With the announcement of Drew Karpyshyn's new novel Darth Bane: Rule of Two, the time seems right to explain the last of the Darth names I'm responsible for: Bane's apprentice, Darth Zannah. (You can read about Darth Ruin and Darth Millennial at these links).

For Star Wars fans familiar with Darko Macan's Jedi Vs. Sith comic series, this choice of Sith name for Bane's apprentice, revealed in the last of the Dark Forces Saga articles I wrote, will certainly seem deceptively simple. Indeed, I admit it was nearly a no-brainer. But there's a particular poetry for the greater Star Wars mythos in this choice. Allow me to explain.

First, a refresher. Jedi Vs. Sith focuses on the War of Light and Dark between the Army of Light and the Brotherhood of Darkness, the end-all stage of the millennium-long New Sith Wars. Circumstances force the Jedi to recruit Force-sensitive children for their army, and among these are found three cousins: Tomcat, Bug, and Rain. Though this is how the characters are introduced and how they refer to each other throughout much of the story, these improbable names are, unsurprisingly, only their nicknames. The motivation for these nicknames is an old supersition from the children's homeworld that says that a swamp demon will gobble up anyone who dares say his or her name aloud. Despite this, they will learn to go by their actual names (Darovit, Hardin, and Zannah) as they are forced to grow up while facing the actual horrors of warfare. The discovery occurs last for the youngest of them, the pre-adolescent girl Rain, after she kills two Jedi Knights in anger and she is found by Darth Bane, the destined reformer of the Sith to whom the prequels' Darth Sidious traces his Sith heritage. At the end of the story, young Rain turns to the dark side with the heartbreaking declaration, "I am Zannah."

Though an excellent story (in fact, one of the best Star Wars comics, in my estimation), the subtlety of the writing leaves readers with many questions. Did Rain become Darth Bane's apprentice? Would she take the Darth title as Bane (as well as all the Sith of the Star Wars movies) had? Could a female be a Darth?

The answers might all seem obviously in the affirmative, or at least plausible, but in Star Wars continuity, the implausible is often exploited if the need demands. And as much as Macan implied that all these cool plausibilities would necessarily come to pass, there was the issue that an epilogue to Jedi Vs. Sith had oddly already been written even before that comic came to fruition. That epilogue is Kevin J. Anderson's "Bane of the Sith."

Was Rain conclusively Darth Bane's apprentice? In "Bane of the Sith," published in Star Wars Gamer #3 and following chronologically after the events of Jedi Vs. Sith, Bane is shown seeking out Sith teachings to rebuild the dark order in his image, and after acquiring what he needs, this short story has him taking off to find a new apprentice. Of course, Jedi Vs. Sith didn't even exist at the time this tale was written, and reasonably, many fans at the time took this to mean that Bane would here begin the search for his Sith apprentice. But in order to make "Bane of the Sith" mesh with Macan's new take on the events that now preceded the short story, a definitive reinterpretation of this scene was required, in which Bane's search for his new apprentice was viewed not as a beginning, but as a reunion with the apprentice he'd already taken on. But just like experts from scientists to theologians, Star Wars literati can be possessive of their initial interpretations, and people generally perceived this ambiguity between these two stories as a contradiction.

Mission #1: Definitively establish Rain as Darth Bane's apprentice.

Second, if Rain did become Bane's apprentice, did she adopt the Darth title? Again, it may seem obvious that she would, but Rain is never referred to as "Darth" in the Jedi Vs. Sith comic series, and, further, there's a precedent of major Sith Lords not taking the Darth title, including Naga Sadow, Freedon Nadd, Exar Kun, and Lord Kaan. In fact, at this point in established Star Wars lore, it was statistically more common for a Sith Lord not to bear the title. Not only that, but conspicuously, up until this point, all the female Sith Lords we did know of (Belia Darzu, Githany, Lumiya) notably did not have "Darth" appended to their names.

The answer to this question would also become important in highlighting or undermining Bane's special status among the Sith (as I explain below). Because of certain lore that was established after the identity of Darth Bane was revealed in The Phantom Menace novelization, I felt it was necessary for some Star Wars author to codify, as much as possible, the idea that all the Dark Lords of Bane's lineage, down to the prequels' villains, now carried the rare Darth title as an indication of Bane's distinctive stamp on the order.

Mission #2: Definitively help establish that all the Sith of Bane's lineage, beginning with his apprentice, used the title "Darth."

A third controversial point: since Darth Vader was revealed to have been Anakin Skywalker, we've known that at least some Sith replace their given names with a new name. The prequels drove the point home by telling us that Palpatine and Count Dooku were Darth Sidious and Darth Tyranus, respectively. This seemed a Sith tradition begun by Darth Bane. But to complicate the situation, the Knights of the Old Republic videogame had also used the title Darth for its villains, but had not adopted the prequel convention of giving its Darths an alternate name. Hence, in the game's storyline, the Jedi Revan and Malak become the Sith Darth Revan and Darth Malak.

The question then became: if Rain was Bane's apprentice, what would her Sith name be? This was only further complicated by the fact that "Rain" was already the character's alternate name, and didn't quite fit the fearsome prequel model of "Sidious," "Maul," and "Tyranus."

Mission #3: Definitively establish an appropriate Sith name for Rain.

The opportunity to fulfill these missions came while I was writing the Dark Forces Saga for the Wizards of the Coast website. While the project focused on Kyle Katarn and the Dark Forces videogames and books, thanks to Daniel Wallace's work on the first edition of the Essential Chronology, one of the primary settings of the game series (called the Valley of the Jedi) had been tied to the last major war between the Jedi and Sith mentioned in The Phantom Menace novelization. That meant I'd have a chance to touch on those events.

According to The Phantom Menace novelization, Darth Bane's ascendancy denoted a significant turning point in Sith history. The Sith as we come to know them in the prequels owe their particular identity to Darth Bane's reformations and guidelines. The novelization reveals Bane's name with apparent drama, at the end of Sidious's recollections about his dark side fraternity:

The Sith who reinvented the order called himself Darth Bane.

A guy even Palpatine looks up to? The book almost whispers the name in awe. And, while it's never explicitly stated, Bane seems to be the very first Sith to carry the title Darth. At least, this was true by default, as up until 1999, all Star Wars literature that featured Sith Lords that chronologically came before Bane (namely, in the Tales of the Jedi comics) did not refer to them as "Darth." But Bane's claim to being the first Darth was soon contested by the creation of a Darth Rivan in 2001's The Living Force Campaign, and then completely nullified by the creation of no less than three more Darths for the Knights of the Old Republic videogame in 2003 (which takes place 3,000 years before Bane's rise): Darth Revan, Darth Malak, and Darth Bandon.

So, the fact now was that Bane wasn't the first Darth--or even the second, third, or fourth. Sure, he reinvented the Sith Order, but how do we reinvigorate his name with that awe The Phantom Menace novelization originally instilled it with? Well, if Bane wasn't the first to use the title, what if he chose to use it after it had gone out of fashion? I couldn't explicitly establish that, but I could set up the suggestion. This I did in my piece "The Path of Evil" in Vader: The Ultimate Guide. There, I established the ultimate founder of the New Sith (referenced namelessly in The Phantom Menace novelization as living 1,000 years before Bane) as carrying the infamous title, calling him Darth Ruin. Next, I established several Sith Lords following in Ruin's wake, being careful to mention only one that also carried the Darth title-the aforementioned Darth Rivan. Hence, the creation of Rivan, previously a challenge to Bane's "specialness," would now provide the link between the founder of the New Sith and Darth Bane, lending Bane more legitimacy now as one of the rare elite: a holder of the Darth title.

And thus, back to Bane's apprentice.

The Dark Forces Saga was going to give me a chance to touch on the events of the last conflict of the New Sith Wars, and that meant having a say about Bane's Sith apprentice but not a lot of space to do it in. The project wasn't about the New Sith Wars, after all.

So, how would I accomplish the three aforementioned objectives (definitively establishing Rain as Bane's apprentice, establishing the Darth title as a staple of Bane's Sith, and giving Rain a proper Sith name)? As it turned out, I accomplished it in two words:

Darth Zannah.

Simple, certainly, but poetic, and more so than at first glance. As we see in Jedi Vs. Sith, though Rain is the nickname of Bane's future apprentice, she uses this appellation within the story as the equivalent of her actual name, only ironically "adopting" her true name, Zannah, once she's turned to the dark side. And wouldn't you know it? "Zanah" in Hebrew already has a very specific derogatory meaning. And while that version is closer to the spelling of the character in Jedi Vs. Sith, it's more likely that Macan, of Eastern European descent, intended the reference to be after the goddess "Zână" of Romanian mythology.*** In either case, the name is powerfully charged, to say the least, and worthy of a Sith (Mission #3).

But there's another less obvious wrinkle here. Namely, in establishing Rain's Sith name as Darth Zannah, the legitimacy of Bane's lineage as heirs to the Sith is further entrenched. This is because in ironically taking her true name as her adopted Sith name, Darth Zannah has inadvertently mimicked the naming conventions of the earliest known Sith that took the Darth title: the Jedi Revan and Malak, who became simply Darth Revan and Darth Malak. So now there is a symbolic bridge from Bane's Sith to those ancient Sith as well. (This connection was later further reinforced in the novel Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, which revealed that Bane took instruction from a Sith holocron once belonging to Darth Revan).

Obviously, Zannah's new title also preserves the special "Darthyness" of Bane's lineage (Mission #2), and, of course, with a title like Darth, who could now deny that Rain/Zannah ended up as Bane's apprentice (Mission #1)?

As you can see, naming Darths is serious business, and a whole lot of thought goes into it. As to when and how within the Star Wars universe Zannah acquired the Darth title, that's not my territory. But maybe Drew will answer those questions in Darth Bane: Rule of Two. ~ Abel G. Peńa

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***Or less likely, "Zana" a female "bigfoot" of Abkhazia. This possibility is subtly pleasing because the male counterpart to the Zana is called an "Almas," which is the same name of the evil planet Darth Rivan called home, further strengthening Bane's claim to the Darth legacy.

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