Krynda Draay, originally known as Krynda Hulis, was a Near-Human female Jedi Master who lived during the Old Republic era, before the pre-Ruusan period. Born to a Human mother and the Miraluka Jedi Master Noab Hulis, she was trained by Vodo-Siosk Baas and achieved the rank of Sage Master. She later married a fellow Jedi, Barrison Draay, and they had a son named Lucien.
After the events of the Great Sith War, she departed from the Jedi Order, but eventually dedicated three decades to instructing Jedi without the oversight of the Jedi Council. She established the Jedi Covenant, a secret group of Jedi with the goal of preventing the Sith's return at all costs. However, her activities were revealed to the Jedi Council by a member from one of the Covenant's WatchCircles, who aimed to stop the consequences of the Padawan Massacre that occurred on Taris.
Krynda Draay, a Force-sensitive Near-Human female, possessed a lineage that included both Human and Miraluka ancestry. Due to her Miraluka heritage, Krynda was born with both typical Human eyesight and the ability of Force sight. Initially, Krynda was among the Padawans under the instruction of Jedi Master Arca Jeth. During her Padawan years, Krynda encountered both Barrison Draay and Haazen, eventually falling in love with Barrison. However, she remained unaware of Haazen's affections for her. Master Jeth eventually elevated both Krynda and Barrison to the rank of Jedi Knight. Haazen, however, was not knighted due to his deficiencies in perception. Following her knighting, Krynda continued her studies of the Force under the guidance of Jedi Master Vodo-Siosk Baas and was trained as a Jedi Consular.
In time, Krynda achieved the rank of Jedi Master. She married Barrison and became pregnant; as a result, her focus shifted away from galactic events, and she failed to recognize the growing influence of the Sith within a fellow Padawan of Master Baas, named Exar Kun. On the very day that Ulic Qel-Droma first encountered the dark side of the Force during the Beast Wars, she gave birth to her son, Lucien Draay.
During the conflict known as the Great Sith War, a war she was unable to participate in due to the complications of Lucien's birth, she witnessed the deaths of her former Jedi instructors, her half-sister, and her husband. Barrison died in an ambush orchestrated by the Sith Minion Dossa and Haazen himself, who harbored long-standing envy towards Barrison. For years, she blamed herself for these tragedies and lived in seclusion on Coruscant, spending her days in grief and shame at the Draay Estate, though she still received assistance from a now-disfigured Haazen. She took him in after the war so he could continue his family's service to the Draays. Krynda refused all contact with the Jedi Order, who hoped she would return to active duty as a seer. Even though her son was an only child and grew up without a father, Krynda was distant from Lucien, leaving his upbringing primarily to the household droid 9BD and Haazen.
Around the year 3993 BBY, Haazen brought a young Miraluka girl named Q'Anilia to the Draay Estate. Krynda sensed something unique within the child and agreed to become her mentor. Re-engaging with the Jedi Order, she initiated a clandestine organization, the Jedi Covenant, with the intention of preventing the Sith from ever returning to the galaxy.
To achieve this aim, Krynda sought to train the most skilled Consulars within the Order, hoping they would be capable of identifying the shatterpoint that would signal the next emergence of the Sith. The Covenant would then take any action necessary to stamp it out immediately. Several WatchCircles were established, some even utilizing Jedi foresight for investment purposes, funneling power to the Draay Trust, which would then exert influence on behalf of the Covenant within both the Republic and the Jedi Order. They also utilized Covenant Shadows to seek out and eliminate dangerous Sith artifacts. However, this objective evolved into an obsession, blinding Krynda to the rise of the dark side through other avenues until it was too late.
During the training of the Jedi Covenant members, Krynda's relationship with Lucien deteriorated. Because Lucien inherited his father's traits rather than his mother's, Krynda entrusted his training to Haazen instead of instructing him herself, leading her to treat Q'Anilia more like a daughter than Lucien. When he voiced his objections, she angrily retorted that if her father's blood was stronger, she would've gladly given him second sight.
In 3988 BBY, Krynda foresaw the arrival of the most powerful seers her secret group would ever train: the WatchCircle, which would foresee the return of the Sith. Eventually, she would encounter these students.
In addition to the four seers she had selected, her own son, Lucien, was chosen to be the Hand, a position suggested by Haazen, responsible for managing arrangements and providing protection for the Consulars. Together, these five Jedi comprised the "First WatchCircle." They were dispatched to Taris to locate the Muur Talisman, operating under the guise of running a school for their Padawans.
Haazen, who played a significant role in establishing the Covenant, regularly provided reports to her. Many of his reports included a Sith text on Chandrila, which was disposed of by a Shadow, and the discovery of a flaw in the Vanjervalis Chain that they had "obtained."
By 3964 BBY, Krynda was serving as an "associate" and advisor to the First WatchCircle, who were stationed together as Jedi Masters at the Jedi Temple on Taris, secretly attempting to recover the Muur Talisman, a Sith artifact of immense power.
During a joint meditation on the rogue moon, the WatchCircle envisioned the destruction of the Jedi Order and the rise of the Sith. The Dark Lord they saw in their vision resembled their own Padawans, wearing a red environment suit, leading them to believe that one of them would fall to the dark side. Master Raana Tey suggested killing them all immediately, while Xamar and Q'Anilia insisted on consulting Krynda for her evaluation. Upon hearing about the vision, Krynda instructed Lucien to bring his Padawans to the Draay Estate on Coruscant for evaluation and to understand the vision's meaning. However, that same night, Krynda had a vision of the First WatchCircle executing their Padawans. Desperate to warn Lucien and prevent the massacre, Krynda suffered a stroke, leaving her unable to move. Subsequently, Haazen imprisoned her in a crystal oubliette to keep her alive in stasis, where she experienced the Padawan massacre repeatedly. Krynda barely endured the torment with the desperate hope that her son would never commit murder. However, Lucien lied to his WatchCircle about his mother's position on the execution, and arranged for the five students to meet their end at their knighting ceremony.
After Padawan Zayne Carrick escaped the Masters' grasp, the Taris security force joined the pursuit, labeling Zayne as a wanted criminal. His Master Lucien spoke to Haazen, who was outraged by his handling of the "Taris affair," and told him that he would not bring Zayne to them alive. He also explained to the other Masters that he had made contact with their associate on Coruscant, and argued that the intervention of civil authorities was expected to offer people a show of justice. Later, when Lucien and the other members of the Covenant went to visit Krynda on Coruscant, Haazen denied them entrance and would later not tell Lucien where Krynda had gone. However, weeks later Haazen told Lucien that she was upstairs in the Estate, though he could not feel her presence.
During the Mandalorian siege of Taris, the dying Raana Tey asked Zayne Carrick to tell Krynda that she was sorry. She was offered salvation by Carrick, whom she had attempted to kill, supposedly making her question the rightfulness of the actions of the WatchCircle. A statue and memorial was constructed outside the Draay Estate in honor of the fallen Togruta, though it appears that Krynda did not attend the memorial service.
Before being put in stasis, Covenant agent Celeste Morne asked Zayne to find Krynda and tell her what had really happened to his friends, believing she would never allow something like that to happen. Zayne then became determined to find Krynda and put an end to the Covenant.
Zayne journeyed to Odryn, where, after a hectic confrontation with Feln, he found proof of the Covenant actions: a collection of Sith artifacts that the Covenant was studying.
Zayne also sent two of his friends, Shel Jelavan and Alek Squinquargesimus, to Coruscant to meet with Masters Vandar Tokare and Vrook Lamar. They told the Councilors that Raana Tey had said Krynda was the figure behind the Covenant before dying and that Zayne was coming to them with proof. Vrook, however, knew that there were many Jedi loyal to Krynda, and worried that if Krynda was accused, the Order would be torn apart.
Realizing that Lucien lied about Krynda authorizing the Padawan massacre, Xamar later confessed everything to the Council. His reason was to ensure that Krynda would be given full immunity. Thus, as part of the Council's plan, Xamar brought Zayne and Gryph, the former disguised as a Sith, to the Draay Estate. They hoped that Zayne's presence would draw her from her chamber to examine him. However, Haazen claimed that Krynda was meditating with Circle Culu and could not be disturbed.
Just as Knights loyal to the Council raided the estate, Haazen surprised and horrified them all when he revealed himself as a servant to the Sith. In truth, he had subverted Krynda as the leader of the Jedi Covenant, pitting the Jedi Order against itself—the true Jedi loyal to the Council vs. the deceived Jedi of the Covenant acting in Krynda's name. Haazen wanted to dominate the Jedi Order, planning on eliminating the Jedi High Council and replacing them with a puppet emergency Council, using the Draay family name to accomplish this.
When Haazen hacked the systems of the Republic ships in the Vanjervalis Chain and had them bombard the Estate, Q'Anilia rushed into Krynda's room, so that she might aid them against Haazen. However, the oubliette in which she was imprisoned shielded her from the Living Force, leading Q'Anilia to believe her dead, and she thus took her own life by poisoning herself, fulfilling the Rogue Moon prophecy. Gryph realized that Krynda was only in stasis, and removed her from the pod by breaking it open. Gryph helped her into the courtyard, where she confronted Lucien over the murders of the Padawans, revealing all that had transpired since his WatchCircle first informed her of their vision. The only thought that got her through it all was that Lucien would never be capable of doing something like that; but he did, as she was found dead in the prophecy and he could not allow that to happen.
Heartbroken over her son's confession, Krynda wailed that no mission was worth the lives of younglings, and asked Lucien, who had led him to believe that murdering the Padawans was the right thing to do. She was horrified when Lucien said she had, and that he had done it to carry out her mission—by any means necessary. Realizing that her teachings had led her son to murder his students, Krynda claimed that she had been wrong the entire time. In her last moments, she told Lucien to accept his mistakes and face the future with humility. She died in her son's arms soon after. Consumed by rage, Lucien attacked Gryph, only to be interrupted by Zayne Carrick, whom Lucien began to duel.
Before the Great Sith War, Krynda possessed a cheerful and optimistic disposition. However, the deaths of her husband, Barrison, sister, and Jedi Master Vodo-Siosk Baas plunged her into a state of depression and self-pity for failing to prevent the rise of the Sith, causing her to emotionally distance herself from others, including her own son. As she began training new Jedi seers, Krynda dedicated herself to doing whatever it took to prevent the Sith's return, leading to the establishment of the Jedi Covenant.
However, her fixation on the Sith obscured the fact that Haazen was responsible for Barrison's murder, and her dependence on him for the Covenant's operations and Lucien's training allowed him to gradually seize control of the organization from her.
Despite Krynda's extreme methods, she deeply opposed the pre-emptive murder of children, believing that the Covenant's mission was not worth such a sacrifice. Upon discovering that Lucien had ordered the Padawan massacre based on the misguided belief that he was preventing her fate, Krynda realized in her final moments that her teachings had been flawed.