Bultar Swan/Legends

"We're talking of revenge, Roblio! That's not the path of a Jedi! Having lost so much, must we now give that up as well?"

- Bultar Swan, to Roblio Darté

Bultar Swan was a female Human who trained with and served the Jedi Order during the final decades of the Galactic Republic. As a Padawan of Jedi Master Micah Giiett, Swan excelled at martial arts and unarmed combat, and later complemented her fighting techniques with a strong lightsaber defense under the tutelage of Jedi Master Plo Koon. Dedicated to her beliefs, she was respected within the Order for her record of never having killed an opponent prior to the outbreak of the Clone Wars. After becoming a Jedi Knight, Swan was routinely sent on peace missions, including one to the Fondor system to investigate the alleged reappearance of an ancient starship and another to the Sepan system to negotiate the cessation of a decades-long civil war. In 22 BBY, the Confederacy of Independent Systems planned to execute Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, his Padawan Anakin Skywalker, and the Republic senator Padmé Amidala on Geonosis, and Swan joined a strike team consisting of 212 Jedi sent to rescue them. The ensuing battle began a three-year galactic conflict known as the Clone Wars, during which Swan served the Republic as a general.

Swan led Republic forces into battle on worlds such as Amaltanna and Aargonar, and three years into the war, helped defend the Republic's capital, Coruscant, from the invading Confederate Navy. Shortly after the Confederacy fled the planet, the Republic's Supreme Chancellor Palpatine brought an end to the war by ordering Republic troops to kill their Jedi Generals and having the Confederacy's Separatist Council murdered. Swan escaped the initial stages of the Great Jedi Purge, and was soon contacted by fellow survivor Shadday Potkin, who invited her to a meeting on Kessel. Eight Jedi attended the conclave, but Potkin had invited them with an ulterior motive: Skywalker had become the Sith apprentice Darth Vader, serving Emperor Palpatine of the reorganized Galactic Empire, and Potkin had leaked intelligence of the meeting to Vader with the hope that the combined strength of eight Jedi could defeat him. Vader stormed the meeting and began killing the gathered Jedi, but was soon wounded and disarmed by Swan and Master Tsui Choi. Although Swan refused to kill her unarmed opponent, her fellow Jedi Koffi Arana was determined to finish their foe. He seized Swan's lightsaber, stabbing her with it in the process and ending her life.

Early life and Jedi training
Bultar Swan, a Human female, was born on the planet Kuat during the final decades of the Galactic Republic. She displayed a high level of Force sensitivity at an early age and was discovered by the Jedi Order. The Jedi separated her from her family and brought her to the galactic capital of Coruscant to begin training with their order, and after several years of studying in the Jedi Temple, Swan was assigned to Jedi Master Micah Giiett as his Padawan. Under Giiett's guidance, Swan displayed prowess in a number of combat disciplines, including Teräs Käsi and the Verdanaian "Sliding Hands" method. The Twi'lek Jedi Master Anoon Bondara aided Giiett in teaching Swan to blend the two unarmed combat styles.

Giiett was killed by Yinchorri extremists during the Yinchorri Uprising in 33 BBY, and Swan continued her training under Jedi Master Plo Koon, a longtime friend of Giiett's. Koon placed greater emphasis on practicing lightsaber combat than Giiett had, and helped Swan learn to use the weapon to complement her skills in martial arts. He took her to Yinchorr to visit the site of Giiett's death, and told her that her former Master had sacrificed his life in order to save several other Jedi. Although she still heavily felt his loss, Swan sensed that Giiett had been at peace at the time of his death and believed that he would have been proud of what she had accomplished in her training.

Knighthood
"Despite the best efforts of Jedi negotiators, the hostilities between the worlds of Dimok and Ripoblus have resumed."

- A HoloNet News report on Swan's mission to the Sepan system

Swan was knighted within the following eleven years, and entered active service as a Jedi Knight in a galaxy growing more dangerous. In 22 BBY, she was paired with Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Padawan Anakin Skywalker on a mission to the Fondor system. A Fondorian patrol ship had encountered what it believed to be the Sun Runner, a starship that had been missing for four thousand years. After the crew of the patrol ship had notified Fondorian authorities about their discovery, it had disappeared. Furthermore, both Fondor and its moon Nallastia were claiming salvage rights to the Sun Runner. The three Jedi were thus tasked with investigating both the patrol ship's disappearance and the alleged Sun Runner reappearance while maintaining peace between the two interested parties. However, unbeknownst to them, the starship was not in fact the Sun Runner, but a fake created by the shipbuilder Groodo the Hutt, who intended to crash it into the Fondor Shipyards in order to eliminate his major competition.

After taking a ship of their own to the Fondor system, the three Jedi witnessed the false Sun Runner, sitting derelict in space, bring its systems online and proceed toward the center of the system. Kenobi and Skywalker followed it in their starfighters while Swan stayed aboard the Jedi's ship. When Kenobi returned, he told Swan that he and Skywalker had discovered they were chasing a false Sun Runner, and had found the Fondorian patrol ship safe inside of its hangar. They had freed the patrol ship and destroyed the false Sun Runner in order to prevent it from destroying the shipyards, but in the process Skywalker had crashed his starfighter on Nallastia. Following Skywalker's homing beacon, Swan and Kenobi recruited Margravine Quenelle, the ruling monarch of Nallastia, to their search, and located the Padawan at the fortress of the moon's skull queen, a ruling figure who held sway over residents of the moon's jungles. After meeting a young boy named Klay, Skywalker had taken Nallastia's Princess Calvaria hostage in order to bargain for the release of Klay's parents, two zoologists that the native Nallastians had brought to the fortress to be sacrificed. Quenelle revealed that she herself was the skull queen, and acquiesced to Skywalker's demands. However, the energy field the zoologists had been placed in would end their lives in three hours unless the Lost Stars of Nallastia could be found. The stars were three ancient jewels hidden somewhere on the moon whose power could be harnessed to break the energy field.

Along with Quenelle and Klay, the three Jedi set out to locate the jewels. When a giant spider attacked and injured Swan and Klay, Skywalker brought them back to Quenelle's fortress for medical treatment. Kenobi and Quenelle located the jewels, and with Klay's parents freed, the three Jedi were treated to a dinner at Quenelle's fortress and named guests of honor. Kenobi had contacted the Jedi High Council and requested backup, sensing that something was not right on nearby Fondor, and Jedi reinforcements arrived in the form of Masters Mace Windu and Kit Fisto. The five Jedi quickly learned that Groodo and his son Boonda had taken over a spaceport on Fondor and that Calvaria was one of their hostages. Actually hoping to use the spaceport to destroy the shipyards, Groodo bluffed to Quenelle, claiming that he would tell her his ransom demands in one hour's time. Swan, Windu, Fisto, and Quenelle boarded the Republic cruiser that Windu and Fisto had arrived in, but were attacked by a Venrap, a large purple snake that had found its way onto their ship. After neutralizing the threat, they traveled to the Fondorian spaceport, destroyed a force field surrounding it, and landed, where they disabled the Hutts' team of armed GNK power droids and rescued Calvaria. With the droids destroyed, the Hutts fled, and the Jedi returned to Coruscant.

Throughout the mission to Fondor, Swan learned much from Kenobi and Skywalker. Her experience made her an obvious choice for other peace missions, and later in the year, she and fellow Knights Empatojayos Brand and Chellemi Chuovvick embarked on one to the Sepan system. Their task was to negotiate the cessation of hostilities between the residents of two neighboring planets, Ripoblus and Dimok, after decades of conflict between the two enemies. The three Jedi were able to bring the civil war to a month-long standstill, but upon their return to Coruscant, the fighting flared up again.

The Battle of Geonosis
"This party's over."

- Mace Windu, revealing to Count Dooku his 212-strong Jedi strike team, of which Swan was a part

In 22 BBY, the Separatist Crisis brought the Republic to its knees. Several thousand star systems began leaving the Republic, many of them joining the Confederacy of Independent Systems, led by the former Jedi Master Count Dooku. When Obi-Wan Kenobi discovered that the Confederacy was building a battle droid army on Geonosis, he was taken captive along with Skywalker and Senator Padmé Amidala of Naboo. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine was given emergency powers by the Galactic Senate, and commissioned a Grand Army of the Republic. As Jedi Master Yoda went to Kamino to recruit an army of clone troopers that Kenobi had earlier discovered the Kaminoans had been secretly building for the Republic, Master Windu brought a strike team of 212 Jedi to Geonosis, Swan among them. As Kenobi, Skywalker, and Amidala stood in Geonosis's Petranaki arena surrounded by Separatist battle droids, the Jedi strike team infiltrated the arena and came to their aid, igniting their lightsabers and charging at the droids.

Swan, who had largely rejected unarmed combat by this point, charged into battle with her lightsaber. All of her combat training came into play as she struggled to resist the barrage of battle droid laserfire. Many Jedi fell to the overwhelming force of rapidly-firing droids, and Swan joined a survivor's circle in the center of the arena as the droids ceased firing and Count Dooku, observing the melee from above, called on the Jedi to surrender. Windu refused, and as the Jedi again raised their lightsabers, the clone army arrived, landing in and outside of the arena in LAAT gunships. A battle ensued between Republic and Separatist forces, initiating the Clone Wars. Swan and the surviving Jedi joined the clones in sending Separatist forces fleeing from the planet.

On the front lines
"Victory is always complicated."

- Ki-Adi-Mundi, after troops under his and Swan's command defeated Separatists on Aargonar

Like many other Jedi, Swan became a general in the Republic's army, leading clone forces into battle against the Separatists. Six months after Geonosis, she led Republic forces against battle droids under the command of the Separatist commander Baron Edi Wedd on Amaltanna. All of the clones under Swan's command were killed while every battle droid was simultaneously destroyed in the process. As the lone survivor of the battle, Swan entered Wedd's fortress and sought out the Baron. Via comlinks and cameras, Wedd followed Swan's every move and repeatedly taunted her, claiming that she could not reach his command chamber. During her search, Swan discovered corpses of native Amaltannans that had attempted to reach Wedd in the past.

Wedd dispatched small spider droids and a pair of B2 super battle droids to halt Swan's progress, but the Jedi Knight swiftly destroyed them all. She also destroyed the fortress' communications array before arriving at the Baron's command chamber. Amidst more of Wedd's taunting, Swan plunged her lightsaber into the chamber door's control panel, short-circuiting the door-opening mechanism. Swan then left the fortress, abandoning Wedd to die in an inescapable tomb.

Nearly one year later, Swan and Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi led Republic forces against the Confederacy on Aargonar. When Skywalker, Jedi General A'Sharad Hett, and Hett's Padawan Bhat Jul became trapped behind enemy lines, Swan lost contact with them, and Hett's troops began to give ground to the enemy. As the Republic base was overrun by battle droids, Mundi ordered Swan to hold the location until the clone troopers under his command finished gathering at nearby Vondar Canyon. A budding sandstorm prevented them from fleeing the planet, and they planned to mount a counterattack from the canyon after the storm lifted. In order to prevent the Separatists from seizing Republic supplies, Mundi further ordered Swan to disable whatever they could not take with them. The two generals ignited their lightsabers and joined their clones in making a stand at the base. After holding it for a brief period of time, their forces retreated to the canyon, and Swan discovered that the ion-charged sandstorm had disabled the tracking, targeting, and communication systems of their equipment. Both Jedi boarded LAAT gunships and continued the fight from the air, hoping to get a better view of how the battle was proceeding. The onslaught of battle droids and IG-227 Hailfire-class droid tanks prompted Swan to order her troops to fall back, but her instructions were preempted by the arrival of Skywalker and Hett in a Gunship Bomber Enhanced closely pursued by a Gouka dragon. Their arrival shifted the tide of the battle, and the broken lines of the Confederate troops fell to the more focused Republic forces.

In 19 BBY, after three years of continuous warfare, the Separatists launched a strike at Coruscant. General Grievous, the Supreme Commander of the Confederacy's Droid Armies, brought the Confederate Navy into the system and began loosing warships against both military and civilian targets. His vulture droids and tri-fighters hammered themselves against the planet's defenses and disrupted traffic lanes; Swan, Jedi Masters Saesee Tiin, Agen Kolar, and several other Jedi piloted Jedi interceptors against the attacking Separatist ships. During the battle, Grievous kidnapped Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and brought the Republic's leader aboard his flagship, the Invisible Hand. Kenobi and Skywalker, now respectively a Jedi Master and a Jedi Knight, infiltrated the warship and rescued Palpatine, killing Count Dooku and forcing Grievous and his fleet to flee in the process. Over the next few days, Swan left Coruscant and transferred to a Republic medstation.

Endgame
"Some do not think the Sith should be allowed to win."

- Swan invites Tsui Choi to a conclave of surviving Jedi

While Swan was at the medstation tending to wounded soldiers, Chancellor Palpatine revealed himself to Skywalker as Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith, and reorganized the Republic into a Galactic Empire with Skywalker, now named Darth Vader, as his Sith apprentice. Sidious had been manipulating both sides of the war, and had Skywalker murder every member of the Separatist Council and shut down all Separatist battle droids, while he himself ordered all clone troopers to murder their Jedi generals. Jedi across the galaxy were shot and killed, but Swan managed to escape execution when other healers at the medcenter warned her of the clones' order. With the war over, the remaining Jedi were scattered and leaderless. Swan was nevertheless contacted by Jedi Master Shadday Potkin a month later, who wanted to organize as many Jedi as possible into a force to counteract the Sith. Potkin invited Swan to discuss their situation on Kessel, but Swan traveled to Eriadu first and rendezvoused with Jedi Master Tsui Choi. She found him while he was killing several clone troopers who had been hunting him, and told him of Potkin's invitation. The two of them then journeyed to Kessel.

Arriving at an abandoned mine on the rocky planet, they were met by Potkin, who introduced them to five other Jedi that had been invited to the meeting: Koffi Arana, Roblio Darté, Jastus Farr, Ma'kis'shaalas, and Sia-Lan Wezz. A discussion began regarding the current galactic situation and their responsibilities as Jedi; though some in the room advocated hunting and killing the Sith, Swan opined that revenge was not the way of the Jedi. No consensus was reached, and Potkin, having expected such a result, revealed that she had lured Darth Vader to the meeting so that he might fall to the blades of eight Jedi. Vader then stormed the room, acting on false intelligence that had told him Kenobi would be attending the meeting, and was attacked by everyone present save for Swan and Choi, who hung back from the carnage.

Vader killed Wezz, Ma'kis'shaalas, and Potkin, and used Potkin's own cortosis blade to disable the lightsabers of Arana, Farr, and Darté. As he prepared to finish them, Swan and Choi emerged from hiding, respectively slashing the Sith Lord's leg and amputating his sword arm. Vader surrendered to the Jedi, but a weaponless Arana suspected a trap and ordered Swan to kill him. Swan was unwilling to strike down an unarmed opponent, prompting Arana to seize her weapon, stab her with it, and attack Vader. Swan died, and Arana was quickly killed when Vader telekinetically impaled him with the cortosis blade. Vader took up Swan's lightsaber to continue the fight, and killed the remaining three Jedi with the aid of the newly-arrived 501st Legion of Imperial stormtroopers. The details of Swan's death were filed in a report by Clone Commander Bow. The official records, which were modified by Imperial Advisor Sate Pestage from a compilation of various reports created by Moff Marcellin Wessel, stated that Swan was killed by her fellow Jedi in a power struggle.

Personality and traits
"Don't give in to your anger, Master Koffi! Beware the dark side!"

- Bultar Swan to Koffi Arana

Prior to the Clone Wars, Bultar Swan was respected within the Jedi Order for having never killed an opponent, but Swan saw it as an objective statistic rather than a point of pride. She hoped to never have to kill anyone, but if forced to, her goal was to make her opponent's death quick and painless. Although Plo Koon surmised that she would one day sit on the Jedi Council, Swan believed that she was nowhere near ready. Until she knew how she would react to murdering someone, she felt that she was unfit to sit in any kind of judgment over other Jedi.

Swan was respectful of other Jedi, and sought the advice of her higher-ranked brethren while on the battlefield. She was honored to train under esteemed Jedi Masters, and although she was saddened by the death of her first Master, Micah Giiett, she felt that he would have been proud of her accomplishments. Swan was willing to fight for the things she believed in, and believed that revenge was not the path of the Jedi. During the Great Jedi Purge, she refused to kill an unarmed opponent.

Powers and abilities
"Bultar Swan! You live!"

- Tsui Choi, surprised by Swan's survival of Order 66

Graceful, athletic, and acrobatic, Swan was a skilled Jedi Knight whose ability to use the Force was spotted at an early age. She developed an interest in unarmed combat techniques early in her Jedi training, and under the direction of Micah Giiett and Anoon Bondara soon excelled in a unique fighting style that blended Teräs Käsi and the Verdanaian "Sliding Hands" method. Her style required her to maintain physical contact with her foes in order to allow her to judge their next move, and her mastery of the two disciplines allowed her to defeat opponents with ease without having to kill them. Prior to the Clone Wars, Swan had never taken a life despite having been involved in a dozen combat encounters.

When fighting an opponent, Swan would remain still and entice her foe to attack. She would then strike forward with awesome speed, blurring her complex routine of moves into a whirl of motion. When Giiett was murdered and Swan's training continued under Plo Koon, the Kel Dor Jedi Master taught her to blend her style with a strong lightsaber defense. Under Koon's guidance, Swan developed a fluid and acrobatic combat style. In combat, she would use her lightsaber to block attacks while seeking an opportunity to disarm her foe. She would then rain punches and kicks on her unarmed opponent until they surrendered. Her methods in lightsaber combat were greatly influenced by her profound interest in martial arts.

When the Clone Wars began, Swan had rejected unarmed combat in favor of her lightsaber. The war saw her finally kill opponents, abandoning her respected record of never having taken a life. Swan was also skilled with various uses of the Force, such as deflecting blaster shots with a bare hand. After visiting the location of Micah Giiett's death, she was able to sense that he had been at peace at the moment of his passing.

Behind the scenes
Bultar Swan was created for George Lucas's 2002 film Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, in which she was potrayed by actress Mimi Daraphet. Nearly four months prior to the release of the film, an image of Swan debuted on StarWars.com, captioned "Bultar Swan, heroic Jedi." She made her first appearance in the fourth issue of Episode II's comic adaptation, released one week prior to the film. A set diary for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith that was made available to members of the Hyperspace fan club on StarWars.com reported that Daraphet underwent makeup and wardrobe tests for the 2005 film. Swan's name did not appear in the script, however, and she was not present in the film's final cut.

Swan was featured as the central protagonist in the short comic Impregnable, published in the Clone Wars Adventures: Volume 7 trade paperback, and additionally appeared in the Clone Wars comic book Star Wars: Republic 59: Enemy Lines. In the 2006 comic Star Wars: Purge, Swan was killed during the Great Jedi Purge in the aftermath of the events of Revenge of the Sith. Details of Swan's Jedi training and combat techniques were revealed in several sourcebooks,  and in 2008, she was given an entry in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia. John Ostrander and Jan Duursema, authors of the Star Wars: Jedi series of one-shot comics which were published from 2003 to 2004, initially considered focusing an entire issue of the series on Swan. In 2003, when discussing the comic series in an issue of Star Wars Insider, author Daniel Wallace stated that the move would have pleased Swan's "burgeoning Internet cult."

Hasbro has released two action figures of Swan. In 2007, a comic pack of Swan and Koffi Arana was released, packaged with a reprint of Purge, and in 2008, a new figure of Swan was included with Luke Skywalker and Qui-Gon Jinn in a "Jedi Legacy" three-pack.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Adventures 1: Hunt the Sun Runner
 * Star Wars Adventures 2: The Cavern of Screaming Skulls
 * Star Wars Adventures 3: The Hostage Princess
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (PhotoComic)
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones 4
 * Battle in the Arena
 * Star Wars: Republic 59: Enemy Lines
 * Labyrinth of Evil
 * Star Wars: Purge
 * Labyrinth of Evil
 * Star Wars: Purge