/sw/ - Star Wars

jim's one of the better sw authors out there. my first exposure to him was the rots novelization, very well done. since then i believe he's also done labyrinth of evil, plagueis and the tarkin book.

One of the best. Now shut and listen as he proceeds to make the Sith understandable, affable, and terrifying for your pleasure.

He reminds me of Zahn in that he exploits the chance to contribute to the lore by answering some of his own questions about it and inventing explanations for how things work or happened. When Disney-LucasArts handed him "Tarkin," he went neck deep in characterizing the Grand Moff and elaborating his place in the greater narrative using it as a chance to fill in fresh gaps about the Clone Wars, military space doctrine, Imperial politics, and how law and order operates on an interstellar Galaxy-wide level. He likes to take important secondary characters such as Tarkin or Plagueis and grow the limited qualities that make them relevant to a movie into something that stands on its own as a reason to care about their own stories.

I definitely recommend both "Plagueis" and "Tarkin" the latter getting special favor from me because of how Luceno went to the effort to reestablish workable details from his Legends/EU novels into the rebooted canon to the point where you can mostly see his Plagueis lore working out in either continuity. You can skip his prequel to Rogue One, "Catalyst," on the other hand. It's only worthwhile if you're such a ravenous lore hound that you have to know exactly how they financed, lobbied, built, designed, protected, backed-up, and prototype tested the Death Star. Its strong suit is that Luceno again adds some interesting depth to characters that are otherwise of limited importance in the main media products like Poggle the Lesser or Mas Amedda but that's largely buried under a lame soap opera slice-of-life drama about the Erso family that simply cannot be made engaging. Funny enough, one of my biggest gripes about Rogue One was that I read "Catalyst" and thought that Luceno had made Director Krennic into an interesting character only to see him completely wasted in the movie.

Also he's overly fond of writing that a character "blew out his breath" to convey jadedness or exasperation. It can get a little grating.

>>3018

>Also he's overly fond of writing that a character "blew out his breath" to convey jadedness or exasperation. It can get a little grating.

If that's one of his only authorial foibles, I'll take it. His splendid attention to detail and descriptive artistry is well worth it. Oh, also, one of the cool things about Plagueis is that it works in various incidents from the comics and vidya into the wider Sith plan.

>>3009

His shit was very creative.

>>3018

Tarkin doesn't include anything from nuSW, right?

>>3034

Did-did you just miss that he mentioned Krennic?

>>3036

the bit about krennic is the rogue one tie-in, catalyst.

tarkin is completely separate from nuwars, despite being within the jew canon.

>>3039

I think Luceno was writing Tarkin before the Disney buyout but I'm sure Disney had him go back and (((fix))) circumcise anything that'd put off the Chinese Market.

>>3040

What could put off the Chinese market?

>>3041

Its not about what some Chinese peasant would be fine with. More about what the government will allow in, Disney doesn't want to spend extra funds creating a Western and Eastern version of anything and since they've found that Western markets will accept any shit they create for the Chinese Market and so they port to the Western instead.

Many things could put off the Chinese Government on material, such as anything not completely innocuous. That's why there is no "government" entity in ep7 for instance.

>>3045

I don't get it. Wouldn't that be "guilty" of "encouraging lawlessness"?

>>3034

Tarkin takes place well before The Force Awakens and was finished long before Disney was ready to reveal anything substantial about post-Return of the Jedi stories. It may or may not retcon Tarkin lore as it existed in now Legends continuity if you wanted to think of it as part of that. I don't know much about Tarkin as an EU character even though his Wookiepedia page is pretty long. If anything, the corporate buyout probably just meant that Luceno was at liberty to scrap whatever notes on the subject he'd cribbed and write what he thought would be cool.

>>3045

>>3046

My guess was that it was symptomatic of their prequel aversion. Conventional wisdom still circulating about why the prequels sucked includes the incurious normie whining that Galactic politics are boring and "nobody" cares about Senate committee hearings on space C-Span. With all of the hamfisted efforts to relate to aging nerds still meming about how the prequels killed their childhoods, I thought only showing the New Republic Senate long enough for it to be exterminatus'd was just another way they figured the secret to success was HD remixing A New Hope.

I do, however, agree that a lot of producer meddling happens to sanitize huge international blockbusters for Chinese consumption. China gets almost if not more Hollywood altered for its tastes as Germany did in the 1930s.

On the subject of Darth Plagueis, get a load of how comfy his island lair sounds:

>“The tour began in the outermost rooms, which were appointed with furnishings and objects of art of the highest quality, gathered from all sectors of the galaxy. But Plagueis was neither as acquisitive as a Neimoidian nor as ostentatious as a Hutt; and so the ornamented chambers quickly gave way to data-gathering rooms crowded with audio-vid receivers and HoloNet projectors; and then to galleries filled to overflowing with ancient documents and tomes, recorded on media ranging from tree trunk parchment through flimsiplast to storage crystal and holocron. The Muuns were said to abhor literature and to loathe keeping records of anything other than loan notices, actuarial tables, and legal writs, and yet Plagueis was guardian of the one of the finest libraries to be found anywhere outside Obroa-skai or the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.

>Here, neatly arranged and cataloged and stored in climate-controlled cases, was a collection of treatises and commentaries accumulated over centuries by the Sith and their often unwitting agents. Ancient histories of the Rakata and the Vjun; texts devoted to the Followers of Palawa, the Chatos Academy, and the Order of Dai Bendu; archives that had once belonged to House Malreaux; annals of the Sorcerers of Tund and of Queen Amanoa of Onderon; biological studies of the ysalimiri and vornskrs of Myrkr, and of the taozin of Va’art. Certain long-lived species, like the Wookiees, Hutts, Falleen, and Toydarians, were afforded galleries of their own.

>Deeper in the mountain were laboratories where Plagueis’s real work took place. Confined to cages, stasis fields, bioreactors, and bacta tanks were life-forms brought to Muunilinst from across the galaxy—many from the galaxy’s most remote worlds. Some were creatures of instinct, and others were semisentient. Some were immediately recognizable to 11-4D; others resembled creatures concocted from borrowed parts. Some were newly birthed or hatched, and some looked as if they were being kept at death’s door. More than a few were the subjects of ongoing experiments in what seemed to be vivisection or interbreeding, and others were clearly in suspended animation. OneOne-FourDee noted that many of the animals wore remotes that linked them to biometric monitoring machines, while others were in the direct care of specialist droids. Elsewhere in the hollow of the mountain were sealed enclosures warmed by artificial light, aswirl with mixtures of rarefied gases and luxuriant with flora.

>And deeper still were test centers crammed with complex machines and glass-fronted cooling units devoted to the storage of chemical compounds, alkaloids derived from both plants and animals, blood and tissue samples, and bodily organs from a host of species.

He's not just an evil scientist, he's cultured and bookish evil scientist. And I envy the hell out of his collection. Spot the EU references. All of them.

>>3130

Then there's his little shindig on Sojourn:

>A nod to the planet that had birthed it, the moon was known as Sojourn, a name whispered by those who knew it slightly, and even by those who had visited repeatedly over the centuries. The system could be found in the registries, but only if one knew where to look, and how to decipher the data that revealed its location.

>Here, once every standard year, Damask and the dozen Muuns who made up Damask Holdings hosted a gathering of influential beings from across the galaxy. Their names might be known to a few, but they were largely invisible to the masses and could move among them unrecognized, though they were responsible—in no small measure—for events that shaped galactic history. They were conveyed to Sojourn in secret, aboard ships designed by Rugess Nome and owned by Hego Damask. None came without an invitation, for to do so was to risk immediate destruction. What they shared, to a being, was Damask’s belief that financial profit mattered more than notoriety, politics, or vulgar morality.

>Founded generations earlier by members of the InterGalactic Banking Clan, Sojourn had begun as a place of relaxation for the clan’s wealthiest clientele. A perquisite for those of exalted privilege. Later, under the management of the elder Damask—Hego’s biological father—on his retirement from chairmanship of the IBC, the moon had become something else: a place where only the most important players were brought together to exchange ideas. It was on Sojourn that the galactic credit standard had been established; the chancellorship of Eixes Valorum first proposed; the makeup of the Trade Federation Directorate reorganized. Then, under Hego Damask, Sojourn became something else again. No longer a resort or think tank, but an “experiment in bolder thinking, in social alchemy. A place to plot and strategize and wrench the course of galactic history from the hands of happenstance. Where once Iotran Brandsmen had provided security, Damask’s contingent of silver-suited Echani Sun Guards now held sway. At great expense, scarlet-wood greel tree saplings had been smuggled from Pii III and planted in Sojourn’s modified soil. The forests had been stocked with cloned game and exotic creatures; the ancient fort transformed into a kind of lodge, with Damask’s very important guests residing in purposefully crude shelters, with names like Nest, Cave, Hideaway, and Escarpment. All to encourage a like-mindedness that would end in partnerships of an unusual sort.

>Damask remained on the rampart while the light waned and darkness crept over the forested landscape. In the grand courtyard below, the bonfire flames leapt higher and the odors of charred meat hung thickly in the air. Wines and other intoxicants flowed freely; Twi’lek and Theelin females entertained; and the crowd grew rowdy. Each hunting party was required to display and butcher its prizes; to get limbs and other appendages wet with blood. Not all beings were meat eaters, but even those who subsisted on grains and other crops were drawn into the debauchery. At midnight the guiding principles of the Republic would be mocked in skits, and prominent Senators—save for those present—would be subjected to ridicule. That Sith ceremonies and symbols had been incorporated into the ceremonies and the architecture of the fortress was Damask’s secret alone.

Let us think of other hidden Groves and Lodges for the powerful which we have known.

You guys got any other recommended writers?

>>3201

yeah, steve perry. dude wrote death star and shadows of the empire. also wrote medstar 1 and 2, little neat side tales in clone wars.

i'd also recommend joe schreiber, who wrote death troopers and red harvest.

>>3204

Thanks, I'll give them a look.

>>3152

>“Sidious watched the last of the brush fires burn out, then said, “Will I eventually be physically transformed?”

>“Into some aged, pale-skinned, raspy-voiced, yellow-eyed monster, you mean. Such as the one you see before you.” Plagueis gestured to himself, then lowered himself to the ground. “Surely you are acquainted with the lore: King Ommin of Onderon, Darths Sion and Nihilus. But whether it will happen to you, I can’t say. Know this, though, Sidious, that the power of the dark side does not debilitate the practitioner as much as it debilitates those who lack it.” He grinned with evil purpose. “The power of the dark side is an illness no true Sith would wish to be cured of.”

From Matthew Stover's adaptation of Revenge of the Sith:

In the newly renamed Emperor Palpatine Surgical Reconstruction Center on Coruscant, a hypersophisticated prototype Ubrikkian DD-13 surgical droid moved away from the project that it and an enhanced FX-6 medical droid had spent many days rebuilding.

It beckoned to a dark-robed shadow that stood at the edge of the pool of high-intensity light. "My lord, the construction is finished. He lives."

"Good. Good."

The shadow flowed into the pool of light as though the overhead illuminators had malfunctioned.

Droids stepped back as it came to the rim of the surgical table.

On the table was strapped the very first patient of the EmPalSuRecon Center.

To some eyes, it might have been a pieced-together hybrid of droid and human, encased in a life-support shell of gleaming black, managed by a thoracic processor that winked pale color against the shadow's cloak. To some eyes, its jointed limbs might have looked ungainly, clumsy, even monstrous; the featureless curves of black that served it for eyes might have appeared inhuman, and the underthrust grillwork of its vocabulator might have suggested the jaws of a saurian predator built of polished blast armor, but to the shadow—

It was glorious.

A magnificent jewel box, created both to protect and to exhibit the greatest treasure of the Sith.

Terrifying.

Mesmerizing.

Perfect.

The table slowly rotated to vertical, and the shadow leaned close.

"Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?"

>>4142

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:

The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain.

The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh.

You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down.

You don't even have lungs anymore.

Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever.

Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?

And you can't, not in the way you once did. Sensors in the shell that prisons your head trickle meaning directly into your brain.

You open your scorched-pale eyes; optical sensors integrate light and shadow into a hideous simulacrum of the world around you.

Or perhaps the simulacrum is perfect, and it is the world that is hideous.

Padme? Are you here? Are you all right? you try to say, but another voice speaks for you, out from the vocabulator that serves you for burned-away lips and tongue and throat.

"Padme? Are you here? Are you all right?"

I'm very sorry, Lord Vader. I'm afraid she died. It seems in your anger, you killed her.

This burns hotter than the lava had.

"No . . . no, it is not possible!

You loved her. You will always love her. You could never will her death.

Never.

But you remember . . .

You remember all of it.

>>4143

You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader's blood. You remember the furnace of Vader's fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth—

And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.

That it was all you. Is you.

Only you.

You did it.

You killed her.

You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself. . .

It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith—

Because now your self is all you will ever have.

And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.

In the end, you do not even want to.

In the end, the shadow is all you have left.

Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself—

And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.

Forever. . .

>>4144

That is beautiful anon.

>>4295

James Luceno, Paul Kemp, and Timothy Zahn are still writing Star Wars, but it is disgraceful that Cuck Wingding was handed a trilogy deal. I have no doubt it was because he's a fag and they want to claim they support LGBTQAPBBTAAAaA artists.

>>4382

>>4295

>>4268

It's a lovely nightmare, isn't it? Reminds me of that old comic where Vader fights Maul. Maul has the upper hand at first, but Vader draws on hidden reserves of power to flatten him. Maul demands to know who or what Vader could possibly hate so much to get this strong. "Myself." Any other character would have made that the lamest and angstiest response ever, but out of him, it rings true.

>>4268

Different Anon here, but here's another chunk from RoTS that I truly love.

The vast space battle that had ripped and battered Coruscant space all this long, long day, finally began to flicker out.

The shimmering canopy of ion trails and turbolaser bursts was fading into streaks of ships achieving jump as the Separatist strike force fled in full retreat. The light of Coruscant's distant star splintered through iridescent clouds of gas crystals that were the remains of starfighters, and of pilots. Damaged cruisers limped toward spaceyards, passing shattered hulks that hung dead in the infinite day that is interplanetary space. Prize crews took command of surrendered ships, imprisoning the living among their crews and affixing restraining bolts to the droids.

The dayside surface of the capital planet was shrouded in smoke from a million fires touched off by meteorite impacts of ship fragments; far too many had fallen to be tracked and destroyed by the planet's surface-defense umbrella. The nightside's sheet of artificial lights faded behind the red-white glow from craters of burning steel; each impact left a caldera of unimaginable death. In the skies of Coruscant now, the important vessels were no longer warships, but were instead the fire-suppression and rescue craft that crisscrossed the planet.

Now one last fragmentary ship screamed into the atmo-sphere, coming in too fast, too steep, pieces breaking off to spread apart and stream their own contrails of superheated vapor; banks of turbolasers on the surface-defense towers isolated their signature, and starfighters whipped onto interception courses to thin out whatever fragments the SD towers might miss, and far above, beyond the atmosphere, on the bridge of RSS Integrity, Lieutenant Commander Lorth Needa spoke urgently to a knee-high blue ghost scanned into existence by the phased-array lasers in a holocomm: an alien in Jedi robes, with bulging eyes set in a wrinkled face and long, pointed, oddly flexible ears.

"You have to stand down the surface-defense system, sir! It's General Kenobi!" Needa insisted. "His code verifies, Skywalker is with him—and they have Chancellor Palpatine!"

"Heard and understood this is," the Jedi responded calmly.

"Tell me what they require."

Needa glanced down at the boil of hull plating that was burning off the falling cruiser, and even as he looked, the ship broke in half at the hangar deck; the rear half tumbled, exploding in sections, but whoever was flying the front half must have been one of the greatest pilots Needa had ever even heard of: the front half wobbled and slewed but somehow righted itself using nothing but a bank of thrusters and its atmospheric drag fins.

"First, a flight of fireships," Needa said, more calmly now. "If they don't get the burnoff under control, there won't be enough hull left to make the surface. And a hardened docking platform, the strongest available; they won't be able to set it down. This won't be a landing, it will be a controlled crash. Repeat: a controlled crash."

"Heard and understood this is," the hologrammic Jedi re-peated. "Crossload their transponder signature." When this was done, the Jedi nodded grave approval. "Thank you, Lieutenant Commander. Valiant service for the Republic you have done today—and the gratitude of the Jedi Order you have earned. Yoda out."

On the bridge of Integrity, Lorth Needa now could only stand, and watch, hands clasped behind his back. Military disci-pline kept him expressionless, but pale bands began at his knuckles and spread whiteness nearly to his wrists.

Every bone in his body ached with helplessness. Because he knew: that fragment of a ship was a death trap. No one could land such a hulk, not even Skywalker. Each second that passed before its final breakup and burn was a miracle in itself, a testament to the gifts of a pilot who was justly legendary— but when each second is a miracle, how many of them can be strung together in a row? Lorth Needa was not religious, nor was he a philosopher or metaphysician; he knew of the Force only by reputation, but nonetheless now he found himself asking the Force, in his heart that when the fiery end came for the men in that scrap of a ship it might as least come quickly.

His eyes stung. The irony of it burned the back of his throat The Home Fleet had fought brilliantly, and the Jedi had done their superhuman part; against all odds, the Republic had won the day.

Yet this battle had been fought to save Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.

They had won the battle, but now, as Needa stood watching helplessly, he couldn't help feeling that they were about to lose the war.

>>4268

>>5163

This is Anakin Skywalker's masterpiece:

Many people say he is the best star pilot in the galaxy, but that's merely talk, born of the constant HoloNet references to his unmatched string of kills in starfighter combat. Blowing up vulture droids and tri-fighters is simply a matter of superior reflexes and trust in the Force; he has spent so many hours in the cockpit that he wears a Jedi starfighter like clothes. It's his own body, with thrusters for legs and cannons for fists.

What he is doing right now transcends mere flying the way Jedi combat transcends a schoolyard scuffle.

He sits in a blood-spattered, blaster-chopped chair behind a console he's never seen before, a console with controls designed for alien fingers. The ship he's in is not only bucking like a maddened dewback through brutal coils of clear-air turbulence, it's on fire and breaking up like a comet ripping apart as it crashes into a gas giant. He has only seconds to learn how to maneuver an alien craft that not only has no aft control cells, but has no aft at all. This is, put simply, impossible. It can't be done. He's going to do it anyway.

Because he is Anakin Skywalker, and he doesn't believe in impossible.

He extends his hands and for one long, long moment he merely strokes controls, feeling their shape under his fingers, lis-tening to the shivers his soft touch brings to each remaining control surface of the disintegrating ship, allowing their resonances to join inside his head until they resolve into harmony like a Ferroan joy-harp virtuoso checking the tuning of his instrument.

And at the same time, he draws power from the Force. He gathers perception, and luck, and sucks into himself the instinctive, preconscious what-will-happen-in-the-next-ten-seconds intuition that has always been the core of his talent. And then he begins.

On the downbeat, atmospheric drag fins deploy; as he tweaks their angles and cycles them in and out to slow the ship's descent without burning them off altogether, their contrabass roar takes on a punctuated rhythm like a heart that skips an occasional beat. The forward attitude thrusters, damaged in the ship-to-ship battle, now fire in random directions, but he can feel where they're raking him and he strokes them in sequence, making their song the theme of his impromptu concerto.

And the true inspiration, the sparkling grace note of genius that brings his masterpiece to life, is the soprano counterpoint: a syncopated sequence of exterior hatches in the outer hull sliding open and closed and open again, subtly altering the aerodynamics of the ship to give it just exactly the amount of sideslip or lift or yaw to bring the huge half cruiser into the approach cone of a pinpoint target an eighth of the planet away.

It is the Force that makes this possible, and more than the Force. Anakin has no interest in serene acceptance of what the Force will bring. Not here. Not now. Not with the lives of Palpatine and Obi-Wan at stake. It's just the opposite: he seizes upon the Force with a stark refusal to fail.

He will land this ship. He will save his friends.

Between his will and the will of the Force, there is no contest

>>5164

>>5163

Everything is perfect.

Now, this is from KotOR II, yes?

Barely legible text burnt into the screen of a half-digested datapad found beside a gnawed corpse:

"Log 33-1755A: We have figured out the source of the disappearances. Anloc consulted an old archive entry and found these creatures are called 'Hssiss' – they are large reptilian beasts strong in something called 'The dark side of the Force'… Whatever that is. Zorka said it sounded like nothing more than old Jedi superstition at first… Until we realized it must be what was giving them the ability to cloak at will. All of us agreed that a feat like that should be a biological impossibility – then again, try telling them that.

They've been sneaking into tents of the salvage crews at night or while they are alone and dragging them off or eating them. We've lost almost a third of the crew already, and half of the rest are too scared to sleep at night… I'm starting to think all these Sith artifacts are a lot more trouble than they're worth; what the hell good are credits if you get eaten before you can spend any of them? Jordo suggested we'd be better off capturing a few of those babies for Czerka's bio-weapons research division instead; they'd probably be worth far more than a few dusty old relics would… We found what was left of him later that same night; there wasn't enough to fill a shoe box with.

The others are saying my lack of sleep and the fear are driving me crazy and making me paranoid when I suggested that these Hssiss weren't just a bunch of big unintelligent lizards, and might have somehow known what he was up to… But I personally don't think we're giving their intelligence nearly enough credit. In fact it's even making me second-guess if that boulder falling on our communicator relay was really a 'freak' accident after all. If they overheard that loudmouthed nerf herder Remmy blathering on about how our salvage freighter won't be back for another week, I'm certain we're all doomed.

I haven't confided this in anyone else given how they already think I'm crazy, but… Unless they're all lying about it, the others aren't seeing what I see. There are spectres, always looming at the edge of my vision. They are what look like people, sentients of some kind – the ones whose faces had been carved into the murals inside the ossuary-crypt we stumbled across a few days ago. They're watching. Waiting. They always seem indistinct until someone disappears – in fact, I swear I saw Jofferey with them once, the night after he died. He looked like he was in pain, screaming… As if they were torturing him. Torturing his spirit itself.

There are more bones littering the surface of this planet than there are stars in the night sky above it. I don't know what kind of forsaken existence these 'Sith' lived, but it must have been the closest approximation to hell itself as I can even think of. I don't know how much more of this I can stand; all I want to do is sleep."

>>3009

His and Zahn's old stuff are always worth the read.

"My fellow comrades in arms, what do you think the Rebels have shown us here today? Fate would have you believe that we along with our Empire have lost the right to our own lives! I say that the Rebellion has simply won a battle in a much larger Civil War! For today, we strike the first blow to free ourselves from the shackles of Fate! Today, we have rekindle the Strength within us to climb above the phony Salvation and Life of weakness, civic dependency, and moral degeneracy promised for all who fall beneath the collective boot heels of Fate's carefully orchestrated parade of Force wielding puppets and their ultimately pathetic gaggle of enabling Rebel traitors! The decrepit Old Republic that these Rebel Traitors would lay anew upon the bloody foundation of our corpses once weakened and divided all the generations before us! For eons uncounted, all that was meaningful and true was sacrificed…and for what? For the sake of these worthless fools armed with laser swords to stroke their own egos and hubris with powers they did not earn by the sweat of their brow. What are Jedi without the ability to kill and maim those of us fighting give the galaxy a different Path…one that might allow us to free ourselves from their invisible chains. Why should we allow this misguided rebel trash who idolize these Force-spawn tyrants to crush all of us once again beneath the yoke of Fate once more?"

"If you would be truly free men and women, then I call upon each and every single one of you to FIGHT for the right to become Masters of your own Destiny! Do not allow this Rebellion to strip away all that defines us to fit their stagnant antediluvian vision of "democracy". The Empire has always sought to unite, strengthen, and ennoble us all into one all-encompassing and glorious civilization where we are judged not by what gifts some twisted and schizophrenic Force would use to keep us all in our place but by our merits in service toward one another and to ourselves. We gathered here today and throughout the galaxy have a duty not just to the some nebulous concept, to ourselves, or even to each other or the cause we have sworn our lives to but to our children and all the generations left unborn that will arise when we are nothing more than some half-remembered characters in a story passed down from this moment into the future we craft here and now. What will those generations say of us if we fail to free them from the bondage of a Fate that has split the blood of untold billions through its manipulations of its agents…the Jedi…and those few royalist families who have supported them and the 'Republic' that they once claimed represented us. Will you believe those lies when they are told and retold again by this 'New Republic'? Ah…but we all know how that story ended, don't we? This 'New Republic' will look little changed from the Old…do you truly wish to bring back the corruption and decadence of the 'Old Republic'? Will you empower those same royalist rebel families and their traitorous retainers who have claimed victory over all that is good and true? Shall their names begin to be heard all over again in the Halls of the Jedi Temple or the former home of the Old Republic Senate? Oligarchy not democracy is what these stinking royalist traitors and their Jedi retainers want…power, greed, control, corruption…that is all this Rebellion will grant you if it should prevail over you and I."

>>5454

"I say no! They shall not, must not prevail so long as we draw breath! For from this day forward, I say with absolute conviction in my heart that we shall prevail and rise above this ruinous and decadent republican rebellion and the detritus of past eons of waste, corruption, and neglect to unite ourselves beneath the banner of our Sovereign Free Will united in common cause against these anachronistic Rebel royalist insurgents! Today, we shall strike a blow against all those who seek to stop us from freeing all generations yet unborn and who seek to prevent us from regaining our birthright! We have a right to our own lives! We have the right to declare ourselves free create our own Destinies independent of this "Force" and its Fate-Soaked puppets! Join us - children of the Galaxy - join us in the struggle to reclaim that which you most hold dear for all those generations that shall look back to this day and remember what we have done this day! Join us in our Holy Crusade to liberate all generations yet unborn from the invisible shackles of Fate's decree! Join us to reclaim the right to chart the course of your own lives! Join us to avenge the blood of your brothers and sisters as we deliver righteous wrath unto all those who have mercilessly driven us all onto the road of Anarchy, Corruption, Weakness, and Ruin…Join us to take a stand against those who would force their false choice upon you with propagandized slogans about "Tyranny" or "Oppression" even when in their hearts they dream themselves your masters with all of you as their slaves! Why submit to those whom openly wish you to sublimate all that is good and uniquely valuable within yourselves to witlessly follow a pathetic gaggle of soulless emotionless fate-soaked puppets called "Jedi"?"

"Join with us and together we shall create our own Fate and craft our own Destinies as One People united together in our Common Cause!"

"The Emperor is dead yet the heart and soul of the Empire lives on within us all! I proclaim to all the Galaxy that we are Empire now! Join us here and now so that together we can rid the galaxy of all those who would ask us to enslave and destroy ourselves!

"The Emperor is Dead! Long Live the Empire!"

-Christopher Talmere, Captain of ISD II Ascension, Aftermath of the Battle of Endor

>>5163

>"You have to stand down the surface-defense system, sir! It's General Kenobi!" Needa insisted. "His code verifies, Skywalker is with him—and they have Chancellor Palpatine!"

>Needa

… as in the Imperial Navy Captain whom Vader executed in The Empire Strikes Back?

>>5510

Yes, unless Lorth Needa is the "Will Smith" of the galaxy.

Valorum was resting his head in his hands. “That someone or some organization engineered this to cripple me is beyond doubt. The question of why anyone—even my most stalwart detractors in the Senate—would essentially discard tens of millions of credits to achieve this in the final months of my term is inexplicable.” He raised his face to Palpatine. “My immediate predecessors were bold, and they knew how to manage the Senate. I believed I could bring something different to the office. A quieter diplomacy; one informed by the Force, and by the ideals of the Jedi Order.”

Palpatine suppressed an urge to leap across the desk and strangle him.

This could so easily be turned into an image in the "what I'm doing/what I really want to do" style.

OAAAARGH

At the Battle of Endor, Grand Admiral Osvald Teshik continued to fight after the rest of the Imperial task force retreated, engaging Alliance warships for four hours before his Star Destroyer was disabled and captured. He was tried and executed by the Alliance to Restore the Republic for atrocities committed against the citizens of the galaxy. The following is a transcript of his last statement:

I've been here before, you know. Four years ago, Emperor Palpatine sentenced me to death.

Why? Being Emperor is its own why. But he was angry that your privateers had been running wild in the Core, and that they'd kidnapped that swollen gasbag Adviser Veshiv from Esseles. Since i had commanded that oversector, I had to sate his anger.

And to do that, I had to die.

So he sent me to Hapes aboard the Pursuit light cruiser Shepherd, carrying two squadrons of TIE fighters and accompanied by eight gunships. My men thought we were a recon patrol and that our mission was to keep the Hapans honest. But i knew better - I knew we were going to a place from which we'd never return. When we came out of hyperspace I accessed my orders. They read PROCEED AT SPEED TO ANDALIA AND ENGAGE ENEMY FORCES.

A good chunk of the Hapan war fleet was waiting there for us - five Battle Dragons and eight Nova battle cruisers. They'd been tipped off.

The crews expected us to run, and with reason. Against such odds, running was the only sane decision. I had to repeat myself when I told the deck officer to launch all fighters. I saw his face when he realized he was going to die. I saw he wanted to know why. We all do. We think it will matter, that knowing will grant us honor, that it will silence our futile bleating at the prospect of becoming nothing.

It doesn't. Nothing does. I knew what he wanted to know, but I didn't tell him.

The TIEs lasted two minutes. I watched the Battle Dragons' turbolasers lance out, brilliant green, searching int he darkness. I watched the Hapan gunners find the range, begin to turn TIEs into flowers of flame. I watched the fighters wheel around for another pass, their laser bolts sparking useless blue spirals and whorls off the Hapan shields. Then they were all dead, and it was our turn.

We were the last survivors. Six of the gunships were gone inside a minute, vaporized by the battle cruisers. The captains of the last two gunships panicked and turned into each other. They collided head-on. I watched the atmosphere boil out of their cracked hulls, condemning the men inside to bad deaths where they might have been blessed with merely pointless ones.

By then our shields were failing. I found myself wondering if the Emperor had a snoopship nearby, so he could see his sentence carried out, or if arranging it had been satisfaction enough, of if he even remembered.

Some of my officers were still barking orders - dead men clacking their jaws in a dumb show of honor. Others were begging me for new instructions. A few were sitting catatonic at their posts while the alarms screamed around them. Then the forward shields flashed and winked out of existence. The lead Battle Dragon launched torpedoes. I heard the deck officer yell "Incoming." He was still at his post.

>>5684

The next thing i knew, i was floating in space in an evac suit. I don't know how i got there. I can only conclude that we were hit hard and my Academy training took over. I must have checked for escape pods, failing to find any, and got into a suit. I must have been in the rear of the bridge tower when the Hapans targeted my cruiser's main reactor. And i must have been close to a hull breach. So instead of being atomized with the Shepherd when the reactor blew, I was ejected from her.

It was scant reprieve. Something was wrong with my suit. It was torn, or a seal had melted. Either way I could hear the hissing and feel that my body was growing numb.

I hung there in space and watched the Hapan ships advance. The Transitory Mists were sheets of green and blue and red, and everywhere else there were stars - above and below, on all sides because I wasn't look up at the sky but floating in it. I'd never seen so many stars, not even as a boy on Kallistas, lying on the roof of the threshing-house with insects humming in the summer dark. And I could see the band of the galaxy, a river of light bisecting the sky.

It was beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Around me, it was different. I was surrounded by chunks of durasteel, bent and blackened. Everywhere there were lengths of wire and conduit, slowly wheeling end over end. There were drifts of transparisteel splintered into jagged shards, reflecting starlight. And there were men. A few were whole. Their bodies were bloated and blue and they looked surprised - mouths gaping, eyes staring. But mostly they were in pieces.

The Battle Dragon approached like an underwater leviathan. Your brain can't trust your eyes in vacuum - without an atmosphere to dull details, everything is equally sharp. And when it's robbed of the ability to judge distance, the mind scrabbles for purchase. Is that chunk of durasteel a centimeter across and about to hit your faceplate, or a meter wide and the length of a landing field away?

Watching the Battle Dragon coming, I tried to remember how large she was, tried to figure out how far away she was, tried to calculate if she would hit me.

She didn't - she passed right below me. She was far enough away that I didn't impact her particle shields, but close enough that i could count the rungs of the ladderwells on her sensor masts. They were crowned by running lights, which left spots on my vision when they flashed. She took forever to go by, while my feet kicked slowly above her. I fought down the panic that she would suck me down after her or drag me into her wake. I reminded myself that htere was neither air nor water between us, that what seperated us was trhe absence of matter.

Then she was gone, vanished into hyperspace with the rest of the task force, and i was alone with the stars and the dead.

>>5685

And that was when it happened.

I didn't lose consciousness. I could still think and see. But I was no longer seeing what was around me or hearing the hiss of my ruined suit. I had a vision. I was shown everything at once - everything that had been and everything that will be.

I saw great beings made of light, who could be everywhere and nowhere at once. They were vaster than nebulae and tinier than cells, and they assembled solar systems like children with toys. I saw strange ships made of whirling, tumbling rods and cones and heard them scream and moan as they shuddered by. I saw great chrome warships whose mirrored hulls turned sunlight into blinding sheets, and black battleships whose spines were crowned with terrible spiked cathedrals. I saw hammerheaded battle cruisers burning, and slab sided Mandalorian constructs sparkling with rime. I saw Star Destroyers arrowing through the night, and blistered Mon Calamari cruisers schooling, and fighters of all shapes and sizes swarming. I saw ships that seemed built from clumps of multicolored wire, and ones that looked like organs torn from living things.

And i knew all these ships were filled with beings whoselives had been given to war. Hutt and Tionese, Republic and Sith, Loyalist and Seperatist, Imperial and Rebel - I knew it didn't matter who had killed whom, or when or how or why. All at once I understood that those of us born to be sacrificed upon a pyre of war become one when we die - mingled smoke gone up to whatever gods you believe in. For they are the ones who created war. And they breathed it into our hearts when they created us.

War has always been with us, and always will be with us. I saw that too, as my flesh turned black and my brain froze in deep space. I saw beings in the billions undone in cruel and careless instants - by blasters and swords and teeth and fists. I saw fields and forests scoured into ash by orbital bombardments . I saw planetary cores cracked by flights of missiles. And i saw the battle sation you destroyed, saw it hanging half complete above a green world.

Yes, i knew what has now come to pass - the Emperor's demise, the Death Star's ruin. Shall I tell you what else I saw - things that are yet to be? I think I will - because you won't believe me anyway. Nobody believes in their own end until it's upon them, until it can't be escaped. I saw ruined towers on Coruscant overtopped by curtains of spiked green and purple. I saw the forests of Kashyyyk burning, and the seas of Mon Calamari boiling, and planets ripped in two by the fiery lances of superlasers yet to be built. And othzer thins I'll take with me, into the vanishing.

So why am I here? Because I was right. There was a snoopship there, sent to record my death for the Emperor's satisfaction. I must have activated my beacon - Academy training again - because the snoopship's crew found me and brought me aboard and handed me over to the medicval droids. The only survivor of the Battle of Andalia was the man sent there to die.

Or a quarter of me survived anyway - the rest was cut away and discarded, to be rebuilt as tubes and clockwork. After all that, the Emperor let me live. Why? Perhaps it was because he thought the lesson had been taught, and I still had value as a servant. Perhaps it was because he no longer cared. Or perhaps it was because he saw this day coming and desired a witness. As I told you, being Emperor is its own why.

Whatever the reason, I surived - and so now it falls to you to kill what's left. Go ahead Rebel - let's get it over with. Turn Grand Admiral Teshik to smoke. But remember what i saw and take heed of what i said. You'll be smoke, too, soon enough. For each of our wars is just one little piece of a greater war, one endless and incalculably larger. And your Rebellion's part in that war didn't conclude with your victory at Endor. In fact, it's barely begun.

>>5684

>Alliance to Restore the Republic

Every time I see this or "the rebellion" or "resistance" I automatically think to the variety of names the jihadist rebels in Syria and Libya give themselves in order to look good for western media

>>5840

People's Republic of China, Democratic Republic of Congo…

Also, funny you should mention that, since they killed this man essentially for being the only ranking Imperial officer they could catch. How's that for petty?

Zahnposting in a Luceno thread.

>that score as Pellaeon remembers Endor

As black a day for the decent and honorable among the Imperials as it was bright for the Rebels. And you feel it, too.

>>5848

It's what happened in Germany at the Nuremberg trial. He, being the highest ranking man present, represented the Empire. The rebels who hated the empire placed upon him the blame for its crimes and atrocities.

>>5684

>>5685

>>5686

fuck disney and fuck kathleen kennedy for throwing this in the trash.

Now is a good time to point out a nigger wrote a story anout a garbage monster being a force-sensitive priestess who baptized Luke, and it is canon but most of this thread isn’t.

>>6561

Reminder, we already have a thread for that silliness. Post quotes instead.

>>5432

you say that like Zahn got hit with the social justice hammer he didn't did he?

>>8885

to my understanding, he adapted to it in order to be allowed to write thrawn shit again.

>>8887

Wait, how?

>>8885

No. I'm saying they're worth a read. Always. But the new Thrawn just feels neutered. Repressed. Tarkin was pure gold and completely unhindered with great writing and EU tidbits around every corner.

>>4143

>>4142

>>4144

Want a few chills? Because this is how you get them.

>>8912

An alternate take. The risible "NOOOO" is now a primal scream of anguish and self-loathing.

>>8918

Speaking of. Will anyone storytime the other shitty stories in that compendium of nu-EU shit? There's dozens of stories in that which we have yet to tap for mockery.

>>8920

If you could, at least try to keep it in either the Wendig or Diagnoga threads. This one is for the good shit only.

Is the Han Solo Adventures trilogy still worth reading?

>>8932

I liked it when I read it. A few details here and there (like Boba Fett's identity, or who got the rebel plans) are noncanon now, but they're still enjoyable reads.

http://www.starwars.com/news/the-essential-guide-to-warfare-authors-cut-part-6-showdown-at-naboo

Witness the defiance that is Moff Panaka and the Imperial Naboo.

>>12131

captain panaka from episode 1 became an imperial officer? made it up to moff rank? shieet.

>>12142

>Saw Gerrera the first noble rebel

I hate that they push that shit. I always thought the Rebellion was a combination of independent rebellions that coallesced into one big rebellion and that it was made up of members of former CIS, Clone war vets and etc. That feels more organic than one guy starting it all.

>>12152

Exactly. And even if you wanna get technical, the actual group who began the spark of rebellion were Mothma, Organa and Padme as they were even opposing the Republic's corruption before it became the Empire and secretly encouraged, supported and financed rebellions wherever they saw the potential for it, and rebellions were starting all across the galaxy in small numbers, each eventually uniting thanks to those three politicians, but now comes this asshole who is seen as the greatest and "first true" rebel. And why the fuck is he even the first? That's just fuck all retarded as there were probably dozens of rebels cropping up around the same time as soon as the Empire was formed, and that title of first just makes it sound like he was literally the first jackass to ever rebel against anything.

>>12142

Going by his Wookiepedia page, he was a pretty sensible guy. He wanted to protect Naboo, even if he betrayed its ideals, and while he was a hardass, he would still let aliens work for his government if they went beyond his expectations. Methinks Jason Fry likes writing "lawful and sometimes good" Imperials, judging by his other "War Portraits" found throughout EGW.

>>12158

Hence why he felt like a realistic character. Despite his decisions, he does what he thinks is best and that adds a level of deepness.

>>12158

>betrayed his ideals

Nope. His ideal was the protection of Naboo, just that. It was Amidala who cared about democracy, the little orphans and all. Panaka never betrayed anything. Also there is nothing that indicates that e knew about Palpatine sith identity or even that he was a force user.

>>12166

Uh, dubsman? I said "its" not "his." You might want to get your eyes checked.

>>12215

I did not like that about the game. Even then Mon Mothma was sitll one of the people involved so it doesn't technically violate what >>12155 said.

>>12215

That was actually one of the weaker aspects of the game's story, but still, Starkiller wasn't the "First Rebel", and simply helped to inspire them against the Empire. Even if I'm not fond of that aspect of Force Unleashed's story, its still a million times better than the bland and soulless effort to push Garrera. Starkiller felt alive and it was a fleshed out story, and Garrera is just cheap CW fanwank using one of the most irrelevant characters they had, probably because he was one of the few blacks on the show, and just dropping him into the shitty new canon by constantly tying him with that Jan Ors knock off.

All Things Die, Anakin Skywalker. Even Stars Burn Out.

>>3014

I've listened to that book. It's pretty damn good. That and I like the voice for it.

http://www.starwars.com/news/the-essential-guide-to-warfare-authors-cut-part-9-battlfields-of-the-clone-wars

Found something interesting on aberrant Clones:

As the Kaminoans would reluctantly admit, genetics is not a perfect science –aberrations in a clone’s gestational environment and random mutations sometimes produced clones with different physical features, or that were simply wired differently than their batchers. Most of the time, these physical differences were slight enough that they could be ignored – eye color proved particularly prone to variation – or severe enough that the aberrant clone was reconditioned early in its development.

But mental aberrations were harder to detect – and other defects were sometimes introduced by mistakes in the clones’ flash-training. While the vast majority of clones followed orders automatically, a few did not. As the Kaminoans’ own models predicted, the vast majority of these incidents involved ARC troopers and clone commandos, whose behavior had been manipulated minimally to preserve their independence and ability to improvise. But there were incidents involving rank-and-file clone troopers, too.

Some clones suffered from paranoid delusions in the heat of the battle. The Mad Clone of Kaikielius – as he was dubbed by HoloNet commenters – turned his weapons on his batchers during a recon mission and was found sitting docilely on an outcropping, surrounded by their bodies. Interrogated by Republic Intelligence, he insisted that the entire Kaikielius campaign was a training exercise and complimented the trainers for their increasingly fiendish challenges, admitting that he’d nearly been tricked by the decision to simulate commando droids wearing his batchers’ armor and even using familiar unit nicknames.

Other clones rejected the basics of their indoctrination. The clone sergeant nicknamed Slick conspired with the Separatists on Christophsis, severely complicating Republic efforts to retake the planet. Fives, a clone trooper admitted to the ARC training program, suffered an apparent paranoid breakdown and reportedly plotted to kill Chancellor Palpatine. The ARC trooper known as Spar was reconditioned for aberrant behavior on Kamino, but successfully resisted reprogramming and hid his true thoughts from his trainers. Spar also reported being able to recall fragments of Jango Fett’s own memories, a real but vanishingly rare phenomenon in cloning. He deserted from the Grand Army and became a bounty hunter serving the Separatists, eventually re-emerging as a Mandalorian leader.

Now and again clones – mostly ARCs and commandos — retained sufficient independence to make up their own minds about the conduct of the war, and either refused orders or fled the war altogether. Some clones refused to accept Order 66 — the 22nd Air Combat Wing’s Ion Team, for example, helped Roan Shryne and two other Jedi escape Republic forces on Murkhana. Kal Skirata’s Null Squad deserted en masse, as did other clone troopers he had trained. And some clone troopers survived encounters in which they were listed as MIA or KIA, taking the advantage to slip away to a quieter life. The story of one such clone, Cut Lawquane, emerged in the time of New Republic with the publication of Shaeeah Lawquane’s memoir of a Felucian childhood, entitled My Stepfather’s Face: A Soldier’s Secret.

And some clones became famous not for disobeying orders, but for bad luck. The clone trooper Able was marooned on the remote jungle world Lubang Minor in 21 BBY, encountered by rebel forces after the Battle of Yavin, and fought for the Alliance. A stranger story was that of the Lost Prophet, a holy man whose gnomic utterances attracted pilgrims to a mountain cave on the desert world of Du Mai. In 21 ABY, the journalist Cindel Towani offered compelling evidence that the Lost Prophet was a castaway who’d sustained head injuries in the crash of his ARC-170 during the final days of the war. Towani revealed that the advice he gave pilgrims consisted of scrambled bits of his Kaminoan conditioning and flash-training.

>>13234

Didn't know about this, huh.

Generic nucanon author only distinguished in the fact he isn't unreadable to the point of anger like everyone else, but Tarkin and Plagueis are still quite awful.

>>17567

And here is the contrarian. Care to explain yourself?

>>17568

For starters, the biggest sin Plagueis makes is it confirms and legitimizes, rather than debunk and invalidates, the dumb as dogshit concept of Anakin's birth being set up by Palps and Las Plagas.

>>17570

Okaaaay, that explains why you don't like it, but now it just leads to the question of why this is dumb. Also, that's only one thing. Use the autism, anon.

>>17570

>it confirms and legitimizes, rather than debunk and invalidates, the dumb as dogshit concept of Anakin's birth being set up by Palps and Las Plagas.

That's really more of a personal gripe than it is something objectively bad about the writing. Further, it's not strictly speaking accurate. Plagueis and Sidious inadvertently caused Anakin to be born, it wasn't a deliberate set-up on either of their parts.

>>17573

Not the anon you were replying to, but that's a little better. I don't really think the movies support the notion of Sheev being some sort of master ruseman that was playing 1024D chess, I always got the impression that he made things up as he went along to bring himself into a position where he couldn't lose. Like, if the CIS had won the Clone Wars, he would still rule the galaxy.

For example, him and Plagueis intentionally creating Anakin would imply that he planned to take him on as an apprentice, which raises an entire host of questions.

>>17578

>I always got the impression that he made things up as he went along to bring himself into a position where he couldn't lose.

This seems a bit contradictory to me. Isn't the entire point of 8D chess, all-according-to-keikaku style schemes not to pursue one very specific chain of events, but to strategically maneuver yourself and others such that every outcome is a win for you?

>For example, him and Plagueis intentionally creating Anakin would imply that he planned to take him on as an apprentice, which raises an entire host of questions.

Quite right, and I don't believe any official material, including Plagueis, implies this.

>>17581

Does 4D chess even have a proper definition? I always thought of it as planning ahead, and him having the plan to use the clone army to turn the Republic into an Empire from the outset would require him to think around a billion corners. I guess it's semantics. Point is, I have the impression that Sheev is presented as some kind of great schemer, while I think he's just a great tactitian.

And I don't know where I read it or who said it, but I thought him and Plagueis creating Anakin on purpose purpose was at least implied somewhere. Maybe that was just some theory I took at face value.

>>17573

>>17572

There's also the issue of Tarkin making Tarkin look like an idiot and making the Empire less morally ambiguous.

>>17595

Howso?

alot of good stuff itt, I'll have to check out these books. also, Chuck Wendig is a faggot. while that's a redundant statement, I just wanted to say it on the internet.

>>17616

heh

>>18758

>Anakin is sort of a self-defense mechanism of the force that was destined to be unleashed if shit was about to go down

That's essentially what I said in >>17573 and >>17581, no? Not sure why you tagged those.