AU timeline (for my main AU series) for the Clone Wars - Part Four
Continued from third post, over here https://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/249748.html which was continued from the second post, over here https://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/249398.html and from the first post, here https://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/249242.html since apparently I talked so much that LJ couldn’t fit everything in a single post.
ALSO, I STILL DON'T KNOW WHY IT KEEPS RANDOMLY CHANGING FONTS. SERIOUSLY, I HAVE GIVEN UP ON THE FRAKKER.
In other words, just because Anakin occasionally broods about things like Jabiim and the fact that he’s never going to forgive Ventress for kidnapping and torturing Obi-Wan, what little he can remember of the absolute mess that was Mortis, Ahsoka being taken from him and Obi-Wan, and a few other nasty or especially striking highlights of the war, that doesn’t mean that I have any intention whatsoever of writing the war, as such. I’m much more concerned with the changes that the war causes, especially among the Jedi, and the aftermath of the war than I am with any kind of blow-by-blow account of the frankly far too many Force-benighted battles and sieges and weapons and inventions and attacks and tasks and rescue missions and all the other things, too, that comprise the entirety of the war. Dathomir and the Asajj Ventress (as well as the Ventress twin sister, Ysyjja, and the Mother Talzin) storylines will be important for certain works down the line, as will Mandalore and the Satine and Bo-Katan Kryze storylines (which means that the false Maul and Savage Opress and the Shadow Collective and the Death Watch and the Darksaber will also all be talked about somewhere, eventually, at least to some extent, though things are going to be so differently situated with Mandalore by the time the Clone Wars ends that I’m not sure how much of anything about Mandalore in general from Rebels or other later Legends or DISNEY!SW materials is actually going to become pertinent, though Din Djarin is still a war orphan rescued by Mandalorians and at least initially taken in as a foundling by the Children of the Watch on Concordia), but my Satine lives and things with Mother Talzin and the Dathomiri Nightsisters and the Dathomiri Nightbrothers go a lot differently than they do in the EU/Legends materials and/or in SW DISNEY. (Plus, my Dathomir’s actually a double planet, so the Dathomir we see in The Clone Wars is actually the smaller [and much more warped by Dark Magicks] of the two worlds, while the much larger planet of the two is essentially the Dathomir we got from the older EU comics and books. Thus far, I am unimpressed by what I’ve heard of the Nightsisters being retconned to supposedly originally hailing from some other galaxy than the GFFA entirely, in Star Wars: Ahsoka. A satellite galaxy I could probably buy, but a galaxy entirely distinct/apart from the GFFA frankly seems preposterously unlikely, to me, and more than a little bit insulting, too, as it seems to argue that Force-users as distinct from the Jedi and the Sith as the Witches can’t arise in the GFFA at all naturally and makes the Witches so far “Other” as to render them extragalactic!)
Additionally, my Asajj Ventress and my Quinlan Vos (and also my Aayla Secura) are largely based on the characters as they’re written/portrayed in the earlier EU, especially in the various Star Wars: Republic comics from Dark Horse (and, frankly, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the related EU/Legends materials portraying Quinlan Vos essentially as an airhead mook with more luck than can be believed, even of a Jedi strong in the Force, royally hacks me off, considering what a wonderful job the people at Dark Horse did, crafting his tragic backstory and bringing his character to life. The two versions of the character basically have nothing at all in common, aside from species/race and name and basic appearance, and, whereas the version essentially created by Dark Horse is interesting and engaging and dynamic and believable as a spy and a double agent who occasionally gets in over his head and needs rescued from himself and, perhaps most importantly of all, is sympathetic, to me, the Star Wars: The Clone Wars version comes across as an extremely bad caricature of a surfer dude or a stoner [or both], only instead of surfing and smoking pot this guy mostly just annoys his fellow Jedi like it’s some kind of spectator sport and drifts about, pretending to be someone else entirely for various missions and doing his absolute best to not really think about it or about who/what he actually is, underneath all of those masks. I honestly could care less if some people find the earlier Dark Horse incarnation of Quinlan Vos grim - for pity’s sake, the man’s a Jedi Shadow, which makes him a spook, which means that it’s a lot more fitting for him to have a tragic backstory and vibes of James Bond at his darkest than for him to run about like a Jedi stoner irritating all the other Jedi like it’s a game and his ultimate goal in life is to undeniably make them all angry! The Star Wars: The Clone Wars version of Quinlan Vos grates on every last frakking nerve that I have, whereas I actually like the previous incarnation of the character, so that’s the version I’m blasted well going with. And that means that my Aayla Secura is also going to have a lot more in common with the Dark Horse version of her than the Star Wars: The Clone Wars version of her, too, since he’s her [former] Master and her story is so closely tied with his [and with Tholme]).
Since I’m writing in an AU that’s focused around discovering earlier on that Palpatine is Sidious (which, in turn, thwarts his plans, essentially derailing everything from Anakin’s fall, Operation: Knightfall, Order 66, and the Jedi Purge onwards), it’s the aftermath and the changed outcomes that matter most, to me, not the things along the way to that discovery that at least mostly happen pretty much as they’re depicted as happening canonically or in the EU/Legends anyway. And for the things that do matter, that have changed more from the canon, EU/Legends, and/or DISNEY SW materials, it’s more a matter of how they’ve altered so that all of those little differences can add up and end up tipping events so that they ultimately spiral out of the control of the Sith, so it’s mostly those changes that I’ll end up spending time on. Anything that I think is important enough to require more attention is likely to end up as another one of my NaNo one-off projects (like the Outbound Flight rewrite, So Much For Outbound Flight - which will likely be edited and rewritten again, in light of both how the Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith trio rewrites end up and things like how interesting/workably usable in my AU any of the newer Thrawn/Chiss-related materials that Tim Zahn produces for DISNEY SW might potentially be, though so far I have to admit that I’m not overly impressed with most of those newer books - or my attempt at rewriting Catalyst, even if it’s currently getting so out of hand that it’s looking like it’s going to have to be split up until at least two books before I can ever actually finish it). For example, I’ve been planning for (and now actually started, as of November 2021) a NaNo project that focuses mainly on Ahsoka and both on the altered version of the Siege of Mandalore and (temporary) capture of Savage Opress and what it means for her that Palpatine has been found out as Sidious and that the war has ended the way it has and whatever I can make work from Ahsoka in my AU to act as her Trials of Knighthood as a Jedi Bendu and, depending on how that goes, there may be more that follows her, Master Taria, Master Feemor, and what’s going on out in the former Outer Rim.
(The AU version of the Empire that arises in the aftermath of the Clone Wars - which I’ve been calling the Imperial Sith Order - is, again, mostly but not completely going to end up being in what used to be the Republic’s Outer Rim Territories, initially in what had basically been the bastion of Separatist space up around the Tintagel Arm and down the outer edge of The Slice into Hutt Space, encroaching on the Unknown Regions on one side of the galaxy and up into Wild Space down the other side, and in and around the Senex-Juvex and the Seswenna sectors to the galactic south, with Ferus Olin/Darth Kra’taral as the Sith leader and Tarkin as the military head of things. So basically, take Thrawn’s confederation or the Imperial Remnant from the old EU, in the so-called New Territories of the galactic north - but not too far towards what had been the Empire of the Hand, because that’s basically the Shadow Ascendancy in my AU - and wrap it down around the Corporate Sector to the Tion Cluster and the Centrality and eventually down through Hutt Space around to the Arkanis Sector and then sort of wrap around the edge of the Trailing Sectors to the Western Reaches. Some of that will be extremely strongly contested, of course - Darth Kra’taral only gets Hutt Space, for example, after tasking Jenna Zan Arbor to design a plague that specifically targets Hutts, Toydarians, and other such related Force-resistant species - and Tatooine, at least, will declare for the New Alliance of the Republic almost from the beginning, but basically, in the name of peace, the NAR will allow parts of the old Outer Rim to secede, one larger one up in the north between around, say, the Entralla Route and the Shaltin Tunnels, or thereabouts, and a smaller one down around the Seswenna and the Senex-Juvex sectors, and Darth Kra’taral and Tarkin will eventually take over in those places, join forces, and then spread and spread and spread out until outright war once again becomes inevitable.)
Of course, with a body of work as vast (and potentially still increasing. Right now, DISNEY may be more interested in the rise of the Rebellion and actual Rebellion, the eventual conflict with the First Order, and the period of time between those two eras, but that doesn’t mean that, at some point, DISNEY won’t circle back to the prequel-era again and either make some more movies or publish some more comics or books or something), odds are that I’m leaving things out, if only by accident or sheer unfamiliarity with the works (after all, I’ve read some of the comics, but I’m not obsessive about reading them, so I could’ve easily missed some entirely, especially if they were marketed towards youth/junior readers. I also don’t often read youth and/or junior books, unless somebody tells me that they’re good enough to be worth my time or I’m curious enough about something to hunt up a copy for myself. Also, I’ll openly admit that I’ve skipped watching entire story arcs from The Clone Wars - most everything having to do with Mandalore and Dathomir, for example - because I’ve heard or read about what happens in them and they piss me off so much. I may love Ahsoka to absolute pieces, but I am most emphatically not ever going to swallow the frankly shit decision to revoke the canonical death of Darth Maul and I probably screamed nearly as loudly/furiously when I found out about how The Clone Wars ratfink writers decided to basically toss Satine Kryze’s character out with the garbage by letting a canonically deceased character murder her as I did when I found out about that brainless little ratfink shite Darth Dumbarse murdering Mara Jade Skywalker in the old EU. Folks, I actually mostly enjoyed my viewing of Solo: A Star Wars Story - even though the plot arguably has much more to do with Firefly/Serenity than it does the GFFA, even with all the lovely Easter eggs scattered throughout the film. In my opinion, it still views and feels much more like a real SW movie than any of the abominations of those so-called sequel films do or even Rogue One: A Star Wars Story almost but not quite manages to pull off [yes, I am one of those people. I loved Rogue One up until about the last, I don’t know, twenty-thirty minutes or so of the movie? And then I hated it. I am actually offended as all get out by the ending of this film, which the main director is supposedly so freaking proud of and so many supposed SW fans apparently praise for being, I don’t know, bloodthirsty enough to simply tie up all the potential loose ends by slaughtering all of the people in the film who matter at all, except for the ones they couldn’t possibly get away with killing, due to them being present in other, chronologically later movies. At least Solo: A Star Wars Story doesn’t murder its entire main cast and most of its supporting major cast, too, before the end of the film, rather than have to try to work out a way to explain/introduce new characters in the existing OT timeframe. It may be a bit disjointed and the backstory given to Han may be undeniably inferior to that of the old EU, but at least the good guys all mainly get to win and to live to fight another day in this particular movie] - but I’ll be damned before I ever permit an illogically resuscitated solely for the purpose of pleasing the fanboys Darth Maul live that long in my AU series). The nice thing about that, of course, is, that if it’s something really important, odds are I’ll be able to work something to do with it into a storyline later on down the road, if I really want to, or else I can just shrug and let it go and the fact that this is an AU can make things work out anyway.
Now, granted, the reboot of both the Clone Wars and the years leading up to the OT, by way of first Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels (along with all the various EU/Legends materials and the later DISNEY SW materials that go along with these two animated shows) and then everything surrounding Rogue One, means that there are also some problems/conflicts with earlier EU materials from these two timeframes (for example, there are now multiple different versions of how the Rebellion gets the first Death Star plans, there are some different backstories for the character of Thrawn and how he ends up working for the Emperor, and, on top of the fact that Star Wars: The Clone Wars makes Barriss Offee go bad, which basically renders the entire MedStar duology and most everything to do with it impossible, it also rather inarguably kills off Master Even Piell of the Jedi High Council, even though he had already been written as having survived the war and Order 66, at least for a little while, in the first Coruscant Nights novel, Jedi Twilight); happily, though, a lot of these problems arise for storylines that don’t/can’t happen, as such, in an AU series like this, anyway. The Jedi Purge and the declaration of a Galactic Empire under the Sith Lord Sidious simply do not happen. I can (and plan to) keep characters I like, such as Nick Rostu, Laranth Tarak, Jax Pavan, I-Five, Den Dhur, Jos Vondar and Tolk le Trene, and Kornell “Uli” Divini (not to mention let Barriss Offee remain a dedicated Jedi and a talented Healer) without having to worry about how they’re supposed to end up, according to the EU, or confusion surrounding things like Even Piell and whether or not he survives the war or whether Barriss Offee is a good and talented Jedi Healer who becomes perhaps overly attached to her nurse, surgeon, and healer counterparts in Rimsoo 7 (especially young Uli, who, by the way, is the same age as my Barriss, given or take a few months or so) or a psychotic backstabbing two-faced little witch.
Point of fact, I’m keeping Master Piell alive but seriously injured by an anooba towards the end of the storyline that begins with “The Citadel,” so he still tells Ahsoka his half of the information about the Nexus Route, just in case. I am having him step down from the High Council, though (at least temporarily), due to the extended time required for him to heal, afterwards. By the time of RotS, the following are canonically still alive and active members of the High Council: Master Yoda; Mace Windu; Plo Koon; Ki-Adi-Mundi; Saesee Tinn; Shaak Ti; Oppo Rancisis; Coleman Kcaj; Obi-Wan Kenobi (who replaces comatose Depa Billaba, who has gone to the Dark Side); Stass Allie (who replaces the slain Adi Gallia); Kit Fisto (who possibly replaces Even Piell); and Agen Kolar (who replaces Eeth Koth, who leaves the High Council at some point before the war ends). That’s twelve Masters, which makes Chancellor Palpatine’s notion of appointing Anakin to the High Council even more problematic, unless someone canonically still alive when Order 66 occurs is supposed to either be lost in action and presumed dead or else for whatever reason has stepped down from the Council (as Eeth Koth apparently does before the end of the war, possibly due to his capture and torture by Grievous), since we know that Obi-Wan and Master Yoda both survive Order 66 for quite some time, while Saesee Tinn, Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, and then Mace Windu are personally slain by Palpatine when the Jedi go to arrest him for being a Sith (with some help from an interfering Anakin Skywalker, for Mace’s eventual defeat and death), Ki-Adi-Mundi, Stass Allie, Plo Koon, and Shaak Ti are all killed because of Order 66 and/or Operation: Knightfall, while Oppo Rancisis and Coleman Kcaj survive Order 66 long enough to make it to an Inquisitorius list of Jedi survivors. Now, granted, the novelization for RotS states that Obi-Wan is sitting in “the chair that once had belonged to Oppo Rancisis,” when Anakin is being appointed to the High Council because of Palpatine’s meddling (and, curiously enough, the novelization never mentions Coleman Kcaj at all, either as a member of the Council or otherwise, though I seem to recall seeing him in RotS, in that scene where Anakin is being granted a seat on the High Council but not the title of Jedi Master); however, other sources clearly state that Obi-Wan is appointed to the High Council after Depa Billaba goes mad and ends up comatose (in Shatterpoint) and that Oppo Rancisis is a Jedi survivor of Order 66 until at least after the hunt for Eeth Koth.
In the EU, the traitor Sora Bulq (who actually fell to the Dark Side shortly after the First Battle of Geonosis, though he acted as a double agent for Dooku for some time before his perfidy was finally discovered. Yes, I know that in Star Wars: The Clone Wars Sora Bulq doesn’t seem to ever fall to the Dark Side, and he’s present in the Temple during the whole kerfuffle with Eeth Koth’s capture by Grievous and the Temple bombing as well, but that’s easily enough fixed by replacing him with another Weequay Jedi, quite possibly one trained by Sora Bulq and therefore also likely a formidable lightsaber fighter, since Sora Bulq is apparently both old enough and sufficiently established as having mastered all methods of lightsaber instruction to have been recruited by Mace Windu to help him adapt the Juyo unfinished Form VII as Vaapad. After all, since he’s referred to constantly as a Master, Sora Bulq ought to have successfully seen at least one apprentice Knighted) runs Rancisis through the back and supposedly kills him at some point during the Siege of Saleucami, which allow Quinlan Vos (as Rancisis’ second-in-command) to take over his duties. Quinlan’s part in the Siege of Saleucami is stated to last at least five full months, though he leaves Stass Allie and the clones to deal with the mopping up, afterwards (which probably at least mostly accounts for the reason why the Siege is generally stated, in the old EU timeline, to take place from approximately around months 30-36 of the war, somewhere between six and seven full months).
Presumably, since other sources have Oppo Rancisis surviving Order 66 (as well as Operation: Knightfall, apparently) but the RotS novelization presents him as no longer a member of the Jedi High Council, he’s either so badly wounded on Saleucami that he (at least temporarily) can’t continue to serve on the High Council or in the field but still manages to somehow survive Order 66, or else he’s actually thought dead and something happens to the body so that no one is able to definitively confirm or deny his death afterwards and he still somehow manages to escape Order 66. Either way, I’m going to presume that it is Oppo Rancisis Anakin canonically seems to be replacing, rather than Coleman Kcaj (even though, since Palpatine is revealed as Sidious before the Chancellor can try to force Anakin’s appointment to the High Council, it isn’t really going to be an issue in my AU, aside from the fact that Master Rancisis isn’t present as a member of the High Council after Sidious’ defeat, since he’s still presumed to have been killed on Saleucami at that time) and that he hasn’t been replaced earlier simply due to lack of time and availability of all the other Masters on the High Council to make their wishes known regarding who should take up that empty chair permanently (also, since Eeth Koth and Even Piell are both still alive and recovering, they’ve kind of been splitting the various duties associated with that seat between themselves, with Depa’s sister, Sar Labooda, stepping in occasionally, as her own duties allow, if/when necessary). (Also, speaking of Saleucami, folks should remember that, in both the old EU materials and the actual canon, there’s a whole lot of open fighting there prior to the outbreak of the actual official Siege of Saleucami. So, for example, in my rewrite of Catalyst, when Has Obitt is thinking about having narrowly missed “the invasion” of Saleucami fairly early on in the second year of the war, it’s because he’s thinking about one of those previous battles, not the start of the official Siege, which actually happens fairly close to the end of the war.)
(Before anyone asks, yes, I do realize that, according to the EU, the Jedi High Council includes among its twelve members five lifetime members, four long-term members, and three limited-term members, and all three kinds of members can technically step down at any time [and for presumably any reason], choosing to retire from the Council. However, the fact remains that there’s supposed to be twelve members of the High Council. While someone could have stepped down or retired from the Council before the time of RotS, given how many members have had to be replaced due to their violent deaths during the war, the odds in support of the notion just don’t seem to be all that high, to me, especially not since there’s never any mention of such a thing happening - canonically, in the EU/Legends materials, or by DISNEY SW - except for with Eeth Koth, and we all know that this is actually just a last moment kind of scrambled explanation to try to explain away the physical differences between the character who becomes known as Agen Kolar and the character of Eeth Koth in the actual prequel films.)
I will say, again, that there are a lot of really great characters in the later EU/Legends materials, even in the ones from after DISNEY took over (I dare anyone to argue that Jyn Erso doesn’t kick major ass, or that Baze Malbus and Chirrut Îmwe aren’t made of awesome, or that Bohdi Rook and Cassian Andor and K-2SO don’t all deserve a helluva lot better than they get, since the idiots basically kill everyone at all interesting/sympathetic off by the end of Rogue One). Frankly, I’ve already grabbed hold of Galen Erso and Orson Krennic (not to mention Jyn) and a part of me is still running with them like there’s no tomorrow (and I am looking forward to Cassian Andor so much, y’all have no idea how much I look forward to introducing him. And the others from Rogue One), and, at some point down the line, I may actually get somewhere with the Catalyst rewrite, despite myself, even if it has become something of a monster and will likely need to be broken up into two books if I ever get my druthers and actually finish it. The fact that I know Obi-Wan and Anakin are definitely going to defeat and slay Sidious (and that the frankly already somewhat worse for wear remains of his chopped up body will be gathered up and thoroughly destroyed later on, via burning) doesn’t automatically mean that I have to write the Death Star entirely out of existence (after all, the idea/basic plans for it have been floating about since well before AotC kicks off the war, and not just according to the older prequel-era EU, specifically Greg Bear’s Rogue Planet. Plus, while Palpatine may have been keeping even the notion of building such a superweapon a secret from the Jedi Order, the newer Legends material and the canon and DISNEY SW establish the fact that he also secretly had structural engineers, starship designers, theoretical and experimental physicists, Senators, key advisors, high-ranking members of the military, vital members of Naval Intelligence, the War Production Board, COMPOR [or the Commission for the Protection of the Republic], and dozens of other such prestigious and influential beings, all under the auspices of the Republic Strategic Advisory Cell, hard at work, not just planning but actually implementing the construction of the proposed Death Star plans over Geonosis, pretty much from the moment Poggle the Lesser was captured at the Second Battle of Geonosis. Technically, in Catalyst, phase one of the construction of the Death Star is actually announced as being complete before the first anniversary of the First Battle of Geonosis occurs, over two years before the Clone Wars would have come to an end, before the Geonosians would even be recruited to help build the station. The Jedi may not have ever known about it all, but Tarkin and others like him sure do!), anymore than it means that all of those Force-sensitives Sidious has been planning to put to work for him and his Empire will suddenly miraculously see the light and reject the Dark Side or that Tarkin won’t still end up being the conniving mass-murdering psycho we’ve all known and loathed ever since ANH and the destruction of Alderaan.
Mostly, it just means that the slavers, the humano-centric bigots, the power-hungry psychotics and mass-murdering psychos, the poor sods already too twisted by the Dark Side to be able to know when they’re doing something wrong or recognize that they and their causes are in the wrong (and so should not be allowed to triumph), and the greedy, venal, power-hungry holdouts from the parts of the CIS that have always been much more concerned with credits and power than freedom or democracy (in other words, the major surviving movers and shakers of the ridiculously bloated and conscienceless conglomerates and corporations who refuse to see reason or to recognize when they’ve already been beaten, even after it comes out that Palpatine and Sidious are one and the same and not just the mastermind behind the entire war, but that he’s been planning to end the war in part by killing off all of them) are going to have to join forces (to some degree, when certain of them can’t get away with simply killing or conquering and then appropriating the resources specifically held by others) and create their own organization to oppose the Republic and the Jedi (actually, the New Alliance of the Republic and the New Jedi Bendu Order), since there isn’t going to be a functional Galactic Empire under the control of the Sith to indulge their excesses and encourage their crimes or give them blanket orders that will essentially give them carte blanche to commit their atrocities. Ferus Olin/Darth Kra’taral and Wilhuff Tarkin will be joining forces essentially as Sidious’ Dark Side heir and his main military leader/head, to form and to lead the Imperial Sith Order, but even with all of Sidious’ myriad paranoid substitute fallback plans for alternative backup plans to help them, it will still require a lot more time/effort (and a couple of very carefully tailored and specifically targeted biological weapons/plagues) for them to truly consolidate any kind of major powerbase (since, after all, even in the worst depths of his paranoid contingency planning and preparation, Sidious has not at all been expecting to fail to survive his plans to end the Clone Wars by turning Anakin, having the Jedi slaughtered and their Temple burned, having his new apprentice slaughter the remainder of the Separatist Leadership Council, and essentially using the supposed treachery of the Jedi and the end of the war to justify essentially dissolving the Republic and declaring the beginning of his longed for Dark Empire).
Plus, there’s also still going to be a lot of the problems caused/exacerbated by the war, like the entirely too powerful crime syndicates and the Shadow Collective that Savage Opress technically takes over, after the clone Maul’s death, and it’s worth noting that Mother Talzin’s entire Clan isn’t actually wiped out, as happens in Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the majority of the battle Dooku incites on Dathomir between Grievous and his droids and the Nightsisters is actually fought by the resurrected army of the dead while most of the living Nightsisters retreat under cover of Mother Talzin’s illusions. Afterwards, Asajj Ventress’ twin, Ysyjja Ventress, leaves Dathomir to become a bounty hunter to really sell the illusion that her Clan has been massacred, while Mother Talzin begins plotting ways to gather more power, so that she and the Nightsisters can eventually have their revenge on Dooku, the Separatists, and the Sith in general. Dooku largely doesn’t notice the deception due to his torture by Mother Talzin’s Dark Magick. Sidious does suspect, which is why he captures Savage Opress, to try to lure Mother Talzin and/or the surviving Nightsisters out of hiding, so he can deal with them, but Mother Talzin’s too smart for him - though the Jedi do eventually thwart her efforts and defeat her - and Savage Opress ends up escaping and going back to Mandalore, since he’s become obsessed with the idea of making Obi-Wan Kenobi hurt).
In other words, the Clone Wars may end, but that doesn’t by any means mean that the fighting will suddenly all stop. The Sith have been sowing chaos and anarchy and encouraging greed and lawlessness across the known galaxy pretty much ever since the Ruusan Reformations happened. They’ve been undermining/weakening the Jedi Order and sowing rot in the Senate for upwards of a thousand years. That doesn’t just magically go away, not even once the last of the Banite Sith has been destroyed (not even once Sidious’ personal records, which include quite a lot of material detailing such actions taken by various Sith since Ruusan, have been found and gone through and addressed as best as possible). The Force may get cleansed and “balanced,” but that doesn’t translate into the instant destruction or automatic conversion to the Light of every single practitioner of the Dark Side in the whole wide universe. (Some may well be swayed, because of what they feel in the Force, as it’s balanced; however, some will have advanced so far towards the point of no return that all the cleansing will do is sicken and infuriate them.) Just because the taint on the Force that the Banite Sith have been endlessly scheming to encourage to strengthen and spread for the past millennium and change (which the Sith think of as the Dark Side of the Force) technically no longer has Banite Sith to continue feeding it and encouraging its advance (though Ferus Olin/Darth Kra’taral does actually end up “inheriting” much of the Dark mantle of the Banite Sith, after Sidious has been destroyed), that doesn’t mean that all of the physical and spiritual damage that the Sith and the Dark Jedi and other such practitioners of the Dark Side have inflicted upon the galaxy during the millennia and change of the Banite Sith’s existence (plus any/all such taint/damage from all the many centuries preceding the Banite Sith) will automatically be magically reversed/undone (there are, for example, whole worlds that have essentially had all life on them devoured/destroyed by twisted Sith rituals, the remains of that horrible thought bomb are still trapped in the caves of Ruusan, there are some Sith Lords who’ve managed to linger enough to haunt their tombs or their holocrons, and there are places where Sith and Dark Jedi have perished that are still so badly damaged by the energies released upon their deaths that they can badly warp the minds/souls of the unwary who trespass upon them. Removing the taint may help balance the energies of the Force, but it won’t and can’t make everything automatically better. That will take individuals willing to work in harmony with one another and the will of the Force to try to set things right. Or in other words, the cleansing of the taint on the Force may cause someone like Depa Billaba to awaken from her coma, but it will still be up to her, to try to make amends for what she’s done, while under the influence of the so-called Dark Side, and to heal the many wounds that her madness - however temporary and however incited by outside forces, at the prompting of Sidious - helped to inflict on the galaxy).
In regards to characters like Tarkin, Ghadi, Raythe, Valco Pandion, Quarsh Panaka, Delian Mors (whose wife, Murra, is still alive, by the way), and Tiaan Jerjerrod (all of whom would’ve gone on to be Imperial Moffs), just because there’s not going to be an Emperor to serve, that doesn’t mean that they won’t still be entirely capable of and willing to commit unspeakably heinous atrocities, just to try to get their own ways and to further their own bases of power. (And, again, for over three years among the highest secret echelons of the military and scientific élite of the Republic, the Death Star plans are treated with utmost seriousness and fervently pursued as a desirable working weapon for the Republic, and Palpatine being revealed as Sidious and slain in combat before he can declare his Empire isn’t going to automatically change or negate that fact, even if it does mean that the existence of the plans will finally become known to the Jedi.) Or in other words, removing Palpatine/Sidious from power won’t and can’t and shouldn’t be expected to somehow magically make all of the other monsters of the ’verse any less monstrous than they already naturally are and/or are more than capable of becoming. Moreover, there are still all of those Prophets of the Dark Side, Dark Acolytes, Dark Side Adepts, and all of the located and abducted/captured Force-sensitives (many of them kidnapped Force-sensitive members of the various branches of the Jedi Service Corps, such as AgriCorps workers, and Jedi younglings and Padawans forcibly snatched from their minders and Masters, though some of them are willing recruits) who’ve either been seduced by or deliberately tortured and turned to the so-called Dark Side of the Force, most of whom (if they survived their training) would’ve either gone on to fill the ranks of the Imperial Inquisitorius, the Emperor’s Hands, the Emperor’s Eyes, the Emperor’s Voice, the Emperor’s Reach, the Emperor’s Mages (a part of the Secret Order of the Empire), and etc., or else been killed/destroyed attempting to pursue Palpatine’s will. For thousands of years, Dromund Kaas has been a nexus of so-called Dark Side energies so strong that it’s been slowly but inexorably warping and wiping out all life on the planet, while Byss, secretly intended to be the throneworld of the Emperor, still lurks near the heart of the galaxy and is not only well on the way towards being corrupted by the Dark Side practitioners gathered upon it already, but has also already been outfitted (at least in part) with cloning facilities and laboratories for Sith alchemy and Dark Side experiments in the sublevels of the citadel from which Sidious meant to rule the galaxy forever (the construction of the towering spire already well under way, by the end of the war, due to the forced efforts of thousands of slaves and captured dissidents either seized on Separatist worlds by Republic military leaders unconcerned with the ultimate fates of the rebellious subjects whose worlds and moons they’ve conquered or else captured by various Separatists forces during the war and handed over to Dooku [and, eventually, to Sidious] to do with as he wills).
The defeat of Sidious may mean that the line of Bane has been broken (though, honestly, there’s a case for the breaking of the line having happened with Plagueis or even with Darth Tenebrous, if not earlier, since Sidious apparently never intended to abide by the Rule of Two and neither of the two Sith Masters preceding him seem to have been content with having just one apprentice or with there only being two acknowledged members of the Sith Order at any given time), but that does not mean that the Sith as a whole have been entirely eradicated for all time and will never, ever be able to return to the galaxy in any form whatsoever. Logically, it doesn’t even mean that there are no more beings in the galaxy, after the death of Sidious, who lay claim to the title of Sith Lord. It just means that the Banite Sith - one specific branching of the Sith - are extant no more. There are still plenty of enemies who’re going to be willing to fight against the New Jedi Bendu Order and the New Alliance of the Republic and a whole lot of them will pretty much immediately be willing to declare against both, just as soon as the news that Palpatine has been exposed as the Sith Lord, Sidious, and slain by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker hits the HoloNet (starting with all the many Force-sensitives Palpatine has been collecting and twisting to his service over the years). The Clone Wars may end and Sidious’ plans for a Dark Empire may be brought to ruin, but that definitely doesn’t mean that all of the fighting will magically just stop. In fact, in some ways, it could be argued that the end of the Clone Wars will only end up sparking far more open and worse (both more destructive and less caring as to collateral damage) instances of conflict. Good may triumph, in the sense that Obi-Wan and Anakin defeat Sidious, but that doesn’t mean that all evil is automatically exterminated for all time to come. It just means that more of the good guys survive and are able to keep fighting the good fight, once Sidious has been eliminated.
P.S. Speaking of timelines, how many of y’all actually realize that, canonically, Galen Walton Erso is supposed to be about five years older than Orson Callen Krennic, Orson is accepted in the Republic Futures Program http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Republic_Futures_Program (also occasionally referred to as the Republic’s Futures Program, which seems to indicate that maybe the Empire has a version of the program, at some point, too) on Brentaal (apparently actually Brentaal IV, technically) http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Brentaal_IV when he’s probably younger than Galen (Orson is only fifteen when be enrolls. The math for Galen puts him at ~sixteen, since he enrolls in 40 BBY and by 36 BBY, after losing both of his parents, is supposed to be best friends with Orson), and that Orson technically would be considered even more of a rube by his so-called “peers” - as in, he’s from a planet that’s actually even further out from the Core - than Galen, even if Lexrul http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lexrul is urban and Grange http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Grange is an agriworld? Seriously, folks. This completely blows my mind, every time I think about it. Canon puts Orson’s birth in 51 BBY in Sativran City on Lexrul, whereas Galen’s birth is in 56 BBY on Grange, and, for all that Grange is supposed to be an agricultural backwater, it’s in the Expansion Region, whereas Lexrul is out in the Mid Rim. Sure, technically speaking, Grange is basically on the opposite end of the galaxy from Coruscant (most of one grid square on the map to the right of directly opposite, six grid squares down), whereas Lexrul is just straight across (six grid squares) and a little bit (about one grid square) down; but the map of the galaxy goes Deep Core, Core, Colonies, Inner Rim, Expansion Region (where Grange is), Mid Rim (where Lexrul is), Outer Rim Territories, and then Unknown Regions and Wild Space. Counting by grid squares, they’re about equidistant from Coruscant. Yet, snobs from the Core would be even more likely to sneer at Orson for being a Mid Rim yokel than they would be to sneer at Galen for being a hayseed from the Expansion Region (from the agrarian Grange). (Naboo is also a Mid Rim planet, remember, whereas Tatooine and Eriadu - Tarkin’s homeworld - and Serenno are all in the Outer Rim. It’s the same kind difference, only taken a step further out than Grange and Lexrul are.)
I am a little baffled by the age gap between Galen and Orson, to be honest. Orson is basically supposed to go straight from the Futures Program to the Corps of Engineers, but there’s still time for him to become best friends with Galen, first? What, exactly, is Galen actually doing for all those years in the Futures Program, if he enrolls in 40 BBY and Orson doesn’t start until he’s fifteen, which puts his enrollment probably in 36 BBY (the same year he becomes best friends with Galen, supposedly)? I get that it’s not just a college - that they’re probably rushing through accelerated programs that combine regular college (undergraduate) degrees with both graduate degrees and doctorate degrees - but is Galen so bored that he’s doing mathematics and physics and crystallography and energy enrichment and, what, he’s gone back to chemistry and music and possibly other scientific fields, too, as well as languages (and magic tricks) to keep him fully occupied (like what happened when he was growing up on Grange, according to Catalyst)? Orson is an engineer, in that he’s an architect. Architecture (or architectural engineering) and the ability to read others and manipulate them at will, pretty much, are Orson’s recorded areas of excellence, according to counselors attached to the Futures Program. I can totally get Galen being a bit of a magpie when it comes to learning - easily distracted by shiny new knowledge and constantly flitting from one interesting field of study to another - but how/why would Orson ever even come to know Galen, much less enter into a serious friendship with him (one where he’s so used to having Galen’s full attention that he just can’t get used to the idea of Galen being married, even years after the fact. In Catalyst, Orson’s actually described as having been “shocked” when Galen and Lyra’s romance lasted long enough for them to marry and “[not] used to the two of them” even years later, even after Jyn’s birth. Also, I find it interesting to note that Lyra doesn’t like Galen’s “old school chum” Orson long before she has any logical reason to distrust or dislike him, and, after his rescue of the family from Vallt and ferrying them safely back to Coruscant, is rather snidely thinking to herself about him that she never can recall if he “graduated or was dropped from” the Futures Program, even though he actually graduated “with high honors” and not only went straight into the Corps of Engineers, but made himself so indispensable for actually getting projects done that apparently he was the first and only choice of the Republic’s Strategic Advisory Cell “to head up the Special Weapons Group”). I so wish that there was more written about this early relationship and how it actually happened. Orson’s so obviously obsessed (besotted?) with Galen that there’s got to be a story there.
(Lyra is quite a bit younger than them both - canon puts her birth in 47 BBY, on Aria Prime http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aria_Prime a world that hasn’t, as yet, even been assigned to a specific region of the galaxy. I find it rather interesting that she’s 21 when she meets Galen - who would’ve been 30, mind, in 26 BBY - on Espinar, acting a guide for his team of scientists studying the crystals, and that they apparently have such a whirlwind romance that they’re lovers by the end of the expedition, six standard months later, and have been married for “almost five years” by the time she and Galen are seized, on Vallt, putting the wedding sometime in that same year, unless Lyra is rounding up enormously. [I know that there’s apparently a date in Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide that puts the wedding in 25 BBY, but unless it’s at the very beginning of the year, I don’t see how the math could possibly work out for that, given what Lyra specifically thinks, in Catalyst, unless she’s the kind of person who, after four years and one day, immediately rounds up to five years.] The dynamic of the relationship feels . . . rather odd, to me, to be honest. Lyra doesn’t like Orson at all, from the first moment he comes back into their lives, on Vallt, even though he’s there to rescue the entire family from what could’ve been a fate worse than death, if the Valltii had actually turned them over to Dooku instead of agreeing to what amounts to some prisoner-of-war trading, and she belittles him in her thoughts and looks down on him and doesn’t trust him so consistently throughout the book that it’s hard to conclude anything other than that she personally feels threatened by him in some way. Lyra has basically self-appointed herself as Galen’s “interpreter” to the galaxy, working as his field and lab assistant and transcribing/translating his notes, and yet . . . apparently she only ever gets a degree from the University of Rudrig http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/University_of_Rudrig - and, given the timing and her age when attending, it’s almost certainly only an undergraduate degree, if not something even more basic. There’s no confirmation that this degree is even in a field of science, though she acts as though she’s some kind of geologist who specializes in rare crystals, when she takes the job that Orson offers her, mapping the crystal caverns on Alpinn - and mostly works as a guide/explorer getting HoloNet footage of wild/rugged places, before meeting Galen? Catalyst goes to some lengths to establish that she’s naturally athletic and quite capable in the wilds, but she’s also nine years younger than Galen and barely in her twenties when they marry, with no mention whatsoever of any further education at all, once she started working getting HoloNet footage to help pay off her mother for taking out loans to pay for her time at the University of Rudrig, which seriously makes me wonder about how qualified Lyra actually is to be doing any of the jobs that she’s shown doing, in the book, especially given the fact that, despite the fact that she’s constantly internally complaining about how much she hates being on Coruscant, not once at any point does she seek to try to find any kind of paid work for herself, even months and months after the family’s “rescue” and return to Coruscant, when it’s obvious that only Galen’s friendship with Orson is keeping Galen from being prosecuted as a traitor to the Republic instead of simply blacklisted for being a pacifist with suspected Separatist sympathies. It doesn’t help at all that she’s also portrayed basically as an idealistic/naïve mystic who’s romanticized both the Force and the Jedi Order, to an almost alarming degree, and yet somehow also manages to be a flaming hypocrite. Despite her professed reverence and love for the Force and the Jedi, she doesn’t push for answers about what happened to the Order or why, at the end of the war, nor does she ever really protest the Empire’s attitude towards the Jedi. I also find it rather telling that, despite the fact that she rather squeamishly points out that the kyber crystals Orson first brings to Galen, to tempt him into agreeing to take part in Project Celestial Power, are the right size to have been the power sources for lightsabers, she nonetheless ends up wearing precisely one of those crystals as if it were nothing more than a piece of pretty jewelry.)
Getting back to the age gaps, though . . . Galen is supposedly born in 56 BBY and Orson in 51 BBY (and Lyra in 47 BBY) and the two men are best friends by 36 BBY (four years after Galen has enrolled in the Futures Program [not long after which his mother dies from an unspecified sudden illness], around the time when his father dies in some kind of vehicular accident), which is also the year in which Orson actually enrolls in the Futures Program, according to the math (since that’s when he’s fifteen). I sort of hate to presume that school in the GFFA isn’t year-round, even for special accelerated/gifted programs like the one they are in, and that the habit of a school year starting after the major planting and harvesting is still at least somewhat in force in the galaxy (as why wouldn’t school be year-round, otherwise?), but given that the discussion between Luke and Uncle Owen seem to back that up, in A New Hope, and it’s not like this comes up elsewhere in canon, well . . . odds are that this program either starts in the latter half of the year in question or else Orson starts between the two major terms of the year. (Honestly, I think that schooling would probably be done by quarters, with the quarters lasting about, oh, say, 75 days or so each - some classes would necessarily require two quarters to properly finish while special seminars and/or introductory courses would perhaps only last one - with breaks between the quarters lasting a few weeks or so, depending on how the holidays fall within those 75 day stretches per quarter. With the holidays, you’d lose at minimum eighteen days per year anyway, so 300 days of schooling plus at minimum 18 days for holidays leaves 50 days to be divided up between the quarters for breaks in addition to the holidays, which seems fairly reasonable to me for a workable system.)
(School can run essentially like this: first quarter of 75 days from 10 Elona through 14 Selona [minus Tapani Day] and then break; then second quarter from 24 Selona until 28 Nelona [minus Expansion Week] and then break [including Productivity Day]; then third quarter from 6 Helona through 10 Yelona [minus Shelova Week] and then break; and then fourth quarter from 20 Yelona through 24 Welona [minus Harvest Day] and then break, including Winter Fete. That way, the longest breaks occur approximately halfway through the year and at the end/beginning of the year, which would be when any “vacations” would be expected to be scheduled.)
So let’s say (to cut down slightly on the age gaps) that Galen’s birthday is towards the end of 56 BBY (which is almost the beginning of 55 BBY), say, on 1 Welona 56 BBY (so if he enrolls in basically the middle of 40 BBY, in time for the third quarter, that means he’s actually around fifteen and a half when he first starts, and it also means that his mother’s unexpected death after his enrollment with the Futures Program “after a short illness,” according to Catalyst, almost certainly occurred in the fall or early winter of 40 BBY), and Orson’s is towards the beginning of 51 BBY (or almost the end of 52 BBY), say, on Tapani Day 51 BBY, which essentially makes the age gap there more like four years (and three months) instead of five or maybe even five full years and change (so they’ll be that much closer in overall age and liable to become really good friends, like they’re supposed to). (If Orson joins the Futures Program in time for the third quarter, roughly halfway through the year, that makes him a few months past fifteen in 36 BBY, when he and Galen meet and become best friends, and puts Galen at about nineteen and a half.) Lyra’s can be towards the very beginning of 47 BBY, say, on 1 Kelona 47 BBY, so it’s closer to an eight year difference between her and Galen than nine full years (though honestly, since she’s at university in 29 BBY and we know she’s out of university and working basically by the time she hits her twenties, that doesn’t really incite me to change my opinion about her having only obtained some kind of basic undergraduate degree).
Note: More nattering continued in next post, https://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/268329.html since apparently I just can't shut up about all this.
ALSO, I STILL DON'T KNOW WHY IT KEEPS RANDOMLY CHANGING FONTS. SERIOUSLY, I HAVE GIVEN UP ON THE FRAKKER.
In other words, just because Anakin occasionally broods about things like Jabiim and the fact that he’s never going to forgive Ventress for kidnapping and torturing Obi-Wan, what little he can remember of the absolute mess that was Mortis, Ahsoka being taken from him and Obi-Wan, and a few other nasty or especially striking highlights of the war, that doesn’t mean that I have any intention whatsoever of writing the war, as such. I’m much more concerned with the changes that the war causes, especially among the Jedi, and the aftermath of the war than I am with any kind of blow-by-blow account of the frankly far too many Force-benighted battles and sieges and weapons and inventions and attacks and tasks and rescue missions and all the other things, too, that comprise the entirety of the war. Dathomir and the Asajj Ventress (as well as the Ventress twin sister, Ysyjja, and the Mother Talzin) storylines will be important for certain works down the line, as will Mandalore and the Satine and Bo-Katan Kryze storylines (which means that the false Maul and Savage Opress and the Shadow Collective and the Death Watch and the Darksaber will also all be talked about somewhere, eventually, at least to some extent, though things are going to be so differently situated with Mandalore by the time the Clone Wars ends that I’m not sure how much of anything about Mandalore in general from Rebels or other later Legends or DISNEY!SW materials is actually going to become pertinent, though Din Djarin is still a war orphan rescued by Mandalorians and at least initially taken in as a foundling by the Children of the Watch on Concordia), but my Satine lives and things with Mother Talzin and the Dathomiri Nightsisters and the Dathomiri Nightbrothers go a lot differently than they do in the EU/Legends materials and/or in SW DISNEY. (Plus, my Dathomir’s actually a double planet, so the Dathomir we see in The Clone Wars is actually the smaller [and much more warped by Dark Magicks] of the two worlds, while the much larger planet of the two is essentially the Dathomir we got from the older EU comics and books. Thus far, I am unimpressed by what I’ve heard of the Nightsisters being retconned to supposedly originally hailing from some other galaxy than the GFFA entirely, in Star Wars: Ahsoka. A satellite galaxy I could probably buy, but a galaxy entirely distinct/apart from the GFFA frankly seems preposterously unlikely, to me, and more than a little bit insulting, too, as it seems to argue that Force-users as distinct from the Jedi and the Sith as the Witches can’t arise in the GFFA at all naturally and makes the Witches so far “Other” as to render them extragalactic!)
Additionally, my Asajj Ventress and my Quinlan Vos (and also my Aayla Secura) are largely based on the characters as they’re written/portrayed in the earlier EU, especially in the various Star Wars: Republic comics from Dark Horse (and, frankly, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the related EU/Legends materials portraying Quinlan Vos essentially as an airhead mook with more luck than can be believed, even of a Jedi strong in the Force, royally hacks me off, considering what a wonderful job the people at Dark Horse did, crafting his tragic backstory and bringing his character to life. The two versions of the character basically have nothing at all in common, aside from species/race and name and basic appearance, and, whereas the version essentially created by Dark Horse is interesting and engaging and dynamic and believable as a spy and a double agent who occasionally gets in over his head and needs rescued from himself and, perhaps most importantly of all, is sympathetic, to me, the Star Wars: The Clone Wars version comes across as an extremely bad caricature of a surfer dude or a stoner [or both], only instead of surfing and smoking pot this guy mostly just annoys his fellow Jedi like it’s some kind of spectator sport and drifts about, pretending to be someone else entirely for various missions and doing his absolute best to not really think about it or about who/what he actually is, underneath all of those masks. I honestly could care less if some people find the earlier Dark Horse incarnation of Quinlan Vos grim - for pity’s sake, the man’s a Jedi Shadow, which makes him a spook, which means that it’s a lot more fitting for him to have a tragic backstory and vibes of James Bond at his darkest than for him to run about like a Jedi stoner irritating all the other Jedi like it’s a game and his ultimate goal in life is to undeniably make them all angry! The Star Wars: The Clone Wars version of Quinlan Vos grates on every last frakking nerve that I have, whereas I actually like the previous incarnation of the character, so that’s the version I’m blasted well going with. And that means that my Aayla Secura is also going to have a lot more in common with the Dark Horse version of her than the Star Wars: The Clone Wars version of her, too, since he’s her [former] Master and her story is so closely tied with his [and with Tholme]).
Since I’m writing in an AU that’s focused around discovering earlier on that Palpatine is Sidious (which, in turn, thwarts his plans, essentially derailing everything from Anakin’s fall, Operation: Knightfall, Order 66, and the Jedi Purge onwards), it’s the aftermath and the changed outcomes that matter most, to me, not the things along the way to that discovery that at least mostly happen pretty much as they’re depicted as happening canonically or in the EU/Legends anyway. And for the things that do matter, that have changed more from the canon, EU/Legends, and/or DISNEY SW materials, it’s more a matter of how they’ve altered so that all of those little differences can add up and end up tipping events so that they ultimately spiral out of the control of the Sith, so it’s mostly those changes that I’ll end up spending time on. Anything that I think is important enough to require more attention is likely to end up as another one of my NaNo one-off projects (like the Outbound Flight rewrite, So Much For Outbound Flight - which will likely be edited and rewritten again, in light of both how the Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith trio rewrites end up and things like how interesting/workably usable in my AU any of the newer Thrawn/Chiss-related materials that Tim Zahn produces for DISNEY SW might potentially be, though so far I have to admit that I’m not overly impressed with most of those newer books - or my attempt at rewriting Catalyst, even if it’s currently getting so out of hand that it’s looking like it’s going to have to be split up until at least two books before I can ever actually finish it). For example, I’ve been planning for (and now actually started, as of November 2021) a NaNo project that focuses mainly on Ahsoka and both on the altered version of the Siege of Mandalore and (temporary) capture of Savage Opress and what it means for her that Palpatine has been found out as Sidious and that the war has ended the way it has and whatever I can make work from Ahsoka in my AU to act as her Trials of Knighthood as a Jedi Bendu and, depending on how that goes, there may be more that follows her, Master Taria, Master Feemor, and what’s going on out in the former Outer Rim.
(The AU version of the Empire that arises in the aftermath of the Clone Wars - which I’ve been calling the Imperial Sith Order - is, again, mostly but not completely going to end up being in what used to be the Republic’s Outer Rim Territories, initially in what had basically been the bastion of Separatist space up around the Tintagel Arm and down the outer edge of The Slice into Hutt Space, encroaching on the Unknown Regions on one side of the galaxy and up into Wild Space down the other side, and in and around the Senex-Juvex and the Seswenna sectors to the galactic south, with Ferus Olin/Darth Kra’taral as the Sith leader and Tarkin as the military head of things. So basically, take Thrawn’s confederation or the Imperial Remnant from the old EU, in the so-called New Territories of the galactic north - but not too far towards what had been the Empire of the Hand, because that’s basically the Shadow Ascendancy in my AU - and wrap it down around the Corporate Sector to the Tion Cluster and the Centrality and eventually down through Hutt Space around to the Arkanis Sector and then sort of wrap around the edge of the Trailing Sectors to the Western Reaches. Some of that will be extremely strongly contested, of course - Darth Kra’taral only gets Hutt Space, for example, after tasking Jenna Zan Arbor to design a plague that specifically targets Hutts, Toydarians, and other such related Force-resistant species - and Tatooine, at least, will declare for the New Alliance of the Republic almost from the beginning, but basically, in the name of peace, the NAR will allow parts of the old Outer Rim to secede, one larger one up in the north between around, say, the Entralla Route and the Shaltin Tunnels, or thereabouts, and a smaller one down around the Seswenna and the Senex-Juvex sectors, and Darth Kra’taral and Tarkin will eventually take over in those places, join forces, and then spread and spread and spread out until outright war once again becomes inevitable.)
Of course, with a body of work as vast (and potentially still increasing. Right now, DISNEY may be more interested in the rise of the Rebellion and actual Rebellion, the eventual conflict with the First Order, and the period of time between those two eras, but that doesn’t mean that, at some point, DISNEY won’t circle back to the prequel-era again and either make some more movies or publish some more comics or books or something), odds are that I’m leaving things out, if only by accident or sheer unfamiliarity with the works (after all, I’ve read some of the comics, but I’m not obsessive about reading them, so I could’ve easily missed some entirely, especially if they were marketed towards youth/junior readers. I also don’t often read youth and/or junior books, unless somebody tells me that they’re good enough to be worth my time or I’m curious enough about something to hunt up a copy for myself. Also, I’ll openly admit that I’ve skipped watching entire story arcs from The Clone Wars - most everything having to do with Mandalore and Dathomir, for example - because I’ve heard or read about what happens in them and they piss me off so much. I may love Ahsoka to absolute pieces, but I am most emphatically not ever going to swallow the frankly shit decision to revoke the canonical death of Darth Maul and I probably screamed nearly as loudly/furiously when I found out about how The Clone Wars ratfink writers decided to basically toss Satine Kryze’s character out with the garbage by letting a canonically deceased character murder her as I did when I found out about that brainless little ratfink shite Darth Dumbarse murdering Mara Jade Skywalker in the old EU. Folks, I actually mostly enjoyed my viewing of Solo: A Star Wars Story - even though the plot arguably has much more to do with Firefly/Serenity than it does the GFFA, even with all the lovely Easter eggs scattered throughout the film. In my opinion, it still views and feels much more like a real SW movie than any of the abominations of those so-called sequel films do or even Rogue One: A Star Wars Story almost but not quite manages to pull off [yes, I am one of those people. I loved Rogue One up until about the last, I don’t know, twenty-thirty minutes or so of the movie? And then I hated it. I am actually offended as all get out by the ending of this film, which the main director is supposedly so freaking proud of and so many supposed SW fans apparently praise for being, I don’t know, bloodthirsty enough to simply tie up all the potential loose ends by slaughtering all of the people in the film who matter at all, except for the ones they couldn’t possibly get away with killing, due to them being present in other, chronologically later movies. At least Solo: A Star Wars Story doesn’t murder its entire main cast and most of its supporting major cast, too, before the end of the film, rather than have to try to work out a way to explain/introduce new characters in the existing OT timeframe. It may be a bit disjointed and the backstory given to Han may be undeniably inferior to that of the old EU, but at least the good guys all mainly get to win and to live to fight another day in this particular movie] - but I’ll be damned before I ever permit an illogically resuscitated solely for the purpose of pleasing the fanboys Darth Maul live that long in my AU series). The nice thing about that, of course, is, that if it’s something really important, odds are I’ll be able to work something to do with it into a storyline later on down the road, if I really want to, or else I can just shrug and let it go and the fact that this is an AU can make things work out anyway.
Now, granted, the reboot of both the Clone Wars and the years leading up to the OT, by way of first Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels (along with all the various EU/Legends materials and the later DISNEY SW materials that go along with these two animated shows) and then everything surrounding Rogue One, means that there are also some problems/conflicts with earlier EU materials from these two timeframes (for example, there are now multiple different versions of how the Rebellion gets the first Death Star plans, there are some different backstories for the character of Thrawn and how he ends up working for the Emperor, and, on top of the fact that Star Wars: The Clone Wars makes Barriss Offee go bad, which basically renders the entire MedStar duology and most everything to do with it impossible, it also rather inarguably kills off Master Even Piell of the Jedi High Council, even though he had already been written as having survived the war and Order 66, at least for a little while, in the first Coruscant Nights novel, Jedi Twilight); happily, though, a lot of these problems arise for storylines that don’t/can’t happen, as such, in an AU series like this, anyway. The Jedi Purge and the declaration of a Galactic Empire under the Sith Lord Sidious simply do not happen. I can (and plan to) keep characters I like, such as Nick Rostu, Laranth Tarak, Jax Pavan, I-Five, Den Dhur, Jos Vondar and Tolk le Trene, and Kornell “Uli” Divini (not to mention let Barriss Offee remain a dedicated Jedi and a talented Healer) without having to worry about how they’re supposed to end up, according to the EU, or confusion surrounding things like Even Piell and whether or not he survives the war or whether Barriss Offee is a good and talented Jedi Healer who becomes perhaps overly attached to her nurse, surgeon, and healer counterparts in Rimsoo 7 (especially young Uli, who, by the way, is the same age as my Barriss, given or take a few months or so) or a psychotic backstabbing two-faced little witch.
Point of fact, I’m keeping Master Piell alive but seriously injured by an anooba towards the end of the storyline that begins with “The Citadel,” so he still tells Ahsoka his half of the information about the Nexus Route, just in case. I am having him step down from the High Council, though (at least temporarily), due to the extended time required for him to heal, afterwards. By the time of RotS, the following are canonically still alive and active members of the High Council: Master Yoda; Mace Windu; Plo Koon; Ki-Adi-Mundi; Saesee Tinn; Shaak Ti; Oppo Rancisis; Coleman Kcaj; Obi-Wan Kenobi (who replaces comatose Depa Billaba, who has gone to the Dark Side); Stass Allie (who replaces the slain Adi Gallia); Kit Fisto (who possibly replaces Even Piell); and Agen Kolar (who replaces Eeth Koth, who leaves the High Council at some point before the war ends). That’s twelve Masters, which makes Chancellor Palpatine’s notion of appointing Anakin to the High Council even more problematic, unless someone canonically still alive when Order 66 occurs is supposed to either be lost in action and presumed dead or else for whatever reason has stepped down from the Council (as Eeth Koth apparently does before the end of the war, possibly due to his capture and torture by Grievous), since we know that Obi-Wan and Master Yoda both survive Order 66 for quite some time, while Saesee Tinn, Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, and then Mace Windu are personally slain by Palpatine when the Jedi go to arrest him for being a Sith (with some help from an interfering Anakin Skywalker, for Mace’s eventual defeat and death), Ki-Adi-Mundi, Stass Allie, Plo Koon, and Shaak Ti are all killed because of Order 66 and/or Operation: Knightfall, while Oppo Rancisis and Coleman Kcaj survive Order 66 long enough to make it to an Inquisitorius list of Jedi survivors. Now, granted, the novelization for RotS states that Obi-Wan is sitting in “the chair that once had belonged to Oppo Rancisis,” when Anakin is being appointed to the High Council because of Palpatine’s meddling (and, curiously enough, the novelization never mentions Coleman Kcaj at all, either as a member of the Council or otherwise, though I seem to recall seeing him in RotS, in that scene where Anakin is being granted a seat on the High Council but not the title of Jedi Master); however, other sources clearly state that Obi-Wan is appointed to the High Council after Depa Billaba goes mad and ends up comatose (in Shatterpoint) and that Oppo Rancisis is a Jedi survivor of Order 66 until at least after the hunt for Eeth Koth.
In the EU, the traitor Sora Bulq (who actually fell to the Dark Side shortly after the First Battle of Geonosis, though he acted as a double agent for Dooku for some time before his perfidy was finally discovered. Yes, I know that in Star Wars: The Clone Wars Sora Bulq doesn’t seem to ever fall to the Dark Side, and he’s present in the Temple during the whole kerfuffle with Eeth Koth’s capture by Grievous and the Temple bombing as well, but that’s easily enough fixed by replacing him with another Weequay Jedi, quite possibly one trained by Sora Bulq and therefore also likely a formidable lightsaber fighter, since Sora Bulq is apparently both old enough and sufficiently established as having mastered all methods of lightsaber instruction to have been recruited by Mace Windu to help him adapt the Juyo unfinished Form VII as Vaapad. After all, since he’s referred to constantly as a Master, Sora Bulq ought to have successfully seen at least one apprentice Knighted) runs Rancisis through the back and supposedly kills him at some point during the Siege of Saleucami, which allow Quinlan Vos (as Rancisis’ second-in-command) to take over his duties. Quinlan’s part in the Siege of Saleucami is stated to last at least five full months, though he leaves Stass Allie and the clones to deal with the mopping up, afterwards (which probably at least mostly accounts for the reason why the Siege is generally stated, in the old EU timeline, to take place from approximately around months 30-36 of the war, somewhere between six and seven full months).
Presumably, since other sources have Oppo Rancisis surviving Order 66 (as well as Operation: Knightfall, apparently) but the RotS novelization presents him as no longer a member of the Jedi High Council, he’s either so badly wounded on Saleucami that he (at least temporarily) can’t continue to serve on the High Council or in the field but still manages to somehow survive Order 66, or else he’s actually thought dead and something happens to the body so that no one is able to definitively confirm or deny his death afterwards and he still somehow manages to escape Order 66. Either way, I’m going to presume that it is Oppo Rancisis Anakin canonically seems to be replacing, rather than Coleman Kcaj (even though, since Palpatine is revealed as Sidious before the Chancellor can try to force Anakin’s appointment to the High Council, it isn’t really going to be an issue in my AU, aside from the fact that Master Rancisis isn’t present as a member of the High Council after Sidious’ defeat, since he’s still presumed to have been killed on Saleucami at that time) and that he hasn’t been replaced earlier simply due to lack of time and availability of all the other Masters on the High Council to make their wishes known regarding who should take up that empty chair permanently (also, since Eeth Koth and Even Piell are both still alive and recovering, they’ve kind of been splitting the various duties associated with that seat between themselves, with Depa’s sister, Sar Labooda, stepping in occasionally, as her own duties allow, if/when necessary). (Also, speaking of Saleucami, folks should remember that, in both the old EU materials and the actual canon, there’s a whole lot of open fighting there prior to the outbreak of the actual official Siege of Saleucami. So, for example, in my rewrite of Catalyst, when Has Obitt is thinking about having narrowly missed “the invasion” of Saleucami fairly early on in the second year of the war, it’s because he’s thinking about one of those previous battles, not the start of the official Siege, which actually happens fairly close to the end of the war.)
(Before anyone asks, yes, I do realize that, according to the EU, the Jedi High Council includes among its twelve members five lifetime members, four long-term members, and three limited-term members, and all three kinds of members can technically step down at any time [and for presumably any reason], choosing to retire from the Council. However, the fact remains that there’s supposed to be twelve members of the High Council. While someone could have stepped down or retired from the Council before the time of RotS, given how many members have had to be replaced due to their violent deaths during the war, the odds in support of the notion just don’t seem to be all that high, to me, especially not since there’s never any mention of such a thing happening - canonically, in the EU/Legends materials, or by DISNEY SW - except for with Eeth Koth, and we all know that this is actually just a last moment kind of scrambled explanation to try to explain away the physical differences between the character who becomes known as Agen Kolar and the character of Eeth Koth in the actual prequel films.)
I will say, again, that there are a lot of really great characters in the later EU/Legends materials, even in the ones from after DISNEY took over (I dare anyone to argue that Jyn Erso doesn’t kick major ass, or that Baze Malbus and Chirrut Îmwe aren’t made of awesome, or that Bohdi Rook and Cassian Andor and K-2SO don’t all deserve a helluva lot better than they get, since the idiots basically kill everyone at all interesting/sympathetic off by the end of Rogue One). Frankly, I’ve already grabbed hold of Galen Erso and Orson Krennic (not to mention Jyn) and a part of me is still running with them like there’s no tomorrow (and I am looking forward to Cassian Andor so much, y’all have no idea how much I look forward to introducing him. And the others from Rogue One), and, at some point down the line, I may actually get somewhere with the Catalyst rewrite, despite myself, even if it has become something of a monster and will likely need to be broken up into two books if I ever get my druthers and actually finish it. The fact that I know Obi-Wan and Anakin are definitely going to defeat and slay Sidious (and that the frankly already somewhat worse for wear remains of his chopped up body will be gathered up and thoroughly destroyed later on, via burning) doesn’t automatically mean that I have to write the Death Star entirely out of existence (after all, the idea/basic plans for it have been floating about since well before AotC kicks off the war, and not just according to the older prequel-era EU, specifically Greg Bear’s Rogue Planet. Plus, while Palpatine may have been keeping even the notion of building such a superweapon a secret from the Jedi Order, the newer Legends material and the canon and DISNEY SW establish the fact that he also secretly had structural engineers, starship designers, theoretical and experimental physicists, Senators, key advisors, high-ranking members of the military, vital members of Naval Intelligence, the War Production Board, COMPOR [or the Commission for the Protection of the Republic], and dozens of other such prestigious and influential beings, all under the auspices of the Republic Strategic Advisory Cell, hard at work, not just planning but actually implementing the construction of the proposed Death Star plans over Geonosis, pretty much from the moment Poggle the Lesser was captured at the Second Battle of Geonosis. Technically, in Catalyst, phase one of the construction of the Death Star is actually announced as being complete before the first anniversary of the First Battle of Geonosis occurs, over two years before the Clone Wars would have come to an end, before the Geonosians would even be recruited to help build the station. The Jedi may not have ever known about it all, but Tarkin and others like him sure do!), anymore than it means that all of those Force-sensitives Sidious has been planning to put to work for him and his Empire will suddenly miraculously see the light and reject the Dark Side or that Tarkin won’t still end up being the conniving mass-murdering psycho we’ve all known and loathed ever since ANH and the destruction of Alderaan.
Mostly, it just means that the slavers, the humano-centric bigots, the power-hungry psychotics and mass-murdering psychos, the poor sods already too twisted by the Dark Side to be able to know when they’re doing something wrong or recognize that they and their causes are in the wrong (and so should not be allowed to triumph), and the greedy, venal, power-hungry holdouts from the parts of the CIS that have always been much more concerned with credits and power than freedom or democracy (in other words, the major surviving movers and shakers of the ridiculously bloated and conscienceless conglomerates and corporations who refuse to see reason or to recognize when they’ve already been beaten, even after it comes out that Palpatine and Sidious are one and the same and not just the mastermind behind the entire war, but that he’s been planning to end the war in part by killing off all of them) are going to have to join forces (to some degree, when certain of them can’t get away with simply killing or conquering and then appropriating the resources specifically held by others) and create their own organization to oppose the Republic and the Jedi (actually, the New Alliance of the Republic and the New Jedi Bendu Order), since there isn’t going to be a functional Galactic Empire under the control of the Sith to indulge their excesses and encourage their crimes or give them blanket orders that will essentially give them carte blanche to commit their atrocities. Ferus Olin/Darth Kra’taral and Wilhuff Tarkin will be joining forces essentially as Sidious’ Dark Side heir and his main military leader/head, to form and to lead the Imperial Sith Order, but even with all of Sidious’ myriad paranoid substitute fallback plans for alternative backup plans to help them, it will still require a lot more time/effort (and a couple of very carefully tailored and specifically targeted biological weapons/plagues) for them to truly consolidate any kind of major powerbase (since, after all, even in the worst depths of his paranoid contingency planning and preparation, Sidious has not at all been expecting to fail to survive his plans to end the Clone Wars by turning Anakin, having the Jedi slaughtered and their Temple burned, having his new apprentice slaughter the remainder of the Separatist Leadership Council, and essentially using the supposed treachery of the Jedi and the end of the war to justify essentially dissolving the Republic and declaring the beginning of his longed for Dark Empire).
Plus, there’s also still going to be a lot of the problems caused/exacerbated by the war, like the entirely too powerful crime syndicates and the Shadow Collective that Savage Opress technically takes over, after the clone Maul’s death, and it’s worth noting that Mother Talzin’s entire Clan isn’t actually wiped out, as happens in Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the majority of the battle Dooku incites on Dathomir between Grievous and his droids and the Nightsisters is actually fought by the resurrected army of the dead while most of the living Nightsisters retreat under cover of Mother Talzin’s illusions. Afterwards, Asajj Ventress’ twin, Ysyjja Ventress, leaves Dathomir to become a bounty hunter to really sell the illusion that her Clan has been massacred, while Mother Talzin begins plotting ways to gather more power, so that she and the Nightsisters can eventually have their revenge on Dooku, the Separatists, and the Sith in general. Dooku largely doesn’t notice the deception due to his torture by Mother Talzin’s Dark Magick. Sidious does suspect, which is why he captures Savage Opress, to try to lure Mother Talzin and/or the surviving Nightsisters out of hiding, so he can deal with them, but Mother Talzin’s too smart for him - though the Jedi do eventually thwart her efforts and defeat her - and Savage Opress ends up escaping and going back to Mandalore, since he’s become obsessed with the idea of making Obi-Wan Kenobi hurt).
In other words, the Clone Wars may end, but that doesn’t by any means mean that the fighting will suddenly all stop. The Sith have been sowing chaos and anarchy and encouraging greed and lawlessness across the known galaxy pretty much ever since the Ruusan Reformations happened. They’ve been undermining/weakening the Jedi Order and sowing rot in the Senate for upwards of a thousand years. That doesn’t just magically go away, not even once the last of the Banite Sith has been destroyed (not even once Sidious’ personal records, which include quite a lot of material detailing such actions taken by various Sith since Ruusan, have been found and gone through and addressed as best as possible). The Force may get cleansed and “balanced,” but that doesn’t translate into the instant destruction or automatic conversion to the Light of every single practitioner of the Dark Side in the whole wide universe. (Some may well be swayed, because of what they feel in the Force, as it’s balanced; however, some will have advanced so far towards the point of no return that all the cleansing will do is sicken and infuriate them.) Just because the taint on the Force that the Banite Sith have been endlessly scheming to encourage to strengthen and spread for the past millennium and change (which the Sith think of as the Dark Side of the Force) technically no longer has Banite Sith to continue feeding it and encouraging its advance (though Ferus Olin/Darth Kra’taral does actually end up “inheriting” much of the Dark mantle of the Banite Sith, after Sidious has been destroyed), that doesn’t mean that all of the physical and spiritual damage that the Sith and the Dark Jedi and other such practitioners of the Dark Side have inflicted upon the galaxy during the millennia and change of the Banite Sith’s existence (plus any/all such taint/damage from all the many centuries preceding the Banite Sith) will automatically be magically reversed/undone (there are, for example, whole worlds that have essentially had all life on them devoured/destroyed by twisted Sith rituals, the remains of that horrible thought bomb are still trapped in the caves of Ruusan, there are some Sith Lords who’ve managed to linger enough to haunt their tombs or their holocrons, and there are places where Sith and Dark Jedi have perished that are still so badly damaged by the energies released upon their deaths that they can badly warp the minds/souls of the unwary who trespass upon them. Removing the taint may help balance the energies of the Force, but it won’t and can’t make everything automatically better. That will take individuals willing to work in harmony with one another and the will of the Force to try to set things right. Or in other words, the cleansing of the taint on the Force may cause someone like Depa Billaba to awaken from her coma, but it will still be up to her, to try to make amends for what she’s done, while under the influence of the so-called Dark Side, and to heal the many wounds that her madness - however temporary and however incited by outside forces, at the prompting of Sidious - helped to inflict on the galaxy).
In regards to characters like Tarkin, Ghadi, Raythe, Valco Pandion, Quarsh Panaka, Delian Mors (whose wife, Murra, is still alive, by the way), and Tiaan Jerjerrod (all of whom would’ve gone on to be Imperial Moffs), just because there’s not going to be an Emperor to serve, that doesn’t mean that they won’t still be entirely capable of and willing to commit unspeakably heinous atrocities, just to try to get their own ways and to further their own bases of power. (And, again, for over three years among the highest secret echelons of the military and scientific élite of the Republic, the Death Star plans are treated with utmost seriousness and fervently pursued as a desirable working weapon for the Republic, and Palpatine being revealed as Sidious and slain in combat before he can declare his Empire isn’t going to automatically change or negate that fact, even if it does mean that the existence of the plans will finally become known to the Jedi.) Or in other words, removing Palpatine/Sidious from power won’t and can’t and shouldn’t be expected to somehow magically make all of the other monsters of the ’verse any less monstrous than they already naturally are and/or are more than capable of becoming. Moreover, there are still all of those Prophets of the Dark Side, Dark Acolytes, Dark Side Adepts, and all of the located and abducted/captured Force-sensitives (many of them kidnapped Force-sensitive members of the various branches of the Jedi Service Corps, such as AgriCorps workers, and Jedi younglings and Padawans forcibly snatched from their minders and Masters, though some of them are willing recruits) who’ve either been seduced by or deliberately tortured and turned to the so-called Dark Side of the Force, most of whom (if they survived their training) would’ve either gone on to fill the ranks of the Imperial Inquisitorius, the Emperor’s Hands, the Emperor’s Eyes, the Emperor’s Voice, the Emperor’s Reach, the Emperor’s Mages (a part of the Secret Order of the Empire), and etc., or else been killed/destroyed attempting to pursue Palpatine’s will. For thousands of years, Dromund Kaas has been a nexus of so-called Dark Side energies so strong that it’s been slowly but inexorably warping and wiping out all life on the planet, while Byss, secretly intended to be the throneworld of the Emperor, still lurks near the heart of the galaxy and is not only well on the way towards being corrupted by the Dark Side practitioners gathered upon it already, but has also already been outfitted (at least in part) with cloning facilities and laboratories for Sith alchemy and Dark Side experiments in the sublevels of the citadel from which Sidious meant to rule the galaxy forever (the construction of the towering spire already well under way, by the end of the war, due to the forced efforts of thousands of slaves and captured dissidents either seized on Separatist worlds by Republic military leaders unconcerned with the ultimate fates of the rebellious subjects whose worlds and moons they’ve conquered or else captured by various Separatists forces during the war and handed over to Dooku [and, eventually, to Sidious] to do with as he wills).
The defeat of Sidious may mean that the line of Bane has been broken (though, honestly, there’s a case for the breaking of the line having happened with Plagueis or even with Darth Tenebrous, if not earlier, since Sidious apparently never intended to abide by the Rule of Two and neither of the two Sith Masters preceding him seem to have been content with having just one apprentice or with there only being two acknowledged members of the Sith Order at any given time), but that does not mean that the Sith as a whole have been entirely eradicated for all time and will never, ever be able to return to the galaxy in any form whatsoever. Logically, it doesn’t even mean that there are no more beings in the galaxy, after the death of Sidious, who lay claim to the title of Sith Lord. It just means that the Banite Sith - one specific branching of the Sith - are extant no more. There are still plenty of enemies who’re going to be willing to fight against the New Jedi Bendu Order and the New Alliance of the Republic and a whole lot of them will pretty much immediately be willing to declare against both, just as soon as the news that Palpatine has been exposed as the Sith Lord, Sidious, and slain by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker hits the HoloNet (starting with all the many Force-sensitives Palpatine has been collecting and twisting to his service over the years). The Clone Wars may end and Sidious’ plans for a Dark Empire may be brought to ruin, but that definitely doesn’t mean that all of the fighting will magically just stop. In fact, in some ways, it could be argued that the end of the Clone Wars will only end up sparking far more open and worse (both more destructive and less caring as to collateral damage) instances of conflict. Good may triumph, in the sense that Obi-Wan and Anakin defeat Sidious, but that doesn’t mean that all evil is automatically exterminated for all time to come. It just means that more of the good guys survive and are able to keep fighting the good fight, once Sidious has been eliminated.
P.S. Speaking of timelines, how many of y’all actually realize that, canonically, Galen Walton Erso is supposed to be about five years older than Orson Callen Krennic, Orson is accepted in the Republic Futures Program http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Republic_Futures_Program (also occasionally referred to as the Republic’s Futures Program, which seems to indicate that maybe the Empire has a version of the program, at some point, too) on Brentaal (apparently actually Brentaal IV, technically) http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Brentaal_IV when he’s probably younger than Galen (Orson is only fifteen when be enrolls. The math for Galen puts him at ~sixteen, since he enrolls in 40 BBY and by 36 BBY, after losing both of his parents, is supposed to be best friends with Orson), and that Orson technically would be considered even more of a rube by his so-called “peers” - as in, he’s from a planet that’s actually even further out from the Core - than Galen, even if Lexrul http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lexrul is urban and Grange http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Grange is an agriworld? Seriously, folks. This completely blows my mind, every time I think about it. Canon puts Orson’s birth in 51 BBY in Sativran City on Lexrul, whereas Galen’s birth is in 56 BBY on Grange, and, for all that Grange is supposed to be an agricultural backwater, it’s in the Expansion Region, whereas Lexrul is out in the Mid Rim. Sure, technically speaking, Grange is basically on the opposite end of the galaxy from Coruscant (most of one grid square on the map to the right of directly opposite, six grid squares down), whereas Lexrul is just straight across (six grid squares) and a little bit (about one grid square) down; but the map of the galaxy goes Deep Core, Core, Colonies, Inner Rim, Expansion Region (where Grange is), Mid Rim (where Lexrul is), Outer Rim Territories, and then Unknown Regions and Wild Space. Counting by grid squares, they’re about equidistant from Coruscant. Yet, snobs from the Core would be even more likely to sneer at Orson for being a Mid Rim yokel than they would be to sneer at Galen for being a hayseed from the Expansion Region (from the agrarian Grange). (Naboo is also a Mid Rim planet, remember, whereas Tatooine and Eriadu - Tarkin’s homeworld - and Serenno are all in the Outer Rim. It’s the same kind difference, only taken a step further out than Grange and Lexrul are.)
I am a little baffled by the age gap between Galen and Orson, to be honest. Orson is basically supposed to go straight from the Futures Program to the Corps of Engineers, but there’s still time for him to become best friends with Galen, first? What, exactly, is Galen actually doing for all those years in the Futures Program, if he enrolls in 40 BBY and Orson doesn’t start until he’s fifteen, which puts his enrollment probably in 36 BBY (the same year he becomes best friends with Galen, supposedly)? I get that it’s not just a college - that they’re probably rushing through accelerated programs that combine regular college (undergraduate) degrees with both graduate degrees and doctorate degrees - but is Galen so bored that he’s doing mathematics and physics and crystallography and energy enrichment and, what, he’s gone back to chemistry and music and possibly other scientific fields, too, as well as languages (and magic tricks) to keep him fully occupied (like what happened when he was growing up on Grange, according to Catalyst)? Orson is an engineer, in that he’s an architect. Architecture (or architectural engineering) and the ability to read others and manipulate them at will, pretty much, are Orson’s recorded areas of excellence, according to counselors attached to the Futures Program. I can totally get Galen being a bit of a magpie when it comes to learning - easily distracted by shiny new knowledge and constantly flitting from one interesting field of study to another - but how/why would Orson ever even come to know Galen, much less enter into a serious friendship with him (one where he’s so used to having Galen’s full attention that he just can’t get used to the idea of Galen being married, even years after the fact. In Catalyst, Orson’s actually described as having been “shocked” when Galen and Lyra’s romance lasted long enough for them to marry and “[not] used to the two of them” even years later, even after Jyn’s birth. Also, I find it interesting to note that Lyra doesn’t like Galen’s “old school chum” Orson long before she has any logical reason to distrust or dislike him, and, after his rescue of the family from Vallt and ferrying them safely back to Coruscant, is rather snidely thinking to herself about him that she never can recall if he “graduated or was dropped from” the Futures Program, even though he actually graduated “with high honors” and not only went straight into the Corps of Engineers, but made himself so indispensable for actually getting projects done that apparently he was the first and only choice of the Republic’s Strategic Advisory Cell “to head up the Special Weapons Group”). I so wish that there was more written about this early relationship and how it actually happened. Orson’s so obviously obsessed (besotted?) with Galen that there’s got to be a story there.
(Lyra is quite a bit younger than them both - canon puts her birth in 47 BBY, on Aria Prime http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aria_Prime a world that hasn’t, as yet, even been assigned to a specific region of the galaxy. I find it rather interesting that she’s 21 when she meets Galen - who would’ve been 30, mind, in 26 BBY - on Espinar, acting a guide for his team of scientists studying the crystals, and that they apparently have such a whirlwind romance that they’re lovers by the end of the expedition, six standard months later, and have been married for “almost five years” by the time she and Galen are seized, on Vallt, putting the wedding sometime in that same year, unless Lyra is rounding up enormously. [I know that there’s apparently a date in Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide that puts the wedding in 25 BBY, but unless it’s at the very beginning of the year, I don’t see how the math could possibly work out for that, given what Lyra specifically thinks, in Catalyst, unless she’s the kind of person who, after four years and one day, immediately rounds up to five years.] The dynamic of the relationship feels . . . rather odd, to me, to be honest. Lyra doesn’t like Orson at all, from the first moment he comes back into their lives, on Vallt, even though he’s there to rescue the entire family from what could’ve been a fate worse than death, if the Valltii had actually turned them over to Dooku instead of agreeing to what amounts to some prisoner-of-war trading, and she belittles him in her thoughts and looks down on him and doesn’t trust him so consistently throughout the book that it’s hard to conclude anything other than that she personally feels threatened by him in some way. Lyra has basically self-appointed herself as Galen’s “interpreter” to the galaxy, working as his field and lab assistant and transcribing/translating his notes, and yet . . . apparently she only ever gets a degree from the University of Rudrig http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/University_of_Rudrig - and, given the timing and her age when attending, it’s almost certainly only an undergraduate degree, if not something even more basic. There’s no confirmation that this degree is even in a field of science, though she acts as though she’s some kind of geologist who specializes in rare crystals, when she takes the job that Orson offers her, mapping the crystal caverns on Alpinn - and mostly works as a guide/explorer getting HoloNet footage of wild/rugged places, before meeting Galen? Catalyst goes to some lengths to establish that she’s naturally athletic and quite capable in the wilds, but she’s also nine years younger than Galen and barely in her twenties when they marry, with no mention whatsoever of any further education at all, once she started working getting HoloNet footage to help pay off her mother for taking out loans to pay for her time at the University of Rudrig, which seriously makes me wonder about how qualified Lyra actually is to be doing any of the jobs that she’s shown doing, in the book, especially given the fact that, despite the fact that she’s constantly internally complaining about how much she hates being on Coruscant, not once at any point does she seek to try to find any kind of paid work for herself, even months and months after the family’s “rescue” and return to Coruscant, when it’s obvious that only Galen’s friendship with Orson is keeping Galen from being prosecuted as a traitor to the Republic instead of simply blacklisted for being a pacifist with suspected Separatist sympathies. It doesn’t help at all that she’s also portrayed basically as an idealistic/naïve mystic who’s romanticized both the Force and the Jedi Order, to an almost alarming degree, and yet somehow also manages to be a flaming hypocrite. Despite her professed reverence and love for the Force and the Jedi, she doesn’t push for answers about what happened to the Order or why, at the end of the war, nor does she ever really protest the Empire’s attitude towards the Jedi. I also find it rather telling that, despite the fact that she rather squeamishly points out that the kyber crystals Orson first brings to Galen, to tempt him into agreeing to take part in Project Celestial Power, are the right size to have been the power sources for lightsabers, she nonetheless ends up wearing precisely one of those crystals as if it were nothing more than a piece of pretty jewelry.)
Getting back to the age gaps, though . . . Galen is supposedly born in 56 BBY and Orson in 51 BBY (and Lyra in 47 BBY) and the two men are best friends by 36 BBY (four years after Galen has enrolled in the Futures Program [not long after which his mother dies from an unspecified sudden illness], around the time when his father dies in some kind of vehicular accident), which is also the year in which Orson actually enrolls in the Futures Program, according to the math (since that’s when he’s fifteen). I sort of hate to presume that school in the GFFA isn’t year-round, even for special accelerated/gifted programs like the one they are in, and that the habit of a school year starting after the major planting and harvesting is still at least somewhat in force in the galaxy (as why wouldn’t school be year-round, otherwise?), but given that the discussion between Luke and Uncle Owen seem to back that up, in A New Hope, and it’s not like this comes up elsewhere in canon, well . . . odds are that this program either starts in the latter half of the year in question or else Orson starts between the two major terms of the year. (Honestly, I think that schooling would probably be done by quarters, with the quarters lasting about, oh, say, 75 days or so each - some classes would necessarily require two quarters to properly finish while special seminars and/or introductory courses would perhaps only last one - with breaks between the quarters lasting a few weeks or so, depending on how the holidays fall within those 75 day stretches per quarter. With the holidays, you’d lose at minimum eighteen days per year anyway, so 300 days of schooling plus at minimum 18 days for holidays leaves 50 days to be divided up between the quarters for breaks in addition to the holidays, which seems fairly reasonable to me for a workable system.)
(School can run essentially like this: first quarter of 75 days from 10 Elona through 14 Selona [minus Tapani Day] and then break; then second quarter from 24 Selona until 28 Nelona [minus Expansion Week] and then break [including Productivity Day]; then third quarter from 6 Helona through 10 Yelona [minus Shelova Week] and then break; and then fourth quarter from 20 Yelona through 24 Welona [minus Harvest Day] and then break, including Winter Fete. That way, the longest breaks occur approximately halfway through the year and at the end/beginning of the year, which would be when any “vacations” would be expected to be scheduled.)
So let’s say (to cut down slightly on the age gaps) that Galen’s birthday is towards the end of 56 BBY (which is almost the beginning of 55 BBY), say, on 1 Welona 56 BBY (so if he enrolls in basically the middle of 40 BBY, in time for the third quarter, that means he’s actually around fifteen and a half when he first starts, and it also means that his mother’s unexpected death after his enrollment with the Futures Program “after a short illness,” according to Catalyst, almost certainly occurred in the fall or early winter of 40 BBY), and Orson’s is towards the beginning of 51 BBY (or almost the end of 52 BBY), say, on Tapani Day 51 BBY, which essentially makes the age gap there more like four years (and three months) instead of five or maybe even five full years and change (so they’ll be that much closer in overall age and liable to become really good friends, like they’re supposed to). (If Orson joins the Futures Program in time for the third quarter, roughly halfway through the year, that makes him a few months past fifteen in 36 BBY, when he and Galen meet and become best friends, and puts Galen at about nineteen and a half.) Lyra’s can be towards the very beginning of 47 BBY, say, on 1 Kelona 47 BBY, so it’s closer to an eight year difference between her and Galen than nine full years (though honestly, since she’s at university in 29 BBY and we know she’s out of university and working basically by the time she hits her twenties, that doesn’t really incite me to change my opinion about her having only obtained some kind of basic undergraduate degree).
Note: More nattering continued in next post, https://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/268329.html since apparently I just can't shut up about all this.