A male Sith Lord, known as Darth Drear, potentially of Human or Sith pureblood lineage, served the Sith Empire after its reformation circa 4645 BBY. On the planet of Odacer-Faustin, he established a Sith academy, where he drove his apprentices to their demise while they toiled constructing the academy itself. Drear also constructed a temple beneath the academy's library, where he delved into Sith alchemy, seeking immortality. To this end, he concocted an elixir that, in effect, created a disease transforming those infected into zombies, a secret he preserved within a holocron. However, before Drear could complete his project's final phase, he succumbed to the very disease he created and met his end.
Around 4645 BBY, a male individual of either Human or Sith pureblood heritage, known as Darth Drear, held the position of Sith Lord within the reconstituted Sith Empire. On the snow-covered planet Odacer-Faustin, he established a Sith academy. Drear utilized the initial Sith students at his academy as a workforce, assigning them the task of building rooms and passages utilizing only the Force. For many of the apprentices, moving tons of ice and snow proved to be too strenuous, but Drear ensured they continued working until they were killed by exhaustion. Once the construction was finished, the Sith Lord filled the chambers with his personal collection of "specimens."
Drear was also involved in construction, personally creating a concealed Sith temple situated beneath the academy's library. Within this secluded stronghold, its walls etched with his strategies for the destruction of the Jedi Order, he conducted experiments in Sith alchemy. Over time, he sought to discover a method of achieving immortality and employed the rare Murakami orchid to formulate a substance that would aid him in reaching his objective. Drear's endeavors resulted in an elixir that, upon consumption, would shut down the body before reviving it as a murderous zombie. However, the path to eternal life could only be completed by consuming the still-beating heart of a powerful Force-sensitive; the midi-chlorians present in the blood of the heart were sufficient to halt the decaying process induced by the elixir and prevent the user from degenerating into a mindless, undead creature. Drear preserved the knowledge of the formula within a Sith holocron before proceeding to finalize his plans and elude death.
The Sith Lord dispatched subordinates to abduct a Jedi from a nearby world and prepared to utilize the Force-user in the final stage of the process. Furthermore, Drear had a sword crafted specifically for the procedure of extracting the Jedi's heart. When the moment arrived, Drear ingested the elixir, but his plans for immortality were thwarted upon the realization that the captured Jedi possessed an insufficient midi-chlorian count to sustain the Sith Lord. Denied his triumph, Drear succumbed to the disease he had engineered to grant eternal life.
Even though Drear perished, the knowledge of his elixir was not lost. Securely stored within his holocron, the formula remained hidden until the Sith Lord Darth Scabrous discovered the holocron and its contents around 3645 BBY, during his time as headmaster of Drear's academy. Scabrous aimed to succeed where Drear had failed, but his experimentation with the elixir ultimately leaked out, transforming the entire faculty and student body of the Odacer-Faustin academy into zombies. Despite his persistence, Scabrous's own attempt at immortality ended in failure when he was killed by Jedi Hestizo Trace in the final stage of the process. Thousands of years later, the Galactic Empire replicated Drear's elixir as a bioweapon, which infected the entire crew of the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Vector.
As the founder of the Odacer-Faustin academy, Drear used his initial students as a construction crew and forced them to work on building the academy's structures. The stress caused by repeatedly moving snow and ice with the Force exhausted the acolytes, but Drear continued to push them until many died from exhaustion. While he relied on student labor for most of the construction, the Sith Lord personally built a secret temple for himself beneath the academy library, where he practiced ancient Sith ritual ceremonies. It was in the Sith temple that Drear experimented with ways to achieve immortality, eventually developing a successful formula. However, his quest for eternal life ultimately led to his demise, as he was unable to complete the process before the elixir's effects overwhelmed him.
Drear practiced the rites of Sith alchemy within his subterranean temple, which were stored in a Sith holocron. His alchemical practices, which he also stored in the holocron, led him to create an elixir that would allow him to cheat death, had he not died during the final stage of the experiment. Drear possessed a Sith sword, specifically crafted for use in his pursuit of immortality.
Darth Drear was first mentioned in Joe Schreiber's 2010 novel, Red Harvest.