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C is for Cal Kestis
Disney – EA
Cal Kestis was a human male Padawan during the fall of the Republic and Jedi Order, who went on to become a Jedi Knight during the reign of the Galactic Empire. Kestis was one of the scant handful of Jedi to survive Order 66 and the purge that destroyed the Jedi Order and ushered in the reign of Emperor Palpatine.
As a Padawan of the Jedi Order, Kestis was chosen at a young age to apprentice under the Jedi Master Jaro Tapal, a male Lasat who served as a General in the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars. Tapal and Kestis were betrayed by their clone troopers during Order 66, and Tapal sacrificed his own life to save Kestis, telling the young Padawan to wait for the Jedi Council’s signal and trust only in the Force. The death of his master haunted the young Padawan for years to come, with the trauma of the event damaging his connection to the Force itself. It took many years before Kestis managed to fully heal his connection to the Force and restore his abilities.
As a Padawan of the Jedi Order, Kestis wielded a single-bladed blue lightsaber with a metallic cylindrical hilt and leathery grip. While evading clone troopers during Order 66, Kestis lost this lightsaber when it fell down an elevator shaft. Before sacrificing himself to save his Padawan, Master Tapal bequeathed Kestis with his own lightsaber, which was damaged during the fighting.
Jedi Master Jaro Tapal’s damaged double-bladed lightsaber.
As a Force user, Kestis possessed the extremely rare natural gift of psychometry, a Force technique that allowed him to sense the history of any object or person that he touched. After deciding to take up his master’s lightsaber and return to the path of the Jedi, Kestis’s abilities with the Force quickly grew at an astonishing pace. He was extremely powerful in the Force, and used Force Pull, Force Repulse, and Force Statis — the ability to hold multiple objects, beings, and even blaster bolts in place — with great effect.
The exploration droid BD-1 was passed from Jedi Master Eno Cordova to Padawan Cal Kestis, during the former’s mission to heal his connection to the Force and stop the Empire’s Inquisitors from hunting down Force sensitive children. BD-1 was a small bipedal droid, who, despite their size, was extremely versatile and resourceful. The small droid was equipped with a healing stim dispenser, a spotlight, holoprojector, a motor to carry his master on ziplines, and hacking tools to access imperial droids. BD-1 saved Kestis’s life on several occasions.
Following the fall of the Republic and the Jedi, Kestis went into hiding on the planet Bracca, working as a rigger for the Scrapper Guild until he was discovered by Second Sister and Ninth Sister; Imperial Inquisitors who hunted down Jedi that escaped Order 66. With his identity revealed and the Emperor’s Jedi hunters on his trail, the young Padawan joined the crew of the starship Stinger Mantis, captained by the former Jedi Cere Junda. Together with Junda and the crew of the Stinger Mantis, Kestis worked to retrieve a Jedi holocron, which contained information that would allow them to create a new generation of Jedi, information that the Empire desperately wanted. Kestis and Junda succeeded in retrieving the holocron, after nearly being killed by the Sith Lord Darth Vader, but ultimately decided to destroy it to prevent the Empire from finding Force-sensitive children spread across the galaxy. After succeeding in their mission, Kestis was knighted by Cere, who had formerly become his master.
You can join Jedi Knight Cal Kestis on his adventures in the the video game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
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