Kit Fisto

Kit Fisto was a Force-sensitive Nautolan male Jedi Master of the final years of the Galactic Republic, renowned as an expert swordsman with some of the finest dueling skills in the Order. He served as a Jedi General in the Clone Wars and was eventually accepted onto the Jedi High Council. When Anakin Skywalker revealed that Chancellor Palpatine was a Sith Lord, Fisto joined Mace Windu in the attempt to arrest him and was cut down in his office in a matter of seconds.

The Nautolan Jedi#

Kit Fisto was a Nautolan from the watery world of Glee Anselm who joined the Jedi Order and rose to the rank of Master. He was a known associate of fellow Jedi Aayla Secura and Saesee Tiin. Around 33 BBY, when the theft of a revered statue threatened to reignite the war between the Anselmi and the Nautolans, one Anselmi official insisted the Jedi be kept out of the peace process, fearing that Fisto's membership would compromise the Order's neutrality.

At some point Fisto accepted the young Mon Calamari Nahdar Vebb as his Padawan and trained him in the ways of the Force, preaching caution to the headstrong apprentice. The pair joined Masters Shaak Ti and Windu on a perilous rescue at an underwater research station on the waterworld of Tordus.

The Clone Wars#

Fisto took part in the opening battle of the war on Geonosis, one of the few Jedi to survive the slaughter in the arena. He fought in a covert operation on Hissrich and, after Separatist leader Nute Gunray escaped Republic custody, was tasked with recapturing him. The hunt led Fisto and Vebb instead into the lair of the Jedi-hunting General Grievous. Vebb perished at the general's hands, but Fisto held his own against the cyborg and nearly defeated him before escaping with his life, the mission a failure.

During a schism between the Mon Calamari and Quarren on Mon Cala, Fisto was sent to support the Mon Calamari against the Separatist-backed Quarren. The campaign went badly, and with a Separatist victory looming he was forced into hiding and was eventually captured and tortured. When the Mon Calamari and Quarren rekindled their alliance and drove out the Separatists, the freed Fisto helped turn the battle. After the Mon Cala campaign he took a more active role on the Jedi High Council, to which he had been accepted.

The final days#

As the war drew to a close, Fisto helped defend Palpatine when Grievous attacked Coruscant and seized the Chancellor, a kidnapping ultimately thwarted by Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Shortly after the Battle of Coruscant, Skywalker learned Palpatine's true identity as a Sith Lord and reported it to Windu. Determined to detain the Dark Lord, Windu traveled to the Chancellor's office accompanied by Fisto, Agen Kolar, and Saesee Tiin.

Confronting Palpatine, the four Jedi ignited their blades. In a surprise attack the Chancellor drew his own crimson saber and felled Kolar and Tiin almost instantly. Fisto held off the Sith Lord for only a few seconds before he was killed by a slash to the abdomen, exactly as Yoda had foreseen. Of the four, only Windu outlasted him.

Legacy#

Fisto's lightsaber was among the weapons that the fugitive Padawan Kanan Jarrus glimpsed in a vision of the Jedi Temple dojo on Lothal. Years after the purge, the Jedi survivor Cal Kestis came across a fallen statue of a Nautolan holding a lightsaber on Jedha and was reminded of Master Fisto. Luke Skywalker later recorded what he knew of Fisto in his journal, The Secrets of the Jedi.

Personality and abilities#

Fisto had green skin, large black eyes, and a tangle of flexible head-tresses, standing 1.96 meters tall. He was far more laid-back than many of his humorless colleagues, keeping his sense of humor even in the heat of battle, yet he was also clever, observant, and analytical, once quietly finding and triggering a hidden mechanism to open Grievous's castle door while his companions resorted to cutting through it.

Windu regarded Fisto as one of the greatest duelists in the Order. He favored Form I, the Shii-Cho, which let him hold off numerous opponents at once and helped him survive Geonosis and the war, though he was also capable with Form IV. Adept at physically channeling the Force, he could create and manipulate water currents for attack and defense, and his amphibious Nautolan physiology made him a lethal foe underwater as well as on land. He was also a skilled hand-to-hand fighter and an expert pilot.