veronicajames asked: Now that their character portraits are up I need to ask: what is the deal with Aava and Synox? I know their deals were covered in the show but I feel like it might have happened a while ago (months?) and I could do with a quick refresher. I feel like...Aava is a Sith that Tryst slept with on the Murder Ball and Synox is...a clone that Bacta knows and his name always needs to be said with a particular hate-filled inflection?

Sure, sure! This is going to be a very small primer as we’ll be seeing a lot more of Aava and Synox alongside Zero and Blue in the upcoming Evil Campaign spinoff.

The oldest Campaign villains are:

Aava Arek



Aava grew up with Grizelle Jorun on Dathomir. In her teens, she was given by the head of her Nightsister clan to Palpatine as a part of some deal to keep Dathomir out of the Empire’s nonsense and help flesh out his growing horde of force sensitive kids. Ever since, she’s been training as a dark side force user and rising up the ranks of his stupidly complex hierarchy.

She’s currently an Emperor’s Hand, which is a position that directly reports to Inquisitors, and is most usually wrapped up in assassinations. Calling her a Sith is technically incorrect based on how Sith works (Asajj Ventress was never a Sith.)

The way she’s hooked up to the crew is that she personally had it out for Grizelle the entire time the Mynock kids knew her. With Grizelle dead, she now seems pretty set on taking Tamlin on as an apprentice. She’s succeeded in kidnapping him before, and is the person who completed his Nightbrother slave tattoos.

Her boss is Inquisitor Louphan, the woman in charge of taking in the Mynock.

Tangentially, some two-and-a-half-weeks ago in-universe time (almost 2 years ago roundworld time) she and Tryst made out on the Death Star.

CC1812: Commander Synox

Synox was Bacta’s commanding officer back during the Clone Wars. They’ve known each other from the pod, and once had a decent, brotherly relationship.

That all changed during order 66, when, from Synox’s perspective, Bacta betrayed his orders, killed a bunch of his brothers to protect a traitorous Jedi, and defected. During the firefight, Bacta and Synox shot each other, leaving Bacta with a scar across the top of his head, and Synox with a missing eye.

Bacta blames a lot of his inability to protect Jedi Sian Jeisel on the time spent on this fight and the resulting injury.

For Synox’s part, he’s a solid military man doing solid military things. He’s in the ISB, monitors a bunch of stormtrooper and shadowtrooper brigades, and largely gets up to elite stormtrooper commander shenanigans. He’s an efficient and thoughtful leader, and has been promoted into a position of no small prominence amongst the COMPNOR.

He’s particularly noteworthy as the literal poster boy for the empire’s remaining Clone officers.

The whole reason Synox is hooked up to the Mynock crew is that over the years, he’s been assigned several missions that deal with them.

These days, Inquisitor Louphan thinks his past with Bacta will be beneficial to tactically taking them down, and keeps requesting him on missions. He was last seen accompanying her search on Mandalore.

Tangentially, it’s worth noting that Bacta has a particular vendetta against Synox. Whenever Synox’s name comes up, it’s echoed with mounting disdain to reflect Bacta’s utter loathing of the man.

Do Aava and Synox know each other?

Yes! Pretty dang well. They’ve worked together for around 5 years now on various covert missions. James and I are looking forward to playing them (I’m Aava and he’s Synox) in Evil Campaign as we swap back and forth on GMing duties there.

You’re both GMing Evil Campaign? How does that work?

Evil Campaign is a lot more modular than Campaign. He’ll GM one mission while I play, then I’ll GM the next mission while he plays, etc. Not all missions will involve all party members. If we’re lucky, someone else might GM at some point so we can both play at the same time.