Varner Hilts

Varner Hilts was a Human male who served as the mild-mannered caretaker of Sith lore for the Lost Tribe of Sith in 3,000 BBY. He grew up during the tumultuous Time of the Rot which lasted almost a millennium and devastated much of the continent of Keshtah Minor. As a historian, Hilts hoped to use the wisdom of the ancients to reunite the Tribe. By that time, the Lost Tribe had descended into violent infighting, and the true origins of the Tribe had been forgotten. Unlike many of his Sith contemporaries, Hilts was very open-minded and forward-thinking. He even related to Keshiri, the purple-skinned humanoid beings indigenous to the planet Kesh, as his equals. Varner Hilts also developed a warm relationship with his Keshiri assistant Jaye Vuhld, who was a brilliant mathematician and theorist.

In 3,000 BBY, Iliana Merko, the leader of the Sisters of Seelah, attempted to coerce Hilts into giving her and her faction political favor on Testament Day. This attempt failed after Hilts tricked her into believing that the holocron of Yaru Korsin, which contained Korsin's Testament, would only activate on Testament Day. During Testament Day, the Tribe discovered an older transmission beneath Korsin's Testament which revealed that the Lost Tribe were actually descended from slaves of the Red Sith which ruled the former Sith Empire. This development sparked the Great Crisis which resulted in much rioting and unrest across Keshtah Minor. Following the disastrous Testament Day which destroyed Hilts' beloved archive, he and Jaye resolved to unseal the ancient Kesh Sith Temple and the starship Omen in order to find the secrets aboard the vessel which might hold the key to the Tribe's survival.

There they encountered Iliana Merko, who was seeking refuge from her Sith rivals during the Great Crisis. After much difficulty, the three explorers discovered the Tapani heritage of the Lost Tribe's ancestors and learnt that Kesh had another continent known as Alanciar. Through these discoveries, Varner Hilts was able to unite the various Sith factions and set the Tribe on a new mission of reaching and annexing this new continent. Hilts was unanimously elected by the other Sith as their new Grand Lord. Hilts subsequently married Iliana, who subsequently adopted his family name. While an ancient law stipulated that the consort of the Grand Lord was to be executed at the latter's death, Hilts vowed to protect her. Their marriage later produced a daughter named Takara Hilts.

Grand Lord Hilts' reign would be remembered by later generations as the Hilts Restoration and was regarded as a time of peace, stability and reconstruction. Under Hilts' leadership, the Lost Tribe undertook a massive programme to explore and colonize the other seas and landmasses on Kesh beginning with Alanciar. Hilt's endeavors would be supported by his wife Iliana and several other Sith including Edell Vrai and Korsin Bentado, who had earlier been bitter rivals during the Time of the Rot and the Great Crisis. These efforts succeeded with the relatively peaceful annexation of Alanciar in 2,975 BBY. The Tribe successfully convinced the Alanciari man Jogan Halder that the Sith were actually the mythical Protectors who were fighting against the malevolent Destructors. Hilts himself pretended to be the Bright Tuash, a legendary avian messenger of the Gods, and helped support Halder's message. Acknowledging the strong influence of Adari Vaal on Alanciari history, he claimed that Adari was a well-meaning but misguided servant of the Bright Tuash.

Following the consolidation of the Lost Tribe's control over Alanciar, Lord Hilts turned his attention to exploring Kesh's South Pole Eshkrene in 2,974 BBY. He theorized that the Keshiri legends of the Protectors and Destructors originated from an earlier group of offworlders who had discovered Kesh millennia earlier. Hilts enlisted the services of Parlan Spinner, an outlaw and assassin who had tried to kill him. Spinner and Hilts' daughter Takara sailed aboard an Alanciari sailing ship the Southern Star to Eshkrene. There, they discovered the Doomed, the descendants of ancient Jedi and Dark Jedi from the Hundred-Year Darkness who had devoted themselves to protecting the Keshiri and finding a balance in the Force. Spinner freed the ancient Sith Lord Remulus Dreypa, who had been imprisoned for millennia within an oubliette.

Spinner and Dreypa returned to Keshtah Minor where Dreypa resolved to return to the stars and instigated a slave uprising against the Tribe. Dreypa defeated the Tribe's forces and the Doomed with his Leviathan sithspawn. Hilts' wife Iliana narrowly survived being devoured by a Leviathan but was artificially aged. However, the Sith Lord was defeated through the combined efforts of Spinner and Hilts' daughter Takara. This ended a major threat to Grand Lord Hilts' rule while validating his earlier theory that the Lost Tribe were not the first group of offworlders to discover Kesh. In return for his services, Lord Hilts made Spinner his new Hand and the young man developed a romantic relationship with the Grand Lord's daughter.

Early life
Varner Hilts was a male Human who was a member of the Lost Tribe of Sith, a group of stranded Human Sith who lived on the remote Wild Space planet of Kesh. Hilts grew up during the Time of the Rot, a nine-hundred period of turmoil and civil war which engulfed the Lost Tribe. When Hilts was still a child, his father died following an accident with his shikkar blade. Hilts' father had attempted to assassinate a certain faction leader with that blade but had failed to fasten the dagger's sheath. His mother also died shortly later during a failed attempt to seduce another faction leader. While her minions had delivered her inside a massive urn to that leader's private bedchambers, the lid was stubborn and she subsequently suffocated to death. Despite being orphaned during his childhood, Hilts persevered and developed an interest in history and timekeeping.

Hilts eventually became the Tribe's Caretaker and was in charged of providing the Tribe with accurate timekeeping and maintaining its historical archives. Hilts lived and worked in the capital city Tahv's Circle Eternal, which had been the traditional residence of the Grand Lord. Hilts was accepted as Caretaker since few other Sith candidates were interested in that job. Most of the Sith were more interested in fighting for power. Varner Hilts' staff consisted of several Keshiri clerks who assisted him in his work. Unlike his other Sith contemporaries, Hilts treated his Keshiri staff as equals and eventually befriended Jaye Vuhld, a mathematician who helped maintain the city's Sandpipes, which were used to measure time.

For over nine-hundred-and-sixty years, the continent of Keshtah Minor, the Tribe's domain, had been devastated by civil war which had been triggered by the death of Grand Lord Lillia Venn in 3,960 BBY. Since Venn had failed to designate a successor, this had created a power vacuum as rival Sith factions fought for power. By 3,000 BBY, there were over twenty rival factions competing for the Grand Lordship. Due to the fighting, many of Keshtah's cities including Tahv lay in ruins and most public infrastructure including the waterworks had broken down. The only time that the various Sith factions gathered together peacefully was on Testament Day, a holiday held every twenty-five years where the Testament of Yaru Korsin, the founder of the Lost Tribe was read out.

Appearances

 * Lost Tribe of the Sith: Pantheon
 * Lost Tribe of the Sith: Secrets
 * Lost Tribe of the Sith: Pandemonium
 * Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith 1: Spiral, Part 1
 * Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith 2: Spiral, Part 2
 * Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith 3: Spiral, Part 3
 * Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith 4: Spiral, Part 4
 * Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith 5: Spiral, Part 5