Dha Werda Verda

"When the dawn came the Zhell awakened and saw the Taungs upon the high place and were afraid, for the morning light caught the glint of helms and weapons and created phantom warriors, made of dazzle and distance. But the cleverest of them were not deceived, and saw how few we were. And so they assembled without haste, merry in mockery, and prepared to march. And in the high place we awaited death."

- Translated excerpt from the ninth chapter of the Dha Werda Verda epic

Dha Werda Verda was the name of both an epic poem, and a Mandalorian war chant, as well as the Taung people that lay at the heart of each. When translated from the language of Mando'a, Dha Werda Verda meant "Warriors of the Shadow," a name the Taung took for themselves during their legendary war with the Battalions of Zhell. On the ancient planet of Coruscant, then known merely as Notron, the Taung and the Zhell's conflict was interrupted by the eruption of a great volcano, that blanketed the skies in ash and blotted out the sun. The forces of the Zhell were devastated, and the Taung—seeing the eruption as divine providence—named their warriors for the massive shadow of the ash cloud that gave them an advantage over their Zhell enemies. Though the Zhell did recover and managed to drive the Taung from ancient Notron, the war and the eruption were recounted by the Taung in a poetic epic known only as the Dha Werda Verda, an epic the rest of the galaxy's scholars would later study from Taung relics left behind on the planet Roon during their journey to a new home.

Under the reign of their leader, Mandalore the First, the Taung settled a new world they deemed Mandalore in the great chieftain's honor, and again remade themselves as the Mandalorians or Mando'ade—sons and daughters of Mandalore. The Mandalorian Taung went on to conquer a number of other worlds, and over time, the Taung began to accept beings of various other races into their culture. All the while, their near constant crusades depleted the Mandalorians' Taung population, and by the time of Mandalore the Ultimate's reign, the culture's Taung progenitors had become vastly eclipsed by the many other races that now called themselves Mandalorian. Into this atmosphere came a new iteration of the Dha Werda Verda, a great war chant also known as the "Rage of the Shadow Warriors." This new chant was birthed by the Taung's understanding that they were in decline, and that the multi-species Mandalorian culture would long outlast them, a plea of sorts that their contributions and place in history not be forgotten. The new chant was accompanied by a ritual dance, wherein performers would drum the rhythm of the Dha Werda Verda on the armored chest and back of those beside them, and was passed down through countless generations of Mandalorians, even being taught to the clone soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic by their Mandalorian instructors as a way to honor their heritage as clones of Mandalore Jango Fett.

History
"The outlines of what happened some 200,000 years ago are known to every schoolchild: The 13 nations that made up the Battalions of Zhell spent centuries clashing with the forces of the Taungs. During one of their skirmishes, a volcanic eruption destroyed the city of Zhell, shattering the Battalions’ power. The assembled Taungs watched in awe as ash blotted out the sun and rained down upon them. Taking their opponents’ destruction as a sign of divine favor, the Taungs christened themselves Dha Werda Verda, the Shadow Warriors, and celebrated their victory in the epic poem of the same name."

- Eschul Shaywa, contributor for Imperial Center Today

On the ancient Core World of Coruscant, in a time when it was known only as Notron, the rival societies of the Taung and the early Human Zhell rose to prominence and came into conflict with one another. The two peoples warred for centuries, in a struggle that came to a head following the death of the Taung leader Doom of Ulmarah. Rallying behind Rexutu the Unconquerable, the warriors of the Taung gathered at their fortress to battle the Battalions of Zhell at dawn; the Taung were fewer in number than the more populous Zhell, and expected the battle to end in their defeat. Before combat could begin, however, a large volcano erupted, devastating the forces of the Zhell as well as their capital city. The Taung, a highly religious society, saw the destruction of their foe as divine favor, and as an enormous cloud of volcanic ash blotted out the sun, the Taung proclaimed themselves the Dha Werda Verda—the "Warriors of the Shadow." Though the Zhell were able to recover from the volcano's devastation and eventually succeeded in defeating the Taung, driving them from ancient Notron, the Taung still celebrated and recorded their legendary victory in a poetic epic they entitled the Dha Werda Verda.

The poetic Dha Werda Verda
"No matter what school, junior academy or crèche you belonged to, if you’re Coruscanti you either memorized the strange syllables of these 10 verses for recitation or had a schoolmate who did."

- Eschul Shaywa

Authored by the Taung, the Dha Werda Verda was a epic poem that told the tale of their victory over the Zhell in the shadow a volcanic ash cloud that devastated the early Humans. The Dha Werda Verda was written in the ancient language of Notron Cant, a dialect of notable linguistic subtleties. In total, the Dha Werda Verda encompassed more than seven hundred verses, and was divided into eleven chapters. The ninth chapter, comprised of ten verses, was known as "The Maker Comes to Unmake."

Following their exile from ancient Notron, the Taung traveled through the galaxy, eventually settling on the planet Roon in the Outer Rim. Though they later moved on to a new world, on Roon the Taung left behind a number of relics including great axes, swords, and a copy of the Dha Werda Verda poem encoded in Notron Cant on a crystalline roonstone, precious gems that could store vast amounts of data. Millennia later, in the year 15 BBY, the roonstone encoded with the Dha Werda Verda was discovered by the explorer Mungo Baobab, who delivered the relic to the Baobab Archives on the planet Manda for study. The copy of the Dha Werda Verda on Manda was the best preserved record of the epic poem, though not the only one: over the millennia that followed the Taung ash-shrouded victory, historians and scholars studied partial records of the Dha Werda Verda from archaeological finds, despite the fact that the subtleties of the language of Notron Cant continued to defy complete translation.

Over time, the most galactically well known portion of the Dha Werda Verda became "The Maker Comes to Unmake," the ten verses from the epic's ninth chapter. By the Galactic Empire's rise to power, Coruscanti school children were being taught the Notron Cant verses of "The Maker Comes to Unmake" as part of their education, and artists, inspired by the tale of the ancient Taung, created various works based on the Dha Werda Verda. Mesh Burzon of the University of Byblos considered the Human veneration of the Dha Werda Verda an odd social phenomenon, as it chronicles the near destruction of the Human Zhell by the Taung. Hu Jibwe, a military history scholar at the Salmagodro Grand Academy, believed that the Taung and Zhell forces were significantly more technologically advanced than the Dha Werda Verda poetically portrays, but nonetheless found the imagery of the poem stirring. Eventually, the Baobab Archives succeeded in translating the ninth chapter of the Dha Werda Verda from Notron Cant to Galactic Basic Standard.

The Dha Werda Verda reinvented
"It's my belief that 'Rage of the Shadow Warriors' dates from the reign of Mandalore the Ultimate, when the Taungs knew they were being eclipsed. I've always thought it a poignant work—a plea that the Taungs not be forgotten by the newborn culture they knew would outlive them."

- Hu Jibwe, military history scholar

After departing Roon, the Taung found a new world to call home. Naming the planet Mandalore in honor of their leader, Mandalore the First, the Taungs, in turn, rechristened themselves the Mandalorians or Mando'ade in their tongue—"sons and daughters of Mandalore." As the Taung changed, so too did their culture and language: instead of Notron Cant, the Taung had begun to speak an archaic precursor to the Mandalorian language of Mando'a, and over time, began to accept beings of various other races into their clans as equals under the Resol'nare, the six basic tenets of the Mandalorian culture. However, the Mandalorian Taung had become zealous conquerors, engaging in holy crusades against other peoples such as the Fenelar and Basiliskans in service first to their god Kad Ha'rangir, then to the very divinity of war itself. Even as the Mandalorians swelled in number, the Taung were in decline, depleted by their many wars.

By the reign of Mandalore the Ultimate, the Taung had come to realize that they were being eclipsed by the influx of non-Taung Mandalorians into the culture they had birthed. It was this atmosphere that led to the creation of a new iteration of the Dha Werda Verda, one born of the Taung's desire to be remembered by the Mandalorian generations that would long outlast them. Also known as the "Rage of the Shadow Warriors," the new Dha Werda Verda was a ritual battle chant, sung in the Mandalorian language of Mando'a instead of Notron Cant, with all new lyrical content, none of which was shared with the original Dha Werda Verda poem. It recalled the volcanic ash that had granted the Taung their legendary victory over the Zhell, and spoke to the Mandalorians' Taung heritage, as well as the Taungs' place as the founders of Mandalore and its culture.

The new "Rage of the Shadow Warriors" iteration of the Dha Werda Verda was often accompanied by a ritual dance. While singing the lyrics, performers of the Dha Werda Verda would first drum the layered rhythms of the music on their own bodies with their fists, before turning to beat the complex tempo on the body of the individual next to them, specifically striking the chest and back. The Dha Werda Verda dance required stamina, timing, and trust in the individuals that surrounded a performer; the rhythmic strikes were imbued with notable force, and to turn too quickly or too late was to risk sustaining an injuring blow, especially to the head or face. "Rage of the Shadow Warriors" was typically done while wearing armor, which softened blows and shielded the performer's body, but was also done in plain clothes on occasion. It was believed that engaging in the Dha Werda Verda and performing the complex rhythms with a group of comrades helped to sharpen the mind and taught cooperative coordination. A number of soldiers—both Mandalorians and outsiders alike—found the Dha Werda Verda an exciting exercise, and felt that they drew strength and courage from the act of performing the ritual dance; to outsiders, it was a fearsome display of discipline and reflex that served to warn an enemy of the power of the force that opposed them.

The Dha Werda Verda "Rage of the Shadow Warriors" incarnation proved popular to the Mandalorian people and culture: Mandalorian warriors chanted the Dha Werda Verda in honor of the Taung who came before, and the ritual dance was performed by Mandalorians for thousands of years after Mandalore the Ultimate's reign came to an end. In a manifesto authored by the Death Watch founder Tor Vizsla, entitled Ba'jurne Kyr'tsad Mando'ad, Vizsla wrote on the cultural importance of the Dha Werda Verda to the Mandalorian warrior clans, and discussed the idea that every time the "Rage of the Shadow Warriors" was chanted, the Mandalorians were honoring their culture's Taung progenitors. The military history scholar Hu Jibwe studied the Mandalorian Dha Werda Verda, determining that the "Rage of the Shadow Warriors" originated more recently than the original poem written in Notron Cant, cross-referencing the Mandalorian war chant with the Dha Werda Verda-encoded roonstone housed in the Baobab Archives on Manda. When writing her piece for Imperial Center Today entitled "A LONG TIME AGO...," Eschul Shaywa heavily researched both incarnations of the Dha Werda Verda, speaking with several ancient history scholars and even attending a performance of the ritual dance. Shaywa found the Mandalorian battle chant mesmerizing.

Adoption by the Grand Army
"I've seen a few squads do it. It came via Skirata, I hear." "Yes. He taught all the commandos to live up to their Mandalorian heritage. You know—customs, language, ideals. It's very weird. It's like they have a compulsion to do it." "Yes, we do. It's very stirring." "I'm sorry. That was rude of me." "No problem, General. It certainly wasn't part of our trooper training on Kamino. It gets passed on from man to man now."

- Clone Commander Gett and Jedi General Etain Tur-Mukan, watching clone troopers and commandos perform the Dha Werda Verda

In 32 BBY, Mandalore Jango Fett was recruited to be the genetic template for an army of clone soldiers that would serve the Galactic Republic. In order to train the Grand Army of the Republic's special forces, Fett recruited a group of one hundred training sergeants known as the Cuy'val Dar, seventy-five of whom were of Mandalorian origin. These Mandalorian instructors brought a number of Mandalorian traditions to the Grand Army, with the veteran Mandalorian soldier Kal Skirata introducing the Dha Werda Verda dance to the clone commandos that trained under him, including the Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos.

However, like a number of other Mandalorian songs the clones learned in training, such as Gra'tua Cuun, Ka'rta Tor, and Vode An—which became the Grand Army's marching anthem —the "Rage of the Shadow Warrior" lyrics learned by the Grand Army's clone soldiers had been altered to remove its connection to Mandalorian culture. In the Dha Werda Verda tought to the clones, references to Mandalore were replaced with Coruscant, now the capital world of the Galactic Republic, and references to the Mandalorians were replaced with Jedi, who would be serving as generals in command of the army.

In 22 BBY, the Grand Army was deployed against the droid army of the Confederacy of Independent Systems following the outbreak of the Clone Wars on Geonosis. After the battle on Geonosis came to a close, numerous clone commandos that had been involved in the fight were taken to the Fleet Support station on Ord Mantell. There, at the barracks, commando RC-1309 sang a chorus of the "Rage of the Shadow Warriors" as a means to comfort himself over the loss of the rest of his squad. He was joined shortly after by his peer, RC-8015, who lamented the demise of his own squad in the battle. Jedi Knight Bardan Jusik's time around the Grand Army's clone commandos led him develop an interest in the Dha Werda Verda, finding the ritual dance an inspiring sight that gave him courage just by watching it, and he learned to perform it with the men under his command.

Although the Dha Werda Verda had only been taught to the clone commandos in the charge of the Mandalorian Cuy'val Dar sergeants on their homeworld of Kamino, as the war progressed, bits of Mandalorian culture including the Dha Werda Verda began to filter through the larger army, spread man to man. Near the end of the first year of the war, after a rescue of the commando squads Delta and Omega brought them aboard RAS Fearless alongside the 41st Elite Legion's Sarlacc Battalions—themselves fresh from an extraction from Dinlo—the commandos taught their clone trooper comrades how to perform the Dha Werda Verda. As Jedi General Etain Tur-Mukan watched with Clone Commander Gett, the commandos of both Omega and Delta Squads led a performance of the Dha Werda Verda from the front of an assembly of close to fifty soldiers of the 41st Elite. Commander Gett recorded a portion of the rare performance, before joining in the ritual dance with General Tur-Mukan's permission. Tur-Mukan found the obvious word replacements in the lyrics and their effect of stripping the chant of its Mandalorian heritage a distasteful decision that further distanced the clones from what she saw as their inherited culture.

Not long after, while taking part in a terrorist takedown on Coruscant alongside the commandos of Delta and Omega Squads, the Null-class ARC troopers Ordo and Mereel, and Jedi Generals Etain Tur-Mukan and Bardan Jusik, the former Cuy'val Dar sergeant Kal Skirata wished he could engage in a round of the Dha Werda Verda to mentally bolster himself for combat. However, the low profile necessitated by the mission kept him from indulging. After the anti-terrorist operation came to a successful conclusion, all parties involved—clone, Jedi, and the Mandalorian Skirata—were invited to the CSF Social Club by the officers of the Coruscant Security Force. While in attendance, the commando by the name of Fi got a performance of the Dha Werda Verda going for the benefit of the assembled police officers: the commandos and ARC troopers took part in the chant and dance while wearing their armor, though Skirata did so with wearing only his civilian clothing. During the performance, the Alpha-class ARC trooper Maze used the blows of the Dha Werda Verda as an excuse punch his Null ARC contemporary, Captain Ordo, in return for a previous strike Ordo had inflicted upon Maze; when the Dha Werda Verda came to an end, both soldiers shook hands, leaving their grievances settled and in the past. The elderly Skirata, having gone without armor during the ritual, emerged from the Dha Werda Verda performance sore and beginning to bruise, but exhilarated.

Behind the scenes
"Ben Burtt's transcript of the text to Dha Werda Verda helped to shape its form. The epic poem's violent and sometimes romantic images fit perfectly with the musical structure of this piece. I utilized the text in sections, applying the portion most applicable to the scene being scored. However, my translations were quite vague, so sometimes the meaning might have gotten a bit skewed."

- Joel McNeely

Written by Ben Burtt, the Dha Werda Verda first entered Star Wars canon with the release of the Shadows of the Empire soundtrack on April 23, 1996, and was named in the soundtrack's liner notes. Burtt, who has developed numerous alien languages for the Star Wars franchise, was asked by the project's composer Joel McNeely to write a poem that could then be sung by a chorus for the soundtrack, specifically requesting that the language used be Germanic in style, with hard, harsh, guttural-sounding syllables. Burtt complied, and McNeely then used pieces of the poem in his compositions, though they were placed out of context. The poem—the in-universe discovery of which Burtt ties into characters and events he developed for the Star Wars: Droids animated series of the mid-1980s—details the ancient conflict between the Battalions of Zhell and the Taungs. According to the poem, the battle of the two peoples was interrupted by a volcanic eruption which wiped out the Zhell, and the site of the battle eventually became Imperial City millennia later.

Nearly a decade later, the Star Wars: Republic Commando video game and its accompanying soundtrack were released on March 22, 2005. The soundtrack, composed by LucasArts music editor and composer Jesse Harlin, featured new audio that referred to the Dha Werda Verda in the thirteenth track entitled Rage of the Shadow Warriors. These lyrics, however, differed from the Dha Werda Verda written years prior by Burtt. Star Wars author Karen Traviss incorporated Harlin's lyrics from the Republic Commando soundtrack into the foundation of Mando'a, the constructed Mandalorian language she developed for her work with the Mandalorian people, retroactively creating a link between the two versions of the Dha Werda Verda. In her Republic Commando novel series, Traviss featured the lyrics of the "Rage of the Shadow Warriors" first in Hard Contact, then in its sequel, Triple Zero. In Triple Zero, Traviss detailed an additional ritual war dance, highly reminiscent of the traditional Māori haka; Temuera Morrison, the actor who portrays Mandalorian warrior Jango Fett and his clones in the Star Wars films, is of Māori heritage, and has been known to demonstrate the haka for fans at conventions.

The Essential Guide to Warfare, a Star Wars reference book co-authored by Jason Fry and Paul R. Urquhart and published April 3, 2012, was the first source to feature a canonical translation for the original Dha Werda Verda poem. In a section Fry likened to the style of the epic of Gilgamesh, the in-universe excerpt of the Dha Werda Verda chronicled the lead up to the climactic, ash-shrouded battle between the Zhell and Taung. The Guide to Warfare was originally going to have a more extensive history on the Dha Werda Verda, but it was cut for length, only to resurface on November 4, 2013, with the second installment of Jason Fry's official Star Wars Blog series, The Essential Guide to Warfare: Author's Cut, entitled "Ancient Coruscant." The blog entry finally outlined the canonical connection between the original poetic Dha Werda Verda as written by Ben Burtt with the later "Rage of the Shadow Warriors" track composed by Jesse Harlin, as two works with a shared name and inspiration in Taung history. The blog also identified the language of the poetic Dha Werda Verda, unnamed for more than a decade, as Notron Cant.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: The Old Republic
 * Star Wars: Republic Commando
 * Republic Commando: Hard Contact
 * Republic Commando: Triple Zero
 * Republic HoloNet News Core Edition 14:9:04