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Is the concept of a Force-repelling plot element, the ysalamiri, wanky? Something that's capable of robbing a Jedi or a Sith of their advantages?

I say no, if written correctly. After the initial encounters, ysalamiri shouldn't be superweapons designed to kill Force-users, but rather integral parts of intricate traps. A Force-sensitive ought to be able to sense a disturbing Force-less node around a ysalamiri, a recognize the danger. Additionally, wily Sith should be able to kill an opponent even if they're armed with such a powerful tool, and master swordsmen shouldn't be dependent on the Force to give them skills.

And if the Jedi has a blaster and his enemy think that he has only the lightsaber, the enemy AND the ysalamiri are dead.

IIRC Luke can tell where the Chiss ambushers are in the Thrawn duology by sensing a null-force area where the ysalamiri are.

I thought that ysalamiri were a stupid plot device from the moment Zahn introduced them.

Ted C wrote:I thought that ysalamiri were a stupid plot device from the moment Zahn introduced them.

Funny, to me one of the highlights of HttE was how awesome Luke perfomred even without the Force.

Same - I think it was actually a good move to include ysalamiri, because of the issues it made for Luke etc. It's nice to see Force users having to go without for a change.

No not wank, when you look at why they do what they do. A predator which naturally uses the Force for hunting, would almost certainly have prey that would block the Force so they can survive, especially a creature with no other defenses and that moves at a snail-like pace.

havokeff wrote:No not wank, when you look at why they do what they do. A predator which naturally uses the Force for hunting, would almost certainly have prey that would block the Force so they can survive, especially a creature with no other defenses and that moves at a snail-like pace.

By that logic, shouldn't animals on Earth project fields that block light, sound, or olfaction, since their predators use those to hunt?

Yeah, and I'm not sure how such an 'evolutionary' development is supposed to do jack shit when the animal is still left slow, defenceless and unarmed against EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE PLANET. See, evolution can make retarded anti-force slugs, but it can't make a predator with.. say... teeth. That's just not how evolution works.

The stupidist part for me is the simplistic thinking. If it was 'this this fucks with the force, which screws up the animal but trained, directed force users thousands of times more powerful can do it anyway' it'd be fine have it give them a headache, or take unprepared users by surprise, or even shut down weaker/newer users in large numbers. But nooooo, it's a no-limits 'PUSHES THE FORCE WHICH IS A CURTAIN AWAY, SOMEHOW NOT KILLING EVERYTHING'. Animals do all kinds of things to various stimuli, but saying they do it better than a specifically designed machine or a well trained Force user seems stupid.

PS, I think they're utterly retarded and an excuse for easier storytelling, just like transporter jamming rocks.

Grandmaster Jogurt wrote:

havokeff wrote:No not wank, when you look at why they do what they do. A predator which naturally uses the Force for hunting, would almost certainly have prey that would block the Force so they can survive, especially a creature with no other defenses and that moves at a snail-like pace.

By that logic, shouldn't animals on Earth project fields that block light, sound, or olfaction, since their predators use those to hunt?

Not to even TRY to bring logic into a discussion about an animal that hunts its favorite prey using the Force when the prey CAN'T be detected in the Force, but there are animals on Earth that can camouflage themselves, and use smells as defensive weapons as well as ink. Some can even create their own light. Not the extremes you cited, but in the ball park... well at least the pall park's parking lot. In a universe where the Force is present though, the abilities of the Ysalamir don't seem that far fetched.

Stark wrote:Yeah, and I'm not sure how such an 'evolutionary' development is supposed to do jack shit when the animal is still left slow, defenceless and unarmed against EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE PLANET. See, evolution can make retarded anti-force slugs, but it can't make a predator with.. say... teeth. That's just not how evolution works.

The stupidist part for me is the simplistic thinking. If it was 'this this fucks with the force, which screws up the animal but trained, directed force users thousands of times more powerful can do it anyway' it'd be fine have it give them a headache, or take unprepared users by surprise, or even shut down weaker/newer users in large numbers. But nooooo, it's a no-limits 'PUSHES THE FORCE WHICH IS A CURTAIN AWAY, SOMEHOW NOT KILLING EVERYTHING'. Animals do all kinds of things to various stimuli, but saying they do it better than a specifically designed machine or a well trained Force user seems stupid.

PS, I think they're utterly retarded and an excuse for easier storytelling, just like transporter jamming rocks.

The way I remember it, the ysalamir are supposed to just be Force neutral, meaning the vornskrs can't find them with the Force. It doesn't mean they can't hunt them. It just negates their most effective tool for hunting. I would imagine that they could still find them using smell and sight. The effect is supposed to extend out around them and gathering them in groups makes the effect larger. Now why this effect stops Force lightning, which is just energy once the Force user expels it, I have no idea, and that is fucking stupid.

And Luke was eventually able to detect them, or at least their absence.

P.S. It's transporter jamming metal. It's just inside the rocks.

Stark wrote:But nooooo, it's a no-limits 'PUSHES THE FORCE WHICH IS A CURTAIN AWAY, SOMEHOW NOT KILLING EVERYTHING'.

I always thought a cooler way for the ysalamiri to work would be if they were also Force-sensitive (like the vornskyrs) and basically coated the area in what basically amounts to Force White Noise. Basically try to override a potential hunter's force senses with static. Then add some natural camo, keep the part about groups being able to reinforce the signal (so smarter predators can't just sense the area with static, then run to the center of it and start chowing down), and there you go.

havokeff wrote:The way I remember it, the ysalamir are supposed to just be Force neutral, meaning the vornskrs can't find them with the Force. It doesn't mean they can't hunt them. It just negates their most effective tool for hunting. I would imagine that they could still find them using smell and sight. The effect is supposed to extend out around them and gathering them in groups makes the effect larger. Now why this effect stops Force lightning, which is just energy once the Force user expels it, I have no idea, and that is fucking stupid.

And Luke was eventually able to detect them, or at least their absence.

Yeah, this renders the 'force hiding' pretty useless. I figured the animals used the force to kill them, with TK or whatever, and it's the 'lol slugs block TK and mindfuckery all around them' that's retarded. Remember, evolution creates these slugs, but never allowed the predators to HUNT BY FORCE OMMISSION.

CWM wrote: I always thought a cooler way for the ysalamiri to work would be if they were also Force-sensitive (like the vornskyrs) and basically coated the area in what basically amounts to Force White Noise. Basically try to override a potential hunter's force senses with static. Then add some natural camo, keep the part about groups being able to reinforce the signal (so smarter predators can't just sense the area with static, then run to the center of it and start chowing down), and there you go.

Absolutely. That is my attitude as well, and it's far less retarded than 'lol no-force radius 10''. It'd make them more interesting dramatically too, and a slug would confuse lowend force guys, require additional effort or training from middling guys (who can see/burn through it) and have little effect on highend guys. I want to see the animal work for it too: if they get 'tired', or they don't notice the force usage, they shouldn't be active.

The fact they stretched 'confused latent force-sensitives' to 'totally defeats all force powers by anyone ever at all times without any strain on the animal' is retarded.

Stark wrote:

havokeff wrote:The way I remember it, the ysalamir are supposed to just be Force neutral, meaning the vornskrs can't find them with the Force. It doesn't mean they can't hunt them. It just negates their most effective tool for hunting. I would imagine that they could still find them using smell and sight. The effect is supposed to extend out around them and gathering them in groups makes the effect larger. Now why this effect stops Force lightning, which is just energy once the Force user expels it, I have no idea, and that is fucking stupid.

And Luke was eventually able to detect them, or at least their absence.

Yeah, this renders the 'force hiding' pretty useless. I figured the animals used the force to kill them, with TK or whatever, and it's the 'lol slugs block TK and mindfuckery all around them' that's retarded. Remember, evolution creates these slugs, but never allowed the predators to HUNT BY FORCE OMMISSION.

You sound like a creationist. Evolution didn't evolve ysalamiri as they are and just leave Myrkr. It's an ongoing process. You don't know how long ago the vornskyrs evolved their hunting Force sense, nor how long ago the ysalamiri evolved their Force-negation, and you certainly have no idea if or when the vornskyrs have developed the ability to hunt by the null-bubble. Perhaps it's a learned behavior that they have already acquired (we don't see much vornskyr hunting behavior). Maybe they're in the process of evolving it. Saying "evolution didn't allow the predators to hunt by omission" implies that evolution has stopped and this is the end result.

Er, they *can't* find them by omission, which is retarded. Don't blame ME because some IDIOT WRITER decided 'lol natural selection lol immune to force' and by fiat decided that's as far as it went. Frankly, you could train a predator to hunt by such an obvious signature: it shouldn't require heritable change over generations at all. It's called 'bad writing'.

Don't talk to me about natural selection in a scenario where the author gave the slugs a 'defence' which is nothing of the kind and said 'haha, evolution wins'. It's called a awful backwards rationale for a stupid idea.

PROTIP: just because I stopped specifying 'evolution' doesn't mean it's anything like actual evolution.

Um, did you read my post, at all?

Stark wrote:Er, they *can't* find them by omission, which is retarded. Don't blame ME because some IDIOT WRITER decided 'lol natural selection lol immune to force' and by fiat decided that's as far as it went. Frankly, you could train a predator to hunt by such an obvious signature: it shouldn't require heritable change over generations at all. It's called 'bad writing'.

Evidence? The only vornskr hunting activity we see is that they will hunt force users. We don't actually see any description of their hunting ysalamiri (or not). You assume that they can't hunt by locating neutral-force bubbles, based on...well, nothing, really. Obviously, the vornskrs still manage to successfully eat ysalamiri, as no other moderate-large prey animals are described in the myrkr forest. Either the vornskrs are eating ysalamiri (and can therefore hunt them well enough, neutral force bubble or no) or the vornskrs are eating a lot of people, which doesn't seem likely based on how the book characterizes the planet.

I'm no evolutionary expert, but apparently the vornskrs could still somehow sense the Force, or at least someone who uses the Force, despite the ysalamiri because they kept targeting Luke and ignoring Mara. I have no idea how that works but I guess they somehow had some kind of adaption if they could still "sense" that Luke used the Force, despite his being unable to use it.

Stark wrote:The stupidist part for me is the simplistic thinking. If it was 'this this fucks with the force, which screws up the animal but trained, directed force users thousands of times more powerful can do it anyway' it'd be fine have it give them a headache, or take unprepared users by surprise, or even shut down weaker/newer users in large numbers. But nooooo, it's a no-limits 'PUSHES THE FORCE WHICH IS A CURTAIN AWAY, SOMEHOW NOT KILLING EVERYTHING'. Animals do all kinds of things to various stimuli, but saying they do it better than a specifically designed machine or a well trained Force user seems stupid.

Spot on in my opinion. That's the one, and only thing that pissed me off about them from the start. It wasn't too bad during HttE, or even the rest of the TTT, but it just got fucking overused after that in that exact scenario.

In TTT, they weren't there to limit Luke, control Jedi, etc. They were there as part of Thrawn's overall strategy of getting Grade A clones up and running in as little as 20 days. He even handeled it better than most in the duology (yeah, I'm a Zahn fanboi, bite me).

But even then, I agree with Stark. The fact that it is a null field, and there is nothing you can do about lolz n00b, pisses me right the fuck off.

Yeah, this renders the 'force hiding' pretty useless. I figured the animals used the force to kill them, with TK or whatever, and it's the 'lol slugs block TK and mindfuckery all around them' that's retarded. Remember, evolution creates these slugs, but never allowed the predators to HUNT BY FORCE OMMISSION.

They were typically living in large groups in forests, where the effect made practically the entire forest a Force-less area. In fact, I even seem to remember it extending out into the atmosphere a fair bit.

I'm no evolutionary expert, but apparently the vornskrs could still somehow sense the Force, or at least someone who uses the Force, despite the ysalamiri because they kept targeting Luke and ignoring Mara. I have no idea how that works but I guess they somehow had some kind of adaption if they could still "sense" that Luke used the Force, despite his being unable to use it.

Yep, which makes me wonder if it really is a no-limits null field. Haven't read the books in a while but the people I remember talking about them are people like Luke, Thrawn and Karrde - none of whom are exactly scientists. Given how the vornskrs went hunting for Luke in the middle of this "no limits null field", I'd say it's something else.

So, if it's an evolutionary defence that doesn't work and these predators can sense through it anyway... why does it do retarded things like STOP FORCE LIGHTNING MID-FLIGHT? And how can the null area extend into fucking orbit when the area is so small in other situations? Is the first introduction of the slugs really this inconsistent with their later use as magic no-force 10 feet radius?

Frankly, the idea that some lameo predator can sense through the effect and super-powerful intelligent trained Jedi can't boggles my fucking mind. Either it blocks the force or it doesn't (it obviously doesn't, or there's a gradient of some kind however inconsistent this is later).

I hear it makes sense for some ridiculous animal to evolve a magical defence that doesn't work and gives writers a 'cancel jedi' card, even though their main predator can still detect them and thus the described 'null force' effect is apparently wrong? GO EVOLUTION!

Civil War Man wrote:I always thought a cooler way for the ysalamiri to work would be if they were also Force-sensitive (like the vornskyrs) and basically coated the area in what basically amounts to Force White Noise. Basically try to override a potential hunter's force senses with static. Then add some natural camo, keep the part about groups being able to reinforce the signal (so smarter predators can't just sense the area with static, then run to the center of it and start chowing down), and there you go.

I always thought it was Zahn's description of what the ysalamiri do -- "push back the Force" -- that was particularly annoying. If they were just Force-sensitive creatures with a well-developed ability to counteract any attempt to manipulate the Force in their vicinity, it wouldn't be as annoying, but I actually talked to Zahn at GenCon one year, and he stood by his description of how the power worked: they make the Force "go away" around them.

It's not exactly uncommon for species on Earth to evolve defences against one predator only to have the predator evolving means of circumventing the defence, and then other defences evolve, etc. etc. Maybe the predators started out as some subterranean animal using only the force to locate their prey; the slugs, who evolved means of hiding from the force, only to have the predators evolve better eyesight or a way of sensing through the effect, and the slugs in turn moved up into the trees. Who cares exactly how it evolved, or how it works? Just because an animal naturally evolved a means to bypass the effect, doesn't mean that Jedi or others will be able to do the same.

Dooey Jo wrote:It's not exactly uncommon for species on Earth to evolve defences against one predator only to have the predator evolving means of circumventing the defence, and then other defences evolve, etc. etc. Maybe the predators started out as some subterranean animal using only the force to locate their prey; the slugs, who evolved means of hiding from the force, only to have the predators evolve better eyesight or a way of sensing through the effect, and the slugs in turn moved up into the trees. Who cares exactly how it evolved, or how it works? Just because an animal naturally evolved a means to bypass the effect, doesn't mean that Jedi or others will be able to do the same.

This is still akin to saying they evolved to block light, given they have no OTHER defenses. They are extraordinarily weak, slow and have only one defense. It sounded from the start as a plot device and stayed that way.

As much as I enjoy Zahn, he had no grasp of evolution when creating this beast except as a sound byte.

So, if it's an evolutionary defence that doesn't work and these predators can sense through it anyway...

It might be strong enough to stop the vornskr sensing the ysalamiri, but the bubble that extends around it is less powerful.

why does it do retarded things like STOP FORCE LIGHTNING MID-FLIGHT?

Some other related mechanism perhaps? I've no idea really .

And how can the null area extend into fucking orbit when the area is so small in other situations?

Put lots of ysalamiri together and they reinforce one another's zones to create a single large one.

Frankly, the idea that some lameo predator can sense through the effect and super-powerful intelligent trained Jedi can't boggles my fucking mind.

Given that it probably took the vornskrs millions of years to evolve into what they are now, is it not possible they have some means of sensing through it that a Jedi doesn't? I'm wondering if it isn't something like the stuff in the Skylark books (very briefly, the ysalamiri would block certain Force "wavelengths" if you will, which would be the ones most commonly used. The vornskr however would've evolved to use some of the unblocked ones, which would let them sense Luke. You'd then have a constant evolutionary battle between the two species)...

even though their main predator can still detect them

Can the vornskrs detect the ysalamiri with their Force sense? The entire forest is one massive null-Force bubble due to the number of ysalamiri living in it, and the only vornskr we have hunting is going after Luke. Sounds more like "vornskr can detect Force users through the null-Force bubble, but not the ysalamiri" really.

What I gather from talking to Zahn at the con is that vornskrs are biologically much more sensitive to the Force than humans due to evolving alongside the ysalamiri. Even in the presence of ysalamiri, they're so sensitive to the Force that they can still sense prey, especially Force-sensitive prey, although not nearly so well as they can in the absence of ysalamiri.

So his explanation of the vornskrs -- able to use the Force a little bit even in the presence of ysalamiri -- actually contradicts his explanation of ysalamiri -- the Force doesn't exist in their presence.

How he manages to resolve that in his head is beyond me.