Lit The Essential Atlas and Galactic Cartography: Official Discussion

What? Palpatine would never do that sort of thing!

 

Too bad it was Obi-Wan that said it.

As far as the EU is concerned, the Rakata are EU, and they were Sith in all but name. Beyond that, as Drew put it, who's to say there were no dark siders before the Rakata?

 

I'm talking about Palpatine's "Once more, the Sith will rule the galaxy!" quote from when he's turning Anakin. I don't know which quote you're talking about.

 

The Palpatine quote says nothing about before the Republic.

 

Given that he says that the Republic's been the ruling government in the galaxy for a thousand years previously in the movie before this, it pretty clearly implies that any Sith rule of the galaxy has to be before that.

Palpatine: "I will not let this Republic that has stood for a thousand years be split in two.

 

There's actually only the Force Demons and the Rakata, and the Rakata seem to have based their technology off that of the Architects, according to the Essential Guide to the Force. While there's more than a few known civilizations from before the Republic, only those two have been clearly said to have ruled the Galaxy prior to the Republic. Amazingly, the Force Demon's seem to pre-date ALL other forms of life:

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Nothing of the sort. It's an appendix to a book and if it is going to be cut out and then presented elsewhere on the internet, then it should be available to anyone who plunked down the money for the book in the first place. Not just to the members of some exclusive webservice. T'ain't right.

 

Trust me, you'll live even if you have the appendix removed. It's been done loads of times.

 

Obviously. But Obi-Wan said the Republic had been around for 25,000 years. I meant before that.

 

That's an assumption on your part and clearly doesn't necessarily mean it *has* to be true.

Strictly speaking, Obi-Wan said "For a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic." That could be taken in a whole lot of ways, particularly as the Old Republic didn't include a good portion of the galaxy for a significant portion of that time, and almost definitely didn't comprise a majority of the galaxy during the New Sith Wars, and finally since the Sith as a Force-using cult did not exist until 7,000 BBY, and the Sith species never controlled more than a couple of hundred worlds, it's clear that Palpatine is not talking about the short-lived and galactically tiny Sith Species Empire.

 

That still doesn't prove he wasn't speaking in terms of the Republic that he lives in, as opposed to the one that ceased to exist as of the Ruusan Reformation, which seems to be the one that matters in the films.

Secondly, it's the freaking script. Didn't make it into the movie, isn't in any cut scenes. Not even in the damn movie novelization.

And again, as I've already demonstrated, the Sith never 'ruled the galaxy' in any significant way before 25,000 BBY. Their Empire covered around 120 individual planets. That's not the "Sith ruling the galaxy" except with a very serious stretch, and the New Sith Empire fits Palpatine's line (which, you know, actually made it into the movie and is therefore a higher level of canon than a deleted line from the script) much better. Not to mention that the only Sith government prior to 25,000 BBY was the Sith species, which was distinctly not the Sith Order, and definitely not even a source of inspiration to the Baneite model of the Order, which Palpatine hails from.

 

Crowded? The Old Republic was founded only 25k years before EP4. And the Rakata's empire existed for how long before that, a few hundred years? That's just a very very small span of time considering the age of the galaxy and its worlds. I never understood why LFL limits the whole history of spacefaring civilizations mostly to just the time of the Old Republic (+ a few thousand years).

<rant>
It seems the authors and writers based the galaxy's / Republic history on our own history and evolution, just stretching the time spans to thousands of years. But even on our world, there were other dominant species before Humans evolved. Hard to believe, that in a billion years old galaxy with millions of worlds, there were so few spacefaring species, so few interstellar events before the Old Republic was founded.

I often wondered why we can't add a bunch of ancient species and civilizations that roamed the galaxy a hundred thousand or even a million years BBY, founded empires, fought interstellar wars, built wonders of technology, had a rich history like "todays" spacefaring species? Not just a few rather mythic species like the Celestials. Sure, we have a few exceptions like the Columi, Hutts and Taung that had the technologies for interstellar travel a hundred thousand years BBY. But there's little to no connection between the pre-republic civilizations and events. It seems they only traveled around a bit, conquered a planet here and there, and didn't really do anything of importance for thousands of years.

Just a few hints that there's also a rich (but little known) history in the hundreds of thousands of years before the foundation of the Republic would be great.
</rant>

 

>>>The Old Republic was founded only 25k years before EP4. And the Rakata's empire existed for how long before that, a few hundred years?


It was a lot longer than that, according to Wookiepedia.

 

Hmm, >10000 years. Didn't remember that the Infinite Empire existed for such a long time. Still leaves hundreds of thousands or millions of years of blank history.

 

Straying back onto the topic of Galactic Cartography, something popped up in my mind when I was re-reading Darth Bane: Path of Destruction.

Qordis is on Korriban talking to Bane and he mentions Sith academies of some sort or another on Honoghr, Gentes, Gamorr, Umbara, Ryloth, Nar Shaddaa, Dathomir, and Iridonia. Now, The Essential Guide to the Force states that the people who eventually became the Zeison Sha fled to the remote Outer Rim world of Yanibar circa 2000 BBY at the start of the New Sith Wars, but in placing the planet, it might be worth putting it somewhere away from Kaan's unstoppable juggernaut of doom,. Seems to me that it wouldn't make very much sense to have a Jedi refuge right in the middle of Sith space. Of course, this is all wild conjecture, as the Star Wars galaxy is under no obligation to make perfect sense.

If the NEC map is remotely accurate, maybe somewhere by Dagobah, Utapau, or possibly in the region of Bakura. I tried to rule out areas that contained Sith academies, and also avoided Ruusan and the Cloak of the Sith, for obvious reasons. Now, I assumed that the Sith Empire was more or less continuous, at least along major hyperroutes, so if I'm making far too many assumptions, feel free to ignore me.

 

Well, at that point you're so far divorced from anything we recognize of Star Wars that you might as well be writing in your own original universe. Even the "late" pre-Republic era has connections with existing lore thru Xim, the early Jedi, etc.

But past a certain point you can't use humans or basically any of the established species, locations, or tech. So you'd have to invent everything from scratch and most writers (justifiably) wouldn't waste that much effort on a mere tie-in--might as well save it for a creator-owned work.

I'm all for hints. But I don't expect anything substantial beyond that.

 

Valin, great HS piece....

If anybody's going to New York Comic Con, I'll be signing at the DK booth from 4-5 Saturday and 2-3 Sunday. And will be on the Del Rey panel from 530 to 630 Saturday -- we're gonna show some ATLAS maps if there's time. So anyway, come say hi if you want and we'll talk geography....

 

Someone show up, take notes and post them! Pretty please!

TC

 

You guys think you're going to be hitting Comic-Con this year? New York is a bit far a drive for a Californian like me, but San Diego is a distinct possibility . . .

 

With a little release-date luck I'll have three books to talk up, so I hope so!

 

Thanks Jason! And now that it's out I can finally ask: did you get your hands on the MS in time to get any of it into the Atlas?

Either way, I cannot stress enough how excited I am for the publication...

 

Yep, it'll be in there....

 

Did you guys devote any sections of the book to space borne lifeforms? And if so, any chance of the Space Grazers from the TOTJ comics getting a writeup? I've always wanted to hear more about those things, and how they went extinct prior to 4000 BBY.

 

Afraid not. That would be an awesome Hyperspace piece, though....