Shaak Ti

Shaak Ti was a Force-sensitive Togruta female Jedi Master who served as one of the final members of the Jedi High Council before the Great Jedi Purge. Respected for her wisdom and prized as a teacher, she was a skilled combatant and a devoted believer in the Jedi way. As a Jedi General in the Clone Wars she fought at Geonosis, Kamino, and Coruscant, but spent much of the conflict on Kamino overseeing the training of the Republic's clone soldiers. She was killed in the Jedi Temple by Anakin Skywalker once he had become the Sith Lord Darth Vader.

A seat on the Council#

Shaak Ti was a Togruta from the planet Shili, marked by the red-and-white pigmentation and striped montrals and lekku characteristic of her people. Widely regarded as wise and patient, she ascended to the Jedi High Council following the retirement of Master Yaddle and held her seat until the body's dissolution at the end of the Clone Wars. She often remained silent in Council debates, but argued for compassion where some of her peers urged harsh punishment, as in the case of Quinlan Vos.

The Clone Wars#

Ti fought at the first Battle of Geonosis and received the rank of Jedi General in the Grand Army of the Republic. Much of the war, however, she spent on Kamino, where she oversaw the production and training of the Republic's clone soldiers and commanded the garrison stationed there. She led the defense of Kamino when General Grievous attacked the cloning facilities, at one point using the Force to hurl aqua droids into one another.

Her time on Kamino was defined by tension. Ti saw the clones as individuals full of potential rather than products, a view that placed her at odds with the Kaminoans, particularly Chief Medical Scientist Nala Se, who regarded the soldiers as intellectual property. She became a trusted mentor to the troopers, and her protective affection for them strayed close to breaking the Jedi Code's prohibition on attachment.

Late in the war Ti was drawn into the conspiracy surrounding a behavioral inhibitor biochip implanted in every clone. When the rogue ARC trooper Fives uncovered the chip's existence, Ti defended him against Nala Se's efforts to discredit him, invoking her authority to give him a chance to present his case to Palpatine, not because she took a side but because it was the right thing to do. Despite her efforts she could not save Fives, who suffered a mental collapse, and the secret of the chips died with him.

Operation: Knightfall and death#

After the biochip affair, Ti returned to Coruscant and joined the Council's failed search for the hidden Dark Lord of the Sith who, they suspected, had engineered the war. Among other endeavors she partnered with Aayla Secura to seal a Starweird in the Sason Temple, and she fought in the Battle of Coruscant.

In the war's final days, Palpatine revealed himself as the Sith Lord Darth Sidious. After Sidious slaughtered Mace Windu's arrest party and turned Skywalker to the dark side, he enacted Order 66. On the night Skywalker became Darth Vader, Ti recorded a message on a holocron pleading with whoever found it not to let the purge be the end of the Jedi. As Vader laid siege to the Jedi Temple with the 501st Legion, Ti, who was inside, did not fight but continued to meditate, and she was killed directly at Vader's hands, in keeping with a vision Yoda had seen months before.

Legacy#

Grievous claimed Ti's lightsaber for his collection and wielded it until Obi-Wan Kenobi severed his hand during the Battle of Utapau. The holocron Ti recorded before her death later passed into the collection of Grakkus the Hutt on Nar Shaddaa, where Luke Skywalker unwittingly opened it and heard her plea. Luke later chronicled her life in his journal, The Secrets of the Jedi.

Personality and abilities#

Ti was wise, patient, and a devoted Jedi, but her bonds with the clones under her command set her apart from her peers. She could be tough on her students to bring out their best, yet she was never callous, opposing the Kaminoans' hyper tests and routine termination of substandard clones.

A Togruta, Ti possessed hollow montrals that gave her a form of echolocation and sharpened spatial awareness, making her one of the finest Jedi in group combat, able to fight with ease when surrounded. She was skilled at telekinesis and capable of remarkably high Force-assisted jumps, and she could wield two melee weapons at once, as she did at the Battle of Coruscant. Above all she excelled as a teacher and combat instructor, which is why she was entrusted with training the clone army. She carried a blue-bladed lightsaber and flew an Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptor.