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 resolve to destroy the Separatists during the conflict drew him towards the dark side of the Force and following his experiences in the Battle of Parein II 4, he fell fully into its 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 constructing a red-bladed lightsaber and acquiring a Star Courier, the Scimitar&mdash;the former personal ship of the Sith Lord Darth Maul&mdash;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 traveled 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 of the Imperial Navy to infiltrate Varth into the Alderaanian Resistance. Their goal was to gain evidence that Senator Bail Organa had betrayed the Empire by secretly leading the Resistance. 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 had ensured that they were easily able to do so, by limiting the number of Imperial troops, under the guise of keeping the facility secret. To keep up the pretense 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, Draco 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 since the Clone Wars, after being captured by the Separatists and placed in an artificial coma. When she was reawakened and freed by an Alderaanian Resistance team, Darga fled the palace and Demos contacted Draco via HoloNet. 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 fool's errand. Denia successfully escaped before Draco arrived. Darga relocated to Bespin, and Draco traveled 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 arrangement, 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 them 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 traveled on a mission to Almas, in the Cularin system. Raik Muun and a contingent of Imperial troops, that included his Noghri were also assigned to accompany him. In addition, he brought a detachment of the elite Shadow troopers, as he believed that if they were good enought to guard the Emperor's storehouse on Utapau, then they were good enough to guard him. He had been sent to investigate the growing power of a Force nexus that was centered 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, which was accompanied by the Lictor-class dungeon ship Revelator. His first action was to search the system for any Jedi who had survived the destruction of the Almas Academy at the end of the Clone Wars, but he failed to find any. Afterwards, he headed for Almas. Both his ships were too large to traverse the system's comet field, that was located near to Almas, so he and his entourage made the journey to planet 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 caves beneath the academy, where he found Darth Rivan's holocron. This contained the teachings of Darth Rivan, a Dark Lord of the Sith who had ruled on Almas over a thousand years earlier. The growing dark side energy on Almas had suffused the holocron and given it greater power, which enabled the holocron gatekeeper to take on a life of its own and believe itself to be the spirit of Rivan.

However, Draco and his entourage were not alone in the Academy. Jedi Master Vhiin Thorla had came there 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. Draco threaten Thorla that he would turn Tilsta to the dark side if he refused to fight and then Muun used the force to induce the young Padawan into a murderous rage directed at his master. Thorla was forced to strike him down, but the grief he incurred from doing this allowed Draco to easily capture him. He imprisoned the Jedi Master in a Force-annulling Universal Energy Cage, and left Crant to guard it. Draco had plans for Thorla and he conspired with the Rivan gatekeeper too turn the Jedi Master to the darkside.

Afterwards, Draco took Rivan’s holocron to a chamber beneath the Academy’s archive room. There, he studied it and the holocron taught him some of the Sith force techniques that Rivan had known. Under the influence of the gatekeeper, he left various traps and creatures around the academy to discourage intruders. It persuaded him to release two parasitic Guardian Spirits in the Academy's library. He also used techniques that the holocron had shown him to create a Force illusion in a room that made anyone who entered the room fall asleep and come under Draco's influence. They would then have a Force-induced nightmare about being in a room in the Academy that resembled one they had previously been in and while seeming familiar, also seemed not to be right. They would then begin to feel claustrophobic and disorientated, making them despair and allowing Draco&mdash;through the Force&mdash;to sap their moral strength. In the same room he created a K'kayeh dreambeast through the Force using another technique that the Rivan gatekeeper had shown him, which was similar to those used to create Sith Dopplegängers. The dreambeast was an illusionary clone of a larger K'kayeh that was hidden beneath the Academy and was linked to it through the Force. The holocron also revealed to him the location of the Qornah Holocron, a holocron made by Jedi Master Qornah, which was concealed inside a bronzium bust of Jedi Master Qornah in the Academy's library. Draco sliced the bust in half and kept the holocron 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.

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, which Draco felt through the Force. He continued to study the Rivan holocron and also the Qornah one, but was interrupted from his work when the Resistance team confronted him.. 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 them to surrender, but they refused, which began a fight between them, Raik Muun and Draco's team of Shadow troopers. The Rivan gatekeeper used its Force connection with Draco to provide him with advanced Sith fighting techniques that Rivan had known. This turned the color of his eyes to a golden hue and he used the techniques against the Resistance fighters. He drew his lightsaber and then used Force rage to enhance his Force power. He then moved to confront them and, once he was within range, attacked them with his saber. However, the team were able to use the Force to sever the gatekeeper's connection to the holocron, which made it dissipate and caused the holocron to overload. As the shadow troopers and Muun were killed, Draco became desperate because the loss of the holocron had weakened his power. He began to lose his resolve and he fled back to 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 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 the team. They then attacked Draco again and he gasped as he dropped the holocron on the ground 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 led 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. Accompanying him were three other Inquisitors who had been sent to help him, although they were unhappy about being pulled from their duties and placed under his command. On board the vessel, he quickly 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, launching moments later. He eventually made his way to the Citadel Inquisitorius on Prakith in the Deep Core and he landed there in his Star Courier, with Denia aboard. He soon began torturing her, but she resisted him and after a few months, he had still not broken her. This made his superiors impatient and he began to use more brutal techniques on her. He continued to torture her and on one occasion while he was doing so, he was confronted by his old foes, the Alderaanian Resistance team, who had infiltrated 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 traveled to Byss, where the Super Star Destroyer prototype was under construction.

Personality and traits
"I know that you've suffered great losses, that you wrestle with the same concerns of virtue and compromise that I did as a Jedi, the same concerns that have plagued the conscientious since time immemorial."

- Valin Draco

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

Draco was ruthless and calculating, so he didn't make rash judgements. He 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 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. Despite this, he believed that being an Inquisitor was his destiny and that it had allowed him to find his true self. 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. Draco was capable of caring and was saddened by Crant’s death, although he tried not to show it.

Powers and abilities
Valin demonstrated various Force abilities, including Force lightning, Force Rage, Telekinesis and Beast Control. He also learned various techniques from Darth Rivan's holocron, such as how to create dreambeasts. The holocron significantly augmented Draco's connection to the Force and he was able to draw power off it, although he lost most of this after it was destroyed. 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. After Denia sacrificed herself, she reduced his power and he was no longer able to continue the fight.

In addition to Basic, Draco could also speak Bocce, Dosh, High Galactic, Honoghran and Huttese.

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. In Echoes of the Jedi, a number of different things involving Draco can occur, depending on player actions. If they are captured or incapacitated by Draco’s Noghri commandos, then they take them straight to Draco. Also, if the players confirm to Draco that it was they who killed Crant, then the glint in his eyes dulls, although he soon regains his composure. The players have the option to free Vhiin Thorla from his cage and if they do, then he comes and fights Draco with them. If they do not know how to sever the Rivan gatekeeper from its holocron, then Thorla does this for them. Draco then snatches the holocron and throws it at Thorla, which makes it shatter and pushes Thorla off the edge of the chasm.

The release of the Legacy Era Campaign Guide&mdash;another supplement to the Star Wars Roleplaying Game&mdash;in 2009 has raised the possibility that Valin Draco is the ancestor of Antares Draco, an Imperial Knight of the Fel Empire. While the Legacy Era Campaign Guide does not explicitly state the familial bond, it is strongly implied in the entry for Antares Draco; it is noted that an ancestor of Antares was a member of the Inquisitorius under Emperor Palpatine.

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
 * Sword of the Empire
 * Jaws of the Sarlacc