Cadden Blackthorne/Legends


 * "Even in death, I still have many enemies."
 * — Cadden Blackthorne.

Cadden Blackthorne (40 BBY) was once a member of the Jedi Order during the Old Republic. When a coma hit him at the time of Order 66, he underwent intent mental changes, and emerged a new man, with his own destiny before him.

Biography
Cadden Blackthorne has always been a strong individual. A product of genetic experimentation on Kamino, Cadden holds the genes of his father, Faarel Blackthorne, and his mother, Trina Blackthorne. Being no clone, however, Cadden is considered a normal human being, but with an abnormal trait. Due to his experimented test-tube process, Cadden is gifted (or, perhaps, cursed) with decelerated aging. This process kicks in during puberty. Therefore, as Cadden ought to be about fifty standard years old, he is truly only about thirty-five.

During his entire life, Cadden has served as a Jedi Padawan, the leader of the ruthless Crimson Guard in the Galactic Empire, a mercenary under hire for the Rebellion, a freelance mercenary, and most notably a bounty hunter. In recent times, he has traveled to Mandalore, where he had acquired the trust of the Mandalorian people, and has become the new Mandalore.

The Old Republic


Cadden was raised on Corellia, approximately ten years prior to the events that occurred during The Phantom Menace. He was the result of an experiment then-Jedi Knight Faarel Blackthorne and his wife, Trina, were willing to partake in, in response to the Jedi Council's frowning on their decision of marriage. Despite the Council's objections, Faarel and Trina subjected some DNA from themselves and delivered it to Kamino, whereupon Cadden joined the ranks of Clones in their cloning cylinders.

While Cadden was born through the same methods of a clone, he was no clone of either of his parents, but rather a bi-product of their genetics. Neither of the Blackthornes wished it any other way. After nine months of Cadden being developed inside one of the cloning cylinders, Faarel and Trina arrived to witness the test-tube birth of their son. They named him Cadden, and brought him home to Corellia where they raised him for his first few years.

When Cadden became of age, the Council took him in and began to teach him the ways of the Jedi. He grew to be a very promising student - strong, capable, intelligent, and powerful in the Force - but there was nothing more special about him than modern-day Kyp Durron or Luke Skywalker. At least, nothing that anyone could foresee occurring. When Cadden was of age to become an apprentice, a Jedi Knight by the name of Raman Rubar took him in as his Padawan learner, where Cadden spent the next several years honing his abilities. During his time under Raman, the Jedi Knight became a Jedi Master, and the Clone Wars hit.

The Clone Wars was a way Cadden saw himself capable of testing his abilities. He was often with his master during their battles, and for the first few against the Seperatists he saw nothing but Clones on his side. However, as the first four months passed, Cadden found himself becoming close friends with a fresh recruit from the Academy, a Twi'lek named Sil'ais Secura. Sil'ais respected Cadden's strength, honor, and fortitude, and about halfway through the Clone Wars, the Twi'lek swore his fealty to the young Blackthorne Jedi.

Cadden became the rank of Commander by the end of the Clone Wars. However, unlike the Jedi whom had fallen as a result of Order 66, Cadden had fallen for another reason. During a fierce battle against Seperatist droids on Baltura, Cadden and Master Rubar led a regiment of Clones to securing the forward battlefront of the planetary warzone. In the aftermath of their sudden victory, Order 66 was issued. It had taken some time for it to relay itself to Baltura, but not within an hour of its release. The massive amounts of Jedi whom had fallen as a result of the order had sent tidal waves through the Force, and no Jedi had felt the impact greater than Cadden. The resulting trauma caused him to fall into a coma during his fending against the Clones.

Cadden was rescued before execution by Sil'ais and Master Rubar, working collectively to get Cadden off-world. The three traveled to Alderaan, then to Corellia, whereupon Cadden stayed under the watchful care of his parents. During his time under his coma, the Force altered Cadden's mind, feeding him fictional events that pieced together truthful puzzles so well that his life had suddenly become one big lie. It had given him visions of his siblings, and of how he was plugged into the equation. Under this dramatic mind-altering experience, Cadden came to believe that he was born during the height of the Clone Wars. And so his life would forever be changed.

The Galactic Civil War


Upon awakening from his coma, Cadden had come to learn that his parents were dead, and siblings missing. However, this was only half true. The Empire had discovered Cadden's father being a Jedi Master, and had stormed the Blackthorne Estate. In a daring escape, Faarel had sent his children away days before this happening, he and Trina barely escaping the onslaught themselves. Cadden was fed Imperial propoganda - his parents died as a result of a Rebel raid. This making sense to Blackthorne, he enlisted into the Imperial Academy, and honed his skills as a commando. Within time, Cadden was promoted within the Empire to the rank of sergeant, and was tasked with a Special Operations group dubbed the Crimson Guard. All members of the Guard wore crimson armor, Cadden's detailed in Black. The Guard was feared on Naboo, where it was stationed for some time, fighting Rebel insurgents. Cadden gained much favor from the Emperor, and Blackthorne remained loyal to the Empire, until he first met a man named Deranz Tryce.

Deranz was a mercenary whom occassionally did a job or two for the Rebellion. He first met Cadden in the aftermath of a raid against a Rebel outpost, in the town of Moenia. There he had informed Cadden of the Empire's misdeeds. Cadden, too fed up by the Rebellion and too dedicated to the Empire, did not believe a word Deranz stated. He let the man off easy with a warning - too much blood had been spilled that day, that one more man whom had challenged all Cadden stood for was not going to make a difference to him.

Cadden took several more assignments against Rebel insurgents, until Naboo was an Imperial safe haven, before Deranz appeared again. Deranz held an assignment of assassinating the leader of the Crimson Guard. He might have actually followed through with it, had he not stumbled across valuable information that could bring Cadden out of the Crimson Guard, and away from the Emperor's service. Instead of fighting Cadden, Deranz handed over a data disc to Blackthorne, and advised him to look it over. Cadden agreed he would consider it, and traveled back to his home deep in the outskirts of Moenia, on a hillside country setting, where the Crimson Order had taken refuge. It took him some time, but he finally popped the data disc into his data terminal. What he saw shocked him. Cadden learned that the Empire was responsible for his parents' deaths, not the Rebellion. The information came directly from the ISB, so no Rebel propoganda could have been involved. Cadden, enraged, moved out of the Crimson Guard, whereupon his second in command challenged him as Cadden was leaving the area for good. The two fought, and Cadden escaped, wounding the man. He took first transport off-world, and fled to Dantooine, where he made certain the Empire would not find him. The Crimson Guard would likely pursue him and assassinate him under the act of treason. Cadden decided he had to lay low for some time.

In response to this small nuicanse, Cadden got to work altering his composite armor's color scheme. He removed all indications of Imperial markings and colored the leggings, biceps and bracers pitch black. Composite armor wasn't cheap, but it wasn't hard to get a hold of either. He figured that this would allow him to operate as a mercenary, taking the alias of Nemesis, without the Crimson Guard taking notice. For some time, it had succeeded.



Because the members of the Crimson Guard knew what Caden looked like, he had to alter his appearance to the point where he would not be immediately recognizable. For the first time, Cadden was a wanted man, a fugitive. Because of this, Cadden was wanted by both sides of the Civil War, the Empire and the Rebellion. What made things complicated was that neither side trusted him. Cadden committed several crimes against the Rebellion during his time as a sergeant for the Crimson Guard, and the Empire wanted him dead for his act of treason. This is what brought Cadden into what would be discovered as the highly lucrative world freelance work.

While Cadden was getting used to his new life, he wound up working as hired muscle for several walks of life. Working on retainer for Jabba the Hutt, as well as other Hutt crimelords, Cadden gained enough notoriety in the Underworld to be trusted with most individuals. The more he accomplished, the more he made. Eventually, Cadden had his own small fortune. It was roughly 500,000 credits, but it was enough for Cadden to retire from the work of a mercenary for a while. He used what few ties he had to begin on the investigation of his parents' deaths, and traveled back to Corellia to search the Blackthorne Estate.

He spent the next several weeks performing investigative work, discovering what he could about the perpitrators and the details of his family's fall. Soon, Cadden had learned that the Imperial Inquisitor was responsible, acting with orders directly from the Emperor himself. It was not enough for Cadden, and so he journeyed into the sublevel of the estate, searching for more clues to his parents' deaths. He was looking for those directly responsible, not for those he would never get a chance in finding, and taking his revenge on. It was in the sublevels of the estate that Cadden found a data disc. Believing it to be something that could lead him to those responsible for his misery, Cadden searched the data on the disc. He soon found information about the whereabouts of a suit of armor, which had belonged to one of his ancestors.

Cadden followed the trail, having to fight many fights over the next couple months, before he found himself on Dathomir, and the location of an old hut. Entering the former homestead, Cadden found a chest, sealed shut and air-tight. He spent the next couple days attempting to open the chest, until he finally was able to open it. Contained inside was a full suit of blood-red Mandalorian Armor. Cadden looked at the perfectly-preserved legendary piece of equipment with awe, all the while wondering how any of his family could have gotten their hands on such a thing. It was at that point Cadden was a free man.



From that moment on, Cadden trained himself rigorously on several different worlds, taking on beasts of nature big and small alike. During this timeframe, Cadden had purchased a Firespray-class Patrol Ship, dubbing it the Pursuer based off of his pursuit for his Mandalorian armor. He used this ship as his personal transport, and each week he put a distinct modification to it. Like Boba Fett, Cadden had remained silent about the origins of his armor. He used the mysticism, and the perk that a similar Boba Fett was a notorious bounty hunter, to climb even higher in notoriety in the Underworld, until Cadden had become a very common household name. Not even the Crimson Guard was capable of touching him at this point, for the Blackthorne bounty hunter had become one of the most feared individuals in the fringes of space, next to Boba Fett, Bossk, IG-88, Raptor, and other well-known bounty hunters.

Cadden made certain to upkeep and upgrade his armor as often as he was able. He modified his armor to include a macrobinocular viewplate helmet, motion and sound sensors, infrared capabilities, an internal comlink with his ship, the Pursuer, and a broadband antenna for intercepting and decoding transmissions. Wrist gauntlets housed lasers, a miniature flame projector, and a fibercord whip/grappling device; a backpack jet pack included a turbo-projected magnetic grappling hook with twenty-meter lanyard. Cadden also carried a knee-pad rocket dart launcher, spiked boots, a concussion-gernade launcher, and a BlasTech EE-3 rifle. Even though his gizmos were that of Fett, Cadden's skills didn't quite equal the other hunter's, but he was confident that soon he would get the opportunity to rise to second best soon enough.

Throughout his life, Cadden had worked as a warrior, a politician, mechanic, a trader, businessman, mercenary, soldier, personal guard, assassin, and, most frequently, as a bounty hunter - one of the most expensive bounty hunters in the known systems. He collected 150,000 credits for the capture of the pirate Senan Asterr, and took a record 500,000 credits when he caught the religious Twi'lek heretic Grok for the Hutts. The only hunter who had bested his work during his career as a hunter was the famed Boba Fett.



Cadden never took his helmet off, not for anybody or under any occassion. It was rumored that he was a grotesquely disfigured man, and was ashamed of seeing his own face. Another rumor had it that he did not wish to be reminded of his family, and the tradegy that remained in the memory of Corellia. The truth behind Cadden's behavior remained the same, however, in the fact that he used the armor to strike fear into others. He was quick and agile enough to hunt without it, but Cadden knew that anyone whom bore Mandalorian armor automatically gained the respect of others.

Cadden returned to working for the Hutts, and got a hefty salary out of his occupation with them, and even started working for the Empire. He was always slow and methodical and as unpredictable as the shifting sands of Tatooine. He rarely lost his quarry, and had shown no remorse for their fate. Cadden was known to work with other bounty hunters, but his motives may have been to show the others up; Cadden had always emerged as the one who caught the prize. He had yet to actually test his skills against the famed Boba Fett and find out who was the better hunter.

At one point, Cadden had been on hire to intercept and eliminate Jedi Knight Cameo Naton, and was backed by a very large reward. Cadden had spent several weeks tracking Cameo and learning about the other. Opportunity struck when the Jedi was to meet with someone interested in becoming his apprentice on some backwater planet. Cadden had taken the opportunity to exterminate the future apprentice and take the ten thousand credit reward, and used that as his chance to ambush the unsuspecting Jedi Knight. Cameo took the bait, but he had escaped Cadden's grasp.

The bounty hunter chased Cameo around for some time, never meeting with success, before he finally gave up the pursuit and accepted the ten thousand, instead of the heavier 900,000 offered on the Jedi Knight, and went on his way. Cadden and Cameo never crossed paths since. However, Cadden had finally found a chance to face off with the Imperial Inquisitor, Ansara Bansari, responsible for his parents' deaths. He dueled Ansara, and had emerged victorious with nothing more than a mere cut in the Inquisitor's right arm before she fled the scene. Several weeks later, Cadden had finally tracked down and eliminated the team he believed responsible for his parents' deaths, thus effectively removing an aged act of vengeance.

As his last jobs, Cadden had turned in the Imperial traitorous senator Ubio for 300,000 credits and a hyperdrive for the one partially responsible for his capture, Councelor Jobe. During the capture of the Bothan former senator, Cadden had run in to a Jedi Knight named Renalla Starrider. He did not know it at that point, but that woman was to be the sole person responsible for his leaving the bounty hunting trade. When Cadden returned from his deliverance of Ubio to Imperial authorities in order to give Jobe his hyperdrive, complications came along and Jobe left the ship to, unexpectedly, Jade. Later Cadden returned and successfully captured Dark Jedi Cazzik Wyn and turned him in to Karde for 1,500,000 credits. That was his last bounty, and Cadden assisted the Dark Jedi in escaping Karde's clutches for reasons unknown.

It is unknown how long Cadden had planned to change, but when he did, the entire galaxy was in shock. The famous bounty hunter returned to a life of mystery, simply fading into the dark expanding abyss of space. It was here that he had met Trai Kanossi, whom was masquerading as his brother Dalen. Trai helped Cadden discover his potency in the Force, as well as bring him and Renalla together for their first, and last, adventure together.

Over the course of time, Cadden had developed a perfection for hiding his presence in the Force. Much like how the Jedi Master Yoda had hid himself with the Dark Tree on Dagobah, but Cadden did not need any kind of mysterious, dark location to remain hidden. It was a trait that could only be perfected to this extent by few, and the Blackthornes were no exception. In order to keep his situation a secret, Cadden had placed an under-the-table order for an HRD, which would look exactly like him, to do his dirty work. For some time, the HRD succeeded in keeping the Empire away from Cadden.

After the Battle of Endor


Later, Cadden finally resurfaced and re-established Blackthorne Enterprises, a family corporation which remained dead for 30 years. The company had gotten off to a good start, and continued to see some promising times at the rate it was going, yet Cadden's old ways got the better of him again. The freedom fighter, and now Jedi-in-training, decided to send a kamikaze ship to Bilbringi, the center of the Empire. He was to pilot it, and collide a modified, custom frigate, packed to the max with highly dangerous and explosive missiles and other detonating projectiles into the planetoid, but one of his Elite Guard members, Trasj Ricknas, took it instead.

Following the kamikaze attack, the Empire sent massive forces to the already-fleeing Blackthorne Enterprises forces, but they still outnumbered the company three to one. Because of an Interdictor field, Cadden's forces lost approximately 75% of its military forces and around 12% of its evacuees, a heavy loss for the company. Captain Irrad of the Red Star Alliance Star Frigate Benevolent gave the ultimate sacrifice, however, staying behind to delay the Empire. As soon as he knew that the company could escape, the Benevolent self-destructed, destroying all on-board, which seemed to include Cadden's personal ship, the Pursuer II.

After the Blackthorne Enterprises forces had retreated to Midpoint, they hypered out toward their next rendezvous point in a series of jumps to shake the Empire off of their tails. However, Cadden, along with Trai, Tamerah, Ryy'Suuk, and Renalla Starrider, all got sucked into an unknown sector of the Unknown Regions to face their ultimate trial of their skills.

But while they were stuck on the unknown ice world, Black one-eighteen, Cadden's Human Replica Droid, sacrificed himself to Ket Maliss in order to have the bounty lifted off of the real Cadden Blackthorne's head. His last move was sending out a message to an agent of Cadden's by the name of Kay'l Syao, a message that would have to be given to Ket Maliss prior to the agent's visit to Junrest, in order to get the apparent killer of Cadden Blackthorne a message from Cadden himself (prior to his departure from Midpoint).

A week after being on the ice world, Cadden finally faced a great soul stealer named Ulfik Nevekron, who had a Dark Jedi Master inside his essence. After a heated duel, Cadden managed to get a jab through Ulfik's defenses with his lightsaber, killing the man almost instantly. While that was going on, a heated battle between Triad and Imperium forces was going on just outside the spaceport they were sent to destroy. Cadden got the detonators placed and had to manually detonate them, racing the explosion out on a hoverbike and barely escaping with his own life, while I'Flym valiantly saved Renalla's life by stopping a jab at her from an Imperium troop's batton. The troop was confronted by Renalla and Ryy'Suuk and taken away, and Renalla went down to the wounded Cadden.

After saying their good-byes, the gang hypered away from the planet and to a secluded, independant system, where Cadden spent the next few weeks recovering from his wounds on the world of Thonner. However, when he had first awoken, he discovered Renalla had left, and perhaps would never know of the real reasons why. As soon as he was healed, he was cleared of all doubts. He could not remain hidden forever... but he did know that there was one thing he had yet to do. Unaware of what was stirring within his own essence, Cadden departed from the others in a personal fighter he had acquired, to seclusion once again.

While in his time of seclusion, Cadden received a call for help from a familliar source - Talmohkt, the ice world in which Cadden and his friends had returned from but a standard year prior. Cadden accepted the stressed call for aid, and returned to the ice world, alone this time. However, the call was a trap - the Nomad Soul had returned in his full form, a grotesque alien by the name of Klatonn. Klatonn, the original Nomad Soul, had gathered enough strength to return from the netherworld, whereupon he goaded Cadden to the Dark Side by claiming to be the cause of the deaths of his entire family, including Renalla Starrider. Cadden, enfuriated, charged the Nomad Soul, lightsaber in hand and blade extended, and brought the saber down on the ancient nemesis of his with all his might. However, Klatonn had a new apprentice with him - a man by the name of Carth Dyral. Carth blocked the blow, but Cadden simply kicked the younger man away in response, and cut Klatonn down. Letting his rage take over, Cadden released a destructive surge of energy on Klatonn, completely destroying the creature's body, and sending his spirit back into the abyss. But at a great cost. With that simple act, Cadden had engulfed himself in the Dark Side, and soon after the defeat of the Nomad Soul, Cadden arose to the creature's place.

He led Talmohkt into a revolutionary stage, where the planet was to engage in modern technological advances of space, a movement that the people accepted well, but was masked with a true purpose - Cadden, with his newfound rage and dark powers, was intending on launching a frontal assault against the outskirts of the Outer Rim, in an attempt to raise a force to strike at the heart of the Empire. However, plans went awry, and Cadden found himself engaged in a fierce duel against Carth Dyral for the position of leader. At the end of the duel, though, both warriors ended in a draw, but both with a price to pay. Carth lost his vocal cords, and Cadden his right eye.

Agreeing to continue the duel another time, the two decided to focus on getting off Talmohkt, first. However, when civil war abrupted, the rebels led by Cadden's sister Tamerah and his long-time friend, Trai Kanossi, alongside Ryy'Suuk, Cadden's sister and two friends managed to convince him to abandon his efforts. After some struggle, Cadden launched into space, using the very single-crewed fighter he arrived on the world with, and destroyed a hyperspace portal that was to lead the people of Talmohkt to their new home. Staging his own death, Cadden used decisive timing and expert piloting to escape through the portal, as it collapsed upon itself. He emerged in the Outer Rim territories, and ultimately decided to head to the Hoth System, whereupon he crash-landed on the ice world. He barely survived the wreckage, due to the interference of a Zabrak named Zartok Ular. When Cadden awoke three days later, he found himself with an artificial eye, and a thanks to be found with a new ally. He spent the next two weeks in recovery and, with no way off Hoth, he dedicated a lot of that time to meditation and training. Cadden had realized the kind of monster he had become, back on Talmohkt, and saw his time on Hoth as a good one to remain separated from all those whom he cared about, in hopes that his seclusion could rid him of his taint.

After the third week, Cadden received a visit from a man named Kladaar, an older ancestor of his from six generations prior, in his spirit form. Kladaar informed Cadden of a dark past that his family had shared, for quite some time, until they had come to the Jedi Order and a new generation of Blackthornes had been established. However, to keep Cadden from walking down the dark path, he refused to disclose any details. Instead, he warned Cadden of the dangers of the Dark Side, that once one walked down that path, it would forever dominate one's destiny, consume their will. And, for those that repented, they would be engulfed in a war with themselves, a war to purge the dark taint that would remain. Kladaar parted with these words: "A Jedi is free to follow the path he has chosen, but do not mistake the path of the Dark Side to be the strongest of the two. It is merely the easiest."

It was only afterwards that Cadden had realized that the last he saw his ship, the Pursuer II, it was in the Empire's raid of Blackthorne Enterprises so many years ago. Taking a gamble, he called the ship on a personal wristpad, and but a couple hours later, his Firespray-class ship found its way to his location, and landed outside. Cadden then made long preparations to leave Hoth, once and for all, and even took Zartok and his medical droid with him after a week's worth of preparations.

From there, Cadden re-surfaced, joining forces with Jhuston Vox in the apprehension of the notorious pirate Kaldone for Esran Croft. Zartok had lost his life in the hunt, but the others managed to pull off the bounty with little trouble. Cadden once again went into seclusion, where he had discovered that Carth Dyral had escaped Talmohkt and, after repenting from the Dark Side himself, had fallen under the magics of a Sith Lord. Cadden faced off with Carth for the last time, aiding the old rival in purging the Sith from his mind, whereupon they parted on peaceful terms. Cadden then joined up with Ryy'Suuk and Jaylin Kumar, and held some minor adventures with the two for the next couple of years.



He has recently re-surfaced one last time, and with an old rival inside of him, slowly creeping to the top of control over Cadden. Having in mind to restore a long-lost Blackthorne legacy, Ulfik Nevekron, the Nomad Soul, nearly succeeded in completely taking control over Cadden's body. However, with the help of Cadden's sons, Guan and Jerik, the Nomad Soul was confronted and was pressed back into Cadden's darkest recesses. Guan finished the job, completely destroying the Nomad Soul's presence within Cadden, and sending the creature's dark soul into the eternal abyss, where it belonged.

After the final destruction of the Nomad Soul, Cadden decided to leave the new Blackthorne Enterprises, and resold all its assets. Using the credits he got for that, as well as a healthy sum of credits from commission costs from selling older Blackthorne Enterprises designs to Esran Croft Enterprises, before his older incarnation of the company went belly-up, Cadden went into retirement. However, old habits die hard, and within a matter of a couple years Cadden was secretly scouring the galaxy in his Rogue-class Armed Transport, the Rogue Star. After hearing of the Xen'Chi and Gait threats, Cadden assembled together a crack team of combat and information specialists to deal with petty thugs, preparing them to combat the new threats on their own. Through this endeavor, Cadden had met Sil'ais Secura once again, and had at that point began to discover his past had been nothing more than a lie.

The Falleen named Xhander joined the Rogue Star's crew shortly after Cadden had a run-on with a deadly Dark Jedi by the name of Ilan Garuda, whom Cadden later discovered had been undergoing the Jedi Trials during the Clone Wars at about the same time he had. Cadden defeated Ilan Garuda twice over the course of three weeks. During those three weeks, he had met with a Jedi Master whom had been in exile since the Clone Wars began named Teslar Maladan. Teslar guided Cadden toward a new path, seperate from that of his ragtag team of specialists. After Cadden had supposedly killed Garuda on Holoworld III, he decided to take Teslar's offer and leave for his own destiny. Little did he know it would lead him to the planet Mandalore. When Cadden arrived in the Mandalore System, his ship's hyperdrive had suffered a major malfunction, due to the tampering of the Pursuer II's computer systems, causing the ship to explode. Locke Rekkon and Gandon Belak, two surviving Mandalorians, found Cadden and Deranz floating in space above their world, after receiving news about the explosion, and nursed them back to full health. Only three days later did Cadden become accepted as one of the Mandalorian Warriors on the planet, and that same day he learned that his father was still alive. Cadden vowed to lead the Mandalorians to their former glory, or die trying. During the calm before the storm that would be the Battle of Thyferra, Cadden had been chosen to become the new Mandalore. Only moments afterwads, did he head to the Corellian System, to speak to his father about his heritage.