The Official Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice Discussion Thread

No peevedness. Just not sure if you knew.

I've explained this before. YOU DO NOT ENSURE THAT THE VISION COMES TRUE BY TURNING TO THE DARK SIDE. The simple point is that Force visions are true. They're always true. The Force does not lie. It might speak metaphorically, but it doesn't lie. Anakin's vision didn't become true because he turned. It became true because it was true. It appeared to him and acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Jedi Council got visions of a greater Sith threat before the Mandalorian Wars. They decided to play it safe. Not do anything dark. Hold back and wait for the Sith. By doing so, they drove Revan to rebel and join the Sith, causing the threat they feared. Anyone who tries to prevent a Force vision is doomed because you can't prevent it. You just have to plan to contain whatever the event is as best you can. Anyone who just sits along and goes with the flow after getting a vision, like Luke seeing Mara dead but not saying anything or really doing anything to stop it, still has it come true.

Now, Jacen was probing the Force in Betrayal. Not passively receiving a vision. He was actively seeking out guidance from the Force and examining various trees of possibility. As I've just spent a paragraph establishing, the Force does not lie. So if the Force shows him that doing X means Y will not happen, then if he does X, Y will not happen. Period. Unless the authors don't understand what they themselves write, Luke is safe. The only out which has been given is that Lumiya may have been tampering with Jacen's mind and his visions at that moment in time. If so, his probing of the future could be incorrect or twisted. Or he could be misinterpreting what he actually sees. However, by no means can one declare that attempting to prevent an action means it is doomed to come true. That is a thematic device, not a metaphysical requirement.

 

What happened to "always in motion is the future"?

I agree the Force does not lie, but that is not at all the same thing as saying that a Force vision necessarily shows a guaranteed future. It often shows only a possible future. The movies (ESB in particular) and the books (like The Joiner King's scenes with Jacen's message to Leia using the Force to project himself into the future) make this very clear.

When Anakin saw a vision of Padme dying, he didn't freak out because Force visions, by their very nature, are always guaranteed to come to pass. He freaked out because his prior vision of his mother's death had come true, and this one was "like the ones I had about my mother, just before she died" - and since Anakin carried the guilt of believing he could have saved his mother if he had acted sooner (and not listened to Obi-Wan's crap about dreams passing in time), he wasn't going to take the chance of doing the same thing again and ending up with the same result.

That is the problem with Jacen's use of the Force in Betrayal. He thinks the Force is showing him where all possible futures lead - but he can't know that.

In VOTF, Luke believed he saw Mara dead - he saw a possible future, and interpreted the images in a certain way. What actually happened was that she was unconscious, appearing dead although still very much alive. Perhaps if Luke had acted differently, Mara would have died. He acted the way he did, and she lived. Yes, the vision came true in some sense - but certainly not the way Luke thought it would.

In ROTS, Anakin sees what he interprets as a vision of Padme dying. We saw it (whole? part?) onscreen. I didn't necessarily see death there. Perhaps if Anakin had not fallen to the dark side, but had "trained [him]self to let go of everything [he] fear[ed] to lose", then Padme would have screamed in childbirth, fallen unconscious, but lived. Maybe that would mean Anakin changed the motion of the future and the vision was "wrong" (in the sense that it showed a possible future that didn't occur), or maybe it would mean that the only error was Anakin's interpretation of the vision (like Luke in VOTF).

So with regard to Jacen... One, Jacen thinks he sees all possible futures converging. Maybe he really did see that, but the future is always in motion. So even if, at that precise moment in time, all possible future are converging on a single outcome, intervening events could change that. Perhaps if Jacen peered into the future in the same way at the end of Exile, he wouldn't see the same thing.

Two, Jacen interprets his vision in a certain way. He interprets it to mean that Luke will die. Maybe he's right. Or maybe he's not - maybe Luke could be saved with bacta, or a powerful use of the Force. Jacen doesn't see Luke decapitated or incinerated, so how can he be sure that he's actually seeing death? He only believes he is. He could be wrong about what he's seeing in the vision (like Luke in VOTF). Or he could be right about what he's seeing, and his choices only make that outcome more, not less, likely (like Anakin in ROTS). Or he could be right about what he's seeing, but if he

 

While I agree that the Force sometimes shows certainties and sometimes possibilities, the important thing to establish was that the Force does not lie. And since Jacen's technique involved checking the possibilities, and then suggesting one, that possibility has now become a certainty. Otherwise, the Force lied.

Now, there are "outs" that Jacen misinterpreted or that Lumiya manipulated it. But the basic assumption that "attempt to prevent anything = it WILL happen" is just mistaken.

 

I'm curious if my recollection here is correct, since it pertains to Jacen Solo and his fall to the darkside. Didn't Aaron Allston already say in an interview on the official site that Jacen had not seen all possible futures concerning Nelani, just the ones he wanted to see (could see)?

I believe he did, so this Force vision of Jacen's of Luke's death because of Nelani was misunderstood by Jacen, since I doubt Allston would condone what Jacen did obviously. Besides which, Jacen has only stopped one possible way Luke could die and plunge the galaxy into darkness, not all. This is of course assuming Luke dies in LOTF, which I don't think Del-Rey will do UNLESS GL has said they can kill Luke now. In that case, Del-Rey has wanted to kill him since Vector Prime for dramatic effect....

I still think it will probably be Mara Skywalker, but we'll see. I just hate the idea Jacen is going to kill one of the old guard most likely and certainly if he does I doubt he will live.
(For clarification, I don't hate that he's becoming a Sith from a narrative standpoint, I just hate it from the perspective that Jacen was once a hero, no matter how differently the Yuuzhan Vong war would cause a hero in that struggle to act.)

 

I need to start reading again it seems.

The whole Yuzhaan Vong tale bogged down so badly for me with 'Rebel Dream' I could not continue.

I say Luke dies for sake of argument. What is he? Over 70 by now?

 

Luke & Leia are 58
Mara is 56 (?)
Ben is 14
Jacen & Jaina are 31
Han is 68
Zekk and Jag are 33
Kyp is 45

 

Why are you all even arguing over Sacrifice. Here's the back cover blurb:

The galaxy is in turmoil due to spreading and increasingly violent civil war - and the Solo/Walker clan is in shock after the horrifying murder of one of it's most beloved members. Jacen Solo, now a full Sith Lord, has seized control of the Galactic Alliance. Luke Skywalker's judgement is clouded by grief, even as he faces his most momentous decision since becoming Grand Master of the Jedi order: whether to support Jacen's illegitimate government against the forces threatening Coruscant...or to join the Rebel Confederacy and take arms against the Galactic Alliance he helped forge.

See? Luke doesn't die. Someone else.

 

That has been posted a while ago as the Inferno back cover blurb. Solo/Walker clan still sounds unofficial.

Also, if this were true, the sacrifice and Jacen becoming full Sith would happen in the very beginning of the book, which would not really explain why Jacen slains whom.

[Jacen talking to himself] I have to kill someone to become a full Sith Lord.
Jacen takes a shuttle to Coruscant, kills Mara Jade without any explanation.
[Jacen talking to himself] Done that. Now on with the plot.

 

Except that we have the backcover blurb already, NelanisGhost, and that ain't it.

From the images at TOS (http://www.starwars.com/eu/lit/novel/news20070110.html):

 

Even assuming that the future is not always in motion (and I'm inclined to agree with Yoda; that dude was wise) and even assuming Jacen really did see all possibly futures in which Nelani was alive - and that they all involved him killing Luke - Luke still isn't necessarily safe.

Just because all futures where Nelani is alive mean that Jacen will kill Luke, doesn't mean that there's not also a future in which she's dead and he kills Luke.

He didn't probe all possible futures of his own. He didn't probe all possible futures where he kills Luke. He just probed Nelani's futures.

 

jacen's arrogance is why he is misled. does it really matter if he kills someone? he is already a sith. the kill is just the resolution.

 

There you have it. He has wanted to die since TESB and even refused GL's request to play Han again in favor of Indy!

 

Nelani's Ghost:
That blurb was for 'Inferno', and might not be particularly accurate.

 

Er, what Harrison Ford thinks, feels, and does is entirely irrelevant to Han Solo ... unless Harrison has a script in hand and a camera pointed at him, and Lucas breathing down his neck to make sure he follows it.

 

Jacen hates Luke and his own parents, Leah and Han. He dont give a crap about Jaina or Mara. He only thinks of Ben as a tool to do his dirty work. Lumiya said that he would have to sacrifice someone he cares about. Here are the only possibilities: Tenal Ka, his baby's mama, Allana, his baby, or Lumiya, his teacher in the dark ways who he has developed a fondness to, in a mother and son sort of way. I dont see him killing Allana, since she's just a little kid, Tenal Ka is a big possibility, but I suspect that it will be Lumiya. I believe that he will realize just how much he cares for Lumiya (again, in a mother and son sort of way) and she will tell him to strike her down. After some hesitation, and her egging him on, he'll finally do it. It would go like this:"Lumiya, I thought you were dead, are you ok?" "you care of my well being, Jacen?" "Of course, you're like a mother to me." "Then strike me down." "What are you talking about?" "Your ascension to sith lord, you need to sacrifice what you care about, and Im standing in front of you, strike me down." "But, who will complete my training?" "Your training will be complete if you strike me down, but dont expect me not to fight back." "Then this is it." After a long battle, Jacen strikes Lumiya down, and in her final words, she says, "From now on, you will be known as Darth ________."

Luke wont die until the last book, if he even dies in this series.

 

Need....spaces....can't...read....

(rofl at Leah)

 

LUKE LIVES

if you look on starwars.com you can read the backj of inferno and it clearly states consumed with grief over the loss of a beloved member of the skywalker/solo clan or family luke tries to decide wheter to side with jacen and the GA or to Join the rebels.

HA HA HA HA

LUKE LIVES

THE FORCE IS STRONG IN THIS REBEL

 

Link, please?

This link here is the only information StarWars.com has on Inferno so far.

 

He must be looking for attention because there is no such thing on there except that link you have.

 

What he means is a blurb for Inferno that appeared to the website of Amazon - I think - some months away and then was hastily taken down. It might have been legitimate, but parts of it looked like it would be fanon. There is stuff about it somewhere in the depts of the older Literature board. The blurb goes:

The galaxy is in turmoil due to spreading and incresingly violent civil war - and the Solo/Walker clan is in shock after the horrifying murder of one of it's most beloved members. Jacen Solo, now a full Sith Lord, has seized control of the Galactic Alliance. Luke Skywalker's judgement is clouded by grief, even as he faces his most momentous decision since becoming Grand Master of the Jedi order: whether to support Jacen's illegitimate government against the forces threatening Coruscant...or to join the Rebel Confederacy and take arms against the Galactic Alliance he helped forge.

 

And it's guaranteed bunk.

 

Of course it is. After all, they will kill Luke, not Mara, in Sacrifice.

Although I have to say that the "Rebel Confederacy" sounds now better when we know about the Confederation. Whoever came up with this was close to truth in this. It makes the clear fanon elements more puzzling, really. Little more embellishment and it would have probably fooled us until Sacrifice comes out.

 

The blurb about Inferno- if the phrase "Solo/Walker clan" had not been used, I would have bought the whole thing hook, line and sinker. But if a fan actually wrote this it seems silly that they would use that statement if they were trying to trick us. The more I think about it, the more it seems real. The Confederation appears in Exile and X-Wings above Coruscant appear on the cover of Sacrafice. What little evidence we have now seems to support the brief summary of Inferno.

 

i think people liked chewie more than luke

 

even if it isnt entirely accurate, it still shows luke wont be the sacrifice. not being entirely accurate is one thing, but the death of a major character would be under a totally different heading; "not entirely accurate" doesn't cut it. So, i'd say if he is alive in inferno, one would think he must live through sacrifice. Unless his force ghost is making decisions come inferno..