Kibh Jeen

Kibh Jeen was a male Jedi Padawan who served in the Jedi Order during the last millennium of the Galactic Republic. He specialized as a Jedi Consular, a branch of the Order that focused on learning the mysteries of the Force, and in around 192 BBY, he began studying under the tutelage of the Jedi Master Qornah, a fellow Consular. Qornah instructed him well and by 188 BBY, Jeen was almost ready to complete his Jedi Trials and ascend to the rank of Jedi Knight.

In 188 BBY, a team of Jedi detected a strong dark side presence that surrounded the planet Almas, in the Cularin system, which originated from an ancient Sith fortress that been constructed on the world by the Sith Lord Darth Rivan during the New Sith Wars. To determine whether the Sith Temple posed a threat to the influx of colonists that were settling in the Cularin system at the time, the Jedi Council—the governing body of the Jedi Order—dispatched Qornah and Jeen to investigate and explore the citadel.

The pair traveled to Almas in a shuttle that was flown by Qornah, and they landed on the planet's surface and disembarked. Jeen immediately felt the fortress' dark aura, and the dark side of the Force whispered to him in his mind and and tried to tempt him into submitting to its will. Jeen silently strove to overcome the dark side's influence, while Qornah failed to notice his apprentice's internal struggle, and the two Jedi set off on foot across the surface of Almas, in the direction of the Sith fortress. However, Jeen was unable to ward off the whispered temptations and he embraced the dark side's lure. In a rage, he murdered Qornah, cutting his master down from behind. He then stepped over Qornah's corpse and entered Rivan's fortress.

Jeen accessed the fortress' facilities and studied the ways of the dark side, becoming a Dark Jedi. He also determined to subjugate the population of the Cularin system and to strike out against the Jedi Council. Several months after his arrival on Almas, he re-emerged from the temple and left the planet in Qornah's shuttle, to set out in search for potential minions whom he could enlist to help him to carry out his plans. Shortly after Jeen's departure, Qornah's body was discovered by the Jedi and the Jedi Council sent the Order's most skilled psychometrics to Almas, to use their powers to determine how Qornah had died and to find out what had became of Jeen. The psychometrics experienced a vision of Jeen's fall and Qornah's subsequent demise, and their findings shocked them.

Within the Cularin asteroid belt, Jeen encountered a band of pirates who preyed upon shipping in the system, and he dominated their minds with the Force, to compel them to serve him. He used the pirates to recruit other criminals to his cause and before long, he had formed them into a large army. After sending some of his forces to sabotage a power plant on Genarius, the Cularin system's third planet, he unleashed his army against the world's floating cities. The assault destroyed hundreds of homes and killed thousands of people, and began war that later became known as the "Dark Jedi Conflict."

In what was one of the bloodiest periods in Cularin's history, Jeen waged war on the system for several years. From their bases in the asteroid belt, Jeen's pirate forces launched strike after strike against the system's population, then disappeared after each attack to hide among the belt. His warships attacked all transports that arrived in the Cularin system and he inflicted suffering onto countless innocent beings. At some point, he learned that the Sith Order, which was believed by the Jedi to be extinct, was still in existence and had reformed itself under a guiding tenet known as the Rule of Two, whereby there were only two Sith at any one time. He also affiliated himself with the Dark Force religion, a dark side cult that was based on the planet Dromund Kaas.

News of Jeen's actions reached the Jedi Order on the planet Coruscant and in 181 BBY, a Jedi Consular and her Padawan were sent to the Cularin system to defeat Jeen and bring the Dark Jedi Conflict to a resolution. The two Jedi organized the system's inhabitants and trading concerns into an effective fighting force and lured Jeen's pirate army into a trap. In a fiercely-fought space battle that was to be the final engagement of the conflict, Jeen was overwhelmed and his pirates were defeated. The Jedi maneuvered Jeen into a vulnerable position and cut him down, and with his dying words, he was heard to mutter some supposed gibberish about how there were always two Sith, no more and no less.

Kibh Jeen's claims about the Sith were dismissed by the Jedi as the utterances of a madman and few gave them any credence. However, the Jedi eventually came to believe in the Rule of Two, at some point prior to 32 BBY. The Jedi Order regretted Jeen's fall and the harm that he had caused, and they established a training facility on Almas in 177 BBY, to give the Jedi a permanent presence on the world from which they could study the Sith fortress and counter its dark side presence. The facility was later expanded to become a full Jedi academy, known as the "Almas Academy," and each generation of students at the school learned about Jeen's fall, to be shown the dangers of being too certain of one's own beliefs, as well as to be warned against the temptations of the dark side and to be deterred from seeking to explore the fortress. Jeen's story was told to the students during the Ritual Tale of Kibh Jeen, an annual event that was held in the Academy's grand lecture hall, and the yearly recital later developed into a drama that was re-enacted by the older students for the benefit of their younger peers. The part of Jeen was always played by a Jedi Master and each year, a different member of the Academy's staff filled the role. The Ritual Tale of the year 53 BBY was recited by the Academy's headmaster, Lanius Qel-Bertuk, and he instructed his students to ponder on whether the Sith fortress was the cause of Jeen's fall, or if instead the seeds of the dark side were already contained within Jeen when he had first arrived on Almas. Qel-Bertuk also asked the young Jedi to consider if Jeen's claims about the Sith were intended as a warning.

Kibh Jeen's fall served as an example of how even a trained Jedi was vulnerable to the temptations of dark side and his story later inspired the Sith Lord Darth Plagueis to consider turning the dissatisfied Jedi Master Dooku to the dark side, a task that was later completed by Plagueis' apprentice Darth Sidious in 32 BBY.

When he was sent to Almas to investigate the Sith fortress with Qornah, Jeen was initially certain that he would be able to handle any threats that he encountered during his mission, because the Jedi Council had reported that the fortress was dormant. However, despite his confidence in his abiliites, Jeen was unable to resist the lure of the dark side, and he became a Dark Jedi. During his campaign to bring terror to the Cularin system, Jeen considered his pirate forces to be mere tools that he could use as he wished. He took delight from the failure of the system's inhabitants to resist his army, yet he also felt despair deep within his soul.

After spending time in the Almas Sith fortress, Jeen became strong in the dark side of the Force. He had the power to control the actions of others and during the Dark Jedi Conflict, he dominated the minds of those who served in his pirate army.

Kibh Jeen was created by Andy Collins and Robert Wiese, and he was first mentioned in the Living Force Campaign Guide, a Wizards of the Coast sourcebook that provided background material for the Living Force roleplaying campaign. In 2006, Jeen was mentioned by Abel G. Peña in the StarWars.com Hyperspace article Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasties, as a means of resolving a continuity conflict regarding the Rule of Two. While the movie Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace established that the Jedi Order knew about the Rule of Two, later material indicated that the tenet was created by the Sith Lord Darth Bane in secret, and Jeen's testimony shortly before his death provided an explanation for how the Jedi could know of the rule. Jeen later featured in the 2007 reference book Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force and he received an entry in the 2008 compendium The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia. In 2012, he received further mentions in the novel Darth Plagueis and the publication Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side.

• Living Force Campaign Guide
• Evil Never Dies: The Sith Dynasties on Hyperspace
• "Ask the Master" — Star Wars Insider 92
• Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
• Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side