Grand Admirals and Emperor's Pawns articles info

If someone with either of these articles could help me here, that would be great. I'm trying to gather info on Trioculus for Wookieepedia, and I was wondering they say about him. For the GA one, I'm particularly interested in what it has to say on the Takel/Grunger/Trioculus business.

 

While Hydronium's asking, can anyone help me with the exact description of Grunger's fleet? I'm curious about the parallel between his forces - thirty Star Destroyers and the Aggressor - and the fleet that was deployed to the Corellian system by the Ruling Council after Endor (25 ISDs, later reinforced by the Aggressor and five more Star Destroyers)....

Also, is this article "in-universe" like GttGAR...?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

It's not in-universe.

 

Thanks, Quest.

I had my attention called by TalonCard's great GODV article that there seems to be a mystery Grand Admiral at Kessel; Trioculus strikes him down (with "the lightning power of the Dark Side"!) when he starts to get mouthy, but eventually spares him. A GA from Gargon later shows up for Trioculus' special Whaladon brunch, which turned out to be Takel, so either Trioculus lightninged him then made up for it (then killed him anyway), or there was another one there. I guess the "other" GA isn't addressed anywhere?

 

>A GA from Gargon later shows up for Trioculus' special Whaladon brunch, which turned out to be Takel, so either Trioculus lightninged him then made up for it (then killed him anyway), or there was another one there. I guess the "other" GA isn't addressed anywhere?<

The mystery Grand Admiral isn't so much an unknown character as we don't know which Grand Admiral it is. Fortunately, we do have a picture of him in the book. He's clean-shaven and (IIRC) strong chinned. He's not Takel; he doesn't match the pictures seen in the article and later in the book.

(Thanks for the complement, BTW. )

Grunger never swore alligience to the Moffs; he died a warlord.

TC

 

Not explicitly, anyway.

 

I'm still not convinced that Takel didn't just grow his mustache back out between those two scenes.

I don't know for certain about that. In Lost City of the Jedi, he did agree to throw his support behind Trioculus if the latter obtained Kadann's Dark Blessing, which Trioculus did get - briefly. Though I would never expect him to actually feel *beholden* to such an oath, I can see him *making* it, and nominally following it (as far as it served his own purposes) until the fall of the Central Committee of Grand Moffs.

 

Ahhhhhh, good point!

That whole Takel mustache thing just doesn't work, though.

TC

 

So Talon, are there any plans to continue "Everything you Wanted to Know about GODV"?

 

>So Talon, are there any plans to continue "Everything you Wanted to Know about GODV"?<

Well, as far as the first book goes, it's all written, just suffering from the sporadic update schedule of the SWFA. (I hear its members are off writing magazine articles and Essential Guides and whatnot. Geez.) Whenever they catch up, I'm game for more (probably shorter) installments.

I'm working on a similar series of entries for my SW.com blog, though, looking at some other obscure EU stuff... (Like that awesome Droids/Ewoks time-travel extravaganza.... )

TC

 

Howdy folks,

Well here's a thread that's too hard to resist.

As someone else has said, the only substantial reference to Trioculus is in the Takel entry in the Grand Admirals.

Bizarrely, jSarek's "mustache-on, mustache-off" explanation isn't too far from what I'd intended concerning this art discrepancy.

Basically, it goes like this. The first thing to remember is that GDV was all over the place when it came to Grand Admirals. You didn't know who was from Gargon, who that square-jawed GA was, who the GA from Gargon present at the meeting was, etc. I'd intended for Takel to be the square-jawed GA that gets zinged by Trioculus with "the lightening power of the dark side," and, IIRC, I intended this guy to be the same guy who gets iced at the little meeting following. However, I was living incognito in Italy at the time the Grand Admirals piece was finally bought by Star Wars Insider (after Star Wars Gamer crumbled, for which it was originally written), and didn't tell Joe Corroney who illustrated the piece to make Takel look like the zapped GA. Not knowing the convoluted continuity side of things, I believe Joe took a look at the "meeting illustration," picked one of the faces that didn't already have a name, and based his illustration of Takel on him. (In my mind, the meeting table was longer, and the square-jawed GA was just off-camera. The mustachioed Imperial was simply some no-name). So you can see how they are, in a sense, intended to be one and the same.

I'll venture this opinion: the common assumption that the mustachioed man in the "meeting illustration" is Grand Admiral Takel is erroneous (not unlike the common misconception that some red-skinned Sith was the Dark Underlord). They may have a passing resemblance to one another, but they are not the same. Takel, in GDV-drawn style, actually looks like the zinged square-jawed GA, and is "off-camera" in the the "meeting illustration," as explained above. Assume that the mustachioed Takel that Joe drew is pre-GDV ... i.e. he shaved for GDV. Kyle Katarn and Mike Stackpole did it, so why not.

Alternately, the mustachioed-man in the "meeting illustration" IS Takel ... and the zinged GA is merely a pretender. Or maybe he's Grand Admiral Tigellinus ... they seem to have the same chiseled good looks, and all the more reason for Tigellinus to reject the Central Committee of Grand Moff's offer, no? Of course, this explanation may be cleaner, but as opposed to the previous one, it requires the recording of new continuity.

For now, I say the matter remains thoroughly ambiguous.

Lastly, some food for thought: just how reliable are the illustration in the GDV series anyway? I would say not very. Note that the "royal guard" who gets zinged along with the square-jawed GA looks nothing like any Royal Guard we'ver seen before or since (admittedly, this is pretty cool, but that's a separate issue). Zorba the Hutt goes from having three fingers to having four in different books. (For that matter, what about Fake Wedge?) I wouldn't take a discrepancy in appearance from one illustration to the next as very solid proof of anything.

Take care,
Abel

 

Welcome back, Abel!!!

 

I hadn't intended anything *specifically* with the numbers adding up that way (as 30 and 30 independently in the Adventure Journal source piece Recon & Report and GDV). Rather, I was just taken by the little coincidence, and decided to throw it into the GAs piece, and "let fate decide." But either way, obviously there's some apparently faulty or incomplete recon going on in that report. Either the five ISDs and Aggressor were captured by Grunger en route to Corellia, or they were in fact already his, and either Coruscant or Pitta (or both) had been fooled into thinking they were reinforcements. Also, the 25 Star Destroyers already in Corellia may have been Pitta's, or Grunger's, as you already anticipated ... or mutinied, or whatever. There's really too little known about that battle to be sure. Likewise, it remains ambiguous.

I believe that sometimes these ambiguities were an unfortunate consequence of having to shorten the GAs piece considerably after reworking it for Star Wars Insider.

Note that the wanna-be "royal guard" who gets zinged along with the square-jawed GA says he's been to Gargon, yet doesn't seem to be aligned with Grunger. Would make sense if the the GA he gets zapped with was himself from Gargon, a.k.a. Takel.

Let's just say I'm glad GAs wasn't published electronically, grand moff grand moff.

Well said.

Which should be about mid-March, celebrating the SWFA's ten year anniversary.

Hey brother.

Take care,
Abel

 

Thanks for clearing that up, Abel.

Regarding that Royal Guard, his outfit actually reminded me a bit of the other Senate Guard uniform seen in the Republic comics. Compare this and this.