Dakhan Ziratai

"How about 'Dakhan'? He led an army here on Coruscant against the Jedi in ancient times.” “I like that name. Did he win?” “Ah, well...almost, but not exactly.” “I'll try to redeem the name then."

- Draiko and Dakhan Ziratai

Dakhan Ziratai, born CC-8053 in the service of the Grand Army of the Galactic Republic, was an ARC clone commander who served as the commanding officer of Special Operations Brigade's Aleph-class clone assassins during the Clone Wars and subsequently defected from the Imperial Military to Bunduki sometime after the war's end to pursue mastery of Teräs Käsi among the Followers of Palawa.

Dakhan died in 3–4 ABY on Bunduki, defending his fellow Followers of Palawa from a concurrent attack by disgruntled Steel Hand of Palawa Arden Lyn and the Imperial forces of the Dark Jedi Yun. As a member of the Ziratai family formally adopted by Draiko Ziratai for saving his life during Operation: Knightfall, Dakhan was interred in the family estate at the Tower of Hurom on Thule in a place of honor.

Early life
Like the bulk of the clone troopers who comprised the Grand Army of the Republic, the clone commander who bore the unit designation "CC-8053" was cloned on Kamino from the genome template of Jango Fett, a renowned Mandalorian bounty hunter considered by many to be the best in the galaxy. Born several years after the first generation of Fett clones as a member of a younger cadre, CC-8053 was not yet ready for active duty in 22 BBY and thus missed much of the Clone Wars. CC-8053 exhibited a predisposition towards unarmed combat and irregular warfare from the earliest days of his training as a clone commander, traits which ultimately contributed to his selection as commander of the Grand Army's elite clone assassins.

Clone assassins
With the codification of the Contingency Orders for the Grand Army of the Republic during the early part of the Clone Wars, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine used his emergency powers to create a specialized unit of clone soldiers capable of executing contingency order sixty-six, the order handling the possibility of a Jedi uprising against the Republic. The end result of Palpatine's emergency legislation was the creation of the clone assassin specialization, a unique class of clone trooper capable of going toe-to-toe with low-level Force users through use of Teräs Käsi, a Forceful martial art developed in antiquity by the Follower of Palawa to combat the Jedi.

Though the Republic Military already employed a number of Forceless Teräs Käsi practioners as contractors, including noted Palawa Belt champion Phow Ji, the Chancellor desired that the inaugural class of clone assassins be trained by a Force user, preferably one without ties or allegiance to the Jedi Order. However, in his secret capacity as Dark Lord of the Banite Sith, Palpatine likewise planned for the clone assassins to play a critical role in the culmination of the Grand Plan to extermine the Jedi, and desired that they be indoctrinated in anti-Jedi sentiment by a loyal dark sider and trained to be rabidly loyal to Palpatine alone.

To this end, Palpatine hand-picked the Steel Hand of Palawa Draiko Ziratai, a native of the Sith fortress world of Thule and a Dark Jedi of a Sith loyalist family, to oversee the training of the first company-sized unit of clone assassins, dubbed the Aleph-class clone assassins. While they existed solely for the execution of contingency order sixty-six, the clone assassins were technically subsumed within Special Operations Brigade under the tacit command of Jedi Generals Iri Camas and Arligan Zey, though they were trained in a separate annex of the Arca Company Barracks colloquially called "the Dojo" far from Jedi oversight.

Training in Teräs Käsi
CC-8053 was selected by the Kaminoans to serve as the commanding officer of the company. He was further slated for advanced training as an Advanced Recon Commando for his penchant for independent thought and furtive nature. Rewarded with the right to take a nickname upon graduation from the program as a token of his cultivated independence, CC-8053 chose the name "Dakhan" at Ziratai's suggestion as a reference to the ancient Jedi-killing Sith Lord Shar Dakhan and a nod to his own specialization as a Jedi-killing clone assassin tasked with fulfilling contingency order sixty-six.