Morgan Katarn

Morgan Katarn was a Force-sensitive Human male from Sulon who became a local leader in the Rebel Alliance, guiding the actions of protesters on the moon against the Galactic Empire, and later the actions of the resistance. His actions were unknown to his son, Kyle Katarn, who had left the moon to take Imperial training.
In order to protect the Sulonese who protested against the Empire, he arranged for them an exodus to a forgotten planet, Ruusan, and while there, thanks to his Force-sensitivity, he discovered a Force nexus, the Valley of the Jedi.
Upon his return to Sulon, he became friends with Jedi Master Qu Rahn, who learned about the Valley from him. Soon later Katarn organised the local resistance during the Subjugation of Sulon in the early Galactic Civil War, and he lost his life to Jerec after refusing to join him to the Dark side and the Empire.
The death of the Sulonese was officially announced as a terrorist act by Rebels, and his son, Kyle, considered them responsible for the loss of his father. Jan Ors revealed to him the truth, which was essential for his change of heart and for abandoning the Imperial Military career. Years later, Jerec would remember Morgan while looking for the Valley of the Jedi; Morgan's and Qu Rahn's legacy played a role for Kyle becoming a Jedi Knight of the New Jedi Order and discovering his powers to confront and stop Jerec.
==Biography==
===Early life===
During childhood, Morgan discovered his Force powers and used them to entertain his younger sister and use telekinesis to "animate" toys; however he even used it to make others do what he wanted. While confronting a bully, he used a Force Push to neutralize him and strike the first blow, but he didn't predict that the boy would stagger to a root, trip and fall over a precipice to his death. Nobody ever learned about that accident but ever since, Morgan was always afraid of the Force, doing a mistake or crossing the boundaries of abuse. He even tried to suppress premonitions that guided him.
He was an agro-mech craftsman and salesmanDark Forces Manual: Coded Transmissions and a self-taught roboticist. As a farmer, a faulty BT-16 perimeter droid killed his wife Patricia and raised their son Kyle Katarn alone. He fashioned for him robotic toy soldiers, who marched on the workshop floor (frequently tripping over) and saluted when they saw Kyle.
Morgan spent a hard-working life in the farm, raising his son, and he couldn't take anything like a vacation since 16 BBY. Father and son formed a strong bond by working together in the laboratory fixing things, and constructing their home droid WeeGee. Morgan was one of the few individuals who still knew a primitive binary code that was used for communication ages ago, and used it to send signals to his agrirobots; he taught it to Kyle.Dark Forces: Jedi Knight audio drama
===Rebel leader===
Although Morgan was sympathetic to the resistance, around 5 BBY he sent his son to the Imperial Academy on Carida in hopes of giving him a proper education. Before leaving, around 6 BBY his son gave him a multitool with his initials engraved on the handle, as a gift. The day they parted, Morgan reminded him how proud he was for him, and made a holorecording.
Morgan was a respected member of the community and became a leading figure of the local resistance movement. He had many friends from Sulon's main planet, Sullust, who belonged to the Rebel Alliance.
In the early days of that resistance, Morgan didn't wish to participate in an anti-Imperial demonstration in Baron's Hed, not believing in its efficacy, and his peers accused him for cowardice. Morgan was proven right when the Empire responded with the massacre of three colonist families, and he had to help them; funded by Rebel sympathizers, he hid 347 colonists in the hold of an old space station, then hired the smuggling ship Cyclops to relocate them to a safe location. The smuggler, Jerg, brought them to an abandoned planet, Ruusan, outside of the Empire's knowledge, where smugglers hid contraband. In order to protect them, Morgan had gathered the Rebels without any information; the day of the Sulon massacre he finally informed them about their destination, only to meet fear and scepticism; which he quieted by revealing to those who didn't know, what happened back home.Dark Forces: Rebel Agent audio drama
===Trip to Ruusan===
Morgan took the first trip of the shuttles, helping mother Roskin by caring for her rumpunctious toddler while landing, who reminded him of his son; he even gave Kyle's multitool to him to play. Once they landed, they approached Fort Nowhere and Morgan picked out some Sulonese with leader potential and led them through a gate. He adviced to stack gear and supplies outside the Fort, in order to remain independent from its influence. For the following couple of planetary days, Morgan welcomed the remaining waves of colonists, ensuring fair treatment between all groups. He helped with the temporary shelters, and the installation of mirrors and fiber-optic cables to in the caverns to illuminate them; he also instructed them to the production healthy crops with the use of fertilizer, drip-style irrigation, and sunlight. He also taught them the binary code of communication, not used by the Empire any more, so that they could safely communicate between themselves and recognise each other.
Jerg had mentioned that while the Sulonese were being landing on the otherwise empty, planet, one of his crewmen noticed something "suspicious" in the badlands, but refused to send any reconaissance, as it wasn't in their agreement; Katarn considered it his responsibility to explore it himself to ensure there was no danger for his people. When he felt that the settlers should continue on their own, he borrowed Jerg's skimmer, named Old Codger, gear and supplies, and set off for exploration the next morning. He followed an ancient roadbed (maintaining contact with Jerg via comlink) and made his stop to a peculiar rock for rest; there he found signs, and also felt strong premonitions, about the presence of sentient life. His disturbing feelings made him to change his plans and continue his road westwards, despite the glare and the extreme heat. He eventually parked among some dunes and had dinner; then the feeling that someone is approaching returned. Because of his disadvantageous situation he welcomed the Force and armed himself; he saw fifty to sixty beings approaching him, but deciding that they looked harmless, he went to meet them.
Thus he made contact with the planet's native inhabitants, whom he named "Bouncers", who recognised him as a "Knight", a figure whom they expected according to their legend, the Poem of Ages, who would spend a night in Olmondo and would reach the Valley of the Jedi. Morgan refused that he was a Jedi Knight, that he stayed in Olmondo or that he saught that Valley, but the Bouncers insisted that he was, proving that they were standing on the very ruins of Olmondo that night. Morgan therefore learned the location of the mythical Valley, situated at an ancient battle site on the planet, a source of almost unlimited power, and heard the voices of spirits of those who were buried there. The feeling was overwhelming and he left crying. As he drove back to the Fort he blamed himself for not being able to help the imprisoned spirits, and needed days to feel normal again.
He didn't reveal his find to Jerg nor even to the colonists; the following months he was tormented by an overwhelming burden and guilt and the inability to share his experience with anyone.
===Rebel leader===
Leaving the colonists on Ruusan, Morgan returned to his homeworld and continued his Rebel operations; months after his return, he was visited by Rebel Jedi Qu Rahn whom he hosted. He finally found a person he could trust to share his experience, and the spirits that required a Jedi Knight to deliver them. Rahn, who had been looking for the Valley in the past, considered organising an expedition of experts there to investigate, with Morgan as their leader. But as that knowledge was dangerous, Morgan should not reveal not even to the Alliance, even Rahn refused to possess the knowledge himself; according to his instructions, Morgan designed and put a complex map of Ruusan on the roof of his home believing that nobody would notice its existence. Morgan also was entrusted with the lightsaber of his Jedi friend, which he placed within a hidden compartment in WeeGee. Along with this, Morgan created a holorecording for his son Kyle that only the droid could decode. It told Kyle of his Jedi potential and of the importance of protecting the location of the Valley of the Jedi, as well as entrusting Rahn's Lightsaber to him. Morgan then resumed his farming work for winter.
The Imperial agent Jerec knew about Katarn and his powers and was interested in him personally; during the Subjugation of Sulon he ordered the Ghost Battalion to capture him alive. Led by Lieutenant Brazack and disguised as Rebels, the Battalion launched a raid on Sulon. A Corellian light feighter killed the Danga family and burned the Katarn homestead, but Morgan avoided capture as he was absent and watched everything from afar, also receiving a warning message from WeeGee on his beeper. He noticed that the raiders looked like Rebels but some details betrayed that they weren't; he secretly recorded the attack with his electrobinoculars before the soldiers left, which he presented shortly later in a Rebel meeting. Katarn mostly worried about WeeGee, and about the map that Rahn had entrusted him.
In the meeting of the Rebel representatives, more attacks were reported; Skorg Jameson considered they were an attempt to attack the G-Tap, to force the population of Sulon to depend on the SoroSuub Corporation, buy a fusion plant and, by extension, pay taxes to the Empire; he advised to openly strike back. Morgan warned that perhaps the reasons of the assaults was a bait to lure them into open warfare and thus destroy all Rebel presence on the moon. Jameson's rhetoric prevailed, and after hours of discussion, it was decided to put all their forces to openly fight for the precious G-Tap.
===Last stand===
As Morgan was one of the leaders with the least military expertise, he was relegated to an easily defended passageway at the G-Tap cavern, and was assigned to command 26 teenagers and seniors. In preparation for the assault, he met there Candice Ondi and her droid A-Cee, and lied that he was optimistic for the outcome.
During the defense, he fought next to the veteran Crowley, the only member with real combat experience. The rebels successfully destroyed an AT-ST before he noticed the arrival of the same assault ship that attacked his farm; he ordered everyone into the passageway, and the missile team, Trol and Jen to destroy it with SLM, but they were killed before stopping the ship from landing.
Katarn's team tried to keep of the Imperial commandoes exiting the ship. His team was ever diminishing and they fell back, while Katarn himself was wounded, but found time to hide and feed A-Cee with information and footage; he ordered the droid to find its way to the Rebel command, covering his retreat to the Barons Hed spaceport, before Morgan was discovered by Imperials and stunned.
===Morgan's death===
The fight lasted four hours, and only 37 survived. Morgan along with others who could still stand were lined up in front of the G-Tap, inspected by Noda. Morgan along with other leaders were arrested for interrogation and the rest were executed.
He was brought aboard the Vengeance and injected with some drug that awoke him and made his senses alert to the extreme, in order to experience all pain from torture. He was brought in front of Jerec himself. After some defiant comments, and an attempt to spit Jerec's face, Jerec saw that he would not cooperate, and beheaded him. His last thoughts were his wife, and the man that his son would become.
==Legacy==
Morgan's head was then placed on a spike outside the walls of Barons Hed, a sight that was recorded by A-Cee. Meanwhile in the Academy, Kyle was informed that his father was killed by Rebels, causing him to despise the Rebellion. Only when Jan Ors revealed the truth, thanks to A-Cee's footage, and Kyle learned that his father was a Rebel killed by the Empire, he followed in his footsteps and deserted the Empire.
Kyle always carried with him the holocube with their last meeting before leaving Sulon, and replayed it at some times. During his days as a mercenary he also looked for the man who murdered him.
What Jerec did not know at this time was the map to the Valley of the Jedi within the roof of his homestead. He later found the map after forcing the information from the mind of Qu Rhan. He ordered his minions to salvage what they could from the homestead but with no success. One of those things was an important-looking encrypted holodisk found by 8t88; among other things, the disk was intended to tell Kyle about the Valley of the Jedi. Katarn later confiscated the disk, but secretly his partner Jan Ors partially decrypted it, and without his knowledge or authorization, played Morgan's hologram before Mon Mothma, Luke and Leia, thus learning about the Valley and notifying the Alliance what the Imperial Remnant was after. Eventually Kyle played it with the help of WeeGee, and it was the beginning of his dury as a Jedi Knight.
The Force ghost of Qu Rahn reached Kyle at several points, and confirmed the existence of Morgan's spirit being always with the Force, and with Kyle. After Kyle displayed mercy towards his first Dark Jedi adversary, Yun, deciding to spare his life, Rahn reassured the fledgling Jedi that both he and his father were proud for him. Soon later Luke Skywalker met Kyle and silently heard a line from the Poem of Ages from Morgan's spirit, which he uttered to Kyle and Jan Ors.
The quest for the Valley eventually brought Kyle to avenge his father by killing Jerec. He honored his father and Qu Rahn by carving their monuments in the Valley, among those of the great Jedi who fought in the Battle of Ruusan.
Morgan appeared as a Force ghost—speaking to Luke Skywalker about the Valley of the Jedi. Years later, he appeared again to his son Kyle when the latter, grieving for the death of Jan Ors, returned to the Valley of the Jedi to regain his Force powers.Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
==Personality and traits==
Katarn was a man of responsibility and modesty, and his powers and authority brought him insecurities. Katarn felt himself to be flawed and unworthy of the gift of the Force. After the accidental death of that boy, he hesitated to learn more about it, fearing that he might misuse it, a stance that Jerec knew and derided. Although the Force revealed to him knowledge that he didn't wish to know, he tried to ignore or suppress his "feelings" and think with logic, but he often followed its will unconsciously. A creative and crafty man, Morgan possessed rare knowledge, including a primitive binary code of communication, long-considered obsoleted by the Imperial Period.
Katarn felt sympathy with the fellow Sulonians and their problems during the Imperial years, and although admiring their nonviolent resistance, he didn't espouse their philosophy as it would be ineffective and slow in the case of the Empire, and would cause more suffering. His choice to not participate with their initial demonstrations was sometimes considered cowardice. Although he believed that only armed resistance would bring the Empire down, he opposed to openly resist the Ghost Battalion, as he (correctly) felt it was a trap to lure all the Rebels out, expose and annihilate them.
A Force sensitive, his choices and fears while leading the Sulonese Rebels proved to be correct, although he was not always understood or heard by his peers. While leading fugitives to Ruusan, his mind was still, even upon arrival, full of worries and fears if he missed something, from whether the planet would be unsuitable to whether the Imperials would discover them.
A disciplined and hardened farmer, he wanted his job and obligations to be finished before resting or eating. He displayed leading abilities and charisma, teaching and instructing the colonists the science of farming, supporting, guiding and helping them, to the point that some of them became too dependent on his leadership, while others chafed under it. He proved his leading talent once more when he felt the right time to leave them in and let them move on with their own leaders.
Although he dedicated that latter part of his life to work and his son, he never lost his curiosity and desire for learning and exploration. His trip to Ruusan was the first opportunity, after years, to still some time for himself, and he opted to explore the planet by following the ruins of an old highway, something that apparently nobody cared to do before.
==Behind the scenes==
Morgan Katarn was portrayed by Jacob Witkin for the live-action sequences of Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, and all other appearances of Morgan are based on Witkin's likeness. Morgan Katarn was voiced by David Chase in Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire audio drama and Dark Forces: Rebel Agent audio drama. Jacob Witkin later reprised his role as Morgan Katarn in Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast.
There appears to be some conflict between the sources regarding the death of Morgan Katarn. In Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire, Jerec beheads him with a vibroblade while he is too injured and exhausted to talk or interact with Jerec; yet in the Soldier for the Empire audio dramatization Morgan is well enough to make some ironic remarks to Jerec and refuse his cooperation before being beheaded with his lightsaber. In another source, Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, Maw tells Kyle that Jerec gave Morgan a slow death.
In Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Morgan Katarn's multiplayer skin is used in campaign mode as a single, generic Jedi in the Yavin IV level.
==Appearances==
*Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire 
*Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire audio drama
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*Dark Forces: Rebel Agent
*Dark Forces: Rebel Agent audio drama
*Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II 
*Dark Forces: Jedi Knight 
*Dark Forces: Jedi Knight audio drama 
*Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast 
*Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy 
==Sources==
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*Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II: The Official Strategy Guide
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*The New Essential Guide to Characters
*Power of the Jedi Sourcebook
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*Star Wars: Empire at War: Prima Official Game Guide 
*The New Essential Guide to Droids
*Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption Expansion: Prima Official Game Guide 
*The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
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*The Essential Reader's Companion
==Notes and references==
Category:Alliance to Restore the Republic members
Category:Farmers
Category:Force ghosts
Category:Humans
Category:Males
Category:Sulonese