Lit So, Cronal’s tenure as Director of Imperial Intelligence….

What’s the deal with that? This seems to be one of those tacked on things that got convoluted (much like Cronal as a whole lol)

Armand died in 0 BBY. I’m fine with this. Makes sense.

But then we have the problem of who succeeds him.

So we have Cronal and Ysanne.

Wookieepedia (in separate articles) states that the two both immediately took the reigns of II and the ISB (error?), replacing him as Director.

Immediately, huh? Doesn’t make much sense for two people to be in the big chair. Additionally, it seems that Cronal was handpicked by Palpatine for the role, whereas Ysanne’s biography seems to hint she more so “inherited” it, both literally and figuratively.

So essentially my question is this: How can we make this work? Considering the fact that Blackhole seemed to retain this role until around 2 ABY (as per the Star Wars galaxies card game). While Ysanne seemed gain it immediately and keep it until the events of Rogue Squadron.

Maybe Cronal kept the official title but since he barely did anything, Ysanne was considered by all to be the “real” de facto director?

An additional note: it seems unlikely that Cronal was an “interim” Director, since he was handpicked by Palpatine specifically (not Ysanne), and Palpatine was in the process of phasing in dark siders to replace the bureaucracy (I.e. Dark Empire). Really makes no sense for him to have his eyes on Ysanne having the job in the long run, despite any…..ahem…..influence she may have on the man.

 

Abel G. Peña actually tried to address this a few years after the issue came about:

 

So can I ship Cronal and Ysanne now?

We all know how Iceheart had her flings with older men in the X-Wing comics... even Pestage maybe. And Pestage and Cronal have their own two people in the same spot story in the wotc Katarn adventure hooks where either Cronal or if dead already (again, for a while at least) Pestage pretending to be Cronal, captured Mara Jade for the reborn Emperor.

Heck.. I dont trust Pestage to be able to even remotely capture Mara and prefer this to be all Cronal. But if both dated Iceheart.. anything goes.

 

I’m pretty sure the whole Pestage (or clone Pestaage) cosplaying as Blackhole takes place solely after Mindor while on Byss. Presumably no one took up the mantle after the Galaxy Gun misfired

 

Didn't remember Abel Peña´s take on it, but it makes perfect sense with what I've always thought of it. I pictured Cronal as something like the Emperor's personal head of Intelligence; a way of knowing certain things before the Isards reported them to him, and how they obtained such information in the first place, if needed. A back up to Intelligence itself, of sorts.

Later on, on Byss, Blackhole´s role seemed to change into supervising many dark side related activities, including the creation of the Church of the Dark side, directing Jerec in the search of the Valley of the Jedi, and the mutation of several creatures with dark side alchemy (Gorc, Pic, chrysalis beasts, etc). Always imagined he had something to do with the Constable of Homunculi and his clone keepers, too...

 

As far I’m concerned, he is the Constable.

 

From "The Imperial Warlords: Despoilers of an Empire, Part 3" by Abel G. Peña and Daniel Wallace:

 

Can very well be the case! If not, the Constable most likely consulted/was supervised by Cronal, since he was probably the most knowledgable darksider in the Empire in terms of dark side alchemy.

I admit, I like the idea of the Constable being a slightly less ambitious/more loyal darksider then Cronal, though, seeing that he is personally in charge of something so precious to Palpatine as his clones, but either way it works, because we know so little about the Constable himself.

 

The Constable could be a clone of Cronal...

If he really died after Mindor, DE could bring him back via cloning and explain his future stories thus. Pestage may have brought him back to tackle the Mara job, using stored Cronal DNA from Mount Tantiss or likewise sites.

 

As per
THE IMPERIAL WARLORDS: DESPOILERS OF AN EMPIRE, PART 3

"Yet, almost unimaginably, that was not the end of Cronal, though what happened next is not clear.

Most likely is the possibility that the mystic’s spirit was summoned back from Chaos by necromancing Dathomiri shamans, or even his former co-conspirator Sate Pestage. Even more portentously, however, the warlock potentially negated his own oblivion by reaching out with his infinite dying thought and every last gram of his olamic cowardice to cross the ineffable threshold from hyperspace to Otherspace: an aberrant dimension where he accessed a perverted dynamism denominated the anti-Force. In any case, Cronal lived … albeit at tremendous cost. His body, save for his head and neck, was completely cybernetically reconstituted via mechu-deru — much as Nightsisters regenerated the bisected body of Darth Maul — while his mind itself was all but shattered from transcendental combat with Skywalker."

 

This.

The Empire worked in 2 tiers...the Bureaucratic Services, with career officers/officials/agents/workers...and the Imperial Court, with Palpatine's cadre of advisers and confidants.

From Vader to Cronal to the Inquisitors and beyond, these vassals of the Emperor could operate independently of the structures of the Empire, or intercede and take command as the situation required. The only challenge to their judgment would be whether their actions please or displease their master.

This is why Vader, with all his power, was still somewhat outside the structures of the Imperial Forces that served him. He carried no responsibilities to operations. He never became "Admiral Vader" or "General Vader". Yet his will in and amongst those forces was unquestioned.

Cronal's role in intelligence was a presence from the Emperor's court in those offices. And as others have said, he utilized the tools in self-interested or non-typical missions for intelligence services to perform, based on Cronal's darkside research or the Emperor's whims.

Isard was a bureaucrat...and while she "inherited" the chair, it was through the maneuvering of bureaucratic channels (and "impulses") that would be unsurprising to most people in large corporate or government institutions. She ran Intelligence day to day, while Cronal took toys and ran around the galaxy hunting sith trinkets and chasing mysteries to gather power and please Palpatine.

Isard is to Cronal, what Tarkin is to Vader. A careful dance of posturing and application of power between people that could easily break out into a messy squabble over hierarchy. Tolerance for those who serve selfishly to the Emperor's ends will be made. Just don't get too big for yourself.

 

I popped into the thread to say exactly this!

Yeah, it's just like how there was another one of Palps' Darksiders having control over the entire Imperial Justice system as the Procurator of Justice, yet also not being a figure known to the general public, and the Darksiders on the Ruling Council, etc.

In a side note, it's a bit remarkable that the EU never had more than the briefest mentions of the judicial system of the Empire. The mention of the Court/Courts in the late Republic, the existence of the position of Procurator of Justice, and one WEG vignette with an Imperial Magistrate sentencing a criminal and that's about it. It's a blank spot most don't even realize.

 

It's an especially weird oversight for the RPGs, being put on trial by the Empire seems like a pretty natural campaign scenario.

 

I always thought an easy solution for this is to have Isard be head of the ISB while Cronal heads Imperial Intelligence.

 

Cronal is the Legends and equivalent of Snoke

 

My take on this is that as Ysanne's promoted directly from mid-level agent by pure Palpatinian caprice to replace Armand as Director, she "needs" someone with more experience to supervise her as she steps into the leadership role - in reality, Ysanne doesn't need the supervision and always answers directly to Palpatine, but this complicates the command structure in the way Palpatine seems to have been fond of, and allows the resources of Imperial Intelligence to be deployed in parallel for Sith-related objectives, while giving one of his most important and egotistical Hands an extra status...

And, by way of Peñaesque retcon, that may, in fact, be why Ysanne is overreacting so much about "the Empeor's Hand" in the Mara Jade comics - she thinks Mara's the one who has the technical command authority to impose on her and seize control of the entire Imperial aparatus...

The real question here, though, is whether Ysanne's return in Isard's Revenge was a little more of a Bevel Lemelisk sort of thing than we've previously realised... and thus more disturbingly repeatable than Iella and Winter realised...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

There are just batches of Isard clones just laying in some abandoned base in the galaxy just waiting to be released. Hell maybe ol' Palpy has a bunch of clones of people he finds useful enough to keep them around for eternality. That would explain one of Sate Pestage's deaths (or maybe both???). Maybe even rekindle the Bast-lookalike in the Hoilday Special.

Have Jeng Droga transfer essence Pestage after Byss got destroyed in order to bring back the Palpatine's inner circle while Droga waited for him to return again.

 

I believe Cronal final Defeat was in a Random Star Wars Tales Comic

 

@clonegeek Not just clones, though there may be some of those too... no, I mean the original Isard essence-transferred into a clone body!!

But I like your explanation for Holiday Special!Bast!!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Let me refine my theory in order to best fit-in the essence-transferrence. Palpatine had used it to keep people he still found useful alive like Isard, Pestage(?) and Lemelink, which he also taught to Jeng Droga. Once Palpatine died his final death, Droga went back to Kaal and also spent time bringing back Isard, Pestage among others and put them into stasis so that they could be released when Palpatine would return. However after Droga got cut down in the Third Battle of Yavin, the revived Imperials were forgotten about waiting to be unfrozen.

 

Given this topic derailed somewhat into clones and essence transfer... I recently reread a Legacy comic with Ania Solo on the cover and the catchy phrase "Ania Solo alone against All the Sith"...

Well, we now got a famous "I am All the Sith" quote from Palpatine in TROS.

What if Palpatine literally did not mean he is all the Sith past.. as he did not want to absorb any past spirits aka Plagueis or others returning from the dead. But he is ALL the future Sith in that he found a way to preserve himself in every single one of them. Unbeatable in a multitude of bodies simultaneously?

Imagine, a Sith can transfer his essence from one body to another. But only One! What he needs is not transfer but copy. To copy himself to other bodies aplenty, to everyone. So that ALL the Sith become One, become him. They may look different, name different and act individual, but underlying is One dark essence, him, in every single one of them, guiding them. Not by overriding their consciousness or battling it like with essence transfer to take over, but him becomming the subconscious of every single one of them, the driving force behind their every action.

What if Palpatine achieved that? Then his TROS self can easily die as he is already ALL the Sith Eternal, all the later One Sith, in many bodies. A trick he maybe stole from the Killiks and their Joiner Program.

If he can copy Isard and Pestage and Cronal etc. who else? himself?

 

Great connection! I’ll be storing that in my mind for the future. I often forget that Cronal was a Hand.

 

Is that needed, though? Won't Isard and Pestage already be back, off-camera in Dark Empire, just like Lemelisk has returned several times...?

That... would explain why Krayt is crazy?!

You're not wrong that preventing Isard making off with the Lusankya and retaining Bilbringi intact gives them some more balance, but (do we know they actually kept the Lucy much beyond the end of the novel, and) honestly, I think absolutely everything in Dark Empire comes down to Leia single-handedly doing what she does in #6...

Well, okay, Anakin Solo's involved too, but you know what I mean...

I really like how these realisations can sneak up years later...

- The Imperial Ewok