Kalin Thalis

Kalin Thalis was a Jedi who was constantly in battle with himself. He felt strong in the Dark Side, but because of the people he loved he had a weakness in the light and his enemies tried to expose it. His rite of passage through the Clone Wars and his conflict in the Force did not only affect his own life, but that of his troops during the war and others.

Birth
Little is known of Kalin's parents, nor do the Jedi archives have any information of them. His mother was a Jedi who led a fair nomadic life, and kept herself mostly active in the Outer Rim, where she felt her help was necessary. During a political crisis in Aargonar she was called back to Temple and ordered to protect Senator Korbin Thalis who represented the system in the senate. Personal attacks started to increase and they hid themselves in an abandoned homestead, where a relationship, again Jedi rules, started to develop. Eventually the crisis was solved and she found herself at her duty in the Outer Rim again, but not much later she found out she was pregnant with the Senator's child. This called from a dramatic decision to leave the Jedi Order for a time being and Senator Thalis took her under his wing, where he took the child in his care when she gave birth and named him Kalin Thalis. They decided that for his sake no connection could ever be made to his mother. It was a tough and sad decision Saiya made that eventually destroyed her life.

Joining the Jedi Order
By his mother's wish, knowing Kalin had Force potential, the child was tested by the council. However only a few Jedi learned of her connection with the child and Kalin would only be allowed to join, if she left the order finally behind. She left the Temple with deep sorrow and as Kalin was brough to the temple to be tested, she caugth a small glimpse of him, which was the first and last time he saw her as a smalll boy. He was accepted and taken as a padawan by Master Remus-Qui. He developped a friendship with another padawan under the name of Qurhon Vos, who was a member of the same clan as Quinlan Vos, yet they were not related. Years passed of heavy trials that would test him in the rest of his life, because in secret his desires for greater power as well as his emotions, drawn by visions of his mother, started to eat at him.

The Clone Wars
Kalin was still a padawan when the Clone Wars errupted after the battle of Geonosis, where he lost many of his friends. One of the few was his friend Qurhon, who at this point had become a full-fledged Jedi Knight, who knew something was off. After the battle of Geososis he alienated himself from others, secretly developping new powers, possibly by the small influence Dooku had on him during the battle. He did not agree completely with the council's decisions and he did not judge Count Dooku as others did, thinking they were narrow-minded. He wanted to explore other aspects of the Force and when he was called back to his homeplanet of Aargonar where Ki-Adi-Mundi led a losing battle, he finally felt to prey to the Dark Side. He served the general as best as he could, but was separated from the Clones and the other Jedi after a massive explosion errupted created by an air assault of Hyena-Class Droid Bombers. He found himself unconscious in a desert, lost from his troops. The explosions had dimmed his connection to the Force and he could not sense them. His clothes were ravaged and a rash decision made him cross the desert, where he slowly lost a part of his sanity. After a month he finally had crossed it, but scarred from his inner and outer battles he never was the same. He was found by a Jedi search party and taken to New Holstice where more survivors of the battle tried to recover. After spending days in a bacta tank he physically recovered from his ill experience he had regained his connection to the Force, but felt even stronger connected to the Dark Side.

Becoming a Sith Acolyte
New visions dwelt in his mind at night, often causing him to sweat and wake up in a dying fear. This fear drew him to the planet Korriban, homeworld to the Sith and one of Count Dooku's hiding places. He met in secret with Sora Bulq, who requested the Count to be tested. Kalin proved himself to be strong in the Dark Side to the Count, but he considered himself not ready. One of his stronger points was actually hiding the Dark Side within him. No one was able to detect it, which gave the Count the idea to serve as a spy, after another acolyte had failed at that plan. He returned to the Jedi Temple and he seemed perfectly fine, but his inner conflict said otherwise. But because no one detected it, they finally gave him the chance to pass the trials and he succeeded to become a Jedi Knight himself, next to his friend Qurhon. He detected something was amiss with his Kalin, but he could not put his finger on it. The time that passed through the Clone Wars showed his betrayal to the Jedi. But everyone who was witness was brought to an end. In his own eyes, it was only justice and for the salvation of the galaxy from the influence of the Republic and its corruption. Little did he know he was on the right track as Palpatine slowly but succesfully regained more power as Supreme Chancellor.

Behind the Scenes

 * The character of Kalin Thalis was created in 2007 for a novel I created with member Ayanna Thalis. We wrote a story that took place more than 400 years after the Battle of Yavin, which gave us a lot of freedom to create our own story, based on the same patterns as the original Star Wars saga using mythology as our greatest source as George Lucas also made use of it to make the story of Star Wars as great as it now.
 * Later I moved the character also to a text-based RPG forum, created by me and Ayanna. Because of our love for writing, we had great fun doing it. The story took off in a similar way compared to that of the novel, but differed of course because it took place in a different timeline, namely the Galactic Civil War.
 * When I joined CWA I tried to recreate it as best as I could as I had envisioned him in the first picture in this article. Using Anakin's original gear was the best way, which was given to me by a friend, member Countess Fairlight. The similarity is actually purely a coincidence as I started to make the picture a year before the movie of The Clone Wars came out.
 * All the pictures in the article were created by myself, manipulating pictures of existing characters, combining them with other pictures of the saga and using actors such as Ryan Phillipe for the character of Kalin himself, who has similar features to Hayden Christensen. Some backgrounds were created by Deviant artists which I am very grateful for to use.