Leektar is an Ewok character whose backstory was developed by Andrew Gilbertson (Hecko Tenton) and Arthur Papadam (Arf Maul) through Star Wars Hyperspace's What's The Story? feature. Below is a collaborative effort by the two authors to explore the origin of all aspects of the story.

Arf Maul:

Hecko and I had a lot of fun getting together and comparing our original submissions. It was very interesting to see how the two entries were merged, what was left out, who was responsible for individual elements of the final entry, and the influences behind said elements.

OUR ORIGINAL SUBMISSIONS [unpublished elements mentioned here are obviously non-canon, non-official]
Hecko Tenton:

My original submission was the story of Leektar's quest to live beyond his brother's shadow, as appeared in the final entry. (That Soul Tree line at the end of paragraph one is my favorite part- one of the few verbatim quotes that made it in.) The point about his finding solace in his family was also there. However, in my version, Leektar already lived at Bright Tree, and it was an initial, disastrous attempt by the Ewoks to drive Imperial invaders away (leaving them crippled and explaining why they're not already at war in ROTJ- they were still licking their wounds,) in which Leektar saved not a bunch of scouts, but Chief Chirpa instead. (What can I say? I think big.) In the conclusion, (very similar to PIXAR's 'Incredibles,') Leektar discovered that while he finally had his glory, his brush with death caused him to realize that his family was where his true contentment lay. Also, the Honorary Elder title (having not been awarded for hundreds of years,) was the sole reason for the Shaman's mantle.

Arf Maul:

My original submission began with the destruction of Red Bush Grove. Leektar - whom I identified as a shaman of the Kewena tribe occupying Red Bush Grove - was a survivor only because he was absent from the village during the disaster. After discovering the tragedy on his return and mourning for several days, Leektar began searching for another tribe to join. He hiked along the Yarlubb River for many days, until he was ambushed by Sanyassan marauders. An ewok called Keoulkeech came to Leektar's aid, and nursed him back to Bright Tree Village, where he recovered from his injuries at the hands of Logray. I identified the tribe occupying Bright Tree Village as the Wiwilla tribe, though this somewhat ambitious element was not published. Leektar became a respected shaman of the village, and participated in the Battle of Endor years later.

LEEKTAR
Hecko Tenton:

Leektar's name is pretty simple and straightforward- in Super Return of the Jedi for SNES, one of Wicket's favorite sound bites was "Yee-cha!" This is stuck in my head as the definitive Ewok sound. (Right next to "Goompa, Wicket" from those old cartoons.) So I took Yee-cha and played around with letters, striving for a phonetically similar sound. As for the character himself, I thought as I usually do; first of how the separate, pre-established elements could fit together in one character, and secondarily the effects and situations that would lead to or result from the first set of elements. So really, like Arf Maul, the character was shaped solely by the areas where it interacted with the events.

Arf Maul:

I had originally named this ewok "Calarb" (named for my girlfriend Clare), though I agree with the editors, "Leektar" sounds much better As with several of my submissions, my depiction of Leektar was more event based rather than character based. Therefore any references to Leektar's character can be attributed to Hecko.

I gave poor Leektar a bit of a rough patch in life - by destroying his entire village, wiping out everything he had grown to love. I guess I wanted the readers to feel sympathetic towards him. I'm sorry Leektar: you didn't deserve what life dealt out to you. But it all turned out alright in the end, finding a new life in Bright Tree Village. He might have even remarried, but that's a different story altogether

RED BUSH GROVE
Arf Maul:

This is one of two locations that I have introduced to the saga . Not much thought went into the naming of this village, though I named it using the same conventions as "Bright Tree Village". I actually called it "Red Bush Village" in my original entry; it was changed from "Village" to "Grove" by the editors. At the time, I was unaware of the several other villages on Endor established by the old Ewoks cartoons and comics.

It was I who established that Red Bush Grove suffered from a natural disaster. It was kind of a tribute to the people on Earth affected by the Category 5 storms that occurred at the time. My depiction of the event was "a horrific storm of massive proportion that flattened the tree dwellings and wiped out the entire tribe", though this was edited to "a horrible fire sparked by lightning wiped out Red Bush Grove".

CHESEA
Hecko Tenton:

This was an unusual Freudian slip of sorts; clearly this character is named after Chelsea, a friend of mine, (being a minor Star Wars fan at best, she was less than enthusiastic to discover her namesake was a part of Lucas-licensed canon...) who I can't recall consciously thinking about at the time. As for the character, she is modeled off of Malani from the old Ewoks cartoon, or at least what I assumed she would grow up to be, based on the episode "Wicket's Wagon," bright, spirited, a lover of horses and an expert rider; ironically enough, a good description of Chelsea, too. (Unfortunately, the happy ending of Leektar finding his purpose in family was truncated when the combined story caused the entire family to perish in the fire. I've always held out hope that if Keoulkeech could survive...)

Arf Maul:

Yeah, sorry for killing her off, Hecko. If only I had considered the ramifications caused by destroying an entire village

KEOULKEECH
Hecko Tenton:

I added Keoulkeech in his current from because of a notation by Pablo Hidalgo in the original description, noting that Leektar was commonly confused with Keoulkeech. It seemed natural to include this notation within the Star Wars universe as well as without, therefore I set Keoulkeech as the standard for Leektar to live up to and his primary motivation. However, the notations about his specializations and the ending with his healing of the forest were added after the fact by Mr. Hidalgo, a necessity for adjusting Keoulkeech's role after the Horrible Fire element was introduced into the story.

Arf Maul:

I also included Keoulkeech in my submission, influenced from Pablo Hidalgo's reference to him in the submission guidelines. My depiction established Keoulkeech from Bright Tree Village, an ewok who rescued Leektar from Sanyassan Marauders, and introduced him to the new village/tribe. Hence my version of Keoulkeech was not related to Leektar.

YARLUBB RIVER
Arf Maul:

Another one of my creations from scratch Again, its name wasn't really based on anything; I just wanted to come up with a name that sounded like it was conceived by an Ewok.

This might sound crazy, but recently, I explored Endor in Star Wars Galaxies, in search of a location that might resemble Yarlubb River. All I had to do was find Bright Tree Village, and pray that there was a river flowing south of it.

On Endor in Star Wars Galaxies, there are two generic "Tree Villages" - I'm unsure if either of them were meant to be Bright Tree Village. One of them did indeed have a river flowing south of it, so I set off on my Zephyr-G swoop. On reaching the river, I scouted around until I found a nice picturesque spot. Typically, it began to rain as soon as my finger approached the "Print Screen" key. I waited until the weather cleared. You can see the picture here.