In honor of the return of The Great British Bake Off this week, I wanted to share my OC, Malan, who inspired my ficlet "Fruta" and who will feature prominently in The Great Galactic Bake Off.
She may have lost The Great Galactic Bake Off, but she won hearts across the galaxy, including one very big one on a remote, tropical oceanic planet. Art by me 🩵
More details about Malan below the cut, including a bikini version of this artwork, and a link to a bonus NSFW version of Wrecker's morning view.
Overview
Birth year/age: 47BBY (28 at end of the Clone Wars; 30 at time of the Great Galactic Bake Off)
Species: Keshiri
Gender ID/pronouns: she/her
Orientation: bi/pan, demisexual
Home planet: Kesh
Current location: Pabu
Occupation: Baker
Alignment: Neutral Good
Family: estranged
Born on the Wild Space planet of Kesh, Malan left home and traveled to the Core Worlds in search of work as soon as she reached adulthood. She attended the University of Coruscant on a scholarship, graduated with honors, and went on to find a prestigious job that she despised. She developed a passion for baking when she spent Life Day with her uni flatmate’s family and learned how to make Wookiee-Ookies.
From that point forward, she threw herself into her baking hobby to escape the stress and boredom of her work. She often fantasized about opening a little bakeshop by the sea, but there were two major obstacles to that dream. First, the bakery market was dominated by droids. Second, there was no kriffing sea on Coruscant.
Thus, she spent her days at a boring but steady job, and her nights were spent researching and practicing ever more fantastical and advanced techniques and recipes. Her coworkers were the lucky recipients of almost daily baked treats, but her passion remained a hobby. Until, one day, a casting call was sent out for a new competition series on HoloNet News: The Great Galactic Bake Off.
Personality
Bubbly, warm, and friendly. Generous and loyal to a fault. Her head is often in the clouds, but she has a surprisingly practical bent when she puts her mind to something. People often assume she’s naive or airheaded until she blindsides them with a shockingly dirty joke. She feels very deeply but presents a happy-go-lucky facade even when things go sideways for her. Despite her seemingly open and amiable nature, she has a tendency to downplay her personal interests as a way of making herself more palatable to a Galaxy that has not always welcomed her enthusiasm.
Uncensored AO3 version here (ft. different background because I can't stop won't stop).
As the poll decreed, a bunch of random aliens! Decided to raid the swtor cupboards for outfits for them which made it extra fun. I'll probably do some more of these before long because I got some great suggestions while I was already halfway through this lot!
A Nelvaanian (NOT a bothan I swear, even if she is riffing off one of Ahuska's favourite getups), a Devlikk, a Keshiri, a Camaasi and a Chistori!
The OGs. Latestage Legends species of beautiful purple-skinned humanoids. Got reintroduced in canon this year but their depiction is irrenconcilable outside of the general aestethic.
Mirialans
While Mirialans were originally only green/yellowish, canon recently (2018 as far as I can tell) started introducing purple Mirialans. We don't technically know the Visions lady's species but i'm counting her because I love her.
Tey Sirrek
Pretty purple elf boi. I could include his whole species I guess. They were technically a thing in Legends but their depiction there wasn't as purple as Tey here, so this is a spotlight.
Gloovans
Canon only. Cavan Scott's pet species.
Rayvis
One tentacly boy. 2023 has been big for purple people hasn't it? (I am not including the Gen'Dai/Gen'dai as a whole because we barely see them and they mostly look grey to me. Show some skin canon Durge!)
honorable mentions:
Lunae Minx (Twi'lek extra played by teenage Katie Lucas in aotc), Latts Razzi (Theelin bounty hunter in tcw)
dishonorable mentions:
Xi'an and Qin from The Mandalorian, Ziro the Hutt, Lasats (not pictured because I still say they're fucking grey)
I've held off naming the Lost Tribe Sith fighters in Voices of the Force because I want something in Keshiri, and I'm not sure what that would be. It could be a derivative of "shikkar," but I kind of want something more original than that.
Keshiri Jedi OC, you say? 👀👀👀
(Please tell me everything about her.)
HHHHHHHH BUCKLE UP AND TYSM
asdfghjkl omg I’ve been waiting for this moment that I don’t even know where to start hang on
So, this jumbled masterpiece ! This is some of her most basic information in Aurebesh, I was actively learning it as I was writing this out so I know my T’s and especially G’s are off, but basically:
Chessaf're'krudo, also known as Chess, or Jedi Knight Krudo. She was born on Keshiri (44BBY), but she’d only been on her home planet for a short time before a Chiss Jedi Master in their chunk of wild space had come for her. The Jedi delivered her to the temple so she could hone the force sensitivity that drove the Chiss Jedi to her. The Chiss Jedi named her themselves, which is why her name is of Chiss origin.
She is eventually taken in as Mace Windu’s padawan (31BBY) (my idea was keep the purples together because I thought it would be cool, but now I am just so genuinely in love with it), they butted heads a lot as master and Padawan, Chess didn’t want to be so detached from attachment, she wanted her friends to know she cared for them, was very vocal about her connections being what kept her good, and we know he has his connections, we know he cares, but he can’t express it as well as he wants to (coming from the interpretation of him I’ve gathered in Shatterpoint).
He’s an amazing Master though, and she knows that he cares in his own Emotionally Repressed Jedi ways. He’s tried to find information about her people so she could still connect to her culture, though so little is known about Kesh and the Keshiri, that he never came up with anything.
And when it comes to emotions, Chess always ran into Depa Billaba, who had yet to take on her own Padawan, who hadn’t dealt with the horrors of Haruun Kal. Depa gave her a support in someone who related to her doubts of being good enough for Mace, and helped her navigate his many different expressions of apathy to find his true feelings.
Both of Chess’s sabers are purple, because it’s the color she’d worn on her skin with pride, even when no one knew what she was, when jeers about her background would follow on various missions, every time she ignited her blade to train with mace, purple against purple as they moved through the forms, it was just right, it’s what the force wanted. He helped her design the saber she’d had in her mind, just like he had his own, and every time she went to upgrade it or replace a damaged piece, he was there to help her and sometimes crack horrible, too serious jokes about what would happen if she forgot a certain piece. “Remember to put your crystal back in,” “Uhg, Master-“ “I’m only joking, I know you’ll remember, because I reminded you,” she is also horrible when it comes to Vapaad, both the lightsaber form and the state of mind, but she’s tried often, with both Depa and Mace to guide her. She’s no where near as proficient as them, and prefers the sixth form, with a tendency to slip back into the fifth form when cornered.
Chess passes her trials merely weeks before the first battle of Geonosis, so when they called for Jedi to load on transports and drop down into that arena, she was there. (22BBY)
When they were all cornered, she’d been in the fray, and when the fighting started back up, and she’d thrown herself at a Super Battle Droid, had melted a chunk of his rocket arm away right as he was going to launch, it had exploded in his arm. She was thrown back, to the now more already out ring of Jedi, Clone Troopers and droids battling it out in the dust.
Hot metal had torn through her, from the very bottom of her jaw on her right side, and had curled up to the bottom of her ear. Another piece had cut through starting at the bottom of her neck, arching up and slicing a good path into her neck before it had exited. Her shoulders and chest also suffered a great deal of damage, but none as life threatening as her neck.
She’d been lucky enough to fall back into Mace and Depa, had been lucky enough for him to pinch sliced arteries closed until the transport ships could start dropping. She was one of the first shuttled back to a newly minted light cruiser, and when she woke up, the Clone Wars had begun, she was a General in a war with an entire battalion of clones waiting for her to lead them, and then everything changed.
Now here comes some rapid-fire random garbage that I’m also copy-pasting from the notes I made about her, so if any of it is repeated from the blurbs I’ve just excited hyperfocus typed,,,,
•The droid piece they pulled from her body was melted down and adjusted to become the new emitter for her sabers, and she absolutely has red paint sprinkled on it so she can tell people it’s her blood.
•The 141st Battalion, the group of soldiers she was put in command of was an elite force, one of the smallest battalion sized units and broken up into three companies, with squads forming from each platoon. The group that she finds herself fighting alongside more often is Cresh, though they started to call themselves the Kesh squad after her.
•her clone commander is CC-6116, also known as Buzz, and he’s one of the strongest attachments she’s ever formed, they go hand in hand in every aspect , and are almost never apart.
•the first time Chess struggled with the dark side, it had been at Buzz’s words, while they were pinned down behind enemy lines and waiting for the other squads to form up on their position. “ you’re a Jedi, you can’t be replaced so easily, we’re just clones, we don’t matter.” Chess had shoved her hand into the lip of the armor covering his chest, had yanked him close enough that he had to meet her gaze because there was no where else to look, and she felt how easy it would be, to Fall. Because the Dark could help her free them. Maybe she could win the war if she just took that step off the edge. But she just stared at him for a moment, before she yanked him closer, before she could wrap her arms around him tight with his armor freaking at the pressure and. “Not to me, never to me,”
•the 141st paints their armor in varying degrees of purple and red in honor of their general. She forms a reputation for keeping her face hidden with her hoods, most times, by the time her enemy gets to see the red of her eyes, they’re already fading into the force. When the boys find out that her eyes are red, they started painting strips of their armor in the same color. (I’m going to post a very rough pic of the armor, that I smashed color over at 0300 at work, but the idea is so much better than this picture)
•At great personal risk, she single handedly keeps her casualty rate low, running all across the battlefield and doing what she can to protect her men. She can't save everyone however, and she mourns each loss with her soldiers too, but she's never allowed it to cloud her judgement, not since she looked into Buzz's eyes and promised him they meant everything to her. The nights she'd spent on the lines with her men was enough to remind her that the dark side wasn't going to free any of them, that the only way they'd win is if they stayed together and trusted each other.
•she has her own lightsaber ignition move. It’s trademarked, she’ll fistfight anyone who uses it
But I have such a hard time explaining it: so she’ll hold out her right hand, flip the hilt up with two fingers, catch it in her palm with her finger on the ignition switch, while her arm is out parallel to the ground, the second she catches it she’ll ignite so the blade is pointed right out at her opponent, after that’s ignited, she’ll ignite her shoto in a backwards grip so it’s against the length of her arm.
•The clones give her her very first tattoo, just an outline of their helmets on her chest (keshiri females , as I'm interpreting it from jedi battle scars, don't have boobs), the scars along her chest form near perfect dark purple markings along the helmet, which eventually gets adopted as Buzz's helmet markings.
Grevious: "another lightsaber for my collection!!"
Chess: "another scar for my collection! chicks dig scars!"
To her, the force feels almost like the kind of anxiety that has you buzzing out of your skin, she can feel it around her, but instead of the fear or any other feeling associated with anxiety, it becomes a source of comfort, since it's been there all her life, however, this also means that she's always active, moving in some way, shape, or form, and her hands are almost always shaking unless she's using the force or holding her saber (thanks to her connection to the Kyber within).
That's all i have for her now, just her time in the clone wars, but she grows every single day, and I've decided that she does survive the purge, though only a small amount of soldiers were able to be saved from the chip, she still cherishes the small squad that helped her survive.
And, I'd just like to say again, asdfghjkl thank you so much for asking about her because she is literally everything to me. I also have a whole Mandalorian AU for her that's only half formed, and a HUGE time-travel fix-it fic self insert in the works right now, as well as the rest of the prompts for jedi june 2023
