Kyle Katarn

          A long time freelance espionage agent for the New Republic and its predecessor, the Rebel Alliance, Kyle Katarn is responsible for many acts of sabotage against the Empire, including the theft of the original Death Star plans and the destruction of the Dark Trooper program. Sometime after the destruction of the second Death Star, Kyle Katarn learned of the Force potiential within him and quickly attained the status of Jedi Knight.
          Kyle Katarn was born on Sulon, the moon of Sullust, to a poor but happy family of rural farmers. His mother died while he was very young, and his father, Morgan Katarn, made raising Kyle his first priority. Even though the elder Katarn was still often busy with his job as a local agro-mechanic, his responsiblity to maintain the local geothermal tap, and his secret leadership of a Rebel cell, Kyle loved his father deeply and his only desire was to follow in his father's footsteps and uphold the Katarn family tradition.
          Once he had taken his education as high as it could go on Sulon, Kyle applied to, and was accepted by, the Republic Academy on Carida. Kyle was a diligent student, earning top scores in his classes and becoming a perpetual Honor student. Kyle took a wide range of elective classes during his stay at the Academy, such as martial arts and target shooting, partly to broaden his horizons, and also because he thought such skills might come in handy on the still rugged countryside of Sulon.
          Such rigorous activities prevented Kyle from noticing the changes to both curriculum and policy, as Palpatine's still new Empire gradually took over the Academy. Kyle's seemingly natural talent in cybernetic systems theory and information engineering brought him to the attention of the Imperial recruiting office; a potential asset such as Kyle was too valuable to be wasted as a dirt farmer in the Outer Rim.
          Meanwhile, on Sulon, an Imperial special forces team disguised as Rebels assaulted Kyle's home commune on Sulon, killing everyone except Morgan, who was brought before Jerec, a closet Dark Jedi and personal agent of the Emperor. When Morgan refused to divulge who his superiors were, Jerec murdered him in cold blood.
          News of his father's death and his home's destruction was filtered through Imperial channels to Kyle, who came to believe a Rebel ambush was responsible for their deaths. With this false information fueling a burning hatred for the rebellion, Kyle enlisted in the Imperial military and earned a commission in the special operations division of the Imperial Army.
          It was here that Kyle's idealistic nature was shattered by the cruel reality of the Empire. Espionage mission after commando mission after intelligence mission, Kyle grew to cling to his hatred of the rebels and excused the attrocities he saw around him as merely unfortunately side effects of his quest. As time went on, however Kyle's anger lessened, and it became harder and harder for him to justify to himself what he was doing.
          During his several years in the Imperial Army, Kyle met Jan Ors, then an officer in Imperial Intelligence. Kyle and Jan ended up working together several times, and developed a strong working relationship. Unbeknownst to Kyle, Jan was really a mole working for the Rebel Alliance. Learning of his history and the source of his hatred for the rebellion, Jan saw to it that copies of the official report on the massacre on Sulon made their way to Kyle's hands. With everything he had believed in for so long destroyed, Kyle's obsession with the Rebellion faltered, leaving him hardened and disillusioned. He knew he could not stay with the Empire, but he also knew he could not fit in with the Rebellion he had hunted and hated for so long, not yet.
          When Jan's cover was blown, Kyle's last remaining loyalty was called on, and he ended his Army career by helping her escape from torture and seeing her safely to a rebel base. There, they parted, with Kyle heading off to the outer rim to find himself. There, he honed his sabotage, commando, and subterfuge skills in the company of bounty hunters, smugglers, and pirates.
          When Kyle Katarn reappeared, it was as a deadly efficient mercenary with a reputation for being able to complete any mission. While selling his abilities as a soldier for hire, Kyle found himself working for the Rebel Alliance several times, though it was strictly business, Kyle refused to join another cause. Somewhere along the line, Kyle purchased his distictive ship, a Corellian Courier modified for combat, the Moldy Crow. Then, at the urging of Jan Ors, Mon Mothma offered Kyle a mission that would change his life forever.
          Through its network of spies, the Alliance had learned of the construction of a massive Imperial battlestation, the Death Star. Kyle's mission was designated Operation Skyhook - Phase One, and was relatively simple - break into the secret base on Danuta and steal a copy of the plans. With his usual efficiency, Kyle did just that, and soon thereafter, the plans were transmitted to Princess Leia Organa's ship, the Tantive IV, to continue the mission.
          Soon after the destruction of the Death Star, Mon Mothma summoned Kyle to hire him for a very important mission. He was to investigate the massacre at a rebel base in the city of Talay, which had been destroyed in minutes by a powerful Imperial force. Crix Madine, an Imperial officer who sought to defect to the Alliance, supplied the Alliance with the information on this new force. Conceived by General Rom Mohc, the Dark Trooper Project's purpose was the design and construction of a robotic super stormtrooper. Accepting the mission under the stipulation that he be paired again with Jan Ors, Kyle followed a lead on a damaged prototype weapon to arms maker Moff Rebus. Revealing secret weapon tests on the planet Fest, Kyle infiltrated the facility and discovered a sample of the metal known as Phrik, which led the rebels to destroy a mining facility on the planet Gromas.
          Meanwhile, Crix Madine was apprehended by the Empire and sent to the Imperial Detention Center on Orinackra to await execution. Feeling they owed Madine for the information he had supplied them, Kyle and Jan freed him and brought him to the Alliance. They then learned that the Dark Troopers were constructed in three phases. First was in the mines of Gromas, the second was at an unknown Robotics Facility, and the last was aboard the huge cruiser the Arc Hammer. Before his capture, Madine had discovered that an underworld kingpin had been hired by General Mohc to transport his raw materials and goods between facilities. Starting from the spaceport Ramsees Hed on Cal-Seti, Kyle and Jan tracked a smuggler ship to the remote ice world of Anteevy, where the Robotics Facility was located. Kyle managed to rig the facility to blow with his usual competency, but then had a deadly encounter with a finished Dark Trooper, barely managing to destroy the robot and escape before the facility exploded.
          Returning from the mission, Kyle learned that the Empire had put a healthy bounty on his head. Unfortunately, the smuggler ship's tracks led straight to Nar Shaddaa, a lawless moon teeming with bounty hunters, hardly a place a wanted man like Kyle would want to go. Managing to fight off the bounty hunters long enough to secure a copy of an Imperial Navacard, the point was rendered moot as the Crow was captured by a Ubrikkian Space Yacht belonging to Jabba the Hutt. Jabba revealed that it was he who was supplying smuggler's to Mohc and expressed his joy at being able to eliminate his partner's biggest enemy. At Jabba's command, Kyle was tossed into a pit containing the Hutt's favorite Kell dragon. Killing the beast with his bare hands, Kyle escaped the pit and managed to recover the Navacard and free Jan.
          The rebel agents' next step was to decode the Navacard, and that could only be done from the Imperial Security Operations Building on Coruscant. After breaking into ISO building and the underground vault containing the decryption key box, Kyle escaped with Datatapes containing the navacoordinates and made it back to the landing pad only to find the notorious bounty hunter Boba Fett waiting for him. After an intense shootout, Kyle bested the bounty hunter and climbed aboard the Crow as Jan returned after dueling with some TIE fighters. The information in the tapes next lead the duo to a refueling station at Ergo, where a smuggler ship was slated to meet up with the command ship Executor. It seemed that the Arc Hammer took random hyperspace jumps about the galaxy to hide it's location, and only the Executor knew where it was at any give time. Thus the Executor ferried supplies and materials to the Arc Hammer.
          Leaving Jan with the Moldy Crow at Ergo, Kyle hijacked the cargo ship and met up with the Executor, stowing away on the massive ship until it reached the location of the Arc Hammer. There, Kyle took a ride on the cargo conveyors to the floating weapons platform, and set about attempting to rig the Arc Hammer to explode. Unfortunately for Kyle, dozens of Dark Troopers were stationed aboard the Arc Hammer, and he had to fight more than a few to complete his mission. Finally ready to leave, Kyle encountered his final obsticle, General Mohc himself, in a suit of Dark Trooper Phase three armor. Barely escaping with his life, Kyle hijacked an Imperial shuttle and escaped the Arc Hammer as it blew itself into atoms. Unbeknownest to Kyle, the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader looked on as he escaped, commenting, "The Force is strong with Katarn."
          The facts behind Vader's ominous declaration would be revealed years later, after the destruction of the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor. With the Empire crumbling, Kyle sought revenge for his father's death, and an information broker, a droid named 8t88, came forward with information. Meeting with 8t88 at a cantina in Nar Shaddaa, Kyle learned that a Dark Jedi named Jerec was the man that had murdered his father, and that he was planning to reestablish the Empire with himself as Emperor. Also, Kyle learned, Jerec was offering 8t88 more than he was. With a gun to his head, 8t88 demanded to know how to interpet a disk found in his father's home. When Kyle refused to tell him, 8t88 left, leaving his goons to finish Kyle off. Killing the thugs and taking off after the droid, Kyle caught up with 8t88 just as he was boarding an Imperial shuttle. Kyle managed to blow 8t88's arm off, the disk clutched between it's fingers, but watched helpless as it careened off the side of the landing platform. 8t88 escaped, leaving a TIE bomber to finish Kyle off, which was subsequently destroyed as Jan showed up in the Crow.
          As another flight of TIE's came in, Jan had to leave, and Kyle promised to meet her on the rooftops after he had retrieved the disk. Kyle suceed in his task, but by the time Jan got to the roof, Kyle was gravely injured and she opted to take him to the medical frigate in the New Republic fleet. While he was recoperating, Kyle had a vision of the dead Jedi Knight Qu Rahn, a friend of his father. Rahn spoke of a hidden Valley of the Jedi which contained the trapped energy of thousands of Jedi. If Jerec harnassed that power, he would be unstoppable.
          Recognising the disk he had retrieved from 8t88 as working with his father's old droid WeeGee, Kyle headed home to Sulon for the first time since he had left for the Academy, so many years before. Upon arriving, Kyle was just in time to see the Dark Jedi Sariss, Boc, and Yun fly off in an Imperial Shuttle. After entering the house, Kyle found they had stolen the roof to his father's workshop. Locating Weegee, Kyle reactivate him and had him run the disk. A hologram of Morgan appeared, telling Kyle that he had left two things for him, the first being the missing roof, which was a map to the Valley of the Jedi. The second was a lightsaber, one Rahn had left with Morgan to give to Kyle many years before.
          Escaping from his father's house through the old irrigation tunnels, Kyle met up with Jan and the Crow and proceeded on to Baron's Hed, where Sariss had indicated 8t88 to be. Breaking into the Imperial Garrison there, Kyle confronted 8t88 and demanded the map. Instead, the young Dark Jedi Yun appeared, using the Force and his lightsaber to destroy it. In his first Jedi duel, Kyle came out on top, defeating Yun but sparing the young Jedi as well. Embarassed and confused, Yun escaped through the ceiling, leaving Kyle to deal with a squad of stormtroopers. Working his way across the roof, Kyle again found himself eating 8t88's exhaust trail as the droid took off in his shuttle for the refueling station outside Baron's Hed. Following in the Crow, Kyle managed to make it onto Jerec's Cargo ship as it was taking off. Catching up with 8t88 for the last time, Kyle found someone had beaten him to the punch as the droid's head tumbled from it's body. Two more Dark Jedi emerged, the bizarre twins Gorc and Pic, and closed in for the kill. The fight was long, but again Kyle's long combat experience prevailed, and he escaped the cargo ship with 8t88's head and the map it contained.
          Retreating back to the Katarn home, Jan hooked the head up to WeeGee, who accessed 8t88's memory banks to display the map to the Valley of the Jedi. Due to the speed of the Crow, Kyle arrived at roughly the same time as Jerec in the cruiser Vengence, though Jerec's scout force had already set up a garrison. With Jan waiting by the Crow as backup, Kyle attacked the forces, making his way up to the Imperial tower that guarded the entrance to the Valley. As he stepped out of the lift, Kyle was attacked by the bitter half Jedi Maw. As Maw taunted him with information about how they tortured his father, Kyle grew more and more angry, unconsciouslly tapping the Dark side of the Force. Finally, Kyle killed Maw in a fit of rage, feelings of invincibility, pleasure, and dark glee filling him. In his moment of weakness, Jerec, Sariss, and Boc appeared, with a captive Jan in tow. Jerec congratulated him on making his first steps towards the dark side and beckoned him to kill Jan in order to prove his alliegence once and for all.
          Torn between the seduction and power of the darkside and his feelings towards Jan, his beliefs, and his raising, Kyle did the only thing he could think of to do. He stopped, calmed down, and realized he couldn't betray Jan and his father's faith in him. Jerec was unmoved, and attacked Kyle with a powerful ball of destruction. Kyle escaped across the platform to the cargo ship, with then lost power and began to plummet down to the surface. Racing through the tilting maze of corridors, Kyle located the captured Crow and took off as the ship exploded against the ground. Unfortunately, Kyle was unable to regain control, and crashed to the valley floor.
          Upon awakening, Kyle found Boc, Saris, and Yun standing over him. Boc destroyed his lightsaber then went to rejoin Jerec while Sariss and her apprentice stayed to finish him off. Sariss raised her lightsaber for the stroke, but Yun blocked it, saving Kyle's life at the expense of his own. Grabbing Yun's lightsaber, Kyle defeated Sariss and began the long climb back to the Valley's entrance. Finally arriving in the Valley of the Jedi, Kyle found Jan tied up and Boc guarding her. Now confident in his skills, Kyle made short work of the brazen Twi'lek, and then left Jan to enter the Inner sanctum of the Valley, where Jerec awaited him.
          Jerec was a powerful Dark Jedi, but he was an old man, and all else being equal, Kyle had him beat in lightsaber combat. As his strength waned, Jerec retreated into the core of the Valley to heal and replentish his power, and the power of the trapped Jedi filled him. Breaking into the core, though, Kyle managed to disturb the Dark Jedi and force him to resume the battle. The spirts of the Jedi were unwilling to help Jerec in the fight itself and soon he fell. Taunting Kyle with the knowledge that he had killed his father, Jerec sought to at least leave an apprentice behind to strength the Dark side, but Kyle refused. He tossed the lightsaber back to Jerec, and Jerec, suddenly strengthened by the power of the Valley, lunged in attack. Defending with a low blow, Kyle sliced Jerec through the stomach, the dark Jedi falling in death. With Jerec dead but the conduit to the Valley still open, the spirits of the trapped Jedi flooded out all around Kyle, dozens of tiny lights filling the Valley. Emptied of it's power and reduced to a memorial to all the Jedi that had died there, Kyle chose two unmarked columns and carved them in the shapes of his father and Yun, a monument to their sacrifices for all time.