Star Wars: The High Republic: Trail of Shadows

Welcome to Trail of Shadows, part of the Star Wars The High Republic series. This is part 1 of 5. We hear a strange melody, as we open on the petrified corpse of a Jedi Master. The Republic has been at war with the Nihil, a group of anarchistic marauders from the Outer Rim. At the Battle of Grizal, Jedi Master Loden has been killed by a mysterious force. His corpse turns to dust, and we see Jedi Investigator Emmerich Kaftor pick up some of the dust. At the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, Emmerich talks to Master Stellan Geos, who was traumatized by what happened on Grizal. He has been singing the strange song we heard earlier, an old lullaby with sinister words that used to be sung to young Padawans at the Jedi Academy. The first lines go like this, Shree ka re ka re, they are coming to take you away. Emmerich tells Stellan that his analysis of the dust came up with nothing, not even a trace of Master Loden. Even the midichlorian test has come back negative. No one can tell exactly what happened, only that it sent everyone into shock. Stellan suspects that the Nihil may have some kind of new secret weapon, and asks Emmerich to look into it. In a nightclub on another part of Coruscant, we meet Shan Holt, a private eye. She's following an old partner of hers, Keefar Branto. Keefar is on probation, and Shan suspects he's getting himself mixed up with the wrong crowd again. She catches up with Keefar, as he's meeting a shady character called Urkpanga in a back alley. We cut to Emmerich Kaftor and his droid Q-2. Emmerich has also been humming the same lullaby that we heard Stellan singing. Q-2 asks Emmerich what the first line of the song, Sri ka re ka re, means, and Emmerich says that it's probably just a bunch of nonsense words made up to create a rhyme. But he suspects that there might be more to the song, because it surfaced from deep within Stellan's memory right after the incident on Grizal. It reminds them both of a fear they hadn't felt since they were children in the Jedi Academy. We cut back to Shan, as she confronts Keefar, and tells him off for associating with a known criminal. Keefar tells her that he can explain what is up to later, but she needs to get out now. They discover that Urkpanga has disappeared, and Keefar exclaims that he's been made. As Emmerich and a unit of Troopers gear up for a fact-finding mission to Vrantarnam, Stellan contacts him via hologram. Stellan tells Emmerich that he thinks he's figured out why the song is stuck in his head. It's because the song ends with the word dust, though he can't remember the rest of it. As Shan and Keefar run through the alleys, Shan asks what Keefar meant when he said he's been made. Keefar tells her that what's going on runs deeper than he can explain to her now. Urkpanga emerges, clutching his arm, and tells Shan and Keefar to run. Urk is shot, and from darkness emerges a red-eyed Tarnab. Shan and Keefar run. On Vrantarnam, Emmerich and his team encounter Nihil fighters. After defeating them, Emmerich realizes that they were stragglers, and the rest of the Nihil have already left. Meanwhile, the Tarnab guns down Keefar, but Shan manages to kill it at the last minute. Emmerich and Q make their way into the ruins of an old cave. They find writing on the walls of the cave, and Emmerich asks Q if he can translate what it says. Q tells him he's not going to like it. The first line says, Shree Kare Kare, the first line of the song we've been hearing this whole while. And that's how Part 1 of Trail of Shadows ends. Join us next time, as the mystery unravels.