Yuuzhan Vong and Force lightning

Just a quick question: can Force lightning be used against Yuuzhan Vong?

I should really know but it's been too long since I read the books to remember. I seem to remember, I think in Star by Star, it not working and some elaborate description about how the Vong were like negative conduits that didn't conduct the electricity. But, I also seem to distinctly remember it being used once or twice as well.

So... can it, can't or, or both and its a continuity issue?

Thanks.

 

McEwok posted this in a different thread...

 

It's in Traitor that Jacen can't fry the Vong with lightning because he says his lightning arcs between poles in the force and the Vong don't exist in the force.

However, Jaina manages it quite effectively in Star by Star, I believe, as does Jacen with his non lethal lightning in Destiny's Way.

My own confusing explanation is that in Traitor Jacen was trying to connect poles in the force with lightning - i.e. picking his own fingertips and a Yuuzhan Vong and then trying to summon lightning to arc between them. Which didn't work because he couldn't feel the Vong in the Force, and it didn't occur to him to try method b (described below) at the time because he was kind of insane in that moment.

Method b would be what Jaina and Jacen do when they successfully fry the Vong with various forms of lightning - they just let it fly - summon lightning to arc forwards from their fingertips but don't attempt to ensure it'll connect with anything in particular - and make sure it's flying in the general direction of a Vong.

I guess it'd be the difference between using the force to throw a rock in the direction of a target, or using the force to make that target attract the rock.

But I think the actual answer to your question is that its an inconsistancy.

 

Thanks guys.

The inconsistency explains why I was confused. I now remember concluding back then the same thing, that a general arc would hit them but that possibly a directly zap wouldn't. The repressed memory idea though is definately food for thought, especially after LOTF.

Anyway, thanks again. Most helpful.

 

yeah, i think it comes down to you can't "target" Vong w/ lightning, but you can cast it randomly with Vong in front of you and it'll hit them. it was probably just inconsitent when written, but it does kinda make sense with the whole "can't feel them" thing.

 

I get the feeling that some Vong are less closed-off to the Force than others, and thus vulnerable to being attacked by it in various ways.

 

I think Jacen was making a rationalization about his own mental block. Jacen was wrong, Jaina was right. Big surprise.

 

I think of it as a difference in the way it was used. You cannot pick up a Vong and toss him at a rock. You can however, pick up a rock and toss it at the Vong. In the same way, you can send a bolt of lightning in a random direction and it can hit one of the Vong. If you attempt to use the Vong as a "Conduit" for the lightning, it will fail.

Carnage

 

I think that makes sense if it were only a mental block causing a problem. I think starting the arc at your target seems counter intuitive. I also think that if Jacen isnt smart enough to figure these things out on his own he needs to be fired.

A simpler way around the problem would be to not hurl "electric-like" Force energy from your fingertips, but to use the Force to create actual electric energy...which would easily arc to any physical conductor (such as a seemingly water-filled Vong body). This is the problem with labeling Force "powers". Theres not just one way to do things, just a similar looking effect from an outside perspective.

Edit: this would also be a more light-sided technique. Since you wouldnt be pouring all the hate you can muster down your opponents throat...you would simply be manipulating the environment around you.

 

Electricity needs two sides, or there's no spark. I wonder if it actually can "just hit the Vong." If Jacen couldn't use the Vong as something to create Force lightning, then I'm inclined to believe the Vong are not cunductive, in which case creating the bolt and allowing it to hit a vong would be like creating a bolt and allowing it to hit a rubber tire, sitting on the floor.

 

Exactly. Thats why im thinking just a mental block, or something else entirely.

 

I've often wondered this myself. Flukes of nature happen on occation, and it's plausible that a species that was once able to touch the Force still has individuals that are more susceptible to the ways of the Force than others.

 

Force lightning is not electricity. It simply doesn't have the correct properties.

 

I've never understood why that is. Vong aren't ysalamiri; they don't negate the Force. They can't be directly felt in it, but neither can a droid or a rock; moving a Vong with the Force shouldn't be any different from moving one of those. Does their Force "non-existence" extend to all the atoms of their body and everything they wear? And if that is the case, can you move a dead Vong with the Force?

 

The way I read it, their cells don't contain the midichlorians necessary to interact with the Force.

If that is true, "no" would answer your question about dead Vong.

 

Rocks don't have midis either, and that doesn't stop anybody from moving them. Besides, midis only communicate between life and the Force; the Force still exists where they don't.

 

Exactly. I'm pretty certain it all has a lot to do with mental block. For example, those Jedi that were forced to spend a lot of time with the Vong all ended up with the ability to sense them in the Force, to an extent, and a lot of Jedi did move the Vong with the Force. Too many people forget Yoda and Luke's little exchanges about how important certainty, knowledge, and belief are in one's ability to use the Force:

Yoda: "You must unlearn what you have learned."

Luke: "I'll try."
Yoda: "No. Try not. Do or do not. There is no try."

Luke: "I don't believe it."
Yoda: "That is why you fail."

The Jedi were freaked out by the Yuuzhan Vong for many reasons, and were freaked out by the things they had to do in this war. Imagine how unsettling it would be for the Jedi to come across the Vong, creatures that were entirely undetectable by one of your major senses. For most of the war, the Jedi had trouble figuring out how to interact with the Vong.

 

A rocks and droids are connected to the Force though.

They just wouldn't be able to percieve the Force... once being a "non-living" rock and the other being "non-living" droid...

I mean, if a cave can be "strong with the dark side"...

 

That's the thing I don't get, though. If a rock and a droid and the air are all part of the Force, indeed if any chunk of matter that's not affiliated with the Vong is a part of it, where exactly does this non-Forceness reside in the Vong? Evidently it's not just the Vong "soul" or mind, otherwise you'd be able to treat their body like any chunk of inanimate matter, even if you couldn't read their mind or sense their feelings. So all their component matter, every atom must be affected by it. Which means in turn that what the Vong eat and breathe must suddenly take on that non-Forceness at some point (otherwise a Vong would become more connected to the Force every time he took a breath of GFFA air). But clearly they aren't the ysalamiri, so they don't just strip the Force from everything they're near or they come into contact with.

I guess the only semi-consistent explanation is that they're a sort of a localized ysalamiri, except instead of a bubble radiating out, it's just in the area of their body, and possibly anything they wear. Using the Force to move stuff near them works fine, but moving them would just result in the Force's cancellation, like with an ysalamiri. Of course, the whole topic of this thread raises a serious problem with this idea too.

EDIT: I guess BobaMatt's answer would sort of invalidate any of this line of speculation. I haven't read that far in the NJO, but I get the impression they weren't exactly consistent as to what one could or couldn't do to Vong with the Force.

 

Yeah, I just noticed it.

Seems like a good answer to me.

Heh. I haven't read any of the NJO yet. I need to rectify that...

 

You can't sense a droid in the Force, or a rock or a chunk of metal. The Vong shouldn't be any different from a droid, in the Force. Maybe a little different. A little dead-er. Like a corpse.

 

I like the idea of using the electrons in the environment to make a bolt of electricity that wouldn't require one to pour hatred and malice into something like Force lightning ala the Sith. Look at what Ood Bnar did to Executor Sedriss in DE2... he called down lightning from the heavens. Any Jedi should be able to do that without resorting to hatred. Force lightning is a bit of a different animal than your average bolt of elemental electricity. Force lightning, if gameplay in ROTS video game can be used for a frame of reference, is the dark side perversion of Force stun.

 

I agree that, since the Vong don't have midichlorians in their bodies (hence their invisibility in the Force), a Jedi or Sith wouldn't be able to Conduct Force lightning through them or draw out their life energy through the Force. However, maybe Jaina was using balls of kinetic energy (like in the retcon that explains how Vader wielded a kind of Force lightning in SOTME, despite GL saying he is unable to use to do so). I think this power would be similar to "calling down the lightning" as someone said. It would be more like drawing energy out of the surrounding environment, coalescing it and hurling it at someone. This power wouldn't be inherently evil either unless you were using it to kill outright. By contrast, traditional Force lightning has the user drawing on the dark side to create a connection between the user and the victim and turns their own life energy against them.
Basically, I think that a Jedi could push or throw a Vong using the Force since this would be bringing an external Force against them. However, they couldn't detect their presence in the Force, sense their intent, or affect their minds with it.
On a similar note, one thing from the old Bantam days that was similar to this that really bothered me was the portrayal of Callista in the Force after she took over Cray's body. KJA wrote it as if she were invisible to Luke when they would spar and that just shouldn't be. Callista was essentially blocked from sensing or using the Force but she should still have existed within it. He should have actually been MORE able to sense her intent since she couldn't draw on the Force to anticipate his moves and counter them in advance. And eventually Callista discovered she could use the dark side of the Force, so I think she was just blocked from using the Force since inhabiting the body of another person when you should by all rights be dead must be a dark side power and therefore she couldn't use the light side while in Cray's body, because she was already subconsciously using the dark side to live in Cray's body. Anyhow, I hate when authors muck with the nature of the Force...

 

See, the Vong have to have midi-chlorians. For one, they aren't absent from the Force... they were stripped of the Force by Yuuzhan'tar, prior to that they were presumably very much Force-sensitive and were likely similar to the Jedi at one point. From all the accomplishments of Anakin and Jacen Solo in the NJO the Vong were "visible" in the Force but on what is apparently a different wavelength in the Force "spectrum" than Force-sensitives of the GFFA were usually seeing. Remember, when Anakin Solo went to his death he was channeling so much of the Force that he could sense every Yuuzhan Vong and Yuuzhan Vong life-form in his vicinity. Jacen Solo, when he fights Onimi and has a transcendent experience of the Unifying Force in the novel named after it, senses all the Yuuzhan Vong life-forms and Onimi in the Force. He wasn't using the "Vongsense" at that point.

I'm not sure what the official retcon is, but it's definitely discrepency between authors. It could also be the dellusional thing that someone mentioned above.

 

Yes, but if they were simply "stripped" of the ability to sense and use the Force, the Jedi would still be able to use their powers on the Vong. It'd be like saying that, after Nomi Sunrider stripped Ulic Qel-Droma of the Force, he could no longer be sensed in the Force or affected by it.

I always assumed that Yuuzhan'tar must've killed off the midi-chlorians in the Vong and their biotech in response to their tampering too much with the natural order of things. After all, midis are what enables people to sense and be sensed in the Force.