Darth Cognus

The Huntress, as she was called, was a Force-sensitive female Iktotchi who, like all members of her species, possessed a natural talent with precognition and telepathy. Her abilities far exceeded those of her kinsmen, and with time she learned to focus and control her visions with great precision. Occasionally, she was able to perceive possible futures and exert minimal influence over them. The dark side also flowed strongly through the Huntress, and with it she was able to hamper the powers and connections of Force-users within close proximity to her. She made use of her talents in a career as an assassin in the years that followed the end of the New Sith Wars. For five years she indulged herself, during which time she cultivated a flawless track record and earned a reputation for exemplary mission success.

In 980 BBY, after several discreet inquiries and transfers of large amounts of credits, the Huntress was contacted by Lucia, a Human woman who served as a bodyguard for Princess Serra of the planet Doan. They met at Paradise station, a spaceport located on a small hyperspace route that branched off of the Corellian Trade Spine, to discuss the assassination of the leader of a militant mining organization that had been implicated in the recent death of Serra's husband, Crown Prince Gerran. The Huntress accepted the contract and made her way to Doan, where she located her quarry in an underground cavern, only to realize that there was a Jedi with them; he had been dispatched to mediate the tensions between the mining caste and the Doan Royal House. Catching them unawares, the Huntress fired her twin blasters and first killed Gelba, the leader of the miners, before felling two more in rapid succession. As pandemonium erupted, the Huntress began projecting her Force-dampening aura to suppress the Jedi's powers, a move which instantly disoriented and temporarily removed him from the skirmish. The Huntress then eliminated the remaining miners, which led the debilitated Jedi, a Cerean Knight named Medd Tandar, into a direct confrontation with her. She answered his challenge with another round of blaster shots, before the Jedi used the Force to wrench the blasters from her grasp, despite her Force-dampening aura. Undaunted, the Huntress listened as Tandar promised her a fair trial if she simply surrendered to him; however, the Force had shown her that a trial was not to be. After advising her opponent of that fact, she made haste her exit as she had set her confiscated blasters to overload—they did so immediately after her departure, exploding and killing Medd Tandar.

Despite the successful completion of her task, the Huntress believed that she had earned Princess Serra's ire because of the resultant collateral damage in the form of Tandar. However, a journey with Lucia to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant revealed to Serra that her father Caleb had been killed on the planet Ambria, presumably by Darth Bane, the same Dark Lord of the Sith who had visited and tormented Serra and her father twenty years prior. Learning of the Huntress' reputation from Lucia, Serra charged her bodyguard with contacting the Iktotchi woman once more, this time on the Princess' behalf. Again the Huntress went to meet Lucia on Paradise station, where she waited in the farthest corner of the Stolen Fortune casino for the arrival of her most recent employer. Lucia arrived shortly afterward, and the Huntress entertained Lucia as she made clear her intention to enlist the Huntress' services yet again. The Iktotchi guessed that she had been contacted to deal with more rebels, but Lucia revealed that Princess Serra had wanted to meet with her alone and in person on Ambria. While handing the Huntress a datapad with the planet's location, Lucia explained that if she accepted, the Princess offered to pay three times her standard rate. After a moment's communion with the Force, the Huntress accepted the offer.

The Huntress meditated for hours during the ride to Ambria, and through the Force she learned much about her destination. However, the clarity of her visions began to wane, and all she could glean about her imminent meeting with Serra was that it was not a trap. Her shuttle, the Stalker, touched down just outside of an abandoned camp, where she disembarked and met with an already present Serra. Once satisfied that the Huntress was able to meet her needs, Serra explained her desire for the location and capture of Darth Bane, a Sith Lord who had come to Ambria many years before. Through the Force, the Huntress saw Serra's childhood and adolescent years with her father Caleb, as well as the faces of hundreds of other individuals who had come and gone from Ambria over the course of the planet's history. The visage of Darth Bane also appeared to the Huntress, and of the confrontation between him and the Princess' father; and of Bane's return at a later date, this time accompanied by a young, blond-haired woman. Serra was desperate to know the details of their second meeting, and the Huntress continued her Force probe, which then showed her the aftermath of Caleb's violent death. She also saw another man in Caleb's former hut, driven mad by an unknown power. She knew that Bane and the young woman were still there, albeit obscured by some magical concealing force. She was thrown out of her trance and violently repelled upon her attempt to breach the haze, which caused her to fall to the ground and cry out in pain. The Huntress realized that Sith sorcery had prevented her from circumventing the veil, and that its power remained potent regardless of the decade that had passed since the spell had been cast. She recovered and told the anxious Princess all that she had seen, confirming that the Sith Lord had indeed returned to Ambria as Caleb had predicted.

While confident that she had seen enough to be able to locate Bane, the Huntress expressed misgivings about her ability to actually kill a Dark Lord of the Sith. Serra specified her desire for Bane to be taken alive, which led the Huntress to remind Serra of her status as an assassin, not a bounty hunter. The Princess offered to pay the Huntress ten times her usual fee and provide a supporting team of mercenaries. Still hesitant, the Huntress inquired as to how she was supposed to keep Bane in custody once he had been captured. She was led by Serra into the shack that she and her father had once lived in, where the Princess entered a makeshift cellar and retrieved a vial of senflax; a neurotoxin extracted from a rare plant found only on the planet Cadannia. Although Caleb had used it as a sedative, Serra explained to the Huntress that senflax's potency would allow her to maintain Bane's imprisonment. Despite her inability to perceive the mission's outcome, the Huntress was intrigued by the possibility of facing an actual Dark Lord in combat, something she felt that she had been preparing for her entire life. She advised the Princess that she would require a minimum of ten well-trained commandos to complete the mission. When Serra offered twenty such individuals, all with prior military experience, the Huntress accepted.

In the days following her meeting with Princess Serra, the Huntress' sleep was disturbed by recurring dreams of Darth Bane. The Force showed her visions of his day-to-day activities, even the daily sunrise of the world on which he resided. Cross-referencing the details of her visions with an all-inclusive database of systems, planets, and other celestial bodies, the Huntress was able to determine that her quarry could be found on the world of Ciutric IV. Armed with Serra's mercenary allotment of eight women and twelve men, led by Captain Jedder of the Doan Royal Guard, the Huntress infiltrated Darth Bane's mansion while he was away. While her teammates waited outside, she explored the entire estate and committed the details to memory. She deactivated all of the mansion's security measures, including those that protected a small building toward the rear of the premises. Mistaking it for some sort of armory, the Huntress entered and found it to be a library replete with all sorts of educational materials, from datapads to scrolls scribed on weathered parchment. She also discovered the Dark Lord's personal holocron, though she was unsure as to what exactly it was. She was compelled to it anyway, and confiscated it before continuing her perusal of the estate. Once she was satisfied that the grounds were secured, the mercenaries entered to begin their preparations.

The Huntress knew that her prey would sense something amiss upon his return and planned to attempt to subdue him in the mansion's vestibule. On her command, sonic detonators were installed on either side of the entrance, while a pair mercenaries took up positions on the balcony with their stun rifles trained on the foyer. She dismissed the idea of using both force pikes and carbonite guns to take him down, as both required close-quarters combat to be wielded effectively. Jedder questioned the efficiency of the tangle guns within their arsenal, but the Huntress made it clear that the projectiles they discharged were only supposed to slow Bane down long enough for her to move in and administer the senflax poison. Once her part had been completed, the mercenaries were supposed to then overwhelm him with their attacks until which time the senflax began to take effect. In the interim, Captain Jedder, who had heard of the Iktotchi's ability to perceive the future, asked her if they would all survive the encounter with the Dark Lord. While she replied that perhaps several of them would, she refrained from making Jedder aware that she had seen his mangled corpse lying on the mansion's marble floor.

Darth Bane returned shortly afterward and immediately sensed the presence of intruders, just as the Huntress had predicted. She held position in the far end of the upstairs hallway, where she began projecting her Force-dampening aura just as the sonic detonators activated. The mercenaries then descended upon Bane, and the Huntress' Force suppression, while unable to stop the Sith completely, hindered him enough to fall victim to one of the many stun bolts fired in his direction. He recovered instantly and killed three mercenaries with Force lightning before evading the adhesive spray of the tangle guns and propelling himself onto the balcony. Now face to face with Darth Bane, the Huntress feinted with her twin senflax-covered knives, distracting the Dark Lord from a series of flash grenade detonations at his feet that momentarily blinded him. Still emanating her Force suppression, the Huntress kicked him over the balcony and pursued, where she was able to carve a deep furrow into his arm with her senflax-coated blades just prior to his immediate recovery. The Huntress then retreated to the balcony, but her opponent made short work of several more mercenaries and returned to face her. After a brief verbal exchange the Huntress attacked him, only to be thrown from the balcony by a strong Force push. Bane followed, but it was then that the senflax took effect; he collapsed into unconsciousness upon landing, and the Huntress immediately called for a cease-fire. At least six of the mercenaries were dead, Jedder included, and the Huntress ordered the survivors to prepare for departure, as she had seen the imminent arrival of the Dark Lord's blond companion through the Force. After ensuring the removal of anything that could implicate Princess Serra, the Huntress collected her prisoner and his personal belongings before departing both the mansion and Ciutric IV with the surviving mercenaries.

Upon their arrival on Doan, the Huntress transferred custody of Darth Bane to Serra, who had him interned in the planet's infamous and antiquated Stone Prison. The Iktotchi chose to remain with the captive, and while the surviving mercenaries and Lucia waited for instructions from Serra, the Huntress meditated quietly in a corner of the room adjacent to Bane's cell. The Princess arrived shortly afterward, and the Huntress insisted on entering the cell with her and Lucia. Bane was then subjected to torture and interrogation at Serra's hand, who repeatedly demanded the acknowledgment of his culpability in her father's death. When he denied responsibility, the Huntress reminded Serra of the blond woman who had also been in her visions and that it was very possible that she had been the instrument of Caleb's demise. The Huntress reveled in Bane's agony as the torment continued, before Serra finally became so frustrated by his indignance that she left to regain her composure.

Curious as to what Serra would do next, the Huntress followed the oblivious Princess, who only noticed the stalker after she herself had halted her own advance. The Huntress had become preoccupied with Serra's reaction to Darth Bane's denials and warned that the Princess had missed her opportunity for revenge. She refused Serra's subsequent dismissal, expressing her interest in what would happen once Bane broke free. Serra vowed that the Sith would never be allowed to leave, but the Huntress revealed that Lucia had betrayed her by facilitating his escape. Serra was unable to understand why the assassin had refrained from telling her sooner, and the Huntress cited that her contract stipulated nothing more than the capture of the Sith Lord. She delighted herself in the Princess' despair and smiled as the woman fled to determine the validity of the Iktotchi's claim. Lucia appeared moments later, and the Huntress disclosed that she had alerted Serra to Lucia's treachery. As the bodyguard ran off in search of her mistress, the Huntress envisioned the destruction of the Stone Prison and made haste for the hangar bay, only to be stricken with a hesitation to leave even as the warning alarms began to sound. She felt that her life had been virtually meaningless up until that point, and something in the Force—though she was unsure as to what it was—told her that the truth of her destiny was about to be brought into sharp relief.

As she waited around the hangar, the Huntress noticed a silver-haired man who appeared to be preparing to steal her ship. She startled him with a warning to leave the vessel alone and was rewarded with his ignited lightsaber swinging in her direction. She evaded the maneuver easily and faced the man who, instead of attacking again, claimed to be Jedi Knight Medd Tandar. The Huntress was not fooled, however, and exposed his falsehood while also mocking him. The man attempted to blast her with a wave of Force energy but was instantly crippled by her Force-stifling aura. She struck at him with twin vibroblades but he eluded her, and the Huntress, a woman thrilled by the chance of an invigorating hunt, gave chase. Try as she might, the Huntress was unable to catch her opponent as he hid between the ships. On one occasion she just barely dodged his thrown lightsaber, which hewed off a portion of one of her horns. She continued to stalk him, but the pitch in the alarm changed and the Huntress knew that she was running out of time. She eventually found him, but each had grown weary of the protracted chase, and conceded that they would both die if the stalemate prolonged any further. Grudgingly, the Huntress allowed the man to escape in one of the shuttles, and at the same moment the formerly captive Darth Bane appeared. Knowing that he still considered her an enemy based on their last confrontation, the Huntress knelt and presented both his lightsaber and holocron to him in a gesture of amnesty. The wary Sith Lord retrieved his belongings and demanded to know the Iktotchi's intentions. Since she first sensed him on Ambria, the Huntress had seen him repeatedly in her visions, and while she believed that their fates were convoluted, she was certain it was not because she was destined to die at his hand. She then pledged to serve him absolutely if he taught her the ways of the Sith and also promised to deliver Princess Serra to him. He accepted, and the pair fled the Stone Prison in the Stalker.

Knowing that Princess Serra would run to Ambria, the Huntress plotted the Stalkers course for the Inner Rim. While en route, she discussed the nature of her Force visions with Darth Bane and how they had led her to his abode on Ciutric IV. When questioned about the accuracy of her visions, the Huntress professed that her instincts were rarely mistaken and that she anticipated Serra's ultimate return to the desert world. She was correct in her assumption; when the Stalker landed near Caleb's former camp, an unperturbed Serra emerged from the hut to confront the Dark Lord. In the midst of their conversation, Serra attempted to dissuade the Huntress from her affirmation of the dark side, but was utterly denied. When the Iktotchi determined that the Princess would be of no use to the Sith, she was granted permission by Darth Bane to end Serra's life, whose corpse she then buried nearby.

That night, the Huntress and the Dark Lord discussed the sacrifices she would have to make in order to fully become one with the Sith. She had neither family nor friends to abandon, and worldly possessions were of no consequence to her; all she had was the desire for an even greater existence than what she had had thus far. She was therefore inspired by Darth Bane to rename herself as a symbol of her Sith rebirth. The name she chose was "Cognus," a testament to her propensity for divination. Pleased by her decision, the Dark Lord christened her with the "Darth" appellation, but advised that her training could not officially begin until the matter of his current Sith apprentice was resolved. He inquired as to whether or not Cognus' visions had revealed the outcome of his battle with the blond woman, but the Iktotchi asserted that what she had seen with respect to their confrontation had been indeterminate; sometimes she saw him as the victor, in others, the blond woman prevailed. Bane surmised that Cognus' visions were unclear because his apprentice had since become his equal. Cognus was left to ponder his words while he went to summon his student for one final showdown. She suspected that the blond woman would arrive with substantial reinforcements with which to ensure her victory, but Bane disagreed and gave her a preliminary description of the tenets of his Rule of Two principle. Understanding dawned on her, and she vowed to refrain from interfering when the blond woman arrived.

Within moments Bane's apprentice appeared, and disembarked from her shuttle with suspicion at the sight of Darth Cognus, whose abstinence from the forthcoming battle Bane guaranteed. Preferring neither over the other, Cognus voiced her desire to learn at the feet of a true Sith Master and pledged to serve the newcomer should she prove the stronger of the two. Battle quickly ensued as Cognus watched, the weapons of the opponents moving faster than her eyes were able to follow. When it seemed to her that Zannah had won, a sudden blinding red illumination caused her to turn away. Sensing an awesome discharge of energy, Cognus knew that Darth Bane's spirit had been sundered from his body somehow and had attempted to inhabit the blond woman. When she looked back she saw that Darth Bane had been reduced to a pile of ashes, and the blond woman, disoriented though she was, remained alive. As the woman recovered, Cognus was unsure if Bane had succeeded and so called his name; she was instead answered by Darth Zannah, Dark Lord of the Sith, who told the Iktotchi that Bane was no more, and that she was now the Master. Cognus identified herself and recounted how Bane had urged her to adopt a new name to intimate her Sith existence, but had yet to completely describe his guiding Rule of Two. Darth Zannah promised to complete Cognus' training and ordered her to claim Bane's lightsaber until she constructed her own. Her new Master then explained that as the chosen heir to the legacy of the Sith, Cognus would one day face Zannah in a final, decisive confrontation which only one of them would survive.

At some point later in Cognus' life, she took on an apprentice of her own, the three-eyed mutant Human Darth Millennial. Cognus, herself a staunch adherent to Bane's doctrines, was often at odds with her apprentice regarding the necessity of Darth Bane's Rule of Two. Millennial considered the Rule of Two far too restrictive, and the Iktotchi was eventually forced to excommunicate him for his sacrilege. Millennial just barely escaped Cognus' choler and fled to the world of Dromund Kaas, where he established the Dark Force religion. Darth Cognus meanwhile stayed on the path set forth by Bane and took on a new apprentice in accordance with the Order of Sith Lords.

The Huntress was a red-skinned Iktotchi female with penetrating yellow eyes, sharp pointed teeth, and plump fingers that were a common trait among her people. She clad herself in black robes which, when the hood was thrown back, exposed cranial horns that tapered just above her shoulders. Her chin was etched with four black tattoos in the shape of pointed lines that extended downward from her bottom lip. The Huntress thrived on the misery of others and relished being able to personally witness their suffering. She took great pleasure in watching Bane's torture at the hands of Serra, as well as from Serra's reaction when the Huntress told her of Lucia's betrayal. While in the Stolen Fortune casino, she expressed great interest in the ensanguined arena deathmatch between a terbeast and an Endorian boar-wolf, even when Lucia had to turn away from the gory menagerie. Lucia considered the Huntress graceful and elegant and concluded that she would have been otherwise beautiful but for her sadistic tendencies. The Huntress was indifferent to the distinctions of "good" and "evil," but was still intrigued by what caused individuals to label others with such terms.

The designation of bounty hunter affronted the Huntress who, as an accomplished assassin, took great pride in the unblemished track record she nurtured over the course of her five-year career. However, when faced with the dilemma of killing Set Harth at her own peril or foregoing the pursuit in favor of survival, her bloodlust was trumped by common sense. As a killer for hire, she was apathetic to those whom she hunted and refrained from allowing her personal feelings to impose upon her business ethic. Even though she accepted credits as contractual compensation, the Huntress was uninterested in material possessions and affluence. Rather, she yearned for a purpose to what she felt was an otherwise meaningless life.

The Huntress recognized the Sith and respected the power they wielded. Despite her enthusiasm at the opportunity, the Huntress did not delude herself into believing that she could fight and kill a Sith Lord by herself. Still, she accepted Serra's offer to find Darth Bane because the Huntress believed that their destinies were somehow intertwined. She knew that through the Sith lay the path to the power she craved and readily offered herself to both Bane and Zannah in anticipation of one day being able to command the might of the dark side. Darth Bane took note of her intelligence and wisdom on several occasions and was pleased with her choice of the Sith name "Cognus" which, to him, signified her awareness of the superiority of her mental powers over her fighting prowess. Darth Cognus remained deeply rooted in Darth Bane's philosophies upon her ascension to Sith Master and adhered to the training of a single apprentice as defined by the Rule of Two. Her first apprentice, Darth Millennial, delved in axioms that ran contrary to those of the Order of Sith Lords, and Darth Cognus repeatedly voiced her disapproval before she was finally forced to banish him.

While the Huntress possessed the natural telepathic and precognitive abilities of her kin, hers far exceeded the fleeting images experienced by other Iktotchi. Early in her life she learned to piece together and command the direction of her visions, which often appeared to her in the form of dreams or during her meditations. With sufficient concentration the Huntress could use the Force to see into a person or place's past, and with it was also able to perceive possible futures. She was able to decipher the meanings of her visions on most occasions, but sometimes the futures she saw were so random that she was unable to make sense of them. Her talents nonetheless served her well in her assassin's profession; because of her heightened extrasensory perceptions, she always found whomever it was she was hired to kill. When Darth Bane realized the Huntress' sibyllic capacity, he speculated that with proper Sith training, she would be able to view all possible futures, prepare for unexpected changes, and even bring to pass ones that suited her.

The Huntress also possessed an innate talent with disrupting and suppressing the use of the Force in others. Those with little or no dark side affinity felt sickened by the unexpected smothering feeling of the Huntress' power and suffered from a significantly-diminished ability to manipulate the Force. Her power even caught Darth Bane unawares, but the Dark Lord was able to overcome the Huntress' Force-hampering once he determined that she was its source.

The Huntress had a wide knowledge of weapons, including sonic detonators, force pikes, tangle guns, and stun and carbonite rifles. Along with her two blaster pistols, the Huntress utilized bladed weapons in combat, carrying on her person twin vibroblades that she wielded with great expertise. She also made use of two long, thin-bladed knives when attempting to dispense the senflax poison. She was intrigued by lightsabers but had no experience with them and thus gave up the idea of using Darth Bane's against the fully-adept Set Harth. The Iktotchi was skilled in infiltration and was also capable of slicing.

Darth Cognus was created by Abel G. Peña, and was first mentioned—albeit unnamed—as the Sith Master of Darth Millennial in the fifth part of The Dark Forces Saga, titled Two Peas in a Pod. Peña later named her in Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasties, an online supplement written for the eighty-eighth issue of Star Wars Insider. Darth Andeddu was originally considered as a candidate for the Master of Darth Millennial, but Peña had to abandon that idea because the conception of Millennial's Master being female had already been presented to Lucasfilm Ltd. for approval. He felt that the names of Cognus and Millennial properly described their interaction with one another and compared their relationship to that of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, with Cognus representing the latter.

Although Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasties failed to specify Cognus' gender, Peña himself considered the character to be female, a fact that was later canonized in Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force. Peña had specific ideas for the appearance of Darth Cognus and worked very closely with artist Chris Trevas with regard to the character's visual design. He felt that Darth Millennial considered Cognus something of a succubus and wanted her visual depiction to reflect that. Among the ideas Peña had were lips with a "fat Jolie quality," a "vampiresque" snarl, and Sith tattoos similar to those of the Miraluka Dark Jedi Jerec. Trevas went on to illustrate a female Darth Cognus for The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia based on Peña's ideas. Despite this, Darth Cognus' entry in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia erroneously identified her as male. Darth Cognus was later given full treatment in the third novel of the Darth Bane Trilogy, titled Dynasty of Evil, where several elements of her backstory were explored in greater detail. Lucasfilm official Leland Chee stated in his blog that Cognus' name is based on the word "cognizance," which means "awareness, knowledge, and perception."

• Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasties on Hyperspace
• Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force
• Star Wars Annual 2009
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
• The Essential Reader's Companion