Mission Vao is a Rutian Twi'lek street kid, born around 3970 BBY and living in the undercity of Taris with her closest friend, the exiled Wookiee Zaalbar. Her older brother Griff left the planet with a dancer and did not take her. She was created for Knights of the Old Republic (2003) and voiced by Catherine Taber, who would later play Padmé Amidala in The Clone Wars.
The Taris problem
She is fourteen, and she is the party member with the most local knowledge, the most competence and the least protection. The game's most effective structural cruelty is that Taris — her entire world, her friends, the swoop gangs, the undercity — is annihilated from orbit at the end of the first act, and she is standing on the ship watching.
Across the media
She also turns up in John Jackson Miller's Dark Horse comic, set seven years earlier, where she disarms an attacker to help the Padawan Zayne Carrick. It is a small crossover and one of the better ones: the comic does not turn her into a different person, it just shows her at twelve doing the same thing.
Early drafts
She was originally written as a male Twi'lek, and the art director sent the face back for being insufficiently teenaged. The Legacy-era comics later named two characters — Astraal and Shado Vao — as a nod to her.