Saaj Calician, existing during the era of the Republic Dark Age, was a male Sith Lord of the Krevaaki species. He was originally in service to the Chagras Hegemony, a Sith domain within the Grumani sector ruled by the powerful Sith Lord Chagras. Following Chagras' death in 1040 BBY, the Krevaaki was designated as the protector of Chagras' twin children, Dromika and Quillan. In this capacity, Calician became the regent of the Dyarchy, a Sith territory based on the planet Byllura and governed by the twins. Over the subsequent years, Calician dedicated himself to reinforcing and expanding their territories. The twins remained confined to their quarters within the city of Hestobyll on Byllura, experiencing the external world entirely through their connection to the Force, with Calician acting as their primary link to the greater universe. As they matured, the twins increasingly utilized Dromika's Force persuasion abilities to exert direct control over Calician's mind, effectively transforming him into an extension of their will, devoid of independent thought.
By 1032 BBY, the Dyarchy had amassed sufficient power to challenge neighboring factions. Calician devised a plan to deploy a fleet of battleships with the intention of conquering worlds within the rival Daimanate territory. The arrival of a mercenary transport from the Daimanate on Byllura was interpreted by Calician as an indication of vulnerability along the Daimanate's borders, as he reasoned that the Daimanites would not have permitted a starship to depart their territory if it were adequately defended. Consequently, he ordered his fleet to mobilize. However, Kerra Holt, a Jedi Knight who was a passenger on the mercenary vessel, infiltrated Hestobyll and disrupted the Dyrachy's Celegian-based communications network. Calician confronted her and engaged in a duel, but was unable to overcome the Jedi. He then relented and offered to introduce her to Dromika and Quillan. Upon presenting her to the twins, Dromika attempted to use the Force to compel Calician to slay the Jedi. He resisted, desiring to confront Holt on his own terms. In the ensuing chaos, Holt abducted Quillan and escaped Byllura aboard the mercenary transport. Shortly thereafter, forces loyal to the twins' older sister, Arkadia Calimondra, landed on Byllura and executed Calician.
During the Republic Dark Age, there lived a Force-sensitive Krevaaki male named Saaj Calician. As a child, due to his high intelligence, Calician was mocked by other Krevaaki, who gave him the nickname "Celegian," referencing a species of sentient invertebrates that resembled floating brains. In his early years, Calician began to tap into the dark side of the Force, studying the ways of the Sith while serving the Chagras Hegemony, a state founded by the Sith Lord Chagras within the Grumani sector. Throughout his Sith training, Calician battled numerous Jedi Knights, Force-wielding adversaries of the Sith, and encountered actual Celegians for the first time during a visit to a colony on the planet Tramanos. He eventually rose to the rank of Sith Lord and, at some point, penned writings detailing the path to achieving peak Sith power.
Around 1041 BBY, Calician became acquainted with Chagras' five-year-old twin offspring, Dromika and Quillan. The Krevaaki realized that through them, he could amass significant power for himself. Quillan possessed a greater capacity to predict the future than any other Sith Calician had encountered, while Dromika demonstrated unparalleled skill in using the Force to control minds. He hoped to exploit their powers for his own benefit. Following Chagras' death in 1040 BBY, Calician assumed guardianship of the twins, and together they established the Dyarchy, a Sith territory centered on the planet Byllura, with Calician serving as their regent. The twins remained within The Loft, their private residence in the city of Hestobyll, perceiving the wider universe solely through the Force and referring to external entities as "aspects." Calician himself was regarded by the twins as their "regent-aspect," and he acted as their primary connection to the outside world. He attended to their every need and acquired nanny droids to care for them in his absence. Chagras' passing left the twins' grandmother, Vilia Calimondra, without a clear heir to her extensive holdings. She initiated a competition among her grandchildren to determine a worthy successor, which quickly escalated into open conflict among her descendants. The Dyarchy found itself in opposition to rival Sith states, and Calician aimed to fortify the twins' empire, making it strong enough to wage war against their adversaries.
Inspired by his childhood observations of telepathic communications between jornisae spiders on his homeworld, Calician resolved to create a telepathic transmission network on Byllura, granting himself and the twins complete control over the Dyarchy's inhabitants. Within days of becoming the twins' guardian, Calician captured a 200-year-old Force-sensitive Celegian, whom he named One, and brought him to The Loft. There, he tortured One, breaking the Celegian's mind and bypassing his judgment centers to turn him into a mindless servant incapable of independent thought. With this success, Calician enticed entire Celegian communities to settle on Byllura, utilizing their telepathic abilities to form a communication web. Sith adepts, known as Unifiers, were deployed to use the Force to suppress the minds of the Dyarchy's inhabitants and transmit messages to the web. Through One, Calician could coordinate Hestobyll's defenses and issue orders throughout the entire Bylluran communication network.
Over the following years, the Dyarchy experienced growth in population, manufacturing capabilities, and military strength under Calician's direction. However, as the twins grew older, they increasingly employed Dromika's mental powers to directly control Calician's mind. He frequently found himself absorbed into the communication web he had created, becoming a thoughtless extension of the twins' will. In 1037 BBY, he initiated the construction of the Dyarchy Fleet, a force of battleships to be secretly built beneath Hestobyll's reflecting pools. Around that time, he also engaged in hologram conversations with Daiman, the twins' cousin and leader of the neighboring Daimanate Sith state, finding Daiman unwilling to either ally with or engage in hostilities against the Dyarchy.
By 1032 BBY, fourteen vessels of the Dyarchy Fleet were complete, and Calician began planning to expand the Dyarchy's territories. Elsewhere in the Grumani sector, Daiman committed the majority of his military forces to the invasion of the Bactranate, a territory led by Lord Ayanos Bactra, which Vilia Calimondra had instructed her grandchildren to annex. The outlying Daimanite worlds bordering the Dyarchy were left undefended, and Calician believed that the firepower of his fleet would deter any Daimanite resistance, allowing the Dyarchy to conquer entire worlds without firing a shot. Amidst this chaos, the troop transport Diligence, operated by the mercenary unit Rusher's Brigade, rescued numerous refugee children and the Jedi Knight Kerra Holt from a battlefield on the Daimanite world Gazzari and headed towards Byllura, where the mercenaries hoped to be rid of their passengers. Quillan and Dromika sensed the vessel's approach through the Force and summoned Calician to instruct him to contact Byllura's defensive stations and report any foreign vessels near the world. Shortly after, Diligence arrived in the system, and Calician allowed the vessel to land and its occupants to disembark. He was excited by the ship's arrival, interpreting it as a sign that the time was right to strike against Daiman, as the Daimanite forces would not have allowed a ship to leave their territory if they had sufficient military strength near their border.
With the support of Dromika and Quillan, Calician ordered the Dyarchy Fleet to launch. However, Holt grew suspicious of the Dyarchy's intentions and ordered the refugees to re-board Diligence. Calician was concerned by their embarkation, fearing it might be a Daimanite trap, but before he could act, the twins summoned him back to The Loft. Holt departed to investigate the city, and Calician was informed of the Jedi's approach through his telepathic network. The twins viewed Holt as a threat and ordered the Krevaaki to protect them, then took direct control of his mind via the Force. Holt infiltrated The Loft and reached the chamber where One was held, persuading the aged Celegian to cease transmitting messages for the Dyarchy, disrupting the communications network. Under the twins' influence, Calician went to One's chamber and attacked Holt with six lightsaber-batons, which he spun from his tentacles. Driven by the twins, he threw himself at her in a nihilistic rage, nearly rupturing One's tank, which would have released a poisonous gas and killed both him and Holt. He regained some control, but Holt outmaneuvered him, singeing his facial tentacles and severing a limb from his middle carapace. He felt no pain, due to the twins' influence, and realized that Holt was too strong for him, as his dulled mind couldn't access his memories of fighting Jedi while being manipulated by Dromika. He ceased fighting and offered to take Holt to the twins, which she accepted.
Upon arriving in the twins' quarters, several nanny droids attacked Calician and Holt to defend the twins. However, Holt brushed them aside, and Calician introduced her to the twins. Using the Force, Dromika pinned Holt down and compelled Calician to strike the Jedi with his blade. Calician resisted, wanting to fight Holt alone, free from the twins' influence. While he and Dromika were briefly distracted, Holt broke free and severed one of Calician's leg tentacles. Before he could recover, Holt kidnapped Quillan and fled Byllura aboard Diligence. Meanwhile, the other Celegians on Byllura followed One's example, refusing to send telepathic messages, causing the telepathic network to collapse. This rebellion made it impossible to coordinate the Dyarchy's manufacturing efforts, leading to explosions in all major construction facilities, destroying most of the Dyarchy Fleet. Calician quickly rushed to The Loft's communications center and sent a transmission to Diligence to learn if Quillan was still alive. Shortly after, forces loyal to the twins' older sibling, Arkadia Calimondra, attacked Byllura and defeated the remaining Dyarchy forces. Arkadianite forces found Calician and executed him; according to a report received by the Bothan spy Narsk Ka'hane, Calician died quietly. Byllura fell, the Dyarchy was absorbed into Arkadia's territories, and guardianship of the twins passed to Vilia Calimondra.
As a child, Saaj Calician enjoyed committing violent acts and would blind jornisae spiders on his homeworld. From a young age, he hated Celegians after being mocked by other Krevaaki, and his dislike grew upon meeting them in person. He found them repulsive, believing they ignored their own ugliness yet expected others to ignore it as well. He also considered the Celegians foolish for not using their telepathic abilities to gain power and influence. He was intelligent and, in his youth, focused primarily on his ego. He pondered the outcome of the conflict between the Sith and the Galactic Republic, comparing himself to other Krevaaki and seeing himself as superior due to his power and independence. He also believed in the ancient Sith principle of self-glorification, considering that subjugation should lead to a single Sith ruling the galaxy, with subordinates acting as self-regulating components of their leader's consciousness.
While Calician initially cared for the twins only to gain power, he became dominated by them, sacrificing his ambitions to become a loyal servant, unquestioningly obeying their commands. However, his encounter with Kerra Holt made him realize he was merely a puppet to the twins, leading him to rebel against Dromika's attempts to use him to kill the Jedi. The hardships of life on Byllura caused him to age prematurely, though Dromika's presence restored his youthful vigor when he acted on her Force-influenced commands. As regent, Calician wore beige-colored robes to match The Loft's walls, avoiding overwhelming Quillan's visual stimuli. Calician had black eyes and a red, chitinous carapace.
Saaj Calician was an experienced fighter, but Dromika's Force influence dulled his memory of some combat skills. His preferred weapons were lightsaber-batons, miniaturized versions of the lightsaber. During his duel with Kerra Holt on Byllura, Dromika augmented his fighting abilities, allowing him to access skills he hadn't trained to use. He also knew how to use the Force to move objects, though he hadn't used this power in over a decade by 1,032 BBY.
Saaj Calician debuted in Star Wars in Knight Errant, a novel by John Jackson Miller published in January 2011 as a tie-in to the Star Wars: Knight Errant comic series. In the novel, Calician is one of the four main point-of-view characters, along with the Bothan spy Narsk Ka'hane, the Jedi protagonist Kerra Holt, and the mercenary Jarrow Rusher. Calician was later featured in the 2012 guide book The Essential Reader's Companion, receiving his first visual depiction, a picture by artist Jeff Carlisle.
On his website Faraway Press, Miller described Calician as a typical egomaniacal Sith, providing an opportunity to frustrate Sith ambitions. Calician also provided readers with an insider's view of life within the Dyarchy, particularly its hallmark of living under constant Force manipulation.