Grand admirals f'sale! Getcha bonafide grand admirals f'sale here!

TheForce.net brought a sale by Paizo.com to my attention, featuring slashed prices on many back issues of Star Wars Gamer and Star Wars Insider. Right away I checked if Star Wars Gamer #5, featuring my first official Star Wars project The Emperor's Pawns, was among them but, conspicuously, it's the only Gamer issue in their stock which isn't on sale!

But all's not lost. When I checked their Star Wars Insider sale inventory, there it was: Star Wars Insider #66. For less than the original cover price, anyone who missed it can now own my second official Star Wars publication, starring the Empire's crème de la crème.

"Who's Who: Imperial Grand Admirals" started life as a follow-up proposal to Star Wars Gamer after the publication of The Emperor's Pawns. When I mentioned the concept of doing an exposé on the Empire's military elite to my buddy Dan Wallace, he said he'd been planning to pitch a similar concept. So when Gamer gave the green light, we decided to collaborate.

The concept of the Imperial Grand Admiral was introduced in that almost mythic book Heir to the Empire, by Timothy Zahn in 1991. In that novel, Zahn created the character Grand Admiral Thrawn, a blue-skinned, red-eyed humanoid who was one of a dozen men belonging to this group of overachieving military strategists. For several years afterward, the identities of the other eleven grand admirals were revealed to us piecemeal, mostly via the Star Wars sourcebooks published by West End Games. Then, in 2000, Dan published The Essential Chronology with Kevin J. Anderson, revealing the names of nearly all these mysterious soldiers.

But who were these Caesars, Sun Tzus, Napoleons, and Pattons of Star Wars, and what happened to them? Names like Grunger, Grant, and Rufaan Tigellinus only hinted at what these grand admirals might be like... and, of course, the brilliant reputation of Thrawn. Dan and I set out to tell their stories.

The Grand Admirals project went into temporary limbo when Star Wars Gamer was cancelled, but eventually Star Wars Insider picked it up, and in the deal my old pal Joe Corroney brought his talents to the team, multiplying the personality of each of the characters significantly through his illustrations.

In the end, each of the grand admirals is unique. Some are depraved, some are honorable, and some are mad. Most are brilliant, and one is an idiot. One is even still alive.

Interested? Check out Star Wars Insider #66. And check out Dan's blog Grand Admirals: What Have They Got in their Pocketsses? for information that didn't make the cut from Gamer to Insider, as well as these two cool threads:

StarWars.com: The other Imperial Grand Admirals...

TheForce.net: Osvald Teshik......framed?~ Abel G. Peña

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