The fortress on Hijarma and the Hand of Thrawn

Well, in HoT Mara sees a resemblance between the Hand of Thrawn installation and the mysterious abandoned fortress on Hijarma Karrde used for a base back in TTT. I remember something about it being built by super energy resistant stones by an ancient unknown race.
This vanished race seemed to have something to do with the threat from the unknown regions. Thus The Hand of Thrawn had only had a single tower damaged by the same weapon that created the canyon Mara originally landed in.

Now we don?t really know what the threat is since it is still, well unknown (or maybe it was the vong, I never really could figure that one out). But my question is whether there any additional information about this vanished fortress constructing race, than what we are told in TTT and HoT? Or is this just yet another unused plotline washed away by the tidal wave that was the NJO.

 

I think in HOT Zahn was setting up his own story arc for Del Rey, but then they just turned it down and went their own way.

 

The "unknown threat" from HoT was the Vong. Zahn said so, and it appears that no one else has any itnerest in either disproving him, or even elaborating on it any more.

 

Cunningham disproved it.

 

I'm guessing that they're of Rakatan make.

 

What did Cunningham say?

 

I'm pretty sure that the Hijarna fortress and the High Tower on Nirauan were connected with an original Bantam/Dark Horse had a plan for a post-HoT2 alien invasion arc, with Zahn, Stackpole and Stradley heavily involved... elements of this were taken over into the NJO, but by no means all of it...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Cunningham made it official in Dark Journey: the Chiss didn't know how to counter the Vong. They had not encountered them.

 

A combined arms story-arc featuring Stackpole and Zahn? Wow, now I feel even more gypped by the NJO.

 

Excellence: Jag didn't know what his father knew.

And Jag did know how to counter the Vong. You shoot them.

Garq, remember?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Huh. I guess there are worse things than the NJO.

 

The original ideas of what might have been could be quite interesting, but then so is the reconciliation with what actually is.

 

I wonder why the Qom Qae didn't have any oral traditions on who built that fortress (though to be fair, it was probably 25 millenia ago), so perhaps the builders predated the Qom Qae/Jha?

 

How much is known about what Zahn and Stackpole had planned. I?ve heard about the idea of water based life forms as the enemy, which obviously wasn?t used.
But which elements of the Zahn/Stackpole storyline did Del rey adopt (I just come to think about Fel?s, or was it Parck?s, comment that there was a chance that both Bastion and Coruscant might fall), and is it known why DR didn?t hire Zahn to write part of the series, seems odd him being so popular and all.
Furthermore, do you see any chance of the unknown threat or the ancient race (could they be linked to the Aing Tii?) reappearing, now that the empire of the Hand has been dissolved and all that.

 

the last thing I want to do is get in an argument with Excellence, for I know I would lose, but Thrawn and the Empires Hand weren't part of the Chiss Ascendancy, so maybe only Thrawn and his force/EoTH came into contact with the Vong. And if the Chiss Ascendancy did, maybe it was only briefly, not enough to know how they worked, or exactly what they were, just that they hurt, and they hurt bad.

 

You said it. I'd have killed to see that instead of the NJO.

 

Actually, Coonsan, what Cunningham wrote---what Fel said to Jaggy---was very open to interpretation. Not knowing how to counter doesn't mean they'd never explicitly said they hadn't encountered some mad barking bald heads.

I'm not opening that volaptuous stench for all the Arkanian armpits Leto luck can buy, but that's what I remembered reading.

 

I'll remember to ask Cunningham when I see her, Ex.

 

Or better yet... don't. She murdered continuity. I respect her a lot and all, but I wish she'd at least worked harder to get continuity straight, because she made a blasted mess out of it. *sigh* I doubt it was intentional, but I just wish that the authors would get better briefs on subjects they're planning on writing about (they have to submit detailed outlines, after all) - and that the continuity people on staff nailed it better. We regularly catch stuff they don't, and they get paid to do it. Obviously, they're not quite as obsessive as we are, but at the same time, one wouldn't think it would be that hard with the kind of resources they have available - not to mention that it's their function. *sigh*

- Keralys

 

Is Hijarna by any chance located in the area of the Old Sith Empire?

 

right, these days, when you don't know who built something, it's automatically the damn Rakatans
(actually I wanted to suggest that, too - only sarcastically...)

 

Strictly speaking, Zahn mentioned a "hundred threats out there that could freeze your blood if you knew about them." The Vong count as a big fat one out of the hundred threats.