Kazdan Paratus

"Dont worry, Masters. I'll defend you from this Sith trash."

- Kazdan Paratus

Kazdan Paratus was an Aleena Jedi Knight and General who fought in the Clone Wars and survived Order 66.

Early life
In his early life and work towards the Jedi trials, Paratus did not possess the detachment most Jedi needed in order to pass the Jedi Trials, instead preferring to hole himself in his room and to build droids for the Temple, to aid in training Padawans. After completing the Trials with his machines, Paratus was appointed a Jedi Knight of the Old Republic.

During the final days of the Republic, Jedi Knight Kazdan Paratus was the Jedi Temple's head engineer and leader of the Technical division, a position the Jedi Council appointed to him due to his skills as an extraordinary droid maker. He was responsible for many exceptional and unique machines that were in possession of abilities far beyond those of average droids. He worked in seclusion on Coruscant until the Clone Wars broke out.

The Clone Wars
Refusing to pass up the opportunity to study the droids of the Separatists, Paratus lived life on the front lines, building medical and power droids as well as other machines designed to support the clone army. Eventually, he took command of a group of clone troopers that were mostly killed off in a disastrous campaign. Due to these circumstances, he was forced to create his own troops that consisted of combat droids that he assembled using makeshift parts. After a great battle, the Jedi Knight returned to the Temple a few days before the issuance of Order 66.

The Great Jedi Purge
With the activation of Order 66 and the subsequent execution of Operation: Knightfall, the Jedi temple was sacked by the 501st Legion, led by none other than Darth Vader. In the face of this brutal carnage, Paratus panicked and fled the Temple in an act of cowardice. He escaped Coruscant in a nondescript freighter with several droid prototypes in tow.

Wracked with guilt over his abandonment of the Jedi, Paratus descended into insanity. Going into hiding on the waste-covered planet of Raxus Prime, he become a reclusive droid maker. Paratus built an army of personally customized combat droids to protect himself from intruders, creating such types as the Scrap Guardian, Junk golem and Junk Titan. To increase his size and mobility, he designed four mechanical arms to wear on his back. While on the junkyard world, Paratus built a Jedi Temple from scratch out of refuse and made puppets of all the Jedi councilors for the Council Chamber, arming them with various melee weapons.

Death
"You are not welcome here!"

- Kazdan Paratus to Starkiller



Approximately 16 years after Order 66, the insane Jedi was discovered by Darth Vader, who sent his apprentice, Starkiller on a mission to eliminate the Aleena Jedi. Paratus noticed his ship landing and began to worry about what he should do. He consulted a metallic effigy of Jedi Master Yoda as to this matter and grew nervous after his silent "answer," moving his lightsaber from hand to hand.

After negotiating the junk world, Starkiller arrived in Paratus's facsimile Temple and was confronted by a Junk Titan armed with two large vibro-axes and a variety of weapons tipping its other arms. The Sith apprentice dodged blows from the junk warrior, and as the floor buckled under the Titan's weight, knocked off one of its weapons with a telekinetic punch. Dodging another attack by the golem, slicing as he went, Starkiller removed more of its weapons. He rolled through the machine's legs and cut up its spine, scoring a deep blow.

The crippled machine attempted to turn at the man, but he used his lightsaber to cut at both its vibro-axe arms, forcing it to drop one axe. He sent a barrage of lightning at the machine, sending all the strength he could muster at it. Its photoreceptors, a droid's "eye," became nonfunctional but it still came at Starkiller with its other ax. The apprentice used the Force to push the creature, knocking it off one of its legs, through the walls of the Temple, following it and finally bringing it down in a junk version of the High Council Chamber of the Jedi Temple with junk effigies of the late or missing council members.



From a hatch in the machine's front emerged the Jedi Master Starkiller had been searching for. Paratus swore he would protect the "Masters" and the mannequins began to stir, distracting the apprentice. Paratus lunged at the invader, slightly scoring a cut down Starkiller's left arm before it was parried. Though Starkiller fought back, every move he made was either blocked almost instantly by the Aleena's Lightsaber pike or missed because of the Jedi's constant hopping from place to place. The invader sent a volley of lightning against Paratus, noticing that Paratus had an extreme aversion to the electric pulses. He hit Paratus with more and more lightning but as he did so, the apprentice was suddenly struck from behind and his lightsaber fell from his hand.

He turned to see the junk version of Plo Koon standing behind him in a Form V stance, a vibroblade in place of his lightsaber. After a moment of surprise, the apprentice used the Force to blow apart the patchwork tribute and regained his lightsaber, deflecting a blow from the recovered Paratus. More "Masters," including Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker, attempted to face the apprentices, but all were destroyed. With each "death," Paratus clasped his chest deeper in pain and despair at their loss, crying when the last one fell to the apprentice. Starkiller grabbed the Jedi in a tight telekinetic hold and slammed him around the room, pounding him into submission. When he was sure that the Jedi was finished, the apprentice let Paratus fall to the ground on his back.

As he lay dying with his eyes closed, Paratus uttered his last words, apologizing to the Masters for failing them yet again. Paratus then became one with the Force and his body disappeared in a flash.

Legacy
"I'm sorry, masters. I've failed you... again."

- Kazdan Paratus' last words

After Paratus' death, Starkiller claimed Paratus's light-pike as a gift for his master, as other than being snapped in half, it had survived the ordeal it had gone through when Paratus was crushed. Although he took the damaged weapon to his quarters and attempted for an hour to repair it, he was unsuccessful in restoring the weapon as he could not realign the focusing crystals to the lens and failed to connect the emitter matrix to the power conduit.

Later, Galactic Emperor Darth Sidious found out about Darth Vader's secret apprentice and their plan to kill him and usurp the throne. Palpatine had his spies follow the Rogue Shadow to the Executor, Darth Vader's still uncompleted flagship. The Emperor boarded and told Vader to kill the apprentice and he reluctantly complied, impaling the apprentice's chest, slamming him around the room, and finally out of a viewport into the vacuum of space. While he floated there, drifting in and out of consciousness, he experienced numerous visions of past and future events, including one of Paratus worriedly watching the Shadow land on the surface of Raxus Prime.

Due to Paratus' death, Raxus Prime was left defenseless, as Paratus' droids had protected the planet during Paratus' lifetime. Although Rodian scavengers remained on the planet for some time, the Empire soon took over the planet, stripping its metals to create Star Destroyers, leaving little for scavengers to obtain. The metals and ores stripped from the planet after Paratus' death were used in orbiting construction facilities, such as the one Starkiller later destroyed using an ore cannon.

Personality and traits


As a young Jedi, Paratus was more anti-sociable than some Padawans, preferring to hole himself up in his personal quarters to work upon droids than to socialize. Not possessing the detachment of most Jedi, Paratus created the droids originally to aid with training Padawans in the Temple, and managed to pass his trials not through physical prowess with a lightsaber, but with intelligence. However, when Order 66 was initiated, and Operation: Knightfall subsequently occurred, Paratus displayed cowardice in fleeing the Jedi Temple, allowing his comrades to be killed by Darth Vader and the clone troopers.

After abandoning the Jedi at the Temple on Coruscant, Paratus held a great deal of guilt, which would eventually lead to madness. The initial stages of his insanity causes Paratus to form an inferiority complex regarding his small size, prompting him to construct the four mechanical limbs he kept strapped to his back to provide him with the desired height and mobility. The next stage of his madness causes him to fall into a delusion of being a member of the Jedi council, which in turn motivates him to construct the replica of the Jedi temple out of the abundant debris on Raxus Prime. By the time Paratus faced Starkiller in combat, the Aleena Jedi was past the brink of schizophrenia, as shown by how he reconstructed all the Jedi council members out of junk and believing them to be the actual individuals.

Powers and abilities
Thanks to the special robotic rig on his back which served as additional limbs for him, Paratus was able to walk on walls and vertical surfaces. A Shien practitioner, Paratus handled his lightsaber pike with two of his mechanical limbs, allowing him to wield his chosen weapon with great dexterity, as shown by the way he mounted almost continuous attacks upon Galen Marek during their duel. He was also able to use his lightsaber staff to block the various counter-attacks utilized by Marek.

Adept with the Force, Paratus had a great level of control over his droid creations, and was capable of giving life to robotic creations that were subject to his will. He was capable of making such creations like the Junk Titan in a short span of time and with ease. With his death, all of the junk creatures he created collapsed. In combat, Paratus had the ability to suspend himself in mid-air and to hurl objects at an opponent using the Force, as he demonstrated against Marek.

Behind the scenes
Kazdan Paratus was voiced by Larry Drake in The Force Unleashed video game.

Kazdan Paratus wields a blue lightsaber staff in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game, but a yellow double-bladed lightsaber with an elongated hilt in the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS versions. The staff is a green double-bladed lightsaber with an elongated hilt for the Wii version. This may be an error when making the game for the Wii. It also has the yellow lightsaber in the same console version. The novelization also describes his lightsaber staff as having two blades, one significantly shorter than the other.

Kazdan's death also plays out differently in the Wii and PS2 versions; instead of crushing him with junk as in the PS3 and Xbox 360 version, Starkiller smashes him against a wall before finishing him off with Force lightning.

Kazdan Paratus does not appear in the graphic novel adaptation of The Force Unleashed.

In The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide, Paratus is depicted as having a yellow lightsaber staff.

Appearances

 * The Force Unleashed novel
 * Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game

Notes and references
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