Darth Apollyon

Darth Apollyon, born as Zelashiel and known also as Zelashiel the Blasphemer, was a Force-Sensitive Human female. She was born on Nyssa, in 4017 BBY.

## Biography

First and foremost of Dreadwar's apprentices, Darth Apollyon has outgrown the need for his direct tutelage but prefers to retain the title and role of apprentice for the favour and power it brings her. She is deeply resentful of Darth Haretisch, for holding the position she believes she deserves, and of Darth Insipid, for imprisoning her Master.

The Emperor's Hand was born on Nyssa, in 4,017 BBY, to High Lord Tritum XI of House Mecetti and Viscountess Mireya of Vjun. Raised in religious reverence of the ancient Sith, Zelashiel was a prodigy somewhat spoiled by her father, privately tutored in the Arts, the natural sciences and use of the traditional lightfoil, before reading Biology and Palaeontology at the Shey Tapani University on Procopia. Spurning under the increasingly oppressive parenting of her austere mother, and the attentions of the lecherous Sith nobles who Mireya granted tax-free holdings on Nyssa, Zelashiel left the Tapani Sector behind her upon graduating, much to the embarrassment of House Mecetti, interning at Adascorp on Arkania.

It was then that the HoloNet came alive with reports of a great uprising of Sith teachings across the galaxy, as Naddists revolted on Onderon, the Mecrosa Order ascended among the Tapani and a new Dark Lord was declared in Exar Kun. Inspired by the news reports of the Krath Holy Crusade's origins in two nobles of Empress Teta stealing a Sith spellbook from the Galactic Museum, Zelashiel used her internship as an excuse to search for artifacts in the ruins of a great Sith library on Arkania. For tireless months, she researched, using her stipend from her father to fund small excavations. And then at last, her search was rewarded with the discovery of the skeleton of a dinosaur native to Trammis III. Impossibly, within its ribcage, glittered a golden-plated book, magically undamaged. While unable to decipher the Kittât alphabet of most of the Sith writings, enough of the contents was written in archaic High Galactic for her to understand the Grimoire's dark secrets. She was left spellbound by the first lines she comprehended:

*That iſ not dead which can eternal lie, and with ſtrange eonſ even death may die. For in Hiſ houſe on Nilrebmah, Darth Dreadwar waitſ dreaming.*

As she poured through the Grimoire, Zelashiel realised the High Galactic portions were describing the life of a Sith Lord more ancient than her understanding of Sith history seemed to make possible, and over the months, she learned the recondite secrets of the dark side contained within, swiftly mastering the power of Force drain; the contents of her Basic translation regarding the formidable rite would later be recorded within Darth Revan's holocron. Yet dreaming of acquiring power greater than that possessed by the Mecrosa Order, Zelashiel abandoned her autodidactic studies on Arkania as swiftly and resolutely as she had abandoned her course on Procopia, converting to a fervently religious adherence to the blasphemous unholiness of the Bogan - the dark side - and what she saw as its embodiments; the True Sith, not the assassins and hedonistic Lords she had known on Nyssa. She embarked on a pilgrimage to Nilbrebmah XIII, and there she found what she ultimately sought: the spirit of powerful Lord Dreadwar, left imprisoned after the cataclysmic Ritual of Nilrebmah that had granted him immortality, but at the cost of his body, all other life on the planet and tearing a rift in the Force and spacetime.

Unbound by time in that eldritch place, Zelashiel the Blasphemer was caught in the wake of a second cataclysm caused by a battle between similarly timeless adventurers and Dreadwar's undead army. As the stars stretched and the blackness of the night sky turned to the maddening blue fire of hyperspace, Zelashiel stood enraptured, looking to the heavens, her eyes burning into black voids as the power of Dreadwar coursed through her. When all fell silent, and the sky returned to normality, over four thousand years had passed in an instant.

Dreadwar, having won free of the timestream some decades earlier, was waiting for her, newly clad in the mockery of a physical form, and christened her Darth Apollyon. Leaving Nilrebmah to Rhand, deep in the Unknown Regions, Lady Apollyon began five years of apprenticeship under the ancient Sith Lord. Dreadwar was generous with his knowledge, yet mysteriously a scarcely attentive Master, so Apollyon turned to the Sorcerers of Rhand's Lorekeeper, Blessed Toxmalb, and their death cult, the Knell of Muspilli, to complete other aspects of her training, and just as well she did. When her Lord was imprisoned by a Sith rival in a Rakatan Mind Trap, Apollyon searched tirelessly for her vanished Master, ultimately using the Knell's secrets from the fragments of the 100,000 year old Taurannik Codex - rituals they claimed were also capable of summoning 'apocalyptic deities beyond the Gunninga Gap' - to summon and vivify Dreadwar. Five years have passed since, and in that time, Apollyon has remained at Dreadwar's side as he undertook the forging of a new Sith Empire. Religious and faithful where Dreadwar is empirical and rationalist, few bonds between apprentice and Master could be stronger than that between Apollyon and Dreadwar.