[NRW] National Retcon Week 2008 (6-12th April)

Happy Birthday, DP?

::tugs guilty heartstrings::

 

I was gonna save this for later in the week, but fine, Matt - this one's for you.

Spinning out of an offhand joke I made in that "How Luke will die" thread...

Assuming you haven't figured it out yet...the Ancient Order of the Whills...is a Whiphid tribe.

[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/e/e3/SWDT6-FC.jpg]

There are lots of little corollaries to this, such as whether K'Kruhk himself was a Whill, whether they're an offshoot of the Jedi Order or incidental, and the matter of when exactly Artoo was with them (if he was at all) since Lucas' offhand comments aren't really explicitly canon - especially in this case - but I see it more or less going like this:

Upon learning of a larger Galactic civilization, the Whiphids become atypically interested in its nature and history.

Being a largely pragmatic species, a conglomeration of the most keenly galactically-inquisitive Whiphids begins to form with the goal of observing and recording the history of the galaxy at large - primarily because it's a very overwhelming situation for a relatively primitive culture to find itself in, and the better they can understand it, the more easily they can anticipate and deal with outward threats like the Empire eventually became (the Jedi Covenant being a good example of a similar scenario). They're a long-lived race, so it's easy to see them as being good at detecting patterns. This particular tribe becomes known as the Whills (the spelling similarity is, of course, a coincidence, but it's entirely possible that there's a "Whi" naming convention for Whiphid tribes - "whi" could be their word for "persons" or "ones"; "Whiphid" could mean "all ones", whereas "Whill" means "wise ones", or "ancient ones" or some such).

Anyway, as time goes on, certain Whiphids become chosen for training by the Jedi Order (possibly an above-average percentage - three known prequel-era Jedi is a lot for a generally rare species), and eventually, the Whills field a candidate. This initial Whill elects to return to Toola upon becoming a Knight/Master, and becomes a very influential member of the tribe; over time, he/she takes others as apprentices, and the Whill tribe becomes largely, if not entirely, Force-users. Fast forward hundreds, maybe thousands of years. As the thousand years prior to Yavin unfold in relative peace, the Jedi Order and the Senate grow complacent, and so do the Whills. Not having come across any serious outside threats in several of their generations, the tribe evolves to a point where the study of history, and of the Force, becomes their primary focus.

What again starts as a largely pragmatic character trait - aversion to aggressive action - becomes, in this new Jedi-influenced group, a profound degree of compassion for other beings. As Mace Wi

 

One of the things that strikes me about this theory is that...well am I nuts or did K'kruhk tell Cade that he had returned to Toola to finally die? Or was it merely that he had been presumed dead? I don't have the issue on me...

 

I've finally watched the Ewoks movies on DVD, and there's a really cool retcon in it...

Why is Mace Towani called Mace?

Because his parents named him after some guy who saved their lifes back on another forest/jungle planet. A quarter of a century earlier, the Towanis had been working as jungle prospectors on Haruun Kal. When they got captured by the resistance and Kar Vastor intended to slaughter all his prisoners, a Jedi named Mace Windu went out of his way to save the entire bunch. After leaving the planet, the Towanis continued to work as scouts in the uncivilized backwater of the galaxy, and it was on one such trip that they crashed on Endor.

The retcon is actually quite modular as we do not know anything about the Towanis - you can have only one parent be a Haruun Kal survivor, and you can choose any other planet on which Mace would have saved the day. But I honestly like combining Caravan of Courage with Shatterpoint, as they are not really targeted at the same audience...

A mild version would have the Towanis influenced by the story of Mace Windu and The Seismic Tank Of Doom that a young writer on Dantooine had published...


And if that's not enough, what about Noa and his friend Salek being Jedi scouts?

On their first mission together, Noa had only been a very young Padawan, so when his master Salek tried to find the energy source, Noa was left behind for safety. After his master was killed, Noa's Jedi abilities atrophied as he didn't use them anymore. Still, his attunement to the Living Force helped him hide and survive in the forest.

A trace of his early training can be seen when he uses his wooden staff against the Marauder King's sword. The wood is really tough, by the way - maybe it had originally been intended to be a lightsaber cane like that of Master Zao? Maybe Master Zao was wandering the galaxy in order to find a certain Padawan he had bonded with...?


For me, both of these retcons wouldn't be too farfetched as they do not really overwrite that much previous information, and Charal having been retconned as a Nightwitch really cries out for placing the Ewok adventures firmly into continuity.


DISCLAIMER: As I'm not too familiar with everything that went on in previous NRWs, I'm not entirely sure that what I've written is really new... but I can hope...

 

I glanced through pretty much everything related to him or Artoo last night, and I didn't see anything addressing his whereabouts at all - Cade says it's the first time he's seen him since the massacre, and that's it.

 

You know, your theory gets even better if you think about K'kruhk's habit of surviving everything that gets thrown at him in relation to "the ability to defy oblivion"...

Meet the Freakin' Sweet Hat Of Compassion!

And on a sidenote, did anyone around here ever read those three fragments of the story of Kyle's time during the Jedi Academy Trilogy? It offers a glimpse at where K'kruhk was hiding during those years... Man, if I had finished that story back then, it would have been a preview for Legacy... And I still want to finish it...

 

I'm not that much into retcons... Not a retcon guy... I think it's complicated enough as it is.

But that's a retcon Coop.

 

I think the reference is this:

"I was in the snows of Toola, the place I thought I would call 'Last Home', when I felt a calling in the Force." - Legacy #12, p.2

 

There it is!

Anyway, if the Whills are Whipids, it would add an interesting dimension to his decision to return there, as a Jedi, to die.

 

Dunno how I missed that...but yeah, that makes it even cooler. I think that makes it even more likely that he'd been working to gather a new tribe of Whills together; otherwise he wouldn't have been quite so ready to die, I don't think. Though really, the "last home" thing really just means he didn't expect to leave again. Going into retirement doesn't necesarily mean you're gonna die anytime soon.

You know what's funny, Watto? I don't really think about these things much myself, either. The Whiphid idea was just nice timing.

 

Is it me, or am I killing a lot of threads lately?

 

Your focus determines your reality.

 

I'll take that as a yes.

 

I love it Coop.

Personally, the first thing I thought of after K'Kruhk's rise to prominence was the Jedi info on Toola that Luke discovered in CoPL. I'm so happy see I'm not the only one.

 

it's ok, coop... i tend to kill threads over in the eu community.

 

A quick one:

Why do some sources treat the Empire as being around during the Clone Wars, or claim the Empire worked beside the Jedi Knights before turning on them?

Well, the out-of-universe answer is easy, but in-universe? Well, a comparison to Nazi Germany might be in order. Hitler became Chancellor in January of 1933, but it was two months later before it actually became the Third Reich, a few months after that until it officially became a one-party state, and 1934 when the Nazis gained control of the army and Hitler became Fuhrer. However, people could easily associate Hitler's rise to Chancellor with the beginning of Nazi Germany, even if that's not necessarily true in a literal sense, because of all the groundwork that began to be laid then, and because Hitler and the Third Reich are so inextricably tied.

So my idea is that in later years, people associate Palpatine's rise to Chancellor as the beginning of the Empire. After all, like with Germany many of the stepping stones were already laid by the time the New Order became official, and Palpatine and the Empire are tied together as well. People might just think of the Empire starting in 32 BBY, regardless of when the official change took place. Thus, the Empire fought alongside the Jedi Knights in the Clone Wars, before turning on them after the war was over. Problem solved.

EDIT: I like the Whills=Whiphids one, Coop.

 

That's a realistic and understandable explanation, Hyde (I'm gonna call you that from now on, okay? ), but I don't know if it's really a retcon...more of a, well, an explanation.

 

In so far as it's an explanation that retroactively fixes a continuity problem...sure, why not a retcon?

An addendum to my bit about Vergere: Krayt's first line would seem to imply that it's not just a difference of opinions with Vergere - as in, One Sith verses Rule of Two Sith - but rather a deception on her part. This would seem to support the interpretation that her later dialogue is in support of the Jedi and anti-Sith in general.

 

I wish I could contribute but I just don't have the knowledge (at the moment). As a noob I'm a bit in awe of you guys and your incredible knowledge.

 

I'm loving the Whiphid/Whill connection, Coop.

 

*bump*

I'm surprised McEwok doesn't have anything for us...

 

I think in light of the slow response (and the fact that we're limiting it to one thread) we should let this sucker go a month.

 

Maybe we should declare 2008 NRY.

 

I hear 31 years is the "retcon" anniversary.

"Married? We were never married!"

 

Here's one I'd like to see:

The Codru Ji are...ridiculous. Their life cycle is really difficult to believe or understand. Then I remembered the weird, mysterious castles that they're not supposed to go into, the ones that belonged to the ancient, vanished race. Codru Ji = Rakata genetic experiments, anyone?