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 an Inquisitor in the Galactic Empire.

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 the chaotic Battle of Parein II 4 and at that moment, his support of the Republic died. As he lay injured, he was attacked by a night hunter and they almost killed each other. Draco managed to subdue it, but not before it had bitten off his thumb and clamped it's 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.


 * [[Image:Draco New.jpg|left|thumb|180px|Draco with ignited lightsaber.]]

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 given the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Assiduous to use as his personal ship and had the 12th Squadron of TIE Fighters assigned to it at his personal request. He was also 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 soon found himself an apprentice, in the form of the Dark Jedi, Raik Muun. She travelled 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 his own personal squad of Noghri Death Commandoss.

He became involved with 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 Darga the Hutt, who was supplying 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 and when she was freed by an Alderaanian Resistance team, Darga fled the palace and Demos contacted Draco. 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 fools errand. Denia successfully escaped before Draco arrived and it is unknown if he fufiled his promise. Darga relocated to Bespin and Draco travelled 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 deal, 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 managed to prevent this from happening and while they were there, Draco felt 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. As the team flew out of the system, Draco sent a transmission to them, saying that he would find they 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 travelled to the Cularin system along with Raik Muun and a contingent of Imperial troops. He had been sent to investigate the growing power of a force nexus that was centred 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, but it was too large to travese the comet field, so he and his entourage made the journey to Almas 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 sublevels of the academy, where he found Darth Rivan's holocron. The growing dark side energy on Almas had suffused the holocron and gave it greater power, which enabled the holocron gatekeeper to take on a life of it's own an believe itself to be the spirit of Darth Rivan. Draco learned from the holocron and remained in the academy to study it further. Under the influence of the gatekeeper, he left various traps and creatures around the academy, to discourage intruders. It also told him the location of the diminutive Qornah Holocron, which he found and kept strapped to his wrist. While he was there, Jedi Master Vhiin Thorla came to the academy 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. Muun used the force to induce Tilsta into a murderous rage directed at his master, forcing Thorla to strike him down. However, the grief Thorla incurred from doing this allowed Draco to easily capture him and he imprisoned the Jedi Master in a Force-annuling Universal Energy Cage. The Rivan gatekeeper conspired with him to break Thorla and turn him to the dark side and Draco got Crant to guard the cage.

Master Denia sent the Alderaanian Resistance team to the academy to recover the Qornah Holocron. They found Thorla's prison and killed Crant, something that Draco felt through the force. Soon after, they confronted Draco and Raik Muun in a chamber beneath the archive room. 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 the team to surrender, but they refused, which began a fight between them, Muun and Draco's team of Clone shadow troopers. Draco used Rivan's holocron to increase his powers, but the team severed the gatekeeper from the holocron, causing it to dissapate and overloading the holocron. As the shadow troopers and Muun were killed, Draco became desperate because the loss of the holocron had weakened his resolve and he fled back to the 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 so as to prevent if from devouring him. He then threatened to destroy the Qornah Holocron, and held it over the edge of the chasm as he fired force lightening from his hands. The team attacked Draco and he gasped as he dropped the holocron and tumbled over the edge of the abyss.

Later work
Draco somehow survived and was fitted with extensive cybernetic enhancements. He was among an Imperial boarding party that landed on the Alderaanian Resistance Nebulon-B frigate Resurgence and he captured Master Denia there. He dragged her to his shuttle and blasted off, eventually making his way to the Citadel Inquisitorius on Prakith in the Deep Core. There, he tortured Denia and on one occasion while doing so, he was confronted by the Alderaanian Resistance team, which had sneaked into the building. They found that he had grown in power since their last confrontation on Almas and he seemed unbeatable in open combat. Denia sacrificed herself to weaken him and he was forced to flee the citadel in his personal shuttle. He then travelled to Byss, where the Sarlacc Project was under construction.

Personality and traits
Draco preferred to twist things so that they could serve his own means, rather than destroy then, as demonstrated when he nursed Crant back to health and attempted to make Vhiin Thorla turn to the Dark side. He also fully embraced his role as an Inquisitor and was a skilled torturer. However, he he viewed his allegiance to the Empire to be one of necessity, as it helped him to do what he wanted and he would abandon it straight away if he would be better off for it.

Behind the scenes
Valin Draco was first mentioned in Starships of the Galaxy (2007) and was a recurring character in the Dawn of Defiance,a Star Wars Roleplaying Game series. He made minor appearances in A Wretched Hive and The Queen of Air and Darkness, but was fully introduced with his first major appearance in Echoes of the Jedi. He is set to appear again, later in the series, in A Reckoning of Wraiths, Sword of the Empire and Jaws of the Sarlacc.

Appearances

 * A Reckoning of Wraiths
 * Sword of the Empire
 * Jaws of the Sarlacc
 * A Reckoning of Wraiths
 * Sword of the Empire
 * Jaws of the Sarlacc