Agents of Chaos Duology

Twenty-one years following the Battle of Endor and the death of Galactic Emperor Palpatine, the galaxy finds itself invaded by an extra-galactic species of religious zealots identified as the Yuuzhan Vong. Both the New Republic and Master Luke Skywalker's New Jedi Order have been actively engaged in efforts to repel the bloodthirsty invaders. However, Han Solo, Skywalker's brother-in-law, has descended into alcoholism and despair in the aftermath of the death of his long-time friend and co-pilot Chewbacca. Subsequent to attending a funeral for the fallen warrior, he distances himself from his family and pledges to avenge his friend's passing without their assistance. He is soon approached by his old friend Roa, who informs him that a former acquaintance of theirs, Reck Desh, has aligned himself with a group known as the Peace Brigade and is cooperating with the Yuuzhan Vong. The actions of the Peace Brigade resulted in the death of Roa's wife Lwyll, and he seeks Solo's assistance in locating Desh and preventing the organization from causing further loss of innocent lives. Solo agrees and departs from the galactic capital of Coruscant without informing his family of his destination.

As the Yuuzhan Vong persist in their conquest of planets along their invasion route, the priest Harrar becomes aware of the Jedi and the Force and concludes that the invasion constitutes a holy war between the Yuuzhan Vong's True Gods and the "False God" of the Force. He and the Executor Nom Anor devise a strategy to present the priestess Elan to the New Republic as a false defector, equipping her with poisonous and lethal bo'tous spores. Elan and her familiar, the Fosh Vergere, are handed over to the New Republic and undergo debriefing by New Republic Intelligence.

Solo and Roa journey to Ord Mantell aboard Roa's ship, the Happy Dagger, to the orbiting space station known as the Jubilee Wheel. There, they receive information about Desh from Big Bunji, the owner of the Jubilee Wheel and an old associate of Solo's, as well as from the young Human Fasgo. However, the Yuuzhan Vong soon arrive in the system and attack Ord Mantell. The New Republic responds swiftly, having been alerted by Elan. Anor and Harrar intend for the attack to fail in order to further their deception, but they seize the opportunity to gather slaves by assaulting the Wheel with a qworlth skaal creature, which begins tearing away the station's exterior bulkheads and drawing the passengers into its gaping mouth. Roa and Fasgo are pulled into the maw, but Solo holds firmly onto a torn bulkhead. He then collaborates with a member of the Ryn species to close the corridor's blast shield.

The Ryn saves Solo's life in the process, and their partnership continues as they lead a group of refugees to a shuttle in the station's launching bays. They pilot it down to the surface of Ord Mantell before parting ways, and Solo encounters his wife, Leia Organa Solo, who has been dispatched to Ord Mantell by the New Republic Senate to assist in caring for refugees displaced by the invaders. He declines to return to Coruscant with her and is then informed by Bunji's lieutenant that Reck Desh has a planned operation in the Bilbringi system. He arranges passage there on the luxury liner Queen of Empire, where he once again encounters the Ryn, who introduces himself as Droma and shares Solo's quarters for the night.

In an attempt to discreetly transport the defectors to Coruscant, Major Showolter of New Republic Intelligence boards the luxury liner with Elan and Vergere, but is attacked by members of the Peace Brigade who seek to return the defectors to the Yuuzhan Vong. Injured, Showolter spots Solo and assumes that he has been sent by the New Republic. He entrusts the defectors to Solo and Droma while he heads to sick bay. Meanwhile, Nom Anor brings a fleet to Bilbringi in order to seize control of the troublesome actions of the ignorant Peace Brigade, and stages a mock attack on the Queen of Empire. As forces of the New Republic arrive, Organa Solo brings Solo's ship, the Millennium Falcon, to the Queen of Empire, where it is quickly commandeered by her husband after he loses the defectors to Desh. Solo and Droma locate their quarry's shuttle drifting in space, and Solo boards it to discover everyone except for the defectors lying dead.

After bringing Elan and Vergere aboard the Millennium Falcon, Solo realizes that the Yuuzhan Vong warship firing on them is deliberately missing, and suspects a trap. He confronts Elan while Droma takes the ship's controls, and the priestess, realizing that her deception has been uncovered, releases the poisonous spores into the air, committing suicide by swallowing some. Solo's life is saved when Droma abandons his post on a hunch and opens a door to the rear hold, providing Solo with some air. Vergere flees in an escape pod after giving Solo a vial of her tears, and Anor's warship is chased out of the system. Back on Coruscant, Master Skywalker uses the tears to help control a Yuuzhan Vong illness contracted by his wife Mara Jade, and Solo, grateful for Droma having saved his life several times, vows to help the Ryn find his family members who have been displaced by the Yuuzhan Vong. With their plan having failed, Harrar and Nom Anor are reprimanded by the Yuuzhan Vong Supreme Commander Nas Choka as they prepare to redeploy their fleet to Hutt Space and ally with the Hutts.

One month later, Organa Solo is on Gyndine evacuating refugees as the Yuuzhan Vong attack the planet. The Jedi Knight Wurth Skidder is fighting on the front lines and intentionally remains on-world, allowing himself to be captured by the invaders so that he might learn more about their war-coordinating yammosk creatures. On Coruscant, several high-ranking officers of the New Republic military learn of Gyndine's fall and begin making plans to halt the invading war machine. They convince Organa Solo to travel to the Hapes Cluster and request assistance from the ruling Hapes Consortium, and devise a strategy to lure the Yuuzhan Vong to the Corellian system where the ancient superweapon Centerpoint Station, once operational, can use its destructive power to devastate an attacking Yuuzhan Vong fleet.

Nom Anor and Commander Malik Carr of the Yuuzhan Vong travel to Hutt Space and ally with the ruling Hutt kajidics, hoping to manipulate them into passing false intelligence to the New Republic. The greedy Hutts do just that, spreading news of the Yuuzhan Vong's supposed upcoming targets to the information broker Talon Karrde, who shares it with both New Republic Intelligence and with the New Jedi Order. As an old friend of Skywalker's, he hopes that the Jedi can use the information to keep their relationship with the New Republic strong.

In the newly-painted matte-black Millennium Falcon, Solo and Droma begin searching for Droma's family while hoping to uncover information on Roa's whereabouts in the process. On Tholatin, they learn that a contractor is paying freelancers to transport refugees to planets that the Yuuzhan Vong plan to attack, and that a group of refugees is soon due to be transported off of Ruan. They arrive on Ruan too late to stop Droma's clanmates from fleeing with the freelancers, and Droma, mistaken for one of his family members, is arrested for forgery of official documents. He is forced into labor at a product enhancement facility, but is quickly rescued by Solo. The two flee in a landspeeder, but Bow, a sentry at the facility, manipulates weather control and sends a tidal wave after them. They are picked up by a Scout Collector controlled by the BFL-series droid Baffle, who has befriended Solo, and who tells them of a refugee ship headed for Fondor.

Organa Solo travels to the world of Hapes and appeals to the Hapan Queen Mother, Teneniel Djo, to aid the New Republic. The Queen Mother's husband, Prince Isolder, sways the Consortium's vote in Organa Solo's favor, but she receives a Force vision predicting disaster and too late warns Isolder to reconsider. Her son Anakin, meanwhile, has been recruited by the New Republic military to help reactivate Centerpoint Station, seven years after imparting his imprint on the station's firing controls.

The refugees left behind on Gyndine are brought aboard the Yuuzhan Vong clustership Crèche and enslaved, forced to tend to a developing yammosk. Skidder encounters Roa, Fasgo, and Droma's sister Sapha, and begins telepathically conversing with the yammosk. He attempts to convince it that the Hutts will betray the Yuuzhan Vong, but the yammosk reacts angrily and kills Fasgo. Chine-kal, the commander of the vessel, discovers that Skidder is a Jedi and prepares to offer him to the Yuuzhan Vong Warmaster Tsavong Lah. He begins to slowly torture the Jedi.

Karrde identifies Tynna, Bothawui, and Corellia as upcoming targets of the Yuuzhan Vong, and when Tynna falls, Commodore Brand of the New Republic military manipulates the Senate's Advisory Council into voting to withdraw ships to Bothawui so that Corellia may remain open for attack. Although they are unaware of Centerpoint, Carr and Anor capture Tynna in an effort to mislead the New Republic, actually intending to strike at the shipyards of Fondor. They do not, however, anticipate the Hutts spreading information that Crèche is headed for Kalarba with a Jedi Knight aboard. Karrde informs the Jedi Knights Kyp Durron and Ganner Rhysode, who bring Durron's starfighter squadron, Kyp's Dozen, to Kalarba and then chase Crèche to Fondor. The Dozen arrives in the Fondor system at the same time as the Millennium Falcon and a Yuuzhan Vong armada, which is forced to strike earlier than anticipated and begins attacking the New Republic First Battle Group. Durron assigns two of his craft to aid the Millennium Falcon in pursuing the refugee ship they are chasing, and the outgunned freelancers agree to turn their prisoners over to Droma and Solo. Durron and Rhysode board Crèche, and although a weak and exhausted Skidder dies before they can rescue him, Rhysode kills the yammosk, and the two Jedi bring the prisoners aboard the Millennium Falcon.

The Hapes Consortium sends over 100 of their capital ships to aid the New Republic, and join Brand's flagship, the Yald, in traveling to Fondorian space after learning of the attack. Anakin's brother Jacen is heavily against the re-enabling of Centerpoint, and goes with Anakin to the station. Within, they find their father's cousin Thrackan Sal-Solo, who has joined the effort to get the station operational. Anakin is able to reactivate Centerpoint's systems, but, influenced by Jacen, decides not to fire the weapon. Sal-Solo seizes the controls and fires the station's powerful repulsor weapon into Fondorian space, but, without the accuracy that Anakin would have commanded, destroys three quarters of the Hapan fleet in addition to half of the Yuuzhan Vong armada. Anor and Carr are shocked and retreat, and the severely weakened Hapans abandon the war to return to their consortium. Nom Anor discovers that the New Republic Senator Viqi Shesh attempted to warn the Yuuzhan Vong about Centerpoint, and travels to Coruscant in disguise to establish a working relationship with her.

During the late 1970s, James Luceno journeyed across the globe with his friend Brian Daley, who was developing the narrative for The Han Solo Adventures, a trio of Star Wars novels he was writing for Del Rey Books. Daley utilized Luceno as a sounding board while crafting the story, and later consulted him again during the creation of the radio dramatizations of the original Star Wars trilogy. Luceno's formal involvement in the Star Wars Expanded Universe commenced in the late 1990s when he was engaged by Del Rey and Lucasfilm Ltd. as a consultant during the planning phase of The New Jedi Order book series. The New Jedi Order was envisioned as a multi-author series that would span several years of publication, and Luceno was brought in to assist in coordinating the project due to his prior experience in overseeing and co-authoring a multi-book saga within the Robotech universe.

Luceno participated in several planning sessions for the series at Skywalker Ranch, and became a member of a continuity team that also included author Dan Wallace. Together, they expanded a map of the Star Wars galaxy, and Luceno authored a comprehensive "series bible" to ensure coordination across all story arcs. Furthermore, he contributed to the drafting and refinement of the initial outline of the series that was presented to George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars. Luceno also reviewed and provided feedback on the manuscripts submitted by the various authors contributing to The New Jedi Order. Initially, it was uncertain whether he would contribute any books to the series, but he was eventually contracted to write a single novel titled Agents of Chaos in 2000, which was intended to be the fifth book in the series, taking place after Michael A. Stackpole's Dark Tide Trilogy. However, due to changes in The New Jedi Order's storyline, Dark Tide was condensed into a duology. Consequently, Agents of Chaos was expanded into two books: Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial and Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse. The working titles for these books were Solo Crusade and The Crooked Sky.

Luceno's duology was designed to heavily feature the character of Han Solo, who had first appeared in the original Star Wars film in 1977. Solo had played a significant role in Star Wars novels published by Bantam Spectra throughout the 1990s, but Shelly Shapiro, Del Rey Editor and a key planner of The New Jedi Order, felt that many of Bantam's authors had not fully grasped the character. In Dark Tide, Stackpole portrayed Solo as succumbing to depression and alcoholism following Chewbacca's death, and he expressed regret for not being able to explore the character further. However, he found solace in the fact that Luceno was scheduled to write a pair of Solo-centric novels immediately afterward.

Having been intimately involved in crafting the narrative backbone of the series, Luceno encountered no difficulty transitioning into the role of author. Nevertheless, he dedicated considerable time to mastering the established rules and guidelines of the Star Wars universe, even after extensively reading the Bantam-published novels during the 1990s. He regarded the chance to concentrate on Solo as particularly providential, as it afforded him the opportunity to honor Brian Daley, who had died in 1996. With the belief that Daley had wonderfully portrayed Solo's essence in The Han Solo Adventures, Luceno could offer a tribute to his colleague. Luceno, who considered Daley to be a mentor, stated that he sensed his friend's presence guiding him during the writing process of the Agents of Chaos Duology, and he appreciated the chance to pay tribute to him.

Luceno's enthusiasm for writing about Solo also originated from his desire to guide the character through a heroic evolution reminiscent of the original Star Wars trilogy. However, he discovered a bittersweet irony in his chosen subject, having enjoyed a friendship with Daley for a quarter of a century that he saw as comparable to the bond between Solo and Chewbacca. His intention was to depict Solo's sorrow with maturity and to distance the character from his wife, enabling him to rediscover himself. Luceno acknowledged the difficulty in portraying Solo as older, isolated, and grieving, but he has stated that Solo is one of his favorite characters to write, citing the character's humanity and the fact that he has not been able to grow and evolve in the same way as his Force-using family. Hero's Trial was intended to be a "Han Solo, this is your life" novel. Several characters from Daley's novels make reappearances within the book's pages. However, many characters in the duology, including Droma, who replaces Chewbacca as the co-pilot of the Millennium Falcon in Jedi Eclipse, are original creations of Luceno. Luceno also conceived of Droma's species, the Ryn, and drew inspiration from the Romany people for their depiction.

The character of Boba Fett was initially slated to fill Big Bunji's role in Hero's Trial, but Fett was ultimately removed from the narrative due to concerns about an overabundance of characters. Roa's fate was also altered during the development of the story; he was originally intended to perish during the attack on the Jubilee Wheel. The refugee storyline that permeates the Agents of Chaos Duology was integrated into The New Jedi Order's original story outline, aiming to provide a perspective from the galaxy's marginalized populations, mirroring the role played by C-3PO and R2-D2 in the original Star Wars film.

Hero's Trial debuted in paperback and audio cassette formats in August 2000. Jedi Eclipse followed suit, being released in the same formats on October 1 and October 3 of the same year, respectively. Anthony Heald lent his voice as the narrator for the audiobooks. The cover artwork for both novels was created by text=Artist Rick Berry, whose initial cover design for Hero's Trial featured a noticeably different depiction of the character Elan compared to the final published version. For the Japanese editions of the books, Tsuyoshi Nagano contributed the artwork for both covers.

Prior to his involvement as a consultant during the planning stages of The New Jedi Order, James Luceno had consumed numerous Star Wars novels published by Bantam-Spectra in the 1990s. The Agents of Chaos Duology prominently features a multitude of returning characters from these novels in significant, minor, and cameo roles, and also alludes to events and situations that unfolded within their narratives. Hero's Trial marks the return of several characters from Brian Daley's The Han Solo Adventures, as Luceno sought to honor his late friend.

Subsequent Star Wars media made references to events from the duology. The New Jedi Order Sourcebook, released in 2002, contains a chapter entitled "Agents of Chaos" that summarizes the plot of both novels and provides roleplaying game statistics for characters like Droma. Droma and Vergere were also profiled in 2002's The New Essential Guide to Characters, and the events of Agents of Chaos were revisited in 2005's The New Essential Chronology and 2012's The Essential Reader's Companion.

When Dan Wallace authored 2006's The New Essential Guide to Droids, he implied that the Jubilee Wheel, despite structural and locational discrepancies, was the same space station as The Wheel, a station that first appeared in the 1978 comic book Star Wars (1977) 18. However, the Jubilee Wheel is destroyed in Hero's Trial, while The Wheel continued to exist, appearing in the 2007 comic book Legacy (2006) 9, which is set more than 100 years later. It wasn't until 2013 that authors Abel G. Peña and Rich Handley, in their article Viva Space Vegas! The History of the Marvelous Wheel for the StarWars.com blog, clarified that The Wheel and the Jubilee Wheel coexisted as rival establishments.

In Hero's Trial, Reck Desh encounters and receives information from an individual disguised as a Kuati telbun. It was only in The New Jedi Order Sourcebook that this individual was confirmed to be Viqi Shesh.

James Luceno has commented that Agents of Chaos garnered a mixed response from fans, with some negative feedback arising from his decision to separate Han and Leia Organa Solo. Star Wars author Jason Fry has lauded Hero's Trial as one of the top five installments of The New Jedi Order, praising Luceno's depiction of Han Solo as a "moving portrait".

Sue Rostoni, Executive Editor of Lucas Licensing, has stated that all nineteen books of The New Jedi Order achieved relatively equal sales, surprising the planning team with their consistently strong performance. While she could not disclose specific sales figures, other novels in the series have achieved notable success on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Plotlines and characters originating from Agents of Chaos, such as Droma, the refugee crisis, and Han Solo's separation from his family, played significant roles in the subsequent entry of The New Jedi Order, Balance Point. However, certain elements initially intended to continue throughout the series were ultimately abandoned. Hero's Trial introduced a metaphysical dilemma for C-3PO concerning sentience and the fear of deactivation, prompted by Chewbacca's death and the Yuuzhan Vong's harsh treatment of droids. Nevertheless, this plotline was discarded when the series' planning team opted to prioritize Anakin Solo in the lead-up to his death, which occurred in the series' ninth installment, The New Jedi Order: Star by Star.

Luceno also envisioned Droma remaining Solo's partner and co-pilot for several more books, but when reader feedback indicated a desire for Solo's wife to join him aboard the Millennium Falcon, Droma's role diminished. Droma did reappear, however, in the series' seventeenth entry, The New Jedi Order: Force Heretic III: Reunion. He was presented as the leader of an organization known as the Ryn Network, which played a substantial role throughout the Force Heretic trilogy. Harrar and Vergere, both creations of Luceno's, went on to play important roles in the latter half of The New Jedi Order.

Luceno was subsequently selected to author the nineteenth and final installment of The New Jedi Order, 2003's The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force. Given his familiarity with nearly every concept considered for the series and his knowledge of the story arc and characters, he was a logical choice for the planning team to conclude the series. He has since authored five additional Star Wars novels, one novella, two short stories, and two reference books. In 2007, Sue Rostoni identified him as an author that Lucasfilm Ltd. was keen to retain.

• Agents of Chaos Coming on StarWars.com (content now obsolete; backup link)
• Agents of Chaos Arrive on StarWars.com (content now obsolete; backup link)
• Jedi Eclipse on StarWars.com (content now obsolete; backup link)
• LucasBooks' Latest on StarWars.com (content now obsolete; backup link)
• Agent of Chaos: An Interview with James Luceno on StarWars.com (content now obsolete; backup link)
• The New Jedi Order Sourcebook
• " Novel Approach " — Star Wars Insider 66
• Star Wars: New Jedi Order Round-Robin Interview
• NJO Finale: The Unifying Force on StarWars.com (content now obsolete; backup link)
• " Bookshelf " — Star Wars Insider 72
• " The New Jedi Order in 100 Easy Lessons " — Star Wars Insider 74
• The New Essential Chronology
• The Essential Reader's Companion