Movies News Talk
The Star Wars galaxy is full of mysterious places steeped in the Force. Planets known as vergences hold the key to unlocking amazing abilities – for the Jedi, for the Sith, and even some crazy cults from The Acolyte. Many of these vergences have ancient Sith temples that are like creepy, dark, energy-sucking machines, helping those who use them accomplish seriously messed up stuff. You could argue that even Darth Vader's creepy fortress on Mustafar was a giant energy-vamp that he used to try and bring his wife Padme back to life.
The Jedi knew this about vergences, too. In fact, they knew about those dark, ancient temples – they even built their Jedi Temple on Coruscant right on top of an old Sith temple. This was like putting a good energy field over a bad energy field in the hopes that they wouldn’t turn bad and attack! But the real scare, the really dangerous vergence, is on the planet Malachor – a place the Jedi feared so much they erased it from history! And if you’re thinking "so scary, tell me more!“, then you’ll love this story.
If you're reading Star Wars novels, you'll stumble across a world named Troithe. Now, Troithe isn’t your average planet, this baby is orbiting around the Cerberon Singularity, which is, like, a black hole! That sounds bad, and it is. You can find a very messed-up tower built on a broken asteroid in orbit around the Singularity – a Sith tower. It’s been in Star Wars books for a minute, so maybe the next movie will have it?
Here’s how messed up things get in this book, "Shadow Fall": We meet Yrica Quell, a good, strong person who was part of the Empire and is trying to leave the dark side behind, and a torture droid named IT-O. Both are trying to find their way back home, but the only way is through that weird, evil Sith tower. But this tower is not like anything they can handle! This one is only open for those who can handle suffering.
So what happens? Yrica decides, with the help of IT-O, to basically give up a big chunk of her humanity for that ship she desperately needs! IT-O makes Yrica endure torture and agony for days! That droid’s the worst.
When she realizes IT-O isn’t even pretending to help her, that it’s actually back to its original purpose as a torture droid (don’t these droids get new programming?), she realizes there is nothing left to do except to get rid of the droid that she cares about and open that scary door into the tower! Right after Yrica sacrifices her friend, the whole asteroid is sucked into the black hole, taking the secrets and the evils with it!
This temple is something else. Let's just say that even if Vader was sitting on a nice little throne on his planet, Mustafar, it would be a piece of cake compared to this! It's almost as if the Sith built it on a cosmic vacuum cleaner that destroys anything near it.
The whole thing is built on top of a black hole, for Pete's sake! That’s not the best spot if you are scared of the dark side or need to go home to see your family!
This is a super scary part of Star Wars, and it's proof that the dark side can do some messed up things! Imagine an entire place, even with a crazy powerful Force around it, built to torture, consume, and make people crazy! This story, about a haunted space tower, makes for the best sort of Star Wars scary story – the one that keeps you up all night because of the messed-up energy and creepy, twisted design of a world full of black holes!
Even those powerful Sith had no right to do that kind of evil to their planet. We always think of the Jedi as the heroes, but this one proves they could do worse. And that's the thing, this place is just waiting to happen again somewhere out there. It's more terrifying than that giant monster with the teeth, those big creatures, the Star Wars monsters – this whole thing? That's the stuff that stays with you, you know, in those dark corners of your imagination. You know, if you ever happen to be floating through space and see that scary black hole, make a note to stay far away from any weird, dark towers, okay? It's best not to ask.