Even before his birth, Jacen Solo held great political significance in the galaxy. As the offspring of Han Solo, a former smuggler, retired general, and Rebel icon, and Princess Leia Organa Solo of Alderaan, who served as the New Republic's Minister of State, both Jacen Solo and his twin sister Jaina immediately drew public attention. News of Organa Solo's pregnancy quickly spread throughout the New Republic. Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo, the newly appointed leader of the Galactic Empire's military, took a particular interest in the developing twins. He promised Organa Solo's powerful Jedi children to Joruus C'baoth, an insane clone of Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth, so that C'baoth could raise them and train them as his apprentices in exchange for C'baoth's support in the Grand Admiral's plans. This led to multiple attempts by Grand Admiral Thrawn's Noghri agents to kidnap Organa Solo during her pregnancy. However, Organa Solo successfully evaded all attempts and managed to persuade the Noghri to switch their allegiance to her by revealing Thrawn's manipulation of their people and appealing to their reverence for Darth Vader, who had been Organa Solo's father.

As Jacen and Jaina Solo grew in their mother's womb, it became clear that they were both Force-sensitive. Organa Solo was able to establish mental contact with their developing minds through the Force, often using this connection to calm them when they were agitated. Jacen Solo was born in 9 ABY in the medical ward of the Imperial Palace on Coruscant. Organa Solo used the Force throughout the ten-hour labor, until Solo, born after his sister, emerged from the womb as a brown-eyed, brown-haired infant.

The children were raised in the Solos' suite within the Imperial Palace, with Organa Solo's adoptive sister Winter serving as their caretaker. Their uncle, Luke Skywalker, assessed their Force potential and found it to be remarkable. Shortly after their birth, they were targeted in another kidnapping attempt by an Imperial Intelligence team. Trapped in their suite, they were nearly captured before Mara Jade, a smuggler ally, intervened and saved the family. Following this incident, when the Solos, the Wookiee Chewbacca—who owed the Solos a life debt—and Skywalker had to leave Coruscant on a mission that led to the defeat of Thrawn and C'baoth, they were entrusted to Winter and a group of Noghri bodyguards who had sworn to protect Vader's lineage.

Shortly after Thrawn's defeat, a new threat arose: Emperor Palpatine resurfaced from the Deep Core and conquered Coruscant. The twins were evacuated from the planet and hidden away from the resurgent Empire and the growing threat of the dark side of the Force on the uncharted safe-world of New Alderaan. They were cared for by Winter, with security provided by a squad of Noghri warriors. They only saw their parents twice in 10 ABY before Han and Leia Organa Solo arrived on the Millennium Falcon to stay in seclusion with the children for the birth of a third child, Anakin Solo. They were quickly followed by members of Palpatine's Dark Side Elite, who sought to kidnap the children for the Dark Lord of the Sith. Defended by the Jedi Kam Solusar, Empatojayos Brand, and Rayf Ysanna, the twins were still snatched by Kvag Gthull before Ysanna freed them and their mother killed Gthull, causing the rest of the Dark Jedi to flee. With the arrival of Imperial All Terrain Armored Transports, Organa Solo had to take the children and flee. Evacuated to Nespis VIII, the twins were present when their brother Anakin was born. They were once again forced to flee when Palpatine targeted Nespis VIII, the site of the New Republic's hidden headquarters, with the Galaxy Gun superweapon. Traveling to Onderon, they were followed by Palpatine, who managed to sneak into Organa Solo's room, seeking to transfer his spirit from his dying body to that of Anakin. Brand sacrificed himself to defeat Palpatine once and for all, and the Empire's resurgence was ended.

Skywalker feared that the young Solo children could be permanently affected by any further exposure to the dark side, so they were once more taken into hiding, this time on the remote world of Anoth. The coordinates were known only to Winter, Skywalker, and Admiral Gial Ackbar. Only the children and Winter lived on the inhospitable rock, into which had been built a home provided with advanced security systems. Visits from their parents took place every few months until, in 11 ABY, the twins returned to Coruscant to live with their family, having turned two years old and, in Skywalker's judgment, passed the point of greatest vulnerability to the dark side.

Winter flew Solo and his sister back to Coruscant, where they were greeted by their mother. Having so little contact with her for so long, they were more attached to their nanny Winter. They were given a tour around the Imperial Palace and their new home before being put to bed by C-3PO, whose attempts to tell a bedtime story Solo rebuffed. Later that week, Skywalker returned, and Solo got to know his uncle. When Winter left to return to Anoth to care for Anakin, Solo was extremely distressed by the separation from the woman who had raised him, and it required much adjustment to get him used to his new routine and caretakers.

Organa Solo was called away from the children to receive the Caridan ambassador, Furgan, the next day. Angered at having to spend time away from her children, she took them to the diplomatic reception held that night at the Skydome Botanical Gardens, with C-3PO shepherding them. Solo and his sister quickly slipped away from the protocol droid and into the botanical exhibits, where they slipped past the spines of a tentacle-cactus to rest safely against its center. When C-3PO attempted to recover them, they sneaked away safely as the tentacle-cactus caught the droid.

Only a few days later, Han Solo returned from his diplomatic mission to Kessel, which had seen him captured first by Moruth Doole and then by Admiral Natasi Daala of the Empire; thus reunited, Jacen Solo could begin to reconnect with both of his parents. Han took the children to Coruscant's polar region, where they could play in the snow with C-3PO, but their vacation was cut short by the need to return to the capital region to greet their mother, who had been involved in a tragic crash during a diplomatic mission to Vortex.

Organa Solo was safe, and the young Solo eventually settled into the new routine of dinners, baths, and bedtime stories. Yet another Solo family crisis intruded on their life when his mother was stranded on Mon Calamari during the renegade Imperial admiral Daala's attack on it and Han Solo rushed off to save her; Jacen and Jaina were left with C-3PO and Chewbacca. To occupy the twins, C-3PO and Chewbacca took them to the Holographic Zoo of Extinct Animals. There, the young Solos quickly became bored and evaded their guardians. Wishing to go home, they took a turbolift, thinking that, like the turbolifts in the Imperial Palace, it would take them home. Instead, after Solo hit the button for the first level, it took them to the long-abandoned surface of Coruscant. They wandered through the derelict and deadly undercity, attempting to use the lessons learned from their favorite bedtime story, "The Little Lost Bantha Cub," to reach their home. Eventually, they were captured in a trap set by one of the underdwellers to catch food. Rather than be eaten, they cooperated in using the Force to pull out the pins holding their cage together. Pursued by the creature's ferocious pet, they were forced to take shelter in a small crack. Moving through a small tunnel, they came upon a camp of undercity residents. Onibald Daykim, the king of the refugees from the Empire who had created the settlement, took an immediate liking to the children. He gave them food and then, using ventilation shafts and other utility systems, carried the twins up the many stories of Coruscant's worldwide city and safely back to their home, where they found their parents had returned.

When Skywalker was felled by his corrupted student, Kyp Durron, the Solos flew to his Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4 within the week. Skywalker lay in state, comatose, and no efforts had been able to revive him. At dinner with Skywalker's Jedi trainees, Solo and the rest of the Force-sensitives were struck by a wave of death felt in the Force, the result of Durron's destruction of Carida with the Sun Crusher superweapon. Han Solo set off to track down and talk down Durron, leaving Organa Solo and the twins on Yavin 4. Solo and his sister, exploring the ruined Massassi temples, encountered a pack of woolamanders; through the Force, Solo was able to "speak" to them, a fact that greatly intrigued him. That night, both Solo twins felt through the Force that Skywalker was in danger. Their cries woke their mother, who with the aid of several other students was able to rescue Skywalker from the trainee Streen, manipulated by the spirit of the Sith Lord Exar Kun.

The next morning, Organa Solo departed to save Anakin, having been informed by the traitor Terpfen that he had given the location of Anoth to the Imperial remnants on Carida. Solo and his sister were left in the care of Skywalker's students. Visiting Skywalker's bier, Solo was able to see and hear his uncle's spirit, standing in the room, as was his sister. They informed their caretaker, Jedi trainee Cilghal, but she did not believe them. That night, Skywalker's spirit appeared to Solo, warning him that his body was in danger from another of Kun's efforts. Solo woke his sister, who began raising the others, while Solo rushed to the Grand Audience Chamber, where he immediately sensed the dark side aura of the three Sithspawn battle hydras Kun had sent to attack. Fearlessly, young Solo charged the creatures to drive them away. At Skywalker's urging, he took up the Jedi Master's lightsaber and, with Skywalker fighting through him, defeated all three creatures. In the aftermath, the rest of the students realized that the Solos could see Skywalker, and Solo relayed Skywalker's message that Kun was behind the attacks and needed to be stopped before Skywalker could return to his body.

The students arranged a trap for Kun, luring his spirit into the Grand Audience Chamber and surrounding him. The twins were part of the circle surrounding Kun, overwhelming his spirit with light side energy and, joined by the spirits of Skywalker and Kun's long-dead Master Vodo-Siosk Baas, eliminating the Sith Lord once and for all. Skywalker returned to his body and awoke, much to Solo's delight. Organa Solo succeeded in rescuing Anakin on Anoth, and thereafter all the children stayed on Coruscant with their parents, tended by Winter.

Neither Coruscant nor his parents were absolute constants in Solo's developing life; 12 ABY saw the family travel to Ithor for the Time of Meeting, at which they were accosted by Drub McKumb. McKumb, insane, caused a commotion that sent the children to the nursery with Winter and Chewbacca for safety and sent Solo's parents off on a mission to Plett's Well. In the same year, the Darksaber crisis and the creation of the Imperial Remnant again sent the adult Solos and Chewbacca scrambling while Solo was left with Winter and C-3PO. Nevertheless, most time was spent with family. Skywalker began developing Solo's Force talents, training him in the use of basic powers. However, utilization of the Force was only allowed under Skywalker's supervision, to prevent misuse.

In 13 ABY, Mirith Sinn held the position of head of security for President Leia Organa Solo at the Imperial Palace, with the responsibility of protecting Jacen Solo and his siblings. One evening, not long after she diverted the President's attention during a council meeting, resulting in her offending the representative from Rhommamool, an assassination attempt targeted the entire Solo family. While Sinn and Nanna, a TDL nanny droid modified for combat, successfully stopped the assassins, Luke Skywalker journeyed to Coruscant. Master Skywalker carried information provided by the Jedi Vima-Da-Boda, revealing the identity of the person behind the assassination attempt: Devian, the leader of the "Restored Empire." Around this time, Jacen Solo, along with the other members of the Skywalker-Solo family, seemed to develop a problem with crossed eyes.

In 14 ABY, the Solo children embarked on a diplomatic tour with their mother and Chewbacca, visiting Mon Calamari, Gbu, and subsequently Munto Codru. There, Solo spent time with Doctor Hyos, gaining knowledge about the field of medicine. Given Munto Codru's history of political abductions—kidnappings conducted according to specific traditional rules—the children were under heavy guard. Despite this, while playing outdoors with Chewbacca and the son of Chamberlain Iyon, they were kidnapped. The perpetrators were not local Codru-Ji, but rather agents of Hethrir, the former Imperial Procurator of Justice, and his Empire Reborn faction. Chewbacca was incapacitated by a pressure bomb, and the children were taken away while unconscious.

Upon awakening on Hethrir's worldcraft, the Rebirth, they were frightened and isolated. Their kidnapper approached them, introducing himself as their hold-father. Hethrir asserted that he had been on his way to visit them when he witnessed an earthquake destroy the castle where their mother—and, he claimed, their father and uncle—had been. He admitted that he did not know the password that hold-parents were supposed to know, explaining that he had not yet met Organa Solo to learn it. However, he declared himself their guardian, dismissing the fact that Winter was designated to care for them should anything happen to their family. The twins were skeptical of Hethrir's story, so they mentioned that Jacen was the elder twin. Hethrir, who had claimed to be present at their birth, agreed with the falsehood, thereby revealing himself as a fraud. The twins played along, and young Anakin did not understand the underlying meaning. However, when Hethrir attempted to separate the twins from Anakin, they resisted. Hethrir then used his dark side abilities to suppress their Force powers, and had his assistant Tigris take the twins away and confine them to separate, small rooms. Solo had been playing with a bat on Munto Codru, and the animal had been brought along with him during the kidnapping. He secretly kept the animal in his tunic, caring for it in the days that followed.

The following morning, the Solo twins and several other captured children were awakened and lined up. Distressed and unwilling to obey the orders of Tigris and Hethrir's Proctors, Solo refused to join the line. He was forcibly placed in line, and even then, he and his sister resisted, walking out of sync and causing disruptions. Enraged, Hethrir canceled breakfast for all the children and sent them directly to their studies. They were given educational programs and expected to complete quizzes on the material. Later that day, the children were lined up again, and those who lacked Force abilities or were not Human were removed from the group to be sold as slaves.

At breakfast the next morning, Jaina used the Force to place sand in the Proctors' food, creating a disturbance with the cook. Solo took advantage of the commotion and used his Force-enhanced connection with animals to persuade the myrmin-like insects in the dining hall to crawl into the Proctors' clothing. When the Proctors began stepping on the creatures, he felt intense remorse for causing their deaths, and immediately used the Force to sweep them out of the way. In doing so, he tapped into the Force with such strength that Hethrir, who was constantly monitoring them through the Force, immediately suppressed Solo's abilities again. The Proctors were so annoyed by the insects' bites that they hurried out of the room, leaving the children unattended after only minimal attempts to maintain order. The Solos, reunited for the first time since their capture, led the other students to the play yard in a canyon on the worldcraft's surface. There, they distracted the fearsome-looking but mostly harmless sand dragon that guarded the end of the canyon while Solo approached the dragon and communicated with her through the Force. However, before he could achieve anything, the Head Proctor returned and sent all the children back to their small rooms.

That night, Jaina used her multitool to unlock her door and release Solo from his cell. When the Proctor on watch woke up, the twins lured him into Solo's room and, pushing him inside, locked the door to trap him before they freed the rest of the children in the dormitory. Going out to the play yard, Solo used the Force to move air molecules rapidly enough to make them glow with heat, creating a light in the evening to distract the dragon as he approached her again. Communicating with the creature through the Force, Solo befriended and convinced her to carry the escaping children on her back. As they rode away, he released his bat. They eventually reached an artificial stream on the worldcraft's artificial surface, where they could drink and eat berries growing on nearby bushes.

However, the five-year-old twins lacked any real plan for the escape group that they were leading. They decided to crawl along a path through the bushes, hoping that the Proctors would be unable to follow them. They were only slightly ahead of the Proctors, and the trail ended at a large, impassable field of mud. The Solos again manipulated molecules, this time freezing the water in the mud to create a solid pathway to a tree on the far side, which was hollow. They were able to climb inside, where they were quickly found by Organa Solo in her ship Alderaan. With the children aboard, Solo summoned his bat so that he could return it to its home. Organa Solo and Chewbacca rescued the Proctors, who had been stranded in the middle of the muddy marsh, and learned from them that Hethrir had taken Anakin to Crseih Station. Organa Solo and Rillao, Hethrir's former lover and recently freed prisoner, took the worldcraft to Crseih after caring for the children and locking up the Proctors. Rillao was able to comfort the twins and alleviate their fear of Hethrir, assuring them that he could no longer suppress their powers.

At Crseih, they were able to locate Hethrir and his entourage. Solo and his sister stayed with Chewbacca while Organa Solo and Rillao, along with Han Solo and Skywalker, who were on Crseih for a separate mission, rushed to rescue Anakin. However, the children and Chewbacca could not resist intervening when they heard the sounds of a fight. They arrived to see Anakin rescued, but Skywalker had been consumed by Waru, Hethrir's trans-dimensional ally. Solo's parents leaped into Waru to save him. The twins surrounded Waru, shouting for their parents and uncle. Their cries reached the three and were able to break through Waru's mental manipulations, allowing them to escape. Thwarted in his attempt to acquire their power, Hethrir was consumed instead by Waru, who then vanished to his home dimension.

Over the next two years, Solo's life remained relatively stable. Han stayed home to be a parent, and when Organa Solo returned from her office, the family would gather to relax and play in their vortex pool. Skywalker spent more time at his Praxeum, allowing Organa Solo to instruct the children in the Force, which involved simple exercises. The Solos moved to a larger estate outside the Palace that had a yard. However, Solo spent little time there; as of 16 ABY, he was more interested in mastering the Force than in physical play. He believed that the Force would provide for all his needs, eliminating the need for strenuous activity. This led him to become somewhat overweight, and he, like the rest of the Solo children, lacked friends due to their strict security measures; they had few other children of their age to socialize with. Furthermore, Solo played less and less with his siblings, and Han became increasingly concerned with his son's lack of interest in sports.

At some point during his childhood, Solo discovered a female rock lizard by a river and decided to keep it as a pet. She was happy under Solo's care and was friendly to those who treated her well. However, she soon began trying to escape. After failing to calm the animal with the Force, he consulted his Uncle Skywalker about the problem. The Jedi was reminded of his friend Windy Starkiller's pet dewback, Huey, and proceeded to tell Solo about him. Huey also had a gentle nature and was not very troublesome, but one night he started trying to escape. Starkiller and his father released Huey into the wild because it was the dewback mating season, and Huey eventually returned. Skywalker advised his nephew to try the same method. Solo reluctantly agreed. His pet did later return, now carrying an egg sack. Skywalker later recounted this story to Mammon Hoole, and the scientist included it in the dewback entry of his reference book, The Essential Guide to Alien Species.

In 16 ABY, Chewbacca departed to attend his son Lumpawaroo's coming-of-age ceremony, and Han was required to leave to temporarily oversee the New Republic Fifth Fleet, leading to Winter's return to care for the children during the day. Meanwhile, Skywalker withdrew from the family into a secluded life for personal reasons. Han returned after two months, but the crisis in the Koornacht Cluster, where the Fifth Fleet had been deployed, quickly escalated. Organa Solo, experiencing burnout in her role as Chief of State, took the family on vacation to Rathalay, where Solo enjoyed playing on the beach, eager to see one of the carnivorous narkaa. After they returned to Coruscant, Han was again sent to command the fleet at Koornacht, but he was captured in transit by the Yevetha of the Koornacht Cluster. Organa Solo kept the news quiet, but it eventually became public. Solo was terrified for his father, but eventually Han was freed through Chewbacca's intervention. Han had to spend time in a bacta tank upon returning to Coruscant, but the children visited him. Returning home after their visit, they were delighted to find Luke Skywalker present. Abandoning his self-imposed seclusion, Skywalker was ready to take a more active role in guiding the children's development.

The family soon moved back to the Imperial Palace, where Solo and his sister enjoyed exploring the vast building. They frequently used Anakin in their explorations, utilizing his uncanny talent with machines to have him open locks, interfere with security equipment, repair equipment, and otherwise facilitate their adventures. As they went out more, Solo overcame his previous sedentary lifestyle and no longer tried to rely on the Force for strength.

Later in 17 ABY, after helping Winter and C-3PO dismiss a nanny droid mischievously ordered by Anakin, Solo was overcome by a sensation of evil and death. Joining with his similarly affected siblings, he pushed back the feeling through the Force, but it was quickly followed by an explosion nearby that made the children worry that their actions had caused it. However, the explosion was a terrorist bombing of the Senate Hall, which injured Organa Solo. Skywalker hurried from Yavin 4 and was able to meet up with the children at their mother's bedside, assuring them that the explosion had not been their fault.

With Organa Solo concerned about the children's safety, she had Winter take them to Anoth for the duration of the crisis. When another terrorist explosion struck Smuggler's Run, the children felt that as well, but were better able to cope with it. Ultimately, the ringleader of the plot, Kueller, was killed and the threat was neutralized, allowing the children to return to Coruscant.

In 18 ABY, the Solo children collaborated in an attempt to secretly construct a droid that would serve them without any adult interference or restrictions. Solo scavenged most of the parts from junk heaps, while his mechanically inclined siblings assembled it. Around the same time, the Solos met Zekk on Coruscant. A street urchin and expert salvager slightly older than the twins, Zekk befriended the children, and the three of them often spent time exploring the less reputable lower levels of Coruscant and getting into minor trouble. When the droid was fully assembled, a faulty actuator caused it to overload and shut down, destroying the droid and leaving burn marks in the room. As the twins tried to figure out how to avoid blame, Skywalker entered the room, lectured them on responsibility, and made them clean up the mess. Solo was simply relieved that his parents had not been the ones to find out.

A few days after the droid incident, Organa Solo was scheduled to attend a major trade conference on Corellia, Han Solo's homeworld. The entire family made it a trip, traveling there before the summit to see the world. The journey in the Millennium Falcon was long, but the time was filled with family activities and an explanation of the situation in the Corellian system from Solo's father. However, as they entered the system, the Millennium Falcon was ambushed, but the attack was repelled by a squadron of the untrustworthy Corellian Defense Forces Space Service, who had clumsily staged the attack in an attempt to gain the dignitaries' trust. After the brief scare, Solo and his family were able to land safely.

They were taken to the villa where the family would be staying, where Solo learned that he and his siblings would have a tutor. The next day, he was introduced to the Drall Ebrihim and his outspoken droid, Q9-X2. Ebrihim taught them about the history of the Corellian system as they prepared for an expedition to an archaeological site near Coronet City the following day. Storms delayed the trip for a day, but the Solos, Chewbacca, and Ebrihim and his droid set out for the dig the next day. Solo was bored by the tour, which was led by General Brimon Yarar of the Human League, the organization funding the dig. He was also suspicious, as he had read about archaeology and realized that the Human League was not following proper procedures. Instead, they seemed to be searching for something. He and his siblings fell behind the group and stopped when Anakin began to act strangely. Anakin had, using his Force-enhanced affinity for machinery, discovered a live power conduit beneath the floor. He ran off to follow it, and Solo and his sister went with him. Anakin found and activated a hidden keypad, opening a hidden door. Solo led the way into the revealed passage, onto a platform near the apex of a vast conical chamber. His explorations were interrupted by the arrival of Q9-X2, who had noticed their absence and tracked them down. Realizing that they would be missed, Solo immediately took charge of the situation and insisted that they leave, knowing that they had found whatever Yarar was looking for—and that Yarar should not be allowed to find it. Leaving and making the others promise to keep the chamber a secret, they rejoined the group, with Solo using the Force to brush away their footprints so that they could not be tracked.

The Solos embarked on a multi-day tour before settling into a suite within Corona House, the governmental hub of Coronet, the designated location for the trade summit. During moments of perceived security, Solo and his siblings confided in their parents about the discovery of the chamber. As the summit commenced, the children capitalized on their parents' absence, indulging in late-night board games in their room. It was during this playful interlude that Mara Jade made her entrance into the apartment. Aware that their parents would soon be engaged in significant adult discussions with Jade, the children retreated from their hidden vantage point on the landing, feigning sleep when their parents returned to check on them. Once the coast was clear, they once again stealthily positioned themselves on the landing above the living room to spy on the ongoing conversation. Jade's mission involved delivering a message to the Solos and the Corellian governor-general, Micamberlecto. This message contained a list of stars and corresponding dates, interpreted as a threat indicating that if the unspecified blackmailers' demands remained unmet, supernovas would be triggered in those stars, which housed progressively larger populations as the list went on. The initial star, devoid of inhabitants, had already met its explosive end.

At the break of dawn, coordinated species riots erupted throughout the Corellian system, with the Human League taking a leading role in the disturbances on Corellia. From their suite, the children, along with Chewbacca, Ebrihim, and Q9-X2, witnessed the unfolding violence as a series of explosions rocked Corona House. Without hesitation, the Wookiee gathered the children and escorted them to the Millennium Falcon, which was stationed on the roof, ready for evacuation. Solo received a comlink call from his father, who informed him that his parents would remain behind to address the escalating crisis. Han entrusted his son with the responsibility of caring for the others and adhering to Chewbacca's guidance.

As the Falcon attempted to flee the system, it encountered an attack from the Corellian Space Defense Force, which had sided with the treacherous elements. In the midst of the ensuing dogfighting, the hyperdrive sustained damage. Confined to subspace travel, Chewbacca and Ebrihim made the decision to seek refuge on Drall with Ebrihim's family. Throughout the prolonged and sluggish journey, Solo grappled with the monotony of the voyage and the demanding task of managing Anakin—a challenge that would test even the most seasoned adults. Upon arriving at the estate of Ebrihim's aunt, Duchess Marcha, they found a secure haven.

The following morning, Ebrihim prompted the children to recount their discovery of the chamber on Corellia to Marcha. Against Solo's advice, Jaina also divulged the details of the secret message they had intercepted. Marcha and Ebrihim then resolved to take the children to a strikingly similar archaeological site on Drall, hoping to unravel the mystery surrounding the chamber and its significance to the Human League, which had proclaimed its control over the enigmatic "starbuster" superweapon and revealed that its leader was Thrackan Sal-Solo, Han Solo's cousin. Approaching the dig site under the cover of darkness, Chewbacca used his tools to create an entry point into the tunnel system near the suspected location of the chamber's entrance, assuming that the Drallish site mirrored the Corellian one. They successfully located an identical replica of the Corellian chamber, and Anakin activated the protruding platform on which the group was standing, managing to open the chamber's top to the surface. Observing the structure, Marcha deduced that the chamber served as a massive repulsor on a planetary scale, employed to reposition Drall during the construction of the Corellian system, as long-standing rumors had suggested. Following Marcha's recommendation, they gathered their supplies and the Millennium Falcon and established a camp at the base of the repulsor itself, intending to study it further.

The group spent a considerable amount of time residing within the repulsor, with Anakin constantly delving into its functions. One night, Anakin stealthily slipped away from the camp and located and activated the main control panel for the repulsor, setting it off. The activation caused tremendous groundquakes that jolted Solo awake, who then quickly gathered the others aboard the Millennium Falcon, where they safely weathered the massive energy output resulting from the repulsor's firing. After the incident subsided, Solo tracked down his brother and successfully convinced Anakin, who was both frightened and remorseful, to return to the ship.

Before Chewbacca could complete the repairs to the ship, which had been damaged by the power surge, Sal-Solo and a squad of Human League troops arrived and seized control of the repulsor. The Solo children, Chewbacca, and the Drall were captured and confined within a force field-stockade inside the camp established by the Human League at the base of the repulsor. Sal-Solo deactivated the jamming system that had isolated the Corellian system and broadcast a message demanding that Organa Solo and the New Republic recognize his claims of sovereignty in exchange for the safe return of the hostages.

As night descended, Ebrihim summoned Q9-X2, who had been concealed within the smuggling compartments of the Millennium Falcon, using a hidden comlink. The droid managed to reduce the intensity of the force field, but was unable to completely disable it without the key to the controls. Anakin began to exert his will, pushing his way through the field and using the Force to strain and distort it. The twins joined forces with him, and together they succeeded in escaping the field. However, the technique proved ineffective in facilitating the adults' escape. Ebrihim urged the children, recognizing them as the most valuable hostages, to escape in the Millennium Falcon with Q9-X2.

Chewbacca provided guidance via comlink for the final repair efforts; once completed, Solo took the pilot's seat. With his sister serving as copilot, he cautiously powered up the ship while Jaina targeted and destroyed the force field generator and attempted to disable Sal-Solo's assault boat. Solo then set the Millennium Falcon in motion, escaping the repulsor. Before Solo could fully master the flight controls, the assault boat began its pursuit. Skillfully dodging Sal-Solo's shots, Solo's amateur flying managed to position him on the assault boat's tail, allowing Jaina to disable it. The Millennium Falcon was immediately ensnared by a tractor beam emanating from the Intruder, a Bakuran cruiser that had entered the system as part of a New Republic rescue operation and had been planning to seize the Drall repulsor. Lando Calrissian, an old family friend, was aboard and reassured Solo, explaining the situation while also complimenting them on their daring escape. The Intruder also apprehended the assault boat, taking Sal-Solo into custody.

Aboard the Intruder, the children were joyfully reunited with their parents, who had swiftly arrived from negotiations on Selonia. As the Bakuran fleet engaged in battle against the fleet of the Sacorrian Triad, the true masterminds behind the starbuster plot, the children were dispatched back to the Drall repulsor to assist the New Republic crew in their attempt to use it to deflect the next starbuster shot from Centerpoint Station, which was targeting Bovo Yagen. The twins played a crucial role in controlling Anakin, who had become imprinted on the control system, making him the only one capable of operating the repulsor. When Anakin became upset and stormed off before the scheduled firing time, Solo had to track him down and persuade him to return. When it became apparent that the repulsor had been improperly aimed, Solo encouraged Anakin to rely on his intuition and the Force to guide his aim. Anakin successfully made the shot that deflected Centerpoint's attack, saving Bovo Yagen. Simultaneously, the Triad fleet was defeated, bringing an end to the threat.

In 19 ABY, Solo accompanied his mother and siblings to Shalam for a treaty signing, as Organa Solo hoped to expose the children to more high-level diplomacy. Later that year, Organa Solo took a leave from the New Republic's presidency, and the family traveled to Wayland, where the Noghri had settled. Before they could take a tour of the ruins of Mount Tantiss, Organa Solo was called away to deal with Lak Jit, a scavenger who had found a collection of datacards in the ruins. Impatient to begin the tour, Solo entered the dukha where his mother was negotiating and began harassing her to hurry. When Jit settled and departed, Solo was able to sense the distress of his siblings as Jit dropped a smoke grenade and escaped with one of the stolen datacards still in his possession. Smuggler and information broker Talon Karrde, working with his lieutenant Mara Jade, was arriving on-planet at the same time and managed to capture Jit. When it turned out that the datacard held vital information implicating the Bothans in the long-ago attack on Caamas, a crisis seemed liable to erupt and Karrde quickly gave the Solos a ride back to Coruscant.

As the Caamas Document Crisis gained in intensity, threatening to pull the New Republic apart, the children traveled to Kashyyyk with Chewbacca, there to see the Wookiee's family and homeworld and remain safe during the turmoil. Once the political situation was brought to a peaceful conclusion, the children left Kashyyyk and attended the signing of the Pellaeon–Gavrisom Treaty, which brought peace between the New Republic and Imperial Remnant.

During the crisis, Skywalker had proposed marriage to Jade. Solo attended a more private Jedi ceremony before the large, public-event wedding. When that event was threatened with disruption by angered ex-Imperials, the Rogue Squadron ushers were called away to secure the facility, and Solo and C-3PO filled in for them. Still, former Moff Derran Takkar was able to infiltrate the ceremony and threaten to release a virus into the New Republic's communications system. Skywalker was able to talk him down, and the wedding went forward peacefully.

In 22 ABY, the twins later spent a handful of months at Skywalker's Praxeum, training as Jedi. Solo enjoyed the outdoors, and familiarized himself with the wildlife of Yavin 4. When the twins returned to Coruscant, Anakin was sent off to begin his training. In the next year, Solo and his sister returned to the Praxeum, where they befriended Tenel Ka Djo. A serious young woman with whom Solo became rather infatuated, Djo rarely if ever laughed; therefore, Solo made it his mission to attempt to get a chuckle out of her with a daily barrage of jokes, which consistently fell flat. Meanwhile, Solo worked to improve his quarters, where he kept an extensive menagerie of captured wildlife; he spent his free time acquiring even more specimens. The collection annoyed some fellow students, particularly Raynar Thul.

One morning, Solo noticed that his nearly-transparent crystal snake had escaped. He recruited his sister to aid him in searching for it, and they found Thul in his room, passed out from the snake's soporific bite. He was able to retrieve it before Thul awoke, preventing the young noble from using the incident to argue against Solo's collection of pets. Later that morning, their lecture was interrupted by an alert at the Great Temple's landing pad. Skywalker left, and, eager to see what was happening, the Solos scaled the temple's exterior with Djo, a persistent outdoors-woman, to get there before the crowd of students. Outside, they found that a massive beast had emerged from the jungle, and was menacing the supply ship Lightning Rod. Solo watched in amazement as his uncle calmed the creature and sent it back into the jungle.

The next morning, the Solos eagerly awaited the arrival of their father, who was bringing a new Jedi trainee. The new student turned out to be Chewbacca's nephew, Lowbacca. They gave Lowbacca a tour of the academy, and sat with him and Djo at lunch. The crystal snake had again escaped, and Solo noticed it as it prepared to bite Thul. He tried to knock Thul out of the way, but as no one else saw the nearly invisible snake, the action was misinterpreted and precipitated a food fight. Eventually, Solo recovered it and was able to lock it away once again.

When Han Solo and Chewbacca departed, they left Lowbacca a gift: a disassembled T-23 skyhopper. The Solo twins aided their Wookiee friend in rebuilding the craft, and Lowbacca then took it out for a test flight. When he returned, he told the twins and Djo of a mysterious artificial object he had seen from a distance. They took the skyhopper out the next morning and found the wreckage of a TIE fighter, which Jaina decided the group should fix. They spent the next days traveling to the crash site, working to restore the wreck. While exploring around the crash site one day, Solo found a trail, which he followed to find the encampment of the TIE fighter's pilot, who had survived the crash after all. He rushed back to the others to alert them, but the pilot showed up just as he attempted to warn them. Armed, Qorl, the Imperial pilot, took the twins prisoner—Lowbacca and Djo were quick enough to escape.

Qorl took the pair back to his settlement, where he fed them. The next morning, he forced them to work on repairing the TIE fighter, demanding that they finish work on it immediately. They were able to complete the last repairs, and Qorl set off in the TIE, which included an added-on hyperdrive unit, abandoning the twins in the jungle. Qorl planned to attack the Jedi academy, but his weapons were non-functional, and Han Solo and Chewbacca, summoned from assisting Calrissian's new venture over Yavin Prime, chased the TIE off Yavin 4 before picking up the twins.

When a field trip to Calrissian's GemDiver Station was scheduled, Solo was extremely disappointed that Djo declined to attend. Calrissian took the Solos and Lowbacca on a tour of his Corusca gem-mining facility, and at their insistence allowed them to ride along on a mining expedition. Calrissian let them work the trolling controls in turn, promising any catch of the extremely rare jewels to the children. Solo was the only one of the three to succeed, snaring a very large and valuable stone. On returning to GemDiver Station, they found a fleet entering the system and bearing down on the station. They were boarded by stormtroopers, and it became clear that it was the Jedi children, not the Corusca gems, that they were after. Calrissian did all he could to protect them, but he and the students were stunned and the children were carried away.

The trio awoke in a cabin aboard a ship, and were soon visited by the woman who had commanded the stormtrooper assault, Nightsister Tamith Kai. Kai took them to the cockpit, where they saw their destination: the Shadow Academy. There Kai intended to turn them to the dark side and make them servants of the Second Imperium, an Imperial splinter state in the Deep Core. In the cockpit they also found Qorl, who had joined the Second Imperium. On landing, they were introduced to the Shadow Academy's headmaster, Brakiss, who Solo knew to be a failed former student of Skywalker's. They were split up and put in small cells, but Solo was determined to remain defiant, mocking his captors and rejecting Brakiss and Kai's pronouncements. When all of the Shadow Academy's students were gathered for Brakiss's lessons, which suggested that the power of the dark side must be added to that of the light, Solo rejected his arguments, but it was Jaina who voiced her objections, causing Brakiss to attack her with Force lightning. Lowbacca began attacking the stormtroopers in the room before Solo talked him down. Brakiss sent all three students away to their cells as a result of the disturbance.

Solo was later brought in for one-on-one training with Brakiss. The headmaster gave the boy a lightsaber, something that Solo had long wanted. Solo distrusted Brakiss and refused the lightsaber, but Brakiss pressed the weapon on him and Solo gave in. The headmaster left the room, which began projecting a holographic simulation for Solo to fight—though, as an incentive to perform, he suggested that he might slip in genuine beasts as well. The training continued, until eventually Brakiss had Solo fight in a holographic disguise, calling it training for possible deployment in disguise. He battled the holographic specter of Darth Vader for some time, until Brakiss dropped the holographic shrouds and found that he had been fighting his sister, with both fighting as Darth Vader. They angrily ended the sparring match.

The next day, the three Jedi students were brought together for an exercise. The Solos would be inside a chamber, blindfolded, and targeted with flying objects. Lowbacca would be in a control room operating drones that could protect them in addition to the sticks given to the twins. Standing back-to-back, they used the Force to sense the incoming projectiles, but as the onslaught intensified, Solo was increasingly battered. Once the systems began firing knives, Lowbacca was able to crash the computer controlling it and bring the test to an end.

Back in his room, Solo hit upon the idea of using his Corusca gem, which he had secreted in his boot, to cut his way out and escape. From within the room, he used the extremely hard gem to slice out the back of the control box that opened the door from outside, allowing him to hot-wire the door open. Reaching out in the Force, he found Jaina and Lowbacca and freed them. Lowbacca sliced into the main computer system and locked down the station before the group fled to the docking bay. There, they found Skywalker and Djo, who had just arrived in a rescue attempt after tracking down the station's location, and escaped.

On returning to Yavin 4, Skywalker offered Solo his lightsaber, instructing him to show what he had learned. Solo refused it; he had realized that he was not yet ready to take up the weapon of the Jedi. Afterward, Han Solo took the children and their friends Djo and Lowbacca back to Coruscant for a break. On their approach to the planet, the twins played their customary game, competing to see who could shoot down more orbital debris with the Millennium Falcon's quad laser cannons. Reunited with his parents and little brother, Solo enjoyed visiting with his family. He offered his mother his Corusca gem as a present, but she insisted that Solo keep it. The youths spent the next day with Zekk, exploring the Coruscant undercity and assisting him in retrieving a hawk-bat egg. When the hawk-bat mother returned with Solo in the process of stealing the egg, he used the Force to calm the creature and allow the group to leave. On their way back, Zekk took them through the headquarters of the Lost Ones, a gang of malcontent youths. The Lost Ones emerged, seeking to rough up the explorers, but the Jedi fled with Zekk to the urchin's mid-level apartment, which he shared with Peckhum, the supply pilot for the Praxeum.

The next day, the Solo family took a private vacation to one of Coruscant's polar ice caps, where they rode tauntauns, turbo-skied, and played in the snow. They also convinced their mother to allow Zekk, Lowbacca, and Djo to attend the diplomatic banquet for the ambassador from Karnak Alpha that night. They attended, where Solo found that the egg Zekk had sold yesterday was presented to the ambassador as a gift for Karnak Alpha's collection of rare animals. Zekk was not fully prepared for the banquet, wearing an outdated suit and accidentally eating his bouquet, thinking it a salad. He stormed off, embarrassed, at the conclusion of the dinner.

The next day, the youths went to visit Zekk, but he was not in. When he still did not turn up at his apartment after an hour of waiting, they were convinced that something was wrong. They left a message for him, but when they came back the next day, there was still no sign of their friend. Solo led the search for Zekk, thinking the older boy was hiding out of embarrassment. The next day Peckhum arrived at the Imperial Palace, having returned from his tour of duty aboard an Orbital Solar Energy Transfer Satellite. Zekk had left no notes for him, and he was convinced the boy was not simply hiding; something had happened to him. Peckhum offered a list of suggestions as to where they might look for Zekk, and Solo took charge of the effort as his sister and Lowbacca went back with Peckhum to the OSETS in order to make badly-needed repairs. Using Anakin and C-3PO as well as Djo, he began systematically combing the areas the old pilot had suggested.

Paired with Djo, Solo searched the undercity, with Djo's quick thinking saving him from a crumbling bridge. They pressed on, and Solo was able to use the Force to sense Zekk. They found him speaking to the Lost Ones; he urged them to leave. When Tamith Kai emerged, it became clear that Zekk, a Force-sensitive whom the twins had never even suspected, had been recruited by the Shadow Academy. Solo argued against the promises of the Second Imperium, trying to persuade Zekk that he was making a mistake. When Kai and her assistants were made to intervene, Solo and Djo attempted to flee, but were stunned. The agents of the Second Imperium simply left them, and they only came to when Organa Solo arrived with Anakin, having tracked the students down. Solo alerted his sister aboard the orbital mirror, and she realized that the Shadow Academy had been hiding, cloaked, in the Coruscant system. She exposed it to the New Republic fleet, but the mobile station fled into hyperspace before it could be disabled. Zekk left the twins a message pod before he departed aboard the station, promising that he held them no ill will, but was determined to make something of himself at the Shadow Academy.

Skywalker picked the students up from Coruscant, taking them back to the Praxeum. Skywalker grew increasingly worried about the threat that the Shadow Academy posed, expecting war to erupt with the growing power. He determined that it was necessary for the students to accelerate their training. For the four most experienced students—the Solos and their friends—it was time to craft their own lightsabers. Taking components from Jaina's store of spare parts, Solo spent a week meticulously assembling his weapon. The Corusca gem he had acquired became the focusing crystal of his lightsaber, creating a green blade.

The Solo children spent a number of days sight-seeing before taking up residence in a suite located within Corona House. This building was the center of government in Coronet, and the location of the upcoming trade summit. When Solo felt sure they were not being listened to, he and his siblings told their parents about the chamber they had discovered. When the summit began, the children took advantage of their parents' absence to stay up late in their bedroom playing board games. It was during this time that Mara Jade entered the apartment. Knowing their parents would soon be meeting with her to discuss adult matters, they returned to bed from the landing where they had been hiding, and pretended to be asleep when their parents returned to check on them. Once more, they snuck onto the landing above the living room to spy on the conversation. Jade had been tasked with delivering a message to the Solos and the Corellian governor-general, Micamberlecto. The message contained a list of stars and dates, and was interpreted as a threat: if the unspecified demands of the blackmailers were not met, supernovas would be triggered in those stars, which housed ever-increasing populations as the list went on. The first star, an uninhabited one, had already exploded.

In the early morning, coordinated species riots broke out across the Corellian system, with the Human League prominent among the troublemakers on Corellia. As the children, Chewbacca, Ebrihim, and Q9-X2 observed the violence from their suite, a series of explosions shook Corona House. The Wookiee acted immediately, gathering the children and taking them to the Millennium Falcon, which was docked on the roof, for evacuation. Solo answered his father's comlink call, and learned that his parents would be staying behind to deal with the crisis. Han instructed his son to take care of the others and follow Chewbacca's instructions.

As the Falcon attempted to leave the system, it was attacked by forces of the Corellian Space Defense Force, which had sided with the treacherous elements. During the dogfighting, the hyperdrive was damaged. Unable to travel faster than light, Chewbacca and Ebrihim decided to seek refuge on Drall with Ebrihim's relatives. Over the course of the long, slow journey, Solo had to contend with the boredom of the voyage and the challenge of managing Anakin—a difficult task even for adults. Upon arriving at the estate of Ebrihim's aunt, Duchess Marcha, they found a safe place to stay.

The next morning, Ebrihim had the children describe the chamber they had found on Corellia to Marcha. Against Solo's advice, Jaina also told Marcha about the secret message they had seen. Marcha and Ebrihim decided to take the children to a remarkably similar archaeological site on Drall in the hopes of understanding the mystery of the chamber and its importance to the Human League, which had announced its control of the mysterious "starbuster" superweapon and the fact that its leader was Thrackan Sal-Solo, Han Solo's cousin. Approaching the dig in the dark, Chewbacca drilled an entrance into the tunnel system near where they suspected the entrance to the chamber to be, if the Drallish site was similar to the Corellian one. They were able to find an identical copy of the Corellian chamber, and Anakin activated the protruding platform on which the group stood, opening the top of the chamber to the surface. Observing it, Marcha concluded that the chamber was a colossal repulsor of a planetary scale, used to move Drall when the Corellian system was constructed, as rumors had long suggested. On Marcha's advice, they took their supplies and the Millennium Falcon and set up camp at the base of the repulsor itself, planning to study it.

The group spent a good deal of time living inside the repulsor, with Anakin constantly exploring its functions. One night, Anakin sneaked away from the camp and found and activated the main control panel for the repulsor, setting it off. Tremendous groundquakes woke Solo, who rushed aboard the Millennium Falcon with the others and safely rode out the massive energy output of the repulsor's firing. After the incident was over, Solo tracked down his brother and convinced Anakin, who was frightened and guilty, to come back to the ship.

Before Chewbacca could repair the damage to the ship from the power surge, Sal-Solo and a squad of Human League troops arrived and took control of the repulsor. The Solo children, Chewbacca, and the Drall were captured and placed inside a force field-stockade inside the camp the Human League set up at the base of the repulsor. Sal-Solo disabled the jamming that had kept the Corellian system isolated and broadcast a message demanding that Organa Solo and the New Republic accept his claims of sovereignty in exchange for the safe return of the hostages.

When night fell, Ebrihim summoned Q9-X2, who had been hidden inside the smuggling compartments of the Millennium Falcon, with a hidden comlink. The droid was able to reduce the strength of the force field, but was unable to turn it off without the key to the controls. Anakin began to push his way through the field, using the Force to strain and distort it. The twins joined him, and together they were able to escape the field. The technique could not effect the adults' escape, however. Ebrihim urged the children, the most valuable hostages, to escape in the Millennium Falcon with Q9-X2.

Chewbacca directed the final repair efforts by comlink; when completed, Solo took the pilot's seat. With his sister as copilot, he tentatively powered up the ship while Jaina shot apart the force field generator and attempted to cripple Sal-Solo's assault boat. Solo put the Millennium Falcon into motion, escaping the repulsor. Before Solo had fully mastered flight, the assault boat was in pursuit. Wildly dodging Sal-Solo's shots, Solo's amateur flying managed to put him on the assault boat's tail, allowing Jaina to disable it. The Millennium Falcon was immediately caught by a tractor beam from the Intruder, a Bakuran cruiser which had entered the system as part of a New Republic rescue attempt and had been planning on seizing the Drall repulsor. Old family friend Lando Calrissian was aboard and was able to reassure Solo and explain the situation while conveying his compliments on their escape. The Intruder also picked up the assault boat, capturing Sal-Solo.

Aboard the Intruder, the children were happily reunited with their parents, who quickly came from negotiations on Selonia. As the Bakuran fleet went into battle against the fleet of the Sacorrian Triad, the true masterminds of the starbuster plot, the children were sent back to the Drall repulsor to help the New Republic crew that was attempting to use it to deflect the next starbuster shot from Centerpoint Station, targeting Bovo Yagen. The twins helped control Anakin, whom the control system had imprinted on, making him the only one who could control the repulsor. When Anakin got upset and stormed off before it was time to fire, Solo had to track him down and convince him to come back.

After weeks of diligent practice, the trainees transitioned from using sticks against dueling droids to wielding their lightsabers against designated targets. Once Skywalker assessed their readiness, they engaged in remote practice to hone their blaster deflection skills. During this exercise, their eyes were shielded by visors that obscured the remotes, compelling them to rely entirely on the Force. Following this, they progressed to sparring matches against one another. Solo faced Djo, employing constant banter to unsettle her while attempting to maneuver her into unfavorable positions. However, Djo remained focused and vigilant. The two combatants locked blades, each exerting force to overpower the other. This intense confrontation took a devastating turn when Djo's lightsaber, hastily assembled with imperfect crystals, malfunctioned. With no resistance, Solo's lightsaber sliced through Djo's left arm, severing it above the elbow.

Overcome with horror, Solo wandered the academy halls in a state of shock as Skywalker escorted Djo for medical attention. Skywalker insisted on restricting visitors, preventing Solo from offering his apology. Consumed by the incident, Solo struggled to find peace and eventually fell asleep, only to be awakened by a premonition that Djo was in danger. He raced outside and witnessed a ship departing from the landing pad, with Skywalker observing the departure. Her family had retrieved Djo, leaving Solo without the opportunity to bid her farewell.

Tionne Solusar, a teacher at the Praxeum, stepped in to guide the remaining friends through their lightsaber training. The students, now uneasy with their weapons and deeply disturbed by Djo's injury, received counseling from Solusar, but their grief persisted. Recognizing the potential benefit of a visit from her friends, Skywalker transported the trio to Hapes aboard the Shadow Chaser, a ship acquired from the Second Imperium. When it became evident that their destination was Hapes rather than Dathomir, the world Solo believed to be Djo's origin, Skywalker revealed that the girl Solo knew as Tenel Ka was, in fact, Tenel Ka Chume Ta' Djo, the daughter of Hapan Prince Isolder and Queen Mother Teneniel Djo, originally from Dathomir. She had concealed her identity to prevent her friends from being influenced by her status as heir to the Hapan throne, as she identified more strongly with her Dathomiri heritage.

Upon landing, Solo eagerly greeted the young princess. Aware of Djo's ever-scheming grandmother, Ta'a Chume, who was determined to prevent Djo from becoming a Jedi, Skywalker arranged for the students to stay with Djo for a month. After settling in, Solo received a visit from the princess, and both attempted to take responsibility for the accident. Ultimately, Solo attempted to ease the tension with his characteristic phrase, "Want to hear a joke?" This prompted Djo to laugh for the first time since their initial encounter, relieved to be reunited with her friend. They resolved to cease assigning blame; Djo accepted Solo's apology, and the two embraced tearfully.

The remainder of the day was spent in Djo's quarters with Jaina and Lowbacca. When dinner approached, Ta'a Chume summoned them to the dining hall. Djo declined, preferring to dine with her friends. Moments later, an explosion rocked the dining hall. They were immediately evacuated to Reef Fortress Island, a royal stronghold. There, Djo selected a special room for each of her friends; Solo's room featured a vast aquarium, a detail he greatly appreciated. After a few days of relaxation, they grew restless on the small island. Their caretaker, Ambassador Yfra, offered them the use of a wavespeeder for a day trip. The wavespeeder was pre-programmed to follow a set course, but as the craft traversed a large, foul-smelling expanse of eye-flower seaweed, Jaina and Lowbacca deactivated the autopilot and attempted to turn back. However, Solo, curiously touching the seaweed, was ensnared by a tentacle that threatened to drag him overboard. He was rescued, but the carnivorous sea life lashed the wavespeeder with numerous tentacles. Solo ignited his lightsaber and defended against the creature, allowing the wavespeeder to escape. Upon inspecting the autopilot, Lowbacca discovered that it had been programmed to strand them in the middle of the dangerous sea.

Upon returning to Reef Fortress, a private investigation confirmed the sabotage of the wavespeeder. Djo suspected Yfra of attempting to seize power. That night, Djo awakened the other students; the power had been cut, and Bartokk assassins were infiltrating the fortress. Ta'a Chume, who had arrived at the retreat that day, was the intended target. The Jedi rushed to her defense, and Solo committed his first acts of killing as he struck down the assassins. As more Bartokks attempted to breach the Queen Mother's chambers, the group fled through a window and into a wavespeeder. Jaina and Lowbacca piloted the craft through the rock formation known as the Dragon's Teeth, and when that failed to deter their pursuers, they navigated over the patch of carnivorous seaweed. There, Ta'a Chume successfully shot down the pursuing craft, sending the Bartokks to their deaths.

They returned to the mainland, where Yfra, who had attempted to usurp power, was arrested. Djo declared her intention to return to the Praxeum, and the return of her parents to Hapes overruled any objections Ta'a Chume might have raised. Skywalker returned the youths to Yavin 4, where Djo constructed a new lightsaber. She insisted on sparring with Solo once more, as a gesture of trust and a means of moving past the accident; the duel proceeded flawlessly.

When Lowbacca became withdrawn, Solo noticed his friend's distress. Eventually, the Wookiee confided that he was concerned for his sister, Sirrakuk, who was nearing the age of her hrrtayyk coming-of-age ceremony and might act independently, as Lowbacca had, potentially endangering herself in an attempt to prove her worth. Furthermore, Raabakyysh, Sirrakuk's friend and Lowbacca's romantic interest, had disappeared after attempting to replicate Lowbacca's solo feat. Lowbacca was traveling to Kashyyyk to accompany Sirrakuk on her hrrtayyk, and the Solos and Djo pledged to join him. Chewbacca transported the group to Kashyyyk aboard the Shadow Chaser, and Solo attempted to amuse Djo with explanations of humor, but his efforts were unsuccessful. Through the Force, Solo detected a creature aboard the ship; he discovered a rodent residing within the ion shield generator circuits. As he retrieved the creature, the Shadow Chaser was pulled out of hyperspace by an ion storm. Deprived of the protection of the shields, its navigational computer was rendered inoperable, but the two Wookiees managed to plot a course for Kashyyyk.

They arrived in Thikkiiana City, where they stayed with Lowbacca's family and toured the advanced electronics factory in the treetop city. After several days on Kashyyyk, Solo, Djo, Lowbacca, and Sirrakuk received a distress call from the factory, reporting injuries to the Wookiees' parents, who were employed there. Upon their arrival, a squadron of TIE fighters began strafing the facility. The young Jedi hurried to the defensive turrets surrounding the station, where Solo downed a TIE bomber before it could deploy its payload and shot down several more fighters. As more Wookiees joined the defense, Solo abandoned his turret to investigate the source of the problem; Lowbacca had identified the traffic control tower as the location from which the automated defenses had been compromised and the attack was being orchestrated. Rushing to the tower, they were intercepted by Zekk—the Second Imperium warrior commanding the strike—and the Nightsister Vonnda Ra. When stormtrooper reinforcements arrived, Solo concluded that victory was impossible and ordered a retreat.

Under intense pursuit, the Jedi descended into the lower levels of Kashyyyk's jungle with Sirrakuk. Solo and Djo followed the Wookiees through the darkness, hoping to evade the Imperials. However, they were forced to activate their lightsabers, revealing their position, when attacked by one of the numerous dangerous creatures of Kashyyyk's depths. Surrounded, they were compelled to surrender. Solo managed to persuade a fierce slug to aid them, allowing them to escape once more. They were recaptured, but Djo dispatched the stormtroopers while Sirrakuk and Vonnda Ra, struggling, fell into the maw of a syren plant. Working with the other Jedi, Solo helped free Sirrakuk by soothing the plant, but left Ra inside to be consumed. While inside, Sirrakuk seized the prized fibers from the plant, completing her hrrtayyk.

They located Jaina, who had followed them with Chewbacca, hoping to organize a rescue. A branch had given way, causing Chewbacca to fall and break his leg. Alone, Jaina had been visited by Zekk, who warned her to stay away from the academy, claiming it would soon be attacked, before departing. They brought the injured Wookiee to the surface, where he received treatment and repairs on the Shadow Chaser were completed before they rushed back to defend the Jedi Praxeum. They landed before any attack had commenced and alerted Skywalker, who immediately began organizing a defense. He assigned Solo to monitor communications and admit Peckhum, making his regular supply run, under the newly installed shields. No sooner had Peckhum landed than the Second Imperium forces entered the system.

A saboteur managed to land and disable the shields, prompting Skywalker to consider evacuating the Praxeum. Solo rushed to his room to release his pets, ensuring they would not be killed in any bombing, before reporting to the Grand Audience Chamber with the other occupants of the Praxeum. There, Skywalker ordered the Jedi to evacuate into the jungle, where they could better confront the invaders. Solo and Peckhum boarded the latter's Lightning Rod to move beyond the range of the Shadow Academy's jamming and transmit a distress message to the New Republic. He managed to transmit an open-channel message past the jamming before the ship was attacked by TIE fighters. One, piloted by the Lost Ones leader Norys, relentlessly pursued the Lightning Rod back into the atmosphere—where Norys was shot down by Qorl, who was leading the TIE assault on the Praxeum, for insubordination and disobedience. The Lightning Rod crashed, breaking Peckhum's arm. Solo was forced to pilot the badly damaged ship from its landing site to an emergency landing at the Great Temple. He landed at the very conclusion of the battle—after the Shadow Academy had been destroyed, Brakiss and Kai killed, the Dark Jedi routed, and the Second Imperium fleet defeated by reinforcements summoned by Solo's distress message—as Jaina dueled Zekk and a saboteur's bomb caused damage in the Great Temple.

With the battle concluded and the Second Imperium decisively defeated, the students traveled to GemDiver Station to recover in Calrissian's bacta tanks. Reconstruction of the Great Temple began, and the students participated in the construction efforts. Meanwhile, Zekk fell into a coma upon returning from GemDiver Station. Solo was at his side when the former darksider awoke four days later. Zekk still felt awkward and guilty about his time at the Shadow Academy, but he worked with the group of friends to repair the Lightning Rod and strengthen their bonds. Once repaired, Zekk departed aboard it, not yet ready to train with Skywalker. During the battle, Qorl had been shot down. The pilot reverted to his hermit lifestyle, renouncing galactic conflict. Solo and his friends eventually encountered the old pilot again and came to regard him as a friend.

Shortly thereafter, Djo received a ship, the Rock Dragon, as a gift from her parents. This pleasant surprise was soon followed by the arrival of Anakin, with Han Solo and Chewbacca, at Yavin 4. Anakin believed his puzzle-solving abilities could be used in the rebuilding effort, and Organa Solo would be arriving in less than a week to celebrate her birthday with her family. Jaina suggested to Han that the twins and their friends travel to the Graveyard—the remnants of Alderaan—in Djo's ship to retrieve a piece of rubble as a memento for their mother's gift. The elder Solo reluctantly agreed, and the group soon departed for the Graveyard. They entered the Graveyard and discovered an asteroid composed almost entirely of pure metal, a former part of Alderaan's core. After landing, they donned spacesuits and extracted a section of the pure metal.

As they attempted to leave, the Rock Dragon came under attack, forcing the Jedi to simulate an explosion and seek refuge inside an asteroid to evade their pursuer. The students collaborated to make necessary repairs, but as they attempted to escape, the enemy ship appeared at the entrance of the cave and fired, collapsing the cave and burying the Rock Dragon. Lowbacca's translator droid, M-TD, connected to the ship's systems, detected that the ship's data banks were being accessed by a remote slicer. The trainees exited the ship to assess the cave-in, but their attacker soon blasted through the rubble and demanded information about Bornan Thul—Raynar Thul's father—who the youths knew had recently disappeared, with Han Solo searching for him. Their attacker identified herself as Boba Fett, but unbeknownst to Solo and his companions, she was Ailyn Vel, Fett's daughter, in disguise. Upon learning that she had misinterpreted a transmission the Jedi had sent to Raynar Thul—that they had not found Bornan Thul, only a birthday gift for Leia Organa Solo—Vel departed, causing another cave-in to trap the friends once more and implying that she would use them as bait for Han Solo, who might possess more information.

Meanwhile, M-TD had accessed the Slave IV's records using the Rock Dragon's remote slicer, revealing that Nolaa Tarkona, the Twi'lek politician whom the elder Thul had been on his way to meet, had issued the bounty on Thul that Vel hoped to collect. M-TD also detected a decoy distress message sent by Vel to Solo's father. Solo and Djo returned outside to clear a path while Jaina and Lowbacca worked on repairs. Once ready, they emerged into the asteroid field, and Solo transmitted a warning and distress message. Vel disabled the Rock Dragon, but before she could destroy the ship, Zekk arrived in the Lightning Rod and drove off Vel. The Lightning Rod disappeared again, and the youths were left to drift in space until the Millennium Falcon arrived and towed them to safety. Zekk returned from his pursuit of Vel and announced his intention to become a bounty hunter himself and search for Thul.

They returned to Yavin 4, where the Solo family celebrated Organa Solo's birthday, and she greatly appreciated the twins' gift. Solo made a conscious effort to be more friendly toward Raynar Thul, and when he learned that Thul was being sent to his mother, Aryn Dro Thul, during this stressful time for his family, Solo suggested that he and his friends accompany him to provide company and assist with his Jedi exercises.

Aboard the Thul flagship Tradewyn, they were warmly welcomed and given a tour of the bridge. While on the bridge, they witnessed the next hyperspace jump of the Bornaryn Trading Fleet—during which the Tradewyn emerged alone, drawn into a bounty hunter's trap. As Raynar and Aryn Dro Thul were escorted to safety in a secure cabin, Solo sensed through the Force that something was amiss. He and Djo followed their assigned guard, Kusk, to the docking bay, where they discovered Kusk attempting to take the Thuls prisoner. Using the Force, the three Jedi captured Kusk, while the bounty hunter's ship was destroyed in battle.

Upon learning that Bornan Thul had last been seen on Kuar, Solo decided that the young Jedi should investigate the world for clues. Raynar remained safe with his family while the other students departed in the Rock Dragon. On Kuar, they identified a landmark that appeared to be the most likely location for any meeting on the abandoned world. After landing, they searched and discovered a House of Thul sash, bearing a message from Bornan Thul warning of great danger to the galaxy's Humans if he were captured. While further investigating, the group was attacked by a combat arachnid. They were rescued by the sudden appearance of Raabakyysh, the friend Lowbacca had believed to be dead. They fled from attacks by more combat arachnids and returned to their ship. Lowbacca spent time catching up with Raabakyysh, who seemed uncomfortable around the other Jedi. The female Wookiee had been injured during her rite of passage attempt and had fled the planet in shame. The next morning, Solo suggested that he and Lowbacca visit the other Wookiee on her ship, the Rising Star. From her, he learned that a trader named Fonterrat had recently been on Kuar, sent by Raabakyysh's employer, Nolaa Tarkona's Diversity Alliance. He was the one Raabakyysh had sought on the planet. Solo immediately deduced that Fonterrat was the individual Thul had met before leaving Kuar. At that moment, Tyko Thul, Bornan's brother, arrived. After they had left the fleet, he had decided to aid them in their search. His disparaging remarks about Tarkona caused Raabakyysh to leave the group, and they uncovered no new clues on Kuar.

That night, they were attacked by several ships that deployed assassin droids led by IG-88A. They fled into nearby caves, where they were trapped between the assassin droids and more combat arachnids. Both the droids and the Jedi fought the arachnids, but when Thul was seized by one, IG-88A rescued Thul and departed with him. The Jedi were forced to retreat to their ship, repair the damage sustained in the droid attack, and return to the Praxeum.

There, Raabakyysh eventually visited, taking Lowbacca back to Kashyyyk with her to announce her survival. Shortly afterward, Lusa arrived at the academy, a Chironian who had been one of Hethrir's Force-sensitive captives when the Solo children were kidnapped and whom the twins knew. Lusa informed the Solos and their friends that she had joined the Diversity Alliance, which promoted hatred and resentment of Humans; she left after being assigned to what was essentially an assassination mission.

Raynar Thul returned from the Bornaryn fleet and decided that, with his uncle kidnapped, he would travel to Mechis III to oversee the droid assembly lines of the planet administered by Tyko Thul. The Solos and Djo volunteered to accompany him in the Rock Dragon. Upon landing, Tyko Thul's protocol droid, 3D-4X, insisted that no visitors were permitted, but they entered the main office regardless. Upon attempting to use the equipment, they triggered a security lockdown and had to disable automated security blasters before they could unlock the door and exit the office. Just outside the door, however, was IG-88A, accompanied by Tyko Thul. The elder Thul had orchestrated his own kidnapping, hoping to lure his brother out of hiding. They became Thul's guests, but while fitting M-TD with a repulsorlift enhancement, Zekk arrived. As a bounty hunter, he had been hired by Bornan Thul—disguised but recognized by Zekk—to rescue Tyko.

They were interrupted by a strafing run from Dengar, a bounty hunter who had followed Zekk. Convinced that Bornan Thul was with them, Dengar was distracted by Zekk and Jaina in the Lightning Rod while Solo, Djo, and Raynar Thul attempted to escape in the Rock Dragon. Before they could reach the ship, however, Dengar landed and held them at gunpoint. Solo joined the other students in distracting Dengar by threatening to topple his ship over the edge of the rooftop. IG-88A arrived and disarmed Dengar, forcing the bounty hunter to retreat. With the threat neutralized, Jaina and M-TD reprogrammed IG-88A to track down and protect Bornan Thul.

While stationed on Mechis III, Lowbacca's parents sent the group a message. It revealed that he, along with his sister Sirrakuk and Raabakyysh, had journeyed to the Diversity Alliance's headquarters located on Ryloth. Although the young Jedi had come back to Yavin 4, they still worried that their friend had become involved with the potentially dangerous anti-Human group. Deciding that they needed to know more about Lowbacca's well-being, they opted to travel to Ryloth, as he had been out of contact for an extended period. An attack by a rakhmar resulted in Thul's injury. The subsequent arrival of Lusa, who announced Ta'a Chume's demand to see Djo, provided an opportunity to return Thul to the Great Temple. Upon their return, Solo went with Djo to meet her grandmother. The Queen Mother's research into the Diversity Alliance, using numerous sources, uncovered that the organization was profiting from the sale of ryll spice from Ryloth. Furthermore, they frequently hired bounty hunters to eliminate defectors, suggesting a leadership that was far more sinister than publicly perceived. Lusa verified this information and warned that Lowbacca would be in considerable danger if he attempted to leave the organization.

The Solos, along with Djo and Thul, decided to go to Ryloth themselves. They chose not to inform any adults, fearing that it might escalate into a diplomatic issue or trigger a New Republic crackdown that could endanger Lowbacca. They secretly boarded the planet by attaching the Rock Dragon to an automated freighter, and then transferred to one of the ship's cargo pods. After the search of the Rock Dragon failed to discover them, they were able to sneak into the tunnel network of the Diversity Alliance's base. While attempting to reach Lowbacca, they were discovered by Hovrak, Tarkona's second-in-command and head of security. Overwhelmed, the students were captured and brought before Tarkona. Raabakyysh revealed their identities as valuable hostages. However, Solo attempted to attack Tarkona by using telekinesis to manipulate their captured lightsabers. Unfortunately, his control wasn't strong enough to inflict any damage, and he was forced to surrender again.

The young Jedi received a sentence of hard labor in the ryll mines. Solo and Djo were tasked with harvesting stalactites of concentrated ryll from the cave ceilings. Eventually, Lowbacca found out about his friends' imprisonment. He pretended to be a guard and took them into his custody. After rearming themselves, they exited the cave network into the open air of Ryloth, while Lowbacca went to retrieve Sirrakuk. Before they could fully escape, they encountered several guards. Jaina covered their escape by destroying a weapons cache, which caused a cave-in that separated Solo and Djo from Jaina and Thul. Eventually, they emerged outside Ryloth's temperate zone, on the planet's cold night side. Solo and Djo struggled through the freezing temperatures and rocky, hilly terrain, sharing warmth and providing emotional support to each other, as they made their way toward the habitable zone. When a heat storm struck the night side, they had to find shelter from the intense, burning heat. In the cave where they sought refuge, they encountered Kur, a former Twi'lek clan leader who had been defeated and exiled by Tarkona. After briefly regaining their strength in Kur's cave, they set out again, accompanied by the old Twi'lek. Before they reached habitable land, Lowbacca and Sirrakuk rescued them in the Rock Dragon. Meanwhile, Skywalker, Zekk, and Lusa arrived and picked up Jaina and Thul, allowing the entire group to leave Ryloth.

They recuperated on Coruscant, where Organa Solo committed the New Republic's resources to stopping the Diversity Alliance. They learned from Zekk's investigations and Hovrak's statements that the Alliance intended to release a plague across the galaxy, which would kill all Humans. Once they had recovered, Organa Solo had the young Jedi testify before the New Republic Senate about their encounter with the Diversity Alliance. Some nonhuman senators were critical of their testimony, pointing out that the youths had broken into the headquarters of another government. Cilghal, a Jedi Knight and senator, proposed a fact-finding mission, which the Senate approved.

Zekk, having previously placed a tracking beacon on Bornan Thul's ship, set out with Raynar Thul to bring the wanted man to safety. The Solos, Lowbacca, and Djo decided to support their friends, arriving at the rendezvous point just in time to drive off Ailyn Vel, who was still impersonating her father, and rescue the elder Thul. Before Thul abandoned his ship and set it to self-destruct, he noticed Vel hacking into his computers. This gave her the location of the Emperor's Plague Storehouse, where the anti-Human virus that Tarkona wanted was stored. They determined it was crucial to reach the storehouse before Tarkona, so they sent a message to Coruscant requesting reinforcements and then headed for the secret former Imperial base.

After traveling for twelve hours, they reached the asteroid base and found that the main chamber contained numerous canisters of the deadly disease. They devised a plan to use the munitions stored at the depot to destroy the asteroid and the plague. They split up to plant their explosives. Before they could finish, the Diversity Alliance arrived, and Solo, his sister, and Djo found themselves pursued by Diversity Alliance agents. They fled to the Rock Dragon, setting up explosives to cover their launch and trap their pursuers. Once they launched, they were attacked by the Diversity Alliance fleet, but the timely arrival of a New Republic task force, led by General Solo, saved them and put the Diversity Alliance's armada on the defensive. The Jedi returned to the asteroid to place and detonate the remaining explosives. The New Republic fleet also bombarded the asteroid, after Zekk, Lowbacca, and Raynar Thul had escaped. Bornan Thul sacrificed his life in an attempt to destroy the plague and kill Tarkona. Tarkona escaped in a shuttle with Raabakyysh, but she had already been infected with another of the artificial diseases stored in the depot and was dying. Raabakyysh chose to flee and quarantine the pair rather than risk spreading the disease further.

The Diversity Alliance was completely defeated. Solo and his friends became involved in resolving the situation on Coruscant, distinguishing the ringleaders of the Diversity Alliance captives from those who were unaware of the group's more extreme plans. They also helped the former members of the Diversity Alliance reintegrate into the New Republic.

Lusa and Zekk both decided to begin Jedi training, which greatly pleased the other Jedi trainees. In the aftermath of the Diversity Alliance crisis, they enjoyed some time off, reflecting on the seriousness of the events that had transpired. When Solo expressed doubt that any future events could surprise them after what they had already experienced, he was proven wrong when Djo kissed him, much to his delight. After a period of training, Han Solo arrived on Yavin 4 to take his children, including Anakin, to the 24 ABY Blockade Runners Derby at Ord Mantell, where he would serve as Grand Marshal. The Millennium Falcon served as the pace craft, taking a trial run through the course. During that flight, the ship narrowly avoided an ambush involving several mines. The race was postponed until the next day, at which point the Solos were quite surprised to see Zekk win the race with Lowbacca and Djo in the Rock Dragon.

After the intense media attention subsided, the youths focused on analyzing the debris from the mines that had almost killed them, hoping to identify who wanted them dead. During a lunch break, a feeling of unease in the Force prompted them to check the evidence, which was in the process of being stolen by camouflaged, color-changing creatures. While fighting the thieves, they were surprised by the arrival of a woman wielding a lightsaber. The thieves managed to escape with the evidence, but one of those killed in the fight had a Black Sun tattoo. The woman introduced herself as Anja Gallandro, the daughter of a skilled gunfighter Han Solo had once fought. The elder Solo attempted to explain that he had not killed her father; when Gallandro drew his blaster to shoot a fellow treasure hunter, the automated security systems in the area had killed Gallandro. However, the young woman refused to believe him and left, criticizing the Solos for never having helped her war-torn homeworld, Anobis.

Solo's thoughts turned to Gallandro's obvious pain and anger, and to his father's incomplete explanation of her accusations. Han Solo had not fully explained the circumstances of her father's death before she left, saying only that it was not his fault. Solo sensed his father's guilt over the matter and discussed it with his siblings. When his father entered the room, Solo pressed him to explain, which he did. The elder Solo had avoided giving all the details to Gallandro so as not to tarnish her image of her father. Still, Jacen Solo could not completely dismiss his doubts about the incident and his father's clear sense of guilt.

The next morning, the Solos set out for Anobis on a fact-finding mission with their Jedi friends. Before they left, Gallandro approached them, and Solo invited her along when she mentioned her intention to return to Anobis. She explained the origins of Anobis's civil war, which stemmed from the conflict between Rebellion-aligned valley farmers and mountain miners who depended on Imperial trade. Solo found himself sympathizing with her miner background. She also explained that she had bought her lightsaber and was not a trained Force-user. As they entered the Anobis system, they encountered the Rude Awakening. Suspecting it of gunrunning after it released space mines and attempted to flee, Han Solo, in his capacity as a New Republic emissary, boarded the craft. With the Jedi students, he found the hold full of illegal munitions. The New Republic representatives forced the pilot, Lilmit, to jettison and destroy his cargo before they landed in a farming village on Anobis. There, they learned that the farmers' fields had been mined by the mountain villagers.

That evening, the village was attacked by a migrating herd of carnivorous knaars. The Jedi volunteered to fight against the massive herd while as many villagers as possible were evacuated in the Millennium Falcon. Resistance proved futile against the overwhelming numbers, so instead, the Jedi led the villagers safely through the treacherous minefields. As the villagers moved beyond the traditional territorial boundary of the knaars, Solo sensed the predators' unease and used the Force to convince them to abandon their pursuit. Afterwards, Han flew several leaders to a mountain village for refuge and to discuss peace, while the Jedi led the rest of the villagers through the dangerous forest to the village. When they arrived, after avoiding most of the booby traps that had been planted in the forest, they were captured by hostile miners.

The villagers were imprisoned while the leader of the miners, Elis, tried to convince the New Republic emissaries that the farmers were the true villains of the civil war. Both sides had inflicted terrible damage on the other, but each was tired of the endless destruction and wanted the war to end. When Elis's brother, Protas, died in an accident while placing burrowing detonators in the abandoned farming village, and the New Republicans revealed that Lilmit had been selling weapons to both sides, the diplomats were able to persuade both sides to set aside their twenty-year feud and work together again to clear their traps and rebuild their lives on Anobis. Using the Force, Solo and his friends were able to sense traps and remove them from a safe distance. In the aftermath, Solo suggested that Gallandro attend the Praxeum and explore her apparent Force powers.

Gallandro spent weeks at the academy, during which both Solo and Zekk found themselves attracted to her and spending time with her. However, she did not get along with the rest of the group. The two boys worked with her on lightsaber technique and were frustrated by the hot-tempered woman's aggressive, risky fighting style. Solo almost lost his own arm during practice with her, and Skywalker admitted that he felt no Force-sensitivity in Gallandro, only a darkness. Solo and Zekk's closeness with Gallandro created a rift between them and the rest of their friends, but a visit from Lando Calrissian offered an opportunity to bring the group together. Calrissian was planning to invest in an amusement center in Cloud City, SkyCenter Galleria, and wanted the Solos, Lowbacca, Djo, and Zekk to test the center and provide feedback. Solo suggested that Calrissian invite Gallandro along.

Upon arriving at Cloud City, they learned that Calrissian's business partner, Cojahn, had died in what was ruled a suicide. They toured the facility, but it was difficult to enjoy the attractions after Cojahn's death. Calrissian was not convinced that it was a suicide, and the Jedi suggested that they investigate. The next morning, before their investigation began, Calrissian told the students that he recognized Gallandro to be under the influence of andris. Solo found this hard to believe, but when questioned, she admitted to using the spice. Upset, she vowed that she was not addicted and stormed off.

When Calrissian learned that a band Cojahn had booked—Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes—had fled Cloud City for Clak'dor VII, he left to investigate the lead with Jaina and Zekk. Solo, Djo, and Lowbacca searched SkyCenter Galleria for suspicious activity, but Gallandro showed little interest in their investigation. When they noticed an Ugnaught who matched the description of the former construction foreman Cojahn had fired, the Jedi students followed him into the floating city's network of service tunnels and into Port Town. There, the Ugnaught led them into an ambush by seven armed thugs of the Black Sun crime syndicate. The Jedi ran, pursued by the hit men, but the Ugnaught managed to drop them down a chute to Cloud City's exterior. Lowbacca and Djo were able to grab onto an antenna, but Solo plummeted into Bespin's atmosphere. He sent out a cry for help through the Force, causing a thranta rider named M'kim to direct his mount to catch the falling boy. M'kim refused to take him back immediately, suggesting that Solo should allow the assassins to believe him dead for the moment. Instead, M'kim took Solo to a floating mat of algae and told the Jedi that he had seen Cojahn fall to his death, pushed by Czethros—the old bounty hunter foe of Han Solo and supposed legitimate businessman Solo had met on Ord Mantell during the Blockade Runners Derby.

M'kim then took Solo back to Cloud City, where he had a joyful reunion with his companions, who had thought him dead. Calrissian and the others returned, having learned from D'an that Black Sun had been attempting to muscle into Cloud City's entertainment sector and put pressure on Cojahn. Calrissian demanded an investigation, and Solo, Djo, and Lowbacca were summoned for a debriefing on the assassination attempt. However, upon reaching the supposed site of their report, they found it deserted except for two of the Black Sun assassins and a pair of corrupt Wing Guard officers. The Jedi fled in a pair of cloud cars, with Solo shaking off his pursuers by flying into a storm cell and using the Force to direct a pack of velkers to attack the following cloud car. He returned to Cloud City, and there, with the conspiracy uncovered, Calrissian began to dismantle Black Sun's influence over Cloud City. However, Czethros himself slipped out of the grasp of the New Republic.

After the students returned to Yavin 4, Gallandro eventually ran out of andris, leading her to steal the Lightning Rod and take off in an attempt to secure a new supply of spice to feed her addiction. Skywalker assigned the Solos, Lowbacca, Djo, and Zekk to find her, recover the ship, and help their friend overcome her addiction. The ship's course as it fled Yavin, and Gallandro's addiction, suggested that her destination was Kessel, where andris was mined.

Solo sensed that something was amiss with the mission. Upon arriving on Kessel, the Jedi met with Nien Nunb, the Sullustan who managed the spice mines of Kessel for their owner, Calrissian. Nunb offered his assistance but warned the students that he suspected some of his employees might be working against him, and the Jedi should be alert for betrayal. While the youths searched for any sign of the Lightning Rod, they noticed that the Rude Awakening, which they had previously encountered running guns to Anobis under Lilmit, had docked in a secluded area, authorized by the former Second Administrator Torvon—who had died while attempting to assassinate Nunb. The Jedi felt they should investigate Lilmit's presence. Upon confronting him, they learned that Gallandro had visited and spoken with Lilmit before leaving for Mon Calamari. Additionally, the smuggler was desperate to leave Kessel quickly, suggesting that whatever conspiracy was working against Nunb would soon come to a head.

The Jedi decided to divide their forces. Solo, Zekk, and Djo pursued Gallandro in the Rock Dragon, while Jaina and Lowbacca remained behind to protect Nunb. Solo thought to signal Cilghal ahead of time, requesting assistance. When they arrived on Mon Calamari, Cilghal had already begun inquiries and arranged to meet the Jedi on Foamwander City. Cilghal was able to track the Lightning Rod to Crystal Reef, an elite arctic resort city. There, the resort's information systems located Gallandro, who was attempting to procure a submersible. Accompanied by Cilghal, the students approached Gallandro. They were able to convince her to explain herself, at which point the young woman finally lowered her guard and admitted her addiction. Additionally, she revealed that she had been working for Czethros, only to realize that she had been manipulated and used by the Black Sun kingpin. Solo's friendship had helped convince her that she had been wrong to hate the Solos, and she no longer wished to harm them. Instead, she was determined to destroy Czethros's cache of spice under the ice cap.

Taking a submersible, they located and destroyed the cache. As they finished, a gigantic and very rare Great Arctic Skra'akan began to attack the submersible. When it consumed some of the free-floating andris, its attacks became frenzied. They managed to escape by sealing their damaged submersible inside a fissure in the ice cap, but being trapped presented its own problems. As Gallandro became overwhelmed by withdrawal in their cramped quarters, escape efforts stalled. Solo and his friends gathered around Gallandro to support her as Cilghal used her healing skills to remove the toxins causing her symptoms. With that complete, Djo suggested they use their lightsabers to clear the ice around the craft. Suiting up for the frigid waters, Solo helped carve away the ice until the submersible could move freely.

They returned safely to Crystal Reef, where Zekk recovered the Lightning Rod, leaving only Solo and Djo to pilot the Rock Dragon back to Kessel. Solo and Djo enjoyed their time together, but were alarmed to learn that on Kessel, Jaina and Lowbacca had narrowly foiled a takeover attempt by Black Sun, capturing Czethros and preventing Black Sun from enacting a scheme to take over various major galactic institutions and locations.

The students made their way back to Yavin 4. There, Solo gave Djo, with whom he was growing increasingly close, a necklace made of precious gort-egg shells. Skywalker spoke with the students individually about their futures as Jedi. It was decided that Solo and his younger brother would become their uncle's apprentices, traveling with him and receiving personal instruction in the ways of the Force. Jaina would become an apprentice to Mara Jade Skywalker.

A celebration was planned to honor the students' progress and accomplishments, and their families were invited. Solo was able to apologize to his father for doubting his account of the elder Gallandro's death, and Anja Gallandro herself apologized before leaving the Praxeum. Lacking ability in the Force, she instead took a job with Calrissian. At the ceremony, all the Solo children, Djo, Lowbacca, Zekk, Thul, Lusa, Gallandro, and even M-TD were recognized for their roles in thwarting the recent plots against the New Republic. After the ceremony, the Solos and Skywalkers took a vacation to Crystal Reef, where they had been invited to enjoy a trip by the local authorities when Solo and his friends had first arrived.

As Luke Skywalker's pupil, Jacen Solo sought a deeper understanding of the ancient Jedi ways, beyond mere peacekeeping through combat. Yet, Solo disagreed with Skywalker's ambition to revive the Jedi High Council, holding firm to the belief that being a Jedi Knight was a profoundly personal, spiritual journey, guided by internal wisdom, not external structures. He feared a Jedi Council would inevitably succumb to political maneuvering and corruption. Similarly, he considered the Praxeum, his recent place of learning, a flawed concept, too rigid and restrictive for individual development. In Jacen's view, students should first discover their own path to the Jedi before being mentored individually to explore the Force. These unconventional, authority-questioning views sparked many debates with Skywalker, who, while holding a more traditional view of the Jedi's role, valued Jacen's opinions and insights. Jacen also engaged in heated arguments with his brother, who viewed the Jedi as peacemakers and guardians of order, their martial skills essential. Jacen countered this, believing a Jedi's true goal was internal harmony and understanding of the Force, not wielding it as a tool to impose personal interpretations of good. Despite his convictions, Jacen felt compelled to instruct his younger brother until Anakin embraced this truth.

In the year 25 ABY, after accompanying Skywalker to a meeting of the new Chief of State Borsk Fey'lya's Advisory Council concerning the Jedi's role, Jacen once again clashed with his brother. The argument escalated into a lightsaber duel, each asserting that their understanding of the Force led to a superior connection and, consequently, greater lightsaber skill. Jacen emerged victorious in the sparring match, but the philosophical divide between the brothers remained unresolved.

Soon after, the Skywalker and Solo families journeyed to Dubrillion, where Lando Calrissian was managing a new mining operation on Dubrillion's sister planet, Destrillion, and the Lando's Folly asteroid belt. During a layover on Reecee, Jacen's Master sought his opinion on reestablishing the Jedi Council, revealing that he shared similar concerns. However, Skywalker believed the Jedi needed oversight and had responsibilities to the New Republic. Skywalker also cautioned Jacen about his pride in philosophical debates and his disdain for Fey'lya, warning against overconfidence in his own views.

On Dubrillion, they toured Calrissian's facilities, and the Solo children eagerly seized the opportunity to "run the belt" by piloting a TIE Advanced x1, enhanced with strong repulsor shields, along the edge of Lando's Folly. Jacen went first, lasting over five and a half minutes before colliding with an asteroid and losing control. Protected by the collision shields, Jacen's name was added to the record board. Anakin narrowly exceeded his time, but Jaina set a new single-pilot record during her run. This performance ignited a debate between Jacen and Anakin Solo about the merits of inner peace versus outer skill. Jedi Knight Kyp Durron, then leading a squadron of fighter pilots against smugglers and a faction of Jedi advocating for an active, interventionist role, was on Dubrillion and joined the discussion after congratulating Jaina. Jacen criticized Durron's actions, accusing him of seeking trouble and reducing the Jedi to mere galactic police. Unfazed by Jacen's arguments, Durron departed with his squadron to investigate unusual activity in the Helska system. After Han Solo and Chewbacca completed a perilous paired run of the belt, during which their TIE Bomber's remotely projected shields failed, they left with Anakin to deliver supplies to Sernpidal for Calrissian. Meanwhile, the Skywalkers departed to investigate reports of trouble at the ExGal Society facility on Belkadan.

On Sernpidal and Belkadan, evidence of a mysterious new menace began to surface. On Belkadan, terraformed through unknown means, Mara Jade Skywalker fought a warrior wielding living weapons and undetectable in the Force. Over Helska IV, strange yorik coral ships annihilated Durron's Dozen-and-Two Avengers. Only Durron survived to report on the frighteningly powerful vessels. The most devastating news for Jacen came from Sernpidal, where a strange creature caused the moon Dobido to collide with the planet. Separated from the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca managed to throw Anakin to safety. Unable to rescue Chewbacca in time, Anakin was forced to escape in the Millennium Falcon to save it and the refugees aboard. The Solos' Wookiee "uncle" perished in the planetary disaster, becoming one of the first victims of the Yuuzhan Vong, an extragalactic race intent on conquering the galaxy.

Han and Anakin guided the Sernpidal refugees to Dubrillion, where the Yuuzhan Vong invaders followed. Upon Anakin's return, Jacen learned of Chewbacca's death and reassured his younger brother that he had no other choice, and Chewbacca would not have wanted others to die attempting a hopeless rescue. With news that the enemy fleet was approaching Dubrillion, Jacen and his siblings volunteered to fight in the impending battle. Overcoming their parents' objections, they were permitted to pilot three of Calrissian's remotely shielded TIEs, armed with a single laser and a torpedo rack, provided they remained within the atmosphere and within range of the Belt-Runner I, which powered their shields.

As the battle began, the Solos patrolled the atmosphere, intercepting enemy coralskipper fighters that slipped past the orbital defenses before reaching the planetary turbolasers. When Belt-Runner I came under attack, it could no longer shield them, leaving their fighters vulnerable. With the shields down, Jaina argued that the restriction to stay within the atmosphere was no longer valid and led the others into the main orbital battle. Their exceptional teamwork drew enemy attention. While the swarm of enemies prompted the other defenders to retreat to the atmosphere, Anakin insisted the Solos run the belt. He called to the other two Jedi through the Force, suggesting they join minds. Surrendering to the Force and sharing perceptions, they evaded the asteroids and easily targeted the Yuuzhan Vong fighters. The strain of the intense bond eventually became too much for Anakin to manage, ending the experiment and forcing the unshielded Jedi to abandon Lando's Folly. Anakin was forced to make a blind jump to hyperspace, and a furious Han ordered the twins back to Dubrillion.

With the Yuuzhan Vong attack weakened by the diversion of much of its force into the asteroid belt, the twins were hailed as heroes upon landing. Following this experience, Jacen felt that the perfect teamwork they had achieved challenged his belief that the Force should be used solely internally, considering its application in battle too potent and practical to disregard. Meanwhile, the Millennium Falcon recovered Anakin and returned to Dubrillion, where Calrissian's men had captured an enemy fighter with its pilot dead. Skywalker intended to use the ooglith cloaker environment suit and gnullith breather, along with an iceborer ship, to infiltrate the Yuuzhan Vong base on Helska IV. However, Jacen believed the Skywalkers should not undertake the mission; Mara Jade Skywalker, who was to pilot the transport ship Merry Miner to deliver and retrieve the iceborer, was suffering from a severe and mysterious disease. Instead, the twins became convinced that they should carry out the mission themselves.

Certain that no one else would approve of their plan, the Solos departed in the Merry Miner without permission, leaving only a message with R2-D2. In the Helska system, the launch of the iceborer proceeded smoothly. However, before reaching the planet, Jacen sensed a cry for help through the Force. He diverted his course toward the signal, alerting the Yuuzhan Vong to his presence, before guiding the iceborer through the thick ice crust covering Helska IV's waters. He exited the iceborer and, disguised in his ooglith cloaker, was mistaken for a Yuuzhan Vong by a group of warriors who ordered him into their ranks. This proved fortunate, as the warriors were headed to a cell holding Durron's apprentice, Miko Reglia, who had been shot down in the earlier battle, and a woman named Danni Quee, whom Jacen recognized with surprise as the source of the Force call. When the warriors realized something was amiss, Jacen was forced to fight them. Quee handled one, and Reglia, broken by Yuuzhan Vong torture, sacrificed himself to remove the ooglith cloakers from two warriors and drag them into the freezing water. Jacen killed the remaining three and pulled Quee to the iceborer. He broke through the ice and launched into space, where a New Republic task force had engaged the Yuuzhan Vong and been defeated. Jaina intercepted his ship, and together with the Millennium Falcon and Jade Sabre, they returned to Dubrillion.

Due to the craft's design, Jacen was confined to the cramped one-man tube with Quee for the entire journey, attempting to comfort the traumatized captive. Quee, a scientist at the ExGal-4 station on Belkadan, explained much about the extragalactic aliens' invasion, equipment, and methods: they sought to conquer the galaxy and used a living, sentient war coordinator, a yammosk, to direct the coralskippers' efforts. When Jacen and Quee conceived the idea of redirecting the yammosk's immense energy output back onto Helska to freeze the planet through intense evaporation, Calrissian provided the shieldships to reflect the energy. After a brief stop on Dubrillion to gather their forces, the New Republic fighters returned to Helska, with Jacen manning the ventral turret of the Millennium Falcon. With many coralskippers having left to attack Dubrillion, the attack caught the Yuuzhan Vong by surprise. Jacen provided cover for the shieldships as they drained heat from Helska IV. The yammosk was killed, and the ice world exploded under the strain of the energy.

Following the battle, Jacen submitted a report detailing his experiences, hoping to provide insights into the strange invaders. Although the Yuuzhan Vong attack had been thwarted, Quee, the Solos, and the Skywalkers believed they had only defeated the vanguard of a much larger invasion force. The New Republic's leadership disagreed and did not want to create a crisis atmosphere, fearing public panic over what they considered an isolated, defeated threat. To organize a Jedi response, Skywalker convened a convocation of the Jedi two months after the initial invasion, which Jacen attended. Skywalker shared the unsettling news that the Yuuzhan Vong could not be sensed in the Force; they seemed invisible or outside of it. When Durron confidently declared the Jedi's ability to handle the threat, Jacen criticized him for overconfidence. Skywalker interrupted the argument but supported Jacen's point, stating that he would direct the Jedi to gather information and prepare for war rather than engage in a war themselves. Jedi Knight Corran Horn brought the Solo brothers to Skywalker afterward to discuss their assignments. Anakin was instructed to accompany their aunt to Dantooine, where she could recover from her illness. Before Jacen received his assignment, he confessed to his Master that he was having second thoughts about being a Jedi. Jacen felt that the Jedi Order had strayed from its meditative origins and that the current Order did not fulfill his need for an internally focused, contemplative connection with the Force. Skywalker insisted that he could not abandon his Jedi duty to protect life in the galaxy, and Horn added that action could be as instructive as meditation. Skywalker denied Jacen's request, insisting that he needed Jacen's help on a dangerous mission to return to Belkadan. Afterward, if Jacen still desired solitude for introspection, he could have it.

Upon approaching Belkadan, the two Jedi observed that its atmosphere had nearly returned to normal, unlike the noxious, hothouse environment the Skywalkers had previously encountered. Jacen landed their craft, the GAT-12 Skipray Blastboat Courage, discreetly near the ExGal facility. They discovered a warning display of broken technology but found no signs of life. They proceeded to an area where, upon landing, they sensed unnatural, diseased life. There, they found an encampment where Yuuzhan Vong biological technology was being cultivated, worked by captives, slaves implanted with coral "slave seeds" that allowed the Yuuzhan Vong to control them. Jacen believed they should free the slaves, but Skywalker resisted, arguing that they lacked sufficient information to risk freeing them, as their lives might be beyond saving. Reluctantly, Jacen agreed.

After a week of scouting the area where the Yuuzhan Vong were developing their weapons and equipment using slave labor, Jacen experienced a vivid dream in which he liberated the slaves he had found on their first day. Accompanying this dream was a sense of urgency, convincing him it was a Force vision, a prompting from the Force to free the Yuuzhan Vong's captives. He accepted the mission, sneaking out of the Jedi camp in the ExGal station in the middle of the night. As he approached the slave quarters, mirroring his vision exactly, his certainty grew. Finding the slaves working in a villip paddy, he boldly summoned them to follow him. Instead of fleeing, the slaves became alarmed and retreated. Their Yuuzhan Vong overseer engaged Jacen in combat. The Yuuzhan Vong warrior gained the upper hand, as his amphistaff and vonduun crab armor resisted Jacen's lightsaber. Unable to use the Force to move the Yuuzhan Vong, Jacen was held underwater until he lost consciousness.

Waking up in the Embrace of Pain, a Yuuzhan Vong torture device, Jacen wondered if he had used a simple dream as a pretext to do what he had wanted all along and resolved to heed the advice of more experienced Jedi in the future. The Embrace of Pain caused him too much agony to focus on using the Force, and he was defenseless when a Yuuzhan Vong creature arrived and implanted a surge coral seed on Jacen's cheekbone. Startled when his lightsaber was thrown out of the door, Jacen looked up to see Skywalker, wielding two lightsabers, defeating three Yuuzhan Vong warriors. The Jedi Master freed Jacen and removed the slave seed. Reporting that the slaves no longer existed in the Force—either dead or completely consumed by the Yuuzhan Vong implants—Skywalker insisted they leave immediately for Dantooine.

Skywalker had sensed that his wife and nephew were in danger from Yuuzhan Vong pursuers on Dantooine. Landing on the wilderness planet, Jacen and Skywalker followed the Force and found three attackers about to kill Anakin. Skywalker saved Anakin, while Jacen subdued the other two Yuuzhan Vong. They returned to the Courage but remained on Dantooine, as Jacen's mother and sister had landed on another continent with a large group of refugees from Dubrillion, which had fallen to the invaders. At the refugee camp, Jacen discovered that his twin sister had joined the elite Rogue Squadron and would be serving with the other fighter pilots in the camp's defense. Jacen and Anakin Solo, along with Skywalker, assisted the New Republic Army forces guarding the perimeter. Jacen also spoke with Quee, who had been traveling with Jaina and Leia Organa Solo, working on the Force skills Jacen had discovered in her. During their conversation, Quee helped him realize that he was content, at least for the time being, to pursue a path of action and defense rather than retreating to meditate—he had found that his place was, in fact, with the Jedi. Quee, five years older, also gently rejected Jacen's romantic advances, stating that she valued him as a friend and could not trust her feelings during such turbulent times.

When the Yuuzhan Vong attacked, a concentrated assault of ground troops dominated by Chazrach slave-soldiers, Jacen and his brother were assigned to the southwest corner of the defenses. As the Chazrach advanced into the New Republic lines, the Jedi were forced into a desperate defense. Skywalker used the Force to redirect one of the gravitic anomalies, which the Yuuzhan Vong assault craft used as shields, back onto the vehicle itself, destroying the command center for the assault. Without central control over their surge coral implants, the Chazrach went berserk. Many breached the camp, but their rampage was stopped before the next wave of Yuuzhan Vong arrived. Although previous supply shortages had forced the refugees to stop on Dantooine, many had been killed in the fighting, and their position was no longer defensible. The New Republic forces used the respite to evacuate the refugees. The arrival of two capital ships under the command of Admiral Traest Kre'fey drove off the Yuuzhan Vong fleet, allowing the refugee convoy to escape. Although Jacen had accepted his duty to defend the refugees, in the aftermath of the carnage battling the seemingly mindless Chazrach, he questioned whether fighting had truly been the role of a Jedi. He felt he was receiving conflicting signals as to whether action or contemplation was the right path for him. After discussing his feelings with Anakin, he resolved to simply follow the paths the Force presented to him and learn from each.

Upon their return to Coruscant, the Solos found Han immersed in alcohol, still grieving Chewbacca's passing. When Skywalker convened another assembly of Jedi, Solo was present. Skywalker declared a change in Jedi strategy, focusing on aiding refugees and gathering intelligence about the invaders until they had sufficient knowledge to develop effective combat strategies. Simultaneously, the New Republic declined to endorse Jedi actions, perceiving them as intrusive and largely ineffective throughout the war thus far. However, Corran Horn was reinstated into military service and tasked with leading a clandestine operation to Garqi, a world under Yuuzhan Vong control, to establish contact with the local resistance and acquire crucial information. Horn's team consisted of six Noghri commandos and two civilian observers; he selected Solo and Jedi Knight Ganner Rhysode.

Solo underwent a week of intensive briefings and training before departing on the Ralroost, where Jaina was stationed with Rogue Squadron. Jaina engaged Solo in a conversation, criticizing his tendency to dwell on philosophical matters rather than focusing on the immediate mission. She urged him to prioritize survival on Garqi and to learn from Horn and Rhysode, emphasizing the importance of concentrating on the Yuuzhan Vong threat. As the scouting team prepared to infiltrate Garqi, they boarded the shuttle Best Chance, concealed within the Lost Hope. Only the mission team, Kre'fey, and the ship's technicians knew of the Lost Hope's intended destruction, designed to allow the Best Chance to land undetected. The plan unfolded without issue, with a fabricated engine failure causing the explosion and providing cover for their landing. Solo distanced himself in the Force from his sister, who was piloting her X-wing in the battle, as she, like the others, was intentionally kept unaware of the true situation until the battle concluded, preventing the enemy from gaining any advantage from their reactions.

After landing, the team connected with the Garqi Resistance and journeyed to Pesktda, the planetary capital. There, they discovered the Yuuzhan Vong were constructing an army of slaves encased in surge coral armor. Horn proposed a plan: during the Yuuzhan Vong's war games in the city, the strike team would capture some of the slaves amidst the chaos and transport them off-world for analysis, aiming to devise a countermeasure without alerting the Yuuzhan Vong to their compromised research. During the subsequent exercise, the New Republic strike team lay in wait within the utility conduits beneath the training area, observing the Wlesc neighborhood streets through their holovision goggles. When the combat reached their position, Solo and the others emerged and engaged the Chazrach, who made up the majority of the Yuuzhan Vong forces. Rhysode, Horn, and Resistance snipers eliminated the three Yuuzhan Vong commanders overseeing the war game, forcing the remaining troops to retreat. The team seized two incapacitated slave soldiers, but a coralskipper quickly appeared. Horn ordered Solo to retreat while he confronted the fighter. Instead, Solo utilized the Force to seize a heavy hatch cover and hold it against the coralskipper's plasma emitter. The ship was obliterated in the plasma backwash, and Horn pulled Solo to safety, away from the falling debris.

With the Yuuzhan Vong in hot pursuit and their extraction point still two hours away, the New Republic team sought refuge in the Pesktda Xenobotanical Garden, while two of the Noghri and the Garqi Resistance fighters secretly departed with the captured slaves. Solo and Horn acted as the rearguard, enduring significant harassment from Yuuzhan Vong warriors. They fortified themselves within the Ithorian section of the gardens, where they were challenged by Yuuzhan Vong commander Krag Val and six additional warriors. Val killed a Noghri and inflicted a facial wound on Rhysode before Solo engaged the warrior and struck him down. The remaining enemy warriors were killed by their own vonduun crab armor, which reacted allergically to the Ithorian bafforr tree pollen, causing it to swell and suffocate them. Recognizing the significance of this discovery, Horn ordered the forest to be burned, preventing the Yuuzhan Vong from understanding what had transpired. Solo protested the killing of the semi-sentient bafforrs, but Horn insisted that it represented the galaxy's best hope.

Instead of the expected suicidal last stand, the Jedi realized they had achieved a victory and successfully reached the Best Chance before extraction. Despite the unexpected arrival of an enemy fleet, Kre'fey's task force, aided by the surprising intervention of Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, leader of the Imperial Remnant, and a small contingent under his command, successfully retrieved the Best Chance. Once safely away, Solo prepared the scouting team's report, while the combined New Republic and Imperial task forces proceeded to Ithor, intending to secure the bafforr population. They prepared for an invasion, anticipating that the Yuuzhan Vong would soon recognize the threat Ithor posed. For the Jedi to travel from the floating herdships to Ithor's surface, sacred to the Ithorians, they were required to participate in a purifying ceremony with High Priest Relal Tawron. Tawron mandated that each Jedi publicly declare a personal obstacle they were renouncing as part of the purification. Envious of the others' ease in identifying their issues and desperate to achieve the same certainty and peace, Solo ultimately rejected his own need to know his future role, focusing instead on the present and setting aside his urgency to know what he would become.

When a Yuuzhan Vong fleet entered the system, the Ithorian herdships were evacuated, with the exception of Tafanda Bay, which the Jedi retained as an ambush site for the Yuuzhan Vong. To prolong the evacuation time for the herdships, Horn proposed challenging Shedao Shai, the enemy commander, to a duel, with the victor determining whether the New Republic would retain Ithor or return to Shai the remains of an ancestor who had died scouting the galaxy. A truce would precede the duel to facilitate further evacuation. Solo felt uneasy about the plan and attempted to dissuade Horn, suggesting that Horn was seeking revenge for Shai's murder of Elegos A'Kla, a senator and friend of Horn's who had attempted to understand the invaders. Horn insisted that his motives were purely strategic, which Solo reluctantly accepted.

During the Yuuzhan Vong attacked, Solo served on Ithor's surface alongside Horn and Rhysode. While the Yuuzhan Vong landing force concentrated on attacking a droid-defended facility built over a large bomb as a trap, the Jedi seized the landing craft serving as Shai's command center. Horn issued his challenge to Shai via villip, and Shai accepted. Following the battle, Solo comforted his sister, who was mourning the loss of her wingmate, Anni Capstan, in the conflict.

A week later, Horn emerged victorious from the duel, but Shai's successor, Deign Lian, disregarded the agreement and instead bombarded Ithor with a bioengineered toxin, eradicating all life on the planet. Horn, overwhelmed by negative press coverage that portrayed him and the Jedi as fools whose actions had led to Ithor's destruction, and realizing that he had indeed sought vengeance, left the Jedi Order, offering himself as a scapegoat. Solo protested, outraged by the idea that the Jedi would succumb to political pressure and public slander, but Skywalker accepted Horn's reasoning, and Horn urged Solo to support Skywalker.

While Solo was training on Yavin 4 with his siblings and Lowbacca, they approached Prince Finn Galfridian, a new Jedi trainee whose homeworld, Artorias, had been conquered by the Yuuzhan Vong. They invited him to train with them for an afternoon, after which Anakin reported hearing a strange sound emanating from a cave. Galfridian deployed his exploration droid, [Prowl], to scout the cave, discovering a massive, enraged tuk'ata within. Anakin wanted to attack the beast, but Solo, sensing something was amiss, blocked his strike and instead approached the creature, removing a shaft from its flank. The calmed beast retreated into the cave as Jedi Masters Skywalker, Durron, and Lar Le'Ung arrived and promised to contain the Sith hound.

Following that incident, Solo, his siblings, his mother, Lowbacca, and Galfridian traveled to Nar Shaddaa to locate a smuggler possessing information about Yuuzhan Vong infiltrators. Han Solo lent them the Millennium Falcon, but remained too consumed by grief, and with relations too strained, to accompany them. Upon their arrival, Organa Solo allowed the youths to cautiously explore the upper levels while she met with a contact—Han Solo himself, unwilling to confront his children due to his feelings of shame. During their exploration, the young Jedi were approached by Dahal, a grifter who offered them a tour of the city. They accepted, but Dahal's true objective was to pick Solo's pocket. When Solo and Lowbacca entered Giton's Bar to find the smuggler, they were directed to Dahal. Solo confronted him, and the alien returned the credit pouch but withheld the money, using it as a bribe to secure a meeting with the smuggler. Prowl tracked Dahal while the Solos returned to the ship, where they learned that their father had been there but had avoided seeing them, which particularly upset Anakin. After Galfridian's droid identified the smuggler, a Vratix named Spraug, the entire group confronted him and forced him to hand over a holocron containing the information.

The holocron implicated Dulac, a longtime friend of Galfridian's family, as a Yuuzhan Vong in disguise. Galfridian insisted on returning to Artorias to warn his father, King Caled Galfridian, who had remained on Artorias. Master Skywalker forbade him from going, but Solo and his sister realized he would attempt to sneak away and waited for him in the hangar that night, intending to accompany their friend. Skywalker foresaw Galfridian's attempt and arrived. He accepted that he could not restrain the youth, though he still considered the mission unwise, and ordered Galfridian to obey the twins, placing Solo in charge of assessing the approach to the enemy-held planet and aborting the insertion if it appeared too dangerous.

They emerged over Artorias and were immediately attacked by grutchins, hull-chewing Yuuzhan Vong insects. Solo eliminated most of them, but Galfridian had to perform an extravehicular activity to fight off those that had already attached to the hull. The damaged ship crashed into the sea, as Galfridian had initially planned, where Galfridian navigated it to the hidden undersea base from which he expected his father would be operating. They arrived, learned that Caled Galfridian was with Dulac in a private room, and rushed to find the king battling Dulac, who had revealed himself. Upon being confronted, the Yuuzhan Vong infiltrator struck the king with poison from his plaeryin bol implant. The Solos swiftly dispatched the attacker and attempted to use the Force to heal their friend's father, but were unable to counteract the exotic venom. Despite their efforts, the king died. The twins honored him at a memorial service conducted by Finn Galfridian before fleeing the planet with the Artorias resistance movement. Aboard their escape craft, Solo spoke with Galfridian, who revealed that he intended to go to Nar Shaddaa in accordance with the holocron, which reacted specifically to the prince. Solo offered Galfridian his assistance, and though the other youth insisted on going alone, Solo maintained that he would be ready to help if his friend ever needed him. He reiterated that promise when he dropped off Galfridian on Nar Shaddaa.

Six months after Chewbacca's death, Solo and his family attended a service on Kashyyyk to honor the fallen Wookiee. Han, still grappling with his grief, subsequently departed with his old friend Roa to investigate the Peace Brigade, a group of mercenaries collaborating with the Yuuzhan Vong. During his travels, he encountered Elan and Vergere, a Yuuzhan Vong priestess and her familiar who claimed to seek defection to the New Republic. This information was presented to Skywalker, who informed a gathering of Jedi, including Solo, that the priestess insisted on meeting with the Jedi leadership, claiming to possess information about Jade Skywalker's illness. Despite the other Jedi's skepticism, Skywalker intended to proceed with the plan, though only he and his wife would meet with Elan and Vergere. Solo objected, arguing that the Skywalkers were the least suitable individuals to enter what was almost certainly a trap. He volunteered himself for the duty, and as others clamored to be included, Skywalker agreed to allow a large group of Jedi to attend and share the risk. The decision became irrelevant when Elan was exposed as a traitor before the meeting. Vergere, however, fled after giving Han Solo a vial of her tears—tears that had been manipulated to provide an antidote to Jade Skywalker's disease.

Roughly a month later, the New Republic, working to reactivate Centerpoint Station for use against the Yuuzhan Vong, attempted to enlist Anakin's assistance in their efforts. Solo strongly opposed this, asserting that Centerpoint, as a superweapon, should only be used for defensive purposes, not aggression. The two engaged in a heated argument at the Praxeum in front of several senior Jedi, which was resolved when Skywalker arrived. Skywalker shared Solo's concerns regarding the potential uses of Centerpoint, but believed that the station's defensive capabilities were too significant to leave it dormant. Determined to ensure that caution was exercised in the superweapon's deployment, Solo decided to travel to Centerpoint with his brother and observe the reactivation process.

The Solos journeyed to Drall, where they reunited with Marcha and Ebrihim. Their arrival, along with the New Republic's takeover of Centerpoint Station, sparked intense protests, with which Solo found it difficult to disagree. The Drall revealed that the New Republic intended to use the space station not as a defensive weapon, but as part of an ambush against the Yuuzhan Vong. Anakin suggested that he attempt to find a way to re-enable the weapon so that it could only be used defensively. The group traveled to Centerpoint, where they encountered Thrackan Sal-Solo, who had been paroled to assist in the reactivation effort. Anakin was immediately able to reactivate Centerpoint's systems, which had imprinted on him eight years prior when he operated the Drall repulsor. Soon after, Yuuzhan Vong ships launched what the New Republic expected to be an attack on a seemingly under-defended Corellia. Instead, the enemy launched a surprise attack on Fondor. Sal-Solo argued that they should target the Yuuzhan Vong fleet from a distance using Centerpoint's powerful repulsor, as it was the only chance to save Fondor. The others in the room agreed, but Solo objected to the offensive use of the superweapon. Anakin looked to his older brother for guidance, and Solo forbade him from firing the weapon. Anakin complied, but Sal-Solo rushed to the controls and took the shot himself. While Anakin could have made a precise shot, Sal-Solo's sloppy targeting incinerated three-quarters of the Hapan reinforcements Organa Solo had recruited into the New Republic's war effort and damaged some of the system's celestial bodies as it destroyed half the attacking fleet. The Yuuzhan Vong withdrew, although the New Republic's cause suffered tremendous losses. Solo was disgusted that Corellian news reports portrayed Sal-Solo as a hero, but was proud that his brother had not fired the weapon.

Han returned to the family with many of his issues resolved, but Solo faced new challenges, doubting his decision at Centerpoint and struggling to reconcile defense and aggression. He ultimately concluded that evil could not be fought with evil, and violence could not be stopped with violence. He not only ceased fighting, but also stopped using the Force entirely to prevent any potential misuse. Excusing himself from more active Jedi missions that he was unsure he could support, Solo traveled to Duro, where Han oversaw Settlement 32, a refugee camp housing the Ryn friends and relatives of Droma, an individual Han had befriended during his time away. Solo assisted his father in managing the camp and resolving disputes. During one such dispute resolution, Solo experienced Jaina's pain through their twin bond. Collapsing, he entered a vision in which Luke Skywalker battled a Yuuzhan Vong atop the disk of the galaxy. Skywalker threw his lightsaber to Solo, who failed to catch it, disrupting the galaxy's balance. As Solo desperately tried to interpret the vision, a voice told him, "Stand firm." He was unable to do so and slipped into the darkness into which the galaxy had tilted. Solo was shaken by the vision, which seemed to warn him that even a single misstep in these times could doom the galaxy.

Upon awakening, Solo insisted that he and his father contact Rogue Squadron to inquire about Jaina's condition. They learned that Jaina had been injured in battle but was recovering safely. Shortly after, they were contacted by the New Republic with the news that Jaina's corneas had been damaged in the battle but would heal. She was furloughed to Duro, to be cared for by her family until she was ready to return to combat. When she arrived, Solo found her accommodation and, at her urging, broke his self-imposed moratorium on Force use to help Jaina enter a healing trance.

Life continued at the camp, with Solo resisting the efforts of the young Hutt Randa Besadii Diori to recruit him into a grandiose but impractical scheme for an irregular squadron to fight the invaders. Solo also had to address CorDuro Shipping diverting supplies intended for the refugee camp to the Duros orbital cities. A sudden change occurred when Solo discovered an infestation of synthplas-eating insects. He took them to Han and organized an effort to eradicate them before they damaged the containment dome that kept the settlement safe from Duro's toxic atmosphere. Meanwhile, Solo and his sister attempted to contact the offices of the Senate Select Committee for Refugees, SELCORE, to locate their mother, who was working for SELCORE but had lost contact. They were able to contact Senator Viqi Shesh, who was in charge of SELCORE, but made no progress. Solo, however, became highly suspicious of Shesh's demeanor and her management of the agency.

Several nights later, Solo awoke with a sense of danger. He roused Jaina and discovered that the insects, thought to have been eliminated, had pupated and become an infestation of moths. Summoning the settlement's leadership, Solo began deploying the repair droids to combat the moths. There proved to be too many to control, and the camp had to be evacuated. Solo helped manage the effort and stunned Diori when the Hutt became belligerent about his place on board one of the evacuation crawlers. As they headed for the larger settlement of Gateway, Solo was contacted by their authorities, who insisted that the newcomers would have to undergo decontamination to ensure the infestation did not spread. Upon arriving at Gateway, Solo was shocked to discover that his mother had been administering the nearby camp all along. While most of the Settlement 32 population remained in quarantine, Solo led the expedition that returned to the breached dome-city to recover possessions left behind, as well as the ships remaining there. He had to intervene to protect some Ryn in the expedition from a mutant Fefze beetle, but refused to kill the creature, instead only distracting it. When five beetles threatened a pair of vulnerable Vors, however, he was forced to kill. More beetles were drawn to his lightsaber, and at Droma's insistence, he threw the weapon away and ran. Before he and Droma escaped in the settlement's I-7 Howlrunner, he reluctantly called on the Force to summon the lightsaber back to him.

Solo was decontaminated, which required that he be shaved and irradiated, and began assisting his mother with Gateway's management. When another CorDuro-handled shipment went missing, Solo traveled to the capital orbital city of Bburru to lodge a complaint and attempt to resolve the situation. Solo met with Vice-Director Durgard Brarun, where two other guests, seemingly a pair of Kubaz, revealed themselves through the Force as Luke Skywalker and Anakin Solo. Brarun was nervous and hostile, and effectively admitted to stealing supplies. Without authorization, Solo took the risk of offering the Duros a cut of future goods from the settlers on the surface, working to make Duro habitable once more. Brarun offered to house him as a guest while they continued negotiations. In his room, Solo was approached by his Master. He shared his vision and his concerns with Skywalker, who expressed approval of Solo's desire to take a stand against misuse of the Force and seek his own path, but cautioned that Solo was approaching dangerous pride in his belief in the importance of his own insights. Skywalker departed with a warning that Solo's resolution not to use the Force would put not only himself but also his loved ones in danger.

In his room, a Sunesi servant named Gnosos approached Solo, warning him that he was in danger and should escape. He provided the means to do so, but before Solo left, his sister arrived. While Solo still hoped to negotiate, Jaina revealed that her investigation, along with the Skywalkers and Anakin, had tied Brarun to the Peace Brigade and to Nom Anor, a Yuuzhan Vong secret agent in Gateway. The pair fled in a hoverpod provided by Gnosos and returned to Gateway, where they found Organa Solo preparing for yet another evacuation, expecting a Yuuzhan Vong attack to follow Anor's unmasking. The assault force appeared almost immediately, and the sabotaged planetary shields failed to cover Gateway. Solo rushed to find his father, who was overseeing the digging of an emergency shelter in the mines underneath Gateway. He led the rest of his family and many refugees there just before the Yuuzhan Vong landed at Gateway. Solo volunteered to accompany his mother and sister in a return to the administration building to activate the mining laser stored there. When Organa Solo asked him to use the Force to help free some refugees, Solo refused, feeling that this was the moment of his crisis. From secrecy atop the building, Jaina was forced to lift a droid herself from the pit into which the Yuuzhan Vong were throwing technological devices and drop it onto a group of the guards, allowing their prisoners to scatter.

Inside the administrative center, Leia Organa Solo revealed to her children a hidden passage leading into the mine system. She insisted they use it to evacuate after she and her Noghri protector, Olmahk, positioned the mining laser on the roof for their planned assault. However, before they could carry out this plan, a Yuuzhan Vong patrol unexpectedly appeared. Organa Solo sealed the door, separating her children from the impending conflict. She commanded them to flee into the tunnels while she and Olmahk confronted the Yuuzhan Vong. As Jacen Solo escaped, a powerful urge to return overcame him. He instructed Jaina to proceed to the transport where Han and Droma awaited, and to inform them of the situation. Stealthily re-entering the building, he concealed himself within a compact storage space, awaiting the moment when he sensed his destiny would be determined. He grappled with uncertainty regarding the Force's demands and whether he should resume its use. Ultimately, he resolved to act, but to uphold his vow to abstain from using the Force. Hearing his mother's agonizing cries as she endured torture, Solo burst from the closet and attacked two Yuuzhan Vong guards in the stairwell. He successfully subdued one without resorting to the Force, while the other fled to a chamber where Solo faced Anor, several attendants, and the Yuuzhan Vong Warmaster, Tsavong Lah. Realizing that he had to prevent them from killing his mother, and that he could not defeat them without the Force, he finally embraced it. Surrendering himself to the Force, he battled Lah and his minions, unleashing a barrage of objects at his adversaries. Lah was struck by a desk and plunged out of a window, severely injuring his left foot.

Jaina arrived just as Jacen Solo secured victory. Attending to his mother's injuries, he allowed Jaina to guide him to the evacuation vessel. He used the Force to control the bleeding from Leia Organa Solo's severely wounded legs. They navigated the tunnels to the Millennium Falcon, where they stabilized Organa Solo and manned the turrets, escorting a small fleet of transports carrying the surviving residents of Gateway. They escaped into hyperspace and met with the Jade Shadow. To avoid detection, the twins transferred to that ship and returned to Coruscant, while Han transported Organa Solo to nearby Corellia for urgent medical care. During their escape, Solo sensed through the Force that his aunt was pregnant. However, as neither of the Skywalkers had disclosed this information to their family, he kept his knowledge to himself for the time being.

Tsavong Lah survived and, consumed by rage, delivered a speech in which he offered peace to the galaxy, contingent upon the surrender of the Jedi. He specifically demanded Jacen Solo for sacrifice. The Senate began to deliberate on the Peace Vote proposed by Senator Shesh, which would have accepted Lah's conditions and outlawed the Jedi in exchange for peace. Simultaneously, Peace Brigaders and other fearful collaborators began to betray, hunt down, and otherwise persecute the Jedi.

On Coruscant, Jacen Solo reported CorDuro's collaboration with the Peace Brigade and Yuuzhan Vong, but lacking substantial corroborating evidence, the case stalled. However, upon their return from Corellia, Han and Leia Organa Solo, in collaboration with the Jedi Eelysa and her Wild Knights squadron of Jedi, provided further evidence of CorDuro's corruption, even linking the company's collaboration to Shesh, who orchestrated assassination attempts on Organa Solo. Jacen Solo was present when his mother, still recovering, presented her case to the Senate Corruption Panel. Victor Pomt, Staff Chief for Shesh, took responsibility, preventing Shesh from being condemned as a traitor. Nevertheless, Shesh's reputation suffered significant damage, and as Jacen Solo anxiously monitored the news, the Peace Vote was overwhelmingly rejected.

In response to Lah's announcement, Luke Skywalker gathered the Jedi to discuss their escalating persecution. During this meeting, Jacen Solo clashed with Kyp Durron, who advocated a more aggressive "Jedi for the Jedi" approach, contrasting with Skywalker's call for a more cautious and measured response. During a break, Jacen Solo spoke with his siblings, who were exploring ways to be more proactive without resorting to aggression. Attempting to identify the most vulnerable worlds and Jedi, they realized that the Praxeum was at risk. They shared their concerns with Skywalker, who revealed that he was already addressing the issue, but the New Republic was delaying the evacuation and he could not contact Booster Terrik, whom he wanted to entrust with the students' safety aboard his personal Star Destroyer, the Errant Venture.

Feeling compelled to act, Anakin secretly departed for Yavin 4. Meanwhile, Skywalker dispatched Talon Karrde to evacuate the students, but upon arrival, Karrde discovered that the Peace Brigade had already descended on Yavin 4. Karrde managed to evacuate most of the students, but Anakin, Tahiri Veila, Valin Horn, and Sannah remained on the planet. Karrde and his forces maintained their position in orbit, attempting to fend off a Yuuzhan Vong fleet. When Karrde's lieutenant, Shada D'ukal, arrived on Coruscant with the rescued students, Skywalker appealed to Chief of State Fey'lya for assistance, but Fey'lya, unwilling to violate the current truce with the Yuuzhan Vong, denied New Republic support. At Skywalker's urging, Jacen Solo and his sister began searching the galaxy for Booster Terrik, Corran Horn's father-in-law and Valin Horn's grandfather, and his mobile headquarters. Mara Jade Skywalker initially wanted to accompany them, but Skywalker advised that they would need to remain discreet to avoid violating Fey'lya's prohibition on a Jedi rescue mission. During the conversation, it was revealed that Jade Skywalker was pregnant, and Jacen Solo admitted that he was already aware of this.

To protect the Jedi students from exposure on Coruscant, the Solos brought them along on the Jade Shadow, intending to house them with Terrik once they located the smuggler and information broker. Although Terrik had largely disappeared from contact, Jaina believed that he could most likely be found running arms for the Hutt resistance movement. As Corran Horn was living in exile aboard the Errant Venture, Jacen Solo spent considerable time in deep meditation, attempting to locate Horn through the Force. He eventually succeeded, and Terrik eagerly prepared to rush to his grandson's defense. When the Errant Venture arrived at Yavin 4, Jacen Solo found his brother escaping with the remaining students, as well as Qorl and the former Peace Brigadier Remis Vehn. Jacen Solo, Jaina, and Horn piloted their X-wings in support of the escape, successfully recovering Vehn's craft, rescuing Karrde's outgunned force, and repelling the Yuuzhan Vong fleet. Anakin shared with Jacen his belief that during his time on the run on Yavin 4, working alongside a Yuuzhan Vong Shamed One—a member of their disgraced lowest caste—he had gained a new understanding of the Yuuzhan Vong as individuals and in the Force, now enabling him to fight them with confidence and without succumbing to the dark side. Jacen Solo was concerned that his brother remained determined to fight, but was encouraged that a path to understanding could be found.

Jacen Solo spent the following months serving as a crew member aboard the Millennium Falcon with his parents as they worked to establish a network for hunted Jedi to flee to safety, which Skywalker dubbed the "Great River." During one such journey, the Millennium Falcon was abruptly pulled out of hyperspace by a Yuuzhan Vong Vua'spar interdictor. Jacen Solo, stationed in one of the turrets, was incapacitated along with the rest of the crew by an enemy device. Awakening first, he roused the older Solos and Organa Solo's two Noghri bodyguards, then prepared to repel boarders. When a grutchin burrowed through the hull, Jacen Solo eliminated it and advanced up the cofferdam behind it. There, he killed two Yuuzhan Vong and severed the cofferdam, which sealed itself shut just before Jacen Solo would have been ejected into vacuum. While Han worked to restore power to the Millennium Falcon, Jacen Solo conceived the idea of using the garbage vent to launch a series of concussion missiles at the interdictor. The missiles diverted the interdictor's attention, and Jacen Solo manned a quad laser turret, enabling the Millennium Falcon to escape.

They traveled to Shelter, a clandestine Jedi base that the Solos had helped construct within the the Maw black hole cluster. There, all three Solos met with Lando Calrissian, who managed Shelter, and representatives from various resistance groups. Jacen Solo helped mediate as they attempted to extend the Great River into a system that would allow the Jedi to support resistance movements across the galaxy in their battles against the invaders. Following the meeting, the Solos embarked on another mission. Upon exiting hyperspace in occupied territory, they detected a suspicious vessel nearby and observed it meeting with a Yuuzhan Vong escort. The Solos now possessed corroborating evidence for Calrissian's earlier claim that the Peace Brigade was handling shipping within Yuuzhan Vong territory. Han decided to seize the opportunity to destroy the enemy vessel, but Jacen Solo objected, stating that he had agreed to come along on the condition that there would be no unnecessary attacks. Han, frustrated with his son's philosophical objections, angrily told the young man to simply follow orders and not expect everyone else to adhere to his moral qualms. Jacen Solo manned a turret as the Millennium Falcon destroyed the Yuuzhan Vong escort. Han and Jacen Solo boarded the freighter, Tinmolok, subdued the crew, and set them adrift on a shuttle with a warning that the "Princess of Blood" would privateer any other craft supplying the enemy. Jacen Solo continued to object to their aggressive actions, but Han instructed him to follow orders or leave when they returned to Shelter with the captured ship.

At Shelter, both Solo men began working on the E-wing fighters that the Tinmolok had carried, attempting to ignore the growing tension between father and son. Jacen Solo struggled with his father's ultimatum and ultimately decided that he had to remain with his parents, using his skills to prevent unnecessary loss of life in future hijackings. When Organa Solo confronted him about his conflict with his father and explained that Han was simply struggling to understand his son and thought Solo ashamed of him, Jacen Solo was stricken and spoke up to reconcile with his father.

The Solos resumed privateering, capturing five Peace Brigade ships before docking on Tatooine to meet with Shalo, one of Han's contacts. As Han did not trust the man, they had Talon Karrde provide backup. During the meeting, Shalo attempted to have his enforcers collect the bounty on Jacen Solo, but Karrde's people had already dealt with them. Han forced Shalo to reveal where the collaborationists were operating in the spaceport town of Mos Eisley before more of Shalo's employees began to attack. The two Solos and Karrde's employees were able to fight off the Peace Brigade attackers, and upon leaving, they interrogated Shalo, whom they had captured. Shalo admitted that a large convoy would be stopping at Tatooine in two days. The Solos prepared an ambush with Karrde, but they were ambushed instead when an interdictor entered the system. During the battle, Warmaster Lah, aboard the interdictor Sunulok, called a truce while demanding that Jacen Solo be handed over to him. Han seized the opportunity to overwhelm the Sunulok's dovin basal shields with the liquid hydrogen cargo of one of the convoy ships. The interdiction field collapsed as the dovin basals attempted to shield the Sunulok, and the Millennium Falcon fled into hyperspace with Karrde's ships.

As they made their way back to Shelter, Jacen Solo felt his aunt's sudden pain through the Force as she nearly succumbed to her disease. However, with Skywalker's assistance, she was able to purge herself of the disease once and for all as she gave birth to Jacen Solo's new cousin, Ben Skywalker. The Solos quickly diverted to the Errant Venture to be with their family.

In 27 ABY, when the Yuuzhan Vong threatened to kill hundreds of thousands of refugees at Talfaglio if the Jedi did not surrender, Jacen Solo attended a small summit that Skywalker held at Eclipse Station, the new secret Jedi base in the Deep Core. Jacen Solo was convinced that both attempting a poorly planned rescue mission and doing nothing were unacceptable, but he could not find an alternative, and the Jedi did not agree on a course of action. When his mother was injured subduing several voxyn, specially created Jedi-hunting creatures newly appearing in the Yuuzhan Vong arsenal, aboard a ship over Coruscant, Jacen Solo traveled to the capital planet to be with her. Jacen Solo was present when Organa Solo spoke to the New Republic Military Oversight Committee concerning the Talfaglio issue. When Shesh used the opportunity to oppose the Jedi, Jacen Solo suggested ambushing the blockade using an unexpected route to Talfaglio. The committee voted in support of Jacen Solo's plan, but with an insufficient majority to bypass a vote of the full Senate. Fey'lya moved the issue to a military study group, outraging Organa Solo at the possibly fatal delay. She declared herself once more done with politics, to Jacen Solo's dismay.

When Cilghal, who was researching the voxyn, discovered the location of the voxyn queen, she called a meeting, which Jacen Solo attended. As their cells degenerated extremely quickly, destroying the voxyn queen, from whom the rest were cloned, would severely limit the voxyn threat. Cilghal was able to determine that the voxyn queen was on or near Myrkr. It was impossible for the Jedi to sneak across the enemy frontier, leading Anakin to suggest that a group of young Jedi allow themselves to be turned over and carried across the enemy border before commandeering the enemy craft and setting off for Myrkr. Dissent emerged over the plan—Han argued that it was too risky, Skywalker that senior rather than younger Jedi should go, and Jacen Solo that the Jedi should not act at all due to the danger of even more severe Yuuzhan Vong retaliation at Talfaglio. Skywalker quieted the heated argument and called on each Jedi to voice his opinion. With Han's reluctant support, the decision was made to send a strike team of young Jedi after the queen. Despite his misgivings, Jacen Solo was the first to volunteer, knowing that as long as the mission was going forward, his skills would be needed.

Calrissian agreed to hand over the Jedi team, which would be led by Anakin. Ganner Rhysode would pose as the team's leader to the Yuuzhan Vong, and fifteen more Jedi, including Jacen Solo, his sister, Tenel Ka Djo, Lowbacca, Zekk, Raynar Thul, and Tahiri Veila, rounded out the team. Two of Calrissian's new YVH-series battle droids would provide support to the mission, securing themselves to the hull of the vessel in which the Jedi would be transported and securing their weapons. Traveling aboard Calrissian's Lady Luck, all the Jedi rehearsed their plan several times over with YVH 1-1A. When Calrissian provoked an argument over how far the team would go to accomplish its goals, Jacen Solo came down firmly in opposition to any philosophy in which the ends justified possibly dark side means. Anakin broke up the argument, but insisted that Jacen Solo get used to the idea that the Jedi would be forced to make swift judgment calls that he might not care for. With Anakin nearly ready to eject Jacen Solo from the team due to his disruptive influence, Jaina intervened with the suggestion that the Jedi use a form of the mental meld the Solos had employed at the Battle of Dubrillion both to be more efficient in carrying out their mission and to lend each other the mental strength to resist Yuuzhan Vong torture and attempts to break their wills. Jacen Solo's empathic skills would make him key to maintaining the meld. Anakin agreed to keep his elder brother on and explore the plan so long as Jacen Solo agreed to follow orders and let Anakin take responsibility for his decisions. Jacen Solo agreed to trust his brother's judgment.

When the Yuuzhan Vong came to seize the Jedi, Jacen Solo sensed a voxyn aboard the enemy ship. He initiated the group's meld as they waited for Calrissian's crew to begin the capture. They allowed themselves to be taken by Calrissian's crew and handed over to the Yuuzhan Vong, but in the process of boarding the Yuuzhan Vong craft they staged an attack. Their resistance provided enough time for the YVH droids to attach themselves to the enemy ship, and it was ended by Calrissian as arranged. As the Jedi were once more subdued, team member Ulaha Kore was stabbed in the back, wounding her severely and dealing the team the first blow to its confidence. Aboard the frigate Exquisite Death, the Jedi were tortured as the Yuuzhan Vong attempted to break their will. Jacen Solo manipulated the meld to provide strength to those undergoing torment. Duman Yaght, the enemy commander, insisted on trying to learn the location of the secret Jedi base, but none of the prisoners were willing to talk. Each Jedi was tortured, but Yaght lingered most on Kore. Finally, with the team's spirit near breaking, Kore used the strength of the meld to kill the voxyn Yaght was using to inflict the torment, with Jacen Solo's animal-control abilities helping distract the creature. Yaght was forced to end the torture, but Jacen Solo was shocked, thinking his brother had ordered Kore to sacrifice herself in the attack.

Once they were safely within Yuuzhan Vong space, Anakin activated the pair of YVH droids attached to the hull. The powerful war droids were able to free the captives. Jacen Solo donned an armored jumpsuit and took up his lightsaber and a small arsenal of additional blasters and munitions, as did the other Jedi. Jacen Solo joined his brother's assault squad, which secured the rest of the ship and rescued Rhysode, who was being held separately as the group's presumed leader. During the rescue, Anakin had to explain to his brother that he had not ordered Kore to take action, leaving Jacen Solo chagrined that he had misjudged Anakin. After they had taken control of the craft and set its course for Myrkr, they began to recuperate, with Jacen Solo and Djo spending their time together.

When the Exquisite Death arrived in the Myrkr system, Anakin sensed the presence of Force-strong captives on Baanu Rass, the worldship orbiting Myrkr and housing the voxyn-cloning operation. This prevented the team from simply destroying the facility with a baradium missile, as they had hoped. In addition, the Yuuzhan Vong were anticipating them, having caught on to the Exquisite Death's capture. Kore piloted the frigate while the rest of the team landed on Baanu Rass, and was killed before she could escape, leaving behind only a final musical performance, broadcast through the Force to the rest of the strike team. The team's landing was covert, and they were able to make their way to the spaceport facilities nearby on the worldship's surface without being harassed. They infiltrated the holding area where the Force-sensitives were, only to find that rather than the Jedi they had expected, the prisoners were Lomi Plo and Welk, a pair of Dark Jedi. Jacen Solo, holding the door, noticed a ship landing at the spaceport, and Nom Anor disembarking. With Anor was Vergere, returned to the Yuuzhan Vong fold and, Jacen Solo was convinced, Force-sensitive. Cut off from the spaceport by over one hundred Yuuzhan Vong warriors, the strike team, plus Plo and Welk, were forced to retreat into the warrens of the training course, where the voxyn were taught to hunt.

In the large course, they were spotted by a pair of coralskippers. YVH 2-4S was destroyed taking out the craft shortly before the team had to wade across a lake. They found several voxyn under the surface, and after killing them, they set up an ambush for the pursuing column of warriors. Jacen Solo continuously manipulated and maintained the battle meld, keeping the team working at maximum efficiency. When the Yuuzhan Vong column was significantly reduced, Jacen Solo used the Force to summon another pack of voxyn and set them on the Yuuzhan Vong, eliminating the enemies.

The strike team set off across the training course, occasionally harassed by more coralskippers. With Zekk's enormous displeasure at taking the Dark Jedi along, discord mounted in the group, causing Jacen Solo to cease maintaining the battle meld lest it spread more discontentment. When they neared the cloning laboratory, they found that the Yuuzhan Vong had anticipated them. The team withdrew and tried another approach. When that failed, they attempted several more, each time being cut off by enemy forces. One attempt to infiltrate through the city in which the Yuuzhan Vong housed their slaves led to chaos as Eryl Besa and Jovan Drark were killed and Anakin suffered debilitating internal injuries that Tekli had difficulty healing. They were able to make it into the voxyn warrens, a dangerous approach that held out their last hope of reaching the voxyn queen. They hurried through the caverns, harried by troops under Anor's command, while Jacen Solo used the Force to induce the feral voxyn to remain inside their deeper chambers. When Anakin's wound worsened, they had to halt. Jacen Solo took the opportunity to finally make the apology for his doubt of Anakin's character aboard the Exquisite Death, as Anakin had been turning him away previously, focused on the mission. Anakin required a healing trance, but they lacked the time to allow such a respite. When Alema Rar suggested entering the central caverns where the feral voxyn made their homes, Anakin doubted his decision-making abilities. He handed the decision to his elder brother, who elected to take the risk of the central chambers.

In the grand central chamber in which the voxyn laired, Jacen Solo realized that they were defending nests. With the blessing of her two Barabel hatchmates, Jacen Solo devised a plan to use fallen Jedi Bela Hara's body as a lure, killing those voxyn that came to claim it with a thermal detonator. As they proceeded, Jacen Solo worried over his brother's injury, but was given more pressing concerns when Krasov Hara was killed and Anakin began to crack under the mission's relentless pressure and continual casualties. Jacen Solo used the Force to calm the voxyn in the central chamber and keep them to their nests as the strike team retreated from a voxyn attack in a side tunnel. They exited the warrens into a semi-abandoned storage area in which technology was kept for use on the training course—including the starship Tachyon Flier. There the team recovered while Lowbacca repaired the ship and a scouting team reconnoitered the grashal in which the voxyn queen was kept. Jacen Solo was shocked when the Tachyon Flier took off, and it took some time to establish that Plo and Welk had stolen the ship, with M-TD and Raynar Thul aboard, and fled.

Though the loss of his comrade weighed heavily on Solo, he, along with the other Jedi, initiated their assault on the cloning facility. Solo and Rhysode commandeered the grashal, but the team found themselves cornered due to the arrival of magma spitters and significant Yuuzhan Vong opposition within the complex. Anakin, nearing his end from worsening wounds, surrendered to the Force and charged forward to defend the entrance. As the voxyn queen made her escape, Anakin entrusted Solo with leadership of the strike force, sacrificing himself to cover their retreat in pursuit of the queen. Solo, deeply saddened, had to physically restrain his sister as Anakin made his final stand, obliterating a stockpile of voxyn genetic material. Anakin's last communication was a mental message to Solo, instructing him to take care of Jaina and kiss his girlfriend Veila on his behalf.

Unable to maintain pursuit of the queen, the team desperately sought refuge within the worldship, collapsing the entrance to their escape route and finding sanctuary inside a Yuuzhan Vong residential area, compelling a low-ranking female to shelter their group while Tesar Sebatyne attempted to pinpoint the voxyn queen's whereabouts. Solo attempted to console his sister, whose sorrow had transformed into rage. When Lowbacca, separated from the group after the Tachyon Flier was stolen, reported that he had discovered the Yuuzhan Vong tampering with Anakin's corpse, Jaina, accompanied by Veila, Zekk, and Rar, impulsively rushed to retrieve it, despite Solo's insistence that their priority should be eliminating the queen.

Upon receiving a report from Sebatyne, Solo led the remaining members of the strike force in pursuit of the queen. They tracked her, but any utilization of the Force betrayed their position, resulting in numerous unsuccessful attempts to ambush her as they traversed the worldship. However, they successfully avoided attracting the attention of any Yuuzhan Vong search parties, enabling them to pursue the queen without interference. As they approached the queen once more, Anor's frigate Ksstarr landed nearby, with Anor and a member of the Shaper caste attempting to retrieve the voxyn queen. Vergere, whose actions had been mysterious throughout the Myrkr mission, activated Anakin's captured comm, allowing the team to eavesdrop. Jaina, consumed by anger following Anakin's demise, arrived with her team in a captured shuttle, launching an assault on the Ksstarr. Her shuttle was shot down, and as it crashed, Solo lost his connection to his sister in the Force, uncertain whether it was due to her death or the intensity of her anger severing their bond. As Anor and his Yuuzhan Vong retreated from the wreckage caused by Jaina's attack, Vergere contacted the team via comlink, offering to guide Solo to the voxyn queen. Despite Vergere's reluctance to disclose her past and Solo's lingering doubts, he did not perceive her as a threat. They tracked the queen, who had been recaptured by the Shapers. Solo repeatedly employed the Force to incite the voxyn to turn against its handlers. Once the enemy ranks had been sufficiently diminished and the Yuuzhan Vong were advancing toward Jaina's crashed shuttle over a dovin basal comb, Solo dispatched the others to seize the Ksstarr and rescue the other members of the strike team while he pursued the queen alone. After a protracted and arduous battle, with Vergere's assistance, Solo managed to send the queen hurtling onto a dovin basal, which defended itself by drawing the queen into a singularity and annihilating her. Weakened, he was unable to resist when Vergere took him captive. Unable to come to his rescue due to enemy pressure, the rest of the strike team, led by Jaina, was forced to flee on the Ksstarr.

Under Anor's command, Solo was destined to be delivered directly to Warmaster Tsavong Lah, who had recently captured Coruscant. Confined within the Embrace of Pain, he endured relentless torture, still emotionally devastated by his brother's passing. Even the Force proved insufficient to alleviate his suffering, and he suppressed his presence from his sister, fearing that his torment would overwhelm her if he reached out through their twin connection. He could sense her escalating anger, however, and his inability to dissuade her from her growing embrace of the dark side only intensified his despair. Eventually, Vergere approached him. He rebuked her for her treachery, but she remained silent regarding her motives. Reaching out with the Force, he discerned that Vergere was a powerful Force-sensitive before the Fosh abruptly severed Solo's access to the Force in a single agonizing moment. Stunned and bewildered, Solo was further perplexed when his captor whispered that everything she said was a lie before abandoning him once more to the Embrace of Pain.

With the exception of Jaina Solo, the surviving members of the strike team, along with several other Jedi, experienced a sudden surge of Solo's presence, followed by its engulfment in pain and subsequent disappearance. Although the true cause of his absence was his loss of the Force, most who sensed it believed that Solo had perished. Only Leia Organa Solo maintained a firm belief that her son's communication had conveyed pain, but not death. Djo and Jaina were heartbroken by their belief in his demise, but Organa Solo remained confident that while she had felt Anakin's death, Jacen Solo's broadcast had lacked the same finality. Han Solo chose to trust his wife's intuition, finding solace in the possibility that at least one of his sons had survived. Skywalker followed suit, refusing to accept Solo's death.

Left once more to endure torture that only ceased when the Embrace of Pain had pushed him to his absolute limits and had to allow him to recover, he was nourished by Yuuzhan Vong creatures and his body completely depilated. His only interruptions were occasional visits by Vergere. She eventually began to speak to him of the Yuuzhan Vong religion, which centered on pain, and suggested that he was not being tortured, but educated. When Vergere suggested that she was helping Solo by protecting him as he went through a necessary but painful process of maturation, he abandoned despair, deciding no longer to hope for rescue but to take his destiny into his own hands. Rather than be a slave to pain, responding to it with fear, he elected to treat pain as a teacher, as a source of power. Drawing on nothing but his own inner reserves of willpower, Solo became impervious to pain, thriving on it rather than allowing it to break him down.

Having mastered the Embrace of Pain, Solo was released from it. After some time, Anor's craft docked with a vast seedship, ready to transform a planet into a new homeworld—known by the original world's name of Yuuzhan'tar—for the Yuuzhan Vong, onto which Vergere led her captive. He was taken to a vast central chamber, where slave gangs worked a replica world holding the specimens that would seed the new ecosphere. Solo was aghast at the pain of the slaves, who served as practice for a crop of dhuryams, world-brains, for the task of controlling the seeded world's ecosystem. Vergere suddenly stabbed him in the chest, implanting a slave seed within and tying him to one of the growing dhuryams. Impervious to the pain the dhuryam could cause him, he was able to resist its bidding and avoid engaging in the make-work of the other slaves. The dhuryam, furious, used its access to Solo's nervous system to put him in continual pain, spasming his limbs for over a week. It devoted so much energy to attempting to control the defiant Solo that it neglected the rest of its domain, and finally left him alone to do what he wished—tending to the wounds of his fellow slaves. The dhuryam saw the advantage of this, and allowed him to continue.

After weeks or months in the Nursery, Vergere visited Solo. She healed the infected wound where she had implanted the slave seed using her tears, which she could manipulate chemically through the Force. When Vergere began to speak to him of the role of the gardener—choosing which plants were weeds and which were flowers, which would live and which would die—Solo accused her of being a Sith. She rejected this, asking whether there were only the binary categories of Sith and Jedi. Solo's comment that all answers fell short of the truth elated her, and she left him after asking how, if the Force was life, there could be life without the Force, such as the Yuuzhan Vong—or himself. Solo spent the next days pondering the question as his bond with the dhuryam, which began directing him to various natural medicines, deepened. He concluded that the Yuuzhan Vong must exist on another spectrum of the Force, one the Jedi were not accessing. Entering a Jedi meditation, he reached out to the slave seed inside his body. Using the same empathy he had used to befriend various creatures, he was able to create a link in the Yuuzhan Vong spectrum, connecting himself to the dhuryam and the other Yuuzhan Vong creatures using what he called his "Vongsense." Able to communicate with the dhuryam and sense the entire landscape of creatures, he became a far more efficient healer, and began to treat slaves belonging to other dhuryams.

When a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, one of many guarding the centrally-located comb of growing dhuryams, killed one of Solo's slave assistants for coming too near, Solo decided that he had been wrong to believe that all in the Nursery were metaphorical flowers. Outraged, he determined to exercise what Vergere had called his responsibility to be a gardener by removing the Yuuzhan Vong. Solo formulated a plan with his dhuryam in which he would kill its competing brethren if it saw to it that the slaves survived seedfall. When the Yuuzhan Vong prepared for the selection ceremony by which one of the dhuryams would be selected as the World Brain for the new homeworld by blocking the dhuryams' transmissions, it drove the slaves to cluster at the coraltree basals that had grown their seeds. Solo ignored the pain of his slave seed and stood in the midst of an amphistaff grove, using his Vongsense and skill with animals to keep the feral amphistaff polyps from attacking him. When four Yuuzhan Vong infiltrators in ooglith masquers left the coraltree basal nearby and came to remove him, he egged one warrior into attacking, whom Solo threw to the ravenous amphistaff polyps. This provided the polyps enough strength to release their amphistaffs to breed, and Solo convinced the detached razor-sharp snakelike creatures to swarm him, covering him in impenetrable armor and providing him with a weapon. He cut his way through the Yuuzhan Vong troops opposing him and used a captured bandoleer of blast bugs to destroy the shreeyam'tiz that blocked the dhuryams' signals. Though Solo was knocked unconscious by an onslaught of blast bugs, his dhuryam, prepared, used its slaves to stage an uprising against the Yuuzhan Vong.

Solo awoke amid the confusion and made his way to the central island on which the dhuryam hive lay. There, he began to slaughter the dhuryams. Agonized by their telepathically-projected terror, he nearly held back before realizing that if he did not kill the creatures, they would kill all the slaves in their panic. He made his choice, and killed each, feeling its death. He nearly killed the final one—the one that had controlled him and with which he had made his deal—before he heard Anakin's voice telling him that he could not. He halted, but quickly realized Vergere had projected the voice. His tutor and captor had just arrived, and with her insistence, Solo was able to see that he had become consumed with battle rage. He still intended to kill the dhuryam, destroying the hope of the new Yuuzhan Vong homeworld, until Vergere insisted that he could not kill the dhuryam he had befriended without betraying himself, and that if he did so, it would destroy the seedship and all aboard. Unsure whether he could believe her, he chose to slay it regardless, but Vergere interposed herself and used her tears as a contact toxin to knock him unconscious.

Solo awoke amid plant life on what he realized to his shock was Coruscant, covered in Yuuzhan Vong plant life and in the process of being reshaped into Yuuzhan'tar. Vergere was there and had removed his slave seed. She told him that the dhuryam had followed through on its promise to save the slaves while controlling seedfall. While Vergere congratulated him on the effects of his actions, Solo insisted that he had succumbed to the dark side. He and Vergere argued over the extent to which his intentions and the results of his actions mattered. After realizing that his fate was once more in his hands, Solo set off across the Coruscant landscape. He spent weeks trekking with his former captor, surviving on scrounged food and improvised gear, as he attempted to reach his former family home.

On his journey, he passed a deep crater, which Vergere said was strong with the dark side. The pair discussed the nature of the dark side, with Vergere again pushing Solo as to how much intention mattered as opposed to results, and asking whether the dark side was only a matter of degree. Their discussion, though, was interrupted by the arrival of Yuuzhan Vong shock troops, sent to eliminate Solo. He fled into the center of the crater, where he waited as Vergere attempted to find an exit. Through his Vongsense, the young man experienced unity with his opponents, feeling what they felt, as well as the sensations of the Yuuzhan Vong wildlife. Unarmed, he was easily able to evade his opponent's attacks, and felt all the pain he inflicted on his enemy. With Vergere's assistance, he fled, but passed out from exhaustion. When the Fosh pushed him to continue, he angrily snapped, nearly killing Vergere before he realized that he was under the influence of the crater's dark side aura. While explaining his fear of the dark side, he mentioned that his grandfather had been Darth Vader. Vergere expressed her grief at learning that Anakin Skywalker had become a Sith, and revealed that she had been a Jedi Knight of the Galactic Republic, and the crater in which they rested was the former site of the Jedi Temple, the well of Force energy beneath it now tainted. As Vergere pushed Solo to decide who he was, he considered the question and declared that he was a Jedi. Disappointed, Vergere revealed that their room was full of Yuuzhan Vong, led by Nom Anor. Furious at the betrayal, Solo gave himself over to rage and launched a barrage of Force lightning at Vergere. Unable to target the Yuuzhan Vong with the Force, newly returned to him, he buried them in rubble.

Coming back to himself, he was aghast at what he had done. Vergere, wounded, insisted to him that there was no dark side to the Force; only the Force, and the darkness within himself. If he surrendered his self-control and embraced his passion, it was his own inner darkness that tainted his actions. Shocked at what he had found in himself and horrified by how easily he had slipped into darkness, Solo fled blindly. Fearing and hating his own weakness, he was considering suicide when he heard Anakin's voice and saw a projection of his deceased brother. He could feel that the projection was not present in the Force, and was therefore some type of trick rather than Anakin's Force ghost. Convinced he was dealing with a masqued Yuuzhan Vong, he chased the imitation in a furious pursuit that led him to the underlevels and into the gullet of a Yuuzhan Vong cavern beast, lured by a telepathic illusion. Realizing he had been duped, he was convinced that the other beings in the gullet were illusions also. Giving in to hatred of a universe that seemed to hate him, he attacked one of the cavern beast's victims, whose screams tormented him, until he realized he could feel the girl through the Force. Channeling his anger, he used it to free the girl from being digested and gave her his robeskin to help her heal. The other inhabitants of the gullet were outraged, as they threw new arrivals to the beast when it became hungry, saving themselves. Solo was disgusted, but willing to help them. When the girl he had saved attempted to convince the others to throw Solo to the beast rather than herself, he was once more enraged. Using his anger, he convinced the cavern beast to vomit up all its victims and not readmit them. He left them locked out from within the cavern beast, where they were safe from the Yuuzhan Vong at the cost of others' lives.

Solo proceeded to his former family home, where he spent hours without motivation to take any action at all before what seemed to be Anakin's Force specter arrived and spoke to him, suggesting that it might have been something more than a trick of Vergere's when Solo heard his brother in the Nursery. Solo confessed to his struggles with the dark side and admitted how much he had looked up to Anakin's certainty. Convinced that he was only hallucinating, Solo argued when the image of Anakin suggested that the Force was one, encompassing all opposites. Solo passed out in despair before awakening to find Vergere. She attempted to break through Solo's apathy toward the universe, pushing him to cease searching for answers from others, and look to himself for truth. At that time, Nom Anor and his warriors arrived, and insisted that Solo could find truth in the Yuuzhan Vong religion, the True Way. He could find the truth that he was a god, the incarnation of the war god Yun-Yammka. Anor offered him Anakin's lightsaber, and Solo realized that if he took it up, using the Force and his Vongsense, he could become one of the greatest warriors ever to live. Instead, he declined the path of violence and accepted Anor's offer to learn the True Way.

Solo, with no real interest in converting to the Yuuzhan Vong faith, feigned belief as he sought to manipulate his newfound position and comprehension for his own purposes. His captors desired to orchestrate a confrontation between him and his twin sister, Jaina, whom they associated with the other Twin God, Yun-Harla. The Yuuzhan Vong regarded twins, a rarity among their species, as exceptional beings, believing that one was destined to slay the other before achieving greatness. To entice Jaina, Solo was placed aboard one of the camp ships—massive vessels filled with captured Coruscanti refugees, dispatched to New Republic systems to strain their resources—accompanied by a four-warrior escort who served as both protectors and wardens. Due to their lingering distrust of Solo, a dovin basal was set to obliterate the entire camp ship should Solo attempt to leave his quarters. With Solo disguised as an obese Human, they subtly disseminated rumors that Jacen Solo had been sighted alive on Coruscant. Solo intentionally designed the trap to be inefficient, hoping that it would prove unsuccessful, compelling Anor to abandon the charade.

Instead of Jaina, Ganner Rhysode arrived at Solo's room on the camp ship above Bothawui, acting on the rumors. Solo employed the Force to overwhelm Rhysode with terror, attempting to dissuade him from entering the Yuuzhan Vong trap. Rhysode remained undeterred and entered. Solo turned him away and attempted to prevent the warriors from attacking Rhysode, but when the Jedi attempted to use the Force to persuade Solo, he was forced to prevent Rhysode's sensing him in the Force. Solo used a powerful mind trick to compel Rhysode to leave. When Rhysode recovered his will, he shut down his Force presence and returned once more. His surprise attack disabled the four Yuuzhan Vong and allowed him to put his lightsaber to Solo's throat. Unable to leave the room, Solo was disappointed that Rhysode's persistence had forced him to capture his friend. To Rhysode's shock, he revealed his identity to the Jedi before knocking him out with a dose of Vergere's tears. He did use the event as an excuse to call off the trap, telling his escorts to return to Yuuzhan'tar.

Rhysode was kept sedated on the throneworld. Anor, who still distrusted Solo, doubted his story, but could not disagree with his suggestion that he should sacrifice Rhysode. As Rhysode, semi-conscious, listened, Solo attempted to reassure him with the Force. Solo persuaded Anor that he needed to practice with Rhysode, converting and sacrificing him as he would his twin. In truth, he simply wanted to use the ceremony as an excuse to enter the Well of the World Brain and convince the World Brain of his own cause, a goal he had had for some time.

After the preparations were complete, Solo was the only one present when Rhysode was awakened. He opened with a bombastic attempt to convert Rhysode, but ceased when he had put the chamber's observing devices to sleep. He then revealed to Rhysode that he had not, in fact, joined the Yuuzhan Vong as he treated Rhysode's injuries. He explained his goal, and tried to convince Rhysode of how deeply his experience in captivity had changed him. He also insisted that Rhysode would be dead no matter what, as he himself was; Rhysode should make his death count by aiding Solo in his deception. To convince Rhysode to choose and act, he offered him Anakin's lightsaber. When the Yuuzhan Vong intruded, Rhysode faked belief in the True Way. Anor easily saw through the act of both Jedi, but with the rest convinced, had to allow the ceremony to go forward.

They were marched to the Well, within the former Senate Building, amid a procession of hundreds of warriors. As they neared the building, Rhysode collapsed in fear and self-loathing. The Jedi nearly took his own life before Solo used the Force to manipulate his body, lifting him and driving his legs telekinetically. On entering, Solo shut the doors behind the pair of Jedi. They entered the Well, where Solo urged Rhysode to flee into a secret tunnel network beneath the building, through which he might be able to escape. Rhysode insisted that he would not leave without Solo, but Solo was intent on following his own path; he felt that he needed to speak with the World Brain in order to be true to himself. Before either of them could take action, Anor's troops blew the door. Rhysode, inspired by Solo's words on being true to oneself, was spurred into action. He decided to make a stand, acting like the hero he had always wanted to be, and hold off the enemy. Understanding and accepting his sacrifice, Solo parted with Rhysode. The World Brain pulled Solo down into its pool with its tentacles, intending to kill him for his earlier betrayal. Instead, Solo opened himself up to the World Brain, expressing to it his regret, his newfound understanding that all was one, and the conviction that only way to approach the universe was with universal love. In their communion, the World Brain was convinced of Solo's beliefs, and agreed with him to frustrate the Yuuzhan Vong's attempts to reshape the world by introducing imperfection. Solo believed that this would challenge the invaders' fanaticism and force them to learn compromise.

Feeling Rhysode's battle in the Force, Solo rushed from the pool to help him, but was cut off by Vergere. She insisted that if he went to the other Jedi's aid, both would die; instead he must honor Rhysode's sacrifice by escaping with his life. Solo was unwilling to let yet another person die for him, but when Vergere returned his lightsaber, he realized that the way of the warrior was not his. He was a student. He felt Rhysode pass into the Force in a final effort that collapsed the entrance, freeing Solo to leave. Solo followed Vergere down into the tunnels, where they escaped in a coralcraft kept by Anor as a getaway ship.

Aboard the ship, in hyperspace, Solo thought on Rhysode's death, attempting to reconcile the fact that Rhysode had died in unity with the Force, confidently battling hundreds of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, with the Rhysode he knew. Vergere shared a vision she had had: that Rhysode would become "The Ganner"—a giant guarding the gates to the underworld in the Yuuzhan Vong mythology. Solo shared with her his plan for the World Brain, which earned Vergere's tearful pride and a confession that her student had surpassed her. Eventually, when he felt ready to deal with his imminent return, Solo opened himself up in the Force once more, sending his family reassurance that he was alive and on his way to them, though he had to break off contact with Jaina on realizing he was distracting her from battle. At that point, Vergere explained to him her past: she had been a Jedi Knight in the last days of the Galactic Republic, sent on a mission to the living world of Zonama Sekot. There she communed with Sekot's collective sentience, newly aware in the wake of an attack by a scouting party of Yuuzhan Vong. Seeking to protect Sekot, she had gone as an envoy to speak with the Yuuzhan Vong. On realizing that they were outside the Force, she decided that she must investigate their nature. Leaving a message with Sekot, she returned with the Yuuzhan Vong to their worldships beyond the galaxy, spending the next fifty years learning their ways. In return, Solo explained what had occurred in the galaxy in her absence.

As his Yuuzhan Vong vessel concluded its hyperspace jump above Mon Calamari, the temporary capital of the New Republic, Solo established communication with Skywalker, who was planetside. This allowed his uncle to assure the hastily assembled military forces that the newly arrived ship posed no threat. Solo and Vergere, situated within an escape pod, were retrieved and transported to the Fleet Command annex. There, they encountered Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker, along with a group of soldiers. Solo's parents were engaged in negotiations with the Imperial Remnant on Bastion and were informed of his successful escape, as was Jaina, who was stationed at Kashyyyk. Subsequently, the group proceeded to a meeting with Supreme Commander Sien Sovv, his retired predecessor Ackbar, and Winter Celchu. Following cordial greetings, the two recent arrivals were promptly taken away for a debriefing by Fleet Intelligence.

While Solo was quickly freed, Vergere remained in custody. He briefed his aunt and uncle on his experiences. Although he regarded Vergere as a mentor and friend, his uncle was incensed by the treatment Solo had endured at her hands. Despite Skywalker's subsequent calming after speaking with Vergere, he instructed Solo to take a period of rest and relaxation, dedicating time to meditation and seeking his place within the Force.

Solo and the Skywalkers journeyed to visit Ackbar at his residence. Solo recounted his observations of the Yuuzhan Vong to the ailing admiral, which confirmed Ackbar's conviction that he could defeat the invaders using the strategy he was developing. Afterward, Solo enjoyed his downtime on Heurkea Floating City, returning to a more conventional lifestyle, while maintaining contact with the World Brain through his Vongsense. He coordinated a campaign of sabotage and disruption with the World Brain, avoiding violent acts. Solo shared his insights on the Yuuzhan Vong with his uncle, also revealing his development of Vongsense, before Danni Quee invited Solo for a day out on Mester Reef. He relished relaxing with her and her friend Thespar Trode. Within a day, Jaina arrived on Mon Calamari, and filled Solo in on her battle with despair and the dark side after Myrkr, a struggle she had overcome. That night, Han and Leia Organa Solo also returned to the planet, and Solo's family was reunited as much as it could be in the aftermath of Anakin's death.

Skywalker, collaborating with the newly elected Chief of State Cal Omas, created a new High Council to govern the Jedi Order, composed equally of Jedi and government officials. Among their initial decisions was the promotion of the Myrkr veterans to the rank of Jedi Knight. In a public ceremony, Solo and his comrades were knighted by Skywalker and the Jedi Masters. At the subsequent celebration, Solo spoke with Jaina and was disturbed by her singular focus on battling the enemy and her acceptance of the idea that she would eventually die in combat. He also spoke with Vergere, who became agitated upon learning from Solo, who had himself been told by Quee, that New Republic scientists had isolated a specific set of genes unique to the Yuuzhan Vong and all their creatures.

The rest of Solo's friends were assigned to Kashyyyk, where Admiral Kre'fey had requested the use of Jedi for a project in battle coordination. Solo chose to join them when Skywalker cleared him to return to action, instead of continuing his work with the Great River. He hoped to protect Jaina and steer her away from her bleak outlook. Solo immediately met with Kre'fey and his senior commanders, at which time Master Durron presented a plan to strike at the Peace Brigade government on Ylesia. Kre'fey approved it and intended an orbital bombardment, but the Jedi were uncomfortable with the possible civilian casualties. Solo suggested they capture the government instead, which he learned included newly-declared President Thrackan Sal-Solo.

Solo became part of his sister's squadron as Twin Suns Thirteen. He re-familiarized himself with combat piloting and working as part of the meld with several other Jedi scattered across multiple squadrons. Solo flew against the orbital Peace Brigade forces during the assault on Ylesia before Twin Suns Squadron and Jagged Fel's Chiss Squadron were tasked to escort the landing force. While Solo saved Jaina's wingmate Vale, he was attacked by a grutchin that tore off one of his X-wing's S-foils before he could kill it. He was forced to return to Kre'fey's Ralroost for a new fighter. As the enemy forces had surrendered by the time he touched down, Solo did not return to the field. Kre'fey instead summoned him to the bridge. Before he could arrive, Solo sensed a Yuuzhan Vong fleet arriving in the system. Without a spare fighter, Solo was stuck on the bridge, and turned his attention to strengthening the meld. While observing the manner in which the enemy commander attenuated his battle line in order to draw Kre'fey into doing the same, Solo realized that an ambush was coming. His use of Vongsense confirmed that another fleet was on its way. He advised Kre'fey in time to prevent the ambush and instead ambush the attackers. With the Peace Brigade leadership captured, the ground forces were able to return to the fleet, which withdrew.

Following this experience, Solo concluded that his skills were better utilized on the bridge, coordinating attacks, rather than in a starfighter. Kre'fey's forces spent two months conducting experience-building raids on relatively weak Yuuzhan Vong targets. Solo embraced his role coordinating the meld, absorbing others' experiences and providing tactical insight gained through his combined perceptions and connection with the Force. While he couldn't fully coordinate a complex battle, he was determined to improve. Solo also began working with Tahiri Veila, who had been captured and shaped by the Yuuzhan Vong previously. He attempted to open her to Vongsense, using the same techniques he had.

After his initial session with Veila, Vergere contacted Solo through the Force, instructing him to meet her secretly on Kashyyyk's surface. He complied, and she revealed that she had discovered that the unique genetic code of the Yuuzhan Vong had been exploited to create Alpha Red, a biological weapon designed to eradicate Yuuzhan Vong life. Vergere had neutralized it and destroyed the research before escaping, but it could be recreated in a matter of months. New Republic Intelligence was determined to apprehend her. Distressed by this revelation, Solo agreed to smuggle her back onto the Ralroost, enabling her to escape into the galaxy undetected. However, before he could land his fighter, he was summoned to a Jedi meeting aboard Mon Adapyne. There, he learned that Skywalker had issued an order to cooperate and detain Vergere if contacted, yet he remained resolute in protecting his mentor. He eventually managed to move Vergere to his quarters and conceal her presence, but he had no opportunity to get her off Ralroost, as it was kept busy in a series of raids against enemy targets.

Eventually, Kre'fey's fleet proceeded to Ebaq 9, a moon in the remote Deep Core Treskov system. There, Solo was reunited with his sister, who had arrived earlier with a task force under Jedi General Keyan Farlander. Solo understood that Jaina was serving as bait for Ackbar's trap, where the Yuuzhan Vong would be lured to Ebaq 9, attack it, and be ambushed by reserve forces.

When Tsavong Lah led his forces in an attack on Ebaq 9, mistakenly believing that the New Republic's government was sheltering there, Solo was aboard the Ralroost, coordinating the battle meld as part of the ambushing force. The battle progressed favorably until Lah, realizing the trap, redirected his forces to assault Ebaq 9, hoping to take the Jedi there with him. Solo recognized the threat and immediately issued orders to hold off the attacking force before rushing to his fighter to personally aid his sister, who had landed her disabled fighter at the base on Ebaq 9. Vergere tried to convince him that he was sacrificing his life, but he remained determined. By the time he reached the moon, Lah's forces had already landed, but Lah allowed him to land unmolested so they could engage in personal combat. Solo rejected the other Jedi's attempts to dissuade him from landing, determined to distract Lah from his sister, not trusting that she could hold out until the New Republic fleet could break through the remaining enemy fleet and land troops.

Solo landed away from the Yuuzhan Vong force, but the few remaining voxyn sensed him. He led his pursuers through the excavated base, away from Jaina, before making a stand in a narrow corridor. However, the enemy troops proved overwhelming, forcing Solo to retreat. Despondent at his failure to save his sister, he began using a stunning Force lightning against his opponents when his blaster ran out of energy. As he fought, a projection of Vergere appeared nearby, warning him of impending atmospheric pressure loss. He used the Force to seal the air in his section of the tunnel, preserving himself while the Yuuzhan Vong warriors died from lack of oxygen. As he spoke regretfully with Vergere about his reckless attempt to save his sister, he realized he was speaking with her Force ghost. His mentor had sacrificed herself by crashing an A-wing into the entrance so that he and Jaina could live. Solo was saddened by the realization that his choices had led to Vergere's death, but she accepted her fate. As the main shaft was too radioactive for immediate rescue, Solo had to hold out with droid-shipped supplies until it was safe to leave.

With Lah dead at Jaina Solo's hand and his large fleet devastated, the Battle of Ebaq was a success. Omas put deployment of Alpha Red on hold as a last resort, and began to reform the government into more effective form. Within three months, the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances had been born and was gaining strength. Skywalker shifted his focus to locating Zonama Sekot; the living world, equipped with hyperspace engines, had fled decades ago, and Skywalker believed that understanding Sekot and securing its cooperation was essential to winning the war without resorting to exterminating the Yuuzhan Vong. Solo, sharing this conviction, was enlisted for the mission, along with Jade Skywalker, Quee, Tekli, and High Council member Saba Sebatyne. They suspected that the mobile world was hidden in the Unknown Regions, as it had not been seen for many years, and planned to use their journey to enlist the Imperial Remnant and Chiss Ascendancy in the Galactic Alliance.

Before their departure, Tahiri Veila reappeared after a period of absence. She was discovered on Mon Calamari, experiencing a mysterious mental breakdown and blacking out. Solo was among the friends who watched over her in the hospital, and was present when she awoke. He attempted to comfort her and updated her on Skywalker's plans before inducing a Force-assisted sleep. A few days later, she was among those who saw the expedition off. Solo felt uneasy leaving his family again so soon after returning from captivity, and harbored doubts about the future, but was committed to the mission.

Upon the Jade Shadow's arrival at Bastion, the crew found themselves in the midst of a battle where the Empire's capital was nearing its fall. They contacted Grand Admiral Pellaeon, who instructed them to meet the retreating forces at Yaga Minor. There, Solo and Quee welcomed a boarding party led by Captain Arien Yage, an officer whom Pellaeon assured them was loyal. Eventually, Pellaeon arrived from Bastion, comatose and severely injured. Tekli, the healer, tended to him as Solo anxiously awaited news of Pellaeon's recovery, their strongest ally in the Remnant. When local Moff Kurlen Flennic, hostile to the Jedi, began consolidating power, Solo volunteered to negotiate with Flennic to ensure the mission's security. Realizing that the attack was retaliation for the Remnant's role in providing the secret hyperspace routes that enabled the Battle of Ebaq 9, Solo deduced that there must have been a leak within the Empire's command structure. He shared this with Flennic's General Berrida, offering Jedi assistance in uncovering the traitors. Solo secured a meeting with Flennic, who attempted to intimidate him. Solo insisted that it was crucial for the Remnant to retreat to the fortress world of Borosk, where it could mount a more effective defense. Before he could persuade the stubborn Moff, Pellaeon intervened via comlink from his bacta tank, ordering the retreat and full cooperation with the Jedi.

Solo returned to Yage's Widowmaker, where he discussed the situation with Skywalker and a recovering Pellaeon. The Jedi shared their anti-Yuuzhan Vong combat techniques and deployed Yuuzhan-Vong detecting YVH-M MSE droids throughout the fleet to identify spies. Solo coordinated this effort, tracing the contacts of the three masked Yuuzhan Vong discovered by the YVH-Ms to expose over a dozen traitors within the fleet. The Imperial forces retreated to Borosk as ordered, where the Yuuzhan Vong fleet launched a follow-up attack almost immediately. During the initial stages of the battle, Solo summoned all the spies to a supposed meeting aboard the Star Destroyer Right to Rule. When the final Yuuzhan Vong arrived, he realized he had been exposed and attacked Solo as a Jedi. The other two joined in before a squad of stormtroopers burst into the room, gunning down two attackers before Solo killed the last. The traitors from within the Remnant were arrested.

When a Yuuzhan Vong slaveship arrived, Sebatyne devised a plan to infiltrate it using the Dreadnaught-class heavy cruiser Braxant Bonecrusher as bait and liberate the prisoners aboard, captives from Bastion. Solo volunteered for the mission, but Pellaeon, who had grown fond of the young man as a future leader, suggested he remain safe. Solo compromised by staying aboard Braxant Bonecrusher, coordinating the droid brains that operated the decoy craft. The Jade Shadow was hidden inside the larger craft with a complement of TIE Fighters. Solo steered the ship through a hyperspace jump to the rear of the enemy lines, where the droid brains launched a swiftly-defeated attack. As the Dreadnaught was damaged, it shut down and was captured by the slaveship. Sebatyne and Quee infiltrated the slaveship, but before they could take over the enemy craft, the Yuuzhan Vong fleet was alerted. Sebatyne resorted to a desperate evacuation maneuver, opening the ship's hold to space and having the Jade Shadow pick up the prisoners, protected by the jelly filling the hold, with its tractor beam. The captives were brought aboard Braxant Bonecrusher, and Solo reactivated the ship's systems, freed Quee and Sebatyne from the jelly, and authorized a hyperspace jump back to Imperial lines. Meanwhile, Pellaeon, commanding from his bacta tank, forced the enemy fleet to withdraw.

In the aftermath, Solo was present as Pellaeon forced the Moff Council to ally with the Galactic Alliance. The Jedi expedition acquired Imperial data on the Unknown Regions for their journey forward, and Pellaeon assigned them an escort—Yage and her Widowmaker. As they set out for Yashuvhu, Solo began developing a relationship with Quee, his feelings rekindled by the time they were spending together.

After tracking potential locations where Zonama Sekot might have visited, the team landed on Munlali Mafir, where records indicated Zonama Sekot had once appeared. There, they discovered the local Jostrans were extinct. Instead, the Krizlaws, originally herd beasts, had become sentient and adopted Jostran culture. Solo, Skywalker, Imperial Unknown Regions specialist Doctor Soron Hegerty, and a stormtrooper guard were invited to dinner. When Skywalker explained that Zonama Sekot, associated with severe seismic activity when it appeared, was unlikely to return, the Krizlaws turned on them, taking them captive. When a Krizlaw forced a creature down a stormtrooper's throat, the Jedi freed the others and fled. As the landing party retreated to their shuttle, they were pursued by their former captors. Solo used the Force to support Hegerty as they raced uphill, until he and Skywalker finally turned and used the Force to create a landslide that pushed the Krizlaws back. Upon reaching the summit of the hill where their Sentinel-class landing craft awaited, another group of eleven Krizlaws attacked. Solo, reaching out through the Force, discerned that the Krizlaws were controlled by higher intelligences living as symbionts with them. Solo and Skywalker reached out, disabling enough of the higher intelligences to loosen their control over the Krizlaws, which Solo finally turned away. On the way to Widowmaker, Solo and Skywalker realized that the Jostrans were the mysterious symbionts, having seized control of the Krizlaws. Tarl, the stormtrooper in their group, had been infected by his earlier force-feeding, and Solo attempted to counter the Jostran's attempt to take over his body. When they docked with Widowmaker, Solo kept the Jostran docile while Tekli carefully removed it from the soldier's body.

While still in the system, Widowmaker and the Jade Shadow were challenged by a Chiss patrol under Commander Hess'irolia'nuruodo. Irolia met with the expedition's leadership aboard Widowmaker, where Solo argued that the Chiss should allow them to continue their mission. The commander ultimately granted them permission to travel to the capital of Csilla, where they could present their case to governmental leaders. Solo supported the decision, hoping the Chiss, who controlled much of the Unknown Regions, could provide information leading them to Zonama Sekot. Upon arriving at Csilla, they landed at Ac'siel and met with Irolia and Chief Navigator Peita Aabe, a Human who had joined the Chiss after Imperial service. They were introduced to representatives of the four Ruling Families of Chiss. On Aabe's advice, the Chiss denied them free travel but granted the team two days' access to the Expeditionary Library's records to search for data on the wandering planet.

Assistant Syndic Soontir Fel offered them a ride to the library. There, the Jedi team had to sift through a vast collection of books for any references to their sought-after world, a challenging task. They eventually gathered enough references to trace Zonama Sekot's travels through the Unknown Regions but couldn't pinpoint its current location. Wynssa Fel, Soontir Fel's daughter and Jagged Fel's younger sister, joined the effort after visiting the library. While the others left to relocate the Jade Shadow and rest briefly, Solo chose to continue searching, leaving him alone with Wynssa Fel and Irolia. Fel was friendly and curious, pressing Solo to describe galactic life, the war, and his convictions.

Soon, Aabe arrived to summon Fel for her father. After she left with him, Solo grew suspicious and contacted Skywalker, who stated that Soontir Fel had not contacted Aabe recently. The conversation was cut short by an attack on Skywalker's craft. Now thoroughly convinced the girl was being kidnapped, Solo set off after with Irolia, tracking Aabe and his guards through the ice tunnels. As Aabe and Fel reached a tramway station, Solo intervened. The guards surrendered before the Jedi subdued Aabe. The Chief Navigator was arrested, and Solo learned from Skywalker that he had been involved in a political move against the Fel family by isolationist elements.

Returning to the search for information, Solo and the others ran a search of astronomical data for systems that had been cataloged as having acquired a planet recently. The search yielded no satisfactory results, disappointing Solo. He retreated to the library stacks to brood, where Quee approached him and offered encouragement, expressing her admiration for him. The conversation inspired Solo to search for planets that had acquired planetary satellites, which he immediately did. The search revealed a new moon of Mobus, a gas giant in the Klasse Ephemora system. With the Chiss's blessing, the expedition set out for Klasse Ephemora, navigating the treacherous and unstable hyperspace routes of the Unknown Regions.

They were delayed near the system, hindered by hyperspace anomalies, when Solo and the other Jedi sensed a cry of pain in the Force. Tracing the sensation, the Jedi pressed forward, arriving at Zonama Sekot as a battle raged in space above it. The planet itself, powerful in the Force, fought against a Yuuzhan Vong fleet attacking it. Sekot overwhelmed the Jedi, rendering them unconscious before waking up Solo so he could receive landing instructions from a Zonama Sekot inhabitant. Jade Skywalker was awakened to pilot the Jade Shadow, and they landed safely on the mysterious world.

Solo remained aboard ship, watching over the unconscious others, while the Skywalkers exited to speak with Zonama Sekot's Ferroan colonists. The others soon awoke, and the party traveled to a nearby village with their Ferroan guides, leaving Tekli to guard the ship. The Jedi and Hegerty marveled at the world, attempting to understand Zonama Sekot's secrets. While awaiting a meeting with the world's Magister, Solo spoke with a Ferroan child, who recounted a previous visit by Jedi, when Anakin Skywalker and his Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, arrived, and young Skywalker had killed an opponent using the Force. The party was soon summoned before Magister Jabitha Hal and a council of Ferroans. Skywalker explained the course of the war, and Hal recounted Skywalker and Kenobi's journey to the planet. The council, unconvinced of the need for action, if any was possible, dismissed the newcomers for deliberation.

The Jedi were jolted awake in the dead of night as attackers obliterated the very structure of their dwelling, causing it to collapse upon them. While the others struggled to break free from the rubble, a group of Ferroans forcibly abducted Quee. Despite the villagers' assertions that tracking the kidnappers in the torrential rain was impossible, Solo, resolute in his determination to rescue Quee, set off in pursuit. Sebatyne followed, but Solo, guided by Quee's presence in the Force, quickly outpaced her. He caught up to the kidnappers in a clearing, where he was confronted by fifteen of them; the sudden arrival of Sebatyne caused eight to flee in terror. Anxious to avoid bloodshed, Solo insisted to the remaining kidnappers that they were no match for him and that they should resolve their differences through dialogue. When one of them mentioned a leader named Senshi, Solo realized that he needed to negotiate with this individual to prevent further attacks. Consequently, he surrendered himself and Sebatyne, demanding to be taken to Senshi.

Upon being brought before Senshi, they discovered that he held them responsible for the Yuuzhan Vong incursions, grouping all outsiders together and fearing another war and the perils of hyperspace travel. Magister Hal was also brought in, having been captured by a separate group. Solo found it impossible to reason with Senshi, who decided to retire for the night. Although Sebatyne wished to free the other captives and escape, Solo contended that they needed to remain and demonstrate to the dissenting Ferroans that they meant no harm. The following morning, after a discussion in which Senshi failed to sway Hal to his cause, he ordered that she be taken elsewhere as a demonstration of his power. Acknowledging that he could not restrain the Jedi, Senshi granted them the choice to leave or stay. Solo and Sebatyne opted to remain with the Ferroans and guard the Magister. Senshi led them into a grove of rogue boras, which were semi-sentient, tree-like plants. These boras exhibited hostility, prompting Sebatyne to insist that they leave with the captives. Solo calmed her down, asserting that there must be a peaceful solution. When Senshi seized the Magister as a hostage, aiming his lightning rod at her while the enraged boras attacked, Solo shifted his focus to the boras, reaching out to their rudimentary intelligence through the Force and persuading them to relinquish their anger and isolation.

Solo had successfully navigated Sekot's trial. The planet's consciousness manifested to him in the form of their mutual acquaintance, Vergere, and Senshi released Hal as Quee regained consciousness. Sekot commended Solo's commitment to peace and shared its nature with him. However, neither he nor Sekot could foresee how Sekot could bring about a peaceful resolution. The planet revealed its capacity to create living starships, employing technology akin to that of the Yuuzhan Vong but with fewer vulnerabilities. When pressed, Solo declined Sekot's offer of military aid. He firmly believed that a military solution could not provide the answer the galaxy needed, and he refused to take actions that he believed would inevitably lead to the genocide of the Yuuzhan Vong. Nevertheless, Skywalker, communicating with Sekot simultaneously, accepted the offer. Sekot resolved to depart Klasse Ephemora and explore how it could halt the Yuuzhan Vong.

For two months, they remained on the planet as it prepared to leave Klasse Ephemora. At the end of this period, a second expedition landed in another region of the planet. This group included Corran Horn, Tahiri Veila, the Yuuzhan Vong priest Harrar, Shaper Nen Yim, and Nom Anor—disguised as Yu'shaa, a prophet of a heretical sect among the Shamed Ones who revered the Jedi and opposed Supreme Overlord Shimrra Jamaane. While all believed that Zonama Sekot held valuable lessons for the Yuuzhan Vong, Anor was primarily interested in betraying the planet to the Supreme Overlord, who sought its destruction. He summoned a vessel filled with warriors and attempted to eradicate the planet by unleashing a plague. Solo and his Jedi allies, aboard the Jade Shadow, sought out the source of the infection. They arrived just in time to defeat the Yuuzhan Vong warriors who disembarked from the ship Anor had summoned, rescuing Horn and Veila. Anor, who had already murdered Yim and, it was thought, Harrar, escaped on the ship.

The infection, which targeted Zonama Sekot's connection to its hyperdrives, was neutralized, but Sekot was unable to prevent its engines from initiating a hyperspace jump. The Widowmaker did not accompany the planet on its jump, leaving the Jedi uncertain about its fate. Sekot appeared to the Jedi, informing them that it had learned much from Yim's research and cautioning them to seek shelter in the planet's caves as hyperspace travel took its toll on the world. The expedition spent nearly a month in the caves of Middle Distance as Zonama Sekot repeatedly entered and exited hyperspace. Emerging too close to a sun ignited a series of forest fires; consequently, the remainder of the journey was spent under constant rainstorms created by Sekot. Groundquakes completed the series of natural disasters. Solo and Sebatyne eventually ventured out in a kybo—a Sekotan airship—to assess Zonama Sekot's condition. The devastation in the southern hemisphere was immense, while the northern ice cap had melted. Furthermore, the Ferroans had become resentful of the Jedi.

The pair returned to report to the others just as Sekot announced that it was reconsidering its commitment, and Tekli and Veila discovered Harrar, alive after all. Everyone rushed to see him, and the high priest helped clarify some of the events that had transpired, and told them of the growing power of the Jedi-venerating heresy spreading through the Yuuzhan Vong undercastes, and of events in Jamaane's court that showed the Supreme Overlord's great fear of the sentient world. Doubt and dissent was growing in the halls of the powerful. Harrar himself, seeing the power of Zonama Sekot, wished to build a rapport with the Jedi and bring peace and understanding between the two cultures.

When the rains ceased, Solo, the Skywalkers, Sebatyne, Harrar, and Hal embarked on another kybo journey to the southern hemisphere, where they visited the ruins of the former Magisters' dwelling in hope of contacting Sekot, which had grown distracted and distant. There, where Sekot had first become aware of itself, they contacted the world's guiding intelligence, which was fascinated by Harrar. Sekot was puzzled by its inability to sense Harrar, and also by his sense of familiarity. Solo and Skywalker, working with Harrar's knowledge of Yuuzhan Vong lore, puzzled out a theory, confirmed by Sekot, that the Yuuzhan Vong had long ago been stripped of the Force and exiled by their homeworld Yuuzhan'tar, a living planet much like Zonama Sekot.

Zonama Sekot initiated a series of trial hyperspace jumps, attempting to test the hyperdrives and get back to known space now that it had regained control of its hyperdrives. During that journey, Solo spoke with Sekot again, as the planet questioned him, attempting to learn more about his commitment to the Force and about the Yuuzhan Vong. He told it of Skywalker's plan to have Sekot travel to the Coruscant system, where it would distract and frighten the Yuuzhan Vong, but would be capable of defending itself. Skywalker likewise spoke with Solo, discussing their roles once they returned to the known galaxy. Skywalker offered criticism of Vergere's philosophy as he understood it, but did not convince Solo that he was wrong to embrace Vergere's teachings.

The planet jumped into the Coruscant system, terrifying the Yuuzhan Vong as it took up orbit. The Yuuzhan Vong considered Zonama Sekot an ill omen, with the exception of the heretics who venerated it, and would not approach it. Skywalker summoned more Jedi and the Solos to the planet in order to explain his vision for their involvement in the conclusion of the war, which primarily involved allowing the dissension in the enemy leadership and lower castes to undermine the government until they had to sue for peace. Solo was happily reunited with his family, and Sekot began to shape ships for many of the Jedi. The Skywalkers departed to confer with Galactic Alliance High Command while Solo remained on Zonama Sekot. The Jedi Master was unable to convince the military and civilian leaders to hold off their planned attack on Coruscant while the Yuuzhan Vong government unraveled. He returned to Zonama Sekot and reported as much. Solo was annoyed that the government had dismissed his report that the World Brain would render the planet uninhabitable if it was invaded; the danger had only increased since he had lost contact with the dhuryam in the Unknown Regions, giving Jamaane a chance to reestablish some measure of control over it. Skywalker decided that in the event of the invasion, the Jedi would have to reach and neutralize Jamaane before he could order the World Brain to ruin Coruscant.

The Galactic Alliance assault came soon, and during it the new Warmaster, Nas Choka, sent a fleet against Zonama Sekot, against expectations that the frightened Yuuzhan Vong would stay clear of the living planet. As the large Jedi contingent scrambled to defend it in their new Sekotan ships, Solo traveled to Coruscant with the Skywalkers, Master Kenth Hamner, Veila, Harrar, and the rest of the Solos and their Noghri bodyguards. Landing at the Galactic Alliance beachhead in Galactic City after slipping through the Yuuzhan Vong orbital forces, Solo set off with his sister, aunt, and uncle as well as Hamner, Veila, and Captain Judder Page and several of his Katarn Commandos, hoping to infiltrate the sacred precinct and enter the Supreme Overlord's Citadel. When they encountered a unit of rebellious heretics, Hamner, Veila, Jade Skywalker, and several of the troops were dispatched to aid them in the battle against Jamaane's forces. The rest proceeded, but were halted when the biots Tu-Scart and Sgauru began demolishing a walkway they needed to cross. Solo could not convince the creatures to desist until he contacted the World Brain, convincing it to cease taking the Supreme Overlord's orders and instead assist the Jedi in reaching the Citadel.

Solo, his twin, and Skywalker entered the Citadel and fought their way up a winding staircase, encountering constant resistance from hordes of devoted warriors. They made their way to the summit, within the Supreme Overlord's escape craft. There they faced Shimrra Jamaane and his bodyguard of fifteen Slayers, genetically enhanced warriors. The three Jedi, melded in the Force, faced the Slayers. Four pitted themselves against Solo before he was relieved by Skywalker; Solo then went to assist his sister. The chamber began to rock violently as the Citadel shifted, and Solo and Skywalker were left to finish off the Slayers amid the turbulence when Jaina rushed after Jamaane's familiar Onimi, who had ascended to the escape vessel's control room a level above. Hard-pressed and much wounded by the Slayers, who began to move under outside coordination, Solo nonetheless defeated his share before he was knocked out of the fight by Jamaane, who was the last enemy standing. Skywalker slew the Supreme Overlord using Anakin's lightsaber, taken from Jamaane, but sustained an amphistaff bite in the process.

Having cast his own weapon at Jamaane, Solo was unarmed. He missed catching Anakin's lightsaber when Skywalker threw it to him, but Skywalker urged him to continue unarmed to Jaina's assistance. Before Solo could reach him, Onimi launched the escape vessel. When Solo did arrive, he realized that Onimi had restored the Force to himself, having grafted yammosk cells to his nervous system. Onimi had been using his mental abilities to control Jamaane. He was the true Supreme Overlord of the Yuuzhan Vong. Onimi believed that he did battle with the Yuuzhan Vong deities, and thought that Solo embodied Yun-Shuno, the redeemer of Shamed Ones. Anakin Skywalker again spoke through the Force to Solo, telling him to stand firm against Onimi. Solo gave himself over to the Force to counter Onimi's complete control of their surroundings, enabling him to counter the mastermind's actions. When Onimi met him in combat, the Jedi countered the array of toxins the former Shaper excreted, neutralizing them instantly. He had surrendered himself completely to the Force, experiencing a blissful state of Oneness unlike anything any Jedi had experienced before. Onimi was unable to contend with the limitless power that emanated from Jacen and expended himself in the manufacture of toxins until he was undone and dissolved by his own poisons.

Solo rescued Jaina, whom Onimi had paralyzed, and was joined by his parents and the defector Nom Anor, who had arrived in the chamber below before the vessel launched. With Onimi dead, the craft began to die with him, forcing Anor to lead the group to an escape vessel for the escape craft. When Anor attempted to lead the group into a waste disposal area, Solo caught on to the deception. Anor, always looking out for himself, attacked Han Solo with a gout of venom from his plaeryin bol, but Jacen Solo intercepted the blast and neutralized it. Anor opened the passage to the yorik-trema escape ship for them, but refused to board himself despite Han Solo extending the offer; he preferred to die on his own terms, having no use for galactic society. The Millennium Falcon, piloted by Jade Skywalker, docked with their escape ship and recovered them. Solo went to Skywalker, badly wounded and abed, and healed him of the amphistaff poison's effects, using his tears as Vergere had.

They traveled to Zonama Sekot, where Sekot had embraced the Yuuzhan Vong whom it had forced down during battle. After a week, Sekot and Hal met with Solo, Skywalker, and Harrar to reveal that Sekot had realized it was the seed of the original Yuuzhan'tar. Sekot now volunteered to serve as a new homeworld for the Yuuzhan Vong, to house and rehabilitate them in the Unknown Regions once Warmaster Nas Choka surrendered. After the surrender, Solo traveled back to Coruscant, where he assisted in reaching an understanding between the World Brain and the Galactic Alliance. Solo was then present at the Jedi convocation Skywalker called on Zonama Sekot, in which he proclaimed a new vision for the future, one which sought to reconnect with the Unifying Force, spend time in self-examination, and adopt lessons from Vergere. Nearly two months after the surrender, once Zonama Sekot had departed, Solo traveled with his family to Kashyyyk, where they gathered at Chewbacca's memorial and lodged Anakin's lightsaber.

Solo came to the conclusion that his true calling was to learn, not to remain a Jedi. He felt that staying with the Jedi would mean being seen as a hero, which would create pressure to meet expectations. Similarly, staying on Sekot felt like it would lead to complacency in a seemingly perfect place. He decided to seek out and learn from other groups that used the Force, hoping to deepen his understanding of the Force and himself. His planned destinations included the Jensaarai, Theran Listeners, Sunesi, and Fallanassi. Before leaving, however, he took some time to teach other Jedi, including Nelani Dinn, whom he instructed in lightsaber combat.

In 30 ABY, Solo embarked on his journey, taking a break from the Jedi Order and ceasing to consider himself an active Jedi Knight. Throughout his extensive travels, he sought out numerous Force-using orders. Early on, he ventured into the Kathol Rift to visit the Aing-Tii, who were skilled at manipulating time and space and viewed the Force as a spectrum of many shades, rather than a dichotomy of light and dark. He was accepted as a student and learned from Tadar'Ro, an Aing-Tii who had previously interacted with Jorj Car'das, a secretive information broker and the only other Human to have studied with the Aing-Tii. Tadar'Ro, communicating through a device that translated the pheromones used by the Aing-Tii, taught Solo Aing-Tii powers such as teleportation and flow-walking, a technique that allowed one to experience the past or future by projecting oneself into it. The young Jedi Knight quickly grasped the Aing-Tii's complex perspective on the Force. He hoped to use this power to change the past and save his brother Anakin, but was heartbroken to learn that he could only witness the past, not alter it. Solo challenged the Aing-Tii's multifaceted understanding of the Force, which earned their disapproval. Over time, the Aing-Tii had gathered many relics in a cave called the Embrace. They believed in collecting Force-strong artifacts but were forbidden from touching them. As an outsider, Solo was permitted to touch them and spent time in the Embrace exploring the relics. When he touched a powerful artifact known as the Codex, his powers were greatly amplified, and he sensed something wrong in the Maw. He spoke to Tadar'Ro, who warned him against going there, saying it was home to Mind Drinkers. Despite the warning, Solo felt compelled to investigate, so Tadar'Ro gave him a riddle that revealed how to find Sinkhole Station, the Mind Drinkers' base.

Solo discovered Sinkhole Station positioned between two black holes. Inside this ancient Celestial structure were the Mind Walkers, as they called themselves, a group of Force-sensitives who projected their consciousness into a mindscape called "beyond shadows," where they claimed to find a deep connection to the Force. They were under the influence of Abeloth, the dark presence that Solo had sensed. He learned to Mind Walk himself and was guided within the spirit world to the Font of Power, where his Mind Walker guides told him he could drink and gain unlimited power. Sensing that the Font was tainted by the dark side, he immediately refused the offer. Within "beyond shadows," the Mind Walkers also showed Solo the Pool of Knowledge, which offered visions of all that had been and would be. Knowing that no mortal mind could grasp the entirety of the universe, Solo declined to immerse himself in it. He merely looked into the Pool and saw the Throne of Balance, where the future sat. There, he saw a dark, armored figure sitting on a golden throne, surrounded by followers. When Solo saw the face beneath the figure's mask, he was shocked to recognize it. His spirit later told Luke Skywalker that the face was not that of his former Master, but Skywalker was unsure if Solo was telling the truth. Driven to change the dark future he had witnessed, Solo stopped Mind Walking and left the Maw, determined to complete his training and prevent the dark rule.

During his journey, Solo interacted with the Jensaarai, a light-side group descended from a Sith cult who maintained friendly relations with the Jedi. He questioned their understanding of the Force, challenging their beliefs in ways that offended them. Solo also spent time with the Witches of Dathomir, learning Force techniques from them, but like the Aing-Tii and Jensaarai, they criticized him for learning their methods without adopting their beliefs or accepting their understanding of the Force. While with the Dathomiri witches, Solo also learned techniques from the dark side Nightsister witch clan. From the Theran Listeners of Nam Chorios, who communicated with the sentient Tsil crystals of that world, he learned quieting and listening techniques that enhanced his ability to communicate through the Force. Rumors later spread that, in his quest for knowledge, Solo had ventured into the Unknown Regions, home to several Force sects unknown to the wider galaxy, including the Blazing Chain raiders and the entropy-worshiping Sorcerers of Rhand.

In 34 ABY, Solo began studying with the Baran Do Sages on Dorin. Koro Ziil, the Master of the Baran Do Order, personally instructed Solo in their techniques, which focused on using the Force to manipulate electricity, enhance the senses, detect danger, and avoid detection. Solo started with weather-detection techniques but wanted to learn more advanced abilities. Within just three days, he mastered the ayna-seff variation of the hassat-durr family of talents, which involved manipulating the body's electromagnetic field. In return, Solo gave Ziil practice in lightsaber dueling. He considered ending his journey after his time with the Baran Do, but while studying documents he had brought with him, he became interested in Force nexuses and decided to seek them out.

Solo arrived on Pydyr in 35 ABY to study with the Fallanassi, who specialized in illusions and secrecy. There, he learned from Akanah Norand Goss Pell, a former lover of his uncle, Fallanassi techniques for manipulating the White Current, their understanding of the Force. Pell was cautious of Solo, believing he carried a darkness within him, and tried to teach him to accept the galaxy's nature instead of trying to save it. He disagreed but continued to respect Pell. While training with Pell, Solo began to sense a compulsion in the Force, a call for help from the Unknown Regions. After several weeks, the call intensified into a plea, and Solo felt he had to leave his training and find the source of the compulsion. Pell advised against it, feeling that Solo needed to stay and finish his training and that he did not truly understand the White Current. She also sensed that Solo lacked "light" in his views on the Force and was determined that he could not leave without moral guidance. Nevertheless, Solo departed.

Venturing into the Unknown Regions, Solo found the source of the call in the Colony, a network of Killik nests, each with its own hive mind, all controlled by Unu, an overmind. Other species had been drawn to the Colony and were unable to leave, having joined one of the nests' minds. Arriving at the Lizil nest, Solo was assigned a guide who took him to the world where Yoggoy nested. There, he learned of a spacecraft crash on the planet years ago and sought out the site of the Crash, which had become a monument. As Solo suspected, it was the wreckage of the Tachyon Flier, which Lomi Plo and Welk had stolen at Myrkr with Raynar Thul aboard. Against the wishes of his impatient insect guide, whose language Solo had to understand through the Force, Solo entered the wreck to understand what had happened and who was summoning him. Cutting into the crew quarters, he found the melted remains of M-TD, and on the bridge, he found signs that the others might have died in the fire after the crash. He flow-walked back to the events of the crash and saw Thul levitating the two Dark Jedi from the burning craft. When Thul noticed Solo's presence, he returned to the present, traced Thul's path to an exit, and was pleased to find that his friend had apparently survived.

Upon exiting, his guide presented him with a new XJ5 "ChaseX" X-wing. Solo refused to take up a combat role until the Colony explained why and who he was supposed to fight. The same presence that had called to him earlier now spoke, insisting that it knew Solo and knew he would find this fight worthwhile. Solo opened himself to flow-walking again, seeking to determine what had become of Thul and if he might be the other presence, and was surprised to find himself in the future, seeing his mother for the first time in five years. She was speaking to someone else, mentioning that Thul had survived. Solo had his guide tell him where he was going, and offered the location to his mother, who had seen his future projection: Qoribu, in the Gyuel system.

Solo flew to Qoribu's moon Jwlio, where he found the other Myrkr survivors, except for Tenel Ka Djo. They were fighting the Chiss Ascendancy, which was attacking the Killik worlds near its borders with defoliant to destroy their food supply. Solo found this unacceptable and joined the other Jedi in flying against Chiss defoliant sorties. Although he accepted Killik ways and fought for the nests, he was not as absorbed into the hive mind as the other Jedi; he resisted becoming a Joiner.

Finally, in one raid a month after Solo arrived, the conflict escalated when the Killiks destroyed a Chiss Star Destroyer with a suicidal ramming attack by a swarm of dartships, and Lowbacca was left outside the ship, where he was captured by the Chiss. As they took the Wookiee Jedi in, Solo's parents, the Skywalkers, and Saba Sebatyne arrived in the system with Jae Juun and Tarfang, smugglers who had worked for the Killiks. They had learned that Thul had survived and become UnuThul, the leader of the Unu nest, which provided the Colony's guiding will. When the others landed, Solo introduced himself to his cousin Ben Skywalker, whom he had not seen since the boy was a toddler, and the pair immediately bonded. Solo then hugged his parents for the first time in five years and listened as the other Jedi tried to justify their desertion from their duties and their role in the war to their elders. Finally, the members of the Masters' Council decided that the Joiner Jedi had lost their neutrality and were only making a confused situation worse, and they asked them to leave the Unknown Regions. Solo, Tesar Sebatyne, Tekli, and Veila agreed to leave immediately, while the others waited for the Solos to rescue Lowbacca before departing.

Upon returning to the Jedi Academy on Ossus, Solo and the other Jedi had their brain activity scanned. Solo used the ayna-seff technique to mask his readings and manipulate the equipment, explaining that he preferred the Masters to trust their feelings rather than technology. Using the others' readings, Cilghal disproved that the blurring of the Jedi's minds was related to overuse of the meld during the war; instead, Killik pheromones were altering their brain functions, joining them to the collective nest mind. Solo, however, likely had not been present long enough to become a Joiner. As the Masters debated how to address the Killik-Chiss tensions, Solo suggested that the Killiks were dangerous but did not mean any harm. In such a situation, he said, it was important for the Jedi to choose a position and act.

Solo felt that he should send a fleet to protect the Killiks, so he decided to approach his old friend Djo, who had become the Queen Mother of Hapes while Solo was a prisoner in the Yuuzhan Vong War. He traveled to Hapes and snuck into the Queen Mother's gardens when her secretary refused to announce him. She was overjoyed to see him for the first time in five years and dismissed the courtiers around her to catch up with her old friend. They went to a private island in her gardens, where Solo explained the situation in the Unknown Regions and asked her to send a fleet to guard the Killiks. She agreed after asking Solo to stay the night. He did, and they finally gave in to their feelings and slept together. Unbeknownst to Solo, he impregnated the Queen Mother during this encounter.

Solo returned to Ossus, where some Jedi were concerned that he had exacerbated the situation, making war more likely rather than less. Since this seemed to be an unconscious motivation of at least some of the Joiners, it was troubling. When Alema Rar attacked Han and Leia Solo on their return trip, being the only Joiner Jedi who had agreed to leave when the Chiss under Commander Jagged Fel captured Lowbacca, she was captured. So was an assassin Killik, calling itself Gorog, when it attacked Mara Jade Skywalker after stowing away aboard ship and attempting to make a Joiner of Ben Skywalker. It was a member of the Killik nest that had been attacking the Solos and Skywalkers while the Colony continued to deny knowledge of the assaults. Solo participated in a test in which all the Jedi from Jwlio were placed in nearby rooms while the Gorog assassin was subjected to pain without their knowledge. Rar, whose readings showed her to be a Gorog Joiner, was restrained, and Solo was the only one of the other Jedi who did not feel the need, unconsciously provoked by Gorog, to end the experiment, as he was not a Joiner. Cilghal determined that Gorog was acting as the Colony's unconscious, manipulating the other nests and influencing Thul without their knowledge. She explained this to Skywalker, and Solo added his observation that Gorog was almost certainly controlled by Plo and Welk, the Dark Jedi survivors of the crash. They had created a secretive, dark side nest. Rar's own inner darkness had led her to join them.

When Chief of State Cal Omas angrily arrived on Ossus, demanding a meeting with the Jedi leadership to discuss the arrival of the Hapan fleet over Qoribu, Solo entered the meeting and admitted that he had persuaded her to send the fleet. He explained to Omas that he believed the only way to prevent the Chiss from exterminating the Killiks on Jwlio was to give them a naval force to protect themselves, holding the Chiss back from action and giving the Jedi time to resolve the crisis. Omas ordered the Jedi to force Djo to withdraw the fleet and withdraw themselves from the Unknown Regions as well, averting a diplomatic crisis with the Chiss. This sparked a debate among the Masters about whether the Jedi should be accountable to the government, in which Solo argued that the Jedi could only trust their own consciences; governments were too weak and corruptible to be in control of the Jedi. Omas's threat to withhold Galactic Alliance funding if the Jedi could not comply worsened the argument, until Skywalker ended it. Organa Solo proposed that the Hapan fleet move the Killik nests to a set of planets they had discovered in the Utegetu Nebula, where the Killiks would be far from the Chiss border. Still, the Jedi would first have to deal with Gorog, which Solo realized seemed to want war.

The Jedi arranged for Rar to escape with the Gorog insect, tracking her back to the Gorog nest's location. The Jedi leadership sent a strike team to deal with the nest, eliminating it to allow a peaceful resolution. Solo remained on Ossus, as the Masters did not want to risk any of the Jedi who had spent time with the Killiks betraying their plans. Instead, Solo spent his time with his young cousin Ben Skywalker, who had withdrawn from the Force and showed signs of having joined with the Gorog stowaway. Solo also reached out to his twin, who was still with the Killiks, and urged her to resist the Colony's will, letting her know that Plo and Welk were in control. Jaina warned Jagged Fel, who was commanding the Chiss task force, of the imminent attack the Killiks were preparing, and the Jedi strike team rooted out Gorog, killing Welk in the process. Plo, however, escaped. Thul agreed to move the Killik nests to the Utegetu Nebula. The conflict seemed resolved.

For the next six months, Solo was confined to the Jedi Academy on Ossus, as were the other Jedi who had been among the Killiks. He declined to answer many questions about his experiences, becoming known for his secretive manner and mysterious bearing. He did file some reports about his travels, but he deliberately withheld much of what he had learned, resulting in documents that were incomplete and omitted several of the sects he had visited entirely. He worked with his uncle to develop Force techniques based on their experiences fighting Gorog. One was a technique to detect individuals who were concealing themselves in the Force by detecting the sensations that spread around them in the Force rather than searching for the individual himself. Another involved using the Force in overwhelming amounts, calling on more power than the body could safely channel. Together they managed to find ways to endure the sensations of overload but not to prevent the damage it caused to the user. Skywalker made a point of asking Solo not to use flow-walking to reach into the future again, as he feared the consequences of fixing the future.

Solo also spent time with his young cousin, Ben Skywalker. Skywalker had withdrawn from the Force, and Solo was the only one who could make him feel comfortable using it. As a result, Solo became Skywalker's informal Jedi Master. He also began to limit Jaina's ability to sense him in their twin bond, who remained joined with Zekk despite having been removed from the proximity of the Killiks. Solo kept in contact with Djo by secure HoloNet, but the pair were unable to meet up again for quite some time.

In 36 ABY, Solo was planning a camping trip to Endor with Ben Skywalker when he received a message from Djo telling him to come secretly to Hapes. He had to bring Skywalker along to their secret meeting. Djo's child protection droid, DD-11A, waited outside the room with Skywalker while Solo was admitted inside to see Djo and her new child. Solo was initially disappointed, thinking that his love had married a Hapan and had a child without telling him, but when he saw the newborn girl, Solo realized that he was seeing his daughter, even though it had been over nine months since he had been with Djo. The Queen Mother explained that she had slowed their daughter's development through the Force to avoid suspicion that the child was Solo's, which would have made him a target for the murderous infighting of Hapan nobility. Skywalker had followed and overheard this news, which Djo was desperate to keep secret.

Solo had been feeling a sense of danger in the Force for some time, but it grew stronger at that moment, and Djo explained that she had felt a threat since the yet-unnamed child's birth. Skywalker sensed that Gorog assassins were attacking, hired to kill the new heir to the Hapan throne. Solo tried to create an escape from the room as Gorog insects swarmed in the walls, and Skywalker was still in contact with the Gorog nest mind, complicating matters through its influence over him. When DD-11A opened fire on the Killiks, Skywalker felt their pain and attacked Djo and the droid, forcing Solo to use the Force to render him unconscious. Solo hid in the corner of the room, pulling his cloak over the Humans, and sent DD-11A through the hole he had cut in the floor. Solo used the Force to project the sound of his daughter's crying near the droid and created an illusion hiding his family's presence in the room. Gorog was convinced they had fled and gave chase, though observers left behind noticed when Solo dropped the illusion and attacked. Solo and Djo killed them, while DD-11A's grenades eliminated the main swarm.

Because Gorog knew of a secret escape tunnel known only to Queen Mothers, Djo was convinced that her grandmother, Ta'a Chume, was behind the attack. Djo intended to deal with the woman, but Solo was not convinced that she would be able to eliminate Ta'a Chume—who was already under house arrest for poisoning Djo's mother, Queen Mother Teneniel Djo—as a threat. He sought out the former Queen Mother himself after promising Djo that he would not kill her. After knocking out her bodyguards, he confronted Ta'a Chume in her private spa before Djo's security personnel could reach her. He demanded that she explain the assassination attempt, but when she refused to cooperate, he used the Force to invade her mind and learn that she had been approached by Gorog, who sought to assassinate Djo because of her fleet's interference at Qoribu. She threatened him, insisting that if she were killed or imprisoned, her agents would not stop until Djo was dead. Outraged, Solo pushed himself further into Ta'a Chume's mind, driving her out of it—essentially rendering her brain-dead. In that moment, Solo experienced a vision of a galaxy-consuming war sparked by the Killiks. Horrified, he hid as Ta'a Chume was arrested.

Before Solo departed, he and Djo chose the name Allana for their daughter. Solo felt a great deal of anxiety concerning his eyesight, and he employed a Fallanassi memory rub to bury the memories of Skywalker's presence on Hapes. He made a swift journey to Endor and spent time camping there, with the goal of making his apprentice think that their Endor trip had unfolded exactly as scheduled. However, Skywalker's mind proved resistant, and Solo found it necessary to repeatedly apply the technique to keep those memories hidden.

Determined to avert such a conflict, Solo made his way back to Ossus. There, the Jedi were divided because of Master Corran Horn's temporary leadership while Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were unreachable on the Killik world Woteba, and the Killiks had reignited their conflict with the Chiss. Concurrently, Leia Organa Solo and Saba Sebatyne found themselves under arrest for trying to break through a Fifth Fleet blockade in the Utegetu Nebula. He stepped into a hangar where Jaina, Zekk, Veila, Lowbacca, Tesar Sebatyne, and others were getting ready for a rescue mission to the Utegetu, led by Kyp Durron. They were in a heated argument with Masters like Horn and Kenth Hamner, who had forbidden the mission. Upon landing, he engaged in conversation with Jaina and Zekk, who updated him on the situation. Learning that the Killiks were once again provoking the Chiss, Solo was filled with dread, convinced that the never-ending war he had foreseen was about to begin. He was certain that his vision, experienced while eliminating Ta'a Chume as a threat, was a sign that the Force required him to neutralize the Killiks as well. He called Sebatyne, Veila, and Lowbacca together and shared his vision of a perpetual war, a war that Gorog was trying to instigate. Solo's intention was to goad the Chiss into wiping out the Killiks, but he knew the others would never agree, so he resorted to a lie. He claimed that the Chiss were planning a preemptive strike that would ignite the war and needed to be stopped.

The others consented to assist Solo in striking against the Chiss, and they set off in their StealthX fighters towards the Chiss Ascendancy's Supply Depot Thrago. They managed to breach the moon base's defenses, but Jaina and Zekk began to doubt the claim that the Chiss were actually preparing an attack. Solo used the Force to draw the Chiss's attention, compelling the Jedi to proceed with the planned assault, blocking the hangar with glop bombs and destroying the numerous fuel tanks at the supply depot. Solo, Jaina, and Zekk advanced towards an ammunition dump, but the latter two intended to retreat when they saw a nearby repair hangar with personnel who would be killed in the explosion. Solo moved to warn the hangar personnel to evacuate, but Jaina and Zekk still pulled out. Solo, unwilling to abandon the target, launched his time-delayed torpedo into the ammunition dump. Jaina and Zekk were compelled to warn the Chiss in the vicinity, but were furious at Solo's actions. The Jedi withdrew, but Solo still had to contend with his twin's anger.

The Chiss were able to identify that the attack had been carried out by Jedi in StealthXs, but since there were no fatalities, they chose not to escalate the situation. Instead, they interpreted it as evidence that some Jedi were once again under the influence of the Killiks, and they launched an attack against the Killiks on their borders. The rest of the strike team returned to fight on behalf of the Killiks, and Solo accompanied them, subtly working to undermine the Killik war effort. Jaina and Zekk had lost their trust in Solo, but Veila became a staunch supporter of him.

After about a month of fighting in defense of the Killiks, the Jedi began to sense a summons from Luke Skywalker at Ossus. Solo argued that they should leave, eager to find a reason for the Jedi to abandon the Killiks to their fate. When a large Chiss bomb landed near their bunker shortly after the call, but failed to explode, Solo argued against investigating it. Nevertheless, the others rushed across the battlefield to the bomb, suspecting it was a new type of superweapon, and Solo followed. Jagged Fel commanded a Chiss landing craft that deployed commandos with the mission of eliminating the bomb before it could be analyzed. Jaina disabled the craft, but as the other Jedi were close to recovering the bomb, Solo used the Force to lift the wrecked landing craft, allowing Fel to escape and trigger the vape charges the commandos had planted, destroying the weapon. Jaina and Zekk were once again outraged, realizing that he had deliberately allowed Fel to destroy the bomb.

The pair refused to return to Ossus with Solo and the others, opting to continue fighting for the Colony. On Ossus, Solo spoke with Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker, explaining his reasons for the strike at Supply Depot Thrago—though he gave them the same false explanation he had given the others. They accepted his explanation, but were concerned that his actions had been reckless. Solo then joined the rest of the Jedi Order, which had gathered nearly all of its members to hear Skywalker speak about the divisions plaguing the Order. After emphasizing the importance of unity, Skywalker asked any Jedi who could not prioritize the Jedi Order to resign. Skywalker retreated to his chambers, and the Masters convened. Djo informed Solo that due to her responsibilities as monarch of Hapes, she could not remain a Jedi given this ultimatum; Solo decided to remain a Jedi. The Masters reached a conclusion, dismissing all but the Jedi involved in the Killik crisis. While they spoke with the Skywalkers, Solo's parents questioned him about Djo's secrecy regarding her daughter. Solo wished he could reveal to them that Allana was their granddaughter, but felt he could not risk her safety and instead evaded their questions. As the Jedi Masters brought them into the conversation, Solo offered his public interpretation of his vision and explained his actions. When no one else could decide on a plan of action, Solo suggested they kill Thul, Plo, and Rar. Solo was convinced that without his old friend guiding the Killiks, imposing his will on the Colony, they would revert to their previous disorganized and relatively harmless state. And with Plo and Rar, the guiding Joiners of the Gorog nest, eliminated, it too would cease driving the Colony's acts of aggression.

Lowbacca, Veila, and Tesar Sebatyne spoke out against Solo to Luke Skywalker, asserting that he could not be trusted and was lying and manipulating the situation. They also revealed that he had tampered with Ben Skywalker's memories. Skywalker summoned his nephew to speak, and Solo arrived just as Zakarisz Ghent was finishing his work to access R2-D2's sequestered memory files of Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala, Solo's grandparents. They observed an interchange between the two after the execution of Order 66; Solo was less inclined to view Anakin Skywalker's behavior negatively than Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker, seeing protectiveness where they saw a controlling nature. Afterward, the Skywalkers confronted Solo about his friends' accusations. Under pressure, he admitted that he had not seen how the war started, and had fabricated the explanation of a Chiss surprise attack in order to gain aid in preventing the war. Solo also admitted to using Veila to spy on the other former Joiners, and when asked about his memory rubs of Ben Skywalker, he lied that he had done so to remove memories of a traumatic Gorax attack on an Ewok village while they camped on Endor.

Han and Leia Organa Solo returned from Killik space with information that the Killiks were planning to overthrow the governments of several Galactic Alliance insect species and replacing them with loyal puppet governments. Skywalker assigned Jedi to thwart these coups, assigning himself, Jade Skywalker, and Solo to protect the Verpine. Solo was the first to observe the Killiks and their Verpine allies attacking, and counterattacked before landing on Nickel One, the main Verpine asteroid, and fighting the Killik attackers on the ground. He successfully defended the Hive Mother before Supreme Commander Gilad Pellaeon arrived to lend the Galactic Alliance's assistance. Pellaeon reported that the coups had been defeated on all worlds except Thyferra, where the Killiks had seized control of the vital bacta supply.

Solo, along with his parents and aunt and uncle, received an invitation to a meeting on Coruscant with Chief of State Omas and Supreme Commander Pellaeon. During this meeting, Skywalker successfully secured their support for Solo's proposed plan—to eliminate the Killik leadership and thereby dismantle the Colony. However, the plan was modified to prioritize the capture of Thul rather than his death, as well as to attempt to persuade the Chiss to abandon the war. To prevent the Colony from expanding, they would introduce ecosphere-preserving nanotechnology native to the Utegetu Nebula to its worlds, which would limit the scale of Killik development. Skywalker intended to confront Plo himself, but Solo was convinced that he should be the one to do it, as Plo used her opponents' doubts to mask herself, and Solo felt he had no doubts at all. Solo was against Skywalker's plan, believing it was crucial for the Chiss to exterminate the Killiks, but he kept his opposition to himself, fearing that revealing the extremity of his convictions would be detrimental.

When his parents were scheduled to journey to Tenupe, at the forefront of the Swarm War, in order to evacuate Jaina and smuggle Killik commandos into a Chiss control center with the aim of convincing the Chiss of the value of ending the war, Solo alerted the Chiss in Tenupe's system to their impending arrival. Despite securing a promise from the Chiss to take them alive, he still felt deep sadness at the act, but regarded it as a necessary sacrifice. Before setting off to confront Plo, Solo and the Skywalkers watched R2-D2's recording of Anakin Skywalker causing Amidala's death after his fall to the dark side, dispelling the doubts that Jade Skywalker had killed Amidala which Gorog had tried to plant. Solo's uncle was overwhelmed with emotion, and declined to view Amidala's actual death; Solo argued that he had to, that Skywalker could not be afraid of pain. When Skywalker still rejected it, and aired his disapproval of Vergere's teachings, Solo brought up his belief that he ought to be the one to kill Plo. Skywalker declined this as well.

A Jedi strike force aboard StealthXs journeyed to Sarm, where they prepared an ambush for Gorog's nest ship in orbit. They infiltrated the nest ship in their fighters, shooting their way in as Solo flew with his aunt and uncle. A Gorog counterattack resulted in their fighters being crushed under rubble, and Solo was trapped in his cockpit and lost consciousness. He awoke to find Plo and her Gorog attacking the party. Skywalker engaged the queen of the Gorog nest while Solo and other Jedi protected him from the swarms of Gorog. Jade Skywalker was injured in the fight and Plo descended on her, using Skywalker's fear for his wife to paralyze him. Solo stepped in to block the attack, disarming Plo of her primary lightsaber, but she also possessed a shoto with which she stabbed him in the belly. Jade shot the Dark Jedi, and she and the Gorog retreated as the Jedi strike team recovered the wounded and evacuated.

With damage to three organs, Solo was incapacitated for some time. With bacta scarce, he volunteered to forgo treatment, knowing he could heal his wounds over time with the Force. Skywalker was determined to subdue Thul and Plo alone, but Solo knew that Plo had used Skywalker's fear against him in their last encounter, and worried that his uncle would prove insufficient to the task. He admonished Skywalker for it, speaking over Jade Skywalker's sickbed. When Skywalker was still confident, he projected a Fallanassi mirror illusion in which Skywalker viewed his fears—seeing Jade Skywalker die. Skywalker was terrified, and when Solo revealed the truth, he realized that his fears were in fact weakening him. The younger Jedi insisted that his uncle had to confront his fears and learn to accept them. They viewed R2-D2's hologram of Amidala's death together, and Skywalker accepted his fear as Solo insisted. He rejected Solo's suggestion that he draw on his emotions for power, however, preferring a more traditionally dispassionate approach to using the Force. At Tenupe, Skywalker killed Plo and captured Thul, while Organa Solo defeated Rar, who was believed dead, eaten by Tenupe's wildlife. Solo remained on Coruscant, recovering, as the Chiss were persuaded to end the war, and the Killiks, while not exterminated, were neutralized as a threat.

Solo continued his training sessions with Ben Skywalker, fostering a strong connection with the boy and allowing him to reside in his Coruscant apartment. Luke Skywalker, however, still harbored reservations about Solo's judgment and was troubled by the changes he had detected in him following his five-year journey. Their relationship experienced a slight strain, with Solo aware that his uncle did not fully trust his decisions, yet they remained close.

Solo's relationship with Djo and Allana remained a secret. Although he visited them covertly every three to four months and yearned to spend more time with them, he was frequently separated from his family and regretted his inability to make their ties public. Allana herself was unaware that Solo was her father, though she held him in high regard.

During his visits to the Coruscant undercity to consult the World Brain, Solo encountered Seha Dorvald, a street urchin. After several interactions, he recognized her Force sensitivity and sponsored her admission to the Jedi Order for training. Meanwhile, tensions escalated due to Corellia's desire to reap the benefits of Galactic Alliance membership while simultaneously attempting to evade its dues and compliance with Alliance demands.

In 40 ABY, Solo, accompanied by his apprentice, journeyed to Adumar to inspect its arms factories, which were suspected of illegally supplying weapons to other planets. He sought to unsettle the Adumari he encountered, hoping to pressure his guide in the Dammant Killers factory, Testan ke Harran, into making a mistake by adopting a mysterious and distant demeanor. Solo succeeded in generating sufficient anxiety in ke Harran to uncover its source: a hidden door leading to an area where illegal munitions were produced and stored. Security guards attacked the pair of Jedi, who fled through the factory and up a turbolift shaft. They cut their way outside and slid down the building's angled surface before disabling a security fighter. Skywalker broadcast his recording of the violation to the Galactic Alliance, and they departed the planet with their mission accomplished.

Upon their return to Coruscant, they attended a full family dinner at the elder Solos' new residence. The dinner was disrupted by an argument between the others and Han Solo, who supported Corellia's rhetoric of independence from the central government and planetary pride. Following dinner, Luke Skywalker took Solo aside to inform him that the Galactic Alliance had discovered that Corellia was conducting its negotiations in bad faith. The Corellian system's government had no intention of adhering to regulations and was secretly attempting to incite other planetary governments to join it in defiance of the central government. Most alarmingly, it was secretly constructing a planetary assault fleet and attempting to reactivate Centerpoint Station. Skywalker requested that Solo undertake the mission assigned to the Jedi by the Galactic Alliance: to infiltrate and disable Centerpoint. Solo accepted and decided to bring Ben Skywalker with him, a decision that the elder Skywalker left to Solo as Ben's Master.

Solo and his apprentice commenced training with Doctor Toval Seyah, a Galactic Alliance spy embedded among the scientists working to reactivate Centerpoint, practicing various methods of destroying or disabling the station. Although Skywalker often met his demise in the simulations, Solo sensed that he would be crucial to the actual mission's success. Once they were prepared, the two Jedi were smuggled aboard Centerpoint Station in a pair of cargo containers. Designated Team Mynock, they reported their successful infiltration to the Galactic Alliance forces preparing to stage a show of force, known as Operation Roundabout, in the system to create a diversion. With Skywalker following behind, Solo entered a chamber where he was trapped, separated from Skywalker, by Thrackan Sal-Solo, the Chief of State of Corellia. Sal-Solo and his guards unleashed a sonic attack, but Solo overcame the pain and counterattacked the Corellian Security Force soldiers with Sal-Solo. They retreated, forcing Solo to pursue them into a room that constituted another layer of the ambush. Aware that Skywalker was nearing success in sabotaging the station, Solo pursued Sal-Solo through a side door rather than attacking the soldiers positioned between himself and the control room. He subdued Sal-Solo and received a vision of a potential future: if he did not kill Sal-Solo here, the galaxy would be consumed by war, and his family would suffer immensely. Despite his reluctance, Solo concluded that he had to kill the politician. Before he could act, one of Sal-Solo's prearranged distractions provided the older man with just enough time to escape. Frustrated by his failure to prevent the war, Solo had to leave the station, which Skywalker had successfully rendered unusable as a weapon.

Following the sabotage of Centerpoint and Admiral Matric Klauskin's occupation of Tralus after Operation Roundabout failed, Five World Prime Minister Aidel Saxan agreed to meet with Supreme Commander Pellaeon at Toryaz Station in the Kuat system for negotiations. Solo was among the numerous Jedi assigned to provide security for the conference. He attended the initial conference before returning to his parents' suite, where they informed him that Luke Skywalker had been experiencing visions of a threatening man who did not yet appear to exist. Solo attempted to detect the same traces in the Force but was unsuccessful; his senses only registered an extremely faint female presence lingering as a threat. Solo went to bed but was awakened in the middle of the night by a sensation that something was amiss. Soon, attackers breached his door; Solo defeated them and joined forces with his father, who had also survived an attack, to check on the Corellian delegation. There, Solo discovered Saxan deceased.

He and several other high-ranking summit attendees convened to discuss the attack and initiate an investigation. Solo roamed the habitat where the summit was taking place, searching for indications that the Force had been used. In certain areas, he once again detected a faint female presence. Grand Master Skywalker assigned Solo to investigate Siron Tawaler, a Toryaz Station security captain who had seemingly collaborated with the attackers before voluntarily walking out of an airlock. Intrigued by the collection of tassels discovered by Jaina and Zekk in the airlock, Solo swapped assignments with her, seeking further information on the unusual object.

In an effort to decipher the meaning of the tassels, Solo consulted For'ali, a Twi'lek scholar specializing in such items. For'ali successfully translated one tassel as a message written in an extinct communication method formerly used by the Tahu'ip subculture, stating "He will strengthen himself through pain." The remaining tassels did not adhere to the same syntax, and For'ali suggested they seek out the academic resources of Lorrd to translate the remaining elements. Upon arriving on Lorrd, Solo was greeted by Nelani Dinn, the Jedi assigned to the planet. They proceeded to visit Doctor Heilan Rotham, a specialist in tactile recordings. Rotham believed she could translate much of the strange object, but their meeting was interrupted when Dinn received a call reporting that a man was threatening to launch missiles from a starfighter at student dormitories unless he could speak to a Jedi.

Solo and Ben Skywalker, accompanied by Dinn, set off for the Lorrd City Spaceport. There, Dinn attempted to negotiate with Ordith Huarr, the pilot, but Solo simply used the Force to flip his Y-wing over, neutralizing Huarr as a threat—or so he believed, until Huarr launched his missiles into the ground, resulting in his own death and injuries to several nearby security personnel. Dinn and Solo debated their approaches, until the young woman confessed that she was romantically interested in him and had been since he trained her years ago. He had to admit that he was already involved with someone, though he did not reveal whom.

They returned to Rotham, who had managed to translate most of the tassels. Solo sensed that several of the messages, which focused on the actions of an individual, had a Sith influence, a conclusion reinforced by the revelation that one tassel, which he could translate through the Force, employed a recording technique native to the Sith world Ziost. Following the meeting, Skywalker reported that he had located the shuttle that had fled Toryaz Station, presumably carrying the attack's mastermind, at the spaceport and had placed it under security observation. The next morning, they were dispatched to another hostage situation. In a large, drained public aquarium, a man held several individuals hostage at gunpoint, with another man strapped to his back, carrying high explosives between them. Solo took the lead in negotiating with him, learning that he was Doctor Movac Arisster and desired to speak to the Jedi at the advice of Aayla Secura—a long-dead Old Republic Jedi. Arisster confessed that he was determined to become famous by defeating a Jedi and that, through numerous precautions, they would be unable to prevent his detonation. Accepting that there was no way around it, Solo allowed Arisster to kill himself and the captive on his back, but protected the other hostages from the explosion, believing that he had minimized the loss of life and chosen the best possible path. Once again, Dinn disagreed.

The following day, a radical group kidnapped the daughter of a prominent businesswoman. The Jedi were summoned again, and Solo executed a plan that involved Skywalker infiltrating the girl's cell through a small steam tunnel and defending her while the other two Jedi and the Lorrd Security Forces stormed the lair. Later that same day, a man dressed as a Jedi threatened to jump off a building if he was not taught to use the Force. Solo spoke with him for over an hour, attempting to find a more peaceful resolution and appease Dinn, in fruitless attempts to convince the man, Borth Pazz, that he had no Force potential. Ultimately, he allowed Pazz to jump; Dinn and Skywalker used the Force to break his fall and take him in safely.

Following the incident, Skywalker received a message from the security forces stating that Brisha Syo, the owner of the mysterious shuttle, was in custody. Syo immediately admitted her involvement in the series of odd events on Lorrd, claiming that she was a Force-sensitive who could hear others planning acts of violence in her dreams and used the Force to persuade them to involve the Jedi in the situation. She also claimed to have observed but not participated in the attack at Toryaz Station. Solo did not fully believe her story but wanted to uncover the truth; Syo insisted she would reveal all if they could visit her home in a remote system. Solo agreed, feeling he had to unravel the truth and that she did not pose a threat to him, but Dinn and Skywalker insisted on accompanying him, distrusting the strange woman.

Syo was released, and the group traveled with her to the nearby MZX32905 system and landed at Syo's home, a habitat on a large asteroid. Solo sensed the dark side there, and Syo admitted that it had been the residence of a Sith Lord and that she had studied the Sith. Syo explained the history of the asteroid, which had once been the home of a society of dark side-using mynock-like beings before it was discovered by the man who became Darth Vectivus. Intriguingly to Solo, Syo said that Vectivus was not corrupted by the dark side, that he could use it without being dominated by evil.

Syo claimed a Sith Lord lurked in the subterranean caverns, asserting she required Jedi assistance to subdue him. They journeyed into the lower caves via rail transport; during the descent, Syo employed the Force to forcibly eject Skywalker and Dinn. Upon reaching their destination, Solo encountered an illusion of the Sith Lord, which dissipated after demanding Solo first confront his underlings. Solo faced an illusory battle against an evil version of Luke Skywalker, who defeated him just as Syo dispelled the illusion. Syo then confessed her true identity: Lumiya, the Dark Lady of the Sith, a former apprentice of Darths Sidious and Vader who had fought Leia Organa Solo, Mara Jade Skywalker, and Luke Skywalker. Her intention was to convert Solo to the Sith, embracing her teachings of a more detached Sith philosophy akin to Vectivus, who could remain uncorrupted and utilize Sith techniques for benevolent purposes and to establish peace. At that moment, Dinn arrived, disputing her claims. Solo expressed a desire to hear Lumiya's perspective, despite harboring skepticism towards her arguments. Lumiya alleged that Vergere had been a Sith, a claim Solo initially dismissed until Lumiya elaborated that Vergere had studied under Darth Sidious before rejecting his destructive nature and fleeing.

While Solo was intrigued, Dinn, exasperated by Solo's willingness to entertain the Sith's propositions, launched an attack on Lumiya. Throughout the conflict, the Sith Lady persisted in her assertion that Solo must embrace the Sith path to achieve galactic peace. Observing Lumiya's measured approach in her battle against Dinn, Solo resolved to glean whatever knowledge he could from the Sith. He intervened to block Dinn's potentially fatal strike against the unarmed Lumiya and persuaded Dinn to cease her attack, demonstrating that he was not being externally manipulated into accepting Lumiya's beliefs. Dinn insisted on arresting her, and Lumiya consented to be taken into custody. Perplexed, Solo probed the potential future outcomes, envisioning a galaxy mired in perpetual war, and himself slaying Luke Skywalker, should Lumiya be incarcerated. Even if he compelled Dinn to release Lumiya, Skywalker's demise remained inevitable. The only future timelines in which Skywalker survived were those in which Dinn perished on the asteroid. With reluctance, Solo pursued Dinn, who had become aware of his intentions, and ended her life for the sake of the greater good.

Solo retrieved Ben, who lay unconscious within the tunnels, and engaged in further dialogue with Lumiya, consenting to become a Sith, albeit with the intention of returning to Coruscant for the time being. She advised him that he must acquire an apprentice and continuously strengthen himself through sacrifice, valuing the pain of loss and ultimately relinquishing that which he held most dear in order to attain the status of a true Sith Lord. Solo manipulated Skywalker's memory once more, crafting a narrative in which he had battled a Dark Jedi who merely believed himself to be a Sith within the caverns, and Dinn had been slain by the Sith apparitions, as had Syo. He also tampered with the shuttle's logs, altering its designated destination to a different asteroid field.

Upon his return to Coruscant, Solo refrained from submitting a report regarding the incident, delegating that responsibility to Ben Skywalker. He encountered difficulties in reconciling with his father, their relationship strained due to Han Solo's support for the Corellian cause and his anger at Jacen Solo's enthusiastic endorsement of the Galactic Alliance. Continuing to monitor the situation with Corellia for several weeks, he reached the conclusion that Corellia's starship construction facilities had to be destroyed to disarm the increasingly belligerent planet and unequivocally demonstrate the Galactic Alliance's authority. He convened with Chief of State Omas and Admiral Cha Niathal, a prominent military advisor, to present his strategy. Omas opposed escalating the conflict, rejecting the proposal.

Solo discerned that Niathal possessed the potential to be an ally in taking decisive action, and subsequently sought her out. During their discussion regarding Centerpoint within an aerial vehicle, a terrorist bombing occurred in the immediate vicinity. Solo's precognitive abilities enabled him to safeguard the vehicle, and he became more resolute than ever in his determination to resolve the conflict and establish peace. He proceeded to the Senate Building, where he met with Omas and the Masters Skywalker. There, Omas proposed the establishment of a domestic security force for Coruscant, with a focus on counterterrorism, and requested Jade Skywalker to lead it. She declined, fearing its potential to evolve into a secret police.

Despite his commitment to embracing the Sith path, he harbored doubts regarding the correctness of his chosen course. He questioned whether he was being manipulated by Lumiya or whether his motives were impure, but these doubts only reinforced his conviction that he was becoming a Sith for the right reasons and would resist corruption. Continuing to grapple with the possibility that he might be replicating his grandfather's mistakes in becoming a Sith, he unintentionally engaged in flow-walking into the past while traversing the Jedi Temple. There, he witnessed his grandfather assaulting the Temple alongside the 501st Legion and sensed Anakin Skywalker's internal turmoil, his fear of loss, and his possessive love. Solo felt relieved; these were not his motivations, and he did not believe himself to be tainted by the selfishness he perceived in Skywalker. Still feeling compelled to test Lumiya and ensure she was not deceiving him, he employed the Force to summon her to Coruscant.

Solo encountered a disguised Lumiya in a public setting and escorted her to the Jedi Temple, intending to place her within proximity of Luke Skywalker and observe her reaction, ensuring she did not seek vengeance. He executed this plan, and she remained impassive. Solo accepted her claims that she had transcended thoughts of revenge and instructed her to remain on Coruscant so that she could provide him with further instruction as a Sith. As she departed the Temple, Solo sensed his mother in distress. His use of the Force revealed that she was aboard the Millennium Falcon with his father, approaching Coruscant for landing and attempting to hold together a fractured drive housing with the Force. Solo lent her his strength through the Force, enabling them to land safely, and hastened to meet them at the spaceport. The tension between father and son was disregarded, and Han reported that Sal-Solo had issued a contract targeting all members of the Solo family.

Omas summoned Solo to his office, where he and Coruscant Senator G'vli G'Sil requested Solo, acting as a private citizen and not as a Jedi, to accept a commission as the head of the counterterrorist security force that Jade Skywalker had declined to lead. He accepted, but stipulated that he would not lead the Coruscant Security Force Anti-Terrorism Unit; instead, he insisted that the security force be a separate agency comprised of specialists drawn from police and military units. Thus, the Galactic Alliance Guard was established, with Solo specifically requesting Captain Lon Shevu, a Coruscant Security Force officer with whom he had interacted during the bomb attack, as well as a company of special forces soldiers from the military. Supreme Commander Pellaeon resigned in protest over the creation of a secret police, and Niathal was promoted to his position; Solo was pleased to have an ally in the office. Solo, determined that Ben Skywalker would be his Sith apprentice, began preparing the boy for that role, starting by having Skywalker join the GAG as a lieutenant.

As the head of the Galactic Alliance Guard, Solo was granted extensive authority. He utilized these powers, as well as his connection to the World Brain, to monitor developments on Coruscant. At G'Sil's urging, he initiated the internment of Corellian nationals on Coruscant. He began with Jabi Town in the Corellian Quarter, leading 967 Commando in a raid of the area. When three individuals possessing explosives were detected in an apartment, Solo personally employed the Force to paralyze them and gain entry into the dwelling, impressing his troops with his skills and willingness to confront danger. The Jedi were far less impressed; Jade Skywalker was among the few Masters who did not entirely oppose Solo's actions, although she remained uneasy about them. Omas himself was having second thoughts about the GAG, but Solo defended the operations as necessary to reassure the populace of Coruscant and convey the message that the Galactic Alliance could not be intimidated. Solo continued the roundups of Corellian passport holders who did not choose to return to Corellia. When the GAG received intelligence that three Corellian agents were meeting with a bounty hunter known as Ailyn Habuur—unbeknownst to Solo, actually Ailyn Vel—in the lower levels of the planet, Solo led a raid on the building where they were staying, personally capturing Vel and an accomplice.

As Solo had anticipated, Niathal persuaded Omas to approve a blockade of Corellia. Solo inquired of Niathal whether he could participate in the blockade; he secretly hoped to enhance his popularity with the Galactic Alliance Defense Force by serving on the front lines. The Supreme Commander agreed to grant him command of a fighter group, including Rogue Squadron, his sister's command. Early in the blockade, while leading Rogue Squadron on a patrol of the interdiction zone above Corellia, he turned away several ships, flying alongside Jaina and Zekk once more. Eventually, he was fired upon by a Corellian fighter; he returned fire, destroying the ship in the first significant escalation of the blockade action.

Solo returned to Coruscant for a tense meeting with Niathal, Omas, and the Masters Skywalker. Following the meeting, the Skywalkers confronted him regarding their son's involvement in the Galactic Alliance Guard. Luke Skywalker insisted that Ben should no longer be associated with the GAG and revealed that he had detected Lumiya's return to Coruscant. Solo pledged to be vigilant against the Dark Lady of the Sith and agreed to allow Ben to decide whether he should continue serving in the GAG; he knew that the young Skywalker would be reluctant to abandon his duties.

Resuming his responsibilities as head of the GAG, Solo interrogated Vel. He was determined to discover whom she had been hired to assassinate; when she refused to provide information voluntarily, he began employing the Force to slam her head against the table and invade her mind. Ben Skywalker, who was present, objected to the treatment; Solo dismissed him from the room and continued for over two hours, until Shevu arrived and intervened. Vel succumbed to an aneurysm resulting from the mental invasion, but Solo disregarded Shevu's objections and focused on identifying alternative channels to ascertain her target. Skywalker, examining Vel's surveillance files, determined that she had been targeting the Solo family, specifically Han Solo, on Sal-Solo's behalf. Solo warned his father of the threat before meeting with Lumiya, whom he cautioned that Luke Skywalker was aware of her presence.

Still resolved to comprehend his grandfather's path, Solo traveled to the High Council Chamber within the Jedi Temple late at night and flow-walked into the past, observing the decision to train Anakin Skywalker and his acceptance onto the Jedi Council. Having done so, he became convinced that he lacked Skywalker's flaws and was, instead, the Skywalker line's second opportunity for greatness, exploring the full potential of the Force and establishing peace without Anakin Skywalker's personal shortcomings.

Solo journeyed back to the exclusion zone in the Corellian system. Six days after its inception, a coalition of ships from worlds sympathetic to Corellia assembled, prepared to challenge the blockade of Centerpoint. Solo took his sister and Zekk to intercept them and personally confronted a freighter attempting to breach the blockade. He narrowly averted a collision, and when the ship opened fire upon him, Jaina disabled its weapons. The freighter turned to flee, but Solo ordered her to destroy it, as it had initiated hostilities against the Galactic Alliance forces. Jaina, deeming the order immoral, refused. Solo destroyed the ship himself and had his sister subjected to a court-martial for the incident.

Back on Coruscant, at Lumiya's instigation, Solo arranged to send Ben Skywalker on a raid in which he would be compelled to make difficult decisions himself. Hoping that Skywalker would become his Sith apprentice, he felt the need to expose the young man to what he perceived as the harsh realities of the Sith way and repair the damage he had inflicted upon Skywalker's respect for him by killing Vel. Skywalker made the decision to raid a building utilized by terrorists, and inside killed two men.

Subsequently, Solo was contacted by his mother, who revealed that Han had reached an agreement with Boba Fett and assassinated Sal-Solo. As part of the agreement, Fett desired to see Vel, his daughter. Solo was compelled to explain that she had died during interrogation, and Organa Solo had him agree to transport her body to Corellia. He placed the corpse aboard the Millennium Falcon and piloted the ship to Corellia, where he relinquished the body to his parents for transfer to Fett. They requested that he explain his actions; upon hearing his explanation, Han expressed his disgust, claiming he no longer recognized his son.

Solo later met with Lumiya on Coruscant. There, she informed him that he must make a sacrifice to become a Sith, extinguishing that which he loved. Solo initially feared that Lumiya had uncovered the secret of his relationship with Djo and Allana, a secret he had meticulously concealed from her. He initially rejected the notion of killing them, but his own attachment to them led him to believe that it would be necessary to truly overcome his own attachments and flaws and become a dispassionate, trustworthy Sith.

When reports surfaced of Bothan assassins continuing to pursue the genocidal ar'krai policy since the Yuuzhan Vong War, the World Brain withdrew itself from the Well, retreating to the undercity. Solo had grown accustomed to utilizing it and its highly informative network of Ferals—survivors of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion still living as primitive scavengers in the Vonglife-covered underlevels—to track terrorists, and traveled to the World Brain's new underground dwelling to converse with it. While attempting to persuade it to return to the Well, Solo was targeted by Alema Rar. Rar had survived the Swarm War and finally escaped Tenupe to seek her vengeance against the Solos and Skywalkers. She had tracked him using her cloaking techniques and launched a poisoned projectile. Lumiya had also secretly trailed Solo and used the Force to pull him to safety. Enraged, Solo attempted to strike down the mysterious assassin before Lumiya pointed out that the World Brain had been struck by the dart and was dying. Rebuked by Lumiya for prioritizing his emotional desire for vengeance over more pressing concerns, Solo abandoned the pursuit in order to attempt to save the World Brain, but was unsuccessful.

To avenge the World Brain's demise and lure the Galactic Alliance's adversaries into the open, Solo had Lumiya begin assassinating Bothans associated with the True Victory Party. Meanwhile, Solo continued to prepare Ben Skywalker to be his apprentice, introducing him to the concept that he had to utilize all aspects of the Force to become a formidable Jedi and suggesting that Luke Skywalker had become overly conservative in his view of the Force. He also continued to meet with Lumiya, who was becoming increasingly critical of Solo's attachment to his friends and family, insisting he had to be prepared to sacrifice them for the greater good if necessary. In public, Solo cultivated his image as a man of action, donning his black Galactic Alliance Guard uniform, and soon adopted a more dashing, and darker, look by adding a black cloak. Combined, the effect reminded some of Darth Vader. Solo began employing an SD-X-series stealth battle droid, designated SD-XX, as a personal bodyguard, and modified it to be capable of torture.

One meeting with Lumiya, held in a park following a discussion with Ben Skywalker, was disrupted at the conclusion when Rar, once again tracking Solo, assaulted Jedi Master Tresina Lobi. Lobi had followed Solo and Skywalker in order to ascertain whether Lumiya was targeting Skywalker as his parents feared and had nearly broadcast information on Solo and Lumiya's cooperation before Rar's attack. Lumiya and Rar slew Lobi after the Sith Lady assured Solo that he was not needed to handle the threat. Solo instead proceeded to an important meeting with Niathal, who granted the Galactic Alliance Guard access to a specially commissioned Star Destroyer equipped with a cloaking system, gravity well projector, and long-range turbolasers. Solo christened it the Anakin Solo.

When Corellian hitmen launched an assault on Djo, seemingly in collaboration with Solo's parents, Djo implored him to help locate the assassins and uncover any potential connections to Corellian terrorism. Solo embarked on the Anakin Solo's inaugural mission, swiftly heading to assist his beloved and daughter, accompanied by Ben Skywalker and Lumiya. Upon arriving above Hapes, he was struck by a Force vision depicting a sequence of expanding, menacing faces uttering, "Mine," the meaning of which eluded him. Troubled, he pondered if it signified his actions were paving the way for a sinister Sith dynasty, but Lumiya reassured him his anxieties were unfounded.

Solo was pleased to receive Djo and Allana above Hapes, and then engaged in a private discussion with Djo. During this meeting, Djo revealed that several witnesses, confined within her most secure prison, had been poisoned. The perpetrator, she believed, could only be a close confidant. Furthermore, Solo's parents were present at the scene and appeared to be linked to the assassination attempt, having created a diversion and absconded with the primary assassin, Aurra Sing. Deeply saddened, Solo drafted an arrest warrant for his parents.

Soon after, the Skywalkers arrived, determined to extract their son from the Anakin Solo upon discovering Lumiya's ties within the Galactic Alliance Guard. They also carried a message from Solo's parents, explaining their attempt to warn Djo before being compelled to flee with Sing, and their subsequent espionage on those orchestrating the coup attempt. Solo convened with his aunt and uncle, who confronted him with their findings regarding Lumiya. Luke Skywalker asserted that Solo was collaborating with Lumiya, a notion Solo feigned shock and dismay at. He permitted the pair to meet with their son, who was away on a mission to locate Jaina Solo and Zekk—missing after attempting to deliver mobilization orders to Djo's nobles—and remove him from the GAG. Solo then reviewed the message from his parents alongside Djo and found their account credible, yet refrained from rescinding the arrest warrants, fearing it would expose their cooperation to the spies close to Djo. Following the Skywalkers' departure, Solo approached Lumiya, requesting she travel to their rendezvous with Ben Skywalker and escort Ben back to the Anakin Solo. He knew this would force her into a confrontation with Luke Skywalker, potentially resulting in Luke's death or her own, while appearing to be tracking Ben as the Skywalkers initially suspected, thus bolstering Solo's perceived lack of involvement with the Sith.

With the Ducha AlGray implicated in the message as a conspirator against Djo, Djo assigned Solo a fleet and tasked him with commanding it in battle against AlGray's forces. She also requested that Allana remain aboard the Anakin Solo, believing her to be safer there than among the Hapans. Solo acquiesced, leading the Hapan fleet to Relephon to apprehend AlGray. Despite the absence of AlGray's private fleet above Relephon, Solo sensed danger, which he soon realized originated from Sing. She had infiltrated the ship over Hapes and was attempting to enter Solo's cabin to assassinate Allana. He hastened to his cabin, employing the Force to halt Sing as she approached his daughter. As she prepared a thermal detonator, his concentration faltered, and she broke free of his hold. They engaged in a duel, and Solo prepared to unleash Force lightning upon her before Allana entered the room. Unwilling to utilize the dark side in her presence, he continued to battle Sing. Horrified at witnessing Solo's attack, Allana rushed forward, stabbing Sing with her paralyzing safety stick as Solo desperately tried to prevent Sing from landing an attack on his daughter. Solo had the subdued Sing securely imprisoned and monitored, and dispatched a commando squad to protect the Hapan heiress.

As AlGray's fleet had departed, Solo returned to Hapes, where the treasonous Heritage Council forces were locked in battle with the Hapan Home Fleet. Assessing the situation, Solo directed the majority of his force to breach the Galney fleet supporting AlGray's forces and aid Djo, while keeping two Battle Dragons with the Anakin Solo, preferring to keep Allana away from the intense combat. When Major Moreem Espara, his Hapan liaison, voiced her objection and questioned his commitment to Djo, Solo used the Force to silence her.

Subsequently, he met privately with a pilot arriving in Lumiya's skiff; only in her presence did he realize that it was not his Sith Master but Alema Rar, who had begun working with Lumiya. Rar explained this, and reported that Lumiya had died in her duel with Luke Skywalker. The Skywalkers believed that Solo had set them up, as Ben Skywalker never arrived at the rendezvous. Reaching out with the Force, Solo realized his cousin, Jaina, and Zekk were extravehicular on the fringes of the battle, having returned to Hapes rather than the rendezvous at Roqoo Depot due to their knowledge of Ducha Galney's treachery. The Millennium Falcon was preparing to recover them. Rar departed after sowing seeds of doubt regarding Solo's parents' motives. Considering that the intelligence they had provided had been more distracting than useful, he concluded that his parents might well be working against Djo. Determining that they would be his sacrifice, he had the Anakin Solo's gunners target the Millennium Falcon. The ship escaped, heavily damaged, and it was left to the newly-arrived Jade Shadow to pick up the extravehicular beings. Meanwhile, Solo led the Anakin Solo into battle, helping ensure Djo's successful defense.

As a result of his actions, the Hapans lauded Solo as a hero, and Colonel Jacen Solo quickly became a revered sex symbol within the Hapes Cluster. Returning Allana to Hapes, Solo met with Djo, and was chagrined to learn that his parents had proven themselves to be on Djo's side during the battle. The Skywalkers were also present, and his aunt and uncle took Solo aside to discuss their suspicions. Solo managed to reassure them that he had not deceived them, with Djo's and Ben Skywalker's assistance, but their doubts lingered. Solo agreed to allow the Skywalkers to remove Ben from the GAG and his apprenticeship until he had identified the traitor within the organization who had been aiding Lumiya.

Despite learning of his parents' innocence, Solo felt no guilt for having assumed the worst and firing upon them, yet believed he should feel remorse. He became plagued by insomnia, consumed by the fear that he was losing his moral compass. He eventually suffered a nightmare in which his mother attempted to kill him, leaving him even more disturbed. Concurrently, Solo expanded the GAG's operations against Corellia. He orchestrated an ambush on a convoy of smugglers attempting to breach the blockade after its leader, Captain Uran Lavint, betrayed it to him. Irritated by her audacity during their subsequent meeting, he confiscated her ship, replacing it with an inferior one, and arranged for the replacement's hyperdrive to be sabotaged.

Following this, Solo met Admiral Wedge Antilles, the Corellian commander-in-chief, for a summit he had previously requested in the hope of negotiating Corellia's surrender. Antilles advised that the government was too unstable in the aftermath of Sal-Solo's death for a peace settlement, but negotiations could prove fruitful in the future. He also, as a family friend, suggested that Solo was succumbing to fanaticism, an assertion Solo rejected. However, upon reflection, he realized that he had become drastically different from his former self. Accepting the changes he had undergone, he finally reconciled with himself and his decision to fire on his parents.

Later, Solo reached out through the Force, contacting Lumiya and confirming her survival of the explosion at Roqoo Depot. She insisted that he must determine whether Ben Skywalker would be a suitable Sith apprentice. He tasked Lumiya with arranging for Skywalker to retrieve a dark side artifact and face a trial alone. Assisting him in smuggling messages into the Jedi Temple for Skywalker was Seha Dorvald, the young apprentice Solo had sponsored and who remained loyal to him. When Skywalker surreptitiously left the Jedi Temple to pursue the mission, his parents contacted Solo, but he managed to convince them that he was unaware of his apprentice's disappearance.

When Luke Skywalker mentioned that approving Booster Terrik's request to station the Errant Venture near the Corellian exclusion zone, where its casino facilities could cater to off-duty personnel, would be a bad idea, Solo decided to grant Terrik permission. After it had been stationed for some time, Solo began touring the ship, scrutinizing it for security weaknesses. While there, he encountered Lavint, who insisted she had experienced no issues with her ship, and the Masters Skywalker. His aunt and uncle took him aside to question him about the events that led to the deaths of Dinn and, according to Ben Skywalker's account, Brisha Syo. Solo had coordinated his story with Lumiya, and knew the Skywalkers were investigating information Lumiya had planted, suggesting that Syo was Lumiya's daughter and was killed by Ben Skywalker during his period of amnesia. With Solo's assistance, the Skywalkers accepted the story, believing Lumiya now sought vengeance for her daughter's death. However, during their conversation, a Bothan and Commenori fleet emerged from hyperspace in a surprise attack on the blockade, both governments having decided to support Corellia. Solo rushed back to the Anakin Solo, but the battle was unwinnable. The blockade was broken, and the Galactic Alliance forces were forced to retreat.

Corellia steadily gained allies, forming the Confederation of worlds in rebellion against the Galactic Alliance. Solo participated in advisory military meetings, including one where he discovered GAG codes had been used to breach Galactic Alliance security and funnel information to the Confederation; Lumiya had been exacerbating the war. At the same meeting, Solo learned that the Confederation had begun spreading word of a meeting to elect its Supreme Commander. He approached Lavint, still aboard the Errant Venture, which was now orbiting Coruscant, and requested she use her underworld connections to grant him access to the Confederation election summit. She provided the location, at Gilatter VIII. Solo devised a plan to infiltrate Galactic Alliance forces into the system undetected and ambush the conference, which Niathal approved.

While the Anakin Solo was inserted into the gas giant Gilatter VIII's atmosphere with the other ambush ships, Solo chose to infiltrate the conference himself, accompanied by Lumiya. Posing as members of the Ession Freedom Front, they gained entry to the space station hosting the conference. As Solo began to mingle with the other guests, his inquiries about the upcoming vote attracted the attention of officials. Supreme Commander Turr Phennir, already selected, appeared via hologram to announce that the event was a trap; the other delegates were all actors. Realizing that there were mines ahead of the emerging Galactic Alliance fleet, Solo warned his uncle, who was with the fleet, through the Force before engaging the Confederation troops attempting to capture or kill him. Solo's parents and aunt and uncle arrived to rescue him, prompting Lumiya to engage the Skywalkers. Amidst the chaos, Solo abandoned his family members, still engaged in combat, to escape to the Anakin Solo. Lumiya also escaped, but in a craft incapable of hyperspace travel. Solo granted her permission to dock aboard the Anakin Solo, which withdrew along with the other Galactic Alliance vessels as the battle ended in a stalemate.

Afterward, Lumiya approached him in his cabin, suggesting that he was ready to become a Sith Master if only he made his sacrifice. Solo resolved to sacrifice his parents, but Lumiya questioned whether he truly loved them anymore. Solo was uncertain, for which Lumiya criticized him, claiming he was too analytical and fearful of his own emotions. She insisted he must become more certain of himself before he could ascend to Mastery. As Solo returned to Coruscant, he sensed that his apprentice had survived Lumiya's trial on Ziost and was seeking him. He reached out to Ben Skywalker in the Force, allowing Skywalker to locate the Anakin Solo and arrive aboard a Sith Meditation Sphere he had discovered on Ziost while pursuing the Amulet of Kalara. Impressed that Skywalker had flown a Sith ship, Solo spoke with Lumiya, who was fascinated by the ship. Noting the apparent connection between the two, he allowed Lumiya to depart in the ship.

Upon returning to Coruscant, Solo was approached by Niathal with a request to address the supply shortages plaguing the Galactic Alliance military forces. Confronted with bureaucratic obstacles, he obtained a legal analyst droid from the Legal and Legislative Department of the Galactic Alliance Defense Force. The droid, HM-3, proposed that Solo introduce an amendment to the law, which currently required approval from the Defense Council for most procurement changes, to empower senior officers to make supply decisions independently. Realizing he was altering the law to enable himself to further alter laws, Solo suggested that HM-3 draft a more expansive amendment, granting him greater autonomy, framing it as a means of circumventing unforeseen red tape. Furthermore, Solo, Niathal, and Omas had already been granted extensive emergency powers to act as they deemed necessary in prosecuting the war. Solo leveraged his authority to assign the purchasing officer responsible for acquiring substandard cannon packs to the ship experiencing the most cannon malfunctions, ostensibly to investigate the issue. Recognizing the inherent risks, the purchasing officers began prioritizing higher-quality supplies.

With the terrorist networks largely dismantled, Solo shifted the GAG's focus to counterintelligence operations against professional Confederation agents and safeguarding government officials. He reserved one mission for Ben Skywalker: assassinating Dur Gejjen, the Corellian prime minister, in retaliation for his attempted assassination of Tenel Ka Djo and Allana. Later, as Solo monitored the HoloNet to confirm the passage of his amendment, with Lumiya influencing the proceedings, Mara Jade Skywalker arrived in Solo's office. She reiterated her belief that Lumiya had a mole within the GAG and was plotting to kill her son, and also confronted him about abandoning the Skywalkers and his parents at Gilatter VIII. He dismissed it as an assumption that they would be safe, but began to suspect that Jade Skywalker had discerned his Sith apprenticeship under Lumiya.

As part of their protection detail, the GAG secretly monitored the comm conversations of government officials; a wiretap on Omas revealed that he had been secretly contacted by Gejjen with a peace proposal, but Gejjen insisted that Solo and Niathal be removed from power before a deal could be reached, possibly through assassination. Solo presented the information to Niathal, who suggested they broaden the GAG's powers to permit the arrest of heads of state deemed a threat to the state, and tacitly agreed that they would seize power if Omas proved a liability to the war effort or a threat to their positions. Following a conversation with Omas, during which the chief of state failed to mention his scheduled meeting with Gejjen, Solo and Niathal decided to stage a coup, removing Omas from power and installing themselves as joint interim leaders until elections could be held.

Solo, feeling overwhelmed by events and his growing conviction that Ben Skywalker would be his sacrifice, consulted Lumiya, who urged him to devote less energy to political maneuvering and instead rely on the Force. Meanwhile, Skywalker departed with Captain Shevu and Lieutenant Jori Lekauf for Vulpter, where they recorded the meeting between Omas and Gejjen, and Skywalker killed the Corellian head of state. With the recording of Omas agreeing to the cease-fire and the assassination of Solo and Niathal, Solo had sufficient justification to act. He enacted the amendment authorizing him to arrest heads of state, and when it took effect at midnight, he and two GAG troopers arrested Omas on charges of jeopardizing state security. Niathal, already serving as acting Chief of State, announced that she and Solo would serve as joint chiefs of state, presenting it as a safeguard against the appearance of a single individual seizing power. Niathal and Solo were respectively referred to as "JCOS-1," or "Joint Chief of State Number One," and "JCOS-2," or "Joint Chief of State Number Two" on Galactic Alliance memos.

Relations with Niathal grew increasingly strained, but Solo was pleased to observe that the coup was largely accepted. Sensing a prompting from the Force to visit Hapes and his family, he made arrangements to do so. Before his departure, he was confronted by his aunt, who revealed that she knew of his alliance with Lumiya, but did not disclose that she had been informed by Ben Skywalker, who had overheard Solo speaking with his Sith Master. She offered to forgive him if he surrendered himself to the Jedi to rediscover his path. Solo continued to feign innocence, and departed after Jade Skywalker accused him of being a Sith. After warning Lumiya to maintain the situation on Coruscant, Solo slipped away to Hapes. He briefly visited his secret family before being compelled to depart again.

As he left the planet, his StealthX was ambushed by Jade Skywalker in her own StealthX. Lumiya, who had secretly tracked him, intervened. She breached Jade Skywalker's hull, forcing her to land on Kavan; with that accomplished, Solo fired on his mentor, determined to safeguard the secret of his family. Although she survived, Solo prioritized landing and locating his aunt. She was concealed within the network of tunnels near her landing site, and had learned to conceal her presence in the Force from Ben Skywalker, who had been taught by Solo. There, she ambushed him as he hunted her. She managed to wound him severely, her weapons—a vibroblade and a lightsaber shoto—better suited to the confined space, as they engaged in a fierce battle. Distracting her for a fraction of a second with an illusion of himself as her son, he managed to stab her with a poison dart. Realizing that killing her was his sacrifice, he remained with her as she died, convinced he had ushered in a new era of galactic peace.

Leaving his aunt's body on Kavan, Solo retreated to Ziost to contemplate his situation. He continued to worry that he was overlooking something, questioning why he did not experience a significant transformation or a greater sense of certainty and purpose. Lumiya arrived and cautioned him that he needed to return to Hapan space, as his presence there at the time of Jade Skywalker's death would soon be revealed. Acknowledging Solo as the new Dark Lord of the Sith, she planned to sacrifice herself, assuming responsibility for Jade Skywalker's murder and diverting attention away from Solo. She carried out her plan, and was killed by Luke Skywalker, as Solo returned to the site of Jade Skywalker's death and discovered Ben Skywalker with the body. Together, they transported her corpse back to Coruscant.

He managed to evade suspicion, and resumed his duties as chief of state. While monitoring tactical displays during a tour of the flagship Ocean, he discovered that he had access to battle meditation, granting him a comprehensive understanding of the battlefield and the ability to influence the outcome; Lumiya had previously indicated this as a sign of Sith Mastery. Subsequently, in his cabin aboard the Anakin Solo, he realized that his true sacrifice had been Ben Skywalker's love and respect for him, and he proclaimed himself Darth Caedus, Dark Lord of the Sith.

As the head of GAG, Caedus, who still concealed his Sith identity, was tasked with investigating his aunt's murder, as Ben Skywalker was able to reveal that he had been tracking Lumiya during his mother's death and she was not the killer. He deliberately stalled the proceedings, instead focusing the majority of his attention on the escalating Second Galactic Civil War. Having glimpsed the future through the Force, he knew that whichever side prevailed in the upcoming conflict at Kuat would win the war; he also knew that the overstretched Galactic Alliance lacked the resources to decisively halt the Confederation's forces.

Seeking a Sith apprentice other than Ben Skywalker, as well as a spy within the Jedi Order to monitor their progress in the investigation of his aunt's death—Dorvald being too low-ranking—Caedus began cultivating Tahiri Veila. He approached her on Anakin Solo's birthday, knowing she would be emotionally vulnerable and feigning a chance encounter, and began to subtly tempt her with the ability to flow-walk back in time to see Anakin. He withheld from Veila that it was impossible to alter the past through flow-walking, allowing her hopes to carry her along with him. A week after killing Jade Skywalker, Caedus took Veila on her first flow-walk, traveling to the site of Anakin Solo's death. There, she pushed her younger self into Anakin's arms rather than letting her younger self refuse him a kiss until he came back. The event did not change the past, only the flow-walking experience, but it left Veila desperate for more flow-walking sessions, which Caedus continued to provide in order to manipulate her emotions for his needs.

Returning to Coruscant, Caedus infiltrated the Hapan Embassy, where Djo was residing. He shared his concerns for the future of the Galactic Alliance with her, and she urged him to seek assistance from the Jedi. Knowing that if the Confederation prevailed, Djo's rule would be overthrown and his lover and daughter assassinated, Caedus implored Djo to lend him the Hapan Home Fleet for the impending clash at Kuat, risking rebellion should the nobles be able to organize quickly enough to strike while Djo was without naval protection. She tearfully agreed, on the condition that he mend his relationship with his grief-stricken uncle. Increasingly convinced that he needed the Jedi Order under control before they discovered that he had killed Jade Skywalker, Caedus dispatched a battalion of GAG commandos under the unstable Major Salle Serpa to the Jedi Academy on Ossus, ostensibly as protection. He believed that by effectively holding the Jedi younglings hostage in the understaffed academy, he could coerce the Order into doing his bidding or at least prevent them from acting against him.

The funeral of Mara Jade Skywalker occurred the following day. Despite the outstanding warrant for his parents' arrest, Jacen knew they would be present. Therefore, he tasked two Galactic Alliance Guard trooper squads with apprehending them upon their arrival at the Jedi Temple. Additionally, he positioned multiple units outside, prepared to seize control of the Temple once the dignitaries were inside. Arriving late to the funeral, he disrupted Saba Sebatyne's eulogy, drawing significant attention. He then proceeded to stand on the dais alongside the Skywalkers and the Jedi Council. This action was met with disapproval from the Jedi Masters and further disturbed the ceremony. However, Luke Skywalker intervened, allowing Caedus to remain. As Jade Skywalker's body lay on a pyre in the center of the Morning Court, it began to vanish into the Force upon Caedus's arrival, seemingly indicating his guilt. Skywalker, however, interpreted it as a sign that her spirit desired reconciliation between them. Sebatyne resumed her eulogy, using it to criticize Caedus's actions and suggesting he reconsider his choices. Disregarding the implied lesson, Caedus departed immediately after the service.

Following the funeral, Caedus joined the Fourth Fleet at Balmorra. While the Fourth Fleet engaged the Hutt and Commenorian Confederation armadas in battle, Caedus attempted to utilize his battle meditation to assist the Galactic Alliance, which was losing. Before he could fully concentrate, he received a hologram transmission from Ben Skywalker, who claimed to know the identity of Jade Skywalker's killer. The younger Skywalker directly questioned Caedus about whether he had murdered his mother. Recognizing the potential in his estranged apprentice's anger, Caedus played a manipulated recording of Cal Omas supposedly ordering Jade Skywalker's assassination while under house arrest. His goal was to distract Luke Skywalker, enabling his allies on the Jedi Council to reinstate him as chief of state without Skywalker's interference. Despite feigning a desire to prevent Ben Skywalker from acting on the information, Caedus anticipated that his enraged cousin would seek revenge. He hoped Ben would eliminate Omas for him, thus turning to the dark side.

Caedus redirected his focus to the battle, acknowledging that the Galactic Alliance was unlikely to win. However, he believed that inflicting significant losses on the Confederation could hinder their victory in the upcoming crucial battle at Kuat. When Admiral Ratobo, the Fourth Fleet's commander, began to retreat, Caedus ordered him to continue fighting. He demonstrated the power of his battle meditation to convince Ratobo of his superior judgment. After Ratobo's death, command was transferred to Rear Admiral Gavin Darklighter. Darklighter, with a daring deployment of his starfighters, forced the Commenorians to retreat, leaving the Hutts' landing force exposed. Even Caedus was taken aback by the maneuver, which he had been unable to foresee. At that moment, a StealthX wing of Jedi arrived. Initially suspecting an ambush, Caedus quickly realized, after joining their battle meld, that they were targeting the Commenorian fleet. While informing Darklighter of this, Caedus was surprised by the appearance of Luke Skywalker in his personal chamber. Suspecting that the Jedi intended to demand concessions in exchange for ensuring the Fourth Fleet's success, Caedus was astonished to learn that they merely wanted to demonstrate their ability to extort him, but were freely offering their assistance instead. As the Hutt fleet retreated, Caedus instructed Darklighter to redirect his fire towards the Hutt capital ships, rather than their landers still invading Balmorra. He was prepared to sacrifice the planet to a potential Hutt occupation, as long as he could weaken their fleet for the critical Kuat engagement. Angered by this decision, Skywalker withdrew his presence from the room, revealing that he had been projecting a convincing doppelganger while fighting in his StealthX. With the Jedi's assistance, the space battle was won, while the Balmorrans were left to contend with the invaders.

The following week, Caedus advanced toward Kuat, where he was met by Confederation forces. Under the command of Vice Admiral Nek Bwua'tu, who had been appointed at Caedus's request, the Galactic Alliance fleets were to encircle the Confederation flotilla, allowing the Jedi StealthX wing to repeatedly devastate the enemy's capital ships. This plan unraveled as Confederation forces began to engage them. Luke Skywalker learned of his son's involvement in Omas's death. Skywalker confronted Caedus in his observation chamber, demanding answers. When Caedus insisted he was unaware of his uncle's distress, Skywalker angrily used the Force to pin him to his chair. Caedus admitted that his apprentice had heard an incriminating recording of Omas, but denied sending Ben Skywalker to assassinate the deposed chief of state. Unsatisfied, Skywalker stalked out, announcing the withdrawal of Jedi support from the Galactic Alliance. The fighter wing abandoned the battle, leaving Caedus with significantly reduced odds. He chose not to commit the Hapan Home Fleet to a battle he was unsure of winning, instead turning it back to the Hapes Cluster to protect his lover's reign. A potentially war-winning victory transformed into a brutal, protracted battle that lasted for a week.

Ben Skywalker rejoined Caedus at Kuat, feigning a devotion that had been destroyed by his belief that Caedus had murdered his mother. Caedus recognized the deception, knowing Skywalker intended to gain his trust only to exact revenge. However, he played along, hoping to exploit Skywalker's hatred and turn him into his Sith apprentice. When Skywalker displayed insufficient ruthlessness, Caedus refused to reinstate him. Only when Skywalker revealed that the Jedi had traveled to Kashyyyk to persuade the Wookiees to join them in opposing Caedus's rule did Caedus believe his apprentice had demonstrated enough merit to regain his position at the Dark Lord's side. Caedus resolved to make an example of the Wookiees while simultaneously breaking the debilitating stalemate at Kuat. He dispatched the Anakin Solo and the Fifth Fleet to Kashyyyk to crush the Wookiee rebels. Caedus was confident that the Confederation would be unwilling to allow a potential ally to fall and lose face at a time when it desperately needed new members. Phennir would be forced to divert fleet elements from the fight to rescue Kashyyyk. Meanwhile, Caedus ordered Serpa to retaliate against the Jedi at Ossus and directed Galactic Alliance Guard forces to storm the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. The attempted massacre at Ossus was thwarted by Caedus's sister, Jagged Fel, and Zekk, and the Jedi Temple was evacuated with relative safety. With his opposition to the Jedi fully exposed, he lost Dorvald's support as a covert agent.

Above Kashyyyk, Caedus demanded that the Jedi, whom he declared traitors, be handed over to him. Upon their refusal, Caedus stood off and initiated a bombardment of the planet using the Anakin Solo's long-range turbolasers, creating a firestorm that ravaged the entire planet. He believed that the resulting outrage would force the Confederation to respond while terrifying worlds contemplating resistance against the Galactic Alliance. He hoped that his actions would provoke his cousin into attacking him. He had given up on Skywalker ever doing so when the youth suddenly struck, missing Caedus as explosions rocked the ship. Seeing potential in him once more, Caedus took Skywalker to a secret cabin equipped with an Embrace of Pain. Caedus suppressed Skywalker's access to the Force and placed him in the Embrace, intending to break him.

As a Bothan fleet arrived to challenge the bombardment and the Jedi launched a StealthX attack, Caedus entered combat in his StealthX, engaging Luke Skywalker in a dogfight. Jaina Solo soon attacked Caedus, who was pursuing Skywalker. Skywalker appeared to be killed by a stray shot from Jaina, prompting Caedus to dock and resume torturing Ben Skywalker. While attempting to corrupt the youth, Caedus was interrupted by an attack from the elder Skywalker. Luke Skywalker had convincingly faked his death and concealed his presence in the Force, sneaking aboard to sabotage the long-range turbolasers. The Sith Lord engaged in a fierce battle with the enraged Jedi Grand Master. Each inflicted severe injuries on the other before Ben Skywalker freed himself and stabbed Caedus through the back with a vibroblade. When Ben Skywalker insisted on delivering the killing blow, Luke Skywalker withdrew them both, fearing they would succumb to the dark side due to their heightened emotions. They took Caedus's lightsaber with them, leaving the Sith Lord to seek medical attention for multiple wounds that would have killed or incapacitated a normal Human or Jedi.

Darth Caedus resumed his duties as soon as he could, even before he was fully healed, intending to lead the Fifth Fleet in a withdrawal, now that many more Confederation forces had been drawn off and Kuat and Coruscant were secure. The Fifth Fleet was surrounded by a far superior enemy force, leading its commander, Admiral Atoko, to prepare for its scuttling. Caedus ordered a desperate attempt to break out, but was relieved to see the Hapan fleet appear, seemingly creating a gap in the encirclement. He was devastated when a conversation with Djo, the fleet's commander, revealed that she was turning against him. Horrified by the destruction inflicted on Kashyyyk, the world for which she and Jaina had once fought against the Second Imperium, she withdrew her support for him and sided with the emerging Jedi Coalition. She demanded his surrender, which he refused. Djo ordered her fleet to open fire on the man she loved. As his fleet was destroyed, Caedus felt Alema Rar, occupying the Sith Meditation Sphere she had inherited from Lumiya, beckon him to break through the Bothan fleet. He complied, and through his battle meditation and Rar's use of the Meditation Sphere, the fleet managed to breach the Bothan line and escape safely.

Consumed by Djo's betrayal, Caedus was determined to maintain contact with his daughter. He devised a plan to kidnap Allana and blackmail Djo into restoring the Hapes Consortium to the Galactic Alliance. He infiltrated the Fountain Palace disguised as the copilot of a Galactic Alliance diplomatic shuttle, with a double for Allana aboard. He found Allana asleep in her playroom and replaced her with the young girl, Tika, before fleeing to the StealthX left by Veila when she had attempted to arrest Caedus's parents during their appeal to Djo for assistance against Caedus. He detonated the bomb concealed in the shuttle, creating confusion and a hole in the side of the hangar that allowed him to escape. He left behind numerous casualties and a message threatening to kill his daughter if Djo did not transfer Hapan military resources to the Galactic Alliance.

On Coruscant, Caedus ensured Allana's safety, keeping her constantly by his side and having her travel in a small, protected chamber when outside a vehicle. Upon awakening, he informed her that he was holding her to protect her from an assassination attempt. Caedus had Allana with him when he was ambushed while entering the Senate Building with a heavily armed guard. Attacked by Jedi Master Kyle Katarn and Jedi Knights Valin Horn, Thann Mithric, and Kolir Hu'lya, Caedus was forced to defend himself with a spare lightsaber, as his guards were incapacitated by dazzle-grenades. Engaging the four Jedi, Caedus telekinetically pulled a GAG speeder from the air, crashing it into Katarn and Hu'lya. As Katarn was thrown towards him, Caedus impaled the Jedi Master, nearly killing him. Horn and Mithric then pressed him, but Caedus decapitated Mithric, forcing Horn to retreat with Hu'lya, while Caedus's former agent Dorvald, now assisting the Jedi strike team, pulled Katarn to safety.

Djo did not transfer her forces to Caedus, but she did withdraw them to the Hapes Cluster and ceased cooperation with the Jedi. With the Jedi in hiding, Caedus sent Veila on a fruitless mission to locate their hiding place. Caedus personally took to the front lines, leading the Fifth Fleet in an engagement at Kuat and skirmishing on the edge of the Corellian system with the Second Fleet, securing significant victories through his battle meditation. He also began constructing a new red lightsaber to replace the one he had used since he was fourteen years old. The Bothans began sending assassins after him, resulting in a constant stream of ineffective attacks and heightened security concerns.

Sadras Koyan, the new Five Worlds Prime Minister, approached the Galactic Alliance with an offer for Corellia to secede from the Confederation. He insisted that his representative meet with Caedus at a deep-space point equidistant from Coruscant and Corellia for negotiations, each taking comparable naval forces. Caedus suspected a trap, but Niathal insisted the Corellians held no advantage and persuaded Caedus to attend with Second Fleet battle groups as backup. As Caedus prepared to depart for the rendezvous, the Anakin Solo was approached by Leia Organa Solo, who requested to speak with him. Sensing she was alone aboard her yacht, Caedus brought her aboard, intending to arrest her. He met her in the Command Salon, where she attempted to persuade him to reject the dark side and the two began to argue politics.

Their discussion was interrupted by their arrival at the rendezvous. He began negotiations with Captain Hoclaw, the Corellian representative. During a pause in the negotiations, he discovered that his mother had returned to the Command Salon from the bridge. She subdued her guard and escaped. Fearing she had brought a bomb aboard, Caedus rushed to the hangar with Allana and evacuated her from the ship in an experimental TIE Reconnaissance Fighter. As he did so, the Corellians sprang a trap, jumping ambush forces into the area. Caedus authorized Admiral Tarla Limpan to bring in the Galactic Alliance reinforcements. Hovering outside the battle, he was surprised to be attacked by Jedi StealthXs. As they continued to track his fighter, Caedus became convinced they were homing in on Allana's presence to target him. Enraged, he evaded the half-dozen Jedi until Galactic Alliance fighter reinforcements engaged the StealthXs and appeared to drive them off—though Luke Skywalker had actually broken off after realizing Allana was aboard the TIE. Caedus promoted Syal Antilles, the leader of the reinforcements, to captain on the spot. At that moment, a strike from Centerpoint Station, which no one knew was operational, destroyed most of the Galactic Alliance fleet. Caedus returned to the Anakin Solo and retreated to Coruscant.

Allana had lost consciousness due to the psychic resonance of the deaths of most of the Second Fleet and remained unconscious for two days. Upon waking, she claimed to hate him, having felt his overwhelming rage during the battle and knowing that he had taken her without her permission. Caedus explained that he did not need permission, as he was her father. Reconciled by this revelation, Allana returned to her previous happiness with her father.

Determining that the Galactic Alliance could win the war by capturing an operational Centerpoint Station, Caedus devised a plan to attack Corellia and seize the superweapon. While preparing for the attack, one of his aides, Lieutenant Patra Tebut, discovered a tracking beacon placed on Caedus's cloak during the battle with Katarn's strike team. Caedus's forces failed to discover the tracking beacon planted when his mother infiltrated the Anakin Solo, allowing the Jedi Coalition to track Caedus's attack and send their own forces to the Corellian system. While Caedus used his battle meditation to support the Galactic Alliance, the Jedi used a captured shuttle to sneak aboard Caedus's flagship. He was forced to abandon his battle meditation to ensure his own security and that of Allana. Luke Skywalker, Ben Skywalker, and Saba Sebatyne reached the bridge, where Caedus had eight YVH droids guarding him. He pulled Sebatyne into the blast radius of a grenade, removing her from the fight. Before engaging either Skywalker, Caedus sensed Allana leaving with the other half of the strike team. He rushed to rescue her, but was unable to arrive in time. His family escaped with his daughter, and another Jedi squad sabotaged Centerpoint Station, resulting in its destruction. Devastated, he ordered a retreat. Upon learning that the Jedi had entered the ship via a ruse and their shuttle was passed through by Tebut, an outraged Caedus executed her by telekinetically fracturing her neck. News of this act quickly spread through the fleet, sowing doubt, fear, and dislike of Caedus among the ranks.

Upon his return to Coruscant, Caedus began attempting to persuade the Imperial Remnant to join the war against the Confederation. He sent a request for talks to Gilad Pellaeon, who had resumed his position as head of state for the Remnant. The note was returned crumpled; Pellaeon had developed a strong aversion to Caedus's methods of governance. Believing he could win over Pellaeon and the Moff Council by offering Bilbringi and Borleias in exchange for cooperation, he decided to send Veila, who had become his right-hand aide as he groomed her to become his apprentice, to meet with Pellaeon. Meanwhile, he began preparing the Galactic Alliance for an attack against Fondor, a major Confederation shipyard.

Caedus ordered the Anakin Solo to Fondor on a reconnaissance mission. He brought Veila with him and tested her when Fondorian fighters approached the Star Destroyer. Leaving the ship defenseless, he delegated the decision to fire on the approaching fighters to Veila, while simultaneously creating ambiguity about whether she was legitimately authorized to open fire. He forced her to make a hasty decision, and her order to attack allowed him to further introduce her to the Sith concept of embracing difficult choices and killing those who were potentially innocent. Caedus grew closer to Veila while grooming her as an agent to advance his objectives, and their closeness led many of Caedus's crewmembers to speculate whether their relationship was developing beyond a professional one. Veila would later imply that she and Caedus had been sexually involved, though without any romantic attachment.

Caedus approached Niathal and, after an argument, obtained her approval to send Veila to the Empire with his offer in exchange for their assistance in retaking Fondor. His fellow Chief of State asked Caedus if he was a Sith, having observed his ruthless nature. Surprised, he admitted it. The Remnant joined the war effort, allowing Caedus to proceed with his plans to attack Fondor. He arranged to lay mines around the world, cutting it off from supply, before launching his assault. When Caedus arrived at Fondor with elements of the Fourth Fleet, he discovered that the minelayers had been ambushed and destroyed; someone had leaked information to the Confederation. Caedus initiated a plan to draw out Fondor's fleet and engage it in an operation that would likely destroy its orbital shipyards, making an example of the rebellious world. He was contacted by Niathal, who strongly objected to Caedus's new plan and his intuitive method of operating, which involved sharing little information with her. She mobilized the Galactic Alliance Third Fleet to join him at Fondor, intending to counteract Caedus's increasing autonomy.

As he waited for his allies to arrive, Caedus, aware of the growing distance between himself and his troops, took his StealthX out on a reconnaissance mission. He hoped to demonstrate that he was still willing to risk his life, and that proved to be the case when, as Niathal's task force arrived, Caedus came under attack from a Jedi StealthX flight. Led by Luke Skywalker, they created illusions around him, making him believe he was being ambushed by several large craft. He evaded them, but fleet sensors soon confirmed that there were no craft present. Niathal had broadcast Caedus's audio to the entire task force, making him appear foolish. He then came under attack from Skywalker's StealthX. Skywalker, closely pursuing Caedus, ordered him to land at one of Fondor's shipyards so they could talk, but Caedus continued to return to his fleet, prompting Skywalker to begin using the Force to disable Caedus's fighters. Other Jedi began attempting to seize his fighter with grappling arms. He escaped them by nearly flying through a docking tunnel filled with innocents and returned to the Anakin Solo, where the revelation that Jedi had been present helped salvage his reputation.

Darth Caedus traveled to Pellaeon's new flagship, Bloodfin, for a meeting with the Remnant head of state and Niathal. They agreed to seek the planet's surrender by offering favorable terms after capturing some of the orbital stations. Caedus left Veila aboard Bloodfin as a liaison with Pellaeon, instructing her to assassinate the old Grand Admiral if he attempted to undermine Caedus's plans. When the originally offered deadline for surrender passed, the Galactic Alliance began moving against Fondor's defenses. As they did so, the Fondorian fleet, hidden within the shipyards themselves, attacked. With the Galactic Alliance under pressure, Caedus took his flagship into the heart of the battle and began targeting Oridin City, Fondor's capital, with an orbital bombardment. He reached out through the Force, inspiring his commanders to extraordinary levels of aggression with his battle meditation, and used the rage generated by his connection with them to fuel an overwhelming use of the Force, establishing mental contact with the planetary shield operators and tricking them into lowering the shield. With the shield down, he proceeded to strike Fondor's cities, beginning with Oridin.

Following a solo decision, Niathal contacted the leader of Fondor, Shas Vadde, and presented the previously negotiated terms of surrender, which were then accepted. This resulted in her issuing a cease-fire, an action that infuriated Caedus. Given his monumental efforts to make Fondor vulnerable, he desired to exploit this advantage and set an example with Fondor. He defied the actions of his fellow head of state, leading to his removal from command. In defiance, he relocated the Anakin Solo from its position within the Fondorian fleet and recommenced firing. Niathal then gave the fleet orders to engage him, and Pellaeon sided with her. Acting under Caedus's instructions, Veila assassinated Pellaeon, which enabled a group of Moffs to direct the Imperial fleet to support Caedus. Pleased by her willingness to execute what was needed, Caedus took her on as his Sith apprentice and resolved to use his Sith name publicly from that point forward, having already abandoned his previous identity internally.

As a makeshift fleet entered the fray, Caedus dismissed it as another illusion created by the Jedi. He commanded his forces to ignore it, but it soon became apparent that these were actual forces commanded by Admiral Natasi Daala, who had been missing for a long time. Having been recalled by Pellaeon, she was seeking revenge against Caedus. Despite his efforts, along with the naval forces that chose to follow him, to resist her fleet, which was equipped with metal-crystal phase shifters, he was losing ground. Caedus then proclaimed that Niathal's decisions were illegitimate and commanded the fleet to declare their loyalty to him. Two-thirds of the fleet present sided with him. They received orders to retreat and return to Coruscant to claim rightful authority over the Galactic Alliance, thereby removing Niathal from her leadership position.

Caedus himself boarded a med sprinter to rescue Veila from the Bloodfin, where she was trapped by a mutiny that had started in response to Pellaeon's assassination. During her evacuation from the ship's escape tunnels, Caedus encountered a squad of Mandalorians, who had been hired by Daala to reclaim the Bloodfin. Caedus rescued a severely wounded Veila from Mirta Gev and Jaina Solo, the latter of whom was training with the Mandalorians to acquire skills to use against Caedus. Tahiri was unable to ascend the docking tube, and the Mandalorians below began cutting through it. Caedus descended to carry her to the medical runner, but one of the Mandalorians seized his leg with a crushgaunt and shot him in the knee; still worn out from his previous efforts, Caedus could not react in time. Instead, he focused on stopping Veila's bleeding and used a Force-jump to get into his ship.

Upon his return to Coruscant, Caedus portrayed himself as a hero who had been betrayed by the traitorous Niathal. He resumed his administrative duties, now heavily overseen by droids, whom he regarded as effective, efficient, and incorruptible. He suspended the Security Council and met with his trusted advisor, Lon Shevu, initially wanting Shevu to shut down a tabloid that suggested he was involved in Jade Skywalker's death. After calming down, he decided against taking action, but, feeling the need to finally share his perspective, he confessed that he had killed Jade Skywalker—but for honorable reasons, explaining the circumstances, and stating that he was not only defending himself but also fulfilling his role as a Sith to bring peace and order. He also revealed his new Sith name and requested to be addressed by it. Despite Caedus's belief that he could trust Shevu, who openly disapproved of his superior but still performed his duties dutifully and honestly, the officer relayed the information to the Jedi, exposing Caedus to his family.

During the following three weeks, Darth Caedus was plagued by visions of danger and catastrophe. Luke Skywalker was using the Force to manipulate Caedus's attempts to foresee the future, directing his attention towards Skywalker and fueling his fears to unbalance him and make him believe that Skywalker would come for him. Skywalker's manipulation of the future diverted Caedus's attention from the person who would actually try to kill him: Jaina Solo.

Furthermore, by this point, Caedus had a realization; he was not following the teachings of his deceased master, Lumiya. He had forgotten that, as Jacen Solo, he had become the Dark Lord of the Sith to serve the galaxy—not to dominate it. When Caedus's training began, Lumiya warned him that the path to the dark side would be agonizing. To become a stronger Sith Lord, Caedus was supposed to embrace the pain of betrayal and sacrifice. However, without Lumiya's guidance, he realized that he became increasingly conceited, disheartened, and obsessed with revenge. In essence, he became like most Sith Lords, all of whom were destroyed by their inability to serve anything other than their own interests.

The revelation of his rash actions, along with their consequences, gave Caedus a new outlook. As a result, he engaged in an internal struggle to regain control of his emotions to lead the Galactic Alliance without being distracted by petty grievances and feelings of self-importance. He decided that, as a Sith Lord, he would use the dark side by embracing the love he felt for family, his sense of duty to the galaxy's countless beings, and the sacrifices he had made to become who he was. From that moment on, he used his powers with greater restraint and, because of his new resolve, struggled to control his temper.

Facing the Confederation, Jedi Coalition, and Niathal and Daala's Alliance-in-exile, Caedus attempted to strengthen his control over the Imperial Remnant. After the Remnant invaded the Roche system on its own, seizing its arms factories and weakening the neutral Verpine-Mandalorian alliance, Caedus confronted the Moffs as they met with the Hive Mother in the Roche system. Recognizing its importance to the war's final outcome, he positioned Galactic Alliance forces in the system and tried to assert his authority over the Imperial Remnant, treating the Moffs as subordinates rather than allies, though they resisted yielding to him. Caedus remained on the Roche system's main asteroid, Nickel One, using his foresight to predict which arms convoys would be attacked by Jedi Coalition forces and sending the Fourth Fleet to protect them.

When the Jedi struck the Roche system at the same time as the Mandalorians, Caedus sensed a team of Mandalorian commandos landing on Nickel One. He allowed them to reach the assembled Moff Council and attack before appearing to save the Moffs and earn their gratitude. He easily defeated the Mandalorians, although several Moffs—including most of his political adversaries on the Council—died before he could eliminate them all, and came under attack by Jaina Solo. Luke Skywalker projected a masking illusion over her, convincing Caedus he was battling Skywalker, and lent his strength to her in the Force. Despite already suffering a disabling shoulder injury from one of her sniper shots, Caedus engaged his sister but knew he was at a disadvantage, especially as he thought he was facing Skywalker. Taking a fallen Mandalorian's beskad sword, she was able to slice off one of Caedus's arms. He applied a Nightsister blood trail to the blood that struck her, allowing him to track her, and continued fighting. Disabling her with Force lightning, he finally broke the illusion and was surprised to find his sister there. With Jaina too badly wounded to continue fighting, Skywalker resumed the illusion, this time projecting it away from Jaina's body. Caedus directed the arriving Imperial guards to concentrate fire on the apparition, allowing his sister to escape. The illusion vanished, and Caedus hurried to receive medical attention. He declined to have his arm reattached, as it would have required a long period of recuperation that he felt he could not afford.

The battle in the Roche system continued, with all of the existing factions continuing to brawl. Caedus left the situation in the hands of Bwua'tu and turned to other operations. Veila had captured Ben Skywalker on Coruscant, but the boy had escaped. The Galactic Alliance Guard was able to track him, and Veila led the Anakin Solo to disrupt a rendezvous between Skywalker and Prince Isolder, who was to return the youth to the Jedi Coalition. Veila captured Isolder, though Skywalker escaped. She reported the news to Caedus while he was interrogating Mandalorian mercenary Mirta Gev, Ailyn Vel's daughter, as to the true identity of his attacker or attackers at Nickel One. Faced with the prospect of the Remnant making a nanokiller to target her grandfather Boba Fett, Gev admitted that Jaina Solo had been with her. Caedus refused to believe that Luke Skywalker had not been there as well, prompting Gev to lie that he had. With that, he decided to strike at the hidden Jedi base, which he had found via the blood trail on his sister.

Caedus took the Anakin Solo, the Super Star Destroyer Megador, and an Imperial fleet to Shedu Maad in the Hapan Transitory Mists to crush the secret Jedi headquarters. As he attacked the Jedi and the Hapans ambushed his fleet, Caedus sensed his sister and Zekk in StealthXs outside the battle. He directed his gunners to fire, disabling Zekk, but Jaina was able to infiltrate the Star Destroyer. At the same time, Luke Skywalker led a Jedi wing against the ship, nearly killing Caedus. Instead, he escaped and received a vision of an adult Allana on a white throne, surrounded by friends. Caedus was convinced it was a sign that, in surviving Skywalker's attack, he had won; he would forge the galactic peace he longed for, and in time Allana would administer a secure, just galaxy. The vision of the dark, armored figure dominating the future seemed to be averted.

The delegation of Moffs aboard were growing nervous, and Veila warned him of this. She urged him to reassure them by using his flow-walking abilities to alter the past, and Caedus took the opportunity to finally disabuse her of the belief that flow-walking could change events that had already occurred. He explained that the only alterations Veila had managed during their flow-walking session were in her mind, and urged her to use her sense of betrayal and anger at Caedus to become a more powerful Sith. He then met with the Moffs on the auxiliary bridge, where Moff Drikl Lecersen proposed releasing a Remnant nanokiller that would target Tenel Ka Djo. Terrified that it would kill his daughter, he forbade the deployment of any nanokillers in the battle.

Caedus ordered the Anakin Solo and Megador into battle to support the struggling Imperial fleet and tasked Veila with finding the true location of the Jedi base in the system, as the space station from which they had fled had clearly been a decoy. Not trusting the Moffs to obey him, Caedus went to release the imprisoned Isolder, who would have to be their source for any nanokiller. Isolder, however, was convinced that Caedus was letting him return to the Hapan fleet in order to spread the nanokiller. Knowing he could never convince the man he respected, the grandfather of his child, to escape, Caedus killed him instead.

He took the body to the medical incinerator for safe disposal, where the medical droid examining the corpse pronounced that tissue samples had already been taken; the Moffs had their nanokiller. He contacted his chief aide, Orlopp, who confirmed that a ship almost certainly carrying the nanokiller had just left the Anakin Solo. Caedus was at the door to leave and hunt down the dangerous ship himself when Jaina Solo opened it and attacked, stabbing him in the abdomen. The Sith Lord merely expressed mild surprise before flinging his sister away with the Force and drawing his weapon. The pair battled fiercely before Caedus gained separation from his sister and deactivated his lightsaber. He pleaded with her to cease the fight so he could save Djo and Allana, but Jaina refused to believe her brother. They reengaged, each wounding the other, but Caedus was at a disadvantage as his many unhealed wounds from his previous duel, missing arm, and now disabled foot left him vulnerable. Jaina rushed to attack, slashing at Caedus in such a way that he could not possibly hope to defend himself. Knowing he would die, Caedus had the option of taking his twin down with him, as her strike left her open to fatal counter-attack. However, he declined to do so, believing that the action would serve no purpose other than revenge. Instead, he used his last moments to contact Djo in the Force and warn her that she and Allana were in danger. At that same instant, his twin bond with his sister returned, just before he died. These actions convinced Jaina that, in his final moments, the persona of Darth Caedus had retreated and some of Jacen Solo's light side aspect had shown through. Caedus's death at the hands of his twin sister fulfilled the Yuuzhan Vong's prophecy of the twin sacrifice.

Jacen Solo's final warning to Tenel Ka Djo allowed her to save herself and Allana. Allana's survival was kept secret, and she was publicly listed as dead in the nanokiller attack. For the princess's safety, she was given to Han and Leia Solo to raise as their adopted war orphan daughter, Amelia Solo. Though his faction lost the Second Galactic Civil War and Ben Skywalker redeemed Tahiri Veila, Darth Caedus's Sith techniques did bring a sort of peace to the galaxy—by uniting all the warring factions against him. Peace was soon settled between all sides, with Caedus succeeded by Natasi Daala as chief of state. Though a fringe of Caedus supporters continued to exist after the war, he was generally condemned as a monster who had committed grave atrocities. During his entire reign, the order of the One Sith had been in hiding on Korriban. Their Dark Lord, Darth Krayt —the man Solo saw in his vision— later described Caedus's role as a "lightning rod" attracting Jedi attention to himself and away from the One Sith, thereby assisting their future rise.

Although his family had adopted a harsh stance against Caedus in his final days, they gradually softened over time, remembering Jacen Solo as a hero and questioning what had gone so wrong that he transformed into Darth Caedus. They felt as though they had failed him by not discovering a way to redeem him, but they did not dwell in sorrow. Instead, they found joy in raising Allana, in whom they recognized much of the young Jacen Solo, including his fondness for animals and, as she discovered, his connection with the Yuuzhan Vong. Allana remained fearful of the dark side she had sensed in her father, but the Solos emphasized his love for her, explaining that in the end he had not been himself, having fallen under the influence of the dark side. Han Solo privately hoped that his son was working towards redemption in an afterlife, and even called upon his spirit for assistance.

Driven by a political agenda to control the Jedi, Chief of State Daala filed criminal charges against Luke Skywalker for negligence in failing to prevent Caedus's descent to the dark side. Skywalker, wanting to demonstrate that the Jedi were not above the law, agreed to a plea deal in which he accepted a sentence of exile, with the option to have it lifted if he could uncover and explain the reason for Jacen Solo's transformation into Darth Caedus. His son, Ben Skywalker, accompanied him. The task became even more urgent when various other Jedi began succumbing to a strange madness in which they expressed the belief that those around them were actually impostors, and manifested various Force powers known only to Jacen Solo after his journey of learning.

During that odyssey, the Skywalkers encountered the Mind Walkers and ventured "beyond shadows" themselves. There, they discovered the Lake of Apparitions, where apparitions of the dead appeared, and within it, the spirit of Darth Caedus. Luke Skywalker summoned him by uttering the name "Jacen," and his appearance shifted to that of his younger, uncorrupted self. While speaking with them, Jacen did not seek forgiveness, but did state that he had not carried his dark side anger with him in death, an experience he described as "damnation." He requested that Ben Skywalker tell his sister he forgave her for his death, and Luke Skywalker, having seen the Throne of Balance and learned of Jacen Solo's vision, asked him who he had seen there. Skywalker informed the apparition that he had seen a happy Allana, surrounded by peace—the same vision Jacen had received near the end of his life. The spirit said whom he had seen no longer mattered, but it was not Luke Skywalker—a statement that did not entirely convince Skywalker. Ben admitted that he forgave his cousin, which greatly relieved Jacen. He slyly told the Skywalkers he did not know exactly who Abeloth, appearing at the far end of the lake, was, but they could keep walking into the Mists of Forgetfulness and find out—which immediately persuaded them to turn around and avoid the dangerous area where previous warnings had not.

He later reappeared when Luke returned to the beyond shadows to fight off Abeloth, having some scorn for Luke regarding his belief that Abeloth possessed him. However, he then felt some guilt when Luke revealed that Jacen was partially responsible for the release of Abeloth by gazing into the pool of knowledge, although he, like Mara Jade, was unable to supply him with an answer as to how to destroy Abeloth. When Darth Krayt appeared and offered to aid Luke in destroying Abeloth, Jacen attempted to warn Luke that Krayt was the man he saw in one of the visions of the Lake of Apparitions, the one he saw that led him to turn to the dark side. After Abeloth was defeated, Jacen revealed that although Luke and Krayt's destruction of Abeloth prevented the dark future he saw from happening, it did not prevent the rise of the Sith, and explained that the vision he saw that led to his joining the Sith was a future where Krayt not only was on the throne of balance instead of his daughter Allana, but Allana was likewise at Krayt's side.

During his early childhood, Solo spent the majority of his first two years under the care of Winter, initially on New Alderaan and subsequently on Anoth. Consequently, he developed a bond with his nanny, and infrequent visits from his parents hindered his ability to connect with them. Upon his return to Coruscant in 11 ABY, he required time to adjust to his family and new routine. Solo settled into a comfortable family life but eventually became overly reliant on the belief that the Force would provide everything he needed, preventing him from maintaining his physical fitness. However, within two years, he had abandoned that belief and was once again in good shape and eager to explore, although he remained unconvinced of the necessity to study non-Jedi combat techniques.

Solo exhibited no fear of animals, readily interacting with them and "befriending" them using his Force abilities. He consistently managed to pacify them, and as a result, displayed no fear of venomous or carnivorous animals as long as he had the opportunity to calm them. He began amassing a collection of animals as pets. He also had an affinity for plants and could similarly influence carnivorous plants through the Force.

Similar to his siblings, Solo was an exceptionally mischievous child. He perceived rules as challenges and adults as spoilers of enjoyment, to be avoided whenever feasible. Constantly exploring—both the Imperial Palace surrounding him and the boundaries of what he could get away with—he frequently found himself in trouble, particularly because both his uncle and mother were always capable of sensing whether he was being truthful, but he reveled in his adventures and felt no inclination to alter his behavior.

Solo's apprenticeship under Luke Skywalker, whom he greatly admired and sought to emulate, prompted him to contemplate more philosophical matters, seeking to identify a new role for the Jedi in an era not defined by war—a role that extended beyond mere warriors, encompassing something more, connecting with the broader history of the Jedi before the Order had been overthrown. He firmly believed that, as a member of the first generation of new Jedi to have experienced the Force since birth and been trained from childhood, he possessed distinct and valuable insights to offer on the Force and a Jedi's relationship with it. He came to view Jedi Knighthood as a deeply personal, spiritual matter of connection with the Force, with Jedi answering to their own conscience and governing themselves as long as they resisted the lure of the dark side. He rejected Anakin Solo's arguments that the Jedi should be active keepers of the peace wielding the Force as a tool for justice. Instead, he insisted that the Force was to be used to gain internal harmony and understanding of truth, not projected outward. In his view, the Jedi should rectify injustice when they came upon it, but not seek out trouble by acting as simple "galactic police."

His experiences during the Dubrillion's First Battle meld made him rethink his convictions. He decided that the coordinated employment of the Force in battle was so potent and valuable that it justified the Force's external and martial applications. Despite this, Solo determined the Jedi Order was not right for him, as it did not satisfy his need for a profound inner connection with the Force. This contemplative emphasis, in his view, had been the Jedi's original purpose, one that had long since been abandoned. However, during the Yuuzhan Vong War, Skywalker's words and Solo's own experiences convinced him that abandoning the Jedi and the war effort would betray his ideals of respect for life and selflessness, even though the Force might later offer opportunities for meditation and self-exploration. In the battle's aftermath, Solo found himself torn between action and contemplation, unsure which path the Force was guiding him toward. A conversation with Anakin ultimately led him to embrace whatever path the Force presented.

Solo was disturbed by the Yuuzhan Vong's undetectability in the Force, which suggested a flaw in mainstream Jedi teachings. He hoped that further meditation would unlock a broader range of Force perception, enabling him to find the mysterious aliens. However, during his time on Duro, Solo completely abandoned Force use, aiming to avoid any potentially aggressive or incorrect application of it. Following the Fondor fiasco, he grew concerned that violent solutions would not truly resolve violent problems, fearing that fighting against evil only served to perpetuate it. Skywalker again cautioned him against pride in his insights. After a crisis point during his mother's rescue, Solo decided he could not sever himself from the Force out of fear of what might happen. Instead, he surrendered himself to it completely, becoming its servant. Subsequently, he remained uncertain about how the Force should be used, whether it possessed a will, or if it encompassed the Yuuzhan Vong within a broader understanding inaccessible to the Jedi. After discussing it with his mother, he concluded that while he still needed to find his own answers, he could not impose his moral dilemmas on others or expect them to follow his path. He then rejoined the war effort, striving to minimize the war's violence.

During his capture by the Yuuzhan Vong, Solo tried to adhere to his Jedi principles. During his attack on the dhuryams, he began to succumb to his anger, and in the crater marked by the death of the darksider Lord Nyax, he was consumed by rage, intermittently giving in to the dark side. After escaping the cavern beast, he was overcome with apathy, disillusioned and hating his succumbing to temptation. He was unable to motivate himself to act. Vergere shook him out of this by suggesting he seek answers within himself, not from others. This made Solo see it as essential to be true to himself, which included accepting the belief that everything in the universe was fundamentally one. All things were interconnected, united in the Force; harming another was harming himself. Solo chose to meet the universe with unconditional, all-encompassing love and compassion, seeing it as the best response to the irrational pain pervading it. Before departing the Yuuzhan Vong, he shared his insight with the World Brain, which agreed and accepted his plan to confront the Yuuzhan Vong with imperfection and force them to learn compromise.

Solo came to embrace Vergere's philosophy of choosing and acting, realizing he could not spend his life second-guessing his decisions. Instead, he acted as he thought best and accepted the consequences. Solo decided that the war could not truly be won by exterminating the Yuuzhan Vong. Instead, the Jedi needed to understand them and guide them away from their violent religion and autocratic society, believing that Zonama Sekot would somehow hold the key. At Solo's urging, Zonama Sekot played a crucial role in resolving the war without genocide, and Solo managed to balance fighting with an ultimately peaceful resolution.

During his five-year journey, Solo began to lose his enthusiasm for learning, seeking knowledge without deriving great joy from it. He was already concerned about galactic peace, believing that the Jedi had a responsibility to help the fractured galaxy recover order and stability after the Yuuzhan Vong War. His vision of a dark enthroned figure motivated him to prevent this evil future. Upon his return, Solo was known for being secretive and enigmatic. He frequently withdrew from the Force and his twin bond with his sister, rarely discussing his experiences. He was willing to take actions that other Jedi considered morally questionable for the sake of what he perceived as a greater good, including exterminating the Killiks to prevent his vision of galactic war and suffering.

During a debate about Jedi obedience to the government during the Killik crisis, Solo argued that the Jedi should not be accountable to any government, as such bodies were too weak and easily corrupted to be trusted with control over the Jedi. Instead, the Jedi should trust their own consciences; only they could bear the burdens of the decisions they had to make.

Although initially a highly empathetic man, by 40 ABY he felt little tragedy at the deaths of soldiers, even those he caused. He accepted the inevitability of sentients being sent to their deaths, viewing their transition to oneness with the Force as compensating for their deaths, though he did not desire unnecessary or accidental deaths. He recognized that his personality and values had significantly changed over time, without his awareness until it was complete, but he did not regret the change. Solo's focus became the greater good; he sought solutions that would harm the fewest to benefit the most, justifying harm to some by the benefits it could bring to more individuals.

When Lumiya argued that Solo could use the dark side and become a Sith without being corrupted, instead using Sith teachings to bring peace to the galaxy, the idea appealed to him. He agreed to learn from Lumiya, believing her argument that he had the strength and commitment to accept the Sith ways without his personal failings leading to ambition and greed. He sought to prevent the dark futures of his visions by serving as a conscientious and restrained Sith Lord. Following his decision and the killing of Nelani Dinn, Solo intermittently doubted whether he had chosen the correct path, but his doubts only reinforced his conviction that his motives were pure.

Solo initially remained dedicated to protecting his friends and family, but Lumiya convinced him that as a proper Sith, he would have to sacrifice those close to him for the greater good of the galaxy. Still, he rejected the idea of sacrificing Djo or Allana, which he had initially thought he would have to do as a good Sith. When he fired on his parents, believing they had tried to harm his daughter, Solo was shocked by his own actions after learning they were innocent. He was consumed by self-doubt, wondering if he had lost his moral compass, until he came to terms with the changes in his personality since his youth and decided that he had acted correctly based on flawed information.

Solo increasingly sought to control his environment, becoming uncomfortable when he was not in charge of his actions, feelings, and surroundings. He felt responsible not only for himself but for the security of the galaxy, and he felt that he could trust no one else with his affairs. This led to paranoia, making him believe that others were plotting against him or hiding ulterior motives. He also became willing to take more extreme action, such as the attempted massacres at Ossus and Kashyyyk, and he adopted a mentality of rule by terror. The empathy that had characterized Jacen Solo disappeared, and Caedus found himself unable to empathize with those around him. Despite his brutality, Caedus retained a love for those who opposed him and for the galaxy as a whole; he was simply willing to sacrifice anything in pursuit of the greater good.

Near the end of his life, Darth Caedus reflected that in becoming a Sith Lord, he had made the mistakes of previous Sith, becoming too selfish, hot-tempered, and vindictive, and too unwilling to suffer. He recommitted himself to serving the galaxy and the cause of galactic peace, controlling his temper and accepting the pain his decisions caused him.

Caedus chose to use his last moments not for vengeance, but to warn Tenel Ka Djo of the danger she and Allana faced. This, along with the resumption of his twin bond with Jaina Solo, convinced his twin that Jacen Solo's light side identity had returned to some extent in his final moments. Jacen's spirit, speaking to Ben and Luke Skywalker, later described his situation as "damnation" but insisted he had abandoned his anger and hate. He forgave his sister for killing him and was glad when Ben Skywalker set aside his resentment against Jacen, forgiving him. He was neither apologetic nor proud, accepting his actions and moving past much of it. However, he regretted killing Mara Jade Skywalker.

During his time at the Jedi Praxeum, Solo developed an affection for Tenel Ka Djo. He constantly told jokes, both old and new, trying to make the humorless girl laugh. She never did, and his jokes were also rejected as poor by his other companions. His jokes soon became a way to cope with awkward situations, although he recognized that jokes were not always appropriate. Solo and Djo became more openly fond of each other during their time at the Praxeum, although a brief infatuation with Anja Gallandro distracted Solo, it didn't develop into a full relationship.

At the start of the Yuuzhan Vong War, Solo rescued Danni Quee and began to develop feelings for her. Five years his senior, she rejected his initial roundabout attempts to explore a romance, citing their friendship and her personal turmoil. Solo accepted that this was probably for the best, as he was likely experiencing a passing attraction. However, the extended time he spent with Quee on the mission to find Zonama Sekot three years later rekindled Solo's romantic thoughts. When he realized Quee felt the same way, Solo remained confused, feeling too young and lacking confidence that he could genuinely interest her. The romance ultimately fizzled out, with neither deciding to pursue the other.

Solo's relationship with Djo had long been stagnant, much to her frustration. When Solo visited her in 35 ABY, after a complete five-year absence, both Djo and Solo were struck by their feelings for each other. Djo finally spoke up, asking him to sleep with her, and Solo happily agreed. However, they could not have a relationship beyond that, as Djo was bound to Hapes by her duties and Solo was active dealing with the Killik situation. A year later, Solo learned that he had fathered a child, Allana Solo, with Djo. Solo was devoted to his daughter, who lived in danger due to the numerous intrigues and plots of Hapan politics.

His determination to protect Allana played a role in Solo's turn to the dark side, a turn that led Djo to finally renounce Solo. By then, Darth Caedus was devastated by the loss of his relationship with Djo. Refusing to be separated from his daughter, he kidnapped her but made no effort to rekindle his broken love with Djo. As she grew distant from him, fearing his absorption in the dark side, he revealed that he was her father, regaining her affection for a time. His threat toward Allana in the holorecording to Djo may have been a lie. After she was taken from him, he was devastated but began trying not to think of her to ease his pain. He soon felt he had made a mistake and embraced his love for her once more. On learning Allana was in danger from the Imperial nanokiller, the redeemed Jacen surrendered his life to warn Djo of their danger, overwhelmed with concern for his family.

Solo possessed a natural talent for fencing and was considered one of the best duelists at the Praxeum shortly after building his lightsaber. By the time he became a Sith Lord, he was a formidable duelist, capable of engaging multiple Jedi simultaneously and even fighting Jedi Battlemaster Kyle Katarn with ease. The Dark Lord also frequently used Force speed in dangerous situations and combat. During his first duel with Jaina Solo, Darth Caedus used the Force to exchange lightning-fast blows with his sister. The Jedi considered only Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker to be on his level. Even the Chiss officer Irolia had told Skywalker as much. In the duel against his aunt Mara Jade, Solo walked into her ambush and was badly wounded. While he could still fight, it was ineffective against Jade Skywalker's speed and agility. She almost killed him, but Solo projected a Force illusion of her son. As Caedus, he proved capable of holding his own against the Grand Master during their duel on the Anakin Solo, inflicting severe injuries on his uncle, although Luke ultimately triumphed and inflicted more injuries on Caedus. After that duel, Caedus considered himself second only to his uncle in combat. His sister, Jaina Solo, fought him twice but could only match him when he was severely injured and with Skywalker's help. Even with a severed arm and a hole in his gut in both duels, Caedus was difficult to defeat. Nevertheless, Jaina defeated him during the final days of the Second Galactic Civil War.

Jacen Solo possessed great Force potential, which his uncle sensed shortly after his birth. Once trained, he was considered broadly gifted in the Force, skilled in many areas. By adulthood, Jacen Solo demonstrated tremendous Force power. Solo could exert powerful mental influence through the Force, compelling even powerful Force-users to obey him against their will. He could dispel Force illusions, even those created by Lumiya. However, he was not as powerful as his uncle in a direct contest of strength. Even as a fully trained Sith Lord, Darth Caedus could be overwhelmed by Luke Skywalker's power, unable to break his uncle's Force grip.

He and Jaina manifested their powers early, using telekinesis as two-year-olds to retrieve items from high shelves and cause mischief. By five, he could use tightly focused telekinesis to rapidly move air molecules, heating them and creating a glow, and to slow water molecules enough to freeze them. However, he struggled with levitating objects and sustaining their motion. This was quickly corrected by training, and by 26 ABY, Solo could launch a telekinetic whirlwind, hurling debris at opponents.

Even as a fetus, Jacen Solo was contacted by his mother through the Force, though he only expressed basic sensations and emotions. After birth, he responded to these Force messages through his bond with his mother. He also had a bond with Jaina, especially strong due to their twin heritage and shared time in the womb and afterward. From childhood, they could communicate through the Force, making conversation unnecessary; they also felt each other's emotions. After his five-year journey, Solo used his Force control to limit the twin bond, preventing Jaina from sensing him unless he wanted her to, and limiting what she could sense even then. During the First Battle of Dubrillion, Solo mentally linked with his siblings, sharing perceptions and thoughts through the Force for superior coordination. The meld went beyond the heightened bonding he sometimes used with Jaina in combat, to the point where their minds seemed to merge. During the Myrkr mission, the strike team expanded on this, with Solo and his empathic powers serving as the focus for a seventeen-Jedi battle meld. The battle meld functioned similarly to the Dubrillion meld, allowing the Jedi to share thoughts. Under Solo's control, they became nearly one mind, and he sometimes lost track of his own body, submerged in the thoughts of others. Through the bond, he could shift emotions from one Jedi to another, drawing the appropriate emotion from one to reinforce others. Caedus also used Mindshards to freeze individuals, as he did when attacked by Aurra Sing on his flagship. He also possessed Battlemind and Battle Meditation abilities and used them effectively.

As a two-year-old, Jacen Solo spoke with animals through the Force, understanding their thoughts and being understood by them. By five, he could direct insect behavior and "befriend" creatures, convincing them to do his bidding. His empathy extended beyond animals; Solo was skilled at detecting emotions and understanding others' feelings. He could use that connection to influence others' minds. In addition to standard mind tricks, Solo could project a sensation of dread to drive others away and exert a powerful mind trick that could compel even a talented Jedi. He could also deceive fellow Jedi's perceptions and project a false Force presence, even making himself feel like multiple individuals.

Using his empathic skills, Solo formed a bond with the slave seed Vergere implanted in him, gaining access to Yuuzhan Vong life through a sense analogous to, or part of, the Force. With it, he could influence Yuuzhan Vong life much like he did other life through the Force. However, he could not access the Force and his Vongsense simultaneously.

He also had a natural talent with Force skills involving body manipulation. Solo could use the Force to dull pain. He was also skilled in healing, skillfully putting others into healing trances, among other healing powers. He could precisely control his bodily functions, manipulating blood flow and organ performance to modify his physical condition and adapt to his environment or wounds. Tapas, the technique of staying warm in a cold environment, was among these practices of bodily control. Solo could also influence others, putting them to sleep or lending them strength.

In addition to his special affinities, Solo had access to a wide range of Jedi skills after training. By five, Skywalker had trained him to erect a Force barrier for defense. Using the Force, he could jump great heights and slow his fall. He could use the Force to "see" for him and had the predictive ability common to Jedi, sensing danger before it occurred. By 40 ABY, he could receive specific brief visions of future hazards. Furthermore, Solo could probe the future, seeing the possible outcomes of various actions at will.

During his battle with Onimi, Solo experienced a moment of Oneness with the Force, uniting with its power. He was briefly transfigured as a being of pure Force energy, achieving deeper unity with the Force than any Jedi in history. Jedi historian Tionne Solusar described him as "briefly transformed into the most powerful manifestation of the Force on record." He could counteract Onimi's actions and neutralize his poisons, ultimately destroying and melting Onimi through the power of the Force and his own toxins. To observers, Solo appeared to grow in size and age five years in that moment, bathed in a glow of light.

As a mature Jedi, Solo mastered many specialized or advanced techniques. He could absorb energy, including blaster bolts, through the Force and safely dissipate it. He could also deflect bolts rather than absorbing them. Solo could strike Yuuzhan Vong warriors using Emerald Lightning, causing enough damage to render them unconscious, but he refrained from killing them with this technique. By the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War, Solo could neutralize toxins and manipulate substances on a molecular level, as Vergere had done.

As a teenager, he could close himself off from the Force, making himself difficult to sense and preventing any guidance from reaching him. He later developed this ability further, returning from his five-year journey with the ability to almost completely cloak himself in the Force, cutting off even the most powerful Jedi from detecting his presence and masking his feelings and emotions. He could project false emotions to cover his presence and only partially reveal his feelings, controlling what others sensed.

Working with Luke Skywalker, Solo developed a technique to detect individuals who posed a threat but were hiding their presences in the Force. By searching for the secondary effects emanating around them in the Force, rather than the individuals themselves, a Jedi could perceive ripples in the Force that seemed to lack a source. The cloaked person would be at the epicenter. At the same time, Solo and Skywalker developed ways to sustain Force use at levels beyond the body's safe capacity for bursts of overwhelming Force use. He could draw the Force through his body at an unsafe rate, resisting the pain and exhaustion of Force overload, but could not prevent it from taking a toll on his body.

His talents also included the ability to project his voice and other sounds through the Force. Solo could use the Force to "flash" a camera, creating a brief burst of static in the recording to prevent him from appearing. Solo could resist interrogation, using the Force to block information in his mind from being divulged. With Ta'a Chume, Solo could force his mind into another's through the Force, imposing his will. In 40 ABY, Solo lent his mother his Force strength, allowing her to channel his power to help her land the Millennium Falcon safely. As a Sith Lord, he demonstrated the ability to strip and restore the use of the Force to Jedi and manifested the rare ability to see shatterpoints—crucial weaknesses in people, situations, and objects.

As both Jacen Solo and Darth Caedus, he commanded more than just the light side. During his fall to the dark side on Coruscant, Solo instinctively summoned Force lightning and performed a Force choke. When he became a Sith Lord, Solo commanded both powers and used them liberally. After becoming Darth Caedus, he had access to Sith battle meditation, giving him the ability to anticipate events and understand and manipulate the battlefield. When furious, Caedus manifested physical effects of the dark side, turning his irises yellow. Additionally, his time as a captive of the Yuuzhan Vong had taught him to suppress his responses to pain through sheer willpower, though he still felt the sensation. Eventually, he could virtually ignore physical pain, shrugging off wounds like an amputated arm or a lightsaber blade through his midsection.

During his extensive five-year exploration of the Force, Solo gained knowledge of a diverse collection of obscure talents from numerous Force-sensitive traditions. From Tadar'Ro, he was instructed in the Aing-Tii art of teleporting objects, as well as flow-walking, a unique ability that enabled him to perceive events from the past and future by projecting his consciousness through time, but not space. Aing-Tii fighting-sight gifted him with the capacity to predict battlefield occurrences with remarkable speed and precision. Throughout his adventures, he mastered a Dathomiri technique to conjure a sphere of light using a Force-based incantation, which he could then manipulate and move to create illumination, and the Nightsisters imparted the blood trail technique, which allowed him to infuse his blood with a Force-based connection to himself, facilitating tracking of assailants who had come into contact with his blood. At some point during his training, he acquired the ability to use the Force to deliver a paralyzing shock to an individual's spinal cord, a skill that set him apart from other Jedi. From the Theran Listeners, Solo assimilated techniques to quiet his mind and enhance his focus on Force-based communications, enabling him to hear and interpret them with greater clarity and discern more detailed information about the communicator. Theran Force-listening enabled him to understand the spoken words of others. He also developed the skill of remote listening, allowing him to perceive sounds from distant locations by employing specific techniques. Within the Baran Do, Solo learned their methods for predicting weather patterns, which involved sensing natural energy. Subsequently, he quickly mastered techniques from the Baran Do hassat-durr family, which centered around manipulating his body's electromagnetic field for various purposes. Among these, he became proficient in the ayna-seff ability, which granted him control over how his brain would appear on electroencephaloscans. Solo acquired the memory rub technique from the Fallanassi, which enabled him to suppress the memories of others through the application of the Force. Furthermore, Solo was acquainted with Fallanassi techniques for projecting illusions, and he could generate highly convincing projections using the sect's methods, including the Fallanassi mirror illusion technique, which projected an illusion tailored to the perception of the viewer.

Timothy Zahn brought Jacen Solo to life as a character in The Thrawn Trilogy. Leia Organa Solo's pregnancy spanned the entirety of the trilogy, and Jacen Solo, along with his twin sister Jaina, made their debut in The Last Command, the concluding installment of the series, released in 1993. Solo's childhood was depicted in several novels published by Bantam Spectra, and he played a significant role in Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy Trilogy, Vonda N. McIntyre's The Crystal Star, and Roger MacBride Allen's Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy. The Young Jedi Knights series, aimed at young readers and launched in 1995, showcased Solo as a young teenager undergoing Jedi training alongside his sister and friends. Anderson, who had previously featured the Solo twins in his novels, co-authored the series with his wife, Rebecca Moesta. Dave Dorman, the artist responsible for the series' covers, based Jacen's appearance on reference model Calvin Engel.

Later, he was featured in Del Rey's The New Jedi Order series, which ran from 1999 to 2003 and chronicled Solo's life from ages 16 to 20. In this series, he was portrayed less as the lighthearted prankster of Young Jedi Knights and more as a somber, contemplative young man preoccupied with the philosophical aspects of the Force. Elaine Cunningham's short story "The Crystal," which appeared in Star Wars Gamer 5, contributed to illustrating Solo's maturation. Throughout The New Jedi Order, Solo endured the loss of his brother Anakin and ascended to the role of the foremost hero of the rising generation.

However, the original plan differed significantly; the creative team had initially intended for Jacen Solo to perish in Anakin's place, with Anakin assuming the mantle of the central hero. This concept was ultimately discarded when Star Wars creator George Lucas rejected the notion of Anakin Solo becoming the dominant figure, leading to a reversal of the brothers' dramatic roles. Jacen Solo emerged as the focal point of the narrative arc; according to editor Sue Rostoni, "in many ways, the NJO is really his series."

According to author Matthew Stover, the initial concept for the New Jedi Order novel Traitor involved Jacen Solo mastering a new fighting style that would provide him with the means to triumph over the Yuuzhan Vong. However, after considering Solo's overall character development in The New Jedi Order, Stover concluded that the character's true need was to overcome his philosophical uncertainties, and he subsequently depicted him as acquiring philosophical, rather than martial, knowledge from Vergere. Solo's transformation in Traitor garnered considerable acclaim for its groundbreaking nature, earning a place on Star Wars Insider's list of the twenty most memorable moments within the Expanded Universe.

When LucasBooks and Del Rey sought ideas for the series that would follow The New Jedi Order, Troy Denning, the author of the Dark Nest Trilogy, proposed the concept of Jacen Solo succumbing to the dark side. This idea was incorporated into the 2006-2008 Star Wars: Legacy of the Force series, in which Solo transitioned into the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Caedus. In Legacy of the Force: Invincible, published in 2008 and penned by Denning, Darth Caedus met his demise at the hands of his sister Jaina.

Solo's given name was inspired by a boy named Jasen, who was a friend of Zahn's son Corwin. Betsy Mitchell, Zahn's editor, suggested altering the spelling of Jasen's name by replacing the S with a C to avoid it sounding too firmly rooted in 1980s America. As Solo was descending into the dark side during the Legacy of the Force series, the publisher made the decision to involve fans in the selection of his Sith name. Del Rey and StarWars.com launched the Darth Who Contest, inviting fans to submit potential names for the new Dark Lord of the Sith. The editors and authors of the series would then evaluate the submissions and choose their top five, which would be put to a fan vote in the next round. The five names that were ultimately selected were Darth Acheron, Darth Caedus, Darth Judicar, Darth Paxis, and Darth Taral. Each name was accompanied by a definition: Acheron, described as "a river in Hell for those who deny justice," Caedus, defined as "a battle of darkness," Judicar, meaning "the final judge," Paxis, signifying "bringer of peace," and Taral, translated as "ancient Sith for 'he who protects.'" Darth Caedus was ultimately chosen, and the individual who submitted the name, Tawnia Poland, received recognition in Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice, the novel in which Solo was bestowed with his Sith name. The New Essential Guide to Characters provides the pronunciation of "Jacen Solo" as "Jā'-sĕn Sō'-lō," and Leland Chee has stated that "Caedus" should be pronounced "KIE-duss," to rhyme with "hide us."

Dave Dorman, the cover artist for Young Jedi Knights, enlisted Calvin Engel, the son of cartoonist Jim Engel, as a model for Solo's physical appearance. The depictions are not exact replicas, as Dorman modified certain aspects of Engel's appearance, such as his hair color, to capture the desired look for Jacen Solo.

This character is one of the few from the Expanded Universe to have been immortalized with his own action figure. In 2009, Hasbro released a 3 ¾ inch action figure of Solo, modeled after his appearance during the events of Traitor, as part of its Legacy Collection.

Solo's childhood is depicted in the Star Wars Tales comic "The Other," which is considered an ambiguously canonical source. However, the timeline presented in the comic is inconsistent with the timeline established by the canonical works Star Wars: Dark Empire and Jedi Search.

Despite the description of Solo having a beard in The New Jedi Order: Destiny's Way and only shaving it off in The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force, all images from that period portray a clean-shaven Jacen Solo. This inconsistency is also present in Dark Nest I: The Joiner King, where Solo is described as sporting a beard, but the Japanese cover art depicts him without one.

In the novel Legacy of the Force: Betrayal, Nelani Dinn states that she received training from Jacen Solo seven years prior to the events of the book. This would place the training in 33 ABY, during the middle of Solo's five-year journey, during which other sources establish that he was completely isolated from his family and the Jedi Order. This discrepancy can be attributed to a failure to correct the reference from "seven" to "ten" when Betrayal was shifted from a 37 ABY setting to 40 ABY. Author Aaron Allston has acknowledged that this shift contributed to at least one other dating error in the novel.

In the online Wizards of the Coast web supplement "Behind the Threat: The Sith, Part 1: Portrayal," Jacen Solo was mistakenly identified as "Jacen Skywalker," but this error was quickly rectified. The comic issue Legacy (2006) 18 contained a misspelling of "Darth Caedus" as "Darth Cadeus," which was corrected in the trade paperback of that arc.

On April 25, 2014, the various stories featuring Jacen Solo were designated as Star Wars Legends and were no longer considered canon to the main Star Wars franchise, in order to pave the way for the sequel trilogy of films. These films introduced a character named Ben Solo, known for a time as Kylo Ren, who shared several similarities with Jacen Solo, including being the son of Han Solo and Leia Skywalker Organa Solo, and temporarily succumbing to the dark side of the Force. Although this meant that Jacen could never appear in this continuity, a character named Jacen Syndulla was created, whose naming Dave Filoni, executive producer of the series Star Wars Rebels, described as being a tribute to the character of Jacen Solo.