"The Lost City of Tatooine" was written by archaelogist David West Reynolds. David was Lucasfilm's location scout for Star Wars: Episode I which marked the movie series' return to the fictional planet of Tatooine. These new filming locations were the inspiration for this project.

In this story, David West Reynolds was able to reveal the origin of the fearsome nomads of the desert called the Tusken Raiders. A young Luke Skywalker and his friend Biggs Darklighter set off on an adventure to discover the fabled "Lost City of Tatooine" before the events of the first Star Wars film. The city was once home to the Ghorfas who inhabited the planet before the early settlers came from the stars. It is revealed that the Tusken Raiders, who were rumored to have killed off the Ghorfas, actually are the Ghorfas. They were forced to abandon their city and adopt nomadic ways when settlers exhausted the water supply.

The Ghorfa tombstone glyphs pictured on the cover were designed by Reynolds. The exact translation is not revealed in the story and appears here for the first time:

Interesting tidbit: Ghorfa is the name of the type of grain storage structures in Tunisia used for filming the slave quarters in Episode I: The Phantom Menace. These structures were the inspiration for the lost city as well since in the story it and the slave quarters were originally constructed by the Ghorfa people.