You’ve come a long way baby
An exotic forest world, home to the rancor and located in the Outer Rim, the Dathomir System was not part of the Old Republic even though it was not far off the much traveled Hydian Way on the way to Toprawa (where Leia optained the Death Star plans), Serenno (home of Count Dooku) and the Corporate Sector.
Dathomir was first introduced to the Star Wars expanded universe in The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton (Bantam Books, Apr 1995). The politically powerful young princess receives a proposal of marriage from a handsome prince of the Hapes Consortium, a matriarchal society. Of course Han Solo wants her to have nothing of it and whisks her off to an obscure planet that he believes he won gambling. The Hapan Prince also arrives on the distant planet in pursuit of Leia.
On Dathomir the small group (trio plus prince) find a primitive matriarchal society of force users known as the Witches of Dathomir. There are good witches and bad witches. We learn the history of the witch women from Old Mother Rell who is about 300 years old at her telling. The colony began with the exiled Allya, a rogue jedi banished to Dathomir and who died when her eldest daughter was only sixteen years old. Of course the force wielding girls born of Allya were raised without guidance and easily took over the local human Paecian colony. (Adaptable humans colonize just about any carbon based planet).
As I calculated, Rell was born about 290 years before the Battle of Yavin. The Battle of Yavin is the measuring stick for everything in the expanded universe. The Star Wars Atlas indicates that Allya was exiled there 600 years before Yavin. In the aftermath of the Galactic Civil War and establishment of the New Republic, Imperial Warlord Zsinj seized control of the sector and used Dathomir as a base until he died in battle with the Hapans.
Since their inception, nightsisters (the evil witches of Dathomir) have appeared in other subsequent stories, novels, graphic novels, both before and after Yavin. There is an appeal to sexy, powerful, female dark force users as foils to the virtuous jedi. These women have appeared solo, isolated and alone, mysterious.
Fast forward to 2011 and the television series Clone Wars.
After she is left to die by Count Dooku, Ventress retreats to her birth world (formerly unknown but possibly Rattatak) of Dathomir. She plots her revenge. Admittedly it is difficult to fit all new stories into an existing framework but a Ventress back story in Clone Wars gives a nod to her youth with a flash back to training by Jedi Nerec and his death.
Dathomir was originally portrayed as a forgotten colony on a distant world, inaccessible. Society was primitive with inhabitants riding rancors. A small Imperial outpost was the only link to the outside galaxy.
Now the leader of the Nightsisters, Mother Talzin, is regal and civilized. She has her own starship. She has her own hololink and converses with Count Dooku shockingly treating a man as an equal. This is still a matriarchal society. Men are kept apart. This time the men aren’t human male concubines but are near human Zabraks (like Sith Darth Maul and Jedi Eeth Koth, Agen Kolar). The women are hooded and robed. Are they human or near human?
Yet the exciting thing is that DATHOMIR is now part of the official CANON. This planet, which first existed in Wolverton’s mind and then in the EU, has made the leap to be cemented as a bona fide part of the galaxy by the film team, by none other than Katie Lucas herself! Like Aayla Secura, the blue Twi’lek jedi. Movements like these make the Star Wars universe a dynamic place. The galaxy so far, far away seems much more friendly, accessible and interactive.
