Aleema Keto

As the children—though not siblings—of the then-rulers of Empress Teta, Aleema and her cousin Satal were the heirs to the throne of the Empress Teta system. Feeling restless and indulged, she, Satal, along with some of their aristocratic companions, established a secret society known as the Krath, named after a mythical magician-god. Through their instructors, the cousins gained considerable knowledge about the ancient Sith Empire, which had sparked the Great Hyperspace War in 5000 BBY. This knowledge fueled their desire to explore the history further on their own.

Seeking to expand their understanding of the Sith, the Keto children embarked on a journey to the Galactic Museum on Coruscant. Within the museum, they explored a section dedicated to Sith history and managed to pilfer a book containing Sith lore. However, they were disappointed to find that they couldn't decipher the ancient text. Discouraged, they returned to their hotel, where they encountered news reports about dark side adepts on Onderon who were using their dark powers to terrorize the populace.

Intrigued by this information, the pair traveled to the war-ravaged planet aboard the Tetan Royal Space Yacht called the Krath Enchanter, hoping to find a Sith affiliate who could assist them in unlocking the secrets of the book. Upon arriving on Onderon, they discovered a massive battle between Galactic Republic forces and the Naddists, a cult devoted to the ancient Sith Lord Freedon Nadd. Their yacht was shot down during a Republic rocket-jumper deployment and crashed in the Onderonian capital of Iziz, where they barely escaped the exploding vessel into the streets. After showcasing their acquisition and inquiring about the Sith, they were eventually brought before Onderon's monarch, King Ommin.

Curious about these potential Sith initiates and their ancient Sith text, Ommin agreed to assist them. Satal initially expressed his reservations, fearing that the old King lacked the knowledge they sought. However, his doubts dissipated when King Ommin used his dark magic on Satal, making him ill and further exposing Aleema to the dark side. Ommin then revealed his prized collection of Sith amulets, including one that allowed them to read Sith writings. The decrepit King agreed to give Satal the amulet, but only if he could make a copy of the spell book for himself. Satal agreed, and while a scribe transcribed the text, Ommin showed them the captive Jedi Master Arca Jeth, who was hung on a wall and suffering greatly under Sith magic. As Ommin leaned in to taunt Jeth, a team of Jedi Knights stormed the royal palace to free him. Ommin was caught off guard as his forces were easily defeated by Jeth's rescuers.

The Jedi swiftly gained the upper hand, and just as Jedi Knight Ulic Qel-Droma shattered Ommin's durasteel exoskeleton to incapacitate him, the ancient spirit of the Dark Lord Freedon Nadd materialized. With Republic forces and the Jedi Knights now in control of the city, Nadd realized that Ommin had failed to restore the Sith's glory. Instead, the Sith Lord convinced Aleema and Satal that they held the key to building a new Sith Empire and that he would guide them. Eventually, the Jedi freed Arca Jeth, and Qel-Droma killed Ommin.

Aleema and Satal then escaped Onderon with a collection of ancient Sith artifacts and texts, using them to become proficient in Sith sorcery. With their newfound abilities, the Krath immediately began plotting their rise to power. Armed with her Sith knowledge, Aleema played a crucial role in overthrowing their parents, the rightful rulers of the Empress Teta system. During a visit to her uncle's carbonite processing facility, Aleema and Satal caused a commotion when their escort, Korus, revealed that Aleema had replaced his tongue with an Adegan eel. Enraged and confused, Lord Keto demanded their arrest. However, Aleema used her Sith powers to transform the guards' weapons into illusory snakes, preventing them from carrying out his orders.

With the guards neutralized, she even had Lord Keto lowered into a vat of molten carbonite, leaving her and Satal as the undisputed rulers of Empress Teta. Korus also met his demise when Aleema used the Force to burn him alive for spilling a drink on her. After successfully staging their political coup, Aleema and Satal established their base of operations in the Iron Citadel, the building where Lord Keto had formally held court. They immediately began planning to unify the worlds of the Tetan system under their control. However, the system's citizens, particularly those on the Krath's home planet of Empress Teta, rebelled against their new rulers.

In an attempt to restore order in the Tetan system, a joint Jedi and Republic battalion was dispatched to deal with the usurpers. Aleema and Satal were well-prepared for the Republic's arrival, commanding their forces from a space station orbiting Empress Teta. As the Republic forces emerged from hyperspace, the Krath engaged them head-on. Aleema used her sorcery to create illusions of space grazers, legendary creatures that roamed the galaxy preying on interstellar spacecraft. These illusions were so realistic that they fooled Captain Vanicus and the Republic fleet during the Battle for Empress Teta, nearly causing the panicked commanders to retreat. However, the Jedi Nomi Sunrider saw through the deception and used her battle meditation to dispel Aleema's illusions, allowing the Republic forces to ignore the apparitions. Drawing upon her full power, Aleema created a mass illusion to conceal a screen of CX-133 Chaos fighter suicide bombers launched by Satal. The Chaos fighters harassed the Republic fleet, and Jedi Knight Ulic Qel-Droma was injured when one of the Krath vessels crashed into the command ship he was on. Although Sunrider managed to distract and defeat Aleema, the Republic detachment was forced to withdraw in the face of such a blatant attack, leaving the Krath in complete control of the system.

Some time later, Aleema and Satal used Krath war droids disguised as service droids to attack the Conclave on Deneba, where the Jedi had gathered to discuss the growing Krath threat. During the assault, Master Arca Jeth was killed, and his student, Ulic Qel-Droma, vowed revenge on the Krath. Consumed by grief over Jeth's death, Qel-Droma attempted to infiltrate the Krath to destroy them from within. He arrived on Empress Teta and made his way to Cinnagar, the capital city. Sensing Qel-Droma's great strength in the Force, Aleema was wary of him, but she devised a plan to turn him to the dark side. During a skirmish in Cinnagar, she allowed Qel-Droma to "save" her from a staged assassination attempt, and then seduced him to gain his trust. However, Satal grew jealous and suspicious, and he had Qel-Droma interrogated and tortured in the dungeons of the Iron Citadel. Despite Qel-Droma denying that he was a Jedi spy, Satal injected him with a Sith poison, which amplified an individual's rage. Satal believed that Qel-Droma's anger would activate the poison, ensuring the Jedi's fall to the dark side.

After Nomi Sunrider and her Jedi companions failed to rescue Qel-Droma, Satal again questioned Qel-Droma's loyalty and attempted to have him assassinated. The vengeful Jedi repelled the attack and then confronted Satal, striking him down in anger. Qel-Droma also rebuked Sunrider and the Jedi, refusing to leave Cinnagar with them despite their pleas. Aleema realized that her seduction had been successful and that Qel-Droma was falling deeper into the dark side. She revealed to Qel-Droma that she had been aware of his infiltration scheme all along, and saw it as a challenge for both of them. Now convinced that he could not turn away from the dark path, she took him as her official partner, and they became the new co-rulers of the Krath.

Unbeknownst to them, the Dark Jedi Exar Kun was also in Cinnagar searching for them. Before Freedon Nadd died his second death, he warned Aleema of Kun's treachery. Kun was aware of this and saw Nadd's other students as potential threats to his efforts to restore the Sith Empire. Arriving at the Iron Citadel, Kun surprised Aleema and Qel-Droma by confronting them. Aleema attempted to stop Kun, but he quickly incapacitated her with a blast of dark side energy. He then dueled Qel-Droma, and during their battle, the matching Sith amulets that each man wore began to interact, awakening the ancient spirit of the long-dead Sith Lord Marka Ragnos. Ragnos halted the duel and issued a proclamation, initiating both men as Dark Lords of the Sith. Aleema awoke to find Qel-Droma transformed, bearing a new tattoo on his forehead and aligned with the Dark Jedi Kun. Kun planned to restore the Sith, and together with Aleema's Krath, a new Sith Brotherhood was formed.

Six months later, Qel-Droma faced Mandalore the Indomitable in a duel to the death on the planet Kuar. Qel-Droma emerged victorious, and instead of killing Mandalore, he forced the warlord and his forces to swear allegiance to him. The Krath, along with Dark Lord Exar Kun and their Mandalorian allies, then devised plans to overthrow the Republic. After successfully capturing a fleet of battleships during an attack on the planet Foerost, Qel-Droma planned to use them to seize power from the government on Coruscant. Kun opposed this idea, as he wanted to first train twenty Dark Jedi to join the Brotherhood. However, Qel-Droma had no intention of waiting for Kun. He and Aleema proceeded with their assault on Coruscant without their partner, who continued training his new students. Aleema used this opportunity to further her own plans for power, and as Qel-Droma prepared to take the Republic command center, Aleema ordered Mandalore to withdraw their troops. Qel-Droma was unaware of Aleema's treachery as his former Jedi companions stormed the command center. The Jedi imprisoned him in a wall of light side energy and took him away to be tried for his crimes against the Republic. Qel-Droma was brought before the Galactic Senate to be judged for his actions.

Back in the Iron Citadel, Aleema attempted to sway Mandalore's loyalty away from Qel-Droma. She ordered him to prepare their forces for the next assault, which would target the valuable Kemplex Nine relay station in the Auril sector. Mandalore was unwilling to take orders solely from Aleema, so he left to find Exar Kun on Yavin 4 and request his assistance in rescuing Qel-Droma. Together, Mandalore and Kun successfully rescued Qel-Droma and returned with him to Yavin 4. Aleema and Qel-Droma were reunited, and although Aleema feigned affection for him, she was unaware that Mandalore had told Qel-Droma of her treachery. Qel-Droma appeared unaffected, but secretly he began plotting his revenge.

Qel-Droma proceeded with the plan to attack the relay station at Kemplex Nine, sending Aleema and the Jedi traitor Crado to oversee the mission. The goal was to lure the combined Republic and Jedi fleet into the Cron Cluster, where they would fall into a trap and be destroyed. Kun then introduced Aleema to the Corsair, an ancient Sith warship once commanded by the Dark Lord Naga Sadow. He showed her how to operate the vessel and gave her specific instructions on using the Sith crystals that powered the ship. These crystals had been used by Sadow generations ago to evade the Republic fleet by passing between the binary star known as the Denarii Nova, using his Sith magic to incite solar flares as Republic ships followed. The Republic pursuers were destroyed in the resulting conflagration.

After Kun taught her how to harness the Corsair's power, Aleema intended to use Sadow's crystals to tear the core from a nearby star and hurl it at the fleet. Aleema and Crado departed for Kemplex Nine, and the Republic fleet followed as planned. When the moment was right, Aleema activated the Sith crystal-weapon aboard the Corsair and tore free the heart of one of the ten stars of the Cron Cluster. The Jedi and Republic ships in pursuit were destroyed as the solar core was hurled towards them. Although she succeeded in destroying most of the starships, she failed to fully control the power she wielded, as Qel-Droma had deliberately calculated. Aleema, the betrayer, was now betrayed. The liberated solar core ignited the surrounding suns, creating an intense, multi-star supernova that engulfed three Auril sector star systems and later the planet Ossus. Caught in the blaze, Aleema and Crado were killed along with their Jedi pursuers Dace Diath, Shoaneb Culu, and Qrrrl Toq, just as Qel-Droma and Kun had planned. Light-years away on Yavin 4, both Kun and Qel-Droma felt the disturbance in the Force that marked the death of Aleema Keto.

Aleema and Satal's legacy would be realized thousands of years later through Satal's descendant, Sebban Keto. Sebban, a Tetan businessman, practiced dark side magic like his ancestors and used it to reestablish the Krath traditions on Empress Teta.

Aleema Keto experienced a rather privileged upbringing as royalty within the aristocracy of Empress Teta. As a result, she grew bored with the mundane aspects of high society and sought amusement by exploring the lore of Sith magic. She displayed a considerable thirst for forbidden knowledge, leading her to travel with her cousin to Onderon solely to uncover the mysteries of the Sith. She naively underestimated the corrosive nature of the dark side, which would inevitably twist and corrupt her.

As a Sith sorceress, Aleema tended to view individuals as worthless inferiors, often devising cruel punishments for subordinates who tested her patience. She possessed a short temper, striking out at subordinates with little provocation and using her powers to horrify and terrorize those she chose.

Aleema was cunning, devious, and manipulative, frequently employing deception to achieve her goals. She used her feminine charm to seduce Ulic Qel-Droma, who was already on a path to the dark side, and then manipulated him into murdering her cousin. Aleema then ruled the Krath alone, and with Qel-Droma by her side, she became even more arrogant, fully confident in the strength of her powers. Her dishonesty was further demonstrated when she betrayed Qel-Droma to the Jedi, but upon his return, she resumed her romantic deceptions. Her naivete was again apparent when she remained unaware that Mandalore had warned Qel-Droma of her treachery. This proved to be her downfall, as Qel-Droma's own deception ultimately led to Aleema's demise.

Even prior to her transformation into a Sith witch, Aleema demonstrated a significant connection to the Force. She withstood the potent dark side energies radiating from Onderon, while her cousin Satal suffered from a debilitating illness upon experiencing the same power. Aleema also possessed a tendency towards precognition, which she exhibited on multiple occasions by displaying a subtle understanding of future events. She alleviated Satal's anxiety about impending doom while aboard the Krath Enchanter by assuring him of their survival in what appeared to be an unavoidable crash. Upon landing, Aleema instinctively recognized that they had arrived at their destination. Her Force sensitivity was also remarkably strong, surpassing Satal's, enabling her to detect the intense dark side aura emanating from Onderon and the powerful dark side presences of both Qel-Droma and Exar Kun.

Following tutelage from both Freedon Nadd and King Ommin, Aleema cultivated her unique dark side connection into an impressive command of Sith magic. During her magical invocations, an ethereal aqua glow of dark side energy illuminated her right eye. Her most remarkable skill was the creation of illusions, which she mastered to an exceptional degree. Aleema employed Sith magic to conjure apparitions of seemingly living creatures that were, in reality, mere fabrications. During the First Battle of Empress Teta, she generated large-scale illusions of space grazers and colossal starships, and also utilized her illusory abilities to mask her cousin's Chaos fighters' attack on the Galactic Republic fleet. On several occasions, the Jedi Knight Nomi Sunrider successfully identified Aleema as the source of the deception and launched a direct mental assault, an attack that Aleema was unprepared for and unable to resist.

To entertain herself, Aleema frequently tormented her subordinates with her magic, transforming technology into grotesque organic distortions or presenting guests with platters of decapitated heads. When swords were brandished against her, she nonchalantly deflected the attack and then turned her adversaries' weapons against them, morphing their blades into serpents. She could also project concentrated blasts of pure dark side energy, even without the aid of a Sith amulet.

She learned from Kun how to control the dark side through Naga Sadow's technology on the Corsair using her sorcery, and subsequently used it to obliterate the ten stars comprising the Cron Cluster. Her hubris in this newly acquired power proved to be her downfall, as Qel-Droma had foreseen; the resulting supernovae engulfed her because she could not completely control the dark power of Sadow's vessel.

The character Aleema Keto was originally conceived and written by Tom Veitch and illustrated by Tony Akins for the Tales of the Jedi comic book series, making her debut in the issue The Freedon Nadd Uprising 1, released on August 2, 1994. However, her initial mention occurred in the Dark Empire endnotes, a collection of brief essays providing background information on various Star Wars subjects, including Ulic Qel-Droma and the Krath. The endnotes' reference to the Krath established the groundwork for Keto's involvement in the subsequent Tales of the Jedi story arcs. For the Tales of the Jedi audio drama, Keto's voice was provided by Garet Scott, and later by Jocelyn Blue for the Dark Lords of the Sith audio drama. Despite her limited role, Veitch's creation of Aleema Keto for the Freedon Nadd Uprising enabled the character to be further developed in the Dark Lords of the Sith and The Sith War narratives, respectively. The Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: Prima Official Game Guide, a companion book for the video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, in which Keto's robe is an equipable item, erroneously claims that Keto began her training as a Jedi before becoming captivated by the Sith during her research.