Chaf'orm'bintrano

"No one would expect you to know one Chiss from another."

- Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano in 22 ABY

Chaf'orm'bintrano (also known by the core name Formbi) was an Aristocra of the Chaf Family, one of the Ruling Families of the Chiss Ascendancy. His career apparently spanned the decades from at least 27 BBY until 36 ABY, but the man who served as the primary Chiss representative in dealings with the New Republic and Galactic Alliance from 22 ABY onwards was surprisingly different in character and attitude from the representative of the Fifth Ruling Family encountered by citizens of the Old Republic several decades earlier.

Outbound Flight
"Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano is not interested in communicating with you at present."

- Commander Thrawn, 27 BBY

In 27 BBY, Chaf'orm'bintrano was conducting an inspection tour as representative of his Family's interests in volume of space along the Chiss frontier, traveling aboard one of his kindred's distinctive diplomatic vessels. In this capacity, he arrived at the base of the Expansionary Fleet's Picket Force Two in the Crustai system &mdash; where at that time the Force Commander was the young Thrawn, later to win fame as an Imperial Grand Admiral.

At this point, Thrawn invited Maris Ferasi and Jorj Car'das, Corellian smugglers who he was holding as half-willing guests, to witness the formal reception ceremony for the Aristocra. To Car'das and Ferasi, Chaf'orm'bintrano seemed to carry himself with the confident arrogance of a born aristocrat &mdash; an impression broadly confirmed by his behavior towards them. He appeared to look down on them as non-Chiss, he refused to make any gesture of greeting, and he would not stoop to using the Sy Bisti trade language to speak with them. Although it cannot be ruled out that Thrawn had invited the Humans to the ceremony deliberately to rile the Aristocra, his behavior still contrasts with the reactions of Admiral Ar'alani and Syndic Thrass a few weeks later.

Some weeks after this, in the aftermath of the clash between Thrawn's picket force, the Vagaari and the Outbound Flight mission, Chaf'orm'bintrano reappeared at the head of a powerful squadron of Chaf Family ships, determined to take control of the Republic technology aboard Outbound Flight's Dreadnaught Cruisers, and to arraign Thrawn for overstepping the limits of the Chiss rules of engagement. Formbi was clearly prepared to fight senior representatives of both the Eighth Ruling Family and the CEDF if he thought that his actions would shift the balance of power within the Ascendancy in favor of his Family, but in the end, when Thrass and Jedi Lorana Jinzler took Outbound Flight out of the equation, Thrawn and Ar'Alani negotiated an alliance to their mutual benefit, and he retreated empty-handed.

The events of 22 ABY
"On my hands, and mine alone, must this rest."

- Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano, 22 ABY

In 22 ABY, a communique was sent out via Nirauan to Luke Skywalker, purporting to have originated from Chaf'orm'bintrano on the planet Sarvchi, and inviting the Jedi Master into Chiss space as a representative of the New Republic, due to the rediscovery of Outbound Flight deep inside the Redoubt.

The initial communique was, however, stolen by Lorana Jinzler's surviving brother Dean, then working as a communications tech for Talon Karrde's organization: Jinzler had been mysteriously tipped off by Car'das, who was attempting to fulfill a promise he had made fifty years earlier to Lorana. When the communique to Luke passed through Jinzler's hands, he stole it and set off for the rendezvous, intending to pass himself off as a New Republic ambassador in order to try and make peace with his sister or her memory. Car'das subsequently intercepted him when his ship suffered a mysterious drive failure, and took him to a rendezvous with a Chiss who he introduced as Chaf'orm'bintrano. Car'das soon departed, leaving Jinzler alone with the Chiss, who apparently accepted his claims to be a New Republic envoy.

Thanks to Karrde's intervention, Luke and his wife Mara Jade Skywalker also made their rendesvous at Crustai, where they encountered the Chiss consular ship Chaf Envoy, with Chaf'orm'bintrano, his niece Chaf'ees'aklaio, Dean Jinzler - and also Commander Chak Fel and Unit Aurek-Seven of the 501st Legion from the Empire of the Hand, whose presence the Aristocra had apparently requested from Parck when it seemed that the Jedi would not arrive in time.

The leader of this expedition, however, was a very different Chaf'orm'bintrano from the man who Car'das and Ferasi had encountered fifty years earlier. He spoke fluent Basic, and had no qualms doing business with Humans or allowing them to address him by his core name as "Formbi" &mdash; and, perhaps even more significantly, his adherence to the Ascendancy's hallowed policy of isolation and their rigid rules of engagement was little more than skin deep. Unknown to the Jedi, the Aristocra was using the mission to recover Outbound Flight as a lure for the Vagaari, drawing them into a pre-emptive attack that would allow the Ascendancy to strike back, ending their threat.

In this, Chaf'orm'bintrano was ultimately successful; but as Mara and Luke later observed, his plan, with its complex subtleties, felt more like the sort of idea that Thrawn would have come up with than the thinking of the conventionally-minded Chiss nobleman that he claimed to be. Also, although it was not evident to the other participants at the time, the evident emotional burden carried by Formbi during the encounter also seems to have been personally linked with Thrawn.

Although Mara thought that the Aristocra was embodying "Chiss collective guilt" over the incident, his emotional involvement seems strangely to reflect Thrawn's own sense of responsibility at the time, and his awareness of what his miscalculation during the battle had cost. His strategem had hinged on luring Outbound Flight and the Vagaari into a clash, but he had underestimated his Jedi opponent Jorus C'baoth, and this had resulted in the deaths of almost all the fifty thousand crewers and colonists aboard the Republic mission, the disappearance of his brother &mdash; who apparently died ensuring that Outbound Flight stayed out of the hands of the Chaf Family &mdash; and the escape of a remnant of the Vagaari, whose descendants were by 22 ABY once again a threat to that region of space. Visiting Outbound Flight, making reparations for the loss, and securing the destruction of the Vagaari threat were thus concerns specific to Thrawn's interests, not the collective needs of the Chiss Ascendancy.

A series of further observations only heighten suspicions that all was not what it seemed. Whereas the Formbi of fifty years earlier had struck Car'das and Ferasi with his aristocratic men and innate sense of superiority, the man who Mara and Luke met was notably less regal in his bearing than General Drask, the expedition's senior military officer &mdash; indeed, on their first meeting, when greeted by the two Chiss together the Jedi mistook the imposing General for the senior of the two. And last, but by no means least, there is the lack of other Chaf Family personnel on the expedition to take into account. In 27 BBY, Formbi's honor guard and the crew of his command ship, Chaf Exalted, had worn uniforms in the yellow colors of the Chaf Family. But although Chaf Envoy was outwardly a diplomatic ship of the Chaf Family, her crew wore the black uniforms of CEDF personnel, and the only other members of the party seen in the yellow robes of the Family were Formbi's niece, Chaf'ees'aklaio, and two unobtrusive junior aides.

In conclusion, there must remain some skepticism as to whether the man claiming to be Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano in 22 ABY was indeed the Chiss noble of that name who had been involved in the events surrounding the disappearance of Outbound Flight. The implications of the incongruities should not be pushed too far: the opinions of Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano could have evolved over the fifty years since Outbound Flight was lost, and there may have been perfectly rational reasons for a ship putatively under Chaf Family control to be carrying a CEDF crew. But on balance, it seems more likely that there was some subterfuge at work in these event, and while it would be rash to hazard any speculation as to who else the man claiming to be Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano might have been, certain details of the events do suggest that Luke and Mara were on the right track in wondering if the hand of Grand Admiral Thrawn was somehow at work here.

The Swarm War
"Formbi's eyebrow shot up, but he quickly caught himself, and assumed a doubtful scowl."

- Leia Organa Solo observes the Aristocra in action in 36 ABY

Five years after the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, the same Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano who had led the mission to Outbound Flight played a significant role in the events surrounding the Swarm War. In 35 ABY, Formbi visited Luke and Mara on Ossus, and later appeared as the commander of Chiss military forces at both Qoribu and Tenupe, the two most significant battles of the conflict. Given the lack of clear evidence as to the exact authority of an Aristocra, it is entirely possible that commanding a fleet of Star Destroyers was entirely within the remit of a Chiss of Formbi's position. However, back in 27 BBY, Thrawn had strongly implied that the Fifth Ruling Family had no regular oversight role over the CEDF, and given the concerns discussed above about possible subterfuge in the recovery of Outbound Flight, it is likewise open to question whether we truly understand Formbi's role in these events, and entirely uncertain how far we can trust his statements about otherwise unconfirmed occurences in Chiss space.

Appearances

 * Outbound Flight
 * Survivor's Quest
 * The Joiner King
 * The Swarm War