Karshi Saan

Karshi Saan was an  who served the Republic prior to the. Renouncing his Jedi commission, he and a group of others left the Order to seek peace in the, but fell to the dark side and lost his mind. He became an interrogator, torturer, and killer before he was finally put out of his misery.

The mind reader
Karshi Saan was born in 2,035 BBY on the Iktotchi homeworld of, a moon of the gas giant. He lived among his people for a few years before he was discovered by a Jedi Knight visiting the planet on an unrelated mission. Taken before the, he was allowed to join the Order. As an Initiate he showed a marked preference for the use of the Force over lightsaber combat, though he was not unskilled. He was twelve years old before he was finally accepted as to a Jedi Master.

Karshi focused much of his effort into improving his telepathy, and he became adept at the use of s. His native, although diminished away from Iktotch, also improved his battle reflexes and sometimes made him appear a more gifted swordsman than he was; the combination of telepathy and precognition gave him a split-second advantage over opponents without sufficient mental defenses. He eventually opted to specialize in, which enabled him to incorporate the Force into his swordplay.

Knighted in his mid-twenties, Karshi opted to become a, although he performed some investigative duties, using his telepathy to help crime victims recall details and identify perpetrators. He served primarily as a, although he experimented with using his precognitive powers for true prophecy. His favorite pastime was meditation, as he liked to be alone with the Force, away from the thoughts of others. Opting not to take a Padawan learner, he devoted himself to his studies. He was considered as a Jedi advisor to a member of the, but no Senator was entirely comfortable having a mind reader as an aide.

The search for peace
In roughly 2,000 BBY, the former Jedi Master Phanius emerged as the Sith Lord and, with the aid of numerous fallen Jedi Knights, launched the  against the Republic. The Jedi prepared to hunt down and defeat the Sith, and Karshi Saan was left wearied by the prospect. He had not developed any great love for combat in his years as a Jedi Knight, and he sensed that there would be no peace or end to the violence in his lifetime.

While he was still trying to reconcile himself to the inevitability of war, Saan heard of a group of Jedi planning to leave the Order and the endless wars with the Sith behind. Led by Council member Ador Hentral and former Council member Merita Ot'kyn, the band had failed to persuade the Jedi to seek a peaceful solution or leave war to the Republic's military, and so were departing the Order altogether. Saan approached them and asked to accompany them, knowing the war would consume the galaxy and there would be no peace on any world he might flee to in known space.

The Jedi Tirj procured a  from the, intending to take the group into the , guided only by the Force. Saan assisted the Jedi Masters in foreseeing the best route to the Unknown Regions which would safely navigate the hyperspace disturbance at galactic west.

A wasted mind
Frozen in stasis aboard the sleeper ship, the Jedi journeyed out from Coruscant. However, they had traveled only a few years when the sleeper ship's stasis system malfunctioned. Though their bodies were completely paralyzed, their minds woke up. As all were Jedi Knights, they could already communicate telepathically with one another, but Karshi could do so with even greater ease. He could sense the fear that was a mirror of his own.

Jedi discipline broke down quickly, as the horror of waking imprisonment and potentially thousands of years in that same condition eroded the sanity of the Jedi. Karshi was among the first to fall; his telepathy allowed him intimate access into the breaking minds of his fellows, and he experienced his own fear and that of eleven others. Fear turned to rage and the dark side, and seemingly perpetual incarceration in his own mind and the warped minds of the others drove him insane.

Torture by chagrin
It was twenty-one long centuries before the Dark Jedi craft emerged at Kizav in 148 ABY. Awakened from stasis at last, all twelve descended on the native Skavik like a storm, laying waste to thousands of lives. The fear in their minds was intoxicating to Karshi Saan; having been trapped with his own for so long, it was an orgasmic release to cause it in others. However, Ador Hentral eventually reined them in, fantasizing of turning the Skavik into an army to destroy entire worlds. Karshi Saan and Sacco Vyrak sought out the Skav queen and "persuaded" her to ally her race with them. Backed by a billions-strong army, the Dark Jedi commandeered disused ships from a nearby system and unleashed themselves on the Golden Empire.

Karshi Saan was initially at the front lines, as were all of the Dark Jedi. He helped in the decimation of Klee`shlyoo`hshee, and was one of many of his comrades who turned to rape and torture on the battlefield. He especially enjoyed over physical torment, watching soldiers and civilians writhing in agony even when he wasn't touching them. He also experimented with mind control, though his fractured sanity rarely allowed him the focus to do it for long.

Assembly line
The death of Vyrak during the Defense of Daispin changed things. Vyrak's body was borne back to the Dark Jedi by the Skavik survivors, and Desha Marad hatched a scheme to clone him. The resulting Vyrak Legions had all of Vyrak's strength in the Force and Anzati strength, but were grown so quickly that they suffered. Marad's mastery of the Force allowed him to impart some of Vyrak's knowledge and training, sharpening the clones' Force instincts into actual skill, but he used Karshi Saan's telepathy to make them obedient as well, enslaving their minds to the commands of their makers.

Trapped on Kizav, away from civilians or enemy soldiers he could hurt with impunity, Karshi Saan began to suffer more flashbacks and haunting memories of the long darkness. His suffering was imparted into subsequent generations of clones, and he sometimes accentuated rather than minimizing clone madness. Sent to Awpierh with Charg, ostensibly to get some front-line action out of his system but mostly to get him out of Desha Marad's way, he arrived in time to assist in the capture of the Centurions Nairasho and Malyri and Kylaea Porén.

Silence
"I got the answers! I learned the things, not Charg! I know the things!  He'll tell Ador and I'll get to go home because I did it right!"

- Karshi Saan, moments before his death

Sensing a chance to win back the support and affection of his siblings, Saan assisted Charg in torturing the three Centurions for several days. Charg inflicted physical suffering on them while Saan infected their thoughts with horrifying images, trying to break their minds. After a few days, the Athan twins escaped, and Charg and Karshi redoubled their efforts on Nairasho. Though she refused to talk and used the Force to suppress her physical pain, eventually Nairasho's mind broke, and Saan was able to read her thoughts and gather information about the Empire and the Order of Keltrayu.

Charg returned to Kizav with the intelligence, leaving Karshi Saan with orders to find the twins. Despondent, Saan grew paranoid and touchy, keeping an increasingly tight mental grip on the Skavik and Anzati left with him. He tried to get more information out of Nairasho, but she finally succumbed to her injuries and died. Shortly after, the twins broke back into the facility, now reinforced by Luna Raquelsei and Elrabin Ralvik. Panicking, Karshi sent all his Anzati and Skavik to intercept them, but Luna and Elrabin got through to him. Confronted by the pair, Karshi had a rare moment of lucidity before a duel erupted.

He briefly held his own against them, flinging horrifying images of the torture of their siblings into their minds to compensate for the fact that his swordsmanship was unequal to theirs. After a few exchanges, however, his plan backfired. Summoning up memories of the ages of darkness and madness in stasis, he became consumed by the horrors in his own past. As memory tore at his concentration, his skills failed him, and Elrabin cut off his head.

Legacy
"May your soul be crucified forever in Chaos!"

- Kylaea Porén to the dead body of Karshi Saan

The four Centurions transported Karshi Saan's body back to the Sith Star, both for evidence and to prevent it from being cloned as Vyrak's had been. After Rayne Turgachia and Te`net Organi contracted The Sickness, unleashed by Hentral and Marad, Rin Sakaros had Elrabin use his  on Saan's severed head, reading back into the Dark Jedi's mind to determine the location of Kizav.

Malyri and Kylaea were united in their absolute loathing for Karshi Saan, even in death. Elrabin Ralvik and Luna Raquelsei, who had seen Saan's memories for themselves as he implanted them in their minds, felt more pity for him, though neither hesitated to kill him.

Powers and abilities
Karshi Saan's foremost power was always. A natural telepath as an Iktotchi, his skills were magnified hundreds of times over with his study of the Force. He could read the minds of nearly anyone around him, even other Jedi, and could detect faint shifts in moods that revealed reactions of guilt, fear, and stress. As a Dark Jedi, he was also capable of, but usually lacked the focus needed for prolonged mind control. He was able to help Desha Marad "program" the minds of the Vyrak Legions while they were being grown.

Though sufficiently talented to be commissioned as a Jedi Knight, Saan was one of the worst swordsmen of the twelve who became the Reawakened. His natural telepathy and precognition gave him a slight edge in battle, but he lasted only a few exchanges against the much more skilled Elrabin Ralvik and Luna Raquelsei.

Appearance and personality
Karshi Saan stood 1.75 meters (5'9") tall and had a fairly trim build, though like all Iktotchi his hands were noticeably larger than hands.  His skin was pink and his eyes yellow-gray.  His Iktotchi horns curved down to frame his jawline.  He preferred loose robes as both a Jedi Knight and a Dark Jedi.  In the Order, he carried a lightsaber with a green blade, though he changed this for a red blade when he came to Kizav.

As a Jedi, Karshi Saan was introspective and solitary, preferring peaceful meditation. He loved the on Coruscant, despite the presence of other minds, as he felt it was an intimate connection to the power and clarity of the Force. He had enough interest in politics to consider serving as aide to a Republic Senator, though nothing ever came of the idea.

When he fell to the dark side, Karshi Saan became violent, paranoid, and short-tempered. He could read the emotions of his fellow Dark Jedi and knew he was being shunted to the side as his work with the Vyrak Legions became shoddier. Terrified of being abandoned, he kept his Skavik and Anzati as close as possible, but occasionally lashed out at them, too. At the end, he sank so deeply into his seemingly limitless memories of misery that death was a mercy to him.