Beri Tulon

Beri Tulon was a Human male born into a family with a proud military tradition dating back millennia. Family lore stated that his ancestors served with Empress Teta during the Great Hyperspace War. He happily continued that tradition by entering the Academy as soon as he could. Raised with traditional military values, Tulon was a principled and responsible officer. He made a point of earning the friendship and respect of his troops. This caused him to become the target of derision by his peers and superiors, but he was able to back his actions with his excellent results as a commander.

However, this only served to embitter one of his superiors even more. The resentful officer plotted to kill Tulon by sending his unit to Khomm on what was supposedly a routine reconnaissance mission. To Tulon's surprise, a unit of mercenaries awaited him, slaughtering almost all of his soldiers. Tulon was able to trace the cowardly attack to the superior and made sure that he faced the full penalty of Imperial justice.

The incident was enough to sour Tulon on command, however. No longer wishing to hold the responsibility for the lives and deaths of his men, he requested that he become a training instructor. Tulon rapidly became one of the most decorated training instructors in the Galactic Empire.

Eventually, Tulon became involved in Grand General Malcor Brashin's Battlefield Holographic Control Interface (BHCI) program. In 0 ABY, Tulon, now a captain, observed the Battle of Kalaan to find prospects to be trained on the BHCI. He found Brenn Tantor, a stormtrooper corporal who had taken command of his unit when his superior was killed and performed superbly. Striding up to the young man in the ruins of a bombed-out Kalaan city, Tulon gave him a battlefield promotion to the rank of lieutenant and ordered him to report to the Star Destroyer Inquisitor for training.

In orbit over Tatooine, Tulon introduced Tantor to the Battlefield Holographic Control Interface, a command station that allowed an officer to direct troops from the safety of orbit with the fullest possible representation of the actual field of battle. Tulon instructed Tantor as the new officer ran Zeta Squadron through a series of exercises. However, the training was interrupted by the announcement that an escape pod from the Rebel Alliance corvette Tantive IV containing plans to the first Death Star battlestation had landed somewhere near Zeta Squadron's position. Tulon observed as Tantor swiftly found the pod.

The young officer next tracked down the Jawa sandcrawler that had picked up the droids carrying the plans and commanded a raid on Obi-Wan Kenobi's hut—where the droids had visited—all under Tulon's supervision.

Tantor, Tulon, and Brashin were then sent to Ruul, based on the possibility that the starship Millennium Falcon, carrying the droids and the Death Star plans, may have escaped to there instead of the suspected target of Alderaan, which lay on a similar heading. Once there, they discovered that while the Millennium Falcon had not jumped there, the primary computer facility on the planet had been seized by forces of the Rebel Alliance. Tulon watched proudly as Tantor, now a captain as well, destroyed the Rebel presence on Ruul.

This was the last mission in which Tulon supervised Tantor. Tulon, who had long considered himself a man of principle, had lost the confidence of Grand General Brashin. In Brashin's opinion, Tulon's conscience, and consequent instillment of more traditional military values in Tantor, was dangerous and unbecoming in an Imperial officer. Tulon was removed as Tantor's training officer and reassigned.

For half of the following three years, Tulon was assigned to the Trasse Proving Grounds, an Imperial facility that manufactured All Terrain Armored Transports. There, the walkers were tested on Rebel prisoners and armored units. Such an assignment only deepened Tulon's discontent with his government. He had been raised by his family to be a man of honor, and as such, he could not make his values fit with those of an Empire that encouraged brutality and injustice. Tulon resolved that he could no longer serve the Galactic Empire.

In 3 ABY, Tulon, by now a colonel, was assigned to command a detachment participating in the assault on a Rebel base on Abridon. Intending to defect on this mission, Tulon learned that his commander would be his old student, Brenn Tantor, now a very high-ranking Imperial general. Shortly after the mission began, Tulon's personal AT-AT, the Annihilator 1, fired on the rest of his detachment and made a beeline for the Rebel base. Tantor, believing that his mentor was dead or the hostage of renegade elements, pursued the walker and brought it down. He was utterly shocked to find that Tulon had in fact been the one defecting. Tulon attempted to explain to Tantor that the Empire was corrupt and evil, but Tantor, feeling betrayed, and with Brashin monitoring, was unable or unwilling to aid Tulon.

Tulon was sentenced to imprisonment in Tarkin Detention Facility on Ruul. However, he never made it there. Unbeknownst to him, Tantor himself, tortured by his own Imperial demons, had refused an order to massacre civilians shortly after Tulon was captured. Tantor arranged his own defection with Rebel General Tyr Taskeen. Tantor's first mission after his defection was the rescue of Tulon.

Tantor led several troopers on a daring commando mission, destroying the Imperial convoy escorting Tulon across Ruul's surface and spiriting Tulon away in a Hover Transport. Tulon learned that Tantor intended to capture an AT-AT walker to prove his loyalty and reliability to Taskeen and needed Tulon's experience with the Trasse Proving Grounds. Tulon realized that they would require a security code to access Trasse undetected and convinced Tantor to raid the Imperial computer facility at Sounder Flats in order to gain the codes. Tulon successfully extracted the codes, despite an Imperial counterattack.

In preparation for the Trasse operation, Tulon trained a unit of elite soldiers, known as the Infiltrators, to hijack Imperial walkers. They were successfully deployed on Trasse and captured an AT-AT, but matters were complicated when Inquisitor appeared in the system, with Grand General Brashin aboard. Tantor's forces crushed Imperial ground opposition in order to rush Tulon to a planetary ion cannon, from which he disabled the Star Destroyer. While accessing the ion cannon's computer banks, Tulon also found some interesting data, suggesting that the second Death Star was nearly operational.

Later, at the Liberation of Coruscant, Tulon was present when Taskeen briefed Tantor for the invasion of Coruscant, throne-world of the Empire. Tulon reported Rogue Squadron's successful sabotage of the shields.

Beri Tulon was raised in a military family, and was thus brought up with traditional martial values. These would have served him well had the Republic continued, but the imposition of Palpatine's Empire brought a new system into play.

Strictly traditionalist and raised with a strong sense of morality, Tulon was not cut out for the New Order. Even so, Tulon was little different from thousands of other Republican-minded officers. However, his placement under a fanatic supporter of the new ideology in the form of Grand General Brashin brought that conflict to the front.

Tulon's reassignment affected his career little, as seen by his promotions, but his new duties appeared to have a much greater impact on his conscience. The brutality that he witnessed and was forced to participate did not inure him to it but instead drove him further from the Empire. Though he valued loyalty, he valued his other principles more and cast his lot in with the Alliance.

The character of Beri Tulon was created for Star Wars: Force Commander, in which he was voiced by Peter Firth.

• Star Wars: Force Commander: Prima's Official Strategy Guide