In the closing decades of the Galactic Republic, a Human male named Silas served as a Mandalorian. Around 52 BBY, he was a novice in the True Mandalorian mercenary army, joining his friend and mentor Jango Fett in the Battle of Korda Six. Mandalore Jaster Mereel led the operation on Korda Six, aiming to extract Korda Defense Force members from enemy territory. However, Death Watch, Mandalorian renegades, had set a trap for Mereel and his forces. This violent splinter group devastated the extraction teams and murdered Mereel during the resulting conflict. Silas and Fett witnessed Montross, a comrade of Mereel's, abandon him to his fate on the battlefield, hoping to seize control of the Mandalorian armies.
When Montross attempted to take command, Silas instead supported Fett, urging him to become the new Mandalore in place of Mereel. The other surviving Mandalorians echoed Silas's sentiments, exiled Montross, and accepted Fett as their new leader. Silas served under Fett until the disastrous event on Galidraan, an Outer Rim world, where the Jedi Order annihilated the remaining True Mandalorian mercenaries. These two men survived, becoming the last True Mandalorians of Mereel's discipline. Twelve years afterward, the Sith Lord Darth Tyranus became interested in Fett, so he kidnapped Silas and tortured him to extract information about the Mandalore's past. Silas eventually yielded to Tyranus, revealing the history of the battle at Korda Six. Despite Silas's offer of further information, Tyranus declined and ordered the Mandalorian's execution.
During the latter part of the Galactic Republic's existence, Silas, a Human male, lived. Sometime after 58 BBY, Silas enlisted in the Mandalorian mercenary forces, then under the leadership of Mandalore Jaster Mereel. As a soldier, the young man underwent the rigorous training typical for a Mandalorian to become a supercommando following Mereel's Supercommando Codex. During this period, he became friends with Jango Fett, the Mandalore's young protégé, who had joined the warrior clans before Silas. Silas developed a strong admiration for Fett and supported his rise through the Mandalorian ranks.
In 52 BBY, the Korda Defense Force from Korda Six contacted the Mandalorians, requesting assistance. Mereel accepted the assignment and assembled a task force including himself, Fett, and Montross, a veteran commando. Silas was assigned to Fett's command for the operation, marking Fett's first independent command of his squad, Jango's Grunts. During a mission briefing, Mereel explained that their objective was to locate and extract a rookie security team from hostile territory on Korda Six, supposedly lightly defended by Kordan forces with minimal organization, according to Korda Defense Force reconnaissance. Silas and the rest of Jango's Grunts were to provide covering fire for Vertigo Squad, Montross's jetpack-equipped team, and secure the landing zone while Mereel's Headhunter Squad retrieved the security team.
The commandos boarded Meteor-class Q-Carrier ships and headed for Korda's orbit, where they found a situation drastically different from the Korda Defense Force's misleading reconnaissance. The ships quickly faced fire from ion cannon emplacements on the planet's surface, forcing many carriers, including Silas's, into emergency crash landings. Upon exiting their downed craft, Silas and Jango's Grunts immediately came under fire from Kordan fortifications on a ridge above the crash site. The Mandalorian forces suffered heavy casualties as they scrambled for cover, but Fett and Silas managed to lead their squad into trenches created by the downed drop ships. Headhunter Squad and Mereel soon joined them, with Mereel declaring the mission a failure and ordering all forces to abort and return to the dropships. Montross ignored the order, leading his Vertigo Squad in a daring attack on the ridge. While Mereel went to retrieve his insubordinate, Fett and Silas took the three remaining members of Jango's Grunts to rescue the security rookies at the extraction site.
Upon reaching the empty clearing where the rookie security team should have been, Jango's Grunts were ambushed by members of the Death Watch, a renegade Mandalorian faction that had broken away from Mereel's forces shortly before Silas joined the warrior clans. The Death Watch relentlessly pursued the True Mandalorians through the Kordan forest, eventually killing all members of the Grunts except Fett and Silas. The two managed to escape their attackers when Fett used his flamethrower to incinerate them. They realized the entire operation was a Death Watch trap: the renegades had armed and trained the locals and provided the false reconnaissance. As Fett contacted Mereel to inform him of the situation, he and Silas headed back towards the battlefield to meet their commander and leave the planet. Reaching the combat zone, they witnessed Tor Vizsla, the Death Watch leader, gun down Mereel while Montross fled, abandoning his comrade. Fett tried to save Mereel, nearly dying in the process, but Silas intervened, pushing him to the ground before the blaster fire could kill him.
After the Death Watch and Kordan forces retreated, Fett and Silas approached Mereel's lifeless body. Silas watched as Fett said his final goodbye to his mentor and then followed him back to the landing zone, where they found Montross claiming Fett had died trying to save the Mandalore. The two interrupted Montross's attempt to usurp control of the Mandalorian forces, revealing that he had abandoned their commander on the battlefield. Fett rejected Montross's suggestion that he should be the new Mandalore, and Silas stood by him, drawing his blaster on Montross and declaring that he would only be led by Jango. Their fellow Mandalorians agreed, forcing Montross into exile while Fett took command and led his commandos off Korda 6.
For the next eight years, Silas and the True Mandalorians followed Fett in his war against Vizsla and the Death Watch. In 44 BBY, the governor of Galidraan, an Outer Rim world, contacted the Mandalorians, claiming that the Death Watch leader and his men were on his planet. The governor offered to reveal Vizsla's location if Fett and his mercenaries first destroyed a group of political activists causing unrest for the Galidraan regime. Fett agreed and fulfilled the governor's request before demanding information on Vizsla. The Galidraan operation, like Korda Six, turned out to be a trap, and the Death Watch ambushed Fett in the governor's palace. Meanwhile, the remaining True Mandalorian mercenaries were confronted by members of the Jedi Order, who had been falsely told that the Mandalorians were slaughtering innocent civilians. The battle with the Jedi resulted in the destruction of the True Mandalorians, with Fett and Silas as the only survivors.
In 32 BBY, Darth Tyranus, a Dark Lord of the Sith, kidnapped Silas and held him in his private retreat on Kohlma, a burial moon in the Bogden system. Tyranus was investigating Jango Fett's background, as the Mandalorian had gained fame as a bounty hunter after Galidraan, attracting the Sith Lord's attention. Silas's former comrade had been lured into a bounty hunting contest organized by Tyranus and was expected to win. Because the contest's spoils were crucial to the Sith's plans, Tyranus wanted to gather extensive intelligence on the Mandalorian bounty hunter before making an agreement with him.
In the lair's dungeons, Tyranus ordered Silas tortured using interrogation droids and a scan grid, hoping to force him to reveal Fett's history. Silas, trained to endure torture, initially resisted, but eventually succumbed after being injected with the potent truth serum Bavo Six. Learning that his prisoner had broken, Tyranus visited the dungeons to hear Silas's admissions. The broken Mandalorian revealed the carnage of Korda Six and Fett's rise to power. Although Silas offered details about the Galidraan massacre, Tyranus refused, as the Sith Lord, formerly Dooku, had led the Jedi Order's task force on Galidraan. Realizing Silas had no more useful information, Tyranus ordered his droids to stop the Mandalorian's heart. Silas's final wish was that the Sith Lord not inform Fett of his betrayal, but Tyranus made no promise.
Silas's Mandalorian career and death at the hands of Darth Tyranus were marked by his devotion to his Mandalore, Jango Fett. Silas held Fett in high regard, considering him the greatest Mandalorian in the order's seven-thousand-year history. The two became friends early in Silas's time with the warrior clans, when Fett was a low-level commando. Silas supported his friend's rise to command and served under him during the Battle of Korda Six. On Korda, Silas saved Fett's life by preventing him from running into blaster fire and witnessed him saying goodbye to his adoptive father, Jaster Mereel. When Montross attempted to seize command of the Mandalorian forces, Silas was the first to draw his weapon on the usurper and nominated Fett as the new Mandalore. His comrades agreed, thwarting Montross's attempt. Silas's strong relationship with Fett ultimately drew Tyranus's attention twenty years later, as the Sith Lord sought information on the Mandalore from his former colleagues.
Although trained by the Mandalorians to prepare for various situations, including torture, Silas eventually yielded to Tyranus's demands, albeit reluctantly. He felt that giving in to the Sith Lord was a betrayal of his old friend, for whom he had risked his life on Korda Six. Despite his disappointment in himself for revealing the bloodshed on Korda, Silas offered to provide details about the Galidraan massacre. When the Sith refused and ordered his execution, Silas used his final words to ask that Fett not be told of his failure.
Silas had light green eyes, dark brown hair, and fair skin. During the mission on Korda 6, the young mercenary wore Mandalorian armor painted green and blue. In Mandalorian culture, these colors symbolized duty and reliability, respectively.
Silas's first appearance was in the second issue of Jango Fett: Open Seasons, a 2002 comic series that chronicled the history of the Mandalorian Jango Fett through flashback sequences. W. Haden Blackman wrote all four issues of Open Seasons, with Ramón F. Bachs providing the pencils. Silas reappeared in Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, as Open Seasons 2 was available as unlockable bonus content in the video game. He later received an entry in the 2008 The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia.