Lit Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi (New series by Ostrander and Duursema)

From what I've read they were pretty bad already when they constructed the Star Forge.

 

I blame Waru. I mean the Celestials. I mean the Mortis Ones.

I forget, what megapower do we chalk everything up to today?

 

Both Celestials and Mortis Ones.

 

Howard the Duck.

 

What do you mean, who has said that the Duck and the Celestials are from different species?

"What's a duck?" is one long brick joke, but we'll soon get the punch line.

 

That assumes that Waru and Howard the Duck are not one in the same. Or that Howard the Duck is not the avatar for Waru. Or that Howie is not Waru's only son, sent to show us just how awesome George Lucas can be when he puts his mind to something.

 

And thus it was prophecised that in the year 666 ABY that the child of Waru and Abeloth shall walk upon the galaxy



Flesh of Waru's flesh. One that day, the Dark Saviour will emerge and chaos reigns.



And bring a new reign of darkness to the galaxy. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the galaxy would flame with a holocaust of ecstacy and freedom.



Begun... the Duck Wars have.... Hail Waru and his spawn. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Waru Mortis wagn'nagl fhtagn.

Ahem... sorry... don't know what came over me

On a more relevant note, I don't think its said outright how the Rakata fell. Its said I think that the Star Forge essentially took a life of its own and turned against the Rakata but there are mentions of a plague that afflicted them as well that stripped them of their Force sensitivity. And this was in the midst of a civil war that had affected the Infinite Empire. I would be curious to know what sparked all this off and hopefully DotJ might reveal that. TOR definately doesn't add more on the fall of the Rakata beyond their attempts at studying Force sensitives in an attempt to reclaim their lost power.

 

I've always thought there could be a curious parallel with how the Vong lost the Force.

In my mind, I assume Yuuzhan'tar stripped them of it, like how Sekot now hopes to return it to them. But we, the reader, know Yuuzhan'tar never truly took the Force from them, it just altered the 'wavelength' of their connection -- which the Plagueis fan in me takes to mean "It mutated their midichlorians."

So did something similar happen to the Rakata?

Where Vong's homeworld stripped it from them -- I assume for the same reason, given Yun-Yammka was basically their personification of the dark side, so I've always assumed the Vong were basically their galaxy's Sith until their world saw it was doomed to die and become like Korriban if they did not stop their war -- whereas in the Rakata's case, they didn't have any living planet to stop them, so there must have been some external influence who did the same thing to them?

After all, the Vong do everything biologically, so I can picture Yuuzhan'tar creating a plague that infected their midichlorians, which could basically be what some foolish Rakata created to defeat his enemies -- only it backfired.

 

Another noted thing is that the Vong became physical voids in the Force to a Force user. Jacen and Vergere though later said that they weren't devoid of it but on a different frequency so to speak. The Rakata though... its more said that they were stripped of it. Mind you, we don't get many written words of how a Rakata 'feels' to a Force user. Could be a Rakata equally feels like a Force void but then Force powers wouldn't work on them which I think they do. So, the nature of the Force 'stripping' feels different between the two of them. I always thought that the Vong seem almost closer to mini-versions of the Exile as being wounds in the Force despite the whole frequency thing.

Also, if the plague was created by someone, it could be pretty much anyone. The Rakata had a long history of enemies such as the Gree, Kwa, Killiks, Esh-kha, World Razer, numerous slave species and even themselves such as the Infernal One. So, it could be anyone of them really though it might be interesting if it was a rogue Rakata who tried to turn a bioweapon against the rest of his kind only for it to spiral out of control and infect all or most of them as you said. Though I think KotOR went along the line of thought that it was the Star Forge that ultimately was responsible for the destruction of their civilization or at least hinted it along those lines.

 

KOTOR definitely gave that impression, yeah, although my main hesitancy of that idea is how a single space station affected a galaxy-spanning civilisation? With Yuuzhan'tar, a biological plague was pretty easy to spread. But as the Star Forge was mechanical, I'm not sure if a "disease" would have worked the same way?

Admittedly, I've considered "the Star Forge" as just shorthand for "their dark side fuelled technology" and that it was everything they used that did it, from the Star Forge, to darksabers, to all the other stuff that just slowly leeched their lifeforce away and corrupted their bodies? (Dark side powered fertilisation tubes and premature ICUs can't do that much good to new little Rakatalings! )

 

Well, with KotOR, it was said that the Star Forge 'corrupted' the Rakata and fed on their dark emotions. The Rakata thought they were strong enough to handle its influences but ultimately it caused the Infinite Empire to fight one another. Don't think they used the word plague there so it seems to suggest that the Star Forge caused the Rakata to fight one another. It could just have caused the Rakata around Lehon to go mad and to uh... 'aid' them, it perhaps even built weapons for them to wage war against their own kind. So, could the plague have come afterwards? Did the Star Forge turn one of the Rakata mad and decide to unleash a 'Force plague' on his comrades? Also, another point of difference between the Rakata and the Vong... the Vong are like voids in the Force or mini-wounds similar to the Exile though its described later as being simply the result of them being on a different 'frequency' in the Force. Early NJO novels though used to describe them as proper black holes in the Force with nothing being sensed which was why Force powers never worked on them properly. But the Rakata, they seem to be more stripped of the Force entirely... its never said that they are voids or blanks the way the Vong are. Force powers I think even work on them so the nature of this 'Force plague' seems a bit different between the two species.

Mind you, I have always been a fan of the thought that the Vong were not affected by a plague but rather faced some form of species wide 'Force sever' ability which drove the Vong made as a result of losing their connection to the Force.

 

On a completely different note, I finally finished reading the first series this evening (I know, I'm slow ).

So, I had a bit of a 'eureka!' moment when Xesh referred to himself as a "shadow warrior".

Wasn't that one of the possible theorised 'meanings' of 'Darth'?

So unless my memory is completely failing me (which at the time of night is more than likely the case ) my money is on the hounds being Darths -- shadow warriors who shall bring death in the name of their masters' conquest -- and that Daegan Lok will be the dude who imports the word into Je'daii culture via 'Darth' Xesh.

 

Maybe the Vong are descended from a group of Rakata.

 

Sorry if this has already been covered ... I had a quick look at the Dawn of the Jedi comic, and it seems that the Jedi of that era don't have powerpacks / cords for their lightsabers. Is this a continuity error?

 

The Je'daii do not use lightsabers they use Force-imbued swords. The thing that looks like a lightsaber is a Rakatan device used by the Force Hound Xesh. I would say that the Je'daii attempt to emulate the weapon and the lightsaber was a result.

 

I am prsonally in favor of retconning powerpacks out of existence. They look silly.

 

Silly can be good. Besides, if nothing else powerpack lightsabers add some small indication of technological progress to the GFFA.

 

I actually got convinced by someone about something online, this never happened before.

 

I thought it was some kind of Midichlorian mutation/mutiliation long before Plagueis (especially since NJO was meant to include PT information, which means that the Force invisibility mystery should obviously have been connected to the more scientific Force view available before the Dark OT Ages. But speaking of Plagueis - I know the timing is probably way off, but couldn't we retcon the Force blindness into a mad side effect of that Sith-Lord-form-Plagueis' shifting of the Force hocus pocus?

In thread-related news, I finally got a copy of Force Storm #4, so I'll finally find out how the first arc of Masters of the SW Universe continues, and what darkness Xesh Draco will bring to Etern... err Tython!

 

I think the timeline is way off here. The NJO gives every indication that the Vong had been in transit for centuries if not milennia, and the implication is that they'd been tearing up their own galaxy for milennia before that, enough to render it incapable of sustaining their civilization any longer (there had to have been a pretty substantial gap between "lose the Force" and "leave the home galaxy", since the Vong are very well aware of the history of the last major wars before they left, but even the priests who keep the secret histories only have scraps about the true Yuuzhan'tar, basing that on what Harrar knows). Given that the first Vong scouts arrived in the GFFA shortly after Episode I, that probably puts their being cut off from the Force originally around the time of KOTOR at the latest, well before Plagueis and Sidious arrived on the scene.

 

Do they not already have spaceships? Seriously Lightsabers should have internal batteries already now if they have to recharge that is fine but powerpacks lame.

 

Modern society has the space shuttle, yet we lack the ability to produce the lightsaber as depicted in post-Great Hyperspace War works. The whole point is that it's meant to be an archaic version of later technology, and I don't really see how it's particularly jolting. A little goofy, sure, but not game-breakingly so. There's much worse to be found in TotJ.

Also, it's KJA and Veitch. The same guys who brought us Palpatine clones and Arca Jeth.

 

please our level of space travel is not equivalent.

 

Wait, we're talking about goofy things that KJA has brought us? I suddenly feel like grabbing a fiddle and singing "Weeeeelllllllllllllll" along with the dragged-out first note of Turkey in the Straw...

 

They don't even have Blasters in use yet.