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| Who’s Who Jerec |
Jerec (d. 43 rS) was an archaeologist, scholar, and Sithologist who served the Jedi Order as a Jedi Master in the last days of the old Galactic
Republic, served the Imperial State as an Inquisitor throughout the Palpatinic era, and served the Palpatinist-Tarkinist breakaway Pentastar
Alignment as a Great InQuestor of Judgment through much of the post-Palpatine era. He served Supreme Chancellors and Galactic Emperors,
Grand Masters and Grand Moffs, but his only true loyalty was to himself. He is noteworthy as one of the most powerful Force adepts in the
Palpatinic Era and as one of the longest-lived dark Jedi Masters in recent history; in Dark Forces: Rebel Agent, Master Jedi Qu Rahn came into
his presence and “felt as though the Force had been turned inside out,” and that “there, like a shadow within a shadow, waited the one called
Jerec” (note the parallel to the description of Darth Sidious as “darkness beyond darkness” and “the shadow” in Revenge of the Sith; à propos,
Rahn pointedly thought of him as “a spirit so malignant that it rivaled Emperor Palpatine’s”). In his first appearance in Jedi Knight: Dark
Forces II, it was aptly remarked that he lived “surrounded by a darkness that has nothing to do with his lack of physical sight.”
Jerec was born with congenital sensitivity to the Force, and as such he was identified as a potential Jedi neophyte by Jocasta Nu KJ, a
Coruscanti Jedi Knight and archaeologist for the Jedi ExplorCorps, who adopted him as her Padawan Apprentice, according to “The Dark
Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” and “Casualty Report: Order 66.” As a result of his period as Nu’s student, Jerec
became convinced that knowledge was power, and he grew into a literal philosopher (lover of wisdom). He completed his training and was
elevated to the rank of Jedi Knight, and took in turn the neophyte Ameesa Darys as his Padawan Apprentice, training her to Knighthood and in
the process attaining the rank of Jedi Master for himself (both The New Essential Guide to Characters and The Dark Side Sourcebook call him
a Jedi Knight only, but since Mastery is an honorific degree of Knighthood, there is no contradiction between those sources and the claim in
“The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” that he was a Jedi Master).
Following in his teacher’s footsteps, he joined the ExplorCorps as an archaeologist, participating in long-range missions to recover lost artifacts
in the far reaches of the galaxy, even as far as the Unknown Regions. It is probable that Jerec became a Sithologist during his time with the
ExplorCorps, as the Unknown Regions are known to have hosted forgotten remnants of the defunct Sith Empire from several thousand years
ago; The Dark Side Sourcebook indicates that he was familiar with both Jedi and Sith lore, and that he could read, write, and speak the Sith
language fluently (as an historian, archaeologist, and scholar, it is a safe assumption that he was also fluent in High Galactic, it being “the
language of the earliest Jedi sages” according to “Fight Saber: Jedi Lightsaber Combat”; “The Dark Side Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and
Megalomaniacs Welcome” adds that he was also fluent in Miralukese). His missions apparently kept him out of contact for extended periods,
to the extent that when Master Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi encountered a obsoleted Jedi distress code broadcasted from the abandoned exploration
vessel SS Titavian IV in “Dreadnaughts of Rendili,” he immediately noted that it was “not the current one, I’ll grant you, but that could cover
Master Zao, Master Jerec, or any number of other Jedi.”
It is not clear how much of the events leading up to the Clone War (13 - 16 rS) Jerec knew about at the time; “Dreadnaughts of Rendili”
establishes that he was certainly out of contact during the war itself. The Dark Side Sourcebook describes Jerec’s shock after returning to the
galaxy proper to find that the Galactic Republic had been transmogrified into the Galactic Empire and the Jedi Order had been destroyed by the
execution of now-Galactic Emperor Palpatine of Naboo’s Order 66. He immediately fled back to the Unknown Regions, but was followed by
one of the Galactic Emperor’s agents, High Inquisitor Tremayne, a dark Jedi Knight in his own right, who “captured [Jerec] and his few
companions, and turned Jerec to the dark side.” The scribe writes in The New Essential Guide to Characters that “in the end Jerec did not
believe in his ideals enough to die for them, and when faced with Tremayne’s offer he eagerly turned traitor.”
Republic, served the Imperial State as an Inquisitor throughout the Palpatinic era, and served the Palpatinist-Tarkinist breakaway Pentastar
Alignment as a Great InQuestor of Judgment through much of the post-Palpatine era. He served Supreme Chancellors and Galactic Emperors,
Grand Masters and Grand Moffs, but his only true loyalty was to himself. He is noteworthy as one of the most powerful Force adepts in the
Palpatinic Era and as one of the longest-lived dark Jedi Masters in recent history; in Dark Forces: Rebel Agent, Master Jedi Qu Rahn came into
his presence and “felt as though the Force had been turned inside out,” and that “there, like a shadow within a shadow, waited the one called
Jerec” (note the parallel to the description of Darth Sidious as “darkness beyond darkness” and “the shadow” in Revenge of the Sith; à propos,
Rahn pointedly thought of him as “a spirit so malignant that it rivaled Emperor Palpatine’s”). In his first appearance in Jedi Knight: Dark
Forces II, it was aptly remarked that he lived “surrounded by a darkness that has nothing to do with his lack of physical sight.”
Jerec was born with congenital sensitivity to the Force, and as such he was identified as a potential Jedi neophyte by Jocasta Nu KJ, a
Coruscanti Jedi Knight and archaeologist for the Jedi ExplorCorps, who adopted him as her Padawan Apprentice, according to “The Dark
Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” and “Casualty Report: Order 66.” As a result of his period as Nu’s student, Jerec
became convinced that knowledge was power, and he grew into a literal philosopher (lover of wisdom). He completed his training and was
elevated to the rank of Jedi Knight, and took in turn the neophyte Ameesa Darys as his Padawan Apprentice, training her to Knighthood and in
the process attaining the rank of Jedi Master for himself (both The New Essential Guide to Characters and The Dark Side Sourcebook call him
a Jedi Knight only, but since Mastery is an honorific degree of Knighthood, there is no contradiction between those sources and the claim in
“The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” that he was a Jedi Master).
Following in his teacher’s footsteps, he joined the ExplorCorps as an archaeologist, participating in long-range missions to recover lost artifacts
in the far reaches of the galaxy, even as far as the Unknown Regions. It is probable that Jerec became a Sithologist during his time with the
ExplorCorps, as the Unknown Regions are known to have hosted forgotten remnants of the defunct Sith Empire from several thousand years
ago; The Dark Side Sourcebook indicates that he was familiar with both Jedi and Sith lore, and that he could read, write, and speak the Sith
language fluently (as an historian, archaeologist, and scholar, it is a safe assumption that he was also fluent in High Galactic, it being “the
language of the earliest Jedi sages” according to “Fight Saber: Jedi Lightsaber Combat”; “The Dark Side Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and
Megalomaniacs Welcome” adds that he was also fluent in Miralukese). His missions apparently kept him out of contact for extended periods,
to the extent that when Master Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi encountered a obsoleted Jedi distress code broadcasted from the abandoned exploration
vessel SS Titavian IV in “Dreadnaughts of Rendili,” he immediately noted that it was “not the current one, I’ll grant you, but that could cover
Master Zao, Master Jerec, or any number of other Jedi.”
It is not clear how much of the events leading up to the Clone War (13 - 16 rS) Jerec knew about at the time; “Dreadnaughts of Rendili”
establishes that he was certainly out of contact during the war itself. The Dark Side Sourcebook describes Jerec’s shock after returning to the
galaxy proper to find that the Galactic Republic had been transmogrified into the Galactic Empire and the Jedi Order had been destroyed by the
execution of now-Galactic Emperor Palpatine of Naboo’s Order 66. He immediately fled back to the Unknown Regions, but was followed by
one of the Galactic Emperor’s agents, High Inquisitor Tremayne, a dark Jedi Knight in his own right, who “captured [Jerec] and his few
companions, and turned Jerec to the dark side.” The scribe writes in The New Essential Guide to Characters that “in the end Jerec did not
believe in his ideals enough to die for them, and when faced with Tremayne’s offer he eagerly turned traitor.”
| 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 2006. It was republished on 31 January 2007. The illustration was added on 13 October 2007; it is a pencil drawing colored in Adobe Photoshop. |
| Inquisitor Jerec, as seen in 43 rS (Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight) |
“Casualty Report: Order 66” is notionally a holomessage from Moff Marcellin Wessel to the Galactic Emperor on the results of Order 66 in 16 rS, complete with “the circumstances of death as they will
appear in the official record,” which the Grand Vizier requested that the Galactic Emperor “approve by 16:9:28 in time for the next cycle of Imperial Holovision.” One of the attached incident reports, viz.,
Incident Report #890-H, filed by Senior Clone Commander CC-1119 (“Appo”) of the 501st Legion, mentions that Jerec had been one of the recently-terminated Jocasta Nu’s Padawan Apprentices, and adds
after Jerec’s name the cross reference “see report 01377B, ACQUISITIONS, under separate cover.” It is noteworthy that CC-1119 was decapitated by Master Jedi Roan Shryne on Kashyyyk only a few
weeks after Order 66 in Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, which probably means that Jerec was scheduled for acquisition rather than already acquired; with his extensive knowledge, Jerec was a valuable
catch for the Imperial State, certainly more valuable to the Galactic Emperor alive than dead. At any rate, his capture must have happened after Tremayne’s entry into the active ranks of the Inquisitorius in
“Evasive Action: Recruitment,” which takes place after Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader in 16 rS.
Imperial Inquisitor
After converting to the dark side, Jerec immediately betrayed other remaining Jedi, “explaining that he knew of a handful of other Jedi students who were on long-range missions and knew nothing of the fall
of the Jedi Order,” according to The Dark Side Sourcebook, which quickly adds that he “sought them out and turned them to the dark side,” and “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs”
mentions that he actually joined the organization responsible for carrying out the remainder of the Jedi Purge, the Galactic Emperor’s Inquisitorius. As an Inquisitor, the scribe notes that he “embarked on
several long-range missions to find other’lost’ Jedi and turn them to the dark side of the Force.” In an unusual twist of fate, “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 4: Of the Crudest Matter” indicates that on one such
mission he tracked down a group of Jedi Shadows, who were ironically “Jedi investigators intent on rooting out and destroying any sign of the dark side” — i.e., the Jedi counterparts to the Inquisitors
themselves. Jerec managed to seduce one of them, a Boltrunian Jedi Knight named Maw, to the dark side, and murdered the rest. Jerec is said to have taken Maw into his clientele, “teaching him to smell the
panic of his prey and taste their fear like a trained bloodsniffer.” Maw was the first, but not last, dark Jedi to be added to Jerec’s clientele.
Note, however, that despite his new rank of Inquisitor, Jerec “kept his Jedi abilities secret,” according to Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire. Jerec’s status as a well-versed Sithologist probably made him
uniquely useful to the Galactic Emperor — a Sith Lord himself (a Sith Master, in fact, not to put too fine a point on it) — , for, more than any other known member of the Imperial hierarchy, he was in a
position to supplement the Galactic Emperor’s own studies of the Force and the various cults and sects surrounding it. The Dark Side Sourcebook mentions that he was sent by his fellow scholar to “locate
artifacts of the Jedi — and the Sith — and bring them to Imperial Center”; who better than Jerec — scholar, archaeologist, and linguist — to find and obtain new additions to the Galactic Emperor’s
collection? “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” mentions that he “studied the Dark Force religion of Palpatine’s Prophets of the Dark Side”; who better than Jerec —
Sithologist and Jedi scholar — to supplement the Galactic Emperor’s own knowledge and analysis of a schismatic sect of the Sith Order? It is possible that Jerec served as a sort of consultant to the Galactic
Emperor, assisting and supplementing the development of his so-called Science of Darkness; in fact, “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3: Pride of the Dark Side” mentions that Jerec had read parts of the Galactic
Emperor’s draft encyclopedia of dark side esoterica, the Dark Side Compendium.
Whether or not he was the Galactic Emperor’s scholarly consultant, he certainly was his procurement agent, and Jerec came to rank very highly in the Imperial hierarchy, despite his somewhat pedestrian
official rank of Inquisitor; in Dark Forces: Soldier for the Emperor, it was noted that Jerec took his orders directly from the Galactic Emperor himself. The scribe writes in The New Essential Guide to
Characters that he “outranked the Dark Side Adepts such as Hethrir, Sedriss, and Kadann” (a fascinating remark, given that Kadann was Supreme Prophet of the Dark Side and one of the Galactic Emperor’s
most trusted advisors). Indeed, Jerec had embraced his role as the Galactic Emperor’s Sithologist, and the scribe notes that he “bore Sith tattoos on his face, as Darth Maul had before him”; the comparison to
the Galactic Emperor’s first Sith Apprentice is a subtle clue to his true status within the Empire, and the scribe goes on to say that “Palpatine never named Jerec a Sith Lord,” and observes that “Darth Vader
already held that title,” which implies that had Vader not already been the Galactic Emperor’s Sith Apprentice, Jerec would have been. This does not seem incredible; he was fluent in Sith, knew Sith lore,
sought and obtained Sith artifacts for his master, displayed Sith tattoos on his face, studied the Dark Force religion of Sith schismatics, and had read in the Galactic Emperor’s Dark Side Compendium about
the ‘empowerment’ technique which the Revised Core Rulebook makes clear is a part of the secrets of the Sith to which the Galactic Emperor had access by virtue of his status as the reigning Sith Master).
Darth Sidious lamented in Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader that if Vader had been killed, no replacement could have been found who was “even half as powerful in the Force”; Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
states that Jerec’s “embrace of the Force’s dark side gives him powers that rival Vader’s” (although the thirteen-year-old Tash Arranda, slightly sensitive to the Force, thought in Galaxy of Fear: Spore that
Jerec’s “dark-side energy wasn’t quite as powerful as the feeling she’d gotten from Darth Vader months ago”). And, consistent with Darth Sidious’s musings in Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader that the
relationship between a Sith Master and his Sith Apprentice was “powered by treachery,” the Galactic Emperor did not trust Jerec in the least bit.
The fundamental problem with trusting Jerec was that he was a confirmed traitor. He had betrayed the Jedi Order by joining the Inquisitorius and betrayed the trust of other Jedi by helping to turn them to
the dark side. The scribe notes that the other members of the dark side hierarchy like the Supreme Prophet and the Procurator of Justice — all of them inferior in rank to him by virtue of his value to the
Galactic Emperor — nevertheless “viewed him as a turncoat waiting for the right opportunity to stab them in the back.” Acting as the Galactic Emperor’s consultant, Jerec had read and become fascinated by
the Sithian ‘empowerment’ technique that would allow the Sith Master to create “a unit of seven Dark Jedi perfectly absorbed into the Emperor’s will,” and “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3: Pride of the Dark
Side” indicates that the Galactic Emperor “readily recognized the darksider’s ambition and denied Jerec further access to the Compendium,” playing the same sort of control games he had once played with
Vader’s predecessor, Darth Tyranus (alias Dooku, Count of Serenno). The scribe mentions in The New Essential Guide to Characters that “Palpatine trusted Jerec so little that he frequently assigned Captain
Thrawn to command Jerec’s Star Destroyer, the Vengeance” (Thrawn being one of the Galactic Emperor’s pet Naval officers;
he would later rise to the rank of grand admiral).
Realizing the limitations to his rise to further power in the hierarchy, Jerec turned to other methods. The scribe notes that he used his influence to attract “silent corporate backers” by “wielding the
bargaining tool of exemption from Inquisitorius audits,” and “quietly became a billionaire.” According to “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome,” one of Jerec’s “wealthy
silent backers” was Grand Moff Ardus Kaine, who succeeded Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin as Governor of Oversector Outer after Tarkin was killed in the Battle of Yavin in 35 rS.
The second dark Jedi to be added to Jerec’s clientele was the Twi’lek slave named Boca’seca (commonly called “Boc the Crude”). According to “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 4: Of the Crudest Matter,” Jerec
first encountered Boc when he was being kept as a manservant of “the pitiless bigot Vice-Admiral Terrinald Screed,” and he immediately “demanded that Screed hand him over for execution.” However, once
Screed had handed over his slave, Jerec instead kept him in “a brutal indentured servitude” and trained him in swordsmanship and the Jedi arts; Boc became a practitioner of the “style of lightsaber combat
that uses a blade in each hand,” traditionally called Jar’Kai among Jedi swordsmen, which indicates that Jerec himself must have been familiar with the style (as he was Boc’s teacher).
At some point during his service to the Galactic Emperor — probably while studying the Dark Force on Dromund Kaas — Jerec had met Lord Cronal, a Prophet of the Dark Side who later left that sect to
become one of the Emperor’s Hands under the codename “Blackhole.” According to “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome,” the Lord Cronal told Jerec of the legendary Lost
Valley of the Jedi, where the last battle of the Light and Darkness War had been fought in 965 BrS, resulting in the complete annihilation of the Army of Light and the Brotherhood of Darkness (the
ecclesiastical predecessor to the current Sith Order); Jerec’s relationship with the Lord Cronal was to provide several significant additions to his network of allies and agents. According to “The Dark Forces
Saga, Part 5: Two Peas in a Pod,” the Lord Cronal had also been responsible for the alchemical experiments that produced the so-called “Brothers of the Sith,” Picaroon C. Boodle and Gorc, a mutated
Kowakian lizard-monkey and Gamorrean, respectively. Both of these Sithspawn creatures would later become dark Jedi
alongside Maw the Boltrunian and Boc the Crude in Jerec’s clientele, although it is not clear when precisely they joined him. According to “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3: Pride of the Dark Side,” Jerec also
met the Lord Cronal’s daughter, the Prophetess Sariss, while he was on Dromund Kaas; she, too, was to later become one of Jerec’s clients, as his semi-loyal second-in-command.
Immediately prior to the Battle of Yavin in 35 rS, Jerec oversaw the pacification of Sulon while on board Thrawn’s Vengeance. This operation provides several interesting glimpses into Jerec’s modus
operandi. In the first place, he deployed the 2nd Platoon, B Company, Special Operations Group — also known as the “Ghost Battalion” — to conduct the pacification disguised as rebel partisans (a
textbook example of the “political gain operation” (PGO) described in the Imperial Sourcebook, Second Edition). He apparently kept his own network of spies and informers, for the disguised troops used
“information provided by Jerec’s agents combined with data compiled by probe droids” to create detailed profiles of captives. Even while his forces were on the ground, Jerec played the part of a highly-
efficient spymaster, as he observed events on the planet’s surface via “highly modified” probots which kept track of individuals, made infrared recordings of their movements, and recorded their
conversations, transmitted intelligence back to the Vengeance, and “reached Jerec only minutes after that,” while he was still in his quarters eating. In fact, while the operation was underway, the ground
forces commander was aware that “Jerec monitored everything he said and did via comlink transmissions, probe droids, and his own seemingly supernatural powers.” Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire
seems to indicate that the sole purpose of this pacification was the removal of insurrectionist elements and the discrediting of the Alliance (unsurprising, given Sulon’s proximity to Sullust, corporate
headquarters of the enormous SoroSuub Corporation), but The Dark Side Sourcebook suggests that Jerec had an ulterior motive. During the course of the operation, Jerec gave specific orders that one of the
rebel leaders, Morgan Katarn, be captured alive (although Jerec decapitated him during the interrogation that followed). Katarn was connected to the fugitive Master Jedi Qu Rahn, and knew the location of
the Lost Valley of the Jedi.
A short time after the pacification of Sulon, Jerec turned up at Carida, where he dined with the highly-decorated war hero Lieutenant General Rom Mohc, who was on Carida to deliver a commencement
address to the graduating class at the Imperial Military Academy at Carida (or “Cliffside,” as it was affectionately known to its alumni). Jerec asked his host to meet one of the graduates, the soon-to-be-
commissioned Second Lieutenant Kyle Katarn, son of the late Morgan Katarn; during the graduation ceremony, Jerec actually pinned Katarn’s newly-awarded Medal of Valor to his uniform, and — perhaps
suspecting that Katarn, like his father, was sensitive to the Force — introduced himself and told him to “remember that recognition is a gift given by those who have power to those who don’t,” and invited
him to “climb the ladder swiftly, join those who possess power, and claim what is yours,” with the added promise that “I will be waiting.” They would prove to be prophetic words.
As seen in Galaxy of Fear: Spore, ten months after the Battle of Yavin, Jerec took the Vengeance — which was by that point no longer under Thrawn’s command — to Ithor, where he sought the imprisoned
Spore, a creature the Ithorians had created some 500 years before (ca 465 BrS) by splicing the genes of the carnivorous vesuvague tree with the genes of the collectively-sapient bafforr tree, inadvertently
creating a sapient parasite that hungered to consume the minds of other sapient beings and forcibly integrate them into its rapidly-expanding collective consciousness. It is not clear how Jerec first learned of
the creature; Tash Arranda (the same sub-adult who evaluated Jerec’s strength in the dark side as being not quite equal to Vader’s) speculated that he had “probably bought or stolen the secret of Spore from
someone,” but it is also possible that he knew of its existence from his time as a Jedi scholar and archaeologist; the Jedi Knights had participated in the first quarantine of ca 465 - 365 BrS that had resulted in
Spore’s 400-year imprisonment, and Jerec may have remembered the incident from his days in the Jedi Order.
Galaxy of Fear: Spore states that Jerec and two of his stormtroopers went to the asteroid where Spore had been imprisoned, but found that Spore had already disappeared; Jerec surmised that it had been
taken to the surface and went to meet it. There, he demonstrated that his command of the dark side was sufficient to hold back Spore’s attempts to assimilate him, and offered to let it assimilate the ship’s
company of the Vengeance instead; it was his plan to use Spore to create an army loyal to himself rather than the Galactic Emperor, and then use it to launch a coup d’état against his master. Unfortunately
for Jerec, the meddling of thirteen-year-old Tash Arranda (a Force-sensitive girl from Alderaan) resulted in Spore taking the Vengeance into an unusually violent asteroid field to chase after her; the creature
was unfamiliar with the operations of the Star Destroyer, and the resulting sluggish maneuvering, poor shield deployment, and uncoordinated damage-control caused the Star Destroyer to sustain several hull
breaches, venting its atmosphere to space and causing Spore — which required oxygen to function — to go into a state of hibernation, killing everyone on board (for his part, Jerec apparently realized that
Spore could not competently control the Star Destroyer, and escaped in a single-man Starfly mini-fighter before the Vengeance was hulled.
By the time salvage teams arrived, the Vengeance had been rendered irreparable, and she was scrapped (although Galaxy of Fear: Spore does mention that the salvage crews recovered “the ship’s computer
core with all its Imperial secrets intact”). “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” states that the computer core was installed in a new Star Destroyer, thus providing Jerec
with a new Vengeance, but he had the ship transferred to Darth Vader’s Death Squadron (see “Rattling the Saber” for a description of Death Squadron’s composition). He had already contracted with Kuat
Drive Yards to manufacture a “Super Star Destroyer variant” for him, which he named Vengeance after his first command ship, disregarding naval practice by choosing a name already in use (in fact, Dark
Forces: Rebel Agent mentions that “regardless of what his position seemed to imply, Jerec had never spent so much as a day in the military,” and that he “saw their rituals as boring”).
Nevertheless, despite his new command ship, the destruction of the Vengeance and the failure of his plot to use Spore against the Galactic Emperor appears to have convinced him to postpone further
plotting against his master. Instead, he decided to spend some time dabbling in affairs of state; he returned to Sulon and took up residence as its governor. Dark Forces: Rebel Agent mentions that “no less an
entity than Jerec himself” had supervised the construction of the palatial Government House atop Baron’s Knoll in Sulon’s capital city of Baron’s Hed “during his brief tenure as Governor.” However short
Jerec’s term may have been, it was apparently long enough for him to leave a characteristic fingerprint: Government House was deliberately situated so that anyone looking at it would be obliged to “look up
as if to a higher authority — a psychological trick that was anything but accidental.” Jerec’s activities after leaving Sulon for the third time — he mentioned that he’d been there once before his visit during the
pacification raid in early 35 rS in Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire — are unknown, except that he operated from the mobile platform of his new Super Star Destroyer. “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3:
Pride of the Dark Side” states that during this time, the Lord Cronal’s daughter Sariss often visited the Vengeance as an agent of the Secret Order of the Emperor, and that she “became strongly attracted to
the enigmatic Inquisitor and his visions of ruling the galaxy,” and that he “turned [her] from one of Palpatine’s magicky pets into [Jerec’s] quasi-loyal second-in-command” through “violent and masochistic
lightsaber sessions,” thus adding her to his clientele of dark Jedi. Like his rival Vader, Jerec was assembling his own more-or-less loyal cohort to serve his ambitions within the hierarchy as well as his own
private spy network.
The Quest for the Lost Valley of the Jedi
When the Galactic Emperor was killed in the Battle of Endor (39 rS), Jerec immediately abandoned the Imperial State; “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” states that he
and “several other Inquisitors” joined Grand Moff Governor Kaine’s Pentastar Alignment of Powers, a breakaway state dedicated to the principles of Palpatinism-Tarkinism, as Great InQuestors of
Judgment (“The Pentastar Alignment” describes the Great InQuestors as “threatening men who wear long black cloaks and hide their faces beneath oversized black hoods,” serving as “the principle tool of
maintaining the decree of the Pentastar Alignment” and the “visible organization to uphold the mandates of the New Order”). It was at around this time that Sariss abandoned her post as “Prophetess,” a spy
on behalf of the Governor of Tatooine, and openly joined Jerec as his second-in-command; according to “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3: Pride of the Dark Side,” she posed as a devotee of the Church of the
Dark Side to insinuate herself with a Panathan mineral baron, then manipulated his son into killing him. This boy, — the naïf Epicanthix male Yun, Sariss’s surrogate son and lover — became the last of seven
dark Jedi to join Jerec’s clientele. Using funding and resources from the Pentastar Alignment, he began to search for the Lost Valley of the Jedi, planning to use the energies contained within it to apotheosize
himself and rule the galaxy — and ultimately, the universe — as an omnipotent god-emperor.
As some point during this search, he came into contact again with the Prophets of the Dark Side, who had abandoned the Imperial State and fled immediately before the Battle of Endor; he agreed to search for
the Valley on the Prophets’ behalf, drawing resources and funding from them as well. The Supreme Prophet’s earlier distrust for Jerec was justified: Jerec neglected to mention to either sponsor that he had
another sponsor, and was basically double-dipping. At some point in ca 40 rS, he was also contacted by the Lord Cronal, who had by then taken up his old post of spymaster to the resurrected Galactic
Emperor, reincarnated on Byss and “alive and watching galactic events from the Deep Core at the center of the galaxy”; Blackhole then “charged Jerec with finding the fabled Valley of the Jedi for the glory of
the Emperor,” and “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” states that Jerec “pledged his submission to the reincarnated dictator” and gave the former Prophet — who didn’t
realize that Jerec was already searching for the Valley on behalf of his former comrades the Prophets and the Pentastar Alignment — the Vengeance, “to take back to the planet Byss as a sign of his
commitment” (it is not clear when this is supposed to have happened, as Jerec’s Super Star Destroyer Vengeance was seen under his control until the very end of his search for the Valley in Jedi Knight:
Dark Forces II and Dark Forces: Jedi Knight; possibly it refers to Jerec’s second command ship, the Imperial class Vengeance). Jerec’s various sponsors financed the assembling of an Imperial Battle Group
— i.e., forces loyal to the Imperial State, not the Pentastar Alignment or the Prophets — centered around the Vengeance in support of his mission (a junior space warfare officer in the Battle Group
complained in Dark Forces: Jedi Knight that supplies were short and that “the Group has half the ordnance it’s entitled to”).
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and Dark Forces: Rebel Agent show that Jerec and his dark Jedi captured the former Master Jedi Qu Rahn in 40 rS; when murdering Rahn’s companions failed to produce the
desired results, Jerec simply telepathically invaded his mind and forcibly extracted the knowledge that a map to the Valley was imprinted on the ceiling of the Katarn homestead on Sulon. With no further use
for the Jedi Master, Jerec simply killed him (but not before he’d been able to cut one of Boc’s tendons and bisected Maw). The ensuing scramble for the precise coordinates led Jerec’s dark Jedi to Sulon,
where they were met by Kyle Katarn — he had deserted from the Marines shortly after graduating and receiving the Medal of Valor from Jerec’s own hands, and had since become a mercenary and rebel
agent; he had learned of Jerec’s machinations from the’droid information broker 8t88 on Nar Shaddaa. Katarn killed Gorc and Pic on board the freighter SS Sulon Star at the Fuel City Complex ten kilometers
south of the Sulon starport and managed to obtain the coordinates from 8t88’s severed head, but by then Jerec and the Vengeance had already departed via hyperspace for Ruusan, the location of the Lost
Valley of the Jedi. The “Brothers of the Sith” were left behind, unmourned.
Dark Forces: Jedi Knight shows that when the Vengeance arrived at Ruusan, Jerec waited on board while Sariss oversaw scouting efforts, but saw fit to countermand her order to exterminate the smugglers
and settlers who had taken up residence on Ruusan, using it as a storehouse and establishing a small community called Fort Nowhere; Jerec demanded instead that the inhabitants be probed for information:
“These people have lived on the planet for some time. Are they aware of the Valley? And if they are, did they loot the chambers? And if they did, what happened to the materials found there?” When Sariss’
s investigations suggested that the Valley remained undisturbed, Jerec authorized the extermination of the settlers, which was carried out with customary Imperial precision and thoroughness; Fort Nowhere
was completely destroyed. The Imperial forces lingered for at least several days afterward, conducting a survey of the planet and identifying the Valley itself, and then constructing a tower on the site at Jerec’
s command. When he descended to the planet’s surface to examine the Valley himself with an expert’s eye, he made a point of sending Yun to examine the artifacts, hoping to help defray the cost of
maintaining the Vengeance Battle Group; Jerec’s Imperial backers and corporate sponsors had to be placated, and the metaphysical and dynamological value of the Valley itself was insufficient.
Katarn had tracked Jerec and his cohort to Ruusan, and was drawing nearer. Meanwhile, Jerec lay in wait in the tower, savoring his closeness of the Valley and plotting his reign after apotheosizing himself;
“by tapping the power resident there and shaping it to his will,” Jerec intended to “control the Empire” — “no, not the pathetic remains of what Palpatine and others had frittered away, but something new,
something glorious, something never seen before,” “an Empire that reached beyond the accomplishments of the past, beyond the surrounding star systems, beyond neighboring galaxies to include all that was
or ever would be — now that was a goal!” Jerec is remarkable as being one of the only characters to have actually surpassed the Galactic Emperor in terms of megalomania; the Galactic Emperor had plotted a
slow and progressive apotheosis, while Jerec planned to accomplish more in one fell swoop. First, however, he needed to restore the structural integrity of the Valley’s confines — “the forces that prevented
the Jedi spirits from leaving the Valley had weakened with the passage of time and needed to be strengthened” — and then to prepare himself for his transfiguration. When notified that a party of intruders
had penetrated the tower’s outer perimeter, Jerec immediately identified the leader as Kyle Katarn, and ordered that he be permitted to proceed under surveillance, plotting to turn the younger man to the
dark side.
To that end, Jerec, Sariss, Boc, and Maw intercepted Katarn at the tower, with Katarn’s companion, the rebel spy Jan Ors, as their captive. Katarn killed Maw with surprising ease — he sliced him in half
from the left shoulder to the right hip (sai tok) — and Jerec tried to have him kill Ors as well and succumb to the dark side, but he refused. Jerec, considerably stronger in the Force than his persistent
adversary, simply swatted him aside psychokinetically and returned to the main chamber in the Valley; Katarn attempted to follow, prompting the former Inquisitor to send Sariss, Boc, and Yun to find him
and kill him. Unfortunately for the dark Jedi, Katarn had spared Yun during a previous duel on Sulon, and the boy attempted to prevent Sariss from killing him while she was in mid-swing; alarmed at his
movement, she instinctively cut him down, allowing Katarn to seize his lightsaber. Although Jerec had trained her well, Katarn had the advantage of having recently gained the memories of a fully-trained and
accomplished Jedi alter ego, Tal (who had died in the climactic Battle of Ruusan), and he ran her through (shiak). As he made his way into the main chamber, he was intercepted by Boc, who fell shortly
thereafter after Katarn — taking advantage of the profound dark side energies accumulated in the main chamber — impaled him with a metaphysical ‘spear.’
Katarn was, however, too late to stop Jerec. He had entered the main chamber and begun to feed off the Valley’s power; “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” describes the
experience as having been one of “absolute omniscience,” in which he understood “the will of the Force, Chaos, the ancient civilizations of the Rakata and Xim, what lay beyond the galactic barrier, and the
origins of the universe”; he had begun the transfiguration, and had even gained the ability to fly. Katarn, however, proved to be more ingenious an enemy that Jerec had believed. The younger Jedi used the
Force to protect Jerec from the dark side that surrounded him, and thus prevented him from completing his apotheosis. Having lost his newfound powers, Jerec fell to the ground “stunned and badly
bruised”; his lightsaber was out of reach, and he was resigned to an ignominious death at Katarn’s hands. But the Jedi refused to be goaded into killing the unarmed dark Jedi Master, and instead he actually
handed Jerec his lightsaber and turned away. Jerec, confident in his far greater experience and superior swordsmanship, immediately moved in for the kill. Unfortunately for him Katarn’s alter ego Tal had a
prepared counterattack, the “falling leaf,” and in an instant Jerec was nearly cut in half; he was dead before he hit the ground. Dark Forces: Jedi Knight claims that his body “seemed to lose substance as the
Force departed, and it landed like a shadow on the ground,” while Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II shows that his body disintegrated in a flash of red light. Jerec’s soul was cast into Chaos — where it was to be
joined not long after by the Galactic Emperor’s.
Personality and Personal Life
Completely unlike the Procurator of Justice, Lord Hethrir — a client of Jerec’s rival, Darth Vader — Jerec had no taste for luxury (curiously, though, the Lord Hethrir also plotted to apotheosize himself in
one fell swoop years later in The Crystal Star). His quarters aboard the Vengeance — the third one — were described in Dark Forces: Jedi Knight as being “the largest the Vengeance had to offer,” but were
“almost painfully Spartan,” decorated with “no shelves, no pictures, and no keepsakes,” “nothing but a standard bunk, a custom easy chair, and a crystal-clear bowl filled with multicolored touchstones,” and
that this asceticism was a result of his philosophy: “Material things meant nothing to Jerec — not unless they added to his power — for to have power is to have physical objects when and where you want
them.” Later, when moving out of these quarters, they were said to be “even more bare as Jerec placed the last of his meager belongings into the case,” with the added comment that “while the Jedi had no
interest in quantity, he was choosy about the possessions he had and didn’t like others to touch them.”
Jerec did not care very much about protocol or the trappings of power; only power itself interested him. He introduced himself simply as Jerec, “a servant of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor,” in Galaxy
of Fear: Spore, which is as grandiloquent as he got. He wore no overt indications of his rank within the hierarchy (there were red patterns stitched into the hem of his cloak, but these, like his tattoos, had
esoteric significance). As already noted, he did not mention his rank of Inquisitor when introducing himself, and it was remarked in Dark Forces: Rebel Agent that Sariss was one of the only people to call him
“my lord” (actually, she is said to be the only person to do so, but Yun also does so in Dark Forces: Jedi Knight), and with two exceptions, his subordinates referred to him by name alone (Yun calls him
“Lord Jerec” precisely once while speaking to stormtroopers on Ruusan, and a junior lieutenant does likewise while speaking directly to him). Even when he attended a graduation ceremony at the Military
Academy at Carida, his rank went unmentioned; to the recently-commissioned second lieutenants, he was simply “the guy in black,” “some kind of government official or something.” In Dark Forces:
Soldier for the Empire, he sent a message to the Galactic Emperor himself, and signed himself simply as “your obedient servant, Jerec.” He rarely had more than two Marine orderlies with him at any given
time.
Despite his unpleasant qualities — ruthlessness, faithlessness, manipulative mind-games and constant plotting and jockeying for ever-greater power — Jerec was in many ways a cultured and charismatic
man. In Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, for example, he demonstrated a marked enjoyment of Borna’s Symphony No. 2, despite the fact that the “dark, moody music the Jedi enjoyed so much had been a protest
against the Imperial government” (indeed, it is strongly implied that Borna, a rebel composer, had been executed by the Imperial State); like his master the Galactic Emperor and Thrawn, Jerec had a taste for
art, regardless of the particular origin of it. No doubt his appreciation of the fine arts was a product of his early education and obsession with knowledge and learning. None of his client dark Jedi ever plotted
to supplant him; even the scheming Sariss deeply valued his approval, and hoped to rule at his side after his apotheosis. Only a few words from him were able to make Yun’s “heart swell to at least twice its
normal size,” and he was able to dazzle Yun with his “reflected glory” (i.e., made him feel important merely by physical proximity and the way “stormtroopers jumped to get out of the way” and “officers
came to attention” as he passed); it was said that Jerec “could be very charming when he chose to be,” and “regaled Yun with amusing stories” as they shared a shuttle from the Vengeance in orbit to Ruusan,
and when he “made a point of saying good-bye,” “the resulting sense of significance followed Yun all the way to his quarters.” Noblesse oblige was but one tool in Jerec’s repertoire of manipulations.
Jerec’s penchant for manipulation and mind-games is evident throughout his appearances in the Dark Forces saga. In Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire, Jerec’s suite aboard the Vengeance — the first one
— was kept in “almost total darkness,” illuminated only by “the soft glow provided by the bridge repeaters and light switches”; “the lack of illumination was intended to be intimidating,” but had no effect
on Captain Thrawn, as the Chiss “boasted exceedingly good night vision.” In Dark Forces: Rebel Agent, it is noted that he spoke immediately when calling others, and that “the lack of a greeting was
intentional, one of the many devices Jerec used to keep others off balance,” and that he often asked questions of Sariss to which he knew she knew that he already knew the answer, and that this, too, “like
many of the things that Jerec said, was intended to subjugate her”; at the same time, she was the only one to call him “my lord,” and Jerec recognized it as “part of her never-ending attempt to manipulate
him, and he enjoyed it.” In Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, he offered Sariss a particular touchstone — small multicolored and multishaped treats which were to be eaten or else popped and smelled, but only Jerec
knew which was supposed to be done — , as part of “a game to be played,” “his way of maintaining his power over her”; she “could ask Jerec, and symbolically reaffirm his superiority, or take her chances”
(apparently she had once incorrectly guessed that a touchstone was a scented capsule and had burst it, releasing a thoroughly malodorous stench and humiliating herself in front of Boc).
Although he “went to considerable lengths to hide certain abilities from those above him” (i.e., the Galactic Emperor, and possibly his apprentice, Darth Vader; no one else was ‘above’ Jerec in the hierarchy)
and he “kept his Jedi abilities secret,” although “chosen subordinates were allowed the occasional glimpse,” such as when he mentioned his ability to feel Morgan Katarn’s presence on Sulon from on board
the Vengeance in orbit. As a result, the crews and soldiers serving beneath him were unsure precisely what to think; it was known that he had strange, preternatural powers, but the nature and extent were
unknown. Jerec not only knew about this, but actively encouraged it; Dark Forces: Rebel Agent mentions repeatedly that he often pretended to be able to see despite obviously being blind, and that he did so
“knowing his actions would feed the carefully fashioned myths that surrounded him,” which “overstated his considerable power by a factor of ten.” In fact, Jerec’s manipulations served more than just to
amuse him — although certainly his games “fed his gigantic ego,” according to Dark Forces: Rebel Agent — , but were intended to help him control his subordinates, “who had more power than they knew,
or were likely to know, since jealousy, envy, and a nearly universal lust for power kept them apart.” His manipulations were in many cases application of the doctrine of divide et impera.
The senses of smell and taste are particularly prominent in Jerec’s appearances. Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire describes him as eating a “carefully scented meal” aboard the Vengeance, and later while
at dinner on Carida with General Mohc, he was eating “half-cooked meat” (i.e., rare steak), and although he “couldn’t see what the meal looked like but could smell the residue of blood” (as it happens, he
thought “the meal was delicious”). In Dark Forces: Rebel Agent, after killing Rahn, it is said that the bridge “stank of ozone and blood,” and Jerec’s first words were the command to the commanding officer
of the Vengeance, Captain Sysco, to “clean up the mess, set a course for Sulon, and arrange something special for dinner.” Both Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire and Dark Forces: Rebel Agent mention
that Jerec’s breath “smelled of mint.” Dark Forces: Jedi Knight mentions a bowl of touchstones kept in his quarters aboard the Vengeance — the third one — , and while he listened to Borna’s Symphony
No. 2, he selected a star-shaped touchstone that, when burst beneath his nose, released “the scent of wild flowers,” which he considered to have “formed a counterpoint to the music, and carried him away”;
afterward he ate a spherical touchstone, filled with liqueur that “tasted of cinnamon and contained a mild intoxicant.” While he lingered on Ruusan, he desired time “to prepare, but more than that, time in
which to savor that which destiny had placed before him, much as a gourmet might linger over a rare and carefully prepared dessert.”
The specific nature of Jerec’s blindness is a matter of some minor inconsistency, as is his species. Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II did not explain the origin of his blindness, but said only that “he hides his
empty eye sockets with a thin blindfold-like mask.” Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire states that “empty eye sockets were hidden behind a band of black leather,” and describes him as having “no eyes
and no sight” and “empty eye sockets hidden behind a band of black,” noting that “a narrow strip of black leather obscured the place where his eyes should have been.” Dark Forces: Rebel Agent goes even
further, stating that “a strip of black leather concealed the caves where his eyes had been,” that he pretended to stare out the viewport “with his back to the command pit and his nonexistent eyes on the stars
beyond,” and that on board his personal command ship, Vengeance — the third one — , “at least half the crew believed he could see, in spite of the fact that both of his eyes were clearly missing.” It is
clearly the case, then, that Jerec was blind because he no longer had eyes, not because of a biological defect; The Dark Side Sourcebook calls him simply “the blind Jedi Knight Jerec,” while the scribe
mistakenly writes in The New Essential Guide to Characters that he was “blind since birth” and claims that he “wore a thin strip of leather over his eyes” (whereas in fact he no longer had eyes at all,
functioning or otherwise). The scribe and The Dark Side Sourcebook both explicitly identify him as having been human, but Senior Anthropologist Mammon Hoole mentioned upon meeting him at Ithor in
Galaxy of Fear: Spore that “he appears human, but I suspect he is not,” and that “my guess is that blindness is natural to his species”; Hoole’s suspicion was confirmed by “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6:
Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome,” which states that Jerec was “mistakenly believed to be a blind human” and that he was “actually a Miraluka and was born without physical means of sight,” again
contradicting the statement in Dark Forces: Rebel Agent that his eye sockets were “caves where his eyes had been.”
Jerec’s blindness was more than compensated for by his ability to use the Force. Although it is often said that he ‘saw’ using the Force, this is not entirely accurate. Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire
points out that he couldn’t see his food when he dined with General Mohc on Carida (although it does go on to say that he “saw more than Mohc could imagine”). Dark Forces: Rebel Agent adds that he
“couldn’t see 8t88 in spite of the fact that the holographic projection was eight meters tall and more than eleven meters wide,” and that he could only “imagine how 8t88 looked, along with the re-created
mosaic and the holo-animated star map.” Instead, Tash Arranda described him in Galaxy of Fear: Spore as “reaching out with the dark side of the Force, using it the way insects used their antennae to feel
their way around.” He had no physical sight, but his metaphysical abilities gave him superior awareness of his surroundings, and he often pretended to be able to see anyway, to the point that (as hitherto
mentioned) “at least half the crew believed he could see, in spite of the fact that both of his eyes were clearly missing.”
Jerec’s physical appearance has been fairly consistent, even when his species and the status and whereabouts of his eyes have not. Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire describes him as being “tall and thin to
the point of emaciation,” — Galaxy of Fear: Spore even goes so far as to call him “thin like a skeleton” — and notes that he kept his head shaved (this is a point of mild inconsistency; Jedi Knight: Dark
Forces II and Dark Forces: Jedi Knight clearly show he had thinning hair, but not a shaved head); Dark Forces: Rebel Agent calls him “tall, almost regal in the way he carried himself, and so emaciated that
his nearly translucent skin appeared to have been sprayed onto the surface of his skull.” In every depiction, he wears black clothes with some red decoration — spaulders and esoteric insignia on the hem of
his cloak — , and he “wore no insignia other than the symbols visible on his blood-red collar” (part of Jerec’s mind games — “such was the nature of the man, however, and the power he commanded, that no
signs of authority were necessary”). He had black Sith tattoos at either corner of his mouth, and wore a black band of leather over where his eyes would, should, or had been.
In terms of his strength in the Force, Jerec was extremely powerful, and was especially capable with invasive telepathy — in both Dark Forces: Rebel Agent and “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 4: Of the
Crudest Matter” he is said to be capable of simply ‘ripping’ information from people’s minds, and he was indeed able to learn about the Katarn map to the Lost Valley of the Jedi from Rahn despite the Jedi
Master’s best efforts to the contrary. The Dark Side Sourcebook attributes extensive abilities of clairvoyance and psychokinesis to him, as well as the ability to use Force lightning (a very rare skill among
the Empire’s hierarchs, and one explicitly not possessed by Darth Vader); he is said to be proficient in the use of lightsabers and blasters, as well as very knowledgeable of Jedi and Sith lore and able to speak
Basic and Sith fluently. “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” adds fluency in Miralukese and unusually quick reflexes (supposedly attributable to Miralukan “reaction
speed” being “superior to that of most other species,” despite “their general lack of coordination”), and states that in addition to carrying his lightsaber, he also carried a Jengardin double-bladed vibroblade,
which is presumably the same weapon he used to decapitate Morgan Katarn. It was noted in Galaxy of Fear: Spore that he was “immensely strong,” strong enough that he could lift Senior Anthropologist
Mammon Hoole from the ground by the front of his shirt, despite the fact that Hoole was wearing gravboots (“equipped with mini-tractor beams”) at the time.
References:
appear in the official record,” which the Grand Vizier requested that the Galactic Emperor “approve by 16:9:28 in time for the next cycle of Imperial Holovision.” One of the attached incident reports, viz.,
Incident Report #890-H, filed by Senior Clone Commander CC-1119 (“Appo”) of the 501st Legion, mentions that Jerec had been one of the recently-terminated Jocasta Nu’s Padawan Apprentices, and adds
after Jerec’s name the cross reference “see report 01377B, ACQUISITIONS, under separate cover.” It is noteworthy that CC-1119 was decapitated by Master Jedi Roan Shryne on Kashyyyk only a few
weeks after Order 66 in Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, which probably means that Jerec was scheduled for acquisition rather than already acquired; with his extensive knowledge, Jerec was a valuable
catch for the Imperial State, certainly more valuable to the Galactic Emperor alive than dead. At any rate, his capture must have happened after Tremayne’s entry into the active ranks of the Inquisitorius in
“Evasive Action: Recruitment,” which takes place after Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader in 16 rS.
Imperial Inquisitor
After converting to the dark side, Jerec immediately betrayed other remaining Jedi, “explaining that he knew of a handful of other Jedi students who were on long-range missions and knew nothing of the fall
of the Jedi Order,” according to The Dark Side Sourcebook, which quickly adds that he “sought them out and turned them to the dark side,” and “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs”
mentions that he actually joined the organization responsible for carrying out the remainder of the Jedi Purge, the Galactic Emperor’s Inquisitorius. As an Inquisitor, the scribe notes that he “embarked on
several long-range missions to find other’lost’ Jedi and turn them to the dark side of the Force.” In an unusual twist of fate, “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 4: Of the Crudest Matter” indicates that on one such
mission he tracked down a group of Jedi Shadows, who were ironically “Jedi investigators intent on rooting out and destroying any sign of the dark side” — i.e., the Jedi counterparts to the Inquisitors
themselves. Jerec managed to seduce one of them, a Boltrunian Jedi Knight named Maw, to the dark side, and murdered the rest. Jerec is said to have taken Maw into his clientele, “teaching him to smell the
panic of his prey and taste their fear like a trained bloodsniffer.” Maw was the first, but not last, dark Jedi to be added to Jerec’s clientele.
Note, however, that despite his new rank of Inquisitor, Jerec “kept his Jedi abilities secret,” according to Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire. Jerec’s status as a well-versed Sithologist probably made him
uniquely useful to the Galactic Emperor — a Sith Lord himself (a Sith Master, in fact, not to put too fine a point on it) — , for, more than any other known member of the Imperial hierarchy, he was in a
position to supplement the Galactic Emperor’s own studies of the Force and the various cults and sects surrounding it. The Dark Side Sourcebook mentions that he was sent by his fellow scholar to “locate
artifacts of the Jedi — and the Sith — and bring them to Imperial Center”; who better than Jerec — scholar, archaeologist, and linguist — to find and obtain new additions to the Galactic Emperor’s
collection? “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” mentions that he “studied the Dark Force religion of Palpatine’s Prophets of the Dark Side”; who better than Jerec —
Sithologist and Jedi scholar — to supplement the Galactic Emperor’s own knowledge and analysis of a schismatic sect of the Sith Order? It is possible that Jerec served as a sort of consultant to the Galactic
Emperor, assisting and supplementing the development of his so-called Science of Darkness; in fact, “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3: Pride of the Dark Side” mentions that Jerec had read parts of the Galactic
Emperor’s draft encyclopedia of dark side esoterica, the Dark Side Compendium.
Whether or not he was the Galactic Emperor’s scholarly consultant, he certainly was his procurement agent, and Jerec came to rank very highly in the Imperial hierarchy, despite his somewhat pedestrian
official rank of Inquisitor; in Dark Forces: Soldier for the Emperor, it was noted that Jerec took his orders directly from the Galactic Emperor himself. The scribe writes in The New Essential Guide to
Characters that he “outranked the Dark Side Adepts such as Hethrir, Sedriss, and Kadann” (a fascinating remark, given that Kadann was Supreme Prophet of the Dark Side and one of the Galactic Emperor’s
most trusted advisors). Indeed, Jerec had embraced his role as the Galactic Emperor’s Sithologist, and the scribe notes that he “bore Sith tattoos on his face, as Darth Maul had before him”; the comparison to
the Galactic Emperor’s first Sith Apprentice is a subtle clue to his true status within the Empire, and the scribe goes on to say that “Palpatine never named Jerec a Sith Lord,” and observes that “Darth Vader
already held that title,” which implies that had Vader not already been the Galactic Emperor’s Sith Apprentice, Jerec would have been. This does not seem incredible; he was fluent in Sith, knew Sith lore,
sought and obtained Sith artifacts for his master, displayed Sith tattoos on his face, studied the Dark Force religion of Sith schismatics, and had read in the Galactic Emperor’s Dark Side Compendium about
the ‘empowerment’ technique which the Revised Core Rulebook makes clear is a part of the secrets of the Sith to which the Galactic Emperor had access by virtue of his status as the reigning Sith Master).
Darth Sidious lamented in Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader that if Vader had been killed, no replacement could have been found who was “even half as powerful in the Force”; Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
states that Jerec’s “embrace of the Force’s dark side gives him powers that rival Vader’s” (although the thirteen-year-old Tash Arranda, slightly sensitive to the Force, thought in Galaxy of Fear: Spore that
Jerec’s “dark-side energy wasn’t quite as powerful as the feeling she’d gotten from Darth Vader months ago”). And, consistent with Darth Sidious’s musings in Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader that the
relationship between a Sith Master and his Sith Apprentice was “powered by treachery,” the Galactic Emperor did not trust Jerec in the least bit.
The fundamental problem with trusting Jerec was that he was a confirmed traitor. He had betrayed the Jedi Order by joining the Inquisitorius and betrayed the trust of other Jedi by helping to turn them to
the dark side. The scribe notes that the other members of the dark side hierarchy like the Supreme Prophet and the Procurator of Justice — all of them inferior in rank to him by virtue of his value to the
Galactic Emperor — nevertheless “viewed him as a turncoat waiting for the right opportunity to stab them in the back.” Acting as the Galactic Emperor’s consultant, Jerec had read and become fascinated by
the Sithian ‘empowerment’ technique that would allow the Sith Master to create “a unit of seven Dark Jedi perfectly absorbed into the Emperor’s will,” and “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3: Pride of the Dark
Side” indicates that the Galactic Emperor “readily recognized the darksider’s ambition and denied Jerec further access to the Compendium,” playing the same sort of control games he had once played with
Vader’s predecessor, Darth Tyranus (alias Dooku, Count of Serenno). The scribe mentions in The New Essential Guide to Characters that “Palpatine trusted Jerec so little that he frequently assigned Captain
Thrawn to command Jerec’s Star Destroyer, the Vengeance” (Thrawn being one of the Galactic Emperor’s pet Naval officers;
he would later rise to the rank of grand admiral).
Realizing the limitations to his rise to further power in the hierarchy, Jerec turned to other methods. The scribe notes that he used his influence to attract “silent corporate backers” by “wielding the
bargaining tool of exemption from Inquisitorius audits,” and “quietly became a billionaire.” According to “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome,” one of Jerec’s “wealthy
silent backers” was Grand Moff Ardus Kaine, who succeeded Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin as Governor of Oversector Outer after Tarkin was killed in the Battle of Yavin in 35 rS.
The second dark Jedi to be added to Jerec’s clientele was the Twi’lek slave named Boca’seca (commonly called “Boc the Crude”). According to “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 4: Of the Crudest Matter,” Jerec
first encountered Boc when he was being kept as a manservant of “the pitiless bigot Vice-Admiral Terrinald Screed,” and he immediately “demanded that Screed hand him over for execution.” However, once
Screed had handed over his slave, Jerec instead kept him in “a brutal indentured servitude” and trained him in swordsmanship and the Jedi arts; Boc became a practitioner of the “style of lightsaber combat
that uses a blade in each hand,” traditionally called Jar’Kai among Jedi swordsmen, which indicates that Jerec himself must have been familiar with the style (as he was Boc’s teacher).
At some point during his service to the Galactic Emperor — probably while studying the Dark Force on Dromund Kaas — Jerec had met Lord Cronal, a Prophet of the Dark Side who later left that sect to
become one of the Emperor’s Hands under the codename “Blackhole.” According to “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome,” the Lord Cronal told Jerec of the legendary Lost
Valley of the Jedi, where the last battle of the Light and Darkness War had been fought in 965 BrS, resulting in the complete annihilation of the Army of Light and the Brotherhood of Darkness (the
ecclesiastical predecessor to the current Sith Order); Jerec’s relationship with the Lord Cronal was to provide several significant additions to his network of allies and agents. According to “The Dark Forces
Saga, Part 5: Two Peas in a Pod,” the Lord Cronal had also been responsible for the alchemical experiments that produced the so-called “Brothers of the Sith,” Picaroon C. Boodle and Gorc, a mutated
Kowakian lizard-monkey and Gamorrean, respectively. Both of these Sithspawn creatures would later become dark Jedi
alongside Maw the Boltrunian and Boc the Crude in Jerec’s clientele, although it is not clear when precisely they joined him. According to “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3: Pride of the Dark Side,” Jerec also
met the Lord Cronal’s daughter, the Prophetess Sariss, while he was on Dromund Kaas; she, too, was to later become one of Jerec’s clients, as his semi-loyal second-in-command.
Immediately prior to the Battle of Yavin in 35 rS, Jerec oversaw the pacification of Sulon while on board Thrawn’s Vengeance. This operation provides several interesting glimpses into Jerec’s modus
operandi. In the first place, he deployed the 2nd Platoon, B Company, Special Operations Group — also known as the “Ghost Battalion” — to conduct the pacification disguised as rebel partisans (a
textbook example of the “political gain operation” (PGO) described in the Imperial Sourcebook, Second Edition). He apparently kept his own network of spies and informers, for the disguised troops used
“information provided by Jerec’s agents combined with data compiled by probe droids” to create detailed profiles of captives. Even while his forces were on the ground, Jerec played the part of a highly-
efficient spymaster, as he observed events on the planet’s surface via “highly modified” probots which kept track of individuals, made infrared recordings of their movements, and recorded their
conversations, transmitted intelligence back to the Vengeance, and “reached Jerec only minutes after that,” while he was still in his quarters eating. In fact, while the operation was underway, the ground
forces commander was aware that “Jerec monitored everything he said and did via comlink transmissions, probe droids, and his own seemingly supernatural powers.” Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire
seems to indicate that the sole purpose of this pacification was the removal of insurrectionist elements and the discrediting of the Alliance (unsurprising, given Sulon’s proximity to Sullust, corporate
headquarters of the enormous SoroSuub Corporation), but The Dark Side Sourcebook suggests that Jerec had an ulterior motive. During the course of the operation, Jerec gave specific orders that one of the
rebel leaders, Morgan Katarn, be captured alive (although Jerec decapitated him during the interrogation that followed). Katarn was connected to the fugitive Master Jedi Qu Rahn, and knew the location of
the Lost Valley of the Jedi.
A short time after the pacification of Sulon, Jerec turned up at Carida, where he dined with the highly-decorated war hero Lieutenant General Rom Mohc, who was on Carida to deliver a commencement
address to the graduating class at the Imperial Military Academy at Carida (or “Cliffside,” as it was affectionately known to its alumni). Jerec asked his host to meet one of the graduates, the soon-to-be-
commissioned Second Lieutenant Kyle Katarn, son of the late Morgan Katarn; during the graduation ceremony, Jerec actually pinned Katarn’s newly-awarded Medal of Valor to his uniform, and — perhaps
suspecting that Katarn, like his father, was sensitive to the Force — introduced himself and told him to “remember that recognition is a gift given by those who have power to those who don’t,” and invited
him to “climb the ladder swiftly, join those who possess power, and claim what is yours,” with the added promise that “I will be waiting.” They would prove to be prophetic words.
As seen in Galaxy of Fear: Spore, ten months after the Battle of Yavin, Jerec took the Vengeance — which was by that point no longer under Thrawn’s command — to Ithor, where he sought the imprisoned
Spore, a creature the Ithorians had created some 500 years before (ca 465 BrS) by splicing the genes of the carnivorous vesuvague tree with the genes of the collectively-sapient bafforr tree, inadvertently
creating a sapient parasite that hungered to consume the minds of other sapient beings and forcibly integrate them into its rapidly-expanding collective consciousness. It is not clear how Jerec first learned of
the creature; Tash Arranda (the same sub-adult who evaluated Jerec’s strength in the dark side as being not quite equal to Vader’s) speculated that he had “probably bought or stolen the secret of Spore from
someone,” but it is also possible that he knew of its existence from his time as a Jedi scholar and archaeologist; the Jedi Knights had participated in the first quarantine of ca 465 - 365 BrS that had resulted in
Spore’s 400-year imprisonment, and Jerec may have remembered the incident from his days in the Jedi Order.
Galaxy of Fear: Spore states that Jerec and two of his stormtroopers went to the asteroid where Spore had been imprisoned, but found that Spore had already disappeared; Jerec surmised that it had been
taken to the surface and went to meet it. There, he demonstrated that his command of the dark side was sufficient to hold back Spore’s attempts to assimilate him, and offered to let it assimilate the ship’s
company of the Vengeance instead; it was his plan to use Spore to create an army loyal to himself rather than the Galactic Emperor, and then use it to launch a coup d’état against his master. Unfortunately
for Jerec, the meddling of thirteen-year-old Tash Arranda (a Force-sensitive girl from Alderaan) resulted in Spore taking the Vengeance into an unusually violent asteroid field to chase after her; the creature
was unfamiliar with the operations of the Star Destroyer, and the resulting sluggish maneuvering, poor shield deployment, and uncoordinated damage-control caused the Star Destroyer to sustain several hull
breaches, venting its atmosphere to space and causing Spore — which required oxygen to function — to go into a state of hibernation, killing everyone on board (for his part, Jerec apparently realized that
Spore could not competently control the Star Destroyer, and escaped in a single-man Starfly mini-fighter before the Vengeance was hulled.
By the time salvage teams arrived, the Vengeance had been rendered irreparable, and she was scrapped (although Galaxy of Fear: Spore does mention that the salvage crews recovered “the ship’s computer
core with all its Imperial secrets intact”). “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” states that the computer core was installed in a new Star Destroyer, thus providing Jerec
with a new Vengeance, but he had the ship transferred to Darth Vader’s Death Squadron (see “Rattling the Saber” for a description of Death Squadron’s composition). He had already contracted with Kuat
Drive Yards to manufacture a “Super Star Destroyer variant” for him, which he named Vengeance after his first command ship, disregarding naval practice by choosing a name already in use (in fact, Dark
Forces: Rebel Agent mentions that “regardless of what his position seemed to imply, Jerec had never spent so much as a day in the military,” and that he “saw their rituals as boring”).
Nevertheless, despite his new command ship, the destruction of the Vengeance and the failure of his plot to use Spore against the Galactic Emperor appears to have convinced him to postpone further
plotting against his master. Instead, he decided to spend some time dabbling in affairs of state; he returned to Sulon and took up residence as its governor. Dark Forces: Rebel Agent mentions that “no less an
entity than Jerec himself” had supervised the construction of the palatial Government House atop Baron’s Knoll in Sulon’s capital city of Baron’s Hed “during his brief tenure as Governor.” However short
Jerec’s term may have been, it was apparently long enough for him to leave a characteristic fingerprint: Government House was deliberately situated so that anyone looking at it would be obliged to “look up
as if to a higher authority — a psychological trick that was anything but accidental.” Jerec’s activities after leaving Sulon for the third time — he mentioned that he’d been there once before his visit during the
pacification raid in early 35 rS in Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire — are unknown, except that he operated from the mobile platform of his new Super Star Destroyer. “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3:
Pride of the Dark Side” states that during this time, the Lord Cronal’s daughter Sariss often visited the Vengeance as an agent of the Secret Order of the Emperor, and that she “became strongly attracted to
the enigmatic Inquisitor and his visions of ruling the galaxy,” and that he “turned [her] from one of Palpatine’s magicky pets into [Jerec’s] quasi-loyal second-in-command” through “violent and masochistic
lightsaber sessions,” thus adding her to his clientele of dark Jedi. Like his rival Vader, Jerec was assembling his own more-or-less loyal cohort to serve his ambitions within the hierarchy as well as his own
private spy network.
The Quest for the Lost Valley of the Jedi
When the Galactic Emperor was killed in the Battle of Endor (39 rS), Jerec immediately abandoned the Imperial State; “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” states that he
and “several other Inquisitors” joined Grand Moff Governor Kaine’s Pentastar Alignment of Powers, a breakaway state dedicated to the principles of Palpatinism-Tarkinism, as Great InQuestors of
Judgment (“The Pentastar Alignment” describes the Great InQuestors as “threatening men who wear long black cloaks and hide their faces beneath oversized black hoods,” serving as “the principle tool of
maintaining the decree of the Pentastar Alignment” and the “visible organization to uphold the mandates of the New Order”). It was at around this time that Sariss abandoned her post as “Prophetess,” a spy
on behalf of the Governor of Tatooine, and openly joined Jerec as his second-in-command; according to “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3: Pride of the Dark Side,” she posed as a devotee of the Church of the
Dark Side to insinuate herself with a Panathan mineral baron, then manipulated his son into killing him. This boy, — the naïf Epicanthix male Yun, Sariss’s surrogate son and lover — became the last of seven
dark Jedi to join Jerec’s clientele. Using funding and resources from the Pentastar Alignment, he began to search for the Lost Valley of the Jedi, planning to use the energies contained within it to apotheosize
himself and rule the galaxy — and ultimately, the universe — as an omnipotent god-emperor.
As some point during this search, he came into contact again with the Prophets of the Dark Side, who had abandoned the Imperial State and fled immediately before the Battle of Endor; he agreed to search for
the Valley on the Prophets’ behalf, drawing resources and funding from them as well. The Supreme Prophet’s earlier distrust for Jerec was justified: Jerec neglected to mention to either sponsor that he had
another sponsor, and was basically double-dipping. At some point in ca 40 rS, he was also contacted by the Lord Cronal, who had by then taken up his old post of spymaster to the resurrected Galactic
Emperor, reincarnated on Byss and “alive and watching galactic events from the Deep Core at the center of the galaxy”; Blackhole then “charged Jerec with finding the fabled Valley of the Jedi for the glory of
the Emperor,” and “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” states that Jerec “pledged his submission to the reincarnated dictator” and gave the former Prophet — who didn’t
realize that Jerec was already searching for the Valley on behalf of his former comrades the Prophets and the Pentastar Alignment — the Vengeance, “to take back to the planet Byss as a sign of his
commitment” (it is not clear when this is supposed to have happened, as Jerec’s Super Star Destroyer Vengeance was seen under his control until the very end of his search for the Valley in Jedi Knight:
Dark Forces II and Dark Forces: Jedi Knight; possibly it refers to Jerec’s second command ship, the Imperial class Vengeance). Jerec’s various sponsors financed the assembling of an Imperial Battle Group
— i.e., forces loyal to the Imperial State, not the Pentastar Alignment or the Prophets — centered around the Vengeance in support of his mission (a junior space warfare officer in the Battle Group
complained in Dark Forces: Jedi Knight that supplies were short and that “the Group has half the ordnance it’s entitled to”).
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and Dark Forces: Rebel Agent show that Jerec and his dark Jedi captured the former Master Jedi Qu Rahn in 40 rS; when murdering Rahn’s companions failed to produce the
desired results, Jerec simply telepathically invaded his mind and forcibly extracted the knowledge that a map to the Valley was imprinted on the ceiling of the Katarn homestead on Sulon. With no further use
for the Jedi Master, Jerec simply killed him (but not before he’d been able to cut one of Boc’s tendons and bisected Maw). The ensuing scramble for the precise coordinates led Jerec’s dark Jedi to Sulon,
where they were met by Kyle Katarn — he had deserted from the Marines shortly after graduating and receiving the Medal of Valor from Jerec’s own hands, and had since become a mercenary and rebel
agent; he had learned of Jerec’s machinations from the’droid information broker 8t88 on Nar Shaddaa. Katarn killed Gorc and Pic on board the freighter SS Sulon Star at the Fuel City Complex ten kilometers
south of the Sulon starport and managed to obtain the coordinates from 8t88’s severed head, but by then Jerec and the Vengeance had already departed via hyperspace for Ruusan, the location of the Lost
Valley of the Jedi. The “Brothers of the Sith” were left behind, unmourned.
Dark Forces: Jedi Knight shows that when the Vengeance arrived at Ruusan, Jerec waited on board while Sariss oversaw scouting efforts, but saw fit to countermand her order to exterminate the smugglers
and settlers who had taken up residence on Ruusan, using it as a storehouse and establishing a small community called Fort Nowhere; Jerec demanded instead that the inhabitants be probed for information:
“These people have lived on the planet for some time. Are they aware of the Valley? And if they are, did they loot the chambers? And if they did, what happened to the materials found there?” When Sariss’
s investigations suggested that the Valley remained undisturbed, Jerec authorized the extermination of the settlers, which was carried out with customary Imperial precision and thoroughness; Fort Nowhere
was completely destroyed. The Imperial forces lingered for at least several days afterward, conducting a survey of the planet and identifying the Valley itself, and then constructing a tower on the site at Jerec’
s command. When he descended to the planet’s surface to examine the Valley himself with an expert’s eye, he made a point of sending Yun to examine the artifacts, hoping to help defray the cost of
maintaining the Vengeance Battle Group; Jerec’s Imperial backers and corporate sponsors had to be placated, and the metaphysical and dynamological value of the Valley itself was insufficient.
Katarn had tracked Jerec and his cohort to Ruusan, and was drawing nearer. Meanwhile, Jerec lay in wait in the tower, savoring his closeness of the Valley and plotting his reign after apotheosizing himself;
“by tapping the power resident there and shaping it to his will,” Jerec intended to “control the Empire” — “no, not the pathetic remains of what Palpatine and others had frittered away, but something new,
something glorious, something never seen before,” “an Empire that reached beyond the accomplishments of the past, beyond the surrounding star systems, beyond neighboring galaxies to include all that was
or ever would be — now that was a goal!” Jerec is remarkable as being one of the only characters to have actually surpassed the Galactic Emperor in terms of megalomania; the Galactic Emperor had plotted a
slow and progressive apotheosis, while Jerec planned to accomplish more in one fell swoop. First, however, he needed to restore the structural integrity of the Valley’s confines — “the forces that prevented
the Jedi spirits from leaving the Valley had weakened with the passage of time and needed to be strengthened” — and then to prepare himself for his transfiguration. When notified that a party of intruders
had penetrated the tower’s outer perimeter, Jerec immediately identified the leader as Kyle Katarn, and ordered that he be permitted to proceed under surveillance, plotting to turn the younger man to the
dark side.
To that end, Jerec, Sariss, Boc, and Maw intercepted Katarn at the tower, with Katarn’s companion, the rebel spy Jan Ors, as their captive. Katarn killed Maw with surprising ease — he sliced him in half
from the left shoulder to the right hip (sai tok) — and Jerec tried to have him kill Ors as well and succumb to the dark side, but he refused. Jerec, considerably stronger in the Force than his persistent
adversary, simply swatted him aside psychokinetically and returned to the main chamber in the Valley; Katarn attempted to follow, prompting the former Inquisitor to send Sariss, Boc, and Yun to find him
and kill him. Unfortunately for the dark Jedi, Katarn had spared Yun during a previous duel on Sulon, and the boy attempted to prevent Sariss from killing him while she was in mid-swing; alarmed at his
movement, she instinctively cut him down, allowing Katarn to seize his lightsaber. Although Jerec had trained her well, Katarn had the advantage of having recently gained the memories of a fully-trained and
accomplished Jedi alter ego, Tal (who had died in the climactic Battle of Ruusan), and he ran her through (shiak). As he made his way into the main chamber, he was intercepted by Boc, who fell shortly
thereafter after Katarn — taking advantage of the profound dark side energies accumulated in the main chamber — impaled him with a metaphysical ‘spear.’
Katarn was, however, too late to stop Jerec. He had entered the main chamber and begun to feed off the Valley’s power; “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” describes the
experience as having been one of “absolute omniscience,” in which he understood “the will of the Force, Chaos, the ancient civilizations of the Rakata and Xim, what lay beyond the galactic barrier, and the
origins of the universe”; he had begun the transfiguration, and had even gained the ability to fly. Katarn, however, proved to be more ingenious an enemy that Jerec had believed. The younger Jedi used the
Force to protect Jerec from the dark side that surrounded him, and thus prevented him from completing his apotheosis. Having lost his newfound powers, Jerec fell to the ground “stunned and badly
bruised”; his lightsaber was out of reach, and he was resigned to an ignominious death at Katarn’s hands. But the Jedi refused to be goaded into killing the unarmed dark Jedi Master, and instead he actually
handed Jerec his lightsaber and turned away. Jerec, confident in his far greater experience and superior swordsmanship, immediately moved in for the kill. Unfortunately for him Katarn’s alter ego Tal had a
prepared counterattack, the “falling leaf,” and in an instant Jerec was nearly cut in half; he was dead before he hit the ground. Dark Forces: Jedi Knight claims that his body “seemed to lose substance as the
Force departed, and it landed like a shadow on the ground,” while Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II shows that his body disintegrated in a flash of red light. Jerec’s soul was cast into Chaos — where it was to be
joined not long after by the Galactic Emperor’s.
Personality and Personal Life
Completely unlike the Procurator of Justice, Lord Hethrir — a client of Jerec’s rival, Darth Vader — Jerec had no taste for luxury (curiously, though, the Lord Hethrir also plotted to apotheosize himself in
one fell swoop years later in The Crystal Star). His quarters aboard the Vengeance — the third one — were described in Dark Forces: Jedi Knight as being “the largest the Vengeance had to offer,” but were
“almost painfully Spartan,” decorated with “no shelves, no pictures, and no keepsakes,” “nothing but a standard bunk, a custom easy chair, and a crystal-clear bowl filled with multicolored touchstones,” and
that this asceticism was a result of his philosophy: “Material things meant nothing to Jerec — not unless they added to his power — for to have power is to have physical objects when and where you want
them.” Later, when moving out of these quarters, they were said to be “even more bare as Jerec placed the last of his meager belongings into the case,” with the added comment that “while the Jedi had no
interest in quantity, he was choosy about the possessions he had and didn’t like others to touch them.”
Jerec did not care very much about protocol or the trappings of power; only power itself interested him. He introduced himself simply as Jerec, “a servant of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor,” in Galaxy
of Fear: Spore, which is as grandiloquent as he got. He wore no overt indications of his rank within the hierarchy (there were red patterns stitched into the hem of his cloak, but these, like his tattoos, had
esoteric significance). As already noted, he did not mention his rank of Inquisitor when introducing himself, and it was remarked in Dark Forces: Rebel Agent that Sariss was one of the only people to call him
“my lord” (actually, she is said to be the only person to do so, but Yun also does so in Dark Forces: Jedi Knight), and with two exceptions, his subordinates referred to him by name alone (Yun calls him
“Lord Jerec” precisely once while speaking to stormtroopers on Ruusan, and a junior lieutenant does likewise while speaking directly to him). Even when he attended a graduation ceremony at the Military
Academy at Carida, his rank went unmentioned; to the recently-commissioned second lieutenants, he was simply “the guy in black,” “some kind of government official or something.” In Dark Forces:
Soldier for the Empire, he sent a message to the Galactic Emperor himself, and signed himself simply as “your obedient servant, Jerec.” He rarely had more than two Marine orderlies with him at any given
time.
Despite his unpleasant qualities — ruthlessness, faithlessness, manipulative mind-games and constant plotting and jockeying for ever-greater power — Jerec was in many ways a cultured and charismatic
man. In Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, for example, he demonstrated a marked enjoyment of Borna’s Symphony No. 2, despite the fact that the “dark, moody music the Jedi enjoyed so much had been a protest
against the Imperial government” (indeed, it is strongly implied that Borna, a rebel composer, had been executed by the Imperial State); like his master the Galactic Emperor and Thrawn, Jerec had a taste for
art, regardless of the particular origin of it. No doubt his appreciation of the fine arts was a product of his early education and obsession with knowledge and learning. None of his client dark Jedi ever plotted
to supplant him; even the scheming Sariss deeply valued his approval, and hoped to rule at his side after his apotheosis. Only a few words from him were able to make Yun’s “heart swell to at least twice its
normal size,” and he was able to dazzle Yun with his “reflected glory” (i.e., made him feel important merely by physical proximity and the way “stormtroopers jumped to get out of the way” and “officers
came to attention” as he passed); it was said that Jerec “could be very charming when he chose to be,” and “regaled Yun with amusing stories” as they shared a shuttle from the Vengeance in orbit to Ruusan,
and when he “made a point of saying good-bye,” “the resulting sense of significance followed Yun all the way to his quarters.” Noblesse oblige was but one tool in Jerec’s repertoire of manipulations.
Jerec’s penchant for manipulation and mind-games is evident throughout his appearances in the Dark Forces saga. In Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire, Jerec’s suite aboard the Vengeance — the first one
— was kept in “almost total darkness,” illuminated only by “the soft glow provided by the bridge repeaters and light switches”; “the lack of illumination was intended to be intimidating,” but had no effect
on Captain Thrawn, as the Chiss “boasted exceedingly good night vision.” In Dark Forces: Rebel Agent, it is noted that he spoke immediately when calling others, and that “the lack of a greeting was
intentional, one of the many devices Jerec used to keep others off balance,” and that he often asked questions of Sariss to which he knew she knew that he already knew the answer, and that this, too, “like
many of the things that Jerec said, was intended to subjugate her”; at the same time, she was the only one to call him “my lord,” and Jerec recognized it as “part of her never-ending attempt to manipulate
him, and he enjoyed it.” In Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, he offered Sariss a particular touchstone — small multicolored and multishaped treats which were to be eaten or else popped and smelled, but only Jerec
knew which was supposed to be done — , as part of “a game to be played,” “his way of maintaining his power over her”; she “could ask Jerec, and symbolically reaffirm his superiority, or take her chances”
(apparently she had once incorrectly guessed that a touchstone was a scented capsule and had burst it, releasing a thoroughly malodorous stench and humiliating herself in front of Boc).
Although he “went to considerable lengths to hide certain abilities from those above him” (i.e., the Galactic Emperor, and possibly his apprentice, Darth Vader; no one else was ‘above’ Jerec in the hierarchy)
and he “kept his Jedi abilities secret,” although “chosen subordinates were allowed the occasional glimpse,” such as when he mentioned his ability to feel Morgan Katarn’s presence on Sulon from on board
the Vengeance in orbit. As a result, the crews and soldiers serving beneath him were unsure precisely what to think; it was known that he had strange, preternatural powers, but the nature and extent were
unknown. Jerec not only knew about this, but actively encouraged it; Dark Forces: Rebel Agent mentions repeatedly that he often pretended to be able to see despite obviously being blind, and that he did so
“knowing his actions would feed the carefully fashioned myths that surrounded him,” which “overstated his considerable power by a factor of ten.” In fact, Jerec’s manipulations served more than just to
amuse him — although certainly his games “fed his gigantic ego,” according to Dark Forces: Rebel Agent — , but were intended to help him control his subordinates, “who had more power than they knew,
or were likely to know, since jealousy, envy, and a nearly universal lust for power kept them apart.” His manipulations were in many cases application of the doctrine of divide et impera.
The senses of smell and taste are particularly prominent in Jerec’s appearances. Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire describes him as eating a “carefully scented meal” aboard the Vengeance, and later while
at dinner on Carida with General Mohc, he was eating “half-cooked meat” (i.e., rare steak), and although he “couldn’t see what the meal looked like but could smell the residue of blood” (as it happens, he
thought “the meal was delicious”). In Dark Forces: Rebel Agent, after killing Rahn, it is said that the bridge “stank of ozone and blood,” and Jerec’s first words were the command to the commanding officer
of the Vengeance, Captain Sysco, to “clean up the mess, set a course for Sulon, and arrange something special for dinner.” Both Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire and Dark Forces: Rebel Agent mention
that Jerec’s breath “smelled of mint.” Dark Forces: Jedi Knight mentions a bowl of touchstones kept in his quarters aboard the Vengeance — the third one — , and while he listened to Borna’s Symphony
No. 2, he selected a star-shaped touchstone that, when burst beneath his nose, released “the scent of wild flowers,” which he considered to have “formed a counterpoint to the music, and carried him away”;
afterward he ate a spherical touchstone, filled with liqueur that “tasted of cinnamon and contained a mild intoxicant.” While he lingered on Ruusan, he desired time “to prepare, but more than that, time in
which to savor that which destiny had placed before him, much as a gourmet might linger over a rare and carefully prepared dessert.”
The specific nature of Jerec’s blindness is a matter of some minor inconsistency, as is his species. Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II did not explain the origin of his blindness, but said only that “he hides his
empty eye sockets with a thin blindfold-like mask.” Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire states that “empty eye sockets were hidden behind a band of black leather,” and describes him as having “no eyes
and no sight” and “empty eye sockets hidden behind a band of black,” noting that “a narrow strip of black leather obscured the place where his eyes should have been.” Dark Forces: Rebel Agent goes even
further, stating that “a strip of black leather concealed the caves where his eyes had been,” that he pretended to stare out the viewport “with his back to the command pit and his nonexistent eyes on the stars
beyond,” and that on board his personal command ship, Vengeance — the third one — , “at least half the crew believed he could see, in spite of the fact that both of his eyes were clearly missing.” It is
clearly the case, then, that Jerec was blind because he no longer had eyes, not because of a biological defect; The Dark Side Sourcebook calls him simply “the blind Jedi Knight Jerec,” while the scribe
mistakenly writes in The New Essential Guide to Characters that he was “blind since birth” and claims that he “wore a thin strip of leather over his eyes” (whereas in fact he no longer had eyes at all,
functioning or otherwise). The scribe and The Dark Side Sourcebook both explicitly identify him as having been human, but Senior Anthropologist Mammon Hoole mentioned upon meeting him at Ithor in
Galaxy of Fear: Spore that “he appears human, but I suspect he is not,” and that “my guess is that blindness is natural to his species”; Hoole’s suspicion was confirmed by “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6:
Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome,” which states that Jerec was “mistakenly believed to be a blind human” and that he was “actually a Miraluka and was born without physical means of sight,” again
contradicting the statement in Dark Forces: Rebel Agent that his eye sockets were “caves where his eyes had been.”
Jerec’s blindness was more than compensated for by his ability to use the Force. Although it is often said that he ‘saw’ using the Force, this is not entirely accurate. Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire
points out that he couldn’t see his food when he dined with General Mohc on Carida (although it does go on to say that he “saw more than Mohc could imagine”). Dark Forces: Rebel Agent adds that he
“couldn’t see 8t88 in spite of the fact that the holographic projection was eight meters tall and more than eleven meters wide,” and that he could only “imagine how 8t88 looked, along with the re-created
mosaic and the holo-animated star map.” Instead, Tash Arranda described him in Galaxy of Fear: Spore as “reaching out with the dark side of the Force, using it the way insects used their antennae to feel
their way around.” He had no physical sight, but his metaphysical abilities gave him superior awareness of his surroundings, and he often pretended to be able to see anyway, to the point that (as hitherto
mentioned) “at least half the crew believed he could see, in spite of the fact that both of his eyes were clearly missing.”
Jerec’s physical appearance has been fairly consistent, even when his species and the status and whereabouts of his eyes have not. Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire describes him as being “tall and thin to
the point of emaciation,” — Galaxy of Fear: Spore even goes so far as to call him “thin like a skeleton” — and notes that he kept his head shaved (this is a point of mild inconsistency; Jedi Knight: Dark
Forces II and Dark Forces: Jedi Knight clearly show he had thinning hair, but not a shaved head); Dark Forces: Rebel Agent calls him “tall, almost regal in the way he carried himself, and so emaciated that
his nearly translucent skin appeared to have been sprayed onto the surface of his skull.” In every depiction, he wears black clothes with some red decoration — spaulders and esoteric insignia on the hem of
his cloak — , and he “wore no insignia other than the symbols visible on his blood-red collar” (part of Jerec’s mind games — “such was the nature of the man, however, and the power he commanded, that no
signs of authority were necessary”). He had black Sith tattoos at either corner of his mouth, and wore a black band of leather over where his eyes would, should, or had been.
In terms of his strength in the Force, Jerec was extremely powerful, and was especially capable with invasive telepathy — in both Dark Forces: Rebel Agent and “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 4: Of the
Crudest Matter” he is said to be capable of simply ‘ripping’ information from people’s minds, and he was indeed able to learn about the Katarn map to the Lost Valley of the Jedi from Rahn despite the Jedi
Master’s best efforts to the contrary. The Dark Side Sourcebook attributes extensive abilities of clairvoyance and psychokinesis to him, as well as the ability to use Force lightning (a very rare skill among
the Empire’s hierarchs, and one explicitly not possessed by Darth Vader); he is said to be proficient in the use of lightsabers and blasters, as well as very knowledgeable of Jedi and Sith lore and able to speak
Basic and Sith fluently. “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome” adds fluency in Miralukese and unusually quick reflexes (supposedly attributable to Miralukan “reaction
speed” being “superior to that of most other species,” despite “their general lack of coordination”), and states that in addition to carrying his lightsaber, he also carried a Jengardin double-bladed vibroblade,
which is presumably the same weapon he used to decapitate Morgan Katarn. It was noted in Galaxy of Fear: Spore that he was “immensely strong,” strong enough that he could lift Senior Anthropologist
Mammon Hoole from the ground by the front of his shirt, despite the fact that Hoole was wearing gravboots (“equipped with mini-tractor beams”) at the time.
References:
- Dietz, William C. Dark Forces: Jedi Knight. Dark Horse Comics, Inc., and G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1998.
- Dietz, William C. Dark Forces: Rebel Agent. Dark Horse Comics, Inc., and G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1998.
- Dietz, William C. Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire. Dark Horse Comics, Inc., and G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1997.
- Ens, Paul. “Evasive Action: Recruitment.” Lucasfilm Ltd., 2005.
- Fry, Jason and Abel G. Peña. “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3: Pride of the Dark Side.” Wizards of the Coast, Inc., 2005.
- Fry, Jason and Abel G. Peña. “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 4: Of the Crudest Matter.” Wizards of the Coast, Inc., 2005.
- Fry, Jason and Abel G. Peña. “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 5: Two Peas in a Pod.” Wizards of the Coast, Inc., 2005.
- Fry, Jason and Abel G. Peña. “The Dark Forces Saga, Part 6: Outcasts and Megalomaniacs Welcome.” Wizards of the Coast, Inc., 2005.
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