History
A born slave, Draaks is actually the heir to an ancient, forgotten Sith legacy spanning millenia who possibly maintained ties to the original Vergent Order. His early life was hard and joyless but not abusive, consisting of menial labor for a handful of different owners. He was freed and brought to Koriban when his connection to the Force was discovered and he excelled there, becoming a sorcerer so powerful that several members of the Dark Council felt threatened by his unusually quick rise through the ranks and his disregard for Sith tradition. He survived their power-plays and defeated the best of them, claiming a seat on the Dark Council and acting as a force of caution and moderation among the Sith Lords.
Draaks followed a vision received on the planet Voss and to a forgotten world where he met the Jedi Jahnn, and was the first person Jahnn shared the knowledge he’d discovered there of the Vergent Order with. Draaks’s unmatched skills for researching and uncovering lost knowledge became a crucial resource to Jahnn’s quest to rebuild the Vergent Order, and he all but abandoned his life in the Dark Council to pursue this knowledge before the Eternal Empire appeared. Thanks to his connection to Jahnn, who was accused of being involved in the murder of Emperor Valkorian, Draaks was one of several agents deemed dangerous enough to be hunted down by Arcann and encased in carbonite as punishment. He was freed by the former Republic soldier Saya’ka, when she rescued her friend and ally Jahnn from the same fate on Zakuul, and now serves their Eternal Alliance as a teacher of students in the Vergant way.
Character
Draaks uses a mask of indifference to hide a snarky, sarcastic tongue that helped him survive the slavery of his youth. He’s that one person everyone knows who can keep a perfectly straight face while delivering the most brutal take-down reply imaginable to something stupid someone else has said. He’s Jahnn’s opposite in a lot of ways; his humor is dry and subtle while Jahnn’s is loud and nonsequiterian. He refuses to suffer a fool, though, and can be dismissive of people he labels as foolish. As a Sith he was uninterested in the concept of dark versus light and when shown the knowledge of the Vergent Order and their rejection of this concept, he immediately embraced the Vergent teachings as his one truth. He has a conscience and a powerful personal code of right and wrong, which sets him apart from most other Sith. He never believed that the Sith code means it’s okay to be cruel to others (indeed, sometimes the choice to be kind instead can require much greater strength), instead seeing its worship of passion-as-power to be a mandate to embrace humanity. As a Vergent, Draaks is finally allowed to explore his passions without having to pervert them with Sith hatred and mindless violence. He has a slaver’s tattoo over his left eye which he refuses to have removed, and kept his head shaved for most of his time as a Sith. He’s very recently allowed his hair to start to grow out as he leaves behind his Sith roots and starts exploring his new spiritual freedom.
Combat
Draaks is competent with a lightsaber but far more effective in a fight using the Force as a weapon, focusing powerful energy storms and crushing pressure against his enemies. His power over life and death extends to the healing arts as well, able to force wounds to close and revitalize the sick and dying by dark force of will. His Sith lightsaber is a classical Ziost design with a red blade, but he’s more recently begun using a lighter and more streamlined lightsaber with a dark violet blade that was constructed for him by Jahnn.
Special Skills
Draaks’s greatest passion is for ancient knowledge. He hungrily searches out lost knowledge of the various Force-commanding orders of the galaxy, and revels in learning about forgotten cultures and societies and art. He’s a skilled paleontologist and archaeologist, and speaks dozens of languages (many of them ancient dead languages). As a historian, his knowledge is without peer.
Relationships
Jahnn – A trusted friend and equal, the two call each other brother. Jahnn first introduced Draaks to the knowledge of the Vergent, and the two are considered to be the leaders of the infant new Vergent Order.
Doriyen and Drae’den – Fellow Vergents, though they each have their own unique place in their Order.
Saya’ka – As of Eternal Empire, Saya’ka is the military leader of the Odessan Alliance that Draaks and the other Vergents have chosen to support. As such she is technically his superior and he follows her orders, showing her deference mainly for Jahnn’s sake.