Joruus C'baoth

"But I really don't think he's a Dark Jedi. He's erratic and moody, but he doesn't have the sort of evil aura about him that I could sense in Vader and the Emperor. I think it's more likely that Master C'baoth is insane."

- Luke Skywalker

Joruus C'baoth was the sole known surviving clone of the Old Republic Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth. He was cloned by Palpatine, and used as the guardian of the Imperial storehouse at Mount Tantiss. During the Thrawn campaign, the mad clone's battle meditation powers were used by Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn as part of a renewed offensive against the New Republic. C'baoth also attempted to lure Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Solo to the dark side of the Force, as part of a plan to seize the Empire for himself.

Biography


It is believed that a tissue sample was procured from Jorus C'baoth during his tenure as Senator Palpatine's personal Jedi advisor (the same position Anakin Skywalker held later, when Palpatine became Chancellor.) Sometime after Palpatine procured his Spaarti cylinders early in the Clone Wars, several clones were grown from that tissue sample. Cloning techniques, especially techniques developed early in the war or techniques intended to rapidly grow clones, produced clones that were extremely mentally unstable&mdash;the Joruus C'baoth clones would prove to be no exception. (It should be noted that the clone troopers produced during the Clone Wars did not manifest these problems as they were grown slowly, over a number of years, and were cloned with different technology).

Only one of C'baoths' clones would have a command of the Force comparable to the original and be mentally stable enough that Palpatine could twist him into a Dark Jedi. Palpatine entrusted the clone with the responsibility of guarding the Mount Tantiss storehouse on the planet Wayland. C'baoth might also have been cloned so that the clone, being a powerful Jedi like his predecessor, could train a new order of Dark Jedi to serve the Empire.

This, at least, is the most probable story if the sequence of events that Coruscant's archives and Thrawn's researches are to be believed. There seems little reason to believe the later, mad Joruus C'baoth's assertions that he killed the Dark Jedi guardian of Wayland himself and took over, as this account offers no explanation of who cloned him or why. However, the inhabitants of Wayland remember a duel between C'baoth and another Force-user.

In any case, several years after the Battle of Endor, Grand Admiral Thrawn finally tracked down the location of the Emperor's private storehouse on Wayland, intending to use the cloaking shield and the Spaarti cylinders there to persue his war against the New Republic. He discovered that Joruus C'baoth had gone completely insane. Only the Grand Admiral's precautionary use of ysalamiri saved him from the death that had found all previous off-worlders to visit the warehouse since the death of the Emperor. Thrawn managed to enlist the insane dark Jedi Master to his cause by promising him Luke Skywalker and his sister Leia Organa Solo, as well as her yet-unborn twins, to be his to mold however he desired.

Drawing deeply on the dark side and honing his skills at battle meditation, C'baoth greatly increased the efficiency of Thrawn's forces. He could use his mastery of the Force to penetrate cloaking shields, to communicate with cloaked ships and coordinate devastating precision-timed attacks. That same mastery of the Force alerted him when Luke and Mara Jade plotted the destruction of Mount Tantiss. He was there and ready for them. Thrawn had ordered him imprisoned in the Royal Chambers of Mount Tantiss due to his realization that the clone was too powerful, power-hungry, and unstable to be safely used any longer, but the clone had out-thought even Thrawn. En route to Wayland, he corrupted the minds of the reinforcements for the garrison. Those reinforcements planted explosives on the ysalamiri within Mt. Tantiss, the very ysalamiri that were making it possible to grow clones in a score of days rather than months, and incidentally, blocking C'baoth's powers. C'baoth had realized that if he could take over the minds of the clones' "parents," he could mentally command every clone created from them, allowing him to personally command a huge section of the Imperial forces.

When they distracted the garrison after their sabotage, C'baoth prophesied that Jade and Skywalker would infiltrate the warehouse and come to the throne room where he awaited them.



Detonating the explosives and restoring his dark power, C'baoth made a second attempt at turning Skywalker but, like his first attempt on the planet Jomark, this one failed. After a brutal and prolonged fight during which Mara Jade killed Luuke Skywalker, a clone that C'baoth had ordered grown from the hand that Luke had lost on Bespin, Joruus C'baoth was slain by a kneeling Mara Jade and detonated in an explosion of blue dark side energy.

Behind the scenes
According to author Timothy Zahn, Joruus C'baoth was originally supposed to be a mad clone of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Zahn was forced to change the character's origin when LucasFilm objected.

"Sabaoth" is a Hebrew word meaning "armies" which may have served as an inspiration for C'baoth's name, given his role as a coordinator of forces in the Thrawn trilogy.

Appearances

 * Heir to the Empire
 * Dark Force Rising
 * The Last Command
 * Vision of the Future