Jabba the Hutt

  One of the galaxy's top criminal underlords, Jabba the Hutt has been in charge of a major criminal empire since he was about 600 years old. He moved to Tatooine and established himself at a palace built around the ancient monastery of B'ommar monks. Its centerpiece is a huge throne room where Jabba constantly entertains and holds court from his high dais at one end of the room.

A mammoth, mostly stone structure on the edge of Tatooine's sandy Dune Sea, the palace of crime lord Jabba the Hutt is a crossroads for the scum and villainy of the galaxy. Jabba seems to be constantly entertaining other criminals, bounty hunters and assassins, putting out lavish spreads and providing all sorts of entertainment, from jizz bands to executions.

Many centuries ago, exiled monks of the B'omarr order built what was then a huge monastery on the edge of the Dune Sea. The bandit Alkhara took up residence in part of the monastery and remained there for 34 years, raiding nearby moisture farms while expanding and improving the citadel. The B'omarr monastery was the home of many other gangsters and bandits until eventually becoming the palace of Jabba the Hutt, who has expanded the stronghold to encompass a hangar for his ships and Sail Barge and repair facility.

A huge repulsorlift vehicle belonging to Jabba the Hutt, the Sail Barge Khetanna is used by the crime lord used for pleasure cruises across oceans of sand on the desert world of Tatooine.

Sail barges are widely popular as recreational vehicles since they can travel across any relatively flat terrain, including sand, water, ice or grass. The sail barge's main propulsion system is a three-chamber repulsorlift thrust array that provides a top speed of 100 kilometers an hour.

Jabba's barge hovers up to 10 meters above the ground, and its immense sails catch the wind and pull the barge along in favorable weather. The barge has a main-deck heavy blaster, with smaller antipersonnel blasters custom-mounted on the deck rails.

Retractable viewports on the passenger deck provide sweeping vistas, and the large banquet room is renowned for Jabba's decadent parties. The Hutt particularly enjoys staging feasts built around elaborate executions, when he feeds those he disfavors to the Sarlacc at the Great Pit of Carkoon.

Throughout the changes, the B'omarr monks have kept to their own affairs in the palace's lowest levels, trying to reach a level of enlightenment at which their brains can be surgically removed by the other monks and placed in nutrient-filled glass jars, freed from the distractions of the flesh.

Jabba's criminal empire knows no bounds. It includes smuggling, glitterstim spice dealing, slave trading, assassination, loan sharking, protection and piracy. One smuggler on his payroll is the Corellian Han Solo and his Wookiee first mate Chewbacca. But after Solo has to jettison a spice load to avoid Imperial entanglements, Jabba orders him brought in. It takes a few years, but bounty hunter Boba Fett eventually delivers Solo entombed in carbonite. Solo's friends come to rescue him, and Luke Skywalker directly confronts the Hutt, who drops him into a pit to be eaten by Jabba's pet rancor.

When Skywalker instead kills the rancor, an enraged Jabba orders all the Rebels to be taken to the desert and fed to the Sarlacc monster. But Jabba pays the supreme price for underestimating Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa and their friends.