Thrawn was never one to stew over defeats. Besides, as far as defeats go, this one wasn't so bad. Certainly the Lasat survivors had managed to elude him. But the other thing he wanted to know about? Well, his suspicions about the bo-rifle had been confirmed. Kallus had been far too desperate to get it back. And for all his attempts to get under the man's skin, Thrawn knew that Kallus was not a glory-hog or prone to instances of prideful revenge. He was far too pragmatic for that.

No, the bo-rifle was hiding some secret that the Rebels desperately did not want him to learn. They needed to get it back. They needed to stop him from learning it. And that meant that he needed to find it.

Standing in the middle of the ruin that had once been the royal palace of Lasan, Thrawn looked about, studying the various mosaics and frescoes that decorated the walls. They were broken, faded, and fragmented. But as the Stormtroopers brought lights into the dome and set them up, new details began to emerge. At first blush, it looked to be a simple origin myth. There was a great king, standing at the head of a group of soldiers. Each of them held aloft a glowing staff, opening a door in the air onto a path to a distant and abstract world, green and crowded with welcoming trees. The Lasat people were arrayed behind the king and the soldiers, in a long line as if to follow.

Thrawn considered the bo-rifle that he still had grasped in one hand. Thoughtfully, he unfolded it into its close-quarters configuration. The yellow energy that crackled at its ends looked remarkably like the glow on the staves in the mural. But the staves didn't quite look like the bo-rifle.

Looking it over again, he pulled on one of the armatures at one end. He found that it moved, though it was reluctant to do so as if it had not been turned that way for a very long time. The energy at the other end cut out. A second armature also looked like it moved, coming up next to the first, pointing along the length of the weapon's haft and forming something of a trident. The crackling yellow energy flared brightly.

Yes. This was it. This was the staff.

"As the ancients used it," Thrawn mused to himself.

He could feel it. Standing here amid the ancient history of the Lasat people, laid out before him, he was close to the answer.


And done. I hope you all enjoyed. And yes, as is implied, this is only part one. Part two is still in its planning stages, but I'm already super-excited to start working on it.

This is supposed to take place while Kanan, Ezra, and Sabine were working with the Mandalorians. I've always been annoyed that we didn't get to see any of Kallus adjusting to the Rebellion and addressing the issue of the bo-rifle seemed like the best way to go about things.

So, given that a map to Lira San is essentially embedded into every bo-rifle on the off-chance it would be needed some day, it kinda bugs me that they didn't address the fact that Kallus has to leave his behind when he escaped Thrawn. And Thrawn, of all villains, is clever enough to work it out in time. A weapon with that kind of cultural meaning would have piqued his curiosity and he would have looked into it.

I scoured everywhere on the web, but I couldn't find any information on what kind of a planet Lasan was, either before its fall or after. I had to make a guess at it. Since the design for the Lasat species is based on the original McQuarrie designs for Chewbacca, I figured that it had been some sort of an arboreal world, like the Wookies' home planet Kashyyk. The Lasats' prehensile toes and natural climbing ability would seem to back this up. But with the destruction, I imagine there was a lot of - if not complete - deforestation.

I didn't set out to make this part of the trilogy into a Freudian Trio trope, but it sort of ended up that way. Zeb turned out to be the ego, Kallus the super-ego, and Drebbo the id. It's really strange how that worked out. It sort of also corresponds to the roles the three are taking on, according to Lasat tradition, as well. In this case, Zeb is the warrior, Kallus is the fool, and Drebbo is the child. It's almost as if these are the Lasat names for the same idea, in a way. I might have to go rewatch that episode, now.

I don't lean toward Kalluzeb. I just can't see it happening. They are totally a BroTP, though.

Thanks for reading and please remember to tell me what you think! Laters!