Twin Suns, Twin Sagas: The Star Wars of 1975, take 2

Since my last thread on this subject, I've come into some knowledge I didn't have before about the overall form of the SW saga as roughly envisioned by George Lucas in 1975.

Surprisingly, perhaps, GL seems to have made plans at the same time for two different versions of the Star Wars series: one in which the story would unfold as a nine-part "trilogy of trilogies," and another which would take place over 12 episodes, like a 1930s serial, and featuring a rather different story line.

That much I've deduced from the various storyboards and concept art drawings from 1975, made during production of the original film.

In this thread, I'm going to try reconstructing the outlines of those two variant plot lines, seeing where they contrast... and where they converge.

Notably, although the specific episode numbers differ, the latter films of the 12-part saga are essentially the same in overall outline as the version of the "original" Sequel Trilogy outlined by Gary Kurtz. As zombie points out in The Secret History of Star Wars, Kurtz's version of the ST is in many respects totally at variance with the more well-known "trilogy of trilogies" idea.

Once again, I've tried not to bog down the narrative too much with descriptions of my source material used in reconstructing these two alternative plot lines for the overall SW saga of 1975.

Enough talk already. Let's play!

C:\> _

C:\> cd luke

C:\LUKE> luke.exe

Before we begin...

let’s have a quick cup of tea.

One lump, or two?

Please select one:

The Adventures of Luke Starkiller

(Theatrical Edition)

A Trilogy in Nine Acts

Being a tale of conspiracies, love, powerful villains, boisterous adventure, and constant danger.

The Adventures of Luke Starkiller

(Extended Edition)

A Serial with Twelve Chapters

Being a tale of a hostile Universe, full of foreboding, uncertainty… and hope.

*click*

Welcome to the Age of the Great Empires.

The Adventures of Luke Starkiller

by George Lucas

---

Editing by Hiroshi Inagaki and Tomu Uchida

Music by Richard Wagner and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Additional story by Brian Moriarty, Jane Jensen, Roberta Williams, and Ron Gilbert

---

Episode I: The Star Wars

Two roads diverged in a wood…

--Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”

---

This being the point of divergence, in both the 9-episode and the 12-episode versions of the saga, the plot of The Star Wars would be largely the same as it is recorded in the August 1975 third-draft script.

One difference between the two versions, however, should be noted.

In the 9-episode plan, Princess Leia would have had blonde hair, like Luke Starkiller. However, in the longer 12-episode series, Leia would have been a brunette.

Additionally, in both 1975 versions of the Saga, Leia would have been featured in a state of déshabillé during the escape from the prison planet Alderaan (later merged with the Death Star). However, the exact nature of her clothing damage would have varied.

In the 9-episode plan, Leia would have been seen topless, the upper portion of her white princess dress having been entirely torn off. However, in the 12-episode plan, her gown would have been torn in such a way that only one of her breasts was exposed.

These differences are for symbolic reasons… and for foreshadowing.

Episode II: The Empire Strikes Back

“The board is set, and the pieces are moving.”

--Gandalf the White, The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

Any way you slice it, the sequel to The Star Wars, much like the final film, was going to open with an Imperial attack on the Rebels’ base of operations.

However, it’s likely that, originally, ESB was meant to open with Vader’s fleet attacking Yavin IV, before the Rebels managed to move their headquarters to a new planet unknown to the Empire. In this case, the sequel would take place mere weeks to months after the events of the first film.

(Lucas discussed the possibility of having the Rebel base be still situated on Yavin IV with Leigh Brackett in the story conferences of late 1977.)

Once the heroes escaped the doomed Rebel base, the plot of ESB would have diverged, based on whether the overall saga was to follow the 9-episode or the 12-episode plan.

Theatrical Edition

Luke, R2-D2, and Ben Kenobi (who survived the first film) would travel to the rocky desert planet of Ttaz, a world of red dunes and tall stony outcroppings beneath an eerie green sky. Here Ben would instruct Luke in the ways of the Force, much as Yoda does in the 1980 version of ESB.

At one point, Ben would send Luke into a sinister cave, just as Yoda does in the final film. Luke would take his weapons in, against Ben’s advice.

Inside the cave, Luke would see a Force vision of Han and Leia entwined in a romantic embrace. They would taunt him—and Luke would use his lightsaber to strike down Han. But even as he did so, Han’s face upon his dead body would be changed into Luke’s own.

Meanwhile, Han and Leia, with Chewbacca and C-3PO, would manage to fly the Millennium Falcon to the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk, a planet of enormous green trees and bronze-hued skies, where Han had grown up as a boy. Han’s parents were settlers, killed by the Wookiees, among whom Han himself spent much of his adolescence.

Eventually, Han was brought back to civilization by Marcus Whitsun, a local trader, who adopted him as a son. By the time of the Galactic Civil War, Marcus had risen to become the head of the powerful Guild of Trade—a reclusive figure, whose support could ensure the success of the still-fragile Rebellion.

During his time on Kashyyyk, Marcus had begun to build a gleaming white city above the treetops, a suitable residence for visitors from off-planet. Here Han and Leia would arrive, seeking sanctuary with Han’s old friend, Lando Katarn.

Lando (who was black, and moreover a clone) was, on account of his being a clone, distrusted by the wider galaxy at large. This was, however, precisely why Han hoped he could trust him.

Seeking to conceal her notoriety as a leader of the Rebels, Leia would have cut her long golden hair into a severe crop, and exchanged her trademark white outfits for something else—in black, perhaps. She would also have taken on a pseudonym.

None of this would have availed, for Lando would recognize her instantly.

As in the final film, Lando would reluctantly sell out his guests to the Empire, and Darth Vader would be revealed as being already present on Kashyyyk.

Han and Chewbacca would be subjected to painful torture, while Leia would be turned over to Imperial troops for their “amusement.”

With Darth Vader acting as broker, Han was to be sold to Jabba the Hutt, a crime lord whom he had angered in the first film.

On Ttaz, Luke would hear his friends’ cries of pain through the Force. Despite the pleas of Ben Kenobi not to go, Luke would insist on aiding them. Just as in the final film, his compassion for his friends would play right into Vader’s hands.

On Kashyyyk, Luke and R2-D2 would be captured upon landing by Lando’s guards. However, Lando, knowing why Luke had come, would promptly release the young Jedi and his droid companion.

Together Luke and Lando would free Han, Chewbacca, Leia, and C-3PO from their confinement. Jabba the Hutt, attempting to make good his “purchase” of Han Solo, would be slain for his trouble. During their escape, however, Leia would be shot in the right hand by a blaster bolt.

While Lando shepherded the group back to the Millennium Falcon, Luke would go in search of Darth Vader, for his blood ran hot at the sight of how badly Leia had been mistreated.

Upon the topmost towers of the shining white traders’ palace of Kashyyyk, they dueled.

Luke struggled to control his rage, knowing that he could not hope to use the Dark Side of the Force to defeat Vader. But in the end Vader overpowered him by a ruse, feigning great injury when Luke merely grazed him.

Vader cut off Luke’s left hand, and though Luke still held his father’s lightsaber, he could not hope to win the fight, wounded and bleeding as he was.

Now Luke stood at the edge of a balcony, looking out upon the giant trees far below.

Vader offered Luke half the Empire to rule for his own. Together, he said, they could overthrow that feeble Emperor, Sate Pestage, who after all was no Force user, only a corrupt politician.

Luke refused, whereupon Vader said four words that shocked him to the core…

“I am your brother.”

Rather than join his brother in the Dark Side, Luke opted instead to plunge into the abyss below.

He was rescued by Lando and Leia, riding a flying creature used instead of horses by the Wookiees, who caught him as he fell.

Together the heroes escaped Vader’s pursuing ships, and rendezvoused with the other Rebels at their new base, already being prepared before the loss of Yavin IV. There, Luke received a new golden prosthesis to replace his lost left arm.

In the finale, Han decided to leave. The Rebellion had become too dangerous for him, and their escape on Kashyyyk too narrow for his comfort. He would go back to his old life as a smuggler, and thus avoid the iron hand of the Empire’s executioners.

But as Luke lay in his hospital bed, recovering from his wounds, Leia stopped by to commiserate with him.

Taking off a glove from her right hand, she revealed something unexpected: a thatch of colored wires and mechanical joints, sticking out from beneath burnt and shriveled synth-flesh.

Years ago, as a child on her homeworld of Organa Major, Leia Organa, like all children of the Royal Houses of the Republic, had been instructed in the art of lightsaber combat.

But one day there was a training accident, and Leia lost her arm. Her father had spared no expense in replacing it, obtaining for her a robotic arm covered with synth-flesh. So fine was its workmanship that no one could tell it was a prosthetic.

Since that day, however, Leia had had a fear of lightsabers, and chose instead to use blasters. Now, she admitted, she might as well get over that, and thus help Luke confront his own fears.

Cheered by Leia’s words, Luke would say that he planned to return to Ttaz, there to finish his training under old Ben Kenobi.

Extended Edition

Luke, R2-D2, and Ben Kenobi (who survived the first film) would travel to the rocky desert planet of Ttaz, a world of red dunes and tall stony outcroppings beneath an eerie green sky. Here Ben would instruct Luke in the ways of the Force, much as Yoda does in the 1980 version of ESB.

At one point, Ben would send Luke into a sinister cave, just as Yoda does in the final film. Luke would take his weapons in, against Ben’s advice.

Inside the cave, Luke would see a Force vision of Darth Vader approaching him with a lightsaber. Just as in the finished film, Luke would attack Vader and decapitate him, only for Vader’s helmet to shatter and reveal Luke’s own face beneath the mask.

Meanwhile, Han and Leia, with Chewbacca and C-3PO, would manage to fly the Millennium Falcon to a large asteroid, inside which was the secret base of Han’s old friend, Lando Katarn, space pirate.

Lando (who was black, and moreover a clone) was, on account of his being a clone, distrusted by the wider galaxy at large. This was why he turned to piracy, and also why Han, who had no such prejudices, hoped he could trust him.

Seeking to conceal her notoriety as a leader of the Rebels, Leia would have taken on a pseudonym. This would not avail her, however, for Lando would recognize her instantly.

As in the final film, Lando would reluctantly sell out his guests to the Empire, and Darth Vader would be revealed as being already present on the asteroid base.

Han and Leia, and Chewbacca and C-3PO, would be taken as prisoners to the Imperial capital world of Ton-Muund, with Lando as an honored guest of the Sith Lord, Darth Vader.

Han and Chewbacca would be tortured in the Emperor’s lightless dungeons. But Leia, the arch-traitor to the Empire, would be stripped and paraded down the streets of Ton-Muund, as in Roman triumphs of old.

Under the merciless eyes of the Emperor and Vader, and the horrified gaze of Lando Katarn, Leia would have her hair shorn, and be given over to the mob, to do with as they willed. In the resulting assault, Leia would be beaten so badly that she was left blind in one eye.

Afterward, in the dungeons of Ton-Muund, Darth Vader, acting as broker, would negotiate the sale of Han Solo to Jabba the Hutt, a crime lord whom Han had angered in the first film.

Vader planned for C-3PO to have his memory wiped, and be sent to the Imperial Palace to work for the Emperor. But Chewbacca was to be sold to a trapper, who would most likely skin him and sell the Wookiee’s pelt.

On Ttaz, Luke would hear his friends’ cries of pain through the Force. Despite the pleas of Ben Kenobi not to go, Luke would insist on aiding them. Just as in the final film, his compassion for his friends would play right into Vader’s hands.

On Ton-Muund, Luke and R2-D2 would be intercepted upon landing by Lando’s agents. However, Lando, knowing why Luke had come, would promptly release the young Jedi and his droid companion.

Together Luke and Lando would free Han, Chewbacca, Leia, and C-3PO from their confinement. Jabba the Hutt, attempting to make good his “purchase” of Han Solo, would be slain for his trouble.

Lando shepherded the group through the bleak and lightless underground tunnels of Ton-Muund, home of the city-planet’s laboring proletarians, and back to the Millennium Falcon. Meanwhile, though, Luke went in search of Darth Vader, for his blood ran hot at the sight of how badly Leia had been mistreated.

Upon the high pinnacles of the shining skyscrapers of Ton-Muund, capital world of the Empire, they dueled.

Luke struggled to control his rage, knowing that he could not hope to use the Dark Side of the Force to defeat Vader. But in the end Vader overpowered him by a ruse, feigning great injury when Luke merely grazed him.

Vader cut off Luke’s right hand, and with it went Annikin Starkiller’s lightsaber. As he stood at the edge of a balcony, overlooking the vast sea of buildings far below, Luke knew he had no more hope of winning the fight.

Vader offered Luke half the Empire to rule for his own. Together, he said, they could overthrow that feeble Emperor, Sate Pestage, who after all was no Force user, only a corrupt politician.

Luke refused, whereupon Vader said four words that shocked him to the core…

“I am your father.”

Rather than join his father in the Dark Side, Luke opted instead to plunge into the abyss below.

He was rescued by Lando and Leia, riding a flying air-car of the type commonly found on Ton-Muund, who caught him as he fell.

Together the heroes escaped Vader’s pursuing ships, and rendezvoused with the other Rebels at their new base, already being prepared before the loss of Yavin IV. There, Luke received a new golden prosthesis to replace his lost right arm.

In the finale, Han decided to leave. The Rebellion had become too dangerous for him, and their escape on Kashyyyk too narrow for his comfort. He would go back to his old life as a smuggler, and thus avoid the iron hand of the Empire’s executioners.

For his part, Luke said that he planned to return to Ttaz, there to finish his training under old Ben Kenobi.

Only Leia, now blind in one eye, remained steadfastly loyal to the cause of the Rebellion. Rather than replace her useless eye with a mechanical prosthesis, she would opt to keep it, as a living symbol to everyone who saw her face of the barbarity of the Empire.

(Theatrical Edition)

Episode III: Rebirth of the Jedi

The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right!

--Hamlet, Hamlet, Act I, Scene v

Three years had now passed since the events of The Star Wars.

In the film’s opening, Han Solo had only just been lured back to the Rebellion. He was the only one who could contact the reclusive head of the powerful Guild of Trade—his foster father, Marcus Whitsun.

After a perilous journey across the galaxy, Han arrived at Marcus’s secret headquarters, a fortified underwater base on the ocean-covered world of Acquis.

Here Han was reunited with his foster family: Marcus and his young daughter, Mina Whitsun. She had been just a child when Han left, but now she was grown to womanhood, and she looked upon her foster brother with great affection.

Han pleaded with Marcus Whitsun, lord of the Guild of Trade, to provide aid to the Rebellion, now in grave danger of extermination after several years of fighting. Marcus refused, revealing in confidence to Han that the Empire was even now building not one, but two new Death Stars.

These Death Stars were being constructed in orbit over Ton-Muund, the Imperial capital world, and were protected by a shield generated on the planet surface below.

The shield could be deactivated only from the high-security control room on Ton-Muund—and, what’s more, this required a code whose only copy was stored in the central computer of the Imperial prison planet of Alderaan.

Marcus told Han this in confidence, and begged him not to get involved with the Rebellion again. But Han, full of remorse for abandoning his friends, secretly radioed this information to Rebel headquarters.

Marcus, detecting this transmission, told Han that he was no longer a member of his family, and bade him leave Acquis. Han did so gloomily, thinking the cause of the Rebellion was now lost.

In secret, however, Mina Whitsun took a starfighter from her father’s fleet, and set out to Ton-Muund, there hoping to aid the Rebels’ cause however she might.

On Ttaz, Ben Kenobi was dying.

Luke had never entirely trusted Ben since learning that Vader was secretly his older half-brother, Annikin Starkiller’s son from a liaison in his younger and more hotheaded years.

Yet he was still prepared to grant Ben Kenobi’s dying wish: a burial on Utapau (i.e., Tatooine), where he had lived so long as a hermit.

Before he died, Ben willed to Luke his Kiber Crystal, and his own lightsaber. He also told Luke of a secret treasure, buried in his mother’s grave: a magic Ring whose wielder could not be given any mortal wound, save only through the eyes.

Bearing Ben Kenobi’s body, Luke returned to the Lars family farm on Utapau. There, he was unprepared for the devastation he found waiting for him.

In the 1975 version of The Star Wars, Luke ran away from his cruel Uncle Owen as a young man, to join Ben Kenobi on what seemed to be an exciting galactic adventure. Now, however, Luke found that in his absence, Imperial troops had burnt the Lars homestead to the ground. The stormtroopers had killed Owen and Beru, leaving their charred corpses for the birds to devour.

Luke buried Owen and Beru in plots next to Ben Kenobi’s own grave. Then he dug up the grave of his own mother: Beru’s sister, Breha. Within he found the magic Ring of which Ben Kenobi had spoken. Once again he interred his mother’s body; and then Luke Starkiller returned to the Rebel Alliance.

Leia (who now wore a glove over her damaged right hand) let Luke know the bad news which Han had radioed in. They decided that together, they would brave the dungeons of Alderaan once more, and extract the shield codes for the two Death Stars being built even now.

Both Luke and Leia disguised themselves as Imperial officers. Each wore black gloves, to hide their mechanical hands. Leia wore an eyepatch, but refused to cut her long golden hair, a gambit which had failed the last time she’d tried to disguise herself.

Before they departed, Luke and Leia pledged their love, which was blossoming once more with their reunion.

With the help of R2-D2, Luke and Leia managed to retrieve the shield codes successfully from Alderaan. Afterward, though, things went wrong. A suspicious Imperial officer noted the distinctive lightsaber (Annikin’s heirloom) on Luke’s belt, and removed Leia’s cap and eyepatch, revealing her identity.

A tremendous firefight ensued. To ensure Leia’s escape with R2-D2 and the shield codes, Luke stayed behind, allowing himself to be captured.

Leia managed to get away, and returned to the Rebel headquarters, where Han Solo had also just arrived.

Together they decided that Han and Chewbacca (accompanied by C-3PO and R2-D2) would lead a commando team in secret through the sewers of Ton-Muund, in order to breach the Imperial control room and disable the Death Stars’ shields.

Meanwhile, a Rebel fleet would make a surprise drop out of hyperspace. Once the shields fell, the fleet would destroy the two Death Stars, and hopefully capture the Imperial capital into the bargain.

It was a risky plan. If it succeeded, the Rebellion would triumph; if it failed, they would be utterly destroyed.

Before his departure, Han Solo gave the Millennium Falcon to Lando Katarn, to pilot in this desperate mission, and afterwards if he did not survive it. Lando, in turn, introduced Han to his young son Morgan, a clone like himself. Lando told Han that if he died, and Han lived, he thought Han was the best person to take care of Morgan.

Leading his commando force, Han set off for Ton-Muund, thinking death more likely than success.

Meanwhile, Leia gathered up the effects left to her by Luke: Ben Kenobi’s lightsaber, and his Kiber Crystal, and Luke’s magic Ring. When she touched the Kiber Crystal, it lit up in her hand with a strange glow, and her entire body was suffused with a feeling of power.

Shortly afterward, Leia Organa took a Starfighter and flew off for an unknown destination. No one hindered her, for she was high in the counsels of the Rebellion, and the other generals believed that she must have some good reason for doing as she did.

In the bowels of Ton-Muund, Han Solo’s commando team found an ambush waiting for them. Most of the team was killed, and Han was captured, as were Chewbacca and the droids.

Overhead, the Rebel fleet dropped out of hyperspace above Ton-Muund, to find the Death Stars’ shields still intact. Not only that—although this was meant to be a surprise assault, the Rebel forces found the massed Imperial fleet ready and waiting for their attack.

Han was rescued from his prison cell by Mina Whitsun, disguised in the black uniform and helmet of a Sith Lord. She had infiltrated the Imperial Palace as a serving girl, and overheard of a detachment of troops being sent to prevent just such an assault as Han had attempted.

Upon hearing of Han’s capture, in desperation Mina stole the armor of a Sith Lord (by what means, she left vague in her retelling), and went in disguise to save Han from execution.

Above Ton-Muund, the Rebel fleet was in disarray, and on the point of losing, when the giant Guild of Trade battleships of Marcus Whitsun emerged without warning from hyperspace.

When he learned that Mina had set out on her own to aid the Rebellion, Marcus had come to save his daughter, throwing his lot in against the Empire. Unfortunately for Marcus, his flagship was destroyed by the first shot of a Death Star superlaser—for one of the two Death Stars was already fully operational.

With Han now masquerading as Mina’s prisoner, the two (accompanied by Chewbacca and the droids) made their way to the central computer room. Here, after a brief but intense firefight, the guards were slain, and the codes transmitted.

Luke languished in prison on Alderaan, but was soon taken from his cell, and flown by Imperial shuttle to Condawn, the lava world where Darth Vader had his grim castle, built on the site of his victory over the Jedi years ago.

Here, in the throne room, Luke was led past his own Kiber Crystal, now housed in a force-field cage in the center of the room, to the dais in front of a great glass window, where sat Darth Vader upon his throne. To his surprise, Vader had one other at his side, in a newly installed throne: Leia.

She wore a black leather jumpsuit. Her golden hair, her pride and joy, was now shorn permanently from her head, saving only one long topknot. Her right hand had been replaced with a nakedly mechanical prosthesis.

At her belt hung Ben Kenobi’s lightsaber. Upon her forehead was tattooed the triskelion emblem of the Sith.

And her blue eyes blazed brightly with the madness brought on by Sith potions of forgetfulness.

For Leia had come in secret to Darth Vader, seeking to trade her own life for Luke’s. Instead, Vader made her drink of an evil Sith drink, and she forgot Luke, and Han, and the Rebellion, and lived only for the greater glory of the nascent Sith Empire.

Now, with Luke standing before her, Leia spoke words that chilled him to the heart.

“Brother,” she called him.

Luke shuddered inwardly, thinking of nights spent on the Rebels’ flagship.

But Leia told Luke that their liaisons did not have to end. After all, she was now quite happily the consort of Darth Vader, the brother of them both.

Leia offered Luke a third of the Empire to rule, alongside his two siblings—herself and Vader. Should he accept, she said, his father’s lightsaber would be returned to him; and here Leia waved the hilt of Annikin’s blade before his eyes.

If he proved himself a loyal brother, Leia went on, they might even give Luke back his magic Ring which held off death.

And at her words, Darth Vader removed the glove from his right hand, revealing bone-white flesh and a gleaming golden ring on his index finger: the mate of Luke’s own, now lost.

Luke refused.

Angered, Leia told Vader to activate the holo-screen on one wall of the throne room. The scene of the Rebel fleet being destroyed by the Imperial ships, while the Death Stars’ shields remained stubbornly active, flashed before his eyes.

Luke was angered and bewildered.

And then Leia revealed that it was she who had betrayed the Rebels to the Imperial cause.

This last was too much to bear.

Tapping into the Force, Luke retrieved his father’s lightsaber, and lashed out at Leia.

Vader blocked the blow.

Then Leia activated her own lightsaber.

The battle was on.

In that awful throne room, lit by the reddish light of the lava outside the enormous glass windows, their fight was terrible to behold, recalling the last stand of the Jedi upon this very site over twenty years ago.

Luke was faced with two foes, but by tapping into his Dark Side rage, he outmatched them both.

In a pitched battle, Luke first cut off Leia’s topknot of hair with his saber, leaving her forever bald. She, however, slashed at his cheek, creating a permanent scar.

Later, more seriously, Luke severed Vader’s right hand, leaving him sprawling upon the ground. Then, turning to Leia, Luke did likewise, and cut off both of her hands, the one of flesh and the other of steel and wires.

At this point, however, Luke recoiled. He saw the stumps of his sister’s hands, and realized that if he continued as he was, he too would be one day as she was now.

So he pulled her to her feet, and they embraced. Then Luke turned to his fallen brother, Darth Vader, and, grasping his left hand, pulled him up as well.

But Vader was too far down the path of the Dark Side to desire redemption.

And, enraged at the magnanimity of his victorious foe, Darth Vader struck out at Luke with Force lightning.

In the air above Ton-Muund, Lando Katarn, piloting the Millennium Falcon, flew into the bowels of one Death Star to destroy it from within. A squadron of Rebel pilots in X-wing fighters flew into the other Death Star to do likewise.

On Ton-Muund itself, Han and Mina liberated an army of proletarian slaves from the dungeons of the Imperial palace. Together they stormed the chambers of the Emperor himself.

Taking Emperor Sate Pestage hostage, Han Solo asked him to surrender, or else his life would be forfeit.

But the Emperor was an aristocrat born, and not one to surrender easily.

He pushed a secret button on the side of his throne, and immediately the water mains in the depths of Ton-Muund broke asunder, flooding the planet from below and killing those of the proletarians who had remained behind.

Angered by this wanton act of massacre, Chewbacca shot Emperor Pestage in the heart, and he keeled over dead.

But the vile dungeons of Ton-Muund, the underground hovels where so many families had lived in poverty and miserable want, were destroyed forever. What had been a foul, reeking planet, home of grimy smoke and grimier buildings, was transformed into a world of crystalline skyscrapers, floating on a placid planet-wide ocean.

On Condawn, Leia watched in horror as Darth Vader blasted his brother—their brother—with barrage after barrage of Force lightning from his left hand.

Having no hands, and no better way to stop Vader, Leia charged at him bodily, knocking them both through the great glass window into the lava below.

Staggering up, Luke walked over to the shattered window… and saw with amazement as Leia climbed naked out of the surging molten lava.

Her skin was bone-white; her eyes had been melted out by the heat of the fiery liquid. But she had been saved from death because, unlike Vader, she had had the prudence not to wear her Ring on her hand, so easily severed by a lightsaber.

Luke Starkiller’s magic Ring, which had belonged to his mother before him, now hung as a piercing from Leia Organa’s breast.

Above Ton-Muund, two Death Stars exploded.

One was destroyed by the Rebel pilot Victor Windom, who survived to escape the blast.

The other was destroyed by Lando Katarn, in the Millennium Falcon, who did not. Han Solo’s ship, and its pilot, perished so that a galaxy might live, and the Republic be restored.

Afterward, Leia Organa settled on the previously ungoverned world of Utapau as its new Queen. Here also Luke Starkiller (who now took back the Kiber Crystal) established the headquarters of the reinstated Jedi Order.

Leia replaced her lost eyes with prosthetic droid eyes, whose whites and iris were the same shade of metallic gold, and whose pupils were eerie in their smallness. Her lost hands, however, she opted to replace with silver ones.

When appearing in formal regalia at court, Leia wore elaborate wigs of braided black hair, and dressed in robes of brilliant red. She went ever barefoot, however, for her droid eyes did little more than distinguish shades of gray one from another.

Mina Whitsun and Han Solo were married. Mina became the Chancellor of the reinstated Senate, and Han Solo became the head of the Guild of Trade. Together they raised Morgan Katarn as an adopted son.

Luke Starkiller and Leia Organa also were married, and R2-D2 and C-3PO lived in Leia’s royal household.

Luke and Leia’s status as siblings was a secret known to few, and it was death to those unlucky enough to learn it without the permission of the Queen of Utapau.

And peace reigned in the newly restored Republic… for the time being.

(Extended Edition)

Episode III: Red Victory

The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right!

--William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5

Three years had now passed since the events of The Star Wars.

In the film’s opening, Han Solo had only just been lured back to the Rebellion. He was the only one who could contact the reclusive head of the powerful Guild of Trade—his foster father, Marcus Whitsun.

After a perilous journey across the galaxy, Han arrived at Marcus’s secret headquarters, a fortified underwater base on the ocean-covered world of Acquis.

Here Han was reunited with his foster family: Marcus and his son, Wilhuff Whitsun. Wilhuff had been just a child when Han left, but now he was grown to manhood, and he looked upon his foster brother with great affection.

Han pleaded with Marcus Whitsun, lord of the Guild of Trade, to provide aid to the Rebellion, now in grave danger of extermination after several years of fighting. Marcus refused, revealing in confidence to Han that the Empire was even now building not one, but two new Death Stars.

These Death Stars were being constructed in orbit over Had Abbadon, the Green Moon of the Imperial capital, Ton-Muund. There, on that world of enormous green trees and bronze-hued skies, the Empire had constructed a bunker complex and a shield generator, to protect the still-incomplete armored space stations in orbit overhead.

The shield could be deactivated only from this high-security bunker on the Green Moon—and, what’s more, this required a code whose only copy was stored in the central computer of the Imperial prison planet of Alderaan.

Marcus told Han this in confidence, and begged him not to get involved with the Rebellion again. But Han, full of remorse for abandoning his friends, secretly radioed this information to Rebel headquarters.

Marcus, detecting this transmission, told Han that he was no longer a member of his family, and bade him leave Acquis. Han did so gloomily, thinking the cause of the Rebellion was now lost.

In secret, however, Wilhuff Whitsun took a starfighter from his father’s fleet, and set out to join the Rebel fleet, hoping to aid his foster brother’s cause however he might.

On Ttaz, Ben Kenobi was dying.

Luke had never entirely trusted Ben since learning that Vader was secretly his father—Vader himself being Annikin Starkiller’s son, who had cuckolded his own father.

Yet Luke was still prepared to grant Ben Kenobi’s dying wish: a burial on Utapau (i.e., Tatooine), where he had lived so long as a hermit.

Before he died, Ben willed to Luke his Kiber Crystal, and his own lightsaber to replace the one lost on Ton-Muund.

He also told Luke that he had a twin sister, Nellith Starkiller. She had been separated from her brother Luke at birth, and, being another potential Jedi, had been hidden many years ago in a remote part of the galaxy, beyond the Empire’s reach.

Ben warned him, however, that he had heard nothing for many years now from the Jedi set to watch over Nellith, even as he himself had watched over Luke. He advised Luke that, if ever it should become necessary to seek out his sister, he must use the utmost caution in dealing with her—if she still lived.

Bearing Ben Kenobi’s body, Luke returned to the Lars family farm on Utapau. There, he was unprepared for the devastation he found waiting for him.

In the 1975 version of The Star Wars, Luke ran away from his cruel Uncle Owen as a young man, to join Ben Kenobi on what seemed to be an exciting galactic adventure. Now, however, Luke found that in his absence, Imperial troops had burnt the Lars homestead to the ground. The stormtroopers had killed Owen and Beru, leaving their charred corpses for the birds to devour.

Luke buried Owen and Beru in plots next to Ben Kenobi’s own freshly dug grave. Then at last Luke Starkiller returned to the Rebel Alliance.

Leia let Luke know the bad news which Han had radioed in. They decided that together, they would brave the dungeons of Alderaan once more, and extract the shield codes for the two Death Stars being built even now.

Both Luke and Leia disguised themselves as Imperial officers. Luke wore black gloves, to hide his mechanical hand. Leia wore an eyepatch to hide her blind eye, and an officer’s cap to hide her trademark shorn hair (kept as a reminder to the Rebels of what the Emperor’s troops had done to her on Ton-Muund).

With the help of R2-D2, Luke and Leia managed to retrieve the shield codes successfully from Alderaan. Afterward, though, things went wrong. A suspicious Imperial officer noted the distinctive lightsaber (Ben Kenobi’s blade) on Luke’s belt, and removed Leia’s cap and eyepatch, revealing her identity.

A tremendous firefight ensued. However, the heroes managed to get away safely, and returned to the Rebel headquarters, where Han Solo had also just arrived.

Together, the three volunteered to lead a commando team (accompanied by Chewbacca and the droids) in secret to the Green Moon of Ton-Muund, in order to breach the Imperial control bunker and disable the Death Stars’ shields.

Meanwhile, a Rebel fleet would make a surprise drop out of hyperspace. Once the shields fell, the fleet would destroy the two Death Stars, and hopefully capture the Imperial capital into the bargain.

It was a risky plan. If it succeeded, the Rebellion would triumph; if it failed, they would be utterly destroyed.

Before they set out, Han and Leia pledged their love, which was blossoming once more with their reunion.

One unexpected arrival bolstered their fortunes slightly: Wilhuff Whitsun, flying a starfighter stolen from his father’s fleet, came to swell the ranks of the Rebel pilots.

Before his departure, Han Solo gave the Millennium Falcon to Wilhuff, to pilot in this desperate mission, and afterwards if he did not survive it. Lando Katarn, now a general, would be commanding from one of the Rebel capital ships.

Leading their commando force, Luke, Leia, and Han set off for Ton-Muund, thinking death more likely than success.

On Had Abbadon, the Rebel forces walked into an ambush, orchestrated by several Sith Lords. Knowing that his father had set a trap for him, Luke fought off the Sith Lords as long as possible, allowing the others to escape.

Overhead, the Rebel fleet dropped out of hyperspace above Had Abbadon, to find the Death Stars’ shields still intact. Not only that—although this was meant to be a surprise assault, the Rebel forces found the massed Imperial fleet ready and waiting for their attack.

Luke was overpowered by the Sith Lords and taken to the lava world of Condawn, where Darth Vader had built his castle on the site of his great victory over the Jedi years ago.

Here, in the throne room, Luke was led past his own Kiber Crystal, now housed in a force-field cage in the center of the room, to the dais in front of a great glass window, where Darth Vader stood before his throne. To his surprise, another man sat on the throne, a wizened old sorcerer in a hooded black robe.

Darth Vader addressed his son, and introduced the hooded old man as Vader’s true master: the Lord of the Bogan Force, whose very existence was unknown to all save the highest in the Sith Order, and not even to the Emperor himself.

The ancient Lord spoke, and told Luke that he had been brought here to be tested. If he proved worthy, he could go free. If not, he would die.

All Luke had to do, the Lord said, was to strike him down as he sat calmly upon his chair.

The Lord tempted Luke with his own lightsaber, once Ben Kenobi’s, which had been taken from him on his capture. He did likewise with Luke’s Kiber Crystal. But Luke refused to give in to his anger.

Above Had Abbadon, the Rebel fleet was in disarray, and on the point of losing, when the giant Guild of Trade battleships of Marcus Whitsun emerged without warning from hyperspace.

When he learned that Wilhuff had set out on his own to aid the Rebellion, Marcus had come to save his only son, throwing his lot in against the Empire. Unfortunately for Marcus, his flagship was destroyed by the first shot of a Death Star superlaser—for one of the two Death Stars was already fully operational.

Angered by Luke Starkiller’s self-control, the Bogan Lord told Vader to activate the holo-screen on one wall of the throne room. The scene of the Rebel fleet being destroyed by the Imperial ships, while the Death Stars’ shields remained stubbornly active, flashed before his eyes.

Luke was angered and bewildered, and his self-control dropped away. Tapping into the Force, Luke retrieved his mentor’s lightsaber, and lashed out at the ancient sorcerer.

Vader blocked the blow with his own lightsaber.

The battle was on.

In that awful throne room, lit by the reddish light of the lava outside the enormous glass windows, their fight was terrible to behold, recalling the last stand of the Jedi upon this very site over twenty years ago.

In a pitched battle, Luke ultimately succeeded in cutting off Darth Vader’s right hand, which was thus revealed to be made not of flesh, but of steel and wires.

At this point, however, Luke recoiled. He saw the stump of Vader’s hand, and realized that if he continued as he was, he too would be one day as his father was now.

So he turned to the terrible Lord, and, proclaiming his defiance, flung his lightsaber away in a gesture of contempt for his murderous ways.

But the evil Lord was too far down the path of the Dark Side to understand mercy.

And, enraged at the magnanimity of this victorious warrior, the Bogan Lord struck out at Luke with Force lightning.

On the Green Moon, with the aid of the native Yuzzem, Han and Leia successfully stormed the Imperial control bunker. But during the assault, Chewbacca fell, mortally wounded.

Worse, once inside, they realized with horror that their attack had been anticipated.

The Emperor had ordered the installation of a dead man’s switch. Any deactivation of the shield would set off a bomb, killing everyone inside the bunker.

There was no way to disarm it. Whoever disabled the shield would die.

On Condawn, Vader watched as the ancient Lord poured out Force Lightning upon his son.

And suddenly, taking up Luke’s lightsaber where it had fallen, Darth Vader struck out at the Bogan Lord and slew him.

Vader’s life-support suit was irreversibly damaged by the Lord’s Force lightning; he would soon surely die. But Luke had been saved.

Yet even as the Bogan Lord passed away, he spoke the words of a terrible curse:

“Thrice now I curse, and from the first,

Your faithful friends shall feel the worse.

Soon shall ye see, they'll surely be

In the most dire jeopardy.

Though wax they slow, these seeds I sow,

That many a man shall be your foe.

On you and yours, the Starkiller line,

This final doom I now define:

What I will shall come full measure,

So shall ye lose all that ye treasure.”

The Lord’s body vanished even as he finished speaking.

Luke unmasked his dying father, and Darth Vader looked his last upon his son with his own eyes.

On Had Abbadon, Leia ordered everyone else out of the bunker, clearly intending to sacrifice herself.

But one remained by her side: Han Solo, who realized at last that he truly loved this Princess of a vanished world.

Together, they pushed down the lever which deactivated the Death Stars’ shields… and as the bunker was obliterated in a fiery mushroom cloud, in space overhead the shields of the Empire’s weapons went inert.

Wilhuff Whitsun, piloting the Millennium Falcon, flew into the bowels of one Death Star to destroy it from within. A squadron of Rebel pilots in X-wing fighters flew into the other Death Star to do likewise.

Soon, above the Green Moon, two Death Stars exploded.

One was destroyed by the Rebel pilot Jerec Ors, who survived to escape the blast.

The other was destroyed by Wilhuff Whitsun, in the Millennium Falcon, who did not. Han Solo’s ship, and its pilot, perished so that a galaxy might live, and the Republic be restored.

Along with the destruction of the two Death Stars, the Emperor himself was killed, for he had been aboard one of them, exulting in the apparent triumph of his battle stations. With the Emperor’s death, the garrison on Ton-Muund surrendered to the Rebel fleet.

Luke Starkiller, Lando Katarn, Jerec Ors, and R2-D2 and C-3PO were feted as heroes, and Han Solo, Chewbacca, Leia Organa, and Wilhuff Whitsun were given funerals worthy of their great deeds.

But before the award ceremony held in the newly liberated Imperial Palace, Luke gave his dead father a Viking funeral, sending Darth Vader’s body forth on a flaming barge into the lava seas of Condawn.

Despite all the blood spilled in the Battle of the Green Moon, peace reigned in the galaxy… for the time being.

Nonetheless, Luke Starkiller could not rest easy when he pondered the matter of where this mysterious Bogan Lord had come from… and what his dying curse might mean for the future of the Republic.

(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.

(Extended Edition)

Episode V: Rebirth of the Jedi

They were not cruel to us, and yet they drained us of vitality by their mere presence among us. Our sun, our moons, our museums of ancient relics, our ruins of former cycles, our cities, our palaces, our future, our present, and our past had all undergone a transfer of title.

--Robert Silverberg, Nightwings

It was now a year after the fall of the New Republic.

A ragtag fleet of the old government’s surviving leaders limped through space, reduced once more to the status of Rebels.

The victorious Yuuzhan Vong, having seized control of the capital world of Ton-Muund, were aghast at the conditions in the planet’s stygian under-dwellings, where the laboring poor lived in darkness and poverty. Naturally, they attributed this great social ill to the fallen Republic, and did not realize that it was largely (though not entirely) the Empire’s doing.

The conquerors resettled the proletarians of Ton-Muund elsewhere, and terraformed the city-planet by flooding its lightless lower levels with water. Thus what had been a world of dank, fog-begrimed skyscrapers was transformed into a shining city of silver spires and glass towers, rising out of a shimmering blue-gray sea.

Luke Starkiller, the highest-ranking fugitive of the old government, was a wanted man, but as yet no definite information had come to the Yuuzhan Vong about his location.

Yet the Vong could not rest easy in their conquest.

A series of assassinations rocked the newly installed overseer government in the months after the takeover. Some attributed these deaths to the vengeance of Luke Starkiller.

Others, however, said that the murders were the work of a faceless figure in white armor, a nameless implacable enemy of the Yuuzhan Dominion, whose nickname had in the last five years become a whispered rumor among the Vong, and a terror by night to their children: “the White Death.”

Crix na Bolg, Governor of the Second Galaxy, had no time to worry about such legends.

His first wife, Ciara, was dying.

She was wracked by a terrible disease, which, Crix knew, would likely kill her. He would rather by far have ended her suffering with an injection of drugs… but the religion of the Yuuzhan Dominion forbade the Vong to take the lives of any but an outlaw and an enemy.

Those who watched as Ciara wasted away said in hushed voices that she was likely dying of poison, administered by Crix’s second wife, Ciara’s sister Cordala. But they did not say so to the Governor’s face, for fear of his wrath. Even the Governor’s deputy did not dare voice this common thought to his master, though he agreed with it privately, and confided as such to the Governor’s translator droid, C-3PO.

So Crix na Bolg, the ruling governor of the Yuuzhan Dominion on Ton-Muund, the crafty warrior feared across two galaxies, sat in his chair of office, or traveled to other planets on visits of state. And all the while he could do nothing to ease the suffering of his beloved wife.

Nothing, until the figure in white armor arrived.

This figure, the “White Death” of Yuuzhan Vong mythmaking, was in fact the very person whom Luke Starkiller now sought. Luke and his young companion Kyle Katarn, now being trained as a Jedi, believed that this mysterious armored avenger, whose legend had sprung up only recently among the aliens, might hold the key to restoring the Republic.

Luke and Kyle (and their loyal companion R2-D2), in turn, were being pursued by the Inquisitor Jan Ors, charged by the Dominion government with apprehending the fugitive Jedi Knight.

Not knowing the reason behind their journey, or even that Kyle Katarn was traveling alongside Luke Starkiller, Jan was alarmed that Luke’s movements more and more shadowed the official itinerary of Governor Crix na Bolg.

Eventually, Luke tracked his quarry to the capital world in the Yuuzhan Vong galaxy, a strange planet of white plastic cities floating on rain-soaked green seas. Here Luke Starkiller waylaid the White Death, and, after overpowering the armored warrior, removed his helmet.

But it wasn’t a he who stared back at him.

The face revealed was that of a woman, with red hair and green eyes, and a scar on one cheek.

Startled by this unexpected revelation, Luke paused long enough for this mysterious woman to take back her helmet and escape into the night. With Jan Ors on his trail, Luke was forced to break off the pursuit for the time being.

On this same planet, as she hunted the fugitive Luke Starkiller, Inquisitor Ors was assisted in her quest by a young officer from the local Dominion garrison, a human turncoat like herself. They got on well together, and she found herself attracted to him.

It was only later, when Luke escaped her once again, that this “officer” revealed himself as Kyle Katarn, who had secretly worked to misdirect her pursuit, and now joined Luke in his flight.

On Ton-Muund, in the private quarters of the Governor of the Second Galaxy, as Crix na Bolg returned from a trying journey to his home galaxy, he found a helmeted figure in white armor waiting for him.

He who had dealt out death to so many on the battlefields of yesteryear did not flinch from this stark sentinel, come to take his life. Instead, he asked of it something strange.

Crix na Bolg requested the White Death to be kind enough to kill his beloved wife, Ciara, for he knew that soon she must die, whether painlessly or in agony.

To his surprise, the legendary killer removed “his” helmet, revealing the face of a woman, though scarred by years of hard living.

She who wore the mask of the White Death attended Ciara na Bolg. She recognized the symptoms of the disease: a sickness endemic to the conquered galaxy, but normally extremely mild—at least in humans. In taking over this new galaxy, the Yuuzhan Vong had not foreseen the latent power of bacterial microbes.

The human woman gave Ciara a set of pills to ease her passing. Then she put on her mask once more, and prepared to depart.

Crix asked her why she did not kill him. She did not answer. Though she would have been loath to admit it, some part of her had been touched by the compassion displayed that night by this normally unflappable warrior.

Before she left, the White Death said to him that what he evidently suspected—that Ciara had been poisoned by Crix’s other wife, Cordala—was untrue. When Crix asked how she could be sure, the masked vigilante replied simply, “I know.”

Then she was gone again, out into the night of Ton-Muund.

Afterward, Crix went to see Cordala, who was sleeping in her private chambers. Cordala revealed to her husband that she had known of the masked human’s presence in their apartment. Indeed, she herself had asked the White Death to ease her sister’s suffering.

Crix na Bolg’s heart leapt in joy at his wife’s faithfulness to him and to Ciara.

Unknown to him, however, the Governor’s deputy, who had long suspected Cordala’s complicity in Ciara’s illness, had set recording devices in her chambers. These captured the conversation between Crix and Cordala.

On tape, Cordala had admitted to knowing, and doing nothing, when a human woman entered her lord’s apartment without his knowledge. Not only that: she had exhorted the human to end the life of a Vong of the Yuuzhan, a thing taboo under Yuuzhan religious law.

Shortly afterward, the Yuuzhan Vong Overlord arrived on Ton-Muund, touring his Dominion’s newly conquered galaxy. Word reached him from the Governor’s deputy that Cordala na Bolg had invited a human woman, a stranger, into the Governor’s house against his will, who did murder there (by Yuuzhan Vong standards).

Justice must be done.

As Crix na Bolg presided helplessly in the central square of Ton-Muund, Cordala na Bolg was stripped and shorn permanently of hair from head to foot, the punishment for petty treason against her lord and husband. Crix did not, however, divorce her, as was usual in such cases, for it was his right as paterfamilias to forgive her.

Meanwhile, on the streets of Ton-Muund, Luke Starkiller and Kyle Katarn split up, hoping thus to stymie their pursuers for a time, while they sought out their common prey. Alone, in a back-alley nightclub, Luke finally succeeded in tracking down the woman known as the White Death.

This time, Luke recognized her, from his buried memories and Force-guided visions of his own past: Nellith Starkiller, his long-lost sister.

At the time of the Empire’s rise, Ben Kenobi had entrusted young Nellith to the care of a noble house of the Republic on the outer reaches of the galaxy, lest the Empire become aware of her. But this strategy backfired when the Yuuzhan Vong, making a foray into the known galaxy, raided her planet, slew all the adults, and took Nellith as a captive.

For many years she lived as a slave in one of the great Yuuzhan Vong households, subject to the whims and desires of her master. At length she escaped, killing her owner, and afterward sought to avenge herself upon the race which had kidnapped her. The Yuuzhan Dominion’s conquest of her home galaxy gave her added reason to hate these pale-skinned aliens.

Recognizing Nellith at last, Luke brought her over to a secluded corner of the cantina. There he told her as briefly as he could of their shared history, and sought to convince her to join him and help restore the fallen Republic.

She agreed. But as they spoke, Jan Ors arrived in the nightclub with a squad of elite soldiers, and arrested them both in the name of the Dominion.

Luke Starkiller, whose crimes against the Yuuzhan regime were generally non-violent, was sentenced to death in the arena, pitted against a trio of wild beasts.

Attending the spectacle was the Yuuzhan Vong Overlord, to whom the Governor of the Second Galaxy was directly responsible. R2-D2, Luke’s faithful astromech droid, was reduced to the status of waiter, serving drinks to the Overlord and his guests.

Nellith, however, was immediately scheduled for public execution by injection of a lethal cocktail of drugs.

Crix na Bolg had pity on Nellith, who had eased the suffering of his late wife Ciara. Present at the execution ceremony in his capacity as Governor, Crix injected Nellith with a drug he had procured himself. It would, he said, ease her pain.

As Luke Starkiller faced off against a wild beast of the Arena—a blood sport which for religious reasons  Governor Crix na Bolg had no authority to ban—Kyle Katarn, watching in disguise in the audience, suddenly jumped into the arena himself.

Together, the two Jedi defeated the beast against which Luke Starkiller had been set. The Overlord, outraged at this irregularity, ordered that they both be summarily executed. However, Jan Ors, also in attendance, argued that the two should be given another chance.

Thus, Luke and Kyle now found themselves facing off against two wild beasts. These too they defeated, though they were both sorely injured by the end.

Then, to punish their insolence, the Overlord ordered yet another beast, the most ferocious of all, to be unleashed against them.

This was too much for Jan Ors, who despite herself admired the bravery of young Kyle Katarn, close in years to her own age. She as well jumped down into the arena, and together the trio slew this last and greatest monster.

In the nameless tombs allotted to common criminals, Nellith Starkiller woke up. Crix na Bolg, and Cordala, were by her side, waiting for her to awaken. Crix explained that, during the execution ceremony, he did not dare say even to her what he had really been doing—injecting an antidote into Nellith’s veins, which prevented the executioner’s lethal cocktail from having its intended effect.

Together, Nellith, Cordala, and Crix raced to the arena to save Nellith’s brother. Behind them waddled C-3PO, chattering on in inconveniently loud astonishment at the return of “Master Luke.”

The Overlord was about to pronounce sentence of immediate death upon Luke, Kyle, and Jan. But before he could, he was taken by surprise, with the feared White Death and his most trusted generals together holding him at lightsaber-point.

The Governor’s deputy, who tried to attack Crix na Bolg, found himself suddenly deprived of a head. Strangely, however, after his death both head and body vanished, and in place of the deputy’s robes there remained on the ground only a coarse black cloak.

But before that could be investigated, the stalemate in the arena had to be settled.

If these barbarians killed him, the Overlord reflected, they would surely be slain by his guards. But he would be no less dead.

So the Overlord, compelled by necessity, stayed his hand. Crix na Bolg took from him his crown of office, and assumed for himself the Overlordship of the Dominion.

Soon surviving Republic officials and Yuuzhan Vong dignitaries sat down for formal peace talks. From the heroism of two galaxies was born the Third Intergalactic Republic.

Crix na Bolg remained in office as Hegemon of the Republic. He married as a second wife Nellith Starkiller, whose bravery and compassion had impressed him greatly. Cordala na Bolg, meanwhile, took to wearing wigs made of precious blue stones imported from the Second Galaxy.

Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors were likewise married.

Luke Starkiller re-founded the Jedi Order, and began to seek out prospective students for his new Academy. But he never wed, and people wondered if he still mourned for Leia Organa.

C-3PO and R2-D2, now reunited, once more bickered constantly as though they had never been apart.

And, with the days of war finally drawing to a close, the two galaxies, those of the humans and the Vong, enjoyed peace at last for many years.

But Luke remained troubled by the question of Crix na Bolg’s mysterious deputy.

He had been a Dark Side user, probably another Bogan Lord: that much was obvious. But if so, how many more of them remained, and what dangers did they yet pose to the Republic?

(Extended Edition)

Episode VI: The City of Gold

Now make you ready, said Merlin, this night ye shall lie with Igraine in the castle of Tintagil; and ye shall be like the duke her husband, Ulfius shall be like Sir Brastias, a knight of the duke's, and I will be like a knight that hight Sir Jordanus, a knight of the duke's.

--Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur

In the days of the Republic, the Jedi Knights were famed not only for their skill as warriors, but also as just arbiters and mediators of disputes.

That was why the Jedi Knight Kane Skywalker, hailed as a hero across the galaxy, had come to Sullust X: a lush, garden-covered world with three suns in the sky, a place of gleaming golden cities and tall spires. This was the ancestral home of two of the great Clone clans, House Valorum and House Katarn.

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 such clan was Clan Valorum, whose members were distinguished by their red hair and green eyes.

Kane Skywalker had come to settle a border dispute between King Zander, ruler of Clan Valorum, and the other Clone King ruling on Sullust X, Justin Katarn.

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.

Kane’s mission, such as it was, failed. The dispute over territory between King Zander and King Justin could not be resolved peaceably, largely due to the intransigence of the leader of House Valorum. And so the peace summit broke up, having accomplished nothing.

Or so Kane thought.

As he was preparing to depart in his Republic starship, Kane had a sudden change of heart, and sent a retainer to board the ship in his place, dressed in his brown Jedi cloak.

Kane’s skepticism was justified. Soon after takeoff, the starship exploded as it flew into the sky, the apparent victim of a catastrophic accident… or, Kane guessed, more likely sabotage.

Kane lay low on Sullust X for a few months, watching and waiting.

And then King Zander Valorum acted.

House Valorum launched an invasion of the hereditary lands of House Katarn. King Justin Katarn was forced into exile from his capital city, fleeing into the fertile grasslands which surrounded it.

Kane Skywalker emerged from his exile and met with the fugitive King Justin. Together, the two plotted a way to thwart the schemes of the mad Clone King, and restore the kingdom of the Katarn dynasty.

Justin Katarn warned the Jedi Knight that House Valorum possessed a terrible superweapon, a device which could destroy a sun remotely, by terraforming it into a planet. Doing this to even one of the three suns of Sullust X would be enough to bring unspeakable ruin upon the entire system.

If Zander Valorum had no other option, Justin warned, he would use this device, and destroy his entire home planet, rather than suffer defeat.

Kane Skywalker agreed that this must not be allowed to happen. The two men decided that Justin should lead a counter-attack against Zander’s armies, accompanied by a small force of Jedi Knights, summoned by Kane via sub-ether radio. Meanwhile, Kane himself would infiltrate Zander Valorum’s palace while he was away fighting, and disable this superweapon before it could be used.

Though the battle between Zander’s massive army and Justin’s small force of loyal warriors and Jedi Knights hung long in the balance, eventually numbers decided the outcome.

Zander killed King Justin, and many of the Jedi Knights. There too the King of Organa Major was badly wounded, fighting as a Jedi as he had not done for many years.

Yet two Jedi—Bail Highsinger, Kane Skywalker’s old friend, and Jaden Monroe, Bail’s current Padawan--escaped the bloody battlefield. Knowing that one man might move faster than an army encumbered with loot, Bail sent Jaden on ahead to Zander’s palace, to warn Kane of the Clone King’s impending return.

Meanwhile, in Zander Valorum’s palace, Kane Skywalker searched fruitlessly for the controls to the Clone King’s superweapon…. until he met Zara Valorum, the concubine of King Zander.

Zara was not a Clone by birth, but a slave captured on one of the Clones’ warrior forays. She had golden hair and blue eyes, and Kane Skywalker thought she was very beautiful. Zara, too, found Kane handsome, a tall and well-built man in his prime with dark hair and dark eyes.

They made love, and afterward, Zara took Kane Skywalker to the controls for House Valorum’s superweapon of last resort. The control room was housed in a bunker shielded by a cloaking device, explaining why Kane had not been able to find it earlier.

Kane 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 Jaden Monroe burst into the master control room. King Zander Valorum had triumphed on the battlefield, Jaden warned Kane, and now he was returning to his palace—

And then Jaden Monroe’s head fell from his shoulders.

Zander Valorum 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 Kane Skywalker not only was alive, but had in his absence infiltrated his home and seduced his favored concubine.

Kane and Zander dueled with lightsabers, and their duel was long and arduous. In the end, Zander triumphed, and Kane Skywalker was mortally wounded.

Zander’s laugh of victory rang through the control chamber. But it was to prove short-lived.

Bail Highsinger had learned that Zander was pursuing young Jaden Monroe, and had followed in turn. Now he arrived at the control bunker, too late to save his young protégé… and his old friend and comrade lay dying as well.

But he could still avenge them.

In his anger and wrath, Bail Highsinger activated the superweapon, turning it upon the Clone King’s own planet.

As King Zander watched in horror, one of the three suns in the sky began to darken, and the ground shook beneath their feet.

Then Zander Valorum watched no more. Rising up one last time, Kane Starkiller cut Zander’s head from his body, and then fell down dead himself.

The menace of House Valorum was ended, and the greatest hero of the Jedi Knights was no more.

Bail Highsinger escaped the ruin of Sullust X with Zara Valorum. 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.

Bail Highsinger, ashamed of the blood he had shed and fearing punishment, reported to the Jedi Council that Kane was the one who had activated the superweapon. Yet no punishment came.

In recognition of his reputed deed, Kane Skywalker was posthumously given a new surname by the grateful Senate of the Republic. Thus he became known to posterity as Kane Starkiller.

But Bail Highsinger was consumed by guilt for his actions, and even more disturbed that they were not condemned by the people of the Republic. He retired from the Jedi Order, and became a moisture farmer on Sullust, the world he had brought into being.

Nine months after the devastation of Sullust X, Zara Valorum gave birth to a child, a boy with dark hair and blue eyes: Annikin Starkiller. Zara died shortly afterward, and so Bail Highsinger raised the child of his old friend as one of his own family.

Eventually Bail Highsinger married another immigrant settler on the new-made world of Sullust, and they had a daughter, whom they named Beru.

But living among the Valorum refugees from Sullust X was Zara’s daughter by the late King Zander—a young green-eyed redhead named Lumiya, whom her mother Zara had left to her fate when their homeworld perished.

Aged nine when House Valorum fell, she was just old enough to grieve for her dead father, but not old enough to understand how cruel he had been to her mother.

And, with the passionate intensity of a child wronged, Lumiya Valorum vowed revenge upon those who had slain her beloved father.

(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.

(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.

As this is a "reconstruction" of sorts, I admit I have no *proof* that this is how the SW saga would or would not have gone in 1975.

This thread is merely my own attempt at extrapolating the probable course of the 1975 outlines for the Saga, based on existing books and movies that GL had likely read.

By all means, feel free to move it to the fanfiction section.

After I'm done, though, I'll gladly post a list of sources (or "Quellen," as H. Rider Haggard puts it in Allan Quatermain).

I will say that my account of the 12-episode Saga is deliberately designed to make sense of both Gary Kurtz's garbled accounts of the Sequel Trilogy, as well as GL's undated page of notes for a 12-episode saga (listing SW 1977 as "Episode VI" in chronological terms) seen in The Making of ESB.

(Theatrical Edition)

Episode V: Wrath of the Republic

“I knew someone like you once. There was no one there to help. Now get movin'.”

--Joe (Clint Eastwood), A Fistful of Dollars, Sergio Leone

Twenty years had passed since the First Clone War and the victory of the Republic. Yet in their exile the survivors of Clan Valorum remembered their grudge, and vowed that one day vengeance would fall upon the Republic.

The young and impetuous new Clone King, Xerxes Valorum, judged the time to be right to strike.

So began the Second Clone War.

At the height of the war, Xerxes Valorum, leading a small force of ships, made a raid upon Organa Major, hoping thus to revenge himself upon those who had defeated his late predecessor, the Clone King Zander.

In a daring assault upon the planet surface, Xerxes carried off Crispin and Corwin, the young twin sons of King Carl and Queen Alexa of Organa Major.

Crispin and Corwin, however, had managed to carry with them a hyperspace beacon, which allowed the Republic to track the Clone King’s ships.

A fleet of ships from the Republic Navy embarked on a chase. Aboard the flagship was Annikin Starkiller, now a Jedi Knight.

But his fellow Knight, Ben Kenobi, looked at the route of the fleeing Clone ships and extrapolated its likely destination: a nebula on the outer perimeter of known space. Thus, when Xerxes Valorum’s ships dropped out of hyperspace, a Republic gunship was waiting.

While the Republic ship’s crew engaged the Clone gunners in a dogfight, Ben and his young apprentice Darth Vader donned spacesuits.

Crossing through the void, they managed to breach the interior of Xerxes’ vessel. They found the young boys, held captive in a luxurious suite, and slew the guards defending them.

Meanwhile, Annikin Starkiller’s armada dropped out of hyperspace behind the Clone King’s smaller fleet. Realizing he was no match for this superior force, Xerxes Valorum took his personal shuttle and fled into hyperspace.

Thus the decisive battle of the Second Clone War ended with a Republic victory.

Upon their rescue, Crispin and Corwin informed the Jedi that they had stowed their locator beacon inside Xerxes’ shuttle when they were first captured.

While Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader returned the children to their parents, their fellow Jedi Annikin Starkiller took a starfighter and pursued Xerxes Valorum, who had fled to the other end of the known galaxy.

Darth Vader, eager to find glory in battle, had wanted to pursue the Clone King himself. But Annikin, who recognized in Darth some of the hotheadedness he had once shared, took the mission for his own.

Still, there was another reason for Annikin’s departure, one which he did not state: he thought the twins’ mother Queen Alexa was very beautiful, and he feared to be around her, lest his own desires end by robbing the happiness from Carl Organa’s marriage.

Xerxes Valorum emerged from hyperspace over the desert world of Sullust, created a mere twenty years before.

When Annikin’s craft emerged into normal space, Xerxes was hiding his own ship behind an asteroid. Before Annikin was aware of him, he fired on the Jedi Knight’s starfighter, forcing Annikin to make a crash landing on the planet surface.

Annikin was left insensible by the crash, and lay unconscious in the burning wreckage of his craft, but he was pulled out by a local settler girl, about eighteen years old. Her name was Beru Thorpe.

Beru nursed Annikin back to health over the next few weeks. When Annikin saw her face, with its brown hair, kindly brown eyes and easygoing smile, he found it pleasant to look at. Beru, too, thought Annikin Starkiller was quite an attractive man, whose missing right arm rather increased than diminished his appeal.

But Beru had a sister, Breha, whose steely blue eyes and sharp tongue had driven away all suitors, though her father Bail clearly favored her over Beru.

When he was well enough, Annikin left the Thorpe homestead, and began hunting for Xerxes Valorum. His knowledge of the war’s progress, as well as his Force sight, told him that Xerxes had likely not left the planet, and was even now hiding out somewhere on Utapau (as the locals termed it).

Before he departed on his quest, Annikin spoke words of love to Beru, and promised that, if he returned alive, they would be wed. To himself he even thought of retiring from the Jedi Order, if only to escape from the gaze of the beautiful Alexa Organa.

In the shadows, Breha Thorpe fumed with jealousy.

Meanwhile, for his first solo mission, Darth Vader was sent to track down a surviving Clone general.

He traced his prey to the rocky desert planet of Ttaz, a sparsely inhabited world of red sands and tall stone outcroppings beneath strange emerald skies. Once, this world had been densely populated, until it was struck with a plague, in the wake of which most of the survivors fled.

While hunting for his quarry in the ruined cities of Ttaz, Darth Vader heard from the few remaining inhabitants rumors of a witch or sorceress who lived in a cave in the desert. Wondering if she might be connected to his missing general, Vader set out to find this so-called witch.

Eventually, in a remote cave on the farthest fringes of the red desert of Ttaz, Vader found his witch.

She was no fraud.

The witch spoke to Vader of his upbringing at the hands of his mother, Zara Valorum, who had raised him to seek vengeance on his father, Annikin Starkiller.

This was a secret Vader had as yet revealed to none, for he never spoke of his childhood to others, and said only that he was the son of a poor farmer’s daughter. Zara had died before her son enrolled in the Jedi Order; so far as Vader knew, she herself had been as reluctant as he was to discuss their history with others.

Vader did not yet quite believe the witch was more than a mind-reader… after all, there were many who had such powers, not all of them Jedi. He asked her to summon his mother’s spirit, so that he could talk to her.

At the witch’s command, the ghost of Zara Valorum appeared in the hut.

Zara’s ghost spoke with the regret of one who had sinned in life, and now could not undo those sins. She said to her son that she had lied knowingly to him.

Annikin Starkiller was not in truth the one who had destroyed their world. It was, in fact, Annikin’s fellow Jedi Ben Kenobi, who afterwards denied his crime. Therefore the Starkiller line was largely innocent of the blood curse she had sought to wreak upon it.

Vader was incredulous and disbelieving. Even if these words were true, he said, Annikin had still assaulted her and killed her clone-father, King Zander Valorum.

But this seeming could not be true. His mother would not have lied to him.

No, the witch had to be trying to deceive him.

And so Darth Vader, lashing out with his lightsaber, slew her in her own hut.

Not long afterward, under the evening light of the moons of Ttaz, Vader found his missing general, hiding out in an encampment hidden among the rocks of the desert. The fugitive Clone leader was sound asleep, and did not rouse at the Jedi’s arrival.

Vader pondered for a moment whether killing this man as he slept, without even letting him know of his impending fate, was wrong. But he told himself that the man was an enemy of the Republic, and therefore deserved to die.

So Vader killed the former Clone general in his sleep, and returned to the Republic, taking the corpse’s head as proof of his quarry’s death.

On Sullust, after months of searching, Annikin finally located Xerxes Valorum, now fallen into a haze of alcohol, in the back alley of a seedy small town. Xerxes was a poor lightsaber duelist, and moreover a coward at heart, and in his drunken misery he begged for his life.

Remembering what had happened on the tenth planet of this solar system, twenty years prior, Annikin decided to give Xerxes a fighting chance to live.

Instead of a sword duel, they had a gunfight.

Annikin was shot in the shoulder. Yet using his left hand, he struck down Xerxes Valorum with a blaster pistol, shooting him in the eye.

From the dead Clone King’s hand, Annikin took a Ring as proof of Xerxes’ death. This magic Ring, identical to that worn on Annikin’s left hand, had the power of preventing its owner from dying. But the ring was ineffective against assaults upon the wearer’s eyes, and Annikin’s shot had penetrated Xerxes’ eye socket and pierced his brain.

Returning to the Thorpe farm, Annikin still ached with the pain of his wound. As he lay recuperating in a guest bedroom, Breha Thorpe approached him, and gave him a drugged drink which roused his passions. Having thus drugged his body and dulled his mind, Breha slept with the man whom she had long desired.

Afterward, Breha went to her father, and said to Bail Thorpe that Annikin had lain with her of his own free will, siring a child on her. Bail urged Annikin to make an “honest woman” of Breha and marry her. Reluctantly, Annikin agreed.

Annikin Starkiller married Breha Thorpe, and settled down to live on Utapau shortly afterward.

Beru Thorpe, heartbroken, married a fellow moisture farmer, Owen Lars, whose advances she had previously rejected, thinking him a dullard.

The Second Clone War continued on for almost another year, but with the disgrace and death of its leading figurehead, the Clones’ defeat was all but inevitable.

The end of the war was celebrated with much fanfare. Prominent Senators spoke of the “end of history” and looked forward to decades of peace.

Cloning technology was outlawed across the Republic, in order to prevent unscrupulous kings from breeding a new race of mentally unstable soldiers.

Ben Kenobi, capitalizing on his fame, wrote a book: Diary of the Clone Wars. It became an overnight bestseller.

Nine months after Annikin slept with Breha Thorpe, she gave birth to a child. This boy had the fair hair and blue eyes of his father.

She named her son Luke.

(Extended Edition)

Episode VIII: The Black Temple of Ttaz

“He is a sorcerer, a wizard of the Inner Lands, seeking the amulet of Erreth-Akbe.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

A battle raged on strangely colored grasslands beneath the light of multiple moons. An army of the finest warriors from almost all the Clone clans watered the grass ankle-deep with its blood. The exhausted soldiers of the Republic’s battered armies rejoiced in victory.

But their cries of joy were muted, for the venerable Jedi Master, Bail Highsinger, had perished in the battle.

On the rocky desert planet of Ttaz, where red sands stretched beneath an emerald sky, stood the Black Temple.

It had stood there for millennia. Its priestesses expected that it would stand for millennia more.

The heart of the Black Temple was the White Stone: a massive piece of marbled white rock, instinct with power, which whispered to those who stood in its presence, and offered visions of the future to those high in its service.

The priestesses of Ttaz were virgins sanctified to the service of the Outer Ones, nameless beings who had been worshipped for longer than the Republic had existed. The White Stone, they said, was the means by which the Outer Ones spoke to Men.

Some noble Houses still followed the old customs, and they sent their younger daughters to the service of the Temple. Increasingly, however, this custom was dying out, as other forms of religion prevailed in the galaxy at large, and the Republic government had officially outlawed such bound servitude.

Breha Thorpe was one of the priestesses of the Black Temple. Aged sixteen, with blonde hair and blue eyes, she had served the Outer Ones since her consecration ten years prior.

No one was supposed to enter the precincts of the Temple without the permission of the Mother Superior… certainly not any man.

Yet one day, walking through the inner cloisters adjoining the Temple proper, Breha stumbled upon a man—a Jedi Knight, no less.

This was remarkable, because the Jedi deemed that the Outer Ones were dark spirits, evil beings who should not be worshipped, but rather feared and resisted. For that reason, the priestesses forbade Jedi to set foot within the grounds of the Temple, on pain of death. It would have been inconceivable for a Jedi to visit the Black Temple of Ttaz.

Yet here was this one, quite handsome overall. A man of twenty-three he appeared to be, with dark hair and blue eyes. He was clad all in black, highly unusual for a Jedi Knight.

Breha Thorpe, who could barely remember life on her homeworld, was fascinated by this visitor from the stars, and against her better judgment refrained from reporting his presence to the Mother Superior.

Instead, Breha brought the Jedi to the very heart of the Temple, for the White Stone of the Old Ones to stand in judgment upon this intruder.

In the innermost sanctuary of the Black Temple, the Jedi Knight stood before the legendary stone… and nothing happened.

Breha was astonished.

The Jedi introduced himself to her as Annikin Starkiller, and explained why he had come.

Annikin said that three years previously, during the First Clone War, the Clone King, Xerxes Valorum, had kidnapped Princess Alexa, the fiancée of Prince Carl of Organa Major.

Carl’s father had since died, and he had been compelled to take up the crown of his homeworld, abandoning the Jedi Order. Bail Highsinger, meanwhile, returned to duty to serve his erstwhile Order once more, but was slain in the war’s final battle.

The fighting had ended, but Xerxes Valorum was still at large, and the Lady Alexa was likewise unaccounted for.  Alexa’s disappearance and his foster father Bail’s death were the reasons why Annikin now wore Jedi robes of mourning black.

Annikin had been sent by the Jedi Council to track Alexa and Xerxes down if possible, and so far he had traced their movements to the planet of Ttaz.

Annikin believed it was quite possible that Xerxes had had Alexa consecrated to the Black Temple, as a convenient means of disposing of her before continuing his flight from the Republic’s justice. That was why Annikin had infiltrated the Temple grounds.

When Breha heard Annikin describe Alexa, a blue-eyed redhead now nineteen years old, she told him sadly that no one of that age and description lived in the Temple.

Annikin thanked her for her help. Breha Thorpe, who by the laws of her priesthood should have given him over for execution, escorted him out of the precincts of the Temple to safety.

But when he had gone, Breha found herself accosted by the Mother Superior, who had been alerted to the Jedi’s presence through visions sent to her by the Stone.

Breha was accused of having spared the Jedi’s life in order to lie with him, violating her sacred vows of chastity. The punishment for such oath-breaking was to be sold at auction in a slave market—for on this remote world, where the Republic’s laws held little weight, slavery was still practiced despite the outcome of the First Clone War.

Breha Thorpe was sold to the agents of Faramond, ruling Duke of Ttaz. Her first nights in her new master’s household were unpleasant.

In her captivity, she was befriended by a woman three years older: the long-lost Princess Alexa, now another slave of the Duke.

It was not long before Annikin Starkiller unexpectedly showed up once more, in the women’s quarters of Faramond’s ducal palace.

At first Breha was furious at him, because Annikin’s intrusion into the Temple had led to her disgrace and defilement.

What he said next made her even more outraged.

Annikin confessed that he knew what had happened to Breha, but he had not dared to intervene—because Breha’s enslavement provided the best lead for him to track down Alexa.

His honesty did nothing to help Breha’s temper, and her slaps smarted on his cheek. But Annikin offered to take Breha with him and Alexa, when they made their escape. Seeing no other way out of her prison, she accepted.

Sneaking through the Duke’s palace at night, as they passed through the treasure vault, Annikin made a curious discovery: an identical copy of the White Stone from the Black Temple.

Unlike the stone in the sanctuary, this Stone felt alive with an evil menace. Even as Annikin approached it, he knew that dark powers watched him through it, and that it was working for his destruction.

Sure enough, the Mother Superior came then into the vault, followed by a phalanx of guards.

The Mother Superior explained that the Outer Ones had warned her of the coming of a stranger, a Jedi, who would defile the sanctity of the Black Temple. Thus she had had the Stone moved to the Duke’s Palace to protect it.

For it was a prophecy of the Outer Ones that a stranger clad in black should one day destroy the White Stone, and that his lineage would in time end their power.

At the high priestess’s urging, one of the guards fired a blaster at Annikin, set to burn and stun but not kill. The priestess wanted to ensure that Annikin’s death would not be merciful.

But Breha leaped in front of the bolt. It struck her in the face, blinding her in one eye.

The delay was all Annikin Starkiller needed. Darting forward, Annikin shouted at Alexa and Breha to close their eyes, and he himself did likewise.

Then the Jedi Knight brought down his lightsaber with a furious blow, and split the White Stone in two.

A terrible bright light filled the room, and a furious rumbling began to shake the ground. The Mother Superior and the guards were all momentarily blinded. They cowered in fear, realizing that the prophecy had been fulfilled. But when their vision cleared, they realized they could still slay these interlopers.

Unfortunately for them, Annikin, Alexa, and Breha were already off and running. They sealed the door of the treasure vault behind them to hinder pursuit.

But at the gate of the palace, the Duke of Ttaz stood blocking their path, with lightsaber ignited.

While the ducal palace shook itself to bits, Annikin and the Duke dueled. The Duke, a formidable duelist, severed Annikin’s right arm at the elbow. But Annikin in turn used the Force to summon the Duke’s blaster from its holster on his belt. Firing it with his left hand, Annikin shot the Duke square in the eye, killing him.

So the three fugitives continued their flight. They managed to reach Annikin’s starship, where Ben Kenobi was waiting for them.

As Ben piloted the ship up into space, they watched as, below them, the Black Temple was swallowed whole by a gaping rent in the earth, and the Duke’s magnificent palace collapsed into a heap of rubble.

In after days Annikin did not replace his lost right arm, following the Jedi tradition of learning to compensate for such a bodily disability without the aid of mechanical prosthetics.

Soon after their escape, a plague struck the citizens of Ttaz, which spared few. Not only children and elders were struck by it, but previously healthy men and women in their prime. The Mother Superior and her successor both died.

Only those few who did not honor the Outer Ones in their hearts were left entirely unafflicted. Many of the Jedi said it was the vengeance of the Force. But the wiser among them wondered if the Force’s vengeance was truly something to be praised.

The survivors of the plague in large part departed Ttaz, leaving behind them the bones of a sinister, dark, corrupted world.

On Organa Major, King Carl and Princess Alexa were married at last.

Annikin Starkiller and Breha Thorpe (now sporting a silver prosthetic eye) were also wed.

Annikin had previously been engaged to Beru Highsinger, his beloved foster sister. When Annikin asked to break off the engagement, Beru gave him her blessing on one condition.

Beru, who was infertile, asked that, if he and Breha had more than one child, they would let her raise one of their children as her own. The newlyweds agreed.

Thus, it seemed, peace had returned to the Republic at last.

But Xerxes Valorum was still hiding somewhere in the outer reaches of the galaxy… and he bided his time, knowing that revenge tastes best when served cold.

Also, for anyone looking for an advance lead on my sources, be sure to read the epigraphs in front of each episode.

(Extended Edition)

Episode IX: Wrath of the Republic

The face of Stapleton had sprung out from the canvas.

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

Twenty years had passed since the outbreak of the First Clone War, which ended in victory for the Republic. Yet still afterward the survivors of Clan Valorum nursed a grudge, and vowed that one day vengeance would be theirs.

At last the exiled Clone King, Xerxes Valorum, judged the time to be right to reveal himself once more, and strike.

So began the Second Clone War.

At the height of the war, leading a small force of ships, Xerxes made a raid upon Organa Major, hoping thus to revenge himself upon those who had defeated him previously.

In a daring assault upon the planet surface, Xerxes carried off Crispin and Corwin, the young twin sons of King Carl and Queen Alexa.

Crispin and Corwin, however, had managed to carry with them a hyperspace beacon, which allowed the Republic to track the Clone King’s ships.

While King Carl Organa remained in his capital to restore order and survey the damage done by the Clone raid, a massive fleet of ships from the Republic Navy embarked on a chase. Aboard the flagship was Annikin Starkiller, now a Jedi Knight.

But his fellow Knight, Ben Kenobi, looked at the route of the fleeing Clone ships and extrapolated its likely destination: a nebula on the outer perimeter of known space. Thus, when Xerxes Valorum’s ships dropped out of hyperspace, a Republic gunship was waiting.

While the Republic ship’s crew engaged the Clone gunners in a dogfight, Ben and his young apprentice Darth Vader donned spacesuits.

Crossing through the void, they managed to breach the interior of Xerxes’ vessel. They found the young boys, held captive in a luxurious suite, and slew the guards defending them.

Meanwhile, Annikin Starkiller’s armada dropped out of hyperspace behind the Clone King’s smaller fleet. Realizing he was no match for this superior force, Xerxes Valorum took his personal shuttle and fled into hyperspace.

Thus the decisive battle of the Second Clone War ended with a Republic victory.

Upon their rescue, Crispin and Corwin informed the Jedi that they had stowed their locator beacon inside Xerxes’ shuttle when they were first captured.

While Annikin Starkiller returned the children to their parents, Ben and Darth took starfighters and pursued Xerxes Valorum, who had fled to the other end of the known galaxy.

They tracked the locator beacon to the swampy world of Dagobah, which had remained neutral in the Clone Wars. Here the two Jedi alighted at the castle of the Count of Dagobah, Brant Waldemar.

The Count was a lean man with dark hair and green eyes, and a dark mustache. He greeted his visitors courteously, and offered them a place to stay while they searched for their fugitive from justice.

Ben Kenobi did not stay long at the Count’s castle, but rather set out into the swamps, having heard rumors of a small cloning laboratory deep in the wilds of Dagobah, which was presumably where Xerxes Valorum had fled.

His apprentice Darth Vader, meanwhile, was left behind in the Count’s castle, there to speak to the Count and his retainers, and to ascertain if any of them might secretly be in league with the Clone King.

Vader heard from the Castle’s servants rumors of a witch or sorceress who lived in the depths of the swamp. Wondering if she might be connected to Xerxes Valorum, Vader set out to find this so-called witch.

Eventually, in a hut on the remotest marshes of Dagobah, Vader found his witch.

She was no fraud.

The witch spoke to Vader of his upbringing at the hands of his mother, Lumiya Valorum, who had raised him to seek vengeance on his father, Annikin Starkiller.

This was a secret Vader had as yet revealed to none, for he never spoke of his childhood to others, and said only that he was the son of a poor farmer’s daughter. Lumiya had died before her son enrolled in the Jedi Order; so far as Vader knew, she herself had been as reluctant as he was to discuss their history with others.

Vader did not yet quite believe the witch was more than a mind-reader… after all, there were many who had such powers, not all of them Jedi. He asked her to summon his mother’s spirit, so that he could talk to her.

At the witch’s command, the ghost of Lumiya Valorum appeared in the hut.

Lumiya’s ghost spoke with the regret of one who had sinned in life, and now could not undo those sins. She said to her son that she had lied knowingly to him.

Kane Starkiller was not in truth the one who had destroyed their world. It was, in fact, Kane’s fellow Jedi Bail Highsinger, who afterwards denied his crime. Therefore the Starkiller line was largely innocent of the blood curse she had sought to wreak upon it.

Vader was incredulous and disbelieving. Even if these words were true, he said, Kane had been the one who killed her father, King Zander. At any rate, Bail Highsinger was still Annikin’s foster father, and his guilt must therefore transfer to his adopted son.

But this seeming could not be true. His mother would not have lied to him.

No, the witch had to be trying to deceive him.

And so Darth Vader, lashing out with his lightsaber, slew her in her own hut.

Afterward, plunging further through the mire, Darth Vader stumbled upon the ruins of some long-forgotten ancient city, of which only the heads of enormous statues now poked up out of the swamp. There he saw a wizened old man in a black cloak, standing on a hillock. Vader hailed him, but the old man simply said, “You did well back there, in the hut. Suffer not a witch to live, they say.”

Unnerved, Vader asked who he was, and what he was talking about. The ancient man replied that he was “a Lord of the Bogan,” and that therefore he knew many things. He was strong with the Force, he said, and he knew of Vader’s desire for revenge upon his father.

If Vader would agree to listen to him, and stay with him on Dagobah to be instructed, he would become a mighty warrior, and would at last carry out the vengeance against Annikin Starkiller which he had long craved.

Vader agreed.

The old man laughed. “Good,” he said. And then, without further words, he simply vanished into the fog of the swamp.

On his way back to the Count’s castle, Vader ran into Ben Kenobi, who was going there himself. Ben said that he had found the cloning facility and radioed to the Jedi Order on Ton-Muund, seeking help in destroying it.

Now they returned to the castle, to show Count Waldemar the illicit work of the Clones upon his land.

The Count went with the two Jedi, Ben and Darth, as they approached the clone base, which was strangely devoid of personnel. Lord Waldemar was evidently quite shocked that such a massive installation could have been constructed without his knowledge.

Then Ben said to the Count: “Don’t act so surprised, Xerxes.”

“Brant Waldemar” was in fact Xerxes Valorum, who had dyed his hair and grown a mustache during his escape to Dagobah. The old Count had been murdered when the Clones set up their base of last resort on this planet, and Xerxes assumed his place.

Ben Kenobi had suspected this upon their arrival, and knew it was true as soon as he had reached the empty cloning facility, whose workers must have been tipped off as to his imminent arrival. But he did not dare risk revealing his hand until the proper moment.

Now, with his ruse uncovered, Xerxes looked to his lightsaber to save his life… as well as a squad of loyal guards, who had remained in hiding in the depths of the cloning facility.

Their initial onslaught was swift and skillful. Finding himself caught unawares in an ambush, Darth Vader lashed out fiercely, but lost his right arm in the struggle. But being young and strong, he used the Force to mitigate the pain of his wound. Taking up his fallen lightsaber, he continued fighting with his left hand.

Fortunately, Annikin Starkiller had just arrived on the planet as well, traveling ahead of a Republic convoy.

While Ben and Darth fought off the attack of Xerxes’ guards, Annikin dueled the Clone King.

The duel of Zander Valorum and Annikin Starkiller was long, and both participants were sorely hurt. Finally, though Annikin had received a painful slash to the leg, he felled Xerxes where he stood, and then collapsed to the ground in weariness.

But even as Xerxes lay dying, he drew from his belt a small remote device, and pressed a button on it. Out of a hidden door there emerged a fearsome black shadow, crawling on all fours: a beast of a terrible unearthly nature, whose insubstantial flesh would not suffer from attacks by blade or blaster.

Yet it had teeth, and claws, and it was lethally dangerous to those standing its way. This was Xerxes Valorum’s final vengeance upon his victorious enemies.

The shadow-beast sprang at Annikin Starkiller where he sat injured on the ground, intending to devour the man who had humiliated its master on the ice plains of Norton III years ago. But before it could reach him, Ben Kenobi leapt in front of the monster, and sought to hold it off, though he himself might die doing so.

Ben told his apprentice to use the Force to bring down the ceiling of the cloning facility directly above the creature. After a moment’s hesitation, Darth Vader obeyed his master. But even as the weight of ceiling, overhead lights, and hidden piping fell to the floor, the shadow-beast vanished, leaving a dark stain on the ground where it had last been.

In the following days, Darth Vader followed the example of his mentor, Ben Kenobi, and replaced his missing arm with a prosthesis covered in synth-flesh.

The Second Clone War continued on for almost another year, but with the flight and death of its leading figurehead, the Clones’ defeat was all but inevitable.

The end of the war was celebrated with much fanfare.

Cloning technology was outlawed across the Republic, in order to prevent unscrupulous kings from breeding a new race of mentally unstable soldiers.

Ben Kenobi, capitalizing on his fame, wrote a book: Diary of the Clone Wars. It became an overnight bestseller.

On Organa Major, the night after the signing of the peace treaty, there was a great celebration. Annikin Starkiller, encouraged by young Darth Vader, drank heavily, and passed out asleep on a couch.

Then Darth Vader, determined to humiliate the father whom he denied publicly and hated in secret, set out on a course of action with momentous consequences.

Vader wove a web of Force illusion around himself, so that he took on the guise of Annikin Starkiller. Thus disguised, he went into the chamber of his father’s wife, Lady Breha.

They slept together, and in the morning, when Breha spoke of Annikin’s passionate lovemaking the night before, Annikin did not disbelieve her.

Nine months later, Breha Starkiller gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl: Luke and Nellith. Luke Starkiller had fair hair and blue eyes, like his mother, but Nellith had red hair and green eyes. This seemed strange to Annikin, but as the ex-priestess Breha had never learned who her parents were, he believed that the genes in question must have been passed on from her side of the family.

He dismissed the thought that Darth Vader, Ben Kenobi’s young apprentice, might be the real father. After all, Darth Vader was an honorable man, and anyway his eyes were blue, not green.

The flaw in his logic did not become apparent to Annikin for some time.

At his own request, Darth Vader, now a full Jedi Knight, was dispatched to serve on Dagobah in the household of the newly appointed Republic governor. Vader’s official task was to pacify a few marauding groups of escaped Clones, workers at the cloning facility who had been warned to flee by Xerxes Valorum.

During his free hours, Vader went to the hillock and the forgotten city deep in the swamps, where he met with the wizened old Bogan Lord, and there learned much from him.

As they had promised, Annikin and Breha gave one of their children to Beru Highsinger to raise as her own. Thus, while Annikin raised his daughter Nellith himself, his old flame Beru took charge of the upbringing of young Luke Starkiller.

With the decisive defeat of the Clones, the citizens of the Republic, including many of the Jedi, believed that the galaxy was on track to return to peace at long last.

How wrong they were.

(Theatrical Edition)

Episode VI: The Phantom Menace

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die.”

--HP Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”

Four years had passed since the end of the Second Clone War, and the decisive defeat of the Republic’s foes. Nonetheless, the promised peace had not materialized, for a campaign of terrorist bombings was even now being waged by Clone guerrillas.

The current Chancellor of the Senate, Sate Pestage, the Lord of Alderaan, fulminated against these “evildoers” in bellicose speeches, and vowed to bring them to justice, either dead or alive.

Chancellor Pestage had been in office since before the Second Clone War. He rose to the Chancellorship on a wave of dissatisfaction with his predecessor’s public image as a coward, more interested in having peace at any price than in defending the interests of the Republic from hostile outlying systems.

The outbreak of war had allowed Pestage to gain an unprecedented second term in power. Now, faced with this new threat, the Chancellor’s supporters in the Senate engineered his election for a third time, so that this strong leader could deal with the Republic’s enemies as they deserved.

It was little known, however, that most of the “terrorist” bombings were actually the work of the Chancellor’s own agents, running false-flag operations in order to provide excuses for cementing the Emperor’s authority.

Already the Emperor had passed new laws criminalizing dissent and placing sharp restrictions on the rights of petition and assembly. Some in the Jedi Order, including Ben Kenobi and others high in the Council, looked on alarmingly, and wondered if they should intervene.

But one Jedi, Darth Vader, had made a secret pact with the Chancellor Pestage: he and his friends among the Jedi Order (and he did have them) would establish and support his rule as a monarch. They would serve as the power behind the throne Lord Pestage craved, in exchange for Vader being made the head of the New Order.

Thus, when the Jedi began in secret to plan for an insurrection, their plans were known to the Chancellor already, and their efforts were undone from the beginning.

A small party of Jedi went to the Republic Chancellery in an attempt to arrest Chancellor Pestage. But Darth Vader, his face concealed by an armored Sith mask, defended his new master, and slew them.

The Chancellor came to the Senate the next day, and related what had happened. He declared that those Jedi who had backed the treasonous plot against his life would be hunted down and defeated. But those who had served him loyally would be rewarded.

The word “Jedi,” whose original meaning had been lost to history, would be abandoned, and stigmatized henceforth as the name of a band of traitorous criminals. From now on it would be replaced by an Old Galactic word for “disciple.” Thus Darth Vader would become the new head of the renamed Sith Order.

The Senate exploded in rapturous cheers of applause. A shout went up to the effect that the benevolent Consul Pestage of Alderaan should become Chancellor for life. A vote was taken, and it was done.

The surviving Jedi loyal to the Republic fled, regrouping on Organa Major under the protection of King Carl. Among these was Ben Kenobi.

Annikin Starkiller, watching from his home on Utapau, was appalled by what was happening to his beloved Jedi Order. He left his farm on the desert planet, and his young son Luke, and went to Organa Major to offer his services to the fugitive Jedi.

Before he left, Annikin gave one of his two magic Rings, the fruit of his defeats of the Clone Kings, to his wife Breha, with instructions to pass it on to Luke should he ever need it. But once Annikin had departed, Breha kept the Ring for herself.

The other Ring Annikin took with him, as armor and protection against the mighty forces of the increasingly sinister Republic.

But Darth Vader bore down on Organa Major, leading an army of Sith Knights, and backed by a large force of Republic troops. The regular army had swelled in size enormously during the two Clone Wars, and it had been politically impossible to turn out so many veterans at once.

Now they would find a new use for their talents: massacring the Jedi who opposed the New Order.

Carl Organa knew that if the Old Jedi remained on Organa Major, they would be surrounded and quickly defeated. Therefore he proposed that they should give battle on a terrain of their own choosing, one far less friendly to a hostile invading force: the rocky lava world of Condawn. Even then the Jedi had small hope of victory, but they had little alternative.

Thus, with heavy hearts, the valiant Jedi Knights of the Old Republic set off for their last battle.

The night before the Battle of Condawn, Annikin Starkiller at last gave into long-standing temptation, and slept with Queen Alexa of Organa Major.

The next day’s battle could more aptly have been termed a slaughter. Against the Sith Knights, who wore black masks to inspire fear in their enemies, the Jedi would have been faced with an even match. But the presence of massed armies of Republic troops, fighting against their former allies, turned the scales.

King Carl lost his legs, and his twin sons Crispin and Corwin were slain. At last only two Jedi remained standing: Annikin Starkiller and Ben Kenobi. Together they faced off against Darth Vader.

Vader offered Ben Kenobi safe-conduct, if he would agree to join the Sith. But Annikin Starkiller must die, he said, for Vader had his own grievance with him.

Ben refused to stand by and let his friend be killed. But Vader knocked him down with a painful lightsaber slash, and he struggled to catch his breath.

Vader and Annikin dueled, and Vader cut off Annikin’s left arm.

With Annikin lying helpless at his feet, unable to wield a sword, Darth Vader spoke the words that had so long burned within his heart:

“Look upon your handiwork, Father!”

Then Darth Vader decapitated his father, Annikin Starkiller.

Fueled by rage, Ben Kenobi sprang up and rushed at Vader, and stabbed him in the heart.

But Vader took up the magic Ring from Annikin Starkiller’s severed left hand, and by wearing it managed to save his own life. Yet he was still wounded grievously, and afterward he turned to machines to sustain his ravaged body, trusting not to the power of a magic trinket which had availed his father nothing.

Still, Vader could fight. And he severed Ben Kenobi’s right hand, defeating the last Jedi standing on the battlefield.

Vader took Ben Kenobi’s sword as a trophy, as well as his Kiber Crystal, a Jedi’s token of power. But he left behind Annikin Starkiller’s sword where it had fallen. Perhaps, Vader said mockingly, Ben would want to keep it as a souvenir. It held no danger to Vader, surely; after all, what good had it done its original wielder?

Laughing painfully in triumph, Vader left Ben Kenobi to his grief, where he sat weeping beside his dead friend and his fallen lord.

In the wake of the Battle of Condawn, Chancellor Pestage assumed the title of Emperor, to thunderous applause in the Senate, and more muted expressions of public approval.

Ben Kenobi went to Utapau, settling there as a hermit and watching over young Luke Starkiller from afar. A few years later, Breha Thorpe died—apparently of natural causes, though many said it was a defective heart which killed her. Afterward Luke was raised by Breha’s sister, Beru Thorpe, and her husband Owen Lars.

Breha had Annikin’s magic Ring buried within her own coffin, to spite the husband who had never loved her. Ben Kenobi grieved, but said nothing.

Nine months after the Jedi were defeated at Condawn, Alexa Organa gave birth to a fair-haired, blue-eyed baby girl: Leia Organa.

Carl Organa now went around in a silver wheelchair, refusing to replace his lost legs, according to the Jedi traditions of old. His hair had turned snow-white, and he always wore mourning black, in memory of his dead sons.

The Sith Knights made their official headquarters in the former Temple of the Jedi Order on Ton-Muund. However, Darth Vader built a castle of steel and glass upon the lava world of Condawn, to mark his victory over the Old Jedi, and this served as an additional center of operations for the Sith.

Darth Vader believed that he had achieved his vengeance at last, and could rest easily at night.

He had forgotten that, more often than not, vengeance begets further vengeance.

(Extended Edition)

Episode X: The Phantom Menace

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

che' la diritta via era smarrita.

--Dante Aligheri, Inferno, canto I, lines 1-3

Four years had passed since the end of the Second Clone War, and the decisive defeat of the Republic’s foes. Nonetheless, the promised peace had not materialized, for a campaign of terrorist bombings was even now being waged by Clone guerrillas.

The current Chancellor of the Senate, Sate Pestage, the Lord of Alderaan, fulminated against these “evildoers” in bellicose speeches, and vowed to bring them to justice, either dead or alive.

Chancellor Pestage had been in office since before the Second Clone War. He rose to the Chancellorship on a wave of dissatisfaction with his predecessor’s public image as a coward, more interested in having peace at any price than in defending the interests of the Republic from hostile outlying systems.

The outbreak of war had allowed Pestage to gain an unprecedented second term in power. Now, faced with this new threat, the Chancellor’s supporters in the Senate had engineered his election for a third time, so that this strong leader could deal with the Republic’s enemies as they deserved.

It was little known, however, that most of the “terrorist” bombings were actually the work of the Chancellor’s own agents, running false-flag operations in order to provide excuses for cementing the Emperor’s authority.

Already the Emperor had passed new laws criminalizing dissent and placing sharp restrictions on the rights of petition and assembly. Some in the Jedi Order, including Annikin Starkiller, Ben Kenobi, and others high in the Council, looked on alarmingly, and wondered if they should intervene.

But one Jedi, Darth Vader, had made a secret pact with the Chancellor Pestage: he and his friends among the Jedi Order (and he did have them) would establish and support his rule as a monarch. They would serve as the power behind the throne Lord Pestage craved, in exchange for Vader being made the head of the New Order.

In turn, Vader, who remained in contact with the shadowy Bogan Lord of Dagobah, promised his other Master that when the time came, they would become the true rulers of a great galactic Empire.

Because of Vader’s treachery, when the Jedi began in secret to plan for an insurrection, their plans were known to the Chancellor already, and their efforts were undone from the beginning.

A small party of Jedi went to the Republic Chancellery in an attempt to arrest Chancellor Pestage. But Darth Vader, his face concealed by an armored Sith mask, defended his new master, and slew them.

The Chancellor came to the Senate the next day, and related what had happened. He declared that those Jedi who had backed the treasonous plot against his life would be hunted down and defeated. But those who had served him loyally would be rewarded.

The word “Jedi,” whose original meaning had been lost to history, would be abandoned, and stigmatized henceforth as the name of a band of traitorous criminals. From now on it would be replaced by an Old Galactic word for “disciple.” Thus Darth Vader would become the new head of the renamed Sith Order.

The Senate exploded in rapturous cheers of applause. A shout went up to the effect that the benevolent Chancellor Pestage should become Chancellor for life. A vote was taken, and it was done.

The surviving Jedi loyal to the Republic fled, regrouping on Organa Major under the protection of King Carl. Among these were Ben Kenobi and Annikin Starkiller.

But Darth Vader bore down on Organa Major, leading an army of Sith Knights, and backed by a large force of Republic troops. The regular army had swelled in size enormously during the two Clone Wars, and it had been politically impossible to turn out so many veterans at once.

Now they would find a new use for their talents: massacring the Jedi who opposed the New Order.

Carl Organa knew that if the Old Jedi remained on Organa Major, they would be surrounded and quickly defeated. Therefore he proposed that they should give battle on a terrain of their own choosing, one far less friendly to a hostile invading force: the rocky lava world of Condawn. Even then the Jedi had small hope of victory, but they had little alternative.

Thus, with heavy hearts, the Jedi Knights set off for their last battle.

The night before the Battle of Condawn, King Carl of Organa Major slept with his wife, Queen Alexa, in what would be his last night as a whole man.

The next day’s battle could more aptly have been termed a slaughter. Against the Sith Knights, who wore black masks to inspire fear in their enemies, the Jedi would have been faced with an even match. But the presence of massed armies of Republic troops, fighting against their former allies, turned the scales.

King Carl lost his legs, and his twin sons Crispin and Corwin were slain. At last only two Jedi remained standing: Annikin Starkiller and Ben Kenobi. Together they faced off against Darth Vader.

Vader offered Ben Kenobi safe-conduct, if he would join the Sith. But Annikin Starkiller must die, he said, for he had his own grievance with him.

Ben refused to stand by and let his friend be killed. But Vader knocked him down with a painful lightsaber slash, and he struggled to catch his breath.

Vader and Annikin dueled, and Vader cut off Annikin’s left arm.

With Annikin lying helpless at his feet, unable to wield a sword, Darth Vader spoke the words that had so long burned within his heart:

“Look upon your handiwork, Father!”

Then Darth Vader decapitated his father, Annikin Starkiller.

Fueled by rage, Ben Kenobi rushed at Vader and stabbed him in the heart.

But Vader marshaled all his Force power to sustain his vital functions, and thus managed to save his own life. Yet he was still wounded grievously, and afterward he turned to machines to sustain his ravaged body, since to use the Force consciously for this task all the time was nigh impossible.

Still, with the desperate strength of a man afraid to die, Vader fought on. And he severed Ben Kenobi’s mechanical right hand, defeating the last Jedi standing on the battlefield.

Vader took Ben Kenobi’s sword as a trophy, as well as his Kiber Crystal, a Jedi’s token of power. But he left behind Annikin Starkiller’s sword where it had fallen. Perhaps, Vader said mockingly, Ben would want to keep it as a souvenir. It held no danger to Vader, surely; after all, what good had it done its original wielder?

Laughing painfully in triumph, Vader left Ben Kenobi to his grief, where he sat weeping beside the bodies of his dead friend and his fallen lord.

In the wake of the Battle of Condawn, Chancellor Pestage assumed the title of Emperor, to thunderous applause in the Senate, and more muted expressions of public approval.

Ben Kenobi went to Utapau, settling there as a hermit and watching from afar over young Luke Starkiller, who was being raised by Beru Highsinger and her husband, Owen Lars.

Breha Thorpe and her daughter Nellith went into hiding with a noble house loyal to the Old Republic, on the far reaches of the galaxy, where the Emperor’s troops would have little power to enforce their will. Another surviving Jedi Knight, Bunden Debannen, went to watch over them.

A few years later, Breha died—apparently of natural causes, though many said it was grief which killed her. Not long afterward, Ben Kenobi stopped receiving reports from Bunden Debannen. This alarmed him, but he did not dare leave Utapau for as long as it would take to investigate matters on the other side of the galaxy.

Nine months after the Jedi were defeated at Condawn, Alexa Organa gave birth to a dark-haired, grey-eyed baby girl: Leia Organa.

Carl Organa now went around in a silver wheelchair, refusing to replace his lost legs, according to the Jedi traditions of old. His hair had turned snow-white, and he always wore mourning black, in memory of his dead sons.

The Sith Knights made their official headquarters in the former Temple of the Jedi Order on Ton-Muund. However, Darth Vader built a castle of steel and glass upon the lava world of Condawn, to mark his victory over the Old Jedi, and this served as an additional center of operations for the Sith.

Here on Condawn the hooded Bogan Lord, taciturn and sinister, came to dwell in secret, revealing his presence only to the innermost Lords of the Sith. It was his counsels which ruled Vader and the Sith Order, and which in turn shaped the destiny of the Empire, though Lord Pestage on his golden throne knew it not.

Darth Vader believed that he had achieved his vengeance at last, and could rest easily at night.

He had forgotten that, more often than not, vengeance begets further vengeance.

There will be a delay in the conclusion of this saga, as I'm going to be traveling until later in May. I've got a conclusion in mind, never fear.

And they who know how to ask shall have a preview of it in advance.