| abstract | - Vihata was born as Garris Raden to a poor family on Rhen Var, into a life characterized by hate and fury. His father, ever the avid treasure hunter and self-proclaimed archaeologist, had deluded himself into thinking that the secrets beneath the planet's icy crust held the key to his family's success and well-being. Garris was raised in this hostile environment by his mother, often spending many lonely days waiting for his father to return from another failed attempt to discover treasure hidden among the slick corridors of Rhen Var's natural tunnels. Garris developed a hobby scouring the abandoned remains of the Republic bases near the makeshift dwelling his family had erected, and began to spend more and more time there, sifting through the rusting tools and vehicles left behind during the Clone Wars. One day, a chance encounter with Rebels forced an Imperial convoy to make a random jump, taking them directly into the Rhen Var system. The convoy's Star Destroyer had been damaged severely in the ambush, and its crew descended to the planet's surface to see if there was anything salvageable in the base ruins that could be implemented as a temporary solution. The stormtrooper patrol stumbled onto Garris as he was carrying on with his daily habit of fiddling with one of the old DC-15 rifles from the armory, and surprised him to the point that he accidentally fired the rifle into the group. The bolt did little real damage to the armor of the trooper that it hit, but the stormtroopers instinctively moved to subdue Garris. He held them at bay by waving the rifle around for a moment, but it did little to slow the troopers. Fortunately for him, it was sufficient to allow time for an Imperial officer to enter the room and take stock of the situation. The officer, mildly amused and admiring of the youngster's rash courage and ferocity, ordered the patrollers off, then offered to take Garris back with him to be educated and trained in an Imperial academy. Garris was thrilled with the prospect, and raced off to inform his parents, with the patrol right behind him. Naturally, Garris's parents were less than ecstatic over the idea of Garris being taken from them, and argued and pleaded with the officer not to take their son. Garris was equally insistent, but pleaded the opposite case. His father, having finally had enough, stepped forward, drawing a small holdout blaster he kept with him at all times while searching the ruins and ice floes. The stormtroopers moved to stop him, but it was not they who saved the officer's life that day. Garris, already in a rage over what he saw as his parents' refusal to allow him to leave for a better life, was overcome by an unexplained burst of hatred. Seemingly of its own accord, his arm lashed out too fast for any of the others to see, snatching the holdout blaster from his father's hand and turning it on both his parents, gunning them down where they stood. The troopers had barely blinked before both Garris's father and mother were lying on the ground with neat holes burned through their foreheads. Silence reigned for a moment, then the officer's mind was made up. He motioned for Garris to follow, while the stormtroopers erased all traces of the little hut that the Radens had lived in. A crew soon found enough materials in the Republic base to repair the Star Destroyer, and they returned to Coruscant, where Garris was immediately put into the Imperial Academy. He was a quick study, and by the time graduation was near, he was at the top of his class. Unfortunately, he was also brash and confrontational, and more than one of his opponents in the class found themselves facing his fists or the soles of his boots when they accosted him. One of the board members, who saw Garris's rise as a threat to another student (whom the board member favored), orchestrated a series of events that finally forced the rest of the board to take action. Garris was summarily dismissed from the Academy, declared "an untoward prospect due to an extreme tendency toward violence, and an extremely headstrong nature". Before he could set off on his own, however, an officer who was in the system to find potential recruits for the Imperial Guard among the Academy's finest stopped him. Despite his violent nature, the officer said, his loyalty was unquestionable. Garris went with the officer, and was placed in the same training program that Kir Kanos and Carnor Jax themselves had undergone. Midway through Garris's training, the second Death Star was destroyed, and the Emperor killed. The training program was abandoned as the Empire attempted to find ways to hold together, and Garris was left to find his own way. Furious over his extremely bad luck over the course of his life, he began to seek out Carnor Jax - a man he had looked up to since learning of him during his training as a Guard. When he found Jax, the Sith immediately detected Garris's potential, and seized the opportunity. Under Carnor Jax, Garris was able to complete the training of an Imperial Guard, as well as something far more valuable: he gained knowledge of the dark side of the Force. Jax tapped into Garris's ability, manifested thus far only through the typical signs, and soon Garris had become a full-fledged Sith Lord. Jax met his end not long afterward, when Kir Kanos finally caught up to him and killed him in the Squall, but Garris, going by the name "Vihata", felt that he had gotten all he could from Jax anyway. He took the armor of an Imperial Guard that Jax had given him, and set out to find his own way in the universe - and to find new pathways to the ultimate power that the dark side offered. Little did he know just what kind of fate awaited him along that path...
|
