Talzin was a Dathomirian female who lived during the final decades of the Galactic Republic‘s reign and became a formidable figure of power during the Clone Wars. On her homeworld of Dathomir, Talzin lived as a shaman and the Clan Mother of the Nightsisters—a coven of Force-sensitive witches who used magicks to manipulate the wilderness around them and rule their male counterparts, the Nightbrothers. Talzin’s expertise in magicks was significant enough to attract the attention of the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Sidious, who came to Dathomir ostensibly to trade dark side Force teachings with Talzin and take her as his own Sith apprentice. Instead, the Sith Lord abducted Talzin’s son Maul and took him as an apprentice in her place. Years later, he was presumed dead at the Battle of Naboo after sustaining mortal injuries, but his strength in the dark side allowed him to remain just barely alive. Although Talzin was aware of Maul’s incredible survival, she was unable to rescue him and thus remained on Dathomir to plot her revenge against Sidious and his Sith, with her ultimate goal being galactic domination.

When the Clone Wars between the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems erupted ten years later, Talzin gained galactic notoriety by selling the services of the Nightsisters as assassins and mercenaries. In the midst of the Clone Wars, Talzin began targeting Count Dooku, the leader of the Confederacy and the newest apprentice of Lord Sidious. Asajj Ventress, a Nightsister-turned-Sith apprentice, had been betrayed by Dooku and returned to Dathomir to seek Talzin’s help in exacting revenge. Although their early attempts to assassinate Dooku failed, Talzin had a long-term plan for the Sith Lord’s demise: she would provide Dooku with a new apprentice in the form of the Nightbrother Savage Opress, who was also one of Talzin’s children. Opress was Maul’s biological brother and, after falling under the influence of her magick, became completely loyal to his mother and was hidden in the ranks of the Sith. Ultimately, both Ventress and Opress proved unable to kill the Count and were forced to seek refuge with Talzin once more. While she tasked Opress with locating Maul somewhere in the Outer Rim Territories, she welcomed Ventress back to Dathomir as a full member of the Nightsisters. The world was then invaded by Dooku’s droid armies shortly thereafter and nearly all of the Nightsisters were wiped out by the Confederate General Grievous and his forces, with the exception of a child called Merrin, Ventress and Talzin herself. Weakened, the elder Nightsister fled into the spirit world to survive. Shortly after the massacre, Opress returned to Dathomir having successfully retrieved a crazed and crippled Maul. Using what magicks she had left, Talzin reconstructed her son and restored his broken mind.

The act of restoring Maul forced Talzin to surrender her physical body to the spirit realm, but her son pledged to carry her torch of vengeance in a quest to draw out and kill Dooku and Sidious. Maul and Opress did succeed in forming the Shadow Collective as a power base but were quickly found and defeated by Darth Sidious himself. Maul was captured and Opress was killed, effectively halting Talzin’s plans for revenge. In the interim, she undertook a scheme to absorb raw Force energy from the Dagoyan Masters of Bardotta. Her manipulation of Bardotta’s Frangawl Cult, who revered her as the Great Mother, resulted in the successful abduction and absorption of nearly all the Masters, but the plan was derailed when Jedi Master Mace Windu and Representative Jar Jar Binks interfered with Talzin’s attempt to absorb Bardotta’s Queen Julia on the moon Zardossa Stix.

Talzin was again forced into the spirit realm, but was presented with a final chance at escape and revenge when Maul was freed from Sidious’s grasp and began plotting with his mother to capture and kill Dooku to draw out Sidious. Maul succeeded in capturing Dooku and transported him back to the heart of Talzin’s power on Dathomir, where his mother possessed the Count’s body and nearly killed him. The torture of Dooku gave the Nightsister enough strength to return to the physical realm, but her ritual was again interrupted, this time by Grievous and Darth Sidious, who had come to end Talzin’s threat once and for all. Despite her return to the material world during the skirmish, Talzin was unsuccessful in killing Dooku and was unable to withstand the might of two Sith Lords and their cyborg general. She sent Maul to safety before being slain by Grievous, a death that marked the fall of Dathomir and the end of Talzin’s Nightsister coven.