A set of three rods existed which could control members of the species known as the Nameless, creatures which preyed upon Force users. Two of the three rods were the Rod of Seasons and Rod of Daybreak. Together, both could be combined into a more powerful rod: the Rod of Power. The Path of the Open Hand used the Rod of Power to control the Nameless in its failed efforts to bring down the Jedi Order. A third rod of the original set, the Rod of Ages, remained lost at that time.

Parts of the completed rod were hidden away by the Elders of the Path due to their use as a weapon, with the hope that the objects would never again resurface. However, one rod found its way into the possession of Eye of the Nihil Marchion Ro, who sought vengeance against the Jedi Order over perceived wrongs done to his ancestors. Wanting the entire rod, Ro tracked down the Elder Tromak and attempted to force him to reveal its location. Tromak refused, but his former ward Krix Kamerat betrayed him and gave the information to Ro. With both halves of the rod in his possession, Ro retrieved a powerful member of the Nameless known as the Great Leveler buried in the Shrine on the planet Rystan. He then reassembled the rod during an attack on the Nihil base on Grizal, using it to test the beast against the Jedi present. After the success of the Leveler, Ro traveled with a group of disciples to a mysterious planet, where he used the rod to gather and capture many of the creatures in order to use them against the Jedi.

Description[]

The Rod of Seasons was made of stone and metal, inscribed with screaming faces, fire, and chains.^[5] It held a removable irregularly-shaped purple gem on one end,^[9] framed by a crescent shaped sharp metal blade that could be used as a weapon.^[4] When the gem was placed in the end of the rod, the holder of the rod could command the Nameless, a species which preyed upon Force-users.^[9] Sections of the rod could be twisted to allow the owner to issue commands.^[8] When touched, the rod grew warm and glowed a sickly purple. Jedi in the proximity of the rod sensed something they found disturbing.^[5] The Rod of Daybreak had a spherical purple gem at its end, with a larger crescent shaped blade framing the gem from below. The gem glowed while activated.^[10]

The Rod of Seasons and the Rod of Daybreak could be combined by twisting the ends of them together to form a larger rod known as the Rod of Power. This rod could entirely control Nameless rather than just direct them, the species having no choice but to follow the commands of its holder.^[10] However, when multiple Nameless were attempting to be controlled, the species could slightly overcome the power of the Rod. The Rod of Power could also channel the power of the Nameless and make it affect Force-sensitives, even when the Nameless were only somewhat nearby and not in the same room.^[4]

History[]

The Path[]

Three rods—the Rod of Seasons, Rod of Ages, and Rod of Daybreak—were created as a matched set of Force artifacts^[1] prior to 382 BBY.^[2] The Jedi Tears necklace was also rumored to be part of the set. The three rods were split up and sent to different places in the galaxy: the Rod of Seasons came into the ownership of the Hynestian royal family, and the Rod of Daybreak wound up in a museum on the moon Jedha. The location of the Rod of Ages was unknown by that time.^[1] They were in some way connected to the Echo Stone, a powerful stone that amplified connection The Force that had once been split into three pieces which were separated far away from each other to the ends of the galaxy by Jedi Master Barnabas Vim and his Padawan Vix Fonnick.^[11]

Around that year, the Mother, the leader of the Path of the Open Hand, a cult based on the planet Dalna, became interested in finding the rods. The Path believed that the Force needed to be "liberated" from those individuals who were capable of wielding it, and the Mother had set up a team, the Children, who were tasked with stealing various artifacts. She contacted Radicaz Dobbs, a smuggler and treasure hunter who specialized in Force artifacts, with the hope of finding the Rod of Ages. Dobbs believed the rods were a myth, but agreed to help the Mother after falling under her sway, gifting her a "jewel" he had retrieved from a Wild Space planet which she was fascinated with due to its Force resonance.^[1]

The Children stole the Rod of Seasons from Hynestia Prime shortly thereafter, drawing the attention of the Jedi, who were asked by the Hynestian queen to retrieve it. Jedi Master Zallah Macri and her Padawan, Kevmo Zink, came to Dalna to investigate after singling the Path of the Open Hand out as potential thieves. The two eventually tracked the Rod of Seasons to its hiding place in the Mother's listening room, alongside other stolen artifacts. However, the Mother and other members of the Path discovered them, and to stop the intruders, the Mother revealed the jewel was truly an egg, hatching the being inside and unleashing it upon the Jedi. A Nameless, the creature named the Leveler quickly overwhelmed and killed Macri and Zink.^[1]

Yana Ro, the leader of the Children, reacquired the Rod of Seasons during the chaos of the incident. As the Council of Elders celebrated the Leveler as a gift from the Force, the creature was drawn to the rod in Yana's possession. The Evereni woman quickly realized the Leveler was attracted to the artifact, but other members of the cult, including the Herald, believed it was drawn to Yana herself. Yana was named the Champion of the cult, becoming a rival to the Mother's power. Desiring revenge upon the Mother for her betrayal of her and her team, Yana kept the Rod of Seasons and hid it under her clothing, maintaining the ruse.^[1]

After Jedi Knight Azlin Rell discovered the remains of Macri and Zink, he decided to investigate their deaths by looking into the artifact they had been searching for on Dalna, the Rod of Seasons. He searched the Jedi Archives on Coruscant for information about the adventures of Master Barnabus Vim, believing that the Echo Stone and its pieces he had once discovered and hid might give them answers about the Rod. After going through the records about Vim's story and the Echo Stones, Rell was convinced that the stones were the key.^[11]

Meanwhile, after helping to start the Battle of Jedha, partially due to Yana's use of the Rod of Seasons to send the Leveler into a crowd,^[12] the Herald used the event to raid several locations in Jedha's Holy City alongside the Children to find the Rod of Daybreak, which the Mother was in pursuit of. After the Final Protector statue was felled in the battle, the Herald and the Children found the Rod of Daybreak in a vault that was hidden beneath it.^[4] He then united the Rod of Seasons and the Rod of Daybreak to form the Rod of Power, which allowed its user to completely and utterly control the Nameless. However, he and the Children were attacked by Jedi Master Vildar Mac and former Guardian of the Whills Tey Sirrek,^[10] who successfully took the Rod of Daybreak and captured the Herald. Yana escaped and took the Rod of Seasons back to the Mother, before eventually returning to Jedha to retrieve the Rod of Daybreak with the help of the Path's contact in the Temple of the Kyber, delivering it to the Mother. She also freed the Herald from his imprisonment.^[4]

When Marda Ro established herself as a leader of the Path and created the Path of the Closed Fist, Marda ordered her to give her the Rod of Power. The Mother eventually did, and Marda used it to hatch many Nameless eggs that the Path had collected from their homeworld, Planet X. Marda used the Rod to send the Nameless after the Jedi, killing many of them in a battle that became known as the Night of Sorrow. The Mother took back the Rod, and when she was approached by Jedi during the battle, used it to channel the power of the Nameless to weaken the Jedi even though there were no Nameless in the room. When the Mother was somewhat taken down, Marda took the Rod of Power from her and started to use it to control the Nameless again. When Marda realized that the creatures were killing all Force-sensitives indiscriminately, including members of the Path, and when Yana helped her realize that things had gone before, they eventually allowed bombs in the compound to go off, killing all of the Nameless except for the Leveler and flooding the caves. In the explosion, Marda lost track of the Rod of Daybreak, and was left only in possession of the Rod of Seasons.^[4]

After using the Rod of Seasons and the Leveler, who had been secretly Force-sensitive and hypocritally using the Force the entire time, she and Yana parted ways and Marda took the Rod, the Leveler, and the Path's flagship the Gaze Electric, founding what would eventually become the Nihil. Yana meanwhile, left Dalna with former Children member Shea Ganandra and Opari Plouth, the ill mother of Yana's late girlfriend, Kor Plouth. Yana left with the Rod of Daybreak, which she secretly had been in possession of since the explosion.^[4]

The Eye[]

Eventually, the members of the Elders of the Path^[13] came into possession of the Rod of Seasons. Recognizing the danger of the weapon,^[14] they separated it into two pieces and hid each piece on a different planet. One half was hidden in a cave in the Kharvashark Ruins on Vrant Tarnum in the Stygmarn system.^[7] The Leveler, meanwhile, was frozen in ice inside the Shrine on Rystan, where it was revered for generations by a group of adherents.^[8] The locations of the halves were kept secret to all but a select few, in the hope that the rod would never again see the light of day.^[15]

However, one half of the rod was eventually removed from its hiding place,^[15] coming into the possession of Marchion Ro,^[5] whose family was connected to the hiding place of the Leveler.^[8] Ro held a grudge against the Jedi for something that had befallen his ancestors, and he believed the rod was almost as fully to blame as the Jedi Order. Having left his homeworld long before, Ro had become the Eye of the Nihil pirates,^[5] a group that had sprung from the Elders of the Path as a sickness.^[14] Ro intended to use the Nihil as one instrument of his revenge,^[5] as well as hoping to control the Great Leveler through the rod.^[8]

In 232 BBY,^[16] Ro engineered the Great Hyperspace Disaster, which disrupted hyperspace travel across the Outer Rim Territories. In the aftermath, Jedi Master Loden Greatstorm was captured by Nihil Tempest Runner Lourna Dee and her forces during a raid on the planet Elphrona. The Twi'lek Jedi was imprisoned aboard Ro's flagship, the Gaze Electric. When Ro visited his prisoner, he showed Greatstorm the artifact, leading the Jedi Master to narrow his eyes at what he sensed from it before the pirate leader stated that he did not fear the Jedi coming for him.^[5]

During an Emergence that threatened the Trymant system in the aftermath, a group of Nihil led by Ro came to Trymant IV to collect Elder Tromak,^[13] who was one of the only people who knew where the rod's other half was hidden.^[7] As the pirates clashed with Jedi who had arrived to assist Trymant's residents, Jedi Grand Master Yoda boarded Ro's Spider Cruiser in an attempt to rescue Krix Kamerat, a young member of Tromak's sect who had been hustled onto the starship as the Gran's assistant. However, Kamerat, who was in mental turmoil over discovering that his friend Zeen Mrala was Force-sensitive — something strictly forbidden by the sect — refused to be rescued. While Yoda was sneaking off the ship, he came across a crate containing the rod and opened it. He was concerned by the object, but left it behind as he escaped the vessel.^[6] Upon his return to the Starlight Beacon, Yoda told other Jedi of the strange object on the Nihil ship and that it was imperative they find out what it was.^[7]

Due to how sacred the knowledge was, Tromak refused to share the location of the other half of the rod with Ro, who subsequently forced him and Kamerat to participate in a dangerous gladiatorial match in the arena onboard the Gaze Electric. Fearing that he would be killed, Tromak confided the information to Kamerat, asking him to keep it secret. However, Kamerat betrayed Tromak after Ro found a holoprojector he had been given by Yoda which turned out to contain a homing beacon, claiming that the device belonged to the Gran Elder.^[7] Tromak managed to escape the Nihil on the junk moon Quantxi, taking with him a bogaranth^[15] which Ro had ordered him fed to.^[7]

While escaping, Tromak encountered Yoda and two other Jedi Masters, Torban Buck and Kantam Sy, who were searching for the pirates and their Padawans, who had ventured to the moon in search of Mrala, who was chasing after Kamerat. Despite his dislike for Jedi, Tromak offered to lead them to the camp as they had a common enemy. In private, he asked Yoda to help him retrieve the relic on Vrant Tarnum, as he wished to keep it out of the Nihil's hands. Yoda recognized the relic as being connected to the artifact he had seen on the Squall Spider, and Tromak was horrified that it was already in the Nihil's hands. The Elder persuaded Yoda to help him, asking him to leave his comlink behind, by mentioning a previous encounter the two had had on Dalna. As the other Jedi dealt with the pirate forces, Tromak and Yoda slipped away, with the other Jedi not knowing where he had gone.^[15]

However, Kamerat, whom Ro had taken a liking to, told him where the other half of the relic was located. As a result, when Yoda and Tromak arrived at Vrant Tarnum, their starship was shot down by drones left in orbit for security. Finding the artifact in the ruins, Ro declared it the "missing piece" and planned to set up a Nihil outpost there, placing Kamerat in charge.^[15]

Trying to find Yoda, Master Sy and their Padawan Lula Talisola later accompanied Mrala back to Trymant IV for answers about why the Nihil had wanted Tromak. Meeting with Elder Barbatash, they were informed of the artifact's status as a weapon and that it could change the galaxy forever.^[14] Ro travelled to Rystan to retrieve the Leveler, bringing along the Force-sensitive navigator Udi Dis to test the effects the creature would have. He brought the creature onto the Gaze Electric, where Doctor Kisma Uttersond implanted a camera into the creature's back so Ro could watch what it did.^[8]

Ro reassembled the rod when the Jedi attacked the Nihil base on Grizal. This action woke the Leveler, which Ro commanded to attack Greatstorm, who had recently escaped captivity, and his Padawan Bell Zettifar. The apprentice was overwhelmed by the Leveler's power, being reduced to curling up into a ball, and Greatstorm was killed by petrification. Master Elzar Mann also crashed his Jedi Vector from the sensation, recognizing the Leveler's power as something he had experienced in a long-ago Force vision. However, none of the Jedi knew what they were dealing with, particularly as Yoda's whereabouts were still unknown.^[8]

In the aftermath of the battle, the Nihil cell now led by Kamerat sustained serious losses^[17] during an incursion by Galactic Republic forces led by Jedi Master Emerick Caphtor, who sought to investigate the Kharvashark Ruins.^[18] Facing Ro's displeasure, Kamerat expressed interest in using the artifact to destroy the Jedi. Ro told Kamerat that he needed to prove himself to regain the Eye's favor, so Kamerat planned to attack the planet Takodana, which had a Jedi temple.^[17]

Behind the scenes[]

One of the control rods first appeared in the 2021 novel The High Republic: Light of the Jedi, written by Charles Soule, which launched the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia project.^[5] Subsequent media, particularly the Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures comic series by Daniel José Older^[15] and Cavan Scott's novel The High Republic: The Rising Storm, revealed the object's purpose and some of its history.^[8] The High Republic: Path of Deceit by Tessa Gratton and Justina Ireland revealed more information, including that there were multiple rods and that they each had specific names.^[1]

Appearances[]

Sources[]

• Star Wars: The High Republic Show: The High Republic at New York Comic Con, Phase II Begins Now, and More! on the official Star Wars YouTube channel (backup link) (Posted on StarWars.com)
• The Path of the Open Hand: Characters of the High Republic on the official Star Wars YouTube channel (backup link) (Posted on StarWars.com)
• The Mother: Characters of the High Republic on the official Star Wars YouTube channel (backup link) (Posted on StarWars.com)
• Star Wars: The High Republic Show: Phase II Exclusive Reveals, a Visit to Dark Horse Comics, and More! on the official Star Wars YouTube channel (backup link) (Posted on StarWars.com)
• Star Wars: The High Republic Show: High Republic Phase II Deep Dive, Star Wars Celebration, and More! on the official Star Wars YouTube channel (backup link) (Posted on StarWars.com)
• Star Wars: Timelines (Indirect mention only)
• NYCC 2023: 13 Highlights from the Lucasfilm Publishing Panel on StarWars.com (backup link)
• Star Wars: The High Republic Character Encyclopedia

Notes and references[]