Mara Jade Legio

Mara Jade Legio was a Jedi Master and a member of the Jedi Council in the New Jedi Order. She was a unique figure in galactic history, having served both the Empire and the New Republic at various times in her life. She also worked for a period of time as a smuggler as part of the Smuggler's Alliance, acting as a liason between the Alliance and the New Republic until she decided to devote herself fully to the Jedi Order in 12 ABY.

Early Life
Although Mara was known by the Solo, Skywalker, and Legio families to have once been an Emperor's Hand - one of Emperor Palpatine's personal assassins - much of her early life spent working for the Empire is still a mystery. Mara considered her homeworld to be Coruscant, although her true birthplace is unknown. Early in her childhood, she was taken from her family by the Empire to be trained in the ways of the Force and become one of the Emperor's Hands.

The Hunt for Skywalker
On one of the final missions of her career as a Hand, Mara was assigned by Palpatine the task of hunting down and killing Luke Skywalker. To do so, she posed as a dancer in Jabba The Hutt's palace, where she expected Skywalker to come in an attempt to rescue his friend Han Solo from the crime lord. The day before he arrived, however, Mara witnessed the entrance of Boba Fett into the throne room with a captive claiming to be Solo's lover, Leia Organa. Feeling a disturbance in the Force, Mara deduced that both "Fett" and "Organa" were Force-Senstives and working with Skywalker and the real Organa to rescue Solo.

That same day, Mara watched as Organa's impersonator - by this time chained to Jabba's dais as his personal slave girl - used the Force to save the dancer Oola from being fed to the rancor and was then dropped down into the rancor pit herself by a suspicious Jabba. As a result, Melina Carniss, a secret security officer who had suspected Mara of being an assassin hired to kill the Hutt, diverted her attention away from Mara to the unfortunate slave girl. Despite the woman's suposed death in the pit, Mara sense through the Force that she was still alive, and a possible obstacle in her mission to kill Skywalker.

Her prediction would come true when the young Jedi arrived the next day, and Mara managed to talk Jabba into letting her come on the sail barge to witness the execution of Skywlker, Solo, and Organa's impersonator, now revealed to be Stephanie Legio. During the ensuing chaos, Mara was forced to engage Legio in a lightsaber duel, in order to get a clear shot at Skywalker. The two women fought to the point of exhaustion, until Mara finally managed to wound and disarm her opponent. As she prepared to fire her blaster at Skywalker, Legio managed to stop her at the last moment, using the saber throw technique to sever both of the Emperor's Hand's legs below the knees. Shocked and in imense pain, Mara pitched herself off the side of the barge into the sand below, waiting there until the barge exploded before managing to get onboard the remaining skiff and pilot it back to the palace.