Vilia Calimondra

Calimondra, Vilia, entered into multiple marriages and, as a result, she gained large territories located in the Grumani sector and became the mother of seven offspring. Because each of her children asserted their right to be Calimondra's successor, she orchestrated a competition, titled the Charge Matrica, to determine which child would inherit her dominion, challenging them to expand her holdings. However, Xelian, her daughter, soon initiated a conflict with Chagras, Calimondra's son, which led to all of her children engaging in warfare against one another. Eventually, Chagras was the only one remaining, and so Calimondra designated him as her heir. Chagras managed to maintain a fragile peace through alliances with various cousins and grandchildren. He also became the nominal leader of a realm known as the Chagras Hegemony. Nevertheless, Vilia remained alive and retained control over certain possessions.

By the year 1042 BBY, Chagras was prepared to challenge the Galactic Republic's authority. In that year, Sith Lord Odion, Xelian's eldest son, successfully persuaded Vilia to sanction an invasion of Aquilaris Minor under the guise of capturing Vannar Treece, a Jedi Knight who was a persistent adversary of the Sith. However, the invasion served as a smokescreen for his true objective: the abduction of several researchers from the University of Sanbra who were involved in a research endeavor to locate the Helm of Ieldis. This ancient Sith artifact, created by Ieldis, possessed the capacity to incite sentient beings into a state of homicidal rage. The researchers were subsequently conscripted into a task force known as Project Pandemonium, tasked with locating the Helm. In 1040 BBY, Chagras met his end after exposure to a nerve toxin. Calimondra then initiated a second Charge Matrica, setting her grandchildren against one another to compete for the right to become her heir.

Vilia also utilized the services of multiple agents, including Narsk Ka'hane, a Bothan spy who officially operated independently for several Sith Lords. She had an implant placed in his head, enabling him to receive coded messages while in the field. At some point before 1032 BBY, Vilia also furnished him with a Cyricept Personal Concealment System, Mark VI stealth suit, complete with an embedded tracking device. Narsk held this advanced stealth suit in high regard, as it had been developed on Coruscant, the Republic's capital, and smuggled into Vilia's domain through clandestine networks. Furthermore, Vilia's technicians had modified the Mark IV stealth suit to enable her to monitor Narsk's location. When deactivated, the suit would silently transmit pings to the secret communications network Vilia employed to keep tabs on her family.

Around 1032 BBY, Calimondra instructed her grandchildren Daiman and Odion to launch an assault on the holdings belonging to Ayanos Bactra, a Quermian Sith Lord who was also an old family acquaintance whom Calimondra deemed to have outlived his usefulness. Following the conquest of the Bactranate, Calimondra subsequently convened a bequest with her grandchildren, dividing among them the various corporations that Bactra had previously controlled. Odion, Xelian's older son, assumed control of Jutrand, the former Bactranate capital, while Daiman, her younger son, gained control of Industrial Heuristics, a supplier of military armaments to the various Sith warlords. After Odion protested the arrangement and threatened to kill the corporation's staff rather than allow them to fall into his estranged younger brother's hands, Vilia offered him two legions of Trandoshan slave warriors. While this temporarily eased the tensions between the two brothers, they would later resurface.

During the same bequest, Vilia acknowledged her granddaughter Sith Lord Arkadia Calimondra's annexation of Byllura, the former Dyarchy world. The Dyarchy had been governed by the adolescent twin siblings Quillan and Dromika, the two youngest children of her deceased son Chagras. Despite his formidable Force abilities of mind control and far sight, Quillan remained entirely within his mind, delegating external tasks to his sister Dromika and their late Regent Saaj Calician, who had been executed by Arkadianate forces during the invasion of Byllura. Ultimately, Arkadia proposed sending Quillan to Vilia for care. She agreed and transmitted a set of hyperspace coordinates across a secure channel to her top-secret retreat world.

Following the Bequest, Arkadia hatched a scheme to assassinate her grandmother, believing that Vilia was responsible for the death of her father, Chagras. As part of her plan, Arkadia arranged for someone to escort Quillan to Vilia's world and then eliminate Vilia. She attempted to enlist her guest Jedi Knight Kerra Holt to carry out the assassination, but the Jedi woman refused, asserting that she was a Jedi and did not collaborate with the Sith. Arkadia was then compelled to rely on the Bothan spy Narsk Ka'hane, who was secretly working for Vilia. Since the Bothan was not a Force user and lacked training in lightsaber combat, Arkadia provided him with a hover chair equipped with the nerve toxin Chagras's Blood, derived from Synedian algae. She also had a modified shuttle fitted with a hidden compartment in one of its engines to conceal the Bothan.

Through unknown channels, Vilia learned of Arkadia's scheme and transmitted a signal to Narsk, instructing him to betray his current employer, Arkadia. In exchange for providing a portion of a hyperspace coordinate leading to neutral space, Narsk was able to recruit the Brigadier Jarrow Rusher and persuade the mercenary to launch a diversionary attack, enabling him to escape with Quillan from Calimondretta, the Arkadianate capital city located on icy Syned. Simultaneously, Narsk freed Kerra from her imprisonment and, after convincing her to assist with Rusher's attack, provided her with the remaining half of the coordinates. The two launched a diversionary assault on Arkadia's forces and military assets in Calimondretta, inflicting extensive damage on her city and military fleet, which had been assembled for rapid blitz attacks on other Sith principalities in the event that her scheme succeeded.

Due to the damage resulting from the Siege of Calimondretta, Arkadia was forced to abandon her expansionist ambitions of enlarging her empire. While her capital suffered significant interior damage, Arkadia also lost substantial military assets, including factories that manufactured shells containing the nerve toxin Chagras's Blood and several warships. Arkadia was also compelled to recall reinforcements from Byllura to bolster her capital and invest considerable resources in rebuilding Calimondretta. Meanwhile, Narsk successfully escaped Calimondretta with Quillan and reached Vilia's homeworld safely. Two of Vilia's other agents also spirited Dromika away from Byllura, bringing her to another one of Vilia's worlds. While both twins were now in Vilia's custody, she made arrangements to keep them apart from each other and any opportunists who wanted to exploit their powers.

After Narsk provided a report on Dromika's status and the situation in the Arkadianate, the Bothan inquired whether she had any involvement in her son Chagras's death. Vilia denied her involvement in Arkadia's father's death, alleging that her granddaughter had both the motive and the means to commit the murder. Vilia characterized Arkadia as an ambitious younger daughter who feared that her father's legacy would be passed on to younger, more favored siblings. She also cited Arkadia's expertise in nerve toxins, the weapon that had caused Chagras's death. Vilia surmised that anyone could construct a case against Arkadia in the same manner that they could build one against her. For the Calimondra family, shared illusions mattered as much as bloodlines in explaining the complex and fraught relationship between its various members.

Narsk also voiced his concerns about having freed Jedi Knight Kerra, speculating that she would remain in Sith Space and pose a constant threat to the Sith. The Bothan worried that the Galactic Republic and Jedi Order could exploit Kerra's knowledge of the Calimondra family and the Charge Matrica in their war effort against the Grumani Sith. However, Vilia dismissed his concerns, arguing that the lack of mass media in Sith Space hindered the dissemination of this information to the general population. She added that the Republic's authorities were ineffective against the Sith, even with good intelligence about their Sith opponents. Finally, Vilia surmised that Kerra was the only Jedi throughout the entire Grumani sector.

When Narsk reiterated that Kerra could still pose a danger to her dynasty, Vilia described Kerra as an opportunity to provide her grandchildren with "learning experiences" in dealing with Jedi, preparing them for the day when the Sith would invade Republic territory and confront the Jedi Order once more. Vilia also justified her policy of sowing discord within her family as a defining characteristic of Sith identity. Finally, she remarked that Narsk could convey her greetings to Arkadia if the opportunity arose for them to cross paths again.

By late 1032 BBY, Odion had recovered the Helm of Ieldis on Skarpos, a desolate desert world located in the Menagerie, the domain ruled by Lord Malakite. After testing the Helm on three Sith armies during the Second Battle of Skarpos, Odion returned to Vanahame and began preparations for launching a galactic apocalypse that would annihilate all life except for himself. To achieve such destructive power, Odion intended to harness the life energies of the orphans residing in the local Odionate cloister, a planet-sized mega orphanage. Daiman and Malakite escaped Skarpos and managed to alert Vilia to the threat posed by Odion.

During a conversation via hologram, Daiman explained to his grandmother that Odion was manipulating forces he did not comprehend. As Odion's acquisition of the Helm threatened the balance of power within the Grumani Sector, Calimondra rallied her family to prepare for a military assault on the Odionate. She urged the disparate Sith Lords, including Arkadia, Lioko, Malakite, and Trevayne, to put aside their differences in order to stop Odion at all costs. While Vilia confided in Daiman that she believed Odion had always been differently guided, she admitted that she had gravely underestimated his nihilistic ambitions of galactic destruction. She added that no one should aspire to be the "king of a graveyard."

Vilia attempted to contact Odion and reason with him, but he ignored her entreaties. Odion then activated the Helm, plunging the entire Grumani sector into a homicidal frenzy. Even the Sith were not immune, with several warships opening fire on each other and several Sith Lords, like Daiman, being forced to fend off their crew. However, Odion's plot failed due to the actions of Kerra Holt and his second-in-command General Beld Yulan, who had turned against his master's nihilistic ambitions and freed the captives from the cloister. Following Odion's death, the former Odionate was divided among the various members of the Calimondra family.

Vilia Calimondra makes her initial appearance in Knight Errant, which was John Jackson Miller's first published novel as a professional writer. Her given name is an anagram derived from Livia, who was the mother of Tiberius.