Darth Andeddu

## Ortan Cela

Born to the name Ortan Cela, Darth Andeddu was one of the twelve original Heresiarchs, also known as Dark Jedi Exiles or Jen'jidai, who were banished from Republic space in 6,900 BBY after the Heresiarchs were decimated at Corbos in the final battle of the Hundred-Year Darkness, a century-long war started by transhumanist Dark Jedi who rebelled against the orthodoxy and mortalist teachings of the Jedi High Council. Upon their defeat, they landed on Korriban, subjugating the primitive Sith pureblooded species and becoming the first Lords of the Sith, thus founding the Sith Order.

In a group that was ultimately whittled down to Ajunta Pall, Sorzus Syn, Karness Muur, Remulus Dreypa, Tulak Hord, Aloysius Kallig, Broodica, XoXaan, Ergast, Pharshol and Vacuus, and controlled by the "Hidden Lords" Ku'ar Danar and Vahl, Ortan Cela stood a less historically prominent member of the Heresiarchs, neither a warrior nor a military commander nor secret mastermind, but rather an amoral scholar, philosopher, and a sneak. Partially due to this, scant records of his existence remain, another reason being that he himself sees no value in notoriety, as he intends to live eternally and does not value beings or their adoration as such.

Born in circa 7,020 BBY to a family of unremarkable middle-class scholars on the planet Prakith in the Deep Core, Ortan was a reclusive, somewhat arrogant child whose greatest joys were to read and to contemplate what he read. His reading consisted of history, prehistory, philosophy, psychology and biology, among other things. Rather than play with other children, he would dismiss them as imbeciles and spend time with books, or walking alone, thinking of ideas and concepts. As the local nobles’ kleptocratic practices made comfortable life ever more untenable, young Ortan's family gathered all their belongings and, bribing customs personnel along the way, moved to Dantooine, an agricultural planet where he could have an academic future without the bribes, otherwise necessary for such, bankrupting them.

While on Dantooine, away from the blatant corruption, things began looking up. The child continued his independent studies parallel to his formal school, which he found too simple and boring. In time, he noticed he could seemingly know things before they occurred, or know instinctively how a being would react. After some research, he learned of similar abilities exhibited by a group of so-called "Force users" called the "Jedi" in an Enclave in the remote grasslands of Dantooine. The abilities listed as possible among them spurred experimentation. He could not begin to replicate most feats, but enough limited success was achieved to prove his Force-sensitivity to himself. This opened a new avenue of inquiry for Ortan, and he felt most progress would be had by learning directly from a Jedi. But how?

As fate would have it, an itinerant Jedi Knight was busy helping the sick and injured refugees from a nearby village, just when Ortan was busy asking any who might know where one might find a Jedi. The search led to the hospital, the youth having to overcome his revulsion for the wailing creatures that constituted its inhabitants. Upon meeting the Jedi, he asked many questions, likely not coming off as a very compassionate young person; but perhaps this was seen as a challenge by the Jedi, who herself was an independent spirit, wandering the planet and providing aid where required. Recognising nascent Force capacity in the youth, and without a Padawan, she agreed to take the persistent brat on. His parents were pleased that their child could become part of such a revered institution, and fully sanctioned the choice.

This was a time before the rebellions of the likes of Exar Kun and Revan had made the Order's rules more stringent than ever, and independent Jedi Knights on their own assignment were common; neither was emphasis placed on a learner's age. At twelve years, Ortan Cela could be taught in the ways of the Force, while continuing his studies in other subjects as he always had - according to his own choices. The Jedi, a kind woman in her mid-twenties, proved to be a challenging debater and skilled negotiator, if somewhat naïve in certain aspects, and well versed in the healing arts.

During his education, they travelled the Republic from world to world, healing the sick and aiding refugees. He learned in practice what healing and diplomacy were, although it quickly became clear the Knight’s compassion failed to rub off on the Padawan. Where her actions were motivated by pure desire to help, the youth took in the proceedings with clinical cynicism, absorbing skill after skill but none of the Jedi philosophy. After years of travel and study, his teacher’s efforts and skills were recognised by the Dantooine Council, and the now young adult apprentice followed her to Coruscant, to attend what could be her promotion to Jedi Master, and to himself be evaluated for future in the Order. She was indeed elevated in rank, but the youth did not impress the venerable Masters nearly as much. He did his best to feign respect and compassion, something he had become quite good at, but the experienced Councillors saw through his act after all. Unwilling to berate his Master for choosing poorly, or instructing poorly, they nonetheless made clear no further instruction toward the rank of Knight would be allowed, much less knighting itself. As a "consolation," they instead offered the knowledgeable Ortan library duties, where he could be of use but cause no harm, out of the way of the heart of Jedi business.

Indignant at the rejection, he nonetheless accepted, and became an assistant and researcher in the Jedi Temple library. Not one to give up, he used that access to devour tomes available nowhere else, and to track down new sources of information, seemingly on behalf of the Jedi. With no loyalty to the Jedi, he also covertly traded more sensitive information to interested parties, and became quite wealthy off such activities. And all was not stable in the vaunted Order.

Having returned from a particularly long exploration journey some time ago, a charismatic man named Ku’ar Danar gradually began giving more and more subversive speeches, aimed against Jedi orthodoxy and what he called "deathism," promoting, instead, a quest to explore the Force through controlling yet using one's emotions, and using this "open-minded, holistic approach" to manipulate biology, heal dead worlds, cure incurable diseases and ultimately "transcend the limits and sufferings of mortal life." Most Jedi scoffed and kept their faces carefully blank as they looked the other way, but certain individuals hearkened to that which was said. Initially oblivious and isolated from most of the Order in the library, Ortan, now in his twenties, learned of it only after some time had passed and dissent had already burgeoned. When he did listen to Danar, he found himself in complete agreement. He had never been one to shy away from any knowledge, and no ingrained loyalty bound him to the Council’s views. Finding a common ground with like-minded members, many of which were full-fledged Knights and Masters, he himself helped spread the word, and bring useful news from beyond the organisation through his illicit info-trading network. Finding he understood much already from his earlier studies, he began to experiment with forbidden techniques alongside the growing minority of heretics.

Eventually the divide between traditionalists and progressives reached its peak. Faced with an ultimatum to desist in their practices or leave the Order, and having failed to recruit a sufficiently large number of colleagues to their side, the ambitious clique that were now branded Heresiarchs chose the latter. So did Ortan. Which side began the eventual war has been lost to history. The truth is that it does not matter. The Council would not tolerate an alternative view of the Force to challenge theirs, and the rebels would never abandon their experiments. Ku’ar Danar himself, the original iconoclast, disappeared from public sight to become the "Hidden Lord" - or "Shadow Lord" or, in more common, later translations, "Dark Lord" - who orchestrated the ensuing conflict from behind the scenes.

Knowing they were outnumbered by an impossible amount, the rebellious Jedi used their newfound skills in science and dark sorcery to raise armies where none had existed. Set on preserving their knowledge, and their right to seek more unobstructed, they unleashed plagues and hordes of alchemically engineered monstrosities against their foes. Ortan, unrestricted by Jedi regulations, could create and experiment to his heart’s content, as long as he stayed out of the fighting, which he knew nothing of. This earned him a place among the greatest minds of the uprising, but also a degree of contempt for never participating in battle. Determined to prove his worth, he undertook covert diplomatic missions to possible allies, ripping away member worlds such as Alsakan from the Republic and adding their strength to the cause. Meanwhile, the pioneering efforts of his peers in science and alchemy meant the Dark Jedi could afford a lengthy war, as they managed to significantly extend their lives, proving their rivals wrong.

The details of the Hundred-Year Darkness are lost to history, but considering no Sith War that followed lasted as long before ending in treaty or defeat, one can assume the Great Schism was truly apocalyptic under the genius ministrations of Danar, coming closer than any other had achieved in overpowering the Republic militarily. Yet the Heresiarchs and their fledgling Dark Empire were undermined by a flaw that would come to characterise the undoing of all successive darksiders: infighting.

A number of Heresiarchs were beginning to become wary of the intentions of Ku'ar Danar. Reclusing himself more and more, and manipulating the war less less, Ku'ar Danar had forged Great Amulets he had given to the greatest minds of the Dark Jedi: four he gave to Ajunta Pall, Sorzus Syn, Tulak Hord and XoXaan, who then forged further amulets in its image as directed, distributing their creations to their lessers. And so there were twelve Great Amulets forged. But they were all of them deceived. In secret, another Amulet was made, a snare to control all others: the Darkstaff, forged from the living stone of Nilrebmah, one amulet to rule them all. One by one, the Heresiarch leaders fell to darkness, the nobility of their intentions corrupting to evil, their prior philosophy - of exploring the Force through emotion - increasingly becoming focused on the negative emotions alone: hatred, anger and bitterness. And so the dark side was loosed on the galaxy.

Yet the corruption of the Heresiarchs only magnified the wariness among some of their number. What was Danar doing on Nilrebmah? What was Vahl doing on Ambria? Why the Leviathans, Sithspawn Syn had created according to Ku'ar's blueprints that trapped the souls of hundreds of Jedi enemies in blister-traps on their backs? Why the introduction of special Force-sensitive crystals, ensnaring the spirits of Jedi and fallen Dark Jedi, preventing them from becoming one with the Force?

The tension reached a boiling point, hampering the war effort, and then Danar revealed his hand.

The Hundred-Year Darkness was irrelevant. The Dark Jedi were not particularly meant to win the war; Danar had merely orchestrated a conflict to feed off its death and destruction, even sabotaging the Heresiarchs at times to make sure the balance between the Republic and the Dark Empire was always even, prolonging the war... and creating the Leviathans to harvest tens of thousands of souls for use in a final ritual on Nilrebmah that would grant him godhood. An ideological rift opened among the Heresiarch leadership, with some remaining loyal to the Jedi Master that had founded the movement, and embracing what he called "the Dark Path:" a secretive cult of immortality-seekers derived from the teachings of a marauding, legendary species called the Sith lurking on the fringes of known space, taking the title of mythical Sith gods who ruled the equally mythical Rakata in pre-Republic times - Darth - to signify their triumph over death. In this philosophy of pure self-aggrandisement, the title Darth was a warning to others: bow down or be destroyed. There was no room for anyone but oneself, and single-minded pursuit of immortality and eternal, omnipotent power.

And so Ortan Cela became, in secret, Darth Andeddu. Other Dark Jedi, meanwhile, overcame Danar's domineering will and cast off their amulets, freeing themselves from his influence and seeking an alternate, more cooperative approach to the dark side, one that prioritised the Order itself over the individual. All individuals died, they maintained, but the Order, the dark side, was eternal; they did not take the title of Darth and rejected Danar's "Rule of One," but pioneered the philosophy of the "Rule of the Strong," calling for the rule of multiple Dark Lords.

Yet Danar's war spread, engulfing the entire Republic in dread, the free peoples of the galaxy falling to the finally revealed and truly unleashed might of Darth Dreadwar. After a century of drawn-out bloodshed that had fashioned Dreadwar the captive spiritual energy needed for his planned ritual, the time had come to end the war, and the last year of the Hundred-Year Darkness was more terrible than anything that had preceded theretofore, and anything that had followed thereafter.

Yet there were some who resisted.

A last alliance of Jedi and Dark Jedi marched on the armies of Nilrebmah. At the Monolith Dreadwar had erected for his grand purpose, and on the mining world of Corbos, they fought for the freedom of the galaxy - the Jedi for the freedom of its people, the Dark Jedi for their own. Surrounded on all sides and besieged in his Monolith, Dreadwar invoked his ultimate ritual, and all heard the laugh of the Dread Lord that terrible night as they realised their folly; Jedi and Dark Jedi alike had been lured to Nilrebmah, only providing thousands of more Force-rich spirits to be consumed. The ritual unleashed a vast wave of energy that destroyed every living thing on Nilrebmah, tearing the spirit from the ant and the Jedi Master alike, the Leviathans' blisters bursting to release the combatants they had psychically imprisoned, the soul-ensnaring crystals shattering as Nilrebmah itself was sundered, and began to move.

Yet the Jedi left in the fleet in orbit perceived all that had happened, and acted with swiftness as they sensed Dreadwar's soul transcend his body, and greedily devour the entire planet. Combining the strength of hundreds of Jedi, they erected a Wall of Light around the planet, interrupting the ultimate ritual. While Dreadwar succeeded in achieving apotheosis and binding his now godlike spirit to Nilrebmah and its living stone, the planet's motion was stopped, and Dreadwar's magnificent power was contained to the Monolith.

Dreadwar, enemy of the free peoples of the galaxy, was defeated.

The Jedi left, content that Dreadwar had been dealt with, not knowing the wily Dark Lord had pioneered the art of Force Phantom to create physical embodiments across the galaxy, thus retaining some - and growing - influence over the wider realm over the ensuing millennia.

Andeddu, meanwhile, had been engaged in the fighting on Corbos, in what would be the last battle of the Hundred-Year Darkness. Having been among the survivors to the end, in part due to his caution, and in part due to seeming unthreatening and amiable to rivals, Andeddu was there when the Republic and Jedi forces broke through Admiral Dreypa’s fleet blockade around the mining world. He was there when the animosity and infighting weakened their ranks at the most critical moment. He stayed behind the lines when Jedi landing parties engaged the rebels on the surface, employing controlled beasts from afar to slow the tide. When Republic ships in orbit began bombardment of what remained of the rebellious forces, golden beams of deadly light setting the sky and ground aflame, he, and others of cooler mind, knew the war was well and truly lost. Some lower-ranking beings fought to the death, but that was folly. He did not think in terms of bravery or cowardice, nor in terms of glory or shame. He thought in terms of Dreadwar's Darth cult, of survival at any cost and the eternal flight from death's specter. Dying for an abstract cause was not bravery, it was a result of self-defeating social programming. True strength was in pushing past these social tethers, the mindless instinct toward self-sacrifice, and having the courage to survive no matter what came after. And so he surrendered. It turned out he was not the only one to think so.

Twelve they were, from the Pall loyalists and Darthists alike, standing amid ash and smoke and the smell of burnt, mangled corpses of ally and foe, surrounded by a seven-rank deep ring of the Senate’s finest troops, led by dozens of alert Jedi, stripped of their weapons and devastating inventions, to face the judgement of those of considerably lesser intellect, and non-existent vision.

After the typical Jedi self-righteous preaching and lengthy deliberation, it seemed the rebels had been ambiguous enough in their testimony and behaviour, particularly in light of the Pall loyalists' aid against Dreadwar, for their light side brethren to contemplate redemption as a possibility. Or perhaps it was a trap, so they could wash their hands clean and dispose of their defeated enemies indirectly. Whatever the case, they were herded onto an obviously ill-maintained galleon and exiled from Republic space. They might have perished in the black gulfs of space then, as their creaking ship traversed the interstellar void without direction, or worse, with a direction that would end in a star, or a black hole. They had a weapon their enemies could not pry from them, though: the memory of Sorzus Syn. Specifically, the coordinates of a place in the Outer Rim where Ku'ar Danar had once trodden, and from where he supplied them with certain skills of dark alchemy. Taking control of the ship's destination, and that of their destinies, they redirected the precarious hunk of metal towards the unknown.

Upon reaching the planet, named Korriban, they impressed the natives into accepting them, then spent weeks infiltrating and subverting their power structure, eventually staging a coup, executing the reigning King Hakagram Graush, heir of pureblooded Dark Lord and Dreadwar's apprentice Dathka Graush, and seizing power over the Sith domain. Under Pall's leadership and guidance, the Dark Jedi all named themselves Dark Lords of the Sith as according to the Rule of the Strong. A council was formed to rule this new regime, and campaigns launched to subjugate and unite all the worlds in the newly discovered Sith Space under the auspices of Tulak Hord.

Andeddu was not granted membership of this new ruling elect due to lack of military accomplishments and allegiance with the Dark Path, which did rankle him, but also spurred a renewed quest for knowledge that would increase his power, a quest he carried out in secret with his fellow Darth cultists in a Shadow Council Dreadwar had created, from which was born the epithet that would later adorn his heretical holocron: In umbris potestas est. "In the shadows, there is power." Experimenting with new avenues of applied knowledge, and taking notice of the powerful talismans crafted by Dreadwar and worn by his colleagues, he had his agents smuggle as much of his rivals' schematics and esoteric knowledge from expeditions as possible. This culminated in his own version of the later infamous artifacts worn by the likes of Muur and Dreypa: the Scepter of Death.

Years passed, the Dark Jedi using their alchemy to interbreed with the Sith species, an experiment that first bore fruit when a Sith Kissai priestess bore the child of Dreypa, while Andeddu's studies into darker areas of the arcane continued. Yet the schism within the Exiles' ranks had not healed. The confines of the Caldera did not sit well with some of the Exiles; godhood awaited, not the collective rule of a backwater species! Desiring a vaster domain, a greater playing field, and to destroy those who had spurned their genius, the Jen'jidai of the Dark Path gathered their fleets and armies, planning to return to wage another war. The rift deepened to outright conflict once again after three of the twelve Dark Lords died in a fight over Dreadwar's Wraith Box, and the rivalry of Corbos was repeated, the Dark Lords' lightsabers clashing amongst themselves once again. Ajunta Pall survived, but the Fortress the Dark Lords had raised at the mouth of Korriban's newest burial valley did not, raining down upon their heads. Tulak Hord declared himself the only true Dark Lord in opposition to Pall, honouring Dreadwar's Rule of One.

Dissatisfied with his status in the new Empire, and growing tired of the technological scarcity on Sith worlds, Darth Andeddu was among those who tried their abilities at conquest a second time. Apprenticing himself to Tulak Hord, Andeddu, Aloysius Kallig, Sorzus Syn, Karness Muur and Remulus Dreypa all followed Hord the Conqueror in leaving the Stygian Caldera, leaving behind an aging Pall and his three loyalists, as well as a new generation of hybrid Sith Lords.

Breaking into the known galaxy once again, the Sith Lords started a bloody war whose details are largely lost to history: the Great Calamity. Its longevity and breadth is unknown, with a presumed end by 6,850 BBY, yet what is known is that it saw Karness Muur die, his Great Amulet ultimately lost on Taris to mindlessly breed Rakghouls, Sorzus Syn create new biological plagues against the Jedi from Malachor III, Remulus Dreypa, after experimenting on Syngia, crashing with his forces and Jedi enemies on Kesh, where he would ultimately be trapped in his Oubliette, and many new Jedi, such as Terrak Morrhage, recruited to replete the lost ranks of Dark Jedi. Tulak Hord, meanwhile, had studied Dreadwar's arts of hunger at the Trayus Academy on Malachor V, and having experienced the wound opened at Nilrebmah first-hand, had become a terrible void in the Force himself. The Lord of Hate, as he was known, put the technique to use at Yn and Chabosh, consuming both worlds and, with them, thousands of Jedi lives. Andeddu followed in his master's wake, both of them using Dashade Shadow Assassins to drain and capture the souls of Jedi for use in Hord's experiments to replicate Dreadwar's immortality. While Hord succeeded in reverse-engineering Dreadwar's Rakatan technomagic to create an artifact capable of transferring his spirit to a new body, Andeddu was plumbing the depths of recondite knowledge further, learning the art of pain encoded in the archives of the Trayus Academy, studying Muur's mastery of dark side healing, and ultimately developing a novel rite of essence transfer that did not depend on artifacts.

As the Great Calamity wound down, the arrogant Sith Lords having wasted their armies of Massassi against a Republic that had well-recovered since the last war, Darth Andeddu, after over a century of patience, study and servitude, and now at last secure in his newfound immortality, made his move. To kill one such as Hord, whose artifact allowed him to project his essence to a new body, required a cunning plan, but cunning Andeddu had in spades, where Hord had raw might. Andeddu ambushed Hord with his Dashade companion, Veshikk Urk; when he stabbed Hord in the back, the Dashade, as instructed, used his unique abilities to capture and consume the life energies of the dying Dark Lord, preventing his spirit from escaping and surviving. Crowing in victory, Darth Andeddu swiftly ordered the Sith fleets to withdraw from known space in recognition such victory could not be had against the Jedi, leaving behind the legend of the Sith and knowledge that the Dark Jedi Exiles had become "Lords of the Sith" in their exile.

Returning to the Stygian Caldera, Ajunta Pall having already died of old age, Darth Andeddu began his reign over the Sith, not from Ziost, but, as befitted one enamoured with death, from the mortuary world of Korriban. Darth Andeddu was left as the sole public Jen'ari, or Dark Lord, his followers merely elevated to the position of Ari - Sith Lord - creating a new system of rule among the Sith that would dominate over the following 2,000 years. However, while he may have been the only reigning Dark Lord, the Lords of the Dark Path that followed in his and Dreadwar's footsteps were not gone; they entombed themselves in thrones of stone in a Great Temple on Korriban, sitting in deathless eternity with ragged grins of death while Andeddu conducted the business of an Empire, one among the number of this Shadow Council, yet, in holding public power over the Sith species, the greatest.

Yet all things must come to an end.

As Darth Andeddu grew in strength and stature, so too did he grow in fear; he came to believe that his hybrid Kissai subordinates coveted the knowledge which he had achieved and the Force abilities in which he had become proficient. Because Andeddu refused to share his intelligence, the powerful new generation of Sith Lords banded together and plotted to first take his secrets for themselves and then destroy him. Andeddu was not blind to the machinations of his detractors and grew increasingly wary of them. He felt any further hesitation on his part would result in his enemies successfully overtaking him. Darth Andeddu was soon betrayed and overthrown by his followers, and forced to abscond from Korriban. Prior to his escape, he created a false tomb on Korriban to deceive potential pursuers. When the Sith Lords realised that Andeddu had fled, they searched relentlessly for him, through the Force and otherwise, but to no avail - Andeddu had soundly eluded them by returning to a private stronghold on his homeworld of Prakith, and as the last of the original Dark Jedi to rule as a Sith Lord, he alone knew the way back to Republic space. However, the fear of losing all he had amassed still threatened to consume him and, because of this, Andeddu recorded a great deal of his knowledge in Sith spellbooks and scrolls that he stored within the belly of his fortress. The sum of his wisdom- including the details of his essence transferring technique - was stored within a personal Sith holocron of his own creation.

Darth Andeddu conquered Prakith and beget progeny, whom he dubbed "The Malevolence" and trained to use the dark side of the Force. Because of his ability to reanimate his own corpse, Andeddu's lifespan far exceeded natural years, and he ruled Prakith for many centuries. His followers came to revere him as their "God-King;" an immortal being whom they believed would forever reign supreme. The collapse of the hyperspace lanes which led to Prakith resulted in the isolation of its inhabitants, and allowed the Dark Lord to maintain unfettered dominion over the Deep Core world.

However, paranoia caused Andeddu to still believe that his enemies would eventually arrive to steal his lore, despite the fact the hybrid Sith who had claimed the mantle of sole Dark Lord in his place had no knowledge of space beyond the Caldera, an ignorance that would result in the Sith Empire remaining separate and isolated until the arrival of Republic hyperspace navigators two thousand years later, an event that sparked the Great Hyperspace War. Andeddu entombed himself much like his peers on the Shadow Council had, surrounded by his books and scrolls, content with the idea that he would carry his secrets into death with him. His holocron, to which he bound his spirit, was kept inside of his sarcophagus with his physical remains, and both stayed hidden for thousands of years after his passing. Meanwhile, Andeddu's Malevolence cult continued to immerse themselves in the dark side while maintaining worship of their God-King. Andeddu mandated that they guard his tomb and fortress, patiently awaiting the day when he would resurrect himself to lead them once again.

They would wait patiently for millennia. And now, in the year 154 After the Battle of Yavin, despite suffering setbacks to his resurrection plans at the hand of Darth Wyyrlok III, the great power of Venomis has granted Andeddu the opportunity he craves and the Malevolence await: a second life.

The Dead-King has returned.