A human female assumed the alias Q'anah as the leader of the Senex-Juvex pirate band known as Q'anah's Marauders. Her father was once a bodyguard, and she herself fell in love with a young noble of House Elegin from the planet Asmeru, joining the secret pirate group he commanded. After his death, she assumed leadership, seeking vengeance on the ships and settlements of the Senex-Juvex regions, thus establishing her reputation and becoming a popular figure.
After a fierce encounter with the Judicial Department, Q'anah and her crew were compelled to move to the Greater Seswenna area of the galaxy, where they began targeting lommite shipments originating from Eriadu. For a period, the Marauders had great success raiding lommite, employing a strategy conceived by Q'anah that effectively spelled her name across each shipment. Eventually, a young lieutenant in the Outland Regions Security Force named Wilhuff Tarkin deciphered the pattern, using this knowledge to predict the Marauders' attacks. By using a virus embedded in the cargo containers Q'anah attempted to seize, the security forces were able to capture her, executing her by leaving her aboard a vessel programmed to crash into a nearby sun.
On the [Core Worlds](/article/core_worlds] planet Brentaal IV, this human female was born as the sole daughter of a former bodyguard working for House Cormond. Subsequent to her birth, her father received a generous offer to leave the Core and supervise security for House Elegin on Asmeru, which he accepted. With him, his daughter moved to Asmeru, adopting the name Q'anah, which in an old Asmeru language denoted a festival celebrated on the 234th day of the planet's 16th month. While residing on Asmeru, she became romantically involved with the youngest son of House Elegin, for whom her father was employed, becoming his mistress. The young noble led a secret life as the head of a group of pirates, which Q'anah eventually joined, fighting alongside them. While serving with her lover's crew, she gave birth to his triplets, but the father of her children was eventually captured and sentenced to death, being executed on the planet Karfeddion.
After her lover's demise, Q'anah took command of his crew, renaming them Q'anah's Marauders, and began attacking starships and settlements throughout the Senex-Juvex sectors, becoming a folk hero in the Senex because of her daring raids. During this period, she was the subject of numerous HoloNet News stories and rumors, surviving starship collisions, starfighter crashes, blaster-bolt and vibroblade wounds, fistfights, and personal duels. On one occasion, she found herself stranded on an isolated moon awaiting rescue, and was forced to chew off her own infected hand. Twice captured, she avoided the death penalty, instead receiving long sentences in high-security prisons due to her connections to House Elegin, though her pirates rescued her from incarceration both times. Following the destruction of six vessels in a battle against the Judicial Forces, the Republic placed a bounty on her, forcing her to relocate to the Greater Seswenna region, where the Judicials rarely patrolled.
In the Greater Seswenna, the pirate and her crew formed alliances with other pirate groups, agreeing to cooperate to target Eriadu's lommite shipments heading to the Core. Some pirates would monitor or engage the limited vessels of the local Outland Regions Security Force, keeping the others informed of their location, allowing Q'anah to safely lead the Marauders in raids on the poorly defended lommite convoys. The Marauders' fastest ships would attack the escort vessel and any security ships, while others deployed troops to board five specific slave-rigged cargo containers carrying the lommite. The targeted containers were chosen based on a simple pattern Q'anah devised using the digits 23416, derived from the date of the Q'anah festival, with each number corresponding to a letter in her adopted name. The ships linked to these numbers would then be selected, though the application of the pattern varied, sometimes starting at the front, sometimes at the back, sometimes in reverse, and sometimes spanning multiple convoys. These containers would then be detached from the convoy's escort vessel and attached to a pirate vessel, which would lead them away to be plundered.
Q'anah and her crew would then sell the lommite or hand it over to the group that had hired them for that specific raid. Eriadu Mining, the lommite's owner, eventually concluded that surrendering the containers to the Marauders was more cost-effective than attempting to defend them, which almost always resulted in the loss of expensive company ships. Attempts were made to include dummy or explosive containers, but Q'anah's Marauders never targeted these traps, leading to their discontinuation due to the expense. Ultimately, a young lieutenant in the Outland Regions Security Force named Wilhuff Tarkin deciphered Q'anah's pattern after months of studying her previous raids, successfully convincing the security forces and mining company of his discovery, supported by evidence from subsequent raids that aligned with his predictions. Tarkin's cousin Ranulph, a commander in the security force, suggested rigging the predicted containers with a hyperdrive motivator virus, allowing the security force to control the pirates' hyperspace jumps.
After the expensive implementation of the virus, Q'anah and her crew remained inactive for a while; however, when they finally launched another raid, the virus successfully redirected their ships to a predetermined location where a large fleet of Outland Region Security Forces' vessels awaited them. 46 years before the Battle of Yavin, Q'anah and her crew were captured and brought before the young Wilhuff, whom she mocked and defied, even after realizing he had cracked her pattern. The pirate queen and her crew were then placed in a cargo container programmed to slowly fly toward the sun of the system where Q'anah was captured. Wilhuff left the audio and video feeds from the container active so that both the security forces and other pirates could witness the Marauders' demise, as all the captured pirates onboard, including Q'anah, were burned alive by the sun's heat. Several other Marauder vessels arrived in the star system and attempted to rescue their leader, but all were destroyed on site by security force vessels. Those members of Q'anah's flotilla who did not perish with her or die trying to save her went into hiding after witnessing her gruesome end.
Prior to becoming the mistress of the young Elegin noble, Q'anah received combat training from her father, developing a thirst for adventure. While serving with her lover's crew, she lived a vibrant and unrestrained life, but became consumed by revenge against the Senex-Juvex after his death. Rumored to be both incredibly quick on the draw and an extremely flexible dancer, Q'anah inspired immense loyalty in her crew, who practically worshipped her and rescued her from imprisonment multiple times. She was a vain individual, devising a pattern for raiding lommite convoys that involved spelling out her own name across the vessels. This arrogance led to her downfall, but even after capture, she refused to concede defeat and mocked her captor Wilhuff Tarkin for his age, though she was briefly stunned when she realized he had deciphered her raid pattern. When speaking with Tarkin, she displayed no fear of death and asserted that others would replace her, but while roasting in the doomed cargo container, she eventually broke down and wailed alongside the rest of her dying crew.
During her reign as pirate queen, Q'anah possessed two artificial arms and one artificial leg from the knee down. She also had one ocular implant and possibly other cybernetic enhancements. She commanded a pirate flotilla comprised of numerous corvettes and frigates.
Q'anah's first appearance was in a flashback to Tarkin's youth in Tarkin, a novel released in 2014 and written by James Luceno. Her birth name is not revealed in the book.