Star of the Guardians is a series of four science fiction/space opera novels written by Margaret Weis without assistance from usual co-author Tracy Hickman.
Based originally on The Magnificent Seven, the team developed a much more varied membership just in time to star in their own novels: The Knights of the Black Earth, Robot Blues, and Hung Out.
These mind-seizers, as they are informally called, use their Blood Royal telepathy and nanobiotic machines to take control of their followers' minds.
Maigrey organizes a rescue mission, while Dion sojourns on the home planet of one of his staunchest supporters, Bear Olefsky, a trip that doubles as Nola's and Tusk's honeymoon.
Maigrey collects her supporters, including Brother Daniel, a member of Sagan's order, and Xris and his Mag Force 7 team.
At the abbey of the Order of Adamant, monks and lay people watch the ceremony with joy, including a new member, Brother Paenitens.
Xris is contacted by Dixter and asked to investigate an alarming development: something has stolen the space-rotation bomb—and literally walked through walls to do it.
Tusk, for his part, is having trouble with his interplanetary taxi service, and is approached—or rather hijacked—by recruiters for a new mercenary army called the Ghost Legion.
Maigrey, pacing the celestial halls of heaven, chafes with her inability to influence the mortal plane, and eventually breaks Divine Law to help move things along.
Archbishop Fideles (formerly Brother Daniel) discovers a troubling secret: that Amodius Starfire, Dion's uncle and former ruler of the galaxy, may have had an incestuous heir.
When DiLuna discovers Dion's affair, she sends assassins to kill Kamil, and Astarte hires Xris to help her protect her rival.
The two retreat to Ceres, where Astarte is high priestess and can guarantee Kamil diplomatic immunity, to work out some compromise over Dion.
They are attacked by members of the Ghost Legion (including the people who hijacked Tusk) and kidnapped from the temple, despite the best efforts of Xris, Raoul, the Little One, Brother Daniel and Kamil herself.
Tusk, in the meanwhile, receives the scare of his life when Sagan, disguised as "Lazarus Banquo," forces him to join the Ghost Legion.
Flaim's machinations drive a rift between Dion and Kamil, and his revelation of Astarte's pregnancy also bring the couple together on friendly terms for the first time.
He left the hospital 65% cyborg, walked out on his wife, and formed a mercenary team, "Xris's Commandos," during which time he came to the attention of a number of the galaxy's more prominent military officers—Warlord Derek Sagan, General (and later Lord of Admiralty) John Dixter, and the Lady Maigrey Morianna, who hired him for an invasion of Corasian space (a feat never before attempted due to its suicidal nature).
He is often regarded as dumber than a post, as there are several jibes in the series referring to injuries sustained to his rear end as possibly damaging his intelligence.
Formerly an employee of weapons magnate and fellow Adonian Snaga Ohme, he found himself drifting after his employer's demise and signed on to the Lady Maigrey's rescue mission.
The Little One - a diminutive and enigmatic figure, approximately the height of a small child, constantly swaddled in an oversize raincoat and battered fedora, from under which peer two bright eyes.
The Little One's only known armament is a blowgun with poisoned darts; its main talent is to keep Raoul focused and provide the team with telepathic reconnaissance.
He faked his own death and changed his gender, becoming Major Darlene Mohini of the Royal Navy, a signal-intelligence and electronic countermeasures officer on a distant star base.
Xris thought she had set him up and hunted her down, only to get the shock of his life; the two eventually reconciled their differences, especially after Mohini was instrumental in foiling a plot to assassinate His Royal Majesty Dion Starfire.
It is unknown whether Mohini was officially invited to join Mag Force 7, nor if she accepted, but she remained active in the group's endeavors for some time to come.
Earlier in the book, Tycho remarks that he doesn't much mind dying, as his life insurance payout would be massive and tax free to his family.