Combat stick

A combat stick was a type of handheld melee weapon. Soft-coat sticks were a type of combat stick and, while they maintained the same weight and balance as real combat sticks, were mainly used for training and sparring purposes.^[1] Between 39 BBY and 37 BBY,^[3] the Chiss cadets Mitth'raw'nuruodo, core name "Thrawn," and Irizi'ar'alani, core name "Ziara," sparred with soft-coat sticks at a dojo on the Chiss Ascendancy planet of Naporar.^[1]

In 2 BBY,^[4] the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader and Thrawn, who had since become a Grand Admiral of the Galactic Empire, visited a cantina in Black Spire Outpost on the planet Batuu. While in the cantina, several Darshi warriors passed^[2] tan-colored^[5] combat sticks among themselves before they used them to attack the pair. The Sith Lord and the Chiss quickly defeated the Darshi, killing and neutralizing them.^[2]

Behind the scenes

Combat sticks first appeared in the 2018 novel Thrawn: Alliances, the second installment in Timothy Zahn's Star Wars: Thrawn series.^[2] The sticks were first pictured in the first issue of the 2024 comic miniseries Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances adapting the book's events. The issue was written by Zahn and Jody Houser, illustrated by Pat Olliffe and Andrea Di Vito, and published by Marvel Comics^[5] on January 24, 2024.^[6] The series' first issue,^[5] as well as its second issue—written by Zahn and Houser, illustrated by Olliffe and Di Vito, and published by Marvel^[7] on February 28, 2024^[8]—depict Thrawn using a combat stick against the Darshi,^[5][7] while the novel establishes Thrawn used a combat baton.^[2] This article follows the original novel's events.

Appearances

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• Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising (and audiobook) (In flashback(s))
• Thrawn: Alliances (and audiobook) (First appearance)
• Thrawn: Alliances 1 (First pictured)
• Thrawn: Alliances 2

Notes and references