Lit Ancient Races: Celestials, Rakata, and Co

true but the question there is... while the TCW Mortis model had a trinity of balance, creation and destruction... the Abelothian model of Apocalypse has 4 beings with balance too counterchecked by chaos.

so the question is, is Abeloth right and it needs 4? or is TCW right and it needs just 3. If Abeloth is right, she needs to be balanced out. If she is wrong, she does not need it at all and all is fine in the post-ROTJ galaxy far far away with balance between Jedi and Sith replacing balance between Son and Daughter, and the entire galaxy and Force being FATHER's role then. Abeloth is an aberration that is not needed and not unbalancing the galaxy, merely stirring Jedi and Sith to have fun with her from time to time.

philosophically, both models have some value and interesting consequences. while the trinity model is based on the principle that harmony is the natural state and needs no counterbalance by chaos, the other model is based on the trinity model but expanding it by neverending cycles of chaos and harmony reigning over destruction and creation. in a way it makes sense since we do know that Son and Daughter fought each other as well as united in harmony to defeat Abeloth or other threats. so there are some cycles of them opposed and united.

in the 4 Ones model, Harmony and Chaos always stay separated. In the Trinity model, that is not so! Harmony and Chaos are one and the same, namely Balance as in Father.

in the end one could even say that Father and Abeloth serve the same role!

by unifying both models, depending if creation of destruction was on the advance, Father/Balance countered it by furthering creation, and vice versa. Mortis eternal cycles of day and night, life and decay, etc. So in a way, Father brought not just harmony but also chaos and war, when creation weighed more than destruction in the galaxy. so, does Abeloth only bring chaos and not balance, unlike Father who did both? because if Abeloth wants to be like the Father and also brings balance and not just chaos.. she is not as wrong as one might guess. but given her track record, she is pure chaos.

 

Abeloth is, as in my previous post, an aberration and no natural element, though she from time to time took to play a natural role that usually belonged to the Father too.

But, her role is not needed permanently. so others might do as she did, but not necessarily. In the end she is just an uberpowerful superbeing with ultrapowers of doom. but she is no ONE.. they are an entire different league.

 

Oh, I'm talking from a narrative position.

In both her and Palpatine's cases, they became neither light nor dark, but unnatural abhorrences that needed stopping for the natural cycle of things to continue.

My question is: are they both simply "one offs" in their respective epochs -- Abeloth the imbalance of the Celestials era, Palpatine the imbalance of humanities -- or should the EU explore other characters who serve the same apocalyptic function that they did?

Or do we feel that would diminish the importance of Palpatine's role in the saga?

 

should... hmm havn't they already? I mean, TOR has the Sith Emperor and many others over the millennia came close to Palpatine level. TOR Emperor closest I know so far. even post-ROTJ EU had some attempts of surpassing him but I think... all that depends on do we want the SW Saga as in movies as the penultimate myth and central core of the Universe with nothing before or after it as good/bad/great... or do we see it as one element in history with many others before and after it in a similiar way important. Also weighing several things against others in a fictional universe are very opinion based and interpretable in multiple ways often, so difficult at best. hmm

realism fans that would see the saga as one in a million important events in history whith every era claiming to be the penultimate. more black vs. white conflict lovers would see the saga as THE moment of truth and everything else pales in comparison.

I myself like both camps.. and think I am not opposed to have as evil foes as Palpatine, but not too soon after ROTJ please... give them a few centuries or 1000 years of rest. I need my happily ever after some day. New heroes then can have new superfoes. Or do those in the past like TOR does it.

 

Sekot?

 

sekot is interesting but not superpowerful or is it? it could shift a species from one Force spectrum to another and do other awesome features but Sekot had an still mysterious artificial planetary sized hyperdrive its inhabitants gave him! without it, it'd not be movable at all.

and I loved Sekot and all that as an allusion to real world esoteric beliefes of the planet being alive and such. I hoped it is a general trend of real world esoterics paralelled by Gffa esoterics, but it turned out to be just one planet and its parent from another galaxy that had this sentience. I hoped for a Mortis-esque impact of planets being sentient but mostly dormant or ignored/misunderstood where Sekot is actively interacting with humanoid lifeforms and other planets are not. like Ones are active Celestials and others passive.

 

Well, if Sekot has the same Force-stripping ability as its parent. could it thoroughly neutralise Abeloth?

Conversely, as Abeloth is attracted to places that are strong in the Force, would she attempt to take Sekot on - or would she think Sekot too much of a mouthful?

 

nope it could not, merely shift Abeloth from one Force spectrum to another since a true cutoff is nonexistant. all cutoffs are shifts from one spectrum to another so the user, unless he knows how to find the spectrum, can't use the Force again without relearning how to do everything.

so Abeloth being superpowerful and knowing the Force itself and the Ones, might be above this spectrumdance and therefore uncutoffable so to speak. as Jacen had become when he learned how to shift his spectrum to hide himself in the Force (make himself "small") and all such.

Sekot might be corrupted by Abeloths sweettalking Forcephilosophy and hardly even scratch Abeloth in a fight given she is a multipeople being and not just a one body for one soul thing anymore.

 

Fair enough - I'd read of Force Sever and wondered!

 

Yeah, all Yuuzhan'tar basically did was rewrite its planet's midi-chlorians, so they operated on a different wavelength to everything else we know. Still had the Force, just... out of phase with the norm. Whereas Abeloth is more a raw Force entity, rather than one rooted in a particular biology.

 

I still say, get themselves a bunch of Rakatan mindtrap cubes and tune in to Ghostbusters theme as a Jedi Strike team sucks Abeloth into rakatan made oblivion for eternity!

and if anybody now tells me one can escape those as per TOR.. I am still in denial about that bit!

though, Mnggnal-Mnggnal vs. Abeloth would be fun. will he absorb her, or she take over him?

 

Or bring back Waru - all the Force he/it could ever want in one neat package?

 

Waru eating Abeloth? sweet.. and she got endless supply of bodies to swallow too! A match made in heaven!

so here's the plan: Get Waru back => feed Abeloth to him => trap them in a Mindtrap => travel to Otherspace => go to hyperspace in Otherspace and toss the cube out of an airlock => return home and celebrate.

any flaws?

 

Hopefully what goes around doesn't come around!

 

but speaking of mindtraps... how big is their inside?

I mean, are they like the Matrix/Inception with theoretically infinite space inside so whole worlds could be inside if programmed right? or is it just whitespace tiny room for a few tops.

In the end the entire galaxy could be in a mindtrap cube... and the Ones/Celestials are outside and watching what happens in there then Mortis would have happened outside the box, requireing "out of the box"-thinking

 

You've lost me! Other than KOTOR, Riptide and POD, I've not read anything about Rakata tech!

 

On Sekot, its been a while since I read the NJO novels again but I remember it being said that Sekot was powerful in the Force but not trained. So, its possible it might not be able to do the Force severing ability that its parent did. I'm guessing there though mostly from that one line. It did have some pretty awesome abilities though.

 

latest TOR update on fb talks about an ancient planetbased cannon the Rakata used on the Gree Enclave! looks very raybeam cannon, though how can it reach the Enclave if on a Rakatan world? they can't shoot through hyperspace like Galaxygun did, cause it fires no projectiles but a beam, so.. hmm.. more like the Infinity Gates of the Kwa firing beams through realspace?

 

New update from Dawn of the Jedi: The Prisoner of Bogan #2 (of 5):

Spoiler

Beneath the Tythonian temple at Kaleth resides an ancient relic thats been called a holocron which is shaped like a Tho Yor. The Je'daii master in charge has failed to unlock the device until Tasha Ryo touches it and inside... is a gatekeeper who calls himself the last of the Tythonian Kwa! And he seeks to guide seekers that have activated the holocron. What does this mean? Are the Kwa responsible for the Tho Yor? Or is A'nang of the Tythonian Kwa simply following the directives from unseen masters, possibly the Celestials? All in all, that was one revelation I did not expect and sadly we have to wait for a while until we get an answer to that.

Hmmm, I completely missed this post. Where is this mentioned? As it sounds interesting to me.

 

That would be my guess, yes.

Two observations from those sections:

1) The Kwa did something to royally piss off the spirits who sent the Rakata to crush them.

2) People the spirits later called to Dathomir to replace the Kwa believe in the idea of a "balance" of the spirits (who just so happen to resemble the Son and Daughter).

Something tells me the Kwa's actions mightily annoyed the Celestials.

 

I so love the Tythonian Kwa

From that I take it that the Kwa helped build the ThoYor and its spacetime warping nature which fits right into their technology given what we've seen about them so far with their Starchambers and wormholes.

as for the Holocron... old continuity had it a sith invention the Jedi adopted... with lightsaber a jedi invention the sith adopted. now we have lightsabers and holocron come from rakata or kwa, so ultimately from celestials it seems.

sorry lost the link to the TOR post.. if I find it I will post it! Cronal


I am still hoping for Sharu references one day

 

the Kwa's infinity gates annoyed them as did their war with the gree... less so their good service with the Tho Yor I guess.

but... if females kept the gift, and males not.. like if a natural celestial created order prohibits any dathomir born beings to be forcesensitive if male... does this imply the MALE Kwa did wrong.. and the female stayed loyal? a Kwa gender split?

 

I dunno, maybe the Tho Yor angered them too, and that it's why the Rakata have been lured to Tython since the Je'daii arguably don't follow the ways of the Celestials, where Light and Dark co-exist independent of each other, as was the case with the Son and Daughter where creation and destruction each have their own place in the cycle of life, and shouldn't just exist in some unified whole -- that's what the Force is, but when you're alive, you're not the Force anymore, so that state of existence can wait until after you're dead and return to it again, making a life of Balance perhaps contrary to the meaning of life, or something pseudophilosophical life that.

As for the male-female bit? That was just Talzin justifying the Nightsister social order and came from a separate section in her writings, so don't read too much into its matriarchal element as it was talking more about Allya than the spirits in that section; I only quoted it for the "balance" part, as it highlights a rather curious aspect of Nightsister beliefs about the Force, and how they're different to the Sith's and how she was asserting that the cultures that had lived on Dathomir had been expected to exist in balance with its two deities.

 

Zorrixor

I doubt the ThoYor angered them... this would mean the creation of Tython and its Forceusers angered the Celestials and instead of having them as Celestial masterplan they'd be a pain in celestial ass, an abomination. I doubt that and doubt the Rakata at this point in time still work for the Celestials.


and your "what the Force is" is totally wrong there mate! that is not what the force is... it is the unified whole, not the separation you proclaim!

 

Correct, and that's what I said it was: that the unified whole is the Force.

What I said wasn't was the state of life, because that's why when you die you return to the Force. But when you're alive, you aren't speaking on behalf of the unified whole, you are individual, you have free will, and with that the capacity for choice.

Bringing me back to my post: why spend your life in pursuit of an impossible state of mortal balance? If that was the purpose of life, then the purpose of life would be to commit suicide as fast as possible to return to the whole. Indeed, those who become one with the Force do so at the point of death. No, life is about living, it is a gift, and something I was suggesting the Celestials may feel the Je'daii are wasting, by trying to mirror the bliss that awaits them in the afterlife when they should be enjoying the state of life.

i.e. the Celestials might have seen the Je'daii as pursuing the impossible, and therefore wasting their gift and their lives. In life, the state of balance is unobtainable, the best one can do is live in harmony with the independent states of Light and Dark, which at present in DOTJ isn't what the Je'daii are focusing on: they're still trying to pretend they can all be one with the Force all the time.

Which, as Jacen Solo showed, is impossible, and too often leads to the opposite.

Light will always cast a shadow, but in a galaxy of Darkness -- and a galaxy ruled by the Rakata was precisely that -- Tython may have been intended as a bastion of Light. But what did the Je'daii do? Turn inward, like Jacen, in pursuit of their own personal nirvana.

And into that void the Darkness expanded and grew stronger as the Infinite Empire spread its arms.

But where were the Kwa? Did they keep watch? Did they help the Je'daii on the path to their true purpose? Or did the Kwa themselves fall to Darkness -- requiring the Celestials to step in to bring the galaxy back into balance, and gently nudge the Je'daii toward their true mission: to look after the galaxy, not to live out their lives obsessed in their own personal search of purity like Jacen Solo.