Lit Abel G. Peña's "Skyewalkers" and "Lone Wolf"

What if we worked together? We could make this more easily and take time to make those translations sound beautiful. ^^

 

Also wanted to add a little to Sinre's compilation of evidence for a vast pre-Adas Sith Empire and evil deities ruling it.

For starters, my favourite source, Tales of the Jedi Companion. This work tells us that the Sith spread across the galaxy before the Dark Jedi ever arrived (and note that the Dark Jedi arrival was intended to be the First Great Schism, so this says something of the author's intent for the Sith's pre-Republic power), spreading terror and becoming so notorious others took their name upon embracing their ideology, again, even before the Dark Jedi adopted the name. Then we have the Killik Sith Lord (who had a holocron, so another pre-Adas holocron alongside the 104,000-year-old Dark Holocron) on Alsakan and Sarafur in 30,000 BBY (right around the time the Killiks incurred the Celestials' wrath, interestingly enough), the library-temple on Krayiss II being built in 28,000 BBY (before the Sith could have ever stolen Rakatan spaceships and reached there), a contemporary of Adas becoming the spirit which guarded a spellbook in a Sith armoury on Onderon, ancient Sith ruins on Muzara (thanks again TOTJ Companion), a Sith warlord who created a dark side citadel on Alpherides >18,000 BBY, Veeshas Tuwan being built on Arkania in 7,000 BBY, Malachor V and the Trayus Academy >24,000 BBY, and that's just scratching the surface.

So what of these evil deities? Well, there are the immortal gods of the Sith, of whom we know of only one: Typhojem. But then there's the fact that the neatest meaning of the title Darth - seemingly of Rakatan origin - is 'immortal god-king,' and enter the fact Sith were running around in the Infinite Empire (the Infernal Council of Soa) and the 'red demons' the Black Rakata say they feared in KOTOR, and it raises the question of whether the Sith became the "Dark Lords of the Rakata" in an interesting parallel to what the Dark Jedi later became. But there's more. What of the Knell of Muspilli, who could summon apocalyptic deities beyond the Gunninga Gap? What about the fact the cult of The Five worshipped the Left-Handed God (the Sith deity Typhojem), yet also worshipped other deities such as the "Soulworm" and the "Lady with the Locust Heart?" This, to me, speaks of a great pantheon of Sith who, like Abeloth and the Ones, passed beyond the mortal coil to become terrifyingly powerful entities, who led a Sith-ruled Infinite Empire in war against the 'good gods' (or less worse gods) of the Celestials, defeating all of them apart from the Ones of Mortis and the Precursors of Kathol.

Absolutely. The missus knows French too, so that's three; should be swift-going.

Plaristes? Your move.

 

I have already started translating "Le Facteur X." How well can you translate French, if you don't mind my asking?

 

I'm decent, and I have help from someone fluent, so the translation should be good enough.

 

Man, Sinre, LelalMekha and Darth_Dreadwar, it sounds like you'd find fascinating Joe Bongiorno's "Supernatural Encounters," which explores in detail lots of prehistoric evil deities like Typhojem, including the Soulworm. It's a massive shame it was never published.

 

Abel, in your description of Busteromuchmacho and the Arc to Infinity you mentioned a "Force demon." Is that supposed to be a "Force Demon" of the same species as Wutzek? If so, that's the only published reference I'm aware of to them outside Wutzek's original appearance (of course, Joe Bongiorno had a lot to say in "Supernatural Encounters," necessitating the "published" qualifier). Also, what is the "trans-dimensional gamester of life-and-death"? That almost sounds like a reference to Star Trek's Q.

 

I wasn't keen on Bongiorno's associating Typhojem with the Bedlam Spirits, as I believe they are the more ill-conceived of Star Wars' various deific entities, and places the origin of the Sith pantheon outside of the Sith themselves (which is incongrous with the deification of Adas, and Darth-linked titles such as immortal god-king). Of course, the second can be forgiven as Supernatural Encounters was written before the link between Pall and Typhojem was made, but it'd still have been inconvenient for our rampant fanonising.

I do agree it was a shame it was never published, but The Clone Wars and Fate of the Jedi would have probably undone its tidy rendering anyhow.

 

i started translating Le Factuer X, but it was too painstaking - I'm not a French speaker!

 

That was a very thorough job, Paxis. I'll just make a few relevant comments.

Right. That was from "Aliens in the Empire, Part 2: To a Traitor Go the Spoils."

You're right about tracing the evolution of the incarnations from Nilo Rodis-Jamero Royal Guard concept art > Atha Prime > Imperial Sentinel > Zeta Magnus.

But there's an additional reference here, and I don't blame anyone for missing it -- though you could say it's been right under our collective noses since 1994. Yes, the "Magi" in Magi Sentinels does refer obliquely to Zeta Magnus (trivia: for a good while, I styled the name Zeta Magus, the singular form). But more specifically, the guys Magnus took inspiration from for his (for expediency, I'm going to stop trying to use gender neutral pronouns for the character) getup, i.e. the Magi Sentinels, are these dudes:

​

​

​

...from The Freedon Nadd Uprising. The story was written by Tom Veitch, naturally, who gave us the Dark Empire Imperial Sentinels. So these guards seemed to me an obviously intended antecedent of some sort, even if only in spirit. Zeta Magnus thus became the missing link. I just had to name them.​

With their capital at Orbsah, I mean, Rennek.

(Why they changed it I can't say ... Magnus just liked it better that way.)

Ah, good. I'd hoped that would come across.

The starfighter's design looked peculiar to me in that way almost unique to Cynthia Martin's illustration of Nagai ships. And because I had Magnus using Nagai cloaking technology, I thought the implication that the starfighter was acquired by the cloner from them would play.

Spoiler

Tark Squad's members are also referred to as "drones" in the narrative once ... you know. That was to play up the connection to Trachta and his stormtroopers in Empire: Betrayal, since that's what the grand moff calls them.

I knew from the start I wanted non-Mandalorians to represent Zeta Magnus' drone warriors. The idea to make them Sun Guards -- the in-universe co-inspiration, along with the Death Watch, for the Royal Guards, according to the Imperial Sourcebook -- simply fell perfectly into place during the outlining stages. Afterward, the idea that a Sun Guard was nearly chosen as the prime donor for the Grand Army of the Republic emerged from Dan Wallace's work on the Galaxy at War sourcebook -- though I can't remember anymore if Dan put that in as a favor to me or it was just a fortunate coincidence.

Spoiler

Man, the Blackhole/Cronal/Lord Shadowspawn/Atha Prime/Zeta Magnus thing is so ******* convoluted.

Anyway, because I didn't know if I'd get a shot at continuing the story, I knew I had to end SkyeWalkers in a way that left open both the possibility of a direct sequel and the possibility that the post-Return of the Jedi Atha Prime storyline actually happened. Because the Lord Shadowspawn biography I'd originally written for "The Imperial Warlords: Despoilers of an Empire" (merging the character with the post-ROTJ Atha Prime storyline) had to be re-written after Matt Stover successfully resurrected my officially rejected idea from "The Emperor's Pawns" of merging the character with Blackhole instead, I figured a "rumor" by the sensational reporter Andor Javin would help to give some closure, however nebulous. It was hard to bite my tongue when that came out.

100% right, except he was more accurately an example of the species species than a specific character.

Thank you so much, Bly.

Perhaps, my good man. Perhaps one day.

You're actually the second person to say that to me. I actually (shamefully) never saw the Transformers movie, so I had to have the "Ultra Magnus" reference explained to me. (Consequently, I never understood what the hell happened to Optimus Prime, either.)

ZOMG ... Optimus PRIME! It all fits!

Take care,
Abel

 

Abel - The whole Prime business AFA Transformers gets almost as complex as some of the SW continuity.

And if you only see one Transformers movie, the animated one from 1986 should (IMHO) be it. The story's a simplistic Hero's Journey (and it traumatized part of a generation with Optimus' death ) but it has a great set of voice actors (Orson Wells, Robert Stack, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle, and Judd Hirsch among them).

Thanks again for both stories, and for all of your hard work with SW.

- Onderon1

 

Me too, Darth_Henning. Thank you, brother.

One of the best Star Wars comics. The kind of stuff that made the Adventure Journal one of the all time greatest Star Wars publications.

I'm here, and I do, LelalMekha. Thank you so much for the huge welcome.

I operated on the assumption that the Anakin-as-Padawan phase of the timeline had been compressed due to The Clone Wars TV series. More specifically, I wrote SkyeWalkers as taking place between the Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars micro-series and the Dave Filoni Clone Wars series. That said, I also understood that the Clone Wars timeline was a mess and made an active effort to avoid as many time stamps within the text as I could.

Well. That's everything I could have ever hoped for in a review.

Thank you so darn much, Darth_Dreadwar.

 

You made Kharys interesting enough that I wanted to know more - how her recruitment by Vader went - the story of Katya M'buele & Han Solo escaping from her - and so forth.

 

I've been away from this thread for HOW long? Inconceivable! Ridiculous wall of text incoming ...

Hence, "from a certain point of view." Regardless of anyone's personal convictions, those tales are not a part of the story being told going forward by Disney/LFL.

Huh, until this moment, I never noticed these references to Norse Cosmology before.

I can but imagine. Just knowing this existed was challenge enough to be quiet about.

Fifteen years. Egads. Time flies. Also, that means nearly half your SW-writing career has had SkyeWalkers hanging over your head to one degree or another.

Earned, every one.

One of the best of us, Abel, one of the best of us.

My pleasure, on both counts. Particularly on the first count; it was an honor and privilege, not to mention unabashed joy, to have had the opportunity.

I think this would be of benefit.

Such a dark place we found ourselves, never to return. :-(

Abel did a wonderful job, I thought, of capturing Kenobi's voice in both pieces. In SkyeWalkers, the words just sound like they're coming out of James Arnold Taylor's Kenobi's mouth.

Hear, hear. It's about time SOMETHING addressed her existence in the days when Jedi were not just a distant memory.

If so, I'm an idiot, too.

Aye. One of the most powerful bits of Jedi wisdom I've encountered is from a vignette in the Star Wars Sourcebook. Arhul Hextrophon has managed to track down Yoda on Dagobah, who, having failed to fool the historian with his eccentric hermit routine, regretfully tells Hextrophon he will have to wipe his memory so his secret remains safe. Hextrophon panics, and pleads desperately to not have his memories, the historian's most valuable asset, taken from him. When he looks up, he sees Yoda, serene, and the Jedi Master replies, "What use saving the galaxy is if so much hurt and pain one must cause? The Jedi way that is not. No. Hurt you I won't. Trust you I will, trust you…and the Force. The Jedi way that is."

THIS is the answer to the means-ends thinking that allows so many to justify so much evil in the doing of good. Jedi serve life, and they serve the Force. To forget that is to start down the dark path.

I doubt he'll mind. ;-)

Spoiler

Huh. I thought this was a reference to a certain other three-eyed chap, one from a subfranchise you have gathered a bit of a reputation for making work despite its goofiness and the neglect it's received.

Which is why I didn't press the issue, even though to this day the use of the word "Abhorrer" stands out to me like a three-eyed mutant. ;-)

Not at all. It was so ... artistically done.

That's what Lit is here for! ;-)

Huzzah!

"No. Hurt you I won't. Trust you I will, trust you…and the Force. The Jedi way that is."

I'm not sure why it took reading this to make a particular parallel stand out, but a remarkably erudite, physically large creation of a hubristic mad scientist (or race of hubristic mad scientists) that ultimately turns on his creator(s)? Mary Shelley would be proud of what you've done with Magnus.

I wish I knew how he does it. Dan Wallace is a machine that takes any raw material as input and outputs AWESOME.

Spoiler

I think it's important to note that Star Wars is a universe where Aristotelian formulations of identity, thanks to the Force, are likely inherent to reality, at least for sapient biological beings. "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

​

​

This was one of my favorite little bits of backdoor retconning in the whole piece. I never would have connected these guys with the Sentinels if you hadn't pointed it out.​

So if you've a date in Orbsah, she'll be waiting in Rennek.

Orson Wells' last movie, in fact. But yes, the whole voice cast was impressive.

And the soundtrack! So deliciously 80s. Nothing is shorthand for "simplistic Hero's Journey" like Stan Bush.

Anyway, time to see if the internet will even let me post this silly wall of text I've just written ...

 

Ooh, neat catch!

I'm going to run with this and take it as further evidence for my fan theory of the Rhandites being an ancient Sith offshoot like a counterpart to the Sorcerers of Tund, what with Norse aesthetics and names (e.g. Marka Ragnos) prevailing among the ancient Sith and all.

Only to a point, no? There's still all the indications that consciousness is an emergent property of neural computation in the Star Wars galaxy, only that there's perhaps an 'additional' ingredient as well, e.g. the anima or pneuma. Shooting Greedo in the head will still result in the loss of his consciousness and ego, even if his luminous being floods, like a drop of water into an ocean, into the totality of the Force (thus losing coherence and discrete individuality). Even the Jedi seem to believe this constitutes the loss of identity, with the technique of the Whills being so distinguished precisely because one's identity is preserved or retained even while being one with the Force.

But even if there is a discrete soul that survives death (regardless of Force ghosting) in the Star Wars Universe, there's not really any definition of physical identity that could exist that could apply to one's 'original self' while excluding identical copies.

 

I actually made a concerted effort to pick up Annual #1 at the comic convention that I went to after I read this novella.

 

When I started writing SkyeWalkers, The Clone Wars movie hadn't been released yet, and the timeline hadn't yet been compressed. Once it was, I seriously wrestled with making Anakin a Jedi and Halagad a Padawan in order to keep the story further up in the Clone Wars timeline, but the "brothers" dynamic I'd already been fleshing out just wasn't playing naturally. There were already so many moving parts to the continuity inherent to SkyeWalkers -- Star Wars Annual #1, the Concordance of Fealty, Zeta Magnus/Atha Prime, Star Wars Gamer #1 -- I just had to draw a line and go with my instincts on making them both Padawans, despite how crowded the pre-Clone Wars TV series time frame abruptly became.

Yeah. Making that deliberate was a concession to the new timeline (though it wasn't that difficult, frankly).

Good catch, TC. I left this intentionally ambiguous precisely to exploit either possibility once the Clone Wars timeline finally shook out. If there was enough time, I figured I could make the "Otranto Mission" a Clone Wars-era story so that I could give Halagad some "buddy time" with Anakin and Obi-Wan as warm up to SkyeWalkers. If there wasn't enough time, I had two other general time frames pegged: just before the Clone Wars or (least preferably) during their initial meeting when Halagad and Everen were running their investigation.

Yeah, that's what I was going for there. I had no idea if an explanation would be offered later by The Clone Wars TV series (or some related literature spinoff) and, for that reason, I underplayed it a la Han's scar in Han Solo and the Lost Legacy. I didn't anticipate that the TV series would take such liberties with Ventress in its later seasons, severely complicating the reconciliation of her storyline with "Dreadnaughts of Rendili" and "Obsession" and thus annulling to some extent the timeline possibilities I was trying to free up here.

No, unfortunately the edits didn't make it that far. Some of the glaring examples include the one above, as well as:

Spoiler

2) the reference to the "military-grade" stun blasts of the clones' DC-17m blasters, which were meant to account for the surprise scene in Darksaber where Callista is unable to use her lightsaber to successfully deflect a stun blast from Admiral Daala. This "military-grade" stun technology compromise was meant to explain why Luke and others (particularly in the Young Jedi Knights series, IIRC) had, by contrast, easily deflected stun "bolts" -- but my seemingly clever explanation ended up being, if not outright contradicted, at least heavily challenged by the episode "The Wrong Jedi," where Ahsoka is deflecting clone trooper stun blasts quite ably without them collapsing on her blade, much to my chagrin. 3) In the Interludium, there is a complex Easter egg that essentially ended up being contradicted by the TV series. Magnus refers to "that corniculate half-bot I revivified for the paltry fee of a double-necked, eight-string quetarra and one more quaint nom de guerre." If you read this carefully, it is actually a reference to cyborg Darth Maul, who I'd already previously referred to in "The Story of General Grievous: Lord of War": the parts about a "corniculate half-bot" referred to his appearance in the comic "Old Wounds"; the payment of a "double-necked, eight-string quetarra" was a reference to Randy Martinez's "Sith Rocks" illustration

;

and "one more quaint nom de guerre" was a reference to the fact that Magnus had taken the alias "K'am'ir Zaarin" (a.k.a. Khameir Sarin, the supposed birthname of Darth Maul cut from official Episode I English materials but supposedly printed in some official foreign translations).

I never imagined The Clone Wars TV series would actually resurrect Maul, let alone do so as he appears in "Old Wounds," and consequently negate the possibility of Magnus' involvement in his resurrection (although this is technically more due to The Sith Hunters and The Wrath of Darth Maul, than the TV series itself).

Yeah, that one is best attributed to artistic license. This is especially clear if you read the descriptions of Obi-Wan, who is still described as having his mullet.

Spoiler

The scene where he is fighting the Sun Guards armed with flame throwers goes on to say that his hair catches fire during the fight, implying that this is why he cut his hair short for the TV series.

As I said before, I didn't know that I'd be able to write a sequel, so I only needed the story to dovetail into The Clone Wars TV series well enough -- that is, indirectly. I relied on subtleties such as

Spoiler

Anakin's scar and Obi-Wan's fried mullet

to do the work for me. In essence, I relied on continuity and hardcore fans' abilities to extrapolate the implications.

For the record, I also wrote SkyeWalkers with the mindset that it took place shortly, even immediately, before Jedi Trial (i.e. the mission they returned from "only two standard days earlier"). I thought Jedi Trial might be able to be slammed in between SkyeWalkers and The Clone Wars TV series (despite the vague 2 1/2-year reference/time stamp in Anakin's dialogue with Sergeant Grudo). I figured it was in Jedi Trial, as originally intended, where Anakin's maturation into a quote-unquote "Jedi Knight" would occur after SkyeWalkers in time for the TV series.

I certainly did hope for that possibility. And, given the chance, I would've answered some loose ends regarding the Postludium directly, but the rest probably only indirectly.

Spoiler

I'd said about all I had to say concerning Team Obi-Wan, Anakin and Halagad. The band doesn't get back together.

It was the blue sauce that made him sick!

I actually made an effort to include some aspects of myself into Halagad. I tend to get motion sickness fairly easily.

 

It helped that I've had my nose in Norse mythology (among a slew of other things) for weeks now in prep for an RPG campaign.

Okay, this I'm just not seeing. Marka Ragnos sounds a little bit Scandinavian, but that seems to be the exception - Naga Sadow, Ludo Kressh, Dathka Graush, Adas, Simus ... none of these sound terribly Norse to me. And the ancient Sith aesthetic seems very much Egyptian in theme.

It seems as if that "additional" ingredient is the bearer of identity, though, at least for beings that possess it. The technique of the Whills may be a rare and special practice, but it nonetheless proves that the important elements of a practitioner's personal identity are all present in the coherent, discrete, persistent ghosts that survive thanks to it.

*Physical* identity, perhaps, but that's not the be-all and end-all of identity in a world where materialist interpretations of selfhood are empirically deficient. Unless the cloning/flash imprinting process somehow also photocopied the "luminous being," which we're given no reason to believe, then the presence of the entity which contains our personal selves remains a singular, defining aspect of the original that physically identical copies do not possess.

It is for this reason that the Sith, and Magnus's accelerated transgenic decoy, view essence transfer as a necessity for immortality.

Better the meal upsetting your stomach, than you upsetting the meal's stomach!

That must have made Star Tours a distinct challenge!

 

Well, Ragnos being derivative of Ragnarok seems fairly clear. But you also have the Old Norse 'Bo Vanda,' the Old Frisian 'Ieldis,' Tulak Hord sounds distinctly Norse (though only the surname is descended from it - 'Hodd' - with the first name being Czech), 'Garu' and 'Rrogon' are Gaelic, Wyrmuk evokes the Old English (but descended from Germanic mythology) 'wyrm,' Bavik is Belgian, and 'Skarok-Nur' sounds fairly Scandinavian, so there's definitely plenty of old European linguistic influences there even if not entirely Norse.

But mostly it's the aesthetics. Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian aesthetics in clothing prevail in KJA's depictions in GAotS and FotSE, it's true, but the ancient Sith have been described in numerous sources as being famed for their horned helmets, and Veitch's TOTJ, as well as Empire's End, show distinct and cliche Viking-style helmets the clearest. The fourteen Dark Lords interred in the Great Temple, its guardian statues and the Graushes are examples.

Yes, but that's a specific technique, so I'm not too sure how distinct it is from essence transfer (and therefore, in turn, the purely technological Rakatan mindspears, mind traps or those few Sith holocrons bearing what seems to be a complete copy of identity), or the Sith alchemical art of binding one's spirit to a physical anchor. The mechanism behind it could be as mundane and materialistic as Rakatan technology, e.g. a whole brain emulation (or 'upload') existing in the computational substrate of the Force; I'm not saying it is, only that the possibility can't be entirely discounted. But all those who haven't learnt such specific methods of preserving one's identity in the Force? Well, there's every indication that one's being becomes one with the Force, which Plagueis understood to be a nice way of nicely dressing up the loss of one's discrete and coherent identity. He theorised one's being persisted for only a few seconds after death, before dissolution.

Personally, I think postulating Force ghosting is merely an upload process using the Force as computational substrate is rather contrived, but if you ignore human beings' biased intuition that something as complex as identity is somehow simple 'soul stuff' or the like, then I don't think it's much more contrived than postulating there is an additional ingredient bearing identity existing in the Force throughout one's biological life. Because if there is, how would you explain brain damage affecting personality and memory, how would you explain physical death involving the loss of that additional ingredient, and so on? Particularly considering there doesn't seem to be any kind of Western afterlife realm in Star Wars, only a loss of discrete identity upon physical death that the Jedi call "becoming one with the Force" and the Sith call "dying."

What would be less contrived than either? Well, I think the most likely model for personal identity and consciousness in the Star Wars universe is epiphenomenalism, which is a form of dualism (property dualism), but very different from Aristotelian or Cartesian conceptions. Essentially, epiphenomenalism describes consciousness as a kind of additional thing possessing non-physical properties, a sort of overflow of mental events if you will, but something that is dependent upon the physical brain, those non-physical properties not having an impact on the physical world. Because of this, it's empirically indistuingishable from and compatible with emergent materialism. So consciousness would remain an emergent property of neural computation, but it also possesses non-physical properties; in the Star Wars galaxy, these properties are lost with the brain shortly after physical death unless one knows specific techniques of preserving them.

In other words, consciousness is information; it arises from and is supported by squishy brains, but the pattern - one's identity - can also be potentially supported by crystalline holocron matrices, silicon-based computer banks, in cloned brains, a soul anchor (as with the haunting Sith spectres) or within the Force itself (as with the Whill method).

Even if we go full-blown dualist here, you still have, say, an Arkanian being born, acquring memories, experiences, developing a personality, and so on, and even if you say there is a soul entirely extricable from and perhaps powering the squishy brain and so forth, then you still have the fact that the memories and personality and nature of that soul - one's identity - is being determined by physical happenings, and that the very definition of a mentally identical copy - which is what Magnus is capable of creating - is that that identity is preserved. Say you create an identical brain of that Arkanian; this gives rise to (or merely by logical necessity yields, if you prefer an acausal interpretation) an identical soul 'attached' to that brain.

If we were dealing with mere low-fidelity flash-prints of memories as previous examples of Spaarti cloning entails, that'd be different. There's obviously a whole lot being lost there. But given that Magnus' methods create a mentally identical clone, then there simply isn't any meaningful definition of personal identity you could create that would include what one would (quite incorrectly) intuit to be an 'original,' yet exclude any copies. There is no empirical distinction here, so the only definition you could create that would exclude in that manner would be one that is unfalsifiable and unverifiable. Furthermore, it breaks down when you consider the true, underlying nature of reality, which is why I added in 'quite incorrectly' in parentheses regarding the intuition of what is an original and what is a copy. If the creation of a mentally identical clone somehow doesn't retain the additional ingredient or soul, then you need to consider why going through a Gree hypergate or Rakatan teleporter would; if you insist the clone copy is not oneself, but rather a separate being, then you must conclude teleportation entails the destruction of one copy and the creation of another. However, when you realise that over the course of a single second the joint position of all the atoms in your brain will change far enough away from what it was before that there is no overlap with the previous joint amplitude distribution - over the course of one second, you will end up being composed of a completely different, nonoverlapping volume of configuration space - it's as if you're teleporting (except to the same spot) constantly, in other words, you're forced to conclude you're being destroyed and replaced by a copy every second (well, actually an unfathomable number of times every femtosecond, to be strictly accurate).

Or, you can realise that identity is not encoded in specific atoms, because there's no such thing - there's no definition for "hydrogen atom #1" that would exclude "hydrogen atom #2." There are merely 'instances of hydrogen atom.' And therefore you can conclude there is no 'Magnus #1/The Original' or 'Magnus #2/The Mentally Identical Copy,' merely 'instances of Magnus.' Your definition of identity either includes all mentally identical copies, or it doesn't, in which case your identity as according to this definition will be lost by the time you finish reading this sentence. Neither is really any more a 'correct' definition of personal identity per se, but I think any definition of personal identity which results in Magnus, or anyone else, concluding they are dying millions of times every femtosecond is absurd, and would be a completely meaningless definition. And then there's the fact such a definition simply can't empirically distinguish between copies, so fails the falsification and verification principles. And that's what I was getting at in my original post when talking about how Magnus, and the Sith, should have realised creating mentally identical clone copies is immortality - or, if you're going to use the unfalsifiable, unverifiable and just plain absurd and meaningless second definition, every bit the immortality (which is to say, not) essence transfer is.

 

So, a bit off-topic, but Darth_Dreadwar, about this pet theory you have about an pre-Republic galactic Sith Empire, I've been wondering: what exactly is your argument for where it went? The Sith at the time of the Second Great Schism are pretty primitive, after all.

 

Well, I theorise this was essentially the same Empire as the Infinite Empire, and that the Infinite Sith and Celestials largely destroyed one another, leaving scant remnants around which the remaining Celestials (the Ones of Mortis and the Precursors of Kathol) erected barriers of spatial disturbances. The Stygian Caldera and Nihil Retreat represented the two largest concentrations, the former falling to primitivism and being invaded once the Infinite Empire (bereft of its Sith leaders - the immortal gods of the Sith e.g. Typhojem) fell into various infighting factions (such as the mixed Rakata-Sith Infernal faction which warred with Adas', and those Rakata who imprisoned Soa and various Sith on Belsavis), the latter joining with the Knell, Kanzer Exiles and a Taung sisterhood to form the Sorcerers of Rhand. But Infinite Sith influence also remained on Alsakan, Arkania, Alpherides, Krayiss II, Onderon, Muzara and other worlds, and their dark spirits threaten to intrude upon the physical realm once more from the Chiloon Rift...

 

Style-wise, the Vikings were copying from the much earlier "bucrania cult" that began sometime during the domestication of the bull from the wild aurochs in the Middle East. Once bull/cow domestication happens, you see that "cult" start to spread throughout Europe, starting in Turkey and moving west. Veitch is probably copying the Vikings because that's what became most popular in our culture today, but the Vikings were one of countless groups that were doing it for millennia. For instance, the Late Bronze Age Mesopotamian god/elite headdresses looked very "Viking": http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mesopotamian_-_Cylinder_Seal_-_Walters_42564_-_Impression.jpg

Language-wise... I'm letting you guys duke that out. I suck at languages and you guys sound like you have degrees in it. But I can see where the Sith style overlaps with both the Norse and Egyptian.

 

I finally read it after waiting to savor it. Just magnificent. The continuity was dense, but it felt natural and immersive, and really pointed out how much depth the EU had to offer in terms of setting and storytelling. Brilliant work, not just in terms of references, but in telling an immersive, atmospheric adventure with depth to the characterization. It's a shame this didn't get to come out earlier, because it's one of the best Clone Wars stories we've gotten.

 

Maybe Ragnos was named such because by recruiting Exar Kun, he caused a Ragnorok-like event for the GFFA.

 

May the Fourth be with you, guys!

Thank you for continuing to read SkyeWalkers and Lone Wolf and keeping the thread active. (Actually, could I make a small request of one of the moderators and ask if "Lone Wolf" could be included in the title as well?)

My apologies, also, for my recent scarcity. Celebration Anaheim was a blast (and I got to finally meet several friends from these boards), but now that it's over, I finally found the time to compile the first series of footnotes for SkyeWalkers, as promised. As I mentioned, these are editorial notes rather than a reference checklist, like previous endnotes efforts of mine, but I think they're in a way more interesting for that if you're curious about the process of writing for a major franchise.

Anyway, I've posted part 1 on my blog:

SkyeWalkers: A Clone Wars Story Footnotes/Endnotes, Part 1

I'll be back shortly to pick up the conversation where we left off.

Take care,
Abel

 

opens this thread for the very first time

How did I never see this thread before?

My brain... its... melting... oh my... wat... huh... omg... woh... what...

I think I am in love.