Yakun Kwaad

Yakun Kwaad was a male Yuuzhan Vong who was an initiate of the shaper caste and a member of Domain Kwaad. As a shaper, Kwaad was schooled in bioengineering and the use of the Yuuzhan Vong's organic technology. Rather than observing the strict laws that governed the shaper caste, however, Kwaad deviated from the orthodox approach to shaping and practiced heresy. The young shaper initiate was discovered and executed for his crimes. Up until his death, Kwaad was the lover of fellow shaper Nen Yim.
==Biography==
===Life and death===
Yakun Kwaad was a male Yuuzhan Vong who was a member of Domain Kwaad and a shaper in service to the Yuuzhan Vong empire. Yuuzhan Vong shapers were essentially scientists, who had been taught to manipulate and improve the biotechnology of the species. An initiate of the caste, Kwaad was at one point present on Baanu Kor, a Yuuzhan Vong Koros-Strohna worldship, where he once tended the mernip breeding pools of the vessel along with a fellow initiate, Nen Yim. At some point during his time on the worldship, he and Nim became lovers.
Kwaad, however, was a heretic. The shaper caste was governed by strict laws, and shaping procedure was laid down in a series of protocols, deviation from which was considered heresy. After Kwaad and Yim had become romantically involved, his heresy was discovered. For the Yuuzhan Vong, the punishment for heresy was death, and Kwaad was summarily accused and sacrificed to their gods. Before his execution, he and Yim shared forbidden moments of passion together.
===Legacy===
Nen Yim also carried out heresy and, in 26 ABY, did so under the auspices of her similarly heretical master, Mezhan Kwaad, on the moon of Yavin 4. In an attempt to discover the suspected heresy of Yim and Mezhan Kwaad, Master Shaper Yal Phaath dispatched an initiate, Tsun Qel, to approach Yim while Mezhan Kwaad was absent.
Qel inveigled himself into Adept Yim's confidences by talking to her about Yakun Kwaad and claiming that not only had he been a friend of the executed heretic, but also that Mezhan Kwaad had sent him to Yim to relate the details of Yakun's fate, to prove that Qel could be trusted. Yim trusted the beguiling initiate, chiefly due to his knowledge of her dead lover, and was subsequently exposed, along with her master, as a heretic.
==Personality and traits==
Yakun Kwaad was a heretic who defied the laws of his caste and species, and was subsequently executed for his transgression. He and Nen Yim shared a passionate, forbidden love for one another, of which she possessed strong memories long after his death. Kwaad's personality was similar to the one affected by Tsun Qel to gain Yim's trust, and the passion Qel showed for seeking forbidden knowledge made her feel as if her lover had been reborn.
==Behind the scenes==
Although Yakun Kwaad is only mentioned in Greg Keyes' 2001 novel The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory I: Conquest, he plays a role in advancing the plot of the story, as it is through Tsun Qel's invocation of Kwaad's name that Yim and her master are discovered as heretics, leading to the showdown at the end of the novel between the two shapers and the novel's main protagonists, Shamed One Vua Rapuung and Jedi Anakin Solo. Yim's affair with the heretic shaper also advances her character's backstory.
==Appearances==
*The New Jedi Order: Edge of Victory I: Conquest 
==Notes and references==
Category:Domain Kwaad
Category:Males
Category:Yuuzhan Vong shapers