| “ | You call yourselves men of war? Observe, and see what an Archon of the old Hutt empire can do! | „ |
| ~ Szajin to the Vice-Commandants of the Reuglators before engaging the players. |
Szajin the Hutt, commonly referred to as The Archon by the Imperials, was a Hutt leader who held the title of Archon during the Hutt Cartel's occupation of Makeb and the secondary antagonist of Star Wars: The Old Republic - Rise of the Hutt Cartel (specifically the main antagonist of the Imperial storyline).
Biography[]
While the Republic forces battled against Toborro and began evacuating the planet, the Empire contended with the Archon in a shadow war as they sought to claim the power of isotope-5 for themselves, in order to stave off the Empire's impending collapse during its Galactic War with the Republic. An Imperial strike team stormed Stronghold One in an effort to seize the Hutts' stockpile of isotope-5, only to discover that Szajin had used all but one sample to create an army of war droids. The strike team managed to escape the fortress with their lives, burying the droids in lava.
Szajin later became suspicious when the Imperials invaded the abandoned mining mesa where isotope-5 was first discovered and dispatched an Regulators Squad 79 to capture or kill any Imperial they find. When the squad failed to return, Szajin presumed that the Imperials were desperately attempting to mine what isotope-5 they could before Makeb's imminent destruction and dispatched Phobium Squad to round up Makebian engineers skilled in the use of the deep-core laser drills. This prompted the Imperials to rescue the engineers and recruit them to operate the mining lasers to stabilize the core before it ripped the planet apart.
However, Szajin eventually learned the Empire's true plan when he captured Katha Niar, a former Ministry of Logistics bureaucrat running the support team for the strike force, and tortured her. Laying siege to the Archon's palace, using its own defense turrets to bring down its shields, the Imperial strike force entered the Archon's throne room and confronted him while he was in conference with Regulator commanders. The Archon mounted a massive battlemech, fueled by isotope-5 and armed with missiles and a powerful laser beam, to engage his opponents. The Imperial forces managed to defeat the machine, leaving the Archon at their mercy. Despite this, Szajin boasted that the secret would soon be out that the Empire had prevented Makeb's destruction, and that once the atmospheric interference had cleared, he would inform the Cartel fleet.
The outcome of the battle with the Archon is determined by the player's conversation choices. Destroying the mercenary bases is the dark side option, and automatically ends with the player slaying the Archon. The light side choices are to negotiate with the mercenary forces, allowing them to leave Makeb if they told no one of the Empire's presence; once that is done, all that remains is the Archon's fate. The light side option is to have the mercenaries take the Archon into custody for imprisonment on Dromund Kaas; the dark side option is to kill him.
Trivia[]
- The Archon is never seen or mentioned in the Republic storyline, instead Vice-Commandant Grevin fills the role of the secondary antagonist in their storyline.
- Ironically, despite being someone who prefers to work behind the scenes, unlike his Republic counterpart, Szajin engages the player directly rather than using minions to fight.
