Once upon a time, my people were at one with them. The Charon Dominion is the damnation of all things, and if you do not realize this now, you soon will. They believe themselves to be your saviors as much as they purpose themselves as your executioners. If defiance is your choice, you will only find that their terrible will is far more arduous to deny than you can possibly imagine.
—Savelle Ulesari
The Charon Dominion, commonly addressed simply as the Dominion, was the highest ruling governmental power in Otherspace, in existence long before the era of the Ruusan Reformation and the dawn of the Galactic Empire. Established well over one thousand years before the Battle of Yavin IV, the Charon Dominion was founded out of the foundations of a fanatically genocidal death-worshiping cult, and was responsible for arguably the most grandiose mass-scale genocide ever known, called the Oblivion Crusades, where the Charon successfully wiped out all known life in the Otherspace galactic dimension over the course of several consecutive centuries. Because the term Charon held dual meaning toward either the species or the people following their ideals and philosophies, the Charon government under the species is often known as the First Dominion, with the reformed government under Human supremacy called the Second Dominion, in order to draw a distinction between the two sovereignties.
Very similar to the Sith empires of old, the Charon Dominion was a totalitarian state which was both theocratic and magocratic; the Savant Caste, the religious class of Charon society, holding the highest authority, with the Savant Caste's leader, the Prophet of the Void, effectively being the absolute sovereign. The Savant Caste presided over the judicial and legislative matters of the Dominion, leaving the military, security and enforcement to the Zealot Caste, which were the Charon warriors as well as the military forces of the vassal races. The Zealot Caste functioned as the executive force of the Dominion, although were largely authoritatively inferior to the Savant Caste. The only exceptions to this were the Oracle and the High Preliator, who were considered to be of equal authoritative rank beneath the Prophet of the Void; the Oracle acted as the functioning leader of the Savant Caste beneath the Prophet of the Void, while the High Preliator acted as the supreme commander of the Zealot Caste and military forces, likewise in submission to the Prophet of the Void.
For most of its existence, the Charon Dominion functioned less as a centralized government than it did as a marauding military force. The Charon Dominion lacks an economy, a diplomatic corps, any true political infrastructure or internal corruption. The education of Charon youths was completely controlled by the Savant Caste, which shaped and molded all future Savants or Zealots. Voidborn are especially sheltered until fully trained as Savants themselves, and functioned as the "nobles" of society within the Charon Dominion. During the Extant War, the Charon Dominion came into violent contact with several governmental powers of the galaxy in realspace, including the Galactic Federation, the Sith Hegemony, the Galactic Imperium, the Hapes Consortium and the Hutt Dynasty, caused the destruction of several interplanetary governments, including the Centrality Confederacy, the Chiss Ascendancy, the Atrisian Commonwealth, and the Gree Enclave, and subjugated and enslaved such species as the Yuuzhan Vong, the Chazrach, and the Yevetha.
History[]
The Great Collapse[]
The beautiful irony of the Charon's invasion is that it wasn't an invasion at all. It was simply... a return. One awaited from long, long ago. Back to a galaxy they'd forgotten they once knew.
—Tyrion Aetus
A fact forgotten by the Charon and known only by the surviving remnants of the Void of Animus movement, the Charon species was native, not to Otherspace, but to the realspace galaxy. Then known as the Charr Ontee, the ancestors of the Charon were in actuality refugees fleeing an attack by a powerful Dark Jedi, over one thousand years before the Battle of Yavin, who attempted to seize the Kathol technology from the Charr Ontee by enslaving them. At that approximate time, the Jedi Knights were dispatched by the Jedi Order to liberate the Charr Ontee and defeat the Dark Jedi subjugating them. In the ensuing battle, many Charr Ontee were freed and being prepared to evacuate the planet for the duration of the conflict between the Jedi Knights and the Dark Jedi's forces.
It was at some point during this conflict that the Dark Jedi caused the detonation of an ancient Kathol technology, known as a hyperspace Launch Gate. The resulting explosion caused a breakdown in space and formed a dimensional space-time anomaly. The cascading explosion from the Launch Gate ravaged the Kathol Sector, and the refugee ships housing the liberated Charr Ontee were assimilated into the event horizon, "flipped" into a parallel galactic dimension that would later come to be known as Otherspace. From that point onward, the entire galactic sector would become spatially destabilized and hazardous to hyperspace travel, and henceforth named the Kathol Rift, with the event itself becoming memorialized as the Great Collapse.
The Great Collapse would ultimately serve as a matter of great intrigue for Xenoarcheologists across the galaxy for centuries to come, as it became speculated that, while the Launch Gates caused the Great Collapse, the space of the Kathol sector had already been unstable, albeit to a much lesser extent, prior to the event. Consequently, it was a common theory following the Great Collapse that the space of the Kathol sector had been, either in whole or in part, an artificially constructed anomaly, potentially a work of the original Kathol species or even the Celestials, with characteristics that had simply been enhanced by the Rift Disaster.
Degeneration on Erebus[]
Due to the initial chaos that marked the early arrival into Otherspace, no records existed that highlighted the first age of the Charr Ontee that were absorbed into the Rift Disaster. It was known, however, that the Charr Ontee had settled on the dark world of Erebus. It was then believed that warlords and despots had risen and fallen during this time period, although it was also said that none among the Charon truly knew what happened during that time.
It was theorized by some among the Jedi Order that the radically different environment of Otherspace, including the nearby, and then dreaded, presence of the Eye of Atheatos, the lack of bright stars and the barren nature of the planet drove the Charr Ontee from their previously benign nature. On the contrary, after the discovery of the Voidborn, many Sith instead speculated that it was the presence of the Void that mutilated and devolved them. Regardless of the cause, within relatively short order, the Charr Ontee had degenerated into the Charon, a death-worshiping society that saw death and annihilation as the means of salvation and enlightenment.
The Cult of Death[]
Both the time and manner in which the Cult of Death rose to power is unknown, even by the Charon, and is mostly referred to by them as their "days of ignorance". By some implication of Charon legends regarding the time period, it was strongly implied that there was another species native to Erebus at the time of the Charr Ontee's arrival, which became a subjugated species by the time of their devolution into the Charon.
In some degree at least, the Charon species had created facets of the early workings of their caste system. Although the indigenous species of Erebus was unknown, with some Charon scholars during the time of the Extant War speculating such information was stricken, as opposed to lost or neglected, it was through that species that the Charon species came into contact with a force that would become a driving force in exponentially augmenting the fanaticism and radicalization of their society. Such changes in transforming the Charon from a cult into a galactic power came through a non-Charon figure - a thrall - known in their legend as the First Prophet.
First contact with the Void[]
When the battle is born, holy power power foresworn, and the thralls of defiance destroyed; In Oblivion's roar, then shall come our great war, with a lord who dared harken the Void
—Excerpt from the Poem of the First One
The first exposure the Charon had with the Void came through an enslaved species, strongly implied to have been an indigenous species to Erebus prior to the Charon's arrival.