Thanatos

"Immortality is my goal. It has, and always shall be, the desired outcome of my existence."

- Thanatos

Thanatos was a male Dathomirian Human Sith Master who lived during the height of the New Sith Imperium's rule of the galaxy. Originally born to a Human mother and Dathomirian father on Dathomir, Thanatos was taken to Korriban at a very young age to be trained in the dark side of the Force. Following the Sith's return to the galaxy and eventual destruction of the Galactic Alliance, Thanatos scoured the galaxy looking for the secrets of immortality, discovering the legacy of and  on the abandoned planet of.

Desiring immortality above all else, with other hopes of becoming a Sith Lord and a member of the Dark Council, Thanatos schemed to unleash the once engineered by the two Sith Lords in order to ensure his rise to power. He was then made a Sith Master and put in charge of a new Imperial prison facility—the orbital station, Father's Dreams—which he intended to use to further his experiments in in order to achieve his goals.

Early life (986—1,011 ABY)
"My upbringing is of no importance to you, or myself for that matter. I was a pupil of the Sith Order when the Sith were still in hiding, like some feeble moles, in the Outer Rim. Before we rose to greatness. Before the Imperium."

- Thanatos in his holocron.

Thanatos was born on the Outer Rim planet of Dathomir to a Human mother and a Dathomirian father. It is unknown how much time he spent on Dathomir, but at some point while he was still a young boy, he was found by the -in-hiding and taken into training on Korriban. To his great annoyance, the great majority of his time in training on Korriban, the Sith Masters who instructed him spent more time preaching loyalty to Darth Aevum, the current Dark Lady of the Sith, than instructing the acolytes in ways of the dark side.

Thanatos was a young adult and a Sith Crusader by the time the Sith returned to the galaxy and took over the, forming the New Sith Imperium. Rather than taking a more prominent role in the Empire, like other rising stars, such as Geist Weiss, Thanatos decided to bide his time and consolidate his power by searching the Outer Rim for the secrets of immortality. During this search, he stumbled upon the abandoned Sith world of, as well as the of , whereupon he learned the secrets to creating an ancient , which was a key to an ancient Sith ritual that could lead one to immortality.

Sith Master (1,012—1,022 ABY)
"Impatience leads to death. To being nothing more than a corpse rotting in the Valley of the Dark Lords, as so many Sith Lords have in millenia past. But patience. Patience leads to victory. Leads to immortality."

- Thanatos

Shortly thereafter, Thanatos returned to the Empire and set about pushing his plans forward. He acquired what is thought to be his first apprentice during this time, though he had no intention of completing the acolyte's training—opting, instead, to use him as a pawn to complete the Sith alchemy he had learned on Odacer-Faustin. Sometime during this period, he was also made into a Sith Master, with high prospects of one day earning a seat on the Dark Council. In order to ensure the early testing of his virus would be a success, Thanatos procured the derelict space station, Father's Dreams—which had formerly been a station owned by the Galactic Alliance prior to the Empire's take-over of the galaxy— and converted it into a prison for prisoners-of-war. He then spent near a decade in seclusion on this station, feigning training his apprentice, when in reality he had begun the search for the : a Force-sensitive flower, of extreme rarity, which would grant his desires.

The Father's Dreams Outbreak
"Betrayal is the way of the Sith."

- Thanatos about to kill his apprentice.

Finally, in 1,022 ABY, Thanatos was prepared to enact the early phases of his plan. His apprentice had returned with the coveted Murakami black orchid, which he would need to complete the mixture he had spent years completing. His usefulness expired, Thanatos turned on his apprentice and wired him to a machine meant to complete the circuit and, at long last, complete the virus for its testing phases. When his apprentice begged to know why the Sith Master was turning on him, Thanatos ignored him at first, tossing the orchid into the mixture, which would lead to the youth's death, before replying that betrayal was the way of the Sith.

The first apprentice of Thanatos then experienced a violent and painful death as the mixture used his body as a source for the virus's creation. Determined to test the finished product on the prisoners—which he had gathered over the years for the express purpose of using them as test subjects in this very experiment—Thanatos the dead apprentice's body and deposited it outside the office of the prison's warden. This inevitably lead to the warden's death, as the apprentice reanimated and attacked him, much to Thanatos's delight. In doing so, Thanatos had, for the fourth time in history, unleashed the deadly of the Murakami orchid free to ravage those it would touch, whilst he retreated to his meditation chambers, at the top of the station, to watch his experiment unfold.

Second Apprentice
"I have already decided on your first test. A test of your resolve and of your knowledge of the Sith."

- Thanatos upon first meeting Azur.

Sometime that same year, and following the outbreak on the Father's Dreams, Thanatos made his first return to Korriban since his time there as a Sith Acolyte and Crusader decades prior. Desiring to advance his plans to their second stage, but lacking a loyal apprentice to use as a pawn, Thanatos arranged for a young acolyte, named Azur Zaff, to encounter him in order to test him as a potential candidate for a replacement apprentice. Thanatos's lessons, even early on, proved cruel for the young Wroonian, as his initial test was forcing the initiate to remember parts of the whilst being bombarded by the Sith Master's Force lightning.

Personality and traits
"Know this, there is no more object of importance to a true Sith than his own power. It is what determines your worth among the Sith ranks. With your strength, you must make the Force your servant, and in so doing, find your power."

- Thanatos reciting his Sith philosophy

As a practitioner of the dark side of the Force and easily one of the most powerful Sith of his day, Thanatos was a sadistic, cruel being of pure evil—in many ways like the Dathomirian culture in which he was unable to be raised in. He took great delight in torturing those he viewed as beneath him, which was almost everyone he came across, and was not above turning on his own pupils if it furthered his own purposes. When it came to training disciples, he was also extremely sadistic in the way he chose to test them, as he thoroughly enjoyed pushing Azur Zaff to his absolute physical and mental limits during their early training together.

As a Sith Master, Thanatos instilled two values—which he deemed of the utmost importance to any Sith—in those unfortunate enough to become his disciples: the importance of patience to see one's plans through to fruition and the importance of victory to prove one's place among the ranks of the Sith Lords. Despite his sadistic tendencies, Thanatos was a valued instructor among the Sith. Valued for his in-depth knowledge of Sith lore and his personal views on the Sith code, he became a figure of great respect for the younger acolytes, desiring to rise among the ranks of the Empire.

Thanatos was also a man who lusted after the secrets of the dark side and constantly sought the knowledge of the ancient Sith, despite his view that they were all failures, seeing as they hadn't obtained the immortality every Sith desired, a fact he would later record in his holocron. His lust for knowledge was only matched by the insatiable desire he had to acquire immortality. This obsession would later transfer to perfecting the rituals of and completing his, which was key to one method of obtaining immortality. He also desired to share this knowledge with future generations, should he fail, hence his creation of his own personal.

Powers and abilities
"I need only my patience to learn from the mistakes of my predecessors and finally bring their dream to reality. I learned, that day, the rituals of Darth Drear. Soon, you will inherit them as well."

- Thanatos's holocron

Thanatos was a particularly skilled and powerful Sith, quickly advancing through the ranks of the Order, and becoming a Sith Master at the young age of twenty-five. As a, Thanatos was born Force sensitive, and is fully aware of his abilities. As a member of the, he has the capability to willing call on the Force to use a variety of abilities, such as Force lightning to torture his foes, and , which he preferred over the normal means of lightsaber combat. He is strongly aligned with the dark side of the Force.

His chief area of study, as a Sith, is the art of. Few in the Imperium knew the secrets and rituals of Sith alchemy better than Thanatos did, which made his council all the more valuable in matters regarding such things. Thanatos believed that Sith alchemy held the secrets of immortality and infinite Sith power and, thus, studied it with fervor and lust. His primary inspiration for delving into the mysteries of Sith alchemy lie in the ancient instructions of the Sith Lord,, and have continued ever since.

Thanatos, despite his power within the Force, was only an intermediate practitioner when it came to the use of his lightsaber. To make up for this weakness around those it would matter against—mainly other lightsaber-wielding Force-sensitives—Thanatos was trained extensively in the art of Form II lightsaber combat,. A dueling centeric martial art, Form II allowed him to easily combat others with a lightsaber. Combined with his superior use of the Force, Thanatos was transformed into deadly and formidable foe against even the mightiest Force users. Thanatos wasn't a man who pined after strength, nor does he spend much time building his physical strength. His focus on mastering the Force and his mind made him forgo the importance of keeping physically strong in any regards.

One of Thanatos's more dangerous traits was his intellect itself. He was quite capable of planning out long and convoluted plans in a very detailed and organized manner, as well as having the patience to see them through. Understanding the mysteries of the Sith are what made his life's goal center around, which has lead to a great majority of the accomplishments he had obtained throughout his career among the Sith Order and the Imperium. Perhaps Thanatos's greatest strength was his wisdom, a rarity among the Sith Order, which was personified in the creation of his holocron. He had instructed those that he taught to beware the fragile bond of the Sith, lest they find themselves facing a grueling death, and had also taught on the importance of patience. Thanatos knows the values of learning from his predecessor's, and, in some cases, his colleague's mistakes and using them to further his own goals and power, which made him a dangerous asset to the Empire and to the Sith in particular.

Behind the scenes
The author has stated that he originally intended to expand on Thanatos's childhood, explaining that he was originally intended to be a of a group of  in his childhood, just prior to being discovered by the Sith, but chose against writing this into his backstory due to its irrelevance to Thanatos's plot. He later concedes that he is considering writing it into the plot anyways, simply to give Thanatos a bit more of a backstory.