He was a good man, who always did everything he could for me, even when the world he came from hated him for it. I'll miss him.
—Ezgi Deshra, Caul Itera's daughter
Caul Itera was a human male Mandalorian, and a member of the peaceful New Mandalorians faction during the final decades of the Galactic Republic. Born on the planet Mandalore in 79 BBY, Caul grew up within the New Mandalorians' domed capital city of Sundari. As an adult, he found a job working as a merchant trader with one of Sundari's shipping firms, transporting goods to and from the city, across Mandalore and to other worlds in Mandalorian space. While collecting a shipment of freshly caught fish from the coastal town of Shoriya on Mandalore, Caul met the Mandalorian mercenary Edeema Deshra, and the two soon entered into a brief but heated affair that resulted in the birth of a baby girl they named Ezgi.
At the time, Mandalorian society was fractured by civil war, as the violent radicals of Death Watch clashed with the True Mandalorian army in a conflict of ideals that threatened to see Mandalore burn. Concerned for their daughter, it was decided that Caul would take Ezgi to live with him in Sundari, behind the city's protective black dome where she would be safe. For years, Caul raised his daughter as best as he could alone, her mother barred from entering the New Mandalorian capital as a member of the traditional clans. He believed strongly in the peaceful principles of the New Mandalorian faction, but grew to despise the insular culture that had developed among its people. When the homogenous sect's more vicious members teased Ezgi for her exotic looks, Caul comforted her; when her classmates taunted her for her thuggish "Old Mandalorian" ties, Caul assured her she was a every bit a proper Mandalorian; when a Guardsman boasted that she should be thrown out of the city, Caul broke his jaw in secret later that night. And no matter what the New Mandalorian government decreed, he made sure that Ezgi could always keep in contact with her mother, even if it was only over the holocomm.
When Ezgi was thirteen years old, Caul was on his way home when a malfunction in the Sundari traffic system led to a deadly speeder accident that claimed his life. Soon after, despite the protests of the New Mandalorian government, Ezgi was reunited with her mother, Edeema, who returned to Keldabe—Mandalore's ancient capital—with Ezgi and a casket bearing Caul's remains. Caul Itera was cremated on the banks of the Kelita River the next morning according to custom, attended to by his daughter, her mother, and several other members of Clan Deshra. Mandalorian tradition held that some manner of the deceased's possessions should be kept in memorial, but as a New Mandalorian, Caul had no armor to pass on, and his Sundari property had been forfeit the moment Ezgi left at her mother's side. As such, Ezgi and Edeema resolved to carry his memory in the years to come, his spirit gone to join the manda.
Behind the scenes[]
Caul Itera was created and developed by writer Mia Mesharad as a key element in the backstory of Ezgi Deshra, the main character and reader companion in her 2017 online tour piece, "Welcome to Mandalore."