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Own ALL the Lost Tribe stories — and a new novella — in the new collected edition!
Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith
Part 2: Skyborn
The second part of a companion eBook series to the Fate of the Jedi novel line, Lost Tribe is available for free download from several services, including the official Star Wars site. The Amazon Kindle edition is available here.
It includes a preview of Troy Denning's novel. Fate of the Jedi: Abyss.
As with all my "production notes," consider a Spoiler Warning attached. Please read the story first.
The second of a series of e-books chronicling the history of the Lost
Tribe of the Sith seen in the Fate of the Jedi novel series, "Skyborn"
focused on the native Keshiri and their first encounter with the Sith.
It provided a good opportunity to reimagine some of the stories from
the past where indigenous peoples encountered travelers from far away.
By the time of Christie
Golden's novel Omen,
out the month before this episode went live, it was known that the Sith
pretty much took the place over. But I wanted the initial meeting to be
something other than simply an open-arms greeting, at one extreme, and
conquering invaders at the other. "Precipice" found the travelers in
question at a pretty dire pass -- much like the Mayflower settlers, in
danger of not lasting the year -- but we're also still dealing with
Sith here, so they'd never seem TOO helpless. And the act of saving
them would be an opportunity for regret for whoever did it --
eventually.
Enter Adari Vaal, one of the sharpest of her people and someone you
might want involved in any first contact situation. Only, she'd have
problems of her own -- big problems -- that made things more
complicated, and made her vulnerable to the particular seductions of
the Dark Side. Geology was an easy choice — especially as she'd have
one clue as to why the Lost Tribe was stranded so long.
"Skyborn" allowed for a fun device, as the events of the story begin
close to concurrently with the events of the previous chapter --
intertwining and intersecting as we went along. This required notes on
what happened on what days, of course.
Another enjoyable thing was writing from the perspective of a culture
not too far out of the Stone Age. Little things like the appearance of
their world on a map could easily be worked into the mythology -- and
while we wouldn't see a map of the land in question, spattered droplets
of blood from the gods paints a pretty good picture of what the
geography is.
There are always challenges in writing aliens from their own point of
view -- and keeping things smooth. You don't want to write, "Say, Al --
your skin is looking particularly purple today!" But they're fun. We
haven't seen the last of the Keshiri...
TRIVIA
- I initially had named
Adari "Adair," changing it as it was a
bit too earthly. The short Keshiri names were something that had
already been established in "Omen."
- The uvak that nearly hits
the ship in "Precipice" is not Nink, but a wild beast; Nink is still
safely tied up in the backyard at that point.
- Readers of Omen
may have noticed a different name for the mountains that include the
crash site. No mistake. All will become clear...
- "Gnomon" is one of those Scrabble words you just never work into polite conversation. But we found a place for it here!
- There is more to be said about this batch of
Sith and their lightsabers, but we learn a little something about them
here...
