Darth Haretisch

Darth Haretisch was a half-Nagai Dark Lord of the Sith who, through various means, lived in multiple eras of galactic history.

Born as Plo Wanderguard in 8 BBY to a Nagai mother and human Jedi father - who had been assigned to the Firefist satellite galaxy prior to Order 66 - he showed significant potential in the force from a young age. Trained from near-infancy by his father, who sought to preserve the dying Jedi arts, Plo's early youth on Nagi is otherwise not well known.

In 4 ABY with the fall of the empire, Plo followed both parents into the larger galaxy as they joined the shortlived Nagai/Tof invasion which took place that year. Though the elder Wanderguard might have proven an invaluable asset and teacher to a very young Luke Skywalker had they met, he along with Plo's mother were killed in the Twelfth Battle of Zeltros before any such meeting could take place. Left orphaned at only 12, Plo did not return to Firefist at the conclusion of the war, but instead found himself taken to Coruscant with other war orphans, where he would remain until he reached adulthood in 10 ABY.

By 11 ABY, Plo had found his way to the newly established Jedi Praxeum at Yavin IV, seeking to complete the training left unfinished by his late father. As a student of Luke Skywalker, he struggled with what appeared to be a restrictively narrow view of the force - having been taught balance and open-mindedness by his unorthodox father, whose dabblings in the dark side had made him a controversial and distrusted figure among the Jedi. His passionate nature was a constant point of criticism, and his unhealthy possessiveness of another student, Theona Kalo, for whom he had developed intense feelings of attachment, only made matters worse.

In 12 ABY it was a chance meeting with Darth Cruor of the New Sith Order which watered the seeds of doubt in the young Plo's mind, and shortly afterward he disappeared from known space to become the apprentice of Dark Lord Vassago on Korriban. Among the Jedi, only Kalo knew of his whereabouts and of his fall to the dark side, a secret she would take to her grave.

In late 13 ABY, having taken the name Darth Haretisch, he was contacted by Kalo who asked to meet with him on a neutral world, where she would pledge herself to the Sith and join him on Korriban. He traveled with his master Vassago as well as Darth Kast, each of whom was interested to appraise the apparent new recruit. The meeting was a ruse, however, as Kalo had no intention of joining the Sith and instead attempted to convince Haretisch to renounce the Dark Side and leave with her. Enraged, he accused her of conspiring with the Jedi to capture and return him to Yavin. Cruelly capitalizing on his apprentice's confusion and growing anger, Vassago ordered him to destroy Kalo as a show of commitment to the Sith. In an emotional stupor, Haretisch complied, to immediate regret. Filled with guilt and rage and self-loathing, he turned his blade on Vassago and was quickly disarmed. Renouncing his apprentice and expelling him from the Sith, Vassago departed with Kast and left the injured Haretisch for dead. Broken and crippled, Plo dragged himself to safety and assessed his wounds. Scarred by force lightning and without a left arm, he was nonetheless alive and well.

Despondent, he wandered the Galaxy for a time before returning to Republic space in 14 ABY to willingly stand trial for his crimes. Though he projected the facade of a remorseless killer consumed by the dark side, the Jedi could see the truth of it - that it was only a facade, and that he was wracked with guilt.

Further, no proof of his murder of Kalo could be found, as she had simply been assumed missing since 13 ABY when she had renounced the Jedi and departed Yavin. In the end, though the Jedi acknowledged Plo's deep feelings of guilt as real, his confession was dismissed as a false one, and he was denied the punishment he sought - advised instead by the Jedi to atone for whatever grieved him so.

In truth, he had been cast even further into a pit of darkness by the confirmation that Kalo had not lied about her renunciation of the Jedi - a suspicion he had held guiltily since the moment she fell dead. She had sacrificed everything only to see him redeemed. This was not a defeatist despair as before, however. This was a focused, burning will to exact vengeance. Outfitted with a cybernetic left arm, he once again left Republic space for the unknown regions.

In 15 ABY, he found what he expected to be the vehicle to his eventual revenge. In a remote corner of the unknown regions, he happened upon an unnamed planet rich in the dark side and the secrets of the ancient Sith. Among the treasures he found there was an eldritch holocron of mysterious and primeval making. Apprenticed to this holocron, and now calling himself Darth Haretisch once again, there he would quickly fall under a malign influence which would feed not only his power, but his growing madness and nihilism.

In 150 ABY, Darth Haretisch at last emerged from his isolation, bent on destroying Darth Vassago and his Sith Order. Though 135 years had passed in the galaxy at large, a mere two decades had come and gone from his own perspective - he was now biologically only 43 years old due to a powerful time dilation effect.

Traveling to Korriban to confront his former master in person, he found Vassago and his order long gone, replaced many times over by orders and kingdoms and empires which had risen and crumbled in the near century and a half since the beginning of his exile. On Korriban he instead found Darths Insipid and Dreadwar, with whom he engaged in a titanic battle of sorcery and swordplay. Though he showed himself as a formidable swordsman - easily besting Dreadwar and very nearly matched by Insipid - he could not prevail against both great sorcerers at once. Each boasted a significantly superior command of dark side wizardry which would have made either an equal match in single combat, and Haretisch's defeat was clearly inevitable from the opening exchanges.

When at last he was overcome, his conquerors came to regard him as simultaneously too dangerous to let alone, and too potentially useful to destroy. Though lords of lesser cunning may have simply killed him, Insipid and his occasional rival were far wiser than the Dark Lords of old. No, Darth Haretisch's coming was far too well-timed to waste with foolish bloodlust. Instead, he was commissioned to lead alongside them the rising Sith Empire, as one third of a Sith triumvirate. And so it was formed, the Third Sith Triumvirate; Emperor Dreadwar, Night Herald Insipid, and Shadow Hand Haretisch.o