The new Clone Wars anthology book called Clone Wars: Stories of light and dark has just released, and in it is a tragic tale written by Dave Filoni’s wife which follows the story of a Dathomirian witch who believed her daughter was slaughtered by general grievous in the famous separatist invasion of the planet. I’m going to break down exactly what happened in this incredibly dark and heartbreaking story, and why it is so important to the future of Dathomir.
The story begins on the misty, grey outer rim world of Sidi, where a young girl without a name is working at her family’s local hotel. The old and badly damaged family hotel didn’t get many visitors because of its location in the outer rim, but it did receive the occasional crash landing survivor or people choosing to flee from the dreadful war currently going on.
The young girl was often forced by her parents to sweep the ruggard floors of the old hotel, ensuring that not a single particle of dust was visible should a guest arrive on the remote planet. On one cold, dark day, the young girl was sweeping the floors and noticed the nearly-silent buzz of a large ash-beetle with it’s many wriggling legs, alongside the bottom of the broom. Her parents viewed the ash-beetles in the same way that they viewed the young girl, just plain annoyance. The young girl didn’t mind the beetles however, choosing to take one as a personal pet to give her something, or someone to bounce her thoughts off. The girl knew that the beetle didn’t understand her thoughts or her emotions, but it was better than nothing. It was better than the process of talking to a brick wall, that she experienced while trying to talk to her parents. Eventually, she made a tiny, nearly invisible leash for the bug, taking it for walks around the fenced off courtyard of the hotel. She really had a deep connection to this thoughtless creature caring very deeply for it. This was unfortunately shattered to pieces by her dismissive mother, Leera, who caught the girl walking the creature, and crushed it under her heel. The girl fell to her knees in tears, but her mother did not give a single care in the world to it and demanded that she get back to work, sweeping the floors of the hotel, calling her a “bug” as she left the area. From here on out, the young girl went simply by the name Bug, since that’s how her mother made her feel about herself and she couldn’t remember her real name. Wow, this mother is seriously cold…
The family hotel had one major attraction that pulled in almost every refugee and crash landing survivor on the planet. On the uppermost floor of the three story building, there was an abandoned military communications tower, stored away inside, a damp, dark room in the attic. The large metal comms device was placed there by the Separatists only shortly after the first battle of geonosis, but the device and the planet as a whole was quickly abandoned after they realized it was a backwater location with no strategic value. The young, nameless girl loved to sneak up into the damp room while her parents slept, with her back up against the wall, knees under her chin, listening to incoming transmissions from help escape pods, crashing clone transports and other distress calls. She didn’t know it, but she was hearing the final moments of many Clone Troopers as their ships sent out a final call for help that would never be answered.