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| Who’s Who Nasdra Magrody |
Nasdra Magrody (d. ca 43 rS) was a distinguished roboticist and galaxy-renowned expert on artificial intelligence in the last days of the old Republic
and the early Imperial era. According to “Droids, Technology and the Force: A Clash of Phenomena,” Magrody was a “near-human Arkanian.” Like
many of his contemporaries – e.g., Umak Leth, Dr. Silas Tagge, &c. – most details of his educational background remain unknown, although in
Children of the Jedi, the Princess Leia of Alderaan discovered some of his personal effects, including “a gold ring that, when brought to the light and
rubbed, proved to be the mark of an honorary degree from the University of Coruscant.” Unusually, Magrody was also sensitive to some degree to
the Force (presumably the Jedi Order had identified him as a potential neophyte, but his family had rejected the offer). Although he was never
trained in the Jedi disciplines, his notes in Children of the Jedi do note that his ‘talents’ had “led [him] to study the records of the old Jedi, to
experiment with the mental effects attributable by them to the energy field referred to as the Force.”
Magrody’s notes revealed that he regarded himself as being simply a “robotics professor,” albeit one sufficiently preeminent in his field to be able to
establish the prestigious Magrody Institute of Programmable Intelligence, the galaxy’s foremost research centers. It is not known when the Magrody
Institute was dedicated, but it was apparently established some time prior to the Separatist crisis that gripped the Galactic Republic in the early 10s
rS, as it had become closely affiliated with the Ministry of Science by 13:4, and received a grant from Republic Sienar Systems “to continue its
research into translational hypermatter energy applications,” according to “Ministry of Science Continues Hypermatter Studies” (incidentally, this
indicates that the Magrody Institute must have broadened its horizons, as hyperphysics would probably not be part of traditional robotics and
artificial intelligence).
Magrody himself remained a leading researcher and expert in his traditional field, and taught a number of brilliant students (about 150 of his finest
students would later come to be known as “Magrody’s pupils,” according to Children of the Jedi, among them ‘droid programming theoretician
Stinna Draesinge Sha, polymath engineer Bevel Lemelisk, and boy-genius autosystems engineer Dr. Ohran Keldor). Although as a rule Magrody was
strictly apolitical, he came to be friends with Senator Mon Mothma (Chandrila) and “Bail” – either Prince Bail Prestor Organa or Prince Bail Antilles,
both of whom served as Senator for Alderaan – and mentioned in his notes that they and others had “tried to enlist [his] support and help against the
rise of Palpatine’s power,” but he refused, more interested in physical science than political science; he remained blissfully uninterested in the
politicking and court intrigues that surrounded him on Imperial Center under the Empire, referring to it distractedly as “beneath the concern of
scholarship.”
Despite the dangers of his fascination with his own Force sensitivity, Magrody could not resist his scientific curiosity. In his notes quoted in
Children of the Jedi he described Force sensitivity as being the “ability to influence this energy field by means of thought wave concentrations,” and
speculated that this characteristic was “hereditary and not limited to the human species” (here one finds the subsequent claim of “Droids,
Technology and the Force: A Clash of Phenomena” – ostensibly written by Tam Azur-Jamin KJ – of Magrody’s Arkanian heritage jarring;
obviously Force sensitivity was not limited to the human species, as he himself was not human – and nor were a large number of well-known Jedi
Knights, for that matter). He published articles in the Journal of Energy Physics on the subject of “directed thought waves,” possibly including the
essays “The Light Side of the Subelectronic Force” and “The Universal Energy Field” mentioned by Azur-Jamin, in which Magrody “speculated the
possibility of implanting a subelectronic converter in the brain of a being with the ability to use the Force” (Azur-Jamin’s words; Magrody referred
to Force sensitives as having “such hereditary ability to concentrate thought waves”), thereby “allowing him or her, with proper training, to influence
artificial intelligences of varying complexities at the individual synaptic level” (Magrody’s words). He thought he had been successful at concealing
the full extent of his knowledge of the subject, although he subsequently speculated that perhaps Roganda Ismaren or the Galactic Emperor had
realized that he “knew more about directed thought waves than [he] ought.” As it happens, he was right; Ismaren had noticed his writings and took
an interest in the subject (for his part, the Galactic Emperor was not at all interested, probably because as a Sith Lord he was already familiar with
the “obscure discipline of mechu-deru – mechanical manipulation using the Force,” first mentioned in “The Emperor’s Pawns” and said by the scribe
in The New Essential Guide to Characters to have been used by his first Sith Apprentice, Darth Maul, in creating his customized protocol ‘droid C-
3PX).
Unconcerned by the brutally authoritarian leanings of his employer, Magrody served as an AI instructor at Grand Moff Governor Wilhuff Tarkin’s
Omwat orbital accelerated learning center, where Omwati prodigies were subjected to accelerated education while their home cities were held hostage
against their academic success; the only student to complete the training was physicist Qwi Xux, who – like Magrody’s protégé Dr. Ohran Keldor –
subsequently became one of the leading members of the design team of the first Death Star. Apparently Magrody himself also contributed in some
way to the design of the Death Star, because he was repeatedly mentioned as being one of its designers in Children of the Jedi, although it is unclear
what specifically he contributed to the design.
Magrody’s lack of interest in court intrigue was to prove tragic for him and for his family. Roganda Ismaren, an Emperor’s Hand who had been
officially covered as one of the Galactic Emperor’s concubines, insinuated herself into a friendship with Magrody’s “bookish middle-aged wife”
Elizie shortly after the Battle of Yavin in 35 rS, and arranged for the kidnapping of both Elizie and their daughter Shenna, holding them hostage
against Magrody’s cooperation. The roboticist himself was sequestered and told that the Galactic Emperor had ordered him to develop new
technology related to the speculative “implanted subelectronic converter” he had discussed in his articles in the Journal of Energy Physics, and he
agreed, hoping that his compliance would secure his family’s release. The galaxy at large assumed that Magrody’s disappearance had either been the
result of his desire to escape retribution for his role in the creation of the Death Star, or else that he and his family had been murdered by
unscrupulous ‘smuggler friends’ of the Princess Leia of Alderaan in revenge (an allegation that was to continue to plague her for years even into her
term as Chief of State of the New Republic).
Political naïveté notwithstanding, Magrody soon realized that the Galactic Emperor had nothing to do with Ismaren’s plot, and suspected that she
was sustaining the operation with “money juggled from Treasury funds,” being “clever enough with finances – and blackmail – to obtain whatever
she wanted.” Nevertheless, with his family held hostage, he had little choice but to comply. According to Children of the Jedi, he was “kept, drugged
with mild doses of antidepressants [which Magrody identified in his notes as having been Telezan] just sufficient to rob him of any will to leave, in a
comfortable villa on a planet so inhospitable, so dangerous, so teeming with bizarre insect-borne viruses, that to step outside the magnetic field that
surrounded the gardens would have resulted, within hours, in his death.” Left with no choice, he “studied, and perfected the techniques by which
subelectronic synapses could be controlled” over the next two years. Ismaren’s son received his subelectronic converter implant at age 5, and at age 7
he began to train using the “less punitive accelerated learning procedures Magrody had developed for the Omwat orbital station,” wherewith he
learned enough over the following five years to qualify for “an advanced degree in subelectron physics or a position as a droid motivator technician.”
Magrody’s notes from his captivity ended when Irek Ismaren was 13, which probably means that he stopped writing them in 43 rS, eight years after
his disappearance. By that time, young Ismaren had gained the ability to control at a synaptic level computer systems whose schemata he
understood, for use in his mother’s plot to exalt herself as a sort of Galactic Empress (if on a somewhat more modest scale than her old master
Palpatine the Undying had been Galactic Emperor). It is believed that he was murdered soon afterward, as he quite simply “knew far too much to be
allowed to live.” Likewise, Stinna Draesinge Sha, who’d become a teacher at the Magrody Institute and a preeminent theoretician of AI programming,
was also murdered by a contract killer, as apparently Magrody had “worked on the initial phases of the implanted brain chip with her”; the Princess
Leia vaguely recalled that “some other physicist, some other student of Magrody’s” had also “died under mysterious circumstances a few years
ago.” Magrody himself had noticed after about two years that the holos he’d been provided of his wife had not changed at all during that time, and
that no holos were provided of his daughter at all, seeing that she would have been maturing from girl to woman during that time, and he voluntarily
allowed the drugs to prevent him from thinking about their probable murder.
Although Magrody personally contributed to the creation of the Imperial State’s most notorious weapon of mass destruction and his life ended in
personal tragedy, he did leave a positive legacy to the galaxy as a whole. The Magrody Institute of Programmable Intelligence continued after his
disappearance and eventual murder, maintaining its reputation as institutionalizing excellence in the fields of robotics. Several years after his de facto
kidnapping, one of the Institute’s faculty members, Dr. Cray Mingla – a full professor and student of Stinna Draesinge Sha – was regarded as “the
most brilliant innovator in artificial intelligence to come along in the past decade,” and was even invited to train as a Jedi Knight at the Praxeum of
Master Jedi Luke Skywalker on Yavin IV. In a curious twist of fate, Magrody’s intellectual granddaughter Dr. Mingla would contribute to the foiling
of Ismaren’s plot to use the abilities she had extorted Magrody into giving her son to seize power in a revivified Empire, as seen in Children of the
Jedi.
References:
and the early Imperial era. According to “Droids, Technology and the Force: A Clash of Phenomena,” Magrody was a “near-human Arkanian.” Like
many of his contemporaries – e.g., Umak Leth, Dr. Silas Tagge, &c. – most details of his educational background remain unknown, although in
Children of the Jedi, the Princess Leia of Alderaan discovered some of his personal effects, including “a gold ring that, when brought to the light and
rubbed, proved to be the mark of an honorary degree from the University of Coruscant.” Unusually, Magrody was also sensitive to some degree to
the Force (presumably the Jedi Order had identified him as a potential neophyte, but his family had rejected the offer). Although he was never
trained in the Jedi disciplines, his notes in Children of the Jedi do note that his ‘talents’ had “led [him] to study the records of the old Jedi, to
experiment with the mental effects attributable by them to the energy field referred to as the Force.”
Magrody’s notes revealed that he regarded himself as being simply a “robotics professor,” albeit one sufficiently preeminent in his field to be able to
establish the prestigious Magrody Institute of Programmable Intelligence, the galaxy’s foremost research centers. It is not known when the Magrody
Institute was dedicated, but it was apparently established some time prior to the Separatist crisis that gripped the Galactic Republic in the early 10s
rS, as it had become closely affiliated with the Ministry of Science by 13:4, and received a grant from Republic Sienar Systems “to continue its
research into translational hypermatter energy applications,” according to “Ministry of Science Continues Hypermatter Studies” (incidentally, this
indicates that the Magrody Institute must have broadened its horizons, as hyperphysics would probably not be part of traditional robotics and
artificial intelligence).
Magrody himself remained a leading researcher and expert in his traditional field, and taught a number of brilliant students (about 150 of his finest
students would later come to be known as “Magrody’s pupils,” according to Children of the Jedi, among them ‘droid programming theoretician
Stinna Draesinge Sha, polymath engineer Bevel Lemelisk, and boy-genius autosystems engineer Dr. Ohran Keldor). Although as a rule Magrody was
strictly apolitical, he came to be friends with Senator Mon Mothma (Chandrila) and “Bail” – either Prince Bail Prestor Organa or Prince Bail Antilles,
both of whom served as Senator for Alderaan – and mentioned in his notes that they and others had “tried to enlist [his] support and help against the
rise of Palpatine’s power,” but he refused, more interested in physical science than political science; he remained blissfully uninterested in the
politicking and court intrigues that surrounded him on Imperial Center under the Empire, referring to it distractedly as “beneath the concern of
scholarship.”
Despite the dangers of his fascination with his own Force sensitivity, Magrody could not resist his scientific curiosity. In his notes quoted in
Children of the Jedi he described Force sensitivity as being the “ability to influence this energy field by means of thought wave concentrations,” and
speculated that this characteristic was “hereditary and not limited to the human species” (here one finds the subsequent claim of “Droids,
Technology and the Force: A Clash of Phenomena” – ostensibly written by Tam Azur-Jamin KJ – of Magrody’s Arkanian heritage jarring;
obviously Force sensitivity was not limited to the human species, as he himself was not human – and nor were a large number of well-known Jedi
Knights, for that matter). He published articles in the Journal of Energy Physics on the subject of “directed thought waves,” possibly including the
essays “The Light Side of the Subelectronic Force” and “The Universal Energy Field” mentioned by Azur-Jamin, in which Magrody “speculated the
possibility of implanting a subelectronic converter in the brain of a being with the ability to use the Force” (Azur-Jamin’s words; Magrody referred
to Force sensitives as having “such hereditary ability to concentrate thought waves”), thereby “allowing him or her, with proper training, to influence
artificial intelligences of varying complexities at the individual synaptic level” (Magrody’s words). He thought he had been successful at concealing
the full extent of his knowledge of the subject, although he subsequently speculated that perhaps Roganda Ismaren or the Galactic Emperor had
realized that he “knew more about directed thought waves than [he] ought.” As it happens, he was right; Ismaren had noticed his writings and took
an interest in the subject (for his part, the Galactic Emperor was not at all interested, probably because as a Sith Lord he was already familiar with
the “obscure discipline of mechu-deru – mechanical manipulation using the Force,” first mentioned in “The Emperor’s Pawns” and said by the scribe
in The New Essential Guide to Characters to have been used by his first Sith Apprentice, Darth Maul, in creating his customized protocol ‘droid C-
3PX).
Unconcerned by the brutally authoritarian leanings of his employer, Magrody served as an AI instructor at Grand Moff Governor Wilhuff Tarkin’s
Omwat orbital accelerated learning center, where Omwati prodigies were subjected to accelerated education while their home cities were held hostage
against their academic success; the only student to complete the training was physicist Qwi Xux, who – like Magrody’s protégé Dr. Ohran Keldor –
subsequently became one of the leading members of the design team of the first Death Star. Apparently Magrody himself also contributed in some
way to the design of the Death Star, because he was repeatedly mentioned as being one of its designers in Children of the Jedi, although it is unclear
what specifically he contributed to the design.
Magrody’s lack of interest in court intrigue was to prove tragic for him and for his family. Roganda Ismaren, an Emperor’s Hand who had been
officially covered as one of the Galactic Emperor’s concubines, insinuated herself into a friendship with Magrody’s “bookish middle-aged wife”
Elizie shortly after the Battle of Yavin in 35 rS, and arranged for the kidnapping of both Elizie and their daughter Shenna, holding them hostage
against Magrody’s cooperation. The roboticist himself was sequestered and told that the Galactic Emperor had ordered him to develop new
technology related to the speculative “implanted subelectronic converter” he had discussed in his articles in the Journal of Energy Physics, and he
agreed, hoping that his compliance would secure his family’s release. The galaxy at large assumed that Magrody’s disappearance had either been the
result of his desire to escape retribution for his role in the creation of the Death Star, or else that he and his family had been murdered by
unscrupulous ‘smuggler friends’ of the Princess Leia of Alderaan in revenge (an allegation that was to continue to plague her for years even into her
term as Chief of State of the New Republic).
Political naïveté notwithstanding, Magrody soon realized that the Galactic Emperor had nothing to do with Ismaren’s plot, and suspected that she
was sustaining the operation with “money juggled from Treasury funds,” being “clever enough with finances – and blackmail – to obtain whatever
she wanted.” Nevertheless, with his family held hostage, he had little choice but to comply. According to Children of the Jedi, he was “kept, drugged
with mild doses of antidepressants [which Magrody identified in his notes as having been Telezan] just sufficient to rob him of any will to leave, in a
comfortable villa on a planet so inhospitable, so dangerous, so teeming with bizarre insect-borne viruses, that to step outside the magnetic field that
surrounded the gardens would have resulted, within hours, in his death.” Left with no choice, he “studied, and perfected the techniques by which
subelectronic synapses could be controlled” over the next two years. Ismaren’s son received his subelectronic converter implant at age 5, and at age 7
he began to train using the “less punitive accelerated learning procedures Magrody had developed for the Omwat orbital station,” wherewith he
learned enough over the following five years to qualify for “an advanced degree in subelectron physics or a position as a droid motivator technician.”
Magrody’s notes from his captivity ended when Irek Ismaren was 13, which probably means that he stopped writing them in 43 rS, eight years after
his disappearance. By that time, young Ismaren had gained the ability to control at a synaptic level computer systems whose schemata he
understood, for use in his mother’s plot to exalt herself as a sort of Galactic Empress (if on a somewhat more modest scale than her old master
Palpatine the Undying had been Galactic Emperor). It is believed that he was murdered soon afterward, as he quite simply “knew far too much to be
allowed to live.” Likewise, Stinna Draesinge Sha, who’d become a teacher at the Magrody Institute and a preeminent theoretician of AI programming,
was also murdered by a contract killer, as apparently Magrody had “worked on the initial phases of the implanted brain chip with her”; the Princess
Leia vaguely recalled that “some other physicist, some other student of Magrody’s” had also “died under mysterious circumstances a few years
ago.” Magrody himself had noticed after about two years that the holos he’d been provided of his wife had not changed at all during that time, and
that no holos were provided of his daughter at all, seeing that she would have been maturing from girl to woman during that time, and he voluntarily
allowed the drugs to prevent him from thinking about their probable murder.
Although Magrody personally contributed to the creation of the Imperial State’s most notorious weapon of mass destruction and his life ended in
personal tragedy, he did leave a positive legacy to the galaxy as a whole. The Magrody Institute of Programmable Intelligence continued after his
disappearance and eventual murder, maintaining its reputation as institutionalizing excellence in the fields of robotics. Several years after his de facto
kidnapping, one of the Institute’s faculty members, Dr. Cray Mingla – a full professor and student of Stinna Draesinge Sha – was regarded as “the
most brilliant innovator in artificial intelligence to come along in the past decade,” and was even invited to train as a Jedi Knight at the Praxeum of
Master Jedi Luke Skywalker on Yavin IV. In a curious twist of fate, Magrody’s intellectual granddaughter Dr. Mingla would contribute to the foiling
of Ismaren’s plot to use the abilities she had extorted Magrody into giving her son to seize power in a revivified Empire, as seen in Children of the
Jedi.
References:
- Hambly, Barbara. Children of the Jedi. Bantam Books, 1995.
- “Ministry of Science Continues Hypermatter Studies.” HoloNet News Vol. 531, No. 50. Lucasfilm Ltd., 2002.
- Peña, Abel G. “Droids, Technology and the Force: A Clash of Phenomena.” Star Wars Insider No. 81 Online Supplement. Lucasfilm Ltd.,
2005. - Peña, Abel G. and Juan Schwartz, with Pablo Hidalgo. “The Emperor’s Pawns.” Star Wars Gamer No. 5. Wizards of the Coast, Inc., 2001.
- Wallace, Daniel E. The New Essential Guide to Characters. Del Rey Books, 2002.
| This site is for informational and entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement of any kind is intended. Star Wars and related materials are © Lucasfilm Ltd., which reserves all rights thereto. All original material is © Julius Sykes. Please do not use without permission. |
| This biography was originally added in 2006. It was republished on 15 March 2008. |