The History Behind The Most Dangerous Lightsabers In 'Star Wars' Lore; The 'Forcesaber'
In The Mandalorian Season 2 episode, The Tragedy, Din Djarin brought Grogu to the planet Tython, so that the Force-sensitive child could make contact with other Jedi. Beside from The Mandalorian, in current Star Wars cannon, the planet was only featured in the Doctor Aphra comic series, where the rogue archeologist took Darth Vader there in an effort to mislead the Empire from discovering the Rebel base on Hoth. Tython played a more prominent role in the old Expanded Universe, now Legends, where it first appeared in Drew Karpyshyn’s novel Darth Bane: Rule of Two, the events of which take place around 1,000 years prior to those of the movies.
The planet was also a major location in a storyline that preceded Bane’s terror over the galaxy by a mere 24,000 years: In February of 2012, Dark Horse Comics released Issue #1 of their new comic series, Dawn of the Jedi. Written by John Ostrander and gorgeously penciled by Jan Duursema the series ran for 15 issues and three story-arcs (until March 2014), when it abruptly ended after Marvel reacquired the Star Wars license. The series also brought forth a tie-in novel called Into the Void, written by Tim Lebbon.
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Dawn of the Jedi told the story of the ancient Je’daii Order, located on Tython, a planet in the Deep Core of the galaxy, that was especially attuned to the balance of the Force and reacted with catastrophic Force Storms, every time the balance was disturbed. The Je’daii believed in the light side (the Ashla), the dark side (the Bogan) and the balance between these two (the Bendu), but they were not strictly forbidden from using dark side powers as long as it didn’t corrupt their personality, in which case they were exiled to one of Tython’s moons.
Their time of studying the Force was abruptly ended however, when the Rakatan Infinite Empire tried to find a way to the center of the galaxy. The Rakata were a race of cruel aliens, technologically far superior to any other race in the galaxy and able to devastate whole planets and crush civilizations with their war machines and the power of the dark side in order to get the resources they required. The Rakatan were responsible for turning Tatooine from a planet with large seas and blooming flora into the desert wasteland that we know from the movies.
The Rakata also abducted Force-sensitive children, brutally torturing them and turning them into so-called "Force Hounds", whom they used to find places that were strong in the Force, in order to exploit them. One of these Force Hounds was a human male called Xesh, who actually found a way to Tython, but crash-landed his ship and got into a fight with three young Je’daii Journeyers.
In this battle he used a weapon called a Forcesaber.
This Rakatan invention was a predecessor to the lightsaber of the Jedi and the Sith and shared several of its characteristics: a metal hilt that was able to emit an energy blade strong enough to cut through most other materials. At the core of the hilt was a crystal, that the Force Hound had subdued to their will, by infusing both dark side energies and Rakatan alchemy. This process was not too different from the “bleeding” technique that the Sith used many thousand years later to torture a kyber crystal until it turned red. Like lightsabers, Forcesabers came in various colors and shapes, like actual sabers or shorter pikes.
But there was one aspect that made Forcesabers much more dangerous than their successors: while lightsabers could be activated by anyone, even by non Force-users, Forcesabers required their wielders to give in to their anger and hate and to infuse their dark emotions into the hilt in order to be turned on and to keep the blade alive. So, when the Je’daii Journeyers had beaten Xesh and taken his Forcesaber from him, they were not able to active it at first. Only when one of them became furious, the blade suddenly ignited.
In the years after their first contact with the Force Hound and later the Rakatan fleet, many Je’daii saw the potential of the Forcesaber as a powerful weapon, constructing their own, while others shied away from it, feeling the danger of sliding closer and closer to the dark side every time they had to call upon their anger and hate to activate and use the weapon. It’s safe to say that Forcesabers were one of the many catalysts for the schism between light and dark Force users.
Unfortunately, Ostrander and Duursema never got a chance to complete the whole story they wanted to tell with Dawn of the Jedi, which would have ended after the war with the Rakatan, with the Je’daii leaving the Tython system and forming the Jedi Order.
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Source: CBR