StarWars.com give us a closer look at Pablo Hidalgo’s forthcoming book Star Wars: Scum and Villainy – Case Files on the Galaxy’s Most Notorious which gives us a detailed look at various underworld factions across the galaxy.
StarWars.com: The case files are punctuated with some little surprises, like a found letter from Hondo Ohnaka — left to someone he was robbing about what an honor it is to be robbed by Hondo Ohnaka. Would these just kind of come to you as you were writing, or was there a set plan to include these supplements, which really add depth and levity to the book?
Pablo Hidalgo: It was a mix of surprises and revelations as the pieces came together, and other elements that were deliberately panned from the start. The Hondo example is a case where what makes Hondo so unique is his boisterous voice, so how do you capture that in evidence? Have his words speak for him. And it ties into some old lore about pirate letters of marque that ran in an article in the old Star Wars Adventure Journal about pirates and privateers.
StarWars.com: The breadth of events, artifacts, and characters featured is really impressive, including some content that hasn’t really been fleshed out before, like the Mandalorian armor in Dryden Vos’s study. Did you want to use the book as an opportunity to further explore and establish more details in continuity?
Pablo Hidalgo: There are a couple of threads that this book continues from other storylines and ideas. An example I can think of is in Solo: The Official Guide that came out earlier this year, there’s a very fleeting mention made of Dryden Vos’s personal physician. Scum and Villainy picks up that idea and identifies him. Given that Vos has a Decraniated server in his staff, you can kind of guess where this is going. That’s the kind of connectivity that’s there lurking in the text, but isn’t called out with any sort of attention, since I hope it’s more rewarding for people to speculate about it.
