Lost Tribe of the Sith: Pantheon
Author: John Jackson Miller
Medium: Ebook novella
Publication Date: July 18, 2011 on StarWars.com
Timeline Placement: 3,000 BBY
Series: Lost Tribe of the Sith
Welcome back to Kesh, where Sith society has been fragmenting and slowly collapsing over the last millennium due to the broken line of succession caused by the disappearance of Grand Lord Lillia Venn Diagram in the previous Lost Tribe story.
Varner Hilts, Sith Caretaker of the holocron of Yaru Korsin, lives in the city of Tahv, where he and his overworked, underpaid employee, Jay, manage a retinue of Keshiri bookkeepers. Every 25 years, the Sith celebrate Testament Day, when they all gather in Tahv to hear the holocron play a recording of Korsin's last will and testament. That day is fast approaching, but this year the elderly Hilts's preparations are interrupted by the Sisters of Seelah, a Sith splinter faction entirely composed of hot women. John Jackson Miller again demonstrates why he is one of the most beloved authors of the Expanded Universe.
The Sisters' leader, 24-year-old Iliana Merko, attempts to seduce Hilts into altering the recording to have Korsin pronounce the devotees of his wife, Seelah, the true inheritors of his legacy. Not only is this plan improbable, it's also impossible, as no one on the planet of Kesh understands anything about advanced space technology. When Hilts fails to respond to her charms, Iliana starts PMSing and threatens to murder meek mathematician Jay. He's saved when a bunch of other Sith factions burst in, wondering what the Sisters are scheming.
Hoping to prevent bloodshed because at age 60 he's getting too old for this Sith, Hilts tries to ease tensions by playing the recording early, because maybe that will do something. The other Sith don't go for this, however, because the actual holiday isn't for another eight days, and the Sith are known for nothing if not their festive spirit. By a shocking coincidence, however, Jay had recently calculated that, over the past 2,000 years, Keshiri time had drifted from the Sith calendar by exactly eight days. I think that's the most pointless filler I've ever seen forced into a story for convenience's sake.
So they play the recording, which accomplishes nothing, but then for no reason Hilts starts playing with the holocron and it plays a never-before-seen recording of Naga Sadow sending Yaru Korsin and the Omen on their mission. The Sith experience a civilization-wide existential crisis as they realize that the divine birthright their entire society is based on is a lie. There's nothing special about them. Not only are there other races in the universe besides humans and Keshiri, but all the Sith on Kesh are descended from slaves, and the Keshiri no longer have a reason to revere them.
As the entire continent of Keshtah is engulfed in internecine conflict, Hilts hides out at Jay's house. Also for no reason, he starts thinking about Korsin's recording, which he has watched countless times before, and suddenly figures out that there is a secret message hidden in his words. He and Jay head for the mountain temple that still houses the crashed remains of the Omen, where they will reopen the ancient ship at last, and hopefully find a way to save their planet.
There are a few funny moments here and there but this is mostly a miss for me. I'm sorry, John Jackson Miller, I'm so sorry, but I just don't care about the Lost Tribe of the Sith. I did like Purgatory and Sentinel a fair bit, but those were the two stories in the series that felt like they had the least to do with the central ongoing narrative of the history of Kesh. These stories were basically written as promotional tie-ins to the Fate of the Jedi series. I haven't read those books and I don't want to, but if I had maybe I would give more of a shit. But as it is, I just don't find this subject matter and this format interesting at all.
3 out of 5 Death Stars.
 |
| Varner Hilts and Jay plot their next move. |
Lost Tribe of the Sith: Secrets
Author: John Jackson Miller
Medium: Ebook novella
Publication Date: March 5, 2012
Timeline Placement: 3,000 BBY
Series: Lost Tribe of the Sith
Secrets opens with Varner Hilts and Jay awkwardly reenacting Sam and Frodo's ascent of Mount Doom, only with more homoerotic tension. The sausage party is soon interrupted, however, when they encounter Iliana Merko crying over the 2,000-year-old bones of Seelah Korsin. With Sithilization on Kesh currently in bloody existential crisis, Iliana has lost all authority and control over her Sisters of Seelah cult. Seeing that she has nothing left to live for after dedicating her life to idolizing a dead woman, Hilts offers Iliana the chance for a new future. She smashes Seelah's skull against the wall and joins the party.
The three adventurers make their way to the abandoned temple built around the crashed Omen like a mausoleum. Exploring the ship's interior, they are befuddled by its complex space technology. In his message in the holocron, Korsin had said that "the true power is behind the throne." Taking this to mean Korsin's La-Z-Boy, Hilts cuts open the back of the chair and feels around inside, but all he finds is a letter from Korsin's mommy.
Suddenly, more Sith arrive, drawn by the urge either to destroy the Omen as a symbolic gesture or to kill Iliana for being a bitch. Hilts, Jay, and Iliana comically duck down underneath the ship's windows, which renders them completely invisible to the new arrivals but leaves them able to overhear their entire plan, which is to squash the ship by knocking over a tower on top of it. While the Sith file for their demolition permits, Hilts realizes that the room they found Korsin's chair in isn't actually the room he kept it in; someone moved it after his death in order to extend the length of this plot. They go to the room where Korsin actually sat in his chair but don't find anything there either, except a map of the continent of Keshtah on one wall and a bunch of blank panels on the others.
The Sith burst into the room and immediately kill Jay. Hilts, generally a pretty pragmatic and laid-back dude, is furious at the senseless murder of his best friend, but he gets over it real quick. Ignoring the fat old guy cradling the dead alien, the Sith gang up on Iliana, but Hilts suddenly has an epiphany and uses the Force to pull down all the panels on the walls, revealing a map of the giant continent on the other side of the planet that no Sith or Keshiri knew existed. The Omen's instruments recorded it as it crashed, and Yaru Korsin secretly transcribed the data, including the locations of Keshtah Major's many populous cities. He knew that the Sith would eventually stagnate and turn against one another without an external enemy to conquer, so he kept the existence of the other continent a secret for future generations to discover.
The Sith present at the Omen realize that this new information will reunite their scattered people and restore their dominance over the Keshiri. They currently lack the technology to cross the vast oceans between Keshtah Minor and Major, but this is another goal they have to work toward. They unanimously elect Varner Hilts as Grand Lord, the new ruler of the Lost Tribe. As his first official act as Grand Lord, the 60-year-old Hilts decrees that he and Iliana are to be married. That's my man right there.
Dirty old man he may be, but Hilts's decree is a multilayered masterstroke. It saves Iliana from the Sith mob who hates her guts, and it saves Hilts from Iliana by taking her to power with him. It isn't until after their wedding ceremony that she realizes the final layer of his trap: according to Sith tradition, the woman of the reigning Grand Lord is executed upon his death. Now their fates are bound together, and she has to spend the rest of her life protecting his.
This ending is hilarious because of how bizarrely cruel it is. Hilts screws over this poor girl in every way imaginable, and in the meantime Jay's killer is standing right there and Hilts makes no effort to find out who it is or get any kind of justice for his friend. He just completely forgets about him when he sees the opportunity to bag a 24-year-old hottie. Treachery is the way of the Sith.
3.5 out of 5 Death Stars or whatever, who cares.
 |
| RIP Jay |
Lost Tribe of the Sith: Pandemonium
Author: John Jackson Miller
Medium: Novella
Publication Date: July 2012 in Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories
Timeline Placement: 2,975 BBY
Series: Lost Tribe of the Sith
Under the leadership of Grand Lord Varner Hilts, the Sith spend the next 25 years developing airship technology. Their first exploratory force approaches the shore of Keshtah Major, known to the Keshiri who live there as Alanciar, just in time to interrupt a soap opera plot about a Keshiri woman named Quarra Thayn cheating on her husband with Keshiri Fabio. Little do the Sith realize, however, that Adari Vaal actually made it all the way to Alanciar after escaping Keshtah Minor two thousand years ago, way back in Savior. The Alanciari Keshiri have spent the intervening millennia preparing for the inevitable Sith invasion.
Defense towers along the coast open fire on the Sith zeppelins and they all go up like the Hindenburg. Only a handful of Sith survive, including the mission's commander, High Lord Edell Vrai. In true daytime TV fashion, the Sith coincidentally wash ashore right where Quarra is fleeing her illicit affair and immediately take her hostage.
Vrai decides that Quarra will lead him inland to reconnoiter Alanciar's defenses so the main body of the Sith invasion will not be caught unaware like he was. If she refuses, they will kill Fabio, who is currently lying unconscious on the beach after a dead uvak fell out of the sky and crushed him to death.
Vrai and Quarra set out together, the Sith Lord's human appearance explained by pretending that he is a Keshiri performer in full makeup to celebrate Observance Day, a commemoration of the Keshiri's sworn duty to resist the Sith. As they travel the countryside, Vrai is awed by the Alanciari's level of technology and martial spirit compared to the simpleton Keshiri from his homeland. Quarra explains that for the last two millennia their entire civilization has developed toward the singular goal of defeating the unseen boogeymen from across the sea.
Seems a bit of a stretch, to be honest.
As they travel together, each comes to understand the other, developing feelings of mutual respect... if not something more. I find it endlessly amusing how the Keshiri women in these stories are so disdainful of their families and domestic lives.
But all of Edell Vrai's carefully laid plans are ruined when the main Sith airship fleet arrives prematurely, spurred on by the ambitious High Lord Korsin Bentado, who plans to conquer Alanciar himself and rule his own independent Sith tribe. Bentado's forces capture the Alanciari capital of Sus'mintri and execute all of the government officials, proving that the Sith aren't all bad.
Bentado is about to kill our "heroes" (?) when he's betrayed by his hunchback assistant, Squab, who was secretly working for Varner Hilts the whole time and stabs Bentado through the heart. "But," Bentado says, "it was so artistically done."
Hilts arrives in Alanciar by airship and scrambles the best spin team he has, casting Bentado and his invasion fleet as the evil Destructors of Keshiri myth and the rest of the Lost Tribe as the Keshiri's Skyborn Protectors. The people of Alanciar swallow this without question and welcome their new Sith overlords.
Edell Vrai is appointed governor of the new continent. His first official act in office is to ask Quarra to go steady with him, but disappointingly she turns him down and goes back to her boring family, the only Keshiri in Alanciar who understands the true nature of the Sith.
Pandemonium is by far the longest novella in the Lost Tribe of the Sith anthology, but honestly it should have been the entire book. The Sith conquest of Alanciar should have been a full-length novel, with the relevant portions of the Yaru Korsin backstory conveyed through flashbacks or discoveries made by other characters during the book. I have to think that this would have immeasurably improved these stories, which I found difficult to get invested in because they were split up across thousands of years and completely changed the central cast multiple times.
Or your could just leave those earlier novellas the way they are and just expand Pandemonium. That way we wouldn't have to lose the Jeff-and-Ori stories. It was an unexpected treat when they showed up in Pandemonium via Force dream for no reason. I must have missed it in Purgatory but Miller describes her here as yet another character with auburn hair (even though her only official illustration depicts her as a brunette). That's at least three redheaded hot chicks he's introduced in this series alone. Doing the Lord's work, JJM.
But anyway, I guess that never could have happened because Del Rey only commissioned these stories as promotional tie-ins to the Fate of the Jedi series. Miller did the best with what he had, as he always does. In an ideal EU world, though, there was a better way for this story to be told.
I really enjoyed the dynamic between Edell Vrai and Quarra Thayn in Pandemonium, but it feels like we didn't get enough of it. I would have read 300 pages of these characters traveling together through hostile countryside, learning more about each other and their respective cultures as they develop from enemies to unwilling allies to who knows what. It's a testament to John Jackson Miller's writing ability and commitment to this premise that he was able to sketch out these characters so well in the limited pages he had. When the story's over, they feel like characters you expect to see again. Alas, it wasn't meant to be.
 |
| Looks like an ammonite, sounds like an Ed Sheeran song. |
No comments:
Post a Comment