Rast'tul

Rast'tul was a Human male, born between c. 50 BBY and c. 60 BBY, who served in the Thaereian military—an armed force responsible for the defense of the Thaereian system—during the waning years of the Galactic Republic. A highly proficient officer, Rast'tul quickly rose through the hierarchy of the military and attained the rank of colonel. He also acted as the chair of several important Thaereian committees. He owned a house on Thaere Privo, the Thaereian homeworld, and he kept a box containing several thousand credits worth of dataries and Thaereian Stock Certificates inside his office within the residence.

By the time of the Clone Wars, a conflict between the Republic and the separatist Confederacy of Independent Systems, Rast'tul was in his mid-forties. Around 21 BBY, the Cularin system in the Expansion Region reemerged, after having been absent from the galaxy for ten years due to the temporal effects of a Sith artifact known as the Darkstaff. The system was a protectorate that had been placed under Thaereian protection by a Republic charter, and Rast'tul was dispatched to the system to serve as part of the Thaereian military contingent that was stationed there. Shortly after the system's reappearance, Ras'tul became involved in a plot to blackmail Senator Lavina Wren, the Cularin system's representative in the Galactic Senate, to force her to support pro-Thaereian policies. Rast'tul schemed to kidnap Wren's seven-year-old daughter, Night, and to use the child as leverage against the senator, and he had his spies monitor Wren's activities. Once he had obtained details of Wren's daily routine, the colonel arranged for the vehicle in which Wren traveled to school to be attacked, then sent in his men to apprehend her under the guise of staging a rescue.

Wren was transported to Thaere Privo, and Ras'tul held her within his personal quarters, as a guest. Rast'tul lied to to the child and told her that her parents had sent her to live with him because she was in danger. Using the attack on Night's vehicle and her mother's recent increase in workload as a result of the war to back up his claims, Rast'tul convinced the child of his sincerity, and she grew fond of him, referring to him as "Uncle Colonel." He also arranged for Wren to be educated by a home tutor alongside a few carefully selected playmates, and he hired the teenage babysitter Nannat to care for her. He took Wren on trips to amusement parks and to attend various cultural events, and he tried to manipulate her into believing that her parents did not love her, hoping that he could turn her into a loyal Thaereian servant. Despite his efforts to persuade Wren that he cared for her, Rast'tul felt nothing for the child, and he told Lavina Wren that he would kill Night if the senator did not do as the Thaereians wished. The senator complied and did nothing to oppose the Thaereians as they took an increasingly heavy-handed approach to security in the Cularin system and became engaged in a conflict with the loyalist Cularin Militia.

Several months later, the Thaereian military ordered Rast'tul to assemble two task forces for special assignments in the Cularin system; the task forces were organized with the aim of creating unrest in order to provide the Thaereians with justification to increase their military presence in the system and tighten their control over Cularin. Task Force Pest, under the command of Lieutenant Dalin, was ordered to round up and incarcerate all Force Adepts and non-Jedi Force users in the Cularin system, while Rast'tul commanded Task Force Vermin to abduct children from the streets of Cularin, who were then coerced and brainwashed into serving Thaereian interests. However, the efforts of Task Force Pest were thwarted after the Heroes of Cularin, a band of freelance agents who were active in the Cularin system, freed the captured Force Adepts, and the actions of Task Force Vermin were also unveiled by the agents and made public.

Over a year after Night's abduction by Rast'tul, Lavina Wren hired the Heroes of Cularin to rescue her daughter from the colonel's clutches. The agents traveled to Thaere Privo and broke into Rast'tul's residence while he was away, where they convinced Wren to leave with them. They then fled the world with the child aboard their starship, and Night stole Rast'tul's lockbox from his office and took it with her. Thaereian starfighters set out in pursuit of the agents, but, not wanting to risk the child's life, Rast'tul recalled the fighters. He contacted the agents over their ship's communications system, and, in an attempt to maintain some influence over Wren, he appealed to her to remember that he would always be there for her. The child was returned safely to her mother, and Lavina Wren changed her political stance and publicly opposed the Thaereian presence in the Cularin system. As a consequence of his failure to continue to hold Night Wren captive, Rast'tul's chances of further advancement within the ranks of the Thaereian military were dashed.

The Thaereian military maintained covert ties with the Confederacy of Independent Systems, but as the Clone Wars raged on, the Thaereians came to the conclusion that the Separatists were going to lose the war, so they decided to strengthen their ties to the Republic. To that end, Colonel Rast'tul was assigned to command a Thaereian military volunteer unit that was assigned to serve in the Grand Army of the Republic as part of Strike Force Cularin, a combined task force formed from Thaereian forces, Republic regular forces, and the Cularin Militia. Lavina Wren suspected that Rast'tul was specially chosen for the posting by Jir Tramsig, the commander of Thaereian forces in the Cularin system, and that the colonel planned to exploit the arrangement to create tension between the Republic and the Cularin Militia, so as to secure Republic backing for the Thaereians' Cularin franchise. Strike Force Cularin was placed under the leadership of the Republic officer Colonel Lazlo Ardine, and Rast'tul was appointed to serve directly under Ardine, as the second-in-command of the task group's ground forces.

For its opening mission, Strike Force Cularin was tasked with assaulting a Separatist base situated on a planetoid in the Ando system. The task force assembled in orbit over the planet Cularin, and, while preparations were being made for the upcoming engagement, Rast'tul sent a transmission to the Heroes of Cularin, who had joined the unit as part of the Cularin Militia contingent, in which he told them that he had not forgotten their previous encounter and warned them against interfering with the Thaereians' plans. Soon afterward, the flotilla moved out in the direction of the Cularin comet cloud, to leave the system. The Heroes of Cularin departed in their vessel in advance of the main fleet but ran afoul of Thaereian customs forces, which, believing them to be criminals, harried the agents and sent out starfighters after them. The task force arrived moments later to find its route out of the system blocked, and Captain Meeba, the commander of the Republic cruiser Relentless and the leader of the task group's space forces, challenged Rast'tul to explain the Thaereians' actions. In an attempt to save face, Rast'tul contacted Lieutenant Marko, the officer in charge of the customs forces, and berated him before relieving him of his command. The flotilla then resumed its course out of the Cularin system and entered hyperspace.

On arrival in the Ando system, the task force encountered a Separatist corvette, and, after a brief exchange of fire, the vessel was disabled. A Thaereian envoy had been traveling aboard the Separatist ship as a passenger, and, when the Heroes of Cularin were subsequently assigned to board the wrecked vessel, Rast'tul secretly arranged for them to fall under attack from a Thaereian Z-95 Headhunter, in an attempt to prevent evidence of Thaere's dealings with the Confederacy falling into Republic hands. Purportedly acting as a rearguard for the Republic task force, the Headhunter opened fire on the bridge of the corvette, but the attack failed, and the freelance agents survived the attempt on their lives. On their return to the task force, Colonel Ardine, Captain Meeba, and Rast'tul briefly met with the agents to discuss the attack, and Rast'tul claimed that the Headhunter had gone missing and that Cularin dissidents were behind the strike.

The task force progressed onward and commenced its assault on the planetoid on which the Separatist installation was located. Rast'tul landed on the planetoid and led the task group's ground forces into battle, but he was wounded and became pinned down in a trench by Separatist fire. With no clear route of escape, the colonel was forced to take cover behind the remains of a damaged artillery piece amid the bodies of some of his fallen comrades. However, he was sighted by the CIS forces, and six Separatist troopers were dispatched toward his location to finish him off. At the last moment, the Heroes of Cularin intervened and fended off the soldiers, thereby saving Rast'tul's life. The colonel began to thank his saviors, but when he looked up and saw that it was the freelance agents that had rescued him, he became outraged, believing that the operatives had humiliated him once again. In his anger, he began a tirade in which he denounced the freelancers and confessed to being responsible for the kidnap of Night Wren and for the attempt on the agents' lives by the Thaereian Headhunter. Rast'tul's confession was overheard by Ardine, who promptly placed Rast'tul under arrest, and the Thaereian colonel was stunned and taken into custody by two clone troopers. The raid on the Separatist base was a success for the Republic, and Rast'tul was placed on trial in the aftermath of the mission. The Thaereian military demanded that Rast'tul be returned to Thaere to face punishment, but their entreaty was rejected by Republic Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who stated that because Rast'tul committed a crime while in the service of the Republic, it was appropriate that he be held under Republic jurisdiction.

Rast'tul was a skilled and highly capable military officer who progressed quickly through the ranks of the Thaereian military. However, he was also arrogant and had an inability to admit being at fault, leading him to blame any military failures in which he was involved on his underlings or unforeseeable events, which undermined his proficiency as a leader. He was duplicitous and greedy, and he was willing to arrest innocent beings, kidnap children, and blackmail Senator Lavina Wren to further his own ends. While he ostensibly acted in the name of the Thaereian military, he sought greater power for himself and tried to use all that he did to further the aims of the Thaereians as a means of his enhancing his own influence on Thaere.

The colonel attempted to manipulate Night Wren into becoming a loyal Thaereian servant and portrayed himself to her as a loving uncle. In truth, he had no emotional attachment to the child; he viewed her merely as a bargaining chip whom he was prepared to kill if need be, and he was willing to use her as a means through which to exert control over her mother. Consequently, even after Night had been rescued from Thaere, Rast'tul continued to publicly maintain the pretense that he cared for her, in an attempt to retain some influence over her. He hated the Heroes of Cularin for thwarting his efforts to blackmail Lavina Wren and disliked the senator personally, finding her to be overly self-righteous.

Colonel Rast'tul was created by Margaret van Poelgeest-Heintz and featured as an antagonist in the Night Eyes trilogy of the Living Force roleplaying game, making his first appearance in Night's Homecoming, the final installment of the trilogy. The adventure advised players to use the 1991 film Hook as a guide for portraying Rast'tul, comparing his attempted manipulation of Night Wren to efforts of the character Captain Hook in the movie to turn the character Jack Banning against his family.

Rast'tul later appeared in the 2004 Living Force adventure Decision: Almas, by van Poelgeest-Heintz's husband, Ronald A. Heintz. During the adventure, the players roleplay as the Heroes of Cularin. When Rast'tul comes under fire from Separatist troops during the raid on the Separatist base, the player-characters have the option to either intervene and save him or stand back and let him die. If they come to his aid and rescue him, he becomes incensed, and the players can goad him into confessing to his misdemeanors, which Lazlo Ardine then overhears. If the players can only get him to confess to kidnapping Night Wren, he is arrested to be sent for a criminal trial; if he also admits to being behind the attack on the player-characters, he is placed under charges of treason and court-martialed by the Republic Military, then put on trial by a civilian court for his role in Wren's abduction. The adventure Decision: Coruscant subsequently confirmed that in the official outcome, Rast'tul was placed on trial, but it did not also confirm whether he was court-martialed.

The sources are inconsistent as to how the colonel's name is capitalized. In the Night Eyes trilogy, his name is spelled "Rast'Tul," whereas in Decsion: Almas and Decision: Coruscant, he is referred to as "Rast'tul." This article uses the latter spelling, because Decision: Almas and Decision: Coruscant are the most recent sources in which he is referenced.