An upcoming Star Wars novel offers new details about the fictional smuggler’s outpost that serves as the inspiration for Galaxy’s Edge and the notorious characters that will populate the new themed land opening this summer at Disneyland.

“Star Wars: Pirate’s Price” describes the setting for Galaxy’s Edge as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” surrounded by the petrified remains of once-towering ancient trees. “Rising above the shops and dwellings were the petrified trunks of what were once giant trees that had dominated the skies of that world,” reads an excerpt from the book posted on starwars.com. “Now their blackened remains stood as silent sentinels on the outskirts of the town.”

Walt Disney Imagineering and Lucasfilm have been using novels to build up the back story of the Black Spire Outpost on the planet Batuu where the new Star Wars land will be set. The books help weave the smuggler’s outpost on the far-flung planet into the existing Star Wars story canon.

“Pirate’s Price,” written by Lou Anders and illustrated by Annie Wu, is set in part in Black Spire Outpost and prominently features Hondo Ohnaka, described in the book as the “greatest pirate in the galaxy.” Hondo and his Ohnaka Transport Solutions, a front company for a smuggling operation, are expected to play a central role in the back story of the new Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run flight simulator attraction coming to Disneyland.

According to the Imagineering back story developed for Galaxy’s Edge, Batuu was once a nexus of trade and commerce for the very first interstellar explorers. The outer rim planet was quickly forgotten when hyperspace was discovered and trade routes relocated to the galactic core.

“The outpost was not an easy place to find unless you knew about it first,” reads an excerpt from “Pirate’s Price,” which will be published Tuesday, Jan. 8. “It was located where the Unknown Regions met Wild Space, a stopover for smugglers and those of less savory occupations — a place for rogues and opportunists, con artists, thieves … and of course, pirates.”

Back in July, another Star Wars novel gave readers their first chance to visit Black Spire Outpost. “Thrawn: Alliances” offered an overview of the geography of the “mysterious and brooding” remote town.

“The trading post with the attached cantina dominated the center of town, pressing up against the edge of the ruins of the ancient civilization that had once stood here,” read a passage from “Thrawn: Alliances.” “Some of the homes and businesses had been built into those ruins, though most were freestanding buildings. The petrified remains of the giant black trees that had given the outpost its name towered over everything, mysterious and brooding.”

Rock work crews have been working for months at Disneyland to create faux tree trunks and towering cliff walls at the 14-acre Galaxy’s Edge construction site behind Frontierland and Fantasyland.

One passage from “Thrawn: Alliances” offered a look inside the cantina at the center of Galaxy’s Edge and a peek at a drink menu that included Black Spire Brew, Toniray White and Moogan Tea. One cocktail mentioned in the book — Blurrgfire — is already being teased as a menu item at Oga’s Cantina when the watering hole opens at Disneyland.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens in June at Disneyland in Anaheim and late fall 2019 at Disney’s Hollywood Studios near Orlando, Florida.