Your Top 20 Favorite "Thrawn" Book Characters: No. 18, Jorj Car'das
(Who is definitely not George Lucas)
I asked for your favorite Thrawn novel characters and you voted. The list so far:
18. Jorj Car’das
Species: Human
Abilities: Survivalist, benevolent criminal
Job: Smuggler
Canon appearances: None
Legends appearances: Specter of the Past, Vision of the Future, Outbound Flight
The bio: Jorj Car’das is a human smuggler who becomes marooned in the Unknown Regions after an emergency hyperspace jump. There, he is apprehended by Thrawn and the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet. Car’das convinces Thrawn they’re not the herald of an invasion force and Thrawn, in return, convinces Car’das and his crew to hang around so Thrawn can ask him certain pressing questions about where they come from: Who are the Jedi? How do I speak basic? What is blue milk?
The funniest thing on Wookieepedia:
The illustration of Jorj Car’das on the cover of the Japanese edition of Outbound Flight was drawn by artist Tsuyoshi Nagano. Japanese editor Junzo Takagi thought the character was probably named after George Lucas and asked Nagano to use him as the model. Initially, Nagano completed a rough draft modeled after Lucas in his twenties, which was approved by Lucasfilm. However, the colored illustration looked too much like Lucas, and he was asked to redraw it. The Lucasfilm staff also immediately contacted Timothy Zahn and asked him what Car’das looked like. Zahn’s response was generally as follows: “Late teens or very early twenties. He has dark, Mediterranean-like skin (not pitch black), slightly Asian eyes, dark hair, and a beard that he is trying to grow out in the hope that one day it will grow into a full beard.” Nagano completed the cover based on these instructions.
Why he’s a favorite: Outbound Flight is a noncanonical “Legends” text, and Car’das is the first purely “Legends” character on this list. But Timothy Zahn seems to consider the events of Outbound Flight canon, at least to the extent that it informs the backstory to latest six novels. When he wrote the original Thrawn trilogy, Zahn wasn’t just introducing the Chiss, but creating a future for all of Star Wars. That meant new heroes, new villains, and new characters on the fringes. Many of the franchises most memorable personalities occupy that third category: Jabba the Hutt, Lando Calrissian, Han Solo. Car’das’s biography—though convoluted like that of most Legends characters—draws a little on all of those rogues. In some ways he’s the Han to Thrawn’s Luke: not the ideal person to teach him about the galaxy, but the guy he got all the same.