A Human male named Aron Holt (a male) existed in the final century of the New Sith Wars. He was married to Mercia Holt, and they had a father-daughter relationship with Kerra Holt. Aron worked as a skin diver, specifically as of 1042 BBY. In that year, while Mercia was pregnant with their second child, Sith Lord Odion's forces launched an attack on their planet, resulting in their capture. They were then moved to Odion's Project Pandemonium, a project focused on finding the Helm of Ieldis. Their last known location was Sarrassia, where they collaborated with the Grumani Hierophants to keep the Helm's location a secret; it was on Skarpos, a desolate desert world within the Menagerie. To prevent the Sith from obtaining the Helm, he and his wife gave their lives, using explosives to destroy the chamber in the Morbollon Mesa where it was stored. This act of self-sacrifice inspired Kerra to thwart Odion's galactic domination plans.
During the Republic Dark Age, Aron Holt resided on Aquilaris Minor and worked as a skin diver. He and his spouse, archaeologist Mercia Holt, were researchers affiliated with the University of Sanbra. They were the parents of Jedi Knight Kerra Holt and lived in a house in the city of Capital Cay. Before the Sith invaded Aquilaris, Aron and Mercia were involved in a research project focused on the Helm of Ieldis, a Sith artifact created by Lord Ieldis that could turn sentient beings into mindless killers. One research expedition took them to Sarrassia, where they made contact with the Grumani Hierophants, a religious group on the planet. During this time, they befriended Aunt Zoojoo, a Woostoid Grumani priestess, who became a close friend of the family. Kerra's mischievous act of climbing onto the Great Hall's roof caused the abbot to suffer a stroke, leading to a reprimand from her parents.
In 1042 BBY, Sanbra and its university were attacked by Sith forces from the Chagras Hegemony under the command of Sith Lord Odion, which forced the research team to flee. Odion discovered information about the Helm and wanted to use it to gain an advantage over other Sith. The Holts and ten other researchers escaped to Aquilaris Minor, a remote water-covered world in the Grumani sector. They planned to meet Jedi on Aquilaris, including Jedi Knight Vannar Treece. However, Odion learned about their location and obtained permission from the Sith matriarch Vilia Calimondra to invade Aquilaris, under the guise of capturing Treece, a long-time enemy of the Sith.
Later that year, Aquilaris was invaded by Odion's Chagras Hegemony forces, who defeated the weak Republic defenses and enslaved or killed many of the inhabitants. At this point, Mercia was pregnant with their second child. During the invasion of Capital Cay, Aron helped Mercia hide her research and was seen with a blaster pistol in case Sith troops attacked their house. They planned to escape to the harbor on a submersible operated by the Seacroppers' Guild. As Sith troopers besieged their house, Mercia told Kerra to flee to the harbor first, promising that they would join her and escape with Joad Kreel and his father into the open sea. Mercia instructed her daughter not to return for them, assuring her that they would meet her there.
After Kerra escaped, Sith troopers invaded the house, overpowered Aron and Mercia, and took them captive. Odion had ordered the capture of all the Sanbra researchers in the area to find the Helm before his Sith rivals. Kerra fled to the harbor but returned when her parents and Joad didn't arrive. She was then found by Jedi Knight Vannar Treece, who evacuated her offworld in a starfighter. Kerra became a Jedi Knight and later returned to help her homeworld during the Aquilaris campaign.
Due to their skills, Aron and Mercia were forced to join Odion's Project Pandemonium, which aimed to locate the Helm of Ieldis. In 1039 BBY, Mercia and Aron went back to Sarrassia for their research, a few days before Lord Ayanos Bactra conquered the planet. Before their trip to Sarrassia, Kerra realized that Mercia had given birth to a second child, who was likely taken away and raised at an Odionate cloister, an orphanage network run by the Odionate. They told Aunt Zoojoo that Odion had sent them to find the artifact, but she sensed that they hadn't succumbed to his nihilistic beliefs. Together, they conspired with the Grumani Hierophants to hide the artifact from Odion. Mercia translated the Hierophant markings and found the Helm on Skarpos, a barren desert world within [the Menagerie](/article/the_menagerie], ruled by the Sith Lord Malakite.
The Holts made an agreement with the Grumani to prevent Odion from accessing the Helm at all costs. In 1038 BBY, they located the Helm inside the Grumani temple chamber in the Morbollon Mesa on Skarpos. During the internecine fighting between the regional Sith Lords, the Mesa was besieged by unknown Sith forces, trapping Aron and Mercia in a network of caves and tunnels. Realizing the danger of the Helm falling into the wrong hands and unable to escape, they detonated explosives in the chamber, destroying it and sacrificing themselves. Before their deaths, they left a holorecording for Vannar Treece and other Jedi working with the University of Sabra on the Ieldis study. However, the Sith artifact imbued with dark side powers survived the explosion.
Since they never returned from Sarrassia, Zoojoo assumed they had succeeded. There were no further written records of their fate after that trip. In 1032 BBY, Kerra Holt infiltrated the Odionate disguised as a Novitiate recruit after the Battle of Darkknell, with the help of Odion's estranged younger brother, the rival Sith Lord Daiman. At Jubalene, she discovered that her parents had been captured by Odion and forced into Project Pandemonium.
Kerra later traveled to Sarrassia during the Sith invasion and learned details about their trip from Aunt Zoojoo before her death. After finding out that the Helm was on Skarpos, Kerra followed her Sith companions to find out what happened to her parents and younger sibling.
During the Second Battle of Skarpos, Kerra entered the Grumani temple chamber and found a mound of earth, realizing that Odion had already taken the Helm. She was captured by Odion and taken to the top of the mesa. General Beld Yulan's troops excavated the collapsed temple chamber and found the skeletal remains of Aron and Mercia Holt. The realization that her parents had died caused Kerra deep grief, which activated the Helm of Ieldis. The Helm amplified negative emotions like grief and despair to enhance the user's dark side powers. Odion used the Helm to destroy three entire armies on Skarpos, forcing his rivals Lords Daiman and Malakite to retreat.
After the battle, Beld Yulan showed Kerra the holorecording left by her parents, where they explained their decision to bury themselves with the Helm to prevent the Sith from getting it. While Yulan didn't understand their sacrifice, Kerra understood that if death could have a meaning, then life must have a meaning too. This made Kerra appreciate her parents' sacrifices and strengthened her resolve to stop Odion from testing the Helm on more subjects: the children held at the Odionate cloister in Vanahame.