Pre Vizsla

Pre Vizsla was a human male Mandalorian warrior who led the terrorist organization known as the Death Watch. A descendant of the ancient Mandalorian ruler Tarre Vizsla, Pre Vizsla's rise to prominence came with his desire to restore the warrior heritage of his people and dethrone the pacifist ruler Duchess Satine Kryze and her New Mandalorians. Publicly serving in Kryze's regime as the governor of the moon Concordia, Vizsla secretly organized the Death Watch to oppose her reign and sought to overthrow her government. Joining sides with various external groups during the Clone Wars, Vizsla made his bids for power amid the pan-galactic conflict, but his obsessive quest to achieve his goals would result in his death and Mandalore's subsequent decline.

Recognizing the New Mandalorian government's vulnerability after the spark of the Clone Wars, fought between the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, Vizsla forged an alliance with the Confederacy in hopes of gaining the necessary aid to conquer Mandalore. With Confederate backing, Vizsla increased his campaign against Duchess Satine and openly targeted her, leading to the revelation of his true allegiance. Expelled from his office as governor, Vizsla and the Death Watch prepared for a joint invasion of Mandalore alongside Confederate forces pending a Republic occupation of the planet, but Kryze's political maneuvering ensured Mandalore's continued neutrality and caused the Confederacy to withdraw from Vizsla's plan. Vizsla and his forces fled the Mandalore system in defeat and settled on Carlac, where the once-strong militia was rendered nothing more than a cultish gang that terrorized the locale.

Pre Vizsla was a male human with light skin, blue eyes, and blond hair who stood at 1.84 meters tall, or 6 feet, and weighed 80 kilograms. During his tenure as Governor of Concordia, he kept his hair short and slicked back with an undercut. At some point after he was publicly revealed as the leader of the Death Watch, Vizsla began shaving his head, and his appearance grew unkempt as well. It was during this time that he also gained a distinct scar across his left cheek, the result of an altercation with Count Dooku.

Claiming heritage to Tarre Vizsla, the ancient Mand'alor who first ruled using the Darksaber, Pre Vizsla was deeply proud of his roots in Clan Vizsla and the traditions therein. Valorizing the Mandalorian tenants of strength and honor, Vizsla believed in the old ways of the "one ruler," a position he would eventually assert belonged to him despite the faded influence of the Darksaber, which he had inherited. Because of his ancestry and heritage, Vizsla was immediately opposed to the reformist New Mandalorian movement and soon harbored a deep enmity towards the political group's leader, Duchess Satine Kryze. Although he initially only believed she was unworthy to succeed her father, Vizsla grew to hate the woman for everything she stood for. He believed that her pacifist policies were unbecoming of a Mandalorian and that she had tarnished the reputation of their people. He held that Kryze had crushed the Mandalorian identity and soul, and considered her pacifism tantamount to a personal attack on everything he held dear.

Vizsla professed strength, often as a way of contrasting himself and his warrior visage with what he considered the "weak-minded" rule of the New Mandalorians. Despite his self-ascribed hardiness, however, Vizsla sought his goals of reversing the reforms enacted by Kryze anxiously, a trait that grew more apparent as he kept failing to achieve them. Vizsla painted himself as an organized militant, but the failure of his first takeover attempt resulted in further cracks in his facade, revealing him to be little more than a cultish zealot armed with a cruel temper, and his repeated humiliations by both Duchess Satine and Count Dooku damaged his mental state to the point some believed he had gone mad. Likewise, Vizsla's obsession with what he perceived to be a Mandalorian sense of honor[6] had become hypocritical as he demonstrated brutality against those that disagreed with him as a show of strength, senselessly bullied, enslaved, and eventually slaughtered the Ming Po of Carlac, and enacted the executions of his political rivals once in power.

Narcissistically believing that he was carrying the traditions of his ancestors, Vizsla maintained opposition to the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic, both of which had warred with the Mandalorians during the Old Republic Era. He considered these ancient enemies of Mandalore his personal enemies, and believed that the individual Jedi in the Order had to pay for the ancient wars, which he referred to as "crimes against Mandalore." To Vizsla, the payback he felt he was due to give the Jedi was a form of justice. He was willing to ally with anyone as long as they were enemies of the Jedi. Despite his passionate hatred of the Jedi, Vizsla was unwilling to give them an unfair fight, in part because of his egotistical view that his martial prowess could outmatch that of the Jedi. Vizsla's ego often got the better of him, however, leading to losses in duels with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka Tano. His loss to Ahsoka Tano, in particular, resulted in rage from Vizsla, who seethed as she handily escaped his attempted execution of her.

A highly skilled warrior, Pre Vizsla was adept at various forms of combat. He was known for his excellent marksmanship and could expertly handle various ranged weaponry with ease, including the blasters embedded in his wrist gauntlets and his signature pistols. He was a very capable fighter in both armed and unarmed combat and could go up against much more powerful foes, including Force-sensitives. Though he was not as athletic as his Force-wielding enemies, Vizsla made up for his lack of agility with potent hand-to-hand combat abilities. In addition, Vizsla was a well-trained swordsman, a necessity for him to properly wield the Darksaber. Where others were unable to handle the Darksaber without difficulty, Vizsla carried the saber with ease. Even if he could not match Jedi or Sith with his combat skills alone, Vizsla was able to hold his own in duels.

Vizsla had mastered his ability to mix his martial capabilities and could swiftly alternate weaponry and skillsets as he needed. This dexterity allowed him to grow as a fighter and learn how to go toe-to-toe with Force wielders. Though he lacked the intelligence of enemies like Duchess Satine, Vizsla had a strong propensity for leadership, using his strongman persona and passionate rhetoric to rally Mandalorians to his cause. Vizsla was also multilingual and could speak both Galactic Basic Standard and Mand'oa, though he, like most other Mandalorians during his time, primarily spoke using the former.

As a Mandalorian warrior, Vizsla wore the traditional and resilient armor of his people. Prior to the failure of his first attempt to take over Mandalore, Vizsla's armor featured a clean paint finish, with various shades of blue and gray, as well as several details painted with red and yellow, including the symbol of the shriek-hawk, which represented Clan Vizsla, on his helmet. Completing his armored appearance was a gray and blue serape, which was also adorned with the shriek-hawk. After his attempted coup fell apart and the Death Watch was forced to relocate to Carlac, however, Vizsla's formerly clean armor became battered, and the various vibrant paints faded and worn away. While no longer wearing his cape, Vizsla customized his armor still, adding antennae to his helmet, and his chest plates displayed a traditional Mandalorian design. Usually heavily armed, Vizsla's gear included a jetpack, magnetized boots, and a pair of armored vambraces. Like other Mandalorian vambraces, Vizsla's featured a variety of gadgets, including blaster barrels, a flamethrower, a whipcord launcher, and a launcher that fired disc-shaped buzz saws.

In addition to two WESTAR-35 blaster pistols, which he kept in hip holsters, one of Vizsla's most prized weapons was the Darksaber, an ancient lightsaber crafted by his ancestor Tarre Vizsla and passed down to him through several generations of Clan Vizsla. A one-of-a-kind artifact, the Darksaber had a long and storied history among the Mandalorians. Although diminished by the time Vizsla inherited it, the Darksaber served as a symbol of authority for his people, and by tradition, whoever wielded it was the rightful ruler of the Mandalore. Though the Darksaber was similar to the Jedi lightsaber, it was unique in shape and color. The Darksaber's signature flat energy blade, which had an angled point near its tip like some metal swords, emitted from a narrow slit in the saber's rectangular hilt. When activated, the black energy blade crackled and was outlined by white plasma energy. Vizsla used the Darksaber as his personal weapon, and had an attachment to his jetpack that allowed him to store it there when not in use.

By 19 BBY, Vizsla owned a Kom'rk-class Mandalorian fighter, simply christened Gauntlet, a name commonly used to describe Kom'rk fighters in general. Vizsla's ship was also called by a name in Mand'oa that translated to Gauntlet in Galactic Basic Standard. Like other Kom'rk ships utilized by the Death Watch, the Gauntlet was designed and built in secret by engineers and technicians loyal to the faction. Vizsla had the Gauntlet proudly finished with the Mandalorian colors of white, blue, and gray, reflecting the traditional colors used in his armor. The Gauntlet measured 52.3 meters in length and followed the sleek, if peculiar, configuration commonly used in Mandalorian ship design. After the Death Watch settled on Zanbar, Vizsla and his crew used the Gauntlet as part of his campaigns, taking it into deep space for explorations and using it in missions to Mustafar, Nal Hutta, and eventually, Mandalore, where Vizsla used it as his base of operations during his coup against the New Mandalorians.

The Clone Wars, also known as the Clone War and the Great Clone War, was the name given to the major galactic conflict fought between the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems. The war was named after the clone troopers utilized by the Republic against the battle droid forces of the Separatists. These armies, the Grand Army of the Republic and the Separatist Droid Army, were two of the largest ever pitted against each other in galactic history, and the fighting between them rapidly spread to countless inhabited worlds.