Elten Shaud was a Human male Jedi Guardian based in the Jedi Praxeum at H'ratth. He was one of the first victims of the Sith Lord Darth Rakena, who drove him insane as part of a larger plan to steal a shuttle from the Praxeum in order to get offworld. Later, he became a reluctant member of a group who set out to put an end to Rakena.
History[]
Early life[]
Born on Coruscant to a pair of struggling merchants, Shaud was discovered to have the makings of a Jedi at a very early age, and was thus brought into the nearest Jedi academy. He was eventually accepted as a padawan by a respected Master named Tobar Voon. However, a few years into training, Voon fell under the sway of an obscure school of Jedi thought, the Melders, who taught that any Jedi could merge with the Force by isolating themselves from others. Voon became increasingly less interested in training Shaud, believing that such training was in fact holding Shaud back from reaching his full potential. The Melders were eventually revealed to be a sleeper cell created by the Sith in order to make the Jedi more ineffectual and drive their padawans towards the comparatively proactive Sith, but by then, Voon was long gone. This was to be the first of several misfortunes that would befall Shaud.
Madness[]
After the Melders were revealed to be Sith, Voon quietly relocated to the academy on his homeworld, Rapyuta. Shaud became apprenticed to Duria Midosea, and soon became knighted as a Jedi Guardian. One of his first major cases as a Guardian was the murder of Jedi Master Rennyri Bomban, who'd been murdered by a pair of Sith Marauders, Czarno Sarce and Goss Krieder. Shaud was assigned to watch over the unrepentent Krieder while he awaited sentencing for the murder. However, during the watch, a fire broke out in Bomban's apartments, and Shaud was ordered to respond. While he was away, Krieder escaped. This would leave a black mark on his record for some time afterwards. Around the same time, Jedi Master Ashka Summ had come under scrutiny by the Jedi Council after several of her students had become Sith. Summ had been ordered to undergo Force Separation from her padawan, Chokusha Tsung, and had become mad as a result. She was confined, and apparently killed herself. Shaud was the first person to find her body, and soon after began to lose his mind. He discovered that Summ had not actually died, that she had in fact projected an illusion. He tried to warn others, but they all assumed his stories to be part of his madness. One day, he accidentally struck someone in frustation, and the local council had him sent away to Tarbrigos, an asylum for mad Jedi.
Recruited[]
Shaud spent three long, miserable years at Tarbrigos, and when he was finally released, he wanted nothing more to do with the Jedi, and thus disappeared onto Nar Shaddaa. Eventually, he was found by Chokusha Tsung and Ejif Wetel, who were organizing a quest to find Darth Rakena and bring about her end. Shaud refused to join them at first, but later changed his mind.
Revelations and treachery[]
The girl is a weapon, boy. She cannot be allowed to fall back into Rakena's hands.
—Tobar Voon, about Chokusha Tsung
As part of their journey to find Darth Rakena, Tsung led her crew to Rapyuta to find Jedi Master Tobar Voon, ostensibly to ask him if he could give them any insight into Rakena's mind, as she had been his student before turning to the dark side. In reality, the trip was more for Shaud's benefit; Tsung believed that it would help him if he confronted the man whom he had blamed for much of his problems. Shaud and Voon got into a fight, and Shaud was surprised to find that the old man was much sharper as a fighter than he had expected. Eventually, Shaud yielded, and Voon asked to talk to him about Tsung. Voon revealed the true reason why Tsung and her former Master had been so violently separated years earlier. Tsung, he explained, had a subconscious ability to burn away doubts in other people's minds. In the wrong hands, this ability could have been twisted to eliminate free will in those around her, and the Jedi Council had feared that Rakena would use Tsung to turn even more people to the dark side. Voon told Shaud that he must sabotage the mission in such a way as to prevent Tsung and Rakena from being reunited.