Darth Malak
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- "This is but a taste of the dark side." — Darth Malak
Darth Malak is a character from the fictional Star Wars universe. He was introduced in the video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) for the Xbox and PC platforms. The events of Knights of the Old Republic take place 3,956 years prior to the events of the Star Wars feature films.
Darth Malak was a bald, pale-skinned human. His head was adorned with a large durasteel plate that covered his face from below the nose on down. The prosthetic was made necessary by a ghastly lightsaber injury that completely severed his lower jaw and occurred at an unknown point prior to his becoming Dark Lord of the Sith. He wore skin-tight red-orange body armor that showed off his powerful physique, draped in a cape of dark cloth. He always carried his lightsaber with him.
Darth Malak was a master swordsman who practiced a personalized Djem So Template:Fact lightsaber form, and an adept Force-user, excelling particularly in such dark side skills as Force Lightning, Life Drain, and Choke. He also excelled in Lightsaber Throw and Stasis, although these are not dark side abilities.
Like many Sith Lords before and after him, Malak's name could be derived from real languages - Mala is Latin for "jawbone." Similarly, the word malus means "bad" in Latin, and has left its stem mal in modern Romance languages such as Spanish and French, possibly in reference to Malak's fall to the dark side of the Force. Curiously, the Arabic word "malak" means "angel." Also, Malak Ta'us is a common name for the Yazidi religion's Peacock Angel figure, Melek Taus, a figure sometimes identified with Lucifer by Christians, or Shaitan by Orthodox Muslims.
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Early career
Malak and his best friend, Revan, were Jedi assigned to the Order's enclave on Dantooine. While they were there, they discovered a Star Map that had been left on the planet by the Rakata, a species that had ruled the galaxy in the distant past.
When the Mandalorian Wars began and Outer Rim planets began to fall, Revan defied the Jedi Council and insisted on defending the galaxy alongside the Old Republic starfleet. The first to follow him was Malak, his closest friend. Together they rallied many young Jedi and began destroying the Mandalorians in battle after battle, finally defeating the mercenary leader, Mandalore the Ultimate, above Malachor V. The duo took their fleet, however, and passed beyond known space, insisting that they had to destroy the remnants of the Mandalorian armada. While beyond the Rim, they found the Star Forge, an ancient marvel of Rakatan engineering. Corrupted by the dark side energies present in and the power represented by the Star Maps and Star Forge, Revan and Malak fell to the dark side and founded a new Sith Empire out of the Jedi and Republic forces who still followed them.
Using their own charisma and status as heroes in the eyes of their soldiers, they wrested control of a large space fleet from the Old Republic and began their career of conquest. As Revan was the stronger of the two Sith Lords, he claimed the coveted title of Dark Lord of the Sith, and Malak reluctantly consented to be his apprentice. He chafed under Revan's control, though, and awaited the opportunity to replace his master.
Dark Lord of the Sith
The moment came when a Republic strike team, led by Jedi Sentinel Bastila Shan, staged an assault on Revan's flagship. In an attempt to slay the powerful Jedi and his master at the same time, Malak ordered his ship's guns to fire on Revan's ship. Malak believed that Revan was dead and assumed the command of the Sith Empire, at last taking the mantle of Dark Lord for his own.
While the war against the Republic was going very well, he feared Bastila's gift of Battle Meditation, a rare Force power that enabled her to strengthen the Republic forces' resolve and coordinate their fighting effort while sapping the will of their enemies, making her a threat to the entire Sith war effort. Darth Malak expended tremendous resources in an attempt to locate and capture her.
Malak nearly succeeded once when he blockaded the planet Taris. Although he had the planet destroyed to prevent Bastila's escape, she nonetheless was able to return unharmed to Dantooine accompanied by her rescuers. Among these heroes were two citizens of Taris, Mission Vao and Zaalbar; Republic pilot Carth Onasi; the utility droid T3-M4; and Revan himself, his mind reprogrammed as a crewmember from the Republic cruiser Endar Spire. It was Revan who had raced in a hazardous swoop tournament in order to free Bastila from the clutches of one of the street gangs of Taris.
Bastila and her companions left Dantooine in search of the source of Malak's power. While on their search, Bastila was captured by Malak. Malak corrupted Bastila to the dark side of the Force and made her his apprentice. (Malak's previous apprentice, Darth Bandon, had recently been killed in action by Revan.)
It is not surprising that Malak's fate would be connected with Bastila's. The two were very much alike -- courageous, arrogant, and heedless of the warnings of their Jedi instructors to beware the call of the dark side. But the true reason Malak chose Bastila for his apprentice was the unimaginable advantages the Sith Empire could gain from her Battle Meditation. Among the Sith, there is no such thing as camaraderie.
The Final Battle
The source of this power was the subject of the Star Map that Malak and Revan had discovered on Dantooine long ago: the Star Forge. The Star Forge was an enormous space station and battle dreadnought constructed by the Infinite Empire of the Rakata. The Rakata were a technologically advanced but savage species who extended their power throughout the galaxy by means of conquest. The Star Forge was constructed above one of the poles of their home star. There, the Star Forge fed on the star's energetic hydrogen and the dark side of the Force to produce an unending supply of starfighters, capital ships, and war droids for the Rakata prior to their collapse, and now for the Sith.
The heroes on the quest for the Star Forge called in the Republic fleet to attack the Sith. For a while, it looked as if Malak would be able to destroy his foes in a single, glorious day. Fate -- or the Force -- handed Malak a stunning defeat, however, and it would be he who would die when his former master, Revan, returned; during the battle, his old master boarded the Star Forge in the Ebon Hawk, defeated an attack force of Forge droids, slew nearly the entire pool of Malak's Dark Jedi and Sith apprentices, and finally killed his old friend in single combat. And Malak knew his error and finally acknowledged his inferiority to Revan: "I am nothing."
In the end, Malak's story is a tragic one. He was one of the most gifted and respected Jedi in their Order, and had a lifelong friend in Revan. But by taking the path of the dark side, which, ironically, Revan started him down in the first place, he lost that respect and friendship in a mad quest for power, trading them in for fear, hatred, and, eventually, death. But even after years of the corruption of the dark side, Malak was not entirely evil. As he lay dying, his mortal wounds dealt to him by his best friend, he couldn't help but wonder, had their positions been reversed, if he could have possessed the strength to return to the light as Revan did, and what his life would have been like had he been able to do so. He tried to blame Revan for his fate, but then admitted that, in the end, the only person he had to blame for how his life had ended was himself. Humbled and belittled by that knowledge, still bested by Revan despite all his clever plans and conquests, Malak, realizing that nothing he had ever done or could ever do could compare to the things done by his former master, at last acknowledged his inferiority, and his final words were the truest he had ever spoken: "And in the end, as the darkness takes me, I am nothing."
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