Q'Anilia

Q'Anilia was born an orphan on the planet of Alpheridies, belonging to the Force-sensitive Miraluka species. As with all Miraluka, Q'Anilia was born without eyes, relying on Force sight to perceive the world. However, Q'Anilia possessed exceptional precognitive abilities, setting her apart from most Miraluka. She demonstrated an extraordinary talent for seeing the future through the Force. In 3993 BBY, when Q'Anilia was a young girl, the newly established Culu Memorial Center on Alpheridies suggested that she be sent to Jedi Master Krynda Draay on Coruscant. Draay, who was herself half-Miraluka, was a renowned Jedi Seer who had isolated herself from Jedi affairs for several years due to her sorrow over the death of her husband, Barrison Draay, during the Great Sith War in 3996 BBY.

Upon Q'Anilia's arrival at the opulent Draay Estate on Coruscant, she was greeted by Haazen, the family's servant. Using her precognitive abilities, Q'Anilia predicted that Draay would request to see her. Haazen proceeded to inform Draay of Q'Anilia's presence. Still grieving her husband's death, Draay initially intended to send her away. However, sensing something remarkable in Q'Anilia, she instructed Haazen to bring her in. When Haazen informed her that Q'Anilia was already present, having known that Draay would summon her, the Jedi Master realized she had encountered someone exceptional. Q'Anilia became Draay's first and most promising student, studying alongside a growing group of young seers.

Q'Anilia's circle eventually included Raana Tey, a Togruta from Shili, Xamar, a Khil, and Feln, a Feeorin warlord. By 3983 BBY, Draay had begun to believe that this group was the one she had foreseen, destined to prevent the impending return of the Sith. Together, Q'Anilia and her companions formed the First WatchCircle of the Jedi Covenant, a secret organization within the Jedi Order led by Draay, dedicated to watching for the Sith. They were also assigned a Hand, a non-Seer Jedi responsible for providing practical support and protection, a role held by Lucien Draay, Krynda's often-overlooked son. Q'Anilia soon developed a close relationship with Lucien, who once took her to a party hosted by Arkoh Adasca, a family friend.

As newly appointed Jedi Masters, Q'Anilia and her circle embarked on their journeys, utilizing the Draays' influence and resources to remain together across various assignments. Eventually, the five Masters of the First WatchCircle were stationed at the Jedi Tower on Taris in the Outer Rim, where they each mentored Padawan learners. Q'Anilia chose Shad Jelavan, a talented young native of Taris, as her apprentice, developing a strong affection for him.

By 3964 BBY, the First WatchCircle's Padawans were nearing the completion of their training, while the Mandalorian Wars raged in the Outer Rim between the Republic and the Mandalorian warrior clans. Although the Jedi Order officially remained neutral, a group of Jedi advocated for joining the war and visited Taris to recruit members on their way to the front lines. Shortly after a meeting with these crusaders, Q'Anilia experienced a disturbing premonition. Although she didn't receive a clear understanding of it, she sensed that boundaries had been crossed nearby and that something negative was imminent.

Soon after, the Masters took their apprentices off-world for their final Padawan trials: a blind traverse of Taris' rogue moon, an unusual planetoid that orbited in the opposite direction of the other debris in the Taris system and was constantly bombarded by meteorites. While awaiting their Padawans' arrival at their cliffside location, the First WatchCircle meditated under the protection of deflector shields. Suddenly, the seers were struck by a traumatic shared vision: a premonition of their deaths amidst the destruction of the Republic and the Jedi Order.

Q'Anilia saw herself on Coruscant, running through the Draay Estate among dozens of deceased Jedi, attempting to protect Lady Krynda, only to find her already dead. Although the specifics of each vision varied, they all shared a common element: the appearance of a sinister figure in a red enviro-suit, similar to those worn by the Padawans during the rogue moon trial. Q'Anilia immediately interpreted the vision as a sign of the Sith's return, and several other Masters wanted to act quickly and kill their Padawans to prevent the prophecy. However, Xamar intervened, refusing to act without approval from Covenant leadership on Coruscant.

Unable to act without full support, Draay agreed, and the group returned to Taris as if nothing had happened. Following their nightmare on the rogue moon, Q'Anilia and the other Masters secluded themselves in the Jedi Tower for days, devising a cover story for the impending murders: The Covenant would announce that Jelavan was not Knighted due to his headstrong nature, leading him to kill the other students before being stopped. In the meantime, Draay contacted Coruscant and later informed the WatchCircle that he had received permission to kill their apprentices. When they emerged from their chambers, they announced their decision regarding who would become a Jedi, and organized a banquet and Knighting ceremony that would serve as the setting for a massacre.

However, at the banquet, an apparently insignificant series of events disrupted the Covenant's plans. While traveling to the Tower, Lucien's Padawan, the clumsy Human Zayne Carrick, unsuccessfully pursued Marn Hierogryph, a small-time Snivvian criminal, ultimately arriving at the banquet by crashing through a window and into a caterer's table. Carrick was instructed to compensate the caterer for the damage, and while negotiating with the Besalisk, he noticed Hierogryph in the courtyard below. Carrick gave chase and eventually apprehended the Snivvian, but in doing so, he arrived late for the ceremony.

The Masters had anticipated Carrick's usual tardiness, but while they waited, Shad Jelavan noticed something was wrong. Lucien Draay possessed his lightsaber, suggesting that Carrick would be Knighted. Although initially delighted that his friend was receiving the honor, Jelavan grew skeptical, as Carrick had finished last in every test and trial. When Jelavan's inquiries were met with insincere lies, he directly confronted the Masters, forcing their hand.

The First WatchCircle acted ahead of schedule, with Q'Anilia killing her apprentice, Jelavan. Upon Carrick's arrival, he discovered his friends dead at their Masters' feet. The First WatchCircle pursued Carrick as he attempted to escape, leading to a speeder chase through the Tarisian airways, although Q'Anilia remained at the Tower. Carrick and Hierogryph, who was still cuffed in Carrick's speeder, escaped to the Lower City through a restaurant's trash chute, and Q'Anilia coordinated with Constable Noana Sowrs to transform the search for Carrick into a planet-wide manhunt.

That night, the First WatchCircle secluded themselves in their chambers to meditate and attempt to foresee Carrick's path. Together, they glimpsed that he was heading toward the desolate, rakghoul-infested wasteland known as the Undercity, and they prepared to move. However, Q'Anilia and her colleagues were deceived by one of Hierogryph's tricks. The Snivvian left a trail leading to the entrance of the Undercity and then fled elsewhere, leading the Jedi Masters into the depths of Taris. Q'Anilia, Draay, and Tey had to fight their way through dozens of rakghouls and Gamorrean slavers, but found no trace of their target. Along the way, however, Q'Anilia divined one thing: Hierogryph would abandon Carrick to them.

With that hope in mind, they returned to the Lower City after Xamar received reports of new sightings near refugee camps outside the Machineville neighborhood. Working with Constable Sowrs, the WatchCircle tracked the fugitives to the desolate dump known as Junk Junction, and Q'Anilia, Feln, and Tey dropped in to pursue and apprehend them. However, with the assistance of two Arkanian Offshoots, Jarael and Gorman "Camper" Vandrayk, Carrick and Hierogryph managed to escape again in a hidden junk-hauler called The Last Resort.

After several twists and close calls, Carrick surprisingly surrendered to Valius Ying, a bounty hunter, after hiding in the Taris system's asteroid belt for days. Ying delivered Carrick to the Jedi Tower, where Q'Anilia quickly realized that Hierogryph and his companions were still alive, but as she had foreseen, the Snivvian had seemingly abandoned him. Draay murdered Ying, who had witnessed too much, and the rest of the WatchCircle prepared to kill Carrick as well. However, at the last moment, the Tower shook. Carrick's friends had returned to rescue him, firing blasters from The Last Resort while Jarael, wielding Carrick's lightsaber, burst onto the scene and spirited him away.

With the Jedi publicly humiliated by Carrick's escape, Taris descended into anarchy in the coming weeks. As riots began to reach the Middle City, word arrived that the Taris Jedi Masters were being recalled to Coruscant. As the First WatchCircle prepared to raise stakes, they received a holo-message from Carrick, who had become one of the Republic's most wanted men. Carrick vowed to hunt down the Masters one by one, promising that the one who cleared his name would be spared.

Upon returning to Coruscant, Q'Anilia and her companions first visited the Draay Estate to seek guidance from Lady Krynda. However, they found the estate's doors locked, as Krynda was not receiving visitors. Their next destination was the Jedi Temple, where they had been summoned before the Jedi Council. There, they received shocking news: they were being reassigned to separate postings. In that moment, Q'Anilia foresaw only more hardship ahead.

Her feeling was accurate, as the search for Zayne Carrick continued amidst the escalation of the Mandalorian Wars. Mandalore the Ultimate, the Mandalorian war chief, interpreted the massacre and the subsequent departure of the Jedi as his signal to launch a full-scale invasion of the Republic, with his initial assault targeting Taris. His onslaught devastated numerous Outer Rim worlds, including his nuclear annihilation of Serroco, an act so destructive that Q'Anilia felt it through the Force during a mission to a distant ice planet. To Q'Anilia, the feeling was akin to a vision beginning to materialize.

Soon, the hunt for Carrick began to claim Covenant lives. Raana Tey was the first to fall, perishing in the destruction of the Jedi Tower during the Mandalorian siege of Taris. Q'Anilia sensed her death during a private moment with Lucien, but was more disturbed by something else she had seen: in the process of his confrontation with Tey, Carrick had learned Krynda Draay's name. Q'Anilia continued to catch glimpses of Carrick's travels throughout the galaxy. During Tey's memorial at the Draay Estate, Q'Anilia and the remaining members of the First WatchCircle experienced another shared vision, this time of an apocalypse of rakghouls led by the Sith Lord Karness Muur.

Carrick was present in the vision, along with several figures whom Q'Anilia had never encountered before. Q'Anilia recognized the vision as being related to the Muur Talisman, an ancient Sith artifact that the Covenant had long pursued. They had reason to believe the Talisman was on Taris, where Carrick was last seen. Fearing that Carrick could find and use the Talisman for nefarious purposes, the Covenant dispatched Celeste Morne, one of its covert agents, to locate the artifact.

Morne found the Talisman and Carrick, but the meeting only led to more destruction, as they inadvertently contributed to the destruction of a massive Mandalorian army on Jebble. Morne disappeared during the incident, leading the Covenant to incorrectly believe that Carrick had murdered her on Jebble. Carrick's travels next took him to Odryn, Feln's home planet, where he discovered evidence of the Jedi Covenant's secret storeroom of Sith artifacts. Feln encountered him there, and the ensuing clash between Carrick and Feln resulted in Feln's own people turning on and killing him.

With the First WatchCircle now halved, Q'Anilia was despondent over the deaths and had become reliant on sedatives. She had also not seen Krynda in months, as no one had heard directly from the Covenant's leader since before the massacre, and Q'Anilia was desperate to see the woman she admired. However, Lucien, more concerned with the possibility that Carrick would present evidence of the Covenant's subterfuge to the Jedi Council, responded to her coldly. Instead, he instructed Xamar to collaborate with the Republic Navy to prepare for Carrick's arrival on Coruscant, which gave Q'Anilia pause. Knowing that Xamar had foreseen his own death with the Republic Navy during the rogue moon vision, she begged him not to go, but he refused, stating that he would find another option.

That alternative, as it turned out, was Xamar confessing everything to the Jedi Council in exchange for full immunity for Krynda and a role in the Lady Draay's extraction from her mysterious seclusion in the Draay Estate. Q'Anilia was not involved in Xamar's plan, and when Xamar arrived at the Draay Estate with Carrick, who was pretending to be under the dark influence of the Muur Talisman, and Marn Hierogryph in tow, Q'Anilia felt justified in participating in the massacre. Xamar intended to draw Krynda out by demanding she see Carrick, but his plan failed when Haazen, the Draay family retainer, refused to allow the meeting to occur. When Haazen revealed Carrick's Muur Talisman as a fake, all hell broke loose.

Xamar slipped away from the hall and signaled a massive Jedi raid of the Draay Estate, abandoning his plan to get Krynda out first. Meanwhile, Haazen launched his counterattack, revealing that he had been preparing for this moment for years. Haazen initiated a contingency plan known as Vindication, which amounted to a full-scale insurrection within the Jedi Order aimed at the Covenant seizing control with Haazen at the helm. He also revealed that he had taken control of the Republic fleet orbiting overhead and triggered a salvo that decimated the raiding Jedi force, including Xamar, who lost his life in the blasts. Q'Anilia was briefly knocked unconscious by falling rubble and awoke to find a raging conflict between Lucien, Carrick, and Haazen. Amidst the chaos, Q'Anilia got up and rushed off to find and protect Krynda, striking down several of Haazen's men guarding the Jedi Master. However, when she reached Krynda's chambers, she found her seemingly lifeless, locked inside a glass casket.

Q'Anilia learned that Krynda had suffered a stroke months before, and the Miraluka could no longer sense the Lady Draay's mind. Devastated by the loss of her mother figure, Q'Anilia resolved to be with Krynda once again and drank a cup of poison. Q'Anilia was soon joined in Krynda's bedchamber by Marn Hierogryph, who had followed the Jedi Master upstairs. Although Q'Anilia blamed the chaos on Carrick, Hierogryph revealed his belief that he might have been the dark figure in the prophecy, as he had been involved in the deaths of all the other members of the First WatchCircle and had once briefly worn the infamous red enviro-suit seen in the vision. Hierogryph also dropped another bombshell on Q'Anilia: Carrick's "he who confesses, lives" prophecy was actually authored by Hierogryph as a diversion to keep the Covenant off their backs. Her worldview shattered by Hierogryph's revelations, Q'Anilia lay down on Lady Draay's bed and died.

Q'Anilia, a woman of contemplation and logic, held the Jedi Covenant's objective as her foremost priority, steadfastly preventing personal connections from clouding her judgment when faced with difficult choices. As an example, despite having deep affection for her apprentice, Shad Jelavan, she unhesitatingly ended his life when she deemed it necessary for the mission's sake. However, Q'Anilia possessed emotions, evident in her conspicuous weeping at the banquet preceding the massacre. Q'Anilia displayed exceptional loyalty towards Krynda Draay, with her counsel to Lucien generally reflecting opinions she believed his mother would endorse—a stance Lucien did not always appreciate. This disagreement occasionally complicated the intense, almost romantic bond between Q'Anilia and Lucien, which persisted until her demise.

Q'Anilia was the first student of Krynda, and she consistently believed that she held a special place in Krynda's affections, even more so than Lucien, Krynda's own son. From a young age, Q'Anilia possessed unwavering confidence in her ability to foresee future events, a quality that initially captivated Krynda. In the months following the Padawan Massacre, Q'Anilia's mental and emotional health deteriorated significantly as the foundations of her life began to crumble. Overwhelmed by the loss of her friends and Krynda's mysterious withdrawal, the Miraluka became reliant on tranquilizers.

Xamar attributed Q'Anilia's decline partly to Lucien's detachment, asserting that he had "destroyed" her. Simultaneously, her faith in the Covenant began to waver as she questioned her involvement in the Padawan Massacre. The breaking point occurred during Haazen's rebellion, when Q'Anilia discovered Krynda seemingly dead. Unable to persevere without her maternal figure and idol, and having lost virtually everyone and everything dear to her, Q'Anilia could no longer endure and took her own life.

Endowed with the Force sight characteristic of her Miraluka heritage, Q'Anilia demonstrated remarkable precognitive abilities from an early age. Q'Anilia's precognitions manifested in various forms: sometimes as complete, immersive visions, and other times as fleeting glimpses of emotions, thoughts, or spoken words. Interpretation was always required, and Q'Anilia demonstrated, on more than one occasion, that she wasn't particularly skilled at accurately discerning their meaning.

Q'Anilia's precognitive visions would strike without warning and could be incapacitating, often necessitating physical support. Despite her lack of physical sight, Q'Anilia was a proficient lightsaber combatant—although not a match for Lucien Draay—and wielded a green lightsaber. She was also capable of operating a speeder, relying solely on Force sight—indeed, her colleagues in the First WatchCircle frequently relied on her to drive them.

The character Q'Anilia made her debut in Knights of the Old Republic 1, the inaugural issue of the Knights of the Old Republic comic book series, penned by John Jackson Miller and released in 2006. Despite Q'Anilia's depiction as a member of the eyeless Miraluka species, Miller humorously included a scene of her driving a speeder in one issue. During her tenure in Knights of the Old Republic, Q'Anilia was brought to life by five different artists: Brian Ching, Travel Foreman, Dustin Weaver, Scott Hepburn, and Bong Dazo.