They say that there is a fine line between genius and madness. Blitzer Harrsk proved it to be a very fine line and regularly danced on both sides of it in the years after a horrific injury shattered his mind.
Little is known of Harrsk's early life, save that he was a career naval officer. He rose quickly through the ranks and was considered by many a prodigy. He met and befriended a young cadet named Firmus Piett, the two would become lifelong friends. Shortly before the battle of Yavin Harrsk was put in charge of Arrowhead Command, a collection of fleet assets tasked with patrolling the Galactic Core Worlds and a portion of the Slice. It was a very prestigious command that allowed Harrsk to mingle with the Galaxy's wealthy Core citizens and more powerful political figures. Coupled with the Admiralty of his long time friend Firmus Piet to the equally prestigious command of Death Squadron under Darth Vader Harrsk became a household name for many of the Imperial elite. His tenure in the Core was marked by stability and efficiency as he developed and implemented tactics of his own to supplement Imperial textbooks on warfare. At the request of his friend Piett, Harrsk attached his personal Star Destroyer and a few escort forces to supplement Death Squadron for what was meant to be the final decisive victory of the Empire over the Rebellion at an obscure Moon in the Outer Rim known as Endor.
Instead of the climactic triumph cementing his reputation Harrsk experienced bitter defeat and watched his reality shattered both figuratively and literally as the Rebels decisively defeated the might of the Elite Imperial Fleet, destroyed the Death Star and killed the Emperor. In the chaos of the battle with the loss of the Emperor's battle meditation Harrsk's gunners failed to keep Alliance ships back when his ship's shields failed Harrsk was standing by his second in command above the crew pit when a direct hit to the bridge tower overloaded the terminals killing all nearby and burning half of Harrsk's head to a pulpy mess of shrapnel and melted flesh. One fragment actually imbedded itself in his brain. Seeing the battle was lost and senior leadership was all but gone the Chimaera under Gilad Pellaeon ordered the Imperial Fleet to retreat to Anaaj.
Harrsk's crew had saved the Admiral's life by getting him into a bacta tank...but the man who awoke in that tank was not the Blitzer Harrsk the galaxy had known. No one knows for sure what did it, the trauma to the brain, the destruction of everything he had known-watching the Executor plunge into the Death Star II-killing his lifelong friend Piett in the process, the shock of the Emperor's death or the pain-but Harrsk had developed a split personality of extremes and now had a very tenuous grip on reality. One personality was ruthless, egotistical and reckless in th extreme, the other was calculating and long suffering. It was as if to cope with the two realities he had been forced to experience his mind had divided itself to reflect the outside world. From his bacta tank Harrsk coldly informed Pellaeon that with the battle over Chimeara was no longer the command ship and therefore he would not follow orders of any subordinate. Declaring that without a clear chain of command no one had the authority to give him orders Harrsk took the forces he had left from Death Squadron and returned to his command briefly only to order all forces under him into the Deep Core. In the chaos of the post Endor collapse his entire command followed his orders. Harrsk dubbed his new protectorate Zero Command. Many wealthy patrons and nobles fled to his protectorate as the Empire dissolved into civil war. Harrsk was regarded as one of the best Admirals and held powerful forces so his protection was well sought. He also did not break with the mainstream Empire at first, merely exercising his 'initiative' he didn't fight with the other power hungry Imperials who went publically rogue and more or less kept to himself in the Deep Core. For the first two years after Endor, though he himself grew ever more unstable his second personality which he had began to create an identity for to personify it without accepting his madness-kept him from destroying himself, fixing errors, cancelling reckless orders, and holding meetings for him. Then when Isard lost Imperial Center Harrsk's cautious personality could no longer restrain him, he declared the Empire dead, and Zero Command it's successor state with himself as head of state under the title of Supreme Warlord and Lord High Admiral. He began attacking the smaller Warlords in the Deep Core and expanding slightly into the Core absorbing defecting Imperial Forces who either for lack of alternatives or because they believed Harrsk their best hope threw in their lot with him. Yet still his second persona kept him from ruin by stopping him from declaring war on the entire galaxy.
Harrsk doubled his territory in the year following Isard's defeat, taking advantage of the NRs focus on Zsinj and then Teradoc. However he still held relatively small amounts of territory and for the most part the NR and larger galaxy ignored him. He became more and more involved in internal warfare with other Imperials rather than the NR as fugitives like Delvardus, Teradoc and others began to carve up the Deep Core among themselves. Harrsk's megalomania would not allow anyone else to contest him, Harrsk attacked and allied with various warlords of the deep core bleeding his forces to galactic insignificance. The NR content with letting the Warlords kill each other ignored him mostly but kept intel tabs on him. Then Palpatine returned and Harrsk, possibly seeing a chance at reclaiming his past prestige joined him and threw all his forces into a reckless series of attacks on the NR. While successful the attacks were very costly and by the time Shadow Hand ended with Palpatines final death and Byss's destruction, Harrsk was left with lots of territory and few forces to hold it. The NR pushed back and Harrsk was forced back into the Deep Core completely losing all his Core holdings permanently. He was so short on men and material from his losses that he could not even crew two Star Dreadnaughts he had in his possession- Megador and Dominion, and so stored them at Deep Space Nine. Now blaming his failures on his fellow Warlords with the final death of his Emperor and Byss gone seeming like a repeat of the Endor trauma Harrsk became the dominant persona with his second reasonable one fading more and more each day, it's possible this was a subconscious attempt at passive suicide from his repressed consciousness. Harrsk might well have continued for decades of these little wars on his fellow Imperials had it not been for Nataasi Daala's peace talks. As she made her rounds Harrsk sought to convince her to join his cause, knowing her popularity with the rank and file he felt he could use her to tip the scales in his favor. When he was humiliated in an attack by his rival Teradoc, Harrsk viciously impressed Daala into service as a flunky, declaring any other action but obedience to be treason. He then refused to listen to Daala or his subconscious that tried to caution him and unleashed his last frontal assault losing 1/4 of his fleet and leading them into what surely would have been certain death had Daala not ended it early by incapacitating his destroyer and negotiating with Pellaeon. Faced with reason Harrsk displayed how very far he had sunk into insanity declaring Daala a traitor for wanting the Imperials to stop killing each other, and ordering his forces to kill her even though they were now hopelessly surrounded by Pellaeon's ships. Disgusted by Harrsk's increasing madness and trained to follow orders the Imperials under Harrsk followed Daala, and with Pellaeon they used all the influence to arrange a meeting on Tsoss between the Warlords. Harrsk attended mainly because at this stage his power of his own forces was largely with Daala and he hoped for an opportunity to either discredit or outright kill her. Things didn't go as planned however when sick of 3 hours of petty squabbling Daala nerve gassed them all. Harrsk blacke dout, but in a somewhat ironic twist his earlier brain injury had scrambled the part of the brain the gas should have affected and so he merely passed out from lack of oxygen. Awakening after the others had died and Daala and Pellaeon had left, Harrsk saw an opportunity. They thought him dead, he would take his private TIE shuttle and kill them as they headed to the rendezvous! They would not see him coming, and as he took off he came closer to his victims and his thumb was on the trigger, he would kill them and then he would conquer the other fleets with his in a headlong charge for their treason! His suppressed personality was horrified by this, as it would truly mean the end of the Empire, the ruin of all he believed in and inspired by Daala's bravery and insight in ending the ICW struggled for dominance with the Harrsk persona, wrestling his hand away from the trigger, the two fought desperately on the mental plane- the loyal yet reasonable subordinate personality against the dominant insane personality. It was as if the ICW had become internal inside Harrsk's own skull until as he wrestled and screamed his subordinates name in hate that personality played his trump card, he released a suppressed truth he had buried-a memory.
The subordinate had been dead for 7 years. He had died in the same explosion that had ripped Harrsk's mind and reality apart. Realizing what he had become, how far he had descended and what was true reality for the first time in years Blitzer Harrsk knew he couldn't live with it, he couldn't go back after all he had done, the millions he'd killed, the Empire he had betrayed, the Emperor, Empire he had served dead and gone and realizing he would slip back into insanity just so he could cope again the old Admiral Harrsk used his last seconds of control to turn away from Daala's ship and pilot the TIE Shuttle into Tsoss Beacon's surface killing himself and in so doing saving the Empire for someone else.
Blitzer Harrsk had once been one of the brightest minds in the Empire, he was devoted, reasonable and by all accounts not cruel, but caring to those under his command. However faced with pain, trauma and literally watching everything he loved and believed in die in front of him snapped him. He might well have blamed himself, believing only a monster could have let down the galaxy and so his mind created that personality to keep from facing reality in a twisted way of coping with what he couldn't accept. A part of him remained but only in the persona of his dead subordinate, partly to protect his fragile psyche from the added guilt of being responsible for this man's death too, and it is worth noting it was THIS persona, what he viewed as someone else that had his only redeeming qualities after Endor. He hated himself so much he created a separate personality that was all he hated, and his only check was from someone else. In the end he chose to kill himself rather than live with this reality. In th every end, he regained his perspective and sanity and in so doing redeemed himself somewhat.
Topic: Character Study Blitzer Harrsk (Read 3220 times)