Jessalyn Valios

Jessalyn Valios, also known as the Jedi Witch, was a Jedi Knight and apprentice to Luke Skywalker in the years following the Battle of Endor. A slender, long-legged woman, she had a wild mane of wavy red hair and twinkling green eyes. Her Jedi regimentals are usually green or black, and her lightsaber has a turquoise blade.

History
She attended the Corellian Flight School as a young woman, becoming an ace flight tech, and joined the Rebel Alliance, where she later met Skywalker and rose to the rank of Colonel in the New Republic Support Corps. Of Corellian descent, she was stubborn, witty and kind, yet loyal and protective of her friends and comrades. Though the feelings between Jessa and Skywalker were often more than that of Master and apprentice, the two never found a way to balance a relationship along with building the New Jedi Order and fighting what remained of the Empire and the Sith.

She would become a Jedi Master in due time, and would be one of Lara Grayson's prime rivals. She was kidnapped by Noghri agents of Emperor Bacharan Valak on Tatooine in 7 ABY, and later rescued by Skywalker. Once again 8 ABY she was kidnapped while on Bonadan, and would not resurface until 10 ABY when she was rescued by the unlikely coalition of Cort Stasus, Simon Sezirok and Mira Isaria. Even though Jessa was liberated from Valak, it would be months before she could be awakened, for her soul was caught inside an elaborate Sith Mind Trap.

By happenstance, a witness to Jessalyn's awakening was Orson Tighe, one of Talon Karrde's employees, who eventually became her first apprentice as well as a serious love interest. As Jessa and her new companions sought out information on the Death Star III, the Selas Simon Sezirok took his own interest in the recovering Jedi, and she tried to lure him back from the Dark Path he had started upon. Her efforts met with failure, and ultimately led to Orson's murder at Simon's hands.

Heartbroken and blaming herself, Jessalyn came to doubt her ability to train others in the ways of the Force. Luke Skywalker comforted her with his own insights and helped her regain her strength of self once more. However, there were only more obstacles waiting around the corner. A man named Aurejin, a Jedi of the Old Ways who apparently had survived the original Jedi Purge, emerged on the scene and befriended the members of the New Order. Around the same time, a being calling himself Palpatine confronted the young woman and nearly killed her, but just as Jessalyn was giving in to her inevitable death, he forced his will upon her, squelching her Self and turning her into a mindless slave to do his bidding. The acts she committed while Palpatine's puppet would haunt her -- and many innocent others -- for the rest of her life. As she gathered her strength to kill herself rather than live this way, the Jedi Aurejin stepped in to save her from herself and redeem her from Palpatine's control.

Jessalyn temporarily lost her Jedi powers and was horribly burned when she tried to stop Sezirok on Yavin IV. After her recovery, she helped to establish the palazzo on Corellia which became headquarters for the Jedi Order. She found herself instrumental as a teacher and brought a measure of peace to those who were studying and training on Corellia, including Joshua Arands, Mira and Kyyel Marrak. During this time she befriended the clone Jedi Aurejin who brought his own insights from the Old Order to this new grouping of Force-sensitives. After he discovered his own true identity and was prepared to relinquish his soul to the original Aurejin, Sezirok appeared to Jessalyn and cursed her with a Force withering disease. She used the last of her strength to save Luke Skywalker, who had been imprisoned in opalite by a then-unknown enemy named Pantara. As she lay dying, the anguished clone Aurejin relinquished himself to the returning spirit of the original, slain Aurejin -- but the old and new were instead merged into one, and Jessalyn herself was restored.



Soon after the two were married. While pregnant with her first child, she stayed on Kashyyyk where she was watched over by the Wookiees and her friend Johanna Siri te Danaan, a New Republic pilot and all-around scoundrel. Jessalyn and Johanna journeyed to Gaena, Aurejin's homeworld, where she would give birth to her son Kiri. It was Kiri, an incredibly gifted and precocious Jedi child himself, who first tapped into Johanna's Force-gifts, and she became yet another apprentice under Jessalyn, and eventually a Jedi Master in her own right.



Auotos Beta IV, also known as Gaena, became something of a safeworld for Jedi younglings and Jessalyn was their fierce protector as well as their wise Master.