Cal Kestis

"You know I've been alone for... a while now. Without any...purpose. Just hiding. It's no way to live. Not for a Jedi. Or a droid. Maybe Cere was right. Maybe we're done hiding."

- Cal Kestis, to BD-1

Cal Kestis was a Force-sensitive human male Jedi Knight who survived Order 66 during the Clone Wars, due to the sacrifice of his Master Jaro Tapal. He became a member of the Scrapper Guild on the planet Bracca, working there as a rigger during the reign of the Galactic Empire. Before the rise of Emperor Palpatine, Kestis was a Padawan who served the Jedi Order during the final days of the Galactic Republic. He served alongside his mentor Jedi General Tapal in the galaxy-wide Clone Wars.

Everything changed for the young Jedi-in-training on the day of Order 66, the purge that all-but wiped out the Jedi Order. Betrayed by the clone troopers who served under their command, Tapal died protecting his apprentice from their former comrades. Having lost most of his fellow Jedi to the purge, Kestis went into hiding on Bracca but was ultimately discovered five years later by an Imperial group of Jedi hunters. Forced to reveal his secret connection to the Force, Kestis would reconnect with his Jedi roots as he sought to finish his training. To that end, he found a new mentor in the former Jedi Knight Cere Junda, who was on a secret mission of her own&mdash;to rebuild the fallen Jedi Order.

Early life
A human male, Cal Kestis was a young member of the Jedi Order during the last years of the Galactic Republic. During his training to become a Jedi, Kestis traveled with Grand Master Yoda to the ice planet Ilum and participated in The Gathering, a rite of passage where all Jedi younglings retrieved a kyber crystal to build their lightsaber. He would eventually be taken as a Padawan by Jedi Master Jaro Tapal. In a training session with his master, Cal was taught that with persistence and the Force as his ally, he will overcome any obstacle and later in another he would be trained to use his force power of telekinesis.

Clone Wars
During the Clone Wars that spanned across the galaxy, Kestis served in the Grand Army of the Republic while training as a Padawan under the supervision of Jedi General Tapal. Following their successful mission on the planet Bracca, Kestis and his Jedi Master were preparing to leave for Mygeeto when Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine initiated Order 66, declaring every Jedi an enemy of the state. The clone troopers of the 13th Battalion that served faithfully under the Jedi's command suddenly turned against their general, determined to kill them both.

Kestis was able to avoid most of the clones by sneaking through the ventilation system while Tapal sabotaged their ship's reactor, ensuring the  Venator-class Star Destroyer's imminent destruction. Despite losing his original lightsaber, Kestis made it to the escape pods with his master, but both were attacked by clone troopers as they attempted to evacuate the Star Destroyer. Although they managed to enter one of the pods, Tapal sustained several wounds to the chest, fatally injuring him while Kestis received a minor cut to his jaw. Kestis was unable to save the life of his master, who died imploring his pupil to stay true to the Jedi way, await the Jedi High Council's signal, and trust only in the Force. Kestis, who kept Jaro Tapal's lightsaber, was traumatized by the ordeal.

Escape from Bracca
In the five years following the rise of the Galactic Empire, Kestis went into hiding to escape the purge that killed most of his fellow Jedi. He found work on Bracca by joining the Scrapper Guild as a rigger, while the Empire consolidated its reign over the galaxy. Despite his efforts to remain hidden, the Imperial Inquisitorius ultimately discovered his connection to the Force, compelling Kestis to flee for his life once more. Kestis was narrowly saved by two individuals, Cere Junda and Greez Dritus. With the Empire in pursuit, Kestis sought to re-awaken his connection to the force and complete his Jedi training. Junda revealed herself to be a former Jedi Knight intent on restoring the Jedi Order. She also revealed that to achieve this goal, they would need to travel to Bogano to retrieve a Jedi Holocron containing a list of Force-sensitive children scattered throughout the galaxy. It turns out this holocron was contained within a vault which only a Jedi could open.

The Vault
After reaching Bogano to enter the vault, Kestis stumbled on a friendly droid, BD-1, who helped Kestis complete his quest. After being trapped in a cave, Kestis was able to improve his connection to the force, and by necessity, re-learned the ability to wall-run in the process. Now able to escape the cave, he made his way towards the vault. Upon reaching it, BD-1 projected a message from Jedi Master Eno Cordova, who went over the details with the Holocron and revealed that, to access it, Kestis had to find the tombs of three Zeffo Sages. With BD-1's aid, Kestis continued his journey to rebuild the Jedi Order. Following Cordova's directions, Kestis and crew traveled to Zeffo to search for the tombs.

The Tombs of Zeffo
"You better get moving. There's a lot to learn here."

- Cere Junda, to Cal Kestis after landing on Zeffo

On Zeffo, Kestis learned that the Empire occupied the planet to mine for ancient artifacts. The directive, code-named "Project Auger," was terminated after Zeffo's magnetic winds proved too difficult for the Empire to deal with. Kestis, guided by the force, was able to pass through and enter the Tomb of Eilram to search for a message left by Cordova. Inside the tomb, Cal found another holo-recording left by Cordova telling them to travel to Kashyyyk to find the Wookiee Chieftain Tarfful.

Assisting the Kashyyyk Resistance
After landing on Kashyyyk, the crew of the Mantis found themselves embroiled in a conflict between the Empire and an early group of rebels. Kestis hijacked an Imperial AT-AT and destroyed a large number of Imperial forces. The rebel insurgent Saw Gerrera took note of Kestis' actions and asked for his assistance in liberating the planet. Saw and his Partisans were in the middle of a campaign to liberate a nearby wroshyr sap refinery. With the possibility that Tarfful could be one of the Wookiees detained there, Kestis and BD-1 agreed to help him.

After freeing the imprisoned Wookiees and taking the refinery from the Empire, Cal still had no information on Tarfful's whereabouts. Luckily Choyyssyk, one of the Wookies Kestis helped liberate, had fought alongside Tarfful in the past. He and Mari Kosan, a member of Saw's guerrilla fighters, agreed to find Tarfful for Cal. However, just as he received this news, Cere discovered an Imperial transmission revealing the Empire was close to unearthing another tomb on Zeffo.

Return to Zeffo
After Kestis rushed back to Zeffo to stop the Empire from progressing further into the Miktrull's tomb, he fell into a trap sprung by the Second Sister. She revealed herself to be Trilla Suduri, Cere's former Padawan. After a perilous battle, Suduri seemed to get the upper hand on Kestis but before she could strike him down, BD-1 intervened - activating an unbreakable laser field between the two of them. As Kestis escaped into Miktrull's Tomb, he tried to call Cere but was interrupted by Trilla slicing his comm.

After exploring the tomb further, Kestis climbed onto a hanging sarcophagus. However, the Second Sister's forces had caught up with him and the Inquisitor ordered her forces to shoot the sarcophagus down. Finding himself falling into certain death, Kestis again was able to improve his connection to the force, and pulled himself towards his saber just in the nick of time, landing safely on a ledge below. On their way out of the tomb, Kestis and BD-1 found another encrypted log from Cordova, explaining how the key to the Bogano Vault is a device called the Zeffo Astrium, which he would of course have to find. Before he was able to return to the Mantis, Kestis was captured by a Haxion Brood bounty hunter.

Waking up, Kestis found himself imprisoned and BD-1 missing. After escaping and finding BD-1, Kestis discovered he had been captured by the infamous Sorc Tormo and forced to fight in a brutal colosseum. Kestis ended up defeating all opponents, in addition to the bounty hunter that had captured him and stolen BD-1 beforehand. At the climax of the show, the Mantis burst into the Haxion Brood's lair to rescue them. However, upon boarding, his crewmates were not met with immediate gratitude. Kestis learned the Brood found him because Greez lied about paying off his debts. Kestis also struggled with the revelation that Cere had given up Trilla under torture. Their argument was cut short as they received word from Mari Kosan -- Tarfful had been found in the Shadowlands and had agreed to meet him.

Journey to the Origin Tree
On the way to Kashyyyk, Greez approached Kestis telling him to go easy on Cere. Landing on the forested planet, they found the remains of the resistance, which had been nearly wiped out by the Second Sister. Finding Mari, she told Kestis that Saw had since left the planet and split their forces. After fighting their way through the recaptured refinery, Kestis and BD-1 regrouped with Mari and Choyyssyk to meet Tarfful. Tarfful told Cal to climb the Origin Tree and Mari gave Kestis a breather to help him get there, and the two groups parted ways.

On the way up to the Origin Tree, Cal and BD-1 encountered the wounded Shyyyo bird. After healing it, they were granted safe passage to the top of the Origin Tree, where they discovered that Cordova had found a Zeffo Astrium there years beforehand and that the tomb on Dathomir may hold another. Just as they were leaving, the Ninth Sister attacked. After a fierce battle, Kestis emerged victorious by cutting off the Ninth Sister's hand and pushing her off the tree. The Shyyyo bird then carried Kestis and BD-1 down the tree, and Kestis returned to the Mantis to make a run for Dathomir.

Trials on Dathomir
After landing on Dathomir, Cal and BD-1 faced off against a Nightsister who demanded they leave the planet immediately. When they refused, she commanded the Nightbrothers to attack them. Shortly after escaping that threat, Cal and BD-1 came upon a Wanderer, who claimed to be studying Zeffo ruins. Cal and BD-1 nearly made it to the next tomb when they were ambushed by more Nightbrothers. While they did eventually overcome that, they were forced to wander through the dangerous Dathomirian swamps. They were once again found by the Nightsister Merrin who began raising undead Nightsisters to attack them as they proceeded on their way. Inside a dark cave, BD-1 found climbing claws on a Nightbrother corpse. Before Kestis could grab them they were attacked by the monstrous Gorgara. After warding the beast off one time, Gorgara soon returned to continue the fight. An intense aerial battle culminated in a devastating crash that killed Gorgara, and Kestis was able to get back on track.

After fighting through Merrin's brethren, Kestis and BD-1 finally made it into the tomb, where Kestis experienced a flashback in which he remembered Jaro's sacrifice to protect Kestis from the clone troopers during the Purge. Kestis was then attacked by Jaro's spirit, resulting in his lightsaber being destroyed. Defeated and disheartened, Kestis attempted to flee back to the Mantis, but ran into the wanderer from before, who revealed himself to be Taron Malicos, a former Jedi now studying the dark side. Malicos asked Kestis to join his quest for power but was cut off by Merrin. She raised the horde of undead to destroy him and Kestis, who narrowly escaped. After this experience, Cere advised Cal to build his own lightsaber.

The Jedi Temple on Ilum
Cere gifted Kestis her lightsaber hilt, though her kyber crystal had been sold long ago to pay for Greez's debts. Traveling to the planet Ilum, Kestis entered the caves and followed the call of his crystal through a crack in an ice wall. The ice beneath Kestis and BD-1 shattered, sending Kestis plummeting into the icy water. BD-1 saved Kestis just in time, and after finding his crystal, it split into two. Ready to give up, that triggered BD-1 to play a log from Cordova, revealing BD-1 had sacrificed his memories to store logs vital to Cal's quest. Cal combined Cere's and Jaro's hilts, creating a new, double-bladed lightsaber.

On their way out of the caves, Cal discovered a massive Imperial mining operation on Ilum to extract the planet's kyber crystals. As Kestis and BD-1 fought their way back to the Mantis, Cere blocked the Empire's comms to prevent them from calling reinforcements. The Empire eventually reversed the slice, but it gave Kestis and BD-1 enough time to get back to the Mantis and the crew escaped back to Dathomir.

Retrieving the Astrium & the Holocron
On Dathomir, Kestis returned to face the shade of his master. He realized the only way to defeat Tapal was to embrace his past and move forward. He knelt before Tapal's spectre, causing the apparition to vanish. As Kestis and BD-1 moved into the Tomb of Kujet, they came upon Merrin. This time, however, she was willing to talk. Cal learned that she might be the only survivor of the Nightsister massacre carried out by General Grievous during the Clone Wars. Merrin learned about the Jedi Purge and Kestis disavowed Malicos as a fallen Jedi.

Merrin allowed Kestis to pass, warning that Malicos was ahead. Malicos tried one last time to turn Kestis, but attacked when he refused. After Malicos began to gain the upper-hand, Merrin intervened, blasting Malicos with magick. They worked together to defeat Malicos, and Merrin buried him alive. Kestis then revealed that he came to Dathomir for an Astrium, and Merrin agreed to help him. Desiring more knowledge of the galaxy and a future for her people, Merrin joined Cal's quest. After Kestis and Merrin found the all-important device, the crew stood ready to return to Bogano and retrieve the Holocron.

Cal and BD-1 brought the Astrium to the Vault and opened the Holocron. Kestis was swept into a vision of a potential future if he kept and used the Holocron. It showed younglings training and calling him master, only to be ambushed by the Empire. Death and torture followed, and Kestis was transformed into an Inquisitor. When he awoke, Trilla stood before him. After a drawn-out duel, Kestis pulled her lightsaber towards himself, thrusting him into a Force echo showing Cere and Trilla tortured and Cere giving into to the dark side. When he returned, Trilla and the Holocron were gone. Cal ran back to the ship and told Cere. She reached out to the Force, took up Trilla's lightsaber and knighted Cal.

Encounter with Darth Vader
"That doesn't look good." "It isn't. It's him."

- Cal Kestis and Cere Junda, on encountering Darth Vader

Chasing after Trilla, Cal ventured into the Fortress Inquisitorius on Nur to retrieve it back. After defeating her in combat, Cere Junda managed to convince her to turn away from the dark side. Upon doing so, Trilla senses and heard the presence of Vader lurking behind her, realizing he had witnessed her shift away from the Dark, Trilla could sense her final moments were near and quickly yelled "Avenge us!" to Cal and Cere before Vader struck her down. Cal and Cere activated their lightsabers in response to the danger Vader posed.

Cere leaped for Vader head-on with Trilla's lightsaber. This proved ineffective, as the Sith Lord was able to swat her away with a simple telekinetic gesture, sending her down towards the Fortress chasm. With Cal completely outmatched and alone, Vader told the young man that he would be wise to surrender to him. However, Cal could sense the danger Vader posed and, though he agreed with the Sith Lord's remark, he did not back down. Vader was able to effortlessly break Cal's Force barrier and pick him up with the Force, temporarily incapacitating him before throwing out of the room and down the walkway. As Cal stumbled to his feet, Vader hurled parts of the flooring at him. Cal was able to get back on to his feet and run for his life, with Vader right behind him sending Stormtroopers to their death and ripping the room apart. Cal was just barely able to make it to the turbolift on the other side of the room and reach lower levels to escape.

When Cal opened the door to his escape, Vader was already there waiting for him. Vader was able to push him to the ground and stagger him, resulting in a blade lock. As Vader was slowly overpowering Cal, BD-1 shocked the Dark Lord, allowing Cal to stab him. Vader was able to stop the lightsaber from going completely in his stomach, and used the force to push Kestis away. Cal tried to force-pull his saber back to him, but Vader caught it in mid-air, activated it, and used it to stab Kestis in his rib. As Vader came in for the finishing blow, he sensed Cere coming in to attack, who had somehow managed to escape the chasm. This distracted Vader long enough to save Kestis, who then engaged in a fight with Cere against Vader. Vader quickly over-powered them, but Cere tapped into the dark side to slow him down. Vader, sensing the anger in her, tried to convince her to give in to the dark side. Cal, reminding Cere that she still had a choice, was able to prevent Cere from fully turning. As Vader struck with his lightsaber, Cere was able to put up a bubble to block his attack. Seeing how easily this could fail, Kestis used the Force to destroy the already damaged glass holding the water out, which forced Vader to avoid that instead of defeating Cal and Cere, who barely escaped in the chaos.

Once the Holocron was safely on-board the Mantis, Cal decided to destroy it, determining that their fates should be left up to the Force before asking where they should go next.

Personality and traits
A human male, Cal Kestis served the Jedi Order as a Padawan before Order 66 ensued. After the fall of the Jedi, Kestis went to serve the Scrapper Guild as a rigger, a physically demanding and dangerous job. However, Cal was regarded for a focused work ethic and sense of humility he generally kept for himself, yet he was quiet and hard-working. Though he refused to speak on his past as he was quite haunted by it, feeling like he got his Master killed and could have done more, usually reacting with anger or dismissive of his past when it is brought up. Eventually Cal began to open up more about his past and when confronted by the dark side on Dathomir for the second time in the form of his master, Cal fully accepted his past and grew quite a lot from the experience, acting much more level headed and very wise, almost mentoring like towards others.

Lightsaber skills
As a Padawan, Cal originally had a single-bladed blue lightsaber until he lost it down a deep shaft while trying to deflect blaster shots from clones. In an escape pod, Jaro gave Cal his damaged lightsaber, and he kept it with him until the crystal broke on Dathomir five years later. Using its remains, Cere Junda's lightsaber and a newly split Ilum crystal on the planet, Cal built a double-bladed lightsaber that could separate into two separate lightsabers. Like all Jedi, Cal's training made him highly athletically adept beyond the limits of normal beings, which he used to traverse difficult terrain and overpower various enemies with ease.

Cal also displayed competence with Jar'Kai. His skills allowed him to hold his own against Imperial Inquisitors and defeat their Purge Troopers including disarming the Second Sister on Bogano in their third duel and overpowering the Ninth Sister on Kashyyyk. Even against the warrior people of Dathomir; the Nightbrothers, Cal was able to handle them as well. However his skills were not enough to defeat Taron Malicos by himself, who would have killed Cal has it not been for the assistance of Merrin. Also, with Cere Junta's and BD-1's aid, he was completely outmatched by Darth Vader, who disarmed him and with one strike, knocked him on the ground and would have killed Cal with his own lightsaber had it not been for Cere coming to his rescue.

Force abilities
Kestis was able to use Force push, Force pull, Force Stasis and other telekinesis abilities to great effect against opponents. Cal was also extremely skilled with the Psychometry Force technique, being able to recall events in the past that left a strong Force residue behind years or even centuries after their occurrence. However, he was no match for Vader in the Force, who broke his Force barrier and nearly choked him to death. Initially after surviving Order 66, Cal's connection to the Force was severely damaged and as such lost most of his Force abilities save for Force Stasis and Psychometry though as he progressed through his journey, Cal eventually fully repaired his connection to the Force and had grown stronger than when he was a Padawan. Due to his personal growth, his physical growth and abilities with his fully reconnected use of the Force, Cere knighted Cal into a full fledged Jedi Knight prior to infiltrating Fortress Inquisitorius on Nur.

Other abilities
As a speaker of Basic, Kestis also understood Binary.

Behind the scenes
Cal Kestis is the protagonist of the Star Wars video game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which was released on November 15, 2019. He is portrayed by Cameron Monaghan. Before settling on Kestis, the game developers thought about having either an alien or female protagonist, but Kestis was ultimately used because they didn't want to "alienate" the player nor have a female protagonist competing with Rey, the sequel trilogy's protagonist.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order