Darth Krayt

Darth Krayt, born A'Sharad Hett, was a Human male who served as a Jedi Knight in the waning days of the Galactic Republic. The son of legendary Jedi Knight Sharad Hett, he eventually became the Padawan of Jedi Masters Ki-Adi-Mundi, and later, An'ya Kuro. When he was only a teen, his father, Sharad Hett was murdered by the Jedi assassin Aurra Sing, who was later defeated in a duel by a young A'Sharad Hett.

During the Clone Wars he served the Republic as a General, and established himself as a charismatic leader who often led his troops from the front. He eventually became friends with the young Anakin Skywalker and helped Anakin come to terms with the destruction which had been wrought by the galaxy-wide war. A'Sharad took part in key conflicts during the war such as the Battle of Boz Pity and Mission to Saleucami. He managed to survive the Clone Wars, and was one of the few Jedi known to have escaped the Great Jedi Purge in 19 BBY.

A'Sharad Hett eventually made his way back to his homeworld of Tatooine where he vowed to wage a private war against the new Galactic Empire. However, after a confrontation with Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was exiled from Tatooine and later discovered that it was Anakin Skywalker who became the Sith Lord Darth Vader, who had murdered the Jedi Order. A'Sharad blamed himself for the destruction of the Jedi Order and became a bounty hunter. During one of his missions, he found himself on the Sith world of Korriban, where he trained as a Sith by a Dark Lord named XoXaan. A'Sharad eventually fell to the dark side of the Force after capture and torture by the Yuuzhan Vong and soon proclaimed himself Dread Lord and Dark Lord of the Sith, taking the name "Darth Krayt". As Krayt, he became the founder and leader of One Sith.

As Krayt, he rebuilt the Sith Order and kept its existence hidden from the Jedi by cloaking their presence on Korriban. To survive, Krayt spent many years in stasis before reemerging to form an alliance with Moff Nyna Calixte and to spark the Sith-Imperial War that led to the destruction of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances. At the climax of the war, Krayt deposed Emperor Roan Fel and brought about the murder of the current Jedi Order.

Darth Krayt ruled the galaxy with an iron fist for seven years before the alliance between Roan Fel and Galactic Alliance admiral Gar Stazi threatened his rule. Furthermore, Krayt discovered the existence and survival of a Skywalker: Cade. Krayt feared that with these deteriorating conditions and his bad health would lead to his demise before his dream was finished, and sent about the hunt for Cade Skywalker. However, during a skirmish on Had Abbadon, Krayt was stabbed and sent hurtling off a cliff. The Sith Lord's powers proved strong, however, when they saved his life. Darth Krayt was then approached by Darth Wyyrlok III (his most trusted advisor) who murdered Krayt with Force lightning, believing the Dread Lord would lead to the Sith Order's destruction.

As a Jedi
Before the Clone Wars, A'Sharad Hett was trained as a Jedi by his fater, also an Ex-Jedi Knight named Sharad Hett. During that time, Sharad was killed by a bounty hunter named Aurra Sing. After his father's death, A'Sharad eventually became Ki-Adi-Mundi's Padawan. A'Sharad and his fellow Jedi then began to search for Aurra. A'Sharad fought and defeated her in a lightsaber duel. Instead of killing Sing, he turned her over to the Jedi. Meanwhile, he completed his Jedi training, and became a Jedi Knight.

The Clone Wars and surviving the Jedi purge
During the Clone Wars, A'Sharad served as a General for the Galactic Republic, and flew his Jedi starfighter in air support during the Battle of Geonosis. He would also fight during many of the ground campaigns of the war, leading clone troopers on worlds such as Metalorn and Aargonar. After Obi-Wan Kenobi's presumed death during the Second Battle of Jabiim, Hett befriended the young Jedi Anakin Skywalker who was in desperate need of guidance as well as companionship.

At the end of the Clone Wars, Palpatine issued Order 66 to A'Sharad's clone troopers. However, unlike some Jedi, Hett made it out alive and headed to Tatooine, his home planet. He then became a war leader of several Tusken clans. As they reached the boundaries of the small moisture farm of Owen Lars, they were halted. To A'Sharad's surprise, he saw Obi-Wan Kenobi, who also survived Order 66 and lived in exile as well. Kenobi had noticed Hett's recent activities, and believed Hett was frighteningly close to the dark side, becoming the very thing he was claiming to fight. He begged Hett to stop his crusade there and then (not mentioning to Hett exactly why he had chosen to defend this small farm), but Hett refused to listen; the settlers and farmers had killed countless Tuskens, and blood called out for blood. With little choice, both Jedi ignited their lightsabers and fought a brutal duel on the desert flat, with the entire Tusken army watching them.

The duel ended with the loss of Hett's right arm, and the extra humiliation of having his mask removed. To the Tuskens, to expose any part of the flesh is forbidden, and with one hand, Hett could not hope to wield the traditional Tusken weapon, the gaderffi also known as the gaffi stick. The clans turned on him and he departed without a word spoken. Hett was now an outcast, and asked Kenobi to finish him off. But Kenobi would not kill his old comrade. Instead, he made Hett swear on the honor of his late father that he would leave Tatooine and never return, hoping that one day, Hett would see the error of his ways and again take up the Jedi way. But it would not happen; in fact, decades after the fact, Hett learned that the very moisture farm Kenobi had been defending concealed the son of Anakin Skywalker, who was, as he would also learn, the man who had destroyed the Jedi Order. When he realized that Skywalker and Darth Vader were one, Hett bitterly regretted protecting Skywalker's bloody secret on Aargonar; to have turned him in then, or simply killed him, Hett believed, would have spared the galaxy untold suffering.

Following his departure from Tatooine, Hett became a bounty hunter, masking his Jedi skills. While pursuing a bounty named Resk to the planet Korriban, a storm forced them down, and Hett continued his pursuit of Resk. Hett killed him after Resk threatened to turn him over to the authorities when Hett revealed himself to have been a Jedi. He shortly afterward heard a voice summon him.

Hett followed the voice that he felt rather than heard, a darkness calling to his darkness. He found and shattered a sealed door and discovered a glowing Sith holocron. The specter of the ancient Sith Lord XoXaan, one of the first of the Sith Lords, stated that she had been waiting for someone like Hett to find her. She offered him the teachings of the Sith, and Hett agreed to learn.

XoXaan opened Hett's eyes to the dark side, and Hett deluded himself into believing that he was only pretending, that he was really just learning new skills with which to avenge himself on Vader and Palpatine. But when he resurfaced from the tombs, he found that more time had passed than he had thought; the Battle of Endor had already taken place, and the Emperor and Vader had already been defeated by Luke Skywalker. Disillusioned yet again, Hett left Korriban behind and made for the Unknown Regions, determined to lose himself.

The rise of Darth Krayt
In the Unknown Regions, Hett was captured by a Yuuzhan Vong advance scout ship. Imprisoned in the Embrace of Pain, Hett was met by Vergere. He was tortured endlessly by the Embrace and was subjected to the experiments of the Shapers; his cybernetic arm was replaced by an organic one and his left eye was replaced by the eye of a Yuuzhan Vong creature. During his imprisonment, Vergere taught him how to use his agony to open himself to the dark side, and that's when Krayt received his vision of his new Sith Order. He had conversations with Vergere (mirroring those with Jacen Solo in the future) and he came to believe that the galaxy was fractured and weak, and that a single will was needed to make it whole and strong again. Shortly after Vergere left him to join with the main invasion force, Hett escaped and destroyed the scout ship, and returned to Korriban[14].

There, Hett took the name Darth Krayt, after the fearsome krayt dragon of his homeworld,[15] and reestablished the cult under his leadership, pledging to reunify the galaxy according to the will of the Sith. Unlike the previous incarnation, however, Krayt abolished the Rule of Two, Darth Bane's ancient diktat commanding that there could be only two Sith at any one time—a Master and an apprentice. Instead, there would be the Rule of One—that one being the Sith Order itself, under which there would be many minions.

After the Yuuzhan Vong war, Krayt sought to recruit Lumiya to his Order, but she instead chose to side with Vergere and her "creation", Darth Caedus. When Caedus went about with the Second Galactic Civil War, the Jedi were distracted away from Krayt's order, which grew in strength, hidden under Korriban's miasma of dark side energy.

For more than a hundred years, Krayt grew and strengthened, along with his Sith, on Korriban, surreptitiously planning to bring its vision of peace and order to the galaxy. Krayt's body could not have survived the Vong implants, but he endured by placing himself in extensive periods of stasis, his mind only open to his closest disciples like the first Darth Wyyrlok. Krayt was living well beyond his standard lifespan and his body began to fail him, his condition kept at bay by healing trances. He estimated that the Vong implants would consume him within a decade or two, and his later interest in Cade Skywalker, motivated by a sense that the young Jedi apprentice in exile had once used the Force to revive his Master from the edge of death, was tied into this fact.

The Sith-Imperial War
At last, in the period of 127–130 ABY, the Sith made their presence known openly under Krayt's leadership, and the result of his machinations was the Sith-Imperial War. Krayt's own holocron contained entries relating how he caused the fall of the Galactic Alliance and the restoration of the Galactic Empire as the dominant galactic power:

Krayt harnessed that hatred to sabotage a Jedi project that was established for entirely altruistic reasons. The original intent of the Ossus Project was to use Yuuzhan Vong terraforming techniques to restore a barren section of the once-devastated Jedi fortress world of Ossus. When the test proved successful, the response was tremendous.

Out of a host of applicants, one hundred worlds were selected for the Vong terraforming process. Yuuzhan Vong Shapers, overseen by Jedi escorts, produced incredible results. But the Sith had already tainted the process. Krayt's agent Darth Maladi was an expert in Vong bio-forms, and she coupled this knowledge with her understanding of the dark side to mutate the Vong's efforts. On every world on which the Vong had carried out their work, the vegetation withered, and bony growths—like those once seen on those the Vong had taken as slaves during their invasion—began forming on the skin of the inhabitants.

The Jedi immediately suspected sabotage, but could never prove it. It did not matter; the lingering resentment the galaxy felt towards the Vong, even decades after their defeat and exile, did Krayt's work for him, and soon the Vong were accused of trying to restart their genocidal crusade against the galaxy by other means.

The results were everything he could have hoped for. The Jedi, devoted to the truth above all, defended the Vong and encouraged the Galactic Alliance to support them. The Empire reacted accordingly; members of the Council of Moffs demanded retribution (quite possibly instructed to do so by Krayt himself) and, invoking the Treaty of Anaxes, declared war on the Alliance. Emperor Roan Fel went along, albeit reluctantly, feeling it was the best course for the Empire in a dangerous galaxy, but never entirely supported it, even keeping his Imperial Knights out of the fighting.

In addition to war with the Empire, the Alliance found itself facing dissension from within its own ranks. Worlds that had suffered the most under the Vong now aimed their resentment at the Alliance; many of them refused to support the Alliance and actively sided with the Empire, while others just stood by and watched under the banner of neutrality. So divided, the Alliance was easy to conquer.

In three years, the Galactic Alliance was forced into surrender and the Empire absorbed all its former holdings, even reclaiming Coruscant as the Imperial throneworld. It was a reversal of the galactic order that no one could have foreseen, or believed was possible. But despite the grandeur of this victory, it was but a stepping stone for Krayt. Quite possibly he felt that it would be easier to establish his definition of order over the galaxy under an Empire than under a democratic government, even if that Empire was no longer the absolute tyranny his predecessor Darth Sidious had originally intended.

Becoming the new Emperor of the galaxy
Now that the Empire was triumphant, it was time to remove the last obstacle to the Sith: their ancient enemies, the Jedi. With the fall of Coruscant, the Empire's ruler, Emperor Roan Fel, had called on the Jedi to surrender and submit to the Empire. But the Jedi were now aware of the Sith's involvement in the war and refused to join them. They withdrew from Coruscant, yielding their Temple to their enemies, and holed themselves in their praxeum on Ossus. Krayt dispatched his Hand, Darth Nihl, on a devastating attack against the praxeum. But what came to be called the Massacre at Ossus was not the absolute victory he hoped for. Nihl managed to make several significant kills, especially one of the most prominent members of the Jedi Council, Kol Skywalker, scion of the very bloodline that had proven to be both the greatest boon and, later, the greatest impediment to Sith dominance. But the death of even a good number of Jedi did not make for victory. The Jedi were sent to flight, scattered, but they were not yet defeated. But the Jedi had still been brought low enough to allow him to take the next step; now that the Empire was triumphant, it was time to claim its throne as his own.

He launched a daring palace revolution, marching with his cohorts straight into the audience chamber of Emperor Roan Fel himself, killing the man who sat on the throne, and seating himself in his place. Noting the confusion and outrage from the members of the Moff Council who were present, he laid out the facts of life for them:

Faced with little choice, the Moff Council swore loyalty to him. For the first time in more than a hundred years, a Sith Lord held the galactic seat of power. At once he set about imposing order on a galaxy that sorely needed it, but this too was an incomplete victory. The "Emperor" he had killed had been anything but. It had to be a double; the real Fel was a fully trained Imperial Knight and would surely have defended himself, rather than just stand there and let himself be slain. It was imperative that the real Fel be found, before he recruited allies among the Moffs, the military, or those Jedi who had survived.

And there was a further concern that he kept to himself and his lieutenant, Wyyrlok. Krayt knew all too well that his health was failing him; he was more than a hundred and seventy years old, and he was ruling on borrowed time. But he had felt a murmur in the Force during the Ossus massacre; someone, a Jedi, had somehow used the Force to heal someone else, bring them back to life from the brink of death. If his reign was to endure, if he was to establish his vision of galactic order, he had to find this Jedi with the power to bring beings back to life, and bend his power to serve the dark side.

Seven years
With the passage of seven years, Emperor Krayt's grip on the throne was still uncertain. Roan Fel remained at large, and finding him was of paramount importance. He sent one of his newest and most devoted hands, the vicious Darth Talon, on a mission to lure Fel out into the open by capturing his daughter, Princess Marasiah Fel. But Fel refused to take the bait; he had plans of his own. In fact, though Krayt did not know it yet, Fel had succeeded in reclaiming the historic fortress world of Bastion, making it a staging area for the Imperial forces he had spent the last seven years moving into position. Little by little, the ground was being laid for a reckoning between Emperors, between the man who claimed to have a birthright to the title and the man who had taken it from him.

It did not help that Krayt was distracted by his own condition. In an attempt to find out how he could survive being consumed by his Vong implants, Krayt traveled to Korriban in an attempt to learn from past Sith Lords how to avoid this fate. Krayt activated the holocrons of Darth Bane, Darth Andeddu, and Darth Nihilus, and asked how he could overcome the limitations of his armor, or at least keep it at bay.

The ancient Sith were of no help at all: Bane lambasted Krayt for not adhering to the Rule of Two, Nihilus merely gave a small statement in his peculiar dialect (which neither Bane nor Andeddu deigned to translate), and Andeddu caused Krayt's armor to consume him, transforming him into a creature very much like his namesake. Laughing, the Sith avatars taunted him with what they said was his destiny. The three ancient Sith Lords, declaring Krayt to be nothing but an impostor and his order a mockery of the Sith, taunted and laughed as Krayt's fear nearly overcame him. But Krayt refused to accept it.

In this outburst he was able to focus his anger to the point that he was able to reverse the effects of Andeddu's wizardry. He was determined that if he could get no help from the ancient Sith, he would find other teachings, another way. Again he was directed on a path that was likely to lead to Cade Skywalker, the only being in the galaxy able to bring the dead to life.

Discovering and capturing a Skywalker
When Darth Talon returned from her unsuccessful mission to capture Marasiah Fel on Vendaxa, she expected to be executed by Krayt for her failure. Her master, however, forgave her when she informed him that one of the foes she faced there was a Skywalker. Musing that it was perhaps fate that had allowed the Skywalker lineage to continue, Krayt ordered Talon to find this Skywalker and bring him to Coruscant. Krayt hoped that this Skywalker's abilities would prove useful in his quest to prolong his life.

In the meanwhile, Krayt sent his Sith minions Darth Maleval, and Darth Kruhl to destroy the 908th Stormtrooper Division and eliminate Emperor Fel, respectively. Maleval was shot down by Anson Trask, and Kruhl was shot and killed by Emperor Fel on Bastion. Krayt also sent the Quarren Darth Azard to oversee the Outer Rim Third Fleet, which had been tasked with eliminating Admiral Gar Stazi and the Galactic Alliance Core Fleet.

While meditating in the Temple of the Sith, Krayt sensed Cade Skywalker heading in his direction to rescue the Jedi Hosk Trey'lis. Krayt tasked his Hands, Darth Nihl and Darth Talon with capturing him, which they did.

Darth Krayt later came to oversee Cade's interrogation at the hands of Darth Maladi, and was astonished to see Cade's body had purged itself of the deadly substances Maladi had injected into his body. In order to witness his power, Krayt ordered Maladi to infect the recently captured Jariah Syn and Deliah Blue with deadly Yuuzhan Vong Yorik-Kul coral seeds. Cade saved his friends and made a deal with Krayt: remain with the Sith in exchange for his friends' freedom.

Krayt then took Cade to his chambers alongside Darth Talon and Darth Wyyrlok, leaving both Lady Maladi and Lord Nihl outside. There, Krayt gave food to Cade and revealed he had once been a Jedi, A'Sharad Hett. Skywalker was far from impressed, even after Krayt explained his origins, but when Skywalker was provoked to anger by Darth Talon, and nearly killed her, it was clear to Krayt that Skywalker was exactly what he had hoped for. Krayt urged Skywalker to use his anger properly, focus it, let the Sith teachings help him to reach his full potential. At last, Skywalker accepted what Krayt believed to be his destiny, and agreed to learn the ways of the Sith. Krayt commanded him to heal Talon, for she would be his teacher. During Skywalker's training, Talon informed Krayt that he was only pretending to be like them but Krayt was confident that Skywalker would come to embrace the Sith way. He later placed Cade in the Embrace of Pain perhaps to ensure his conversion while telling him more of his own fall.

Not long after, Cade escaped from the Embrace of Pain and then attempted to escape the temple itself, but was quickly apprehended. Cade was brought before Darth Krayt who, in front of his two "Hands", ordered Skywalker to execute the captured Jedi Hosk Trey'lis. Skywalker refused, and so Krayt executed him personally, unintentionally invoking Cade's rage. Cade broke the transparisteel casing around his father's lightsaber and used the weapon to impale Darth Talon. Skywalker then engaged Darth Nihl in a duel, while Darth Krayt stood back and observed; throwing in insults every now and then in an attempt to bring Cade closer to the dark side. When Cade succeeded in cutting off Nihl's right arm, Krayt commanded him to kill the Sith Lord. Skywalker refused and began a duel with the Dark Lord of the Sith. Krayt was almost at the edge of defeating Skywalker when Skywalker's mother, Morrigan Corde, shot him in the back. With Cade successfully rescued, Krayt commanded his Sith servants to find him by any means necessary. He swore that he would break Cade, have him use his healing power, and then kill him. As the Sith began to recover, Krayt is angered, desiring to end Nihl's life for his failure. But Wyyrlok suggested there was another way he could serve him; Krayt relented, ordering Maladi to replace Nihl's arm with a Vong one, but revokes his position as a Hand, calling Stryfe in his place. He also ordered Talon in a bacta tank. Soon after, Krayt got into stasis as Wyyrlok searched for Andeddu's true tomb on Prakith, finding a number of texts that could help the Dark Lord.

Genocide on Dac
After Admiral Gar Stazi stole the new Imperious-class Star Destroyer Imperious during the battle against the Outer Rim Third Fleet, Emperor Krayt personally came to Dac to confront Gial Gahan, former Triumvir and supporter of the Galactic Alliance Remnant. The capture of the Star Destroyer infuriated Krayt, as did the disastrous failure of his underlings. Therefore, Krayt, before Holonet droid cams, murdered Gial Gahan and the other Mon Calamari present. Krayt issued the extermination of ten percent of the planet's Mon Calamari population and internment of the rest in work camps.

He ordered his Sith Lords to execute the entire Mon Calamari Council, including those Quarren opposing his edict thus showing the galaxy the cost of betraying the Empire. With so much fear on the planet, through the dark side it strengthened Krayt. But this action triggered a catalyst that resulted in a resistance movement and an alliance between Stazi and Fel.

Death
As the genocide on Mon Calamari continued and the hunt for Cade Skywalker commenced, one of Krayt's minions, a Devaronian Sith known as Darth Reave, encountered Skywalker and his companions on the Imperial world of Had Abaddon. During the skirmish, Reave was attacked by a female Jedi, Skywalker, and a group of Imperial Knights and Jedi. The female Jedi used ancient Sith magic and transformed Reave's stormtroopers into vile mutants. Realizing that he was outnumbered, Reave fled and returned to Coruscant, to report on both the Jedi woman and her monsters, as well as on Cade Skywalker's presence on Had Abaddon.

Before he could finish his report, however, Reave himself transformed into one of the same mutants he had recently encountered, only to be quickly stricken down by Darth Stryfe. Krayt was unfamiliar with the creature, and was informed by Lady Maladi that it was a rakghoul; a form of sithspawn that had been extinct in the galaxy for thousands of years.

Krayt and his advisors were then interrupted by a transmission from one of his officials on Had Abaddon, who had a message for the Dark Lord only. Karness Muur was contacting Krayt under the guise of the Jedi woman that Reave had spoken of, and presented Krayt with none other than Cade Skywalker. When Krayt feigned a lack of interest in the Human, Muur coaxed the Dark Lord's desire for Skywalker out of him by blasting him with torrents of Force lightning, and Krayt immediately dropped the pseudo-lack of interest. Muur then issued an invitation to Krayt—one that he was to answer alone, or both he and Skywalker would die. Krayt accepted the invitation, albeit with three of his Sith Lords accompanying him, and set out for Had Abaddon. As they traveled to the Deep Core world, Darth Wyyrlok told Lord Krayt of Karness Muur and his legendary amulet, which had the spirit of Muur trapped within. Wyyrlok further surmised that Muur would not divulge any secrets, and rather sought to control Krayt through his talisman. However, Krayt was in greater desperation to find a cure for himself, as his life was nearing its end. He and the foremost members of his Order traveled to Had Abbadon with intentions of capturing Skywalker. On the surface, Muur offered an alliance and began to modify Krayt's body. Suddenly, everything was revealed to be a trap, as Cade's allies were waiting in secret. Muur, however, truly took control of Celeste and planned to take Krayt's body for his own.

During the fight, Krayt was stabbed in the right chest by Azlyn Rae, electrocuted and Force-pushed off of the cliff by Morne/Muur, and seemingly fell to his doom. At the bottom of the cliff, Darth Wyyrlok, having landed his shuttle nearby, approached the Emperor's body, declaring that he would be taken to the tomb of the Sith on Korriban. To his surprise, Krayt woke, having cushioned his fall with the Force. He asked Wyyrlok to take him to a bacta tank in order to regain his strength, but the Chagrian Sith Lord electrocuted his master in response, killing him. He then placed Krayt's corpse in a stasis chamber within the Sith Temple of Korriban, hiding the truth from the other Sith while planning on inducting all beings the galaxy into the ranks of the One Sith, as Krayt had always intended.