Reborn

An accomplishment of the dream of artificial infusion of the Force into individuals, the Reborn were a deadly force of Dark Jedi.

Desann's Reborn
Desann, &mdash; a former student at Luke Skywalker's Jedi Praxeum &mdash; and a Dark Jedi allied to one of the Imperial Remnant's many warlords, Galak Fyyar, Desann was key to the creation of the Reborn &mdash; an army of warriors artificially embued with the Force. Lord Hethrir had entrusted Desann with training a number of his Empire Youths. The Dark Jedi used the Force nexus on the Valley of the Jedi, whose location Desann had tricked Kyle Katarn into revealing, quadrupling their powers with the residue of the ancient Jedi and Sith spirits. Wielding their own lightsabers, and wearing cloaked uniforms, they were a military organization that would support Hethrir's Empire Reborn and posed a serious threat to both the New Republic and Skywalker's newly established Jedi Order.

Agents of Desann and the Empire Reborn, the Reborn were dispatched on various missions to different locations in the galaxy along with regular Imperial army units. One such place was Cloud City on Bespin, which they briefly occupied, until defeated by the local militia which was assisted by Kyle Katarn, who was now struggling to reconnect with the Force.

Desann, teeming with hatred towards Luke Skywalker, planned for the ultimate purpose of the Reborn to be the destruction of him and his Jedi Academy, as Desann and Fyyar planned on unleashing their army of Reborn, the superior Shadowtroopers (equipped with cortosis armor), and ordinary Imperial forces at the Skywalker's academy on Yavin IV. The invasion army was to be unleashed from the Imperial transport ship Doomgiver.

However, Kyle Katarn, who had rediscovered his connection with the Force, managed to infiltrate the Doomgiver and transmit its coordinates to the Rogue Squadron who launched an attack, destroying the ship in orbit above Yavin IV, before the entire invasion army had reached the surface of the moon. Those forces that had already landed were defeated by New Republic forces and Skywalker's Jedi. Many Reborn and Shadowtroopers fell victim to Kyle Katarn, who eventually killed Desann inside the Jedi Academy.

Tavion's New Reborn
After Desann's defeat, those Reborn who had survived rallied under Tavion, Desann's apprentice whose life Katarn had spared on Bespin. Tavion had established a Sith cult called the Disciples of Ragnos (that had the support of the Imperial Remnant), whose aim was to resurrect the ancient Sith Lord Marka Ragnos and take over the galaxy. Fighting alongside Tavion's own Sith Cultists, the New Reborn, as they were now called, became core to Tavion's as they were more skilled and powerful than her newly recruited Cultists, who, like the Reborn, were artificially embued with the Force&mdash;this time with the aid of the Scepter of Ragnos.

As with Desann, Tavion dipatched her Cultists and New Reborn on various missions to locations all over the galaxy, where they faced several Jedi Knights from Skywalker's academy, among others Kyle Katarn, who was now a Jedi Master, and his highly talented apprentice, Jaden Korr. Korr, most of all proved to be a nemesis of the Cultists and New Reborn, as many of them met their end at the blade of Korr's lightsaber.

The New Reborn met their ultimate end on the planet Korriban, as an army of Jedi from Skywalker's academy&mdash;including Master Katarn and Skywalker himself&mdash;defeated them in an epic battle that took place among the ancient Sith temples and tombs in the Valley of the Dark Lords. The last of the New Reborn had fortified themselves inside in the tomb of Marka Ragnos, where they and their mistress Tavion were slain by Jaden Korr.

Ranks
Under Desann, the Reborn were more of an organized military force than a massive war band of Dark Jedi. They had different colors for each rank and were organized and trained into different groups specialized for different tasks.

Under Tavion they were less organized and wore different uniforms; mostly grey and red, but some had blue. Two prominent New Reborn were the Reborn Twins, Vil and Dasariah Kothos. They did not use lightsabers but were more powerful in the Force than other Reborn using acrobatics and other abilities. They wore orange and were powerful adversaries.
 * Reborn: The weakest division. Reborn had minimal strength in the Force; they carried a simple red lightsaber and their cloaks were orange.
 * Acrobats: They wore blue, and specialized in using the Force to jump and be mobile.
 * Force Users: They wore red over their cream colored vests. Their specialization was in pure Force abilities rather than saber skills or unarmed combat skills.
 * Fencers: Skilled and trained specially with their red sabers; they also have reasonable skill with the Force. Their color was green. The average Jedi could defeat a Reborn Fencer, but not without difficulty.
 * Bosses: Wore black and red robes. They were a combination of all the different Reborn divisions. They were the second highest level, an elite of the organization. Capable of using the Force strongly, and counter a Jedi's blade skills, they were Desann's best men along with Galak's Shadowtroopers.
 * Masters: The absolute elite, wore grey suits and carried lightsabers identical in style to those of their dead lord, Desann.

Reborn and Jedi
While able to use the Force and skilled in lightsaber combat, the Reborn, New Reborn, and Tavion's Sith Cultists lacked the training that Skywalker's Jedi had gone through as well as their discipline. Being artificially embued with the Force, many Reborn developed an arrogance and exaggerated self-confidence that trained Jedi would not have. In combat, the Reborn would often taunt their opponent with utterances such as "Do you fear me?", "Come get me, Jedi" and "I thought Jedi were powerful", but in the end the Jedi proved to be superior.

Whilst searching for Jan Ors, Kyle Katarn who had not even regained his full connection with the Force had several run-ins with Desann's Reborn and shadowtroopers, defeating them all nevertheless. During the crisis of the Disciples of Ragnos there were many cases of one single Jedi taking on several Sith Cultists and New Reborn simultaneously, still ending up victourious. The sheer number of Reborn, New Reborn, and Sith cultists dying by the hands of Kyle Katarn and Jaden Korr should be an indicator of the superiority of the Jedi over the Reborn.

Reborn and the "stormtrooper effect"/"inverse ninja law"
There is doubtlessly a mismatch between the number of Reborn killed singlehandedly by Kyle Katarn and New Reborn killed signlehandedly by Jaden Korr and the threat that they are made out to be, especially in cutscenes of the games, in the two video games they appear in.

It has often been argued that the source of this degetically serious mismatch phenomenon is the application of the inverse ninja law, which is best described as a subtype of the stormtrooper effect, to the two recent Jedi Knight games.

It essentially states that the skill and ability of each ninja, within any given group is inversely proportional to the number of ninjas, in the said group. While a single enemy ninja is often portrayed as a significant threat to the protagonists, a large group of ninja is significantly less of a threat, and as such is easily defeated. This is sometimes applied to other close combat–oriented minions as well, such as the Reborn, New Reborn, and Sith Cultists of the two recent Jedi Knight games.

The law can be expressed mathematically in the equation
 * $$p=\frac {ae} {N}$$

where $$p$$ is equal to the average ninja power (anp) of the group, $$ae$$ represents the power of a lone ninja, and $$N$$ is equal to the number of ninja in a group. Following those rules, the ratio for determining the relative skill of any enemy group of ninja is $$ae$$ divided by $$N$$. In layman's terms, the more enemy ninjas there are, the weaker each individual ninja is (unless the lone ninja is left in a near dead state to fight a larger battle at a later date).

Thus, the weakness of the Reborn and the superiority of the Jedi in the two recent Jedi Knight games are merely a reflection of the inverse ninja law, which is applied to the games for the sake of the gameplay. While it presents a digetic mismatch, it does then, nevertheless, serve the purpose of giving the player a positive experience of the gameplay. It should be mentioned that, just like the stormtrooper effect does not apply completely in any of the Jedi Knight games, the inverse ninja law is also violated in that the strength of the Reborn are not weakened in relation to their number, but appears to remain constant. It is more correct to argue that they are generally kept weak in relation to the player, even though more powerful Reborn are introduced in the course of the game, to match the improvements of the player character, so as to not make the game impossible to complete.

In fact, a digetic explanation is proposed, which has been more or less accepted as the in-universe cause of the Reborns' relative weakness compared to the Jedi. In a cutscene of Jedi Outcast Luke Skywalker, tells Kyle Katarn that the Reborn lack the training and discipline pf the New Jedi Order, which he characterizes as the ultimate weakness of the Reborn.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
 * Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy