Ardré Kartik

"You had better hope she doesn't turn, because she is the new kind of Jedi, the early personification of what the war is turning the Order into, for better or for worse."

- Oné Madierre

Ardré Kartik was a royal handmaiden to Padmé Amidala, and an supposedly failed Jedi Initiate who later returned to the Order and was knighted during the Clone Wars. She was the padawan of Oné Madierre

Jedi Initiate(53 BBY to 42 BBY
Ardré was born to a poor farming family on Naboo, and as a result was only identified as Force-sensitive when she was half a year old. Her parents debated on what to do for nearly another half a year before deciding to give her to the Order. She was removed to the Temple shortly before her first birthday.

From early on, Ardré was identified as a problem child, considered to be too aggressive, though for many years the Temple Masters hoped to train this out of her. Their attempts to guide her, however, were met with resistance, and though later Ardré genuinely wanted to be better, she developed a belief that she was basically unfit to be a Jedi. Nonetheless, when she was ten, she constructed a lightsaber and began training in From V lightsaber combat. She was also assigned to tutor fellow misfit Oné Madierre. Since Oné was a model student and already selected as a padawan by Master Yaddle, it was hoped that her pupil would teach Ardré.

This failed, and when she turned eleven, Ardré began looking into the possibility of returning to her family, and petitioned the government of the Republic to return her to their legal custody. Concluding that she was likely to be dismissed from the Temple in two years anyway, the Council consented after impressing on Ardré the importance of not abusing her powers. Ardré left her lightsaber with Oné for the younger girl to practice with.

Naboo Militia(42 BBY to 33 BBY
Ardré enjoyed the freedom that returning to Naboo brought to her, but by the time she came of age she was discontented, missing the sense of being part of something bigger than herself. In 39 BBY she traveled to Theed and joined the militia. There she became renowned for her fighting skills, though her other powers had deteriorated from lack of use. She also met and befriended Losté Maiterrie and Ené Warsilo. She also met Coté Lanlin, but knew her less well due to their difference in age.

Several times she attempted to get a position in the palace, and much to her surprise, in 33 BBY she was selected as handmaiden to then-Princess Amidala contingent on her being elected Queen. However, due to her lack of resemblance to the Princess, who would go on to win the election, she was one of the lowest ranked.

Handmaiden(32 BBY to 24 BBY)
Ardré's ability to defeat even Captain Panaka in hand-to-hand impressed everybody, and she and Coté, who was also a handmaiden, took notice of each other and the rumors that swirled around both of supernatural abilities, but Ardré spent most of her time in training with her friends Losté and Ené. She admitted to having been off Naboo, but refused to tell them anything else about her past. She felt a new contentment, however, in the handmaiden's selfless service.

Battle of Naboo
When during the Battle of Naboo temporary leader Saché Aeyinson connected her speed and precision with that of the Jedi, she demanded answers, but Ardré insisted that Saché already knew all she had to. On further questioning by Coté, however, Ardré admitted that she had been part of the Jedi Order. A friendship started to grow between the two girls.

When Yané was badly wounded in a firefight, Saché took Ardré with her into the Theed to get medical supplies. They were attacked by battle droids on their way out and Ardré convinced Saché to flee and supposedly leave her to die. However, she then took down the droids and got out of Theed with floor plans to the Trade Federation's droid factory in the museum. Though needing afterwards to recover from wounds, she then helped her fellow handmaidens blow up the museum and fought in Amidala's attack on the palace. She was part of the party that found Darth Maul's body with a holocron on it, and gave it to Obi-Wan Kenobi when she returned to him his lightsaber.

Bond with Coté
She and Coté both attended Qui-Gon Jinn's funeral, and she asked after Oné and heard she was doing well. Later that night, she and and Coté swore a Concordance of Fealty, in which she agreed to help Coté develop some control over her particular abilities, in return for which Coté would try to help her develop some of her own powers. The two of them continued to work on this for the rest of their time as handmaidens. Eventually they managed to form a Force thought link between themselves, leaving them able to communicate with each other telepathically. Ardré noted that this was an ability beyond Jedi, because strong emotional attachment was required for the link to form.

Swamp Hermit(23 BBY to 22 BBY)
After Amidala left the throne, Ardré and Coté removed to the swamplands and lived together there, exploring their abilities further. After a year, however, Coté left, giving no explanation for another year. Then she would explain that she had sensed their upcoming parting, and left early so it would be easier. She had not told Ardré because she had felt Ardré needed to make her upcoming choice out of her own free will.

When the Clone Wars began, Ardré had come out of the swamp herself to aid in the settling of the refugees who had come to live on Naboo. While living in their camps she was visited by a now knighted Oné Madierre, who presented her with her old lightsaber and invited her back into the Order as her padawan, explaining that with the start of the war and the thinning of the Order's ranks she was needed. Ardré immediately agreed, realizing that she again was unhappy without something greater than herself to live for.

Padawan(22 BBY to 19 BBY)
The first year was the hardest for Ardré. Not only did she had to relearn most of her childhood lessons, and better than she had learned them then, and then condense many years of apprenticeship onto the end of that, but she also had to get used to having her former pupil as a Master. She spent most of the war's first year in the Temple, receiving recorded instructions from Oné, but they clashed over their different styles of using the Force.

Mission to Holt
Eight months into the war Ardré was judged ready for her first mission, which, like many of the Jedi's missions in the early war, was an undercover mission. She was sent to pose as an attendant to Queen Hansmena of the Tapos nation on Holt. Her objective was to convince Holt to declare loyalty to the Republic instead of the Confederacy. She found posing as an attendant very easy after her time as a handmaiden on Naboo, but was nearly exposed when the murder of Mycan leader Boinit Ten threw the the debate into chaos. Her identity was confirmed by one Mycan child whom she was forced to protect as they fled through the Tapos city of Siret, after which he promised to keep her secret. Thanks to her machinations, Hansmena declared her support for the Republic, leading eventually to Holt doing the same.

In the Field
Teaming up with her Master on the battle lines, they discovered their fighting styles worked well together, and after a tense couple of days Oné was firmly established as the Master. Ardré, however, proved more adept at working with their main commander, Lim, and the other clone troopers. Oné noted once Ardré had a mentality closer to theirs than other Jedi's, perhaps too much so.

During all this time, Ardré kept in sporadic contact with Coté through their thought link. This even saved her life once, when Coté was able to supply her with a vital piece of knowledge to get herself out of one situation alive.

Conflict with Coté
Almost exactly year before the end of the Clone Wars, fortune put Oné and Ardré in the vicinity of Naboo just prior to the double wedding of Losté and Ené to Pene Dulks and Melio Vetamoid respectively, allowing them to attend, much to both brides' delight. There Oné was introduced to and Ardré reunited with Coté, whome she had not physically met with for three years. Coté, seeing herself replaced in Ardré life by Oné, grew secretly jealous. They also met Oné's mother, who revealed to them that Coté history was tied to Oné's, and that her father was Count Dooku. Ardré, knowing that Coté was unaware of this last fact, decided that it was better that she remain so.

The following month Commander Lim mysteriously went rogue on Veck III and his battalion with him, and Oné and Ardré were sent to investigate. The night before they landed on the planet, Ardré had a dream where her Master led her, eleven again, to where Darth Maul had died and told her to go in, advising her she would not need her lightsaber, and she should in fact be ready to give it over to she whom she feared. They discovered the clones to be under mind control and seemingly under orders to try to kill Oné at all costs. Seeing things that forced her to believe Coté was responsible, she asked that she be allowed to search for the source of the mind control alone, though she did not tell her Master her suspicions.

Finding Coté, she fought the urge to kill her needlessly, and to tell her the truth about who her father was, which might have broken her. Then remembering her dream, she handed her lightsaber over to Coté and challenged her old friend to kill her, knowing if Coté had truly gone over to the dark side, she would do so. Ardré was in fact more than willing to die if Coté had fallen, and Coté knew this. Unable to kill her, Coté surrendered, and released the clones.

Oné, on finding out what had happened, submitting Coté to the Temple for therapy, and insisted that the two women never have any contact with each other again. They submitted to this without protest, though the thought link remained in place, as it was unbreakable. Ardré also admitted that she would never let go of Coté entirely in her heart, and asked that she not be ordered to. Oné answered that there were some orders every Master knew better than to give.

Defending Naboo Again
At the end of 20 BBY, Naboo was attacked by Separatists forces, and Ardré and Oné were sent to the planet's defense alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. Oné and Ardré were assigned to protect Queen Apailana and Senator Amidala. Intending to negotiate on her own the the Separatist leaders, Apailana, disguised as one of her handmaidens, attempted to sneak off from them with her decoy's aid, but Ardré, as a former handmaiden herself, saw through the disguises and tailed her, and prevented her from being fatally shot.

When Amidala's active handmaiden Dormé Costil was killed defending her mistress, Ardré sat on the panel of handmaidens to choose her replacement. Before it convened she was approached by Anakin Skywalker, who pointed out Ellé Okrest as borderline Force-sensitive, and suggested Ardré support her. Ardré agreed, and won over her fellow handmaidens.

After the battle, Oné told Ardré she had believed since Veck III that Ardré was ready for the trials, and now formally petitioned the Council to let her take them. The Council rejected the petition, but suggested they might consider the question again in only a few months.

Knighting
When Coruscant was attacked near the end of the war, Oné and Ardré fought in the planet's defense, and Oné was wounded. Ardré was then pulled away from her Master's bedside by Mster Windu, who informed her that she was to take the Trials immediately. She passed them, not to her own satisfaction, but to the Council's, and was knighted.

She was then sent to the Outer Rim as one of many Jedi trying to find General Grievous. She landed on a planet in the middle of a local crisis, where she was joined by her recovered former Master, as well as Lim and his battalion. The two Jedi solved the problem before them together, working together as equals for the first time in their life, and when they stood opposite each other as sisters, Oné confessed to Ardré she had originally sought her out because she'd had a vision of this moment when she was six, though she had never imagined all that had happened to make it come to pass.

Death
Hearing of Grievous' death, Ardré and Oné prepared to return to the Temple, but there were complications during their takeoff which burned out all their communication equipment. Expecting no complications during the journey itself, however, they continued on, until Ardré suddenly got a message through the thought link from a hysterical Coté, claiming she'd gained foreknowledge of Ardré's death within a matter of hours. She also related a meeting she'd had with four Council members on their way to the Senate district on some vital but possibly fatal errand. From the details she gave, Oné and Ardré concluded that there might be a Sith in the government.

When they saw the Jedi Temple on fire, they decided that Coté's foreknowledge justified a change of course, and landed on a docking platform nearby while Coté flew to meet them. What they did not realize was that the likelihood of their being killed at the Temple was the only reason Palpatine had not bothered sending Order 66 to their troops, and that to be on the safe side he was tracking their ship. Just as they landed and Coté arrived at the platform Commander Lim announced he had received a Clone-Eyes Only transmission from the Supreme Chancellor's Office.

Ardré hurried to greet Coté, and heard her claim that she could now sense Jedi dying everywhere. Then, due to understanding of the clones, she realized the likely contents of the transmission, and turned to yell a warning to her Master, only to see her fall dead in front of her, shot in the back. It that vital moment, Ardré's training failed her and anger took her over, causing her to charge the troops and receive a fatal wound in her abdomen.

Coté, also enraged, started using her mental powers to kill the clones. Coming back to her senses, Ardré used all her strength to plead with Coté to stop and just send them away. Coté did so, then wept that she had not stopped them from shooting. Ardré bequeathed her lightsaber to Coté in accordance with the Concordance of Fealty and then died in her friend's arms.