Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith

Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith is the expansion pack for the first-person shooter Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. It was released on January 31, 1998. One of the most attractive attributes of the game for fans was the opportunity to play as Mara Jade, one of the most popular Star Wars Expanded Universe characters. The game contains fourteen levels spanning a story set in 10 ABY, five years after the events of the original Jedi Knight game.

Many under-the-hood changes were made for this expansion; for example, colored lighting support was added to the rendering engine, and the COG scripting language that was also used in Jedi Knight was enhanced with new programming capabilities. These upgrades to the game engine were well received by editing communities who made proprietary add-ons for the game.

Plot summary
The New Republic base on Altyr V is under attack from two artificial asteroids controlled by the Imperial Remnant. Kyle Katarn steals a Lambda-class Shuttle from the Imperial attackers and flies to one of the asteroids. There, he breaks into the control room and redirects the asteroid's fire to the other. With the other asteroid destroyed, he circumvents the weapon's cooling system, self-destroying the asteroid base, escaping just before the asteroid explodes. While on the artificial asteroid, he finds information on the planet Dromund Kaas, which has some importance to the Empire. He travels to the planet to investigate, leaving Mara Jade to carry out several missions for the New Republic.

Mara's first mission is to negotiate with Ka'Pa the Hutt concerning the New Republic's supplies. In order for Ka'Pa to comply, Mara is forced to steal Takara's GCT device. While looking for one of Takara's lieutenants, Abron Mar, on the Katraasii Spaceport, Mara is trapped by Takara. She is thrown into a prison but manages to break out of her cell and retreat into a series of pipes. The pipes lead to the lair of a rancor kept by the pirate group. Retrieving her lightsaber from behind the cage door, she slays the rancor and escapes with the device.

Afterwards, Mara is assigned to a New Republic Corvette guarding a Jedi Holocron. The ship is attacked by Kaerobani's pirates. Mara repels the attackers but the Holocron is stolen. Mara stowes away in a cargo container and infiltrates the pirates' ship. The ship carries her to Rathalay, where she reclaims the Holocron and escapes.

With Kyle having been absent for quite some time, Mara travels to Dromund Kaas to find him. The planet's dark side aura leaves Mara's weapons useless, except for her lightsaber. Fighting her way through a large swamp, she reaches the Dark Force Temple. There, she encounters Kyle, totally maddened by the dark side. Mara and Kyle duel several times, Mara as the victor. Kyle retreats deeper into the catacombs, finally reaching the temple's throne room. Mara pursues Kyle, finally confronting him inside the throne room. Mara then voluntarily turns off her lightsaber and leaves herself open to Kyle's attack. Kyle is unable to kill Mara and rejects the dark side.

Realizing his mistakes, Kyle let his Force powers atrophy, and then he returned to his mercenary life on behalf of the New Republic with his long time partner, Jan Ors.

Voice credits

 * Heidi Shannon: Mara Jade / Dark Mara
 * Rino Romano: Kyle Katarn
 * Peggy Roberts-Hope: Mon Mothma
 * Joe Paulino: Imperial Officer / Stormtrooper / Weequay
 * Terence McGovern: Rebel Commander / Pirate Raider / Rebel Soldier / Stormtrooper 2 / Civilian Man / Trandoshan / Abron Mar
 * Roger Jackson: Ka'Pa The Hutt / Imperial Commander / Kaerobani / Rebel Officer / Gran (credited as Ree-Yees) / Tusken / Rodian
 * Brendan Holmes: Droid Eye / Stormtrooper / Intercom
 * Mary Dilts: Droid Eye / Civilian Woman
 * Steven Jay Blum: Computer / Rebel Officer / Rebel Soldier

Hidden Bespin level
The game has a hidden level which allows the player to take the role of Luke Skywalker during his visit to Bespin in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. The website that LucasArts released this information on was well and truly hidden with no pages linking to the required files. Discovery of this page spread by word of mouth.

Instructions on how to play it can be found here. To add to the problem, the downloaded 'episode.jk' file occasionally downloaded as 'episode.txt' depending on the users PC and browser configuration. Simply renaming 'episode.txt' to 'episode.jk' solved the problem.

Aurebesh inscriptions
In two instances, Aurebesh inscriptions can be seen. They are mirror-inverted, denoting all capital letters.
 * A camera screen on Katraasii reads 'DISABLED'
 * The New Republic Corvette schematics is seen on a screen of the bridge, which reads 'WARNING'