Zayne Carrick

"You're Zayne Carrick, right? Your Master sent me to look for you. He said to follow the trail of debris."

- Squint

Zayne Carrick was a young Human Padawan learner during the Mandalorian Wars who became a fugitive from the Jedi Order.

Early life
Zayne was brought to the Jedi Order when he was several years old, coming from a family where he had four siblings. His father was an accountant. Although Jedi Master Vandar Tokare described Zayne's ability in the Force as "marginal," he was accepted to the Jedi Academy on Dantooine. It was hoped that Zayne's ability to quickly form kinships would blossom with Jedi training.

On Dantooine, Zayne was trained by Master Vandar, along with Shad Jelavan, Kamlin, Oojoh, and Gharn. However, his Jedi abilities did not advance as far as might be hoped while at the Academy.

Padawan on Taris
By 3,964 BBY, Zayne was being instructed by Jedi Master Lucien Draay at the Jedi Tower on the city-world of Taris. Here Zayne's ability to form friendships was demonstrated by his emotional attraction to Shel Jelavan, the sister of his best friend Shad. Yet Zayne struggled to keep up with his fellow Padawans on Taris; his clumsiness with the Force was often evidenced in his ongoing pursuit of the black-marketeer Marn Hierogryph, or Gryph.

Zayne was interested in the rapidly spreading Mandalorian Wars and other issues affecting the Jedi Order, but he felt isolated on Taris and doubted his ability to become a Jedi Knight. However, he received encouragement from the Padawan Squint. While passing through Taris with his Master on their way to the Outer Rim frontlines, Squint told Zayne that he was to become a bigger player than he thought.

However, Squint's advice to Zayne that "sometimes you have to enter the darkness to save the light" boded ill for the future. Jedi Master Q'Anilia sensed a dark change in the Force just after Squint spoke to Zayne. Indeed, the Jedi Masters on Taris were apparently worried that one of their Padawans would turn to the dark side.

Soon after Zayne's encounter with Squint, the Padawans on Taris faced a challenge on Taris' rogue moon. Zayne and the other Padawans had to find their way back to their Masters admidst the moon's perpetual meteor bombardment, blinded by their visor's blast shields. As he was the last to complete the task, Zayne felt that he might not become a Jedi Knight along with his friends.

The Masters' fears about their Padawans led them to desperate measures; for as Zayne noted, they hated the Sith&mdash;but hatred was an emotion forbidden to the Jedi. After observing their apprentices' completion of the rogue moon challenge, they retreated into cloister at the Temple. When they emerged, they announced that a knighting ceremony would soon take place.

The ceremony was only a ruse, however, for in consultation with a female associate on Coruscant, the voice of the Jedi Covenant&mdash;a secret Jedi organization dedicated to preventing the return of the Sith with the help of seers&mdash;the Jedi Masters instead carried out the Padawan Massacre of Taris, slaying all of the Padawans but Zayne, who, having finally caught Gryph, was running late. He discovered his masters in the midst of their crime and managed to escape.

Ironically, as Zayne later discovered, his own ineptude saved him twice. Not only was it his late arrival that saved him: it was expected, and the Masters were prepared to wait for him as long as needed; Shad Jelavan was originally going to be blamed for the crime. However, the delay, and the fact that Lucien was carrying his lightsaber like the other Masters, indicated that Zayne was going to be knighted, which the Masters confirmed with a hastily concocted story about his alleged "special relationship" with the Force and the increasing demand for Jedi Knights. However, Shad grew suspicious, as they never treated Zayne seriously, and his disbelief urged the Masters to strike preemptively. The last Padawan arrived moments after the other four were killed.

Jedi on the run
On the run from the Jedi Masters he once served, Zayne had no choice but to flee into the seedy Lower City of Taris with Gryph, whom he had finally succeeded in capturing. Meanwhile, the Jedi Masters successfully framed Zayne and Gryph for the massacre&mdash;and knowing that the Dantooine Council would not believe that he could have done it with his lack of skill, they said that he allegedly received help from the dark side. Zayne decided that he must return to every place where he had been trained in order to decipher why the Masters had betrayed him.

After hitching a ride with some Wookiee garbage collectors and a closer encounter with some Black Vulkars, Gryph led Zayne to Junk Junction, where they encountered the aging mechanic Camper and his friend Jarael. Jarael was suspicious of the fugitive duo and attacked Zayne, upstaging the young Jedi with her electrostaff skills, even in the face of Zayne's lightsaber. Initially both Jarael and Camper refused to help Zayne&mdash;Jarael because of Zayne's indirect role in convincing Lhosan Industries to leave Taris, and Camper because of Gryph's failure to pay him for their last transaction; however, when a force led by Constable Sowrs and Master Draay arrived on the scene, Jarael and Camper allowed Zayne and Gryph to escape with them on their ship Last Resort.

Unfortunately, the Last Resort had not flown in years, and soon stalled in the asteroid field in orbit around Taris. While the other passengers slept, Zayne sent a transmission to Master Vandar Tokare, who did not believe Zayne's story. Instead, Master Vandar speculated that Zayne did murder his friends, but did not remember the incident correctly. He advised Zayne to contact one of the Jedi Consulars on Taris&mdash;who, of course, were trying to catch him. Zayne was interrupted in the middle of his discussion with Vandar by Jarael, who knocked him out with her electrostaff.

After his transmission to Dantooine, Zayne quickly realized that it was odd that four out of the only five Masters stationed at Taris, save for Lucien, were Consulars: Q'Anilia, Feln, Raana Tey, and Xamar. He descended with Jarael to the rogue moon, hoping to find clues to the mystery of the Padawan Massacre. While there, the duo uncovered the destroyed droid T1-LB ("Elbee") that might have had information as to why the Masters murdered their Padawans. Elbee had been present for the Jedi Trials but had foolishly fallen off the edge of a cliff. Yet before they could locate Elbee's information, Lucien Draay and the forces of the Republic descended to the moon's surface to apprehend Zayne.

Dark prophecy
On the rogue moon, Zayne and Jarael recovered the remains of T1-LB from the cliff. Zayne and Jarael were almost out with the droid's memory bank when the forces of the Republic, commanded by Zayne's master Lucien Draay, stopped them. But thanks to a surprise attack by Camper and Gryph, both Zayne and Jarael got away without harm and with Elbee's memory bank in their hands.

Camper tried his best to transfer Elbee's memory bank to another droid body and he gave him a vocabulator and holo projector. Zayne asked Elbee to recall the last moments of his recordings on the Rogue Moon. Zayne saw a revelation: a dark secret had been kept by his own masters.

The four Masters (bar Lucien), as it turned out, had all seen terrifying visions from the past that ultimately led them to commit the murders. All the Masters saw a Sith Lord encased in red armor and armed with a red lightsaber responsible for their own deaths; Feln was the first to make the assumption that the red figure symbolized one of their Padawans, each of whom was wearing a red environmental suit on the moon at that moment.

Zayne now knew the truth about his masters. However, moments after Elbee's projection was finished, the Last Resort was brought in by the tractor beam of the Oroko, a bounty hunter spacecraft captained by Valius Ying. After some negotiations, Gryph determined that Zayne's freedom was non-negotiable, but that the other members of the party could go free; the bounty on Zayne's head was too high for Ying to let the Padawan go.

Gryph and Zayne made an alternate plan: Zayne would go and then distract the guard and take the Last Resort for his escape. However, they did not predict that Jarael was waiting there to cut him off. She reminded him that there was nothing wrong with running, but one must not endanger others to save oneself. Zayne did not want to die, but neither did he want to lose his newfound friends. He came to the only decision that a true Jedi would make: he decided to stop the prophecy from happening by surrendering to the Masters.

Justice
Valius brought Zayne to Taris and dragged him to through the Upper City, now filled with an exultant crowd impatient to see the "murderer" punished&mdash;including Shel Jelavan, who was led to believe that Zayne killed her brother&mdash;to the Jedi Tower.

The young Padawan's fate was, at last, in the hands of the five Masters. Having Zayne alone to themselves, Lucien Draay explained to the young Jedi how Shad Jelavan's impetuousness had forced their hand, making Zayne their unintended patsy. They prepared, finally, to end Zayne's life (not before disposing of Ying, who learned too much about the actual circumstances of the crime). It was at that moment that Jarael, dressed as the five masters' mysterious Sith Lord&mdash;complete with the red suit, closed helmet, and Zayne's lightsaber&mdash;chose to rescue Zayne. They escaped together with the help of Camper and Gryph inside the Last Resort, after which Gryph offered him a place in his "organization", consisting only of himself&mdash;to which Zayne agreed, happy that someone finally indicated belief in him.

Lucien, desperate, ran out of the Tower to reach his former apprentice as he was boarding the Last Resort. He admitted underestimating Zayne and asked him to, if he intended to run, to forsake the Jedi ways because, as Lucien put it, he needed to fear his dark destiny that the other Masters had foreseen. Zayne refused, saying that fear leads to the dark side.

Zayne succesfully escaped from the masters once again, but with terrible consequences for Taris. Because of the Masters' repeated failure to catch the supposed Jedi killer, public confidence in them plummeted to the point that the Jedi Council recalled them to Coruscant. It was around this time, roughly three weeks after his escape, that Zayne contacted the five Masters and gave them a warning:

"I have a goal now, too. Justice. [...] Because, you see, I've had a vision of my own. One day, one of you is going to confess and clear my name, and to make sure, I'm going to hunt down each and every one of you. The one that confesses, lives. [...] Don't look for me, Lucien. Because I'll find you. And if I do end up collapsing the Jedi Order, just remember one thing. You started it."

The Mandalorian Conflict
On the run from the Jedi Order, Zayne Carrick and the crew of the Last Resort made life on Vanquo, a mining colony on the fringe of Republic space. With supplies low, the crew did what they could to survive; they stole.

Disguised as a refugee, Zayne had himself spotted by the mining crew and begged for supplies to his "family". During his "pleading", a distress transmission came in from covenant member, Q'Anilia. Though the mining crew believed it to be a trick. By using a Jedi mind trick, Zayne convinced the crew that the Mandalorians were indeed attacking and ordered the camp to evacuate.

The plan was successful. The transmission from Q'Anilia was actually Jarael in disguise. While the crew raided the mining camps supplies, the Mandalorians actually attacked. Jarael was surrounded by them and taken prisoner. Stricken with guilt, Camper had to be carried away from the scene by Zayne and Elbee. While trying to flee to the Last Resort, Zayne and Gryph attempted to hold off the Mandalorians with what little they had. However, the Mandalorians managed to beat them to the Last Resort and steal it.

Traits
Despite his clumsiness and apparent ineptitude as a Jedi learner, he had "random destructive power", as Gryph referred to his tendency to leave wreckage behind, and that power was valuable enough for Gryph to team up with Zayne; he was possibly the only person who did not view Zayne as entirely hopeless. However, the very fact that he was able to outrun five Jedi Masters and uncover the truth about their plot shows that he may not have been, in fact, as inept as everyone tended to assume.

Zayne wielded a yellow lightsaber.

Behind the scenes

 * Many fans have speculated about Zayne's future. If the Jedi Masters' fears turn out to be accurate, there is a possibility that Zayne could become one of the characters from the Knights of the Old Republic games. In particular, many fans predicted that Zayne might become Darth Nihilus, judging by the "destroyer of worlds" prophecy.


 * In an interview to Lightsabre.co.uk, John Jackson Miller, the writer of the KotOR comic series, admitted that, while the series was not a direct adaptation of the video game of the same name, Zayne was partially inspired by the early player experience in the game, with the overall feeling of disorientation and the player learning the controls&mdash;with Zayne still "learning the controls" with the Force.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 0: Crossroads
 * Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic: Commencement
 * Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic: Flashpoint
 * Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic: Reunion