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| Who’s Who Harrsk |
Harrsk (d. 47 rS) was a space warfare officer (SWO) in the service of the Imperial State in the late 30s rS who became one of the most prominent
rogue warlords to defect from the Empire after the Galactic Emperor’s death at the Battle of Endor in 39 rS. Unlike many of those who followed in
his footsteps, Admiral Harrsk had actually been present at the battle itself; The Essential Chronology and The New Essential Chronology both
confirm that he was a task force commander under Fleet Admiral Firmus Piett’s command, and Darksaber mentions that his Star Destroyer had been
severely damaged during the fighting. He himself “had been nearly killed in an explosion” during the battle, and he “could have repaired his skin with
existing medical techniques,” but he declined, “keeping the hideous scars as a badge of honor.” Despite the severity of his wounds, he was
sufficiently recovered to return to duty as early as the Imperial battle force’s regrouping at Annaj, as the New Republic Historical Council writes
that Harrsk refused to accept orders from Captain Gilad Pellaeon, the acting Commanding Officer, HIMS Chimaera – it was he that had illegally
ordered the retreat – and abandoned the Empire, taking his forces to the Deep Core to set about “building up his own pocket empire” there “among
the secure Imperial safeworlds.”
Having established himself as an independent empereur en petit, Harrsk eschewed his admiral’s flag in favor of more grandiloquent titles. In Children
of the Jedi he is said to have claimed the rather loftier title of Lord High Admiral, while the scholars call him “Grand Admiral Harrsk” on at least one
occasion (q.v. “Atravis Sector”), although most sources agree that he styled himself Supreme Warlord, which appears to play off the legitimate title
of Warlord of the Empire (Grand Admiral Thrawn is the last known bearer of that title, according to the Dark Empire Sourcebook); another of
Harrsk’s imitators, Admiral Zsinj, would affect a similar title, styling himself the Imperial Warlord. Whereas many of his counterparts – especially
Zsinj – were expansionistic and aggressive, most of Harrsks’s known activities seem to revolve around military build-up rather than conquest. In the
best known example of this sort of behavior, The Essential Chronology mentions that Grand Admiral Martio Batch’s second in command
assassinated him and took his task force to the Deep Core to join Harrsk’s bourgeoning private starfleet.
For six years Harrsk massed his forces, before the Time of Destruction – also called the Imperial Mutiny, or the Imperial Civil War, or the War of
Purification, depending on one’s loyalties during the conflict – and the return of the Galactic Emperor in 45 rS, as seen in Dark Empire and the Dark
Empire Sourcebook (Harrsk is not mentioned in either source, as his character was not introduced until two years after the publication of the latter
and four years after the former). In both versions the Historical Council mentions that “surviving warlords like Harrsk, Delvardus and Teradoc swore
obedience to the same master and fought under the same banner,” alongside the Loyalists who had never abandoned the Imperial State as he and his
ilk had done; surprisingly, The New Essential Chronology mentions that some of these Loyalists like Pellaeon “did not yet know of Palpatine’s
return” before the Time of Destruction, indicating that Harrsk, Teradoc, and Delvardus did know. This raises questions of whether or not he was one
of those summoned by him to Byss to reaffirm his loyalty while the Galactic Emperor was still in occultation, as described in the Dark Empire
Sourcebook; his pocket empire’s location in the outskirts of the Deep Core is extremely close to the hidden Empire within, and his behavior is
consistent with being an ‘agent of chaos’ or ‘wrecker’ under the Galactic Emperor’s orders during the ‘great interregnum’ of 39 - 45 rS. Presumably
Harrsk continued to serve the Galactic Emperor as a fleet commander during Operation Shadow Hand, but no details of his activities are known
during this era.
With the Galactic Emperor’s death in late 45 rS and the destruction of Byss, Harrsk realized that the Shadow Hand Strategy was defunct and that the
revivified Empire was no longer a place of opportunity for him, and so he abandoned the Imperial State for the second time and returned to the Deep
Core as a rogue warlord; according to Darksaber, he created his headquarters in a subterranean fortress on “a rocky planet that orbited close to a red
giant star,” where he set up “giant solar smelters” that “provided energy and processed raw material to construct Harrsk’s personal fleet of Imperial-
class Star Destroyers.” By 47 rS, Harrsk’s territory extended far enough Rimward that he held at least one stronghold in the Atravis Sector, Spuma,
near enough to the Senex Sector in the Mid Rim Region that New Republic officials were concerned for the personal safety of the Chief of State
when she was on Belsavis at the time of what appeared to be increased recruitment on Spuma of “basic trooper levels” in Harrsk’s fleet, in Children
of the Jedi (surprisingly, Admiral Ackbar’s comments implied that he did not regard Harrsk as being one of “the larger warlords,” even though he was
consistently one of the first warlords mentioned by any character during this ‘post-Imperial’ era, much as he was during the ‘great interregnum’ era).
Darksaber notes that by that time, he had constructed twelve Imperial class Star Destroyers in that system, but seems to count his flagship
Shockwave among them, despite the fact that Shockwave is said to be “larger than the other Star Destroyers, more heavily outfitted with high-energy
weapons,” and was even able to destroy a Victory Star Destroyer with a single volley of her guns. Even so, twelve Star Destroyers cannot represent
the full extent of Harrsk’s forces, given that he had control at least of his task force from Endor and Batch’s task force from the Outer Rim, to say
nothing of the fact that twelve Star Destroyers could not possibly maintain his territory, which is known to extend from the red giant system in the
Deep Core to the Atravis Sector in the Mid Rim (it is possible that his holdings in the Atravis Sector constitute an enclave, but this does not seem
particularly likely). He mentioned in Darksaber that “a significant portion of my budget was devoted to bribing other Imperials” for intelligence
gathering.
In 47 rS, Harrsk was visited in his headquarters by “Fleet Admiral” Daala, who liked to think of herself as a ‘freelance ambassador’ of Imperial unity
(she was in fact not a fleet admiral, nor even a commissioned officer; her actual rank was corporal, her fleet admiral’s flag being the unofficial
commission given to her after she slept with a Grand Moff Governor). Even while she was speaking to him, his fleet came under attack by an armada
of 73 Victory Star Destroyers loyal to his archrival, High Admiral Teradoc; Daala’s second in command, Commander Kratas, took command of
Shockwave and led her “to the point of a phalanx formation,” concentrating her fire on individual targets. Although ten of the Victory class ships were
destroyed in the fighting, three of Harrsk’s Imperials were crippled and Shockwave was destroyed; Teradoc’s remaining 63 Star Destroyers fled.
Outraged, Harrsk commanded Daala to take command of his retaliatory strike, and threatened to have her shot if she refused . While he raised his flag
aboard the Whirlwind, Daala was left to command of the Firestorm and instructed to take point during the attack. Suffering from delusions of
grandeur, Daala instead incapacitated Whirlwind with an alpha-strike from Firestorm’s ion cannon, and threatened to self-destroy Firestorm in close
proximity to both the disabled Whirlwind and Teradoc’s fortress unless an immediate cease-fire were called. Teradoc’s second in command, Gilad
Pellaeon – the same Pellaeon whose illegal retreat order had prompted Harrsk’s defection from the Empire in the first place, now a vice admiral –
agreed to Daala’s terms without consulting with his superior, and Harrsk agreed with 30 seconds remaining before Firestorm’s autodestruction.
Daala and Pellaeon called a détente council of “thirteen of the strongest Imperial warlords” at Tsoss Beacon, an automated station constructed “on a
planetoid scoured clean by an endless wash of radioactive storms and solar flares that swept the region,” deep within “the fiery soup of stars and
gases near the heart of the deep core.” Harrsk was the second to arrive at the council, after Teradoc and before the self-styled Superior General
Delvardus. During the talks, Harrsk mocked Daala’s naïveté, but she closed the only door to the compartment, cyberlocking it with a three-hour seal,
in a clumsy attempt to force the rogue warlords to choose a nominal leader from amongst themselves or at least agree to a common strategy of attack
against the New Republic. Given that Daala’s ‘negotiations’ and ‘talks’ amounted to little more than fantasies and platitudes, it is unsurprising that
she failed utterly to force some sort of alliance; locked in with one another in such close quarters, the rivals fell into ferocious arguing, and Harrsk
attempted to strangle Teradoc in the heat of a shouting match. Ultimately, confronted with the enormity of her failure as a peacemaker, Daala opted
to simply murder them all, releasing nerve gas into the air-sealed chamber while she and Pellaeon donned protective breathmasks. Harrsk and three
others attempted to force the door, but died before the cyberlock released; his infrastructure and military forces were absorbed into Daala’s zombie
“Empire,” and would later contribute to the formation of Pellaeon’s neo-Palpatinist “Imperial Remnant” in the Outer Rim.
Darksaber’s describes Harrsk’s disfigurement as having left “the entire left half of his head” looking “sizzled, leaving only bubbly pinkish skin, a
mass of thick and insensitive scar tissue”; his left eye had been irreparably damaged, and had been replaced with “a synthetic droid optical sensor
that caused his eye socket to glow yellow.” In contrast, he kept the hair on the unscarred half of his head “short and neat and black,” and “he seemed
to show as much meticulous care for the intact side of his visage as he showed disdain for the scarred portion.” He was also said to be substantially
shorter than the 1.73-meter-tall Daala; she speculated that he had deliberately foregone reconstructive plastic surgery and retained his disfigurement
as a means of intimidation.
Harrsk is mentioned in the non-canonical Invention section’s The Test of Wills as having been one of the “six former Starfleet commanders” who
joined with the Emperor’s Ruling Circle to drive the New Republic from Coruscant, as described in Dark Empire (see “Sic Transit Gloria, Part IV:
Operation Shadow Hand and the Twilight of Empire”); although this is somewhat implied by The Essential Chronology and The New Essential
Chronology, it has never been explicitly confirmed.
References:
rogue warlords to defect from the Empire after the Galactic Emperor’s death at the Battle of Endor in 39 rS. Unlike many of those who followed in
his footsteps, Admiral Harrsk had actually been present at the battle itself; The Essential Chronology and The New Essential Chronology both
confirm that he was a task force commander under Fleet Admiral Firmus Piett’s command, and Darksaber mentions that his Star Destroyer had been
severely damaged during the fighting. He himself “had been nearly killed in an explosion” during the battle, and he “could have repaired his skin with
existing medical techniques,” but he declined, “keeping the hideous scars as a badge of honor.” Despite the severity of his wounds, he was
sufficiently recovered to return to duty as early as the Imperial battle force’s regrouping at Annaj, as the New Republic Historical Council writes
that Harrsk refused to accept orders from Captain Gilad Pellaeon, the acting Commanding Officer, HIMS Chimaera – it was he that had illegally
ordered the retreat – and abandoned the Empire, taking his forces to the Deep Core to set about “building up his own pocket empire” there “among
the secure Imperial safeworlds.”
Having established himself as an independent empereur en petit, Harrsk eschewed his admiral’s flag in favor of more grandiloquent titles. In Children
of the Jedi he is said to have claimed the rather loftier title of Lord High Admiral, while the scholars call him “Grand Admiral Harrsk” on at least one
occasion (q.v. “Atravis Sector”), although most sources agree that he styled himself Supreme Warlord, which appears to play off the legitimate title
of Warlord of the Empire (Grand Admiral Thrawn is the last known bearer of that title, according to the Dark Empire Sourcebook); another of
Harrsk’s imitators, Admiral Zsinj, would affect a similar title, styling himself the Imperial Warlord. Whereas many of his counterparts – especially
Zsinj – were expansionistic and aggressive, most of Harrsks’s known activities seem to revolve around military build-up rather than conquest. In the
best known example of this sort of behavior, The Essential Chronology mentions that Grand Admiral Martio Batch’s second in command
assassinated him and took his task force to the Deep Core to join Harrsk’s bourgeoning private starfleet.
For six years Harrsk massed his forces, before the Time of Destruction – also called the Imperial Mutiny, or the Imperial Civil War, or the War of
Purification, depending on one’s loyalties during the conflict – and the return of the Galactic Emperor in 45 rS, as seen in Dark Empire and the Dark
Empire Sourcebook (Harrsk is not mentioned in either source, as his character was not introduced until two years after the publication of the latter
and four years after the former). In both versions the Historical Council mentions that “surviving warlords like Harrsk, Delvardus and Teradoc swore
obedience to the same master and fought under the same banner,” alongside the Loyalists who had never abandoned the Imperial State as he and his
ilk had done; surprisingly, The New Essential Chronology mentions that some of these Loyalists like Pellaeon “did not yet know of Palpatine’s
return” before the Time of Destruction, indicating that Harrsk, Teradoc, and Delvardus did know. This raises questions of whether or not he was one
of those summoned by him to Byss to reaffirm his loyalty while the Galactic Emperor was still in occultation, as described in the Dark Empire
Sourcebook; his pocket empire’s location in the outskirts of the Deep Core is extremely close to the hidden Empire within, and his behavior is
consistent with being an ‘agent of chaos’ or ‘wrecker’ under the Galactic Emperor’s orders during the ‘great interregnum’ of 39 - 45 rS. Presumably
Harrsk continued to serve the Galactic Emperor as a fleet commander during Operation Shadow Hand, but no details of his activities are known
during this era.
With the Galactic Emperor’s death in late 45 rS and the destruction of Byss, Harrsk realized that the Shadow Hand Strategy was defunct and that the
revivified Empire was no longer a place of opportunity for him, and so he abandoned the Imperial State for the second time and returned to the Deep
Core as a rogue warlord; according to Darksaber, he created his headquarters in a subterranean fortress on “a rocky planet that orbited close to a red
giant star,” where he set up “giant solar smelters” that “provided energy and processed raw material to construct Harrsk’s personal fleet of Imperial-
class Star Destroyers.” By 47 rS, Harrsk’s territory extended far enough Rimward that he held at least one stronghold in the Atravis Sector, Spuma,
near enough to the Senex Sector in the Mid Rim Region that New Republic officials were concerned for the personal safety of the Chief of State
when she was on Belsavis at the time of what appeared to be increased recruitment on Spuma of “basic trooper levels” in Harrsk’s fleet, in Children
of the Jedi (surprisingly, Admiral Ackbar’s comments implied that he did not regard Harrsk as being one of “the larger warlords,” even though he was
consistently one of the first warlords mentioned by any character during this ‘post-Imperial’ era, much as he was during the ‘great interregnum’ era).
Darksaber notes that by that time, he had constructed twelve Imperial class Star Destroyers in that system, but seems to count his flagship
Shockwave among them, despite the fact that Shockwave is said to be “larger than the other Star Destroyers, more heavily outfitted with high-energy
weapons,” and was even able to destroy a Victory Star Destroyer with a single volley of her guns. Even so, twelve Star Destroyers cannot represent
the full extent of Harrsk’s forces, given that he had control at least of his task force from Endor and Batch’s task force from the Outer Rim, to say
nothing of the fact that twelve Star Destroyers could not possibly maintain his territory, which is known to extend from the red giant system in the
Deep Core to the Atravis Sector in the Mid Rim (it is possible that his holdings in the Atravis Sector constitute an enclave, but this does not seem
particularly likely). He mentioned in Darksaber that “a significant portion of my budget was devoted to bribing other Imperials” for intelligence
gathering.
In 47 rS, Harrsk was visited in his headquarters by “Fleet Admiral” Daala, who liked to think of herself as a ‘freelance ambassador’ of Imperial unity
(she was in fact not a fleet admiral, nor even a commissioned officer; her actual rank was corporal, her fleet admiral’s flag being the unofficial
commission given to her after she slept with a Grand Moff Governor). Even while she was speaking to him, his fleet came under attack by an armada
of 73 Victory Star Destroyers loyal to his archrival, High Admiral Teradoc; Daala’s second in command, Commander Kratas, took command of
Shockwave and led her “to the point of a phalanx formation,” concentrating her fire on individual targets. Although ten of the Victory class ships were
destroyed in the fighting, three of Harrsk’s Imperials were crippled and Shockwave was destroyed; Teradoc’s remaining 63 Star Destroyers fled.
Outraged, Harrsk commanded Daala to take command of his retaliatory strike, and threatened to have her shot if she refused . While he raised his flag
aboard the Whirlwind, Daala was left to command of the Firestorm and instructed to take point during the attack. Suffering from delusions of
grandeur, Daala instead incapacitated Whirlwind with an alpha-strike from Firestorm’s ion cannon, and threatened to self-destroy Firestorm in close
proximity to both the disabled Whirlwind and Teradoc’s fortress unless an immediate cease-fire were called. Teradoc’s second in command, Gilad
Pellaeon – the same Pellaeon whose illegal retreat order had prompted Harrsk’s defection from the Empire in the first place, now a vice admiral –
agreed to Daala’s terms without consulting with his superior, and Harrsk agreed with 30 seconds remaining before Firestorm’s autodestruction.
Daala and Pellaeon called a détente council of “thirteen of the strongest Imperial warlords” at Tsoss Beacon, an automated station constructed “on a
planetoid scoured clean by an endless wash of radioactive storms and solar flares that swept the region,” deep within “the fiery soup of stars and
gases near the heart of the deep core.” Harrsk was the second to arrive at the council, after Teradoc and before the self-styled Superior General
Delvardus. During the talks, Harrsk mocked Daala’s naïveté, but she closed the only door to the compartment, cyberlocking it with a three-hour seal,
in a clumsy attempt to force the rogue warlords to choose a nominal leader from amongst themselves or at least agree to a common strategy of attack
against the New Republic. Given that Daala’s ‘negotiations’ and ‘talks’ amounted to little more than fantasies and platitudes, it is unsurprising that
she failed utterly to force some sort of alliance; locked in with one another in such close quarters, the rivals fell into ferocious arguing, and Harrsk
attempted to strangle Teradoc in the heat of a shouting match. Ultimately, confronted with the enormity of her failure as a peacemaker, Daala opted
to simply murder them all, releasing nerve gas into the air-sealed chamber while she and Pellaeon donned protective breathmasks. Harrsk and three
others attempted to force the door, but died before the cyberlock released; his infrastructure and military forces were absorbed into Daala’s zombie
“Empire,” and would later contribute to the formation of Pellaeon’s neo-Palpatinist “Imperial Remnant” in the Outer Rim.
Darksaber’s describes Harrsk’s disfigurement as having left “the entire left half of his head” looking “sizzled, leaving only bubbly pinkish skin, a
mass of thick and insensitive scar tissue”; his left eye had been irreparably damaged, and had been replaced with “a synthetic droid optical sensor
that caused his eye socket to glow yellow.” In contrast, he kept the hair on the unscarred half of his head “short and neat and black,” and “he seemed
to show as much meticulous care for the intact side of his visage as he showed disdain for the scarred portion.” He was also said to be substantially
shorter than the 1.73-meter-tall Daala; she speculated that he had deliberately foregone reconstructive plastic surgery and retained his disfigurement
as a means of intimidation.
Harrsk is mentioned in the non-canonical Invention section’s The Test of Wills as having been one of the “six former Starfleet commanders” who
joined with the Emperor’s Ruling Circle to drive the New Republic from Coruscant, as described in Dark Empire (see “Sic Transit Gloria, Part IV:
Operation Shadow Hand and the Twilight of Empire”); although this is somewhat implied by The Essential Chronology and The New Essential
Chronology, it has never been explicitly confirmed.
References:
- Anderson, Kevin J. Darksaber. Bantam Books, 1995.
- Anderson, Kevin J. and Daniel E. Wallace. The Essential Chronology. Del Rey Books, 2000.
- Hambly, Barbara. Children of the Jedi. Bantam Books, 1995.
- Horne, Michael Allen. Dark Empire Sourcebook. West End Games, 1993.
- Sansweet, Stephen J. Star Wars Encyclopedia. Del Rey Books, 1998.
- Veitch, Tom. Dark Empire. Dark Horse Comics, 1991 - 1992.
- Wallace, Daniel E. with Kevin J. Anderson. The New Essential Chronology. Del Rey Books, 2005.
| This site is for informational and entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement of any kind is intended. Star Wars and related materials are © Lucasfilm Ltd., which reserves all rights thereto. All original material is © Julius Sykes. Please do not use without permission. |
| This biography was originally added in 2005. It was republished on 7 October 2007. |