Literature / Shadows of the Empire

It is a time of crisis. Imperial
probes, scouring the galaxy for
the hidden Rebel base, have
discovered their outpost on the
remote ice world of Hoth.

Darth Vader, obsessed with
finding Luke Skywalker, has
sent his forces to engage
the Rebels in battle.

With the dreaded Imperial,
fleet approaching, a lone
freighter has entered the Hoth
system...

Shadows of the Empire is an entry in the Star Wars Legends, coming out in 1996. Conceived as an interquel between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, it's a multimedia project, like The Force Unleashed after it, designed to have all of the media that would surround a new movie without actually making a movie.^note It's speculated that this project was constructed as a marketing "dry run" for the then-upcoming prequels, testing the responsiveness of the consumer base to the revival of the decade-dormant Star Wars IP. There is a novel (with an accompanying junior novelization), a video game, a role-playing game, a six-issue comic series, a soundtrack, a toyline, trading cards, and a Making Of book. Not all its elements overlap—to get the full story, readers would have to see each story-related component.

The novel, written by Steve Perry, is the centerpiece of the project and tells the overall story, focusing on the main characters. The comic book series from Dark Horse Comics has generally the same focus, but includes interludes to bounty hunter Boba Fett's battle to keep possession of the frozen Han Solo, and the antics of Wrenga Jixton, a spy sent by Darth Vader, as he infiltrates Jabba's swoop gang and ensures they are unable to kill Luke Skywalker. The video game, released in late 1996 for the Nintendo 64 and a year later on PC, allows players to control new character Dash Rendar, whose adventures in the game weave in and out of the overall storyline.

Throughout each of these, Prince Xizor, the head of the criminal organization Black Sun, finds out why Darth Vader, his bitter rival for the Emperor's favor, wants the Rebel hero Luke Skywalker. In order to gain the Emperor's favor and punish Vader for killing Xizor's family, Xizor plans to kill Luke, while the Rebels try to find Han.

There are also two sequel comics, the In Name Only Mara Jade - By The Emperor’s Hand follows Mara Jade fighting the Black Sun’s successor crime lords at the tail end of her service as an Emperor's Hand. Shadows of the Empire: Evolution follows the future of the Black Sun after Xizor's downfall and the efforts of his assassin and bodyguard, Guri, to rebuild her life. There would also later be a prequel novel, Shadow Games, which focuses on the rivalry between Dash and Han as they struggle to protect a famed actress from several attempts on her life, some of which may have Xizor's hand in them. As typical for the Expanded Universe, events from the original story have also been occasionally redone or expanded upon in other media, particularly video games, with X-Wing Alliance allowing players to take part in an operation to capture a Black Sun freighter from the middle of the story and Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader showing further troubles the Rebels faced trying to get that stolen cargo back home.

Not related to the Video Game Shadow Empire.

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Shadows of the Empire provides examples of:

• 10-Minute Retirement: Dash's plan to fake his death lasts at most a year, as an RPG article has him on a mission with Kyle Katarn, Jan Ors and Bey to infiltrate the Tof homeworld.
• Abandon Ship: When the heroes need to escape from Xizor's palace, Lando decides the best way to do so is amidst the associated confusion of a mass-evacuation of the building (not entirely unlike their escape from Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back). He invokes this trope by tossing a thermal detonator down a garbage chute.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: How Luke, Dash and Lando sneak into Xizor's palace. The trope is justified by the novel by explaining that the large sewer is needed because it's a huge building.
• The Ace: Han Solo's Suspiciously Similar Substitute, Dash Rendar. He's annoying even to the characters, but they do acknowledge that he's a good pilot.
  [narration from Luke's POV] This guy was so full of himself it was a wonder he didn't explode and spew ego all over the place.
• Action Girl: Leia gets up to less action in this book, but still briefly shows her stuff, kneeing Xizor in the groin at once after breaking free from the pheromone-caused lust toward him.
• Adaptational Heroism: The novel and comic has Dash abandoning the other heroes on Gall as soon as trouble arrives, because they didn't pay him to fight. The video game instead has him going into Gall alone and blasting his way through the Imperial outposts to do the job.
• Affably Evil: While he's Faux Affably Evil with his enemies, Xizor is more Affably Evil when dealing with the everyday parts of his job of ruling a criminal empire, as he generally prefers to use the carrot rather than the stick when he deals with his subordinates. Barring the traitors of course.
• Always Identical Twins: Subverted. The Pike sisters, expert martial artists whom Xizor hires as assassins, look the same aside from their eyes: Zan's are green, Zu has one blue eye along with one green. This would actually make them fraternal-the book simply says they're "genetic twins".
• Ascended Extra: Durga the Hutt, who previously appeared as the Big Bad of Darksaber the year previous (set years after this novel), shows up as a Vigo of Black Sun (The Han Solo Trilogy explains how he got there). Xizor pulls a Blofeld Ploy on him to remind him not to have any ideas of taking over. After Xizor's death, however, Durga manages to do this.
• As Long as There Is Evil: Palpatine muses about this upon hearing the news from Vader that Xizor has been killed, reasoning that someone similar will replace him.
• Attempted Rape: Xizor's attempt at seducing Leia becomes a lot creepier than it otherwise would be since his species' pheromones act more or less like a date-rape drug. She is saved partly by Chewbacca intervening, and partly because she uses Heroic Willpower to rid herself of his mind control and knees him in a very unpleasant location.
• Bad Boss / Benevolent Boss: Xizor zigzags between the two, as he is just as prone to reward a hardworking employee as to punish (sometimes in unpleasant ways) those who fail him.
• Badass in Distress: Leia and Chewie's attempt at infiltrating Black Sun's headquarters doesn't end so well. He escapes, but Leia has to be rescued by Luke and the others; Xizor allowed Chewie to escape for this reason, as he knew that this would bring Luke to rescue the princess.
• Baddie Flattery: Xizor is impressed with Luke parrying his shots with his lightsaber.
  Guri: He is related to Vader.
• Band of Brothels: Exotic dancers in Black Sun's casinos have a union, who are actively lobbied for by their representative Maili Weng with Black Sun leader Prince Xizor to get better conditions.
• Been There, Shaped History:
  • Dash Rendar was at the battle of Hoth. A brief mention in the book, but a playable event in the game, which was notable in that, thanks to how well the level turned out, every Star Wars game set in or after the classic trilogy since then has had a Hoth level if the devs could find an excuse to add one (plot relevance and doing something other than just adapting the battle from the film optional).
  • We learn in the video game that luring the Rebels to the Death Star II to wipe them out in the Battle of Endor was all Xizor's idea, not the Emperor's. Xizor even provided the ships to construct the new station.
  • Dash was also integral to the theft of the Imperial supercomputer containing the plans of the Death Star II, an important enough event that we get to see him do it again in X-Wing Alliance.
• Berserk Button: The novel explores the notion of Luke absolutely hating losing men under his command, especially since he's lost some in every mission he's led up to and including this point. In unleashing More Dakka to disable the freighter, the narration explicitly mentions him being too enraged to use the Force.
• Big Brother Instinct: Luke often feels protective towards Leia in this way, despite not yet knowing he's literally her brother at the time the story is set.
• Big Damn Heroes: Rogue Squadron shows up during the escape from Coruscant at, of course, a dramatic moment when the Falcon and the Outrider are being hemmed in by Xizor's private navy.
  Wedge: Hey, Luke! Mind if we join your party?
• Bigger on the Inside: Going from the cutscene model of the Imperial freighter Suprosa compared to the scale of the Outrider as it docks with it, the ship's exterior is far, far too small to possibly house the fairly large and quite elaborate interior environments it hosts.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: Xizor has Guri as his bodyguard despite being a skilled martial artist who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Dash also shows up to protect Luke from a swoop gang that comes after him on Tatooine. Luke protests that he could have handled it himself, but Dash points out that he still evened the odds for him quite a bit.
• Body Horror: The novel shows Vader meditating in his chamber without his helmet and armor, where he thinks about the horrific injuries he got long ago in his duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi, such as his burned skin and destroyed lungs. He attempts to use The Power of Hate to heal himself and breathe again without his mask, but has only limited success.
• Boldly Coming: Prince Xizor, a humanoid alien with green skin (of reptilian evolutionary descent) seems to primarily like human women, as that's all we see him pursue. He also has a human replica droid named Guri, who is almost entirely indistinguishable from a blonde human woman (whom Xizor occasionally has sex with).
• Bookends: The prologue and epilogue each center around an alternate perspective of a holographic-communication scene from the film preceding and following the book, respectively. In the prologue, Prince Xizor is privy to the conversation between the Emperor and Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, learning Luke Skywalker's name and relation to Vader. In the epilogue, Luke records the message that R2-D2 plays for Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi, thinking to himself all the while how unlikely it is that Jabba will actually take him up on his offer to negotiate.
• Boss Corridor: There's one before the AT-ST in Echo Base, one before Boba Fett and the Slave I, and one before the Gladiator Droid.
• Bounty Hunter: Luke is captured by a group of bounty hunters. Then it turns out they have competing bounties from Black Sun vs the Empire, the former wanting Luke dead, the latter alive. He escapes as they're waiting out the bidding war which it sparks for him.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Getting all 87 challenge points on Jedi difficulty. Whereas the other modes offer nice benefits for getting them all (i.e. invincibility, a scanner, being able to play as an X-wing or TIE fighter in the Skyhook battle) this mode reward is that you receive no damage... from Wampas. All nine of them, eight in one level.
• Brainwashed: Xizor's pheromones essentially do this to women; according to him, even if they were faithful to their spouses for years, they'll only want to have sex with him after exposure.
• Break the Haughty: Dash becomes a lot less arrogant after he fails to destroy a missile aimed at some of his allies, resulting in the deaths of several Bothans. It's later revealed that this missile couldn't be damaged by his weaponry, meaning that he did hit it, but it was no use.
• Buried Alive: Xizor recalls how one of his mistresses wouldn't break it off when he wanted to, with her ending up "accidentally" buried in concrete by a construction droid.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Prince Xizor is attacked by a young man named Hoff, who yells "You Killed My Father" to him, to which Xizor replies, "I'm sorry. Have we met?" It's subverted, however, since Xizor does remember the father once Hoff tells him the father's name. Also subverted in the sense that Xizor didn't directly or intentionally kill him. The guy was a competitor who ended up Driven to Suicide after Black Sun bankrupted his business. Vader also has this reaction after being told he killed Xizor's family (along with many other people on their world).
  Vader: A regrettable incident.
• Butt-Monkey: Lando, just a little bit. "It's not my fault!" is practically his catchphrase.
• The Cameo: Jabba the Hutt makes a brief appearance when Xizor talks to him via holoprojector in the novel. Jix's story in the comic version focuses more heavily on him and the thugs he commands.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: This is why Luke's unconvinced Vader's actually behind the asassination attempts. He knows full well from their duel at Bespin that Vader needs him very much alive.
• Captain Obvious:
  • "There seems to be a slight problem, my prince." "So I noticed. Why are your ships blowing up, Commander?"
  • "You resist me."
• The Chessmaster: Throughout the story, Prince Xizor is constantly formulating plots and pulling strings so that Vader will be brought down by losing favor with the Emperor. Though Vader is the main target of his intrigues, others get his attention as well. It eventually catches up to him, and he dies for it at Vader's orders.
• The City Narrows: Coruscant's seedy underground districts.
• Collapsing Lair: The heroes escape from Xizor's palace just before it implodes on itself.
• Constructive Body Disposal: A former mistress of Xizor who annoyed him by trying to reconcile with him was "accidentally mixed with a vat of duracrete" and is now part of a building foundation.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The radio drama for Return of the Jedi makes an offhand mention of these events, namely the trip to Coruscant and allowing the droids to fly the Falcon.
  • And of course, since it's an interquel, a lot of references to the sixth film are made. For instance, we're shown how Luke built his new lightsaber, how the Rebels got the plans of the Death Star (and that indeed, many Bothans died for this information), and how Leia got Boushh's clothes, among other things.
• Continuity Snarl: In the video game, Dash arrives in the Echo Base hangar just in time to see the Millennium Falcon take off. In the movie, Vader and a whole platoon of stormtroopers were right there to see it take off, but he's absent from the video game's depiction of the scene.
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: Dash unexpectedly shows up behind the swoop gang that attacks Luke on Tatooine, taking potshots at them and forcing them to scatter.
• Cool Chair: Xizor's "Myostim unit". You sit in it and it makes you buff.
• Cool Starship: The Outrider is a later model YT-series freighter (it's a 2400 to the Millennium Falcon's 1300) with plenty of modifications in the form of better engines and extra weaponry.
• Corporate Warfare: Black Sun has its own fleet, which Xizor deploys against the Rebels and, unwisely, the Imperial Navy.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Xizor, in addition to being the leader of the galaxy's premier criminal organization, is also the CEO of a mostly legitimate shipping business, Xizor Transport Systems, that would make him quite wealthy on its own. This gives him legal cover to participate openly in Coruscanti high society.
• Cosmopolitan Council: Black Sun's Vigos (lieutenants of its leader Prince Xizor, who's himself Falleen) are all from different species.
• The Creon: Black Sun Vigo Vekker isn't the second in command, but one of nine equally ranked lieutenants in an NGO Super Power intergalactic criminal organization. He qualifies otherwise, though, as he's the only one specifically mentioned as being content with his position. In Shadows of the Empire: Evolution, he doesn't push to be Xizor's successor (which does him no good as he's framed for an assassination attempt on the newest Vigo and is targeted himself by Vigo Sprax in retaliation).
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Vader in his Interceptor single-handedly obliterates an entire squadron of X-wings during the Empire's assault on the Rebel shipyard. It's so easy he gets bored and allows the last X-wing to escape.
• Cyborg: Guri is a Terminator-like one, a human built around a robot core rather than the other way around. Her outer layers are cloned human material, but her "brain" and inner mechanisms are robotic.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: AT-STs, at least during the on foot levels, can soak up a ridiculous amount of damage. If you've run out of ammo for everything but the big standard blaster, be prepared to circle strafe for ages to whittle its health down. Fortunately, getting between their legs and aiming up will let you hit their weakpoint.
• Dark Action Girl:
  • Guri is a deadly female droid who serves as Prince Xizor's personal aide and assassin. She can easily kill most people (only Luke ever beats her). Guri is The Dragon to Xizor.
  • Early on, Xizor also hires the Pike sisters as assassins due to their skills as martial artists. He watches a holo where they wipe out eight armed stormtroopers and approvingly notes neither is even breathing hard after. Both are experts in an unarmed combat technique; Shadows of the Empire: Evolution also shows they're equally skilled with blasters.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Dash Rendar's family, it turns out, were once wealthy Corellian merchants, and he was in the Imperial Academy. Then his brother accidentally crashed into the Imperial Museum on Coruscant flying a ship, dying in the process (it had been sabotaged by Xizor, because they wouldn't sell their company to him). In revenge, the Emperor had Dash expelled and exiled his entire family from the Core while seizing all their property, ruining them. Since then he's been a smuggler. It's brought up by a Rebel to appeal for his help as he has good reason to despise the Empire, but Dash still doesn't join them full on.
  • Xizor, although the villain, also has one. After a deadly virus escaped from a lab in a city on his planet, the Empire destroyed everything within 40 kilometers to contain it. This resulted in the deaths of his parents, siblings and two uncles, along with over two hundred thousand other people. It's implied he really did love them, and wants revenge against Vader (who ordered the virus project) due to this.
• Deadly Sparring: This is mentioned to be a problem regarding Darth Vader. He buys combat droids for the purposes of training, but is such a skilled and ruthless fighter that he ends up destroying all but one of the five droids in question. He does order more of the surviving droids' series, indicating this may less be accidental and more an attempt to find a suitable sparring partner.
• Death Mountain: The canyons of Gall.
• Debug Room: Typing in " Wampa Stompa" (case sensitive—one space before Wampa, two spaces before Stompa) as a file name and putting in an elaborate cheat code as soon as you start a level ^note  Pause the game as soon as the level starts, then press and hold all at once: C up, C right, C down, C left, L, R, Z and Left on the d-pad. While holding these down gently move the control stick left halfway, and hold all this until you hear a sound. Do the same thing with the joystick facing right, then left, right and finally left. Make sure you keep the other buttons held down during this time. If it worked pink writing will come up on the pause screen. To make the menu reappear each time you go back to the pause screen C up, C right, C down, C left, L, R, Z and Left on the d-pad. will grant you access to the game's Debug mode, where you can cycle through options with the shoulder buttons, which includes getting 50 lives, wall ghost, next level, gravity, jump power etc.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Xizor's constant needling of Darth Vader.
• Died in Ignorance: At one point midway through the story, Luke and Dash assist the Bothans with an assault on the Imperial freighter holding the plans to the second Death Star. During the battle, the freighter launches a missile attack on the Bothans which Dash tries to destroy, but misses, resulting in the "many Bothans died" line by Mon Mothma mentioned in Return of the Jedi and a brief Heroic BSoD by Dash. After Dash is seemingly killed by his ship getting hit by debris from Xizor's exploding skyhook in the final battle, Luke learns from Wedge in the aftermath that Dash didn't miss, and that the missile was in fact one of the Empire's new diamond-boron-armored ones and nothing Dash could have hit it with could've stopped it.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Luke tries to save his dying Bothan friend, but it doesn't work, and Luke winds up getting captured anyway.
• Double Agent: Xizor calls together his Vigos (lieutenants) knowing one of them has been spying on Black Sun, then has Guri kill the spy, who's revealed to be the Human Vigo Green, once they all deliver the reports of their areas' earnings, after letting Durga the Hutt sweat to warn him against making any similar disloyal moves. He sternly lectures them first about how ungrateful it is to be betraying Black Sun, given how each of them enjoys significant power, status and wealth.
• Double Standard: Rape, Sci-Fi: Xizor's (and by extension all of his species') pheromones basically act like a mind control drug. Once you smell them, there'll be an intense desire to have sex with them. While this isn't portrayed as good when Xizor's trying to coerce Leia into having sex with him this way, it's also not described as rape, nor are all his many previous "conquests". Basically, he is a serial rapist, which adds an extra layer of evil to his character. He has also "made use" of Guri's anatomical correctness, at one point pondering if he should tell her to join him in his bath. As she is a droid and owned by him, it can lead a reader to wonder just how consensual this is. The sequel comic book Shadows Of The Empire: Evolution says she literally cannot disobey any of his orders, so the answer it gives would be "not at all". Apparently for Xizor, Guri's his occasional sexbot. Given that even the nice people in Star Wars tend not to think of droids as people (despite all evidence), it's probable they wouldn't view this as rape regardless.
• Down the Drain: The Imperial City sewers.
• The Dragon: Guri is Xizor's chief lieutenant, serving as his aide, assassin and sometimes sexbot. Being a droid too, her loyalty is beyond question since she's programmed to do whatever he asks.
• Dramatic Irony: Leia looks into Black Sun, hoping their spy network can figure out who's trying to kill Luke, unaware that it's Black Sun themselves. Prince Xizor, meanwhile, believes Leia already suspects Black Sun and plots to lure her into a trap.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Luke and Lando liberate some elite stormtrooper uniforms for their jaunt to Imperial Center.
• Drives Like Crazy: C-3PO briefly gets the chance to pilot the Millennium Falcon for a Gunship Rescue on Coruscant. His flying is a bit rough, to say the least.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: If you beat the game on Easy Mode, you don't get to see if Dash survives. The novel implies that he dies at the end, so you have to play the game on at least Normal difficulty to find out what really happens. He lives, using a well-timed hyperspace jump as Xizor's skyhook blows apart to make it look like he was caught in the blast. As he says, after all the trouble he's caused the Empire is going to have all sorts of bounties out for him—but if everyone thinks he's dead, nobody's going to be looking to collect. Plus, it's nice to be thought of as a martyr for a good cause without actually being dead.
• Emotionless Reptile: Prince Xizor believes that his reptilian ancestry gives him superior emotional control that sets him above the warm-blooded species. Though he is The Chessmaster, his emotions rule him more than he admits; his desire to seduce Leia and his rage at being thwarted lead directly to his death.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Black Sun has tried to make overtures with the Rebel Alliance, who always rebuffed them on account of their criminality. Leia, however, approaches them in hopes of using their spy network to find out who's behind the assassination attempts against Luke, (unaware that it's Black Sun), using the rationale that the Empire is their common enemy. It does not transpire though.
  • Vader temporarily aids the Rebels against Black Sun, since they both want Luke alive.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Black Sun, in stark contrast with the Humanocentric Empire, accepts members of any species into its ranks (headed by Falleen Prince Xizor as well). Palpatine does let Xizor into his inner circle, but maintains Humanocentrism otherwise (indicating he just uses this with recruiting Humans who support those views). With his Vigos (lieutenants), their leadership is a full-blown Cosmopolitan Council, with just one Human and every Vigo besides that from a different unique species.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Xizor apparently loved his family. At least enough to try to bring down the second most powerful man in the galaxy in order to avenge them.
  • Same with Vader. While he wants to turn Luke to the Dark Side, Vader will absolutely not abide anyone who is out to kill his son, to the point that he willingly works with the Rebels to bring Xizor down.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Vader doesn't like politicking, spying, and mucking around with double-dealing and triple-crossing, which is how he's forced to handle Xizor. He'll do it, but he feels soiled.
  Striking a man down with your blade was clean and honorable. Shooting him In the Back from the darkness of an alley and hurrying to blame it on another was something else altogether.
• Evil Is Petty: Xizor is so impressed by the park on the Emperor's skyhook, he offers the Emperor's horticulturist twice as many credits to work for him instead. A short while later...
  Palpatine: I really must see about hiring your spies away from you. Especially after you stole my best horticulturist. A pity the man had that fatal lift accident before he could start working for you.
  Xizor: Yes, a pity.
  If ever there was a poor loser, it was the Emperor.
• Evil Versus Evil: Xizor and Vader... don't play well together. It's implied in the novel that Palpatine sets situations like this up so that his underlings would become rivals and work even harder to gain his approval by trying to outdo the other in obedience to the Empire—nothing gets results like a threat to job security.
• Expy:
  • Dash Rendar is an expy of Han Solo, right down to his weapon.
  • The Human Replica Droid Guri is basically a Terminator. Simulates all human functions, so perfectly imitates a human that special tech or the Force is needed to tell otherwise (dogs probably wouldn't work), implacable, Nigh-Invulnerable, faster and stronger than any human, and there is no being which can best her at hand-to-hand. Except Luke Skywalker. Yet she's also starting to understand emotion, particularly the search for new challenges. A later-set comic has her looking for ways to reprogram herself so she's not so violent.
• Eye Scream: Luke blocks a shot from Xizor that would have hit him in the eye if he hadn't. This is also how the dianoga in the sewers is dealt with, Luke cutting off its eyestalk in the novel and Dash in the video game having to shoot it in the eye.
• Fatal Flaw: Xizor arrogantly relies too much on his ability to read and predict people and their actions. This costs him his life during the climax when he is convinced that Vader wouldn't dare kill him and risk the Emperor's anger at losing a powerful ally. That may have been the case had Vader not found out about Xizor's scheme to kill Luke.
• Faux Affably Evil: Xizor is this towards his enemies, especially around Vader (and Leia after she resists him): plotting their downfall or death while being unfailingly polite. Although he's more Affably Evil when dealing with the everyday parts of his job of ruling a criminal empire, as he generally prefers to use the carrot rather than the stick when he deals with his subordinates. Barring the traitors of course.
• Final Boss: For the on-foot levels of the video game, the Gladiator Droid at the end of Xizor's Palace serves this role, as the only level after that is the second and last space level. For the game as a whole, the reactor core of Xizor's Skyhook is the last target.
• Foregone Conclusion: Xizor is trying to kill Luke. Also, Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, and Lando are trying to rescue Han, still in carbonite, from Boba Fett before Boba turns him over to Jabba. Since Luke is still alive in Jedi, where he finally rescues Han from Jabba, you can guess how well those plans work out.
• Foreshadowing: At one point in the novel, Darth Vader attempts to locate Luke with the Force only to sense his presence in two different locations. Since most readers are likely familiar with the big reveal in Return of the Jedi, it is pretty obvious Vader is now sensing Leia, especially given that Luke is contacting Leia through the Force at the time.
• Frame-Up: Black Sun bribes a Rebel to assassinate Luke, and makes it appear the payment came from the Empire. Luke is skeptical though, knowing Vader wants him alive.
• Genius Bruiser: Xizor is a criminal mastermind, martial artist, and a skilled marksman as well. On the other hand, his rival Darth Vader fits this trope too.
• Go for the Eye: In the game, you meet a giant Dianoga as a boss in the semi-final chamber of the Imperial Sewers, and amongst all the Dianoga tentacles is one that has the monster's eye. You must destroy the eye to kill the thing and get to the room with the door to Xizor's Palace.
• Good Is Not Soft: When it is time for the heroes to make good their escape from Xizor's palace, Lando takes a high-yield thermal detonator and drops it down a garbage chute. This earns him a What the Hell, Hero? from the others, but he justifies it by pointing out that anyone working there has to know how evil their boss is.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Xizor's people, the Falleen, have skin that's bright green. It changes to a light orange when they're aroused. Aside from having little hair (enough to form a topknot) plus slightly ridged skin, except for the skin they're pretty indistinguishable from Humanity and considered very attractive (however much of that's due to their pheromones). In the book, Xizor is a Gender Flipped version of this, though given his pheromones cause women (Leia included) to experience a strong attraction which they can rarely resist, it's more predatory than most other examples.
• Groin Attack: Leia explains to Xizor that no really does mean no. Immortalized on a playing card◊.
• Hallway Fight: Guri, being a Challenge Seeker, confronts Luke in a hallway during the escape from Xizor's palace, looking to fight him one-on-one. After narrowly being defeated, she then asks him to Get It Over With and kill her, but he refuses and instead urges her to leave with him and the Rebels instead.
• Harder Than Hard: The Jedi difficulty setting in the video game. Most enemy attacks (except from Droid enemies) will kill you in two or three hits, and health and ammo is much more scarce and their placement is changed around. Nintendo Hard doesn't even begin to describe the hair pulling insanity of this mode—basically, one or two slip ups anywhere, and you're done for. You'll struggle to even get past the first two stages on this setting. On the upside, Dash's own laser pistol does much more damage as well (it can kill Imperial Troopers in one hit when the laser pistol is fully charged) so you can have some fighting chance of winning in this mode.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Being a practitioner of the Dark Side, Darth Vader can't heal his injuries but hopes to one day.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Rendar gets one of these when he fails to shoot down a missile and twelve Bothans on his side are killed by it; previously he'd thought he was invincible and never missed. It turns out he didn't miss—the missile was made of diamond-boron, impervious even to starship cannons.
  • Luke gets one at the same time, because the dead Bothans were under his command, but his anger snaps him out of it, even delivering a Big "SHUT UP!" to Dash to stop whining and start shooting.
• Hero of Another Story: Shadows of the Empire is a multi-media mini-franchise, with a game, a novel, and comic books each centering on different characters running through the same plot in parallel. Wherever any two versions of the story intersect, this trope is brought into play.
• Heroic Willpower: Leia's righteous anger, once Chewie awakens it, lets her resist Xizor's supposedly irresistible pheromones; she feels a ghost of attraction still, but can shrug it off. Xizor is disbelieving. Possibly her latent Force powers also helped.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Spearing two fleek-eels with the same trident.^note Killing two birds with one stone. Another day, another credit—before taxes, of course.^note Another day, another dollar. Going to entropy in a turbolift.^note Going to Hell in a handbasket. What I know about programming you could inscribe on a microdiode lead with a dull sword.^note What I know about [topic] you could write on the back of a postage stamp. Like shooting snakes in a shoebox.^note Like shooting fish in a barrel.
• Honor Before Reason: Luke refuses to leave a dying Bothan ally and run for cover; this leads to him being captured.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Mayli Weng, a representative of the Exotic Entertainers Union, constantly advocates for better working conditions for exotic dancers and impresses Xizor with her good manners.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Luke is depicted as still learning to become a Jedi, and there are several times when he struggles to use the Force. He does build his own lightsaber without it blowing up, though.
• Humanoid Aliens: Though descended from reptiles, the Falleen have the same basic body plan as humans, with some hair (enough to form a topknot) and only slightly scaly skin (although it's green). Female Falleen also have breasts.
• Humongous Mecha: The Gladiator boss. The AT-ST counts as well, given that it's fought inside a hangar that can barely fit it and there are none of the larger AT-ATs around to dwarf it. You get a second one as a mid-boss in a similarly-sized hangar in Gall Spaceport.
• Hypocrite: Both Xizor and Vader, regarding their Even Evil Has Loved Ones. Xizor, who wants to avenge his slain family, feels complete No Sympathy for a would-be assassin attempting to do the same for his own father (whom Xizor caused to be Driven to Suicide). Vader, meanwhile, feels Papa Wolf outrage upon learning about Xizor wanting Luke dead, yet doesn't even offer so much as a Noble Demon nod of understanding about the kingpin's own family-related vendetta against Vader.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Jabba the Hutt apparently can speak Basic perfectly well, as well as understand it. He just chooses to speak Huttese most of the time, considering other languages beneath him—but when a bigger crime boss such as Xizor summons him all the way to Coruscant and tells him to speak Basic, he speaks Basic.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Not the main point of Xizor's Evil Plan, but definitely a side benefit along with Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me when he uses Leia as a way to lure Luke to his castle.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Leia resisting Xizor's advances only makes him more interested in her. Guri points this out to him.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Xizor is an incredibly good shot who practices marksmanship constantly. However, he can't bring down a Jedi.
  • Dash Rendar is described as even better, and we see him pick off members of a swoop gang while moving at high speed on a swoop himself and in a direct vertical drop. Even Luke is impressed.
• Improbable Piloting Skills: Dash Rendar is probably among the top five pilots we see in the entirety of the galaxy. And he doesn't have the Force to help him like Anakin or Luke.
• Inferred Survival:
  • Near the end of the book, Dash Rendar, the Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Han Solo, seems to die in a Heroic Sacrifice, although his allies Never Found the Body and there are a couple of lines about how if he did live, not informing them is very rude of him. It's like that in the easy version of the video game, too, but the hard mode shows that he survived and flew off without informing anyone. And he did show up in later works. Just not very prominently. What's a Han Solo stand-in without a Leia?
  • Luke notices that one of the paragliders on the landing platform of Xizor's palace is missing as the heroes take off in the Falcon, implying that Guri may have escaped. The sequel comic Shadows of the Empire: Evolution confirms she did.
• Insecurity Camera: Lando comes up with the idea of destroying the surveillance network in Xizor's palace to help them escape. It only partially works, since they're traveling upward through the palace and he can only shoot out the camera transmission wires for the floor they're on at the time. Xizor simply notes which floors still have cameras and which don't, then goes to intercept them.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Played for Drama, when Xizor is kissing Leia then moving toward sex with her when Chewie interrupts them. Since this is basically date rape given his pheromones affect her so strongly Leia can't resist, it's all to the best.
• Interspecies Romance: Xizor, a Falleen, tries to seduce Leia with his pheromones. Chewbacca interrupts.
• I Owe You My Life: Luke comes to respect Dash a lot more after the latter shows up to help him fend off the swoop gang on Tatooine.
• It's All My Fault: Luke blames himself for the twelve Bothans killed by a missile, and is convinced he's a lousy commander since he always loses men when he's in charge. He has a brief Heroic BSoD, but it quickly turns into anger, causing him to unleash More Dakka on the ship they're trying to capture to disable it. The narrative outright states he was too angry to use the Force, light or dark side.
• It's Personal: On Prince Xizor's home world, when Xizor was off ruling his criminal enterprise, there was a lab that a biological weapon escaped from, and Darth Vader had the city around it and the two hundred thousand people in that city "sterilized" (i.e. incinerated with turbolasers) from orbit. This included Xizor's mother, father, brother, two sisters, and three uncles. The way this is phrased actually makes it seem like a comparatively benign decision on the Empire's and Vader's parts—this spared the billions of other people on the planet, potentially trillions if it escaped into the rest of the galaxy, from "a horrible, rotting, always fatal infection for which there was no cure." However, It Makes Sense in Context: Xizor describes the laboratory as one of Vader's "pet projects". It's actually not clear that Vader was in fact personally responsible for the cleanup that killed Xizor's family or if it was just the Imperial officers at hand, but either way Xizor blaming Vader makes sense since if it wasn't for his lab, the planet wouldn't have needed sterilizing in the first place.
• I Want Them Alive!:
  • Subverted. Xizor orders his forces to shoot down the Millennium Falcon, adding that capturing it and securing its crew and passengers would also be acceptable.
  • Vader himself, as expected, wants Luke taken in alive—it's intercepting Xizor's order to kill him that gives Vader the justification he needs to just blow him up.
• I Will Find You: Vader's personal mission is to find Luke before Xizor does.
• Jedi Mind Trick: Luke fumbles his way through doing this to make the guard to his cell open the door, let Luke out, and go to sleep. Later, with fewer mistakes, he gets a suspicious but not currently hostile Imperial officer to follow him into a refresher, strip, and go to sleep. Seems to be Luke's thing in this book.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Dash Rendar. Early on he leaves the Falcon to fight its way out of an ambush alone because the Rebels had paid him to guide them, not to fight Imperials. Later on, his arrogance gets several allied Bothans killed and this shakes him. After he seems to die, Wedge informs Luke that Dash didn't actually miss and the missile that destroyed the Bothan ship was an experimental diamond-boron weapon invulnerable to blasters.
• Kingpin in His Gym: Xizor has an "exercise chair" that strengthens his muscles while not having him actually exert himself since he considers exercise for its own sake to be boring, though it's also established that he does practice martial arts and is a crack shot. Vader is shown practicing with his lightsaber, which he uses to duel and cut down several lightsaber-wielding droids.
• Left Hanging: Xizor has Guri kill Vigo Green for spying on him for an outside party, but neither he nor the readers ever find out exactly who that party is.
• Leitmotif: Listen to the soundtrack. Vader's leitmotif is played a few times and Xizor has one of his own. The composer has expressed regret that he didn't include Leia's Theme.
• Literal-Minded: An obstructive droid clearly is this.
  Droid: Master Melan is a very busy Bothan. Perhaps I can arrange for you to see him in, oh, perhaps a standard week? Your names?
  Dash: Okay, Goldie. My name is Man with a Blaster About to Cook You. Either you open the door or your busy Bothan is going to have to get himself a new receptionist.
  Droid: Oh dear. Very well, Man with a Blaster About to Cook You.
• Living Aphrodisiac: Xizor and his species, the Falleen, have this ability naturally. They can emit pheromones to attract members of the opposite sex (whether from their own people or not). People affected find it very difficult to resist.
• Lizard Folk:
  • Xizor's people, the Falleen, had evolved from reptiles. However, they look much more like humans than most examples, even having some hair, though only enough for a single topknot (oddly). Their females have breasts as well (though none appear in the book). Aside from green, slightly scaly skin, they don't have much "reptilian" to their physiology.
  • A more straight example is the female Barabel who's the leader of the bounty hunters who'd captured Luke. Her species has far more resemblance to lizards, with black scaly skin, large black eyes, taloned digits, forked tongues and sharp teeth.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • In keeping continuity with Return of the Jedi, Luke hasn't yet told Leia, his friends, or anyone else in the Alliance about the claims Vader made during their duel at Bespin. This is why Luke's not really convinced Vader's actually behind the assassination attempts (since Luke knows Vader wants him very much alive). Of course, since Luke hasn't yet told Leia or the others, he can't exactly articulate why he's convinced Vader's ironically innocent for once.
  • In the sequel comic, the heroes learn that Guri is headed for trouble. Luke, Leia and Lando immediately begin discussing the situation. As Han was frozen at the time, he keeps asking in increasing irritation who this Guri is.
• Locomotive Level: The hover trains in Ord Mantell Junkyard. In this level, you have to jump from train to train until you find IG-88.
• Love Is in the Air: Xizor's creepy, creepy pheromones.
  An excited Falleen who loosed his full pheromonal arsenal was, for all practical purposes, irresistible to a member of the opposite sex. It did not matter what a woman's stance was on fidelity, that she had been a faithful partner to another for years or decades. Falleen pheromones were more potent than the strongest spice. Leia might want to resist him with her mind, but her body would ache for him. There was no antidote save one.
  Xizor smiled. He would enjoy administering the single antidote to Leia. He would enjoy it very much indeed...
• Macross Missile Massacre: In the video game, the final boss of the foot levels—the gladiator droid—can fire clouds of seeker missiles towards you.
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • One of Xizor's former mistresses was buried by a construction droid "accidentally".
  • The Emperor, after Xizor bribed his best horticulturalist away, arranged for the unfortunate man to die in a turbolift accident.
• Marathon Level: As far as the on foot levels go, Gall Spaceport is a long trek through winding canyon roads, and large structures to get to the end.
• A Master Makes Their Own Tools: Luke spends almost a month working on his new lightsaber at Obi-Wan's former house, since it's his first time making one and he wants to be as exacting as possible.
• Mecha-Mooks: The battle droids encountered in many levels of the game.
• Mighty Glacier: Wampas are slow, but one swipe from them can take out a third of your health.
• Mildly Military: Rogue Squadron, even moreso than in the X-Wing Series. Here, they apparently have free rein to help Luke with whatever, and other than Leia the Alliance High Command is nowhere to be seen.
• Neck Snap: Guri kills one of Xizor's underlings this way for double-crossing him. Xizor himself uses it to kill a man with a vendetta who accosts him on Coruscant.
• Never Found the Body: Dash Rendar. And it turns out, he survived.
• N.G.O. Superpower: Black Sun is the most powerful criminal syndicate in the known galaxy, whose reach is in every corner. It has its own spy network which is trumped only by the Bothans, with its leader being part of the Imperial Court beside the Emperor's right hand Darth Vader (whom he tries to usurp), and he's portrayed as the third most powerful man in the Empire. Later we see Xizor has a private fleet, with other material showing he also has multiple mercenary companies serving him.
• Nothing Personal: A Barabel holding Luke Skywalker captive tells him that they're now involved in a bidding war for a bounty between those who want him dead and those who want him alive, but that it's not personal, just business.
  Luke: You'll excuse me if I take it personally.
• Not Worth Killing: While destroying a Rebel base, Vader allows an X-wing to escape, as he sees the entire battle as beneath him.
• Oh, Crap!: Xizor's reaction to Luke blocking all of his shots.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The first part of "Xizor's Theme", and "The Destruction of Xizor's Palace", the climax of which is used in the final stage of the video game.
• Ominous Floating Castle: Prince Xizor's skyhook, a space station above Coruscant that has its own space elevator.
• Papa Wolf: Vader is... displeased about Xizor's efforts to kill his son. He even allies with the Rebels briefly to stop him, and orders Xizor killed for this at the end.
• Parrying Bullets: Naturally, Luke is able to parry blaster bolts with the lightsaber he builds.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Xizor towards the two ship guards who remained at their post to guard the Virago even when the evacuation of his castle was being sounded. He takes the time to tell the guards to take one of the airspeeders and get away before the building blows up, noting to himself that he will keep said guards in his employ and possibly even give them a promotion for their loyalty.
  • Even Vader himself gets a moment; in an inversion of his habit of choking subordinates for failure, when one officer succeeds with his work by finding critical information that reveals Xizor's motive for revenge against Vader,^note  Xizor used Black Sun's influence to destroy the records of his family and their deaths on the planet so as to not leave hints of said motive; the uncovering of a pirate copy of the planet records reveals a telltale holophoto featuring Xizor among his family members the Dark Lord rewards the man with a hefty paycheck, so to speak.
    Vader: When you finish this project, you will no longer have need to worry about money, such is my gratitude.
  • Vader also distractedly spares the lives of several Bounty Hunters who had Luke prisoner but let him escape.
• Pheromones: The Falleen of both sexes emit them, and this is the source of their attraction ability. Once a person is exposed to them, a strong desire for the individual who emits persists until they have sex. Leia only resists it due to Chewbacca interrupting her with Xizor, plus her own strong willpower (possibly her latent ability with the Force).
• Play-Along Prisoner: At one point, Leia, Lando and Chewie get Guri to submit to being bound to her chair with carbonite cuffs. They then interrogate her about her master and get her to agree to arrange a meeting with Xizor. After this, Guri just gets up and walks out the door. You will notice we didn't mention Leia or Lando undoing the carbonite restraining cuffs first, because Guri breaks them like sugar glass when she stands, as if they weren't even there in the first place.
• The Pornomancer: Xizor's pheromones allow him to boink any woman without so much as a struggle.
• The Power of Hate: Vader tries to use this and heal himself with the Dark Side through concentrating on how much he loathes Obi-Wan for injuring him. It works temporarily, though when he feels himself healing Vader is joyful and this cancels it out. The book indicates he's tried the same thing many times over the year with the same results.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner:
  • Vader to Xizor.
    Vader: I will risk the Emperor's displeasure. However, you will not be there to see it.
  • IG-88 to Dash.
    IG-88: You will detain me no further.
• Private Intelligence Agency: Much of Black Sun's power stems from its having one, second only in skill to perhaps the Bothans', and Leia asks for their help in finding out who's targeting Luke for death as a result (not knowing they're the culprits). Other books explain Black Sun has gathered blackmail material about government officials across the galaxy using its spies and gets these people to aid them as a result.
• Punch-Clock Villain: The Barabel who captures Luke insists it's only business, and she has nothing against him personally. In fact, Barabels generally have a great respect for Jedi.
• Racing Minigame: Mos Eisley & Beggar's Canyon; Get to Luke before the biker gang does, or kill all of the bikers before they reach Luke.
• Reactor Boss: The skyhook core.
• Really 700 Years Old: Prince Xizor, a Falleen, looks like he is about thirty, but he is over a hundred years old. This makes him older than Palpatine. According to Legends, the average Falleen lifespan is 250 years, while a rare few can live up to 400.
• Red Shirt: This becomes a Berserk Button for Luke when he considers himself a failure of a commander for always losing men. He becomes so enraged that he single-handedly cripples a ship without the aid of the Force.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Xizor is a reptilian humanoid Falleen. Subverted since the Falleen are generally thought to be one of the more beautiful races of the galaxy (their pheromones help). Double subverted since the only Falleen we meet is Xizor, and he's a duplicitous creepy bastard.
• Revenge by Proxy: Xizor wants Luke dead and Vader in disgrace as payback for Vader killing his family. And neighbors. And anyone else within a hundred-mile radius of Xizor's old home...
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Guri, Xizor's very expensive Human Replica Droid. She breathes, she has muscles and a heart that pumps fluid. Even a full-body scan can't tell that she is a droid, other than her weight being higher than it should be for someone of her build and her skin being only ten years old.
• Robosexual: Xizor and Guri.
  As [Xizor] watched her walk away, he briefly considered telling her to disrobe and join him in the water. He had made her do that a few times when he wanted company he could trust absolutely, and she had demonstrated to his satisfaction that she could pass for a woman in virtually every way during those times.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Xizor was a prince on his home planet but keeps himself busy running a massive company—and an even more massive criminal empire—and practices martial arts and shooting in his spare time in case he has to fight anyone himself. And as usual for Star Wars, Princess Leia.
• Running Gag: None of the voxchips in any of Prince Xizor's cool chairs seem to be able to pronounce his name to his satisfaction.
• Samus Is a Girl: Leia is momentarily surprised that her contact with Black Sun is a woman, but then reasons that as a high-ranking woman in the Alliance herself, it shouldn't be that much of a shock. This is an Internal Reveal as the reader already knew Guri was female (really, a droid made to appear this way, not an actual woman).
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Lando tosses a thermal detonator down a garbage chute, Xizor barks at his men to find it. 'We're not paid enough', comes the reply.
• Sequential Boss: This applies to Boba Fett in the Gall Spaceport and the Gladiator Droid in Xizor's Palace. For the former, you first fight Boba Fett on foot, and after you deplete his health, he jumps into his Slave I ship and continues the fight from there. As for the Gladiator, when you start that fight, you're fighting the full droid, but you have to deplete three health bars. After the first one, the droid loses its legs and begins floating, plus the floor opens up to reveal a maze. After the second one, only the head is left, but it still has its sweeping laser and your jetpack breaks.
• Sequence Breaking: Using a cheat code (type in "Joe" as a case sensitive name and set the difficulty to Easy) allows you to skip all of the flight based missions.
• Sexbot: Guri sometimes serves as a sex partner for Xizor, in addition to his personal assistant and assassin.
• Shoot the Builder: The sourcebook short story "Only One of Her Kind" shows Xizor purchase the human replica droid Guri and then have her kill the scientist who is primarily (although not solely) responsible for her creation so no one else will have a similar weapon. This effort fails because the scientist was Properly Paranoid enough to make a replica droid of himself and have that droid deliver Guri to Xizor.
• Shout-Out:
  • In a Star Wars tradition, this line references THX 1138: "Thix? What is going on down there? Thix? Come in, sector one-one-three-eight, come in—"
  • In the N64 version of the game, when Dash locates the supercomputer aboard the Suprosa. If the player steps far enough back and looks at it head on... Looks an awful lot like an N64 with a Shadows cartridge plugged in, doesn't it? Also, one of the Challenge Points is shaped like Max.
  • Also in the N64 version, the credits contain "...and Weena Merkatur [sic] as The Hopping Woman", a reference to Freakazoid!. Several more are hidden via an Easter Egg^note Hold C-Right during the entire credits loop, you'll see the Shout Outs at the very end: "Narf!", "Don't be a weird boy!", "United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama...", and "...G'dnight Everybody!" Someone at LucasArts was a big fan of Kids' WB! circa 1996.
• Sky Face: The comic adaptation that takes place just after A New Hope features Luke remembering Obi-Wan with his face in the sky.
• Slave Liberation: It's mentioned during a meeting of Black Sun's leaders that their profits from slave trading have dropped as planets influenced by the Rebels passed local laws banning slavery, thus freeing slaves under their jurisdiction.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration : IG-88 is a Blood Knight that treats bounty hunting as a game, finding the thrill of the hunt more rewarding than the reward itself. His boss arena is astonishingly suited for this, as the complicated layout of the room makes his Boss Battle a game of hide-and-seek: the winner is whomever spots the other first.
• Smug Snake: Xizor is a high-functioning example. He's certainly clever and he's got style, but his arrogance leads him to make several mistakes that end up biting him hard—most notably underestimating Darth Vader.
• Spell My Name With An S: Xizor is apparently pronounced "SHEE-zor," with the X pronounced as in Portuguese. This issue is still being debated almost 15 years later.
• Standard FPS Guns: In the video game, the blaster, seeker missiles, flamethrower, pulse cannon, stunner, and disruptor take the roles of Pistol (complete with Bottomless Magazines), Rocket Launcher, Flamethrower, Automatic Weapon, Gimmicky Weapon, and BFG respectively. Plays all associated tropes relatively straight, save for the seekers, which are actually fairly weak for a rocket launcher (their main strength is their heat-seeking abilities).
• Statuesque Stunner: Guri is noted to be beautiful, and sources state that she stands at 1.8 meters tall: 5'11". To put things in perspective, she's taller than Luke (1.72 meters), with her height being only slightly less than Xizor's 1.83 meters (as per The New Essential Guide to Characters) and considerably more than Leia's 1.55 meters (the height of Carrie Fisher, the actress who played Leia).
• Super-Reflexes: Luke gets this when he opens himself to the Force during his fight with Guri—the narration says that he "felt as if he were moving at normal speed, though there was a crackling feeling to his motion, a sound like strong wind whistling about his ears."
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Dash Rendar in place of frozen Han Solo. Several characters actually comment on his similarity. If anything, though, Rendar is even cockier.
• The Syndicate: Black Sun is the most powerful criminal organization in the galaxy. It's an Empire within an Empire (though predating it by centuries) and has a cozy arrangement with Palpatine (for example, providing logistical support to the construction of the Death Star) who considers it valuable enough that its leader, Xizor, is a respected member of the Imperial Court, the third most powerful man in the galaxy, and a rival to Darth Vader himself. Its upper-level members are all rich and powerful in their own right—Xizor is the CEO of the galaxy's largest transportation company, one of his underlings Durga leads a Hutt crime family that rivals Jabba's, etc. Star Wars: Scoundrels reveals that Black Sun accumulated most of its power not by bribery or intimidation, but by gathering information to blackmail high-level officials into cooperating, making it as much a private intelligence agency as a crime syndicate (which is why Leia reaches out to it in the first place), and one the Bothans alone can outdo.
• Tank Controls: In the N64 game, to an extent—pushing the joystick to the left or right causes Dash to rotate rather than just face that direction.
• Token Human: Black Sun starts out with nine Vigos (lieutenants) of Prince Xizor (himself a Falleen). Only one Vigo, Green, is Human, and he soon dies after Xizor reveals he's a spy (with Guri summarily killing him). Guri is taken as Human by most people too, but is really a Human Replica Droid who can pass for one almost perfectly.
• Turns Red: In the video game—as you destroy the Gladiator from the feet up, its attacks become deadlier. On top of that, the floor opens up and creates a maze (which has a few droids in it), and once the head is left, it will only use the sweeping laser and your jetpack will malfunction; it won't refill when you exhaust the fuel.
• Uncanny Valley: In-universe, Lando Calrissian notes that while Guri is beautiful, there's something "spooky" about her.
• The Unfought: Dash never directly encounters Xizor or Guri in the game.
• Unique Enemy: Guarding the Imperial base on Gall is the lone Cliff Wampa, who differs from the ones on Hoth with its brown fur.
• Villainous Breakdown: Xizor has one near the end.
• Villainous Rescue: During the final battle over Coruscant, Vader saves Luke by ordering the Imperial fleet to attack Xizor's forces.
• Villain Shoes: There are several cheats that let you play as the bad guys in the video game:
  • In the Echo Base level, if you already have the Wampa Stompa code as your filename, you can trigger a cheat code ^note press left on the control pad and right-C at the exact same time, then press up on the pad. Press the right-C button to switch between characters. to play as either a Snowtrooper or a Wampa.
  • There is also a cheat code that allows you to play as an AT-ST in the Battle of Hoth level.
  • If you're in the "Sewers of Imperial City Level" or "Xizor's Palace", you can use a similar cheat to play as one of Xizor's guards.
  • During the Skyhook battle, there is a cheat that allows you to play as a TIE fighter, in addition to an X-wing. You can also unlock them by getting all 87 Challenge Points on Medium difficulty.
• Villains Out Shopping:
  • The book sometimes cuts to Xizor doing mundane things that aren't linked to one of his evil plans. It once cuts to him going to a restaurant, wondering what dish he'll order. It also cuts at one point to him trimming a six-hundred-year-old bonsai tree while thinking that he will reveal this patient, cultured side of himself to Leia, among other things. Later it cuts to him luxuriating in a bath, having invited Leia to join him (he was rejected), thinking that soon his pheromones will overcome her willpower.
  • There's quite a few of these cuts in the novel—one shows Xizor inspecting a mansion he bought for his mistress as a good-bye gift, and in another he's contemplating his navel while dining on the Star Wars equivalent of fugu.
• Vocal Dissonance: Quasi-meta example. Most official artwork shows Xizor as having a rather Pretty Boy look, yet the book describes his voice as being very deep and manly.
• Warm-Up Boss: The AT-ST you fight inside Echo Base in the video game. Even on Jedi difficulty, it's a ridiculously easy fight, since it moves and turns so slow, allowing you to circle strafe behind it and shoot it into submission.
• We Will Not Use Stage Makeup In The Future: Subverted, as with nearly all disguises in Star Wars Legends.
• Wham Episode: Vader of all people is on the business end of one when he figures out why Xizor is hell-bent on killing Luke: Xizor knows Luke is Vader's son, and he wants to kill Luke in revenge for Vader killing Xizor's family. It's notable as one of the few times in the old canon that Darth Vader is caught on the wrong foot. But, true to form, he takes zero chances in dealing with Xizor after that moment.
• Wicked Cultured: Xizor. Part of the reason the heroes know he's dead is that he never shows up again at any of Coruscant's most expensive restaurants, one of which he co-owns.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: Guri is a very beautiful blonde who most men notice instantly and find her highly attractive. Despite this, Lando notices there's something not quite right about her (he's right, since Guri's really a droid-she was designed to be so beautiful). No other woman in the book, not even Leia, ever gets described as being so attractive.
• Worth It: During the final battle, Vader is fully aware that he'll be risking the Emperor's wrath by killing Xizor (who currently has the Emperor's favor as a major resource-provider), but still invokes this trope after finally having enough of Xizor's crap. For what it's worth, Palpatine claims to have been aware of Xizor's treachery all along, and praises Vader for having exposed it.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Xizor sees Vader as this, disliking him on a personal level but respecting him as a warrior. Guri also sees Luke as this since as a droid programmed for combat, most humans are no match for her... but a Jedi is.
  • It's also notable the Vader explicitly says in the book that he doesn't consider Xizor this, considering his duplicitous scheming to be beneath him.
• You Have Failed Me: After learning that a rescue party broke into his palace, Xizor plans to replace his entire security staff—and those other than foot soldiers, the supervisors, would find their dismissals particularly painful. On the other hand, when it comes time to flee the palace, Xizor takes note of the two guards who kept watch over his personal fighter, the Virago, and decides that they will keep their jobs when the situation is taken care of (and possibly even earn a promotion).
• You Killed My Father: Comes up quite often, actually. Vader killed most of Xizor's family, Xizor drove a would-be assassin's father to his death, the Empire killed Melan's schoolteacher father for espionage... Also, Dash's parents were exiled and he was expelled from the Imperial Academy because his brother crashed a ship into one of the Emperor's personal museums. Vader wants to kill Xizor over his attempt on Luke.

Tropes in Shadows of the Empire: Evolution

• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: In the original series, Prince Xizor prefers to direct things from his headquarters, punishes ambition and disloyalty among his lieutenants, uses his name and reputation to further his ends, is secretive about his plans, and attracts people with his pheromones. Here, his niece Savan ventures out in various disguises to conduct operations and leads her goons in the climax. She provokes dissent and disloyalty to weaken her rivals. She avoids using her name, reputation, and established position to persuade or intimidate people and relies on money and demonstrations of her skills to make allies and deter enemies. She also confides in some of her men and doesn’t use her pheromones while flirting with people.
• Evil Power Vacuum: Xizor's death has left Black Sun in disarray, having his lieutenants (called Vigos) fighting over who will lead this. Numerous innocent people have been killed when caught in the crossfire during their street fights, which causes Han, Luke and Leia to attempt mediation so the violence will cease. Xizor's niece Savan incites the factions against each other with false flag operations in hopes of taking over herself. She's foiled by the end, with what becomes of Black Sun left unclear. Other material says Durga the Hutt, one Vigo, takes control before being killed himself.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: The only way to tell Zan and Zu Pike apart is that Zan has a sleeveless, midriff-barring shirt and vest, while Zu wears a scarf and a shirt that covers her arms and stomach. Other sources say that they have different eye colors, but that isn't apparent in this comic.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: As soon as the Pike Sisters learn that their bounty hunt is pitting them against the Heroes of Yavin, they quit their job. Their boss tries to enforce Resignations Not Accepted with his blaster, but he’s the one who ends up dead while the heroes let the Pike Sisters leave peacefully.
• Latex Perfection: The Falleen woman Savan flawlessly impersonates a human female Vigo and an elderly male Falleen antique dealer by wearing plastic masks.
• Literal Disarming: Luke cuts The Dragon's gun hand off.
• Living MacGuffin: Kind of living, anyway, as a major plot line is Savan trying to capture human replica droid Guri to assess Black Sun files in her head and make her an assassin again.
• Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: A crowd of Thrumble's employees tries to throw Kar Yang out of the bar, and in the next panel, they're all on the ground dead or unconscious.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Several of Savan's fellow Vigos are openly prejudiced against humans and/or women.
• Retired Monster: Massad Thrumble is a former Imperial admiral who ran the regime's weapons division and helped build the assassin droid Guri (although beyond that, it's unclear if he did anything really heinous). Now, he hangs around a backwater cantina (which he owns) while having drinks with a much younger girlfriend and avoiding working for either major faction. When Guri asks him to erase her assassination programming and memories, he agrees to help for the intellectual challenge rather than out of any sympathy for her (at least initially).
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The story follows Guri trying to reprogram away her nature as an assassin, Savan's efforts to take over the Black Sun, the Heroes of Yavin interacting with Savan and becoming suspicious of her manipulations, Bounty Hunter Kar Yang chasing Guri, and the Pike sisters and their employer trying to to reclaim a medical droid that Guri stole (after they stole it first) for her upcoming operation. The plots overlap some and come together, but the main characters don’t interact much early on.

Tropes in Mara Jade - By The Emperor’s Hand

• Beware the Nice Ones: Gorb Drig and his customer Jorshim are both affable, considerate people without an ounce of criminality in their bodies, but they are also tough, burly, and brave enough to put up a good fight against Black Nebula goons.
• The Cracker: As Mara tries to escape from Coruscant after falling out with the State Sec, Imperial computer technician Tal Burren works to track her movements and adjust security technology procedures to hinder her (although he also makes sure to take steps to avoid killing other prisoners while releasing gas). He casually negotiates one promotion after another as a reward for each innovation.
• Evil Power Vacuum: The series is collected in the same omnibus as other Shadows of the Empire comics, but the only real connection is that the Black Nebula is taking advantage of Xizor’s death to become the dominant criminal group. Mara Jade puts an end to that.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Most Houks are violent, surly criminals. Gorb Drig is a polite, patient diner owner who recalls how he and his son saved their money to buy the diner before his son became a casualty of "another foolish Houk war of conquest."
• Obfuscating Stupidity: In the first issue, Mara's attempt to bust a Black Nebula operation is seemingly foiled by the local officer’s incompetence, but he turns out to be The Mole and is actively sabotaging her.
• Spare a Messenger: When Mara is laying low with a waitressing job, Black Nebula thugs show up for protection money. They kill her boss for refusing to pay and plan to spare Mara to spread word of their deeds to other merchants. Mara kills them instead.

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