Tor Vizsla

"They called themselves the "Death Watch" and followed a barbarian called Vizsla, who believed that the Mandalorians should conquer the galaxy."

- Dooku, about Tor Vizsla and his followers

Tor Vizsla was a male Human Mandalorian warrior and the first leader of the Death Watch faction during the Mandalorian Civil War. He founded the splinter group following Jaster Mereel's ascension to Mandalore in 60 BBY in direct competition against Mereel's promulgation of the Supercommando Codex. While Mereel sought to root out the immoral banditry that had taken hold among the Mandalorians, Vizsla wished to continue their marauding ways, with the ultimate goal of starting a new Mandalorian War and conquering the galaxy in the name of his forefathers. To this end, he and his supporters waged war against Mereel's True Mandalorians for several years, with heavy casualties on both sides, until Vizsla was seemingly killed on Concord Dawn.

Vizsla and the Death Watch later reappeared on Korda 6 where he managed to trap the True Mandalorians and kill Mereel as the Mandalore was betrayed by his second-in-command, forcing them to retreat. After several more years in hiding, he layed another trap for the True Mandalorians, now following Mereel's successor, Jango Fett, in which a strike team of Jedi were manipulated into slaughtering Vizsla's enemies for him. The only survivor of the battle, Fett was sold into slavery and spent several years aboard a spice transport. He managed to escaped, however, and recovered a suit of Mandalorian armor from Galidraan. Fett then hunted Vizsla to Corellia where Fett destroyed his ship, the Death Rattle, and fought Vizsla hand-to-hand on the planet's surface. Vizsla injected Fett with a drug to knock him out but before he lost consciousness, he slashed open Vizsla's stomach. Attracted by the scent of blood, a pack of dire-cats attacked, killing and devouring Vizsla, leaving Fett to wake up the following day, unharmed.

Hunting Jaster Mereel
"They dressed themselves up as patriots wanting a return to the good old days of the Mando empire, but it was just a cover for organized crime."

- Kal Skirata

In 60 BBY, Jaster Mereel took the title of Mandalore, claiming leadership over the Mandalorian clans that still followed the old ways. He instituted his Supercommando Codex as a new moral standard for all Mandalorians to follow, asserting that Mandalorians should conduct themselves honorably as nothing more than highly-paid mercenaries. He also hoped to eliminate the public perception of Mandalorians as amoral killers. Tor Vizsla opposed this reform, however, and sought the title of Mandalore for himself. He advocated the belief that the Mandalorians should return to their roots as conquerers, claiming that it was their birthright to wage a second war for control of the galaxy. Gathering likeminded Mandalorian hardliners to his cause, he led a violent coup against Mereel's supporters and formed a splinter group which he cast as the Death Watch, adapting his clan sigil to symbolize the movement.

Scattering Mereel and his men on Concord Dawn, Vizsla's forces hunted them across the planet. Finding a young Jango Fett working in his father's fields, Vizsla questioned the boy while his companion held him at gunpoint. Learning that Jango's father had been sheltering Mereel, Vizsla brutally interrogated the Journeyman Protector. When he refused to talk, Vizsla had one of his men put a blaster to Jango's head, threatening to kill the boy if Fett didn't cooperate. Before any harm could come to her son, Jango Fett's mother shot and killed the Death Watchman holding him. Fett urged Jango to run and the boy broke for the fields with several of Vizsla's men in pursuit. As they caught up to Jango, he was saved by Mereel and his remaining followers. Hearing the ensuing firefight in the fields, Vizsla ordered his men to set them on fire while they murdered Jango's parents and kidnapped his sister. Confident the fire had finished off his nemesis, the Death Watch settled in for two days of rest and recreation to celebrate their victory in a nearby town. There, they came under attack from Mereel and what remained of his army. During the battle, Vizsla took cover inside his tank and Jango placed an explosive on its underside. When the explosion cleared, Mereel searched the debris and, though no body was found, Vizsla was presumed dead.

Laying traps
"Finally I get to wipe you from Mandalorian history forever..."

- Tor Vizsla upon Jaster Mereel's death

However, Vizsla was encountered alive in 52 BBY, albeit extensively scarred by the explosion. Luring the True Mandalorians into an ambush on Korda 6, the Death Watch decimated more of Mereel's forces between them and the native Kordans. Vizsla appeared on the battlefield aboard a tank and gunned Mereel down himself when the Mandalore was abandoned by his own second-in-command, Montross. When the True Mandalorians retreated, leadership passed to Jango Fett who swore to hunt down Vizsla once and for all.

When the Governor of Galidraan agreed to pass information about the Death Watch's whereabouts on to Jango Fett in exchange for his Mandalorians putting down a rebellion in 44 BBY, Vizsla set yet another trap for his foes. He coerced the governor into requesting help from the Jedi Order, claiming the Mandalorians were slaughtering political activists. When Fett met the governor at his castle, Vizsla attempted to kill him, firing on Fett from behind a curtain where he hid with several of his men. Fett retreated, leaping out a nearby window and activating his jetpack, but Vizsla disabled it with a shot from his blaster pistol, sending Fett hurtling to the ground below.

Satisfied the trap was a success, Vizsla and the Death Watch took their leave to create evidence of civilian deaths while the Jedi, led by Master Dooku, arrived at the Mandalorian camp and killed every Mandalorian except for their leader. Jango Fett was handed over to the governor, who promptly had him sold into slavery.

Endgame
After years aboard a spice freighter, Fett made his escape during a pirate attack. Returning to Galidraan, he recovered his armor and held the governor at gunpoint, demanding to know where he could find Vizsla. Over Corellia, Fett used a starfighter to disable the Death Rattle engines while he himself stormed the bridge by smashing his way through the main viewport. As the ship began to break up, Vizsla fled toward the escape pods, ordering his men to abandon ship. Fett gave chase and they scuffled briefly before making their way down to the planet.

The two men fought savagely, evenly matched, until their brawl carried them over a cliff and into a river. When they washed ashore, Vizsla injected Fett with a poison that made him near-lethargic. Before he could deliver the death blow, however, Fett slashed Vizsla's stomach open with a pair of blades ejected from his gauntlets. As Fett slipped into unconsciousness, the Death Watch leader was attacked, killed, and eaten by a pack of dire-cats who ignored Fett completely.

Legacy
"We conquered whole star systems. We had an empire. When cities heard our armies were coming, populations fled before a shot was fired. Now we cling to a pathetic sector of dirtball planets, we scramble for the crumbs that the cowardly aruetiise throw when they want us to fight for them, and they use us as a breeding stock for their clone armies. The aruetiise will always treat us like an animal species to be used for their convenience until we stand up for ourselves again."

- Lorka Gedyc

While the True Mandalorians remained defeated, the Death Watch carried on in secret for decades, continuing to resurface years after they'd been believed to have been destroyed.

Another member of Vizsla's clan, Pre Vizsla, took over clandestine leadership of the splinter group while acting as the governor of Mandalore's moon, Concordia and publicly supporting Duchess Satine Kryze of Kalevala. Under Pre Vizsla's leadership, the Death Watch undertook a terrorist bombing campaign during the Clone Wars against Kryze's New Mandalorians who controlled the city of Sundari and conspired with the Confederacy of Independent Systems in order to reconcquer the whole of the planet. Their plot was foiled when Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi came to Mandalore to investigate rumors that Kryze was building a secret army to fight for the Separatists and discovered Pre Vizsla's hidden base and uncovered his true allegiances.

By the end of the Clone Wars, leadership of the Death had passed to Lorka Gedyc, who advocated cooperation with the new Galactic Empire as a means of regaining the Mandalorians' strength. Former Cuy'val Dar members Dred Priest and Isabet Reau actively recruited for the Death Watch in the city of Keldabe and Priest claimed that Gedyc had changed the Death Watch for the better from the way it had been under Tor Vizsla.

By 1 ABY, Vizsla's movement had passed laregly into legend. Teti Viba, having styled himself "Overlord" of the Death Watch, had moved the group's headquarters from Concordia to the forest moon of Endor. There, they continued to operate in secret, having allied themselves with Black Sun, until a band of spacers in the employ of Imperial Commander D'krn infiltrated their bunker, killed Viba, and took a sample of his blood to create a new batch of stormtroopers.

Personality and traits
Described by Count Dooku as a barbarian, Vizsla was indeed brutal and vicious in his methods. On Concord Dawn, he commanded his troops to slaughter the young Jango Fett's family, and later permitted them to take whatever they wanted from a local town. When he orchestrated the Battle of Galidraan, he ordered the governor of the planet to tell the Jedi that Fett's Mandalorians had been slaughtering women and children. When the governor protested that there was no evidence of such crimes, Vizsla promised that he would make some.

Vizsla was also narcissistic and egomaniacal. He resented Jaster Mereel for stealing the title of Mandalore from him and fed his ego by claiming that he and his followers would conquer the galaxy as their Mandalorian forefathers had intended. His followers were little more than sycophantic thugs held together by the force of his charisma.

Equipment
Vizsla wore a suit of black Mandalorian armor which he adorned with a red cape and his clan sigil on the shoulders. His gauntlets mounted several weapons including a wrist rocket, flamethrower, whipcord launcher, and poison injector. He also used various blaster rifles and pistols in combat, as well as a tank on at least two occasions. He also possessed a personal starship, the Death Rattle.

Behind the scenes
The character of Tor Vizsla was created by Star Wars writer Haden Blackman for the four-part comic series Jango Fett: Open Seasons, released on May 1, 2002 shortly before the premier of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Initially known simply as "Vizsla", he was finally given a first name on August 18, 2009 in The Essential Atlas by authors Jason Fry and Daniel Wallace. The name Tor translates to "justice" in Mando'a.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars supervising director, Dave Filoni, applied the name Vizsla to Pre Vizsla, the primary antagonist of the three-part Mandalorian story arc of The Clone Wars: Season Two as a reference to the Expanded Universe material, also including the name and symbol of the Death Watch. The two characters were later connected by the Clone Wars Character Encyclopedia, which retconned the Death Watch sign into the symbol of Clan Vizsla.

Appearances

 * Jango Fett: Open Seasons
 * Order 66: A Republic Commando Novel
 * Imperial Commando: 501st
 * Sacrifice

Notes and references
Tor Vizsla トー・ヴィズラ Tor Vizsla Vizsla