Lit The genealogy of the Skywalker-Solo clan

Ta’a Chume is described as having red-gold hair in COPL. I do recall that Hapans in general have light hair (hence why I believe Hogrum and Elliah are descended from Zekk), so maybe they’re best known as strawberry blondes?

 

Lots of other redheads and haircolors for Hapans exist, differs even for the various worlds presenting presents. Isolders bodyguards also have red hair, darker shade though. And art has plenty of dark or black haired or brown haired Hapans always in rpg guides.

So yub, I doubt there is a general haircolor and there wasn't such mentioned in COPL itself which I reread last weekend looking for such cues.

 

Regarding hair colour so do we have some official art of dark haired hapanians:

from WotC Galaxy at War


and from WotC Galaxy of Intrigue

 

Cracken's Thread Dossier informs us that Dathomir's fourth moon Koratas is notable for its "thick, red-tinted soil", which Imperial scientists were for unspecified reasons digging through when they "stumbled across several rich veins of neutronium, lommite, and zersium" (prompting Zsinj to construct his Rancor Base shipyards in the system).

On a completely unrelated note, the Dathomir we see in the cartoon looks like this, and is depopulated by a Separatist attack during the Clone Wars, leaving behind some rather interesting but completely empty ruins...



re: Mara-- I guess this goes against the spirit of this thread, but I don't really get why she needs some kind of special genealogy. She's just a kid who Palpatine acquired and molded into one of his tools-- the missing past is kinda the point? This goes doubly for Shmi-- the whole point is that she's a nobody, a random slave woman, with no past and no future-- who miraculously gave birth to a boy upon whom the fate of the entire galaxy would one day turn.

 

No, I think this is totally within the spirit of the thread. Some characters don't have amazing family history or hidden identities. I think that it's good to be skeptical and try to discern the most likely connections.

Maybe Zahn really didn't intend Mara to have a complicated origin. In fact, I suspect this is the case because he had a long time to develop one and other than her having fake memories, did nothing with it. At the same time, there are other characters (Shira, Etain, Scout) who all plausibly have links to Mara. I was looking at that artwork of Etain on her Wookieepedia page the other day and thought she really did resemble Shannon McRandle. But it could be nothing.

Shmi I respectably disagree about just based on the thematic perspective. I mentioned this maybe on page 1 of the thread, but in many religious traditions the virgin mother of the messianic figure is herself often a descendant of a religious leader. But Lucas didn't necessarily need to adhere to that: maybe his intention was that Shmi had no origin.

 

Calling it now, Episode IX goes out with a bang, Rey timetravels using the Force and World between Worlds and ends up enslaved on Tatooine with memory loss and pregnant... cannot recall the father or ever having had sex, she goes by the only thing and name she can remember: Skywalker!

The circle is now complete!

 

None of those have any link to Mara at all other than that they're Force-sensitive women with reddish hair, though. I mean, yeah, okay, Shira's of similar age and an Emperor's Hand, but this ignores that her background is totally different from Mara's-- where Mara was Palpatine's from the start, Shira was Vader's discovery and only turned over to Palpatine he got caught training her up on the sly. Don't get me wrong-- I've played around with Shira having blood ties to Mara myself over the years (how couldn't you?), but in the I can never think of any point either narratively or thematically to having them related to one another. Which is what it comes down to for me-- retconning connections should be to a specific point, not just to be able to say "oh, that's cool I guess."

As to Shmi-- Mary's only the descendant of David because the Matthew and Luke needed her to be so that Jesus could convincingly be the prophesied Hebrew messiah. It's a not a story point, it's a political one; I don't think it's a coincidence that the most narrative of the four gospels (John) omits the genealogical throat-clearing entirely. The point of Jesus isn't that he's descended from David (or Abraham or Adam though by that point you're so far back that pretty much everyone else is also descended from them so who even cares), it's that he's the son of God who was born to some random girl in some random town of zero prior importance.

Though now that you mention it, that'd be an interesting thing to explore in-universe; I could imagine some distant Fel Emperor or Empress inventing an impressive lineage for Shmi (and at the timescales the GFFA deals with it, the sky's the limit-- why not have her be descended from Ajunta Pall and one of the first Jedi and Xendor and Xim and the first emperor of Atrisia, too!).

 

Moving on to new families:
Galaxy of Fear's Tash and Zak Arranda as well as parents and uncles and aunt are known...
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Arranda_family

But what about this one likewise named Alderaanian who served the Emperor aboard the Executor???
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lilit_Arranda

Related or not? Did the author just google alderaanian names and picked one, or was there any intent?

 

As to the Prequel/cartoon-style Nightsisters (who do show up in odd places before they were actually invented in TCW - there's a speeder full of them joyriding on Coruscant in a Jude Watson novel, isn't there?), my point is not that they can or should be shuffled out of the continuity, but that they are essentially unknown to mainline Dathomiri "clan" society - not a difficult proposition when Dathomir has three continents and no way to travel between them.

I like the suggestion by @Iron_lord that what we're seeing in the Quin Vos comic is an attempted takeover of a clan by a rogue Nightsister.

@Golbolco - I should have added earlier that the "clans" all claim descent in the female line from the Jedi exile Allya (who seems to have been around c. 600 BBY), hence "daughters of Allya". This sort of backstory can be invented for socio-political reasons, but there's absolutely nothing implausible in the idea, either. They're variously said to be nine or "a dozen" in number in Courtship, nine (at a formal gathering) presumably reflecting the canonical number of "daughters of Allya", though the larger figure may imply three or four additional groups that are regarded as dynastic branches of one of the canonical nine...

@ColeFardreamer - the geography of the "settled" area of Dathomir seems to be quite precisely laid out in Courtship, refined further by various details in Cracken's Threat Dossier, Shadow Academy and Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds...

The clans are located primarily in an area of mountains, with settlement focused in isolated from each other - Singing Mountain and the Great Canyon both appear to be on the western edge of the mountains, bordering plains to the west still dominated by wild rancors, while the Frenzied River and Red Hills are also within a few days' march; in contrast, the Imperial prison (taken over by the 4BBY-7ABY Nightsisters) is located on the opposite side of the mountains, on the edge of an eastern desert, inhabited by the reptilian Kwa; the Northern Lakes, a remote area, evidently lie further north here and represent the furthest limit of settlement.

Without checking, I think the Quin Vos comic must be set in the eastern desert. Not sure what Galaxies added to the mix?

As @ColeFardreamer says, the story in Courtship implies that Ni'Korish was still reigning during the period immediately after Episode III, and her anti-Jedi attitude doesn't necessarily imply hostility to the Sith. All of which fits neatly with the idea of Ni'Korish and Palpatine forming a tag-team at some point.

Well, you just fancast Emilia Clarke as Mara Jade, and are one step away from drawing the obvious conclusion that Mara and Salla Zend are the same character, which explains that weird thing with her and Lando too well not to love.

Oh, and Harrsk = Snoke.

Are you suggesting that cartoon!"Dathomir" is Koratas, in the same way that cartoon!"Mandalore" isn't Mandal'yaim?

I assume you followed my suggestion is that the Separatists focused entirely on the direct threat of the Nightsisters and ignored the "clan" area on a completely different continent?

This is really, I suppose, a reflection of how I think in terms of retcons - merging the narratives seems more awkward. Not everyone would necessarily agree?

This is a really good point. This actually reinforces my preference for her being Scout ("just a kid who Palpatine acquired") over a clone of Etain. She has exactly the sort of backstory you're talking about, and she became a popular character entirely on her own merits. I wouldn't be bothered if she's a Hapantine, but not everyone needs to be.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

@Trip - I see what you're saying about Mara and Shira, but I'll point out that like Mara, Shira has been raised entirely in Imperial captivity, albeit left to COMPNOR and other Imperial agencies unlike Mara who was under Palpatine's watch. Mara's upbringing was described as an experiment by Palpatine: to create an assassin who did not rely on any aspect on the Force. I like to think that if there's a connection to Shira, then Shira is the control for the experiment, because she becomes a Dark Jedi (and debatably a Sith) under Vader. On Shmi: I think the most likely fabrication of the Fels would be to link their ancestry to Palpatine in some way, or to one of the founders of the Republic like Lord Hoth or Tarsus Valorum, but I like the idea nonetheless.

@Thrawn McEwok - Interesting stuff on the geography and clans of Dathomir. One of my other hobbies is cartography, which doesn't cross over nearly enough with Star Wars. When I go back over COPL maybe I'll make a map of Dathomir's surface. Are we able to identify which clans are the original nine and who their matriarchs might be? Also, is there anything to the original clan identities for the different incarnations of the Nightsisters?

@ColeFardreamer - Lilit Arranda might be another aunt of Tash and Zak's. This reminds me, by the way: when a Shi'ido takes the form of a human, can they reproduce with a human too? Is the offspring 100% human in that case? Maybe Lilit is the adult child of Moloch Hoole and Beryl Arranda, if such a thing is possible.

 

There is also the possibility that the claim of being Allya's daughters are symbolic as they are all the recipients of Allya's teaching.

Or we could be dealing with a claim of kinship based on adaptation.

Also, any clan old enough will most likely claim that they are one of the first clans created, if not even created by Allya herself.

 

Galaxies had this map of Dathomir:




But it ramped up the nightsister count quite some and had them literally all over and in between. Still it nicely places some clans and mountain ranges, ocean to the north or seas, desert to the south of this map, but map orientation may not be up to north anyway.
It also has pockets of Singing Mountain sites outside of Singing Mountain far down or away from home.


@Golbolco I doubt Shi'ido can reproduce with humans when in human form. Essential Guides make it a bit clearer how their shaping works and that would make it not possible unless the species in general can reproduce with humans, no matter in which form. All in all, guides made their shifting abilities less than what Hoole could do in the books.


@Gamiel I like the notion of some lineage being not by blood but symbolic. Allya and her daughters always struck me as a paralell of the concept of the first Forceuser, the Skywalker, teaching the Force to his sons as some original Lucas scripts mentioned. But a lot still are related by blood I think. I wonder if those claiming lineage by affiliation only already did during Allyas time, or just later on for justification of their clans.


@Thrawn McEwok & @Trip A lot can be explained away by the moons instead of planets theories. But that is not always the best choice. Regarding Dathomirs red color in TCW, I had my own retcon that I am quite attached to: It's a seasonal thing. Spores, pollen, special stellar constellations and light or whatever colors the atmosophere red during one planetary season. We still have green plantlife in TCW even and COPL had red spots too mentioned for Dathomir itself. Given TCW spaceview has oceans, plant areas as well as desert reddish but with green, blue etc. shining through, it must be an atmospherical thing for me. I think the Essential Atlas too hinted with its depiction at something like this with more green spots in its planet art and terrain descriptions. So the different continents to separate the clans and nightsisters till work best for Dathomir. Mandalore though may require the moon theory, but even there the Essential Atlas tried to mingle TCW and Legends versions in art depiction and descriptions.


And now to my Arranda family... IF said Imperial Arranda is the daughter of a Shi'ido and has interited even only half the shaping ability, who did send her to infiltrate the Executor and why? I need this story told!

The longer he's dead, the more secret plots of Bail Organa we uncover it seems. First the Naberrie-Pallopides senate gamble, now a Shi'ido Rebel Agent on the Executor serving the Emperor. What is next?

 

Okay, this is my new headcanon now. This also explains how Maul circa Solo can have his base on "Dathomir" even though the Empire is blockading the planet. It's like how people refer to everything in the LA metropolitan area as LA.

 

If they do it because of symbolism as recipients of Allya's teaching or because of adaptation than it's likely that the begun to claim kinship during Allyas time.

You make it sound like evading a blockade is not basic stuff for a criminal organisation.

 

Uh, Trip, WTF.

You know as well as I do that Shmi can trace her ancestry all the way back to this guy.

Wait, former featured article? Wookieepedia is getting worse all the time . . . .

 

So I've been thinking about the Sunriders and the Shans lately, two of the most prominent pre-New Sith Wars families that we know of.

What's interesting with Bastila Shan is that she was originally going to be Vima Sunrider but apparently there were rights issues with the name "Sunrider." I think this came from the Databank but the archive.org links don't work anymore. I don't think it can be retconned so that they're one and the same at this point: they have radically different life histories, and Bastila appears to be a little younger than Vima would be by 3956 BBY. Isn't Bastila very recently knighted during the first KOTOR game?

But I do think it's possible that Bastila is Vima's daughter. Apparently by 2011 the Sunrider name rights were no longer an issue because Alex Irvine was writing a book titled Mandorla about Nomi and Vima. Wookieepedia has a quote from Alex Irvine from a now-dead website:

Interestingly, there's a quest in Knights of the Old Republic where we can learn that Bastila's father was a treasure hunter. Now, to be fair, this theory has two snags: for one, Irvine calls the scavenger character in his book a new character. New because we've never seen him before, or new because he's entirely new from scratch? Second, Bastila has a mother present in KOTOR named Helena. It could be retconned that Helena was a stepmother, though.

I'm not sure. We do know that Vima had children because eventually we reach her great-great-great-granddaughter Vima-Da-Boda. Also, was it not established how long ago Tales of the Jedi occurred before Dark Empire back in the day? Because there's about a 3800 year difference between the two Vimas, and yet only 6 generations. I'm not sure how to square that circle. Maybe Theron Shan gets frozen in carbonite until 200 BBY and then becomes Vima's father?

 

I'd like to connect the Shan and Sunrider families too, lets try:

I'd say it'd be easiest to attribute Helena as second name to Bastilas mother, thus Vima Helena Sunrider, marrying a treasure hunter named Shan?

Vima was born 4000BBY as per wook, Bastila has no exact birthyear. KOTOR 1 takes place 3956BBY, so Vima would be 44 years old and perfect mommy age. So yub Bastila is her and treasure boys daughter. I guess Bastila was around 18 in KOTOR?

Is it an unchangeable fact that there are 6 generations? Maybe Da-Boda's knew of their ancestors the Sunriders but not exactly how many were in between. They knew they dabbled in Sith Wars and attributed it wrongly to the last Sith War before Ruusan Reformations? Genealogy has issues like these all the time in family histories.

Another option would be that when stating their ancestry, they simply stopped after a few times greatgreatgreat... for the exact relation would be too confusing to exactly state. It just was supposed to say "its been a long while".

I'd not go to the lengths of carbonite and such if easier retcons like these exist.

The most arcane of versions may be that if indeed 6 generations only, a generation would have to be about 633 years. We know from Rell on Dathomir that 400+ years for Forceusers is possible. 600+ is too far a stretch though for several generations in succession I'd say. Carbonite has bad effects on longtermsleepers, I'd rather have Darth Rivan's timetravel during New Sith Wars involved but that is outta there too. Unless we say, long life goes with Dathomir... have a Shan stranded there until Vima Da-Boda leaves it.

 

How long before KOTOR was Revan captured by the Jedi? I think that's the event that got Bastila knighted, and usually Jedi become knights around 18-20 (Obi-Wan is explicitly a rare exception to that, I think.)

The problem with making Helena and Vima the same character is that there's no indication Helena is force-sensitive/a Jedi unless something happened during the Mandalorian wars. In fact, I think she's explicitly jealous of Bastila for being Force-sensitive? I'd have to boot up the game again sometime or find a transcript online.

The Essential Guide to Characters from 1995 says great-great-great but I suppose that could be a stand-in. Even if a generation is 633 years for this family, they're certainly not having kids only at or after 633. Vima-Da-Boda isn't particularly well aged unlike Dathomiri Witches like Augwynne and Gethzerion who only look middle-aged while they're pushing 200. Remember, a normal generation is 25 years, 633 is more like a lifespan.

What's this about Rivan's time travel, by the way? I haven't heard this one.

 

@Golbolco - you can do a little bit of inference; Courtship refers to Red Hills and Frenzied River being four days away from Singing Mountain and identifies these as the closest clan centres in 7 ABY, but in 23 ABY, Shadow Academy states that Great Canyon, the group serving serves as the basis of the Second Imperium's 23 ABY "Nightsister" project, is just three days away; Great Canyon is decisively identified as a pre-existing non-Nightsister group in Geonosis and the Outer Rim, but given their relatively simple camp-settlement and the fact that they aren't acknowledged by Augwynne in 7 ABY, I suspect that they're a newly-emerging subgroup of either Red Hills or Frenzied River, both of which are presumably "main" clans of the group of nine. The Nightsister group of 4 BBY-7 ABY is not based on any one clan, while the earlier "clan" in the Quin Vos comic could perhaps be a subgroup, not least because if they're in the desert they're on the very fringe of the settled area.

@Gamiel - what you suggest is exactly what I mean by "this sort of backstory can be invented for socio-political reasons", but I still think that the nine clans could plausibly represent nine branches of Allya's lineage, even if not in the stereotyped "nine daughters" form. In the old days, when Allya was the source of the whole Force tradition on Dathomir, that was rather axiomatic, but there are plausibly three other groups in "clan" society:

1. the associated "commoner" lineages (non-Force-sensitives) - while some of these may be descended from Allya via descendants who lacked strong Force-ability, they probably include the descendants of Allya's original followers; this is an interesting indicator of social change, as there has been a distinct increase in the percentage of Allya-descended Force-users, from a small ruling family to a substantial body of "sisters" in each of the nine clans; as a result, the "commoners", originally the backbone of this society, have been socially suppressed and perhaps also demographically weakened. The inconsistency over whether there are nine clans or a dozen probably represents the start of another phase of subdivision.

2. warrior "sisters" whose Force-sensitivity is transmitted through male intermediaries or simply expressed at random

3. descendants of other Force-users from outside "clan" society, recruited by Allya or her descendants

Each of these groups could be "synthetically" added to Allya's lineage, but don't have to.

@ColeFardreamer - hm, Courtship is very explicit that the prison is on the western edge of the desert, so for that map to be book-accurate, south has to be on the left, and west is at the top...

I don't think Mandal'yaim should be a moon, btw. I'm thinking that there are two completely different planets, quite possibly in separate systems - Mandal'yaim ("home of the Mandalorians"), the planet with Keldabe as capital and a basically republican political tradition, is presumably the original point of settlement of c. 7,000 BBY, but c. 1,000 BBY the hereditary Jedi Lords of House Viszla ( ) establish themselves at Sundari on the separate planet we see in the Clone Wars (this planet's Mando'a name may be Mandalor "leader of the Mandalorians"); this remains the political capital of the "New Mandalorian" government of the Prequel era, but may sink into obscurity afterwards; multiple Mandalorian planets are certainly a thing - Mandellia, in the same system as Mandal'yaim; Concord Dawn (the pre-reboot "Concord Dawn" may actually be the moon we see in the cartoons); Kalevala, the planet of which Satine is actually duchess; Krownest, controlled by a branch of the Viszlas.

Again, this thinking reflects my own "better to differentiate than awkwardly integrate" attitude. Some people may disagree.

@Daneira - the Imperial blockade shouldn't be established any earlier than 4 ABY, so the Empire may not have any presence at all on Dathomir in the timeframe of Solo, 10 BBY.

@Golbolco (again) - I often wondered if the rancor-filled planet of the "Ottethan warlord" who Vima-Da-Boda's daughter eloped with was originally supposed to be Dathomir. Need to dig out my Dark Empire tpb to remind myself of the original phrasing and chronology...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

@Thrawn McEwok don't you mean 4BBY instead of ABY?

Do we know the location of the Ottethan Empire of said Warlord? (PS: I always confuse Ottethan and Ottegan...) Rancors live on many worlds but none as iconic as Dathomir for them.

Edit add on: As per Essential Atlas Ottethan planet is in Outer Rim grid M-6, which is two quadrants to the west of Dathomir actually near the Braxant Run. Closer to Ithor and Ottega than anything else. Hmm..

Sidenote: Did the Drackmarian family of who Han wins the planet Dathomir in COPL ever do anything with their ownsership or was it nominal only? Maybe it was a token handed around until it ended up in their hands and belonged to the Ottethan Empire before but nobody ever bothered much with it aside handing it out to loyal followers as token gift.

Dark Empire came before COPL publishing wise so I doubt Dathomir was intended back then, but once established as Rancor homeworld it is the obvious choice in an era where they were not spread far and wide on other worlds yet as in later EU.

@Golbolco

Darth Rivan was a timetravelling sith as per wotc rpg, using the Dark Staff (Palpatines later walking stick of ROTJ). Rivan was a Revan fanboy kinda. Check wook for his full story.

IF Helena does not fit being Vima, I wonder why Vima would need a Stepmother? Vima btw also trained Meetra Surik, aka Jedi Exile. So Vima was around and not to be replaced. But given Vimas fame and grandeur I do wonder why she was absent during KOTOR and subsequent events or how to write her story around that inuniverse fact. Maybe Vima married Mr Shan, had Bastila who was training at the temple. But her mom decided to leave with Revan and Meetra for the war against Council wishes. That keeps her an epic and influential Jedi while at the same time having her off Council approved and thus later on Jedi business. It also would position Bastila to have Helena as foster mom or second wife of Mr Shan. Helena being pissed the kid is more like the mom who abandoned her for war makes sense.

So SWTOR bring on the lost tale of Vima Sunrider and how she went on to find and fight the True Sith.

Ca. 3994BBY Revan is said to be born per Wook. So.. only six years younger than Vima. So if Bastila is aged up a bit to be midtwenties (24, with Vima having her when she was 20) in KOTOR 1, that still leaves an agegap of about 14 years. Worse things exist in real life. I can see now that Bastila originally was Vima... but still the daughter gamble works.

 

I don't know if it was intended to be Dathomir, but is Ottethan actually specified to be a planet in Dark Empire, or is it just a location/descriptor that got extrapolated into a planet later? If it's the former, then "Ottetha" could be a location on Dathomir briefly controlled by a male, or maybe the pre-Allya population. @ColeFardreamer is right though; plenty of OT monsters were dropped on a dozen planets and called "native fauna."

I agree, it could be that Vima did die or otherwise was moved out of the picture during and after the Mandalorian Wars. I didn't realize she was the Exile's master, though! Vima's not old enough to have become Kreia, right? She'd be 49 by KOTOR 2 and Kreia doesn't look that young; and besides, the Exile would have recognized their original master probably. I subscribe to the Arren Kae-Kreia theory anyway, personally.

 

my impression was that the knighting usually happened post-20 years (for humans and species which similar aging).

Where is the information about their age from?

Also, you call this looking middle-age:

Interesting so do Augwynne say "There are a dozen other clans in the mountains, but even the nearest is a four-day march" [Chapter 16] and then later in Chapter 27 it's written "Han gathered sisters from all nine of Dathomir's clans for a feast the following evening". I have not read through enough of CoPL to know if that's just the author forgetting the numbers they gave earlier and the editor missing it or do they really imply that three whole clans have been destroyed?

Also it's not stated that the Red Hills and Frenzied River are the ones who are closest, just the ones to which Augwynne had sent runners asking for aid to. It could just as well mean that they are the clans that Augwynne expect aid from, not that they are closest.

To muddle up things a bit so do Ros Lai call Zalem's group a coven in Infinity's End and they are attacked by another group of witches on a slave raid. This second group have nothing that makes them look different from Zalem's group and their attitude is similar.

 

It's stated in Star Wars Galaxies I believe, referring to Gethzerion. She's "many centuries old" so at least 200?

I was thinking more of Gethzerion's depiction in SWG, but Augwynne is described as looking like she's in her 60s (okay, maybe that's pushing middle-age.)

By the way, I found evidence that Rell is the mother of Augwynne: Cracken's Threat Dossier on page 31 has Rell referred to as grandmother from Gethzerion's perspective. Could be a verbal flourish, could be another honorific, but given that in COPL Augwynne calls her mother and not grandmother, I don't know why the two would use different titles for her.

 

Some additional and very useful catches, the first two prompted by a quick flick through the book to the long reply to Gamiel that follows:

1. At the end of Courtship, Rell explains to Luke that the reason Yoda was determined to prevent the clans getting access to the Jedi training files aboard the Chu'unthor c. 400 BBY was the presence of the Nightsisters on the planet. In the context of a novel where everyone else thinks of the pre-Gethzerion problem as consisting of a small number of individual outcasts, this came as a total a surprise - but I don't think this just means the problem everyone else knows about; Rell, because she's awesome and lives out of chronological order, is talking about the Clone Wars Nightsisters here.

2. I was struck by the thought that the Dathomiri clans may have taken Jedi padawans from the Chu'unthor captive - some of the Jedi from the ship, and perhaps some further captives from Yoda's failed rescue mission c. 400 BBY, might have joined the Dathomiri clans. Good candidates for "synthetic" lineages not actually descended from Allya.

And another two points that I got when looking for age-related stuff, mostly from Cracken's Threat Dossier:

3. a New Republic report on the origins of the OT-era "Nightsisters" provides a slight retcon to the narrative - according to this version, Gethzerion and Baritha were exiled from Singing Mountain together, and then attacked by a pre-existing group of "former clan sisters" - killing most of them, they took the one survivor onto their team, and thus started the expansion of their group from a duo into a clan. This implies the existence of some sort of pre-existing "Dark Dathomiri" group outsdie "clan" society at a slightly earlier date (whether under Imperial oversight or not, whether connected to earlier "Nightsisters" or not).

4. Barakka, who Cracken's Threat Dossier establishes as Gethzerion's elder sister, is POV'd by Leia in Courtship as being "perhaps no more than thirty". This seems to be a huge understatement in terms of what's subsequently said about Gethzerion's own age. But also, and just as significantly, her appearance shows that the Palpatine-style physical effects experienced by the OT-era "Nightsisters" from excessive Force-use evidently heal fully over time...

@ColeFardreamer - yeah, I meant 4 BBY.

No, they don't. As far as I can see from a quick re-read, the other clans aren't even involved in the fighting. There's no context for the numbers to drop mid-novel.

In terms of the text, this is simply an inconsistency. Now, I have no idea whether or not the inconsistency is deliberate, but (given the carefulness of Wolverton's worldbuilding, I certainly won't rule out the possibility, and) if we take the inconsistency seriously, the distinction is between a formal gathering of nine clans and a practical reference to around twelve groups. Perhaps I was a little quick to spell out my inference (i.e., there are three or four groups that can be considered clans for practical purposes but which formally represent subgroups of the main nine) but I think I put everything on the table in terms of the fact that I was extrapolating from an inconsistency.

As to who's the closest clan to Singing Mountain - Augwynne says that the nearest clan will take four days to get to Singing Mountain, and in the next sentence, adds that she's asked Red Hills and Frenzied River to come urgently. The implication that they're the closest clans seemed so strong to me that I didn't even notice that the connection wasn't absolutely fixed - but you're technically right that this isn't fully explicit, and I'll concede that there's room for continuity manoeuvres here, if required.

Agreed, but there's nothing to identify them as Nightsisters.

Let's not forget that when Master Yoda led a mission to Dathomir, the Daughters of Allya fought the Jedi to a standstill. These ladies are pretty hardcore, and very territorial.

In terms of creative intent, the comics represent a stage in conceptual evolution between the "clan" society of Courtship and the "Nightsister" setting of the cartoons, but in terms of continuity the Prequel-era "Nightsister" setting doesn't fit into the backstory of the OT-era "clan" society.

My own preference is to try to avoid that sort of inconsistency, even if that makes the narrative more complicated - which is why I rather like the suggestion by @Iron_lord that the "clan" in the comics have been shifted out of the mainstream by the individual influence of the one character that does have clear (albeit retconned) Prequel-era "Nightsister" attributes, namely their leader.

Other people will prefer "simple" retcons which create less complicated overall narratives but cause problems for the backstories of the individual stories.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

A possibility that could be used to explain away their inhuman age, if anybody wanted to, is that in CoPL so is Allya's oldest daughter's age given in seasons, not years. So it could be possible that Gethzerion's "many centuries" of age could be of seasons, not years.

Because they have different relationships to her?

A possibility could be that the nine clans gathered in Chapter 27 for the great victory feast are all the "high clans", "great clans" or similar - the clans that uncontradictable can trace their linage to Allya (by blood or teaching) and/or the ones with greatest political power.

And if we say that the nine clans in Chapter 27 are not all clans do that open for there to be many more clans since Augwynne only say "There are a dozen other clans in the mountains" and that could imply that there are other clans outside of the mountains, possibly many other clans.

In The Wildlife of Star Wars: A Field Guide we see a Dathomirian witch, of the Charal school of dress, with a horse:


And that horse don't look like a mountain breed to me so which point to there being at lest one clan of horse using witches from the lowlands. Maybe Charal is from that group, that could explain why she dresses differently from any of the other Witches of Dathomir groups we know of.

I never said that they were identified as Nightsisters . They are identified by Yag Shushin, who's not a native, as "Rival clan -- on a man raid after breeders!"

Also while I'm talking about Infinity's End so do it introduce Dathomir, through Vos as "The planet of witches... a world steeped in the dark side... [...] The witches are castaways -- marooned her for countless generations... they use men as slaves." Then we have Mace saying "The dark side saturates Dathomir".