For those of you who haven't heard of the What's the Story contest, it's a weekly (now semi-weekly) contest for Hyperspace members where a certain character, location, vehicle, etc. from the Star Wars universe is given to fans to provide a backstory for. Judges select the winning entry, and if you're the submitter, you've now contributed a piece of Star Wars canon. Any Hyperspace members out there, I encourage you all to give this thing a shot.

This is a bit late in coming, but I figured I'd give some Behind-the-Scenes information on my two winning entries: Rango Tel and Romeo Treblanc.

Rango "Tankhead"Tel
This funny-looking guy from the first round of entries can be seen quite clearly in Episode I when Qui-Gon, Padme, and Jar Jar enter Mos Espa for the first time.

This first thing I'll comment is that Rango Tel's name is not my invention; that comes from Captain Daultay Dofine (Dofine, if you're out there, I'd love to hear from you--I'm curious what your original entry was about). As Abel G. Peņa notes in his blog, though I have two winning submissions, I have yet to contribute a name to the Star Wars universe. My original name for Tel was Ip Numeth.

Now, onto the databank entry. I'll begin by saying the text from my submission and the text in the blog are nearly identical; cleaned up slightly, but even then, there are very few changes.

The saying among crime lords, "For every bounty hunter that can do the job, there are a thousand more who think they can," is entirely my invention. It's my hope that this saying may actually one day be said by a crime lord, but until then, I'm content simply knowing it is a saying among them.

I chose Sernpidal as Tel's home planet simply by looking in a map of the Star Wars galaxy (in the back of my Essential Chronology). It looked backwater enough, so I checked it out on the internet. Seeing as it really didn't come into play before the New Jedi Order, I figured this was an excellent opportunity to make mention of it.

Probably the biggest change to my submission comes in the following bit of the entry. While I said Tel was looking for Mandalorian Merc armor and got second-rate body armor, the editors simplified it to Mandalorian armor and gave Tel second-rate vac-exposure body armor. In addition, the sentence labeling Tel "Tank Head" was not in my original submission.

The idea that Tel thought he was wearing Mandalorian armor was my basis for the entire submission. The idea didn't actually occur to me until I watched Tel's scene in Episode I; something about the way he moved made the Mandalorian idea click. The idea was solidified when I was half-way through writing my submission, and my mom saw Tel's picture and made a Boba Fett joke.

I imagine Borzu Nale's name was already established when I wrote the entry, as I had named him Mik Nale, but the editors changed it. (Elan Mak, real name Kam Nale, was a pre-established Podracer pilot.)

Other than that, my submission is almost entirely intact. My only regret is that I told so much of Tel's story; there's not much chance of him cropping up somewhere in the EU. But at the same time, his story couldn't really be told if he had survived it; part of his character was that he had to die on this first bounty hunting mission.

So I guess I'll just keep looking for a crime lord to mumble something about a thousand people who think they can do a bounty hunter's job.

Romeo Treblanc
This second-round entry should come with a very important note: Treblanc's backstory is near-identical to the one I submitted for the character who eventually became Tannon Praji. I'd like to think this wasn't so much laziness on my part as that I really liked that original submission, and thought it had a decent chance a second time around. Which I guess it did.

When I submitted him this time, I named the character Bor Nameloc--mostly because I was too lazy to come up with a decent anagram for "Rob Coleman."

Romeo Treblanc appears in Episode III at the Galaxies Opera House, in the viewing box adjacent to Palpatine's.

This entry was a bit more heavily edited than my last one, which probably is also due to Captain Yossarian's bits in it. Yossarian and I seemed to agree that Treblanc had a gambling addiction, but he took it a step further to tie in Rob Coleman's cameo in Episode I. The paragraph describing Treblanc's love of Podracing is entirely his.

I should also note that Valin Kenobi made a nice nod to Treblanc in his entry for Diva Shaliqua.

I guess my hope with Treblanc's entry was that in describing the security measures afforded Palpatine in his private booth, I could provide a reason worth picking this contest entry.

When I write my submissions, I always ask myself why the judges would pick it. In Treblanc's case, the answer was it provided the security features to Palpatine's booth that would allow him to speak so openly with Anakin. In Tel's story, I thought it was light-hearted and a fun read; plus, after reading it, I didn't see how you could look at Tel's armor and not think Mandalorian.

So I always try to answer one or more of the following questions in the affirmative with my submissions: "Would a person want to read this?" or "Is the Star Wars universe better if this is a part of it?" or "Does this help explain, clarify, or deepen the Star Wars story?"

Thanks for reading.