(Extended Edition)
Episode IV: Invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong
"Fallen is Imperial Kôr!—fallen!—fallen! fallen!"
--H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure
A year had passed since the Rebel Alliance’s victory over the Empire. Though the New Republic now held the capital world of Ton-Muund, it could not rest easy, for sporadic pockets of resistance held out on worlds still loyal to the Empire.
Nor was this all. Rumors had begun to circulate of an impending invasion by an alien fleet, an armada originating outside the known galaxy.
Luke Starkiller, now the sole Jedi in the galaxy, and Lando Katarn, Chancellor of the New Republic, were on high alert. So was Jerec Ors, now the commander of the Republic navy.
By this time Lando had introduced Luke to his young son, Kyle Katarn, a clone of himself. Kyle was in awe of Luke, the powerful Jedi Knight, and hoped to become his first apprentice.
A failed assassination attempt on Chancellor Katarn led Luke to track down the would-be assassin—but even as Luke found him, the felon was himself struck down by a poison dart, fired by a figure in white armor who escaped into the night.
Studying the dart’s make, Luke Starkiller discovered that it came from Bestine, a planet which had, oddly, been wiped entirely from the Republic’s official star charts. Traveling to the sinkhole world of Bestine, Luke found it to be the home planet of the Boma, a race of Dwarves who were master craftsmen.
They had served the Emperor before his fall, but now their energies were redirected to the needs of a new master. Try as he might, Luke could get nothing out of them, save the name of the planet where the Boma had first met this illustrious client.
Luke went there in turn, only to find a military camp abandoned some months previously, with no clue as to where its occupants had gone afterward. Faced with a dead end, Luke returned to the core worlds of the Republic.
Then came the invasion.
The aliens, known as the Yuuzhan Vong, had a strange relationship to what the citizens of the known galaxy would call “pleasure” and “pain.” The Yuuzhan Vong scorned many worldly pleasures and rejoiced in pain, believing that pain was a joyous reminder that one was yet alive.
Properly speaking, the “Vong” were the chief ethnicity of the Yuuzhan Dominion, the preeminent government in a nearby galaxy. There were other species in the empire, however, who were bred as slaves of the ruling Vong.
The Vong were tall, with bone-white skin and fine hair of white or black, and their men were beardless until very old. They had strange eyes with small pupils and no irises, eyes whose “whites” were eerie yellow.
The Yuuzhan Vong were terrifying in battle, fiercely courageous, and eager to shed blood—for their laws prescribed that all who stood outside the Yuuzhan Dominion must either submit to it, or die.
Yet these same beings themselves had a terror of death, and feared it. This was in large part due to a religious commandment obligating each Yuuzhan Vong to prolong his or her life as long as possible.
Their leader in battle was the fearsome warrior Crix na Bolg, who invariably fought accompanied by his two wives, the sisters Ciara and Cordala.
Nevertheless, the Republic might have won the day, but for treachery.
Jerec Ors, the Marshal of the Republic Navy, had a younger sister, Jan, who he was informed had been taken captive by the Yuuzhan Vong. In order to ensure her release, Jerec betrayed his fellows and the trust of his high office, and gave crucial information about the weak points of Republic defenses to the aliens.
As a result, in a pitched space battle over Ton-Muund, the Republic was defeated, and its principal battle fleet destroyed.
Aboard the doomed flagship, Chancellor Lando Katarn told Luke Starkiller to take his young son, Kyle Katarn, and flee in an escape pod. Lando stayed behind and fought off the advancing ships of the Yuuzhan Vong, buying time for the escape of the surviving Rebels’ shuttles and escape pods.
Thus died Chancellor Lando Katarn, and the Republic fell once more, this time to external foes.
The traitor Jerec Ors was escorted to a meeting with the victorious Crix na Bolg, speaking through C-3PO, now captured and forced to work as a translator droid. Crix revealed, to Jerec’s great surprise, that his sister Jan Ors was not a prisoner, as he had believed, but rather a collaborator—working with the Yuuzhan Vong as a captain in their battle fleet.
Jerec, shamed that his defection had cost the lives of so many Rebels, attacked Crix’s guard of Yuuzhan Vong troops, and was summarily cut down before Jan’s eyes.
But though the Yuuzhan Vong tried to capture Luke Starkiller, the Jedi Knight eluded them. Taking young Kyle Katarn with him, and his faithful droid R2-D2, Luke slipped away into the uncharted outer reaches of the galaxy before the aliens could track him down.
Upon their shoulders rested the hopes of a fallen Republic, and a galaxy whose people were now conquered.