Star Wars: The High Republic - Path Of Vengeance Takes Shocking Twists And Turns
This post contains spoilers for "Star Wars: The High Republic: Path of Vengeance" by Cavan Scott, released May 2, 2023.
For those unfamiliar with the Star Wars era of the High Republic, it's set between a few hundred and a hundred and fifty years before the events of "The Phantom Menace." There, the Jedi and the Republic are both in their prime. Leslye Headland's upcoming show "The Acolyte" promises to be the cap on the era that leads to the eventual fall of the Jedi, but in the meantime, we're being treated with an epic story told across many books compliments of the Lucasfilm publishing program.
Phase One introduced us to the Nihil, a deadly band of pirates led by Marchion Ro and their vendetta against the Jedi. Phase Two, where we are now, took us back in time another hundred or more years, to a time when the Path of the Open Hand antagonized the order of Force users.
Last month, "Star Wars: Cataclysm" by Lydia Kang was released by Lucasfilm as the new installment of "The High Republic." It follows a number of Jedi, including Yaddle, as they end up on the backwater planet of Dalna and fight a war against the Path of the Open Hand, which has, somehow, turned into the Path of the Closed Fist, hellbent on destroying the Jedi. The motives of the Hand were quite opaque and many questions were left unanswered.
With the release of Cavan Scott's "Star Wars: The High Republic: Path of Vengeance," we're finally given the other side of the battle of Dalna, which was a massacre of Jedi. Many secrets were revealed and the story has taken exciting turns. For the most part, the book follows the Evereni sisters Marda and Yana Ro. These are both ancestors (in some way) to the Marchion Ro who is the big, bad villain in the future of the setting.
Marda is a true believer and hates that the Force is something manipulated willy-nilly by the Jedi or other users of the Force. Yana is a realist and has been burned by the Path — she's not working against them, per se, but she's not working for them any longer either.
The Mother
The biggest revelations in "The High Republic: Path of Vengeance" concern The Mother. She is the leader of the Path of the Open Hand and has been manipulating situations across the galaxy, specifically between the planets of Eiram and E'ronoh, and fomenting hatred against the Jedi. Finally, we have the reasons behind her machinations and they're far less grand than I might have expected. That's not a bad thing, by any stretch of the imagination.
Some had speculated that she was secretly a Sith or some dark side warrior with a vendetta looking to destroy the Jedi. But the answer is so much banaler, and that makes it so much more interesting. The banality of evil is something so important to talk about in our modern discourse and I think it's too often overlooked.
As it turns out, the vendetta against the Jedi the Mother harbored is nothing more than petty jealousy and family drama. When she was a child, the Jedi came to test her and her sister's abilities. They left the Mother behind and took the sister, leaving her angry and scarred.
That's it. Her grand plan is just to prove to the Jedi that they took the wrong sister. And look at all of the chaos she wrought...
The Levelers
The Mother's secret weapon was a Leveler, a great, monstrous beast that feeds off of those who manipulate the Force, turning them into ashy husks. How does it do this? We still don't know, but it drives fear into the hearts of Jedi before it sucks the life from them.
"The High Republic: Path of Vengeance" delves more into how they work, though, and where they come from, but hand waves some of the magic involved to control them. It turns out there are artifacts — the Rod of Daybreak and the Rod of Seasons — from the history of the galaxy that can control these creatures. When combined, they can control the beasts and force them to submit to their master's will. It's like a leash made of the Cosmic Force.
At the end of the new "Star Wars" book, one great Leveler is left, under the control of Marda Ro aboard her ship, the Gaze Electric, leaving us to wonder if this is the same creature enthralled by Marchion Ro and killing Jedi a hundred and fifty years later.
Planet X, Mortis, and the Wellspring of Life
In "The High Republic: Path of Vengeance," we learn the Levelers come from a place that the hyperspace prospector Sunshine Dobbs has dubbed Planet X. It's a difficult-to-reach place, beyond a "Vail" in space and is brimming with the Force. Some people who land there with minimal Force abilities seem to have them magnified.
Of course, a planet that evolved a predator that consumes the Force would be strong in the Force, but it feels like it's more than that. In fact, Planet X reminds me very much of a nexus of the Force, like we've seen before in Mortis or the Wellspring of Life. Could they actually be one and the same? Anything is possible, and I gather that's why a codename like Planet X was used. It can be any of those in the future of "Star Wars" storytelling if it needs to be.
It's a fascinating place, mystical and wondrous, and I'd be surprised if there wasn't more storytelling to be had there. The sequences getting there reminded me (in the best ways) of sequences from L. Neil Smith's criminally underrated Lando Calrissian books from the '80s as well.
More than anything, this actually adds to the mystery of the Force and deepens it, rather than tries to explain it. And for me, that's always a good thing.
Details to watch out for
There are many cool things to look out for as you read "Path of Vengeance." For instance, a deep cut from the old Expanded Universe comes in the form of a Selonian Jedi. Selonians first appeared in a "Star Wars" newspaper comic script in 1979 and were named in a 1995 book called "Ambush at Corellia." Cavan Scott has put them into the canon through "The High Republic" comic books and offers a Selonian a more meaty role in this book.
Fans of the rest of "The High Republic" Phase Two will be happy to know that Kradon and the bar on Jedha known as Enlightenment is back. That was a key location and player in George Mann's "The Battle of Jedha" earlier this year.
"Andor" gets a fun shout-out, too, in a metaphor used by Scott. He says that something rings like a Ferrixian chime, and as we know, those chimes on Ferrix mean business and counted off the Rebellion as it began in the final episode on Rix Road.
What I think might be the most obscure reference I pulled out of the book was the appearance of a Tarsunt character named Okut Dand. It feels like it can't be a coincidence that the first Tarsunt character we met in "Star Wars" was a character named Vober Dand, a member of the Resistance in "The Force Awakens." Okut Dand is as small a bit part as Vober, which makes this one a real head-scratcher, but connecting those dots was definitely fun.
East of Eden
"Path of Vengeance" was a wild ride. One thing I really love about "The High Republic" as a whole is that it gets to take different looks at events from a lot of different angles from different authors. Lydia Kang's take on the battle on Dalna was superb but focused on the chaos and the mystery through the lens of the Jedi. Cavan Scott gave us a perspective from the side of the Path and it was everything I wanted it to be, filling in gaps and allowing me to wonder about where all of this is heading. To that end, I'm not sure! There are so many open possibilities from this point and so many characters that could have a hand in the future of the universe.
The thing I love most about this particular installment of "The High Republic" is it shows how prejudice and generational trauma are so deeply intertwined and cause problems and poison hearts down the line. There's something in the "East of Eden" stylings of the Mother and her sister acting as surrogates for Charles and Adam and Yana and Marda as Cal and Aron.
This story has all of that familial tension and build-up for this found family in a way that explores similar themes and I really enjoyed that about it. The Mother begins with a hatred of the Jedi and preaches that and twists it with the next generation. Marda and Yana pay for the sins of the previous generation and take those prejudices as a given, carrying them forward. Like in "East of Eden," these sets of siblings turn on each other and it's shocking in all of the right ways.
Cavan Scott brought literary chops to "Star Wars" in a way that will keep this book rattling around in my brain for a long time, all in the guise of a galaxy far, far away.
"Star Wars: The High Republic: Path of Vengeance" is available now wherever buy books.