Ashin Varanin

Ashin Varanin · May 15, 2013

http://sanchiko.deviantart.com/art/Die-198199032

http://varanin.deviantart.com/art/Resonance-Lightsaber-207078386

NAME: Ashin Cardé Varanin, formerly Shira Karrde, formerly Ori'vod, formerly Empress Desmius the First
FACTION: Lords of the Fringe
RANK: Grand Admiral
SPECIES: Human
AGE: 32
GENDER: Female
HEIGHT: 5'11"
WEIGHT: 170lbs
EYES: Pale Blue
HAIR: Brown
SKIN: Olive
FORCE SENSITIVE: Yes

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STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES (Required: 2 Weaknesses Minimum) :
Strength/Weakness Tradeoffs:

1) Ashin's new body, provided by Val'ryss Zankarr, carried over certain marks and traits of her old body. For example, she has a serious limp in her right leg. The limp was made worse by Josiah Denko during their fight on Barab One, and by falling through the roof of the Dark Side cave on Dagobah.
2) Ashin may be a master of the Core Powers, but many of her more specialized skills fall short. For example, though (as a Darksider) she was skilled enough at alchemy to make powerful armor, render Spencer Jacobs immune to pheromones, and use Mask on her own face, she suffers from a generalist's faults: She was never able to match @[member="Valik"] or @[member="Val'Ryss Zankarr"] for alchemy. Similarly, she never matched Velok for tutaminis or Reyven Samoth for Force Drain. Her powers in these areas were respectable, but her focus lies on the Core Powers. Now that she is a Lightsider, most of those powers are off limits to her anyway.
3) Ashin's lightsabre combat focuses entirely on Shii-Cho and Trakata, with an emphasis on broken rhythm. Her fighting style is simple in many ways, and she is extremely poor at every other Form. For example, she cannot use a Makashi master's finesse or give the same defensive showing as a Soresu master.
4) Ashin is a tank, but her mobility suffers.
5) Every Master of the Force faces a choice between 'throwing stones' and 'reading ripples', or, as Luke Skywalker put it, between 'hearing a whisper' and 'shouting all the time.' In other words, there is a massive tradeoff between power and sensitivity. Up until now, Ashin has been a shouter and a rock-thrower. Her sensory abilities have suffered.

Primary Powers/Skills:

Force Weapon (specialized to enhance bodily resilience)
Telekinesis (simple but strong)
Shii-Cho
Short-term Memory Enhancement
Enhanced Strength
Crucitorn/Remain Conscious
Grounding
~~Force Storm~~

Secondary Powers/Skills:

Mass Emotional Effects
Force Bellow
Tutaminis/Energy Resistance
Force Jump/Speed
Force Barrier/Deflection
Perceive White Current
Flow-Walking
Doppelganger
Force Valor
Force Tracking
~~Force Drain~~
~~Lightning~~
~~Biological Alchemy/Mask~~
~~Materials Alchemy~~
~~Force Phantom~~
~~Transfer Essence~~
~~Force Walk/Spirit Binding~~

~~Sith Magic Spells:~~

~~Enhance eyesight~~
~~Mind control~~
~~False Light Side aura~~
~~Bestow Force sensitivity~~

SHIP:
The Chimaera, a heavily modified Invictus-class Star Destroyer.

BIOGRAPHY:
Ashin was born to middle-class parents, and quite normally began training as a Jedi in her early teens. She served extensively in the Unknown Regions, rebuilding a broken empire. As a Knight, Ashin fell afoul of Darksiders when her Padawan, a Mon Calamari named Temap, killed a captured Dark Lord. She found herself poisoned, cut off from the Light Side, and chased back into her home in the Unknown Regions, where she lived in the slums to avoid risking the lives of her friends. Only once she was at peace with herself did a certain Sith Lord recruit her to find some kind of a noble purpose, despite her continued use of the Dark Side.

Former Masters (Chronologically):
Holt Charnil (Jedi arts)
Lyn-Char Beorht (telekinesis)
Akemi Nakamura and Siriss Cortann (blade combat)
Cerberus Olra'en (Jedi arts)
Hagron-tides-of-green (deep-current mass emotional tuning)
Velok (energy manipulation, Force Drain)
Darth Sirena/Sirella Valkner (Sith Magic, biological alchemy)
Darth Sarastro (lightning)
Darth Kharonos (materials alchemy)
Darth Ahkris (materials alchemy, biological alchemy)

“I've done a few things I'm not proud of, and a few things that keep me up at night screaming. I'm nobody's champion anymore. But right or wrong, I'm not going to let you lay a hand on him again.” – Ashin on Trevel'ka

”Ever seen her fight? Deliberate, strong, unhurried, unimaginative. She's like Darth Vader come again.” – Ember Rekali, Jedi Master

Ashin Cardé Varanin is a Jedi Master in the process of redemption, with close ties to various bodies in the Unknown Regions. As a Jedi Knight, she never had an official Master, but was taught by many different instructors. Cut off from the Light Side of the Force by a group known as the Cult of Shadow, she travelled the galaxy with her lover, Tamzar Ranox, until her kidnapping and forcible recruitment by the Cult. After being forced to use the Dark Side to survive, the fallen Jedi Knight escaped and hid from all galactic matters until recruited to a group called None Whatsoever by Velok's promise that she would not be alone as a moral and ethical Darksider. In this sense she filled the shoes of Ori'vod, the Mandalorian Blademaster who was Velok's best friend. Ashin was named First Apprentice to the Sith witch Sirella Valkner, and later staged a coup of a major Sith government in the Unknown Regions.

As a full Sith Lord, she regulated access to the most sensitive knowledge aboard the ''Stormblessed,'' a starship that functioned as a Sith academy. She was a teacher and mentor for the Sith scholars, guarded the holocrons – the Skull Holocron, the Sorkatar Holocron, the Vectivus Holocron and Vulta Daanat's holocron - and used her deep-current tuning techniques to alter the balance of emotions aboard the ''Stormblessed.''

Since the overthrow of the Sith government to which she gave allegiance, Ashin charted her own course, eventually finding a place in the Sith Empire under Emperor Moridin. She hid her Sith training by referring to herself as a Dark Jedi Master, until such time as it suited her purposes to reveal the true nature of her abilities.

At that point, she staged a coup, became Empress, and tripled the Empire's territory. She worked with, trained, and eventually fell in love with Spencer Jacobs, a wayward Jedi Padawan who later became one of the galaxy's most powerful Masters. When the Empire met the Republic at the Battle of Roche, Ashin's life changed overnight. She discovered she had breast cancer, lost an arm while putting a lightsabre through the gut of the Jedi Grandmaster, and was betrayed by the Dark Council. Her life in shambles, she fled with Spencer, and they founded the Vagrant Fleet together. In the process, she came out of the shadows only to oppose the Empire's invasion of Mandalore, which she had protected twice before.

Her period of being presumed dead ended when Moridin tracked down the Vagrants at Void Station. She and Moridin were cast into hyperspace on his flagship's bridge tower by Jorus Merrill, and vanished.

She reappeared in the Unknown Regions under the name Grand Admiral Shira Karrde and, with Spencer and her closest allies from the Empire and the Vagrant Fleet, unified the Unknown Regions while defending them against the deadliest threats of the galaxy.

Eventually she regained the Light Side of the Force, and then her story truly began.

==History==

===Apprentice===

“Just an ordinary person who woke up one day and discovered she could use the Force. And nothing changed. She didn't get a messiah complex or start ego-tripping. Situations came her way, not of her doing, and she swam as often as she sank.” - Lyn-Char Beorht, ~830 ABY

Ashin was the daughter of a wayward Jedi Padawan named Cerberus Olra'en, the son of Darth Shule, the Jedi Master Je'gan Olra'en. Her mother, a girl from a royal house on Naboo, gave her up for adoption, and she was raised by a husband-and-wife merchant team on New Cov.

Ashin began training at a very secretive Jedi praxeum in her early teens. She spent several years there, maintaining close contact with her adoptive family. It was there that she first met her biological father, Cerberus Olra'en, then a Jedi Knight. She trained under Holt Charnil, a relic of a bygone age but a master of the fundamental Jedi techniques. She rejected the traditional Olra'en skillset of mentalism and illusions, preferring instead to hone her gifts in more general areas of the Force. It was at this facility that she was first introduced to her missing grandfather's holocron, as well as the carbonite-frozen Darron Wraith.

Later, she transferred to another, larger Jedi facility, this one in the fringes of the Unknown Regions, but her happiness was short-lived. A Sith Lord named Damascus assaulted and overran the facility. Ashin had the option to stay behind, but chose instead to evacuate with her fellow Apprentices, a choice that haunted her for many years. She continued her Jedi training aboard a wandering Ithorian herd ship.

Over the course of her training, it was confirmed that the Force was weak with her. She decided to prioritize core Jedi skills, including telekinesis, physical enhancement, and the simplest of the lightsabre forms. Her training focused on pushing these simple skills to their limits through discipline, timing and imagination. She became a master of broken rhythm and split focus.

While training on the herd ship, Ashin received a message from a Bothan named Ketti, in which he claimed to be her parents' business partner. He told her that her parents had been injured in a transit accident and that she needed to come to a major hospital on Kothlis. The Jedi who oversaw Ashin's training allowed her to journey to Kothlis, alongside a Jedi Knight.

They had been deceived. Ketti, as it turned out, was a close assistant of the Dark Lord Kishkumen, who was right-hand man to a Defel mastermind named Sivter. By capturing Ashin and her escort, Ketti hoped to supplant Kishkumen and ascend within the ranks of Sivter's organization, the Cult of Shadow. The group sought to erase civilization and rebuild it entirely, disdainful of the chaos of the galaxy.

Once lured to Kothlis, Ashin was kidnapped by suborned planetary security troops and spent six days awake in a force-field prison, while her captors attempted to drug or incapacitate her. The drugs included Sith Poison. She resisted the poison and escaped, a trial by fire that became instrumental in her growth as a Jedi. She was aided in her flight by two rogue Jedi, Lyn-Char Beorht and Ember Rekali. Before she could return to the Order, however, the three Jedi were recruited by Captain Farn Engel, a smuggler and powerful infobroker, to participate in an important effort deep in the Unknown Regions. Without formal orders, and knowing that Beorht and Rekali were only peripheral members of the Jedi Order, Ashin nevertheless agreed.

Engel's ship brought them to the Jade Worlds, where Ashin became a member of the Committee to Restore the Shau'ghunate, a body which sought to restore the Jade Worlds' independence in a peaceful and legitimate way. The Jade Worlds had been subjected to a cataclysm and then assimilated by a militaristic neighbouring government. Acting as a Jedi advisor to Admiral Jita Hangetsu, the senior military officer of the Jade Worlds, Ashin participated in Operation Overdue Justice, an operation that crippled a significant pirate faction. She learned the art of the blade from two Jade Worlds warriors, Akemi Nakamura and Siriss Cortann, and helped teach them the lightsabre in return. She also helped Beorht and Rekali train a young prodigy named Halla Kitani Kaijus. Halla was the heir apparent to the Jade Worlds, her father and older brother having died in the cataclysm.

Later, when Kishkumen's agents framed Ember Rekali for attacking Admiral Hangetsu, Ashin was asked to track Ember down and assure him that the Guard had discovered the fraud. She and a squad of Guardsmen tracked him to Salvadda. However, her pursuit was interrupted by a Nightsister and Dark Jedi called La-Reia Beorht. The Nightsister Master attacked and wounded her, then went for the Guards. Though wounded, Ashin was able to strike Reia down from behind. Ashin remained unaware that a Whiphid Dark Lord named Velok had been nearby, subtly making it more difficult for Reia to kill the Guards.

Ashin knew the dangers of being known for killing a Dark Master. Until her ascent as a Sith Lord, only the Guard and Velok knew who really killed the Nightsister.

===Jedi Knight and Jade Worlds Operative===

“How many Jedi just ignore everything lawful, go charging off based on their own judgment, think they can make decisions for thousands or millions? That’s how it works. You think you’re infallible. And what gives us the right – genetics? That’s elitism at its finest. We’re not supposed to be above the law. Reformed Darksiders should answer for their crimes in a fair manner, not be given a few pious words about repentance and redemption and then sent on their way. Repentance involves making restitution, being willing to pay for what you’ve done – not given a pardon because your blood has midichlorians in it. I’ve seen people ‘redeemed’ and re-accepted into the fold who would have been given the death penalty if they weren’t Force-sensitive.” – Ashin to Brembla Kol

Ashin returned to the Jedi Order and took the Jedi Trials, after which she began service as a Knight, trying to hold the Republic together. However, she soon returned to her new home in the Jade Worlds. The Jade Empire began to take shape, thanks to the work of the Committee to Restore the Shau'ghunate. Ashin helped train the first Patriots, the Jade Empire's Force-using warriors. The feline Kalo-Kaa and others had already learned well from Akemi Nakamura, Siriss Cortann, Lyn-Char Beorht and Ashin herself, and she returned to find Kalo-Kaa her equal. Several of her students had matched or exceeded her, as she had begun to reach the limits of her Force potential.

She was instrumental in the rescue of Ember Rekali, who had been taken hostage by Siriss Cortann and a group of Darksiders which had broken out of a Forcer prison on Armitage. Working with Brembla Kol and several members of an Unknown Regions Force group called the Tak Council, Ashin evicted Cortann and her associates - including a young woman named Kelen Adwar - from the Jade Empire. She helped save the Isen nobleman Ciribal Armel from Cortann's people, only to face betrayal as Ciribal opted to join the Cult of Shadow along with Cortann and company. She duelled Ciribal and removed his leg at the knee, but she would live to regret sparing his life.

Shortly thereafter, she took part in a military operation designed to cripple an arachnid species known as the Cold, near the Jade Empire's northern borders. Flying a stealthed courier, she infiltrated the Cold staging points over the planet code-named Iceball and located the highest concentration of humanoid prisoners. When the JEAF fleet arrived for rescue ops and orbital bombardment, Ashin landed on Iceball and participated in SpecOps raids against certain weapons installations that were located in populated areas. She encountered the half-mythological 'Frost Witch,' Simma Cobaul, who warned her of specific Cold patrols, then vanished.

After the Cold threat was neutralized, Ashin resigned her commission and left the Jade Worlds. To her old trainer Master Charnil, she cited two reasons: the successful establishment of the Patriots, and the sense of an oncoming storm. She returned to Onderon and took an apprentice, a Mon Calamari boy named Temap whose Force potential matched her own for mundanity. After two routine missions, they travelled to the ice world of Yusi to follow up on ancient hints to the location of a lightsabre cache. Leaving Temap to search one set of ruins, Ashin set out for another set - an ancient palace and colosseum, half-way around the world. It was there that she encountered the former Imperial agent Tamzar Ranox, who (it appeared) had been stranded for days. In the snowstorm, Ashin's fighter disappeared. They survived the storm together by nesting in the guts of a snow-bantha, and set out to find the cache.

In that purpose they were unsuccessful, but they did find an ancient Sith laboratory and crypt buried under the palace. After fighting Sith- animated skeletons in alchemical armour, they found themselves trapped in the crypt with a holocron encased in a black skull. The holocron's gatekeeper agreed to release them from the rapidly freezing crypt if, and only if, Ashin used the Dark Side. The influence of the holocron's presence, coupled with Ranox's efforts to unseat her, swayed Ashin enough that she lost control and used the Dark Side to break a huge granite altar. The passage unsealed and they left the palace, though not before Ranox destroyed the crypt with a thermal detonator.

When they got outside, her X-Wing was waiting. Ranox revealed that he had been remote-controlling it to get her help in retrieving the holocron, and pulled a lightsabre. Ashin disabled the remote-control apparatus in the fighter and confronted him in a duel that laid waste to a portion of Yusi's surface. The incident ended when Ranox received a communication regarding the public theft of a huge cache of Force-related artifacts. Ranox proposed that they work together., and Ashin agreed. She, Temap and Ranox traveled to Kothlis, where they would encounter Darth Ahkris in the form of 'Delana Saan, Jedi Knight', and the Dark Lord Kishkumen. All of them would participate in the deadly chase that would come to be known as the Winnowing.

===Things Fall Apart===

”She will come through this, you have my word on that.” – Tamzar Ranox

It was not the first time that Ashin had come face-to-face with Kishkumen. Her involvement with the Cult of Shadow stretched back across several years. This time around, she had the help of Tam Ranox, who outmaneuvered and incapacitated the Dark Lord. They would have secured him as a prisoner if not for Temap: the young, terrified Mon Cal decapitated the unconscious man. Kishkumen exploded at death, and 'Delana Saan' escaped with the cache. Temap was almost killed by Ranox, but Ashin intervened.

With help from the Winnowing's mysterious manipulators, the Dark Lords known as Velok and Ald Sorosel, the three followed the cache to Nar Shaddaa and confronted 'Delana Saan'. They didn't know whether Saan was actually a Jedi; neither were they aware that Temap, and by extension his master, had been targeted by Siriss Cortann, who had become Kishkumen's lover. Teroch'dha, the Cult's secret police, gave Cortann a sample of a specialized Sith Poison variant, along with specific instructions.

After tracking Saan to a cantina and overcoming her mental influence, Ashin, Ranox and Temap confronted her. Meanwhile, a Teroch'dha assassin named Arox executed Temap's family and friends, causing Temap - new to the ways of the Force - to become ill without realizing why. He collapsed; Ashin, believing that Saan was using a Force technique, drew her lightsabre but was talked down by Ranox. They left Saan with the cache and took Temap to the hidden Jedi temple where Ashin's training had begun. There, they hoped to take refuge with Master Charnil and the Olra'en legacy. There had been a rumor of Je'gan's return, and Ashin sought sanctuary from her grandfather.

She arrived, however, to find that the rumors were false. Je'gan's whereabouts remained unknown. That night, Siriss Cortann, a master mentalist herself, snuck into the Temple, killed a handful of Jedi and guards, and took Ashin and Temap hostage. She poisoned them both, Temap fatally. Ashin was rendered near-comatose by a blend of Senflax, Aktharan, Molthiadol and the dreaded Shadow Poison, which would cut her off from the Light Side of the Force. As the Shadow Poison approached full integration, Ashin lay helpless beside Temap's body and the cortosis-frozen Darron Wraith. Cortann covered her escape by unleashing three alchemically altered Terentateks. She took Ashin with her, but was pursued by Ranox. He forced her to flee and leave Ashin behind.

Despite the efforts of the Temple's best healers, Ashin eventually succumbed to the poison. When she woke up, she lashed out at everything and everyone in sight with telekinesis, her mind overcome with frustrated, chemically altered rage. Ranox talked her down. Exhausted, cut off from the Force, Ashin begged him to leave and take her with him. They departed Ossus, destination unknown.

After some time, they found themselves on the Unknown Regions world of Trevel'ka, whose huge slums offered a refuge. As Cortann's searchers crossed paths with the Patriots, the Kartanin Temple of the Voice and the Tak Lords, the Cult's war began to be felt in the Unknown Regions. Despite a high body count on both sides - Cortann herself was nearly killed by a Kartanin Asanatir - Ashin did not break cover for several months. She focused on helping humanitarian efforts in the slums where she lived, trying to find purpose without the Force.

A bloody battle between the Cult and the Patriots caught her attention from a nearby world. Guessing that the Cult was also on Trevel'ka, she took the Skull Holocron to an inner-city location, and - by allowing people to notice and fear it - increased its presence in the Force. Two Cult searchers showed up within minutes and threatened the lives of everyone present if Ashin did not turn to the Dark Side and join them. They killed a bystanding Raka Kiri to make a point; with the aid of on old alien and a redheaded smuggler, Ashin killed them. However, a Dark Knight of the Cult, a Bith named Alos Firren, captured Ashin and transported her to Arcanix, much to the chagrin of Siriss Cortann.

===Rogue Cultist===

Ashin was dosed with Sith Poison, both through the air of Arcanix and through receiving the Cult of Shadow Tattoo on the inside of her left forearm. At this point, her blood now contained no less than four variants of Sith Poison. Though she initially refused to use the Dark Side, she soon found that she could only survive by turning; to her shame, she did so. She received the Mind Twist from the Shadow Keepers, compelling her to keep the Cult's secrets on pain of death, and threw herself into survival.

It was not long before her Jedi Knighthood was made known, and a Dark Knight attempted to fight her. She killed him and took his quarters, prestige and rank, becoming a Dark Knight of the Cult herself. By this point she had served on several missions, and her fall to the Dark Side was complete; nevertheless, in her heart she hated what she had become.

Ultimately, Ashin escaped the Cult while on a mission, killing several fellow Cultists in the process. She ran to New Cov, where her mother lay terminally ill, but Cult agents killed her mother. She wandered, still a Darksider, for some time before deciding to lose herself in the slums of Trevel'ka again. She made a living by murdering rapists and taking their money or possessions. She hid from everyone - the Patriots, the Cult, and the Jedi.

Over a period of several weeks, Ashin began to sense a subtle stirring in the Force. Curious, she tracked it to an old Kotala named Hagron-tides-of-green, a devout Jukre Star Sailor, who was 'tuning' the entire world of Trevel'ka. Tuning was a process whereby the 'melodies' and 'dissonance' of the population's emotions, dreams and destinies were brought into tune with the underlying harmonics of the universe, the currents of the Force - the Jukreshna. The Music. Through repeated Jukre rituals over the course of two years, Hagron had been touching the souls of the slum-world's dwellers, smoothing their despairs and angers and frustrations into motivation, peace and so forth. He told Ashin that he could take a little time from his work to tune her. He helped her come to terms with her grief, her guilt, and her sense of the unfairness of life, and began to teach her to tune. Nevertheless, when the pacifistic Hagron was threatened by a Dissonant young Jukre, Ashin killed the aggressor.

=== None Whatsoever ===

“I'll offer her the only thing she wants: the chance to be a good person and a Darksider at the same time. A Jedi? Raised to defend the helpless and so on? I know she killed those Cultists without the Force, using knives of all things. But knives won't heal a broken child or lift rubble off a trapped survivor or stop a Dark Lord of the Sith. She has to be aching to do more; her sense of fairness demands it. She's been taught to see herself as a person who can change things, and she can't make herself be anything less, even if it goes against her conscience.” - Velok to Kalo-Kaa

After weeks or months of tuning, she was tracked down by Kalo-Kaa and Velok. Velok had tried to recruit Kalo to help regulate the Sith'ari Centrality, an Unknown Regions Sith government of which he was a part. Velok had been impressed with the way Kalo had united Darksiders and Lightsiders into the Patriots, while integrating them into several civilian and military chains of command. He needed someone who could do something similar for the Sith'ari Centrality's Darksiders. Kalo declined out of a sense of duty to the Jade Empire, though he recognized the validity of Velok's need. Velok had anticipated this; the request had been a preamble to asking Kalo's help in finding Ashin.

Led to Ashin by Kalo's sense of his old Master, they met her and Hagron on Trevel'ka. After confirming the lawful nature of the Centrality, Kalo reluctantly agreed that the job offer was legitimate, and that Velok would probably not ask her to compromise her ethics. Ashin accepted, and said a temporary farewell to Hagron. She departed Trevel'ka with Velok on the starship Sojourn, which he gifted to her.

“You're a Darksider who's no Darksider at heart, who would keep my people in line and teach them something about honour, duty, compassion, teamwork...basically anything besides self-interest. I need people who will promote stability.” - Velok

Deep in the Unknown Regions, she was inducted into None Whatsoever and the Sith Purge; the long con of the Dark Council was explained to her, and she joined the Council as Darth Ashera. She worked alongside 'Delana Saan', Darth Ahrkis. Velok prevailed upon her to use his Sith holocrons, starting with Ori'vod's entries on the ethical Sith, contained in the Sorkatar Holocron. From there she became Keeper of the Holocrons aboard the capital ship-slash-Sith Academy Stormblessed, and the authority most responsible for training the Sith Sorcerers, though she worked with all students in her role as subtle tutor in civic duty, teamwork and ethics. These things occupied much of her time, but she also used all three holocrons extensively. The path of the extinct Blackguards - Vulta Daanat's philosophy of using the Force to understand the universe and gain knowledge - appealed to her, and within Ori'vod's ethical framework she began to explore the strange knowledge of the Skull Holocron and the obscure melange of Velok's own entries into the Sorkatar Holocron.

She interfered in the studies of Darth Silentai, a heavily burned female Sith Warrior, and revealed certain facts about None Whatsoever without Velok's consent. This move solidified her position as a 'peripheral' member of the secret organization; she would never be fully trusted by Velok and Ahkris, at least as far as they ever trusted anyone.

===The Sith'ari Centrality===

“You know me. You can guess why I made the choice I did, though there are factors you're not aware of.”

Now a Sith Lord, Ashin upheld law and order in the Sith'ari Centrality . Her impartiality was tested, however, when her territory was violated by a group of Jedi, including her longtime friend Mahana Sira. The Jedi had rescued a kidnapped Padawan named Jeanida Nalloi from an allied Sith group; hyperdrive and comms damage had forced them to come to ground in the Centrality. Ashin's talent for tracking, and her familiarity with Mahana, allowed her to locate the Jedi alongside a team of Central Command Operatives. Upon learning their problems, she offered to help; to get them to begin to trust her, she removed her Nihilus-style mask and revealed herself to her old friend and the other Jedi.

She took Mahana and a Jedi Knight named Gaenal'ra to the Stormblessed to contact the Jedi via HoloNet, asking that her identity be kept hidden and her involvement be downplayed. In the meantime, she pondered her future. The Jedi had told her that her old friend Ember Rekali had covered their escape and was probably dead at the hands of a Sith Lord whose description matched Darth Kabal, Ashin's ally of necessity. Furious, Ashin pondered radical action. She settled on providing an untraceable ship for the two Jedi, who used it to rescue Rekali.

Her courteous public treatment of the two Jedi did not endear her to the Sith of the Stormblessed, and Ashin found herself challenged by Sannasa Moth. She proved enough of a challenge to the Sith Blademaster that she earned back a portion of respect; then she switched the game to a battle of Force powers, endured his onslaught, and choked him into unconsciousness.

In the aftermath, an Elomin Sith Knight attempted to seduce her; in his quarters, Ashin changed her mind, and when her repeated refusals were ignored, she half-killed him with a concussive blast of the Force.

Her defeat of the Sith Master failed to restore her 'good name' among the Sith. When called to the Centrality's Sith Temple to answer to Velok for revealing None Whatsoever to Darth Silentai, she was challenged and ridiculed by the Elomin Sith Lord Bos Ten Kam, an illusionist and sorcerer. Unable to find him to defeat him by lightsabre, she resorted to an unorthodox use of Jukre tuning, and in the process discovered that Jukre tuning can, in certain circumstances, dispel illusion by reconciling perception to what truly is. Taking advantage of Kam's surprise, she struck him down.

At that point, she entered the Sith temple to face Velok. The Whiphid sought to teach her a lesson, but she matched his wit; startled, the jen'ari acknowledged a fair point and refrained from harming her. Ember Rekali was also present in one of Velok's games, alive despite Kabal's best efforts. Overjoyed at her old friend's survival, Ashin still recognized that she had crossed the Dark Lord of the Sith and lived, and that her days might be numbered.

Ashin took the time to reconnect with her extended family on Naboo. The Cardé family had a very military background, including several handmaidens to various Queens. Various political purges had winnowed her family, and she found that her birth mother was long dead. Ashin connected with her cousin, former queen Jasmine Cardé-Avondale, bought a small bubble home in Otoh Gunga, and spent several weeks in the lake country. She encountered the Cult of Palpatine - and secretly beat a high-ranking member to a pulp, as well as telekinetically destabilizing their statue of Palpatine. She also learned of the rogue Dark Lord Lucian Odysseus, and began to investigate him on behalf of None Whatsoever. Her commitment to the Sith Purge grew.

===Sith Lord and Apprentice===

The Dark Side organizations of the Unknown Regions had finally come together into a coherent whole, and a new player had entered the scene, a Sith witch named Sirella Valkner, also known as Darth Sirena. Ashin, already a Master, was taken as First Apprentice to Sirella, who gained primacy over the region. From Sirella, she learned politics, Sith Magic, plant growth, and resistance to pheromones and mentalism.

Ashin journeyed to Filve, the home of the Paladin Order. She had recently learned Force Lightning from Ald Sorosel, a specialist in that art, and hoped to learn alchemy from him, from the Skull Holocron, and from the spirit of Moroiniy Traverts, former leader of the Paladins. The collaboration resulted in a trip to The Home, the conversion of the Paladins and the resurrection of Traverts under the name Darth Kharonos. Ashin had gained a close friend, and a debt to her new Master, who had facilitated the resurrection.

After so long dead, despite his new Sith body's physical fitness, Kharonos' combat skills had suffered, and Ashin took it upon herself to bring him back up to speed. They journeyed to the planet Mimban, searching for Thrella artifacts with a group of troopers including the Elom Corporal Sanep - all unknowing that the planet was also being searched by Doctor Linna Beorht and the spacer Jedi student Kayla Masi. Ashin and Kharonos felt a tremor in the Force caused by Beorht's interaction with the Kaiburr Crystal. They journeyed to the Temple of Pomojema, where the Crystal fell down a Thrella well. Ashin leaped in after it and fell for miles, approaching Mimban's mantle. Battered by the fall, she obtained the Crystal and used its waning power to heal herself and telekinetically rise up the well. She emerged from the well inside the Temple, with the Kaiburr Crystal in her arms, having committed herself to the Dark Side in order to secure her survival.

As Masi and Beorht reclaimed their ancient Thrella starship, Ashin and Kharonos examined the crystal. Realizing that it lost its power the farther it went from the Temple of Pomojema, Ashin suggested to the alchemist that linking it to a smaller shard of crystal could let her access its power from afar. They began a ritual, but were interrupted by a sudden assault from the Thrella ship. Ashin was able to use the power of the crystal to counter the ancient weapons fire, but Masi and Beorht demanded the Sith leave both temple and crystal. Ashin and Kharonos were able to turn the tables on them, and the four disparate wanderers forged a fellowship. As Kharonos and Linna grew close, Ashin began to train Kayla in the Force. That training would see the death of several unworthy Sith Lords.

===Preparing for a coup d'état===

Just prior to Sivter's assault on the galaxy in concert with the Charon, Ashin and the other Lords of the Sith'ari Centrality decided the time had come for a change in the leadership of the Sith territories in the Unknown Regions. Ashin learned that a plan had been put in place by Hagron-tides-of-green, Ori'vod, Je'gan Olra'en, Velok and Seren Teancum Mordavo. If the plan was not followed, Ori'vod's Darksight predicted the rise of an eternal galactic empire under Sirella, Halla Kitani Kaijus, Ashin herself or one of a few other candidates. Ashin was told that she needed to strip the Force from Halla, who had been unveiled as a galaxy-shaking prodigy. She was told that if she killed Halla, the galaxy would still fall. Not wanting to think poorly of her old friend, she asked Hagron to temporarily block her memories of the conversation, and events were arranged such that Ashin would steal Halla's power without knowing the significance of it.

Ashin decided the time had come for a coup against Sirella. She cultivated the support of many of the other Sith factions, then realized she valued her freedom too highly to take the position of Dark Lord of the Sith. She met Rashael Koss, Seth deSchaen and Lyra Onaesar - the three Lords of a powerful faction - deep in the fortress of Niflheim, and offered to support Koss as Dark Lord of the entire Sith faction. Various machinations were in place, though all was kept very quiet, when Sivter made his move and staged the Cult's invasion.

===The Battle of Celesta===
The Battle of Celesta would have serious repercussions for the reluctant young Sith Lord. Onboard the Centrality flagship Ineluki, Ashin used La-Reia's Crystal to direct significant power towards a powerful Jukre tuning of the battle, trying to avert utter disaster. The Jedi Master Kalja Leidias sensed Ashin's efforts in the midst of her battle meditation and wove the two effects together. Ashin recognized Master Leidias' presence from her many years in various Jedi academies, and was stunned that she had somehow overcome the effects of the Shadow Poison that still swam through Ashin's blood.

Ashin discovered, as she used the Crystal, that it resonated with the Masters who had created it, most of all with those who were present at Celesta: Velok and Empress Halla Kitani Kaijus. It drew power from both, though Velok quickly blocked the drain with his superior mastery of energy manipulation. Struggling to control the flow of energy, Ashin was unable to stop the crystal from draining Halla of strength, at least not without ceasing the tuning effort. To make matters worse, the Crystal was beginning to crack under the strain of being used to its full potential as a portable Force nexus. Ashin feared that if she stopped tuning long enough to find a way to keep it from draining Halla's power and life force, the crystal would break. Therefore, she performed her Sith sacrifice by letting the drain continue, knowing what it meant for her, for her relationship with Halla, and her progress as a Sith Lord. The Crystal drained all of Halla's Force strength, but stopped short of killing her; the Empress was left without the Force, permanently. Ashin had sacrificed the love of her old friend and student, and had meant to sacrifice her life, in service to a greater purpose.

When the Edict of Darkness arrived, Sivter sensed the efforts of Kalja and Ashin, and intruded subtly upon the young Sith Lord's mind. Their telepathic dialogue served to awaken Ashin to the potential she had gained by absorbing Halla's power, and she shattered the Crystal to strike a blow against Sivter. Although the attempt failed, the full power of the Crystal became part of Ashin and expanded her Force potential. In an instant, she went from a thoroughly mediocre, even unimpressive, Force-user to a galaxy-class Sith Master. The technique, timing and attention to detail which she had honed over years of training and war had once made her limited Force potential competitive. Now her skills applied to a far greater reserve of power.

After the conclusion of their dialogue, Kalja Leidias congratulated Ashin on resisting Sivter's words - though Ashin found it disturbing that both Kalja and Sivter were pleased by her choices. Kalja requested that Ashin continue to tune, and Ashin did so. Kalja continued to weave her tuning into the Battle Meditation.

The Jukre tuning had granted Ashin a glimpse of the whole pattern of the battle, and its implications for the galaxy as a whole. When she sensed a critical element in danger, Ashin ceased to tune and left the Ineluki aboard Ori'vod's Firespray, the Kyr'am Mureyca. She navigated through the battle to the black hole on the outskirts of the system, and skimmed the Firespray across the accretion disc of solar plasma on her way to rescue Garrett G. Granth IV from the doomed corvette Tzohar. As she approached, hard radiation burnt both her and the little ship; Ashin received a lethal dose, but between Velok's Knowledge by Instinct technique and the Jukre perception of the universe's underpinnings, Ashin experienced and understood the black hole at a doctoral level. After Granth channeled the solar plasma into the portion of the Charon Otherdrives that coexisted in the same space, destroying the Charon fleet from within, he attempted a cold-shirt crossing, and landed in a pile of thick fire-retardant foam within the Firespray. Ashin had successfully saved the man who saved the Unknown Regions.

Much banter ensued. Both had been irradiated to a lethal degree. Landing at a Charon-beseiged hospital on Celesta, they set about finding better anti-radiation drugs; Garrett dosed himself and Ashin. Ashin, still burnt and in serious medical danger, was forced to submit herself wholly to the Dark Side in order for the strength to kill the attacking Charon and save Garrett. This final transformation was spurred by the spirit of Kishkumen. The burst of power mended many of her wounds, and from that moment she began to consider herself a Sith Master, a true Dark Lord. Ashin and Garrett then went to a weather station elsewhere on Celesta to stop a Cult team from releasing a bioweapon; Ashin used her Jedi identification records to enlist Republic help and access. At this point, she was technically still missing in action, but she soon would leave the name Darth Ashera behind and go by her own name, openly.

They were tracked down after the battle by Master Kalja Leidias, who healed the remaining radiation damage and confirmed Ashin's belief that there was no known cure for Shadow Poison. Master Leidias herself had only overcome the poison through the intervention of her ancestors. It was around this time that Ashin remembered her conversation with Hagron. The coup against Sirella would have to wait, though, as Sivter remained the primary threat.

===Assault on Arcanix===

At that point, Ashin became involved in the allied forces' assault on Arcanix, secret stronghold of the Cult of Shadow. Along with Asemir Lor'kora, Elena Connor and Tsivoin Ulderis, she infiltrated the Cult stronghold, intending to occupy Sivter. They made their way past the Shadow Keepers, using a variant of Sith Poison called Ashin's Henna to duplicate the Cult of Shadow Tattoo, as all the team members except Ashin had removed their tattoos. They entered the Shadow Temple's library in search of Teshran Lor, one of Sivter's major lieutenants. The Dark Lord agreed to turn against Sivter in exchange for safe passage off Arcanix, territory in the Unknown Regions and a place on the Sith Council that ruled a portion of the Unknown Regions. As a gesture of good faith Ashin gave him Vulta Daanat's holocron.

The next day - the day of the assault - Teshran drew the attention of the Cult to a duel between himself and Siriss Cortann on the Ashen Expanse. Sivter himself was in attendance. Meanwhile, Ashin and Asemir, disguised, had spoken with, Kishkumen, whose spirit possessed an Eradicator-class Droid. Kishkumen was in the process of building Sivter a machine of great complexity. He took them for spies of his student and rival Arksis Nan, but acquiesced until Siriss Cortann arrived with news of her upcoming duel. Ashin and Asemir spent the rest of the night hiding in a storage room in the forges, in position to strike when the time came.

In the morning, as Teshran and his people rebelled against Sivter, Ashin and Asemir raided the Forges of the Shadow Temple. They killed several alchemists, destroyed furnaces, and even - using Kishkumen's tomahawk Sundering - shattered works of alchemy. As Asemir duelled with Arksis Nan, Ashin squared off against Darth Obscurus as an equal, fighting over a datacard full of Kishkumen's research. Faced with waves of deadly insectoid Schrai, she copied the datacard to her Jade Empire ComTac implant and gave it to Obscurus. The two made common cause against the Schrai. When Obscurus went to deal with Uvon Okdoro and the bio alchemy labs, Ashin went deeper into the Shadow Temple. She ran across none other than Kishkumen, who had recently taken the body of a Cult Scholar, and realized that he was trying to impress or intimidate her - that he considered her a threat. She realized then just how far she had come, that the Cult's greatest destroyer, the terror of her youth, was treading carefully around her. She discovered that he had turned traitor, and they fought Schrai together briefly, then parted without violence. A reckoning would come, she felt, but this was not the time.

She moved on and found herself duelling the Dark Lord Morikune for the Necromonus. Using the aura of her armor, Contempt, she scrambled his ability to break even the products of alchemy, then countered with an offer of employment in the Sith territories of the Unknown Regions. After a protracted duel, Morikune yielded the Necromonus and departed, eventually making it to Sith space and the inheritance of a Lord. Ashin claimed the Necromonus and bound it to her bracer, then overcame the ancient spirit within and subjugated the talisman. She was about to depart when confronted by the rogue Jedi Akain Karna, who had recently defeated Siriss Cortann.

In the duel, Ashin found herself taxed to the limit, and unable to control the range in such close quarters; though a serious practitioner of Form One, she could not defeat him blade-to-blade. Her telekinetic will devastated the Chamber of the Necromonus, ripping out its ceiling and exposing it to the chambers above. She collapsed the roof on Karna, but was overcome by the power of the Spear, the artifact that was both killing him and keeping him alive. The bizarre artifact recognized the elements in her blood that circumscribed her agency, and the Shadow Poison began to bleed through her pores and tear ducts. The Spear's power immobilized her, but kept Akain from striking. As ever, unwilling to be controlled, Ashin took the only chance she had of breaking the Spear's hold: she opened herself to the power of the equally old, equally potent Necromonus. Its corrosive strength ate through the Spear's influence on her. Excited and invigorated for the first time in a long, long time, Ashin allowed Akain to share a rather unexpected kiss with her, and the vision that followed. In the vision, they saw a potential future - them, together, raising a child; her working for the Sith Empire, him for the Jedi. It appealed to Ashin, and she and Akain worked together to fight the Schrai and Cultists until the Force called him away to help resolve the situation between Sivter, Kalja, and his mind-controlled girlfriend Caitlyn DeVries.

As he departed, Ashin consumed the full power of the Necromonus and turned the artifact of mass destruction to dust.

===Sic Semper===
Immediately upon her return from Arcanix, the coup began. Seren Mordavo was dead at the hands of Velok and Kabal, and Sirella's whereabouts were unknown. Rashael Koss, backed by the Lords of the Sith, re-established control over the entire Sith order in the Unknown Regions. Ashin angled for a more significant position for the Central Command Operatives, and went from being their patron to being named their leader, DCCO or Director of Central Command Operations. The CCOs gained jurisdiction over investigating and prosecuting Sith within the Empire, as well as dealing with Jedi incursions. She began to delegate more and more to the Hands of the Leafghost, to Kelen Adwar and to Hin Jasto. In return for one-half of one percent of Celesta's gross domestic product, she became its champion and defender, a beneficence she extended to the entire region. Including her secret bases in the Unknown Regions, her interests on Naboo and her connections to Filve and Trevel'ka, her life had grown vastly more complicated.

As the political situation began to stabilize, she met with Arice Quinn, Iara Beorht, Ossu Ikari and the young Alu Beorht at her secret complex. She facilitated a meeting with Velok, who used Darth Kren's memories of alchemy to diagnose Alu's condition. As Arice, Iara and Alu left for the Sith Academy on Ziost, looking for a girl named Rave who could be used to test Velok's hypothesis, Ossu was left in the care of Ashin and the Hands of the Leafghost. Ashin began to see something of herself in the Twi'lek girl's sense of helplessness, and remembered what it was like to be tossed around in a storm. She began to wonder if Ossu could learn the ways of the Jukre Star Sailors.

At this point, however, a message from the memory, the ghost, the holocron or the person of her grandfather warned her that the Sith of the Unknown Regions were turning against her. She took the dream literally and moved pre-emptively. Velok's dream of a Sith Purge was fulfilled, but he himself was one of her targets. She struck down the ancient Whiphid who had taught her so much, but spared his life.

It was her last act of mercy for a long time. By the time Ashin's work was completed, the Dark Lords of the Unknown Regions had fallen to her blade and the strength of her will. She left their worlds to their own devices, strewn with dead Sith Masters and wrecked Academies. The one Darksider she refused to oppose – either out of recognition of her own misdeeds, out of friendship, or out of fear – was Sirella Valkner. Sirella seemed more than happy to be rid of the other Sith of the region. Her son Hylo, always friendly with Ashin, was the one source of light in Ashin's life at the time.

===The Known Universe===

Calling herself a Dark Jedi Master, she emerged at last from the Unknown Regions and obtained her grandfather's holocron. She procured the carbonite slab of Darron Wraith and saw to it that he awoke after twenty years of sleep. They duelled as equals on Kamino, wrecking a portion of a city. Ultimately, however, she revealed that she had merely been testing him. Je'gan's holocron and a Kaminoan flash-learning tape had given her a portion of the old man's memories. She knew Darron, knew how much he struggled to control his inner darkness through Vaapad, and verified to her satisfaction that he could keep himself under control and see a Dark Master as a sentient being. They forged an accord, to keep the back channels open in hopes of staving off disaster. She gave him her grandfather's holocron, after learning from it what she could, then travelled to the Sith Empire to pledge allegiance to Darth Moridin, the Emperor. In return she achieved rule of a sector which included Rhen Var, Lianna and Felucia, as well as the power to enforce the Emperor's laws on wayward Sith who disrespected his authority. As this was much the same role as she had played in the Sith territories of the Unknown Regions, the job was familiar to her.

It was one thing to enforce the Emperor's laws on Apprentices and Knights. It was quite another to impose them on rogue Masters. After Reyven Samoth killed a group of 'unready' Sith troopers on the outskirts of Dromund Kaas's capital city, Ashin was called in to bring him to heel. He refused to accept her authority and threw assault after assault at her. She weathered them all, taking numerous minor injuries without striking back, each choice calculated to draw him farther and farther into transgression. When the Emperor arrived on the scene personally, Ashin submitted her report and departed, knowing that she had made an enemy for life.

Meanwhile, another plan took shape. She boarded a starliner and offered the Jedi Padawan Spencer Jacobs a chance to change the universe. Spencer's fantastically powerful empathy combined well with Ashin's Jukre teachings, and Ashin showed her how to bend fate and influence minds on a large scale. As Ashin integrated into the Sith Empire, she took Spencer with her.

The waterworld of Dac – home to Mon Calamari, Quarren and Amphi-Hydrus – was on the Sith Empire's borders, its shipyards threatened by a civil war about to start. Ashin pre-empted the war with an invasion. As Darth Tirdarius provided orbital strike support, Ashin and a small army of Knights and Apprentices – including her right hand, Anaya Fen; her alchemy student and would-be lover, the Dark Jedi Knight Darren Shaw; and the Padawan Spencer Jacobs – landed in force on Dac. Their target was the single greatest threat to peace, a jungle island which Amphi-Hydrus militants were using as a staging point.

It was there that Ashin's students encountered another associate of hers: Her former friend, enemy, Master and rival, the plant witch Sirella Valkner. Sirella had turned a recently evacuated resort into her personal playground. When the Sith Knights and Apprentices wasted time arguing among themselves, the Amphi-Hydrus army – composed of Darksiders riding rancors and other powerful beasts – surrounded them. Sirella's overgrown resort was their only escape. As a wall of thorns kept the Amphi-Hydrus at bay, Sirella's pheromones tested the mental defenses of the young Sith, and of Spencer Jacobs. Ashin and the plant witch might have agreed to let bygones be bygones, but echoes of old rivalries stirred up between the longtime friends as they subtly battled over the Jedi prodigy's destiny.

With Sirella's aid, they counterattacked. Shaw, Sirella and others destroyed the Amphi-Hydrus fortress, while Ashin and Spencer used Jukre tuning to subdue the associated village of froglike aliens. Occupation troops landed, bringing Sith scholars to chronicle the Amphi-Hydrus beastmastery powers. As Tirdarius pounded a Quarren stronghold into submission, Ashin's strike team returned to the Mon Cala capital and personally convinced them to bow to Sith authority.

As the Sith Empire solidified control over Dac, Ashin's forces regrouped aboard Sirella's Ithorian herd ship in orbit. It was there that Ashin was reunited with an old friend, Sirella's sheltered son Hylo. 'Aunt' Ashin and the boy were able to spend some time together, along with Spencer, but the demands of Ashin's plans separated them yet again. For one thing, there was the conquest of Gand to plan. For another, Sirella and Ashin had hatched a plan to put Ashin on Moridin's throne.

===Coup d'Etat===

Sirella and Spencer were key components of Ashin's plans. Other important players included Darren Shaw and the Red Coterie's leader, Ryori Za'tire, an old friend of Ashin and a fellow battlemaster. Meanwhile, Ashin approached Mandalore himself, Emberli Garrett, on his homeworld. She offered to hire him and ten thousand supercommandos in return for the return of Concord Dawn and the end of Moridin's war, which both considered wasteful.

With Mandalore's temporary allegiance and Sirella's backing, Ashin sought out the rogue Falleen Sith Radon Mont and convinced him to accept an administrative role in the Sith Empire once she took power. Other Sith pledged not to interfere, telling her that they would serve the victor faithfully.

She made various other offers and explanations to assorted powerful Sith, but ultimately the crux of the plan rested on her own personal ability to face the Sith Emperor and win. She knew that she could not afford others to make excuses or rationalizations, so she left behind every means of aid – her powerful armor, as well as Sirella's offer of alchemy that would let her siphon great power from her surroundings. Apart from her lightsabre, she would face Darth Moridin without help or defense.

Her final stop before she made her move was Darth Apparatus, perhaps the strongest Sith Master alive. From him, she requested a Darth name, inspired by the Dark Side of the Force. He plucked the name Darth Desmius from the aether, and she took it for herself.

The coup went relatively smoothly. Moridin shrugged and departed without a fight. Reyven Samoth declined to challenge her, suggesting instead that she challenge him, and she 'farmed him out' to Asemir Lor'kora. After defeating Darth Voracitos (who had been empowered by Darth Apparatus' full strength), Ashin took the Obsidian Throne.

===Empress and Conqueror===

===Ori'vod and the Vagrants===

===Karrde and the Fringe===

==Appearance, Traits and Personality==

“Oh, I've known plenty of people who had her outmatched in sheer power, or skill, or technique, or combat ability. Those aren't what set her apart, oh no. On paper she's bland, bland, bland. But eventually you realize...when you throw the mountain at her, when you break her friends and her soul and her self-image and her self-respect, when you outmatch her in every way, shower her with lightning, cut her up and laugh...she doesn't stop. She's never going to stop. No psychopath or juggernaut, nothing flamboyant or dramatic; an ordinary person, a bit unimpressive. It's just that she hunches her shoulders and takes it and moves on, and may the Force help you if you're what she's looking at.” – Velok, prior to the Battle of Celesta

“Tough.” - Kalo-Kaa

Ashin transforms her face through Mask.

A tallish human woman in her late twenties or early thirties, Ashin is broad-shouldered and strong. Her walk is slightly confrontational and less feminine than she'd like. Her fingers and hands are hardened by combat training; she has a fighter's calluses. She has a number of scars down her left cheek. When she was younger she wore her hair in a multitude of long thin braids, but now she usually lets it hang loose. While infiltrating the Shadow Temple, she returned to the hairstyle of her teenage years, but braided many small talismans into it: for example, shards of crystal, bone and alchemical metal, a Rakatan poem inscribed on a tiny disc of beskar, and a few tiny Sith relics.

She is somewhat paler than she used to be, though that can also be attributed to her use of the Dark Side. Her hair has also lightened, from nearly black to a lighter brown - dirty blonde in some lights. From time to time, a fingernail will fall out. The blue colour of her eyes has continued to lighten; this is likely part of the Dark Side's effect on her physiology.

Ashin has the following marks and tattoos:

A Cult of Shadow tattoo in the center of her back
The mark of Naga Sadow on her sternum
A tiny outline of a Red Coterie hand on the side of her neck
A blood trail mark over her heart, from Spencer Jacobs.

===Armour===

Ashin's first suit of armour was made with Sith alchemy by Moroiniy Traverts, Ald Sorosel, the Skull Holocron, and Ashin herself. It was destroyed during her Sith Purge in the Unknown Regions. Later, she and Darren Shaw constructed a second suit, known as Contempt.

The armor projects white noise into the Force, the aetheric equivalent of ECM. This makes her presence hard to miss, but equally hard to pin down; if she is wearing it, her best friend would not recognize her presence. It shields others if they stay close to her. It has been known to disrupt spirits' control over the physical world. Made from alchemical metal, it is lacquered in blue and red with an alchemical formula of Traverts' creation involving nullification resin and taozin flesh. Inside the armour are set the shards of La-Reia's Crystal, which Ashin shattered through overuse at the Battle of Celesta. The armour is mastercraft and nearly indestructible; though lightsabres or blasters can burn the lacquer away, they cannot harm the metal more than they would harm Mandalorian iron.

This armor was given to Warren Valik.

=== Military Skills ===

Ashin is fully qualified with powered armor, can fly a number of small craft, and knows a broad selection of military sidearms and main battle weapons. She frequently carries a blaster. She can fly a starfighter competently, command a capital ship, and plan an invasion. Her strategic eye is decent but somewhat untested.

Ashin once had a Jade Empire Command Tactical Implant in her skull; it was destroyed during the Sith Purge, and has been removed. As a result, she can no longer communicate mentally with military hardware.

==Training, Experience, Potential, Power and Skill==

Due to years spent in Jedi academies, Ashin was the definition of a regular Jedi. Her focus still rests on the Core Powers and the standard skills of a Jedi: a testament to discipline. She has experience, talent and ability with the power called Detoxify Poison, can track extremely well via the Force, and sometimes dreams of the future. Her tracking abilities have been altered by her exposure to several kinds of Sith Poison. Now she can sense evil emotions and intentions more easily. She can also use Control Poison. Holt Charnil taught her some obscure, traditional Jedi skills; for one, she can enhance her vision. As another example, she can enhance and 'walk back' through her own short-term memory. She uses this frequently and with great skill. For example, while speaking with Rashael Koss in the fortress of Niflheim on Nassus, she flipped through Sith spellbooks and scrolls, too quickly to read them. Later, she was able to re-examine these memories. She did the same in the library of the Shadow Temple after meeting with Teshran Lor.

Ashin spent considerable time learning the path of the Jukre Star Sailors. Her mentor, Hagron, was devout and not Descant. She used the tuning ability he taught her to subtly alter the balance of emotions on board the Stormblessed, evening out the sharpest spikes when necessary.

As Keeper of the Holocrons for None Whatsoever and the Dark Council, deep in the Unknown Regions, Ashin learned many interesting things. Due to the layered secrets and conflicting ideals of the two overlapping organizations, it was necessary that access to the various holocrons be monitored; this was Ashin's function, and so she spent significant time listening to holocrons teach others and answer their questions. The holocron of Darth Vectivus was one of these, and it is probable that she is familiar at some level with the Force Phantom technique.

After her training with Hagron, and after she overstretched herself and broke La-Reia's Crystal at the Battle of Celesta, Ashin increased her natural potential in the Force from slightly below-average to striking. She improved upon this by learning from many specialists: Alchemy from Darth Kharonos, Darth Ahkris, Velok and Sirella Valkner; defense against mentalism from Sirella Valkner and the holocron of Je'gan Olra'en; lightning from Ald Sorosel; Force Drain, energy manipulation and instinctual attainment of knowledge from Velok; Sith Magic from Sirella Valkner; and some degree of blademastery from the holocrons of Ori'vod and Je'gan Olra'en. Furthermore, her study of her family heritage, and exhaustive comprehension of her grandfather's holocron, has given her the ability to see Current-scribing and perceive White Current effects.

Nevertheless, Ashin remains a 'simple' Forcer in her own mind. Her combat philosophy has been compared to that of Darth Vader: she enhances her strength and speed, relies on the lightsabre or simple telekinesis, and uses Force Choke. She views more complex techniques as tools whose learning will increase her innate connection to the Force, but will not use them in battle except at extreme need. The one exception is Jukre tuning, which has been known to disrupt powerful illusions, even the deeper illusions of Sith Magic and the White Current. Whether this would work against the light-bending skills of the Disciples of Twilight is, as yet, untested.

Ashin is a generalist. When fighting powerful specialists, Ashin prefers to 'outflank' them by using skills at which she is their match or their superior. When all else fails, Ashin relies on her ability to fortify her own body's limits. When wearing her armor, she is not especially mobile, preferring instead to ride out the worst of her enemies' assaults and take the requisite amount of damage. Her behavior in battle has been compared to Darth Vader.

Ashin was not born with the extremely rare gift necessary to use true Sith Magic. As with the historical King Ommin, her powers have come about through transformation. Certainly her sense of purpose is potent enough that Ashin affects reality on a deep level, building off her Jukre understanding. In effect, she found a back door into Sith Magic -- as certain other fallen Jukre have done. Sirella Valkner's tutelage built upon that, giving Ashin a thorough grounding in the basics of Sith Magic. She knows three spells: Mind control, False Light Side Signature, and a spell to enhance her eyesight temporarily.

Ashin is not a lightsabre specialist, but can hold her own against all but the finest duellists. She has gone blade-to-blade with Akain Karna, Darth Obscurus, and Darron Wraith, and given a respectable account of herself. Her primary weapon is the blue-bladed lightsabre she created as a Jedi Knight. Until her duel with Morikune inside the Shadow Temple, she also relied upon a Jiann-style, Tak-forged Force Sword. After her duel with Darron Wraith on Kamino, Ashin was given the lightsabre of her grandfather, Je'gan Olra'en. Subtly curved and plated with electrum, the lightsabre became her weapon of choice. Its blade is sky blue. However, the weapon was seriously damaged at Roche, and when rebuilt it boasted a burnt-orange blade.

Although Ashin's traditional Jedi instruction gave her a thorough grounding and basic competence with every major style of lightsabre combat, she only excels in two. Ashin is one of the few lightsabre duellists to have pushed Form One, Shii-Cho, to its limits. A master of broken rhythm and exact timing, she may be the greatest Shii-Cho practitioner alive, a dubious distinction.

As a student of Velok, she has been known to employ Force Bellow, using the breath control and will projection of Jukre techniques to make up for her small size relative to an eight-foot-tall Whiphid or an Ithorian. Her Force Bellow is respectable.

KILLS:
Ashin is not a killer, per se. Her vengeance usually takes other routes. For example, she has been known to engineer coups d'etat, recruit and turn her enemies' lieutenants, and cut her rivals off from the Force permanently.

BOUNTIES COLLECTED:
None.
ARTIFACTS:
Ashin is caretaker of several important artifacts.

The Kaiburr Crystal. It is not known whether this is the only such crystal of significant size. Fragments of the Kaiburr, and assorted other Mimban crystals, are relatively common. It is possible this is the actual Kaiburr; it is also possible that it is not. Whatever the case, it provides Ashin with enormous power...when both she and the crystal reside at the abandoned Temple of Pomojema on Mimban. In all other galactic locations, the Kaiburr Crystal is essentially useless.
The holocrons of Darth Vectivus, Vulta Daanat, and Velok. All three are in the care of the Sith Empire's Master of Vaults, Dissero.

Valiens Nantaris · May 15, 2013

Very impressive!

Request your rank and it will be accepted.

Welcome!

Ashin Varanin · May 15, 2013

Thanks, glad to be here.

Considering I just requested a perma-ban at TGC, and Exodus is dead as a bucket of doornails, this looks like a good place to put down roots.

Noxu Za'tire · May 15, 2013

Lookin' good, Ashin.

Disciple · May 15, 2013

YAY YOU'RE HERE <3

Garza · May 15, 2013

On your faction you can come and join the Rebels [This] that is if you would like to.

Kumai · May 5, 2014

Wow, that's quite a character.

Ashin Varanin

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Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler

Valiens Nantaris

Head Admin

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler

Noxu Za'tire

Legitimate Businessman

Disciple

Dr. What

Garza

Lord of Girth

Kumai

New Member

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