Marda Ro's journal

A journal was recorded by the Evereni pirate leader Marda Ro for her descendants that chronicled Ro's life after she left the Path of the Open Hand cult in 382 BBY and her hunt for other members of her species during those years. It was recounted through various entries, including those describing her meeting the elderly Evereni called "Isren" and the twins Vika and Velya Faer. The journal also included messages addressed to her descendants. At least some of the entries were recorded after the death of Ro's assistant Alirya no earlier than 379 BBY.
The memoirs eventually ended up in the possession of Ro's granddaughter Shalla Ro, who had introduced her own grandson Marchion Ro to the journal by 252 BBY. Marchion listened to all of its recordings but considered them to be useless ramblings. The journal was kept in a storage room aboard his starship, the Gaze Electric. In 228 BBY, Ro reviewed the records in the storage room—including his great-great-grandmother's chronicles—to learn whether his ancestors had encountered anything similar to the husking of a crystal forest on a moon of the planet Norisyn that he had witnessed; however, he failed to find such information.
==Description==
Recorded by Marda Ro, the Evereni founder of a group of pirates who would eventually become the Nihil, the journal consisted of entries intended for her descendants that chronicled Ro's life after leaving the Path of the Open Hand cult in 382 BBYStar Wars: The High Republic Character Encyclopedia dates the events of The High Republic: Path of Vengeance, during which Ro leaves the Path of the Open Hand, to 382 BBY. and her quest to find other members of her species in the following years. The first message recounted Ro's visit to the oldest settlement of the planet Dantooine around 381 BBY,"A Closed Fist Has No Claws" establishes that Marda Ro visited Dantooine around a year after taking possession of the Gaze Electric, an event that Star Wars: The High Republic Character Encyclopedia dates to 382 BBY. Therefore, Ro's trip to Dantooine must have occurred around 381 BBY. where she questioned a human about other Evereni and recruited the Twi'lek Fori Nagor to her pirate group.
Another message detailed endeavors in the time between her departure from the Path and the visit to Dantooine, and a pair of entries discussed how Ro met a Jedi at a marketplace around 379 BBY, assaulted him, and dragged him to her starship, the Gaze Electric, where he was killed by the Great Leveler, a Force-consuming beast. The latter of those two included an account of a conversation between Ro and her human assistant Alirya that took place shortly after the Jedi's death.
Also included was a recollection of a different conversation between Ro and her assistant about the purpose and future of the group that the Evereni had assembled. Other entries also recounted Ro's visit to a bar on the planet Ryloth—where she met the Evereni "Isren"—and an event in the Gaze throne hall where Nagor presented a group of refugees captured during a raid to Ro. Another series of messages covered the time Ro spent with the Evereni twins Vika and Velya Faer, a feast on the Gaze Electric during which Alirya died while trying to kill Vika, and a conversation between Ro and Velya after Ro had shot his sister to avenge Alirya. The journal also included various messages from Ro addressed to her descendants.
==History==
The journal was recorded by Marda Ro after she left the Path of the Open Hand in 382 BBY, and at least some of the entries were recorded after Alirya's death at some point no earlier than 379 BBY.The segment of "A Closed Fist Has No Claws" depicting a Jedi's death onboard the Gaze Electric takes place around 379 BBY per the reasoning here. Alirya died after the Jedi's death; therefore, she must have died no earlier than 379 BBY. Eventually, the journal came into the possession of Marda's granddaughter, Shalla Ro.Star Wars: The High Republic Character Encyclopedia By 252 BBY,The part of The High Republic: Eye of the Storm 1 that includes Shalla Ro's death takes place twenty years before the Great Hyperspace Disaster, which Star Wars: Timelines dates to 232 BBY. As The High Republic: Temptation of the Force establishes she introduced Marchion Ro to Marda Ro's journal, he must have listened to it by that year. Shalla had introduced her grandson, Marchion Ro, to the journal. As a child, Marchion listened to all of the recordings and considered them useless.
By 228 BBY, Marchion kept the journal and other family records in a family storage room underneath the throne hall aboard the Gaze Electric. That year, after he discovered a husked crystal forest on the fifth moon of the planet Norisyn, Ro entered the storage room to see if his predecessors had encountered anything similar and found the ghost of his great-great-grandmother waiting for him.
Unable to learn anything from other family records, Ro played the recordings from his great-great-grandmother. Ro was reluctant to do so as he did not want to give voice to the journal, but he listened to what he considered to be his ancestor's ramblings about home, freedom, her hunt for other Evereni, and her gradual descent into violence. As he listened, Marchion noted that if he had found it useless as a child, the journal would be even more useless to him at that point. He eventually left the storage room without discovering any indication that his family had ever encountered anything like the husked forest.
==Behind the scenes==
===Creation of the journal===
Marda Ro's journal first appeared in the short story "A Closed Fist Has No Claws," written by Tessa Gratton and published in the 2023 young-adult anthology The High Republic: Tales of Light and Life as a part of the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia project. "A Closed Fist Has No Claws" was written as an epistolary collection of entries recorded for the journal. The existence of the journal as an in-universe recording was later confirmed in The High Republic: Temptation of the Force, a novel written by Gratton that released in 2024 as a part of the multimedia project's Phase III.
In an interview, Gratton discussed how they started writing the story in third person out of habit because of the expectation for Star Wars books to be in third person; however, they came to the conclusion that the style did not work for the story. She wanted it to contain "gut punchers," which she considers the best Evereni moments, but the third person was too distant and not raw enough for an Evereni story. Gratton mentioned that he was not sure what the reason for switching to second person was, but thinks that he decided that the story needed to be told by Marda Ro herself in the middle of a draft.
Gratton did consider having "A Closed Fist Has No Claws" feature a scene where Marda recorded the story, but they "galaxy-brained" while writing it, deleting the whole scene before rewriting it in the format now published. The author stated that one of her favorite things about Phase II of the multimedia project, where Gratton had wrote for Marda, was the ability to play with how slippery history can be and how what people later think happened can be different from what truly happened, going on to talk about how Marda was not a reliable source regarding her own history.
===Connection to Marchion Ro===
Gratton also revealed that he wanted to plant ideas in the story that he could reuse in Phase III in the event he got to write Marchion Ro, which he did in Temptation of the Force. In the novel, they established a connection between Marchion and the journal created by his great-great-grandmother. In a different interview, Gratton discussed that Marda's ghost, which Marchion sees in Temptation of the Force, may be in his head and could be based on what Marchion thinks his great-great-grandmother to have been—based on the contents of the journal and what he was told by his family.
Gratton also added that she does not think Marchion would be able to hear and see the apparition of Marda in a recognizable way without the journal to have taught him something about her. Additionally, they spoke about how Marchion revealing himself to the galaxy—an event depicted in Claudia Gray's 2022The High Republic: The Fallen Star Phase I novel The High Republic: The Fallen Star—was one of the reasons the importance of names was discussed in "A Closed Fist Has No Claws," thinking that the character's decision to do so was influenced by the contents of the journal despite Marchion himself likely not realizing it.
==Appearances==
* 
*The High Republic: Temptation of the Force 
==Notes and references==
Category:Journals and memoirs
Category:Unidentified subjects