Shadan Katsure

"I hoped to retire after a career full of successful arrests, but this cXe murderer forced me to work sleepless nights on days I should have sat by the fire to enjoy what remains of my golden years."

- Vencit Duly

Shadan Katsure, known only as cXe by the majority of the galaxy, was a Force-sensitive serial killer who conducted a killing spree across the Core Worlds and planets. Born in 13,036 BBY on the planet Dellalt, Shadan murdered his mother along with several other prominent authorities in his life before leaving his home world permanently at age seventeen. After abandoning his childhood home, he rarely settled down in one location for more than a few months at time and constantly traveled between planets to find new victims and evade capture. Emulating the traits of the, Shadan killed all of his targets with a form of and absorbed their life experiences. Because of this power and his egomania, he had a compulsion to hunt beings with, what he considered, "high potential" in life. Due to its vast population, Coruscant became the killer’s favorite location to visit, and the majority of his crimes occurred there.

Government authorities from each planet he visited never uncovered Shadan’s true identity or motive, and they named him cXe after the shape of the bruises that appeared on the victims. Even when Shadan left clues, codes, and riddles for the officials to analyze, almost no detective managed to locate him. Private Investigator Vencit Duly was the first to successfully track him down and brought him into custody after nearly a three decade killing spree. Before any court hearing could take place, however, an unknown assailant poisoned Shadan while he was in prison.

Early life
"The weak die to feed the powerful; the powerful are only so until you take everything from them."

- Shadan Katsure

Shadan Katsure was born on the Core Worlds planet of Dellalt in 13,036 BBY. His mother, Brenna Katsure, worked as a medical doctor at the neighborhood hospital, and Portcal Katsure, his father, helped the local government as a politician and civil engineer. His parents could afford to pay for the best education and they sent Shadan to the most prestigious boarding school in the area. Even though he was highly intelligent, Shadan never completed his education. He had a severe problem with respecting authority, and he refused to follow directions when he thought of a different way or wanted to do something else. After a few years of unending defiance, his school expelled him and no institution would accept him.

From his earliest years, Shadan had a fondness of the Anzat species. He enjoyed stories of their crimes and admired how they deceived others to drain their “luck.” He despised the fact that he was Human, yet he always believed that he was destined to be more powerful than even nature. By the age of ten, he had convinced himself that he had more potential than even the Anzati, and that if the species could drain peoples' life essence, he could do better. At this young age, he discovered his Force potential, albeit he never named it so, when he drained the life and memories out of his mother. The local law enforcement declared Brenna’s death as a heart attack, and Shadan escaped his first crime without becoming a suspect.

Abandoning Dellalt
After murdering his mother, Shadan spent the next seven years of his life without committing a single crime. His success of avoiding suspicion only increased his egomania and megalomania, and he developed a case of asthenophobia, the fear of weakness. In this short hiatus in his criminal career, Shadan worked on developing a strong, fit body and trained in combat techniques. He obsessed over any advantage a friend, foe, or teacher used against him, and would work fanatically until he nullified said advantage. People around him began to shun him due to his extremism, and he only took this as a sign that he was ready to move on to a higher level of power.

Shadan’s fascination of the Anzati led him to desire their natural ability of telepathy. The only Humans that he knew possessed such powers were Jedi, and he knew that he had not yet developed his potential to defeat such a target. After pondering the options, Shadan decided to target a student of the Order, one who he regarded as strong enough to be worth the effort, yet weak enough to defeat. He killed a series of people using the same method that he used on his mother and drew the attention of the Jedi Order. A master and apprentice came to Dellalt to investigate the deaths, and Shadan ambushed the Padawan when he began his own investigation. The skirmish ended with the student being drained of life; Shadan abandoned the body and left with the young Jedi’s life experiences.

Before Shadan could leave Dellalt, the authorities arrested him for questioning. His fanatic personality caused him to become a suspect, but the recovered evidence could not convict him. An innocent homeless man, who had stumbled upon the dead Jedi’s sword and taken it for himself, ended up in prison for the crime. Not long after escaping conviction, Shadan left Dellalt forever.

The quest of power
The crimes that followed Shadan’s departure from Dellalt did not fit together well and often seemed random to investigators. The marking, cXe, which appeared as a bruise on the victim, first appeared on Coruscant; officials discovered dozens of other victims with identical markings as far as the Inner Rim planets. Authorities decided after time that copycat killers had appeared and emulated the mark, which had become infamous among most citizens in the Core Worlds. After all, the victims ranged from wealthy politicians to homeless scavengers, and no one killer could have one motive that they all fell under. A private investigator known as Vencit Duly, on the other hand, immediately connected the murders in two ways after studying the case files: the “cXe” markings and the fact that the killer only robbed the victims of their lives and nothing more.

Shadan Katsure killed on intervals as random as the people he targeted. Some days he would murder over ten people over a large distance, but sometimes he would wait weeks before committing another crime. Although the killings seemed random to the detectives studying each case, the victims all had a similar appeal to Shadan; they all had something he considered an advantage, like the poor man’s ability to survive or the politician’s charisma. With the Force related ability to drain both life and memory, he could absorb the experiences and, as he believed, their advantage. By the time he reached the age of twenty-five, he had killed nearly a hundred people just within the Core Worlds.

Failed repentance
For about the duration of a year, Shadan settled down on Coruscant in an apartment near the University of Coruscant and refrained from killing for that short amount of time. He met a young woman by the name of Miranna Latt while he walked around the college campus and looked for potential targets. The two spoke for the first time outside of the psychology laboratories, and Shadan became firmly attached to her. He thought she was beautiful and intelligent, and enjoyed hearing about her psychology studies, but his love for her caused him to do everyday things and think about things differently than he normally would; Miranna almost completely sapped his will. At first he believed that she would make a great ally and help reach his full potential, and that the two of them could live together forever as masters of nature. However, the mania deep within Shadan's mind never relaxed, and he still had an unrestrained need to seek power. Miranna knew him barely for a year before his mind decided that she had some deceptive supernatural power, which caused people, like him, to give their willpower over to her. Naturally, he did to her what he would do to any person that he thought had an advantage over him. Shadan killed the only girl that he ever loved or ever loved him.

The grim spree
Not only did Shadan kill the woman he loved, but he could not absorb the “womanly charm” that had controlled him. Miranna’s death ripped him completely apart, and the only times when he did not feel miserable were when he planned and executed a murder. The years that followed the girl’s death were filled with more killings than ever before; planets distant from Coruscant, like Ord Mantell, which saw the very first Mid Rim murder with the cXe symbols, began to report killings. While Shadan committed more crimes, he rarely stayed among one society for more than a day or two. By this point in his life, he had given up cleaning up his tracks to remain completely unknown to the authorities and instead chose to taunt them and challenge their wit and intelligence. When he found the most intelligent detective, he planned to kill him or her; at that point he believed he would become the greatest non-Force trained life form in the universe. Regardless of the clues and taunts, the government officials never even laid eyes on Shadan, falling for diversions and misinterpreting codes and riddles. However, Veteran Vencit Duly joined the cXe case a year after Miranna's murder and made significant headway where the other investigators could not. After discovering the skills and intelligence of the new investigator and his partner Archel Samules, Shadan knew that the battle of wits, which he long desired, had come.

The battle of the minds
"Of course I came alone: it’s all about you, isn’t it?"

- Vencit Duly

Shadan led Vencit and Archel in a chase across the galaxy for several years, and often escaped planets just before the private investigators brought officers to the scene. Vencit reported looking up at a porthole of a departing passenger and seeing the cold smile and haughty wave of the killer, just as he had arrived at the  with a large security force. The passenger vessel entered before the authorities could apprehend it, and Shadan vanished before the officers at the destination arrived. Several events happened similarly, and, in one instance, Vencit nearly apprehended him while he chased the hooded killer through a luxury hotel on Coruscant.

The several close calls began to distress Shadan as much as it did Vencit, and the murderer responded by randomizing his locations, times, and even victims. He no longer felt the need to kill standard people for their advantages; he just needed to draw attention while avoiding capture. After all, he could not ambush the detective until he had lowered his guard, and the experienced man refused to give the killer a single good night’s sleep. Finally, after years of playing with the law enforcement, Shadan contacted Vencit to end the chase on Coruscant. While the two talked, they decided on a place and time to meet and agreed to come alone. Shadan, however, doubted from the very first moment that the detective would come alone, and he intended to leave one clue at the location to where he would truly be.

The true meeting place was in the psychology labs at the University of Coruscant, and the clue, “my true love’s work,” only functioned if Vencit had discovered his motive for killing Miranna. Shadan planned that by the time the detective would discover the clue, he would have insufficient time to plan a successful arrest and would have to come to the labs unprepared. Unknown to the mechanics at the University, Shadan reprogrammed the fingerprint door lock of one lab to only open to his and Vencit’s, regardless of whatever administration override anyone else used. The rest of the plan was to remain alert and wait for the detective to fall into the trap or leave when time expired.

Shadan placed the clue at the crowded meeting place just a quarter of an hour before the meeting time, and made certain that no one saw him do so or tried to tail him to his new location. When he entered the trap room, he found that his precautions had not mattered. Just moments after he closed the door to the lab, he faced the barrel of Vencit’s slugthrower pistol. In the struggle that shortly followed, Shadan fell for the first time, with a bullet in his torso and left femur. Detective Vencit Duly, who had fired before the killer could think a single thought, did not take a single blow from the murderer. The private investigator reported to the Coruscant Security Force that he had determined that the meeting would be a trap for him, but that he had also determined that the laboratory was the only place that meant enough to Shadan to meet a head detective. Vencit by that point not only knew that Shadan had dated the late Miranna, but that he had lived on Dellalt and possibly killed a Jedi Padawan. After using this information to defeat the serial killer, he proved to society that he was more intelligent than Shadan, even with all the experiences he had stolen.

A permanent end
The maximum security penitentiary of Coruscant held Shadan Katsure in solitary confinement while he awaited his plea hearing. The court system assigned a public attorney for his trial, even though no defense lawyer wanted to have anything to do with the killer. However, the trial never came into existence; shortly after Shadan’s first meeting with his attorney, he died from a high dosage of neurotoxin. No one found any evidence to seriously suspect anyone, including the attorney, and the officials buried the murderer’s death into the cold case file system. Vencit Duly suspected that a government agency had secretly organized his death, but he had no intention on investigating the case.

Legacy
The three decade long killing spree of Shadan Katsure left both a light and dark legacy. Several copycat killers appeared across the galaxy and tried to create as much unrest as the cXe killer had. However, the law enforcement branches across the galaxy, especially those from in the Core Worlds and Inner Rim, had trained and hired some of the best homicide detective in of the era. The Shadan impersonators faded with time, but criminology schools kept his spree in memory. Even as late as, the Coruscant College of Criminology continued to use cXe’s history to teach that motives were not always what they seemed to be and that psychotic serial killers could still be as intelligent, if not more, than the detective chasing him.

Personality and traits
From a very young age, Shadan Katsure had a very egotistical frame of mind. He could not stand for anyone to do anything better than him, and this caused him to have a fanatical work ethic. When he wanted to reach a goal, he would only stop and rest to prepare to continue his work fervently the next day. Most people who saw him thought that he was antisocial, but he was completely fascinated by other people. He hardly ever spent time with another person of his species, but he liked to watch how people acted. If he saw someone who appeared to function better than another, he could not stop thinking about their advantage. His interest in studying people around him only increased his own egomania; he knew education was power, and the more he studied others, the more of their strengths he discovered.

By the time Shadan reached adulthood, he had developed an obsession for acquiring power. He evaluated the power of people by their potential, and not their immediate skills. This belief helped clarify his egotistical idea that he was more powerful than nature itself. Shadan’s megalomania caused him to fear nothing, but his intelligence gave him caution. He knew enough to know that he could only reach his full potential by overpowering and stealing power from others, just as the Anzati did. Because of this belief, he only chose targets who appeared to have significant potential in life, regardless of social status, and not always people with evident power.

Shadan had a small need to interact with people, and whenever he did, he assumed a fake role. He believed that lies created an advantage over the clueless, and so he only played his true role with people who knew it already. Once he left Dellalt, he left his identity as well; even when he met Miranna, he used a fake name and personality. In a sense, he regretted his true lifestyle, and he felt that people would accept his lies better than his truths.

Powers and abilities
The signature power of Shadan Katsure was his ability to drain life and memory from his victim by skin contact. The ability was nearly identical to the Jedi and Dark Jedi techniques of, although Shadan never had formal training in Force skills. Through this power, he gained knowledge in how to use other powers, like telepathy, but the absorbed experiences did not function as well as personal, master-apprentice training.

Before he left Dellalt, Shadan trained in multiple martial arts as a form of fitness and developed a strong self-defense skill set. He often would use these skills to overpower and incapacitate a target before killing them. He also had decent prowess with ranged and melee weapons, but, because he preferred to kill with his Force-based power, he hardly ever used one.

Behind the scenes
Shadan Katsure was created by Cyril Khan for use on TheStarWarsRP.Com during the Alsakan Crisis. On the role playing site, the character was known only by the name cXe and he had just begun challenging Cyril’s other characters Vencit Duly and Archel Samules. The story did not continue far, and only one death was explained in detail. After the time jump into the Hutt War, Cyril Khan decided to retire the character.