Mara Jade

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**Mara Skywalker** (née **Jade**) began her life as a slave to the Dark Side of the Force, specifically the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Sidious. Born in 11 BBY, during the early years of the Galactic Empire, she was taken from her parents while she was a little girl by agents of Sidious, and would for the rest of her childhood be trained as an assassin skilled in the ways of the Force. As a secret Hand to the Emperor, she carried out the will of the Dark Lord, killing rebels and corrupt Imperials alike with a cold degree of professionalism. Her mission was so secret that not even the Emperor's closest aides knew of her, with the few who did knowing to fear her. Even as a cold calculating Imperial assassin, Jade was not a bad person, acting out the will of Sidious, because she believed what she was doing was right. Palpatine's final order was for her to to kill the son of Skywalker, but the death of the Emperor caused her to go rogue.

After the fall of the Order of the Sith Lords, Jade eventually chose to pursue the career of a smuggler. During the fall of the Empire, she was forced to work alongside with the very man she was tasked to kill, the last Jedi Luke Skywalker. In the years after the fall of the Empire, Jade would continue to work as a smuggler and interact with Luke intermittently, training at the site of an old Jedi Temple Luke had intended to build a New Jedi Order at. She continued to grow close to Skywalker and worked alongside him on different occasions in the quest to build a new generation of Jedi. After so many years of fighting side by side the two finally realized that they were in love, and wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. After making this decision, Mara Jade devoted the rest of her life to the Jedi, becoming a true Knight in her own right.

## Biography

### Early Life

**Mara Jade** was born in 11 BBY, after the birth of the Galactic Empire, during a time of great instability as the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Sidious publicly known as Emperor Palpatine, and Sidious's student Darth Vader were eliminating the remnants of the Jedi Order. Identified as Force-Sensitive, the Emperor arranged for Jade to be taken from her parents and for her to begin training in the ways of the Force at a very young age along with several others. Although she was officially known in the eyes of the general public as a dancer working at the Imperial Palace. Years after her separation from her family, Jade could barely remember anything about her early life besides her parents were reluctance to let her go and her own certainty that she was going to leave with the Emperor. She did recall at one point that she had had a falling-star globe as a child and had gotten in trouble after breaking it to see how it worked. Her instructors trained her in the ways of the Force and she was made into an agent of the Empire. Some of the Imperial court assumed her to simply be a dancer or one of Palpatine's concubines.

### Hand of the Emperor

Throughout Jade's youth, she was pushed through an intensive training regimen which involved training alongside the Imperial Royal Guard and learning covert espionage and assassination skills, at which she was adept by the age of fourteen and became a Hand of the Emperor, one of Palpatine's personal assassins, after a final test in which she successfully broke into Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin's private quarters. In order to accomplish her mission, Jade, posing as a guest at a formal event at Tarkin's residence, feigned illness in order to get away from the other guests. She then retrieved a sack of equipment and descended down the side of the building to the room containing Tarkin's private safe. While she was breaking in, a group of droid guards came in and she engaged them with her blaster and Lightsaber. However, upon sensing that one of the guards was living, she knocked him out rather than kill a soldier willing to give his life in a training exercise. Vader and Sidious were pleased with her skills and she was pronounced the Hand of the Emperor. Despite there being several Hands, she, like the others, was unaware of the existence of any other Hands.

Jade carried out Palpatine's will on numerous worlds, eliminating corrupt Imperial officials, traitors, and others who he deemed deserving of death or judgment. His esteem for her was such that he actually allowed her time for relaxation, atypical of Palpatine's usual style. In addition to a personal starship and a protocol droid to aid her in her duties as Hand, she also received a private quarters on Coruscant, where she kept her Lightsaber and a lanvarok for left-handers even though Jade herself was right-handed among the items in her personal weapon collection. Before the Battle of Yavin, the destruction of an Imperial superweapon called the Death Star, she was tasked with gathering intelligence in order to help hunt down any Jedi she found that had survived Order 66. During the years following the Battle of Yavin and preceding the Battle of Hoth, Jade spied on Darth Vader and delivered reports on his actions to the Emperor, even going so far as watching, from afar, his assaults on the rebels. In later missions where she was assigned to discreetly observe him, Jade soon became envious of Vader and sensed a division in him, specifically because she didn't understand the basis of his obsession concerning a young Jedi named Luke Skywalker.

Jade began to hope that Vader would betray the Emperor so that she could kill him and take his place as the Emperor's apprentice. Despite these spy activities, she still performed tasks for Vader himself. Jade was in Palpatine's chamber when Darth Vader brought the Force-Sensitive Lumiya to Palpatine to serve as another Hand. Jade was dismissed from Palpatine's presence before he accepted Lumiya's service, maintaining her illusion that she was the only Hand, but Jade nevertheless sensed immediate hostility from Lumiya. Though Jade's interactions with many of Palpatine's servants were remote, there have been noted accounts when she met with them. Darth Vader, one of the few who knew Jade's true identity, often worked alongside her on the few times when their missions coincided. One of the few high-ranking Imperials who knew Jade's true identity was Thrawn, the only Non-Human Grand Admiral in the history of the Empire. Jade met the Chiss on the day he was promoted to Grand Admiral, in which Palpatine informed Thrawn of her position within his court. Earlier, she and Thrawn had unknowingly worked together against the rebel terrorist Nightswan, who could have been made a great asset of the Rebel Alliance.

### Deserting the Dark Side

Following the Battle of Hoth, Jade became aware of Palpatine's worries about the young Luke Skywalker, and as an extension of this she was sent to infiltrate Jabba Desilijic Tiure's Palace on Tatooine, disguised as a dancing girl, in order to await Skywalker. While waiting for Luke Skywalker, Jade witnessed C-3PO and R2-D2's arrival at the palace. Later, after the droid was forced into the Hutt's service, C-3PO met Jade. After a brief conversation, in which she questioned 3PO regarding Skywalker and introduced herself as one of Jabba's dancers, Jade disappeared as C-3PO witnessed the dancing girl Oola's execution. However, a member of Jabba's secret security detail, suspected her of being out to assassinate the Hutt, and attempted to arrest her. Jade turned the tables on the one who suspected her, however, taking her into custody and then using the Force to influence her into shooting one of Jabba's Gamorrean guards. Jade fled down a tunnel and came to a ventilation shaft of the rancor pit. After fighting through three rows of guards, she was able to watch Skywalker kill the Rancor. She then entered the ventilation shaft of the rancor pit using a vibro-ax, and used the Force to open the trapdoor and follow the crowd out to the sail barge.

Though she begged Jabba to let her join him and others at the Dune Sea, a suspicious Jabba instead provided her with a landspeeder and told her to leave and never come back after she tried to use the Force on him. Thus stymied in the attempt to fulfill her mission, she made her way back to a displeased Sidious. Due to Mara's failure to kill Skywalker, the Jedi was present aboard the Death Star during the epic Battle of Endor. Though Mara was not present, she later learned that Skywalker's actions soon led to the redemption of Anakin Skywalker and the death of Palpatine, who Mara viewed as a kindly uncle figure. Not long after the Emperor's death, she was apprehended by two of Director Ysanne Isard's henchmen, who imprisoned her and used intelligence tactics to try and force Jade to aid her in her bid for power. Jade, though, was able to escape from captivity and find passage to a backwater world. After his death, Palpatine arranged for Jade to be given a Sentinel droid with a message carrying his final order for her. His secret order was for Jade to kill Luke Skywalker in retaliation for the destruction of the Sith, filled with guilt she vowed to still kill Skywalker, for that was the Emperor's final command.

However, with both Darth Vader and Darth Sidious no longer giving her direct orders and instructing her in the ways of the Dark Side, she became consumed with bitterness and thoughts of vengeance, but ended up a rogue Imperial. Meanwhile, her life was in shambles: the resources she had once had access to were all dependent on the Emperor, and her life of luxury, privilege and purpose was over. Still hunted by Isard, she made her way through the galaxy, doing odd jobs and manual labor to make ends meet. Within several months following the death of the Emperor, Jade's ability to wield the Dark Side was weakened to a great extent, and she became an outcast who had to find a new way of life. For the next few months, Jade drifted from one odd job to another under a variety of aliases. It was during an encounter with Lumiya that Mara lost her Lightsaber given to her by Palpatine. Lumiya who had been sent by Ysanne Isard, found her and tried to bring her back, but Jade refused and after the two dueled Jade escaped but lost her Lightsaber in the process. After her run-in with Lumiya, she later worked under the improvised alias **Celina Marniss** made from the name of one of Jabba's former slaves.

### Embracing the Light Side

Fortune finally struck when Jade was taken under the wing of a smuggler who showed her the ropes of the new lifestyle she had chosen. She ended up finding a second home as a smuggler, with her reputation being well known in the criminal underworld, not only for her skills as a smuggler, but for those who instructed her on how to become one. During the her career, Mara Jade proved herself skilled in a variety of fields such as being a great pilot and mechanic who trained in the use of both a blaster and hand-to-hand combat even without relying on the Force.In the duration of her new life as a smuggler, with a strange twist of fate, Jade did encounter Luke Skywalker, and saved his life, a favor he was to trade with her several times. During the time that she first spent with Skywalker Mara continuously insisted that she would kill Skywalker despite having many chances to do so. However after finally getting to know one another and developing a mutual level of respect, Skywalker manages to redeem his former adversary, much like he had done to his father years ago. She comes to the shocking realization that Palpatine was not who she thought he was, a kindly dictator. Rather, she was forced to except the fact that the Emperor was a ruthless Dark Lord who used and manipulated her throughout her entire life.

In time, she began to view Vader's treason as a lawful execution of a despicable tyrant. This knowledge would fill Mara with rage, both at Palpatine for his ruse and herself for not catching on sooner. Finally, she allied with Skywalker officially and stood with him against the dark forces still at play. After fully renouncing the Dark Side of the Force, Jade sought to redeem herself for her past actions against so many innocent lives, and so had hoped to be trained as a Jedi, all the while maintaining contact with her fellow smugglers. Jade began work with fellow aspiring Jedi Kyle Katarn, entering a brief but unique mutual-apprenticeship with Kyle Katarn that would build a great friendship between the two for years to come, with Kyle initially taking on the role of master, and Mara that of the apprentice. The two later participated in an ancient Jedi tradition of a mutual apprenticeship. One of her solo missions was to recover a Jedi Holocron that had been stolen by pirates, which required her to infiltrate their base and reclaim the Holocron before escaping. Jade would return to the site of the Jedi Temple where Luke was planning to build his New Jedi Order to learn the ways of the Jedi. Around that time, her smuggling mentor started helping her set up her own small legitimate trading company.

### **Death of a True Knight**

**To be edited after The Last Jedi...**

Over the years, she continued to work as a smuggler and interact with Skywalker intermittently, which resulted in them becoming incredibly close. After The two finally realized that they were in love, and wanted to spend the rest of their lives together, Mara Jade ended her alliance with her smuggling associates in order to commit herself to her Jedi knighthood.

### Falling for Skywalker

They attempted to conceive a child but soon discovered that Mara was infertile and couldn't produce a child. Feeling that Luke would be better off with someone who could give him an heir, but Luke convinced her that he didn't care. Despite this Mara felt that she needed some distance to sort things out, while Luke continued training the New Jedi Order. Unfortunately Skywalker's New Jedi Order fell apart, many of his students had been killed, and Luke went into exile where Mara lost contact with him. At which point Mara accepted Karrde's offer to take over the Smugglers' Alliance, Shortly after surprisingly Luke contacted Mara seeing how he couldn't just leave her in the state that she was in, and he asked for her help in protecting Force-Sensitive's in reach of the Dark-Side and in finding the First Jedi Temple. In the journey to find the temple, Luke and Mara tried to come to peace with the fact that they would never have a child, and also saw that a way to deal with this pain was to help children who couldn't protect themselves from the Dark Side.

### Life of a Jedi

After the two found the temple Mara spent her time learning the ways of the Jedi, and was ultimately proclaimed Jedi Knight by Skywalker. In order to keep the First Order from discovering Luke's location and ultimately wiping out the only one who could bring the Jedi Order back, Mara offered to undertake missions in Luke's place. Mara then went to Jakku to deliver a sliver of a map to trusted friend Lor San Tekka. Mara was to tell Lor to give the map to a trusted ally of Leia as foreseen by Luke. After delivering the map fragment, Mara made her way home but she was discovered by the *Finalizer*. As the ship locked on to Mara's craft, Kylo Ren began to recognize that it was one of Luke Skywalker's old ship's and believing that Luke himself was onboard ordered that they target the Hyperdrive. Mara managed to shoot the Tractor-Beam source on the *Finalizer* and worked to make her escape. Kylo ordered that they cripple the ship and not destroy it. The low level blasts from the *Finalizer* hit Mara's cockpit, severely wounding her, seconds later she managed to activate the Hyperdrive and launched into various star systems to keep Ben from following. Mara then returned to the Temple with her ship heavily damaged. Luke ran to assist his wife and found her near death. Mara then told Luke she would alway's love him, and then died in Luke's arms. Luke then mourned his wive's death and made a grave for her at the top of the Temple.

## Powers and Abilities

**The Force:**  After years of training and battle, Mara Jade Skywalker's skills with manipulating the Force were well-developed. Even Skywalker relied on his wife's danger sense more than his own, since Jade Skywalker had required it to survive as an Imperial agent. Her keen danger sense provided her warning of imminent danger and saved her life on numerous occasions. As the Emperor's Hand, she was able to hear Palpatine's voice through the Force and just prior to her marriage with Skywalker, she discovered that they had gained a similar telepathic ability. By the time of her ascension to Jedi Master, Jade Skywalker had became a powerful member of the New Jedi Order.

### Abilities

* **Lightsaber Skills:**Beginning with her training under Emperor Palpatine, and culminating with her ascension to Jedi Master, Jade Skywalker continually proved her reputation as an accomplished lightsaber duelist.
* **Expert Pilot:** During her life, she became an experienced pilot who flew a variety of ships in a number of situations.
* **Master Infiltator:** During her time as an Emperor's Hand, Jade Skywalker became skilled in the arts of disguise and infiltration.

### Weapons and Equipment

As a Jedi; Mara's valued weapon and possession is the Lightsaber.