Arliz Hadrassian was a businesswoman, a human female, who operated as an agent for the First Order. Before the Battle of Jakku and the subsequent fall of the Galactic Empire, she had served the Empire. Beginning as a TIE fighter pilot within the Imperial Starfleet, she ascended to become an officer in the Imperial Security Bureau, where she pursued spicerunners in the vicinity of Kessel and Kerev Doi. Her elder brother was a member of Emperor Palpatine's Royal Guard, also serving the Empire.
Following the defeat of the Empire at Jakku and the establishment of the New Republic, Hadrassian transitioned into a small-time entrepreneur. She later rose to lead the Amaxine warriors, a paramilitary force secretly utilized by the First Order. Hadrassian aided Carise Sindian in her scheme to support the First Order by masterminding the Napkin Bombing targeting the Galactic Senate on Hosnian Prime and assassinating Senator Tai-Lin Garr, after which she promptly committed suicide.
During the Age of the Empire, Arliz Hadrassian, along with several family members and friends, were in service to the Imperial Navy. Initially, she was a TIE fighter pilot before becoming an Imperial Security Bureau officer. A considerable portion of her career involved the pursuit of spice smugglers operating around Kessel and Kerev Doi. Her elder brother also served in the Emperor's Royal Guard around the time of the Battle of Endor. Prior to the battle, he had fallen ill and was not present on the second Death Star when it was destroyed. Following the death of Emperor Palpatine, Hadrassian's brother remained in service to the Empire and died during the Battle of Jakku. Hadrassian later obtained her brother's Royal Guard helmet as a keepsake.
After the Galactic Concordance, Hadrassian established herself as a small-time businesswoman on the Outer Rim planet of Daxam IV. Furthermore, she took the reins of a paramilitary group known as the Amaxine warriors, which maintained connections with the First Order, an Imperial remnant, and the cartel of Nikto crime lord Rinnrivin Di. The Amaxines were equipped with black jumpsuits, trained with Force pikes, and possessed multiple starfighter squadrons. Approximately twenty-four years after the Battle of Endor, the Amaxines numbered in the thousands and were sufficiently armed to pose a threat to the New Republic, the government that succeeded the Alliance to Restore the Republic.
Under Hadrassian's command, the Amaxines provided funds and pilots to Rinnrivin's cartel. While the Amaxines outwardly appeared to be the financial backers and partners of Rinnrivin's operations, they were, in reality, a front for the First Order. The First Order leveraged Rinnrivin's cartel's smuggling and gambling ventures to generate capital for rebuilding the old Imperial fleet. Rinnrivin funneled his earnings back to the First Order through various shadow corporations and Centrist figures, such as Senator Lady Carise Sindian. Hadrassian envisioned the Amaxines as the vanguard of the First Order, but Lady Carise, her collaborator, regarded them as a diversion to justify the First Order's efforts to "restore order" to the galaxy. On one occasion, Hadrassian piloted a BTL-A4 Y-wing starfighter over a desert landscape.
In 28 ABY, Rinnrivin's illicit activities in the Gaulus sector began to negatively impact the economy of Ryloth. Following a petition to the New Republic Galactic Senate by Emissary Yendor of Ryloth, Populist Senator Leia Organa and her Centrist counterpart Ransolm Casterfo agreed to investigate Rinnrivin's cartel. Around the time of the investigation, Arliz, accompanied by a group of associates, paid a visit to the casino hub of Bastatha. She encountered Leia's team and seized the opportunity to observe the former rebel leader and New Republic senator. Despite her attempts to remain unnoticed, Leia detected her presence.
Subsequently, Leia's pilots Greer Sonnel and Joph Seastriker traveled to Pamarthe and discovered that Rinnrivin was recruiting Amaxines pilots from Daxam IV. With Lady Carise's approval, Hadrassian orchestrated a "distraction" to impede the investigation. While Carise had envisioned a scandal or accident, the fanatical Hadrassian went a step further and employed a Twi'lek individual to plant a bomb in the Senatorial conference building. However, Leia uncovered a message warning of the bomb and successfully ordered an evacuation of the building, saving numerous lives. The event, known as the Napkin Bombing, strained relations between Hadrassian and Lady Carise, who began to view the former as a liability to the First Order.
Following the Napkin Bombing, Arliz Hadrassian, operating under the alias Crimson Blade, made arrangements to sell her Imperial Royal Guard brother's helmet to an offworld buyer. This buyer turned out to be Senator Casterfo, who used the transaction as a pretext to visit and investigate Daxam IV. With Senator Organa's approval, Casterfo traveled with Greer to meet with Crimson Sword. Hadrassian arranged to meet her buyer at a dilapidated teahouse. Upon entering the teahouse, Casterfo immediately recognized Hadrassian as the woman who had been observing the senatorial delegation on Bastatha.
After exchanging greetings, Casterfo inquired about the origin of the Imperial helmet. While previous sellers he had encountered had typically acquired their Imperial artifacts as war trophies, Hadrassian recounted the story of her brother's service as an Imperial Royal Guard. Assuming the Centrist senator to be an Imperial sympathizer, Hadrassian informed Casterfo that he was the ideal customer she had been seeking. After Casterfo inquired about her time in the Imperial Navy, Hadrassian spent the next two hours entertaining the young senator with anecdotes from her experiences as a TIE fighter pilot and later as an ISB officer.
Having assessed Hadrassian's suitability, she arranged for the purchase of the helmet to take place at her encampment in the Western Wastes the following day. Hadrassian also instructed Casterfo's "staffer," Greer, to remain behind in order to maintain the confidentiality of her transactions. Hadrassian then returned to her territory, leaving Casterfo and Greer to spend the night in the settlement. Later that night, Greer conducted a reconnaissance flight over Daxam IV and discovered that the Amaxines had at least six starfighter squadrons practicing maneuvers over the planet.
The following day, Hadrassian received Casterfo at her compound in the Western Wastes. Inside the building, Hadrassian presented the young Senator with her brother's Royal Guard helmet and allowed him to wear it. Hadrassian then asked Casterfo to imagine himself as a Royal Guard serving the Emperor and Darth Vader aboard the Death Star. Despite his distaste for Vader and the Emperor, Casterfo played along and requested to try out a force pike. While Hadrassian did not possess an original force pike, she allowed him to borrow one of her Amaxine warrior's training force pikes.
Hadrassian then arranged for Casterfo to duel with one of her Amaxine warriors but cautioned the combatants to fight until the first landed blow since she did not want anyone to be injured. Due to his martial arts and quarterstaff combat training, Casterfo managed to defeat the Amaxine warrior and spared his life, as per Hadrassian's instructions. Believing Casterfo to be an Imperial sympathizer, she informed the senator that she had fifty starfighters and two fully-qualified pilots on Daxim IV. Furthermore, Hadrassian revealed that the Amaxines had at least six bases around the Galaxy, including their central base on the watery Expansion Region world of Sibensko, a seedy crime haven.
Due to her meeting with Casterfo, Hadrassian inadvertently disclosed information about the Amaxine warriors to Senator Organa. Hadrassian's financier, Lady Carise, also learned about the leak through Casterfo, who informed Lady Carise about his encounter with the paramilitary group. Deeming the disclosure a disaster, Lady Carise contacted Hadrassian via hologram and reprimanded the Amaxine leader for jeopardizing the First Order's plans by tipping off Castefo. Hadrassian retorted that she had spent several years building the Amaxine army on Daxam IV. In response, Lady Carise accused her of abandoning the First Order, prompting an angry response from Hadrassian, who emphasized that Carise was too young to have known the Empire.
Lady Carise then criticized Hadrassian for divulging the Amaxine warriors' secrets to Casterfo, whom she revealed was assisting Leia's investigation into Rinnrivin's cartel. When Hadrassian insisted that she was attempting to recruit Casterfo as a potential ally, Lady Carise pointed out that he was deceiving her due to his work with Leia. Hadrassian maintained that Casterfo was an Imperial sympathizer and a potential supporter of the First Order. Losing her temper, Lady Carise then chastised Hadrassian for her role in the Napkin Bombing and pointed out that her actions had only drawn the authorities' attention to the Amaxines.
Still trusting Casterfo, Hadrassian urged Lady Carise to exert more effort in convincing the Centrist senator to remain on their side and to convert him to their cause. Lady Carise agreed and, in return, extracted a promise from Hadrassian to adhere to their plans before terminating the holographic connection. Having learned about Leia's true parentage as the daughter of Darth Vader and knowing Casterfo's contempt for Vader, Lady Carise decided to drive a wedge between Casterfo and Organa by disclosing Leia's true parentage. Feeling betrayed, Casterfo upstaged a Senate hearing into Leia's candidacy for the position of First Senator and exposed Leia's identity as the daughter of Vader. Due to the political uproar that ensued, Leia's political credibility was fatally undermined, and she was forced to withdraw her nomination for First Senator.
Despite Lady Carise's efforts to undermine Leia's investigation into the Amaxines and Rinnrivin's cartel, Leia remained undaunted. She and her team, including C-3PO, Joph, and Greer, embarked on a mission to Sibensko. During the course of the mission, Leia and C-3PO managed to obtain banking records linking the Amaxines to Rinnrivin's cartel. Leia also discovered the Amaxine base and managed to escape with the help of her husband Han Solo. During a brief dogfight with Han's racer, one of the Amaxine B-wing starfighters crashed into the underwater base's arms depot, triggering a massive explosion that obliterated the underwater city, the Amaxine headquarters, and a significant portion of the militia's forces.
The events on Sibensko dealt a major blow to Hadrassian's plans for the Amaxines to serve as the vanguard of the First Order's coming war with the New Republic. Enraged by the disaster, Hadrassian engaged Lady Carise in a heated hologram conversation. When Lady Carise blamed Hadrassian's impatience for the recent debacle on Sibensko, Hadrassian chastised the Centrists for not seceding from the New Republic and accused her financier of being too cowardly to take chances. Lady Carise counteracted that the Napkin Bombing proved that she and her Amaxines were a liability.
After Lady Carise hinted that she would write off the Amaxines as a First Order asset, Hadrassian pleaded for Lady Carise to allow her to kill Leia Organa in order to avenge her warriors. Lady Carise then criticized Hadrassian for taking the conflict personally. As a political player, Lady Carise preferred to assassinate Organa's character and to sow discord within the Populist faction. Before ending the conversation, Hadrassian warned Lady Carise that she would have a greater need of soldiers someday and that she would regret abandoning the Amaxines.
Despite their falling out, Lady Carise would find a new opportunity to exploit Arliz Hadrassian's services. When Casterfo unexpectedly defended Leia during a Senate hearing into Rinnrivin's cartel and the Amaxine Warriors, Lady Carise decided to eliminate the dissident senator. She hired Hadrassian to assassinate the Populist senator Tai-Lin Garr, Leia's friend and the new Populist candidate for First Senator. Hadrassian shot Tai-Lin in the heart before shooting herself in the head with a blaster. Prior to committing suicide, she told Leia that she should be fortunate that Hadrassian was thinking strategically.
With the Senate in mourning, Lady Carise then fabricated evidence presenting Casterfo as Hadrassian's financier and close friend. With Hadrassian linked by Leia's investigation to the Napkin Bombing and Rinnrivin's rise, Casterfo was implicated and deported to his homeworld of Riosa for imprisonment, trial, and sentencing, while those within the Centrists that had been supporting the Amaxines began preparing the groundwork for a mass secession of the star systems represented inside their faction, allowing the First Order to emerge from hiding. Lady Carise's elation was however short-lived because Leia determined her role in Casterfo's frame-up and convinced the Elder Houses to strip Carise of all her royal titles in retaliation for the fate that had befallen Casterfo. Sensing that other threats to the New Republic existed, Leia formed a paramilitary group called the Resistance.
Arliz Hadrassian was a sixty-year-old woman, advanced in years, with long hair that was a mix of wiry black and silver streaks. She possessed a thin and angular physique, marked by small, pale scars on her forehead, left cheek, and throat. Her eyes were known to be dark. Throughout her life, Hadrassian remained a steadfast Imperial loyalist and admirer, harboring a deep disdain for the New Republic, which she referred to in derogatory terms. Due to her unwavering loyalty, she was assigned to the Imperial Security Bureau during the Age of the Empire. Viewing the New Republic as an illegitimate government, Hadrassian and other like-minded former Imperials established a paramilitary organization known as the Amaxine Warriors, with financial and material support from the First Order and its intermediaries, including Lady Carise.
She dedicated a significant portion of her adult life to transforming the Amaxine Warriors into a formidable and well-equipped militia capable of challenging the New Republic, claiming to have struggled, hoped, and dreamed for years to build the paramilitary organization. As a military figure, Hadrassian had little patience for political intrigue. Her relationship with her financier, Lady Carise, was strained due to the latter's reluctance to resort to violence and secede from the New Republic, which Hadrassian considered "weak and sniveling." Lady Carise found Hadrassian difficult to manage due to the latter's penchant for violence and destruction, as exemplified by the Napkin Bombing.
Hadrassian held her brother, who served as an Imperial Royal Guard during the final years of the Old Empire, in high regard. She kept his helmet as a memento. Hadrassian was also idealistic and trusting, which allowed Ransolm Casterfo to gain her confidence by posing as an Imperial sympathizer. She mistakenly believed that Casterfo was a genuine convert who would support the First Order. Later, Hadrassian viewed the destruction of the Amaxines as a personal setback and sought to kill Senator Organa in an act of revenge for the warriors who had perished in the destruction of their headquarters at Sibensko. In an attempt to eliminate Hadrassian, Lady Carise convinced her to assassinate Tai-Lin Garr and then take her own life, with Hadrassian's last words being a remark that Leia Organa was fortunate that she was thinking strategically.
Arliz Hadrassian, as a former Imperial officer, possessed proficiency with weapons such as blasters and Force pikes, and she was capable of piloting a starfighter. She demonstrated the ability to lead an army of Amaxine Warriors.