#lujayne forge

Fair warning: This probably will make no sense at all without at least a casual understanding of the stuff that's already out there about that fanon.

I'm thinking that in this AU, Kyp's four years older, so he's Gavin's age. The reason he ended up in the mines was that his parents were protesting the destruction of Alderaan, so I could similarly move his ending up there to pretty soon after that, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't break anything important (Whereas in JAT he's been there eight years by the time Han and Chewie find him in 11 ABY.)

Because my hope is for this to be mainly spun off from X-Wing, there's a payoff I can find in drawing connections between Kyp and other characters who were on Kessel at the same time. Primarily, Lujayne and Inyri Forge.

The idea is that the Forges are acting in the same kind of role as the wise woman who reminds Anakin of his true heritage in the first Double Agent Vader story. They're charged with knowing the stories of the Amavikka, and passing those stories along. In canon, Lujayne mentions having multiple sisters and brothers in her spiel to Corran where she accuses him of thinking less of her because of where she's from and stuff.

I think when Kyp shows up, Lujayne offers the mythical origin story of the Maw, and he hears it. Kyp's ten at this point, so it's not the same as if he was born into it (as Lujayne was), but in a lot of respects one could say he was raised as Amavikka.

The reason why the Maw's origin story is always the first one people hear when they arrive on Kessel is because the Maw is a complete mystery even to people who were brought up with high technology, maybe especially to them. This is an Imperial prison colony, so there would be a lot of people with that kind of upbringing. And those people, who otherwise might dismiss the stories told by the slaves as the pathetic imaginings of poorly educated minds or something like that, are inclined to give them more credit because it's not like they understand this cosmic anomaly any better.

Whether or not Kyp believes the stories - and I think he does, soon enough - he definitely takes heart in one of the most important points of the whole thing:

You own yourself.

Kessel isn't a planet like Tatooine that's been revisited far too often in official Star Wars stories, so there's not an abundance of native/introduced animals that I can use in the myths, nor would there likely be. In FotJ they do talk about some vanishing avian species around the tombs.

Of course, this is related to the version found on Tatooine, so a lot of that would probably cross over.

The fact that they do all their work in total darkness invites so many opportunities for various symbolism. I have yet to have any very distinct ideas for what the stories are.

Anyway, some of the background for this verse is that when they were both on Kessel, Lujayne took a liking to Kyp in particular, and kind of took him under her wing. When she manages to get out, she can't take him as well, so she and Inyri (another relationship I need to flesh out more) do the counterpart to that oath where you mix your own blood with water and sand (does that have a name?) to promise that if Inyri's ever able to escape, she'll get him out with her. This is the context in which Kyp gets out and meets the Rogues.

The local Kessel counterparts to some of the Tatooinian symbolism pose some deep questions. I'm currently thinking that the belief on Kessel is that light is sacred in the perpetual darkness of the mines. Obviously, it's not quite as important as water is in the deserts of Tatooine, but the constant darkness has a huge impact on how they need to develop their senses and stuff. This also means I can make the bogeys have all kinds of meaning.

I don't buy that nobody knew of the energy spiders until JAT.

Most or all of the plot of Wedge's Gamble is probably getting rewritten here anyway. He's not going to join the Rogues until probably towards the end of Krytos Trap, but it is pretty important that he spend a lot of time around some of them before then.

Particularly, I want him and Corran to actually be friends. I don't think that's too hard to believe in this context.

Kyp, at some point: I don't trust Erisi.

Corran: Why not?

Kyp: I don't know. It's just a feeling.

Corran: My father always told me to trust those feelings.

After Corran escapes the Lusankya, Kyp can now share his culture and stuff with him because now Corran's been enslaved.

X-Wing: Rogue Squadron - Fancast

Lujayne Forge

Lujayne Forge was a pilot in the re-formed Rogue Squadron in 6ABY. Whilst not the best pilot in the squadron (as the book points out again and again, even though she must be a pretty damned good pilot to have got into an elite squadron), she was key to the new group pf pilots bonding in the early days, particularly taking the very young Gavin Darklighter under her wing. She was killed in her sleep by imperials attacking the squadron's base on Talasea during their first assignment.

Like a number of female characters, she''s rather neglected in terms of imagery - the illustration above is the only one of her I can find. Possibly understandable given how briefly she appears in the X-wing series (though she does turn up in a vision later). But the case of Lujayne Forge has had me thinking a lot about the way female characters are used in the Stackpole X-wing novels.

I probably need to write something more on that general theme after I've finished re-reading them all. Stackpole's books are in someways great in terms of women, in that he really does actually populate his books with men AND women. That get's a big WOO-HOO as it's something you can't even count on now, twenty years later. And he gives us some bloody fantastic women too. Women are happily mixed into Rogue Squadron as well, without any particular comment. It's great, I loved it when I first read it and I love it now. However, some of the ways the women are portrayed and utilised is less that ideal at times, although this may be a symptom of it's era.

Looking at poor Lujayne in particular; first up she very obviously takes on the 'mother hen' role in the squadron. As mentioned above, she's the 'worst' pilot in the squadron, and we're reminded of that again and again. But she does at least get more character development than many of the other pilots at this point and frankly she's probably the most sympathetic and likable of the lot of them. But the reason she's developed so well is because... well because she's there for the specific purpose of getting shoved in a refrigerator.

I mean, it's great that the female pilots are as likely to get killed in combat as their male counterparts, and Stackpole has no problem doing that. But she doesn't get that - she is the first of the new squadron to die, and it is ignobly, in her sleep, not even able fight back. Her death is entirely for the character development of the rest of the squadron, an object lesson for them. (it's also for the background of her sister, who turns up later in the series). To make things worse, when Wedge tells Corran and Gavin, they rapidly switch the conversation from being about Lujayne, their comrade and friend, to a long conversation about a man, the long-gone Biggs.