Eli Vanto

Eli Vanto was a human male who served as an ensign in the Imperial Navy during the era of the Galactic Empire. He was promoted to Lieutenant Commander at the same time Thrawn was promoted to Commodore. He was also a protege of the Chiss known as Thrawn.

Early Life
Vanto grew up on Lysatra found in Wild Space, where both his parents owned a shipping company that usually dealt in the Unknown Regions. Because of this, Vanto spent a lot of time picking up several languages, one of which was Sy Bisti. In later years, he became a cadet at Myomar Academy and was on track to becoming a supply officer.

Meeting Thrawn
Vanto, along with Captain Voss Parck were summoned by Colonel Mosh Barris onto an unknown world during an expedition mission as Barris had found a hut which did not appear to match anything of Imperial design. Vanto was summoned due to his knowledge on unusual languages which the Empire's droids could not translate. Found on crates surrounding this hut was the dialect Sy Bisti.

Later on the same day, the Imperial settlement that had been set up was seemingly attacked by an unknown force, though Vanto was able to determine the attacker was a humanoid and had possibly been on the planet since the Clone Wars. Due to the attack, a decision was made to take the hut aboard the Strikefast, where upon inspection it was discovered the attacker was a lone Chiss. Vanto had learned stories of the Chiss, where he had heard that they too used the Sy Bisti language. The Chiss preferred to use this language to speak, which Vanto helped translate, however the Chiss was demanded he speak in basic as he knew the dialect too. The Chiss then introduced himself with the name of Mitth'raw'nuruodo, or simply Thrawn.

On the Strikefast, Vanto was commanded by Parck to coach Thrawn more on how to speak Basic, despite Thrawn knowing, for the most part, how to speak it. This was more due to that Parck believed Thrawn may be of interest to the Emperor and wanted him tutored for a potential meeting with him. During the tutoring lessons, Thrawn began to learn a lot about Vanto and became interested in his life and the Empire.

The Emperor was indeed interested in meeting a Chiss and Thrawn and Vanto were called to Coruscant to meet him. During this meeting, the Emperor, realizing the Chiss race could one day become a prominent ally in the war, enrolled Thrawn into the Imperial Navy, where Vanto was to be Thrawns translator where required. This decision confused and dismayed Vanto.

Graduating the Academy
Throughout the three months leading up to the graduation, Vanto and Thrawn became fast acquaintances with each other. Upon graduating, Vanto found out that his duty would be the Ensign aide to the now Weapons Officer Thrawn on board the Blood Crow.

Vanto correctly deduced that his career would be negatively impacted due to being the alien's aide. After a visit to Coruscant, Vanto was approached by Culper, a member of Moff Ghadi's staff. She offer him a job, a job which would be vastly more luxurious than being an officer's aide, and would carry a higher position. Moff Ghadi had some kind of objection to the way Thrawn was cheating the system, especially as an alien. All he wanted was to bring down Thrawn, and hoped taking away Vanto would help with this effort. When Vanto learned of this, and also experienced Culper's prejudice toward those from wild space, he turned down the offer. Culper then promised him that Moff Ghadi would make certain that Vanto's career would be of no importance, and told him to get comfortable with being an Ensign, as he would hold that title for a long time, further implying Moff Ghadi's intent to mess with his career.

Vanto continued to serve with Thrawn after this encounter, and did so for a long time, including after the transfer from the Blood Crow to the Thunder Wasp and after Thrawn took control of the aforementioned ship. After time, Vanto's career appeared to be going very badly. He had held the rank of Ensign longer than most, and for no overtly visible reason. Vanto had done little wrong, and had been involved in many successful operations engineered by Thrawn. Vanto of course knew why no promotion had been given to him, but others didn't, and others were beginning to wonder. Among these was Thrawn, who could understand the lack of promotion just as much as anyone else, and being a fair man, he did something about it.

Thrawn met with Arihnda Pryce, and the two of them discussed problems that Arihnda was facing. She asked Thrawn to help her protect herself from prosecution being threatened by the same person messing with Vanto's career, Moff Ghadi. Thrawn agreed, and in return she promised to make sure Vanto would be promoted, and some other demands of Thrawn's, by using her contacts in high places. To do this, Pryce met with Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin. She provided him with some compromising facts and recordings of Moff Ghadi and other senior officials. In return she asked for govenorship of her homeworld, Lothal, and what she had promised Thrawn. Tarkin agreed to these terms, and so the promotion followed. Vanto and Thrawn were summoned to Coruscant. Vanto was surprised by his inclusion in this meeting. It started by Thrawn receiving yet another promotion, this time to the rank of Commodore. Then, to Vanto's surprise, praise made its way to him. He began imagining the name "Lieutenant Vanto" being spoken, and then realised he would never hear that spoken! Vanto had been promoted straight from Ensign to Lieutenant Commander, a jump in ranks never heard of before! He knew that something must have been favouring him somewhere. At the same time as receiving this honour, Vanto and the newly-appointed Commodore Thrawn were assigned to the Star Destroyer Chimaera.

Appearances

 * Thrawn