Malakite

Malakite was a male Sith Lord who lived during the Republic Dark Age and was known for his bias against technology and his extensive use of Sith engineered beasts. In c. 1,032 BBY, Malakite's grandmother Vilia Calimondra ordered her grandchildren to attack the territories of the Quermian Sith Lord Ayanos Bactra, and Malakite captured a proportion of Bactra's holdings. He was later seen on the planet Skarpos, fighting Odion's troops with his own mutated army before retreating from the battlefield. About a day later, Malakite returned to Skarpos and attempted to retake the world.However, he was forced to retreat once again, after Odion gained possession of the Helm of Ieldis&mdash;a powerful Sith artifact&mdash;and used it to turn Malakite's forces against one another.

A Sith Dynasty
The Sith Lord Malakite lived in the Grumani sector during the Republic Dark Age, the last century of the millennia-long New Sith Wars. He was the grandson of Vilia Calimondra, the matriarch of the Calimondra family and the ruler of substantial Sith holdings in the Grumani sector. He was also the cousin of the two Sith Lords Odion and Daiman, the sons of Xelian, one of Vilia's daughters. His grandmother Vilia married several rulers and produced seven children, including one of Malakite's parents. However, all of her children made claims to become Calimondra's heir, so in order to decided which one would inherit her empire, she organized a contest, which she called the Charge Matrica, challenging her children to expand her territories. However, Xelian soon declared war on Calimondra's son Chagras, resulting in all of her children waging war against each other.

Eventually, only Chagras was left, and Calimondra made him her heir. Chagras maintained a shaky peace through the shaky cooperation of several cousins and grandchildren. He also became the titular ruler of an empire known as the Chagras Hegemony but Vilia still lived and controlled her own empire. By 1,042 BBY, Chagras was ready to challenge the Galactic Republic. However, in 1,040 BBY, Chagras was killed after being exposed to a nerve toxin. Calimondra then initiated a second Charge Matrica, pitting her grandchildren against each other to fight for the right to become her heir. While Odion and Daiman were the first to declare war on each other, their cousins including Malakite soon followed suit. By 1,032 BBY, Malakite had created his own doman known as the Menagerie. Malakite also developed a "perversed" reputation throughout Sith Space of using Sith alchemy to transform sentient beings and animals into vicious Sithspawn who were used to fill the ranks of his armed forces.

Malakite's manpower included various individuals from sentient species who had been mutated into "Mutates" who served as his infantry, and winged Menagerie dragons and Night-soarers. These creatures were the leftovers of centuries of Sith experimentation and had been reduced into vicious minions who only existed to served their Sith Lord's bidding. Through Sith alchemy and the power of the dark side, Malakite had forged slave warriors would would attack without hesitation. Since the Sith Lord eschewed modern technology in favour of pre-modern weapons and claws, Malakite devised a tactic of using overwhelming numbers to swarm opponents with superior technology. Besides fighting the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order, Malakite also fought constant battles with other Sith like Odion and Ayanos Bactra. Thus, Malakite's forces frequently suffered heavy losses which led the Sith to implement a large-scale breeding program.

Foreign Threats
In 1,032 BBY, the Calimondra dynasty was challenged by a new threat: the lone Jedi Knight Kerra Holt. Kerra was the sole survivor of a failed Jedi mission Operation Influx and had evacuated 63,000 civilians during the Chelloan affair. Kerra employed guerilla tactics and lightning raids which frustrated the various Sith Lords of the Grumani sector who failed on several occasions to capture or eliminate the Jedi. While Kerra initially targeted Daiman and Odion, her frequent forays into Sith Space eventualyl caught the attention of matriarch Vilia. However, the matriarch allowed Kerra to remain unmolested because she regard the Jedi woman as a mechanism for providing her Sith grandchildren with experience on how to deal with the Jedi. Vilia planned to one day challenge the Galactic Republic and she believed that her descendants needed to know how to deal with the Jedi Order, the Republic's erstwhile defenders.

That same year, Vilia ordered her grandchildren to turn on the Quermian Sith Lord Ayanos Bactra, a close family friend and the ruler of his own domain known as the Bactranate. Vilia felt that Bactra had outlived his usefulness to the Calimondra family and ordered his elimination. Malakite along with Odion, Daiman, and Lord Lioko were the first to respond and launched an invasion of the Bactranate. Within days, the Bactranate had collapsed and Bactra had fled into hiding at a Quermian retirement colony. Malakite would later be present at a subsequent family bequest convened by Vilia where the Sith matriarch divided Bactra's former territories and corporate assets among her grandchildren. Malakite likely inherited some territory and corporate holdings. Kerra was also secretly present at the bequest since she had been permitted by the Sith Lord Arkadia Calimondra to witness the proceedings which were conducted via hologram. During the proceedings, Malakite's hologram was situated beside Odion's one. Due to his unkempt appearance and untidy hair, Kerra regarded Malakite as an "evolutionary throwback."

Later that year, the Calimondra family also faced another external threat in the form of the Hutt interloper Zodoh, a crime boss involved in slave trafficking and munitions production. He invaded the Daimanate, beginning with the rearward planet of Aquilaris Minor. Malakite was present at a holo-conference where Zodoh contacted the regional Sith Lords, whom expressed anger at the Hutt's incursion into Sith territory. During the holo-conference, his cousin Odion made xenophobic remarks about the Hutt and threatened to harass his business operations. His cousin Arkadia agreed with her Odion's sentiments and angrily slammed Zodoh for treating her like a gangster.

Undaunted, Zodoh dismissed the assembled Sith warlords as a bunch of "petty crooks" who fought over crumbs while neglecting the banquet. He compared the Sith warlords within the Grumani sector to other Sith in Hutt Space who had degenerated into petty squabbles after the Galactic Republic severed all hyperspace communication relays, effectively bring interstellar travel and commerce to a halt throughout much of the galaxy. Zodoh also stressed the superiority of the Hutts by claiming that the Hutt clans were able to survive despite the collapse of governments because they had protocols for talking to each other and moving goods and weapons. The smarter Sith Lords in Hutt Space had realized this fact and made peace with the Hutts while the others had been driven out of the market.

Zodoh claimed that he had come to spread his business franchise in the Grumani sector. He also offered to become their main supplier of slaves and amunitions if they were willing to develop a constructive relationship with him. However, if they resisted, Zodoh promised he would play rougher than the Sith. Finally, he told the assembled warlords to tell their spies to observe developments in Aquilaris in the near future before ending the transmission. During the subsequent Aquilaris campaign, Zodoh used his Stormdrivers&mdash;large capital ships equipped with weaponized vaporizers&mdash;to artificially flood Aquilaris Minor, inundating large areas of the planet's surface. Zodoh had these developments broadcasted during a second holo-conference with the Sith Lords. Malakite was also present during that conference and agreed to a deal with the Hutt lord where the Sith warlords would work against the Daimanate by keeping Daiman's forces preoccupied with border skirmishes.

This had the effect of weakening Daiman's military defenses during the Battle of Darkknell when Zodoh's Stormdrivers flooded his capital world of Darkknell. However, Daiman was saved at the eleventh hour by the intervention of the Jedi Kerra and the Republic starfighter captain Jenn Devaad who destroyed Zodoh's flagship Voracious, ending the Stormdrivers's artificially induced flood. Following the battle, Zodoh was captured by Daiman's cruisers and taken as a captive to his palace Sanctum Celestial at his capital city of Xakrea. Malakite along with Daiman's brother Odion and fellow cousin Arkadia were present when Daiman executed the Hutt interloper. This effectively ended any Hutt ambitions of challenging Sith dominance in the Grumani sector. However, it did little to end Sith tensions which continued to persist.

The Helm of Ieldis
Later in 1,032 BBY, Odion's forces invaded Skarpos, one of Malakite's worlds. Unknown to both Sith Lords, Malakite was also the secret location of the Helm of Ieldis, an ancient Sith artifact created by Lord Ieldis that was capable of driving sentients into a homocidal frenzy. Odionate and Menagerie warships fought a space battle in orbit while Odionate groups forces including Force-sensitive Novitiates and the Thunder Guard were deployed for ground assault. In response, Malakite rallied his Mutate forces and led the battle while riding a purple horned beast. Malakite's Mutates swarmed the invaders but were no match for their superior technology. Odion's forces were also equally suicidal and fanatically devoted to their master's cause. Unknown to either side, the Jedi Knight Kerra had secretly infiltrated the Novitiates&mash;Odion's elite Dark Side acolytes&mdash;while posing as a young Sith wannabee who had escaped from the Daimanate factory world of Tergamenion named "Mercy."

While the Novitiates battled against Malakite's primitive Mutates, the Odionate commander General Beld Yulan ordered his Thunder Gurds to charge into the trenches. However, Malakite had set a trap for Odion's forces and ordered his archers to shoot flaming arrows into the trench, which had earlier been filled with starfighter fuel. Despite "Mercy's" warnings, the Odionites charged the trench and many were immolated. All of them were willing to die in order to fulfill Odion's nihilistic ambition of killing all life to end the pain of existence. In the process, sevveral of Malakite's soldiers were burnt to death or wounded. After marvelling that Odion's people were willing to endure anything, he ordered his Mutates to return to an escape craft. There, they would heal their wounds. Malakite also made plans to return and reclaim Skarpos.

Appearances

 * Knight Errant novel
 * Star Wars: Knight Errant 6: Deluge, Part 1
 * Star Wars: Knight Errant 7: Deluge, Part 2
 * Star Wars: Knight Errant 11: Escape, Part 1
 * Star Wars: Knight Errant 12: Escape, Part 2
 * Star Wars: Knight Errant 13: Escape, Part 3
 * Star Wars: Knight Errant 14: Escape, Part 4
 * Star Wars: Knight Errant 15: Escape, Part 5