Phasma

Author: Delilah S. Dawson

Time: 34 ABY, before the events of The Force Awakens. The flashbacks mostly take place in 24 ABY.

Place: Aboard the Star Destroyer Absolution. The flashbacks take place on Parnassos.

No one knows anything about Phasma's life before the First Order. She just showed up one day with General Brendol Hux (Domhnall Gleeson's daddy) and basically started running the First Order stormtrooper training program. No one knew who she was or what her qualifications were. Like, did she even go to space college? Did she even graduate high school? (No. She didn't. We'll get to that later.)

Resistance spy Vi Moradi gets captured by Captain Cardinal on the Star Destroyer Absolution. Cardinal sees that she's recently been to the deserted planet Parnassos. He locks her in a storage closet and interrogates/tortures her to learn more about Phasma's history.

Parnassos was originally settled by the Con Star Mining Corporation. They did their capitalistic thing for a while, until a pesky nuclear disaster led Con Star to abandon the planet and strand everyone in a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

Fast forward 100 years. Phasma is a young adult who leads the Scyre, a warrior clan who live on the rocky cliffs and spires of Parnassos. It's a rough life. All Phasma knows how to do is survive.

General Brendol Hux and three stormtroopers crash land on Parnassos. Their escape pods landed far away from their ship. If they can get back to the wrecked ship, they can contact the First Order to rescue them. Phasma really wants to get off this rock, so takes her fiercest warriors and accompanies Hux to find his ship.

Along the way, they come across a few interesting places. There's the giant desert filled with golden beetles that bite you and turn your entire body into water. There's the abandoned mining station filled with lonely, possessive droids that really need a software update. There's the textile plant city filled with bloody gladiatorial matches and machines that turn sand into fabric. And there's the dead zone filled with deadly radiation and, of course, Hux's ship.

Phasma spends this journey discovering new things about herself, namely that she is a ruthless killing machine. Well... she knew that as a teenager, but she never had the chance to practice on so many humans at once. She ends up killing all of her old clan, including her own brother. When Hux's rescue ship arrives, Phasma ditches her best friend Siv. She leaves her to die in the irradiated wasteland of Parnassos. Later, Phasma methodically murders everyone who knew about her past, including a Scyre child stormtrooper and General Hux himself.

Cardinal is shocked and reports this to General Armitage Hux (Domhnall Gleeson). Armitage already knows: he was complicit in his father's murder. Cardinal has a mental breakdown and decides to confront Captain Phasma about her past. They fight and Phasma stabs him with a posion dagger.

But he doesn't die! Vi rescues Cardinal and takes him with her. Cardinal is still dedicated to the First Order cause, but he now sees Hux and Phasma in a different light. Vi thinks he can be an asset for the Resistance. Plus, Cardinal is from Jakku, so that means he's probably Rey's dad.

Quotes: 

• Yes, sir, so it turns out that this Resistance spy I’m hiding in the bilge said Phasma is a no-good nerf herder huttnugget.
  
• “I’ve never walked on sand,” Torben noted. “What’s it like?”
  
  Phasma’s people looked to her, but she nodded to Brendol.
  
  “It shifts under your feet. Coarse and rough. Irritating. Gets everywhere. Slips into your clothes and boots.”
  
• He gave one last moan and exploded in a cloud of water.
  
• A children's lullaby from Parnassos:
  “If you get the smallest wound
  Better tell your Mama soon
  Edges red and skin gone white
  Gonna lose a toe tonight.
  Don’t tell Mama and you’ll see
  Wound goes putrid, dead you’ll be.”
  
• Phasma had not mated among the Scyre, at least not as far as Siv knew, and there was little chance for privacy among the rocks.
  
• At first, there was no sign of any such topography, but as they went on, strange shapes and shadows began to appear in the monochrome gray. They began to pass tall posts, each leaning sideways like a broken finger reaching from the ground. Farther on, a peculiar skeleton of metal rose proudly from the sand, looping and whirling like the spine of the giant eels that washed up on the rocks sometimes at home.
  
  “Were they animals?” she asked.
  
  Brendol had fallen behind, slowing them all with this lack of physical conditioning, and he held his side and wheezed as he spoke. “Amusements,” he said. “They once guided vehicles that people rode for fun. An archaic form of entertainment on planets without enough technology to stimulate the populace from inside their own homes. This planet had much land and little sense.”
  

Final Judgment: 5 out of 5 skinwolves. I really enjoyed reading this novel. But I'm sad thinking about what Phasma's arc in the movies could've been. This backstory makes her such an interesting and compelling character. There is even a line that hints at Phasma playing a longer con, waiting for the right time to defect from the First Order. Well, I guess that's not going to happen now. Because she's dead. Maybe they can resurrect her like Darth Maul!