Set Harth

Set Harth was a male Human Dark Jedi, possibly from Brentaal IV. Before succumbing to the dark side, he trained as a Padawan under Master Aru-Wen during the waning days of the Ruusan campaign in the New Sith Wars. After Aru-Wen's death on Ruusan, Harth was trained by a new master named Obba of the Council of First Knowledge. However, because of his obsession in the research of Sith artifacts, his fall to the Sith lore was complete.

In 980 BBY, Harth was tracked down and bested by Sith Lord Darth Zannah, who forced him to become her would-be Sith apprentice while she was hunting down her master. Then, as fate would have it, he freed himself from Zannah's grasp when obtaining the long lost holocron of Darth Andeddu.

Years later, under Andeddu's wisdom, Harth learned the path of immortality.

Life as a Jedi
Set Harth first succumbed to his anger while battling a warrior of Lord Kaan's Brotherhood of Darkness. Due to Harth's violent tendencies, Aru-Wen left Harth in the Jedi Temple when he left for Ruusan to join the Army of Light for the final showdown with Kaan. In the Seventh Battle of Ruusan, Kaan used a thought bomb on the Army of Light, killing every last member of it, including Aru-Wen.

Following his Master's death on Ruusan, Harth fell under the tutelage of Master Obba. Working with the Ithorian Jedi, Harth began working with the Council of First Knowledge in their endeavors to locate and confiscate all Sith artifacts scattered across the galaxy. As he was assigned more and more tasks, Harth began to horde the artifacts he found, until eventually he had enough money to leave the Order and learn the ways of the dark side.

A fallen Jedi
Harth heard rumors of a Sith artifact that had survived the catastrophe on Ruusan. He tracked the artifact to an abandoned Sith armory on the Ruusan battlefields, where he battled a dark side warrior for possession of the artifact. Harth defeated the warrior and gained possession of the artifact, which further corrupted him.

Harth set up a base on Nal Hutta and began searching for other Sith artifacts. His searches led him to the palace of a Hutt slaver, where he encountered another Dark Jedi, Bal Serinus. The two dueled each other to exhaustion. Before the two darksiders could finish their duel, they were both caught by the Hutt slaver.

While they were imprisoned in separate cells, Harth and Serinus communicated through the Force. Harth promised himself to protect Serinus from harm until she suddenly rebuffed his telepathic contact, in light of which Harth took a vow of vengeance.

Darth Zannah's Sith apprentice
In 980 BBY, Harth was searching for Sith artifacts on the planet Doan. Darth Zannah, the apprentice of Darth Bane, tracked Harth to Nal Hutta and, after a brief duel in Harth's estate, offered him the opportunity to become her own apprentice. Harth, realizing that if he refused, she would kill him and accepted.

The two traveled to Ciutric IV where Zannah had been living with her master, only to discover that Bane had been captured by the Royal Guard of the Princess of Doan. Unknown to Zannah and Harth, the princess was actually Caleb's daughter, Serra, who sought revenge on Bane, whom she believed had killed her father.

Zannah and Harth returned to Doan to rescue Bane from the Stone Prison, but he escaped with the help of Serra's bodyguard Lucia, who had fought under Bane as a member of the Gloom Walkers. Zannah ordered Harth to watch her vessel, the Victory, before entering the Prison, locating Bane, and challenging him to a duel, hoping to defeat him and become the next Dark Lord of the Sith.

As the two Sith Lords fought, Harth found and stole Darth Andeddu's holocron, which had been taken from Bane after Bane's capture. As he fled, he decided to steal a starship, the Stalker. However, before he could escape, the starship's owner, the Huntress, arrived and challenged him. After a fight in the hangar in which neither Harth nor the Huntress was able to gain the upper hand, Serra&mdash;hoping to kill the two dueling Sith&mdash;set the Prison to explode. Harth then disabled three of the five ships in the hangar with his lightsaber and proposed to the Huntress that either they both should go free in their own ships or he would destroy both ships and they would be killed in the collapsing prison. The Huntress accepted, allowing him to flee in his starship.

Legendary explorer
From Andeddu's holocron, Harth learned how to transfer his consciousness into other bodies. He did so for four centuries, at the end of which he contacted cloners who were able to reproduce his original body. For the next 600 years he continued to clone his original body over and over, discarding his clone bodies at age 30.

Over the ages, Harth gathered many collections of Sith artifacts scattered in caches across the galaxy, as well as numerous starships and vast resources. He discovered a vast number of dark Force sites. Harth became a legendary explorer, his continued existence suspected by but unproven to the Jedi Council, even though it was unknown to them that he himself was a Sith.

Lightsaber training
Harth was a well-known practitioner of Ataru, which he displayed in his duel with Darth Zannah. However, the form had exhausted him greatly, as did Qui-Gon Jinn in his final duel with Darth Maul years later, giving Zannah an advantage to defeat him. Unlike Jinn, Harth was spared by Zannah for his skill.

Weapons
While Harth was carrying a lightsaber, he also equipped himself with two blasters.

Behind the scenes
Set Harth's only official appearance to date is in the third and last novel of the Darth Bane trilogy, Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil.

Appearances

 * Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil

Notes and references
Set Harth Set Harth