Questions Raised by the Star Wars films and the Fanfics that Answer Them

It wasn't her parents who had the Snippet buried with her, but Obi-Wan and Yoda. After Padmé died and gave Obi-Wan the Snippet, the two of them were curious as to why she had it. So they decide to bury her with it, since it obviously had a special meaning to her.

 

Can we have that answer in the form of a fanfic, or a passage from a fic, please?

AFTERTHOUGHT: It's OK if you have to write it...

 

I keep going back to the question raised by GunraysLawyer back on page 1:

How deeply entwined in the Republic's culture was the Jedi philosophy of The Force?

I haven't grappled with the question directly in a fic (maybe someone else has? [face_hopeful]), but in the prologue to "Ring of Fire" I painted a picture of a Galaxy that is accustomed to the idea of the Force, where its existence is accepted common knowledge, but its use and manipulation remain a skill mastered only by a few:

* * *

Firestones were an interesting geological phenomenon.

They appeared only rarely in the Galaxy. Most were mined on a small cluster of moons around an uninhabited planet in an obscure system somewhere near the Minos cluster, where the dull, dirt-colored stones lined the walls of deep subterranean caves. Extracting them was costly and dangerous and would never be attempted if it weren?t for a particular property of these stones that gave them an open-market price beyond the rarest gemstones.

Firestones seemed to respond to thought.

Even the most primitive sentients could make the stones glow slightly by thinking about them, and in the few cultures that had evolved with access to the stones, their primary use had been to provide a kind of pale light. A more powerful mind could make that glow brighter or dimmer with a little concentrated effort. Magicians and sorcerers had used firestones to impress their intended audiences for centuries, as had entertainers. Rumor and a few erudite academic studies posited that very highly trained minds, like those of the Jedi, could make the stones burst into a visible flame. Most people never got to see that phenomenon, of course. Jedi were not prone to giving demonstrations.

Still, that ?flame-light? property of firestones was all the more remarkable because those dancing flames gave off light without heat. Firestone flames could be made to burn on skin without causing the slightest sensation, or on a fine piece of silk without leaving the tiniest mark. It wasn?t a process of chemical combustion that made firestones burn; they seemed to respond to much more subtle qualities of matter. It was, people said, like seeing the power of the mind made visible.

Needless to say, it was fashionable throughout the Galaxy for the wealthy to own at least one firestone, whether or not they could make it perform. It was enough that the stones were rare and remarkable, and very, very expensive.

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, the war-torn Republic?s duly elected leader...had managed to gather quite an extraordinary collection of the finest firestones. Each homely, mottled gray stone had been shaped carefully into a modest oval that fit comfortably into the palm of a human hand. He kept them in a priceless antique votive bowl from his native Naboo, as one of the very few ornaments in his Senate office. Visitors often eyed them curiously, but no demonstrations of the stones? capacities had ever been given.

The stones were well used, though. In his private moments Chancellor Palpatine often spent time arranging and re-arranging firestones in patterns that had meaning only to him. He delighted in the knowledge that the true power of firestones, like that of so many other arcane phenomena, was perfectly hidden in plain sight. While to most people in the Galaxy firestones remained benign toys for the primitive or the privileged, to the few who understood their true nature the stones were a source of limitless illumination of the very essence of the universe ? the Force. A useful tool, in other words, for the knowledgeable...

* * *

But no, it certainly doesn't answer the queston of how the idea of the Force became relegated to a "hokey religion" in a relatively short span of years.

EDIT: I can spell. I can punctuate. I can type. I just can't prove it.

 

Can we have that answer in the form of a fanfic, or a passage from a fic, please

Erm, that passage is in the ROTS novel. I'd type it up, or at least give the page numbers, but my copy is missing at the moment... So no fic or anything. Just info I got from Stover/Lucas *grins*

 

Mmmmmm, have to check the book more closely, I haven't had the heart to read it completly, since it pains me that Ani chose not that wisely and that Padme is dead, but.. I guess I'm missing stuff .
Oh, and please DarthIshtar!!!!!! the link for the fic will be so wonderfull!!!!!

Oh, and Geo, we know you rock !!! maybe is just lack of time??

 

Alethia Hmmm... I guess the novels can be considered as part of the films... still, a fanfic author fanfic might come up with another take on it... another'answer,' if you will.

Erin I think I need a clone!

I forgot to add a question to my answer above. Here goes:

If it's true that Vader was destined to become more powerful than Palpatine himself (per ROTS), why was he on Tarkin's leash in ANH? Was the whole 'more powerful' thing just another of Palpatine's lies, or did the severe damage Vader sustained undermine his ultimate potential?

 

On "How did Vader get rescued from Yavin?" I wrote a little piece on the battle. It doesn't answer it directly, but my theory is he eventually regained control of his ship and that it was equipped with at least a short-range hyperdrive, allowing him to go somewhere and make repairs. Here's the paragraph on his TIE fighter:

It was of the basic TIE design, with the distinctive spherical cockpit module and winglike vertical radiator panels, but with several differences. Vader had designed the craft himself and had it custom built by Seinar with his requested design modifications: A hyperdrive and internal nav computer for hyperspace travel. Shielding and composite alloy armor plate to make the craft survivable. Refinements to the cockpit layout and ergonomics. Redesigned wing panels, angled inwards at the top and bottom to increase atmospheric stability and handling. More powerful ion engines, to handle the increase in weight. It was not as maneuverable as the standard TIE but its other attributes more than compensated, and suited Vader?s combat style. Seinar called it the TIE X-1; everyone else called it Lord Vader?s ship.

My question:

If the enlisted Stormtroopers were clones, where did the non-clone officer corps of the ground forces and Imperial Fleet come from if there was no military until the Clone Wars? Were they being trained secretly to take command following the liquidation of the Jedi?

-Tim

 

This one just came to me this afternoon and has been plaguing me ever since:

In ANH, Artoo and Threepio hide in a Mos Eisley building to avoid the Stormtroopers who are after them. The troopers knock on the door, and when it doesn't open, one of them says, "If it's locked, move onto the next." Why in the Core did Stormtroopers take the policy of leaving doors locked if they were after something? It seems so anti-Imperial to me. Was this particular stormtrooper a little kinder than most? Was he just lazy? Was there some event that brought this policy into place? It's driving me nuts just thinking about it.

 

EDIT:

Apparently I made a mistake , could someone erase this message please??, not the next one.
Thanks

 

Mmmmmm I have a question... does the fanfics have to be here???, 'cause if not I know the perfect one to answer Geo3's question

But is not here in the boards, is at FF.net, so let me know if it's ok, so I can post the link?? or ask me in a PM , hugs back !!! be well and take care

 

Erin_21 But is not here in the boards, is at FF.net, so let me know if it's ok, so I can post the link?? or ask me in a PM

Good question! I don't know the answer, although I'd say if it's someone else's story and you don't have their permission, probably not. Still, I've asked a mod for advice. Stand by.

EDIT: To be on the safe side, don't post the link here. PM's should be fine, for the curious...

 

Splintered Steel answers both that and how did Vader figure out Luke was his son. (Since he's already looking for "young Skywalker" at the beginning of ESB, he obviously knows he's got offspring. I don't buy this edited DVD version of the Vader/Palpatine discussion in ESB since it makes Vader sound like he didn't know he was searching for his own child--he's not a blasted idiot! )

As Alethia pointed out, her parents didn't know the significance of it. It was a cut scene from RotS which, of course, found its way into the novel. [Jedi Mind Trick]Go out and buy the novel today....[/Jedi Mind Trick] I, however, didn't like the idea that no one had a clue as to its significance and thought, "Oh, well! She seemed to think it was important!" and thus buried her with it based solely on that. That just seems...silly. So here's my take of it in part two of These Whispering Sounds. I figured if anybody recognised the carving on the snippet, Obi-Wan would. He spent the most time with Anakin in foxholes or wherever GFFA generals spend their time during war....

 

On the ESB DVD Director?s Commentary George Lucas stated that Anakin Skywalker had lost a lot of his power in the Force due to the massive injuries he sustained that put him in the armour.

This is expanded on in the RotS novelisation where Lord Vader wakes up:

---

And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.
[hr]
Another point-of-view is that it isn?t so much that Vader is weak, it is more that Tarkin and the Tarkin family are one of Palpatines oldest allies, having worked with him (in [i]Cloak of Deception[/i] for example) even before Palpatine became Supreme Chancellor (let alone Emperor) and so Grand Moff Tarkin was simply important enough that he was one of the (very) few people in the Empire who could give Vader orders.

According to [i]Force Heretic: Remnant[/i] before Gilad Pellaeon was in the Imperial Fleet he was in the Judicial Department of the Republic (the people with the blueish uniforms and red Republic Cruiser who got killed (without retribution) by the Trade Federation blowing up ?the Ambassador?s ship?) so we know that at least some of the naval officers were drawn from that source.

My opinion is that the Judicial Department was renamed to the Republic / Imperial Starfleet (having been renamed to Judicial Department from Republic Starfleet for PR purposes so they could say they had no military) but Thrawn McEwok did a story (which I can?t find, sorry) where he suggested that there was a separate organisation which for some reason, even under the Republic, was called the Imperial Starfleet (thus allowing for Pellaeon to have been in the Imperial Starfleet for fifty years at the time of the Thrawn Trilogy).

There would also be other system police forces as if there is enough piracy for the Trade Federation to be able to justify arming their ships then there is enough piracy that it needs to be fought.

Plus there were still wars going on despite the efforts of the Republic, which shows both that planetary militaries existed and that there was a pool of military officers to be drawn from by both sides (though the Republic were nice enough to not treat their new Generals the same way as the Separatists treated Grievous :p).

I suppose, since I mentioned it in the Deus Ex Machina thread, I could mention that I asked the question [i]What happened to the surviving Stormtroopers on Endor?[/i] and answered that in [link=http://boards.theforce.net/The_Saga/b10476/15125645]The Emperor?s Forgotten[/link].

I also asked the question [i]Why can?t the Jedi sense Palpatine is Darth Sideous?[/i] and answered that in [link=http://boards.theforce.net/The_Saga/b10476/15266270]Soul?s death, Emperor?s birth[/link].

(But since those, which were my first two stories here, I haven?t been asking or answering.)

Er?question?aha!
What happened to the Jedi Temple? At the end of Return of the Jedi we actually see the Jedi Temple (or an identical building) during the celebration scene, so what did people think it was? I?ve seen different ideas.

How did Chief Bast (Death Star bloke who was seen in the Holiday Special) manage to escape the Death Star? Could make a good story with him realising the danger, being fobbed off by Tarkin, and making the difficult decision to make his own escape.

 

I found another answer to Geo3's question!! and is here on the board

Sadly is also incomplete but is such a great story!! Rebirth of the Light - The Years Between by Shinning_Star http://boards.theforce.net/The_Saga/b10476/11998906/p23
This page is where I think there is a similar explanation, , hope you are going to like it!!, I emailed the author not so long ago, and she's ok, just busy, maybe she'll have time soon!! at least I hope so , be well and take care.

 

Great thread! Hmmm, lesse what I can add to it...

Erin: Page 411:

He stood in the hall outside, looking down at what she had pressed into his hand. It was a pendant of some kind, an amulet, unfamiliar sigils carved into some sort of organic material, strung on a loop of leather. In the Force, he could feel traces of the touch of her skin.

When Yoda and Bail came for him, he was still there, staring at it.

"She put this in my hand--" For what seemed the dozenth time this day, he found himself blinking back tears. "--and I don't even know what it is."

"Precious to her, it must have been," Yoda said slowly. "Buried with her, perhaps it should be."

Obi-wan looked down at the simple, child-like symbols cared into it, and felt from it in the Force souring echoes of transcendent love, and the bleak, black despair of unendurable heartbreak.

"Yes," he said. "Yes. Perhaps that would be best."



How does a child get to be Queen of the Naboo? What is it like for her to be Queen? What is the history/tradition behind her gowns, the face painting, the altered voice and accent?

The tradition of the gown and face painting, I think, are in the SW databank EU.

The Queen's elaborate gowns and make-up were steeped with historic symbols important to the Naboo. Her white painted face had stylized beauty marks on her cheeks to display symmetry, and the paint that divided her lower lip was called the "scar of remembrance", which marked Naboo's time of suffering before the Great Time of Peace.

Not real specific, but I'm sure there are some fics out there that I need to find answering this question.

Handmaidens ? I have a million questions. Do they serve out of honor or is it a civil service job? What?s their training like? Are they really bodyguards, too? Are they all friends or do they secretly hate each other?


Hmm... well the Episode 1 handmaiden questions are being answered by scores... we're currently discussing handmaidne fanfic over in community, actually, so I still remember some of the stories...

Jazzy Jedi's AU Handmaiden Stories were probably the first ones. OK, they're AU, but they don't really get AU until really far down the road. Until then, everything is pretty imaginably canon.

Handmaiden Eirtae's A long Handmaiden Fanfic might be more canon, and really goes in depth to every handmaiden.

There are lots of others, but those two are "firsts" in my book.

Sadly, though, handmaidens from the other episodes seem still in the dark. Though there are some AOTC handmaiden stories at:

Anyanka's Of dreams and Duty goes into Dorme's childhood and beyond. Unfinished, but charactor analysis nontheless.

Another one I liked was Pandora's Corde's Story, which I thought really went into Corde's psyche really well.

4. What would Obi-Wan have done if the Council had forbidden him to train Anakin?

JediMasterRev's The Naboo Chronicles tackled that question interestingly.

 

I'm not sure this qualifies as a question...more of a confliction, as it deals with the films and the books. Before GL started working on the prequels, Kevin J. Anderson stated in the Jedi Academy Trilogy that Qui Xux had designed the Death Star (and the World Devastators and the Sun Crusher) in the Maw Installation. But in AOTC, Count Dooku had a holo-model of the Death Star on Geonosis. Is there anything that explains this (possibly) 'minor' inconsistency?

Saucy_Chik

 

I don't know of a fan fic for it, but I may have a theory.*

The hologram Tyrannus has on Geonosis looks pretty simple to me: big ball, little saucer, trench around circumfrence. Those plans may have been a basic sketch. Qui Xux may have contributed to the more detailed construction.

And/or, Qui could have actually made those plans. It's likely many of the Separatist organizations, such as the Banking Guild, the Techno League, and the Geonosians, contributed to the project. Xux may have worked for one of them in the design of the Death Star.

*Note: I'm afraid I don't know much about Qui Xux. If she's a lot younger than, say, 40 around the Battle of Yavin, my theory is flawed.

 

SWTC goes into quite a lot of detail (as is Curtis Saxton?s wont) on the differences between various Death Stars or depictions of them. The point being that the ?Death Star? seen at the end of RotS is different from the Death Star in ANH, and therefore modifications have been made to the design (with the RotS ?Death Star? having either been modified into or replaced by the ANH).

Therefore although the original concepts and designs can?t be the work of the Maw Installation (since the Separatists were manipulated into refining Raith Seinar?s designs (as seen in Rogue Planet)) they could still have done a huge amount of work on refining them and this could be retconned as what the pre-prequel EU meant.

 

That makes sense, actually. And now that I've pulled out my copy of the trilogy, it does say that she only designed most of it (Jedi Search, pg 270), so although she was too young to have designed whatever it was Dooku had on Geonosis, she may have made the additional modifications. Or maybe the holomodel was just that - a model - and she still did the design work. Or she could have been the one to develop the modifications. So many possibilities...

It'd be an interesting story, in any case.

Thanks, Aerex_Matare, _JM_!

Saucy_Chik

 

: it does say that she only designed most of it

I vaguely recall her asking questions about the Death Star's hyperdrive like she wasn't aware they had ever actually made that work.

 

I believe she also had some sort of memory loss/amnesia thing going on.

Here's a question: was Qui-Gon's appearance to Yoda in RotS his first time appearing as a Force appirition, or had he done it before? And why did he appear to Yoda first instead of Obi-Wan?

 

Here's a question: was Qui-Gon's appearance to Yoda in RotS his first time appearing as a Force appirition, or had he done it before? And why did he appear to Yoda first instead of Obi-Wan?

Qui-Gon's voice was in AOTC just as Anakin killed all the Tusken Raiders. He had been in communication with Anakin after Jinn's death (starting in Rogue Planet). Obi-Wan had consistantly ignored his attempts at communication since people joined the Force and that was that. So it would make sense that Qui-Gon contact Yoda since Yoda would listen and Obi-Wan would not.

 

Good questions, everyone! But I'm still hoping we can keep the answers in the form of fics - you know, the whole "show, don't tell" thing that we're all too familiar with. So no direct answers, please - only fics or excerpts from fics!

I've found an answer to my question about Handmaidens... here are two very original stories by Pandora26 called Corde's Story, and Verse, trnasformed into a flower....

Here's my new question:

How did Palpatine become a Sith?

 

Hmmm... Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by LLL? Says Palpy's grandfather was a sith... so it was hereditary.

 

I don't have any answers, but I do have a few questions.

In AOTC, Padme tells Anakin that she wasn't the youngest queen ever elected. I can't help but wonder about the queen who was the youngest. Who was she? How old was she when she was elected?

I also wonder about Queen Jamillia. What was it like to rule after such a popular leader? And she doesn't serve a second term. Did she choose to leave office? Or did she run against Apailana, the queen in Episode III, and lose?