Beyond - Legends Leo Denive - Revision Prologue is Up!

Title: Leo Denive
Author: S_Heffley
Timeframe: Some 1000 years after the death of Luke Skywalker
Genre: Action, though I'll try to sprinkle in a little humor.
Characters: All OCs

Prologue ​

The moon was high, and Leo lay awake in his bed. He couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t easy for him to pass off the danger he felt approaching in the force as simple paranoia, even though his senses hadn’t been correct since the last attack three months ago.

Why should tonight be any different? He tried to tell himself this for what seemed like the hundredth time tonight. The town of Ava was in constant danger. Leo had read stories about governments controlling many planets at a time, but the galaxy wasn’t like that anymore. As time went on, planets wanted freedom. Now, all planets were free, and no galactic powers still existed. Because of this, factions fought for power within their own planets, not on others.

Ava was part of the Coalition of Free Towns and Cities of Manda. Often shortened to just the Coalition, it was created in an attempt to unite the people of the planet Manda under a single banner.

There was one faction, however, that refused to join.

No one knew for sure how the faction known as Ruin had actually came to be on Manda. It was possible the known story was only legend. It could have been made up as a scary tale to tell your friends late at night, or possibly spread by Ruin themselves. Leo began to recite this tale in his head. It would at least distract him from his paranoia.

Hundreds of years ago on the planet Iridonia, there was a policeman by the name of Alkees. Alkees was a Zabrak, of course, you had to be of the native species to get any sort of work that wasn’t a low paying factory job. This type of employment was not law, but Zabraks rarely hired outside their kind.

Alkees went out one night to inspect a transmission he had received from a remote farm. Something about a large group of strange people trespassing. Alkees wasn’t too concerned, probably just teenagers.

What he actually saw when he reached the top of the hill overlooking the farm was far stranger than he could have possibly imagined.

At a distance, it was hard to make out the exact details, but Alkees gathered the important ones. A huge group of humans and other various “lesser species” gathered around what looked to be a huge pile of sticks. A large, rickety looking hut stood off to the right side. Smaller huts were being constructed all over the field.

Alkees watched in awe for a few moments. There was a certain precision in which the builders worked that he had never seen before. While he couldn’t begin to understand what was going on, it was mesmerizing.

His attention was taken away from the effectiveness of the workers when two humans emerged from the hut, carrying a wooden stake horizontally. Tied to the stake was a Zabrak, who Alkees could only assume was the farmer.

The situation now seemed far more serious than Alkees has previously anticipated. He guessed the group to be runaway slaves, traveling the world in search of revenge against the Zabrak species. While slavery was technically illegal, the mistreatment of “servants” tended to be ignored by the government.

These slaves probably didn't know how close they were to civilization. They might be able to get away uncaught in a more rural area, but not here. All Alkees had to do was call for backup.

Just then, the situation got even stranger, momentarily making Alkees forget about his plans to call for reinforcements.

Right after the stake was secured in the ground, right in front of the pile of branches, two Zabraks entered the scene from the hut. One male, one female. The male’s face was marked by strange red tattoos, while the female’s face was covered in yellow in almost the same design. And despite Alkees’s theory the group were runaway slaves, the crowd dropped to their hands and knees in a bow.

It was clear that this duo was viewed as royalty. Alkees couldn’t exactly tell from the distance, but the look the pair were giving seemed like This isn’t enough.

The female began to speak to the assembled mob. The speech was unintelligible. Alkees didn’t think it was because of the distance, he could have picked out at least a few words if that was the case. He understood none of it.

The job of speaking eventually transferred to the male, who continued on in the same strange language. The tone in which they addressed the crowd was also a huge concern for Alkees. They sounded like they were rallying troops for a battle.

After delivering what seemed to be the final line of the speech, a large cheer erupted among the listeners, who then turned their attention to the sticks beside them. The male Zabrak barely even looked at his work as he unleashed an arc of pure electricity from his fingers, turning the hill of wood into a giant fire.

Realizing he was probably too late, Alkees attempted to reach for his communicator to call for backup. They wouldn’t be able to save the farmer, but could at least try and catch the criminals before they got away to repeat the process.

His hand was stopped against his will before he reached the device. He was yanked from his feet, his arm pulled by an unseeable force. He flew through the air, his shoulder screaming in pain as it supported his entire weight. He landed in front of the female Zabrak, the male still too focused on the gruesome public burning to notice the new arrival.

“Well what do we have here?” said the female Zabrak in a quiet, slithery voice, “A little police officer? Come to stop Ruin, now did he?” She grabbed Alkees by the shirt and held him face to face with her, “I’ll make you pay for ever coming here.” Alkees could smell the stink of her breath and see the yellowness of her teeth, but was in too much pain to react. When Alkees kept quiet, as he felt he should, she added, “Not very talkative, eh? That’s alright, I know ways to make people talk.”

They disappeared into the hut. Any screaming that Alkees produced - and there was certainly lots of it - was drowned out by the cheer of the crowd as the farmer was burned alive.

Alkees was lucky not to lose his life that night. His communicator, which tracked his location back at the station, got destroyed when he landed. This sent up an immediate distress signal.

After a while, the female Zabrak seemed to get bored of her work, and instead chose to keep Alkees bound to where he was.

Before she left the hut, she said, “Enjoy these last few moments, infidel. You’ll be the next person fed to the fire.”

On the other side of the door, Alkees heard the duo riling up the swarm of people with another speech. He knew now that they were indeed speaking an alien language, but Alkees could barely process this in his mind. He was too busy trying to cling to his sanity as his body tried to recover from pain a thousand times worse than anything he had ever imagined to exist.

Because of this, he didn’t notice the moment his reinforcements arrived, storming down the hill to perform the largest mass arrest the planet had ever seen.

Alkees wouldn’t speak for weeks afterwards. It was a long time until the police, and now the planet of Manda, knew the story that he finally told.

Many were captured that night, but many still escaped. It would be said that no one knew where they escaped to, but the people of Manda knew better. Now Ruin was all that stood between them and a united planet.

Among the escaped were the leaders, the dark side users, the reason that people like Leo were trained on Manda. To make things worse, Ruin’s power had only grown since then. While none of the original members still survived, the faction lived on through its descendants as well as new members drawn to the promise of power.

Trapped in his recollection, Leo almost didn’t hear the screams coming from outside. He stood and grabbed his lightsaber. His senses had been correct all along.

 

Sorry about the paragraphs, it looked good before I clicked post.

EDIT: Okay, this, and the posts before the revision alert, don't make any sense without the context of the original. Just try to roll with it the best you can.

 

Hi and welcome. I'm almost certain that you'll get more replies here.

Now, since you openly asked for feedback and you want to improve, the biggest problems here - in my opinion - are:

1. There are waaay too many dialogue tags. This is something some people would probably disagree with, but seeing a "said" on every other line can get incredibly annoying.

2. Brevity does not compliment an action story. While it's clearly obvious that you have a story here and that the story is interesting, you seem to be struggling with putting it together. This is more of a draft than an actual chapter. Some things are not explained at all. Remember: while you know what's going on, we don't and therefore you need to paint the right picture, using words.

3. Things such as "there battle general" are why it helps to read the story multiple times before posting. Mistakes happen.

I am not a native speaker, so I may be missing whatever other errors you made; but in general, the "show, don't tell" rule would help you a lot. If Leo said something, show us what he was doing, how he was feeling, describe us the atmosphere, the very moment.

“I just hope there is a way to keep the zabraks from attacking again.” Leo said.

can be something like:

Leo was worried. "I just hope there is a way to keep the zabrak from attacking again." He looked to the distance and remembered how this whole conflict erupted years ago.

(I am new to your universe, so this was extremely clumsy, but you get it...)


When you talk about the Max Summit, share more background, but not too much, so you don't drift away from the story itself. If the Zabraks were entering the city, explain how they were entering and so on.

All of this takes some time and lots of revisions, but it's absolutely worth it! Good luck.

Also, there is no edit lock in the fanfic forum. You can edit things now, tomorrow, or in two years.

 

Thanks for the feedback! I'm not sure if I mentioned this was my first attempt at a story but I guess it's pretty obvious. Anyway, side question, am I allowed to post a link to the rest of the story, or is that against the rules?

 

You can have it in your signature, but yup, against the rules otherwise, for whatever reason.

The story has potential and if I were you, I'd try to use what currently is there as a "skeleton" of a new, complete piece.

 

Well, it's been over two years since I first posted this and over a year since I decided to rewrite it, but it's finally here! Exciting news for the zero people who were looking forward to it. Anyway, this is way better than the original. If you enjoyed and want to see the original as reference, I could PM it to you or something. But trust me, you do not want to read it. It's that bad.

 

The new version is so much different that I...wow! This is going to be good. The original was rushed, looked like a bunch of notes, barely any characterisation...and this is well-done. Then they say that people can't improve as writers...ha!

It's great to see Manda in a fanfic. I fondly remember it from the Droids cartoon and I always thought it was underused. Wondering if the Baobab Archives still exist and if they will play a role in this story...hmmm. The other thing that's interesting is that the said planet is at war. In Star Wars, we don't get much of that - it's always planets fighting against other planets, not this. You have taken a brave route, I'd say, especially with the idea that ALL the planets are like this (that's a fustercluck of chaos, all right!) and that there's no central government in the Galaxy anymore.

Not sure if this is a canon thing, but it's deffo interesting. The whole idea of seeing other species - including Humans - as inferior is yet another cool reversal of common Star Wars clichés. And then, as if that wasn't enough - the slaves are ruled by what apparently are two darkside users who are local - btw, that woman is disgusting.

And then, Alkees is almost killed and it's not clear how the Ruin came to Manda, but they're obviously wrecking havoc.

The cliffhanger left me wanting more. Is Leo a Jedi? Something else? And who's screaming outside?

P.S. It would be cool to see your fanon on Manda in the fanon thread.

 

Well it seems I have some reading up to do on Manda...

Honestly, I was looking for a more obscure planet to use so I would have pretty much a clean slate, sorry to disappoint. Guess I forgot to click on the "Legends" tab when searching on Wookieepedia.