The Star Wars galaxy was no stranger to
conflicts, which, in fairness, is to be expected, considering the name. Galactic civilization
frequently had to face external threats, ranging from bloodthirsty empires to opportunistic
raiders to manipulative Sith Lords. But some conflicts weren’t just threats to civilizations.
Some were threats to the galaxy itself. We’ll be discussing three such threats today, the greatest
dangers that the galaxy as a whole ever faced. First up, we have Abeloth, the Bringer of
Chaos. Originally known as the Servant, Abeloth was a mortal woman who came to serve
the Ones, the powerful Force-wielders that would come to inhabit Mortis, a hundred thousand
years before the Battle of Yavin. Over time, she became a beloved part of the family in her own
right, taking the role of the Mother and playing a major role in resolving conflicts between the
Daughter and the Son. But Abeloth was still mortal, as opposed to the beings she loved, and as
she grew old, she began to grow desperate as well. Seeking immortality, she drank from the Font
of Power; bathed in the Pool of Knowledge, becoming a twisted Dark Side entity in
the process -- a completely unnatural being. Horrified by what she had
done, the Ones withdrew to Mortis, leaving Abeloth on the jungle planet they all had
once called home. To ensure she didn’t escape, the Son and the Daughter enlisted the help of the
Killiks, and using massive gravitational weapons like Centerpoint Station and Sinkhole Station,
they pulled black holes through hyperspace, forming an impassable cluster around Abeloth’s
planet. That cluster of black holes was called the Maw in later years, and was infamous for
being the primary obstacle of the Kessel Run. The Son and Daughter released the Killiks
from their influence and returned to Mortis after imprisoning Abeloth, but the prison they
had created was imperfect. Abeloth was still incredibly powerful, and whenever there was
a major change in the current of the Force, the Bringer of Chaos was strengthened and
attempted to escape. Each time she did so, the Son and Daughter returned to the Killiks
and drove her back… that is, until 21 BBY, when both the Son and Daughter
died during the Mission to Mortis. The next few decades did a great deal
to alter the current of the Force, and the final blow came when Jacen
Solo fell to the Dark Side in 40 ABY, becoming Darth Caedus in a bid to change
the future. This awakened Abeloth, who once more made a bid to escape by
drawing Force-sensitives towards the Maw. To make matters worse, Centerpoint Station
was destroyed in a war that Caedus started, a war from which the galaxy was still recovering
in 44 ABY, when Luke Skywalker learned of her. In short order, Abeloth became strong enough
to destroy Sinkhole Station, allowing her to escape into the galaxy at large. She battled both
Jedi and Sith, and plotted to plunge the galaxy into such chaos that all life within it would be
extinguished. Using her powers of shapeshifting, possession, and her gift for manipulation,
she managed to evade Luke Skywalker and quickly rise to power, getting herself elected
as Chief of State of the Galactic Alliance. With political control of the whole galaxy and direct
possession of a number of important figures, Abeloth came close to galactic domination, which
she would be able to use to destroy civilization. However, Abeloth was confronted by Luke Skywalker
and Darth Krayt before her plans could come to fruition. The three engaged in a long and grueling
battle, but Skywalker and Krayt ultimately emerged victorious when, one by one, their allies began
killing off all of Abeloth’s avatars -- the beings she had possessed. This greatly weakened
her, allowing Skywalker to, apparently, kill her. But, as Luke knew well, such a
powerful abomination was not that easy to kill, and he believed that Abeloth would
return to threaten the galaxy once more. Next up, we have the ones everyone should know
would be on this list - the Yuuzhan Vong. The Vong were a masochistic alien species from another
galaxy, whose invasion of the Star Wars galaxy in 25 ABY ended up being the deadliest war in
galactic history. The Vong abhorred traditional tech, instead using unique forms of biotechnology
for everything from weaponry to hyperspace travel, and their society was built around a caste
system enforced by genetic engineering and the worship of a pantheon of bloodthirsty
war gods. They were also unique in that they existed outside the Force, having been cut off
from it for the terrible things they had done. Thousands upon thousands of years before the
rise of the Empire, the Yuuzhan Vong engaged in an endless series of wars that left their
entire galaxy lifeless and uninhabitable, and so they set out across the intergalactic void to
find a new one. Traveling in massive worldships, they eventually approached the galaxy we all know
and love, which they saw as weak and ripe for the conquest. For decades, they scouted it out,
and were disgusted by what they discovered. Galactic civilization was abhorrent to the
Yuuzhan Vong, so they resolved to destroy it. The Yuuzhan Vong invaded in 25 ABY, exploiting
the instability of the New Republic and beginning a war that lasted for four years. The Vong
sought to claim the galaxy as their new home, but after scouting it, they had developed
additional goals as well. They sought to destroy the galaxy as it was known -- to transform its
planets and either exterminate or re-engineer its native species. They didn’t just destroy worlds
and commit genocide as a matter of conquest; they saw the destruction they unleashed as an
act of religious purification. In the words of Warmaster Tsavong Lah, “We do not live side
by side with impurity. Your civilization is built on abominations. Your galaxy is
polluted. We have come to cleanse it.” The Yuuzhan Vong were so severe a threat
that the New Republic, the Imperial Remnant, and indeed the entire galaxy came together to
fight them off - and the Vong still almost won. They successfully conquered around two-thirds
of the known galaxy, including Coruscant itself, which they renamed Yuuzhan’tar in honor of
their old homeworld. However, the defenders of the galaxy, under the banner of the Galactic
Alliance, were able to strike back and cripple the Vong war machine, eventually resulting in a
victory in the Battle of Yuuzhan’tar. Nonetheless, the war came with an incredibly high cost, leaving
an estimated three hundred trillion beings dead. The greatest threat the galaxy ever faced
wasn’t some terrifying Force entity, nor some powerful invader, but was, in fact, war
itself. War - not just conflict, but protracted, gruelling, proper warfare - wounded the
Force, corrupting life itself on a basic level. Force-sensitives that were exposed to
long, bloody conflicts had their connections to the Force slowly weakened, while even those
that weren’t Force-sensitive were negatively influenced by the shockwaves of pain and
despair that war sent through the Force. No one understood this better than Meetra Surik,
a Jedi Exile that, at the Battle of Malachor V during the Mandalorian Wars, was responsible for
a terrible atrocity that destroyed thousands of warships and life on the planet below. The act
was so grave that Surik was cut off from the Force entirely. Ten years later, she confronted
two Sith Lords who had been terribly warped by the effects of war - Darth Nihilus, who was forced to
consume whole planets to maintain his existence, and Darth Sion, whose broken body was held
together only by the sheer force of his hateful will. The unnatural states of both
Sith Lords were the result of years of war. As part of stopping them, Surik travelled to a
variety of war-torn worlds, all of which still bore the scars of what happened there. The planet
Dantooine had been subjected to an attack during the Jedi Civil War that destroyed most of its
infrastructure and killed scores of people, and yet the scars on that world stretched far
beyond the damage that had been done to its civilization. The planet’s wildlife had become
vicious and predatory, upsetting Dantooine’s ecosystem. On Dxun, the weight of a bloody battle
that had happened during the Mandalorian Wars lingered still ten years later, driving the
beasts of its jungles mad. And in Korriban, the ancient homeworld of the Sith, Surik
encountered a planet that had been completely annihilated by war, leaving scars that made the
world a beacon of the Dark Side. Even tens of thousands of years after the initial atrocity,
Korriban was still a thoroughly corrupted world. Malachor V itself represented the worst of what
war could do to a planet. During the battle there, a weapon called the Mass Shadow Generator
annihilated the world and crushed thousands of ships into it, killing all aboard. But the
worst damage done to the planet was not caused by the superweapon, but rather the mass death from
the battle. Malachor itself became a gaping wound in the Force. As a result, the life-forms left on
Malachor mutated into terrible Storm Beasts, and what was left of the world was constantly wracked
by destructive lightning storms. All who walked on the surface of Malachor V could feel the weight
of what had happened there, and Force-sensitives that set foot on the planet were typically drawn
to the Dark Side by the sheer horror of it all. Because of how it wounded the Force,
war was a threat to all life in the universe. The sheer pain and horror it
created warped life in terrible ways, strengthening the unnatural influence of the
Dark Side or weakening the Force itself. War isn’t as easily identifiable a threat as Abeloth
or the Yuuzhan Vong -- you can’t put a face on it, so to speak -- but at the end of the day, it was
far worse than either of them. Neither Abeloth nor the Vong were capable of the sheer devastation
war could cause to the Force. They threatened the life of an entire galaxy, but neither were
quite so destructive as to threaten life itself. So, those were the three greatest threats that
the Star Wars galaxy ever faced. But what do you think? Do you agree with our picks?
Do you think we missed anyone or anything that could've been included in this video?
Let us know in the comments section below.
