How Would I Believably Wipe Out an Entire Planet's Population and Culture Without Destroying Said Planet?

In my story, there is a planet. The planet's name is not really important for the sake of this question, so we're going to refer to it as "dead planet".

Background:

• Dead planet is entirely hot desert, with civilization only able to exist in the vicinity of a mega-oasis around the size of Texas derived from the largest known aquifer in the galaxy

• The galaxy has just been hit with a massive plague that, while having vanished as suddenly as it arrived, caused massive population decline and greatly weakened planetary governments (so it didn't completely remake the social order like the black plague did but weakened existing systems kind of like the Plague of Justinian)

• The galaxy, in terms of technology and culture, varies by planet from neolithic to very early renaissance. Gunpowder, on planets where it even exists (dead planet is not one of them, being basically halfway between the bronze and iron ages), is still in its infancy, for example. Travel between planets is done by magic-assisted boats rather than through technology at this point.

Basically, the reason I have the dead planet's entire population and culture being wiped out is that the villain gets mad at not being able to get a certain artifact required for his evil plans and unleashes a massive sandstorm that chokes the mega-oasis to punish the planet's citizens. Agriculture becomes impossible and the whole population basically starves. There are only 2 survivors: one of the villain's henchmen who happens to be from this planet, and the planet's crown prince, who escaped in a spaceworthy vessel the king had purchased from a more advanced civilization. My question is, without destroying the planet completely, how could I justify everyone of dead planet's ethnicity being dead after this except these 2 people (for example, how would I explain the lack of a diaspora community anywhere)?

posted over 4 years ago

The Weasel Sagas‭

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