The Night of Sorrow was the final domino in a long chain leading back to events both recent and more longstanding, in the era of the High Republic. On one side, you had the Path of the Open Hand, radicalized by the Mother with larger ranks thanks to their time on Jedha despite the recent chaos unleashed there. On the other, you had over half a dozen separate, small-scale missions led or accompanied by Jedi seeking answers from the Path regarding that chaos and other recent mysteries.

These forces were practically destined to clash but when it happened, the battle went down very differently to how both sides, and different people within those sides, expected it to.

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Inciting Incident

The origins of the Night of Sorrow were numerous but mainly lay in the Battle of Jedha. Thanks to the meddling of the Mother and the Herald of the Path of the Open Hand, riots gripped the city while the forces of Eiram and E’ronoh deployed against each other as the peace treaty collapsed. While the riots had not been the Mother’s plan, they still painted the Path in a negative light, especially as the group’s response was to flee back to Dalna.

The Mother paid a huge donation to the Convocation and threw the Herald under the hoverbus as the sole figure responsible for all of the trouble, even while she had further plans in place to ensure the Forever War resumed. Her agents attempted to transport a lethal substance into Eiram and E’ronoh space, but were caught, and might have implicated E’ronoh as the culprit had cooler heads not prevailed. This event caused the young future monarchs of the paired planets to plan a mission to find the Path.

Having left Jedha behind, the Gaze Electric carried the Path back to their old home of Dalna. While they were not exactly greeted with open arms, the Mother’s rather intense use of her hidden powers to influence minds by speaking bought them enough time to reestablish themselves in their former compound. But already, the Mother was changing things within the Path.

Desperate for more weapons against the Jedi, she turned to “Sunshine” Dobs, the hyperspace prospector who she had wrapped around her finger, for a mission to return to Planet X to locate more eggs like the one that had since hatched into the Great Leveler. Marda Ro, meanwhile, had been shunned by the Mother following the events on Jedha. Reduced in her role as Guide to once again taking care of the Littles, Marda was frustrated and tortured by a specter of Kevmo Zink. Not a true spirit, this unique creation of Evereni physiology mocked and belittled her, driving her to seek a useful outlet.

The Converging Jedi & Planet X

Marda soon found such an outlet in Dobs’ mission and forced her way aboard. Among the crew was a young alien man who had been growing close with Marda, much to the fake Kevmo’ sneering dislike, and the two further bonded during their journey. However, their arrival to Planet X was rough. Of the three ships taken on the expedition, one was destroyed by the barrier surrounding the planet, while Dobs’ vessel crashed, killing his droid.

Marda’s anti-Force-use beliefs were also challenged on Planet X, as even the slightest kernel of Force sensitivity seemed to bloom within the expedition’s members, including her new amorous friend. This aggravated Marda, but the group was able to carry on and locate the eggs of the Nameless.

Unfortunately, these were guarded by a hideous monster, which chased the group to the surface of the planet, before another giant creature appeared and briefly defended the Path expedition. However, upon their attempt to depart with the eggs, it turned on them too, and in an act of sacrifice, Marda’s new beloved gave his life to help the team get into orbit. Ultimately, the group only escaped from Planet X due to mysterious modifications made to the hyperdrives of both Dobs’ new ship, scavenged from the planet, and the other intact vessel, performed by a Force-influenced mechanic.

At the time the ships jumped away though, Marda’s part of the expedition assumed the other ship was lost, but in reality, it simply ended up in a distant star system, crashing into a Jedi vessel and setting about the events of The Nameless Terror comic miniseries.

Back on Dalna, small clusters of Jedi were converging on the planet. Some of the first to arrive were Aida Forte and Creighton Sun, fresh from the Battle of Jedha and determined to investigate the Path after the suspicious events on the Pilgrim Moon. Unknown to them, Matthea Cathley and Oliviah Zeveron were also on Dalna for the same purpose, though they were soon discovered and forced to leave Path property. However, they also discovered a poisoned and dying journalist who had been attempting to write about the Path. Taking her to get healed, they were assisted by a recently returned Yana Ro, who had brought the Rod of Daybreak with her back from Jedha where she had also helped free the Herald who now lurked in hiding from the Path and the authorities.

Yana by this time was turning against the Path, aware that the Mother had radicalized the group into a hateful force, though still could not bring herself to completely ally with the Jedi. This was complicated by the sudden arrival of a ship bearing members of the Jedi Council with Jedi Temple Guards and other Jedi, brought to Dalna by the investigation of Azlin Rell into the deaths of Kevmo Zink and Zallah Macri two months prior.

Meanwhile, while these groups met and tried to compare notes, Jedi Wayseker Gella Nattai and a fellow Jedi had snuck into the Path compound while on the trail of a recently freed Axel Greylark. He had been held for his crimes following the events of the novel Convergence but had been broken out of Jedi custody and brought to the Path to serve the Mother’s political ambitions. Unfortunately, Gella and her fellow Jedi were caught, and she was forced to watch as the man was injected with poison, dying in agony soon after.

Finally, the Eiram prince and E’ronoh princess arrived with a small Jedi escort in tow, to seek an official audience with the Path. It was the will of the Force that so many different Jedi groups would all converge on a single location, all at the same time, and with no awareness of each other.

Immediate Consequences

The Herald was accepted back into the group, the Mother temporarily gave Marda the Rod of Power (formed from the Rod of Seasons and the Rod of Daybreak) and the cult’s forces rallied against the Jedi. Yana tried to reason with Marda, but her cousin had embraced her savage Evereni nature and cut off Yana’s hand without remorse.

Meanwhile, other forces closed in on Dalna, as the Mother had put out a call to her allies and the criminal element to come if they wanted some payback against the Jedi. The Path was also bolstered by the Mother having purchased many enforcer droids from Tilson Graf which were secretly shipped to the Path compound and set up across the surface for eventual deployment. Elsewhere, the Mother had sent out a crew to begin sabotaging the communications relays in the region so that when she desired, the Mother could isolate Dalna from the rest of the galaxy, and this part of the plan was soon to trigger.

The Night of Sorrow

The Night began with the return of the Jedi to the Path’s land. This was a contingent featuring the Jedi Council members, their guards, Oliviah, Matthea, and Azlin, alongside the sheriff of the nearby town of Ferdan with some deputies and citizens. They were looking to investigate the death of the journalist and others in recent days, as the Path seemed squarely to blame since they had begun operating a soup kitchen in the town that was deemed the common source of the poisonings. Instead, the droids attacked first, followed by hordes of radicalized Path members.

Jedi Master Yaddle, who had also arrived at Dalna unexpectedly, soon found herself under attack while the Jedi guarding the Eiram and E’ronoh delegates also found themselves assaulted. The battle began to rage…and then, the eggs recovered from Planet X began to hatch as Marda wielded the Rod of Power.

In the pouring rain that followed, chaos reigned. More Jedi appeared, having rallied support from Dalna’s capital city, bringing proper militia forces looking to bring peace and order. Mercenary and criminal factions arrived in orbit to begin attacking Jedi and Republic-aligned forces in the region, their ships tearing up the sky even as it continued to weep. Within the Path compound underground, the Jedi fought their way inside, seeking the Mother, while lines of cultists poured out against them from the caverns and passages. And through it all ran the Nameless led by the Great Leveler, stopping and feeding on Jedi and those with the Force as they encountered them, casting a pall of fear and madness over those they passed. It was a slaughter on both sides.

The Elders of the Path fled, having arranged transport for themselves possibly at the behest of the Mother. They abandoned hundreds of their fellows in the faith to their fate. Elsewhere, Axel Greylark had become thoroughly disenchanted by the Path, and had been forced into the fight on their side.

He escaped this conscription and went to find and free Gella, successfully killing a major Path operative and former friend in the process. He then ran into his mother, Chancellor Kyong Greylark, only to learn she had told the truth via the hologram she’d sent the Path after his own message sent on the Path’s behalf: she was no longer a Chancellor and had given up her position to go and help her son as a private citizen.

Meanwhile, as Creighton Sun and Aida Forta fought, the Nikto Jedi Knight lost her life and elsewhere, Jedi Master Char-Ryl-Roy fell in battle while his Padawan, Enya Keen, survived. Even Master Yoda now joined the fray as having traveled with the former Chancellor, he and other Jedi became part of a second wave that successfully pushed the enemy back.

Lies Uncovered

But as the battle began to be lost on the surface, the Mother started to enact her dastardly failsafe, though she had already been planning for this before Marda’s co-opt of the cult’s control. Marda, seeing Yana as a traitor, went to go and find her, leaving the Rod of Power in the Mother’s possession. Meanwhile, the Littles had been sent across the caverns to begin setting bombs at the Mother’s request, to ensure that when the time was right, she could escape and detonate her device, killing her own people, many Jedi, and probably leaving many to think she was dead as well.

But Yana discovered what the Littles were doing, and in a confrontation with Marda, forced her to understand what the Mother had planned. Elsewhere, the remaining enforcer droids turned against the Path members and began to indiscriminately kill anyone in their sight, driving the Jedi and their allies to defend the people who had just been trying to kill them minutes earlier though often without any thanks or acceptance.

With the Herald now re-captured in the caves beneath Dalna’s surface, Jedi led by Oliviah Zeveron and accompanied by an increasingly manic Azlin Rell but also a levelheaded Matthea Cathley headed for the Mother’s chamber. Marda beat them there and found the woman emptying her drawers and collecting her valuables. The Jedi arrived soon after, and it was then that Oliviah revealed all. The Mother was her sister, Elecia Zeveron, and had powers in the Force. She had enacted all of this, just to get revenge on the Jedi for not choosing to train her as a child, and had used the Path to accomplish her goal.

The Herald jumped at Elecia and might have killed her, though the woman used a lightsaber in her possession to kill him, before battling Oliviah. Marda, acting fast, snatched the Rod away along with the detonator, rushing back to Yana as she realized her mistakes in trusting the former cult leader. She sought to entomb the Nameless in the compound and used the Rod to call them to her and Yana before they then safely detonated the explosives to bury the creatures under mounds of rubble.

Thanks to the pouring rain outside, the caverns began to flood as well, and at that moment, the cousins were separated, along with the Rod broken in two between them. The remaining members of the Path fled as their compound collapsed, while Azlin Rell encountered his old master, the Wookiee Arkoff, and Arkoff’s former master, Ravna Abronsa.

Barely had the three run into each other then the rush of water spirited them out of the caverns, where Ravna was then consumed by a Nameless, probably the surviving Great Leveler. In a final act of horror, Azlin’s mind was broken by the presence of the Nameless, and he was reduced to a gibbering mess, unable to see the world properly. Closer to the former site of action though, the Mother was in Jedi custody, and the miserable night was finally over as ships of Eiram and E’ronoh arrived overhead to begin relief efforts.

Aftermath

During much of the battle, the Mother’s communications blackout had been successfully upheld, but thanks to Rooper Nitani, Sky Graf, and others, it was disabled. Meanwhile, the royal heirs of Eiram and E’ronoh had fled Dalna to seek help from their homeworlds, barely surviving in a disabled ship drifting in the void of space. But, they returned to Dalna at the head of two fleets now working together to provide aid to the Jedi, the people of Dalna, and the remaining Path members.

Forces from Jedha were also soon arriving to help with the relief effort, and an exhausted Matty reunited with Vildar Mac and Tey Sirrek. Azlin Rell was taken away to Coruscant for treatment, while other surviving Path members were given whatever help they needed to locate family or friends. The Mother, Elecia, was not in Jedi custody for very long though. The Ro cousins had survived, though Marda only retained one Rod, and Yana secretly hid the other from her cousin as they did not see eye to eye on the Jedi or much else anymore. The Great Leveler had survived as well, and in an act of cruel justice, Marda turned the Leveler on its former master, consuming and husking the Mother, before she and it fled to the hidden Gaze Electric, and vanished into the void.

But the conflict had left a scar on Dalna and the Jedi, one the Jedi quickly sought to heal through denial. Lacking information on what had happened on Dalna regarding the then-unknown Nameless, the Jedi buried the event and put it under restricted access in the Jedi archives in the future, an effort headed by Creighton Sun and supported by Yoda and others. Azlin Rell later vanished from Jedi custody after an encounter with a pursuing member of the Path. His journal full of ciphered information fell into the possession of Arkoff who proceeded to hide it on the planet Banchii with a droid who spent decades deciphering it. The Nameless soon became a myth among the Jed.

As for Dalna, they soured on the entire event. They blamed the Jedi for the situation getting out of control, but equally blamed the Path, and considered the whole evening a tragic loss of life and thus, the Night of Sorrow. The Jedi temple outpost later built on Dalna was received without objection, but the populace never warmed up to the Jedi presence, leaving it a quiet corner of the planet.

As for Marda Ro, these events had deeply shaped her. She had been radicalized to hate the Jedi and led a revolution within her faith, only to see its leader as a pretender and liar who had manipulated everyone around her for years. Marda kept the Great Leveler alive aboard the Gaze Electric, and gradually, marauders began to use the vessel as a base of operations as she traveled, seeking other Evereni and knowledge of their kind. She kept her Rod, and over time, helped to found a dynasty that would carry the hatred for the Jedi into their war against them. 150 years later, it would lead to Marchion Ro, the Nihil, and the Great Hyperspace Disaster.

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