Darven

"What I remember about the rise of the Empire is… is how quiet it was. During the waning hours of the Clone Wars, the 501st Legion was discreetly transferred back to Coruscant. It was a silent trip; we all knew what was about to happen, what we were about to do. Did we have any doubts? Any private traitorous thoughts? Perhaps, but no one said a word. Not on the flight back to Coruscant, not when Order 66 came down, and not when we marched into the Jedi Temple. Not a word."

―RC-1197

RC-1197 was one of the commandos trained by Kal Skirata, who gave him the name Dar'vencuyot or simply Darven, which is Mando'a for One who has no Future. He was a member of Sarang Squad; only two of its members survived Geonosis. He and his squadmate Trey were briefly joined by two other survivors of Geonosis, until they hit a stroke of bad luck during a traffic interdiction op, of which he emerged the sole survivor. After a brief period of being chilled-down, RC-1197 found himself as one of the spec-ops training instructors, re-training commando units within the 501st - and totally alienated from his former brothers.

Operation: Knightfall

What happened then is history. RC-1197's file reports him as part of the group of the 501st who was with Darth Vader in Operation: Knightfall when they took the Jedi temple; he was one of the eight commandos of Decoy Squad Five, who infiltrated the temple dressed in Jedi robes and were left behind to guard the beacon calling the Jedi home and kill all incoming sentients.

"You--- I sense the conflict in your heart... y-you know this is --wrong. You... c-cannot let this go o-on. Find my daughter. Save her. She... is an innocent. Just like you."

―Fionn Halcyon's last words to RC-1197

But the turmoil inside RC-1197 - the rising confusion that he had felt since he had received his instructions, the utter wrongness of his actions - causes one of the Jedi to reach out to him as he is about to die after receiving a mortal wound by RC-1197's blaster and implore the clone to save his child. It drives home the horror of what he has become, and makes him realise he is something more than just the unfeeling extension of his superiors' commands. The Jedi's last command gives his tortured soul the necessary fuel to overcome his initial inbred loyalty to his superiors. Taking up Fionn's lightsaber, he strikes down the rest of the clone squad and escapes.

After that, RC-1197 did not exist anymore - in his stead there was Dar'vencuyot, a man with a deeply-rooted, ever-present sense of grief and loss, all overshadowed by a terrible horror and regret of his own actions. A man who hated the Empire and the Jedi at the same time, for having made him, twisted him into whatever they needed, and then made him kill his own brothers.

"Think of yourselves as a hand. Each of you is a finger, and without the others you're useless. Alone, a finger can't grasp, or control, or form a fist. You are nothing on your own, and everything together."

―Kal Skirata

Feeling like the walking dead, he escapes from Coruscant on an abandoned ship after having gotten the necessary data to find out who the Jedi had been, and where he would find the Jedi's child, from the datapad he picked took from the Jedi. A short time later, he infiltrates a private residence on Corellia to snatch the 5-year-old Nya Halcyon from her bed. The child is so frightened it faints, and he escapes with her to his ship and gets off the planet before anyone can even notice her absence.

A little girl's hero

When the little girl wakes up Darven is there to explain where she is. He can see how scared she feels. He feels the same. She doesn't trust him, but he mentions being sent by her father. The bitter taste of pain and loss and regret and hate is still there, hasn't gotten any better. He wants to dislike the child for being the daughter of Jedi, but he can't. Instead, he feels a kind of kinship with her. She has much in common with him - outcast, hunted, hated, pawn in someone else's games. She reminds him of a childhood he never had, and of the man who tried to give him a family who must have seen him in the same way as he himself was seeing her now.

He finds that spending time with her soothes the turmoil inside him, and he tells her much about the galaxy she has never seen before; but it is also him who is learning from her, the things he never had a chance to experience in his 12 years of being raised as an efficient killer. The bond strengthens through new experiences they both share.

The two of them travel through space for long months, daring only to stop at the most outlying spaceports. At such times they only leave the ship in disguise - an injured father, face heavily bandaged, and his small child - stocking up supplies. He has heard and seen what happens to those clones who dared defect - and he is not only a defector but a killer. He cannot show his face. To that end, he begins looking for a more efficient way of disguising himself, and starts buying up parts of Mandalorian armor, a piece at a time. He had not shared Kal Skirata's close bond with the Null-Arcs but it was not only the Nulls who had got the Mandalorian's attention - and now that he is out there on his own, Darven remembers the lessons taught by the man, and it is the closest thing he can identify with. Secretly, he tries to keep up with what his brothers might be doing, to see how he can put his knowledge of Mandalorian culture to good use. He studies Mando'a.

But the girl needs something to identify with, too - not one where she must hide. And to achieve this, he is torn: should he let her become what he ultimately hates, and find her a Jedi tutor? or let her forget about that aspect of her life and teach her the ways of a warrior like he was taught? But the Jedi Purge seems to have been horribly efficient, and at first no Jedi can be found to take the matter out of his hands. He teaches her bits and pieces of his knowledge, gives her a rudimentary training in the skills he once was taught.

The only "family" they have

After two years his investigations strike gold as his careful search for survivors of the Jedi Purge comes up with a result. Ironically, this Jedi is located on Mandalore, where some of the Null ARCs and Skirata's old squads seem to have made their home, too. This doscovery comes at the same time as a nasty encounter with an Inquisitor of the Empire who takes too much of an interest in the girl, so Darven takes her to Kyrimorut on Mandalore, safe haven for GAR deserters and, apparently, the odd Jedi or two.

When they arrive, and he tells Nya that she will be staying with the Jedi, it hurts terribly - but her reaction is like a knife jabbing deep into his insides: realising that she doesn't understand and seeing her sudden distrust of him at what she thinks is a betrayal of their "family", he knows he must tell her at least a little more, and finally relents. Still fearing to tell her the full truth, he nevertheless reveals that he killed his brothers to save her father, and that he can never let any of the surviving clones know he is still alive because of the fratricide he committed against the orders they had been given. For that, he tells her, he cannot bring himself to like the Jedi, and he deeply loathes having to leave her with one, but he is a marked man and it won't be safe for her to stay with him. To his relief, the already emotional girl, accepts this story, and the two of them spend their last heart-breaking hours clinging to each other and recounting shared memories that they never want to forget.

When they arrive at the Jedi's home, he turns out to be no other than Bardan Jusik, the Jedi general that once commanded his first squad and who seems to have defected from the Jedi Order to become a Mandalorian. And once in his presence, despite the helmet, Darven realises that the Jedi knows who it is that is standing before him, and what he has done. Terrified of what the Jedi might do, Darven panics, his emotions a chaotic painful mess once again, but the Jedi calms him. Jusik tells him that he need not feel afraid - neither he nor the other surviving clones will punish him for following his conscience. When Darven tells him of the true events, Jusik merely looks to the floor, saddened, and tells him that he had not been anything but the victim of the war - caught between fronts; that he should stop punishing himself for it, for any blame that fell to him he had long absolved himself of by taking care of the child. But Darven, finally finding courage to speak again, replies that he will forever be the judge of his own deeds, and cannot forgive himself even if others would

The Jedi then accepts the girl as his student, and tells Darven to take his leave. And, guessing at what Darven has been afraid most of all, he tells him that he will not tell her the truth about her parents' death, for that would only result in setting her down a path that none of the surviving Jedi should take, now that only few of them remained.

So Darven, still overcome by his emotions, bides her farewell and leaves her there.

"Although bred to be an unfeeling, unthinking clone by a race equally apathetic to emotions, I rose above that because of the man who raised me. Kal Skirata, we found out later, had left his own family behind to become our everything. To the outside world he was of the Cuy'val Dar - Those who do no longer exist. And now, because of all I have done, I am following in his footsteps - I myself have become cuy'val dar, to those who are my family. Tell me, how does one who was only a part of many survive being only one?"

―Darven

Olek Farsynn

Calling himself Olek Farsynn and claiming to be a trained Mandalorian warrior, Darven joins a Mandalorian community on the other side of the planet. He speaks fluent Mando'a with a gruffness that makes any underlying accent impossible to hear, has armor made of beskar which seemed cobbled together from two differently colored sets, and an impressive range of skills. No one doubts he is genuine.

Although he is accepted by the community of Mandalorian farmers and warriors he makes his home with, he shuns the company of others. Olek Farsynn keeps to himself and does not socialise. He is never seen without full armor and helmet outside his house, and on the rare occasion someone comes to visit, he will not greet them bareheaded. This odd behavior leads to various rumours that he is either a wanted criminal, or possibly has gotten a terrible injury at some point in his life that he prefers to keep to himself. Either way, it is no cause for concern amongst his community - if anything, it earns him the respect of the pragmatic Mandalorians who are used to hiring themselves out to fight the wars of others and accept pain and death like a friend.

"Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la."

―Mandalorian Proverb

When called upon to fight by the Mandalore, he joins the ranks of the Mandalorian warriors readily, but does not take open contracts by any other organisations. And yet, every now and then he mysteriously disappears without a word, for varying lengths of time; and whenever he returns, his neighbors soon find out it is better to leave him alone. For these absences, as mysterious as they might be, cause the man to go through alternating periods of grief and rage that can almost be felt in the air around him, which greatly increases the mystery shrouding him.

For several years, life continues like this, and his neighbors accept the clanless man for what he is, not asking any questions where it is apparent they will get no answer. They are Mandalorians, and his way the Mando way as much as any other.

For information about the person behind the character and an overview of alternate characters, see Mara