Sintas Vel

Sintas Vel was a female Kiffar born on the planet Kiffu in the year 34 BBY. At some point in her youth, Sintas would take up the profession of bounty hunting. It was during her career as a bounty hunter that Sintas would meet fellow bounty hunter, Boba Fett. The two fell in love and were married in 16 BBY, when Sintas was eighteen and Fett sixteen years old. Though Sintas told Fett that he was too young to understand what he was doing, he replied that he only needed to know that she was beautiful, a terrific shot, and that he could trust her. They exchanged the simple, four-lined Mandalorian marriage vow—though neither spoke Mando'a at the time and didn't understand the words it entailed—and Fett presented Sintas with a heart-of-fire gemstone from Kiffu, which was believed to contain a part of both individuals' souls in the Kiffar culture, and that she had strung upon a necklace.

Sintas and Fett settled on the agricultural world of Concord Dawn, where Fett gave up his life as a bounty hunter to become a Journeyman Protector, one of the planet's constables charged with upholding the law. A year later, in 15 BBY, the young couple had a daughter they named Ailyn. Around this time, however, Sintas was raped by Lenovar, Fett's superior officer in the Journeyman Protectors whom Fett had considered a friend and mentor. Sintas never told anyone about being raped, not even Fett, though Fett would eventually find out the truth for himself. When he did, despite Sintas' pleas to the contrary, Fett killed Lenovar, a crime for which Fett was arrested, imprisoned, and tried. Because Fett didn't reveal the truth of Lenovar's own crimes to the magistrate in an attempt to protect Sintas, he was found unrepentantly guilty and exiled from Concord Dawn. Fett's exile and a series of bitter arguments and recriminations—including among them an instance where Fett demanded to know if Ailyn was really even his daughter—served to tear the couple apart and the two separated after three years of marriage when Ailyn was only two years old, leaving Sintas to care for her daughter alone. To this end, Sintas continued to work as a bounty hunter in order to support Ailyn.

Years later, Boba Fett sent Connor Freeman, a clone relative of Jango Fett, to Concord Dawn to find Sintas and protect her from unknown assassins that were after Fett's family. Connor did manage to find Vel's home on Concord Dawn. While Connor was surprised to find Sintas' young daughter at the door, Sintas came behind him to confront him as to what he wanted. Before he got much of a chance to answer, a Devaronian strike team in a landspeeder began shooting at them, and Connor proved his good intentions by helping them dispatch them. Relocating to an armored safehouse in town, Sintas started telling him about how much he reminded her of Fett, and kissed him. As he was eating a late dinner afterwards, Connor discovered a family holo, discovering that he had just kissed his brother's wife. Confronting him about it, Sintas explained Fett's time as a Journeyman Protector and how their marriage had played its course, with Ailyn getting up and making fun of them for kissing. Just then the safehouse door blew open, and Connor was able to deflect it from them which his cybernetic arm. As Governor Purton revealed himself as the man trying to kill Fett and his family, Connor and the Vels took cover from his grenades in the storage basement, with Sintas giving him a set of yellow Mandalorian armor. Purton then followed the grenades with a strike team, and they were able to force the governor into the basement with them. After killing his guards, Purton explained that he wanted revenge for Fett killing his son, Lenovar, which prompted Sintas to tell him that Fett had killed Lenovar because he had viciously raped her, which Fett didn't reveal during the trial in order to protect her. Not believing her and calling her a liar, Purton attempted to strangle her, forcing Connor to shoot and kill him. Sintas then kissed Connor goodbye, explaining that Fett or anyone like him just brought her trouble. Unbeknown to her, Fett was standing by the trapdoor right then, watching his wife and daughter in silence. He then left with Connor, without revealing himself to Sintas.

At some point prior to 1 ABY, a canister containing a holo-image of Sintas, Fett, and their daughter that belonged to Sintas was stolen by the criminal known as Pizztov. The only image of the three together as a family, Sintas tracked Pizztov to the city of Bidamount where Pizztov was attempting to use the canister to extort over six million credits from Boba Fett with the threat of auctioning it off to the public in one of Bidamount's auction houses. Breaking through the floor of Pizztov's quarters, Sintas demanded the return of her property at blaster point, shooting one of Pizztov's bodyguards when he attempted to stop her. At the same time, Fett arrived, saving Sintas from a second guard's attempts to kill her, though he was looking to take the canister for himself. Pizztov fled and Sintas gave chase, eventually catching and shooting the man in the back; before she could claim her stolen property, Fett shot the canister from her hand. Pizztov attacked Fett with one of Sintas' blaster pistols, though he missed and was killed by Fett. Wounded, Sintas pleaded with Fett not to take the canister, and Fett explained that the reason he'd fired was because the canister had been rigged to explode if not opened correctly. Upon opening the canister and seeing the holo of his family along with Sintas' tearful reaction, Fett decided to return the canister to Sintas instead of destroying it as he had originally planned. Though she was grateful, Sintas was also dismayed when Fett left her again, this time wounded. Despite this second abandonment, Fett's actions in recovering the hologram gave Sintas hope that he still in some way cared for her.

Just before Ailyn's sixteenth birthday in the year 1 ABY, Sintas took a job pursuing a bounty for a large sum of credits. She planned to use the money to take her daughter to Coruscant in order to see the city and buy her some nice things for her birthday. Unfortunately, Sintas would never return home from her mission: she was captured and drugged with a sedative by a man looking to ransom her, possibly recognizing her as Boba Fett's ex-wife. When she didn't return, Ailyn believed Sintas to be dead and began to hate Fett, feeling as though it was Fett's fault for abandoning them. She became a bounty hunter, herself, and would devote her life to hating her father and make several attempts to find and kill him, even killing a clone she mistook for Fett and raising her own daughter, Mirta, to hate Fett. Ailyn also managed to recover the heart-of-fire necklace that Fett had given to Sintas from the man believed to have killed her, eventually passing it on to Mirta as part of another attempt to kill Fett. When Ailyn was killed by Jacen Solo in 40 ABY, Mirta and Fett were able to establish an uneasy peace between them, and together attempted to find out what had happened to Sintas. During one evening at the Oyu'baat tapcafe on Mandalore, Fett and Mirta were approached by the elderly Mandalorian Gotab who introduced himself as a Kiffar capable of reading the memories from the heart-of-fire gem Mirta had, in order to help shed light on Sintas' death. Gotab's insight and Mirta's further research led the pair to the planet Phaeda where they found Sintas not dead, but frozen in a slab of carbonite among the belongings of the dead gangster, Hidu Rezodar. Taking Sintas back to Mandalore, Fett and Mirta revived Sintas from carbon-freeze after nearly forty years with the help of Fett's doctor, Beluine. Initially, Sintas suffered from severe confusion, dizziness, sensitivity to sound, and blindness, and it soon came to light that she was suffering from amnesia as well, unable to recall large portions of her life or even who she was.

Though appearing to still be in her mid-thirties due to the carbon-freezing process, in her impaired state, Sintas was forced to rely on the kindness of strangers, living on Mandalore at the home of Goran Beviin—the closest person Fett had to a friend—and attended to by her granddaughter, Mirta, and Beviin's partner, Medrit. Mirta returned her heart-of-fire necklace to her, and the others, including Fett, attempted to remind her of her past, but made little progress. It was only when Jedi Knight Jaina Solo—on Mandalore seeking training from Fett in order to deal with her Sith Lord brother, Jacen—enlisted the help of Gotab, who was in fact not a Kiffar at all, but a Jedi-turned-Mandalorian well acquainted with Force healing, that any true progress was made. Gotab used the Force to restore Sintas' lost sight, and allow her to recover her lost memories.

With her lost memory returned, Sintas swore to avenge the death of Ailyn if the opportunity arose, and was able to explain the circumstances of her and Fett's divorce to her granddaughter, revealing that she had never told Ailyn the truth or raised her to hate Fett, but that Ailyn had attempted to fill in the blanks for herself after Sintas disappeared and made Fett out to be more callous in her mind than in reality. When Mirta married Ghes Orade, Sintas attended the celebratory feast afterward at the home of Orade's father, Novoc Vevut. Sintas was also able to make peace with Fett, who was already remorseful for his role in leaving her and abandoning his daughter. He gave her another heart-of-fire gem, a rarer and more expensive blue-colored one, along with a portfolio of stock shares and properties he owned, explaining that she could either keep or sell them in order to allow Sintas to never have to hunt bounties in order to make a living again. Fett also informed her that no matter what her decision, she would be welcome to stay on Mandalore for the rest of her life.

As a Kiffar, Sintas possessed the unique psychometric abilities of her people, along with a distinctive set of qukuuf facial markings in the form of three black stripes on each of her cheeks that had been presumably passed down from her mother in the Kiffar tradition. Sintas was a proficient marksman, and proved herself capable of wielding two blaster pistols at once during her mission to recover the hologram that had been stolen from her by Pizztov. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, with high cheek bones and small pointed chin, Sintas was considered an attractive woman, though she wasn't one to rely on her looks in her career as a bounty hunter. Boba Fett once stated that "he could never get over how beautiful Sintas was." Though a hard and ruthless bounty hunter—willing to risk the life of an innocent bystander in order to reclaim the hologram of her family that had been stolen—Sintas showed a softer side around those she cared for, notably her daughter Ailyn, granddaughter Mirta, and lover Boba Fett, whom she called by the petname "Bo" even after they had divorced, and whom he referred to as "Sin" in return.

The character of "Sintas" first appeared in the short comic, "Outbid But Never Outgunned" from Dark Horse Comics' Star Wars Tales 7, a story which primarily featured Boba Fett and a brief glimpse into what was, at the time, a mysterious past. Though the first twenty issues of Tales series canonicity was dubious at the time, Sintas' character was later canonized with appearances in both the Star Wars Gamer article, Unusual Suspects, and the Star Wars Insider article, The History of the Mandalorians where she's first identified as "Sintas Vel". She later featured in the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force novel series, receiving mentions in both Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines and Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice by author Karen Traviss, before making a full appearance in Traviss' third Legacy of the Force novel, Legacy of the Force: Revelation, where her character and history were further fleshed out.

• "Unusual Suspects" — Star Wars Gamer 6
• "The History of the Mandalorians" — Star Wars Insider 80
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
• "Boba Fett: A Bounty Hunter's Journey" — Star Wars Insider 117