Cronal

Warlord (Imperial Remnants)
Director of Military Intelligence (Galactic Empire)
 Age
 Status
 Weight

**Cronal**, born with the name **Perek**, was a male Human and dark side cultist who'd in his Imperial service be given the code named **Blackhole**, as the leader of the Galactic Empire's Imperial Intelligence. Following the Battle of Yavin and the destruction of the Death Star, Cronal would often collaborate with Sith Lord Darth Vader to eradicate the rebellion. Adept at divination, Cronal was recruited by the Emperor himself from Cronal's cult to join the Empire. He abandoned himself to his meditations in the dark side, through which he became withdrawn, becoming physically weak, and paranoid. Considered Palpatine's "monster-maker", Cronal was responsible for the making of several biological experiments using ancient techniques derived from the Sith. As time passed, Cronal withdrew further, growing steadily more mad as the dark side had consumed him.

Just as the Emperor began to loose faith in him, Cronal exiled himself in the middle of the Galactic Civil War to the Outer Rim and later the Unknown Regions. There Cronal would remake himself both through the Force and cybernetic enhancement. After the fall off the Galactic Empire, Cronal would return as a warlord, and took the name **Shadowspawn**. With a cadre of the Emperor's Royal Guards and a legion of Shadow Troopers at his disposal, Cronal made plans to destroy the New Republic's hold on the galaxy and lay waste to those who would deny the return of the Empire. To this end, Cronal's splinter faction would often disguise there acts of war against the Republic as random acts of piracy, mass slaughter, and terrorism. In the decades following the Empire's defeat, in addition to Cronal's faction, a new faction would rise among the Imperial Remnants called the First Order, which would prove to be the most powerful of the Remnants.

## Biography

### Dark Origins

**Cronal's** true origins have always been shrouded in mystery, with rumors of his early life circulating throughout the Empire. Some believed he was once a member of the Galactic Republic's government who conspired with the Emperor prior to the birth of the Galactic Empire, while other rumors asserted that he was an assistant at the Jedi Archives on Coruscant who was ultimately seduced by the dark side of the Force and sided with the Sith in their return to power. Lord Cronal was, in fact, originally a member of a dark side cult based in the Unknown Regions. The cultists took him from his mother at birth and raised him as one of their members. He was taught to harness the power of the dark side and use it to project a number of abilities. During his time with the cultists he fathered a child, Sariss, who would to be raised by the dark side worshipers, and like her father would receive massive abuse forging a hatred that would fuel the dark side within them.

### Imperial Intelligence

Around the time of the birth of the Galactic Empire, Cronal left the dark side cult that had raised him and would eventually be recruited by the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious, who saw Cronal's power over the dark side as something that could not be ignored. Cronal would be placed as the director of Imperial Intelligence, given his abilities of divination being unequaled. Around the time of his being assigned the role of director, Cronal would come into contact with Inquisitor Jerec, and Cronal spoke to Jerec about the rumors regarding the Valley of the Jedi. Lord Cronal's addition to the ranks of Imperial Intelligence was so smooth that few even realized he had joined. Cronal himself was extremely reclusive, even more so than Darth Sidious himself. In addition to his Intelligence position, Cronal also became one of the Emperor's personal operatives using fear and paranoia as his tools. Most of his work was carried out through droids, agents, and various fronts.

In his rare appearances, Cronal presented himself through a holographic transmitter equipped with an image distorter and went by his code name, **Blackhole**. Blackhole, to most, took the form of a vaguely humanoid figure anywhere from two to three meters tall, and the voice Blackhole transmitted was modulated so as to be androgynous. As head of Intelligence, Cronal was granted virtually unlimited access and control over the Imperial HoloNet. He could take control of and appear in any holocomm unit in the Imperial Navy, or any one connected to the few civilian HoloNet nodes that still existed. He had unrivaled access to the galaxy's enormous quantities of information, and would spend his time in his sanctum meditating over the data that flowed across his screens and awaiting visions from the dark side of the Force.

### Cybernetic Enhancement

Only a handful knew Cronal's true form of an old man who had become weaker with his many years of depending on the dark side for power. The darkness would over the years drained Cronal of his physical and mental health, forcing him to spend his time in a specially-designed life support chamber. To aid his servant, Palpatine gifted Cronal with many attempts at increasing Cronal's state including medicines and early experimental surgeries, which the Emperor would later keep in mind should he be forced to rely on those surgeries if he suffers the same conditions as Cronal. When these treatments failed to yield permanent results, the Emperor sent one of his best scientists, Cylo, to improve Cronal's condition.

With his numerous cybernetic enhancements thanks to the assistance of Cylo-IV, Cronal had dedicated himself to becoming a master not only of the Sith ways but of cybernetic and genetic engineering, using these abilities to further his own personal experiments. These experiments would range from cyborgs to mutants that Cronal had created, earning Cronal the epithet of the monster maker. When working on one of his projects, he would often turn to Cylo whose assistance would prove beneficial to Cronal's work. In addition to modern science, in his experiments Cronal used ancient alchemy derived from ancient Sith scrolls to create monsters that had not seen the light of day in millennia.

A few weeks following the Battle of Yavin, Cylo would be labeled a traitor and killed by Darth Vader, forcing Cronal to continue his experiments without Cylo's assistance. Yet there would be one final gift that Cronal would receive unintentionally from Cylo, the corpse of the cyborg Karbin. Having acquired Karbin's body from the Imperial Palace, Cronal began studying the cybernetic systems in the hopes of replicating them to enhance Cronal's own physical condition, all the while incinerating the unnecessary biological matter left over from the experiments. Karbin's cybernetic form which had been inspired by the deceased Grievous, would now be the inspiration for Cronal's new cybernetic body.

### Encounters with the Rebels

Almost immediately after the Battle of Yavin, the Rebel Alliance had begun increasing its activities from attacking Imperial facilities to enlisting numerous pilots and soldiers into their ranks. By the time of around a year following Yavin, Cronal had begun assisting Palpatine's apprentice, Darth Vader, with discovering the rebels means of recruitment and cut off their number of volunteers. Whenever the Empire managed to secure enemy recruiters, Cronal believed that they should be executed on sight to showcase the Empire's wrath, but Darth Vader would order the prisoners be interrogated and cover up the Empire's involvement. As Cronal's attempts at cutting off the rebel recruiters and infiltrating their ranks became more and more frequent, the Rebel Alliance began gathering all information available to them on the mysterious figure called Blackhole. The rebels surmised that Blackhole was the coordinator of the Shadow Troopers, a high ranking member of if not the director of Imperial Intelligence, and given his surprising accuracy with determining rebel strategies a Force-Sensitive.

### Exile in the Unknown Regions

Around two years following the Battle of Yavin, as Cronal's madness and paranoia increased, the Emperor began to rely on him less, though he remained an effective enemy of the rebellion. The Rebel Alliance would deploy its own series of attacks on Blackhole, but before they had the chance to end Cronal's reign of terror, Cronal fled into the Outer Rim Territories and later the Unknown Regions of his own accord. In exile, Cronal began to feel his body dying after receiving a terminal report, forcing him to initiate his plans of gaining immortality. Using advanced cybernetics including the corpse of Karbin, Cronal began the process of replacing all his biological material, except his vital organs such as his heart and brain. With all his years of serving under Darth Sidious, Cronal had gathered a wide array of knowledge of the Sith and their ways, and began to use this knowledge to prolong his life and increase his power. Using the teachings of the Sith, and his expertise in the field of modern technology, Cronal had given himself the skills and traits needed to gain power both politically and thought the dark side.

In the wake of Palpatine's death at Endor and the Galactic Empire's retreat into the Unknown Regions, Cronal began to put his plan of galactic domination in motion. He made contact with various factions of the Imperial Remnants, and gathered several of them to join his cause including gaining the support of Sate Pestage whom was a member of the Imperial Ruling Council. With Pestage's support, Cronal founded the Church of the Dark Side, a dark version of the Church of the Force which supported the light side, while this cult would support the darkness and fill a gap in Imperial spirituality and morale. Around the same time as the Empire's fall, Cronal contacted his old student Jerec, and manipulated him with finding the Valley of the Jedi, which should he succeed would make Cronal more powerful. In the end Jerec failed and was killed by the aspiring Jedi Kyle Katarn, ending Cronal's hopes of enhancing his own Force-Sensitivity.

With his reign as an Imperial warlord spanning years following the defeat of the Galactic Empire, Cronal took the new name of **Shadowspawn**, and become well known among the Imperial Remnants as having one of the most stable and powerful splinter factions among them, though the most powerful was the still growing First Order. Cronal had also established his own form of the Emperor's Royal Guards, formed from former members of the original who joined Cronal's faction. Due to the Galactic Concordance, Cronal's forces could not openly attack the New Republic without the risk of provoking the New Republic into leading their forces into the Unknown Regions and destroy any hope of the Empire's return, though with careful precision his Shadow Troopers often committed acts of terrorism and piracy all the while keeping secret the involvement of the Imperial Remnants. It was Shadowspawn's hope that with time and careful planning that he could break the New Republic's hold on the galaxy and breed fears of an Imperial and Sith resurgence, with the intentions of fully restoring the Galactic Empire.

## Powers and Abilities

**The Force:** Much of Cronal's power derived from fear and paranoia. Individuals who spoke with him claimed to feel a noticeable chill, though measurements showed that the temperature of the air did not change. Though part of this fear was through his physical presence, Cronal was also capable of inducing fear in others through the Force. After being made aware of the feat, he also gained the necessary Sith knowledge as well as developed techniques that allowed him to transfer his mind into another body. In addition, his great knowledge of Sith lore allowed him to use their methods of creating biological weapons. His greatest power was his Force visions which allowed him to see into the future and anticipate enemy strategies. Cronal had many other powers of the Force, including the ability to control minds, rip thoughts from the minds of others, cast Force illusions, and heal himself.