Full Series Mortis / The Ones Vs. The Five Priestesses / Their Planet

I see what you are saying, and when you put it that way it would indeed seem like the Ones are beyond almost all of them. You also bring up a good topic regarding Abeloth and the Font Of Power / Pool Of Knowledge, having read the FOTJ series i am aware of their backstory, but it brings to light a new question: The One's are supposedly the embodiment's of the Balance, Light Side & Dark Side respectively, so obviously as you stated you would expect them to be beyond extremely powerful, however the other facts that we know kind of contradict this as to be an embodiment of the force itself, one would assume they would have manifested/originated from the force, possibly even be as old as the force itself. However we know that the son and daughter gained their power from the Font / Pool respectively, suggesting that they were not as powerful before using these things, so does that suggest they didn't become the embodiment's until after they used them and became so powerful as to be a danger to the known universe? Especially knowing that Abeloth wasn't anything special in terms of power before using these, so they are shown to be able to transform regular people in immensely powerful beings.

Also did the Father at any time ever use both / either of these, and if not how is he more powerful than them? Plus the actual places themselves, the Font Of Power and Pool Of Knowledge, it would be interesting to know more about them and how they came to be, they seem to share similar traits to a force nexus (light or dark), however having seen what they can potentially create in Abeloth, i think they seem to go far beyond a typical force nexus. It would be interesting to know how they came to be and how they are linked to the force. Could it be that the unnamed planet that they are on in which Abeloth was stranded for Millennia be another location like the planet the Priestesses resided on - another wellspring for the force?

Plus we are told by the Killik's that the Ones are what the Celstials become. Now i know that is a very vague point, but if we take it literally, then from what we know that would suggest that the Celestials were required to use the Pool / Font to become like the One's, so does that mean those three beings were the only Celestials to do so, or did any others actually do this, as from what we know there never seemed to be any others besides the One's (besides Abeloth who started out a mortal servant), so are they the only members of their "Force Wielder" race/group.

 

Another point i forgot to mention was that the results of exposure to the Font / Pool don't always seem positive, as we see in one of the FOTJ novels when the Sith Lord Sarasu Taalon bathes in the Pool of Knowledge, he begins to transform into a being potentially resembling Abeloth before his death. Meaning that seems to be the fate of any mortal who uses them. Even though his transformation began after only using one, whereas Abeloth used both. So its interesting how the Son & Daughter not only managed to not completely mutate into an Abeloth like entity, but also how they only used one each and still became immensely powerful, powerful enough they they seemed to be the only beings who could stop Abeloth whenever she escaped her confines. Could this go back to them already being immortal / non-coproral entities before using the Font / Pool if they were indeed originally Celestials?

 

The Shadow Collective
The Father is more powerful in a couple ways. For one, he can control the Daughter and the Son. Two, their power flows through him i.e. when the Father willingly dies, his power dies with him, and the Son's (and the late Daughter's, presumably) power is extinguished. I personally think that he drank from the Font and bathed in the Pool, but wasn't corrupted like Abeloth because he was a Celestial. I agree that their mortality was the reason Taalon and Abeloth were corrupted. The idea that Abeloth's planet was another wellspring of the Force is interesting, could you expand upon that? Lastly, I am not sure whether more Celestials existed or not.

 

I find myself wondering if it isn't just going to needlessly complicate things if we bring Abeloth and that business into this...

 

Denning definitely asked more questions than he answered when he decided to bring the Ones into his Abeloth story.

 

Here's the thing: I know my EU pretty well, so I definitely thought to myself that the Ones could be Celestials the exact moment the Father said that he and his kids could manipulate the Force like no others could - which of course made feats like arranging entire star systems and creating a stable cluster of black holes easy to explain away (though I still in my gut think Centerpoint Station to be beneath these guys), to say nothing of actually being able to rip the fabric of the universe in order to crawl into a conduit in space-time through which the Force flows freely. It's a neat and tidy idea in theory; I just don't think the connection was handled properly in practice. Plus, it's clear as day that though the Ones are indeed supposed to be actual intelligences within this conduit, they're also there to symbolically illustrate philosophical concepts, and that gets somewhat compromised when we really DO connect the Ones with the Celestials.

With respect to Abeloth, I WILL go so far as to say I liked the IDEA of the Mother as Chaos-Bringer and the imagery involved - and it was at least intelligent as an idea for a villain-from-beyond in every way that the idea of Waru WASN'T (no disrespect to the Waru fan club, but that's my $0.02) - but again, it just wasn't executed well enough to suit me (Stover might have been a better fit for such material; his prose style and his grasp of the concepts involved made Traitor work when another writer could have botched it). In any event, with the post-Jedi EU now quite possibly in for a major pruning, if not outright purging, I'm not sure how constructive it is to bring all that material into this particular discussion when the information involved risks being merely a metaphysical red herring.

 

The question is, was it Denning's idea to include the Ones in his FOTJ stuff or was he told to include it after the fact? Also, wasn't he communicating with the Cowboy Hatted One when writing the end of FOTJ?

 

He was.

 

Lucas suggested he include the entire business with Mortis in

 

Agreed.

 

See, do we have to use words like "blame?"

Otherwise, you're right on all counts. The part about keeping a journal, specifically, can be possibly tied into the fact that these Priestesses say they watch and study all who are strong in the Force in the universe; just on the back of that fact, I could accept these characters as chroniclers as well - there are many conceivable reasons for these characters to watch and study Force-talented beings, but chronicling their histories is one reason among several I could see being applied to them.

 

I also wonder why the Pool of Knowledge, a Dark Side Nexus, made Daughter strong in the Light Side. I wonder if the GFFA would change if the Pool and/or Font were destroyed.

 

They were/are.
I assumed, when I saw the trailers, the Whills were the priestesses in the Yoda arc. But, who knows.

 

Maybe when GL originally worked on this story they were supposed to be Whills but that was before the ST was planned, so maybe he took them out of here so they could be introduced in the ST instead.

 

Or maybe the ST will reveal that the priests are Whills.

 

Could be! It would be cool to see them revealed in a totally different way and then find out they were the same beings from this arc too.

 

Firstly, what you say about their power flowing through him would imply a new connection not really explained (although i'm not disputing the fact as it was evidently shown in the scene you described), but the fact that they got their respective powers from the Pool or Font and act as individuals with their own control, and yet if the father dies they lose power, if he has that level of superiority over them, i'm surprised he couldn't have some level of direct forceful willful control over them.

Secondly, it brings an interesting point forward about how the Font / Pool affects mortals and immortals differently. So as the Ones are the exception being the only known truly immortal beings, i guess anyone else in the galaxy would turn out like Abeloth if exposed to the Nexus'.

Regarding Abeloth's planet being a wellspring, i was thinking that, i'm sure the priestesses said that their planet was just One of the wellsprings of the force / life in the universe, implying that there are others. And since no other people have a stronger connection to the force that the Ones / Abeloth, all of which apparently got their powers from the Font / Pool, which themselves would appear to be natural locations, I considered that maybe that planet is another one of these wellsprings, simply because it would appear to have a unique yet unexplored relationship with the force, granting users of its waters with direct and instant control over the force - beyond anything an mortal is capable of through any level of training. Most force nexus' seem to be dark side related and are usually created through the area / object being tainted by the dark side of the force due to either an incredibly powerful dark siders death or a large group of deaths etc. But the Font / Pool being a natural place on the planet and consisting of everlasting waters, leads me to assume they have a more natural relationship to the planet. Plus it doesn't just turn them into powerful force users, but somehow makes them the embodiment of the two sides of the force. It would be interesting to know how exactly this happened.
Plus we know they existed hundreds of thousands of years earlier when the One's first used them, way before the Jedi / Sith or any other known Force users existed, so its unlikely they had been created by the same means as traditional force nexus'. They actually remind me a bit of the Source from Lost, for anyone who's watched Lost. As in they are likely a naturally occurring element of the planet, but were likely elaborately decorated by sentient's when eventually discovered, as in the the actual waters were always there, but were possibly built into a fountain by others. Plus a direct connection to the force also presents itself when you consider that the planet also has a somewhat physical link to the realm of Beyond Shadows, with those places also existing in that realm as well.

That last part about the One's being the only Celestials, i had never considered that possibility. I always looked at the Celestials like a whole race of beings with an empire much like the Rakata. That's why i always wondered what could have happened to the rest and why there wasn't any others like the One's, were they the only three to go on to become "Force Wielders" and no longer have a single fixed form? The Celestials being a whole race always seemed more apparent to me as they were said to have once been the dominant power in the Galaxy, and built many marvelous objects like Centerpoint Station and was able to do unimaginable feats like align the Maw Cluster of Black Holes. Plus who knows whether they may have had a hand in creating the Mortis Monolith itself. Which also brings me to the Mortis Dagger, who/how would a weapon already exist that could be the only thing that could permanently kill one as powerful as them?

Exactly, that's the kind of connection i'm implying. Not just a powerful force nexus but a place with a direct and physical link to the Cosmic force itself. One that could be tied to the origins of life/the force itself given how old it potentially is.

 

You have a lot of good points here. Firstly, the dagger. My theory on that is the Force manifested it as a form of "fail-safe" against the Celestials if something were to... happen. Or maybe it was created by the Ones for usage against Abeloth. Nextly, I like your idea that the Font and Pool were created in a different way than normal nexuses (nexi?). Maybe they became dark nexuses only after being tainted by mortality (Abeloth) when they were never supposed to be used in such a way. Lastly, about the Father's relationship with the Son and Daughter... it's confusing, to say the least. Maybe he wanted to let his children the ability to choose their own paths. For instance, together, he and the Daughter could have easily made sure the Son no longer was a threat. Yet the Father chose not to...

 

Maybe what the Father says about Son and Daughter is supposed to be more a reflection on the nature of the Force than something that's supposed to make sense as character motivation, from the interpretation that it was all a vision.

 

Interesting point, could be that since Father was all about Balance, he let them stay equal since they were both opposites. Maybe if after their exposure to the power, if both had turned to the light or dark, he may have taken a stronger role in controlling them as he says if the force sways too much in one direction, it is a bad thing. Another thing i wondered about which Father says, is something along the lines that if there were to escape Mortis, they could bring disaster to the very fabric of the universe. Does he just say this to get his point across about how powerfully and absolutely they control the force, or is there a deeper meaning, that they are linked to the very fabric of the cosmic force / universe itself, and just there actions could literally bring disastrous results to the physical world?
Another point i forgot to mention was that in the FOTJ novels, the Killik hive say that they remember the Celestials and witnessed the birth of the One's! They suggest that they saw the family "coalescing out of a geyser" on the unnamed tropical planet that they then resided on along with the Font / Pool. There they lived in harmony, with the Father warning his children never to drink from either to which they eventually disobeyed and gained their immense and absolute control over the force. However i wonder what state of being they were in at this point as when they originally were bore from the planet itself (this may be subject to how accurate the Killiks memory is), they were clearly not yet the One's as they hadn't drunk from the waters, however was this after being known as the Celestials, or is they how the Celstials themselves came about? In which case the circumstances of their "birth" seem very enigmatic and questionable. If they indeed didn't exist before being birth on the planet how did the Father already know about the Font / Pool enough to tell them not to drink from them?
I also remember them after becoming the One's, using the Killik hive to help build Centerpoint Station, which i originally assumed had been built by what i assumed was a race of Celestials before becoming the One's, this could give further credit to your idea that the One's were the only Celestials. I first assumed this planetary birth was a "rebirth" of sorts after submitting to the force or something and becoming the One's, but then that contradicts them needing to drink the waters to become powerful in the first place, and since it was never stated the Father drunk from the waters, how did he get his power?

Both your ideas about the Mortis Dagger are possible, I personally like the idea and hadn't considered that Father could have created it only after Abeloth became what she did as a means of destroying her, this again could show his deeper connection to the force than either of his children if he could manifest a weapon powerful enough to destroy them all. Plus I think it would have been cool to actually see the One's true power against one equally as powerful as them, like Abeloth. Since we only see them in their own realm and compared to a few regular Jedi. Seeing what they could truly do in the mortal universe would have been interesting, would they have been as destructive as Abeloth?

I also like your idea about the Pool / Font becoming tainted by a mortal, this could mean that it may never have originally been meant for any living being to use it in that way (again making me wonder if it was ever meant to have been discovered, and if it was an essential part of the force itself, like a physical manifestation of the power), as the Celestials immortality and ability to survive corruption from it may not have been naturally occurring. We don't know enough about them as Celestials before becoming the One's, and what their power was like beforehand. They may have been naturally born immortal like another race i remember reading about, or may have adopted it through technological or other means.

I see your point, and though i realize there are many that consider the Mortis arc merely a vision and nothing more. There are others of us like myself and i'm assuming based on our back-and-forth discussion, Obi-Yoda as well, that it was to be taken literally and really did occur. I believe there are different things that point to this, and the fact that it was mentioned that the Father was originally to be mentioned by the Priestesses in the original script for the episode, shows that Filoni/writers were of the mind that it was real as well. Plus i still consider FOTJ canon and so Abeloth is part of the history of the One's - who really exist/ed.
Just my opinion.

 

Another point i forgot to mention regarding your original question about the Unnamed Jungle Planet being one of the wellsprings was: The Priestesses i believe said that their planet was the wellspring of all life / midi-chlorians, what if the Jungle planet with the Font & Pool was the wellspring of the force itself.
They say that the Living Force exists as a result of life, and the Jungle planet seems to overflowing with Flora & Fauna, so perhaps that planet was one of / the first to gain living organisms, and when that life touched and entered the waters of the Font / Pool it brought life to the force. Thus the planet and more specifically the waters of the Font/Pool being the wellspring of the force itself. And it would also suggest that the Font / Pool was around before any sentient species.

 

That makes sense... and the planet's link to the realm Beyond Shadows gives credence to a link with the Unifying/Cosmic Force.

 

Another good point, finally someone understands where i'm coming from, and is open to making theoretical assumptions.

 

I was wondering if somebody else would have had the thought that these 2 episodes were somehow linked...

They had a very similar vibe. I like The Shadow Emperor 's theory of the Cosmic Force coming from Mortis and the Living Force coming from Planet Midichlorian.