Chantique

"Somehow, when I turned inside myself to escape, I found something there&mdash;power. The power not to die. The power to heal myself. And once I'd succeeded&mdash;the power to take my freedom&mdash;and my revenge."

- Chantique

Chantique was a female Zeltron slave who lived during the Mandalorian Wars and eventually rose to become the leader of the Crucible, a massive slaving organization. She was born under the name Kessarah on the Core World of Osadia, and spent her childhood at the New Generation Academy on the planet. Her father, Antos Wyrick, ran the academy as a testing ground for his experiment into generating Force-sensitivity in infants on behalf of the Mandalorian warrior clans. Kessarah was one of the first test subjects conceived, but was considered a failure by Wyrick&mdash;she was mentally unstable and did not meet his standards, particularly after the birth of Edessa, an Arkanian Offshoot test subject who proved to be the embodiment of Wyrick's vision. As a result, her father gave her to the Crucible as a slave in exchange for more Arkanian Offshoots who could serve as prospective parents.

As a slave, she was forced to combat other captives in the fight pits maintained by the Crucible. She proved victorious time and again, and around the age of fifteen, she was assigned by her masters to oversee the fights of younger slaves. As their Overseer, she brutally enforced the Crucible's will, throwing captured younglings into deadly combat against one another and thus earning the name Chantique, meaning "destroyer" in the ancient language of the Crucible. She was eventually challenged by one of the children she minded, the young Edessa, who had been captured by the Crucible along with the rest of the younglings at the New Generation Academy not long after Wyrick had given Chantique to the organization. Edessa stabbed Chantique in the back and left her to die, becoming the new overseer while the Zeltron was put back into the slave pits and sold to a buyer in the Outer Rim Territories. During this time, Chantique discovered that she was indeed Force-sensitive, and used that to heal her wounds and find the strength to murder her masters. She lived on the Rim for a time, but eventually made her way back to the Crucible to reclaim her old job as overseer and exact revenge on Edessa.

To her dismay, Edessa had fled the Crucible and gone into hiding, but Chantique swore that she would one day kill her old enemy. Meanwhile, she went about reclaiming her lost status, eventually becoming the Magister Impressor of the Cruicible, overseeing the induction of new "recruits" and the placement of those who progressed beyond the fight pits. Once a year after her assumption of that title, she would locate one of the New Generation students and take them to Osadia for execution, as an act of revenge against her father. In 3,963 BBY, Chantique learned that Edessa, now known as "Jarael," was involving herself in Crucible affairs and working with former Jedi fugitive Zayne Carrick to free slaves that the organization had sold to the Franchise and Sungrazer cooperative. Shortly after, Carrick undertook a solo mission to bring down the Crucible from within the slave ranks, but was instead discovered by Chantique and manipulated into believing that Jarael had been as sadistic a slave driver as she. Her plan worked, and Jarael and Carrick went their separate ways.

Chantique later experienced a Force vision that told her Jarael would be returning to Osadia without Carrick, meaning that the Zeltron could finally confront her nemesis. During the confrontation, Chantique learned that Jarael was accompanied to the planet by Antos Wyrick, and left the Arkanian to hunt down her father and take his life. Wyrick instead attacked her, stabbing her in the back and demanding to know what she had done with the other New Generation students. Upon admitting that she had killed them all, Chantique attempted to kill her father, but died when the double-bladed lightsaber he attempted to defend himself with activated at both ends. The two blades impaled father and daughter, ending both lives.

A failed experiment
"Look outside&mdash;to the Zeltron. Older than others. She is a wild one. Inattentive. Disruptive. No good to me at all. There is no sense prolonging the inevitable. Yes, it would be best for everyone, Golliard&mdash;you can have her."

- Antos Wyrick gives his daughter to the Crucible

The Zeltron woman that would one day be known as Chantique was conceived during the Old Sith Wars as part of a grand scheme to create an army of Force-sensitive supersoldiers loyal to the Mandalorian warriors and their leader, Mandalore the Ultimate. These "Mandalorian Knights" were to rival the Galactic Republic's Jedi Order in a coming war, and serve as a vanguard for Mandalore's conquest of the galaxy. The Mandalorian Knight project was led by Antos Wyrick, a Zeltron doctor and geneticist who had become obsessed with knowing the secret behind Force-sensitivity. During the Great Sith War, Wyrick stole the robe of the legendary Arkanian Jedi Master Arca Jeth, hoping to use the genetic traces on it to uncover the secrets of the Force. With sponsoring from the Mandalore, Wyrick and a number of researchers founded a colony on the Core World of Osadia where they hoped to synthesize Force-sensitive children and train them at their New Generation Academy. The synthesis had to occur in vitro, meaning that sentient fetuses would be altered with Jeth's genetic material from within the womb. Wyrick himself contributed to one of the earliest attempts, and conceived a child with Sibyl, a fellow Zeltron researcher, around 3,963 BBY. Wyrick believed his procedure would work, but upon the infant's birth, he conceded that she was a failure, unbalanced both genetically and mentally and incapable of touching the Force.

The child was named Kessarah and lived as a disappointment to her father in the New Generation Academy along with the children of other researchers that he had similarly deemed to be "failures." Two to three years after Kessarah's birth, Wyrick discovered the reason for his failures: the genetic model of Arca Jeth he had been operating by was incorrect&mdash;the Arkanian also had a Sephi heritage, and the Mandalorian doctor had been unwittingly placing those genes into his test subjects. With this knowledge in hand, he attempted his experiment once more, this time with two Arkanian Offshoots serving as parents. They produced a child named Edessa who was quick to pick up new talents in both martial arts and, Wyrick assumed, the Force. Edessa became Wyrick's pride and joy&mdash;her name literally translated to "triumph" in the Arkanian language&mdash;while Kessarah and the other students continued to be neglected. Kessarah's father replicated his success with Edessa a number of times, creating more Arkanian offshoot children to become his pupils in the Academy. She despised these children and became a schoolyard bully, further disappointing her father as he saw her as a disruption to his experiment.

Wyrick's ambition for more children eventually outgrew his resources, and he was forced to contact the Crucible&mdash;a massive slaver organization&mdash;in order to procure more Offshoot parents. After a number of deliveries, Wyrick was asked by Crucible Captain Dace Golliard for additional compensation for the Arkanians. He offered up his own daughter as payment, and Kessarah was taken by Golliard to join the numerous slaves being held by the Crucible at secret locations across the galaxy. The act earned Wyrick his daughter's hatred, and she vowed to some day make him pay for the betrayal. The Mandalorian scientist neglected to consult Kessarah's mother on the decision, and in the days following her abduction, Sibyl committed suicide.

Making a monster
"I won't tell you who's in the market for slaves who can't do anything. I would have been glad to die."

- Chantique

The Crucible was built around eternal violence, and the slaves were forced to combat one another in fight pits as a constant test of strength. The victors were sold off to high-paying bidders such as dueling leagues, while the failures that survived were auctioned off to buyers who needed laborers for high-risk jobs, like comet mining. As a Zeltron, Kessarah had a natural hypersensitivity the emotions of others, and being surrounded by the pain and strife cultivated by the Crucible twisted her empathetic abilities such that she became a sadist, enjoying the tortured experiences of others. She ultimately fared well in the pits, surviving numerous fights and earning the notice of her minders. While still young, she was singled out for her potential and saddled with the responsibility of overseeing the fights between younger children. Among these younglings were the remaining students from the New Generation Academy, who had been captured by Captain Golliard while Wyrick was away from Osadia. Kessarah was particularly cruel to these new "recruits," as they were termed by the Crucible, pitting them against one another in deadly combat. Her actions eventually earned her the name "Chantique," meaning "destroyer" in the ancient tongue of the Crucible. Her face and upper arms were tattooed with glyphs known as the Flames of the Crucible that represented her new moniker.

As Chantique, she continued her brutal reign over the children she minded until the now-enslaved Edessa resolved to challenge her. The young Arkanian Offshoot waited until they were both away from the fight pits and drove a blade into Chantique's back. The Zeltron was left for dead while Edessa took her place as Overseer of the youth duels. Chantique lost all standing and prestige she had gained, and was no longer able to fight due to her crippling wound. Thus, she was sold off with other invalid slaves to owners in the Outer Rim Territories who Chantique would later refuse to speak about. They abused her so heavily that the young girl wished for death, but she instead found that she had an inner strength that had not yet been accessed. That strength was her as-of-yet undiscovered Force ability, which she was able to tap into and heal her wounds. Motivated by the discovery of her powers, Chantique killed all of her owners in a bid for freedom. In the aftermath the crime, she lived as a fugitive on the Rim, committing a number of additional murders in her teenage years.

Return to the Crucible
"But why would you come back here?''" "Because its different this time. I'm Magister Impressor. I oversee the capture of new recruits''&mdash;the replacement of our successful trainees, and the disposal of our failures. No one will have that power over me, ever again."

- Zayne Carrick and Chantique

Although her time in the Outer Rim was difficult, Chantique survived and eventually chose to return to the Crucible. She blamed Edessa for her downfall and intended to reclaim her old position and exact revenge on the Arkanian. She eventually found her old masters and rejoined them, working to a position of power once again. Soon, however, she learned that Edessa was no longer with the Crucible; the Arkanian had been appalled by the organization's treatment of slaves, and so did what she could to protect the children she minded. She was given the name "Jarael," meaning "protector" in the language of the Crucible, and attempted to reduce the hardships that the slaves were forced to endure. Jarael eventually realized that she could do little to stop the Crucible, and so fled the organization and went into hiding. Chantique had been deprived of her revenge, but nevertheless found other ways to act out her wrath.

She eventually reached a pinnacle of power in the Crucible, becoming the Magister Impressor, which gave her command over the organization's press gangs, as well as the authority to oversee the capture of new recruits, the placement of successful pit fighters, and the disposal of the failed combatants. Immediately after gaining this new position, she went about locating the other children who had been taken from the New Generation Academy. Most of them had survived the fight pits and were now either working as Crucible overseers or being readied for sale. Chantique removed them from the system and imprisoned them in the remains of the abandoned academy on Osadia, intending to kill them as revenge against her despised father and her nemesis, Jarael. To that end, once a year after her ascension to Magister Impressor, she took one of the New Generation students out onto the schoolyard and buried them alive beneath the soil.

When she wasn't focused on the betrayals of her past, Chantique spent her time cultivating a reputation of cruelty and heartlessness that was known throughout the Crucible. She found pleasure in torturing slaves in the most heinous of ways, as evidenced by her treatment of the Gotal slave Goethar Kleej. Shortly after his capture by the Crucible, Kleej angered Chantique; knowing that it was abominable acts in Gotal culture, Chantique severed Kleej's horns from the top of his head, thereby depriving him of his ability to receive electromagnetic signals, which were a primary source of sensory information for Gotals. Sometime later, the Crucible executed Kleej's wife and sold Goethar and his son to the Franchise, a Krish-run dueling league that had financial ties with the major galactic corporation, Lhosan Industries. As she was now the leader of the slave ring, both Dace Golliard and the Sanyassan Magister Protector, Bar'injar, worked beneath her, although she held a rather antagonistic relationship with both. Despite escaping the wrath of her former overseer, Jarael never forgot her time as a slave, as she would use Chantique's name as an alias on Telerath in 3,963 BBY.

Hunting Jarael
"If Jarael wants a war&mdash;I'll give her one. She thinks she's buried the past&mdash;but the past will bury her!"

- Chantique

In 3,963 BBY, Chantique strangled Jervo Thalien to death after he decided to discontinue the use of slave fighters on Jervo's World. She also expressed her desire to settle her score with Jarael, who had been spotted on the station, and planned to harm the Arkanian and anyone who helped her. She would also threaten Dace Golliard with death due to his failure to capture Jarael and Zayne Carrick, but his life was spared by Bar'injar.

The enslavement of Zayne Carrick
Carrick, under alias of Carth Kamlin, was captured in a derelict Aurek fighter and brought to the Crucible training facility on Volgax, where he was pitted against several combatants. One of their senior fighters, Snout, used memnii to show Zayne the history of the Crucible, causing the Jedi to collapse from the rush of memories. The act was part of Bar'injar's plan to show that Jedi could read memnii. Chantique then brought the former Jedi into her own quarters, revealing that the Crucible had known from the beginning who he was and that he was trying to infiltrate the organization. Chantique told Zayne that she was glad that Snout had showed him the Crucible as a whole; Carrick retorted that the fights were meaningless. Chantique pointed out that the Jedi were hypocritical, as they practiced violence to gain their objectives. She then revealed that Jarael's original name was Edessa. "Jarael," as well as the Flames of the Crucible tattooed on her face meant "Destroyer."

Chantique continued her manipulation of the former Jedi by revealing the pasts of herself and Jarael. She explained to Carrick her defeat at Jarael's hand's and subsequent sale, but refused to talk about the kind of masters who were in the market for a fifteen year-old Zeltron slave girl who couldn't defend herself. As she told of her escape from her new owners, Carrick realized that she was using both her Zeltron heritage and her Force powers to influence him. He attempted to reason with her, but she sent him back to fight the Caamasi after he asked her whether all the torturing she did was just "fun" to her. During the duel, Sitan pinned Carrick, but instead of finishing the former Padawan off, the Caamasi stabbed himself to end his suffering. Witnessing the broken Carrick fail to heal his friend, Chantique declared that he was finished. The Crucible left Volgax, leaving the broken Carrick on the surface of the planet to be picked up by Jarael. Instead of greeting his friend, Carrick grew angry at her, demanding to know why she abandoned her fellow slaves and why she had kept her tattoos. The two parted acrimoniously but not before Jarael told him that her tattoos meant "Protector". Carrick realized too late that Chantique had lied to him."

Family reunion
Soon after her meeting with Carrick, on Osadia, Chantique fought face-to-face with Jarael, who now wielded Exar Kun's double-bladed lightsaber. Little would she realize that her own father Antos Wyrick, who was now Mandalorian scientist Demagol, was helping Jarael against her. During the battle she mocked Jarael about her shattered relation with Zayne Carrick. This drove Jarael into a rage, and she quickly overpowered Chantique. As she stood over Chantique she demanded that Chantique get out of her life. However,at this moment Zayne Carrick crashed in through the roof, ramming into Jarael and knocking her out. Chantique caught Exar Kun's Lightsaber and engaged Carrick, asking, with a mixture of amusement and surprise, why he had come to save Jarael. They fought until Zayne informed her that her father was on Osadia. Chantique went off to kill him, but then returned and incapacitated both Zayne and Jarael, having felt more powerful with Kun's lightsaber in hand. Demagol stabbed her, and then demanded to know where the students were. Chantique revealed that she had murdered them all and buried their corpses in the schoolyard. Zayne revealed that Jarael had no prodigious Force sensitivity after all, and that it had been Demagol who was strongly Force sensitive. This revelation prompted Chantique to attack her father. Demagol summoned Exar Kun's lightsaber and activated it, and both father and daughter were impaled on the blades.

Personality and traits
"I don't know her name&mdash;just what she was. Gotal legend says our cones can sense evil. Never believed it 'fore I was abducted&mdash;but if it were true, she would have provided the proof."

- Goethar Kleej

Chantique possessed a sadistic, psychotic, and tormented personality. She could rapidly switch between an emotionless killing and violent rage, usually brought on by something in connection to her father, who had sold her to the Crucible.

Powers and abilities
"I know I left school a little early&mdash;but as you can see, I've learned some things since then."

- Chantique

At a young age, Chantique discovered her Force-sensitivity and without training she used the Force and her anger to heal herself and to break free from the slavers who keeps her prisoner after her confrontation with Jarael. Years later, during her meeting with Zayne Carrick on Volgax, she attempted to use Force persuasion on him with mixed success. She also demonstrated a talent for telekinesis and had at least one Force vision.

Additionally, Chantique was a capable melee fighter who favored using a whip.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 11: Reunion, Part 1
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 40: Dueling Ambitions, Part 2
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 41: Dueling Ambitions, Part 3
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 44: The Reaping, Part 2
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Destroyer
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 48: Demon, Part 2
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 49: Demon, Part 3
 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 50: Demon, Part 4

Notes and references
Chantique Chantique