Darth Traya

"Know that there was once a Darth Traya. And that she cast aside that role, was exiled, and found a new purpose. But there must always be a Darth Traya, one that holds the knowledge of betrayal. Who has been betrayed in their heart, and will betray in turn."

- Darth Traya

Kreia was a Jedi Master during the time before the Mandalorian Wars, and later a Sith Lord under the alias Darth Traya. As the guardian and keeper of the Jedi Archives, Kreia was an ardent observer, a patient scholar and a wise master. Later in life, after she turned to the dark side, the traits that she had exhibited in her former profession suited her new role as master schemer and Sith Lord. A woman who felt the bitter sting of betrayal from both the Jedi and the Sith, she dreamt of revenge not toward both or either group but toward the one that had destined her for such an end: the Force itself. Her story reached its climax when she found the Jedi Exile, a unique being who had the potential of bringing her dream of revenge a step closer to fruition.

Early life
Much of Kreia's early life is shrouded in mystery. It is known that she worked her way to the rank of Jedi Master and that she trained many students, the most famous of whom was Revan. It is very possible she fought during the Great Sith War and was the guardian of the Jedi Archives before Atris.

Fall to the dark side
"All that talk of hatred, manipulation, and standing on your own two feet&mdash;sorry, you don't get any more Sith than that."

- Atton Rand

Upon the close of the Mandalorian Wars and after Revan's disappearance, the Jedi who participated in the wars were called to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant so that they might answer for their transgressions. Only one returned, and he was exiled as punishment. The Jedi Council blamed Kreia for the war after several of her apprentices were easily seduced by the call of battle, most notably Revan. For this, she too was exiled by the Order. Consumed by her guilt and stung by the bitter actions of the Jedi, she questioned the validity of her beliefs in the Grey Philosophy and wondered if this was the reason why Revan had fallen. She followed Revan's footsteps in history, traveling from planet to planet, searching for an answer that he alone could provide. In her travels, she encountered many of Revan's acquaintances and found fragments of a man far from the dreaded image history would eventually paint of him. Her crusade ended on the dark world of Malachor V. As she descended to the lowest levels of the world, the extreme caress of dark side energies encompassed the frail Grey Jedi. From the descent of Jedi Master Kreia into the abyss arose the Darth Traya, Sith Lord.

On the surface of Malachor V, she had found her own answers. At the center of Revan's former stronghold was the Trayus Academy, an ancient dark side Praxeum that contained the deepest and most intimate secrets of the Sith. From this mausoleum of ancient Sith knowledge she learned of what her apprentice had discovered: the existence of a more powerful, more dangerous empire far beyond the known borders of Galactic Republic space, where the true Sith Empire was waiting.



The august boy whom she had taught; the brave knight who defended the weak when his fellows would not; and the fragments of the dark yet noble figure in history was one man trying to carry the weight of the galaxy and its future on his shoulders. There she found Revan's true intentions. From that moment on, she firmly believed that Revan had never "fallen", that instead a greater cause had come that called for certain actions to be done.

Continuing the legacy of her greatest student, Darth Traya reestablished the Trayus Academy to train, convert, and create the new generation of Sith: men and women who would act as a gadfly to the Republic. After some time, she found similar Sith Lords who were interested in rebuilding the deteriorating Sith Order. Darth Nihilus, the Lord of Hunger, and Darth Sion, the Lord of Pain, joined her in the creation of the first Sith Triumvirate. As time passed and the Jedi ran to hide, the Sith Lords' ideals became divergent. Traya and Revan's legacy fell far from Darth Nihilus' hunger and Sion's crusade against the Jedi. A violent argument eventually arose among the three, and as Traya was the odd one out, she was cast aside, beaten and broken. Once again she had been betrayed.

Lost and disheveled, Traya blamed neither side and instead dreamt of revenge on a far greater scale, revenge against a higher power which had destined her to be betrayed by those whom she had loyally served. She knew now that this conflict between light and dark was never going to end, and that the galaxy was doomed to chaos forever. Firm in her belief, she engineered a master plan to eliminate the Force, once and for all. Kreia had come to regard the Force as an uncaring, insidious god. She noted the tremendous loss of life throughout history -- and far into the future -- during the many battles between the Jedi and the Sith. For this, Kreia blamed neither the Jedi nor the Sith, but rather the Force itself. Stopping the Force from controlling the lives of men and women throughout the galaxy became her crusade.

Kreia and the Jedi Exile
"It does not matter where we go. It is not the destination that matters. It is the journey."

- Kreia

Banished, disbanded or in hiding, the Jedi Order was nearly gone from the galaxy. The Republic, plagued by instability, found false hope in the rumors of the Order's resurrection. One such story is that of the Last Jedi, the one who walked the path of most men and wandered the galaxy. Beneath layers of hearsay and unconfirmed reports, Kreia had found a means to destroy the Force. Bound by hands of death, Kreia intruded upon the company of the wounded Jedi Exile. They subconsciously reached out to each other, both strengthening each other in the knowledge that they had survived the void that had befallen them. That bond formed a connection so powerful that the death echoes of either member would be enough to kill the other.

Shortly after, as Kreia and the Exile attempted to escape the Peragus II asteroid mining facility, Kreia encountered her former protege, Darth Sion. Master and student fought, and Kreia, hardly at her full power, lost her left hand to Sion's lightsaber. The Exile felt the pain of losing the limb as she had done, and the two confirmed that their deep link could well have proven to be fatal.

While slowly regaining her connection to the Force, Kreia began to shape the Exile as a new pupil. Her new student sought answers to the questions of his identity, and Kreia was all too willing to search for them, curious to see if the answers would lead to the end she was planning. She taught the Exile to carefully choose his actions, asking him to view the ethical implications of his quests, and showed him that the galaxy and its inhabitants' morals were far more complicated than the basic tenets of the light and dark sides of the Force.

As the Exile grew in power, Kreia watched as he unknowingly strengthened the struggled Republic through his search. During these adventures many people found the company of the Exile, most of them sensitive to the Force; and although many of them were wary of Kreia, she was able to manipulate most of them do her bidding. Through the ease of which the Exile had "called" upon his companions, the old master had seen the Exile's ability to transmit extreme echoes to those he was bound with. Using the Exile's power and with the knowledge of Darth Nihilus' condition, Kreia intended to bring her plans into finality.

By the end of her adventures with the Exile, Traya had devised a method to kill the Force with what she called "echoes": tragedies that left persistent wounds in the universe, which made the Force difficult and sometimes impossible to hear and to be used. Her discovery of these "echoes" and her avenue of attack on the Force was made possible entirely by the Exile; he provided the first "echo" that she could study through his actions on the planet of Malachor V, and he turned the echoes of his survival from a mere curiosity into being a viable mechanism for destroying the Force. By Kreia's reasoning, people who died of these echoes when they could not bear to voluntarily sever themselves from the Force (as the Exile did to save his life) were not strong enough to deserve to live in the first place. Her hatred of the Force was the overriding goal, for in her mind, if she did not kill it, even more lives would be lost in the future.

Kreia traveled with the Exile on his search for the Jedi Masters, manipulating him toward the truth of his existence and his bizarre abilities. When the truth was revealed -- that the Exile was indeed a wound in the Force -- Kreia confronted him and left him unconscious in the ruins of Dantooine. Journeying to Telos IV, the reborn Darth Traya turned Jedi Master Atris to the dark side of the Force. She became the second Darth Traya, and believed herself to be the heir to Kreia's power, but her duel with the Exile in the Telos academy proved otherwise. In reality, Traya had used Atris as a pawn to lure the Exile to her, so she could break him and use him to end the Force, once and for all.

After the Battle of Telos IV in which the Exile destroyed Darth Nihilus, the Exile journeyed to Malachor V, where Traya and Sion were hidden in the depths of the Trayus Academy. The Exile confronted the Sith Lords, and eroded Sion's will, releasing him from all his pain in the process. By giving up the pain, and therefore the Force, Sion was finally able to die -- but not before warning the Exile that Traya would try to do to him what she had done to Sion himself.

The Exile found Traya in the core of the academy and bested her. As her final act, she drew upon the Force that radiated from Malachor V in order to give the Exile one last gift: a prediction of the future of the galaxy and that of his friends. She died from the wounds dealt to her by the Exile, leaving her apprentice to follow Revan to the true Sith Empire. Before her death, she confessed that she truly loved the Exile, as he had finally proven her ideals were correct.

Teachings
Among her students were Darth Nihilus and Darth Sion. Even when she was a Sith, Traya had some notion that neither the light nor dark side of the Force was truly superior to the other. Due to the fact her teachings incorporated light side concepts (she never believed in power or destruction for its own sake), Sion and Nihilus grew weary of her. They betrayed her, stripped her of power, and exiled her. She described her fall from power thus:


 * "There are dark places in the galaxy, where few tread. Ancient centers of learning, of knowledge. But I did not walk alone. To be united by hatred is a fragile alliance at best. But my word was not law. There were disagreements, ambition . . . and hunger for power. There are techniques within the Force against which there is no defense. I was cast down, stripped of my power, exiled. I suffered indignities, and fell into darkness."

Darth Traya would refine her beliefs while wandering the galaxy, eventually coming to view the Force as being a sort of uncaring, insidious god that uses the lives of sentients as pawns in a pernicious game of balance. This, she thought, was evidenced by the widespread occurrences of destruction and death that had persistently transpired throughout the galaxy to that point, many of which could be traced to a conflict between force-sensitives. Yet, Traya blamed neither the Jedi nor the Sith, but rather, the very thing they had both come to draw and rely upon: the Force itself. She was, however, upset with the Jedi and the Sith for being too "caught up in the game" to realize how the Force was manipulating them all.

After being exiled from the Jedi Order when she was forced to shoulder the blame for Revan's corruption, and again after she was exiled from Malachor V by her impatient Sith students Nihilus and Sion, Darth Traya had thus experienced betrayals from, and saw the flaws of, both the light and dark sides of the Force. These unique experiences disillusioned her and forced her to refine her ways of thinking.

When she heard about the Jedi Exile, she saw proof that life could exist without the Force, which she saw as disproof of the traditional dogma of both the Sith and Jedi that the Force and life itself were inseparable by nature. This renewed Traya's confidence in her personal beliefs and fueled her desire to learn more of the Exile's personal motivations. By the end of her adventures with the Exile, during which time she went by the name of Kreia, Traya had discovered that certain tragedies can leave wounds in the Force, which sometimes made it difficult to hear and be used. These "echoes," as Traya called them, provided a possible avenue through which it was possible to attack the Force. Her discovery was due in no small part to the Exile, as his experience at Malachor V, where he willingly severed his own bond with the Force, created an echo large enough that Traya was able to connect the tragedy to the wound created in the Force. According to Traya, those who had chosen death (or the Jedi who chose the dark side) over a life devoid of the Force were not strong enough to deserve life. Her desire to prevent unnecessary death in the future was the overbearing motivation that cultivated her hatred for the Force. She once explained how one such as she could use the Force despite loathing it by comparing herself to one who studies poison. Just as such a person would strive to understand the lethality behind poison, so she strives to understand the particularities of the Force, thereby enabling her to destroy it, perhaps.

Darth Traya envisioned a galaxy that would choose not to acquiesce to the will of the Force. She thought she could achieve this by showing how one could willingly abnegate the Force and eventually become stronger for it, and it was the Exile who was a living testament to this. In her teachings with the Jedi Exile, she emphasized the how dependent the Jedi and Sith were on the Force, and how they had become flawed for it. By making the Exile her protege, she hoped her message would resonate with future force-sensitives so they would choose to use the Force without necessarily bending to either extreme, and certainly not to the point where they would choose death over life without the Force. Ultimately, though, she dreamed of a galaxy lacking of the Force altogether, as it was her belief that the galaxy would be better off that way.

Personality
As a person, Darth Traya was self-reliant, manipulative, and constantly wary of the intentions of others.

Traya often remonstrated the Exile for taking away the challenges of others. She argued that indiscriminate compassion weakens the benefactors by disallowing them the mental and physical enrichment that life's challenges inherently procure. Ultimately, such compassion thus weakens the very people it is intended to help, cheapening their experience and leaving them more ill-prepared for dealing with things on their own. In other words, Traya had adopted a "survival of the fittest" philosophy, and encouraged people to struggle in order to learn and to prosper.

After being betrayed by those closest to her, Traya expected the worst from the people around her. As the Exile's circle of companions grew, Traya came to see how these companions could be used for her own ends, and sometimes ensured their loyalty using methods like blackmail. For example, she read the mind of Atton Rand, learned of his dark history, and used that to blackmail him into the Exile's service. She also tempted the Mandalorian leader, Mandalore, with knowledge of Darth Revan's fate in order to ensure that he would not betray the Exile.

A master of manipulation, Traya also used betrayal and deception to achieve her goals. She lied to the Exile at the beginning of their quest, claiming that the Jedi Council had stripped the Force from the Jedi Exile. Traya knew this would lead the Exile to seek out the surviving members of the Jedi Council, in hopes that she and/or the Exile would prove them wrong on their teaches. That one could not fully understand the force by simply adhering to the Jedi Code. On Onderon, Traya lied to Colonel Tobin about the existence of many Jedi in a Jedi Academy on Telos. Traya did this because she knew that Tobin would relay this to his true Master, Darth Nihilus, who would not be able to resist the chance to replenish himself and would recklessly assault Telos. This left Nihilus vulnerable to the assault of the Mandalorians and the Exile.

Despite these traits, Traya was not the witch that many had dismissed her as. She had a softer side to her personality that was more apparent when she was around the Jedi Exile. "You are beautiful to me," she once told the Exile, referring to his being the living proof of her philosophies. In fact, Traya once expressed that she would go so far as to let the entire galaxy die in order to ensure the life of the Exile. Such expressions left little doubt as to her zealous devotion regarding her beliefs.

Though Traya was intelligent and quite powerful in her own right, she was also wise enough to know that her philosophies would be disregarded as fanatical by both the Jedi and the Sith. Because of this, she preferred to fly beneath the radar, often using her own power to shield her identity from other force-sensitives who might have known her, and could have otherwise detected her. She was not outspoken about her convictions. Only by carefully employing her manipulative tactics was she able to successfully convert the Exile to her cause. And through him, she surmised, many more would follow.

Abilities
Kreia had the unique ability to wield three or more lightsabers in combat, holding each of them aloft with the Force, and having them fight with a will of their own.

Her eyes appeared damaged, but in reality, they were simply atrophied from disuse. She could repair her eyesight with the Force, yet she refused to do so, as she had the Force Sight ability and regarded her natural sight as a distraction.

Kreia could easily Force Cloak herself and knew the ability of Breath Control, which she later taught to the Exile. She could go into a Hibernation Trance that would make her appear perfectly dead. As Darth Traya, she was a master of Force Drain, which she used to kill Jedi Masters Vrook Lamar, Kavar, Zez-Kai Ell and, later, dozens of Sith Assassins instantaneously and simultaneously.

Kreia had once been a historian of the Jedi, but realized early on that the Jedi Code did not answer all the questions she posed. She was also a master manipulator, having used this skill to maneuver herself into a position of power at the Trayus Academy and, later, trick the Jedi and Sith into revealing themselves, allowing her and her accomplices to destroy them.

Traya was also able to glimpse far into the future, predicting isolated events with incredible accuracy. Traya was able to predict the death of Jango Fett at the hands of Mace Windu nearly 4,000 years later, in a prophecy relating to the fate of the Mandalorians:

"They will die a death that will last millennia, until all that remains is their code, their history, and, in the end, the shell of their armor upon the shell of a man, all too easily slain by Jedi."

Kreia also made an allusion to another great event in galactic history: The rise of the Galactic Empire. When discussing the Jedi's neglecting their skills to the Exile, she notes the skill of persuasion: "Do not doubt that a galaxy can be conquered with words, a Republic overthrown, and an Empire created." Whether this was a peek into the future, or merely Kreia's understanding of the power of persuasion, however, is unknown.

Behind the scenes

 * Kreia was voiced by Sara Kestelman.
 * Like Darth Sidious and Darth Vader, Darth Traya's Sith name suggests another word: betrayal.
 * Darth Traya is the first known Darth (after, possibly, Darth Andeddu) to use a Sith alias instead of her real name. Her predecessors, Darth Revan and Darth Malak, both added the Darth title to their actual names.
 * Kreia was not always intended to be the only Traya and final boss in the game. Before the content was cut out, the choices the Exile made could have her or Atris become Traya at the end. The New Essential Chronology introduced even more confusion, as it mistakenly referred to "Darth Kreia" and "Darth Traya" as two separate characters. This error was later addressed by Dan Wallace, but it was too late, as the book was already out.
 * Elements such as Atris' dark side ending and Kreia's comments near the climax of the game may indicate that the Darth Traya role has a quasi-religious significance within the Sith Order; Count Dooku himself notably remarked that "treachery is the way of the Sith." As such, Sion's and Nihilus' respective titles as Lord of Pain and Lord of Hunger may betray further arcane Sith teaching delved from the Malachor ruins and the Trayus Academy.
 * GameSpy declared Kreia the best video game character of 2005.
 * The screenshot that shows Kreia with her hood removed was taken with a modified game; while such a scene never takes place in the game, it was supposed to take place during the Rebuilt Enclave scene, when Kreia reveals herself to the three Jedi Masters; however, in the official release, Kreia stays hooded due to a scripting glitch. This has been fixed by The Sith Lords Restoration Project developers.

A mysterious past
The Chronicles of the Old Republic located on the official Knights of the Old Republic II website are the only sources that provide the information on the whens and hows of Kreia's turn to the dark side. Unfortunately, the Chronicles often conflict with the dialogue in the games, so there is no clear-cut "history," aside from what only can be extrapolated from the various sources. It could therefore be speculated that she acted as the guardian of Malachor V during the Jedi Civil War at Revan's command. Or it could be suggested that she did not find Malachor until well after Revan's departure; otherwise she likely would have accompanied him in his search for the "True" Sith.

Mistaken identity
There is an ongoing dispute as to whether the Jedi Arren Kae and Kreia are the same person. Evidence in the game indicates that both Kae and Kreia were both Revan's first and last master. Additionally, Kae was also exiled from the Order. Furthermore, their names bear a distinct similarity. Kreia's name is pronounced as if it were an portmanteau of the names "Kae" and "Traya." This is possibly in keeping with the character's personality. Given that she turned her back on both the Jedi Council and the Sith, instead embracing the Gray Philosophy, it is possible she combined her names to create a new one, much in the same way she combined both Light and dark side knowledges of the Force. The name similarities could, on the other hand, be striking coincidences.

Beyond etymology, however, there is also the confusion surrounding the events of Kae's death (no body was discovered) that help to fuel this argument, as well as a statement made to Kreia by Master Kavar "I thought you died in the Mandalorian Wars" towards the end of the game, when she is recognized by the assembled council. While this argument is ongoing, no one can conclusively prove their case, so it remains in the realm of speculation at this time.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords