Darth Traya
Darth Traya discovered an academy on Malachor V known as the
Trayus Academy. The academy was apparently an ancient
Sith ruin, so it is unknown if Traya named the academy after herself, or herself after the academy. It is quite possible that the existence of this structure might have been why the
Mandalorians treated Malachor V with religious reverence.
Among her allies were
Darth Nihilus and her students,
Darth Sion,
Darth Revan, and the
Jedi Exile. Even when she was a Sith, Traya had some notion that neither the light nor dark side of
the Force was superior to the other. Due to the fact her teachings incorporated light side concepts (e.g. she never believed in power or destruction for its own sake), Sion and Nihilus grew weary of her. They betrayed her, stripped her of power, and exiled her. She described her fall from power thus:
"There are dark places in the galaxy, where few tread. Ancient centers of learning, of knowledge. But I did not walk alone. To be united by hatred is a fragile alliance at best. But my will was not law. There were disagreements, ambition . . . and hunger for power. There are techniques within the Force against which there is no defense. I was cast down, stripped of my power, exiled. I suffered indignities, and fell into darkness."Darth Traya would refine her beliefs while wandering the galaxy, eventually coming to view the Force as being a sort of uncaring, insidious god that uses the lives of sentients as pawns in a pernicious game of balance. This, she thought, was evidenced by the widespread occurrences of destruction and death that had persistently transpired throughout the galaxy to that point, many of which could be traced to a conflict between Force-sensitives. Yet, Traya blamed neither the Jedi nor the Sith, but rather the very thing they had both come to draw and rely upon: the Force itself. She was, however, upset with the Jedi and the Sith for being too "caught up in the game" to realize how the Force was manipulating them.
After being exiled from the Jedi Order when she was forced to shoulder the blame for Revan's corruption, and again after she was exiled from Malachor V by her impatient Sith students Nihilus and Sion, Darth Traya had thus experienced betrayals from, and saw the flaws of, both the light and dark sides of the Force. These unique experiences disillusioned her and forced her to refine her ways of thinking.
When she heard about the
Jedi Exile, she saw proof that life could exist without the Force, which she saw as disproof of the traditional
dogma of both the Sith and Jedi that the Force and life itself were inseparable by nature. This renewed Traya's confidence in her personal beliefs and fueled her desire to learn more of the Exile's personal motivations. By the end of her adventures with the Exile, during which she went by the name of Kreia, Traya had discovered that certain tragedies can leave wounds in the Force, which sometimes make it difficult to hear and be used. These "echoes," as Traya called them, provided a possible avenue through which it was possible to attack the Force. Her discovery was due in no small part to the Exile, as his experience at Malachor V, where he willingly severed his own bond with the Force, created an echo large enough that Traya was able to connect the tragedy to the wound created in the Force. According to Traya, those who had chosen death (or the Jedi who chose the Dark Side) over a life devoid of the Force were not strong enough to deserve life. Her desire to prevent unnecessary death in the future was the overbearing motivation that cultivated her hatred for the Force. She once explained how one such as she could use the Force despite loathing it by comparing herself to one who studies poison. Just as such a person would strive to understand the lethality behind poison, so she strives to understand the particularities of the Force, thereby enabling her to destroy it, perhaps.
Darth Traya envisioned a
galaxy that would choose not to acquiesce to the
will of the Force. She thought she could achieve this by showing how one could willingly abnegate the Force and eventually become stronger for it, and it was the Exile who was a living testament to this. In her teachings with the Jedi Exile, she emphasized the how dependent the Jedi and Sith were on the Force, and how they had become flawed for it. By making the Exile her protégé, she hoped her message would resonate with future force-sensitives so they would choose to use the Force without necessarily bending to either extreme, and certainly not to the point where they would choose death over life without the Force. Ultimately, though, she dreamed of a galaxy lacking of the Force altogether, as it was her belief that the galaxy would be better off that way.
As a person, Darth Traya was manipulative and constantly wary of the intentions of others.
Traya often remonstrated the Exile for taking away the challenges of others. She argued that indiscriminate compassion weakens the benefactors by disallowing them the mental and physical enrichment that life's challenges inherently procure. Ultimately, such compassion thus weakens the very people it is intended to help, cheapening their experience and leaving them more ill-prepared for dealing with things on their own. In other words, Traya had adopted a "survival of the fittest" philosophy, and encouraged people to struggle in order to learn and to prosper.
After being betrayed by those closest to her, Traya expected the worst from the people around her. As the
Jedi Exile's circle of companions grew, Traya came to see how these companions could be used for her own ends, and sometimes ensured their loyalty using methods like blackmail. For example, she read the mind of
Atton Rand, learned of his dark history, and used that to
blackmail him into the Exile's service. She also tempted the
Mandalorian leader,
Mandalore, with knowledge of Darth Revan's
fate in order to ensure that he would not betray the Exile.
A master of manipulation, Traya also used betrayal and deception to achieve her goals. She lied to the Exile at the beginning of their quest, claiming that the Jedi Council had stripped the Force from the Jedi Exile. Traya knew this would lead the Exile to seek out the surviving members of the Jedi Council which would allow Traya to kill them. On Onderon, Traya lied to
Colonel Tobin about the existence of many Jedi in a
Jedi Academy on
Telos. Traya did this because she knew that Tobin would relay this to his true Master,
Darth Nihilus, who would not be able to resist the chance to replenish himself and would recklessly assault Telos. This left Nihilus vulnerable to the assault of the Mandalorians and the Exile.
Despite these traits, Traya was not the witch that many had dismissed her as. She had a softer side to her personality that was more apparent when she was around the Jedi Exile.
"You are beautiful to me," she once told the Exile, referring to his being the living proof of her philosophies. In fact, Traya once expressed that she would go so far as to let the entire
galaxy die in order to ensure the life of the Exile. Such expressions left little doubt as to her zealous devotion regarding her beliefs.
Though Traya was intelligent and quite powerful in her own right, she was also wise enough to know that her philosophies would be disregarded as fanatical by both the Jedi and the Sith. Because of this, she preferred to fly beneath the radar, often using her own power to shield her identity from other force-sensitives who might have known her, and could have otherwise detected her. She was not outspoken about her convictions. Only by carefully employing her manipulative tactics was she able to successfully convert the Exile to her cause. And through him, she surmised, many more would follow.
Darth Traya had the ability to wield three or more
lightsabers in combat, holding each of them aloft with the Force, and having them fight with a will of their own. This ability is also associated with the ancient
Dark Lord of the Sith Exar Kun.
A cursory glance leads many to believe that Traya's eyes were somehow damaged, but actually, as she revealed to the Exile, they had
atrophied from disuse. She could have repaired her own eyesight, but she refused to do so, arguing that natural sight is nothing more than a distraction to the superior practice of perceiving the world through the Force.
Traya possessed the ability to single-handedly strip others of the Force, utterly robbing their bodies of the mystical energy field. When the Exile was threatened by Jedi Masters
Kavar, Vrook, and Zez-Kai Ell,using a truly ancient and dark technique, she not only stripped them of the Force, but also killed them, leaving more echoes in their wake.
Traya was also uniquely able to accurately predict future happenings that were thousands of years into the future, spanning all the way to the fall of the
Republic which occurred about 4,000 years after her death. Her
clairvoyance was specific enough that she was able to predict the existence of
Stormtroopers. Shortly before her death, one of her predictions regarding the Mandalorians went as follows:
"They will die a death that will last millennia, until all that remains is their code, their history, and, in the end, the shell of their armor upon the shell of a man, too easily slain by a Jedi." This references the Mandalorian body armor, later worn by
Jango Fett who was cloned and made into the
Clone troopers; the precursor to the noticeably weak (for a Jedi) Stormtroopers.
Like
Sidious and
Vader, Darth Traya's name suggests another word: betrayal.
According to
Chris Avellone's comments on the
Obsidian Entertainment Forum, she is likely to be 50 years old, but also says "like Yoda, who knows", indicating that her true age is still a mystery. Avellone also stated that Kreia is heavily inspired from
Palpatine.
