Cylo

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**Cylo** was a Doctor who had cybernetically enhanced himself into an immortal system capable of assuming multiple bodies in the event a previous one died. A scientist who believed that evolution was only possible for the universe if organic species were upgraded with cybernetics, Cylo dedicated his research to this goal. Unbound by any sense of ethics, Cylo specialized in cybernetic enhancement and played a part in the making of some of the Empire's most menacing defenders, one notable among them being Darth Vader. The Doctor Cylo did save his greatest creation for himself, securing a form of immortality by uploading a replicated version of his mind to a computer. Cylo entered into the service of Palpatine after the Clone Wars, and for two decades, he worked to make cybernetically-enhanced individuals who, without the need for the Force, may possibly replace Palpatine's apprentice, Vader, as Imperial enforcers.

## Biography

### Early Career

Doctor **Cylo** was a scientist specializing in cybernetics whose research eventually led Cylo to the concept that technological superiority was inevitable, and that certain mystical aspects of the universe such as the Force, were obsolete. To that aim, he began his research into creating new life forms, depending on technological augmentations, which Cylo created using illegal alien parts smuggled to Doctor Cylo's own research facility in conjunction with cybernetic upgrades. Experiments eventually included himself when Cylo created a map of his personality, completed with several memory banks along with calculation systems, that would make himself into a immortal system. As such, Cylo could grow several upgraded versions of himself; when one body died, another was activated at his base with no memory of what had happened to the previous Cylo body.

### Imperial Service

#### Creation of the Dark Lord

By the time of the Battle of Yavin, Cylo had already lost three bodies and was using the one called Cylo-IV. Cylo's work had begun before the Clone Wars, during which time his work was funded by the Astarte line of Celanon. However, their support of the Separatist Alliance during the war earned them the wrath of the Galactic Empireonce the war ended. The Astartes gave their children, Morit and Aiolin, to Cylo to protect them from Imperial reprisals. Doctor Cylo had integrated both children into his experiments, turning them into cybernetically-enhanced warriors. At some point before the end of the Clone Wars, Cylo came to the attention of Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine, who then declared himself Galactic Emperor when the war ended. He was one of several scientists who was ordered by the new Emperor to save the life of his critically-wounded apprentice, Darth Vader, after his duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi. After a long night of operations, the scientists' technology successfully saved Darth Vader's life by replacing his lost limbs with prosthetics, and placing him in a mechanical armor which allowed him to breathe despite his badly-scorched lungs and other sever bodily wounds.

#### Making Cybernetic Beings

Intrigued by the scientists who had saved his apprentice, the Emperor kept them on to see what they could accomplish without the scrutinizing eyes of the Old Republic and the Jedi to limit them. As such, Doctor continued his research and his experiments with the full backing and financial support provided by the Emperor. He upgraded Morit and Aiolin with the best genetic enhancements, and the finest technology was integrated into their flesh. In addition, he provided them with training in lightsaber combat, allowing them to possess the abilities of the Jedi and Sith of old but without the need for the Force. Cylo developed other subjects as well as Morit and Aiolin. Among the many creations of Doctor Cylo were a cybernetically-enhanced Mon Calamari named Commander Karbin. A veteran of the Clone Wars during which he had been injured when his ship was lost near the end of the conflict, Karbin had spent eighteen years on life support when the Doctor Cylo decided to upgrade him about two years prior to the start of the Galactic Civil War. Cylo had modeled his cybernetics on the cyborg General Grievous, the ruler of the Separatist droid armies, whom he had always admired.

This allowed Karbin to fight with four lightsabers much as Grievous had, while Cylo also included propulsors in his back to give him an edge in combat. The doctor also took an interest in a scientist named Tulon. Unlike Cylo's other subjects, she was not a warrior but a genius scientist who had been involved in high-level research and development work for the Empire, including the Tarkin Initiative and the Death Star project. Doctor enhanced her cerebellum and connected it to a series of drone-droids which she controlled through distributed intelligence in each individual drone. They allowed her to see and to fight as they provided both her weapons with incorporated blasters and defensive capabilities through shield generators which they could deploy around her. As a result of her ability to see through her drone-cloud, Tulon adopted the name "Voidgazer". Cylo seemed particularly pleased with his work on Tulon, noting that Tulon was already a genius when he augmented her but that her upgrades had made her even smarter. In parallel to his sentient subjects, Cylo also developed a solution for what Cylo believed was the biggest problem of the enforcers: their tendency to wither and die.

#### Additional Imperial Ventures

Believing that only a system could succeed where an individual failed, he began work on a cyberanimation program. He developed a "trainer" artificial intelligence to guide a host's bestial instincts while removing any undesirable personality traits and even the ability to feel pain or other emotions. In Cylo's own words, the cyberanimate would feel only what his programmer wanted to feel. The doctor adapted this program to a Trandoshan but he believed that it could work on any host, even a Rancor. During his time with the Empire, Doctor Cylo was heavily involved with the Tarkin Initiative and also worked closely with the other great Imperial minds, possibly contributing his service to the creation of the original Death Star. He became close friends with Professor Thlu-Ry, who had been working on the station's alignment tests before the Battle of Yavin. His influence allowed him to develop his own fleet of upgraded spacefearing creatures, which Cylo used as a research base and hid in various galactic nebulae. Cylo also developed his own armed force to man his fleet along with protecting his creations. As a result of his involvment with these projects, Cylo had grown powerful and influential.

Doctor Cylo believed that his subjects were the future of the Empire, and he began pushing the Emperor to use them as enforcers in the place of Darth Vader, whom Cylo saw as a relic from a bygone age. Under his vision, Darth Vader would be relocated to a ceremonial position as the Galactic Emperor's apprentice while his subjects enforced his will through the Galactic Empire. Unbeknownst to Doctor Cylo, the Emperor Palpatine had began to be concerned with his growing influence within the Empire. Coming to see his reliance on the scientists as a mistake, he decided that it had come time to remove Cylo as a potential threat. However, he could not act until the original Death Star had been completed. As the doctor had many friends among the Empire's great minds, Emperor Palpatine feared removing him would cause a great schism among the scientific community which he needed to accomplish his long-term plans. Although he continued to tolerate Cylo's presence in his persistence in trying to remove Darth Vader, the Emperor Palpatine began to consider a number of different ways of removing Doctor Cylo without causing a rift among members of the scientific community.

### Betraying the Empire

#### Encountering Darth Vader

After Darth Vader failed to prevent the Rebel Alliance from destroying the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin, his position in the Emperor's eyes was compromised. To make matters worse for Vader, he was unable to prevent the destruction of the Weapons Factory Alpha on Cymoon 1. In order to test Vader in the wake of his failures, Emperor Palpatine decided to consider Cylo's plans to replace his apprentice as an enforcer with one of his subjects and summoned Cylo, who was using his fourth body at the time known as Doctor Cylo-IV, to the Imperial Palace to discuss these plans. The Lord Vader who was briefing the Emperor when Cylo-IV arrived demanded to know who he was but the Emperor had then denied Vader this intel and sent him away. The Emperor decided to see which of Cylo's subjects or Vader impressed him most. The one who won would win a place as his sole enforcer while the others would be removed from the equation. Doctor Cylo eagerly agreed to the challenge, confidant that his future would beat the past represented by Vader. Secretly, the Emperor hoped Cylo would overplay his hand to make his subjects win, which would let him paint Cylo-IV as a traitor.

This would allow him to eliminate the problem the scientist had began to pose. After Darth Vader's meeting with Cylo-IV, he became suspicious of the Emperor's plans and hired the bounty hunter Black Krrsantan to find and capture him. The bounty hunter succeeded in tracking down Cylo-IV and discovered that he was shipping illegal alien organs supplies to his secret base. Before he could discover the location of his base the doctor found out that the Wookiee was tracking him. Nonetheless he was captured by the bounty hunter who brought him to Vader. Once Cylo-IV was captured, Vader ordered his new droid, 0-0-0, to torture the information about his work for the Emperor from him. The droid 0-0-0 then inadvertently killed Cylo-IV during the interrogation but not before discovering the location of his research base and the existence of his specimens. Cylo-IV's death led to the activation of his next body, Cylo-V. Cylo's research base was then attacked by Darth Vader along with his droid army and Doctor Aphra. Vader then went to the dojo and encountered the Cylo's subjects, the twins Morit and Aiolin Astarte who he engaged in a duel. Cylo-V then arrived and stopped the duel.

He revealed to Vader how he had survived and that he was not making replacements for him but rather enforcers for the Empire. He told him that he believed the Force to be obsolete and claimed that his subjects were in a way Darth Vader's successors. Enraged by this Vader attempted to kill Cylo-V but was stopped by the Emperor who had arrived there. The Emperor then told them that he wanted to see a presentation of Cylo's subjects. As Darth Vader started fighting with the Astarte twins, Tulon Voidgazer, Commander Karbin and a Trandoshan, Cylo told Palpatine about their special skills and abilities. As no one had gotten injured yet, Emperor Palpatine had demanded a real presentation and told them to fight to the death. While Vader was fighting with the Trandoshan, Morit intervened and killed the enforcer. Emperor called a stop to the fight and told them that their mission was to defeat the enemies of the Empire not each other. The Emperor then had declared that they could not kill each other at least not with him knowing. With this the Galactic Emperor along with his apprentice left. Cylo was then appointed to serve under the Imperial Grand General Cassio Tagge in the military.

#### Turning Against the Empire

Commander Karbin had tried to eliminate Darth Vader during a battle on the planet Vrogas Vas but failed and was killed by the Sith. Sometime later the Galactic Emperor Palpatine ordered Doctor Cylo, on Grand General Tagge's insistence, to accompany Vader, along with his subjects, to Shu-Torun to stop the growing rebellion by the Ore-dukes. During their meeting Cylo warned Darth Vader that even if the Sith were to make a single mistake then the Emperor will turn to him and his enforcers. While they were discussing their strategy with Queen Trios, in the ancestral retreat of the Shu-Torun royalty, they were attacked by a vessel belonging to Lord Rubix, the leader of rebellious Ore-Dukes. Darth Vader along with the Astarte twins managed to destroy the vessel. Later Cylo had a conversation with General Tagge about the war progress. Grand General Tagge remarked that Darth Vader, while being effective had many flaws. He then advised Cylo that the great victory at Shu-Torun must look like victory of the military forces of the Galactic Empire, and not Vader's.

Cylo, a little while later, betraying the Galactic Empire, contacted rebels and told them that he can provide them Vader in the Lithoporoite seam where the dukes could finish him off. Darth Vader, using a combat drill, led his troops and Astarte twins to Rubix's delving citadel but the drill, having been sabotaged by the doctor, veered off course to the Lithoporoite stream where Rubix's forces were waiting to kill them. While the Sith Lord was battling Rubix's elite, Queen Trios, having presumed Vader dead, started preparations for the attack on the citadel but the doctor told her to call it off and recalled his troops. Vader managed to escape Cylo's trap with the two enforcers who turned on him. Lord Vader had fended off their attacks and Mortis seeing an opportunity killed his sister who in her dying breath then revealed Cylo's treachery to Vader. Trios attacked Rubix's citadel with her forces soon joined by Vader who had come with the Imperial forces. Cylo fled during the battle, and after defeating the Ore-Dukes, the Lord Darth Vader told the Emperor of the doctor's betrayal.

## Abilities

**Expert Scientist:** Doctor Cylo appeared to be Human but had grafts from various species, notably Rodian skin and eye in place of his right eye. The rest of his skin was light, and he had grey hair and a light beard— contrast to Cylo-IV, who had darker hair. He also had cybernetic implants across his head and neck. Cylo believed the universe needed to evolve and that progress was inevitable. He also believed that organic species were running out of time and that the Force was obsolete. He also continued the work of creating new specimens who he planned to introduce as new enforcers for the Emperor. He believed that men like Vader lacked the vision to see that they needed to evolve, but that the Emperor did not lack that vision. However, he did believe Vader represented a bridge between the "old world" and his "new world", seeing as Vader was more machine than man. Cylo also removed his tendency to hold grudges from his system, so he did not blame Vader for the death of Cylo-IV. Instead, he claimed that he would've done the same in Lord Vader's place.