#tualon

[inquisitorius-sin-bin]

The Imperial Inquisitorius

Nearly 66 hours over 20 days and 1 burst sclera blood vessel later, they're here.

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[archfey-edda]

Version 1 - Imperial puppets

[wookieejamcrew]

a pointed cod

[legomocfodder]

Some assorted Imperial minifigures.

Terisa Kerrill, Tualon Yaluna, Eli Vanto, Iskat Akaris, and Dedra Meero.

These figures are mostly purist, with the exception of Tualon's lekku, which I painted

[ct-hardcase]

maybe I'm off my rocker but I can see in a roundabout way how the inquisitor number system could be in induction order (to be clear, I don't put that much time into understanding it anymore, this is just the amalgamation of years of theories and being not normal). I'm assuming a lot based on headcanon and there are some asspulls/inconsistencies in there, but as follows, I think there are a few "cohorts" of inquisitors:

The First Brother through the Fifth Brother, to me, make up Cohort One. I assume Cohort One also is primarily made up of Inquisitors that were either volunteers, or assumed that they would be:

We don't know much about the First Brother, yet, but given his whole design and some verbal clues, I'm assuming he's a fanatic and was the first to turn, if not the first recruit as a whole.

I have a theory that Trilla was not originally supposed to be the Second Sister—Cere was, given her on-the-record doubts about the Jedi and her skill as a Seeker. However, Cere Junda, though she did think the Order was flawed, did not turn as easily as assumed. Trilla Suduri, who imo was originally a Tualon-esque bonus inquisitor, got the title after Cere made a break for it/it was clear she'd be harder to turn.

I also think that Reva Sevander was not the original holder of the Third Sister title. Barriss was. Though I'd assumed her to be the First Sister, she fits in this cohort's theme of "people the inquisitors believed to be voluntary recruits", and is the number most open to the type of replacement that I think happened with Reva and Trilla. After Barriss defects, the number remains open until Reva is recruited.

Given that the Fourth Sister was already acting as an Inquisitor at the time of Order 66, we can assume that she was an early, and voluntary, recruit.

Though the Fifth Brother is not on Nur with the rest of the aforementioned group, it's made clear through his internal monologue that he did not think highly of the Jedi, even before the Purge, and that his being an Artemesian could have set him up as a target for early recruitment. His flashback in the Inquisitors comic series also implies that he may have killed his Master during Order 66.

Cohort Two, if I had to define it, is made up of Inquisitors who were previously slated for the Inquisitorius, but needed more intense conditioning/torture before getting there, given that they were all present for Vader's introduction to the Inquisitorius. In my opinion, this is the Sixth Brother through the Ninth Sister.

The Sixth Brother's position here is an assumption, and it could go either way. However, there are narrative clues imo wrt him needing to go through the conditioning process (Ahsoka wondering who 'twisted his potential for good', his own 'but lord vader, we saved you' before the novel, etc.).

Though we don't know much about the Seventh Sister either, we can guess from Iskat's narration that she went through conditioning as well.

Much like the Sixth Brother, the Eighth Brother is an assumption. However, given his place with the other characters, we can guess that he needed more intense conditioning.

The Ninth Sister's initiation process has been extremely confirmed by her. "Torture, isolation, mutilation," says it all, I think.

This next cohort is more nebulous, since it's made up of characters I think had a variety of motives and levels of volunteerism. I'll go through my reasoning for why someone might have the number they do, but it starts to fall apart here.

The Tenth Brother, though I would thematically put him with Cohort One, may have taken longer to condition, or, like Cere, did not take to the idea of the Inquisitorius as well as expected. He was on Coruscant a short while after Order 66, but not with the group from Cohort Two (though I don't remember exactly when; I'd have to reread RotRB).

The Thirteenth Sister's higher number, I expect, comes from her taking longer to accept her Inquisitor title, even though she was a volunteer. Interestingly, she joined at about the time I'd guesstimate the Inquisitors from Cohort Two did, but she seems behind them, which confuses even Iskat narratively.

Tualon doesn't have a number, but given that he arrives on Nur after Iskat (who's on the later end as-is), I assume he's the Fourteenth Brother, or something close. I guesstimate he took longer than the Cohort Two Inquisitors given that he was not previously slated and needed more time to break.

Marrok I assume is Eleventh or Twelfth. He's a bit of an enigma, because other than the fact that he was on Nur at the outset of the Inquisitorius (making him the odd one out here) and a general deference to Vader, we don't know much about him when he's not a cloud of Nightsister Magick. Given where he is, I also assume he was a voluntary recruit, but have no clue why he wouldn't be grouped with Cohort One.

[tremendouskoalachild]

there is not enough about iskat/tualon. official or fan works. they have such an interesting and fucked up relationship! i want more evil romance!

[apas-75]

So last night I finished reading Rise of the Red Blade for TotE Vibes Research purposes and the two Inquisitor characters in it really illustrate exactly why I think Barriss is going to survive and escape them.

Because the thing is that there are two kinds of Inquisitors! The ones who volunteered, and the ones who...didn’t. Iskat (RotRB’s focus character) perfectly exemplifies the first type: she had some traumatizing experiences at a young age, fell through a number of institutional cracks in the Order, had a really terrible master (meet me in the pit, Sember Vey), everyone was too busy to give her the follow-up they would under normal circumstances, Palpatine had an agent actively gathering information about her and pushing her to become Worse—she was a pre-selected candidate who was offered the choice to come quietly when Order 66 hit, and she took it. By that point all of her issues and doubts had been exacerbated to the point where it wasn’t hard for her to make herself hate the Jedi, and then she rationalized her way through any indication that her freedom was a lie and doubled her way down right into hell.

By contrast: Tualon, Iskat’s crechemate situationship guy. He had some issues but was not someone on Palpatine’s radar; Iskat left him to die in Order 66 and he survived getting shot by darksiding out about her betrayal. Because of that he was taken alive and they did some shit to him. When Iskat runs into him at the Inquisitor HQ after he’s freshly-inducted he can barely remember why he hates her, or anything else from before he was taken. He woke up in the room where you fight Trilla and they fully shattered him and glued a semblance of a person back together out of the wreckage, just COMPLETELY Winter Soldiered the guy, and the only way he had to cope with it is to lean into a weird codependent situationship with Iskat.

And that distinction’s always been there with the Inquisitors; you have the true believers who ended up hating the Jedi or wanted to go on a power trip (or had the kind of revenge plan only a 12 year old could come up with and then stick to for a decade, in one case) and didn’t need any additional coercion to volunteer, and you have the ones that they broke. In the former group you’ve got the Grand Inquisitor, Reva/Third, Lyn/Fourth*, Fifth, and Iskat/Thirteenth. For the most part they’re certified freaks, but they came by it naturally. (Reva’s a different flavor.) In the latter, you’ve got Trilla/Second, Seventh, Masana/Ninth, Tualon, and probably most of the others. They all got disassembled and reassembled without much care given to the process and are all Coping with it badly in different ways, whether by deciding it’s Empowering, Actually (Trilla & Seventh) or by becoming completely jaded about everything (Masana & Tualon).

(*We obviously don’t know a lot about Fourth yet, but the fact that she shows up to recruit Barriss while rocking yellow dark side eyes before ROTS is even over tells me she’s definitely a volunteer.)

All this is to say: The Grand Inquisitor is making a colossal mistake with Barriss from the drop, and it’s why I think she’s going to win their battle of wits and escape. Because he is treating her like she is an Iskat and she could not be any farther from it.

He sends Lyn to get her to come quietly! They actively withhold information from her about what happened to the Jedi and what her expected role in it is! That’s not how they recruit the ones they think will be a problem; if that were the case she would have been stunned out of hand and woken up on a rack.

Instead, he’s giving her special attention,, he’s training her—he doesn’t think they need to break her. She’s just got a few...pesky hang-ups from her time as a Jedi that need ironing out**. He’s projecting on her; he doesn’t just want an empty shell holding a lightsaber—he wants Barriss Offee, loyally kneeling at his side, fully believing in their mission. She’s his favorite.

(**That “mercy only breeds defeat” line isn’t just a generic darksidism; I’m pretty sure he’s directly critiquing how Barriss got caught because she showed mercy to Asajj Ventress.)

And surely that's something he can turn her into, right? Because she hates the Jedi, right? She attacked them, she outsmarted them, obviously she’d be down for wanting to wipe them out! He was there when she confessed and, like pretty much everyone else in the room save for Ahsoka, he didn’t hear a single word that she said—just what he wanted her to be saying. He’s got a deeply incorrect idea of her, and that idea is “she’s just like me for real.”

And he’s wrong, because the Inquisitorius is everything she feared the Jedi Order was becoming—literally, an army fighting for the dark side—and the Empire is everything she knew the Republic was becoming. She might be prone to despairing, it might in some hypothetical be possible to get her into the same resigned despair trap as Anakin, but she would never actually want to serve the Empire, and they don't think they'll have to try hard to convince her to.

She loves the Jedi, she loved being a Jedi, she wanted to save them. She wants to be one again more than anything even though right now she thinks she doesn’t deserve it, thinks that she’s already too broken to reclaim what she was. But I think being surrounded by actual fallen Jedi and being told over and over again that she’s like them is, in the end, going to be what reminds her that she never stopped being a Jedi in the first place.

And as long as she can make sure her captors don't realize that's true until it's too late, she'll be home free.

[425599167]

I've been holding back a while on publishing this post, but I finally feel like sharing my thoughts about Barriss in Tales of the Empire.

It was fine. It was the okayest way to continue Barriss’s story. It’s not bad at all, it’s just basic and misses out on opportunities.

Part of what started my fascination with Barriss was her courtroom tirade. Not just her motives, but seeing her, a young woman of relatively low rank now put in handcuffs, speak up and tear into the most powerful people in the galaxy. My impression of her was, from that point on, she is uncontrollable. This part of her is out in the open, there’s no going back to the demure padawan. She can be angry and scared and self-hating, but even if she uses the dark side, she is a wild card. She can be intimidated into feigning loyalty, but she’s plotting against whoever dares think they can manipulate her. People like Barriss are why the Rule of Two was necessary. In TotE, she was not that. She seriously worked as an inquisitor and intended to follow Vader’s orders, albeit briefly. It isn’t a definitively wrong direction for her character, but I was underwhelmed.

The first warning sign that got under my skin is the scene from the trailer where Barriss is depicted being the first person to bow to Vader. The knee-jerk takeaway was she’s evil now, nothing more to it. I predicted she was planning to escape the inquisitors, pretending to be loyal, and laying it on thick. Then in the episode it turned out that scene was shown in reverse for the trailer, she was actually the last person to rise, and the villains are all too stupid to notice her hesitation. Because, y’know, why write the protagonist showing some cunning when you can just deceptively edit the trailer? Good work, marketing team, you successfully tricked me into thinking you were making something interesting.

Then the scene with Vader. Let’s assume it wasn’t just a cheap move made to stick him in the trailer. Vader will kill people for annoying him, and he mutilated several inquisitors as part of their training. It didn’t take much for him to kill Trilla, Iskat, and Tualon. He has personal reasons to hate Barriss, but expresses nothing. His goal could be to make her suffer as his servant, but again, he frequently brutalizes subordinates yet does nothing to her. Even if he really doesn’t care about the events of the Sabotage Arc, shaky loyalty would not be tolerated. He could put Barriss in a torture chamber to take his frustrations out on rather than give her any opportunity to escape. There’s hardly even a meaningful look, like he’s got anything in mind for her. This being shortly post-RotS, maybe he’s so burned out over recent events he doesn’t really care about Barriss, but him being too tired to pay attention undercuts the menace. Maybe Palpatine ordered him to leave Barriss be, but nothing implies that, and at this point I’m doing the writers’ job for them. Vader’s involvement doesn’t work, and Inquisitor Barriss doesn’t work by extension. IIRC Pablo Hidalgo pointed out this problem years ago, and he was right. Vader is just an evil cardboard cutout for Barriss to kneel to, and that could be a good moment showing how out of her depth she feels, except it doesn’t make use of his character and their history. This is little better than other pointless Glup Shitto cameos.

My personal fix would be giving Vader a single line implying he’s leaving Barriss alone because he wants her to try escaping so he gets the satisfaction of hunting her down. He could maim Marrok and that nameless inquisitor to make a point, but he wants Barriss in top shape for a good chase. Perhaps Barriss could infer his identity based on his wording, a suggestion he already chased her down once before and she won’t survive the second time. Ratchet up the terror Barriss feels, the danger she’s in, the enmity between them, the challenge of how to escape knowing Vader is watching and waiting. Barriss isn’t only under the same pressure as the other inquisitors, Vader is looking for an excuse to kill her and is savoring her misery. Lyn is a fine antagonist, but Vader is the one Barriss is forced to kneel to. Vader is the obstacle she needs to overcome to free herself. Seeing the Empire’s infamous top enforcer getting outsmarted by the girl he thought he’d trapped and broken would’ve hit so much harder. Getting Lyn to leave Vader’s service is a solid victory, but it’s not the same magnitude and it's possible to combine both events anyway. Using his character could’ve made Barriss’s struggle and triumph even greater.

Another option is to forego Vader entirely and focus on the Grand Inquisitor, because Barriss’s interaction with Quizzy didn’t amount to much. There’s no mention of Luminara and whether Quizzy captured and/or killed her yet, nor does he reveal that he was present for and motivated by Barriss’s confession. Like, maybe that green lightsaber Barriss used could’ve been Luminara’s. Let her grapple with the implications. Fans who know about Quizzy’s past can dig under the surface, such as how he encourages Barriss as sincerely as his smug personality permits, but to this day we only know he was one of those four temple guards because of BTS or supplementary info. There’s been nothing on-screen about it, most viewers don’t know, this was the opportunity to explore that connection, but it doesn’t happen. The training scene was fine. Everything was just fine.

A sticking point for me is her helmet, because that could’ve meant something much juicier. Barriss’s inquisitor helmet strongly resembles the one she stole from Ventress and wore while attacking Ahsoka. I’m not sure if this is purely a choice by the animators, or if it’s supposed to imply one of the villains (most likely Lyn) intentionally made the helmet look like that. If the inquisitors designed the helmet to remind Barriss of her crimes, it reinforces how they don’t understand her at all. They present her the helmet to make her one of them, but it’s a glaring reminder she isn’t. Service to imperialism isn’t what the original helmet represented. Barriss’s disguise was that of a dangerous renegade aware of the Republic’s impending fall, and the inquisitors don’t get that about her. That helmet doesn’t just remind Barriss of her attack on the Jedi and how she hurt Ahsoka, it reminds her that she knew the Empire was coming, wants to kill it, and can fight back independently. Giving her the helmet could’ve backfired on the inquisitors spectacularly.

What I found interesting about Barriss is she’s highly intelligent and recognized the unwinnable situation of the Clone Wars, then her reaction was inventive and volatile. She’s right about everything and handles it terribly. TotE Barriss is kinda dumb, especially in her second episode. She went with Lyn on a mission to kill a Jedi, witnessed her partner commit a massacre, then tried to convince the target Jedi to come with her back to the inquisitors despite what she knows about the organization, and only took down Lyn at the last moment. I watched her throughout the episode hoping her comments to Lyn were probing for information, waiting for an opening, but they weren’t. There is no defection plan, she’s genuinely operating as an inquisitor and wants to take a Jedi back alive to people whom she knows murdered at least one of her peers and forced her into a deathmatch with another.

At this point, Barriss is mentally unwell in many ways due to child soldier war trauma and probably serious brain damage, plus the year in solitary confinement couldn’t have helped, but I always thought her issues manifested as doubt and contempt for any authority. Her behavior can’t all be written off as “she’s crazy and irrational”, there are patterns there. After the bombing, she was dismissed by the Jedi Council as a “Separatist terrorist”, and that shows how little people understand her. Jedi, Sith, Republic, Separatists, Empire, rightly or not, Barriss resents them all for ruining her life. Trust is overrated. Eventually deserting fits with her previously putting on an appearance of loyalty until her doubts break through, but it would’ve been interesting to see her evolve further after that side of her already emerged during the Sabotage Arc. Sincerely giving the Inquisitorius a chance makes her look like an idiot compared with her previous appearance. It’s not the worst direction to write her, but it’s so much less than she’s capable of. Maybe Barriss just wasn’t as cunning of a character as I imagined her to be.

The broader problem with TotE is that, despite focusing on Barriss, it killed the remaining interest in her, and there wasn’t much left. After TCW Season 5, the one big question about Barriss was what happened to her after RotS, and many people vilified her enough to not care at all, or assumed she was executed before or during Order 66. After eleven years of fading relevance broken up by occasional theory clickbait, TotE answered the question adequately and left little room to explore her further. Her time between deserting imperial service and being found by Lyn is implied to be uneventful. Barriss says, “I saw amazing things, traveled the stars with my master. But that was long ago,” the corollary being she hasn’t been traveling and hasn’t seen amazing things since being a Jedi, nothing worth showing in a future story. She spent at least a decade in hiding without being seen by the inquisitors, including a long period in that tundra working as a healer.

This was the best opportunity to show Barriss and Ahsoka finding each other. It was skipped over. The small hint of what happened off-screen doesn’t tease intrigue, and apparently the writers consider Ahsoka and Barriss reconciling to be less interesting than what happened in the third episode. Instead she gets to interact with such fascinating characters as Unnamed Jedi, Unnamed Attendant #1, and Unnamed Attendant #2. Then Barriss gets stabbed through the chest and could easily be presumed dead by fans and future writers even though being impaled in Star Wars has become inconsequential. The resolution was so basic, yet filled in so much of the timeline, people aren’t clamoring for more stories and space wasn’t left to fit more in. I’ve thought of ways, but TotE put in unnecessary restrictions which make it tougher.

It was eleven years since Barriss’s story progressed. All of TCW’s other dangling plot threads got dealt with during that time, Barriss is the bottom of the barrel. There is currently no reason to believe she will appear again. I’d like to think Barriss could reappear in Ahsoka Season 2, which probably won’t be until 2026, and I’ve seen a couple people suggest TotE was providing background for that purpose. The problem is that Barriss wasn’t even hinted at in Ahsoka S1 to build up awareness, even when it would make contextual sense for Ahsoka to mention her. If she does show up, it’s an obnoxious writing choice to foreshadow a character in a completely different series and medium with a much, much smaller audience. You might be wondering, “How much smaller?”

That much smaller. Before anyone says anything, I did try variations like including Ahsoka and Barriss's last names, that made it worse. TotE couldn’t even keep Barriss at half of Ahsoka’s baseline popularity for a week before she fell back down to nothing. Google Trends isn’t a perfect measurement tool, but it’s useful for seeing how TotE is mostly forgotten and continues declining. Then keep in mind Barriss was only half the TotE story. What little interest remained after the first few weeks was drowned out by The Acolyte, which maintained >100x more attention even after the usual post-premiere drop, and even that wasn't enough to save it from cancellation. It probably won’t make anyone at Lucasfilm think Barriss is worth revisiting. I remember people saw the TotE trailer and said stuff like, “We are so back!” First of all, I never left, and second, no we fucking aren’t. I wish we were, but we aren't.

TotE is irrelevant now. In my experience, tumblr is the most Barriss-friendly social media site, and almost nobody here is still enthusiastic about TotE. There was an uptick in Barriss posts when it premiered, but that died quickly, TotE posts showed mixed reactions, and few of the recent Barriss posts are about TotE. Nobody new got invested, 80% of her tag is the same dozen-or-so diehard Barriss fans who've been here for years, myself included. Reddit has next to nothing and one time I checked, the first post to show up specifically questioned why nobody was talking about TotE, followed by several critical posts. The subreddit r/talesoftheempire was created on the same day the trailer dropped, when interest was highest. It has 16 members. There might be stuff happening over on Twitter but I’m not making an account to check because why would I make myself suffer like that? Even on my favorite totally legal website for watching shows, the Barriss episodes have no ratings because nobody watched them, and my second-favorite site doesn’t have the show at all.

Fanart is a troubling indicator. Very little recent fanart shows Barriss as she was in TotE, people stick with her Jedi look. I didn’t keep a tally, but I think people drew more TotE fanart between the trailer and the premiere than they have since the show debuted. Barriss’s final outfit, which depicts her at what should be the climax of her character arc, has been drawn by only two people. For a little perspective, I write a Barriss-centric fanfiction series with a couple hundred subscribers, and five people have made art of my Barriss. Even factoring in how long I’ve been writing, that ain’t good. On @barrissday, a niche fan event specifically about celebrating Barriss, there was almost nothing TotE-related. Lately, there’s been more artwork of her decades-old Legends appearances than a recent animated series starring her.

Sure, I was proven mostly correct in my reading of Barriss’s character and I’m still writing stories about her, but I didn’t want to be doing that for a diminishing audience. Being proven right doesn’t matter to me if other people don’t become invested in Barriss’s character or even find her worth talking about. I wanted her to become popular and loved and interesting. The show was so unimpactful it took months for me to build up enough motivation to explain how unimpactful it was.

Star Wars would be so good if it was good.

[rainbowsaber]

Been rewatching TOTE *inquisitor brainrot setting in hard* and I have some thoughts on Barriss's induction into the inquisitorious and how it relates to the larger group

To be honest, I think that she was always "supposed" to win her duel and join their order and that the entire episode of Devoted was a set-up. Dante and Ahmar were potential candidates sure, but I don’t think the Grand Inquisitor or Palpatine expected them to win

We know that Palpatine actively sought out Jedi that were pushing back against the order as potential candidates for the inquisitorious, even saving them from Order-66 (Iskat)

The Grand Inquisitor was at her trial and commented that she "might not be as powerful as they thought"

She might have been the only Jedi to protest the war in such an open way, and, despite her efforts she definitely tapped into the darkside. Letting it pretty consume herself. I believe this resonated deeply with a certain temple guard who had already been feeling some uneasiness within the order

Now I think that the other 2 also fit into this mold, however they didn't seem has experienced or prepared

It’s interesting to note that the three of them knew each other and Dante had been friends with Barriss.

I’m going to guess that these 2 where young Jedi that had voiced problems with the order and where spared, but didn’t have the strength or notoriety that Barriss had.

The grand Inquisitor himself was the one to train Barriss, the same way he did Iskat while Lyn (a lower ranked inquisitor) was tasked with the less important job of training Dante.

If I had to guess it was a trial by fire, if Barriss won then everything went as planned and if not well then they have a strong new initiate into their order

Barriss proved herself and they already had a uniform at the ready for her once she was finished.

Now- we can assume that they might have had uniforms ready for the other 2 as well, however, I think they had their bets on Barriss since the Clone Wars

It wouldn't surprise me if we found out later down the line that she had spoke to Hezzo as well. Similar to Iskat.

Plus- I like the idea that Marrok was one of the first recruits and that the Eighth brother may not have been expected to survive his initiation

Hence his armor being "rushed" and looking so close to a previous design. They didn’t think he would win and this could be shown in his fighting style. Choosing to flee over stand his ground

The Empires mistake was thinking that Barriss was like them

That she fell to the darkside due to her hate/anger. Barriss made mistakes and tapped into the darkside but it was out of protest for the war and the trauma she faced. She was left in a cell to reflect and grieve.

The moment it came to actually fighting a fellow Jedi, she faltered

I honestly just love the inquisitors and I hope that we get more material following how they where as Jedi and the interactions between them

The day I get to see Iskat & Tualon in animation/live-action I'm going feral lol

[phantom-wolf]

Might I propose a discussion about the timeline:

Good now that I have your attention I wanted to discuss and hear people's opinions on it. What do you think the timeline is for when Fortress Inquisitorius was built?

We know Iskat was recruited by the Empire during Order 66. From then on she spent weeks or months in a cell (As far as I'm aware the book doesn't specifify a time frame). We know that the reason that the Fortress was built was because her and Tualon ended up causing damage to Coruscant trying to escape Vader. She seemed to be with the Empire and Inquisitors for a decent amount of time at the point in which she died.

Seems very cut and dry right?

Well maybe? But we also know Fallen Order takes place 5 years after Order 66. The Fortress is built by then so it must've been built some time after Order 66 and before Fallen Order.

However, we see when Trilla is captured. During that time Cere and the youngling she was with (plus Trilla herself) seem to be wearing their Jedi apparel. That paired with the fact that they're being hunted make it seem like that happens during Order 66. Unless I'm wrong about this and they were captured a few weeks/ months after the order? Maybe they had been stuck on the mission planet with no way to escape and had just been hiding from the Clones for a while?

Regardless Cere is held at the Fortress. I'm not sure how the Fortress would have been built by the time Cere and Trilla were captured if it took Iskat a bit to even become a full blown Inquisitor.

Perhaps Iskat was only held for a few days in a cell and it seemed like longer to her? Then everything else happened pretty quickly?

Maybe its just a continuity error? Or maybe I'm overthinking it. Thoughts?

[jewishcissiekj]

reading Rise of the Red Blade and do Iskat and Tualon have a shipname? love em and I want to know

[inquisitorius-sin-bin]

Inquisitorius Draw-A-Thon Day 12: Tualon Yaluna

Back from break, and ready to power through our remaining Inquisitors this week!

[archfey-edda]

Imperial puppet.

Still a WIP. I just liked the look of Iskat alone - now time to draw Tualon.

[wookieejamcrew]

forgot to post these over here! from the dk pocket dark side book. no huge revelations but some of note: seventh, ninth, and fourth are specified to have escaped or survived order 66 and then fell to the dark side. the grand inquisitor was one palpy's easiest marks. for some reason only seventh and reva are specified to have trained under yoda (despite at one point or another everyone has). unfortunately no mention of iskat or tualon, but it's now officially one month until rotrb's release!

[nerdyornothing]

I've been reading several other peoples reviews on Star Wars Inqusitor: Rise of the Red Blade, and I can definitely say there are certain points that I had a very different perspective of then some of them. As a bit of background on me, I am a queer neurodivergent person who grew up in a cult (christian fundamentalist type), so hopefully that explains some things. I can empathize with Iskat's anger, and I have an intimate knowledge of how hard it is when you feel like you're inherently broken and no one seems to care. I felt rage when she admitted this to the Jedi master and his reply was essentially you're not broken; you just need to try harder. I have been the child who hid and broke off pieces of themselves to fit in a mold that they were never meant to. The Jedi Order was messed up they tried to create black and white in a world of greys, and Iskat's story shows how it did damage. They weren't as bad as the sith, but they weren't good either. Both systems are inherently flawed. This book did a wonderful job of highlighting that. I wish Iskat could have found healing in the end or at least moved past the anger stage of grief, but that wasn't meant to be. I would love another book on Tualon and his journey from Jedi to Inqusitor as a companion. One final thing I'd like to highlight is that Iskat endured emotional neglect(at the least) and dealt with many of the same situations that cult members do, especially since she was indoctrinated from childhood keeping this in mind. It has been proven that abuse survivors (religious,emotional,domestic, etc.) will often seek out similar situations because they are familiar and "comfortable." (I am saying this as an abuse survivor) so her switch to the dark side makes sense on that level as well. She is a terrible person who enjoys being cruel and shows what can happen if you use trauma as a free pass to hurt others. Sorry for the long post. (No one's going to read this, so why am I apologizing?(probably trauma response(should I text my therapist..... probably)))

[ct-hardcase]

In terms of Inquisitor stories I'm hoping that we potentially get someday, I'm looking forward to seeing how the Seventh Sister and Fifth Brother's dynamic got established. While we don't know much about them as a duo before rebels, it's been established that if they're in the same room, they're near each other (be it fighting or just in each other's presence), and they also hate the other's guts. We also know, based on their sparring together in Vader (2017) and their appearance in Rise of the Red Blade (also sparring together and/or Seventh heckling Fifth while around Iskat) that they've been at it since 19BBY and kept it up until 3BBY, which, especially considering the backstabby nature of the inquisitorius, is a long time!

I do ship them, so clearly my questions about/view of them has a bit of a romantic and/or sexual tinge to it, but even completely in the context of a platonic relationship, the question of why those two gravitate to each other fascinates me, given everything else we know about them as characters and how they interact with the other inquisitors.

There's quite a bit of evidence for this on Fifth's end—he doesn't take shit from Reva or Iskat, and the only inquisitor he shows true fealty/respect to is the Grand Inquisitor. Seventh, whether or not you take stock in the numerical rank system, doesn't outrank him, and she'll also openly confront him, so there are similarities among her, Reva, and Iskat in that none of the three of them are doormats. Notably, one could also assume Fifth's attitude skews a bit misogynistic, as he doesn't seem to have the same issues with Eighth or Tualon based on what little we get of those dynamics, but that's a different post.

We've gotten less of Seventh's dynamic with a variety of inquisitors given her comparative lack of content compared to him (not that I'm bitter), but she's clearly headstrong, smart, cruel, and isn't afraid to push others under the bus in order to gain the upper hand in a situation for revenge. Given all this, it's notable that despite their arguing, she consistently works with Fifth and spars with him (which, even Iskat notes that sparring with Seventh is sort of terrifying). Clearly, Seventh's willing to put up with him as much as he's willing to put up with her. Since she isn't that different from Reva and Iskat, all things considered, what was The Thing that did makes Seventh and Fifth tolerate, and even gravitate toward, each other?

Obviously, I have my own ideas for why (up to and including "they want to jump each other's bones about it"), but in terms of guessing what canon may do? I'd estimate that when the two first meet (and they're probably among the earliest to do so/the earlier initiates), Seventh takes Fifth's surliness less personally than the other inquisitors and makes it more into banter, keeps pushing him back. This pisses him off, but the fact that she doesn't back down draws him in, both as a rival and otherwise. Given the fact that he's dyed-in-the-wool committed to the inquisitor cause and less fazed about evildoing, her propensity for cruel and unusual violence may not bother him as much as it would the others. The two of them coming as a set may be process of elimination as much as it is being drawn to the other, honestly.

This bit also didn't really fit anywhere else, but what cements their dynamic as different to me is something I noticed while watching Rebels, where despite the fact that Seventh almost always takes point on missions (and in notable contrast to owk, he usually lets her), the two have what seems to be an unspoken agreement that Fifth is the one interacting with imperial leadership and Vader. By the end, they clearly know each other, even through pointed barbs.