Cope Shykrill

Cope Shykrill was a failed male Jedi trainee of the early Galactic Republic and Jedi Watchman-in-training. He was found on Sarcophagus, the graveyard moon of Sacorria by Jedi Consular Sar Agorn and Jedi Watchman Nuck Lyu who had been searching for Force-sensitives in the outlying systems of the Corellian sector. His fall to the dark side was recounted in the Great Holocron by Master Agorn.

Biography
According to the Great Holocron, Master Agorn and his fellow Jedi had been searching for other Force-sensitives in the outlying systems of the Correllian sector. On Sarcophagus they landed, and met a Selonian widower who had just witnessed a youth use the Force to lower his wife's coffin into the ground. That youth was Cope Shykrill, who was living with his family of groundskeepers at the time. Cope's parents were more than grateful to the Jedi for expressing interest in their child. So it was that he left with Master Agorn to become a Jedi, and blossomed at it. Sar Agorn took notice of the zeal with which Shykrill went about his studies. He was pleased by the boy's pleasent demeanor when requesting further study, and how he never asked a wrong question or even gave a wrong answer. To Sar Agorn, Cope Shykrill had been quite the poster-child in his group of students. But his peers felt differently. Nuck Lyu, a close friend of Agorn, was the first to express concern about Shykrill. Lyu had been instructing a group of Jedi on how to use the Force to throw a new weapon of his own creation at wooden targets. During the lesson, Master Lyu was surprised at how Cope Shykrill excelled over the others by repeatedly hitting the targets with precise efficiency. Agorn however, was not too concerned and wrote it off as nothing, seeing as how he considered Shykrill a prodigy amongst his peers. But Nuck Lyu was not convinced. To Sar Agorn he said,


 * "You do not understand. I designed the weapon, and it still took me nearly two months to throw it with consistent accuracy.  Cope Shykrill's ability is not merely uncanny.  It is unnatural."

Lyu then returned to his post at Esseles, leaving with Master Agorn samples of his new blade. He also gave a stern warning to Agorn, telling him to pay closer attention to Shykrill, who was still a Watchman-in-training himself.

The Dark Side
Sometime later, Sar Agorn found a group of trainees around a campfire. A Fian, a Nosaurian, and a human sat around the fire being entertained by Cope, who was using his hands and the fire light to make animated shadows against a stone wall. Shykrill told a compelling story of two brothers, one good and one bad. The good brother sought to plant seeds and grow vegetables, while the bad brother sought to consume them. His audience laughed as Cope made the good brother seem very knowledgeable, while the bad brother seemed like quite the blunderer. But as Master Agorn watched Cope's hands cast their shadows from a distance, feelings of envy and shame came over him. He retreated to his own quarters in confusion as he tried to meditate on what he had felt. Twenty-three minutes later, Agorn was startled by the sound of screams. The screaming attracted all the Jedi in the camp, and they all set out for the campfire. Agorn was horrified to find Shykrill, the human, and the Fian lying on the ground covered in blood. The Nosaurian stood amidst the fray, tightly clutching one of Nuck Lyu's weapons. The other Jedi realized that it was he who had cut down his mates. The Nosaurian began again to scream, shouting,

"The shadows are in my head!! GET THEM OUT!!"

With that, he slashed his own throat and collapsed, now joining the human and Fian in death. Cope Shykrill, however, survived.

Death
Some weeks had passed before Cope was mobile again. Though he was still bandaged, Master Agorn encouraged him to join him for a constitutional. Shykrill wasn't the least bit surprised as Sar Agorn led him back to where his fellow trainees met their demise. Agorn informed the young man that he'd seen part of his "shadowplay", and he was astonished that Shykrill was quite the storyteller. He then asked the boy if the "shadows" ever spoke to him. Cope answered,


 * "You know they speak to me. They spoke to you, too.  I heard them.  They made you wish you had hands of your own."

Agorn then asked him how long he'd been listening to the "shadows", to which Shykrill replied,


 * "If you want to know whether the shadows spoke to me before or after I became a Jedi, I can't say."

Agorn pressed on further, now asking whether Cope represented the good brother or bad brother from his shadowplay. His final answer was the most telling of all:


 * "I am the brother who lived. And now, it is time for you to join the shadows."

Sar Agorn was suddenly overwhelmed with extreme cold, and feelings of dread and sickness that attacked him inside and out. But as quickly as he was assaulted by these feelings, they passed; for as he looked upon Cope Shykrill he saw the boy's head fall to the ground in clean separation from its shoulders, having met the business end of one of Nuck Lyu's signature weapons. It was Nuck Lyu himself who'd hurled the weapon from his hiding spot, having been summoned from Esseles secretly by Master Agorn. Both of them instinctively knew that Shykrill had been responsible for the trainees' deaths, and that the only way to free him of his evil was to end his life.

Powers and abilities
From an early age Cope Shykrill was very talented in telekinesis, which he demonstrated on his homeworld of Sarcophagus by lowering a coffin into a gravesite. He further demonstrated his telekinetic abilities by excelling in Force Throw lessons given by Jedi Master Nuck Lyu, who noted that Shykrill's own ability made him wary as it took Lyu considerably longer to perfect a skill that Shykrill mastered upon first learning it. He also seemed to be somewhat skilled in Dominate Mind, having caused a Nosaurian padawan to murder two others and attack Shykrill as well. This could have also been an instinctual application of Torture by Chagrin or Force Horror. His attack on Master Agorn suggests that he also instinctively (or otherwise) knew the Force drain ability, based on how Agorn describes feeling at the onset of the assault. He didn't seem to be too adept at Force Sense, as he was clearly unaware of Nuck Lyu's presence behind him.

Behind the scenes
The story of Cope Shykrill is recounted by Master Agorn as he talks about his first encounter with what he described as a Dark Jedi. The story appears in Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force.