Ravilan Wroth

"There is something killing them and it can kill us! We've got to remove them from our lives once and for all!''" "Don't listen to this. How will we live without them?" "Like Sith! This is not our way, Seelah. You have&mdash;we have become too dependent upon these creatures. They are not Sith." "Neither are we, by your people's lights." "''Don't get political."

- Ravilan and Seelah Korsin, arguing over whether the Sith should separate the Keshiri from their lives following the mass deaths in Tetsubal

Ravilan, nicknamed Rav by Captain Yaru Korsin and the "crimson man" by the Keshiri, was a male of the Sith species. He served as the quartermaster and keeper of the Massassi warrior contingent aboard Omen, a Sith dreadnaught that was intended to participate in the Great Hyperspace War effort led by the Dark Lord Naga Sadow. When the starship crash-landed on the planet Kesh after a collision with its sister ship, Harbinger, Ravilan was among the survivors. The Massassi who had survived the crash and remained under Ravilan's care began to die rapidly upon exposure to the planet's atmosphere. When the Massassi were all dead, Ravilan was left without his title of quartermaster. After meeting with a native woman named Adari Vaal, the Sith were brought into contact with the Keshiri people. Using their appearance, technology, and power in the dark side of the Force, Ravilan and the other Sith quickly subjugated the native people, who believed them to be the Skyborn deities of Keshiri legend.

Fifteen years later, Ravilan occupied a series of jobs for Yaru, who had become the Grand Lord of the Sith Tribe on Kesh, including that of spokesperson of the Fifty-seven Red Sith of Sith species descent. Since their arrival on the planet, none of the Red Sith offspring had survived past their first day, leading to concerns about their continued existence on the planet, and more pressure for the Red Sith to get off-world. In a last attempt to focus efforts on getting off-world, Ravilan and the Fifty-seven purposefully caused a plague in the village Tetsubal on the Ragnos Lakes. This killed all of the Keshiri there, and crisis broke out amongst the Sith after they found a Human among the victims. The situation worsened as reports of deaths in other villages around the Ragnos Lakes filtered in. Although Ravilan himself was secretly behind the deaths in Tetsubal, the outbreaks elsewhere had been the design of Yaru's wife, Seelah Korsin, who had learned of Ravilan's duplicity and sought to frame him and his people to rid herself of them once and for all. To this end, she convinced Yaru to authorize a purge of every Red Sith on Kesh&mdash;which included Ravilan. Being the spokesperson of his fellow Fifty-seven Red Sith, Ravilan was captured and subsequently tortured by Seelah, who revealed her role in the event and her part behind the deaths of all of the Red Sith children. The life of the last Red Sith on Kesh was then ended as Seelah's son, Jariad Korsin, struck him down on Seelah's orders.

Biography
Ravilan was a male of the red-skinned Sith species and a native of the Sith Empire during the Great Hyperspace War of 5,000 BBY. During this time, the position of Dark Lord of the Sith had been vacated by the late Marka Ragnos, whose passing also brought an end to the Sith Empire's Golden Age. Two opposing Sith Lords, Naga Sadow and Ludo Kressh, stepped up to take his place as Dark Lord. Ravilan was a supporter of Sadow, whose expansionist ambitions were opposed by the conservative views of Kressh, who was content with the long-enjoyed stability of the Sith Empire in its secluded area of space and sought to maintain it in its wealthy state. Though it was undecided who was to become the Dark Lord of the Sith, Sadow maneuvered himself into position to gain the title. The Empire split into factions under Kressh and Sadow as a result, and the latter assembled his followers and made plans for galactic conquest. With a newly assembled invasion fleet, Sadow invaded the Republic.

Omen
"Now I know why we kept the Massassi on their own level.''" "Charming. I should say they are not very happy with you'', either."

- Yaru Korsin, noting the smell of the Massassi warriors, is overheard by Ravilan, who comments on his statement, just after Omen crashes on Kesh

During the Hyperspace War, Ravilan was assigned to the Sith dreadnaught Omen. He served aboard Omen for some time, long enough to have shared several missions alongside its captain, Yaru Korsin, with whom Ravilan fenced on occasion. Omen permanent crew was comprised of Human descendants of exiled Tapani nobles, and Force-sensitivity was introduced into their bloodlines over the years as they interbred with the Dark Jedi outcasts of the Hundred-Year Darkness who had interbred with the Sith after 6,900 BBY.

Ravilan was still aboard Omen when Sadow dispatched it&mdash;along with another ship, Harbinger, under Captain Saes Rrogon&mdash;to search for Lignan ore for use during the upcoming battle at Kirrek against the Jedi and the Republic. The mining flotilla, including Ravilan and the rest of Omen crew, along with Harbinger, gathered at Primus Goluud, where miners were recruited to carry out the task Sadow had set for them. The Massassi were stationed aboard both ships as commandos, and Ravilan took the position of quartermaster of the Massassi aboard Omen. The mining flotilla eventually found Lignan deposits on Phaegon III's largest moon and mined it for the valuable ore, but as Harbinger and Omen finished and readied to leave, a Jedi starfighter attacked them. With the first priority to protect the cargo of Lignan crystals, Ravilan and rest of Omen crew made preparations to go into hyperspace. Before they could jump, Harbinger started producing nonsensical sensor readings and began to move toward Omen, on a collision course. However, Omen navigator managed to engage the hyperdrive, sending Omen into hyperspace. Despite his efforts, Omen did not completely avoid colliding with Harbinger, and the ship was knocked off course slightly as a result. The warped physics of hyperspace combined with the collision as they entered it caused terminal damage to the ship. Contact with a gravity well in hyperspace caused the shielding to fail and the bulkheads to give way, and the armory was completely removed by a seismic tug, taking a large portion of the quarterdeck with it.

Omen exited hyperspace out of control and plunging toward an unknown planet. Yaru tried desperately to regain control of the ship but crash-landed nonetheless in a sharp mountain range surrounded by sea, just managing to stop Omen before it fell off the edge of the adjacent cliff and into an abyss. 355 beings&mdash;including Ravilan&mdash;survived the catastrophe, but due to injuries and the hazardous terrain as they were coming down from the mountain, twenty-one died along the way. By sunrise Ravilan had met up with Yaru and Seelah Korsin&mdash;a former battlefield medic and the wife of Yaru's brother, Devore&mdash;to discuss what was happening to the Massassi. Eighty of Ravilan's warriors had survived the crash, but for some reason they all seemed to be dying rapidly from exposure to the planet's atmosphere. Already, Ravilan's assistants were burning in a pyre a third of the Massassi who had initially survived the crash.

Two days later, Ravilan split the last of the Massassi between himself and Yaru. With his portion of the Sith, Yaru went up to the crash site to test the transmitter and see if it was possible for the Sith Empire to find and rescue them and the Lignan crystal cargo. Ravilan was initially surprised to see Yaru upon his return. After finding out that the transmitter beacon did not work, Ravilan was saddened to learn that the last of the Massassi from Omen had died. That night, Devore Korsin did not arrive at the campsite. This caused concern among some of the Sith, who believed him missing from the crash-site and eventually presumed him to be dead.

Adari Vaal
"We are the Skyborn&mdash;and we will return to the stars!"

- Yaru Korsin declares himself and the rest of the Sith to be the Skyborn

The second night after Ravilan and the crew of Omen crash-landed on the planet, a native of the planet accidentally stumbled upon the Sith encampment, alerting the inhabitants within. The Keshiri woman, Adari Vaal, spent three days learning to talk comfortably with the Sith, while Yaru and Ravilan's cyborg cousin Hestus tried to learn her language. Hestus had a "special ear" which helped to speed up the transfer of information between the Sith and Vaal. However, this exchange was very one-sided, with the Sith learning more about the Keshiri and their life on the planet&mdash;Kesh&mdash;than Vaal was learning about the Sith.

Eventually, Yaru was able to inform Vaal of their concerns and their need to reach the mainland. However, according to Vaal, the only way she could go to the mainland was alone on her uvak, Nink. This worried Ravilan and the other present Sith for fear of abandonment in the inhospitable environment in which they had settled. The fact that Vaal's own people were unlikely to listen to her, as she had been labeled a heretic, only added to Ravilan's and the others' concerns.

A week after Ravilan and the rest of the crew of Omen had been stranded on Kesh, Vaal left for a day and returned on Nink with uvak-flying Neshtovar nobles of the Keshiri following her. The Sith met with the Keshiri, who, after observing their appearance and talents, believed the offworlders to be the Skyborn&mdash;the heroic deities of Keshiri legends. With their newfound authority and status amongst the Keshiri, Ravilan and the rest of the "Skyborn"&mdash;under newly proclaimed "Grand Lord" Yaru&mdash;took the previously ruling Neshtovar caste's quarters as their own and quickly came to rule the Keshiri as a whole. During this time, Ravilan was aloof due to losing the Massassi for whom he had cared. He was referred to by Vaal as a minority within a minority, part of the small group of Sith species members within the small group of Sith; this was very different from the norm within the Sith Empire, where the Sith species were the majority.

At some point while Yaru was giving knowledge to Vaal in the Keshiri capital city of Tahv, Vaal tried an experiment out on Ravilan to test if the Sith could really read minds. She did this by sending him into the busiest quarter of Tahv to find a specific location. She noted that he got lost in the same neighborhood as she did, and although his perceptive abilities were amazing, he still needed accurate information from others in order to find his way. She concluded from this that the Sith could read minds&mdash;but only to an extent. In the years following the conquest of the Keshiri, Ravilan experienced a series of losses, including a serious leg injury in his second year on Kesh when he lost in a disagreement with an uvak.

Genocide
"Oh, and the crimson man has asked for an audience.''" "Crimson man? Ravilan? " "Yes, milady." "''Then I should go."

- Tilden Kaah notifies Seelah Korsin that Ravilan will be having an audience, and of his existence as the "crimson man"

Fifteen years after the Sith crew of Omen had crash-landed on Kesh, Ravilan continued to suffer from the injured leg he had received in his second year there. Over that time, the planet's effects had faded Ravilan's coloring from crimson to a more somber maroon hue. Without the Massassi to keep or a mission to carry out, he had held a series of various tasks to pass the time. His most important job was that of spokesperson for the Fifty-seven, a group that included the surviving Red Sith on Kesh&mdash;those whose bloodlines ran truest to the Sith species&mdash;and those beings who were more interested in leaving Kesh and getting the Lignan ore to Sadow than staying there. However, since its inception, "the Fifty-seven" had been rendered an inapplicable name, as a dozen had died over the time since they had landed due to accident or lack of ability. The fact that none of the Red Sith offspring were surviving past a single day added to Ravilan's and the Fifty-seven's reasons for wanting to abandon Kesh. As the spokesperson, Ravilan had earned the nickname the "crimson man" amongst the Keshiri.

Crisis at Tetsubal
"Yes&mdash;I will be in the south, as you requested, visiting the towns of the Ragnos Lakes. There are eight villages on various bodies of water, all with different specimens to examine.''" "That's a lot of territory. You alone?" "As you requested. I start in Tetsubal, farthest away." "''Take your whole retinue. It's important&mdash;and it'll go faster if you split up. And you could all stand to get off this mountain for a few days."

- Ravilan and Yaru Korsin discuss the former's trip to Tetsubal

Ravilan and a team of his investigated Omen to see if there was anything left that the Sith could use. He employed a strong Keshiri named Gorem to assist him and his team in pulling apart one of the decks of Omen to reach what remained in the crushed sections. There, Ravilan found some cyanogen silicate&mdash;a cauterizing agent used for the Massassi by their healers. When Gorem died after touching a stained deck plate from the Massassi apothecary, Ravilan realized that the silicate could be used against the Keshiri without any adverse effects on the Red Sith.

A week later, Ravilan asked for an audience with the Sith. During the meeting, the Houk Gloyd described his latest idea for leaving Kesh and gaining the Sith Empire's attention, not knowing that by this time the Sith Empire had already fallen. After he finished his speech, Ravilan stepped forward. Yaru&mdash;still the Grand Lord of the Keshiri and the Sith&mdash;walked forward and addressed him, expecting Ravilan to also present an idea about getting them off Kesh; instead, Ravilan brought up the subject of ancestry and how the people under the service of Seelah were documenting the ancestry of the crew of Omen. Though the research only applied to Humans, Ravilan still objected to it, as many in both groups had at least some degree of interbreeding with the other. For Ravilan and the Red Sith on Kesh, the subject of interbreeding with the Dark Jedi was a moment of great pride, and picking it apart through documentation was a sensitive topic for his people. However, the causes for the Massassi's deaths, and why the Red Sith offspring were dying now, were still unknown to them, and so Yaru disagreed with him and thought that the research should continue. Ravilan suggested that in order to better understand the issue, one of the his people should be accepted into the crèche as a midwife. Seelah&mdash;who was in charge of the crèche&mdash;immediately interrupted and refused his suggestion. She thought the Red Sith were not qualified medical personnel; the fact that she had developed an extreme hatred toward the Red Sith under Dark Lord Kressh's care did not help Ravilan's cause. However, Ravilan was insistent; he was complimenting her work&mdash;to him, it was only fair that the Red Sith, like her Sith, were allowed to thrive. Halting the conversation between the two, Yaru told them that their discussion would be continued later.

Ravilan then informed Yaru that he would be in the south visiting the towns of the Ragnos Lakes. Yaru had previously assigned him to examine the eight villages there, specifically the bodies of water they were on and the specimens of fluorescent algae they contained. Because they had found out that Kesh was devoid of any useful metals, the algae had potential use in lighting the Sith structures. Ravilan was to start in the vast amount of territory in Tetsubal, the village farthest away from the Sith sanctum in the Takara Mountains, where Omen had crashed fifteen years earlier. Before Ravilan left, Yaru told him that he should take with him the rest of the Red Sith, so that the work would get completed faster. He also told Ravilan to address him as "Grand Lord" in the future. It was an order that had come from Seelah, who had married Yaru after the death of Devore. Ravilan had no choice but to obey his commands even though "Grand Lord" had been used only by the Keshiri to address Yaru.

Ravilan and the Fifty-seven formulated a plan in light of what had happened to Gorem after coming into contact with the cyanogen silicate. Ravilan realized that since the silicate could be used against the Keshiri, it could be used as a tool to force Yaru and the rest of the Sith to focus on getting off-world instead of continuing to build on Kesh. When Ravilan arrived in Tetsubal, he took the cyanogen silicate and put it into the aqueducts of the villages, where it intensified with its contact with the water, killing all those in the village like a plague, including his Human aide. Ravilan realized that this meant that Humans, too, were affected by cyanogen silicate; only the Red Sith were unharmed by its affects. Following his discovery, Ravilan sent a message through the Force to the Sith sanctum in the Takara Mountains. In it he alerted them that everyone in Tetsubal had died except for him, and he refrained from revealing his involvement in the incident.

When Yaru and Seelah arrived in Tetsubal, Ravilan lied and said that he had gone to meet his contacts in the town circle with a plaza and a large sundial. He explained how he had been unable to locate his Human aide and so had taken up position on top of the sundial to call for her. From there, he had also surveyed the plague that was consuming Tetsubal's Keshiri population. The Korsins wondered if what had happened was the result of a biological agent or an airborne disease. Their worries intensified when they eventually found Ravilan's dead aide, and realized that this illness not only affected the Keshiri but could also affect the Human Sith. Ravilan suggested that because of this it would be necessary to not only burn the village to keep the illness from spreading, but to also cease all contact between the Sith and the Keshiri&mdash;a suggestion that surprised Yaru. Seelah disagreed, saying that the Sith depended on the Keshiri too much and shared her belief that without the Keshiri they would not survive. Ravilan, however, reminded them that they were Sith, and that they should not be dependent on non-Sith such as the Keshiri. He even went so far as to suggest that, since they had been standing there for some time and the plague had not affected them, this plague was really a warning from the dark side. Bringing his attention back to the conversation, Yaru took Ravilan off on a walk through the village to discuss this subject. Seelah held back and examined the body of Ravilan's aide before following them and announcing that she would be retreating back to the Sith sanctum, and Ravilan cautioned her about bringing the plague into the Sith stronghold before she left.

Ravilan and Yaru arrived back at the Takara Mountains during the night to find that word of the crisis had spread amongst the Sith. Communications were the main problem, as the Sith had been so stirred and confused by the information of the recent event that even the most experienced heralds were having trouble fielding messages. Yaru called for all the Sith to return to the Takara Mountains, but he was careful that the word of the crisis did not reach the ears of Keshiri. He also sent out reconnaissance fliers to check the surrounding areas around Tetsubal to see if the plague had spread.

Sith Purge
"All gone. Right?''" "''All gone. You are the last."

- Ravilan asks Seelah Korsin if he is the last of the Red Sith on Kesh and receives a confirmation

Ravilan reported to Yaru that all the Red Sith had returned safely to the Takara Mountains. Though Ravilan was pleased, a messenger then arrived with news that the plague had struck again, this time at Rabolow, another village on the Ragnos Lakes. Ravilan was very surprised and disturbed by this news; he and his people had only planted the cyanogen silicate in the aqueducts of Tetsubal. When Seelah remarked that his people were assigned there, Ravilan ignored her and went off to talk with his associate, who had just returned from Rabolow to figure out what had happened there.

Reports of Ragnos Lake villages struck by the plague continued to pour in, and Seelah told Yaru that she thought Ravilan and his people were adding cyanogen silicate to the water around all the villages. The Grand Lord believed her; convinced that the Red Sith were plotting to destroy them, he called in all of the other Sith and ordered them to destroy and wipe out the Red Sith for this apparent treachery. Outnumbered and caught by surprise, the Red Sith were driven back and slaughtered. Their Human counterparts placed the heads of murdered Red Sith at even intervals along the main plaza at the Sith temple. With only a small number of the Red Sith remnant left, Yaru and his chief lieutenants cornered them in a last stand beside the precipice where Omen had crashed and had nearly fallen over the edge fifteen years ago. Those who surrendered were flung over the side of the mountain to their deaths.

Ravilan, the only remaining Red Sith on Kesh, was captured quickly due to his damaged leg. As the leader of his kinsmen, he was held captive centimeters off the ground by strong cords that were usually used to hold down uvaks while they were being washed. Out of the stable master's stone silo where Ravilan was held, water poured out of slots high up the tower for one minute at a time and drenched Ravilan, choking him to the point of complete exhaustion. After recovering, Ravilan finally registered Seelah's presence. She confirmed to him that all the Red Sith had been wiped out, aside from him. Confused, Ravilan admitted that he and his people were responsible for the "plague," but that they had only caused it at Tetsubal, and stated that he knew nothing about the other villages. Seelah revealed that she was in fact responsible for the introduction of the silicate into the other villages and the subsequent extermination of the Red Sith. After she had returned from Tetsubal, she had sent her most trusted aides out to the various Ragnos Lake villages, where they had planted the cyanogen silicate in the aqueducts and wells of each, made possible by the fact that her ward had the last remaining supply of the chemical. While she could not determine what had happened to the Keshiri of the village due to her unfamiliarity with their biology, she deduced that the cyanogen silicate had to be the cause, due to the swollen, blue features on the tongue of Ravilan's dead Human aide.

Ravilan was horrified by Seelah's revelation, disgusted with the knowledge that she had orchestrated the genocide against his people. His captor saw the eradication of the Red Sith in the Empire as an inevitability based on the way things were going in Sadow's hands, with his expansion and allowance of other species into higher ranked positions. Through this, Seelah believed the Red Sith would eventually become obsolete and replaced. Ravilan disagreed, stating that Sadow valued both the new potential Sith as well as the old Sith. Seelah then gestured to the guard beside Ravilan, releasing more water down upon him. This time it took Ravilan much longer to recover. He explained how he thought the Sith society could have worked on Kesh, similar to how the Dark Jedi and the Sith species had millennia earlier, if only his children had survived on Kesh. He then realized that Seelah had also been responsible for the deaths of all the Red Sith children who had been born on Kesh, as it was she who was in charge of the Sith crèche. At this, Seelah told him that his people would have eventually done the same thing to the Human Sith. With Ravilan still moaning in horror at what she had done, Seelah told the guard&mdash;her son, Jariad Korsin&mdash;to finish him off. Jariad wielded a jagged vibroblade as he leaped forward and attacked, before he finally drew his lightsaber and cut Ravilan down. With Ravilan's death, Gloyd was left as the only non-Human Sith alive on the planet. Although it seemed that the plan to exterminate the Red Sith had solely been Seelah's idea, she had actually been manipulated by the Keshiri Adari Vaal and Tilden Kaah in their larger plan to rid Kesh of all of the Sith.

Personality and traits
"Where&hellip;are your Massassi?''" "All dead. You don't think I wanted to do this myself, do you?" "''No, of course not&mdash;Commander."

- Ravilan and Korsin

Ravilan was a crimson-skinned Sith with yellow eyes, as well as eyebrow-stalks and cheek tendrils, which were all common physical characteristics of the Sith species. Ravilan's skin color changed over his time on Kesh from a red color to a more somber maroon. Over this time Ravilan continued to wear his earrings and other Sith ornamentation, which eventually only served to make him look more dull with his more maroon coloring. Yaru believed that Ravilan looked as pure-blooded as possible for a Red Sith.

Like all the Red Sith on Kesh, Ravilan was proud of his Sith heritage, especially the subject of interbreeding between his species and the Dark Jedi exiles following the Hundred-Year Darkness. Though it was a topic of pride for his people, he and his kinsmen were also very sensitive about the topic, and didn't like it being picked apart and analyzed. For this reason, Ravilan and his people were against the project of documenting the ancestry of Human Sith on Kesh, trying to prevent their ancestry from being revealed, because even though the study only applied to Human Sith, many of both species had intertwined ancestry due to previous interbreeding.

Ravilan was a supporter of Dark Lord Naga Sadow during the Great Hyperspace War. He believed that through Sadow's progressive ways, the Sith Lord valued power in the new species brought into the Empire as well as the Red Sith. This was in strong contrast to other less progressive Sith Lords in the Sith Empire, who valued and saw power only in the Red Sith.

As quartermaster of the Massassi aboard Omen, Ravilan had the job of looking after and keeping the Massassi. Saddened by their deaths after their exposure to Kesh's atmosphere, Ravilan became aloof. After their deaths he held a series of atypical jobs to replace his original one, including becoming the spokesperson of the Fifty-seven, who shared his similar interest of leaving Kesh and getting the Lignan ore to Sadow rather than staying there to build a Sith society as rulers of the Keshiri.

Powers and abilities
"You know where we are? You spoke to someone?"

- Without being told, Ravilan determines that Yaru Korsin has discovered something about the whereabouts of the Sith, and that he had met someone at Omen

Ravilan was a Red Sith who, like all the other members of his species, had the ability to manipulate the Force. As keeper of the Massassi aboard Omen, Ravilan was able to control the Massassi warriors. The loyalty of the Massassi had to be earned, and could not be bought or forced. In Ravilan's second year on Kesh, he became permanently injured in a confrontation with an uvak. This crippled him, limiting his abilities, and contributed partly to his capture during the Red Sith purge thirteen years later.

He demonstrated skill with telepathy numerous times on Kesh; he was able to determine that Yaru had found something out about their location and also that the Captain had met someone when he returned to camp after checking if Omen transmitter was working. Yaru had indeed discovered at the crash-site of Omen that the Sith were bound to the planet and that a sentient species lived on the planet elsewhere from where the Sith were camped. Like Ravilan had determined, Yaru had met with and was also responsible for the death of his brother at the crash-site. Also, once Ravilan had become one of the Skyborn on Kesh, Vaal carried out an experiment on him to test if the Sith could really read minds. She did this by sending him into the busiest quarter of the city of Tahv to find a specific location. Without ever being in the city before, Ravilan was able to find his way through the city, but in one particularly busy neighborhood he could not find the location without the aid of accurate information of others through asking them directly. He was also able to answer Seelah's thoughts when she had unconsciously left them unguarded, picking up the exact lines of her thoughts.

Behind the scenes
Ravilan was first introduced in the eBook Lost Tribe of the Sith: Precipice, released on May 28, 2009 and written by John Jackson Miller. He later appeared in the eBook's sequel, Skyborn, and again in the third eBook in the Lost Tribe of the Sith series, Paragon, in which his character featured in a more prominent role than in the previous two stories.

Appearances

 * Lost Tribe of the Sith: Precipice
 * Lost Tribe of the Sith: Skyborn
 * Lost Tribe of the Sith: Paragon
 * Lost Tribe of the Sith: Savior