Barriss Offee

Barriss Offee, later known as "the healer" and "wise mother," was a Force-sensitive Mirialan female who served as a Jedi Padawan during the Clone Wars before falling to the dark side. Trained under the Jedi Master Luminara Unduli, she was a gifted healer who came to believe the Jedi Order had betrayed its own ideals. Her disillusionment led her to bomb the Jedi Temple and frame her friend Ahsoka Tano, and in the years that followed she served the Empire as an Inquisitor before renouncing it to live as a wandering healer.

Jedi Padawan#

Barriss Offee was trained as a Padawan under the Jedi Master Luminara Unduli, wielding a blue lightsaber and preferring the study of ancient Jedi texts to combat. She fought at the First Battle of Geonosis, surviving as the Clone Wars began, and afterward volunteered to watch over injured Jedi in the Temple clinic, where her attentive care helped many recover. Early in the war she traveled with Unduli to Ilum to complete her final lightsaber, only for the Jedi Temple there to be nearly destroyed in a Separatist ambush from which Grand Master Yoda saved them.

Friendship with Ahsoka Tano#

At the Second Battle of Geonosis in 21 BBY, Offee returned to the field and joined the forces of Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan Ahsoka Tano. Though different in temperament, with Offee's authoritative manner clashing against Tano's improvisation, the two Padawans infiltrated a Geonosian droid factory together. When they were trapped by a Geonosian super-tank, they chose to use the vehicle to destroy the factory's reactor, expecting to die in the blast, but both survived, and the ordeal strengthened their bond.

Soon after, aboard the medical frigate TB-73, Offee was infected by a Geonosian brain worm and, under its control, hunted Tano across the ship and nearly killed her. Tano freed her by rupturing the coolant system to kill the parasites, sparing Offee even as she begged to be killed rather than remain infected. The two went on to undertake many missions together, including the Battle of Umbara, though Offee remained critical of Tano's unorthodox fighting style.

Bombing of the Jedi Temple#

By the last year of the war, Offee had grown convinced that the Jedi Order had given in to the dark side, become the villains of the conflict, and abandoned the common people of the galaxy. Coming into contact with the anti-war activist Letta Turmond, she shared her beliefs and resolved to make a statement against the Order. She showed Turmond how to weaponize nano-droids, and Turmond fed them to her husband, a munitions worker at the Temple, triggering a bombing that killed Jedi, clones, and civilians in 19 BBY.

To cover her involvement, Offee Force choked Turmond in her cell before she could talk, framing Tano for the murder, then freed Tano and killed clone troopers to further incriminate her. Disguised as the former Sith assassin Asajj Ventress, whose lightsabers she had stolen, Offee attacked Tano herself and led her into a trap. Tano was expelled from the Jedi Order, but Skywalker, suspicious of his Padawan's guilt, confronted Offee in her chambers; when she defended herself with Ventress's hidden lightsabers, she revealed herself, and he captured her. Offee confessed at Tano's trial, declaring that she had acted because she believed the Jedi had become the true villains of the war, as if they were no longer the Jedi they had once been. Tano was cleared but, feeling betrayed, refused to return to the Order.

Inquisitor of the Empire#

Imprisoned for the remainder of the war, Offee witnessed the attack on the Jedi Temple during the final days of the conflict. She was visited by a former Jedi acquaintance, Lyn Rakish, now serving the Empire's Inquisitorius as the Fourth Sister, who told her that her accusations against the Jedi had proven correct and offered her a way out. With clones' blasters at her back, Offee accepted and was taken to Fortress Inquisitorius.

There the Grand Inquisitor tested the captive Jedi, pitting Offee against a fellow prisoner, Dante, in a fight to the death. Offee killed Dante and was inducted into the Inquisitorius, kneeling before her new master, the Sith Lord Darth Vader. But on a mission to hunt a fledgling Jedi, she was sickened by the Fourth Sister's slaughter of innocent townspeople and, after her fellow Inquisitor cut down a Jedi who was prepared to surrender, Offee turned on her and Force pushed her off a mountainside. Cradling the dying Jedi, she defied the Empire, and her betrayal made her a target of the Inquisitorius.

Life as a healer#

Years later, having left the Empire behind, Barriss Offee became known as "the healer," aiding travelers from a small encampment on a snowy world and gathering a devoted following who called her "wise mother." When a family with a Force-sensitive child sought her help, she told them of her own past as a Jedi and sent them to safety as the Fourth Sister arrived in pursuit. Offee kept the Inquisitor at bay in a cave, probing her with doubts about her loyalty to the Empire, until the Fourth Sister, swinging wildly in frustration, accidentally impaled her. Promising to save her old friend, the Fourth Sister carried her wounded body from the cave.

Legacy#

Offee's betrayal left a deep mark on the Jedi Order and on Ahsoka Tano. Months after her arrest, the Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi cited her treachery as evidence that the Order had a problem with traitors in its ranks. A year into the reign of the Empire, Tano reflected that although Offee's actions had been wrong, she had a point about the Jedi and the Republic, and that had the Order truly listened, it might have stopped Darth Sidious before it was too late.

Personality and abilities#

Offee was disciplined, studious, and deeply principled, qualities that made her disillusionment with the Jedi all the more total. A natural healer uneasy with violence, she was nonetheless a capable duelist who held her ground against Anakin Skywalker and, after her fall, against the trained Inquisitorius. Her conviction that the Jedi had lost their way curdled into the dark side during the war, yet in her final years she sought to use her gifts to heal and protect rather than to harm, dying in defense of a Force-sensitive child.