Saren Karnith

Saren / Sabertooth / Twinkletoes

## Background

Saren Karnith was born on his species' homeworld as the only surviving child of his litter. An only child in a Cathar family is a vulnerable one, and when he was confirmed to be force-sensitive at four years of age, his parents did not hesitate to relinquish him to the Order - they were convinced the Jedi held a better life for him than they could provide.

Having completed the trials of a youngling and deemed ready for apprenticeship at 12 years of age, he was assigned to the care of the Zabrak Jedi Knight Vreydis. By this time, Saren had taken the majority of Jedi protocol to heart, but an ember of resentment flickered within him. Even though this Jedi life was all he could remember, he felt as if life in and around the Temple had dulled him to the unjust reality outside of it - the reality people like his mother and father had to live with. They now had to live with the reality of childlessness, while children had to grow up orphaned, or even worse, with evil parents. He confided in Vreydis about his grudges with monastic life, and she listened in the way a teacher does; adapting the lessons to the needs of the pupil.

Vreydis took all opportunities to bring Saren off of Coruscant and into the less glamorous worlds he wished to know, and her padawan quickly learned the importance of both independence and community. The silent grief he held for his stillborn siblings was soothed by Vreydis' teaching that like all living and once living, his denied brethren were with him in the Force - and that thus, he need not grieve for them, but rather worry about the living, who are also with him in the Force and more in need of aid. Vreydis had been an admirer of the late Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, and taken his rogue philosophy on attachment and emotion to heart. Attachments become dangerous when a Jedi cannot let go of the past, or when they cannot look beyond the people close to them - ideally, a Jedi should strive to have many shallow attachments that they can let go of, to avoid the few and deep attachments that they cannot abandon, mused Vreydis before her apprentice, who quietly adopted her teachings.

At the dawn of the Clone Wars, Saren had evolved into a determined and Light-devoted padawan that nevertheless was inclined to reckless decisions and often seemed eager to find alternative interpretations of the Council's directives.
After the battle of Geonosis, where several Jedi took notice of Saren's distinguished capacity to independently and prudently make use of his lightsaber and Force abilities against the new menace, the Council reached out to Vreydis to hear her perspective on how far Saren had come in his training. Vreydis, however, was nowhere to be found, and even Saren had no answers as to where she had disappeared - at some point between telling Saren how proud she was of him immediately after the battle, and the reconvention of the Jedi leadership on Coruscant, Vreydis had gone offworld seemingly without telling her padawan or anyone in the Council where she was headed.

Worried over his master's fate, Saren was told to not delve into the mystery - this was a matter for the Council, not for a padawan, and his attachment to his master may cloud his judgment in the matter. Saren protested, but when the Xeosis crisis started, the Order found both a reason for him to let go of the search for Vreydis, and a way for him to advance his training without the presence of his master. On his 20th standard year, Saren was deployed to Xeosis with General Kenobi's forces, both to reinforce the war effort and to prove himself - is he ready to do the work of a Jedi without his master looking over his shoulder?

## Personality Traits

Saren's experiences in childhood, at the temple and under Vreydis' guidance have shaped him into an unpredictable man, unafraid to employ his emotions and risk forming bonds to achieve his missions. His patience and respect for subordinates and equals is stronger than that for his superiors - for better or worse, he is inclined to partially or fully reinterpret or disregard an ordered plan when he thinks his is better.

Jedi padawan as he may be, Saren has not been willing to let go of his hatred for injustice and indecisiveness among the powerful. With great power comes great responsibility, and those who use their power for evil are worthy of contempt, but those who can stop evil but won't rise to the challenge are no better.

Simultaneously to all of this, Saren is equally driven by a loyalty to what he loves. He will go to great lengths to alleviate or eliminate suffering and cruelty, not merely because he hates cruelty but because he loves compassion. The Jedi Code may teach that emotions cloud judgment and attract darkness, but to Saren, love for the light is merely natural, and barely an emotion - all a Jedi does must be for the sake of light, freedom, harmony and justice, and Saren seeks to emulate these values in deed and personality. He will not deny a friend a smile, and he will not deny himself the joys of life. Only enemies get no emotions, for the dark side deserves none. The Jedi who know about Saren's relationship with emotions find it troubling, and there are those among his supervisors who feel he is at risk of corruption. Saren has not yet proven them right. He finds himself muttering the Jedi Code often to remind him - he has flaws, but pride has not yet become one of them.

In battle, Saren can be mistaken for a different person. With his lightsaber ignited and in his favored Ataru stance, his emotions quieten to make way for a determination to hinder and incapacitate - to whichever extent necessary - that which threatens the Light. For all her doctrinal flexibility, Vreydis did not tolerate any emotional and impulsive behavior in combat situations, and she taught Saren to replace emotion and impulse with discipline and instinct. He mostly manages to.

### Likes

Justice, generosity, kindness, nature, architecture, history, mysteries and myths, men, women, Corellian whisky

### Dislikes

Injustice, greed, cruelty, cowardice, megacities, processed food

## Appearance

With his mixed dominant Cathar and Juhani bloodline, Saren's face and body is coated in a short length of brown fur, with a darker shade of brown painting symmetrical markings across his pelt. His amber, feline eyes and the triangular ears at the upper sides of his head contrast with his human-like mouth and jaws, still revealing their feline ancestry through a vaguely protruding mouth section and a thin slit-like philtrum connecting it to his lion-like nose. His straight, dark brown mane of head hair reaches just below his chest, his padawan braid barely noticeable among the greater fluff. Standing at 176 centimeters tall and weighing in at 76 kilograms, he currently wears a set of black Jedi robes with white and blue plastoid armor plates, the sigil of the Order visible on his left pauldron. He wields a single, standard-length blue-bladed lightsaber held with a cylindrical black durasteel hilt in his right hand.

## Character Attributes

### Professions

 Detective
 Historian
 Subterfuge
 Athletics
 Basic Pilot

### Saber Forms

 Soresu
 Ataru

### The Force

 Push
 Pull
 Speed
 Sense

### General Statistics

 Saber Bonus
 Melee Bonus
 Ranged Attack Bonus

### Unique Bonuses

+2 to subterfuge rolls in Savannah and Rough Uplands, +1 to unarmed wound rolls to maximum of 8

Favored Planet Advantage: Cathar (Rough Uplands)

Hidden Talent: Subterfuge

### Experience

 Total Spent Profession Experience
 Unspent Experience