Lit What’s your view on Operation Cinder?

Were there any crews that mutinied after the order was given??

Sentinel droid shows up and tells the SD captain..."dude..you will go to this planet and BDZ the heck out of it."

SD captain is all "yeah...sure....genocide warms my heart...why the heck not."

However...several of the deck crew and the XO are from that planet and decide "whoa....that ain't gonna fly."

Captain gets deaded...Sentinel droid gets smashed to bits....XO takes over and instead of destroying said homeworld takes the SD there and protected it from other Imps.

 

It does seem like the spiteful kind of thing Palpatine would do. I'm not sure about the logic and not entirely sure about the details of it though. Like Naboo wasn't exactly a fanatically loyal Imperial planet, and not like Palpatine cared about his homeworld much either. Although Wookieepedia said as his homeworld it might have become a "rallying point for Imperial sympathizers"?

I don't have a problem with Palpatine having a plan like that, he's evil and all so the galaxy should burn if he dies, but the Imperial fleet must be even more stupid or fanatical than I expected to destroy worlds like Vardos, that was particularly counterproductive. Attacking rebel leaning planets is one thing, but attacking a major (and loyal) Imperial world? What a waste of resources, not to mention it drove Inferno Squad into defecting. Unless that was the point, find out which soldiers were fanatical enough to follow the Imperial fleet to the Unknown Regions, get rid of everyone else (or drive them into defecting). Not like Palpatine cared that much about having a proper successor. And Rax was looking to build his own little empire.

 

I quite like it because A) evil Palpy from beyond the grave B) shows how the Empire could have ended in a year after Endor. as opposed to a "moping up action that has taken years" that Leia referred to in Legends Heir to the Empire which I felt kind of lessened the win at Endor if it kept going forever.

I think the most apt line is Rax saying "Your Empire is dead, I have killed it." that shows the actual spiteful hate at the core of the Contingency. Nothing is allowed to survive because it failed Sidious. Very true the character. The genocidal rage also shows why there weren't a lot of Imperial loyalists left afterwards and those who DID escape were forged into something different and nastier which we see borne out with the First Order.

always think Operation: Cinder and The Contingency are used interchangeably but I think Rax -and the plan - is the Contingency and Operation: Cinder is what the military brass calls it.

I still wonder if the Escape into the Unknown Regions for a chosen few was part of Palpatine's plan (it IS his Super Star Destroyer The Eclipse out there) or Rax was freelancing that one. "Eh, I'll give them a Super Star Destroyer and pure unclaimed space to conquer as a prize if they follow this crazy plan through" is maybe what Palpatine thought.

 

We haven't seen anything like tgat, but I hope we do. I'd imagine there were at least some mutinies. I think that could make interesting stories. Also, we need a book that deeply examines Operation Cinder as a whole. What happened and it's aftermath. We've only seen one battle during it and then have a time skip in both stories. So we know it happened, but we have few details.

Naboo as a rallying point comes between Cinder and Jakku. Lost Stars mentions Imperials trying three times to conquer it for that reason. My assumption is that it's a faction independent of Rax that is trying to gain control of the Empire. I'm hoping to see these battles eventually. I'd like to see them play a role in Alphabet Squadron or a sequel. I'd assume the Imperial resources dedicated to Naboo contributed to the Empire going away at Jakku. My thought on that year is Cinder kills many and caused massive defections. A large portion of the fleet was destroyed over Kuat. Then a powerful Imperial faction gains control of most Imperials not loyal to Rax and Sloane and begins throwing its forces at Naboo. Concurrently or afterwards, Rax takes his faction to Jakku which is then destroyed

 

If Palpatine wanted to burn the Galaxy to the ground, they should have destroyed the holonet, destroy the shipyard worlds, destroy the agricultural worlds, hit the financial worlds, launch something like the Krytos virus or set up something like the Camaas incident in 19 ABY in Legends, ruin the bacta supply, set up strikes on every world government, attack Rebel sympathetic planets, Mon Cal, Chandrilia, Kashyyk, etc.

 

I'm sure there was a lot happening in Operation Cider aside from just the big weather machines of evil. Aftermath shows a galaxy falling apart at multiple points.

 

You are thinking of Legends Palpatine. Canon Palpatine very much wanted Darth Vader to surpass him and become the ultimate Sith Lord.

Darth Sidious did not bargain on his prized pupil being reduced to a broken shadow of his former self mere days after joining the Sith.

]

Sidious was not at all happy with what transpired on Mustafar. He wanted a young, hale and whole apprentice who possessed more potential than any other living being in the Galaxy.

He got a crippled husk of man that he managed rebuild with the best cybernetics in the Galaxy. But Darth Vader was always a pale shadow of the Sith Lord Palpatine had envisioned. That's why he was so delighted when Luke was discovered. That was his second chance for the perfect apprentice.

 

I think that's a result of Cinder being a component of the Contingency rather than the entire thing. However, I do think they used more than the weather devices. All we've seen is the attack on Naboo. I wouldn't be surprised if ghere were other devices used on other planets and if some were just destroyed through orbital bombardments. That's one of the reasons why I really want more details on this. The way I think the Contingency worked is that Operation Cinder caused havac, increased suffering, destabalized the galaxy, kill civilians, killed people who may have opposed Rax, further radicalized the Empire in preparation for Jakku, and weaken both factions in preparation for the final battle. Then Rax began consolidating power and working towards the Battle of Jakku which was supposed to destroy both militaries. With both militaries destroyed, there would be no one to keep peace and handle the chaos and devastation caused by Cinder. Eventually everything would collapse. Rax's modification was to hide a fleet which could swiftly conquer the post Cinder galaxy.

 

To be honest, the whole "broken shadow of his former self" thing sounds a lot more legends than canon to me, regarding Vader. He´s been depicted consistently as a far above average Force user in canon, himself feeling quite superior now to the man he was before his injuries (Lords of the Sith).

In fact, this very same comic, in its conclusion, has Palpatine referring to Vader in these terms:



Even if Vader failed to meet expectations (and become the most powerful being in the history of the galaxy), he was all the same considered powerful enough for Palpatine to seriously contemplate the possibility of being murdered by him, in order to achieve the rank of master. With the help of Luke, that was completely possible, in my opinion. That´s why Palpatine was so wary of anything regarding the connection between Vader and his son, I feel...

 

I like this being ambiguous, but yeah, to some extent I don't see the Contingency so much as a case of Palpatine "abandoning" the Rule of Two as I do it being a further extension - the whole notion of "if Vader is Sith enough to kill me he also should be Sith enough to deal with this stuff." (Not that the whole thing is about Vader).

 

It's funny, back when the EU was rebooted in 2014, one of the things I assumed was going to happen was that the Empire was going to completely collapse at the end of ROTJ, as the celebration montage is clearly meant to indicate from a movie-only context. (Especially as one thing the purists had always brought up in the 90s was that the EU continuing the Civil War after ROTJ contradicted the clear meaning of the scene.)

Then when we got the first TFA trailer in early 2015, and it opened with the star destroyer ruins in the desert, my sense was that the Civil War was going to be far more apocalyptic in the new canon than the old EU, with basically world-shattering battles happening across the galaxy as the Empire collapsed. This was also due to several rumors on TFA at the time that Making Star Wars was releasing which seemed to provide evidence to this.

And then, when December 2015 came around, what we ended up getting for the post-ROTJ civil war was essentially the condensed version of the EU, just squeezed into a single year. It's actually fairly disappointingly conventional. I feel like they really wanted to go with the intended ending of George and have the civil war end in ROTJ so the movie would still stand up as the major point, and to give the maximum span of peace, but also wanted to tie their new planet into galactic history and provide at least a small window of time to do Bantam-style post-Endor civil war stories. But ultimately I think the two above options of how to take the civil war after ROTJ would be a lot more innovative than what we got.

Though I do think it is still notable that, if you approached Star Wars solely through the movies as most audience members do, there's no indication that the civil war didn't end with Endor or that the battle on Jakku was particularly notable on the galactic scene.

 

I think the end of Return of the Jedi, and especially the cross galaxy "Wesa free!" montages that were added later in subsequent versions, is really meant to show that the war ends with the Death Star being blown up and the death of the Emperor. The post-war period is more just for hardcore Star Wars nerds who would see that it couldn't possibly end on the spot, there would be stuff happening still afterwards. The canon approach where it's basically just a year long chaotic grind I think works well because the head of the serpent is cut off at Endor and you have the Imperial death throes lasting for a year, which is aggravated by the fact that the Contingency is being lead by a literal freakin' madman who is taking orders from beyond the grave of another evil magic madman.

 

I think a lot of people who have a problem with Operation: Cinder are struggling to grasp the ideology of the Imperial and have a very Western "the government is to be trusted" view of the subject versus the kind of environment which a 20 year occupation by a military dictatorship would engender in both the subjects as well as the military themselves.

I think this is summarized best with the fact that Operation: Cinder from the perspective of the average Galactic Citizen is wholly unnecessary as a breaking point for the galaxy. Everything that happened with Operation: Cinder has ALREADY HAPPENED in the Star Wars galaxy.

With Alderaan.

Alderaan was a Core World, not in open revolt, and was a planet universally loved with no military. The destruction of the planet was such a horrifically evil and unimaginably callous act that anyone still in the Empire automatically became a monster. Vardos is a planet of fascists so anyone who objects to their destruction is an enormous hypocrite.

You can make up any story about why they need to die and it would make just as much sense as Alderaan's destruction.

Certainly, the logic of Operation: Cinder makes perfect sense, "This is what happens if you disobey us." Plenty of examples were made of communities that did nothing wrong in history other than be nearby rebel activity.

 

You're right that the order itself is completely insane. Given by a man who is dead. Yet, we have no record of an high-ranking Imperial commander disobeying it. Which is just another black mark against the Empire, because it's officers were so mindlessly obedient, they didn't even question an order from their deceased monarch to kill their own people.

I'm reminded of Admiral Garrick Versio, who turns on his own homeworld just because a droid with a hologram of the dead Emperor orders him to. He even turns on his own daughter when she, quite sensibly, tries to stop the slaughter.

Operation: Cinder works because most Imperials are brainbolted soldiers who follow orders blindly and without question.

 

That's an interesting view on what's considered "Western", since I'm pretty sure you and I both live in a country founded by traitors and seditionists, but that's a discussion for another time.(though my assumption about your country of origin could be wrong I suppose, in which case I'm pretty sure I live in a country founded by traitors and seditionists)

In universe, I don't have a problem with Operation Cinder as it makes sense considering who Palpatine is.

However, there were plenty of other choice to go with for the post Endor era. Many which may have been a bit more interesting.

As someone pointed out, Operation Cinder is essentially the Imperial Mutiny and the post Dark Empire Imperial collapse condensed into one year. The ideas certainly had their roots in Legends, especially the Dark Empire sourcebook which stated that if Palpatine could not rule the galaxy he would see it burned to ashes.

We could have went with something new.

 

Actually, that's another thing.

Fanon is really going wild in the forums here, so much so a lot of people keep assuming things are being said which are...not.

For example, Operation: Cinder shows no sign of having caused mass defections in the Empire.

We know of TWO Imperials who turned against the Empire because of it. All indications are the vast majority of Imperials barely noticed it.

And why would they?

 

Hmmm....true.

But I still like the idea of it causing mass desertions and defections, because it would go a long way to explaining how the Empire lost the war in just a year.

 

I think it's better if those mass desertions and unrest started with Alderaan.

 

Oh sure.

And I remember more than few imperials defecting because of that in legends.

But I can also see more people defecting once it becomes clear that the alliance can actually win - frankly I can see people who aren't particularly moral bailing on the empire at this point because they see which way the wind is blowing.

 

Doesn't mean we can't have two sets of mass defections and unrest from Imperial ruthlesness.

 

I always felt that this was a terrible idea, and one which says more about the unconscious biases of whoever came up with the plotline than the system that produced Piett or Needa or Tagge, or even a coward like Ozzel and a power-grabber like Jerjerrod (still less with the message of hope and redemption that, you know, STAR WARS...?). The cardboard villainism of the First Order is also part-and-parcel of the same problem, as is the lazy characterization which allows characters like Skypilot to kill, and kill, and kill, without losing their Light Side points, simply because they're not Otherised in this way. The pre-reboot continuity wasn't immune either, but there was less there, and more to offset...

The idea that the idea of freedom is uniquely "western" seems bizarre to me, especially in a movie where the heroes owe a significant debt to Kurusawa and Lawrence of Arabia ("But you know, Lieutenant, in the Arab city of Cordoba were two miles of public lighting in the streets when London was a village?"; like GL says, this rhymes with "For a thousand generations, the Jedi knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Galaxy"), and in the context of the fact that this plot-device is basically a fiction of "western" privilege ("what people who're not like us do"), the absurdity is striking enough that I think this is important enough to flag up and ask you to think about what you're saying...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

This isn't an insult but I actually have no idea what you're saying. What do you object to about Operation: Cinder which is notably actually based on history unlike most commands by the Emperor and Empire?

Scorched Earth tactics also predate Hitler's own.

And how does freedom enter into the idea the Empire is evil and doesn't need ANOTHER monstrous atrocity (which the Empire did anyway) to show they're bad people?