Undervillian: A Scum of Hive and Galaxy

By now, you may have heard a little bit about the Insider 89 article that Abel Pena, Joe Corroney and myself collaborated on. I'll take a page from Abel's playbook, and give you a little inside look at the process behind the writing. Hope this proves interesting...

There were three creators on this piece, so I'll cover what I did, and hopefully Abel and Joe can kick down with some behind-the-scenes insight on their contributions-which were stellar.

The article was originally intended to focus on another subject (to be named later), but LFL and Insider editor Frank Parisi redirected us into the dingy alleyways and smoky cantinas of the Star Wars Underworld. I was really excited to take the job, immediately thinking back to my great memories of the old Brian Daley Han Solo novels, and the "Tales from..." anthologies and comics.

I'd never worked with Abel before, but I knew his work very well. Scholarly doesn't even begin to describe the depth and insight this guy applies to Star Wars. When I worked with Karen Traviss on the Insider 84 "Guide to the Grand Army" article, I already knew her writing style and she and I talked almost every day over email. But I didn't know Abel as well. How was it going to work?

In one of those lightning bolts of inspiration, I realized we could actually make a potential weakness into a strength. We would write the piece in the form of these little "field reports" from a wide variety of sources. We could and would have disparate, varied voices, each narrating a very tight POV: an "in-universe" description. That way, the more disjointed the piece was, the more it might actually feel like a real collection of reports! Abel immediately seized on the idea, and went to town. He "got it" instantly, and his stuff turned out fantastic.

Plus, I gotta say, it's just fun to write this way. For me, Star Wars is about characters and stories, and I love using those characters and their distinct voices whenever I can. I'm pretty sure Abel feels the same way.

Now! On to the article itself...

Bounty Hunter Guild
I knew from the get-go that I wanted to delve into the guild. The Bounty Hunter Wars books held some good memories for me, and I love the cast of characters woven into them. I also loved the Crimson Nova "Show of Force" storyline from Republic # 65-66 and I wanted to touch on those guys as well. The linchpin was the hunting of Jedi. One consistent message from GWL on down is that, post-ROTS, Palpatine is only peripherally concerned about hunting down the remaining Jedi. It's not worth an all-out assault, full-scale manhunt, in his opinion. So what do you do in that situation? You sub-contract!

Bloodthirsty groups like Crimson Nova are out there, waiting to make a cheap buck off a poor Jedi's head. Mika's hate for the Jedi was so intense, I thought for sure she would have passed it down to her daughter Breela. I like the idea of a legacy of hate. Seems like that's how these things happen in life.

Incidentally, I figured Mika (and Breela) for Cathar-but they are in fact Farghul. This is one of those situations where the Holocron is just indispensable as a reference tool.

Some things that were changed at press time include Breela's name and the fate of Mika. My original draft had Breela listed as Mika'a, with the implication that Farghul children added a vowel sound to their parents' name to denote ancestry. Russian names are sometimes like that. Also, my draft had Mika dead at the hands of the Jedi, sometime during her stay in prison. I figured this was plausible, given Mika's deep hatred of the Jedi. She would be the type to try and stage an escape, and then fight to death when it all went wrong. After all, that's what her parents did! And that fate would give her daughter a strong revenge motivation, and establish a tragic cycle of violence in this Farghul family's life.

Someone on the SW.COM forums asked where the name "Scay Danson" comes from. He is a relatively obscure character referenced in the Coruscant and the Core Worlds RPG book.

Death Sticks
I'm glad we got the death sticks entry in, because it references the Jango Fett video game. I was close to Jon Knoles while he was writing the story, and I thought he did a fantastic job with it. One thing we debated was the nature of Jango's search. I pushed to have Jango following a "thread" of some kind back through dealers, pushers and suppliers to the original Bando Gora manufacturers. Jon agreed that this would make the story clearer.

At one point, we had a game level involving a warehouse of frozen nerf carcasses. We couldn't figure out what it had to do with the story, other than it being a cool environment to play in. Finally, Jon snapped his fingers: "The dealer is hiding the death sticks in the frozen nerf meat!"

This was, actually, not the weirdest sentence I ever heard at LucasArts, but it was close. And, actually, it made perfect sense in the context of the story.

I'm glad we could revisit that world and find out what happened when Jango decimated the Bando Gora's numbers and stopped their death stick business for good.


Han Solo
I was chomping at the bit to do as much about the original Han Solo Adventures as possible. I loved those Brian Daley books (Han Solo at Star's End, Han Solo's Revenge, and Han Solo and the Lost Legacy.) I checked them out of the library over and over... you have to remember, this was at a time when it was the HSA, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and the Marvel comics, and that was pretty much it. (I'm probably forgetting something.) We're talking 1979 and not a whole lot of SW material out there. The world of the Corporate Sector Authority was as real to me as anything, and Han was out there, getting into scrapes, talking tough and having awesome shoot-outs with the galaxy's best gunslingers.

So it was a natural focus when I came to write his bio. I also added the line about Solo being "prone to shooting first" as a snarky rejoinder to the Special Editions, but it's all done in love.

BoShek
I wasn't a big fan of BoShek until Jeremy Barlow wrote a fantastic one-shot for him in Star Wars Empire # 23 from Dark Horse. But now I'm growing out my sideburns and learning to love my spacesuit.

In fact, BoShek will make another appearance in the upcoming online supplement to this article.

Because the article is "in-universe," it's timeline didn't allow me to get into the events of the BoShek one-shot. But you gotta check this thing out. Hunt it down and find it! The events I described in the article can be found in the oldie-but-goodie Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina. The narrator of the piece, Clyngunn, is a character from the Thrawn Trilogy. I always liked his groovy name and wanted to use him somewhere... and so here he is!

Smuggler's Run
This was a fairly straightforward piece to write. I actually didn't know, until I started my research, who had taught Han Solo how to navigate the Kessel Run-so that was cool to learn.

And the "Gavin Zmitt" referenced as the narrator is a nod to my good buddy Kevin Schmitt. Kevin pops up a lot in my stuff, because he was pretty much the most loco Star Wars fan I ever met. We worked together at LucasArts, where he boasted a car with the rundown rusty looks of the Falcon, and a license plate that said "MTFBWY". Our boss once took a puzzled look at it and attempted to translate: "Mount Fuboowy?"

Anyway, Kevin was the Lead Level Designer on Mysteries of the Sith (where he camoed as stormtrooper TK-825-- his phone extension at the time) and later was LLD on Republic Commando.

Aurodium Sword
The genesis of Aurodium Sword came not from a sourcebook or a video game or a novel or comic-it came from playing Star Wars with my five-year-old son. (Those who know the dread Jennifer Greebus will be familiar with this scenario.)

Max had a clone commander and about three Wookiee action figures. They used to pal around together all the time, taking on all manner of foes-mostly in completely non-canon situations. (Fighting Darth Vader and his friend, Padawan Obi-Wan for example.)

It struck a chord with me, though, and I thought, "Boy, who wouldn't want to have a trio of huge Wookiees backing him up?" I remember when I was a kid, thinking that Chewbacca was the strongest alien in the galaxy. How awesome would it be to team up a grizzled super-soldier with a bunch of the biggest, meanest guard dogs you've ever seen!??"

Karen Traviss and I have a gentleman's agreement that I won't step on anything commando or Null-related. Those are HER BOYS-in no uncertain terms. But the ARC troopers are wide open for discussion. I've always liked those unaltered misfits anyway. Haden Blackman helped invent them, and I remember him coming to me at LucasArts and bouncing acronyms around. I never thought "ARC" would catch on, but here we are six odd years later!

I wanted to explore what happened to the ARCs after the war, and it made sense to me that their strong Jango genes would infuse them with a sense of adventure and a contempt for authority. In Muzzle's case, the decision was made for him... to some extent. (More on this in the upcoming Hyperspace Supplement.)

"Aurodium," by the way, is sort of the Star Wars equivalent of gold, and my reference comes from Cloak of Deception (and Rogue Planet.) I figured Muzzle would want his organization's name to project an aura of class, intelligence, and purity, and aurodium fit the bill.

I invented the "Rogue Cell" division writing the report as a small group of Imperial intelligence agents who track clones and ex-military Imperials. "Gone but not forgotten" is their motto. The Empire can ill afford to have its former agents turn against it. And so the Rogue Cell division keeps track of who goes where and says what to whom. Most former personnel behave themselves, but every so often, you get one of these unpredictable ARCs or clones who runs off and joins the Rebellion.

Joe Corroney is going to blog about the art, but I have to take a moment and point out a few details of the Aurodium Sword composition. First off, Joe is amazing. He captured the chaos of a job gone wrong, with Alpha-66's grim determination, and Snoova and his buddy going nuts back there. I love it! But take note of Muzzle's armor. Joe asked me for some direction and we kicked around a few ideas. We came up with a sort of "combined" armor type.

Props to the graying temples and the big X-shaped scar on Muzzle's noggin. I don't know if this was intentional, but he reminds me of Hartigan from Sin City: That Yellow B@st@rd and nothing could make me happier!

You can see Muzzle's ARC pauldron there on his shoulder. He still wears it. It's still a functional piece of armor, a good blast shield, and it's proven especially effective in close-combat. Most aliens and humans can't get a good grip on your shoulders or neck, if you've got a massive plastoid collar on. He's also wearing several pieces of his old ARC body armor, gauntlets and utility belts. The ARCs had the highest-rated armor of all the original Kamino batch. And it's held up all these years. But he's ditched the lower torso armor, in favor of the leather blast armor favored by the Naboo Palace Guard. In Muzzle's experience, sometimes the best defense is being able to run like hell. Speed and armor have to remain in constant balance. Plus, those old plastoid butt pieces were impossible to sit down in!


Lando Calrissian
All I can say about the Lando entry is: any day I get to make a Mindharp of Sharu reference is a good day.

Tyber Zann
This one came as a request from LFL and LucasArts to help promote Tyber Zann as an up-and-coming character in the underworld. We didn't have much to go on, and LucasArts was still in the midst of writing his backstory, so we had to keep things brief. All we knew for sure was: the boy wanted to get his hands on the galaxy's biggest Star Destroyer.

As time goes on, no doubt Tyber Zann's story will be added to and grow. Maybe someday he'll get his own Sharu, but for now, it's still just a dream...

The "Izbela Saarj" is a nod to my own daughter's name. Hey-I'm a proud dad. I'm allowed to do that every once in a while.

Conclusion
That's it for now. Stay tuned for Abel's endnotes. The man is truly a master of reference and retcon, and this time around, he also showed off his mad fiction skillz yo. Okay I'll stop. Writing this piece was s great assignment-- a ton of fun to write, and great guys to partner with.