The Battle of Columus was a confrontation of the First Great Schism, a conflict fought in 24,500 BBY between the Jedi Order and the faction of dark side-adherents known as the Legions of Lettow. Armies commanded by Jedi Master Awdrysta Pina and the Legions' leader, General Xendor, engaged each other on the world Columus. Pina's forces used a Force-assisted battle-meld, which gave them an advantage over the Legions of Lettow, and Xendor himself was ultimately slain by Pina.
Also during the battle, a group of Dark Jedi Legionnaires attempted to trap a party of Jedi, including the Padawan Danzigorro Potts. In the ensuing fierce engagement, Potts slew his former best friend, the Legionnaire Blendri, and her apprentice, Cuthallox. Himself sustaining mortal injuries, before his death Potts made an audio recording recounting the battle on a datacard that eventually became popularly known as the Columus Data Card and, by tens of millennia later, had inspired several operas.
In 24,500 BBY, the Jedi Order fought a war, later known as the First Great Schism, against the Legions of Lettow, a faction of followers of the dark side of the Force led by General Xendor, a former Jedi Knight. In order to prevent the Galactic Republic worlds from being dragged into what was essentially an internal Jedi conflict, Xendor and his followers attempted to end the war early by taking the fight to the headquarters of the Order on the distant planet Ossus.
The Legions of Lettow were repulsed, and the war soon reached the Republic's Core Worlds. There, on Corulag, the Jedi Padawan Danzigorro Potts tracked down and killed his former Master, Jook-jook H'broozin, who had defected to the Legions of Lettow. However, Potts' similarly-renegade best friend, the former Jedi Knight Blendri, and her apprentice, Cuthallox, kept evading the Padawan, escaping from one world to another before finally arriving on the world Columus.
On Columus, several armies commanded by Jedi Master Awdrysta Pina, known as the Green Blade, faced legions led by Xendor, with the combatants wielding Force-imbued blades. The Jedi forces used a battle-meld created through the Force that allowed them to fight as a collective, with all fighters moving and reacting synchronously. According to Steel Hand of Palawa Arden Lyn, Xendor's lover, such surrendering of one's individuality, which made the Jedi forces resemble hive-minded insects, was anathema to the Legions of Lettow, which resulted in the former having a decisive advantage in the battle.
General Xendor (right) was killed during the Battle of Columus, which Arden Lyn (left) claimed to have witnessed despite not being present at the time.
Pina's armies closed in on their enemy, cutting off Xendor and his vanguard from the rest of his forces. One by one, the Jedi cut down the mightiest warriors of the Legions, including Sethul Asaiage and Tun Bohoi, until finally Pina himself, reportedly wielding his emerald-colored swords, struck Xendor down. Lyn, who was not one of the combatants of the battle, later claimed that she had witnessed her lover's death as if she had, in fact, been present there. She also claimed that, "rather than be drunk by the Green Blade and destroyed," Xendor's "spirit fled into the Dark."
As another part of the battle on Columus, a group of nearly thirty Dark Jedi who were a part of the Legions of Lettow attempted to trap a similar-sized group of Jedi Knights in a ravine. In the resulting fierce and fast-paced confrontation, Danzigorro Potts killed Blendri and Cuthallox, although, despite being the last survivor of the engagement, the Padawan himself also suffered mortal injuries. Potts then received a transmission informing him that Xendor had also been killed.
As he lay dying on the battlefield, Potts made an audio recording on a data card. In the recording, which was addressed to whichever Jedi would discover it, the Padawan briefly recounted the battle—mistakenly claiming that he was the last survivor of the engagement—and his relief at the inevitable end of the Great Schism. He then expressed a sympathetic view of his former best friend, Blendri, before musing whether the Jedi needed a common external enemy that would prevent the Order from descending into another internal conflict. Subsequently, Potts died of his injuries.
Following the Battle of Columus, the forces of the Jedi Order moved to eliminate their enemy at Lettow.
After the Battle of Columus, Pina's armies advanced on the planet Lettow, the site of the Legionnaire Academy, with the intent of killing the rest of the Legions of Lettow. Although Arden Lyn had inherited the leadership of Xendor's forces, she realized the only viable strategy was for the Legions to hold off the Jedi forces at Lettow long enough for the former to escape beyond the borders of the Republic. Pina eventually tracked down the fleeing Lyn to Irkalla, and during the ensuing confrontation, the latter was placed in a state of stasis that lasted until 4 BBY.
The exiled fallen Jedi Sorzus Syn mentioned the Battle of Columus in her chronicle, authored following the conflict known as the Hundred-Year Darkness in 6900 BBY, claiming that Xendor's demise during the confrontation was not a "tragedy" compared to the Jedi not changing their supposedly dogmatic ways following the end of the First Great Schism. In 4 BBY, Lyn was awakened from her stasis by agents of the Galactic Empire and recounted the Battle of Columus in a debriefing, selections of which were filed by Grand Inquisitor Laddinare Torbin.
By the time the New Republic had supplanted the Empire as the dominant galactic power, the last words of Potts' recording on what became popularly known as the Columus Data Card inspired three operas performed on Coruscant, the capital planet of the galaxy. The 40 ABY publication Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force by the Jedi historian Tionne Solusar also included a mention of the Battle of Columus in relation to the Columus Data Card.
Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force was the first work to properly describe the Battle of Columus.
The 2005 reference book The New Essential Chronology by Daniel Wallace and Kevin J. Anderson was the first source to mention Xendor's death at the hands of the Jedi. Ryder Windham's 2007 book Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force later introduced the battle known as the "conflict on Columus," and the 2009 reference book The Essential Atlas by Wallace and Jason Fry firmly placed Xendor's death during that confrontation, which was explicitly referred to as the "battle on Columus." Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side, a 2012 book by Wallace, provided an illustration of the event and introduced its proper name, the "Battle of Columus," although initially an image caption in the book misidentified it as the Battle of Corbos.
- The New Essential Chronology
- Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force
- The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
- The Essential Atlas
- Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side
- The Essential Guide to Warfare
- Star Wars: Force and Destiny Core Rulebook