24,500 BBY
*So, this follows directly after the Dark Jedi section we talked about last time. It’s the second section in the third section of Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force, which we talked about last time.
*This one is also introduced, briefly, by Tionne Solusar and then, like last time, we get a straight up historical record. This takes place some 500 years after Cope Shykrill and his head parted ways. Also, this is about 400 years after the Jedi officially joined the Republic.
*So, Tionne indicates that there are few details about the period we’re about to look at. It’s called the First Schism and it is the first time when the Jedi Order organized as a group to do battle with a group of Dark Jedi who had broken away from the Jedi.
*First and only time.
*This group of Dark Jedi called themselves the Legion of Lettow and they were led by . . . aha! General Xendor! As in “Minions of Xendor!”
*So, Tionne then presents us with an account of the battle of Columus where the Legions of Lettow were finally defeated. The account is a recording made by a young Padawan named Danzigorro Potts as he was dying in the aftermath of the battle.
*In a detail I absolutely loved, Tionne says that three operas have been based on the life of Danzigorro Potts.
*So, this one is shorter than the last one, maybe two pages all told, what with all the illustrations that break it up and such. Anyway, this Padawan Potts relates that the news has been received that Xendor is dead. Potts is glad to hear that the Dark Side users have finally been defeated. There is static on the line; Potts attempts to make a grand statement about the Force, but can’t quite pull it off.
*Then he says that he killed one of his best friends in the battle. She wasn’t a bad person, he says; she just didn’t like all the rules of the Jedi Order. Maybe none of the Dark Jedi were really bad people, he says.
*Then he says that for five hundred years the Jedi have had relative peace. He wonders if the Jedi need an enemy; if they don’t have one, he muses, perhaps they turn on each other. He notes that it is getting cold. The recording ends.
*Quite a moving death scene. But it’s hard to take someone named Padawan Potts seriously, you know?
*Well, this one wasn’t as good as Dark Jedi. Maybe the opera is better.
* ½ out of **** stars.
*Next time, we’ll go back to the Despotica for more of the story of Xim the Despot! Join us next time for Xim at Vontor!