Geist

Geist, a Human male, was the general in command of the Imperial Army of Emperor Roan Fel's Fel Empire during the Sith–Imperial War. His position earned him the title of High Moff and a seat on the Moff Council, a six-person group composed of three civilian and three military leaders. Geist's spot on the council in turn gave him control over a single sector as its governor.

The Imperials' war against the Galactic Alliance began in the year 127 ABY, largely due to the urgings of the Moff Council. Although Fel opposed the war, the council did not—Geist in particular felt the need for the Moffs to reassert their authority against Fel. However, the Empire soon found itself struggling against the abilities of the Alliance's allies in the New Jedi Order. One year into the war, Moff Nyna Calixte came to the rest of the council with an offer from the secretive One Sith of an alliance. That idea too was opposed by Fel, but the Moffs—each with his or her own agenda—were more receptive. The Sith thus joined the war effort on the Imperial side, and the Empire won victory after victory over the next two years. In 130 ABY, the Empire trapped and defeated the Galactic Alliance Defense Fleet at the planet Caamas, which prompted an Alliance surrender and the end of the war.

As the Imperials took control of the galactic capital world of Coruscant, the Sith laid siege to the Jedi on Ossus, killing many of them and scattering the rest of the broken order throughout the galaxy. On Coruscant, the Moff Council appeared before Fel in his new Imperial Palace, and Grand Admiral Morlish Veed gave a report on the Jedi massacre. The meeting was interrupted by the arrival of Darth Krayt, the Dark Lord who led the One Sith, and three of his fellow Sith Lords. Krayt demanded Fel's life in exchange for the Sith's assistance in the war, and the Dark Lord cut through Fel's Imperial Knight bodyguards before slaying the Emperor himself. As Veed tried to prevent his fellow Moffs from interfering, Geist angered him by accusing him of having had advanced knowledge of the attack. Declaring himself the new Galactic Emperor, Krayt commanded the Moffs to swear allegiance to him, which all six did before being dismissed. However, Krayt had in fact struck down a double of Fel, allowing the real Fel to escape Coruscant and flee into exile.

Darth Krayt's Galactic Empire ruled much of the galaxy for the next seven years, while Fel established an Empire-in-exile and waged the Second Imperial Civil War against Krayt's forces. In 137 ABY, the Predator-class fighters of Krayt's Empire's Skull Squadron chased a starship through the skies of Coruscant that matched a description of the Mynock, the personal craft of Cade Skywalker. Skywalker was a former Jedi whose powerful healing abilities Krayt sought, and in the midst of the stir caused by his ship's appearance, Geist and the rest of the Moff Council convened in their Coruscant meeting chambers. The Sith Lady Darth Maladi joined them via hologram and told them not to waste any resources on hunting for Skywalker, refusing to give them any more details before signing off. Geist was the first of several Moffs to vocally lament the council's status as little more than puppets of the Sith.

After Moff Konrad Rus, the only council member present via hologram, signed off and departed the meeting, Grand Admiral Veed told the rest of the council that they needed to learn more about Skywalker, but Geist dismissed the idea as futile due to the Moffs' lack of real power. Veed broke up an ensuing argument between the Moffs and demanded that Skywalker be found, which brought the meeting to a close. Skywalker had in fact been captured by the Sith, and he spent weeks as their prisoner before being rescued by a group of his friends.

Later in the year, Krayt was betrayed and nearly killed by the Sith Lord Darth Wyyrlok during a battle on the planet Had Abbadon. Believing that his Master was indeed dead, Wyyrlok assumed control of the Empire and made Grand Admiral Veed his regent, all the while maintaining the illusion that Krayt was merely resting in stasis. When Veed received intelligence that Roan Fel was planning to negotiate an alliance with representatives of the recovering Jedi Order on the planet Agamar, he called a meeting of the Moff Council. Geist and the others convened in their chambers, where Veed outlined his plan: Moff Rulf Yage of the Imperial Navy would lead an assault on Agamar and attempt to kill or capture Fel. Geist did not participate in what Veed dubbed Operation: Thunderstroke, and was instead sent to the planet Dac.

Krayt had earlier instigated the genocide of Dac's native Mon Calamari, and, around the same time as Operation: Thunderstroke, Wyyrlok ordered the Sith scientist Vul Isen to accelerate the process by infecting the water world's oceans with viral spores. Dubbed the Final Protocol, the poisoning would kill every living thing on the planet within a week. Wyyrlok anticipated an evacuation effort on the part of the Galactic Alliance Remnant, a military organization that had recently allied with Fel, and he placed Geist in command of an operation to confront the Galactic Alliance Core Fleet in the space above Dac. Along with the Sith Lord Darth Stryfe, who was overseeing the mission, Geist boarded Admiral Krion Grail's Relentless, a Pellaeon-class Star Destroyer that served as the flagship of the Outer Rim Third Fleet. Ten hours into the Remnant's evacuation of the planet, Geist's strike force arrived at Dac.

On the Relentlesss bridge, Geist asserted that the Third Fleet's primary target should be Remnant leader Admiral Gar Stazi and his flagship, the Alliance, but Stryfe was insistent that Darth Krayt's main goal was the extinction of the Mon Calamari. Stazi sent five ships vectoring toward the Relentless, which Grail identified as drone vessels carrying bombs, and Geist ordered them destroyed. However, the ships contained ion bombs, which detonated and took down all of the Third Fleets' ships' sensors. Grail ordered that available power be transferred to the Relentlesss shields just before the Remnant's capital ships began a run through the Third Fleet's lines with guns blazing. Five Imperial ships were destroyed or rendered derelict, but the Remnant fell back to protect their emergency evac fleet from retaliation.

When the Relentlesss sensors came back online, Stryfe demanded that they target the civilian evacuation vessels, and Geist's insistence that Stazi's effective tactics rendered him the primary target prompted Stryfe to lift him into the air by the neck. Stryfe argued that Stazi would use his own capital ships to shield the civilians, which the Admiral did after the Third Fleet destroyed several of the civilian ships. The Remnant fleet took heavy damage, but a fleet of the Empire-in-exile arrived from hyperspace and began to fire on the Sith–Imperial ships. Trapped between two foes, Geist was adamant that they retreat, and managed to convince a fanatical Stryfe that attempting to exterminate the Mon Calamari at the cost of their own lives would serve only to bring joy to their enemies. The Third Fleet thus jumped to lightspeed, and the evacuation of Dac continued unabated. Meanwhile, Roan Fel escaped from Agamar with his life.

In 138 ABY, a fully-recovered Darth Krayt returned to Coruscant to slay Wyyrlok, reclaim his throne, and launch a renewed military push against the Empire's enemies. Veed was dismissed from his position as regent, and the Moff Councils' numbers were thinned when Konrad Rus went missing and when Nyna Calixte fled Coruscant after Veed discovered that she was a spy for Roan Fel. When Antares Draco, a captured Imperial Knight loyal to Fel, was tortured into revealing that the Jedi had a Hidden Temple on the planet Taivas, Krayt gathered Moffs Geist, Veed, and Fehlaaur'aitel'loro into his war room in the Temple of the Sith. He outlined his attack plan: Moff Yage would lead a naval assault on Taivas while Geist commanded troops on the ground, and Veed would be in charge of their combined forces.

The Moffs departed the war room to prepare, unaware that they were merely bait in the Dark Lord's secret plan to destroy the Alliance that had been formed between the Jedi, Empire-in-exile, and Galactic Alliance Remnant. The Imperial Navy soon afterward arrived at Taivas and began the Attack on the Hidden Temple with an orbital bombardment. When high cliffs and powerful magnetic fields prevented them from locking onto their target, Geist and his ground troops were sent in. Commanding stormtroopers, Imperial walkers, TIE Predators, Sith-Imperial starfighters, and a number of Sith warriors, Geist led his forces from the front lines and marched on foot with them toward their target: the Hidden Temple, which consisted of several starships turned upright in a pool of water. The Imperials fired on their targets, with a minimal defense coming only from the Mynock and a group of Jedi and Imperial Knights.

A number of Sith fell to the defenders' lightsabers, as did several stormtroopers and at least one walker, but the invasion force marched on largely unopposed. Meanwhile, in orbit, the Jedi sprang a trap when fleets of the Empire-in-exile and Galactic Alliance Remnant emerged from hyperspace and surrounded the Sith–Imperials. Krayt, however, had anticipated their arrival, and he sprang his own trap: the Dragon ships and Annihilator-class starfighters of his secret Sith trooper army arrived at Taivas and were unleashed upon the gathered Alliance forces. Unflinchingly loyal to their Dark Lord, the Sith troopers blasted through friendly and enemy forces alike, and a group of them approached Taivas's surface. When they fired on the Imperial Army forces that stood in their way, Geist frantically commed Veed, who screamed at him to fall back. It was too late, however; an explosion caused by the Annihilators' guns killed Geist and most of his forces as the Sith troopers raced toward a confrontation with the Imperial Knights and Jedi. Outmatched by the new arrivals, the Alliance forces were only able to escape from the battle when a beam of light created by the death of Jedi Master T'ra Saa destroyed a number of Sith–Imperial ships and created an escape corridor.

Geist was the commanding general of the Imperial Army in the Fel Empire and later in Darth Krayt's Galactic Empire. His preferred tactics were threats and intimidation, and he had little regard for Konrad Rus's Imperial Mission and its "Victory Without War" mantra. Geist fought alongside his troops on the battlefield at Taivas, leading them on foot from the front lines. He had been eager for a chance to confront the Jedi for some time.

As a member of the Moff Council in Krayt's Empire, Geist had a personal agenda. Like the rest of the council, he did not entirely trust any of his fellows, believing Rus to be a spy for Roan Fel and accusing Morlish Veed of having helped plan Krayt's usurping of Fel's throne. Despite being divided on a number of issues, the council limited their squabbling due to a fear of the power of the Sith. Geist despised the fact that the Moffs had little power in a Sith-controlled Empire, feeling as if they were a pack of dogs that the Sith could send to their kennels. He initially agreed to wage war on the Galactic Alliance and to form a partnership with the Sith after growing tired of Roan Fel playing the Moffs against one another, but he eventually came to realize that Fel's Empire had given him more power than Krayt's did. Geist idealized the days of the Imperial Remnant, which he saw as having granted its Moffs considerable authority.

Although he was the leader of the Imperial Army, Geist was selected to command a naval mission to Dac. He dismissed Darth Stryfe's order to target the Mon Calamari, believing them to be insignificant "fish-heads," and openly argued with Stryfe on the Relentlesss bridge. Geist thought that Gar Stazi and the Galactic Alliance Remnant were a significant threat to the Empire, but he chose to flee the battlefield when the odds pointed to his fleet's destruction. He was able to convince Darth Stryfe, who was dogmatically following his Master's wishes, to agree to the retreat. Geist had black hair, dark skin, and golden eyes.

Geist was created by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema as one of the villains in the Star Wars: Legacy comic series, with his first appearance coming in Legacys inaugural issue, released in June 2006. He made sporadic appearances throughout the rest of the series before being killed in the fourth issue of its followup miniseries, Star Wars: Legacy—War, released in March 2011.

• "The Art of War" — Star Wars Insider 89
• Star Wars: Legacy (2006) 0½
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, Vol. II
• Legacy Era Campaign Guide