Xiri A'lbaran

Xiri A'lbaran was a human^[2] female who was princess and heir to the throne of the planet E'ronoh and a captain in Thylefire Squadron during the High Republic Era. She fought in the war between E'ronoh and its sister planet, Eiram, which raged for five years. She was the daughter of the ruling Monarch.^[1] In 382 BBY,^[3] after a chance meeting, she proposed marrying Prince Phan-tu Zenn of Eiram at a summit hosted by the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order during a temporary truce, hoping the marriage would help bring peace to their planets. Though the wedding was tumultuous, in the aftermath it was decided that a peace treaty would be signed on the holy moon Jedha.^[1] However, that chance at peace was destroyed in the Battle of Jedha, leaving the two heirs to deal with the aftermath.^[4]

When A'lbaran, Zenn, and the Jedi then discovered members of the Path of the Open Hand cult trying to frame E'ronoh for accumulating the bioweapon klytobacter, which could devestate Eiram, A'lbaran agreed to travel with the Jedi on a diplomatic mission to speak with the Path on Dalna and investigate their role in the conflict. However, the Path used it as an excuse to attack them and the Jedi, which erupted into an extensive battle that became known as the Night of Sorrow. She and Zenn managed to escape the planet and the battle in a damaged starfighter they found. The two, with the help of Supreme Chancellor Orlen Mollo, then united their planets against the Path and turned the tide of the battle in the Jedi's favor, all while hoping to bring a lasting peace to their worlds.^[4]

Biography

Early life

Xiri A'lbaran was born to Monarch A'lbaran, and was the second in line for the monarchy behind her brother Niko A'lbaran. In around 387 BBY a war between E'ronoh and its twin planet Eiram was reignited when Prince Niko accidentally drowned while on a visit to Eiram. Xiri therefore became heir to the throne and was made Captain of Thylefire Squadron, leading the E'roni starfighters into battle against the Eirami for five years. A constant at her side was her second-in-command, Jerrod Segaru, with whom she developed a close friendship.^[1]

Peace negotiations with Eiram

Ceasefire and crash on Eiram

After five years of fighting, the war had taken a severe toll on both E’ronoh and Eiram. Xiri brokered a temporary ceasefire so that E’ronoh could receive a shipment of ice to provide for its thirsty populace, while Eiram requested medical aid from the Galactic Republic. The arrival of both shipments was carefully stage-managed, with Xiri and her Thylefire Squadron scheduled to receive the ice shipment before the Eirami Navy under General Nhivan Lao met with the Republic mission. However, the hauler was late, arriving just before not one Republic Longbeam cruiser, but two – Chancellor Orlen Mollo had also decided to travel to the system to try and broker a peace agreement. The Republic ships – the Valiant and the Paxion – collided with each other, while the hauler took evasive action and drifted into Eiram’s gravity well. Xiri tried to placate the agitated Eirami, but one of her pilots, Bly Tevin, lost control of his starfighter and began to first open fire on the Eirami, before flying directly towards Eiram itself. This caused a skirmish to break out between both forces until the arrival of Jedi Knight Gella Nattai, who flew into the midst of the action and got both Xiri and Lao to agree to help her try and rescue Tevin. Unbeknownst to Xiri, Nattai, and Lao, however, Tevin’s fighter was not just malfunctioning but had been sabotaged by the Path of the Open Hand, a Force cult that wanted to keep the war going. As they managed to slow his descent, his starfighter suddenly exploded.^[1]

Xiri’s own fighter was caught in the blast, and she crash-landed on Eiram’s surface, plunging into the Erasmus Sea close to Erasmus Capital City. She was in danger of drowning until she was rescued from the waters by none other than Prince Phan-tu Zenn of Eiram, who used her ceremonial bane blade to cut her free from her cockpit. Shocked, Xiri initially attacked Phan-tu once he had pulled her to shore, holding her blade to his throat, but as guards approached, she then turned it on herself, believing it better to die than be taken prisoner. However, Phan-tu promised that he could get her an audience with his mother, Queen Adrialla, and Xiri realised her father would escalate the war if she died. She agreed to go with the Prince, giving him her blade as a symbol of trust.^[1]

On meeting Adrialla, Xiri was informed by the Queen that her father believed her to be being held as a hostage. The Monarch had sent a holo threatening to raze Eiram to the ground if his daughter was not returned quickly. But Eiram had also received a message from Chancellor Mollo and his Jedi companions, inviting both planets to a peace summit aboard Mollo’s ship, the Paxion. Adrialla suggested that Xiri could represent E’ronoh herself and Xiri agreed to go, as well as to send a message to her father informing him that she was well. Xiri travelled with the Eirami delegation to the Paxion later that night.^[1]

Summit aboard the Paxion

Once aboard, Xiri sent a message to Jerrod Segaru, asking him to persuade her father to come. As luck would have it, Segaru succeeded and Monarch A’lbaran arrived for the first day of negotiations. But A’lbaran, goaded by the hawkish Viceroy Ferrol, spent much of the time levelling accusations at Adrialla and when the Eirami Queen refuted them, he stormed out of proceedings. That night, through a conversation with Segaru, Xiri realised that the initial messages she had sent to her father asking him to attend had not reached him. She began to suspect that Ferrol had been the one stopping them, although Segaru himself was sceptical.^[1]

Over the next few days, the negotiations failed to progress much further. Xiri began to develop more of a personal relationship with Phan-tu, as well as with Gella Nattai, both of whom she sparred with. While researching her planet’s history, she also discovered that both worlds had been united through marriage in the past. When Mollo and the Jedi decided to stream recordings of the suffering of both the E’roni and Eirami people around the ship, Xiri made the decision to secure the peace herself. The next day, she proposed a marriage between herself and Phan-tu, a proposal that was met with approval from Mollo and the Jedi, but outrage from her own father. Yet behind closed doors, and despite the best efforts of Ferrol, Xiri was able to prevail upon him to accept the engagement. Even the protestations of her longtime friend Segaru could not dissuade her, and Phan-tu was able to persuade Adrialla to accept as well.^[1]

Later that night, however, the body of Segaru was found murdered in Phan-tu’s bed. Xiri immediately accused Ferrol, but he was cleared of wrongdoing. Just at this moment, the delegations were unexpectedly joined by Axel Greylark, son of Chancellor Kyong Greylark, who had sent him to represent her interests in the proceedings. Through the Force, Nattai was then able to locate the body of another E’roni soldier, Braxen, drifting in space. The two deaths were clearly connected but the exact perpetrator remained unknown. Nevertheless, both Xiri and Phan-tu remained resolved to push through with the marriage and therefore both delegations left the Paxion to travel down to E’ronoh’s capital, the Rook.^[1]

Touring E'ronoh

Segaru’s funeral was held soon afterwards, but following the ceremony an extremist pro-war group known as the Children of E’ronoh pelted the Eirami contingent with stones. With Adrialla furious at the security issues and the Jedi revealing that a mysterious jamming beacon had been found on the surface of E’ronoh and Eiram’s moon, it was clear that the peace was being threatened by multiple parties. It was therefore decided that Xiri and Phan-tu should go on a tour of E’ronoh, accompanied by Nattai and Greylark, in order to curry support for the peace treaty and to potentially draw out its detractors.^[1]

Xiri, Phan-tu, Nattai, and Greylark traversed much of the planet aboard the Monarch’s sail barge, the Amaryliss. During these weeks, the group grew increasingly close as they opened up to each other, with Xiri and Phan-tu developing feelings for each other. At Barakat Outpost, while delivering relief supplies, Xiri was challenged to single combat by a dissatisfied miner named Bruzo. She accepted the challenge and managed to defeat him, being the first to draw blood three times. Flushed with victory, she promised to the villagers that she and her betrothed would fight for them every day.^[1]

While crossing E’ronoh’s Badlands, near the village of A’ranni, the group came across a group of Eirami soldiers pinned down in a cave by a detachment of E’roni, neither of whom appeared to have realised there was a ceasefire in effect. While reconnoitring the site, Phan-tu fell through the ground into a cave system beneath their feet, however the group had no time to wait for him. While Nattai distracted the E’roni, drawing their fire, Xiri and Greylark stunned them one-by-one. But when the Eirami survivors came out of hiding, they did not believe that a ceasefire was underway as Phan-tu was not visible and they therefore fired on Nattai before being gunned down by Greylark. When Phan-tu did finally emerge from the tunnels, he was covered in thylefire scorpions, a fact that amazed the captured E’roni soldiers.^[1]

Their last stop was the mining village of U’ronoh, but when the group arrived, they found that the Children of E’ronoh, led by Viceroy Ferrol’s son Rev, had taken the villagers hostage, demanding that Xiri and Phan-tu be handed over. The heirs agreed, allowing themselves to be taken aboard a shuttle that was set on autopilot to crash into the Rook. Luckily, Greylark and Nattai were able to sneak onto the shuttle just before it took off and rescue Xiri and Phan-tu, forcing Rev Ferrol to flee the scene. The group parachuted back down to ground and spent the night celebrating with the villagers.^[1]

Complications

Rev Ferrol’s failed attack at U’ronoh led to the imprisonment of his father, although little information could be gleaned from him. Xiri and Phan-tu had the first of their wedding ceremonies at the Rook on their return, however another assassination attempt was made – this time by Abda, a Kage who was secretly a member of the Path of the Open Hand. Before Abda could talk, she was herself poisoned in her cell. Nevertheless, Xiri and Phan-tu resolved to push on with the second part of the wedding ceremony, to be held on Eiram.^[1]

Once they had arrived on the aquatic world, Phan-tu and Greylark went to investigate an Eirami research facility on Arium Island and discovered that it was still producing poison, the very same poison that had been used to murder the would-be assassin, Abda. Xiri overheard Phan-tu confronting his mother about the facility’s existence, but Xiri stepped in and argued that it should be kept open as a failsafe, in case Eiram and E’ronoh were faced with threats in the future.^[1]

A royal wedding

A few days later, following Xiri and Phan-tu’s rehearsal dinner, it was found that Greylark had disappeared from his quarters, leaving behind the dead body of Viceroy Ferrol and his damaged therapy droid, QN-1. Nattai rebuilt the droid and scoured its holorecordings to discover that Greylark had been working with the Path of the Open Hand to undermine the peace process the entire time. Again, Xiri and Phan-tu decided to proceed with the ceremony while Nattai went after Greylark. The ceremony was marred by Greylark’s efforts to sabotage it; he had left a personal beacon inside the venue that transmitted his location to the wider galaxy, causing large numbers of bounty hunters to converge on Eiram in order to collect on a bounty that had been put on his head. At the same time, despite the efforts of Nattai, he also managed to detonate explosions on the towers that projected Erasmus Capital City’s protective dome, causing mass flooding in the city.^[1]

Despite the chaos raging outside the venue, Xiri ordered Chancellor Mollo, the officiant, to proceed with the ceremony and she and Phan-tu were married. Xiri then rushed to her starfighter as, to make matters worse, Rev Ferrol and the remaining Children of E’ronoh had launched an attack from the skies and brought down the Paxion. Xiri called for an evacuation of the cruiser before engaging Rev with a mix of her Thylefire Squadron and Eirami pilots flying Eirami starfighters. Realising that her fighters were struggling to penetrate the armor of Rev’s E’roni drill ships, she began to bait Rev into pursuing her, asking over the comms whether he had told his soldiers that he had declined to challenge her to single combat. Angered, Rev followed Xiri into a manoeuvre known as the Kestrel's Dive towards the sea. The bulkiness of his ship meant that he was unable to pull up quick enough, while Xiri’s Eirami craft was able to plunge into the waters. Rev was killed as his ship plummeted towards the bottom of the ocean.^[1]

Xiri’s defeat of the Children of E’ronoh was followed by the quelling of the bounty hunters by the Jedi and Nattai’s capture of Greylark. In the days after the wedding, it was decided for the signing of the peace treaty itself to occur on the holy moon of Jedha, a neutral venue. Xiri, Phan-tu, and their parents were to remain in the Eiram system to oversee the rebuilding of the planets, sending ambassadors to sign in their stead.^[1]