Fanclub Dathomir Fan Club - from kwa to witches!

Then "never concede to evil" is an in universe maxime and thus subject to bias of its contributers as well.

 

It's possible that Dathomir history in general is somewhat shrouded in myth.

 

If she died when her daughter was 16, how could she change her coda to never concede to evil and repent at the birth of her granddaughter? Does this confirm her daughter was/is pregnant at age 15/16??? I need quotes for proof please!


Regarding the feeding to Rancors. We know them as hungry beasts from ROTJ but COPL makes it clear they are semisentient, would not be ridden by darksiders like Nightsisters AND Rancors are matriarchal. So how can any witch dark or not feed men and children to Rancors that are intelligent enough to not eat them and unwilling to work with darksiders? Explain that to me!
Did they force Rancors to go hungry like Jabba did so they would devour them? That be pretty dark and clearly nightsister then. Or does in fact "throw them to the Rancors to feed on them" not literally mean to have them eaten but rather abandoned to the jungle and roaming Rancor herds that might feed on them if hungry enough, but more likely is it they escaped until recaptured by other clans! Unless too young like kids or babies that might not survive the wilderness on their own!

 

Outside of prime source COPL and the books there are many overlooked sources with interesting details to reread and discuss here. WOTC rpg guides offer quite some stints into Dathomir and Witch lore as well as several guides, essential and else, too. But first and most overlooked I want to adress Star Wars Galaxies MMO:

This game packed a lot of lore, maps and its accompanying digital card game too had its own stories and interesting implications.

Real world wicca witchcraft transported to the world of Dathomir gives us the triple deity of the Witches long before the Book of Sith expands on a Mortis connection. Real world witches know of "The Mother, the Maiden and the Crone" depicted as a woman in three stages of her life, young, middle aged, and old. You can google it and read up on it. The same exists for Dathomiri, named the same even, and Galaxies had banners depicting them and named for them all over it.


And one of my fav TCW Dathomir lore bits is that dathomiri chants and language are derrived from ancient german magic chants like "Merseburger Zaubersprüche" in style and sound.

 

"This account claims that Dathomiri society was forged in a single generation, and traces the ancestry of every Human on the planet to a single mother and her daughters—the eldest of whom was said to have been just sixteen local years old (about twenty standard years) when her Jedi mother died"

Qoute from the wook but I think I also read it in that Cracken´s dossier I quoted earlier.

In YJK the nighstsisters ride Rancors no problem, same in Forces of Corruption. But even if not Rancors are canivours so if the witches feed them with humans instead of animals I´m not sure they would really make a difference, or maybe the men are killed, drugged beforehand.

 

thx, I like local Dathomir years. I wonder if timeliners considered the differences when calculating character ages for other Dathomiri.

 

Yes please. The Galaxies MMO is one of the representations of Dathomir where I have a real white spot.

Acording to the Wook' so was it in Cracken's Threat Dossier that it was established that Dathomir had a longer year than Earth.

But this is presented as something new, just like that they were not visibly marked by their use of the dark side, did not need to chant and/or gesticulate to use their magic and allowed males into their group. All this probably come from adapting Brakiss greater understanding of the Force.

You really don't want your animals to begin to see humans as food, one day they might decide that somebody you care about looks tasty.

 

Maybe, and while they say its a new group they say with no word that riding Rancors is new with them. So maybe the claim they don´t in Courtship is wrong. Again Forces of Corruption set between episodes 5 and 6 shows them riding Rancors as well. So I guess it would come down to wich sources to accept and wich not. In Courtship we here what the witches claim, in FoC we see the oppositte so I would say as a source its more relaible.

I don´t think the authors think that far, also don´t they let the Rancors in general devour the bodies of fallen enemies?

 

Regarding riding and feeding Rancors: COPL talks about Rancor intelligence and how Rancors learned from witches to use armor and weapons, as well as other stuff even and in return allowed them to ride them. It's very symbiotic a bond and requires the Force communication witches also use amongst each other in COPL for not all are used to using talk.

So yes, these kind of Rancors would never allow Nightsisters to claim and use them. Others maybe might, especially if raised from birth by Nightsisters and not naturally in a herd. Also, not all Rancors had contact and learned from witches. So there are untamed versions out in the wild that despite intelligence are not so friendly to outsiders. Still I do not see the good witches force Rancors to eat humans as I explained earlier. Nightsisters might, and wild rancors might if hungry, but in order to let the tamed Rancors eat humans they'd have a system of telling them which humans are good and not to be eaten and who they can munch on. Rancors are intelligent and could learn, maybe only a special sacrifice place for that or they are taught to only hunt outside clanland, so once someone is pushed over the boarder he is fair game. But I still do not see Rancors feeding on them on clangrounds close by home. Out in the wild with a chance of survival even if slim is most logical.




Another observation from COPL before later usage muddied the waters and added here and there to their history:

Hapes and Dathomir both are not only female dominated amazon societies, they both are isolated from the galaxy. One by choice, the other by force. The technological more modern seeming society ends up being more backstabbing and evil-ish than the backwater natureloving society which even is open to change, settlement and interaction with the larger world outside their world. Both societies are said to having had contact with the Jedi, Dathomir via Chuuntor and Yoda, even Allyas exile. Hapes via Order 66 refugees seeking a safe haven and being betrayed and slaughtered, or if more ancient, the ancient past conflicts of Jedi and Sith that lead to Hapes closing its boarders keeping to itself.
There are many more such paralells even! The entire story is crafted like that.
Isolder loves Leia, Teneniel loves Luke. Isodler and Teneniel end up together, Luke and Leia... well lets not go there, they had 4 years of fun before Kenobis joke was up thx to Yoda spoiling it. But more seriously: Isolder and Teneniel are both runaways kinda that flirt with changing their societies and very dominant mothers. Hapes and Dathomir show two different kinds of beauty which are in contrast to each other: Hapes is glamor due to breeding, medical tech and genecontrol whereas Dathomir is rough natural no-makeup, strong women beauty. Dathomir and Hapes are a special kind of Yin and Yang where not male and female is paired but two different kinds of female.

I wish we would get a modern COPL type story with modern problems of representation, diversity, equality and gender adressed. How would transgender people fare in Hapes or Dathomir? LGBTQ+ in Hapes or Dathomir? Is there a Hapan culture where men have to wear a burka? When will Aphra go to both these places to tell us?

(crossposted the last bit to the Hapes topic for relevance)

 

The RL explanation is that most people using Dathomir after CoPL only read a short synopsis about the planet and the witches and there it was not stated that rancorns don't allow nightsisters to read them.

I don't remember that part.

Yes nightsisters steering broken and beaten rancorns with the treat of pain feel in character and don't really go against CoPL since the rancorn would not do it under normal circumstances.

I have some points about this but I need to think them throng and do some resource first.

Possibly, but I think it's very likely that there is a culture where males go veiled and/or the nobility treat their menfolk like great treasures and are often kept hidden behind locked doors - similar to how the Russian royal family and nobility treated their women during some periods.

Soon hopefully.

---------------------------------------------------

In CoPL it's stated that:

(quote from my pdf)

And I was thinking that even if the rancorns are dangers so could they not alone be behind that the pre-Allya Dathomirians was "nearly hunted to extinction". What other dangers on Dathomir do we know of?

Also it very possible that the areas on Dathomir that Leia, Han, Luke and Isolde move around on are all within clan territories and that means most likely that any highly dangerous animals and plants have been removed from the area or are actively hunted by the witches if they enter. If this hypothesis is true so would that mean that there are many areas on Dathomir that are much more dangerous.

 

Plenty of other dangers! Dathomir had a Sith Alchemy Academy during the New Sith Wars... so sithspawn aplenty roaming some areas. Could even be mutated Rancors and else. Tukata? Leviathans leftovers? Terrentateks? Guess the Academy Zoo got loose...

Even before that Paecian Empire used Dathomir as a prison dump I think. Other non-living dangers may include Kwa leftover tech like Startemples, pyramids and ancient sites later Witches tried to excavate and reactivate.

Past wars may have left some radioactive wastelands maybe that unsuspecting folks wander into...

 

From FFGs latest sourcebook Collapse of the Republic:

 

Just wondering, where was it stated that it was a Sith Alchemy Academy? Becouse the Wook' just call it a Sith Academy, and presented it more as a warrior training facility.

And I have to say that I was more thinking of native threats.

Since it has been a thousand years and then some since then so would I say that most of them have died of old age by now. Unless some of them was able to bread...

(Tuk'ata) I personally have always seen them more as tomb guardians and maybe royal beasts than real war beasts or something lowly middle management Siths had around but it's possible.

I don't see it as likely that a Sith academy had any since they are so hard to control. But if they had any so are they most likely dead by now since they would be competing with the rancors for the same prey and if any had survived to the time of the witches so would they be hunted down

I have hard to see them dumping more than people on Dathomir, but than again since they all was convicts and criminals so was probably many of them ruthless, vicious killers. No longer of any danger but a certain threat in their lifetimes.

As seen in Inifinity's End.

Possible and if so most likely marked by warning stones all around it.

Cool.

 

Sith Alchemy Academy is if I recall right from the Darth Bane novels by Drew Kapryshn himself. The book said something about alchemy and warriors as focus of the academy both I think. It was just one line mentioned in passing.

 

https://boards.theforce.net/threads...alker-solo-clan.50051792/page-5#post-55897976

Dathomir relevant discussions lately in this topic, shall we crosspost some intel here or discuss it there?

 

I think crossposting is best.

 

feel free to copy paste what you need then. Its a lot though!

 

*Sight* that you have to do all work yourself

Here are the relevant quotes (I think):

 

I think we need to construct a rough timeline of the Nightsisters’ formation and dissolution. Some sources say Gethzerion founded the Nightsisters in the last days of the Republic/first days of the Empire but Republic and The Clone Wars both contradict this. Could Gethzerion have been the founder/leader starting centuries before COPL, and then Talzin, Zalem and others operated as her minions? And when all of the purges happened, Gethzerion reassembled the various survivors and exiles into one coven, which was destroyed in 8 ABY?

 

Given that Teneniel Djo can remember the times when Gethzerion was an ordinary clan member and not a Nightsister, I doubt it.

I'd go with "Gethzerion refounded the Nightsisters."

 

RL answer: beside KJA so had non of the people who used Dathomir actually read CoPL and most likely only read the most basic of synopsis, like "Dathomir is a planet ruled by rancor riding Force using witches, the dark side using ones are called Nightsister."

IU answer: no idea since so much of the stuff using Dathmoir after CoPL contradict much of the stuff established in it.

Also I feel that this is a good time to repost my old post about the different incarnations of the Nightsisters (I had originally planed to first create a now post about the different incarnations/depictions about the standard witches):

Note: All bellow is how I how understood it and I can be mistaken and/or have missed something.

The witches of Dhatomir and the nightsisters have gone through many different incarnations before appearing in tCW: When they were first introduced in the Courtship of Princess Leia (1994) the witches was powerful Force-users who needed to chant and/or gesticulate to work their magic; they seemed to be at an iron age level technological but used piece of scavenged high-tech without problems (even if the items we saw them use were rather simple) or any special reverence. The term nightsister meant a which who was dealing in "dark magic" and seemed to be a synonym with outcast. They were quickly physically marked by their use of the dark side and rancors would not allow them to ride on their back. They had not been organised until mother Gethzerion come along.

depiction of Gethzerion from The Essential Guide to Characters (1995)


Next time they appeared was in the Young Jedi Knight (1995-1998) series were they had been recreated with the help of the "imperial jedi" Brakiss, those new nightsisters were not visibly marked by their use of the dark side, did not need to chant and/or gesticulate to use their magic and could ride rancors - this probably come from adapting Brakiss greater understanding of the Force. They also allow males into their group.
The nightsisters was this time lead by Tamith Kai:

depiction from the cover of Young Jedi Knights: Shadow Academy

The nightsisters appeared again in the comic Darth Maul (2000) were we have a nightsister, Mighella, who works for the Underlord of Black Sun as his bodyguard and enforcer. She is shown to be able to use Force lightning without chanting or gestures and is the first we see who sports the modern nightsister-look.


The 'sisters were used again in the PT-era in the Republic comic storyline Infinity's End (2000-2001) that takes place on Dathomir. Here we see no other witches then the nightsister, who are organised like a clan (and there seems to be more then one nightsister clan), the only males we see are spacer outsiders. They are able to cast their spells without chanting or gestures and have their hands on technology like Proximity shield, Fire blade, droids, repurposed spaceships and whatever it was that Yongti used as a weapon. They are also shown riding on rancorns and sport a look inspired by Mighella.


They were lead by mother Zalem


Later in the Galaxies (2003-2011) MMORPG Dathomir was one of the planets you could visit and you could meet people from the Singing Mountain and Howling Crag clan and the nightsisters who had begun to organize themselves under mother Gethzerion and I understand that it also introduced a some kind of splinter group to Gethzerion's nightsisters called the Spiderclan. I never played Galaxies so I can not really comment on it and how this incarnation was different/the same from earlier. But they gave Gethzerion a new look:


Here are some pics of other nightsisters (I think)


The nightsisters played a role in the Empire at War: Forces of Corruption (2006) video game. Here they were able to control and ride on rancors and the nightsister group you, as the crimeboss Tyber Zann, dealt with was lead by the energywhip wielding Silri. To my understanding some of the "good" witch clans were mentioned but I don't know if they appeared in the game since I have not played it.


In the Galaxies TCG expansion The Nightsister's Revenge (2009) so did the witches play a prominent role with representatives from both the Singing Mountain clan, Gethzerion's nightsisters, the Spiderclan and the exiled nightsister Kyrisa who was show to use a lightsabre and ride a rancor. They also appeared in the Galactic Hunters (2009) expansion. The exiled nightsister Kyrisa, who used a lightsabre, was to my understanding one of the main character of this set:


Here is a depiction of a Spiderclan member from the set:


and here are some of the other illustrations from the game:


There is also Charal from Ewoks: Battle for Endor (1985) who was retconed into being a Dathomirian nightsister at some point and we see women from Dathomir dressed like her in the Wildlife of Star Wars: A Field Guide book.

There is also probably some other pre-TCM Dathomir/witches representations that I have missed.

 

Thx for the great writeup, I planned doing something along the lines but now I just keep yours

Regarding the Shadow Academy and Zekk training under Tamith Kai... does that mean that indirectly he was a male Nightsister? A Nightbrother? He was not on Dathomir but trained among the offworld Second Imperium Nightsisters and brothers at Brakkis Academy. Never considered him to be anything but a regular darksider with Dark Jedi training but now it intrigues me how much of Dathomir was in his training. And if he and Tenel Ka ever had a bond due to shared dathomir connections and training afterwards when he was with the YJK friends.


Also an add to your above article:

With the Prequels came abandoned concept art of a Sith Witch as one concept for a female Darth Maul or Dooku, whose design the EU took and ran with to redesign the Nightsisters of Prequel times accordingly. Lucas seemed to like these comics and lifted from them not just Quinlan and Aayla for his movies but also the witches for TCW.
Another design for Sith Witches, female darksiders, was that which CW rebirthed into Asajj Ventress who originally was not tied to Dathomir at all. Later TCW though connected her to the Nightsisters and combined it with her previous backstory, as well as tying Darth Maul to Dathomir as well. The rest is history.
Ironically, blink and you'll miss them horned Nightsisters in comic art existed even before the Zabrak/Dathomiri connection was ever established.


Also you missed the game(s) Jedi Alliances and another one, set during TCW that featured Nightsisters working with the Separatists. It has a cameo of Ros Lai helping the Jedi even.

 

Zekk wasn´t trained by Tamith Kai at all, that´s actually a plot point. He was Brakiss favored student, while Vilas was Tamith Kai´s, so both boys were pawns in the rivalry between the two leaders/teachers. Zekk eventually kills Vilas.
So no there wasn´t really any Nighstsister influence on him.

 

Something that might be interesting is that in Infinity's End do Ros Lai call Zalem's group a coven.

actually they do in Shadow Academy

Something that interesting is that Augwynne in her talk about the new Nightsisters not only mention that they train males, ride rancorns and are unmarked by the dark side but also mention that they dress like warriors. This is actually not I have thought about until rereading that part of the Shadow Academy: In CoPL so are the Nigthsisters presented as spellcasters and -casters while the Singing Mountain clan's witches was warriors at the same time they were witches, so the concept that Nightsisters as warrior-witches (which is their standard presentation from at least Mighella) was possibly not part of the original Nightsister concept.

CoPL, chapter 16: "The witches' husbands worked silently, dressed in tunics of woven plant fibers, serving meals to the women so quietly that Han almost felt as if they must be communicating telepathically."

No mention of any horns.

Also in Infinity's End a group of witches not afflicted with Zalem attacking Zalem's group's slave pens and they were only looking for "healthy humans".

What do you base this thesis of "all but confirmed" on?

border lines on a void map just shows how far a interstellar realm spans. It don't need to mean that all of the planets within that border line belongs to that realm. Also, which one of all the Sith Empires are you talking about.

possibly

What do you bases this thesis on?

I think one or more of the RPG or fact books have mentioned that the Force has a strong presence on Dathomir.

Not established, told. All we got is oral history.

At least in that area.

Can you expand on this?

They were not presented as such in CoPL, the nigthsisters were the one who was a ragtag bunch of outcasts made into a society by Gethzerion who lived in conquered territory while the Singing Mountain clan had history and organisation and their own made clan-keep.

Do we know that any other Dathomirian who was really old or slowly aging? My impression was that Rell was something rather unusual

Can you give any examples?

Do we know if the offspring can be of any gender or is it just girls? Also, if the later: is the offspring genetically a clone or not?

Why do you think your suggested implication is most obvious?

That's racist.

If we want to have some kind of explanation that fit TCW, Infinity's End, Galaxy, CoPL and all the other appearances of Dathomir together so would I say that the easiest is that Dahtoimir is a planet with at least TCW, Infinity's End, and CoPL taking place on different parts of the world.

Depends on how many of them was marooned, if any of them know any life expanding techniques, and if they did breed. Also on how many was willing to abound the Sith teaching of "me first" and "kill the guy who's in my way" to actually functionally work together.

or at least some of their teachings could have influenced them

possibly but not likely since the witches of Dathmoir did not know about the dark side in CoPL, but than again it was mentioned in Infinity's End

possibly but than you have to ask why they did not step forward earlier and created personal kingdoms from the marooned prisoners who was supposedly practically defenceless before Allya

What do you base this on?

No mention of it in the Wook'

Not according to the Wook'

What do you base this thesis on?

There is also adaptation and marriages from outside of the clan.

What do you base this thesis on?

No, Augwynne is the matriarch. Rell is the much honoured elder.

No.

Or maybe Luke sow some wild oats during his pre-marriage times?

He is technically nameless but we do know of Ros Lai's father.

At least one group of nightsisters had spaceships in Infinity's End

Or they could belong to different groups and possibly even different territories. After all Zalem's* group was raided by another clan of witches out for male human slaves.
* (which I now just realise is likely a reference to Salem, Massachusetts)

not to my knowledge.

Could be that Dathomir don't have a last name culture but Hapes has so Teneniel Djo decided that for simplicities sake so is the last part of her name now juridical her last name.

Not my assumption. To me it's more likely that some of the clans are splinter groups from older clans while other in practise already existed before Allya and sent women to learn magic from her or one of her students / student's students.

They was only called a clan by Tenel Ka, I think, when she + Luke meet three guards protecting the territory the the Nightsister/Imperials occupied. Don't think they were called clan any other time but maybe they were considered one and we don't know what happened to them after the fall of Shadow Academy

I think you are right.

What do you mean with that "She's been marooned on Dathomir since 96BBY"?

Do we know that the Kwa Temple on Singing Mountain ground is the same Kwa Temple see in Infinity's End?

Have to admit that I often saw Mingella's markings as face paint more than tattoos.

I think so to but don't have anything to back it up with.

Good then that Palpatine is not a Jedi

It's probably at least all the land around their village within a days rancor ride. Possibly with some good areas a bit farther away that they claim the right to and are able to protect.

It's possibly that some areas are charade with other clans but each clan only have right to it during a certain period.

most likely so is there clan territory not border to border but there is an area of neutral ground between them.

or maybe the River clan only control one of the rivers surrounding Singing Mountain land?

CoPL establish that Dathmoir witches very easily develop something like varicose veins when they use the dark side.

Will have to disagree here, then only females with something horn like on their head in Infinity's End was Yongti who did not belong to Zalem's group and Zalem herself and in both cases I think it's head ornament.

Also Yongti's group was only interested in taking human males

 

Galaxies map for Dathomir... its not perfect, has Singing Mountain outposts all over and way too many Nightsister settlements even too close to singing mountain.