Nightsisters

A prevalent narrative suggests that the initial Nightsisters received instruction in the Force from Allya, a female Jedi exiled to the enigmatic planet of Dathomir by the Jedi Council as a form of exile. However, the Jedi Council lacked records of an exile named Allya, and the Nightsisters themselves told different stories about their origins. Regardless of whether Allya founded the sisterhood, she did author the Book of Law, instilling in the sisters a disdain for the Jedi. Furthermore, the Dathomirian people maintained connections to Peridea, an extragalactic planet and the former site of the Witch Kingdom of the Dathmiri, considered their original homeworld. The ancient Dathomiri mastered the Purrgil, creatures capable of navigating hyperspace, thus bridging the distance between Peridea's galaxy and Dathomir's galaxy. The Great Mothers, three Nightsisters in slumber on Peridea, shared this animosity towards the Jedi.

When the Fromprath arrived on Dathomir, they began exploiting the planet's natural wealth. The Nightsisters resisted this technological encroachment, forging a cooperative bond with the rancors to expel the colonizers. Riding them into battle, they successfully drove the colonizers from Dathomirian soil. Recognizing the threat posed by technologically advanced outsiders to their covens, the Nightsisters modernized some of their weaponry, including their energy bows.

Legend states that the Nightsister Zeldin pursued the Sith Darth Caldoth after he pilfered a burial pod from Dathomir. Zeldin attempted to manipulate Caldoth into bringing about his own demise as revenge, but Caldoth was aware of Zeldin's presence, exploiting their connection before trapping her consciousness within his mind. Though more commonly associated with the Jedi, the Nightsisters had adopted lightwhips by the High Republic Era. In 232 BBY, Jedi Padawan Imri Cantaros mused on the Nightsisters' comparatively fewer restrictions and their creative, destructive tendencies.

There was a time known as the Golden Age of the Nightsisters. The clan thrived and the distinct Nightsister clans existed peacefully. However, the era nearly ended as the clans grew apart. However, the strong will of new Clan Mother Talzin held the clans together, uniting them into a single clan. During this period, Talzin collaborated with Sith Lord Darth Sidious. Despite her growing wariness of such schemes, aware of the inherent conflict between two powerful dark side factions due to the Rule of Two, Sidious promised her the position of his right hand. They shared secret knowledge and sought to merge dark side powers with Nightsister magick. Ultimately, however, he betrayed Talzin by seizing her eldest son, Maul, to train as his Sith apprentice. By the time of the Clone Wars, Talzin began offering her sisters' services as mercenaries to the galaxy's affluent inhabitants.

In 50 BBY, the clan was compelled to surrender the young Asajj Ventress to the Siniteen criminal Hal'Sted as collateral for protection.

Other witch factions on Dathomir included the Singing Mountain and Blue Coral Divers Clan. A few years prior to the Clone Wars, Talzin requested that the clanless witch Falta relinquish her daughter, Yenna. Falta refused, and Yenna gradually grew dissatisfied with her mother's teachings, eventually departing to join the Nightsisters in search of alternative instruction. The Nightsisters became entangled in Arzo Suun's attempt to steal from a Nightbrother village.

Ventress later sought refuge with her people after Count Dooku's betrayal, seeking their assistance in avenging herself against her former Master. Following the failure of their initial attempt, the Nightsisters manipulated the Nightbrother Savage Opress, Talzin’s youngest son and Maul’s brother, as a tool to destroy Dooku. They amplified his size, rage, and strength through their magic. However, this scheme incurred Dooku's wrath, leading him to dispatch General Grievous to Dathomir in retaliation. The witches also posed a threat to Sidious' new evil Empire and thus were a target he wanted destroyed. Grievous subsequently obliterated their fortress and decimated the majority of the Nightsisters during the battle, effectively ending the Nightsisters as a civilization. The few survivors included Ventress, Talzin, Merrin, Yenna, Jerserra, Shelish, and Morgan Elsbeth.

While Ventress pursued a career as a bounty hunter, Mother Talzin remained in seclusion within the ruined fortress, aiding in the restoration of her eldest son, Darth Maul's, fractured mind and body. She orchestrated the kidnapping of Bardottan Queen Julia to amplify her power beyond that of the Jedi and Sith. However, her plan was thwarted by Jedi Master Mace Windu and Representative Jar Jar Binks, causing her to retreat to the spirit realm. Maul and Talzin plotted to eliminate Darth Sidious and Count Dooku, but Talzin was killed in the ensuing confrontation. Concurrently, Ventress partnered with Jedi Master Quinlan Vos in a final assassination attempt against Dooku, seemingly sacrificing herself to protect Vos, her newfound lover, from the Count. However, Ventress was alive and continued her bounty hunter life into the Imperial Era.

Following the end of the Clone Wars, the Nightsisters' massacre at the hands of Grievous and Dooku became widely known, leaving only a handful of Nightsisters, such as Merrin. However, as the Nightbrothers weren't wiped out. Merrin would take them as her servants and they took control of Dathomir during the age of the Empire.

Despite Grievous's assault marking the end of the Nightsisters, groups of Force users persisted on Dathomir during the Imperial Era, continuing to use the name, like the Nardithi Nightsisters. These groups remained a concern for Sidious, who tasked a small garrison of the Imperial Military with reporting any attempts to leave the planet. At some point, a female Inquisitor discovered [Jerserra](/article/jerserra], a member of the Nardithi Nightsisters, and took her as an apprentice. However, years later, Jerserra betrayed her master, concealed her death, and claimed her double-bladed spinning lightsaber. Eventually, the Nardithi Nightsisters and similar groups vanished from Dathomir.

Elsbeth was consumed by rage over the massacre of her people during the Clone Wars. Fueled by this anger, she amassed the Imperial Navy by stripping worlds of their resources, seeking the power to secure her future and avenge herself on her enemies. In 9 ABY, former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano recounted the story of Elsbeth's people to the Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin in 9 ABY.

In 14 BBY, Merrin joined the crew of the Stinger Mantis, consisting of Jedi Knight Cal Kestis, former Knight Cere Junda, the latero pilot Captain Greez Dritus, and the droid BD-1, departing Dathomir with them to explore the galaxy.

In 2 BBY, Maul and Ezra Bridger summoned two Nightsister spirits to exchange information gleaned from merging a Sith and Jedi holocron. However, the spirits demanded flesh and blood as payment. The Nightsister spirits attacked and possessed Bridger’s Master Kanan Jarrus and Sabine Wren. Together they fought Maul and Bridger. Maul abandoned the fight, but Bridger continued fighting. Bridger spoke with the Nightsister that possessed Kanan. The Nightsister told Bridger that Maul promised flesh and blood to rebuild the Nightsister clan. However, Bridger destroyed the altar, the source of the Nightsisters' power, causing the spirits to vanish. By this time, with Maul's impending death, Dathomir was considered a lifeless world, devoid of both Nightsisters and any other civilization.

By the [Galactic Civil War](/article/galactic_civil_war], Shelish was among the few known surviving Nightsisters. During the lockdown of the Anoat sector between 4 and 5 ABY, she imparted the ways of the Force to a smuggler from Burnin Konn, who ultimately rose to lead the Uprising.

Before the time of the New Republic, Elsbeth, who became a servant of Grand Admiral Thrawn after joining the Empire, seized control of Calodan on the forest planet Corvus and Djarin speculated she was plundering the planet like she did for the other systems in her control for the Empire. Working together, Djarin and Tano liberated Calodan and Tano demanded her to reveal where Thrawn was. Elsbeth was then taken into the custody of the New Republic, where she revealed the location of an ancient temple built by her people on Arcana containing a map to Peridea, a planet in a distant galaxy which was the ancient homeworld of the Nightsisters, and the place of exile for Thrawn. The map was recovered by Tano and unlocked by Wren. Elsbeth was freed from New Republic imprisonment by former Jedi Knight Baylan Skoll and his apprentice Shin Hati, and the map was taken from Sabine in a duel with Shin. Using her influence with Imperial loyalists at her former shipyard on Corellia, Elsbeth had ordered the construction of a massive hyperspace transport ring called the Eye of Sion, which was completed shortly after her escape from the New Republic.

Morgan and her allies used the Eye to jump to Peridea with coordinates gained from the map, using a reflex point on the planet Seatos. At Peridea, Elsbeth and Thrawn were reunited at a Nightsister fortress and it was revealed he allied himself with the Dathomiri Great Mothers. In preparation for the journey back, mysterious coffin-like, cargo was loaded onto the Chimaera from the catacombs. Bridger, Wren, and Tano stormed the fortress in an attempt to stop Thrawn's return. A unit of resurrected Night Troopers and Elsbeth, who was reinstated back into the Nightsisters wielding Talzin’s sword and empowered with the magick of the Great Mothers, were able to suppress the attack long enough for Thrawn to dock with the Eye of Sion and escape Peridea. In the process, Bridger stowed away on the Star Destroyer so he could join the New Republic to stop Thrawn for good and Elsbeth was slain by Tano. Upon their return to the galaxy, Thrawn and the Great Mothers traveled to Dathomir with their cargo.

By channeling the magical ichor flowing from Dathomir's core, the witches could command a power they termed "magick." The most skilled Nightsisters could employ this ichor to conjure objects from nothing, transform individuals into spectral reflections of themselves, or even reanimate the dead. They were also known to tame benign rancors.

While the Jedi and Sith might categorize their abilities as originating from the dark side of the force, the Nightsisters' approach diverged from the Sith's pursuit of power and the Jedi Order's quest for knowledge. In reality, they recognized little distinction between the light and the dark, although their methods often leaned towards darkness. Nightsisters' viewed everything such as animals, weapons like the energy bows, and even the Nightbrothers as tools to ensure their clan's ultimate survival and would bend or discard such tools without remorse, pity, and regret. Because of this mindset, they could avoid the passions and rage that swayed the Sith while wielding powers a Jedi withheld tapping into.

Some Nightsisters revered the Winged Goddess, a deity of life, fertility, and divination, while others venerated the Fanged God, a deity of death and the hunt. The Nightsisters did not celebrate death, but did not fear it and saw it as a part of life, with the divide being a veil that they would all eventually pass through.

Most Nightsisters were Dathomirian, but members of other species, such as the human Morgan Elsbeth, could be part of the coven. Several studies indicated that the Nightsisters were a peaceful tribe who lived in harmony with their planet, but this was not true. The Nightsisters of Dathomir resided in the isolation of a stone fortress bordering dense swamplands. As a matriarchal society, the sisterhood lived separately from the men of Dathomir, the Nightbrothers, whose sole purpose was to serve the sisters as laborers and breeders. Nightsisters were known to have less rules than Jedi.

Nightsister ranks included Nightsister acolyte and the ruling Clan Mother. The Nightsisters mummified their dead before placing them in pods of animal skin decorated with tassels, which were hung on structures made of branches, bones, animal skins, and shells. Their graveyards mimicked the configuration of the plant life seen on Dathomir, with its crooked trees burdened by large, cocoon-like fruits.

Prior to interring dead Nightsisters in burial pods, the Nightsisters undertook a series of steps to prepare a funeral. When using cloth for burial pods, the cloth was washed in magickal water. Then, the cloth was hand-braided together while Nightsisters recited a spell of protection. Finally, the bodies were cleansed with fragrant oils and placed in the newly created burial pod and mummified.

The Nightsisters, recognized as formidable Force wielders, are known to wield different powers compared to other force wielders derived from incantations and spells. While rumors persisted about them being powerful, only strong leaders within the Nightsisters had power that could contend with fully trained Jedi Masters or Sith Lords.

As young initiates, Nightsister witches undergo training as children to master their power over magick. Young women aspiring to join the ranks of the Nightsisters first had to use the Dark side to subdue a powerful, strong-willed creature living in the depths of the pools in the village known as the Sleeper, and bring back a part of its body. The harvested remains would then be converted into the Water of Life, a major component of Nightsister magicks. Any initiate who gave into their fear, such as Talia's twin sister, would be dragged down into the depths and killed. An important component of training was that a Nightsister had to master their power without losing control and giving into the dark side completely.

Years before they were wiped out, the Nightsisters practiced their magick inside the Witches Horn, a cliff high above the cave of the chirodactyl Gorgara. A Nightsister there made potions and elixirs. Some were medicine, while others were poisons. The Nightsisters also used spells once intended to help plants and animals thrive, to create incantations of dark magic that gave supernatural strength to their best warriors, imbuing them with ichor.

The Nightsisters were the creation of Dave Wolverton, debuting in his Star Wars Legends 1994 novel, The Courtship of Princess Leia. Within Legends, they are portrayed as a splinter group of the native Witches of Dathomir, descendants of the fallen Jedi Allya, and featured in numerous Legends works. Wolverton himself mentioned in an interview his intention to establish a set of influential female characters within the Star Wars universe, which had been predominantly male at the time, and expressed satisfaction that George Lucas adopted the concept for Darth Maul's backstory.

George Lucas later decided to integrate them in his TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars after he saw Lucasfilm Animation Singapore's use of the Nightsisters in the video game Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance (2008), and how they were inspired by a concept art by Iain McCaig for The Phantom Menace. They were first introduced in the current canon with the twelfth episode of the third season, "Nightsisters," aired on January 7, 2011. Tricia Barr, who authored the 2018 reference book Star Wars: The Dark Side, inferred from source material that the Nightsisters possessed sufficient magick and technology to reproduce without the need for Nightbrothers.

Morgan Elsbeth first appeared in "Chapter 13: The Jedi," portrayed by Diana Lee Inosanto, where it was stated that her "people" were massacred during the Clone Wars. Inosanto's hairstylist, Maria Sandoval, indicated on her Instagram that Elsbeth's people were the Nightsisters. This was confirmed in "Part One: Master and Apprentice."