In the year 19 BBY, near the conclusion of the Clone Wars, Ahsoka Tano, along with sisters Trace and Rafa Martez, made their getaway from the planet Oba Diah. This escape was necessitated by their having provoked the ire of the Pyke Syndicate. Pyke leader Marg Krim had previously hired Rafa to transport a spice shipment from Kessel to Oba Diah. However, the original pilot backed out, forcing Rafa to enlist her younger sister Trace and Trace's untested, self-built vessel, the Silver Angel. Trace then extended an invitation to her new acquaintance, the former Jedi Padawan Tano, concealing both her history and her Force powers, to join them on their journey. However, a disagreement arose when Tano discovered the true nature of their mission and the identity of Rafa's client. This led Trace, fearing the loss of her starship, to impulsively jettison the spice into hyperspace. Consequently, the three young women found themselves indebted to a dangerous criminal organization. Tano devised a desperate scheme to deceive Krim, subtly employing a mind trick to enable their departure with payment. However, Krim's majordomo, Fife, proved resistant to such manipulation and orchestrated their capture upon discovering the crates were empty. Now prisoners of the Pykes, Tano, Rafa, and Trace attempted to break free. After a chase through the city surrounding the High fortress of the Pyke Syndicate, they were recaptured. However, their actions attracted the attention of Mandalorian warrior Bo-Katan Kryze and her Nite Owls, who were surveying the area. Kryze, recognizing Tano from a previous encounter on Carlac, considered her a potentially valuable ally, given their shared adversary.
Tano created an opportunity for the sisters to escape by feigning a desire to negotiate a deal with Krim independently. She claimed that the sisters had concealed the spice offworld and could retrieve it, threatening retaliation against their family if they failed, Krim being unaware that the sisters had no living relatives. Rafa, moved by this act, conceived a plan to steal spice from the Pykes' loading docks to provide to the Pykes in exchange for Tano's freedom. Meanwhile, during her attempt to escape the stronghold and sabotage their spice refining operation, Tano uncovered the Pykes' affiliation with the Sith Lord Darth Maul. Upon Tano's subsequent recapture, Krim and Fife realized she was a Force-user and presumed she was a Republic agent working undercover for the Jedi and the Galactic Republic. When the sisters returned to rescue her, the three managed to escape Oba Diah once more, though the truth about Tano's past was revealed to the Martezes. Tano believed the sisters were safe from retaliation due to her apparent status as a Republic operative. However, upon their return to Coruscant, Kryze, who had followed them from the Outer Rim, immediately recruited Tano to assist in confronting Maul.
Early in the Clone Wars, Ahsoka Tano became the Padawan of Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker. However, she grew disillusioned with the Jedi Order after being falsely accused of treason by her former friend and fellow Padawan Barriss Offee. Despite being exonerated and offered Knighthood after her trial, Tano declined the offer and chose to leave the Order permanently. Tano spent some time wandering the city planet of Coruscant, eventually acquiring a dilapidated Joben T-85 speeder bike. A malfunction caused the bike to plummet through an underworld portal down to Level 1313, where she crash-landed on the landing platform of a repair shop owned by Trace Martez. Tano quickly formed a friendship with Trace, but her older sister Rafa Martez, a cynical gambler, remained suspicious of Tano's motives, suspecting she was being used. After assisting Trace in apprehending a runaway Type II loadlifter droid that Rafa had been commissioned to build, Tano was invited to stay as long as needed. She accepted when Trace asked for help testing her self-built starship, the Silver Angel. Tano chose to conceal her past, providing vague explanations about her background and skills, and avoiding the use of her Force powers to avoid suspicion.
Rafa, constantly seeking credits to settle debts from various schemes, accepted a job to transport spice from Kessel to Oba Diah for Marg Krim, the leader of the Pyke Syndicate. Despite Trace's aspirations to be a pilot, Rafa knew that Trace's skills were "more of a dream than a reality" and her ship was untested. Therefore, Rafa initially hired a pilot and crew. However, when the pilot withdrew, Rafa was forced to rely on Trace and the Silver Angel due to time constraints. Rafa, suspicious of Tano's (nonexistent) ulterior motives, doubted the Togruta's explanation that she was simply trying to help and protect both sisters.
Rafa kept the job's location secret from Tano. Trace, unaware of Coruscant's upper-level traffic regulations, flew the ship into restricted military airspace, passing a Venator-class Star Destroyer commanded by Skywalker. Sensing his former apprentice aboard the freighter, Skywalker allowed them to pass, and the Silver Angel entered hyperspace using coordinates programmed by Rafa. Upon arriving at their destination, Tano was dismayed to discover they were at Kessel, infamous for its spice mines. At Kessel Castle, they were greeted by Kinash Lock, majordomo of King Yaruba, and invited to a feast. While Trace was excited, Tano was skeptical, noting that spice could be refined into more than just medicine. After the meal, Trace flew the Silver Angel to the mining zone, ignoring Tano's warnings about the dangers of flying spice. The spice was loaded, and the Silver Angel departed for Oba Diah.
Before Tano left the Jedi, the Pyke Syndicate had willingly joined the Shadow Collective, a criminal organization formed by the Sith Lord Darth Maul. Maul and his allies, the Mandalorian faction Death Watch, had coerced the Hutt clans and Black Sun into joining. Maul, rescued by Death Watch after his escape pod was found adrift, convinced their leader, Pre Vizsla, that an army of criminals could overthrow the New Mandalorians ruling Mandalore under Duchess Satine Kryze.
Vizsla and his lieutenant Bo-Katan, Satine's estranged sister, planned to betray Maul after he served his purpose. Vizsla only wanted to rule Mandalore and had been betrayed by Sith before when they allied with Count Dooku, leader of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. However, Maul and his apprentice Savage Opress used the crime syndicates to create chaos, allowing Death Watch to be hailed as heroes for "saving" Mandalore. Maul then turned on Vizsla, recruiting deposed Prime Minister Almec as a puppet ruler. Maul challenged Vizsla to a duel for leadership, defeating him and beheading him with the Darksaber, a symbol of Mandalorian leadership. Bo-Katan refused to accept this and formed her own faction of Death Watch, the Nite Owls. As a civil war erupted, Maul focused on avenging himself on his old enemy, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, by luring him to Mandalore and forcing him to witness Satine's murder. However, Maul's actions attracted the attention of his former master Darth Sidious, publicly known as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine of the Galactic Republic, who feared the events on Mandalore could disrupt his plans. Sidious traveled to Mandalore, fought Maul and Savage in a duel, killing Savage and imprisoning Maul in a Separatist prison called the Spire. This removed Maul from power, causing the Shadow Collective factions to feud.
The Shadow Collective briefly collapsed due to Sidious and Dooku's manipulations, causing the Pykes to withdraw their support. However, Maul regained power and reformed the Collective, placing the Pykes back under his control. Maul was unimpressed by Krim's perceived incompetence and pressured him to continue supplying spice as part of his plans. The loss of a spice shipment to Galactic Republic authorities further diminished the Pykes in Maul's eyes and increased the pressure on them.
During their journey from Kessel to Oba Diah, Rafa revealed Krim's identity as her client. When Tano recognized him and knew about the Pykes' activities, Rafa demanded to know how Tano knew so much, Tano answering that she paid attention to the world around her. Tano suggested delivering the spice to a place where it would be used for medicine instead of drugs, warning Trace that the Pykes were dangerous gangsters who might seize her ship. As Tano and Rafa argued, Trace, fearing the loss of her ship, impulsively dumped the spice into hyperspace. However, Tano and Rafa agreed that this was a disastrous decision, leaving them indebted to a galactic crime syndicate with limited options. Trace became distressed when Rafa suggested giving the Silver Angel to the Pykes to settle their debt. As the argument continued, Tano devised a risky plan, insisting it would work due to undisclosed tricks.
Upon arriving at Oba Diah, the Silver Angel docked at the Pyke Palace, where they were met by Krim, his majordomo Fife, and a squad of Pyke guards. Rafa introduced herself, but Krim insisted on inspecting the cargo before payment. Tano used a mind trick to change his mind, and Rafa took the credits as the young women returned to their ship, offloading the containers. Trace had Tano go and warm up the engines. Fife, more perceptive than his master, grew suspicious and demanded the code to open the crates. Rafa claimed it must have been transmitted already and began closing the cargo bay door. Fife shot open a container, finding it empty and dismissing Rafa's claim that Kessel had scammed them. The girls attempted to escape, but Pyke patrol ships surrounded the Silver Angel, capturing it with tractor beams.
The three young women were imprisoned in a cell within the Pyke Palace, where they argued about their predicament. Rafa, refusing to accept blame and angered by Tano's ethical lectures, revealed that she distrusted the Jedi and "topsiders" because the Jedi were involved in her parents' deaths: during the escape of Ziro Desilijic Tiure, a red-eyed alien protecting the gangster had shot out the engine of a transport ship, which the Jedi had diverted into the portal wall so it wouldn't crash into a crowded landing platform. However, the Martez family's home had been on the other side of the wall, and Trace and Rafa's parents died getting them out. The Jedi who came to speak to them afterwards had offered condolences, but she had come off as patronizing to the sisters, who were not given any other form of help. Horrified, Tano resolved to conceal her Force powers further. Pyke guards took Rafa away for interrogation, where a torture droid repeatedly shocked her after she tried to convince it they had been cheated on Kessel. In the cell, Trace confided in Tano that Rafa's distrustful lifestyle was not how their mother had raised them. When Rafa was returned barely conscious, Trace demanded to know what the guards had done and was dragged away as well. Reaching the torture chamber, Trace pretended to faint before grabbing a blaster from a guard and fighting her way out, pursued by the remaining guard.
Rushing back to rescue Tano and Rafa, Trace collided with a guard in front of a cell holding two other prisoners, an Ithorian and a Weequay. The Weequay urged Trace to release them, and while being seized by the guard, she managed to hit the door release button with her foot. The Ithorian surged out, grabbing the guard as he dropped Trace, who reclaimed her stolen blaster. With more guards approaching, the Ithorian threw the guard at his fellows as he and his cellmate went to fight the guards. Trace continued to her friends.
Back in their cell, Tano used telekinesis to open the cell door, taking advantage of the guards' distraction by the ongoing escape and Rafa's unconsciousness. When she woke Rafa, the young woman yelled that she didn't know where the spice was before realizing her surroundings. Noticing the open door, Rafa asked how Tano had managed that, and Tano claimed a power outage had opened the door and deactivated the force field. Rafa quipped that it was about time the girls had some luck. Fleeing the area, Rafa bumped into Trace at an intersection, and as Tano helped her up, the sisters exclaimed that they had both been heading to rescue the other. As the two began to argue about which direction they should go while guards approached, Tano proclaimed herself the "tiebreaker" and dragged them both in one direction. The trio managed to flee through a blast door as it closed ahead of the guards. Running outside, the girls knocked over barrels of explosive fuel to block their pursuers. When the guards emerged, Trace engaged in a shootout, ending it by shooting one of the barrels, causing an explosion that eliminated that group of guards. As the trio ran onto a bridge, Tano used the Force to pull down a stack of crates to block their path. As Rafa approached the other side of the bridge, it began to retract, but she jumped the gap. Trace and Tano hesitated before Trace jumped. Tano surreptitiously used the Force to propel Trace forward, allowing her to grab the other side, where Rafa helped her up. Rafa, thinking Tano was stuck, tried to convince Trace to abandon her, arguing that the Togruta would never make it. However, using a running start, Tano easily cleared the gap with a Force jump, landing behind the sisters. Rafa and Trace initially assumed Tano had fallen to her doom, and were surprised when she revealed her presence. Tano attributed her feat to being "more athletic" than she looked, and although Rafa was skeptical, blaster fire from approaching guards forced the trio to flee before she could ask any questions.
Heading towards the gate, Rafa struggled with a guard while trying to seize his stun baton, leading to the guard's death when he was crushed between the lift platform and the stair structure after Trace and Tano grabbed a hold of Rafa. Rafa wondered why the Pykes were trying so hard to capture them, and Tano suggested it was to uphold their reputation, unaware of the Pykes' involvement with Maul and his Shadow Collective. On Rafa's suggestion, the sisters distracted the guards while Tano climbed to the guardhouse to open the gate.