The Essential Guide to Force Exile/Amavel Norres

Amavel Norres was born over the planet Nathas I in 44 BBY on the medical station Orvinhas that orbited the planet. He was raised on Nathas III and schooled there with his friend Rego, who persuaded him to follow intelligence as a field study. Norres dreamed of working for the Senate Bureau of Investigation and becoming a field agent just like he saw on some of the holodramas of the day. After his education was complete, he did join the Senate Bureau of Investigation, though he remained near the Nathas system before the SBI assigned him to a station they operated on Corulag.

When the New Order was declared, the SBI was changed to Imperial Intelligence, and he and many other agents were placed through thorough background checks. As well, the Nathas system and the entire Nathas sector was given to Moff Questa Bandor. Bandor had the sector and Nathas III renamed Questa after himself. Bandor’s secretary mentioned the sector and planet as “Nathas” and “Nathas III,” respectively, directly after the requested name change. Due to a typographical error, the quote after the Questa name was confused with a leth and both were officially changed to Questal before Bandor could halt the process. Not wanting to appear indecisive, Bandor did not seek to correct the mistake.

Though Norres was not pleased with both the changes and the mistakes made so early in his homesector’s new Moff, Norres developed a fixation with Bandor’s supposed daughter, Brysli Bandor, who was also in Imperial Intelligence. Through Brysli, Norres gained connections into Sector Plexus of Imperial Intelligence, where the process for reevaluation was sped up and he was reassigned to his previous job over Commenor under Sector Plexus. As he was somewhat infatuated with Brysli, however, he spent as much of his leave on Questal as possible, and when he was not needed, he did work for Bandor to earn extra money and favor in Brysli’s eyes.

Rego, his childhood friend, also grew in power in Intelligence, and, using his money and additional funding from Moff Bandor, who was fond of entrepreneurs, he started a small mining business on the side in 17 BBY called Rego Mining Company. When Rego’s business found the mineral-rich planet Altor 14 on the very edge of Moff Ammar’s Portmoak sector and Moff Bandor’s Questal sector, both Moffs sought control over it. Bandor used Norres to attempt to “convince” Moff Ammar that the planet was Bandor’s own because Rego had discovered it. This was unsuccessful, though.

While on Questal, Norres heard from Brysli about the issues surrounding Altor 14. As he knew from his intelligence studies that Moff Ammar was an avid gambler, Norres came up with the idea to bet the planet on a game of chance, something he knew Ammar would not refuse. However, as Moff Ammar still considered the planet his, Bandor demanded that Norres come up with something to serve as collateral for the game. With Bandor’s permission, Norres bet Orvinhas, as he knew that Ammar had long wanted to move the station and turn it into a tourist attraction - most likely a casino. However, Ammar wanted to press his advantage and said that was not enough. At Norres’s prodding, the angered Moff Bondar also bet Vehana, the Moff’s supposed professional mistress and the rumored mother of Brysli, thus exploiting another of Ammar’s weaknesses. Knowing it would be dangerous to press further, Ammar agreed to the terms. Ultimately, Bandor won the game of chance in a private match on Cloud City and, in turn, Altor 14.

After winning Altor 14, Bandor and Rego sent Norres to persuade the local Nuiwit to let Rego mine there and to trick them into slavery. However, though the Nuiwit did not mind Rego’s mining company too much, they didn’t want to work with any affiliate of the infamously sadistic Moff Bandor. The attempt to convince the race eventually failed due to an uprising of the more traditionalist Nuiwit. Though Bandor sought to crush the race for their insolence, Ammar, still bitter about losing the planet, filed a protest against his acts there, as the rebellion and Bandor’s first attempts to quench it had disrupted Imperial rule of a nearby planet still owned by Ammar.

As a kind of punishment to Norres for failing, and as a vent for his frustration, Bandor used his remaining power over Norres and, in early 18 BBY, had Imperial Intelligence reassign him from Corulag to serve on Altor 14, which was not to his liking. As well, Norres was likely to be assassinated by the restless Nuiwit. Though he had no proof, Norres suspected that his aspirant friend Rego was behind the uprising, and managed to convince Brysli of that fact. As Brysli had much influence on her father, Rego was put in charge of Altor 14 in his place, replacing Norres, who was due for a fairly easy assignment as a liaison to the Commenorian law enforcement. Afterward, Rego managed to succeed in his role as Intelligence chief on Altor 14, however, much to Norres’s disdain.

Soon after freeing himself of his post on Altor 14, Brysli began to fall away from Norres. Scorned, Norres returned to Commenor almost permanently, ceasing his visits to Questal, and soon forgot her, obsessed by his work and Imperial Intelligence’s approval. In 18 BBY, Norres was working in the city of Munto on Commenor, assisting the Munto branch of the Investigators. Norres, a product of years in intelligence work, felt naturally superior to the Commenorians, and his almost free rein allowed him considerable freedom. The fact that he wielded considerable political influence with Moff Bandor further allowed him the liberty to work on whatever projects he wanted.

However, only a few months into his job, Norres learned that Brysli had been slain in a Jedi-led uprising on Naboo. Norres was both heartbroken and enraged, for some part of him had still loved her, despite her rejection of him. The Jedi rebellion was crushed, but Norres wanted nothing more than to stamp out any survivors of the Jedi Order; he had been more or less ambivalent towards Jedi previously, thinking them just another type of anti-Imperial insurgent. At Brysli's funeral, he vowed to himself to devote his efforts to making sure that any other survivors of the Empire's Jedi purge were completely wiped out, to the point where tracking down and killing a Jedi became a silent personal crusade and a dream of his. Little did he know that Brysli had actually had his child two years earlier, a daughter named Zuud, who was raised by the Empire and eventually joined Imperial Intelligence.

While investigating various records of Jedi from Commenor, he discovered that a fairly wealthy and respected Commenorian family known as the Kraens had had a son taken from them and raised by the Jedi Order. That Jedi, Selusda Kraen, had been reported dead on Coruscant during Operation: Knightfall. However, Norres did further digging into the matter and discovered that a mysterious cousin of Selusda's named Micor had resurfaced on Commenor two years prior during an attack on scientist Sarth Kraen by Mistryl Shadow Guard. The lead detective for that case, a woman named Annita Daowot, had reported that Micor Kraen was a former pilot for the Galactic Republic, but Norres found that something was wrong with her explanation after reading the case files. Norres confronted Daowot about the matter, but her answers did not satisfy him. In particular, records searches revealed that Micor Kraen did not exist in the Treasury's records, and pulling some strings with law enforcement officials on Coruscant, he was able to retrieve the autopsy records for Selusda Kraen and found that, contrary to all reason, the body was of a female. Annita's evasive answers only intensified his curiosity, particularly when he learned that she had gone to school with another member of the Kraen family, Sarth Kraen, and was good friends of the family.

He bugged both her apartment and that of her fiancé, Jorgesoll Knrr, in an attempt to catch Daowot in a trap. Norres quietly bided his time, building evidence slowly and although he couldn't find anything concrete, he had a strong feeling that Micor Kraen and Selusda Kraen were one and the same. However, Annita and her allies on Commenor refused to let him question the Kraens, hindering his efforts. After several months, he sent a message that was eventually received by an Imperial Inquisitor named Ajaur, who responded by arriving personally on Commenor along with a high-ranking Imperial official named Kinman Doriana.

Once they arrived, Norres informed them that they would most likely catch the Kraens at Annita's and Jorge's wedding. The other Imperials agreed, bringing thirty Imperial troops-stormtroopers, Imperial Army, and Intelligence-as backup. As it turned out, the Kraens were at the wedding, including Selusda Kraen, as Norres discovered when he burst into the ceremony theatrically. However, there was not one Jedi, but five present at the wedding and they had brought a number of blaster-toting allies. As it turned out, they had planned for the possibility of an Imperial ambush attempt, and Norres found himself in the midst of a pitched battle inside the chapel. He was set upon by Jorgesoll Knrr, who attempted to beat him to a pulp, but Norres fended him off and drew a holdout blaster to kill Jorge with. However, one of the Jedi deflected his shots, and Annita Daowot slew him with a blaster of her own. Ultimately, Norres' mission was unsuccessful and all the Jedi, along with Annita and Jorge, escaped Commenor. Furthermore, both Ajaur and Doriana were slain in the fight.

Behind the scenes
Originally, the character played a rather minor role in Force Exile III: Liberator, acting mostly to bring all the characters together for a climactic battle scene at the end-his other appearances in the novel were rather minor and he was more often alluded to than directly appeared. Despite his relative lack of page time, the character was depicted on the front cover of Liberator. Norres's image is that of canonical character Feyn Gospic and that was after Atarumaster88 realized that using Gospic's image for Sarth Kraen was not a good idea. As the image had already been placed in the cover, Atarumaster88 changed the assignment of the image to that of Norres.

The backstory and first name for Norres were created by What's the (back)story? contest winner Solus. Her entry was the first for that contest, and expanded the character's backstory considerably, including providing a first name for Norres, “Amavel”. For the entry, Solus took the contest’s encouragement to employ obscure canon to heart, incorporating numerous canonical characters and locations, such as Altor 14, Moff Bandor, and Zuud. She read the pertinent parts in Liberator before going to Wookieepedia and going through those Imperials related to Intelligence. That was how she came up with Moffs Ammar and Bandor besides the fact that the former smokes a cigarra. Zuud, Altor 14, and the Rego Mining Corporation were also found through searches of lists and categories on Wookieepedia. After getting a group of useable Moffs, she cleared it down to the two who ended up in the entry, and settled on Moff Bandor's Questal system. To play up the suspicious side of Norres, she created Rego, the only non-canon person originally in the backstory to have a kind of rivalry over what happened on Altor 14. The idea of betting a planet came as a reference a similar event in the canonical novel The Courtship of Princess Leia. Other things came to Solus from wanting to show briefly the lifestyle of a Moff as described in several novels, mostly as inspired by The Hutt Gambit. The idea for Questa to be misnamed Questal was just a cumulation of an idea Solus had wanted to realize of a planet that was named by mistake. She first had to find an Aurebesh character that looked like an Aurebesh "L" but the idea finally came to fruition.

In the original entry, Solus had Norres serving as liaison to Commenor for years, which conflicted with information in Liberator that Norres was "new" as of 16 BBY. Another significant change that was made by Force Exile Series author Atarumaster88 was adding the death of Brysli, in order to provide motivation for Norres to place particular emphasis on hunting down the Jedi. The character Brysli was originally named Zuud, a canonical character, but Atarumaster88 felt that including Zuud in the way Solus had done so would make her too old to accurately reflect the Zuud shown in canon. However, to retain the connection to the name, he made Zuud the illegitimate daughter of Norres and Brysli, born circa 20 BBY. The name Brysli is derived from the Brisingr necklace from Norse mythology.

The finished entry is therefore written partially by Atarumaster88 and partially by Solus and includes behind the scenes material from both authors.

Appearances

 * Force Exile III: Liberator