Curved-hilt lightsaber

The curved-hilt lightsaber was a type of melee weapon; elegant in design, its gracefully curved hilt enabled the wielder to utilize greater finesse when slashing and lunging at an opponent. Count Dooku, an accomplished duelist who favored the second form of lightsaber combat, wielded a red-bladed curved-hilt lightsaber. Asajj Ventress, a Force-sensitive assassin trained by Dooku in the ways of the dark side of the Force, wielded two lightsabers that featured a curve-shaped hilt similar to her master's weapon. When joined together, Ventress's lightsabers formed a double-bladed lightsaber.

Curved-hilt lightsabers were used by several Jedi Knights of the Galactic Republic since the time of the High Republic Era. Examples of Jedi with curved-hilt lightsabers included Cohmac Vitus' lightsaber and Torban Buck's lightsaber. The Jedi Obratuk Glii owned several lightsabers, one of which had a curved-hilt design.

When Dooku was a Jedi Initiate, Jedi Master Lene Kostana made up the story of a Dark Lord of the Sith named Darth Sakia to test him. Part of the story was that she wielded a curved-hilt lightsaber. Later, once Dooku himself was a Jedi Master, he replaced the lightsaber he had been using since his days as a young Padawan with a handcrafted curved-hilt lightsaber that emitted a blue blade. Dooku used this lightsaber on multiple assignments that he undertook during his time in the Jedi Order, including the mission to rescue Senator Dagonet's son and the to Raxus Secundus.

When his new allegiance to the Sith was discovered by Jedi Master Yaddle, Dooku attacked his former ally at the behest of the Sith Lord Darth Sidious. Rejecting Yaddle's entreaty of atonement, Dooku killed her with his own lightsaber and thereby became Sidious' new Sith apprentice, taking the name of Darth Tyranus in addition to his public title, the Count of Serenno.

Count Dooku's lightsaber blade was changed from blue to red after his conversion to the dark side. During the First Battle of Geonosis, Dooku engaged in a duel with Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi and Padawan Anakin Skywalker. He succeeded in wounding Kenobi and severing Skywalker's right arm, but was bested by his former master, Grand Master Yoda, and retreated from Geonosis.

Dooku dueled with Kenobi and Skywalker on several occasions during the Clone Wars, as well as his prospective apprentices Ventress and Savage Opress. In his final bout which took place during the Battle of Coruscant, Dooku was disarmed and beheaded by his nemesis Skywalker, who used his own lightsaber and the Count's weapon to carry out the execution.

Though initially trained as a Jedi Padawan, Asajj Ventress switched her green-bladed lightsaber for a pair of red-bladed curved-hilt lightsabers during her years as Darth Tyranus's apprentice. Both hilts could be joined together to form a unique double-bladed lightsaber. Throughout her time in service to the Sith cause, Ventress utilized her lightsabers in several capacities—as her master's emissary and assassin, as well as a military commander of the Separatist Droid Army. She fought a number of Jedi on several occasions with varying degrees of success, such as Kenobi, Skywalker, Luminara Unduli, and Ahsoka Tano.

Ventress retained her Sith lightsabers after Tyranus discarded her on the orders of his master, Darth Sidious, and continued to use them as a Nightsister before pursuing a career as a bounty hunter. She allowed Obi-Wan Kenobi to use one of her lightsabers during their fight against the Dathomirian brothers Maul and Savage Opress.

Both lightsabers were lost when the fallen Jedi Barriss Offee ambushed Ventress in the Coruscant Underworld and took possession of her weapons, consequently forcing the bounty hunter to acquire a replacement. The Mirialan used the weapons when she ambushed Ahsoka Tano at an abandoned warehouse, leading the exhausted Tano, on the run in an attempt to clear her name after being framed by Offee for her crimes, to assume her attacker was Ventress. Offee was later forced to use Ventress's lightsabers when Skywalker confronted her in the Jedi Temple, and thereby revealed herself as the culprit responsible for framing Tano.

Ahsoka Tano, once a Jedi Padawan who departed the Order late in the Clone Wars after being framed for treason by Barriss Offee, abandoned her first pair of lightsabers on a moon in the aftermath of Order 66 to fake her death to the nascent Galactic Empire. Over a year later, she finally built herself a pair of white-bladed lightsabers after becoming involved in an uprising against the Empire on the remote moon Raada. Although the weapons' hilts were originally rough due to being constructed in the middle of battle, when she finished them, they were curved with a rectangular profile. Like her original lightsabers, Tano's new blades consisted of a standard single-bladed lightsaber and a shoto.

Tano used the weapons throughout the Imperial Era, including when she encountered the members of the Spectres, a rebel crew that included Jedi Kanan Jarrus and his apprentice Ezra Bridger. She used her blades in at least one sparring match with Bridger. Over the course of her association with the Spectres and Phoenix Cell, Tano crossed blades with Imperial Inquisitors Seventh Sister and Fifth Brother on Takobo. Eventually, Tano accompanied Jarrus and Bridger on a mission to the dark world of Malachor, where they encountered the Inquisitors. Tano was eventually forced to duel her former master Darth Vader as Jarrus and Bridger escaped, after which she was presumed dead. However, Tano survived the ordeal when Bridger rescued her via the World Between Worlds, from his perspective several years later. Tano used her weapons to defend herself from Galactic Emperor Sheev Palpatine's Sith alchemy before they both escaped.

A curved-hilt lightsaber served as the weapon of Jedi Master Kirak Infil'a and Sith Lord Darth Vader in turn. It first belonged to Infil'a and was therefore a Jedi lightsaber that emitted a green blade. During the early days of the Emperor's reign, Vader sought to claim Infil'a's lightsaber, having lost the blue lightsaber that he wielded as Anakin Skywalker, in accordance with the ways of the Sith.After killing Infil'a on Al'doleem, Vader traveled to the planet Mustafar to change the blade's color to red by subjecting its kyber crystal to a dark-side process known as bleeding. His first attempt failed, resulting in a Force vision that showed Vader returning to the light as Anakin Skywalker, and using Infil'a's green-bladed lightsaber to kill Darth Sidious.

However, Vader rejected the vision and made a second attempt to bleed the crystal. The process succeeded and Vader returned to Coruscant where he presented his new curved-hilt Sith lightsaber to Sidious. Vader used the lightsaber when he fought the Grand Inquisitor and later when he hunted the Jedi Master and Chief Librarian of the Jedi Archives, Jocasta Nu. The hilt was subsequently destroyed during an attempt on Vader's life by a family of bounty hunters on Cabarria, during which the hilt was shattered by the combined strain of a tractor rifle and Vader's pulling it back with the Force. Salvaging the crystal, Vader soon crafted his own, new hilt for it.

During the hunt for the Spark Eternal, the Spark Eternal artificial intelligence took control of Doctor Chelli Lona Aphra's body, forcing the doctor to live out the Spark Eternal's "memories" as it piloted her body. Inside one memory, after helping Miril, the leader of the Ascendant cult, defeat the Darkseekers group of Sith, Aphra picked up a curved-hilt Sith lightsaber. In another memory, as part of a test of the Null Blade, Aphra cut the swords blade, but the saber was neutralized as the Null Blade had a cortosis alloy.

Curved-hilt lightsabers first appeared with Count Dooku's lightsaber in Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones. It was first formally identified in the short story "Dooku Captured."

The lightsaber of Oppo Rancisis was set to appear in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but the show was cancelled before the blade made an appearance. Designs for the lightsaber that were based on Count Dooku's lightsaber and included the addition of a hilt-guard were revealed by Dave Filoni and Pablo Hidalgo in their The Untold Clone Wars panel at Celebration Anaheim in 2015.

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