Character Tavian Rhyse

[Tavian Rhyse]

TAVIAN RHYSE

SOCIAL INFORMATION

• Name: Tavian Rhyse
• Aliases:
  
  • Graves
  • DT-219
• Birthplace: Bastion
• Allegiance: Tarkin Initiative | Formerly Galactic Empire
• Occupation: Death Trooper Sergeant
• Residence: Classified

PHYSICAL INFORMATION

• Species: Arkanian
• Age: 28 (Biological)
• Gender: Male
• Height: 1.91 m (6 ft 3 in)
• Weight: 102 kg (225 lb, combat-conditioned mass)
• Physique: Lean, athletic, muscular build
• Skin Pigmentation: Pale
• Eye Color: Steel gray
• Markings: Minimal. Surgical scar along cervical spine from Death Trooper augmentation
• Force Sensitivity: Yes
• Force Alignment: N/A

ATTRIBUTES, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

• Doctrine Incarnate: Graves does not merely "follow orders" in the traditional sense. He internalizes command intent to such a degree that he can operate without oversight for months while still achieving strategic goals aligned with Imperial doctrine. Initiative analysts often remark that his after-action reports read less like mission logs and more like inevitabilities being recorded.
• Cinder Veteran: Having served during Operation Cinder, Graves possesses psychological hardening far beyond conventional soldiers. He has operated under moral-collapse scenarios and didn't fracture. This gives him exceptional resistance to propaganda, emotional compromise, or hesitation in high-casualty decision matrices. To put it simply, Graves will always do what needs to be done. Even if other Imperials don't have the stomach to do it, even if they themselves are his targets.
• Blacksite Combatant: Graves specializes in close-quarters neutralization, shipboard clearance, and urban eradication missions where visibility, comms, and support are degraded. His combat rhythm is efficient and silent, preferring controlled lethality over spectacle.
• Adaptive Warfare Specialist: Trained across multiple Imperial doctrines, Graves can integrate outdated Imperial systems, warlord equipment, and Initiative technologies seamlessly. He thrives in fractured battlefields where others struggle with inconsistency.
• Sensorial Discipline: Death Trooper conditioning enhanced his auditory filtering, threat recognition, and environmental awareness. Graves can track movement through sound distortion, power fluctuations, and micro-vibrational cues within armored environments.
• Psychological Siege Operator: Graves is frequently deployed not to destroy forces, but to collapse their willingness to resist. Strategic assassinations, infrastructure disappearances, and calculated fear projection precede most Initiative occupations he participates in.
• Armor Integration Mastery: Unlike standard troopers, Graves treats his armor as an extension of cognition. His suit's sensorium, targeting overlays, and life-support regulation are tuned to operate at thresholds that would overwhelm unconditioned operators.
• Strategic Patience: Graves is known to observe a target environment for weeks before acting. He possesses a strong, capable strategic mind and a brilliance for leadership.
• Total Environmental Endurance: Conditioned for vacuum exposure windows, toxic atmospheres, and starvation cycles, Graves can function operationally in conditions meant to deny human presence.
• Unshakeable Loyalty Structure: Graves is a hardcore loyalist to the concept of Imperial order. This makes him uniquely stable in a galaxy of collapsing chains of command.

PERSONALITY

Graves is a study in controlled severity, calm, cold, and relentlessly calculating. Every movement is measured, every decision deliberate, every response stripped of excess emotion. He doesn't display rage, fear, or enthusiasm in recognizable forms. Instead, he operates with a quiet certainty that unsettles those around him, a stillness that suggests violence is never far from execution. The transformation into a Death Trooper didn't simply enhance his abilities, it reshaped his psychology. Years of doctrinal conditioning, neural reinforcement, surgical augmentation and operational indoctrination stripped away hesitation, sentiment, and personal ambiguity. What remains is a mind optimized for clarity of purpose. Graves doesn't question necessity. He defines it, executes it, and accepts its consequences without internal conflict.​

​

To him, the Empire is not an ideology to be debated or a memory to be preserved. It is structure, function, and inevitability. Order is the only defense against the galaxy's natural descent into chaos and maintaining that order requires unwavering discipline and decisive action. Where others seek justification, Graves requires only operational necessity. He is ruthless when circumstances demand it, yet never reckless. Violence is not an outlet for emotion but a tool of enforcement, applied with surgical precision. He doesn't inflict suffering for pleasure, but neither does he avoid it when it serves strategic objectives. Mercy, to Graves, is not compassion, it is a calculated resource to be deployed only when it strengthens control.​

​

Despite his fearsome reputation, Graves possesses exceptional leadership capacity. He commands through clarity, consistency, and absolute reliability rather than charisma. Subordinates trust him because he doesn't falter, panic, or demand of others what he would not endure himself. Under his command, operations move with machine-like efficiency, guided by tactical foresight and disciplined execution. He understands battlefield momentum instinctively and demonstrates remarkable capacity for strategic planning, administrative control, and long-term operational stability.​

​

His mind is ordered, structured, and precise, qualities that mark him not only as a lethal operative but as a potential architect of Imperial governance. Given authority, he would not merely enforce order; he would systematize it. Yet this discipline comes at a cost. Graves is profoundly unsettling to those who interact with him. His emotional restraint, unwavering gaze, and clinical detachment create the impression of something no longer entirely human. Conversations with him often feel like evaluations rather than exchanges. He studies behavior constantly, assessing risk, value, and intent with disquieting focus.​

​

He doesn't seek connection. He does not seek approval. He doesn't require either. His loyalty is absolute and unyielding. Not to individuals, not to personalities, but to the principle of Imperial order itself. The collapse of the Empire did not break his faith, it strengthened it. Where others abandoned their oaths, Graves refined his.​

ASSETS & ARMORY

• Weapons:
  • E-11D Modified Carbine - Suppressed configuration with multi-spectrum targeting suite; tuned for surgical lethality
  • Imperial Precision Sidearm - Quick-draw neutralization weapon used in confined eliminations
  • Combat Vibroknife - Mono-edged vibroblade issued during Death Trooper induction; never replaced
  • Shock Detonator Package - Used for infrastructure denial and breach entry
  • Slicing Kit - Field tools for slicing, sabotage, and signal corruption
• Armor:
  • Initiative Death Trooper Armor
• Ships / Vehicles / Support:
  • Rotational access to Initiative insertion craft and stealth deployment platforms
  • No permanent command, Graves operates as a detached strategic asset

BIOGRAPHY

Tavian Rhyse was born into the Imperial war machine, raised in a loyal Imperial family where identity was secondary to function. He excelled not through aggression, but through precision and restraint. These traits marked him early for Death Trooper selection in the early days of what would become the Galactic Empire. His defining crucible came during Operation Cinder. While many officers questioned the Emperor's command, Rhyse executed it without hesitation. Many assignments that turned the stomachs of most Imperias, Rhyse took without hesitation.

Rather than breaking him, the experience clarified his worldview: Loyalty is not conditional. Order cannot survive if obedience falters. Graves would continue to serve throughout the rise of the Galactic Empire with valor. After the Empire fragmented, Graves did not join the scramble of petty warlords. He conducted isolated enforcement operations, eliminating defectors, stabilizing collapsing sectors, and maintaining the illusion that Imperial reach still existed. That was where the Tarkin Initiative found him still fighting a war everyone else believed had ended when the Sith Covenant took the core.

They brought him into the fold, reactivating him for service. After a brief retraining, reconditioning and augmentation process, under those loyal to Daedalus Tarkin he was reactivated. Within the Initiative, Graves was given a promotion to Sergeant and leads a squad of Death Troopers. Now as the Tarkin Initiative rises, he operates wherever instability threatens the Initiative's long game, appearing without hesitation, and killing whoever the Director and his subordinates require, resolving resistance with terrifying efficiency.