Hestus

A male member of the Sith species, Hestus served the Sith Empire as a translator during the era of the Great Hyperspace War. By that time, Hestus had received an acid scar across his face, disfiguring him and forcing him to cover his wound with a shining mask, and he had enough cybernetic implants to be considered a cyborg. In 5000 BBY, in the midst of said conflict, Hestus was aboard the Sith dreadnaught Omen when it was knocked off course as it jumped to hyperspace due to a Jedi attack. The Omen crashed in a mountain range in the remote, uncharted world of Kesh. Hestus, along with his cousin Ravilan Wroth and a sizable group of Omen crewmembers, survived the crash, but with their ship destroyed, the survivors had no way to reach civilization. Their salvation soon came in the form of a native Keshiri woman, Adari Vaal. Fleeing from trouble with the Keshiri establishment, Vaal stumbled across the makeshift Sith settlement in the mountains, and was taken in by the castaways.

With the language barrier a significant problem, Hestus was enlisted to aid with communications between the Omens captain, Yaru Korsin, and the frightened Vaal. Hestus, a talented translator, stunned Vaal with his incredible ability to quickly pick up and repeat the Keshiri language. Hestus helped to speed up the exchange of information between Korsin and Vaal, as the two spoke about the arrival of the Sith on Kesh and Keshiri society. After the discussion was over, Korsin sent Vaal to lead Keshiri authorities to the Sith in the mountains, hoping to facilitate their escape from their ramshackle settlement. Although Hestus and Wroth were both worried about that arrangement, neither Sith did anything to prevent Vaal's departure. Vaal did her part, and the Sith were able to make their way back to civilization, where they posed as Keshiri gods and took their place as rulers of Kesh. Hestus and the other so-called "gods" were quartered in the homes of the traditional Keshiri ruling council, the Neshtovar, and the Sith translator quickly went to work indexing the Keshiri language.

By 4985 BBY, the Sith had mostly given up hope of finding a way off Kesh, and had settled in as their own tribe. Undaunted, however, Hestus continued to work with other linguists from the Omen to search through Keshiri oral histories for anything about anyone who had ever happened by the planet, or would eventually return again and could provide the Sith escape. Despite his efforts, Hestus found little. That year, Hestus's cousin Ravilan Wroth engineered a plan to falsify a deadly virus, killing thousands of Keshiri in an attempt to get the Sith leaders to focus on escaping Kesh. However, his plan was discovered, prompting Korsin and the other Human Sith to purge Kesh of the surviving members of the Sith species on the planet, including Hestus. Hestus was personally executed by Yaru Korsin's wife Seelah, and his body was put on display publicly in a plaza in the city of Tahv. Yaru Korsin fully intended to remove Hestus's cybernetic implants, hoping to find some use for them.

A cyborg, Hestus had a number of cybernetic implants, along with a shining mask that he wore over a large acid scar on his face. Although his appearance could frighten those who were unfamiliar with him, such reactions did not faze Hestus at all. Hestus had a special ability to pick up foreign languages quickly, and repeat them exactly. Hestus was distrustful of Adari Vaal, and was worried that she might betray the Sith if Yaru Korsin let her go. A tireless worker, Hestus toiled for years trying to find something in the Keshiri oral histories that could facilitate an escape from Kesh, although his efforts were unsuccessful. As a member of the Sith species, Hestus had red skin, specifically resembling the color of rust.

Hestus made his first appearance in John Jackson Miller's 2009 eBook Lost Tribe of the Sith: Skyborn.