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I finished playing KOTOR and am 3/4 of the way through KOTOR II and first and foremost let me say I haven't had a pleasurable time consuming fun experience like this with an RPG since Baldur's Gate (I and II)

AWESOME stuff.

But I have to ask because I'm not well versed with the EU but are plot elements in KOTOR considered canon? By that I mean was there a Revan in the EU? A Mandalorian War? A Jedi Civil War that all but wiped out the order before Anakin pulled his little temper tantrum?

And when we take certain statements made by Kreia in KOTOR II it makes me wonder if some of it makes sense. For instance on Korriban Kreia states that the Sith Lords of Naga Sadow's vintage would wipe up the floor with mosern day Jedi in terms of overall power but esepcially in lightsaber skills.

Wouldn't lightsaber skills and forms evolve over time and be better? Aren't figthing styles and dueling refined as time goes on so that a Spanish fencer of the 14th century would easily wipe the floor with a Roman duelist of 1000 years earlier? Why would a Sith Lord from millennia ago be a better deulist or have secret more powerful forms than an order that has been around refining their styles for millennia afterwards? Does that make sense?

Also once again not an EU person POV here but from what I managed to pick up Exar Kun was all but Godlike in his level of Darkside mastery doing things on a galactic scale and this Darth Sidon in KOTOR II (no spoilers please, almost finished the game but not quite there yet.) kills planets with the Force alone.

Palpatine doesn't seem to be anywhere near that. Vader is a joke in comparison to Kun and some of these Sith lords if the hyperbole is to be believed. So what gives? Why are the ancients more powerful than their descendants?

The near-total destruction of the Sith Order, perhaps. Many of its secrets would have been lost or seized by the Jedi Order, which then forbade the teaching of these secrets. In the ROTS novel, Anakin reports to Palpatine that they have now re-acquired their holocrons; this might indicate that the Jedi kept some of the captured Sith holocrons rather than destroying them. This might also explain why Palpatine had Force Storm powers many years later: powers which could easily obliterate an Eclipse-class starship and could obviously devastate a planet as well.

Thematically, it's because the Force is the mythological aspect of Star Wars, and a common theme in mythology is Ancient Glory. In mythology and religion, there is a common theme of lost glory. In Christianity, it is humanity being thrown out of the garden, modern man being diminished from his former long lifespans and good health, etc. In Greek mythology, there are ancient stories of Titans and other immensely powerful beings. LOTR is absolutely infused with a sense of lost ancient glories, with virtually everything new being crappy and everything old being grandiose and awe-inspiring.

The cut scenes and basic plot (light side) are canon. The Mandalorian War, Jedi Civil war, and the Rakata are actually elaborated on in other EU as well.

As for Sith power levels, Kriea's statements are a bit ambiguous, and its difficult to say if what she say about the "Ancient Sith" is entirely true. However, the most powerful feat I saw in the games was Darth Nihilus' destruction of Miraluka, and that is pretty much on par with Papaltine's max power (perhaps less so, as his is more versitile), if used in a different manner.

Keep in mind that even in the Star Wars movies, we see that your average Jedi is a mediocre swordsman. Sure, the "deflecting blaster bolts" trick is impressive, but when it comes to real ability at swordplay, most of the Jedi are lacking--they simply don't find themselves engaged in swordfights against a competent opponent often outside sparring with their fellow Jedi. Some of the Jedi took swordsmanship very seriously--particularly after the beginning of the Clone Wars, and the rediscovery that their were Sith alive and well--but most of the Jedi seemed content to be able to parry a few blaster bolts (and not an enormous number of those, judging from the results in the arena on Geonosis).

General Grevious, for example, slew a number of Jedi in lightsaber combat--and he didn't even have the Force, just speed and aggressiveness. Darth Maul made mincemeat of a number of Jedi, and was beating Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan handily until Obi-Wan lost his temper and gave himself fully over to the Force.

During the events of KoTOR and KoTOR II, Jedi were just having to reacquire swordplay skills beyond "parry blaster bolt, disembowel gunner" again as melee weapons were spreading in popularity due to the oh-so-convenient energy shields. Yes, I realize this was likely just an excuse to give Jedi players a chance to use their lightsaber and have a lot of swordfights without the PC tripping over a Dark Jedi or Sith every twenty yards, but I believe we're taking it for granted that in this particular time period swordsmanship was a going concern for non-Jedi. Regardless, Jedi, likely for the first time since the Sith Wars, are finding themselves fighting opponents armed with swords again outside of sparring with their fellow Jedi. I believe we can all agree that beating a friend in a sparring match is not as much of an incentive to master swordsmanship as "Some other guy with a sword is likely to be trying to kill me and I'd damn well better know how to defend myself." Thus, Jedi are suddenly going to feel an urgent need to reacquire skills at bladework--particularly since they're not as likely as the Sith to simply reach out and crush the fool with the vibrosword's windpipe with the Force. After energy shields fall out of favor--perhaps due to improvements in blaster technology that made such shields ineffective--the average thug or soldier is going to quickly dump the vibroblade and go back to a blaster rifle, and the average Jedi is going to find himself not using his hard-earned skills with the sword.

The Sith, from what I understand, fought against each other constantly--and so would have a great deal of motivation to be very, very good swordsmen. Likewise, they'd want to emphasize offensive Force powers, while a Jedi during the PT era is not going to be going around extinguishing life on entire planets very often, if ever--and no sane Sith lord is going to start doing so unless he knows damn well the Jedi aren't going to be able to gang up on him and kill him for it. I'd imagine using the Force to destroy planets would tend to draw the attention of the Jedi Order.

Like the advent of the energy shield and conveniently lightsaber-resistant vibroblades in KoTOR, the Sith War would force the Jedi to very quickly improve in swordsmanship--I'm sure that at the end of the Sith War, and for a while thereafter, the Jedi Order was *very* focused on improving lightsaber skills across the board. After a few hundred years of not using many of the lightsaber techniques in actual combat, however, attention to such skills is going to wane--it's only human nature not to intensively practice abilities we are not likely to ever use. Some of the Jedi doubtless kept their skill up, either because they simply enjoyed swordplay, or because they were sufficiently paranoid that they figured that they might need the skills someday, and passed them on to their apprentices. However, on average, the lack of a need for swordsmanship is likely to disincline most Jedi to master the skills.

In the EU, the recent war with the Yuuzhan Vong and the seemingly constant stream of Dark Jedi is likely to have a similar effect; Jedi are going to be very interested in improving their swordsmanship. If nothing else, the EU Jedi are seeing a LOT of heavy combat, and Jedi Masters Luke Skywalker and Kyle Katarn are certainly going to be inclined to insist on apprentices being competent in an actual swordfight as well as just being able to parry blaster bolts!

And thus concludes my unintentionally long essay on why Jedi swordsmanship skills may by cyclical, depending on the threats they have had to face recently.

Darth Nihilius pays a high price for his ability to wipe out planets with the Force. Talk to Visas about him if you haven't already, anf if your awareness (I think it's awareness anyway, but it might be intelligence or wisdom) is high enough, one of your dialoge options will imply what that price is. It's certain that Palpatine wouldn't want to pay that price.

Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, Revan was the first Sith to use the title Darth. Given the source, this should of course be taken with a grain of salt. However, I don't think I've ever heard of any of the Sith who preceeded Revan referred to as Darth.

Darth Wong wrote:The near-total destruction of the Sith Order, perhaps. Many of its secrets would have been lost or seized by the Jedi Order, which then forbade the teaching of these secrets. In the ROTS novel, Anakin reports to Palpatine that they have now re-acquired their holocrons; this might indicate that the Jedi kept some of the captured Sith holocrons rather than destroying them. This might also explain why Palpatine had Force Storm powers many years later: powers which could easily obliterate an Eclipse-class starship and could obviously devastate a planet as well.

The Jedi Master and Historian Atris had a room full of Sith Holocrons. Their fate is never spelled out, however, unless there's something done with them in the cut scenes that my PC isn't powerful enough to play. Seeing as how they seemed to have a mind of their own and turned Atris to the dark side, it seems likely that the Jedi historian who followed Atris, the Handmaiden, would destroy the things (especially since she felt the effects of Atris's fall first hand, as dark Atris blasted her with Force lightning). She may have just locked them away, however, allowing them to wind up in the Jedi Temple's library about 4,000 years later.

Jaevric wrote:Darth Maul made mincemeat of a number of Jedi, and was beating Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan handily until Obi-Wan lost his temper and gave himself fully over to the Force.

Uh... Am I missing something? When did Maul encounter other Jedi besides Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, and then preoceed to make mincemeat?

Actually when Obi-Wan lost his temper, he got knocked into the big ass hole.

Like the advent of the energy shield and conveniently lightsaber-resistant vibroblades in KoTOR, the Sith War would force the Jedi to very quickly improve in swordsmanship-

Personal energy shields on that scale of availibility and lightsaber resistant vibro-blades most likely fall into the game mechanic and thus non-canon category. However, the rest of your essay is quite interesting.

Stravo wrote:But I have to ask because I'm not well versed with the EU but are plot elements in KOTOR considered canon? By that I mean was there a Revan in the EU? A Mandalorian War? A Jedi Civil War that all but wiped out the order before Anakin pulled his little temper tantrum?

KOTOR, like other games, are EU as far as the plot goes. The Mandalorian Wars already existed, KOTOR simply ironed out more of it.

Stravo wrote:And when we take certain statements made by Kreia in KOTOR II it makes me wonder if some of it makes sense. For instance on Korriban Kreia states that the Sith Lords of Naga Sadow's vintage would wipe up the floor with mosern day Jedi in terms of overall power but esepcially in lightsaber skills.

European swordfighting is basically lost today. We have recreated it, but we don't really know if that's how they did it in the past with centuries of experience behind it. One could imagine that blasters had a similar effect on galactic swordfighting, especially when there was millennia of peace before the Clone Wars. Plus, it's a character speaking - she could be wrong, exaggerating or lying.

Stravo wrote:Wouldn't lightsaber skills and forms evolve over time and be better? Aren't figthing styles and dueling refined as time goes on so that a Spanish fencer of the 14th century would easily wipe the floor with a Roman duelist of 1000 years earlier? Why would a Sith Lord from millennia ago be a better deulist or have secret more powerful forms than an order that has been around refining their styles for millennia afterwards? Does that make sense?

I would say that a medieval knight would wipe the floor with any swordfighter we have today. Lifelong experience and centuries of knowledge to draw upon, unlike us. Granted, is a simplified example but the point should be clear.

Stravo wrote:Also once again not an EU person POV here but from what I managed to pick up Exar Kun was all but Godlike in his level of Darkside mastery doing things on a galactic scale and this Darth Sidon in KOTOR II (no spoilers please, almost finished the game but not quite there yet.) kills planets with the Force alone.

Palpatine doesn't seem to be anywhere near that. Vader is a joke in comparison to Kun and some of these Sith lords if the hyperbole is to be believed. So what gives? Why are the ancients more powerful than their descendants?

The comics about the ancient Sith lords have lots of things we never see again later. Basically it's a case of lost lore and tech during the wars. It should be possible to recreate it, but it takes time, effort and luck. Only Palpatine had the resources to get anywhere near the effort required to recreate some of it.

THis is making me think I should listen to the copy of the"Dark Lords of the Sith" audiobook I acquired.

havokeff wrote:Uh... Am I missing something? When did Maul encounter other Jedi besides Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, and then preoceed to make mincemeat?

Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter. A Jedi Padawan (just short of reaching Knight rank) got whacked, and earlier her Jedi Master found himself so badly outmatch that he was forced to trigger a fusion core explosion (or something like that) and in the process killing himself, just trying to stop Maul.

Actually when Obi-Wan lost his temper, he got knocked into the big ass hole.

After he managed to hold his own for a while, and even damaged Maul's sabre. Earlier, Obi-Wan just got kicked around and in the face almost dismissively.

Noble Ire wrote:

Like the advent of the energy shield and conveniently lightsaber-resistant vibroblades in KoTOR, the Sith War would force the Jedi to very quickly improve in swordsmanship-

Personal energy shields on that scale of availibility and lightsaber resistant vibro-blades most likely fall into the game mechanic and thus non-canon category. However, the rest of your essay is quite interesting.

as far as I remember, it´s canon that vibro weapons can resist lightsaber hits

darth korte wrote:

Noble Ire wrote:

Like the advent of the energy shield and conveniently lightsaber-resistant vibroblades in KoTOR, the Sith War would force the Jedi to very quickly improve in swordsmanship-

Personal energy shields on that scale of availibility and lightsaber resistant vibro-blades most likely fall into the game mechanic and thus non-canon category. However, the rest of your essay is quite interesting.

as far as I remember, it´s canon that vibro weapons can resist lightsaber hits

KoTOR kinda wormed their way around this by making all melee weapons out of a lightsaber resistant material. so your saber pretty much was a +5 sword of cuttiness, and that's all.

Stravo wrote:
But I have to ask because I'm not well versed with the EU but are plot elements in KOTOR considered canon? By that I mean was there a Revan in the EU? A Mandalorian War? A Jedi Civil War that all but wiped out the order before Anakin pulled his little temper tantrum?

As mentioned before, the Mandalorian Wars were already in the lititure, the war with Exan Kur was there as well. It is the 'Jedi civil war' which KOTOR created and they did a good job of creating a PT like enviroment with out copying it exactly. In fact, I think it's reversed.

The OR is falling apart, not by thousands of years of complacency, but going on 50 years of strife. One war after another is tearing it apart.

And when we take certain statements made by Kreia in KOTOR II it makes me wonder if some of it makes sense. For instance on Korriban Kreia states that the Sith Lords of Naga Sadow's vintage would wipe up the floor with mosern day Jedi in terms of overall power but esepcially in lightsaber skills.

The Great Hyperspace War, IIRC the history right, Sadow would have been one of the Sith who came back from the Sith homeworld to pick a fight. Since he's one of the 'first generation' of Sith, it's possible that he indeed knew things that were lost to time or to the Jedi and could be able to out 'force power' modern Jedi.

Wouldn't lightsaber skills and forms evolve over time and be better? Aren't figthing styles and dueling refined as time goes on so that a Spanish fencer of the 14th century would easily wipe the floor with a Roman duelist of 1000 years earlier? Why would a Sith Lord from millennia ago be a better deulist or have secret more powerful forms than an order that has been around refining their styles for millennia afterwards? Does that make sense?

Particular types of fighting styles depend on certain factors of the opponents. Yes, Indigo Montoya would wipe the floor with a Roman Legionare, but mainly becasue that Legionare is trained to fight in shield wall like tactics, not in single combat. Meanwhile, a trained Gladiator of the same time period might be able to kill poor Indigo.

The Jedi of the PT era used their lightsabers as anti-blaster weapons mainly, and past that, there were an aweful lot of hands and arms being chopped off in the movies rather than body strikes. They trained themselves to defend against the most likely threat, which makes sense.

As did the Sith, since their most likely threat was a Jedi, they trained to defeat them in swordplay. However, once again, they specialized, just like the Jedi. Since the Jedi only used a rough type of swordplay, the Sith only had to beat that one type of style.

It's possible that in the past, when the Jedi indeed did use more advanced forms of swordplay that there were radically different types that a Sith Master would have to be prepared to defend against. As such, he'd know quite a bit more than a Sith who had to just overcome a watered down version of Jedi swordsmanship.

My take, anyway.

Also once again not an EU person POV here but from what I managed to pick up Exar Kun was all but Godlike in his level of Darkside mastery doing things on a galactic scale and this Darth Sidon in KOTOR II (no spoilers please, almost finished the game but not quite there yet.) kills planets with the Force alone.

Palpatine doesn't seem to be anywhere near that. Vader is a joke in comparison to Kun and some of these Sith lords if the hyperbole is to be believed. So what gives? Why are the ancients more powerful than their descendants?

The earlier Sith also seemed to be able to channel Force through certain objects or even a bunch of people, IIRC. This might be the difference. While Palpatine may have the 'battle meditation' power, he may not know the 'use thousands of pissants to channel force' power.

Darth Wong wrote:The near-total destruction of the Sith Order, perhaps. Many of its secrets would have been lost or seized by the Jedi Order, which then forbade the teaching of these secrets. In the ROTS novel, Anakin reports to Palpatine that they have now re-acquired their holocrons; this might indicate that the Jedi kept some of the captured Sith holocrons rather than destroying them. This might also explain why Palpatine had Force Storm powers many years later: powers which could easily obliterate an Eclipse-class starship and could obviously devastate a planet as well.

Palpatine did indeed spend a great deal of time studying after he created the Empire, as indicated by the Dark Empire Sourcebook, which specifically says that after he was acclaimed Galactic Emperor, he "gathered the greatest works of knowledge from over a million worlds" and "studied the Force in all its guises throughout the galaxy, whether it was the shamanism of the Jarvashqiine or the tales of the Tyia," to the point that "he had long ago gone beyond any knowledge to be found in the recovered teachings of the Krath or the Heresiarchs" (The New Essential Guide to Characters adds that he was "known to have studied [the Sorcerers of Tund] prior to their destruction"). The NEGC also explicitly states that Palpatine learned "the secret of spirit transference via the Force" from Master Jedi Ashka Boda after the Great Purge; he also took a particularly valuable 600-year-old holocron from Boda before killing him, which he added to his growing collection (he had at least one Sith holocron before the Great Purge, and the "restricted holocrons" of Revenge of the Sith are explicitly said to include "the only known Sith Holocrons, whose very existence is revealed only to a handful of Jedi at the highest levels" according to Attack of the Clones: The Visual Dictionary, which are said to "contain teachings of powerful evil" (it also mentions, interestingly enough, that "after he left the Jedi Order, Dooku was no longer able to use the Sith Holocron in the Archives" (emphasis added)). It is worth noting that The Dark Side Sourcebook calls Sidious the most powerful Sith Lord in the history of the Sith Order.

Where does NEGC get the Ashka Boda name from? *Grumbles about having to rewrite a portion of his RoTS fic*

Darth Fanboy wrote:Where does NEGC get the Ashka Boda name from? *Grumbles about having to rewrite a portion of his RoTS fic*

Dark Empire.

Stravo wrote:Wouldn't lightsaber skills and forms evolve over time and be better? Aren't figthing styles and dueling refined as time goes on so that a Spanish fencer of the 14th century would easily wipe the floor with a Roman duelist of 1000 years earlier?

This is a brain-bug, and one of the reasons medieval sword fighting has been so unfairly maligned, not only by katanaphiles but by rapier stylists who'd wax poetic about how their techniques represented the 'pinnacle' of an evolution from the rough, uncultured, barbaric hacking of the medieval times.

Which, of course, is pure bullshit. In a historical perspective it seems fairly easy to create a workable martial art -- after five or six generations of development by a few masters, and tempered through conflict, you'll start seeing a quite serviceable body of techniques. Apparently, limitations of the human body are good signposts for what can and cannot be done.

Stravo wrote: Why would a Sith Lord from millennia ago be a better deulist or have secret more powerful forms than an order that has been around refining their styles for millennia afterwards? Does that make sense?

It does, if you posit a very inflexibly structured Order whose priorities continually change. Then throw an upheaval every two hundred years or so with the occasional attendant loss of knowledge, and you'll pretty soon have a situation where a style no longer has any meaningful reason for looking as it does, except for it being traditional. Then you embellish it some more because you aren't really penalized for it -- as a Jedi, you don't have to pay for your mistakes in sworsmanship in quite the same way, as you can fall back on your Force abilities. Then you realize that the more showy you get, the easier it is to intimidate the mobs that are your principal enemy.

Add the very Star Warsy notion of ancient superior fighting forms and secrets common to japanese and, I think, chinese mythology, shake, and stir.

To be fair when those energy shields are introduced it's made perfectly clear they're to expensive for use except for what amounts to special forces guys. Considering Kyle Katarn apparently had such a system (nevermind the Gungans) I think it might be reasonable to say they haven't actually disappeared. It would be natural for them to be messed with more when they're a new fangled thing though, no?

Not to mention by the PT era they haven't had a war in how long, and what politician wants to bother funding such away from their pork? By the OT the New Order has taken power and why would they want to let people have something that might give them a leg up against their normal troops?