{"product_id":"dark-lord-star-wars-legends-isbn-9780593974322","title":"Dark Lord: Star Wars Legends","description":"\u003cb\u003eAnakin Skywalker–the Chosen One–is dead. In his place rises Darth Vader, who now hunts what Jedi survived the desctruction of their temple on Coruscant.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e From the site of Anakin Skywalker’s last stand–on the molten surface of the planet Mustafar, where he sought to destroy his friend and former master, Obi-Wan Kenobi–a fearsome specter in black has risen. Once the most powerful Knight ever known to the Jedi Order, he is now a disciple of the dark side, a lord of the dreaded Sith, and the avenging right hand of the galaxy’s ruthless new Emperor. Seduced, deranged, and destroyed by the machinations of the Dark Lord Sidious, Anakin Skywalker is dead . . . and Darth Vader lives.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWord of the events that created him–the Jedi Council’s failed mutiny against Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, the self-crowned Emperor’s retaliatory command to exterminate the Jedi Order, and Anakin’s massacre of his comrades and Masters in the Jedi Temple–has yet to reach all quarters. On the Outer Rim world of Murkhana, Jedi Masters Roan Shryne and Bol Chatak and Padawan Olee Starstone are leading a charge on a Separatist stronghold, unaware that the tide, red with Jedi blood, has turned suddenly against them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the three narrowly elude execution–and become the desperate prey in a hunt across space–it’s neither clone soldiers, nor the newly deployed stormtroopers, nor even the wrath of the power-hungry Emperor himself they must fear most. The deadliest threat rests in the hideously swift and lethal crimson lightsaber of Darth Vader–behind whose brooding mask lies a shattered heart, a poisoned soul, and a cunning, twisted mind hell-bent on vengeance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor the handful of scattered Jedi, survival is imperative if the light side of the Force is to be protected and the galaxy somehow, someday reclaimed. Yet more important still is the well-being of the twin infants, Leia and Luke Skywalker, the children of Anakin and his doomed bride, Padmé Amidala. Separated after Padmé’s death, they must be made safe at all costs, lest the hope they represent for the future be turned to horror by the new Sith regime–and the unspeakable power of the dark side.\u003cb\u003eJames Luceno \u003c\/b\u003eis the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eStar Wars: Labyrinth of Evil, Star Wars:\u003c\/i\u003e The New Jedi Order \u003ci\u003eThe Unifying Force\u003c\/i\u003e, and other\u003ci\u003e Star Wars\u003c\/i\u003e novels. He lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with his wife and youngest child.\u003cb\u003eMurkhana. Final Hours of the Clone Wars\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Dropping into swirling clouds conjured  by Murkhana’s weather stations,  Roan Shryne was reminded of meditation sessions  his former Master had  guided him through. No matter how fixed Shryne had been on  touching the  Force, his mind’s eye had offered little more than an eddying whiteness.   Years later, when he had become more adept at silencing thought and  immersing himself  in the light, visual fragments would emerge from that  colorless void—pieces to a  puzzle that would gradually assemble themselves  and resolve. Not in any conscious  way, though frequently assuring him that  his actions in the world were in accord  with the will of the Force.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Frequently but not always.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When he veered from  the course on which the Force had set him, the  familiar white would once again be  stirred by powerful currents; sometimes  shot through with red, as if he were lifting  his closed eyes to the glare  of a midday sun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Red-mottled white was what he  saw as he fell deeper into Murkhana’s  atmosphere. Scored to reverberating thunder;  the rush of the wind; a  welter of muffled voices . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He was standing closest  to the sliding door that normally sealed the troop  bay of a Republic gunship, launched  moments earlier from the forward hold  of the Gallant—a Victory-class Star Destroyer,  harried by vulture and  droid tri-fighters and awaiting High Command’s word to commence  its own  descent through Murkhana’s artificial ceiling. Beside and behind Shryne   stood   a platoon of clone troopers, helmets fitting snugly over their heads,  blasters  cradled in their arms, utility belts slung with ammo magazines,  talking among themselves  the way seasoned warriors often did before  battle. Alleviating misgivings with inside  jokes; references Shryne  couldn’t begin to understand, beyond the fact that they  were grim.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The gunship’s inertial compensators allowed them to stand in the  bay  without being jolted by flaring anti-aircraft explosions or jostled by the   gunship pilots’ evasive maneuvering through corkscrewing missiles and  storms of  white-hot shrapnel. Missiles, because the same Separatists who  had manufactured  the clouds had misted Murkhana’s air with anti-laser  aerosols.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Acrid odors  infiltrated the cramped space, along with the roar of the aft  engines, the starboard  one stuttering somewhat, the gunship as battered as  the troopers and crew it carried  into conflict.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Even at an altitude of only four hundred meters above sea level  the cloud  cover remained dense. The fact that Shryne could barely see his hand in   front of his face didn’t surprise him. This was still the war, after all,  and he  had grown accustomed these past three years to not seeing where he  was going.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nat-Sem, his former Master, used to tell him that the goal of the  meditative  exercises was to see clear through the swirling whiteness to  the other side; that  what Shryne saw was only the shadowy expanse  separating him from full contact with  the Force. Shryne had to learn to  ignore the clouds, as it were. When he had learned  to do that, to look  through them to the radiant expanse beyond, he would be a Master.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Pessimistic by nature, Shryne’s reaction had been: Not in this lifetime.  Though  he had never said as much to Nat-Sem, the Jedi Master had seen  through him as easily  as he saw through the clouds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Shryne felt that the clone troopers had a better  view of the war than he  had, and that the view had little to do with their helmet  imaging systems,  the filters that muted the sharp scent of the air, the earphones  that  dampened the sounds of explosions. Grown for warfare, they probably  thought  the Jedi were mad to go into battle as they did, attired in tunics  and hooded robes,  a lightsaber their only weapon. Many of them were astute  enough to see comparisons  between the Force and their own white plastoid  shells; but few of them could discern  between armored and unarmored  Jedi—those who were allied with the Force, and those  who for one reason or  another had slipped from its sustaining embrace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Murkhana’ s lathered clouds finally began to thin, until they merely veiled  the planet’s wrinkled  landscape and frothing sea. A sudden burst of  brilliant light drew Shryne’s attention  to the sky. What he took for an  exploding gunship might have been a newborn star;  and for a moment the  world tipped out of balance, then righted itself just as abruptly.  A  circle of clarity opened in the clouds, a perforation in the veil, and  Shryne  gazed on verdant forest so profoundly green he could almost taste  it. Valiant combatants  scurried through the underbrush and sleek ships  soared through the canopy. In the  midst of it all a lone figure stretched  out his hand, tearing aside a curtain black  as night . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Shryne knew he had stepped out of time, into some truth beyond  reckoning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A vision of the end of the war, perhaps, or of time itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Whichever, the effect of it comforted him that he was indeed where he was  supposed  to be. That despite the depth to which the war had caused him to  become fixed on  death and destruction, he was still tethered to the Force,  and serving it in his  own limited way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then, as if intent on foiling him, the thin clouds quickly  conspired to  conceal what had been revealed, closing the portal an errant current  had  opened. And Shryne was back where he started, with gusts of superheated  air  tugging at the sleeves and cowl of his brown robe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The Koorivar have done a  good job with their weather machines,” a  speaker-enhanced voice said into his left  ear. “Whipped up one brute of a  sky. We used the same tactic on Paarin Minor. Drew  the Seps into  fabricated clouds and blew them to the back of beyond.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Shryne  laughed without merriment. “Good to see you can still appreciate  the little things,  Commander.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “What else is there, General?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Shryne couldn’t make out the  expression on the face behind the tinted  T-visor, but he knew that shared face as  well as anyone else who fought in  the war. Commander of the Thirty-second air combat  wing, the clone officer  had somewhere along the line acquired the name Salvo, and  the sobriquet  fit him like a gauntlet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The high-traction soles of his jump  boots gave him just enough added  height to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Shryne,  and where his armor  wasn’t dinged and scored it was emblazoned with rust-brown markings.  On  his hips he wore holstered hand blasters and, for reasons Shryne couldn’t  fathom,  a version of the capelike command skirt that had become all the  rage in the war’ s third year. The left side of his shrapnel-pitted helmet  was laser-etched with  the motto live to serve!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Torso markings attested to Salvo’s participation in  campaigns on many  worlds, and while he wasn’t an ARC—an Advanced Reconnaissance  Commando—he  had the rough edges of an ARC, and of their clone template, Jango Fett,   whose headless body Shryne had seen in a Geonosian arena shortly before  Master  Nat-Sem had fallen to enemy fire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Alliance weapons should have us in target  lock by now,” Salvo said as the  gunship continued to descend.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Other assault  ships were also punching through the cloud cover, only to be  greeted by flocks of  incoming missiles. Struck by direct hits, two, four,  then five craft were blown  apart, flaming fuselages and mangled troopers  plummeting into the churning scarlet  waves of Murkhana Bay. From the nose  of one gunship flew a bang-out capsule that  carried the pilot and co-  pilot to within meters of the water before it was ripped  open by a  resolute heat seeker.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In one of the fifty-odd gunships that were  racing down   the well, three other Jedi were going into battle, Master Saras Loorne   among them. Stretching out with the Force, Shryne found them, faint echoes  confirming  that all three were still alive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He clamped his right hand on one of the slide  door’s view slots as the  pilots threw their unwieldy charge into a hard bank, narrowly  evading a  pair of hailfire missiles. Gunners ensconced in the gunship’s  armature-mounted  turrets opened up with blasters as flights of Mankvim  Interceptors swarmed up to  engage the Republic force. The anti-laser  aerosols scattered the blaster beams,  but dozens of the Separatist craft  succumbed to missiles spewed from the gunships’  top-mounted mass-drive  launchers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “High Command should have granted our request  to bombard from orbit,”  Salvo said in amplified voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The idea is to take  the city, Commander, not vaporize it,” Shryne said  loudly. Murkhana had already  been granted weeks to surrender, but the  Republic ultimatum had expired. “Palpatine’ s policy for winning the hearts  and minds of Separatist populations might not make  good military sense,  but it makes good political sense.”The Essential Legends Collection","brand":"Random House Worlds","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302393532645,"sku":"NP9780593974322","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593974322.jpg?v=1767724707","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/dark-lord-star-wars-legends-isbn-9780593974322","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}