Ambush on Tatooine (Darth Maul)

"These Sand People are tiring me. I must save my strength for my mission!"

- Darth Maul

The year of the Naboo Crisis, Darth Maul was ambushed by Tusken Raiders on the planet Tatooine. Maul, a Dathomirian Sith Lord, had been tasked by his Master&mdash;Darth Sidious&mdash;to eliminate Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, the two Jedi who protected Queen Padmé Amidala, ruler of Naboo. Sidious wanted to capture the Queen and have her sign a treaty allowing the Trade Federation to blockade her homeworld. After following the Jedi's trace to the Tatooine, Maul was ambushed by a group of thirty Tusken Raiders in a canyon. As he wished to save his strength for the upcoming lightsaber duel with the Jedi, the Sith apprentice decided to run away from the battle.

Prelude
"Tracking down the Jedi should be simple enough. And once I defeat them, the Queen will be back in my master's hands. I will not fail."

- Darth Maul

Thirty-two years before the Battle of Yavin, the mysterious Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious planned on capturing Queen Amidala of Naboo. He wished to force the queen sign a forged treaty that  would legitimize the occupation of Theed by the droid armies of the Trade Federation.

In his secret lair on Coruscant, capital world of the Galactic Republic, Sidious tasked his apprentice, a Dathomirian Zabrak known as Darth Maul, with eliminating Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi&mdash;the Jedi who were protecting Queen Amidala. According to the trace provided by his master, Maul knew the queen's J-type royal starship was on the planet Tatooine. The Sith then set course to the remote and sparsely populated planet aboard his personal stealth-ship, the Scimitar. After being attacked by Togorian pirates upon exiting hyperspace in the Tatoo system, Maul made a night landing on an isolated mesa close to the spaceport of Mos Espa.

The ambush
"The Sand People advance on me angrily. In their breath masks and goggles they are protected from the sand that now stings my eyes and clogs my mouth."

- Darth Maul

After sending his probe droids to track down Qui-Gon Jinn, Maul spent the night aboard the Scimitar. The next morning, he woke up early to practice his Sith art of battle. After beating two assassin droids he had brought with him that were similar to those he used to fight when he was younger, the Dathomirian noticed bantha tracks circling his ship. Fearing it may have been a spy sent by the Jedi, Maul decided to investigate and followed the prints in the sand.

The tracks led him over the dunes and into a canyon. While he was scanning the canyon in search for lifeforms, a riderless bantha lurched into sight around a rocky wall, temporarily breaking the Sith Lord's concentration. Suddenly, a lone Sandperson rose from the shadows under the cliff and tried to attack Maul with his gaderffii stick. The Dathomirian activated one end of his saberstaff and cut the Raider's weapon in two with one stroke of his bloodshine lightsaber blade.

After a brief sparring match, Maul prepared himself to strike his opponent down. But the desert warrior wasn't alone, and Maul had just fallen into a trap. A flock of at least thirty other Sand People appeared, spilling out from behind the cliff where they were hidden. Soon, the Raiders began to surround the Sith. While he thought that he could have easily defeated five of them with ease, Maul understood that it would only infuriate the rest of the group. The Tusken Raiders kept maneuvering Maul closer to the face of the canyon wall. As the only way out was to avoid the fight, Maul quickly enacted a fallback strategy. He ran straight for the canyon wall and managed to scale it. With a burst of dark side strength, Maul performed a Force-enhanced backward flip, flew in the air and landed behind his attackers.

This unexpected move left the Sand People temporarily stunned. Maul grasped the opportunity to run, and headed back to his ship through the canyon. The Raiders eventually engaged in chasing the Sith, but they couldn't match his speed. Once they were left one hundred meters behind, they finally gave up and walked away, in hopes of finding easier prey.

Aftermath
"If he's heading out of town on foot, he must be going to his ship. No time to waste!"

- Darth Maul

Maul had never run from battle before, but he wouldn't have succeeded in defeating all thirty Raiders so easily. This fallback had filled him with rage, but he was willing to tap into his feelings of fury during the upcoming fight. Back at the Scimitar, he received a report from one of his Dark eye probes. The collected coordinates indicated Jinn was heading out of Mos Espa spaceport, most likely returning to the Queen's ship in the company of a local boy. The tattooed warrior got on the Bloodfin, his personal speeder bike, and raced through the sands of the sun-scorched planet. When he finally reached his Jedi prey, Maul engaged in his first duel with Jinn.

Behind the scenes
The ambush on Tatooine first appeared in the eighth chapter of the March 2000 novel, Star Wars Episode I Journal: Darth Maul, written by Jude Watson. In November of the same year, a visual interpretation of this event was included in Darth Maul's Revenge, a young readers book written by Eric Arnold and illustrated by Tommy Lee Edwards.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Episode I Journal: Darth Maul
 * Darth Maul's Revenge
 * Star Wars: The Wrath of Darth Maul