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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2riiQIr:
pearwaldorf:
tobermoriansass:
chamerionwrites:
Do you ever contemplate the fact that - at least according to the ending scenes of Return of the Sith - plans for the Death Star were developed (and the initial phases of its construction begun!) during the Clone Wars? I mean clearly it was a closely-guarded secret otherwise Alliance leadership with its heavy concentration of ex-Republican politicians and military officers would have known about it from the beginning, but…still. That’s not a small project. That’s not something Palpatine can set in motion on his own. A number of people in the theoretically not-yet-fascist state definitely signed on for carrying I am become death, destroyer of worlds to its most literal extreme. Or did Sheev delegate this project to the Separatist interests he was controlling? IIRC the Geonosians were involved but Galen Erso’s connection as well as the sheer SCALE of that project suggests it was the brainchild of the Republic’s military-industrial complex. Either way, the fridge horror is strong with this one.
Also - how long has this been on Rebel Intelligence’s radar? By the time of Rogue One this thing has been under construction for twenty years, and a good number of the people in the Alliance’s command structure defected from the system that was building it. Who’s heard whispers? Who’s pored over intelligence reports and dimly seen the shape of something terrible in the empty spaces? How long has this looming unnamed uncertain threat been hanging over the people whose job it is to deal with looming threats before they spiral out of control?
#WHAT I’M SAYING IS#how long has cassian andor been chasing a quarry he can’t see#he doesn’t know what it is but he’s been doing this long enough to sense that the threads in his hands all lead in the same direction#it’s just an instinct it’s not actionable intelligence but he’s been a spy for a long time and his instincts are good#and the closer he gets the more ominous it all starts to feel#why does he spit galen erso’s name so frantically at his informant#how often does draven stare at stacks of reports till his eyes cross because he knows there’s something there but he doesn’t know WHAT#I desperately need answers to these questions
canon answers some part of it! or at least, there’s this incredibly blink and you might miss it moment in attack of the clones where the film does answer where and when the death star was first conceived and the beautiful and horrific irony of it is that it was conceived of by the separatist war machine. not the discontented outer rim worlds, no, but the separatist council itself - the one that’s made up of all these interest groups and war profiteers out for a kick and corporate alliances looking for tax cuts that the republic won’t give them. it’s this moment which occurs right around the time where the separatists are evacuating geonosis following the republic’s attack/defence. the film cuts to the leader of the geonosians talking about their special weapon and how the republic cannot find the plans for their weapon:
which dooku promptly offers to take to palpatine.
so i think canon in part answers your question about whether or not it was a republic birthed idea or a separatist one - and because palps is pulling so many strings at this point, its impossible to tell whether or not he had a hand in instigating its creation in the first place. the catalyst novel is pretty clear that the geonosians designed (and built part of) it, but it still doesn’t say anything about whether palps planted the seeds of the idea directly or indirectly in their minds. in the end the separatists versus republic arms race only benefited him (and the arms manufacturers): he’s the one who ends up in charge of the massive arsenal anyway.
but this raises another interesting question the fact that this weapon is a separatist weapon first poses a problem: how far down the chain is this knowledge made known? do they distribute knowledge of this weapon downwards to the separatist outer rim worlds in an effort to build morale? or at least hint at it, so they know the republic cannot stand triumphant forever? do they hint at this weapon’s existence to the heads of local militias or beat their chests over it in public? how many of the people fighting on the ground in the separatist worlds might have been clinging onto these hints as promises of comeuppance for the republic?
all of which boils down to: how many of these rumours would cassian have heard as a child?
imo in the wake of the clone wars and the early years of the formation of the rebellion, the alliance would very much aware of the fact that there’s a bunch of separatist weaponry and arsenal floating around the galaxy where it could potentially be dangerous in the wrong hands - especially their larger scale weapon projects. and i think that early rebel intel would definitely have tried to hunt down as much knowledge on the separatist weapons’ projects and existing weapons caches. part of this would have involved weaving contacts & networks with former separatist rebels (a potential source of conflict between saw and the rebellion?) to get to the people who might have known what was what. (does the rebellion recruit former separatists with a hope that one of them might prove to be the key? does draven recruit cassian hoping that this boy might prove to be the key, or that one person who leads down the chain to discover just what was going on with the separatists before the emperor took charge? i like to think yes to both. that and the whole cynical, they’re more loyal bc they already hated the republic and naturally hate the empire even more and have no moral compunctions the way others do bc they’ve already given up so much, a little more almost doesn’t matter.)
then you have also the shifting resources in the galaxy. rebel intel would definitely have kept their ear to the ground where the movement of metals and raw resources used in shipbuilding or weapons was and how much of it was being shifted by the empire and how much of it was being shifted by private players, gangsters and arms dealer types. the thrawn novel has thrawn figuring out the existence of the death star almost entirely by keeping an eye on the market for metals like doonium, which were used in manufacturing separatist droids, and noting how prices are shooting up which means demand is high - and yet the metal is disappearing and isn’t being used to build ships. so i think in that regard, rebel intel would start worrying why the empire is stockpiling metals used in shipbuilding at such a large scale while still strip mining all these various planets for metals. it’d definitely raise red flags for them if they couldn’t tally up the empire’s weapons output with the amount of metal being moved off the market.
there’s also the aspect of slaves - if i’m not mistaken the thrawn novel implies that the wookies were eventually used as slave labour on the death star after i guess, they finished massacring the geonosians. escaped/freed slaves might have some information about it. or rumours of it. whispers of it. so many whispers - berch teller, for example, attacking those ships on the way with metal to build the death star - how many such transports did the rebellion catch and then sweat about because none of these numbers were adding up.
and then there’s the whole saw connection! how much did the ersos tell saw? how much did saw tell rebel intel in turn? catalyst has both the ersos figuring out that the empire is building a WMD and leaving - did they tell saw about this, if at all? did saw put this to rebel intel and did they file it away as unlikely but something to keep an eye on? suppose saw didn’t even tell them about this, did he tell them about the smuggler krennic used in catalyst, the one who dropped weapons onto legacy worlds like wadi raffa so the empire could claim they were stamping out a rebellion and step in and strip those worlds of their resources - with again, the metal seemingly disappearing into the ether. so many worlds are being ruined and the math just doesn’t add up -
given all of this its likely that even back then they might have had hints about a huge weapons project the separatists were into - and worse, that the empire might have seized these projects for their own and been working on them in secret anyway. in that context, i don’t think its an accident that cassian is fulcrum in the albarrio sector, where the intergalactic banking clan has part of its HQ and where plenty of their hangers-on, their clients and those trying to influence them spend their time. its likely that they decided to go back, follow the credits back as far as possible and see if there was someone with just about enough resentment against the empire - against being sidelined from power - who was ready to talk. i don’t think they might have understood what exactly they were up against. the imagination often has its limitations and people can’t exactly imagine something that’s so… large. we’re very bad with scale and imagining scale. build a weapon to destroy a world? impossible and illogical. the empire has to be stockpiling this to make a huge arsenal to unleash.
but then, the math is still insane and there’s always this nagging knowledge, probably, that the separatists had once boasted they’d had a weapon which could destroy the republic at one go. what if its true. what if.
so what i’m saying is: draven and cassian and rebel intel have almost definitely been hunting this weapon for years if not for two decades, hoping against hope that they were doing the math wrong or that this was just a weapons stockpile and an idle separatist boast, only to constantly receive confirmation that the empire is building something big. something that needs kyber crystals, which means it uses or channels the force - or force like powers. something that’s eating up huge piles of metal, more than any kind of super star destroyer would ever require - more than even a shipbuilding or ordinary weapons facility would ever need. something that needs hundreds and thousands of slaves to build it. they’ve definitely been on its trail for a while, searching for more than just speculative maths - some tangible proof, plans, actual physical evidence - to prove its existence so they can act.
(and then boy, does the empire supply proof.)
#what i’m saying is that rebel intel is like please god no let this not be true#but the math is like ha ha fuckers #and you bet cassian was out there in the albarrio sector hunting down former separatist and war profiteer after the other#searching for answers hoping someone would crack and give him the answer he was desperate for #or at least supply the knowledge that would get them on the right track #(besides also ofc getting inroads with disgruntled powerbrokers #and trying to sway them to the rebels cause get them to supply them arms that sort of thing)#like you know how in intel a defector might supply you with some info #but then you need corroboration from multiple sources to make sure they’re not a plant or a double agent #there was defs a lot of that with the rebellion a lot of hoping these were plants trying to scare them into submission #because they just have a lot of hypotheticals & spec but no actual tangible proof until bodhi rook defects with a message from galen #(claming he has a message from galen) #and even then its not really enough until fucking jedha #because how do you even wrap your mind around a weapon that big #so immensely destructive #how do you begin to understand the sheer scale and sublimity of it so you can believe its existence?#you just can’t #the mind just can’t #its this breakdown of imagination #an acceptance without acceptance (tobermoriansass)
pearwaldorf:
tobermoriansass:
chamerionwrites:
Do you ever contemplate the fact that - at least according to the ending scenes of Return of the Sith - plans for the Death Star were developed (and the initial phases of its construction begun!) during the Clone Wars? I mean clearly it was a closely-guarded secret otherwise Alliance leadership with its heavy concentration of ex-Republican politicians and military officers would have known about it from the beginning, but…still. That’s not a small project. That’s not something Palpatine can set in motion on his own. A number of people in the theoretically not-yet-fascist state definitely signed on for carrying I am become death, destroyer of worlds to its most literal extreme. Or did Sheev delegate this project to the Separatist interests he was controlling? IIRC the Geonosians were involved but Galen Erso’s connection as well as the sheer SCALE of that project suggests it was the brainchild of the Republic’s military-industrial complex. Either way, the fridge horror is strong with this one.
Also - how long has this been on Rebel Intelligence’s radar? By the time of Rogue One this thing has been under construction for twenty years, and a good number of the people in the Alliance’s command structure defected from the system that was building it. Who’s heard whispers? Who’s pored over intelligence reports and dimly seen the shape of something terrible in the empty spaces? How long has this looming unnamed uncertain threat been hanging over the people whose job it is to deal with looming threats before they spiral out of control?
#WHAT I’M SAYING IS#how long has cassian andor been chasing a quarry he can’t see#he doesn’t know what it is but he’s been doing this long enough to sense that the threads in his hands all lead in the same direction#it’s just an instinct it’s not actionable intelligence but he’s been a spy for a long time and his instincts are good#and the closer he gets the more ominous it all starts to feel#why does he spit galen erso’s name so frantically at his informant#how often does draven stare at stacks of reports till his eyes cross because he knows there’s something there but he doesn’t know WHAT#I desperately need answers to these questions
canon answers some part of it! or at least, there’s this incredibly blink and you might miss it moment in attack of the clones where the film does answer where and when the death star was first conceived and the beautiful and horrific irony of it is that it was conceived of by the separatist war machine. not the discontented outer rim worlds, no, but the separatist council itself - the one that’s made up of all these interest groups and war profiteers out for a kick and corporate alliances looking for tax cuts that the republic won’t give them. it’s this moment which occurs right around the time where the separatists are evacuating geonosis following the republic’s attack/defence. the film cuts to the leader of the geonosians talking about their special weapon and how the republic cannot find the plans for their weapon:
which dooku promptly offers to take to palpatine.
so i think canon in part answers your question about whether or not it was a republic birthed idea or a separatist one - and because palps is pulling so many strings at this point, its impossible to tell whether or not he had a hand in instigating its creation in the first place. the catalyst novel is pretty clear that the geonosians designed (and built part of) it, but it still doesn’t say anything about whether palps planted the seeds of the idea directly or indirectly in their minds. in the end the separatists versus republic arms race only benefited him (and the arms manufacturers): he’s the one who ends up in charge of the massive arsenal anyway.
but this raises another interesting question the fact that this weapon is a separatist weapon first poses a problem: how far down the chain is this knowledge made known? do they distribute knowledge of this weapon downwards to the separatist outer rim worlds in an effort to build morale? or at least hint at it, so they know the republic cannot stand triumphant forever? do they hint at this weapon’s existence to the heads of local militias or beat their chests over it in public? how many of the people fighting on the ground in the separatist worlds might have been clinging onto these hints as promises of comeuppance for the republic?
all of which boils down to: how many of these rumours would cassian have heard as a child?
imo in the wake of the clone wars and the early years of the formation of the rebellion, the alliance would very much aware of the fact that there’s a bunch of separatist weaponry and arsenal floating around the galaxy where it could potentially be dangerous in the wrong hands - especially their larger scale weapon projects. and i think that early rebel intel would definitely have tried to hunt down as much knowledge on the separatist weapons’ projects and existing weapons caches. part of this would have involved weaving contacts & networks with former separatist rebels (a potential source of conflict between saw and the rebellion?) to get to the people who might have known what was what. (does the rebellion recruit former separatists with a hope that one of them might prove to be the key? does draven recruit cassian hoping that this boy might prove to be the key, or that one person who leads down the chain to discover just what was going on with the separatists before the emperor took charge? i like to think yes to both. that and the whole cynical, they’re more loyal bc they already hated the republic and naturally hate the empire even more and have no moral compunctions the way others do bc they’ve already given up so much, a little more almost doesn’t matter.)
then you have also the shifting resources in the galaxy. rebel intel would definitely have kept their ear to the ground where the movement of metals and raw resources used in shipbuilding or weapons was and how much of it was being shifted by the empire and how much of it was being shifted by private players, gangsters and arms dealer types. the thrawn novel has thrawn figuring out the existence of the death star almost entirely by keeping an eye on the market for metals like doonium, which were used in manufacturing separatist droids, and noting how prices are shooting up which means demand is high - and yet the metal is disappearing and isn’t being used to build ships. so i think in that regard, rebel intel would start worrying why the empire is stockpiling metals used in shipbuilding at such a large scale while still strip mining all these various planets for metals. it’d definitely raise red flags for them if they couldn’t tally up the empire’s weapons output with the amount of metal being moved off the market.
there’s also the aspect of slaves - if i’m not mistaken the thrawn novel implies that the wookies were eventually used as slave labour on the death star after i guess, they finished massacring the geonosians. escaped/freed slaves might have some information about it. or rumours of it. whispers of it. so many whispers - berch teller, for example, attacking those ships on the way with metal to build the death star - how many such transports did the rebellion catch and then sweat about because none of these numbers were adding up.
and then there’s the whole saw connection! how much did the ersos tell saw? how much did saw tell rebel intel in turn? catalyst has both the ersos figuring out that the empire is building a WMD and leaving - did they tell saw about this, if at all? did saw put this to rebel intel and did they file it away as unlikely but something to keep an eye on? suppose saw didn’t even tell them about this, did he tell them about the smuggler krennic used in catalyst, the one who dropped weapons onto legacy worlds like wadi raffa so the empire could claim they were stamping out a rebellion and step in and strip those worlds of their resources - with again, the metal seemingly disappearing into the ether. so many worlds are being ruined and the math just doesn’t add up -
given all of this its likely that even back then they might have had hints about a huge weapons project the separatists were into - and worse, that the empire might have seized these projects for their own and been working on them in secret anyway. in that context, i don’t think its an accident that cassian is fulcrum in the albarrio sector, where the intergalactic banking clan has part of its HQ and where plenty of their hangers-on, their clients and those trying to influence them spend their time. its likely that they decided to go back, follow the credits back as far as possible and see if there was someone with just about enough resentment against the empire - against being sidelined from power - who was ready to talk. i don’t think they might have understood what exactly they were up against. the imagination often has its limitations and people can’t exactly imagine something that’s so… large. we’re very bad with scale and imagining scale. build a weapon to destroy a world? impossible and illogical. the empire has to be stockpiling this to make a huge arsenal to unleash.
but then, the math is still insane and there’s always this nagging knowledge, probably, that the separatists had once boasted they’d had a weapon which could destroy the republic at one go. what if its true. what if.
so what i’m saying is: draven and cassian and rebel intel have almost definitely been hunting this weapon for years if not for two decades, hoping against hope that they were doing the math wrong or that this was just a weapons stockpile and an idle separatist boast, only to constantly receive confirmation that the empire is building something big. something that needs kyber crystals, which means it uses or channels the force - or force like powers. something that’s eating up huge piles of metal, more than any kind of super star destroyer would ever require - more than even a shipbuilding or ordinary weapons facility would ever need. something that needs hundreds and thousands of slaves to build it. they’ve definitely been on its trail for a while, searching for more than just speculative maths - some tangible proof, plans, actual physical evidence - to prove its existence so they can act.
(and then boy, does the empire supply proof.)
#what i’m saying is that rebel intel is like please god no let this not be true#but the math is like ha ha fuckers #and you bet cassian was out there in the albarrio sector hunting down former separatist and war profiteer after the other#searching for answers hoping someone would crack and give him the answer he was desperate for #or at least supply the knowledge that would get them on the right track #(besides also ofc getting inroads with disgruntled powerbrokers #and trying to sway them to the rebels cause get them to supply them arms that sort of thing)#like you know how in intel a defector might supply you with some info #but then you need corroboration from multiple sources to make sure they’re not a plant or a double agent #there was defs a lot of that with the rebellion a lot of hoping these were plants trying to scare them into submission #because they just have a lot of hypotheticals & spec but no actual tangible proof until bodhi rook defects with a message from galen #(claming he has a message from galen) #and even then its not really enough until fucking jedha #because how do you even wrap your mind around a weapon that big #so immensely destructive #how do you begin to understand the sheer scale and sublimity of it so you can believe its existence?#you just can’t #the mind just can’t #its this breakdown of imagination #an acceptance without acceptance (tobermoriansass)
