Meerto Adrimbani was a Veknoid Jedi Knight of the Old Jedi Order who was born over two thousand years before the Battle of Yavin. Departing the Jedi Order in disgust upon the onset of the New Sith Wars, he accompanied a group of other Jedi into the Unknown Regions. There they fell to the dark side and launched the Nightmare War.
Biography[]
Watching[]
Born on the Veknoid homeworld of Moonus Mandel, Meerto Adrimbani was identified as a Force-sensitive while still an infant and taken for training at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. To compensate for his small stature, he elected to practice Ataru. As a Padawan, his Master often had to remind him to focus on the Unifying Force, as young Meerto had a tendency to become bogged down in small issues and forget the larger picture.
When he was knighted, Meerto elected to serve as a Jedi Sentinel. Early on, he worked as a Jedi Investigator, assisting law enforcement in solving particular complex crimes. At the age of thirty, he became the Jedi Watchman for his home planet of Moonus Mandel, and resided there nearly full time. Reporting back to the Temple only when summoned, Adrimbani developed many friendships and contacts among his fellow Veknoids, and felt he was serving the Force and the galaxy best by making sure individuals did not slip through the cracks.
Gray and black[]
Already something of a Gray Jedi due to his narrow focus on Moonus Mandel and his general isolation from other Jedi, Meerto was not altogether pleased to be recalled to Coruscant when the former Jedi Phanius emerged as the Sith Lord Darth Ruin. The Jedi Council was preparing to fight Phanius and his acolytes, and had pulled all available Jedi home for the campaign. Adrimbani unsuccessfully petitioned to return to his Watchman duties, fearing that the Order's single-minded focus on the Sith threat would leave average citizens open to predation.
Disgusted by the Council's refusal, Adrimbani would likely have become a rogue and returned to Moonus Mandel anyway had he not chanced to cross paths with the Arkanian Jedi Master Desha Marad and the historian Tirj. The two Jedi were part of a larger group planning to leave the Order—and indeed the known galaxy—behind and seek true peace elsewhere. Three other Jedi Masters were part of the group, one of them a Council member, which helped convinced Adrimbani that the Order was too far gone to ever refocus on the needs of individuals. Wearied by the lack of response to his concerns from the Council, Adrimbani asked to join the group.
The Jedi had procured a sleeper ship from the Gree Enclave, and set out toward the Unknown Regions, freezing themselves in stasis and intending to awaken when the ship arrived at a planet. However, the archaic system malfunctioned; while the Jedi were immobilized, their minds awoke. Forced to endure millennia of waking paralysis, linked to one another telepathically through the Force, they gradually went insane and fell to the dark side.
Armorer[]
The Jedi finally awoke twenty-one centuries after their departure from the Republic, arriving at Kizav in 148 ABY. Meerto joined his brethren in a mindless slaughter of the native Skavik until Ador Hentral and Desha Marad reined them in. They turned the Skavik into an army and unleashed them on the neighboring Golden Empire.
In the Nightmare War, Meerto Adrimbani saw front line action only during the initial campaigns, up through and including the sack of Dolomir. After the death of Sacco Vyrak at Daispin, Desha Marad hatched his ambitious plan to clone the dead Anzat many times over. As wave after wave was grown, Adrimbani was charged with producing lightsabers for the Vyrak Legions. He was discontent with his role, and occasionally lashed out, killing Skavik or even the nascent Vyrak clones, which led to furious arguments with Marad and other Dark Jedi.
As the pool of clones grew larger (while also becoming less skillful and stable), more of the Dark Jedi had to assist in lightsaber construction, and Adrimbani's constant griping and occasional tantrums began to wear on their already fragile grip on reality. His comingled insults and whining got him into an argument with Tirj and the Mon Calamari Wuluro. In the ensuing squabble, Tirj smashed Wuluro's head between his hands, killing her. The incident led to increasing paranoia among the dwindling ranks of the Dark Jedi, and occasional clashes which left them all with lightsaber burns.
After the death of Tirj at the Battle of Quadia, Adrimbani became sullen and refused to work, despite cajoling and even threats from Hentral and Marad. Stopped every time he tried to board a ship bound for the front lines, he began to suffer cabin fever, sitting in silence for days on end, talking to himself, and shrieking and using telekinesis on anyone who came close by. Shortly before Rin Sakaros arrived to destroy the Kizav system, a troop of clones were being loaded onto a transport ship and, in a sudden fit of rage, Adrimbani jumped on one of them and chopped off his head. As the clones stared vacantly and Marad screamed at him, Adrimbani cackled and leapt onto the warming engine of the transport. He grabbed on to the metal there, smiling insanely, and was roasted alive as the ship's engines ignited.
Powers and abilities[]
As a Jedi Sentinel, Meerto Adrimbani had a number of mundane talents not shared by his Dark Jedi colleagues. Used to being in the field without support for months or even years at a time, he was skilled at assembling lightsabers quickly, able to turn out a functional weapon in two or three days. It was this skill which led his brethren to assign him to weapons production for the clones of Sacco Vyrak.
Adrimbani was an Ataru stylist who could hold his own against most of his fellow Dark Jedi, though his skills were nowhere near those of Sacco Vyrak or Vev Nar. As a Jedi Knight, he developed good investigative and problem-solving skills from his years as a Jedi Investigator.
Appearance and personality[]
Of moderate height for a Veknoid at 1.47 meters (4'10"), Meerto had orange skin with mottled pale spots and dark eyes. He often dressed in nondescript clothing as a Jedi, the better to blend in and observe his environment without standing out; he continued the same habit as a Dark Jedi, but allowed his clothing to fray to rags. His Jedi lightsaber bore the yellow blade common to Jedi Sentinels. When he began manufacturing weapons for the Anzati clones, he occasionally made one he liked and switched it out for his current weapon, going through several before his death.
As a Jedi, Adrimbani was deeply concerned with the affairs and struggles of ordinary citizens. His time as both a criminal investigator and a Jedi Watchman brought him into regular contact with normal citizens, and he began to feel that the Jedi on Coruscant devoted attention to the large issues of the galaxy at the expense of everyday people. His Jedi comrades were divided in their opinions of him; some felt he was the model of a Jedi's compassion for all life, while others believed he had allowed himself to develop dangerous attachments.
Adrimbani was one of the most radically changed of the Dark Jedi after their millennia in waking stasis. His concern for all life had turned into a hatred of everything, including the Force, his Dark Jedi colleagues, and himself. He resented being kept on Kizav as a glorified weapons maker, and took his frustration out on any available target even as the shreds of his sanity faded away. His madness and despondency finally culminated in his suicide.