Callista Ming

"The blonde with the legs."

- Han Solo

Callista "Callie" Ming was a Human Jedi Knight from the time of the Old Republic who survived the Great Jedi Purge as a disembodied ghost, and later, in a new body, became romantically involved with Luke Skywalker.

Early life and Jedi training
Born on the water-world of Chadra, Callista's lightsaber bore a ring of stylized sea-creatures around the hilt in token of her heritage. She lived on an ark in a deep-water ranch with her father, unhappy stepmother, and Uncle Clain. She also had an Uncle Dro. The ranch would follow the planet's Algic Current, ranging from the equator to the arctic circle. The first time Callista used the Force was to move some ice that had trapped her with several cows. Afterwards, she knew she had to join the Jedi, but could never make her confused father understand why.

Rather than going through the normal process of separation from her parents and training in the Jedi Temple, she was recruited into the Jedi Order by the maverick Jedi Master Djinn Altis, who operated from the gas giant world of Bespin. She trained under Altis for five years. While there, she met and fell in love with another Jedi trainee named Geith. During the Clone Wars, she knew General Obi-Wan Kenobi, suggesting she herself fought in the war.

The Eye of Palpatine and the children of the Jedi
Djinn Altis, Callista, and Geith survived the Jedi Purge, and remained in contact with other survivors such as Master Plett, who was sheltering a group of Jedi children on the remote world of Belsavis. But they discovered that the newly-formed Galactic Empire had built the massive dreadnaught Eye of Palpatine to attack Belsavis &mdash; a sort of proto-Death Star armed with super-heavy experimental turbolasers. Callista and Geith attempted to sabotage or destroy the massive ship, but were only partially successful, and both died in the attempt. Callista, however, used her talents in the Force to essentially 'haunt' the battlemoon's gunnery computer.

Reawakening and a new life
She remained there for thirty years, until Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and several other New Republic Jedi discovered the Eye of Palpatine and assisted her in destroying it. During the process, the two fell in love, and just prior to the station's destruction, Callista transferred her spirit into the body of Cray Mingla.

Unfortunately, the process cut her off from the Force. Luke remained loyal to Callista despite this and took upon himself to aid her in reconnecting with the Force. To this end, he took her to a number of places to try and spark something. These included Coruscant, Dagobah, Mulako Corporation Water Quarry, and Hoth, where the two got caught up in the battle against the Darksaber. Later experiments revealed Callista could still touch the dark side.

It was while repelling Admiral Daala's assault on the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4 that Callista realized she needed to strike out on her own to rediscover her Force connection. Remaining with Luke put too much pressure on her, and was too painful. Sneaking into a stolen Imperial craft, Callista infiltrated the Knight Hammer and managed to set off the self-destruct. She was presumed dead, but revealed her survival to Luke, while still leaving him.



All of Callista's activities in exile are not known. However, she did re-surface in 13 ABY, to warn Leia Organa Solo not to meet Seti Ashgad on Nam Chorios, the "Planet of Twilight." Callista had become aware of the Death Seed menace there, but Leia chose to ignore the advice. There she aided Leia in defeating the Hutt Dark Jedi Beldorian. When Luke heard of her message to Leia, he traveled to Nam Chorios to try and persuade Callista to return. Although painful, their meeting brought resolution to their relationship and they realized that going their separate ways was for the best. Luke Skywalker would eventually go on to marry Mara Jade; among the students at the Jedi Praxeum was a rumor that Mara had arranged for Callista's permanent disappearance.

One further incident involving Callista is known. Later in 13 ABY, she was working on the Gamorrean trading-ship Zicreex. Bogged down on Gamorr during slush-time, she became caught-up in the murder of the Gamorrean warlord Vrokk. She eventually solved the murder, revealing the murderer to be a Kheilwar from Af'El.

Relationship with Jedi orthodoxy
There are some unanswered questions about Callista's time as a Jedi Knight under the Old Republic and in the early years of the Empire. Jedi Master Djinn Altis was a maverick, allowing Jedi trainees to become romantically attached, and he taught techniques &mdash; such as the ability to preserve one's consciousness after death by transferring it to an inanimate object &mdash; which were lost to, or condemned by, the mainstream Jedi Order. Yet Callista seemed to have been unaware of the heterodoxy of her own training: for instance, she seemed to have accepted Luke's assumption that the "children of the Jedi" were the children of Jedi parents, rather than, as seems more likely in the light of recent revelations, Padawans or younglings.

Nevertheless, Callista was an important witness not simply of the diversity possible in the Jedi Order in the last years of the Old Republic, but of the survival of fragments of its organization after the Purge. Some of the children from Belsavis became Imperial agents or trainees at Luke Skywalker's Praxeum, but the final fates of Masters Plett and Djinn Altis, like that of Callista herself, remain unknown.

Appearances

 * Children of the Jedi
 * Darksaber
 * Planet of Twilight
 * Murder in Slushtime
 * Vision of the Future
 * Survivor's Quest
 * Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial
 * Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse