Valin Draco

Valin Draco
Biographical information
Died	c. 17 BBY, Beshqek system
Descriptive information
Species	Human
Gender	Male
Height	Nearly two meters
Hair color	Black
Skin color	Fair
Cybernetics	Cybernetic thumb Cybernetic eye Various other cybernetic implants
Chronological and political information
Affiliation(s)	Jedi Order Galactic Republic Galactic Empire Inquisitorius
Masters	Denia (Jedi Master) Darth Rivan (via holocron)
Apprentices	Raik Muun

"Pray that you have not summoned the Empire on a fool's errand, for the Inquisitorius is not gentle with those who deal with Jedi."

―Valin Draco

Valin Draco was a male Human Jedi Knight who was the student of Jedi Master Denia during the waning years of the Galactic Republic. Following the outbreak of the Clone Wars, he fought for the Republic against the Confederacy of Independent Systems. However, his resolve to destroy the Confederacy drew him towards the dark side of the Force, and after he was almost killed during the Battle of Parein II 4, he fell fully into its grip.

Following the creation of the Galactic Empire, Draco allied himself with it and became a member of the Inquisitorius, an order of Dark Side Adepts that served the New Order. He adapted well to his new position and soon formulated a plan to try and find evidence that Senator Bail Organa had betrayed the Empire. Draco suspected that Organa was the leader of a resistance group based on Alderaan, and he helped Admiral Gilder Varth to infiltrate the movement. He also became part of the Sarlacc Project, a secret collaboration between the Inquisitorius and the Imperial Navy to build a Super Star Destroyer prototype.

When a powerful Force nexus began to develop on the planet Almas, Draco was sent to investigate it. In the ruins of the Almas Academy, a Jedi academy that was destroyed during the Clone Wars, he discovered and learned Force techniques from a Sith holocron that was constructed by the ancient Sith Lord Darth Rivan. However, Draco was seriously injured after an encounter with the Alderaanian Resistance, and had to be fitted with extensive cybernetics. He gained revenge by attacking a Resistance task force and capturing Denia, his former master. He took her to the headquarters of the Inquisitorius on Prakith, a planet located in the Deep Core, and tortured her there. However, a rescue team traveled to Prakith to free her, and Denia sacrificed herself to weaken Draco, forcing him to flee to the planet Byss where the Super Star Destroyer prototype was under construction. There, Draco took command of a Golan space defense platform that was protecting the prototype and he was killed when the platform was attacked by the Alderaanian Resistance.

Biography

Jedi Knight

"During the Clone Wars, the brave men and women I commanded called me the Valiant Dragon."

―Valin Draco

Valin Draco was a Human male who served in the Jedi Order during the waning years of the Galactic Republic. Draco trained as the Padawan of Jedi Master Denia. He fought during the Clone Wars and fully embraced his role as a commander in the Grand Army of the Republic, so much so that the people he commanded nicknamed him the "Valiant Dragon." However, his determination to defeat the Separatists gradually began to rise as the war progressed and drew him closer to the dark side of the Force. Draco participated in the Battle of Parein II 4, a battle fought between the Republic and the Confederacy on the fourth moon of the planet Parein II, where he was under the command of Jedi General Sannen. However, the Republic forces were defeated, and Draco was injured and left for dead. He believed that he had been abandoned, and his support of the Republic died. As he lay injured, he was attacked by a nighthunter, a dangerous Force-sensitive species of predator that was thought to be extinct. Draco fought back, and the two almost killed each other. Eventually, he managed to subdue the creature, but not before it had bitten off his thumb and clamped its jaws around his throat, causing extensive scarring. Rather than leave it to die, Draco nursed the hunter back to health, named it Crant, and kept it as a pet.

Serving the Empire

"My name is Valin Draco, and I will find you and make you pay for meddling here. You may have bested that slimy Hutt, but I can assure you that the affections of an Inquisitor are not so gentle."

―Valin Draco

Draco with his lightsaber ignited

Draco somehow escaped Parein II 4 and allied himself with the Galactic Empire, the newly-formed galactic government that had replaced the Republic, and joined the ranks of Emperor and Dark Lord of the Sith Palpatine's Dark Side Adepts as an Inquisitor. He was fitted with a cybernetic thumb to replace the one that Crant had bitten off, and he used his new Inquisitor tunic to hide his neck scars. He was also given command of the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Assiduous, and had the 12th Squadron of TIE/LN starfighters assigned to it at his personal request. Draco also expanded his personal armory by constructing a red-bladed lightsaber and acquiring a Star Courier.

Draco soon found himself an apprentice in the form of the Dark Jedi Raik Muun. Muun had held a grudge against the Jedi, but following the Order's destruction at the end of the Clone Wars, she was prevented from having revenge against them. Muun had traveled to the galactic capital of Coruscant to try and find those who had ordered the execution of the Jedi and cheated her out of her vengeance. However, things did not go as she expected, and she instead met Draco there. He saw great potential in her, and he asked her to join him. She accepted, as she felt that she had finally found someone to love her, and she accompanied him on various assignments. Around this time, Draco also aided the Sith Lord Darth Vader in torturing the captured Jedi Halagad Ventor. The Sith Lord showed his gratitude by giving Draco a squad of Noghri Death Commandos to use as his own.

In circa 17 BBY, Draco conspired with Admiral Gilder Varth of the Imperial Navy to infiltrate the Alderaanian Resistance, intending for Varth to become a member of it. Their goal was to gain evidence that Senator Bail Organa had betrayed the Empire and was secretly leading the Resistance. Draco had Varth display interest in joining the movement, and to ensure that no one suspected that Varth was still loyal to the Empire, he had the Admiral imprisoned in a facility on the Outer Rim planet Felucia. Draco wanted the Resistance to free Varth, and limited the number of Imperial troops stationed at the facility, under guise of trying to keep its existence secret. The Resistance took the bait and sent a team of operatives to free Varth. To keep up the pretense of Varth's defection, Draco sent a message to the prison while the team were still there, stating that he would be arriving in the system aboard the Assiduous to take custody of Varth, and wanted interrogation chemicals to be administered to the Admiral on his arrival. Everything went according to plan, and Varth took up a post in the Resistance.

Around this time, Draco became involved with the Sarlacc Project, the secret construction of a Super Star Destroyer prototype to serve as a flagship for the Imperial Navy. He oversaw a deal made with the Hutt Darga Jiramma Mionne, who agreed to supply tibanna gas for the project in return for Nazren slaves. Igren Demos, the Hutt's majordomo, began to secretly contact Draco, as he hoped that he could use his alliance with the Empire to take control of Darga's organization. Draco's former master, Denia, had been held captive in Darga's palace on the planet Cato Neimoidia since the Clone Wars, after being captured by the Separatists and placed in an artificial coma. When she was reawakened and freed by an Alderaanian Resistance team, Darga fled the palace, and Demos contacted Draco via HoloNet. The Majordomo told him that he had cornered Denia, and wanted to trade her in return for the Inquisitor's assurance that Darga would never return to Cato Neimoidia. Draco agreed, and said that he would travel there aboard the Assiduous, but he threatened Demos that he would not be pleased with him if he failed to hand over Denia. However, the Jedi Master successfully escaped before Draco arrived.

Darga relocated to the gas planet Bespin, and Draco traveled there aboard the Assiduous to oversee the transfer of funds to the Hutt—which would occur in secret during the Cloud City Sabacc Tournament. The Alderaanian Resistance team had tracked Darga to Bespin and infiltrated the tournament, discovering the truth about the deal. In order to cover up the arrangement, Draco used slave circuitry to take control of a Tibanna gas hauler, and tried to crash it into the slave ship Shackles of Nizon, which would kill all the slaves inside and destroy all evidence of the deal. The team commandeered several Z-95 Headhunters and managed to prevent this from happening. While they were there, Draco felt through the Force a presence that he had not felt since he was with Denia, and he suspected that this was the same team that had rescued her on Cato Neimoidia. As the team flew out of the system, Draco sent a transmission to them, saying that he would find them and make them pay for what they had done.

Investigating the Almas Academy

"Surrender yourselves to the Empire. I promise your treatment will be gentler, and you might even be given the chance to serve me."

―Valin Draco

Several months later, Draco traveled on a mission to Almas, a planet located in the Cularin system. Raik Muun and a contingent of Imperial troops, including Draco's Noghri, were assigned to accompany him. In addition, Draco brought a detachment of the elite clone shadow troopers, as he believed that if they were good enough to guard the Emperor's storehouse on the planet Utapau, then they were good enough to guard him. He had been sent to investigate the growing power of a Force nexus that was centered around the Almas Academy, a former Jedi academy, and also because he had learned from torturing Force-sensitive prisoners that there was a Sith holocron there.

Draco arrived in the system aboard the Assiduous, which was accompanied by the Lictor-class dungeon ship Revelator. He first searched the system for any Jedi who had survived the destruction of the Almas Academy at the end of the Clone Wars, but failed to locate any. Following this, he headed for Almas. Both his ships were too large to traverse the system's comet field, and he and his entourage were forced to make the journey to Almas in a Theta-class shuttle, and landed in the remains of the Forard spaceport. Draco arrived in the academy ruins, and was immediately entranced by an intoxicating surge of dark side energy. Attempting to locate the source of this power, he went into the caves beneath the academy, where he found the holocron of Darth Rivan, a Dark Lord of the Sith who had ruled Almas over a thousand years earlier. The growing dark side energy on Almas had suffused the holocron and given it greater power, which enabled the holocron gatekeeper to take on a life of his or her own and believe himself or herself to be the spirit of Rivan.

However, Draco and his entourage were not alone in the Academy. Jedi Master Vhiin Thorla had already arrived there along with his Padawan, Dorv'Tilsta, in search of any Jedi survivors of Order 66. They encountered Draco and Raik Muun, and engaged them in a lightsaber duel. Draco threatened Thorla that he would turn Tilsta to the dark side if he refused to fight, and Muun used the Force to coerce the young Padawan into a murderous rage, directed at his Master. Thorla was forced to strike his apprentice down, but the grief the Jedi Master suffered in doing so allowed Draco to easily capture him. The Inquisitor imprisoned Thorla in a Force-annulling Universal Energy Cage, and left Crant to guard it. Draco had plans for Thorla, and he conspired with the Rivan gatekeeper in the hopes of turning the Jedi Master to the dark side.

Draco took Rivan's holocron to a chamber beneath the Academy's archive room, where he studied it and learned some of the Sith techniques that Rivan had known. Under the influence of the gatekeeper, Draco left various traps and creatures around the academy to discourage intruders. The holocron persuaded him to release two parasitic Guardian Spirits in the Academy's library. He also used techniques that the holocron had shown him to create a Force illusion in a room that made anyone who entered the room fall asleep and come under Draco's influence. They would then have a Force-induced nightmare about being in a room in the Academy that resembled one they had previously been in, and while seeming familiar, it did not seem real. They would begin to feel claustrophobic and disorientated, making them despair and allowing Draco—through the Force—to sap their moral strength.

In the same room, Draco created a K'kayeh dreambeast through the Force, using another technique that the Rivan gatekeeper had shown him, similar to those used to create Sith Dopplegängers. The dreambeast was an illusion that resembled a larger K'kayeh that was hidden beneath the Academy, to which it was linked through the Force. The holocron also revealed to him the location of the Qornah Holocron, a holocron made by Jedi Master Qornah, which was concealed inside a bronzium bust of the Jedi Master in the Academy's library. Draco sliced the bust in half and retrieved the holocron, keeping it strapped to his wrist from then on. At some point, Draco hired the pirates of the Red Fury Brotherhood to prevent outsiders from landing on Almas by having their ships patrol the planet's orbit.

Meanwhile, Master Denia sent the Alderaanian Resistance team to the academy on a mission to recover the Qornah Holocron. They found Thorla's prison and killed Crant, which Draco felt through the Force. He continued to study both Rivan's and Qornah's holocrons, but was interrupted from his work when he was confronted by the Resistance team. Draco realized that the team must have been formidable foes, as they had survived all the traps and creatures that he had left in the academy. He urged them to surrender, but they refused, which instigated a fight between them, Raik Muun, and Draco's team of Shadow troopers. The Rivan gatekeeper used its Force connection with Draco to provide him with advanced Sith fighting techniques that Rivan had known. This turned the color of Draco's eyes to a golden hue as he used the techniques against the Resistance fighters.

Draco drew his lightsaber and then used Force rage to enhance his Force power. The Inquisitor moved to confront them, and once he was within range, he attacked them with his saber. However, the team was able to use the Force to sever the gatekeeper's connection to the holocron, which caused it to dissipate and overload. As the shadow troopers and Muun were incapacitated, Draco became desperate to survive, due to the fact that the loss of the holocron had weakened his power. He began to lose his resolve, and he fled back to the entrance of a large cavern. However, the gatekeeper had planned to summon a K'kayeh dragon if it lost control of Draco, and a dragon emerged from the depths of the academy as Draco fled further back to a bridge formation. Draco used the Force to control the dragon, preventing it from devouring him, and then threatened to destroy the Qornah Holocron. He held it over the edge of the chasm while he fired Force lightning from his hands at the team. In turn, the team attacked Draco again, causing him to drop the holocron on the ground, from where it tumbled over the edge into the abyss.

The capture of Denia

Denia, Draco's former Jedi Master, whom he captured.

"If the past is any indication, Draco will try to break her—it is only a matter of time."

―Bail Organa, to members of the Alderaanian Resistance

Draco somehow survived the encounter, and was fitted with extensive cybernetic enhancements, including a cybernetic right eye. To hide these, he began to wear a black face-plate with a red optic center. He posted a bounty on the Resistance team and sent the Zabrak Vril Vrakth to collect it. Vrakth tracked them to Nizon, a planet located in the Centares system, and hoped to please Draco by bringing them to him. However, he failed and was killed during the Battle of Nizon. A few weeks later, Gilder Varth sent Draco the coordinates of the location of an Alderaanian Resistance task force that was waiting near Coruscant. Draco led several Imperial-class Star Destroyers in an attack on the task force, and was among an Imperial boarding party that landed on the Alderaanian Resistance Nebulon-B frigate Resurgence, which had been commanding the flotilla. Accompanying him were three other Inquisitors who had been sent to help him, although they were unhappy about being pulled from their duties and placed under his command. Aboard the vessel, Draco quickly captured Master Denia, and then planned to leave with her in his custody.

While Denia was being taken to a shuttle, the Alderaanian Resistance team that Draco had encountered on Almas arrived. He paid them little heed, and hurried aboard the shuttle where Denia had been taken, which launched moments later. He transferred Denia to his Star Courier, and eventually made his way to the Citadel Inquisitorius on the planet Prakith in the Deep Core, the headquarters of the Inquisitorius. He took her to the Citadel's torture chamber, an octagonal-shaped room located high up in the building, where he began to torture her. However, she resisted him, and after a few months, he had still not broken her mind. This made his superiors impatient, and Draco began to use more brutal techniques on her.

Draco's old foes, the Alderaanian Resistance team, traveled to Prakith to try and free Denia. They infiltrated the Citadel and confronted Draco in the torture chamber, where he was torturing his former Master with the help of two T0-D interrogation droids. He immediately attacked them and initially fought defensively, using an examination table to give him cover while he used the Force to try and knock them over and disarm them. Afterward, he engaged them in melee combat. He seemed unbeatable and it appeared that he was about to defeat the agents. However, Denia used her last reserves of strength to grab Draco with the Force. The energy from her attack reflected back on to both of them, killing Denia and weakening Draco. It now seemed that the Alderaanians were going to win, so he turned and fled the room. He ran to a landing platform and left the Citadel aboard his personal shuttle.

Confrontation on Byss

"Had I known, when our paths crossed so long ago on Almas, that you would become such a thorn in the Empire's side, I would have had the planet razed from orbit. Yet I did not, and here we stand. If you throw down your weapons now, I guarantee you a quick and painless death. As you can see, I have been looking forward to this meeting for some time now."

―Valin Draco, to agents of the Alderaanian Resistance

Draco traveled to the planet Byss, where the Super Star Destroyer prototype was under construction, as his meditations revealed to him that his final confrontation with the Alderaanian agents would take place there. With Varth's approval, Draco made himself in charge of a Golan space defense platform that was being used to protect the Star Destroyer and hold it in place with tractor beams. However, Draco chose not to tell Varth about his visions, as he planned to wait for Varth to fail at defending the Star Destroyer, then step in, save the Star Destroyer, and take control of the Sarlacc Project and it's support fleet. While he waited for the Alderaanian Resistance to attack, Draco stored his Star Courier in Docking Bay 616 of the Golan platform and was also assigned two Imperial Shadow Guards to serve him, as part of a training mission for them.

Draco's prediction proved to be correct and an Alderaanian Resistance fleet attacked Byss, intent on destroying the prototype. During the battle, Draco's old adversaries, the team of Resistance agents that he had encountered on Almas and Prakith, boarded the Golan station and planned to use it's weapons to attack the Super Star Destroyer. The Inquisitor waited for them on the station's auxiliary command bridge, along with a complement of stormtroopers and both of his Shadow Guards. He ignited his lightsaber and allowed the agents to reach the bridge. When they arrived, he told them that when he had first encountered them on Almas, he hadn't realized what a problem they would cause for the Empire. He then offered to give them quick and painless deaths if they dropped their weapons and surrendered to him. However, their conversation was interrupted, as Varth contacted Draco over a display screen, demanding to know why the Inquisitor hadn't powered down the station's tractor beams, to allow the Star Destroyer to participate in the battle and decimate the Alderaanian forces. Draco ordered his men to lower the tractor beams and was then immediately attacked by the Alderaanian agents. The agents killed Draco and the Resistance was able to succeed in destroying the Super Star Destroyer.

Personality and traits

"I know that you've suffered great losses, that you wrestle with the same concerns of virtue and compromise that I did as a Jedi, the same concerns that have plagued the conscientious since time immemorial."

―Valin Draco

As a Jedi, Draco was heroic and idealistic, and at the start of the Clone Wars, he sided with the Republic. However, as the conflict drew on, he increasingly lost hope in what he was fighting for, and eventually completely abandoned his belief in the Republic after the Battle of Parein II 4.

Draco was ruthless as well as calculating, and did not make rash judgments. He preferred to twist things so that they could serve his own means, rather than destroy them himself. This was demonstrated when he nursed Crant back to health and attempted to make Vhiin Thorla turn to the dark side of the Force. He also fully embraced his role as an Inquisitor, and was a skilled torturer. However, he viewed his allegiance to the Empire to be one of necessity, as it helped him to do what he wanted and he did not see himself as beholden to it. Despite this, he believed that being an Inquisitor was his destiny and that it had allowed him to find his true self. By the time that Draco had traveled to Byss, he began to believe that he was future of the Empire and that he should exterminate any Jedi he met by engaging them in personal combat, like the Emperor had done. He planned to earn a high-ranking position within the New Order, by crushing the Alderaanian Resistance, which he believed would deter any future rebellions against the Empire.

Draco liked to seek revenge against people who had caused him harm or double-crossed him, but was also wary of fighting those that he could not defeat, and as such, he knew when to retreat. An example of this was when he captured Denia aboard the Resurgence and left without attacking a constant thorn in his side, the Alderaanian Resistance team, even though he had previously vowed to kill them. Draco genuinely cared for Crant and was saddened when the night hunter was killed, although he tried not to show it.

Draco was nearly two meters in height and had black-colored hair and fair skin. During his service as an Inquisitor, he was fitted with various cybernetic implants, including a cybernetic thumb and eye.

Powers and abilities

Draco demonstrated various Force abilities, including Force lightning, Force Rage, telekinesis and Beast Control. He also learned various techniques from Darth Rivan's holocron, such as how to create dreambeasts. The holocron significantly augmented Draco's connection to the Force and he was able to draw power from it, although he lost most of this after it was destroyed. By the time of his encounter with the Alderaanian Resistance on Prakith, he had greatly grown in power since their previous encounter with him on Almas, as the time he had spent in the Citadel Inquisitorius had infused him with the power of the dark side. After Denia sacrificed herself, she reduced his power, and he was no longer able to continue the fight.

Draco was multi-lingual—in addition to Basic, he could also speak Bocce, Dosh, High Galactic, Honoghran, and Huttese.

Behind the scenes

Valin Draco was a created as a recurring villain for Dawn of Defiance, a campaign produced by Wizards of the Coast to supplement the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. However, he received his first mention in the sourcebook Starships of the Galaxy in late 2007, just prior to the release of Dawn of Defiance in 2008. Draco also later received an entry in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia and was indirectly mentioned in an adventure hook in the Rebellion Era Campaign Guide.

In Echoes of the Jedi, the fourth scenario in the Dawn of Defiance campaign, a number of different things involving Draco depend upon the actions of the players, who role-play as the Alderaanian Resistance agents. If the player characters are captured or incapacitated by Draco's Noghri Death Commandos, then they take them straight to Draco. Also, if the players confirm to Draco that it was they who killed Crant, then the glint in his eyes dulls, although he soon regains his composure. The players have the option to free Vhiin Thorla from his cage, and if they do, then he comes and fights Draco with them. If they do not know how to sever the Rivan gatekeeper from its holocron, then Thorla does this for them. Draco then snatches the holocron and throws it at Thorla, which makes it shatter and pushes Thorla off the edge of the chasm.

In Sword of the Empire, the ninth scenario in the Dawn of Defiance campaign, it is possible for the player characters to encounter Draco either after infiltrating the Citadel Inquisitorius, or after being taken there if they are captured by Imperial forces. However, as the plot summarization of the scenario in Dawn of Defiance: Gamemaster Primer claims that the player characters encounter Draco after infiltrating the Citadel, this can be assumed to be the canonical option. The means by which Denia sacrifices herself during the events of Sword of the Empire can also vary, depending upon player actions. If they succeed in inflicting a lot of damage on Draco and are about to defeat him, then he turns on Denia and attacks her with Force lightning, which she reflects back onto him. If, alternately, it seems that Draco is about to win, then Denia uses telekinesis to attack Draco and the resulting Force energy reflects back onto both of them. The Gamemaster Primer claims that Draco was about to defeat the player characters, so this article assumes that it is that outcome that is the canonical one.

The players again confront Draco in the final scenario of the campaign, Jaws of the Sarlacc. If any of the player characters present during this encounter are Jedi, then Draco duels them and is prepared to fight to the death to defeat them, while relying on his Shadow Guards and stormtroopers to attack any non-Jedi player characters.

The release of the Legacy Era Campaign Guide—another supplement to the Star Wars Roleplaying Game—in 2009 raised the possibility that Valin Draco is the ancestor of Antares Draco, an Imperial Knight of the Fel Empire. While the Legacy Era Campaign Guide does not explicitly state the familial bond, it is strongly implied in the entry for Antares Draco; it is noted that an ancestor of Antares was a member of the Inquisitorius under Emperor Palpatine.

Appearances

• "The Traitor's Gambit" – Dawn of Defiance campaign (First mentioned)
• "A Wretched Hive" – Dawn of Defiance campaign (First appearance) (Appears in hologram)
• "The Queen of Air and Darkness" – Dawn of Defiance campaign (Appears in hologram)
• "Echoes of the Jedi" – Dawn of Defiance campaign
• "The First to Strike" – Dawn of Defiance campaign (Mentioned only)
• "The Core of Corruption" – Dawn of Defiance campaign (Mentioned only)
• "A Reckoning of Wraiths" – Dawn of Defiance campaign
• "The Gem of Alderaan" – Dawn of Defiance campaign (Mentioned only)
• "Sword of the Empire" – Dawn of Defiance campaign
• "Jaws of the Sarlacc" – Dawn of Defiance campaign

Sources

• "Dawn of Defiance: Gamemaster Primer" on Wizards.com (content now obsolete; backup link)
• Starships of the Galaxy, Saga Edition
• "Customizing Star Wars Minis 9" on Wizards.com (content now obsolete; backup link)
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
• Rebellion Era Campaign Guide (Indirect mention only)

Notes and references

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