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It's pretty much a consensus that the Maw was built by an advanced race.

My question is why? What is the point of putting a bunch of black holes near each other? Could it have simply been a weapons test?

One possibility I can think of is they were trying to build a massive Dyson Sphere powered computer complex (maybe they were uploads and lived inside such a structure). They would have built it around supergiant stars to maximize the energy, and moved them into a close cluster to minimize communication lag time between the spheres.

At some point they abandon it and the stars evolve into supergiants, go supernova, and become black holes. The Dyson Spheres are destroyed in the process.

(spoiler alert!)


Based on Star Wars Fate of the Jedi the Maw was built by the Celestials to keep the evilbeing Abeloth trapped.

Star Wars 888 wrote:(spoiler alert!)


Based on Star Wars Fate of the Jedi the Maw was built by the Celestials to keep the evilbeing Abeloth trapped.

"Abeloth"?
I should have known after the Quarren, but...damn, Star Wars really doesn't give a damn about cribbing from D&D, does it?

Meh, of all the post-ROTJ debacle, getting an explanation for Centerpoint Station and the Maw that isn't just "lol Celestials moved stars because they could!1!11" isn't such a bad deal. They did something similar with the UR in the last WOTC sourcebook, and had the "hyperspace distortions" be a safety measure to prevent some of the more Lovecraftian species from infesting all of the galaxy. (While still making them passable and thus getting adventurers into contact with said beasts, anyway. )

And they linked Waru with one of those threats. Fucking Waru. Wasn't half-bad, either. It also helped give credibility to the Chiss' claim of being the only thing standing between civilization and chaos in the UR. Can you tell it's one of my favorite WOTC books?

VT-16 wrote:Meh, of all the post-ROTJ debacle, getting an explanation for Centerpoint Station and the Maw that isn't just "lol Celestials moved stars because they could!1!11" isn't such a bad deal.

What's wrong with it being unexplained? I always found them fascinating precisely because they were examples of large-scale cosmic engineering whose creators had long ago disappeared - it shows that the SW universe is an old universe, with other civilizations that came before the one in the "present".

VT-16 wrote:It also helped give credibility to the Chiss' claim of being the only thing standing between civilization and chaos in the UR.

I never particularly liked the Chiss.

Well why does any advanced race do strange and complex things. There bored and have nothing esle to do but make puzzles to torment people thousands of years later.

Star Wars 888 wrote:(spoiler alert!)


Based on Star Wars Fate of the Jedi the Maw was built by the Celestials to keep the evilbeing Abeloth trapped.

I look at this, and all I can say is, how banal. How utterly banal. This does not encapsulate all that is wrong about the EU, but it shows many of the things that are wrong with it deep down. And then, glancing down, what to my wondering eyes should appear but:

VT-16 wrote:Meh, of all the post-ROTJ debacle, getting an explanation for Centerpoint Station and the Maw that isn't just "lol Celestials moved stars because they could!1!11" isn't such a bad deal. They did something similar with the UR in the last WOTC sourcebook, and had the "hyperspace distortions" be a safety measure to prevent some of the more Lovecraftian species from infesting all of the galaxy. (While still making them passable and thus getting adventurers into contact with said beasts, anyway. )

And they linked Waru with one of those threats. Fucking Waru. Wasn't half-bad, either. It also helped give credibility to the Chiss' claim of being the only thing standing between civilization and chaos in the UR. Can you tell it's one of my favorite WOTC books?

More banality, combined with the persistent mental disease which afflicts far too many fans of any large universe. This is the disease known as inclusionism. It is characterized by the inability to step back, regard something, and cry forth "This is fucking stupid." Waru was a bad idea in a bad novel. The Unknown Regions have gone from an origin without capitalization, to becoming swathes of the galaxy. Swathes! Why explain this with "hyperspace distortions"? There are galaxies apart mentioned throughout the literature. Have them be the unknown regions, have them be a galactic frontier from which come strange traders in stranger ships, but above all, have them be unimportant.

The theoretical failings of much of the EU are thus: a failing of understanding what Star Wars is. Star Wars is about Rebels against an Empire. The galaxy is a civilized and settled place, and its conflicts are internally generated. We don't see massive extragalactic invaders in any of the movies, nor are they hinted at. So resorting to- how many times have they done so? Nagai, Tofs, Killiks, Yuuzhan Vong, "million threats that would freeze your blood", Waru, and... Abaddon Apollyon Aboleth. Probably more, but by resorting to the extragalactic invader so many times, they lack an understanding of what Star Wars is. Evil is largely internal in Star Wars. Sure, there is the Dark Side, but it isn't really personified, and the point is that you have to draw upon its power for it to affect you. So external threats aren't really keeping with the thematic elements of Star Wars- not that many of the authors understand this.

Having a Space-Satan- but they don't. Hell, a Miltonian Satan would actually fit well into Star Wars thematically, seeing as Anakin Skywalker ought by rights to have fallen into the same general character model. They have something that is either a Space-Angra Mainyu, a Manichean god of evil, or else a Space-Cthulhu, a truly alien entity that is incompatible with galactic civilization. I know which one I'd pick to be more likely. But a Manichean anti-god (or rather, judging from the Wookieepedia article, anti-goddess) is again, incompatible. But the description given is banal, yet hilarious.

The true form of this being that lies imprisoned within a cluster of black holes and neutron stars is a humanoid woman with an exceptionally broad mouth, T-rex arms, and tentacles for fingers. The effort put in was truly stunning. This is a grand evil that was imprisoned? Consider the appearance of Palpatine, consider the effort put into the makeup in Return of the Jedi, consider the effect that this produces, and contrast it with... this. But I find that I cannot continue any more right now, so if you disagree, feel free to defend Madam T-Rex Arms.