Voss Parck was a Human male that served as a officer in the Republic Navy and later Imperial Navy who discovered the future Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo and later served as the commander of Thrawn's Empire of the Hand. Hailing from a naval family on Corulag, Parck followed the expected career path and joined the Republic Navy, serving in the Clone Wars. He became the Captain of the Strikefast by 19 BBY. Shortly after the Galactic Republic became the Empire, Parck came across Thrawn while chasing smugglers in Wild Space. Impressed by Thrawn's tactical abilities, Parck offered him a position in the Empire and took him back to Coruscant, where Emperor Palpatine was greatly pleased with Parck's find.
Parck remained attached to Thrawn's career, following the Grand Admiral on his mission to subjugate the Unknown Regions and its myriad aggressors. Deeply devoted to and admiring of Thrawn, Parck served as his right-hand man throughout the deployment, helping to bring many worlds under Imperial control and defeat the forces of the Warlord Nuso Esva. When Thrawn returned to known space to take up command of the Empire's military forces, Parck was left behind as Head of State of the Empire of the Hand, an territory that Thrawn had carved out of the Unknown Regions.
Upon Thrawn's death, Parck assumed sole command of the Empire of the Hand, continuing its mission to pacify the hostile civilizations in the region, which he regarded as essential to the future of the galaxy. When a hoax proclaimed the return of Thrawn ten years after his death, Parck cautiously opened relations with the galaxy at large, retaining high-level diplomaticties even after the impostor was exposed.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
A Human male born to a Corulag family with a tradition of naval service, Voss Parck entered the Corulag Academy to begin a career as a military officer, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who had both captained capital ships. There, he trained alongside several siblings and cousins and carried on a rivalry with one cousin in particular, which would last into their military careers, though Parck generally came out behind.
Within a few years of graduating the academy, Parck attained the rank of captain in the Republic Navy, commanding the Victory-class Star Destroyer Strikefast by the end of the Clone Wars in 19 BBY. At the conclusion of the war, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine reorganized the Galactic Republic into an Empirewith himself as Emperor. Parck felt that the new Emperor would bring negitive change to the galaxy, but continued his service in the Imperial Navy, leading the Strikefast on a long-range exploratory assignment.
A Mist Encounter[]
Around one week after the Declaration of a New Order, Parck and the Strikefast were in pursuit of the Starwayman, a smuggler ship suspected of carrying arms for an anti-Imperial resistance group. The smugglers made a blind hyperspace jump into the Unknown Regions in an effort to shake their pursuers, but Parck would not be deterred and gave pursuit.
When the ships emerged from hyperspace, the crew of the Starwayman attempted to take refuge on a nearby planet. Parck ordered the launch of the Strikefast's TIE fighters to pursue the freighter into the planet's atmosphere, but a problem with the launch racks prevented the launch of all but two of the
The Strikefast.
starfighters, both of which were destroyed as they gave chase. The smugglers took refuge in a cave, and Parck dispatched a ground team and several starfighters to locate them and the two downed Imperial fighters. In the process, they discovered the abandoned dwelling of what appeared to be an unknown species. Although he was exasperated by the additional bureaucracy, Parck instructed his commander on the ground, Colonel Mosh Barris, to handle the potential first contact situation in accordance with the Empire's Unknown Alien Encounters Orders.
Parck organized a technical team to send down in support of Barris. Meanwhile, Barris's troops found the body of one of the fighter pilots, clearly killed and scavenged for technology. Shortly thereafter, mysterious explosions began to plague the Imperial ground camp, followed by the crash of another TIE. When Barris contacted him to report these new developments, Parck correctly deduced that the dead pilot's comlink had been stolen by the unknown aliens, and had it cut out of the network.
The next morning, Parck contacted Barris again. Barris had taken casualties and wished to simply raze the forest and pull out. Parck, however, was intent on finding the smugglers and the location of the resistance cell that they were supporting. Parck sent down two squads of stormtroopers to relieve Barris's Imperial Army troopers.
At that point, the unidentified enemy—in fact an exiled Chiss by the name of Mitth'raw'nuruodo making clever use of Imperial supplies—began jamming the ground forces. Cut off from communications with Parck and suffering casualties from the mysterious attacks, Barris ordered a retreat and returned to the Strikefast. Parck quickly came to suspect that the alien Barris had encountered had stowed away aboard the shuttle that had brought the surviving troops back from the surface. The captain took Barris to the hangar control bay, where he ordered that the lights be dimmed. Parck's suspicions were confirmed when Mitth'raw'nuruodo sneaked out of the shuttle.
The Chiss was captured and questioned by Parck, who asked what he had hoped to accomplish by sneaking on board and also sought to find the methods by which Mitth'raw'nuruodo had outmaneuvered the Imperials, though he had to reign in the overly hostile and anti-alien Barris. Impressed by his resourcefulness and intrigued by the alien's desire to protect his people from assorted dangers, Parck offered him a position in the Imperial Fleet, phrasing it as an opportunity to put the Empire's resources to work against the threats of the Unknown Regions. Thrawn—as Mitth'raw'nuruodo decided to use his core name among the Imperials—accepted the offer, and Parck abandoned the hunt for the smugglers in order to take what he saw as a more promising prize to the Emperor.
Palpatine was in fact greatly pleased by Thrawn's recruitment; several years earlier, Thrawn had aided Palpatine in destroying Outbound Flight, a Jedi mission to explore beyond the known galaxy, as it had passed through the Unknown Regions, and Palpatine had twice tried unsuccessfully to recruit Thrawn since. After bringing Thrawn to the Emperor, Parck's career saw a boost. On the other hand, Barris was shunted aside to backwater assignments, and his career plunged sharply, for which he always resented Parck.
Lone ally of Thrawn[]
Parck remained associated with Thrawn throughout the Chiss's swift rise through the Imperial ranks. When Thrawn, who was an active player in Imperial Court politics, was ready to return to the Unknown Regions and exert the Empire's influence, he and Palpatine staged a court scandal. The political fallout forced Thrawn into exile on a lowly mapping expedition to the Unknown Regions, or so it was thought. Parck, who backed Thrawn in a move so clearly unprofitable that it became notorious among the court, was likewise exiled with him and officially demoted to the rank of commander. In fact, Parck was one of a few select individuals who knew that Thrawn's exile was staged and had quite deliberately put himself on the losing side in order to be assigned to the expedition, which was entirely orchestrated by Thrawn and Palpatine to allow Thrawn to conduct his mission of Imperial expansion in secrecy.
Into the Unknown[]
Parck was assigned to the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Admonitor, Thrawn's new flagship, as first officerto Captain Dagon Niriz. Niriz despised Parck for having brought the alien admiral to the Empire, deeming him arrogant. In the initial stages of the journey, Thrawn assigned Niriz to demeaning tasks and frequently countermanded Niriz's orders in such a way as to look passive and weak-willed. This was, in fact, part of a ploy, of which Parck was aware, to strain Niriz's patience and loyalty in a test.
Upon reaching the Unknown Regions, the Admonitor began scouting systems. In the fifteenth system searched the Imperials were approached by three unknown ships commanded by the Ebruchi Creysis, who claimed to be the ruler of the system. Deducing that the Ebruchi were pirates, Thrawn devised a plan to deal with Creysis and find his superiors. Taking the opportunity to further test Niriz, Thrawn shared the details of his plan with Parck but not Niriz. The admiral convinced Creysis that the Admonitor was a colonization ship and dispatched Parck to negotiate with Creysis as part of a fictitious "Council of Colonists," taking a golden sculpture as a gift for Creysis's assistance. The admiral allowed Parck's Zeta-class shuttle to be captured by the Ebruchi. Niriz found Thrawn's performance intolerable, and so did General Larr Haverel, the ship's infantry commander. Haverel approached Niriz with a plan to mutiny, suggesting that their admiral could not possibly be so incompetent and must in fact be in league with Creysis. Niriz passed Thrawn's test when he refused to mutiny, sticking proudly to naval regulations and his sense of tradition and propriety.
Parck took the opportunity to learn more about the Ebruchi while waiting for Thrawn to spring his trap. When Creysis sent the tracker-equipped sculpture to his masters to demonstrate the Admonitor's worth as a target, Thrawn launched his TIE fighters against the pirates. At the same time, stormtroopers erupted from Parck's captured shuttle, easily overwhelming the assembled pirates and rescuing Parck and the shuttle's crew. Parck returned to the Admonitor as Thrawn demolished Creysis's forces. With Creysis defeated, Thrawn's forces proceeded to lay waste to the base of the pirate's superiors.
After the battle was over, Niriz submitted his resignation as captain of the Admonitor. Parck visited Niriz in his quarters, telling him that Thrawn had turned down his resignation. He informed the captain of the nature of Thrawn's test and the fact that Niriz had passed, as well as revealing the truth of their mission. Niriz took heart, and turned to the mission with much greater eagerness and respect for Thrawn.