Dathka Graush

"It is done. I am free."

- Dathka Graush

Dathka Graush was a Sith Lord who lived about seven millennia before the Battle of Yavin.

Biography
Graush was entombed on Korriban roughly fifty years after he had won one of the planet's periodic civil wars and established a dynasty that ruled over two-thirds of the planet. While he was alive he had his heart removed and replaced with a Force-sensitive crystal. Through Sith Alchemy, he created an army of servants out of dead bodies, Korriban zombies, that helped him establish his rule, which ended with his death.

Like most Sith of the period, his spirit was imprisoned in his tomb on Korriban along with his Sith sword, a holocron, and a Sith amulet. Exactly six months before the destruction of the first Death Star, pirate captain Naz Felyood crashed his ship, Jynni's Virtue, on Korriban. His ship logs indicated that Dathka's spirit was still around.

Behind the scenes
There is some degree of ambiguity present in the Wizards of the Coast article. It states that Graush was a "pure blooded Dark Lord" and that his death was 7,000 BBY. This seems impossible, due to the Hundred Year Darkness having recently begun at this point, with the Sith Empire not even having yet been founded. Since it is already established that Ajunta Pall was most likely the first Dark Lord of the Sith, Dathka may have become the Dark Lord immediately afterward.

It is also possible, and perhaps more likely, that Dathka was the Sith Lord when the Dark Jedi arrived on Korriban &mdash; as we know, during the warring era of the native Sith, after the arrival of Ajunta Pall and the others their Sith ruler was slain by the Dark Jedi. This would make sense, as Dathka is said to have ultimately been assassinated and his approximate death date fits in with the time of the Dark Jedi arrival on Ziost. The fact that Graush is buried in the Valley of Golg, rather than the Valley of the Dark Lords like all the later rulers of the Sith Empire, would seem to support this theory, as well as his "pure Sith" ethnicity - unlike the baseline humans that comprised the early Dark Lords of the Sith Empire.

Appearances

 * Korriban: Planet of Lost Souls