Jaras Alde

"This isn't for me! I feel like I'm on Belsavis with no way out!"

- Jaras Alde to Riva Owatsii

Jaras Alde was a Jedi Padawan and blood heir to the House Alde aristocracy. He was the son of Count Alde, and recruited into the Jedi Order at age two. His training was slowed and frustrating due to his selfish, defiant and stubborn attitude, and he fell toward the dark side by using banned secrets in an effort to accelerate his training. He was caught cheating with these methods, and left Tython to return to Alderaan, but due to his dark side tampering, he was unable to support his claim to the House Alde hierarchy. He went on a rampage and nearly destroyed the Alde Embassy before escaping to Nar Shaddaa, where he used the Force to cheat in casino games. He managed to get a gang leader and his organization to bet themselves into one game, and when they lost, Jaras used the gang to attack Alde and put himself in power by force. Unfortunately, his efforts were stopped by another Jedi Padawan and a Republic trooper, and he was captured by Organa and Alde forces. Jaras later saw the error of his ways and helped the Jedi Order defend Tython against the gang's attempt to steal artifacts from the Jedi Temple.

Early life
Jaras was born to Count Alde on Alderaan in 3620 BBY. In 3622, he began to display signs of abnormality, later identified as Force-sensitivity. Master Oric Traless discovered the child while on-planet and took him to the Order, despite the Count's wishes that he stay to claim his birthright.

Jedi Training
Unfortunetly, Jaras' training was halted, interrupted and slowed due to Jaras's attitude. His qualities during training reflected those of an Alderaan nobleman to the letter: selfish, greedy and always wanting to be better then everyone else. During his training, he became friends with fellow Padawan Riva Owatsii, who's curiosity about the mysteries of the Force helped to forge a strong bond between them. But Jaras wanted to accelerate his training and prove his dominance, and resorted to diving into dark side techniques stored in datacrons in the Jedi Archives. When his training instructor caught Jaras going too far during a training exercise, he brought Jaras before the Jedi Council, who by that point had discovered the Archives breach. They ordered him to begin from base training and start all over again. After this meeting, Jaras decided that he had had enough.

Escape to Alderaan
Jaras snuck out of the Temple and stowed away on an outgoing Republic transport shuttle that same night. Upon the shuttle's arrival at the Gav Daragon for refueling, Jaras tricked his way past security and took another shuttle off the ship, this time to Alderaan. Once on-planet, he traveled to the House Alde embassy near Castle Organa, intending to rejoin his father and the Alderaan politics. Unfortunatly, he learned that the Alderaan noble houses were waging a civial war for control of the planet, and that his father, Count Alde, had been killed with experimental Republic technology. Jaras was furious, and stormed into the embassy demanding to be recognised as the rightful ruler of House Alde. But when the identification tests revealed was that the dark side experimentations from his Jedi training had left his skin, blood and face changed, meaning that he could no longer be indentified as being the Count's offspring.

Irate with fury, Jaras unleashed a wave of dark side energy, destroying much of the Embassy and killing several people inside. He defeated the guards that came to invstigate the explosion and stowed away again, this time on a cargo ship headed for Nar Shaddaa.

The Hundered Reapers
Jaras had no idea where the ship was headed for until it landed on the Promanade to deliver supplies, and now because House Alde rejected him, he had nowhere to go and no life to return to. He soon began using the Force to inflence some Sabaac games in nearby casinos, then began gambling himself and winning thousands of credits in winnings.

One such game led to playing with a Rattataki named Qeezak, who had a reputation a cautious card player. When a final Force-influenced move caused Qeezak to lose the game with no credits left, he flew into a rage and would have killed Jaras had it not been for the casino's defense droids. The Rattaki demanded that he get his credits back, then Jaras had an idea and hired the mercenary and his whole gane back to get the credits. In return for their pay, Qeezak and his gang, the Hundered Reapers, would help him get his revenge on House Alde and the Jedi.

Attack on House Alde
Jaras and Qeezak made House Alde their first priority, but when the gang leader asked about their impending Tython attack, Jaras pushed it aside, focusing on attacking those who he believed had wronged him on Alderaan. Midway through their preperations, however, he got word that a Jedi had been captured on Nar Shaddaa and locked up on another Reaper ship's brig. Going to investigate, Jaras was shocked to see Riva locked up, in conversation with a Republic soldier cellmate. Riva implored him to stop his attack and see reason, and something about her plea seemed to touch something inside Jaras, and he left without saying anything.

He took a moment to consider what was about to happen, and was just about so call the attack off when they arrived at Alderaan and Qeezak announced their readiness to fight. Jaras' fury reignited, and a Reaper task force descended to the surface in a shuttle. The shuttle landed on the surface near the Embassy, and the Reapers attacked the partially-demolished building and took total occupation, intending to place Jaras in command by force. Suddenly, Riva and and Bann arrived, havng escaped from the brig, and created a distraction for Jaras. Without their leader, the Embassy occupation fell apart, and local forces from Houses Alde and Organa managed to get inside and lock Jaras up.

Redemption
Riva and Bann finally got Jaras freed from Organa custody and put him on a ship headed for Tython. While in hyperspace, Riva told him that she had had a revalation while in Reaper custody: the good cannot exist without the bad, and if Jaras was willing, he could find the good within himself and see the error of his ways. Jaras finally gave in and mentioned his previous plan to use the Reapers to attack Tython and Qeezak's greed to obtain dark secrets for himself.

Upon thei arrival at Tython, Jaras informed the Jedi Council the impending attack, and was unable to help assist the defenses and held in Republic custody for his previous actions. But when the Reapers attacked, Jaras had a vision of Master Oric Traless, urging him to look past himself and his selfishness and look ahead for the sake of others. At this point, the vision faded and Jaras' guards had left to join the battle.

Defense of Tython
The battle had spilled into the Temple by this point, and Jaras assists the guards and Jedi inside with repelling the Reapers back outside. Shocked to see Riva and Bann down, he managed to get to them both before they fell into unconcisness, and both wished him luck against the rest of the forces. Checking the bodies, Jaras failed to see Qeezak among them, and an ensuing communication from Jaric Kaeden revealed that the gang leader was still inside the Temple, heading after a dark side artifact similar to one that Jaras used only a short time before. Sprinting to the archive, he took an artifact known to posess incredible knowledge of the light side of the Force, and rushed to assist Kaeden, but by that time, Qeezak and a few other Reapers had overpowered the Jedi and accessed the artifact. Ducking down, Jaras flash-meditated on his artifact, drawing on it's power, and battled a now-mutated Qeezak until the Rattataki was so filled with dark side Force energy that he was killed.

Later, the Council regocnized his efforts and his ability to cast aside his selfish whims.

Personality and traits
Before his departure of Tython, Jaras was very self-centered, selfish, defiant and stubborn, and really only cared much for one person other than himself: Riva. He still believed that his was the only strong tie left to the House Alde aristocarcy, and he was until his dark side tempering altered his DNA, blood, skin and facial appearence.

Powers and abilities
Studying the dark side, Jaras was known to exibit a large amount of Force energy into one blast, leveling House Alde on his first visit. On his invasion of the Embassy with the reapers, he would use common dark side techniques to defeat the House Alde defenses, including Force chokes.

After his redemption, he was able to manafest enough lightside power to unlock a datacron of immesurable light side power in his fight against Qeezak, and the powers that were open to him from that datacron included an augmentation of all of his normal Jedi abilities.

Behind the Scenes
Jaras Alde was created by author Jacob Anderson as the protagonist and anti-hero of the novel ''Star Wars: The Old Republic Ressurection. ''Initial character idea included those of a Jedi Knight (rather than a Padawan) falling to the dark side and causing trouble on Coruscant, but was changed to a Padawan with a backstory from Alderaan, due to Anderson's want to tie a Star Wars: The Old Republic character storyline into the novel.