r/darthmaul • u/Enough-Cycle-2226 • 4d ago
Fan Fiction (gross wtf why are you doing fan fiction) Mother Talzin’s origin story as an Arcane-style series ie a cycle of abuse repeating itself through Maul
Not a huge lore expert, so if I’m getting something wrong about established canon feel free to correct me but I’ve been sitting on this concept for a while and wanted to see what people think
Characters:
- Talzin - future Mother Talzin, starts the story as a captive
- The Nightbrother - Talzin’s captor, later Maul’s father
- The Nightbrother’s Father - the regime leader, Maul’s grandfather
- The Pilot - a young Palpatine, not yet revealed as Sith
- Maul - born at the end of this timeline, the product of everything above
1. Before Talzin reunites the Nightsisters, Nightbrothers run Dathomir. Nightsisters are property, used for magic, sold off-world, and some kept specifically as forced breeders. Talzin is being kept by one Nightbrother who’s faking abuse toward her so his father doesn’t sell her off. Privately, he’s protecting her. He’s the youngest son, overshadowed by his brothers, no real power in the family.
2. A group of rogue Nightsisters starts an uprising, rediscovering old magic. It’s violent and chaotic. A bounty goes out on them lol imagine The Crucible witch hunt gone wrong. Every Nightbrother gets sent to hunt, including Talzin’s captor.
3. He sees the bounty as a way out for both of them, thinking if he catches the group, they’ll have enough to escape together. He doesn’t tell Talzin any of this before he leaves.
4. Talzin’s left alone, no guard. She senses something’s off but doesn’t know if he’s protecting her, about to turn her in, or just as lost as she is. She starts hearing an unstable voice, part his cadence, part of the cries of the rebelling Nightsisters, telling her to follow. She doesn’t know the voice’s intent. She follows it and escapes in the chaos.
5. He returns, but she’s gone. He lies to his father, says he sold her to a bidder. In reality he meets with a pilot (young Palpatine) trying to get her actually off-world to freedom. Palpatine isn’t interested in the deal itself — he senses something in her bloodline, not her, and smiles. Nobody knows what that means yet.
6. Talzin ends up leading the rogue Nightsisters, turning their power into an actual culture and hierarchy. Her leadership style traces back to that first decision in the cell to act first, don’t wait to be proven right.
7. Years later, she and the Nightbrother secretly reconnect. He still believes politics can be avoided. She needs an heir to secure her rule. Around this time she also realizes the immortality doctrine she’s built her movement on isn’t real, but instead of admitting it, she makes a political excuse for her romance.
8. He finally says something stupid in reference to love (cornball SW dialect) aka “why can’t things just go back to the way they were” but for Talzin that’s basically referring to when Talzin was a slave. Immediately after their intimate moment, she has him executed. She can’t leave a witness to her weakness, and can’t forgive a lifetime of passivity dressed up as love.
9. She frames wiping out his family as political necessity (“erasing the bloodline that enslaved Nightsisters”) when it’s really grief she won’t process. Yet despite eliminating that bloodline, Talzin is pregnant with Maul who is made from a bloodline of violence, running away, and a lack of confrontation.
10. When Maul is born, she makes it law and history that Nightsisters were always on top. The cycle that created Talzin through those abusing power over those powerless repeats through her to Maul. Ironically, Talzin sees the Nightsisters’ dominance as a refusal to repeat the past.
11. Maul is eventually taken by the Sith, having visions such as his mother’s captivity, his father walking away while she begged not to leave her (to hunt the Nightsisters), and the voice that called her to follow her “passion.” He doesn’t get the full picture. He is just fueled with hatred and resentment, and some of it isn’t even his own.
I was inspired by Jinx from Arcane, Miranda from the Devil Wears Prada 2006, and Snow from the Hunger Games S&S as well as Animal Farm and The Crucible
