Iden Versio was born on the planet Vardos to Garrick and Zeehay Versio.
Garrick was a highly respected officer in the Galactic Empire and Zeehay was a famous
propaganda artist. From birth, Iden was destined to join the Empire as well.
She was raised in the Future Imperial Leaders military preparatory school where she met Gideon Hask.
He was orphaned by a Rebel attack and taken in by the Versios. Both of them moved on to the Coruscant?
Imperial University when they were old enough. Iden graduated at the top of her class with honors. Her first
assignment was on the Death Star as a senior lieutenant.
During the Battle of Yavin she flew a TIE fighter and earned the record for the most
verified kills and her squadron, a record that would never be broken.
Thanks to a prolonged chase with a Y-Wing
She was outside the blast radius of the death star's explosion.
She made her way to Yavin 4 where she was able to steal a Rebel shuttle and return to imperial
Space. Back on Coruscant her father, who was now an admiral in the Imperial Security Bureau
summoned her, Gideon, and two other soldiers to start a new elite special forces unit.
Together with Del Meeko and Seyn Marana they formed Inferno Squad.
Iden took command of the unit and it was their responsibility
to stop potential breaches of security like the incident on Scariff that led to the death star's destruction.
Their first mission targeted a potentially treasonous moff
Inferno Squad's success satisfied Admiral Versio enough to trust them with a more prolonged
undercover mission against the surviving members of Saw Garrerra's
Partisans who now called themselves The Dreamers.
They had somehow acquired imperial intelligence through their mysterious leader known as The Mentor.
To avoid suspicion the team was split up to infiltrate the group under different circumstances,
but Iden's mission was a special case. She was needed to enter The Dreamers under her own name by publicly
expressing doubts about The Empire. She was a disgraced and renowned imperial hero, a potential ally the dreamers could not resist.
With their help she quote-unquote escaped The Empire to join their ranks.
every member of Inferno Squad made their way into The Dreamers and began to secretly aid each other
They discovered the identity of The Mentor to be Lux Bonteri,
a former senator for Onderon and known associate of Saw Garrerra.
Inferno Squad put a stop to the leak in Imperial Intelligence and killed The Dreamers.
Although the mission was successful, agent Marana was killed and both Del and Iden were shaken by the
experience, but they were able to return
to active duty within the empire, Iden's name was restored, and she was once again a celebrated hero.
Two to three years later the empire neared completion
on its second death star
the rebellion was allowed to learn of its existence in order to lure their full fleet into a trap.
But a message from Moff Wraith was intercepted which would alert the
Alliance of the danger they were in once it was decrypted.
Iden allowed herself to be captured by Alliance Intelligence so she could break out of her cell, delete the message, and escape.
Inferno Squad participated on the ground during the battle of Endor and witnessed the destruction of the second Death Star.
They escaped the planet and returned to Admiral Versio for debriefing. It was there that Iden learned about
Operation Cinder the Emperor's contingency plan. She was not allowed to learn the true nature of the attack but was sent to Fondor to retrieve
experimental weapons for her father. Upon her return she learned that those weapons were meant to be used
on her homeworld of Vardos. The Emperor's plan was one of spite and revenge.
He felt that an empire that allowed its leader to die was an empire that did not deserve to go on living.
The attack on Vardos was meant to be a statement that no world was safe, even the most devoted imperial world.
Unwilling to attack her own people, Iden and Del turned on their friend Hask and they helped a number of civilians escape death.
They turned themselves over to the rebellion and reluctantly agreed to help defend another planet from Operation Cinder.
They successfully saved Naboo alongside rebel heroes Lando Calrissian and Leia Organa.
Iden and Del then decided to fully defect and join the New Republic for the remainder of the Galactic Civil War.
I'm gonna pause the story here to offer my thoughts on that controversial decision
I do think in the context of the game that was a sudden turn.
Over the course of two missions Iden decides that she's been fighting for the wrong side her whole life.
But, she was willing to happily continued serving after the destruction of Alderaan.
Her story told in the book plants the seeds for both her and Del's defection.
Meeko was more obviously sympathetic to the plight of The Dreamers but there were hints at Iden's own doubts as well.
Her talks with Lux Bonteri made her see the darker side of The Empire, pun intended
She was able to shrug those doubts off for years as she was always on the winning side of the war,
but when she saw that imperial leadership including her own father was willing to blindly attack their own
civilians she finally felt strongly enough to take action.
Again, I think we could have used another mission or something to make Iden's
defection a little more gradual, but i don't think the decision came completely out of left field as
some people claimed. But, back to the story, Iden spent the months after Naboo attempting
to hunt down and capture her father which would have been a significant setback to the remaining Imperial forces.
Their paths finally crossed again at the battle of Jakku.
Iden assisted many New Republic operations on the ground,
shot down Gideon's TIE interceptor, and, while she was able to reach her father, he insisted that he go down with his ship
but implored his daughter to save herself.
During the next twenty nine years, Iden and Del married and had a daughter named Zay.
They seemingly lived their life in peace, not involved in the growing Resistance, but when Del went missing Iden and Zay began an investigation.
They were led back to Vardos where Gideon revealed that he was still alive
serving the First Order and that he had murdered Del. They escaped the First Order's clutches and
decided to get revenge by learning as much about their enemy as they could for the Resistance.
they boarded the Resurgent Class battle cruiser Retribution where they learned about Project Resurrection, the scope of the First Order fleet, and
downloaded schematics for a First Order dreadnought. They sabotaged the ship's hyperdrive to pull it out of hyperspace
in the middle of the battle of starkiller base.
Gideon was killed for good in the process, but he also fatally wounded Iden. She died as starkiller base
exploded, asking Zay to bring their intelligence to General Organa.
Iden's final mission was instrumental in the survival of the Resistance.
The schematics for the dread not allowed commander Poe Dameron to destroy the ship.
The Resistance suffered heavy losses and Dameron defied orders to take it out,
but had it survived their small fleet would have been tracked through hyperspace and
almost certainly would have been wiped out by the dreadnought immediately.
And so ends the story of Iden Versio, hero of the Empire, Rebellion, and Resistance.
Are there any other characters you'd like
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As always thanks for watching and may the force be with you.