Nevil Cygni

Nevil Cygni, also known by his alias Nightswan, was a male human smuggler and insurgent leader during the Imperial Era. Before becoming an insurgent leader, Cygni acted as a consultant to Angel's pirate group Culoss, which he used to raise funds for avenging people who had been wronged by the Empire. While raiding the freighter Dromedar, Cygni came into contact with the Chiss Thrawn, a rising star in the Imperial Navy who would later rise to the rank of Grand Admiral. After Thrawn disrupted Culoss' operations, Cygni used the Higher Skies Advocacy Group as a front group to gather intelligence on Imperial officials and senators on Coruscant with the goal of uncovering the Galactic Empire's secret Death Star project. This operation was disrupted by Arihnda Pryce, the future Governor of Lothal, with the help of Thrawn and the Imperial Security Bureau.

Cygni later engineered the Imperial annexation of Umbara, which was defeated by Thrawn. After the Umbara incident, Cygni instigated the Cyphar Incident between the native Cyphari Afe clan and human colonists as a means of smuggling doonium from Cyphar offworld. This was again defeated by Commander Thrawn, who discovered that the human colonists were also exporting an illegal spice called scarn. Soon after the operation, Cygni advised a group of insurgents to rescue Wookiee slaves from the transport Sempre, and launched an attack on the space station Lansend Twenty-Six to liberate their companions. Thrawn again foiled the attack, gaining Nightswan's respect.

Cygni later became the leader of the Batonn insurgents and engineered the Battle of Scrim Island to facilitate his showdown with Thrawn. Despite Nightswan's cunning tactics, Thrawn recaptured Scrim Island for the Empire. After Thrawn's aide-de-camp Eli Vanto ascertain that Cygni and Nightswan were indeed the same person, Thrawn met with Cygni to negotiate a peaceful dispute to the siege of the Creekpath Mining and Refining complex on Batonn's main continent. Despite failing to end the siege, Cygni extracted a promise from Thrawn to minimize civilian casualties. Thrawn's efforts came to naught when Governor Pryce blew up the Creekpath complex to hide the murder of ISB Agent Gudry. Cygni was killed during the explosion, which ended the Batonn sector insurgency.

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