(Theatrical Edition)
Episode IV: Attack of the Clones
Oh, blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle, marked by Heaven:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
--Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man
Tension had long simmered between the ruling Clone clans of the Outer Rim and the inner systems of the Republic, to which the Clone Kings paid outward homage. The Clones’ propensity for making slave raids on other worlds led to a series of intermittent yet continual conflicts between the various Clone Houses and the rest of the known galaxy.
Yet for the Clones, slavery was a way of life, and they would not give it up, even when offered compensation. Thus, when the Senate of the Republic finally proposed the abolition of slavery, the Clone Houses declared almost one and all that they would secede from the Republic, rather than submit to its decree.
So began the First Clone War.
The Clone warriors, who traditionally wore full-body armor and helmets when they left their planets to make war and seize slaves, were feared across the galaxy, and not merely for their prowess in battle. Cloning was still much more of an art than a science. While individual appendages could be cloned with reasonable success, the entire reproduction of a human mind was still extremely problematic.
Some clones came out of the birthing labs with inherent mental instabilities. Over time, if these clones lived to beget other clones from their own DNA, a form of hereditary insanity took root. This became a distinguishing characteristic of certain Clone clans, who prized it as a heroic “battle madness.”
One of these “mad” clans was House Valorum, whose King, Zander Valorum, was the chief general of the Clone armies.
On the other side of the war, many young men were swept up into the armies of the Republic. Two such were Annikin Skywalker and Ben Kenobi, who lived on the mountainous world of Organa Major.
Both were wards of the planet’s King. Ben Kenobi was the son of a deceased Jedi Knight and beloved comrade of the King, who had fallen in battle when Ben was still a child.
Annikin Skywalker’s history was more complex.
Ten years before the first Clone War, the King of Organa Major, who at that time served in the Jedi Order, as was traditional for princes of his line, went to the Clone planet of Sullust X. There he hoped to negotiate a compensated end to slavery. This was a lush, garden-covered world with three suns in the sky, a place of gleaming golden cities and tall spires.
The Jedi-Prince’s negotiations failed, and he went home empty-handed.
Except in one thing. The Prince bought a slave child who caught his attention, a ten-year-old boy. This boy was Annikin Skywalker, so named because his mother, a slave named Shmi Warka, did not know who the child’s father was.
The Prince knew that his young ward, Ben Kenobi, was lonely, and wanted to give him a playmate of his own age. But another reason for his interest in Annikin was that he could see the young boy had great innate Force power.
Though it could be cultivated even in the apparently mundane who joined the Jedi Temple, the Force was a skill often best left to develop on its own. In fact, Annikin was already winning podraces for his Clone master at the age of ten.
So the Prince hoped to purchase both Annikin and his mother. But despite all his efforts to bargain, their owner would only sell one slave. In fact, he secretly hoped to sire another Annikin on her; for he thought that he himself was the father, and had reason to do so. And isn’t that what slaveowners do in their hypocrisy?
Thus the Prince brought Annikin back to Organa Major, and in due time ascended his father’s throne, at which point he renounced his membership in the Jedi Order.
Annikin Skywalker had fair hair and blue eyes, and he was good at working with his hands, at putting together electronic devices and machines. He was quiet, and moody, but he enjoyed a good joke. And he was slow to anger, save only on the subject of the Clones, his former masters, whom he hated with a burning resentment.
Ben Kenobi, slightly older than Annikin, was a charming young man and a merry one, with a sly sense of humor, but when he was crossed his fury could be terrible to behold. Ben had dark hair and dark eyes, and sallow skin, but for all their physical differences he and Annikin were inseparable.
When Annikin was twenty years old, the First Clone War broke out, and together they ventured off to join the war, lusting after glory and hoping to become heroes.
Annikin and Ben both were accepted into the elite ranks of the Jedi Temple. Here they trained as apprentices beneath the venerable master Minch Yoda. Yoda hemmed and hawed about how they were both “too old” to make ideal students, but in this war the Jedi needed as many able recruits as they could get.
For his first independent mission, Annikin was entrusted with infiltrating Sullust X, his birth world. Here ruled House Valorum, the leading noble family of the Clones in this conflict.
The Clone King of Sullust X, Zander Valorum, had recently made a daring raid on the world of Organa Major, whose royal family were staunch supporters of the Republic war effort. There Zander had slain the planet’s King and kidnapped Princess Alexa, the beautiful betrothed of the King’s son, Prince Carl Organa.
While Prince Carl remained on Organa Major to assess the damage inflicted by the Clone King’s raid, Annikin was tasked with rescuing Princess Alexa.
Meanwhile, Ben Kenobi and his Master, Minch Yoda, visited the palace of King Justin, ruler of Clan Katarn, which ruled on Sullust X alongside Clan Valorum. Not all the Clone clans fully backed the idea of secession, and indeed, Clan Katarn was one which had favored remaining in the Republic.
The Katarn clan was known for its dark skin, dark eyes, and close-curled hair. Unlike Clan Valorum, its members generally did not show signs of “battle madness” … which, scornful Valorum men said, was because many Katarn “clones” were actually the product of illicit sexual reproduction.
Ben and Yoda convinced Justin Katarn to marshal his forces, giving a challenge to Zander Valorum. Once Zander took the bait and led his own army out to fight, Annikin would be able to infiltrate the palace of Clan Valorum and rescue Alexa.
Once inside the palace of King Zander, however, the young and brash Annikin, who paid little heed to stealth, was quickly captured and thrown into the dungeons of the Clones. Here Annikin was put to work repairing droids and other devices.
On the grasslands of Sullust X, the clash between King Zander’s massive army and the smaller forces of House Katarn, aided by a score of Jedi Knights, hung long in the balance.
Eventually numbers decided the outcome. Zander won the day, and Jedi Master Minch Yoda was slain. Knowing that one man might move faster than an army encumbered with loot, the dying Yoda sent Ben Kenobi on ahead to Zander’s palace, to warn Annikin of the Clone King’s impending return.
In the dungeons of Zander’s palace, Annikin was visited by the Clone King’s daughter, Zara Valorum. Like all the members of Clan Valorum, Zara had red hair and green eyes. She wanted him to repair a necklace for her. Annikin, who hated all Clones with the burning resentment of a former slave, assaulted her, and afterwards broke free of his prison cell.
Now, taking back his stolen lightsaber and Kiber Crystal, Annikin resumed his mission. He located Princess Alexa in the private women’s chambers of the Palace. The beautiful Alexa gratefully embraced her Jedi rescuer.
Alexa gave to Annikin a magic Ring bestowed on her by Zander Valorum, forged by the Bomas or Dwarves of Bestine, which prevented its wearer from dying—save only from wounds to the eye.
Afterward, Alexa led Annikin to a well-hidden control room, located in a bunker concealed by a cloaking device.
Alexa told Annikin that King Zander had developed a terrible superweapon, which could put out a sun remotely, causing a shockwave that would devastate the surrounding planets. If Zander Valorum had no other option, Alexa warned, he would use this device to destroy his own home planet, rather than suffer defeat.
Annikin studied the weapon, hoping to disable its delicate machinery with his lightsaber, so that it would have to be entirely rebuilt before it could be used. And that could take many years.
But then Ben Kenobi burst into the master control room. King Zander Valorum had triumphed on the battlefield, Ben warned Annikin, and now he was on his way back.
As Ben spoke, King Zander Valorum entered the control room behind him. He had had word from his scouts about this young Jedi making in haste for his palace, and had gone himself to investigate. Now he discovered that in his absence another Jedi had infiltrated his home and ravished his daughter.
Still young and impetuous, Ben Kenobi (who disbelieved the accusations Zander hurled at Annikin) rushed at the Clone King. But he was quickly knocked down by the wily old warrior, receiving a painful wound to the leg.
In turn Zander and Annikin dueled with lightsabers, and that duel was long and arduous. Finally Zander Valorum cut off Annikin’s right arm at the elbow, including the hand which bore Alexa’s Ring on one finger.
As he prepared to finish off the maimed Jedi, Zander Valorum taunted him. He revealed that Annikin’s mother, the slave Shmi Warka, had been sold to his royal household, and died there recently under torture, after a failed escape attempt.
But Zander had not counted on Ben Kenobi, who still lived, and who was enraged to hear these barbaric words.
In his anger Ben activated the superweapon.
As King Zander watched in horror, one of the three suns in the sky began to darken, and the ground shook beneath his feet.
Then Zander Valorum watched no more, for Annikin Starkiller, now on his feet again, cut him in half.
The menace of House Valorum was ended, and the First Clone War was over almost before it had begun.
Annikin took up the magical Ring which Alexa had given him, and with Ben Kenobi escaped the ruin of Sullust X. Others too escaped, many from Clans Valorum and Katarn alike reduced to flight by the ending of the world they had known.
Sullust X was reduced to a post-apocalyptic wasteland by the blast wave from the extinguishing of the sun. Its once pristine rivers filled with toxic sludge. Those Clones who stayed behind became terrifying mutants, and hid their ravaged faces behind bandages.
Where the system’s third sun had been there now was a planet instead, a harsh desert world set between two burning stars: known simply as Sullust, or in the half-ironic name used by its settlers afterward, Utapau.
Ben Kenobi, ashamed of the blood he had shed and fearing punishment, reported to the Jedi Council that Annikin was the one who had activated the superweapon. To protect his friend, Annikin concurred with Ben’s story. Yet no punishment came.
In recognition of his reputed deed, Annikin Skywalker was given a new surname by the grateful Senate of the Republic. Thus he became as Annikin Starkiller.
But in his heart Ben Kenobi remained consumed by guilt for his actions, and was even more disturbed that they were not condemned by the people of the Republic.
King Carl Organa and Princess Alexa were wed. Still, she looked always with fond eyes at Annikin Starkiller, who had rescued her from the dungeons of the Clones.
Annikin did not replace his lost right arm, following the Jedi tradition that a maimed man should learn to compensate for his wounds without mechanical aid. His near-death at the Clone King’s hands had shocked Annikin into the beginnings of humility, and he now desired to become a better and more disciplined Jedi.
But living among the refugees from Sullust X was Zara Valorum, daughter of the late King Zander.
Nine months after the devastation of her homeworld, Zara gave birth to a child, a boy with fair hair and green eyes: the future Darth Vader.
Zara Valorum filled her young son’s ears with stories of the cruelty of his father Annikin, who killed her own beloved clone-father in cold blood, and who ravished her against her will.
But these truths were not enough, in Zara’s view, to stoke her young son’s hatred, and so she lied to him, claiming that Annikin Starkiller had been the one who destroyed Sullust X.
And, listening to these tales with the unquestioning acceptance of a child, Darth Vader vowed revenge upon those who had wronged his beloved mother.