And once again I have written a spin-off from the book series "New Jedi Order". Again, it's become an AU and a denial fanfiction, so characters who normally die stay alive. I won't reveal what these are at this point for those who want to read the original book series largely without spoilers. In contrast to my first fan fiction of this type, "Im Auftrag der Götter - Priester Harrar im Einsatz", I have now finally finished reading the NJO book series; so nothing could surprise me anymore, be it something different or something happening that I had alluded to in my story, just as it had happened in Pellaeon Chapter 15 of the Harrar story.

While the deviation from the original series in the Harrar story begins from volume 10 of the book series "Dark Journey" by Elaine Cunningham (2001), it begins a little later in this story, from volume 12 "Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand" by Aaron Allston (2002) - namely, by saving a character who would otherwise die. The pairing in this story is only hinted at, if at all, in the book series, but there were at least enough lines to set the plot bunny carousel in motion in my head. First of all, there is the memorable final scene from volume 5 "Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse" by James Luceno (2000), where Nom Anor and Viqi Shesh meet for the first time. I embellished this scene into the ball scene that introduces the actual story in Chapter 1 after the prologue that was added later.

This encounter is not the only time, if Troy Denning is to be believed in Vol. 9 "Star By Star" (2001). These are the lines from Denning's novel in which Tsavong Lah and Nom Anor speak to Viqi Shesh via Villip and it says the following:

The villip had assumed the visage of a human female with high cheeks and sharp features. Nom Anor's annoyance immediately vanished, for he knew the woman well. He had been the one who turned her to the Yuuzhan Vong cause.

…

Tsavong Lah was already returning to the villip. "Viqi, I have an old friend of yours here."

"Really?" Shesh replied. … "Who's there?"

"I am certain you recall Pedric Cuf," Tsavong Lah said, using the alias by which Shesh knew Nom Anor.

The smile that came to the villip's lips was less than sincere, for Viqi had seized the first opportunity to bypass Nom Anor and offer her sendees directly to the warmaster. "What a delight."

No, it wasn't joy for Nom Anor. By then I had already lost sight of the first meeting between the two, but after this scene it was clear to me that something must have happened, or just nothing, or not enough. And that's why I wanted to follow up with this story.

The pairing Nom Anor/Viqi Shesh, hereinafter referred to as Nomiqi, is not necessarily an antagonistic pairing as I usually use it and as we now know it from Ep. VIII and IX of the last film trilogy. Both belong to different species, but are otherwise on the same side and have a similar background - both politicians and both with a lot of intelligence experience, even if Viqi's isn't necessarily a first job like Nom Anor's. They also fit together well in terms of age, and if Tsavong Lah hadn't come along, the relationship might have developed more intensely than it ultimately did in the book series.

In contrast to the Harrar story, the duration of the war is not shortened compared to the book series due to the changed storylines, but the events that take place in the book series are reweighted in that they were caused by other circumstances or had other causes. For example, the events on Ebaq9 that are discussed in Chapter 3 also took place in the book series, but Nom Anor's intention there was completely different than in my story, which means that the whole thing can seem a little more humorous here. In general, it was important to me to portray Nom Anor's actions as nefarious and devious at first glance and, moreover, to leave it in the dark for as long as possible how serious he really is about defecting or loyal work for the superiors of his people or for the shamed is - at least I hope that I succeeded in this balancing act. I like this Snape-like dynamic of appearing dark and inscrutable, if not evil, at first, and then later coming out on the right side.

Since I like to rhyme quite a bit, it was also very fitting for me in the original fairy tale that the recurring rhyme where the princess complains about her fate provided a common thread that I was able to pick up on here, especially since Onimi is also a good antagonist , who is more than good at answering with rhymes.

In general, the fairy tale. In the beginning, no man is good enough for the princess, and Viqi Shesh is also very selective in the book series and the playmates who are mentioned there don't play a big role as characters. As I read the series, I found more and more that Nom Anor suits Viqi far better than Tsavong Lah, but what does true love care about such assessments or even predictions? There were a few constellations in the book series where I would have liked a meeting and reunion with or between characters - preferably after a long time, which unfortunately didn't happen - also an impetus for spin-off stories. Nomiqi is such a character relationship that deserves more space. But there were also a lot of book scenes that were cut before the volumes were published, and I strongly suspect that this particularly affected the Yuuzhan Vong scenes - so many loose ends that I noticed.

The priest Harrar once again makes a strong appearance in this story, which is mainly due to James Luceno's conception of this character of his - Harrar is simply the good soul of the Yuuzhan Vong who is there when there is a need - he is the man whose gut feeling and tact can unravel certain knots with verve and esprit. Here he shares this role with Nom Anor, even though in Chapter 16 the priest is the pivotal point on which everything stands or falls. While in the story named after him it was Harrar who initiated Tsavong Lah's change in the first place, in this story it is Viqi Shesh who causes Nom Anor to rethink his previous actions and his goals in chapter 3 (A new one Hope). From this point on, the original version of the story, which I initially published as a chapter in my collection "Yuuzhan Vong-Shots", moves very quickly towards the end. Shortly after Nom Anor Viqi reveals himself in all his identities, Zonama Sekot comes into Coruscant's orbit and the war is surprisingly over - in the fifth and final chapter section of the original oneshot. This gap annoyed me for months, if not years, but I simply had no reasonable idea of how to fill it without going beyond the scope of the original fairy tale.

To overcome a creativity snag elsewhere, I decided at the beginning of this year to translate a German oneshot of mine into English and upload it here. It seemed short enough to me that I could complete this project relatively quickly with my knowledge of English plus an automatic translation program like Google Translate. So for this purpose I divided the five chapter sections of the original oneshot into independent chapters and got started. I was amazed when I realized how much better Google Translate had become. In the past, it didn't make a difference to me in terms of time whether I translated myself using a dictionary or with Google Translate - I had to correct so many things afterwards with the latter. This year, at the beginning of my translation work, almost all of the sentences were reproduced grammatically correctly by Google Translate - I mainly had to add subject-specific terms. In the meantime, I learned a lot of new words and also saved myself a lot of work typing and looking things up.

At some point during the translation of Chapter 5, I decided to include the shaper Nen Yim, who initially shouldn't be included in the story at all, lest to compete with Viqi as a partner for Nom Anor, into the character set - with profound consequences. First of all, this personnel expansion meant that Chapter 4 about Yu'shaa's journey to Zonama Sekot, which was criminally briefly discussed in Chapters 3 and 5, was completely newly written and inserted into the story. This chapter was later followed by other Zonama Sekot episodes; and with that the knot for a comprehensible story ending without gaps was finally detangled, because from this fourth chapter on the further plot thread beyond the original chapter 5 arose as if by itself, exactly how Nom Anor and his allies did it to overthrow Shimrra and bring peace to the galaxy. Then Nom Anor should reunite with Viqi and that should actually be the end of the story - with Chapter 18.

At this point the story had already expanded to more than three times its original size, but when I proofread Chapter 18, I found it so silly, cloying and shallow with the announcement of peace and the reunion of our main couple... It is so that my favorite spy alienated and linked all sorts of people during his masterful plan - several sins that I, as the author, didn't want to let him get away with so easily. I may have exaggerated it a bit, but the material for another eight chapters was born - and I also think these chapters are good because, for example, Princess Leia (clicked on in the register of people) and the head of state Cal Omas also get good appearances, where they are allowed to shine – or not. Nom Anor was given a new goal - you grow with your tasks - and is in a much better position at the new and final end of the story than I gave him credit for at the end of Chapter 18. This means that the volume of the story has more than quintupled in terms of chapters.

The word count difference is even more extreme. While the original story had a word count of 5,518, the length has increased more than thirteenfold since the revision began! This is not only because of the expansion of the story arc itself, but also because even within the rough concept, new ideas for main and supporting characters kept creeping into the story when it was finally formulated and rectified. The Yevethans, for example, only joined shortly before the goal closed.

Then I mentioned the Centerpoint Station so often in the story that at some point I felt the irrepressible urge to add the current prologue to the story in order to vividly show the readers how this monster actually works, instead of telling the reader again and again something about an abstraction that you either have to know per se - or you will remain unhappy with the gap in knowledge and emotions all your life until you have read the book series finally. I've already discovered such gaps in other spin-off stories and I wanted to avoid them here as much as possible - in a spin-off from a fairly gigantic original work, where you have to think more than once about what should be included and what can be left out. Then – due to the growing volume of the last chapter by inserting some more events, dialogues and descriptions – I divided it into two, the last story expansion – and the final amount of 27 chapters was reached.

And so actually all of my favorite characters from "Heir of the Jedi" not only got a good ending, but also a reasonably challenging pairing. I am very happy to have started the translation - and it will probably not be the last of its kind.

See you soon or somewhere else

Your Sudooku :)