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Knights of the Old Republic 24: Knights of Suffering, Part 3

What is it ? : 25 years before, a young Raana Tey sees Lucien Draay's mother, Krynda, having a vision of the five, one dark, one light, and the fall of the Republic and the Jedi Order.
Moving to the current date, Zayne is pretending to be a Mandalorian again, with Shel as a prisoner to gain access to the Jedi Tower the Mandalorians are using as their command center. The two argue, Zayne expressing disbelief that someone he thought knew him so well would believe the lies told about him, that even if she didn't trust him, she should have known he wasn't powerful enough to kill the other Padawans.
Some Mandalorians see them arguing, but Shel grabs Zayne and kisses him, and the Mandalorian leave them in peace as they believe he is "recruiting". They enter the tower and find a storage room, and memories of his friends and the life they led here, playing in the storage rooms brings Zayne to tears. But Shel recovers her brothers lightsaber from where it has been placed in storage.
They unlock a passageway and Raana Tey gains access to the tower, and Zayne scouts out the chamber at the top, where once his fellow padawans were butchered, but now supposedly used as Cassus Fett's command post. But he discovers that the Mandalorians don't like to stay one place for long as it presents a target, and Cassus has moved on to attack the Resistance.
His alarmed reaction alerts the guard that something is wrong, but before he can act, Raana Tey kills him from behind and they attacks Zayne.
Gryph and the rest of the strike team hear about the attack on the Resistance base, and realise that the Mandalorian tower will be virtually unguarded so decide to take to their Speeder bikes to attack and help extract Zayne and Raana.
Raana easily outskills Zayne, and after knocking him to the ground advances, boasting that when they were children, Lucien used to tell her off for taking more than her share of food, and now she is going to kill more than her share of Padawans, but she thinks Lucien will forgive her.
But suddenly a lightsaber blade erupts from her chest as Shel stabs her in the back with her brothers lightsaber. Shel collapses into Zaynes arms in tears, telling him that he didn't do it.
Gryph arrives overhead, and winches Shel to safety, and Zayne leaps grabbing a rope that is offered. But pauses to reach back to save Raana Tey as the explosive is dropped into the tower. She is puzzled, but still attempts to strike him with her lightsaber, only for Gryph to press the detonator for the explosives.
The explosive mortally wounds her, and as she lies breathing her last she shouts to Zayne to tell Krynda she is sorry.
On Coruscant, Lucien and Q'Anilia sense Raana's death, and realise that she has let Zayne know who is behind everything.
As they fly to safety, Zayne realises that the name Krynda is important. . . .

High Points : And extremely solid issue, we get a brilliant conversation between Shel and Zayne, where he explodes that the person he thought he loved didn't trust him. Shel is defensive, saying that he wasn't serious with her since he was going to become a Jedi. No matter that he thought he would fail, his efforts to become a Jedi showed a commitment to that rather than to her. Which shows us more and more the type of person Zayne is. He wanted to be a Jedi so much that he put his all into it, no matter how often his Masters derided him, no matter how much he was told he was a joke, he tried his hardest, because that was what was expected of him. But what he really wanted was to be with Shel, that it didn't matter if he failed, because she was waiting for him.
But to her, that made her feel like she was second best, instead of giving up and being with her, he was doing everything he could to not be with her, but if that failed she was second best.
Zayne cries for the loss of his friends in this issue, but Shel I think cries for the loss of what she could have had with Zayne, that she has destroyed his love for her by not trusting him.
And there's loads of action here as well, with Raana Tey easily demonstrating that she is a Jedi Master, even if a seer so not an expert in combat, and Zayne only a Padawan, and not even a competent one. She quickly knocks him to the floor, but it is her boastfulness which sees her undoing, as she admits to killing the Padawans, revealing the trust to Shel who strikes her revenge using the lightsaber of Shad, one of those that was murdered.

Low Points : It feels as if the raid against the Resistance HQ was supposed to make us worry about Gryph and the others there, but a cutaway reveals that they're not there so not in any danger.
And although she's breathing her last, the Raana Tey gets to reveal a final secret to Zayne after being blown up by the explosive that they intended to kill the entirety of the Mandalorian command including Cassus Fett. While I suppose she was on the roof above the explosion, it still feels like it should have been a big enough blast to have killed her outright.

So what do you really think ? : While this wraps up the storyline with Raana Tey, and takes Zayne forward in his quest to clear his name, it doesn't feel as if the storyline on Taris is complete, but I can't really see where events here will involve Zayne and his storyline, but I guess I will see.

Final Words : So next issue to go into Vector, a storyline which bridged Knights of the Old Republic, Legacy, Dark Times and the Rebellion titles. Now while I don't have the Dark Times or Rebellion series, I can see from where I'm sitting both my Kotor and Legacy "Vector" graphic novels. Now sometimes these storylines don't make much sense (as we've seen across the Vader comic as it's had crossover storylines with other comics) as the story just seems to suddenly stop without a resolution. But with these being split over such different time periods, with Kotor 4000bby, Dark Times 20bby, Rebellion 0aby, and Legacy 137aby, I wonder if they'll hand off to each other more gracefully and each have their own beginning, middle and end, rather than skipping parts.

Score : 9/10

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