A Dusty Duck Sighting!

Anyone who talks to me for any length of time will discover quite quickly that, not only do I love monsters, but I am a huge Star Wars fan. Like any kid growing up in the '80s, there was never a time where Star Wars wasn't a part of my life. Even before I'd ever seen the movies, I knew all about Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, Vader, and the droids. I appreciated Star Wars from afar until, around high school, I learned that everything related to Star Wars--comics, cartoons, movies, games, books--were all connected into a large, decade-spanning tapestry of mythology. It was called the Expanded Universe, and when I learned of its existence, I truly fell in love with Star Wars, as I believed that the whole was greater than its parts. To know that all these stories mattered--that they all existed in some way and reflected each other, that authors who had never met built upon the creative labors of those who came before to create this living, breathing epic canon.

I still get chills, just thinking about it.

Once I learned that, I devoted my efforts to "get in". To tell my own little story within this megamyth, to carve my own niche that other authors could play with and elaborate on and explore. Thanks to God (and the fine folks at Lucasfilm), I got that chance with an online writing contest called "What's the Story", where fans were given the incredible, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a backstory for some minor element glimpsed in the background of one of the (then) six Star Wars movies. After years of effort, I won two rounds. I was a co-contributor for Senator Silya Shessaun, and I was the sole developer of the backstory for a ship seen in a deleted scene for The Phantom Menace that I dubbed the Dusty Duck.

I was in. I had touched that monument and left my mark. I was totally fulfilled, knowing my contribution would stand.

Then Disney came along and acquired the Star Wars brand and their first order of business was to dump the entire Expanded Universe--decades of myth-making--in favor of their own in-house stories.

In a single boardroom decision, everything was gone, including my own humble contributions.

I was devastated. As a fan, and as a writer. I know I'm supposed to be cool and say "Hey, babe, it's all part of the gig". But it wasn't to me.

Well, I have long lamented this Disney buyout (though I enjoyed The Force Awakens), but then something special started to happen. I began to see some of the old Expanded Universe elements creeping back into the official--"no we mean it this time"--Disney canon. Thrawn shows up in the animated series Rebels, and the visual guide to Rogue One was a veritable smorgasbord of references to the old West End Games roleplaying modules. Maybe my Expanded Universe wasn't entirely gone after all. Oh, yes, now it's been re-branded as "Legends"--but the new material has shown time and again that some legends are "real".

Slowly, I began to hope that maybe my own mark on Star Wars might exist in some form. Maybe not as a I originally envisioned them, but maybe they would live on after all. Earlier this year, with the release of Star Wars The Visual Encyclopedia, I learned that Silya Shessaun is still "alive" in this new canon. True, nothing else has been revealed of her origins, and I don't know how much of what we built in What's the Story is "factual" any more, but she's still in there.

The biggest surprise, however, came just a couple weeks ago with the release of the (delightful) children's book, BB-8 On the Run, by Drew Daywalt and Matt Myers. Set in between the early events of The Force Awakens, it chronicles the adventures of BB-8 immediately after he's separated from Poe Dameron and leads up to his rescue by Rey. Over the course of his travels, he helps a stranded droid return to his ship--a scavenger ship piloted by droids, it would seem--and lo, when you turn the page...

It's the Dusty Duck.

She's alive. The old bird's alive. Now: a disclaimer! The ship is not actually named in this book. It is entirely possible that, though I wrote that the Dusty Duck was a one-of-a-kind custom-job, someone could come along and say this was just another ship "like" the Duck. Or maybe it's not "the Duck" at all. Maybe they took the same ship from the deleted scene of Phantom Menace that the Duck was originally intended to be and have given it an entirely new backstory. Which would be, frankly, heartbreaking--a second time.

But maybe--just maybe--it's still her. Maybe it's still the Duck. After all, the story still tracks. In my original entry, the ship's pilot, Aneesa Dym, purchased a handful of droids to repair the ship right before her shocking murder at the hands of Darth Maul. And the story I wrote does say that the droids repaired the bird to perfection. Could it be that, after years of being stranded on Tatooine, the droids finally took the Duck to flight and started their own crew, salvaging parts to keep the ship running and collecting other master-less droids?

I think so. But, that's out of my hands now. But it's a start. And it's enough to hang a hope on.

At any rate, thank you to Drew, Matt, and the Lucasfilm Story Group for dusting off the ole girl and giving her another day in the sun. It's pretty neat to see her in action again (and, hey, she actually flew in this story!) and I can't wait to see what new adventures she'll go on :) Best of all, the day we bought the book, my wife read it to our seven-year-old daughter for her bedtime story, and she could know that our family had a small part in that ship's legacy. That's what it's all about, folks.

My First Step Into a Larger World...

In case you missed it, yesterday was a big day for me. I saw the publication of my very first article for the Official Star Wars Blog. It's entitled "The Not-So Magnificent Seven" and shines the spotlight on seven of the Star Wars' galaxy's less successful bounty hunters (like Greedo over there to the left). Featured in the article is my very own creation--the Dusty Duck and her crew, including hapless hunter Rango Tel (you can read the story behind that here).

For this article, I dug deep in the well of obscurity, discovering gems from the old Marvel Star Wars comics published in the late 70s-early 80s, as well as the anthology Tales of the Bounty Hunters. It was an incredible experience dusting off these old characters that have been forgotten by most and giving them a spit-polish and a chance to shine for a little while longer.

Endnotes: Dusty Duck

Concluding the two-part series of endnotes for my contributions to the Star Wars mythology, today we talk about the Dusty Duck. The following originally appeared on my blog at StarWars.com, but now that the feature has been discontinued, I've edited my endnotes and moved them here. To read Part One of my endnotes about Silya Shessaun, clicky here. 

DUSTY DUCK

Following many setbacks and a seemingly exceptionally long waiting period, the What's the Story feature returned to StarWars.com with the winners of Round 6. Having been very frustrated with the waiting process (and griping quite a bit about it, I'm a bit embarrassed to say :p) I was just happy and relieved to see that an update had been posted at all. When I saw that the first entry was dubbed "Dusty Duck", I looked to my wife and said, "Oh, they used my name for the ship". Imagine my shock when I realized that the judges had, in fact, used my entire entry!

I was really excited to see that 99% of my entry was used, word for word. There was only one "story change", but we'll get to that later.

Here's the breakdown--excerpts are taken from the original Dusty Duck databank entry:

Aneesa Dym was a Pa'lowick born and raised by her smuggler father on Nar Shaddaa.

Although I wasn't the most well-versed guy when it came to the Expanded Universe that encompassed all the games, novels, movies, cartoons, trading cards, comics, etc--I hadn't really heard of a lot of Pa'lowick characters. Pa'lowicks, as you may or may not recall, first appeared in Return of the Jedi in the form of Sy Snootles, a space-y lounge singer for Jabba the Hutt. I can count the number of Pa'lowick characters that exist in Star Wars on one hand--and most of those followed in Sy's footsteps of being singers. I hadn't discovered any Pa'lowicks who were smugglers, so I thought it would be a nice change and break the species stereotype.

Nar Shaddaa originated in the pages of the Dark Empire comics and is a rough place for a kid to grow up--a far cry from the small agricultural community of Lowick (where most of the other Pa'lowicks in the galaxy are born and raised).

She helped him pilot a ship of his own design that he had dubbed the Dusty Duck, named partly for the waterfowl of Naboo and for the ship's penchant for coughing to a halt in space and coming in for a rough landing on many barren worlds. "Duck's not meant for flying," he'd often say. "At least, not for too long."

The idea of naming a ship "Dusty Duck" was hilarious to me. I guess that's just a throwback to pirates having ridiculous names for their ships in movies or something. I wanted a name that was personal and warm and not a typical ship name like "the 85LZ-Whatever". Also, I noticed a trend. There was the Millenium Falcon. The Moldy Crow. The Ebon Hawk. So, I wanted something that had the same structure as these names, just...well, silly. And, since ducks are kind of a running gag throughout anything George Lucas touches, I thought "Eh, why not?" The only problem was coming up with a reason to name a ship after a duck. I came up with this little quote to, not only (hopefully) deliver a laugh, but show that the father loved this ship, despite its flaws, which is a recurring theme in this story...

When Aneesa's father was stabbed in the back by an angry customer, Aneesa became the sole crewer for her late father's gigantic jalopy and scoured the galaxy for the scum that left her an orphan. Her search led her to many backwater planets but time and again her hunt would come up empty.

So the father dies and Aneesa is left with the family business. It's a scary position to be in, but she tries her best. Though...she could use a little help.

Then bounty hunter Rango Tel entered the picture. Tel heroically cornered the murderer of Aneesa's father in a cantina and bested the villain in combat, collecting the bounty. With this act of bravery, Tel stole the heart of Aneesa Dym. She offered him her piloting skills and the Dusty Duck and, together, the duo set off across the galaxy in search of Tel's next bounty, Kam Nale.

When I decided on the silly name for this ship, I knew I had to have something equally silly to go along with it. Enter: Rango Tel. Many Whatsthestoryists try to tie into each other's creations, building a mythos within a mythos, as it were, and I'm certainly no different. Rango Tel was actually one of the earliest entries picked for What's the Story and was instantly likeable. The tale of the bounty hunter wannabe was personable, funny, but ultimately tragic and I remember his creator Aaron Sinner upset that he had created this great character but killed him off his first time out, thereby ending any hope he had of any further EU adventures.

Well, this one was for you, Aaron.

I talked about the theme of this entry before and here's where it really kicks in:

Everybody needs somebody. No matter how much of a dork you really are, you need a friend who will love you in spite of that. Luckily, I have an amazing wife, two beautiful daughters, and great, loyal friends who all love and support me, despite my craziness. Rango Tel was a bumbling kid who got a lucky shot and had ill-fated delusions of grandeur because of it. However, to Aneesa, he was brave. To her, he was a hero. As you can guess, the "villain he bested in combat" in this entry is the same guy he "inadvertently score[d] a bounty on" in Aaron's original entry. I saw Aaron's entry as the true version of the facts, but wanted to write my entry through Aneesa's rose-colored view of this man who avenged her father (however accidentally), which accounts for Rango sounding a lot tougher in this entry than he really, probably, was.

Rango and Aneesa are kind of in the same boat. They're both young and lost, looking for something to do with their lives. Now, they've found each other and have decided to take that journey together. So, Rango's got a faithful friend who adores him and a rickety ship, ready to begin his life as a "daring" bounty hunter.

Their search led them to Tatooine. Aneesa drop-landed the Duck just outside Mos Espa and waited onboard for her valiant defender to collect the head of Nale, as her newly purchased DUM pit droids tended to much-needed repairs on the ship.

However, while Tel was away, an image of the Dusty Duck was captured in the dying camera eye of a Sith probe droid destroyed by a fleeing Qui-Gon Jinn and Anakin Skywalker. Darth Maul, the probe's owner, followed the trail to the Dusty Duck and boarded, demanding a very startled Aneesa to tell him where the Jedi was. A confused Aneesa had no answer for the fierce Sith Lord.

This is where we get to the Dusty Duck's appearance in The Phantom Menace deleted scene. Rango Tel heads out for his big job (from which he'll never return) and Aneesa stays behind to watch the ship.

I love Darth Maul. I think he's one of the most underused baddies in all of Star Wars, so racking up one more kill for him was a great thrill for me. In the deleted scene, Qui-Gon strikes down the probe droid following he and Anakin back to the Queen's ship. Darth Maul only sees them fleeing and thinks they are headed for the Dusty Duck, which accounts for why he's a bit behind the duo and almost misses his opportunity to make a good first impression when we see him in the movie.

This is also the only part of my story that was actually changed. Originally, Maul enters the ship and demands to know where "the boy" is, meaning Anakin. Aneesa thinks he's referring to her friend - the brave and dangerous bounty hunter - and refuses to give up that information in order to protect Rango. Maul cuts her down for her insolence. The changes were made and, yeah, Aneesa might not have gotten her heroic death but I can see that my claiming Maul was really on Tatooine looking for Anakin was overstepping my boundaries so I can live with the decision to change it to Maul just looking for "the Jedi" (though, now that I think of it, I think I nicked that idea from the New Essential Guide to Chronology written by Dan Wallace to begin with).

Darth Maul cut her down. The Duck remained abandoned and became the talk of local ghost stories. The pit droids remained, operating on their last command and rebuilding the ship to perfection. However, sadly, it never flew again.

It's a sad ending. But Rango got a sad ending, too, so it's sort of poetic, if not grim. I actually thought it might be harder for Aneesa to have lived without Rango, so, in the end, their friendship was not broken. They entered death together.

Having the Duck being a local ghost story is a real treat for me, as a horror writer and fan. I love a good urban legend and being able to add one to the Star Wars galaxy was pretty cool. I can almost hear all the little Tatooine kids daring each other to sneak up and touch the underside of the Dusty Duck.

Most recently, the Duck popped up in Ryder Windham's outstanding The Wrath of Darth Maul book. Will we see the old bird again one day? I hope so. For now, I did write up a completely UN-official short story for the Star Wars Outsider fanzine :)

 

UPDATE: The Dusty Duck and her crew are featured in "The Not-So Magnificent Seven"--my first published article for the Official Star Wars Blog!

The Dusty Duck Flies Again!

Now this is a great way to start off the new year.



In stores now (finally) is Ryder Windham's latest Star Wars book--The Wrath of Darth Maul! Maul has long been one of my favorite characters in the series and this book takes you through his life: from the very beginning, through the events of The Phantom Menace where he met his supposed end, and beyond! With Darth Maul making a dramatic and most unexpected return to Star Wars later this year in The Clone Wars, this is a must-read for young fans of the cartoon who want to get the skinny on who this red-skinned devil is.

As excited as I am to see Darth Maul's story told in full, the reason behind this exuberant blog post resides on Page 174. You see, it is on this page that my very own contribution to the Star Wars saga--the Dusty Duck--gets a mention!! Why? Darth Maul plays an integral role in my Dusty Duck story, which you can read by accessing the Wayback Machine and clicking here.

Seeing "my creation" get a mention in a major Star Wars release is really fulfilling. Like any kid from the '80s, I grew up with Star Wars. When I was in high school, I first discovered the Expanded Universe (or EU for short).


It was two things that did it: I glimpsed a hardcover edition of the much-maligned The Crystal Star on the new releases display at Hastings, and then I found the first issue of Dark Horse Comics' Crimson Empire. Crystal Star enlightened me that the adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han extended past the movies (and they had kids!). Crimson Empire showed me that there was a whole galaxy of potential stories--that every minor background character could be the star of his, her, or its own epic space opera. I was spellbound--even more so when I discovered that all of these books, games, comics, cartoons, etc worked together into a single (mostly) cohesive continuity.

Ever since that moment, I was fascinated by this rich lore written over these decades by many talented storytellers. And, perhaps, most importantly--I wanted to write my own story.


Many years later, in 2006, I got that chance, thanks to a limited running contest on the official site. The feature was called "What's the Story?" and gave fanboy writers like me the opportunity to take a minor background character, ship, or creature and develop a backstory that, if selected, would be officially adopted into Star Wars canon forevermore. I worked hard, wanting desperately to leave some small mark on this series that had captivated me. I know it sounds silly, but it was a rigorous time and taught me a lot about perseverance and rejection in the writing biz.

At last, after several rounds and multiple tries, the heavens parted and I won an entry of my very own: The Dusty Duck. My tale of a doomed spacecraft and the star-crossed lovers who flew it was an entry I, initially, hadn't thought long and hard about. It was just one of many submissions, but, looking at it again, I realized how proud I was of the concept. My excitement was renewed when, a couple years later, it received a place in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia. After that, I feared my little ship that could would settle in the dusts of obscurity, never to be mentioned again.

But today, that's changed thanks to author Ryder Windham and The Wrath of Darth Maul. Folks, the Duck is in there. Yes, it's only a passing mention--not enough to warrant such a long and gushing blog post, but it's there. My contribution to the Star Wars saga lives on in other writers and there are few things, creatively speaking, that are cooler than that.

I am forever grateful to you, Mr. Windham, for resurrecting my baby :) My hope is that it'll help inspire some other kid to take notice that the stories of Star Wars extend further and deeper than what they've seen in the movies. Maybe one day, they'll make their own contribution to that galaxy far, far away.

Finally here's the deleted scene that started it all, featuring the Dusty Duck....