Over the 25,000 year-long history of the Jedi
Order, many Jedi rose above their peers to earn a place in the history texts. Many of these great
Jedi, the likes of Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi among them, were seemingly always pure of heart, symbols
of virtue and selflessness that most beings could only aspire to imitate. But not all great Jedi had
spotless records, and the one we’ll be discussing today couldn’t have been more different from
the likes of Yoda. This Jedi Sentinel lived during the time of the Old Republic, and before
becoming a Jedi, he lived a much darker life - that of a murderer. His name was Atton Rand,
and in this video, we’ll be telling his story. In 3951 BBY, the Jedi were all but extinct.
Between casualties sustained in the Jedi Civil War and the subsequent purge carried out by
Sith remnants, the whole Order was believed to be exterminated. The galaxy believed
only one Jedi remained - Meetra Surik, who was exiled after the Battle of Malachor V at
the end of the Mandalorian Wars. For ten years, she had roamed the edge of the galaxy, trying
to forget and be forgotten, but in 3951 BBY she returned, and after a run-in with
a Sith warship, she ended up in a bacta tank on an asteroid mine above Peragus II.
While she was recovering in the bacta tank, Sith hit the fan. She emerged from the
tank to find the Peragus facility almost completely deserted; the miners were all
dead, slain by reprogrammed mining droids. As she explored the abandoned facility, Surik
discovered a sole survivor - a prisoner that had been locked in a force cage when the droids
attacked, ironically saving him from a grisly death. He identified himself as Atton Rand, and
after Surik helped him out of the Force cage, he decided to team up with her, monitoring the comms
system as she made her way through the facility. Atton soon found himself a member of Surik’s
small party of allies, together with an older Force-sensitive woman named Kreia and the
astromech T3-M4. After a run-in with an HK-50 Assassin Droid and the Sith Lord Darth Sion,
Atton, Surik, and the others narrowly escaped the Peragus facility aboard Surik’s freighter,
the Ebon Hawk. Atton piloted the Hawk as they fled from Sion, narrowly escaping as the Sith
Lord blew up the entire Peragus asteroid field. Initially, Atton wasn’t very happy about
being roped into Surik’s little crew, especially after the encounter with
Sion and the narrow escape from Peragus. Kreia, who Atton assumed to be another Jedi,
was also not thrilled with the arrangement; she disliked Atton and referred to him, both
in private conversation and to his face, as “the Fool.” But whether he liked it or not, Atton
was in for the long haul. After escaping Peragus, he set the Ebon Hawk on a course for Telos IV,
where he and the rest of the crew were placed under house arrest due to suspicion over their
involvement in the Peragus field’s destruction. Even after they were cleared of suspicion,
Atton couldn’t get a break. The party’s ship had been stolen and hidden on Telos’s ruined
surface while they were under surveillance. Atton tagged along with Surik and Kreia during
their adventures on Telos IV, where they were joined by a Zabrak mechanic named Bao-Dur. Bao-Dur
helped them track the Ebon Hawk to a facility at one of Telos’s poles - a secret academy run by the
Jedi Master Atris. Atris, it turned out, had been the one who stole the Hawk. She imprisoned Surik’s
party and brought Surik in for interrogation. During the party’s short stint in Atris’s
cells, Kreia took the opportunity to read Atton’s mind. She uncovered secrets that Atton
had tried to bury and used them as blackmail, warning him that she would reveal everything
to Surik if he didn’t do as she wished. Her terms were simple - Atton was to stay with
the party and continue to fly the Ebon Hawk. After escaping Telos, Meetra Surik set
out on a quest to find the Lost Jedi, in particular looking for four Jedi
Masters hiding on various war-torn worlds. She hoped she could convince the Jedi to come out
of hiding and help battle the Sith Triumvirate, three powerful Sith Lords that threatened
the Republic - Darth Sion, Darth Nihilus, and Darth Traya. Atton, per Kreia’s demands,
went along with her. Atton rapidly warmed up to Surik after Telos, even going so far as to ask
Bao-Dur, who had served with Surik at Malachor, what his chances were of landing a date with the
Exile. As both a skilled pilot and a good shot, he proved to be a useful asset to the team.
Surik soon noticed that he also had some other, unusual skills. He knew Echani combat forms
rarely taught outside of commando units, and techniques that allowed him to hide
his thoughts from Force-sensitives. After Telos, the crew of the Ebon
Hawk traveled to Nar Shaddaa, a world that Atton seemed very familiar with.
On Nar Shaddaa, while searching for Jedi Master Zez-Kai Ell, Surik set about helping the many
refugees who had ended up on the Smuggler’s Moon, something that Atton couldn’t help but admire. But
during Surik’s adventures in the Refugee Sector, she came across a pair of Twi’leks that
recognized Atton. They requested a private conversation with her, in which they informed the
Exile that Atton was not who he claimed to be, and that he’d come to Nar Shaddaa before. He was a
murderer, they claimed, and was not to be trusted. Surik eventually confronted Atton with this
information, and managed to coax Atton’s backstory out of him. Atton had indeed been on Nar
Shaddaa before, a deserter hiding among refugees fleeing the Jedi Civil War. He had fought
for the Republic during the Mandalorian Wars, in which he saw millions of his comrades die while
the Jedi Order stood by, hesitating to intervene and stop the Mandalorians. He had fought under
Revan when he took command of the Republic fleet, following him all the way to Malachor V. And
after Malachor, he had continued to follow Revan. After the end of the Mandalorian Wars, Revan
became the self-proclaimed Dark Lord of a new Sith Empire, and the Republic was split.
Many in the Republic Military defected at the start of Revan’s war on the Republic - the
Jedi Civil War - and Atton was among them. He knew where his loyalties lay - not
to the Republic or the Jedi Council, but to the one Jedi who had joined
the fight while the others hesitated. Atton hadn’t been some run-of-the-mill
Sith Trooper, however. He had hunted Jedi. All those years of war led
Atton to despise the Jedi, and when he was given an opportunity to
track down and murder Jedi for the Sith, he eagerly accepted. He became skilled at hiding
his thoughts behind walls of strong emotion and adopting different identities. He developed
techniques of hunting Jedi, often choosing to wound Padawans to weaken the wills of their
masters. But Atton wasn’t just a murderer. He had served as an interrogator for the Sith as well,
responsible for torturing Jedi until they fell. That, to him, had been the best part of all
- making the Jedi see his point of view. Over the course of the Jedi Civil War, Atton
did unspeakable things in Revan’s name. One day, however, a Jedi tracked
Atton down and confronted him. She told him he was Force-sensitive, which
was why he had been so good at killing Jedi, and warned that the Sith would make
him into a Dark Jedi if they found out. In retaliation for this, Atton captured and
tortured her, intending to give her the slowest and most painful death he could manage. Just
as she was about to die, the Jedi awakened the Force within Atton, allowing him to truly feel
life around him. Atton killed her for it, but not out of hatred. As he later realized, it had
been an act of mercy. He realized that everything the Jedi told him was right, and that she’d saved
him from a terrible fate at the hands of the Sith. After this, Atton deserted the Sith and hid out
on Nar Shaddaa, becoming a smuggler and running from guilt. He wanted nothing more than to forget,
to lose himself in whatever vices he could find. But when he met the Exile on Peragus, Atton saw
her as a chance to make up for what he had done, and he took it, vowing to keep
Surik safe to atone for his crimes. Initially, he hadn’t wanted her to learn about his
past, but when she asked, he told her everything. After all was said and done, the most remarkable
thing of all happened: Surik forgave him. Atton asked her to awaken the Force within
him again, to train him as a Jedi. Surik did. As the crew of the Ebon Hawk traveled across
the galaxy, searching for the Lost Jedi, the Exile began to train Atton as a Jedi Sentinel.
Atton was the first of the Jedi trained by Surik, but not the last. As the crew of the Hawk
grew, Surik began training others as well. Atton and the others helped Surik hunt for
Jedi Masters hiding on Nar Shaddaa and Onderon, on Dantooine and Korriban, using their newfound
abilities to bring the fight to the Sith. On Nar Shaddaa, Atton helped protect Surik
and the others from bounty hunters searching for the last of the Jedi. He battled a pair
of fearsome assassins known as the Twin Suns and rescued Surik when the Exchange captured her.
Above Onderon, Atton’s piloting skills helped the crew of the Hawk escape an orbital battle with
Onderonian Separatists, and Atton later joined the Exile’s other students in defeating a force
of Sith on Dxun, Onderon’s demon moon. Together, the crew of the Ebon Hawk gathered the
surviving Jedi Masters on Dantooine. But there, everything went wrong. Kreia, as it
turned out, had been Darth Traya the whole time. She killed the Jedi Masters, tricked Darth
Nihilus into attacking Telos IV, and then went to the Trayus Academy on Malachor V, where she
supplanted Darth Sion as master of the academy. Even with the Jedi Masters dead, however, Meetra
Surik wasn’t ready to give up. She, Atton, and the others helped defeat Darth Nihilus above
Telos. Then they pursued Kreia to Malachor V. After a crash landing on Malachor, the
crew of the Ebon Hawk was separated. As Meetra Surik made her way to the Trayus Academy
alone, her Jedi students, Atton among them, found a shortcut and were able to confront Kreia before
she arrived. When Kreia easily defeated the other Jedi trainees, however, Atton fled - only to come
face to face with Darth Sion. Sion attacked, but Atton, using lightsaber techniques he had learned
from Surik, was able to wound the Sith Lord, or at least to stall him long enough to escape. Meetra
Surik eventually made it to the Trayus Academy, rescued her other companions, and slew both Darth
Sion and Kreia. At the end of it all, she found Atton waiting for her. Together, the two returned
to the Ebon Hawk and left Malachor V behind. Surik’s quest was complete. She
went out looking for the Lost Jedi, and in the end, she’d found them. The Jedi
Masters she had been looking for were all dead, but along the way Surik had gathered lost
souls and awakened them to the Force. In a way, Atton and the others were the Lost Jedi, the true
Jedi, upon whom the future of the Order rested. After Malachor, Meetra Surik left the Republic on
a new mission, and she left her companions behind. Atton and the others worked together to rebuild
the Jedi Order, to correct the mistakes of the past and create a better future. Atton Rand, once
a ruthless Jedi-killer, helped resurrect the Jedi Order - and for as long as he lived, he never
forgot the woman who had shown him the light. Redemption is a recurring theme in Star
Wars, but usually it’s a last-minute thing, something characters attain as they lie dying.
Atton Rand was an exception to that rule. After a long journey, with the help of Meetra
Surik, he forged a new life for himself, making up for the grievous wrongs he had committed
in the past. But what do you think? Would you like to hear the stories of the other Lost Jedi? Feel
free to post your thoughts in the comments below.
