Zilastra, also called Zil, was a Nautolan female pirate who commanded the Riftwalkers group.
During her childhood, Zilastra resided in a colony that the Republic had abandoned. Her mother made a desperate attempt to earn sufficient funds to leave the colony, but she tragically died in a mining accident, leaving Zilastra completely alone with only a sabacc deck of cards as a memento. Zilastra ended up in an orphanage managed by a solitary nanny droid, who provided care for Zilastra and two other children. She formed strong friendships with these two children. However, one day, Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas visited the orphanage and determined that the other two children possessed the potential to become Jedi. Sifo-Dyas, known for disregarding recruitment protocols, swiftly took the other two children away without ensuring Zilastra's well-being as he should have. As a consequence of the Jedi's actions, Zilastra was left behind and soon had to survive on her own. This led her to develop a deep-seated hatred for the Jedi, feeling abandoned and uncared for by them.
Zilastra matured into a pirate, leading her own criminal organization known as the Riftwalkers in the Ootmian Pabol hyperlane. The name was a reference to Riftwalker sabacc, a variation of the game in which Zilastra specialized from a young age. In 33 BBY, Zilastra enlisted a young human girl named Kylah Lohmata to conduct a theft from the Regal Voyager company, specifically targeting Regal Voyager cases from their central hub on the planet Keldooine. She intended to use these cases, which were shielded against electronic scans, to orchestrate the assassination of other influential pirate gangs operating in The Slice. She dispatched fake protocol droids, resembling official Regal Voyager droids, to the leaders of all the influential pirate gangs within The Slice. These droids carried a proposal: in exchange for substantial monthly payments, the gangs would agree not to attack any Regal Voyager shipments or passenger lines. The payments would be of equal value for each gang, with each gang having the option to request delivery in credits, gems, metals, or similar assets. The agreement would be nullified if any gang attacked a Regal Voyager vessel. To guarantee cooperation among the rival gangs, the leaders were required to convene on holocam to jointly open the cases. Each of the fake Regal Voyager protocol droids was programmed to know only one word of the five-word code phrase needed to open the voice-activated cases.
During the initial months of the scheme, the rival gang bosses were hesitant to open the cases independently. However, as time passed, they grew complacent, a vulnerability that Zilastra exploited. She secretly placed Baradium-357 within each of the rival bosses' cases, triggering a simultaneous explosion that eliminated them all during the holocam meeting. She capitalized on the ensuing chaos to unite all the rival pirate gangs under her command, with the ultimate goal of assassinating all the members of the Jedi High Council on the planet Kwenn during the bicentennial celebration of the Kwenn Jedi outpost and seizing control of the planet to establish their own pirate nation.