Krelach, the Grey Warden

(With help from my friend, Vlad Draghici)

"Krelach was born just under 4000 years before the Battle of Yavin, and spent most of his childhood surviving on the brutal conditions of his homeworld, Britannis Unitis. It was, for the most part, kill or be killed; he was routinely hunted by roving gangs of adolescents who were looking for food, resources, anything which they could use to help them survive. His father was a hard worker in a local factory but was paid very little, and his mother worked twenty hour days every day but one in the week, so there were few opportunities for Krelach to have help from his parents. He grew up thinking they despised him (this being the reason they worked such long hours to avoid him), but they loved him very much and wanted to provide him the best life they could. One day, whilst salvaging a rubbish pile, Krelach was ambushed by a group of six children. He was held down and beaten repeatedly, and as he was about to be stabbed, Krelach released a torrent of force energy at the offender, who flew backwards into a concrete wall and broke his neck. The other children quickly ran away.

Krelach began to run home to tell his parents, but on the way, the parents of the child from earlier, as well as their friends, tried to kill him. He was not able to muster the same force energy, and was stabbed. Before the parents could finish the job, a hooded figure disarmed and defeated the gang of thugs and rescued Krelach. He took the wounded child to his home, where he told Krelach’s parents the truth – the robed figure was a Jedi Master, and their son was force sensitive. The Master explained that it was his duty to take Krelach to the Jedi Temple to be trained as a member of the Jedi Order – something his parents were all too happy to let happen, as they wanted nothing more than to have Krelach escape life on the crime world. The Jedi healed Krelach on the journey to Coruscant, and Krelach began his padawan training.

At the age of fifteen, Krelach demonstrated more strength in the force than virtually any Jedi at the time. Several council members believed he was stronger even than them. Disaster struck when the Mandalorian War began, and the Jedi Order refused to aid the Republic. Now a Jedi Knight around the age of twenty five, Krelach disobeyed the council and joined Revan’s Jedi contingent as they went to fight the Mandalorians. Whilst fighting on Revan’s campaign, Krelach fell in love with a Jedi Knight named Saralia Vriesia. The two had a romantic relationship for the duration of the campaign, but when Revan turned to the dark side, so did she. She pleaded with Krelach to stay with her, so that they could defeat the stagnant Jedi Order together; Krelach, however, refused. He did not believe it was right. The two duelled, with Saralia trying to kill him. In the end, she made a fatal misstep and was impaled by Krelach’s lightsabre. In her last moments, she was redeemed – but her death put a heavy weight on Krelach’s conscience which never really went away. Little did he know, she had had a daughter before their fight, but had sent her away so she was not exposed to the conflict Revan was brewing.

After defeating Saralia, Krelach fled to Coruscant to warn the Jedi Council. For his warning, he was not exiled, although he was instructed to fight in battles which were virtually suicide against superior odds. He defeated his opposition again and again, and was part of the strike force which captured and wiped the memory of Darth Revan. When he returned, he was made a Jedi Master, and given charge of a Padawan named Logan Aparkus. Krelach treated Logan like his own son – he had always wanted a child with Saralia, and so took the new opportunity as it came. He trained Logan firmly but with love. At the age of fifty seven, with Logan being twenty three, Krelach took Logan to Taris with the intent of finishing the final stage of his knight trials. The unfortunate co-incidence was the arrival of Revan, whose memory was wiped, and the bombardment of the planet by the Sith. Krelach and his Padawan tried desperately to rescue as many as civilians as possible, but in a move to give some civilians more time to escape, Krelach made a mistake and did not give Logan enough time to escape to a shuttle. He was forced to leave Logan behind to save the civilians of the planet, and his padawan vowed revenge upon Krelach.

When he returned to Coruscant, he was told he was being reassigned to the temple at Typhon, and so Krelach went. He spent three more years there before a Sith invasion force appeared in orbit with little warning and invaded the planet, killing many of the masters, as well as the Grandmaster of the Jedi at the time, who was visiting Typhon. As the most senior Jedi still alive, Krelach took charge and marshalled the Padawans, Knights, and junior Masters who were still able to fight, and repelled the invaders, but not before he caught sight of the leader of the invasion force – Logan Aparkus, his old apprentice, now reborn as the leader of the Sith. Krelach was elected the new Grandmaster, and it was this time when he met Varonno, a promising Jedi Knight who had been instrumental in the defence of the temple at Typhon, Remus, a Knight strong in the force, and Oliver, a prominent Master on the planet. For their service, Krelach promoted Remus and Varonno to Jedi Masters, and made Oliver a Jedi Council Member.

The next decade was tumultuous, with numerous conflicts emerging between Logan’s Sith Order and Krelach’s Jedi. Open war broke out between the two factions, and for the most part, neither side gained any significant advantages. Krelach promoted a massive recruitment drive with the intent of gaining as many Jedi as possible to help stave off the Sith, with Varonno and Remus both being made councilmen. Varonno was made Master-of-Arms and put in charge of training younglings, whereas Remus was made chief consular. There was a brief period where the Republic Military broke off from the Jedi and became an informal ally instead of being connected formally, but negotiations between Krelach and the Marshall General of the Republic forces, Richards, led to an agreement for the two to become allied again.

The combined Republic forces made their way to a planet named Kalos VI, which the Sith had also made way to. It was rumoured that remnants of holocrons created by Revan had been left on the planet, and both factions wanted to retrieve the holocrons to prevent the other from gaining Revan’s secrets. Krelach and his forces were preparing to move out when Logan and his retinue met at the entrance to the Republic base and requested a meeting with the Jedi Grandmaster. Krelach answered, and Logan challenged Krelach’s padawan at the time, Boom, to a duel with his own apprentice, Core. Core wielded a double-bladed lightsabre, but despite this clear advantage, Krelach was arrogant and believed Boom could defeat him. She was killed mercilessly by the Sith Apprentice and, wracked with guilt, Krelach excused himself from the Jedi Order for a period to meditate. He went to Revan Canyon – a location where Revan supposedly mediated – and met the force ghost of Grand Inquisitor Palmier, who had been executed by Logan for failing to capture a Jedi.

Palmier bestowed upon Krelach his ideology – that the dark side would always consume itself, and the light side would always grow stagnant and collapse. Either side being out of balance in the Force would lead to apocalyptic consequences. Palmier offered to teach Krelach the strength of the dark side for him to use in tandem with the light – using both would allow him to be extremely powerful and perfectly in balance with the force. Krelach agreed, and spent a week learning the powers of the dark side. In his absence, Varonno became leader of the Jedi Order, with Remus and another councilmember, Grayla, helping him. Krelach eventually mastered both the light and dark side, and spoke to Varonno and Remus. They agreed with his ideology – that the whole war was flawed, and that any imbalance led to dire consequences. Thus, they decided to learn the powers of Grey from him, and the three formed a new faction devoted to maintaining balance in the Galaxy – the Grey Force Wardens.

The Wardens’ first action was to resurrect Grand Inquisitor Palmier, who could be of great use as an informant in the Sith Order. The Wardens established a network of sympathetic individuals in both the Jedi and Sith, who could be counted upon to help maintain balance to a certain extent, should it be necessary. One fatal move by the Jedi, however, led to a period of civil war within the Jedi and Sith Orders – Logan Aparkus converted once more, and re-joined the Jedi Order. Krelach warned Grayla, the Grandmaster of the Jedi at the time, against taking Logan, but she did not listen. Logan possessed Grayla, and so the Grey Force Wardens killed Grayla. A new Jedi, named Jando, took lead of the Jedi Order. At this time, however, total chaos had erupted in the force as a result of civil and external wars between the Sith and the Republic. Driven by hopelessness, Krelach went into hiding and faded into legend. Varonno tied up a loose end by killing the leader of the Jedi, Jando - his once and former apprentice -, and Remus was killed by the Sith, although he attained Force Ghost form and accompanied Varonno as he, too, faded into myth.

Then, three and a half thousand years later, inklings of Krelach began to emerge once more. He had imbued his spirit in four Clone Commanders of the Grand Army of the Republic, each of whom bore a very similar name: Kralich, Krolach, Krelich, and Krilach. All four survived Order 66 and met, feeling a mutual connection to one another. With the four fragments of his personality reunited, Krelach’s spirit merged the four Clone Commander’s souls into his own body once more. Now possessing an almost total dominance of the Force, Krelach waited for the perfect moment to make an attempt at seizing galactic power – he had foreseen an apocalyptic future, where an alien race would enter the galaxy and annihilate all life in an attempt to balance the Force themselves.

250 years after the Battle of Yavin, with brand new Sith and Jedi orders now waging war, he emerged, and killed the leaders of both factions. He took control of them, using his dominance of the force to control the majority of Jedi and Sith in the galaxy. A handful of both groups survived and joined forces, looking for rumours of the spirits of Remus and Varonno, both of whom had survived as Force Ghosts over the millennia. They were reborn in their old bodies and led the attack against Krelach’s regime. Krelach easily defeated numerous Sith and Jedi at a time, but when his former compatriots took arms against him, he found himself overworked. Varonno sliced off Krelach’s arms, and both Remus and Varonno did a force purge of Krelach’s body. He returned as a force ghost, but now, with no regrets – finally, he had come to terms with the death of his lover, of his padawans, and of his impossible calling. He decided it was down to the duty of the galaxy to decide balance for itself. With their own duties in their lives fulfilled, Varonno and Remus left their bodies once more, and the three passed on from the mortal plane into the force. As they did so, a huge menace began encroaching on the borders of the galaxy…force sensitive, malign, and hungry. The Sith and Jedi Orders were united, now, and in balance – when they fought the new menace, they would do so together. In the memory of Krelach and the Grey Force Wardens, the newly formed alliance named itself “The Order of the Grey.” Krelach never faded into legend this time – his memory, and that of his compatriots, was sealed into the heart of the galaxy for ever.

At long last, the Grey Force Wardens had created balance in the force."

#modelwriteup #starwars