Been years since I wrote one of these, but I have plenty of material to work with for several entries in this blog series. The topic today is on the duel between Darth Sidious and Darth Maul and Savage Opress in The Clone Wars episode "The Lawless."

In my experience, this fight is not nearly as misconstrued as the two previous blogs I wrote of this kind, but I do often see some users present this fight as depicting Maul, or even occasionally Savage, being in Sidious' power and skill tier, which the events themselves fail to support. This fight is so clearly and so unfairly played in Palpatine's favor, I honestly can't fathom how it could be misunderstood to highlight Maul's formidability. But since that interpretation is often what we find ourselves dealing with, let's dissect it point by point.

To begin, here is a clip of the duel as it occurred on-screen in TCW. Having sensed Maul's exploits on Mandalore, Sidious arrives on the planet in order to cement his own position in the Sith ranks to the exclusion of Maul and Savage who claimed the Sith title apart from Sidious' authorization. He tells Maul that his newly formed organization on Mandalore over the Mandalorian armies and the criminal cartels, as well as his assuming the title of Sith Lord in spite of Sidious and Tyranus, is an affront to Sidious' own plans for galactic conquest and calls him a "rival." He then fights Maul and Savage, killing Opress, and defeating and capturing Maul alive.

There are several reasons why certain scenes in this duel are, to be perfectly blunt, doctored to portray Maul and Savage as posing a serious threat to Sidious in the course of this encounter. Among them are the fact that both Savage and Maul each landed one unarmed strike on Sidious. Savage rammed him, and Maul later kicked him in mid-air. This does absolutely nothing to gain them any advantage though, especially in Savage's case. Where Maul and Savage only each hit Sidious once, Sidious connected no less than four unarmed strikes on Savage before killing him and two unarmed strikes on Maul, as well as a Force Push mid-duel, and on top of that, the hits Sidious connected inflicted more lasting harm. His second blow to Savage sent him flying backward and lying face-down on the ground until he struggled to regain his composure some seconds later, and the last roundhouse that Sidious threw at Savage stunned him and left him open to a stab with both lightsabers that Sidious immediately ended the contest with. On Maul's side, Sidious succeeded in temporarily knocking Maul unconscious with a telekinetic blast until he had mortally wounded and discarded Savage. On that note, I could also mention the telekinetic control Sidious exhibited at the beginning and end of this battle, where he pins Maul and Savage to a wall against their will and lets them down of his own volition and later bashes Maul into a wall and the floor, both of which show just how easily he could have beaten both with the Force alone had he not elected to duel them for his own entertainment.

By contrast, Maul and Savage's attacks were hollow attempts to injure or incapacitate Sidious. Even the horn-ram that Savage launched Sidious off the balcony with dealt absolutely no visible or implicit injury to him; this is significant because that same horn-ram was crippling against Adi Gallia in the duel between her and Savage on Florrum in the episode "Revival." For that matter, Sidious even saw Savage charging toward him and neglected to evade him, and all this attack served to accomplish was allow Sidious to Force pull both the Zabrak brothers off the balcony against their will down into a lower arena. In short, Sidious capitalized on being rammed by Savage by changing the location of battle into a different chamber, and it benefited the brothers not at all.

Concerning the kick Maul connected on Sidious in the last phase of the duel, that also knocked Sidious away but caused him little if any real damage. I give Maul credit for succeeding to hit Sidious at all and consider it a good display of fighting skill on his part to maneuver Sidious into the air so that he could deliver his subsequent kick (although Sidious was toying with Maul as I'll be covering shortly), but once again, this resulted with Maul and Sidious just closing the gap formed between them by Maul's kick and ending the duel with a saberlock. On account of this, the fact that Maul and Savage hit Sidious in no way reduces the overwhelming advantage he enjoyed over them throughout the duration of the entire duel. Their blows failed to procure them an edge during the fight, they were shrugged off by an unharmed Sidious, and they were returned with more than twice as many attacks that Sidious managed to batter them with, to say nothing of the fact that Sidious' blows were more forceful and harmful.

To address another point championed to attribute an advantage to Maul and Savage, there is this behind-the-scenes clip "Wrath of the Sith" in which Dave Filoni, the supervising director of TCW, remarks that Savage's performance against Sidious was better than the Jedi Council members that Sidious killed in Revenge of the Sith. "You know, getting taken out by Sidious is pretty good, ranks up there. He puts up a better fight than the Jedi Council did, I'll say that much for him" (1:24-1:33). To that, I agree; Savage did put up a better fight than the Jedi Council did. Not very hard to do considering that the official starwars.com, on which "Wrath of the Sith" is posted, also said that Palpatine slew Saesee Tiin, Agen Kolar, and Kit Fisto before any of them could react.

Before the Jedi could react, Palpatine sprang into action and killed all of them except Mace Windu.

--Taken from starwars.com, Palpatine Biography Gallery, Image 26 of 29

The reality is, Savage fought for a longer period of time with fewer allies against Sidious; therefore, he put up a better fight than the Jedi Council did. Filoni is absolutely right. Problem is, the fact that Sidious dispatched Savage with relative ease and the fact that Savage fared better than the three Council members did are not incompatible with one another. In the clip I posted of the duel itself, after Sidious pushes Maul away, he then leaps around Savage and dodges his lightsaber strokes with his own two blades withdrawn, then proceeds to outfight Savage and kill him. During this brief fight, Savage evinces noticeable strain to keep up as he repeatedly grunts and vainly flails his blades but never comes close to slashing Sidious. So not only did Palpatine tool Savage, which was conveyed very plainly, but Filoni's statement that Savage "put up a better fight than the Jedi Council did" is not tantamount to Savage actually putting up a good fight.

The key to interpreting this quote properly is in understanding that this a statement of comparison between Savage and the Jedi Council members, not Savage and Sidious. Had Filoni stated that Savage "put up a good fight against Sidious," that would mean what it clearly says, but instead he stated that Savage "puts up a better fight than the Jedi Council did." Savage performed better than the Council members, but the Council members themselves performed terribly. Concluding from Filoni's statement, "Savage did better than the Jedi Council," that "Savage put up a good fight against Sidious" is both non-sequitur and fails to listen to/read Filoni's statement for what it is. To summarize in one sentence: Filoni never said that Savage put up a good fight against Sidious, only that he fought better than the Jedi Council members.

Not to mention, if we want to judge the succession of events in this fight based on Filoni's commentary, then I offer the following citations as more accurate descriptions of the play by play.

Dave Filoni: Well, that was definitely one of our biggest challenges, Maul and Savage versus Sidious, because we wanted to have an epic lightsaber fight. We hadn’t really had a big one in awhile, and I really thought this is our chance to show everyone why Sidious is the Sith Lord. Why no one can compete with this guy.

At the end of the day, with Sidious, nobody was really going to be able to touch him. He had to be the strongest, most dangerous guy. And you could see at a certain point, he just puts his lightsabers away at the end of the fight and says, “I’m done with this,” and goes in and mauls Maul, so to speak.

Sidious can’t show up and have people walk out of the room. It’s just not gonna happen. As soon as he shows up, people are going to die, bad things are going to happen. Yoda barely escapes [when he fights Sidious in Revenge of the Sith]. So, Savage had to pay the price, and I felt bad for Clancy [Brown] because he did such a great job as Savage. But yeah, he had to go.

--Taken from starwars.com, Interview: Dave Filoni on Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season Five, Part 2

It’s nice to see the villain of Star Wars really kick the butt of other villains you think are powerful, which helps establish Sidious as “Oh, yeah. This is why he is the Sith Lord.”

IGN: He really always does have the upper hand in that fight.

Filoni:And he’s enjoying himself while he does it.

IGN: And there are some other notable beats there at the end, besides, obviously, the death of Savage. There’s the fact that Maul begged for his life. I'm curious, should we take that at face value or was it a ruse?

Filoni: Yeah, I think that’s pretty literal at that point. I think that what you understand about Maul is that he is still not nearly as powerful as Sidious. Perhaps in his time away and his own ambition, like a villain, he got carried away with himself. He’s not offering proper respect to his master, Sidious, and he’s going to pay the price for that.

It’s one of those things where you sit around the table and everybody just agrees that if Sidious shows up and confronts these two guys, people aren’t leaving the room. That just doesn’t happen. You don’t have the main villain from the series show up and people just run away and escape.

--Taken from ign.com, Star Wars: The Clone Wars' Dave Filoni Talks about the Death Watch/Darth Maul Arc and the Casualties Along the Way Page 2 of 3

Isolating one comment from Filoni and holding that as the rule of the fight when there is a wealth of other comments from him pointing to a different conclusion is an obscurantist's argument. According to Filoni during his interviews, "no one can compete with [Sidious]," "nobody was really...able to touch him," "[Sidious] really always does have the upper hand," "he's enjoying himself while he does it," and "Maul...is still not nearly as powerful as Sidious." The sheer superfluity of Filoni's commentary on this fight should suffice to drive the point home. His statement that Savage "puts up a better fight than the Jedi Council did" in no way relegates his redundancy in saying that Sidious was dominating the fight from start to finish, because all he suggested in that comment is that Savage fought better than the Jedi Council, not that he fought well against Sidious. All available interviews with Filoni, and even the "Wrath of the Sith" commentary itself, punctuates Sidious' supremacy in this fight. Therefore, the theory that according to Filoni, Maul and/or Savage pressed Sidious during this fight is wrong.

The next point is cut content from the scene. During an unfinished deleted scene from the duel, which was posted on ign.com, Sidious fires Lightning at Maul and Savage, which they parry with their lightsabers, and then Maul pushes Sidious against a wall. In response, Sidious retrieves his footing by collapsing a chandelier over him, which Maul rolls away from; then they resume the duel. Of course, to anyone with some grasp of SW canonicity, the flaw here is both self-evident and hilarious; cut content is non-canon. No further refutation is really required than that, but if I wanted to thoroughly dispense with that clip being used in Maul and Savage's defense, I would point out that it flies in the face of Filoni's various statements that no one could compete with or touch Sidious and that Maul is nowhere near as powerful as Sidious is, even disregarding the fact that this deleted scene contradicts the opening salvo in the fight where Sidious subdues Maul and Savage simultaneously by holding them against a wall with the two of them being incapable of escaping. Regardless, non-canon content is not an acceptable form of proof. In canon, we see the exact opposite, where Sidious overpowers the brothers by pushing them against a wall before the duel began.

Finally, to solidify my general point, here are two pages from starwars.com that finalize Sidious' ease of victory. The first is this statement, which stresses that Sidious "never waver[s] from his position of superiority."

Meanwhile, Sidious duels the Sith brothers, never wavering from his position of superiority.

--Taken from starwars.com, The Lawless Episode Gallery, Image 21 of 23

Then, we have been provided with this event summary that clarifies in the simplest terms just how much Sidious surpasses Maul and Savage.

Upon arrival, Sidious declared the Sith brothers to be his rivals. In an intense duel, he killed Savage and toyed with Maul, ultimately deciding not to kill his former apprentice.

--Taken from starwars.com, Darth Maul Biography Gallery, Image 33 of 33

According to this review of what transpired, Sidious first killed Savage and then afterward "toyed with Maul." To any dissenting views that Sidious had done anything on Mandalore besides toy with Maul and Savage, this one line precludes any other possibility. What's most important about this caption of the image is the order of description; first, it says that Sidious killed Savage, then says he toyed with Maul. In other words, even when Maul was enraged at Savage's death and drew the darksaber in addition to his standard lightsaber, and he and Sidious fought one another, Sidious was still toying with him.

And with that, this whole debate has been settled. Sidious stands comfortably above both Maul and Savage combined.

Now, to further elucidate on this duel, I will post the sequence as described in the novelization Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy, which to my understanding is no longer part of current SW Canon. However, for the purpose of Legends/EU information, this book also reinforces how minimal an effort it was on Sidious' part to thrash the brothers.

The unmarked shuttle landed on the royal palace’s platform, reserved for Mandalore’s rulers and their most important advisers. The ramp lowered and a hooded figure in dark robes descended. The commandos rushing to intercept him reached for their throats, gagging, and the cloaked figure swept past them without a sideways glance, gaze fixed straight ahead.

The feeling had begun as a faint stirring in the Force, like the tiniest ripple of something moving slowly through deep water, far away but drawing steadily closer. It intensified, until it felt like the Force itself was roiling, heaving like the sea in the grip of an enormous storm.

“I sense a presence,” Maul warned Savage. “A presence I haven’t felt since...”

And then Maul knew.

“Master,” he said, leaning forward on the throne.

The commandos guarding the royal chamber reached for their throats. As Maul watched, an unseen forced lifted them high in the air, then slammed them to the floor, where they lay motionless in their red-and-black armor. The doors opened, then closed behind a figure in dark robes. A deep cowl hid most of the face, leaving only a pale chin and a downturned mouth visible. To most eyes the man in those simple robes of rough cloth was unremarkable, just another being making his way in the universe. But to those who could feel the Force he was anything but ordinary. To them, he was a dark sun blazing with power that was simultaneously hypnotizing and terrifying to behold.

Darth Sidious, the reigning Dark Lord of the Sith, had come to Mandalore.

Savage stared at the new arrival in astonishment, transfixed by the sight. Maul felt himself leap from the throne, mechanical legs clacking down the steps and toward his old Master. The motion was almost automatic, involuntary. Maul’s earliest memories were of that hooded figure—his tests, his teachings, and also his torments. He had been Maul’s father, his protector, his torturer. He had been everything.

Maul halted before Sidious and kneeled, bowing his head.

“Master,” he said simply.

Sidious stopped. For a moment all was silent.

“I am most impressed to see you have survived your injuries,” he said, the voice as rough and cracked as Maul remembered.

“I used your training, Master,” Maul said. “And I have built all of this in hopes of returning to your side.”

Sidious lifted his head slightly, and Maul saw his yellow eyes beneath the hood. They were as cold as space.

“How unfortunate that you are attempting to deceive me,” Sidious said.

“Master?” Maul asked.

“You have become a rival,” Sidious declared.

He raised his arms and both Maul and Savage flew through the air, smashing into the elegantly patterned walls of the royal chamber and crashing to the floor. Maul sprang to his feet and ignited his lightsaber. Savage did the same. The two Zabraks stared grimly at the hooded figure. Sidious retrieved a pair of elegant-looking lightsabers from within the depths of his robes and ignited them. The blades turned his pale face a hellish red.

Maul and Savage didn’t waste time seeking an advantageous position. They simply charged, blades shimmering, trying to overpower Sidious with the animal ferocity of their attack. Sidious caught their sabers on his, the weapons howling and crackling where they touched. Maul saw that Savage was startled by the seemingly frail man’s enormous strength. Maul stared at his Master’s face. He saw the strain as Sidious called upon the Force to keep the brothers at bay. But there was something else there, too—a terrible pleasure. Sidious began to grin.

The three-pronged duel between Sidious, and Maul and Savage had moved, like some deadly ballet, from the throne room to the steps of the palace. Sidious’s lightsabers twirled swiftly and elegantly, turning aside the furious blows Maul and Savage rained down upon him as the three Sith leapt and spun.

Maul had fought his Master many times, starting when he was little more than a child and continuing through his apprenticeship. His body bore innumerable scars from those duels—lessons in the peril of being too slow or two quick, too weak or too distracted. During Maul’s apprenticeship he had always known that Sidious had been willing to kill him. The Sith had not survived their centuries of exile by being sentimental, and a student who couldn’t stand against his Master in a mere training exercise was worse than useless—he was a waste of valuable resources better used elsewhere. But Maul had never faced his Master when he was actually trying to kill him.

Maul had grown more powerful since the last time he’d been in Sidious’s presence, before the Neimoidian invasion of Naboo had turned disastrous and Obi-Wan had bested him inside the Theed power core. His hermitage on Lotho Minor, his lessons on Unbara, his restoration by Mother Talzin, and his training of Savage had all strengthened him, made him a more worthy vessel for the dark side to fill with its power.

But strong as he had become, Maul found himself in awe of Sidious. The Sith Lord was astonishingly fast and efficient, and the Force flowed through him effortlessly. His sabers stabbed and slashed through the smallest hole in an opponent’s guard, his movements never carried him a millimeter out of position, and he could sense every attack Maul and Savage made before it developed.

Maul tried to slash past Sidious’s guard, only to find his Master had given ground, causing Maul to extend his arms too far and leave himself slightly unbalanced. It was the smallest stumble, easily corrected, but Sidious saw it—and pounced before Maul could draw himself back. Snarling, he reached out with the Force and slammed Maul against the wall, leaving him lying stunned in a heap.

Savage knew the dangers of facing the Sith Lord alone, and pressed his attack before Sidious draw his hand back from Force-shoving Maul into the wall. Teeth bared, Savage windmilled his double saber, hoping to disarm Sidious or force him to give ground. If he did, that would allow the yellow-and-black Zabrak to follow his initial attack with a lightning-quick thrust that would penetrate Sidious’s defenses and wound or even kill him.

Maul tried to shake off his attack, rocketing up from the floor. Sidious neatly side-stepped Savage’s assault, drawing back as the massive Zabrak raised his double-bladed saber high to try to pummel him with it. Savage didn’t think Sidious was fast enough to take advantage of the brief opening in his defenses, but he was wrong.

Sidious rammed one of his blades through Savage’s black armor, the glowing crimson tip of the saber appearing between his shoulder blades. Savage gasped, his saber tumbling from his grasp. Sidious yanked his weapon back and Savage seemed to hang suspended for a moment, as if he were being levitated by with the Force. Then he crashed to the ground.

Sidious stepped back as Maul rushed to his fallen brother’s side. A mist seemed to rise from Savage’s body, emerging from his wounds and then from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. As Maul and Sidious watched, Savage’s horns shrank and the massive bands of muscle melted away from his chest and shoulders. The last misty remnants of Mother Talzin’s magic grew hazy and tattered, then dispersed and vanished, leaving the dying Savage lying in the shell of his now-oversized armor.

His eyes turned to Maul.

“Brother, I am an unworthy apprentice,” Savage said. “I am not like you. I never was.”

He took a last breath and lay still.

Maul looked up, saber in his grasp, and stared into Darth Sidious’s blazing eyes.

“Remember the first and only reality of the Sith,” Sidious said. “There can only be two, and you are no longer my apprentice. You have been replaced.”

Sidious raised his saber and flew at Maul, who parried desperately, his mechanical legs whirring as he sought to counter his former Master’s blows. Sidious’s sabers were a blur, a whirling cage of deadly plasma. Maul danced away from one blow, then reversed his movement to avoid another, and then there were too many to count, and then there were even more than that.

Maul’s saber spun out of his hand, bouncing away across the floor. Then Sidious seized his former apprentice with the Force, hurling him against the wall. Maul’s vision swam. He tried to get up, but realized he was already in the air, held aloft by the Force. Sidious slammed him into the floor. Then Maul was off the ground again, legs kicking for purchase in empty air. He could taste blood in his mouth. His head hit the wall with a sickening crunch.

A rhyme crept into his head, a nagging sing-song bit of poetry.

Far above, far above,

We don’t know where we’ll fall.

Far above, far above.

What once was great is rendered small.

Maul could no longer remember where he had heard it, or what it meant. He was broken, helpless, useless.

“No,” Maul heard himself gasp. “Have mercy. Please...”

“There is no mercy,” Sidious said.

Bolts of energy ripped out from the Sith Lord’s fingers, tendrils of brilliant blue and purple that danced across Maul’s tattooed skin and ripped through his muscles, his organs. His mechanical legs convulsed, shorting out.

“You belong to me,” Sidious said. “Your existence is now perfectly meaningless.”

He stretched out his fingers and the energy tore through Maul again. Sidious watched the lightning build in intensity, his eyes unblinking, his teeth gritted in a triumphant, terrible smile.

--Taken from Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy

To recap from the novelization:

• Savage is awed by the power Sidious radiates in the Force
• Sidious repels their combined strength in a saberlock
• Maul is astonished by Sidious' speed and efficiency with his blades
• After killing Savage, Sidious gradually throws consecutive blows faster and faster until all Maul can see is a blurring "cage" of light and numerous blows heading towards him, unable to block them all
• Sidious tosses Maul around with the Force, then tortures him with Lightning

If anyone wants to dismiss the novelization on the grounds that it no longer represents TCW Canon, fair enough. In that case, to summarize what we've learned from the episode "The Lawless" as well as Filoni and starwars.com's descriptions:

• Sidious held both Maul and Savage helpless against a wall and willingly released them in order to engage in a fight
• He smiles and laughs throughout the battle, enjoying the contest
• He pulls the brothers off the balcony after Savage rammed him
• He hits the brothers more times than the inverse
• He never wavers from his position of superiority, and he always holds the upper hand
• He dazes Savage with a kick twice
• He knocks Maul unconscious with a Force Push
• He dances around Savage's last attack with impunity before killing him
• He permits Maul to rush to Savage's side, pausing the duel
• He defeats an irate, dual-wielding Maul while toying with him
• He telekinetically throws Maul around without Maul being able to mount a defense against his power
• He tortures Maul with Lightning

If all of that doesn't spell a clean, painless curbstomp, I don't know what does. Every single source that discusses this duel distinguishes Sidious as the winner by a country mile, and the episode itself illustrated Sidious' amusement, restraint, and inevitable victory. The facts are the facts, and Maul and Savage together were never able to adequately oppose Sidious in a fight.

All right. I’ve procrastinated on this one for a few years; that’s a long enough time for me to delay talking about this subject. So here we go. Let’s discuss everyone’s favorite aspect of the Force: midi-chlorians.

The concept of midi-chlorians is very unpopular with viewers of the films, and I actually associate that general unpopularity with the misunderstandings about them. This may be a bit of a hasty generalization on my part, but just speaking from my own observation on normal behavioral practices, when something or someone is looked at unfavorably by a person or group of people, it’s not uncommon for that something or someone to be misrepresented or have its character outright assassinated by those who disapprove of it/him/her. No, I’m not saying that any misconception that exists concerning midi-chlorians is always the product of people just intentionally misunderstanding it in order to justify their repudiation of the concept. However, there are some misconceptions that exist surrounding the nature of midi-chlorians, and how some of these misconceptions are even propagated is really inexplicable to me if the source material is being given an objective view. The only explanation I can gather as to why midi-chlorians are so misunderstood is incorrect hearsay being passed around and some aforementioned disparaging of the concept.

Having said that, this blog is not a critique of the idea of midi-chlorians or whether we as viewers should or should not like them. All this blog is is an informational post to clarify a few issues to interpret these ideas accurately and is only written because I just like analyzing these subjects. To begin let’s rewatch the scene from The Phantom Menace where Qui-Gon Jinn describes midi-chlorians to Anakin Skywalker.

From this scene, one of the most common misconceptions about midi-chlorians is (somehow) derived, which is the conclusion that midi-chlorians themselves are the Force. How on earth anyone arrived at that conclusion, I have no idea. Nowhere was it stated or even remotely hinted that midi-chlorians are the Force. What Qui-Gon describes to Anakin is that the midi-chlorians act as messengers for the Force and serve as the access-point by which living beings interact with the Force. This misconception is so prevalent that Daniel Wallace directly addressed it in the “Secrets of the Force” article in Star Wars Insider #123. He points out that the dialog elucidates on midi-chlorians at face value, defining them as a kind of go-between between living beings and the Force and in no way insinuates that midi-chlorians themselves are the Force.

I could probably just end this blog right there, because Wallace summarized this topic more succinctly than I could. But I will continue to add further supporting material to this picture of the midi-chlorians and also refute other misconceptions. For informational purposes, let me post just a little bit of biological information on midi-chlorians. Midi-chlorians are microscopic organisms who populate inside the cells of a living host and are colonized and synchronized through a collective hive-mind, uniting their consciousness.

Qui-Gon nodded. "A boy. His cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians I have ever seen in a life-form." He paused. "It is possible he was conceived by midi-chlorians."

There was a shocked silence this time. Qui-Gon Jinn was suggesting the impossible, that the boy was conceived not by human contact, but by the essence of all life, by the connectors to the Force itself, the midi-chlorians. Comprising collective consciousness and intelligence, the midi-chlorians formed the link between everything living and the Force.

--Taken from The Phantom Menace

“They also appear to possess a single unified consciousness linked via the pneuma and can be influenced by the host’s mental state. In particular, negative emotions such as the loss of hope can induce cellular necrosis.”

--Taken from Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side

As Qui-Gon said and The Phantom Menace novelization narrated, the midi-chlorians speak to living beings the will of the Force and join living beings to the Force. To supplement that, Darth Plagueis in his extensive research on midi-chlorians took to designating them as the Force’s intermediaries and interlocutors, using these terms to establish the mediating link and position the midi-chlorians occupy between living beings and the Force.

A common misconception held that midi-chlorians were Force-carrying particles, when in fact they functioned more as translators, interlocutors of the will of the Force.

They could have been torturers: Plagueis and 11-4D, leaning over an operating table on Aborah that supported Venamis, still in an induced coma and now anesthetized, as well; the droid's appendages holding bloodied scalpels, retractors, hemostats, and Plagueis, gowned and masked and with eyes closed, his shadow puddled on the floor by the theater lights, but in truth nowhere to be found in the mundane world. Folded deeply within the Force, instead, indifferent to the meticulous damage 11-4D had done to the Bith's internal organs, but focused on communicating his will directly to the Force's intermediaries, the droid monitoring cellular activity for signs that Plagueis's life-extending manipulations, his thought experiments, were having their intended effect.

--Taken from Darth Plagueis

This further distinguishes midi-chlorians from the Force, as they exist to stimulate a line of rapport between the will of the Force and the will of living beings, and nothing more. As it stands, midi-chlorians are simply a species of microscopic organisms who have a unique connection to the Force which they then share with any and all beings they come into contact with. So how do we apply this concept of midi-chlorians with Qui-Gon’s statement, that without midi-chlorians life could not exist, and how exactly do midi-chlorians function as a kind of conduit for the Force to be transferred to living beings? Plagueis expounded on this principle in his journal by contrasting the energy of midi-chlorians with the energy emitted by any other standard organelle.

“Of considerable interest is the fact that, while most cellular organelles generate chemical energy, midi-chlorians generate Force energy.”

“Typical blood concentration is around 2,500 midi-chlorians per cell. Cutting this concentration in half will usually induce death. I conclude that Force energy is required for life and that midi-chlorians are its biological vector.”

--Taken from Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side

“Midi-chlorians generate Force energy.” An important discovery, but it needs to be read with Plagueis’ knowledge of the subject as a whole. While it is true that the midi-chlorians generate Force energy, as Plagueis mused to himself, “A common misconception held that midi-chlorians were Force-carrying particles,” and he rejected this idea in favor of perceiving midi-chlorians as intermediaries. Read in juxtaposition, we can surmise that the Force flows through the midi-chlorians, not from them. This further cements the role of midi-chlorians as channels through which the Force manifests itself, and this does away with the idea that the Force is somehow limited by or to midi-chlorians.

Although many people think because of the dialog in The Phantom Menace that the Force is limited to the midi-chlorians instead of pervading the universe at large, as was previously implied by the original trilogy, the totality of the Force is not contained in these microscopic organisms; these microscopic organisms are simply a transmitter for it. Anything that lives requires the Force to live, and midi-chlorians open a funnel to the Force in order for that being to continue living. Sabla-Mandibu wrote the following analogy for a proper understanding of the purpose of midi-chlorians with respects to the Force as a whole:

Master Bowspritz will teach you of the midi-chlorians in our cells that channel the Force’s energy. I urge you not to think too much on this necessary biological symbiosis but to instead cast your focus wider. After all, we do not drink the bowl but the soup contained in it.

--Taken from The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force

The idea of midi-chlorians being the vessel and the Force being the substance is one of the simplest bits of exposition on midi-chlorians that can be found. It also underlines the necessity of midi-chlorians but not to the point of undermining the greater necessity of the Force. Just as a person needs to eat to survive, living beings need the Force to live as well. A container for food is important because it affords a means to eat, but the container is not the food itself. It just creates a way to more easily access food.

Sabla-Mandibu’s comment about not overly-prioritizing midi-chlorians has been a common mindset towards the subject of midi-chlorians among Jedi. Luke was of a similar persuasion to Master Mandibu and commented on midi-chlorians in Plagueis’ recovered journal. He pointed out that the very existence of midi-chlorians in a way serves as a lesson to humble a Jedi. By paying attention to the most minuscule creature, a Jedi can glean a more vast scope of the Force. He also underlines the fact that symbiosis, a trait intrinsic to the Force, is echoed in the operation of midi-chlorians as well. The Jedi know that the Force and life are interrelated. Each is equally dependent on the other. Midi-chlorians highlight this truth.

“The entire focus on midi-chlorians is misguided. They are a natural lesson in symbiosis. When we listen to the smallest creatures, they open us to the expanse of the Force. Only a Sith would seek to dismantle a relationship that benefits both parties.”

—Luke

--Taken from Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side

The reality of midi-chlorians’ symbiont relationship with life is a universal truth. Both Jedi and Sith have agreed that much regarding the topic. Since we learned from Plagueis’ journal that although the Force doesn’t originate with midi-chlorians but instead passes through them, living beings rely on midi-chlorians to connect to their source of life, which is the Force. If a being is cut off from their midi-chlorians, they die. Conversely, if the host that the midi-chlorians live in dies, the midi-chlorians themselves also die. This once again punctuates the symbiotic relationship between living beings and midi-chlorians, as well as the Force by consequence.

“Midi-chlorians are endosymbionts. They die when their host dies, and no host can live if completely purged of midi-chlorians.”

--Taken from Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side

At this point, since we’ve defined many of the fundamental properties of midi-chlorians, we should ask ourselves what exactly their job is and how they perform it. We know that they speak the will of the Force to those receptive to hear it, but what else do they do? To give an example in order to answer that question, I will point out that the symbiosis between life and midi-chlorians and the integral service midi-chlorians provide to the Force has effects on the characteristics of different life-forms. Since life is drawn from the Force and the Force instills itself into living beings through midi-chlorians, all of these three components, the Force, the midi-chlorians, and the life-form itself, can influence one another. One of these influences is the way that the Force can affect the make-up of a living being or even an entire species.

When a species suffers a large predatory attack that may cause its extinction, it naturally adapts to the problem in order to survive. Since life springs from the Force, the Force itself can engineer certain evolutionary adaptions. But that begs the question, how precisely does the Force go about in changing a species’ biological make-up? Through midi-chlorians, who act in accordance with the Force’s will to preserve that species. As a result of this, there are some species whose biological evolutions allow them to either voluntarily or involuntarily use the Force to negate its effects from predators. This shows how interlinked life, midi-chlorians, and the Force are and gives an example of the kinds of tasks the midi-chlorians fulfill to serve the will of the Force.

My specialty is alien biology, and as a Jedi I recognize that the fundamental unifier of all life is the Force. It is fascinating how the Force inspires such a variety of change and adaption, even allowing species to develop barriers that redirect the Force’s natural flow. Because such evolution can be found among recognized sentient beings, you should be able to identify these species on sight if you wish to use your Jedi abilities to their fullest.

Hutts You and your Master will probably run across a Hutt’s thugs long before you meet an actual Hutt, but don’t use mind tricks if you’re brought before their boss! Hutts are notoriously difficult to influence or read through the Force. Their elusiveness has been a struggle for the Jedi since our forebears left Tython.

Toydarians These fascinating beings have lighter-than-air gases in their bellies that enable flight in standard or less-than-standard gravities. But remember that Toydarians are resistant to mind tricks, illusions, and telepathic suggestions. They are well aware of this fact and boast that they can easily outsmart a Jedi. Do not haggle with a Toydarian vendor!

--Taken from The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force

Damask concealed his astonishment. As rumored, the Yinchorri were apparently resistant to Force suggestion! But how was it possible that midi-chlorians in a being of relatively low intelligence could erect an impenetrable wall against the influence of a Sith? Was this some sort of survival mechanism—the midi-chlorians’ way of protecting the consciousness of their vessels by refusing to be manipulated? He would need to possess one of these beings to learn the secret.

A gift to Damask from the Council of Elders on the occasion of Yinchorr’s seating in the Senate, the towering reptilian condemned murderer shuffled to the center of the energy field that defined his cage on Aborah and, with confusion contorting the features of his beaked face, prostrated himself on the permacrete floor and mumbled in Basic: “I’m honored to be here and to perform whatever tasks you require of me.”

Standing at the field’s shimmering perimeter, 11-4D pivoted his head toward Plagueis. “Congratulations, Magister. At last he responds to your suggestion. You have undermined his resolve.”

That resolve, Plagueis had learned after more than two years of experimentation on the Yinchorri, was in fact a kind of Force bubble fashioned by the turtle-like alien’s limited number of unusually willful midi-chlorians. This suggested that the Yinchorri was actually strong in the Force, despite his pitifully low count. The discovery had come as a breakthrough, and Plagueis was still grappling with the implications.

Plagueis hadn’t lost interest in Venamis by any means, but the Yinchorri’s immunity to Force suggestion—an immunity the species shared with Hutts, Toydarians, and others—had provided him with a new line of investigation. Unlike ysalamiri, which created a Force bubble in the presence of danger, the Yinchorri were in a perpetual state of involuntary immunity to Force suggestion. The fact that immunity was in a sense hardwired into them meant that the ability was an adaptation, prompted by a past threat to the survival of the species. To Plagueis, it meant that the Yinchorri’s midi-chlorians had evolved to provide protection to a species that was naturally strong in the Force. If that were indeed the case, then the Yinchorri were living proof that the Sith of the Bane line had been on the right path from the very start.

--Taken from Darth Plagueis

To give another example of the service of midi-chlorians to the Force, I will also mention briefly that the midi-chlorians were of course instrumental in the conception of the Force’s Chosen One, Anakin. When the Sith defied the Force’s will for balance by tipping the scale toward the dark side, the Force’s retaliation was its Chosen One, who would destroy those Sith and restore its balance. Anakin’s conception was accomplished by the midi-chlorians under the unwitting control of Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious. Midi-chlorians, being interpreters of the Force’s will, cooperated with the Sith’s influence in order to conceive the Chosen One without the Sith initially being aware that they caused it. Once again, the symbiotic relationship between the will of the Force, the midi-chlorians, and the will of living beings is demonstrated.

“Midi-chlorians are not easily persuaded to execute the dictates of one newly initiated in the mysteries. The Force needs to be won over, especially in work that involves the dark side. It must be reassured that a Sith is capable of accepting authority. Otherwise it will thwart one’s intentions. It will engineer misfortune. It will strike back.”

His election seven years earlier had been one of the signs Plagueis had been waiting for—the return to power of a Valorum—and had followed on the heels of a remarkable breakthrough Plagueis and Sidious had engineered in manipulating midi-chlorians. A breakthrough the Muun had described as “galactonic.” Both of them suspected that the Jedi had sensed it as well, light-years distant on Coruscant.

The Muun’s eyes narrowed. “One can’t be content to abide by the rules of the Jedi Order or the Force. Only by making the Force serve us have we prevailed. Eight years ago we shifted the galaxy, Darth Sidious, and that shift is now irreversible.”

All that mattered was that, almost a decade earlier, they had succeeded in willing the Force to shift and tip irrevocably to the dark side. Not a mere paradigm shift, but a tangible alteration that could be felt by anyone strong in the Force, and whether or not trained in the Sith or Jedi arts.

The shift had been the outcome of months of intense meditation, during which Plagueis and Sidious had sought to challenge the Force for sovereignty and suffuse the galaxy with the power of the dark side. Brazen and shameless, and at their own mortal peril, they had waged etheric war, anticipating that their own midi-chlorians, the Force’s proxy army, might marshal to boil their blood or stop the beating of their hearts. Risen out of themselves, discorporate and as a single entity, they had brought the power of their will to bear, asserting their sovereignty over the Force. No counterforce had risen against them. In what amounted to a state of rapture they knew that the Force had yielded, as if some deity had been tipped from its throne. On the fulcrum they had fashioned, the light side had dipped and the dark side had ascended.

“The Chosen One,” Dooku amended. “No. But Qui-Gon accepts it as fact, and the Council is willing to have him tested.”

“What is known about this Anakin?”

“Very little, except for the fact that he was born into slavery nine years ago and was, until recently, along with his mother, the property of Gardulla the Hutt, then a Toydarian junk dealer.” Dooku smirked. “Also that he won the Boonta Eve Classic Podrace.”

Palpatine had stopped listening.

Nine years old... Conceived by the Force... Is it possible...

Plagueis fell back a step, his thoughts reeling.

There was still a chance that the Council would decide that Anakin was too old to be trained as a Jedi. That way, assuming he was returned to Tatooine...

But if not... If Qui-Gon managed to sway the Council Masters, and they reneged on their own dictates...

Plagueis ran a hand over his forehead. Are we undone? he thought. Have you undone us?

--Taken from Darth Plagueis

One other common misconception is that midi-chlorians by themselves create the Force. The mistake here lies in thinking that if the Force is revealed through the agency of midi-chlorians, then the midi-chlorians themselves formed the Force, but this is untrue. We know from objective sources that the Force created life, all kinds of life including microorganisms, and other sources have told us plainly that the Force actually created the midi-chlorians to serve as its interpreters in order to communicate with the galaxy, not the other way around. Barriss Offee once commented on this truth, pointing out that the Force is not relegated to any one kind of organism.

In addition, the Force is a living entity, generating life. The Force is a necessary and vital part of the universe. When running a Jedi campaign, think of the Force as more than merely a means by which the characters can gain extreme powers. It is a metaphor for the universal nature of life itself, vibrant, dynamic, and dangerous. All Jedi are permeated by the Force, just as all beings are, but the Jedi are most aware of it. Events in one region might affect another as if the galaxy were one interconnected being, with the Force as its blood and life.

--Taken from Power of the Jedi Sourcebook

“What is the Force? The Jedi say it is created by life. But I say the Force creates life. It is a simple deduction—an obvious conclusion when supported by structured experimentation.”

--Taken from Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side

The dispersal of midi-chlorians at the moment of physical death was, for lack of a better term, inexorable. Analogous to his fated confrontation with the Woebegone crew, the moment of death appeared to be somehow fixed in space and time. According to his Sith education, since Captain Lah and the others had been in some sense dead from the moment Plagueis's gaze had alighted on the freighter, it followed that the midi-chlorians that resided in alleged symbiosis with them must have been preparing to be subsumed into the reservoir of life energy that was the Force long before Plagueis had stowed away. His attempts to save them—to prolong that state of symbiosis—were comparable to using a sponge to dam a raging river.

"Let me explain what is happening to you," Plagueis said. "The cells that make up all living things contain within them organelles known as midi-chlorians. They are, in addition to being the basis for life, the elements that enable beings like me to perceive and use the Force. As the result of a lifetime of study, I have learned how to manipulate midi-chlorians, and I have instructed the limited number you possess to return to their source. In plain Basic, Veruna, I am killing you."

--Taken from Darth Plagueis

She nodded. "Actually, the Force may create midi-chlorians, sort of as its conduits into our continuum, rather than the other way around. They're isomorphic on every world that has life. The Force, it appears, truly pervades the galaxy, if not the entire universe.

"But, when all is said and done, the Jedi don't really know how it actually works and what it really is, either, We know how to connect to it, how to channel it, but in a lot of ways we're like primitives standing on the bank of a rushing river. We can put our hands in it, even wade in and try to swim, but we don't know where it comes from—only that it exists, and that it is bound to life and consciousness more deeply than the quantum level."

--Taken from MedStar II: Jedi Healer

A microscopic life-form that resided within all living cells and was capable of communicating with the Force. Symbionts found in all beings, midi-chlorians might be responsible for all life. They could reveal the will of the Force when one’s mind was quiet. Those beings with a high concentration of midi-chlorians in their blood could become Jedi. Anakin Skywalker may have been conceived by midi-chlorians, and his midi-chlorian count exceeded 20,000, which was more than that of Master Yoda. The Jedi Knights developed techniques that could detect high concentrations of midi-chlorians in infants. During the last years of the Old Republic, some Jedi began to wonder if the relationship between midi-chlorians and the Force might actually be the opposite of traditional thinking. They believed that the Force created the midi-chlorians as a way to reach out to life throughout the galaxy. In the wake of the Clone Wars, most information regarding midi-chlorians was erased from galactic computer banks by the handful of surviving Jedi Knights in an effort to prevent the Imperials from learning how to use cellular testing to identify other Jedi survivors.

--Taken from The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia

As the Encyclopedia states for us and as Plagueis mentions when he says that the source of midi-chlorians is the Force, the Force produced the midi-chlorians in order to establish a connection to living beings and make itself known. As an offset to that however, we know that life also subsists the Force, just as the Force subsists life. With that in mind, I don’t think we can altogether deny that midi-chlorians generate the Force, any more than we can deny that any other forms of life generate the Force. Once again, the matter of mutual symbiosis is at work. If we understand that the Force is a universal consciousness but is not by itself a conscious entity, what consciousness then does the Force unite if sentient life doesn’t exist? In this way, the dependence of the Force on life is known; as Yoda said, “Life creates it, makes it grow.” The Force needs life every bit as much as life needs the Force. So what Barriss Offee said was true, from a certain point of view.

Another misconception touching on the topic of midi-chlorians has to do with midi-chlorian count. Some people have submitted an array of random numbers of midi-chlorians for several movie characters, such as Yoda or Luke. Let me state very clearly that these numbers don’t exist in the source material. The only Jedi or Sith we have ever been told in quantifiable numbers a midi-chlorian count for is Anakin Skywalker, who according to multiple sources had a midi-chlorian count of over 20,000 midi-chlorians per cell (The Phantom Menace, Book of Sith, The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia). There have only ever been a couple other exact quantities of midi-chlorians per cell ever proposed in sources, such as in Plagueis’ journal, where he gives a mean figure for how many midi-chlorians inhabit the standard humanoid’s cells, which he averaged was about 2,500.

As a last thought, I want to discuss something more relative to the Force’s all-encompassing nature. It should be pointed out that the idea of midi-chlorians was first introduced to viewers through the dialog of Qui-Gon Jinn. Interestingly, Qui-Gon’s focus in his Jedi disciplines was on the Living Force, which is the organic and present flow of the Force as opposed to the grander picture of the Unifying Force. He made it his effort to follow the immediate leading of the Living Force in order to better serve the Force’s will in the here-and-now. What this has to do with midi-chlorians is the fact that, in one sense, they could be thought of as a physical representation of the Living Force.

As the Living Force is the Force as it appears on a smaller, more personal scale and permeates individual living things, the midi-chlorians can illustrate this mystery very precisely. On the one hand, the midi-chlorians are biological, living creatures. They find their origin in the Force, just as all life does. Prerequisite to midi-chlorians’ continued preservation is that they remain exposed to the Force as a source of life energy. The midi-chlorians form a collective consciousness and act as one. They have an interdependent relationship with living organisms. This is just my opinion as it only comes from my study into the subject and is not explicitly stated in any source to my knowledge, but in these ways, midi-chlorians could be said to be a kind of microcosm of the Living Force, having qualities of a united consciousness, speaking the will of the Force, adapting to organic matter, supplying life to individual beings.

In the comic Star Wars: Visionaries, there is a short story called “The Fourth Precept,” which has no narration or dialog and is drawn by Stephan Martiniére. The story, if you can call it that, is basically just a visual depiction of the nature of the Force. A basic interpretation of its art is that the light and dark side are out of balance (shown by the scale the two are on and how it leans more to one side than the other) and begin fighting with one another. The battle of the light and dark sides stretches across the galaxy, through space, amid strange creatures, in every kind of landscape (serene ocean floor, violent volcano), and it finally climaxes with a clash between the two. But instead of one or the other or both being destroyed, the light and dark sides are united again, in balance and without conflict. This is the last page of the story.

What’s worth pointing out is the top and bottom panels. Just as the Force has a light and dark aspect, it also has, just as was previously mentioned, a Living and Unifying aspect. The top panel could be understood to be the Unifying Force, since it shows a cosmic burst of energy spanning across astronomic fields of space. The bottom panel could be understood to be the Living Force, since it shows what is most likely the midi-chlorians. This “big picture” perspective shown in contradistinction to the infinitesimal size of the midi-chlorians gives a diagram for the ubiquity of the Force and its various dualities. While the Force is the essence of timeless creation and entropy, it’s also a consciousness gathered from even microscopic living creatures. Midi-chlorians stress this particular attribute of the Force.

(Tangent: Let me take this opportunity to go on record and formally recommend to anyone who hasn’t read it to pick up Star Wars: Visionaries. It’s a great collection of stories with some great artwork. “The Fourth Precept” is one of my favorite Star Wars comic stories, for however little actual story there is in it. If you ever wondered what a visual portrayal of the Force would look like, “The Fourth Precept” is a fascinating glimpse at it. In total, it’s only six pages long, but each panel shows a picture you could cross-reference with a different part of the Force’s nature in a variety of interpretations. The other stories in the Visionaries volume are worth reading too, some of which are also especially good. Well worth reading if you have the chance.)

After Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn was released, reviving much public interest in new Star Wars stories, there were a number of novels and comic series released to continue advancing the mythos. The comics were published by Dark Horse, and the novels, including Heir to the Empire and its two sequels in the Thrawn trilogy, were published by Bantam Spectra. While Dark Horse’s team began development on several stories, some of which like the Tales of the Jedi series took place thousands of years before Lucas’ films in Star Wars’ internal chronology, just about all of Bantam’s novels were set in the movie era or directly after it, exploring the idea of a New Republic coming into formation subsequent to the collapse of the Empire and a New Jedi Order to replace the one that had been destroyed.

Bantam’s Star Wars novels were not the first official Expanded Universe books though. Del Rey, who ironically gained the rights to publishing Star Wars novels again in the new millennium, had published Splinter of the Mind’s Eye by Alan Dean Foster, who also wrote the novelization for A New Hope, and The Han Solo Adventures by the late Brian Daley. These books were few and far between and were never set to be written in quick succession the way SW books are today. But with the success of the Thrawn trilogy, there were quite a few EU books authored by quite a few writers set to be released through Bantam publishing spanning several years after Return of the Jedi. These books weren’t released in chronological order either. For instance, The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton, which precedes the Thrawn trilogy on the in-universe timeline by one year, was released a year after The Last Command, which concluded Zahn’s trilogy.

Now, I don’t claim to have an intimate grasp of the developmental process of Bantam’s novels. I have read a few interviews with authors here and there in SW magazines and the like and have been informed of certain back-of-house details concerning their progression, but from what I can gather, there was no overarching individual or individuals who spearheaded the project of authoring new SW novels with a clear, unified vision for where they were to lead the mythos narratively. This is in stark contrast to what we’ve seen under Del Rey’s publishing. The New Jedi Order series had complications in development, as it naturally would with as many creative talents behind its development as it had, but it did have some general outline as to what the series was meant to be from the editors’ standpoint. In the same way, the Legacy of the Jedi and the Fate of the Jedi as other cogent examples were also undertaken with a definite idea in the mind of the creative team as to what they intended the story to grow into. This isn’t to say that these creative teams never had changes of mind mid-development or that their goal was a perfectly realized product of how they first imagined it, but there was more evident communication and premeditated decision-making regarding what track the writers’ story was supposed to take.

In the case of Bantam, it would seem reasonable to assume this single-minded direction existed in their SW tenure to some extent, but it was less controlled and focused and allowed more liberties on the part of the individual authors. Del Rey of course does permit creative liberties, especially in the case of standalone novels, but when Del Rey’s editors and creative staff have taken in hand to produce a fluid novel series, their writers always seemed to have a more linear destination in mind (whether they always succeeded in creating that is another discussion). With Bantam, again, I say this not having too extensive an apprehension of their creative background or editing system, but their goal more appeared to be simply: generate as much continuation of the franchise as possible. This is not to suggest that they let anything pass without the editors’ notice, but at the very least, there was apparently little in way of an organic flow from book to book.

Like I said, part of the reason for this can be found in the fact that Bantam’s novels (and Del Rey’s for the record) were not released in chronological order, and neither should it be required of them to, in my opinion. With an open universe as expansive and with as much story potential as Star Wars, writers should hardly be confined to writing in successive order. If a gap in the lore history exists, that leaves opportunity for it to be filled in, and Bantam and then Del Rey have seen fit to do exactly that. With that said, whether read in chronological order or otherwise, Bantam’s Star Wars novels can often times feel disconnected from one another and overall somewhat directionless.

Bantam’s Star Wars novels have a noticeably distinct tone and mindset from Del Rey’s novels, and much of that disparity in narrative style is due to the release of the prequel trilogy. The PT made a number of additions to the SW lore, particularly in its history and philosophy, and had a fairly dramatic change in tone and focus compared to the OT. For this reason, some ideas that were investigated in Bantam’s SW novels were never given much attention in Del Rey’s SW novels, and Del Rey’s books began expositing on ideas that didn’t even exist when Bantam was publishing Star Wars.

For many EU fans or even casual readers, the Bantam books can seem a bit more removed from Star Wars as we know it today, especially in the EU, something similar to how Dark Horse’s Star Wars comics have a more concrete chronology and sense of story relevance as opposed to Marvel’s Star Wars series from the 70s and 80s. Much like Marvel’s older Star Wars series, Bantam’s novels introduced a few concepts and characters that don’t integrate very well with modern EU. Bantam Star Wars was for all practical intents and purposes the origin of the EU as it is today, but there were numerous settings, tones, concepts, and plots throughout Bantam EU, some of which worked and some of which didn’t. If I can express my own commentary on Bantam candidly, despite some of the failures in their stories and ideas, I personally think that testing the parameters of what does and does not belong in Star Wars actually helped shape it for modern readers’ benefit. Because of Marvel and Bantam, we now know what Star Wars’ Expanded Universe ought to be better than if we never had them.

If you begin reading Bantam’s novels looking for a sense of consistency or direction as you might find with some of Del Rey’s stories, you will probably be disappointed. Even though Bantam’s books set the stage in the aftermath of Return of the Jedi with the recreation of the Republic and the Jedi Order and most of their plots revolved around those two developments, there often is a sense of waning central drive in those books; this is especially palpable if you attempt to read all of Bantam’s novels in chronological order. As you read one book after another, the stories begin to come across as more and more disjointed. There is an idea of chronology in those novels, and many of them reference events in other books. But you could start asking what exactly the point of these stories is after a while.

To illustrate a contrast, let’s examine the Clone Wars in the prequel era. The Clone Wars were first mentioned sort of edgewise in A New Hope and of course were incorporated into the PT. Because there are some years spanning the divide between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, this left ample room for the EU to flesh out the events that took place during the Clone Wars, with The Clone Wars show being the latest addition. There are a number of novels that Del Rey published that tell some of the events in the Clone Wars. Each is a lore piece that fills out a gap in history between the films. Some of these stories you could argue are unnecessary, but nonetheless, the purpose of them is rarely lost: they’re moving singularly toward the climax of the war and the fall of the Republic in Revenge of the Sith. Although the characters in these stories are unaware of that fact, the point is never lost on readers. Even before RotS was released, this was still effective for a narrative flow because, although viewers didn’t know to a T what would happen in RotS, they knew because of the prior release of the original trilogy that somehow the Republic would be transposed with the Empire and Anakin would become Darth Vader. Again, there is a precise understanding of where it all leads, even if how the story arrives there is unclear.

This is also true for the events in the Galactic Civil War. Countless stories have been written in the EU inside the four years of the OT. Once again, someone could say that some of these stories are unnecessary and possibly be right, but we know what it all culminates in: the ending in Return of the Jedi. That grants the narrative with a more meaningful point. Of course, there are stories in the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War that are less than stellar, and some can just feel like filler. But if nothing else, they arguably have a little more reason to be written precisely because we know what the story is aiming at in the long run. As a result of essentially blazing new chronological territory, Bantam’s books lacked this more purposeful vision.

Now, suppose we aren’t reading these stories in a continuous fashion, not caring all too much for chronology or grander lore or anything, and are just wanting an enjoyable read worth our time: that actually is where Bantam is better suited. Because Bantam books can seem to want in momentum if read as a series of consecutive events, they can sometimes be more enjoyable if just read by themselves. There are actually some very worthwhile reads in Bantam’s Star Wars collection in my opinion, but if you’re expecting them to read the same way modern EU stories read, spoiler: they won’t. I don’t mean to exaggerate this difference as if Bantam is some weird alternate universe or something, because on the contrary, a good amount of the stories we enjoy today are either continuations of or based on stories from the Bantam era. So don’t start assuming that all Bantam books are as strange as that group of wizards inside an interdimensional space gate that Luke and Han met in Marvel’s old Star Wars series. They’re not that weird or that far-removed. They just read at a decidedly different pace and had a different reason for being written.

I spent a good deal of time discussing the flaws and obstacles that Bantam's novels had, but this blog is not intended to draw people away from them. I actually mean to do the opposite. In spite of what are some of its mistakes, many of the novels published through Bantam are worth reading. For some of the more unfavorable viewers of the PT, the fact that the last decade or so of EU material surrounding the six movies has been dominated by stories centered not on the OT but the PT might be offputting or uninteresting. In my humble opinion, the PT actually served as an entryway for many of the best Star Wars novels ever written, because the EU, at least in many of its stories, did a fantastic job with the prequel era and gave us some excellent reading material. However, if you really are opposed to buying into the PT tie-in stories, what the Bantam era can offer you is a selection of novels that follow the exploits of the big three from the OT, Luke, Han, and Leia. The authors of the New Republic era novels did, if nothing else, care quite a bit about the source material and the characters they were writing about and built their characters in ways beyond what was commissioned in the OT. If you prefer the OT characters, I would strongly encourage you to at least consider some of the New Republic era stories; there is sure to be at least a few you find rewarding.

There are some readers who as a whole are not fans of New Republic era, that is, Bantam SW novels. Speaking for myself, there were some definitely weak stories from them, but then again, not everything that has been published through Del Rey has exactly been classic literature either. Both have some hits and misses. To conclude, I want to recommend just five novels published through Bantam that I like. This list is varied in that it includes some books which are almost universally liked, some which are not so well liked, some which are well read, and some which are not so well read. But the reason I chose these particular ones to feature here is because I believe they deserve attention or because they’ve faded away from general recognition. This is not meant to comprise a list of my favorite novels, and these are just based on personal, subjective opinion. Also, this isn’t intended as a comprehensive review of these books, just a basic overview of why I appreciate them. Note: the Thrawn trilogy and the X-Wing series will not be listed here because those are well acclaimed for their quality; so if anyone’s wondering, yes, I do recommend the Thrawn trilogy and the X-Wing series too.

1. Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry: This book bridges the gap between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and describes much of the preparation that went into Han’s rescue and Luke’s struggle with the dark side. It mainly focuses on Luke and Leia but features Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, and Dash Rendar as other prominent characters. This book’s excellence to me can mainly be attributed to Perry’s very direct and almost-sardonic descriptions; Luke and Leia’s character development in light of recent events; discoveries and exposition pertaining to the Force; Prince Xizor and Darth Vader's intriguing and satisfying conflict; and the basic fact that it just plain feels like classic Star Wars. When an EU story is written in such a way that you could easily see it being one of the films, that speaks volumes about its quality. Shadows of the Empire is one of those stories and may possibly be my favorite out of all of these five and easily one of my favorite Bantam novels.

2. The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers: This will probably not win me much support. Bakura is a novel some EU fans have never bothered with, and from what I gather, most of those who have were less than impressed with it. For me, this book is gratifying, the primary reason being that Han, Leia, and especially Luke are three of my favorite characters in Star Wars, and Tyers made a point to evolve their character on the outcome of RotJ, mostly by her use of perspective-based narrative modes. Because of all the characterization and build-up that contributed to RotJ’s climax, there is a wealth of opportunity to explore Luke, Han, and Leia just afterward, and this book does exactly that. While the novel does suffer from some slow parts that can lose your interest and has some very strange and somewhat outlandish plot points, it delivers in enough meaty characterization to hold my interest. For that reason, in spite of its problems, I like it.

3. The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton: This book sometimes borders on being a guilty pleasure of mine. Again, probably not garnering much support in this, but I actually really enjoy Courtship despite what I acknowledge are its flaws. Its basic story set-up and a few of its plot devices are a little improbable, similar to Bakura, but in my opinion, what Courtship does well is that it reads like a Star Wars story. Its not-so-subtle environmental message aside, it has good characterization, some interesting story turns, good antagonists, a kinetic narrative, and some fair discourse on the Force (for its time). To me, this is just a fun read, but I understand what many of the gripes about it are and agree with some of them.

4. I, Jedi by Michael Stackpole: This book is actually fairly well-received among EU fans, to the point that I occasionally consider it a bit overrated; regardless, the hype is accurate, it does still hold-up well. Its first-person narrative, chronological awareness, and character development are well executed. I’ll say what many others have said in criticism of it that Stackpole does seem to go a little too far in trying to rectify what he sees as mistakes in previous stories through Corran Horn’s perspective, but that does nothing to detract from its quality in my opinion. There are very few flaws with this book, aside from maybe its pacing. What it does well though, it does very well: plot-line, descriptions, characterization, and so on are up to par. Well worth the read.

5. The New Rebellion by Kristine Kathryn Rusch: I have no idea what the general consensus on this book is, but for me, Rusch managed to succeed with this novel where many others in this era failed: what basically amounts to a filler book still felt like it had gravity. The events in this book are hardly continuity-shattering and can be labeled filler, and yet although the crisis that emerges here is just one of many in this era, it still comes across as serious and even threatening, in my opinion. What especially struck me in this book where others of its like failed was that it pushed the status of Luke as a teacher for the Jedi and Leia as an example for the Republic senate. It very quickly brought both into the foreground to personally deal with the immediate crisis, but by intentionally drawing narrative parallels to the OT (something too few stories do very well these days), it conveyed that much more how much Luke and Leia have grown and changed since the days of the Rebellion and thereby had them inherit roles previously occupied by their mentors. By doing this, in some ways it placed them in more danger because of their greater roles and saw them deal with greater consequences. That gives this book more weight, both in terms of narrative suspense and plot but also character, at least within its own narrative even if not in the broader continuity. I won’t describe what exactly happens (it would be rather underwhelming and unexciting for me to describe it to you anyway), but think of this book in context of the events that preceded it, particularly the OT, because the intention of the author is to deliver a generational tone, especially for Luke. It doesn’t hurt that this book features two of my favorite EU villains, Kueller and Brakiss, either. Don’t misunderstand, this is definitely not the best EU novel ever published or even close to it, but in my opinion, this is one of the better ones from Bantam. A good book.

The idea that the Force is a cosmic deity with some consciousness of its own is an idea that may have some slight merit but is overall not corroborated by sources. In this blog, I will address what may contribute to some misconceptions about the Force’s deity or lack thereof and will briefly cover various ideas presented in sources such as the will of the Force and a few Force religions outside of the Jedi and Sith Orders.

So is the Force a conscious deity? I would answer that question with a somewhat hesitant but resounding “no,” but it is important to give credit where it’s due. To the best of my understanding, the idea of the Force being a deity at least in part comes from varying interpretations on aspects of its so-called “will,” a literal translation of the phrase “the Living Force,” references in sources to the Force being a living being, and different Force cults that hold to the idea that the Force is a god. I won’t be too unfair to the idea of deification of the Force, because even George Lucas has acknowledged that his spiritual and philosophical concepts in the films were drawn from every major religion in the world, which obviously would include theistic religions, and he has made vague comments about the Force being a kind of amalgam of eastern ideas of a universal mind with western ideas of monotheism. The Star Wars story lines, including the movies, narratively incorporate the Force as influencing events and guiding actions, which could convey some mindful, deistic control. But other than that, Lucas has been very clear in his interviews on the Force that it’s meant to resemble a universal consciousness based on eastern religions more than anything, the countless water metaphors for the Force being basic evidence of that.

Despite some facets of it that may imply otherwise, the Force is not a sentient being. It does not have the faculty of thought and for the better part is not consistently portrayed as a decision-making being. The Force is a metaphor for consciousness and unites living beings, but by itself, the Force is not a conscious entity. But if that’s true, what do the Jedi mean when they refer to the “will of the Force”? There are numerous dimensions to the concept of the Force’s “will,” but quite possibly the simplest one is that presented by Obi-Wan in a conversation with Padme in Revenge of the Sith:

"But the will of the Force—isn't that what Jedi follow?"

"Well, yes. But you must understand that not even the Jedi know all there is to be known about the Force; no mortal mind can. We speak of the will of the Force as someone ignorant of gravity might say it is the will of a river to flow to the ocean: it is a metaphor that describes our ignorance. The simple truth—if any truth is ever simple—is that we do not truly know what the will of the Force may be. We can never know. It is so far beyond our limited understanding that we can only surrender to its mystery."

--Taken from Revenge of the Sith

This is both an easily understandable and honest description for the will of the Force and the Jedi’s role in service to it. The common phraseology I’ve used as a substitute for the phrase “the will of the Force” is the Force’s “natural inclination,” which relates this idea that the Force’s will is just its natural order, not necessarily a conscious will. The Force is possessed of a number of defining characteristics, many definite, some all-inclusive. It has a natural state that its inherent qualities dictate it ought to be in. For the most common and well-known example, the Force has a light and a dark side, and the Jedi and the Sith both recognize that the Force demands balance between them, which is to say, it’s the will of the Force, or the Force’s natural inclination, to be in balance. The difference between the Jedi and the Sith is that the Jedi submit to the will of the Force and serve to maintain the balance; the Sith goal is to subjugate the Force (and the galaxy and all life) and often defy it.

Judging from this idea of the will of the Force, this would hardly point to the Force being a sentient being or deity that has a master plan for the universe. Rather, the Force just has a standard condition that its qualities will naturally resort to, in much the same way as a river’s standard condition is to flow down-stream. The river will never suddenly just up and decide to turn the other direction, and it will never decide anything of its own accord. It just moves along in compliant accordance with its innate characteristics precisely because it’s a river; it has no conscious choice. Obi-Wan’s analogy of the gravity that pulls a river is similar to the fact that living, decision-making beings have a direct influence on the Force. While the Force has a will (not in the literal sense of the word but in the sense of having a kinetic direction and normal status quo), thinking beings that live in the galaxy also have a will, and their will is more meditative and choice-oriented than the Force’s will is.

In spite of the fact that all life, and even death, is linked to and springs from the Force, living beings can still make choices independent of the Force’s will, but the Force may react just by its natural inclination. Again, following Obi-Wan’s analogy, if the river is flowing down-stream, and I try to swim up-stream, the fact that the river is moving down-stream doesn’t mean I no longer have the capacity to choose to swim the opposite direction. It just means it will be next to impossible to fight its natural flow. This is basically how the Sith of the Banite Order operated. They fought the will of the Force by imbalancing it toward its dark side, but the Force “struck back,” so to speak, by working through its Chosen One to destroy those Sith and restore its balance. So did the Force make a fatalistic decision to kill off the Sith Lords? Not exactly. Anakin Skywalker still had to fulfill his part, and he is a decision-making, sentient being with the capacity to make independent choices irrespective of anything else including the Force. But that doesn’t mean the Force is without influence.

There could be debate over whether the Force’s natural inclination is completely fatalistic and controlling or not, but I think there is validity to a degree in both the idea that the Force is deterministic and the idea that individuals have a free will. Stories make use of both, describing the galactic consequences of the actions of thinking individuals but also the guiding influence of the Force. The fact that numerous sources talk of the Force as being all-inclusive leaves room for both ideas to be explored, as much as that may sound like a contradiction. Luke described this dichotomy in one of his notes in the Book of Sith, during a conversation with Jacen at the conclusion of the Yuuzhan Vong War, and then again in his address to the Jedi after the war ended:

"Seeing into the future is an aspect of the Unifying Force, but Yoda warned me that the future is always changing. We have the power to make our own destinies."

—Luke

--Taken from Book of Sith: Secrets of the Dark Side

“Sentience gave rise to the dark side. Does it exist in nature? No. Left to itself, nature maintains the balance. But we've changed that. We are a new order of consciousness that has an impact on all life. The Force now contains light and dark because of what thinking beings have brought to it. That's why balance has become something that must be maintained—because our actions have the power to tip the scales."

"But here's what I wish to say to all of you: if I have learned anything from the events of the past five years, it is that the Force is more all-embracing than I ever realized. Light and dark do not always stand opposed, but mingle with each other in curious ways. More important, the Force seems to have a will, and it's when we're acting against the will of the Force that we can get into trouble. Anger by itself is not of the dark side unless it is accompanied by a desire to dominate. When we act in harmony with the will of the Force, we disappear into it. When we struggle against it, we not only sever our ties with the Force, but also feed the needs of chaos.

"The evolution of sentience reflects the constant movement between those two poles. Evil—the dark side—won't be eradicated until it has been discarded as an option for acquiring power, subjugating would-be opponents, or offsetting feelings of anger, envy, or exclusion. Where victims of injustice exist, the dark side finds initiates. That is the cycle our actions are meant to forestall, and in this battle the Force is both our ally and our guardian. We serve it best by listening to its will, and serving the good with our every action—by personifying the Force.”

--Taken from The Unifying Force

From this, we can surmise that Obi-Wan’s view of the will of the Force is correct. If the Force could act independently of thinking beings, then the Force wouldn’t need any actuators or servants for its will, such as the Jedi, and yet Luke points out that sentient beings have the ability to serve or defy the will of the Force. This would lead us to conclude that the Force is not a decision-making, thinking being, or at the very least, not a completely deterministic being.

But then, how do we interpret sources that indicate the Force is a living being?

One all-encompassing driving Force influences the destiny of the galaxy. An energy field generated by all living things, the Force surrounds and penetrates everything, binding the galaxy together. Universal balance—life and death, creation and destruction—is reflected in the Force, and thus is reflected from the Force back into the galaxy at large. The Force, for all the mystery and the power it provides, is as much a part of the natural order as suns and planets and life itself.

The Force has as many mysteries as it has aspects. It may be a nonsentient energy field, the sum of all creation. It may be an eternal entity, knowing and unknowable. It may be both of these and more; it may be something else entirely. The only certain truth is that the Force exists and is omnipresent, and that’s enough for most who study its various influences. From the Living Force to the Unifying Force, this mysterious energy field consists of a multitude of properties. The light side and dark side are always present, constantly struggling for balance in the galaxy and within individual beings.

The natural order encompasses balance. Day and night, life and death, light and dark—each pair represents a different kind of balance. As a part of the natural order, the Force follows the same rules. The light side embodies peace, knowledge, and serenity. The dark side encompasses fear, anger, and aggression.

--Taken from The Dark Side Sourcebook

The Force is not inherently good or evil. It has its light side and its dark side. It is a tool, and like any other tool it can be misused or even broken. Ignorance leads to improper use of the Force; the unwise use the Force emotionally. Incorrect use of the Force can lead to death and destruction. Only through proper training can the Force be justly applied.

In addition, the Force is a living entity, generating life. The Force is a necessary and vital part of the universe. When running a Jedi campaign, think of the Force as more than merely a means by which the characters can gain extreme powers. It is a metaphor for the universal nature of life itself, vibrant, dynamic, and dangerous. All Jedi are permeated by the Force, just as all beings are, but the Jedi are most aware of it. Events in one region might affect another as if the galaxy were one interconnected being, with the Force as its blood and life.

--Taken from Power of the Jedi Sourcebook

What do we make of these sources if others seems to suggest that the Force is not an independent being? This is mostly why I said that I “hesitantly” deny that the Force is a conscious being. With that in mind, I should point this out: just because the Force is living does not mean the Force is sentient. The Force is the combined essence of creation and destruction, life and death. It is both created by living things, and it also creates living things. Its relationship with living beings is interdependent. This by itself is not proof that the Force is a conscious, thinking entity, especially when you read the text from The Jedi Path as a whole. The beginning of the paragraph from The Jedi Path says that the Force is a “tool” that can be “misused or even broken,” making its use subordinate to the prejudices of the user. That hardly helps any case for the Force being a sentient being, much less a deity.

Now what about the Potentium concept? For those of you not familiar with it, the Potentium theory of the Force is as follows:

The core tenets of the Potentium held that all living things had the potential to create newer and better living things, and that ultimately the Force and the galaxy were developing as per a master plan that was inherently good. As such, there was no dark side, no evil undercurrent that could be tapped through the Force. Advocates of the concept believed that the Force could not turn one to evil. Rather, the living Force was the beginning and end of all things, and one's connections to it should not be mediated or obscured by any sort of training or discipline.

--Taken from The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia

As Jedi learn more about the Force, they frequently form their own theories about how and why it works. They question how, if the Force creates and sustains life, it can have a dark side. Some arrive at the erroneous conclusion that the Force is not divided into dark and light—that there is only the Force, and that its energy is inherently positive, despite the use to which it is sometimes put. Those who believe in this theory feel that no "dark side" waits to corrupt them for daring to explore the limits of the Force any more than monsters wait beyond the galactic rim to devour starships. To them, the Jedi theory of the Force is just one way to perceive this potent life-energy, and the training and discipline the Jedi employ to reinforce their perspective only serves to justify the existence of the Jedi Order.

Seeking another answer, these self-styled philosophers relabel the Force something that fits their perception of it—"the Potentium" is but one example—and attempt to explore their philosophy as far as possible. Some come perilously close to the dark side before other Jedi patiently bring them back from the brink. These "heresies" are fortunately rare, for, if unchecked, they can produce dangerously powerful Dark Jedi. Sadly, those who follow this line of reasoning straight to the dark side rarely perceive the danger, believing that they are making new discoveries that the Jedi are afraid to explore. Some come back from the dark side willingly when they see the error of their ways. Some refuse to renounce their mistaken beliefs and must be exiled to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Some few must be, regrettably, destroyed.

The core of this theory asserts that there is no distinction between the light side and the dark side. It claims that both aspects of the Force are the same energy viewed from different perspectives. Its adherents theorize that using dark side powers (Fear, Force Grip, Force Lightning, and so on) in the service of good still serves the cause of good, and doing so cannot actually lead a person to want to use the Force for evil. They question why using a lightsaber to strike down an opponent is any different from using the Force to choke the breath out of someone. What they fail to see—and what the Jedi so diligently try to establish—is that being a Jedi is not about exploring the limits of the Force, but about using what is already known to protect peace and justice. Jedi students should concentrate on learning how to use the Force, and leave careful exploration to the Jedi Masters.

--Taken from the Power of the Jedi Sourcebook

Founded in the pre-Palpatine Republic by would-be Jedi, the order known as the Potentium professed belief in a Force that was not divisible into light and dark.

--Taken from The Unifying Force

Basically, the Potentium is a term used for the Force by those who insist that the Force is underlyingly good and benevolent and can't lead one to evil. Some also believed that training and meditation to determine wise decision-making was pointless as long as one followed the guidance of the Potentium, which would always lead them to a good action. This view has been decried by the Jedi practically from its inception and found little mass following. Asli Krimsan questioned the moral ramifications of this philosophy in a recording in Jedi vs Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force, and many Sith Lords, such as Darth Plagueis, also resented this ideology.

But the Potentium concept would more denote that the Force has a meaningful intent to it and that its intent is gracious; taking this theory, I could see how someone could argue that the Force is a deity with a specifically good nature. The problem is that this theory is never given any credence narratively or by objective sources. The Potentium theory is at best an incomplete perspective on the Force and at worst an obstinate corruption of it. The simple existence of Force sensitives who use the Force for evil purposes is sufficient to disprove this theory. Were it outside the Force’s attributes to be used for destructive or malevolent purposes, we would never find it possible for a being to darken the entire galaxy and dominate life through the Force, and yet we find exactly that in the Star Wars films. The Potentium concept isn’t enough to prove that the Force is some kind, generous deity looking out for the interests of the galaxy.

With that said, it should be noted that the Force’s will for balance will support life and its wellbeing, though not necessarily from a particularly kindness-motivated source. Luke noted that it was the will of the Force for the Death Star to be destroyed. The Force had been out of balance and leaning toward the dark side, and the Death Star was a physical representation of that imbalance. It was a weapon that could be used by the Empire to destroy any target they wanted and intimidate others into obeisance. This stood in opposition to the Force’s inclination for balance, and this gives a clear example of how the Force’s natural inclination can affect galactic events and life itself:

I may have been the one who fired the shot, but the Force itself wanted to purge the galaxy of the Death Star. It was the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with the dark side.

—Luke

--Taken from Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side

Keeping that in mind, sources have made it very clear that the Force itself is not good or evil on its own merits. Although the misconception exists that classifies the light side of the Force as good and the dark side of the Force as evil, this is untrue because the Force doesn’t make decisions. As Luke explained, the light and dark sides of the Force are reflections of the light and dark sides of thinking beings. That is to say, the light and dark sides of the Force are not good or evil, but the light and dark sides of thinking beings are. Thinking beings have the capacity for good and evil choices, and therefore they can pass to either their light or dark sides. The Force though doesn’t have this attribute as its power for purposeful action is limited. Only conscious choices can be labeled good or evil, and the Force has never, to my knowledge, been said to make conscious choices. Therefore the Force is not good or evil.

The Light is positive. It is intimately bound with the essence of living things; it is peace, harmony and knowledge. The Light Side springs from the great pattern of existence. It draws strength from diversity and tolerance. It is also inherently communal in nature, thriving on cooperation. Those emotions that enhance the existence of the whole flow from it and tap into its great reserves of strength and peace. Patience, humility and self-sacrifice are paths to enlightenment. Above all, it seeks harmony and perfection.

The Dark Side, in comparison, is the force of entropy and destruction. Chaos and rage feed it and are its sources of power. The Dark Side is a part of nature—it is not inherently evil, but evil comes from its irrationality, its intolerance and its lack of control. Bestial and predatory, domination is its goal. Mercilessly aggressive and unforgiving, its adherents are blinded by greed and lust for power over those weaker than themselves.

The Light and Dark Side manifest themselves in the way they are used; they are simply different interpretations of a single aspect of nature, and they exist in balance with themselves and the universe. Just as with any aspect of life and death, both the Dark Side and the Light Side are intertwined with each other, are necessary to each other and form a cosmic balance.

--Taken from Dark Empire Sourcebook

Moving on from that subject, there are other concepts we could dissect, such as the diametrically opposed religion of the Nightsisters and the Fallanassi or the beliefs of the Ysanna, but all of those religions are primitive and reflect only certain aspects of the Force without acknowledging the whole. Even though the Nightsisters and the Ysanna subscribe to a certain element of deity in the Force, their observations of it are imperfect. This isn’t to say that even the Jedi have discovered all there is to know about the Force, because the Jedi will freely admit that they neither do nor can know everything. But the teaching of the Force that the Jedi espouse, that the Force is an energy field that more interacts with living beings just by virtue of its existence, is typically shown to be closer to the truth than the idea of the Force as a god over the universe. On the other hand, because Jedi, being sometimes semi-relativists, are not predisposed to dogmatically assuming they know all there is to know, the option is left open that there is more to the Force than the Jedi believe in. Luke pointed out that the Jedi path is only one way to gleaning wisdom from the Force:

"Is it that the Jedi are unwilling to share the Force, then?" she asked. "Are you uncomfortable knowing I have a path to knowledge that doesn't require you, that isn't yet open to you? At the same time that you ask me to teach you, you seem to need to doubt, even to discredit—"

Luke was shaking his head vigorously. "No, no, that's wrong. The Force is a river from which many can drink, and the training of the Jedi is not the only cup that can catch it," he said. "If we didn't know that before we met the witches of Dathomir, we surely know it now."

"That is something, at least."

"But the truth lives side by side with lies, and errors, and self-deceptions—with hopeful dreams, and baseless fears, and mistaken memories," Luke added gently. "And we have to try to know one from the other. All I ask is that you help me understand the source of your insight. That will help me know what weight to give it."

--Taken from Tyrant’s Test

Just to quickly cover the concept of the Living Force, the phrase “the Living Force” is not as much a reference to the Force being a conscious, living being itself per se, as much as it is the Force manifesting itself in conscious, living beings. The Living Force is the immediate, personal, even minute aspect of the Force and is contrasted with the Unifying Force, which is the Force on a cosmic and timeless scale. So the use of the phrase “the Living Force” is no more proof that the Force is a sentient being than the phrase “the will of the Force.” It has a very specific definition in Jedi philosophy. To be fair though, the Living Force does add to the reality of the Force’s inseparable connection to living beings.

On Ossus, the Jedi came to understand that both the light side and dark side of the Force reflect aspects of the living Force, the in-the-moment manifestation of life energy, and the unifying Force, the cosmic expression of prophecies and destinies.

--Taken from Jedi vs Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force

The Force is bigger than all of us, but expresses itself in two aspects. The Living Force is raw and close at hand. It is the life energy tingling around you when you pass among plants and animals in a walk through the jungle. When beings die, you sense it through the Living Force. When many die at once, the loss of their energy may shock you, even knock you out. All of your tangible Force Force abilities—such as running, jumping, heightened senses, moving objects, or soothing the emotions of others—are techniques by which we become agents of the Living Force.

The Unifying Force is a vast cosmic power. You may not sense it yet, but with patience and insight you will. The Unifying Force is the stars and galaxies, the rippling surface of space and time. It is this voice that whispers of your destiny, and make no mistake—the Force does have a will. To commune with the Unifying Force is to temporarily leave your body, allowing you to walk in the past or see the future. Some of the ancients believe it is even possible to transcend death.

--Taken from The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force

This will be an out-of-universe perspective, but to be honest, I think one of the major reasons that many people see the Force as a kind of deity is because Star Wars was written in and to a western culture. For those of us who are westerners (and even many who aren’t), our basic concept of spirituality is from a monotheistic perspective. It’s normal to assess things by our own experiences, and westerners by and large are somewhat unfamiliar with eastern religions, which Star Wars draws inspiration from just as much as it does western religions. Some eastern religions are polytheistic, and there are other sects of eastern religions that are entirely atheistic and simply adhere to the idea that the universe is a connected consciousness or some kind of animistic idea of spiritual personalities inhabiting a place or object. This isn't ordinary to think about for western viewers of Star Wars, and so our natural inclination is to attach our religious exposure onto it, which would more attribute the Force the quality of being a god. The idea of the Force being a deity of any kind is usually not attested to by the source material though.

Having said all of this, there are vague references to the Force being a living being or even a deity. Lucas’ original concepts for the Force played with the idea that the Force is basically everything in every world religion; it’s a god, a cause-and-effect force of karma, a path to understanding, a spiritual moral determinant, a universal guiding principle, a balance of nature's intrinsic dualities, an existential metaphor, and so on. However, for the most part, the films and other source material define the Force as a universal consciousness that flows with the cycle of creation and destruction; expresses the duality in nature; and corresponds to life and death and the light and dark side of thinking beings. Despite the Force in recent years and in more recent stories taking on characteristics that more resemble choice, it’s still come just short of actual sentience. This could be disputed based on obscure concepts that have arisen, such as the Ones or the Celestials, but overall, the Force is not expressly a deity.

To conclude this blog, I will post this scene from the Revenge of the Sith novelization. This is at the time of Luke and Leia’s birth at the end of the story. Yoda is in meditation over the import of recent events and feelings of personal failure. He searches the Force in his meditation, and the narration says that he spoke to the Force and that the Force spoke back. But the Force spoke in the person of Qui-Gon Jinn, who had become one with the Force. The Jedi technique of becoming a “Force Ghost” is seen as retaining one’s identity even after death. All living things that die return to the Force and become one with it, but the Jedi technique of retaining individuality even after death is one that has to be learned. This is accomplished, not by selfishly grasping at one’s own identity, but by selflessly releasing it only for it to be retained.

The strong influence from eastern religions is present here. In some philosophies and religions, there is no true individuality, or at least not permanently; everything is part of a collective consciousness. Notice that the Force didn’t respond to Yoda in its own voice; it spoke through use of an individual consciousness, Qui-Gon, who learned how to retain his individual being even after surrendering to the Force’s united being. This seems to suggest that the Force doesn’t have a personal identity or a conscious existence of its own. Of course, there are instances in stories where the Force speaks to someone without a personal identity named with it (Darth Plagueis, Labyrinth of Evil, Dark Empire, etc.), but more often than not, as shown in the scene below, the Force remains the sum total of all consciousness in existence, not a conscious deity on its own.

Beyond the transparisteel crystal of the observation dome on the airless crags of Polis Massa, the galaxy wheeled in a spray of hard, cold pinpricks through the veil of infinite night. Beneath that dome sat Yoda. He did not look at the stars. He sat a very long time.

Even after nearly nine hundred years, the road to self-knowledge was rugged enough to leave him bruised and bleeding.

He spoke softly, but not to himself.

Though no one was with him, he was not alone.

"My failure, this was. Failed the Jedi, I did."

He spoke to the Force.

And the Force answered him. Do not blame yourself, my old friend.

As it sometimes had these past thirteen years, when the Force spoke to him, it spoke in the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn.

"Too old I was," Yoda said. "Too rigid. Too arrogant to see that the old way is not the only way. These Jedi, I trained to become the Jedi who had trained me, long centuries ago—but those ancient Jedi, of a different time they were. Changed, has the galaxy. Changed, the Order did not—because let it change, Idid not."

More easily said than done, my friend.

"An infinite mystery is the Force." Yoda lifted his head and turned his gaze out into the wheel of stars. "Much to learn, there still is."

And you will have time to learn it.

"Infinite knowledge..." Yoda shook his head. "Infinite time, does that require."

With my help, you can learn to join with the Force, yet retain consciousness. You can join your light to it forever. Perhaps, in time, even your physical self.

Yoda did not move. "Eternal life..."

The ultimate goal of the Sith, yet they can never achieve it; it comes only by the release of self, not the exaltation of self. It comes through compassion, not greed. Love is the answer to the darkness.

"Become one with the Force, yet influence still to have..." Yoda mused. "A power greater than all, it is."

It cannot be granted; it can only be taught. It is yours to learn, if you wish it.

Slowly, Yoda nodded. "A very great Jedi Master you have become, Qui-Gon Jinn. A very great Jedi Master you always were, but too blind I was to see it."

He rose, and folded his hands before him, and inclined his head in the Jedi bow of respect.

The bow of the student, in the presence of the Master.

"Your apprentice, I gratefully become.”

--Taken from Revenge of the Sith

To whom it may concern (that is, to whoever cares): In my blog entries, there was a blog written some years ago where I explained my inactivity and what caused me to retreat from the forums for a little while. That blog is fairly out of date, and I had it deleted because of that. This is an update of that blog for my current activity, or lack thereof.

To settle any questions among my circle of friends here on CV (primarily, but not exclusively, this refers to the users I follow) as to why for the past few years my activity increases and then declines, as some of you know the main reason is that I have a number of personal responsibilities IRL that need to take precedence over my time on this site. As much as I enjoy talking with you guys, obviously there are more pressing items on my agenda than analyzing fiction. This by no means is meant to say that those of you who follow me and those whom I follow are unimportant or that you’re not a good use of my time. As far as I’m concerned, you’re great people, a few of whom I’ve actually had good personal understanding and support with, and for that matter, the only real reason I’m posting right now at all is because I just plain missed having conversations with you. The reason my activity on CV is not more of a priority has nothing to do with the quality of the people I have conversations with but rather because of the substance of our conversation, which generally speaking is to assess fictional reading material. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it becomes a conflict of time, mental attention, and priority with other RL obligations that need it more.

Sentimentality is the first and foremost reason for my being here, the other being that I do still enjoy sharing analyses on these forums. As with everyone else, it gives me a free outlet for my thoughts about whatever I may have been reading. My activity will not be indefinite though, and to any questions about how long my duration of activity will be or if I will return again, I can’t answer that. It could be until tomorrow or until next year, and I make no promises about returning to the forums again. I apologize for not giving a straight answer, but it really is just a matter of what I can afford to temporarily set aside for activity on this site and for how long, which is impossible for me to say.

With that said, for whatever more time I will be here, let me finish this blog and succeed my activity ahead of time with two conclusions: First, I apologize to anyone I have ever had a conversation with whom I may have offended or insulted. This is the only CV account I’ve ever created, but it was created years ago. And in the several years I’ve been posting on this site, my general posting demeanor and content of my posts have changed substantially. In years past, there has been more than one time where my comments to other users were in poor fashion, and I personally apologize to anyone I have treated harshly or unfairly. Second, thank you to those of you who’ve just been good people to chat with. You're the real reason my activity here has persisted this long, and you made my time here worth it.

That is all.

Recognizing that the contents of this blog can be received as disrespectful, before explaining this at length, let me preface this discourse by saying that this blog will be rather blunt and direct in its outline but that it's targeted at no one in particular and is only written to address a glaring trend rather than individual characteristics of any one user. Let me also say that there are obvious exceptions to what is described here and that the topics highlighted here are not universally applicable. So please do not feel personally offended or singled out. This was not written with you in mind, and this is not meant to be an aggressive retaliation or some kind of offensive polemic. This is just an explanation of my and @JediXMan's behavior.

Having said that, the topic at hand is Star Wars battle threads. When a Star Wars battle thread surfaces, almost invariably, someone will call out either JXM or myself or both for the purposes of protracting the discussion and looking for the input of someone they consider knowledgeable on the subject. There is nothing wrong with this, especially since JediX volunteered himself for that function in The Battle Callout Phonebook. However, as you hopefully have noticed by now, we do not always respond to this summons. In fact, I would venture to say that we scarcely do.

The reason for this is that we simply find the majority of Star Wars battle threads that currently appear to be, if I may speak candidly, uninspired and bereft of potential to generate worthwhile discussion. This can in some cases refer to battle threads that pit two SW characters against one another, but usually this pertains to threads that pit one SW character against a character from a different company/universe/mythos. JediX and I find that by and large these threads attract negative attention and rarely incite inquisitive posts but rather dismissive, dogmatic posts from users who quite honestly know very little about SW material.

Of course, there are users also who are essentially the unofficial, counterfeit spokesmen for JXM and myself, users who presume to speak on our behalf and quote our opinions and regurgitate our points and arguments almost verbatim as if they represent us in doing so and who appear ostensibly knowledgeable in the process. I was always offput by users like this because they failed to actually learn and arrive at conclusions for themselves and instead resorted to just parroting my or JediX's opinions as fact. "JediXMan and Silver said ABC; so therefore it's true." This is an appeal to authority logical fallacy. Neither I nor JXM are infallible and have never professed to be. Additionally, even if a user re-posts evidence from source material provided by myself or JediX to verify their assertion, that still only gives the facade of being informed on the subject because your information is limited to what I or JXM have said, which definitely does not cover all the source material in-depth.

I don't say this to insult anyone or to unfairly categorize people's opinions, but while part of the purpose of these forums is to learn, you should also do your own homework instead of depending on someone else's knowledge and analyses. Whatever you learn from someone else should be internalized, re-evaluated from the source material, and assessed from your own perspective before being repeated. So when I say that there are users who are uninformed on SW material that are fans of works published by another company, I am in no way saying that there are no users on the pro-SW "faction," for lack of a better descriptor, that themselves are uninformed. There are.

With that said, the visible trend on SW vs non-SW threads is that fans of works from another publishing company are not very interested in learning anything new about SW characters. To repeat what I said in my preface, there are obvious exceptions to this, but I am speaking to what I observe to be the overwhelming bulk of cases. Instead of inquiring as to the attributes of an SW character, instead the propensity seems to be to fall back on a foregone conclusion about what that SW character may or may not be capable of without actually having the knowledge of the character to say that for sure and then to ascribe victory to the opposing party in the thread. If someone then replies by pointing out the accomplishments of that SW character that the non-SW fan may not be aware of, the natural predisposition seems to be to doggedly deny the showing, attempt to undermine it, or derail the issue with a red herring about the canonicity of EU material without themselves being very aware of what is or is not canon.

Frequently, when fans of a different mythos see a feat achieved by an EU character, what I see them say in response can be accurately simplified as, "I can't fathom how Star Wars character ABC could perform feat XYZ. This cannot be correct." This is called an argument from incredulity. Your willingness to believe something is factual changes nothing about its veracity. Another common defense is, "I have seen all the Star Wars films and never witnessed abilities of this kind." This is anchoring to your initial exposure or experience. Just because you were never aware of a certain detail in your limited experience with something does not mean it can't happen with it. These two types of counterarguments speciously manufacture the impression of faithfulness to high-canon source material (the films) while in actuality just serve as a means to reject other canon material (the EU) so as to assist the standing of their preferred character in the thread. As for dodging the issue by calling into question the canonicity of EU material, I direct users here and leave it at that. There is no reason users should be wasting their time arguing over something so fundamental.

Ultimately, the underlying problem that I and JXM have is the attitude many users not so well-versed in the EU have towards it. The ideal debating circumstances would be that we don't have to educate users at all, but it would be perfectly fine for us to educate users in order to have a constructive discussion. The one condition is that you have to want to learn in order to be educated. There is nothing wrong with asking questions on battle threads, and why so many users neglect this very simple option is beyond me. Even when users do ask questions to learn about the other character(s) involved, the question is asked with a contemptuous demeanor and typically has a preconceived answer: that whatever accomplishments the SW character has cannot exceed those of the character they're defending. This strips the thread of any and all discussion value, because no one is actually interested in the discussion; they're interested in ensuring the victory of their preferred character. This is why, to me and JediX, most SW vs non-SW threads are just mine fields not really worth the effort, because the effort will virtually always be wasted.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that we SW fans are these poor, misunderstood, ostracized champions of the unpopular opinion, because in some threads, SW characters do find more support than non-SW characters. I also am not trying to draw a proverbial line in the sand between us and fans of other publishing companies, the way that DBZ and DC/Marvel had very paroxysmal factions. Trust me, this issue of SW and non-SW fans is not even close to the warzone that was DBZ vs DC/Marvel threads. I also don't mean that users should only debate with other users who agree with them; chances are, you'll learn most with users you disagree with. But to learn, both users need to be willing to hear one another's cases, a trait absent in the threads I'm describing. Lastly, I don't mean to diminish anyone's right to post their opinions. Users can opine anything they want, whether substantiated or not, but the ability to post an opinion doesn't mean a good discussion is in sight.

I say this instead to explain why JXM and I consistently ignore call-outs on SW battle threads. We simply don't see the majority of SW battle threads created right now as productive conversationally. We're not trying to sound jaded or to encourage other SW fans to avoid SW battle threads; if you can navigate them, please do in our absence. It just comes down to the fact that I and JediX have debated in SW vs non-SW threads before quite a few times, and in our experience, threads created with SW characters vs non-SW characters have no positive outcomes in most instances. So to conclude, we are sorry that we don't usually respond to your call-outs, and if we see any SW battle threads that we would consider “safe” to engage in, we will. The two of us have just learned to pick our battles, so to speak.

The Unifying aspect of the Force is a dimension of the Force’s nature that is so remarkably misunderstood that I feel I will need more than one blog to address it properly. This blog will simply cover the basic and most prevalent misconception plaguing it without addressing the enormity of its total facets. The Unifying Force is a very expounded principle of the Force, and its outlook represents a vast range of points of focus for Jedi. Its counterpart, the Living Force, is another property of the Force that will receive its own individual blog. After posting that one, I will then probably discuss both of them together in one final essay that will actually enumerate countless qualities of the Force as a whole, but that will be a long time from now (finding time to accumulate sources for these blogs is tough). This, however, will be my preface to the blog I will write in the future.

In this blog, I will detail the fundamental characteristics of the Unifying Force and deal, more aggressively than usual, with the accompanying misconception about it. Understand that unlike my other blogs of this kind where I treated the subject matter very seriously, in this blog I will take a few liberties in how I attack this misconception, because this misconception, to me, has the unique characteristic of being both tiresome and also unintentionally funny. Note however that because this is only an overview blog, some particular details pertaining to the Unifying Force will not be covered, and as a result, certain sources on the issue will not be cited, such as the novel The Unifying Force. In my later blogs, I will more loquaciously detail those other sources and their contribution to the subject.

To begin, instead of starting off by establishing what the Unifying Force is, like I normally would in a misconceptions blog, let’s just cut right to the misconception and talk about what the Unifying Force is not. The conventional definition of the Unifying Force championed by many casual EU readers would be a paraphrase of “an outlook on the Force which maintains that the Force does not intrinsically possess a light or dark side.” Were I to ask any users who subscribe to that opinion on the Unifying Force for a source to corroborate that interpretation, I would hazard the guess that nine out of ten users would be unable to provide any. Typically, they would direct me to Wookieepedia or claim that the novel The Unifying Force confirms this definition (which it doesn't). Wookieepedia is not a canon source, and while it is a very useful tool for finding sources, it should not in and of itself be referenced as a source. When it comes to the Force, Wookieepedia can sometimes be unreliable in its summaries on it, and some of its articles on the Unifying Force are a prime example of that. Therefore, allow me to quote a source that talks about this:

The Living Force, as accepted by Jedi throughout the ages, is believed to exist in most living creatures. Jedi who believe in the tenets of the Living Force rely on their instincts and become attuned to the living things around them. They are mindful of the future and what might result from their current actions, but they remain focused on the present. The Living Force has both a light and a dark side, and Force-users must be mindful of their emotions lest they succumb to the temptations of the dark side. Those who adhere to the doctrines of the Living Force believe that life creates the Force and that the Force is an omnipresent field of energy that surrounds and permeates living things, and that living things are connected by it. Through the Living Force, certain Jedi are able to retain their identities after death, manifesting as Force spirits while still becoming one with the Force.

Jedi who adhere to the Living Force view recognize the existence of mid-chlorians in all living beings. The higher the concentration of midi-chorians in a life form, the stronger that life form’s connection is to the Force, and the greater its potential to use it—for good or evil.

The Unifying Force, garnering less support among the Jedi than the Living Force, teaches that the Force is a single power and has neither a light side nor a dark side. The Unifying Force has no sides and does not take sides, treating all living creatures equally. This view has been supported by the likes of Vergere and Emperor Palpatine. (The only significant difference between the Jedi view and Palpatine’s view is that the Sith see the Force as a means to an end, while the Jedi see it as an end unto itself.) Those who follow the Unifying Force tend to keep their eyes on the future and possibilities, leading them to act in ways to fulfill a destiny instead of focusing on the here and now, like those who follow the Living Force.

--Taken from Jedi Academy Training Manual

This is a source that contends the Unifying Force outlook dismisses the notion of constituent light and dark sides. In fact, this is the only source that makes this assertion about the Unifying Force. No other sources in the entire lore that I have ever been able to find reiterate this description. The materials that first introduced the concept of the Living and Unifying Force never did either. That this is the only source may not necessarily be condemning (although it does carry less weight), but the fact that several other sources, both preceding and succeeding this source, contradict what this source says does diminish its credibility. I repeat: to my knowledge and research, not a single other source ever released coincides with this explanation of the Living Force and the Unifying Force.

More importantly, take note of one very crippling item found in that text:

The Unifying Force, garnering less support among the Jedi than the Living Force, teaches that the Force is a single power and has neither a light side nor a dark side. The Unifying Force has no sides and does not take sides, treating all living creatures equally. This view has been supported by the likes of Vergere and Emperor Palpatine.

--Taken from Jedi Academy Training Manual

Did you catch the flaw? Let me isolate the text of significance: “The Unifying Force…has neither a light side nor a dark side… This view has been supported by the likes of…Emperor Palpatine.”

Do you see the problem yet? Let me isolate the text again but condense it just a little more: “The Unifying Force has [no] dark side. This view has been supported by Emperor Palpatine.”

Do you see it now? This sourcebook just stated that Emperor Palpatine adheres to the Unifying Force perspective, and that, by consequence of the Unifying Force’s declared precepts, he does not believe in the existence of the dark side of the Force…

Let me qualify that statement to help you grasp its import. Emperor Palpatine, Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith, the character for whom at least half of his dialog in the films consists of extolling on the virtues of the dark side of the Force…does not believe in the existence of the dark side. Darth Sidious, who brought the Sith Order to its zenith in culmination of their philosophy and lineage…does not believe in the existence of the dark side. Emperor Palpatine, who founded a New Order built on the power of the dark side to permeate the galaxy in order to subdue it…does not believe in the existence of the dark side. Palpatine, who made every effort to expand the imbalance of the Force towards the dark side, whose only sentimental relationship is with the dark side of the Force, whose sole intention was to subordinate all life in the universe to a rule of darkness, who once in a moment of solidarity with the dark side claimed himself to be the dark side itself…does not believe in the existence of the dark side…

Emperor Palpatine does not believe in the existence of the dark side of the Force.

Emperor Palpatine does not believe in the existence of the dark side of the Force.

Palpatine does not believe in the existence of the dark side.

Palpatine does not believe in the dark side.

PALPATINE…DOES…NOT…BELIEVE…IN…THE…DARK…SIDE.

Words fail me. I honestly cannot fathom how any Star Wars authors could so thoroughly misrepresent the most fundamental qualities of a prominent movie character. It baffles me as to how a source like that could even be published without the editors noticing the glaring error. Really, where did they even get that idea from? “Palpatine doesn’t believe in the existence of the light or dark sides.” What nonsense. I have no idea how you can possibly write that about a guy who spends most of his screen time sharing his twisted fantasies about how sexy the dark side is. Call it an ad hominem against the source if you want, but that one statement disqualifies the entire source for me, never mind that several other sources run contrary to the definition of the Unifying Force espoused by the Training Manual. Seriously, I...don’t…even…

Sigh. Anyway… To continue, the fact of the matter is that this proposed interpretation on the Unifying Force is met with an overwhelming number of sources that discredit it. Since I’ve stalled long enough talking about what the Unifying Force is not, what is it then, and, since it was mentioned, what is the Living Force? The Living and Unifying sides of the Force are simply this: the Living Force is the present, personal, organic flow of the Force; the Unifying Force is the cosmic, future, transcendent flow of the Force. The Force is an omnipresent field, and it manifests itself on both a minute and astronomic scale. The Force both pervades living creatures individually, even microscopic creatures, but it also spans the galaxy and wraps around celestial bodies. The Living Force and the Unifying Force simply draw attention to this dichotomy.

Sabla-Mandibu, a Jedi seer who chronicled Jedi teaching, illustrates the Living Force and the Unifying Force like this (this section also conflicts with the Training Manual in that it identifies Force Ghosts as extensions of the Unifying Force, not the Living Force as the JATM suggested):

The Force is bigger than all of us, but expresses itself in two aspects. The Living Force is raw and close at hand. It is the life energy tingling around you when you pass among plants and animals in a walk through the jungle. When beings die, you sense it through the Living Force. When many die at once, the loss of their energy may shock you, even knock you out. All of your tangible Force Force abilities—such as running, jumping, heightened senses, moving objects, or soothing the emotions of others—are techniques by which we become agents of the Living Force.

The Unifying Force is a vast cosmic power. You may not sense it yet, but with patience and insight you will. The Unifying Force is the stars and galaxies, the rippling surface of space and time. It is this voice that whispers of your destiny, and make no mistake—the Force does have a will. To commune with the Unifying Force is to temporarily leave your body, allowing you to walk in the past or see the future. Some of the ancients believe it is even possible to transcend death.

--Taken from The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force

Tionne Solusar similarly relays this account (pay attention to how Tionne insists that the light and dark sides are echoed in both the Living and Unifying Force):

On Ossus, the Jedi came to understand that both the light side and dark side of the Force reflect aspects of the living Force, the in-the-moment manifestation of life energy, and the unifying Force, the cosmic expression of prophecies and destinies.

--Taken from Jedi vs Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force

These sources offer a more consistent and, quite plainly, accurate examination on the Unifying Force. And just to reinforce the point, here are three instances where the Living Force is called to Obi-Wan’s attention as well as a quote from Yaddle about listening to the Unifying Force to acquire foresight, and in each quote, the Living Force is contrasted with the “big picture,” so to speak, while the Unifying Force is a reference to broader events:

Obi-Wan bristled slightly at the mild reprimand, but it was deserved. He had a habit of looking forward, as opposed to staying in the moment, as Qui-Gon preferred—of attending to what the Jedi called the living Force.

"I'm not worried, Masters," Obi-Wan said good-naturedly. "I'm only thinking forward." He waited for Qui-Gon to offer some piece of wisdom regarding the living Force, but for once his Master kept silent.

Yaddle turned to face Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, who were standing outside the Masters' circle. "You two: flying here, flying there, chasing clues... If stopped for a moment to listen to the unifying Force, see what was coming you might have."

--Taken from Cloak of Deception

The reclosing of the deck canopy quieted the howl of the wind outside, and now from deeper within the city Obi-Wan could hear a ragged choir of hoarsely bellowing cries that had the resonance of large animals—they reminded him of something...

Suubatars, that was it—they sounded vaguely like the calls of the suubatars he and Anakin had ridden on one of their last missions before the war, back when biggest worry Obi-Wan had had was how to keep his promise to Qui-Gon...

But he had no time for nostalgia. He could practically hear Qui-Gon reminding him to focus on the now, and give himself over to the living Force.

So he did.

--Taken from Revenge of the Sith

To further establish this point, let’s consider this: if the Unifying Force really is a philosophy that the Force is not possessed of a light or dark side, then we should find that devotees of the Unifying Force deny the existence of the light and dark sides. Do we? Well, Sabla-Mandibu, who authored the above expository segment on the Force from The Jedi Path, certainly believes in the existence of the light and dark sides and even warns Jedi students about the dangers of the dark side:

You already know of the Force as omnipresent, simultaneously existing as both a personal energy and as an imposing power through its Living and Unifying aspects. The dark side is not some "missing piece." Don't be tricked into seeking it. The Force is a mountain rising from water—the dark side is merely the submerged, scum-covered underside. If you choose to dive, the slime will trap and drown you.

--Taken from The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force

Dooku mentions in a conversation with Palpatine that Qui-Gon’s emphasis on the Living Force competes with his faith in the prophecy of the Chosen One, which aligns with the Unifying Force. Dooku absolutely believes in the light and dark sides:

“Qui-Gon is rash,” Dooku was saying. “Despite his fixation with the living Force, he demonstrates his own contradictions by being a true believer in the prophecy—a foretelling more in line with the unifying Force.”

--Taken from Darth Plagueis

Dooku understood that this was more than a test for Skywalker; though Sidious had never said so directly, Dooku was certain that he himself was being tested as well. Success today would show his Master that he was worthy of the mantle of Mastery himself: by the end of the coming battle, he would have initiated Skywalker into the manifold glories of the dark side, just as Sidious had initiated him.

--Taken from Revenge of the Sith

Yoda’s vision through the Force was a product of his stressing the Unifying Force, and Yoda even found himself in dispute with Qui-Gon over Qui-Gon’s centrality of the Living Force where Yoda would rather he attended to the Unifying Force.

Yoda and Qui-Gon had a long-standing relationship, but Yoda was one of those who sometimes took issue with Qui-Gon's focus on the living Force over the unifying Force.

--Taken from Cloak of Deception

"The larger prophecy: that unfold the dark times would. Born into their midst the Chosen One is, to return balance to the Force."

"Anakin," Obi-Wan said.

Yoda regarded him for a long moment. "Difficult to say," he said quickly. "Maybe, yes; maybe, no. More important the shroud of the dark side is. Many, many discussions Dooku had. With me, with other members of the Council. Most of all, with Master Sifo-Dyas."

Obi-Wan waited. "Close friends they were. Bound together by the unifying Force. But worried about Master Dooku, Sifo-Dyas was. Worried about his disenchantment with the Republic; about self-absorption among the Jedi. Saw in Dooku the effect of Qui-Gon's death, Sifo-Dyas did. The effect that resurfaced the Sith had." Yoda shook his head mournfully. "Knew of Dooku's imminent departure, Master Sifo-Dyas did. Sensed, he may have, the birth of the Separatist movement."

--Taken from Labyrinth of Evil

I really shouldn’t have to post proof that Yoda believes in the existence of the light and dark sides, but just for the sake of it:

As Obi-Wan grew as a Master, he found himself more inclined towards the Unifying Force.

Whether foresight was something innate in Obi-Wan or the result of his continuing fascination with the unifying Force—the long view—Obi-Wan couldn't say.

--Taken from Labyrinth of Evil

Again, there should be no need for this, but in case there is any doubt that Obi-Wan believes in the existence of the light or dark sides:

Luke also accepts the function of the Unifying Force.

"Seeing into the future is an aspect of the Unifying Force, but Yoda warned me that the future is always changing. We have the power to make our own destinies."

—Luke

--Taken from Book of Sith: Secrets of the Dark Side

…Do I really have to post evidence that Luke of all people concretely believes in the existence of the light and dark sides?

More examples of this sort could be produced. There is a surplus of characters who simultaneously believe in the duality of the Force’s light and dark sides as well as the Unifying Force. How is this possible? Because the Unifying Force has nothing to do with the existence, or lack thereof, of the light and dark sides. The Unifying Force is the Force as it expresses itself on a grand and cosmic scale. Numerous sources consistently convey this meaning. The Training Manual is overruled by the multiplicity of sources that distinguish the Unifying Force as a timeless and cosmic power, not to mention the stories that narratively incorporate the Unifying Force without disregarding the light and dark sides. This is the real definition of the Unifying Force.

There are many species in Star Wars, both sentient and non-sentient, that are in some fashion resistant to influence or detection through the Force. However, most people seem unaware how this insubordination to Force suggestion transpires, and others even translate this immunity to others by holding Force-resistant species as a standard, saying that if a Jedi can’t affect a certain species with the Force, then that attests to a limitation in their Force power. Both of these issues will be addressed here. Before continuing, I will not be covering every species with some resistance to the Force. The Yuuzhan Vong notably will not be dealt with here; the Vong race will receive its own “Force Misconceptions” blog at some point in the future, because there are countless misunderstandings about them.

To begin, let’s address species that displayed shielding to Force abilities in the movies: Hutts and Toydarians. We all should be familiar with these two; both resisted Mind Tricks in the movies, Jabba the Hutt from Luke Skywalker and Watto from Qui-Gon Jinn. But how did Jabba and Watto resist the Jedi’s Force suggestion? First, in the novelization of Return of the Jedi, Jabba noted that his brain patterns are very distinct from those of humans, which would inhibit Luke’s ability to arrest Jabba’s thoughts and subject them to his own influence.

Bib stood proudly before Jabba. “Master, I present Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight.”

“I told you not to admit him,” the gangster-slug growled in Huttese.

“I must be allowed to speak.” Luke spoke quietly, though his words were heard throughout the hall.

“He must be allowed to speak,” Bib concurred thoughtfully.

Jabba, furious, bashed Bib across the face and sent him reeling to the floor. “You weak-minded fool! He’s using an old Jedi mind trick!”

Luke let all the rest of the motley horde that surrounded him melt into the recesses of his consciousness, to let Jabba fill his mind totally. “You will bring Captain Solo and the Wookiee to me.”

Jabba smiled grimly. “Your mind powers will not work on me, boy. I am not affected by your human thought pattern.”

--Taken from Return of the Jedi

What about Toydarians? Sources have told us that Toydarians’ bodily structure also contributes dissimilar mental facilities and that Hutts and Toydarians both possess adamant wills that are difficult to subjugate through Force suggestion.

Another unique trait of this species is its brain structure. While this is seemingly no more complex than that of an average human or other sentient species, Toydarians are able to resist attempts at mind control and Force domination.

--Taken from The New Essential Guide to Alien Species

Both Hutts and Toydarians possess varying degrees of mental strength that can make them immune to Jedi mind tricks. In an event from the year 4 A.B.Y. that has since become the stuff of legend, Luke Skywalker found himself unable to mentally persuade Jabba the Hutt to release Rebel prisoners, and had to resort to a backup plan.

A personal log of Darth Vader, recovered from his fortress on Vjun, revealed Vader’s disturbing perspective regarding Toydarians. It should be noted that Vader’s disposition may have been influenced by Anakin Skywalker’s relationship to Watto, the Toydarian junk dealer and slaver who was young Anakin’s “master” on Tatooine. Although Shmi Skywalker’s recovered journal suggests that Watto was a relatively benevolent master, it is conceivable that Vader’s memories of Watto were unfavorable. Furthermore, the identity of the “Toydarian subject” mentioned in Vader’s recordings remain unknown, but records from Tatooine preclude the possibility that it was Watto.

These creatures have become such an irritation that every time I see one I want to strike it down with my lightsaber. Be that as it may, I interviewed a Toydarian subject who showed a great amount of resistance to Force suggestion, up to the point that I created physical discomfort. I found that they can be easily intimidated by a demonstration of strength. And it proved relatively simple to cause it to expire, merely by making its existence extremely painful. Ultimately, though it showed a great degree of willpower, it was no match for the power of the Force.

--Taken from Jedi vs Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force

So the issue is the wavelength of the species’ thoughts and willpower. That partially answers the question, but is there anything else? Does this inability to Mind Trick Hutts or Toydarians speak of inherent weakness on the parts of Luke and Qui-Gon as telepaths, or is there something more complex at work? Recent stories have informed us there is. Bowspritz, a Jedi biologist, elucidated in The Jedi Path that Hutts and Toydarians innately repel suggestion through the Force as a result of biological adaptions.

My specialty is alien biology, and as a Jedi I recognize that the fundamental unifier of all life is the Force. It is fascinating how the Force inspires such a variety of change and adaption, even allowing species to develop barriers that redirect the Force’s natural flow. Because such evolution can be found among recognized sentient beings, you should be able to identify these species on sight if you wish to use your Jedi abilities to their fullest.

Hutts You and your Master will probably run across a Hutt’s thugs long before you meet an actual Hutt, but don’t use mind tricks if you’re brought before their boss! Hutts are notoriously difficult to influence or read through the Force. Their elusiveness has been a struggle for the Jedi since our forebears left Tython.

Toydarians These fascinating beings have lighter-than-air gases in their bellies that enable flight in standard or less-than-standard gravities. But remember that Toydarians are resistant to mind tricks, illusions, and telepathic suggestions. They are well aware of this fact and boast that they can easily outsmart a Jedi. Do not haggle with a Toydarian vendor!

--Taken from The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force

Now, how can biological evolution impact a species’ connection to the Force? The answer lies in Bowspritz’s remark that the Force itself can inspire evolutionary adaptation, which can alter a species’ place in the Force. This makes sense, as the Force pervades all forms of life and is the collective consciousness of life; in fact, it generated life from itself and instigated life’s natural growth. Though the Force is not deterministic (unless a being willingly surrenders to the Force’s directive), the Force can motivate mindsets and emotions, which a decision-making being can accept or deny. And if the Force can galvanize a sentient being to action or provide the capacity for choice, it can certainly alter biological compositions.

After all, the Force does pronounce life in the form of biological makeup. The Force might be present in everything, whether organic or inorganic, but the Force manifests itself in living beings most as opposed to inorganic matter. Droids, for instance, cannot be Force sensitive despite them existing in the Force, while virtually any sentient life can be Force sensitive (even sentient crystals). While there is validity in Yoda’s statement that the “crude matter” of living beings don't advertise the truth of their person and in Luke’s statement that living entities really are “beings of light,” the Force is most potent in organic life and has a profound influence on it. Even since the OT, this was displayed in a minor way when it was established that Force sensitivity can be inherited from a being’s lineage; Luke and Leia acquired their Force sensitivity from Anakin, as the example given in the films. In the EU, Force sensitivity passed along the Halcyon lineage lacks skill in Telekinesis but has an aptitude for Illusions and Absorption. As well, one of the primary applications of Sith alchemy is the administration of physical enhancements in creatures, which often ingrains in them a stronger connection to the dark side. Naturally then, it follows that the Force could also affect life’s evolution.

To illustrate this point in the most detail, let’s look at two other cases of Force-resistant species, the Yinchorri and the ysalamiri. The Yinchorri, like Hutts and Toydarians, are resistant to mental manipulation, and ysalamiri are notorious for their Force-neutralizing fields. It is commonly misunderstood that ysalamiri are simply absent in the Force and can just sever others in the Force who are near them, but this is not entirely accurate. In their accounts on them, Tionne Solusar and Bowspritz explain that ysalamiri actually use the Force in order to negate it within a restricted range.

Yinchorri These reptilians are immune to mental manipulation and cannot have their internal balance disrupted by advanced Force techniques. Their warriors also wear cortosis armor, so don’t pick a fight.

--Taken from The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force

Ysalamiri are salamander-like, nonsentient creatures native to the planet Myrkr. Sessile, arboreal, and equipped with strong claws that draw nutrients from Myrkr’s mineral-rich trees, they cling to their branches with such tenacity that special knowledge is required to remove them without killing them. The ysalamiri’s most remarkable characteristic is its ability to create a “bubble” in which the Force cannot exist. More specifically, the Force cannot be manipulated within such a bubble, which can extend up to ten meters in radius from a single ysalamiri. In groups of ysalamiri, such bubbles can extend and overlap, resulting in vast areas in which the Force cannot be used on Myrkr.

Talon Karrde, the founder of the Smugglers’ Alliance, was based on Myrkr when Grand Admiral Thrawn cam to acquire ysalamiri, which Thrawn then used to protect himself from Force-users. To prevent the ysalamiri from dying after they were removed from the trees and to allow for their use as a mobile means of defense against Force-users, Imperial engineers fashioned special nutrient-infused pipe frames that could be worn on the backs of individuals.

The ysalamiri’s incredible ability to disable or “push back” the Force is part of a natural defensive mechanism that protects them from another indigenous species on Myrkr, the Force-sensitive pack animals called vornskrs. Cunning predators, vornskrs are fur-covered canine animals with sharp teeth and poison-coated, whip-like tails. Their attunement to the Force seems to be tied directly to their hunting instincts, as they are naturally able to detect Force-users, and also use this ability to hunt ysalamiri. They regard any Force-user as prey, and will not hesitate to attack Jedi.

--Taken from Jedi vs Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force

Why shouldn’t animals use the Force? That was my thought when I first heard of the phenomenon as an Initiate, before I started down the path that ultimately gave me the honorific of beastmaster. Since that time I’ve seen plenty of evidence that the Force can be an evolutionary advantage, just like spines or antlers.

Central to any such discussions are the vornskrs and ysalamiri of a classified world. Their abilities caused the Council to quarantine the entire system. Vornskrs are quadrupedal predators that can sense the Force and can use that sense to home in on their prey. So because Jedi are strong in the Force, they appear the biggest and tastiest meal a vornskr has ever encountered. Beware the enemy that utilizes this ability to hunt Jedi.

Though vornskrs are organic “Jedi detectors,” their Force abilities are negligible compared to those of the ysalamiri—arboreal lizards that create bubbles or voids in the Force that hide their energy from predators like vornskrs. Enough ysalamiri clusted together can generate a void large enough to disable an army of Jedi from using the Force.

--Taken from The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force

This changes the matter considerably. If ysalamiri were somehow just removed from the Force and could assert that status onto others around them, that would be evident in how Force sensitive’s respond to it, as there would be little solution to a situation like that, but if a character could circumvent the effects of ysalamiri’s Force bubbles, then that further affirms the idea that ysalamiri use the Force to void the Force, because Force-derived skills can be counteracted. And there is an instance of that; Luke once briefly noted during the Vong War that he had practiced preventing himself from being cut off from the Force by ysalamiri.

"Would she? Obi-Wan and Yoda never talked about what the distant future held for me. Maybe if I hadn't spent the past few years trying to learn how to overcome ysalamiri and tune my lightsaber to cleave cortosis ore, I'd know what course the Jedi should take now. It's the dark side that calls constantly for aggression and revenge—even against the Yuuzhan Vong. The stronger you become, the more you're tempted." Luke gazed at his wife. "Maybe Jacen's right about there being alternatives to fighting."

--Taken from Agent of Chaos I: Hero’s Trial

This also means that if the Force itself is what enforces an ysalamiri’s Force-retardant bubble and fomented Hutt, Toydarian, and Yinchorri Force-resistances, among others, that there might be a way to overcome the latter three species’ Force-resistances as well. But to bypass a Force-resistance, you need to isolate the root of that resistance. We know that the Force engineered a natural environmental adaption in species like Toydarians or Yinchorri, but that clarification is still too simplistic. Through what means did the Force accomplish this? How exactly is the Force linked to biological functions? What caused it to modify a species’ reaction to it? Darth Plagueis answers this.

During his experiments on midi-chlorians, Plagueis finds that midi-chlorians can adjust a species’ connection to the Force. Midi-chlorians are the intermediaries between the Force and organic life that interpret the Force’s will to living beings, and because midi-chlorians are biological and serve the Force, they can protect a species from environmental or predatory dangers through the evolutionary process as the Force directs them to. Plagueis uncovered this relationship between adaptions and midi-chlorians while operating on a Yinchorri subject and attributed the Force-resistance that midi-chlorians cultivated in Yinchorri to other species with natural Force adaptions as well. He found that by his manipulation of midi-chlorians, he could force the midi-chlorians to drop the defenses that shield a Yinchorri’s mind and subsequently Mind Trick the Yinchorri successfully.

Holding Qayhuk’s baleful gaze and motioning with his hand, Damask said, “You have no interest in seeing Yinchorr seated in the Senate.”

Qayhuk took umbrage. “Why else would we have journeyed all this way?”

“You have no interest in seeing Yinchorr seated in the Senate,” Plagueis repeated.

Qayhuk glanced at his green-skinned brethren, then looked at Hill. “Is Magister Damask deaf or in ill health?”

Hill turned to Damask in concern but said nothing.

Damask concealed his astonishment. As rumored, the Yinchorri were apparently resistant to Force suggestion! But how was it possible that midi-chlorians in a being of relatively low intelligence could erect an impenetrable wall against the influence of a Sith? Was this some sort of survival mechanism—the midi-chlorians’ way of protecting the consciousness of their vessels by refusing to be manipulated? He would need to possess one of these beings to learn the secret.

A gift to Damask from the Council of Elders on the occasion of Yinchorr’s seating in the Senate, the towering reptilian condemned murderer shuffled to the center of the energy field that defined his cage on Aborah and, with confusion contorting the features of his beaked face, prostrated himself on the permacrete floor and mumbled in Basic: “I’m honored to be here and to perform whatever tasks you require of me.”

Standing at the field’s shimmering perimeter, 11-4D pivoted his head toward Plagueis. “Congratulations, Magister. At last he responds to your suggestion. You have undermined his resolve.”

That resolve, Plagueis had learned after more than two years of experimentation on the Yinchorri, was in fact a kind of Force bubble fashioned by the turtle-like alien’s limited number of unusually willful midi-chlorians. This suggested that the Yinchorri was actually strong in the Force, despite his pitifully low count. The discovery had come as a breakthrough, and Plagueis was still grappling with the implications.

The Force bubble itself was similar to those generated by creatures that drew on the Force to avoid predation by natural enemies. The relationship between the arboreal ysalamir and its adversary, the vornskr, provided a curious example, in that the latter was attracted to the former by the very mechanism the ysalamir employed as a defense. Where an extremely low midi-chlorian count might have bolstered the odds of survival, nature had instead made the ysalimir species strong in the Force. So strong, in fact, that several of the creatures acting in concert could create a Force bubble encompassing kilometers rather than meters. In a sense, the Jedi Order had done the same on a galactic scale, Plagueis believed, by bathing the galaxy in the energy of the light side of the Force; or more accurately by fashioning a Force bubble that had prevented infiltration by the dark side, until Tenebrous’s Master had succeeded in bursting the bubble, or at least shrinking it. How the Order’s actions could be thought of as balancing the Force had baffled generations of Sith, who harbored no delusions regarding the Force’s ability to self-regulate.

The Yinchorri former convict wasn’t the only new addition to Plagueis’s island facility. In the eleven years that had elapsed since the capture of Venamis and the recruitment of Sidious, Plagueis had collected more than a dozen beings of diverse species and had been subjecting them to a wide range of experiments involving volition, telepathy, healing, regeneration, and life extension, with some promising results. As for the Bith would-be Sith Lord, he was alive and well, though kept comatose more often than not, and always under the watchful photoreceptors of 11-4D or a host of custodial droids.

Plagueis hadn’t lost interest in Venamis by any means, but the Yinchorri’s immunity to Force suggestion—an immunity the species shared with Hutts, Toydarians, and others—had provided him with a new line of investigation. Unlike ysalamiri, which created a Force bubble in the presence of danger, the Yinchorri were in a perpetual state of involuntary immunity to Force suggestion. The fact that immunity was in a sense hardwired into them meant that the ability was an adaptation, prompted by a past threat to the survival of the species. To Plagueis, it meant that the Yinchorri’s midi-chlorians had evolved to provide protection to a species that was naturally strong in the Force. If that were indeed the case, then the Yinchorri were living proof that the Sith of the Bane line had been on the right path from the very start.

In the same way that the pre-Bane Sith had been responsible for their own extinction, the great dark side Lords of the past had doomed themselves to the nether realm through their attempts to conquer death by feeding off the energies of others, rather than by tapping the deepest strata of the Force and learning to speak the language of the midi-chlorians. Plagueis was finally learning to do that, and was just beginning to learn how to persuade, prompt, cajole, and coax them into action. Already he could command them to promote healing, and now he had been successful in enticing them to lower their defenses. If he could compel a murderous Yinchorri to become peaceful, could he—with a mere suggestion—accomplish the opposite by turning a peaceful being into a murderer? Would he one day be able to influence the leaders of worlds and systems to act according to his designs, however iniquitous? Would he one day conquer not only death but life, as well, by manipulating midi-chlorians to produce Forceful beings, even in the absence of fertilization, as Darth Tenebrous might have attempted to do with gene-splicing techniques and computers?

Perhaps.

But not until the singular flame of the light side was extinguished from the galaxy. Not until the Jedi Order was stamped out.

--Taken from Darth Plagueis

This puts everything into perspective. The Force itself originated the adaptions in species such as Yinchorri, Hutts, Toydarians, ysalamiri, and several others with resistances to Force powers and did so through the activity of midi-chlorians present in these species as an evolutionary growth to protect that species. That elaborates on how any species could universally and involuntarily repulse the influence of the Force, because it would be near to impossible to do that without the Force’s consent. It also clarifies that there is no defect in the power of Jedi or Sith for failing to appropriate their powers against these species, because the midi-chlorians, actuators of the Force’s will that they are, implanted these adaptions with the Force itself, and even then, there are some like Luke and Plagueis who have exercised methods of overturning these resistances.

To continue onto another subject of the Force, the topic at hand is the Dark.

Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers to Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, Revenge of the Sith, Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Dark Empire, and The New Rebellion below.
In some Star Wars stories, there is a narrative concept which Matthew Stover named the Dark. But there is question as to the relationship between the Dark and the Force; one common misconception held is that the Dark is tantamount to or, in some way, is the dark side of the Force. Another misconception is that the Dark may not even exist but is simply a metaphor. This is not so. For me to refute these misconceptions, I need to define its characteristics, but that is no easy task. The Dark is...complicated.

Were I to summarize its key definition in only a few words, my summary would be this: final, perpetual, ineluctable nonexistence. Referring to the Dark as an abstraction, the Dark embodies the eventual end of an existence. The laws that govern the universe point to the fact that nothing is permanent. All inorganic matter degrades, and all organic matter dies. This can require practically incomprehensibly long periods of time to happen for some natural phenomena (celestial bodies, for instance, can endure for countless years), but ultimately, everything expires. As a metaphysical power though, the Dark is, once again, more complicated.

For background on the Dark, let’s discuss which stories it has appeared in. The Dark was primarily a concept integrated and developed by Matthew Stover in his novels, mostly Shatterpoint, Revenge of the Sith, and Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, and “the Dark” is one of the names he ascribed to it, another name being “the jungle” from Shatterpoint. This idea has been present in other novels though, such as Sean Stewart’s Yoda: Dark Rendezvous. However, the Dark adds dimensions even to themes prevalent in stories such as Return of the Jedi, and one of the primary sources for the Dark, as I said above, is Revenge of the Sith. While it may never be outright discussed in the films, the fact that the Dark can be traced into the plots of Lucas’ stories exhibits huge significance.

To give a complete overview of the Dark, I will post the descriptive intervals between section divisions in Revenge of the Sith and analyze their meaning.

The dark is generous.
Its first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, our true hearts remain shadowed deeper still. But the greatest concealment lies not in protecting our secret truths, but in hiding from us the truths of others.
The dark protects us from what we dare not know.
Its second gift is comforting illusion: the ease of gentle dreams in night's embrace, the beauty that imagination brings to what would repel in day's harsh light. But the greatest of its comforts is the illusion that the dark is temporary: that every night brings a new day. Because it is day that is temporary.
Day is the illusion.
Its third gift is the light itself: as days are defined by the nights that divide them, as stars are defined by the infinite black through which they wheel, the dark embraces the light, and brings it forth from the center of its own self.
With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins.

The dark is generous, and it is patient.
It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, that drips contempt into compassion, that poisons love with grains of doubt.
The dark can be patient, because the slightest drop of rain will cause those seeds to sprout.
The rain will come, and the seeds will sprout, for the dark is the soil in which they grow, and it is the clouds above them, and it waits behind the star that gives them light.
The dark's patience is infinite.
Eventually, even stars burn out.

The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins.
It always wins because it is everywhere.
It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Walk in the midday sun and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet.
The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.

The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins—but in the heart of its strength lies weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back.
Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars.

Master Yoda held up his bowl. "Asked the toaster to make this feast I did," he said, nodding benevolently at Fidelis, "that we might share our food, and remember our lost Master Leem and Master Maruk."
Fidelis handed the Padawans beakers of a rich purple liquid that tasted like candleberries and rainwater and the smell of sweet stuff. It fizzed on Scout's tongue as she drank a toast. "Master Leem and Master Maruk."
"That's it?" Whie said angrily. "That's what you want to do? Eat? Maks and Jai Maruk dead, and all you can think about is filling your bellies?"
Scout looked up guiltily, licking cracker crumbs off the edge of her mouth.
"What about finding Ventress?" Whie demanded. "What about making her pay for what she did? Are the Jedi about justice, or dessert?"
"Profiteroles Ukio," Fidelis said quietly. "With a caramel ganache filling."
Yoda savored a spoonful of gumbo. "Honor life by living, Padawan. Killing honors only death: only the dark side."
"Well, much has the dark side been honored, then," Whie said bitterly.
"Kid, it's been way too many hours since you've slept," Scout said.
"Don't call me kid," Whie said dangerously. "I am not your little brother. I look out for you, not the other way around, Tallisibeth. Jai Maruk was right about you. If I hadn't been taking care of you back in the spaceport, I might have been able to get down to the floor in time to stop her from killing them both."
"Taking care of me!" Scout cried, outraged. "Who was pinned to the railing by his butler droid while I was trying to get down there? Who snuck off to hear stories about his so-called real family in the first place?" she said, white with anger.
Yoda set his bowl of gumbo regretfully aside. "Hear it working, do you?"
"Hear what?" Whie snapped.
"The dark side. Always it speaks to us, from our pain. Our grief. It connects our pain to all pain, our hurt to all hurt."
"Maybe it has a lot to say." Whie stared at the starscape hovering over the projector table. "It's so easy for you. What do you care? You are unattached, aren't you? You'll probably never die. What was Maks Leem to you? Another pupil. After all these centuries, who could blame you if you could hardly keep track of them? Well, she was more than that to me." He looked up challengingly. Tear tracks were shining on his face, but his eyes were still hard and angry. "She was the closest thing I had to a mother, since you took me away from my real mother. She chose me to be her Padawan and I let her down, I let her die, and I'm not going to sit here and stuff myself and get over it!" He finished with a yell, sweeping the plate of crêpes off the projection table, so the platter went sailing toward the floor.
Yoda's eyes, heavy-lidded and half closed like a drowsing dragon's, gleamed, and one finger twitched. Food, platter, drinks, and all hung suspended in the air. The platter settled; the crêpes returned to it; Whie's overturned cup righted itself, and rich purple liquid trickled back into it. All settled back onto the table. Another twitch of Yoda's fingers, the merest flicker, and Whie's head jerked around as if on a string, until he found himself looking into the old Jedi's eyes. They were green, green as swamp water. He had never quite realized before how terrifying those eyes could be. One could drown in them. One could be pulled under.
"Teach me about pain, think you can?" Yoda said softly. "Think the old Master cannot care, mmm? Forgotten who I am, have you? Old am I, yes. Mm. Loved more than you, have I, Padawan. Lost more. Hated more. Killed more." The green eyes narrowed to gleaming slits under heavy lids. Dragon eyes, old and terrible. "Think wisdom comes at no cost? The dark side, yes—it is easier for them. The pain grows too great, and they eat the darkness to flee from it. Not Yoda. Yoda loves and suffers for it, loves and suffers."
One could have heard a feather hit the floor.
"The price of Yoda's wisdom, high it is, very high, and the cost goes on forever. But teach me about pain, will you?"
"I..." Whie's mouth worked. "I am sorry, Master. I was angry. But...what if they're right?" he cried out in anguish. "What if the galaxy is dark. What if it's like Ventress says: we are born, we suffer, we die, and that is all. What if there is no plan, what if there is no 'goodness'? What if we suffer blindly, trying to find a reason for the suffering, but we're just fooling ourselves, looking for hope that isn't there? What if there is nothing but stars and the black space between them and the galaxy does not care if we live or die?"
Yoda said, "It's true."
The Padawans looked at him in shock. The Master's short legs swung forth and back, forth and back.
"Perhaps," he added. He sighed. "Many days, feel certain of a greater hope, I do. Some days, not so." He shrugged. "What difference does it make?"
"Ventress was right?" Whie said, shocked out of his anger.
"No! Wrong she is! As wrong as she can be!" Yoda snorted. "Grief in the galaxy, is there? Oh, yes. Oceans of it. Worlds. And darkness?" Yoda pointed to the starscape on the projection table. "There you see: darkness, darkness everywhere, and a few stars. A few points of light. If no plan there is, no fate, no destiny, no providence, no Force: then what is left?" He looked at each of them in turn. "Nothing but our choices, hmm?
“Asajj eats the darkness, and the darkness eats her back. Do that if you wish, Whie. Do that if you wish."
The old Jedi looked deep into the starscape, suns and planets and nebulae dancing, tiny points of light blazing in the darkness.
"To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan." His matted eyebrows rose high over his swamp-colored eyes, and he poked Whie with the end of his stick. Poke, poke. "Be a candle, or the night, Padawan: but choose!"


Whie cried for what seemed like a long time. Scout ate. Fidelis served. Master Yoda told stories of Maks Leem and Jai Maruk: tales of their most exciting adventures, of course, but also comical anecdotes from the days when they were only children in the Temple. They drank together. Many toasts.
Scout cried. Whie ate. Fidelis served.
Yoda told stories, and ate, and cried, and laughed: and the Padawans saw that life itself was a lightsaber in his hands; even in the face of treachery and death and hopes gone cold, he burned like a candle in the darkness. Like a star shining in the black eternity of space.

This is Anakin Skywalker:
The most powerful Jedi of his generation. Perhaps of any generation. The fastest. The strongest. An unbeatable pilot. An unstoppable warrior. On the ground, in the air or sea or space, there is no one even close. He has not just power, not just skill, but dash: that rare, invaluable combination of boldness and grace. He is the best there is at what he does. The best there has ever been. And he knows it.
HoloNet features call him the Hero With No Fear. And why not? What should he be afraid of?
Except—
Fear lives inside him anyway, chewing away the firewalls around his heart. Anakin sometimes thinks of the dread that eats at his heart as a dragon. Children on Tatooine tell each other of the dragons that live inside the suns; smaller cousins of the sun-dragons are supposed to live inside the fusion furnaces that power everything from starships to Podracers.
But Anakin's fear is another kind of dragon. A cold kind. A dead kind.
Not nearly dead enough.
Not long after he became Obi-Wan's Padawan, all those years ago, a minor mission had brought them to a dead system: one so immeasurably old that its star had long ago turned to a frigid dwarf of hypercompacted trace metals, hovering a quantum fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Anakin couldn't even remember what the mission might have been, but he'd never forgotten that dead star.
It had scared him.
"Stars can die—?”
"It is the way of the universe, which is another manner of saying that it is the will of the Force," Obi-Wan had told him. "Everything dies. In time, even stars burn out. This is why Jedi form no attachments: all things pass. To hold on to something— or someone—beyond its time is to set your selfish desires against the Force. That is a path of misery, Anakin; the Jedi do not walk it."
That is the kind of fear that lives inside Anakin Skywalker: the dragon of that dead star. It is an ancient, cold dead voice within his heart that whispers all things die...
In bright day he can't hear it; battle, a mission, even a report before the Jedi Council, can make him forget it's even there. But at night—
At night, the walls he has built sometimes start to frost over. Sometimes they start to crack. At night, the dead-star dragon sometimes sneaks through the cracks and crawls up into his brain and chews at the inside of his skull. The dragon whispers of what Anakin has lost. And what he will lose.
The dragon reminds him, every night, of how he held his dying mother in his arms, of how she had spent her last strength to say I knew you would come for me, Anakin...
The dragon reminds him, every night, that someday he will lose Obi-Wan. He will lose Padmé. Or they will lose him.
All things die, Anakin Skywalker. Even stars burn out...
And the only answers he ever has for these dead cold whispers are his memories of Obi-Wan's voice, or Yoda's. But sometimes he can't quite remember them.
all things die...
He can barely even think about it.
But right now he doesn't have a choice: the man he flies to rescue is a closer friend than he'd ever hoped to have. That's what puts the edge in his voice when he tries to make a joke; that's what flattens his mouth and tightens the burn-scar high on his right cheek.
The Supreme Chancellor has been family to Anakin: always there, always caring, always free with advice and unstinting aid. A sympathetic ear and a kindly, loving, unconditional acceptance of Anakin exactly as he is—the sort of acceptance Anakin could never get from another Jedi. Not even from Obi-Wan. He can tell Palpatine things he could never share with his Master.
He can tell Palpatine things he can't even tell Padmé.
Now the Supreme Chancellor is in the worst kind of danger. And Anakin is on his way despite the dread boiling through his blood. That's what makes him a real hero. Not the way the HoloNet labels him; not without fear, but stronger than fear.
He looks the dragon in the eye and doesn't even slow down.
If anyone can save Palpatine, Anakin will. Because he's already the best, and he's still getting better. But locked away behind the walls of his heart, the dragon that is his fear coils and squirms and hisses.
Because his real fear, in a universe where even stars can die, is that being the best will never be quite good enough.

The Sith Lord who once had been a Jedi hero called Anakin Skywalker stood, drawing himself up to his full height, but he looked not outward upon his new Master, nor upon the planet-city beyond, nor out into the galaxy that they would soon rule. He instead turned his gaze inward: he unlocked the furnace gate within his heart and stepped forth to regard with new eyes the cold freezing dread of the dead-star dragon that had haunted his life.
I am Darth Vader, he said within himself.
The dragon tried again to whisper of failure, and weakness, and inevitable death, but with one hand the Sith Lord caught it, crushed away its voice; it tried to rise then, to coil and rear and strike, but the Sith Lord laid his other hand upon it and broke its power with a single effortless twist.
I am Darth Vader, he repeated as he ground the dragon's corpse to dust beneath his mental heel, as he watched the dragon's dust and ashes scatter before the blast from his furnace heart, and you—
You are nothing at all.
He had become, finally, what they all called him.
The Hero With No Fear.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:
The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain.
The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh.
You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down. You don't even have lungs anymore. Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever.
Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?
And you can't, not in the way you once did. Sensors in the shell that prisons your head trickle meaning directly into your brain.
You open your scorched-pale eyes; optical sensors integrate light and shadow into a hideous simulacrum of the world around you. Or perhaps the simulacrum is perfect, and it is the world that is hideous.
Padmé? Are you here? Are you all right? you try to say, but another voice speaks for you, out from the vocabulator that serves you for burned-away lips and tongue and throat.
"Padmé? Are you here? Are you all right?"
I'm very sorry, Lord Vader. I'm afraid she died. It seems in your anger, you killed her.
This burns hotter than the lava had.
"No...no, it is not possible!"
You loved her. You will always love her. You could never will her death.
Never.
But you remember...
You remember all of it.
You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader's blood. You remember the furnace of Vader's fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth—
And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.
That it was all you. Is you.
Only you.
You did it.
You killed her.
You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself...
It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith—
Because now your self is all you will ever have.
And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.
In the end, you do not even want to.
In the end, the shadow is all you have left.
Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself—
And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.
Forever...

There was a time when Mace Windu had feared the power of the dark; there was a time when he had feared the darkness in himself. But the Clone Wars had given him a gift of understanding: on a world called Haruun Kal, he had faced his darkness and had learned that the power of darkness is not to be feared. He had learned that it is fear that gives the darkness power.

Now the scene below subtly altered, though to the physical eye there was no change. Powered by the dark side, Dooku's perception took the measure of those below him with exhilarating precision.
Kenobi was luminous, a transparent being, a window onto a sunlit meadow of the Force.
Skywalker was a storm cloud, flickering with dangerous lightning, building the rotation that threatens a tornado.
And then there was Palpatine, of course: he was beyond power. He showed nothing of what might be within. Though seen with the eyes of the dark side itself, Palpatine was an event horizon. Beneath his entirely ordinary surface was absolute, perfect nothingness. Darkness beyond darkness.
A black hole of the Force.

"Darth Plagueis was my Master. He taught me the key to his power," the shadow said, dryly matter-of-fact, "before I killed him."
Without understanding how he had moved, without even intending to move, without any transition of realization or dawning understanding, Anakin found himself on his feet. A blue bar of sizzling energy terminated a centimeter from Palpatine's chin, its glow casting red-edged shadows up his face and across the ceiling. Only gradually did Anakin come to understand that this was his lightsaber, and that it was in his hand.
"You," he said. Suddenly he was neither dizzy nor tired.
Suddenly everything made sense.
"It's you. It's been you all along!"
In the clean blue light of his blade he stared into the face of a man whose features were as familiar to him as his own, but now seemed as alien as an extragalactic comet—because now he finally understood that those familiar features were only a mask.
He had never seen this man's real face.

Because Mace, too, has an  attachment. Mace has a secret love. Mace Windu loves the Republic.
Many of his students quote him to students of their own:  "Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace."
For Mace Windu, for all his life, for all the lives of a thousand years of Jedi before him, true civilization has had only one true name: the Republic.
He has given his life in the service of his love. He has taken lives in its service, and lost the lives of innocents. He has seen beings that he cares for maimed, and killed, and sometimes worse: sometimes so broken by the horror of the struggle that their only answer was to commit horrors greater still.
And because of that love now, here, in this instant, Anakin Skywalker has nine words for him that shred his heart, burn its pieces, and feed him its smoking ashes.
Palpatine is Sidious. The Chancellor is the Sith Lord.
He doesn't even hear the words, not really; their true meaning is too large for his mind gather in all at once.
They mean that all he's done, and all that has been done to him—
That all the Order has accomplished, all it has suffered—
All the Galaxy  itself has  gone through, all the years of suffering and slaughter, the death of entire  planets—
Has all been for nothing.
Because it was all done to save the Republic.
Which was already gone.
Which had already fallen.
The corpse of which had been defended only by a Jedi Order that was now under the command of a Dark Lord of the Sith. Mace Windu's entire existence has become crystal so shot-through with flaws that the hammer of those nine words has crushed him to sand.

Anakin Skywaker knelt in the rain. He was looking at a hand. The hand had brown skin. The hand held a lightsaber. The hand had a charred oval of tissue where it should have been attached to an arm.

"What have I done?"
Was it his voice? It must have been. Because it was his question.
"What have I done?"
Another hand, a warm and human hand, laid itself softly on his shoulder.
"You're following your destiny, Anakin," said a familiar gentle voice. "The Jedi are traitors. You saved the Republic from their treachery. You can see that, can't you?"
"You were right," Anakin heard himself saying. "Why didn't I know?"
"You couldn't have. They cloaked themselves in deception, my boy. Because they feared your power, they could never trust you."
Anakin stared at the hand, but he no longer saw it. "Obi-Wan—Obi-Wan trusts me..."
"Not enough to tell you of their plot."
Treason echoed in his memory.
...this is not an assignment for the record...
That warm and human hand gave his shoulder a warm and human squeeze. "I do not fear your power, Anakin, I embrace it. You are the greatest of the Jedi. You can be the greatest of the Sith. I believe that, Anakin. I believe in you. I trust you. I trust you. I trust you."
Anakin looked from the dead hand on the ledge to the living one on his shoulder, then up to the face of the man who stood above him, and what he saw there choked him like an invisible fist crushing his throat. The hand on his shoulder was human. The face...wasn't.
The eyes were a cold and feral yellow, and they gleamed like those of a predator lurking beyond a fringe of firelight; the bone around those feral eyes had swollen and melted and flowed like durasteel spilled from a fusion smelter, and the flesh that blanketed it had gone corpse-gray and coarse as rotten synthplast. Stunned with horror, stunned with revulsion, Anakin could only stare at the creature. At the shadow. Looking into the face of the darkness, he saw his future.
"Now come inside," the darkness said.
After a moment, he did.

Anakin stood just within the office. Motionless. Palpatine examined the damage to his face in a broad expanse of wall mirror. Anakin couldn't tell if his expression might be revulsion, or if this were merely the new shape of his features. Palpatine lifted one tentative hand to the misshapen horror that he now saw in the mirror, then simply shrugged.
"And so the mask becomes the man," he sighed with a hint of philosophical melancholy. "I shall miss the face of Palpatine, I think; but for our purpose, the face of Sidious will serve. Yes, it will serve."

Order Sixty-Six is the climax of the Clone Wars.
Not the end—the Clone Wars will end some few hours from now, when a coded signal, sent by Nute Gunray from the secret Separatist bunker on Mustafar, deactivates every combat droid in the galaxy at once—but the climax.
It’s not a thrilling climax; it’s not the culmination of an epic struggle. Just the opposite, in fact. The Clone Wars were never an epic struggle. They were never intended to be. What is happening right now is why the Clone Wars were fought in the first place. It is their reason for existence. The Clone Wars have always been, in and of themselves, from their very inception, the revenge of the Sith.
They were irresistible bait. They took place in remote locations, on planets that belonged, primarily, to “somebody else.” They were fought by expendable proxies. And they were constructed as a win-win situation.
The Clone Wars were the perfect Jedi trap.
By fighting at all, the Jedi lost.
With the Jedi Order overextended, spread thin across the galaxy, each Jedi is alone, surrounded only by whatever clone troops he, she, or it commands. War itself pours darkness into the Force, deepening the cloud that limits Jedi perception. And the clones have no malice, no hatred, not the slightest ill intent that might give warning. They are only following orders.
In this case, Order Sixty-Six.
Hold-out blasters appear in clone hands. ARC-170s drop back onto the trails of Jedi starfighters. AT-STs swivel their guns. Turrets on hovertanks swung silently.
Clones open fire, and Jedi die.
All across the galaxy. All at once.
Jedi die.

Dooku could not argue. Not only had the Dark Lord introduced Dooku to realms of power beyond his most spectacular fantasies, but Sidious was also a political manipulator so subtle that his abilities might be considered to dwarf even the power of the dark side itself. It was said that whenever the Force closes a hatch, it opens a viewport...and every viewport that had so much as cracked in this past thirteen standard years had found a Dark Lord of the Sith already at the rim, peering in, calculating how best to slip through.
Improving upon his Master's plan was near to impossible; his own idea, of substituting Kenobi for Skywalker, he had to admit was only the product of a certain misplaced sentimentality. Skywalker was almost certainly the man for the job.
He should be; Darth Sidious had spent a considerable number of years making him so.
Today's test would remove the almost.

Dooku derived a certain melancholy satisfaction—a pleasurably lonely contemplation of his own unrecognized greatness—from a brief reflection that Skywalker would never understand how much thought and planning, how much work, Lord Sidious had invested in so hastily orchestrating his sham victory.

Anakin stared at his hands. The left one was shaking. He hid it behind him.
"It's them or me, Anakin. Or perhaps I should put it more plainly: It's them or Padmé."
Anakin made his right hand—his black-gloved hand of durasteel and electrodrivers—into a fist.
"It's just—it's not...easy, that's all. I have—I've been a Jedi for so long—"
Sidious offered an appalling smile. "There is a place within you, my boy, a place as briskly clean as ice on a mountaintop, cool and remote. Find that high place, and look down within yourself; breathe that clean, icy air as you regard your guilt and shame. Do not deny them; observe them. Take your horror in your hands and look at it. Examine it as a phenomenon. Smell it. Taste it. Come to know it as only you can, for it is yours, and it is precious."
As the shadow beside him spoke, its words became true. From a remote, frozen distance that was at the same time more extravagantly, hotly intimate than he could have ever dreamed, Anakin handled his emotions. He dissected them. He reassembled them and pulled them apart again. He still felt them—if anything, they burned hotter than before—but they no longer had the power to cloud his mind.
"You have found it, my boy: I can feel you there. That cold distance—that mountaintop within yourself—that is the first key to the power of the Sith."
Anakin opened his eyes and turned his gaze fully upon the grotesque features of Darth Sidious.
He didn't even blink.
As he looked upon that mask of corruption, the revulsion he felt was real, and it was powerful, and it was—
Interesting.
Anakin lifted his hand of durasteel and electrodrivers and cupped it, staring into its palm as though he held there the fear that had haunted his dreams for his whole life, and it was no larger than the piece of shuura he'd once stolen from Padmé's plate.
On the mountain peak within himself, he weighed Padmé's life against the Jedi Order.
It was no contest.
He said, "Yes."
"Yes to what, my boy?"
"Yes, I want your knowledge."
"Good. Good!"
"I want your power. I want the power to stop death."
"That power only my Master truly achieved, but together we will find it. The Force is strong with you, my boy. You can do anything.”
"The Jedi betrayed you," Anakin said. "The Jedi betrayed both of us."
"As you say. Are you ready?"
"I am," he said, and meant it. "I give myself to you. I pledge myself to the ways of the Sith. Take me as your apprentice. Teach me. Lead me. Be my Master."
Sidious raised the hood of his robe and draped it to shadow the ruin of his face.
"Kneel before me, Anakin Skywalker."
Anakin dropped to one knee. He lowered his head.
"It is your will to join your destiny forever with the Order of the Sith Lords?"
There was no hesitation. "Yes."
Darth Sidious laid a pale hand on Anakin's brow. "Then it is done. You are now one with the Order of the Dark Lords of the Sith. From this day forward, the truth of you, my apprentice, now and forevermore, will be Darth..."
A pause; a questioning in the Force—
An answer, dark as the gap between galaxies—
He heard Sidious say it: his new name.
Vader.
A pair of syllables that meant him.
Vader, he said to himself. Vader.
"Thank you, my Master."

Dooku could only shake his head in awe. And to think that only days earlier, the Jedi had seemed so close to uncovering, even destroying, all he and his Master had worked for. But he should never have feared. His Master never lost. He would never lose. He was the definition of unbeatable.
How can one defeat an enemy one thinks is a friend?

The Coruscant nightfall was spreading through the galaxy. The darkness in the Force was no hindrance to the shadow in the Chancellor's office; it was the darkness. Wherever darkness dwelled, the shadow could send perception.

There came a turning point in the clash of the light against the dark. It did not come from a flash of lightning or slash of energy blade, though there were these in plenty; it did not come from a flying kick or a surgically precise punch, though these were traded, too.
It came as the battle shifted from the holding office to the great Chancellor's Podium; it came as the hydraulic lift beneath the Podium raised it on its tower of durasteel a hundred meters and more, so that it became a laserpoint of battle flaring at the focus of the vast emptiness of the Senate Arena; it came as the Force and the podium's controls ripped delegation pods free of the curving walls and made of them hammers, battering rams, catapult stones crashing and crushing against each other in a rolling thunder-roar that echoed the Senate's cheers for the galaxy's new Emperor.
It came when the avatar of light resolved into the lineage of the Jedi; when the lineage of the Jedi refined into one single Jedi. It came when Yoda found himself alone against the dark.
In that lightning-speared tornado of feet and fists and blades and bashing machines, his vision finally pierced the darkness that had clouded the Force. Finally, he saw the truth.
This truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most implacable, most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known...
just—
didn't—
have it.
He'd never had it. He had lost before he started. He had lost before he was born. The Sith had changed. The Sith had grown, had adapted, had invested a thousand years' intensive study into every aspect of not only the Force but Jedi lore itself, in preparation for exactly this day. The Sith had remade themselves. They had become new.
While the Jedi—
The Jedi had spent that same millennium training to refight the last war. The new Sith could not be destroyed with a lightsaber; they could not be burned away by any torch of the Force. The brighter his light, the darker their shadow. How could one win a war against the dark, when war itself had become the dark's own weapon?
He knew, at that instant, that this insight held the hope of the galaxy. But if he fell here, that hope would die with him. Hmmm, Yoda thought. A problem this is...

Vader’s shuttle settled onto the docking bay of the Death Star, like a black, wingless, carrion-eating bird; like a nightmare insect. Luke and the Dark Lord emerged from the snout of the beast with a small escort of stormtroopers, and walked rapidly across the cavernous main bay to the Emperor’s tower elevator. Royal guards awaited them there, flanking the shaft, bathed in a carmine glow. They opened the elevator door. Luke stepped forward.
His mind was buzzing with what to do. It was the Emperor he was being taken to now. The Emperor! If Luke could but focus, keep his mind clear to see what must be done—and do it. A great noise filled his head though, like an underground wind.
He hoped Leia deactivated the deflector shield quickly, and destroyed the Death Star—now, while all three of them were here. Before anything else happened. For the closer Luke came to the Emperor, the more anythings he feared would happen. A black storm raged inside him. He wanted to kill the Emperor, but then what? Confront Vader? What would his father do? And what if Luke faced his father first, faced him and—destroyed him. The thought was at once repugnant and compelling. Destroy Vader—and then what. For the first time, Luke had a brief murky image of himself, standing on his father’s body, holding his father’s blazing power, and sitting at the Emperor’s right hand.
He squeezed his eyes shut against this thought, but it left a cold sweat on his brow, as if Death’s hand had brushed him there and left its shallow imprint.
The elevator door opened. Luke and Vader walked out into the throne room alone, across the unlit antechamber, up the grated stairs, to stand before the throne: father and son, side by side, both dressed in black, one masked and one exposed, beneath the gaze of the malignant Emperor.
Vader bowed to his master. The Emperor motioned him to rise, though; the Dark Lord did his master’s bidding.
“Welcome, young Skywalker.” The Evil One smiled graciously. “I have been expecting you.”
Luke stared back brazenly at the bent, hooded figure. Defiantly. The Emperor’s smile grew even softer, though; even more fatherly. He looked at Luke’s manacles.
“You no longer need those,” he added with no-bless oblige—and made the slightest motion with his finger in the direction of Luke’s wrists. At that, Luke’s binders simply fell away, clattering noisily to the floor. Luke looked at his own hands—free, now, to reach out for the Emperor’s throat, to crush his windpipe in an instant...
Yet the Emperor seemed gentle. Had he not just let Luke free? But he was devious, too, Luke knew. Do not be fooled by appearances, Ben had told him. The Emperor was unarmed. He could still strike. But wasn’t aggression part of the dark side? Mustn’t he avoid that at all costs? Or could he use darkness judiciously, and then put it away? He stared at his free hands...he could have ended it all right there—or could he? He had total freedom to choose what to do now; yet he could not choose. Choice, the double-edged sword. He could kill the Emperor, he could succumb to the Emperor’s arguments. He could kill Vader...and then he could even become Vader. Again this thought laughed at him like a broken clown, until he pushed it back into a black corner of his brain.
The Emperor sat before him, smiling. The moment was convulsive with possibilities...
The moment passed. He did nothing.

Slowly, Luke and Vader circled. Lightsaber high above his head, Luke readied his attack from classic first-position; the Dark Lord held a lateral stance, in classic answer. Without announcement, Luke brought his blade straight down—then, when Vader moved to parry, Luke feinted and cut low. Vader counterparried, let the impact direct his sword toward Luke's throat... but Luke met the riposte and stepped back. The first blows, traded without injury. Again, they circled.
Vader was impressed with Luke's speed. Pleased, even. It was a pity, almost, he couldn't let the boy kill the Emperor yet. Luke wasn't ready for that, emotionally. There was still a chance Luke would return to his friends if he destroyed the Emperor now. He needed more extensive tutelage, first—training by both Vader and Palpatine—before he'd be ready to assume his place at Vader's right hand, ruling the galaxy. So Vader had to shepherd the boy through periods like this, stop him from doing damage in the wrong places—or in the right places prematurely.
Before Vader could gather his thoughts much further, though, Luke attacked again—much more aggressively. He advanced in a flurry of lunges, each met with a loud crack of Vader's phosphorescent saber. The Dark Lord retreated a step at every slash, swiveling once to bring his cutting beam up viciously—but Luke batted it away, pushing Vader back yet again. The Lord of the Sith momentarily lost his footing on the stairs and tumbled to his knees.
Luke stood above him, at the top of the staircase, heady with his own power. It was in his hands, now, he knew it was: he could take Vader. Take his blade, take his life. Take his place at the Emperor's side. Yes, even that. Luke didn't bury the thought, this time; he gloried in it. He engorged himself with its juices, felt its power tingle his cheeks. It made him feverish, this thought, with lust so overpowering as to totally obliterate all other considerations. 
He had the power; the choice was his. 
And then another thought emerged, slowly compulsive as an ardent lover: he could destroy the Emperor, too. Destroy them both, and rule the galaxy. Avenge and conquer. 
It was a profound moment for Luke. Dizzying. Yet he did not swoon. Nor did he recoil. 
He took one step forward.
For the first time, the thought entered Vader's consciousness that his son might best him. He was astounded by the strength Luke had acquired since their last duel, in the Cloud City—not to mention the boy's timing, which was honed to a thought's-breadth. This was an unexpected circumstance. Unexpected and unwelcome. Vader felt humiliation crawling in on the tail of his first reaction, which was surprise, and his second, which was fear. And then the edge of the humiliation curled up, to reveal bald anger. And now he wanted revenge.
These things were mirrored, each facet, by the young Jedi who now towered above him. The Emperor, watching joyously, saw this, and goaded Luke on to revel in his Darkness. “Use your aggressive feelings, boy! Yes! Let the hate flow through you! Become one with it, let it nourish you!”
Luke faltered a moment—then realized what was happening. He was suddenly confused again. What did he want? What should he do? His brief exultation, his microsecond of dark clarity—gone, now, in a wash of indecision, veiled enigma. Cold awakening from a passionate flirtation. He took a step back, lowered his sword, relaxed, and tried to drive the hatred from his being.
In that instant, Vader attacked. He lunged half up the stairs, forcing Luke to reverse defensively. He bound the boy's blade with his own, but Luke disengaged and leaped to the safety of an overhead gantry. Vader jumped over the railing to the floor beneath the platform on which Luke stood.
“I will not fight you, Father,” Luke stated.
“You are unwise to lower your defenses,” Vader warned. His anger was layered, now—he did not want to win if the boy was not battling to the fullest. But if winning meant he had to kill a boy who wouldn't fight...then he could do that, too. Only he wanted Luke to be aware of those consequences. He wanted Luke to know this was no longer just a game. This was Darkness.

Luke heard something else, though. “Your thoughts betray you, Father. I feel the good in you...the conflict. You could not bring yourself to kill me before—and you won't destroy me now.” Twice before, in fact—to Luke's recollection—Vader could have killed him, but didn't. In the dogfight over the first Death Star, and later in the lightsaber duel on Bespin. He thought of Leia, briefly now, too—of how Vader had had her in his clutches once, had even tortured her...but didn't kill her. He winced to think of her agony, but quickly pushed that from his mind. The point was clear to him, now, though so often so murky: there was still good in his father.
This accusation really made Vader angry. He could tolerate much from the insolent child, but this was insufferable. He must teach this boy a lesson he would never forget, or die learning. “Once again, you underestimate the power of the dark side...”
Vader threw his scintillating blade—it sliced through the supports holding up the gantry on which Luke was perched, then swept around and flew back into Vader's hand. Luke tumbled to the ground, then rolled down another level, under the tilting platform. In the shadow of the darkened overhang, he was out of sight. Vader paced the area like a cat, seeking the boy; but he wouldn't enter the shadows of the overhang.
“You cannot hide forever, Luke.”
“You'll have to come in and get me,” replied the disembodied voice.
“I will not give you the advantage that easily.” Vader felt his intentions increasingly ambiguous in this conflict; the purity of his evil was being compromised. The boy was clever indeed—Vader knew he must move with extreme caution now.
“I wish no advantage, Father. I will not fight you. Here...take my weapon.” Luke knew full well this might be his end, but so be it. He would not use Darkness to fight Darkness. Perhaps it would be left to Leia, after all, to carry on the struggle, without him. Perhaps she would know a way he didn't know; perhaps she could find a path. For now, though, he could see only two paths, and one was into Darkness; and one was not.
Luke put his lightsaber on the ground, and rolled it along the floor toward Vader. It stopped halfway between them, in the middle of the low overhead area. The Dark Lord reached out his hand—Luke's lightsaber jumped into it. He hooked it to his belt and, with grave uncertainty, entered the shadowy overhang.
He was picking up additional feelings from Luke, now, new crosscurrents of doubt. Remorse, regret, abandonment. Shades of pain. But somehow not directly related to Vader. To others, to...Endor. Ah, that was it—the Sanctuary Moon where his friends would soon die. Luke would learn soon enough: friendship was different on the dark side. A different thing altogether.
“Give yourself to the dark side, Luke,” he entreated. “It is the only way you can save your friends. Yes, your thoughts betray you, son. Your feelings for them are strong, especially for—“
Vader stopped. He sensed something.
Luke withdrew further into shadow. He tried to hide, but there was no way to hide what was in his mind—Leia was in pain. Her agony cried to him now, and his spirit cried with her. He tried to shut it out, to shut it up, but the cry was loud, and he couldn't stifle it, couldn't leave it alone, had to cradle it openly, to give it solace.
Vader's consciousness invaded that private place.
“No!” screamed Luke.
Vader was incredulous. “Sister? Sister!” he bellowed. “Your feelings have now betrayed her, too... Twins!” he roared triumphantly. “Obi-Wan was wise to hide her, but now his failure is complete.” His smile was clear to Luke, through the mask, through the shadows, through all the realms of Darkness. “If you will not turn to the Dark Side, perhaps she will.”
This, then, was Luke's breaking point. For Leia was everyone's last unflagging hope. If Vader turned his twisted, misguided cravings on her...
“Never!” he screamed. His lightsaber flew off Vader's belt into his own hand, igniting as it came to him. He rushed to his father with a frenzy he'd never known. Nor had Vader. The gladiators battled fiercely, sparks flying from the clash of their radiant weapons, but it was soon evident that the advantage was all Luke's. And he was pressing it. They locked swords, body to body. When Luke pushed Vader back to break the clinch, the Dark Lord hit his head on an overhanging beam in the cramped space. He stumbled backward even farther, out of the low-hanging area. Luke pursued him relentlessly.
Blow upon blow, Luke forced Vader to retreat—back, onto the bridge that crossed the vast, seemingly bottomless shaft to the power core. Each stroke of Luke's saber pummeled Vader, like accusations, like screams, like shards of hate.
The Dark Lord was driven to his knees. He raised his blade to block yet another onslaught—and Luke slashed Vader's right hand off at the wrist. The hand, along with bits of metal, wires, and electronic devices, clattered uselessly away while Vader's lightsaber tumbled over the edge of the span, into the endless shaft below, without a trace.
Luke stared at his father's twitching, severed, mechanical hand—and then at his own black-gloved artificial part—and realized suddenly just how much he'd become like his father. Like the man he hated. Trembling, he stood above Vader, the point of his glowing blade at the Dark Lord's throat. He wanted to destroy this thing of Darkness, this thing that was once his father, this thing that was...him.
Suddenly the Emperor was there, looking on, chuckling with uncontrollable, pleased agitation. “Good! Kill him! Your hate has made you powerful! Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father's place at my side!”
Luke stared at his father beneath him, then at the Emperor, then back at Vader. This was Darkness—and it was the Darkness he hated. Not his father, not even the Emperor. But the Darkness in them. In them, and in himself. And the only way to destroy the Darkness was to renounce it. For good and all. He stood suddenly erect, and made the decision for which he'd spent his life in preparation. He hurled his lightsaber away. “Never! Never will I turn to the dark side! You have failed, Palpatine. I am a Jedi, as my father was before me.”
The Emperor's glee turned to a sullen rage. “So be it, Jedi. If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed.”
Palpatine raised his spidery arms toward Luke: blinding white bolts of energy coruscated from his fingers, shot across the room like sorcerous lightning, and tore through the boy's insides, looking for ground. The young Jedi was at once confounded and in agony—he’d never heard of such a power, such a corruption of the Force, let alone experienced it.
But if it was Force-generated, it could be Force-repelled. Luke raised his arms to deflect the bolts. Initially, he was successful—the lightning rebounded from his touch, harmlessly into the walls. Soon, though, the shocks came with such speed and power, they coursed over and into him, and he could only shrink before them, convulsed with pain, his knees buckling, his powers at ebb.
Vader crawled, like a wounded animal, to his Emperor's side.

On the Death Star, Luke was nearly unconscious beneath the continuing assault of the Emperor's lightning. Tormented beyond reason, betaken of a weakness that drained his very essence, he hoped for nothing more than to submit to the nothingness toward which he was drifting. The Emperor smiled down at the enfeebled young Jedi, as Vader struggled to his feet beside his master.
“Young fool!” Palpatine rasped at Luke. “Only now at the end, do you understand. Your puerile skills are no match for the power of the dark side. You have paid a price for your lack of vision. Now, young Skywalker, you will pay the price in full. You will die!”
He laughed maniacally; and although it would not have seemed possible to Luke, the outpouring of bolts from the Emperor's fingers actually increased in intensity. The sound screamed through the room, the murderous brightness of the flashes was overwhelming.
Luke's body slowed, wilted, finally crumpled under the hideous barrage. He stopped moving altogether. At last, he appeared totally lifeless. The Emperor hissed maliciously.
At that instant, Vader sprang up and grabbed the Emperor from behind, pinning Palpatine's upper arras to his torso. Weaker than he'd ever been, Vader had lain still these last few minutes, focusing his every fiber of being on this one, concentrated act—the only action possible; his last, if he failed. Ignoring pain, ignoring his shame and his weaknesses, ignoring the bone-crushing noise in his head, he focused solely and sightlessly on his will—his will to defeat the evil embodied in the Emperor.
Palpatine struggled in the grip of Vader's unfeeling embrace, his hands still shooting bolts of malign energy out in all directions. In his wild flailing, the lightning ripped across the room, tearing into Vader. The Dark Lord fell again, electric currents crackling down his helmet, over his cape, into his heart.
Vader stumbled with his load to the middle of the bridge over the black chasm leading to the power core. He held the wailing despot high over his head, and with a final spasm of strength, hurled him into the abyss. Palpatine's body, still spewing bolts of light, spun out of control, into the void, bouncing back and forth off the sides of the shaft as it fell. It disappeared at last; but then, a few seconds later, a distant explosion could be heard, far down at the core. A rush of air billowed out the shaft, into the throne room.
The wind whipped at Lord Vader's cape, as he staggered and collapsed toward the hole, trying to follow his master to the end. Luke crawled to his father's side, though, and pulled the Dark Lord away from the edge of the chasm, to safety.
Both of them lay on the floor, entwined in each other, too weak to move, too moved to speak.

Luke waited—but a moment. In the very faltering, he found strength. Thus had Ben and Yoda both instructed him: when you are attacked, fall. Let your opponent’s power buffet you as a strong wind topples the grass. In time, he will expend himself, and you will still be upright.

For the first time, the Death Star rocked. The collision with the exploding destroyer was only the beginning, leading to various systems breakdowns, which led to reactor meltdowns, which led to personnel panic, abandonment of posts, further malfunctions, and general chaos. Smoke was everywhere, substantial rumblings came from all directions at once, people were running and shouting. Electrical fires, steam explosions, cabin depressurizations, disruption of chain-of-command. Added to this, the continued bombardments by Rebel Cruisers—smelling fear in the enemy—merely heightened the sense of hysteria that was already pervasive. For the Emperor was dead. The central, powerful evil that had been the cohesive force to the Empire was gone; and when the dark side was this diffused, this nondirected—this was simply where it led.
Confusion.
Desperation.
Damp fear.
In the midst of this uproar, Luke had made it, somehow, to the main docking bay—where he was trying to carry the hulking deadweight of his father's weakening body toward an Imperial shuttle. Halfway there, his strength finally gave out, though; and he collapsed under the strain. Slowly he rose again. Like an automaton, he hoisted his father's body over his shoulder and stumbled toward one of the last remaining shuttles. Luke rested his father on the ground, trying to collect strength one last time, as explosions grew louder all around them. Sparks hissed in the rafters; one of the walls buckled, and smoke poured through a gaping fissure. The floor shook.
Vader motioned Luke closer to him. "Luke, help me take this mask off."
Luke shook his head. "You'll die."
The Dark Lord's voice was weary. "Nothing can stop that now. Just once let me face you without it. Let me look on you with my own eyes."
Luke was afraid. Afraid to see his father as he really was. Afraid to see what person could have become so dark—the same person who'd fathered Luke, and Leia. Afraid to know the Anakin Skywalker who lived inside Darth Vader.
Vader, too, was afraid—to let his son see him, to remove this armored mask that had been between them so long. The black, armored mask that had been his only means of existing for over twenty years. It had been his voice, and his breath, and his invisibility—his shield against all human contact. But now he would remove it; for he would see his son before he died.
Together they lifted the heavy helmet from Vader's head—inside the mask portion, a complicated breathing apparatus had to be disentangled, a speaking modulator and view-screen detached from the power unit in back. But when the mask was finally off and set aside, Luke gazed on his father's face. It was the sad, benign face of an old man. Bald, beardless, with a mighty scar running from the top of his head to the back of the scalp, he had unfocused, deepset, dark eyes, and his skin was pasty white, for it had not seen the sun in two decades. The old man smiled weakly; tears glazed his eyes, now. For a moment, he looked not too unlike Ben.
It was a face full of meanings, that Luke would forever recall. Regret, he saw most plainly. And shame. Memories could be seen flashing across it... memories of rich times. And horrors. And love, too.
It was a face that hadn't touched the world in a lifetime. In Luke's lifetime. He saw the wizened nostrils twitch, as they tested a first, tentative smell. He saw the head tilt imperceptibly to listen—for the first time without electronic auditory amplification. Luke felt a pang of remorse that the only sounds now to be heard were those of explosions, the only smells, the pungent sting of electrical fires. Still, it was a touch. Palpable, unfiltered.
He saw the old eyes focus on him. Tears burned Luke's cheeks, fell on his father's lips. His father smiled at the taste.
It was a face that had not seen itself in twenty years.
Vader saw his son crying, and knew it must have been at the horror of the face the boy beheld. It intensified, momentarily, Vader's own sense of anguish—to his crimes, now, he added guilt at the imagined repugnance of his appearance. But then this brought him to mind of the way he used to look—striking, and grand, with a wry tilt to his brow that hinted of invincibility and took in all of life with a wink. Yes, that was how he'd looked once. And this memory brought a wave of other memories with it. Memories of brotherhood, and home. His dear wife. The freedom of deep space. Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, his friend...and how that friendship had turned. Turned, he knew not how—but got injected, nonetheless, with some uncaring virulence that festered, until...hold. These were memories he wanted none of, not now. Memories of molten lava, crawling up his back...no.
This boy had pulled him from that pit—here, now, with this act. This boy was good.
The boy was good, and the boy had come from him—so there must have been good in him, too. He smiled up again at his son, and for the first time, loved him. And for the first time in many long years, loved himself again, as well.
Suddenly he smelled something—flared his nostrils, sniffed once more. Wildflowers, that was what it was. Just blooming; it must be spring. And there was thunder—he cocked his head, strained his ears. Yes, spring thunder, for a spring rain. To make the flowers bloom. Yes, there...he felt a raindrop on his lips. He licked the delicate droplet...but wait, it wasn't sweet water, it was salty, it was...a teardrop.
He focused on Luke once again, and saw his son was crying. Yes, that was it, he was tasting his boy's grief—because he looked so horrible; because he was so horrible. But he wanted to make it all right for Luke, he wanted Luke to know he wasn't really ugly like this, not deep inside, not all together. With a little self-deprecatory smile, he shook his head at Luke, explaining away the unsightly beast his son saw. "Luminous beings are we, Luke—not this crude matter."
Luke shook his head, too—to tell his father it was all right, to dismiss the old man's shame, to tell him nothing mattered now. And everything—but he couldn't talk.
Vader spoke again, even weaker—almost inaudible. "Go, my son. Leave me."
At that, Luke found his voice. "No. You're coming with me. I'll not leave you here. I've got to save you."
"You already have, Luke," he whispered. He wished, briefly, he'd met Yoda, to thank the old Jedi for the training he'd given Luke...but perhaps he'd be with Yoda soon, now, in the ethereal oneness of the Force. And with Obi-Wan.
"Father, I won't leave you," Luke protested. Explosions jarred the docking bay in earnest, crumbling one entire wall, splitting the ceiling. A jet of blue flame shot from a gas nozzle nearby. Just beneath it the floor began to melt.
Vader pulled Luke very close, spoke into his ear. "Luke, you were right...and you were right about me... Tell your sister...you were right."
With that, he closed his eyes, and Darth Vader—Anakin Skywalker—died.
A tremendous explosion filled the back of the bay with fire, knocking Luke flat to the ground. Slowly, he rose again; and like an automaton, stumbled toward one of the last remaining shuttles.

Cronal's rise to power had started with a vision: a vision of the Dark.
More than a vision, in fact; more than a simple prophecy, or precognition. To the Nightsisters of Dathomir, it was the Heartshadow.
Other Force users had other names for it.
But Cronal called it simply Darksight.
Deep in the area ignorantly described by the Old Republic, and later the Empire, as the "Unknown Regions," there was a vast cloud of dust and rock and interstellar gas that pulsed with a bloody and forbidding scarlet glow as it radiated away the energy of twelve stellar clusters within. This was the Perann Nebula; the twelve clusters that it surrounded were known collectively as the Nihil Retreat. The absolute rulers of the Nihil Retreat, dreaded masters of darkmagicks beyond the grasp of even the Sith, were the Sorcerers of Rhand.
The Sorcerers of Rhand were the only family Cronal would ever know. The Rhandites had plucked him from the arms of the nameless woman who had borne him, and had forged him as a weapon is forged, awakening his insight, refining his will, opening his mind to the One Truth:
Only power is real, and the only real power is the power to destroy. Existence is fleeting. Destruction is eternal.
Every child was born waiting for death. Civilizations fell, and their very ashes were swallowed by time. The stars themselves burned out. Destruction, on the other hand...
Destruction was the will of the universe.
Some called it entropy, and tried to quantify and constrain it with the laws of thermodynamics. Some expressed it with a simple poetic declarative: Things fall apart. Some even tried to dismiss it with a joke: Anything that can go wrong will. But it was not a joke, or poetry; it was not science, nor was it subject to any law.
It was the Way of the Dark.
Destruction was easy...and permanent. When a being was killed, everything he or she would have ever done or possessed, seen or felt, was murdered. And that murder made a permanent change in the structure of the universe—it emptied the universe of an entire life, and left behind only a void.
That void was the foundation of truth.
That was why the Jedi and the Sith would remain forever locked in their pointless battle: because all their philosophy of light versus dark, of service versus mastery, was as meaningless as the whistle of wind through desert rocks. Service and mastery were equally futile, even illusory, in the face of the One Truth. All the endless Jedi vs. Sith nattering of "the dark side of the Force" blinded them one and all to the bare reality that there was nothing but the Dark.
The Dark was not a side of the Force, and it was no mere portion of reality. It was reality. The Sorcerers of Rhand had never spoken of the Force, and Cronal was to this day unsure whether they would have had any understanding of how the Force was viewed and spoken of in the rest of the galaxy. To the Rhandites, it was only the Dark, and the only pertinent feature of the Dark was that it would respond to the will of a properly trained being, so long as that being's will was in line with the Way of the Dark.
It was the Dark that set world against world, nation against nation, sibling against sibling, child against parent. It was the Dark that brought pestilence and starvation, hatred and war. The Dark was the hidden energy of the cosmos itself: that which pressed galaxy away from galaxy, star away from star until finally each and every world would fade within its own private black hole, moving too swiftly from its neighbors for their light to overtake it.
This was why Cronal had chosen the code name Blackhole: because he had willed himself to become an event horizon of the Dark.
And of all the powers the Dark granted its adepts, the greatest was Darksight. It was Darksight that had led Cronal far from the Nihil Retreat, beyond the Perann Nebula and out of the Unknown Regions altogether, in search of the truth of his visions. It was Darksight that had led him to Dromund Kaas, where he had easily infiltrated and come to dominate that pack of pathetic, self-deluded fools who styled themselves Prophets of the Dark Side. Imagine, to waste one's brief foray in life, the fleeting bright instant between the infinite dark before and the eternal dark beyond, in mere study—in trying to learn to use the "dark side of the Force" to merely predict the future.
With Darksight, Cronal could create the future. He was familiar, in concept, with the pale shadow-imitation of Darksight that had supposedly been employed by some exceptional Jedi and certain among the Sith—the pathetic conjuror's trick they called battle meditation. Through massive concentration and expenditure of energy, they claimed to subtly influence the course of a single combat, or, for the most powerful among them, an engagement of greater forces, like armies in collision or fleet-to-fleet battles. They claimed that their simplistic Force-powered visualization of a desired outcome would subtly shift probabilities and grant them luck, that it would inspire their allies and demoralize their enemies. Of course, these claims could never be proven, or disproven; any charlatan might simply take credit for any random victory, or ascribe a defeat to the will of the Force—or a supposedly more powerful Force-user practicing his or her own "battle meditation" in service to the opposite side...
Battle meditation. Idiots.
Anyone trained by the Rhandites could have told them: any and all battles, all wars, the very concept of battle itself, served but a single end. Their only function was destruction. Only by setting one's will upon pure destruction could victory be achieved. When your will was fixed steadily upon the Way of the Dark, the Dark itself became your partner in all that you did.
Cronal was living proof of this truth. It was Cronal's Darksight that had attracted the attention of Palpatine and brought Vader to Dromund Kaas; even Kadann, the fool who pretended to be the Supreme Prophet of the Dark Side, never suspected how entirely his order served not some fantasy of Sith power, but the Dark itself…because Cronal had made it so. Palpatine had plucked Cronal from the Prophets and set him apart from even the other elite Emperor's Hands, for Palpatine had been swift to recognize that his was a gift that transcended mere prophecy. Any fool with a trace of ability could see echoes of the future—Palpatine himself was rather good at it—but Cronal's ability transcended mere prophecy as hyperdrive transcends the wings of a shadowmoth.
Palpatine had been impressed with the "accuracy" of Cronal's "predictions"...yet not even the great Darth Sidious had ever suspected that Cronal's predictions were accurate not because Cronal had seen the future, but because he had chosen that future. That exact future.
He had decided, and his choice had molded all of history to his will. That was the power of Darksight: to search among all the possible futures for the one that best suited your own desire and the Way of the Dark...and then to map each step that must be taken to bring you to that future, and bring that future to you. But to make it happen, you had to bind your desire to the Dark, and dream only of destruction.
Palpatine had been a fool. He had thought he could make the Dark serve him, instead of the opposite. In the days of the Old Republic, before he had revealed his Sith identity, Palpatine literally could not fail. Every blind flailing gesture of every Jedi who'd set himself against him had turned to his advantage, and even the sheerest accidents of fortune had served his goal...because that goal had been the destruction of the Jedi Order, and the death of the Republic. He'd served the Dark unknowingly, all the while believing that the Dark was only a means to an end, a tool to help him destroy his enemies and clear his path to absolute power.
What he'd never understood was that destruction was his power. As soon as he'd turned his will to rulership, to building instead of destroying, he had forsaken the Way of the Dark...and everything had begun to go wrong for him. Where before he could not fail, now he'd had no chance of succeeding, because when you turn your back on the Dark, the Dark turns its back on you.
Only days after the Battle of Yavin, Cronal had cast his mind deep into the void, seeking the future of the young Rebel pilot who had destroyed the Death Star, and had found him as an older, more seasoned man, dressed in dark robes—and bearing a lightsaber.
Kneeling before the Emperor, to swear his allegiance to the dark side.
My fate...will be the same as my father’s.
Which was when Cronal finally understood who Darth Vader was, and saw the terrible flaw that would bring the Order of the Sith to its ultimate destruction. A destruction that Cronal not only was determined to survive, but was certain he could transform into an eternal victory for the Dark. And, not incidentally, eternal life for himself.
Near to eternal, anyway; as long as a single living thing struggled and suffered and fed the Dark with killing and dying, Cronal would be here. His ultimate sacrifice to the Dark would be the survival of his consciousness until the heat death of the Universe...when he would be joined forever with the final oblivion of all that had ever been. All that will ever be.
He would be the last.
Slowly, subtly, through the months and years from Yavin to Endor, Cronal had served his vision. A delicate balance had had to be meticulously maintained, to navigate the intricacies of the relationship between Palpatine and Vader...to inculcate a rivalry with the half-mechanical terror that Palpatine had elevated to the rank of Lord of the Sith. For all his undoubted physical power, Vader had never been more than a blunt instrument, with no real understanding of the truth of the Dark, nor of the uses of real power. He had been, all in all, only a thug with a lightsaber...and, as it proved, a weakhearted, emotionally crippled, impulsively treasonous thug at that.
Though Vader could never have been Cronal's equal in coursing the mazy paths of dark power, it had served Cronal's purpose to pretend jealousy—even to appear to fail, more than once, and to openly bridle under Vader's supposed authority, so that Palpatine had begun to suspect that Cronal might deliberately sabotage the monster's operations. Thus it was that he had persuaded Palpatine—subtly, oh-so-delicately, so that the Emperor believed to the day of his death that it had all been his own idea—that Cronal could better serve the Empire from afar, away from Coruscant, away from the prying optical receptors of Vader's ridiculous helmet. Away from the entirely too keen vision, both physical and mystic, of Palpatine himself.
Out among the forgotten fringes of the galaxy, Cronal had appeared to merely bide his time, running minor operations through his private networks of agents, while in truth he had devoted his life to searching out forgotten lore of the ancient Sith and other supposed masters of the Dark. If they had done so much damage even with their limited understanding of the Dark, how much greater destruction might be wrought by one who knew all their secrets, and also knew the One Truth?
He traveled in secret, deep into the Unknown Regions, following his Darksight vision to worlds so ancient that even legend had no memory of them. Among the drifting moon trees that flowered in the interstellar space of the Gunninga Gap, he was able to discover and assemble scraps of the Taurannik Codex, which had been destroyed in the Muurshantre Extinction a hundred millennia before; arcane hints in that forbidden tome led him to the Valtaullu Rift and the shattered asteroid belt that once had been the planet-sized Temple of Korman Lao, the Lord Ravager of the long-vanished race of demon-worshipping reptoids known as the Kanzer Exiles. The lore in the Temple fragments gave him the knowledge he needed to capture the corrupt spirit essence of Dathka Graush, to rip it free from its resting place in Korriban's Valley of Golg, to eventually extract and consume even the most secret lore of Sith alchemy that the ancient tyrant had carried to his grave.
And that ancient Sith alchemy had given him the knowledge to forge a device to control the living crystal that formed the structure of Mindorese meltmassif...
Because the Emperor had once confided in him that the transference of the spirit to another was a pathway to the ultimate goal of a Sith: to cheat death. Of course, he had been thinking of clones, but Cronal's plans were more ambitious; if such a feat was possible, he determined that he would perform it—and not to a mere clone body, either. After all, his own body had never been strong, and his service to the Dark had eaten away what little strength he'd had until he could no longer stand—until he could no longer feed himself, or even breathe without the life-support functions built into his gravity chair. Why should he settle for exchanging his flawed and failing body for another of the same model, every bit as certain to fail?
No. His devotion to the Way of the Dark had shown him a path to power greater than Palpatine could have ever dreamed: to transfer his consciousness permanently into a body that was young, that was healthy and handsome in a way Cronal had never been. A body more powerful in the Force than Vader, potentially more powerful even than Palpatine. The body of a true hero, beloved by all rightthinking citizens in the galaxy as the very symbol of truth and justice…
He would not simply turn Luke Skywalker to the service of the Dark. Why should he? Luke Skywalker served the Dark already, without ever guessing; he had powers of destruction that humbled even the Death Star.
No: Cronal would become Luke Skywalker, and serve the Dark himself.

Though he was far from conscious, Luke knew something was wrong. He felt...cold.
Unbelievably cold. He'd been cold before—a couple years earlier, on Hoth, he'd come within a shaved centimeter of freezing to death before Han had found him—but this was different. That cold had been a creeping numbness, and weakness, and a growing inability to force his hypothermic muscles to move. This cold, though, froze him without the comfort of numbness. Tiny razor-edged crystals of ice—colder than ice, so cold they burned, cold as liquid air—grew inward through his skin at every pore, becoming hairlines of freeze that crept along his nerves.
And with the cold came silence.
Physical silence, deeper than a living creature can truly experience: not just the absence of external sound, but the absence of all concept of sound. No whisper of breath, no hush of blood coursing through arteries, no faintest beat of his heart. Not even the vaguest sensation of vibration, or pressure, or friction on his skin. But the cold and the silence went deeper than the merely physical. They were in his dreams.
These dreams were glacially slow, actionless, featureless hours of empty staring into empty space, hours becoming years that stretched into numberless millennia, as one by one the stars went out. He could do nothing, for there was nothing to do. Except watch the stars die.
And in their place was left nothing. Not even absence. Only him. Floating. Empty of everything. Without thought, without sensation. Forever.
Almost.
His first thought in a million years trickled into his brain over the course of decades. Sleep. This is the end of everything. Nothing left but sleep.
The second thought, by contrast, followed instantly upon the second. Wait...somebody else is thinking with my mind.
Which meant he wasn't alone at the end of the universe.
Even in frozen dreams of eternity, the Force was strong with him. He opened himself to the Sleep Thought and drew it into the center of his being, where with the Force to guide and sustain him, he could examine the thought, turn it this way and that like an unfamiliar stone.
It had weight, this thought, and texture: like a hunk of volcanic basalt around a uranium core, it was unreasonably dense, and its surface was pebbled, as though it had once been soft and sticky and somebody had rolled it across a field of fine gravel. As he let the Force take his perception into greater and greater focus and detail, he came to understand that each of these pebbles was a person—human or near-human, every single one, bound into an aggregate matrix of frozen stone.
As the Force took him deeper, he came to understand that this stone he held was also holding him; even as he turned it in his hand, it also surrounded and enclosed him—that it was a prison for every one of these pebble-lives, and that these imprisoned lives were also imprisoning him.
He was the stone himself, he discovered: the very matrix of dark frozen stone that bound them all. He trapped them and they trapped him, and neither could let go. They were bound together by the very structure of the universe.
Frozen by the Dark.
And here was another strangeness: Since when did he think of the structure of the universe as capital-D Dark? Even if there might be some trace of truth in that bleak perception, when had he become the kind of man who would surrender to it? If the Dark wanted to drag him into eternal emptiness, it was going to have to fight him for every millimeter.
He started looking for the way out. Which was also, due to the curious paradox inherent in his Force perception, the way in. The imaginary thought-stone in his imaginary hand was a metaphor, he understood—even as was the frozen stone he had become—but it was also real on a level deeper than nonimaginary eyes could ever see. He was the stone...and so he did not need to reach out to touch the lives represented by the pebbles. He was touching them already. He only had to pay attention.
But each life-pebble on which he focused gave back no hint of light. No perception even of the human being it represented, only a featureless nonreflective surface like a smoothed and rounded spheroid of powdered graphite. Each one he touched gave back no hope, no purpose, no dream of escape, but instead drew these out from his frozen heart, swallowed them whole, and fed them to the Dark. And the Dark gave up no trace of evidence they had ever existed.
All he got from the pebbles was gentle wordless urging to let himself sleep. Struggle is futile. The Dark swallows everything in the end. All his hopes, all his fears, every heroic dream and every tragic reality. Every single distant descendant of everyone who had ever heard of him. All would be gone, leaving not even an echo to hint that they had ever existed. The only answer was sleep. Eternal sleep. Sleep.
Luke thought, Never.
He had an intuition that was half memory, half guess, and maybe altogether a hint from the Force, because when he again turned that imaginary stone in his imaginary hand, one of those imaginary pebbles of powdered graphite had a crack in it that wasn't imaginary at all. And through that crack, tiny beyond tiny, nanometrically infinitesimal, so small that if it hadn't been imaginary, Luke couldn't have seen it even with the most advanced instruments in the galaxy, shone the very faintest conceivable glimmer…
Of light.
With the Force to guide him, he focused his perception into a similarly nanometric filament. And through that tiny crack of light within the imaginary stone, Luke found the universe.

Focusing his whole self into his Force perception with all his power and every scrap of the mental discipline that Ben and Master Yoda had pounded into him, Luke could send enough of himself along that filament of light that he could see again—dimly, distantly, through waves of bizarre distortion—and what he saw was sleeves.
Voluminous sleeves, draped together as though concealing folded hands...and beyond them, a floor of smooth stone, illuminated by cold, flickering blues, like the light cast by the screen of a holoplayer. He tried to lift his head, to get a look around, but the view didn't change, and he realized that the eyes through which he saw were not his.
With that realization, other perceptions began to flower within his consciousness. He became aware that the floor at which his borrowed eyes were staring was connected with him somehow...that it was not ordinary stone at all, but a curious semicolloidal structure of crystal...that it was, inexplicably, somehow alive.
That when he set his mind to it, he could feel the life, like a sub-sonic hum can raise a tingle on the skin. But it wasn't on his skin that he felt it, it wasinside his head...and he felt it because he had crystals of that semicolloidal somehow-living stone growing inside his brain...
No—
Not his brain.
The crystals grew within the other brain, the one connected to the eyes he was borrowing from outside the universe. This became another subject of contemplation, like his imaginary stone, because like that imaginary stone he was both inside this borrowed brain and outside it, pushing in while looking out. And when he touched those crystals with his attention, he could hear—no, feel—the whisper of despair that had murmured to him at the end of the universe.
Sleep. Struggle is futile. All things end. Existence is an illusion. Only the Dark is real.
He could feel now that the whisper came from outside this borrowed brain, even as his own perception did, and that the crystals somehow picked up this whisper and amplified it, adding this brain's limited Force power to its own, the same as it had done with the other hundreds of brains that Luke could now feel were all linked into this bizarre system. There was somebody out there.
Luke thought, Blackhole.
And with that thought, he could feel the malignancy that fed this field of Dark: the ancient wheezing cripple entombed within his lifesupport capsule, who poured his bleak malice through a body-wide webwork of this selfsame crystal...
Just like the one growing within Luke's own body.
And with that understanding came power: he set his will upon the web of crystal within his body and allowed the Force to give power to his desire; now he was able to clearly perceive the link between his crystals and those within this borrowed brain. Then, when he willed the head to raise, it did, and when he willed the eyes to take in the room, he saw a stone cavern, dimly lit by waves of blue energy discharge that crawled along the stone walls and ceiling like living things—the same crackling discharge Luke had seen in the Cavern of the Shadow Throne—though this energy did no harm to the people gathered here.
The cavern was filled with Moon Hats. Each and every one among them stood motionless with head lowered, hands folded invisibly within the drape of their sleeves. Each and every one among them faced a large stone pedestal that stood empty in the center of the room. The pedestal was of a single piece with the floor, but not as though it had been carved from it; it looked as if it had grown there, like a tumor. It was about a meter and a half high, and its flat top was roughly the same size and shape as a comfortable single bed. From time to time, with a kind of regularized increase of frequency like the tide coming in, the electric discharge from the walls and ceiling would pause, and shiver in place as though captured between electrodes; then with a painfully bright flash, they would converge upon the stone pedestal and vanish into its surface.
Luke understood. That's me, he thought. That's where I am. Buried alive in solid rock.
This didn't particularly bother him; after spending eternity at the end of the universe, mere death didn't mean much at all. Death was better than what Blackhole was trying to do to him. With him.
As him.
He didn't know if he could save himself, but he might be able to help these people. That would have to be enough. Luke reached out through the crystals with the Force...and found nothing beyond this one lone brain to grasp. Though he could feel them clearly, though he could listen to the whisper of the crystals in their heads, he could find no surface on those crystals that his will could grasp. Exactly like his dream: these were the pebbles of featureless graphite. Nothing there but the Dark.
This one alone had that fissure of light...
In the distant reaches of his memory, he found a lesson of Yoda's, from one long solstice night, deep in the jungle near Dagobah's equator. When to the Force you truly give yourself, all you do expresses the truth of who you are, Yoda had said, leaning forward so that the knattik-root campfire painted blue shadows within the deep creases of his ancient face. Then through you the Force will flow, and guide your hand it will, until the greatest good might come of your smallest gesture.
He'd never really understood that lesson. He'd only tried to live according to the principle...but now there was an image slowly breaching the surface of his consciousness. An image of his own hand, delivering a punch. Just to the right of center, on the forehead of "Lord Shadowspawn." Which had been precisely the impact required to crack the crystalline matrix inside his brain.
A simple act of mercy, born of no other desire than to end a conflict without taking a life, now had become his own lifeline, by which he could draw himself back from the eternal nothing at the end of the universe. He could feel his connection now, could sense the control he might exert through this connection; a simple twist or will would seize this body and make it act at his command—he could even, he sensed, send his power with the Force through this body to serve his desire. He could make this man his puppet, and forge his own escape.
Or...
He could abandon his fear, and express the truth of who he was.
For Luke Skywalker, this was not even a choice. Instead of a command, he sent through the link a friendly suggestion.
Hey, Nick, he sent. Why don't you wake up?

Somebody had switched on the lights inside Nick's head.
He jerked awake, blinking. His eyes wouldn't focus. "Man...I have been having the weirdest dream..."
He tried to rub his eyes, but his hands were tangled in something...what was this, sleeves? Since when did he wear pajamas? Especially pajamas made out of brocade so thick he could have used it as a survival tent on a Karthrexian glacier... And his head hurt, too, and his neck was stiff, because his head had gained a couple of dozen kilos—must have been some serious party, to leave him with this bad a hangover—and when he did finally free his hands and rub his eyes and massage his vision back into something resembling working order, he took in his surroundings...and blinked some more.
He was standing in a stone chamber along with about forty other people who were all wearing funny hats and robes just like his, who all stood motionless and silent in a crowd around a big stone pedestal with heads lowered and hands folded inside their sleeves, and he said, "Oh, okay. That explains it."
It hadn't been a dream.
Okay, sure, a nightmare, maybe—but he was wide awake now and the nightmare was still going on, which meant it was as real as the deep ache in his feet, not to mention his back and his neck. How long had he been standing like this, anyway? Plus there was this knuckle-sized knot of a bruise over his right eye...
Oh, he thought. Oh yeah, I remember.
For a long, long moment, he didn't move. He couldn't guess exactly how long he'd have to make his moves from the first instant he attracted Blackhole's attention, but he had a pretty good idea what the old ruskakk's reaction was gonna be: the walls and floor and ceiling of this whole chamber were made of meltmassif.
This was always the problem with Jedi, Nick decided. Whenever there were Jedi around, you ended up in some kind of trouble that nobody in the galaxy could possibly survive. Not even the Jedi himself. And this time, it wasn't even about dying. It was about getting stuck as Blackhole's sock puppet for the rest of his natural life. So what was he supposed to do?
On the other hand, doing nothing sure wouldn't make anything better. He could feel Blackhole inside his head—a cold slimy goo like the trail left behind by a Xerthian hound-slug on a damp autumn day—and he could feel, too, that Blackhole could snatch back control of Nick's arms and legs and brain anytime he felt like it; the only reason Nick had any self-awareness at all was that Blackhole's whole attention was focused on the kid inside the stone slab.
Overall, it looked like both of them were pretty well fragged. But, y'know, he reminded himself, that kid is supposed to be a Skywalker. Nick had never been superstitious, but there was something about that name. It seemed to carry the promise, or at least the possibility, that the day might be saved in some incomprehensibly improbable fashion. Even if the situation was so clearly hopeless that only a lunatic would even try.

Making contact with the Melters wasn't the hard part. Luke simply laid his left hand on the shimmering black stone of the crypt wall. His hand's sprouted thatch of shadow web melded instantly with the stone's crystalline structure...
And they were there. He could feel them. It was an unfamiliar sensation, vaguely analogous to sight—he sensed them in the stone the way one human might see another from a distance. Getting their attention wasn't hard, either. They became aware of him in the same instant that he perceived them—and they knew he perceived them. He sensed their instant curiosity and puzzlement, and felt the interchange of lightning-fast pulses of energy between them like a conversation in a language he could not understand. The hard part was actually talking to them.
They sent tentative, questing pulses toward him in what could have been a cautious hello, and he felt his own shadow web respond, but not like an answer. More like an echo, or a harmonic overtone—as though the dark mirror of his nervous system was warping into some kind of resonance with their signal. To communicate with them, he would have to send his mind fully into the shadow web alongside his nerves, into his internal void that swallowed even the memory of light. He'd have to join them in the dark.
In the Dark.
To bring his consciousness into resonance with the Melters would require that he not only stare into that abyss, but dive into it headfirst. To drown himself in the void. To let the dark close over his face and seep into his ears and eyes and down his throat and entomb him in the empty, meaningless end of all things.
But—
The Melters were at the core of this. Everything came back to them somehow. Meltmassif was their body, or bodies, or the medium in which they lived; meltmassif was the active ingredient in the Pawn Crowns. It was the control crystals and the deadly interlock inside each Pawn's brain. It was the underlying structure of Blackhole's entire base. It was the shadow web that Blackhole had used to infect Luke with despair.
It was what he would use to steal Leia's body.
It was dark where they were. Not just dark, but Dark.
And he was afraid.
Afraid that the Dark really was the truth. The only real truth. That everything else everyone pretended was important was only a deception, a distraction, a game to keep your mind off the eternal oblivion to come. He had spent aeons in the Dark and he knew its awful power.
Everything dies, it would whisper forever in his heart. Even stars burn out.
But if his nerve failed him now, he'd be leaving Leia in that Dark. Alone. Forever. The Dark would swallow her as if she'd never existed. What chance would she have to escape? She wasn't even a Jedi. How would she find light?
Because that's what Jedi do, isn't it? Luke thought. That's what we're for. We're the ones who bring the light.
So he gathered his courage and focused his mind to open a channel into the Force, because if he was going to dive into the absolute negation of light, he'd better bring along some of his own. He allowed his consciousness to touch the event horizon of the shadow web's black hole, and let himself slip across the threshold and fall forever into the Dark.

His senses were useless here in the Dark. Here was no sight, no sound, no touch, no awareness of his body. He had only an inchoate awareness of being part of some kind of indefinable field of energy—or perhaps he was the indefinable field of energy. The only perception he could summon beyond simple awareness of his own existence was of certain modulations in this energy field: unreceivable signals, untouchable textures, unseeable colors. Irretrievably alien. Cold and ancient lives that had never experienced the beat of a heart, the touch of a hand, the taste of air.
Impossibly distant, unreachable, born of vanished stars.
Stars, he thought. Yes. That's it: stars. That's where they come from. That's where we meet. Because that's what I am, too.
Everything in the universe is born of dying stars. Every element is created in the fusion furnace of stellar cores. Every atom that exists was once part of some long-vanished star—and that star was part of others before it, an unbroken chain of ancestry back to the single cosmic fireball that had been the birth of the universe.
It is the death of stars that gives the universe life.
With the idea of stars on which to hang his imagination, he could bring his situation into a kind of focus. Instead of a formless field of barely perceptible energy, he visualized himself as part of a stellar cluster, vast and dim; those alien modulations of energy became distant stars.
Though every true star is functionally the same—a fusion furnace in space—each is also an individual. One may be larger, another hotter; one may be nearing the end of its life cycle, collapsing in upon itself or expanding to destruction, while another might be freshly forming by aggregating the dust and gases of ancient supernovae. In Luke's imagination, he could read their individual spectra the way he might recognize a human face: they looked tired, and old, and far apart, burning themselves out in the endless Dark.
But he, too, was a star, and the light that shone from him was the Force.
Each and every distant star on which he fixed his attention, however dim it was, instantly brightened as his light fed its own. They drew near, attracted by his energy, captured by his gravitational field, growing ever brighter as they approached, burning hotter, giving off bursts of exotic particles like gusts of delighted laughter. They fell into orbit around him, becoming a new system of infinite complexity wheeling through the Dark in joyous dance.
Here we are, in the Dark, he thought. And it's not empty. It's not meaningless. Not with us all here. It's beautiful.
And each one he had touched with the Force remained linked to him by pulsing threads of light as they basked gratefully in its power; they had been trapped in this freezing Dark for so long, their only light coming from the burning away of themselves and their kin, forever fading until one by one they would wink from existence...
With that, Luke discovered that he knew them now. Not as though they had told him about themselves; not as though there was any communication at all. Luke didn't need to be told. He was part of them now, joined to them by the Force. He knew their lives as if they were his own, because in the light of the Force he was those lives, and they were him. He knew them as they knew themselves: a corporate entity that was also an array of individuals, nodes of consciousness in a larger network of mind. They had—been born? been created? altered? evolved?—first become aware of themselves (themself?) as alive on Mindor's rocky, airless sister planet, which Luke knew only as Taspan II; they had no name for the planet that Luke could comprehend. There they had lived for untold millennia, basking in Taspan's unfiltered glare, in fear of nothing save the changes that could be wrought in the meltmassif that was their home by radiation from Taspan's occasional starspots and stellar storms.
They did not have any comprehension of the cause of the Big Crush; the Imperial weapons research facility on Taspan II had been entirely outside their concern. In those days, they hadn't even known what humans were; they'd never had experience of noncrystal-based life-forms. The Big Crush itself had been no disaster for them; on the contrary, the planet's destruction had simply scattered its crust into a vast cloud, with orders of magnitude more surface area to absorb the energy of the star. For the Melters, the Big Crush had been an all-too-brief Golden Age; their culture/mind had blossomed throughout the system, celebrating their accession to Paradise.
For these particular Melters, the Golden Age of Paradise had come to an abrupt and catastrophic end, as the chunks of their shattered home planet had drifted across the orbit of Mindor. Captured by its gravity, they had fallen to its surface in each and every rock storm, and soon found that their new home was less a home than a prison. An oubliette. A cosmic-extermination camp. Many, many individual Melters had been lost as their rocks had burned away in the atmosphere, and the radiation-absorbing qualities of the vaporized meltmassif screened the survivors from Taspan's life-giving rays. The survivors were slowly dying of energy asphyxiation.
They were drowning in the Dark.
Each rockfall brought new Melters into Mindor's lethal gloom, and every meteor that burned away deepened the shadow that was killing them. That shadow also cut them off from the rest of the Melter community out among the asteroids; they simply did not have the power to drive a signal very far into the planet's atmosphere. All they could do was wait, struggling to survive, and try to comfort the new victims falling into this planetary prison every day.
Comfort was what the Melters originally had sought from humans, as well; the human nervous system produced a tiny trickle of energy in the general wavelength of the Meltermind, which drew Melters to humans the way a glow rod attracted cave moths.
Cave moths, Luke thought. Perhaps that was what had happened to him at the cave...something in the meltmassif had been stealing light from inside him...
When these organic life-forms, these tiny flickering candle flames of warmth and light in the permanent midnight that was Mindor, had started shooting Melters with stun blasts that randomized the microcrystalline structure of meltmassif, the Melters had begun sequestering them in self-defense. There had never been malice in their attacks at all; they didn't even understand that their captives were dying—they were unclear on the whole concept of organic-death. It wasn't murder, or war, or even violence, because they really didn't comprehend any of those concepts, either. Their campaign against humanity had been, to them, merely pest control.
As all this information filtered through his consciousness, Luke at last became aware that the stellar cluster of which he was the center was itself moving, rolling through the Dark as though in orbit around some vastly more massive gravity source, something so huge and dark that it could be seen only by its effect on the stars of the Melters in his cluster. One by one they were peeled from his cluster, stripped away to spiral into decaying orbits around the inescapable void until one by one they flared with a last brief burst of light as they slipped over some invisible event horizon and vanished forever.
An event horizon of the Dark, consuming the last of the light in his universe...
Oh, he thought. I get it. It's a black hole.
Some kind of metaphor for how Blackhole—how appropriate that old code name seemed now—was controlling the Melters, he figured; Blackhole must be luring them down somehow, cutting them off from each other so their only source of light was what he chose to feed them...
Even thinking about it seemed to increase the imaginary black hole's gravity gradient; he found himself drifting closer and closer to the event horizon, gathering speed as his spiral orbit tightened, more and more of the stars around him falling away, some to vanish into the black hole's insatiable maw, others breaking free into higher orbits until he was entirely alone, no star left between him and the black hole...
Except one.
One star like none of the others still swung through an orbit lower than his: a blue-white supergiant, far larger, far brighter than any his imagination had so far produced. This one did not feed upon his Force light, but shone with its own, as brilliant and powerful as his. It fell in a tightening tide-locked gyre down the black hole's gravity well, and as it fell the relentless pull of the void was stripping a huge jet of energy and mass from it, a fountain of star-stuff ripped from its heart and sucked down across the event horizon to vanish forever in dark beyond the Dark.
And he knew this star was Leia.
He reached out to her, but there was nothing to grasp, nor any hand to grasp it; he'd had some crazy half-formed idea to grab her and slingshot around the black hole and out again, because he'd half forgotten that this was only a vision after all, only a metaphor, and if he tried to stretch it into reality it would shatter. So instead he brought his light to bear, focusing a beam of the Force upon his sister star.
Leia, hang on, he tried to send. Don't give in to the Dark. I'm coming for you. Hang on.
He felt no response, only overwhelming sadness and crushing despair and that empty, lost meaninglessness at the end of the universe, and he couldn't even tell if this came from her or from himself. He tried to focus the Force on her, to make his beam of light a conduit for strength that might save her, even as the tiny crack of light he'd found in one imaginary pebble had saved him—but somehow his light could not add to hers. He burned a different color, but no more brightly.
He remembered too well that terrible void, the endless lack that was deeper than any darkness. If only there were some way he could show her that all the light she'd ever need shone from her own self...but that was only a metaphor. Wasn't it?
What Ben and Yoda had called the dark side wasn't actually dark; it had nothing at all to do with the visual spectrum. The phrase dark side of the Force was just an expression. An evocative shorthand to express a broad range of negative characteristics. A metaphor.
They could have called it the evil side, or the death-and-destruction side, or the enslaving-the-whole-galaxy side. But they didn't. They called it the dark side. But they'd never seen dark like this. Or had they?
Maybe they had been here, at the end of all things—or at least glimpsed it. Maybe they had seen the truth of the Dark. Maybe that's why they never talked about a "light side." Because there wasn't one.
But, Luke thought, gazing upon the brilliant blaze that was his sister, just because there's no "light side" doesn't mean there's no light.
He had thought he was bringing light with him into the darkness, by holding on to the Force. Now he saw that the Force's light didn't shine on him. It shone through him.
He was the light in the darkness.
He saw it now, and it made sense to him at last. That same light shone through Leia, and as soon as he understood that, he began to sense other lights, pinprick stars far out in the dark. Some of them he recognized: Han, and Lando...Wedge and Tycho, Hobbie and Wes and the rest of the Rogues...Nick, and Aeona Cantor, Lieutenant Tubrimi and Captain Tirossk and so many, many others, sailors and marines, even the impossibly distant spray of vanishingly faint stars that must have been the stormtroopers, for even they were lights in the darkness. All of them were stars. And every star, every life, was a thing of beauty. 
And Leia couldn't see them. She couldn't even look their way, not anymore. Her star was tide-locked to the black hole—its gravity would not allow her to turn her face away. He couldn't even get her attention. And the black hole was aware of him now; the abyss he'd stared into was now staring into him. He felt its emptiness that nothing could fill, its bleak hunger that could never be satisfied. In his mind, it swelled toward him like jaws opening to swallow the universe, capturing every scrap of light and hope and love that Luke could channel from the Force. The longer he stared, the more he lost, and nothing he could do would help Leia at all. Once that maw closed around her, she would be lost to the Dark forever.
All right, he thought. I guess I'll have to do this the old-fashioned way.
He opened his eyes.

Kar crouched, his bare back against an icy wall, in a stone chamber filled with the dead. Corpses in long robes littered the floor, and the room stank of corruption; the only light came from blue spark-chains that crackled across the ceiling. His heart hammered against his ribs, and his breath rasped in his throat. His teeth were bared in an involuntary snarl, and his fingers scrabbled against the stone at his back as if he could somehow dig his way through. All from fear of the small blond man.
The same small blond man who now stood on the far side of the piles of dead bodies, inoffensive and mild, his expression friendly, his hands, empty of weapons, spread wide in invitation.
Kar did not know where this place might be, or how he had come to be here; he had no memory of having been anywhere like this maze of stone peopled only by dead men. He knew only that he had never felt such terror. Not as a child, lost and alone in the lethal jungles of his homeworld; not in the dock of the Galactic Court on Coruscant; not even in the infinite deadly dark of Kessel's spice mines. He had come back to himself in the midst of battle, blind with rage, surrounded by armed men on a Starship's hull, He remembered seizing this little man in his unbreakable grip; he remembered sinking his needle teeth into the little man's throat, biting down like a vine cat strangling an akk wolf. And he remembered what the little man had done to him.
The hands that scrabbled against the wall at his back still sprouted the black crystal hairs. His mouth was full of these crystal hairs, stiff and sharp as needles; when he worked his jaw, they cut and slashed at his palate and punctured his gums. And he could feel them inside him, throughout his body, an infection of dead stone within his living flesh...
He snarled wordless animal sounds. What are you?
The small blond man started toward him. "I'm not your enemy, Kar."
Stay back!
"I can't. Too many lives depend on me."
I'll kill you! Kar gathered himself to spring. I will rip your head from your body. I will feast upon your guts!
"It's all right to be afraid, Kar. This is a frightening place. Things have been done to you here that should never be done to anyone."
It's so...dead. Something broke inside him then; his rage and terror fled, and he sagged to his knees. Nothing but stone and corpses. Everything dead. Dead within. Dead without. Dead forever.
"Not everything." Though the small blond man had to step over corpses to reach Kar's side, his expression of sympathy and compassion never flickered. "You're alive, Kar. I'm alive."
That means nothing. Kar's eyes burned as if he'd dipped his face in sand. We mean nothing.
"We're the only meaning there is." The small blond man extended a hand. "Trust me or kill me, Kar. In the end, it'll come out the same. I will not harm you."
What are you? His snarl had gone plaintive. What do you want from me?
"I'm a Jedi. My name is Luke Skywalker," the small blond man said. "And I want you to take my hand."

Deep in hyperspace, Cronal reached up For the Shadow Crown. His life-support chamber was buried within an asteroid of meltmassif; with the Shadow Crown to focus and amplify his control, he could part the stone that shrouded his chamber's viewports and so enjoy the infinite nothing of hyperspace. He loved gazing into hyperspace, the nothing outside the universe. The place beyond even the concept of place... Ordinary mortals sometimes went mad, succumbing to the delirium of hyper-rapture, from gazing too long into the emptiness. Cronal found it soothing: a glimpse into the oblivion beyond the end of all things.
To him, it looked like the Dark.
It would be some consolation for the frustration he had faced these past days. How was it that everywhere he turned, there seemed to be a Skywalker waiting to bar his path? Still, the Skywalker boy's weakness had been a gift. How fortunate he was that Skywalker had lacked the strength of character to simply kill him.
Even in Cronal's wandering through the trackless wastes of hope where he had lost his way, he still had managed to deliver a blow to the infant second Republic from which it would never recover. Not to mention that he still had the advanced gravitic technology made possible by the properties of meltmassif, and he had the Shadow Crown itself.
Yes, he had lost his best chance to acquire a young, powerful, and influential body to carry his consciousness, but he still had his original body with all his powers intact. In a few days—long enough to be certain that every Republic ship still in the Taspan system was crewed only by the dead—he could return, harvest the meltmassif from the asteroid clouds, and begin anew. He would not repeat his mistake, however. Never again would he seek to build rather than destroy. Never again would he create anything but engines of ever-greater destruction. Never again would he forsake the Way of the Dark. His rule of the galaxy would be no mere Second Imperium, it would be the Reign of Death. He would preside over a universe of infinite suffering whose only end would he oblivion, meaningless as life itself. He would author the final act in the saga of the galaxy.
With that dream to comfort him in his temporary exile, he lowered the Shadow Crown upon his head and sent his will into the Dark beyond darkness, to take control of the mind in the stone.
But where there should have been Dark, he found only light.
White light, brilliant, blinding, a young star born within his head. It seared his mind, blasting away even his memory of darkness. He recoiled convulsively, like a worm encountering red-hot stone. This was more than light; it was the Light.
It was the power to drive off the Dark.
This was inconceivable. What could heat his absolute zero? What could banish his infinite night?
You should know. The voice of the Light was not a voice. It spoke without speaking, communicating not with words, but with understanding. You invited me here.
Skywalker? This light was Skywalker?
In the instant he thought the name, Cronal saw him: a shape of light, absolute, uncompromising, kneeling within the Election Center in the darkest heart of the Shadow Base, his hands solemnly interfolded with the massive paws of Kar Vastor. He had linked his shadow nerves to Vastor's, and through the intimate connection between Vastor and Cronal he had somehow stretched forth to touch the Shadow Lord himself.
In the Dark, Cronal saw Skywalker smile. Thank you for joining me here. I was a little worried you might get away with that silly crown of yours.
This was impossible. This must be some hallucination, a twisted product of his Darksight run amok. He was in hyperspace! Hyperspace did not, could not, interact with realspace—
I was with Ben Kenobi in hyperspace when he felt the destruction of Alderaan. No wall can contain the Force.
The Force, the Force, these pathetic Jedi kept nattering on about the Force! Did any of them even faintly comprehend how naive and foolish they were? If any of them had ever had so much as a glimpse of the real power of the Dark, that glimpse would have snuffed their tiny minds like candles in a hurricane—
Was my tiny mind snuffed? I must have missed that part.
Cronal could sense gentle amusement, like a tolerant uncle indulging a child's tantrum. Fury rose within him like molten lava climbing a volcanic fault. This simpleminded youth had fooled himself into believing his paltry light could fill the infinite Dark? Let him shine alone within eternal night. Cronal opened himself wholly to the Dark, cracking the very gates of his mind, expanding the sphere of his power like an event horizon yawning to swallow the universe. He surrounded Skywalker's light, and with a shrug of power he consumed it.
In this arena, minds naked to the Dark contending in nonspace beyond even hyperspace, there was no question of age, or health, or physical strength. Here the only power that counted was the power of will. Skywalker and his so-called Force could never match Cronal's mastery of the Way of the Dark. On this level, Cronal was Blackhole. From his grip no light could escape.
Escape? Me? Did you forget that you're the one who's running away?
Cronal suddenly felt, unaccountably—and unpleasantly—warm. At first he dismissed this unwelcome sensation; he was too experienced a servant of the Dark to be distracted by a minor malfunction in his life-support settings. But gradually he became aware that his body—specifically, his body's skin—did not seem to be warm at all. It was, in fact, chilly. And damp. As though he had broken out, somehow, in a cold sweat.
He turned his mind back to the Dark, and became again the ultimate black hole. He examined the abyss of darkness he had become and found it to be flawless. Perfect. The ultimate expression of the absolute power of the Dark. This boy, this infantile Jedi-ling, had thought his meager light could stand against that power? Cronal's black hole had swallowed every last lumen; Skywalker's light was gone forever. His puerile Force trick of light had done to Cronal nothing whatsoever.
That's because I'm not trying to do anything to you. I'm doing something through you.
What? How could Skywalker still speak?
A creeping dread began to poison Cronal's smug satisfaction. What if Skywalker was telling the truth? What if the boy had been so easily vanquished because he had intended to be? He had already used his tiny gift of the Force to forge a link through Kar Vastor to Cronal...what if his light had not been destroyed by falling into the black hole that was Cronal's mind? What if his light had simply passed through?
That's where you dark siders always stumble. What's the opposite of a black hole?
Cronal had heard this cosmological theory before: that matter falling into a black hole passes into another universe...and that matter falling through black holes in other universes could pass into ours, bursting forth in pure, transcendent energy.
The opposite of a black hole was a white fountain.
He thought, I've been suckered.
The Sith alchemy that had created the Shadow Crown had imbued it with control over meltmassif in all its forms; to drown Skywalker in the Dark, Cronal had opened a channel into the Crown. Through the Crown. Through the Shadow Crown, Skywalker's light could shine upon every crystal of darkness. Every shadow stormtrooper. Every gravity station. Every millimeter of the shadow web of crystalline nerves in his body, and Vastor's, and—
And Cronal's own!
With a snarl, he yanked his mind back into his body; it would require only a second to pull the Crown from his head. Or it would have, if he could have made his arms work...
In the shimmery glow from the viewscreens within his life-support capsule, Cronal could only sit and watch in horror as his skin began to leak black oil. This black oil flowed from every pore, from his ears and nose and mouth and eyes. This black oil drained even from the channels within the Shadow Crown. And not until the last drop of it had left his body could Cronal even take a breath.
He did not, however, have time for more than a single breath he fore the meltmassif rehardened, encasing him wholly in a sarcophagus of stone. The asteroid of meltmassif around his chamber melted, and its shreds vaporized as they fell from the hyperdrive zone. Very soon, the hyperdrive itself fell away, as it had been mounted on the stone, rather than on the chamber. The chamber, no longer within the hyperdrive's protective envelope of reality, simply dissolved.
Cronal had enough time to understand what was happening. He had enough time to feel his body lose its physical cohesion. He had time to feel his very atoms lose their reality and vanish into the infinite nothing of hyperspace.

Cronal paused in the archway of the Cavern of the Shadow Throne. His Throne still hovered on its platform of meltmassif, all dark and sinister in the bloody glow of the lava-fall behind it. Looking upon the cavern through Kar Vastor's eyes, he felt a bit melancholy; it truly was a pity that his magnificently staged reality holodrama would never reach the broad audience it deserved. But such were the vicissitudes of life and art; rather than mourning his spoiled masterpiece, he resolved to focus entirely upon the truly important task of permanently securing a new and healthy body. Not to mention killing everyone who might know, or even suspect, that this young and lovely girl was in fact an old and ugly man.
He shifted the unconscious Skywalker girl from the massive shoulder of his stolen body and set her gently down. He could not help taking a moment to contemplate her, as she lay upon the stone, lovely and graceful even in unconsciousness. He could not help recalling how he had watched her, through his years in Imperial Intelligence; he'd monitored her anti-Imperial activities for a considerable span prior to her open break and alleged treason at the time of the Alderaan affair. Young Senator Organa, he mused. Princess Leia Skywalker, hiding in plain sight for all those years. Who'd have thought it?
She was a superior choice to her brother in almost every way. After all, she was no Jedi; in her body, no one would expect him to go gallivanting across the galaxy, risking his life to save strangers. No, after the traumatic experience of surviving the Imperial trap that had taken the lives of her brother, her raffish paramour, and so many of her friends and allies, she would reluctantly retire from her life of adventure and devote herself full-time to politics. She was perfect.
He closed his eyes and let his mind slip partially back into the ancient decrepit body that lay in its life-support chamber. From within that skull, he could send forth his mind into the rock from which the cavern had been shaped, and seize once more the wills of the creatures that used it as their physical forms.
The bridge that had connected the cavern's ledge to the Throne grew once more, carrying the Skywalker girl and Kar Vastor's bulk out to the platform of the Shadow Throne before once more shrinking away. The stone of the platform itself rippled and spread and curved upward to entomb the unconscious girl and the immobile man in a seamless rocky shell that hovered far out above the lake of molten lava. Cronal decided that this should very likely be sufficient to prevent unwelcome interruption.
Now all that remained was to ensure that his new body would not be consumed in the stellar conflagration that was already beginning. A palsied hand groped through the darkness to the chamber's voice modulator, which would transform his creaky wheeze into Shadowspawn's liquid basso, then he keyed a preset secure comm channel.
"Yes, my lord? Is it time?"
"It is," Cronal said simply. "Engage."
Then again he closed his eyes and returned his consciousness to the Vastor body. He didn't bother to open that stolen body's stolen eyes, for within the tomb of stone was only darkness. He had no need for eyes. He tuned his stolen brain to the proper frequency for control and pushed, and the stone of their tomb responded. Ultrafine hairlines of crystal began to thread themselves in through the Skywalker girl's pores, and in with the crystals came the full power of his will.
Sleep. This is the end of everything. Nothing left but sleep.
Sleep forever.

In the absolute blackness of the Shadow Egg, Cronal had only one problem left.
The Shadow Egg, as he had mentally dubbed it in the instant of its creation, was his improvised cocoon of meltmassif in the Cavern of the Shadow Throne. It hovered where the Shadow Throne had once stood, held aloft by the repulsorlifts that had once supported the Throne. There was no longer a lava-fall behind it, nor a lake of molten lava below; whatever remained of the volcano's lifeblood, once the Shadow Base had cut free from the planet, had spilled from its underside in a rain of fire. The Shadow Egg bobbed gently in midair as the shock waves of the Shadow Base's ongoing destruction passed over it. This ongoing destruction was not Cronal's problem; it was not a problem at all. He had counted on it. Had the Republic forces not hit upon their idea of deflecting his own gravity bombs back at him, he would have been forced to blow the Shadow Base up himself.
The Battle of Mindor was to have only one survivor.
Nor was he concerned that all his preparation for his new life had focused upon impersonating Luke Skywalker rather than his sister; one useful lesson he had taken from working with Palpatine was the value in flexible planning. He would, as Leia, simply fake amnesia—traumatic brain injury would be an ideal explanation for any stumbles or fumbles he might make upon meeting the princess's old acquaintances—and then discreetly hire one of the countless hacks who scripted holothrillers to make something up. He would, he anticipated, even have this holothriller produced. He already had a few ideas for a title: Princess Leia and the Shadow Trap, for example. Or, perhaps, Princess Leia and the Black Holes of Mindor.
Nor was he worried about making an escape from his own trap, once the transfer of his consciousness was complete. Buried in meltmassif not far from the Election Center, he had secreted a custom craft to make his escape as Luke. Though in appearance it was a very ordinary-looking Lambda T-4a, its hull was layered with so much additional shielding that there was no cargo capacity at all, and virtually no room for passengers. The cockpit was altogether fake; a pilot and at most two or three others could be packed into a tiny capsule cocooned in additional radiation shielding in the center of what would have been, in an ordinary shuttle, the passenger compartment.
All necessary planning had been done. All difficulties had been anticipated, and all contingencies had been covered. Except one.
The blasted girl simply refused to break.
The incrystallation had gone flawlessly; the raw power of the Vaster body had enabled Cronal to propagate a shadow web of crystalline nerves throughout her body with the speed of frost spidering across supercooled transparisteel. With only a short time available—and no ready supply of thanatizine II—he had proceeded without drug suspension. After all, this was but a mere girl who had, through an accident of genetics, an exceptionally powerful connection to the small fraction of the Dark that Jedi had ignorantly named the Force. He should have been able to overwhelm her by brute strength alone.
He had taken her sight, cut away her hearing, erased her senses of smell and taste and touch. He had stripped her kinesthetic sense, so that she was no longer aware of her own body at all. He had shut down the activity of certain neurotransmitters in her brain, so that she could no longer even remember how being alive had felt.
She wasn't lighting him. She didn't know how. He wouldn't let her remember what fighting was.
She just wouldn't let go.
She had something that her brother had lacked, some inner spark of intransigence that sustained her against the Dark. He couldn't guess what this spark might be; some sort of primitive, girlish emotional attachment, he presumed. Whatever it was, it must be extinguished once and for all; she must sleep forever. 
The problem was how to do it without killing her outright. The meltmassif shadow nerves would contain only his consciousness; he needed her brain to be fully functioning to maintain autonomic functions. He hadn't gone to all this trouble to simply trade his decaying body for one that was already dead.
This was taking far too long. The boy Jedi had been ready to let himself slip away in a fraction of the time; of course, the boy had given him more to work with. He carried with him an inner darkness that would no doubt have astonished his sister, had she lived long enough to discover it. Had Skywalker not damaged Shadowspawn's control crystals, none of this would have been necessary in the first place. But as the situation stood, he could only drive his will deeper into the Dark—to gnaw away her resistance with the single-minded intensity of a Klepthian rock otter chewing into a basalt clam's shell.
But when he finally did break through that resistance, he found her brain not weak and quivering, but hard like a burnberry stone, and shining with a brilliant white light that was not imaginary at all. That light stabbed him like a knife in the eye, and drove him reeling back.
He took that stone in the palm of a hand made of the Dark, and with a Dark rock hammer he struck it...and the imaginary hammer splintered in the imaginary hand. He came at the stone like a gem harpy, and swallowed it into a crop powerful enough to pulverize diamond, but it burned its way out. He made fists of whole galaxies and brought them together to crush this one tiny star, but when their cataclysm faded back into the Dark, the tiny star shone on.
"What is wrong with you?" he shouted at the star in frustration. "What are you, and why won't you die?"

Han had stayed at Leia's side as her seizures quieted; he stayed at her side as her every pore oozed black and shiny meltmassif, as it drained off her and puddled on the blanket. And he would stay at her side as the groundquakes strengthened and the killing sun rose over the horizon. He would be at her side when the planet exploded.
A bitter irony: she had suffered so much from being forced to watch her homeworld destroyed. Now she would die in very much the same brutal fashion as had her family and all her people. That was why he figured he probably shouldn't wake her up.
But the Force again displayed that nasty sense of humor; Leia stirred, and her eyelids fluttered. "Han...?"
"I'm here, Leia." He felt like his heart would burst. "I'm right here."
Her hand sought his. "So dark..."
"Yeah," Han said. "But the sun's coming up."
"No...not here. Where I was." She drew in a deep breath and released it in a long, slow sigh. "It was so dark, Han. It was so dark for so long I couldn't even remember who I was. I couldn't remember anything."
Her eyes opened and found his face. "Except for you."
Han swallowed and squeezed her hand. He didn't trust his voice.
"It was like...like you were with me," she murmured. "You were all I had left—and I didn't need anything else."
"I'm with you now," he said, his voice hoarse, unsteady. "We're together. And we always will be."

Beyond the transparisteel crystal of the observation dome on the airless crags of Polis Massa, the galaxy wheeled in a spray of hard, cold pinpricks through the veil of infinite night. Beneath that dome sat Yoda. He did not look at the stars. He sat a very long time.
Even after nearly nine hundred years, the road to self-knowledge was rugged enough to leave him bruised and bleeding.
He spoke softly, but not to himself.
Though no one was with him, he was not alone.
"My failure, this was. Failed the Jedi, I did."
He spoke to the Force.
And the Force answered him. Do not blame yourself, my old friend.
As it sometimes had these past thirteen years, when the Force spoke to him, it spoke in the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn.
"Too old I was," Yoda said. "Too rigid. Too arrogant to see that the old way is not the only way. These Jedi, I trained to become the Jedi who had trained me, long centuries ago—but those ancient Jedi, of a different time they were. Changed, has the galaxy. Changed, the Order did not—because let it change, I did not."
More easily said than done, my friend.
"An infinite mystery is the Force." Yoda lifted his head and turned his gaze out into the wheel of stars. "Much to learn, there still is."
And you will have time to learn it.
"Infinite knowledge..." Yoda shook his head. "Infinite time, does that require."
With my help, you can learn to join with the Force, yet retain consciousness. You can join your light to it forever. Perhaps, in time, even your physical self.
Yoda did not move. "Eternal life..."
The ultimate goal of the Sith, yet they can never achieve it; it comes only by the release of self, not the exaltation of self. It comes through compassion, not greed. Love is the answer to the darkness.
"Become one with the Force, yet influence still to have..." Yoda mused. "A power greater than all, it is."
It cannot be granted; it can only be taught. It is yours to learn, if you wish it.
Slowly, Yoda nodded. "A very great Jedi Master you have become, Qui-Gon Jinn. A very great Jedi Master you always were, but too blind I was to see it."
He rose, and folded his hands before him, and inclined his head in the Jedi bow of respect.
The bow of the student, in the presence of the Master.
"Your apprentice, I gratefully become.”

Unlike the Light Side of the Force, which embraces the whole, the entire focus of the Dark Side is the self. The appeal of the Dark Side is its very destructiveness and its isolation. Those who seek power for selfish reasons find comfort in its narcissistic gaze. The Dark Side emphasizes aggrandizement of self to the exclusion of others. In this way, rage and anger are turned into sources of strength.
Many are attracted to the Dark Side because its selfish nature allows great and showy deeds. The ease with which power is summoned belies its danger, for anger and hatred consume the individual even as one dominates one’s surroundings. Ultimately, the Dark Side rejects the very celestial nature of life itself. To the Jedi, the Force is not a part of their existence; it is their existence. To a student of the Dark Side, this is incomprehensible.

What Palpatine realized was that the Dark Side had never gained the fame the Light held because it was a personal, secretive thing. The Light was good for simple tricks and for the altruistic, but such things were useless to one who knew the things the Force made one capable of. Palpatine became convinced the Dark Side was ignored because few had the courage to pay the price it demanded. Since the Dark Side didn’t lend itself to sharing and other such weak-minded attitudes, there had not been organizations of Dark Side servants to endure the ages.

Gallery

Gallery

"Give up, Skywalker," Kueller said. "You lack the strength to defeat me. I will kill you this time. And then I will slaughter your sister."
Leia! She had her lightsaber. Luke extended his hand, and Kueller brought his blade down at it. Luke dodged as Leia's lightsaber sailed in the air toward him, landing neatly in his fingers. Immediately he ignited the blade and its reassuring hum echoed in the growing darkness.
"Ah," Kueller said. "So you have chosen to fight me. Careful, Master Skywalker. If you do so with the wrong attitude, you might join my side."
"I've fought better than you, Kueller," Luke said. The lightsaber felt odd in his hand. "And won."
"Years ago, Skywalker. You've become complacent." Kueller slashed at Luke. Luke parried, the electric clash of blades ringing in the night air.
Then Kueller whirled and blocked several bursts of blaster fire. Leia peeked out of the bay doors.
"Leave him alone, Kueller. It's me you want!" she yelled.
His death mask glowed from an internal light. It made his smile even more sinister than usual. "Actually, President, I want your entire family. Without them, there are no true Jedi."
Luke inched closer. His blade was still out, still humming. He wanted Kueller to fight him, not Leia. Leia wasn't ready yet. "Actually, Kueller, there are dozens of Jedi now."
"But not Jedi Masters, Skywalker."
"There are more than you imagine," Luke said, thinking of Callista. She would provide quite a battle against Kueller, even without the Force.
Kueller turned to Luke, and Leia fired again. Without even looking at her, Kueller blocked the blaster shots. The shots flew harmlessly to the sides. Then her blaster rose in the air, and exploded a few feet above her head. "Use another of those, President, and it will explode in your hand."
"You like explosions, don't you, Kueller?" she said. Luke suppressed a smile. She was trying to distract him so Luke could attack. But it wasn't that easy. Kueller had pushed Luke far enough that Luke's feelings were confused. He wasn't certain if he was going after Kueller out of anger or hatred, instead of in defense. That would only make Kueller stronger. He seemed to be stronger anyway, giving credence to Luke's theory.
"Small explosions, President," Kueller said, his blade still locked with Luke's. "Large ones destroy wealth."
Leia stepped out of the bay. She was unarmed. "Even if you kill us, Kueller, you won't get the rest of us. The explosives you put in the droids won't work. We shut the droids off."
"Did you, now?" Kueller's tone was mocking. Luke could feel the physical pressure Kueller was putting on the blade. They were locked in a battle of wills, their strength holding the blades together in a haze of light. "You managed to tell all the developed planets about the droids, President? Because if you didn't, then I will still get enough strength from one single order to defeat you all."
A chill ran through Luke. All those lives. All those billions of lives. They meant nothing more to Kueller than a breath of air, a surge of adrenaline, a swallow of food. Anger flowed through Luke, deep and fine and rich. He had created this monster. Luke, through his arrogance, had given Kueller all the tools he needed to destroy the entire galaxy. If Luke hadn't taught all his students about the dark side, if he hadn't warned them repeatedly and in detail about the quick and easy path, then Kueller would still be Dolph, not this hateful being who wore a death mask proudly and dealt in lives as a smuggler dealt in stolen goods.
Kueller turned toward Luke and grinned. His lightsaber broke free from the enmeshment and whooshed near Luke. Luke jumped aside, pain shivering through his back, and down his arms.
Kueller had suddenly gotten stronger.
"Kueller!" Leia shouted. She held another blaster. He turned his attention to her, and Luke thrust his blade toward Kueller's side, drawing blood before Kueller swirled away.
Easy blood. The lightsaber moved with a sureness Luke had never felt before.
Leia's blaster was turning red. She tossed it aside before it exploded, and rolled in the opposite direction.
Kueller had turned back to Luke, thrusting, parrying, thrusting, their sabers locked in a battle as loud and spark-filled as Luke's battle with Vader. Kueller's breath hissed through the mask, but it wasn't Vader's stentorian breathing that it imitated.
It was the Emperor's greedy gasping.
Luke staggered under Kueller's next blow, and barely managed to roll aside. His ankle kept buckling under him, but he forced himself to put weight on it. They had moved into the alleyway Luke had seen in that strange moment of vision. Stones littered the ground all around them, and the light only came through a small opening on either end. Luke could no longer see Leia.
Use your aggressive feelings, boy! Let the hate flow through you.
Kueller struck at him, his blow shattering a nearby rock. He was stronger. Much stronger. And his strength seemed to be increasing. Luke's arms were growing tired battling the power of Kueller's blade. Then Kueller laughed, a gurgling, familiar laugh. The Emperor's laugh, the unamused choking of a slave to the dark side.
Fueled by hatred, anger, and fear.
Luke was making him stronger. Luke's response, his hatred, his own self-loathing at creating this thing, this student who had become a horror, was making the thing even stronger. Kueller slammed his blade against Luke's, and the sparks lit the area all around them. Luke parried. Parried again. And again. He was trapped in a cycle of hatred and anger. If he fought, Kueller got stronger, and if he attacked, Kueller got stronger still.
Luke glanced at the mouth of the alley.
No Leia.
He was alone with this thing he had created. The rogue student. The Vader to his Ben.
Vader.
Ben.
Luke grinned. He suddenly knew what he had to do to break free.

Her hands were useless, and Kueller was no longer listening to her arguments. He was watching Luke.
Luke, who looked like a man possessed.
Luke, who had always warned her not to give in to anger, was giving in to his.
And Kueller was smiling. He seemed to be growing taller, and broader, the aura of power around him so great that it made him seem invincible.
Then a look passed across Luke's face. It was a familiar look, but it wasn't his. She had seen it before.
On the day she met him, so many years ago.
She had seen that look the only time she had seen Obi-Wan Kenobi alive. He had been fighting Darth Vader, and then he smiled, and raised his lightsaber—
—and Vader cut him in half. His lightsaber's blade faded, the hilt spinning through the air before landing on his empty, steaming cloak.
Luke had said Obi-Wan believed that moment made him stronger, but really it had only made him dead.
Dead.
Leia stumbled a few steps forward. Luke didn't see her in the growing darkness. Kueller hesitated as Luke slowly raised his lightsaber blade toward his face.
Just as Obi-Wan had.
Kueller smiled.
Just as Vader must have.
"Luuuuuuuuuuke!" Leia screamed as Kueller brought his lightsaber up, preparing to strike.

Luke was raising his lightsaber, his heart pounding. He was reaching out with the Force, going back to the place he had gone when he first fought Exar Kun. He would be out of his body but protected within the Force. Just as Ben had done in his battle with Darth Vader. Luke would come back even stronger, and he would guide Leia to defeat Kueller.

"Each of us stands at a kind of midpoint, from which we're capable of seeing only so far in either direction. Our senses have been honed over countless millennia to allow us to navigate the intricacies of the physical world. But because of that, our senses blind us to the fact that we are much more than our bodies. We truly are beings of light, Jacen."

Despite their powers, even the most powerful of Jedi eventually die. For most, death is a release from their physical forms, and allows them to join the totality of the Force. However, encounters with Jedi apparitions indicate that some Jedi have learned how to maintain their identities even after death, so that they linger at the edges of the physical world of the living as Force spirits.

The Dark was not a side of the Force, and it was no mere portion of reality.

The Light is positive. It is intimately bound with the essence of living things; it is peace, harmony and knowledge. The Light Side springs from the great pattern of existence. It draws strength from diversity and tolerance. It is also inherently communal in nature, thriving on cooperation. Those emotions that enhance the existence of the whole flow from it and tap into its great reserves of strength and peace. Patience, humility and self-sacrifice are paths to enlightenment. Above all, it seeks harmony and perfection.
The Dark Side, in comparison, is the force of entropy and destruction. Chaos and rage feed it and are its sources of power. The Dark Side is a part of nature—it is not inherently evil, but evil comes from its irrationality, its intolerance and its lack of control. Bestial and predatory, domination is its goal. Mercilessly aggressive and unforgiving, its adherents are blinded by greed and lust for power over those weaker than themselves.

One all-encompassing driving Force influences the destiny of the galaxy. An energy field generated by all living things, the Force surrounds and penetrates everything, binding the galaxy together. Universal balance—life and death, creation and destruction—is reflected in the Force, and thus is reflected from the Force back into the galaxy at large. The Force, for all the mystery and the power it provides, is as much a part of the natural order as suns and planets and life itself.
The Force has as many mysteries as it has aspects. It may be a nonsentient energy field, the sum of all creation. It may be an eternal entity, knowing and unknowable. It may be both of these and more; it may be something else entirely. The only certain truth is that the Force exists and is omnipresent, and that’s enough for most who study its various influences. From the Living Force to the Unifying Force, this mysterious energy field consists of a multitude of properties. The light side and dark side are always present, constantly struggling for balance in the galaxy and within individual beings.
The natural order encompasses balance. Day and night, life and death, light and dark—each pair represents a different kind of balance. As a part of the natural order, the Force follows the same rules. The light side embodies peace, knowledge, and serenity. The dark side encompasses fear, anger, and aggression.

A Jedi should never commit murder, for any reason. When confronted with a life-or-death struggle, however, a Jedi may have to kill to complete her mission. This act is always unfortunate, because deliberately ending a life strengthens the dark side. However, if the cause is justified—if the Jedi is protecting others, serving the will of the Force, or even merely acting in self-defense—then the light side is equally strengthened.

Safeguarded by the powers of the dark side, the Sith could hardly fear death when they were allied to it.

"One of the Emperor's Force Storms destroyed the Alliance base on the moon of Da Soocha and the entire fleet above it. Every day I'm reminded how lucky we are that Palpatine is lost to Chaos forever."
—Luke

The Light and Dark Side manifest themselves in the way they are used; they are simply different interpretations of a single aspect of nature, and they exist in balance with themselves and the universe. Just as with any aspect of life and death, both the Dark Side and the Light Side are intertwined with each other, are necessary to each other and form a cosmic balance.

Yet, in the Dark Side are anger and hatred and isolation and...fear. That fear drives the Jedi to isolation, jealousy and the desire to be the most powerful of all.

Darth Vader stood on the command bridge of the Mustafar control center, hand of durasteel clasping hand of flesh behind him, and gazed up through the transparisteel view wall at the galaxy he would one day rule. He paid no attention to the litter of corpses around his feet. He could feel his power growing, indeed. He had the measure of his "Master" already; not long after Palpatine shared the secret of Darth Plagueis's discovery, their relationship would undergo a sudden...transformation.
A fatal transformation.
Everything was proceeding according to plan.
And yet...
He couldn't shake a certain creeping sensation...a kind of cold, slimy ooze that slithered up the veins of his legs and spread clammy tendrils through his guts...
Almost as though he was still afraid...
She will die, you know, the dragon whispered.
He shook himself, scowling. Impossible. He was Darth Vader. Fear had no power over him. He had destroyed his fear.
All things die.
Yet it was as though when he had crushed the dragon under his boot, the dragon had sunk venomed fangs into his heel. Now its poison chilled him to the bone.
Even stars burn out.
He shook himself again and strode toward the holocomm. He would talk to his Master. Palpatine had always helped him keep the dragon down.

Luke paused, for he saw something else, as well; something he hadn’t seen before in the Emperor. Fear. 
Luke saw fear in the Emperor—fear of Luke. Fear of Luke’s power, fear that this power could be turned on him—on the Emperor—in the same way Vader had turned it on Obi-Wan Kenobi. Luke saw this fear in the Emperor—and he knew, now, the odds had shifted slightly. He had glimpsed the Emperor’s nakedest self.

When he finally withdrew his mind from the Dark, Luke found himself in darkness of the wholly ordinary sort. The flicker of the energy discharge had fled from the chamber that had once been the Election Center.
He knelt in darkness, and from that darkness came a long, slow growl that the Force allowed him to understand as words. Jedi Luke Skywalker. Is it done?
By reaching into the Force, he could feel the surviving Republic ships jump away as the artificial mass-shadows of the destroyed gravity stations shrank and vanished. He felt the final breakup of the Shadow Base, and the final destruction of Mindor under the killing radiation of Taspan's flares.
All gone, now. Everything was gone.
No more shadows.
"Yes," Luke said. "Yes, it is done."
Is this where we die?
"I don't know," Luke said. "Probably."
How long?
Luke sighed. "I don't know that either. I sealed the chamber when I came in, so we'll have air. For a while. But I don't know how thick the stone around us might be, now that the mountain's broken up. I don't know how much radiation it can block. We could be cooking right now."
And there is no one who can come for us.
"Their ships can't protect them. Not from radiation like this."
Then this will be where our lives end.
"Probably."
I do not like this place. I do not know how I came to be here, but I know I did not choose this.
"None of us did."
This is a bad place to die.
"Yes."
Granted a choice, I would not die beside a Jedi.
"I'm sorry," Luke said. And meant it.
I have known Jedi. Many, many years ago. That knowing was not a gladness for me. I believed I would never know another, and I rejoiced in that belief. But it is a gladness for me to be proven wrong. I am happy to have known you, Jedi Luke Skywalker. You are more than they were.
"That's—” Luke shook his head blankly, blinking against the darkness. "I mean, thanks, but I barely know anything."
So you believe. But I say to you: you are greater than the Jedi of former days.
Luke could only frown, and shake his head again. "What makes you say that?"
Because unlike the Knights of old, Jedi Luke Skywalker...
You are not afraid of the dark.

Although the Force always existed, it was first identified and developed by the group of “wizards and mystics” who eventually formed the Jedi Order.

The Force is timeless, but we Jedi have not always been present to interpret its teachings.

In the Dark, Cronal saw Skywalker smile. Thank you for joining me here. I was a little worried you might get away with that silly crown of yours.
This was impossible. This must be some hallucination, a twisted product of his Darksight run amok. He was in hyperspace! Hyperspace did not, could not, interact with realspace—
I was with Ben Kenobi in hyperspace when he felt the destruction of Alderaan. No wall can contain the Force.

You already know of the Force as omnipresent, simultaneously existing as both a personal energy and as an imposing power through its Living and Unifying aspects.

The only certain truth is that the Force exists and is omnipresent, and that’s enough for most who study its various influences.

The Force is not inherently good or evil. It has its light side and its dark side. It is a tool, and like any other tool it can be misused or even broken. Ignorance leads to improper use of the Force; the unwise use the Force emotionally. Incorrect use of the Force can lead to death and destruction. Only through proper training can the Force be justly applied.
In addition, the Force is a living entity, generating life. The Force is a necessary and vital part of the universe. When running a Jedi campaign, think of the Force as more than merely a means by which the characters can gain extreme powers. It is a metaphor for the universal nature of life itself, vibrant, dynamic, and dangerous. All Jedi are permeated by the Force, just as all beings are, but the Jedi are most aware of it. Events in one region might affect another as if the galaxy were one interconnected being, with the Force as its blood and life.

As Jedi learn more about the Force, they frequently form their own theories about how and why it works. They question how, if the Force creates and sustains life, it can have a dark side.

Out of the Great Void came the universe, its galaxies, star systems, and suns. Everything that exists, and will ever exist, was spawned from the primordial plasma of time’s beginning. Over billions of years planets formed and life arose through a steady progression of increasingly complex organisms. Woven into and intertwined with all of this—from the smallest molecule to the largest star—was the Force. As civilizations grew upon these newly formed planets—newly formed on a celestial scale, that is—they began to sense, if only subconsciously at first, this mystical energy. Over the millennia, the Force has been called by an uncountable number of names: the Unity, the Way, the Power, Magic. All hint at one aspect or another of the Force’s all-encompassing presence, but none completely reflect its true nature.
And perhaps none shall, for the Force defies explanation. At times it seems dualistic, yet it has no separate components. Most prominent among the contradictions is the fact that the Force has two aspects, the light and the dark, yet without one the other would cease to exist. For most beings these concepts hang well out of reach, celestial nonsense better left unconsidered. But for a select few, the Force is everything.

Let me preempt this blog with two forewords: First, as a few of you may have noticed, I have been absent from forum activity on CV due to preoccupation with RL matters and due to my reputed dissatisfaction with the forum quality here. But periodically, I do log in to check in on the site but rarely post. However, Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm and their professed intentions to produce more Star Wars movies desperately begs a response, and since I would rather not wait for my inbox to explode with messages regarding this subject, I will just post my opinion here.

Second, I feel compelled to address an aspect of Star Wars fandom. As everyone knows, most casual and hardcore Star Wars fans, in the past decade especially, have been intensely perturbed with the creative direction of the Star Wars franchise particularly as a result of the prequel trilogy, which extracts mixed opinions from viewers, and, for EU fans, as a result of the storylines following the New Jedi Order series, among a few other questionable stories. Because of this, there has been a certain divide in the fandom, but contrary to popular belief, this divide isn't even so much about whether a fan enjoys any one story or not. The divide, really and truly, is about whether the fan even likes Star Wars. Let me explain. A while back, I read an article called “Why Do Star Wars Fans Hate Star Wars?” by Adam Summers (the link is to a forum that reposted the article, not the original source; the original source was Jive magazine’s site, which seems to have removed the blog). There are other similar blogs, such as “No One Hates ‘Star Wars’ Quite Like a ‘Star Wars’ Fan” which basically reiterate the position. And, honestly, as someone who is familiar with Star Wars fandom, this assessment of the standard proclivity of the fandom is absolutely correct. There are some fans who are so extreme that they reject any Star Wars media other than A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (the films only, not the novelizations or the comic adaptions). Many fans who despise most Star Wars media would not consider a fan who accepts much of the franchise a “real” fan. With that said, I can be categorized as a “fake” Star Wars fan because I enjoy most of the franchise.

Now, I have expressed my malign for story arcs such as The Old Republic multimedia project, The Force Unleashed multimedia projects, and the entirety of the Legacy era, among a few others, and on account of that, the conclusion could be surmised that I dislike most Star Wars stories. But this is untrue. Those stories that I have a distaste for comprise a small fraction of all of Star Wars continuity. Although I haven’t read everything, I have read a respectable quantity of all Star Wars stories. And from what I have read, I enjoy a solid portion of the Old Republic era, the vast majority of the Rise of the Empire era, the vast majority of the Rebellion era, the vast majority of the New Republic era, the vast majority of the New Jedi Order era, and none of the Legacy era. The crucial distinction between me and most of Star Wars fandom is that most Star Wars stories that I’ve read, I like. So by the estimations of many “real” Star Wars fans, I’m a pretender (especially since I don’t attend cons or collect memorabilia or costumes; I just read the stories from novels, comics, etc.). Obviously, there are creative decisions I have taken issue with, and I have made my opinions on them clear. But (as a rough approximation), I would say that about 80% of Star Wars lore, I genuinely enjoy or, at the very least, don’t hate.

Why am I running on this verbose explanation? So as not to be misunderstood, I don't say this to insult other Star Wars fans; people can like or dislike whatever they choose. But I want to establish my own personal mentality before elucidating on my opinion of Disney’s Star Wars project. It alters my perception considerably that I don’t automatically associate new Star Wars film projects with the apocalypse, as many other fans would. I am a Star Wars fan, but I’m not an angry, disgruntled Star Wars fan. And that puts me in a minority and makes a significant difference. So if any of you are expecting me to start a raging rant, you will be disappointed (rants are typically JXM’s specialty anyway; if you want one, request his opinion on this).

With that said, here are my thoughts. My initial reaction is that there are too few details released pertaining to this project for me to form an objective consensus on the story quality, characterization, or Force exposition without arguing from ignorance. So I will not be approaching those subjects. Instead, I want to discuss a live action style of presentation, necessity (or lack thereof), and impacts on continuity.

Briefly, since it has been implicated that these movies could, in the Star Wars film tradition, be live action, I have a problem with that. Maybe I am too attached to them, but I would rather not replace the original actors with younger substitutes (and I doubt Disney would hire the original cast if their movies occur within a decade after Return of the Jedi). Instead, it would be better, to me, if the movies were animated and employed voice actors who simulated the voices of the original cast. But this is just my preference, and somehow, I doubt it will result in that.

Necessity. Do I find this necessary? Short answer: No. Long answer: The story told by the six existing Star Wars movies are very self-contained and, really, need no further development. Of course, many would say this of PT as well, as the OT was, for the most part, a complete story, but it left many questions of its past unanswered. From a narrative standpoint, there is nothing wrong with ambiguity, as long as it leaves no plot holes, and the ambiguity of Obi-Wan, Yoda, Anakin, the Jedi Order, and the Old Republic conveyed an atmosphere of mystique about the lore, which many people preferred. However, there was legitimate room for expansion on those unused plot lines, which is where the PT came in. In this case, while it could be argued that sequels to the original trilogy are no more unnecessary than the PT was, I would disagree. Whatever your opinion on its finished product may be, the PT did have more story potential within a cinematic medium. Post-OT stories bear possibilities but are not required, and I say that because they are never referenced. Throughout the OT, there are allusions to previous events and characters we know little about. All the PT did was attempt to offer closure on those unresolved plot threads (whether that attempt was successful or not is up to you). However, sequels to the OT have no basis within the movies themselves; there are no implications of future events or unsettled matters (which is self-evident, because those events hadn’t happened yet). The OT provides a simple end. This is why the EU entertained the opportunity to expound on the potential stories in separate mediums, much of which many people have never read and care next to nothing about. In a film medium, with only the PT and OT as a guideline for its history, there is just no demand for follow-up stories. The EU is an evolution of the lore with no technical genesis for its storylines within the confines of the movies themselves; the PT, conversely, did have foundations for its exact story within the movies themselves, which is why I find the addition of sequel movies unnecessary.

Having said that, can I see sequel movies as worthwhile additions to the franchise? If handled well and had the EU not already done so, yes, but that leads me into my next point. Parts of the EU could either be G-Canonized or retconned as a consequence of sequel movies, and this is my primary reservation. We could analyze the story necessity of sequel movies as much as we want, but even if the movies are completely unneeded, that does not inherently preclude the prospect of them being decent films (of course, this presumes on your willingness to believe that Disney has the capacity to manufacture good Star Wars films, and I will leave that subjective expectation to your own discretion). The EU is where my interest in this issue rests. Truth be told, I, as with many other EU fans, like the EU more than I do the movies. From what Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy discussed, they may actually incorporate EU material as a framework.

Lucas: “Well, um, I always said I wasn’t gonna do any more, and that’s true, ‘cause I’m not gonna do anymore. But that doesn’t mean I’m unwilling to turn it over to Kathy to do more. I have story treatments of 7, 8, and 9 and a bunch of other movies, and, and obviously, we have hundreds of books and comics and everything you could possibly imagine. So, you know, I sort of move that treasure trove of stories and various things to Kathy, and, you know, I have complete confidence that she’s gonna take them and make great movies.”