Naka Iit

Naka Iit was a male Blarina who flew as a podracer and placed in the top five in Lolo Chochee's Speedster Challenge on the planet Malastare several times before being forced to leave his career as a racer after being caught trying to fix a race with the bookie Ohn Gos. The pair fled from Malastare in a freighter Gos would later rename the Beloved Bophine and ended up on the desert planet Jakku, where Iit began working as a scavenger in the year 14 ABY.
In 34 ABY, Iit encountered the Resistance pilot Poe Dameron while out scavenging. Dameron had survived a crash in the desert nearby and needed transport back to the Resistance base on the planet D'Qar. Iit did not believe Dameron's story about stealing a TIE/sf space superiority fighter from the First Order, but agreed to take him to Blowback Town in his speeder as he found the pilot's story amusing. En route the pair were attacked by the Strus clan of thieves, but managed to escape after the Blarina gave control of the vehicle to Dameron. Happy to have gotten away, Iit brought Dameron to Blowback Town, where he introduced the pilot to Gos so that the former bookie could transport Dameron off world in the Beloved Bophine.
==Biography==
===Caught red handed===
Born on Rina Major, the Blarina Naka Iit flew as a podracer pilot and achieved limited success by placing in the top five of Lolo Chochee's Speedster Challenge on the planet Malastare. His racing career ended with the 432nd edition of the challenge, in which he worked with the bookie Ohn Gos to rig the outcome of the race. Iit's part in the plan was to play tricks on his fellow racers in order to fix the order of winners; however, during the racing the harmonic dampener on Iit's vehicle spun out of harmony, leading to a massive pile up of racers that reversed the order from he and Gos' desired result.
Gos' plans to rig the race where then discovered on the computer of Iit's wrecked pod, forcing the pair to flee from Malastare where the penalty for manipulating a podrace was death. The bookie brought a freighter off the black market for them to travel in, and as neither was a good astrogator they simply set their destination for the starship's last listed coordinates: the desert planet Jakku. There, Gos set up a trading business appraising, buying and selling salvage in Blowback Town while Iit took up the life of a scavenger in the year 14 ABY,The Star Wars: The Force Awakens novelization establishes that Iit has been scavenging for 20 years by the time he meets Poe Dameron during its events. Star Wars: Galactic Atlas establishes that the events of the novelisation take place in the year 34 ABY, and so using simple math we can deduce Iit's scavenging career started in 14 ABY. searching the deserts for materials to sell. Their sudden disappearance from the podracing scene led some to believe Iit had sustained a career-ending injury in the pile up, unaware of the true reason he had to flee.
===Friends with a madman===
During the former podracer's time on Jakku, he came into conflict with the junk dealer Unkar Plutt, and after the encounter avoided Niima Outpost, which Plutt ran. Twenty years into his scavenging career in the year 34 ABY,Star Wars: Galactic Atlas he was out scavenging on his speeder in the desert when he was waved down by Poe Dameron, a pilot of the group known as the Resistance who had recently had to eject out of a crashing TIE/sf space superiority fighter while escaping from the First Order political and military faction. After getting down from his vehicle, Iit examined his find and introduced himself, joking about Dameron's predicament and claiming that he might "scavenge" the pilot.
Dameron then tried to persuade Iit he had nothing worth scavenging, and then explained he had stolen the TIE fighter he had crashed in from the the First Order Resurgent-class Star Destroyer Finalizer and now needed to return to the Resistance base on the planet D'Qar. Iit assumed Dameron was lying and cried with laughter at the preposterousness of his claim, but agreed to help because he found the story so amusing. He shared a drink of water with the pilot once they were inside his speeder and offered to take him to Gos who was more likely to be sympathetic.
Iit was silent during the journey to the town until he and Dameron came under attack from a speeder belonging to the Strus clan who began shooting to disable. Dameron then asked to take the control of the speeder, and the pair wrestled over the controls after Iit refused. The Blarina eventually gave in and Dameron banked sharply left and began to decelerating, telling Iit to pretend they were surrendering, As the Strus approached, Dameron then tilted the speeder's nose skyward and shot up and away at full power, dumping large amounts of sand on their pursuers and rendering their vehicle temporarily inoperable. Overjoyed at their escape, Iit promised to make sure that Dameron got off Jakku and interceded with Gos for him. The former bookie then flew Dameron to the moon Yavin 4 onboard the freighter he and Iit had originally arrived on Jakku in, which he had since renamed the Beloved Bophine. Dameron later looked up information on Iit and Gos and included it as an entry in a flight log he compiled.
==Personality and traits==
As a Blarina, Naka Iit was not particularly strong, but was relatively fast. He stood a little over half Dameron's height and had a broad face above a wide snout and a toothy grin. His skin was scaly and his eyes were gold-hued. Like all Blarina, Iit was fast with words, and at one time came fifth in a soliloquy contest on his homeworld. He made a cackling hiss when delighted.
Upon arriving on Jakku Iit discovered that he enjoyed the freedom that a life of flitting about the desert looking for scrap provided. After meeting Dameron he at first denied being at all hospitable, but offered help after finding the pilot's story amusing. He considered the Strus clan to inept to do anything but steal the hard work of the more competent, and his mood turned grim when they attacked him. As he considered his speeder his only valuable asset, he was at first reluctant to give his passenger control of it, but eventually gave in. When Dameron managed to escape, Iit was overjoyed and began to believe there might be some truth to his passenger's tale, although he considered Dameron mad for having attempted such a feat. Dameron later described Iit as grumpy in his flight log, but declared that it was beings like the scavenger who were willing to show kindness to strangers that made the fight against the First Order worth it.
==Equipment==
While out scavenging, Iit wore mirrored eyeshades and rode on a slow, ugly, speeder with a flat front and a bulging stern. He kept a slender metal drinking flask of water with a sipping tube in the vehicle.
==Behind the scenes==
Naka Iit first appeared in the novelization of Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens released in conjunction with the film in 2015. The scene involving Iit, which explained how Dameron left Jakku, was created by Alan Dean Foster, author of the novelization, and was not included in the film itself. Michael Kogge, author of the junior novelization of the film, stated that he was specifically asked to also include the scene in his version of the story, so he based his take of it on Foster's work.
A slightly different version of Iit's encounter with Dameron is shown in "Poe's Quest for Survival", a DLC expansion for the non-canon video game LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In the game, Iit is voiced by Josh Keaton and depicted as discovering Dameron amongst the wreckage of the stolen TIE fighter while searching for parts to scavenge instead of wandering in the desert. The game's depiction of the pair's conflict with the Strus clan is also greatly expanded beyond the single Strus vehicle in the novel. Iit mans a turret on the back of his speeder in order to destroy large numbers of the clan's vehicles while Dameron pilots Iit's speeder through traps and shifting sand.
Unlike the novel, the game then depicts Iit and Dameron's arrival at Blowback Town, which they discover has been taken over by the Strus clan. Iit sneaks past the clan's raiders and releases a large amount of food into a trough while Dameron attracts the attention of a sleeping happabore which then knocks down several raiders in order to reach the food. This begins a fire fight, and once Dameron has defeated all raiders present he and Iit then free Ohn Gos from captivity. Instead of traveling in the Beloved Bophine, Dameron is then picked up by a Resistance transport after helping to repair the town, much to the shock of Iit and Gos.
==Appearances==
*Star Wars: The Force Awakens novelization 
*Star Wars: The Force Awakens: A Junior Novel 
*Poe Dameron 26 
===Non-canon appearances===
*LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens 
==Sources==
*Star Wars: Aliens of the Galaxy
*Star Wars: Complete Locations
*Poe Dameron: Flight Log
*Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, Updated and Expanded
*
*Star Wars: Timelines
*Star Wars Encyclopedia: The Comprehensive Guide to the Star Wars Galaxy
==Notes and references==
Category:Blarina
Category:Males
Category:Podracer pilots
Category:Scavengers