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I have become shadows, terror, and death. One or one thousand, it no longer makes any difference.
— Lady Ahsoka Tano
Kage-Nare, the way of the starweird, also called the quiet form is the 8th recognized form of lightsaber combat. Developed by Lady Ahsoka Tano, it relies strongly on the use of the force to dampen any awareness of the fighter’s presence, relying on a combination of absolute stealth and unavoidable offense. The style is very much a product of Lady Tano, and Lady Tano is a remarkably interesting person.
She was once a Jedi apprentice to infamous Jedi Knight Anakin “Hero with no fear” Skywalker during the Clone Wars. In practice, her padawan-ship was handled by Knight Skywalker as much as Councilor Obi-Wan “The Negotiator” Kenobi. It is widely accepted that this led to her developing a proto-kage-nare style by switching between Dijem So from Knight Skywalker, Soresu from Councilor Kenobi, and a healthy sprinkling of Ataru from Grandmaster Yoda. Some also speculate that she used Ataru as the many acrobatics needed for Ataru complemented her extreme Togruta flexibility and endurance.
It is to be noted that unlike a lot of other battlefield padawans of her time, Knight Skywalker made minimal attempts to keep her away from the frontlines, instead pushing her to perfect her tactics and technique instead.
By the end of the two-and-half years Lady Tano apprenticed under Knight Skywalker, she was widely considered one of the Old Jedi Order’s best combatants and was even better than a considerable number of knights. After all, she had not only fought General Grievous, but also Asajj Ventress, and Darth Maul having lived to tell the tale where many fully trained Knights and Masters have fallen to the afore-mentioned killers.
Things would change significantly in the aftermath of the Temple Bombings of 19 BBY. With Lady Tano expelled from the order with nothing but the clothes on her back, she would learn just how dependent she was on her lightsabres. The subsequent enactment of Order 66 would result in her being both defenceless and hunted.
It was somewhere during this time that Senator Bail Organa recruited Lady Tano to run his spy networks under the callsign ‘Fulcrum’. It is during these years that the philosophy behind Kage-Nare would start taking shape.
Lady Tano’s only recourse against the empire was to remain undetected, unknown, and then to strike unexpectedly and hard . . . to leave no trace behind. It meant learning to see things most people missed, to misdirect, to be unobtrusive even at 6 feet of lean, dangerous predator.
It’s from this period of time, where she couldn’t afford to be identified as a Jedi that another key feature of Kage-Nare comes. It’s not built around the lightsabre. Kage-Nare is about weaponizing your environment. Anything can be turned into a weapon in the hand of a Kage-Nare master. It’s considered a light sabre form because almost no one but a trained Jedi can keep up with the sheer demands of the combat style and it takes a lightsabre to truly use the full extent of the style.
The period after the fall of the Empire in 4 ABY would see Lady Tano seeking to track down Admiral Thrawn and by extension, the lost Jedi Ezra Bridger. Coincidentally, this is the where we begin to see Lady Tano apply stealth and the principles of leverage through understanding toward lightsabre combat. After all she can now wield lightsabres openly again.
The final component of Kage-Nare would come due to a chance encounter between Lady Tano and a starweird. Taken by surprise by the starweird’s sudden and unavoidable attacks, she would almost die. How do you really defend against a creature that can phase through walls but still hit you?
No one has an exact reading of when exactly this encounter occurred with estimates ranging from her stranding in Peridia to well into the war against the Lost Tribe.
It is the opinion of this chronicler that the starweird encounter took place sometime during or shortly before Lady Tano’s unintentional stranding in Peridia. It is known that the Mark IV architect droid, Professor Huyang was present with her during her time on Peridia. This would have afforded her both time and external insight needed to methodically create, define, and perfect a completely new combat philosophy and style.
Fighting against a Kage-Nare user is off-putting to say the least. For starters, Kage-Nare users dampen their presence on multiple levels — they make no noise, they have no smell, they have no force presence, they give off no heat, they use the force to affect a mood or their choice in their enemies all while putting out a strong notice-me-not suggestion or outright cloaking themselves.
You can look head-on at a Kage-Nare master and not see them. It is dangerously easy to lose track of them, and once you do, you’ll find death faster than you find them.
If you were to go up against a Kage-Nare user, often, they won’t draw their weapons. They’re as likely to snap your neck as they are to choke you out. If they do need a weapon, they’re good at improvising — pans, doors, knives, staffs, guns — everything can be weaponized and used in combination. But the difficulties of facing a Kage-Nare fighter don’t end there. Using the environment is core tenet of Kage-Nare — the form isn’t meant to adapt to any situation; it is meant to weaponize everything it can.
And if a Kage-Nare user finally pulls up their lightsaber? This is where the twisted tempo comes in. Twisted tempo is a fundamental technique unique to Kage-Nare where the fight has no rhythm. Fighters continually switch up the pacing of the fight while also adapting to the opponent by applying one of three ‘modes’ — using defense to reposition, overwhelming offense to defend or vice versa, and using high-speed, high-precision, high-strength attacks to guarantee a confirmed strike (i.e., force them to choose between a small and a big injury). This switching isn’t a clear, distinct change. Masters can often change modes mid-swing.
Unlike the other forms that have a distinct weakness, Kage-Nare doesn’t have one, after all it’s more of a combat philosophy and process than a style. No two practitioners of Kage-Nare have the same moves.
Jedi Battle master Hezu-So put it best: Mastering Kage-Nare in a single lifetime is beyond all the most obsessive, but should you master it, you’re only real enemy is old age and death.