Clone Wars

The Clone Wars are invoked as a chronological landmark in the account of Dathomir’s recent past. The narrative situates the Nightsisters’ and Nightbrothers’ alliance with the Sith in the years leading up to the conflict, while tying that era to an earlier attempt to strike at Coruscant through the Infinity Gate.

Dathomir Before the Conflict

In the years before the Clone Wars, the Nightsisters and Nightbrothers—orders made up of outcasts from existing tribes, many of them human–Zabrak hybrids—had allied themselves with the Sith. Their history also included an attempt to destroy Coruscant, then the Republic’s seat, using the interstellar portal known as the Infinity Gate. The episode places Dathomir’s Force-using orders within a wider political and military struggle without detailing the course of the Clone Wars themselves.

The Jedi Response and Its Aftermath

The Jedi defeated the orders and destroyed the Star Temple on Dathomir that contained the Gate. That destruction, rather than a narrated battle in the Clone Wars, is the account’s concrete turning point. Thirteen years later, Dathomir remained all but quarantined. The novel notes that this isolation was unfair to the majority of the planet’s clans, even as it describes them as unfriendly and observes that the planet lacked resources or strategic importance likely to attract the Empire.

Narrative Function

The Clone Wars provide historical scale for the discussion: the failed attack on Coruscant and the Jedi destruction of the Star Temple belong to Dathomir’s prewar past, while the planet’s isolation persists into the present of the narrative. This compressed history also distinguishes the Nightsisters and Nightbrothers from the broader clans and places their Sith alliance in the lead-up to the conflict, rather than presenting it as a general account of Dathomir or of the war itself.