Darth Venamis

"I am Darth Venamis.''" "Darth? We'll see about that." "''Your death will legitimize the title, Plagueis."

- Darth Venamis and Darth Plagueis

Darth Venamis was a prospective Sith Lord of the lineage of Darth Bane. A male Bith, he was the Sith apprentice of the Dark Lord, Darth Tenebrous. Tenebrous trained Venamis in violation of the Rule of Two, since he had another apprentice, Darth Plagueis. Despite Venamis's use of the Sith title, Darth, it was not legitimately bestowed upon him.

Biography
Darth Venamis claimed to have been found by the Bith Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Tenebrous, and selected as an apprentice&mdash;Darth Plagueis considered that Venamis may have been related to their master, possibly an offspring. Venamis's apprenticeship was kept secret from Tenebrous's other apprentice, the Muun Darth Plagueis. After the latter discovered the former's existence, he doubted that Venamis had been trained as a true Sith apprentice.

Around the year 67 BBY, Venamis posed as a physician, using fraudulent information regarding place of residence and practice, to free the Nautolan Naat Lare from the Bedlam Institution for the Criminally Demented on Bedlam who had been incarcerated there three years before in 70 BBY. The Bith then tasked his potential apprentice to cull the population of marsh haunts near a Barabel settlement on Abraxin.

After Tenebrous died on Bal'demnic at the hands of Plagueis in 67 BBY, the latter discovered that Venamis kept a list of certain Force-sensitive beings as potential apprentices of his own&mdash;other than Lare, they were a Shi'ido changeling who worked as a professional gambler and the Iktotchi prophet of Saleucami. However, before Venamis could pursue his own agenda, he moved to fulfill Tenebrous' final command to eliminate Plagueis, leaving Lare on Abraxin.

Traveling to Sojourn&mdash;a moon owned by Plagueis and maintained as a personal retreat&mdash;he was bested in a duel and forced to ingest a coma-bloom, a poisonous species of flora he was familiar with. As part of his experiments with midi-chlorians over the following decades, Plagueis and his droid 11-4D kept the comatose Venamis alive to manipulate and study. Around the year 42 BBY, Venamis was eventually allowed to die by Plagueis, his usefulness finally fulfilled. Afterwards, he was resurrected and killed again and again, in the presence of Plagueis's apprentice, Darth Sidious, and of 11-4D.

Powers and abilities
In his duel with Plagueis, Darth Venamis demonstrated a superior offensive skill in lightsaber combat taught to him by his master, Darth Tenebrous. His attacks were so powerful that Plagueis had to change tactics and defeat Venamis with his use of the power of the dark side of the Force.

Venamis could also generate Force lightning, as Plagueis sensed him about to do so, before he crossed his blades to Venamis's neck, and caused him to "yield." Among his talents, was also the difficult ability to levitate himself, doing so when Plagueis used the Force to break the greel branch he was perching on, and suspended himself in midair and continued the duel using that ability.

Behind the scenes
Darth Venamis' first and currently only appearance to date - save for the brief appearance of his corpse in the 2014 novel Maul: Lockdown - is the 2012 novel Darth Plagueis, written by James Luceno. The novel tells the backstory of Darth Plagueis. It revealed that Venamis was Darth Tenebrous' secret apprentice.

Appearances

 * Darth Plagueis
 * Maul: Lockdown