For the sake of preservation, I will be republishing/reuploading lost Star Wars content to my blog. There are other sites out there that already do this, but I'm always paranoid of data being lost, so... what's one more resource?
BARELY TOLERABLE: ALIEN HENCHMEN OF THE EMPIRE
By Abel G. Pena and Rich Handley
Part 1
Triocolus, Supreme Slavelord
In the days that the triple-eyed orphan Trioculus was bullied and taunted while growing up in the pueblos of Kessel, never did he imagine he would one day become Emperor of the known galaxy.
Strikingly handsome and eloquent, Trioculus seemed the product of an elite Imperial upbringing. But the truth was, in reality, much darker. Unbeknownst to him, Trioculus was actually the artifact of radical scientific experimentation into the quintessence of life, supervised by Chancellor Palpatine’s advisor Sly Moore. Utilizing a Bordali woman named Niobi as a “test subject,” these experiments were initially unpredictable, resulting in asymmetrical homunculi with extra heads and partial appendages. But eventually, the scientists eradicated all harmful mutations in their successful exemplar save one: a third eye. Thus was born Trioculus. This extra optical organ exhibited a powerful hypnotic quality and was located square on the forehead. Legends of the Prophets of the Dark Side had it that the will of the Force produced a perfectly symmetrical three-eyed being once every millennium whose magnetism and power were undeniable. But whether that being was Trioculus was another matter and beyond science.
In any case, Trioculus was quickly thrust into a life of slavery and toil. His mother Niobi was deported to the spice mines of Kessel, along with her newborn son. However, under the cruel power lash of Lord Overseer Reskell Twane — who was a stooge of Jabba the Hutt’s — she ultimately died in the unforgiving mines. Perhaps because of the boy’s intelligence, Twane took pity, bringing Trioculus under his wing and sending the youngling to school. But the boy mutant was shunned and harassed by his peers. He took feverish refuge in the world of literature as a result, particularly as pertaining to warfare. Trioculus grew to become an expert in military and political theory, which naturally led to a fervent devotion to the Empire. When he rooted out a Rebel cell that had been suspected to inhabit his village — a cell that just happened to contain several of his former schoolyard tormentors — Trioculus gained the attention and friendship of sector Grand Moff Bertroff Hissa.
Yet, Trioculus’ relationship with the infamous spice mines of his infancy, and with his racketeering surrogate father, remained complicated. Eventually, Lord Overseer Twane granted the mutant’s petition for employment, and the embittered savagery Trioculus showed the prisoners knew no rival. Then, after the unexpected death of Warden Commander Dewt Kluskine, on the opposite side of the misshapen planet, Twane transferred into that slave lord’s vacated position while Trioculus rose to the rank of Lord Overseer and Supreme Slavelord. But following the death of Jabba, Twane’s prisoners — inspired by a previous riot led by crimelord Tyber Zann — revolted, and a corrupt Rybet administrator named Moruth Doole captured Twane and offered him to Trioculus in exchange for control of the Supreme Slavelord’s hemisphere of Kessel. When Trioculus asked Hissa what he should do, the Grand Moff told him that a loyal Imperial never caves in to threats. Thus, Trioculus refused — and Doole had the mutant’s caretaker fed spice grubs and carbonite-frozen amidst his screams of agony. Trioculus had no regrets.
Having seen what Trioculus was made of, Grand Moff Hissa approached him with a proposition: Palpatine was dead, but he had long been rumored to have a mutant son with three eyes. How were Trioculus’ acting skills, Hissa wondered? Triocolus accepted the challenge and posed as the late Emperor’s son. In the year following, the mutant became embroiled in a multi-sided struggle with Imperial Intelligence, the Imperial Council, renegade Grand Admirals and the cabalistic Church of the Dark Side for dominion of the galaxy. Improbably Trioculus emerged victorious, though he found his reign a short one when his rivals now froze him in carbonite and when the dark power of a Sith amulet worn by Darth Vader began rotting the flesh of the mutant’s hand.
Yet, his greatest mistake was his attempt to force Princess Leia to become his new “Queen of the Empire,” which resulted in a deadly Rebel trap that proved not even a third eye can foresee every danger. His heart still smoking from a fresh blaster wound, Trioculus gripped Hissa’s hand and urged his mentor and longtime friend to avenge him. Hissa faithfully had Emperor Trioculus’ body ceremonially cremated and blasted his remains to the proverbial four corners of the galaxy.
Grand Moff Bertroff "Troff" Hissa
Perhaps the most surprising of all aliens serving the Galactic Empire is Bertroff Hissa, who attained the remarkably high rank of Grand Moff. Hissa was a young man when the Empire came to his homeworld, the uncharted PL-40112-CE-021105 in the Salfrem system within the forbidden Wild Space region known as the Wastes. His alien mother and father were former political agitators and counter culturists who had decided to settle together into the “simple and natural” hard-scrabble life that the barren planet offered.
But when Imperial surveyors came — bringing their humanoid biases with them — they awoke an ancient crash-landed horde of ghastly Rozzum: inter-dimensional monsters once allied with the bygone Order of the Terrible Glare and more alien than anything any of them had ever seen. Outnumbered, the swart commanding Imperial officer conscripted Hissa and his parents into their ranks. Side by side, humans and near-humans vanquished the phantasmagoric swarm, but only Hissa and the ranking Imperial officer, Commander Panaka, survived. Thus, Hissa began his long and unlikely career in the Empire. Within the military, he faced crushing prejudice, but Panaka fought for the alien and kept him on course until the Naboo native’s own promotion to Moff.
At first glance, one might not even realize Hissa possessed nonhuman origins, as his exterior countenance and physique — not to mention his balding head — seemed well within the normal range of human characteristics. The goateed Grand Moff had only to smile, however, to hint at his alien side. Razor-sharp teeth, pointed and deadly, filled his wide mouth, giving him the appearance, when smiling, of a rabid predatory animal.
Although some believed Hissa’s dentition proved he carried Devaronian or Pau’an genetics — or, indeed, that he had lopped off his own Twi’lek brain tails — these rumors were wholly erroneous. Actually, he had started them himself. Incredibly, Hissa purposely filed down his teeth into points, knowing this horrifying visage tended to intimidate others. In fact, the Grand Moff rarely discussed the true source of his alienness: the Sephi heritage that gave him his distinctive tapered ears. During the conferences he held with his peers aboard an Imperial strike cruiser codenamed “Moffship,” he learned they were a largely xenophobic bunch and used his ghastly aspect to turn his appearance from a hindrance to an advantage. Grand Admiral Rufaan Tigellinus, in particular, seemed patently allergic to the merest whiff of alien blood, and the arrogant naval officer never spared Hissa his disgust — something the Sephi would never forget.
Hissa’s lucky break seemingly came in his partnership with the three-eyed slave lord Trioculus. Because Hissa and Trioculus shared the distinction of not being entirely human, a friendship quickly formed between the men, both of whom knew what it was like to be an outsider. Hissa’s isolated upbringing had largely made him a loner, and he did not form friendships lightly. Aside from Trioculus and a few fellow Grand Moffs, his only close friend was Governor Quorl Matrin of Stenos, who shared his interest in archeology before the religiously zealous Stenaxes rose up and killed the man. Following the Emperor’s own unexpected death, Trioculus conspired with Hissa and the Central Committee of Grand Moffs to rule the Empire under the guise that the mutant was Palpatine’s long-lost son.
However, Hissa was severely disfigured on the planet Duro when hazardous waste materials from the Imperial dumping grounds of that planet flooded the Valley of Royalty. A misstep caused the Grand Moff to fall into the toxic waste, which rapidly ate away much of his body. Rescued before the corrosive funk could kill him, he tolerated excruciating pain as his arms were replaced with those of a JMM assassin droid, his torso encased in a hoverchair. Afterward, the powerful clergy of the Church of the Dark Side, furious at having been deceived regarding the identity of Palpatine’s son, arrested and tortured the Grand Moffs involved in the plot. Hissa was starved aboard Space Station Scardia until he was very near death.
Hissa’s execution was scheduled to come in the form of a final meal of biscuits loaded with spice grub parasites to consume him from the inside out — just as he had allowed happen to Trioculus’s surrogate father. However, the Supreme Prophet of the Church of the Dark Side gave him a temporary reprieve from his sentence, sending the Sephi to Yavin IV to investigate a report of the fabled Lost City of the Jedi. In a false entrance to the hidden city, however, Hissa slipped and was incinerated in a pit of molten lava. The pointy-toothed villain had finally bitten off more than he could chew.
Kosh Kurp
As the Empire’s top consulting weapons specialist, with a reputation as the greatest living authority on offensive devices in the galaxy, the Pantoran known as Kosh Kurp was one of the Empire’s most reliable agents. Born and raised on the planet Intuci, in the city of Bonaka Nueno, Kurp was the lone survivor of a bloody Imperial raid on his village.
This strapping, azure-skinned humanoid wore rare crimson man-o’-war body armor of Iskalonian origin and a matching helmet with two blunt horns housing a variety of sensors and other wireless devices. Two rage-filled eyes were hidden beneath a low-lying visor that left only his mouth and jutting chin visible. Sent to the hideout of the Bah’r Kilido criminal kingpin known as the Gaar Suppoon to investigate a bomb threat from Jabba the Hutt, Kurp did not realize he himself was the “bomb” in Jabba’s plan.
Jabba had learned that his longtime rival, the Gaar, had once served as the governor of Intuci under the alias Sonopo Bomoor, buying off the Empire with embezzled monies and ruling the planet with a tyrannical hand. Food shortages on the planet — caused by his own hording of Imperial resources — resulted in widespread rioting, and to maintain order on the planet lest the Emperor investigate his operation, Bomoor decided to eliminate an entire city so others would have enough to survive.
To that end, Governor Bomoor ordered a massacre on Bonaka Nueno, encouraging the troops under his command to be creative in their cruelty. More than 50,000 Bonakats died over the course of three days. Hundreds of them were hung by the heels to die in Bonaka Square, including Kurp’s entire family. Forced to watch as the blood-crazed troops ransacked the town and performed unspeakable atrocities against the people of Bonaka Nueno, Kurp was the only citizen of the town not executed. Arrogant and vain, Bomoor told the soldiers to spare him so the boy could bear witness to Bomoor’s “greatness.”
Kurp never forgot the name of the monster presiding over his family’s massacre, and spent the next two decades tracking Sonopo Bomoor down, vowing to make him suffer a prolonged and agonizing death. During this time, he learned as much as he could about various types of weaponry so he could inflict the maximum damage to Bomoor without killing him, until the time was right. Unfortunately, after retiring the governership to focus his energies into an underworld empire, the Gaar reverted to his real name, Suppoon, and Kurp was unable to find him. Bah’r Kilidos, after all, were a decicred a dozen in the galaxy. Kurp eventually came to serve the Empire, having learned so much about weapons that he was able to leverage a career as a weapons specialist. But still Kurp had no luck in locating his hated enemy — at least, not until Jabba secretly intervened.
By threatening to plant a bomb in Suppoon’s palace, Jabba knew Kurp would be called in to deal with the situation, as the Gaar still had many connections among the Imperials, affording him special treatment. After two days spent searching for the bomb, Kurp announced that no bomb had been planted. Satisfied that his old rival had merely been bluffing, the Gaar invited Jabba to a Bah’r Kilido jubjub ceremony and opened negotiations with the Hutt to trade an un-milked female tromonid for the Pontak Hypergland. A byproduct of one Dr. Pineas Pontak’s ambitious desire to pinpoint the precise location at which the body and soul come into communion within sentient beings’ brains, the man-made Pontak Hypergland prototype organ synthesized a variety of bodily secretions from a wide range of species, potentially revolutionizing the field of inter-species medicine.
Jabba sweetened the deal by offering Suppoon Dr. Pontak himself, whom he’d captured and sedated since the Gaar was so fascinated with his work. All he asked in return was a male tromonid. Selling a female and male together was highly illegal — after scientists discovered the tromonid during an expedition to Rywin, the species had overpopulated five worlds in a matter of months due to its unusually potent reproductive cycle, resulting in very strict regulations regarding its transportation. Regardless, the appeal of possessing both Pontak and his Hypergland was too much to resist, and Suppoon relented. Each criminal outsmarted the other, however, for the male tromonid was sterile and Pontak’s brain had been removed, his body kept functioning (and remotely controllable) by a cranioport hidden behind the man’s left ear. When the deadly tromonid bit Suppoon, Jabba offered him an antidote in return for Pontak’s brain, the Hypergland, the tromonid and ten korgs of spice. With little choice, the Gaar accepted, but he soon turned the tables on Jabba, taking the Hutt and his entourage prisoner.
At that moment, Jabba played his best card, igniting his “bomb” by addressing the Gaar by his alias, Sonopo Bomoor, in Kurp’s presence. Stunned to learn that his employer was, in fact, his lifelong quarry, Kurp turned on the startled Bar’h Kilido, who tried to shoot him in defense. The laser bolt ricocheted off Kurp’s armor, utterly blasting off Suppoon’s own head, much to the bomb expert’s frustration since he’d yearned for the chance to torture Bomoor as he’d once tortured Kurp’s family.
To compensate him, Jabba addressed the assembled members of Garr Suppoon’s criminal organization, naming Kurp their new master. Knowing better than to disagree with a Hutt, they immediately accepted the change in leadership, and the Pantoran consultant resigned his position with the Empire, at last letting his family’s memory sleep in peace. Although his superiors valued Kurp’s skills as a weapons expert, they allowed the resignation…in return for a hefty percentage of the organization’s profits, used to further fund the military.
Part II
KkH'Oar'Rrhr a.k.a. Hoar, the Whirling Dervish
The orphaned Tusken Raider KkH’Oar’Rrhr, or Hoar, was just a boy when he snuck into the empty, mysterious hovel in Tatooine’s Dune Sea. The home was reputed to belong to a wizard, and Hoar planned to steal one of his magical devices. Among the technological effects, he discovered a fascinating cylindrical object, and upon clutching the device, he was overcome by a startling vision. In his mind’s eye, Hoar saw the weapon’s apparent builder — a young male not much older than himself — who covered his naked human face with the most frightening black Tusken mask Hoar had ever seen. The male then ignited his weapon, like a gaderffii pike lit on fire, and motioned to strike Hoar down.
He awoke from his vision with a start to find the wizard Ben Kenobi had returned to the hovel. Fearful of being turned into a womprat, Hoar ran back to his friends…leaving the lightsaber as he found it. After recounting how he’d “boldly battled past the wizard” to escape, Hoar listened as his companions Sliven and Bordo explained that the young man in his vision must have been the “Demon Outlander” — the spawn-child of a witch and a monster called the Great Jawenko — who had slain the Tusken Rrhr hunting band, including Hoar’s family, years ago. Only Hoar, who’d been away bonding with his bantha at the time, had escaped the carnage.
Not long after his vision, Hoar’s Force-sensitivity was discovered by his tribal leader, A’Sharad Hett. A Tusken-raised human, who’d left to join the Jedi and become one of the Order’s masters, Hett had returned embittered after narrowly escaping Emperor Palpatine’s Order 66. Hett began cultivating Hoar as his successor, teaching him how to speak rudimentary Galactic Standard, and how to channel his aggression in a Force-based martial art called Teräs Käsi. A master duelist, Hett also fashioned a bisected gaffi stick for Hoar, tutoring him to fight with two weapons simultaneously. Hoar proved an apt protégé, and while Hett was clearly the clan chieftain, young Raiders idolized Hoar.
Then, during an attempted raid on the Lars Homestead — the very territory from which the Sand People had once captured the Demon Outlander’s witch-mother — the wizard Kenobi confronted Hett and his tribe, defeating the chieftain in a savage duel. Because Hett was unmasked in the fight — a severe Tusken trespass — he was shunned by the Sand People and left Tatooine disgraced. Hoar still revered him, however, so he abandoned Tatooine as well, with many admiring Raiders in tow. But after futilely searching the Outer Rim for his hero, from Portug to Dromund Kaas, Hoar and his nomads found themselves destitute, hungry and discouraged.
It was on Dromund Kaas that the Emperor’s minion Maw eventually found them. A former Jedi Knight, Maw organized Hoar’s Tuskens into a gang of swoop-riding Raiders. Transporting them to Tython to rob ancient Jedi graves of Force artifacts, Maw dubbed them the Grave Tuskens. For their part, Hoar and his riders defiled their traditional Tusken masks, flaunting their bare faces to honor A’Sharad Hett. However, their thievery soon attracted a far more powerful, cyborg Imperial dark-sider: the Emperor’s Hand, Arden Lyn.
Lyn was an implausibly ancient human said to have actually fought on Tython during the earliest Jedi wars. Interfering in one of Hoar’s grave raids, she entered into combat with the Tusken and cowed him with her own Teräs Käsi martial expertise. If Hoar was surprised by the woman’s proficiency in the fighting method of his former mentor, Lyn was in turn dumbstruck at the presumably primitive nomad’s knowledge of the rare martial art. But she was not displeased. Promising to make Hoar more powerful than he’d ever imagined, she coerced the Tusken into joining her mission to eliminate high-profile members of the Rebel Alliance. Without a second thought, Hoar abandoned the Grave Tuskens to Maw’s whim and allied himself with Lyn. Little did he realize the payoff his decision would yield.
Channeling his Force abilities into mastering Teräs Käsi, and testing his skill against the likes of Lyn’s Gamorrean and Stormtrooper pupils, Hoar became a lethal whirling dervish of fighting capability. Then came an unexpected boon: When exposed to the hologram of a young male Rebel on Lyn’s hit list, Hoar matched the face to that from his chilling childhood vision. The Rebel’s name was Luke Skywalker, and, tauntingly, on his belt he wore the unmistakable energy sword Hoar had come across in the wizard Kenobi’s hut. At last, he felt he’d found the murderer of his family, the Demon Outlander. He took to hunting down Skywalker with unrestrained fervor, but the phantom aura of Kenobi clung to the Rebel, protecting him. Frustrated but determined, Hoar retooled A’Sharad Hett’s gaffi gift using instructions stolen from the Tython tombs, turning each half of his Tusken weapon into a working lightsaber.
Hoar’s quest for vengeance reached a crisis point, however, when in his travels with Lyn he at last set eyes on the midnight visage of the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader — who wore the dreaded, black “Tusken” mask from his vision. Hoar was bewildered. Were there actually two Demon Outlanders, or were Vader and the Rebel Skywalker one and the same murderer? Or was he simply mad, deluded for years by a childish conviction based on hearsay and hallucination?
The ultimate conclusion at which Hoar arrived isn’t clear. What is known is that, during a vicious duel with Skywalker, the Tusken Raider laid the Force-user low, with the point of his gaderffii at the young man’s throat. But in that moment, Hoar experienced another vision…and spared the Rebel’s life. Having defied Arden Lyn’s direct order, the Tusken then abandoned his Imperial commander, though not before engaging the Teräs Käsi master one final time in mortal combat.
The last that was heard of Hoar, he had resumed his hunt for both his old chieftain A’Sharad Hett and the raven-masked Darth Vader, taking his quest as far as the ravaged Outer Rim planet Shumari — a place much like his old haunt on Tython, littered with the bones, graves and even ghosts of Jedi. There, Hoar felt certain he would at last find Hett, slay the Demon Outlander…or meet his destiny.
Thok, Gamorrean Double-Agent
Two of the meanest shoats this side of the Greater Javin, Thok and his brother Gorc were, in many ways, rather typical of their species: They loved to fight, and they hated droids. Gamorreans on war-locked Pzob, however, felt there was something distinctly odd about this pair. These clan Skunnt brothers acquired a bizarre reddish tint to their lime skins whenever they boiled over with rage, but an even more astonishing display of their “magic power” occurred during an impromptu fisticuffs after Thok finished a particularly heavy brunch and a barrel of Gamorrean hooch. When he literally belched a fireball into his clan-rival Scumbo’s face, flambéing his opponent’s snout, Thok knew there were bigger hogs to fry off Pzob.
Thok may not have been the brightest Gamorrean, but when it came to brawling, he knew every dirty trick in the book. So he obtained a universal transliterator and took his bigger, even stupider younger brother Gorc with him offworld to make their fortunes. The siblings quickly found work on Zlarbv IV as guinea pigs for Dr. Pineas Pontak’s development of the Pontak Hypergland. The infusion of alien secretions into their bodies had the extraordinary side-effect of making the brothers’ muscles swell dramatically if sufficiently enraged. The experiments were painful, however, and Thok and Gorc eventually moved on to Tatooine. There, they hooked up with Ortugg, a Gamorrean who was recruiting a good dozen sons of sows to proposition the gangster Jabba the Hutt for work. Jabba knew, at once, that Thok and the others were his kind of swine — fearless and dim-witted.
Thok had many adventures in the Hutt’s employ. One particularly unforgettable experience involved securing Jabba’s pet rancor. While his co-thug Ortugg wailed “rankur!” on sight of the beast, Thok bolted, recognizing the “spider-crab” monster that had become part of Gamorrean mythology since the Rakata Empire introduced one on Gamorr millennia before. Thok also ratted out Dr. Pontak’s whereabouts when Jabba required the scientist’s presence in order to one-up the Hutt’s business rival Gaar Suppoon in a negotiation. Thok helped kidnap the doctor, and an impressed Jabba made the Gamorrean his personal bodyguard during the negotiations.
However, the most memorable incident occurred one wild night in Mos Eisley’s Red Moon Saloon, involving Thok, Gorc, seven barrels of Zelosian wine, a Kloo horn, three bludgeoned-to-death Gungans and five fricasseed Ugnaughts. When the brothers ended up in the custody of Tatooine’s local Imperial dark-sider, the Prophetess, quick-thinking Thok squealed about Gorc’s “magic power” to eruct fire, hoping to save his own hide. Ultimately, though, this only separated the siblings: Gorc was dragged away to an Imperial laboratory, while Thok was tossed into Prefect Orun Depp’s prisons to rot.
But destiny soon intervened. In exchange for information about a Panathan mineral baron, the cybered “Emperor’s Hand” Arden Lyn acquired Thok from the Prophetess. As promised, the Gamorrean was strong in the Force. But invoking Gamorrean tradition, Thok told Lyn he’d die before serving someone who couldn’t defeat him in single combat…especially someone who was part droid. The Teräs Käsi master went toe-to-toe with the unorthodox brawler, amazed as Thok literally grew a third in size and fought with ferocious instincts. In the end, only a well-timed wallop from Lyn’s cyborg arm K.O.ed the big bruiser.
Lyn was impressed enough with Thok’s Force-enhanced reflexes that she had him join her Teräs Käsi students Hoar, former leader of the Grave Tuskens, and stormtrooper 17786, offspring of the Imperial Force-user Nial Declann. Using the amplifying power of Teräs Käsi, Thok dramatically sharpened his fighting skills in preparation for Lyn’s Imperial mission to terminate the Rebellion’s “Heroes of Yavin”—Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo and Chewbacca the Wookiee— the last of whom became Thok’s greatest nemesis, engaging him in epic broils. In truth, however, Lyn was merely gathering soldiers to overthrow Emperor Palpatine and complete her eons-old agenda to rule the galaxy. Unfortunately for her, another so-called Emperor’s Hand, Mara Jade, shadowed Arden Lyn, exposing the cyborg’s intended treachery to her master. At this point, Lyn and Thok disappeared. But some months after the Battle of Hoth, the pair reemerged, now in league with the treasonous Imperial Grand Admiral Demetrius Zaarin. Taking a page from the last battle of the Clone Wars, Trooper 17786 helped Thok and Lyn abduct Palpatine aboard the shuttle Haven 3. The coup failed, however, and Lyn subsequently released Thok from service.
Mighty Thok now found himself back where he started, minus one brother. With nowhere to go, he turned again to Jabba. After operating as an Imperial agent, a double-agent and a kidnapper of galactic dictators, working at Jabba’s now seemed quite a bore by comparison. The same Gamorrean clique was still here: Ortugg, Thug… and his old clan Skunnt rival from Pzob, Scumbo, who had apparently taken Gorc’s spot. Things didn’t seem like they could get much worse—though Thok did feel some satisfaction upon seeing Chewbacca’s human sidekick frozen in carbonite in Jabba’s throne room.
Things quickly heated up, however, when the dancer “Arica” came to the palace, as Thok felt positive he’d seen the woman before…. Then Thok’s nemesis Chewbacca showed up as well—captured by the scrawny bounty hunter Boushh. Thok could hardly believe it. That’s when he realized that the dancer “Arica” was, in fact, the Emperor’s assassin, Mara Jade. He was about to inform Jabba of the Imperial spy in their midst when all hells broke loose: Han Solo was defrosted by “Boushh,” who turned out to be Princess Leia Organa in disguise, and Thok watched agape as Luke Skywalker strode in and killed the rancor.
With the Heroes of Yavin and Palpatine’s hitwoman all in one place, he felt sure they were out to get him. Thok’s mind was still reeling as he accompanied the other Gamorreans on Jabba’s sail barge to watch the Rebels get swallowed by the Sarlacc. But when Skywalker suddenly assaulted the barge, cleaning skiff with his glowing lightsaber, Thok’s old instincts kicked in, and he stormed the barge deck, body checking C-3PO as the droid tried to deploy a faulty subroutine in gravik-nez, the ancient Affan art of hand-to-hand combat. Blaster rifle in hand, Thok charged Skywalker alongside the Kadas’sa’Nikto Wooof, hoping to take the Rebel by surprise. But the Jedi’s powers had matured immensely since they’d last met. Thok was about to scorch Skywalker with a faceful of his patented Teräs Käsi-embellished flame belch when his lightsaber-wielding opponent unexpectedly whirled and cut the Gamorrean down.
In his dying moments, the hog who dreamed of big things beyond Pzob saw his old nemesis Scumbo standing over him—vibro-axe in hand and a wicked gleam upon his mucous snout. Thok knew he was finished. Yet, instead of cutting Thok down, Scumbo loosed the war squeal of their tribe, bidding his old foe safe passage to that Great Trough in the Stars as the sail barge exploded around them. Clan Skunnt would remember him forever, memorializing mighty Thok with a burping contest on his farrowing-day every year.
Part III
Sly Moore, Imperial Advisor
The name of Chancellor Palpatine’s aide, Sly Moore, was little spoken by the time of the Rebellion. But the oldest Imperial courtiers remembered her well, especially by a different sobriquet: Queen of the Empire.
An ambitious Umbaran with an unsettling dead glare, the ashen Moore was calculating and ruthless. She dressed in an intricate and obscenely expensive shadowcloak, which could render her undetectable to the naked eye, and hid within its voluminous folds a stiletto-like knife known as a vooktar. Rumored to have blackmailed her predecessor Sei Taria into retirement, and managed to become as close to Chancellor Palpatine as his trusted human male confidants, Sate Pestage and Kinman Doriana — and some whispered even closer. Exploiting the mind-clouding abilities of her species, Palpatine sometimes had Moore impersonate his Sith persona of Darth Sidious, enabling him to appear in two places at once. And while nobody could prove anything, after the rise of the Galactic Empire, gossipvids and sludgenews stories claimed she and the Emperor shared something more than a professional relationship.
Despite the tabloids’ inability to corroborate these lurid tales, Palpatine’s appetites for concubines — such as his courtesan-cum-assassin Roganda Ismaren — was well known, and the Imperial public latched onto the sensationalistic title “Queen of the Empire” bestowed on Moore by the Galactic Gossip. In the aftermath, the stoic Moore became an object of adoration and worship, and the glamorization of her image and role in the Empire only increased as her public appearances became rarer and rarer.
At least part of the reason for Moore’s frequent scarcity, even in the days of the Republic, was that she and the “Chancellor’s Hand,” Sarcev Quest, were busy on the planet Byss, serving as custodians to several darksiders-in-training, recruited from the rejected Jedi stock of the Agricultural Corps. While Quest handled the students’ formal Force-training, Moore helped bend their minds to the dark side. The Umbaran also used her peculiar talents to root out survivors of Order 66 and, for a time, supervised a pair of Shi’ido scientists, Mammon Hoole and Borborygmus Gog, as they conducted experiments in abiogenesis — the spontaneous generation of life. To that end, Moore provided them with a female Bordali test subject. However, Moore herself had come into the possession of Force-sensitive DNA from an undisclosed source and was deeply interested in a technique once perfected by Darth Plagueis: influencing the midi-chlorians to create a zygote in a fertile female.
At last report, Moore abruptly disappeared from the Imperial Court shortly following a public appearance during a New Year’s Fete celebration, where unsubstantiated murmurs began to spread of her “delicate” condition. It was rumored that she was sequestered to the Ghost Nebula, the home of her species, where she departed life during child labor while giving birth to a nameless mutant offspring who was immediately spirited away by her old confederate, Quest.
Though the memories of Moore’s glory eventually faded, whispers of Palpatine’s “three-eyed son” continued circulating far and wide in the galaxy, and an impressionable three-eyed slave from Kessel named Trioculus would never forget the majesty of the Umbaran lady or her unofficial title.
Mas Amedda, Vice Chancellor
The story of the once-noble statesman Mas Amedda is a sad, but redundant, political tale of moral compromise and the corruption of power. A Chagrian from the watery planet Champala serving as Speaker of the House and Vice Chair under his friend Supreme Chancellor Valorum, Amedda once helped foil an assassination plot against the Republic leader. A few short years later, he would actually give the secret order to have him murdered.
Amedda’s deep voice often resonated around the Senate as he called for order when the Republic’s government lapsed into pointless bickering. To show his command of the vast chamber, he would often allow a flicker of his long, forked tongue. The radiation from Champala’s sun was responsible for the evolution of his pale blue flesh, but it was the brutal politics of the Senate that gave him his thick skin.
Shortly after the annihilation of the Outbound Flight project, a Jedi mission of peace for which Amedda had passionately lobbied, Palpatine not only revealed to Amedda that he’d ordered the mission’s destruction, but that he was, in fact, a Dark Lord of the Sith, sworn enemy of the Jedi and the Republic. Palpatine explained that he’d known all along Amedda and others had tried to manipulate him, and that in truth, he had manipulated them, pitting them against each other like pawns to do his bidding. The Chagrian was crushed. Amedda thought he could use his position to deceive Palpatine and secretly lead the Republic out of darkness and into a glorious new order. Instead, he was responsible for the exile of Palpatine’s enemies and the deaths of countless innocents.
But Palpatine appealed to the Chagrian’s most basic nature. Contrary to killing Amedda, the Dark Lord explained that they were both mere cogs in a transcendent “Grand Plan.” The Jedi, the Republic and even the revenge of the Sith were all mere components in the greatest experiment ever attempted, an experiment stretching back beyond the time of Xim the Despot and the ancient Infinite Empire. Palpatine, too, shared Amedda’s vision of a New Order — but this New Order was not the same as the Republic or even Palpatine’s future Galactic Empire, for these were only practical manifestations of Amedda and Palpatine’s shared dream within the limitations of time and space. This truth was what the earliest Sith people had understood, so long ago.
And then, Amedda understood, too: Absolutes were an illusion. For 25,000 years, democracy had had its chance. Beyond the Republic and beyond the Sith, beyond the contrary yeas and nays of the Senate, which were only the two opposing ends of this illusion, was the inexorable dream of perfect procedure — and of peace. That was eternal. And it had fallen to him and Palpatine to bring it into reality. Amedda accepted his destiny and pledged his undying loyalty to the Supreme Chancellor. And among Amedda’s first duties was planning the assassination of his friend, former Chancellor Valorum.
Thus, despite the noble ideals he’d once held so dear, Amedda subsumed himself to the Grand Plan, hunting Sith relics for his master on worlds such as Yavin 4, and standing by Palpatine’s side when he declared himself ruler of a Galactic Empire that would endure 10,000 years. But as Imperial policies became increasingly human-centric and hostile toward alien species, Amedda slowly withdrew from public politics. From a secret Imperial Citadel on the planet Byss, in the very heart of the galaxy, Amedda diligently outlined preparations necessary for his New Order for the next thousand years, the next 10,000 years… and beyond.
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