Name: Talzin
Homeworld: Dathomir
Died: 19 BBY, Dathomir
Species: Zabrak (Dathomirian)
Gender: Female
Height: 2.23 meters
Eye color: Silver (with black sclera)
Skin color: White (with black markings)
Dexterity: 3D
Brawling Parry: 7D
Dodge: 10D
Melee Combat: 9D
Melee Parry: 9D+2
Knowledge: 4D
Alien Species: 5D
Bureaucracy: 6D+2
Cultures: 6D
Languages: 8D
Scholar; Jedi Lore: 6D
Scholar; Sith Lore: 6D+2
Scholar; Nightsister Lore: 12D
Planetary Systems: 7D
Tactics: 6D
Survival: 8D
Intimidate: 8D
Perception: 4D
Bargain: 7D+2
Command: 7D
Command; Nightsisters: 10D
Hide: 9D
Persuasion: 8D+1
Search: 8D+2
Sneak: 9D
Strength: 2D+1
Climbing/Jumping: 6D
Brawling: 8D
Stamina: 7D
Mechanical: 2D
Astrogation: 7D
Beast Riding: 9D
RepulsorLift Operation: 4D
Technical: 3D
First Aid: 10D
Medicine: 8D
Security: 6D
Move: 10
Force Sensitive: Yes
Force Points: 20
Dark Side Points: 18
Character Points: 27
Special Abilities:
Control: 13D
Sense: 14D
Alter: 12D
Force Powers (These are an estimate of the powers that Talzin possessed, although as a Dathomirian Witch her powers manifested in different ways to Jedi and Sith, for example her Force Lightning was Green, and her Absorb/Dissipate Energy (or possibly Greater Force Shield) formed a visible green bubble around her, and her Injure/Kill formed flames around the target. She was also able to manifest her abilities over a far longer range than Sith or Jedi seemed to be able, often with the trappings of magic such as potions or crystals, attacking enemies with Telekinesis or Injure/Kill using a lock of their hair.):
Control: Absorb/Dissipate Energy, Accelerate Healing, Concentration, Control Disease, Control Pain, Detoxify Poison, Enhance Attribute, Force Of Will, Hibernation Trance, Rage, Reduce Injury, Remain Conscious, Remove Fatigue, Resist Stun, Chant of Resurrection, Metamorphosis
Sense: Combat Sense, Danger Sense, Life Detection, Life Sense, Receptive Telepathy, Sense Force
Alter: Force Jump, Injure/Kill, Telekinesis, Force Push
Alter and Sense: Greater Force Shield
Control and Sense: Projective Telepathy, Jedi Armed Combat
Control and Alter: Force Lightning, Inflict Pain
Control, Sense and Alter: Affect Mind, Telekinetic Kill
Equipment: 750 Credits
Robes,
Description: Talzin was a Dathomirian female who lived during the final decades of the Galactic Republic's reign and became a formidable figure of power during the Clone Wars. On her homeworld of Dathomir, Talzin lived as a shaman and Clan Mother of the Nightsisters—a coven of Force-sensitive witches who used magicks to manipulate the wilderness around them and rule their male counterparts, the Nightbrothers. Talzin's expertise in magicks was significant enough to attract the attention of the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Sidious, who came to Dathomir ostensibly to trade dark side Force teachings with Talzin and take her as his own Sith apprentice. Instead, the Sith Lord abducted Talzin's son Maul and took him as an apprentice in her place. Years later, he was presumed dead at the Battle of Naboo after sustaining mortal injuries, but his strength in the dark side allowed him to remain just barely alive. Although Talzin was aware of Maul's incredible survival, she was unable to rescue him and thus remained on Dathomir to plot her revenge against Sidious and his Sith, with her ultimate goal being galactic domination.
When the Clone Wars between the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems erupted ten years later, Talzin gained galactic notoriety by selling the services of the Nightsisters as assassins and mercenaries. In the midst of the Clone Wars, Talzin began targeting Count Dooku, the leader of the Confederacy and the newest apprentice of Lord Sidious. Asajj Ventress, a Nightsister-turned-Sith apprentice, had been betrayed by Dooku and returned to Dathomir to seek Talzin's help in exacting revenge. Although their early attempts to assassinate Dooku failed, Talzin had a long-term plan for the Sith Lord's demise: she would provide Dooku with a new apprentice in the form of the Nightbrother Savage Opress, who was also one of Talzin's children. Opress was Maul's biological brother and, after falling under the influence of her magick, became completely loyal to his mother and was hidden in the ranks of the Sith. Ultimately, both Ventress and Opress proved unable to kill the Count and were forced to seek refuge with Talzin once more. While she tasked Opress with locating Maul somewhere in the Outer Rim Territories, she welcomed Ventress back to Dathomir as a full member of the Nightsisters. The world was invaded by Dooku's droid armies shortly thereafter and nearly all of the Nightsisters were wiped out by the Confederate General Grievous and his forces, with the exception of Ventress and Talzin herself. Weakened, the elder Nightsister fled into the spirit world to survive. Shortly after the massacre, Opress returned to Dathomir having successfully retrieved a crazed and crippled Maul. Using what magicks she had left, Talzin reconstructed her son and restored his broken mind.
The act of restoring Maul forced Talzin to surrender her physical body to the spirit realm, but her son pledged to carry her torch of vengeance in a quest to draw out and kill Dooku and Sidious. Maul and Opress did succeed in forming the Shadow Collective as a power base but were quickly found and defeated by Darth Sidious himself. Maul was captured and Opress was killed, effectively halting Talzin's plans for revenge. In the interim, she undertook a scheme to absorb raw Force energy from the Dagoyan Masters of Bardotta. Her manipulation of Bardotta's Frangawl Cult, who revered her as the Great Mother, resulted in the successful abduction and absorption of nearly all the Masters, but the plan was derailed when Jedi Master Mace Windu and Representative Jar Jar Binks interfered with Talzin's attempt to absorb Bardotta's Queen Julia on the moon Zardossa Stix. Talzin was again forced into the spirit realm, but was presented with a final chance at escape and revenge when Maul was freed from Sidious's grasp and began plotting with his mother to capture and kill Dooku to draw out Sidious. Maul succeeded in capturing Dooku and transported him back to the heart of Talzin's power on Dathomir, where his mother possessed the Count's body and nearly killed him. The torture of Dooku gave the Nightsister enough strength to return to the physical realm, but her ritual was again interrupted, this time by Grievous and Darth Sidious, who had come to end Talzin's threat once and for all. Despite her return to the material world during the skirmish, Talzin was unsuccessful in killing Dooku and was unable to withstand the might of two Sith Lords and their cyborg general. She sent Maul to safety before being slain by Grievous, a death that marked the fall of Dathomir and the end of Talzin's Nightsister coven.
Personality and traits
Mother Talzin's main loyalties laid with the Nightsisters and with her son Maul, and her primary goals were to exact revenge against Darth Sidious and eventually rule the galaxy alongside her son. In service to these grander aims she was duplicitous and manipulative, able to control various different factions in a puppetmaster-like fashion to achieve her goals, all while maintaining a facade of loyalty to her various underlings who were none the wiser to her true intentions. While she was ultimately overcome and defeated by Sidious, she possessed a shrewd and tactical mind and was able to go toe-to-toe with the Sith Lord for a time, accurately predicting his movements and adjusting her own strategies accordingly.
As the leader of her Nightsisters, Talzin taught them to be loyal to nobody except each other and to only focus on themselves and their sisters. As their leader and shaman, the Nightsisters obeyed her orders without question, as did her other followers such as the Frangawl Cult. Acting as a maternal figure, she was very sympathetic and kind towards Asajj Ventress, aiding her and giving her a hug when she returned to Dathomir. While initially helping Ventress in her quest for revenge, she was also adamant in her belief that she should return home and renounce the ways of the Sith. While supportive, she wasn't against deceiving Ventress to advance her own goals, helping Savage Opress after he betrayed Ventress and sending him on a quest to find Talzin's other son, a fact she withheld from Ventress after her return. She comforted Ventress when the younger Nightsister blamed herself for bringing the Separatists to Dathomir, and also defended her fellow Nightsisters with her magick. However, when Talzin realized that the Nightsisters were going to lose the battle, she fled, and rather than continuing to give Ventress sanctuary she told her to leave and find her own path so Talzin could focus on her endgame: vengeance against the Sith.
While she did care for the Nightsisters, Talzin's greatest attachment was to her "beloved son," Darth Maul, which ran contrary to her culture that viewed males as expendable tools for breeding. After losing Maul to her former partner Darth Sidious, Talzin wished to rescue him, and she stated he was what was most dear to her. After Maul was returned to her, Talzin provided some of her own life force to revive him, sent him aid as he carried out her plans for revenge, and eventually, gave her life to help him escape from Sidious. Her protectiveness and love for Maul was reciprocated and Maul was devastated by her death.
Talzin's regard for Nightbrothers other than Maul seemed more in line with the Nightsisters' matriarchal tendencies; despite this, Viscus and the other males under her command respected her leadership and showed concern for her well-being, and were trusted with guarding the heart of her power at the Nightbrother village. While Maul, Feral, and Savage were all her children, she appeared to be fine with using Savage as a pawn in her and Ventress's game for revenge, empowered him with magicks that suppressed his personality and amplified his anger, and allowed Ventress to force him to kill his brother Feral. In private she displayed a much kinder attitude towards him, such as when she comforted Savage when he returned following his betrayal of Ventress, and they regarded each other with mutual respect when Savage arrived on Dathomir with Maul. She also pressured Ventress to treat Savage with respect after his transformation. Despite her apparent fondness for Savage, Talzin never expressed any desire to avenge his death at the hands of Sidious even as she sought to have him killed for betraying Maul.
Talzin despised the Sith and deeply resented Darth Sidious for taking Maul from her and casting her aside. A talented liar, she was able to trick Dooku into believing she was fulfilling a debt she owed him, while in reality was planning on having him killed. She also showed signs of sadism, as she was very gleeful when torturing Dooku. However, she later opportunistically tried to convert him to her cause, warning him about Sidious's true intentions to replace him in the process. She didn't think very highly of the Jedi either, telling blatant lies to Anakin and Obi-Wan when they arrived seeking information on Savage's whereabouts, though she did eventually relent upon further prodding. She displayed a snarky and dismissive side when confronted by Mace Windu, sarcastically declaring she was a "simple witch" and beneath his attention. In her lust for power she was willing to sacrifice innocent Bardottans including Queen Julia to enhance her own abilities.
Powers and abilities
Mother Talzin was an extremely powerful witch and a master of dark magicks, able to manipulate the spirit ichor that flowed from Dathomir's depths in a variety of ways. Unlike other members of her kind, she claimed to not have a natural connection with the Force; despite this, her powers were in fact derived from the Nightsister's unique connection to the Force, which allowed her to craft a crystal ball to see the future or events across the galaxy. She often led the rest of the Nightsisters through incantations, such as when she transformed Savage Opress, and when she made Asajj Ventress into an official Nightsister, as well as when she was able to disguise Asajj Ventress and two other Nightsisters from Count Dooku's detection, transforming them into ghostly versions of their true forms. She also could put people to sleep with the tap of a finger. Talzin was capable of using her powers to torture Count Dooku using a lock of Dooku's own hair even though the Count was on a completely different planet at the time. She was even capable of appearing in more than one place at a time, as shown when a ghostly vision of her appeared from within Dooku's chest, although Talzin's physical body was still on Dathomir. She was also able to contact members of the Frangawl Cult in the form of visions. Talzin was also capable of dematerializing her body, transforming into smoke and vanishing into the spirit world when General Grievous had her cornered, as well as materializing and disappearing from wisps of green mist before Savage Opress after he returned to Dathomir. Using her magicks and a portion of her life energy, she was able to repair Darth Maul's damaged mind and build him a fully functional set of new legs formed from salvaged droid parts, and after doing so could still manifest in the physical world by using her son's body as a vessel.
In combat, Mother Talzin was capable of creating a green protection bubble capable of absorbing blaster fire and Force lightning, although it was useless as a barrier against physical attacks. She was able to launch Force lightning at the opponent whilst maintaining the shield at the same time. Unlike other Force lightning users, Talzin's lightning appeared green in color and was fired in concentrated beams that could home in on multiple targets from afar. It was very powerful, able to destroy a B-1 battle droid in one hit. She was able to create a lightsaber-like sword conjured from magick and survive in battle against Mace Windu, one of the most powerful Jedi in the Order, displaying impressive dueling skills. While possessing Dooku, Talzin was able to use Dooku's lightsaber to briefly hold her own against Sidious, though Sidious remarked that Talzin's skills could not be compared to Dooku's. However her magicks proved to be powerful enough, at least while on Dathomir, to challenge Sidious's dark side powers, and it took the intervention of both Dooku and Grievous to overcome her.
Though she was never known to use telekinesis in combat, Talzin was a powerful user of telekinesis, able to lift many types of objects with ease as well as levitate herself. She could also incinerate or form objects with her magic, as she was able to melt the silver orb that contained Count Dooku's lock of hair, as well as create a drinking cup for Dooku when he visited her. She could set things on fire simply by using her magicks, as shown with the large pot that contained Count Dooku's Voodoo doll. Although Talzin was extremely powerful, she asked one of the elder Nightsisters to use a resurrection spell, showing that she may not have mastered the ability to resurrect the dead.
Talzin's magicks were said to be strongest on Dathomir; her power was such that Darth Sidious himself believed that even an entire droid army would be unable to defeat her there. After sacrificing her life energies to her son she receded into the spirit world, and could be revived with a sacrifice in a temple near the Nightbrother village. Within this temple her spirit was able to emerge from a stone monolith to directly possess Dooku, drain his life energy, and even regain her physical form, though upon receiving a fatal injury she was permanently destroyed.
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