Back in 8th grade, I legitimately wanted to write a Star Wars novel so bad that I actually started doing it. I developed an extremely convoluted series of ideas into a gigantic folder full of them, and began working on Dark Redemption, which was supposed to be an adaptation of some cancelled toy line in the 80s along with the Battle of Coruscant, which I didn’t realize was adapted in one of the X-Wing novels already (I think).
Well, here is all I actually wrote, despite my year+ of planning it:
Prologue:
Space. The final most hideously boring frontier any one man could ever explore. Especially for a guy like him. In his opinion, it was a place for battles, extra area to build in, and crime. Nothing else. Especially, of course, the reason that Admiral Luke Vanda was stationed in the endless vacuum, watching a patroller Star Destroyer sail along at a slow pace. An entire mega-armada of Star Destroyers, cruisers, and frigates, including the Super Star Destroyer Excecutor, the Star Destroyer on which he was sitting at the moment, was assembled above the Sanctuary Moon apparently to protect the newest Death Star from a surprise attack by the Rebel Alliance. But it was not like something like that would be attempted a second time. What he was doing now was pretending to listen to a conference by Admiral Piett about Star Destroyer safety, things about escape pods being installed right and things like that. That and being crowded around many other admirals stationed at Endor who were listening to the speech were the two things that he loathed the most when they were together.
He wouldn’t even mention something like that out loud, not to the most trusted ally. For both Darth Vader–who can use the force to choke you to death–and Emperor Palpatine–who has infinite influential power, even once banishing a wealthy family from the Core Worlds just for crashing into a building he liked–were stationed on the nearly completed death machine and were quite upset about the lack of progress in the space station’s construction. Vanda was partially glad that he was only a lesser-known admiral in the Imperial fleet, not someone as high up as his current superior, Admrial Firmus Piett of Vader’s own Death Squadron. That man was sitting on a timed bomb as long as he commanded the Ex-
That reminded Vanda. While he was gazing off into space, he had stopped listening to Piett’s monologue about the “need of increased security”, or something like that. That man wasn’t even as old as the amount of time that Luke had been an officer! Maybe that was an exaggeration… But even so, this entire seminar would be recorded and sent to each Destroyers’ crews, so there was no point in paying any real attention. Their gathering compromised the security of the other Destroyers as is… -Agh! He needed to start focusing before somebody noticed his dazing and scolded him for an hour because of it.
“-There is in no way,” Piett was saying when Luke tuned in, “however unlikely it may seem, to get the main crew into the escape pods without any chaos. Thank you for your time, Admirals. Now, each of you must return to your Destroyers now, and ready yourselves for battle. And be hasty about it, please; we haven’t much time to spare anymore.” With that, Luke stood up and started stretching, as with most of the other sitting officers. As he glanced at Admiral Piett, he noticed that a captain he had not seen before was beginning to report something to the commander of the Executor. Vanda began to walk towards the exit more slowly. He definitely wanted to find out what the conversation was.
The captain saluted, and then spoke, “Captain Sarkli Piett, junior, reporting .” Piett gave an at-ease sort of look to Sarkli, and then replied to him.
“Yes. Assemble your squads to guard the shield generator bunker,” the admiral said, “but from a kilometer or more away from it. These are direct orders from the Emperor, you know.”
Sarkli nodded, and the conversation became much more casual, and much more uninteresting. However, the thought of the Emperor himself ordering ground forces on Endor to assemble was very disturbing. What was more disturbing was that when he opened the door to leave, Darth Vader was directly in front of him, just about to come into the control room. Vader’s suit of armor frightened most just on regular sight, and seeing it unexpectedly made Vanda jump in shock.
Strangely, the Dark Lord of the Sith did not pay any attention to him at all, and simply passed by. The last thing that Vanda heard from the command bridge was an officer shouting that a shuttle had come into realspace near the Excecutor, and that it was the Tydirium, which hadn’t reported back to any base in quite a while, or so he’d been told. It made him wonder very much about what he and most likely many of the other main officers at Endor were being left in the dark about…
“Look, a TIE Shuttle , coming up,” one pilot yelled out. How men like these novices ended up as wingmates to him, was a wonder. Gorn had been the leader of the top-rated Blade Squadron for two years, but was recently transferred to a backwater “Black Squadron” because Admiral Luke Vanda requested Gorn come with him when he himself was transferred from the famous Naval Heir to the “shiny-new” Imperial III-Class Star Destroyer Green Blade . Why Vanda accepted such a ludicrous offer was definitely beyond Gorn. Nevertheless, pilots are mere privates in the battle to defeat the Rebellion, and even elites like Soontir Fel had minimal influence within the Imperial Navy. It was theirs as a duty to follow orders, and blast the enemy, whoever that may be, until the battle is over.
Like the novice pilot had shouted, a TIE Shuttle had entered the hangar bay, and was landing. Gorn was sure that Vanda was inside, so he and a couple of others opened the door and walked down the stairs into the hangar bay to greet the admiral. The group stood in attention, creating two parallel lines from where the passenger hatch was located, while Gorn stood alone in front of the hatch. Very few men greeted the arrival of Vanda besides Black Squadron, which disgusted him. At least his men stood to honor their own commanding officer, unlike those other idiots.
Stepping out of the shuttle with a certain excitement, the admiral shook his hand with Gorn and said, “Boys, get in your ships. We’re going to battle!” The smirk on his face didn’t fade at all as he continued. “What else, is that the Green Blade will be leading in the attack!”
At this point, Captain Jorj Guston, Vanda’s unofficial aide, stepped off the shuttle with his blunt face. Vanda glanced at the man, and then turned his head back towards the shocked pilots. One of them, which Gorn knew as Durr Gjoiy, Black Four, actually spoke.
“Ss….Sir,” He asked, “Why would you be excited about a suicide mission on the front lines?!”
Inevitably, Vanda’s smirk did fade after the question. He turned right back into a stereotypical naval officer, as he spouted out his orders of, “Attention! Ready your stations and move up the fleet! That is an order!” The two lines of men turned into a scrambled pile of rushed men getting equipment, officers rushing to their posts, and pilots trying to run to their TIEs while attaching their helmets, all while Vanda regained his smirk and paced out of the hangar. Gorn leisurely power-walked towards his TIE Interceptor and climbed in. It would be a moment before they were actually launched, so he put his helmet on after he was inside the cockpit.
Gorn booted up the Interceptor, and checked the systems, and watched as the view from the hangar changed from dozens of Star Destroyers and frigates to the Death Star and the moon of Endor below it. But something was definitely out of place, and that was the gigantic Rebel Alliance fleet. Not nearly as big as the Imperial Fleet, but these guys put up much more of a fight. It was good for the Empire that they probably expected a fight like the one on the last Death Star about four and a half years before, where the starfighter squadrons could simply blast their way to the station and blow it up from the inside. The shield generator was still up, and it seemed that the about fifty starfighters were zooming towards doom. Wait-
The entire Rebel Fleet curved their route, like they were reading his mind. Almost instantly after that, the hangar’s siren blared. Time to engage the enemy. His TIE lifted off the deck and blasted towards the several X-Wings in the front of the battle.
Black Squadron had reported in, and now Gorn and his nine co-pilots fired their lasers with no accuracy, simply hoping that some would impact. Only about three enemy fighters were gone by the time Black Squadron swooped to make their second pass. So were four of theirs. That was the price of victory, he assumed that his Admiral would say.
Even in space, Gorn could surely hear the blazing chaos and explosions happening around his TIE. Four all-new B-Wing starfighters almost grazed the right wing of it as they headed towards a Tector-Class Star Destroyer .
Black Two shouted to Gorn over comlink. “Black Leader! Blacks Six and Five are preparing to bomb the Redemption. Permission to make a pass ?” Gorn replied something along the lines of “granted,” but he could not remember specifically what it was, because he was focusing at an A-Wing that was dogfighting with him very intensely. At this , he broke off from the fight and headed towards the medical frigate. The TIE Bombers attacked, unleashing a dozen proton bombs onto the vessel. But two particularly fierce ships, the Millennium Falcon and an X-wing, blasted on the scene and destroyed them both, along with another one of his Interceptor co-pilots. That made for he and two other TIEs left in Black Squadron, all three starfighters being pursued by the Millennium Falcon.
They swerved and looped around the Redemption, blasting away at each other, but after only a few seconds, Black Three was gone, and Black Eight had broken off to join another squadron, leaving Gorn alone, who was scoring almost no hits against any starfighter out there! Extremely suddenly, the Death Star’s superlaser roared up and blasted a Mon Calamari vessel. The explosion was bright enough that it stunned him for a moment. The blinding lights went away for just long enough to see the collision between him and a B-Wing starfighter. He did his duty, and death was his just reward, obviously.
Did the losers of the war always die? Did the Empire ever lose like this? It was too late to answer anything now, because everything faded to black as his Interceptor spiraled out of control.
The rest is on this outline:
Dark Redemption
Prologue
-Admiral Luke Vanda: He brings Captain Sarkli Piett to his uncle, Great-Admiral Firmus Piett. Firmus tells Sarkli some orders from the Emperor and then orders Vanda to go back to the Star Destroyer Green Blade, and ready the ship’s defenses/TIEs. As he is leaving, he hears Piett talking to the pilots of the shuttle Tydirium.
-Gorn: Admiral Vanda arrives on the Green Blade in a TIE Shuttle, along with bounty hunter Jodo Kast. The men on the Star Destroyer are pretty casual until Vanda arrives and gives
Orders to the pilots, for all men to battle stations. Gorn gets in his TIE Interceptor and his squad of 7 other TIES (3 regular TIEs, 2 TIE Bombers, and Gorn’s Interceptor plus another Interceptor manned by Grom Farlander), and they launch and strike right into the recently-arrived Rebel Fleets. He battles a whole bunch, slowly losing some of his men until the squad starts attacking the Medical Frigate Redemption. Lando Calrissian and the Millennium Falcon see this, and Lando begins to attack them until Gorn is the only man left. His TIE is damaged, so he lands on a nearby Star Destroyer to get some repairs. To his surprise, Admiral Vanda is there, and there are many other pilots whose TIEs weren’t damaged that were called back. Vanda can feel that the battle is being lost, so he gives out TIE Defenders to all of the pilots in hopes that it would help turn the tide of the battle. Gorn starts shooting down tons of ships with it, but he notices many ships going towards the Death Star, and he pursues, shooting down some of those that were going towards the entrance to the core. Suddenly, the Excecutor crashes onto the Death Star, and everybody starts panicking. Gorn is caught up in the panic, and crashes into a TIE Bomber. Everything goes black.
Chapter 1
-Luke Skywalker: He is having a vision of himself fighting several villains of the Empire, and defeats them easily, all until there is one left, who is hooded, and has a crimson saber. The duelist is more than a match for Luke in the vision, and has the Knight on his knees after a very short time. The hooded man teases and taunts Luke, telling him that even if the balance of the force is restored, that doesn’t mean the Jedi will rule again, because both sides will go extinct forever in a matter of time. As the man leaps to deliver the final blow, Luke is awakened by Yez McQuarrie, son of one of the founding fathers of the New Republic, Pharl McQuarrie. Yez found that he was force sensitive, and is acting as Luke’s mock apprentice. Yez tells Luke that he sensed something wrong with Luke, and came to see what it was. Luke lies and says that nothing is wrong, but his apprentice doesn’t believe it for a second, but disregards it, and asks Luke where they were headed anyway (They are on the Millennium Falcon). He says that they are going to Mimban to obtain some shards of the Kaiburr Crystal for Luke’s second lightsaber to be built by himself. He tells a short summary of his past experience with the crystal, then is interrupted by Han Solo, who tells them that they are exiting hyperspace.
-Yez McQuarrie: The crew enters the cockpit where Chewbacca and General Cracken turn off hyperspace. Cracken gets up out of Han’s seat, and Mr. Solo sits down. They find that there are a few TIEs waiting for them. A short dogfight ensues while Han Solo enters the atmosphere, and the Falcon impacts bumpily. (all of the TIEs are shot down also). Han whines a lot that his ship was damaged, and tells the others that he’s going to need to take his ship to get repaired before they get off, and they’ll need to go without him.
Chapter 2
-Yez McQuarrie: Luke, Cracken, and Yez are traveling in the jungles of Mimban, so Yez asks some questions about the force and stuff for a while. They enter the temple, obtain a fragment, and Luke uses the Force to combine all of the Lightsaber pieces and create the full lightsaber. He ignites it and his green one, then swings the two around, then stops and holds it up and shouts with joy. Yez wonders what it’d be like to make one, because his blue/yellow saber was a gift from his father, who was a Captain in the Clone Wars (One of Rahm Kota’s). After a while, Luke tells him that they need to hurry up and go before Han starts to worry. Luke laughs.
-Gorn: He wakes up to see that he was in a bacta tank surrounded by medical droids. He is taken out, and then a Falleen with tons of scars and a white uniform named Xeirna and General Jan Dodonna take him into a room and question him with questions he has no idea why they’d ask. Once it’s over, he is put in his cell to wonder what happened after he crashed. Suddenly, an explosion rocks him out of his cell bed, and he hears blaster fire outside of the prison station. The door to his cell opens to show several Space Troopers They throw him a blaster, and he runs out.
Chapter 3
-Luke Skywalker: On the way back from the crystal’s temple, they find that there is a group of Imperials waiting for Skywalker near a Sentinel Landing Craft. Two Stormtroopers converse about how they were holding up Rouge Squadron on Cilpar, General Fordo and the Great Rebel Knights’s remnants in the backwater areas of Coruscant (“Corusc-Imperial Center” is what he says), and Princess Leia and General Riekaan’s forces on the planet of Jorohna, and they had to get stuck on this deserted planet. Yez is surprised by this and shouts, thus alerting the Stormtroopers. But while they start shooting at the three, Han Solo and Chewie, on the other side of the opening of the woods, sneak into the Sentinel and takes it over, then pointing the main guns at the 4 Stormtroopers there. They begin to retreat into the forest, but when Luke and Yez ignite their sabers, they give up. Luke interrogates the soldiers, and finds that they were here to stall them while Oovo IV was being raided. They were supposed to be elite commando troops, but they hadn’t been used for military purposes in years, so they were really rusty, and thus just gave up. They were also in Katarn-Class Stormtrooper armor. Han tells the other heroes that the city nearest to the forest is entirely filled with Patrol Troopers. This whole thing was an ambush, and the Falcon can’t get fixed. They have to take off anyway and hope that it doesn’t explode when going into hyperspace.
Chapter 4
-Admiral Vanda: His Star Destroyer, the Green Blade, goes from hyperspace to realspace, and Shows up just in time to see the Millennium Falcon and Sentinel blazing off the planet. Vanda attempts to shoot them down by using hundreds of cannons and 3 TIE Defenders, but the ships easily run through Vanda’s blockade. Luckily for Luke Vanda, one crewmember captured the coordinates that the two ships had, and he tells the crew to pursue into hyperspace, and hurry.
Admiral Vanda (real): Green Blade shows up, and the M Falcon dodges lasers, but when it goes off to hyperspace, it locks up and the Green Blade pulls it in, capturing all 5 of them.
-Yez: They exit hyperspace, and show up at the prison to find several Star Destroyers laying siege to the station. Space Troopers fly across the vacuum and into the Prison’s hangars. The few starfighters that were available for combat against the Imperial forces, a few outdated Cloud Cars and Z-95 Headhunters, are being obliterated by the new models of the TIE Vanguards and TIE Oppressors. The Millennium Falcon races through the carnage and lands in one of the hangars, eliminating all of the raiding Space Troopers. While Han, Chewie, and Cracken man the 3 turrets (2 actual turrets and the special one on the underbelly, from ESB), Yez goes on his first true “Jedi mission” as he and his “master” Luke make their way to the central command station at the center of the asteroid by cutting down stormtroopers and using awesome Jedi skills. Before they get to the station, they find that General Cal Weir has broken out and led a huge force of prisoners to riot their way out of the prison blocks and out towards the nearest hangar. The group begins to assault the two Jedi, and when Yez tries to strike back, Luke tells him that the Jedi way is to defend, not attack. They were too dangerous, and they needed to escape before the riot turns deadly, and not die fighting. Suddenly, Wedge contacts Luke and tells him that an X-wing dual-seater is waiting for them back at the hangar that they came in from. Luke tells Yez that now they have an extra incentive to run. They force speed away, but Weir follows them.
Yes (real): The captured guys see the carnage, and as the Space Troopers and TIEs launch, Luke uses a mind trick and is able to free himself from Vanda. They start to escape in a Shuttle-type thing, and Yez uses a mind trick to mess with the stormtroopers while they’re getting away.
-Gorn: He is in the riot group, and bursts into the hangar next to Weir, blasters firing at the rebel pilots. Gorn sprints past some rebels, punches and knocks out Yez, and then gets into a Lightsaber vs. fist fight, with him having to dodge Luke’s fury of slashes. Eventually, he kicks Luke in the stomach, and hijacks one of the A-Wings. he zooms out of the hangar, blasts a few New Republic fighters away (Rouge Squadron and several vessels arrived), and when a Star Destroyer arrives (The Green Blade), he alerts Admiral Vanda and then lands on it. The Star Destroyer then docks itself very near the hangar, and uses its shuttles to bring back all of the prisoners that they can bring. Luke and Yez try to pursue in the Dual X-Wing, but it goes into hyperspace too quickly. The other Star Destroyers have stopped engaging the NR Vessels, and also jump shortly after.
Gorn (real): The riot group gets so violent that by the time they enter the docking bay, the group starts fighting within itself, which creates almost pure chaos. Only a few manage to escape, including Weir and a couple of bodyguards of his in the dual X-Wing right before Luke and Yez can get to it.
Chapter 6 (2 chapters for battle)
Gorn: He reunites with Vanda, and he tells him that a lot happened since Endor. They and a few others ride a turbolift up to another Star Destroyer “’Man, how is this possible?’ asks Gorn” above, and notices the growing amount of ships that are arriving from hyperspace. They walk through a corridor or two. Just while Vanda is talking about being optimistic about the future, they door opens to reveal a gigantic command center for the new Super Star Destroyer, the Hand of God. Atha Prime is sitting in a command chair much like the Emperor’s, but much more modern and less evil. His chair turns around automatically, and he greets the new officers on deck. Vanda relays information about the mission (and the stalling attempts), and Prime finds the Kaiburr crystal information especially interesting.
Atha Prime: It IMMEDIATELY switches to Prime’s POV as he thinks about why he needs the Kaiburr Crystal, which is because he knows of its history and wants to use it to power the dark side force power that he so desperately wants.
Chapter 7
Atha Prime: After some research, he sends different groups of Dark Side Adepts to different planets, and Vanda fights against the New Republic near Xo. Atha Prime takes the opportunities of both Jerec and Vanda fighting the New Republic and he himself travels to Tatooine for an undisclosed reason. (Jerec’s side mission at the Valley of Jedi was to find a possible crystal there, though there never was one as the Adepts found the other 6 first.
Luke, Yez, Gorn, Vanda, Vergere: Vanda attacks Xo partially to stall the New Republic and partially to find another crystal for Prime. The battle leaves the Green Blade crashed and Luke & Yez captured by the Zanibar Yuuzhan Vong for pain sacrifices. Vanda is also captured, as he was one of the only survivors of his crew. Gorn is also captured. While Vanda is being tortured, Yez’s Saber AKA Tholme’s Saber is destroyed, so when the three break out, he has to use the Vong Shaper’s lightsaber-like mini shaper weapon that turns what its lighting touches into plant-life. Vergere and Nom Anor sense Vanda’s resistance to the torture and Vergere gets an idea…
(By Chapter 10)
As the three take shelter in an ancient Ratakan temple, Gorn is interrogated by Luke and Yez, asking about why the Empire would want to occupy this backwater planet. Gorn replies by walking them into the temple and showing them the glowing yellow crystal. Gorn fills in most of the details that he knows, and then he says that if they want to catch Atha Prime, they’d need to get to Tatooine quickly. Luke is shocked and wonders what anyone needed on Tatooine, but suddenly remembers something, and tells the other three (including R2) to hurry up and follow them. Gorn grabs the crystal and goes with them.
They take off in a BTS-A2 Long-Range Strike Fighter/Bomber AKA H-Wing and then after disabling some blockading Star Destroyers, they take off into hyperspace.
Atha Prime, Luke: Atha Prime gathers the 6 crsystals he has and puts them in the Ratakan temple on Tatooine. He, assistant, Bataal Bandu, and the Dark Side Adepts all meet together. When Luke, Yez, and Gorn arrive and face the Adepts, Gorn throws the Xo stone and Atha Prime aquires all 7 needed. Luke and Yez defeat some adepts, but Prime, Gorn and the others escape back to the temple.
But when Atha is about to use the ultimate power of the crystals, Bataal Bandu betrays him and takes all of the power and most of the Adepts with him. Chy’do is killed for being with Prime, and Gorn & Prime are buried under the temple that Bandu destroys. Now, Bandu and the others have split and created a warlord faction, and the group is taking over Coruscant! Atha Prime had only one thing left to do to recapture the capital from Ysanne Isard…
Han, Leia,: Lots of politics and stuff, setting up the New Republic and all that junk, taking place on New Alderaan. They travel to the Imperial Warlord Yuhn Celtix’s water planet of Aquilaris (The podracing one) because he was going to negotiate a peace treaty, possibly gaining the New Republic several new planets, including the vital Duro System. There is a Summit that gathers several former Imperial leaders and warlords and New Republic leaders, but not long after the conferences are over, and Han & Leia are leaving, an assassin attempts to kill Celtix. The man is captured and is revealed to be a Bothan named Uion Fyu’yla, a Rebel Alliance High General. While this is obviously a trick to make the warlords destroy the treaties, Celtix knows one of the leaders is a traitor. But before he can react, the Bothan, who had already wired a proton bomb onto himself before attacking, explodes, and more assassins come and try to kill the survivors of the explosion. Han and Chewie gun down many of them early on in the skirmish, but smarter attackers fled and soon, the fight spread all across the underwater city of Prime Roon. Celtix is killed after attempting to escape in a Bongo, and some attackers hijacked the Falcon, C-3P0 still inside. Han gets angry enough that he takes a TIE and pursues it to the Sunken City, where two Imperial forces are blowing each other to pieces. Luckily, Lando and his commandoes arrive and take care of the insurrection creators. Leia and Chewie arrive in the Sunken City later, angry that Han cared more about his ship than his girlfriend and best friend. After a short argument, Lando breaks in along with the Fosh commando Yayf Blisten to tell the group about the news of a huge battle on Xo that is just beginning to fade, and now that the Imperials are retreating, Ackbar has a plan. Leia asks Lando what the plan is, and tells her to ask the Mon Cal himself. Tons of New Republic leaders (including Fenn Shysa) and the ally Imperial Warlords have shown up in the Sunken City to prepare for the final assault on Coruscant to defeat the Empire. Luke, Yez, and the other fighters that fought on Xo show up, and the plan for the battle is shown out in epic holograms. Han and Leia are sent to the nearby planet Lors with Yayf Blisten to gather the secretive Fosh warriors to help the attack on the Capital, while Luke leads the ground assault. Rouge Squadron leads the attack against Ysanne Isard. Admiral Ackbar leads the naval attack, but first, Admiral Wiriz leads the assault as a distraction to draw out all defenses. Unknown to the New Republic, a group of warlords led by Bataal Bandu are preparing a similar battle…
Luke is still in Tatooine, stranded. The assassins were from Bataal Bandu.
Wow this was complicated.
I could show you more of my ideas if you want. There are probably 100 .txt documents floating around my computer full of them.
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