(Extended Edition)
Episode VII: Attack of the Clones
“ ’Tis time!”
--Sergei Eisenstein, Alexander Nevsky
Tension had long simmered between the ruling Clone clans of the Outer Rim and the inner systems of the Republic. 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.
Since the ruin of Sullust X twenty years before, its ruling House Valorum had become pariahs in the Republic at large, but heroes to most of the Clones. The survivors of this House, led by their new King Xerxes Valorum, settled on the inhospitable icy world of Norton III.
When war was declared, it was Xerxes Valorum, a bold and cunning warrior, who struck the first blow. Sweeping down in a daring raid upon Organa Major, he kidnapped the Princess Alexa, betrothed bride of Prince Carl Organa, son of the planet’s King. Prince Carl was serving in the Jedi Order until he inherited his father’s throne.
Organa Major’s aged King had also once been a Jedi, and had fought valiantly in the Battle of Sullust X. Xerxes wanted thus to revenge himself upon those who had defeated his predecessor, King Zander.
In those days many young men were swept up into the armies of the Republic. Two such were Annikin Starkiller and Ben Kenobi, who lived on the desert world of Sullust, born out of the destruction of a sun. They were not from the planetary nobility, for no such distinctions existed on Sullust as yet. Rather, it was their prowess in battle which distinguished them in after days.
Annikin Starkiller had dark hair and blue eyes, and he was good at working with his hands, at putting together electronic devices and machines. He was quiet, and spoke little, but what words he said were usually wise, and he enjoyed a good joke. Although he lost his temper on occasion, and fought fiercely in combat, he was not often given to anger.
Annikin had always known that he was not the son by blood of Bail Highsinger, but nonetheless he loved his elderly foster father. Likewise he was devoted to his foster sister Beru, and she to him.
Ben Kenobi, for his part, was slightly older than Annikin. He 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. Together they ventured off to join the war, thinking 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 solo assignment, Annikin Starkiller was sent to explore the remote ice planet of Norton III, where the Republic had heard rumors of a Clone military installation. Here he found not just a minor garrison, but an entire army being marshalled by King Xerxes Valorum.
Annikin was captured and tortured, but he had managed to send out a distress signal beforehand. Ben Kenobi came to his aid, and infiltrated King Xerxes’ fortress, where he liberated his friend. After retrieving Annikin’s stolen lightsaber and Kiber Crystal, together the two Jedi made a perilous escape down icy cliffs.
They expected to perish there in that frost-covered wilderness. But before Ben had come to help Annikin, he had sent a message to the headquarters of the Jedi Order on Ton-Muund. Now a great army, led by Minch Yoda and Prince Carl Organa, descended on the planet and rescued them, and advanced to confront the new Clone King.
There on the icy plains of Norton III, the Republic’s army fought against the forces of the Clones.
Annikin was still weak from his wounds, so he remained behind in the camp of the Republic troops, while the great armies clashed upon the fields of ice.
The Republic won the day. Minch Yoda died valiantly in the battle, but against the swords of Ben and Carl, none could stand.
Yet when the fortunes of war turned against him, Xerxes Valorum fled the battlefield, reaching a small hangar where his private starship stood waiting. Already on board was Princess Alexa, securely bound.
The enraged Ben Kenobi charged at Xerxes Valorum, and was swiftly defeated by the wily old warrior, who cut off his right arm at the elbow. Carl Organa then attacked Xerxes himself. After a long and fierce duel, Xerxes drove Carl to collapse in pain and exhaustion from repeated glancing wounds.
Annikin Starkiller, now largely recovered, went after Ben and Carl in their quest to capture Xerxes Valorum. But just as Annikin arrived at the hangar, the Clone King fired a blaster bolt at the ceiling, threatening to bring the entire cavern down in an avalanche of ice.
Annikin was forced to use all his strength in the Force to prevent the chamber from collapsing. Xerxes took the opportunity to escape in his starship, with his hostage in tow.
Thus the Republic’s victory at Norton III was bittersweet.
Ben Kenobi replaced his lost right arm with a prosthesis covered in synth-flesh, going against the Jedi tradition that a maimed man should learn to compensate for his wounds without mechanical aid.
Immediately after the battle, in the tents of the victorious Republic army, Annikin met an attractive young captain of Republic troops, a red-haired, green-eyed woman. They spent a night together, and parted in the morning.
Little did Annikin know that the woman with whom he had slept in the first flush of his victory was his half-sister, Lumiya Valorum, serving incognito as a Republic officer.
She had fulfilled her goal of getting a child by her brother Annikin: for she was now pregnant with the future Darth Vader. The boy, when born, had the red hair of his mother, and the blue eyes of his father.
Lumiya Valorum was determined to raise her son as a weapon for the undoing of his father, Annikin Starkiller—the son of her hated foe, Kane Skywalker, who murdered her father.
So Lumiya filled her young son’s ears with false stories of the cruelty of his father Annikin, and of the destruction of their lost homeworld, the earthly paradise of Sullust X.
And, listening to these tales with the unquestioning acceptance of a child, Darth Vader, like his mother before him, vowed revenge on the offspring of Kane Skywalker.