Valin Draco

"Pray that you have not summoned the Empire on a fool’s errand, for the Inquisitorius is not gentle with those who deal with Jedi."

- Valin Draco

Valin Draco was a male Human Jedi Knight who was the student of Jedi Master Denia and served during the Clone Wars. However, his experiences during conflict drew him towards the Dark side of the Force and following his experiences in the Battle of Parein II 4, he fully fell into it's grip.

Following the creation of the Galactic Empire, he allied itself with it and became a member of the Inquisitorius. He became involved in various secret plots including a plan to infiltrate Admiral Gilder Varth into the Alderaanian Resistance and the Sarlacc Project, the construction of a Super Star Destroyer prototype. He was also dispatched on a mission to Almas, where he discovered and learned from Darth Rivan's holocron. However, he was seriously injured after an encounter with the Alderaanian Resistance and had to be fitted with extensive cybernetics. He gained revenge by attacking a Resistance taskforce and capturing Denia, his former master. He took her to Prakith and tortured her there. However, a rescue team came after her and Denia sacrificed herself to weaken Draco, forcing him to flee to Byss.

Jedi Knight
"During the Clone Wars, the brave men and women I commanded called me the Valiant Dragon"

- Valin Draco

Valin Draco was a member of the Jedi Order and the Padawan of Jedi Master Denia. He fought during the Clone Wars and fully embraced his role as a Commander in the Grand Army of the Republic, so much so that the people he commanded nicknamed him the Valiant Dragon. However, his determination to defeat the Separatists gradually began to rise as the war progressed and drew him closer to the Dark side of the Force. He was left for dead on Parein II 4 following a chaotic battle there and at that moment, his support of the Republic died. As he lay injured, he was attacked by a night hunter. In the fight that followed, they almost killed each other. Draco managed to subdue it, but not before it had bitten off his thumb and clamped its jaws around his throat, causing extensive scarring. Rather than leave it to die, he nursed it back to health. He named it Crant and kept it as a pet.



Serving the Empire
"My name is Valin Draco, and I will find you and make you pay for meddling here. You may have bested that slimy Hutt, but I can assure you that the affections of an Inquisitor are not so gentle."

- Valin Draco

Draco somehow escaped Parein II 4 and allied himself with the Galactic Empire, joining the ranks of the Dark Side Adepts as an Inquisitor. He was fitted with a cybernetic thumb, to replace the one that Crant had bitten off and he used his new Inquisitor tunic to hide his neck scars. He was also given command of the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Assiduous and had the 12th Squadron of TIE/ln starfighters assigned to it at his personal request. He also expanded his personal armory, by obtaining a red-bladed lightsaber and a Star Courier. The Courier was to be used as a shuttle for Draco was similar in appearance to the Scimitar, the personal ship of the Sith Lord Darth Maul, although it is unknown if it was the same craft or not. He soon found himself an apprentice, in the form of the Dark Jedi, Raik Muun. She had travelled to Coruscant when she learned of Order 66, to confront those responsible for destroying the Jedi Order and so preventing her from having revenge against them. She met Draco there and he saw great potential in her, so he asked her to join him. She accepted, as she felt that she had finally found someone to love her and she accompanied him on various assignments. Around this time, he also aided Darth Vader in torturing the captured Jedi Halagad Ventor. The Sith Lord showed his gratitude by giving Draco a squad of Noghri Death Commandos to use as his own.

A few months after the end of the Clone Wars, he conspired with Admiral Gilder Varth to infiltrate Varth into the Alderaanian Resistance, to gain evidence that Senator Bail Organa had betrayed the Empire by secretly leading them. He had Varth display interest in joining the Resistance and to ensure that no one suspected that Varth was still loyal to the Empire, he had the Admiral imprisoned in a facility on Felucia. The Alderaanian Resistance sent a team to free Varth and Draco ensured that they were easily able to do so. To keep up the pretence of Varth's defection, Draco sent a message to the Felucia prison facility while the team were still there, stating that he would be arriving in Felucia aboard the Assiduous to take custody of Varth and that on his arrival, he wanted interrogation chemicals to be administered to the Admiral. Everything went to plan and Varth took up a post in the Resistance.

Around this time, he became involved with the Sarlacc Project, the secret construction of a Super Star Destroyer prototype to serve as a flagship for the Imperial Navy. He oversaw a deal made with the Hutt Darga Jiramma Mionne, who agreed to supply tibanna gas for the project in return for Nazren slaves. Igren Demos, the Hutt's majordomo, began to secretly contact Draco, as he hoped that he could use his alliance with the Empire to take control of Darga's organization. Master Denia had been held captive in Darga's palace on Cato Neimoidia and when she was freed by an Alderaanian Resistance team, Darga fled the palace and Demos contacted Draco. The Majordomo told him that he had Denia cornered and wanted to trade her in return for the Inquisitor ensuring that Darga never returned to Cato Neimoidia. Draco agreed and said that he would travel there straight away, with the Assiduous, but he threatened Demos that he would not be gentle with him if he had been summoned on a fools errand. Denia successfully escaped before Draco arrived and it is unknown if he fufiled his promise. Darga relocated to Bespin and Draco travelled there aboard the Assiduous to oversee the transfer of funds to the Hutt which would occur in secret during the Cloud City Sabacc Tournament. The Alderaanian Resistance team had tracked Darga to Bespin and infiltrated the tournament, discovering the truth about the deal. In order to cover up the deal, Draco used slave circuitry to take control of a Tibanna gas hauler and tried to crash it into the slave ship Shackles of Nizon, which would kill all the slaves inside and destroy all the evidence of the deal. The team commandeered some Z-95 Headhunters and managed to prevent this from happening. While they were there, Draco felt through the Force a presence that he had not felt since he was with Denia and he suspected that this was the same team that had rescued her on Cato Neimoidia. As the team flew out of the system, Draco sent a transmission to them, saying that he would find they and make them pay for what they had done.

Investigating the Almas Academy
"Surrender yourselves to the Empire. I promise your treatment will be gentler, and you might even be given the chance to serve me."

- Valin Draco

Several months later, Draco travelled to the Cularin system along with Raik Muun and a contingent of Imperial troops. He had been sent to investigate the growing power of a force nexus that was centred around the Almas Academy, and also because he had learned from torturing force-sensitive prisoners that there was a Sith holocron there. He arrived in the system aboard the Assiduous, but it was too large to travese the comet field, so he and his entourage made the journey to Almas in a Theta-class shuttle and landed in the remains of the Forard spaceport. He arrived in the academy ruins and was immediately entranced by an intoxicating surge of the dark side. Attempting to locate the source of this power, he went into the sublevels of the academy, where he found Darth Rivan's holocron. The growing dark side energy on Almas had suffused the holocron and gave it greater power, which enabled the holocron gatekeeper to take on a life of it's own an believe itself to be the spirit of Darth Rivan. Draco learned from the holocron and remained in the academy to study it further. Under the influence of the gatekeeper, he left various traps and creatures around the academy to discourage intruders. One example of this was a K'kayeh dreambeast that he created through the Force, which was a smaller copy of a larger K'kayeh that was hidden beneath the Academy, to which it was linked through the Force. The holocron also told him the location of the diminutive Qornah Holocron, which he found in the Academy library and kept strapped to his wrist. Also, at some point, he hired the pirates of the Red Fury Brotherhood to prevent outsiders from landing on Almas by having their ships patrol the planet's orbit. While he was there, Jedi Master Vhiin Thorla came to the academy along with his Padawan, Dorv'Tilsta, in search of any Jedi survivors of Order 66. They encountered Draco and Raik Muun, starting a lightsaber duel. Muun used the force to induce Tilsta into a murderous rage directed at his master, forcing Thorla to strike him down. However, the grief Thorla incurred from doing this allowed Draco to easily capture him and he imprisoned the Jedi Master in a Force-annuling Universal Energy Cage. The Rivan gatekeeper conspired with him to break Thorla and turn him to the dark side and Draco got Crant to guard the cage.

Master Denia sent the Alderaanian Resistance team to the academy on a mission to recover the Qornah Holocron. They found Thorla's prison and killed Crant, something that Draco felt through the force. Soon after, they confronted Draco and Raik Muun in a chamber beneath the archive room. Draco realized that the team must be formidable foes, as they had survived all the traps and creatures that he had left in the academy. He urged the team to surrender, but they refused, which began a fight between them, Muun and Draco's team of Clone shadow troopers. Draco used Rivan's holocron to increase his powers, but the team severed the gatekeeper from the holocron, causing it to dissapate and overloading the holocron. As the shadow troopers and Muun were killed, Draco became desperate because the loss of the holocron had weakened his resolve and he fled back to the the entrance of a large cavern. However, the gatekeeper had planned to summon a K'kayeh dragon if it lost control of Draco. One emerged from the depths of the academy and Draco fled further back to a bridge formation, where he used the force to control the dragon enough so as to prevent if from devouring him. He then threatened to destroy the Qornah Holocron, and held it over the edge of the chasm, while he fired Force lightning from his hands at them. The team attacked Draco and he gasped as he dropped the holocron and tumbled over the edge of the abyss.

The capture of Denia
Draco somehow survived and was fitted with extensive cybernetic enhancements To hide these, he started wearing a black face-plate with a red optic center. He posted a bounty on the Resistance team and sent the Zabrak Vril Vrakth to collect it. Vrakth tracked them to Nizon and hoped to please Draco by bringing them to him, but he failed and was killed during the Battle of Nizon. A few weeks later, Gilder Varth sent Draco the co-ordinates of the location of an Alderaanian Resistance task force that was waiting near Coruscant. He lead some Imperial-class Star Destroyers in an attack on them and was among an Imperial boarding party that landed on the Alderaanian Resistance Nebulon-B frigate Resurgence, which had been commanding the Resistance task force. On-board it, he captured Master Denia and planned to transport her off it. . While she was being taken to a shuttle, the Alderaanian Resistance team that he had encountered on Almas arrived. He gave them a dismissive gesture and then hurried aboard the shuttle which Denia had been taken to, which then launched moments later. He eventually made his way to the Citadel Inquisitorius on Prakith in the Deep Core. There, he tortured Denia and on one occasion while doing so, he was confronted by his old foes, the Alderaanian Resistance team, who had sneaked into the building. However, they had underestimated him and he seemed unbeatable in open combat when they attacked him. Denia sacrificed herself to weaken him and he was forced to flee the citadel in his personal shuttle. He then travelled to Byss, where the Super Star Destroyer prototype was under construction.

Personality and traits
As a Jedi, Draco was idealistic and at the start of the Clone Wars, he believed in the Republic and what he was fighting for. However, the conflict drew on, he increasingly lost hope in it and he completely abandoned his belief in it after the Battle of Parein II 4.

Draco preferred to twist things so that they could serve his own means, rather than destroy them. This was demonstrated when he nursed Crant back to health and attempted to make Vhiin Thorla turn to the Dark side of the Force. He also fully embraced his role as an Inquisitor and was a skilled torturer. However, he he viewed his allegiance to the Empire to be one of necessity, as it helped him to do what he wanted and he did not see himself as beholden to it. He liked to seek revenge against people who had caused him harm or double-crossed him, but he was also wary of getting into fights against them that he could not win and knew when to retreat. An example of this was when he captured Denia aboard the Resurgence and left without attacking his nemesis, the Alderaanian Resistance team, even though he had previously vowed to kill them.

Powers and abilities
Valin demonstrated various Force abilities, including Force lightning and Beast Control. He also learned various techniques from Darth Rivan's holocron, such as how to create dreambeasts. By the time of his encounter with the Alderaanian Resistance on Prakith, he had greatly grown in power since their previous encounter with him on Almas.

Behind the scenes
Valin Draco was a created as a recurring villain for Dawn of Defiance, a campaign produced by Wizards of the Coast to supplement the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. However, he received his first mention in the sourcebook Starships of the Galaxy in late 2007, just prior to the release of Dawn of Defiance in 2008. He featured in most of adventures in the campaign and also had a possible mention in the sixth adventure, The Core of Corruption. In that, Draco's personal Star Destroyer, the Assiduous, arrives on Coruscant and it is possible for the players to sense a force-sensitive aboard it. However, this has yet to be confirmed as referring the Draco.

Appearances

 * Sword of the Empire
 * Jaws of the Sarlacc
 * Sword of the Empire
 * Jaws of the Sarlacc
 * Sword of the Empire
 * Jaws of the Sarlacc
 * Sword of the Empire
 * Jaws of the Sarlacc