Cameo Naton

37 BBY – 32 BBY
Cameo Naton was born on Alderaan 37 years before the Battle of Yavin to Adelle Naton, but he never knew his father. His mother was a Jedi, and so it was assumed that he had inherited at least some of her talent in the Force. However, Cameo was born blind. This delayed his entrance into the Jedi Order for several years, until it became evident that he had an innate ability in the Force, which allowed him to “see” with a sort of second-sight. Adelle and Cameo returned to Coruscant, where he was tested, and admitted to the Temple at the age of five – almost too old to be trained, or so he was often reminded.

32 BBY – 25 BBY
He was immediately separated from his mother, and began the most basic training with the rest of the children. The other younglings ostracized him because of his blind eyes. He learned early on that his disability unsettled people. They also underestimated him, assuming that because he could not see, he was diminished in other ways as well. But through his Force sight, Cameo could see more than the average humanoid could with their “normal” sight. He would often slip out and wander the halls of the Jedi Temple, and if he got caught, someone would always assume he had merely gotten lost. Yoda, however, could always see through Cameo. The few times he caught him, the senior Jedi Master would send him scuttling back to his room with a smile.

It was the Jedi custom then to keep children separated from their parents. As with romantic bonds, the Jedi Council believed that an emotional bond to ones parents could one day become a link to the Dark Side. Cameo, however, had already spent the first five years of his life at his mother’s side. When he would sneak about the Jedi Temple, it was often to try and find her, to be close to her. Unfortunately, when Cameo was only eight years old, a Dark Jedi struck down his mother. Young Cameo felt the disturbance in the Force, but was unable to articulate the sensation. It was only later, when the Jedi Master Mace Windu came down to speak with him, that Cameo truly understood what had happened. Now, Cameo felt truly alone.

25 BBY – 21 BBY
He continued his training at the Jedi Temple until he was twelve years old. He stopped wandering, and kept mostly to himself. Then he was promoted to Apprentice. He left Coruscant, and went to live on Corellia with his new Master, Neeja Halcyon. Neeja already had a family – Neeja had a son, Valin, who was a good deal older than Cameo. The Jedi Council felt that the family atmosphere might restore to Cameo some of the traits they perceived he had lost after the death of his mother. They feared his self-imposed solitude would one day serve as a doorway to the dark side. Since it was the death of his mother that opened that doorway, perhaps a new family could help close that wound.

Cameo lived with the Halcyons for four years. He grew to love their family as his own, and saw Valin as an older brother. Neeja trained him as best he could – the Halcyon line had no real ability in telekinesis – but he instilled in Cameo a sense of what it meant to be a Jedi, and of the legacy he carried in the Force.

22 BBY
The Clone Wars began when Cameo was 15, and occasionally he and Neeja would go out on a mission together. Primarily, though, Neeja left his ward at home, perhaps because he had come to view Cameo as a son as well, and didn’t wish to see any harm come to him. It was during this time Cameo constructed his first lightsaber, an amethyst blade with a second crystal that could be rotated in, extending the length from one meter to three. Cameo’s training ended much too early, though, when Neeja sacrificed his own life on another world to save his compatriots from an attack by the Jensaari. Cameo felt the loss, but not as severely as the death of his own mother. Neeja’s friend and partner, Rostek Horn, married his widow and adopted Valin, now Hal Horn, as his son.

21 BBY - 18 BBY
Cameo, however, was recalled by the Jedi Order, and assigned to another Master, Galen Seneca. He was an older man, but skilled in the Force. While Neeja had been like a father to Cameo, Galen was solely a teacher. In the midst of the war, Galen placed the emphasis on bringing Cameo up to speed as quickly as possible. They had lost many Jedi at Geonosis, and every available Jedi was a valuable asset in the war. Every mission Galen received, Cameo accompanied him on. Galen spoke to Cameo very little, and not a word was wasted. It was as if Galen had a premonition of the future, and wasted nothing on small talk. Cameo blossomed in the Force under his tutelage, and achieved the rank of Jedi Knight. He and Cameo were on a mission together on Mon Calamari, leading the Clone Troops there to defend that world from the assault of the Droid Army when Order 66 was issued. The Clone Troopers turned on them, and Master Galen Seneca died protecting Cameo. It was only through the assistance of the Mon Cal people that Cameo survived and escaped.



18 BBY - 0 BBY
Cameo survived alone for many years with his very limited resources. It grieved him to see the Jedi hunted down and slaughtered by the very troops they had led into battle. It even angered him a little to see Darth Vader leading the purge, when the Sith had supposedly been defeated long ago. It cast into doubt everything he’d been taught by the Jedi Order. He clung to the memory of his mother, and the training he received from Neeja and Galen. He took their words to heart, and tried to continue his training in hiding, moving from world to world. Cameo knew there would be other survivors; others like himself that managed to escape the purges. He also knew that his life work would be devoted to rebuilding the Jedi Order, and to restore what had been lost. He believed this was what Master Seneca had foreseen, and had been preparing him towards. To this end, Cameo made contact with the few Jedi he came across. He was biding his time and listening to the Force, preparing toward the day when the Jedi would rise again.

0 ABY – 2 ABY
Shortly after the Battle of Yavin, Cameo began to act out boldly. He perceived the destruction of the Death Star – so closely following the destruction of his own homewolrd – was a herald towards the end of the Empire. He sent a broadcast to the Holonet, calling for a reunification of the scattered remnants of the Jedi Order. Cameo expected to get the attention of Darth Vader, and even the dozens – perhaps hundreds – of Dark Jedi that had risen in the absence of the Jedi. But he believed the time was coming when the Jedi would be able to stand against this dark tide.

Cameo joined forces with one Ulic Qel-Droma, supposedly the same Qel-Droma that had fallen to the Dark Side eons ago. Now, he was looking for redemption. The two of them also took a padawan, one Freedom Nadd, who would inherit Qel-Droma’s resources later on. As the de facto leader of the Jedi reunification movement, Cameo Naton assumed the rank of Jedi Master, at the age of 38. Naton and Qel-Droma set out for Dathomir, following rumors of the crashed Jedi starship Chu’unthor. Their goal was to resurrect the vessel, and have it serve as a symbol for the resurrected Jedi Order, as both a roving Jedi Temple and Academy.

While on the mission to find the ship, Cameo and Ulic encountered one Exar Sadow, a self-proclaimed Sith Lord that had intercepted the Jedi’s transmissions regarding the vessel. Sadow planned to squash the Jedi uprising at Dathomir by killing the perceived heads of the Order, and to take the Chu’unthor as his own. Cameo Naton faced Exar Sadow in a duel. While they were near equals with the saber, Cameo used the Force to create a maelstrom of rocks and debris around his foe, and knocked him unconscious. He left Sadow alive, a decision that would change the course of his life forever.

Leaving the Chu’unthor in its grave on Dathomir, Ulic and Cameo retreated back to safe space. It wasn’t long before the consequences of their actions on Dathomir spread. Exar Sadow, unable to defeat Cameo, placed a bounty on both his and Ulic’s heads of 9 million credits apiece. Regretfully, Cameo and Ulic parted ways for their own safety. If any bounty hunter were to capture or kill one of them, the other would still be safe elsewhere to continue the mission of reuniting the Jedi. But just because they separated didn’t mean they stopped the work. Cameo received a communiqué from a young man named Teggan, who wanted training to become a Jedi. He had caught wind of Cameo’s call for reunification, and sought out the Jedi. After searching the Force for guidance and wisdom, Cameo agreed to meet him on a distant space station.

Unwittingly, Teggan had lured Cameo into a trap. While in a tapcaf, waiting for Teggan, Naton was ambushed by the bounty hunter Cadden Blackthorne. A massive firefight erupted in the bar, during which Cameo encountered another Jedi, one Kuun Deasa. Master Deasa helped Cameo escape, and suggested he join the Eden Alliance, a ragtag group of colonists, Jedi, and pirates that were on the run from the Empire. Master Naton followed Deasa, and left instructions for Teggan to follow him. Teggan, however, was not the only one to follow Cameo. Minutes after landing on the planet, they came under assault by Cadden Blackthorne. He was perhaps the most feared bounty hunter since Boba Fett, but he was no match for a half-dozen Jedi. Blackthorne managed to wound Cameo with a rocket, but retreated when the Jedi began to attack his ship. Knowing it wasn’t safe, the Eden Alliance also prepared to leave. Not a moment too soon, they left orbit just as Exar Sadow and his Super Star Destroyer arrived.

2 ABY – 4 ABY
This launched Cameo on perhaps his greatest adventure. Over the next several years, he served the Eden Alliance as they tried to find a new home for this ragtag group of refugees, rebels, and colonists. He became good friends with Rikard Biel, a spacer; Cecil Tellyn, a fellow Jedi Master, leader of the colonists, and Cameo’s best friend; Litan Adats, a former Imperial Intelligence Agent; Kuun Deasa, the Jedi Master who had led him to the Edenites; Garrett G. Granth, writer, slicer, and drinker extraordinaire; and many many others. He also met many enemies, from the infamous Chiss warrior Thrawn, to the Imperial Admiral Felsk, the cyber-Sith witch Venix, the biomechanical Gait, and seemingly omnipotent Overlords. Teggan, his padawan, died fighting these foes, but others came to take his place, like Aeryn Brax and Rik’s friend and co-pilot, Traiger Poach.

On a mission to defeat the evil Overlord Gargolus, Cameo met someone who would change his life. A woman named Marle Llibrik, a former padawan of Cecil’s, had been captured and brainwashed by Gargolus. So complete had his control over Marle been, that when he finally let her go, he short-circuited her brain. She was alive, but trapped within her own mind. Cameo and Cecil made a trek to Ossus, to see if perchance some of the old Jedi knowledge had survived, that might somehow let them save Marle. After a long fight with the supremely powerful Gargolus, they found what they were looking for, and returned to Marle. Cameo and Cecil delved into her mind with the Force, working with Marle to re-wire her own neurons, leading her consciousness back to the surface. It was an exhausting task, but they were successful. Marle still had emotional damage from the complete domination Gargolus had possessed over her, but her body was healed. And while Cecil and Cameo worked to heal the other damage, Cameo realized something else. He had fallen in love. Whether it was from the intense sharing of minds they had experienced while they tried to heal hers, or from the later efforts to heal her heart, Cameo had fallen deeply in love.

5 ABY – 6 ABY
This realization came just before the most dangerous mission the Eden Alliance had faced yet. They had finally found a home, Cecil’s Moon, ironically the planet the colonists had originally launched from. Finding no safe haven, the Eden Alliance made a deal with Thrawn. Thrawn was not the only who would be looking for them, though. So, Litan Adats developed a plan: they would remove the planet from knowledge. Keeping it a secret would be a relatively simple matter – Cecil’s Moon was a fair distance from any supply lanes, and there were no other civilized creatures that had made so much as a settlement or even a research outpost there. If they could delete the planet from every computer, everywhere, it could simply cease to exist. The trouble was figuring out how to delete the planet. It was determined that the right program could be sliced in, a virus of sorts, that would travel rapidly through every computer connected to the Holonet, and erase the planet, but it would have to be done on Coruscant, at Imperial Center. In 4 ABY, A small group of the Edenites, including Cameo, infiltrated the capital world of the Empire. There, they met Saba J’onoats, a slicer who had retreated to the seedy underbelly of the city to avoid being killed by the Empire. With his help, they crafted the program, and introduced it into the system. The presence of so many Jedi on Coruscant, however, raised the undue suspicion of the Darth Vader, who they encountered on the way back to their ship. Cameo attacked, hoping to give his friends a chance to escape. He had no delusions about this fight – he knew that Vader had slaughtered countless Jedi, and knew that his own name would soon be added to that long list. His only goal was to delay the Sith Lord long enough. The battle was intense, but in the end, Cameo was struck. Master Naton exposed his back to Vader, and the Sith slashed through his spine. Cameo collapsed, and Vader marched on to face his friends. One of them used the Force to lift Cameo away, and into one of the escaping ships. Miraculously, they escaped, and Cameo was the only one injured.



When he woke up in the bacta tank later, Cameo discovered that he was paralyzed from the ribs down. Despite facing down Darth Vader and living to tell the tale, he was demoralized. His friends refitted a sort of hoverchair for him to provide some maneuverability, but his disability was too much for him. As he had when his mother died, Cameo grew despondent, and distanced himself from his friends, even Cecil and Marle.

A short while later, Cameo was captured by Venix, an evil entity that had managed to survive for decades by transferring her consciousness between several Human Replica Droids, or HRD’s. Now, though, she had finally chosen a human host. She wanted to rule the galaxy, and determined that Cameo was going to rule at her side. Cameo refused, of course, but Venix dangled the temptation of making him whole again. Using her knowledge of cybernetics, she would restore Cameo’s mobility, if only he would serve her. Grudgingly, Cameo obliged. The Jedi Council had been wise to fear for him so long ago, but it turned out to be not love that led him to the Dark Side, but pride. After a surgery which placed a cybernetic relay where his spine had been severed, Venix demanded a test of his loyalty. She positioned a superweapon called the Warhammer over a small planet that had crafted parts for the original Death Star – the one responsible for destroying his homeworld. Venix ordered Cameo to destroy it, and he did. Only 250,000 died on the planet, most of them responsible for contributing in some way to the destruction of Alderaan and millions more lives there, but it was vengeance nonetheless. Cameo hardened his heart, and while he rebuffed Venix’s physical advances, he also knew he could never return to Marle after what he had done, what he had become.

Fortunately for Cameo, Cecil and Marle had not given up on him. Even with the destruction of this world, and dozens more held in fear of Venix’s wrath, they staged a daring rescue mission. In the end, it was their love for Cameo that won him back, despite himself. With Venix’s influence and the Warhammer destroyed, they returned to Cecil’s Moon. There, Cameo awaited trial for his crimes while in the service of Venix. He did this willingly, as one more way to atone for what he’d done. As the trial was nearing a verdict, Gait attacked Cecil’s Moon. Thousands of mechanical spiders overwhelmed the defenses of the main city, and Cameo joined the other Jedi in defending the innocent citizens of Cecil’s Moon. During this fight, his cybernetic relay was destroyed, and he was almost killed. Dr. Reab turned to Garrett Granth for a transfusion to replace Cameo’s lost blood. The result was another miracle. The nanites that Granth carried in his own blood went to work repairing Cameo’s spine and other injuries, leaving him completely whole again. When the trial resumed, Cameo was exonerated, due to his past service to the Eden Alliance, and for the pain and suffering he had already endured as a result of his acts.

7 ABY – 9 ABY
Finally, Cameo felt that the time was right. He proposed to Marle, and she accepted. The two were wed by Kuun Deasa, who also later married Cecil and Kelsey. This marked a happier era in Cameo’s life, but not an uneventful one. The Eden Alliance still had enemies, and at one point, a Noghri by the name of Silverwuulf kidnapped Marle. Cameo and Cecil again pursued her. In the confusing course of those events, Silverwuulf killed Marle, and the outpouring of grief from Cameo and Cecil somehow thrust them back in time. They were then able to prevent Marle’s death, and the future versions of themselves simply ceased to be.

An old apprentice of Cecil’s by the name of Sto-je had been captured by Gargolus three years prior. Sto-je finally managed to escape, taking with him a clone of Marle, and the two returned to Cecil’s Moon. This proved to be an uncomfortable situation for Cameo’s wife. Shortly thereafter, Gargolus attacked the planet, with yet another Marle at his side. It was soon revealed that this evil Marle was in fact Cecil’s original student, and the other two, including Cameo’s wife, were actually the clones. Gargolus was ultimately destroyed, but the evil Marle escaped with a promise of vengeance. Cameo and Marle came to terms with this new development, and tried to move on as best they could. The other clone was left to redefine her own identity with the help of Cecil, and a few others.

In 9 ABY, Cameo Naton felt the Force leading him to make another attempt to reunite the Jedi. Cecil’s Moon was at peace, but the rest of the Galaxy remained in turmoil. The first Jedi Convention at Midpoint Station was held, and Cameo thought he would see what he had hoped so long for. Hundreds of Jedi came, far more than he expected, and they elected a dozen members to a new Jedi Council, which included Cameo. Unfortunately, this first Council lacked the authority to lead the Jedi. There were so many different academies, and the Jedi had adjusted to the seeming independence for so long, that the Council largely powerless. Dejected, Cameo returned to Cecil’s Moon to bide his time again.

10 ABY – 11 ABY
Time passed, and Marle was with child. She and Cameo were tremendously happy and excited. They had always wanted a child of their own. But as often happened on Cecil’s Moon, their happiness was not long-lived. Exar Sadow, Cameo’s nefarious arch-enemy, launched an attack on Cecil’s Moon. His lieutenant, Shun Xing, had discovered the world while pursuing Aeryn Brax. Knowing that the next strike would endanger both of their families, Cameo and Cecil went on a pre-emptive strike against Exar Sadow, using information gleaned from Shun Xing. It turned out to be a trap, and while Cameo was away, Exar Sadow slipped in and kidnapped his wife, Marle. Cameo and Cecil spent the next several months trying to track down Sadow, finally facing him on his Super Star Destroyer. Sadow’s treachery was deep, however, and he used the neural pathways Gargolus had used to control Marle so long ago to control her again. She was his puppet, and he launched her in a duel against Cameo while Cecil faced Exar. Horrifically, Cameo was forced to kill his own wife, while Sadow escaped. In the last moments before her death, Sadow released her, giving Cameo and Marle a tearful goodbye. His goal had never been to destroy Cameo, but rather to hurt him so deeply that he destroyed himself. The fate of Cameo’s unborn child was never discovered. The pain of both losses stung Master Naton deeply.



12 ABY – 15 ABY
In relative solitude, Cameo worked to train the next generation of Jedi on Cecil’s Moon. Side by side with Cecil and his wife, Aeryn Brax, and occasionally Traiger Poach, they created a microcosm of the old Jedi Academy, training young students together, while taking older students on as padawans. Master Naton also trained to fight with two lightsabers, after recovering Marle’s lost lightsaber. By keeping her blade at his side, he felt she was still at his side, if only in spirit. Cameo took a young orphan girl, Devina Rey, the child of two Edenite colonists who were killed in the mechanical spider massacre, as his apprentice. Again, peace reigned on Cecil’s Moon for a time, and Cameo again felt the call of the Force. A second convocation of the Jedi was held at Midpoint Galactic Station, and once more, Cameo made the trek from Cecil’s Moon. There, he was nominated to lead the Jedi Council. He was only 52 years old. His friend Cecil Tellyn was also confirmed as a member. The Council was reduced from twelve members, to seven. While at Midpoint, Cameo received a shocking vision through the Force, indicating that their old enemy Gait was back, and focused on destroying the Jedi. Cameo channeled the urgency of that vision into giving the Jedi Order a renewed sense of purpose.

Current
As of 15 ABY, Master Cameo Naton continues to serve as the leader of the Jedi Order by popular vote, aboard the Star Destroyer Mace Windu. His primary goals are currently to defeat Gait, and to find a peaceful solution to the Xen’Chi invasion of known space. He hopes that the third time is the charm, and that the Jedi Order will remain united through these continually perilous times.