Chapter 1:
My name is Echobe, and I am a Wookiee.
It was several years after my coming of age when my home world got trapped between our enemies the Trandoshans, and the newly emerged Empire. The war engulfed the entire galaxy. The Galactic Empire came to be from the self-immolation of the Republic, and ruled by a human named Palpatine who had been given the powers of Emperor effectively destroying the Republic with the bludgeon of galactic emergency.
While the ashes of the Old Republic smoldered, the Empire shutdown open society beginning with the extermination of the so-called Jedi threat, and continuing on to the undermining of the Senate, and then the Wookiee people with the influence of the Trandoshans who have long been our enemies.
Kashyyyk was blockaded, bombarded, and harvested for its resources including the Wookiee people for slave labor. The Empire, and the Trandoshans, hand-in-hand, slashed and burned our world and lives, ruined out lands, destroyed countless families, and with the help of the Empire, the Trandoshans set out to conquer us. The Empire soon took the reigns of our enslavement and extermination away from the Trandoshans while leaving the remnants of our society free to be plundered.
I am the son of former Republic Senators. Former for one, because there was really no Senate after Palpatine came into power, and two because my parents disappeared shortly after the dissolution of the Senate. At the fall of the Republic, more specifically, at the dissolution of the Senate, my Mother and Father disappeared while on Coruscant. Rumors circulated after my parents' disappearance - along with the disappearances of many other members of the Senate, their staff, and other political enemies of the Empire - that they were imprisoned. I heard further rumors that they were killed as part of federalized exterminations, or that they never made it to Coruscant, that pirates had taken them. The one thing that was true is that all trace of their existence vanished after they left me on Kashyyyk. The blockade was implemented shortly after, making it impossible for anyone to investigate.
Without any remaining family, the remainder having been killed in the bombing raid my grandfather and cousin, I was put upon another family at the request of a once respected Wookiee Elder named Ulchewbuk who I looked upon as the only father I had. Ulchewbuk's reputation eroded during the occupation and he was seen as a troublemaker, an Imperial instigator.
Ulchewbuk, The Elder, never supported what had happened with the Senate on Coruscant. He looked upon Palpatine as the dictator he truly was, and Ulchewbuk refused to accept the official explanation of the disappearance of my Mother and Father who were his dearest friends. The opposition he faced from the Empire, and from his own people who were cowered by Imperial proclamation, only solidified Ulchewbuk's judgment that Palpatine was corrupt and that war would soon be upon the Wookiee people once again. The Elder was ignored, and many Wookiee leaders throughout Kashyyyk became complacent, relying on public opinion and the voices in the Senate to keep the Wookiee people safe. Needless to say, all of our pillars of hope were crushed, and we were quickly marginalized and drowned out by the rising tide of war under the guise of threats to galactic security.
However, The Elder, Ulchewbuk, still commanded some respect among the Wookiees. Though the family that The Elder had placed me with had little love for me, it was still a home, and shelter. My foster parents' minds and hearts were full of fear and anger at what was happening to our world. With the deaths of their own family still fresh in their memory they had no desire for a child being put upon them at such a time, but take me in they did during the occupation at the behest of The Elder. I respected my foster Mother and Father for that, but there was an unexplainable disconnect between my kin and me, there always was.
I used to shut myself away from the ongoing war and from other Wookiee's suffering partly because I was not liked very much by my own people. My true Mother and Father's, and Ulchewbuk's, dissonant attitudes towards the Empire laid the groundwork of disparity between my people and me. Coupled with that, my people saw me almost as a betrayer for walling myself away from the rest of them. They did not openly resent me, but I could see it in their eyes, I could almost hear it in their thoughts. I thought I was going mad, or that the bombs falling over Kashyyyk had damaged my ears making me hear things. My perception at the time had become clouded by the strange feelings and visions I had then begun to experience. Only now do I understand.
The Elder saved me, the only one who did not look upon me with distain. He was the only one who had any compassion for me. I would often visit The Elder at his battle-scarred home, as all the homes were battle-scarred. He was the only other Wookiee I felt comfortable being around. He was my tenuous link to the Wookiee people. The Elder was my teacher. Ulchewbuk instructed me in the dance with the Ryyk Blade, a Wookiee's traditional weapon. The Ryyk Blade that The Elder had taught me how to use belonged to my Mother and Father, and had been handed down the family for generations. The Elder would tell me stories of my parents, of their work in the Senate, which may seem like the most mind-numbingly dull thing you can listen to, but I loved every moment of it. We talked for hours during my daily visits to The Elder's ruined home.
He told me the stories that a Wookiee family Elder did by tradition. Ulchewbuk did his best to fill the void in my life that the abduction of my parents hollowed out. Ulchewbuk taught me things that would have been lost to me, and he did his best to invoke hope that the thing happening around us all would eventually pass as it had many times in our people's long history. The Elder was my only real interaction with my own kind back then. At first I didn't understand why The Elder did not take me in as his family, I was even a little hurt by it. I found out the truth behind that later on.
As I said, I was a recluse, and as you also know, it was years after my coming of age that about the same time things fell apart for the Republic and the rest of us. It was during that same time I found that I had the uncanny ability of communicating with animals as well as a connection to my surroundings.
Let me try and explain.
When the bombing raids first began, I would become almost ill, my head would feel about ready to burst, I credited it to stress, or to sensory overload, but it was something else. My first true discovery of my abilities happened while on one my many ventures away from home to stay out of eye's reach of my foster family, or anyone else. I would often climb to the lower levels of the Wroshyr trees, and there just below the city among the smaller life forms such as bugs and small birds, I started to interact with them. They would climb about on me as if I were a part of the tree, causing me no harm, drawn to me by some unseen power. I explored this ability over time, and graduated myself to bigger and more dangerous creatures. The more curious I became, the lower I climbed, and the more confident I grew in my ability. You should have seen the commotion I caused when I brought home a young kliknick from the lower levels of the forest. Ever since then, I have had a bond with creatures that I never had with my own kind to this day. The creatures even sought me out at times, as if they needed a friendly ear. I was all too happy to be around them as they basked in my presence like a pet would. I treated them as extended family, another reason why other Wookiees looked down on me.
I spent most of my time below the city to get away, which, ironically, only served to reinforce their judgments about me. Below the city was my escape from the reality of the occupation, to shield myself from what my own people were suffering. The guilt over my foolishness and selfishness weighs down on me now. In my detachment, I took little notice of what was really going on around me, doing my best to ignore the screaming in my head. I paid more attention to the creatures I was so fond of, who did not judge me for being strange. I left my people to their fate as I saw it. That was before the Empire bloodied my own hands.
During the beginning of the blockade, the lines of communication between the cities that dotted Kashyyyk dimmed as the blockade strengthened, and they eventually winked out completely. Fewer and fewer travelers from the cities and villages and beyond arrived. Some just vanished, and any news from the outside galaxy ceased to exist as if Kashyyyk had been pulled away from the galaxy altogether. The normal Imperial propaganda didn't even filter to us. Kashyyyk became a black hole. It was then that the Empire began to gather up Wookiees for slave labor, while the Trandoshans took what they wanted of what the Empire didn't lay claim to including slaves. I just wanted to get away. I wanted to find a way off of the planet. I loved my home world, but I was cynical and bitter towards my people and towards my adopted family. I wanted to distance myself from them and the pain, as if they were the cause of what was happening, as if running away would somehow fix everything. I kept my home in the trees beneath the city, and my family the animals. Remaining around the death and the teetering sanity in the city made me feel empty and even more disconnected. I can't blame my people, they were frustrated and caged and had to turn on someone, and so they turned on me.
Anyways, back at the beginning when the Empire was scarce, the Empire instead did some of their dirty work through the complicit Wookiee leaders who made backdoor deals in an attempt to placate our enemies, thinking that we could somehow remain neutral in the war. It wasn't until the start of the Imperial air strikes that I was forced into reality. When a Wookiee child died in my arms, it changed everything for me.
I was making my daily visit to The Elder when an Imperial bombing raid began. A bomb destroyed the home I was standing next to, turning it into fiery splinters and knocking me to the floor. After a few moments of dizziness I heard a Wookiee girl cry out from inside the blaze in her mind with my budding abilities. An unknown force took command over me at that moment and gave me the strength, agility, and the ignorance to pain that allowed me to pull the little girl from the blazing wreckage before the flames had consumed her. Her family burned, or must have been blown apart in the initial blast. There was nothing left of them to save. There was hardly anything left of her once we emerged from the smoke. Almost all the blonde fur on her body had been singed away. Half of her body was pink and raw like a fetus, and the other half was charred and crumpled to my touch as I cradled her. Every part of my being came to a halt. I cried over her as she gasped for air, her face contorted in that vile look of pure agony as my tears fell on her tender skin, but she did not cry. Her green eyes looked at me, hoping I could do something for her. I couldn't.
She wilted in my arms. I stayed there with her lifeless body and watched her house burn down into a heap of glowing, red ash. Wookiees screamed and panicked around me as the raid continued. Bombs and the streaks of blaster-cannon fire tore through sky in a vortex of smoke and light as they descended upon their targets. Bombs tore holes into the groundwork sending many Wookiees to their deaths; many others were blown clear of the cities edge. I couldn't move. I was frozen in that nightmarish assault on my senses as the fireworks of the Empire's invasion celebration exploded around us.
The little girl's blood soaked my fur and quickly dried in the wind and heat, and cracked like dried paint. When the bombing finally stopped, and the once grand Wookiee city was remade into a smoldering, scrap heap of matchsticks, hundreds of Wookiees died that night in our city alone. Many Wookiees who I didn't know were gone, but I cried for them all as if the opposite were true. The life dying around me hurt inside inexplicably, amplified by my growing abilities. I could almost see the life ebb from all the bodies. I felt drained, bloodless. My head ached from their screams echoing in my mind.
The following day was as quiet as the grave the city resembled. There were Wookiees mulling back and forth in a trance, not believing what had just happened the previous night. I had fallen asleep, or lost consciousness rather in front of the little Wookiee girl's burnt-out house. The girl still lay beside me, her head tilted onto her shoulder, he eyes closed like she was sleeping. The grotesque charring of her flesh marred her innocent, childish beauty. Her furless body made her seem like a human child. I laid her body upon the pyre of her home where her family died and set fire to what remained. I help burn a lot of bodies that day. I no longer feared my people, nor was I angry with them. I was attached to their pain. Then, in the darkest of times, it was easy to become one with them.
My foster parents did survive that night. They were shocked to see me come into the house covered in dried blood and black soot. To my surprise they were concerned for me. They had spent the night searching for me among the rubble of the city. I was glad to discover that they didn't hate me, only saw me as an undesired burden, and a painful reminder of what they had lost. I couldn't blame them. Though they protested, I thanked them, and I moved out of what was left of their home that night and made my own home below the city. That's just where I went to sleep, however. When I was awake I helped rebuild and cleanup as much as I could above. That first bombing raid was only the first. We all were trapped in a constant cycle of destroy and rebuild. It was futile now that I look back on it, but there was nothing else for us to do. Other villages throughout the world were in the same situation, or far worse off. Whole populations were wiped from the face of Kashyyyk back then. We often got word from refugees who, by some amazing skill, made it to our city to pass along information in an underground effort, or to look for help that we could no longer provide. Our own efforts to survive were stretched to the limit.
I did have one solace, one foundation. The Wookiee Elder, Ulchewbuk, who had always looked after me as a father. As I said, he was originally the sole opposition to the Empire within the city. He never believed the rhetoric coming from the Senate before the collapse, or from the Wookiee appeasers on Kashyyyk. He was still well respected, but he was a target for his dissent. He was seen as a warmonger, a stubborn old has-been of the Wookiee people, an unwavering, panicky, or confused Elder, unable to accept the terms for peace as required by the new leadership in the Senate. It was after his death that I decided to leave Kashyyyk.