The first original Star Wars canon manga keeps improving with The Edge of Balance: Precedent (which is basically Volume 3). In this story, Star Wars uses flashbacks and a few species with long lifespans to fill in the gaps in Master Arkoff’s past.
The last we saw of Master Arkoff was in The Edge of Balance Volume 1 on Starlight Beacon with Stellan Gios. I had mentioned Arkoff as one of the Jedi who might have been on Starlight when it went down.
**Spoilers for The Edge of Balance Vol. 2 and The Edge of Balance: Precedent, The Fallen Star, and The Path of Deceit**
The Story
We’re coming to take you away.
They’ll do what they can,
They’ll do what they must.
But when they do find you,
All you’ll be is dust.
The Edge of Balance: Precedent
The Edge of Balance: Precedent picks up where The Edge of Balance Volume 2 left off from the Nihil perspective. Marchion Ro arrives on Banchii looking for something the Nihil soldiers have yet to find. Enter the Harch bounty hunter, Vol Garat, who clarifies that he doesn’t respect the Nihil or Marchion Ro. And Garat is the only one in the group that knows what the object they seek looks like. Ro lets Harch take the lead in the search with a warning: he is only valuable if he finds the item. When the group reaches the destroyed Jedi Temple, they find a ZZ-Model droid atop a box. Garat recognizes the droid and asks him why the Wookiee Jedi buried him all those years ago.
We then flashback to The Battle of Dalna (The Night of Sorrow) when Garat worked with the Path of the Open Hand. During the battle, Jedi Arkoff, his Master Ravna, and Jedi Azlin Rell encounter the Nameless. Ravna disappears into the Dalna caves to face the unknown presence, leaving her lightsaber. Rell is found alive but repeats the rhyme first mentioned in Trail of Shadows, “Shrii Ka Rai.”
Because Master Ravna tells Arkoff that the moment a Jedi lets go of their lightsaber is the moment they’ve lost, Arkoff believes Ravna is dead. He buries her lightsaber and leaves Dalna to the irritation of ZZ.
Unbeknownst to Arkoff, Garat witnessed their encounter and became obsessed with discovering what could bring a Jedi to their knees.
Garat’s pursuit leads him to Jedi Azin Rell, and Arkoff and ZZ must work together to protect the Jedi driven to madness and keep an item from falling into enemy hands.
The story is told from the perspective of ZZ during Phase One, focusing on the chaos in the aftermath of The Battle of Dalna.
The Jedi Order still is not aligned on what is attacking the Jedi and, with Ravna’s disappearance/presumed death, thinks that Rell is suffering from trauma. They certainly do not believe Arkoff’s story of what he saw.
The story’s star is the visuals, specifically portraying Rell’s constant fear. They show that even though he escaped the Nameless, he is forever changed.
The Characters
It is no small feat to introduce a character, take them on a compelling arc, and make readers look forward to seeing them again. ZZ’s bond with Master Ravna is strong enough that the droid is in denial that she is dead and despises Arkoff for leaving her behind. Because ZZ is a droid, he is just as confused as Garat about what happened. However, unlike the Jedi Order, ZZ accepts Arkoff’s story and helps the Jedi speak to Rell to try and find answers.
ZZ is an excellent addition to the growing number of droids we sympathize with through their attachments.
Arkoff continues to show the difficulty in having Wookiee main characters, where you constantly have to have other people restate what they say for translation. It works better on the page than on the screen, but most of his panels are pure visual storytelling where the Wookiee reacts to what he sees, so it works overall. We do not learn more about Arkoff, only how he impacted others around him during Phase Two.
And because he teams up with ZZ to investigate (much like Emerick Caphtor and Sian Holt in Trail of Shadows), the droid sees how others treat Arkoff. Garat constantly refers to him as a hairy beast. He resents Arkoff by interrupting a battle between him and Ravna, whom he deems a more worthy Jedi opponent.
Garat, an apex predator, views the Jedi as his ultimate nemesis and takes Rell almost as a trophy to learn more about what happened. Luckily, Rell retains enough of his senses to recognize when Arkoff is in trouble and saves him.
Everything with Azlin Rell is simultaneously heartbreaking and the best thing in this story. Rell was the Jedi to discover the remains of Padawan Kevmo Zink and Master Zallah Macri in Path of Deceit, so to have him succumb to the Nameless in a different but equally devastating way is hard to watch. However, it is the best portrayal thus far of what the Nameless does to the mind of a Jedi (even better than Marvel’s The High Republic with Keeve Trennis). Perhaps everything is more disturbing in black and white (is that blood dripping from Rell’s eyes or something else?), but nothing is more terrifying than being trapped in one’s own mind. And Rell’s story is incomplete at the end of this story. Just like Ravna, he disappears from his room one day, but it does not take away from this volume being a complete story. There are other questions posed that need answers in future High Republic stories.
Canon Contributions
Azlin Rell and his journal could be the key to understanding the meaning behind “Shrii Ka Rai.” Now, it is back in the hands of Master Arkoff and Master Sav Malagán. The journal’s contents are essential enough for Marchion Ro to be involved in its retrieval. Is it another key to defeating the Nameless, or does he just want to confiscate the Jedi’s documentation of its existence?
ZZ differs from the Legends ZZ model, and his design resembles the native Banchiian species. Another droid model beginning with Z, ZN-A4, was recently introduced in Jedi: Survivor and also is from The High Republic era. There is probably no significance to this, but it is great to see the droid designs are so different from the modern Star Wars timeline. Sometimes Star Wars struggles with conveying that in technology, but the High Republic continues to have a strong identity in look and feel.
Although The Edge of Balance kicked off with a lackluster first volume, switching up writers and story leads has worked for this series. If it can stick the landing with Volume 4, it will be one of the strongest contained stories in The High Republic.
Credits and Canon 