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Character History
Arania was born on Ralconia, as second child of a Jedi family. They were mostly living on the small, unimportant Republic planet Salaa, in the Nakali region. Her mother Zhansi worked for the local Jedi Training Center, sending a lot of promising candidates on to Luke Skywalker. Her father Deanon was often going about this or that Republic affair, so neither her nor her brother Heron saw very much of him. He still had a very important influence on her and her brother. An influence that, in her case, her mother resented because it included references to the Dark Side. Arania always knew that her parents, mainly her mother, were hiding things from her she was supposed to know. This made her to be resentful more than open for her mother’s teachings and turn to her father even more.
Her father died early in her life during a mission that had never been explained to her. Having lost her main guidance, Arania started to try to fit into the family, with little success. When she was 9, an accident happened that killed her beloved pet in a marketplace. Furious at the workers who only laughed at this, she went into a rage and almost killed the workers, leaving one with serious brain damage. She had, of course, no idea what exactly she had done, but the incident would not be forgotten. From then on, she was watched and berated all the time, making her feel cold and lonely. The resentment on being stuck on the planet added to her emotions of anger and slowly growing hate. She found that being honest about her feelings, as Master Kadubar and her mom taught her at the training center, made things worse, so she learned both to lie and scheme and to despise the Jedi, who, in her view, behaved very foolish and arrogant.
When she was 14, her brother went on to the Jedi Academy, but occasionally returned to “help mother with the girl.“ This attitude and them constantly putting her down made her slowly resent her brother, too. When she was 16, she tried to run away with a mercenary crew on an old freighter, but they did not want to take her, despite her abilities. But the failure made her need to leave just stronger.
When she was 17, her mother kept her from going to the Jedi Academy, with the reason that she was still not “free from Dark tendencies,“ not realizing that she had partly planted those tendencies herself. From then on, Arania did all she could to pretend to be completely Light, with more or less success. Just after her mother denied her a second time for the Academy, and just when she had decided to leave the planet for good, being 19, a Dark Jedi Knight by the name of Z’lar Khan came to search her out. He did not come for anyone else but for her. Her mother tried to prevent her being taken along and got killed in the ensuring battle.
There is no doubt in Arania’s mind that her mother could have won, would she just have used the darker possibilities of the Force. But she did not, thus not only betraying her daughter once more but also once again proving her foolishness. Arania left with Z’lar, accepting him as new Master.
Upon arriving in the Dark Brotherhood and joining the Order of the Krath, Arania's main goal was to be Tetrarch. But fate would have it different as she got picked for Aedile after helping her Clan, Aquillas, out with an important war.
Raising fast in ability and thus power, driven by the almost mad need to not end up like her mother, Arania became Quaestor when her Master, who had the position until then, was forced to go on a long term mission.
When Arania was just Jedi Hunter, shortly before she took Quaestor, she became involved in a quest for a Force artifact because of the then-GM Faethor (now Chi-Long). The events surrounding this quest included a time travel of the weird kind. Faethor, who was supposed to take possession of the item after the whole affair, was too busy fighting off high power Force users, so Arania took the bracelet without really knowing what it truly was, and of course without being able to use it. Part of the bracelet's effect was, though, to instill a growing hunger for Force artifacts and old scriptures in her. Ever since then, Arania has been an almost mad collector of such items and owns plenty of them now.
While some of these Force artifacts and scriptures have long outlived their use for Arania, as her own powers are far more advanced, or never had a use for her to begin with, she is still very reluctant to part with any as the collecting is an obsession far beyond any logic. Would she know what is driving this compulsion, things would likely go out of her control. It is an obsession she shares with her 'nemesis' Trev, which makes the dislike for him only worse as she would want the same artifacts he owns.
Over time, Arania became Consul and Magistrate to the KHP. When the KHP went missing, Arania got the position and left Aquillas with the promise to once return. Unfortunately, the promise could not be kept because the then Grand Master Thedek disbanded her Clan, fearing it's influence and a possible back stab. Just prior to the Clan's end, other events had weakened it badly, so Arania and a few other Aquillas members vowed revenge and founded the Aquillari, a group of former members and their students adamant on but one thing - avenging the attacks that had ripped apart the Clan. This was achieved eventually .
Her tenure as KHP was a very successful one, partly because she included other talented and influential Krath in its running, among them Praetor Trevarus Caerick who later became a very significant force himself. Thus she kept infighting and envy low, yet the competition high enough to make her staff outdo each other. But after over a year, she felt the drive of being on the move more often, collecting knowledge and artifacts. This was not compatible with staying in a Council position.
She went rogue for a while, exploring the galaxy on her own, partly taking her family (adopted children) along. This also gave her a possibility to claim rights on her Ralconian heritage and settle quite a few old scores, including with her former Jedi instructor Kadubar.
She was not subtle about getting the historical data, scripts and artifacts she wanted. Many had to lose their lives even over minor things such as the Ring of Calm. And it was not only Dark Side artifacts she wanted. In her possession are several Light Side artifacts, part of those she managed to disable. Her idea is that they are better with a Dark Jedi to keep them away than with a Jedi who'd use them.
Eventually, Arania joined Clan Satal Keto and had a long and successful time there, serving as Rollmaster several times while there. The only reason for her to change Clans again was the disbanding of the Clan.
The reason she chose Scholae Palatinae was her friendship with several Dark Jedi there, plus the fact that they had always supported her during her time as High Priest. The idea was to have a place to belong and be an active force whenever she felt like it. However, it soon turned out that the Clan was in shambles, never having recovered completely from the split from the Emperor's Hammer
During the rebuilding of the Clan, Arania served as Proconsul under 3 different Consuls. Eventually, her personal research interests were more important to her than sticking to positions others could do as well. While she was always there when the Clan needed assistance, she usually spent her days in the alchemy lab, the library or on obscure planets hunting for yet more artifacts.
It was on one of those expeditions that she was tricked into visiting an old tomb supposedly the burial ground of a Jedi Master who was said to have owned a lightsaber of special powers. Instead of finding yet another trophy, she was attacked by several Jedi. Not taking them seriously at first, Arania soon found that they were more than a match for her. She lost the battle after killing several of them.
Of the events that followed in the years after, she remembered very little. The Jedi brainwashed her and erased most of her memories, tricking her to believe she was a mediocre Jedi assigned to a small library on a backwater world. This could have been the last anyone had heard of here, were it not for Grandmaster Sarin who happened to come across the world she had been hidden on. As it was unacceptable to Sarin that some Jedi who had not even made names for themselves had captured one of his Brotherhood, he entered the library grounds to find her and break the memory block the Jedi had placed on Arania. Remembering who she really was, Arania killed the few people at the library she had considered friends and half destroyed the building in the process. From that moment on, she felt she owed Sarin even more than her life.
In the archives of the library, she found one single Force artifact and found it to be just what she needed. It was a silver pendant with a blue stone, preventing the wearer from being controlled by any other mind in any form. What the Krath did not realize was that this artifact, by its very nature, was Light Side. Over time, it embedded itself into her chest and every time it was called upon, it corrupted her more towards the Light Side. But before it could do too much damage, an accident happened that changed Arania.
Upon returning to her Clan, Arania found that they were just trying to reclaim Antei. Knowing little of the Vong or what had happened to make the Brotherhood leave Antei, Arania at first did not want to get too involded in it all. Instead, she helped out Robin Hawk in the alchemy labs while trying to adjust to all the changes. About the same time, Koskian 'Psyko' d'Tana had an accident in one of the alchemy labs of Dorimad Sol. The details were never revealed to outsiders, but the Obelisk managed to switch body with an Ewok subject he was supposed to have an eye on when there was an explosion. The soul of the Ewok was now in his body and ran off with it, and it took kosk about a week to convince the Clan he was who he claimed to be.
Arania was arrogant enough to believe that she could recreate the experiment mishap and thus understand, prevent and, more importantly, reverse it. Instead, she only recreated it with her as the victim and ended up in an Ewok body herself, while her own body was destroyed in the explosion.
DJB Facts