Set Harth

"Not much different from what you do now. You've managed to stay one step ahead of the Jedi all these years; how much harder can it be to stay one step ahead of the Sith of the same time?"

- Set Harth, pondering over the dilemma he was put into

Set Harth was a male Human Dark Jedi. 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 during the final battle of the war on Ruusan, Harth was trained by Master Obba of the Council of First Knowledge. Obba's obsession in the research of Sith artifacts led to Harth's fascination with the Sith, and Harth fell to the dark side of the Force. Harth then moved to Nal Hutta, where he set up a mansion, as well as on other planets under his many disguises, to store all the dark side artifacts he could find.

In 980 BBY, Harth recovered several artifacts that had been excavated on Doan. However, he was tracked down and bested by Sith Lord Darth Zannah, who forced him to become her would-be Sith apprentice while she hunted down her Master, Darth Bane.

Together, Harth and Zannah found out that Bane had been captured and taken to the Stone Prison in Doan. Zannah went inside to confront her master, leaving Harth to guard their ship. However, Harth entered the prison and found the holocron of Darth Andeddu, which had been taken from Bane following the Dark Lord's capture. Harth then fled the prison, but not before briefly encountering his replacement, Darth Cognus, and began studying the method of transfer essence under the holocron's gatekeeper.

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 him 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 came 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 mansion 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.

On Doan
"If you're going to kill somebody so you can steal the credits, at least go after an easy target"

- Harth to Quano after the Rodian's failed assassination attempt

In 980 BBY, Harth traveled to the planet Doan to recover several recently excavated Sith artifacts. He forced a Rodian bartender, Quano, to take him to the miner who had dug up the artifacts, Draado. As Draado attempted to rally he miners to go to war with the Doan Royal House in retaliation of the recent assassination of their leader, Gelba, Harth ambushed them. The other miners were quickly killed, but Draado survived for a short time due to the help of the artifacts he wore. However, Harth managed to Force choke the miner and kill him before taking the artifacts from him and returning to Nal Hutta.

Darth Zannah's Sith apprentice


After Harth returned home, 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 realized that if he refused, she would kill him, and accepted. The two traveled to Bane's home on Ciutric IV, where Zannah and Bane had been living, only to discover that Bane had been captured by the Royal Guard of the Doan Royal House. Unknownst to Zannah and Harth, Princess Serra of Doan, who had ordered the attack, was actually Caleb's daughter. She sought revenge on Bane, whom she mistakenly believed had killed her father.

Zannah and Harth returned to Doan to rescue Bane from the Stone Prison, but he escaped from his cell 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, where she located Bane and challenged him to a duel, hoping to defeat him and become the next Dark Lord of the Sith.

However, Harth disobeyed Zannah and entered the prison, where he found and stole Darth Andeddu's holocron, which had been taken from Bane after Bane's capture. As Harth fled, he decided to steal a starship, the Stalker. However, before he could escape, the starship's owner, the Huntress&mdash;the Iktotchi assassin who had captured Bane&mdash;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 Lords&mdash;set the Prison to self destruct. 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 together. The Huntress accepted, allowing him to flee in his starship, taking the Holocron with him.

Legendary explorer
Fearing Zannah would find him on Nal Hutta if she survived the Stone Prison's destruction, Harth knew better than to go back to his usual location. Fortunately, he had other bases under false identities, so there was no need for him to run aimlessly across the galaxy.

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 briefly a Sith.

Legacy
Because of Harth's desertion from the Sith Order, Zannah realized that taking him in as an apprentice had been a mistake. However, after she defeated Bane on Ambria, Zannah took on a more willing apprentice: the Huntress, who had taken the name of Darth Cognus, a name she took before Zannah became the Dark Lord.

Many years later, Andeddu's holocron was then rediscovered by Sith Lord Darth Tyranus on the Sith world of Korriban in 21 BBY. What happened to Set Harth and how the holocron slipped through his fingers is unknown. Possibly after securing the secrets of the Essence transfer he was consumed in the ways of the Dark side of the Force and handed the secrets down to his disciples who eventually killed him. However, his personality was strongly against those ways.

Personality and traits
It is believed that due to the war against the Brotherhood of Darkness, the Jedi Council were more likely to allow "less than ideal" candidates. Set Harth was likely one of these exceptions. Though Harth was allowed into the Jedi Order his master, Aru-Wen, felt that his violent tendencies indicated a dangerous path and left him on Coruscant. Harth continued to take these paths because of his arrogance and allegiance to himself. Even when faced with a situation as dangerous as Darth Zannah and the legacy of the Sith, he pulled off a betrayal that made him a legend.

Powers and abilities
"Now that the Sith are extinct, Set Harth may be the most dangerous individual in the galaxy."

- Jedi Master Obba

Harth had the power to throw his lightsaber directly at an enemy. When he fell to the dark side, he learned how to choke the life out of his enemies with the Force. Before turning his back on Darth Zannah, he realized his full potential when he could expand his awareness, due to some early part of his training under Obba. He later learned how to transfer his essence into other beings which he used to extend his life indefinitely.

Harth was a practitioner of his own stylized version of Ataru, which he displayed in his duel with Darth Zannah. However, the form had exhausted him greatly, giving Zannah an advantage to defeat him. He was also quite proficient with throwing his lightsaber, a move that nearly killed Zannah in their first confrontation and also the Huntress on Doan. Both women only survived because to their precognitive abilities. Harth was spared by Zannah for his skill and because of her desperate need of an apprentice.

During his life as a Dark Jedi, while carrying a lightsaber, Harth also equipped himself with two blasters to hide his affinity to the Force: a GSI-24D disruptor pistol and a conventional blaster. He was quite skilled with the blasters easily taking down many miners in his skirmish with them on Doan.

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