Species Focus: Chiss (Spoilers)

I did a similar topic with the Arkanians not too long ago so thought I would try my hand on the loveable blue skins with the red eyes. Note, there will be spoilers in this topic so journey here at your own risk... Hopefully can get some comments and thoughts from people on this one as there werent too many for the Arkanians.

History
So, what do we know about origins? Well, they are remarkably similar to humans and quite a few sources hinted that they were an offshoot of an early colonization effort that landed on Csilla. Sources like the University of Sanbra and The Essential Atlas confirm that is the case. I was reading Outbound Flight recently and Cardas's first meeting with the Chiss has him wonder whether they were the result of an early colonization or whether their forms was a simple coincidence. I found that as a nice touch after reading up on the Chiss again. Other things we learnt? Outbound Flight and similar novels indicated that the first contact the Chiss had with outsiders was prior to the Clone Wars. They were largely unknown even after that until the post-Empire era.

Yet, we have things like the Thule colony of Chiss and various Chiss running around such as the bartender in Jedi Knight or the ones in SWG. The Unknown Regions RPG book helps explain that by saying that the Thule Chiss were actually taken by the Brotherhood of Darkness around 1,000 years ago. So, this could potentially explain a lot of Chiss appearances such as Cyndra who was in the Darth Bane book. Another interesting thing to note about the law against aggression was stated in Survivors Quest to be at least a thousand years old so that would mean it came into being sometime when Kaan took the group of Chiss to Thule. Just something I thought off whilst reading Survivors Quest also recently.

Other things of note are the material recently introduced by The Old Republic with the revelation that the Imperial Agent class has Chiss amongst it. The entry on the Holonet says that the True Sith Empire encountered the Chiss during their conquests of the Unknown Regions. The Chiss Ascendancy did something that the Sith did not expect ? they offered an alliance leading to them working together in the cold war era which is interesting. Yet, at the same time, this contradicts what is already established on the Chiss namely that they had no contact with the wider galaxy prior to the Clone Wars era. One can only assume that perhaps they either lost the records of sealed them after the True Sith potentially lost the war.

Now, The Unknown Regions say that the Chiss see themselves as being a force of order in their chaotic region of space. This is further seen by the Vision of the Future where Stent says that there are terrors in the Unknown Regions that would chill the bone of the wider galaxy. Dark Tide has Jagged Fel state that the Chiss had been dealing with threats that made the Yevethan Great Purge like a neighbour dispute or words to that effect. Prior to the Clone Wars, they also discovered the Redoubt and had encountered the Vagaari but it was only their fight with a suspected Yuuzhan Vong scout force that led them to turning the Redoubt into a fortress haven if the Ascendancy was ever overrun.

Now, we have things like Galactic Battlegrounds which introduced Supreme Commander Tann who was a Chiss Dark Acolyte who served under Dooku. Her and her lover Vandalor were both exiles from the Chiss apparently but we know little of their backstory or whether Thrawn knew of them. We also have Nuru Kungurama who was a Chiss Jedi but Secret Missions reveal that he was a child that somehow ended up at the Jedi Order. I haven?t read the books so apologies if I get anything wrong there. From what I can tell, the Chiss do have some limited diplomatic relations with the Galactic Republic but its more or less ?we are not getting involved in your Clone Wars?

Thrawn is of course a huge part of the Chiss backstory and Outbound Flight indicated that he left the Chiss Ascendancy primarily because of the encounter with the Far Outsiders. Pa

 

i am very interested in the chiss so am delighted to see this thread in the forums. Thank you for creating it. will be very interested to read more

 

Well I think you did a kick ass job on that post Cronal! I dont have any new info but the Chiss have always been my most fav EU species and Ive longed to have some of them being Jedi. I think theyd make great Jedi with their beliefs of not attacking first and their sense of honor.

 

The group in the Old Republic I'm currently torn on until we know more, but I can see it going several ways, from either (i) just a colony ship that ended up in the Sith Empire; (ii) just a particular Ruling Household that ended up involved with the Sith Empire, but either in the course of the Great War or a future feud between Ruling Households, ended up destroyed, its history purged and forgotten to preserve or erase its secret, etc; (iii) the Ascendancy feeling ashamed of being tricked into allying with the Sith, mistaking them for the "good guys", and ending up covering it up as a state secret.

Of the options, the TOR group being a Ruling Household that no longer exists is probably my favourite, as there's lots of time (and ways) for it to have been wiped out, and the Chiss are not one to spill their secrets to everyone (even each other), so if House [ZZZZZZZ] thought the Sith provide it the power to surpass the other Ruling Households, then House [ZZZZZZZZ] will have got precisely what it deserved for thinking an alliance with the dark side was the way to take control of the Ascendancy: betrayal by the Sith, civil war, and ultimately self-destruction.

In terms of the Jedi and Sev'rannce Tann, I just tend to assume they were outcasts or something, who had somehow wandered into the Republic, blah, blah, blah. Their existence irritates me much more than the TOR ones, since at least the TOR group are millennia in the past so -- like the Hapes Cluster -- can be forgotten about again. But whichever person thought a Chiss Jedi in the Clone Wars deserve to be smacked. In Tann's case, I've often liked to think she just didn't even know her own species or where she came from, since we know so little about her; I don't think that'd work for the Chiss Jedi though.

 

Thanks guys I quite like the Chiss as well and they certainly do have the whole discipline and honour thing about them that seems suitable for being a Jedi.

I think part of the problem on the TOR side of things is that the Holonet entry seems to indicate that it was some kind of official meeting behind closed doors which led to the Chiss becoming allies. I do like the concept though of perhaps one Chiss ruling family that was heavily invested in the incident and after its potential destruction, all records became lost. Would be a nice way of retconning this incident.

As for Nuru, when I first found out about him I felt that they were going against continuity but so far from what I heard, I think its being explained a lot better than Sev'rannce Tann. She and Vandalor could very well be Thule born Chiss though I think some source did say she was exiled from Chiss space or something like that.

 

The official site's Holonet Inhabitants -section tells this about the Chiss and seems to perhaps contradict a bit other sources:

As remote and secretive as the distant star system from which they emerged, the Chiss species remains a mystery to most of the galaxy. Completely removed from the Republic and the Empire, these blue-skinned humanoids evolved an advanced civilization known as the Chiss Ascendancy in the Unknown Regions of space. Despite constant political power struggles among the ruling class, the Ascendancy maintained strict controls over its dominion and the civilization prospered. This is how the Chiss developed socially and technologically in isolation for thousands of years? until they were discovered by the Sith Empire.

During the late days of the Empire?s exile, the Sith came into contact with the Chiss, and what followed was an event unique in the annals of Imperial history. In every previous instance where the Empire had encountered an alien civilization with enough technology and resources to defend itself, the Empire demanded surrender and capitulation to the rule of the Emperor. Each civilization refused and the Sith conquered their worlds and killed or enslaved the inhabitants. The power struggles of the Ascendancy are rarely solved with force of arms, however, and the Chiss ruling class surprised the Empire by considering the offer on its merits and asking for a summit. The Empire's military leadership, confused, agreed.

Behind closed doors the best Chiss negotiators met with a who's who of important Imperial diplomats, including the very unusual presence of the commander of the secretive Imperial Guard. Nothing has ever been publicly revealed about that meeting but the outcome is known and now wondered about by diplomats and historians the galaxy over. The Chiss would become the first official allies of the Emperor. Their armies, resources and tax revenues would be freely offered to the Empire. In return the Empire would allow the Ascendancy to govern and administer its own planets, and never set foot on the Chiss homeworld of Csilla without permission. Not one political representative, not one noble tourist, not one Sith.

In the years that followed, the Chiss assisted the Sith in the invasion of Republic space and earned the Empire?s respect and trust as military allies. While in Sith-controlled space, the Chiss submit to Imperial authority without question and a handful of Chiss have even integrated themselves into Imperial society. Nonetheless, the Chiss Ascendancy maintains its own forces, separate from the Imperial military, and most members of the species still retain their characteristic private ways, even when working closely with their heavy-handed Imperial allies. To the Republic, the Chiss continue to be a complete mystery and the species? very existence is unknown except in high level political and military circles.

The text does seemingly contradict itself too in the underlined parts of the text.

 

Yeah I think I vaguely remember reading that the Chiss were humans that evolved with blue skin a red eyes due to Csilla's sun and the cold weather. They are such a badass group though! Id love if we had a group come soon like Saba's Wild Knightz did.

SW EU would be a much better place for having Chiss Jedi.

Hmm I wonder what would happen to a Chiss's Sith eyes with the color changing deal Sith get?

 

IIRC the Chiss were created originally by Zahn. I always had the impression that it started with Chess (strategig thinking etc) and Swiss (snowy mountains, reclusive people, ...) and evolved from there.

 

I believe the University of Sanbra or perhaps the Unknown Regions state that glacial minerals are responsible for the Chiss's appearance. The former speculates that the colonists landed on Csilla prior to it entering into an ice age and had to move underground when this occured. The Essential Atlas makes the mention of a genetic analysis indicated that the Chiss were indeed an offshoot of Humans whereas other sources just noted the similarity and made the comment. The Legacy Era Campaign Guide suggests that the Chiss themselves might not even know their origin though Sanbra I think says everything is locked up in their library on Csilla so who knows what they actually know....

 

Yeah it was something like that I read Cronal. Funny thing is I think I read it in one of the books???

 

Ah, now this is a major topic of interest to me so I'll try and contribute as much as I can to this conversation. As a matter of fact I'm currently writing a fanfic on the site featuring the Chiss (and Cronal) which I'd be incredibly flattered if people took a look at.

Yes, the colonisation of Csilla can indeed be traced back as far as the earliest sleeper ships to leave Coruscant, with it landing so far off the beaten track that the colony simply lost all contact with their human brethren, resulting in the Chiss evolving along separate lines. Eventually the cold conditions forced the Chiss into underground warrens, possibly resulting in adaptive changes to their eyes whilst natural minerals in the Csillan hydrosphere led to the eventual emergence of blue skin.

The Thule retcon was a very clever retcon designed to not only reconcile the appearance of the Chiss in the galaxy in several stories but also to explain the rather unusual Chiss colony on Thule. I seem to remember having an ?erm.... what?? moment when I first read about the Chiss residing there before this retcon appeared. Whilst the appearance of the Chiss in TOR now also explains the Chiss making an appearance in the mainstream galaxy it still helps to fix that rather unusual Thule colony. By the way, nice catch on the non-aggression doctrine coinciding with a Sith encounter. Perhaps memories of the TOR-era Sith resulted in them just attacking this group of New Sith unprovoked, resulting in an entire colony being kidnapped forcibly, causing the Chiss to change their attitudes. It would definitely be something I'd like to see fleshed out sometime.

The appearance of the Chiss in TOR is something that greatly interests me. While this can create several canon headaches if it's not addressed properly

 

Planets in the Unknown Regions and Wild Space had trade relations with outlying port worlds like Terminus. It's possible individual Chiss groups and organizations travelled to these planets during expeditions into the Republic/Empire.

 

Another great post in here! Wish I could be as knowledged in Chiss History as you two.

So I looked up Tann for an image of her as I was curious about Chiss eyes using the Dark Side, but she just showed red in every pic.

 

I wonder if the Chiss have a planet named Tamriel.

 

Well there's certainly some striking parallels between the Chiss of Star Wars and the Dunmer of Elder Scrolls. Dark skin, humanoid, red eyes, society organized into Houses bound by both familial and political bonds, real or perceived xenophobia, reluctant interaction with human empires...

I think that a general ignorance of the Chiss prior to Thrawn is understandable even with the presence of Thule. Thule's location itself helps- it's on the edges of the Stygian Caldera. The hyperspace anomalies would prevent casual travel in the first place, and Sith Space seems to me mostly uninhabited during the PT era. The only Sith planet which ever seems to pop up in Prequel sources is Korriban, and that's mainly for Palpatine's discreet visits. Well, that and the Imperial listening post on Jaguada. In which case, still, the only presence in the area is the military forces of a Sith-aligned government and some Jedi refugees. I wouldn't be surprised if the Republic discouraged travel in the region even during the PT era, which would further lessen contact with the Chiss colony on Thule.

Then again, there's this business of Palpatine apparently opening relations with the Chiss Ascendancy during the Clone Wars. Sigh.

 

Well, to be fair, it wasnt so open really from my understanding. He did launch a diplomatic initiative using a Chiss padawan left in the Jedi Orders care but thats about it. And the Chiss pretty much said that they don't want to be involved in the Clone Wars. That isnt really too bad in my view on continuity. I think problems do arise though in situations like Sev'rannce Tann or even how the Chiss seemingly forgot about Force-users or droids despite having encountered them in the True Sith Empire. Mind you, the latter can easily be rectified though Tanns and Vandalors is a bit more problematic.

 

My point in alluding to Elder Scrolls is that, all things considered, Chiss seem suspiciously like Space Elves, from their that-much-better-at-everything-than-youism to their suspiciously perfect physique. Don't get me wrong, I'm fond of the Chiss and their enigmatic civilization, but their always slender, taller-than-Human physique and their solemnity rings some alarm bells for me. Especially the slimness. Sure, credit it to higher metabolism. I bet they really just execute all the fat Chiss.

 

I'm not too concerned about Tann and Vandalor. After all it's only two members of the Chiss species and they were both killed, leaving it a mystery as to where they came from.

As for the Chiss and their encounters with droids and the Force we can dismiss it as either so much time passing that it became forgotten. After all, depite the Chiss who actually entered the galaxy encountering these things, the Chiss in their own space were self-administering with even Sith Lords unable to set foot on the surface without permission.

 

So why is it exactly that we have no Chiss Jedi at present in the NJO? For that matter why are the Chiss so few in Force User material?

 

Maybe they have already formed the Imperial Knights (or a predecessor organization)?

 

Well, on the no Chiss Jedi in the NJO era, most likely its because the Chiss have kept the New Republic at an arms length. Its only during the Yuuzhan Vong War was there any deeper relation between the two sides. Yes, there was Survivor's Quest but that was the only occassion we know so far where they contacted anyone outside their space. Plus, Hand of Thrawn along with short Red Sky book shows that the Empire of the Hand had a low opinion of the NR and thus could extend to the Jedi. So, its not unsurprising that there arent any Chiss Jedi in the NJO era.

RPG books like LECG state that there are no known Chiss Force users or Force traditions but thats an RPG element. We have Nuru and Sev'rannce after all. Yet, Outbound Flight and Force Heretic II both have it being said that the Chiss have almost zero experience with Force users. So, it kind of dances around the issue... things made even more complicated by the fact in the TOR era when we see Chiss actively working for the Sith Empire. Mind you, that was thousands of years ago so potentially all knowledge of this event could be lost to the Chiss.

 

I always half wonder whether there's Chiss who are Force-sensitive but just don't realise it.

For example, if there was a dude like Thrawn in the Ascendancy, master strategist, then it could be thanks to their innate precognition, their "Force Luck" as I think WEG once called it? (Admittedly, that was back before midichlorians, when anyone could become Force-sensitive, where Han Solo had "Force Luck" in the sense that he had the Force on his side, so to speak.)

I've always wanted to see a character like that one day. A Force-sensitive Thrawn, basically. They don't need to learn how to jump really high or wave a laser sword. All they need to be able to do is what Anakin did naturally as a little boy on Tatooine flying a pod-racer.

 

I was thinking along these lines also if they are so isolated they may not even KNOW they are using the Force without training. Theyd just think something was wrong with themselve. Ofcourse it would really kickass if it gets revealed that this whole time The Chiss had an underground Force group like the ones Luke and Ben are visiting currently...

 

True. I could certainly see it being possible that, because of their secrecy, their own Force cult might simply be so secret not even other Chids know about it. That could actually be pretty neat. Too often Force cults are so public. A hidden Illuminati who keep to the shadows would be a nice break from the stereotypical ruling Force elite.

 

I like to link Tann to Outbound Flight. Somehow.

As for the Jedi, I always think of Yoda and Yaddle: two individuals of a species apparently no one knows about, even though there are two of them on the Council. Nice. Frankly, I don't think people in the galaxy at large think much about species. Most of the species you see on any given day on Coruscant or traveling the galaxy are not going to be species you recognize - that the Chiss are notable because of their vast, interesting culture outside of Republic space is lost on a passerby who just sees a blue guy amidst some fish guys and a birdlizard guy with six arms. There are probably times when, coming upon a master and a pet, you don't know which one to address. Day to day, I'd imagine no one is mystified enough to actually get into a conversation with a stranger about where they're from, and, "My race is secret and not very well known because blah blah blah" is probably pretty common given how many near-extinct, or not-very-spacefaring, or primitive-but-taken-offworld, or my-planet-got-completely-frakked-up species there are.

On oblivious Chiss Force sensitives: I have to imagine since the Empire, or at least since the NJO era, they've been trying to figure this out. The ones who have Force users win in the long run, and those that don't lose. I'd be very surprised if some time after Legacy we don't meet some maser-sword wielding dudes.