Darth Traya

"Know that there was once a Darth Traya. And that she cast aside that role, was exiled, and found a new purpose. But there must always be a Darth Traya, one that holds the knowledge of betrayal. Who has been betrayed in their heart, and will betray in turn."

- Darth Traya

Kreia was a female Human Jedi Master during the time before the Mandalorian Wars, and later a Sith Lord under the alias Darth Traya, the Lord of Betrayal. Later in life, after she turned to the dark side, the traits that she had exhibited in her former profession suited her new role as master schemer and Sith Lord. Having been betrayed by both the Jedi and the Sith, she dreamt of revenge not toward both or either group but toward the one that she felt had destined her for such an end: the Force itself.

Her story reached its climax when she found the Jedi Exile, a unique being who had the potential to bring her dream of revenge a step closer to fruition. But this plan came to nothing, as the Exile dueled and killed Darth Traya in the Trayus Academy.

Early life
"I was a historian once, gathering the relics of the Jedi, learning the ancient mysteries. Always, there were more questions."

- Kreia

Much of Kreia's early life is shrouded in mystery, except for the fact that she worked her way to the rank of Jedi Master and that she trained many students, among them Revan. Her teachings were looked upon with concern by the Jedi Council and by the end of her time with the Jedi Order, they believed all of her students to be failures as they followed Revan into the Mandalorian Wars and fell to the dark side.

Fall to the dark side
"All that talk of hatred, manipulation, and standing on your own two feet &mdash; sorry, you don't get any more Sith than that."

- Atton Rand

It is unknown when exactly Kreia was cast from the Jedi Order, although, judging by certain comments made by Jedi Masters such as Kavar, it was most likely during, if not before, the Mandalorian Wars. According to Kreia, she had been exiled from the Order for her role in training Revan. The Jedi Council blamed Kreia for the war after several of her apprentices were easily seduced by the call of battle, most notably Revan. Consumed by her guilt, she questioned the validity of her beliefs in the philosophy and wondered if this was the reason why Revan had fallen.

She followed Revan's footsteps in history, traveling from planet to planet, searching for an answer that she alone could provide. In her travels, she encountered many of Revan's acquaintances and found fragments of a man far from the dreaded image history would eventually paint of him. Her journey ended on the world of Malachor V, a nexus of dark side energies and part of the ancient Sith Empire. From the descent of Jedi Master Kreia into the darkness arose Darth Traya, Dark Lord of Betrayal.

On the surface of Malachor V, she had found her own answers. At the center of Revan's former stronghold was the Trayus Academy, an ancient dark side Praxeum that contained the deepest and most intimate secrets of the Sith. From that moment on, she firmly believed that Revan had never "fallen", that instead a greater cause &mdash; the "True Sith" in the Unknown Regions &mdash; had come that called for certain actions to be done.



Continuing the legacy of her student, Darth Traya re-established the Trayus Academy to train, convert, and create the new generation of Sith, who would act as a gadfly to the Republic. After some time, she found similar Sith Lords who were interested in rebuilding the deteriorating Sith Order. Darth Nihilus, the Lord of Hunger, and Darth Sion, the Lord of Pain, joined her in the creation of the first Sith Triumvirate. As time passed and the Jedi ran to hide, the Sith Lords' ideals became divergent. Traya and Revan's legacy fell far from Darth Nihilus's destructive hunger and Sion's bitter crusade against the Jedi. A violent argument eventually arose among the three, and as Traya was the odd one out, she was cast aside, beaten and broken. Once again she had been betrayed.

As Kreia was stripped of the force by Nilhus and Sion, she became a second "Wound in the Force". Atris alluded to this fact during her and the Exile's second meeting on Telos. Atris surmised that when the two wounds in the force met as they did aboard the Ebon Hawk, they formed a force bond which ran so deep, if one died the other would too.

Lost and dishevelled, Traya blamed neither side and instead dreamt of revenge on a far greater scale, revenge against a higher power which had destined her to be betrayed by those whom she had loyally served – the Force. Having forsaken her Sith identity for the time being, Kreia had come to regard the Force as an uncaring, insidious god. She believed now that this conflict between light and dark would never end, and that the galaxy was doomed to chaos forever. Firm in her belief, she engineered a master plan to eliminate the Force, once and for all.

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Endgame
Kreia traveled with the Exile, whom she helped search for the Jedi Masters. When the truth was revealed &mdash; that the Exile had unconsciously deafened herself to the Force in order to survive, as opposed to being cut off from it by the Jedi Council as the Exile previously believed &mdash; Kreia confronted the reassembled Jedi Council in the ruins of the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine. As the Jedi Masters &mdash; Vrook Lamar, Kavar and Zez-Kai Ell &mdash; actually tried to strip the Force from the Exile, whom they believed to be a wound in the Force and a danger that could lure the Sith &mdash; Kreia drained their connection to the force, killing them, and once again assumed her Sith identity.

She was then led to Jedi Master Atris for judgment by Handmaidens while the Exile laid unconscious. Journeying to the Telos Academy, the reborn Darth Traya revealed that Atris had herself been corrupted and turned to the dark side by the Sith holocrons she gathered, but could not admit it even to herself. Atris embraced the dark side openly, but was soon confronted and defeated by the Exile.

Kreia returned to Malachor V where she intended to sacrifice herself to open up the larger wound in the force in order to destroy it. After their brief duel, Atris told the Exile that such an act would undoubtedly kill the Exile and destroy the Force but she couldn't fathom why Kreia would want to make such a move. However, Kreia would wait for the Exile to come to her for answers and final confrontation.

After the Battle of Telos IV, in which the Exile destroyed Darth Nihilus, the Exile journeyed to Malachor V, where Traya and Sion were hidden in the depths of the Trayus Academy. The Exile confronted the Sith Lords, and eroded Sion's will, releasing him from all his pain in the process. By giving up the pain, and therefore the Force, Sion was finally able to die&mdash;but not before warning the Exile that Traya would try to do to her what she had done to Sion himself.

"Save me? You already have – it is enough what you have done, from now into the future."

- The redeemed Kreia to the Exile

The Exile found Traya in the core of the academy and bested her, slicing her remaining hand off. Despite so many betrayals, so many deceptions, the Exile forgave Kreia for everything that had happened. Kreia realised that she had been seeking redemption all along and chose to honour the Exile with a final gift; she drew upon the Force that radiated from Malachor V and cast a prediction of the future of the galaxy and that of the Exile's friends. She stood dying from the wounds dealt to her by the Exile, telling her apprentice that she must follow Revan to the Unknown Regions. Before her death, she confessed that she truly loved the Exile &mdash; her greatest student, by her own words &mdash; as she believed that the Exile had finally proven her ideals were correct. Then, the Exile eased the Kreia, who has been like a mother to her, from her sufferings to what she once despised &mdash; the Force.

Her body was shortly afterwards destroyed with Malachor when the Mass Shadow Generator was activated for the last time.

Personality and traits


As a person, Darth Traya was self-reliant, manipulative, and constantly wary of the intentions of others.

Traya often remonstrated the Exile for taking away the challenges of others. She argued that indiscriminate compassion weakened the benefactors by disallowing them the mental and physical enrichment that life's challenges inherently procure. Ultimately, she said, such compassion thus weakened the very people it was intended to help, cheapening their experience and leaving them more ill-prepared for dealing with things on their own. In other words, Traya had adopted a "survival of the fittest" philosophy, and encouraged people to struggle in order to learn and to prosper.

After being betrayed by those closest to her, Traya expected the worst from the people around her. As the Exile's circle of companions grew, Traya came to see how these companions could be used for her own ends, and sometimes ensured their loyalty using methods of questionable morality. For example, she read the mind of Atton Rand, learned of his dark history, and used that to blackmail him into the Exile's service. She also tempted the Mandalorian leader, Mandalore Canderous Ordo, with knowledge of Revan's fate in order to ensure that he would not betray the Exile.

A master of manipulation, Traya also used betrayal and deception to achieve her goals. She lied to the Exile at the beginning of their quest, claiming that the Jedi Council had stripped the Force from the Jedi Exile. Traya knew this would lead the Exile to seek out the surviving members of the Jedi Council, in hopes that she, or the Exile, would prove them wrong on their teachings. On Onderon, Traya lied to Colonel Tobin about the existence of many Jedi in a Jedi Academy on Telos, knowing that Tobin would relay this to his true Master, Darth Nihilus, who would not be able to resist the chance to replenish himself and would recklessly assault Telos. This left Nihilus vulnerable to the assault of the Mandalorians and the Exile.

Despite these traits, Traya was not the cruel, cold-hearted manipulator that many had dismissed her as. She had a softer side to her personality that was more apparent when she was around the Jedi Exile. In fact, Traya once expressed that she would go so far as to let the entire galaxy die in order to ensure the life of the Exile, and lived up to her word &mdash; during her travels, the Exile was the only person she really cared about, viewing everyone else as expendable.

Though Traya was intelligent and quite powerful in her own right, she also realized that her philosophies would be regarded as fanatical by both the Jedi and the Sith. Because of this, she preferred to fly beneath the radar, often using her own power to shield her identity from other Force-sensitives who might have known her, and could have otherwise detected her. She was not outspoken about her convictions.

An odd trait of Kreia was her habit to rarely refer to any of the Exile's companions by name, calling them by titles:

She would refer to Atton Rand as "the fool", Mical as a "tiny Jedi", Brianna as the "servant of Atris", Visas Marr as "the blinded one" or "the seer", Mira as "the huntress", T3-M4 as either "the small one" or "the machine", Hanharr as "the beast", HK-47 as "the assassin machine", and Bao-Dur as "the alien".

Powers and abilities
"I use it as I would use a poison, and in the hopes of understanding it, I will learn the way to kill it. But perhaps these are the excuses of an old woman who has grown to rely on a thing she despises."

- Darth Traya on the Force



Kreia was a master of telekinetic lightsaber combat, which allowed her to wield three or more lightsabers in combat, holding each of them aloft with the Force, and having them fight with a will of their own.

Her eyes appeared damaged, but in reality, they were simply atrophied from disuse. She could repair her eyesight with the Force, yet she refused to do so, as she had the Force Sight ability and regarded her natural sight as a distraction.

Kreia could use Force Cloak to hide her presence and knew the ability of Breath Control, which she later taught to the Exile. She also used a variation of the Force Cloak ability that enabled her to be seen but remain entirely unnoticed, or to later make others forget her presence or even her existence. She described this ability as making herself "very small". She could go into a Hibernation Trance that would make her appear perfectly dead. She also had the Force Fear ability.

As Darth Traya, she was a master of Force Drain, which she used to kill dozens of Sith Assassins instantaneously and simultaneously. She also killed Jedi Masters Vrook Lamar, Kavar, and Zez-Kai Ell by showing them the Force through the Exile's eyes&mdash;thereby denying them even the means to become one with the Force&mdash;the Exile would later behold them as "worse than lifeless, like an absence in the Force".

Kreia had once been a Jedi historian, but realized early on that the Jedi Code did not answer all the questions she posed. She was also a master manipulator, having used this skill to maneuver herself into a position of power at the Trayus Academy and, later, trick the Jedi and Sith into revealing themselves, allowing her and her accomplices to destroy them.

Traya was also able to glimpse far into the future, predicting isolated events with incredible accuracy. Traya was able to predict the death of Jango Fett at the hands of Mace Windu nearly 4,000 years later, in a prophecy relating to the fate of the Mandalorians :

"They will die a death that will last millennia, until all that remains is their code, their history, and, in the end, the shell of their armor upon the shell of a man, too easily slain by Jedi."

- Darth Traya

Teachings
"Is this your new Master, exile? If so, then you follow Revan's path. Her teachings will cause you to fall as surely as he did."

- Vrook Lamar to the Jedi Exile

Among her allies were Darth Nihilus, and her students, Darth Sion, the Jedi Exile and Revan. Even when she was a Sith, Traya had some notion that neither the light nor dark side of the Force was truly superior to the other. Due to the fact her teachings incorporated light side concepts (she never believed in power or destruction for its own sake), Sion and Nihilus grew weary of her. They betrayed her, stripped her of power, and exiled her. She described her fall from power thus:

"There are dark places in the galaxy where few tread. Ancient centers of learning, of knowledge. But I did not walk alone. To be united by hatred is a fragile alliance at best. But my will was not law. There were disagreements, ambition&hellip; and hunger for power. There are techniques within the Force against which there is no defense. I was cast down, stripped of my power, exiled. I suffered indignities, and fell into darkness."

- Kreia to the Jedi Exile

Darth Traya would refine her beliefs while wandering the galaxy, eventually coming to view the Force as being a sort of uncaring, insidious god that uses the lives of sentients as pawns in a pernicious game of balance. This, she thought, was evidenced by the widespread occurrences of destruction and death that had persistently transpired throughout the Galaxy to that point, many of which could be traced to a conflict between Force-sensitives. Yet, Traya blamed neither the Jedi nor the Sith, but rather, the very thing they had both come to draw and rely upon: the Force itself.

After being exiled from the Jedi Order when she was forced to shoulder the blame for Revan's corruption and again after she was exiled from Malachor V by her Sith students Nihilus and Sion, Darth Traya had experienced betrayals from, and saw the flaws of, both the light and dark sides of the Force. These unique experiences disillusioned her and forced her to refine her ways of thinking.

When she heard about the Jedi Exile, she saw proof that life could exist without the Force, which she saw as disproof of the traditional dogma of both the Sith and Jedi that the Force and life itself were inseparable by nature. This renewed Traya's confidence in her personal beliefs and fueled her desire to learn more of the Exile's personal motivations. By the end of her adventures with the Exile, during which time she went by the name of Kreia, Traya had discovered that certain tragedies can leave wounds in the Force, which sometimes made it difficult to hear and be used. These "echoes," as Traya called them, provided a possible avenue through which it was possible to attack the Force. Her discovery was due in no small part to the Exile, as her experience at Malachor V, where she cut herself off from the Force, created an echo large enough that Traya was able to connect the tragedy to the wound created in the Force. According to Traya, those who had chosen death (or the Jedi who chose the dark side) over a life devoid of the Force were not strong enough to deserve life. Her desire to prevent unnecessary death in the future was the overbearing motivation that cultivated her hatred for the Force.

Despite her loathing of the Force, she still used it; she explained it by comparing herself to one who studies poison. Just as such a person would strive to understand the lethality behind poison, so she strives to understand the particularities of the Force, thereby enabling her to destroy it, perhaps.

Darth Traya envisioned a galaxy that would choose not to acquiesce to the will of the Force. She thought she could achieve this by showing how one could willingly abnegate the Force and eventually become stronger for it, and it was the Exile who was a living testament to this. In her teachings with the Jedi Exile, she emphasized how dependent the Jedi and Sith were on the Force, and how they had become flawed for it. By making the Exile her protégé, she hoped her message would resonate with future Force-sensitives so they would choose to use the Force without necessarily bending to either extreme, and certainly not to the point where they would choose death over life without the Force. Ultimately, though, she dreamed of a galaxy lacking of the Force altogether, as it was her belief that the galaxy would be better off that way.

Behind the scenes



 * During the sequence in the Sith tomb, Kreia uses a blue lightsaber.
 * On Dxun, Kreia tells Mandalore,"Always in motion is the future." It mirrors what Yoda said in Empire Strikes Back.

Portrayal and name

 * Kreia was voiced by Sara Kestelman.
 * GameSpy declared Kreia the best video game character of 2005.
 * Darth Traya is the first known Darth (after, possibly, Darth Andeddu) to use a Sith alias instead of her real name. Her predecessors, Darth Revan and Darth Malak, both added the Darth title to their actual names.
 * The name Traya comes directly from the word "betrayal," which holds an obvious relation to the events of her life.

Alternate ending
If the Exile is dark-sided, there is an option to throw her into the Trayus Core. This cutscene mirrors Palpatine's death.

Cut content

 * In an unused dialogue (and discarded plot events) Kreia revealed that she had been manipulating the mind of Atris for years, and through her orchestrated the Jedi Exile's trial and sentence.
 * A single alternative line in the "Kreia's Fall" scene from the game revealed that the catalyst for Sion and Nihilus's betrayal was that Kreia decreed that the Jedi Exile was not to be harmed.
 * The official player's guide to the game showed that Kreia had actual dark side transitions, and that her alignment would change depending on the Exile's alignment and level of influence with her, like the rest of the crew. The decision to remove them and set Kreia's alignment to "true neutral" permanently must have been made late in production.
 * After Kreia slew the three Jedi masters on Dantooine, if Brianna the handmaiden was not part of the Exile's party, Visas would take Kreia before Nihilus instead of Atris.
 * Kreia was not always intended to be the only Traya and final boss in the game. Before the content was cut out, the choices the Exile made could have her or Atris become Traya at the end. In that scenario, Kreia sacrifices her life to protect the Jedi Exile from her. The New Essential Chronology introduced even more confusion, as it mistakenly referred to "Darth Kreia" and "Darth Traya" as two separate characters. This error was later addressed by author Dan Wallace, but it was too late, as the book was already out.
 * After Kreia lost her first hand in the beginning, there are a few errors in her actions and movements while lacking it throughout the rest of the game, such as putting fists on the waste, holding her lightsaber as if there were "two" holding it, and using her Force powers in battle.
 * Elements such as Atris's dark side ending and Kreia's comments near the climax of the game may indicate that the Darth Traya role has a quasi-religious significance within the Sith Order; Count Dooku himself notably remarked that "treachery is the way of the Sith." As such, Sion's and Nihilus's respective titles as Lord of Pain and Lord of Hunger may portray further arcane Sith teaching delved from the Malachor ruins and the Trayus Academy.
 * The screenshot that shows Kreia with her hood removed was taken with a modified game; while such a scene never takes place in the game, it was supposed to take place during the Rebuilt Enclave scene, when Kreia reveals herself to the three Jedi Masters; however, in the official release, Kreia stays hooded due to a scripting glitch. This has been fixed by The Sith Lords Restoration Project developers.

A mysterious past


There is an ongoing dispute as to whether the Jedi Arren Kae and Kreia are the same person. While available material, cut or not, indicates that it may indeed have been Obsidian Entertainment's original intent, there is no conclusive evidence that could either prove or disprove this theory within Star Wars canon.

Another common fan theory states that Kreia may be Krynda Draay, a member of the Jedi Covenant who apparently ordered the Padawan Massacre of Taris so that a new Sith could not rise. Krynda was introduced in the Knights of the Old Republic comic series that followed the two KotOR games, delving into their backstory.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords