Duel on Stygeon Prime

In the years that followed the establishment of the Galactic Empire, the Jedi who had managed to survive Order 66—the directive issued by Darth Sidious, then publicly known as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, commanding the clone troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic to annihilate the Jedi Order before he proclaimed himself Emperor—were systematically pursued and killed as part of the Great Jedi Purge. The Grand Inquisitor was a key figure in this endeavor, tasked by Darth Vader, Sidious' Sith apprentice and Dark Lord of the Sith, with eliminating all surviving Jedi. Among those targeted was Jedi Master Luminara Unduli, a Clone Wars veteran and former member of the Jedi Council. The Inquisitor carried out Unduli's execution within the Spire, a prison facility located on the planet Stygeon Prime. Post-mortem, Unduli's bones were kept within her prison cell, and the lingering Force presence they emitted was used to draw other surviving Jedi to their deaths.

Later, during the Empire's rule, Sidious detected a potential threat in the form of individuals he termed the "children of the Force." Vader subsequently instructed the Inquisitor to locate these individuals and either convert them to the dark side of the Force or eliminate them. Subsequently, Agent Kallus of the Imperial Security Bureau encountered a group of rebels operating in the vicinity of Lothal, a planet situated in the Outer Rim. These rebels launched a mission to liberate Wookiees enslaved by the Empire in the spice mines of Kessel, prompting Kallus to pursue them in an attempt to destroy them. During this operation, Kanan Jarrus, the rebel leader, revealed his identity as a Jedi survivor, while Ezra Bridger, a Lothal street orphan recently integrated into the rebel crew, displayed latent Force abilities. Kallus, deducing their master-apprentice relationship, reported his findings to the Inquisitor, who then orchestrated a trap on Stygeon Prime in an attempt to eliminate them.

Without knowing of the danger posed by the Inquisitor, Jarrus took Bridger as his Padawan and started training him in the Jedi ways. Jarrus, who was a Padawan himself when Order 66 happened and whose training was not finished, felt unsure about his ability to train the boy. Bridger, on the other hand, was still undisciplined and full of doubt. After a failed training session on the Ghost, the rebels' starship, the crew saw a HoloNet News broadcast get cut off by Gall Trayvis, a former member of the Imperial Senate who was secretly working for the ISB as a rebel sympathizer to lure rebel groups into traps. This time, the Inquisitorius used Trayvis to spread the word that Unduli was still alive and being held in the Stygeon system. Jarrus believed this because he had heard rumors about Master Unduli surviving the Clone Wars. The rebels quickly decided to try and save the Jedi Master, and Jarrus hoped she could be a new teacher for his apprentice. The rebels didn't know that the Inquisitor was waiting for them, as the information about Unduli's survival was a trap.

The rebels soon figured out that Unduli was being kept in the Spire, which was the only Imperial prison in the Stygeon system. The crew gathered in the cockpit of the Ghost, where Sabine Wren, a Mandalorian explosives expert, showed a hologram of the prison. She explained that the facility was impossible to get into, that it was blast proof, and that it was protected by ray shields, anti-ship weapons, and TIE/ln space superiority starfighters, and that it would be impossible to break into the main landing platform. Even though they thought the odds were against them, they decided to try the rescue and trick the facility's scanners so they wouldn't see them coming. Once on Stygeon Prime, they planned to sneak into a small entrance guarded by a few stormtroopers, break into the prison, and then go to the isolation cells on the upper levels of the facility, where they would free Unduli before leaving the same way they came in.

With their plan ready, the rebels traveled to Stygeon Prime and entered the atmosphere in the Phantom, an attack shuttle that was part of the Ghost. Their astromech droid, C1-10P, stayed with the Ghost while the rebels went on their mission. The infiltration team included Jarrus, Bridger, Wren, and Garazeb Orrelios, a Lasat rebel. Hera Syndulla, the owner and pilot of the Ghost, stayed with the Phantom. Wren also brought some detonators, which she called "miracles," to use if needed. The shuttle quietly got close to the Spire, where Jarrus jumped out and landed on the small platform in front of the entrance. He started fighting the stormtroopers guarding the entrance. Before being told to join him, Bridger jumped out of the shuttle and landed on the platform, but he stumbled into the door and alerted more soldiers to the rebels' presence because of the noise. Wren and Orrelios came to help Jarrus fight off the remaining stormtroopers, while Bridger used a lockpick to open the door. The rebels went into the Spire after the door was open, while Syndulla attached the Phantom to the side of the prison, turned off its power, and used a jamming signal to avoid being detected by the Empire.

Once inside the prison, Jarrus used the Force and could feel Unduli's presence. Even though he felt it was unclear, he still thought she was alive. Wren learned from a computer terminal that Unduli was being held in isolation on the lower levels. This meant they had to change their plans, because they had thought Unduli was being held in upper-level isolation cells. Jarrus started making a new plan as they took a turbolift to the lower levels. While they were traveling to the lower levels, Syndulla stayed on the Phantom and the sensors detected something coming toward the shuttle. At first, she thought it was a TIE fighter, but then she saw it was a group of creatures called tibidees, who thought the jamming signal was a mating call and were drawn to it. Syndulla knew that the tibidees could attract unwanted attention, so she detached the Phantom from the side of the complex and flew it away from the prison, leading the tibidees away to avoid being detected by the Empire.

The team soon got to the lower levels of the prison. When the lift stopped, Jarrus attacked the stormtroopers guarding it. Bridger was surprised by how intensely Jarrus was fighting, and Jarrus explained that he knew the potential rescue of a Jedi Master was very important, especially if she could teach Bridger. Knowing they would have to escape using the same elevator, Jarrus left Wren and Orrelios to guard it, while he and Bridger went on to the isolation cells. When they got to the cell, Jarrus used a Jedi mind trick to make the stormtroopers guarding it think they were supposed to be guarding the next level. The stormtroopers left, and Jarrus and Bridger went into the cell, where they saw who they thought was Master Unduli. But it was really a recording of the moments before the Inquisitor killed her. The two went closer, but Jarrus could feel that something was wrong. The holographic Unduli stood up and walked over to the wall, where she went through it and into a small chamber. Inside was her visible, decomposing corpse in a sarcophagus.

The Inquisitor came into the cell after Jarrus and Bridger saw the corpse. He turned on his lightsaber and explained that Unduli had died a long time ago but that her bones were still helping the Empire kill the remaining Jedi. Bridger tried to contact the others, but the Imperial forces in the prison were jamming their communications. With no help available, Jarrus attacked the Inquisitor and they started lightsaber combat. The Inquisitor was a better fighter and quickly gained the upper hand over the former Padawan. He figured out that Jarrus was trained by Jedi Master Depa Billaba based on his fighting style. The Inquisitor explained that he had studied the records of the Jedi Temple, where he learned that Billaba was a master of Form III, the lightsaber combat style that Jarrus used a lot. The duel continued inside the cell until Bridger set off one of Wren's "miracles" to blow open the door. Jarrus and Bridger ran from the cell, but the Inquisitor followed them closely. At the turbolift, Wren realized that the Imperial forces were jamming their signal and that the whole mission was a trap, so she and Orrelios had to start thinking of a new escape plan.

Jarrus and the Inquisitor continued their duel in the detention area, where the Inquisitor tried to use his better combat skills to convince Bridger to join the dark side of the Force. Bridger, who had never heard of the dark side before, instead tried to attack the Inquisitor with his energy slingshot, but the Inquisitor used the Force to push him down the cell block. Back in the lift, Wren and Orrelios sent an empty elevator to the upper levels, tricking the stormtroopers waiting for them into thinking the rebels were coming back. The stormtroopers shot at the empty lift before realizing there was no one there, and then they went into the elevator. When they did, one of the detonators exploded, destroying the lift and the stormtroopers. Wren disabled the other lifts into the detonation area, which would give the rebels some time but would also make them find a new way to escape.

The Inquisitor, trying to make his opponents angry, told Jarrus to give up for Bridger's sake. Jarrus refused, and the Inquisitor threw him down the cell block with the Force. The Inquisitor tried again to turn Bridger, but the boy refused and the Inquisitor attacked him. As the Jedi hunter was about to strike the Padawan down, Jarrus used the Force to pin the Inquisitor to the ceiling, giving Bridger a chance to escape. The Inquisitor landed back on the floor after Jarrus let go of his telepathic hold. As the rebels started to run away, the hunter turned on a setting on his double-bladed lightsaber that made it spin on a disc, which made the fight even more dangerous. After he did this, the rebels ran away, going through the halls of the prison before meeting up with Wren and Orrelios.

As they were escaping, the Inquisitor followed the rebels throughout the prison. Wren told Jarrus that their new exit was the landing platform, which they had rejected before, but it was now their only option. As the Inquisitor chased the rebels, he ordered the prison to be locked down, which made the doors in the halls start to close. The rebels were able to avoid him, and Orrelios held one of the doors open long enough for the rebels to get through, trapping the Inquisitor on the other side. The Inquisitor used his lightsaber to start cutting through the door while the rebels went inside the landing pad, closing another door behind them and shooting the controls to stop the Inquisitor from opening it from a console. Wren tried to open the main landing bay door but couldn't, so Bridger tried to pick the lock, but it caused an electrical surge that shocked him and stopped him from opening the door. At Jarrus' command, he and Bridger used the Force together to lift the landing bay door.

The door opened, showing many stormtroopers on the other side. The stormtroopers started shooting right away, and Orrelios threw one last "miracle," which exploded and killed many of the Imperial soldiers. The rebels went onto the landing platform and fought the stormtroopers there, while Wren contacted Syndulla to tell her they were ready to be picked up. The Phantom arrived quickly, along with a "fleet" of tibidees who attacked the firing stormtroopers. The rebels ran toward the Phantom as the Inquisitor broke through the doors. As the rebels were almost at the shuttle, the Inquisitor threw his lightsaber at them, which Jarrus deflected with his own. The rebels finally got on the Phantom and flew away from the prison, having escaped even though their mission to rescue Master Unduli had failed.

After the mission, HoloNet News broadcasted that Master Unduli had been killed by the rebels while traveling to testify before the Imperial Senate. But the broadcast was interrupted by another transmission from Gall Trayvis, who claimed to urge Imperial citizens not to believe the Empire's version of events and to remember Unduli. The rebels still didn't know about Trayvis and what he was really doing. The Phantom left Stygeon Prime and met up with the Ghost, which then returned to Lothal and landed there. Once on Lothal, Jarrus said that he didn't want to leave Bridger as a student, but he just doubted his own ability to teach the boy. However, they both agreed to be less doubtful about their training together in the future.

Later, Bridger infiltrated the Academy for Young Imperials on Lothal to find out where a large Imperial kyber crystal of great power was located, which the rebels wanted to destroy. He found the information, but he also learned that the Inquisitor was taking students who were thought to be Force-sensitive. These students were later only known to have disappeared from the Academy. He and one of the Force-sensitive students, Jai Kell, escaped, and the Inquisitor recognized Bridger—who had been pretending to be a cadet—as the Padawan he had met on Stygeon Prime. He questioned another cadet, Zare Leonis, about what he knew about the rebels. The rebels met the Inquisitor again on the fifteenth anniversary of the Empire's rise, and he confronted Jarrus and Bridger on Fort Anaxes, where Bridger used the dark side to help them escape. Because of these encounters and the danger posed by the Inquisitor, the Jedi hunter became something that Bridger feared, seeing him as someone who could kill his friends and leave him alone again, like he had been as an orphan on Lothal. To move forward in his Jedi training, Bridger had to overcome that fear. Once he did, he was able to get a kyber crystal and build his own lightsaber.

The rebels eventually found out that Trayvis was an Imperial agent. He sent another message saying he wanted to meet the rebels at the Lothal City Capitol Building on Lothal, but the meeting was a trap set by Agent Kallus. The rebels escaped, and Trayvis—his cover blown—appeared on HoloNet News denouncing the so-called violence of the rebels.

The mission to save Luminara Unduli was the main story of "Rise of the Old Masters," the third episode of the first season of the animated TV show Star Wars Rebels. The mission, which was first shown in the reference book Star Wars Rebels: The Visual Guide by Adam Bray, was also turned into the chapter book Droids in Distress by Michael Kogge and The Inquisitor's Trap by Meredith Rusu. The mission let the creative team use the Spire on screen. The prison had been made for a story arc in the animated TV show Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but the episodes were never finished because the show was canceled. The episodes were turned into the comic book series Star Wars: Darth Maul—Son of Dathomir, in which the Spire appeared in the first issue, but the mission in "Rise of the Old Masters" was its first time being shown on screen. Some concept art for the mission, like the Phantom attached to the side of the prison, was submitted on October 10, 2013.

Dave Filoni, the executive producer of Star Wars Rebels, said that the mission was a way to tell a story about what happened to some of the Jedi who didn't die right away when Order 66 was carried out. It also let the show, which is heavily influenced by the original trilogy, connect to the prequel trilogy and to The Clone Wars. The team chose Luminara Unduli as the Jedi the rebels wanted to save because the audience of The Clone Wars knew her. Filoni said that by using a character that people already knew for the mission, the show was able to show what the Empire destroyed and how "it destroyed a lot of these characters" that audiences knew.