Ador Hentral

Ador Hentral was a distinguished  of the. Dedicated to nonviolence except when absolutely no other choice was available and a vocal opponent of war, Hentral was awarded a seat on the for his wisdom and commitment to the light side of the Force. Upon the dawn of the, however, he was unable to sway his fellows away from violence and drew to himself a group of Jedi equally dissatisfied with the current leanings of the Order. The Jedi left for the, but accident and tragedy drew them into madness and the dark side of the Force. When they arrived, Hentral became the de facto leader of the group and inaugurated the Nightmare War.

Early service
Hentral was born on in 2,051 BBY. Recruited into the Jedi Order in infancy, he trained at the. His instructors considered him intelligent, sociable, and hardworking, and he became apprenticed to a Jedi Knight when he was only ten years old. During his long period as a Padwan, Hentral continued to develop his powers, and his desire to avoid violence led him to master s and other forms of telepathy while still an apprentice. His master, a, insisted on regular lightsaber practice, and despite his desire to avoid conflict Hentral became an able swordsman.

In 2,028 BBY, Hentral passed the and was knighted. He took a Padawan within a year, and the two served together for eleven years. Hentral often arbitrated disputes between member systems of the Republic, and his action-oriented Padawan sometimes chafed under what he felt was solely diplomatic work. The two debated the matter for some time, but Hentral gradually came around and volunteered for a few more proactive peacekeeping missions.

Voara
Hentral's Padawan passed the Trials in 2,017 BBY, and Hentral himself was proclaimed a Jedi Master for his success. However, he wished to employ the lessons his former Padawan had taught him, and immediately selected a second Padawan from the Temple's Initiates, a girl named Voara Culee. Despite her species' natural blindness, she had already mastered, and Hentral sensed the Force was powerfully with her.

Learning from his previous teaching experience, Ador Hentral took Voara on numerous and varied assignments, volunteering to the Jedi Council when he felt his Padawan was not experiencing sufficient variety. A voracious learner, Culee sought her master's knowledge on many subjects, and while he was careful not to teach her too much too quickly, they enjoyed many long philosophical discussions about the place of the Jedi in the galaxy. Voara, like Hentral's first Padawan, found herself called to active peacekeeping, but rather than try to discourage her, Hentral did his best to prepare her for the life of a Jedi Guardian, sparring with her regularly and helping her hone her.

Both Jedi learned from one another and became like father and daughter. While Hentral had been trying only to help his Padawan and round out her skills, his repeated successes on all variety of Jedi missions had earned the attention of the High Council. In 2,005 BBY, he was invited to take a long-term seat on that body, much to his own surprise. Voara trained for one additional year, and Hentral made sure to devote time to her studies in addition to his own Council duties. When Voara was knighted in 2,004 BBY, she entered field service, but she and her former master remained close friends.

Advocate for peace
As a member of the Jedi Council, Hentral became good friends with Merita Ot'kyn, a Jedi Master and former Republic ambassador. The two had many discussions about the conflict between the Jedi commitment to preserving peace and the need for active peacekeeping in a violent galaxy. Hentral's broader experience led him to have some sympathy for the need for violence as a last resort, but he agreed that war was an altogether different matter.

Ot'kyn left the High Council to retake his seat on the, but he and Hentral spoke openly about the growth of the dark side and their shared portents of an approaching time of turmoil. On the Council itself, Hentral became the loudest voice for peace and negotiation, sometimes even taking the field himself in support of other Knights and Masters. Voara, active in peacekeeping for the Republic, kept her friend informed about realities of life for the Jedi in the field. In 2,002 BBY, Hentral was among the Masters who judged Jedi Knight Desha Marad's second Trials and agreed to promote the to the rank of Jedi Master.

The New Sith Wars
In 2,000 BBY, the  emerged and drew fifty Jedi Knights to his cause, setting in motion the New Sith Wars. Most members of the Jedi Council were intent on bringing down Ruin and his followers, but Hentral pleaded for attempts at peace. Though the Council reminded him that the Sith were the perennial enemies of both the Jedi and civilization as it was known, Hentral felt simply abandoning Ruin and his followers to the dark side was a terrible waste of potential and in defiance of the.

Merita Ot'kyn joined him in his objections, and the Jedi Council debated the matter for some time before the majority vote carried for war with the Sith. Disheartened, Hentral and Ot'kyn met privately to discuss their predicament. They had both served the Order for half a century, but they sadly concluded that it was no longer the appropriate place for them. As he prepared himself to resign his commission, he met with Voara to discuss his decision. She was heartbroken, and they left each other unhappily.

Shortly before Ot'kyn and Hentral were planning to present their resignations to the Council, however, Voara returned and asked to accompany them. Hentral swore that he did not want his former Padawan to feel bound by his decision, but she was adamant. Moreover, she had found others who also desired to leave the Order; their reasons varied from Hentral's, but all were united in their belief that the Order was not the right place for them. Hentral hesitated; some of them were not the type of Jedi he felt would be entirely dedicated to his envisioned life of peace, particularly Wuluro and Sacco Vyrak. However, he thought by taking them with him, he could not only help them develop inner peace, but also prevent them from falling in among the Sith.

The price of failure
What ultimately became a group of twelve Jedi presented their resignations to the Council and prepared to depart the Order. The Tirj, a Jedi historian with numerous field contacts among those who specialized in antiquities and artifacts, procured a  from the. The Jedi decided to freeze themselves in stasis, directing their craft out from Coruscant toward the and allowing the Force to guide them where they were meant to go.

En route, the system worked perfectly at first, freezing the bodies of the Jedi and sending them to sleep. However, a malfunction caused their minds to awaken, but kept their physical forms paralyzed. Hentral was aghast to discover his comrades starting to slip into fear at their predicament and rage at their helplessness. He was unable to keep them from falling one by one, and when Voara finally lost herself into insanity and the dark side, Hentral too lost hope.

Over twenty-one centuries, the Dark Jedi suffered in their prison, madness eating away their memories of what they had been and stood for. Ador Hentral's fury rose and peaked and rose again, and he desired only to inflict the suffering he felt on others.

Awakening
In 148 ABY, the Jedi ship emerged from hyperspace at Kizav, deep in the Unknown Regions. As it settled on the planet, the Jedi finally awoke from stasis, and the dark side consumed them. Hentral was right beside his comrades as they loosed their lightsabers and the Force on the native Skavik, slaughtering hundreds before the insectoids could even organize themselves enough to flee.

After the initial massacre, however, Hentral recovered enough shreds of sanity to realize that one planet alone could never slake their lust for destruction. Desha Marad, too, had enough of a mind left to see the advantages in making the Skavik an army rather than victims. The two together managed to assert control over their comrades long enough to explain their plan. Though mutated into something evil by the dark side, Hentral's bond with Voara Culee remained relatively intact, and she endorsed her master's plan. Gradually, the others fell in line.

Sacco Vyrak and Karshi Saan convinced the Skavik queen to ally herself with the Dark Jedi, while Hentral, Culee, and Vyrak sought out the mysterious Veracht and brought them in as allies with promises of limitless Skavik and other sentient prey. The Dark Jedi and their new vassals exterminated all life on nearby Awpierh, and turned Awpierh's foundries into weapons and ship factories. Within a year, the force was ready for war, and Hentral directed it into the nearest occupied territory: the Golden Empire.

Lord and master
Hentral and Ot'kyn together had led their brethren away from the Jedi, but Ot'kyn had gone completely insane, alternating between murderous mania and abject depression. Hentral became the de facto leader of his group, and it was he who decided the targets of their military campaigns. But Marad retained his ability to focus and Vyrak could still think tactically. As they butchered their way through the first worlds of the Empire, Hentral began to distrust them, paranoid about their intentions and his tenuous hold on power.

Once the Empire discovered the Reawakened and their activities, it prepared a defense for the planned invasion of Daispin. The battle was the first loss for the Dark Jedi army, and Vyrak was killed in a duel with Aria Nikina. Hentral initially saw this as a victory; the Skavik had borne Vyrak's body back to Kizav, and Desha Marad was quickly diverted by a plan to clone the dead. With one of his chief rivals dead and the other newly obsessed, Hentral exerted greater control over his comrades and maneuvered his former apprentice Voara into Vyrak's spot as field commander.

Driving the Skavik on with his will alone, Hentral discovered a latent talent for. He was still motivating unseasoned Skavik, though, and while his forces were able to inflict heavier casualties than they might otherwise have caused against the Empire's forces, they lost at Rykar and Feldirjo, even with the aid of Marad's new Vyrak Legions. However, the capture and torture of the Centurion Nairasho revealed intriguing information.

The Dark Jedi attacked Quadia, with Hentral motivating their forces from orbit while Voara led an attack on the ground that infiltrated a Ministry of Health facility and obtained a sample of the Sickness. Marad used his powers to mutate into a weaponized form, and the Dark Jedi orchestrated a sham attack in the Xoquon sector to bait Te`net Organi into responding. The Qua was duly infected, and when he returned to the Sith Star for treatment he infected Rayne Turgachia as well.

Organi did not infect half-Qua Rin Sakaros, and Hentral soon found he and Marad had seriously underestimated both Rin's power and her capacity for Sith vengeance. While the main Dark Jedi fleet was at Kizav, the Prime Fleet emerged at the edge of the system and Rin tore Kizav's primary apart. Hentral had his fleet flee, safeguarding Voara, Charg, and Vev Nar, but leaving Marad to perish along with Kizav.

The end
In addition to wiping out billions of Skavik and Desha Marad, the destruction of Kizav also killed the Skavik queen. Without her telepathic control over the Skavik, they became more unreliable and less loyal, forcing Hentral to constantly use his powers to enslave their minds. His already-fragile grip on sanity eroded further, and when Tariun Sakaros appeared on the Royal HoloNet to proclaim victory and declare the Dark Jedi defeated, Hentral commanded his forces to go to Dolomir.

When the Battle of Dolomir erupted, Hentral was at last able to grapple with Rin Sakaros personally, her Battle Meditation warring against his. Having sat entirely still for days, he was partially dehydrated and had soiled himself repeatedly, and he seemed all but welded to his throne. A group of Centurions under Breek Zagrev landed on Hentral's flagship and fought its way to his command room, cutting through Skavik, Veracht, and Anzat clones. They engaged his personal guard of Vyrak Legionnaires, and Hentral fully expected his troops to prevail. He had only an indistinct image of a shadow blurring his vision when Zahyr landed in his lap and stabbed both his lightsabers into Hentral's chest. The Adarian managed only a strangled gasp before Zahyr ripped both blades upwards, bisecting Hentral's face and killing him.

Powers and abilities
It was generally agreed by the Jedi of the New Sith Wars era that Ador Hentral possessed one of the strongest connections to the Force among living Jedi. His control of the mental aspects of the Force was great, and as a Jedi it enabled him to easily employ mind tricks and other telepathic deceptions. He could almost invariably read the intentions of non-Force-sensitives around him. He also possessed a particularly strong mental bond with his former apprentice, Voara Culee.

Hentral always had the gift of Battle Meditation, but had no cause or circumstance to realize it while he was a Knight of the Republic. His rage drove the Skavik under his control on to battle, even compelling them to hurl themselves into danger or commit to clearly suicidal charges.

Hentral was a capable swordsman and the match of his former apprentice, but was not at the level of Sacco Vyrak or Vev Nar.

Appearance and personality
Ador Hentral had the blue-gray skin common to Adarians, and bright hazel eyes. He was 1.70 meters (5'7") tall, and tended to dress in flowing robes as both a Jedi and a Dark Jedi. He carried a single lightsaber with a green blade which he never bothered to turn red after his arrival at Kizav.

As a Jedi Master, Hentral was committed to peace and used violence only as an absolute last resort. Though experienced and capable, he was humble enough to learn from his two Padawans, and sufficiently committed to their success to undertake missions he himself did not particularly enjoy in order to help them improve. His wisdom was respected by other Jedi, as reflected in his selection to a long-term seat on the Jedi High Council, bypassing a short-term seat.

When the Dark Jedi emerged at Kizav, Hentral was obsessed with destruction. However, unlike many of his comrades, he did not seek boundless slaughter merely for its rush of emotion and dark side energy. His long ages in darkness, reflecting on his failures and the madness that had consumed him and his fellows, had instilled in him a deep hatred of all life. He desired to destroy every living thing, everywhere, in order to create what he felt was the only possible peace: a void.

Insanity and the dark side had also made Hentral paranoid, and he was suspicious of nearly everyone around him, with the exception of Voara Culee. He did not mourn the deaths of Sacco Vyrak or Desha Marad, but he also could not sense the effect the deaths of his comrades had on the frail telepathic link binding the remaining ones to some semblance of sanity.