Kira Cereza

Kira Cereza was a Jedi Master that had served during the Clone Wars and had survived Order 66.

Early Life
Born on the planet Alderaan fifty-seven years before the Battle of Yavin, Kira Cereza was discovered to be Force sensitive during her infancy and was thus taken to the Jedi Temple on Coruscaunt to begin her training in the Jedi arts.

The Clone Wars
Kira Cereza was involved in the Clone Wars, having been a Jedi Knight during the first year of the conflict, but graduating into a Jedi Master in 22 BBY. Shortly after, Master Cereza would take on her first apprentice, the Padawan Ilia Charan. Master Cereza and her Padawan would be companions on many missions during the Clone Wars, with the two being a successful pair. However, their partnership would end in 20 BBY.

On the planet Luranda, while leading a battalion of clone troopers and accompanied by her apprentice, Master Cereza and her group were subjected to an intense enemy ambush which nearly wiped out the entire clone batallion and left Master Cereza and Ilia fighting mainly on their own while waiting for an evacuation. In the following engagement, Ilia was injured by stray blaster bolts first striking her lightsaber, destroying it, and then striking her arm, forcing Master Cereza and her remaining clones to hold their position. Master Cereza took her injured Padawan's lightsaber in order to utilize two blades to more effectively deflect the onslaught of blaster bolts, desperately fighting off the encroaching battle droids as evacuation was on the way. Eventually, several LAAT Gunships arrived at their position to evacuate both Jedi and the remaining clone troopers and the group boarded the ships. However, the convoy of gunships were chased down by multiple droid starfighters, and in the ensuing air battle, Master Cereza's gunship was hit by the blast of a nearby gunship exploding, causing the ship to sway and resulting in Ilia falling out of the open bay doors, unable to hold on with her injured arm. Master Cereza ordered the ship to turn around to save her Padawan, but was unable to due to the pursuing fighters. The gunships were then rescued by several V-19 Torrent fighters flying in from head on to engage the droid fighters, allowing the gunships to lift off and escape the planet, returning to the nearby Venator Star Destroyer in orbit.

Master Cereza was still very concerned about her Padawan, and insisted on going back down to the planet with a contingent of clones in order to find her apprentice. However, several CIS cruisers had jumped in from hyperspace, forcing the Star Destroyer to leave the system, abandoning the planet to the Separatist forces. With only her Padawan's broken lightsaber remaining, Master Cereza extracted the blue kyber crystal to keep in the hopes that she could return and find her apprentice.

However, upon returning to Coruscaunt, Master Cereza would learn that the Republic had decided to abandon Luranda altogether, as Separatist forces in the system were far too numerous to break through. Master Cereza was distraught at this, and pleaded with the Jedi Council to return and find her fallen apprentice. The Council, however, informed her that there was nothing they could do, as their attention was needed elsewhere and they could not summon the forces to take back the planet without approval from the Galactic Senate, which had deemed Luranda a lost cause. Devastated by her inability to protect her Padawan, Master Cereza fell into a depression during which she seriously considered leaving the Jedi Order and attempting to recover her apprentice on her own. Master Cereza was convinced to stay by Grand Master Yoda, in whom she sought council and guidance in her anger and sadness. She would overcome the hardship, though made it clear that she felt it would be quite a long time before she was ready to accept a new apprentice after the loss of her first, considering it a personal failure and a sign that she was not truly ready to be a Master. Cereza would continue to keep Ilia's kyber crystal as a memento and a reminder of her failure.

After losing her Padawan, Master Cereza withdrew herself from the front lines of the Clone Wars, deciding instead to serve the Order in a different way. Instead of fighting, she would instead be sent out into the wide Galaxy to discover young Force sensitives to bring back to the Jedi Temple in order to induct them into the Jedi Order. In this way, she felt, she could still serve the Jedi with a sense of purpose, while remaining detached from a war that had taken much from her.

The Jedi Purge
By 19 BBY, Master Cereza had spent a full year away from the frontlines, and had recruited many younglings into the Jedi Order. Her latest recruitment mission had her travel to the planet Torano II, where she came across two Force sensitive children; siblings Ral and Ren Silber. Taking the toddlers with her, Master Cereza began the hyperjump back to Coruscant. However, mid-way through the journey, she felt a strong disturbance in the Force, nearly causing her to faint from the intense pressure. Sensing a dramatic shift in the balance of the Force towards the dark, Master Cereza altered her course and instead decided to go someplace safe in order to properly assess the situation. She instead travelled to the Outer Rim planet of Nirakos, a place that was somewhat isolated from the wider galaxy and had been untouched by the Clone Wars due to its strategic unimportance. Upon landing on the planet, Master Cereza tuned her ship's communications array to the emergency frequency used by the Jedi Order, though there was no response. She then decided to meditate in order to seek out her brothers and sisters in the Force, but in doing so only saw darkness and malicious intent as a powerful dark presence emerged in the Galaxy. With this, Master Cereza deduced that she may have been one of the last Jedi in the Galaxy, and thus decided to stay on Nirakos in self-imposed exile.

With the siblings Ral and Ren with her, however, Master Cereza saw an opportunity to possibly rebuild the Jedi Order. She decided to take on Ral as a new apprentice, but did not want to train Ren due to his more brash and fiery personality, favoring Ral's more calm and collected demeanor despite her young age.

Time in Exile
Over the years, Master Cereza would train Ral in the ways of the Force, and would eventually donate her first Padawan's kyber crystal for Ral to use in her own, which she constructed from spare parts that Master Cereza had procured, mainly by dismantling parts of the starship she arrived on Nirakos in. While Ral showed promise as a Jedi Padawan, taking to her Master's defensive style of Form I and III lightsaber combat, Ren showed more proficiency in the more aggressive forms, especially taking a liking to Forms IV, V, and most concerning to Master Cereza, Form VII. She would eventually come to discover that Ral was secretly training Ren when her master was away, and Ren had been developing rapidly on his own. Although scolding the two at first, Master Cereza did take note of Ren's prodigial abilities in the Force and in the combative arts, and decided that it would be best if he too had a proper Jedi Master in order to properly hone his developing skills, and thus took Ren as a second apprentice.

Death
In the year 4 BBY, the Empire succeeded in tracking down Master Cereza to Nirakos, and sent the Imperial Inquisition to eliminate her. Noticing the unknown ship landing nearby, Master Cereza hid with her two Padawans, ordering the two not to move from their spot no matter what. The Eleventh Brother, arriving on the planet accompanied by four Purge Troopers, demanded that Master Cereza show herself. In response to the silence, he then ordered the Purge Troopers to raze their village to the ground. Master Cereza then revealed herself in order to stop the Purge Troopers, managing to cut all four down before turning her attention to the Eleventh Brother and engaging him in a duel. Master Cereza initially held her ground against the Inquisitor, but in her age and years out of combat, she quickly found herself being pushed back. Eventually, the esoteric nature of the Inquisitor's double-bladed spinning lightsaber proved to be too much for her to handle, and Master Cereza was finally struck down.