Ashara Zavros was a Togruta Jedi Padawan of the female persuasion. She served the Jedi Order until the Sith Empire's Lord Kallig seduced her to the Dark side of the Force during the Cold War. As part of her Jedi training on Taris's Jedi Enclave, she was assigned the task of exorcising the spirit of Kalatosh Zavros. Kalatosh, a Jedi who became a Revanchist and later a Sith Lord, was a blood relative. Consequently, the elusive spirit only appeared to his great-granddaughter through a Force bond.
Lord Kallig, a Sith Lord who had recently lost acolytes to Darth Thanaton, noticed Ashara's unique talent for summoning Kalatosh. In a desperate move, Kallig collaborated with a group of Sith assassin to lure her into the open and force her into their service, utilizing Darth Angral's holocron in the process. Trapped by the dark side, Ashara couldn't resist Kallig's control, which led to her masters' deaths. Overwhelmed by guilt, Ashara broke her Jedi vows and joined the Sith Lord, becoming their apprentice.
She was born around 3662 BBY during the Great Galactic War to Jedi Knights Rolend and Yanila Zavros, and at the age of five, she was inducted into the Jedi Order. Zavros's lineage included many powerful Force users, such as her ancestor Kalatosh Zavros, a former Jedi who had been a part of Darth Revan's Sith Empire and who perished during Darth Malak's bombardment of Taris three centuries prior.
In 3642 BBY, during the Galactic War between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire, Zavros arrived on Taris to train under Jedi Masters Ryen and Ocera. Their philosophy emphasized the importance of Padawans learning about the Force through direct experience in the galaxy. Zavros absorbed the Jedi's knowledge, excelled as Master Ryen's student, and applied the Code's principles to her satisfaction. However, she was dissatisfied with the situation on Taris and desired an attack against the Sith because she despised the Empire's approach.
In Zavros's particular situation, the Masters brought her to Taris for a couple of reasons: first, to teach her compassion amid the destruction that had happened there, and to warn against the dangers of pride and the dark side. Second, it was to complete her trials by helping to banish a dark ghost from the ruins of a Jedi enclave.
Meanwhile, Kallig, a recently elevated Lord of the Sith, arrived on Taris and began searching for the Jedi. The powerful Sith Lord had learned from Elios Maliss that Zavros was descended from a powerful spirit. Kallig decided to find Zavros and bind the spirit of her ancestor in order to defeat Darth Thanaton. While Kallig was searching, Ryen assigned Zavros to a team preparing an attack against the Sith. Kallig needed to reach Zavros and discovered her traits through holocron recordings of her training sessions. In these records, Kallig identified her lack of understanding and rash decision-making as weaknesses that could be exploited to indoctrinate the padawan as a new Sith apprentice.
Lord Kallig moved to the next phase of their plan, acquiring a Sith holocron that would be crucial to her downfall. Accounts of its use varied. Some suggested Kallig personally presented the holocron to the unsuspecting Zavros to tempt her with its mysteries, flooding her with dark side knowledge and enabling Kallig to use this knowledge to bait her, similar to what Exar Kun did centuries earlier. Other evidence indicated a more elaborate and sinister plan. Kallig could have traded the artifact with fellow Lord Anathemos, enlisting a group of Sith assassins to draw Ashara out of safety. Then, in an act of betrayal, Kallig presented themself as a defected Sith by coming to Ashara's defense. As hunters became the hunted, Kallig urged Ashara to execute the man who led the hunt, which she reluctantly did. It was either the dark side knowledge's mysteries or the brutal act of killing the Sith assassin that shattered her commitment to the Jedi way, and Kallig proceeded to coerce her into his service.
Kallig instructed Zavros to clear the Jedi Enclave and summon the ghost. However, Zavros hesitated and alerted her Masters, who attempted to stop the Sith Lord. However, Zavros' Masters were easily defeated by Kallig. With nothing standing between her and Kallig's wrath, Zavros was forced to summon Kalatosh. Her ancestor was unhappy about being awakened and tried to kill her, but Kallig stopped him. The Sith then bound him and took his power. Blaming herself for the bloodshed, Zavros chose to follow Kallig, condemning herself as a traitor to the Jedi.
As Kallig's apprentice, she maintained her Jedi ideals while serving her new master. Her goal was to establish a lasting peace between the Jedi and the Sith, and consequently, between the Republic and the Empire.
Eventually, her new master was consumed by their actions of binding too many Force ghosts. Unwilling to witness such suffering, she assisted Darth Zash in finding a cure and comforted Kallig on the eve of reaching Voss. She then witnessed Kallig's defeat of Darth Thanaton and their ascension to become Darth Nox and a member of the Dark Council alongside the other members of the Sith Lord's personal crew.
Later in the Galactic War, while meditating on the Force, Zavros had a vision of Nox being killed by roots and vines on a jungle planet, causing her to faint. When she regained consciousness, she told her Master about her vision. She added that a woman had spoken to her through the Force, asking her to tell Nox to go to Rishi. Andronikos Revel then informed them that Rishi had been entered into the Fury's navicomputer. Nox recognized it as a subtle message and set a course for Rishi. Zavros then informed Moff Valion Pyron, an ally of her Master's, about the Order of Revan's infiltration of the Empire, prompting the Moff to conduct a discreet search for the infiltrators.
During the Eternal Empire's conquest, Zavros was separated from her master and nearly killed by the Eternal Throne's forces. After Nox disappeared, she had nowhere to turn and chose to abandon her allegiance to the Sith, claiming that both they and the Jedi were failed orders to which she never belonged. Over the years, Ashara charted her own course away from the Dark Council, the Sith Empire, and Nox, who had tried to influence her. She traveled across the galaxy, assisting many people who had suffered from the Eternal Empire's wrath. She never stayed in one place for long, feeling that helping those in need taught her a great deal. During the war against the Eternal Empire, she was stationed on the planet Voss, where she helped defend the people of Voss from the Eternal Empire's forces.
Ashara, although a capable fighter with a strong understanding of the Jedi Code, always felt that Jedi should take a more proactive stance against the Sith. She believed that her masters were not helping her realize her full potential as a Jedi. These characteristics drew her closer to the dark side, but even while traveling with Kallig, she did her best to adhere to the Jedi ways.
During her time with Kallig, Ashara noticed many contradictions within the Sith Order. They claimed to follow their passions but were constantly at odds with each other, lacking any sense of friendship. She even criticized the Empire's xenophobic views, considering that the original Sith were not human. Despite this, through discussions and debates with Kallig, she concluded that the best hope for peace was not to destroy the Empire, but to reform it. She believed that a strong but rational Empire would be more effective than the Republic.
Ashara was a powerful Padawan who claimed to be the best duelist in her class. She even stated that she had defeated Master Ocera in lightsaber combat. She practiced the Jar'Kai dual-saber fighting style, making her melee attacks extremely fierce and ruthless. She was also known to be skilled with the Force, particularly Force Burst, but she used it less frequently than her physical strikes.
Under the guidance of Kallig and Zash, Ashara became more proficient in the mental aspects of the Force. Her skill with Force vision eventually progressed to the point where she could receive visions from Lana Beniko from across the galaxy, and she experienced prophetic dreams that were even more accurate than Zash's.
Azura Skye voices Ashara Zavros in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Ashara's dialogue and the Star Wars: The Old Republic Encyclopedia both confirm that her Jedi parents, Rolend Zavros and Yanila Zavros, died during the Great Galactic War during the Sacking of Coruscant. However, in one conversation with a female Sith Inquisitor, Ashara reads a letter from "Mom and Dad" that mentions a brother named Asher, and she mentions that it has been fifteen years since she last saw them.
The Sith Inquisitor and Ashara may collaborate to find power bases on both sides of the Empire and Republic that would agree to a truce, depending on the player's choices. If this happens:
Ashara initially approached a Jedi Master who advised Padawans but was rejected, which angered her and convinced her of the Sith Code's sincerity regarding "Peace is a lie". She eventually found hard-line Jedi who had broken away from the Order. Although they were hesitant to believe that a Sith would work for peace, they trusted Ashara's sincerity.
The male Sith Inquisitor can romance Ashara. She will only advance her courtship status with the player if the player makes more rational (typically light-sided) choices rather than those driven by malice and cruelty (dark-sided). At some point, the player has the opportunity to flirt with her, which will begin their romance. If the relationship reaches its peak, she and the Inquisitor will decide to marry after the war.