Fan Spotlight: Novall Talon

There are many cos­tume orga­ni­za­tions through­out the world that list bounty hunters on their ros­ter. The Fight­ing 501st legion even boast an entire divi­sion of Jango & Boba Fett cos­tumers. There is one orga­ni­za­tion; how­ever, where fans of the Fetts and their Man­dalo­rian brethren can craft their own cus­tom suits of armor and join hun­dreds of other cos­tumers like them at events all over the world: The Man­dalo­rian Mercs Cos­tume Club. The BFFC had a chance recently to talk with Novall Talon, leader of the organization.

To begin with, tell us a bit about your­self includ­ing how long you have been a mem­ber of the BFFC?

Well, my real name is Tom. I’ve been part of the Boba Fett Fan Club since August 7, 2007, so over a year or so now. I’m also the founder of the Man­dalo­rian Mercs cos­tume club and also go by the char­ac­ter name Novall Talon or Mand’alor the Uniter. I’m the senior PC/Network tech at my work and spend my free time black­smithing and prac­tic­ing Kung Fu. I have a lady mando who cap­tures a major­ity of my free time also, and a cou­ple fer­rets that love get­ting into trouble.

How did the Man­dalo­rian Mercs come to be?

The idea of Man­dalo­rian Mercs started as a player asso­ci­a­tion in Star Wars Galax­ies back in 2005. It was orig­i­nally a group of Mer­ce­nar­ies, bounty hunters, and just not nice peo­ple. I decided to take my in-game char­ac­ter an extra step and get myself some of the new Man­dalo­rian armor that had just been intro­duced. Once that hap­pened, every­one else wanted some…so we would make reg­u­lar runs into the Death Watch Bunker and make them. Pretty soon I had just about all of my men and women suited up in mando armor. In 2006 after see­ing many dif­fer­ent look­ing man­dos at Dragon*Con, and see­ing how they were just kind wan­der­ing around aim­lessly, I decided that I wanted to bring my SWG char­ac­ter to life, and that we needed a home in the real world. April of 2007, the first Man­dalo­rian Mercs web­site and forum went live. In Decem­ber of 2007, we thought it would be a fun idea to start our own lit­tle char­ity to give back to our local com­mu­ni­ties. From that the “Help a Verd’ika Fund” was born. This is a char­ity fund that we work towards rais­ing money for all year, then dis­pense that money to our chap­ters who go and buy toys for chil­dren in their area who won’t get a Christ­mas. It’s a very fun and some­times emo­tional event, but it’s worth every moment of the work we put towards it. We also help large char­i­ties like March of Dimes, Make a Wish, ALS Asso­ci­a­tion, and other var­i­ous char­i­ta­ble organizations.

So how did you become “Man­dalore the Uniter”?

How I become Mand’alor is a good ques­tion. I never called myself that, I was only the chief of our orig­i­nal NC/SC chap­ter here in the U.S. at first. Much of it sur­rounds the fact that I did get Mercs started, and that I did the ini­tial work in cre­at­ing a home for those who wear cus­tom mando armor. Some­time in the sum­mer of 2007, our mem­bers started label­ing me as the Mand’alor, but I still refused to call myself that because in Star Wars that is a title that car­ries a whole lot of respect. In early 2008, the mem­bers voted to call me “Man­dalore the Uniter” for unit­ing cus­tom man­dos from around the world under one ban­ner. At that point I just decided to go with it. I am a firm believer in “lead by exam­ple”. I’m the first one up at events and con­ven­tions to armor up in the morn­ings, and I’m usu­ally the last one to kit-down in the evenings. I have many per­sonal motto’s, but the two I live by con­stantly: You can’t lead the best if you can’t be the best & Noth­ing is given, every­thing is earned.

Well said. Accord­ing to the site, the Mercs are now at over 200 offi­cial mem­bers world­wide. What do you think about that?

I didn’t expect Mercs to grow this fast this quick, but I did expect us to grow into a siz­able club. There are many many cus­tom man­dos out there in the world, even some that have still not yet found Mercs…but I know that one day they will “Heed the call of Man­dalore” and help Mercs ful­fill it’s duty and place as the world’s pre­mier Man­dalo­rian cos­tume club. We have had our strug­gles how­ever, and still have a few more hur­dles to get over…but all in all I am happy with how things are going so far.

Accord­ing to Wook­iepe­dia, there is an entry for a “Mur­dered Man­dalore” some time before Jango Fett takes the title. There have been rumors that this per­son and Novall Talon are the same, is this true? If so, is it canon?

The “Mur­dered Man­dalore” char­ac­ter is some­thing that I tied my mando char­ac­ter to shortly after accept­ing the “Mand’alor the Uniter” title. I fig­ured that the char­ac­ter needed a place in Star Wars that was rel­a­tively untouched by sto­ries but open so that Novall as a char­ac­ter isn’t step­ping on the toes of what is already writ­ten about. Tak­ing a name­less spot like that put Novall out of the mando civil war, clone wars, Empire, Rebel­lion, Vong wars, and every other major event that would raise ques­tions. There’s very lit­tle mando his­tory in those few hun­dred years before Jaster Mareel, just some mentions…and hope­fully Novall is a char­ac­ter that helps explain what brought the man­dos back together before the civil war. As to becom­ing canon, well I can’t really say about that. Sure it would be a great honor, but it’s not really in my hands for some­thing like that to hap­pen. The legacy of Novall is car­ried on by men and women around the world who have fun putting on armor and call­ing them­selves “Man­dalo­ri­ans” at events. You don’t need to be canon for that.

Although we can prob­a­bly guess, what ini­tially made you a fan of Boba Fett?

The armor. I have always loved Man­dalo­rian armor…it just kicks so much shebs.

As a fel­low Merc and crafter of my own suit, I think your armor is incred­i­ble! How many ver­sions of it have you made now?

I am fin­ish­ing up my 3rd ver­sion of my armor now. I am hop­ing to debut it at Adventure*Con 2009, or SDCC 2009. It all depends on how much time I have to fin­ish it up…it’s been A LOT of work this time around, much more than the last. With every set I make, I learn some­thing new or push the enve­lope I lit­tle fur­ther. This new set is entirely mod­u­lar, and can go from heavy to light in about 5 min­utes. I’ve tried to stay close to what was writ­ten and use mag­nets to keep my leg armor on. I also built a metal, work­ing jet­pack! No it doesn’t fly, but it does have com­pressed CO2 that blasts out when I hit the but­ton. As far as sets for other peo­ple, I’ve built 3 other sets and am work­ing on another set for a Mercs mem­ber. In the local Mercs chap­ter I’ve helped build 5 sets, and hope­fully inspired more than that around the world. I love teach­ing armor­smithing and the tech­niques to any­one will­ing to learn. I’m the only per­son on the east coast who makes metal mando armor the same way armor was made in the 1500s…with a forge, stump, ham­mers, and an anvil. Some­times you’ll see me teach­ing a mando armor panel at a con­ven­tion, I like to spread around the knowledge…that’s how you keep it alive.

What is some­thing you have learned from Fett that you can apply to your every day life?

I’d say less from Fett and more from Man­dalo­rian cul­ture as a whole. Fam­ily is more than blood, some­thing you finally start to get from Fett in “Blood­lines” by Karen Traviss.

As a leader in the fan com­mu­nity, what is your rela­tion­ship like with Ka’buir (Karen Traviss) and Jeremy Bulloch?

I con­sider Karen to be a very good friend. We trade emails reg­u­larly on every­thing from armor to our mutual dis­like for politi­cians. We are both ex-military, and have quite a bit of com­mon opin­ions. Regard­less of what any­one says about her books or writ­ing style, she has brought more life and detail to Star Wars. Whether or not she con­tin­ues to write for LFL after her cur­rent con­tracts are up I couldn’t say, but regard­less she will always be a friend I respect greatly. Jeremy is also a good friend, although we do not com­mu­ni­cate as much as I do with Karen. His wife Mau­rine is a very sweet and out­go­ing woman, I’d say Jeremy would be in a pinch with­out her. Jeremy though is one of the nicest peo­ple you could ever have con­tact with, and he is a big fan of steak!

What is your favorite Fett line?

“He’s no good to me dead.”

What are some of your other favorite events from con­ven­tions with the Mercs?

Well, I have three favorite con­ven­tion events that really stick out in my mind. The first one was Adven­ture­Con in Knoxville TN, which was the first “offi­cial” gath­er­ing of Mercs as a club. There were four of us! That was big back then. The sec­ond was Drag­onCon 2007, where 20 cus­tom Man­dalo­ri­ans marched in the Dragon*Con parade for the first time ever as one group. The third was the wed­ding of two of the Mercs mem­bers at SDCC last year. We did it mando style, and it was a very cool event!

That wed­ding event was fea­tured on gam­ing chan­nel G4TV and var­i­ous other news sites around the inter­net, how did it come to be?

The mando wed­ding was awe­some! Karen Traviss was at SDCC, and was able to pro­vide trans­la­tions for the wed­ding cer­e­mony in Mando’a for the bride and groom. In the mando cul­ture, the type of wed­ding we per­formed would not be a very social event…in fact to have more than the bride and groom there would prob­a­bly be con­sid­ered a lit­tle off. How­ever, we wanted it to be fun for the cou­ple as well as for every­one else, so we had to spice it up a bit. My mando’a is not that great. In fact, I guess you could say that I am more like Boba in the sense that he didn’t know much if any mando’a either. I kept every­thing I said for the most part in basic, with a few mando’a words here and there.

What do you hope to see in store for Boba Fett in the future?
Well, I’m sure we’ll see a kid Boba in the Clone Wars series. I’m hop­ing to see my good friend Daniel Logan take up the hel­met in the Live Action series, and Karen Traviss has another Boba Fett book due out in the next cou­ple years. We have a lot in store for us in the com­ing months and years!

And what is in store for the Mercs?

I hope Mercs grows! If we con­tinue to grow the way we have, we will have around 400 mem­bers by the end of 2011. I think that says a lot for the pop­u­lar­ity of Man­dalo­ri­ans and Star Wars in gen­eral. As Mercs grows, the orga­ni­za­tion adapts and changes as we learn new things and over­come obsta­cles. As far as a group who is mainly “cus­tom” Star Wars char­ac­ters, our armor guide­lines fairly strict and straight for­ward. We’ve made the rules more strict over the last cou­ple years to ensure that everyone’s armor becomes some­thing every­one can be proud of. We are also a Lucas­film LTD. approved club like the 501st and Rebel Legion, and I hope that we get more events from LFL as time goes on, but I also enjoy the fact that we do fall under the radar of what they ask from the larger groups. Mercs mem­bers are much like their Star Wars coun­ter­parts in that we are inde­pen­dent and indi­vid­u­al­is­tic. In Star Wars you have Impe­ri­als and Sith, Rebels and Jedi…then you have Man­dalo­ri­ans. I know the Man­dalo­rian Mercs will be around for a very long time.

Tom, thank you for tak­ing the time to talk with me. See you at Adventure*Con in June!

Cool. =)

For more infor­ma­tion on the Man­dalo­rian Mercs Cos­tume Club, check out the organization’s web­site, mercs.firespray.net.