Eventually the Blight found and enslaved a benign race of plants called the Doda, which have the unusual ability to teleport themselves for the sake of flowering in new places. With the Doda enslaved, the Blight's reach was again increased, until they arrived on the edge of United Planets space, in the Lycidas system. They Blighted a moon in that system, which robbed it of almost all potential energy: very little combustible organic material of any kind remained on it, very few of its inhabitants survived at all, and those that did existed in a state of constant fright and panic. The Blight's transport, upon departing that moon, accidentally brushed a Legion ship, marooning almost a dozen Legionnaires who barely escaped with their lived before the moon itself disintegrated.

President Brande has promised to devote his full efforts toward rehabilitating the devastated planets. However, the destruction of the stargate network raises important questions about the safety and stability of stargates and thereby the United Planets' structure.

Xan City, Xanthu -   Xanthu, which was not stricken by the Blight as much other United Planets worlds, is a planet coping with different problems, as it has yet to fully recover from problems caused by a dark mass earlier this year.

The world, which exists on the fringes of U. P. space, had not yet received the necessary relief in the form of food to replace crops destroyed by the darkness, energy crystals to replace those drained to combat the darkness and drugs and medical personnel to help treat those stricked with darkness-anxiety. Thus, the cutoff of transport caused by the Blight has hit Xanthu worse than most other worlds.

In addition, Xanthu's Amazers have yet to return from Earth, where they were dispatched to fight the Blight.

Fortunately, Xanthu has one great asset in combatting these problems. Ironically, that happens to be the one who caused the darkness to begin with.

The Shade, an immortal supernatural being who was apparently born in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century and who acted as a super-villain throughout most of the twentieth, has spent much time trying to repair the damage caused by his darkness cloud and by the Blight. The darkness cloud was, he said, the result of an infection planted in his body by an enemy of his. In the twenty-first century, the malignant growth of darkness was detected, at which time, the Starman of that era had him exile himself to outer space until he could control it well enough to bring those who could help him.

Those turned out to be two of his twentieth-century friends, Jack Knight and Mikaal Tomas, who both operated under the name Starman in their times. The Shade says that he has mastered the use of his darkness for time travel, and he snatched the two of them from in the middle of a quest in space to help him in the thirtieth century. The two Starmen, along with the Xanthusian Legionnaire Star Boy and the darkness-controlling Legionnaire Umbra cured the Shade and returned Xanthu to normalcy.

Since that incident, the Starmen have returned to their home era, and the Shade, while he has expressed an interest in traveling, has remained on Xanthu to make amends. While he was unable to combat the Blight directly, he has been instrumental in maintaining morale on Xanthu during that bleak period and in restoring services in its aftermath.  

Takron-Galtos Spared Blight

Takron-Galtos -   The Takron-Galtos warden's office has confirmed that operations of the prison world were not affected by the Blight epidemic.

The reason for this is still unclear, since Takron-Galtos is linked to the stargate network and lies on the usual stargate path to Earth. It is possible that being an artificial world, the Blight was unable to detect any reasonable amounts of energy on the planet. Another possible reason pertains to the presence of high-energy creatures, such as Validus and its new member, the Emerald Eye, infusing the world with so much life-energy that it could not be drained.