The Force: the act of war further "thickens" the cloud that limits Jedi perception- the same cloud or "shroud" referred to by Yoda and Mace Windu that was limiting the ability of the Jedi to use the Force back in Attack of the Clones.pp 348-349 wrote:It's not a thrilling climax; it's not the culmination of an epic struggle. Just the opposite, in fact. The Clone Wars were never an epic struggle. They were never intended to be.
What is happening right now is why the Clone Wars were fought in the first place. It is their reason for existence.The Clone Wars have always been, in and of themselves, from their very inception, the revenge of the Sith.
They were irresistible bait. They took place in remote locations, on planets that belonged, primarily, to "somebody eles". They were fought by expendable proxies. And they were constructed as a win-win situation.
The Clone Wars were the perfect Jedi trap.
By fighting at all, the Jedi lost.
With the Jedi Order overextended, spread thin across the galaxy, each Jedi is alone, surrounded only be whatever troops he, she or it commands. War itself pours darkness into the Force, deepening the cloud that limits Jedi perception. And the clones have no malice, no hatred, not the slightest ill intent that might give warning. They are only following orders.
In this case, Order Sixty-Six.
Hold out blasters appear in clone hands. ARC-170s drop back onto the tails of Jedi starfighters. AT-STs swivel their guns. Turrets on hovertanks swung silently.
Clones open fire, and Jedi die.
All across the galaxy. All at once.
Jedi die.
Ground Combat: A canonical reference to hovertanks (presumably using repulsorlifts like landspeeders) used by the Grand Army of the Republic. This may be a reference to the TX-130 Sabre-class "fighter" tank.
Ground Combat: a glimpse of the weaponry used by the heavy-weapons operators of a Clonetrooper company- T-21 repeating blaster rifles (also used by Stormtroopers in A New Hope, on Tatooine), guided shoulder-fired torpedoes, and proton grenade launchers capable of indirect fire.p 349 wrote: Cody had coordinated the heavy-weapons operators from five different companies spread over an arc of three different levels of the sinkhole-city ...
He raised his comlink. "Execute."
On that order, T-21 muzzles swung, shoulder fired torps locked on, and proton grenade launchers angled to precisely calibrated elevations.
"Fire."
Kenobi, his dragonmount, and all five of the destroyer droids he'd been fighting vanished in a fireball that for an instant outshone Utapau's sun.
Visual polarizers in Cody's helmet cut the glare by 78 percent; his vision cleared in plenty of time to see shreds of dragonmount and twisted hunks of droid raining into the ocean mouth at the bottom of the sinkhole.
Cody scowled and keyed his comlink. "Looks like the lizard took the worst of it. Deploy the seekers. All of them."
Ground Combat: Clonetrooper units deploy seeker droids to assist in reconnaisance and the acquisition of targets. These are probably similar to the model seen in use by the Stormtroopers searching for the droids in A New Hope.
Ground Combat: canonical reference to the vision aid devices present in Clonetrooper (and by extension, Stormtrooper) helmets.
The Force: self-explanatory.p 354 wrote:He clipped it back to his belt by feel, and- using only a minor exercise of Jedi discipline to suppress compulsive coughing, he contracted his diaphragm, forcing as much water from his lungs as he could.
Droids: Clonetrooper seekers obviously have self-preservation programming.pp 357-358 wrote: He had walked only a few hundred metres before the gloom ahead of him was pierced by the white glare of high-intensity searchlights ...
Their searchlights illuminated- and, apparently, awakened- some sort of immense amphibian cousin of a dragonmount ...
The Huge Slimy Cave-Monster in question promptly opened jaws that could engulf a bantha and snapped one of the seekers from the air, chewing it to slivers with every evidence of satisfaction. The second seeker emitted a startled and thoroughly alarmed wheepwheepwheep and shot away into the darkness, with the creature in hot pursuit.
Sensors: a wealth of canonical information about Star Wars sensors.p 359 wrote:Tantive IV swept through the Kashyyk system on silent running; this was still a combat zone. Captain Antilles wouldn't even risk standard scans, because they could so easily be detected and backtracked by Separatist forces.
...
"Bail stared through the forward view wall. Kashyyk was only a tiny green disk two hundred thousand kilometres away. "Do you have a vector?"
"Roughly, sir. It seems to be on an orbital tangent, headed outsystem."
"I think we can risk a scan. Tight beam."
"Very well, sir."
Antilles gave the necessary orders, and moments later the scan tech reported that the object they'd picked up seemed to be some sort of escape pod. "It's not a Republic model, sir- wait, here comes the database-"
The scan tech frowned at his screen. "It's ... Wookie, sir."
...
"Interesting." Bail didn't yet allow himself to hope. "Lifesigns?"
"Yes- well, maybe ... this reading doesn't make any ..."
The scan tech could only shrug. "I'm not sure, sir. Whatever it is, it's no Wookie, that's for sure ..."
1. Ships can run in a reduced emissions mode to reduce their detectability to enemy sensors.
2. This reduced emissions mode includes scanning.
3. Scanning can be modulated to "tight beam", presumably to minimize the above risks.
4. The Tantive IV can not only detect an escape pod roughly 200,000km away- but it can also check a database to see what the target is, identify it precisely, scan for lifesigns, and determine what kind of life it is, to the point of detail in this case that is most assuredly not a Wookie.
Propulsion: techniques used by a hyperdrive-capable craft to evade pursuit. Presumably these attempts worked.p 360 wrote:Obi-Wan took General Grievous's starfighter screaming out of the atmosphere so fast he popped the gravity well and made jump before the Vigilance could even scramble its fighters. He reverted to real space well beyond the system, kicked the starfighter to a new vector, and jumped again. A few more jumps of random direction and duration left him deep in interstellar space.
Comms: Obi-Wan is able to patch in General Grievous' comm system into his Jedi comlink, then use the galaxy-wide Holonet system to call out to any Jedi, anywhere.p 360 wrote:
While the starfighter's nav system whirred and clunked its way through recalculating his position, he punched codes to gang his Jedi comlink into the starfighter's system.
Instead of a holoscan, the comlink generated an audio signal- an accelerating series of beeps.
Obi-Wan knew the signal. Every Jedi did. It was the recall code.
It was being broadcast on every channel by every Holonet repeater. It was supposed to mean that the war was over. It was supposed to mean that the Council had ordered all Jedi to return to the Temple immediately.
Obi-Wan suspected it actually meant what had happened on Utapau was far from an isolated incident.
He keyed the comlink for audio. He took a deep breath.
"Emergency Code Nine Thirteen," he said, and waited.
The starfighter's comm system cycled through every response frequency.
He waited some more.
"Emergency Code Nine Thirteen. This is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Repeat: Emergency Code Nine Thirteen. Are there any Jedi out there?"
Culture: The Jedi Order has existed for 25,000 years.p 362 wrote:Twenty-five thousand years wiped from existence in a single day.
Misc: an example of the kind of ridiculously dense materials available for frivolous sculpture in the Star Wars galaxy. Which a lightsabre can cut through, given time.p 320 wrote:As a Jedi shuttle settled to the landing deck outside, the shadow sent its mind into the far deeper night within one of the several pieces of sculpture that graced the office: an abstract twistof solid neuranium, so heavy that the office floor had been specially reinforced to bear its weight, so dense that more sensitive species might, from very close range, actually perceive the tiny warping of the fabric of space-time that was its gravitation.
Neuranium of more than roughly a millimeter thick is impervious to sensors; the standard security scans undergone by all equipment and furniture to enter the Senate Office Building had shown nothing at all. If anybody had used an advanced gravimetric detector, however, they might have discovered that one smallish section of the sculpture massed slightly less than it should have, given that the manifest that had accompanied it, when it was brought from Naboo amoung the then-ambassador's personal effects, clearly stated that it was a piece of soild-forged neuranium.
The manifest was a lie. The sculpture was not entirely solid, and not all of it was neuranium.
...
The darkness within the sculpture whispered of the shape and feel and every intimate resonance of the device it cradled. With a twist of its will, the shadow triggered the device.
The neuranium got warm.
A small round spot, smaller than the circle a human child might make of thumb and forefinger, turned the color of old blood.
Then fresh blood.
Then open flame.
Finally a spear of scarlet energy lanced free, painting the office with the color of stars seen through the smoke of burning planets.
I will add more when I get my hands on the actual novelization
not near-humans like the Chiss, Etti , Hapans etc.
