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| - Lady Menal Bathiriat was a Tapani noble of House Mecetti and, in 154 ABY, the head of the secretive Mecrosa Order. Born and raised on the Mecetti capital of Obulette, the daughter of prominent Mecetti nobles, Menal was expected to make a good marriage while her elder brothers carried on the family traditions of military prowess. Instead, she found her way into the Mecrosa and was trained in the arts of combat and assassination, as well as the history of the Sith. When she was twenty-six, her eldest brother was killed in a duel with a rival noble. She challenged her brother's killer, who initially laughed off the comment as the grief of a distraught youth. Menal coldly called him a dishonorable coward and added that she suspected he must have cheated to defeat her brother, which brought an
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| abstract
| - Lady Menal Bathiriat was a Tapani noble of House Mecetti and, in 154 ABY, the head of the secretive Mecrosa Order. Born and raised on the Mecetti capital of Obulette, the daughter of prominent Mecetti nobles, Menal was expected to make a good marriage while her elder brothers carried on the family traditions of military prowess. Instead, she found her way into the Mecrosa and was trained in the arts of combat and assassination, as well as the history of the Sith. When she was twenty-six, her eldest brother was killed in a duel with a rival noble. She challenged her brother's killer, who initially laughed off the comment as the grief of a distraught youth. Menal coldly called him a dishonorable coward and added that she suspected he must have cheated to defeat her brother, which brought an end to the noble's laughter and led him to accept her challenge. The following morning, Menal dueled him with a lightfoil, feigning lack of skill to bait him into a false sense of security, then cut his throat and slashed through his heart and lungs with a single sweeping slash. The duel was not prosecuted, but Menal was thereafter regarded as a dangerous woman not to be slighted. Her remaining brother was killed during the Second Imperial Civil War, leaving her to split her inheritance with that brother's three children. Armed with the wealth and influence of her position and the backing of the Mecrosa, she steadily expanded her personal wealth and developed a private force of loyalists in the House Guard. In the years immediately following the death of Darth Krayt, Menal was responsible for obtaining a number of Sith artifacts which had been overlooked as the Sith fled from the victorious Galactic Federation Triumvirate. Around the same time, Menal began training Marcus Antessio as a sort of personal apprentice. Handsome and well-liked, Antessio was an ideal Mecrosa, as he could go almost anywhere in Tapani society without it being thought odd. Even better, he was a Force-sensitive. Menal's influence ensured that Antessio was knighted even before he reached the normal age of majority at thirty. In addition to Antessio, Menal also cultivated a close association with Baron Offul Grant, who supported her as she ascended to lead the Mecrosa. Though she was not personally fond of Grant's adopted daughter Evangelia Maxico, who had been adopted from a common family, Menal appreciated the value of having another Force-sensitive in the Mecrosa, and allowed the girl to be trained. She also felt a rival would be good for Marcus, as it would force him to constantly improve himself to keep his edge; it struck her as embodying the very Sith principles the Mecrosa were supposed to support. By the 150s, Menal was not only leader of the Mecrosa, but also had a seat on House Mecetti's Privy Council. She had an alliance with Lord Titus Astagon, who controlled House Mecetti's intelligence network, and the two of them frequently collaborated to expand the House's fortunes and protect its interests. In 154 ABY, Astagon informed her that two Sith holocrons belonging to Darth Ramage and Darth Chosis had come up for sale on Coruscant. Menal dispatched her apprentice Marcus Antessio and a team of Mecrosa operatives to retrieve the holocrons. The mission was a catastrophe. Evangelia returned with the news that Marcus and Menal's nephew, Aimon Bathiriat, had both been killed in action, and Evangelia herself had obtained the holocrons only to yield them to two women identifying themselves as Sith, new adherents of the Rule of Two, after being bested in a duel by the apprentice. Beside herself with fury, Menal attempted to have the Privy Council strip Evangelia of her knighthood but, unable to provide them details of what the girl had done, was unsuccessful. Not content to merely expel Evangelia from the Mecrosa—and concerned about the girl becoming an informant for some rival House—Menal sent Mecrosa agents to kill the young woman. She did not live long enough to find out they had failed; Evangelia dispatched the assassins, infiltrated Lady Bathiriat's estate on Procopia, and poisoned her in her sleep.
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