Literature / I, Jedi

Captain Corran Horn, NRDF, alias Kieran Halcyon, alias Jenos Idanian.

I, Jedi is a 1998 Star Wars Legends novel by Michael A. Stackpole. The book is a P.O.V. Sequel (and unintended Fix Fic) of the earlier Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson, retconning Stackpole's character Corran Horn from the X-Wing Series into an Adaptation Distillation of its events, before leaving the Jedi Praxeum behind to pursue its own original story.

Two years after his last^note by In-Universe time; Isard's Revenge wasn't published until eleven months later appearance in X-Wing: Isard's Revenge, New Republic Defense Force flying ace Captain Corran Horn—Rogue Nine, former Corellian Security Force officer, and grandson of Jedi Master Nejaa Halcyon—finds himself with a psychic wound when his beloved wife, freelance freighter captain Mirax Terrik, goes missing while investigating the Invids, an Imperial Remnant sect commanding a coalition of Space Pirates whom the New Repubic has been having a devil of a time rooting out. General Wedge Antilles brings him to Luke Skywalker, the galaxy's only known living Jedi Master, who asks him to be part of his first class of Jedi apprentices, with the carrot that he might be able to use the Force to help find Mirax. Corran accepts the offer, disguising himself as Kieran Halcyon, and trains there for a time, only to become embroiled in the machinations of the ghostly Sith Lord Exar Kun, and then Rage Quit over Luke deciding to forgive his rogue apprentice Kyp Durron for blowing up an inhabited star system.

At loose ends, Corran decides to focus on the Invids, joining one of their subsidiary gangs as Jenos Idanian, and must decide for himself how much of Luke's teachings he can use, and ultimately how to balance his various identities as fighter pilot, policeman, Jedi Knight, and husband.

I, Jedi, as a Star Wars novel, had a lot of firsts. First novel to be entirely written in First-Person Perspective (and the only such story in the Star Wars Legends continuity). First novel to have as its hero a character who was never featured or even mentioned in the films. First novel to directly retcon events in a previously written book. The novel also has significant cross-pollination with Timothy Zahn's The Hand of Thrawn, which was written at the same time, and the three novels make up a sort of Two-Part Trilogy. There is also crossover with The Han Solo Trilogy as Han used an alias while Corran's dad Inspector Hal Horn was after him years earlier, which Corran later uses too (they mention the elder Horn's pursuing Han in a brief conversation).

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Tropes:

• Actual Pacifist: The Caamasi as a species seek to refrain from violence and were renowned as peacemakers in the past, which made them greatly revered across the galaxy. However, it turns out this wasn't solely due to any philosophical reason, but their psychology. Caamasi memories can be very strong, especially of momentous events, which would include killing someone (justified or not). It would be very burdensome for them doing this as a result. Elegos nonetheless uses a blaster in defense of Corran (who had just defended him), thinking the men he shot were dead before he realized he'd only stunned them. He considered a memory of killing them a necessary sacrifice given the circumstances. Later too he willingly uses a blaster once more when rescuing Mirax with Corran, though only stunning enemies. Ylenic, his uncle, also willingly served as a Jedi, including killing armed enemies in self-defense. The devastating Caamasi Genocide was viewed as even more heinous than most due to their general peacefulness.
• Adaptation Distillation: The first act of the book is a P.O.V. Sequel covering the high points of Luke Skywalker's storyline in Dark Apprentice and Champions of the Force.
• Adaptational Badass: Exar Kun was later shown to have an epic backstory in Tales of the Jedi, but his ghost in the original Jedi Academy Trilogy was a rather underwhelming villain. I, Jedi upgrades him considerably, both in intelligence and power, by expanding on his role.
• Albinos Are Freaks: In I, Jedi the albino Shistavenen female Caet Shrovl relates that she was poorly treated by her people on their home world for her condition. As she believed the Empire caused this through an experiment which they performed on her mother, she grew to loathe them for it and joined a pirate group which despised Imperials.
• The Atoner: Discussed. Kyp, after Exar Kun's control over him is broken.
  Luke: In dedicating his life to being a Jedi, you know Kyp is really under something of a life sentence.
  Corran: I know, and it'll be hard labor, too. Killing him wouldn't make the galaxy any better, so this is likely the best solution. Doesn't mean I like it and doesn't mean my inability to come up with a better solution isn't frustrating.
• Atrocity Montage: Corran's description of the destruction of Carida, felt through the Force, lasts for three long paragraphs.
  Luke Skywalker had told us that at the moment of Alderaan's destruction, his master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, had said he felt 'a disturbance in the Force'. Anyone who could label what I felt a 'disturbance' could think of Hutts as cuddly. The hollow shock one feels when told of a close friend's sudden death slammed into me at lightspeed. My conscious mind searched in vain for an identity to attach to that feeling, finding a way to contain it, but the hollowness opened into a bottomless void. Not only did I not know who had died, but I would never have a chance to know them, and that seemed the greatest tragedy possible.
  Flashes of faces, snippets of dreams, laughter aborted and the sweet scent of a newborn's flesh undergoing a greasy transformation into roast meat all roared through me. Thousands upon thousands, millions upon millions, these images and impressions came in a whirlwind that screwed itself down into my belly. Hope melted into fear, wonder into terror, innocence into nothingness. Bright futures, all planned, proved the ultimate in morphability when a fundamental truth in these lives proved wrong. For these people there had never been a question of whether or not the sun would rise tomorrow, and yet in an instant they were proved wrong, as the sun reached out and devoured their world.
  I heard Streen screaming that there were too many voices to handle before he slumped to the floor. I envied him in that moment. The same clarity of recall I cherished seconds before meant I watched a vast parade of dead flicker through my consciousness. A mother, acting on instinct, shielded her child in the nanosecond before both of them were vaporized. Young lovers, lying together in the afterglow of the moment, hoping what they felt would never end, got their wish as they were torn into their constituent atoms. Criminals, triumphant in some small success, were reduced to fearful puling animals as their world evaporated.
• Attempted Homewrecker: Leonia Tavira decides in the last third of the book that she wants "Jenos Idanian", i.e. protagonist Corran Horn, as her next boytoy, despite the cover identity including a preexisting romance with the heiress of a shipping line (Corran's real wife Mirax is being held prisoner by Tavira's pirates). She makes it clear she doesn't care about his other lover and forcefully kisses him in an attempt to whet his appetite.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Corran's dual phase lightsabre, while allowing for further reach in its long phase, requires a different set of techniques to use effectively and is also so unstable that it craps out at a vital moment. It's noted that dual phase sabres were a passing fad at one point.
• The Baroness: Admiral Leonia Tavira, riding crop and all. She was the Trophy Wife of an Imperial moff and is believed to have engineered his downfall to take his job, and turned warlord, then pirate queen after the Empire fell apart.
• Being Evil Sucks: Discussed. Exar Kun doesn't feel that way, but Corran makes a pretty convincing argument of it (at least as far as the Light Side vs. the Dark Side debate is concerned).
  Corran Horn: You don't get it, do you? You've already lost and you're continuing down that losing path. Haven't the last four thousand years taught you anything?
  Exar Kun: I know more than you could ever hope to learn in four thousand years or forty thousand years.
  Corran Horn: That may be. But I know the one thing you don't. You're never going to win. You destroy those who oppose you, and what does that leave you?
  Exar Kun: The faithful.
  Corran Horn: From among whom arises a rival. You have a schism.
  Exar Kun: And I destroy the heretics.
  Corran Horn: Yes, you do. And again and again that cycle repeats itself and you let it go on because you've forgotten the most fundamental truth of reality: Life creates the Force. When Kyp destroyed Carida, he diminished your power. When you destroyed Gantoris, you diminished your power. You're a predator over-grazing your prey, but you can't stop because the dark side fills you with this aching hunger that will never be satisfied.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: The book is extremely self-aware about the tropes it uses and frequently hangs a lampshade on them.
• Big Damn Heroes: Mara Jade interrupts Exar Kun's Mind Rape of Corran with an awesome Shut Up, Hannibal! moment.
• Brick Joke: In I, Jedi, Luke and Corran muse that Mirax and Mara are very similar to each other. Corran jokingly suggests that they should make sure the two women never meet. Fast forward a few years, Mirax finally meets Mara during the latter's wedding. The two become friends fast and Mara ends up becoming Mirax's temporary flying partner, which explains her conspicuous absence at Luke's side in the Young Jedi Knights series.
• Bland-Name Product: When the dual-phase modification on his lightsaber fails, Corran discovers the diamond he'd used for it was, in fact, a synthetic "Kubaz xurconia."
• Call-Forward: Brakiss argues using the dark side would be acceptable for a good goal, using destroying the Death Star as an example. Kam (a former dark Jedi who served the Emperor Reborn in Dark Empire) along with Corran reject this idea immediately and both try to make him see otherwise. Brakiss backs off, but he's still not entirely convinced. This ties in with him later falling and becoming evil himself, as in the previously published The New Rebellion and Young Jedi Knights (though I, Jedi is strangely the only work that actually depicts his time at the Praxeum, and Corran leaves before Brakiss does).
• Call to Agriculture: Rostek Horn became a rather well-known horticulturist after retiring from CorSec, secreting the works of Persecuted Intellectuals and other banned information in his plants' genetic codes. He relates how one time, an Imperial Jedi-hunter asked for some flowers, and he gave the man a bunch of plants containing all kinds of information on Jedi as a private joke.
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • I, Jedi has two references to Tatooine being Obi-Wan Kenobi's homeworld. While this was a reasonable inference at the time (especially given that the novelization of the first Star Wars movie identified Owen Lars as Obi-Wan's brother^note Later changed into Obi-Wan having a vision of him he mistakenly thought was his brother.), unfortunately for Stackpole The Phantom Menace was released only one year later and contradicted it. One of the references was indirect (Kenobi wasn't actually mentioned by name, it was just clearly implied to be him) and the other could be written off as in-universe records having mistakenly said Kenobi was a Tatooine native (the original records showing him being born on Stewjon could have been lost in the destruction of the Jedi Temple).
  • There's also the fact that the mission on which Corran's grandfather died is said to have been sent out by the Jedi shortly after the end of the Clone Wars. Of course, the prequel films released since then show that the Jedi were wiped out/driven into hiding just before the end of the Clone Wars.
  • The romance between Mara and Lando in the Jedi Academy trilogy was retconned into being a cover story in The Hand of Thrawn, and given the links between I, Jedi and that duology, it's unsurprising that there's a brief nod to this Retcon in I, Jedi.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Corran Horn is less bothered by the sight of Gantoris' charred corpse than most of the other Jedi trainees and is able to impartially investigate it for clues, because as he notes to Luke, during his time working as a cop for CorSec he routinely saw things like this and worse.
• Continuity Snarl: Shares a page with the rest of Star Wars Legends.
• Cowboy Cop: Apparently, all Corellian Jedi and/or Security Force members are this to a certain extent, befitting Corellia's Hat as a planet of Brass Balls.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Mirax was a relatively important recurrer in the X-Wing Series besides being Corran's Love Interest, but her only real role in the plot of I, Jedi is to provide motivation for Corran's adventure to find her: she's a Human Popsicle when he finally finds her.
  • Corran's R2-series astromech Whistler is also mostly absent from this book after the opening scene, since Corran can't bring the droid with him while undercover.
• Didn't See That Coming: The New Republic is at a loss as to how Tavira and the Invids have managed to avoid every trap the Republic has set to catch them, not knowing Tavira has a Force-sensitive cult called the Jensaarai predicting the future for her. But when Tavira leads her fleet in a raid on a shipyard, to their surprise they run into a New Republic task force (including Rogue Squadron) who just happened to be there on other unrelated business. This clues Corran into a weakness in the Jensaarais' foresight: they can't predict a threat that isn't directed at them.
• Didn't Think This Through: Corran's plan for confronting Exar Kun hinges on Kun's seeming inability to interact with the physical world, and need to act through other agents. Corran forgot that Kun had managed to short out the Holocron by himself, and Kun proceeds to do the same with the explosive device that Corran brings with him. Only then does Corran realize his mistake.
• Disappeared Dad: Corran reflects on his father Hal, who died years back, often during the book largely because he begins his Jedi training and inherited Force sensitivity from his paternal line. After learning about how Luke lost his own father in the moment he'd regained him, Corran feels deep sympathy for him, knowing it's far worse than his experience, since at least he had many years with him and lots of happy memories.
• Don't Think, Feel: Luke instructs his students using these exact words on how to open themselve and touch the Force, echoing Obi-Wan telling him something like this years before. He explains that them using the Force has much more to do with the heart than the brain, so putting aside rational thought in favor of feeling is key.
• Dumb Blonde: Exploited. Corran, who is naturally a brunet, dyes his hair blond as part of his Kieran Halcyon disguise, which carries over to the Jenos Idanian identity. Leonia Tavira turns out to believe in this stereotype, despite "Idanian" clearly being just as intelligent as the real Corran to the reader, and overestimates her ability to use her feminine wiles to control "Idanian" as a consequence.
• Energy Absorption: One of the two main special gifts of the Halcyon bloodline is an extreme proficiency with Tutaminis, the ability to absorb energy from the environment and redirect it into other Force powers—including telekinesis, which the Halcyons are normally completely incapable of.
  • Corran first discovers this proficiency when a group meditation in an underground hot spring is interrupted by a sudden upwelling of dangerously hot water into the spring. He absorbs the excess heat from the water around him and uses it to rescue Tionne from drowning.
  • In the two visions of Nejaa Halcyon's death, after being run through by his Dark Jedi opponent's lightsaber, he drains the saber dry and then fatally flings his opponent into a nearby building.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Tavira believes that Luke Skywalker ordered the destruction of Carida because: 1, that's what she would have done to her foes had she a Sun Crusher; and 2, grace such as Durron was shown is completely outside her understanding. Exploited later: she doesn't believe the New Republic would dare destroy a superweapon they could use, so Corran uses the Force to make her imagine the Sun Crusher launching from the Errant Venture and ramming her own Star Destroyer, scaring her into retreating.
• First-Person Smartass: I, Jedi is the first book in the Star Wars Expanded Universe and only book in Star Wars Legends to be written from First-Person Perspective, and Corran isn't above making wisecracks in his narration. See the opening scene, where he snarks that the basic TIE/LN starfighter is second only to hydrogen and stupidity as the most common thing in the galaxy.
• Fix Fic: I, Jedi is often assumed to be this for the Jedi Academy Trilogy, though in a blog post from 2014 Stackpole denied this: he and Kevin J. Anderson were good friends and the book wasn't intended as a "jab" against what Kevin had written.
• For the Evulz: The reason Remart was blasting travelers.
• Franken-vehicle: In addition to the usual "Uglies" cobbled together by Space Pirates from salvaged wrecks, the Invids fly a TIE variant called a "clutch", which takes the ball cockpit of the standard TIE fighter—which Corran describes as the third-most-plentiful substance in the galaxy after hydrogen and stupidity—and adds additional viewports and three triangular wings encircling the cockpit. The bottom two act as landing gear while the upper tine carries an ion cannon.
• Genocide Survivor: Elegos A'Kla is one, along with the rest of the Caamasi Remnant. The Caamasi's home world was devastated by the Empire, and survivors have settled on other planets. His uncle Ylenic It'Kla also survived the Jedi Purge, but tragically could not escape being killed on Alderaan, where he lived, during its destruction by the Death Star.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Oddly, I, Jedi has the lightsaber colors backwards from the usual: the Dark Jedi use blue ones and the Light side Jedi seem to use any color but blue. Part of that might be an example of continuity marching on: until The Phantom Menace the only character to use a red lightsaber onscreen was Darth Vader and the idea that all Dark Jedi and Sith used exclusively red lightsabers was Word of Dante, and many fans (apparently including Stackpole) found the idea silly and arbitrary given the rainbow of colors used by light-side Jedi (and ironic considering that the Sith are treacherous and individualist, while the Jedi are so effective because of their ability to work together harmoniously).
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Played for Laughs: the bad cop is Luke Skywalker himself. He plays the "bad cop" completely silently, just standing there looking intimidating while Corran pretends to be getting telepathic commands from him. And it's HILARIOUS.
  Corran: Just stay over there by the door, and look as malevolent as you can. Keep your face straight and you really don't need to say anything.
  Luke: Malevolent?
  Corran: Think Hutt, but with eyebrows.
  Luke: Got it.
• Good Feels Good: There's a couple of moments in I, Jedi where characters describe the Light Side of The Force as feeling like every positive feeling they've ever experienced.
  It filled me up in an instant and I imagined it leaking from my eyes, nose and mouth. I wanted to shout and dance with joy because it was everything Streen had described. It was what I felt when Mirax first said she loved me. It was the scent of the perfume my mother wore, and the warm laugh my father used to have when he was proud of me. It was the hearty slap on the back from Wedge after a mission and even a touch of Whistler's triumphant serenades. It was everything that was good and right and positive and alive; and it was waiting for me to bend it to my will.
• Good Is Impotent: Inverted and discussed. Corran gives an And Then What? monologue in response to Exar Kun's attempt to recruit him as a Sith apprentice, pointing out that ultimately all Kun is doing by destroying all opposition is weakening himself, since the Force is created by life itself. Kun, of course, does not listen.
• Happily Married: Corran and Mirax, since the end of The Bacta War, but that doesn't mean their marriage is completely without problems. At the start of the novel they're engaged in an argument over starting a family: Mirax wants kids, but Corran considers children annoying. He changes his mind just in time for her to be taken prisoner by the Invids.
• Hired to Hunt Yourself: When a mysterious Jedi has begun wreaking havoc on the mercenary groups working for Tavira, she orders the leader of the Survivors' Bolt Squadron, Jenos Idanian (Corran Horn), to find and deal with the Jedi. Unbeknownst to Tavira, Corran is the Jedi.
• I Have Many Names: Corran goes through a total of four cover identities in this novel: Kieran Halcyon at the Jedi Academy, then separate infiltration, walking-around, and exfiltration identities on his trip to Corellia. The last identity, Jenos Idanian, he adopts as his cover for infiltrating the Invids, after using it to foil an attempted hijacking of the liner he's on.
• Internal Reveal: Corran and the rest of Luke's students were unaware he's the son of Darth Vader before he reveals this, showing it isn't widely known even years after Vader's death. They're stunned by the revelation.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Corran is appalled after Kyp is forgiven having blown up the entire planet Carida, with millions murdered by doing so and Luke welcomes him back into the Jedi Academy. Even if he was incluenced by Exar Kun, Corran thinks it's hardly enough for this treatment, and he gives Luke a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech before quitting the Jedi Order. On further reflection though he admits executing Kyp or giving him life in prison wouldn't undo this, and spending the rest of his days atoning by serving the galaxy as a Jedi is the best option, though he's still not happy with it.
  • Tavira remains at large by the end of the book, but with no Force sensitives as her allies it's only a matter of time until her pirate gang is tracked down.
• Kicked Upstairs: The Invids' Rock Squadron, which Corran joins as Jenos Idanian, voted to send their "class bully" Remart Sasyru (among other things, he tried to rape Caet Shrovl) to join Tavira's elite Bolt Squadron so they could get away from him. He happened to be a good enough pilot for them to get away with it.
• Language Equals Thought: Elegos A'Kla's race, the Caamasi (universally Actual Pacifist), are so beloved by the galaxy at large as traders, diplomats and healers that several other planets have adopted the name "Caamasi" as a loan word meaning "friend from afar" or "stranger you can trust."
• Lightbulb Joke:
  • Corran does the Star Wars version, glowpanel jokes.
    Q. How many Corellians does it take to change a glowpanel?
    A. None—if it's dark, you can't see them cheating at sabacc.
  • Apparently "Bothan and gornt" jokes are also a common joke format in the Star Wars galaxy, all of which begin with "So there was this Bothan who walked into a tapcaf with a gornt under his arm..."
• Love Interest vs. Lust Interest: At the start of the novel, protagonist Corran Horn is Happily Married to Mirax Terrik, though they're in the middle of an argument about starting a family when she suddenly goes missing on a mission for New Republic Intelligence. Much later, while infiltrating the pirates he suspects are holding her, he's targeted by pirate queen Leonia Tavira, an ex-Imperial moff who decides she wants him for her latest boy toy, and makes a good stab at appealing to his lust. He briefly tries to rationalize it away as a means to an end but realizes he'd really just be sleeping with Tavira to satisfy his male pride. This comes with the admission that Luke Skywalker's warnings about the dark side might actually have had a point: Corran's not nearly as incorruptible as he thought he was.
• Love Triangle: A distinctly negative example. Corran is married to Mirax Terrik, who went missing on a mission at the start of the book, and under his "Jenos Idanian" cover identity he crafts a story of a forbidden love affair between him and an heiress to a shipping line. Pirate queen Leonia Tavira, the primary antagonist of the book, develops a Villainous Crush and decides to make him her newest boytoy, not caring about his other lover nor for "Idanian's" feelings on the matter. Corran considers taking her up on it, briefly trying to rationalize it as a way to make his cover more effective, but then rejects the idea as a dark side-fueled impulse of male pride and chooses instead to accelerate his plans to break up her pirate alliance.
• Master of Illusion: Trainee Jedi Corran Horn has been unable to use telekinesis, a power which comes easily to most Jedi. He thinks he might be able to break through a mental barrier if he tries to do it with a huge rock, closing his eyes and really focusing. He pictures the rock rising up into the air, opens his eyes... to find the rock has stayed where it was, but everyone else is staring up in the air. He learns that his family have always been poor at telekinesis, but gifted at making illusions.
• Mistakenly Attacked Mole: Corran is on a raid with the Invids when they unexpectedly encounter a New Republic task force, putting Corran in the unenviable position of being on the opposite side from his usual comrades in Rogue Squadron. He tries to use the Force to covertly warn Tycho Celchu that he's on the other side, and orders the pirates to use their ion cannons on the New Republic fighters (ostensibly to force ships to be diverted from pursuit to rescue the flight crews), and manages to accomplish an orderly retreat without having to kill anyone from his own side. This gets him noticed and promoted by pirate queen Leonia Tavira, as well as leading him to the realization that whomever is warning her off of New Republic ambushes can't pick up ones that aren't aimed at her (the NRDF task force was in the target system on unrelated business).
• Naked People Are Funny: Corran is firebombed by one of the gangs he attacks as a Vigilante Man, and uses Energy Absorption to survive the heat. Much to his chagrin, he discovers afterwards that the Force didn't protect any of the clothes he was wearing: the only thing he had with him that survived was his lightsaber. Elegos covers it up by claiming that Corran's crashed his speeder bike, which two nearby women find uproariously funny.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Corran attends the Jedi Praxeum under the name "Kieran Halcyon", after a historical Jedi Knight that Luke found in recovered records who was possibly a distant ancestor. The holocron of Jedi Master Vodo-Siosk Baas recognizes the name—Master Baas apparently knew the real one—forcing "Kieran" to explain to Tionne that he was named after the historical Kieran.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Possibly as a result of a Series Continuity Error. Iella and Corran go out for lunch before he leaves for the Jedi Academy, and she orders a dish made from mynocks (those bat-things inside the space slug in The Empire Strikes Back). Other material establishes mynocks as Silicon-Based Life, which would almost certainly be inedible to humans.
• Oh, Crap!: Corran gloats to Kun's spirit that since he's already set explosives to destroy his temple, there's nothing Kun can do to stop him because as a ghost he can't affect anything physical (such as the bombs). Kun takes great pleasure in demonstrating that he can in fact influence the physical world (though with great difficulty), especially inside his temple which is what his spirit has been anchored to all along.
  Exar Kun: Ah, then I cannot do this. (Kun melts all the bombs' detonators.)
  Corran: Ooops.
• Orbital Bombardment: Corran tells Tycho that if the Jedi apprentices are defeated he should convince Ackbar to order an orbital bombardment of Exar Kun's temple, as that would be the only way to destroy it while staying far enough away to be safe from mental influence by Kun's spirit.
• Orphaned Setup: Wedge's joke, "So a Bothan walks into a bar with a gornt under his arm," because Luke's using the joke as a distraction to put Corran in a meditative trance for a mind probe. Lampshaded later by Iella, who's apparently heard several variations on that joke in New Republic Intelligence (given their penchant for espionage, NRI has more than its share of Bothans), but naturally doesn't tell us any of them.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Exar Kun has been a ghost on Yavin IV since he died there 4,000 years before, and remained around by his Force powers. He's strongest in his temple, but also can mentally interact outside with Force-sensitivies outside it (and try to corrupt them). While his powers are mostly mental, he's also capable of Mind over Matter with difficulty as well (once again, he's most potent in his temple).
• Papa Wolf: Corran's father-in-law Booster Terrik didn't like him to begin with.^note He had a grudge against Corran's father for catching him during his smuggling career. When Corran visits Booster on the Errant Venture after quitting the Jedi, Booster is furious with Corran, both because he didn't tell him Mirax was missing and because Corran has spent the intervening time dicking around at the Jedi Academy instead of looking for her. Booster pretty much tells Corran that the fact he's probably the only person in the galaxy who can find Mirax is the only reason he hasn't killed him already. He later brings the Errant Venture to Courkrus planning to attack the Invids head-on, despite the fact Tavira's ISD Invidious is fully armed and therefore outguns the Venture twenty to one. (It would have been six to one, but Booster currently only has three of his legally permitted ten turbolaser batteries—out of an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer's normal sixty—working because of cash flow problems.)
• Parental Marriage Veto: As part of his Jenos Idanian identity, Corran makes up a story about his lover being an heiress to the starliner company where the Invids picked him up and her cousin, the owner, vetoing the relationship—hence "Jenos Idanian" joined the pirates to rob the company in question into insolvency and take his girl away.
• Pirate Girl: Leonia Tavira, a former Imperial Moff, is now the leader of a small pirate fleet based around her Star Destroyer Invidious. She has several different pirate gangs under her command, as Invidious provides them more firepower (and protection) than is usually possible for them, while Tavira has Force-sensitives under her as well who alert them when New Republic ambushes are set to catch their forces. As a ruthless, cunning woman, she's an effective pirate queen along with these assets. Among lower-ranking pirates there are also several other female ones, such as Captain Tyresi Gurtt, Caet Shrovl and Timmser. They don't stand out from their male comrades.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • For obvious reasons, when Corran goes undercover with the Invids, he starts encouraging the other pirates to practice this to promote cooperation in the future, for example by arguing for establishing a Protection Racket instead of going the Rape, Pillage, and Burn route. While a few of the pirates are in it more For the Evulz, most of them recognize the potential of this racket and end up accepting a legitimate security contract at the end of the novel.
    Corran: Yeah, a refueling station might blow up really pretty, and might even set half a city on fire, but that's not the objective here. Look, you can kill a woolly-nerf and make a coat out of its skin, or you can shear the beast's coat and come back year after year for more wool. We play this right, six months from now we show up in the system, send a list of demands and they'll freighter the loot out to us.
  • When the pirate gang has to fight its way out of a confrontation with the New Republic Defense Force, Corran convinces the crew's leader that they should use ion cannons to disable the Republic fighters... because some forces will have to be diverted to rescue the pilots, distracting them from chasing after the Invids.
• Rage Quit: Corran quits the Jedi Order over Luke deciding to welcome Kyp Durron back into it after the whole blowing-up-a-star system thing.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Corran Horn delivers one to Exar Kun in I, Jedi. He gives another to Luke over Kyp Durron, although he does apologize for some of it later.
  • And so, much more devastatingly, does Mara Jade against Kun.
    "Ysanne Isard would've had you analyzed, digitized and discarded without a second thought, and she wasn't even Force-sensitive. Darth Vader would've found you amusingly quaint, and the Emperor... well, the Emperor actually succeeded in destroying the Jedi, so he'd see you as the very definition of failure!"
• Retcon:
  • I, Jedi was the first novel in the modern EU to directly retcon events of an earlier novel, mainly by establishing that Corran Horn studied at Yavin IV under Luke over the course of Dark Apprentice and Champions of the Force (neither he nor his alias Kieran Halcyon was ever mentioned in the earlier trilogy because Stackpole hadn't even created the character yet). Kevin J. Anderson had intentionally left half the slots blank so later Legends material filled in all but two of Luke's Original Twelve (there are are at least four possible candidates for the remaining two).
  • I, Jedi had to be retconned by David Sherman and Dan Cragg's Jedi Trial after the prequels contradicted some of the timing in the Halcyon/Horn family tree, a common problem for pre-Phantom Menace novels.
• Reverse Grip: The leader of the Jensaarai grips her lightsaber in a two-handed variant, with one hand on the grip and the other grasping the pommel, allowing her to lever the blade around by its end using the grip hand as a fulcrum.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage: At the transition between Acts II and III of I, Jedi, Leonia Tavira tries to seduce Corran Horn, who's gone undercover in her Space Pirate gang to find his wife Mirax. He is massively tempted, briefly tries to rationalize it, then decides it's the Dark Side of the Force talking. But Tavira's made it clear she wants him as her boytoy and won't take "no" for an answer long-term (despite his cover story including a committed relationship), so Corran accelerates his plans to break up her pirate alliance.
• Shipper on Deck: Corran is not pleased that Wedge Antilles has fallen in love with escaped Maw Installation scientist Qwi Xux, in part because he ships him with his old CorSec partner Iella Wessiri (whom Wedge had briefly tried to date back in The Krytos Trap, and went on to marry after the events of Starfighters of Adumar).
• Space Pirates: Leonia Tavira, an ex-Imperial Moff, leads an alliance of these based around her Star Destroyer Invidious. As a result, they're nickname the Invids, and have been raiding New Republic shipping. The New Republic has had no success when the book starts in stopping them, since they always seem to know when an ambush is coming. Corran's wife Mirax tried to find the gang, but vanished. After this he goes undercover with the intent to find both her and them, sparking the book's plot.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Back in X-Wing: The Bacta War, smuggler chieftain Booster Terrik, Corran Horn's father-in-law, managed to capture an Imperial-class Star Destroyer with a lot of subterfuge and a bit of luck, naming it the Errant Venture and turning it into a mobile trade port and casino (the New Republic agreed to let him keep it on condition that most of its armaments were removed). In I, Jedi, Corran visits the Venture to get help returning to Corellia (where he has an active arrest warrant), and finds that the Star Destroyer has become something of The Alleged Starship: turns out Booster significantly underestimated how much it costs to keep a ship that size in proper repair.
• Sword and Fist: Corran challenges Luke to a lightsaber duel prior to leaving the academy. Thanks to his prior hand-to-hand experience, he is able to use other techniques against Luke to turn the fight to his advantage. Luke actually picks up on this and makes use of such techniques upon later coming to Corran's aid.
• Taking You with Me: In the vision of his death, Nejaa Halcyon is Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Nikkos Tyris. He responds by using his Energy Absorption to draw all the power from Tyris's lightsaber and telekinetically fling Tyris into a faraway wall, killing the Dark Jedi instantly.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: At the end of the novel, just to make absolutely certain Exar Kun is gone for good, Corran personally bombs his temple to dust with an extended barrage from his X-Wing.
• This Banana is Armed: Corran uses a handlebar from a wrecked speeder bike as the hilt of the lightsaber he builds on Courkrus. It saves his hide after he gets all his clothes burned off in a mishap: Moff Tavira assumes he was driving drunk and wrecked his bike.
• Three-Act Structure: Act I consists of Corran's time at the Jedi Academy, ending with him quitting over frustration with Luke letting Kyp Durron be a Karma Houdini. Act II is Corran traveling to Corellia to learn about his family history and then joining Tavira's pirate alliance undercover. Act III? Corran becomes a Force-powered Vigilante Man, smashes up the alliance from the inside, and then smokes out the Sith offshoot sect that is helping Tavira evade the New Republic Defense Force.
• Two-Part Trilogy: A nonstandard example: Stackpole wrote I, Jedi at the same time that Timothy Zahn was writing The Hand of Thrawn, and the two authors collaborated to share characters and toss Call Forwards and Call Backs to each other, making Hand of Thrawn in effect a two-part Distant Sequel to Stackpole's novel. In publication order, Specter of the Past came out first, then I, Jedi, then Vision of the Future.
• Vigilante Man: In order to draw out the Force-users he suspects are helping Tavira, Corran constructs a lightsaber and starts mounting night raids on the various Invid gangs.
• We Will Not Use Stage Makeup In The Future: Averted and Played for Laughs. In order to disguise himself as Kieran Halcyon, Corran grows a beard and uses hair dye. Hair dye which he initially misuses, making all of his hair green and forcing him to call his old partner for help. The hair dye is actually a gel which is slathered on all over the body to get all the hair, such as eyebrows and the stuff on your arms. But Corran didn't do it in stages, and left it too long, and he briefly turns his skin as well as his hair green.
• Welcome Back, Traitor: Reconstructed with Kyp Durron. Corran is initially aghast that Kyp Durron doesn't end up in prison or executed for his actions in the Jedi Academy Trilogy and Rage Quits the Jedi Order after chewing out Luke over it. After some Character Development of his own, he decides to regard Durron being allowed to rejoin the Jedi as a kind of supervised release for community service. He still doesn't like it, but he has no better ideas.
• What Have I Become?: Corran wonders this after Kerilt. He knows he's not a monster, at least, but he doesn't know who he really is, what side of his heritage to follow.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Corran gives Luke a spectacular "The Reason You Suck" Speech and quits the academy for forgiving Kyp Durron for... what prefix, exactly, do you use before "-cide" to describe blowing up an inhabited solar system? "Stellar"-cide? However, he does later apologize to Luke for some of the things he said, and he admits that having Kyp serve the galaxy as a Jedi is more constructive than executing him or sticking him in a prison. He still doesn't like it but has no better ideas.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • During his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Luke, in response to a stock Jedi "beware the Dark Side", Corran basically says he faced the Dark Side all the time during his time as a cop.
    • Responding to a 415 family disturbance, he found a domestic abuser had battered his wife severely, and he was so furious that he was sorely tempted to employ Police Brutality, to let the abuser know what it felt like. But he held back.
    • A drug lord offered him a Briefcase Full of Money in the middle of a raid in exchange for Corran saying the kingpin had run out the back before they got there. No one would know. "But I'd know, and I didn't do it."
    • He also tells Luke that when he caught Bossk, the Bounty Hunter who murdered his father, since Bossk was a Cop Killer he literally could've frog-marched the Trandoshan into the lobby of One CorSec Plaza and shot him "resisting arrest", and nobody in the building would've batted an eyelash. Corran also didn't retaliate against Kirtan Loor for cutting Bossk loose.
  • The above rant gets a Call-Back later: If Corran sleeps with Tavira, his ego (and other things) get stroked, she, the leader of the group he's infiltrating, won't be suspicious of him, and he can get closer to finding his wife. Ethically, it's just part of the deception; Mirax is the love of his life and he really would do anything to save her. Plus, Tavira really hates rejection and might well have him killed. But would he really be doing this out of a genuine desire to endure anything for Mirax, or would it be a matter of lust and pride? Corran comes so close to going for it that he realizes Luke actually had a point: he's not nearly as invulnerable to the Dark Side as he previously thought. He ultimately takes a third option: embrace being a Jedi Knight and fight Tavira.
• Who Dares?:
  • Exar Kun, the Star Wars equivalent of a Sith Dastardly Whiplash, says it word-for-word to a thoroughly unimpressed Mara Jade, who goes on to describe how poorly he stacks up to the Sith Lords that she personally knew (not to mention Ysanne Isard, who wasn't even Force-sensitive).
    Mara: More like who cares.
  • Mirax later has a similar reaction to Admiral Tavira saying much the same thing. After that, Luke decides that Corran's earlier comment about making sure that Mirax and Mara never meet is good advice. They do though, and hit it off massively, becoming fast friends.
• Wrong Insult Offense: Corran is badass enough to weaponize it. When a rival from another pirate squadron tries insulting Corran's wingman while he's undercover, Corran deflects it back at him. The rival states that it's typical of Corellians to speak before they think, and Corran launches into an epic recitation of a variety of Corellian-specific barbs the rival could have said instead, culminating in the "light-bulb joke" mentioned above. Corran then No Sells the guy's first punch, insults him again, and knocks him flat on his ass when the rival tries to attack a second time.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Subverted. X-Wing: Rogue Squadron established that Corran is wanted for murder under color of law on Corellia (part of a ruse his friend Gil Bastra cooked up to assist Corran's defection to the New Republic), which is still an Imperial Remnant world at this time to boot. In the second act he returns home to visit his step-grandfather Rostek Horn under a fake identity, and Rostek suggests he might pull some strings with the Public Safety Service (the Diktat's replacement for CorSec as of Wedge's Gamble) to get the arrest warrant cleared.
• You No Take Candle: Caet Shrovl's Basic is somewhat limited and she tends to talk like this.

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