RJ Writing Ink

Star Wars: History Abridged Pt. 8- The Dark Wars Pt. 2

Hello, everyone, and happy May the Fourth. Hopefully you’ll have already read my review for the final episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars by now. There’s more, though. For the last week, I’ve been continuing my history abridged series for the Expanded Universe, covering the era of the Old Sith Wars. Today is the grand finale. If you’ve read my last posts, then you know the Galaxy’s in bad shape. The Jedi are on the brink of extinction, the Republic’s at death’s door, and the Sith are making it worse. However, there’s still one person left who can help. So, come with me and learn the story of the Jedi Exile.

If you haven’t played Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, then major spoilers ahead. Just saying.

The Jedi Exile

The woman known to history as the Jedi Exile was born Meetra Surik, and she spent her youth trained as a Jedi Padawan. She was strong in the Force, far stronger than some teachers gave her credit for. In addition, she was to unconciosuly use the Force to create powerful bonds with others, making her a natural leader and compassionate person. When the Mandalorian Wars broke out, she was one of the Jedi who followed Revan and Malak into battle. Next to Malak, she became Revan’s most trusted follower.

At the final battle of Malachor V, Revan entrusted Meetra with the superweapon that would wreck the planet. As a result of, she saw many of the friends she made die in front of her. It broke her, and she became the only Jedi to return to the Council to face judgement. They chose to exile her for what she did. In addition, they also seemed to sever her connection to the Force. she spent the next ten years wandering the Outer Rim. That is, until Revan’s friend Carth found her and brought her back to the Republic.

Hunted by the Sith

In 3,951 BBY, Meetra, aka the Jedi Exile, returned to Republic space. Naturally, this attracted the attention of many factions, including the Sith. Darth Sion and his Sith Assassins infiltrated the Republic ship she was on and came close to capturing her. However, she would be saved by none other than Darth Traya. Her students had turned on her, stripped her of the Force, and threw her out. Now she wanted revenge on them and saw the Jedi Exile as the key to that, and more.

With her new companions, along with several she picked up while on the run, she narrowly escaped the Sith. After returning to the Republic, she then set out on a quest to reunite the remaining Jedi Masters, take down the Sith, learn why she was exiled and why she was starting to regain her connection with the Force.

Journey of the Jedi Exile

With her new companions, Meetra began to travel to multiple worlds touched by the Mandalorian Wars and the Jedi Civil War. While doing so, she ended up helping the locals out with a lot of problems that were keeping them from rebuilding. She also gained a few more companions in the process. Among them were Visas Marr, the lone survivor of Katarr and Nihilus’ apprentice, and Mandalore the Preserver. The latter was trying to rebuild his people after their defeat, and saw aiding the Republic as their best option.

After traveling to multiple planets and fending off Sith assassins and bounty hunters, events would reach a fever pitch on the familiar world of Onderon. It had been fifty years since the events surrounding Freedon Nadd and the Beast Riders. Now the planet was ruled by Oron Kira and Galia’s descendant, Talia. However, a growing force wanted Onderon to secede from the Republic. What no one knew was that these separatists were backed by the Sith.

Ulimately, Onderon became engulfed in a Civil War that the Exile and her companions found themselves caught in. On the moon of Dxun, the group worked with their Mandalorian allies to drive the Sith out of Nadd’s tomb, which they were using to bolster enemy with the Dark Side. Meetra herself led the counterattack that would save Talia and end the conflict in victory. As a bonus, she found the last Jedi Master she was looking for.

Revelations

With all the (still) living Jedi Masters found, Meetra returned to Dantooine to learn the truth about her exile and her regaining the Force. The revelations were pretty big.

As it turned out, the Council never took her connection to the Force. She did that herself at Malchor V. If she hadn’t, the backlash from feeling all her friends die would have killed her. As for how she could use it again, it was through her bonds with others. So the masters wanted to exile her again, for good. However, Kreia intervened.

Kreia had come to believe that the source of much of the Galaxy’s strife was the Force itself and sought to destroy it. And in the Exile, she saw a truth that the Jedi refused to believe: that people did not need to rely on the Force to survive. So, she slew the masters and abandoned the Exile before journeying to Malachor V.

Fall of the Triumvirate

After Kreia left her, Meetra learned what she was planning. The countless deaths at Malachor V had made it a wound in the Force. By expanding it, she could cut the Force off from the entire Galaxy. In other words, killing it. But doing so would probably kill countless beings in the process. So, they had to stop that. First, though, the Sith had to be dealt with.

Firstly, Meetra managed to slay Darth Nihilus when he came out of hiding to consume another planet. After that, the group traveled to what was left of Malachor V, took down the Sith assassins, and convinced Sion to let go of his hate and pass on. After that, she confronted and struck down Kreia/Darth Traya, and then reactivated the superweapon that destroyed Malachor V to destroy the planet, closing the wound in the Force.

The Jedi are Reborn

However, this is where the story of the Jedi Exile ends in Republic Space. with her dying breath, Kriea told Meetra the truth about what happened to Revan, why he became a Sith Lord, and why he had left after the Jedi Civil War. He had discovered that the Mandalorians were pawns for a much greater evil, lurking in depths of space. An evil so great, that Revan sought to prepare the Galaxy for it by any means necessary. It was this evil that he left to confront on his own, and now the Exile would follow in his footsteps.

Meetra didn’t leave the Republic unguarded, though. Many of her companions on this journey were Force-sensitive. She chose to pass on her knowledge and training to them before she left. These students of hers would rebuild the Jedi Order and the Republic in the decades to follow. Thus, the Old Sith Wars came to an end.

May the Fourth Be With You

I didn’t intend on making this post as detailed as it was. However, I found that the only way to give this story any credit was to dedicate a separate post to it. This isn’t the end of the story, though. There are some pretty crazy things left to tell you about the Mandalorian Wars, Revan, and the Exile. So, come back tomorrow for Revenge of the Fifth as I give you the epilogue to the Old Sith Wars.

May the Force be with you.

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Star Wars: History Abridged Pt. 7- The Dark Wars, Pt. 1

Any Star Wars fan worth his salt knows how Darth Sidious almost managed to wipe out the Jedi Order in the films. However, in the Star Wars Expanded Universe timeline, this wasn’t the first time this happened. That distinction belongs to the period of time following the end of the Jedi Civil War. Known as the First Jedi Purge, it’s what we’ll be talking about both today and on May the Fourth. And in some ways, it was worse than what Sidious ever did.

Republic and Jedi at Death’s Door

Thanks to the efforts of the redeemed Revan and his friends, the Jedi Civil War ended in victory for the Jedi and Republic. However, that brought no comfort. In less than fifty years, the Galaxy had gone through three major conflicts that had eaten away at the Jedi. Thousands of members had either died or fallen to the Dark Side. Some of their most important centers of knowledge had been lost. And since the latest incarnations of the Sith had been ex-Jedi, public confidence in them reached an all-time low.

When the Jedi Civil War ended in 3,956 BBY, the total number of Jedi left was around a hundred. A hundred; in a galaxy of trillions of people who needed help. Worse still, the Republic stood on the brink of total collapse. Their military and infrastructure were in shambles, and they could do nothing to help their protectors.

There was one person who could lead the Galaxy through this strife, though: Revan. However, after the war, he began to regain more of his memories. Suspecting there was a threat in the deep reaches of space, he left known space a year after the war ended. Thus, the Galaxy was deprived of a leader.

The Sith Triumvirate

Even though Revan’s Sith Empire was shattered, remnants of it clung to life in the dark corners of the Galaxy. For several years they continued to cause trouble for the Republic, but they also fought each other. After a while, though, the remnants united under the leadership of the Sith Triumvirate, three powerful Dark Lords of the Sith with badass titles.

There was Darth Sion, the Lord of Pain. He had been a part of the Brotherhood of Sith in the Great Sith War, where he discovered an unnatural power. By focusing on his pain/sheer willpower, he could use the Dark Side to bring himself back to life whenever he fell. In other words, he was immortal at the cost of his body becoming a patchwork of injuries held together by the Dark Side.

Then there was Darth Nihilus, the Lord of Hunger. scariest of the three. He fought in the Mandalorian Wars and was unlucky enough to be on Malachor V when Revan almost destroyed it. Even though he survived, he had to drain the Force Energy from others to survive. In other words, he was a Force vampire. When the Dark Side began to destroy his body, he got rid of it. He transferred his consciousness to his skull-like mask and armor, become a freak of nature.

Then there was Darth Traya, the Lord of Betrayal. Once a Jedi, she had been one of Revan’s teacher’s in his youth. When he became a Sith Lord, the Jedi kicked her out, and she vowed revenge. Journeying to Malachor V, she learned Revan had left something behind: the Trayus Academy and its students, the Sith Assassins. They used the Force to hide themselves and hunt down targets through it.

First Jedi Purge

Rather than conquer the Galaxy outright, the Triumvirate had a different strategy: take. out. The Jedi. They were smart enough to realize that if their attempts at Galactic Domination kept getting foiled by the Jedi Knights, they should get rid of them. After that, it wouldn’t who was in charge: the Dark Side would reign supreme. Thus, they got to work, starting the First Jedi Purge

Every time the Jedi tried to gather together, they began to disappear, hunted down by the Sith. No place seemed safe for them. To make matters worse, someone put out a bounty on the Jedi; now they had to worry about bounty hunters as well. Something had to be done. So, most of the remaining leaders called a meeting on the planet of Katarr in secret. However, one of them ratted on them in the hopes of drawing their attackers out of hiding. Big mistake.

Katarr was also home to a colony of Miraluka, a species of blind humanoids who used the Force to see. The whole planet was like a Force feast for Darth Nihilus. So he came to Katarr and… he ate them. He sucked the Force out of everything on planet, killing all but one person.

So, the remaining Jedi (who I could count with my fingers) went into hiding. The Order was publicly disbanded. It seemed like the Galaxy would fall into darkness.

One Last Hope

By the year 3,951 BBY, the Galaxy was sinking into darkness. The Jedi were gone, crime was rampant, and the Republic was on life support. It looked like the end of everything.

However, all was not lost. In the Outer Rim, the Republic found a Jedi; rather, a former Jedi. She had fought in the Mandalorian Wars as one of Revan’s top officers. She was the only one to return when the war ended and was exiled as a result. Now this Exile was the last hope for the Jedi and Republic.

Come back tomorrow as I cover the events of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Wars and the end of the Old Sith Wars and the First Jedi Purge. Then come back on Revenge of the Fifth for an extra surprise. May the Force be with you!

Click here to learn all there is about Star Wars with Wookiepedia, the Star Wars Wiki.

Click here to see more of my Star Wars Stuff.