Roni von Wasaki

A Jedi Knight active prior to 20,000 BBY, Roni von Wasaki was respected as both an able administrator and a skilled warrior. In response to a bounty placed on Wasaki by a crime boss, the bounty hunter Leshy Drobo and his droid partner, XT-8, were ultimately successful in capturing the Jedi, whom they froze in carbonite for transportation to the bounty's originator. Wasaki retained his mental faculties and the ability to use the Force, however, and influenced Drobo's mind so that he would release him.
Wasaki's plan backfired, however, when XT-8 confronted and killed his partner, in the process damaging the hyperdrive of the Starkiller, the starship they were traveling aboard. XT-8 then simply continued the journey at subliminal speed, leading the journey to stretch on for twenty millennia, an ordeal during which the imprisoned Wasaki went insane. During the Galactic Civil War, another starship discovered the Starkiller and its crew eventually released Wasaki from carbonite. His madness and growing paranoia soon caused Wasaki to attack his liberators, but they ultimately managed to calm his mind by using the Force.
==Biography==
===Captured===
Roni von Wasaki was a Jedi Knight active at some point prior to 20,000 BBY. He established order in many of the sectors that formed the frontier of the galactic community at the time. Eventually, a crime boss posted a bounty of 100,000 credits on the Jedi's head. Subsequently, many bounty hunters failed to capture Wasaki, until Leshy Drobo and his partners, Gammid and the XT labor droid-turned-assassin droid, XT-8, laid an ambush for the Jedi. Although Gammid died during the confrontation, XT-8 managed to sneak behind Wasaki and stun him while the latter was concentrating on Drobo.
Drobo then confiscated Wasaki's pair of lightsabers, which he stored in the captain's quarters of his freighter, the Starkiller, and then he and XT-8 froze the Jedi into a slab of carbonite. Wasaki's imprisoned form was then stashed in a secret compartment of the Starkiller cargo hold for transportation to the crime lord who had originated the bounty.
Frozen in carbonite, Wasaki remained alive and in perfect hibernation and, by using the Force, managed to keep his mind focused. While Drobo was noting Wasaki's capture in an entry of his personal log, the Jedi begun to subtly influence the bounty hunter via telepathy to release him from the carbonite, although Drobo quickly realized the danger posed by that idea. Shortly after the Starkiller had jumped to hyperspace, however, Wasaki finally implanted a similar suggestion in Drobo's mind, with the bounty hunter beginning to act upon it. However, XT-8 learned of its partner's intentions and confronted Drobo in the freighter's engine room, which led to the former killing the latter, in the process damaging the starship's hyperdrive. As a result, the ship reverted to realspace.
===A journey of millennia===
Since repairing the Starkiller was beyond XT-8's programming, the droid simply continued its mission under sublight speed, turning a brief interstellar trip into a more than twenty-thousand-year-long journey. While Wasaki remained hidden in the Starkiller cargo hold, the year 6900 BBY saw the beginnings of the Sith, which was an order of practitioners of the dark side of the Force that eventually became the ideological opposite of the Jedi Order. In 19 BBY, the Sith brought about the virtual extermination of the Jedi Order and the replacement of the Galactic Republic, which the Jedi had served for twenty-five thousand years, with the Galactic Empire.The Essential Atlas
During the intervening millennia, Wasaki continued to reach out via the Force in order to contact anyone who could liberate him. The perpetual loneliness, fearful dreams, and extreme sensory deprivation that the Jedi endured, however, eventually drove him mad.
===Liberation from imprisonment===
At some point during the Galactic Civil War, fought between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance between 2 BBY and 4 ABY,The New Essential Chronology another starship traveling through hyperspace unintentionally emerged in realspace close to the Starkiller. Attempts by a Force-sensitive member of the other vessel's crew to discern the presence of any living beings aboard the Starkiller were unsuccessful, although at that point Wasaki established telepathic contact with one of the crew-members. In the brief communication, the Jedi only managed to vaguely and almost incoherently point to his situation.
The group then boarded the Starkiller and, during their exploration of the ship, discovered the secret compartment in the cargo hold where the frozen body of Wasaki was located. After de-carbonizing the twenty-thousand-year-old Jedi, the explorers made him comfortable while at the same time attempting to question him, and subsequently both they and the ancient Jedi left the Starkiller and departed aboard the starship the group had arrived on.
===A mad Jedi===
Shortly after the ship entered hyperspace, Wasaki became fearful and, taking one of the vessel's crew-members aside, claimed that something that was also aboard the same ship had "found" him. In response to intense questioning by the individual, the Jedi further asked for help in fighting a physical manifestation of the dark side of the Force that had supposedly followed Wasaki aboard the starship. Noticing that the crew-member was unresponsive to his pleas, Wasaki then stated that he was an embodiment of the light side of the Force and claimed that his death would lead to the disappearance from the galaxy of "all that [was] good and true."
When the crew of the ship realized that Wasaki's mind was disturbed and began planning on how to deal with him, the Jedi entered a catatonic state. Standing rigid with his hands held out before him—in a posture that resembled someone who had been frozen in carbonite—Wasaki resisted all attempts to move him and began using various Force abilities to attack the crew-members. The Jedi then suddenly snapped out of that bizarre state and continued with the offensive, complementing the Force powers with direct attacks with a lightsaber. Eventually, the crew-members managed to calm the mad Jedi's mind via the Force, and one of the individuals requested that Wasaki provide instruction in the use of the Force.
==Personality and traits==
===Imprisoned Jedi===
A short Human male with light skin, dark eyes and hair, and a waxy face, Roni von Wasaki was originally respected by peaceful individuals for his just administration. He was knowledgeable in bureaucracy and adept at balancing wisdom and peace with a struggle for justice, and even after his capture by the bounty hunter Leshy Drobo, the latter considered the former as "tricky" as a Lwen'len Wingor.
The twenty thousand years Wasaki spent frozen in carbonite, which induced in him long, perpetual loneliness, fearful dreams, and extreme sensory deprivation, eventually drove the Jedi mad. During his imprisonment, the captive had been reaching out telepathically in search of help for so long that, eventually, he could no longer control the use of that ability, leading to him constantly attempting telepathic contact with random individuals. When Wasaki finally managed to contact one of his future liberators, the individual was overcome with a chaotic flood of the Jedi's thoughts and fears, amid which Wasaki repeatedly expressed his loneliness and desperation.
===Liberated madman===
By the time he was released from carbonite, Wasaki had also been rendered permanently blind due to a severe case of hibernation sickness. Upon his release, Wasaki was devoid of energy and did not express any emotions. He did not volunteer any information to his liberators, and, when asked a question, he repeated it once or twice before answering in the form of brief, confused fits of rambling.
Soon, Wasaki's paranoia partially contributed to the Jedi experiencing the feeling that he was watched and talked about by someone, and that someone was attempting to enter his mind without permission. He began claiming that a physical manifestation of the dark side of the Force was following him with the intention of killing him. Wasaki also claimed that he embodied the light side of the Force and was not above using the Force to make his listener more receptive to his claims. Eventually, the Jedi's madness caused him to attack the group of individuals that had rescued him from the carbonite imprisonment, although he had not yet succumbed to the dark side of the Force at that point. After the group succeeded in calming Wasaki's mind, the Jedi's former personality began to re-emerge.
==Powers and abilities==
Roni von Wasaki was a warrior skilled enough to be hated and feared by the villains of his time. He was adept at climbing and jumping and was able to simultaneously use two lightsabers in combat. Wasaki was also a skilled user of various Force powers, such as telekinesis and the more offensive Inflict Pain and Injure/Kill. The Jedi could also use the Force to telepathically communicate with other people and affect their minds.
Upon being frozen in carbonite, Wasaki drew on the Force to keep his mind focused. He was able to implant subtle suggestions in Leshy Drobo's mind, but the reputation of his skills backfired when Drobo realized the incongruity of the thought that Wasaki was "harmless" without access to his lightsabers. Over the subsequent twenty millennia, the imprisoned Jedi constantly attempted telepathic contact with anyone who could potentially free him, being able to make his communication attempts overtake an individual's own thoughts and senses and render the receiver's body rigid.
In order to compensate for the blindness induced in him by hibernation sickness, Wasaki learned to see by using the Force. The Jedi's Force skills were not able to protect his mind from madness caused by the imprisonment in carbonite, however. Ultimately, at one point following his release, Wasaki briefly fell into a catatonic state during which he became unaffected by pain.
==Equipment==
Roni von Wasaki's attire was stylistically similar to that of other ancient Jedi. He wore black robes with a belt, under which was a light-colored tunic; black antique armor on his chest, legs, and shoulders; and an ornate horned helm. Wasaki wielded two lightsabers, of which one had a three-feet-long blade and the other, a less-powerful left-hand weapon, only a two-feet-long one. The pommel of Wasaki's main lightsaber's hilt was decorated with a ring to which several ribbons were attached.
==Behind the scenes==
Roni von Wasaki was introduced in "Disturbance in the Force," a roleplaying mini-adventure written by Chris Hind as a supplement for West End Games' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, illustrated by Paul Daly, and published in Challenge 66 in November 1992. In the adventure, if the player characters are unsuccessful at calming Wasaki's mind when he has begun attacking them, his madness leads him to completely turn to the dark side of the Force, and it is suggested that, at a later point, they can encounter the now-evil Jedi as an agent of the Galactic Empire. This article assumes the scenario plays out as described.
"Disturbance in the Force," which was released outside of the Lucas Licensing process and never had its canonicity within the Star Wars Legends continuity confirmed, described Wasaki as wielding lightsabers prior to 20,000 BBY, a fact which was apparently contradicted when the 2005 reference book The New Essential Chronology established that the earliest such weapons were only invented around 15,500 BBY. Furthermore, the Challenge 66 mini-adventure depicts Wasaki's lightsabers without any visible external power packs, a technological development of Jedi lightsaber technology the introduction of which The New Essential Chronology places around 4800 BBY.
==Appearances==
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==Notes and references==
Category:Blind individuals
Category:Humans
Category:Individuals with he/him pronouns
Category:Jedi Knights of the Jedi Order
Category:Jedi Purge survivors
Category:Males