Voren Na'al

Age
 Status
 Weight

**Voren Na'al** was a Human historian serving the Rebel Alliance and its successors. Voren's career in reporting originated with the HoloNet News. His experiences and imprisonment during the overthrow of the government of Corsin drove him into the service of the Alliance movement against the Galactic Empire. In the Alliance, after a stint as a spy, Na'al became a historian alongside colleague Arhul Hextrophon, tasked with compiling the history of heroes of Yavin. Na'al traveled to various worlds to acquire intelligence and context on events before the Battle of Yavin, and conducted interviews with the participants, then submitting the collected intelligence to the rebel Hextrophon. Subsequent reports had included an attempt to discover the truth behind Han Solo and Chewbacca's adventures, a report on the Rebel Alliance for Mon Mothma, an account of events that surrounded Hoth and the tribulations of the Yavin heroes afterward, and also a report on events at the Battle of Endor.

## Biography

### Early Life

**Voren Na'al** was the child of a Human family devastated by the Clone Wars. Na'al lost grandparents, aunts, and uncles in that conflict he never had meet. As a result of this, Na'al held some prejudice regarding the concept of cloning in his years of adulthood. Even as a boy, he was interested in the causes of galactic events. History and journalism became hobbies of Na'al, nurtured by his journalism instructor, Arhul Hextrophon. His hobbies soon blossomed into a fledgling career, as Na'al became a stringer for the news service called HoloNet News. On the planet Corsin in the Expansion Region, Na'al was first exposed to depredations of the ruling Galactic Empire. Na'al had been fortunate enough to get assigned a task of covering the prestigious races there. While he was covering the events, Stormtroopers burst in and placed all the press under arrest.

#### Imperial Imprisonment

Voren Na'al was kept in a detention cell for three weeks, visited only occasionally by an interrogator droid that asked no questions. No reasons were ever given for his incarceration, but later, he learned that the Galactic Empire had deposed the government of the world and replaced it with one dedicated to the New Order, dispensing with civil rights and then placing the entire population under a police state. The imprisonment of journalists had been a method of keeping them silent. Na'al was disturbed by this event, and realized he had two options: quit reporting and ignore the growing tyranny of the Empire, or go all-out and show the galaxy what the Empire was becoming. Before Na'al had the chance to pursue the more reckless path, he had a chance encounter with his old instructor, Arhul Hextrophon. Hextrophon had been with the Rebel Alliance since its earliest years, and he had convinced Na'al that the young reporter could make a difference in the Galactic Civil War by joining the rebellion. Na'al was initially made a spy, but was soon placed in a special group within the rebellion under his mentor Arhul Hextrophon, one of the Alliance to Restore the Republic's master historians.

### Rebellion Service

While still freshly recruited, Voren made the acquaintance of a rebel-sympathizing cadet of the Imperial Academy by the name Biggs Darklighter. When Darklighter discovered that Rivoche Tarkin, niece of Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, was quite willing to spy for the Alliance, he put her in contact with Na'al. Rivoche's precarious position as a deep cover spy meant that Na'al was one of the few rebels who knew of her existence, and also one of the most vocal advocates for extracting her before the Empire realized her role. Within a few years of joining the Rebellion, he earned the rank of a Lieutenant. At the time, Voren was working on a project called "Official History of the Rebel Movements, Volume One" along with Arhul Hextrophon. Na'al was present in the briefing room at Base One when Jyn Erso was brought before the Chancellor Mon Mothma and the rest of the Rebel Alliance's High Command, and he summarized the proceedings of this gathering in a report to Hextrophon. This report was later included in a compilation of documents that was prepared by General Airen Cracken, Rebel Inteligence Chief, for Mon. Later, Na'al was present in the ceremony honoring heroes of the Yavin battle.

#### History of the Rebellion

He and Hextrophon were at the Massassi Outpost on Yavin 4 after the Alliance to Restore the Republic's victory against the Death Star station. After the battle, they participated in the ceremony which awarded the Medals of Bravery to Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Chewbacca. Na'al had a part in bearing the medals, which General Jan Dodonna then gave to the Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, who awarded it to Skywalker. Hextrophon assigned Na'al to write an account of the Battle of Yavin and the events surrounding it, for inclusion into the "Official History of the Rebel Movements, Volume One". Starting from a rebel base, Na'al took a circuitous route via to Tatooine to begin his research, under the guise of being a reporter for the Imperial affiliated news groups. On Tatooine, he encountered the Jawa Aguilae, trying to peddle two droids, which he succumbed to purchasing. By chance, these droids happened to be present when Jawas caught and subsequently sold R2-D2 and C-3PO to Skywalker's family. After cleaning the droids and interviewing them for all intel, he gave a droid to a needy farmer, and another to an assistant administrator, where the droid spied for the rebels.

While in Mos Eisley, he sought out Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina, and interviewed several of the patrons therein. Na'al then traveled to an Imperial bureaucratic hub, where he sliced into restricted computer files of Imperial records to find an overview of the first Death Star and its crew, only narrowly escaping capture. Upon his return to the rebel base, Na'al conducted interviews with the heroes of the Battle of Yavin themselves, including an interview with Luke Skywalker. All the information he acquired on his journey was compiled in a report to Hextrophon. At some point following the Battle of Yavin, individuals on Tatooine were accused of being Na'al and his companions, and had subsequently been labeled as wanted for questioning by the planet's Imperial authorities. An Imperial Prefect investigating a datatape left by Voren on a prior journey to Tatooine, hoped to interrogate the suspects so he would not have to spend time decoding the tapes. Encouraged to bribe an Imperial government agent for information at the Chalmun's Cantina, suspects found out that the Imperial Prefect had placed a large bounty of a thousand credits on the rebellion historian and reporter Voren Na'al.

Learning that the Prefect kept the tapes within the Tatooine governmental offices, the suspects subsequently broke into the building in order to tamper with them. The tapes were decoded and Prefect found their apparent contents—a result of the individuals' tampering—to be completely worthless, and the suspects were let go in what was considered a case of mistaken identity. Two years after the Battle of Yavin, Na'al was tasked by Hextrophon to learn the truth of Han Solo and Chewbacca's adventures. Impressed with his work, Hextrophon tasked Na'al with generating a summary of a report on the growth, organization, equipment, activities and objectives of the Alliance for Mon Mothma herself. Na'al finished the summary three years after the Battle of Yavin. Na'al was eventually relocated to the Echo Base on Hoth. The General military leader of the rebellion's base on the ice planet Hoth,Carlist Rieekan, realizing his job as a historian was largely a passive one, put him to work, first on duty as a courier duty delivering messages between ranking personnel while the station's communication equipment was still being adapted to the cold, and later in the other noncombatant capacities.

He was present in the command center when a rebel maintaining watch from one of the base's perimeter posts, sent in a brief, panicked comlink call. He accompanied Bren Derlin to Bervin's post, only to find the sentry gone, with a trail of blood leading through a caved-in wall into the night. More attacks on sentries occurred, followed by an actual assault: a pack of Wampas bursting through the snowy walls of the rebels Echo Base, driven into great rages by the high-pitched acoustic signaling of the base's astromech droids. The Wampas outside the rebels Echo Base were driven away by the determination and weaponry of the rebels, while the ones that had made it into the base were rounded up with the droid recordings, stunned to incapacitation, and penned in non-vital areas. Na'al was again in the command center when the remains of the self-destructed probe droid were brought in. As a noncombatant, he was supposed to evacuate aboard a rebel transport off the icy world. Instead, he remained behind, assisting in the evacuation of the other rebellion starships and gathering holo-recordings from the trenches, though before long he discarded his own equipment for a blaster rifle.

### Republic Historian

#### Ending of the Conflict

In the course of the battle, he broke his ankle in a cave-in, but successfully made it to one of the final transports to flee. He waited patiently at the rendezvous point for the heroes of the Battle of Yavin, who eventually arrived, allowing him to continue his research and write a detailed account of their travails. For his part in the Battle of Hoth, he was awarded a medal of bravery, and his recordings helped rebel tacticians analyze the battle. Following the difficult battles in-between the third and fourth years of the Galactic Civil War, Na'al wrote detailed accounts of the Battle of Hoth and the Battle of Endor, which joined his record of Yavin. With the dawn of the newly formed New Republic, Na'al's historical works led him to continued advancement. After the events at the Battle of Endor, Na'al was tasked with presenting a report to the New Galactic Senate of the New Republic regarding a conflict on the planet Bakura. When the Moff Abran Balfour was deposed, Na'al was dispatched to examine both the Moff's stronghold along with any records stored there. While sifting through those files, he accidentally triggered a trapdoor, which dropped him into the midst of Moff Balfour's menagerie.

Voren Na'al was eventually was promoted to a position of Director of a New Republic research division and was made a assistant historian to the New Republic. He compiled reports on the campaigns of various Imperial warlords such as the Grand Admiral Rae Sloane and her fight against the New Republic forces as well as those of others who wished to take the throne. He also began growing close to the former Rebel Intelligence agent Rivoche Tarkin, who provided Voren with firsthand accounts of the devastation of Coruscant in her new profession as a journalist. Not long in the aftermath of the successful liberation of Kashyyyk, Na'al interviewed Han Solo regarding his exploits, hoping to gather information useful to New Republic expanding into that region. He prepared for this interview by compiling a report on the past jobs of the smuggler Han Solo from New Republic Intelligence; he later sent this information to Hextrophon. At some point after the Battle of Jakku, Na'al interviewed a retired Imperial Governor. Na'al, in cooperation with the New Republic's Intelligence group, edited and annotated an article which detailed the structure of the Republic after a recent internal reorganization.

Na'al eventually retired from his position as head in the New Republic's research division, becoming a history professor. He and Rivoche Tarkin were married, and had several children together. Over a decade following the Galactic Civil War and the fall of the Galactic Empire, he enlisted help from one of his students in investigating for the Chancellor Mothma some unusual reports emanating from the Outer Rim Territories, reports connected to remnants of forces that served the Empire. Following the end of the war between the First Order and the Resistance, Na'al became an archivist who would oversee the release of an important historical chronicle. This record included a comprehensive discussion of the conflict between the Force groups Jedi and Sith. For a guide to the Force, Na'al provided information on a Jedi who was active around the time of the Old Republic, identifying him as Quinlan Vos and indicating that he was in conflict with the Force users known as the Nightsisters of Dathomir. However, Voren Na'al acknowledged that this information was drawn from a single unreliable source, a memoir of an alleged former Nightsister who survived the fall of her fellow sisters of night.