Akanah Norand Goss Pell was a female Fallanassi practitioner of the White Current. Isolated from her parents at an early age, she later married Andras Pell, who died shortly afterward. She later met up with Jedi Master Luke Skywalker around the time of the Black Fleet Crisis. Akanah told the Jedi that she knew his mother, a Fallanassi, and would lead him to her if she would help her find her people, though she was in fact lying to further her own gains. After she made her way back to them with the Jedi Master's help, she revealed the deception to Skywalker after the Battle of N'zoth, and the two parted.
Pell later trained Skywalker's nephew, Jedi Knight Jacen Solo, following the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War and taught him to accept the nature of the galaxy as it was rather than constantly attempt to save it. After Solo left her, Pell continued to live with the Fallanassi on the moon Pydyr.
In 44 ABY, the dark side entity Abeloth consumed Pell and took the form of her body. Pell greeted Skywalker, but after he discovered that the woman who appeared to be Pell was in fact Abeloth, he killed her in the ensuing fight. Regaining her consciousness for a very short moment, Pell implored Skywalker to forgive her as she died.
Born to Joreb Goss and Isela Talsava Norand on the Expansion Region planet Gavens, Akanah and her family later left her homeworld and moved to the city of Ialtra on Lucazec. Akanah inherited her Fallanassi potential through her mother. While still a young girl, her father, Joreb Goss, left her and her mother in search of wealth to support his small family, though he never returned. Years later, when the Galactic Empire arrived on Lucazec, Akanah was only twelve years old. Along with her mother, Akanah fled to Carratos to avoid death at the hands of Emperor Palpatine's Inquisitors.
Hidden away and separated from the Fallanassi, Akanah's mother used her Fallanassi abilities to hide Akanah and herself from the myriad of thugs that plagued Carratos. While on Carratos, Talsava enlisted the aid of a fellow Fallanassi named Nashira to teach Akanah. With a good start in the practices of the White Current, Akanah was formally inducted into the Fallanassi circle. Nashira left soon after, leaving the completion of Akanah's training to her mother. However, this was not to be. Just three years after arriving on Carratos, Talsava took all the money they had saved up on Carratos and bought passage off world, abandoning Akanah.
All alone, Akanah was forced to fend for herself using her subpar abilities to hide herself with Force illusions. Devastated by being abandoned, Akanah swore to make it offworld and discover the reason for her mother's departure. She met and married Andras Pell, a wealthy businessman who was thirty-six years older than her. Pell loved Akanah dearly, but she was more interested in Pell's prized possession, a Verpine star freighter which was later christened Mud Sloth by Luke Skywalker. Andras Pell died only a year after their marriage.
Inheriting the Mud Sloth was a huge plus for Akanah. Starships were hard to come by on Carratos, and having her own ship meant that she would finally be able to leave the planet. With her newfound ship, Akanah was eager to reunite with her mother and the rest of the Fallanassi. Unfortunately, she was in no way a spacer, and while her Force skills had improved over the years, she doubted that she could locate her family without aid.
Some time later, Akanah Norand Goss Pell sensed the strong Force presence of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker through the White Current. Knowing that he would be the perfect pilot and aide to finding the hidden Fallanassi, she began a journey to Coruscant, the capital of the New Republic, to meet him. Deathly afraid of abandonment due to the fact that both her parents had left when she was a girl, Pell devised a plan to ensure Skywalker's cooperation and devotion to the quest. Upon meeting Skywalker, Pell revealed that her former teacher, Nashira, was Luke's long-lost mother, though she had in fact invented this fact as a ruse to fool Skywalker.
Skywalker was desperate for any information and was completely fooled. He had been meditating on his role in the Force, hidden in a reconstructed residence of his father on Coruscant. Akanah's arrival and offer to help him find his mother helped shake Skywalker from his existential ponderings. Traveling in Pell's ancient Verpine Adventurer, Mud Sloth, the pair left in secret to locate the Fallanassi and, as Akanah claimed, Skywalker's mother. Their journey first led them to Lucazec, the previous home of the Fallanassi before Akanah and her mother had fled to Carratos. Searching through the abandoned city, Akanah was able to find evidence that several of her Fallanassi family had fled to Teyr.
Arriving on Teyr, Pell and Skywalker made their way to the small town of Sodonna, where the Fallanassi had once owned a group of communal lowhouses. Searching the abandoned houses, Pell found where the Fallanassi had fled to, the small world of J't'p'tan. However, on her way back to the Mud Sloth, Pell came upon another piece of information, the location of her long-lost father. After Pell crafted the lie that the Fallanassi were actually on Atzerri, Pell and Skywalker made their way off Teyr.
Arriving on Atzerri, Pell quickly made up a false story and left Luke in search for her father. Through several Force tricks, Pell made her way to Atrium 41, the decrepit home of her estranged father. Unfortunately, a joyous reunion was not to be. Joreb Goss had become strongly addicted to the drug Rokna blue, which had severely damaged his brain. He had no recollection of his wife, the Fallanassi, or of even having a daughter.
A tearful Pell returned to the ship and revealed the true location of the Fallanassi hideout on J't'p'tan. Along the way, Luke comforted the grieving Pell, and she began to open up. The pair engaged in debates over the Force and the White Current and grew close, even making love one night. Pell now had a horrible dilemma of continuing a love affair based on deception or revealing her subterfuge to the Jedi Master.
Once at J't'p'tan, Pell led Skywalker to the hideout of the Fallanassi under a Force illusion on the far side of the planet. Once there, Luke tried to question the Fallanassi leader, Wialu, about information on his supposed mother, Nashira. Because Luke was not a Fallanassi, Wialu refused to give any information on the sought-after woman. However, Pell managed to convince Wialu and the rest of the Fallanassi to aid the New Republic in defeating the Yevetha. During the Battle of N'zoth, she used her White Current abilities to help create illusions of a large fleet that made it difficult for the Yevethan warships to target the real New Republic vessels.
After the battle, Pell questioned Wialu about her mother and was upset to hear the truth of her mother's disappearance—that she had in fact been the one who had betrayed the Fallanassi to the Imperials many years before. When the Fallanassi learned of the treachery, they exiled Talsava but offered to provide training for her young daughter should she develop any Force abilities. Greed had gotten the better of Talsava again on Carratos, and she had stolen their funds out of selfishness.
Pell then revealed to Luke that she had misled the Jedi Master and knew nothing of his mother. Shocked by this revelation, Luke was heavily disappointed in her. However, he managed to forgive her, knowing she was full of guilt, and the two said good-bye after the battle. Two decades later, Skywalker would finally learn that his mother had actually been Padmé Amidala, the Queen of Naboo around the time of the Clone Wars.
Devastated by the revealed betrayal of her mother and by Luke's refusal to forgive her deception, Pell completely devoted herself into the workings of the Fallanassi. On the star liner, Star Morning, Pell, along with the rest of the Fallanassi, relocated to the moon Pydyr to renew their immersion in the White Current.
Some time later, Wialu died, and Pell became the leader of the Fallanassi. Several years after the conclusion of the Yuuzhan Vong War, Skywalker's nephew, Jedi Knight Jacen Solo, visited Pell and the Fallanassi during a galaxy-wide odyssey to gain a wider understanding of the Force outside the teachings of the Jedi Order. Solo spent a period studying with Pell to understand the White Current. While Jacen believed that he was obligated to fix a fractured galaxy, Pell instead taught him to accept the nature of the galaxy as it was. Solo respected Pell but disagreed with her opinions, so he left Pell and Pydyr. Pell later sent a recording to Luke Skywalker about her concerns over the Potentium view of the Force which was now practiced amongst the Jedi.
Despite their parting, Skywalker and Pell were destined to encounter each other again. In 44 ABY, Skywalker, temporarily working with a group of Sith to defeat the dark side entity Abeloth, tracked Abeloth to Pydyr after she had escaped their previous encounter. At some point, however, Abeloth consumed Pell and took over her body. Pell greeted Skywalker after he arrived in the village where the Fallanassi now lived, and after exchanging greetings, the two discussed the fate of the Jedi. Pell revealed to Skywalker that when she had trained Solo, he had shown a vehement desire to save the galaxy, which had caused him to cause serious death and destruction during the recent Second Galactic Civil War. Pell then told Skywalker that the principal issue with the Jedi was that numerous Jedi, including Solo, Raynar Thul, and Tenel Ka Djo, planned to save the galaxy but instead ended up causing severe damage to it. The two then parted ways, and Skywalker left the village.
When Skywalker, along with his son, Ben, and a group of Sith, returned to the village, they were greeted by an angry Pell, who menacingly told them that they should not have come back. Luke then asked Pell about Abeloth's whereabouts, after which she said that the Fallanassi were in fact hiding Abeloth because she was one of them. When several Sith took a group of Fallanassi hostage, Pell conjured an illusion of phantoms attacking the Sith, driving them insane. After witnessing this act, Skywalker was definitely convinced that Abeloth had taken over Pell's body. As the Jedi and the Sith battled Abeloth, Skywalker was finally able to kill the body of Abeloth, who then took the form of Callista Ming, another former lover of Skywalker. Pell regained control of her body for a very short time before dying, then asked Skywalker to forgive her for everything that she had done to him.
Akanah Norand Goss Pell was a kind person. She disliked violence, and frequently asked Luke why he had killed and continued to kill, as well as why various Jedi acted in what they believed to be in the general interest of the galaxy but ended up destroying what they had vowed to protect. Pell was very concerned with finding her family and the Fallanassi. When she discovered the truth about her parents, she was shocked and deeply saddened. When Pell first met Skywalker, she was fascinated with him but also feared him, knowing his power rivaled that of the late Emperor Palpatine. While she was not above tricking Skywalker into believing she knew his mother, she disliked having to lie to him. When she eventually revealed the deception to Skywalker, she apologized to him, begging for his forgiveness. Almost three deceades later, when her body was consumed by Abeloth, Pell implored Skywalker to forgive her.
Akanah was created for the The Black Fleet Crisis novel series by author Michael P. Kube-McDowell. Later, she appeared in Troy Denning's The Joiner King as part of Jacen Solo's attempt to better understand the Force and learn about different aspects of it, such as the White Current. She later reappeared in Denning's Fate of the Jedi: Vortex, which told of her consumption by Abeloth and her death.
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