This week’s Star Wars Character Spotlight takes a look at Deathstick, a mysterious bounty hunter and daughter of a Nightsister. She does not use any Nightsister magicks, but is still a highly skilled assassin who operated during the reign of the Empire and Galactic Civil War. She debuted in the Star Wars: Uprising mobile game, but has since appeared frequently in the Bounty Hunter and Doctor Aphra comics.
Only her eyes are visible beneath her assassin garb. An encounter with the Empire saw her face get heavily disfigured, and her jaw is entirely prosthetic.
Master assassin
Though she was the daughter of the Nightsister Shelish, Deathstick (we don’t know her real name) never actually visited Dathomir, as her mother left the planet before the Dathomiri Massacre during the Clone Wars. Instead, Deathstick grew up without her mother in the Anoat system. She knew that in another life, she could have become a Nightsister, and felt like that birthright had been stolen from her.
There, she joined the Kouhun, a group of assassins named after the centipede-like creatures used by Zam Wesell in Attack of the Clones. She rose through the ranks to become the group’s leader, and even assassinated the Imperial Governor Adelhard’s wife.
Hired by Crimson Dawn
Shortly after the events of The Empire Strikes Back, Deathstick was hired by Qi’ra, who had told her that Emperor Palpatine was behind the death of the Nightsisters. She promised that by working for Crimson Dawn, she would get her revenge.
Deathstick gladly joined Crimson Dawn, who were announcing their return to the galactic stage by holding a grand auction for the carbonited Han Solo, with all the galaxy’s key players invited including the major syndicates, the rebels and the Empire. Deathstick’s first task was to hunt down Dengar and Beilert Valance, with Qi’ra wishing to set them on Han’s trail so he could be rescued from the auction.
After a brief fight with the two bounty hunters, Qi’ra had to order the assassin not to kill them, as keeping them alive was an important part of her plan.
Her next task was to invite the Unbroken Clan to the auction, which she did after infiltrating their base. She then headed to Canto Bight to confront Dengar and Valance once again. She stole an emergency comm device from them, only for Dengar to pickpocket the location of the auction from her.
During the auction on Zekara, Deathstick came upon the stranded Dengar, who had lost a fight with Valance. She saved him from a native monster in exchange for the location of Cadeliah, a young girl who was in line to inherit both the Unbroken Clan and Mourner’s Wail syndicates. It was important to Qi’ra that she controlled Cadeliah to shape the underworld in her favor.
She then turned her attention to other security matters at the auction, locking up a mercenary friend of Doctor Aphra’s and his brother. She used knives laced with Dathomiri poison, convincing him to come quietly if he wanted to live. The two brothers were quickly freed by Doctor Aphra and Sana Starros, but they were immediately attacked by Deathstick and Crimson Dawn guards.
Aphra and her friends were outmatched, until the archaeologist came across a Thought Dowser, an ancient technological relic capable of controlling people with the thought of the person wearing it. Aphra touched it and froze Deathstick in place, ordering the guards to take her poison blades and stab themselves and the assassin with them.
Deathstick recovered from the poison as the other four left the room.
Parting ways with Crimson Dawn
After the auction, Deathstick was concerned with tracking down Cadeliah for Qi’ra. After discovering the girl was taking refuge in a Rebel Alliance base, she informed the Imperials of the base’s location anonymously. When the Empire arrived to destroy the base, she snuck in and captured the girl in the chaos. She asked what Qi’ra’s intentions were with the girl, only for the leader to subtly tell her it was none of her business.
As Qi’ra’s plan to eliminate Palpatine and Vader came to its climax, she asked Deathstick to guard the Archivist working to activate the Fermata Cage, an ancient artifact that could trap any being, no matter how powerful they were in the Force. Deathstick took exception to this; she explained that she was an assassin, not a soldier, and bid Qi’ra goodbye.
In the end, Palpatine and Vader fought their way to the Fermata Cage and the trap failed. Deathstick likely would have been killed if she’d stayed to protect it.
Bounty Hunter
Having gone freelance, Deathstick spent time at a Bounty Hunter’s Guild social club. After impressing during a bar room brawl with Durge, she was hired to join bounty hunter T’onga’s crew, which also contained Bossk, Zuckuss and 4-LOM. The mission was to hunt down Boba Fett, who would help them save Beilert Valance, T’onga’s friend who was slowly losing his memories.
Deathstick warned T’onga that confronting Fett would be particularly dangerous as the Black Sun Syndicate had placed a bounty on his head, meaning that he would be anticipating attacks from other bounty hunters. Even so, she was relishing the challenge presented by the job.
They tracked down Fett and after an inevitable skirmish, during which Deathstick managed to disarm her target, T’onga explained that they weren’t there to collect his bounty. Fett agreed to help them, on the condition that they help him clear the bounty on his head.
Their plan was to escort Fett to the Black Sun boss who had placed the bounty, getting an audience with him in order to kill him. They got that audience, but the plan went awry as the gangster announced his intention to kill them all anyway instead of paying up.
They killed every Black Sun member in the room, with Deathstick particularly enjoying herself. Keeping up his end of the bargain, Fett gave them the coordinates for a cyborg fixer named Tarr Kligson. He would be able to repair Valance’s mind.
The crew journeyed to Kligson’s coordinates, which led them to a remote space station populated by droids. These droids took Valance to see Kligson, but demanded the other bounty hunters wait in the hangar bay.
The bounty hunters grew increasingly skeptical as time passed without an update. Deathstick remained in the docking bay while Zuckuss and 4-LOM searched the station for Valance. She noted to Durge that she had a feeling that they’d have to blast their way out of the station soon enough.
It soon transpired that Kligson had been possessed by the Scourge techno virus, which was rapidly infecting droids across the galaxy. The virus was obsessed with controlling organic bodies, so Kligson had infected Valance with the virus, as the bounty hunter was a cyborg himself and one step closer to a purely organic being.
Valance attacked the crew and fled the station, with the bounty hunters dealing with Kligson and pursuing Valance to Epikonia, where he met with two possessed hybroids in order to experiment on organics.
At this point, Deathstick had decided that the crew were in over their heads and agreed to mutiny against T’onga and install the more morally dubious Khel Tanna as their leader. Every other crew member except Zuckuss mutinied against T’onga, throwing her and the Gand from the ship while they left to pursue more lucrative – and less dangerous – contracts.
Deathstick enjoyed her time under Khel Tanna, and she was later seen celebrating a successful bounty with her and Durge in the Bounty Hunter’s Guild social club.
Uprising
Deathstick’s latest chronological appearance is also her debut, as it comes in the mobile game Star Wars: Uprising, for which she was created. At this point, she had returned to the Kouhun and was operating out of Bespin between 4 and 5 ABY, as Moff Adelhard tightened his grip on the Anoat system and enforced a blockade.
The player character (known canonically as The Smuggler) can join the Kouhun and liaise with Deathstick, who joins Bespin’s other major factions to form the Uprising against the Imperial Remnant. They drew up a plan to kidnap Commander Bragh, the leader of Adelhard’s purge troopers.
The plan went awry when the player informed the Empire of it in order to clear the death mark against them. Many Kouhun agents were killed and Deathstick was forced to go into hiding. For some reason, Deathstick chose not to kill the player for that betrayal, but her choice was rewarded when the player helped her rescue captured Uprising agents, including Kouhun members.
She agreed to cooperate with the player and the rest of the factions that made up the Uprising. Eventually, Adelhard was overthrown and killed, as was depicted during the events of the Battle of Jakku comic macro-series. Deathstick and the Kouhun had no part in that, as they were presumably limited to smaller scale operations in the Anoat system.
What next?
Deathstick could easily appear in more stories set during the New Republic era, likely in stories featuring bounty hunters. Any future appearance would likely be as part of a comic or novel. Thanks to Wookieepedia, without whom I’d have no idea that Deathstick was even involved in the Uprising mobile game.
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.