During the chaotic events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the Knights of Ren initially appeared as allies of the First Order. In addition to serving as personal bodyguards for Kylo Ren, these armed band of marauders also helped him in his quest for Rey Skywalker, the "last Jedi." In fact, the Knights of Ren are much more than this.
They have a long and fascinating history that touches on many areas of Star Wars lore. Since they originally appeared in the Unknown Regions at some point in the distant past, they have been the subject of several myths and legends, some of which have some truth to them.
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Characteristics of the Knights of Ren
The Knights of Ren were never really an organisation in the traditional sense; they were more like a band of outlaws. One might say they had their headquarters on board what was known as the Night Buzzard, which had undergone modifications to better fit their nefarious tastes in decor.
The Knights favoured a threatening appearance; therefore they wore battle-damaged armour and masked helmets, mostly in black. Each of the Knights had his or her own distinct flair, even if they all had a common appearance. To provide one example, each Knight was free to equip themselves with any weapons they chose, from clubs to blasters. Even their former commander, Ren, possessed a lightsaber that was meant to explode if another individual managed to get their hands on it. "
It is safe to say that the Knights of Ren were allied with the evil side of the Force. To govern their acts, they followed a ruthless code known as "the Ren," which was inspired by a pirate's amorality. Knighthood was reserved for individuals who could sense the Force and had a tendency towards the dark side. Despite this, the Knights were known for their untrained devotion to the Force—they were more interested in brawling than in learning the finer nuances of martial arts.
Leadership of the Knights of Ren
The Master of the Knights of Ren was the name given to the group's commander. A human with Force sensitivity, Ren was the first person to hold this title and have his name documented. His face and torso were covered in scars and burns from his years of warfare. Seeing Ben Solo's promise, Ren permitted him to join the Knights of Ren, a recommendation from Snoke.
Ultimately, Ben slew Ren on Mimban and renamed himself Kylo Ren in order to gain command of the Knights of Ren, which was his undoing. In fact, the Knights' rank-and-file members viewed Darth Sidious as their actual ruler. Ren did not know this.
What Happened to the Knights of Ren?
During the Battle of Exegol in Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker, Kylo Ren turned his back on the dark side of the Force and murdered the Knights of Ren.
History
Origins
There has long been rumour among those who live in the Unknown Territories of the existence of the Knights of Ren. It was believed that this gang of savages had crossed planets at breakneck speed and devoured everything in their path. A group of warriors emerged from the shadows in recent years to seize control of the moniker and the associated terror. Sidious Darth Vader
The Knights of Ren The name "Knights of Ren" comes from a mythical band of knights from antiquity. For centuries, the Knights of Ren ravaged the galaxy, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. By the time of the New Republic, their attacks had become legendary, particularly among the many Unknown Regions settlements where the Knights had become mythologized over time. During the Imperial Era, a band of masked assassins claiming to be the legendary Knights of Ren rose to prominence, and their reputation quickly became one of dread. The contemporary Knights of Ren, like their ancient counterparts, were marauders who gained their possessions by force, including a prison ship they seized during their attack on Osseriton. The Knights had been paid to attack Osseriton's prison world; they freed the inmates and took possession of one of the transports. Night Buzzard was the name given to the ship after it was repaired and renamed.
There were few groups of "dark side practitioners" throughout the Imperial Era other than the Sith. The Knights of Ren were one among those." However, while they were able to gain strength from the dark side, their ability to wield its power was severely restricted in compared to the Sith, partly owing to their lack of training and education. Despite this, according to "the Archivist," only Knights had the fortitude and pride to publicly confront the Sith.
Equipment
Armor
Look at that child, he's garbage. A real-life trash heap. You need to get him clothing. I don't know... It is with great honour that we introduce ourselves as the Knights of Ren. We have a good name in the community. Reen and Kuruk discuss the Jedi robes of Ben Solo.
While serving as a Knight of Ren, Kylo Ren donned black robes and padded armour in addition to his trademark mask. Attributing to their fearsome appearance were their tattered handcrafted armour and weaponry, and war helmets. They wore the wounds and instruments of war on their armour as a sign of their familiarity with bloodshed and conflict. From a distance, they looked to be a cohesive unit, but closer inspection showed that each Knight was unique, with personal preferences for fighting style and tactics. All of their equipment was made from scratch using a combination of originality and extensive modification after capture.
Ap'lek sported a water-shedding oiled cloak and a lightweight plastid armour beneath his tunic. Sharp teeth on his gauntlets and greaves helped him avoid and hold onto edged strikes. A smoke canister was also attached to his belt. Riftiaworm hide was used to make Cardo's flame-resistant coat. Weapons and ammo included three-braced plasteel armour on his legs, a chest strap to hold concussion grenades, plasma bolt shells on his lower chestplate, and a holster for the left leg's blaster pistol Susurra-weave fabric was used to make Kuruk's clothing sound-proof. His plasma bolt shells were carried on collar rings attached to soft-soled boots. The thick weave tabard and hood that adorned Trudgen's garments were particularly striking. Armor plates from his dead opponents were used to adorn it. A crushing backhand was made possible by Ushar's ironweave armour. Vicrul's fur was fashioned from the hide of an unidentified, enormous lizard.
Ren was decked up in black robes and armour, much like the rest of the Knights. An old hood and linked cloak were left behind from his early training, while the robes hid his padded armour below. To avoid electrostatic interference, the new cape was fashioned of Static Dampening Fabric, which was hoodless. Ren wore a flame-resistant cloak after capturing power of the First Order.
Helmets
Here, relax. The mask's kind of intense—that's the point—but you and me, maybe we're gonna be friends. Snoke thinks so, anyway.Ren, to Ben Solo
The Knights of Ren were known for their use of masks and combat helms to intimidate their enemies. The Knights wore menacing masks that mirrored the helmet of Kylo Ren. The Knights used theatricality to heighten their terrifying image and produce greater feelings of terror in their opponents by concealing their features with masks and combat helms. There were many who felt that anonymity equaled intimidation, because victims would project the most harrowing images onto those of the Knights who struck them down. Even before Kylo, the Knights wore masks to hide their identities. They'd done so since Ren, their first commander. Knights would remove their helmets in instances where intimidating others was not necessary, as Ren did for Solo and Kylo did for Rey when he was Kylo. Despite his dislike of the Knights' masks, General Armitage Hux theorised that they were used to disguise their terrible and disfigured appearances.
The Knights' helmets were all one-of-a-kind. In terms of the Knight helms, Cardo's was the most basic; it was made from a blast furnace plate and had neck protection. He had breathing tubes and anti-ox filters in his helmet, which indicated that he or his mask was not of human origin. Using pastillion ore and synthetic leather ear flaps, Vicrul's helmet was case hardened.
A piece of a death trooper's helmet was put into the patchwork helmet of Trudgen, the Knight who amassed trophies from his victims' corpse. As well as a vocoder grid and blinder flannels to direct his vision forward, Kuruk's helmet also had a breath screen and recesses carved out for peripheral line-of-sight. The mask Ap'lek wore was a patchwork of shattered armour that he had cobbled together. In order to evoke the disturbing visage of a trickster, the faceplate was sculpted.
Ren, like his Knights, wore a helmet that obscured his appearance. The faceplate of the helmet was ornamented with red patterns..
Helmet of Kylo Ren.jpg Kylo Ren's combat helmet is inspired by the Knights of Ren's war armour. Kylo Ren's helmet was inspired by the Knights of Ren's fighting armour; it serves a dual goal of hiding his identity and accentuating his fearsome persona. Servomotors were integrated into the helmet, controlling movable arms that detached the face mask from the helmet, allowing Kylo to remove his helmet and show his uncontained hatred. As a sign of power, the silver inlay visor transmitted Kylo's voice via the helmet's embedded vocabulator. Ben Solo—son of Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa—remained Ben Solo behind the mask's theatrics. Kylo shattered the tattered battle helmet until it was reduced to bits in an outburst of wrath.
Kylo regained his shattered helmet once he was freed from Snoke's control, and delivered the shards to Albrekh so that it might be reassembled. The eccentric metalsmith reassembled the pieces using Sith alchemy. The reforged helmet served as a metaphor for Ren's struggle to reclaim his own sense of self. Alchemical lattice of Sarrassian iron added by Albrekh made the helmet more durable than it had been previously. Sarrassian iron shards were now held together by a bright crimson webwork of the metal.
Weapons
I've just pushed the kill switch. You, the child, the explorer, your old buddy, and all this fancy junk are all blown away by this blade when it leaves my palm. Ren, to Luke Skywalker
A vibrocleaver and a battle club were the weapons of choice for the Knights Trudgen and Ushar. Weapons that could be used in both close-quarters and long-range warfare were provided to each Knight. Weighted clubs and axes were preferred by Ushar and Ap'lek, as well as clumsy technological improvements, for their primitive melee weapons. When wielded by strong men, these weapons were capable of dealing devastating strikes. With a simple switch or dial twist, they were able to take on extra traits that may make the difference in combat. Using a kinetite-charged end with concussion vector vanes, Ushar gripped the blunt, studded end of his war club tightly. The battle club has a concussion absorption head as well as a studded pummelled. In a quick shockwave, it might discharge a concussion charge built up in a kinetite generator. A vibromachete and three thermal detonators were also Ushar's weapons of choice. An archaic executioner vibro-ax of Mandalorian provenance, Ap'lek's long axe was used by the Mandalorian executioner. An ultrasonic generator wire was added to the weapon, turning it into a conduit for ultrasonic energy and, as a result, increasing the weapon's cutting capability through armour and bone. In order to safeguard the handle, vibro-insulator plates were included on this model as well. Beskar was used for the blade, and gore channels were carved into the material's surface.
When it came to their blade weapons, Vicrul and Trudgen both used ultrasonic vibro-tech settings that boosted their lethality to the point of deadly lacerations with even a glancing blow. Prik or beskar filament was added to the steel, making the blades very strong and durable. Even while a lightsaber could pierce these weapons, the wielder would need to exert more force to do it.
He was one of just a few of Knights that liked long-range combat thanks to his arm cannon. This sawtooth-crooked blade of Vicrul's was made of vibro-scythe blade, annealed, and had an ultrasonic echo channel along the blade's edge. On the opposite end, an insulated handle attached the blade to the ultrasonic generating chamber. Weapons like Trudgen's vibrocleaver became synonymous with him. Ultrasonic technology, which was added to an old-fashioned vibrocleaver, made the blade edge vibrate fast, increasing its cutting power. Trudgen was also armed with a second weapon.
With their modified and customised blaster rifles, Kuruk and Cardo stood out from the other Knights in close quarters battles. As a result, Kuruk's blaster rifle and Cardo's arm cannon were one-offs. A plasma bolt launcher and a pump-action plasma bolt launcher were both included in the blaster rifle's arsenal of three different firing modes. Laser power was increased with an external tibanna bulb that was attached to the pump action bar and vented stock for reduced recoil. The rapid-fire barrel included an external cooling sheath.
As a result of Cardo's massive arm cannon, he was essentially a one-man turret. The rapid-fire repeating laser gun sat atop the weapon pod. In addition to shooting plasma bolts, the same channel might also be used to feed plasma into a receiver for later use. A separate trigger primed the bolts, allowing them to be released with the next draw of the trigger. A flammable gel projector was used in the lower barrel. Air-cooled barrel; piezoelectric flame projectors surrounding the recessed gel spinneret; forward handgrip and trigger selector on the front. To protect the plasma charge, the weapon's bolts featured casing and rifling grooves.
A crimson lightsaber was in the hands of the fighter known as "Ren." The removal of the safety circuitry on the blaster pistols Vicrul and Cardo carried in addition to their primary weapons allowed them to use their ammo more swiftly and dangerously. The guns' attachments featured a backflash suppressor casing, power level indication LEDs, and a stun setting switch.
To distinguish himself from his predecessors, Ren used an orange-colored lightsaber while leading the Knights of Ren. As long as Ren held onto his weapon, it would detonate and kill everyone who tried to take it from him. According to Ren, the following explosion was powerful enough to obliterate everything in its path.
In spite of the lightsaber's old appearance and contemporary components—a power cell brace, power field conductors and an exposed diatium core—Kylo Ren's weapon still had an ancient feel about it, despite its modern components. It was obvious from its shabby appearance that it was made by a less-than-skilled hand. Even still, Kylo would have chosen the lightsaber's unpredictable, volatile character to that of the Force. As a result of its partially revealed internal workings, it was straightforward to modify and maintain.
The design of Kylo Ren's crossguard lightsaber harkened back to the Great Scourge of Malachor, which had ravaged the galaxy thousands of years before. In the same way that all Jedi lightsabers are fueled by the kyber crystal, Kylo's sabre was unstable since the crystal was destroyed. Due to the weapon's overly strained bifurcated crystal, which was housed inside the shaft and could only hold so much energy, additional plasma vents were added to create crossguard blades, which were then connected to the centre blade by quillons. The kyber crystal's surplus power was expelled by the blades of the quillons. An ancient crossguard lightsaber, based on the Great Scourge of Malachor, was created as a consequence of the experimentation. It appeared as though the kyber crystal fractured on the primary plasma blade and quillons in the field matrix.
As soon as the primary blade snapped into existence, the crossguard blades appeared, helping to balance Kylo's lightsaber's power. With each swipe, its unstable serrated plasma blade left a trail of ashes. The quillons were formed by utilising an array of focusing crystal activators to divide the plasma stream into perpendicular blade energy channels. The emitter shrouds on the crossguard protected the user's hand from the smaller blades. The crystal cradle had a kyber crystal above it; the vent iris opened once the primary blade was ignited.
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