Krynda Draay

Krynda Draay was a Force-sensitive female Near-Human with Human and Miraluka heritage. Due to her Miraluka heritage, Krynda was born with both normal Human sight and Force sight. Initially, Krynda was one of several Padawans studying under Jedi Master Arca Jeth. During her time as a Padawan, Krynda met Barrison Draay and Haazen, the former being with whom she fell in love. However, she was unaware that Haazen also had feelings for her. Master Jeth eventually had Krynda and Barrison knighted. Haazen was not, however, due to his lack of perception. After being knighted, Krynda continued her education into the Force under the tutelage of Jedi Master Vodo-Siosk Baas and was trained as a Jedi Consular.

Eventually, Krynda was granted the rank of Master. She married Barrison and became pregnant; consequently, her attentions were drawn away from galactic events, and she failed to see the rise of the Sith within a fellow Padawan of Master Baas named Exar Kun. On the day that Ulic Qel-Droma had his first contact with the dark side of the Force during the Beast Wars, she gave birth to a son, Lucien Draay.

During the Great Sith War, a war she could not participate in due to the difficult birth of Lucien, she witnessed the deaths of both her former Jedi instructors, her half-sister, and her husband, who died in an ambush devised by the Sith Minion Dossa and Haazen himself, as he had always been envious of Barrison's life. For years she blamed herself for these deaths and lived in seclusion on Coruscant, spending her days in grief and shame on the Draay Estate, though still receiving help from a now-disfigured Haazen. She took him in after the war so he could continue his family's service to the Draays. Krynda refused all contact with the Jedi Order, who were hoping she would return to active duty as a seer. Even though her son was an only child and grew up without a father, Krynda was distant from Lucien, leaving him to be brought up mostly under the care of the household droid 9BD and Haazen.

In 3993 BBY, Haazen brought to the Draay Estate a young Miraluka girl named Q'Anilia. Krynda sensed something special in the child and agreed to train her. Drawn back into the Jedi Order, she began a secret organization—the Jedi Covenant—to prevent the Sith from ever returning to the galaxy.

To this end, Krynda set out to train the greatest Consulars of the Order, which she hoped would be strong enough to find the shatterpoint that would lead to the next Sith outbreak. The Covenant would then take any action necessary to stamp it out immediately. Several WatchCircles were formed, some of them using Jedi foresight even for investment advice, siphoning power to the Draay Trust, which would then lend influence to the Covenant both in the Republic and Jedi Order. They also made use of Covenant Shadows to search out dangerous Sith artifacts and dispose of them. However, this goal became an obsession, and blinded Krynda to the rise of the dark side through other means until it was too late.

During the training of the Jedi Covenant members, Krynda's relationship with Lucien became unpleasant. Due to Lucien inheriting his father's traits instead of his mother's, Krynda left him under the tutelage of Haazen rather than training him herself, and as such, she became more of a mother towards Q'Anilia than Lucien. When he protested, she furiously yelled at him that if her father's blood was stronger, she would've gladly given him second sight.

In 3988 BBY Krynda predicted the coming of the most potent seers her secret sect would ever train: the WatchCircle, which would foresee the return of the Sith. Eventually, she would encounter these students.

In addition to the four seers she had selected, her own son—Lucien—was chosen to be the Hand, a position that was suggested by Haazen, and was responsible for handling arrangements and protection for the Consulars. Together, these five Jedi made up the "First WatchCircle." They were sent to Taris to locate the Muur Talisman while working under the guise of a school for their Padawans.

Haazen, who greatly assisted her in constructing the Covenant, regularly reported to her. Many of his reports included a Sith text on Chandrila, which was disposed of by a Shadow, and the Vanjervalis Chain was discovered to have a flaw that they had "obtained."

As of 3964 BBY, Krynda was acting as "associate" and advisor to the First WatchCircle, who by this time were stationed together as Jedi Masters in the Jedi Temple on Taris in order to secretly recover the Muur Talisman, a Sith artifact of great power.

During a joint meditation on the rogue moon, the WatchCircle envisioned the destruction of the Jedi Order and the rule of the Sith. Circumstance had it that the Dark Lord they all saw in their vision reflected the appearance of their Padawans, wearing a red environment suit, so they assumed it would be one of them falling to the dark side. Master Raana Tey suggested killing them all right away, while Xamar and Q'Anilia insisted on speaking with Krynda first, for her evaluation. Upon being told of the vision, Krynda ordered Lucien to bring his Padawans to the Draay Estate on Coruscant so they could evaluate them and understand what the vision meant. But that same night, Krynda had a vision in which the First WatchCircle executed their Padawans. Desperate to warn Lucien in hope of averting the massacre, Krynda then suffered a stroke, rendering her unable to move. Subsequently, Haazen imprisoned her in a crystal oubliette to keep her alive in stasis, where she experienced the Padawan massacre repeatedly. Krynda barely endured the torment with the desperate hope that her son would never commit murder. However, Lucien lied to his WatchCircle about his mother's position on the execution, and arranged for the five students to meet their end at their knighting ceremony.

After Padawan Zayne Carrick escaped the Masters' grasp, the Taris security force entered the chase, tagging Zayne as a wanted criminal. His Master Lucien spoke to Haazen, who was outraged by his handling of the "Taris affair," and told him that he would not bring Zayne to them alive. He also explained to the other Masters that he had made contact with their associate on Coruscant, and argued that the intervention of civil authorities was expected to offer people a show of justice. Later, when Lucien and the other members of the Covenant went to visit Krynda on Coruscant, Haazen denied them entrance and would later not tell Lucien where Krynda had gone. However, weeks later Haazen told Lucien that she was upstairs in the Estate, though he could not feel her presence.

During the Mandalorian siege of Taris, the dying Raana Tey asked Zayne Carrick to tell Krynda that she was sorry. She was offered salvation by Carrick, whom she had attempted to kill, supposedly making her question the rightfulness of the actions of the WatchCircle. A statue and memorial was constructed outside the Draay Estate in honor of the fallen Togruta, though it appears that Krynda did not attend the memorial service.

Before being put in stasis, Covenant agent Celeste Morne asked Zayne to find Krynda and tell her what had really happened to his friends, believing she would never allow something like that to happen. Zayne then became determined to find Krynda and put an end to the Covenant.

Zayne journeyed to Odryn, where, after a hectic confrontation with Feln, he found proof of the Covenant actions: a collection of Sith artifacts that the Covenant was studying.

Zayne also sent two of his friends, Shel Jelavan and Alek Squinquargesimus, to Coruscant to meet with Masters Vandar Tokare and Vrook Lamar. They told the Councilors that Raana Tey had said Krynda was the figure behind the Covenant before dying and that Zayne was coming to them with proof. Vrook, however, knew that there were many Jedi loyal to Krynda, and worried that if Krynda was accused, the Order would be torn apart.

Realizing that Lucien lied about Krynda authorizing the Padawan massacre, Xamar later confessed everything to the Council. His reason was to ensure that Krynda would be given full immunity. Thus, as part of the Council's plan, Xamar brought Zayne and Gryph, the former disguised as a Sith, to the Draay Estate. They hoped that Zayne's presence would draw her from her chamber to examine him. However, Haazen claimed that Krynda was meditating with Circle Culu and could not be disturbed.

Just as Knights loyal to the Council raided the estate, Haazen surprised and horrified them all when he revealed himself as a servant to the Sith. In truth, he had subverted Krynda as the leader of the Jedi Covenant, pitting the Jedi Order against itself—the true Jedi loyal to the Council vs. the deceived Jedi of the Covenant acting in Krynda's name. Haazen wanted to dominate the Jedi Order, planning on eliminating the Jedi High Council and replacing them with a puppet emergency Council, using the Draay family name to accomplish this.

When Haazen hacked the systems of the Republic ships in the Vanjervalis Chain and had them bombard the Estate, Q'Anilia rushed into Krynda's room, so that she might aid them against Haazen. However, the oubliette in which she was imprisoned shielded her from the Living Force, leading Q'Anilia to believe her dead, and she thus took her own life by poisoning herself, fulfilling the Rogue Moon prophecy. Gryph realized that Krynda was only in stasis, and removed her from the pod by breaking it open. Gryph helped her into the courtyard, where she confronted Lucien over the murders of the Padawans, revealing all that had transpired since his WatchCircle first informed her of their vision. The only thought that got her through it all was that Lucien would never be capable of doing something like that; but he did, as she was found dead in the prophecy and he could not allow that to happen.

Heartbroken over her son's confession, Krynda wailed that no mission was worth the lives of younglings, and asked Lucien, who had led him to believe that murdering the Padawans was the right thing to do. She was horrified when Lucien said she had, and that he had done it to carry out her mission—by any means necessary. Realizing that her teachings had led her son to murder his students, Krynda claimed that she had been wrong the entire time. In her last moments, she told Lucien to accept his mistakes and face the future with humility. She died in her son's arms soon after. Consumed by rage, Lucien attacked Gryph, only to be interrupted by Zayne Carrick, whom Lucien began to duel.

Prior to the Great Sith War, Krynda was very pleasant and hopeful. But the deaths of her husband Barrison, sister, and Jedi Master Vodo-Siosk Baas drove her into depression and self-pity for not doing enough to stop the Sith, emotionally detaching her from others, even her own son. When she later began training new Jedi seers, Krynda made it her mission to do anything and everything to prevent the return of the Sith, leading her to found the Jedi Covenant.

However, her obsession with the Sith blinded her to the fact that Haazen was Barrison's murderer, and her dependence on him for the Covenant's day-to-day activities and training of Lucien allowed him to gradually seize control of the Covenant from her.

Despite Krynda's extreme methods, the thing she abhorred above all else was the pre-emptive murder of children, believing the Covenant's mission was not worth it. Upon learning that Lucien ordered the Padawan massacre out of the misguided belief that he was preventing her fate, in her last moments, Krynda realized she was wrong to teach her son as such.

Before the standalone issue Homecoming, Krynda was known only as the "Jedi associate" of the Jedi Covenant on Taris.

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