Well, it all started with Zora herself. I created her initially for cosplay, in fact, not for a full story or anything like that. In 2019 I cosplayed as a First Order stormtrooper sergeant, and even if I couldn’t express much creativity in her outfit, I did it the most I could and made up a little backstory for my trooper, who I called Sergeant Aysha. Although I loved cosplaying as her, I wanted another character too, whose visuals I could create from the ground the way I imagined. As the dark side is my favorite side of the Force in Star Wars (obviously) I thought it’d be nice to cosplay as a Sith Lady.

Just like I did with Aysha, I created a Sith Lady with a backstory, and that’s how Darth Zora came. However, it was in the very beginning of COVID-19 quarantine in 2020, so I ended up consuming more Legends content from the Old Republic than I expected, and therefore having more free time and inspiration than I thought I would, so I started developing Zora’s arch and creating a full story featuring her before I even realized. I could simply write it and post it somewhere like I did with many other Star Wars fanfics I wrote, but I got way too attached to the idea, specially because all the characters and most of their arches were entirely created by me, and this made me wish to make Zora’s story something beyond. I started with one “book”, then it became two, and then three (laughing nervously). I always loved fan work, specially fanfilms, but I’m not a filmmaker, so the closest thing to them that I could do were books. So I adapted the way most fan-projects are idealized for something that would work with books.

The only responsible for the project is me, in all aspects, and I’m a person, not a business. I do have a kind of “individual entrepreneur registration” in Brazil, but that’s not the same as a business, and even if it was, it’s not involved with the project in any way.

No. As I said before, I’m the only responsible for the Darth Zora Project, and it involves paying for everybody’s work and whatever is necessary for keeping the project running online, and all the content on the project’s website is absolutely free, as this is a non-profit project run by fans for fans, so there’s no profit at all.

I chose to crowdfund the Darth Zora Project because it’s the only way to make the project financially viable without having to exclude from it precisely what makes it a fan-project and not a mere fanfic: the physical books and other physical materials that will be made along with them. As I said, I’m not a filmmaker, nor an animation artist nor, neither a comic artist. I’m an aspiring book writer, so books had to be the main material in a fan-project run by me. I didn’t want the project to be online only, and running a crowdfunding campaign was the best way to enable that. It is by no means a way for me to make money or promote myself. I can’t sell the books individually or anything like that, because then I would be violating the law by selling something which the copyright I don’t own, as it’s a Star Wars fan-work. However, it isn’t possible to produce them without fundraising because the costs of doing so are very high. The money raised in the crowdfunding campaign for the Darth Zora Project are exclusively for covering such production costs and also the costs of mailing and other outgoings I already had in order to run the physical materials of the project, such as paying artists, designers, etc.

No. I use Legends as an inspiration, recovering elements and making references, but there won’t be specific Legends characters in the story. Maybe some slight mentions in the future, but not as part of the plot itself. Same goes for events: the story doesn’t follow the Legends timeline, so the events of it won’t be considered there, at least not when/how they happened on Legends. Zora’s story is placed in the Old Republic era, and that’s where I get most inspiration from on Legends books, games, etc., so there are similarities, such as using the same planets for the same purposes, same teachings, rituals, training methods, among other things. However, as there is nothing about the Old Republic on Canon for now, I created Zora’s story as if was a Canon trilogy set in the Old Republic, which means I follow Canon events and timeline, although they only occur in the future in this case.

So I can say it’s basically a lot of inspiration in Legends content, respecting the Canon pre-existent rules and timeline, and all the rest is created by me.

Yes, definitely. Vaylin’s story was the main inspiration for the beginning of the plot of Darth Zora: Daughter Of Darkness, and I kept most of its elements that fit Zora’s story as well. However, the stories follow totally different paths from then on, although there will still be elements visibly inspired by Vaylin in later chapters. Vaylin is my favorite Legends character, and although I never played SWTOR (unfortunately, I just suck at playing games…), I researched a lot about her after 2019, because she was my very first direct contact with Star Wars’s Legends content back then. I just love how deep, dark and heavy Vaylin’s story is, and it made me sad to see how it ended. I created Zora inspired on Vaylin thinking about how Vaylin deserved better after all that, and also on how much I’d love to see such a story on Canon, even if I have little hope that it will happen one day.

As for other inspirations, Zora’s name was taken from the lead singer in the gothic metal band Blackbriar (which I absolutely love), Zora Cock. I listened to Blackbriar for the first time in 2017, and I remember I found her name beautiful ever since then, and when I started to create the concept for a Sith Lady, I thought this name would fit it well. Also, Zora from Blackbriar has a vivid red hair, and I can say I got that for my Zora as well, since red is a very symbolic color in the Dark Side of the Force, and I personally adore how aesthetic red and black are together (maybe I’m crazy, but yes, I adore it). And there’s a song by Blackbriar in their debut album, The Cause Of Shipwreck, that fits my Zora perfectly. It’s in the Spotify playlist for Darth Zora: Daughter Of Darkness if you wish to listen to it.

Of course, as I developed Zora’s story away from the inspiration on Vaylin, I put a lot of other elements into it, including somethings that came from my own self, which made her a character with a deep connection to me as a writer and person too. But we can talk about that in the non-spoiler-free questions as the story goes on.

Not really, although it might seem like it. I’ll explain why: physically, he’s somewhat like Valkorion indeed, I got a lot of inspiration from him as he’s shown in the game to create Vorr’zell’s visuals in general, only changing some details. Also, Vorr’zell’s plot when it comes to Zora is almost the same as Vitiate’s when it comes to Vaylin: the father who imprisons his overpowerful daughter in a horrific place. However, almost everything that comes before and after that is different. Also, I’m definitely not trying to make Vorr’zell as powerful or more powerful than Vitiate, even because… Let’s be honest, is that even possible? As far as I know about him, I would be stupid to try. But it wouldn’t fit Zora’s story anyway, so although Vorr’zell’s motivations and family structure, if I can call it that, are similar to Vitiate’s, similarities pretty much stop there. Mainly considering that Arcadia Sollyen, his wife and Zora’s mother, isn’t similar to Senya Tirall at all.

About the name… I honestly don’t know. Seriously. It’s funny because everyone asks me that expecting for an answer that’s super complex and full of references, because Vorr’zell’s name is odd indeed, specially due to the apostrophe. Although I’ve seen some weird names with apostrophes in Star Wars, it’s still odd, for me at least. But the truth is that I don’t know where I got his name from, because it just popped up in my head as I was planning Zora’s story. About 8 months or a little more before I started writing it for real, someone at home was watching Superman and it came to me that maybe I was unconsciously inspired by Jor-El, perhaps associating his name and its sonority with his role in Superman stories, and adapting it to what I needed in Zora’s story. That’s the only thing I can think about when it comes to inspirations for Vorr’zell’s name.

There’s a funny curiosity about that too: when I was researching the Sith language, Kîttat, I realized that it’s weird as heck to write Vorr’zell in its alphabet, because R and L are written using the exact same symbol. Honestly, I wouldn’t have created such a weird name with weird coincidences such as this if I was actually trying to make it weird.

That will seem surprising too, but no. I had no idea that Zannah had a nickname and it was Rain when I decided to use Rain as Zora’s nickname – I swear. Zora’s childhood nickname is Rain because of the sonority of Zarrain (Zar-RAIN). In fact, when I decided that, I hadn’t even read Darth Bane: Path Of Destruction yet, and everyone thought I had and it was because of Zannah. Now that I’ve read it and love Zannah as heck, I can consider it an unintentional tribute, I think.

Get used to the unbelievable coincidences when it comes to stories I write and characters I create. It always happens, ever since I was 7 and wrote silly short stories with animals who had magical powers. I could give examples of that for hours. Maybe one day I will.

Not for any specific and over important reason, really. I was researching planets of the Sith Worlds and thought Begeren could be a good option, since it was in the Sith space, and I wanted the first planet conquered by Vorr’zell to be a Sith planet. Maybe there’ll be more development on that matter on later chapters, though, so it’s still open for possibilities. There wasn’t much about Begeren on Legends either, so it gave a lot of freedom to create how it was, how life was inside this planet, its weather, etc. It also made it a good option.

I’m an aspiring professional writer. I have written original books and short stories, but I haven’t been able to publish almost any of them yet. The only ones I did were written in Portuguese and published in Brazil, where I live for now, but it wasn’t traditional publishing. Brazilian publishing market is complicated and difficult to get into, so most writers here prefer an independent career. I intend to seek traditional publishing when I move, though, considering that most of what I write now is in English exactly for this reason.

I finished Law School in December 2021, but I haven’t yet tried to take the OAB Exam (Brazilian Bar Exam), and I’m not sure if I’ll ever work as a Lawyer professionally, since I have plans of moving to Canada and focusing in a future artistic and content creator career. For now, I do a lot of freelance jobs in many fields, and I had three paid Law internships while I was still in Law School.

I’ve been a Star Wars fan since my early childhood, when my father watched the movies with me, but it was just me and him for a long time, as I only met other fans online and actually joined the fandom in the beginning of 2018. That’s when I got to know the Canon expanded universe, and Legends too eventually. I’ve always known about the existence of the Old Republic era, although, until then, I’d never read any books or comics that took place on it, as I preferred to consume only Canon content at the time. In 2019, however, as I said before, I first heard about Vaylin, and that was the gateway for me to decide to read Old Republic books, as they also brought stories of two other things that always fascinated me in Star Wars: the Dark Side of the Force and the Sith. After I started, I could never stop (laughing).

In the end, the idea for the Darth Zora Project came from my own desire for content that Canon hasn’t yet brought: stories about the Sith, and the Old Republic era. Both were loved by many fans before Disney made this entire era Legends, and they continue to be loved anyway, even though none of that content is part of the Star Wars timeline anymore. With that in mind, I started to imagine how amazing it would be if Disney finally produced content set in the Old Republic, taking inspiration from the Legends material, but adapting what was necessary to fit the story into Canon. This was at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when we were all worried and isolated at home, in need to abstract from the catastrophe around us. Writing something like what I wanted to read as official Star Wars material turned out to be my way of doing it at that point.

I have 2 channels on YouTube right now, one in English and the other in Brazilian Portuguese. My English channel is focused in my music, currently with covers I try to post weekly and maybe original songs in the future, and is also for beauty, makeup and fashion content, which I’m passionate about. But this channel is still in the beginning, so I may include other types of content on it eventually. My Portuguese YouTube channel doesn’t have a specific niche, because when I created it, back in 2017, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I posted a lot about goth-like makeup, looks, style, but after having to keep this channel in a long hiatus due to my health, I realized this type of content would be better if made in English, because then more people would be able to watch it worldwide. I’ve been through a lot in this hiatus time as well, so I thought of making the content in this channel more personal, maybe funny sometimes, things that Brazilian watchers would identify with and like to watch as it’s in Brazilian Portuguese and Brazil is my home country… Something that’s not so closed into specific things.

I had other channels, including one about Star Wars in Brazilian Portuguese as well, but thinks didn’t really work out for these. Although this last one is still on YouTube, I don’t intend to go back on working on it.

Unfortunately, I do. In 2013 I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and in 2015 with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is because of a whole lot of trauma I had before that, but mostly from a very difficult year in my life, 2012. It’s impossible to say for sure if I got Irritable Bowel Syndrome because of 2012 as well, but it’s a possibility. In the beginning of 2018 I was diagnosed with Depression, and my doctors believe it came as a “side effect” of PTSD, which is very usual to happen in cases such as mine. In 2020 I received a diagnose of Fibromyalgia.

None of my diseases have a cure, but they’re all being treated and mostly controlled due to that. Sometimes it’s hard to do things because of them, from the most complex types of work to the simplest daily activities, but I’m handling it. Although it’s far from easy, I try to just keep telling myself that it’s all a matter of adjusting to the situation and doing the best I can.

None of my diseases have a cure, but they’re all being treated and mostly controled due to that. Sometimes it’s hard to do things because of them, mostly work, but I’m handling it well. It’s just a matter of adjusting to the situation and doing the best you can.

That’s a complicated topic, so let’s talk about it carefully.

First things first, yes, Zora was repeatedly assaulted inside the Sanitarium, as a form of subjugation and humiliation. That was the torture scene I chose to put in the end of chapter 2 because for me personally sexual assault is the worst torture someone can go through, and the experiments made on Zora in the Sanitarium demanded that she was tortured in every possible way, much like Vaylin, as it’s written in her biography on Wookieepedia: “Jarak exhausted conventional methods and subjected Vaylin to torture by machines of his own”. Same thing happens to Zora, and this is mentioned in chapter 4 as well, when she thinks to herself about Ylbov’s torture machines.

Before going on, it’s important to reaffirm that sexual assault is an act of power, not sex. It’s a form of aggression that aims to humiliate and subjugate the victim by reducing them to a role where they don’t have the slightest dignity, to the point of having their body and mind violated in the most intimate way. This can happen regardless of gender or sexual orientation, because, again, it’s not a sexual, so such characteristics, both from the aggressor and the victim, don’t really matter. Of course, in our world victims are mostly women, since our society was built based in patriarchal beliefs that consider women inferior to men, therefore it was historically easier to put us in this subjugation role. Although this mentality begun hundreds of years ago and it’s been banished from society little by little after the second half of the 20th century, the culture of sexism still exists nowadays. However, as we’re talking about Star Wars, I won’t go deep into this subject here.

All of that being said, Zora being sexually assaulted in the Sanitarium was only a torture method that would be used regardless of her gender or species. A lot of people ask me if I approach themes such as sexual abuse in my stories so that they’ll get noticed, and the answer for this is: absolutely not. Sexual assault is a serious matter, and it should never be a way for a story to get noticed. Writing this issue like that, with no respect, is wrong, to say at least. There’re a lot of discussions regarding how and when to write this in a fictional story, mainly considering that stories are read in our world and society, although they might be set in fantasy worlds that have nothing to do with ours. However, this topic deserves a whole post, because you can’t debate this or even expose your opinion about this in the short space of a FAQ page.

Therefore, it’s likely that I’ll post something about this here on the website some time soon, dedicating the time, study and seriousness it rightfully demands.