•Kelif proves himself a hero to the Jedi.
•Ras comes saber-to-saber with one of the most powerful Sith in the galaxy.
•Lyta talks a Sith into renouncing the dark side, but still walks a fine line herself.
•Despite his new identity, Yvegeny finds it hard to stay discreet, giving Ras plenty to be frustrated about.
•Upon arriving at Naboo, the Raraza is attacked by Mandalorians swearing allegiance to a new Mandalore, and the crew finds itself stuck in an unfamiliar place.
The party hauls Cariaga Sin to the Jedi Temple to keep her in custody until she can be interrogated, and meets up with Kelif, who is keeping up his live fire exercises with the Jedi apprentices. Yvegeny and Kelif meet for the first time, and though Kelif doesn't sense Yvegeny is Kazbich, he thinks there's definitely something wrong with him. The Jedi also bring back Neyeria's body for a traditional Jedi cremation, but Lyta avoids attending the ceremony, preferring to work at the clinic with Oro instead. Yvegeny gets to work on the HK-48 unit he recovered from facing Cariaga Sin, discovering that it's programmed to translate and provide aid for the Sith, and provide mayhem and provide inaccurate translation for non-Sith. Yvegeny debates programming the droid to obey him, noting that if its old programming ever resurfaces, it could try to kill the entire party again.
Ras goes to the Coruscant holding facility, where "Kazbich" is being held en route to transport to the spice mines of Kessel. There she meets up with Jazz, who has been working on Kazbich's release but has had little legal luck. Ras meets up with "Kazbich," who greets her warmly and asks if she's got any Jedi way of getting him out of there. Ras presses him for his real identity, but "Kazbich" ignores her, even saying Kazbich's trademark, "We're all friends here!" Ras finally uses the Force to prompt "Kazbich," who whispers that he's really named Rann and it's sort of a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend thing — all he knows is that if he goes along with it, they'll financially support his family (and the food is better in prison anyway). Surprised that Rann is willingly going along with the sentence, Ras comms Yvegeny, telling him to be discreet so as not to screw things up for Rann. Ras then goes to visit Rek Luk at his luxury apartment on Coruscant to discuss the Kazbich dilemma.
While Ras is with Rek Luk, Kazbich is in the Jedi Temple's droid labs, Kelif is training Jedi apprentices and Lyta is in the clinic, alarms suddenly go off in the Jedi Temple. Ras is called back by comlink, telling her the Temple is under attack. Lyta feels a disturbance in the Force, the first one since Neyeria was killed by the Sith. A Jedi tells Yvegeny the Temple is under attack, while Jedi Master Muz tells Kelif to lead the apprentices to an underground bunker for their safety. Ras has Rek Luk fly her to the Temple post-haste; Lyta leaves Oro behind at the clinic and takes off for the Temple.
Kelif leads the apprentices to the bunker, but on the way there is attacked by a Sith mage, who promptly fries him with Force lightning. Yvegeny happens to arrive at the same time and shoots the Sith in the back, knocking him prone and drawing his attention. The Sith uses the Force to summon a whirlwind to disable Kelif while he Force chokes Yvegeny. Unable to escape the grip, Yvegeny pulls the pin on a grenade and prepares to drop it when the apprentices charge the Sith, disrupting his concentration so Kelif and Yvegeny can blast the Sith to oblivion and lead the children to safety to a Cerean Jedi, who heals the both of them. Kazbich gets on a computer terminal and assesses the security reports: a strike team of about 20 Sith charged through the front door, killing Gatekeeper K'Chuk and then spreading out through the Temple to cause mayhem. Most of the Sith seem to have made a stand in the Archives, luring most of the Jedi defenders to them. Yvegeny uses his neck comlink to contact Ras, which makes Kelif realize that Yvegeny is actually Kazbich.
Ras and Lyta arrive at the front gates of the Jedi Temple at the same time, Ras diving out of Rek's ship and using the Force to stop her fall. Ras deduces the Sith must be there to free Cariaga Sin and runs with Lyta to the holding cells. After speaking with Yvegeny, they circumvent the Sith group at the Archives, and meet up with Yvegeny and Kelif at the Room of a Thousand Fountains. They follow the trail of destruction to the holding cells.
However, the two Sith going there had doubled back, so the party arrives before the Sith do: a mage wielding a tremor sword and a warrior with a red lightsaber. The lightsaber-wielding warrior uses the dark side to wound Cariaga Sin in her force cage while the party engages the sword-wielding mage. Yvegeny successfully knocks the mage down, only for him to create an illusion of advancing Sith troopers, which disorients Yvegeny and Kelif before a grenade finishes him off. Oro gets a lucky shot against the remaining lightsaber-wielding warrior, prompting that Sith to go on an uncontrollable rampage. Lyta barely pulls Oro out of the way of the Sith's lightsaber in time, and after the party slows him down, Lyta uses her best Big Girl voice to intimidate the Sith into surrendering, which he promptly does. Ras binder-cuffs the Sith, then charges off to the Archives to help the Jedi there. Lyta attempts to resuscitate Cariaga Sin, but it's too late; she's dead.
Ras arrives at the Archives to a scene of carnage — shelves of datacards have been knocked over, thrown around and destroyed, and the bodies of both Jedi and Sith lie everywhere. Immediately before her are a female Rodian Jedi Master fighting a Sith marauder in black, metallic armor, his face hidden behind a mask, and wielding a lightsaber pike. Ras rushes to the Jedi's defense, unleashing the power of the Force to hurl the Sith into the ceiling three floors up. The Rodian recognizes Ras as Asa Ulara's apprentice and says they can take on the Sith marauder together... she hopes. As Ras has been hurling the marauder all across the room, he slices and dices at her, battering down her defenses and slicing off her left arm and right leg before she passes out from shock.
A few moments later, Lyta, Yvegeny and Kelif arrive in the Archives and find Ras near death's door (the Rodian Jedi is nearby, beheaded). They quickly gather Ras' limbs and Lyta performs emergency surgery to reattach them; as they found her right away, Lyta is successful and Ras will not need cybernetic replacements. Jedi Master Vrook arrives, looking much worse for the wear; the surviving Sith have made their escape. He recognizes the Rodian as Jedi Council member Jeela Ronu, and mourns for her loss.
In the aftermath of the battle, Ras recuperates from the loss of her limbs under the care of Lyta. All told, 29 Jedi were lost in the assault, including Gatekeeper K'Chuk, Council member Jeela Ronu, and Duros artisan Muz, and 12 Sith were killed. Thanks to Yvegeny and Kelif, most of the children made it to safety. Master Archivist Kalor gets right back to work rebuilding the Jedi Archives. Yvegeny tries to find out how the Sith got to the Jedi Temple in the first place, but finds no useful information. Ras has the idea to take a blood sample from the ruins of the Archives and finds that the Sith marauder she fought was once a Jedi Knight named Talvon Esan, who followed Revan during the Mandalorian Wars. The Republic, shaken that the Sith were able to get close enough to attack the Jedi Temple, assigns more Republic soldiers to guard the premises in case of a return attack. Master Kalor tells Ras that she's one of several Jedi Knights assigned to the Chommell Sector, which was found to be the Sith strike team's ship's destination based on their last known trajectory; Ras is being sent to Naboo. To keep Kelif from blowing Yvegeny's cover, Ras uses a Jedi mind trick to make him forget Yvegeny's true identity, though Kelif has a nagging feeling there's something not right about him.
Lyta interrogates the Sith prisoner from the holding cells, whose name is revealed to be Valin. Valin reveals that the purpose of the attack was to cause mayhem and silence Cariaga Sin, whose knowledge of troop movements and hidden Sith bases could not be allowed to fall into Republic hands. Talvon Esan is one of the highest-ranking Sith Lords in the Empire, having followed Revan since the start of the Mandalorian Wars, and he is known among the Sith as "the Butcher" (not being one of the two to get a Darth title). The name of his warship is the Devastator. Lyta spends most of the day talking to Valin, and eventually turns him (mostly) away from the dark side, as he ponders returning to the Jedi.
Lyta trains Oro to be a health administrator and sends him off on a mysterious errand while Ras meets with Yvegeny, trying to probe who Yvegeny's handlers are now but getting no answers. Ras tells him that she's planning to stop Gaph, who she can't let continue his bloody conquest of the lower reaches of the city, especially given that he's got a Sith artifact grafted to his spine. Yvegeny says his handlers aren't interested in Gaph, but he'll do some investigating himself.
Yvegeny talks to his contacts in the Coruscant underground, trying to find someone who's left Gaph's organization. He eventually finds a Ryn named R'vanna, who used to be the transport specialist for that particular Ryn group, and arranges a meeting; Yvegeny drops the Republic Intelligence hammer, saying he needs R'vanna's testimony to bring Gaph down. R'vanna recognizes desperation when he sees it, however, and isn't convinced, especially once Yvegeny starts threatening to kill him and offers to provide witness protection by letting him stay in the Raraza. He walks away, but Yvegeny quietly tails him back to his apartment.
Thinking he can persuade R'vanna to help him, Yvegeny solicits some Trandoshan thugs to claim to work for Gaph and beat him up, so then Yvegeny can "come to the rescue" and win his trust. Yvegeny fails to notice the Trandoshans are a little too eager to help, and so when Yvegeny bursts in to save R'vanna, the Trandoshans draw vibrodaggers and attack him. Yvegeny manages to kill one, but while grappling with the other one, he tries unsuccessfully to tie the Trandoshans to Gaph, to which the still-standing Trandoshan points out that he hired them to beat up the Ryn, then runs off. R'vanna angrily points out that he left Gaph on good terms, and Gaph has no reason to send goons after him. Frustrated with his lack of luck, Yvegeny shoots R'vanna's lamp (it was an heirloom from his mother, he protests) and television, then ties him up and hauls him into the medical clinic speeder ambulance. As soon as they leave the building, R'vanna YELLS OUT that he's being kidnapped by a madman, but it being the lower levels of the city, no one rushes to his defense.
Yvegeny then decides to coerce R'vanna, and goes off to buy some death sticks to get some collateral. The death stick dealer, however, notes Yvegeny's extremely high initial offer — 400 credits — and notes that it's apparently a seller's market, and continues to overcharge, forcing Yvegeny to settle for 650 credits. Yvegeny hauls R'vanna to the factory where the party first tracked Wertsnik's ship and forces the Ryn to ingest death sticks, hoping to get him addicted, and tells him the Republic will provide a cure for his new death stick addiction if he provides evidence against Gaph. Still having no luck, especially since R'vanna is now more worried about his crazy captor than his former boss, Yvegeny calls in Kelif to help intimidate him, claiming, among other insane theories, that R'vanna knows Kelif's father. Kelif takes Yvegeny's prodding the wrong way and nearly executes R'vanna, but instead decides to haul the Ryn back to the Raraza to torture him.
When Yvegeny and Kelif return to the Raraza, Ras, Lyta and Marina are preparing the Raraza for takeoff to head to Naboo. (Oro returns to the ship and tells Lyta his errand was a success.) Ras, extremely frustrated that her attempt to build a case against Gaph took such a nosedive, lets R'vanna go, having Crask drive him to the free clinic Lyta worked at to get the death sticks out of his system and putting him in a Force trance until he gets there, then forcefully mind-tricks Yvegeny into thinking that he's violently allergic to death sticks so that he never does something so stupid again. When Marina hears that the ship is going to Naboo, she relates to the party that a message came to the ship from Gobmush, who says he's been busy with things of his own but is heading in the same direction.
A few days later, when the ship arrives at Naboo, it is immediately set upon by three Mandalorian gunships, who order the ship to surrender to their lord, "Mandalore the Divider." The Raraza naturally refuses, and a gunfight breaks out, with the Mandalorians blasting the ship with ion cannons as the Raraza makes a run for it against the superior firepower while Ras and Yvegeny blast away in the turrets. The escape is hurt by Marina's accidental overtaxing of the systems while trying to boost the ship's speed, and the ship eventually destroys two of the gunships before being disabled. Yvegeny jury-rigs the ship to function again, leading him and Ras to try to blast the remaining gunship again, but the last ship fries the Raraza's circuits again, and this time, the ship has already entered Naboo's gravity well — so it's landing, one way or another. Yvegeny hurriedly jury-rigs the ship again to provide enough piloting control so the ship can safely descend. The Raraza safely lands in the Naboo wilderness, but the Mandalorian ship follows them down, notes their location, and flies off. The ion damage is severe enough that the ship will need new parts to get airborne again, though most of the mundane systems are still online. With the sensors offline, the crew has no idea where the nearest settlement is, leaving them trapped in the wilderness on an unfamiliar planet with Mandalorians on their tail.
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