Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

She may be small in stature, but wizened alien spitfire Maz Kanata had a big role in last year’s mega-hit film Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Fans won’t have to wait for Episode VIII for more of the old lady with the tell-tale eyes and a real love for Chewbacca: Maz appears in author Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars: Aftermath: Life Debt (Del Rey, on sale Tuesday). The novel is a sequel to last year's Star Wars: Aftermath, which made it to No. 4 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list.

Wendig checks in on the character before audiences first meet her in The Force Awakens, years before Rey would find the legendary light saber that was once Luke Skywalker’s (and his father Anakin’s before him) in the basement of Maz’s castle. The exclusive excerpt below from Life Debt, set just after the Empire's defeat in Return of the Jedi, is an interlude that puts readers among the colorful characters in Maz’s castle and makes clear the one rule of the joint — one that’s broken by a guy who’s suffered huge personal losses in the Empire’s downfall.

“Maz Kanata’s clearly seen much and done more than many ever will in the galaxy and that’s so tantalizing," Wendig says. "I wanted the chance to tell just a little bit of that — to reveal a few more micrometers of Maz and her castle’s history."

The follow-up to Aftermath also catches up with Norra Wexley and the rebels as they hunt for Grand Admiral Rae Sloane and other Imperial leadership. But Norra gets new orders from General Leia Organa when Han Solo’s mission to liberate his pal Chewie’s home world of Kashyyyk goes awry.

Read an exclusive excerpt from Star Wars: Aftermath: Life Debt:

There’s only one rule in Maz Kanata’s castle.

(Well, okay, there are dozens, even hundreds of rules. If you get up on stage, you have to perform; don’t drink what’s in the brown jug; don’t go downstairs; if your animal drops a pile anywhere, you’re out; all deals need the approval of Maz before they’re done, and if you try to go around her back she’ll take what’s yours and what’s his and sell all of it to the highest bidder; and for the love of all that is holy don’t mention Maz’s eyes unless you want to get into a very long conversation.)

But there’s only one spoken rule — written, too, in a hundred lan­guages (many of them long-forgotten) on the wall beyond the bar: ALL ARE WELCOME. (NO FIGHTING.)

That rule is simple on the surface, but not easy in the execution, because Maz Kanata’s castle has been a meeting place since time im­memorial — a nexus point drawing together countless lines of alle­giance and opposition, a place not only where friend and foe can meet, but where complex conflicts are worn down flat so that all may sit, have a drink and a meal, listen to a song, and broker whatever deals their hearts or politics require. That’s why the flags outside her castle represent hundreds of cities and civilizations and guilds from before forever. The galaxy is not now, nor has it ever been, two polar forces battling for supremacy. It has been thousands of forces: a tug-of-war not with a single rope but a spider’s web of influence, domi­nance, and desire. Clans and cults, tribes and families, governments and anti-governments. Queens, satraps, warlords! Diplomats, bucca­neers, droids! Slicers, spicers, ramblers, and gamblers! To repeat: ALL ARE WELCOME. (NO FIGHTING.)

You fight? You’re done.