Darth Charus was a Human male who served the Reconstituted Sith Empire as a Sith Lord and member of the Dark Council, overseeing the Sphere of Defense of the Empire centuries before the outbreak of the Great Galactic War. Part of a long heritage of Sith Lords, Charus was born on the Sith capital world of Dromund Kaas and trained from an early age to be Sith. He was among the best students of his class at the Dromund Kaas Academy, and his talents drew the attention of Darth Viscran, a member of the Dark Council, who took Charus as one of several apprentices. After defeating or discrediting his fellow apprentices in the eyes of their master, Charus emerged as Viscran's final student, and was eventually granted the title of Lord by the Dark Lord.
As a Sith Lord Charus mirrored Viscran's training methods, taking on a multitude of apprentices and waiting until one emerged who was both stronger and cleverer than the others. This apprentice transpired to be a female Sith pure-blood named Abolon. With Abolon as his apprentice, Charus set about preparing a position of power for himself from which he could, in time, ascend to the Dark Council. Charus' chance would come when the Sith Emperor himself ordered the entire Dark Council purged in the wake of a conspiracy against him. Darth Viscran was killed, and in the power vacuum left by the purge, Charus was able to secure himself a seat on the Council, overseeing the Sphere of Defense of the Empire. At some point before his ascension to the Dark Council Charus fathered a son, Tem'rah, who inherited his father's Force-sensitivity. He also created a holocron, which through the centuries came into the possession of various Sith Lords before eventually being destroyed by Darth Gravid.
Biography[]
Apprenticeships[]
Charus was born on Dromund Kaas, the capital of the Reconstituted Sith Empire, the latest in a long heritage of powerful Sith Lords. More than one of Charus' ancestors had held seats on the Dark Council, and it was the wish of Charus' father, Lord Phlegethus, that his son emulate their ancient forebears. To that end, Phlegethus trained his son in the basics of using the Dark Side of the Force and in lightsaber combat. On one occasion, Phlegethus bought two Force-sensitive slave children - a Kadas'sa'Nikto and a Twi'lek - and set them on his young son in a lightsaber fight to the death. Despite being outnumbered, Charus managed to kill both of his opponents.
Charus, as a young child, trains against two Force-sensitive slaves
All of Charus' childhood training ensured that by the time he was old enough to be enrolled in the Sith Academy, he was already an adequately proficient Dark-Sider. This gave Charus a significant advantage over many of his peers at the Academy, and he quickly became one of the establishment's most promising students. Charus' potential caught the attention of Darth Viscran, a Sith pure-blood who was among the twelve Dark Lords who held seats on the Dark Council, the Empire's governing body in the absence of the Emperor. Viscran, who already had fifteen apprentices studying under him, instructed Charus to remove the competition he faced by any means necessary, warning his newest apprentice that his fellows had all been set the same challenge.
Over the course of several years Charus followed his master's instruction, killing some of his fellow apprentices and managing to use his intelligence to discredit others in Viscran's eyes. Eventually, Charus was the sole remaining apprentice of the Dark Lord. Viscran, impressed, by Charus' ruthlessness in removing obstacles, power in the Force and willingness to use underhanded tactics to achieve his ends, bestowed on Charus the title of Lord of the Sith, officially bringing his apprenticeship to an end and making him a supremely powerful being within the hierarchy of the Empire.
Charus during his time as Darth Viscran's apprentice
Lord of the Sith[]
There were once sixteen apprentices. Now there is but one. Rise, Lord Charus.
—Darth Viscran conveys the title of Sith Lord upon his final apprentice
As a Sith Lord, Charus' position in the Empire was highly privileged. Answering only to the Darths, the Lords of the Dark Council and the Emperor himself, Charus was free to act virtually as he saw fit. Among his first actions as a Lord of the Sith was to revisit the Sith Academy and choose a group of hopeful apprentices of his own. Mimicking his master's technique, which he believed to be a highly effective method of discerning which apprentice most deserved to become a Sith Lord, Charus took a dozen apprentices, and over the course of years watched as they slowly whittled each other away. Quickly, Charus identified one particular apprentice whom he believed showed the greatest potential. A pure-blood Sith female named Abolon, to whom Charus gave extra attention. However, he refrained from assisting Abolon any more than he did her peers, believing that to do so would cheapen her eventual triumph and fail to prove her true strength and power.
Eventually, as Charus himself had under Viscran, Abolon emerged as the final apprentice of Lord Charus. The Sith Lord then, in turn, proclaimed that Abolon was herself a Lord of the Sith, proving correct his initial intuition that she would prevail and prove herself to be the most worthy of his apprentices. Further, Abolon also became Charus' lover, and in time their union produced a son, whom Charus named Tem'rah. Just as Charus' father had taught him as a boy, so too did Charus train Tem'rah until the youth was old enough to attend the Sith Academy.
Lord Charus caught in the eruption on Enferriad
Enferriad[]
Choosing not to take any further apprentices, Charus instead dedicated himself to helping to expand the Empire's territory, taking part in the Invasion of Enferriad, a hostile world strong in the Dark Side and the site of an ancient Sith Academy. Charus, under the orders of Darth Nyriss, one of the members of the Dark Council, led a small force of Sith troopers in a mission to secure a volcanic region of Enferriad. However, during the mission the Sith forces were caught in a violent eruption, and all but Charus were killed by the molten rock, ash and toxic fumes. Charus himself only survived by drawing on all his power with the Dark Side and unshakeable willpower, a feat which impressed Darth Nyriss enough that she commended him to the Dark Council. As a reward for having passed the ultimate trial, and having technically completed his mission, the Dark Council conferred on Charus the Darth title, placing him one rung higher on the ladder of the Imperial hierarchy.
Ascension to the Dark Council[]
As a Darth, there were but thirteen who stood over me. Now, though, there is only one.
—Darth Charus, on joining the Dark Council
As a holder of the highly prestigious Darth title, Charus was among the highest-ranking Sith Lords in the Empire, answerable only to the Dark Council and the Emperor himself. However, even this was not enough for the highly ambitious Charus, who began to plan his own ascension to the Dark Council. A key pawn in his plan would be Darth Viscran, whose influence Charus planned to use to secure himself a position of power from which to springboard himself to the Council. Charus was prepared to wait years, even decades, for his plan to bear fruit, but his chance for power came sooner than he ever anticipated, due to affairs completely outside his control.
Darth Charus uses a Force wave to subdue rioters in Kaas City
Five years before Charus' ascension to the rank of Darth, and completely unbeknownst to the Sith Lord, a Jedi Knight named Revan had been captured by Darth Nyriss and her associate Lord Scourge on the planet Nathema, a world completely devoid of life and the very Force itself due to the enactment of a Sith ritual centuries earlier, at the end of the Great Hyperspace War, by the Sith Lord Vitiate, who would go on to become the immortal Sith Emperor. Nyriss, and several other Dark Council members, had known the truth of Nathema for several years, and together they had formed a conspiracy to overthrow the Emperor, whom they saw as a deranged madman whose dreams of war with the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic would doom the Sith Empire. Influenced for five years by the captive Revan, Scourge tipped the Emperor off to the conspiracy, hoping to create an opportunity for himself, Revan and Meetra Surik, another Jedi, to assassinate the Emperor themselves. Upon learning of the plot against him, the Emperor had the entire Dark Council wiped out in a single move. He summoned all twelve to meet with him. Nine answered his summons, two were killed by the Imperial Guard and Darth Nyriss was killed by Revan. The nine who went before the Emperor, Darth Viscran included, were all slaughtered by him, creating a mass vacuum of power and the unprecedented prospect of all twelve Council seats open to the most worthy Sith of the Empire.
Darth Charus decided to prove his worth to the Emperor by helping to suppress the riots that erupted following the destruction of the Dark Council, mercilessly slaughtering dozens of rioters personally, leading his private army of Sith troopers against them and making full use of his lightsaber skills and Force powers in the ensuing battles. This served not only to suppress the civil unrest in Kaas City, but served also as a demonstration of Charus' considerable power and a warning to any who sought to challenge him. The ploy succeeded, and many lesser Sith Lords, and even a small number of Darths, backed Charus in his bid for a seat on the Dark Council. The Emperor, impressed by Charus' demonstrations of power and his display of loyalty to the Empire and to the person of the Emperor, appointed Charus to the Dark Council, giving him control over the Sphere of Defense of the Empire.
Legacy[]
Darth Charus was remembered in the annals of Sith history as a skilled warrior and powerful Force-user, although this was hardly unique among Sith of his era, or indeed any era. At some point before his death, Charus created a holocron, which came into the possession of many prominent Sith Lords throughout the centuries, such as Darth Marr, his eventual successor on the Dark Council, Darth Ruin and Darth Bane. The holocron was handed down through the Bane line of Sith until it was destroyed by Darth Gravid, along with around half of everything in the Sith Order's repository.
Personality and traits[]
A Sith must be utterly ruthless and without remorse.
—Darth Charus
Darth Charus was a psychopathic being, almost completely lacking in empathy or compassionate feeling. His ambition and determination ruled his life, and with them he managed to rise from an Acolyte at the Academy to one of the twelve Lords of the Dark Council. Brutal, ruthless, merciless, cunning and highly intelligent, Charus was prepared to do anything to achieve him aims. He was also incapable of feeling remorse for his actions, and indeed believed that a Sith ought to be free of such a constraint. However, he was not entirely without compassionate emotions, as he genuinely cared for both his lover Darth Abolon and for their son Tem'rah.
Darth Charus was fanatically loyal to both the Sith Empire as a political entity and to the person of the Sith Emperor. Indeed, it is testament to Charus' loyalty to his Emperor that his seemingly infinite ambition finally reached its limit at membership of the Dark Council, and Charus never once contemplated overthrowing the Emperor.
Powers and abilities[]
Darth Charus was the result of centuries of Force-sensitive breeding, and as such was extremely strong in the Force. Like many of his ancestors, he was a masterful wielder of the Dark Side, and demonstrated many abilities that required great Force potential, such as Force lightning or the Force wave technique. In addition to his talent with the Force, Charus was also a skilled lightsaber combatant, able to win a fight to the death in which he was outnumbered, even as a pre-pubescent child - albeit against untrained opponents. He was also able to defeat and kill several of his fellow apprentices under Darth Viscran in lightsaber duels, further proving his prowess. On at least one occasion, Charus demonstrated at least a familiarity with the Jar'Kai technique of wielding two lightsabers.
Darth Charus was familiar with the Jar'Kai technique
Furthermore, Charus was highly intelligent and patient, able to wait years for carefully laid plans to come to fruition and capable of manipulating fellow Sith into disgracing themselves in the eyes of their superiors, which Charus would in turn use to his advantage to fill the power vacuum such sudden falls from grace inevitably left behind. Charus was also a very persuasive figure, able to convince even the Sith Emperor of his worth as a member of the Dark Council.
Behind the scenes[]
Darth Charus' name is derived from Charon, who in ancient Greek mythology ferried the souls of the dead to the underworld.
The character of Darth Charus was initially conceived as being the true identity of an infiltrator of the Jedi Order in the centuries preceding the Great Galactic War, similar to the character of Barel Ovair. However, this idea was quickly dropped and Charus' lifetime was instead made to coincide, but not cross paths with, the lives of Revan and Meetra Surik.
The decision to have Darth Charus' holocron be destroyed by Darth Gravid, a Sith Lord mentioned in the novel Star Wars: Darth Plagueis, was intended to tie together the story lines found in the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series and the later plot lines surrounding the Star Wars movies.
Consistently, the image of Namman Cha, a Dark Jedi of the Rebellion era, is used to portray Darth Charus, save for the image of Charus as a child, which was taken from Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side.