Asajj Ventress

"You've told me your existence has been nothing but pain and loss. Never feeling secure. Never having a home. You deserve so much, and I can get it for us. The life we'll be able to have together once&mdash;''" "What kind of life will that be, Quinlan? The kind where we're slaves to our hatred? Our rage? That's what the dark side made me. That's what it does''. Nothing is ever enough. You get more, and more, but you're never happy. It's a trap baited with all the things you want most in life&mdash;and it's not worth living. I already left that behind."

- Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress

Asajj Ventress was a Dathomirian female who, at various points throughout her life, was a slave, a Jedi Padawan, a Sith apprentice, a Nightsister, and a bounty hunter. In the final decades of the Galactic Republic's reign, Ventress was born into a clan of Force-sensitive Nightsister witches led by Mother Talzin on the planet Dathomir. Early in her life, her coven was forced to surrender Ventress to the criminal Hal'Sted, who spirited Ventress away from her sisters to the war-torn world of Rattatak where she was raised as a slave in his service. She was orphaned when her master was killed by Weequay pirates, but was later discovered by the Jedi Knight Ky Narec, who was stranded on Rattatak and waging a battle against the pirate marauders. Narec raised Ventress and taught her to use the Force in the ways of the Jedi Order, and together they protected the people of Rattatak and fought back against the predatory attacks of pirates and warlords. After a decade of helping the local population, Ventress was orphaned once more when Narec was killed by pirates seeking to end the Jedi's crusade on their world. Enraged by the loss and bereft of guidance, Ventress embraced the dark side of the Force, deposing the local warlords and ruling in their stead. She was eventually discovered by the Sith Lord Count Dooku and fell under his guidance and tutelage as an apprentice and aspiring Dark Lord.

When the pan-galactic Clone Wars erupted between the Galactic Republic and Dooku's Confederacy of Independent Systems, Ventress became a commander in her Master's Separatist droid military and an assassin in the employ of the Sith. Her exploits brought her into conflict with the Jedi Order and she became renown for her skill and cruelty as she waged war against the Republic. She frequently crossed lightsabers with Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, heroes of the Republic who were often assigned to counter Ventress’s efforts. Although she was highly talented and saw success in the kidnapping of Rotta the Hutt, the rescue of Nute Gunray, and the infiltration of the Republic fortress world of Kamino, Ventress was repeatedly forced to compete for her Master’s favor against Confederate military leader General Grievous.

As the war progressed, Dooku's own master, Darth Sidious, became increasingly wary of Ventress's growing strength in the Force and ultimately ordered the Confederate leader to eliminate his apprentice in a show of loyalty. Dooku complied, and during the Battle of Sullust, betrayed Ventress and ordered her own forces to execute her; left for dead, Ventress survived and clawed her way back to her homeworld of Dathomir to seek refuge and revenge. Mother Talzin and her coven welcomed Ventress back to their sisterhood and together they conspired to kill Dooku. After a failed attempt to assassinate the count, Ventress and Talzin moved to install a pawn of their own close to Dooku as his new assassin and apprentice. To that end, Ventress selected the Zabrak Nightbrother Savage Opress to be gifted to Dooku and eventually to aid her in his murder. This plan also went awry after Opress rejected both Ventress and Dooku and nearly killed them both. Resolving to make a new life for herself, Ventress returned to Dathomir to formally rejoin her clan and forgo further plans for revenge, but Dooku would not have it. The count targeted the Nightsisters for harboring his former apprentice and dispatched Grievous and his droid army to massacre the Dathomirian witches. Mother Talzin and Ventress were the only survivors of the slaughter and were forced to flee Dathomir separately to escape Dooku’s wrath.

Ventress was deeply hurt by the loss of her new-found family and so took to wandering the galaxy in search of a purpose, ultimately turning to bounty hunting and finding a good measure of success in the business. This work forced her to adopt a series of unexpected alliances&mdash;she rescued Obi-Wan Kenobi from the clutches of the Sith and worked alongside Skywalker’s apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, when the Jedi was falsely accused of bombing the Jedi Temple. Near the end of the Clone Wars, she encountered Quinlan Vos, a Jedi Master tasked with assassinating Count Dooku to end the war. Vos partnered with Ventress under the guise of a fellow bounty hunter but ultimately revealed his identity and purpose after the two fell in love. Ventress trained Vos in Nightsister culture and dark side skills to prepare for a strike against Dooku, but their attempt to kill the count failed and she was forced to flee while he was taken into Confederate custody. She eventually worked with Kenobi and Skywalker to rescue Vos, but months of torture at Dooku’s hand had turned him to the dark side. Although Ventress sensed his fall, Vos refused to believe his own darkness and was again sent to kill Dooku by the Jedi Council. She joined him on this final mission, but it was met with failure when Vos gave himself fully to the dark side. Ventress reluctantly helped Vos and Dooku in fleeing from Jedi pursuit but refused to embrace the dark side once more. Instead, she sacrificed herself when Dooku attempted to kill Vos with Force lightning by absorbing the blast to protect her lover. Her death finally motivated Vos to renounce the dark side and she was honored for her sacrifice by the Jedi Council. Her body was later laid to rest in the waters of her clan’s village on Dathomir.

An orphan's upbringing
"I remember the day we were forced to give you up in order to protect the clan. Your sacrifice has never been forgotten."

- Mother Talzin

The Dathomirian female Asajj Ventress was born on the planet Dathomir in the latter years of the Galactic Republic's reign as the preeminent governing body in the galaxy. Dathomir, which was outside of Republic territory, was ruled by the Nightsisters, a clan of witches that used the Force in the form of Magick to manipulate nature around them and control their male counterparts, the Nightbrothers. Ventress's mother belonged to the coven under the leadership of Mother Talzin, a powerful spellcaster and former associate of the Sith Order. While Ventress was still an infant, Talzin's clan came under a threat associated with the Siniteen criminal Hal'sted. In order to ensure her people's safety, Talzin arranged for Ventress's mother to surrender the young girl to Hal'Sted, who took her away from Dathomir as a slave. The Siniteen ferried his new possession to the war-torn world of Rattatak, where Ventress lived with him for several years and appreciated his surprising kindness as a master.

Her new homeworld was a violent land, ruled by warlords and wracked by repeated raids from Weequay pirate bands. Hal'Sted was killed during a pirate uprising, leaving Ventress&mdash;still a young child&mdash;orphaned during the attack. She discovered her master's body and grieved over her loss, but was became distracted by the arrival of Ky Narec, a Jedi Knight who had been stranded on Rattatak and resolved to combat the pirate menace. When he too was attacked by a Weequay, Ventress called upon previously untapped Force power to throw the pirate into the air and across several homes. Recognizing her potential, Narec took the child into his care and made her his Jedi Padawan.

For ten years Narec trained the young Dathomirian in the ways of the Jedi Order. Together they worked to protect the people of Rattatak from the pirates and warlords that preyed on them, becoming heroes to many and enemies of those who would visit violence on the local people. Narec tutored his apprentice in lightsaber combat and the use of the Force, and although she was very skilled, Ventress was ultimately unable to avoid being orphaned once more. While the two were battling yet more Weequay pirates, Narec was shot in the back and killed. The loss devastated the adolescent Ventress, and she took up her fallen Master's lightsaber and killed Narec's assailants. Bereft of guidance and with only an introductory training of the power of the Force, the young Dathomirian embraced the dark side and waged a war of vengeance against the pirates and warlords that controlled Rattatak. She ultimately deposed all of the planet's warmongers and ruled in their place, claiming the world as her own. Her power in the dark side eventually attracted the attention of an offworlder&mdash;the Serreno noble Count Dooku. Dooku was himself a former member of the Jedi Order who had abandoned his brethren to join the Sith Order as Darth Tyrannus, a Dark Lord under the command of his Master, Darth Sidious. The ambitious Count plotted to find a Sith apprentice with whom he could overthrow Sidious and claim the mantle of Master, and so recruited Ventress to his side as a student and assassin. She still blamed the Jedi for abandoning Narec on Rattatak, and so joined Dooku to eagerly kill Jedi and embrace the power offered by the Sith.

At the Count's command
"I hated the Jedi for abandoning my Master, and Dooku wanted an apprentice as filled with hatred as he was. It was a good match."

- Asajj Ventress

After meeting the Count on Rattatak, Ventress pledged herself to Dooku at his palace on Serenno, agreeing to serve at his side in exchange for Sith teachings. He was impressed with her strength in the Force and educated her in new and brutal lightsaber combat methods. She adopted the use of twin red-bladed lightsabers, for which she became renown. An additional responsibility of her apprenticeship to the Sith Lord was a command role in the newly established Confederacy of Independent Systems, Dooku's anti-Republic separatist rebellion movement. She was installed as a high-ranking commander in the Separatist military and fought for the Confederacy on the battlefields of the galaxy-spanning Clone Wars. Her brutality and ruthlessness in battle against the clone armies of the Republic and Jedi Order garnered her a fearsome reputation.

Early in the war she fought on the frontlines of a major battle against the Republic forces under the command of Jedi Master Tholme. The Confederacy had broadly won the contest, but in a final large skirmish, Ventress engaged Tholme in personal combat and quickly overwhelmed the Jedi, disarming him and forcing a surrender. Ignoring Dooku's command that she spare Tholme's life, Ventress claimed victory by executing him on the battlefield. She later delivered the Jedi Master's lightsaber to the Count as a trophy. Ventress also became familiar with two Jedi adversaries early in the war&mdash;the human Generals Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. The two were considered some of the Republic's greatest heroes and Ventress came to savor opportunities to trade verbal barbs with Kenobi and saber strikes with Skywalker.

Enemy of the Republic
Shortly after the start of the war at the Battle of Geonosis, the Confederacy moved to seize control of major hyperspace routes to separate the Republic's Core Worlds from the bulk of its forces in the Outer Rim Territories. Dooku and Sidious, eager to exploit their advantage and weaken the Jedi's position, hatched a plot to turn Jabba the Hutt, leader of the Grand Hutt Council and the crime families of the Hutt Clan, against the Jedi and the Republic. The first objective of the scheme was to ensure the Jedi were embroiled in long, drawn-out campaigns in the Outer Rim and unable to combat the ostensibly everyday injustices that were once their focus. Ventress led one such effort on Christophsis, a resource-rich crystalline planet allied with the Republic. With Separatist military leaders General Whorm Loathsom and Admiral Trench at her side, she led her battle droid forces in an invasion of the world, attacking the local population and laying waste to a major city. The humanitarian crisis prompted the Republic's Senator Bail Organa to launch relief effort for Christophsis's people, but he too came under assault from the Confederacy.

Trench's blockade of Christophsis was eventually broken by a fleet led by Generals Kenobi and Skywalker, who launched a counter-campaign on the surface to beat back the Separatist armies. To confound their efforts, Ventress bribed the clone trooper Sergeant Slick, promising him wealth and freedom from servitude in exchange for divulging Republic movements and strategy on the planet. His information was fruitful and resulted in many losses for the Jedi-led task force. The existence of a security breach was realized by the generals and their lieutenants after finding classified intelligence in the memory of the captured T-series tactical droid TJ-55. Slick learned of their discovery and informed Ventress that the Jedi were heading behind enemy lines to search for information on the breach; he meanwhile went into hiding at the Republic base while arranging to sabotage its munitions depot.

Ventress ordered her forces to stand down and allow the Jedi to infiltrate the Confederate headquarters, which occupied a large tower in the central city. To distract the Jedi while Slick sabotaged their base and a massive army of droid reinforcements landed on Christophsis, she confronted Kenobi and Skywalker in the upper floors of the tower and engaged them in an aggressive lightsaber duel. She taunted the two about the existence of her informant before fleeing into an adjacent room where she used the Force to hurl numerous books and rubble at her opponents. The Jedi telekinetically turned the attack against her, pelting Ventress with the projectiles and apparently forcing a surrender. Confident that her forces were in positon and that Slick had done his duty, she deactivated her weapons and sat on the floor. As Kenobi and Skywalker approached, she reactivated her blades into the floor, opening a hole that Skywalker and Kenobi fell into. She mocked the two before bursting out of a window and fleeing through to perch atop an Octuparra tri-droid that was scaling the tower. Before her, numerous C-9979 landing craft were delivering her invasion force into the city. The pursuing Jedi were shocked by the Separatist reinforcements but still managed to escape after severing the legs of Ventress's Octuparra droid.

Ventress left the remainder of the battle in the hands of General Loathsom, who was ordered to march on the city and keep the Jedi occupied while she executed the next part of her Masters' plan: the kidnapping of Rotta, son of Jabba the Hutt. Ventress traveled to Jabba's throneworld of Tatooine in a Trident-class assault ship and hunted down the young Huttlet. She ambushed Rotta's sail barge and its escort skiffs in the desert, destroying one of the skiffs before abducting the barge. With Rotta in tow, she fled to the abandoned B'omarr Order Monastery on Teth in Wild Space, far from the frontlines of the war. News of Rotta's kidnapping at the hands of "renegades" spread quickly as Jabba hired bounty hunters to retrieve his kin and reached out to the Republic Senate and Jedi Council for aid in exchange for clear passage through Hutt Space. On Teth, Ventress locked Rotta in the monastery dungeons before contacting Count Dooku and Lord Sidious, who praised her work. Dooku asked Ventress to guard the child but allow for the inevitable Republic rescue force to find and seize him; the Count required footage of the Jedi with the Huttlet to deceive Jabba into believing that the Jedi were behind the kidnapping.

The monastery was first discovered by Jabba's bounty hunters, but Ventress defeated and decapitated every one of them, sending their heads back to the Hutt in mockery. Republic reconnaissance forces had also discovered the location of Rotta's prison, but took longer to mobilize a rescue mission because the only available Jedi were Skywalker and Kenobi, who were still occupied with General Loathsom on Christophsis. They ultimately won that battle and Skywalker and his new Padawan, the Togruta Ahsoka Tano, were sent to Teth to find and recover Rotta. Ventress arranged for a small droid force to defend the monastery landing platform, preventing the Republic from landing there directly and instead forcing the enemy into a costly battle to scale the mesa on which the monastery was built. Skywalker, Tano, and their forces succeeded in reaching the summit, at which point Ventress sent the protocol droid 4-A7 to guide them into the dungeons.

She meanwhile contacted Dooku to update her progress. Although she insisted that she could kill both the Master and Padawan at that moment, the Count cautioned patience and promised an opportunity to hunt the Jedi once she had record of them with the Huttlet. Once they retrieved Rotta and brought him back to the monastery courtyard, Skywalker and Tano discovered he was sick, and so put him into a backpack for transport to their cruiser. This was the footage that Ventress and 4-A7 collected&mdash;a recording of the Jedi manhandling the child while Skywalker discussed his general distaste for Hutts. The data was sent to Dooku on Tatooine, who instructed his apprentice that she was now to recover the Huttlet and return him to Jabba. The goal to cast the Jedi as treacherous enemies of the Hutt clan and the Confederacy as an ally to Jabba and his family was successful, and Jabba agreed to join the Confederacy if Ventress returned his son unharmed.

To ensure success, she was reinforced with two landing crafts carrying hundreds of droids and squadrons of Vulture-class droid starfighters. At her command, the army attacked the small Republic unit occupying the monastery and forced the Jedi and clones to retreat into the structure and seal themselves in. Although Ventress believed them to be trapped, Skywalker and Tano discovered a secondary landing platform while the droids struggled with getting through the monastery's sealed outer blast door. The Sith apprentice quickly lost her patience and simply cut through the controls, releasing the lock and opening the doors to the main entrance hall. The Jedi had already fled deeper into the monastery, but their clone troopers remained behind to delay the Separatists forces for as long as possible. After a short battle only a few clones lived; Captain CT-7567, also known as "Rex", attempted to kill Ventress but managed only to destroy a command droid. The Dathomirian deflected all of his blaster bolts and seized his windpipe in a telekinetic Force grip, lifting the captain into the air and demanding to know Skywalker's whereabouts. Rex refused to divulge the general's location, so Ventress dropped him to the floor and used Force mind control techniques to make him contact Skywalker and give the all-clear.

While she continued the search for the Jedi in the monastery, Ventress was informed by her droids that Republic reinforcements had arrived. Recognizing the need to accelerate her plans, she ordered her fighters and droids to engage the new Republic forces and buy her enough time to complete the mission. She soon discovered the Jedi attempting to flee from a rear landing pad, but their astromech droid R2-D2 sealed a blast door in front of her, halting her advance. Ventress began cutting through the barrier while dwarf spider droids climbing the mesa below hammered the exterior platform with blaster fire. By the time she made it outside, Skywalker was nowhere to be found; Ventress and the new Padawan Tano engaged in a brief duel, but the Dathomirian easily overpowered the Togruta and threw her to the ground. Upon demanding to know where Skywalker had run to, the Sith apprentice was attacked by the Jedi General and a giant insectoid can-cell he had taken as a mount. The beast threw Ventress back towards the monastery just as the spider droid's sustained fire caused the platform to break apart and fall from the cliffside. Skywalker and Tano escaped the mesa on the can-cell's back, leaving Ventress with a B1 battle droid that informed her Dooku was demanding an update. In a rage, she threw the droid off the mesa before contacting the Sith Lord.

She was met with disappointment and veiled threats from her Master, who was still on Tatooine attempting to parley with Jabba. While Dooku reminded her of the stakes of their conspiracy, she was distracted by the arrival of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who was leading the Republic reinforcements. Ventress retreated into an antechamber in the monastery, luring Kenobi into a one-on-one battle in the darkness. Although she lurked about in the upper reaches of the monastery for a time, Kenobi's prodding and taunting eventually drew her down to engage the Jedi on a level field. The duel saw both combatants enjoy the advantage for a time, but ultimately Kenobi found command of the conflict when he led the Sith apprentice to a catwalk outside the monastery. It was there that they both sensed through the Force that Skywalker and Tano had escaped Teth with the Huttlet, signifying her mission's failure. Although she attempted to continue the attack, Ventress was disarmed of one of her lightsabers and forced to retreat aboard a Vulture-class droid starfighter.

In failure, Ventress was forced to contact Dooku and explain before him and Jabba the Hutt that Skywalker had managed to kill Rotta before she could intervene. Although Dooku had hoped she at least managed to kill the Jedi after losing control of the Huttlet, she admitted that Skywalker had escaped and was now on his way to Tatooine&mdash;ostensibly to kill Jabba, but in reality to return the crime lord's son. Dooku endeavored to kill the Jedi himself, but was also foiled in his attempts to intercept the Huttlet. Ultimately, Skywalker and Tano managed to deliver Rotta back to Jabba's Palace, convincing the elder Hutt that Dooku and the Confederacy had been deceiving him. The debacle resulted in the Republic and Hutt clan establishing a treaty of cooperation, a significant setback for the Separatist cause.

Ambassador and assassin
"Gunray's capture could be a serious threat to us, my friend. The viceroy will not last long under Jedi interrogation.''" "''I have already put a plan into action, my Lord. My best agent, Asajj Ventress, will infiltrate the Jedi ship, and either free Gunray, or silence him."

- Darth Sidious and Darth Tyranus

Early in the war, after the outbreak of the Battle of Ryloth, Dooku's spies learned that the Republic sought to establish an agreement with the Toydarian people that would allow for the building of a supply depot in their territory. The Toydarians, previously neutral in the conflict, agreed to engage in secret negotiations on the neutral moon of Rugosa between Jedi Grand Master Yoda and King Katuunko of Toydaria. With this information, Dooku sent Ventress to Rugosa with a significant military detachment to convince Katuunko that the Toydarians should join the Confederacy of Independent Systems instead of the Republic. The Sith apprentice arrived on Rugosa before either the Jedi or the king to jam communications and positioned two Munificent-class star frigates not far from the moon. She confronted Katuunko upon his arrival to the meeting location, and although he was wary of her presence, Ventress assured him that she was there merely as a messenger for Count Dooku. While the Count explained the intrusion to the king via holographic transmission, the two Munificent-class frigates jumped into the star system and engaged the recently-arrived Republic frigate that was ferrying Yoda to the moon. The Confederate warships quickly overwhelmed the Jedi Master's, but he was able to make it to the surface with three clone troopers aboard an escape pod.

When the Republic frigate fled the system, Ventress insisted to Katuunko that it was a clear sign of the Jedi's inferiority; however, he did not yet believe her and was relieved when Yoda contacted him from the escape pod's crash site. The Toydarian had been eager to do business with the Grand Master and was clearly displeased with Ventress's intrusion, but the Sith apprentice piqued his interest with an offer to perform a show of force: she suggested that she could prove the Confederacy's superiority by sending her forces to capture the Jedi Master. If Yoda were to escape her grip and arrive at the rendezvous by nightfall, the king could consider himself free to join the Republic; if not, she expected him to consider an alliance with the Separatists. Although the king found the idea of pushing his guest into a test of battle distasteful, Yoda accepted the terms and Ventress agreed to give the diminutive Jedi a fair fight.

However, a fair fight was never intended. After contacting Dooku, Ventress oversaw the deployment of a full battalion consisting of B1 battle droids, B2 super battle droids, and Armored Assault Tanks and tasked her droid commander, 224, with hunting down and killing Yoda and his retinue. Ventress remained alongside King Katuunko as they monitored the Jedi's progress through Rugosa's coral forests. 224 regularly updated the Dathomirian on the droids' progress, eventually reporting that their forces had engaged the Yoda and forced him into retreat. Katuunko was clearly rooting for the Jedi's success and contacted Yoda to confirm his survival, but Ventress seized his communicator from him and crushed it with her bare hands, vowing to win the contest. 224 contacted her again later in the day, claiming that the Jedi had been found by the Confederate forces and was simply sitting in the wilderness before a column of droids and assault tanks. Ventress insisted that they kill the Jedi immediately, but Yoda managed to destroy all of the tanks and droids, creating a scene of smoke a destruction visible from the rendezvous point. The Sith apprentice attempted once more to contact 224, but was informed by another droid that her commander had been destroyed by Yoda. Katuunko took this as a sign of victory, but Ventress refused to surrender and dispatched a large group of droidekas to finish the job.

Even without knowing the outcome of the contest, Katuunko made his decision and contacted Dooku to reject his offer, claiming that Ventress ignored the terms of their deal and refused to give Yoda a fair fight. The Count would not allow for Toydaria to fall to the Republic, so ordered his apprentice to kill the king and make way for a pro-Separatist monarch. She nearly succeeded in the task, but her lightsaber blades were halted mid-strike by Master Yoda's telekinetic intervention. The Jedi threw Ventress back and taunted her Force prowess, seizing her lightsabers from her and suggesting surrender. Yoda allowed her to take her weapons back, but Ventress refused surrender and instead detonated bombs she had planted near Katuunko's starship on the ridge above. The explosion and falling rubble distracted the Jedi and his clones, giving the Sith apprentice an opportunity to escape aboard her Punworcca 116-class interstellar sloop. Dooku was disappointed in his assassin and developed a grudge against Katuunko in light of the mission's failure.

In spite of her public failures at Teth and Rugosa, Dooku continued to call upon Ventress in the early days of the Clone Wars for delicate and imperative missions. The count and his military commander, the cyborg General Grievous, placed the capture of the planet Kamino as one of their highest priorities during this time. Kamino was the site of the Republic's cloning facilities, where clone troopers were churned out at accelerated rates to join the fight against the Confederacy. In an early attempt to destroy the cloning resources, Dooku and Grievous plotted to invade the world by way of the Rishi system. Because Republic space was monitored by an interconnected network of listening posts, Grievous's fleet was unable to travel directly to the Kamino system lest the Republic be warned of the incoming attack by the station on the moon of Rishi. While the general oversaw a plan to disable the listening post, Ventress was dispatched to Kamino alone to engage in espionage and prepare for the arrival of the Separatist fleet. Her efforts were successful and she contacted Grievous to inform him of her readiness, but his plans had yet to see fruition; his fleet was still hiding from Republic detection while he waited for his forces to take the Rishi station. Ultimately Ventress's efforts were for naught, as a small force of clones repelled Grievous's droids and alerted their command to the presence of the Confederate fleet. Grievous was forced to abandon the mission and Ventress escaped Kamino without the invasion having commenced.

Shortly afterwards, following the destruction of the Confederate listening post Skytop Station, Darth Sidious and Darth Tyranus faced a crisis when Nute Gunray, Viceroy of the Trade Federation and a leading member of the Separatist Council, was taken into custody on Rodia while attempting to kill Republic Senator Padmé Amidala. Gunray was a long-time co-conspirator to the Sith and had knowledge of Dooku's machinations and Sidious's involvement in the war. Recognizing the damage the Neimoidian could do if he divulged his secrets under Jedi interrogation, Sidious ordered that Dooku see to it that Gunray be saved or silenced. To that end, Dooku assigned Ventress the task of traveling to Rodia with a contingent of battle droids to intercept and infiltrate the Tranquility, the Venator-class Star Destroyer that was transporting the viceroy back to the Republic capital world of Coruscant. She would be assisted in her mission by Captain Argyus, a Republic Senate Commando who had covertly turned traitor and was now in service to the count. Agyus was in charge of the viceroy's Senate security detail on the Tranquility and arranged an intricate extraction plan with Ventress prior to her arrival.

After meeting with her Master on his Munificent-class frigate, Ventress set off for Rodia in one of several Separatist boarding ships dispatched to the planet alongside Vulture droid starfighters. The vessels ambushed the Star Destroyer before it could leave the system and aimed directly at the Tranquility, slamming into the hull and penetrating the Venator main hangar to disgorge dozens of super battle droids. After the droids wiped out the first wave of clone defenders and moved onto other regions of the ship, Ventress leaped out of her vessel and beheaded the last remaining clone trooper before he could warn his commanders of her presence. She pilfered his gauntlet-mounted comlink so she could listen in on Republic chatter and proceeded to cut her way into the Tranquility ventilation ducts and navigate towards the Star Destroyer's engine room. Within, she evaded the notice of the maintenance droid 327-T while stealthily planting time-delayed thermal detonators throughout the room. Avoiding capture by patrolling clone troopers, Ventress slipped back into the ventilation shafts and made her way to the detention center, where Gunray was being held.

As the battle droids were cut down and their invasion of the Tranquility defeated, Ventress found the detention center and cut her way into its control room from the ceiling above. The assassin quickly dispatched two Senate Commandos before being confronted by Ahsoka Tano, Skywalker's Padawan who had been assigned to guard Gunray. The two briefly dueled and Tano was ostensibly aided by Captain Argyus, who shot at Ventress to maintain their ruse. Nevertheless, Ventress easily overcame them both and released Gunray from his detention cell before luring Tano into the cell herself. Gunray sealed the Padawan behind the prison's energy shield, but his freedom was short-lived; Jedi Master Luminara Unduli, who was overseeing the prisoner transfer, returned from battling the droids with Clone Commander CC-1004 and engaged Ventress. Using the Force, Unduli released Tano from her prison and together the two Jedi attacked Ventress, who appeared to quickly surrender. However, the surrender was also a ruse, as at that exact moment, the timed detonators that the assassin had planted in the engine room blew, crippling the ship and throwing the crew and combatants into chaos. Ventress used the opportunity to throw Unduli to the ground and leap over her, escaping past the Jedi Master and her troops into a now-malfunctioning turbolift. Plunging her lightsabers into the wall of the lift to control her descent, the assassin fled into the bowels of the ship in an attempt to lure Unduli away from the viceroy, leaving a trail of dead clones in her wake.

The scheme worked, and the Jedi Master tracked Ventress alone into the Tranquility now-ruined and burning engine room. The Dathomirian ambushed Unduli and temporarily blinded the Jedi by slicing open an exposed pipe that immediately blasted gas into her opponent's face. Unduli's left eye was injured in the attack but the two continued their duel throughout the upper levels of the room, with Ventress growing more enraged at the Jedi when she criticized the assassin for sloppy lightsaber combat discipline. After they both attempted to Force-push one another off of the engine platforms, Ventress lunged at Unduli and kicked her in the face, disarming her throwing the Jedi to the ground far below. Before descending to finish off her opponent, the Dathomirian leaped to the ceiling and severed several large pipes, sending them crashing down atop Unduli below. The Jedi Master was trapped beneath one of the pipes when Ventress reached her, but before the killing blow could be made, she was interrupted by Ahsoka Tano, who used the Force to throw her backwards into one of the severed pipes. Tano freed Unduli and returned her lightsaber in time for them both to defend against Ventress, who attacked them simultaneously.

The assassin again fled into the upper levels of the engine room after a short duel, this time to keep the Jedi occupied while she signaled to Argyus via the pilfered gauntlet that it was again time to free Gunray. While the Jedi searched for the assassin, believing her to be the only threat, Argyus killed his own commandos and released the Neimoidian, absconding with the viceroy to a docked Republic frigate. When CC-1004 contacted the Jedi to inform them of Argyus's betrayal, their rush back to the detention level was halted by Ventress, who used the Force to pelt them with pieces of piping and debris. She was able to combat both the Jedi but ultimately had to give ground until Argyus signaled to her that the mission had been completed. Ventress then quickly fled the scene, leaping onto a reactor and into an overlooking ventilation duct and covering her final escape by lobbing a primed thermal detonator behind her at Tano as the Padawan gave chase. The Jedi were left behind as Ventress made her way to the Tranquility escape pod bay, where she slew two clones before boarding a pod and departing the crippled Star Destroyer. Her pod rendezvoused with Gunray and Argyus's stolen frigate a short distance from the Tranquility, where she found the Senate Captain boasting about his success and claiming credit for the mission. Seeing that he planned to downplay her role to Count Dooku, Ventress stabbed Argyus through the chest, killing her confidant before ferrying Viceroy Gunray to safety herself.

Battle of Kamino
"Keep playing with your droids. I'll handle breaking into the DNA room." "Shall I provide you with a droid escort?" "My dear General, there's nothing you have that I could want."

- Ventress and Grievous during the assault on Tipoca City

At some point later in the war, prior to the battles over the world of Felucia, Ventress participated in a clash between the Republic and Separatists on the planet Khorm. During that battle, Ventress came into contact with CC-36363, a clone trooper commander who served under Jedi General Plo Koon. The commander, informally known as "Wolffe," was assaulted by Ventress and lost his right eye to her lightsabers, although both combatants survived the conflict.

As the war progressed, Dooku's Confederacy still faced staunch resistance from the Republic and its clone armies, prompting Separatist leadership to once again target the clone trooper production facilities on Kamino. The count assigned both Ventress and Grievous to oversee the theft of the clone genetic source material and the destruction of the Republic's clone training and housing complexes, although both of his subordinates sought to claim the victories for themselves. Thus, for the second time, Ventress traveled to the watery world in advance of Grievous's fleet and armies, now commanding a small insertion force of aqua droids aboard her submersible Trident-class assault craft. She and the cyborg general planned for the Confederate fleet to be engaged by the Republic blockade in orbit and intentionally take damage so the wreckage from downed Separatist vessels could ferry droid soldiers and components for additional Trident-craft to Ventress in the waters of the planet below. In preparation for the assault, Ventress studied the Kaminoan capital of Tipoca City and determined the exact locations of the DNA store room and the clone barracks. On the eve of the attack she contacted Grievous from deep beneath the waves of the Kaminoan oceans to inform the general that she had completed her first phase of the operation and was in position to begin the attack. Unbeknown to both Confederates, Grievous's transmissions to Ventress had been intercepted by Republic forces, drawing Skywalker, Kenobi, and the clone 501st Legion back to Kamino for its defense.

Grievous's fleet arrived in orbit shortly thereafter and began the assault on the Republic blockade. The general pushed his attack against the greater force, all while deliberately sacrificing Munificent-class cruisers that, upon detonating under enemy fire, sent large chunks of debris down to Ventress in the waters outside Tipoca City. The Sith apprentice quickly put her droids to work assembling the components that were attached to the debris and soon had a fleet of Trident-class drilling assault craft carrying an army of aqua droids. With the battle in space nearly won by the Republic, Ventress launched her assault. The Trident ships rose from the sea and clung to the stilted, domed structure of Tipoca City. While some disgorged droids onto landing platforms and bridges that connected the city, others drove their spiked drills directly into the city walls to deliver Separatist troops into hangars and other sensitive areas.

While Grievous led the frontal assault, Ventress infiltrated Tipoca City on her own, leaving the aqua droids behind as she set out towards the DNA archive room. On the way she encountered the clone Advanced Recon Commando Colt making a desperate last stand against a droid squad led by Grievous. Ventress quickly ended the shootout when she seized Colt in a telekinetic Force choke and slammed him into a passage wall before impaling his body on one of her lightsabers. The display impressed Grievous, but Ventress rebuffed his praise and offers of reinforcement, instead insisting that she would retrieve the DNA on her own. Upon reaching the DNA store room, Ventress used the archive computer to withdraw the genetic material belonging to Jango Fett&mdash;the template organism used to create all of the Republic's clones&mdash;but was intercepted by Anakin Skywalker before she could abscond with her objective.

The Jedi Knight attempted to seize the DNA sample, but Ventress easily evaded his grasp and fled into the city passage ways. The two dueled one another through the halls of Tipoca City, trading saber slashes until Ventress found an opportunity to flip Skywalker over her body with a kick. Now with an open route, she fled towards the city exterior with the Jedi in close pursuit but emerged to find that the Republic had disabled the last Trident-assault craft and driven back the droid forces. As she sparred with Skywalker again, their duel attracted the attention of nearby clones who rushed to aid their general. Near the edge of the city, the Jedi gained the upper hand when he kicked Ventress off her feet and pulled the DNA container away from her with the Force, but the Sith apprentice responded furiously, kicking Skywalker in the face and chest until he too was knocked down and dropped the DNA sample. As Ventress tried to pull it back into her hands with the Force, the container was intercepted mid-air by a clone trooper&mdash;one of many who had arrived to reinforce Skywalker. Now outnumbered and without her objective, Ventress asked if she was expected to surrender, but Skywalker implied that he would have her executed on the spot. At that moment she received a signal from Grievous, who was likewise fleeing a duel with a Jedi. As the general passed overhead in a stolen Kaminoan flight pod, Ventress dodged Republic fire and leaped up into the pod, in which the two of them would flee the planet.

Despite the damage the battle did to Tipoca City and its cloning facilities, Ventress and Grievous's failure to either capture the Fett genetic material or destroy the clone barracks ensured that Kamino would continue to mass produce soldiers for the Republic and its Jedi Generals. The Battle of Kamino also contributed to a growing list of engagements wherein Ventress failed to fulfill the orders of her Sith masters.

Battle of Sullust
"You have failed me for the last time. You are no longer my apprentice. And now, you shall die."

- Dooku to Ventress at the Battle of Sullust

As the war dragged on Ventress continued her service to the count while steadily becoming more powerful in the dark side of the Force, a fact that came to greatly concern Dooku's Sith master, Darth Sidious. Shortly after the Republic approved an effort to enhance and expand its military capabilities, Ventress led a sizable Confederate battle group to the Sullust system where she and the tactical droid TJ-912 directed their forces in a showdown against a Republic fleet led by Kenobi, Skywalker, and Admiral Wullf Yularen. Ventress's fleet, consisting of her Providence-class command dreadnought, Recusant-class destroyers, and Munificent-class frigates, launched a vicious attack against the Jedi's forces over Sullust. Many Republic ships were overwhelmed by Vulture droids and Separatist tri-fighters and Ventress herself joined the fray in her personal Fanblade starfighter. The tri-fighters of Trident Groups One and Two followed the Sith apprentice in an assault on Yularen's flagship, the Venator-class destroyer Resolute. Under her orders, Group One targeted the Resolute starboard engines and Group Two fired on the ship's port-side deflector shield generators; the coordinated assault allowed Ventress to navigate her starfighter through the Resolute turbolaser defenses and blast the destroyer's port-side command bridge. The Resolute was crippled in the assault and was ultimately destroyed under Speparatist fire, though Admiral Yularen managed to escape.

As Ventress pushed her attack she and her droid squadrons located and intercepted Kenobi and Skywalker's Jedi starfighters. She quickly fired on Kenobi's ship, driving the two Jedi to diverge from one another to split their attackers' attention. While the tri-fighters followed after Skywalker's fighter, Ventress tailed Kenobi and continued to fire on his ship, gradually crippling its systems. After chasing the Jedi through the battle theater and around a Venator-class destroyer, Ventress nearly killed Kenobi but instead came under fire from Skywalker, who had managed to evade and destroy his tri-fighter pursuers. Ventress's fanblade starfighter was badly damaged and she was forced to follow Kenobi into a crash landing in the hangar of her Providence-class dreadnought.

Unbeknown to Ventress, Dooku had been confronted about his apprentice by Darth Sidious during the battle. Although her master attempted to assuage the Dark Lord's concern, Sidious was convinced that Ventress was being trained as a means to overthrow him and so insisted that Dooku kill her. The count reluctantly complied and decided that Sullust would be Ventress's end. And so, when Ventress contacted Dooku from within the cockpit of her downed fighter to request assistance, he rejected his apprentice and left her to die. Injured and with her reinforcements ordered to abandon the battle theater, Ventress emerged from her ship to face the Jedi alone. In a refusal to surrender she attacked the two aggressively in a duel across the hangar. Although she managed to separate the Jedi for a moment, she was quickly overwhelmed and cornered against her own starfighter. In a burst of dark side aggression, Ventress was able to seize both men in a Force choke but was interrupted when TJ-912&mdash;under orders from Count Dooku&mdash;opened fire on Ventress's command ship from the droid's Recusant-class destroyer. As the Providence dreadnought rocked under the assault, the battle in the hangar was thrown into chaos. Ventress was disarmed by the Jedi and nearly taken down when a damaged Hyena-class droid bomber performed a suicide run on the dreadnought hangar. The three combatants jumped away from the impact and the Jedi decided to flee the doomed command vessel and leave Ventress to go down with the ship.

Again left for dead at the Battle of Sullust, Ventress scurried aboard her crippled starfighter and drove it along the hangar floor towards the airlock, escaping the Providence-class destroyer just as it detonated under continued fire. The explosion destroyed much of the remaining Confederate fleet and won the battle for the Republic, leaving behind only debris and an unconscious Asajj Ventress in the charred hull of her disabled Fanblade fighter. TJ-912 reported to Dooku that scans showed no survivors, leaving the count and Lord Sidious convinced that the Dathomirian assassin had met her end.

The remains of Ventress's ship and her unconscious body were eventually discovered by a salvage ship, the Raider. The scavengers aboard, who had been picking through the debris field in the aftermath of the battle, took the Fanblade starfighter as a prize and pulled Ventress from the wreckage. The scavenger captain Ratch and his crew resuscitated the woman and began interrogating her about the battle at knife-point, but the injured and betrayed Ventress refused to answer questions, instead demanding to be taken to Dathomir. When Ratch questioned her demands, she seized the Twi'lek captain and his three crewmen in a Force choke that killed him almost instantly. Knowing that the Confederacy was no longer her cause and the Republic was still her enemy, Ventress took command of the Raider and set course for her long-lost homeworld in the Mid Rim.

Return to Dathomir
"Dooku. He betrayed me." "I know. I had hoped you would find your way to us sooner."

- Ventress and Mother Talzin

Ventress arrived at the sparsely-populated planet and set the Raider down just outside of the Nightsister fortress-village. As she approached on foot she was surrounded by a cadre of witches who failed to recognize their sister and threatened her as an unwelcome stranger. The injured and exhausted Ventress was saved by the intervention of Mother Talzin, who knew the woman was the young Nightsister child she had given away decades prior. Asajj, overcome by her wounds, collapsed into Talzin's arms and was carried into the village by her sisters. Her body was placed on a stone slab while Talzin directed the Nightsisters to gather basins containing the Water of Life &mdash;a liquid ichor that was infused with the magick of Dathomir and aided in Nightsister rituals. The coven encircled Ventress with the Waters while Talzin led them in a shamanistic ritual intended to heal the assassin. During the ceremony, the dark magicks caused Ventress to experience vivid and painful visions of her past&mdash;her transfer to Hal'Sted and his eventual murder, her training under Ky Narec and his eventual murder, and ultimately her tutelage under Dooku and his attempted murder of Ventress herself. Her last vision of Dooku abandoning her at Sullust made Ventress realize what she needed most: revenge.

Ventress emerged from her unconscious state to find Talzin by her bedside. The Clan Mother had hoped Ventress would have returned to Dathomir sooner, but was prepared to aid her long-lost clanswoman nonetheless. Although Talzin was acquainted with Dooku and ostensibly on cordial terms, she hated the Sith Order and its adherents. Decades prior, she had been a confidant and aspiring student of Darth Sidious, but the Dark Lord ultimately betrayed the Nightsister shaman by abducting and indoctrinating her young son and leaving the witch to her fate on Dathomir. And so in Talzin, Ventress found a new mentor and ally in her vendetta against Dooku. The Clan Mother pledged Nightsisters Karis and Naa'leth&mdash;the coven's greatest warriors&mdash;to Ventress's cause and set out to plan the assassination of Count Dooku.

Ventress hid out with the Nightsisters for a short time after her healing, gathering strength and becoming familiar with her people's attire and customs. Meanwhile, Talzin prepared her assassination plot. She summoned her coven to the village center and greeted Ventress with a prayer circle and an enchanted basin of ichor. Using her coven's spellcasting abilities, Talzin had imbued the liquid with the magick powers of stealth. Ventress, Karis, and Naa'leth stepped into the mist rising from the ichor and became nearly invisible. Their forms were cloudy and translucent, allowing the three Dathomirians easily be camouflaged in any environment. Ventress and her compatriots were given Jedi lightsabers by Talzin, who planned for the three women to strike at Dooku in his palace on the planet Serenno. The lightsabers ensured that if the three were seen, the would appear to be Jedi assailants and not Nightsister assassins.

Ventress flew the Raider to Serenno with Karis and Naa'leth in tow, landing in the forests on the outskirts of Dooku's compound. Under the cover of night, the three women trekked to the palace and infiltrated it by cutting through the outer wall and crawling through the ducts. Ventress sensed her old master in his room below them and descended upon a sleeping Dooku with her cadre. Before engaging, she shot him with a dart that had been dipped in Nightsister poison by Talzin. The count immediately woke and armed himself with his lightsaber, but quickly began to lose his vision as a result of the poison. Nevertheless he attacked his assailants, who he assumed to be Jedi on the basis of their lightsaber blades. Ventress, Karis, and Naa'leth went in on the Sith Lord, striking to kill their target who remained a dangerous and talented foe despite his impairments. The duel eventually moved into Dooku's office, where the count faltered and was slammed into his desk by a powerful Force push from Ventress. The Dathomirian nearly took the Sith Lord's life, but Dooku surprised his three assassins with a sudden and overwhelming wave of Force lightning. The blast incapacitated all three Nightsisters, lifting them into the air and allowing Dooku to fling them through his window and out of the palace towards the forests below. Ventress fell for a long distance but swiftly regained her bearings and clung to a cliffside to avoid impact on the ground. She grabbed Karis and Naa'leth's tumbling bodies through the Force and rescued them too before returning to the Raider and fleeing Serenno in defeat.

The Raider flew back to Dathomir where the assassins were greeted by Talzin and the coven. Karis admitted their failure, but the Clan Mother insisted that the defeat presented additional opportunities. She explained to Ventress that their failed assassination demonstrated to Dooku his own vulnerability, and that the Sith Lord would now be eager to protect himself&mdash;specifically, by finding a new pupil with which to replace Ventress. To that end, Talzin contacted her old acquaintance and offered the count a new apprentice. Dooku had always acknowledged Ventress's talents and the power of Dathomirian warriors, and so accepted the offer to take a new apprentice from Talzin's people&mdash;this time from the subordinate but ferocious male warrior clans of Dathomir, the Nightbrothers.

The Nightbrother
"This one is strong. A perfect male specimen. Oh, such hate, the sheer power of it."'' ''"A tremendous gift from the galaxy, Mother. He will serve us well."

- Talzin and Ventress regard Savage Opress

Not long after the assassination attempt, Dooku traveled to Dathomir to hold audience with Talzin and discuss the Nightsister's offer. Ventress hid among her sisters during the meeting but monitored her old master until his departure from the planet. Talzin had promised to find Dooku a new assassin from the ranks of the Nightbrothers and assured him that the warrior would be of the same bloodline as Darth Maul. Maul had been a renowned Sith assassin a decade prior during his time as Darth Sidious's apprentice; after he was reported dead at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Dooku replaced him as the Dark Lord's pupil but his legend lived on. It was that legend that motivated the count to agree to the arrangement, unaware that Talzin was conspiring with Ventress to ensure that his new assassin would be a weapon against Dooku that was loyal only to the Nightsisters. Unbeknown to all parties but the Nightsister shaman herself, Darth Maul was the young son of Talzin's who had been abducted and indoctrinated by Darth Sidious so many years prior. Talzin's aid to Ventress in maneuvering against the Sith was motivated by loyalty to her son and her desire to revive him and strike back against the Sith Lord. Thus, she sent Ventress off aboard a speeder towards the Nightbrother village on the far side of the planet to find one of Maul's kinsman to be her proxy and Ventress's pawn in taking down Dooku.

At the village, Ventress met the Nightbrother chieftain Viscus and informed him that she had arrived to perform the Selection&mdash;a Dathomiri ritual by which Nightsisters tested their own skills and in which Nightbrothers were selected for mating. Viscus summoned the heads of each Nightbrother clan to the village square, where the men lined up to be inspected by the Nightsister. Taking full advantage of her dominant social status, Ventress began to beat and berate several of the Nightbrothers to demonstrate that many were unfit for consideration. After dismissing several undesirables, she selected a group of six potential candidates, making sure to single out two in particular: Savage Opress and his brother Feral.

The warriors' first trial would also serve as an initiation assessment for Ventress&mdash;the Test of Fury was the first part of the Selection process, but was also a necessary rite for Nightsisters to become full-fledged assassins in their culture. In an open circular arena high above the village, Ventress and Viscus gathered the six candidates and armed them with a variety of deadly melee weapons. At Viscus's signal, the men attacked the unarmed Nightsister, who easily dodged their assaults and assailed them with her bare hands. Ventress killed two of the Nightbrothers in the vicious scuffle and incapacitated the other three. Opress was the last warrior standing, but she knocked him out with a swift punch after he chose to rush to Feral's aid instead of continuing the attack.

Night fell on Dathomir as Ventress and Viscus began the second test of the selection. In a challenge of blindness, Ventress wielded a Dathomiri flail and hid in the darkness from the four remaining warriors, occasionally using the Force to quickly and quietly speed towards them in an ambush. Her first two attacks were successful and killed two of the candidates, but Opress was able to predict the angle of the third attack and pull himself and Feral away from Ventress's deadly strike. Impressed, she accepted the two brothers into the third and final trial in which she would fight them to the death on ceremonial platforms that raised and lowered unpredictably. The brothers did not want to fight one another for survival and so attempted to evade Ventress together, but Feral was discovered and attacked by the Nightsister when he was separated from Savage. Ventress nearly killed Feral, first beating him into submission and then seizing him in a Force choke. She was prevented from doing so by Opress, who threw her against a pillar and demanded that she take him and spare his brother. Ventress accepted the offer and ordered Feral to leave before continuing battle against Opress. The two were well-matched in martial combat but the Nightsister ultimately overcame her opponent after brutally beating him to the ground. With her foot on his throat she proclaimed Opress the victor of the Selection and took ownership of him as a slave.

The following day, Ventress departed from the village with Opress in tow to return to the Nightsister fortress. She presented the man to Mother Talzin, who praised her selection of such a fine specimen. Opress was sedated under Talzin's influence and brought to the village center, where he was subjected to the dark magicks of the gathered witch clan. Ventress watched as the coven used the Spirit Ichor to transform the man's body, infusing him with dark power and enhancing his natural rage and hatred. Opress grew from an average-sized Zabrak warrior into a hulking monster with little free will or compassion left within. When the ritual was complete, Talzin reawakened Opress, who immediately grabbed Ventress's neck and began to crush her throat with overwhelming strength. Although he initially ignored her protestations, Talzin's magick made him obedient to the Nightsister in the proper context, and so Ventress was able to order him to release her with a calm and soft command.

To ensure his loyalty to her above all else, Ventress brought forth Feral, who had been abducted from the Nightbrother village after Opress was selected and taken away. Ventress ordered Savage to kill Feral to prove his obedience and merciless nature; although he hesitated briefly, Opress ultimately grabbed his brother by the throat and strangled him to death. Assured of her pawn's allegiance and skill, Ventress allowed Talzin to take Opress to Dooku on Serenno, where he would be apprenticed to the count and train in the dark side of the Force. Still believing Ventress to have been killed at Sullust, Dooku took the Nightbrother into his inner circle and began planning to overthrow Sidious and conquer the galaxy with his new student&mdash;just as he once had with Ventress. While she remained with the Nightsisters on Dathomir, her pawn grew stronger in the Force under the count's teachings and began to undertake missions on behalf of the Confederacy. The first of these missions saw Opress brutally kill two Jedi on Devaron, forcing the Jedi High Council to launch an investigation that ultimately led Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to Mother Talzin on Dathomir. Talzin, realizing that Opress could no longer be kept a secret from the galaxy and not wanting to incriminate herself or her clan, complied with the Jedi. After Kenobi and Skywalker departed Dathomir to intercept Opress at Toydaria, Ventress met with Talzin to discuss their progress. Although the younger woman believed that her assassination plot was not yet prepared, Talzin insisted that she needed to strike now, as Opress had been revealed to the galaxy. Ventress agreed and set off for Toydaria to reclaim Opress as her own and finally kill Count Dooku.

While Opress was on the planet to retrieve King Katuunko alive and force him into an agreement with the Separatists &mdash;thereby correcting Ventress's failure on Rugosa &mdash;he was intercepted by Kenobi and Skywalker and ended up killing the Toydarian monarch. Ventress meanwhile infiltrated the Confederate Providence-class destroyer in orbit, which had ferried Dooku to the system to parley with his intended captive. When Opress returned to the count's observation chamber with Katuunko's corpse, the Sith Lord punished his student for his failure with relentless blasts of Force lightning. Ventress shocked both of them when she interrupted the torture and once more took command of Opress and the two students turned against their former teacher. A vicious duel ensued, with Dooku just barely fending off attacks from the Dathomirian warriors. Although the count was at a severe disadvantage and was even disarmed at one point, he was able to hold off Opress by repeatedly electrocuting him with Force lightning. Ventress bristled at her pawn's inability to strike at Dooku and began berating him for his weakness; the derision from Ventress and torture from Dooku was ultimately too much for the Nightbrother to handle, and so he broke free from his bonds of servitude and attacked both of his masters. As the duel devolved into a three-way brawl, Dooku escaped the fray by fleeing into a trap door in the floor. Ventress gave pursuit, leaving Opress in the count's observation chamber where he was discovered by Kenobi and Skywalker who were still tracking him for his murder of the Jedi on Devaron.

Ventress followed Dooku into the lower levels of the destroyer where she once again confronted her former Master. The two continued their duel throughout the vessel and into the escape pod bays, where Dooku ended the confrontation by throwing the Nightsister into a bulkhead and disarming her with telekinetic Force. He poured a blast lightning into her body and moved to execute her with a swift downward strike, but Ventress was able to narrowly avoid death by using the Force to push his blade into the piping beside her instead. Harsh gasses flowed out of the severed pipe and into Dooku's face, allowing Ventress just enough time to retrieve her lightsabers and flee into a nearby escape pod. The pod's path took her down towards Toydaria, after which she fled into the galaxy to hide from Dooku, Opress, the Jedi, the Confederacy, and the Republic.

Dooku's revenge
After some time alone, contemplating her next course of action, Ventress returned to Dathomir, just as Dooku sent General Grievous to lead a revenge attack. The severely outnumbered Nightsisters were slaughtered: the only survivors were Ventress and Talzin, who disappeared, leaving Ventress alone and feeling uncertain once more.

The Quarzite Mission
"None of this was my choice. I never asked to be ripped away from my home. From&hellip;my family. You'll never know what it's like.''" "''I wish I didn't, but I do."

- Pluma Sodi and Asajj Ventress

Finding herself at the cantina in Mos Eisley on Tatooine, Ventress had an altercation with the bounty hunter Oked, whom she killed. His fellow bounty hunters Bossk and Latts Razzi, impressed, invited her to replace him on their mission to Quarzite. Although she was unimpressed by their leader, Boba Fett, due to his young age, she agreed to join them.

Their mission was to guard a large chest to be delivered to the planet's ruler, Otua Blank via subtram. Ventress helped fend off Kage Warriors who came to steal the chest, but relented when she discovered it held a captive girl named Pluma Sodi, whom Blank had kidnapped and intended to marry. Ventress turned on her fellow bounty hunters and tied up Fett, placing him in the box instead. She delivered the chest, received her payment and left before Blank opened it, and returned Pluma to her brother, the Kage Warrior leader Krismo. She then met up with the other bounty hunters to drop off their share of the payment.

Unexpected alliances
"At first I admit I was just interested in the money and a little bit of revenge, but then I realized your fallen Padawan and I had a lot in common." "How dare you compare yourself to Ahsoka." "It's true! My master abandoned me, and that's exactly what you did to her. You and your precious Jedi Order."

- Ventress, interrogated by Anakin Skywalker

Afterwards, Ventress learned Opress had joined his brother Darth Maul in a massacre on Raydonia. Taking the bounty on Opress, Ventress flew to Raydonia, watching them capture Kenobi, and snuck aboard their Turtle Tanker. She revealed herself, and Maul ordered she be destroyed. She slipped away and reemerged to untie Kenobi, and the former enemies dueled Maul and Opress. Overwhelmed, they fled to the command module and used the escape pod before Maul and Opress cut through the airlock with their lightsabers. Ventress reemerged in the Coruscant underworld, where she donned a helmet to conceal her identity. She encountered Ahsoka Tano, Skywalker's Padawan who was on the run after being framed for murder. Ventress was going to turn her in for the bounty, but began to sympathize with her betrayal, and decided to help her find the real killer. After helping her, Ventress left, only to be knocked out by a hooded assailant, who took her lightsabers and helmet. The assailant ambushed Tano, who was then arrested by arriving clone troopers.

Subsequently, Skywalker ventured into the underworld and tracked down Ventress. She explained what happened, pointing out her lightsabers had been stolen. She noted Tano had contacted her friend Barriss Offee, leading Skywalker to find Ventress's lightsabers in her room and discovering she had framed Tano.

Successful hunter
"I guess the bald banshee is stealing everybody's gigs these days." "That woman is trouble!"

- Quinlan Vos and Bossk

Joining her sisters
"Remember... you always have a choice to be better. You always have a choice to... to pick the right path. Even if that choice comes a little late."

- Asajj Ventress to Quinlan Vos

Towards the end of the Clone War the Jedi Council decided to assassinate Count Dooku to hasten the end of the war. It sent Quinlan Vos under the guise of a bounty hunter to recruit Ventress, who previously came close to killing Dooku and knew much about him, to aid him in the assassination. She soon figured out he was a Jedi, but worked with him anyway as a bounty hunter until he proposed killing Dooku and disclosed his identity. She also lied about Dooku killing Vos' former mentor Master Tholme, when she had actually been the one who killed Tholme. During their time together they fell in love and Ventress began teaching Vos to use the Dark Side without being controlled by it by taking him to her home on Dathomir. Their first attempt on Dooku ended in failure with Vos being captured.

While Dooku's prisoner, Vos learnt that it had been Ventress who killed Tholme, pushing him further into the Dark Side. Ventress teamed up with Boba Fett's syndicate to try to rescue Vos but failed. She later teamed up with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and succeeded in rescuing him. Ventress realized that he was still under the influence of the Dark Side, but the Jedi did not sense it. Vos rejoined the Jedi but was secretly sabotaging them. Vos then recruited Ventress again to finish the plan to kill Dooku. Vos' overall plan was to rescue Dooku only to be led to Darth Sidious and to kill both Sith, but that plan failed when Vos, Dooku, and Ventress crashed on Christophsis. Pursued by the Jedi, Dooku learned of Vos' plan and tried to kill him with Force lightning, but Ventress stood in the way and saved Quinlan's life, getting mortally wounded. After Dooku escaped, Ventress' sacrifice helped Vos break the dark side's grip on him completely.

Ventress died in Vos' arms, and he and Obi-Wan took her body back to Dathomir where she was laid to rest in the waters of her village.

Personality and traits
As a child she was kind and caring, but became dark and brooding after the death of her master, Ky Narec. Giving into rage and resentment, she subsequently spiralled into darkness. Known to be quick to anger, Ventress could easily be infuriated, such as when her formidable lightsaber skills were described to her as those of an amateur by Luminara Unduli. Despite her quick temper, she was very cunning and swift, allowing her to outsmart most foes.

Ventress could also be vindictive and inconsiderate. After being betrayed, abandoned and nearly killed by Dooku, Ventress desired to kill him and went to the Nightsisters to find a way to defeat her former Master. She recruited Savage Opress and treated him like a slave which ultimately caused him to turn against her.

After becoming a bounty hunter, her attitude had softened somewhat, as seen when she allowed Pluma Sodi to return to her people. Likewise, she had lost interest in killing some of her former enemies, including Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka Tano. In fact, she rescued Kenobi from Darth Maul and Oppress, more interested in the latter's bounty reward than her previous enmity with the Jedi Master. On the other hand, she helped Tano, as she empathized with the Padawan's situation, likening it to her own with Count Dooku. She also incapacitated a group of clones without seriously harming any of them, and implied that not killing people was her new modus operandi. To highlight her misunderstood status, she used a snake as the icon on her bounty hunter armor; they are thought to be evil, even when they are not.

Near the end of the war, as she traveled with Quinlan Vos to assassinate Count Dooku, her more compassionate and trusting side was even more strengthened - to the point of her developing a romantic attraction to him. In the end, she sacrificed herself to save Vos who was influence by the dark side, fully redeeming herself into the light.

Powers and abilities
"She is a gifted assassin. You have my word, she will complete her mission to the letter."

- Darth Tyranus, speaking of Ventress to his master, Darth Sidious

Force abilities
Though noted for her skill in physical combat, Ventress was by no means lacking in Force strength. Darth Sidious himself noted that she was powerful, and feared that Count Dooku would use her to help overthrow him as Dark Lord of the Sith.

Ventress displayed a great deal of aptitude with Force-enhanced jumps, frequently doing so during her duels. She was also skilled with telekinesis, as witnessed when she lifted Captain Rex in the air, while simultaneously choking him. Later, the Dark Jedi proved herself capable of Force choking and telekinetically levitating Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, both of whom were very powerful Jedi, at the same time. Ventress demonstrated an aptitude for using mind tricks, though Rex was able to avoid her influence when contacting Skywalker.

Lightsaber prowess
"Do you think you'll still be able to call on the Force once I've separated your head from your body?''" "''Even with my vision clouded, I recognize the fighting style of Count Dooku. Your version is unrefined, amateurish, sloppy."

- Ventress and Luminara Unduli

Asajj Ventress was a master of Jar'Kai, a style she acquired after the death of her first master, Ky Narec, taking up his lightsaber alongside her own.

Under the tutelage of Count Dooku, Ventress developed a fighting style very similar to that of her master. However, her technique still was not without its flaws; notably her version was criticized by a temporarily-blinded Luminara Unduli as being "unrefined," "amateurish," and "sloppy." By the time of their duel, Ventress had already developed a physical strength to hold up simultaneous bladelocks with multiple duelists at a time, and Ahsoka Tano recognized her as "too powerful for any one Jedi to fight alone." She was even able to contend with Grievous, although she was ultimately defeated.

Hunting skill
Ventress also displayed considerable skill in unarmed combat, notably being able to easily fight a group of Nightbrothers when she was looking for a suitable servant on Dathomir. Her hand-to-hand combat skills were later displayed when she fought Savage Opress and Darth Maul alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi, dodging Opress's aggressive blows and striking back with a flurry of punches and kicks until Kenobi returned her lightsaber to her.

Behind the scenes
Ventress was created for the Legends animated series Star Wars: Clone Wars, and reappeared in the second, canonical  The Clone Wars series, where she was voiced by Nika Futterman.

Her design comes from early Attack of the Clones brainstorming sketches by Dermot Power for the design of Palpatine's apprentice that would later become Dooku. He wanted her earlier designs to look almost as if she was a samurai. The concept art can be seen in The Art of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

The 2015 novel focusing on Ventress is based on episodes planned for the unproduced seventh season of The Clone Wars: the first illustration revealing she grew out her hair was also developed for the series. Dave Filoni explained Ventress' shaved head symbolized her loyalty to the Sith philosophy.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Galactic Defense
 * Star Wars: The Clone Wars film
 * Dark Disciple
 * Dark Disciple
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