Lit What Can Be Reconstructed of Legacy of the Force's Sith-Era Stage?

Recently I've been going back to reviews covering Legacy of the Force at the time it came out, and a few of the reviews I've seen keep pointing out that Legacy of the Force was originally supposed to be a series set in the Sith era (before it became known as the Old Republic era). Stephen Wrighton's review of the series brings up a few times that Legacy of the Force's planning stages (not just the Sith era stage) appear to have been more coherent than the final product.

While I doubt that any significant amount of prose was written in the Sith era and then retooled into post-NJO content (as far as I know, that's not how planning a book series works), what I wonder is what characters and events were converted over from one era to another and how. Where exactly in the Sith era was LOTF supposed to fit? Was it a follow-up on the KOTOR games, or was it connected to the Bane trilogy which was coming out around the same time? Who was going to play Jacen's role? Were the Mandalorians originally Neo-Crusaders or connected to Canderous Ordo? If anyone has more concrete information or ideas, I'd love to hear it.

 

Reminds me of someone who wanted the One Sith to take place before the Bane Sith.

 

I thought it was supposed to be set during the New Sith Wars era?

Anyone else wish that the Lost Tribe wasn't brought back onto the Galactic stage during FOTJ?
I would have preferred if they were brought back during the New Sith Wars.
Say, the Jedi are this close to victory 400 years in or so and these guys show up and restart the conflict?

 

I haven't heard this specifically, but intuitively it feels more accurate to me than setting it in the TOTJ-KOTOR timeframe. Was it supposed to be Darth Ruin-focused?

 

Well I guess if we keep the idea of 'good jedi goes Sith', then Ruin is an obvious choice. Revan could also be a good choice, though Revan's story would have to end either when he is captured or they would have to tell KOTOR in book form.

I think Ruin gives the better choice to make a more full arc.

 

I think the question is if Ruin is a "Rebirth" of the Sith....Again....after the tenth extinction

Because it seems like NuCanon Sith didn't have destruction after destruction after destruction ...and just continuinaly went on until Canon version of Russan and Bane.

 

What are you talking about? This talk is EU. Not Disney.

So I think Ruin would be the best fit for Jacen's role.

To me the more interesting question is who would fit Ben's role.

 

I think KOTOR follow-up was the most likely scenario, as that is the "ongoing" Old Republic Era story that was kickstarted by TOTJ, the New Sith Wars period didin't get anything until we got the Knight Errant material and even then that only scratched the surface and was still very close to Bane, having a Jedi turned Dark in that period wouldn't get much emotional resonance as with post-KOTOR II given the state of the Galaxy was unknown.

Unless they made it a Darth Ruin series...

 

For such a badly regarded story arc LOTF sure had an interesting creative process. Like, the Reader's Companion says that the character that would function as Jacen's corruptor was decided by literally making a list of all the Darksiders with unresolved arcs at that point, and selecting Lumiya from that.

Troy Denning also said that, when writing both LOTF and FOTJ, that he assumed the Legacy comic was only one "possible future" that The Galaxy Far Far Away might have. I still wonder if we'd have seen others if not for the reboot.

 

@Hamburger_Time I really don't like the idea of the "possible futures" regarding Star Wars EU.

 

For me NJO series, then the Legacy comics. The Denning-verse is an alternate future.
Though, might steal the Kilik, and Abeloth stuff and create an original story after the Legacy comics for that.

 

I mean, I'm pretty sure it's so poorly regarded is because the creative process was so messy. The "possible future" thing ties into that as well - for those who don't know, originally the series was meant to end with Anakin Solo being resurrected, but this got shot down outright by editorial, which is why Invincible is such a non-ending. I'm pretty sure that had the Legends timeline continued, Denning would have tried to flat-out contradict Legacy, gotten vetoed again, and turned in another Invincible as a result.

 

I agree, and I also don't think the One Sith should have been a thing in the far future of Legends.

While nu Canon screwed up in bringing the Sith back for around 31 years after RoTJ (hopefully Palpatine says dead.....), I hated how much the Sith got a lot of screen time after there supposed end in the finale of RoTJ, in the Legends timeline.

Palpatine returning in Dark Empire

Lumiya's Sith.

Lost Tribe of Sith

One Sith

This obsession towards using the Sith Post RoTJ was made worse for me, because we already had the Sith as constant enemies in Old Republic material. There is no need to bring back the Sith Post RoTJ, when we have thousands of years in the ancient past, to give us Jedi vs Sith battles.

Personally, content that dealt with Jedi vs Not-Sith (i.e Vong, etc) was better then Jedi vs Sith content post RoTJ.

They should have just kept....."evil dudes trained in lightsabers" as just dark jedi, post-RoTJ.

 

That was a very curious thing to say, considering how much his work was already setting up and laying down the pieces for the Legacy comics to happen.

I think the novelty is just having not just Jedi vs. Sith, but the ICONIC Jedi of the movies fighting the Sith again.

And as for the One Sith, there is a novelty in wanting to see TONS of Sith again after over a thousand years of the Rule of Two, during a time at least closer to the era of the movies.

 

And I feel that was a mistake. The Tons of Sith thing was a unique part of the Old Republic era, which is why it shouldn't be repeated close to the time period of the movies.

With there still being periods of the Old Republic era that we had little stories on (we had almost no stories set during the 100 year darkness) , I would have preferred fleshing that out instead of going into Jedi vs many Sith post RoTJ.

I hope Disney never brings back the Sith, especially the Sith in large numbers post ST.

 

This is the first time I’ve heard of it and it’s wild and intriguing to me. A story like that of Jacen’s fall would fit perfectly with that time period, in which it was uncertain how many Sith Lords there were in total but when they all tended to operate in pairs. That’s how it ended up being in the EU (Knight Errant, though I think all Sith were on their own here), how it still is for this time period in canon (Momin), and how Lucas seems to have pictured most of Sith history.

The main value of that time period is that the Sith are not extinct, but neither are they known to be involved in a specific campaign. So there could be relatively tranquil periods followed by the sudden rise of a Sith Lord and the destruction they might bring with them. Which is what we see in LotF. Lumiya is the old Sith master who survived some previous campaign and hides until she can find a new apprentice to corrupt. This new Sith Lord then surpasses her and begins training his new apprentice, but all the time the Sith operate in pairs only, and almost single-handedly bring great devastation to the galaxy.

I’d say the story even works better if the main fallen character had not been a Sith Lord who was specifically known in history later on (i.e., Darth Ruin). If they and their story are self-contained, set somewhere in the thousands of years before the Sith’s apparent extinction, then the story serves as an example of one of many that could’ve occurred during this time, in which Sith Lords continually emerged and threatened the Republic, only to be stopped either by the Jedi or by rival Sith.

 

I find it interesting editorial would kibosh this, considering the polarized reception to Anakin's own death and the downright wretched reception to Mara's. I can only assume it's because the Force being capable of true, complete resurrection of the dead was a Pandora's Box they didn't want opened, but that's just my guess.

 

They may have been riffing off of ideas first concieved in an early draft for ROTJ which would have had Obi-wan and Yoda as either force ghosts or brough back to life fighting Palpatine while Luke faced Vader in the underground lava filled castleA(my source is JW Rinzlers making of Return of the Jedi,)

 

While I don't see the need to make this yet another Canon versus Legends argument, there is merit to bringing up the destruction and rebirth of the Sith: Legacy of the Force was coming out around the same time as the Bane trilogy with Betrayal debuting in May 2006 and Path of Destruction in September 2006. Having both Ruin and Bane's stories told in that same timeframe would probably come off as somewhat superfluous unless they were originally planned to be one long series spanning from Ruin's day to Bane's day.

I agree that the KOTOR-follow up hypothesis makes the most sense intuitively for me. However, I'd have to go back and look at exactly what timeframe KOTOR 3 and early TOR's development took place in--I doubt that the publishing side of things would release a sequel at the same time as a game was being developed unless they directly tied into each other.

This is another part of the timeline I think Legacy of the Force's first incarnation may have focused on: the Hundred Year Darkness would actually be perfect to do the story of a Jedi being corrupted by some Dark Side user and plunging the galaxy into civil war. Another possibility that I favor is a series focusing on the ancient Sith Lords pre-contact with the Republic. And as @Sauron_18 points out, the benefit of the Sith era is indeed that the Sith are never fully wiped out, merely amassing forces in dark corners of the Galaxy.

 

This would indicate that story planning and development in the EU was at best ad hoc, at worst it was just lazy and disinterested. Still that’s very interesting.

 

This is why I always felt SWOTOR was a bad follow up to KOTOR even with a good long period of time.

You mean to tell me SO MUCH happened between KOTOR 2 and Ruin coming up and doing his thing....I mean it kinda feels far-fetched.

 

Isn’t there a period called the inter Sith wars era?

Something like between 3,400 BBY and 2000 BBY?

Maybe it could have been in that timeframe or the new Sith wars?

 

There's almost like 2000 years between KOTOR II and Ruin, that's plenty of room for storytelling, i'm pretty sure that's why there was such a big gap between the KOTOR era and the Ruin era anyway, so they could make continuous stories in there without being held back by the movies. And many of the things SWTOR does story-wise are very interesting (like having a Sith/Republic Cold War, more Rakatan lore due to Belsavis, Iokath, using the remnants of the original Sith Empire and exploring that culture, etc.) most of the things that SWTOR does wrong as a follow up to KOTOR are because of it's constant overuse and overhype of Revan to the point where his character becomes tiresome, and it's disregard for the Jedi Exile's story, but that's only a small part of what SWTOR contributed overall, i'd say it did more good than bad for the lore (giving us new species, cultures, explored some underused planets like Belsavis giving them new life, showing both sides of the Jedi/Sith conflict, and so on).

Plus, if you had this novel series being set in here we wouldn't have SWTOR, but having this series take it's place in the timeline, with the fallen Jedi taking the reins of the Jedi/Sith conflict instead of a reformed Sith Empire returning, it wouldn't be all that happened in SWTOR + a big nine book series in this time period.

 

And wherever Darth Tanis winds up - whether contemporary to what we once called the 'Revan Era' or significantly before that...