Saga - PT Saga - OT Saga - ST Tales of Tatooine (UDC IX)

Really liked how you managed to tie all the prompts into the story of Biggs leaving the Empire, from the first doubts to the resolution at the end. He's probably like a lot of TIE pilots in not knowing what he signed up for in the beginning -- but he's uncommon in his willingness to see what's in front of him. Karma is such a painful turning point in his ongoing doubts, I can see how that would haunt him forever. And his side trip home to Tatooine takes on so much significance -- now it's just one of those "headcanon accepted" things that it was that important to him.

 

Thank you! I wanted to see how someone who had joined the Imperial Academy could be swayed to become a rebel pilot. Luckily these prompts gave me the ideas!

Thank you for your response! I figured that Biggs' journey to the Rebellion was probably like Han's - he joined to get a better life for himself, then realized that the so-called better life came at the cost of his soul. It was an illusion.

Thank you for your comments! I like the Tonnika sisters. They are con artists and proud of it. They are so far into crime that they truly don't know what "honest" work is!

Biggs is intriguing, because we know that 1. he left for the Imperial Academy just one year ago, 2. he actually graduates from the Academy, and 2. something happens that makes him abandon his commission and join the rebels to fight against the people who were his classmates and teammates. That's a huge jump. I had hoped to fill in that blank space. And yes, there's a symmetry there - a hope that the Empire could "use a good pilot," his naive, sort of selfish way of getting off of a planet that is tying him down, transforms into the hope that the Rebellion could "use a good pilot" because he now has a selfless reason to offer his skills.

Thank you! Biggs didn't start off as rebel, he was an imperial. I figured his turn toward rebellion was probably similar to Finn's.

Thank you! That's the key line, where he listens to his moral center, his human heart, instead of the indoctrination. And there is really only one choice he can make. I'm glad you're enjoying these!

Thank you! Biggs is a remarkable character when you think about it. He does see more than most. While everyone else is either treating Luke as a child (which, you know, is not surprising considering the whining) or as an annoying pest, Biggs treats him as a friend and an equal. He sees something in Luke that everyone else misses. Naturally, he would see through the propaganda and the fascism of the Empire, too. And being Biggs, he would not be able to continue to do what he knew was morally wrong. It would be a scar on his soul.

 

Week 4: Where Once There Had Been a River (unnamed Tusken Raider)


Misty

The memories of all other things were becoming misty now. This memory stayed.

He had returned from a hunt with his brother. They knew there was trouble, so they had left their mounts safely in the canyon. He walked toward his village, fear curling around his heart like the smoke that rose from untended fires gone wild.

His stomach heaved at the carnage. Tuskens only killed what they needed to eat, they only executed who the gods had chosen. This was not a righteous kill. This was wanton, mindless rage.

He wanted to call her name, but he knew better.


Lonely

The two searched among the wreckage for clues, for survivors. The dead revealed nothing.

Finally, they looked in a cave where the ancient paintings adorned the walls, pictures of the rocky canyon where once there had been a river, the sand dunes that had once been fertile fields. Against the odds, they found a lonely survivor. Her clothes were slashed and burned, and her arm was severed. They recognized her distinctive necklace -- she was the chieftain’s daughter.

“What happened?” he asked.

“A demon,” she whispered. “A vengeful demon took our sacrifice and slaughtered our people. The gods have abandoned us.”


Fiery

“Tell me what happened, so that the record may continue,” he demanded of the dying woman.

Her voice was filtered by her mask. “He came for our sacrifice. We could not fight him off as we did the others. Then, when she died, he did not welcome her passage to the Land of Waters. Instead, he became enraged. He became Death.”

“He raised a fiery blade of light. It cut down every living thing.” She paused. “I saw his eyes. They were yellow and full of hate.”

She died soon after, and the brothers added her body to the rest.


Golden

The brothers silently gathered the dead and placed them on top of the discarded gaffi sticks.

He finally found her body beside their tent, their little child tucked underneath her. It was forbidden to remove the coverings of the body, but she was his wife and her life was gone. Gently, he touched her cold face - pale skin, blonde hair, the ritual scars that adorned her beautiful forehead and cheeks. He could not bring himself to unwrap the coverings of his dead son.

The spirits of his wife and child rose together, in the golden flicker of the funeral pyre.


Undying

The brothers told their new clan how Death, wielding a blade of light and fire, struck down their people.

Some claimed that the gods had abandoned their village. Others said their sacrifice was unsuitable, and the gods had punished them for their laziness. Still others, eager for battle, speculated that the colonizer’s cruel, savage actions demanded retaliation with even more raids.

He knew none of this was true. The reason didn’t matter. Sometimes, he thought, the gods were fools.

The memories were becoming misty now, slipping away to the forgetfulness of age. All memories but this. This memory was undying.

 

Superb as we see the carnage and loss from the Tuskens' point of view, in the context of their belief system. It becomes a personal and community legend in time.

 

a great set seeing the carnage and the Tusken in this. They were a people done wrong by many

 

Week 2: The Tonnika Sisters
= Wow, you breathed new life into them. The last time I read about them was indeed in that SW story collection book.

Week 3: Biggs Darklighter
= A man turning away from the Empire and his duties for the better of freedom.

Week 4: Where Once There Had Been a River (unnamed Tusken Raider)
= It deeply touched me to see the other side of the story. Thank you!

 

Thank you! It must have been horrifying to see your entire community destroyed, and I have to say, it was shocking to me that Anakin had killed every living thing in the Tusken village. The massacre had become a legend, with people talking about a demon who slaughtered everyone, so there had to have been at least one survivor to tell what had happened. Just as there were people off-world when Alderaan was destroyed, there must have been people who were away from home when their world was destroyed, too.

Thank you for your comment. I think the Tuskens were done a raw deal. This was their home; the settlers were not asked to come here. It's tragic that there were deaths from the raids but the settlers were on Tusken land to begin with. To see it from their perspective, it was a monumental wrong done to a people who had never asked to be bothered.

Thank you! Biggs was actually in the Imperial academy. Something significant had to have caused him to have a dramatic change of heart. He could have stayed, become a TIE pilot, be a part of the most elite team in the galaxy, but his conscience bothered him too much. I think that it was because he was from such a backwater place, an outer rim boy, he saw through the glamor to the corruption that was at the heart of the Empire. He knew that the Empire would mow down his own family and home in a heartbeat, and he wanted no part of that.

It was a massacre. They didn't kill Shmi because they hated her, or because they were cruel by design; their lives were harsh and cruel anyway, and she was an outsider who had no rank in their community. In my head canon, the Tuskens (the original inhabitants of Tatooine) were once "civilized" people but a climate catastrophe made their world barely habitable. They had converted their collective memories of a more temperate landscape into a religion, and in their mind it was an honor to be selected to be sacrificed to the God of Water. In their way of thinking, Shmi was an expendable foreigner who they were doing a favor. They didn't understand the rage that the settlers felt when she was taken. (Nobody seemed to mind shooting at them, after all.)

Anakin's rage is baffling to them. Life is cruel. Shmi's death was just a reflection of that. It made absolutely no sense to them that he would be so enraged about it, and that his response would be to add more unnecessary and wasteful suffering and death to a village that was barely surviving as it was.

Thank you! I wanted to reframe this scene from TCW from the perspective of the slaughtered Tuskens. There was so much attention paid to the suffering and death of Shmi, but the families and people of the Tusken village that Anakin murdered were ignored. Someone had to have come home to that. Those people mattered to someone.

Thanks! I like those gals. They are so completely corrupt that they make it look like innocence.

Yes, and his actions inspire Luke to take his step toward his own destiny!

Thank you for the comments! It bothered me right away that nobody, not even Padmé, called Anakin on that brutality. Here I get to put a face to the people he destroyed.

 

Week V - The Whisper of the Universe (the B'omarr Monks)


Temple
The Universe was within and without.

All that could be learned, all that could be felt, existed already, fully formed, in the mind. Therefore, the mind was as expansive as the Universe, and the Universe lived in the mind.

The monks did not care about those creatures that scurried about in their temple. In fact, they did not even notice them. Sensors on their spidery carriages took care of any danger, and for the most part the creatures, both wild and sentient, left the monks alone. The monks drifted across the shadowy stone floors, oblivious to all but the Universe.


Sanctuary
Occasionally one of those sentient creatures found a sanctuary in the relics and rubble of the ancient temple. One such creature called himself Alkhara. The monks found this confusing; to have a name was to isolate oneself from the Universe. To have a gender was to distinguish oneself from the Whole, the Universe. The monks had no names, no genders, no bodies to set one from the other.

Alkhara lived with them for many years in their temple until another took his place and the sense of the being that named itself Alkhara faded into the memory of the Universe.


Shrine
The being that replaced Alkhara was crass and violent. Some of the monks died as Jabba’s guests would occasionally destroy their sacred carriages for amusement, to watch the monk’s life-giving fluids and brain matter spill and shrivel in the sun. The loss of those minds was painful, as they had become interlinked over generations and what was learned by one mind was felt by all of them.

It was a desecration of their shrine. But the Universe spoke to the monks and showed them that in the future, Jabba would fade as surely as Alkhara had.

And so they waited.


Monastery
Obviously, they had not always been in this form. One monastery, on the world called Teth, was so old that it was built when the B’omarr still retained physical bodies. Some fortunate monks had mastered the ability to speak to the Universe within their minds, and since their minds were the only part of existence that mattered, it was decided to remove the organ and give it freedom. The other monks built the carriages, then lovingly placed their brethren’s brains inside them and made them immortal.

Dust claimed the mortals, and the living minds of the Universe carried on elsewhere.


Pilgrimage
Two beings, humans, were in the monastery. Both shimmered with the heat of the Universe: one, a male, was a blaze; the other, a female, was an ember. And yet the monks knew that both would shape the Universe and would be shaped in turn by it.

It had been centuries since such beings who moved with the force of the Universe had made a pilgrimage to the monastery. They did not notice the appearance of the monks who had emerged from the shadows to honor them. They ignored the monks, who blessed them anyway.

And the Universe whispered on.

 

Superb use of the prompts as we get the point of view of the B'omarr Monks

 

great set showing the life and viewpoint of the monks

 

I like the Tonnika Sisters one. In general it brings memories back about three short-story anthology books called Tales of Jabba’s Palace, Tales of the Bounty Hunters and Tales of the New Republic. I used to have those books, I loved them.

 

Wow, it has been a while that I have heard from those monks and you manage more than that with this update. You explain their believes to us, simple as that. With beautiful words woven like a tapestry of faith.

 

Thank you! Talk about a minor character...The only part of them that's alive is literally a brain in a jar!

Thank you for the response! To me, they are creepy and weird, but I tried to understand how they rationalized that existence.

Thank you for your comments! I always had a soft spot for the Tonnika Sisters (even wrote a story once where they figured prominently). As for the books, honestly I am not familiar with them. I was going more off of The Canterbury Tales here. Showing my nerdy side here for sure.

Thank you so much, Finds! Love the "Sentients of Tatooine" line, seeing as I am a huge follower of "Humans of New York"! It's been fun trying to match the prompts with the character, and I am finding that nearly every character is at some point on Tatooine! Again, I have to confess ignorance of the "Tales of.." books. I was just riffing off of The Canterbury Tales, where 30 wildly diverse pilgrims are headed in the same direction. I have some ideas where I want to bring the stories but it's just taking me for-flipping-ever to actually write them out.

Thank you! The monks are so, so strange! But I kind of looked at them as doing the ultimate in cloistering - not just removing yourself from your society, but removing your brain from your physical body! I guessed they are also followers of the Force in a way (which is how they sense the presence of other people, and how they recognize the Force in Luke and Leia while they are in Jabba's throne room). Thank you for your kind words!

 

Week VI: The Handmaiden (Sabé)


Angel
The handmaiden Sabé bore a strong resemblance to Queen Amidala, which made her a natural for the role of bodyguard and decoy. As long as Padmé was queen, Sabé would be her reflection. The resemblance allowed Padmé to become Sabé whenever she desired, an angel in disguise, a queen in commoner’s clothes.

The elaborate costumes and intricate adornments made it even more difficult for people to realize there were two young women and not just one queen. Amidala, disguised as Sabé, could observe the room while secretly communicating her intentions to Sabé, while Sabé, disguised as Amidala, ruled by proxy.


Beast
Sabé, still wearing the queen’s regalia, listened patiently to the captain. “We cannot go anywhere until we repair the hyperdrive,” he explained.

“Perhaps I can be of help, Your Highness,” volunteered Qui-Gon. “We could take a small vehicle - even a beast of burden - to the local outpost and secure the parts we need.”

Sabé considered. What would a queen say to this? she thought. She let out a sigh, then raised her chin.

“So be it,” Sabé declared. “But you must not delay. The Trade Federation has blockaded my people’s planet, and they suffer every moment that prevents our return.”


Rogue
“My lady,” Sabé said cautiously. “Is it necessary to accompany them?”

“Yes. I must know what they talk about when they think the queen can’t hear. I will be going with them, and that is final,” Padmé declared.

“In that case, perhaps this one, my lady,” Sabé suggested, handing her another outfit.

Padmé stood quietly for a moment, deep in thought, then took the outfit approvingly. Sabé moved to help the young queen dress into the tunic and pants, a simple outfit to deceive an eager young padawan and his rogue master Jedi into thinking she was merely a servant.


Frost
Sabé’s family were musicians, and she had trained as a vocalist since childhood. In fact, she had been studying music in Theed when Captain Panaka had approached her with an offer to become a potential handmaiden should Padmé be elected queen.

Sabé’s natural ear for music allowed her to mimic Padmé’s speech. Her physical resemblance to Padmé was a coincidence, but her vocal resemblance, dependent on them both speaking in a lower octave and with a flat affect, was carefully cultivated. Her voice was compassionate but firm, like a flower gilded in frost, befitting a maiden wise beyond her years.


Storm
When the queen returned, they brought not only the parts needed to fix the ship but a new passenger -- a child. The boy radiated a storm of emotions: sorrow and fear mixed with untamed curiosity and intense intelligence. Padmé and Master Qui-Gon both seemed fascinated by him.

Sabé frowned imperceptibly. Another child who the adults decided was destined to lead us? Padawan Obi-Wan seemed to be unsure about the boy as well, but Sabé observed that he trusted his master and followed the Jedi’s lead. She kept her reservations to herself, remembered her training, and, as always, followed her queen.

Spoiler: Notes on Sabé

Notes on Sabé, played by Keira Knightly in The Phantom Menace, can be found here.

 

I was intrigued to read about Sabe and Padme reciprocally posing as the other, fitting into the other's role, their way of speaking, mannerisms, etc., so seamlessly and flawlessly that no one could pierce the disguise.

 

A great insight in Sabe being so connected to Padme