Darth Vectivus

"Even as I speak, I am unaware of myself. Of thinking, of decision making. Could I, in fact, be nothing?''" "''No, I can feel you. Gleaming in the Force. Shining with the dark side."

- Darth Vectivus and Nelani Dinn

This male Human was a shrewd but just businessman who served as the director of the Jonex Mine Eight Eleven B asteroid mining colony in the MZX32905 star system near the planet Bimmiel. When the reservoir of dark side energy over which the colony was situated began to negatively influence Vectivus' employees, he shut down the operation; but because of his own Force sensitivity, he began to study and experiment with the mysterious anomaly himself, where he developed a Force technique which involved the creation of dark side-empowered phantoms. He eventually did away with the entire mining operation and left the habitat for a time in search of the Sith. His quest was ultimately fruitful, and upon completion of his apprenticeship he ascended to mastery as Darth Vectivus, Dark Lord of the Sith. Though a master of the dark side, it's pall was not strong enough over him to erode his personal sense of morality. Vectivus' self-discipline and preexisting code of business ethics allowed him to remain fair and balanced without succumbing to the lure of power which plagued the Sith Lords who preceded him. Eventually, he returned to the mine and maintained a plentiful existence in the company of friends and loved ones alike.

Darth Vectivus had passed into physical death centuries prior to 40 ABY, but his spirit retained its power and lingered in the labyrinth of mines underneath the Home where in life he had once resided. It was also here where his ghost met the current Dark Lady of the Sith Lumiya, who later raised a phantom of Lord Vectivus that encountered a young female Jedi Knight named Nelani Dinn. After sending a swarm of hundreds of mynock-like phantoms to harass the Jedi, Vectivus revealed himself and explained the nature of his arcane technique to her; for every mynock-creature she killed, the organism which it was connected to died as well. Dinn refused to believe him, and he in turn offered her an alternative: to instead kill Vectivus' phantom and its host, thereby saving the lives of countless others. Dinn declined the offer, unwilling to potentially jeopardize even a single innocent life. The Dark Lord even changed his appearance to that of former Galactic Emperor Palpatine, enticing Dinn to strike down the visage of a known villain, but still she could not bring herself to kill him. Vectivus was satisfied that he had sufficiently exposed what he believed to be the Jedi's weakness, her inability to sacrifice one life to save many. He illuminated the exit for for her as he mocked her weakness, before disappearing into the Force with his mynock apparitions.

Early life
"He was a hardheaded business man with a keenly balanced sense of profit and fairness, and when temptation whispered in his ear he could ignore it as easily as he could ignore the importunings of equally destructive softheartedness."

- Lumiya

During his early years, this Human male lived a normal and plentiful life until into adulthood, complete with family and a host of friends for whom he cared. From them he learned many skills which he would incorporate into his business practices as the administrator of the Jonex Mine Eight Eleven B mining facility in the MZX32905 system. Situated within an asteroid belt near the planet Bimmiel, he established his headquarters on a particular asteroid known as the Home, which was also rich in the metal ores that his company harvested. Unknown to both him and his employees, the asteroid was suffused with the dark side of the Force, the result of a sentient mynock-like species that had resided in the Home but had also gone extinct prior to his arrival. The sanity of Jonex Mine Eight Eleven B's attendants was slowly eroded over time by the dark side energies of their work environment; Force-sensitives among them experienced unexplained visions, displayed peculiar abilities, and even began to behave similarly to the extinct species that preceded them. The director&mdash;who was Force-sensitive and also began to experience unusual phenomena&mdash;discretely silenced the reports of bizarre happenings and ceased all of Jonex's mining activities, keeping the situation secret in the midst of the asteroid field's other continuing operations. He devoted his time to experiments with the dark puissance of the caverns, where he examined and developed new Force abilities in the process.

Sith Master
"He, too, was a Force-sensitive and had been experiencing things, experimenting, acquiring and testing new powers. When this asteroid belt eventually became less profitable as a mining operation, he closed it down, carefully mismanaged things so that the habitat would be left here and forgotten&hellip;and then, leaving it behind, he went out into the galaxy, finding the Sith, apprenticing himself, eventually becoming the Sith Master Darth Vectivus."

- Lumiya describing Vectivus's life.

When it was no longer a lucrative endeavor, the director quietly mismanaged the operation and shut it down entirely. He coerced individuals to turn a blind eye through monetary incentives and persuasion, and effectively consigned the mine to obscurity. He then ventured out into the galaxy in active pursuit of the Sith. The director's quest proved successful; he found and was apprenticed to a Sith Master who furthered his dark side knowledge and ability to the point of his own mastery. Upon completion of his training in the ways of the Force, he inherited the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith as Darth Vectivus.

The established moral code of his former existence as a business executive was not lost to Darth Vectivus during his transformation into a Sith Lord, and adherence to this ethical standard prevented him from succumbing to the stereotypically common shortcomings of his predecessors. Violence, galactic ambition, and the eradication of the Sith's philosophical Jedi rivals were of no consequence to him; his contention was to simply immerse himself in Sith lore and study of the galaxy itself. He also developed a unique talent for creating dark side-empowered phantoms, controlled Force projections that required a living host to serve as the manifestation's anchor into the physical realm. If the phantom or the organism were killed, the other would also die. Such was his ability that summoning hundreds of concurrent phantoms required little effort. Darth Vectivus also fashioned a personal Sith holocron which contained philosophy on business practices as well as a detailed explanation of the creation and implementation of his Force phantom technique. Vectivus returned to the asteroid years later as a full-fledged Sith Lord, where he built a decadent mansion in the heart of its dark side potency. He eventually died there, having lived out the remainder of his days surrounded by friends and family.

Lumiya
"He developed a strong ethical code before he ever felt any pull from the dark side."

- Lumiya

Millennia after Darth Vectivus' death, his residence would serve as the domain of Lumiya, Dark Lady of the Sith. The Home became her sanctuary, where she studied the Force, the history of the Sith, and Lord Vectivus himself, whose spirit she discovered still lingering in the bowels of the asteroid. She also learned to master his Force phantom technique, to the point of being able to the projection of his phantoms to the point that she could send them across the galaxy and use them for communication.

Conversations with Nelani Dinn
"Is this taunting necessary?''" "''Yes, it is. To goad you into the action you need to perform. By killing one&mdash;whoever it is I'm attached to at the moment&mdash;you'll save scores. Hundreds. Thousands. What you think of as the evil of my dark side teachings will not spread so far. So kill me."

- Darth Vectivus converses with Nelani Dinn

In 40 ABY, Lumiya, under the name Shira Brie, took Jedi Knight Jacen Solo into Vectivus's former home to persuade him to join the dark side. Nelani Dinn and Ben Skywalker, the Jedi that had accompanied Solo, were separated from him by Lumiya. Dinn and Skywalker were attacked by a large group of the mynock-like creatures, and the two fought for their lives against them. After a while, they were separated from each other, and the mynocks suddenly stopped accosting them. A dark figure appeared to Dinn and it complemented her fending off of the creatures. It introduced itself as Darth Vectivus, telling her that he was a ghost but also stated his suspicions that he had no actual presence at all. Dinn refuted this, as she could feel him as a large presence of the dark side, though he informed her that the feeling did not stem from him but rather the organism he was connected to. He informed her that he was actually a Force phantom, like all the "mynocks". He informed her that for every "mynock" she killed, a person or animal somewhere in the universe died with it. He used an example of a baby bantha dying in front of its helpless mother due to Dinn's strike and being helpless to stop it. Despite Vectivus's assurances that this was true, Dinn did not believe him and asked him how she could get rid of him and the creatures. He told her that the only way to do it was to kill him; if she did so, the "mynocks" would disappear, not killing those who were attached, and she would be able to find both Skywalker and Solo again. However, as he was a phantom, the person he was attached to would die as well, which Dinn found unacceptable. The Sith Lord tried to goad her into killing him, but Dinn refused to take the life of the innocent.

Vectivus did not give in; he continued trying to push her toward the act despite her continued refusals. The Sith Lord changed his form to that of former Galactic Emperor Palpatine and spoke in his voice, telling her to strike him down. Dinn still refused to kill him, and Vectivus reverted to his original form and accused her of not being strong enough to save the lives of people, unable to sacrifice one for the greater good. Dinn told him that she would gladly give her own life for a cause like that, and Vectivus rebuffed it, saying that in that case she wouldn't have to face the loved ones of the sacrificed. He illuminated the way she needed to follow to rejoin her group after allowing them to make their own decisions and telling her that he did not want her to die unnecessarily but if she meddled in their affairs at her current strength, she would. Dinn told him to "Go to hell" and he disappeared along with the chittering of the "mynocks" above. Dinn left the chamber filled with worry for her friends' safety.

Destruction of the asteroid
"This is of highest priority. We will not concern ourselves with a cloaked ship, but assign a fully armed warship to the task. I am recalling the Poison Moon and assigning it to you for this mission. It will be equipped with explosives sufficient to destroy an asteroid. You will use it to locate the dark side energy source used to power Vectivus's Force phantom technique and obliterate it. You will obtain any Sith artifacts in Alema Rar's possession. You will also capture Alema Rar, or, if circumstances warrant, kill her."

- White Eyes commanding Dician to destroy the asteroid

Darth Vectivus's holocron later came into the possession of the One Sith, a growing new order of Sith following the Rule of One. The holocron was given to the Twi'lek Dark Jedi Alema Rar when she visited the One Sith's base. The Sith did not approve of Lumiya's plan to turn Jacen Solo to the dark side, though it was successful. They ordered Rar to deliver the holocron to Solo, who had recently come into his full Sith powers and renamed himself Darth Caedus. Eventually, it was revealed that the One Sith Order had determined Vectivus to be a fraud, despite his possession of some unique dark side powers, and Rar's gift was to be an insult to Caedus as gesture that he was irrelevant.

The leader of the One Sith Order, a man with white eyes, ordered Dician, another Sith Lord, to destroy the asteroid and the dark side powers it contained so that it would not fall into the hands of the Jedi and Galactic Alliance forces. While the One Sith attacked the asteroid, the Alema Rar Task Force, a squad led by Jagged Fel with the sole purpose of eliminating Rar, infiltrated the mine in an attempt to kill the Twi'lek, who was using the facility as a hideout. After chasing Rar through the mines, Fel used a pair of crushgaunts to break Rar's neck, killing her. The One Sith also succeeded in their mission, detonating fission bombs on the mine and obliterating the asteroid. Though the Task Force was able to escape, Rar's body and the holocron were destroyed as well before she could deliver it to Caedus and inform him of the new, growing Sith power in the galaxy.

Personality and traits
"Strength that is never touched by ruthlessness is touchingly irresponsible."

- Darth Vectivus

The Human male who would become Darth Vectivus was a savvy businessman with a strict code of morals and ethics to keep himself in line. He learned about business and other skills, such as negotiations, from his family and friends. Due to his curiosity of the peculiar feelings his mine was giving him, he realized that he was a latent Force-sensitive. After taking the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith and leaving the mine, Vectivus sought out Sith lore and other information about the Force. His code of ethics carried over into his time as a Dark Lord, causing him to avoid capturing a system or eliminating populations, which was commonly stereotypical for Sith. However, Vectivus was still a ruthless individual, partly connected to his background as a businessman, and was willing to do whatever it took to succeed, a trait he promoted to others as well. After he grew old, he created a mansion inside the mine and moved back there with his friends and family. He loved his family and was a generally happy person during this time until he died of old age some time later.

Powers and abilities
"Every phantom you see here, every one you encounter, is connected to something that is distinctly real, distinctly alive-though possibly far, far away. Every time you struck a mynock, a living being somewhere suffered the pain and injury you inflicted."

- Darth Vectivus

Little is known about the powers that Vectivus obtained during his journey through the galaxy. It is only known that he could conjure Force Phantoms at will, without the restricting and draining backlash that limited some, like Alema Rar, to only one or two Force Phantoms at a time. Instead, Vectivus was able to summon hundreds of Phantoms at the same time. After his death, he retained his powers as a Force ghost, at least to create Phantoms; he also had the ability to change his shape at will and showed the ability to levitate above the ground.

Behind the scenes
Darth Vectivus was created by Aaron Allston for the first novel of the Legacy of the Force series, Betrayal. He appeared as a spirit to Nelani Dinn and served as a platform for Lumiya to convince Jacen Solo to become Darth Caedus by showing him that not all Sith were necessarily evil. He was also mentioned many times later in the series and was pictured&mdash;despite the obstruction of his face&mdash;in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia.

According to Leland Chee's blog, Darth Vectivus' name comes from the word "invective", which has a number of definitions, including vehement or violent denunciation, censure, or reproach; a railing accusation; vituperation, an insulting or abusive word or expression, vituperative; denunciatory, or censoriously abusive.

The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia states that Vectivus told Jacen Solo that he was akin to a Force spirit. This is an error because Solo never met Vectivus throughout Legacy of the Force or at any other time in Star Wars canon.

Appearances

 * Betrayal
 * Exile
 * Inferno
 * Fury