Darth Vader leads Imperial forces to Shu-Torun to assist Queen Trios in the pacification of the rebellious Ore-Barons and ensure that the planet is able to meet the quotas set forth by the Empire. In preparation for a final, all out assault on the unruly Barons, our (anti-) heroes have gathered on board huge delving citadels. Throbbing with armaments, these large citadels will penetrate the firm but yielding surface of the planet and make their way ever deeper inside until they hit just the right spot to unleash their fury. Wait. Gimme a minute. Okay. So, Vader is on board one with the Astarte twins. Cylo is on another with Voidgazer, you know the one that controls the little probe droid things; and Queen Trios is on another. Once they are all under way, Cylo gives Voidgazer the order to sabotage Vader’s citadel, sending it off course. It ends up crashing in a cavern where they are immediately surrounded by forces loyal to Baron Rubix. Vader orders siege defenses activated and takes the Astarte twins outside for some good ol’ fashioned lightsaberin’. Despite Vader’s well known and much practiced ability to slaughter people, they are in danger of being overwhelmed. Vader gives Triple Zero the order to activate his personal army of battle droids (don’t leave home without it). These droids, by the way, are the same kind as the commando droids from The Clone Wars. The enemy surge is halted. Vader realizes that this was a trap and that Rubix has gambled all by sending his best troops here to take him out. Queen Trios needs only carry out the intended attack on Rubix to end the conflict. Easier said than done. Cylo is now in command of the Imperial forces and he orders the attack stopped until they get word from Vader. Of course he knows they won’t get word because he set this trap and cut off Vader’s communication. Ohhh, this guy. This guy! So Trios is like, okay I’ll just attack with my own forces. Well, now her Chancellor, Jooli, decides to exercise his veto power. “I will not let you advance without Imperial support”, he says. Chancellors. Have any of them ever been worth a darn? Oh, not you Angela Merkel; you’re one of the good ones. So Jooli and Trios argue back and forth a little bit; but what Jooli hasn’t taken into consideration is that Queen Trios has been spending a lot of time lately with Darth Vader. If there’s one lesson that Darth Vader has to teach it’s that any problem can be solved by murdering it into non-existence. Much like Colt .45, it works EVERY TIME. So, Jooli is dead and Trios is off to war. Meanwhile, Vader has left the delving citadel, with the Astarte twins in tow, on a little sub-subterranean excursion to open up communications with the Imperial forces. Man, Vader must be getting kind of close to the twins. Maybe he is even starting to like and trust them a little. Well, I’m sure everything will work out---PERFIDY!! The twins ambush Vader. “I can’t believe you trusted us,” one of them says. No, Shmi Skywalker didn’t raise no fool, a monster sure, but not a fool. “If I trusted you, I’d have left you at the siege. Instead, I tested your character. You failed.”
Triple Zero's rousing speech.
So, Vader and the twins face off on a natural rock bridge over a lake of lava. It’s not going well for the young abominations (band name?) and they fall back out of range. Aiolin (the girl) destroys part of the bridge, separating them from Vader. “We can’t beat him,” she tells her brother Morit. “You won’t, Aiolin. I will,” he says and then he pushes his own sister off the cliff. Yet more perfidy! Sororicide, even! Morit bids Vader a ‘til we meet again, and beats a retreat as his sister rapidly reaches the status of a too long microwaved hot dog in the lava below. Vader responds to her pleas by Force lifting her out of the lava. “Tell me everything. Now,” he says. She spills the beans about Cylo collaborating with the Barons and gives Vader her memory circuit to prove everything. Vader then puts her out of her misery. Vader returns to his delving citadel to find that Rubix’s troops have surrendered because they overheard Triple Zero’s conspicuously loud speech stating that the battle droids had the ability to suck out organic blood and use it as fuel like some kind of robot vampire (band name?). They’re not really able to do that. It was a ruse, and it worked. Meanwhile, Trios leads her troops against Rubix’s headquarters. Things look dire until Darth Vader shows up. As you can imagine, it wraps up pretty quickly from there. Rubix surrenders. Trios, who has developed quite the hard edge thanks to Vader’s influence, has him executed on the spot and appoints his daughter as his successor. It should be her brother, but as Trios notes to Vader, “I’ve found inexperienced youths not expecting power the most easy to manipulate”. On board his Star Destroyer, Vader contacts Palpatine to let him know the war is concluded and that Cylo and his abominations have been revealed as traitors and fled. Palpatine orders Vader back to Coruscant; “It is time I explained everything,” he says. As they depart, Triple Zero approaches and tells Vader that Aphra has been found. When Vader says this bounty hunter better not be trying to pull a fast one on him like the last, Triple Zero informs him that it wasn’t a bounty hunter that found her. He plays Vader a message: it’s Inspector Thanoth. “I’ve found your girl,” he says. “I suspect it’s time we had a little talk.”
Review (Part II)
And thus concludes the legendary Shu-Torun war; the devastating conflict that ravaged a planet for, I don’t know, three days or something. But seriously, it was a good storyline. I feel like I’ve said that about all of Gillen’s Darth Vader run, but it’s always true. He wisely keeps Vader as the focus of the series, but introduces (mostly) good to great supporting characters and develops them as they play off Darth Vader. In this case there’s Trios. It’s difficult not to compare Trios to Vader’s previous female companion/accomplice Dr. Aphra. Aphra is a very self centered character, whereas Trios seems to more interested in taking care of her planet and its people, even if she has to get in bed with the Empire to do it. Aphra, despite (or perhaps because of) her admitted fear of Vader, never really stops trying to come out on top. Trios, on the other hand, is pretty soundly defeated by Vader in their first meeting; and yet she is not depicted here as a “beaten” person. She has a certain strength and hardness that, as I mentioned in the summary, seems to come from her encounters with Vader. That’s interesting to me because most people who encounter Vader come away from it broken, or worse; but not Trios. In addition to creating some pretty interesting characters, Gillen is just a guy who gets stuff done. He has a story to tell and he tells it without dragging it out ad nauseam. As most of you probably know, this series ends with the next storyline. That wasn’t a mandate from Marvel or LFL, that was Gillen’s decision. He had a story about a character to tell, and when it came to its conclusion it was concluded.
Action Figure Comic Pack Wish List:
Comic Pack Action Figure wish list: The Astarte Twins.
