Sariss

Sariss was the daughter of Lord Cronal, one of the Prophets of the Dark Side who raised her in the dark ways of the Force on Dromund Kaas. Cronal adhered to a violent nihilistic belief system, and the mere existence of his daughter was a shocking contradiction, as it represented creation instead of destruction. As a result, Sariss was rejected by her father in the worst way he could devise; Cronal not only permitted his fellow Prophets to engage in unwanted carnal relations with her, but he also participated himself. Sariss endured a childhood filled with sadness and sadism, never knowing which of her abusers was her true father. Eventually, she encountered her future master, Jerec of the Inquisitorius within the Galactic Empire.

Sariss took on the persona of "Prophetess" on Tatooine, where she collaborated with local governor Tour Aryon and pretended to be a fortune teller as a cover for her true role as a spy for the Empire's Secret Order. In her role as a fortune teller, she asserted that Wuher was the reincarnated soul of Cedo Partu. Wuher consistently refused the Prophetess entry into Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina.

In the hours preceding the Battle of Yavin, she spied on Jabba Desilijic Tiure and his security detail as they went to Docking Bay 94 in Mos Eisley as part of her espionage activities. Soon after, Sariss had to quickly step aside for a group of stormtroopers who were rushing to the docking bay in a futile attempt to stop the droid R2-D2 from escaping with datatapes that contained the stolen schematics of the first Death Star.

In the years leading up to the Battle of Endor, she frequently visited the Vengeance, Jerec's new flagship, as part of a Secret Order entourage. She found herself captivated by his charisma and ambitious visions of power, developing a personal loyalty to him. She relished the violent and sadistic lightsaber training she received under his guidance.

Sariss also served as a mentor to Merili.

With the death of Emperor Palpatine in 4 ABY, a rebellion on Tatooine presented Sariss with the opportunity to abandon her post and join Jerec. She secretly left the planet and became one of the Inquisitor's Dark Jedi.

As the Galactic Empire's situation worsened after Endor, Sariss was dispatched to Panatha to seduce a wealthy Epicanthix mineral baron. She became engaged to the man to seize control of his assets for her master's benefit. Sariss then seduced his indulged son, Yun, teaching him her "faith" and even persuading him to kill his own father.

She then bestowed the baron's wealth upon her master and presented him with Yun, whom Jerec accepted as an apprentice. Yun was smitten with her, but she viewed him as a son. Having never known a real family, she treated him as the Prophets had treated her, manipulating him cruelly. Besides satisfying her sadistic tendencies, she believed it was necessary to prepare him for the harsh realities of the galaxy. She led him to commit numerous killings and suppressed his remorse. In time, Yun also came to regard Sariss as his master.

Sariss aided Jerec in his efforts to salvage the collapsing Empire and locate the Valley of the Jedi, a Force nexus created during the final battle of the New Sith Wars over a thousand years prior.

After discovering that Qu Rahn, a surviving Jedi Master from the Old Republic, might possess knowledge of the Valley's location, Jerec blockaded the planet Dorlo to intercept Rahn, who was on a mission for the Rebel Alliance. Sariss's master then dispatched a landing party led by her, her apprentice Yun, and her comrade Maw. Rahn, hunted by Maw's ability to "smell" fear and anxiety, allowed Cee Norley to ambush the Imperials. Norley managed to destroy the landing party's troop-carrying skimmer before being executed by Sariss. As she pondered why a Rebel would be left behind to be sacrificed, she realized that they were trying to buy time for a ship to escape. Indeed, Rahn's team boarded a CR90 corvette, and as the Dark Jedi trio pursued the Rebel craft, their own skimmer was caught in the corvette's slipstream and crashed. Sariss and the others survived the impact, though their helmsman sustained a head injury. Sariss killed him to resolve the issue.

Jerec successfully captured the Rebel corvette by using a tractor beam from his waiting Super Star Destroyer, the Vengeance. Sariss, Yun, and Maw rejoined Jerec and their three colleagues on the Vengeance's bridge, where their master interrogated Qu Rahn. Jerec summoned her to his side, questioning whether this inexperienced pilot, two scientists, and a disheveled old Jedi were the ones who had evaded three of his apprentices. He expressed his disappointment and cautioned her against allowing it to happen again.

The Jedi refused to answer, even as his rebel companions were murdered one by one, and instead tried to provoke his captors into executing him. However, Jerec resorted to violating Rahn's mind. He discovered that although Qu Rahn did not know the location of the Valley, his friend Morgan Katarn—whom Jerec had killed several years earlier—had known and had hidden a map leading to it in his home on the planet Sulon. Qu Rahn made his final stand by Force pulling Yun's lightsaber from his belt and engaging the assembled Dark Jedi in combat. Sariss witnessed Boc attempting to stop the Jedi and being injured before she stepped in. However, she was no match for Rahn, who blocked all her conventional attacks. Jerec intervened and killed the Jedi Master.

Sariss was sent to Sulon with Boc and Yun to collect the pieces of the hidden map, which were found in the ceiling of the Katarn homestead. She teased Yun when he questioned the existence of the Valley of the Jedi and whether their efforts to load the grav sleds onto a shuttle had been in vain. Sariss explained the next step of the plan: taking the map pieces to 8t88, a droid information broker, in the city of Barons Hed to decipher them. Boc didn't seem to respond to her orders, explaining that he was sensing that they were being watched. Sariss dismissed his concerns, stating that they were the only activity in the area and were attracting attention. Boc insisted that the presence was strong in the Force and wanted to destroy them, but Sariss considered it normal.

She returned to the Vengeance and reported their progress. 8t88 soon reconstructed the tiles and transmitted the digitized map. The Dark Jedi determined that the Valley was located on the planet Ruusan, and Jerec ordered Sariss to prepare the ship for hyperspace. Yun destroyed the original on Jerec's order, thwarting the efforts of another Jedi: Kyle Katarn, Morgan's son, who was trying to reach the Valley of the Jedi before Jerec. Jerec mobilized his forces and established an excavation site on the world.

Once the initial surveying phase was complete, Sariss reported her findings to Jerec. Before that, Jerec offered her one of his touchstones, making her wonder if it was a delicacy or a prank, as had happened before, unable to refuse his gift. She then reported the presence of Fort Nowhere, a settlement of smugglers and dissidents, and her decision to attack it the following day. Jerec overruled this, ordering her to go to the planet with Boc and Yun to gather more information about the Valley beforehand. Sariss was even more upset that Jerec not only overturned her plans but that his were more logical than hers.

Sariss, along with Boc and Yun, arrived at Fort Nowhere in an assault shuttle. The settlers were initially hostile, and Sariss nearly used Force-choke on a settler named Lasko to "soften up" the dwellers. Byron Devo III, the Mayor, appeared, and Sariss accused him of smuggling, tax evasion, and harboring traitors. However, in the "Imperial way," she was willing to listen to his explanations. In his office, Sariss interviewed him for relevant information, ruins, artifacts, and relics, making false promises to leave the Fort alone. Confident that the settlers knew nothing about the Valley and were therefore useless, the Seven Dark Jedi proceeded with the town's destruction, despite Devo's cooperation and Sariss's promises. They chose an enclosed valley as a staging area, where they established a temporary maintenance facility and buried fuel bladders for over a day. The three Dark Jedi actively participated in the massacre. A panicked Devo approached Sariss as she emerged from one of them, asking the meaning of all this. Sariss greeted him ironically and promptly stated that she had lied. Devo took a few steps back before being decapitated by the Dark Jedi's lightsaber. After their victory, Sariss savored the moment, imagining the Brotherhood of Darkness slaughtering the Army of Light on those very plains a millennium ago.

Sariss had her office on the administrative deck of the newly constructed tower near the Valley of the Jedi. A few days after the massacre, it was nearing completion, and her boxes were still stacked, waiting to be unpacked. She heard that Yun had saved a worker's life using the Force and read the official report. She summoned Yun to congratulate him, conveying Jerec's acknowledgment. In reality, however, Sariss sensed something different in him, a flicker of the Light side. Furthermore, Sariss began to acknowledge the possibility that Yun had gained some confidence and unlocked a talent that would rival hers and make him her rival. Hiding these thoughts, she gave him his next assignment: to discover the status of a lost patrol that was long overdue.

Sariss later accompanied Jerec when the Dark Jedi Warlord confronted young Katarn, furious at the Rebel Jedi's slaying of Maw on a landing pad near Jerec's personal cargo ship, the Sulon Star. Jerec sought to turn Katarn to the dark side by persuading him to kill his partner and love, Jan Ors, whom Jerec's men had captured earlier. Katarn managed to control his anger and remain on the light side of the Force, and Yun watched as Sariss pushed the Jedi into the Sulon Star and sent the doomed ship plummeting to the surface. Jerec ordered his servants to go down and destroy what remained of Katarn.

Indeed, Katarn managed to escape from the Sulon Star in his own ship, the Moldy Crow, though he crashed the vessel in the process. Sariss, Boc, and Yun pulled his unconscious body out to be executed. It was night when he regained his senses. Sariss allowed Boc to taunt the Jedi and destroy his lightsaber hilt before telling him to report their find and the Rebel's execution to Jerec. She promptly raised her lightsaber to deliver a fatal blow to Katarn when Yun, in an act of pure instinct, deflected his mentor's blow, wounding her arm. As a result, the deflected strike inflicted a mortal wound on the young Jedi whom Sariss considered her only friend. A panicked Sariss struggled to comprehend why Yun would turn against her and shouted for help in vain. Yun explained that Kyle was a true Jedi and deserved a fighting chance instead of an execution. Seeing the closest person to her die, she decided to inflict many painful wounds on Katarn before bringing his head back to Jerec. Turning her eyes, she saw him already armed with Yun's lightsaber.

She initially held the advantage, starting with a mental attack that Kyle deflected successfully and responded to. She didn't know that although self-taught, Kyle called upon the Force ghost of a Jedi Master who had died centuries ago near that place. As their blades clashed, she realized the meaning of Yun's final words to her: that Kyle was a true Jedi of the light side. Sariss intended to wear him out with small, painful wounds, forcing Katarn to put a quick end to this. He countered her own use of a lightsaber technique by borrowing Tal's Flowing Water Cut and ran her through the chest with his blade. Sariss would die of the wound, seeing only darkness and feeling pain from Yun's final words, who was seeing the light.

Kyle went on to rescue Jan and defeat the last of the Dark Jedi cadre, Boc Aseca and Jerec, once and for all.

After Sariss's death, her true father, Cronal, came seeking her, wanting her forgiveness for how he had treated her. Unfortunately for him, he found her stabbed, worm-eaten corpse. In his eternal guilt and heartbreak, he lost all grip on reality and his philosophy of entropy, wholly embracing his new mechanical body.

Sariss was a woman of average height by human standards. Similar to Jerec, she always wore black with a red collar. Following the fashion of many other human females, she also painted her lips and nails red. Her hair was groomed short, like that of many human males.

Jerec's Dark Jedi were all ruthless, and Sariss was particularly power-hungry. This trait earned Jerec's trust, making her especially close among his Lieutenants. She was the only one who addressed Jerec as "My lord." Sariss worked diligently to gain and maintain Jerec's approval, which was very important to her. She felt upset whenever Jerec countermanded her plans or when she disagreed with his, and she tried to conceal it.

Sariss would sneak behind her peers while they were discussing and interrupt. When Yun was caught off guard, she blamed him for his lack of sensing abilities.

Sariss was a quiet and reserved, but a formidable opponent in combat and was deemed the most skilled lightsaber fighter of the seven Dark Jedi, relying almost exclusively on her fencing skills rather than using additional Force powers.

Sariss was considered a master at lightsaber dueling, and Qu Rahn feared her more than any other of the Seven Dark Jedi. In addition to her lightsaber skills, she would launch mental attacks at her enemies in battle, forcing them to fight two battles: a mental one and a physical one. The mental attack caught Kyle Katarn off guard during their duel.

Sariss demonstrated skill in the Force Choke and was also the only known practitioner of the devastating ability Deadly Sight.

Sariss was portrayed by Valerie Wildman in Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. Sariss has also appeared in the graphic novella adaptations of the Dark Forces series, where her perspective is expanded. Audio dramas were produced based on the graphic novellas, including Rebel Agent and Jedi Knight. In all these instances, Sariss was voiced by Nancy Crocker.

In the non-canonical ending of Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, where Kyle chooses the dark side, he kills Yun instead of Sariss, and she later appears as Emperor Katarn's aide.

William C. Dietz and Dave Dorman, in their novella Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, add further depth to the relationship between Sariss and Yun. They reveal that she considered Yun a very good and talented student and that he was the closest thing to a friend she ever had. In the novella, Yun's block superficially injures her in the arm, and she instinctively hits him on the shoulder. She is panicked by what she did and redirects her rage toward Katarn. In the audio version of Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, Sariss deliberately kills Yun when he tries to stop her and explains what he sees wrong in their ways. Sariss just kills him to "help" him, seeing him confused. She shows no remorse in Yun's death, which enrages Kyle, leading him to kill her. The Dark Forces Saga, Part 3 confirms that the hit was accidental.

The figure of the 'Prophetess' was initially just an uncredited extra who appeared briefly in A New Hope. Later, that figure's backstory as the "Prophetess" was created for the Star Wars Customizable Card Game. Abel G. Peña, in his The Dark Forces Saga articles, retconned the Prophetess and Sariss into the same character. An unidentified illustration for a Dark Side Adept in Threats of the Galaxy matched the appearance of a lightsaber-wielding Prophetess.