This Small-Time 'Star Wars' Villain Secretly Had A Huge Impact On 'The High Republic'

Star Wars

Apr 5

The High Republic has seen a cavalcade of conniving, cruel, and crafty villains as part of the Nihil, the Path of the Open Hand, and groups that fall outside these two categories. Many have been critical parts of the initiative’s journey through Phases 1, 2 and 3. We also recently ranked 10 of the greatest of these villains, only now that list needs some drastic changes because of Into the Light.

One villain deserves one of the highest spots on that list and indeed, deserves a great deal of the blame for many terrible events…and no, it isn’t Marchion Ro. Join us today as we explore just what Into the Light revealed, and why it makes this character hugely impactful to this corner of Star Wars storytelling.

WARNING: This article contains SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS for Into the Light. Do not read further if you want to avoid key spoilers for this recently released novel.

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Dr. Zadina Mkampa was first introduced to readers in Mission to Disaster, the final middle grade book for Phase 1. When she was first introduced, she cut a fearsome figure, a heavy-cybernetics-augmented scientist working with the Nihil on Dalna. She had a scornful disposition, displeased by the Nihil’s lack of understanding about her science, and Avon Starros was able to manipulate her in order to both sabotage her machines, and help some of the other children held captive on the planet escape. Unfortunately, Avon’s sabotage wasn’t successful enough, and Dalna was lost when Mkampa’s machines activated, causing massive volcanic eruptions. She escaped from this encounter, her cybernetics helping her move at incredible speeds.

When next we saw Dr. Mkampa, she was in charge of the Lightning Crash space station. This converted Graf facility helped maintain the Stormwall of the Nihil via the generation of immense qualities of power through crystallography. Mkampa was enough of a genius to realize Avon’s designs from Dalna, while purposefully flawed, were useful for her purposes, and she used them as the basis for a new method of power generation. Avon nearly killed Mkampa when she went to Lightning Crash, only being stopped by Xylan Graf, as the woman was a menace who had no morals about the nature of her scientific explorations, and was heavily supporting the Nihil.

While the defeat at the hands of Avon was no doubt an embarrassment, Mkampa remained key to Nihil efforts as one of their few remaining assets in the scientific field following the death of Chancey Yarrow in The Fallen Star. Despite a purge of the station’s staff after Avon’s infiltration, Mkampa was kept alive, and was not aboard the Lightning Crash when the Jedi and Republic destroyed the station in Temptation of the Force. Free from her post there, with no one punishing her for the recent security failures, she was allowed to return to her malicious ways.

As Into the Light begins, we learn that following Marchion Ro’s bold claim of a cure for the blight, she started to help the Nihil seed the blight across the galaxy, to study and test the effects it was having on living matter. But she quickly realized Marchion did not have a cure, and with her last interest in remaining loyal to the Nihil severed, Into the Light shows us the true face of Zadina Mkampa.

That novel completely rewrites what we knew about her. While the timeline is unclear, it would seem she had been with the Nihil long before Dalna. In that time, she found a Sith holocron, and used a captured Jedi prisoner to open the device for her before they died, undoubtedly because of her treatment and cruelty toward them. From the device, she learned of the ancient pact between the Sith and the Drengir, and sought to use her influence with the Nihil to steer some of their vessels toward where she believed the Drengir lay imprisoned aboard an Amaxine battle station.

It was by her hand that Nan and her guardian Hague were in hyperspace as the Great Hyperspace Disaster befell the galaxy, an excellent cover for her actions due to the random chaos the event would bring. Nan and Hague’s fellow Nihil were lost, and their ship was the only Nihil vessel to dock aboard the Amaxine station. Still, it was enough, given the cascading series of events that led to the Drengir being unleashed on the galaxy once again. All that followed was because Mkampa wanted to confirm the knowledge from the holocron, and because she wanted an even deadlier weapon, a Thornseed.

Thornseeds were Sith artifacts we learn were created using hardened Drengir sap. When making impact with a planet, every bit of plant life in a wide radius would turn to the Dark Side. Poisons could be developed from the newly corrupted vegetation, crops devastated, and the Sith would lure their enemies to these worlds to trap and hunt them. Mortis Gods only know what Mkampa could have done with a weapon like this, but the answer is nothing good. In addition, she controls the Drengir for much of Into the Light, goading them on to commit violence and drain their own strength for her ends. Fortunately, the Jedi and their allies are able to put a stop to her control.

n summary, Mkampa has gone from an intriguing side-villain, to a main villain of The High Republic. It was by her machinations that a devastating threat was unleashed across the galaxy after slumbering for over two millennia, while she hunted for an even more devastating weapon derived from their power. She is no simple amoral scientist, she is a super villain with her own agenda the galaxy should be happy the Nihil derailed with their countless other projects that needed her time and focus. To top it off, Marchion Ro had absolutely no knowledge of her efforts, and she was able to use Nihil manpower and resources in her quest. She was even able to take control of the Drengir from a distance, using advanced technology to achieve a subversive mind control over even the greatest members of the species.

It's never good when a villain uses another villain, since that’s when you know they’re just too good at evil. But, for her to use two entirely separate enemy factions for her own ends? That requires a level of knowledge and skill in the villainous arts that truly proves her diabolical impact on this publishing initiative.

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