Bane's Heart (crystal)

For other uses, see Bane's Heart and Bane.

Bane's Heart was a unique carmine lightsaber crystal given to Darth Zannah by her Sith Master, Darth Bane, following the Seventh Battle of Ruusan. She used it in her double-bladed lightsaber, which she named after the crystal itself.

The lightsaber and crystal later came into the possession of a Dark Jedi murdered by General Grievous, Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, either on Dica or Necropolis. Grievous stored the weapon aboard his personal starfighter, which was later recovered by Imperial forces and used as part of the N-K Project. The Bane's Heart lightsaber was wielded by N-K Necrosis during the Galactic Civil War until he was killed by a group of spacers who took the crystal from his dead body.

When tuned to be used in a lightsaber, it caused that lightsaber to release an electrical discharge and made it difficult for anyone other than the rightful owner to use the lightsaber.

Behind the scenes

Bane's Heart appeared in the 2003 video game Star Wars Galaxies, a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game developed by Sony Online Entertainment and published by LucasArts,^[3] prior to its closure on December 15, 2011.^[4] It was an unique lightsaber crystal that gave a purple-red hue to the player's lightsaber, contrasting its stated color of "carmine."^[3]

Bane's Heart was part of a series of 19 unique lightsaber color crystals created in the context of the Publish 9's Jedi system revamp^[5] in June 2004.^[6] However, only one of those crystals — Sunrider's Destiny — was made available in the game.^[7] Bane's Heart and the other crystals were not introduced in the game at that time.^[8]^[9] Bane's Heart was finally added to the game with the release of the expansion pack Rage of the Wookiees, on May 5, 2005, as a reward for defeating N-K Necrosis.^[3] It was therefore the second unique lightsaber color crystal available to players.^[8]^[9] In addition, Bane's Heart was also made more widely obtainable with the release of the Hotfix 21.4 on October 20, 2011. Players had a small chance to loot the crystal from enemies defeated during raids.^[10]