Warning! Spoilers ahead for Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #6

The High Republic era is fast approaching for Star Wars fans, revealing an all-new time period set 200 years before the events of the Skywalker Saga. However, Marvel has already begun to tease the new era in their various comics, especially their ongoing Doctor Aphra series from Alyssa Wong. The series has revealed new artifacts and elements of history from the High Republic, but the latest issue may have revealed its biggest tease yet, showing fans that the villains from the High Republic known as the Nihil might have been even more dangerous than the Empire.

In the first arc of Wong's Doctor Aphra, the infamous archaeologist formed a crew to go after the legendary Rings of Vaale, said to grant their wielder immortality, fortune, and power. These valuable and rare artifacts were reported to have originated from the High Republic era, and Aphra's crew even manages to locate the ring in the abandoned Lost City of Vaale, uncovering symbols and iconography from the High Republic as well. However, the rich and powerful Ronen Tagge sought the rings for himself, leading to a confrontation between his forces and Aphra's crew. While the conclusion of this arc ended with Aphra besting Ronen, it did put her in the crosshairs of Ronen's Aunt Domina, the matriarch of the powerful Tagge family.

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Domina Tagge hires bounty hunters to bring Aphra to her ship in Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #from Wong with art by Ray-Anthony Height and Robert Gill. However, it's remarkably not to seek revenge on Aphra for defeating her nephew. Instead, she actually hires Aphra to infiltrate a rival tech company that claims to have discovered an ancient path engine, a device designed by the villains of the High Republic.

From what's been teased so far, the High Republic will have been enjoying a period of peace and prosperity until the emergence of High Republic villains known as the Nihil. The Nihil will somehow be responsible for the Great Disaster, an event that involves the wreckage of ships coming out of lightspeed with highly destructive and deadly force, obliterating worlds in their wake. According to Domina is this issue, the Nihil path engine holds the key to a long-lost method of an even faster form of lightspeed, which in the grand scheme would not work in Lady Domina's favor. Faster lightspeed travel would completely change not just the galactic economy, but the current Galactic Civil War as well, neither of which would bode well for the Tagge Family.

If the path engine provides a faster form of lightspeed, it's possible that the Nihil found a way to travel through certain obstacles that normal lightspeed has to circumvent such as mass shadows. The path engine could theoretically generate its own paths in straighter lines, rather than use the established lightspeed travel and trade routes such as the Hydian Way. Not only that but if it can also be used as a weapon to desolate worlds like the Great Disaster will, it's more than likely that the power of the Nihil was greater than any the Empire has ever wielded. What happened to the Nihil, and how did their technology become lost to time? Hopefully, Doctor Aphra will be able to find out more about this High Republic technology as the Star Wars series from Marvel continues.

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