Jorgen Weight

**Jorgen Weight** (callsign: Jerkface) is the leader of the Skyward flight, and a pilot for the Defiant Defensive Force (DDF). He appears in the Skyward series, and stars in his own novella *Evershore*.

## Appearance & Personality

Jorgen is described to be tall, have dark, tan skin, and has dark curly hair. Spensa has described him to look like he has a "distinctive in a kind of baby-faced, pretty-boy way."

Jorgen is a skilled pilot, and works hard in his status of flight leader and takes it very seriously. He is known to have a very by the book personality. He isn't the perfect leader, but he will do the right thing for his flight crew when it comes down to it, even if that means breaking some rules.

Jorgen feels trapped by the life decisions his family has made for him, and the legacy they hold.

## Attributes & Abilities

Jorgen is a very good pilot. Not only because he has trained since being fourteen, but because he enjoys it and is very diligent in his training. He has proven himself since the first flight at school.

He is also savvy in battle, and thinks through the moves before acting. He doesn’t have a problem saying what he thinks for the course of battle, but will do as commanded.

He is able to keep calm and assess situations even under very tense battles, he does care and try to push his team to victory and safety. He has studied the Krell and is curious and concerned on the military strategy of both sides.

Jorgen is a Cytonic, though he is unpracticed and lacking skill with his abilities. He can show taynix an image of a delver to scare the taynix and make them teleport, while showing them a picture of where he wants them to go. He grows better at this, though sometimes the taynix misunderstand him and teleport in the wrong direction. He is capable of getting all three types of taynix to operate, though is currently unable to use many of the main cytonic abilities on his own.

## History

### Skyward & Starsight

Jorgen’s family owned three private fighters, and Jorgen had been training on them since he was fourteen. He had nearly a thousand hours in the cockpit. Because of this, not only did he have direct pass to Flight School, but he was made flightleader.

Since the first day, Jorgen took their training very seriously and tried to bully the team around, wanting them to follow his orders. It was not well received by the team and brought Spensa to a defensive, aggressive attitude. She gave him the Callsign of “Jerkface” which gained traction with the rest of the team. During his first days and battles, Jorgen led the team with a cool head, however he was very frustrated with the lack of respect he received from his team, especially Spensa, and refused to accept the Callsign of Jerkface. He tried to comfort the team by giving a speech after Bim and Morningtide died, which was not very in-depth, and mostly focused on him, as he was reading the speech off the back of his hand.

After the battle, Spensa found him going over and over through the simulation of that battle, where he tried several times to find a way he could’ve saved Morningtide. He continued to give advice to all his flight, even if they didn’t always take it the right way.

In a later flight, Spensa's wingmate, Hurl, dies. She crashes because she was unwilling to eject. Spensa announced she would give her a proper pilot’s burial and is followed by Jorgen who takes her in his hovercar. He brought the materials for a funeral pyre. They recovered Hurl's pin to give to her parents and burned Hurl's body. Jorgen also helped Spensa with taking the booster for her ship. Spin told the rest of the crew about what they did for Hurl and Jorgen was better respected after that.

As their flight numbers lowered, with the departure of Arturo, Nedd and Kimmalyn, they were asked to join with other flights. This was the first time he had to use his callsign of Jerkface. After the other crews tried to call him out for being “smug”, he received the support from both FM and Spin who called him a great flightleader.

Only Jorgen and FM from Skyward flight graduated. After a very short graduation, they were sent with the rest of the pilots to secure a falling shipyard which, if rescued, could give enough parts to build a winning fleet. This however was a trap and not only were they outnumbered in battle, but the city of Alta and Igneous Cavern were unprotected, targeted for destruction.

He tried to return on time to save Spensa but he was too far away. He managed to survive the fight and became a full pilot of the DDF.

After discussing his cytonic abilities with Spensa's Gran-Gran, Jorgen traveled below the deep caverns with Nedd Strong and Arturo Mendez, because he heard a faint music from deep within using his cytonic senses. After searching for several days, he found a hidden cavern full of taynix.

### Experimentation

After Jorgen found the colony of taynix, he collected them in crates and brought them to Platform Prime. Cobb relayed information from Spensa, and told Jorgen that the slugs were hyperdrives. Jorgen, FM, and Rig were set to the task of figuring out how to make them work. The yellow and blue taynix routinely escaped from their crates, using their Cytonic abilities to teleport out. Jorgen was initially not gentle with the taynix, and made the mistake of squeezing one of the red and black ones to hard. The taynix, later named Boomslug, slashed him with what was likely a mindblade and inflicting Jorgen with dozens of tiny shallow cuts across his face and arms.

After visiting the infirmary and giving a report to Cobb, Jorgen and FM were sent to talk with Alanik when she was woken up by the doctors. FM did most of the talking, and maked progress, though Jorgen’s mother, Jeshua, came in and ruined the negotiations with her harsh demands. Alanik used her cytonic abilities to teleport away, but speaking into Jorgen’s mind as she left. She told Jorgen that he was powerful and that he shouldn’t let others control him.

Jorgen conducted furthur experiments with his cytonic abilities, but drew the attention of the Superiority, who decided to wipe out Detritus now that they could potentially escape. They moved their biggest battleship into position, armed with a cannon for planetary bombardment. Jorgen, Rig, FM, and several other flights engaged the Krell, and Jorgen communicated with the taynix in FM’s plane to allow her to teleport close to the cannon. She was soon swarmed by Krell however, and was forced to retreat. Jorgen teleported her too far away, leaving her far from the battle. Cobb called the retreat as the cannon began to fire. The Engineering Corps managed to get Detritus’ shield up, keeping them safe from the Superiority’s battleship. Jorgen and the rest of Skyward Flight met up with FM far from the battle, unable to get through the shield using ordinary methods. After the taynix had calmed down, Skyward Flight touched wings with each other and Jorgen teleported them inside the shield to safety.

### Sunreach

After Rig got the FTL communicator to work, Jorgen uses his ability to get the taynix to open up a communication to Cuna. They and Cobb talked, Cuna saying that they were trapped on the research outpost of Sunreach. They gave the DDF coordinates, which appeared in Jorgen’s mind. The communication ended, and Jeshua went to discuss with the National Assembly. The coordinates were fading from Jorgen’s mind however, and Cobb told him and Skyward Flight to leave immediately for Sunreach.

After prepping their ships, Skyward Flight touched wings, and Jorgen teleported them to Sunreach using Cuna's coordinates. They were greeted by an enormous space monster which Cuna identified as a mammoth starpod. It was a huge beast attached to a enormous chunk of rock, with long tentacles extending outward. Krell ships came around the starpod, and engaged Skyward Flight. After using his IMP, Jorgen teleported away using one of the taynix, which caused the Krell to identify him as the cytonic and target him. He tried to teleport again, but accidentally ended up close to the starpod’s mouth. He managed to teleport out of his ship and into the station just as his ship was blown up. Though he was safe, the rest of the flight thought him to be dead.

Gill teleported FM into the station, and she and Jorgen had a joyful reunion. The station’s life support systems began to fail, and Cuna and Jorgen said they would have to flee back to Detritus and come back for the others later. FM insisted they couldn’t abandon them, and told Jorgen to send images of Skyward Flight’s members to the taynix. Jorgen did so, and each slug teleported away and returned with a member of the flight. As the life support system failed, they all huddled together and Jorgen teleported them away.

They arrived back at Detritus, and were greeted by a very surprised Cobb. Afterward, Jorgen went up to the command room with Cobb for a debriefing.

## Trivia

* Brandon Sanderson came up with Jorgen's callsign (Jerkface) before his name
* Jorgen was both the hardest character for Sanderson to write and the one he related to the most
* Jorgen couldn't think up his own callsign because he's not as imaginative as he should be

## Notes and References

1. ↑ Attributes and Abilities from the Coppermind Wiki: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Jorgen\_Weight#cite\_note-Skyward-34-chapter-2
2. ↑ History from the Coppermind wiki: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Jorgen\_Weight#cite\_note-Skyward-34-chapter-2
3. ↑ https://wob.coppermind.net/events/375-skyward-atlanta-signing/#e11894
4. ↑ https://wob.coppermind.net/events/361/#e11064
5. ↑ https://wob.coppermind.net/events/475/#e15022