Grif Grawley

Grif Grawley, a male of Human descent, worked as a farmer on Sullust's moon, Sulon, where he lived with Carole, his wife, and Katie, their young daughter, during the era of the Imperial Period. Grawley maintained a cordial relationship with Morgan Katarn, a fellow farmer, and his son, Kyle, who eventually joined the Imperial Academy. Dissatisfied with life under the oppressive Galactic Empire, the Grawleys, along with other Sulon inhabitants, sought to exercise their right to free speech by organizing anti-Imperial gatherings, initially in private homes and later in informal assemblies. When they decided to move their demonstrations to the streets of Barons Hed, Sulon's main city, they invited Katarn to participate, but he declined, fearing the potential severe repercussions from the Empire.

Despite Katarn's caution, and dismissing him as a coward, the Sulonese proceeded with their demonstration, confident that the Empire would not resort to violence. However, they dispersed before the Imperials could intervene and make arrests. Due to holographic recordings made during the protest and the presence of a traitor within their ranks, the Empire quickly identified the "agitators," including Grawley and his family. One night, the Empire struck back with a military force comprising All Terrain Armored Transports and Viper probe droids to burn the protesters' residences.

Grawley and Carole were outside their home and witnessed the attack firsthand. They first observed an Imperial probe droid passing near their house, followed by a barrage of blaster fire that ignited their home. Carole, attempting to rescue Katie, who was inside at the time of the attack and crying for help, rushed toward the house. Grawley managed to pull her back just before the structure collapsed, resulting in their daughter's death. Carole suffered severe burns but survived, bearing prominent scars on her face. Two other families were also massacred that night, and the Empire made no attempt to conceal its involvement, as evidenced by visible AT-AT tracks near the burned buildings. Fearing further punishment, including potential transportation to slave labor camps, the protesters sought Katarn's assistance, acknowledging that he had been right all along. Around 2 BBY, Katarn, secretly affiliated with the Alliance to Restore the Republic, secured support and funding from Alliance sympathizers and devised a plan to evacuate the people from Sulon. As a first step, Katarn hid Grawley, Carole, and 345 other men, women, and children on an abandoned space station within the Sullust system. Life aboard the space station was challenging due to extreme cold and overcrowding.

Katarn then hired the Cyclops, a blockade runner captained by Jerg, a smuggler, to transport the refugees to another planet. Ten years prior to that, Jerg had discovered the planet Ruusan, which he claimed was free of Imperial presence, and Katarn chose it as the destination for Grawley and the other Sulonese people. Among the few possessions the colonists brought to Ruusan were fertilized gra ova, genetically engineered to produce gra herd animals. During the lengthy journey to Ruusan, Grif studied the electronic manual for the gra, learning about their instincts. After assisting the men under his care in settling in and near Fort Nowhere, a military installation built by Jerg's smuggling gang and used for storage, Katarn departed from the planet. Before leaving, he ventured into the countryside and encountered the native Bouncers, globe-like creatures that floated on the wind. The settlers noticed that the Bouncers they met after Katarn's departure referred to him as "the knight who never was," although the meaning remained unclear to Grawley and the other colonists. Prior to his departure, Katarn also taught Grawley and the colonists a primitive communications code that he used to communicate with his agricultural droids back on Sulon. As the code was no longer used by the Empire, the colonists could safely communicate with each other and use it as a friend-or-foe identification system.

As the years went by, Grawley and Carole made a home on their new planet, hoping that the Empire would leave Sulon alone. They lived in a house dug into a hillside twenty klicks south of Fort Nowhere, facing south to get the most of the winter sun. Back on Ruusan, they went back to farming, but it was much harder than on Sulon because there wasn't much water. They started calling what they did "outcropping." Besides growing crops, the Grawleys had a personal garden and a herd of gra. Even though his life became routine, Grawley couldn't forget seeing his daughter die and started to drink. On the day before Katie's birthday around 4 ABY, Grawley tried to forget his pain with a bottle of "Old Trusty", an alcoholic drink, at the Smuggler's Rest cantina in Fort Nowhere. He got so drunk that Carole had to come to the cantina, put him in an airspeeder, and take him home. This made Grawley a target for jokes from the other people at the cantina.

In 5 ABY, six months after he got drunk, Grawley drove his speeder into the countryside, following the gra on a long trip to find food. As night came, the creatures went to the hills nearby to get away from predators, following their built-in instincts. Grawley stopped at Hill 461 for the night and turned on Fido, a machine he made that looked like a boomerang. It had different sensors and was supposed to warn him about any danger. After using a comm unit to say goodnight to Carole, Grawley checked Fido's sensors. The machine told him that everything was okay, except that the weather and surveillance satellites set up by the smugglers who built Fort Nowhere were not working. Grawley wasn't too worried and thought the problem would be fixed soon.

Grawley spent some time watching the sunset with a bottle of Old Trusty, but, thinking that Carole wouldn't like him drinking, he took his electrobinoculars and walked to the highest point of the hill, hoping to see the native Bouncers, who he found interesting. Switching to infrared mode, Grawley saw something he thought was a Bouncer at first. But then he noticed that it was giving off too much heat and was too high in the air, and that it was moving against the wind. Grawley realized it was an Imperial probe droid and that it had seen him. He wondered if the probe had been sent by a passing scout ship, which was normal for Imperial scouting, or if it had been sent by a ship that was currently in orbit, which would explain why the satellites were not working. Either way, Grawley knew he had to destroy the droid and warn the other settlers. He got in his speeder and drove straight at the machine, grabbing his blaster rifle and standing up to aim better. He shot at the droid twice; the first shot missed completely, and the second barely scratched it. The droid shot back at his speeder.

Grawley realized that the droid had better weapons, so he turned the vehicle and drove it down toward the ground. This helped Grawley go faster, while also making the droid use more of its computing power to navigate at a low level. Grawley used his knowledge of the area to head toward a ridge nearby and stopped his vehicle at the top. The droid lost the speeder's heat signature behind the rock and switched to its holocams. Grawley then grabbed his handmade remote controller for the speeder and his blaster rifle and jumped to the ground. He turned on the remote control and accelerated the speeder away from the probe droid, and the droid started shooting at it. Grawley used the controller to maneuver the speeder into a collision course with the droid. When the speeder crashed into the droid, both machines exploded. He took the droid's ID plate—which read [PD 4786](/article/pd_4786]—as proof, and set off to Fort Nowhere to warn the settlers that the Empire had found them. After walking fifty kilometers, which was very tiring, Grawley reached the gates of Fort Nowhere at sunset the next day.

At the city gates, he was greeted by Horley, a sentry, who told Grawley that Byron Devo III, the city's mayor, was at the Smuggler's Rest. As he entered the Rest, Grawley was met with jokes from the regulars, who remembered the night six months before. He silenced the crowd by destroying the cantina's sound system with his rifle, showed them the droid's ID plate, and told them about his encounter with the droid. He told them to leave Fort Nowhere right away, but most of the colonists didn't believe him because Grawley was known to be a drunk. He then asked Marie Peeno, Captain Jerg's second-in-command, about why the weather satellites had stopped working. Peeno told everyone that the satellites had all gone down at the same time and hadn't come back online. She also said that there were no starships in orbit that they could contact, because Jerg had left the planet and taken all the smuggler ships with him and wasn't expected to return for a month. Still, Mayor Devo was sure that the Empire hadn't found them yet, and even if it had, he was sure that Fort Nowhere would be impossible to attack, because Jerg's smugglers had turned it into a fortress. Realizing that he couldn't convince the settlers to leave the Fort, Grawley angrily left the cantina and returned home to Carole, who was already worried because he was late.

Grawley's suspicions were correct; the destroyed droid had been dispatched by Jerec, a Dark Jedi. Jerec sought to exploit the power of Ruusan's legendary Valley of the Jedi, which housed the trapped souls of the Jedi and Sith who had perished in the final battle of the New Sith Wars a thousand years prior. When Jerec's forces attacked Fort Nowhere, many colonists were killed, and the survivors were forced to flee into the badlands, seeking Grawley's help. Grawley was napping at home when the perimeter alarm sounded, and he saw the survivors asking for assistance. Despite their previous doubts and behavior, he accepted their apologies and led them to unexplored territories, where they discovered the ruins of a temple—once used by the Jedi as a stronghold during the war—and settled there.

Shortly thereafter, Grawley and his men observed a ship approaching the ruins of Fort Nowhere. To determine the ship's affiliation, the colonists used Morgan Katarn's old code, encoding the coordinates for a landing site. The ship landed at the specified location, indicating that its pilots were not Imperial. Grawley sent Fido to observe the newcomers with its holocams, while he and Carole stood on a hill near the temple. Using Fido, Grawley inspected the ship and its crew, consisting of a man and a woman. He determined that they did not resemble standard Imperials, and while Luther Pardy suspected them of being bounty hunters, Grawley noted that they recognized Morgan's code and that the male one resembled Morgan Katarn's son. Grawley flew Fido west and back several times, signaling the pilots to follow the machine. The two flew their starship to the temple, guided by Fido. There, Grawley greeted Katarn, but uncertain of his loyalties, he ordered him and his companion to surrender their weapons. Katarn introduced his companion, Jan Ors, and explained that his father had been killed by Jerec years earlier. The younger Katarn had defected from the Empire upon learning of his father's death. He subsequently became a Rebel agent, and, along with Ors, was trying to foil Jerec's plans for galactic domination. Moreover, Katarn claimed that he had recently discovered that he was a Jedi.

Pardy, holding Katarn's confiscated weapons, initially doubted his story, prompting Katarn to use the Force to pull his lightsaber from Pardy's hands. The colonists drew their blasters, but Grawley, convinced that the Rebels were on their side, ordered them to stand down. He offered his help to the pair; Katarn spoke of a prophecy, which, as Grif knew, the Bouncers had told to Morgan years ago.

Grawley suggested meeting with the Bouncers to seek their advice and assistance in finding the Valley. Grawley, Katarn, Ors, and six colonists sought refuge in a stone temple near the area where the Bouncers were most likely to appear. While awaiting the Bouncers' arrival, Grawley told Katarn about his father's encounter with the globe-like beings, who still referred to him as "the knight who never was." As the Bouncers finally appeared and the group prepared to move out and meet them, Katarn spotted an Imperial skimmer and two speeder bikes heading towards the Bouncers. These newcomers were Jerec's troops, who intended to kill the Bouncers for sport and opened fire on the gathered group.

Determined to prevent the Bouncers from being killed, Ors eliminated one speeder bike with a well-aimed shot from a blaster rifle, causing the remaining Imperials to turn against their group. Katarn gave Grif an opportunity to avenge what the Imperials had done to them. One of the colonists was killed by fire from a skimmer, before they engaged the squad of Stormtroopers. Grif witnessed Katarn slaughtering the leader and his squad of six, a shocking sight that Grif acknowledged was necessary. The fight was soon won with the help of the Bouncers—who also lost one of their own—who killed the remaining Imperials, and they managed to secure the skimmer and one of the bikes relatively intact. To maintain secrecy, Grawley's men buried the Imperials in carefully camouflaged graves and collected all equipment, both for their own use and to conceal their involvement in the patrol's disappearance. Katarn insisted on a more thorough search, but Grawley preferred to leave before dawn, hoping that the desert was vast enough to hide any remaining traces from the Imperials.

As dawn approached, they contacted the Bouncers, and one of them, whom Grawley called Floater, agreed to guide Katarn to the Valley of the Jedi and help them avoid Imperial troops. Although Ors wanted to depart for the Valley immediately, Katarn felt that the timing was not right and decided to regroup at the temple. Grawley and his men, along with the two Rebels and Floater, then returned to the colonists' base.

One afternoon, Fido spotted an Imperial force consisting of an AT-ST and an AT-AT nearby. Grif determined that they were searching for debris, not for them, but suggested to Katarn that they hide their supplies as deep within the temple as possible and conceal the captured skimmer Zeta 19. In an effort to spy on the Imperials and—in case they headed toward the temple—to lead them away, Grawley, Katarn, and Ors took Zeta 19 and set off. Grif used the shadows as he rode the skimmer, and fifteen minutes later, he dropped it into a dry riverbed and followed it to a mesa. There was a hiding place near its base and a trail to its top, where they monitored the Imperial forces. Katarn suddenly felt in the Force that the patrol was being led by one of Jerec's Dark Jedi and that the Dark Jedi had sensed the Rebels as well. However, much to Katarn's surprise, no attack followed; in fact, the Imperial group was commanded by Yun, a Dark Jedi whom Katarn had previously had the chance to kill but decided to spare. Although Yun's troops had found a helmet belonging to stormtrooper RW957 from the fallen Imperial patrol, Yun decided to repay his debt to Katarn and stalled his forces.

Realizing Jerec's forces remained unaware of Grawley's contingent on Ruusan, Katarn moved forward with his planned infiltration of the Valley of the Jedi, where Jerec's troops had already initiated digging operations. As darkness fell, Grawley, Katarn, Ors, and Katarn's droid, WeeGee, along with Floater, boarded Katarn's vessel, the Moldy Crow. They then took flight towards the Valley, setting down five kilometers away to avoid detection. WeeGee was left concealed with the ship under a camouflage net. Led by Floater, Grawley and the two Rebels then began their trek to the Valley through the mountainous terrain. By sunrise, they were only half a kilometer from the Valley, ascending the steep incline of a fragile ravine. Upon pulling himself onto a wide ledge, Grawley spotted a probe droid, AD-43, which had been alerted to the Rebels' presence.

With no time to draw his blaster, Grawley reacted instinctively, charging at the droid with outstretched arms. The droid collided with him, sending them both tumbling over the edge. As the droid seized one of his legs, crushing it with powerful pincers, Grawley drew his knife and began to stab the droid repeatedly, seeking vengeance for all that the Empire had inflicted upon him and his family. Katarn and Ors could only watch the struggle between man and machine, unable to risk firing their weapons due to the danger of hitting Grawley. Grawley's relentless assault damaged the droid's vital systems, causing it to crash into the canyon wall, taking Grawley with it in a fatal explosion. Before its destruction, however, AD-43 managed to report the presence of Grawley and his companions, enabling Jerec to set a trap for Katarn. Grawley's demise fueled Katarn's anger, intensifying his resolve to eliminate Jerec. Katarn and Ors successfully disrupted Jerec's schemes, killing him and his entire group of Dark Jedi, thereby fulfilling the Bouncers' prophecy.

Grawley was a man of light complexion and brown eyes. By 5 ABY, Grawley was no longer young, and his once-brown hair had begun to turn gray. Yet, he possessed a level of physical fitness surpassing that of most men half his age. Despite this, he experienced fatigue during the fifty-kilometer return journey to Fort Nowhere. However, he was more accustomed to navigating rocky landscapes. While he, Kyle Katarn, and Jan Ors were climbing a mountain to observe the Imperial patrol and, subsequently, to reach the Valley of the Jedi, Katarn was breathless, while Grawley appeared largely unaffected. Grawley was a proficient mechanic, having personally constructed Fido from scavenged parts and assembled his speeder from salvaged materials. He also created the remote control for the vehicle. He held a deep affection for his machines and had a habit of naming them, even calling the water pump at his home "Jenny." Grawley addressed his rusty speeder as an "old girl," and during his confrontation with the first probe droid, he urged the vehicle to function properly, later regretting having to sacrifice it to destroy the droid.

Grawley harbored deep love for his wife, Carole, considering her beautiful even after she sustained severe burns while attempting to save their daughter, Katie. He was profoundly affected by his daughter's death. Haunted by the sense of helplessness he experienced during her passing, Grawley sought solace in alcohol. However, his indulgence only led to humiliation. Grawley gained a reputation as a drunkard at Fort Nowhere, and the cantina patrons at the Smuggler's Rest mocked him, which angered him. The mayor regarded Grif as a troublemaker, and when he fired at the sound system to gain their attention, Devo III stated that they had "enough of" him. During his battle with the probe droid AD-43, Grawley attempted to avenge the Empire's actions by destroying the machine. He found Morgan Katarn to be an intriguing individual and was saddened to learn of Katarn's death. Although some settlers feared and despised the Bouncers, Grawley was fascinated by them, studying their habits and seeking opportunities to observe them. When he began to share detailed information about the Bouncers with Kyle Katarn, his interest surprised Katarn and made Grawley feel embarrassed. During the engagement with the Imperial patrol, Grawley was shocked to witness Katarn using his lightsaber to kill the Imperials.

Grawley struggled to adapt to the heat and dust of Ruusan, finding it challenging to farm there due to the scarcity of water. He seriously contemplated cave-farming, a practice employed by other settlers involving growing plants using artificial light. However, he recognized the disadvantages of this method and disliked the idea of being confined to a cave. Conversely, his time on Ruusan taught Grawley to improvise and make the most of available resources. During his encounter with the probe droid in the desert, Grawley demonstrated quick thinking, utilizing the speeder's low-altitude flight capability and the terrain to his advantage. He also became adept at navigating Ruusan's landscape and could find his way back to Fort Nowhere without navigational aids. Overall, Grawley and his wife attempted to approach their difficult life on Ruusan with humor, jokingly referring to a flat, hard-packed area near their home as "the veranda." Grawley himself possessed a somewhat sarcastic sense of humor, referring to Devo III as the "fat guy who thought he was a mayor," which amused Horley. Despite the smugglers who founded Fort Nowhere claiming that there were ruins on the three moons of Ruusan, Grawley showed no interest in such claims.

After Jerec's troops destroyed Fort Nowhere, and the "townies"—as Grawley called the town folk—turned to him for help, Grawley agreed to assist them despite their earlier disregard for his warnings about the probe droid. He eventually assumed leadership of the survivors, and Carole was astonished that her normally tactless husband never reminded the townspeople of their misjudgment. In turn, the survivors followed Grawley's instructions without question. As the leader of the survivors, Grawley exercised caution, ordering Katarn to surrender his weapons until they could learn more about him. He later utilized shadows to maintain a low profile while he, Katarn, and Ors drove the stolen skimmer to observe Yun's troops. However, he believed that the probability of Imperials discovering any trace of the missing patrol was minimal and did not dedicate time to searching for remaining clues, but he was proven wrong when Yun's men found RW957's helmet.

Grawley owned a landspeeder that, by 5 ABY, had become rusty and fragile, and he avoided putting too much stress on it. When traveling through the deserts of Ruusan, he carried camping equipment, including a shelter and a portable kitchen. After years of living on Ruusan, setting up camp had become routine for him.

Grawley also possessed a custom-built probe droid, Fido, a boomerang-shaped miniature flyer, which he used for surveillance, scouting, and as an alarm while camping. He managed to obtain its components through begging, salvaging, or stealing.

In addition to a blaster rifle, Grawley carried a hunting knife half a meter in length, its blade crafted from diamond-hard hull metal.

Grif Grawley and his family were first indirectly referenced in Dark Forces: Rebel Agent, a 1998 novella by William C. Dietz, which mentioned the three families massacred on Sulon. Dietz's subsequent novel, Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, revealed that the Grawleys were one of those families and featured Grawley prominently. In the book, he was illustrated by Dave Dorman. Grawley also appeared in the audio dramatization of Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, where he was voiced by Jay Hornbacher.

Dark Forces: Rebel Agent suggests that Morgan Katarn evacuated the Sulonese after three families, including the Grawleys, were massacred. However, the Dark Forces: Rebel Agent audio drama implies that most colonists heeded Katarn's warnings and evacuated, while three families remained and were massacred. Consequently, the Grawleys are not among the three massacred families mentioned in the Rebel Agent audio drama. As a result of this altered portrayal of events, the Jedi Knight audio drama omits any mention of Katie's death and Carole's scarring. In the Jedi Knight audio drama, Grawley learns of the malfunctioning satellites while communicating with Carole. He then hears the probe droid landing. While still in contact with Carole, he instructs her to warn the other settlers about the droid while he investigates it.

The ensuing encounter with the droid is also condensed in the audio drama, where Grawley simply turns the speeder around and uses it as a battering ram, jumping out just before impact. In Jedi Knight, when Grawley arrives at the gates of Fort Nowhere, Horley informs him that Carole is worried about him, and Grawley says he will call her. However, in the audio drama, Grawley asks Horley to call Carole. In the audio drama, Grawley, Katarn, and Ors do not spy on Yun's patrol. Instead, Yun senses them from afar while they are still at the temple. There is also a discrepancy between the two publications regarding the depiction of Grawley's death scene. In the audio drama, Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors pause to rest while climbing the mountains, but Floater insists on continuing, and Grawley follows him, which is when he encounters AD-43. In The Official Star Wars Fact File 124, the image of Grawley fighting the droid AD-43 is mistakenly captioned as depicting Morgan Katarn's capture by a probe droid on Sulon.