Ordae Eiha

*"Light and Dark are but concepts created by the mind, acting as constrictions to Force users, keeping us bound and controlled. Dark surrounds the Light, and the more said light grows, the more darkness expands on its outskirts. A perfect balance is met. If only we could be so enlightened..."*

― 'Ruminations on the Force' by Ordae Eiha

**Ordae Eiha** was a renown Zabrak Sith Lord and imperial scholar recognized for his highly experimental work in combining dark science with Sith sorcery and ritual. Ordae was the adopted son of Darth Fengari, a prominent Sith Lord who held Alderaan for the Sith Empire. Originally a slave of the Fengari Powerbase, Ordae's force-sensitivity was recognized by Fengari himself at an early age, after which he would be subjected to, and pass, an unorthodox trial to prove his worth. Ordae would experience ruthless and vigorous training exercises at the behest of his adopted father, while his new mother, Lord Aghul, would instill in him various Sith philosophies. Eventually, Eiha would decide that his parents had nothing more to teach him and were holding him back, which led to him killing them in their sleep in the typical Sith fashion and staging it as an assassination by their personal guard. After her ascension to the title of Darth Umbra as a result of her parents' unexpected demise, Ordae became the apprentice of his sister, Khralla. The freedom to explore his deceased parents' archives combined with the lessons he extracted from her emotional turmoil and tutelage would allow him to refine his objective of study; to unlock the secrets of the Force, and in doing so, discover the next logical step in the evolution of the Sith Order. When Umbra began to display what he decided was weakness after giving birth, Ordae used the force to choke her to death and took her twin children, Nesytu and Towa, as his own. With this, Ordae seized complete control of Fengari's bloodline and powerbase, naming himself Darth Eiha and dedicating himself almost completely to his work. Despite some of his more progressive ideas, Darth Krovos would recognize his potential usefulness, and recruit him to the Empire's Blade.

## Biography

### Of Soot-Coated Roots

Ordae Eiha was born into an unremarkable family of Zabrak slaves on the planet of Alderaan. The slaves in question belonged to the Sith Powerbase of Darth Fengari, which he established to secure a foothold in the system on the behalf of the Sith Empire. The powerbase was spearheaded by the Sith Pureblood family of Fengari himself, who acted as its patriarch, Lord Aghul, his wife, and their daughter, Khralla. Ordae and his parents were worked to the bone every day, which eventually cost them his mother's life, who would collapse from exhaustion. Ordae did not hold any semblance of rancor for this of event, as he never knew any other life and thought of it as natural, nor did he interact with his parents much, even if he was given the chance. As a child, Ordae tended to drift from his duties and wander off to the outskirts of the labor camp, often to the foot of a nearby mountain. He considered it his hideout of sorts. The guards never payed much attention to him as a small boy and focused on working the adult slaves, which favored Ordae's desire to explore. He would calmly pick flowers out of curiosity and examine them as well as a child could. The flowers were a soft purple, somewhat more tender than the regal color of the Fengari family banners that covered the walls of the massive estate beyond the camp.

One day, Ordae explored further and found a small cavern entrance hidden behind a few bushes. Reckless, the boy wandered inside the empty shadowy crevice and examined it. It was damp, cold and the air was suffocating, but he found it thrilling to experience something besides the beautiful flowers. He wandered ever deeper, eventually coming across a narrow, tight gap in one of the cavern walls. Cracks of light emerged from it and, unable to resist the seduction of adventure, he crawled through and emerged in a dimly lit chamber with wall sconces pleasantly lit. At the end of the room, a stone pedestal. Upon the pedestal sat an item that Ordae couldn't identify, but would later come to know was the hilt of a lightsaber. Curious once more, he touched the hilt and a migraine filled his head; pain and a dark sensation of dread ran through his spine. It was the first time he pain that didn't originate from an external source, and he found it horrifying and unbearable. He screamed, his voice echoing through the cavern walls and unheeded by a single soul. The migraine eventually stopped, and Ordae immediately fled the cave, crawling through the gap and rushing back to the foot of the mountain. He no longer craved adventure. He had something growing in him that didn't let him set foot inside the cavern again. He was afraid, intimidated at how easily fear defeated him.

Ordae couldn't sleep. He felt as if his eyes were pried open, not because of his bed being made of dirtied, harsh fabric, but because of the strange sense of fear that grew within him. Looking out from his roughly patched tent, he could only stare at the bright Alderaanian moon in anticipation. Soon, he sensed a feeling of dread once again... It was a very familiar one. He turned back to his tent and found himself face to face with a towering figure. Ordae was startled, quivering as he fell backwards from the tattered entrance. The figure stepped out of the darkness, revealing himself as Sith pureblood male. He wore black robes of fine silk, a purple insignia on his shoulder. His dark grey hair was slicked backwards and reached his shoulders, his eyes a pure yellow and his skin a smooth, dark orange, a color which almost concealed a snickering face in the blackness of the night. It was Darth Fengari himself.

Despite having never personally encountered the Dark Lord, Ordae was terrified by his appearance alone. Especially when he recognized the metallic hilt dangling from his belt. The Sith Lord kneeled and inspected the Zabrak boy's face attentively. He then spoke, asking him how he felt. Despite trying to do otherwise, Ordae was petrified and could not answer the Sith's question. "Fear? Awe? Both?", the Darth asked, as if he already knew the answer. Giving Ordae a sinister smile that inspired both discomfort and warmth, he grabbed the hilt of his lightsaber and touched it to Ordae's hand. Had he the strength to attempt to resist, he would, but the terror-induced paralysis had a powerful hold over him. This time, however, he felt no pain when touching the weapon. No screams invaded his mind and he didn't feel as if all the horrors of the galaxy preyed upon his soul. Instead, he felt a bizarre, welcoming resonance.

Fengari lifted himself off the ground and stashed the hilt, reaching his hand out to Ordae. "Come, child", he ordered, "I believe it's time to leave this place." Ordae was confused, but he obliged. Curiosity had returned once more, accompanied by an insatiable desire to learn more.

### Sith Etiquette

By Fengari's will, Ordae became a member of his family as an adopted son. Fengari revealed he had been watching the Zabrak with interest for some time, having knowledge of his visits to the mountain foot. When Ordae's excursions were first brought to his attention, he had thought of it merely as the diversions of a mere child and was prepared to slap a shock collar on him to put him back in his place, but then began to discover that the boy had a dormant, yet very much present, force-sensitivity in his relationship to the natural world. As such, he had ordered the entrance to a cave near Ordae's usual hideout spot to be cleared of the boulders which blocked its entrance, and placed his lightsaber hilt, temporarily imbued with powerful, dark sorcery, upon a pedestal for the Zabrak to find. If his connection to the Force was strong enough and survived the ordeal, then Fengari had found a new apprentice. At the end of this explanation, Ordae did not know what kind of apprentice he was about to become; he simply wished for the contrast between the calm and chaos he had experienced to become part of his life, beyond mere curiosities. Something he would wish to explore in order to fill his life, and the Dark Lord was happy to oblige.

Ordae's indoctrination into the family was a strange process. He wasn't used to having servants fetch meals and items for him, preparing his bed and other daily necessities. His relationship with Fengari's daughter began sour, as she despised him, thinking he was to replace her as Fengari's most valued apprentice. But, in time, he grew accustomed to it all. His new mother, Lord Aghul, taught him several lessons not only in basic courtesies, but also in adopting a more educated and fluent manner of speaking as well as Sith philosophies.

Darth Fengari's lessons, on the other hand, were far less intellectually stimulating. They consisted of combat training with an electroblade, an ordeal the young boy found to be incredibly dull. Ordae felt that wielding a blade was not what had drawn him to becoming an apprentice to the Sith family.

Excelling at the intellectual training but stumbling with a blade in hand, he gained the favor and tenderness of Lord Aghul and the bitterness of her husband. This created a rift between the two Sith Lords, as they often disagreed on how to execute Ordae's training. Khralla accredited this strife to Ordae, which only contributed to her growing hatred of him.

Ordae would only survive the following years at the grace of Aghul, who avidly protected him from Fengari's murderous advances. Now a young man, Ordae grew bored of his lessons, feeling the had become stale, as if he had imbibed in all that his adoptive mother could offer. He still enjoyed debating with her on the intricacies of the Sith code, of the light and the dark side of the Force, of Republic and Imperial politics, but it wasn't enough. Needless to say, Fengari had proven to be a massive disappointment to him. With a heavy heart, soothed only by his desire to become something greater, he made a decision; one that would give him the determination he needed to take the next step.

At nightfall, he coaxed the guards away from their duties and entered Fengari and Aghul's chambers. He watched them as they slept for a while, with a cold stare that didn't project a clear emotion. He examined the Jedi and Sith Codes that Aghul had informed him on. He hated them. He hated them for their lack of vision, for their one-dimensional way of thinking. Was that all the Force could offer? No. There had to be more.

He took hold of Fengari's lightsaber, resting in the nightstand, and he ignited it. A sizzling, slithering noise of activation rang in his ears. He examined the blade: a dark, entrancing purple. The blade's outline reminded him of the banners that had hung on walls all his life, looming over him as reminders of his subjugation. The clear white in the center reminded him of the friendly, inviting layer of thin snow that fell by the mountain foot, populated by flowers that brought unprecedented beauty into his life. He knew what needed to be done.

With two calculated thrusts, he stabbed each of the Sith in the chests with the blade's tip, watching in silence for a moment as their life faded before him. The power to decide the life or death of a being… he ruminated on it for a while.

The two guards he had sent away returned. They stared at the scene, shocked, and barely had the time to react before the Zabrak harnessed the Force to strangle the both of them, slowly pulling the two towards him and staring them down. His eyes almost seemed to apologize, but that was quickly overcome with a glint of newfound purpose. He then ignited the lightsaber once more and struck them down with a single motion. He cleaned the hilt and placed it in Fengari's dead hand, staging the Lords' death as an assassination.

Ordae heard noises approaching from down the hall. Quickly, he left the room and shouted for help with terrible news: Darth Fengari and Lord Aghul had been murdered by their own guard.

### New Teachings

The Powerbase had erupted into chaos. Ordae observed as servants rushed to call medics, analysts and advisors as well as guards utterly shaken and uneasy, a sweating lieutenant commanding them to search the grounds for any more hostiles, and, of course, Khralla, recently appointed a Sith Lord, at her knees and bewildered. It was curious to the Zabrak that the death of two beings, out of all the trillions of others in the galaxy, had caused such unrest. The power to choose... to decide life or death. Order or chaos. With this contemplation, he felt he had discovered a breakthrough.

Not long after her parents' assassination, Khralla was rushed to a higher position in a sloppy attempt to keep the Powerbase from crumbling and was dubbed Darth Umbra. Had it been up to her alone, she likely would have disposed of Ordae, but it was clear to her that her mother would've wanted the boy's tutelage to continue, so she reluctantly took him under her wing as her first apprentice.

A few months passed and Ordae was more than satisfied with the fruits of his labor. Through the grief and pain Darth Umbra experienced, in her frustration and uncertainty concerning her newfound position, Ordae learned much. He drastically improved in his lightsaber combat, harnessing the calm, melancholic burden that Umbra expressed and channeling it into an eloquent form of combat, adopting a Makashi-based lightsaber form.

Ordae also took advantage of his newfound freedom without the vigilance of Fengari or Aghul, wandering into areas where he wasn't previously permitted. To his immense delight, he found a treasure trove of information and learning: the Powerbase's archives, deep bellow what he knew to be the estate. Ordae immersed himself in the ancient texts, journals, diaries, tomes, and datapads stored within, documenting the findings and experiences of Sith and (surprisingly) Jedi authors alike. Finally, all that he had been denied was in the palm of his hand. Cross-referencing the information in the archives led to him developing techniques on his own, including a unique form of Force Drain that encompassed both life and death. He focused solely on this research, connecting it with the dichotomy of calm and the chaos that he so avidly craved, and reached a conclusion: To become more than any force wilder before him, he must transcend material life entirely by surpassing the dogma of the Jedi and the Sith. Easier said than done, but the mere thought was already carved into the Zabrak's mind.

In his spare time, Ordae continued to experiment with Sith rituals catalyzed by Jedi techniques and vice versa, toying with the many aspects of the Force in an attempt to find common ground between the two and using its power to make scientific breakthroughs. Using his own body as a test subject usually proved to not be only moderately dangerous, but a specific ones he could easily cauterize with his alarmingly fast-growing knowledge of the Force. However, he received one that he couldn't cure when he delved into the scientific grounds: a self-experiment involving deteriorating agents and kolto in an attempt to achieve increased molecular regeneration damaged his respiratory system, resulting in his being forced to wear a respiratory mask in order to breathe properly. He isn't entirely dependent on it thanks to the Force, but hours without it would mean certain death.

Despite this massive failure, Ordae refused to stop. His strange, reckless ideas that he turned into material testing eventually attracted his sister's attention and she demanded he stopped before he caused greater damage... Ordae did not listen. He felt as if he was near a breakthrough, near the next step to evolution, and disobeyed Umbra's commands. A fight ensued, in which Ordae emerged victorious, overwhelming the Darth. Not even she could fully fathom how far he had pushed himself, and that made her both angry and proud. She ceased her fighting and granted Ordae the rank of Lord. Though he cared little for the title itself, it gave him more material to work with.

As the years went on, Darth Umbra slowly recovered from her grief. This didn't please Lord Eiha, as he felt that her anguish was a fountain of inspiration. She began taking part in more social gatherings and even met a wealthy Pureblood man by the name of Vyleron on Dromund Kaas. The two would become intimately involved, and Umbra became pregnant. Upon hearing the news, Ordae feared for the future of the Powerbase. Moving on from her hatred and embracing love for her newfound family, Ordae determined Umbra to be easy to manipulate and therefore would weaken the family, and by extent, the breadth of his influence. This would not do.

In hopes of discouraging his sister from giving birth and sending her back into a state of depression, Eiha promptly organized the disappearance of Lord Vyleron, who was never heard from or seen again... yet his death only strengthened her resolve. The day arrived when Umbra was rushed into an infirmary room within the estate. Servants and supporters alike eagerly awaited the arrival of the child in the courtyard as Ordae waited patiently in the opposite room. He heard Khralla's cries, followed by the wailing of a baby, and then of another. Twins. His distaste intensified. He walked out of the room, passing a frantic droid that informed him that the childbirth had been successful and he was permitted entry. He didn't utter a word as he stepped inside the dimly lit room, closing the door behind him, locking it, and walking to Umbra's bedside. She held the twin babies, both female, in her arms, with a face that irradiated joy and tenderness. Ordae sensed her guard lowering, her negative feelings being swept away... his objective became clearer.

Umbra diverted her eyes from the newborns and whispered to Ordae, "This is a new beginning for the family", with a smile that made him all the more nervous. The air became colder, thicker. Umbra paid no heed to this, until she saw her brother deactivating the nursing droids. "What are you doing?", she asked, receiving no reply. He returned to her side and stared at her and the infants with a cold look. Umbra suddenly felt like the air had been pushed from her lungs as the Force tightened its grip around her neck. She gasped for air, in a desperate attempt to breathe, her eyes darting to Ordae's hand which was slowly forming a fist. In that moment it all came together. "You vile bastard..." she all but coughed. "After everything we've done... It will never be... *enough*." A single tear dropped from her right eye as she gripped her throat, before she stopped moving altogether. Much like he had with her parents, Ordae loosened his grip and pondered on what he had done. He felt a hint of sorrow, but it was quickly overshadowed by his vision of the future.

Taking hold of the two newborns, he activated the droids once more, wiping their memory and reprogramming them to recall a single directive. Ordae walked outside, and into the courtyard, children still in hand. As the door opened, cheers erupted that were soon silenced when they saw the Zabrak holding the newborns. Eiha did not speak to them, allowing the medical droids to explain on his behalf that Darth Umbra had perished by overexertion during childbirth. The crowd was in a state of shock, more so when Lord Eiha sat upon Fengari's elegant throne, the newborns resting on his lap. In that moment, he had claimed all his adopted father had ever owned, and became Darth Eiha in all but title.

### The Next Step

The newly appointed Darth did not waste time. Now with total control over the estate and all that existed within, he renamed the Powerbase from Fengari to Eiha, consolidating his name as one of power and authority. With unfettered access to the resources Fengari had collected over the years, as well as a lack of any obligation to a higher authority, Ordae began to officially document his findings, his various strange rituals and experiments, his thought processes, which would eventually become the first of his published scientific papers and journals.

Residing in the background of Ordae's experiments lived his two nieces, now essentially adopted daughters, who had taken their Uncle's last name. This alone would have been enough to inspire resentment in Neystu and Towa, but his negligence did not stop there. Throughout their early life, he taught them the bare minimum they would need to survive, and left them exposed to seemingly random events of calm and chaos in hopes that they would grow from the experiences. They proved more formidable than he had bargained for, especially when working together. While a rift formed between Eiha and his nieces, he studied them from afar as a zoologist might observe a rodent.

Slowly but surely, the name 'Ordae Eiha' spread across the Empire's scientific community, either beloved or hated for his unique approach to research and life as a whole. The release of some of his more revolutionary and voluminous scientific publications coincided with Darth Krovos' search for members of an elite task-force. Her attention was piqued, and she prepared a formal visit to the Eiha estate. Upon her arrival, Eiha welcomed Vowrawn's head of Military Command with a modest yet respectful greeting party and provided her a tour of his laboratories. In an attempt to impress her, Ordae presented a few of his most promising projects relevant to his research on the Force and enhancing/harnessing its properties, the most notable of which being 'Genome M', 'Project Malachite' and 'Eiha's Cube'.

Genome M was an artificially manufactured biological component kept in a cryogenic containment unit. Acting as a form of steroid, the goal of the experimental serum was to directly stimulate an individual's Midi-chlorians using a combination of carefully selected chemical compounds and Sith Sorcery. For non-force users, Project Malachite was a small, slimy life form kept in an isolation chamber that emitted an odor capable of affecting a being's pheromones to amplify overall physical functions. It still required stabilization and proper attunement, however. Eiha's Cube was Ordae's pride and joy, having once been a dormant artifact he discovered in ancient Sith ruins on Korriban, Eiha awakened it through extreme effort and the precise application of particular Force Rituals. In combination with the other two projects, the Cube would absorb the force from the life that surrounds its wielder and amplify his or her power.

Krovos was impressed with the Zabrak's work and made the decision to induct him into the ranks of the Empire's Blade, convinced of his utility. Ordae was eager to accept his new role, as with the full backing of the Dark Council, he would have access to more resources and funding than ever before in fulfilling his quest in discovering the code to rewriting the force and all that it commands.