The Essential Guide to Force Exile/Almos Terthbak

Almos Terthbak was a Human male from Anaxes, born to a family to middle-class laborers. In 20 BBY, at the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the Republic academy to escape what he viewed as drudgery in the business field, but did not complete his training until after the Clone Wars had ended and the Empire had been formed. Terthbak was swept up in a wave of zeal for the new government and had dreams of grandeur related to achieving high rank in the Imperial academy.

He graduated from the academy in the top twenty percent of his class and dreamed of quick advancement and dedicated service to the Empire as part of the mighty Imperial fleet. However, his superiors were not impressed with his toadying nature nor his obsequious fawning. For a few months, he served in minor capacities at various installations, but never could hold a serious post. Eventually, though, he was promoted to Lieutenant and received his first real assignment. To his dismay, his first post wasn't to serve as a junior officer on a Star Destroyer, but rather as the captain of a tiny scout vessel, the Observant.

Boarding the brand-new vessel at the Sluis Van Shipyards, Terthbak's first impression fell flat, as the officer literally fell flat on his face within seconds of meeting two of the crewmembers. He boarded and took command of the Observant, setting out on their mission: to survey a number of systems for traces of Jedi activity using a special experimental detector put together by the Inquisitorius.

Terthbak soon became incredibly unpopular with the other four members of the crew, who were used to a far more relaxed style of command. With no experience in scout ships, whereas all the other crewmembers were veterans. His officious and arrogant mannerisms did little to endear him to the crew, nor did his excitability and tendency to shout out orders they'd already carried out. In less than a month, he had become the butt of their jokes. According to Crewman Marsden Royner of the Observant, the answer to "What's white, stupid, blond, and looks good with a nek battle dog on it?" was "Almos Terthbak."

To make matters worse, the sheer dullness of their cruise soon wore on them as days turned into weeks turned into months of searching system after empty system. The Observant would jump into a system, conduct a series of scans, only to find nothing, not even a trace of the Jedi.

Finally, in the Erediss system, the Observant detected an old derelict Jedi starfighter left there from the Clone Wars. Terthbak and his crew were ordered to bring the ship and the desiccated corpse it contained with them for later evaluation. To his surprise, Warrant Officer Jasnan, the ship's pilot and the lone female in the ship's crew, offered to help him suit up and bring the Jedi corpse into a storage hold. Terthbak, who was smitten with the pretty Jasnan, readily agreed to her help, and after that, noticed that she seemingly began to reciprocate his feelings.

From Erediss, the Observant continued its mission, though due to their instructions, they had to fly around with the Jedi starfighter strapped to their hull, ruining their sensor signature, for several months. They visited dozens of worlds in the Outer Rim without success, but didn't find anything more until a priority signal from Imperial High Command sent them back to the Mid Rim to scan the world of Haruun Kal. The results showed that there was a sizable Jedi presence. Terthbak relayed this information to his superiors and ended up speaking with Darth Vader himself, who commended them for their work and sent them back out to the Outer Rim. Terrified out of his mind by the Sith Lord, Terthbak dutifully obeyed. The only thing that made his journey a little easier was that Jasnan's shell had finally cracked and she had begun openly returning his affection, to the surprise of the rest of the crew. Little did Terthbak know that Jasnan was playing him, using their relationship in a partially-successful attempt to get concessions from the uptight officer.

Their mission eventually took them to a remote nebula. The Observant had scarcely arrived when the ship began experiencing an airlock failure, which turned out to be a cloaked ship full of Jedi boarding them. Terthbak and the rest of the crew were summarily imprisoned in a cargo hold, as their capture had taken them completely by surprise. The Jedi interrogated him, using his relationship with Jasnan as leverage to get him to spill all of the details of his mission. They then locked him back in the hold and absconded with his ship. Terthbak attempted to find an escape route, but the other crewmembers were simply happy to be alive and ignored both his ranting at them and his unrealistic escape plans.

Two of the Jedi took the Observant to the Outer Rim world of Yanibar, where they landed. Terthbak and his crewmates remained imprisoned, albeit with a sufficient supply of food and water, and had no choice but to endure their captivity quietly. Eventually, while the ship had taken off again a few days later, Jasnan remembered the lightsaber that they had recovered off of the Jedi corpse, which was stored in the same hold they were locked into. Retrieving it, she cut through the door while Terthbak and the other crewmembers armed themselves and prepared for a desperate attempt to take over the ship. They were pleased to find that there were only two Jedi onboard and they were brawling on the bridge when the Imperials burst in. Terthbak fired at one of them, injuring the Jedi named Spectre, but the other one, Selu Kraen, was more than capable enough to defeat all five crewmembers. In the process, Selu severed Terthbak's right hand, leaving the lieutenant in agony. Their escape attempt failed, they were again placed inside the cargo hold, but this time, with laser trip mines across the doorway that would incinerate them if they tried to escape again. However, his leadership in the escape attempt had earned him some modicum of respect.

They remained prisoners for some time afterward, until Selu Kraen, who had seized another larger Imperial ship called the Griffin, unceremoniously shoved them into escape pods and dumped them, along with the remnants of the Griffin ' s crew in the midst of the Hoth system. They were retrieved by the Empire and during debriefing, Terthbak told them as much as he could about their captors. After receiving a prosthetic hand to replace the one he'd lost, was re-assigned to a new scout ship, the Enquirer and sent to finish his mission. It was Almos Terthbak who filed the official report marking the planet Yanibar as infested with a deadly plague, unknowing insuring that prying Imperial eyes would be kept away from the newly-formed Jedi refuge there.

Eventually, Terthbak managed to redeem himself with several years of long service in the Empire, though Jasnan left him a year after the incident. As a result, Terthbak threw himself into his work and was eventually rewarded in 2 BBY with a post on a Star Destroyer. Records relating to his later career after the Battle of Endor have yet to be recovered.

Behind the scenes
Almos Terthbak was created for Force Exile III: Liberator. His first name, Almos, is intentionally one letter away from “almost”, signifying Terthbak’s character as almost useful. Terthbak and the crew of the Observant serve as a dark, twisted form of the crew of the Hawk-bat, and their disunity, incompetence, and devotion to the Empire were characteristics intentionally contrasted with the crew of the Hawk-bat. The character of Lieutenant Terthbak was not conceived until late in the development of Force Exile III. The author felt that Force Exile II was not always humorous enough and he developed the crew of the Observant as comic relief. Terthbak is a caricature of an arrogant junior officer with no grasp of military reality.

Lieutenant Terthbak’s operating number is a reference to both the number 1138, which has featured prominently in many works of George Lucas’s, and to the TK-421, the designation of a stormtrooper in A New Hope. He was intended to find some measure of ultimate redemption at the end of the story, having earned at least the partial respect of his crew and gained some measure of competence after being a bumbling idiot for most of the novel. When writing Terthbak's entry for The Essential Guide to Force Exile, Force Exile author Atarumaster88 considered killing the character off at the Battle of Yavin, but decided against it. Terthbak has yet to be depicted in any Force Exile work.

Appearances

 * Force Exile III: Liberator