New Essential Guide to Droids

Check out this guy. The chameleon droid would work something like that, only much more sophisticated, projecting a hologram of the stuff behind it and essentially rendering it invisible to a casual observer (though not to radar, etc.)

Dan

 

Ah, but what was the House of Tund? A noble family? A lineage of Sorcerers?

For all the "small galaxy" discussions going on here in regards to retconning, I always try to drop enigmatic info here and there to contribute to the "big galaxy" feel, and to provide seeds for future reference. I know Abel does this too.

See also: Electric Caliphs of Mourn.

Dan

 

Oh, I almost forgot... Part 2 of the Endnotes feature is now up!

Dan

 

Fantastic!

 

Awesome..

About the Silentium's obsession with numbers being slightly creepy, that reminds me of the (also more than slightly creepy) Givin, with their mathematical theocracy, "First Temple of Prime", and painting math symbols on their exoskeleton. Are the Givin Silentium cultists?

 

Yeah, now that you mention it I think it's more likely the Silentium started the war rather than the Abominor, as a sort of "witch hunt" for the "unsymmetrical ones". Or at least had an equal part in starting it:

Silentium: No! It's "405628954782564813354792500.02941232498" not "405628954782564813354792500.02941232497"! Death to you!

 

Probably why they went to such pains to program Vuffi as non-violent, didn't want a repeat...

Wonder if it was lucky for the galaxy that they showed up to grab him right after he was able to overcome his own programming and begin operating the Falcon's cannons... (One of the best moments in that trilogy, Vuffi tells Lando that he just shot down two ships and Lando just sits there with his mouth open for a few moments).

 

There's another EV-unit in the Phantom Menace PC game---EV-7G7, who tends the bar at the 7-G Lounge.

Finally!

The mention of the TDL-501 knockoff model is a reference to the MedStar duology, which featured one "Teedle."

Oddly, WA-like droids served as the worker droids for the Republic in Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns. IIRC, in-game they were related to the Kaminoans---perhaps the cloners got a whole ship-load of them from somewhere?

At last that mess is (more or less) ironed out. IG97 is, of course, from Tales: Sandblasted; for some reason, it looks very similar to a Baktoid B-1 but with a goofier face. Of course, there are still some random IG droids that need to be backstoried---there's one in an issue of the earlier Republic comics, one in the Young Boba Fett books, and some others that appear in the backgrounds of RPG or comic art.

Other observations:

-There's a bonus mission in Battle For Naboo where the Republic captures plans for a new, more powerful battle droid right after the Battle of Naboo. It could be related to the development of the B2.

-The Crab Droid entry contains a mention of the "Second Battle of Jabiim." There being more than one battle could explain a possible error in Cestus Deception (or some other novel, I forget), which mentions the Jabiim battle inappropriately, timeline-wise.

-Presumably, the MT-ST (from Planet Hoppers: Carida) is also based off of the the Caridan engineers' crab droid experience.

 

I think you could also group the Xi Char in that category.

I like the idea of mathematics and precision engineering being linked to religion -- it makes sense, if you look at both as explorations of perfection.

Dan

 

I like this.

For what it's worth, I've always been a fan of Vuffi's people, and have had parts of the Silentium backstory in my head for years. In previous works, I've tried to drop references to their activities:

1) The Essential Chronology: Adult Silentium aliens spotted across the galaxy in UFO-type sightings

2) Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds: Adult Silentium dropping nano-star "babies" in the oceans of Mon Calamari for who knows what purpose

Finally, for this book I decided to go all-out and actually write a full backstory.

Dan

 

Whew! Glad I didn't pin down the date of the EV's creation.

You're right -- I should probably add that to the Endnotes.

IIRC, my mention of "the Second Battle of Jabiim" wasn't an intentional tie-in to anything, so if it works out to solve a pre-existing problem, so much the better.

Dan

 

The idea of a religious order enacting a successful business plan is also not without precedent
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/posts.html?pg=2

The article points out the benefits of such a system - no paying workers, devotion to the job, low overhead, etc.

 

[image=http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b372/Neo200567/dodge.jpg]

Close one.

 

Very Pythagorean.

 

I have to say the purpose of the nano-stars kind of confuses me and seem to slightly detract from Vuffi being the one to yank the Silentium out of contemplation.

One of my favorite droids remains the Serv-O-Droid ERL-21 transcribot.

 

But no timeframe was given for the nano-star drop. This was intentional on my part in case a gamemaster wanted to use them during a prequel campaign or something, but in my mind it wouldn't have occured in-universe until after the events of the Lando trilogy.

Wizards.com? Man, that's obscure!

Dan

 

Oh, okay! I thought it was before, and was a little confused

 

WotC created a lot of obscure droid that haven't been referenced ever again---but need to be. Like, say, 1-GM (JD Wiker), Z1-2B (Chris Perkins), RT-1 (Kyle Hunter), L4-1 (Jeff Quick), 1-4L (Mike Mikaelian), 4X-LNC (Johnny Wilson), and I-M D1 (Jefferson Shelly). They are the droid alter-egos of the staff for Star Wars Gamer, and appeared in the Editor's Column in Gamer 3.

Perhaps they will be used one day...

 

Well, speaking of obscure droids from WotC's website, I'd personally like to find out more about "Arf", the astromech droid from Hapes: Ladies First .
And since I'm on the subject of extremely obscure droids called "Arf", how about the K-9 droid? .

 

the trnscribot advertised Serv-O-Droid, but Serv-O-Droid was supposedly out of business.

 

>>>And since I'm on the subject of extremely obscure droids called "Arf", how about the K-9 droid?<<<



Though Excellence would disagree, I think the random Dalek appendage is the sum total of the Doctor Who references we need right now. I know there are others though, including another (or the same...) Dalek in some RPG, comic, or GoDV art (I forget which.)

The other K-9. (Of course, K-9 is a rather common, if unclever name for robotic dogs, but I'd prefer that it doesn't look like a crossover or a copy.)

 

Gah, I didn't know it was a Doctor Who reference.

 

It might not be an intentional one, but if I were an author, I would take pains to avoid the appearance of unoriginality and/or plagiarism. Perhaps little K-9 is connected to the F1 Exploration droid, or the GV/3 Guardian...

 

It's pretty clearly a very old droid badly in need of a memory wipe, so I don't see the problem

 

Dan, I also want to thank you for explaining why Bakurans live so much longer than humans elsewhere in the galaxy.