4,000 BBY
*So, Sith Reborn is the fourth chapter of the Tales of the Jedi Companion. We’ll see what we find there.
*So, Ood Bnar is narrating this chapter in the form of a holocron.
*I am no longer so excited now that I know that my guide is going to be Treebeard the Lesser.
*So, we open with a brief scene of Queen Amanoa executing a prisoner with the Dark Side in the Throne Room. She has the guards take his body out one door and sends word to let the Jedi come in the other.
*Let me just once again say how frigging impressed I am with Ulic and his boys. Here we discover that they were literally like in the same building as Queen Amanoa was like hurling glowing spheres of the Dark Side all over the place and they absolutely missed every damn thing.
*So, then we get a section of background on Amanoa. Apparently, and I did not recall this detail, it was King Ommin who was the Dark Sider first. Amanoa came later, making this a sort of twisted reversal of the classic Adam & Eve motif.
*It even says that Amanoa tries to save King Ommin from the Dark Side, but fails and after the failure, she falls into a depression and thence into a deep anger toward her husband and from there into the Dark Side. That’s actually a cool little back story.
*Allow me to quote: QUEEN AMANOA Type: Sith Adept DEXTERITY 2D+1 Dodge 3D KNOWLEDGE 4D Alien Species 4D+1, bureaucracy 8D, business 6D+2, intimidation 6D+2 . . .
*Okay, I’m going to be skipping every single bit of this.
*So, we then get a lengthy section on Freedon Nadd detailing his fall. And this sort of doesn’t mesh at all with The Shadow of Freedon Nadd, which we’ll talk about shortly. In this version, Nadd falls because the Masters refuse to elevate him to the rank of Jedi Knight. He confronts one of them, Matta Tremayne, and after taking a whole lot of passive aggressive crap from her, he finally kills her.
*I dunno, she was kind of being a jerk to him.
*So, he then flees Ossus and heads for Ashas Ree to study the Sith.
*So, then we get a section about Novar and I was like, ‘who the hell . . .’ And then they had a picture of him from Beast Wars.
*And, this is telling, the most badass picture they could come up with is of him frowning and telling Ulic, “Threats on your part will cause severe political repercussions!”
*Oh, yeah, this is totally the guy you want to be in the RPG!
*I honestly don’t remember him doing much of anything in the comics. But he has a whole backstory here about how he used manipulation and deceit to rise in the ranks of the politicos until he was taken as King Ommin’s apprentice and then as Amanoa’s. So, this little bureaucrat is actually a Sith apprentice! Didn’t see that coming.
*There’s then a page and a half scene of Freedon Nadd showing Ommin a Dark Side vision and seducing him to the Dark Side completely. And then as the section closes, Ommin realizes that he can no longer move his legs. So, I guess this is the beginning of the disease that confines him to a metal frame in Freedon Nadd Uprising.
*Geez, this chapter is all over the place. I suppose that one could break all these stories up and rearrange them on the timeline into true chronological order. If one was insane.
*Then the chapter closes with a section on Warb Null.
*Who, you ask? Oh, you remember, the guy in the striking armor who was like the main bad guy in Freedon Nadd Up – oh, no, I mean the guy in the striking armor who was killed thirty seconds after his arrival in Freedon Nadd Uprising. You remember, King Pointless?
*Null, indeed.
*So, we get a story of how this metallurgist . . .
*Stay with me here.
*Metallurgist named Shas Dovos was crafting this great set of armor that he had found in an ancient Sith book. And then a Sith spirit appears and tells Dovos that he’s been manipulating Dovos all along and that the armor Dovos created he will wear forever. The Sith spirit christens his new apprentice, Dovos, Warb Null.
*The Sith spirit tells him, “You will have your place in the history of the galaxy. I did not bring you this far to end your albeit insignificant existence now.”
*No, first you put on the armor and then you sort of ignite your lightsaber and then you die ignominiously! What a grand fate! Truly, Warb Null, you will indeed go down in history.
*Anyway, that’s the end of the chapter. Some interesting back story; it’s a shame the front story is still so terrible. I would maybe find Novar’s back story, for instance, more engaging, if he had done more in the real story than stand around in a stupid hat and talk about politics. But what do I know?
*CANONICAL STATUS: These stories are clearly fictions amended to the original fiction about the Beast Wars of Onderon. This work is NOT RECOMMENDED as a historical resource.
* out of **** stars.
George R. Strayton
*Next time, we’ll hit up a short story that has a substantial bit that takes place around this time. Join me next time for the flashback from The Most Dangerous Foe!