Lit What Makes a Jedi/Sith?

Yeah but that was totes a mistake.

Nevermind that the Tales of the Jedi sourcebook put out by West End Games established that First Great Schism date.

Official line: It was always 7,000 BBY, just like Greedo always shot first.

Reality: Tulak Hord's lightsaber

 

Has Dan Wallace even played the KOTOR games? He botched every other reference to them in TNEC. Tulak Hord is such a random nonentity to cause such a major shift in the background lore. My first thought was that they saw how Lucas made the Sith 2,000 years old in the prequels so they decided to make them 2,000 years old in GAOTS, but that makes no sense.

All the Ajunta Pall stuff in KOTOR 1 was more consistent with the 25,000 BBY date. Did Tulak Hord's lightsaber even come up in that game, or was it only in TSL?

 

What other references did he botch?

And Tulak Hord is only mentioned by Kreia. I think this is what baffles me most about the EU, is that generally they take stuff to such zealous extremes that if Karpyshyn calls Juyo "Vaapad" anachronistically, or Tulak Hord is mentioned having a lightsaber, or some other mistake is made, then GOSHDARNIT WE'RE GOING TO DEMOLISH CONTINUITY TO MAKE IT FIT.

I don't get this idea that we're going to overwrite the intended story with the mistake. Just own up to the mistake and move on, but no, EVERYTHING IS CANON EVEN THE MISTAKES.

But then with TCW they just don't do squat.

 

Darth Traya and "Darth" Kreia were different people, the Jedi Council erased Revan's memories (that seems to have become the new canon by default, but in the game his mind was destroyed by Malak and the Jedi just gave him new memories), Revan regained all his memories by the assault on the Star Forge, Exar Kun created the tarentateks (the game says that they've appeared throughout history whenever the dark side is ascendant, not just once 40 years ago). And not really a botched game reference but he also created a new unnamed Darth character who survived the events of TSL "off-screen" so there could be an unbroken line of succession between Darths, although that was never the case to begin with and still isn't.

 

I love KOTOR II, and KOTOR I to a lesser extent, but boy did those games make a mess of continuity. Back in the day, I always thought they should have been moved up 2,000 years so that the Fourth Great Schism replaced the Great Sith War as the recent event, as well as maintaining Darth as a Fourth Great Schism feature. Plus the game has to emulate the Rule of Two and make the Jedi much more closer to the prequel Jedi than TOTJ, so that would have fit much better. Not to mention the art design.

 

All I remember about their effect on continuity was introducing the Darth name "too early" (lol). Otherwise I don't remember KOTOR contradicting too much; I think TSL had a lot more continuity flubs. In retrospect though I mainly just regret their prequelization of the Old Republic era.

I think TOR would have worked much better as a NSW game, though. How many more redundant galactic wars can we shoehorn into eras that don't need them?

 

To that same point; how many Jedi exterminations do you need in one era? How many times do both Jedi and Sith need to come to the brink of extinction only to be back to fighting galactic wars in (on a historical scale) no time at all.

TSL seems to suffer from some flubs, but also the game not being finished and some content cut or rushed that could have done a better job explaining things. Also, the need to align things for TOR which meant making canon endings for the games made things get a little weird.

I'm still confused by forcesabers vs lightsabers vs lightsabers w/cords and when they all come about. I'm not totally sure it matters when you have the extinctions that could have meant the Jedi and/or Sith lost technology they had once had.

Just like I'm not sure why it's that big of a deal when "Darth" became a thing.

Even reading the Wookeepedia articles it gets a little confusing what exactly happened when in terms of the Great Schisms and exactly what was going on with the Jedi vs Dark Jedi vs Sith species vs Dark Jedi called Sith but also actual Jedi Sith...whew...confused? You won't be after the next episode of SOAP!*

*showing my age there...

 

Pretty much agree but none of it confuses me. I just know that the EU has gotten so derivative that they had to contrive for lightsabers to exist at the eponymous dawn of the Jedi.

_Catherine_ I'd argue the prequelization of the Jedi in KOTOR is a continuity error. The Jedi of the era were established by TOTJ and KOTOR completely ignored it to copy the films.

 

That's true but I meant contradictions to pre-KOTOR continuity, like an ancient Sith Lord having a lightsaber, the Ubese bombing happening too early, Basilisk war droids looking completely different.

Yeah no idea. I think it's probably pointless to try to work this out at this point since any time something is established as being invented or discovered at a certain point, someone's going to write a story set earlier in the timeline that has that thing in it anyway because no one would understand that it's Star Wars without it.

It's not, especially if they just stick with the idea that it's a corruption of a Rakatan word, meaning it predates the Sith anyway. I just remember people being upset about KOTOR introducing Darths who predated Darth Bane, even though other sources had already done that.

That's fair. It's regrettable they went that way, but I have a hard time holding it against them.

 

Which?

 

Darth Rivan from the Living Force Campaign Guide was introduced either as Bane's contemporary or predecessor, IIRC. He might be the only one. I was thinking of Andeddu as well but apparently he was created the year after the game came out.

In retrospect it probably would have been a lot less confusing if someone had decided that "Sith" just meant "evil Jedi" and left the alien species getting their name appropriated out of it.

But off the top of my head I think it's basically like this:

Pre-25,000 BBY - The Sith species just does their own thing in their own little region of space. King Adas unites all the Sith to fight off the Rakata and gets their technology of building pyramid-shaped holocrons. Basically all pre-7,000 BBY references to the Sith now just refer to the species, which almost no one knew about I guess.

25,000-ish BBY - First Great Schism, the one with Xendor and Arden Lyn and the Legions of Lettow. Not sure how long it's supposed to last, but at the end the evil Jedi are all killed and no one cares anymore.

7,000 BBY - Second Great Schism, the one where the evil Jedi become the Sith. Lasts 100 years, at the end Ajunta Pall and his friends are exiled into deep space, where they stumble upon the Sith species and become the "Dark Lords of the Sith." Some of them go back to the Republic to try to get some revenge, and that's how the TOTJ Jedi know that there is something called a "Sith."

5,000 BBY - Great Hyperspace War, as seen in GAOTS and FOTSE. Basically the last time the Sith species is relevant, because they all get killed until TOR.

3,990-something BBY - Great Sith War, aka the one with Exar Kun. From this point on the Sith are basically just evil Jedi, with little connection to the original Sith species.

3,950-something BBY - The Jedi Civil War from the KOTOR games. Despite its name, not considered a Great Schism.

????? BBY - Third Great Schism. No one knows anything about this and no one cares.

2,000 BBY - Fourth Great Schism, the one the prequels are concerned with. Darth Ruin starts a war that lasts for a thousand years, ending with Ruusan and Darth Bane and the Rule of Two and all that jazz.

 

Darth Rivan does precede Bane by a few centuries -- and has been retconned to being a Revan fanboy that misspelled his name -- but I didn't so much get mad that KOTOR preceded Bane with the Darth name, but that it made it precede Ruin since Rivan had already preceded Bane. I think logically it makes the most sense for Darth Bane to be the first, but given that was off the table, it shouldn't have been something that predates the Fourth Great Schism to at least give these "G-canon" Sith that, given that Kun and Qel-Droma didn't have the name, nor did Ragnos or Sadow.

But I'm pretty traditionalist about the Sith magicians, and I liked things a lot better when the EU was content to keep Lucas' version of the Sith contained to the Fourth Great Schism and beyond, but it's anachronistically bled into all of Sith history now.

 

For me what determine if you are truly Jedi or Sith is mindset, motive, and approach. I don't buy and never will that the Jedi are good and the Sith are evil. Neither faction is wholly right and often the Jedi are plainly hypocrites.

 

Yeah, the proliferation of Darth names in the EU is pretty atrocious, especially since 90% of the names themselves are godawful. Although to be fair Ruin wasn't said to be a Darth until long after KOTOR came out, when it was clear that from now on all new Sith characters ever created would have to be called that.

 

Ah yes.

Not that I really agree with Gabe/Mike about the EU since he thinks LOTF is great and all. Although he does think Denning is terrible.

Anyway, I think this is why film purists hate the EU, that it has stuff like the Living Force with Darth Rivan predating Darth Bane.

 

Film purists shouldn't even know about Darth Bane!

Honestly I think both the prequels and what the EU has become would be more interesting if Lucas had left the red lightsaber and Darth name unique to Vader and come up with a less derivative concept for the Sith for the EU to utterly overexpose.

 

But the novelizations are canon! Just not the other novels! Lucas commanded them what to write.

I don't mind the Banite Order of the Sith Lords that is steeped in a particularly self-aggrandizing ritual for Bane in which every member has to take his name and give the same oath.

I don't remember, but I'm sure that the oath which Stover has Anakin give and which Luceno had Palpatine give was not used in Karpyshyn's novels.

I really don't dislike the Banite Sith, I just dislike that most of the Sith in SWTOR are Banite Sith, and all the Lost Tribe and Saes from Crosscurrent and pretty much every depiction the Sith in the Great Hyperspace War have become Banite Sith. The Lost Tribe should be utterly alien as Sith to Luke Skywalker but they're not anything new at all and that's absurd to me.

 

I have a new theory about the Jedi Exiles date retcon: GL hates the idea of a non-Rule of Two Sith society surviving for 20,000 years.

 

GL hates the idea of "Sith society" at all. The Yuuzhan Vong were originally Sith and Lucas nixed for that reason. That the Lost Tribe exists shows that his influence over the EU ceased after the NJO.

 

That's the basis for my theory. I'm suggesting that GL, hating the Sith Empire, made its lifespan as short as possible by moving its birth to the Second Great Schism.

 

Didn't Lucas allegedly answer questions for KJA and Veitch when they were writing TOTJ? You'd think he would have let them know they were barking up the wrong tree.

 

It was Pena, not KJA and/or Veitch, who initially established that the Sith Empire was 20,000 years old. TOTJ doesn't say how old the Sith Empire is.

 

Lucas used to do this for I imagine all the EU up to the NJO. I've theorized (because I'm a nerd) that Ulic and Exar Kun are supposed to reflect the idea of the Rule of Two.

Alternatively, it's possible Lucas only did this at the start of new projects, so when KJA went off to do the Sith Empire stuff, he was past writing out a questionnaire for Lucas since it was still under the TOTJ umbrella. The reason I propose this is because Lucas did this process for TFU which is why it was heralded as "Lucas is involved" (in contrast with everything after the NJO when he wasn't involved), but he had no involvement with TFU2. Likewise with the NJO, he was involved early on when the series uberplot was being hashed out and didn't like the idea of a prophesied Anakin Solo destroying these invading exiled Sith in fulfillment of said prophecy, so it was changed to Jacen, the prophecy was dropped, and the Sith were changed to Yuuzhan Vong due to his objection to a "Sith society." But his involvement in the series after that point was nil.

 

Idk, maybe I'm just cynical of George's foresight, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't even thought up or settled on the Rule of Two yet whenever TOTJ was being written. When was that, '95 or '96? I mean it wasn't "always supposed to be that way" in the OT, so maybe Lucas didn't have a problem with the Sith starting out as an empire back then. That's basically how they start in the Ruin backstory anyway, maybe he just condensed their history when he sat down to write TPM.