11 Years Later, Star Wars: The Old Republic Officially Inspires a Thrilling New Sith Lord (EXCLUSIVE)
Star Wars has always been so much more than a mere film franchise. The classic Knights of the Old Republic games have had a massive influence too; the first KotOR game made history, winning a staggering number of awards. It’s no surprise a KotOR remake is in the works, with a first trailer reportedly due soon. Now, though, the fifth expansion – released all the way back in 2015 – has officially inspired a thrilling “new” Sith Lord.
Madeleine Roux’s new novel, Legacy (available now from retailers like Amazon), is set in the sequel era. One major subplot sees Rey discover an ancient Jedi Holocron, where she watches a Sith apprentice known as Kalrian Diir as she attempted to overthrow her inner darkness. Kalrian Diir’s Sith tattoos reminded ComicBook of Darth Maul, but Roux has exclusively revealed her true inspiration:
“She’s a call back to a Force user called Vaylin, who appears in Star Wars: The Old Republic. She’s an incredibly fascinating character who never got their shot at redemption (spoiler for an expansion that came out ten years ago!), so I wanted to nod to her backstory while ultimately taking Kalrian in a different direction. Maul is dope, though.”
Kalrian Diir is a Fantastic Mirror of Rey
Personally, I found Kalrian Diir absolutely fascinating. “I think we see a lot of Jedi falling to the darkness,” Roux noted, explaining Kalrian Diir’s role in Legacy, “but we so rarely see the inverse. It was important to me that if we’re setting this in a temple made for Force users to reconnect with the goodness inside themselves, then a highly controversial figure needed to be present. She’s sort of the ultimate test for a place like that, and close readers will be able to piece together whether or not that test was a pass or fail. It was important to me that we saw all these mirrors of Rey in the book… and Kalrian Diir is another funhouse version of Rey. Well, not fun, but you get what I mean.”
Star Wars canon hasn’t revealed much about the origins of the Jedi and the Sith, likely saving reveals for future stories (including James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi project, announced in 2023 but since consigned to development hell). Kalrian Diir is technically one of the oldest Sith we’ve seen – perhaps the oldest of them all. Kidnapped as a child by the Sith Lord Darth Maritosh, she was taken to the Sith homeworld of Korriban, where she was bent and broken to the dark side. She traveled to Tython, to an ancient vergence called the Forge used to heal broken Jedi, and tried to find her way back toward the light.
As Roux says, Kalrian Diir is a mirror of Rey herself. The mirror becomes even more appropriate given we know so much more of Rey’s origins than she does herself (at least in Legacy). This is before Rey learned she was part of the Palpatine bloodline; in fact, it’s the story in which Rey’s master Leia learned that shocking truth. Just like Kalrian Diir, Rey will find herself battling with her own nature. “Trying to kill the darkness inside doesn’t work,” Roux explains. “You have to make peace with it,… you can only move on from your mistakes when you learn to nurture the version of yourself that made those choices.”
I’m not going to spoil Legacy (not even a plot set 5,000 years before the Skywalker saga). But personally, I found Kalrian Diir absolutely fascinating. She’s a Sith Lord at a time when the Jedi didn’t really know what the Sith were, long before they ever came to the conclusion the dark side would dominate the destinies of anyone who fell. We tend to imagine the Great Sith War as a time of darkness and fear, but there’s something wonderfully hopeful about a Jedi Order who still believed redemption was possible for the Sith. Personally, I’d love to get more stories set during the Old Republic; in novels, games, and pretty much every medium. Legacy has definitely whet my appetite for more.
