Tales of the Jedi: The Fall of the Sith Empire
We pick up with failed hyperspace explorer Jori Daragon flying the Starbreaker 12 back to her home planet of Koros Major. She is weeping and miserable and will be for the rest of the book, and it gets old fast. Immediately upon landing she is arrested for “grand theft, firing upon Cinnagar Security ships, destruction of property, fraud, resisting arrest, reckless mayhem, [and] unauthorized departure through restricted shipping lanes.” (Reckless mayhem is, perhaps, the most enjoyable of crimes.) Jori tries to warn the capital city of Cinnagar about the imminent Sith invasion that she doesn’t know about, but they laugh the Sith off as a fairytale (seriously why does everyone know about the Sith?) and sentence her to hard labor on the colony world of Ronika.
Shipping merchant Ssk Kahorr, who is still a giant yellow lizard, takes possession of the Starbreaker 12 as compensation for the cargo ship he lost using one of Jori Daragon’s unreliable hyperspace routes. This is completely legal, even though the route was approved by the Navigators’ Guild and flagged as highly dangerous. Also despite the fact that Ssk Kahorr had already murdered the guild representative who approved the route and tried to have Jori and her brother killed. Where is the Occupy Cinnagar movement when you need them?
Back in the Sith Empire, Jori’s brother, Gav Daragon, has become the sort-of apprentice of Naga Sadow, Dark Lord of the Sith, who has taught him a few paltry Force illusions. As Sadow prepares to launch his invasion of the Republic, his old rival, the ludicrous Ludo Kressh, returns to Sadow’s stronghold in a single ship. He tries to warn the other Sith Lords that Sadow has betrayed them and instigated this war with the Republic for his own glory, but Sadow tells Gav to go push a big red button on the wall. He does so, then acts surprised when Kressh’s ship suddenly explodes. “You tricked me!” Gav whines. “I didn’t know I was going to destroy him. I’ve never killed anybody.” Over the course of this book, Gav Daragon will prove himself a serious contender for the most stupid character in all of Star Wars.
Meanwhile, Jori concocts a plan to escape from Ronika. “I’m sure they’ve guarded against any carefully planned escape . . .” she muses, “. . . so I guess I’ll just have to act spontaneously.” She hits a guard in the face with a rock, jumps into an ore shuttle, and flies away while the other guards shoot at her. She’s finally shot down by security starfighters over Cinnagar, but survives by sailing to the ground in a hang glider that looks like it’s made out of canvas, wood, and twine. Were parachutes seriously too advanced a piece of technology for this time period? I mean really?
Conveniently, Jori lands right outside the Cinnagar royal palace. She scales the walls like it ain’t no thang and bursts in on Empress Teta, ruler of the Koros system. Teta is about to impale her with a spear but Jori gets out her story about the Sith Empire through her snot-soaked sobs and Teta stays her hand. Odan-Urr, bibliophile and Jedi Nerd, fortunately happens to be there and reminds the empress of his vision of the Sith invasion. Empress Teta, Odan-Urr, and Memit Nadill, a Jedi who looks like a green camel with dreadlocks, begin assembling the Koros system’s fleet to fight the invaders, but they know that the rest of the Republic, having failed to heed their warning in the previous book, will be caught off-guard by the attack.
The Sith themselves are finally ready to follow the signal of the tracking device Naga Sadow put on the Starbreaker 12. Sadow explains that he will remain hidden in his Meditation Sphere, a ship that looks like a giant eyeball with wings, while the inexperienced and incompetent Gav Daragon leads the fleet into battle. Because the Sith control a relatively small region of the galaxy compared to the Republic, their fleet is too small and their Massassi, members of the Sith warrior caste, are too few to prevail in a conventional war. Through the power of the Meditation Sphere, however, Naga Sadow will create a host of illusory ships and troops to bolster his real forces. As long as the Republic thinks they’re outnumbered, the Sith’s victory is assured! I’m no military tactician but I have a few concerns about the usefulness of this ploy as a war-winning strategy.
But since nobody in the comic says that the invasion fleet launches and the Great Hyperspace War begins!
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A last alliance of Elves and Men marched against the armies of Mordor. |
[Continuity Note: The Great Hyperspace War marks the beginning of the Old Sith Wars, an umbrella term that encompasses the succession of clashes between the Republic and the original Sith Empire or its off-shoots over the next 1,400 years. It was useful to delineate these conflicts from the later period known as the New Sith Wars when there was a noticeable difference between the ancient Sith and the more modern variety seen in the films. Due to almost every era of EU storytelling aping the style of the prequels, however, that difference has grown less appreciable with every new conflict added to the Old Sith Wars. Who wants a living, breathing space epic where the setting changes organically over time when everything can just always be like it was in the movies!]
The Sith come out of hyperspace at the Starbreaker 12’s location, immediately blowing it up and killing Ssk Kahorr and his chimpanzee manservant. “My sister better not have been on that ship!” Gav says crossly, then adds, to a chorus of groans, “This deal is getting worse all the time . . .”
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“This deal is very fair and I’m happy to be a part of it.” |
The Sith launch a three-pronged attack on the planets of Coruscant, Koros Major, and, for some reason, Kirrek, where the Daragons’ parents were killed. Memit Nadill arrives on Coruscant to warn the Republic just as the Sith strike, prompting the populace to take shelter in the Senate Hall while the Jedi defend against the invaders and their monstrous war beasts. A random nobody gets the best line in the book when he looks toward the heavens and cries, “Can the Senate Hall protect us? This is a place of government, not war!”
At Koros Major, Gav Daragon takes a shuttle down to the planet to look for his sister, hoping she won’t be killed while his forces bomb the shit out of Cinnagar. He comes across his former creditor, Aarrba, a kindly Hutt who wears a fez and vest, making him the best character in the EU. Since Gav is currently commanding an all-out assault on the city for no discernible reason, Aarrba refuses to help him, so Gav’s bodyguards impale the Hutt with spears. Gav is horrified and tries to stop them but they don’t listen. With the last of his strength, Aarrba rolls over onto Massassi warriors, killing them.
Famous Last Words: “AAARRUHHH . . . crush you . . . UUURRUHHHHHHHHHHHHH” – Aarrba the Hutt
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And may angels fly thee home. |
Jori shows up at Aarrba’s Repair Dock at just that moment, hoping to find a ship. Thinking that Gav has killed Aarrba, she cuts down his remaining Massassi bodyguards with a lightsaber given to her by Odan-Urr, because I guess anybody can use one now. She confronts Gav and demands to know what’s going on with him, but he is too horrified at all he has done to explain and flees back to his ship. Jori follows in another Sith shuttle and somehow deduces from the direction Gav’s ship is going that he’s headed for the unstable red giant star of Primus Goluud. That is literally the only place in the entire galaxy he could be going.
Yep.
But he is going there, and it’s to confront Naga Sadow and put an end to all these shenanigans. Gav opens fire on Sadow’s Meditation Sphere, crippling it. Across the Republic, vast swaths of the Sith forces fade into nothingness as Naga Sadow is unable to maintain his illusions. The Jedi and Republic soldiers have no trouble with the remaining Sith and emerge victorious. I guess before they just didn’t have the confidence to win or something.
On Kirrek, Odan-Urr tries to use his Battle Meditation to bolster the resolve of Empress Teta’s forces, but they are too overwhelmed by the Sith onslaught. Odan-Urr’s Jedi Master, Ooroo, who has been back in the story since the beginning of this book but hasn’t done anything worth mentioning because he is a jellyfish, apologizes for sending his student off to war instead of letting him remain in peace among his books. Ooroo then floats out into the midst of the Massassi warriors and cracks open the crystal he lives in, revealing that it is full not of piss but of deadly cyanogen gas. The gas floods the battlefield, killing all the Massassi who breathe it, but Master Ooroo cannot survive in an oxygen atmosphere.
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“. . . because I am a big stupid jellyfish.” |
As reinforcements from Ronika, former prisoners pardoned by Empress Teta, arrive to mop up the rest of the Sith, Odan-Urr approaches his dying master and says his goodbyes. Heartbreakingly, Ooroo laments that he could not swim in the oceans of his homeworld one last time. Through his tears, Odan-Urr confesses his wish that war had never come to them and they’d just been able to stay on their planet and read books forever. Ooroo prophesizes that Odan-Urr will live to be one of the most ancient Jedi of all time and eventually pass away surrounded by his beloved books. He dies and his body vanishes into the Force, marking the first time we’ve seen this Jedi curiosity. His death is “so much more than a Sith illusion.” :,(
Back at Primus Goluud, Naga Sadow tries to appeal to Gav’s inner bromantic by reminding him of all the great times they’ve had together, like when he tricked Gav into murdering a political rival or cajoled Gav into burning down his home planet or convinced Gav that galactic civilization should be overthrown by an evil magocracy by giving him some gemstones. “I don’t agree with what you have done, Naga Sadow,” says Gav, deciding to go meet with him anyway. “You won’t convince me,” he warns. “Your silken words won’t have any effect.” He gets over to the Meditation Sphere only to find that Naga Sadow has already abandoned it, leaving him trapped there. There’s no reason given for why he can’t just leave on the same shuttle he took over there so I’m going to assume he just didn’t think of it.
Naga Sadow tries to rally the remnants of his battered fleet, but Jori Daragon has alerted the Republic to Gav’s destination and their fleet shows up at Primus Goluud to shoot Sadow in the dick. Gav tells them that Sadow took the entire Sith fleet to war, leaving the Sith Empire completely undefended. If they strike now, they can end the threat of the Sith for all time (yeah we all know how that works out). Sadow uses some crystals on his warship to amplify his Force powers, destabilizing Primus Goluud and causing the star to go supernova. The Republic ships escape but Gav is trapped aboard the Meditation Sphere and dies in the explosion. I guess Jori is sad about this or something.
Back at the Sith Empire, Naga Sadow encounters another Sith fleet and learns that, in his absence, the Sith Council has stripped him of his title and elected a new Dark Lord, the interminable Ludo Kressh. Kressh gleefully recounts how he faked his own death by sending a decoy ship to be destroyed by Sadow’s decoy fortress at the beginning of the book. His armada opens fire on Sadow’s, and one of Sadow’s damaged warships careens into Kressh’s, killing him three pages after he returned from the dead. Wow what a great plot twist.
Sadow doesn’t even have time to catch his breath, however, before Empress Teta and the Republic fleet, following Gav Daragon’s coordinates, are upon them. Seeing he has no chance against the Republic’s superior forces, Sadow pulls the same trick he did in the previous volume, ordering the Massassi warriors on all his ships to murder their commanders and take control of the fleet. They then self-destruct all of their ships. I don’t understand how this was helpful.
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“Hurray, I suck!” |
Sadow himself flees to the Denarii Nova, where he does the same goddamn thing he did a few pages ago and makes the twin stars of that system explode, destroying a few of the starfighters chasing him and covering his own escape. Believing Sadow to be dead, Jori Daragon and Empress Teta return to Koros Major, where Odan-Urr is investigating the abandoned Sith ships still in orbit. Aboard one he discovers a Sith holocron, a repository of arcane knowledge, pyramid-shaped instead of cubical like the Jedi’s. This inspires him to build the galaxy’s biggest library on the planet where Master Ooroo trained him, which he finally reveals is called Ossus. Maybe Kevin J. Anderson should have reread the previous story arc before writing this one, because he apparently forgot the very first line of that volume: “History has forgotten the name of the planet.” Jesus, KJA.
Naga Sadow and his Massassi take their last remaining ship, which is apparently called the Corsair although that name is never mentioned in the comic, and finally settle on the remote jungle moon of Yavin 4, which of course is the location of the Rebel base in the original Star Wars. Exiled and disgraced, the former Dark Lord of the Sith sets his followers to work constructing a new base on the moon, vowing that this will be a fresh start for him, no matter how long it takes. This is the last we’ll see of Naga Sadow, although he still has a few parts to play in inter-story lore not depicted on the page.
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A variety of Jedi holocrons, or possibly hatboxes. |
On the final page of the comic, Empress Teta asks Jori Daragon if there’s anything she can do to repay her for saving the Republic. Jori requests to be made the new manager of Aarrba’s Repair Dock. “It’s all I ever wanted,” she says happily. So why didn’t you and your brother just go to work for Aarrba instead of failing at being hyperspace navigators and almost destroying the galaxy oh forget it.
The best part of this story is one we don’t even get to see. After completely crippling the Sith Empire’s military and eliminating any threat they posed, the Republic and the Jedi invade the Sith worlds with the goal of completely erasing their civilization from the galaxy for all time. They destroy their artifacts, talismans, and temples and drive the Sith species to the brink of extinction. Of course, this information comes from previous, later, and better written lore and isn’t touched on at all in the comic.
Meditations
Okay so this book kind of blows. Despite having the same artist as the previous volume, the art is stupendously terrible, like Carrasco was so embarrassed to have to draw this foolishness that he kept putting it off and finally finished the whole book the weekend before it was due. Everyone looks ugly and deformed and poorly detailed, it’s just so bad.
The writing suffers from all the same problems as the previous volume, except now KJA has apparently run out of ideas and started blatantly reusing plot points from The Golden Age of the Sith as well as earlier in this same comic. Ludo Kressh gets blown up or almost blown up three separate times, Sadow destroys two different star systems (I guess Darth Vader was speaking incredibly literally when he said the ability to destroy a planet was insignificant next to the power of the Force), the Massassi kill off all the Sith Lords twice, Sadow keeps committing blatant atrocities that Gav justifies to himself by [the author was too lazy to come up with a way for Gav to justify continuing to help the Sith].
As an introduction to the Dark Lords of the Sith, the most recurring threat to galactic peace over the rest of the EU, these comics are amazingly poor. A story set during the golden age of the Sith could have been really cool and portrayed the Sith Empire as a more primal sort of evil than the typical Jedi-gone-bad we’re used to seeing. Instead they all come off as a bunch of bureaucrats and buffoons. I think it was a mistake to see their politics in action, with a representative council electing a leader and arguing about their stagnant economy. They should be practicing dark arts and performing arcane rituals, not trying to win the hearts and minds of pink monkeys with bad hair and only using the Force for ridiculously overpowered finishing moves (too bad the Emperor didn’t have any of those Sith crystals, he could have just blown up the Rebel base with his mind and not even bothered building the Death Star).
Bizarrely, the one thing I did kind of enjoy about this two-book arc was the characters of Odan-Urr and Master Ooroo. Odan-Urr, a nervous, nerdy bookworm, was kind of an original take on a Jedi Knight and I could empathize with him wanting to go read a good book instead of being involved with this dumb plot. As for Ooroo, a jellyfish Jedi Master may sound hilariously stupid on paper, but I actually like the idea that you don’t need to be able to hold a lightsaber to be a great Jedi. The Force is in all things, so it stands to reason it would be in weird jellyfish aliens as well, and occasionally it’s entertaining to see that idea reflected in the text.
Yeah but this one sucked overall though. Final verdict: 1.5/5 Death Stars.
Honestly, don’t even bother with these two comics, just let Lance Henriksen’s awesome voice tell you about them instead.
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