Mischance

Mischance was a harvester in the Alanciari harvester fleet, which was used to hunt for fish and crustaceans in the Southern Passage, a sea which straddled the southern coast of Alanciar, a continent on the Wild Space planet of Kesh. It was a sailing ship as with most of the Alanciari ships and was also equipped with an anchor. It was manned by several Alanciari fishers, whose civilization had remained independent from the Lost Tribe of Sith, for two millennia until 2975 BBY. The Lost Tribe was a tribe of Human Sith who inhabited Keshtah, a continent across the Western Sea. On the night of the Sith discovery of Alanciar, the Mischance had been fishing in the Western Sea since its captain had fallen behind on delivering his quota of seafood. That very night, the Mischance was hijacked and commandeered by the Sith High Lord Edell Vrai and five other members of the Sith expeditionary force.
All of the crew of the Mischance with the exception of one member fought to their deaths against the Sith but were ultimately killed and thrown overboard. In a futile attempt to extract information about the Alanciari, Edell's lieutenant Peppin tortured the last surviving crew member to death. After making contact with Grand Lord Varner Hilts, the Sith crew returned with the Mischance to Keshtah, marking the first transcontinental voyage between the two continents. The Sith also brought back the Alanciari soldier Jogan Halder, who became the Tribe's "ambassador" to the Alanciari. He later helped convince the Alanciari to submit to Sith rule. Meanwhile, the Sith expedition's leader Edell Vrai and his Alanciari prisoner Quarra Thayn remained behind for a ground reconnaissance mission into Alanciar's interior. As a result of the Mischance's capture, the Lost Tribe gained access to the Alanciari's sailing ship technology and would use it to explore and colonize the rest of the planet Kesh.
==History==
===Alanciari service===
The Mischance was a harvesting vessel which served in the Alanciari harvester fleet prior to 2975 BBY. As with all Alanciari vessels, it was crew by Keshiri, a purple-skin near-Human species who lived on the Wild Space planet of Kesh. The Mischance and its sister ships usually fished for seafood and crustaceans in the coral banks of the Southern Passage, a sea which straddled the southern coast of Alanciar. These vessels usually went on fishing expeditions which lasted for a few weeks and used massive stone kedges as anchors. In 2975 BBY, the Mischance was fishing in the Western Sea on the very night that a Sith Tribe expedition from Keshtah Minor under the leadership of High Lord Edell Vrai made contact with Alanciar. While the harvester fleet was not supposed to work in the waters of the western frontier, her captain was falling behind on his quota of seafood and decided to "cut corners" by illegally fishing there.
The Sith expeditionary force's airships were quickly shot down and attacked by Alanciari ballistae and the Alanciari air force. Edell and several other Sith survivors managed to escape their wrecked airship and succeeded in reaching the Alanciari frontier fort of Point Defiance where they captured the Alanciari Wardmaster Quarra Thayn and her lover Jogan Halder, a signal officer in the Alanciari Signal Corps. While they were occupying Point Defiance, Lord Edell and his Keshiri servant Tellpah spotted an approaching ship on the horizon which turned out to be the Mischance. Edell then decided that the Sith survivors would hijack the Mischance and use it to return to Keshtah. The Sith also brought their two prisoners Quarra and Jogan with them.
===Sith service===
====Capture====
Edell and the Sith crew then used a boat which they had found nearby Point Defiance to reach the Mischance under the cover of night. They departed shortly after Alanciari reinforcements from Garrow's Neck arrived at Point Defiance. While the Keshiri sailors aboard the Mischance were taken by surprise, they nevertheless still put up a fierce fight against the Sith intruders. As with all Alanciari, these sailors had been raised from young to regard the Lost Tribe of Sith as the "Destructors," malevolent beings in Keshiri religion, who had enslaved the Keshiri living on the continent of Keshtah. All of the Keshiri sailors with the exception of one were killed by the Sith, who then threw their bodies overboard into the sea. Edell's lieutenant, Peppin, interrogated the surviving Keshiri sailor but he held out against his Sith interrogators even under torture. By noontime on the following day, the sailor had succumbed to his death without disclosing any information to the Sith other than the fact that the Mischance had been trapping crustaceans for a week before returning to port.
However, the Sith were still able to obtain the ship's maps which provided them with information on the currents of the Southern Passage, a sea that was still unknown to the Lost Tribe. In the end, Edell and Peppin decided to use the Mischance to return back to Keshtah by sailing through the Southern Passage to reach the Sea of Flames, a small ocean which lay to the western coast of Keshtah. Such a voyage had never been undertaken in the history of the Tribe. While the Mischance was a lowly harvesting vessel, it was considered to be advanced by the standards of the Tribe who had never built anything larger than a boat. Unlike the Alanciari, the Sith on Keshtah had not been able to develop ocean-going vessels since the continent's native timbers were unsuitable for such purposes. The hejarbo shoots were unable to withstand sea waves while heavy timbers like vosso were too dense to float. As a result, the Tribe had settled for airships.
Following the capture of the harvester Mischance, Edell's uvak-tenderer and pilot Peppin managed to figure out how to operate the ship's sails and steerage. Both reasoned that the Tribe would be interested in the Alanciari sailing vessel and Jogan Halder, along with his collection of books which included the invaluable Keshtah Chronicles, a popular Alanciari book which had been written by the Keshiri exile Adari Vaal. This book was compulsory reading for all Alanciari children and provided the Alanciari with information about the Tribe and Keshtah Minor. Thus, the Tribe gained invaluable intelligence on what the Alanciari knew about them Not wanting to return to Keshtah since he feared for his position, Edell then made up new orders ordering himself to embark on a ground reconnaissance mission of Alanciar. For this he needed a local guide: Quarra Thayn.Lost Tribe of the Sith/Email from John Jackson Miller
====Voyage to Keshtah====
After conferring with Peppin, Edell approached the other Alanciari captive Quarra Thayn with the offer of serving as his guide on a ground-based reconnaissance mission into Alanciar's interior and capital Sus'mintri. Edell told Quarra that this mission would take two weeks and that the Mischance would be waiting of the coast of Garrow's Neck. While Quarra was reluctant to cooperate with her captor, Edell was able to use her lover Jogan as leverage. In the end, Quarra agreed to help Edell provided the Sith attended to Jogan's injuries. Since the Tribe had intended to spare Jogan's life, Edell agreed to Quarra's demand. Shortly later, the Mischance dropped Edell and Quarra at Meori Cove, a remote cove to the east of Point Defiance which was not being watched by the Alanciari military.
Meanwhile, the Mischance sailed back to Keshtah under the captaincy of Edell's lieutenant Peppin. This voyage occurred during the southern autumn when the Southern Passage was dangerous due to its swift polar currents and the spread of ice. Despite the inexperience of the Sith crew with operating the sailing ship, Peppin's engineering and piloting skills enabled the Mischance and its passengers to safely arrive on the western coast of Keshtah after several days of travelling. Upon arriving, Jogan was blindfolded and transported by cart to the Sith capital of Tahv. Meanwhile, Peppine flew ahead on an uvak, a winged reptilian beast, to Tahv where she presented Grand Lord Hilts with Jogan's copy of the Keshtah Chronicles and debriefed about their "first contact" with the Alanciari. Based on this information, Hilts concocted a "grand deception strategy" designed to win over the Alanciari. However, he did not inform Bentado of this new intelligence since he intended to give the Alanciari the fight they wanted and to eliminate a rival at the same time.
This voyage was significant because it marked the Mischance's first transcontinental voyage from Alanciar to Keshtah. Back on Alanciar, Bentado's forces were decimated by the Alanciari. However, he and several survivors succeeded in infiltrating the Alanciari capital of Sus'mintri and killing the War Cabinet, Alanciar's military government and taking over its highly centralized defense infrastructure. Bentado then attempted to mutiny against Grand Lord Hilts but was stopped by Edell, Quarra, and his own Keshiri servant Squab, who was a secret agent of Hilts. The invasion came to an end when Jogan Halder convinced the Alanciari people that the Tribe did not actually pose a threat to them but were rather the Protectors.
As a result, the Alanciari submitted to Sith rule. As a result, the Tribe gained access to the Alanciari's sailing ship technology which they were able to use to explore the rest of Kesh including the uncharted northern hemisphere. In 2974 BBY, the Alanciari sailing ship Southern Star, under the command of Captain Chegg, discovered the southern polar continent of Eshkrene, which was home to the Doomed, an offworld community who were descended from Dark Jedi and Jedi who had become stranded on Kesh following the Hundred-Year Darkness.Lost Tribe of the Sith—Spiral 1
==Behind the scenes==
The Mischance was first introduced in John Jackson Miller's Lost Tribe of the Sith: Pandemonium, the last novella of the Lost Tribe of the Sith series, which was released on July 24 2012 as part of the mass paperback Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith: The Collected Stories.
==Appearances==
*Lost Tribe of the Sith: Pandemonium 
==Notes and references==
Category:Aquatic vehicles
Category:Keshiri culture