Heart of the Force

The Heart of the Force

The Heart of the Force was the name Urias Orian gave to the wound in the Force located at the core of the Temple of Lost Souls inside Mount Kazinal on Lehon. It was a spiritual prison created by the dark sorceries of the ancient Rakata sometime prior to the collapse of the Infinite Empire in 25,200 BBY. The Heart appeared as a crystal of dark side energy that hung within Kazinal Core, inside of which the souls of hundreds, if not thousands, of sacrificial victims had been ripped apart and forever trapped.

After the Heart's discovery by Orian in the final decades of the old Sith Empire, it became the source of the Sith Lord's obsession with immortality, and it was the history of the Heart's creation that eventually let him to sacrifice the Ombi race of the Sepros system, much as the Rakata had done to their slaves millennia before. In an act of irony, the Heart also became Orian's end when history repeated itself: his actions in replicating the depravity of the Rakata ultimately causing his own slaves to rise up against him as well.

The existence of the Heart was rediscovered in the Holocron of Antar IV in the early days of the Dark Brotherhood when the holocron was recovered from Antar IV in 15 ABY by the Night Hawks under the command of Trevarus Caerick. Given the holocron was created during the days of Darth Revan and Darth Malak, it was assumed the Heart itself's creation must have predated the Jedi Civil War which ended in 3,956 BBY.

However, the holocron of Antar IV was cryptic as to the Heart's whereabouts, the holocron's gatekeepers seeking more to simply entice wayward Jedi, rather than offer up the information directly. Caerick surmised this was the work of the holocron's creator to deliberately hide the location of the planet. It was not until the existence of Lehon was rediscovered in the holocron of Darth Maestus by Darth Vexatus in 27 ABY that it became possible to reconnect the ancient Rakatan homeworld with the planet first hinted at in the Antar holocron. The Heart subsequently became the source of the pair's obsessions for the following three years, appearing to both offer a solution to the Yuuzhan Vong War and a path to apotheosis.

After years of being lost, the location of Lehon was finally rediscovered in the Star Map on Sepros, from which the pair of rogue Dark Jedi Masters deserted their Clan and the Brotherhood and headed to Lehon and Urati Kazinal. There saw the climax of years of treachery and betrayal in a duel between Master and apprentice, and the knights of Prince Astronicus Sadow. But in the battle that should have seen one man ascend to godhood, instead greed took the better of them, and the Heart was shattered into a million pieces, its power forever to be lost.

Trivia

• The Heart of the Force was a long rumoured element of Urias Orian's backstory, and was developed from the Eighth Great Jedi War in Summer 2007 up until it finally featured first hand in the Dagger's Point run-on in Spring 2008. In that same run-on, however, the Heart was at long last destroyed, finally putting an end to the dark curse that had hung over it since its creation.
• Though not elaborated on above, the Heart was also the hidden power that Severina, one of the founding triumvirs of the True Brotherhood, had been searching for since her return in the Invasion of Orian of Autumn 2007. Unaware of the Heart's destruction, she continued her pursuit of its power up until her final death in 31 ABY at Dystopia.