Ok so this isn’t comic related but may be one of the bigger reveals we’ve had in a ling time.
With Star Wars: Brotherhood due out this week it was a pleasant surprise to get a new excerpt from Del Rey’s upcoming, Shadow of the Sith novel (in stores June 29, 2022) that shares some insight into a Sith Acolyte that Luke Skywalker will face off within the book.
Before this, we knew that Luke & Lando team up to track down Ochi of Bestoon after he allegedly kidnapped Lando’s daughter. Ochi was first mentioned as Palpatine’s personal Sith Assassin in Rise of the Skywalker who murdered Rey’s parents and then died in some form of quicksand with a dagger in his possession that lead the Resistance to Exogol to take down zombie Palpatine.
**See all Star Wars Omnibus, Trade Paperbacks, and Epic Collections coming out in 2022**
Aside from that, Ochi had almost no backstory until being introduced as a key player in the Darth Vader 2020 run from Marvel where he first appeared in Darth Vader #6.
Ochi, while formidable, is more of a fanboy of the Sith than a darkside user himself. A talented assassin who serves those who he deems to be the most powerful.
But today’s excerpt unveils a potentially even bigger threat to the New Republic and the future of the Jedi. A new Sith Adversary that will be the latest to f*$# around and find out that Luke Skywalker isn’t to be played with.
So who is this new female Sith? Well for starters we don’t know if she’s technically a Sith. That being said I have my thoughts.
The excerpt is below and below that I’ve put who I personally think the new dark side nemesis is referring to. And no I do not think this is Lady Shaa from Darth Vader #22.
Shadow of The Sith
(W) Adam Christopher
Official Description: The Empire is dead. Nearly two decades on from the Battle of Endor, the tattered remnants of Palpatine’s forces have fled to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But Jedi Master Luke Skywalker is haunted by visions of the dark side, foretelling an ominous secret growing somewhere in the depths of space, on a dead world called Exegol. The disturbance in the Force is undeniable and Luke’s worst fears are confirmed when his old friend, Lando Calrissian, comes to him with reports of a new Sith menace. After his daughter was stolen from his arms, Lando searched the stars for any trace of his lost child. But every new rumor only led to dead ends and fading hopes, until he crossed paths with Ochi of Bestoon, a Sith assassin tasked with kidnapping a young girl. As Ochi hunts the granddaughter of Darth Sidious and her parents to the edge of the galaxy, Luke and Lando race into the mystery of the Sith’s lingering shadow and aid a young family running for their lives.
Shadow of The Sith Excerpt
THE SEPULCHRE, COORDINATES UNKNOWN
NOW
Something moves in the darkness—a shadow, cast long, crawling through the abyssal night. The shadow is a thing apart: neither alive nor dead.
It is a relic. It is an . . . echo. A presence from an older time, a malignancy that somehow survived, somehow found a way.
Found a path.
She can see it now. Black and blacker still, moving, always moving. An intelligence, yes. A mind, but one without form or substance.
But here—present—nonetheless.
She closes her eyes. It makes no difference. There is nothing to see but a gulf, a nothing, where the shadow lives.
Where the shadow thrives.
In the darkness, in the forever night inside her head.
And the void is not silent. It is anything but. It is a cacophony, a sound so loud it lights up every nerve fiber of her entire being, even though she knows there is nothing to hear, physically.
It is the sound of pain. The sound of death. The sound of a thousand thousand thousand souls crying out in sorrow and agony before they are snuffed out in an instant. Brothers and sisters. Sons and daughters. Mothers and fathers. Podlings, branchlings, kithkin. Sporechilds and denmothers; space fathers and their brethren, and their gene-clusters and their shoots. Spawn, and offspring. Children.
Entire generations of the living, consumed, their dying cries absorbed and left to reflect forever, trapped inside a dark vessel crafted centuries ago by a power uncommon, inhuman.
By a darkness.
By a shadow, cast long.
And there is another sound. A voice, from the ancient past. It is far distant, a call echoing across a huge valley of space and time.
The voice is terrible.
The voice is as familiar as her own.
SOON.
She opens her golden eyes. The room is bright and, mercifully, silent. Her ears ring like a bell, the sudden absence of screams almost as painful, the echo of the voice still reverberating in her mind.
Slowly, slowly, she remembers where she is. As she lies on the floor and blinks the world into existence around her, she pulls up a hand and touches her face. It is warm, and wet, the blood on her fingertips the bright blue of the Pantoran sky.
The place is lit by flickering flame, and the flickering flame lights the plinth of meteoric iron, and beside the plinth lies the mask made of the same starstuff. The mask faces away from her. It rocks, gently, like it has just been thrown.
She stares at the back of it, the curve of nothing, of darkness, of deep shadow.
And she hears the voice again.
SOON.
SOON.
She closes her eyes, and she sleeps, exchanging one nightmare for another, in the dead of night, in the dead of space. She wakes to another sound, one technological, modern. She lifts herself from her nest, ignoring the throbbing in her head, the ache of her limbs.
Because she can’t keep them waiting. They are patient, yes. Infuriatingly so.
But they are also quick to anger, and if there is one thing she dares not do, it is make them angry.
She agreed to help them. They agreed to show her the way.
This is how it was.
And she would do nothing to jeopardize that.
Standing, she activates the communicator, and her nest is lit in the sudden electric blue of a hologram. The image shimmers and pulses, tinged with the same static and interference that protects the caller’s point of origin.
She kneels before the figure, cloaked in darkness, the hood barely concealing a face that is wrapped tightly in heavy black bandages, in the manner all cultists of the Sith Eternal hide their features.
She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t care.
But she does obey.
“What is thy bidding, my Master,” she intones, repeating the litany that echoed through time like the screams inside the mask she knew she would have to put on again, soon.
The looming figure speaks, and she listens, and she wonders whether this will be the last time or whether they will ever honor their promise.
Perhaps one day, they will ask too much.
Who is the Sith In Shadow of The Sith? Who is Kiza?
I think it’s a character from the Aftermath Trilogy named Kiza. Kiza was a force sensitive member of the Acolytes of Beyond. This was a type of Sith cult that worshipped past and present. They are a part of the Sith Eternal who can be seen in the background of the Palpatine battle with Rey on Exogol. Thousands of Sith loyal cultists who have dedicated their lives to Palpatine and the Dark Side.
While Kiza spent most of her life in Coronet City on Correlia, she was actually Pantoran. A blue skinned humanoid species, yellow eyes, and blue blood. This would certainly line up with this part of the excerpt.
(we also are getting a Pantoran Jedi in the upcoming Path of Deceit High Republic book)
“She opens her golden eyes. The room is bright and, mercifully, silent. Her ears ring like a bell, the sudden absence of screams almost as painful, the echo of the voice still reverberating in her mind.
Slowly, slowly, she remembers where she is. As she lies on the floor and blinks the world into existence around her, she pulls up a hand and touches her face. It is warm, and wet, the blood on her fingertips the bright blue of the Pantoran sky.”
So what does this mean for future content? For one I think this opens up the possibility that there will be a sort of void left by Palpatine and Vader’s deaths where different force sensitive groups like The Nights of Ren and The Acolytes of the Beyond step out of the shadows to make claims to what they believe to be theirs and take bold steps without fear of repercussions from Vader and Sidious.
This likely means we will continue to see a lot of Ochi of Bestoon and other non-force -elated Sith followers. Would make for a fantastic challenge for Luke to tackle as his first task as a Jedi Master.
Also out this week is…
Star Wars: Brotherhood – May 10th
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker must stem the tide of the raging Clone Wars and forge a new bond as Jedi Knights in a high-stakes adventure set just after the events of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.
The Clone Wars have begun. Battle lines are being drawn throughout the galaxy. With every world that joins the Separatists, the peace guarded by the Jedi Order is slipping through their fingers.
Price – $28.99 $20.00
In Stores May 10, 2022
That’s it for now! More later!
Grand Admiral Babu Frik
