Aron Holt

Aron Holt was a who lived on Aquilaris Minor during the Republic Dark Age. He and his wife archaeologist Mercia Holt were researchers from the University of Sanbra. They were the parents of Jedi Knight Kerra Holt, residing at a house in the city of Capital Cay. Prior to the Sith invasion of Aquilaris, Aron and his wife became involved in a research project searching Helm of Ieldis, a Sith artifact developed by Lord Ieldis which would turn sentient beings into mindless killers. One of their research expeditions took them to the planet Sarrassia where they established contact with the Grumani Hierophants, one of the many religious sects inhabiting that planet. During that time, they befriended the Woostoid Grumani priestess Aunt Zoojoo, who became a close family friend. Kerra climbed onto the roof of the Great Hall, she caused the abbot to suffer a stroke. Kerra was later reprimanded by her parents for her mischievous actions.

In 1042 BBY, the planet Sanbra and its university were by Sith Chagras Hegemony forces under Sith Lord Odion, forcing the research team to flee offworld. Odion uncovered information about the Helm and sought to use it to gain an edge over his Sith compatriots. The Holts and ten other researchers fled to Aquilaris Minor, a backwater watery world in the Grumani sector. There, they were planning to meet several Jedi on Aquilaris including Jedi Knight Vannar Treece. However, Odion obtained intelligence that the researchers were there. He was subsequently gained authorization to invade Aquilaris from the Sith matriarch Vilia Calimondra, under the ruse of capturing Treece, a perennial foe of the Sith.

Later that year, Aquilaris was invaded by Chagras Hegemony forces under Lord Odion who wiped out the weak Republic defenses, and slaughtered and enslaved much of the population. By that time, his wife Mercia was pregnant with their second child. During the invasion of Capital Cay, Aron helped his wife Mercia conceal her research and was seen sporting a blaster pistol in the event that Sith troops stormed their house. They planned to flee to the harbor and escape on a submersible manned by the Seacroppers' Guild. While their house was being besieged by Sith troopers, Mercia instructed her daughter Kerra to flee to the harbor first. Her parents would then meet up with her and they would flee with Joad Kreel and his father into the open seas. Finally, Mercia told her daughter not to come back looking for them and promised that they would join her there.

After Kerra fled, the house was invaded by a group of Sith troopers who overpowered and took the couple captive. Odion had ordered his forces to capture all the Sanbra researchers within that area in order to capture the Helm before his Sith compatriots could. Kerra would flee to the harbor but would return when her parents did not join her and Joad. Kerra subsequently was found by the Jedi Knight Vannar Treece who managed to evacuate her offworld in a starfighter. She subsequently became a Jedi Knight and would return to help her homeworld during the Aquilaris campaign.

Due to their occupations, Aron and his wife were forcibly inducted into Odion's Project Pandemonium which aimed to locate the Helm of Ieldis. In 1039 BBY, Mercia and Aron returned to Sarrassia as part of their research project. This visit occurred a few days prior to the of Sarrassia by Lord Ayanos Bactra. Prior to their Sarrassian trip, Kerra deduced that Mercia had given birth to a second child but it was presumably taken away from them and raised at an Odionate cloister, a network of orphanages run by the Odionate. While they revealed to Aunt Zoojoo that they had been sent by Odion to find the artifact, she sensed that they had not yet succumbed to his nihilistic 'sickness.' Together, the pair conspired with the Grumani Hierophants to locate and hide the artifact from Odion. Mercia translated the Hierophant markings and managed to locate the Helm on Skarpos, a barren desert world in the Menagerie, a realm ruled by the Sith Lord Malakite.

The Holts then sealed an agreement with the Grumani where they would deny him access to the Helm at all costs. In 1038 BBY, the Holts managed to find the Helm within the Grumani temple chamber in the Morbollon Mesa on Skarpos. During the internecine fighting between the regional Sith Lords, the Mesa was by unknown Sith forces, leaving Aron and his wife trapped within a network of caves and tunnels. Realizing the dangers of the Helm falling into the wrong hands and unable to escape, the Holts instead detonated explosives in the chamber, destroying the structure and sacrificing themselves in the process. Prior to their deaths, they left a holorecording for Vannar Treece and any other Jedi who were working with the University of Sabra on the Ieldis study. However, the Helm of Ieldis was a Sith artifact imbued with dark side powers and survived the explosion.

Since they never returned from that trip, Zoojoo assumed they succeeded. Following that trip to Sarrassia, there were no further written records of their fate. In 1032 BBY, Kerra Holt infiltrated the Odionate disguised as a Novitiate recruit following the Battle of Darkknell with the connivance of rival Sith Lord Daiman, the estranged younger brother of Odion. At Jubalene, she learned that her parents had been captured by Odion and had been conscripted into Project Pandemonium.

Kerra subsequently traveled to Sarrassia during the Sith invasion and quickly learned about details of their Sarrassian trip from Aunt Zoojoo prior to her demise. After learning that the Helm was located on Skarpos, Kerra would follow her Sith companions in her quest to ascertain the fate of her parents and her younger sibling.

During the Second Battle of Skarpos, Kerra managed to enter the Grumani temple chamber only to discover a mound of earth and that Odion had already claimed the Helm for himself. Kerra was subsequently taken captive by Odion and brought to the top of the mesa. General Beld Yulan's troops did an excavation of the collapsed temple chamber and discovered the skeletal remains of Aron Holt and his wife. The realization that her parents had died drove Kerra into a deep grief, which activated the Helm of Ieldis. The Helm was capable of amplifying negative emotions like grief and despair to increase its user's dark side powers. Odion subsequently use the Helm to destroy three entire armies on Skarpos, forcing his two rivals Lords Daiman and Malakite to flee.

Following the battle, Beld Yulan showed Kerra the holorecording left by her parents where they explained their decision to bury themselves with the Helm in order to deny it to the Sith. While Yulan was unable to understand why they chose to die for everyone else, Kerra perfectly understood that if death could have a meaning then life must have a meaning. This made Kerra better appreciate the sacrifices of her parents and galvanized her determination to stop Odion from testing the Helm on more subjects: the children incarcerated with the Odionate cloister at Vanahame.