Lit What's This? More Droids from Handley and Peña?

Is that its mass shadow that you're referring to, jaoblias? I guess the answer is a resounding "maybe," though can you remind me where that bit comes from?


I can't seem to find any official mention of it. Huh, sorry about that must of been fanon I picked up at some point. Esentially someone somewhere explained that the moon of Endor could have had a greater mass shadow that would pull ships passing the planet from hyperspace causing the oddly high amount of ships crashing on the planet bringing new species. I guess if this were canon it could be explained by the Endor wormhole.

 

Most of them do.

It's very brief, so I didn't want to spoil that by addressing previous speculating about it.

It was very much a combination of multiple considerations. First, I'm of the mind that whenever you can tie older continuity into newer continuity, it breathes vitality into the older source. Coupled with that guiding principal, I knew that 2) I wanted to incorporate a reference to the Annoo-dat clones; 3) the Fromms' survival into the Darth Plagueis novel and the MyComyc series was worth addressing; and 4) the Death Watch proliferation of the Clone Wars TV series is an issue that stands somewhat at odds with the established Expanded Universe and is unlikely to be directly addressed soon (and given my deep scribal ties to the Mandalorians, I feel a little responsibility for their, shall we say, living history).

So, when trying to figuring out why Jabba would let Sise and his gang off the hook, it seemed to me natural that the Hutts would have a grievance with the Death Watch after they did the Hutt Council serious wrong. That thought then pretty much triggered the aforementioned considerations.

Another inspired contribution by Rich. I quite loved it.

That was riffing off of Dan's work, who had already established that researchers suspected many Abominors had infiltrated the galaxy. It did seem high time to confirm the Yuuzhan Vong connection, though.

Thanks so much, Eyrezer. Greatly appreciate the kind words, my friend.

The Ropagu connection (and the Jillsarian bit) is about as good as you can serendipitously match up two completely unrelated pieces of continuity. That said, Ropagu are supposed to be frail philosophers, and I had to justify Kybo to myself as an outlier—which I thought was cool. The Ropagu once were warlike, after all.

As for making Doodnik a Jillsarian, I was a bit concerned. The intervening years since coming up with that (admittedly) near-flawless connection had given us Gregory Walker’s “Dining at Dex’s” piece. While one of the funnest Star Wars pieces I’ve read, I wondered while revising for StarWars.com whether we’d still be able to keep Doodnik a Jillsarian and disentangle him from the heavy Besalisk association insinuated in "Dining at Dex's." I was just glad it hadn’t been made airtight.

That said, I can't fault Gregory one bit. If I hadn't known about Jillsarians, I would've probably made Doodnik a Besalisk without much of a second thought and just chalked it up to artistic license. You don't let a retcon that perfect die easily, though.

Ah, still remember that, do ya? Of course, as a writer, when it feels that "obvious" is when you know you've ****ing nailed it.

We're right there with you on that one.

I believe that was something I first came across in the Droids adaptations published by Dragon Picture Books in the UK. We'd let the opportunity slip in Polyhedron to reference them, and I didn't want that to happen again.

Take care,
Abel

 

The Jillsarian retcon was a thing of beauty. In your next article, The Holiday Special Re-Choreographed, any chance of making Gormaanda a Jillsarian too?

 

Hmm, you bring up a good point of contrast, Tzizvvt, though I assure you it was unintentional. In a way, it speaks to the force a character embodies. Literature isn't always fair to the good and the bad guys, but tends to favor those with emotive power—they're too good to kill or maim. And we keep em around till their potential is sucked dry like an old cow. And then.... Well.

Again, one of those that seems somewhat obvious in retrospect.

Bingo.

Thanks, Hav. There was room for more, frankly, but we didn't know where the line might be drawn.

And remember, this was largely done pre-Wookieepedia. Thems was heady days.

Well, I gave my thoughts on this mostly a post or two back. For specifics, you'd really have to ask Rich on that one. Different writers have different styles, though, for my part, I didn't try to talk him out of it. But again, I want to emphasize that being relegated to a hoverchair isn't the end of the world, especially for a businessman. I don't think Jann would've let it slow him down.

This may be the extent of it, for now, my friend. But, please, ask away!

Happy to hear it, JTS. Hope we gave you the best of both worlds.

We've got some things in the works. Let's just hope our luck holds. (Here me, baby, hold together....)

Take care,
Abel

 

Halagad_Ventor Now that I'm part of the JCF, at least I can witness that you really are involved with the fandom. I had been hearing about this for years, but it's incredibly heartwarming to see it with my own eyes! It's good to seen that people officially involved with high-flying franchises like Star Wars are still close to the fanbase like that. We Star Warriors truly are lucky aficionados. ;-)

 

Tackle Ewoks! I want Mount Sorrow explained without Ewoks on spice overuse.

He can be a member of (Zonama) Sekot's species, living crying babyplanetsentience that has yet to grow all over the planet?

 

I love the Fromm clones. Ever since AOTC I've been fascinated by the idea of cloned armies and workforces being not exactly uncommon in the GFFA.

 

Ooh. Yes, that would be a brilliant move.

I'm really happy to hear that, Grand Admiral Paxis. Mission accomplished.

As I believe I already mentioned, a lot of the Heep's background came from the New Essential Guide to Droids, but we salvaged what we could from our original back story, including where the monster was found. As for Screed, I think the only bit we ended up sacrificing was that we had him losing his eye in "the subjugation of Ord Gertoth." Since Jason fairly got to that bit before us in the EG to Warfare, the name Ord Gertoth was salvaged as a destination regarding the droids' adventures after R-Duba.

These are precisely the possibilities I wanted to hint at. May someone run with it and do justice to the idea.

Like the stone giants of The Hobbit, just scaled way, way up.

Do you happen to have that passage on hand, Grand Admiral Paxis? I consulted heavily with Dan while he was writing that portion of the Unknown Regions sourcebook, and I don't quite remember that part. The Russ Manning version, of course, is dovetailed with the BRT supercomputers in the New EG to Droids.

We thought it brought just a touch of extra poignancy to that scene in the Force Heretic series.

It's much appreciated, my friend, I assure you.

Thank you so very much, Kez-Iban. It was a great, great pleasure.

That's true. In fact, if you and others hadn't continued expressing their desire to see this project Rich and I had written, it's likely we wouldn't have put up the continuous effort to get it published when we saw opportunities. (For instance, it actually almost saw publication immediately on the heels of the Dark Forces Saga, except the editor in charge of the Star Wars content at Wizards.com at that time got switched out, IIRC.) But that's how important feedback is and the interaction with fans. Sometimes, that's all that keeps a project alive and writers fighting the fight.

Thanks again, guys.

 

I wish they had done something like this for Crimson Empire III. Creating a new, stand-alone Imperial splinter group seemed unnecessary and missed a chance to solidly tie the story in with the wider EU. IMHO it would have made Devian seem far more interesting.

Maybe that is a job for secondary chroniclers, though...

 

Actually, I like there being more than one Imperial faction post-DE. We see more factions being namedropped in EGTW and I assume will see some former Imperials in the upcoming Sequel movies, so it's appropriate.

 

Sure, but the point is there already were a bunch most with nothing to their name. For me that meant I basically went, "eh, whatever" to Devian.

In other words, I'm not advocating a link with the Empire Reborn, just some relevance to the rest of the EU.

 

It only received a one-line mention in the campaign “The Search for Endelaan: Act II,” on page 72. The passage reads: “The positive influence that the Spiral Dancer creates in the sector eventually pays off. The heroes are directed to Mnemos, a planet-sized computer database that holds the secret to the location of Endelaan.

It doesn’t really receive any mentions after that, other than suggestions that the players get ambushed by the enemy on the planet and have to repair the access nodes to gain the information they seek, before setting off again. It seemed intended as just a throwaway line, but the best pieces of the EU have come from single lines that inadvertently meshed well with future sources. I think the only reason I remembered it at all was because I’d just been reading up on the Silentium, and making it a planet-sized one seemed like a novel idea in my own personal canon.

Someone reminded me that his mention of Screed happened when he was recuperating in a bacta tank, which I’d forgotten about. Sorry about that. And I totally agree. The fact that he asks after his close friend while he’s in such a vulnerable state reflects a lot of guilt and feelings of loss on his part, even after so many years. I get the feeling that that scene is going to hit home a lot harder when I read Force Heretic again.

Once again, thanks for all the time and hard work you’ve put into making this all happen, and extra thanks for slumming it with all us Lit folks. It’s truly appreciated.

 

I can get behind that chronological interpretation as the most expedient in the absence of further canonical elaboration. I'll only point out that Droids Re-Animated Part 2 states that the Heep was around for 300 years in Coruscant's Braltzamir Museum of Antiquated Machinery, and the wording is ambiguous enough to allow for Broom to have studied Heep prior to Screed's finding the thing. That requires a greater leap of probability than the one you've made, but it's only one creative stroke of the pen away (cf. "Lord Shadow's Pawn").

That works for me, subject to the aforementioned caveat. We weren't sure exactly how the MyComyc stories would be best integrated with the Droids TV episodes, so note that Droids Re-Animated Part 2 also explains that Putch Gundarian was a planet-hopping adventurer that stumbled on the Death Wind Corridor through the Cloak of the Sith (hence making it possible that those MyComyc Jann stories which feature Roon take place before the Mungo arc as well).

I think you mean the ancient art of gravek-naz.

(And for anyone wondering, I did think about throwing that into Droids Re-Animated, but I wasn't sure how it was spelled, and I figured it was one of those things that could easily be brought up in another project.)

I'm not averse to that interpretation, TC, though I really must second jSarek's insight into the strong Lovecraftian influence on Moore's work. In fact, though it's never been published (and I have tremendous hope that it one day will be, as its creativity and scope is something on par with The Despotica), Cult Encounters by Rich and Joe Bongiorno touches on this quality repeatedly, and I frequently refer to this "bible" when dealing with elements of the Devilworlds stories.

Stuff happened after Traitor?

You might not be able to find any official reference to it, but actually what you're describing sounds a little to me like Castaways of Endor by Dan Wallace and Amy Pronovost.

Now if only we could access Hyperspace content. *Le sigh*

Take care,
Abel

 

Excellent, Traitor is still well respected by some people.

 

Here's a few questions for Abel. I was wondering how involved Lucasfilm has been in your Droids work. Do they sometimes make suggestions and corrections or are they usually satisfied with what you and Rich have presented to them? Are there any areas/topics in Droids that you have been limited from expanding on? Are there still people there that have a passion for Droids after all these years? Once again, thanks for all your fine work!

 

That was really very touching, Lelal. It's my pleasure, and thank you for your warmth.

Heh. I'm afraid not even I am brave enough to take on The Holiday Special while the Maker still dwellest amongst us.

Magic is such a prominent theme on Endor, I imagine it's most faithfully explained as some variety thereof.

Ah. Well, that actually seems to me like a bit of sloppy continuity by someone who wasn't really familiar with the background established for Mnemos in the New EG to Droids correlating the concept with the BRT supercomputers. I would probably write it off as a sister BRT to the Mnemos from the Constancia Affair, as that seems least silly given the identical name. Doubling down on a continuity error isn't a preferred course.

Of course, silliness is relative when you're talking about planets duking it out. Still, this doesn't preclude the idea of Ronyards fighting another sentient world -- say, D'vouran (which is quite similar to a Zonama Sekot-like Vong planet, anyway) or Indobok.

You're very welcome, and it's my honor, frankly.

As I may have mentioned, Rich and I wrote Droids Re-Animated about ten years ago, updates notwithstanding, so there wasn't much additional input from LFL. I'd say we largely limited ourselves to the timeframe of the comics and TV series simply because it was a significant amount of content in and of itself and was a sell-worthy hook. Honestly, it's no exaggeration to say that it was the emergence of the MyComyc series and Rich's and my own close involvement with it via StarWars.com that provided the perfect storm for the publication of Droids Re-Animated.

Luck or the Force? You decide.

And thank you for enjoying it.

I get a sense that there is a cresting nostalgia for the old Star Wars cartoon series. Enough time has passed that their faults are more often overlooked and their quaintness idealized. I don't know that there are any plans to do Blu-Ray editions of Droids and Ewoks, but after aborted attempts on VHS and DVD, the release of the complete series seems like an idea whose time has come.

Take care,
Abel