The Transfer...did i miss something?(Bane:DOE spoilers)

once again ***************DARTH BANE: DOE SPOILERS************ I dont like ruining things for people


ok so did i miss something? It seems pretty clear to me that BANE was the victor of the mental battle. I was just reading in the official dane forum and many people over there seem to think that Zannah came out on top. Obviously the author wants there to be a question about thier fate, but he also hands out some fairly major clues if I am not mistaken.

chapter 27, page 293
"The woman on the ground shifted,her eyes fluttering open as she rose slowly to her feet. She moved awkwardly and couldn't seem to stand up straight, as if she was unfamiliar with how her own limbs and muscles worked""The woman on the ground shifted,her eyes fluttering open as she rose slowly to her feet. She moved awkwardly and couldn't seem to stand up straight, as if she was unfamiliar with how her own limbs and muscles worked"

it does state in the sentence after that it could have been exhaustion from the battle. I think thats very Improbable. to describe something like that seems unnecessary from another charcter's view and really just seems like some foreshadowing (which brings me to part two)

Chapter 27 Page294 (last sentence)
"She couldn't help but notice that, as she was speaking, Zannah was continually clenching and unclenching the fingers on her left hand"

to me this is pretty much hitting the nail in the coffin and the culmination of the foreshadowing from the observation on the previous page. Bane had the tremor in HIS actual body...The only reason for Zannah to clench and unclench her fingers would be to test them out/marvel at how the tremor is no longer there. Just seems to me all indications point to the fact that bane successfully did the transfer.
chime in if I missed something.

p.s. this post is not to discredit the theory that part of bane or part of zannah is still left in there.

edit:blacked out book text for extra spoiler stoppage

 

Here's a question though:

At the end, Zannah says to Cognus "I am Darth Zannah, Dark Lord of the Sith." If it were Bane, why would he lie?

Factor in the fact that Mr. Karpyshyn explicitly stated that Zannah won, and that he never intended for it to be ambiguous, I don't see the issue.

The clenching of the hand was just to show that some part of Bane, some little part of his Force essence, survived in Zannah. Her Master would always be with her, but none of his consciousness survived.

 

Zannah was victorious against Darth Bane as confirmed by the author, Drew Karpyshyn on his website.
http://www.drewkarpyshyn.com/spoiler.htm

 

I just think Drew's simply left the seed of a possible story there for if and when he or another author chooses to or to not explore however they wish. It may be Bane's just "in there" as much as the thought bomb victims, a ghostly shade to taunt Zannah a bit like Muur did his hosts; it may be Bane's trapped under the surface, with Zannah one day needing to find a way to "exorcise" him out of her; or it may simply be that Zannah won and that the point will just be dropped if another author wants to skip Zannah entirely and jump straight to Cognus and Millennial.

Until such time as we get a sequel featuring Zannah, I think it's clear enough at the moment from Drew's own statements that we're just meant to take it as Zannah having won and just "absorbing Bane's energy", either in the full blown devouring way that Nihilus did, or else simply perhaps the way Bane smashed up holocrons when he was done with them to absorb whatever lingering essence there was left, or else it's simply some vague "anointment" by the dark side thing going on whereby once you become Dark Lord the great machine turns and you become greater for it (I'm thinking how LOTF made such a big deal about how becoming the Dark Lord unlocks new powers for some abstract reason).

Much like all the above though, I expect it's a hanging thread that a later story either can or cannot choose to explore at its own prerogative (e.g. perhaps Zannah will now be doubly strong, perhaps not, etc). Drew's simply been creative enough to leave open (and yet at the same time still close up) various potential ideas that work perfectly fine as they are right now, that could simply never be revisited and it not feel like we've been dropped in the middle of a story without getting a conclusion, but which also could potentially be picked up should someone want to.

Basically, I see it the same way I see Set Harth: they might choose to go after him, but if they never do it won't matter. Ditto, Bane might reappear in some form and need to be finally exorcised, but he also might not and if he doesn't that won't really matter either.

 

I simply thought right away that it would be very sith-like of Bane to not let anyone know he actually transfered to a new body. That would not exactly be a secret you would let a very very new apprentice in on. I have yet to read DK's statement that Zannah won but it seems that officially thats the story. I was unaware of DK's response thanks for the link.

 

He would lie in case his new apprentice made the same "mistake" as the first. The mistake? Waiting too long.

 

Yep, he confirmed it after the outrage and uproar of some.

Now, was it always planned this way or was it changed after the mentioned outrage and uproar?

Well, that's up to you to decide...

 

your thoughts mirror my own. i assumed that Bane would not willingly tell an apprentice of like 3 days that he knew the secret of immortality. That would just be stupid really. But i was wrong, according to Drew Zannah won, but from the hints in the book that Bane's willpower was "indominatable", i have a sneaky suspision Drew changed it because of the amount of people wanting Zannah to win. i let four of my friends read the novel, and didn't tell them what i thought. At the end, they each thought Bane was the victor of the battle. i guess that doesn't really mean anything, beacuse alot of people thought Zannah won too. I think Drew should have just let one of them be gone. for good. not Bane still in there in some, or any form. It makes me think he wasn't ready to let go of one of them, but thats just opinion. I think he could've left out the part about Zannah seemingly being unfamiliar with her limbs, there really was no need for that except to fool us.

 

Either way I am happy with the ending...well written and I love both Bane and Zannah. I hope DK keeps on writing this series with a carry over into Zannah and Cognus. Havn't seen too much Female/Female - master/apprentice combos within the sith and I for one am interested to see the havoc these two wreak upon the republic. Part of me wishes Bane would have won or gone away forever and not have a piece left over in zannah...but then the other part of me revels in Bane's Badassery

can't wait for the next one.

 

haha i agree, i'm happy with zannah winning. jesus though, when these two get their periods at the same time....zannah may end up killing cognus before she teaches her everything! nah jk. The only part of me that wants Bane in there too is if he somehow gets outta there, which would violate the ROT anyway. SO, i don't really want Bane in there, just Zannah. I really want the series to continue too, i'd LOVE to read more about the Sith!

 

Ok I've been out of Star Wars limbo a good while, so are the Sith now pulling Highlander type **** now? Is this something just Zannah and Bane did or are we to believe that the Sith lords down the road up to Palpatine did the whole, "There can be only one," type thing?

 

Umm... well, more like "there can be only two", but yeah. From Bane/Zannah till Sidious/Vader there were never more than 2 Sith Lords at any one time, or at least not for very long. It's the Rule of Two and has been around since at least when the Prequals came out.

 

The book was finished a long time before the spoilers came out, and the spoilers were based on the printed release. So there's no way he could have changed it "after the uproar". Even if changing the book to quell "outrage" had been physically possible, it would have been a terrible idea and would have set a bad precedent.

 

Well, for those who read the link, it's fairly explicit:

I?ll be honest; I thought it was pretty clear in my writing. I wrote the scene from Cognus?s point of view to keep you guessing to the last instant, but when Zannah proclaims ?Darth Bane is gone. I am Darth Zannah, Dark Lord of the Sith and your new Master,? I thought it would be pretty clear.

Drew does, however, address as to why some people may have read it the wrong way:

The second odd assumption you have to make to think Bane destroyed Zannah is to assume that you are dealing with an unreliable narrator. Once Zannah identifies herself, I refer to her as ?her? and ?Zannah? throughout the scene. To believe Bane took over, you have to assume that I am intentionally misleading you throughout that scene for a cheap GOTCHA moment at the end. But I?ve never done that in any of the previous Bane novels. The narrator has always played fair with the reader, and I think it would be unfair to suddenly change that in the last few pages of a trilogy. Unfortunately, ?twist? endings have become so prevalent recently that I think people assume narrators are unreliable now by default; the narrative paradigm has been flipped on its head. (I blame M. Night Shyamalan.)

End of story.

 

I know that, I'm talking about the whole transfer thing. Sounds to Highlander to be. What did Bane and Zannah do? With Bane defeated did Banes power transfer to Zannah?

 

These quotes are what led me to believe that Bane had taken over Zannah's body on my 1-3 read throughs of the novel.



"The air hissed and crackled as it was split time and time again by the crimson blade that had become and extension of his INDOMITABLE will"

"But where Bane's brutal childhood and savage upbringing in the mines of Apatros had taught him to fight to survive, had helped forge his INDOMITABLE SPIRIT, the miserable curs she had encountered
on Doan were weak,deserving nothing better than servitude."

"However, it was possible to circumvent the gatekeeper...but only one strong enough to survive the attempt. If Bane's WILL faltered, or if the power of Andeddu's holocron was more than he could handle, then his mind would be
destroyed"

"Bane let his WILL invade the small four sided talismen just as he himself had invaded the stronghold of andeddu's cult back on Prakith"
"BAne welcomed the pain,feeding on it and transforming it along with all the frustration and anger he had built up over the past four days into a raging, swirling storm of dark side energy"
"Then, bit by bit, he began to impose order on the chaos, bending it to his WILL.

"But bane's will was as strong as his body"

And here is the smack daddy of them all to me, as this tested his will against one of Zannah's strongest spells, she was in deep concentration, focusing all of her energy on the attack. Yet Bane beat her:

"That didn't mean he was unprepared however. Dark side sorcery was complex; it attacked the psyche in ways that were difficult to describe, and even MORE difficult to defend against. Bane had NO talent for it,
yet he had done his best to study the techniques. WHAT HE LEARNED WAS THAT THE ONLY REAL COUNTER WAS THE VICTIM'S STRENGTH OF WILL."

Bane threw off that attack by Zannah. His willpower beat hers. These quotes (i'm not sure if there are more in the book) are what led me to believe that Drew was setting Bane up to win the final battle of WILLS.
That is what makes me have a SLIGHT suspicion Drew MAY have changed the ending. Nothing is to stop him from posing a page at the last instant saying that Zannah was the true victor, but yes, it probably didn't happen.
He could have just as easily come out and said that Bane won, and that he was only keeping it from Cognus so that she wouldn't back out (who wants a master that may be able to take her body??) Alas, Zannah won the duel though, in the end,
but if someone, anyone can find a quote in the book that relates to ZANNAH'S willpower being uber powerful, as it was mentioned about Bane so much, please post it. Cos i can't find it so far. It doesn't make sense to me for Drew to
build up Bane's "will" like that, only to have it beaten in the end. There may be some reason for it, or he could've just done it on accident and not noticed that he was building bane up when he was going through and editing it like 50 times. who knows...either way zannah won this....i'm still really confused about it though. If i could find one instance where Zannah's willpower is shown off, i would rest in peace at night.

 

i agree...even though DK said he thought it was a straightforward ending...it was misleading. I liked it, but it left room for more. For him to say we were butchering his narrator, i feel is unfair. Yes i agree he has not decieved us before...the last chapter alone left a couple misleading hints...even if unintended. I am glad there is at least a solid statement telling us what the truth of the matter is. i love DK and hope he continues to write the sith books from here to pleaguis i think drew would be more than up to the challenge to give us a satisfying trilogy of our most sought after sith lord.

 

yeah i second that for sure, he's probably in my top 3 SW writers as far as giving you a good story

 

I imagine they're referring to the interpretation of the text, rather than the text itself. I know I was tempted to make a number of jokes about Drew leaving it ambiguous but-slightly-hinting-at-Bane's-victory just so he could see the reaction and what he could get away with.

They were pretty rubbish jokes, mind you.

 

yep, you're right, atleast on my part, i can't speak for the other dude.

 

Sure, I'd love to read the next one too! I like Cognus already.

 

Yeah cognus does seem pretty bad ass, i can't wait to see her get better at disrupting the force and being able to tune zannah down, then foresee zannah's next move, then just murder the crap outta her, as we know she does since its pretty much for sure she takes millenial. Who knows though, we may never see how zannah and cognus's master/apprentice thing goes

 

But for there to be popular interpretations of the text, the text must be finished and released by that point, so it's then too late to change anything. So the scenario imagined in which Drew changed things as a result of "uproar" would be physically impossible ( without red matter, that is ). That's all I was saying, but I may have misunderstood what the other posters were getting at.

 

DBTI... what about Serra?
Bane thought her will was too strong to risk the transfer with her... and even mused that the best candidate would be someone younger, innocent even. Zannah wasn't young, or innocent... and I doubt her willpower was less than that of Caleb's daughter. If it was, then Zannah was not worthy of being Bane's apprentice in the first place.

Remember that Drew wrote the ambiguity (of the end) from Cognus' POV, not the narrator's or the 2 main protagonists'. Cognus could only *guess* where Bane ended up, and her guess was quickly denounced by the true victor.

 

Serra is a good point, but it still doesn't really have anything to do with building Zannah up. Bane's will was built up alot(as my post way above says) and rather than that one paragraph about serra, there's nothing downing his willpower. I'm looking for something that mentions Zannah's willpower being so strong and uber powerful and whatnot, as if Drew was gonna put all that about bane, why wouldn't he put atleast one thing about Zannah too? True, Zannah's willpower PROBABLY wasn't stronger than serra's, but i'm not sure. Serra did have a rock hard determination. Zannah's willpower was obviously stronger than Bane's of course, but why not put anything about it to help the reader out. i mean if you read all those quotes about Bane, wouldn't you think his willpower was the SH**? I know i would and did, that's the whole reason i thought Bane was the victor, because his willpower was built up so much. He used it to conquer several times, and then even used it to throw off Zannah's spell. Idk, maybe it was just a slip in Drew's writing, or maybe he did it on purpose(to what purpose that is, i don't know) And also, what would be the point of keeping some part of Bane in there? Just to give Zannah more ambition? i don't think it'd be worth that. Who knows, maybe Drew wasn't ready to let go of Bane, although i highly doubt there's enough of him there to actually say its him, and not just an imprint. Hell, if Drew wanted to be a dick, he could somehow make Bane resurface, take the arm that had been hewn off, and clone his body again, but there would be NO point in that. I'm just rambling. I just don't see what Zannah needs that Bane had if she managed to thwart him in their Duel anyway. I mean Bane did say she had the potential to overthrow him, so why even put the line about Zannah's hand clenching? It could all come down to him just wanting to get another book bout the sith, who knows!!