“Peace is a lie. There is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.”
-The Code of the Sith
Written and published over the span of five or six months, Drew Karpyshyn’s sequel Darth Bane: Rule of Two continues the gripping, cinematic, dark anti-hero’s tale established in Darth Bane: Path of Destruction. Initially, Del Rey Books intended for Darth Bane to be a single book, and for James Luceno’s Darth Plagueis to be the next book released in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, but Del Rey Books apparently changed their minds and quickly rushed out a Darth Bane sequel (hence why the cover artwork for Darth Bane: Rule of Two by John Van Fleet is a strange computerized graphic image, rather than a more impressive work of art, except for the original Chinese edition for some strange reason). At any rate, this savage, ruthless, disturbing Star Wars trilogy explains the intricate lore behind the Sith practice of the “Rule of Two,” or the dark side practice of always pairing two Sith together –a Master and an Apprentice– in contrast to the Jedi who work together in large democratic groups like the Jedi Council. For the Sith, there is always “one Master and one Apprentice; one to embody the power, the other to crave it.” Darth Bane: Rule of Two begins right where the previous book left off –on Ruusan shortly after the detonation of the “thought bomb” which destroyed almost all Force-using beings in the area. Darth Bane and his new apprentice, a ten-year-old curly blond girl named “Rain” who now goes by the Sith name “Zannah.” Together, Bane and Zannah head deep into the subterranean tunnels on Ruusan to witness the remnants of the thought bomb –a floating orb filled with the suffering voices of all the Jedi and Sith killed in its wake. However, in the cavern, Zannah stumbles upon her cousin Darovit (also known as “Tomcat”) who survived the explosion and wandered into the cave. Darovit grew up under “Rain” (Zannah) and another cousin named “Bug” on the small world of Somov Rit, under the guardianship of “Root” before he was recruited by the Jedi into the Army of the Light by General Hoth and sent to Ruusan for battle. Inexplicably, Darovit survived the explosion (the thought bomb only affected those most attuned to the Force), and now, he is embittered and resentful of the Jedi. We meet him descending into the cave on Ruusan to find the floating remnant of the thought bomb which still contains the bodies of the victims of the explosion, their spirits condemned to unending suffering –touching the orb nearly drives Darovit mad. When he first spots Darth Bane, Darovit attempts to fight him, but Zannah quickly uses the Force to mutilate and utterly disintegrate his hand, saving his life but leaving him limp and bleeding on the floor of the cave as she departs with her new Master.
One of the central questions in this book concerns the extent to which Zannah will secretly reveal herself to be a compassionate, sympathetic figure, or if she has now fully committed herself to the egoism of the dark side. Will Darth Zannah betray her Master? Can she be converted by the Jedi? Only time will tell. Zannah is given a harsh new training regimen by Darth Bane, including her abandonment on Ruusan where Zannah learns to fend for herself, board a shuttle, and remorselessly murder all the Republic soldiers operating the vessel before commandeering the ship and heading for Onderon where she plans to regroup with her Master. Her goal in this novel is to grow her power in the dark side and learn as much as she can.
Meanwhile, Darth Bane pursues several shadowy quests in this book. At the start, he is plagued by visions of Sith Lords Qordis and Kaan, former members of the “Brotherhood of Darkness” whom he killed in the previous book. First, Bane discovers a book kept by Qordis featuring a compilation of the history and teachings of Freedon Nadd, a great Sith Master who lived three thousand years ago. Freedon Nadd was a Jedi who turned to the dark side as the apprentice to Naga Sadow, the former ruler of the ancient Sith Empire (who survived, himself, for six hundred years). Perhaps the teaching of Freedon Nadd can help Bane overcome his dark visions of Qordis and Kaan. He reads a note scribbled in the book in the “Galactic Basic” language which states: “Seek the tomb on Dxun” (Dxun is an oversized moon, one of four moons orbiting Onderon, which is filled with catlike creatures in its jungles as well as huge flying drexls in its atmosphere). And when Bane crashlands on Dxun after being distracted by his recurring haunting visions, he finds the tomb of Freedon Nadd which houses a prized Sith Holocron. However, inside the tomb of Freedon Nadd, Bane is attacked by thousands of tiny parasitic crustaceans with impenetrable shells called “orbalisks” that leech onto his body, forming a robust protective armor around him. The acid-excreting orbalisks actually feed off the dark side of the Force, and they also amplify the power of the dark side within him. As parasites who sink their teeth into the skin of their host, they cannot be removed without killing Bane. They serve as a source of pain within Bane throughout the rest of the book as he gradually forms a symbiotic relationship with the creatures. From knowledge imparted by the Holocron, Bane learns to wear a protective helmet over his head and special gloves at night in order to prevent the orbalisks from growing and expanding their presence over his face and hands. From here, Bane senses Zannah is nearby on Onderon, and so he uses the Force to control a flying dragon-esque drexl creature. When Zannah crash-lands on Onderon, she runs into the “Skelda clan,” a hostile band of “beast riders,” until Darth Bane swoops in to rescue her on his flying drexl from the moon known as Dxun. The savagery of this sequence is utterly vicious. Thus begins a new series of adventures with Bane and Zannah together.
What is Bane’s vision for the Sith now that he has vanquished the Brotherhood of Darkness and has adopted a new apprentice of his own? As he tells Zannah, “We cannot live in isolation, cut off from the rest of the galaxy while cowering in fear. We must work to grow our power; we will need to interact with individuals of many species across many worlds” (25). Instead of building a standing army like Lord Kaan, Bane decides they must wreak havoc on the Republic by encouraging rumors and half-truths from the shadows, unveiling a convoluted tapestry of deception and destruction.
“He believed in the power of the Force, but he also believed in himself: He was more than just a servant of prophecy or a pawn of the dark side, subject to the whims of an inevitable, inescapable future. The Force was a tool he had used to forge his own destiny through strength and cunning. He alone among the Sith had truly earned the mantle of Dark Lord, which was why he alone among them still lived” (3).
In addition to the Darth Bane and Darth Zannah narrative arc in this book, we are also given the perspective of the Old Republic and the Jedi in this book –Johun Othone is a temperamental young padawan who served under the late General Hoth within the Army of the Light. At the start of the book, he is knighted by Valenthyne Farfalla (wherein his padawan braid is sliced off) and he is asked to serve in the role of a personal guard for Chancellor Tarsus Valorum (as a member of the Valorum family, Tarsus is a distant relative of Chancellor Finis Valorum who is featured prominently in the Star Wars prequels). Valorum is a controversial figure because he hopes to bring about an end to the war between Jedi and Sith, and inspire a rebirth of the Republic through legislation approved in the Galactic Senate, particularly the “Ruusan Reformation” which calls for disbanding the Army of the Light and ending the war against the Sith.
Ten years later, Zannah has grown into a powerful Sith Lord. She wields a small double-bladed lightsaber. She has now infiltrated the Anti-Republic Liberation Front, a separatist group on the wealthy world of Serenno. The leader of this rebel group is a person named Hetton of the Demici house, and Zannah’s lover is a member of the group, a Twi’lek known as Kelad’den (or “Kel”), a rare red-skinned Lethan Twi’lek. As part of a broader scheme, Zannah deceptively persuades Anti-Republic Liberation Front to launch a failed murder attempt on former Chancellor Valorum, but when it backfires (the assassins are all killed by Valorum’s personal guard, Johun) and Zannah is blamed. She is captured and brought before the group’s leader, Hetton, before she easily massacres everyone in the Anti-Republic Liberation Front except Hetton –Hetton was trained by a Duros assassin and bounty hunter named Gula Dwan, who was later killed by Hetton before Hetton poisoned his own mother. He has since been accumulating resources and former students of the Sith Academy on Umbara –now eight assassins in total—and in an effort to partner with Zannah, Hetton suggests they join forces and attack Bane together, and for Zannah to take Bane’s place and train Hetton as her Sith apprentice. However, when they arrive at Darth Bane’s camp on the planet Ambria (a world which was first introduced in the first Darth Bane book Path of Destruction), Zannah betrays Hetton and his eight assassins leaving them to die by Bane’s hand.
By now, Bane has been struggling to solve the mystery of how to create a Holocron, and he starts to believe the orbalisks are actually hindering him. To learn more about Holocrons, Bane heads to Tython, an ancient planet shrouded in mystery and legend which is supposedly the birthplace of the Jedi (it is featured in the novel Dawn of the Jedi), where Bane finds the remnants of Belia Darzu’s teaching –Belia Darzu was an ancient Sith Lord who conducted biological experiments and left behind a collection of rusted technobeasts who have all been abandoned while worshipping an ominous Holocron in the center of a large temple. But as Bane enters, he is infected with a technovirus via a cloud of nanogene spores. He battles all manner of abominations, such as living droids as well as a rancor armed with centuries-old shoulder-cannons, and wave after wave of numerous other horrendous creatures. Meanwhile, Zannah is sent to Coruscant by Bane to research in the Jedi Archives how to safely remove orbalisks from a person. Is this all just a concocted scheme devised by Zannah to weaken her Master? She goes undercover as a padawan named Nalia Adollu, but once inside the Jedi Archives, she accidentally bumps into Darovit (or “Tomcat”) who had been wandering as a hermitic healer on Ruusan before being compelled to return to Coruscant by the Jedi Knight, Johun, who had been dispatched back to Ruusan to construct a monument in honor of the fallen Jedi on the planet. Darovit was compelled (through subtle use of the Force by Johun) to return to Coruscant in order to explain his story as a witness to a new Sith Lord named Darth Bane and his apprentice, Darth Zannah. But upon accidentally bumping into Zannah (undercover as Nalia Adollu) in the Jedi Archives, he warns her that she is being hunted by the Jedi. Thus, she takes him back to her Master on Tython… but they are followed by a troupe of Jedi.
In the end, they all convene on Tython where a giant battle explodes within the temple of Belia Darzu. The hideous, unrelenting gory fight sequence leaves several Jedi hacked to pieces, decapitated, and dismembered, including Johun and Farfalla, while Darth Bane is also mortally wounded after being electrocuted which kills the orbalisks on his body, but in dying, the orbalisks yield a poison into Bane’s bloodstream. This leads Zannah to quickly elicit the help of the healer, Caleb who still resides on Ambria (he was previously featured in the first book), only unlike in the first book, Caleb has now sent his daughter far away (i.e. she is no longer hiding in the secret bunker he has constructed beneath his hut) –but I wondered why would Caleb continue to reside on Ambria if he has already sent his daughter away and wants nothing to do with Bane? Why remain on a planet where he is sure to face Darth Bane again? Anyway, Caleb is convinced to heal an exhausted Bane, while Darovit makes one last attempt at bringing Zannah back to the light side of the Force. But while Zannah briefly toys with turning Bane over to the Jedi in order to save his life, instead Zannah decides to hide with Bane in Caleb’s hidden underground bunker, while driving Darovit insane with horrifying mental Force-infused phantasms as a distraction for the incoming Jedi –the Jedi witness a crazed Darovit with one arm wildly swinging a lightsaber in his good hand to fend off the horrifying visions he is witnessing, and so the Jedi instantly kill him, assuming he has gone insane and also Caleb is killed (though, in reality, it was Zannah who killed Caleb). In time, Zannah and Bane quietly escape from the bunker and she vows to surpass her Master and kill him one day in the future.
Darth Bane: Rule of Two explores more of the fascistic impulse of the Sith –Darth Bane describes equality as being a perversion of the natural order, it binds the exceptional to the weak. The politics of the Darth Bane makes Rule of Two an intriguing read in the Star Wars universe, but the immensely dark, violent, evil themes in this book make it an essential classic of the Sith. I particularly enjoyed learning about the ancient Sith Lords, like Freedon Nadd and Belia Darzu (even Exar Kun is mentioned at one point). And there are several scenes of mental-visions caused via the Force in this novel, a practice which raises all sorts of ethical concerns (particularly when Zannah implants ghastly torturing visions in the minds of her enemies), and the introduction of the orbalisks adds a new layer of complexity to the Expanded Universe, not unlike Timothy Zahn’s creation of the Ysalamiri.
Aside from a few minor quibbles with this book, and the obvious fact that Darth Bane Path of Destruction (the first book in the trilogy) is the better novel, this sequel is still a top-notch Star Wars novel despite being rushed through publication. It offers a wild, brutal, disturbing adventure that expands upon the history of the dark side of the Force during the fan-favorite era of the Old Republic. Thus far this trilogy comes recommended from me to Star Wars fans.
Other Notes:
- Irtanna, a Republic soldier, flies a ship called the Star-Wake which was donated by an anonymous benefactor on Coruscant, a product of the Tallaan shipyards with a “Class Twelve hyperdrive.”
- In Valenthyne Farfalla’s quarters there are grand artworks that would not have seemed out of place in the museums of Alderaan, as well as a bedframe made of timber from wroshyr trees on Kashyyyk.
- Health stim shots are used to help Bane’s body to rejuvenate itself (I don’t recall hearing abut stim shots previously in Star Wars).
- The ancient Dark Jedi, Exar Kun, was rumored to have found Freedon Nadd’s tomb, as well.
- Johun was born and raised on Sermeria, an agriworld in the Expansion Region between the Inner and Mid Rims of the galaxy. His parents worked on a fam a few kilometers outside Addolis, the capital city.
- The chancellor on Coruscant is Tarsus Valorum. He proposes a policy called the “Ruusan Reformation” which calls for disbanding the Army of the Light and ending the war against the Sith.
- Neeks are described as a species of reptilian herbivores on Ambria. In the book, Zannah is tested, learning to control one with the Force.
- Among the many different ships described in this book, there are missary-class shuttles (like The New Dawn) and new Cygnus-class shuttles, or popular consular space cruisers. Later, Bane acquires The Mystic, a Sienar-designed Infiltrator series ship customized with a Class Four Hyperdrive.
- In addition to Bane and Zannah, there are other followers of the dark side on other worlds include the Marauders on Honoghr and Gamorr, and the Shadow Assassins of Ryloth and Umbara.
- The Umbaran Shadow Assassins have gone into hiding since the fall of Kaan. “Force Pikes” are the traditional weapons of the Umbaran Shadow Assassins.
- Belia Darzu was a Dark Lord of the Sith who reigned over two centuries ago, a student of Sith alchemy, a Shi’ido in life, a changeling species whose members were capable of shifting theirappearance, it was said she learned the secrets of mechu-deru, the ability to transform the flesh of living beings into metal and machinery. She used this power to create an army of technobeasts: organic-droid hybrids bound to her will. She also allegedly discovered the secret to creating Sith Holocrons. There is speculation that all her archives are stored on Tython, a Deep Core world.
- Planets in the Deep Core are shrouded in myth and legend. Some accounts suggest that the Jedi visited Tython during the era of the “Great Hunt,” three thousand years ago to cleanse it of the fearsome teretateks, monstrous creatures that fed on the lifeblood of those sensitive to the Force. Much older legends identify Tython as the original birthplace of the Jedi Order over twenty-five thousand years before. According to the tale, priests and philosophers of the world had the ability to draw upon a mystical energy they called Ashla, a power that represented all compassion and mercy in the universe. They were opposed by a rival group that drew their strength from the Boga, the manifestation of raw passion and pure uncontrolled emotion. A Great War ensued and the worshipers of Ashla proved victorious. The first Jedi Knights supposedly evolved from the survivors of the war, creating the first lightsabers in their initiation ceremonies. More background on this ancient age can be found in Tim Lebbon’s Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void.
- Typically, planets like Ruusan have climate-controlled conditions but the thought bomb created an invisible maelstrom of dark- and light-side energies capable of permanently altering the planet’s weather patterns. Ruusan has three sister moons and two twin suns.
- The words “kriff” and “kriffing” are used as examples of profanity used in this book.
- In the Jedi Archives on Coruscant, there is a long row of busts of “The Lost,” or twelve individuals who willingly set aside their vows they had sworn upon becoming Jedi Knights and chose to leave the Order.
- Tarul is a delicacy wine beverage, typically found on Naboo.
- Battle meditation is used by the Ithorian Jedi Master Worror Dowmat.
- The Japrael sector (also known as the Onderon sector) is mentioned as a place where Bane and Zannah abandon a ship. It includes the planet Onderon.
- In this novel, we learn about a Twi’lek known as Kelad’den (or “Kel”) a rare red-skinned Lethan species of Twi’lek.
Karpyshyn, Drew. Darth Bane: Rule of Two. Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, NY, NY (2007, republished in 2008).
This sequel is dedicated to Drew Karpyshyn’s parents, Ron and Viv, and his younger sister Dawn.
This was a superb trilogy. The author has been on my watch-out-for list ever since.