As a child, Corran heard of the Jedi mainly through holodramas portraying them as villains and his grandfather talking about the Clone Wars. He believes he knew/heard less about them growing up than most kids because of the secret Hal and Rostek were hiding. He perceived them to be vaguely romantic and somewhat sinister, although they were distant and remote compared to the greater reality of CorSec.
Corran entered the Corellian Security Force Academy immediately upon finishing secondary school.
His mother was present at his graduation, her face a mixture of pride and fear.
Corran set many new records at the Corellian Security Force Academy, including breaking one that had been set by his father, who had in turn broken his father's record.
One of the exercises Corran underwent at CorSec Academy involved his being interrogated under the influence of skirtapanol. He revealed a lot of minor transgressions he had committed in his childhood. These transgressions came back to haunt him, since one of the men conducting the interrogation was a friend of his father's and saw to it that Hal got a copy of the transcript of the interrogation.
Corran and his father had always gotten along, but they grew even closer when his mother died. He came to feel that there was nothing that the two of them couldn't take.
Corran and Iella partnered together for two years. They had been partners for six months when Corran's father was murdered. She and Gil Bastra helped him through this difficult time.
On one mission, Corran and Iella raided a glitterstim dealer's warehouse. He was seconds away from being shot and killed when Iella shot the would-be murderer, saving Corran's life. Corran felt very close to Iella immediately after this, and wanted to sleep with her. He believed that she felt the same. They were inadvertently saved from this by Kirtan Loor, who spent the next two days debriefing them. The moment passed.
Corran first heard of the Lusankya when a rival of Corellia's Diktat was murdered by a trusted aide. The aide kept repeating Lusankya over and over. He'd heard of other mentions of the Lusankya in similar cases.
It is mentioned that Corran and his father had both worked hard to bring down Booster Terrik. Based on my calculations of when Booster was arrested, I find this hard to believe. Corran had to have been in his teens when Booster was arrested, and therefore not even in CorSec Academy, let alone on the Force. Unless he helped by looking through datafiles at home, I really don't see how he could have happened.
Corran and Hal were able to arrest Zekka Thyne for smuggling, but suspected him of almost a dozen murders while working with Black Sun. Corran believes that Thyne's diamondlike eyes, which are capable of reflecting some light in the dark, were the cause of his downfall, having betrayed him to Hal. He and his father never acknowledged any of Thyne's threats or attempts to be intimidating.
Kirtan Loor altered the structure of Thyne's records, making it impossible for Xixor to sneak Thyne off. Corran attributed this act of Loor's to incompetence on Loor's part, albeit a good bit of incompetence.
Iella says that Corran seemed to know where Loor was going to be before Loor did. Corran had also programmed Whistler to give him a signal to alert him if he somehow happened to have missed Loor's imminent arrival.
Corran and his father thought there was going to be trouble on the day that Hal died. They did not encounter any, so Corran allowed himself to relax. For many years afterward, he used this as one reason to blame himself for his father's death.
He watched his father being murdered a hundred meters away from him. He was watching Hal by remote as he sat in a booth talking to a human male and a female Quarren. Bossk came in and blew away all three people. Corran held his father in his arms, but it was too late. He later arrested Bossk and brought him in, but Kirtan Loor let him go.
Iella describes Corran as burning for vengeance after Loor let Bossk go and frustrated that he could do nothing about it because of Loor's Imperial ties.
He found his father's gold Jedi Credit coin in Hal's pocket after Hal's murder. Afraid he would lose the coin, he had it fixed into a collar so it could be hung on a gold chain around his neck. Believing it to have been a good-luck piece for his father, he regarded it in the same way. This is the only memento he has of his father.
Corran had never liked Kirtan Loor, but his dislike escalated after Loor let Hal's murderer, Bossk, go free.
Corran made one "new friend" after his father's murder, but she left after six months.
Corran manipulated the outcome of the CorSec Awards Ball pool so that he could take the Selonian exchange member, Chertyl Ruluwoor. They hit it off really well, had a great time, and after the ball went off alone to get much better acquainted. They realized the day after that they were allergic to each other, but remained friends.
When the Imperials started getting quite a bit of power and influence with the Corellian Diktat, Gil Bastra started creating fake identities for Corran, Iella, and Diric. He and Corran created fake smugglers that Corran supposedly killed in cold blood. He and Gil then staged a public falling out so that Kirtan Loor would have no idea that they were working together. Before leaving, Corran decided to complete one more mission, which consisted of inspecting some small-time smugglers coming in-system. Instead, two flights of TIEs were waiting for him. Luckily, Whistler had already plotted courses away from Corellia for Corran's imminent departure, so it was easy for them to jump out. Loor retaliated by putting out a death mark on Corran for murdering the six fake smugglers.
The X-Wing that Corran flies is one that he drew from the pool of craft that CorSec had confiscated for their use on missions.
Corran believed that arranging a wake would be the best sendoff for his father that he could imagine. Ryshcate was served at the wake.
Corran felt somewhat directionless and adrift after his father's murder. He was so used to checking his thoughts and perceptions with his father that he wasn't confident when it came to trusting his own "moral compass." He came to look to Gil Bastra and Iella Wessiri to help him in this, but then they were all forced to flee Corellia. He had also been spending more and more time alone, and having to abruptly leave behind his job and his friends only exacerbated these problems and tendencies.
Corran was on the run for a year and a half before joining the Rebellion/New Republic.
The last cover he assumed before joining Rogue Squadron was that of Eamon Yzalli, an aide to the Imperial Prefect of Garqi. Corran made it look like Eamon had been an aide under the previous Prefect and had been left behind. He became extremely valuable to the Prefect, Barris.
While on Garqi, Corran couldn't resist taking night flights in his X-wing, although that fell out of the parameters of the cover profile that Gil Bastra had created for him and his abilities as Eamon Yzalli. He loved flying too much to give it up.
Receiving word that Kirtan Loor would soon be arriving on Garqi, Corran was forced to aid some captured Rebel and University students mistaken as Rebels in escaping the planet. If he had not done so, he would not have been able to get the parts that his X-wing needed to fly, nor would he have been able to escape as easily himself.
In his year and a half on the run, Corran seems to have become much more self-centered than is normal for him. His first urge is to turn his back on the captured University student, and he tells Whistler at least once that that's not his job anymore; looking out for the two of them is his primary job now.
While on Garqi, Whistler assumed the secret identity of Xeno when he sliced into chats being carried out by disgruntled Garqi Ag U students. He taught them how to make Rebel graphics and slogans and have them affect other computers. He was believed by the students to be a crew member of the Star's Delight that had escaped capture. Whistler claims he did this to help Corran get the needed X-wing parts.