Mraito

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"Dzwol wo hadzuskak Qyâsikottoi yun, koshwai kosh&mdash;dzwol Qyâsik wokun. Chwitokka hyalûshsaaraikut tashdzwolutyun."

- Sith language extract from the writings of Mraito summarizing the central tenet of Dzwolutwokun

Mraito (/'mraɪ.toʊ/; MREYE-toh, pronounced [ mɽaɪto̞ ]  in Sith ) was a male Sith-Human half-breed of the House of Tund who served the old Sith Empire as the presiding Sith Lord of Korriban during the Golden Age of the Sith and subsequently manifested as a Force ghost for millennia thereafter.

Mraito was widely regarded as one of the foremost philosophers of the Force and most prolific scholars of the post–Hundred-Year Darkness period. He was best known for the Dzwolutwokun philosophy, a monist Unifying Force offshoot that stated that light and dark side alignment were characteristics of Force users rather than the Force itself. He was also notable for the Qotaral, a divisive work of political philosophy that was critical of the kratocratic individualism that characterized prevailing Tsisajak ("Sith doctrine" ) and instead proposed a collectivist form of government for the old Sith Empire.

Apart from his academic career, Mraito was immortalized among the vestigial Sith diasporas of Ambria, Dromund Kaas, Korriban, Thule, Tund, and Vjun for his actions during the Republic counterinvasion of the Sith Empire that followed the Great Hyperspace War. Fearing that the invaders intended to systematically exterminate the Sith species, Mraito assembled the Tsistaralkut, a paramilitary resistance movement that rescued and resettled Sith refugees on outlying colonies far from the conflict, disease, and famine that characterized the war-torn Sith Worlds.

Despite a string of successful evacuations, Mraito and the Tsistaralkut met their end during the third battle of Korriban, self-sacrificially giving their lives to help acting Dark Lord Shar Dakhan drive Republic forces out of the Horuset system. Though his disembodied Force ghost primarily resided within the confines of his tomb, he occasionally applied his mastery of essence transfer to the possession of host bodies, shuttling his consciousness through a series of unwitting temporary vessels whenever the mood to wander the galaxy and study with other Forceful traditions took hold.

The Sith-Human half-breed known as Mraito was born in the city of Kaniset on the Sith species's ancestral homeworld of Korriban  to Tullin the Elder, head of the noble House of Tund  and presiding Sith Lord of Tund. Unlike his elder half-brother Tullin the Younger, Mraito was the son of his father's second wife Kamurantha, a Sith sorceress of the Kissai caste who served as high priestess of the Great Temple on Korriban. Mraito was known to have been born sometime after the death of Dark Lord Tulak Hord and prior to the ascension of Dark Lord Marka Ragnos to the rulership of the Sith Empire as its presiding Jen'ari ("Dark Lord" ). Like his contemporaries Ludo Kressh and Naga Sadow, Mraito was old enough in 5100 BBY to recall firsthand the details of Ragnos's brief and brutal campaign of conquest over the Sith Empire and the final duel between Ragnos and Simus that decided the victor of the war of succession and heralded the dawn of the Golden Age of the Sith.

Though not part of the Kissai priest caste, Mraito was genetically a member of the Sith subspecies of the same name, related by blood to both the original Kissai residents of Tund and the priests that served the ruling caste of Sith Lords. As such, he exhibited his species's strong Force sensitivity and natural affinity for the dark side  in addition to a number of physical characteristics and collectivist personality traits for which the ruling caste of Sith Lords had selectively bred the Kissai for centuries. Despite his Kissai blood, Mraito was considered a noble of the Sith ruling caste on account of his membership in the House of Tund and his proven relation to those Human Dark Jedi Exiles who had chosen to mate with the Sith in the years following the formation of the Sith Empire in 6900 BBY. Mraito's membership in the House of Tund enabled him to claim patrilineal descent from the Human Jen'jidai Baron Remulus Dreypa and his alleged Kissai lover. Additionally, his Human blood was likewise derived from the Tapani refugees of House Nidantha who had wandered into the Empire in the aftermath of the Unification War and subsequently interbred with the Sith  over a period of centuries.

The House of Tund's titular planet of origin was a verdant Force nexus of the same name lost on the northeastern borders of the Open Sea, a vast expanse of empty space situated in what would come to be known in subsequent millennia as the Centrality sector. Though isolated far from the Sith species's ancestral homeworld of Korriban,  Tund had hosted a Sith diaspora since the aftermath of the Infinite Empire's failed invasion of Korriban  in 27,700 BBY. Tund's original settlers were heretical Kissai priests who had been exiled from Korriban for interpreting the death of Sith King Adas during the Rakata invasion as a sign to reject the dark side. The descendants of these heretics were joined in subsequent millennia by other outcasts and dissidents banished from the Sith Worlds for heresy. Despite its established status as a Sith penal colony, Tund was settled by a number of half-breed Sith-Human colonists hailing from the Sith Worlds following the formation of the old Sith Empire in 6900 BBY.

Given the diverse nature of its population and its distance from the Sith Worlds, Tund's official status as a member world of the Sith Empire was the subject of some debate. As Sith-Humans of such noble families as the House of Tund maintained ties to the Empire, the half-breed minority generally considered Tund one of the Empire's outlying colony worlds along with Arkania, Ambria, Thule,  and Vjun. As such, in keeping with the Empire's feudal system of government, Tund was nominally governed by a Sith Lord who ruled the planetary fiefdom as a vassal of the presiding Dark Lord. In reality, however, the Sith Lords of Tund only possessed tangible authority over the Sith-Human minority. The pureblooded majority, descendants of the original heretics and outcasts, generally viewed Tund as an independent state and contested the legitimacy of Sith Empire rule, leading to some contention between half-breeds and purebloods during the Manderon Period.

As a member of the House of Tund and son of the presiding Sith Lord of Tund, Mraito was immersed in the study of Qyâsik ("the Force" ) from a young age. Possessed of an above-average Force sensitivity coupled with an inexorable thirst for knowledge and desire to understand the Force at its most essential level, he eschewed participation in the power games of his Sith-Human peers in favor of apprenticeship to masters of many different traditions and beliefs. Unlike many of his fellow Sith-Humans, Mraito took a particular interest in studying the varied heretical systems of thought observed and developed by the original Tundan Kissai and their descendants, ranging from various Light Sith offshoots to Rakata-inspired Unifying Force monist philosophies. Mraito spent much of his youth traversing the jungles of Tund to take up residence at a multiplicity of pureblood Tundan library-temples in his search for obscure knowledge and philosophical enlightenment.

Trained by Kissai priests of both the heretical and mainline Sith traditions, Mraito was deeply familiar with that caste's traditional disciplines of dark side Sith magic and Sith alchemy. Pursing a specialization in the former as a Sith sorcerer, Mraito developed a proficiency in many of the most fundamental rituals of Sith magic, including Dwomutsiqsa, a ritual used to summon Smoke Demon spirits; Sutta Chwituskak, an early incarnation of the Force lightning power; Odojinya, a binding technique used to subdue opponents; and Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut, a ritual of Sith necromancy used to reanimate corpses into undead warriors. However, his greatest skill lay in his burgeoning affinity for powers related to mental manipulation, ranging from conventional mind tricks to more advanced Qâzoi Kyantuska incantations used to bind and enslave multiple minds at will.

As a Kissai priest, Mraito was immersed in that caste's traditional study of dark side Sith magic  and Sith alchemy  from an early age. Pursuing a specialization in the former as a Sith sorcerer, Mraito developed a proficiency in many of the most fundamental rituals of Sith magic, including Dwomutsiqsa, a ritual used to summon Smoke Demon spirits; Sutta Chwituskak, an early incarnation of the Force lightning power; and Odojinya, a binding technique used to subdue opponents and draw upon their power. However, his greatest skill lay in his burgeoning affinity for powers related to mental manipulation, ranging from conventional mind tricks to more advanced Qâzoi Kyantuska incantations used to bind and enslave multiple minds at will.

From an early age, Mraito readily distinguished himself from his peers for his intuitive grasp of many fundamental Force powers and rituals. Possessed of an above-average connection to Qyâsik ("the Force" ) coupled with an inexorable thirst for knowledge and desire to understand the Force at its most essential level, Mraito spent much of his youth traversing the red wastes of Korriban to take up residence at a multiplicity of Sith Temples and library-temples, the most notable being the Great Temple situated at the mouth of the Valley of the Dark Lords. His travels saw him wander locations as diverse and remote as the Sanctum of Sakkra-Kla and the Valley of Golg in his search for obscure knowledge and philosophical enlightenment. Never content to remain in one place for too long, he eschewed participation in the power games of his Sith Lord superiors in favor of apprenticeship to masters of many different traditions.

Despite its hallowed status as the birthplace of the Sith species,  Korriban had long since been replaced by the Sith Empire's capital world of Ziost  as the beating heart of the Empire. The vast majority of the Sith population resided on Ziost and the other one hundred and twenty planets of the Stygian Caldera that constituted the Sith Worlds. Despite the wealth of knowledge he had acquired from his time on Korriban, it was not long before Mraito turned his eyes upwards from the dusty trails of his homeworld to the stars and began pondering the possibility of studying abroad in the greater Sith Empire among scholars of many different traditions and schools of thought.

Eventually, Mraito's desire to study at the feet of noted scholars and academics of the Force compelled him to depart his homeworld and join the perambulating multitudes of fellow Sith acolytes  wandering across the Empire in pursuit of Sith Lordship. Mraito's travels took him across the breadth of the Stygian Caldera and saw him apprentice himself as a Shadow Hand to Sith Lords of a hundred different factions and levels of influence. Mraito's prodigious talent as a Sith sorcerer, lack of personal ambition, and indifference to the power games of the Sith readily ingratiated him into the ranks and good graces of many high-ranking Sith Lords of the Empire, granting him easy access to many highly-placed and influential individuals in the Imperial hierarchy. Though not a power player in his own right, Mraito saw frequent employment as a consigliere and right-hand man to other members of the Sith nobility, leveraging his unbiased counsel and potent Force abilities in exchange for the knowledge and instruction in arcane Force techniques.

Though primarily a Sith sorcerer by specialty, Mraito made an effort to expand upon his rudimentary knowledge of Sith alchemy during his time abroad. His study of this applied science of Sith magic included the sub-disciplines of Sith poisoncraft and Force imbuement, the latter of which he studied in detail on Korriz in the court of Sith Lord Tritos Nal. Considered by some Sith to be a less intensive facet of alchemy suitable for study by apprentices, Force imbuement was commonly used by the Sith as the means by which corporeal objects like Sith swords and bronzium armor could be enhanced and strengthened beyond their base properties through the imbuement of Force into the atomic substructure of the objects in question. Under Nal's expert tutelage, Mraito developed a proficiency in this sub-discipline, applying his knowledge of meditative trances to the imbuement process in a manner not unlike that used in millennia prior by the Jedi in the development of their Force-imbued katanas.

Among other facets of Sith alchemy, Mraito likewise showed particular promise in the design and development of Sithspawn, living manifestations of dark-sided bioengineering. His subsequent studies in the development of Sithspawn took him across the Stygian Caldera and saw him undertake experiments in the selective breeding of creatures as diverse as the Rhak-skuri of Upekzar and the Silooths of Kalsunor. His work in the field of Sithspawn engineering eventually brought him to the attention of the Ninûshwodzakut, an exclusive group of Kissai alchemists specializing in the creation of Sithspawn. He remained apprenticed to this group for some time, continuing to contribute to their academic work even after moving on to other worlds in later years. His knowledge of Sithspawn breeding as taught by the Ninûshwodzakut proved invaluable in later years in his subsequent studies of Sith necromancy, a niche field that combined the incantations of Sith magic with conventional Sith alchemical techniques governing the creation of Sithspawn.

In addition to his pursuit of Force-based academic scholarship, Mraito also pursued a number of more tangible Force-mediated fields of study during his time abroad, including swordsmanship, conventional military strategy, and espionage. To this end, he frequently apprenticed himself to noted warriors and weapon specialists of the main Sith traditions. Foremost among these was the Sith academic Komok-Da, a warrior-scholar who awoke in Mraito an interest in the Sith lightsaber. Though the Tapani slaves of the Sith Lords had long since improved upon and perfected the protosaber design initially brought to the Sith Worlds by the Dark Jedi Exiles, use of the modern Sith lightsaber was still uncommon due to prevailing preference for the Force-imbued Sith sword.

The only known Dark Lord to favor the lightsaber was Tulak Hord, a duelist of unparalleled ability unmatched by the greatest Sith Warriors and Jedi Weapon Masters of later millennia. Inspired by tales of Hord's expert swordsmanship, Mraito took to studying the Dark Lord's preserved teachings on the subject of lightsaber combat in detail. In later decades, Mraito pursued additional instruction in lightsaber combat from fallen Jedi and Naga Sadow supporter Saes Rrogon. Though development of the Seven Forms of conventional lightsaber combat was still in its infancy, many protosaber-wielding Jedi were trained in the basics of Shii-Cho, a widespread dueling paradigm that came to be known as Form I in later centuries. At Mraito's request, Rrogon instructed the Sith in the specifics of the form. Though simple and inelegant in comparison to the more evolved forms that followed it, Shii-Cho was nonetheless a brutally efficient approach to lightsaber combat. Mraito found that its distinctive fluidity complemented the raw power embraced by the Tulak Hord form. The simultaneous embrace of both techniques allowed the user to gracefully execute powerful, unpredictable attacks while remaining fully in control of the duel's momentum.

Over time, Mraito's desire for ever greater knowledge led him to venture outside the traditional boundaries of the Empire to more distant, far-flung Sith colonies lying outside the shroud of the Stygian Caldera. First among these outlying worlds visited by Mraito was Thule, a dark-sided Force nexus lying immediately outside the vicinity of the Stygian Caldera upon its galactic western flanks. This perpetually overcast planet was the haunt of the several Sith military units and organizations drawn to the planet for its natural concerted power in the dark side and its remote location. Of these, the most notable were a Sith stealth regiment belonging to the Sith Empire military's special forces and the Châtsûshnwûlkut Tsisottoi Shikkarûjontû, a furtive guild of Kissai assassins answering directly to the presiding Dark Lord.

Mraito's decision to travel abroad outside the Stygian Caldera was ultimately motivated by an invitation issued by the latter group. Having heard of Mraito's reputation as a Sith sorcerer and alchemist of the Ninûshwodzakut, the Shikkari offered him a place in their midst as one of the group's resident Sith alchemists. Though not formal members of the group, these ancillary personnel were charged with enhancing the assassins' natural properties through bioengineering, developing their poisons by means of Sith poisoncraft, and imbuing their traditional shikkar daggers with the Force as needed. Mraito ultimately accepted the proffered invitation, maintaining a residence in the capital city of Hurom within walking distance of the Sith Arts Academy, the local Sith Temple, and the Tower of Hurom, the headquarters of the ChTsSh.

Over a period of several years, Mraito split his time between serving the ChTsSh and training with special forces personnel of the Sith stealth regiment. Mraito's tenure among the ChTsSh saw him develop a baseline proficiency in Force stealth, Force mask, and Force conceal, spells that empowered him to avoid being seen in certain settings if he wished. Despite cultivating such skills, Mraito ultimately found himself ill-suited to the clandestine subtleties of special reconnaissance and special operations as practiced by the ChTsSh. He cultivated a greater interest in the study of military strategy as applied to irregular warfare, showing some promise in the planning and undertaking of unconventional warfare operations during his studies under Sith special forces personnel.

After a lengthy tenure among the Shikkari, Mraito eventually departed Thule for worlds farther afield, most notably the jungle world of Tund. Tied with Arkania as one of the furthest Sith colonies from the beating heart of the Empire, Tund was a verdant Force nexus lost on the northeastern borders of the Open Sea, a vast expanse of uninhabited space lying in the Centrality sector. Though initially settled by outcast Kissai priests who had interpreted the death of Sith King Adas in the 27,700 BBY Rakata invasion of Korriban as a sign to reject the dark side, Tund had eventually come to serve as the principle Sith penal colony in the millennia since the Empire's founding in 6900 BBY. Its residents were heretical thinkers and theorists of many traditions, from proponents of Rakata monism as applied to the Unifying Force to Light Sith who refused to embrace the dark-sided mores of prevailing Sith culture.

Though Mraito generally only spent a few years at most on any given world before moving on to the next, he mingled among members of these varied factions over the span of several decades, studying unconventional theories of the Force and penning dissertations on arcane Force rituals practiced by the residents of Tund that eventually came to constitute a considerable portion of his Qâzoikut Qyâsikanjat anthology. Despite his protected status as a free citizen of the Sith Empire, he found himself readily welcomed by the exiled residents of the planet, many of whom were eager to engage in spirited philosophical discussion with a mainline Sith from the heartland of the Empire. Between its residents' hospitality and the planet's beautiful verdant landscapes, Mraito came to consider Tund a second home away from Korriban, leading him to return on multiple occasions in the years that followed.

After a brief visit to the sparsely populated colony of Vjun, Mraito traveled to the Inner Rim to visit the Empire's westernmost holdings of Ambria and Arkania. After a brief visit to the court of Ambria's overseeing Sith sorceress, Mraito brought his extensive perambulations to an end on Arkania, a frozen wasteland famously home to the Veeshas Tuwan library-temple. This subterranean complex, sitting on a city-sized campus spanning five square kilometers, was widely considered the foremost repository of Sith writings and artifacts in the Empire, containing so much collated data and compiled lore by the Golden Age of the Sith that locating specific relics of interest was a nearly impossible task. Mraito subsequently took up residence at the library-temple among countless other Sith sorcerers, often ending up lost in ceaseless study within the labyrinthine structure for months at a time before finally emerging from its depths to bask in Olim's white sunlight. Arkania proved to be an ideal adopted homeworld for Mraito&mdash;far removed from the tedious power games of the prevailing Sith establishment, the world was mostly populated by similarly minded academics and scholars with whom Mraito frequently entered into deep philosophical discourse and concerted study of Force rituals during his decades-spanning tenure.

It was within the Veeshas Tuwan's walls that Mraito came to achieve mastery of a great many rituals of Sith magic and associated sub-disciplines. One such niche field Mraito studied was Sith necromancy, a sub-discipline of Sith magic combining Sith alchemy and sorcery. Mraito's study of this field began with a perusal of Jen'jidai Sorzus Syn's titular chroncicle, an account of the Dark Jedi Exiles' earliest days on Korriban. Nestled among discussions of ancient Sith artifacts and observations regarding the unique cultural mores of the Sith people, Syn included copies of a number of Sith language incantations, the most obscure of which was the Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut incantation. This obscure and complex spell combining Sith magic and Sith alchemy was capable of reanimating corpses into hoyakut, a Sith word meaning "the dead" made in reference to the hordes of mindless Korriban zombie Sithspawn that protected Sith sacred sites like the Valley of Golg and the Valley of the Dark Lords.

Though the subjects of his studies were widely varied in nature, Mraito developed a particular interest in the study of post-mortem spiritual transcendence. Per the conventional dark-sided means of achieving continued existence as a Force ghost, a sufficiently powerful Sith Lord could make use of the Transfer essence ability to deny the will of the Force on death, persisting as a disembodied spirit bound to the physical realm by means of a locational focus point like a tomb or a specially prepared receptacle like a Sith amulet. Though such incorporeal spirits could continue to make use of Force powers related to the manipulation of minds  or the possession of host vessels, they were unable to employ Force abilities that directly affected physical objects, just as they could not be affected by such powers themselves. These Sith spirits could only be banished through the destruction of the host vessels or focus points that tethered them to the corporeal plane.

Mraito was particularly disenchanted with this conventional Sith approach to transcendence, believing that the practice of transferring essence between host vessels and focus points was little more than a cheap means of temporarily avoiding permanent extinction of individuality rather than a true merging of identity with the Force. He sought instead for a means by which personhood could be retained while being completely transferred from the physical realm to the Force without the need for any corporeal crutch. Mraito began his search for alternate possibilities with the study of Force ghosts themselves, employing the rituals of Invoke spirits and Force walk to summon and bind Sith spirits to his person for firsthand examination of their properties. He learned much from these restless spirits of the limitations inherent in this means of transcending death, particularly of the impermanence endemic to physical focus points susceptible to decay and destruction. As a result, Mraito spent many years in search of a better way of melding his identity into the Force, though his studies turned up few promising leads.

In the quiet solitude of the Veeshas Tuwan's qabbratai and focusing chambers, Mraito had much time to reflect back upon all he had seen in his extensive perambulations across the Empire. Particularly inspired by his tenure among the free-thinking population of Tund, his musings on Force-based philosophy took increasingly more concrete form as he began analyzing perceived flaws with prevailing conceptions of the Force as codified in conventional Tsisajak ("Sith doctrine" ). Unlike most Sith, Mraito forsook the traditional dualist conception of Qyâsik ("the Force" ) as a binary entity of cleanly demarcated light and dark sides, a view commonly taught by the Jedi and inadvertently disseminated to the Sith people by the Exiles at the founding of the Sith Empire. Instead, inspired by the monist Unifying Force teachings of the Rakata that he had encountered among the Sith outcasts of Tund, Mraito outlined a monist theory of the Force that came to be known by the Sith language compound word Dzwolutwokun, meaning "the state of existing as only one."

Unlike some proponents of the Unifying Force paradigm, however, Mraito did not go so far as to outright deny the existence of the light and dark sides. Instead, he claimed that the Force alignment spectrum was a characteristic of Force users rather than the Force itself. Applying the analogy of the Sith lightsaber to this theory, Mraito likened the Force to a lightsaber's focusing lens used to amplify the output and unique properties of the weapon's crystals in the production of a blade. In a similar fashion, the Force was a means by which the fundamental character and moral fabric of its wielders was augmented, amplified, and revealed. Those of a traditional "light-sided" bent were empowered by the Force to aid and heal others at the expense of the self, while "dark-siders" were granted easy access to powers permitting self-aggrandizement at the expense of others.

Though he made no efforts to proselytize or disseminate his views to others, Mraito's controversial philosophies eventually came to the attention of the greater population of Sith sorcerers also in residence at the Veeshas Tuwan. Though most dismissed his monist beliefs as unconventional conjecture little different from any another borderline heretical system of thought, a select few shared Mraito's sentiments and basic belief system. Many of these began to frequent his private study in the basement of the Veeshas Tuwan and engage in philosophical inquiry on a number of subjects related to the Force. This group's membership grew over time as more sorcerers of varied denominations and traditions began attending the weekly informal debates held in the bowels of the library. Many of those regulars who conformed to Mraito's teachings on the subject of the Force named themselves "Mraitoite Sith" in honor of their instructor, forming the core of Mraito's burgeoning informal power base.

Patently disinterested in the acquisition of thrones or titles, Mraito never went to any efforts to cultivate a power base of followers and servants like those of the Sith Lords and sorcerers alongside whom he studied. However, in addition to the several dozen sorcerers who constituted the membership of the Mraitoai, Mraito was also served and protected by a number of volunteer Massassi veterans of the Kohortwotok Wishastuwan, an elite Massassi kohortwotok ("first cohort" ) charged with providing security to the Veeshas Tuwan complex. Many of these retired veterans had served Mraito for years during his decades-long tenure at the library and had come to respect him for his power in the Force and for the uncommon respect that he, a Forceful member of a higher caste, had shown them. These several dozen Massassi, subsequently nicknamed the "Mraitosassi" by the Mraitoite Sith, were storied veterans of a hundred Sith civil conflicts and came to serve as Mraito's elite bodyguard unit in the years that followed. With their permission, Mraito subsequently amplified their natural abilities through the application of several Sith alchemical enhancements he had perfected during his time among the Ninûshwodzakut, augmenting their already prodigious skill in combat with increased strength and dexterity.

"Alas, the Jedi are so many and our numbers so few; how will we bury them all?"

- Mraito to the Tsistaralkut during the post–Great Hyperspace War counterinvasion, 4999 BBY

Despite being born a member of the Kissai priest caste, Mraito carried himself with a Sith Lord's air, exhibiting both an unmistakable aura of command and a patrician's effortless charm in turn. His quiet confidence and aristocratic bearing often led others to mistakenly conclude that he himself was a Sith Lord in the years prior to his formal anointing by Marka Ragnos, an erroneous misconception he rarely saw fit to correct due to the respect and prestige the assumed status afforded him. A reserved academic little interested in ostentatious displays of power or influence, he was often described as "quietly intense" by his contemporaries, conducting his affairs with an affable grace and subtle charm that belied his true dark-sided nature and considerable power in the Force. His polite smiles, though frequently lavished upon friend and stranger alike, were more often described as predatory than genuine, and many remarked that the vein of humor in his easy laugh never quite reached his eyes.

Raised on the ancestral homeworld of the Sith species,  Mraito was steeped in the dark-sided mysticism and kratocratic cultural mores of the Sith from an early age. As such, he took no issue with such traditional Sith practices as slavery and ritualistic kaggaths, believing such exercises in krato-magocracy to be simply the way of nature. Though not one to engage in wanton violence or needless acts of cruelty himself, Mraito nonetheless shared the ends-justify-means mentality tacitly embraced by his peers and engaged in all manner of sordid acts of mindless brutality whenever ready justification could be provided in light of the desired end. Though possessed of no personal ambition for titles or thrones, Mraito was nonetheless vengeful towards those who slighted him or used him to their own ends, often spending decades brooding upon half-remembered slights and nursing petty plans for revenge.

Despite possessing the dark-sided sensibilities of his peers, Mraito was nonetheless not without positive traits. Like many of his caste, Mraito exhibited the characteristic loyalty and dependability for which the Dark Jedi Exiles and their Sith Lord descendants had selectively bred the Kissai for centuries. Though slow to trust, Mraito went to great lengths to look after and protect those whom had proven their dedication to him in some unmistakable way, loyally defending his trusted friends and allies regardless of the personal cost to himself. This unshakable loyalty, augmented by means of the Kissai caste's genetic predisposition towards working with others for the good of the group, ultimately manifested itself in Mraito's deep-seated collectivist mentality, breeding an aversion to individualism encapsulated both in his seminal work of political philosophy, the Qotaral, and his subsequent formation of the Tsistaralkut during the post–Great Hyperspace War counterinvasion to protect the greater Sith civilian population. This collectivist loyalty to his species was so intense that Mraito was ultimately willing to sacrifice his own life to ensure the survival of his people.

"The Force is neither light nor dark in itself&mdash;it is the means by which the fundamental nature of the wielder is illuminated and laid bare. It is the wielder who is light or dark, just as it is the wielder who is responsible for the choices made and the consequences suffered."

- Galactic Basic translation of an extract from the collated writings of Mraito

Mraito was often labelled a Light Sith by later historians for his sacrifice during the post–Great Hyperspace War counterinvasion on behalf of the Sith people and for the collectivist tenets of the Qotaral that put the greater good of the Empire above the selfish ambition of the individual. However, Mraito took issue with the term, believing that it did not properly speak to the root of his problems with conventional Sith dogma. His issue was not one of disagreement with traditional Sith kratocracy, but rather with the individualism codified in the Qotsisajak. Mraito considered himself to be a "kratocratic collectivist" in contrast to more conventional Sith Lords of a "kratocratic individualist" persuasion, a difference encapsulated in his belief that while Force users&mdash;"the strong"&mdash;had a Force-given right to rule over the Forceless&mdash;"the weak"&mdash;it was in their interests and in the interests of the Empire to put the good of the entire group before the good of the self.

Unlike other Sith Lords who wielded their powers carelessly, Mraito displayed a distinct reverence for the Force, considering it more of a mysterious deity to be studied and worshiped than a tool to be wielded at will. As such, he refrained from the casual usage of his prodigious Force powers for such mundane purposes as retrieving items off shelves by means of Force telekinesis or decreasing travel times through Force speed. He believed limiting the usage of the Force in everyday life helped preserve the wonder and awe with which non-sensitive individuals viewed the Force, allowing the wielder to study its aspects and practice spellcasting with the proper respect and admiration the Force deserved. His reverence was based on his belief that the Force was a pseudo-conscious entity that shaped the course of events in the entire galaxy, a theory he first encountered on Tund among the proponents of Rakata Unifiying Force monism. In accordance with such theories, Mraito believed that the so-called "will of the Force" was the collective consciousness of the Celestials who had transcended into the Force during the Celestial-Rakata War and predestined all subsequent events in light of a greater purpose.

"Hunanqû Tsisottoi, Tsisqû Hunanottoi."

- Mraito despairs about his genetic composition

In life, Mraito looked for all intents and purposes like any other reasonably attractive Sith Pureblood of highly concentrated Human blood. Though he possessed a legitimate claim of relation to the Jen'jidai Baron Remulus Dreypa and made frequent boasts as the purity of his Human Dark Jedi blood, Mraito was in reality of primarily Tapani Human descent, descended from refugees of House Nidantha who had fled into the Stygian Caldera in the aftermath of the Unification War and interbred with their Sith masters over centuries. As a result of this high percentage Human ancestry, Mraito manifested predominantly Human physical features. Though he exhibited the Sith species' trademark florid complexion,  crimson eyes, high cheekbones, cheek tendrils, superficial eye stalks,  and predisposition towards left-handedness, Mraito possessed certain features like five-fingered hands and a distinctly Human nose that betrayed his Human ancestry.

In his sporadic post-mortem appearances as a perceivable Force ghost, Mraito&mdash;like many incorporeal spirits &mdash;generally chose to appear as he most often had in life, clad in his characteristic high-collared, floor-length Sith robes and adorned with his Kissai Sith amulet. His visible shade, which generally hovered half a meter off the ground, shimmered with the characteristic blue Force glow commonly evidenced among other perceivable Force ghosts. This same blue glow similarly manifested itself as a visible light emitted from the eyes of physical host vessels he possessed by means of essence transfer, both Korriban zombies and living sentients alike. While Korriban zombies reanimated by means of the Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut incantation of Sith necromancy generally exhibited glowing red eyes by default, the eyes of those reanimated and personally possessed by Mraito's spirit shone with a bright blue. Similarly, living sentient vessels Mraito possessed&mdash;willingly or otherwise&mdash;likewise evidenced a slight blue glow from their pupils whenever Mraito attempted to wield the Force through them.

"If you were to face an ancient Sith Lord in combat, you would learn that we are as children playing with toys compared to the prowess of the old masters."

- Darth Traya in reference to the Sith Lords of the old Sith Empire

Like many of the Sith Lords of the old Sith Empire, Mraito was possessed of a powerful, above-average connection to the Force greater and more potent than those of Sith active in subsequent millennia. Though dwarfed and overshadowed in the Force by such noteworthy contemporaries as Marka Ragnos, Naga Sadow, and Ludo Kressh, Mraito's raw ability, shaped and refined over many decades' worth of dedicated training and concerted study of arcane rituals, nonetheless rendered him one of the most powerful Kissai priests and Sith sorcerers active during the Golden Age of the Sith. However, his patent disinterest in the acquisition of thrones and titles granted him few ample opportunities to publicly demonstrate his strength in the Force during his lifetime. As a result, only a select few of his contemporaries and peers were fully aware of his potential and the true extent of the power he wielded in the Force.

Raised in the traditions of the Kissai priest caste from birth, Mraito was immersed in the study of the Force and instructed in the usage of fundamental powers like telekinesis, Force sight, and Force barrier from an early age. A Sith sorcerer by specialty, Mraito was proficient in the application of such fundamental incantations of Sith magic as Dwomutsiqsa, Sutta Chwituskak, and Odojinya, offensive spells that empowered him to engage in combat at a distance. Additionally, from an early age, Mraito displayed a particular affinity for Sith magic rituals related to the mental manipulation of sentient organisms, exhibiting a talent for powers ranging from simple mind tricks to less conventional Qâzoi Kyantuska incantations used to invade and control the minds of weaker beings at will. In addition to combat-oriented incantations, Mraito's lifelong interest in the academic study of Force ghosts led him to pursue mastery in more arcane rituals related to spiritual transcendence, including invoke spirits, Force walk, and transfer essence. His acquired proficiency in these advanced rituals ultimately empowered him to persist as a Force ghost himself after death and likewise manifest as a visible shade to the living at will.

In addition to conventional Sith magic, Mraito was also versed in a number of other Force-mediated fields of study. During his grand tour of the Sith Empire in the days of his youth, Mraito studied the varied aspects of Sith alchemy in great detail, cultivating a proficiency in the Force imbuement of corporeal objects and the development and selective breeding of Sithspawn. The latter skill came in handy in later years with his subsequent study of Sith necromancy, a niche sub-discipline combining Sithspawn alchemy with Sith magic by means of the Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut ritual. During his time among the Châtsûshnwûlkut Tsisottoi Shikkarûjontû, Mraito also developed some elementary skill in Force powers used for more furtive purposes, including Force stealth, Force mask, and Force conceal. Though he considered himself ill-suited the subtle art of assassination as traditionally practiced by the Shikkari of the ChTsSh, he was competent enough in these spells to avoid being seen in certain settings if he wished.

Though a proper polyglot by the end of his life, Mraito was primarily a speaker of the so-called "Sithic" family of languages widely spoken during the Golden Age of the Sith. As a member of the Kissai priest caste born on the homeworld of the Sith species,  Mraito possessed a native fluency in the Sith language due to its extensive use in rituals of Sith magic and Sith alchemy. As he often interacted with Massassi guards and warriors pledged in service to the Kissai caste, he also possessed a professional fluency in the Massassi dialect. Mraito encountered Tundan during his time spent in study on Tund, cultivating a conversational ability in the offshoot of the Sith language spoken exclusively by the Kissai heretics in residence on the planet.

Though he favored the use of the Sithic languages in his personal and professional lives, he was eventually forced to cultivate some conversational ability in Galactic Basic upon leaving Korriban to study abroad in the greater Sith Empire. The version of Galactic Basic commonly spoken in the Empire was a somewhat antiquated version of the language originally brought to the Sith Worlds by the Dark Jedi Exiles in the aftermath of the Hundred-Year Darkness. As he was not a native speaker of the language, Mraito often faced difficulty in pronouncing some Basic words without a distinctive Sith accent, a fact largely attributed to the presence of certain phonemes in Basic lacking equivalents in the phonetic palette of the Sith language.

In contrast to the colorful and often ostentatious style of raiment worn by many Sith Lords during the Golden Age of the Sith, Mraito adopted a more severe and unobtrusive form of dress based on the traditional vestments worn by Kissai priests prior to the arrival of the Dark Jedi Exiles in 6900 BBY. He most commonly arrayed himself in perfectly tailored, nondescript Sith robes of charcoal and black colorations, high-collared and floor-length in form. While many Sith Lords of the Golden Age displayed their wealth on their persons in the form of jewels and baubles of solid aurodium, Mraito wore only a single unobtrusive Sith amulet around his neck of a style common among Kissai priests and a simple bronzium coronet upon his ascension to the Sith Lordship of Korriban. Such a repressed style of dress allowed him to avoid unwanted attention by rendering him invisible at court, hidden in plain sight and lost among the more colorful garments of those around him.

In his intermittent participation in armed conflicts, Mraito wore alchemically enhanced bronzium armor and a closed-face Sith kabuto of similar to that adopted by Naga Sadow's apprentice Gav Daragon. During the Great Hyperspace War, Mraito grudgingly donned a Sith Lord's traditional crimson cape at the suggestion of his Massassi executive officer Kazarkasimus as a visual aid assisting his subordinates in recognizing him on the battlefield. Mraito was intimately familiar with the use of the traditional Sith lanvarok, a forearm-mounted slugthrower weapon requiring the use of the Force to launch and guide disc projectiles to their intended targets. Like all members of the Kissai caste, Mraito was trained in the use of this weapon from an early age and demonstrated proficiency in its use mediated by means of his above-average Force sensitivity. He generally wore a lanvarok in place of a left vambrace when donning full bronzium armor, though his prodigious command of Sith magic ensured that it was rarely used in battle except as a last resort.

The character of Mraito was in large part inspired by Firedance's Sith philosopher Karros and the varied members of SaMraito' namesake family of Sith Purebloods. The author exploited the convenient orthographic similarities between "Karros" and "SaMraito" in the development of the character's name, considering it a fitting tribute to both fanon continuities and their respective authors. Additional sources of inspiration for Mraito's personality came from the characters of Petyr Baelish from A Song of Ice and Fire, Apocalypse!Michael from Supernatural, Odysseus from the Iliad (as well as Sean Bean's portrayal of the character in the film Troy), and the film portrayal of the King of the Dead from Tolkien's legendarium. The character's self-sacrificial death during the post–Great Hyperspace War counterinvasion was inspired by the events of the Battle of Thermopylae and the post-credits mission of Halo: Reach titled "Lone Wolf."

The character, originally provided the Sith name "Dzunyâsh" in reference to the Wookieepedia username of linguist Ben Grossblatt, was initially developed as an experiment in the writing of a believable, EU canon-consistent immortal Force user similar to the members of the Emperor's Hand. Dzunyâsh was initially supposed to achieve immortality by means of the Curse of Graush, surviving the Great Hyperspace War in a Sith oubliette and persisting for millennia on vestigial Sith worlds like Tund and Thule. However, the idea of a Sith self-sacrificially giving his life for the Sith species during the post–Great Hyperspace War counterinvasion and subsequently achieving spiritual transcendence as a light-sided Force ghost proved to be the more compelling concept in the author's mind. This concept gradually developed outward into philosophical waters after the author concurrently encountered unconventional Force-using factions like the Followers of Palawa, Sorcerer of Tund, and the Jal Shey in EU canon and fanon characters like the aforementioned Karros by Firedance.


 * Wiki wide-crop.png Karros on Star Wars Fanon, the Star Wars Wiki of fan invention
 * Wiki wide-crop.png SaMraito family on Star Wars Fanon, the Star Wars Wiki of fan invention