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Corellia
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This history is a reconstruction, based on personal memories and archived materials of Risua Cantor (Darkfire), a founding member of the clan. All dates given are approximations, and several official events have not been researched.
Formation and Early History
The chat room #BG_II on IRC's Undernet was once the unofficial lounge and stomping grounds for members of the ISD Relentless and ISD Challenge (the main capital ships of the EH's second battle group), and in 1997 and 1998, the room grew from a few members to a hub of Imperial social activity, even attracting officers from other vessels. Through the chat, the officers using the nicknames Yacko, Darkfire, Trident, Tronsta, Zoomba, and Mazzic became friends and often joked that their similar personalities marked them as family members separated at birth. In early 1998, Darkfire, Tronsta, and Mazzic decided to make this relationship official and link their character histories - Darkfire and Tronsta as brother and sister, Mazzic as cousin to both. Yacko came on board as father to Darkfire and Tron, and Trident his brother/their uncle. Zoomba was the next to join, as cousin to Darkfire and Tronsta, then Terry as brother to Mazzic, and finally Kessler and Fink, as brothers to Yacko and Trident.
By this time, the group made frequent allusion to their relationships in stories and during chat, and decided together that a more official status for the family was necessary. After a vote, the surname "Cantor" was chosen, and all members changed their names accordingly (often using Cantor as a middle name in cases when they were already widely known by a different last name); they also decided on a homeworld, Corellia, taken from Yacko's original biography. They also registered the Undernet channel #EH_CSA and began using it to discuss family business and socialise. Frequent requests from curious EH members to join the family led to a mutual decision that Cantor membership would be closed except through invitation only, and that the invitation would have to be agreed upon by all members and confirmed through an IRC "initiation" (usually involving an embarrassing series of online actions). Finally, Darkfire and Yacko began compiling the Cantors' earliest history, and Darkfire created the Corani tongue - partly as a college project and partly to serve as a language for the growing clan.
The members also began writing stories of the Cantors, including "The Cantor Chronicles," a tag-team series of stories about how each member encountered the clan for the first time. These stories were compiled and established on a Cantor website in 2000, at the URL www.forestwind.ca. Several new members were approved and initiated, and by 2000, Cantor rolls stood at eleven members.
Later History and Current Status
In 2001, #EH_CSA began to flag, and many of the Cantor members were frequently offline or no longer involved with the Emperor's Hammer or Dark Brotherhood. The chat room lost its registered status, and in 2002, the webpage was also removed when crystal-star.net crashed, taking forestwind.ca with it. While off-site copies existed of many stories, the family tree and timeline, and a few photographs, much material was lost, and the Cantors ceased to maintain a strong presence in the Hammer.
The Cantor reputation and stories remained, and other EH members forged familial relationships from the Cantor example. The first organised effort came from the Longs, and because of the waning Cantor presence, it was believed by many new members that the Longs were the first and only existing EH family. Other families then rose to challenge the Longs, and the tradition of DB families became firmly established; later, online families finally received recognition as a valid option for character history and biography.
The EH-DB split in 2003 brought many curious members back online, and nearly all of the remaining Cantors chose to depart with the fledgling DB. This brought a small resurgence of Cantor activity, during which the stories were polished, the chat room briefly re-established, and the webpage brought back online for a short time. Once again, though, interest waned, and currently only a few Cantors remain active in the DJB.
Controversy and Apocrypha
The Cantors' secrecy about certain family matters and their insistence upon a closed, invite-only group caused resentment among some EH members, who viewed the family as snobbish and insulted Cantor members in public forums. Because of the outspoken natures and controversial actions of several Cantors, most notably Yacko, Fink, and Darkfire, EH intelligence began to suspect that the Corellian clan posed a threat to EH security; this culminated in a clandestine investigation of the group in 2001 by the newly-formed Imperial Security Bureau under the investigation of its head, Slade. Darkfire, in particular, came under heavy fire from the ISB and was nearly summoned before the Inquisition for "subversive activities" as a member of the "traitorous" clan.
A point of confusion and running joke in the club was that the Cantor family tree resembled a stick; in reality, there was never incest written into the family histories. The confusion came from two sources: the real-life relationships of a few members of the online family, and the exact relationship between Darkfire, Tron, Mav, and Terry. Darkfire and Tron adopted Terry as a "ward," protecting him as older siblings would look out for a younger one. However, this relationship was difficult to depict clearly on a pictorial family tree and often appeared as if brother and sister had wed and raised a child. Darkfire and Mav also had something of a mother-son dynamic on IRC and frequently acknowledged this, which later led to the establishment of a similar relationship in the Cantor line - but since Mav's father was never written, it was sometimes assumed that Mav was also a product of an incestuous brother-sister union.
Finally, several people were associated with the Cantors but later left the family and/or IRC, or were never Cantors but asserted a relationship with its members, causing even more confusion. These included:
- Trident, who was a founding Cantor but left IRC and the Hammer after a few months and is usually not mentioned in the histories,
- Alastery, briefly associated with Yacko and approved to be related to the Cantors through marriage, though this event did not take place,
- Timetrap, a real-life friend of Darkfire who was briefly adopted by Fink but left the EH after a few months,
- Flamechild, Timetrap's sister who would have been technically a Cantor through the relationship described above,
- Zoraan, oathbound to Darkfire but not officially considered a Cantor, and
- Nightflyer and Kawolski, close friends to many Cantors but not unanimously admitted into the group.
Important Cantor Stories
(Please note: This "history" uses Corellia as a place of origin but does not follow Star Wars canon. Many of the Cantor stories posited a Corellia that is very different from the world in the published novels; because of this discrepancy, several members suggested the homeworld be changed, but at Yacko's insistence, the location Corellia was kept, with the compromise that Cantors were free to describe the planet as they wished.)
The Cantors began as the clan Qena-Cantor of Corellia when it was still known as Coran, and have had a strong Force ability in their bloodline for centuries. The Cantor sword, Cansanor, has been passed down through the generations and most recently is the property of Yacko; it was to pass to his eldest at his death, but is currently held by Tron after the death of Darkfire.
In more modern history, the stories began with Yacko's meeting and courtship with Larisa Borlúm on Corellia. They were forbidden to marry, and driven offworld by the current ruler when they disobeyed the prohibition. Their children were taken from them and raised by others, ignorant of their heritage, and then Larisa herself was kidnapped by Rebels. It was later revealed that this supposed "Rebel attack" was actually orchestrated by the Diktat himself to retrieve his daughter without the burden of her new family. However, the men chosen by the Diktat for this mission were untrustworthy, and they recognized the opportunity of having the royal heir in their possession. Their ship, Corel's Dream, was destroyed in the ensuing battle, and though Larisa managed to escape, she later was actually captured by Rebels and killed. It took Yacko eight years of searching to discover his wife's ultimate fate. Similarly, Yacko's brother Kessler also had a wife, Kayta, who died under Rebel attack. The mourning for these two women, the grief at their absence and hatred of their killers, forms a central part of the Cantor mythos.
In terms of position, the Cantors are royalty and have ruled Corellia in the past; Corellia's system of government consists of a series of royal Houses that rise to control ("ascendancy") in alternation. While Borlúm was ascendant when Darkfire and Tron were born, the House was displaced by the machinations of a renegade, power-mad warlord from the disgraced House Carata. Many were enraged by the aberrant ascendancy, however, and civil war seemed imminent as pro- and anti-monarchy factions developed. This conflict ended bloodlessly, with House Cantor taking ascendancy through Darkfire, who exposed Carata's deceptions and ruled the planet for a little over a year. She then chose a representative from House Malae to succeed her, and Malae rules the planet at the present time.
List of Known Cantors
(Name, followed by callsign and/or other names in parentheses)
- Keirdagh Taldrya-Cantor ("Yacko", formerly Yacko Semenov)
- Risua Cantor ("Darkfire")
- Daavak Tron Cantor ("Tronsta")
- Zoomba Cantor
- Kyle Cantor Kessler
- Anduin Cantor Piett
- Andrekan Anomolos Cantor Mazzic ("Mazzic" or "Kaneda")
- Terry Cantor
- Telaris Cantor ("Mav")
- Tola Cantor Jerel ("Fink")
- Aiden Cantor Karias ("AbsoluteK")
- David Cantor Torres
- Enegiza Cantor
- William Flechette Taldrya-Cantor
- Gryffon De'Urtha Cantor
- Kate Cantor Flyer
- Kir Taldrya Katarn-Cantor
- Jac Ae-Sequeira Cotelin Taldrya-Cantor
(This list includes only existing/lasting Cantors and does not reference the many characters created for stories.)
Family Tree
The last-known family tree image was created in 2000 and has been lost. Other Cantor members are invited to create a new one based on the existing relationships.
Cantor Links
Risua 21:04, 15 January 2007 (Mountain Standard Time)