Lit General post NJO Discussion thread.

Stang. This really throws a wrench into my personal Legends Headcanon.

Oh well, I guess it does help explain what happened to the Lost Tribe of the Sith before Legacy.

 

I dont think that an author's unrealized plans for her character should throw a wrench into anyone's headcanons tbh, even if Legends continued there is no guarantee her plans would have went anywhere.

 

Compared to what I plan to do to Vestara and the Lost Tribe in my headcanon, she gets off lightly.

 

Huh. I'm trying to figure out how this would even work. Weren't the One Sith in hiding until around the time of the Legacy comics?

 

A hidden war then, since the Lost Tribe were ALSO in hiding. Maybe this is why the One Sith don't make a move for 100 years.

Also maybe Ves and Ben have kids, they just don't get married (deep huff of copium).

 

That would seem to be the necessary implication.

I mean if you look at the quote "I wanted to do a big book with her a couple years on, where she was basically a Joan of Arc character leading the Lost Tribe against the One Sith, and falling... in the end, it was love of her people and the familial connections that proved just too strong for her to walk away from." that seems to imply that she was on the light side for a while (she has to fall from somewhere). So I think one could imagine that she becomes good, marries Ben, has Kol and Nat's mother (or father) and for a while everything is good. But then the One Sith conspiracies begin.

Here we take a meta-textual detour. One thing that makes Empire Strikes Back effective as a sequel is that it doesn't make Luke relearn the lesson from the first film. In the first film he needs to learn to trust his instincts. In the second film, his refusal to do anything but obey his instincts is a major factor in his rushing headlong into Vader's trap. Now jumping forward a few decades in-universe, Vestara's first arc dealt with her turning away from pure selfishness. So her second arc, the "fall" that Golden mentions, should logically involve her misapplying the first lesson.

Vestara learns that the One Sith are fighting a war to assimilate the Lost Tribe of the Sith. Vestara, deciding her old family merits protection as much as her new one, goes off to fight in this secret war. Ben gets caught up in some other set of adventures. [Note: The galaxy is largely at peace, there are no major wars, life for the average person is still pretty good. But in a Galaxy with millions of inhabited worlds, there will always be trouble spots.] Vestara gets caught up in the war and gradually slides further and further into darkness as a result of feeling the increased pressure to win by any means necessary. Eventually, she relapses into full usage of the Sith arts.

If learning to value others was the thesis, and then selling one's soul for them was the antithesis, and if I swallow my distaste for Hegelian dialectics, then we should be looking to close Vestara's life with a synthesis, where she cares for others but accepts that she shouldn't do anything for them, that the ends can't justify the means. This would combine with another theme in the war, which is that the One Sith owe their doctrine to XoXaan, one of the Dark Jedi Exiles who conquered the original Sith Empire. The Tribe Sith have been cut off from the Sith Empire proper for thousands of years. The Secret War is then, in some sense, a recapitulation of the historical devouring of the Sith culture by its Dark Overlords. Not to say that the pre-Exile Sith and the Tribe Sith weren't evil, however they had cultures and traditions. The Sith Idealogues (full Sith in the George Lucas sense) gradually destroyed that tradition in service of the blind worship of power and hatred, and so on. Now that's happening again.

Vestara therefore finds herself working to preserve aspects of Keshian Sith Culture not shared by the Cult of Krayt. Unfortunately, the One Sith are winning the Secret War and ultimately the Lady Khai realizes that she can best honor both her tribe and the family she left to fight for it by remaining true to actual principles and not devolving into a reverse-Krayt to fight him. As the One Sith get closer and closer to victory, Vestara leads a series of raids that push them back, and finally gives her life so that some members of the Tribe can escape into Deep Space, and carry on some aspect of Keshian culture. (I'll say she tries to assassinate Krayt while he's in stasis, which forces the withdraw of some One Sith forces to fight him, and leads to Vestara killing either Wyrlock I or Wyrlock II before dying at Krayt's hands.) Ben also dies heroically in some other crisis, and the two reunite post-mortem.

At least, that's how I would run with it.

 

The "fall" could simply mean in battle.

 

Am i the only one who took fall meaning falling to the light side as she was dark before always?



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wouldnt be a fall then.

 

That's what I took it to mean. She mentions it right after the Joan of Arc comparison and then trails off when talking about why Vestara would have "fallen" as if allowing the interviewer/listeners to fill in the blanks. The real Joan of Arc was steadfast in resisting the moral corruption surrounding her, but she did "fall" in the sense that she died sacrificially for what she believed in, including resistance to the subjugation of the French people under the English crown. The second sense of "fall" fits the comparison a lot better.

 

As noted this was just Christie Golden’s particular idea where things would have gone. This isn’t necessarily what the people in charge would have agreed too.

 

This makes sense to me. It gives her a unique end, and somewhat of a redemption but not completely.

I just hated the idea of Luke ruling out her redemption... but I don't think she needed to be redeemed.

And going with the bad girl/boy is an unhealthy obsession in young adult romances.

 

would that war between Tribe and One Sith in OneCanon be before, after or during the ST? Need to know for... ahem... something

 

That would have been an effective way to have the One Sith as antagonists without revealing them to the Jedi prematurely.

 

Just thought about the Ossus Project, its sabotage and fallout...

Kinda reminds me now of the High Republic and Starlight Beacons project, its sabotage and fallout, subsequent unleashing of various threats/plagues across the galaxy from Drengir, Nameless, Blight and else... which do resemble the amount of Vongspawn the Ossus project unleashed likewise. The Jedi blamed and at the core of the conflict, without an actual war but the nemesis acting like terrorists/pirates more.

Could abandoned plans for one have influenced the other?

The NR/GA followed by a High Republic kinda before these setbacks pave the way for the PT revival that is the Legacy comics would make sense.