Darra Thel-Tanis, who was also known as Darra Haariden, was a Human female Jedi Padawan. She studied under the tutelage of Master Soara Antana as the Galactic Republic approached its end. Back in 27 BBY, she, along with her master, joined a group of Jedi which included Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Padawan Anakin Skywalker (who was the same age as her), Siri Tachi and Ferus Olin, and Ry-Gaul and Tru Veld. They were sent to the planet Radnor because some dangerous toxins had been accidentally let loose into the atmosphere, causing a bioplague. The Jedi Council gave the Jedi instructions to assist in the evacuation of the remaining Radnorans from the Twin Cities of Tacto and Aubendo.
Thel-Tanis, a female of the Human species, was brought to the Jedi Temple on the world of Coruscant because she exhibited Force-sensitive abilities. It was there that she would receive instruction to become a Jedi Knight. Around 27 BBY, Soara Antana, a Jedi Master renowned for her skill wielding a lightsaber, chose her as her apprentice.
Darra went with Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi on missions to planets like Radnor (which was her first mission) and Haariden alongside her Master. During the mission to Haariden, Thel-Tanis sustained a serious injury when she was hit in the thigh by a blaster shot. She became friends with Skywalker while she was healing. Before 24 BBY, she and Skywalker were dispatched on a mission to Norah, where she was wounded once more.
She also participated in an escort mission to Nuralee in 24 BBY. The following year, Thel-Tanis and her Master joined Skywalker and Kenobi, as well as two other Jedi pairs (Siri Tachi with Ferus Olin and Ry-Gaul with Tru Veld), on a trip to Korriban to put a stop to Granta Omega and Jenna Zan Arbor. During this mission, the apprentices began to argue instead of working together as a result of the dark-side energies of the planet. The situation got worse when Ferus Olin offered to fix Tru Veld's lightsaber, which Anakin Skywalker had worked on before their departure from the Temple. Ferus's repairs, sadly, made the lightsaber drain power more quickly because he was unaware of Anakin's modifications to Tru's weapon. This made the encounter with Granta Omega extremely dangerous. Ferus noticed that Tru's lightsaber was malfunctioning and quickly switched weapons with him, but Granta Omega caught them off guard by sneaking around and attacking them from behind. Darra Thel-Tanis, seeing that Ferus was in danger, jumped in to defend him, determined to save her friend. However, when the faulty saber failed, Granta Omega's KYD-21 blaster bolt flew past Olin and struck Darra in the chest, killing her.
Soara Antana wept over her beloved apprentice as she gently untied the ribbon from Darra's Padawan braid. Her fellow Padawans were deeply saddened by Darra's death. Olin felt responsible for her death and left the Jedi Order as a result of his guilt, but not before solidifying his friendship with fellow Padawan Tru Veld.
Darra Thel-Tanis was described as a slim young woman with vibrant, rust-colored eyes and hair that was described as both auburn and a combination of bright copper and gold. She made a good impression on others because she was kind and polite, but she was also very happy, had a sharp and sarcastic sense of humor, and radiated a positive energy that could almost be felt when she was nearby. She also possessed "a cool grace" that Anakin Skywalker admired, and she was especially skilled at switching her Jedi weapons from her right hand to her left, which Jedi were required to do as part of their lightsaber training, and at not favoring one hand over the other.
Darra's lightsaber fighting style, which was graceful, fluid, constantly in motion, flawlessly planned and executed, and seemingly effortless, was a testament to the excellent training she received from Jedi Master Soara Antana. Darra's focus and discipline in combat were unmatched. She also developed her talent for communications, such as the ability to "jam" varied and complex signals—a sensitive gift at which she became an expert.
Darra, who was always a bright presence among the apprentices, seems to have changed, though, after her experience on Haariden, where she was hurt in battle. After that, her actions and demeanor were marked by a new maturity and a stronger sense of purpose. Anakin Skywalker thought she carried a sense of gravity with her trademark humor. She told Anakin that the incident on Haariden had brought death so close that she had made friends with it—a remark that was intended to be a joke, but one that was tinged with a seriousness that Skywalker struggled to accept. Anakin wanted the old, wisecracking Darra back, whose jokes were just jokes, not clues to her own suffering. Indeed, even Anakin's Master noticed as they traveled to their final mission together on Korriban that the customary exuberance that had danced in Darra's unusual, rust-colored eyes would frequently give way to a shadowy sadness.
Darra enjoyed wearing a piece of colorful fabric, or ribbon, in her Padawan braid.
The author Jude Watson created Darra Thel-Tanis, who made her debut in her young-readers book Jedi Quest: The Way of the Apprentice. She remained a significant character in the series and was killed off in the last book, Jedi Quest: The Final Showdown.
Darra's other last name, "Haariden," seems to be a writing mistake because it only appears once in the Jedi Quest books (whereas "Thel-Tanis" appears frequently), in conjunction with a mention in the very next sentences of the character being wounded on a mission—the same mission that her friend Anakin Skywalker says was the last time he had seen Darra for any length of time before they worked together on Coruscant to thwart a joint heist-assassination attempt by Omega and Zan Arbor. The name is not given any in-story justification or explanation as a surname for Darra. The fact that readers last interacted with Thel-Tanis on a mission with Skywalker to the planet also named Haariden, where she was also injured (a crucial incident involving Skywalker that served as a significant character-development point in both that earlier story and a subsequent tale), suggests that the surname Haariden was an early designation in Jude Watson's development of the story arc that became her eleven-book Jedi Quest series. In the three sentences that appear together in Jedi Quest: The False Peace—which mention Darra's alternate surname, her wound, and her mission—the planet where that mission with Anakin took place is named Norah, perhaps also an early discarded name, for, as with the alternate surname, it nowhere thereafter appears as a planet name in the corpus of Star Wars Legends. It seems that Watson simply renamed Darra "Thel-Tanis," swapping her original surname "Haariden" with the planet where she was ultimately wounded on her mission with Skywalker—with later drafts of the continuing storyline simply escaping the name changes, the original designations slipping their way into print. The final volume in the Jedi Quest series, The Final Showdown—sequel to The False Peace—poignantly references only Thel-Tanis' wound that she received on her mission to Haariden, with no mention of the supposed intervening planet, mission, wound or alternate surname. Nor does Watson, even in her capstone Last of the Jedi series, ever again mention the alternate nomenclature specific to Darra's character.