Desolator crisis

"The Empire has formally disavowed Darth Angral's actions, saying he's gone rogue. It's a lie, but the Senate refuses to authorize a military response.''" "For good reason. Neither the Republic nor the Jedi are prepared for another war. We would lose. Billions would die." "''And if the enemy turns our weapons against us, billions will die. Tarnis transmitted details of all our top secret projects to his father."

- General Var Suthra and Grand Master Satele Shan discuss Darth Angral at the beginning of the crisis

Near the end of the Cold War between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire, the Sith Lord Darth Angral waged a personal war against the Republic and the Jedi Order in an attempt to gain his revenge upon a Jedi Knight, who had killed Angral's son Tarnis on the Republic capital of Coruscant.

Using information on the Republic's superweapon projects sent to him by his son, Angral sent his apprentices to seize control of several Republic weapon projects across the galaxy. Attacking Republic bases on Taris, Tatooine, Nar Shaddaa, and Alderaan, the Sith Lord combined the different weapons technologies into a single superweapon known as the Desolator, which he used to annihilate the agriworld of Uphrades. Moving on to the Jedi's homeworld of Tython, Angral planned to destroy that world as well, but was defeated aboard his flagship Oppressor by the same Jedi Knight who had stopped his son from destroying Coruscant.

In the wake of Angral's assault on Republic space, the Treaty of Coruscant began to quickly dissolve into war between the Republic and the Empire.

Prelude
The Desolator crisis centered around two powerful Force-users and their apprentices: Jedi Master Orgus Din and the Sith Lord Darth Angral. The two humans were bound by a rivalry that stretched back to the last days of the Great Galactic War between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire, where the pair fought before the Senate Building during the Sacking of Coruscant in 3,653 BBY. When the Treaty of Coruscant ended the twenty-eight-year conflict and forced the galaxy into a tense Cold War, Angral was furious at the lost advantage over the Republic, and his anger only grew over the next decade. Orgus Din and the Jedi Order, meanwhile, retreated to their recently rediscovered homeworld of Tython in the Deep Core and began to slowly rebuild their strength.

Over the next ten years, Angral trained two further apprentices, Nefarid and Sadic, to the status of Lord, while his former student Praven trained Angral's own son Tarnis in the ways of the dark side. Din's apprentice Bengel Morr had been present during the destruction of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant during the Sacking, and was presumed dead&mdash;however, Morr had in fact survived, going insane and turning to the dark side and would marshal the native Flesh Raiders of Tython against the Jedi Order in the weeks leading up to the Desolator crisis. Morr and his forces were defeated, however, with the help of Din's new apprentice, whom the Jedi Master met after witnessing the learner defeat Morr's own apprentice Callef with only a vibrosword. Feeling that the Force had drawn them together, Din decided to take on the young Jedi as his Padawan, and the two investigated the recent activity on Tython. After the apprentice rescued Din from Morr and defeated the Dark Jedi in a duel, the Padawan was granted the rank of Jedi Knight and sent to the Republic capital of Coruscant to investigate a dark presence that the Council had sensed there.

The Planet Prison
"Tarnis will use the Planet Prison against Coruscant. He could trap us here forever. Paralyze the Republic be holding us hostage. You're our only hope of stopping that."

- General Var Suthra

The "dark presence" that the Council sensed was actually Angral's son Tarnis, who was deep undercover as a Republic scientist named Eli Tarnis. Under this alias, Tarnis had joined the Republic's weapons division several years earlier and quickly became the head of the development team for the Planet Prison superweapon. The Planet Prison, a device that ionized a planet's atmosphere in order to blockade enemy worlds without excessive naval force, was one of several weapons projects started by the Mon Calamari general Var Suthra in the aftermath of the Sacking of Coruscant. Suthra, who had witnessed the destruction of the Jedi Temple, founded the projects in honor of the Jedi who had fallen during the defense of their home as a way to end the next war with minimal loss of life.

When the Planet Prison prototype became ready for field tests in 3,643 BBY, Tarnis set his plans in motion. Revealing his true identity as a Sith Lord to Salarr, the leader of the Black Sun criminal syndicate, Tarnis enlisted the gang's aid in exchange for advanced Imperial weapons and technology. At Tarnis' request, the Black Sun thief Vistis Garn and a team of criminals from the Migrant Merchants' Guild raided a secure military warehouse and stole the plans for the Planet Prison and other superweapons, making off with a shipment of weapons and munitions.

Collateral damages
"All that life extinguished... It's unthinkable."

- Kira Carsen

Hero of Tython
The Jedi Knight that would become known as the Hero of Tython was the student of Jedi Master Orgus Din.

Kira Carsen


The human female apprentice of Jedi Master Bela Kiwiiks, Kira Carsen was originally a Child of the Sith Emperor until she fled Sith Space as a child. Carsen lived among refugees on Nar Shaddaa until she was discovered by Kiwiiks, who took her back to the Order as her student. During the early days of the crisis, she worked closely with the Republic Strategic Information Service to aid the former apprentice of Orgus Din in tracking down the Planet Prison superweapon. After the Jedi Knight and Carsen defeated the Sith Lord Tarnis in the ruins of the Jedi Temple, she became the older Jedi's apprentice as her own journeyed to Tatooine in an attempt to secure the Shock Drum weapon. Together with the Knight and T7-O1, Carsen fought the forces of Darth Angral on several worlds in order to destroy the captured Republic superweapons, and her past as a Child was revealed to her master when the Emperor sent a fellow Child named Valis to recover her. After his defeat, Carsen agreed to tell the Jedi Council about her past, and the trust her teacher placed in the young Padawan continued to serve in the Order. In the final weeks of the crisis, Carsen helped rescue her former master Kiwiiks on Tatooine, and faced Darth Angral aboard the Oppressor in a final duel. However, she was possessed by the Sith Emperor during the fight, and was forced to fight her own master until she successfully purged herself of the Emperor's mental control. For her actions during the crisis, she was elevated to the rank of Jedi Knight by the Council, and continued to serve alongside the Knight and T7 during the Second Great Galactic Wawr.

T7-O1


A T7-series astromech droid with a long and storied history, T7-O1 served the Jedi Order as a reconnaissance droid on Tython after his former partner, Jedi Master Ven Zallow, was killed by the Sith Lord Darth Malgus during the fall of the Jedi Temple.

Var Suthra


A male Mon Calamari veteran of the Great Galactic War, Var Suthra served in the Republic Miltary during the Sacking of Coruscant and witnessed the devastation of the Jedi Temple from afar. In an attempt to honor the Jedi who were killed during the attack, Suthra started a series of superweapon projects in an attempt to end the next war with minimal casualties.

Galen


An agent of the Strategic Information Service, Galen was stationed on the capital during the Cold War. By the time of the beginning of the crisis, Galen had risen to head the SIS unit based in the Senate Tower, and he reported directly to General Var Suthra. When the Planet Prison files went missing, Galen's unit handled the investigation, and Galen worked directly with the Knight to recover the stolen data. After the Jedi discovered that the Republic's weapon facilities were no longer secure, Galen agreed to investigate the Power Guard Project on Nar Shaddaa while Jedi Masters Din and Kiwiiks traveled to Alderaan and Tatooine. However, Galen walked into a trap&mdash;he was captured by the forces of Lord Sadic and subjected to the Power Guard procedures, placing the now-cybernetically-enhanced SIS agent under Sadic's command. When the Knight arrived to locate Galen, Sadic used the agent in his attempts to stop the young Jedi, but the Knight helped Galen overcome his conditioning when the Jedi refused to kill him. In a vain attempt to end his life with purpose, Galen attacked Sadic's lab alone and was defeated by the Power Guards under the Siths' control. Fortunately, Galen survived and later worked with the SIS to control his implants, going deep undercover in Imperial territory.

Nasan Godera


A human male scientist who worked for the Galactic Republic during the Great Galactic War, Doctor Nasan Godera was widely considered a genius in the field of advanced military technology. A staunch opponent of the Empire, Godera was furious when the Republic submitted to the Treaty of Coruscant, and resigned in protest before secretly retiring to the ruined world of Taris. There, the scientist built a series of laboratories manned by droid assistants, and continued his work over the next decade until he was swept up in the Desolator crisis. The SIS had long suspected that Godera was present on Taris, and Angral acted upon this information in the files sent to him by his son and sent Imperial Intelligence to capture the scientist.

Watcher One
The man known as Watcher One was a shadowy member of Imperial Intelligence, long at the top of the SIS' most wanted. A master spy with years of experience, Watcher One surprisingly remained a man of principles despite his work with the Sith Empire, and served the Empire out of honor and and a sense of duty more than any true loyalty to the government's ideals. When Darth Angral assigned him to Taris to retrieve Doctor Godera, the operative suspected that the Jedi Knight who had killed Tarnis would also attempt to locate the scientist, and prepared for the eventuality.

Praven
A Sith Pureblood member of a long-standing family in the Sith Empire, Lord Praven was one of Darth Angral's three apprentices during the Great Galactic War and the Cold War. One of the fifty Sith who stormed the Jedi Temple under the command of Darth Malgus and Lord Adraas during the Sacking of Coruscant, Praven defeated Jedi Master Usma in combat. He later taught Angral's son Tarnis as a Sith, completing the man's training by the end of the Cold War. During the Desolator crisis, Angral sent Praven to Tatooine to secure the Shock Drum superweapon. On that desert world, Praven successfully wrested control of the device with minimal casaulties, as his staunch values of honor and loyalty caused him to view senseless killing of innocents with disdain. When he encountered the Jedi Master Bela Kiwiiks, who was also in search of the weapon, he subdued her and complied with Angral's orders to leave her to die with the activated Shock Drum, despite his regret. Not long afterwards, he learned that the Jedi Knight who had killed

Nefarid
A diminutive, cruel human, the man known as Nefarid was trained as a Sith Lord by Darth Angral during the decade following the Treaty of Coruscant.

Behind the scenes
The Desolator crisis appears in Star Wars: The Old Republic, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game released by BioWare and LucasArts on December 20, 2011. It serves as the in-universe events of the story presented in the Prologue and Act I of the Jedi Knight storyline, and as such is subject to certain elements of game mechanics.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: The Old Republic 8: The Lost Suns, Part 2
 * Star Wars: The Old Republic 11: The Lost Suns, Part 5
 * Star Wars: The Old Republic