Well, you haven't seen anything yet. I have this habit... I'm a deserter. It's what I do.
—Atton Rand
Atton Rand was a Human Force adept from Alderaan who fought as a Republic soldier during the Mandalorian Wars, serving under Revan and her dissident Jedi Crusaders.
Biography[]
From soldier to deserter[]
When Revan and her Jedi embraced the ways of the Sith and turned against the Republic, Atton was one of many who defected to their cause. During the Jedi Civil War he was recruited into the Sith Empire's Blackflare Division, which employed specially trained operatives to hunt down and assassinate or capture enemy Jedi. Atton excelled in this, killing many of his targets and helping to brainwash many others into becoming Sith converts. However, his life was changed by a confrontation with an unnamed Jedi woman, who revealed Atton's Force-sensitivity and claimed that he, like his Jedi captives, would eventually be tortured and twisted into becoming a Sith. Though this Jedi did not survive the encounter, Atton was deeply shaken and abandoned the Sith soon after, eventually turning up on Nar Shaddaa to begin a new life. For six years he drifted through the Outer Rim's criminal underworld, working as a blaster-for-hire or occasionally a smuggler.
The Exile[]
In 21,102 AR Rand was incarcerated at the Peragus Mining Facility for, as he put it, "violating some trumped-up regulation or another." Ironically, his stay in a force cage kept him alive while the facility's staff was killed by an HK-50 series assassin droid on the payroll of the Exchange. He was freed by the droid's target, the Jedi Exile Meetra Surik. Together with another enigmatic Jedi named Kreia and the droid T3-M4, they commandeered the freighter Ebon Hawk and fled the Peragus system. Pursued by a Republic warship that had been hijacked by the Sith Triumvirate, Atton—at Meetra's urging—fired on the nearby space rocks, igniting Peragus's fuel asteroid field and destroying the mining facility.
The Ebon Hawk was stolen from them at Citadel Station on Telos IV. Meetra's bid to recover the ship brought her to the hideout of Jedi Master Atris. Though the reunion was not a pleasant one, it led her to seek out other surviving Jedi Masters as allies against the Sith. Atton was leery of any further involvement with Jedi, but after Kreia invaded his mind to uncover his past, she blackmailed him into staying aboard the Ebon Hawk as its pilot. Together they traveled to such worlds as Nar Shaddaa, Dantooine, Onderon, and Korriban, collecting a motley collection of companions while contending with a variety of foes. Despite having been forced to stay with the crew, Atton believed that he was meant to protect the Exile and eventually fell in love with her. In time he confessed his past with the Sith and asked to be trained in the Force, and after some hesitation Meetra agreed.
In the meantime, the crew made contact with Masters Zez-Kai Ell, Vrook Lamar, and Kavar, convincing them to gather on Dantooine to discuss the Sith threat. When the Jedi arrived, however, Meetra turned on them and killed them herself before pinning the blame on her mentor, Kreia, whose true identity was Darth Traya. Pursuing the treacherous Sith Lord to Telos, Meetra fought Atris and grievously wounded her, though she spared the fallen Jedi's life when Atton and his fellow companion Mical interrupted the confrontation. Subsequently the Sith fleet of Darth Nihilus attacked Telos, only to be destroyed by Republic and Mandalorian forces, with Nihilus himself slain aboard his flagship. The crew then followed Darth Traya to the Triumvirate's headquarters on on Malachor V, where Meetra struck down her former mentor and took her place as Dark Lord of the Sith.
According to Darth Traya, Revan had secretly founded her empire to serve as the known galaxy's first line of defense against the Second Sith Empire (or "true Sith") in the Unknown Regions. Intending to continue this purpose, Surik reformed the Triumvirate into the Sith Remnant, and decided to have Atton, Mical, and Visas Marr trained formally as Sith apprentices.
Sith apprentice[]
Meetra's claim to the title of Dark Lord was formally ratified by the minor Sith Lords residing at Trayus Academy. The most notable of these was the Nautolan Thoriel Silbus, who courted the Exile's favor by ratting out dissidents within the Sith Order and was eventually rewarded with a post as headmaster. Surik also tasked him with training her three apprentices in the ways of the Sith. Atton's flippant and irreverent attitude instantly earned Silbus's ire, but he survived the rigorous training on Malachor and became a proficient wielder of the Force. At some point a Cathar Sith Adept named Nuruz Lar was assigned to spar with Atton as part of his lightsaber training.
Soon after Traya's death, Meetra made a clandestine return visit to Telos, where she intended to finish off Atris and claim her store of Jedi and Sith artifacts. Since the Ebon Hawk was undergoing repairs, she took the scout flyer Celestus, accompanied by Atton, Visas, Mical, a company of assassins, and the interrogator droid X-C88. While they were still en route, Atton confronted Meetra in private, as he had come to suspect that she had in fact killed the Jedi on Dantooine. Meetra didn't deny it, but argued it had been necessary, as she believed the Jedi only intended to use her as a tool. Atton was only partially convinced, as he recalled that Meetra and Kavar had been close friends, which cast doubt on her reasoning. To deflect from the issue, Meetra accused Atton of being blind to the Jedi's true natures as ruthless manipulators, including the one who had convinced Atton to desert the Sith six years before. She sowed doubt in Atton's mind about that Jedi's motives, claiming that she could only have been acting out of a desire to remove a threat, rather than any care for his well-being. Atton was shaken to his core; though Meetra's presumption infuriated him, upon reflection he was unable to refute her claims, and began to hate the Jedi even more than he ever had in the past. Ultimately he forgave Meetra for her deception and agreed not to reveal the truth of what had happened on Dantooine to the rest of the crew.
In the meantime, they reached Atris's hideout on Telos, only to find that the fallen Jedi as well as her storehouse of artifacts had disappeared. Remembering the brutal injuries she had inflicted on the fallen Jedi, Meetra dismissed her as a serious threat, but decided to task her Sith minions with hunting her down.
Defector[]
Eventually, Meetra and her companions would journey to the Unknown Regions in search of Darth Revan, who had vanished before the end of the Jedi Civil War. What took place afterward is obscure, but by 21,108 AR they had somehow succeeded in killing the current Sith Emperor, Vitiate. Rather than continue to undermine the Second Sith Empire, however, Revan took the throne herself as Empress, intending to direct the invasion of the Republic according to her own designs. Meetra and her companions supported the Empress in this, but Atton—for reasons of his own—decided to turn on the Sith, stealing the Ebon Hawk and fleeing back to known space in the hopes of warning the Republic. His only companions in this were X-C88 and another droid, the Remote which had formerly belonged to Bao-Dur.
As the Ebon Hawk was in need of much repairs and maintenance, Atton hired a spacer named Cole Terrick to acquire the numerous ship parts that were needed. Through an unknown means, he also acquired 30,000 Republic credits to pay Cole with.
To accomplish his mission, Atton sought out Force-users as allies and decided to track down Atris, as she was the only former Jedi he knew of that might still be alive. He found her in an abandoned monastery on Belsavis, and though she refused to aid him at first, Atton convinced her by comparing her apathy to that of the Jedi Council during the Mandalorian Wars. Subsequently Atris entered a meditative trance in which she used the art of farsight to search for other Jedi survivors. After seeing a lone straggler in the ruins of the Enclave on Dantooine, Atris sent Atton there.
Atton found the straggler in question, who turned out to be a former Padawan named Kaevee. Despite a close encounter with Visas Marr and a company of Sith assassins, the two escaped. Kaevee turned out to have been living alone in the Enclave since it was bombed by Darth Malak nearly a decade prior, and as such was largely ignorant of what had been happening in the galaxy since then. Exhausted and agitated, Atton passed himself off as a Jedi Knight in order to stave off her questions. To his dismay, the Padawan had been followed aboard the Ebon Hawk by a tame laigrek beast which she regarded as a pet. Begrudgingly, Atton agreed to let her keep it.
The pair traveled to Lossway spaceport on Ord Lonesome to meet with Cole Terrick, but the spacer reported that the supplies had been slightly delayed. As they left in frustration, Atton and Kaevee were confronted by a gang of unsavory characters, including the Trandoshan Hossk and the Zabrak Jeller. They threateningly asked questions about the Ebon Hawk, but the confrontation was defused by Cole Terrick, and the crews went their separate ways.
Atton and his charge then went to Belsavis, where they met with Atris. Kaevee was distraught and angered when she finally realized that neither of her new companions were actually Jedi, and Atris was also annoyed with Atton for having deceived the Padawan. Things deteriorated further when it came out that Atris admitted to believing the Jedi Order's teachings to be corrupt, which sparked an argument with the naïve Padawan. When Kaevee declared she would rather be taken back to Dantooine than travel with non-Jedi, Atton stormed out of the room. He spent some hours working on the Ebon Hawk with the droids before the Padawan approached him again. Having taken some time to reconsider her options, she agreed with some reluctance to join the crew after all.
The three departed Belsavis to rendezvous with Cole Terrick in the Ord Lonesome system. While the supplies were being transferred from Terrick's Sharp Turn to the Ebon Hawk, both freighters came under attack by an apparent pirate vessel as well as the Celestus, piloted by Visas Marr. Atton manned the Hawk's turrets while Kaevee and X-C88 completed the transfer. Ultimately they escaped, but the Sharp Turn was destroyed, with Cole Terrick himself forced aboard the Ebon Hawk by Kaevee just before the ships were un-docked. Once they were away, Cole railed against Atton, blaming him for the loss of his ship and livelihood, but when the pilot expressed little remorse for it, the two men scuffled in the main hold.
For several days Atton, Kaevee, and the droids busied themselves with repairing the ship. Though Kaevee instinctively disliked Cole Terrick, she still pitied his misfortunes and showed her displeasure over Atton's callous treatment of him. She also pried into Atton's past with Meetra Surik, though Atton answered only a few questions before shutting the conversation down. Between the menial tasks and their time apart, Atton made a point to tutor Kaevee somewhat on the use of Force powers, observing that her interrupted training and lack of experience was a serious liability.
Terrick himself haunted the ship during this time, doing little except brooding and drinking the Corellian whiskey that was in the cargo hold. After sobering, however, he offered to become a member of the crew, on condition that he be allowed to leave when he saw a favorable opportunity to do so. Atton agreed to this deal, but warned the spacer that he would regret it.
The crew finally journeyed to Daluuj, where Atton and the Remote hijacked an unmanned Republic hyperwave transmitter, using it to send information on the true Sith to Admiral Sargo Opelle. Atton hoped to convince the Republic to delay the Sith invasion by destroying Malachor V, which would be the Second Sith Empire's arrival point. While on their way back to the Ebon Hawk, the crew was ambushed by bounty hunters, who were the same group that had accosted them in Lossway and then attacked in the Ord Lonesome system. Despite killing or wounding a number of their attackers, Atton and his companions were stunned and captured. Awakening outside the sealed Ebon Hawk, Atton was surprised to discover that the hunters' leader was Mira, who had traveled with him and Meetra Surik six years prior. Declining to answer who had hired her, Mira interrogated the crew, pressuring Kaevee to talk by threatening to cut out Cole's eye. The scene was interrupted by Republic soldiers, dispatched by a corvette which had been tracking the Ebon Hawk. The bounty hunters tried to blast their way out, but were stunned, and both crews were taken into custody aboard the Valiant, Admiral Opelle's flagship. After a brief detainment, Atton and his companions were interviewed by the admiral, who believed their claims about the true Sith. For various reasons they were liable to be imprisoned, but he offered to have all charges dropped if they agreed to work for him as members of the Republic's Strategic Information Service. The crew accepted this deal.
Atton, Kaevee, and Cole participated in the Second Battle of Malachor V, the former fighting his way into Singularity Base alongside Republic soldiers to activate the Mass Shadow Generator. Due to heavy infantry casualties, Atton entered the control center alone, confronting Sith assassins and Marauders as well as Lord Silbus, and finally Visas Marr yet again. Kaevee's reckless decision to follow Atton nearly got her killed several times, but she managed to save Atton from Visas Marr by compelling a drexl to attack her. Meanwhile the Remote activated the Mass Shadow Generator, and Atton and his companions escaped with the surviving Republic soldiers before Malachor V was destroyed.
SIS agent[]
In the aftermath, Supreme Chancellor Barris declared war on the Second Sith Empire and ordered a Republic incursion into Sith Remnant holdings in the Outer Rim. Operating under the SIS code name Salvage Team Four, Atton and his crew assisted in this campaign, undertaking covert missions which supported Admiral Opelle's strategic objectives. As well as sabotage and general intelligence gathering, a primary goal of theirs was to discover the new arrival point which the true Sith would use in the absence of Malachor.
Salvage Team Four was eventually sent to Telthek Nest shadowport on the planet Gulvitch, where they met with Republic Intelligence agents Lannik Mai and Rittu Zarander. The two provided information on Torque Highport station, which the Remnant used as its administrative center for the Gordian Reach. It was thought that Prefect Korlen Olligard would have information on the true Sith in his private files. Mai and Zarander had been tracked to Gulvtich by two Sith Adepts, and as a result were killed, though Salvage Team Four escaped. On Krylon, the black marketeer Troycule Rythcema III supplied the team with special assets for infiltrating the station, including an antique star courier. Atris and Atton used this ship to dock with the station, disguising themselves as a Sith Master and her acolyte. Prefect Olligard attacked the two in his office after uncovering the deception, and the Sith Adepts from Gulvitch came to Torque and raised an alarm. However, Atton disabled the prefect, and he and Atris made off with files stolen from his office, escaping in the Ebon Hawk which Kaevee and Cole had docked on the station's depot level.
The stolen data shed no light on the plans of the true Sith, but it did yield strategic data which aided the Republic's campaign in the Gordian Reach. A later mission took Atton and his team to Vaal, where they rescued RI agent Sulen Tusser from Remnant captivity. After learning that the Republic's Obeth refueling station at Landor had been destroyed by Sith sabotage, the team was ordered to search for kolto bulk freighters that were stranded near the Gordian-Thesme border. This led to Atton taking the Ebon Hawk into battle near the Ferrous Aurora Nebula. With the help of Republic fighters from Yellow Squadron's Deneba Flight, Salvage Team Four defended the freighter Errant VI long enough for reinforcements arrive. However, half of Deneba Flight's pilots were killed, and since the Ebon Hawk suffered significant damage, it was taken to Indosa in the cruiser Dauntless. During the trip, Atton was castigated by Commodore Ulric Gortescue, who blamed him for the fighter casualties. Atton defended himself, though, and since SIS operatives were outside the regular chain of command, there was little Gortescue could do to punish him.
On Indosa, both the Ebon Hawk and the Errant VI were among the vessels being repaired in Doscaras Spaceport, and as the days passed the two crews dined together in the mess hall. During this time Kaevee approached Atton, asking if he would join her and Atris in using farsight to try to find more Jedi survivors. Atton deduced that this had been Kaevee's idea, not Atris's, but the main reason he refused, in his words, was "I'm not going to let Jedi or ex-Jedi or the Force go rummaging around inside my head."
Days later the spaceport was attacked by two Remnant saboteurs. Aided by a spaceport worker named Kuar Homonlif, they attempted to destroy Doscaras by engaging the docked Errant VI's hyperdrive. Atton, Cole, and Kaevee foiled the plot with the help of Republic soldiers and the bulk freighter's chief engineer, Torm Heshusa. Kaevee discovered after the crisis that Torm was a former Jedi Padawan like herself, but after he refused to join Salvage Team Four, she recounted their conversation to the rest of the crew. Atton was impressed with Kaevee for uncovering something he had not even suspected, and he agreed with Atris that there was nothing to be done with Torm if he was unwilling to help them.
Soon after the Ebon Hawk's repairs were completed, Admiral Opelle contacted the team, and they left Indosa in haste for their next assignment.
Behind the scenes[]
The author admits that this article is extremely truncated with regard to the events that it purports to detail, and perfunctorily resolves to rewrite it in proper proportions and thoroughness at some nebulous point in the future.