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Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: December 31, 2013
This excellent collection gathers together issues of Star Wars: Republic #79-#80, Dark Times Volume 1: The Path to Nowhere, Dark Times Volume 2: Parallels, Dark Times Volume 3: Vector and Star Wars: Dark Times: Blue Harvest Parts 1-2.
Taking place at basically the moment Order 66 was issued - when the clone troopers turned on the Jedi by order of The Emperor - this collection gathers multiple stories about two primary Jedi masters, Dass Jennir and K'Kruhk, and how they struggle with what happened while adapting to their new reality.
Master K'Kruhk, tired of the war, is relaxing after a victory when he senses something has just changed. As their own troopers turn on them he manages to not only survive but to escape with many younglings. Their shuttle escapes but he can only answer with the same response to all of their questions: “I don't know…â€
They eventually crash-land on an uninhabited planet and there are able to make a new go of it. The shuttle provides some basic supplies and the rest are taken care of in their new environment. But K'Kruhk struggles with the limited communication and news he's able to receive. The Jedi are being blamed for what happened, painted as traitors who tried to overthrow the Senate in order to save their precious Republic. Any remaining Jedi are thus wanted and have substantial bounties on their heads. Considering the remoteness of their new home, though, K'Kruhk believes them to be fairly safe, at least for the moment.
That all changes when a mercenary by the name of Lumbra has to also crash-land on this planet. His story intersects with Dass Jennir's, detailed a little later here. But, basically, he's double-crossed his boss and escaped what he thinks is highly-valuable cargo. But a nosy fellow pirate detonates the booby-trapped fake cargo and forces this emergency landing. The mercenaries noticed the other crashed ship on their descent, though, so they figure it's worth scavenging. When they find that its full of valuable Jedi younglings, though, they know they're on to something good so they set about brutalizing them and seemingly kill Piru, the young Padawan watching over them.
K'Kruhk, out hunting with his bow & arrow, saw the mercenary ship land and what happened next. After the mercenaries clear out and take the younglings back to their own ship, getting it fixed to depart, he finds that Piru is not dead. As a healer-class of Jedi K'Kruhk is able to bring her back to consciousness and set about planning to save the younglings. With her wounded and just recovering, though, he knows it doesn't have much of a chance. However, once the plan starts to fall apart and the mercenaries threaten Piru and the younglings, K'Kruhk forgets this Jedi training of calm and balance and loses it, hacking up the mercenaries with savagery. In the aftermath, he's glad they're all safe but knows things will never be the same between any of them any more.
In a similar story arc - one that just takes a lot longer to play out - Master Dass Jennir undergoes a similar transformation. On the run from his new enemies, he encounters a lone Nosaurian, his most recent enemy that he and the troopers were fighting. But after a brief detente, Jennir learns that the Nousarians were just defending their homeland, that the Senate had denied them entry there and they only were selling their resources to the Separatists as they had no other choice. Jennir learns this from Bomo Greenbark, who has a good laugh at the change in Jedi fortunes but figures they now share a common enemy and having a Jedi on their side might not be a bad thing.
The rest of the males from his village feel differently and it takes an intervention from their chieftain to stop them from killing Jennir. They talk and Jennir wants to help but can't just right now so he promises to return after taking a trip to Coruscant. There, undercover, he finds another Jedi Master but they find truth that their order is being eliminated and that the Empire is now in power. The other master recommends to Jennir that he abandon his Jedi identity entirely in order to survive. But Jennir feels he has to atone for his mistakes and make something good of this new reality so he returns to the Nousarians, to help as best he can.
Unfortunately, based on their rebellion, the Empire dispatches a serious amount of troops to their planet. They plan to wipe out all the males and take the rest to sell into slavery. This doesn't sit well with Lord Vader, though, who has his own experience being a slave and what that means. It's only the start of Vader's suspicions about his new Master and what his intentions are for Vader himself. Back on the planet, though, the males figure they can buy their wives and children time to escape. Doing so gets all of them killed - except, by pure chance, Jennir and Bomo.
These two get to the planet's spaceport and steal aboard the first ship they find - but its crew find them first. Heren is captain of the Uhumele and his crew of near-pirates take them in, again having a common enemy. They soon hatch a daring plan and escape the locked-down spaceport. Once clear, Jennir reveals he has found where Bomo's wife and child are headed. One of the ship's crew, Mezgraf, is a former slave and he knows the place they're headed. The crew decides to help their new shipmates, which gives rise to some suspicions on Jennir's part but he's happy for the help.
They're soon in disguise and on the slave-trading planet but, they find, too late - Bomo's wife was killed trying to save her daughter after she was sold and being taken away. Distraught, they know they have little time to track down and find his daughter but Jennir has a lead on the seller. That takes Jennir to sneaking into the trader's apartment and, once he finds where the girl has been sold, he realizes he has to kill this man to prevent him from spreading any info. He does so and knows he's now headed down a path where his identity is no longer certain.
They track down the slave owner to his remote, droid-guarded fortress. But they're soon past his defenses and have him in their sites. Unfortunately, his use for slaves exists only as part of his diet and such is the fate of Bomo's child. But before Bomo can get his revenge it's Jennir that executes the cannibalistic slave owner. Bomo is outraged but Jennir sees this as his role now, saving others from doing things they shouldn't have to compromise their soul over. Bomo doesn't like it but neither does Jennir, who departs on the slaver's own ship, on his own, down his own, new path.
Bomo and the others are saddened by this, having grown close during this whole ordeal and how it intersects with several of their own stories. But they press on with their original mission - selling an incredibly-rare cargo to an old acquaintance of Heren's. He doesn't trust his buyer, though, so they stop off and stash the item on a nearby asteroid. On the way to the sale, though, one of their number is captured and eventually in the hands of Vader, who's been directed to this special cargo by the Emperor.
And, naturally, the sale of this cargo does goes south, with the aforementioned Lumbra taking the fake cargo and escaping, leaving his old boss and Heren & crew behind. The crew is either put to work or tortured here, with Bomo able to act like he'd passed out from it and then able to escape. He soon runs into the human woman Crys and together they're able to rig up a trap for their captors that involves lots of explosions and Bomo killing pretty much each and every one of them. Most of the crew survives and they fetch their cargo, off to another buyer of Heren's.
Though the rest of the crew is suspicious Heren is hopeful this scholar won't be a problem. But this hope is dashed when Vader and Imperial troops show up at the sale as they are after the cargo as well. And as it turns out the cargo is an ancient artifact, basically a coffin containing a Jedi and the Muur Talisman, an ancient weapon holding the spirit of a vengeful Sith lord. (This story - and the very brief telling of it here - were covered in other issues, reviewed as part of the Knights of the Old Republic Omnibus #2.) Vader not only wants at the talisman but, also, the possibility of having now an apprentice in this four thousand year-old Jedi, Celeste Morne.
But Morne was just fighting the Sith so now that she learns the Sith are once again in power (in the form of Vader there) a fight breaks out between them. She starts to see how strong Vader is and senses what the talisman in his hands would mean for the rest of the universe, with the rakghoul plague under his control. The Sith lord keeps whispering in her ear, too, trying to get either possession of her soul or into Vader's. But even this gives Vader pause, seeing that he would just be trading one Master for another.
Heren and his crew use this fight as an opportunity to finally escape. And Morne, sensing defeat, releases the power of the talisman and turns the surviving troopers into rakghouls in an attempt to kill Vader. He, of course, escapes, but the plague reaches Crys and Heren tearfully has to put her down. Morne is thus stuck on an abandoned moon with only her mind-controlled rakghouls for company. But, for her, that's at least some victory.
This volume ends with a follow-up story of Jennir. Older now, broke and working basically as a gun-for-hire, he finds a new job that holds some promise to him, one not only of pay but also of some sense of redemption. He has to fight off other applicants to win the contract but this only demonstrates that he's still in possession of his unique abilities. It's clear he has yet to find the peace that eludes him so this nicely sets up his character arc as he tries to find his way in an Empire-controlled universe.
This set of stories is an excellent collection for even the most casual of Star Wars fans and should not be missed. Randy Stradley's story and script are both excellent, balancing competing storylines and introspective, compelling characters with equal ease. The artwork from artists Douglas Wheatley, Dave Ross and Lui Antonio is also excellent, varied a bit from artist to artist but incredibly expressive and pretty fantastic overall.
