Let's talk numbers in the GFFA and my AU series, shall we? - PART ONE
Okay, so in the novelization of Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker thinks to himself that Obi-Wan is only a Knight, like the majority of the ten thousand Jedi, and not one of the Masters, the highest-ranking members of the Order and (with the possible exception of Ki-Adi-Mundi, who I believe was still a Knight upon initially inheriting a seat on the High Council, due to Jedi Master Micah Giiett’s unexpected death during the Yinchorri Uprising) the source of members for the ruling Jedi High Council, and the Battle of Geonosis is said to be devastating to the Jedi Order, though fewer than two hundred Jedi were slain during the fight (170, according to the Wookieepedia). In both that novelization and the actual film, it is stated by the Kaminoans of the clones that there are “200,000 units ready, with a million more well on the way.” By the time of Matthew Stover’s Shatterpoint (set approximately half a year after Geonosis), there are at least 1,200,000 clones in the field (despite deaths on Geonosis and elsewhere). By the time of Karen Traviss’ Republic Commando: Triple Zero (set approximately a year after Geonosis), there are three million clones in the field. However, by the time of Stephen Barnes’ The Cestus Deception (set a little less than a year after Geonosis), there have also already been a million casualties among the clones. By the end of the war, thousands of Jedi are supposed to have been killed (with all but maybe a hundred eventually perishing in the execution of Order 66 and Flame Night/Operation: Knightfall, when the Temple on Coruscant burned), greatly reducing the Order’s size and efficiency. Soon after the war started, according the “Guide to the Grand Army of the Republic” by Karen Traviss and Ryan Kaufman (these details can basically also be found under “Tactical organization” and “Personnel” at https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Grand_Army_of_the_Republic/Legends) the command structure of the regular forces was as follows:
(It’s probably worth noting that the organization of the GAR and the Republic’s Navy - and in fact, the organization of the Empire’s Army and Navy, as well - tends to mirror the ranks for the British Army and the Royal Navy more than then do those of the United States armed forces.)
In a discussion on TheForce.net’s literature boards, a statement was made denying that the 3,000,000 figure is meant to be treated as a definitive figure for the total army: “FYI, re: 3 million. LFL was very clear to us that no fixed number of total clones would or could be assigned. Therefore, the number 3 million (plus) does not represent the entire fighting force.” Thus, it can be safely assumed that this was merely the number of clones in the field fighting approximately one year into the war. Given that most of the stories since AotC have shown dozens of battles, during many of which the clones sustain massive losses, that Spaarti cloning technology did not become available to the Republic until after the Battle of Cartao, a fight over the use of a secondary cloning facility owned by Spaarti Creations (when the technology was reported destroyed but was actually essentially seized wholesale by Palpatine/Sidious, at a time approximately one year after the First Battle of Geonosis, after which it was not used to create more soldiers for the Grand Army but rather precursors for the Imperial army), that the entire need for the clone army arose from the fact that the Republic had no central military organization to organize and carry out a war against the Separatist forces (and, what few systems did have any kind of military-type forces were mostly geared towards fighting pirates and, in any case, were not by any means large enough to defend the entire Republic), that recruitment and non-clone soldiers have been mentioned/seen in several EU sources (The New Essential Chronology, Jedi Trial, The Cestus Deception, and “The Story of General Grievous: Lord of War,” among others), and that The New Essential Chronology states, “Conscription, however, was a necessary reality. Countless beings of every species became draftees into the Grand Army of the Republic,” it is most likely that the so-called Grand Army was made up of a combination of clones, draftees, and troops from local planetary armies, with the clones probably initially comprising the bulk of the armed forces and the amount of non-clones (and non-Jedi) steadily increasing over time (and, perhaps, serving mainly as naval crew on such ships as the 1,000 Acclamator-class assault ships ordered by the Republic immediately after the beginning of the war, according to the Star Wars Roleplaying Game Revised Core Rulebook, given that each ship requires 700 crew and is meant to carry 16,000 clone troopers and support personnel).
So. What does all this tell us? Since Jedi are traditionally not accounted full members of the Order until they have been Knighted (a fact that I believe is made clear not just in the EU but the canon as well), it is likely that the figure of 10,000 given in the AotC novelization is meant to represent only the Knights and Masters in the Order (perhaps even only those in the Jedi Order based out of the Coruscanti Temple). It is highly unlikely that this figure is meant to account for Jedi Padawans, Jedi Initiates or younglings in the crèche, or members of the various branches of the Jedi Service Corps (including the Agricultural Corps or Agri-Corps, the Educational Corps or EduCorps, the Exploration Corps or ExplorCorps, and the Medical Corps or MedCorps. And, no matter what anyone might have to say about the Jedi Service Corps, logically, there has to be a place for the Force-sensitives who either can’t hack the training or else . . . in essence just fall through the cracks, since the number of full members in the Jedi Order has been declining pretty much since Ruusan and it’s pretty well established that there’re never enough Knights/Masters to go around for all the upcoming Initiates who could be apprenticed and taught, and who evidently have to be apprenticed by a certain age to remain in the main body of the Order. The Jedi Service Corps makes as much sense as anything else and, in fact, makes a whole lot more sense than just cutting these probably bitterly disappointed/hurt/angry kids loose, to potentially run amok in the galaxy as partially-trained Dark Jedi), where Jedi hopefuls who are not deemed a proper fit for the Order for whatever reason(s) and/or who have not been individually selected by a Master to become a Padawan (by the age of thirteen for human norms or the specific species equivalent) end up being sent (though presumably they could instead be reclaimed by their blood families).
Given that the EU/Legends (and even some of the newer canon, since Ahsoka apparently had to be “assigned” a Master by the High Council) suggests a rather large disparity in the number of Jedi Knights and Masters both available and willing to become Masters to potential apprentices (with some Knights/Masters simply refusing to take on apprentices and with at least one out of five [in the case of Bruck Chun, out of him, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Garen Muln, Reeft, and Bant, who were all agemates in the crèche] or even two out of five [given that, initially, Obi-Wan himself was refused by Qui-Gon as an apprentice and sent to the Agri-Corps on Bandomeer] or even occasionally one out of two [in the case of Lorian Nod and Dooku, Dooku being accepted where Lorian supposedly would not have been, even if he hadn’t been driven by desperation to steal a Sith Holocron in an attempt to learn something capable of forcing some Knight/Master to choose him as an apprentice] potentials apparently regularly being sent to the Service Corps for failing to be chosen as Padawans, with an unknown number being rejected previous to reaching the cut-off age of thirteen) and given that, while the crèche contains younglings ranging in age from infanthood up to almost thirteen, it apparently generally takes approximately about twelve years for a Padawan to be ready for Knighting, it is entirely likely that there are at least two to three times the number of Jedi Padawans and younglings of various ages in the crèche as there are full Jedi in the Order, if not more, and equally likely that, though individual outposts for each branch of the Jedi Service Corps might maintain only a few dozen to a few hundred or so members (plus instructors/bosses) at any given time, the whole of the Jedi Service Corps contains numbers far in excess of the combined population (Initiates, Padawans, Knights, and Masters) of the entire Jedi Order (at least in regards to Jedi who’re coming out of the Coruscanti Temple).
For simplicity’s sake, I think it’s probably safe to say that, at the time of AotC, there would’ve been not only the 10,000 full members of the Jedi Order thought of by Anakin (at Coruscant) but roughly 25,000-35,000 or so potential members (including both Padawans and younglings in the crèche) and perhaps 50,000-75,000 or more still living rejected members of the Order known and on file as working in one branch or another of the Jedi Service Corps (not counting any families such individuals might have made for themselves while working in one of those branches, which, let’s be honest, given the evidently dismissive/condescending attitude of Jedi Knights/Masters towards the Service Corps and the obvious fear of being rejected/sent away to the Service Corps among the Padawans/Initiates would probably quadruple the higher end of that number, at the very least, just with the Force-sensitive offspring of multiple generations who’ve been trained by their parents and/or the wider Corps and willingly chosen to stay in their specific field rather than try to be taken for training by and as Jedi Knights/Masters, given that they’ve almost certainly been raised on horror stories of the bullying and favoritism in the crèche and the sheer lack of attention/care being paid both the Initiates and Padawans by most of the Knights/Masters of the Order. Remember, no one in the entire Jedi Order so much as bats an eye over the way that Obi-Wan gets treated, either in the older canon/EU or the DISNEY!SW canon, and he’s irrefutably bullied and borderline abused/neglected for the majority if not the entirety of his time as first an Initiate and later as a Padawan. Qui-Gon Jinn treats him like garbage, routinely telling him to ignore his particular strength in the Force [as it’s the Unifying Force, not the Living Force, or Qui-Gon’s personal strength], shutting him down every time he tries to pass on a warning from the Unifying Force, and slamming him for every question he dares to ask or opinion he dares to try to voice, and, in the EU, even gets away with flat-out lying about why Obi-Wan’s chosen to stay on Melida/Daan, and no one ever does a single thing to correct any of this frankly appalling behavior. Imagine how much worse it could’ve been for an Initiate who hadn’t caught Master Yoda’s eye enough for him to meddle in his life. Also, keep in mind that when Obi-Wan is sent away to Bandomeer, in the Outer Rim, in the old EU, that he is not being sent to any of the main hubs in operation in the Core - such as the research labs located in the Jedi Temple, itself, or the Salliche Ag Circuit working in conjunction with the Republic Agricultural Administration in the Core - but rather to a fairly new and dangerous outpost of the AgriCorps, specifically because that world is known to be dominated by Offworld Mining Corporation and because Qui-Gon’s interest in his abandoned/failed previous Padawan, Xanatos, is likely to take him there, meaning he is more likely to interact with Obi-Wan and be driven by circumstances to accept him as his new apprentice, as Yoda desires to occur). Yet, this still doesn’t even attempt to account for Jedi attached to other Temples (like the Almas Academy, the Jedi Academy at Ossus, the Dantooine Temple, the Temple of Eedit, the Jedi Temple at Tython, and etc.) or in entire other factions (like the Altisian Jedi, the Green/Corellian Jedi, the Teepo Paladins, the Gray Paladins, and etc.).
Interestingly, when composing background information for licensees in 1977, George Lucas himself described the Jedi Order as being “several hundred thousand” strong before the Great Jedi Purge of the Emperor, which implies that the numbers I’m estimating for the Jedi Order as coming from the Coruscanti Temple (at 100,000 or more total) have as much if not more basis in the highest possible level of canon (that of Lucas himself, who also, I have recently learned, put the number of Jedi prior to Order 66 as 100,000 in the script treatments for the possible sequel films that DISNEY ultimately rejected) than the 10,000 number given in the EU novelization of AotC, something I find especially interesting given that the Jedi Order of the Clone Wars era was actively working with other Force-organizations (such as the Gray Paladins, the Teepo Paladins, and the Altisian Jedi, who numbered in the “probably thousands,” just counting the individuals taught specifically by Master Djin Altis, according to the renegade head of that Jedi faction, in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars tie-in book No Prisoners, meaning that their actual number is very likely much, much higher, given the near certainty of others having been taught by Master Altis going on to teach others, in turn, since the Altisian Jedi have been a faction separate from the Coruscanti Jedi since at least 35 BBY and possibly much earlier) during that period of time and, technically, could have been said to also include those numbers within its fold . . . perhaps hinting at an alliance among those various sects yielding combined numbers easily within the hundreds of thousands and perhaps even hinting at several other Jedi Temples beyond the main one on Coruscant. (If so, then Order 66, Flame Night, and the subsequent Purge become even more terrible, considering the sheer amount of lives lost.)
While we’re talking numbers, let’s just take a moment to pause and ponder on the ridiculousness of there being Initiate Clans https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Initiate_Clan/Legends for the Jedi younglings in the crèche in the Coruscanti Temple when said groups are only supposed to have ten to twenty individual members and even EU/Legends doesn’t list more than thirteen possible different clans for the time period in question. Even according to the most basic math, that only accounts for between 130 and 260 Initiates for an organization that is regularly said to have around 10,000 full members (as Jedi Knights and Masters), so clearly there is something seriously wrong here. Even if we say that there are different groupings by age in the individual Initiate Clans - which honestly, it would only make sense to do this, because otherwise how would one even get crèchemates of approximately the same age, as clearly happens in the EU and in canon? - and count by two standard years (which seems to be hinted at, at least, in the EU, given that the group of ten Initiates Obi-Wan helps save from that sabotaged turbolift in the seventh Jedi Apprentice book are all either three years old or two years old and that Obi-Wan’s closest friends are basically either his age or around a year younger), that only gives us, what, at least seven distinctly different groups within each Initiate Clan (newborns up to a year; two years to three years of age; four years to five years of age; six years to seven years of age; eight years to nine years of age; ten years to eleven years of age; and then the younglings who’re twelve to thirteen, who need to either be apprenticed or else age out and apparently are looked after by a Jedi Docent, again according to the Jedi Apprentice books), though, in all honesty, there might be enough of the youngest Initiates to need to divide them up by each year (since, logically, at least some Initiates likely wouldn’t be deemed unsuitable for further training until after they were old enough to at least start lightsaber training and so have a chance to prove whether they could physically do it or not)? That’s still only 910-1,820 younglings at most, which, while more reasonable than just 130-260, is still insanely low for an organization that is evidently thought to be healthy enough to be self-perpetuating/self-sustainable.
People, this is not Harry Potter, where low numbers of students (while honestly still somewhat ridiculously low) can at least be sort of explained away as the result of a whole lot of a relatively small population having pretty recently been essentially wiped out. This is an organization that is known both to have at least 10,000 fully-fledged Knights and Masters as members and to have enough younglings just of a certain age that some of them are pretty much guaranteed to age out every year without being apprenticed because there aren’t enough available Knights/Masters to go around. Granted, there should be a fairly high percentage of Knights/Masters who already have Padawans, at least most years, since it does seem to take at least ten to twelve years (if not more) for most apprenticeships, but it’s also pretty darn clear in EU/Legends as well as in canon that not all of the Knights/Masters in the Order have or take on apprentices. Granted, some of the younglings who go into the Service Corps very likely do so because they are thought not suited for the life of a Jedi Knight/Master or else they don’t want to keep training as potential Knights, but the EU makes a pretty convincing case for there being so many younglings of or nearing the right age for apprenticing that it’s difficult or next to impossible to find enough Knights/Masters who don’t already have Padawans of their own to take someone else on. If you’ve got a fairly even spread of different ages, from newborn up to almost thirteen (and honestly, I don’t see why there shouldn’t be - though of course there would probably be more of the youngest ages, since it logically would take a while to wash out/be assigned to the Service Corps - at least for Force-sensitive younglings given to the Order prior to the outbreak of the war, at which point I imagine that number would start to plummet, though it would take at least a decade to twelve years for this to actually impact the issue at hand, although, to be fair, the only reason that the whole one apprentice per Master rule likely ever worked at all is because it was implemented after a war, when numbers would’ve been way, way down, and because it takes approximately as long as a standard apprenticeship for any new younglings taken in by the Temple to actually be old enough to need to be apprenticed), but it’s consistently an ongoing, yearly issue, finding enough Knights/Masters who’re free to take on Padawans, then you have got to have enough younglings present to justify the perpetuation of said problem.
(Seriously, I am so blasted tired of people willfully ignoring how many sapient beings there would logically be in any given organization in the GFFA. We’re stuck with the 10,000 number because that’s what Lucas, himself, has said, regarding fully fledged Jedi during the Clone Wars, which, considering just the size of the Coruscanti Jedi Temple alone, is pretty darn obviously ludicrously lowballed as a number, especially for an organization that apparently believes that it’s doing fine/has no issues with recruits/doesn’t need to worry about whether or not it’s at all sustainable as an Order. According to EU/canon, there are approximately 7,100,000,000 stars in the part of the galaxy that the Galactic Republic has actually managed to map, with something like 3,200,000,000 known habitable star systems. Sure, only around a billion [or 1,000,000,000] of these systems are known to have life and, of those, only about 69,000,000 of those systems are apparently able to meet the population requirements for representation in the Galactic Republic [though of course not all of them actually petition for such representation, much less are granted them, outside of the Core], but keep in mind just how much of the maps of the GFFA are taken up by the Unknown Regions and Wild Space. Maybe - and that’s an awfully iffy sort of perhaps - the Galactic Republic has actually managed to map possibly half of the actual galaxy, not counting all of the satellite galaxies likely attached to its edges. For reference, our Milky Way galaxy, which canonically is approximately the same size as the GFFA, has something like fifty-nine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_galaxies_of_the_Milky_Way other small satellite galaxies alone confirmed to be on the edge of its disc to the edge of its dark matter halo. The GFFA is HUGE, people. Coruscant alone has a population of known to be somewhere between one and three trillion [or between 1,000,000,000,000 and 3,000,000,000,000] sapients, and that’s not really counting those who’re there illegally or those who’re living in the underlevels, since no one knows [or even seems to care] how many beings are actually surviving/living down there, closer to the surface of the planet, so odds are that the actual sapient population is at least a few trillion more. And that is the population of one single planet alone, folks, out of the millions upon millions of inhabited planets/moons/satellites/stations/etc. that are part of the Republic. No matter what way you look at it, the GFFA is very big and millions of its systems in the approximate half of the galaxy that the Galactic Republic actually knows anything at all about [enough to have at least mapped, anyway] are likely at least as densely populated as the Earth, which currently has something like 7.753 billion humans alone, or else far more densely populated, like Coruscant with its trillions of beings. The math alone, if there’s 7.753 billion sapient beings in each of those 69,000,000 systems with populations large enough to warrant inclusion in the Galactic Republic, gives 534,957,000,000,000,000 sapient beings. That’s over half of a quintillion sapient beings in roughly only half the space taken up by the actual GFFA. I think it’s safe to say that, no matter how rare Force-sensitivity is, given the sheer numbers of sapient beings most likely actually living in the galaxy, logically speaking, there are always going to be more Force-sensitives floating around than anyone generally thinks there are.)
Really, unless the Coruscanti Jedi Temple for some bizarre reason keeps the vast majority of its younglings at another location (which hardly seems likely), the only reasonable explanation is that there are either a heck of a lot more than just thirteen Initiate Clans or else there are a lot of different groups all of the same basic age within the individual Initiate Clans in addition to there being different age-groups within the individual Initiate Clans. Personally, I know which way I tend to lean - that there are more Initiate Clans than we have names for, but that there are also at least initially different little groupings of the same basic age within the individual Initiate Clans (as well as the basic divisions into subgroups just by age) and that these shrink over the years as younglings are winnowed out, for one reason or another, until, towards the end, there’s generally only one basic subgroup by age in the twelve to thirteen years of age range for each Initiate Clan. I tend to believe this in large part due to the fact that, logically, every individual strong enough in the Force to be of interest to the Jedi really cannot possibly also have the right temperament or the right kind of body or level of health to be able to feasibly make it as a Jedi Knight/Master, and so I also tend to think that there are normally a lot more Jedi younglings under the age of around six or so in the crèche (and even who’re around four, plus even more who’re toddlers and even more who’re basically infants) and that a whole lot of younglings regularly end up being sent to be raised in the communal crèches that are attached to the main (most secure) locations for the different branches of the Service Corps once they’re past the age of around six or seven (though they can and sometimes are sent away even earlier, probably depending on their health and body types, rationally speaking, for the more robust ones, I would hope that their caretakers and teachers would wait until they were old enough to show more personality before making the decision to send them away) - but the upshot here, really, is that there honestly has to be more than just thirteen separate Initiate Clans of ten to twenty members to account for all the younglings and even just separating members of different Initiate Clans into subgroups by age can’t account for all the younglings that really should consistently be present in the Coruscanti Jedi Temple.
By extension, there has to be a lot more Jedi who’re attached just to the crèche, to watch over and to help corral all these Force-sensitive younglings. The feeling I get from the EU is that there either should be a lot more Jedi attached to the crèche than there are or that there should be a lot more oversight over how these Jedi are permitted to treat their charges, since clearly everyone in the Jedi Order over a certain age is falling down on the job (badly!) when it comes to dealing with/stopping bullying and making sure that everyone’s treated fairly, both in EU/Legends and in canon. However, my opinion on that issue doesn’t really change the fact that, logically (since the Jedi don’t seem to go in much for nanny-type droids and honestly probably shouldn’t, all things considered), there really has to be multiple workers routinely/consistently attached to the crèche nursery (not just one Master, no matter how awesome), not to mention the rest of the crèche, too. Each Initiate Clan really ought to have a dedicated Master assigned as its Clan Leader and each age-group within that Initiate Clan should have a dedicated Knight or Master as its Sept Head (I have chosen “sept” rather than tribe or gens or sect since those other choices all sound a bit too familial or too religious for Jedi to be comfortable with using. Furthermore, I am going to say that, across Initiate Clan lines, younglings belonging to the same specific age-group or Sept are all members of the same Phratry [which is why Katooni and the other Initiates on the Gathering in the fifth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars aren’t all from the same Initiate Clan] and at least the oldest Phratry [and very likely the oldest two, since Padawans can be chosen as young as ten and possibly even younger] are assigned to Jedi Docents [which is why Obi-Wan, as part of an age-group old enough to either be chosen as Jedi Padawans or else age out of the Order, is initially the responsibility of Docent Vant - who, going by the word choice for the position alone, seems to be either a volunteer or else an extremely young Knight who’s still in training to work in the crèche rather than a dedicated Knight or Master formally recognized as part of the staff who work full-time/solely in the crèche - in the first Jedi Apprentice book]).
(Speaking of Katooni and the Gathering, logically, if Ahsoka is assigned by Yoda to escort the Jedi Initiates to Ilum and back, this has to happen sometime before the bombing of the Temple hangar, so it has to be at least six and a half approximate standard months prior to the Separatist attack on Coruscant and the kidnapping of Chancellor Palpatine by General Grievous, given that Anakin and Obi-Wan end up being assigned to the Outer Rim Sieges after the whole mess with the bombing for over six standard months before they’re recalled to save Palpatine. Since the age at which most Jedi Initiates are chosen to become Jedi Padawans is likely decreasing - most of the time from around twelve approaching thirteen or just twelve and possibly even eleven going on twelve or only eleven occasionally - the longer the war drags on and the more Jedi casualties there are [in other words, the increasingly desperate things become], for those Initiates to still be Initiates at the end of the war, they probably can’t have been much more than eight or nine years old when sent on their Gathering, meaning that they almost certainly aren’t ten yet when the war ends, or else they probably would’ve become Padawans by the end of the war. As desperate as so much of the war seems to be, I honestly think that, by the time Grievous attacks Coruscant, it’d make entirely too much sense for it to be increasingly typical for Initiates as young as eleven or even ten and a half [if not even younger] to be assigned to or chosen by a Knight/Master and, thus, to become Jedi Commanders, at least for certain areas, like, for example, the Jedi attached to the various Temples as Healers or to the RMSUs as Healers and possibly also to systems that have demanded token forces in case of trouble but that aren’t actually expected to ever see open combat, like in the Core and Colonies and possibly also part of the Inner Rim. [They would try to keep the younger Padawans out of active combat, but they wouldn’t always be able to succeed, the longer the war lasts and the dirtier the tactics of the Seps get.] Since Initiates are doubtlessly becoming Padawans younger, to help increase the number of Jedi available for all the different battlefields [witness, for example, Cal Kestis, who’s already become a war Padawan by the age of twelve, if not earlier], the Jedi should be sending Initiates to Ilum for their Gatherings earlier, too, so those younglings would still have at least some time to train with and get used to their personal ’sabers before having to worry about actually being sent to the field to fight. Since evidently a Gathering can and does take place from the age of eight onwards - as Jedi Initiates practice with training ’sabers between the species-specific equivalent of the ages of four and eight for a human norm, when a Gathering logically has to take place before actual personal lightsabers/other such weapons can be constructed - and, as Ahsoka is quite clearly taller than all the Initiates, even the Ithorian and the Wookiee, I think it’s likely safe to say that, during their Gathering, those Initiates would’ve been the same age as or even slightly younger than Anakin Skywalker would’ve been during TPM, making then likely around the age of nine, at most, then, and close to ten when the war ends.)
There should, of course, be Jedi who train to be attached to the crèche and who devote their lives to being Initiate Clan Leaders (who should, I would think, have to be Jedi Masters, the same way that members of the High Council are supposed to be Jedi Masters) and Sept Heads (who can be either Jedi Knights or Jedi Masters), just the same as there are Jedi who specifically train to work in the Jedi Archives or who train as Jedi Healers or Jedi Shadows or Jedi Temple Guards or Jedi Watchmen and so on. “Crèche Master” seems more like an umbrella term or an honorific, in that Jedi younglings as a matter of course as well as other Jedi simply being polite would refer to Jedi who work in the crèche - whether actually Masters or just Knights - as Crèche Master thus-and-such. It seems like there would honestly have to be different categories of workers in the overall crèche, though, depending on whether they act more as caretakers - like in the nursery, with the infants and toddlers - or as teachers. Teachers seem to incline more towards either Lore Keepers or Jedi Researchers (who are Jedi Consulars) or else towards weapons instructors and specialists (who are Jedi Guardians), if not towards the Jedi Artisans or members of the Order’s technical division (who are Jedi Sentinels). Caretakers, though, would probably incline more towards Jedi Healers (again a type of Jedi Consular) but would also have to include the Jedi Recruiters who initially find/test and retrieve young Force-sensitives for the Order (again a sort of Jedi Sentinel). Perhaps there should be both Jedi Carers for the youngest of the Initiates and Jedi Tenders for the rest (Consulars), Jedi Instructors (both for educational basics and for various types of weapons training) and (for higher learning) Jedi Pandits (Guardians), and also (for highly specialized training and/or creation involving both the arts and technology) Jedi Crafters (Sentinels).
In the EU, evidently Jedi elders who retire are allowed to leave the Temple and make homes for themselves on their original homeworlds (as with Jedi Master Noor R’aya in Jedi Apprentice: The Dangerous Rescue); however, older Jedi who no longer take active missions also apparently routinely act as instructors for specific courses/classes of Jedi younglings (as with Master Wren Honoran in Jedi Quest: The Trail of the Jedi). The idea of Jedi leaving the Temple when they retire seems kind of hinky to me - it seems awfully close to what Dooku does, which makes him one of the Lost Twenty, after all - but I suppose that it could be something that used to happen a lot more often (and also used to include Jedi Watchmen retiring to systems or worlds that they’ve become accustomed to looking out for), but not nearly so much since the Ruusan Reformations and so tends to be an exception involving an eccentric but venerable old Master or a Jedi whose birth family is powerful/wealthy/influential enough for the High Council to allow it. One would think that Jedi who are either too old/infirm or else simply too injured for active missions (and/or who have, perhaps, retired from highly stressful positions, as on the High Council) would most often logically end up either attached to the crèche in some way or else assigned to the various classes that both Initiates and Padawans are expected to take (and pass), especially the ones that don’t necessarily involve actual combat; if so, though, then there either just aren’t enough of them or else they simply aren’t capable of actually keeping up with their young charges (and perhaps this is where/how/why the bullying problem among Initiates - and even Padawans, to some extent - persists, especially if there are Jedi who deeply resent being assigned, thus, to the crèche and/or to classes for the younglings and/or, lacking the training and the inclination for such work, do a less than stellar job of it. Not everyone is cut out for teaching, after all, and not everyone has the right kind of temperament to really be around children/adolescents all the time).
Honestly, the whole situation with the crèche and the obvious lack of enough competent adult supervisors/workers reminds me entirely too much of the (glaring lack of sufficient trained) Jedi Healers. I understand that being able to use the Force to help heal others might be a very rare talent, but honestly, that’s no excuse for there not being more than a handful of Jedi Healers of any sort ever even mentioned (much less seen) in EU/Legends or canon! In an organization of at least 10,000 full members, many of whom would logically fairly constantly be out and about in the galaxy on various missions, courting mayhem and disaster at every bloody turn, you’d think that the Temple could produce more than maybe eight fully-fledged Master Healers (i.e., Vokara Che, who is actually referred to as a Jedi Master Healer; T’ra Saa, a Jedi Master skilled in Force healing; Tresalis, a Jedi Master and noted Healer who makes a holocron detailing her teachings; Stass Allie, a member of the Circle of Jedi Healers and a Jedi Master who becomes a member of the High Council before the end of the war; Winna Di Yuni, a Jedi Master and “diagnostician” in the Halls of Healing when Obi-Wan is a Padawan; Caudle, a Jedi physician/healer in the Halls of Healing; Thracia Cho Leem, Jedi Master and Healer [though she leaves the Order sometime after the Zonama Sekot mission, even if she isn’t ever counted one of the Lost]; and Rig Nema, who’s only ever called a doctor, oddly enough, though she’s presumably a Jedi and probably a Master, as she’s allowed to treat Master Yoda) and maybe six Jedi Healers in training (i.e., Olge Plavi-Dol, a Jedi Knight and Healer; Nahdar Vebb, a very young Knight and Healer who dies near the beginning of the Clone Wars; Aubrie Wyn, a Padawan who dies on Jabiim; Rann I-Kanu; Bant Eerin; and Barriss Offee) to deal with all the myriad potential injuries and illnesses.
Call me crazy, but as dangerous as Jedi missions apparently all too often tended to be, even well before the beginning of the Clone Wars, I would hope that the Jedi would have both enough fully trained Healers/Doctors and enough Healers in training and nurses (by way of various Padawans and possibly even older Initiates who might be helping out in the Halls of Healing as part of their basic coursework, not to mention Knights who’re still learning) to at least conceivably staff an entire actual real world basic hospital (for reference, even fifteen years ago, in the US, most hospitals would employ roughly a thousand workers and about half of them would be healthcare workers). Yes, I suppose at least some of the workers in the Halls of Healing could be members of the MedCorps, at least in the EU, and at least some might be some kind of specialized Temple employees (much the same way as at least some of the workers in and immediately adjacent to the crèche might be regular caretakers employed by the Temple and/or members of the EduCorps or the MedCorps, though honestly, given that the Jedi Order presumably has to pay its regular employees something, to keep them working there, it would make a lot more sense if it mostly just put its own members - both those too old/frail/injured for active missions and those not quite suitable for training as full Knights/Masters, for whatever reasons - to work within its bounds for what amounts to room/board/necessities. Otherwise, unless somebody back in the pre-Ruusan Order [back when the Order still had a lot more autonomy and power and could likely get away with doing so without having the Senate have a collective apoplexy about it] was smart enough to make some really great investments that are somehow still resulting in some major dividends, where is all the money coming from to pay more regular employees?), but canonically? Where the frak are all the Healers, Jedi or otherwise, to fully populate a Healers’ Wing, much less the Halls of Healing, and where the kark are all the crèche workers, Jedi or otherwise, to care for the younglings?
If a primary care physician should only be treating around a thousand patients here in the real world (according to the American Association for Physician Leadership) and the WHO (World Health Organization) says through should be at least 2.5 medical staff (physicians, nurses, and midwives) for every 1,000 individuals in a population for minimum adequate coverage, then where are the at absolute minimum ten to twenty-five fully fledged Jedi Healers needed just for the 10,000 active Jedi Knights/Masters, not to mention all of the associated specialists who might also be required not just for the active duty Jedi likely to come back to the Temple with serious wounds and/or various local sicknesses but for the Jedi who’ve retired from active missions but chosen to stay on at the Temple, the Jedi who’ve never really gone on active missions because they’re busy with the Archives or with various teaching duties, etc., and the overall staffing for the Temple complex (the cooks, the cleaners, the people in charge of the grounds, the various maintenance workers for the lifts and all those fountains and such, the people who produce all the necessary items for the people who live in the Temple, and etc.), not to mention all of the younglings in the crèche (plus all the associated staffing for the crèche), Initiates who are old enough and have passed all the tests necessary to be considered eligible to be apprenticed, and actual Padawan learners? In the real world, city status is granted starting with numbers that equal the core of 10,000 active Jedi Knights/Masters in the Temple alone. With the amount of beings it must take simply to keep the Temple itself safely habitable - to maintain all the basic amenities and to keep everyone properly clothed and fed - who logically ought to either live in the Temple or else spend most of their working hours in the Temple (and who probably live in the associated Temple Precinct), I have an extremely hard time imagining anything less than what ought to be at least a small to medium hospital/medical center plus enough trained nonspecialist Healers and associated personnel (the equivalent of nurse practitioners, etc.) being required to keep everyone who calls the Temple their home and/or primary workplace healthy. By rights, the surrounding and apparently quite sizeable Temple Precinct should probably have both its own more specialized medical centers and offices for regular Healers and such, too.
Canon and even EU/Legends spends so much time focusing on the lightsaber-wielding Masters and Knights and Padawans (and even, occasionally, Initiates who end up having to deal with pirates and Separatist monsters), and I get it, I do, lightsabers are flashy and engaging and look like fun, but honest to ever-loving gods, folks, there has to be some kind of basic infrastructure in place both to help support, raise/care for (including feeding them and making sure that the laundry gets done and all the basic supplies are readily available from Temple stores! And don’t even get me started on the Temple Guards, which logically should be a massive chunk of those 10,000 Jedi Knights/Masters, given the actual size of the Temple complex, not to mention the almost certainly even more massive surrounding Temple Precinct!), educate, and train the ones who go out on missions with said lightsabers and to help patch them back together again (or fit them with good prosthetics) when they inevitably get hurt and to diagnose and give them the right kind of meds when they eventually catch some weird bug while out on said missions! For the Jedi Order to realistically be expected to run the entire blasted war, especially, there needs to be a strong, basic infrastructure to support everyone and everything, or it all falls rapidly apart.
There are enough mentions of nonJedi Temple workers (craftsmen, traders, artisans, technicians, etc.) and members of the Jedi Service Corps in EU/Legends that it’d probably be fairly safe to assume that at least some of these people are responsible for things like food, laundry, cleaning services, supplies of all sorts (from soap to eating utensils to clothing to tables and chairs and etc.), and possibly even a certain amount of employees in the crèche and the Halls of Healing, but canon (both the older Lucas canon and the newer DISNEY!SW canon) mostly just blows straight past all of this without any kind of acknowledgement that there even should be a whole lot of individuals whose job it is to mind the younglings and make sure that they get all their shots and regular meals and medical checkups and treatment for illnesses/injuries, along with all of the Padawans and Knights and Masters. Granted, droids can probably help at least some with the workload, when it comes to things like cleaning and possibly even some really basic medical care or nursery duties, but does anyone actually think that the Jedi Order would buy really good and/or fancy medical or nursery or cleaning droids (if the budget would even allow for it, if the main budget is indeed dependent upon the Republic Senate), when the Jedi could conceivably get people from some branch of the Service Corps, Padawans or Initiates doing some kind of penance, or other living beings to do it? Honestly, if there are 10,000 Jedi Knight and Masters available to go out and about in the galaxy, logically, there should be at least that many people (if not more) either in the Temple or else coming in from the surrounding Temple District just seeing to the basic everyday tasks of keeping the place going and making sure the younglings don’t accidentally kill themselves or each other with Force-fueled tantrums, accidents, or spite.
On the other end of the spectrum, given that the first foray of the Kaminoans into exploring the Jango Fett DNA reportedly results in the creation of twelve prototype clones with an enhanced Fett genome, only six of which manage to survive the gestation process, and that these clones are then perceived as a failure by the Kaminoans due to the low birth-rate and their refusal to follow orders (with no further such enhanced clones being created, only Kal Skirata’s intervention keeping the Kaminoans from terminating the six survivors as defective units in accordance to Factor H, or the human variable that the Kaminoan scientists believe ruins the theory of the perfect clone) but kept on to eventually become the Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos, and given that there are 200,000 clone units ready, with another million well on the way, when Obi-Wan Kenobi discovers the existence of the clones, in AotC, the odds are very good that, after some experimentation and early failure, the Kaminoans began creating batches of clones in a regular, standardized number, once an optimally acceptable version of a successful Fett clone had been successfully produced. Given scientific procedure, odds are very good that the 200,000 clones ready for use at Geonosis are the result of two batches of test clones of 100,000 each, with one group acting as a sort of control and the other as a sort of test subject. Both, evidently, prove acceptable, and so the batch size is then increased to the apparent standard of 1 million units.
Now. Given that the Kaminoan clones mature at roughly twice the rate as human norms, the gestation period of these clones would, in Earth terms, be roughly 4.5 months (or approximately 135 days, just one 5-day week shy of four 35-day months, by the Galactic Standard Calendar). According to Karen Traviss’ Republic Commando: Triple Zero, the boys who would become the Nulls are about four years of age when the Kaminoans decide that they’re defective and, if not for Skirata, would have had them liquidated. That means that they grew for approximately two years, given their advanced rate of aging. If the Kaminoans have been continuing to experiment with the Fett genome in the meantime (which is extremely likely, given that Skirata, among others, is present at the Kaminoan facility at that time due to the fact that he’s been hired to train the clones as they grow), odds are good that the 200,000 clone troopers ready to fight by what would become the First Battle of Geonosis have been bred at the same time as or immediately after the decantation of the Nulls, meaning they likely have at least nine to nine and a half years or more in which to grow and so are around eighteen or nineteen (possibly pushing twenty) by the time of the start of the Clone Wars. Equally likely is the fact that the million units well on the way to being ready, in AotC, were bred immediately after those 200,000 clones were declared successful (very likely around the same time that the Nulls were declared a failure and the decision was made not to attempt to breed any more clones with an enhanced Fett genome).
There’s 368 days in a standard year in the GFFA, going by the Galactic Standard Calendar http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_Standard_Calendar Given a gestation period of 135 days, given ten full standard years in which the Kaminoans had to work, prior to the outbreak of the Clone Wars, and given that the war lasted over three years (just over three and a half, in my AU ’verse), the Kaminoans could technically have produced, in the thirteen and a half years in which standard batches of 1 million would have been the norm probably roughly two years in, almost 37 (36.8, meaning that, when the war official ends, there’s a batch growing in their tubes but not quite ready to be decanted yet) batches of clones altogether, of those likely 31 (or 32, counting the batch still in their tubes) of 1 million clones apiece, plus the 200,000 from the initial successful test batches, plus however many other test batches of 100,000 also could have been made in those first two years while the Kaminoans were waiting to see how their experiments would turn out (and at least four others could have been fit into that timeframe, though that means that eight batches could’ve resulted, since the first 100,000 test batch happens at the same time that the second test batch of 100,000 is occurring), bringing the total from 31,200,000 up to 32,000,000 decanted clones (with yet another million well on the way). Given that Kamino was the site of two battles, though, with the First Battle of Kamino occurring roughly two months after the First Battle of Geonosis (and apparently resulting in little real damage to the cloning base at Tipoca City, though droid fighters did land in the city) and the Second Battle of Kamino occurring less than a year prior to the end of the Clone Wars, and given hints in the EU that the Kaminoans were no longer producing any new clones by the final year of the war, it is entirely possible that three or even four of those batches either were not made or did not come to fruition, yielding a number more like 29,00,000-30,000,000 Kaminoan clones produced for the Republic.
I AM SO GORRAM TIRED OF THE LJ'S CHARCTER LIMITS. CONTINUED IN THE NEXT POST, HERE https://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/265096.html
- Grand Army: 10 systems armies, a total of 3,000,000 units, with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine as commander-in-chief.
- Systems Army: 2 Sector Armies (294,912 troops) led by a High Jedi General.
- Sector Army: 4 corps (147,456 troops) led by a Senior Jedi General.
- Corps/Division: 4 legions (36,864 troops) led by a clone marshal commander and a Jedi General.
- Legion/Brigade: 4 regiments (9,216 troops) led by a senior clone commander and a Jedi General.
- Regiment: 4 battalions (2,304 troops) led by a clone trooper commander, clone regimental commander, and a Padawan Commander.
- Battalion: 4 companies (576 troops) led by a major.
- Company: 4 platoons (144 troops) led by a captain.
- Platoon: 4 squads (36 troops) led by a lieutenant.
- Squad: 9 soldiers led by a sergeant.
- Special Operations Brigade (SO BDE): 20 groups (10,000 men), commanded by Senior Jedi General Arlingan Zey, made up of 10 batallions/Commando Groups by one year after the First Battle of Geonosis.
- Commando Group: 5 companies (500 men), commanded by Jedi General Bardan Jusik (Jedi Knight) and later by Jedi General Etain Tur-Mukan (Jedi Knight).
- Company: 5 troops (100 men).
- Troop: 5 squads (20 men).
- Squad: 4 men.
- Supreme Chancellor/Supreme Commander
- High Jedi General
- Senior Jedi General
- Jedi General
- Jedi Commander/Clone marshal commander
- Senior clone commander
- Clone regimental commander
- Clone trooper commander/Battalion commander
- Clone trooper major
- Clone trooper captain
- Clone trooper lieutenant
- Clone trooper second lieutenant
- Clone trooper sergeant major
- Clone trooper sergeant
- Clone trooper corporal
- Clone trooper
- Clone cadet
(It’s probably worth noting that the organization of the GAR and the Republic’s Navy - and in fact, the organization of the Empire’s Army and Navy, as well - tends to mirror the ranks for the British Army and the Royal Navy more than then do those of the United States armed forces.)
In a discussion on TheForce.net’s literature boards, a statement was made denying that the 3,000,000 figure is meant to be treated as a definitive figure for the total army: “FYI, re: 3 million. LFL was very clear to us that no fixed number of total clones would or could be assigned. Therefore, the number 3 million (plus) does not represent the entire fighting force.” Thus, it can be safely assumed that this was merely the number of clones in the field fighting approximately one year into the war. Given that most of the stories since AotC have shown dozens of battles, during many of which the clones sustain massive losses, that Spaarti cloning technology did not become available to the Republic until after the Battle of Cartao, a fight over the use of a secondary cloning facility owned by Spaarti Creations (when the technology was reported destroyed but was actually essentially seized wholesale by Palpatine/Sidious, at a time approximately one year after the First Battle of Geonosis, after which it was not used to create more soldiers for the Grand Army but rather precursors for the Imperial army), that the entire need for the clone army arose from the fact that the Republic had no central military organization to organize and carry out a war against the Separatist forces (and, what few systems did have any kind of military-type forces were mostly geared towards fighting pirates and, in any case, were not by any means large enough to defend the entire Republic), that recruitment and non-clone soldiers have been mentioned/seen in several EU sources (The New Essential Chronology, Jedi Trial, The Cestus Deception, and “The Story of General Grievous: Lord of War,” among others), and that The New Essential Chronology states, “Conscription, however, was a necessary reality. Countless beings of every species became draftees into the Grand Army of the Republic,” it is most likely that the so-called Grand Army was made up of a combination of clones, draftees, and troops from local planetary armies, with the clones probably initially comprising the bulk of the armed forces and the amount of non-clones (and non-Jedi) steadily increasing over time (and, perhaps, serving mainly as naval crew on such ships as the 1,000 Acclamator-class assault ships ordered by the Republic immediately after the beginning of the war, according to the Star Wars Roleplaying Game Revised Core Rulebook, given that each ship requires 700 crew and is meant to carry 16,000 clone troopers and support personnel).
So. What does all this tell us? Since Jedi are traditionally not accounted full members of the Order until they have been Knighted (a fact that I believe is made clear not just in the EU but the canon as well), it is likely that the figure of 10,000 given in the AotC novelization is meant to represent only the Knights and Masters in the Order (perhaps even only those in the Jedi Order based out of the Coruscanti Temple). It is highly unlikely that this figure is meant to account for Jedi Padawans, Jedi Initiates or younglings in the crèche, or members of the various branches of the Jedi Service Corps (including the Agricultural Corps or Agri-Corps, the Educational Corps or EduCorps, the Exploration Corps or ExplorCorps, and the Medical Corps or MedCorps. And, no matter what anyone might have to say about the Jedi Service Corps, logically, there has to be a place for the Force-sensitives who either can’t hack the training or else . . . in essence just fall through the cracks, since the number of full members in the Jedi Order has been declining pretty much since Ruusan and it’s pretty well established that there’re never enough Knights/Masters to go around for all the upcoming Initiates who could be apprenticed and taught, and who evidently have to be apprenticed by a certain age to remain in the main body of the Order. The Jedi Service Corps makes as much sense as anything else and, in fact, makes a whole lot more sense than just cutting these probably bitterly disappointed/hurt/angry kids loose, to potentially run amok in the galaxy as partially-trained Dark Jedi), where Jedi hopefuls who are not deemed a proper fit for the Order for whatever reason(s) and/or who have not been individually selected by a Master to become a Padawan (by the age of thirteen for human norms or the specific species equivalent) end up being sent (though presumably they could instead be reclaimed by their blood families).
Given that the EU/Legends (and even some of the newer canon, since Ahsoka apparently had to be “assigned” a Master by the High Council) suggests a rather large disparity in the number of Jedi Knights and Masters both available and willing to become Masters to potential apprentices (with some Knights/Masters simply refusing to take on apprentices and with at least one out of five [in the case of Bruck Chun, out of him, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Garen Muln, Reeft, and Bant, who were all agemates in the crèche] or even two out of five [given that, initially, Obi-Wan himself was refused by Qui-Gon as an apprentice and sent to the Agri-Corps on Bandomeer] or even occasionally one out of two [in the case of Lorian Nod and Dooku, Dooku being accepted where Lorian supposedly would not have been, even if he hadn’t been driven by desperation to steal a Sith Holocron in an attempt to learn something capable of forcing some Knight/Master to choose him as an apprentice] potentials apparently regularly being sent to the Service Corps for failing to be chosen as Padawans, with an unknown number being rejected previous to reaching the cut-off age of thirteen) and given that, while the crèche contains younglings ranging in age from infanthood up to almost thirteen, it apparently generally takes approximately about twelve years for a Padawan to be ready for Knighting, it is entirely likely that there are at least two to three times the number of Jedi Padawans and younglings of various ages in the crèche as there are full Jedi in the Order, if not more, and equally likely that, though individual outposts for each branch of the Jedi Service Corps might maintain only a few dozen to a few hundred or so members (plus instructors/bosses) at any given time, the whole of the Jedi Service Corps contains numbers far in excess of the combined population (Initiates, Padawans, Knights, and Masters) of the entire Jedi Order (at least in regards to Jedi who’re coming out of the Coruscanti Temple).
For simplicity’s sake, I think it’s probably safe to say that, at the time of AotC, there would’ve been not only the 10,000 full members of the Jedi Order thought of by Anakin (at Coruscant) but roughly 25,000-35,000 or so potential members (including both Padawans and younglings in the crèche) and perhaps 50,000-75,000 or more still living rejected members of the Order known and on file as working in one branch or another of the Jedi Service Corps (not counting any families such individuals might have made for themselves while working in one of those branches, which, let’s be honest, given the evidently dismissive/condescending attitude of Jedi Knights/Masters towards the Service Corps and the obvious fear of being rejected/sent away to the Service Corps among the Padawans/Initiates would probably quadruple the higher end of that number, at the very least, just with the Force-sensitive offspring of multiple generations who’ve been trained by their parents and/or the wider Corps and willingly chosen to stay in their specific field rather than try to be taken for training by and as Jedi Knights/Masters, given that they’ve almost certainly been raised on horror stories of the bullying and favoritism in the crèche and the sheer lack of attention/care being paid both the Initiates and Padawans by most of the Knights/Masters of the Order. Remember, no one in the entire Jedi Order so much as bats an eye over the way that Obi-Wan gets treated, either in the older canon/EU or the DISNEY!SW canon, and he’s irrefutably bullied and borderline abused/neglected for the majority if not the entirety of his time as first an Initiate and later as a Padawan. Qui-Gon Jinn treats him like garbage, routinely telling him to ignore his particular strength in the Force [as it’s the Unifying Force, not the Living Force, or Qui-Gon’s personal strength], shutting him down every time he tries to pass on a warning from the Unifying Force, and slamming him for every question he dares to ask or opinion he dares to try to voice, and, in the EU, even gets away with flat-out lying about why Obi-Wan’s chosen to stay on Melida/Daan, and no one ever does a single thing to correct any of this frankly appalling behavior. Imagine how much worse it could’ve been for an Initiate who hadn’t caught Master Yoda’s eye enough for him to meddle in his life. Also, keep in mind that when Obi-Wan is sent away to Bandomeer, in the Outer Rim, in the old EU, that he is not being sent to any of the main hubs in operation in the Core - such as the research labs located in the Jedi Temple, itself, or the Salliche Ag Circuit working in conjunction with the Republic Agricultural Administration in the Core - but rather to a fairly new and dangerous outpost of the AgriCorps, specifically because that world is known to be dominated by Offworld Mining Corporation and because Qui-Gon’s interest in his abandoned/failed previous Padawan, Xanatos, is likely to take him there, meaning he is more likely to interact with Obi-Wan and be driven by circumstances to accept him as his new apprentice, as Yoda desires to occur). Yet, this still doesn’t even attempt to account for Jedi attached to other Temples (like the Almas Academy, the Jedi Academy at Ossus, the Dantooine Temple, the Temple of Eedit, the Jedi Temple at Tython, and etc.) or in entire other factions (like the Altisian Jedi, the Green/Corellian Jedi, the Teepo Paladins, the Gray Paladins, and etc.).
Interestingly, when composing background information for licensees in 1977, George Lucas himself described the Jedi Order as being “several hundred thousand” strong before the Great Jedi Purge of the Emperor, which implies that the numbers I’m estimating for the Jedi Order as coming from the Coruscanti Temple (at 100,000 or more total) have as much if not more basis in the highest possible level of canon (that of Lucas himself, who also, I have recently learned, put the number of Jedi prior to Order 66 as 100,000 in the script treatments for the possible sequel films that DISNEY ultimately rejected) than the 10,000 number given in the EU novelization of AotC, something I find especially interesting given that the Jedi Order of the Clone Wars era was actively working with other Force-organizations (such as the Gray Paladins, the Teepo Paladins, and the Altisian Jedi, who numbered in the “probably thousands,” just counting the individuals taught specifically by Master Djin Altis, according to the renegade head of that Jedi faction, in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars tie-in book No Prisoners, meaning that their actual number is very likely much, much higher, given the near certainty of others having been taught by Master Altis going on to teach others, in turn, since the Altisian Jedi have been a faction separate from the Coruscanti Jedi since at least 35 BBY and possibly much earlier) during that period of time and, technically, could have been said to also include those numbers within its fold . . . perhaps hinting at an alliance among those various sects yielding combined numbers easily within the hundreds of thousands and perhaps even hinting at several other Jedi Temples beyond the main one on Coruscant. (If so, then Order 66, Flame Night, and the subsequent Purge become even more terrible, considering the sheer amount of lives lost.)
While we’re talking numbers, let’s just take a moment to pause and ponder on the ridiculousness of there being Initiate Clans https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Initiate_Clan/Legends for the Jedi younglings in the crèche in the Coruscanti Temple when said groups are only supposed to have ten to twenty individual members and even EU/Legends doesn’t list more than thirteen possible different clans for the time period in question. Even according to the most basic math, that only accounts for between 130 and 260 Initiates for an organization that is regularly said to have around 10,000 full members (as Jedi Knights and Masters), so clearly there is something seriously wrong here. Even if we say that there are different groupings by age in the individual Initiate Clans - which honestly, it would only make sense to do this, because otherwise how would one even get crèchemates of approximately the same age, as clearly happens in the EU and in canon? - and count by two standard years (which seems to be hinted at, at least, in the EU, given that the group of ten Initiates Obi-Wan helps save from that sabotaged turbolift in the seventh Jedi Apprentice book are all either three years old or two years old and that Obi-Wan’s closest friends are basically either his age or around a year younger), that only gives us, what, at least seven distinctly different groups within each Initiate Clan (newborns up to a year; two years to three years of age; four years to five years of age; six years to seven years of age; eight years to nine years of age; ten years to eleven years of age; and then the younglings who’re twelve to thirteen, who need to either be apprenticed or else age out and apparently are looked after by a Jedi Docent, again according to the Jedi Apprentice books), though, in all honesty, there might be enough of the youngest Initiates to need to divide them up by each year (since, logically, at least some Initiates likely wouldn’t be deemed unsuitable for further training until after they were old enough to at least start lightsaber training and so have a chance to prove whether they could physically do it or not)? That’s still only 910-1,820 younglings at most, which, while more reasonable than just 130-260, is still insanely low for an organization that is evidently thought to be healthy enough to be self-perpetuating/self-sustainable.
People, this is not Harry Potter, where low numbers of students (while honestly still somewhat ridiculously low) can at least be sort of explained away as the result of a whole lot of a relatively small population having pretty recently been essentially wiped out. This is an organization that is known both to have at least 10,000 fully-fledged Knights and Masters as members and to have enough younglings just of a certain age that some of them are pretty much guaranteed to age out every year without being apprenticed because there aren’t enough available Knights/Masters to go around. Granted, there should be a fairly high percentage of Knights/Masters who already have Padawans, at least most years, since it does seem to take at least ten to twelve years (if not more) for most apprenticeships, but it’s also pretty darn clear in EU/Legends as well as in canon that not all of the Knights/Masters in the Order have or take on apprentices. Granted, some of the younglings who go into the Service Corps very likely do so because they are thought not suited for the life of a Jedi Knight/Master or else they don’t want to keep training as potential Knights, but the EU makes a pretty convincing case for there being so many younglings of or nearing the right age for apprenticing that it’s difficult or next to impossible to find enough Knights/Masters who don’t already have Padawans of their own to take someone else on. If you’ve got a fairly even spread of different ages, from newborn up to almost thirteen (and honestly, I don’t see why there shouldn’t be - though of course there would probably be more of the youngest ages, since it logically would take a while to wash out/be assigned to the Service Corps - at least for Force-sensitive younglings given to the Order prior to the outbreak of the war, at which point I imagine that number would start to plummet, though it would take at least a decade to twelve years for this to actually impact the issue at hand, although, to be fair, the only reason that the whole one apprentice per Master rule likely ever worked at all is because it was implemented after a war, when numbers would’ve been way, way down, and because it takes approximately as long as a standard apprenticeship for any new younglings taken in by the Temple to actually be old enough to need to be apprenticed), but it’s consistently an ongoing, yearly issue, finding enough Knights/Masters who’re free to take on Padawans, then you have got to have enough younglings present to justify the perpetuation of said problem.
(Seriously, I am so blasted tired of people willfully ignoring how many sapient beings there would logically be in any given organization in the GFFA. We’re stuck with the 10,000 number because that’s what Lucas, himself, has said, regarding fully fledged Jedi during the Clone Wars, which, considering just the size of the Coruscanti Jedi Temple alone, is pretty darn obviously ludicrously lowballed as a number, especially for an organization that apparently believes that it’s doing fine/has no issues with recruits/doesn’t need to worry about whether or not it’s at all sustainable as an Order. According to EU/canon, there are approximately 7,100,000,000 stars in the part of the galaxy that the Galactic Republic has actually managed to map, with something like 3,200,000,000 known habitable star systems. Sure, only around a billion [or 1,000,000,000] of these systems are known to have life and, of those, only about 69,000,000 of those systems are apparently able to meet the population requirements for representation in the Galactic Republic [though of course not all of them actually petition for such representation, much less are granted them, outside of the Core], but keep in mind just how much of the maps of the GFFA are taken up by the Unknown Regions and Wild Space. Maybe - and that’s an awfully iffy sort of perhaps - the Galactic Republic has actually managed to map possibly half of the actual galaxy, not counting all of the satellite galaxies likely attached to its edges. For reference, our Milky Way galaxy, which canonically is approximately the same size as the GFFA, has something like fifty-nine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_galaxies_of_the_Milky_Way other small satellite galaxies alone confirmed to be on the edge of its disc to the edge of its dark matter halo. The GFFA is HUGE, people. Coruscant alone has a population of known to be somewhere between one and three trillion [or between 1,000,000,000,000 and 3,000,000,000,000] sapients, and that’s not really counting those who’re there illegally or those who’re living in the underlevels, since no one knows [or even seems to care] how many beings are actually surviving/living down there, closer to the surface of the planet, so odds are that the actual sapient population is at least a few trillion more. And that is the population of one single planet alone, folks, out of the millions upon millions of inhabited planets/moons/satellites/stations/etc. that are part of the Republic. No matter what way you look at it, the GFFA is very big and millions of its systems in the approximate half of the galaxy that the Galactic Republic actually knows anything at all about [enough to have at least mapped, anyway] are likely at least as densely populated as the Earth, which currently has something like 7.753 billion humans alone, or else far more densely populated, like Coruscant with its trillions of beings. The math alone, if there’s 7.753 billion sapient beings in each of those 69,000,000 systems with populations large enough to warrant inclusion in the Galactic Republic, gives 534,957,000,000,000,000 sapient beings. That’s over half of a quintillion sapient beings in roughly only half the space taken up by the actual GFFA. I think it’s safe to say that, no matter how rare Force-sensitivity is, given the sheer numbers of sapient beings most likely actually living in the galaxy, logically speaking, there are always going to be more Force-sensitives floating around than anyone generally thinks there are.)
Really, unless the Coruscanti Jedi Temple for some bizarre reason keeps the vast majority of its younglings at another location (which hardly seems likely), the only reasonable explanation is that there are either a heck of a lot more than just thirteen Initiate Clans or else there are a lot of different groups all of the same basic age within the individual Initiate Clans in addition to there being different age-groups within the individual Initiate Clans. Personally, I know which way I tend to lean - that there are more Initiate Clans than we have names for, but that there are also at least initially different little groupings of the same basic age within the individual Initiate Clans (as well as the basic divisions into subgroups just by age) and that these shrink over the years as younglings are winnowed out, for one reason or another, until, towards the end, there’s generally only one basic subgroup by age in the twelve to thirteen years of age range for each Initiate Clan. I tend to believe this in large part due to the fact that, logically, every individual strong enough in the Force to be of interest to the Jedi really cannot possibly also have the right temperament or the right kind of body or level of health to be able to feasibly make it as a Jedi Knight/Master, and so I also tend to think that there are normally a lot more Jedi younglings under the age of around six or so in the crèche (and even who’re around four, plus even more who’re toddlers and even more who’re basically infants) and that a whole lot of younglings regularly end up being sent to be raised in the communal crèches that are attached to the main (most secure) locations for the different branches of the Service Corps once they’re past the age of around six or seven (though they can and sometimes are sent away even earlier, probably depending on their health and body types, rationally speaking, for the more robust ones, I would hope that their caretakers and teachers would wait until they were old enough to show more personality before making the decision to send them away) - but the upshot here, really, is that there honestly has to be more than just thirteen separate Initiate Clans of ten to twenty members to account for all the younglings and even just separating members of different Initiate Clans into subgroups by age can’t account for all the younglings that really should consistently be present in the Coruscanti Jedi Temple.
By extension, there has to be a lot more Jedi who’re attached just to the crèche, to watch over and to help corral all these Force-sensitive younglings. The feeling I get from the EU is that there either should be a lot more Jedi attached to the crèche than there are or that there should be a lot more oversight over how these Jedi are permitted to treat their charges, since clearly everyone in the Jedi Order over a certain age is falling down on the job (badly!) when it comes to dealing with/stopping bullying and making sure that everyone’s treated fairly, both in EU/Legends and in canon. However, my opinion on that issue doesn’t really change the fact that, logically (since the Jedi don’t seem to go in much for nanny-type droids and honestly probably shouldn’t, all things considered), there really has to be multiple workers routinely/consistently attached to the crèche nursery (not just one Master, no matter how awesome), not to mention the rest of the crèche, too. Each Initiate Clan really ought to have a dedicated Master assigned as its Clan Leader and each age-group within that Initiate Clan should have a dedicated Knight or Master as its Sept Head (I have chosen “sept” rather than tribe or gens or sect since those other choices all sound a bit too familial or too religious for Jedi to be comfortable with using. Furthermore, I am going to say that, across Initiate Clan lines, younglings belonging to the same specific age-group or Sept are all members of the same Phratry [which is why Katooni and the other Initiates on the Gathering in the fifth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars aren’t all from the same Initiate Clan] and at least the oldest Phratry [and very likely the oldest two, since Padawans can be chosen as young as ten and possibly even younger] are assigned to Jedi Docents [which is why Obi-Wan, as part of an age-group old enough to either be chosen as Jedi Padawans or else age out of the Order, is initially the responsibility of Docent Vant - who, going by the word choice for the position alone, seems to be either a volunteer or else an extremely young Knight who’s still in training to work in the crèche rather than a dedicated Knight or Master formally recognized as part of the staff who work full-time/solely in the crèche - in the first Jedi Apprentice book]).
(Speaking of Katooni and the Gathering, logically, if Ahsoka is assigned by Yoda to escort the Jedi Initiates to Ilum and back, this has to happen sometime before the bombing of the Temple hangar, so it has to be at least six and a half approximate standard months prior to the Separatist attack on Coruscant and the kidnapping of Chancellor Palpatine by General Grievous, given that Anakin and Obi-Wan end up being assigned to the Outer Rim Sieges after the whole mess with the bombing for over six standard months before they’re recalled to save Palpatine. Since the age at which most Jedi Initiates are chosen to become Jedi Padawans is likely decreasing - most of the time from around twelve approaching thirteen or just twelve and possibly even eleven going on twelve or only eleven occasionally - the longer the war drags on and the more Jedi casualties there are [in other words, the increasingly desperate things become], for those Initiates to still be Initiates at the end of the war, they probably can’t have been much more than eight or nine years old when sent on their Gathering, meaning that they almost certainly aren’t ten yet when the war ends, or else they probably would’ve become Padawans by the end of the war. As desperate as so much of the war seems to be, I honestly think that, by the time Grievous attacks Coruscant, it’d make entirely too much sense for it to be increasingly typical for Initiates as young as eleven or even ten and a half [if not even younger] to be assigned to or chosen by a Knight/Master and, thus, to become Jedi Commanders, at least for certain areas, like, for example, the Jedi attached to the various Temples as Healers or to the RMSUs as Healers and possibly also to systems that have demanded token forces in case of trouble but that aren’t actually expected to ever see open combat, like in the Core and Colonies and possibly also part of the Inner Rim. [They would try to keep the younger Padawans out of active combat, but they wouldn’t always be able to succeed, the longer the war lasts and the dirtier the tactics of the Seps get.] Since Initiates are doubtlessly becoming Padawans younger, to help increase the number of Jedi available for all the different battlefields [witness, for example, Cal Kestis, who’s already become a war Padawan by the age of twelve, if not earlier], the Jedi should be sending Initiates to Ilum for their Gatherings earlier, too, so those younglings would still have at least some time to train with and get used to their personal ’sabers before having to worry about actually being sent to the field to fight. Since evidently a Gathering can and does take place from the age of eight onwards - as Jedi Initiates practice with training ’sabers between the species-specific equivalent of the ages of four and eight for a human norm, when a Gathering logically has to take place before actual personal lightsabers/other such weapons can be constructed - and, as Ahsoka is quite clearly taller than all the Initiates, even the Ithorian and the Wookiee, I think it’s likely safe to say that, during their Gathering, those Initiates would’ve been the same age as or even slightly younger than Anakin Skywalker would’ve been during TPM, making then likely around the age of nine, at most, then, and close to ten when the war ends.)
There should, of course, be Jedi who train to be attached to the crèche and who devote their lives to being Initiate Clan Leaders (who should, I would think, have to be Jedi Masters, the same way that members of the High Council are supposed to be Jedi Masters) and Sept Heads (who can be either Jedi Knights or Jedi Masters), just the same as there are Jedi who specifically train to work in the Jedi Archives or who train as Jedi Healers or Jedi Shadows or Jedi Temple Guards or Jedi Watchmen and so on. “Crèche Master” seems more like an umbrella term or an honorific, in that Jedi younglings as a matter of course as well as other Jedi simply being polite would refer to Jedi who work in the crèche - whether actually Masters or just Knights - as Crèche Master thus-and-such. It seems like there would honestly have to be different categories of workers in the overall crèche, though, depending on whether they act more as caretakers - like in the nursery, with the infants and toddlers - or as teachers. Teachers seem to incline more towards either Lore Keepers or Jedi Researchers (who are Jedi Consulars) or else towards weapons instructors and specialists (who are Jedi Guardians), if not towards the Jedi Artisans or members of the Order’s technical division (who are Jedi Sentinels). Caretakers, though, would probably incline more towards Jedi Healers (again a type of Jedi Consular) but would also have to include the Jedi Recruiters who initially find/test and retrieve young Force-sensitives for the Order (again a sort of Jedi Sentinel). Perhaps there should be both Jedi Carers for the youngest of the Initiates and Jedi Tenders for the rest (Consulars), Jedi Instructors (both for educational basics and for various types of weapons training) and (for higher learning) Jedi Pandits (Guardians), and also (for highly specialized training and/or creation involving both the arts and technology) Jedi Crafters (Sentinels).
In the EU, evidently Jedi elders who retire are allowed to leave the Temple and make homes for themselves on their original homeworlds (as with Jedi Master Noor R’aya in Jedi Apprentice: The Dangerous Rescue); however, older Jedi who no longer take active missions also apparently routinely act as instructors for specific courses/classes of Jedi younglings (as with Master Wren Honoran in Jedi Quest: The Trail of the Jedi). The idea of Jedi leaving the Temple when they retire seems kind of hinky to me - it seems awfully close to what Dooku does, which makes him one of the Lost Twenty, after all - but I suppose that it could be something that used to happen a lot more often (and also used to include Jedi Watchmen retiring to systems or worlds that they’ve become accustomed to looking out for), but not nearly so much since the Ruusan Reformations and so tends to be an exception involving an eccentric but venerable old Master or a Jedi whose birth family is powerful/wealthy/influential enough for the High Council to allow it. One would think that Jedi who are either too old/infirm or else simply too injured for active missions (and/or who have, perhaps, retired from highly stressful positions, as on the High Council) would most often logically end up either attached to the crèche in some way or else assigned to the various classes that both Initiates and Padawans are expected to take (and pass), especially the ones that don’t necessarily involve actual combat; if so, though, then there either just aren’t enough of them or else they simply aren’t capable of actually keeping up with their young charges (and perhaps this is where/how/why the bullying problem among Initiates - and even Padawans, to some extent - persists, especially if there are Jedi who deeply resent being assigned, thus, to the crèche and/or to classes for the younglings and/or, lacking the training and the inclination for such work, do a less than stellar job of it. Not everyone is cut out for teaching, after all, and not everyone has the right kind of temperament to really be around children/adolescents all the time).
Honestly, the whole situation with the crèche and the obvious lack of enough competent adult supervisors/workers reminds me entirely too much of the (glaring lack of sufficient trained) Jedi Healers. I understand that being able to use the Force to help heal others might be a very rare talent, but honestly, that’s no excuse for there not being more than a handful of Jedi Healers of any sort ever even mentioned (much less seen) in EU/Legends or canon! In an organization of at least 10,000 full members, many of whom would logically fairly constantly be out and about in the galaxy on various missions, courting mayhem and disaster at every bloody turn, you’d think that the Temple could produce more than maybe eight fully-fledged Master Healers (i.e., Vokara Che, who is actually referred to as a Jedi Master Healer; T’ra Saa, a Jedi Master skilled in Force healing; Tresalis, a Jedi Master and noted Healer who makes a holocron detailing her teachings; Stass Allie, a member of the Circle of Jedi Healers and a Jedi Master who becomes a member of the High Council before the end of the war; Winna Di Yuni, a Jedi Master and “diagnostician” in the Halls of Healing when Obi-Wan is a Padawan; Caudle, a Jedi physician/healer in the Halls of Healing; Thracia Cho Leem, Jedi Master and Healer [though she leaves the Order sometime after the Zonama Sekot mission, even if she isn’t ever counted one of the Lost]; and Rig Nema, who’s only ever called a doctor, oddly enough, though she’s presumably a Jedi and probably a Master, as she’s allowed to treat Master Yoda) and maybe six Jedi Healers in training (i.e., Olge Plavi-Dol, a Jedi Knight and Healer; Nahdar Vebb, a very young Knight and Healer who dies near the beginning of the Clone Wars; Aubrie Wyn, a Padawan who dies on Jabiim; Rann I-Kanu; Bant Eerin; and Barriss Offee) to deal with all the myriad potential injuries and illnesses.
Call me crazy, but as dangerous as Jedi missions apparently all too often tended to be, even well before the beginning of the Clone Wars, I would hope that the Jedi would have both enough fully trained Healers/Doctors and enough Healers in training and nurses (by way of various Padawans and possibly even older Initiates who might be helping out in the Halls of Healing as part of their basic coursework, not to mention Knights who’re still learning) to at least conceivably staff an entire actual real world basic hospital (for reference, even fifteen years ago, in the US, most hospitals would employ roughly a thousand workers and about half of them would be healthcare workers). Yes, I suppose at least some of the workers in the Halls of Healing could be members of the MedCorps, at least in the EU, and at least some might be some kind of specialized Temple employees (much the same way as at least some of the workers in and immediately adjacent to the crèche might be regular caretakers employed by the Temple and/or members of the EduCorps or the MedCorps, though honestly, given that the Jedi Order presumably has to pay its regular employees something, to keep them working there, it would make a lot more sense if it mostly just put its own members - both those too old/frail/injured for active missions and those not quite suitable for training as full Knights/Masters, for whatever reasons - to work within its bounds for what amounts to room/board/necessities. Otherwise, unless somebody back in the pre-Ruusan Order [back when the Order still had a lot more autonomy and power and could likely get away with doing so without having the Senate have a collective apoplexy about it] was smart enough to make some really great investments that are somehow still resulting in some major dividends, where is all the money coming from to pay more regular employees?), but canonically? Where the frak are all the Healers, Jedi or otherwise, to fully populate a Healers’ Wing, much less the Halls of Healing, and where the kark are all the crèche workers, Jedi or otherwise, to care for the younglings?
If a primary care physician should only be treating around a thousand patients here in the real world (according to the American Association for Physician Leadership) and the WHO (World Health Organization) says through should be at least 2.5 medical staff (physicians, nurses, and midwives) for every 1,000 individuals in a population for minimum adequate coverage, then where are the at absolute minimum ten to twenty-five fully fledged Jedi Healers needed just for the 10,000 active Jedi Knights/Masters, not to mention all of the associated specialists who might also be required not just for the active duty Jedi likely to come back to the Temple with serious wounds and/or various local sicknesses but for the Jedi who’ve retired from active missions but chosen to stay on at the Temple, the Jedi who’ve never really gone on active missions because they’re busy with the Archives or with various teaching duties, etc., and the overall staffing for the Temple complex (the cooks, the cleaners, the people in charge of the grounds, the various maintenance workers for the lifts and all those fountains and such, the people who produce all the necessary items for the people who live in the Temple, and etc.), not to mention all of the younglings in the crèche (plus all the associated staffing for the crèche), Initiates who are old enough and have passed all the tests necessary to be considered eligible to be apprenticed, and actual Padawan learners? In the real world, city status is granted starting with numbers that equal the core of 10,000 active Jedi Knights/Masters in the Temple alone. With the amount of beings it must take simply to keep the Temple itself safely habitable - to maintain all the basic amenities and to keep everyone properly clothed and fed - who logically ought to either live in the Temple or else spend most of their working hours in the Temple (and who probably live in the associated Temple Precinct), I have an extremely hard time imagining anything less than what ought to be at least a small to medium hospital/medical center plus enough trained nonspecialist Healers and associated personnel (the equivalent of nurse practitioners, etc.) being required to keep everyone who calls the Temple their home and/or primary workplace healthy. By rights, the surrounding and apparently quite sizeable Temple Precinct should probably have both its own more specialized medical centers and offices for regular Healers and such, too.
Canon and even EU/Legends spends so much time focusing on the lightsaber-wielding Masters and Knights and Padawans (and even, occasionally, Initiates who end up having to deal with pirates and Separatist monsters), and I get it, I do, lightsabers are flashy and engaging and look like fun, but honest to ever-loving gods, folks, there has to be some kind of basic infrastructure in place both to help support, raise/care for (including feeding them and making sure that the laundry gets done and all the basic supplies are readily available from Temple stores! And don’t even get me started on the Temple Guards, which logically should be a massive chunk of those 10,000 Jedi Knights/Masters, given the actual size of the Temple complex, not to mention the almost certainly even more massive surrounding Temple Precinct!), educate, and train the ones who go out on missions with said lightsabers and to help patch them back together again (or fit them with good prosthetics) when they inevitably get hurt and to diagnose and give them the right kind of meds when they eventually catch some weird bug while out on said missions! For the Jedi Order to realistically be expected to run the entire blasted war, especially, there needs to be a strong, basic infrastructure to support everyone and everything, or it all falls rapidly apart.
There are enough mentions of nonJedi Temple workers (craftsmen, traders, artisans, technicians, etc.) and members of the Jedi Service Corps in EU/Legends that it’d probably be fairly safe to assume that at least some of these people are responsible for things like food, laundry, cleaning services, supplies of all sorts (from soap to eating utensils to clothing to tables and chairs and etc.), and possibly even a certain amount of employees in the crèche and the Halls of Healing, but canon (both the older Lucas canon and the newer DISNEY!SW canon) mostly just blows straight past all of this without any kind of acknowledgement that there even should be a whole lot of individuals whose job it is to mind the younglings and make sure that they get all their shots and regular meals and medical checkups and treatment for illnesses/injuries, along with all of the Padawans and Knights and Masters. Granted, droids can probably help at least some with the workload, when it comes to things like cleaning and possibly even some really basic medical care or nursery duties, but does anyone actually think that the Jedi Order would buy really good and/or fancy medical or nursery or cleaning droids (if the budget would even allow for it, if the main budget is indeed dependent upon the Republic Senate), when the Jedi could conceivably get people from some branch of the Service Corps, Padawans or Initiates doing some kind of penance, or other living beings to do it? Honestly, if there are 10,000 Jedi Knight and Masters available to go out and about in the galaxy, logically, there should be at least that many people (if not more) either in the Temple or else coming in from the surrounding Temple District just seeing to the basic everyday tasks of keeping the place going and making sure the younglings don’t accidentally kill themselves or each other with Force-fueled tantrums, accidents, or spite.
On the other end of the spectrum, given that the first foray of the Kaminoans into exploring the Jango Fett DNA reportedly results in the creation of twelve prototype clones with an enhanced Fett genome, only six of which manage to survive the gestation process, and that these clones are then perceived as a failure by the Kaminoans due to the low birth-rate and their refusal to follow orders (with no further such enhanced clones being created, only Kal Skirata’s intervention keeping the Kaminoans from terminating the six survivors as defective units in accordance to Factor H, or the human variable that the Kaminoan scientists believe ruins the theory of the perfect clone) but kept on to eventually become the Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos, and given that there are 200,000 clone units ready, with another million well on the way, when Obi-Wan Kenobi discovers the existence of the clones, in AotC, the odds are very good that, after some experimentation and early failure, the Kaminoans began creating batches of clones in a regular, standardized number, once an optimally acceptable version of a successful Fett clone had been successfully produced. Given scientific procedure, odds are very good that the 200,000 clones ready for use at Geonosis are the result of two batches of test clones of 100,000 each, with one group acting as a sort of control and the other as a sort of test subject. Both, evidently, prove acceptable, and so the batch size is then increased to the apparent standard of 1 million units.
Now. Given that the Kaminoan clones mature at roughly twice the rate as human norms, the gestation period of these clones would, in Earth terms, be roughly 4.5 months (or approximately 135 days, just one 5-day week shy of four 35-day months, by the Galactic Standard Calendar). According to Karen Traviss’ Republic Commando: Triple Zero, the boys who would become the Nulls are about four years of age when the Kaminoans decide that they’re defective and, if not for Skirata, would have had them liquidated. That means that they grew for approximately two years, given their advanced rate of aging. If the Kaminoans have been continuing to experiment with the Fett genome in the meantime (which is extremely likely, given that Skirata, among others, is present at the Kaminoan facility at that time due to the fact that he’s been hired to train the clones as they grow), odds are good that the 200,000 clone troopers ready to fight by what would become the First Battle of Geonosis have been bred at the same time as or immediately after the decantation of the Nulls, meaning they likely have at least nine to nine and a half years or more in which to grow and so are around eighteen or nineteen (possibly pushing twenty) by the time of the start of the Clone Wars. Equally likely is the fact that the million units well on the way to being ready, in AotC, were bred immediately after those 200,000 clones were declared successful (very likely around the same time that the Nulls were declared a failure and the decision was made not to attempt to breed any more clones with an enhanced Fett genome).
There’s 368 days in a standard year in the GFFA, going by the Galactic Standard Calendar http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_Standard_Calendar Given a gestation period of 135 days, given ten full standard years in which the Kaminoans had to work, prior to the outbreak of the Clone Wars, and given that the war lasted over three years (just over three and a half, in my AU ’verse), the Kaminoans could technically have produced, in the thirteen and a half years in which standard batches of 1 million would have been the norm probably roughly two years in, almost 37 (36.8, meaning that, when the war official ends, there’s a batch growing in their tubes but not quite ready to be decanted yet) batches of clones altogether, of those likely 31 (or 32, counting the batch still in their tubes) of 1 million clones apiece, plus the 200,000 from the initial successful test batches, plus however many other test batches of 100,000 also could have been made in those first two years while the Kaminoans were waiting to see how their experiments would turn out (and at least four others could have been fit into that timeframe, though that means that eight batches could’ve resulted, since the first 100,000 test batch happens at the same time that the second test batch of 100,000 is occurring), bringing the total from 31,200,000 up to 32,000,000 decanted clones (with yet another million well on the way). Given that Kamino was the site of two battles, though, with the First Battle of Kamino occurring roughly two months after the First Battle of Geonosis (and apparently resulting in little real damage to the cloning base at Tipoca City, though droid fighters did land in the city) and the Second Battle of Kamino occurring less than a year prior to the end of the Clone Wars, and given hints in the EU that the Kaminoans were no longer producing any new clones by the final year of the war, it is entirely possible that three or even four of those batches either were not made or did not come to fruition, yielding a number more like 29,00,000-30,000,000 Kaminoan clones produced for the Republic.
I AM SO GORRAM TIRED OF THE LJ'S CHARCTER LIMITS. CONTINUED IN THE NEXT POST, HERE https://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/265096.html