A journal was recorded by the Evereni pirate leader Marda Ro for her descendants that chronicled Ro's life after she left the Path of the Open Hand cult in 382 BBY and her hunt for other members of her species during those years through various entries. The journal also included messages addressed for her descendants. At least some of the entries were recorded after the death of Ro's assistant Alirya at some point no earlier than 379 BBY.
The memoirs eventually ended up in the posession of Ro's granddaughter Shalla Ro, who had introduced her own grandson Marchion Ro to the journal by 252 BBY. Marchion had listened to all of its recordings, but considered them to be useless ramblings. The journal was kept in a storage room aboard his starship, the Gaze Electric, by 228 BBY. That year, Ro reviewed the records in the storage room—including his great-great-grandmother's chronicles—to learn whether his ancestors had encountered anything similar to the husking of a crystal forest on a moon of the planet Norisyn that he had witnessed, but failed to find such information.
Marda Ro, author of the journal
Recorded by Marda Ro—the Evereni founder of a group of pirates who would eventually become the Nihil—herself, the journal consisted of entries intended for her descendants that chronicled Ro's life following her departure from the Path of the Open Hand cult in 382 BBY and her quest for other members of her species during those years. The first message recounted Ro's visit to the oldest settlement of the planet Dantooine around 381 BBY, where she questioned a human about other Evereni, and recruited the Twi'lek Fori Nagor to her pirate group.
Another message explained endeavors in the time between her departure from the Path and the visit to Dantooine, and a pair of entries discussed how Ro met a Jedi at a marketplace around 379 BBY, assaulted him, and dragged him to her starship, the Gaze Electric, where he was killed by the Great Leveler, a Force-consuming beast. The latter of those two included an account of a conversation between Ro and her human assistant Alirya.
Another account of a different conversation between the two was included in another message. Other entries also recounted her visit of a bar on the planet Ryloth—where she met the Evereni Isren—and an event in the Gazes throne hall during which Nagor presented a group of refugees captured during a raid to Ro. Another series of messages covered the time Ro spent with the Evereni twins Vika and Velya Faer, the feast at which Alirya died while trying to kill Vika, and a conversation between Ro and Velya after Ro had shot his sister to avenge Alirya. The journal also included various messages from Ro addressed to her descendants.
Marchion Ro (pictured as a child) listened to the journal when he was a child.
The journal was recorded by Marda Ro after she left the Path of the Open Hand in 382 BBY and at least some of the entries were recorded after Alirya's death at some point no earlier than 379 BBY. Eventually, the journal came into the possession of Marda's granddaughter Shalla Ro. By 252 BBY, Shalla had introduced her grandson—Marchion Ro—to the journal. As a child, Marchion listened to all of the recordings, and considered them to be useless.
By 228 BBY, Marchion kept the journal, along with other family records, within a family storage room underneath the throne hall. That year, after he discovered a husked crystal forest on the fifth moon of the planet Norisyn, Ro entered the storage room to see if he predecessors had encountered anything similar and found the ghost of his great-great-grandmother waiting for him.
After he was unable to learn anything from other family records, Ro turned on the recordings from his great-great-grandmother. While he was reluctant to do so, as he did not want to give voice to the journal, Ro listened to what he considered to his ancestor's ramblings about home, freedom, her hunt for other Evereni, and her gradual descent into violence. As he listened, Marchion noted that if he had found it useless as a child, the journal would be even more useless to him at this point. Eventually, he left the storage room without discovering any indication that his family had ever come across anything like the husked forest.
Tessa Gratton, creator of the journal
Marda Ro's journal first appeared in the epistolary short story "A Closed Fist Has No Claws," written by Tessa Gratton and published in the 2023 young-adult anthology The High Republic: Tales of Light and Life as a part of the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia project, which was written as a collection of entries recorded for the journal. Despite its existence being implied by the format of the short story and the journal being discussed by Gratton in an interview, its existence as an in-universe recording was not confirmed until The High Republic: Temptation of the Force, a novel written by Gratton that released in 2024 as a part of the multimedia project's Phase III.
In the same interview, Gratton discussed how they started writing the story in third person out of habit because of the expectation for Star Wars books to be in third person, but came to the conclusion that the style did not work for the story. She wanted it to contain "gut punchers," which he considers the best Evereni moments, but the third person was too distant and not raw enough for an Evereni story. Gratton mentioned that they are not sure what the reason for switching to second person was, but think that she decided that the story needed to be told by Marda Ro herself in the middle of a draft.
He did consider having "A Closed Fist Has No Claws" feature a scene where Ro recorded the story, but while writing it they "galaxy-brained" and deleted the whole scene, before writing it the way the published story was written. Gratton stated that one of her favorite things about Phase II of the multimedia project was the ability to play with how slippery history can be and how what what people later think happened can be different from what truly happened, and went on to talk about how Ro was not a reliable source regarding her own history.
Gratton reused the journal in Temptation of the Force.
Gratton also revealed that he wanted to plant some things in the story that they could reuse in Phase III in the event she got to write Marchion Ro, which he did in Temptation of the Force, where they established a connection between Ro and the journal created by his great-great-grandmother. In a different interview, Gratton discussed that Marda's ghost which Marchion sees in Temptation of the Force may be in his head, and could be based on what Ro thinks his great-great-grandmother to have been based on the contents of the journal and what he was told by his family.
She also added that he does not think Ro would be able to hear and see the apparition of Marda in a recognizable way without the journal to have taught him something about her. Additionally, they mentioned another connection between Ro and his great-great-grandmother's journal in the interview. She spoke about how Ro revealing himself to the galaxy was one of the reasons the importance of names was discussed in "A Closed Fist Has No Claws," and that he thinks Ro's decision to do so was influenced by the contents of the journal, despite Ro himself likely not realizing it.