One of the most interesting aspects of the original Star Wars Expanded Universe in my opinion was The Empire of the Hand, Grand Admiral Thrawn's "shadow Empire" set up in the Unknown Regions (with the full knowledge and support of Emperor Palapatine). The Empire of the Hand was basically what would happen to the Empire if Thrawn was in charge - a coalition of worlds, in a mutual alliance of support and cooperation, where actual merit, not who you knew or what Family you were part of, was what mattered.
It was supposed to serve as a bulwark against the upcoming Yuuzhan Vong (or "Far Outsider") invasion, and demonstrate to the Chiss Ascendency that cooperation with the wider Galaxy was not only possible, but necessary. I was really excited reading about it in Timothy Zahn's Hand of Thrawn Duology and Survivor's Quest , eagerly moved to the New Jedi Order series. A major character, Jagged Fel, was from the Hand, so I thought for sure I would learn even more about this fascinating faction.
Then every author not named Zahn either completely forgot it existed, or conflated it with the Chiss Ascendency.
So I decided to explore it myself -- what would a faction formed by Thrawn, and living up to his ideals, actually be like? And what if that faction had a leader who was in every way Thrawn's equal, who could steer the Empire of the Hand to prominence, even in his absence?
What would it be like if Thrawn had an actual home, and a loving family? Poor guy certainly deserves it!
My fanfics try to answer that question, to build upon this little part of Star Wars that Timothy Zahn began. They're mostly based off of Star Wars: Legends, but I've added in some elements of Disney canon that I like. I've also written a number of world-building "support documents" as well.
Empire of the Hand fanfics (all on Ao3 - locked to registered users):
The Hand of Thrawn: Penelope
Ten years after the Grand Admiral's defeat, his Empire of the Hand lives on. How will his wife, Empress Xelarra, deal with rumours of his return? Takes place immediately after Visions of the Future by Timothy Zahn.
Nightfall of the Final Day
Two years after Grand Admiral Thrawn's defeat at Bilbringi, Stent finds himself in the office of Thrawn's wife, Governor Xelarra of Nirauan. She has a mission for the Household Phalanx -- one that will safeguard the Chiss people as a whole against a deadly enemy, and deliver much deserved justice.
Reunion
The Chiss Ascendency has suffered an attack by the Ssi-ruuk, but Fleet Admiral Ar'alani gets help from an unexpected source -- Grand Admiral Thrawn and his Empire of the Hand. She hasn't seen Thrawn, or her childhood friend Xelarra, for over 20 years. As memories of her younger days creep up on her, Ar'alani must deal with the battle at hand, the political storm Thrawn's return will cause in the Ascendency, and her never-forgotten connection to her old friends.
Seat of Command (Explicit)
While inspecting the bridge of a new class of Star Destroyer, Thrawn and his wife Xelarra enjoy a sexy game of "Riddle Me" while discovering just how much the new captain's chair can take.
Balrog
While Grand Admiral Thrawn might be the most famous alien serving the Galactic Empire, he was not the only one. For over a decade, Kaleesh warlord Bentilais san Sk'ar, the only survivor of Grievous' elite Izvoshra warriors, led his people's resistance against the Empire, until Thrawn was sent to put them down. But the Chiss commander had other ideas -- ones the Kaleesh warlord can't help but find intriguing.
Way of the Hunt
From Bentilais san Sk'ar and the new family he thought he'd never have, and Sk'ar's niece and successor struggling to find her place, to Qymaen jai Sheelal showing his care for his soldiers, to an alternate timeline where the roles of Kaleesh and Chiss are swapped. Seven stories of the Kaleesh and their place in the Empire of the Hand. Written for Kaleesh Week 2025 with individual stories also posted to Tumblr:
Young/Old, Hunt, Scales, Friends, Ranged, Sun, Species Swap
Tumblr Snippets
Little short stories related to my AU:
Goodbyes
Thrawn and a newly pregnant Xelarra discuss their future, right before he leaves for the Heir to the Empire campaign. Art by @blackmonitor!
Seatos
probably not "canon" to my AU, but still fun. Thrawn and his son, Shran explore Seatos.
Mess hall convo
Yuna and Sk'ar's "lunch date" is interrupted. One of their fellow officers is in trouble and needs their support.
New Beginnings
Sk'ar muses on his new baby, and old friends. Art by @accursedkaleeshi!
Wake Up Call
While Mara is out on her first "business trip" for the Empire of the Hand, Luke still manages to find most annoying possible way to wake her up.
Empire of the Hand Worldbuilding Posts
Nirauan, Capital Planet of the Empire of the Hand
Empire of the Hand Military Ranks and the Explorers
Capital Ships of the Navy of the Hand
Hyperspace Beacons - The Empire of the Hand's unique way of Navigating the Chaos
Worlds of the Empire of the Hand - Lysatra
Worlds of the Empire of the Hand - Kalee
"Astrography" of the Empire of the Hand and its Hyperspace Beacon Network
OC Overviews
Mitth'shra'nuruodo - Shran -Thrawn and Xelarra's son, Captain of the Explorer ship RRS Intrepid (and basically a Starfleet captain in the Star Wars universe)
Cherith Fel - one of the six Fel kids, Explorer helms officer on the Intrepid, Shran's girlfriend (eventually). She's not really an OC, but considering she never appears in Legends, is only mentioned as part of her brother Jagged's sad backstory, she might as well be.
Yuna and Rikku - Trandoshan and Wookiee "sisters" who were abandoned on the Glavis Ringworld and grew up together, not caring whatsover about the norms of their species. Privateers on the Maelstrom -- a EotH aligned privateer vessel.
Raw'nuru - the Chiss captain of the Maelstrom (spoilers for Penelope)
Spiral Empire - my original work based off my Star Wars AU
Finally, I've written up some worldbuilding docs for my original novel idea, "Spiral Empire". My Star Wars stuff forms the "scaffolding" for it, but I'm trying to do more than just file the serial numbers off. It would mean the world to me if you took a look!
Spiral Empire Prologue - the backstory to this 'verse. After environmental catastrophe, Earth is abandoned, and the colony ships try to use Planet Nine as a gravitational slingshot out of the Solar System. Only Planet Nine isn't a planet -- it's a wormhole, which spits the surviving ships out into different places -- and times -- in the Galaxy. Call their nation - the two gas giant moons they inhabit - the Spiral Empire (the gas giant itself is named Spiral), as a way to keep the Confederacy off their backs.
The Chie - the "protagonist" group for Spiral. A majority-Autistic society. Explores what a world would be like if most people were autistic and the world was built with our needs in mind. Based loosely off Legends-style Chiss (who were more Thrawn-coded than in the newer books), with a Star Trek style socialist, green energy utopia. Chie have abandoned the flawed legacy of humanity, and want to start over.
The Machina - the second of the three human factions, the Machina live in a solar system that is one big asteroid belt, and needed to become cyborgs to survive. Think The Borg, but maintaining their sense of individuality while also being part of a collective, and humanoid forms is a choice, not a given. Also info on the Matrons -- Machina who forgo intensive cybernetics in order to keep their ability to give birth, and unlike most sci-fi, are highly respected and honoured for it.
Other factions, which I still need to make worldbuilding docs for:
The Confederacy of Man - may have to rename. The majority of the surviving colonists. An ultra-capitalist society, with a wasteful viewpoint since they can "always find another planet", they consider it their "manifest destiny" to reunite humanity - under their own banner, of course - as they think everyone was happy when we were all together on Earth. The Chie and Machina greatly disagree. Antagonists.
Dragons - an apex predator alien race based off of pterosaurs, with the sociality of cats, they were "discovered" by a joint Spiral/Confederacy project. Managed to kick the Confederacy off their planet, but invited Spiral to stay, and later joined the Empire themselves.
Tripods - a mysterious, ultra-advanced alien race from a completely cloud-covered, fungi jungle planet, much like how Venus was thought of before space probes proved otherwise. Completely non-humanoid, these aliens have a radial bodyplan with three tentacle arms, three legs, and are blind, using echolocation. They want to observe the three human factions before committing to support any one of them, if at all.
I see a lot of folks defending their vitriolic repugnance towards toddlers with cries of "but my sensory needs!" as if children are not also in possession of sensory needs. As if you, an adult here on Tumblr.com, do not have the capability and resources to learn the skills or acquire aids for coping with competing access needs. Or, y'know, just the option to leave, the way children most often do not.
You're holding an actual child to higher standards than you hold yourself, but it's the child that should be removed from public and community spaces. For your comfort.
Quark can't say Fuck because Fuck is a valid ferengi name and he doesn't know what cousin Fuck did to the hu-mons that they say his name with such vitriol but Quark is proud of him for it
Make your own era-accurate Star Trek episode title cards in seconds. Boldly go!
The sitemaker (Josh Mayfield at https://bsky.app/profile/bean525.bsky.social) has asked for people to come in and kick its tires so he can work out any bugs they turn up. So do give him a hand, if you feel inclined. :)
I saw the photo in my feed and went ohh, dude, no, we do not handle yellow rocks with our bare hands until we know for sure what they are. And I know that orange...
In comments, they continue:
and that's where I started cussing at the computer monitor. But someone else had got there first:
So just as a reminder, folks. If you don't know what it is, don't put it in your fucking mouth!
Oh yes Soontir because Wedge’s just going to show up in Coruscant for a very public wedding and be like “Yo I know i’m one of the Empire’s greatest enemies, but my sister’s getting married. So peace?”
Not sure why it's a new trend among fic readers to assume if the fic has not been posted within the week it's inappropriate to comment on it, like the fic has to be hot out of the oven to give feedback for.
I got a comment on a fic that is less than a year old and it was mostly an apology for being a comment on an "old fic" and how late they were in commenting.
Just comment on the fic. Doesn't matter how old it is.
“What will I be if I don’t graduate/don’t get a promotion/don’t get my shit together/don’t make this relationship work?” You would be a perfectly normal human being who is inherently valuable and who possesses many talents and good traits
Okay, for Star Wars Day I want to talk about what I love about The Thrawn Trilogy. Not sure if I’ve posted about this before or not.
[Spoilers for the plot of the whole trilogy below.]
Timothy Zahn’s written a wide range of sci-fi other that Star Wars; some of it I like (The Quadrail Trilogy), some of it I don’t (the Cobra books; the first one’s a Rambo-esque examination of the human fallout of a supersoldier program, but the others dive headfirst into militarism). He leans towards military sci-fi and clever people with elaborate multilayered plans, and that does come out in the Thrawn Trilogy, but what really makes him stand out is something too often lacking in multi-author media: he respects the universe he’s in.
The Thrawn Trilogy is noticeably more idealistic than many of Zahn’s other books, because that’s a foundational characteristic of the Star Wars universe. Zahn’s non-Star-Wars books are frequently ones where the heroes win by being clever and adaptable; Star Wars is a media where the heroes win by being good. Luke’s redemption of Vader in Return of the Jedi is, to me, the moment at the absolute heart of Star Wars.
Zahn neither throws away his own literary instincts nor bends Star Wars to serve them; he weaves them together effectively. The thing I love the most about the Thrawn Trilogy is that the heroes win by being good. Thrawn is more nuanced and thoughtful than the Imperials of the original trilogy, and treats his own men better than Vader does; but the crucial difference between him versus the heroes is that he treats neutral characters as enemies or tools while Luke, Han, and Leia listen to them, trust them, take risks for them, even when the neutral characters look awfully like enemies. Kaarde takes Luke captive and is considering handing him over to Thrawn. Mara Jade openly and vociferously proclaims her desire to kill Luke – both to others and to his face. The Noghri carry out numerous very skilled attempts to capture Leia and hand her and her unborn twins over to the mad Jedi Master Joruus C’baoth.
And Han and Luke work with Kaarde. Luke repeatedly trust and saves Mara. Luke rescues Kaarde when he is captured by Thrawn. Leia places herself at extreme risk by travelling to the Noghri homeworld to help free them from the deceptions of the empire. They would have good, pragmatic, sensible reasons to not do any of these things. But the fact that they do them, while the Empire lies and manipulates and coerces, is why they win. Mara helps Luke to destroy C’baoth and the Empire’s cloning facilities [this was written pre-prequels, so it’s operating on different assumptions about the Clone Wars]. Kaarde comes in clinch with an alliance of smugglers in the main space battle. (The climax’s combo of a land battle, a space battle, and a Jedi showdown is also a great nod to ROTJ.) Thrawn’s Noghri bodyguard assassinates him at a pivotal moment. It’s what frustrates me so mich when people call this combination of events a deus ex machina, because it’s anything but – it’s the culmination of every moral choice the heroes have made over the course of the trilogy, including the ones they didn’t recognize as choices because they were so ingrained (Luke!!! ❤️❤️❤️ “this woman hates me and wants me dead. guess I’ll trust her unconditionally and give her whatever she needs.”). Even before the final battles, Mara is present to save Leia from a kidnapping because Luke went out of his way to save her when she was helpless.
Zahn’s own instincts and talents enrich the story without overriding its ability to feel like Star Wars. There are so, so, SO many stupid, arrogant villains in Star Wars Legends (I am looking at YOU Kebin J Anderson!), and next to them Thrawn is a breath of fresh air. He’s calm, collected, smart, creative, adaptable, able to keep a cool head in the face of setbacks and modify his plans as needed, and yet he’s still villainous, and he loses because of villainous actions – actions that he or his adherents could easily regard simply as hard-headed pragmamtism. (In some of his more recent books Zahn has kind of bought into Thrawn’s hype and moved away from this, and in consequence I don’t find those ones as good.) His right hand and the Watson to his Sherlock is Pellaeon, our Imperial viewpoint character and a good insight into a ‘typical’ Imperial – he believes in the Empire, hates the ‘Rebellion’, is bigoted, has few moral compunctions but lots of practical ones, and still feels like a three-dimensional character rather than a caricature. (Twenty years later in the Hand of Thrawn trilogy, he’s improved considerably as a person.)
And the additional asset of Zahn’s penchant for smart characters is that the heroes are also smart, thpugh their plans tend more towards off-the-cuff improvisation than long-term strategy. Zahn brongs in fantastic new characters like Mara and Karrde, but he integrates them effectively with Luke, Leia, and Han rather than using them to upstage the OT characters (a frequent temptation for shared-universe authors).
All of these are things that authors in some of the major events later on in Legends (New Jedi Order and onwards) conspicuously failed to do, and destroyed by enjoyment of the later books in consequence (I was flagging by the late NJO books and dropped off entirely about a chapter into Legacy of the Force). They imposed their own preconceptions, tone, or genre preferences on the series (pro tip: don’t hire someone virulently anti-Jedi to write Jedi.) The played favourites with characters (each of three LOTF authors seems to have had their own key blorbo, and some NJO authors did as well). They wrote at cross purposes with each other and tried to pull the narrative in different directions (really, the attempt at a stronger shared continuity from NJO onwards was what made this a big problem; before that, continuity was fluid enough that you could mostly just ignore the book you didn’t like and focus on the ones you did). And it makes me appreciate even more an author who had not only the talent but the humility to shape the tone of his work to fit the genre and universe it was located in.
May any force that helps you in any way be available to you whenever you require it. If you should happen to find happiness in a community of fans wishing each other goodness on this particular day, that is a wonderful thing for everyone.
Abraham. Do you bite your thumb at us, bro?
Sampson. I do bite my thumb, bro.
Abraham. Do you bite your thumb at us, bro?
Sampson. [Aside to GREGORY] Is the law of our side, if I say ay?
Gregory. No.
Sampson. No, bro, I do not bite my thumb at you, bro, but I bite my thumb, bro.
Gregory. Do you quarrel, bro?
Abraham. Quarrel bro! no, bro.
Sampson. If you do, bro, I am for you: I serve as good a man as you.
Abraham. No better.
Sampson. Well, bro.
Gregory. Say 'better:' here comes one of my master's kinsmen.
Sampson. Yes, better, bro.
Abraham. You lie.
Sampson. Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.
