Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic arrived in comic book form in January 2006, published by Dark Horse Comics, and it told a story the video games had never shown directly. Set eight years before the first Knights of the Old Republic game, the series placed readers in an era of Jedi academies, Mandalorian wars, and a galaxy still scarred by the Great Sith War. Its first issue hit stands on the 25th of January 2006, and for the next several years it would run for 50 issues before concluding.

  At the center of everything was a young Padawan named Zayne Carrick, who was neither the most gifted student at his academy nor the most fortunate. His story begins with a smuggler, a crime, and a graduation ceremony he would never make it to in time. What he found when he returned to that academy would shape the next four years of storytelling.

  The series was written entirely by John Jackson Miller, who would go on to write novels including Star Wars: Kenobi and Star Wars: A New Dawn. Miller built a world populated by outlaws, disgraced Jedi, Mandalorian deserters, and a labor droid who preferred not to follow orders. The questions the series planted early were large ones: why would Jedi Masters kill their own students, and what secret organization could drive them to it?

• 2. Zayne and Gryph

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  Zayne Carrick trained at the Jedi Academy on Taris, and the source is clear-eyed about his limitations. He had a dubious connection with the Force at best. He was clumsy, unlucky, and prone to danger. His defining quality was not power but intention: he always tried to do the right thing.

  The series opens with Zayne chasing a Snivvian smuggler named Marn Hierogryph, who went by the nickname Gryph. Capturing Gryph was Zayne's last test before his graduation ceremony. He caught him, but arrived back at the academy too late. What greeted him there was not a celebration but a massacre: the Jedi Masters standing over the bodies of his fellow Padawans.

  Zayne fled instinctively, taking Gryph with him. Within moments, the two of them were framed for the murders. The irony was layered: Zayne, who had just proven himself capable of catching a criminal, was now a fugitive learning the criminal underworld from the very smuggler he had captured.

  Gryph had always dreamed of being a notorious criminal, but his crimes went largely unnoticed by the galaxy at large. He was greedy and opportunistic, willing to take risks that endangered everyone around him, yet the series made clear he was not a murderer. Over time, traveling with Zayne, Gryph showed genuine compassion. He began the series calling Zayne a Jedi intern. Later, when their partnership became something real, he promoted him to henchman. Zayne's name was eventually cleared during the story arc called Vindication, but by then his loyalty was to the friends who had believed in him, not to the Jedi Order that had not.

• 3. Jarael, Camper, and Elbee

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  Jarael was a young Arkanian offshoot who served as a bodyguard, and her loyalty ran deep. Camper, an elderly Arkanian offshoot inventor and mechanic, had saved her life years before the series began. In return, Jarael dedicated herself to protecting him. She called him Perero, an Arkanian word meaning Honored Elder, a title that captured her genuine reverence for the old man.

  Camper's full name was not revealed until issue 18, when readers learned he was Gorman Vandrayk. He and Jarael had fled his home planet of Arkania together because a corporation called Adascorp was hunting him. His memory had begun to fade by the time the series opened, and his mental and physical health worsened steadily as the story progressed. Despite his deteriorating condition, he remained a brilliant mechanic, capable of repairing or modifying virtually any ship or droid he encountered. Before Jarael met Camper, she had been a slaver, a detail the series revealed to complicate the character who, on the surface, seemed defined entirely by loyalty and care.

  Elbee was something different: a bulky labor droid from the Jedi Academy on Taris. The Jedi Masters destroyed Elbee during a Padawan training mission to the Rogue Moon, as part of their effort to keep their murderous plan secret. Zayne later returned to the Rogue Moon looking for clues and found Elbee's remains. Camper rebuilt the droid using parts from other droids, since most of the original components were beyond repair. Labor drones were built to follow orders without question, but Elbee had the mind of a high-end droid and questioned nearly everything. Getting him to do anything required convincing or trickery. The series suggested Elbee's catchphrase, that he would prefer not to, was a tribute to the character Bartleby from Herman Melville's short story of the same name.

• 4. Rohlan Dyre and the Mandalorian Wars

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  Rohlan Dyre entered the series as a Mandalorian soldier who had been in more battles than most people had heard of. He believed he could have been Mand'alor, the Mandalorian leader, if he had wanted that role. He did not want it. What he wanted was to be on the frontlines of actual combat rather than studying maps and commanding from a distance.

  Over time, that desire curdled into doubt. Rohlan began questioning what the Mandalorian Wars were actually about. His conclusion was bleak: the war against the Republic had no real purpose. The Mandalorians had, in his view, degenerated from pragmatic warriors into treacherous bandits. He tried repeatedly to flee the battlefield, and was caught each time and returned to fight.

  When he encountered Zayne's crew at a location called Flashpoint, Rohlan saw an exit. He stowed away on their ship and eventually came to the aid of Jarael and Camper after they were attacked by an HK-24 assassin droid. He joined the group from that point forward. Back among the Mandalorians, however, his reputation grew rather than faded. His actions at Flashpoint station turned him into a legend, and Mand'alor used that legend, calling him Roland the Questioner, for propaganda purposes. The man who had fled the war became, unwillingly, one of its symbols.

• 5. The Covenant and Lucien Draay

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  The Jedi Masters who killed the Padawans were not rogue individuals acting on personal impulse. They were members of a secret organization, established without the knowledge of the Jedi Council, whose purpose was to stop the Sith from returning. They called it a covenant.

  Lucien Draay was the executive officer of this group, and his background explained much of his psychology. His parents were Barison Draay and Lady Krynda, both Jedi Knights who had fought Exar Kun during the Great Sith War. His father died in that war, alongside his aunt and Lady Krynda's own master, Vodo-Siosk Baas. Lucien grew up watching his mother withdraw into guilt, and he experienced her distance as a lack of love. He did not inherit her gift of foresight.

  Lucien originally trained under a former Jedi Padawan named Hazeen, who had barely survived the war and now served as Lady Krynda's aide. Through the Draay family's financial resources, the covenant trained only Jedi who possessed the gift of foresight, building a secret network designed to detect and stop any Sith resurgence. The other masters in the group were Xamar, Q'Anilia, Feln, and Raana Tey.

  What triggered the massacre was a vision. Shortly before the graduation ceremony, the masters saw dark images of a Sith Lord wearing a red spacesuit, destroying the Jedi Order. The Padawans had worn red spacesuits during their final training exercise. The masters concluded that one of their students was destined to become that Sith Lord. Their solution was to kill all of them. Zayne's escape that day, frantic and accidental, set off a chain of consequences that would eventually bring the covenant's hidden existence into the open.

• 6. The Shape of the Series

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  The 50-issue run was organized into 18 story arcs, each with its own title. The first arc, Commencement, covered issues 1 through 6, opening on the 25th of January 2006 and closing on the 28th of June 2006. A flip-book titled Crossroads, released on the 1st of March 2006 for 25 cents, served as a preview of the series before issue 1 even launched.

  Arc titles gave a sense of the series' tonal range: Days of Fear, Nights of Anger, Daze of Hate, Knights of Suffering. The 11th arc, Vindication, covering issues 32 through 35, was the moment Zayne's name was formally cleared. The 18th and final arc, Demon, ran through issues 47 to 50 and brought the main story to a close.

  The 25th through 28th issues formed an arc called Vector, which was also the first part of a standalone crossover called Star Wars: Vector. That crossover moved through four separate Dark Horse series in sequence: Knights of the Old Republic, then Dark Times, then Rebellion, then Legacy. The trade paperback collecting that arc paired it with issues 11 and 12 of Dark Times.

  In 2012, Dark Horse released a five-issue follow-up miniseries titled Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: War. Set after the events of the Demon arc, it was collected in the tenth trade paperback volume and marked the end of the series' total output. All 50 original issues plus the five War issues were eventually gathered into ten collected volumes.