Dawn of Defiance Episode IV and Darth Rivan: Retcons (DoD Ep IV spoilers)

This adventure is pumped full of punny name references.

"Army of Darkness"

"Jacen and the Stalfonauts"

"The Dreams Beasts Are Made Of"



Also, skeletal, undead enemies named "Stalfonauts"? ORLY?

 

And Sith Lord names that sound like typos, apparantly.

 

Sith Lord names that actually are typos in-universe too, to be technical.

 

Granted

 

"a Force-user of inconsequential power"

Darovit?

 

Reddjak. Sweet.

So tell me, what was the original source placing Rivan at Ruusan?

TC

 

Was there one? I always thought that was fan misinterpretation.

 

I figured there must have been one in order to require a time-travel retcon...

TC

 

Howdy folks,

If you're commending here, you probably know you can now download Echoes of the Jedi. This was a very fun project. As I mentioned in the Dawn of Defiance thread, I co-wrote it with long-time friend JF Boivin, and the collaboration worked wonderfully. JF actually had one-up on me for this project, since he was intimately familiar with the Living Force adventures that were developed for the RPGA, and we wanted to integrate the adventure as thoroughly as possible with existing Living Force Campaign lore. Many of the characters and elements that we seem to introduce in Echoes of the Jedi, such as Raik Muun, Master Thorla, and the t'salak, actually come from these RPGA supplements.

So we tried to make the adventure work on a number of levels: as a general rpg adventure, for people who had played in the Living Force Campaign, and also for those just interested in some Dark Times-era lore. Of course, the adventure's stuffed to bursting with continuity nuggets that should make many folks smile, as well as some stuff that's harder to catch. Domain of Evil references are the "Where's Waldo?" of this project, though just to make sure the point got across, there is a special authors' dedication to the man behind the evil in the "credits" section.

We think it's a pretty good product. Enjoy!

I think that The Essential Guide to the Force already established this.

Probably. Where did this term Third Sith Civil War come from, however?

Actually, I think Drew probably avoided Rivan simply because the name looks almost identical to Revan.

I thought it was pretty fun.

Thanks Sinrebirth.

The bit about the Rivan holocron gatekeeper becoming an actual spirit-like entity is something that the editors actually came up with. JF and I had originally used the spirit of Rivan himself. The issue was probably the idea of having another Sith Lord in this era other than Vader and Palpatine, no matter how disembodied.

Take

 

Was there one? I always thought that was fan misinterpretation.

Correct. It is and always was fanon. There is no canon source that ever places Rivan at Ruusan.

 

Seconded.

Abel, I'd say that you're the greatest thing since bread came sliced, but frankly, by comparison, the entire concept of sliced bread just can't keep the pace. I never saw a loaf of bread reference and utilize elements from Droids comics anyway.

Also, any Halagad is a big plus.

 

How are we not mentioning Reddjak in the initial post? He was the star of the show here! Best reference I have ever seen in a long, long time. And linking him with the Red Fury Brotherhood? Absolutely brilliant. I had a quick question about that though. Is the Blood Brother meant to be Reddjak's ship from the Droids comic? I assume so, since basically all the description describes it, however, it makes mention of it as a "consular-class", is that...right? Is it a different ship then? The stats don't support a consular-class however, which makes me think that it might just have been some weird wording.

Another great bit, Halagad Ventor tried to meet with Ashka Boda (from the Dark Empire sourcebook) before being captured. Coolsville man.

We also get mention of Rivan's traitorous apprentice, Darsin.

Also, I'm not sure, but...are we getting a source for the term, "Emperor's Black Bones"?

Shadow Troopers - It's believed that when the curse "Emperor's black bones" was coined, it was at the sight of these ashen-armored soldiers.

The last bit I want to mention, is the k'kayeh dragon. Now, I'm not exactly sure, but is this a reference to the Behemoth from Marvel comics? It seems to be the same sort of beast, but it has no connection to Seviss Vaa that I saw, and it shoots Force lightning out of its nostrils, which is a bit different from the beam that comes out of the Behemoth's head in Marvel. Genetic cousins? Last thing, the Pinurquians. Glad that finally got cleared up, I was thinking that Tinketh Fo, from the Underworld article, was actually called, "Pinurquian Tinketh Fo", not that he was a Pinurquian named Tinketh Fo.

Bravo Abel, Bravo!

Are we so sure about that? I thought Abel was referencing this, which says, The Living Force Campaign Guide provides a brief history of the Sith presence in Cularin, which ended over a millennium ago when Darth Rivan died alongside many other Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, the climax of the Sith War. I thought that mention was repeated a couple other places on the WotC site, but I might be wrong. Abel is cleverly retconning this inconsistency away though, so no worries.

Gah, I'm bad at formatting.

 

Impressive article on the whole. One thing I don't believe has been mentioned...

Perhaps I'm reading too deeply or does anyone else wonder whether "the creed of ruin" a possible shout out at Darth Ruin?

 

I think you're probably on to something.

Incidentally, that Creed blows the the vanilla Sith Code out of the water. If that is an invention of Darth Ruin, my interest in him just skyrocketed.

 

It certainly fits with with Ruin's solipsism.

 

I'd forgotten one of the potential names for Ruin was Darth Solipsis.

 

Making Halagad an Almas Jedi is a nice connection between two different RPG products, and also explains his unusual training history...pretty sweet! Any chance we'll get endnotes on this piece sometime soon?

TC

 

I second an endnotes.

And, hey! WTS lives on! Shadow Trooper goodness galore!

 

Yeah, that is ridiculously fricking awesome. That's a code for a Sith who just doesn't give a damn about others, about trying to talk nicey-nicey to Jedi recruits about how the Jedi restraining them. That's a code that says, "I am power, bow down." That's like the Sith code taken to the extreme by a guy who's wholly consumed by the dark side. I love it.

 

I seem to recall reading somewhere the reason Darth Ruin's followers turned on him was because he ignored them. That would certainly fit with the whole "There is only me" attitude too.

 

Hi folks,

Yes. At this point I had just burned through my KOTOR campaign guide chapters and parts 1-3 of Aliens in the Empire, and I needed to do little things like this just to keep my sanity.

For instance, the "There's Something Familiar About This Place" encounter was essentially inspired by the fact that I felt like I *was* in a recurring nightmare, as everyday for about four months I woke up to another stressful day of writing.

Aww, you poor baby, you had to write STAR WARS all day! Yes, I know, but I'm not a very fast writer, and quintuple overlapping deadlines do get a bit stressful.

Puuuum-PumPumPumPaPaPum(pumpum)...

I suppose that would be, look like typos and sound like homophones.

Maybe, though not necessarily. If I'd intended that, I would've made the wording a bit tighter (i.e. "demented, pint-sized lagomorph"). I think a Dark Lord of the Sith getting killed by a weak Force-user, whoever he or she is, is comeuppance enough.

There are a lot of neglected pirates in the EU. Once we figured on using the Red Fury Brotherhood (which is from the Living Force Campaign), I smiled wickedly at the thought of bringing back Reddjak.

The source is a Wizards.com article for the Living Force called "The Sith Fortress," and at this point I should own up to the fact that I helped produce this quandry ... though I will gladly drag Dan Wallace into it as well.

What happened was that I had written Evil Never Dies back in 2001, at which point I had Darth Rivan coming after Belia Darzu as the reigning Dark Lord of the Sith, in line with the content of "The Sith Fortress." Of course, when Dan wrote the New EG to Droids, he moved Belia's actions up further in the timeline, and when END was to be published on StarWars.com a few months later, I had to scramble to incorporate the new dating, and I simply flip-flopped Darth Rivan and Belia Darzu's positions in the New Sith Wars timeline. Basically, I got confuzzled.

That said, I think things worked out quite nicely, mostly on account of Rivan' obssession with the darkstaff. The darkstaff had already been used previous in Living Force Campaign scenarios to literally time-warp the entire Cularin system ten years into the future (a convenient fix for moving the campaign from the Phantom Menace timeframe to the Attack of the Clones timeframe after Episode II came out), so I figured using the darkstaff to chuck a single person a few centuries into the future wasn't too far-fetched, especially when tied to the existing idea of a Force Storm. This way Rivan's obssession was consumated and continuity was believably mended.

Incidentally, aside from the time-travel bit, most of Rivan's bio included in Echoes of the Jedi is essentially the exact text that was originally included in Evil Never Dies, before it was cut in approvals. Cut content never dies, either.

Time-travel being such a rare plot-device in Star Wars, I never thought I'd get to believably use it for a retcon. Of course, if you can swallow a whole star system time-traveling on account of a dark side object (which players of the Living Force Campaign were asked to do), it's pretty much easy street after that.

 

Bah, it isn't really time-travel when you're only going forward, that's just time-dilation extreme...
(I tried to look through the battle scenes in JvS to find something resembling a confused Zelosian, but no such luck...)

Great little adventure you put together there, Abel! Love the small continuity nuggets!

 

While the whole Force Storm wormhole retcon was cool with me (in fact it was pretty damn awesome), I just pray it doesn't become used one day to travel back in time. Getting thrown into the future is cool. Backwards... let's just leave it at "can of worms".

 

Unless...causation loop. A Sith being trained by a holocron he himself makes in the past, for example, but he doesn't know it's him until he gets tossed backwards...

Anyway, I like the Rivan retcon because it avoids the potential unpleasantness of having a Darth Sith at Ruusan besides Bane.