Lord Grievance Vexx

*note - some sections may be ambiguously cannon*

Lord Grievance Vexx

Grog (pet roggwart)

Sputnik (pet jumping spider)

EV-A4-D (medical droid)

Kolkpravis

Post-Legacy era

## **Biography**

### Early Life

Grievance Vexx, originally known as Karolus Rexx Sheelal, was born to Qymaen Jai Sheelal and Ronderu Iij Kummar during the time when the Kaleesh were at war with the Yam’rii (Huk War). Due to being born in such a tumultuous time of war, Karolus’s childhood was riddled with chaos from day one. Fearing the insectoid race would capture their son and either kill him or raise him as a slave of him, Ronderu placed infant Karolus under the care of her own mother while she returned to fight alongside Qymaen. The two made visits by night as often as they could, raising their son dutifully in small increments, always interrupted too soon by the call back to war. As Karolus grew, he was raised as a warrior, shaped in the way of the Izvoshra and Kolkpravis led by his father.

He was sent on his first krigare rättegång (warrior trial) at the age of five, Ronderu reluctantly letting him go and prove himself even during a time of war in which anything could have happened to him. Only Qymaen’s quiet reassurance kept her from bringing her son back from his trial to early and, much to his poor mother’s relief, Karolus returned with plenty of proof that his earliest survival training had been sufficient.

Karolus’s relationship with his parents was strong despite the fact that his time with them was so limited. As a youngling, he cherished every embrace and every life lesson offered him by Qymaen and Ronderu. Absolutely nothing could be taken for granted. He learned when he was very young that death was no respecter of age, rank, or role. Death would come whenever and wherever and however it so chose; one only had to do his best to be prepared and submit with honor and dignity. Facing death with courage was an expectation of his bloodline and even as a child, Karolus eagerly looked forward to the day when he would look death in the face without fear.

His childish beliefs that death was no big deal were shaken to the core, however, on the fateful day when Ronderu was killed in battle. It was a time when all seemed peaceful and the Kaleesh mother decided to take her son for a quiet walk along the shores of the Jenuwaa Sea, not knowing that the Yam’rii were lying in wait, an ambush carefully prepared. As Ronderu was teaching her son the importance of knowing himself as well as he knew his enemies, the trap was sprung and Ronderu found herself outnumbered by a dozen Huk soldiers. Using her javelin to shove Karolus away from the fray, she commanded him to run and hide himself and under no circumstances was he to look back.

Karolus heeded nearly every word, but he could not obey her command to not look back. He had to know if his mother was all right. As he hid among a cluster of boulders along the shore, he watched what were to be his mother’s final moments. With his own eyes, he watched the Yam’rii overwhelm her; take her weapons from her; and run her through with her own lig swords, not once, but multiple times until she slumped lifeless into the arms of death. After ensuring that Ronderu was in fact dead, the Huk soldiers cast her body into a watery grave, sinking her into the Jenuwaa Sea. A place that held so many memories for Karolus was now a place of death and images that would haunt his consciousness forever.

Having been engaged in a brutal battle elsewhere, Qymaen returned as night was falling over Kalee. When he did not find Ronderu and their son at their home, he headed straight for the sea where he knew they often spent time together. As evidence of a struggle became clear in the sand, his heart feared the worst. At last, he found Ronderu’s weapons, tossed carelessly on the shore and crusted with blood and sand. A feral roar of desperate sorrow and fury tore from the Kaleesh warlord and he searched the shores all night, hoping to at least recover the remains of his love and their child, who he assumed had been killed as well. He was flooded with relief when he discovered Karolus, mute with grief, shivering among the boulders jutting up from the sandy shore.

Qymaen, changing his name to Grievous, vowed to protect his only living memory of the sword-fighter he had loved and lost on that day. He moved Karolus and his grandmother to a safer location in the catacombs of Kalee, then returned to war to avenge Ronderu. He continued his parental responsibilities, returning as many times as he could to bond with his son, teaching him the ancient ways of the Kaleesh, though he was never able to coax Karolus to confront his own grief. His son would remain haunted for the rest of his days by what he had seen.

Grievous once again returned to war. By this time, Karolus was seven years old and able to assist warriors on the frontlines near his home by delivering food and water and whatever supplies were available. He threw himself wholeheartedly into these tasks as they took his mind away from his sorrow and gave him a mission to accomplish. Grievous had said he would return within a few weeks, but the time of his return came and went with no trace of the Kaleesh warlord and Karolus began to worry, especially when word came that Grievous had been killed when his shuttle the Martyr was shot down. His worry turned to other matters though when he was captured by the Yam’rii and held as a slave while the insectoid race continued to plunder his homeworld.

The Kaleesh were led to believe that their legendary war hero was dead, but young Karolus was not convinced that his father was dead and this dogged belief helped him find the will to resist succumbing entirely to his Huk masters. He would find a way to both survive and escape. This proved to be a daunting challenge for one so young as he found himself caught and beaten more times than he could count. The burgundy skin on his back soon became marred by lighter scars running in messy checkerboard patterns. Still he refused to give up. He had to get away so he could figure out what had happened to his father.

His near-deadly escape from his Huk masters finally came when a Kaleesh uprising occurred. It was to be a failed attempt at overthrowing the Yam’rii as the scales fell in the wrong direction when the Jedi came to the aid of the insectoid creatures in subduing the Kaleesh people once again, but Karolus was already long gone. Determined to take up the torch of Qymaen Jai Sheelal, he began making plans to resurrect the Izvoshra branch of warriors. As he worked at this, he also spent the following eleven years tracking the cyborg that had arisen as a great Separatist terror to the galaxy under the name General Grievous. If the cyborg was his father, he wanted to be reunited; if the cyborg was an imposter who had stolen such a famous name, the young Kaleesh wanted vengeance for the offense.

Unfortunately, Karolus never was reunited with his father, but he learned that the fearsome cyborg was indeed the one and only Kaleesh warrior who had called himself Grievous. After learning of the General's gruesome death at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi, his already festering hatred for the Jedi began to grow inside Karolus and he was determined to recover what was left of the cyborg who had wrought havoc on the galaxy all those years; bring him home to Kalee to rest in peace. However, Grievous's remains changed hands a few times and were eventually resurrected as the droid N-K Necrosis, whom Karolus hunted relentlessly until the droid was destroyed by a group of spacers, whom Karolus killed in order to obtain his father’s remains. He was confronted by a powerful Sith Lord, Darth Kancerus, who could sense the Force in him and told him that the only way he could claim the remains of Grievous would be if he would surrender to the Sith Empire. Of course, to the Kaleesh, surrender is not an option and so a fight ensued in which Kancerus overpowered Karolus and subdued him, then proceeded to torture him to try and break him. Karolus remained in stubborn refusal--until Kancerus threatened to destroy the cybernetic remains of Grievous and melt them down. Only then did the stubborn Kaleesh surrender. He never knew just what he was surrendering to until, after months of his physical mass being slowly burned away by white phosphorus, he awakened encased in the cybernetic body of his father; a living, breathing (and sometimes coughing) replica of the fearsome cyborg who had been a Separatist General and a thorn in the side of the Republic.

Upon surrender, he inherited all of his father's belongings by default with the exception of his starfighter, the Soulless One. His prolonged time of unconsciousness had been induced by a drug injected into his neck by Kancerus the moment he had surrendered and had been repeatedly administered each time he had awakened and found the wherewithal to try to fight back.

Much therapy was required upon his awakening and his stubborn will defied his captor, wishing to be returned to Kalee to die and thus give his father a proper resting place. Too tempted to kill his creation to deal with him any longer, Kancerus found and reactivated Grievous's reconstructed medical droid, EV-A4-D, and left it to him to motivate Karolus to accept his fate. The droid, having worked closely with Karolus's father, was able to convince the young Kaleesh to rise and take up Grievous's torch and pick up where the cyborg general had left off. EV-A4-D is ultimately credited with having saved Vexx’s life and worked him through learning how to use his cybernetic body.