Haali-Ola-Edi

"I took action to avoid being an honor wife to someone I hated, and that led to more actions. There are definitely days when I wish I'd just gritted my teeth and married him."

Haali-Ola-Edi, also known as Haali-Ack-Cerlo, was the final wife to Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi, the mother to Enmi-Ola-Mundi, the founder of a smuggling ring dedicated to the preservation and circulation of banned media in the Imperial galaxy, and its master for many of the years of its existance.

Marriage to a Jedi
From her birth on Cerea up until 20 BBY, Haali-Ola-Edi lived a relatively normal life, until a powerful Cerean official took a shine to her and set about trying to make her his tenth "honor wife." With her father's position in the government at stake, she staved him off for several months. She was very close to capitulating, despite her strong dislike of her suitor, when the aftermath of the Battle of Cerea provided an unexpected solution. Master Ki-Adi-Mundi's entire family was killed in this battle, and in order to be of service to his species, he needed to marry again to produce more children, but for understandable reasons, noone was willing to marry him. When Haali-Ola-Edi volunteered, she managed to paint it with her words as such a noble venture that noone, not even her thrawted suitor, could bring themselves to object, or punish her father for it.

It took nearly a year for Ki-Adi to return to Cerea for the marriage, and after the ceremony he was able to spend only a week with his new wife, during which he expressed to her his belief that he would not be able to come again before his death. He conceived a child by her that week, and, in what would prove an action even more defining to her life, gave to her a manuscript of poems written by the oldest of his previous four wives, Egrit-Ond-Kladi, asking that in accordance with her wishes, they be published after his death. Beautifully written and painting a full picture of not only her, but of all four of Ki-Adi's previous wives, the poems captured young Haali-Ola's imagination, and she told her husband that she would be proud to publish them.

Trouble With the New Empire
True to his request, when she heard of his death at the end of the war, Haali-Ola took the poems and went looking for a publisher. Her subject matter was such that it was not at all difficult to find one, and with the publisher wanting to capitalize on the memory of the Jedi still lingering amoung the populace, Confessions of a Jedi's Wife: The Poetry of Egrit-Ond-Kladi was published less than half a year after the war's end. This was when the new Emperor was just beginning his efforts to suppress anything that protrayed the Jedi as anything but villians. Haali-Ola and her publisher were approached by an Imperial official who informed them they were only allowed to publish half of the poems, specifically the ones Egrit-Ond had written whenever she had been angry at the Order, or had simply not mentioned feelings towards it one way or the other. Horrified at the idea of such a lopsided image of all four wives being allowed, Haali-Ola refused vehemently, and persuaded her publisher to refused also. The poems were pulled from the shelves.

That evening, the official came to Haali-Ola's home and attempted to kill her. Heavily pregnant with what would turn out to be Ki-Adi's only Force sensitive daughter, she had just enough connection to the Force herself through the unborn baby to be forewarned, and she managed to kill him instead. She then took her copy of the poems, as well as all other writings she had in the house about the Jedi, and left her house seeking safe passage off Cerea. She obtained it with the aid of Gordi Melgeth, the Aqualish lover of Ki-Adi's late second wife, Myra-Min-Shala, though at the cost of his life.

Hiding Out on Ando
Gordi's aid had gotten her to Ando, where she faced some initial hostility due to her not being Aqualish, but after she had learned some of the language, and when those around her learned of her anger at the new Empire, they became much more welcoming. They knew her as Haali-Ack-Cerlo, as she viewed it as no longer safe to use her real name, and likewise when her daughter, Enmi-Ola-Mundi, was born, she registered her under the name of Enmi-Ack-Moka.

At first she kept her writings hidden from everyone, but after a year or so, when she had made several very close friends, she revealed to them her history. Though initially they could not understand the poems, as Haali-Ola's personal copy was written in their original Cerean,they were sympathetic to her cause, and eventually she first produced the poems' second translation into Basic, then her Aqualish teacher, Rogo Drundo, translated the translation into Aqualish, under her supervision in order to minimize inaccuracies. He started with the poems about Gordi and Myra-Min, and many of the younger female Aqualish found their story very romantic and circulated those poems, and then the other ones, enthusiastically, perhaps too much so, though at first the Imperial Garrison on Ando noticed nothing, as most of them did not understand Aqualish.

Over time Haali-Ola grew bolder, having Rogo Drundo translate her other materials and procuring more from offworld as she began to make contacts out of some of the galaxy's more idealistic youths. Amoung her first recruits were the Gliasi teacher Ivorn Tika and Alderaan ice artist Noirah Na. She was one of the few people to whom the latter confided her secret history as a survivor of the Old Jedi Order. They helped her form a network through which all sorts of banned media traveled through Ando and neighboring systems, then neighboring sectors, then neighboring Rims. She also began reading some of the texts to her daughter, intending to teach Enmi-Ola all she could about her powers.

On the Run
With the scale her activities grew to, it was perhaps inevitable by 13 BBY that Haali-Ola-Edi would get caught. Thankfully when in that year she was, the chance arrival of a refugee running ship, the Padmé Amidala, allowed her and her five year old daughter to escape. Thanks to the efforts of one of the poems' fans, most of her media collection was rescued with her.

While on the Amidala, Haali-Ola discovered that travel suited her goals much better than staying on Ando would have. By the time she and Enmi-Ola first disembarked from the ship in 12 BBY, she had extended the reach of her media ring to all four corners of the galaxy. Both would be a passanger on the Amidala again in later years, and would remain on cordial terms with the crew.

Neither mother nor daughter ever officially joined the rebellion, though they were certainly sympathetic to them. This would even determine Haali-Ola-Edi's final fate, as in late 0 BBY, she gave her life to allow her daughter and a band of rebels to escape from a group of stormtroopers.

Her Media Ring
More or less started in 15 BBY with the recruitment of both Ivorn Tika and Noirah Na, at the height of its activity in 2-1 BBY the operatives involved in the ring passed around hundreds of media items in multiple formats, from books, to holofilms, to musical recordings, to philosophical tracts. Their reach extended as far as Telos and Mirial on one end of the galaxy and Bakura on the other, with operatives permanently placed on Coruscant, Corellia, Alderaan, Commenor, Malastare, Naboo, Ando, Zeltros, and many other planets.

Haali-Ola-Edi gave the following directive to her operatives: "Make copies and move them somewhere else. And then more more copies and move them to another place.  And then make as many more as you can.  And make sure you keep the originals." It was good advice; many times imperial agents found and destroyed the contraband media, and certainly nothing that did not have enough copies made of it survived. Much of the material on the Jedi, for instance, was permanently lost, because not enough people carried it to make sufficient copies.

The ring would continue to be run after 0 BBY by Enmi-Ola-Mundi for nearly ten more years, until the New Republic controlled enough of the galaxy to make it no longer needed. It took some time for much of the underground material to return to the surface even after that, but by the time Enmi-Ola died in 44 ABY, it was with the satisfaction that the efforts of her and her mother had preserved much of the culture of the Old Republic that the Empire would otherwise have certainly obliterated.