A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 97: Dark Force Rising Pt. 2 (Ch. 11 - 21)

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

It is all happening this week: Han reverts to a flustered school boy in the face of Corellian local legend. Luke gets a new teacher, and the vibes are more off than ever before. Leia connects with her dad's favorite slave race. And Mara Jade finds herself compelled to help a boy she just.... GRRR... she hates him!!! Has Star Wars ever been this good?  NEXT TIME: Dark Force Rising Ch. 22 - 29 Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Ricardo Contreras (@a_cado_appears) Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zackney, joined by Ali Akron, Pora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners, via patreon.com slash civilized, so head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our Q&A episodes. So we're covering the middle section of Dark Force Rising Day with today's episode. chapters 10 through 21, is that it? 11 through 21. 11 through 21.

So the things fork out pretty nicely for this one. We were going to sort of take things chronologically last time. We actually go back to sort of dealing with the plot arcs of the characters, characters respectively. I'd say the biggest storyline in this section is Leah's mission to Onager, where she finds she has nothing. she can fairly offer or ask of the no-grey, but her failing mission turns even more dire as she has pinned on the planet by a suspicious Grand Admiral Thrawn

who wants to know why the no-gri are acting so odd and why does Kabarok the Leah's guide to the planet, why is he so full of shit? Han and Lando, meanwhile, find themselves at the secret base of a disaffected splinter faction

of the old Rebel Alliance, led by a legendary Correllian senator, Garm Bell Iblis. Yum, yum, yum, yum. These are these are. Delicious food here. Delicious food. Good drinks. Good hang.

Han is dazzled by the man's reputation and charm. While Lando increasingly regards the entire group of suspicion and contempt, both men are sent into a panic by the realization that Bell Iblis's fleet of dreadnots are salvaged Catana fleet dreadnoughts. They're given a lead on the fleet's location by a. by Bell Iblis's aide who knows the senator is waiting to rescue the galaxy from a power-hungry manmabma, who exists only

in the senator's imagination. Yeah, dude. And that Bell Iblis can only bring himself to come back to the rebel fold if he can present something of value to the new republic. That is the same logic that motivates Mara to use her past connections to the empire to

attempt to negotiate with Thron directly. Caught in a basically an imperial speed trap. She is forced to play the only card she has, which is that she is the former emperor's hand and goes straight to the top and is given an audience with Thrawn

where she offers Thrawn the Catana fleet to mollify him and put card back in the Empire's good graces. But of course, Thrawn immediately betrays her, tracking her back to cards so that he can extract the fleet's location under interrogation. Mara realizes her sometime on again, off again

daydream of reconciling herself to Thrawn's empire has been a folly, especially after Thrawn just decides to get incredibly personal and cruel just to really dance in the end zone while Mara looks on in horror

but her mistake has also made enemies of Cards' entire organization with no flag or master to follow but knowing she needs to rescue card Mar runs to Luke Skywalker to ask his help on a rescue mission. How's Luke been? He might need a little rescuing of his own, of course. His insecurity about his own lack of knowledge about the Jedi Order and the Force

lead him to let himself be instructed by Saviath, even as all his instincts, are telling that something is really not right about the old master. Things escalate quickly when literally on day one, Sabiof shows Luke his vision, his version of Jedi dispute resolution, where Luke would like to be this kind of investigative small claims judge, we saw him be on New Cove. Sabiaf simply hands-down dictates and uses force lightning on anyone who disagrees. This is not Luke admits to Artu a good sign.

But Luke's lingering daddy issues lead him to see Sabio, not as a dark Jedi or an enemy, but as a man undone by sickness and loneliness. But when Sabayov attacks Mara when she arrives on Jomark and tries to tell Luke that Mara is his enemy, the younger Jedi has seen enough and makes clear he will not be joining Sabiof, especially when the Asala Miri that Mara brought with her for this exact eventuality reveals to Luke that just the kind of weird, low-gey lack of energy he's had since showing up on Joe Mark, was Sabayov just kind of messing with his mind?

Luke tells Sabiof that he is he's leaving with Mara but he's willing to he's willing to help Sabiof get better Sabiof attacks Luke and Mar instead but as people so often do he forgets about Artoe who knocked him the fuck out with a warning shot from the X-wing all-timer strongest character Marr suggests to Luke they should just kill Sabiaf while he's vulnerable but Luke insists the price insists that they cannot do this while Sabiof is so is so vulnerable and that he could maybe still be saved. The two set off together for the chimera to rescue card before Thron can ring the Katana Fleet's final resting place out of the smuggler.

I just want to, I want to take Luke's little face in my hands and just hold him and just say, you can't fix him. Yeah. You can't. Oh. You can't. And it's okay. and it's time to let go

and and leave and it's time to leave Joe Mark and maybe let Mara kill this guy before you do and maybe he's got really evil vibes I love we'll get there but we'll get there

we'll get there and in the background of this I would say like we are starting to see the implied mistakes of Thrawn and begin to pile up, and that is first, like, most palpable in the, in the Ottinger section, as, as Leia is, is trying to get the backstory of the Nogri out. And it's a, it's a brutally sad one. It is a planet that, you know, she hears from the Matroch that, you know, she tells the story as they, as they understood it,

that they were a pre-spice space-faring race, like far-flung tribes with a history of warring against one another, like hunter-gatherer society, and then one day, for a series of days, there appears to have been some sort of titanic space battle in low orbit. The description is really good shit. This is the kind of stuff that I would love to see in Star Wars more. She talks about like the tops of mountains just being like planed off.

by laser blasts and spaceships falling from the sky, creating like Krakatoa level earthquakes and like clouds covering the planet. The bit that gets me there, and I know we're jumping ahead, but I'm going to read from it because I haven't highlighted, is it was like a war between gods. We know now that it was only large flying craft above the land, but then we knew nothing of such things. Their lightning flash across the sky through the night and into the next day, brightening the distant mountains with their fury, and yet there was no thunder, as if those same gods

are too angry to even shout at each other as they fought. I remember being more frightened of the silence than of any other part of it. Only once was there a distant crash like thunder. It was much later before we learned that it was one of our highest mountains that had lost its uppermost peak. Then the lightning stopped, and we dared to hope that the gods had taken their war away from us until the ground shake came uh-oh because it turns out they the the ship that crashed into this big mountain was a like older model rebel ship that leaked a bunch of chemicals all over the planet and brought like plague and acid rain and total environmental destruction.

No more, no, like the vegetation is completely obliterated. Most of the animals, animals have been, been killed. And the moment that Leia recognizes that the only way this could have happened is like from specifically an older ship and the only people who had older ships were the rebels because that's all they could get. Yep. is yeah it's it's like we're the only people putting guns on like pre-catalytic converter cars right where it's just it's just like yeah every everywhere we went we just like clouds of mercury

behind um and then the punchline is that after that battle Vader comes down and you know the the the Nogri had gathered the tribes in their main city, sort of a neutral ground where the tribes could discuss business without you know, it erupting into conflict and

the Empire landed led by Vader and a bunch of Nogree warriors decided let's get these guys and they did. I do love that Laya's like wow, but they were just massacred with the by stormtroopers and they were like did not go that way.

No. Did not, didn't go that way. They wrecked shop and then it was Vader who shot, who, who defeated them and shut them down. But Vader immediately recognized, what we got here is an asset. Well, a little bit of that. You know, I think we can read it as like, you know, obviously this is, this is the story of how the empire gets a limitless supply of death commandos. Yeah. That are like, you know, incredibly competent.

But in the no-gris telling, Vader is the only person who, like, immediately and a surprising degree of, like, sensitivity to what has happened, uh, begins, like bringing aid, begins taking, like, cultural relics from, like, unsupportable outlying villages to, like, a sort of rehabbed, uh, preserve that they're, that they're trying to concentrate the no-grian. Uh, and, and so, like, that is the origin of, of the no-gris. reverence for for vader it's sort of this image of uh vader as like at least in their eyes benevolent disaster recovery administrator yeah well and it's fun because there's a little shifting of ambiguity here where in the first book when you learn about this you're like okay there's some uh it wasn't the rebels was it the empire the empire secretly do this and then they're like claiming the rebels did it um and no you're sure now the rebels did the thing they didn't do it, but it was the cost, it was, it was because of one of these old rebel ships.

But now there's more ambiguity around Vader and where in the line of all of this, did this go from, like, rehabilitative for cost to purely exploitative? Is, was, did Vader lock them in the terrible loan repayment scheme that they're in now? Or is that something that Thron or the emperor even administered more closely? How much of, you know, Vader's vision for this was one where they could theoretically repair their planet? How much of it was that he was already completely locking them in to the scheme that we get detailed here, which is that like, hey, you know, we will produce or bring decontamination droids here to slow. repair your world in exchange for you giving us your like your best hunters to come kill for us basically which by the way also takes their strongest hands away that could help rebuild their their culture and their planet so like there's like a double cost there that the matrock is like

she understands in her heart of hearts how screwed they are and leah like keys in on it like truly it is described like a payday loan scheme like there's just no way to dig yourself out of this credit scheme um uh and they can't even recall the the no greek commando teams right because like that would tip them into a famine they cannot support uh the the detachments of no gree that are out there um and i do love the detail too there's a little bit of them as awful as its deal is there's a little bit of them that's like this is how we got to travel stars like it was a

thing the no we're always like we're fascinated by and we're curious about and so there is this little bit of our planet was destroyed but we've gotten to see the galaxy out of all this but the funny thing here is this conversation

is a really good one between Leah and the matriarchie and it's over. It's like Leia is basically like we can't, you know this deal sucks, right? And the Matrix, we know. Some of us do.

Some of us know that we, like, that this is a payday loan situation, that this is, we are never going to be able to discharge this debt. This has become exploitative for quite some time. But it's kind of the only deal on offer. The Republic is far away. empire is here and there's there's there's there's really nothing you can do except get us all

killed just by your very presence and so leah yeah yeah that's a change it's done laya's like a leaf well that will be a wrap well that's fine because they're on left already right should be easy to get out of here right yeah yeah you can just he's back fuck uh because Wookie shut I do think this is one of the funniest fuck-ups we ever get for Thron though This is like his His line of reason

Like of Like Consequence or the line of The timeline of events that he pulls together From from finding the wookie fur Is so funny It's what he finds is They've done the breakdown of the ship

To see if the lies See if Cabrack was lying as a reminder Cabrack said oh I couldn't land at the main place I didn't call in because there was some some sort of bugs in the system I was going through it One I was going through it So I wanted to stay out for 30 days to get my head straight before I came home Two I didn't respond right away because I had a glitch in the machine

Three, I landed at my place instead of landing at the central place to get it fixed because like no one told me I had to and I wanted to go home and see my mom. So they were investigating to see if the glitch was real, which we get double confirmation in this section that Chewbacca set it up, right? Yeah, successfully set up the glitch. Exactly. But while they're looking at it all, they're just like, damn, there's a lot of Chewbacca hair in here.

There were some damn bookies in here. And Thrawn is like, ah, my dear Pallion, I figured it out. He spent 30 days among the wookies. And then he brought that hair back on board his ship with him. Mm, yes. We have to go. He's been, we have to interrogate him and see what the wookies got out of him. Yep.

It's like the idea that that Caraback's ship was just still on Kashik. like, wookies were just, like, coming on board, coming off, like, just hanging out, getting off. Like, it's just like, it's so, I love when Thron is so confidently wrong. It's great. Because it, we, he needs to be a little bit of a, of, he needs a little clownishness to him. Like, Pelion is, is absolutely a, uh, his, like, his, his, his fool. foolish counterpart, who has a very serious attitude, but, like, is usually the last to kind of

figure out the through line of, uh, uh, Throne's thinking. But Thron, but Thron, yeah, I just, I love a little bit of a... The thing that I've been thinking about a lot for this section is like, damn, Thron would make a great emperor. Unfortunately, there's not really an empire. There's a fleet. And he keeps needing to just do it all himself. He's bouncing around the galaxy with his whole damn fleet or with like a lard with the chimera and like, you know, it's major support vessels. And he's like, all right, I'm going to go take care of this. Now, I'm going to go over here. I'm going to go deal with Marjain and then I'm going to go deal with the no green. And then I'm going to go deal with this. And it's like, no, no, no, like you can't

do it all. You're going to start making mistakes when you do that. Like you, the way the system works is the emperor had 12 grand admirals who were really good my man you don't have one grand admiral you're the grand admiral and that's it you know like you got to build a support structure under you that you can delegate to because when you put it on your back you're going to start making stupid mistakes like thinking i bet there were just a bunch of rookies on this ship for 30 days not chubacca was on there the guy i've been chasing the guy who i thought was on there a week Listen, we know that he was, he was on Kashik. We do.

You know, there are a lot of, there are a lot of wookies out there. A lot of wookies on Kashik, obviously. It's just funny that he's finally made a more restrained guess for the first time in the entire book series so far. And it's the wrong one for the first time. Yes. Yes, it's very good. We were, this was our wish, right? Our wish was that, that all, for all of his, um, critical.

thinking skills and art analysis expertise that he would get it he needs to get it wrong and this is a very funny way to get it wrong. Well and that he would never, I think in a weird

way this is also representative of his blind spot where Jedi are concerned. Nobody he's familiar with would do, their move would have been what Leah is doing. What he assumes happened is sort of a routine like counterintelligence

ploy, right? Like we capture one of their agents, interrogate them, then, you know, release them, and we've gotten a bunch of info and the empire won't know that we've turned him

or that, you know, that something's gone sideways here. Thrawn should probably be more alarmed if the existence of the no-grey's been compromised to begin with. One of the big advantages is that nobody knew anything about these commandos.

So that seems like it should be alarming in itself. But the thing he just never even considers is that he is so convinced that like Leah would do what you'd assume like any, you know, pregnant woman would do in this situation when she's being hunted by people who want to steal her kids. She'd go to ground and like hide. It never occurs to him that they would get Cabrach under interrogation and say, no, no, no, we're coming with you to your house. We want to go talk to all the... We want to go meet all the no-grie.

And just, like, deal with this problem at the source. It's so funny because it's like, if there is one... You would think the guy who studies art would understand that sometimes people are moved by mythic or, like, traditionally epic, you know, like, poetic epic, like, goals and drives. And that's what the fucking Skywalker's are all about is, like, redeeming their parents.

parents. And, you know, in this case, the idea that Leah, if Leah found out about this, she would want to free, she would want to clean the rebellions conscious of the act that scarred the no-gree planet and then leverage her relationship with her, you know, leverage her relationship with her father to like fix the situation. And in a way, kind of overtake the shadow of him. her mind like but he's not he's not applying that lens to the skywalkers in any way he is just he is thinking in this tactical strategy game like they are over here playing six ages or um or king of dragon pass and he is playing he's playing age vampires like he is not even really

playing crusader king you know what i mean in the weird way he he has this like lack of curiosity about the no gree outsources on his understanding the no gree to rook yeah hey Rook, does this seem, does this seem legit? Hey, rook, what, what a bunch of Nogri think of this? But, like, he's apparently not concerned that he's had them hunting Leia and, like, all their little, like, kids playing, like, soccer in the street are doing so beneath, like, little Nogree portraits of, like, Vader and shit. Like, he's never, like, this hasn't. Hey, he does. He knows, right?

Wait. Does he not know? Does he know? Does he know? I feel like he must not, right? Like, because this is such, like, he knows that he sent them after Leia. And he knows that whatever the, like, change of conscious happened, happened with a wookie on Kashik. Does he not know?

We assume that. Because the emperor gave them to him. The Republic public publicize. Vader didn't know he had any kids until Empire starts back. You were saying, does he know that the Skywalker's are Vaders? Yeah, that has to be a known thing, right?

Is it not a known thing in this continuity? Did the Emperor know? Shit. It did occur to me like, I'm like, well, of course everyone knows that, but unless Luke and Leia told everyone the Republic was like, yes, the people must know that our heroes of the rebellion are Vader. I'm not 100%.

Do people know Luke is... They don't look this up. Don't look this up. I do. There's a scene later that touches on this point. Okay.

Well, in the current continuity, I know the answer to this. Who's Skywalker is, though, right? Like, for him to point Mara... Yeah. Right. So why wouldn't Thron now? Throne left before it all went bad.

Right. Like, you have to imagine it was like, the Death Star is being destroyed. And at that point, Tron is like, I have to take care of important business and unknown space. And

the emperor is like, yes. That is where you need to be right now. In the contemporary, in the current continuity, this is part of what that book Bloodlines is about is about a becoming public knowledge that Leah is Vader's daughter and how that like

destroys her public like ability to like she's like the person holding everything together. she's a little bit like the Mon Mothma figure in this book. And then, like, someone kind of leaks that to the world, and it fucks up the whole thing. It's good. It's great. I really like that book.

It's a Claudia Gray book. And there's, like, some of my favorite stuff in there shows up kind of here with Laid, kind of thinking through her relationship with Vader. But, yeah, I guess I don't know. I don't know. I, for some reason. I'm going to skim through what we've read so far. Like, does he, he knows Luke is a Jedi.

Yes. But, and he, he, he, doesn't, I can't actually think of any time he's like really talking that much about Vader or like any real, like, because it would be a huge, I don't, I think if he knew that,

I'm not sure he would have sent the Nogre on this mission. He would constantly be thinking like, as the children of Vader, they, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, right? Because he's too smart. The minute the Nogre acting weird, he would probably be able to make this,

this deductively, which is that, right. Oh, yeah, this would have been a weird mission to send them on. Yeah. I'm not sure. That would explain to a little bit of this. Like, he is, he's just like, what could be going on here with the Nogre? And that would also explain why he never even imagines that, like, Leia might try to pull something like this.

Right. Totally. Because to him, Leia is this key figure in the rebellion, is the sister to Luke Skywalker. Walker, Jedi Hero, herself, kind of a Jedi in training. But, like, there's none of the familial relationship stuff. And there's none of the direct connection to the Nogri. Yeah. And, like, they're just not operating in that schema, in that sort of, like, version of history

and storytelling, right? Right. God, well, I have to go, but we have to go back and look at the books in between sessions to see. He has, I don't know. Does no one know? So at this point, the. Populizations for the original trilogy were already out, right?

Yeah, those were out for years, yeah, for a long time, for a long time. But also are not like the sort of like publishing industry isn't built around them at this point. Do you know what I mean? Like they'd been out for so long. This is a new sort of core group of editors and writers and at the publisher who are like, building this new continuity out again there have been the marvel comics there have been those things thrott there as on is not referencing those so low exactly zan has kind of bracketed those and been like all right whatever that other shit whatever like this is the new shit we're taking a string

at this like it's a new trilogy of movies this is all you need right so but yeah uh i do like like thron is the sherlock holmesian character but it is like if sherlock holmes gets it is capable of getting it just like wrong 10% of the time. And usually in places that require a little more common touch, as it were, a bit more humanity. And I think what's interesting is, you know, Pelion, he likes having Pelion around because, like, Pelion is very smart. He's, he, but he's smarter than Watson is to Holmes, right? Like, Watson is just there to observe Holmes and be like, I'm astonished. I didn't get any of it. Pelion is smart enough. And it pleases Throne when, when Pellion like tips his hand that he's perceptive and insightful.

He likes that someone smart is able to appreciate like he's performing to an audience that can like sort of, they're close enough that you can sort of show off to Pellion. But that doesn't escalate to like I'm really going to very often listen to Pellion about this stuff, which comes up in various places here as well. Like should we do this? Is this the play? And Thron goes down there. We're going to talk to them about these wiki hairs. And a bit of comedy unfolds at this point. Like, when I read this as a kid,

I never fully appreciated the slapstick of the fire drill that unfolds here where it's like, where do we go? We're in a big, empty receiving chamber, but there's kind of a weird confessional booth somewhere off to the side. But there's three of us. There's a wookie, a pregnant lady,

and a droid. And a droid, yeah, an anxious droid, yeah. The bit where Jabaka just scampers up the wooden posts supporting the roof. Yep. And just bodily dumps 3PO on the pinhole, like, relief sculpture of the star, of the stars. I couldn't believe that this is not how they got caught. Because we've, it's been set up, you know, that Thron is, is so observant that he pays so much attention to art. And the, um, the, is it the Dukha?

The, yeah. The Dukha is described as having all of these carvings, like on each of the pillars, uh, on the walls and everything that describe the, the sort of family tree of the, the, the, Matrix family and of this clan and I was convinced that like Thron was going to walk in and like see just giant wookie claw marks on on all of the pillars and that was going to be and like 3PO would have like I don't know they he would have like observed that the stars there's something obscuring the the star dish up above them but luckily Luckily, he wasn't that observant, was too focused on doing evil things and launching a pretty horrific intimidation attack against the no-gris here. But, yeah, I was shocked. I was shocked that they got, that they missed this. And the description of the hiding place where Chubaka has to fold himself up inside the little confessional booth and, like, basically hunch over Leah, who's, like, crowd. down between his knees and she also does Jedi sensory skill she turns up the game she turns up the game so she just is like like his fur is all over her and she feels like his hot breath and and and all of the like uh she will she turns it on so she can hear um uh thron and and everything that's going on in the center of the room um um um

It's especially kind of shocking because she turned the gain all the way up and as Thron kind of launches this intimidation attack, she like is completely shell-shocked by the sounds, which, you know, who amongst us hasn't been there where we turned the microphone all. the way up and then we get sent the scary YouTube video that surprises you halfway through and and yeah I mean she doesn't do that somehow she just like gets knocked out basically and does not does not manage to give herself away yeah somehow somehow good work yeah I just searched the first book for Vader and father and does not fucking come up so I mean, another person probably worth saying doesn't know is Mara Jade. Right? Oh my.

We have no reason to believe that she knows who Darth Vader is, that Donald Vader's Anakin Skywalker or that Luke is Vader's son. We know that she knows that Vader offered Luke to overthrow the emperor and to conspire against the emperor, but we've no reason at this point, at this point, I don't think I've seen anything I again I searched that first book for the word son father Vader then why the fuck does she

hang on when they fly off yeah in this talk about this in detail but she's talking about how they they they got her with the old let you go but put tracker on your ship trick and he's like yeah

just like with the death star yeah and she says well that worked out for you and Luke says I don't imagine the emperor was pleased. No, he wasn't, Marce had her voice dark with memories of Rhone. Vader nearly died for that blunder. Deliberately, she looked over at Luke's hands. That was when he lost his right hand, in fact.

Okay. Why would she do that? Okay, well, maybe she knows. Maybe she knows. I don't know. Or maybe she's like, you also have a robot hand. Interesting. Like, Darth Vader, I actually love that beat, by the way.

The fact that in this version of the world, Vader is continuing to lose body parts, including because of Luke that the emperor took his fucking hand after the first Death Star incident is like wild and is like an interesting way of unsticking Vader in history and like making it clear that his his soul's always up for grabs. You know, in the language of Star Wars in which mechanization generally interests, you know, lines up with being corrupted by the dark side or being having something taken from you, which again, we've problematized a lot. the past. But like, the response to the Death Star stuff in whatever way is Darth Vader

loses a hand and like, oh, he's being drawn closer into the robotic killer vision for him that the emperor has. That that's not, that book wasn't already closed when the story started is a really fun twist on what I, I didn't, I never thought about Vader as someone who continued to get pushed towards cyborg as the movies went on. And that's, but like, it's actually good because it's like, oh, right, his soul is always at stake. You know, that's the thing, right? It wasn't like he was all the way corrupted and then Luke brought him back from the edge. It's always in motion.

It's stuff he's always moving back and forth is a really fun way to think about that, which, of course, is the case, because that's what happens with Luke. That's, that's, we've talked about this before. Luke is, uh, the status of Luke is always up in the air until these big dramatic moments where he's able to be like, no, this is who I am. This is what I believe. I'm not to think about what Marr's doing there, because I don't think she does now. Yeah. Maybe she's just thinking about Luke as, because she knows Luke's hand is cybergat. She does know that, but then what's she, what point?

You know what I mean? It's like kind of an odd beat. And I can't tell if it's like, is she kind of a nasty move where it's like in the same way. Like, is she, does she like testing for a weakness there where it's like, you know, you're more like this dark Jedi than you think? Right. Or is it also a... Because she knows the history there. Is she also saying, you know, before he took your hand, you took his?

Right. Is there a weird, is what she's saying? Is there a weird sort of like comforting, like, it, you, like, it was not just one way. Right. Like, before he did that to you, you know, he paid this price for something you did. I don't know. She doesn't know about the family connection, but she doesn't know. does remember them like working in together against the emperor right so it could be a dig of like

well you lost your master too like i lost everything yeah yeah it's true yeah she's partnered up her dream of that situation is really fun too because of how different it is than what actually happens in return of the Jedi or she her dream is like they take up their lightsabors and attack the emperor together it's like no not Not so much. The emperor vision of like, well, this is unfair. Yeah. No.

No. It's bullshit, guys. Papazine would not stand for that. This fucking sucks. Yeah. So, yeah, Thron, Thron does the, like, just scaring the hell out of them. But also, he still thinks it's just, you know,

Kabarak concealing the fact that he basically gave up a ton of info. to the Wookies and is hiding that fact because he was supposed to kill himself rather than be taking a prisoner but he's like

well he does an interesting thing after the whole thing he does where he has the turbo lasers from the chimera just like shell the area just to demonstrate like we could

you know obliterate this village in a heartbeat it's to make the point that, hey, like, you can't, like, the Matrix's trying to lawyer him about, like, no-grid custom and, like, how Kabarak should be handled. And Thron's response is like, no, you're forgetting that, like, I run this planet. Like, this is my word is law. But then afterwards, he softens, having made his point, and says, but you know what?

We will honor your custom. you guys can do your little no green investigation the public shaming do your ritual with Kabarok but just don't forget I'm letting you do it these

and it's interesting because like for me it feels like Thron is more culturally sensitive than the old empire but he still can't like every like he still doesn't understand that like this move here he inflicts the same kind of injury as the

empire does right he inflicts the injury of being like your customs don't have any value here like we will we'll put the boot on you when when we want to he inflicts the injury and then tries to soften it by honoring the customs but he's not going to get any credit for that right like he's like this is already how you alienate people this is how you make enemies of them and then he thinks, but you know, having done that, I can keep them on side by like throwing a bone to their sense of custom and propriety. And that isn't how that works, right? That's, that is not how like, you know, power and coercion. That's, that is a risky strategy he is adopting. Like, like, Machiavelli would be horrified, right? The, the core, like, insight of, like, Machiavellianism is

that if you're like it's better you know the it is better if people don't want to fight you if they don't hate you but if they're going to hate you you have to break the ability of that hatred to like translate in any sort of resistance and throng kind of does the opposite here right where he's like you can stay a heavily armed race of like elite commandos but now the laws of custom and honor that abound you to me I have just severed you know that because that's ultimately what he's done they can't betray the empire fundamentally because once upon time vader came down became their savior and they're pledged to the empire thron comes down and with this move is like eh fuck you in your little beliefs

but those shots have destroyed that claim to their loyalty and then he's like but don't worry you can still like do your little no-gry things we have to continue to serve us And in that one moment, it's like, well, now they're slaves and they know it. Well, and he keeps making this fucking mistake. Because this is also what he ends up doing later. We'll talk with Marjig. Yeah. Right?

It's the same thing of like, pull the leash as tight as possible and then give a little back on the leash as if that like brings you back to normal, which by the way is also what Sabayath does. Like for all of their bickering over what power looks like, they sure administer it very similarly to two people who they have no respect for, you know? Right. It's kind of, there's an interesting mirror thing happening there. It's just weird to me that it's like such a blind spot for him because like,

has he not seen any theater performances or like, to your point before, like, you know, there are stories about compassion. Like, like, it's just strange to me that he would not know. I mean, like, even if he doesn't know Darth Vader's. relationships. Like, he should, if he wants to wield the no-gris like he does, why wouldn't he, A, look into why they're even part of the empire at all? And it's through this, like, act that Darth Vader did. And why not, like, walk the walk and try to pretend to care for them like he did? Like, it just occurs to me that, like, that relationship never would have been

fostered if it was Thrawn being the person in orbit or whatever, right? The fact that Darth Vader went out of the way to go do that is what is why he has this this this weapon in his arsenal so like i it's just so strange to me that like he's supposed to be the guy who understands but can't close that gap on his own i think because ultimately he he does see the no gree as i mean not that he would ever see basically anyone as his equal, but like, genuinely sees the no gree as kind of an expendable. I mean, they're not exactly doing much to rehabilitate the planet. Like, they're keeping, they're keeping the no gree in this, uh, uh, enormous debt.

And with every thing that they, every, you know, resource that they provide, they, they, increase the debt even more to keep this kind of cycle of of owing so the no gree are constantly in in uh in debt to the the empire um and thron is taking that kind of initial setup and just like running with it but i i don't think he i don't think he sees the no gree as valuable because there's other things that are more

more valuable to him for example the Dark Force fleet he'll come to understand or come but Natalie I think like something you're highlighting here

is it's just you put things in different mental buckets like category and I think the no gree he's like they're a weapon like the Katana fleet

they're a military asset and they don't for whatever reason occupy the space he gives the people who are he studying who are like adversaries that needs to think

about cultures he needs to understand the Nogri it's like he's like those are my commandos that's the commando planet where I order up more commandos to do commando things

I hit a little plus key seven times and I get seven commando units oh I understand why he thinks this way because of the clone wars he's just yeah

they're just things that you use okay well I feel like he thinks well they're already subjugated there's like there's nothing left to figure out. Put them in checkmate.

They're in a win state. They're not going to get out of it. Yeah. They, for all the reasons that the Maitrack highlighted to Leia, they aren't in a position to resist the empire's rule at this point. They don't have the resources to support themselves or the people that, or, or, the commanders commandos that they've sent out in in service of the empire um so i feel like they're just they're not a threat like they're just not a threat and ultimately throns kind of flip-flop at the end of this scene here where he's like you know what take take cabrack uh and uh do your do your kind of

you know your traditional uh trial situation i'll be back in a couple days anyway like you can have him for a couple days i got other shit to do like he i feel like he's you know he's a boss spread too thin he's just he's got it's got too much on his plate he's got no one to delegate to and so because there isn't an immediate the things that he's seeking lea lea lay unchewy you know additional kind of uh uh resources for the empire like the like the dark force etc um information like he he just isn't seeing this as value he what he doesn't like is that he's being lied to but i don't think he thinks what he's being lied to about is very consequential or would have that big of an impact on what's going on in his world and like his kind of

movements and in machinations. But what he doesn't like is anyone that would be comfortable lying to Thrawn because it throws off like his anticipated like understanding of things. his his ability to strategize and anticipate um you know particular outcomes outside of that i i think he just like doesn't isn't identifying the the threat in hiding here and as a consequence like yeah when so lea was about to leave the next time we check in on them they're planning a prison break to rescue cabarach uh so like it is now nothing much happens for the rest of her time on Onager in the section, but it's like, she's now poking around and doing Jedi stuff with the, with the no gree and the matroch and the whole village now have basically defected, right?

It went from, we have no traders to there's an entire small clan that is now defected. And now Leah, who is willing to just pull up stakes and leave, is now out there like, all right, so then what we're going to do is going to blow the wall. You know what I mean? It's like we're going to, like, like some, some, some. full Skywalker Jedi nonsense is about to happen on this planet and that is

not that that should have been that is the type of thing Thrawn really would want to avoid but instead he's yes fixating on this notion of like Cobrocks not telling me about the fact that like the wookies caught him so what now you know

have we said why he leaves in such a hurry because this is also very funny today Ali he there's a report that the millennium Falcon is hovering above Endor

and he's like, oh my God, they could know about the mountain, the mountain that everybody cares about. I have to go rush back there. The thing they don't know about at all. And by the way, crucial thing. Do you remember the passage before this, Landau's

like, I don't know, and you're like maybe a little too nervous. Like, He's like, Grand Amarral could do anything. And Land is like, I don't know, but maybe he'll make a mistake. And Han's like, no, he won't. Grand Amaral's not going to make a mistake. And then we get this scene of, like, William Falcons in orbit above Endor. And he's like, oh, I figured it out.

And what he's figured out is that they took Kabarak in interrogation, filled his head with time. tons of bogus intel to distract. Right. Literally, he was like they released him knowing it would distract me. Right. Because our adversaries know how dangerous I am. They're trying to really get desperate.

So they released Cobrock with this bullshit story and a head full of like implanted fake info so that it would distract me and lure me away from the real thing they're investigating the mountain. and Peleon after hearing so he's like we gotta go we gotta go out indoor right now Endor Mountain

gotta figure out what's up and Pelion just says you know I feel like I should the rebels don't do this I just need to point out the new Republican intelligence does not historically

psychologically break recondition and release prisoners And Thrawn's like That's exactly what makes this plan So devious Sorry, I just wanted to say There is something about Thron Maybe it's because I've been listening to the Cambodia

Season of Blowback He's a little Nixony sometimes He's a little They're all working against me They're all working their angles I got to listen in I got to be everywhere all at once Like all these motherfuckers

you know what pelion you're the only one i can trust you know all these other people all around me are are are secretly scumbags and they're they're you know they're actually working against the cause that we've been putting into play like it's i i'm gonna keep watching we're gonna see what what does finally undo thron in the end uh maybe it will be you know uh that that paranoia ticked up to 11 that that uh undo them we'll see Sorry, Natalie, you were saying. I was going to just ask, what is the deal with this mountain? We don't fully know.

We just know that they're concerned about a particular mountain on the end of the mountain from the first book that Jura Sabayath was protecting that's filled with like imperial prototype weapons. The cloak, the cloaking device was in there. There's some other like secret. It's real. Well, then at the start of this book, during the army assault. on Cards base.

At the end of it, Thron puts in this request. Who were the best, like, officers and non-coms, you know, the best soldiers you saw during this assault, set them aside for the Mount Tantis project on Wayland. Right. We'll see.

But yeah, so he is, and also, like, to that point, he's nervous. It's a bit of a security through obscurity thing, he's nervous about protecting the mountain. And so, like, this is a move where he's, like, going into panic mode, trying to protect an asset that nobody knows he has. He is, but he's convinced,

he's somehow convinced that the rebellion might be onto it a little bit and goes, and leaves, leaves Onager in post-haste, leaving Leia and the Noghry to continue their cultural exchange. I want to come back really quick to an open question we keep talking about. We keep coming back to does Mara know, does Mara not know, does Thron know, who knows, etc. I went back and revisited the original conversation between Luke and Mara where, in the first book, where she explains that she was on Jabba's, the Jabba's palace, but didn't get to go out to the skiff for the execution. and so she wasn't there

for when she would have killed Luke still an extremely funny conversation and it's interesting The worst thing that ever happened to anyone happened to me that day Yeah, exactly that one Her eyes flashed Her lips twisted

And as a reminder This is also where Luke is like Vader knew I'd go there To rescue Han And so he sent you to capture me And Mara's like Vader

She all but spat the name Don't make me laugh Vader was a fool And skating on the edge of treason along with it my master sent me to job is to kill you, not recruit you. And he's like, oh, no, your master was the emperor. And so there's the thing that continues here that I think is interesting, given where we've been thinking about here.

So like, when I'm about to read, keep in mind the bit where Mara is looking at Luke's hand in the second bit that Robert read earlier. I also keep in mind that she doesn't know, that she doesn't fucking know. You're wrong, though, Luke said. He did try to recruit me, the emperor. Only because I failed, she ground out. Her throat, it says ground. Maybe he meant growled here.

She ground out, her throat muscles tight. And only when Vader had you standing right there in front of him. What? You don't think he knew Vader had offered to help you overthrow him? Unconsciously, Luke flexed the fingers of his numbed artificial hand. Yes, Vader had indeed suggested such an alliance during their Cloud City duel. I don't think it was a serious offer, he murmured. the emperor did mara said flatly he knew and what he knew i knew not true mara i'm sorry to tell you you don't know

you didn't know shit you didn't know shit and then and i think this is the other thing i was his hand skywalker that's how i was known to his record as the emperor's hand and so i think what we're getting a little bit here is mara sees does mara see lucas vader's hand in the in the way that she was the emperor's hand. And so we have the hand is this thing that connects them. They are the extension of their... Do you know what I mean?

And she's completely wrong. It's all about hands, baby. It's great. I know. I know. I'm so fond of her after this reading, though. So we'll get there. I also do like... This feels like Zahn is also

reading the film, a reading that I like, which is that the second version, Vader realizes his son is alive, the shit has hit the fan. Yeah. Like that all the, yes, good Vader, we're going to totally turn Luke Skywalker. That's an awesome plan. Yeah.

And meanwhile, back at the palace, she was like, oh, fuck. Oh, shit. Oh, no. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay, we can get this back. Okay, I can't just normally have Vader kill him. Can't do that.

Can't do it. I know Mara I'll send Mara to him She's pretty good with the force Like she can Look she'll have her go be a dancer at Jabba's The fact that she couldn't work her way On to the skiff is wild

She got on the wrong You know because you know what it is What is it? Because he got a new You got a new dancer that one Because Leah showed up He was like I don't need

Sorry you're not the entertainment came with this afternoon. I got someone who's way more fun. A princess would capture. And then, and then like 20 year old Mara Jade is like, Jabba, you will

let me go on the sail barge. And he was just like, oh, gosh. First shit doesn't work for me. No. You're totally right. I hadn't thought about it. I've been really taken reading these books how much, like, the foundation of trying to figure out stuff about this has been like, well, this character was just off screen a couple feet away and they saw the whole thing happen.

And, like, people have been doing this for decades at this point. And, like, just, oh, my God, putting together that there was a different dancer and it was Leia is physically harming me. It's so funny. Oh, it's good. So, I think maybe my favorite section in this whole book is our time with Senator Garbaudelibless. The way we come in on him as a great man, almost Hemingway-esque figure, uh, reliving past glories while just getting drunk off his ass with his two new bodies. Another through line of, like, a guy who's kind of profoundly lonely and wants people to hang out with and, like, appreciate what he's accomplished.

We got to get this guy in contact with cards. They need to hang. They need to meet up. They need to hang out. They would have so many dinner parties. They would, they would, they would just, they would vibe. They would be bros. They would vibe.

I do feel like they're a little bit, they're a little bit more, like, Garms. feels like he's madmen party and Card feels like he's a Fraser Crane Niles Crane party. You're right. There's a difference. Like I think like Garm wants to have a madman office party

and They can bond over these dreadnots though. Like I kept like sort of expecting them to have a relationship because I you know Everyone still could right We don't know yet. But yeah I

they can hang out on their weird In book three they throw the biggest The Death Star of dinner parties Can't wait Can't wait This is the real thing Rob Is actually It's that they would throw

Different parties That make them perfect To throw a party together It's not that they should hang They should put together A party What if it was like A Bride Wars situation

Where they had A dinner party The same night And like across across the hall from or like maybe across the planet i don't know what the and then all the characters could like you don't want to take sides so you attend the two parties and you try to like make it look like you're only attending the one but you're like darting between them yeah oh these canopays look great and you got to run back and eat like a full course like of the meal and then be like

oh you gotta take this you you note to the wrong person how good the crab cakes were and they're like crad cakes our host has a garm has a fish allergy yeah I'm saying how good they would have been I was saying

if not for that they would be incredible Garm's face falls I knew I should have I knew I should have served shellfish to the guests I shouldn't I shouldn't have let my allergy

despite myself so I love I also love that here we see a very unfamiliar side of Han Solo, which is like... Oh, it's so good. This is like Han Solo, kid from Space Boston, meaning a Kennedy. It literally is that.

God, I wish the audiobook had voiced him as a Kennedy. That would have been so funny. They voiced him as like a Southern gentleman in the book or the audio book. Hey, that's... I have to say something really important about voice acting. Yeah. And it has been bothering me for, for so long. But why does Hans sound like Kronk from Emperor's New Groove?

Because Kronk is doing a, there's a way you could get back to there. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Who is Kronk voiced by? Kronk is voiced by Patrick Warburton. Who is, of course, doing. I mean, Patrick Warburton probably just sounds like that for real, right? Yeah, he sounds like that.

What is the guy? He's kind of, Patrick Warburton is kind of doing a Phil Hartman, and both of them are doing like a sort of chest out masculinity from the 70s. That, that is. You know what I mean? So I think Zahn. You know what I'm talking about when he talks of like that? Yeah. Zahn writes him, writes, he dials into where Han sounds most like Han on the page.

Yes. Is in his like, hey, fuck you, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And I think when you're going from the chest like that, it is easy to be like, you push it out a little more and you begin sound. You begin deepening toward more of a Patrick.

You miss Hans. You miss Harrison Ford. Especially because that's a subtler voice. The voice actor's got to make these characters sound really distinctive when he reads their lines. So I guess I see how you get there because so often, like the things that are the most Han being Han in these books is him making a scene. He's not going to let something pass except for this one moment where he meets he meets Carpbell Iblis. No Corellion could forget you, sir. It's so funny.

The little bits we get of of Han's like childhood. schooling here where it's like the the senator from Corellia came in to to the class to talk about to talk about politics and Han stood up and talking about corruption in his face and Han and it's like it's like a re-and-the-an-alian laws and the anti-alian laws right right he was like I'm I'm anti-racist I'm a white boy who knows better yeah that's probably right actually Rob. And it's such a funny rerun of the last book where he's hanging out with cards people and cards people are like, oh, you're such a hero. And he's like, no, I'm not a hero. I actually don't do anything heroic ever. Because here he's like, I was probably just egged on by a friend

to say that stuff about corruption and anti-racism. It was probably just, I didn't believe it. I was just being a little jerk, you know. I love him. He's great. And he's completely bought in. He's completely bought into, I want to say the hype, but like, I don't know, Bill I almost seems all right to some degree. I think he's wrong about the major thing he's wrong about, but like, it's so fun to have a run at this sort of rebellion, like, outsider before, like, you know, I had forgotten this character fucking existed at all, and now I want him to show back up in contemporary continuity so badly. I need him to be in Andar Season 2.

I need him on screen with Saw Guerrera. You know what I mean? It is striking the degree to which you can you can survey fan fiction and see which characters hit and which one's missed. Yep. This dude shows up. If it's like, oh, the rebellion needs an emperor figure,

an admiral figure, it ain't gonna be. Yeah, Akbar's there. But like any chance, like fan fiction writers can be like, and then they get a fleet together. And it's Garm. It's Garm. Garm fucking. Garm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Because he is, he's kind of cool, right? It's like he's this legendary, you know, he explains the Han that like the emperor tried to kill him, killed his family. Cause, you know, he disappeared. Everyone just thought he was, he was gone in the, in the wake of all this. And then he, he makes such a great first impression, right?

Like this figure from the past. Lando's a little less buying into it at first. But the way, the whole dynamic of Garmt telling war stories and really wanting to impress these guys. And also just like have fun, let's drink these brandy sours, these Twitzlers.

Oh my God. Twistlers Twistlers Twistlers Twistlers How do they Not service twistlers And the

The scene opens With him like Galt And then just like shaking the glass At the wet bar He's gotten His command center

And the bartender Bring it over Like if this guy's gonna be If this guy's gonna be At war with the Empire forever He's gonna do it in style But like He's just

He's just belting them down he's talking about, you know, and then we took out of eubictor at base. That's when the Empire knew that, a real problem with us. And Han's like, damn, what they did? That's awesome.

How did you do that? That's so cool. And Lando is just like, so where do you get the ships? Hey, a minute ago you said you had five ships, but I counted six. There's six here. What's up?

Well, he's glaring at Han. because Han is like in full fanboy mode. A hundred percent. And Lando is just getting increasingly pissed. Yeah. Hey, man, where are you doing the war? You were in a different war with the empire that wasn't with us? You had your own war.

Because we didn't hear about you at all, you know? And it's not like me and Han are like big join up and do the rebellion things. We're criminals, you know? So like we thought maybe you would be part of that. You weren't there. I'm just asking questions. And Han is constantly like, Lando, come on. That's JFK's cousin, you know, like.

I love Han saying later, like, I've seen Chewy be more polite than you were. Since when do we care about being polite at a bar? I love that. It's so good. Han gets to have, I'm glad Landau's here to keep things on track, but I'm glad Han gets to have his fan boy moment because I feel like he's always playing the

too cool or like kind of just without a care. Like above it all, you know what I mean? And finally there's this guy who's this legend from his home planet. Who is cool? I get it. He's cool. He's cool. He's

going to have a dinner party that night. I was very disappointed. We didn't get to that dinner party. But so it goes. But I love when well one very crucial bit of information we learn is that Bell is aware

of a named leak in the Imperial Palace that there is someone called DeltaSource which showed up somewhere else in this? In the previous section the previous section Thron says Luke is going to Joe Mark

that's straight from DeltaSource Winter I hope it's not Winter at all, but he was, I know. No, hang on. Hang on, though. Hang on. Okay.

Because Thron's wrong. He's not going to Joe Mark. He goes to New Cove with Han Leia, but he is, he tells Winter, he's going to Joe Mark. That makes it sound like it's a case for. That means it is winter. No, no, right. Like, that is, that does indicate the conversation with Winter that is what was leaked. Yeah.

Either Winter did it or that, that com is. is bugged in some way. The intimate friend of Leo Argana with the perfect recall. Right. But that's so clean. Like that's so obvious. Also, they would have everything.

They would have more than they get from Delta Soros. You're right. You're right. But it is true. But that is an important, that detail is important because Thrawn is confid. It is a wrong piece of intelligence.

But we can actually mark where it comes from. That's interesting. Yeah. Maybe winter, if it is winter, maybe she's like, I'm actually controlling what information is going out in order to get information in. Like, I don't know if there's like some sort of like double agent, double double agent vibes going on. But I don't know. Or just a nightmare executive assistant. Just a personal aide from how.

just like, I'm going to run this whole thing from behind Leia. Yep. That would be, that would be bad. That would be very bad. So, so Hawn and Lando go back to their room. They have a Tiff. They have a Tiff. And I guess the whole story is that Bell, the story that Bell's giving is that they, you know,

they have to move around a lot. that they're constantly on the chase by um, um, from all that fight of the empire. Yeah, they're,

they're just like they're, they're working hard at, at resisting, at doing resistance and, and chasing the empire. Um, but Lando seems to think that there's quite a few inconsistencies like Rob,

Rob mentioned earlier, the, with the ships and everything. Um, well, they were just at, they were just at, uh,

which is built to be packed up and shipped off in five minutes, right? Yeah. They were just at a dinner party with folding chairs and IKEA tables, you know? And Lando's looking around this place and it's like, this is a regular ass lounge. They are, they are here, you know? They're seated. Yeah. Oh, one thing.

They poured foundations. They're sculptures. Right. They're sculptures. things you're going to put in straw and styrofoam and like put in separate boxes they got hell of bottles

hell like so many bottles of alcohol that would be very that's right no because Han because a minute later once once he wins over Han like we got to investigate this the thing that Han used to distract the bartender is like

asks after a particular vintage of this liquor and he's like let me see what we've got You're right. This is not, this is like, he's cellaring drinks. He's celery wine and liquor.

How does he? Go ahead, just, it's one of my favorite bits of the section because you stay on Han that whole time in terms of like, I'm going to take five minutes here. So what happens to Lando is,

it's concealed from the reader until we get out there. And I was like, this is fucking writing, man. Let's go. So good. I love, so again,

so again, this is also, I love this. Lando so much, which is just like guard always up, like much more calculating than it initially appears that he is actually far more paranoid than Han is. Because like this is guy who saw it go all the way bad at Cloud City. Like this is guy who, one, he's been on the other side of this. Han has walked into a really similar trap, disarmed by a familiar face, charmed by status,

opulence, he has been on the other side of this. And he saw like all Han's defenses failed him in that moment. Yeah. Like Leia's like doesn't feel right

and he's like, I think Lando's fine. And he is right. Fundamentally he does have a correct read on his relationship with Lando. But yeah, their head is in the lion's mouth. Yeah.

And here, you know, like I love Lando's okay rant at me and then I got to like let's talk let's talk through the fact that like all this shit has been here too long but they aren't they aren't fighting the empire anymore this is not as it's true and then we get the detail yeah he's like the whole base should look more like this these quarters they're in yeah which repurposed this chair this chair i came for the dreadnots yeah and they just re-apolstered it and he pulls the re-apulstery up

and I love this detail it's so funny it's blue gray No, blue and gold. Blue and gold. Yeah. And Hans, like, yeah. No one's ever upholstered fleet, their fleet interiors in blue and gold. Not the republic, not the empire, not the new republic. Nobody's ever done it.

It's like once. And the implication, Hans like, how do you know this? The implications that Lando basically had to do a con at one point, right? The 100% he knows about this because he had to, he did the, I have a bridge to sell you type thing. He did do that. But the other way you can read it is like, it was my hyper focus once for a month.

Yeah. I watched so many YouTube videos. I read the Wikipedia page. I read summaries of books. I didn't read the books. I was too busy for all that. I was clicking hyperlinks. I was clicking hyperlinks.

I joined Discord. They can't do that in this universe. I know. Because Lando has a wild theory for what's actually happening. Okay, this is where his powers of deduction do fail. Yeah. And there's some leaps where he's like, I'll bet they got a body double in here.

And they just set this up to make it look like Garumbell-Iblis is back. But actually, it's an imperial op. And Hans, like, this is an incredibly famous Carillion. Like, this would be a really hard guy to falsify. And Land is like, if you had the hollows from the archive of what the guy actually looked like, but all you have is memory. Unless you had the holos with you, you wouldn't know. you cannot, you cannot in this universe.

You're right. Google someone. Google, you cannot Google like, you know, Kennedy inaugural or I have a dream speech. You can't do it. You can't do it. Like, you have your memory. Yeah. And if you have like the big fucking data card.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Then you can do it. Yeah. Probably the size of a dinner plate. Right. Right.

Right. I mean, like, I think all the time of the end of Rogue one, the thing that they have the coordinates on or whatever, the plans to transmit. It's like this huge, like, briefcase-sized data, you know, giant data disc. I was like, yeah, Star Wars data is big. It's big data, like, in a different way. He said he spends two months researching the Dark Force, researching the Katana Fleet so that, yes, he can do a con, basically. He had a, he had a bake map to the Katana Fleet.

So he got conned. He got conned. Yeah, he bought the bridge. I love him. I love him. And he said, well, how do I flip this? fake bridge? What if I can give an even more compelling sale on this thing? Great. You don't have to take that out. You don't. That's right. You know, you just double down,

you turn it around. Now you got to double you. Yeah. What's the, all my haters become my waiters when I sit down at the table of success? Oh no. Is Eric Adams a Lando Calarizian? No. No. He wants to be. be he wants to be so bad like the thing yes because he's like when the mayor has swag the city has something that would be true with mayor calrisian when he was running cloud city cloud city had swag but he would never say that you because you cannot you don't the swag evaporates like morning due the minute you're like check out all my swag oh it's true you can't have calrizian without Riz. And I think

he would campaign on that in our terrible world. A vote for Cal Rizian is a vote for Riz. Bring Riz to your city. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I'd vote for him. I'd vote for Lando tomorrow.

Unfortunately. Unfortunately. Yep. Lando also not a former cop. So, you know. Bringing the drip to Corrissonne. Seriously. And that's his urban renewal program. Just going to reach this.

going to, like, redevelop downtown. Yep. We need hotties in office. That's right. Anyway, he's like, yeah, he thinks it's a fake bell, Iblis, and is not right about that as far as we can tell, but is right about this being part of the Katana fleet. Well, and it's interesting, they get caught back at the bar because he needs to see this one repeater display that, like, he's pretty sure now will be that vintage of Republic.

What is a repeater display? I think it's a computer monitor, basically. My read on these repeaters is it's like when you go to the bar and it's like first screen, mozzarella sticks, 899, you know, tequila shots, $2.99 plus, you know, $3 chaser or whatever, right? And then it rotates. And the next one is whatever your, you know, your daily fish special is. and the idea of Landau be like, let me just get to the back of that really quick

and see what year of these were made is extremely funny to me. Yep, MagnaVox. They shut down, they shut down right after the Katana Flea's made. That's right. They got all in on a slave circuit factory assembly line

and they just didn't have the droids to compete. Yep. Which is, by the way, the other reason this is such a big deal is like, oh, they don't need a lot of people to run these six dreadnots because they're the six Ketanafleet dreadnots and they don't need a lot of people

to run them. And so like they could have been an effective like, you know, I'm not sure I don't think, I don't know that they're like actively fighting Thrawn right now, but during the height of the war,

it does seem as if they were doing their own little thing with these ships, right? We get this story because, so Lando gets caught doing this investigation by Irenaz but the reason they get caught is because

Senna Bellibless's top aide so in these books it does appear the signal of having your operation really together is do you have a bad bitch to look after your interests

Thrawn does not Thron does not he has Pallion I don't think I don't think Pellion counts no but cards got Mara Leah has winter

Garmbell Iblis has Senna Yeah And Han and Lando have each other It's true It's true But

Senna wanted to see them Yeah Because she's It is such a heartbreaking scene Because she needed to have the conversation She's like So When the New Republic was established

Bell Iblis had a cease all operations, basically. Just stop. We have to get ready to rescue the galaxy from the tyranny of Monmouthma. And we have been waiting ever since. Right. So we left this bit out a little bit. But when Bell is talking to Han and Lando, a lot of his questions keep coming back to Monmouthma.

And he's like, so how are things going in the New Republic? Like, any, uh, any attempts for anybody to like seize power and, and they're like, do you mean like, what are you like, you know, who are you getting at? Like failure? Like, no, like, Mon Mothema and like, Mon Mothema. And it's like, it's clear that even for Han, this is a reach. You're like, no, she seems. You know, yeah, but at the same time, I think that he's like, I don't like her, but I don't

know, she does, she does things. She's the one who does things. I don't, is that bad? Like, what are, what are you getting at, Bell? And, like, he can't quite piece together what Bell is, like, elbowing him to try to say until here we have, is it Senna or is it, it's Senna, says basically like, yeah, back in the day, Mon Mothema always was trying to, like, be the one. Like, Bell was the master tactician, but Mon Mothmo was the person.

And Senator Ergana was like the, the money and, the political lever. So it was a triumvirate. Exactly. But Ma'amotha would walk in the room and would get people excited. Mon Motha was the people person. And so quickly it became her rebellion. And it's even, Han even does say that. He's like, you know, during the, during, during the rebellion, what she said went. But we know firsthand, that is not the case anymore because we've seen the new republic. They could do more, do with more of that. A hundred percent. What, what it feels like is The New Republic is her letting go and be like, we all have to govern ourselves now and no one's stepping up.

And Faley is like, I got it. So what you mean is, it's time for me to really step in because just like I'm an evolutionary drive to, it's like, it's like if Roman senators was an entire species of like Fox. And it's just like, what do you do? What do you do in life? I just amass followers and build political movements and then knife my opponents.

That's the other thing about this chapter or these chapters. You would think Thron would be the source of most of our scientific racism in this book. But these motherfuckers have a lot to say about what the Bothans do naturally.

What comes to the Bothan race? How the Bothans are built. What their predilections are. What their capacities are. And as far as I can tell, Bell Iblis, you were working with the Bothons. What do you do? Like, how are you talking about all sides of your mouth, man?

Taking their supplies. Yeah, I mean, that is what he's doing. It's like, they suck. We know they suck. It is, look, this is what happens when it's like, sorry, I need the space to Gaulists. Yep. Like, it's, this is just, it's got to be an entire, entire race of the free French.

You know, and that's, that's kind of, that's kind of how it's going to be. But so Senna's like, we all know Garm misread the whole situation that like we we set out the rebellion and now we're waiting here to like launch a rescue operation for democracy that nobody wants or needs

Garm increasingly knows it but he dedicated his whole life to like preparing for this moment and he can't he can't go back and so can't you please go talk to Mamadma and say Garm wants to come home. And I have to be the one to do this because Garm could never bring himself to say it.

And the weird thing is Lando's won over by this. This totally, this is where Lando comes around on Garm because he's like, oh yeah, no, I see how you got to. And what's funny is, I feel like this reading of Mamadma's like, I don't know, you're drawing a lot now from the original movies. it does feel completely viable for the Mamadma we meet in Andor that like 10 years go by and it's like oh this is an alarmingly

driven and like power concentrating leader we have here I would love for us to get Arman Mathema to get here in Andor that would be so fun if that was the arc she went on to where it was like by the

end of it you're like oh my god she's decided she's the one who is in charge here that would be fantastic and then and then let her be the star in a post original trilogy like fall of the new republic why did it all go wrong show also that'd be great my god that would be so good and parent is there yeah uh-huh just being a piece of shit see this is probably i am worried that like part of the story in the end or is like when mama loses her whole family as part of this like either can't bring them. Absolutely. Yeah, they're not on those ships with her, right?

But, but what if they were? Like what if there's a little sitcom the mothymus? And the fucked up thing is Perrin and Garum would get along so well. Like this is the hey, how did parent ever get radicalized? He was

really comfortable under the rebellion. Can't garm can hang It's all he needed They just they just throw down Yeah Uh huh So And then things get sadder

Because they're like look We can intercede with Mamama but you have to tell us about the Catana fleet And she explains they don't know much about Where they're sourcing these ships They just meet a guy on Basically a riverboat gambling ship

They meet him there He blows through one of like no tomorrow he's not a professional gambler he's a sucker uh so he always needs the money so every once in a while you can hit him up for a catanofly dreadnought uh so that's the lead and han lander like we gotta go immediately can't stay for dinner with uh with garm which is probably wise because given how much they're drinking in there before like they were it was either leave now or be laid out for two days i think no way that dinner doesn't like close out that bar Oh, but I really wanted that dinner.

I'm hoping that, you know, we'll get like the, a happy ending where everyone gathers at Bells for, for a final dinner. Yeah, like the end of a fast, fast and furious movie. This is the problem in this is, I do feel like it's an under explored. Like, we get the coffee shop I use a lot, but like where is the, and then they have a very good party. type thing. It's just not too often those scenarios are just bound up in like ship fix and such but like just

where is the good like put these characters together and it's the the Citadel party in Massifax. Yeah like where's we need more things to explore like and then these characters hung out together but they're going back to the lady luck to leave

and Garm is there and he's like, hey, guys, I was looking for you. I wanted to hang more. I didn't, you guys rode at the corridor, so I thought maybe you'd be at your ship. I was right. Isn't this awesome? Let's hang. And then like, hey, wait, you aren't leaving.

Santa? What did you tell them? It's brutal. And they're like, we have to leave this Katana Fleet thing. It's too big. We can't let the. Empire get hold of it. But hey, you can go back to the rebellion.

Like, you can, you can, you can come back. And he's like, I, I won't come back like, I won't come back like a has been or a beggar. Bro. I know. Just come back. What are you doing? Yeah, just, so, like, talking to an older relative and just being like, like, Like, you know, we look past these, these, these things in your life, do the right thing.

The only person who thinks about you as much as you do is you. That's so true. But does not care about this shit. Yeah. Uh-huh. She needs spaceships. The thing that she needs is spaceships, actually, and you have a bunch of them. And, you know, it would be great.

People would drink with you. You would have fun. You would have fun. we're gonna go see mon mothma and talk to her if we do um and she's gonna be like yeah he can come yeah yeah he's got chips cool that's great either way he can come if i were relaunching the halcyon i would set it in this in this timeline this era oh my god please and i would just have actors playing garbill iblis and talent card i would have it be like it's the meeting between mom Mothma and Bellel is like, okay, they're going to try to like hash it out together and Throns decided he can kill two

you know, rivals. But he has to swing by himself. But he has to course, yeah. Actually, no. He sends Pallion because the makeup is too hard to do. No, no, but he showed, but maybe he shows him in a call on the final night. I thought the captain was a, was a, yeah, she wasn't Chis. She wasn't chis. She's Pan, Panterian. Panthoran.

Panthoran. Yeah. They're Pantera, yeah. Pantera. Yeah, like, that would be, that would be the bomb. They should bring it back, and they should put Theron there. Thrawn would be a really great villain because he doesn't have to, like, they don't do fight choreography with him. No, it's all like, it's, it's, everything that's happening could happen on a space

is, and does sometimes happen on space yachts. Like, there's, we haven't talked about it, but there's the gambling yacht, space yacht that we might. We might go to, but this is perfect. All these people are perfect for the Galactic Star Cruiser. I'm sorry, like, you can just dump the Saja and instead, like, have art, art lecture with Grand Admiral Thron. Get rid of them now.

While I'm here to root out this nest of traitors, I thought I would indulge myself. I hope you'll forgive me for hijacking your tour a little bit and tell you a little bit about. bit about this art. It's truly, I mean, the thing that's so fucked up is, it would truly have been better if it was just like, hey, I'm someone Luke trained and I'm here to help train you as Jedi. Like, it didn't, you know what I mean, rather than the Saja? Because I think of how good the Saja sequences would be if it was someone trying to affect the Luke Skywalker tone of voice instead of the like vague, whatever, whatever.

weird the saja had no nothing you know and it would be better if it was just Luke it would be better if it was the guy with like dusty brown hair

dusty brown blonde hair who we were so yeah that's Luke close enough instead of really weird fans of it's like it's like people who got really in the anime

but only through like mistranslated DVDs from like Hong Kong and was like you kind of have to imagine what they're saying because they're like kind of

translating like Cantonese but I'm not sure they really knew Cantonese either so it's just like but you kind of get the gist but the art's incredible well it it feels even grosser when we saw all of those photos of the cast before

they were changed over and they were all brunette women so it was like oh we don't have to think about this because people are just going to slot right into their minds anyway like kids are going to see a a woman who's a Jedi and just be like, oh, Ray, cool. That's basically right. Yeah, let me do the, let me do the training with you.

I forgot about that. I forgot about the early versions that it was all brunette women. That's, yeah. Anyway, bring it back. Anyway, bring it back and... It was miserable. I want to go again. I need to be there.

It would fix me. I'm so broken right now. And for just four days. for just two nights and three days, whatever it was. It wasn't four days. We'll just go back to back. I'll do it back to back.

We get off the ship and we get back on. Spin it around. I'm on the next one. Woo! So they take off to go unravel the secret of the Catana fleet and Garm is once again, like

everyone's fate in this in the series does not get to have his awesome party. Things don't go well for Mara either. No. Okay. Mara, I don't even know what to. She, hang on.

Yeah. I see how she gets here. You don't want to. They're all, like, speechless when it comes to trying to discuss this disaster woman. It's like every day in Dark Force Rising is a common Mara L, common Mara L day after day. It's just, it's just, yeah. It is, it is truly, I suppose. support women's rights and women's wrongs.

Oh, hang it. This just reminded me of something I do find interesting. So she goes to the Abragado-Ray space port, right? Yeah. To get the either way. Which is the ship. That was an impound that Fintorv lost, that Han and Lando escaped. Right.

It was Han's point of view on that space port. And he was like, wow, this place used to be a hellhole. But like, they really cleaned it up. This isn't bad. They've really fixed up Abigato-ray. Right. Mara goes there and sees it is basically a police state. Her point of view on it is the place is crawling with visible security, tons of

plain clothes, and the whole place has this like sweaty, like panicked vibe to it. The local government is totalitarian. They're cracking down on everyone. They're fighting a civil war with the rebels in the hills. It's just interesting that, like, Han, and I do think this is reflective of Han is becoming sort of a complacent core worlder. You know what I mean? He's becoming someone who is like, he's there in Corrason.

He's, and so he goes to Abergato Ray, and he's like, the place looks great. It's sounds better than it used to be. And I, maybe Marry's an unreliable narrator. She misreads a lot of things, but I do kind of wonder if also this is meant to suggest Han doesn't have the instincts that he used to, right? He's willing to see things a little more. He's willing to be a little more dazzled by like gentrification

and like outward signs of prosperity and progress. And Mara sees it as all of this is a veneer on a place that's actually gotten worse since the new government took over and, you know, joined the Republic. I had not thought about that, but you're totally right. I had not, I had not begun to piece that together because I'd kind of forgotten Hans. I forgot, we've gone to a lot of places, and I think this particular place got kind of smushed together maybe with Nicolaun or one of the other places from the first one, from the first book. But yeah, I think that that's an interesting perspective here. You would think maybe you would put her on high alert for something.

something to trip her up here. Though I don't know, maybe there's just truly nothing that could be done. But if so, it went pretty bad. She just kind of took off and then immediately was like in the line of fire of a star destroyer, right? Yeah. Which speaks to, by the way, how precarious it is on all of these planets, that like anybody could launch and then a star destroyer could jump in and just kid. kidnap them. Like, oh, there's no, like, planetary defenses on these places. It really is call

the Republic and try to hold out until they get here. But if you're a one ship, you're screwed, basically, which is interesting. Like, there is no, even though this is a place that would impound a ship for the Republic, it's not a place that has Republic centuries that could come and save Mara Jade a civilian pilot from being immediately kidnapped by a Star Destroyer, right? Bad, bad look. So, knowing she's getting run in, she decides, and this is extreme RPG, character at the table being like, hang on, what if I use my background to the emperor's hands? Yeah.

And I just sort of bear face my way through this. And so she gets on the radio, rolls the intimidation check on the tractor beam operator. And she fully adopts like, congratulations on your vigilance, lieutenant. Let me speak to the captain. It's a matter of grave import for the empire. And the captain doesn't work as well. But then she speaks her magic, like, command code. Yeah.

And he's like, well, I don't know what this is. Yeah. Like, you're still going, you're still going on the slammer, but we'll treat you nicer. Mm-hmm. But this is now, like, it's above my pay grade. We'll take you to the boss. So she goes, sees the boss. She's escorted immediately see Thron.

And things get off on a bad foot. She's like, why are you, why did you bring me to end? She's like, he took me to Endor to fuck with me. Okay, I guess she does take something else. Yeah. To be clear, to be clear, he's also there taking an L. Yeah. Right?

So it's a sort of cascading. They release Cobrach to fuck with me. Exactly. The Ls are cascading all around us. At this rate, it'll all be L's right next Thursday. she is just like she cannot imagine a world where anyone has a motivation or um just a thought that does not center around marjade like she it's impossible impossible and i love it and is that sort of self absorption lets you remember the sculpted corsage you wore at a party like eight years ago And Tron just has a gallery of fault Like there's multiple choice task

Yeah no He's like here's 50 corsages It's insane So yeah I mean like the thing that I again For the people who are not reading along here The thing that happens is she's like Hey I'm the emperor's hand remember me And he's like

But are you who you say you are Prove it prove you're the emperor's hand And she's like, well, here's all this stuff that I did as the emperor's hand. Like, I'm important. I know stuff. I was there when I, we met once at a special event. And then we met at the after party slash secret second special event. And he's like, what was the special event?

And she's like, it was when you were made Grand Admiral secretly. And he's like, what were you wearing? And none of it is, this is not as, there's not charged at all. Not like this. There's none of it. Zero. None. and she's like I was wearing a white dress

and he's like and it had a special clasp didn't it and she's like ooh did it yes it did and he's like pick it out and then yeah all of his holographic art shit he's 50 of them ready to go what are we doing fucking Google Google robot checker like to please please match this find the street light in this

in this like two pixel photo blurry photo and Mara Mara does it she picks out her she does her thing but you know if I was the only man in the universe with Google I would I would play these little

games with myself that's true that's a great point how does he do this what does he have like what how does he do this no one else can do this That's what I'm going to say. Like, how is he simulating her, how, her, like, corsage or whatever, like, her brooch or whatever it was that she was wearing?

How is he, like, pulling up the original and also 49 alternate versions of it? I don't know. What is, what is Thron's computer like? Maybe he just has, like. What are the specs? Yeah, maybe he just has, like, a huge visual encyclopedia. fashion and so he can just be like show me yeah beep beep exactly and it's on board like i don't know but maybe he just has a google guy like there's a guy that is like listening to everything

thron's talking about and like you know on podcasts where they'll just like can you look that up can you dial the 50 different uh dress clasps in one in in in two seconds please yeah and one of them Was the right one, but the other 49er fake. Keep doing bits of shitty people on this podcast. I know. I know. Well, you know, they're shitty. Yeah.

And then the real shit starts happening, right? Because now I'm like, okay, we're who we say we are. Now it can get real dirty. Now it can get real mean. Because Thron makes it very clear that she is not who she thinks she is. She has told a story in her head for years, and he was going to break that story in half. It doesn't need to. I know.

It's so sad. It's like, it's so, it's so painful. And she knows instantly. That's the part that kills me is that he, there's this bit where he is like, don't presume to dictate, you know, to me. Don't tell me your terms. And the book describes her being shook, by the way he says it. And then she tries to be like, she like steals herself. She's like, okay, we're going to play it.

Like, let's do it. And she's like, I was the emperor's hand. I went around the whole galaxy telling people what to do. And when I spoke, they listened to even Grand Admirals. Even Grand Admirals were obliged to listen. And he says, your memory serves you poor. morally emperor's hand. When all of a sudden done, you're a little more than a highly specialized courier. And she's like, nah, uh, like I was making policy decisions all in his name.

And he says, you carried out his will. No more. Whether you heard his commands more clearly than the rest of his hands is irrelevant. It was still his decisions that you implemented. And she says, what do you mean the rest of his hands? Maris sniffed She sniffed She went I was the only She broke off

The look on Thrawn's face And abruptly All her rising anger drained away No she breathed No you're wrong He shrugged Believe what you wish But don't attempt to blind others

With exaggerated memories of your own importance Oh You really didn't know Like truly Oh Oh, my God. Yikes. And you know it's true because he does give her at least, you were special to him.

You were one of the better hands. Like, you were his best hand. Sure. Totally. You know, he's not lying to her about the idea that there were other ones because he is telling her you were a special one among the many of them that you didn't fucking know about. Dummy? So. so sad.

This is what she's held against Luke Skywalker for five years. Just like, I was such a good life. I was, I was somebody. Also, it never occurred to her that,

like, people did things because she was just, the emperor was like, go here and tell these people this. Go here. But, but also, it's an incredibly cool way

that Throne handles this. but it is a little bit revealing of the issue we've identified with him where he has no ability to delegate. Right. Like the emperor didn't just have her go here and tell people A. Go here and tell people B. She did go and was like, like it was go here, sort this out, go handle whatever this is.

And I don't really care about the details. And go. Right, right, right. She had discretion. Right. Thron looks at this and is like, that's ridiculous. why does he get this like assume like this little platoon of like uh you know magical children that are running around like pretending like they they run the show and it's like because actually

that's going to be a key way to run like you have you have the moffs who you don't trust you have the admiral so you don't fully trust and then you have this group of like personal servants who can override them anywhere right exactly and you you've just like train them well and then they can just go handle things when when he's handling and thron doesn't have that he's like what an absurd arrangement he in the process of this i kind of think he fumbles the bag because he could have had amara jade and i'm not saying that she's like she is high value no she's sick of shit she is she is she is right now she is yesterday's price is not the same as or today's price is not the same as yesterday's price but in like bad way like

Her price is lower today after everything. Today's price is not yesterday's price. Well, this is more Michael Clayton, like when the dudes, like, giving the speech, Michael Clayton. And don't give me this. You should have seen me in court back in the day. Because I've seen it go the other way. Yes. And he could be an asset to him.

A hundred percent could be. He knows that vaguely. But the way he plays this is so, like, baffling. Because he has to, his first move is I have to break people's ways. Will. Yeah. Again, which is the same way. Sa bianx.

Which is like, ah. So he says, I'm going to take a prideful, spiteful person. Yes. I'm going to humiliate them. And then we're going to. And then once they feel powerless and small and realize their insignificance next to my majesty, then we can get a cracking. Then we can just move on.

Now we can be friends. And tells her, she's here. Her case, the thing that she says is, hey. I know that Card knows where the Catana Fleet is. Let me have some time. Give me a week. Give me eight days. I'll go talk to him.

I can come back with the locale. So I do think the reason she doms herself and Card here is that if the pitch had been, I can go bring Card in and have him tell you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's a compelling pitch. It is so clear that she is like, I'm just going to do this whole thing off the books. Yeah.

I'll get card to tell me. And then I'll come back with the intel. Yeah. As a child would. It's like, it's as if like the, she's doing the thing where Card said not to do that. And it's been burning inside her sense that she should.

Like she has been looking for an excuse. used to fight Throne and tell us. That's all that I could do. Clark, you understand that it was my only option. We'll be so proud of me. We'll talk about her only options in the future, too. She has some wild leaves of watching. Well, I mean, it all happens, right?

So she's like, she actually doesn't even ask for the week. She says it's going to take me about three days to get there, two and a half of I push it. Thrawn says, all right, I'll give you eight days to get the location and bring it back to me. And she's like, that's not a lot of it. time but okay she goes she gets to to card

card is like I knew you wouldn't betray me obviously ugh it's it's you it's my Mara J it's my Mara Jid

hey everybody Marr's back yay and she's clearly not here to betray and then like the Thai fighters swoop over her head stormtroopers pour in and he starts he pulls his gun and she knocks it out of his hand

I know the fact that he's like on her He thinks in his mind that they're going to, like, fight them off together at this point, buddy. So the other thing is, again, Thron's like, we'll just track her and we'll just pick card up ourselves. And Pellion's like, but we said we'd give her eight days. And Thron's like, no. Give her eight days. And see, Pellion, Pellion understands.

Mm-hmm. You don't want to get on the wrong side of a stripper. This is a, like, this is a basic, like, you just don't. while we go down this road. Yeah. Oh, the Thron's like, that's not what the, that's not what she was doing as a hand.

And the response is, I'm sorry, did Jabba have a modern dance troupe? Was it ballet? I didn't see, I didn't see, I didn't see ballet dancers at, at,

at, at Javas. Oh, no, is exotic? Okay. Okay. You know what? He's proven points. this is how your Star Destroyer gets keyed This is how your Star Destroyer gets keyed

Oh my God God It's really like Because it is the The hell of it Is that Mara can see The card realizes at this last minute That she's axiom period

The whole thing like well At least I can comfort myself that I know what her background was now. Right. She's one of them. She's, she is Robert De Niro and Ronan. I never left.

And of course she wants to kill Luke. That makes sense now. It's all adding up. Okay, I get it now. And so she thinks that card is Pacino at the end of Donnie Brasco. Basically, right? Realizing like his best buddy,

like surrogate child. was actually the whole time working him. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, state. Like, oh. And it's what the whole organization believes. Aves threatens the shooter the next time they meet. Because when they go back, when she's like,

you promised me, like, what the hell are you doing here? Again, compounding the error, Thrawn's like, hey, you better be careful. you keep talking like this you're not going to you're not going to get a good job with the empire yeah but if you play ball you could be a first mate you be like second command

of one of these dreadnots I guess of which would be 200 yeah you'll be worth nothing basically again like Clooney at the start of out of sight where we realize later it's like you can start in the as a secure

security guard for the bank just humiliating offer oh and so she's out of here she's going to get the fuck out she she has figured it out and maybe alley this is where you start to question some more of her feeling that she only had one choice is this is this the moment yeah i well i because she's decided she has one one play right there's only one person who can help her she she she was with card this entire time yeah she has a final talk like a charge talk with Aves, who's willing to do her this big favor, but isn't willing to be, like, brought in on the scheme. It seems like a valuable resource. I don't know, Mara.

And you didn't have one person you played cards with. You didn't have someone at the cafeteria who would give you some extra mashed potatoes or whatever. The only person in the world who could possibly help me in this moment is Luke Skywalker. That's fucking right. I suppose you think there's like some sort of sublimated wish here I okay he's just front of mind a lot you know I've been playing this farming game dating sim and recently I was like I wonder if the devs played like a clever trick to attract me to this boy because you know his birthdays in the first month that like he gives you a farming tool and no it's

Because I fucking am obsessed with him. I stop what I'm doing to talk with him. And I be in the minds. Like, this is Mara Jane being like, oh, every single thought that I have all of the fucking time is about this person. So, of course, in this moment of stress, I think it's my only option. Right. Exactly. Yes.

It's, oh, it's the only, it's so stupid. It's so funny. It's so funny. she she is down bad for that boy she she's in the trenches for him and cannot for her life get out for her life well and also she's not going to new republic

to be like hey we lost the catana fleet but like Skywalker can bail us out of this it's I am going to him directly and I'm going to tell like I am just going to ask him and he will come. She's just out of her mind in so many ways. And the fact that she tries to, like, force, choke, Thron. Oh, that's so, God, I forgot.

Oh, my God. I thought the most embarrassing things have happened. It's so bad. It's so awkward. She's, like, standing there, like, locked in, locked in on Thron, force choke. She's choking him. it. But he's like, are you really choking me right now? Oh, you're choking me right now? Oh, you're really doing it? And he's like, he like rubs his throat a little bit, like he has like a little bit of like a, like an itch, like a little.

Like a little bit. And she's choking it. Like she is doing it. And it's just never going to be enough to actually hurt him. It's like she's like trying to do like Vader with Admiral Ozzell. Yes. And he for Thron, it's like, oh damn, I fucked up my tie. Yeah. He's like, all right, that's enough. Oh, fuck, you're done. It's over for you. You can never go back. You can never go back.

And Thrawn should have just shot her. Like, this is too, this is too humiliating. Like, she's never going to, like, she cannot, she cannot go here anymore. And like, again, the thing that happens here is she does it for a minute. She holds it for a minute trying to choke him. And she ends up being the one gasping for breath because she can't, like, sustain using the force for that long. Oh, it's so sad.

She's scrunching up, just. She is the most, like, she is the most on the receiving end of, for me, it was Tuesday. Oh, yeah. Then anyone who has ever existed, she is just, like, constantly, like. For every direction is the thing, right?

Every direction. It's not just Luke. It's also the emperor. Like, no one actually cares about you. Well, card, card does. Cards like so mysterious. Like, find someone who looks at you the way you look at yourself. Cards like, man, what secret does the omnipotent Mara Jade hold?

And, you know what's weird is Luke hasn't? He didn't, for me, it was Tuesday. He was so much more patient with this bullshit than it's true. That's who Luke is. It deserved. I forgot there's that bit in the first book where he's like, if you do this like, you know, we're just going to get

killed. And she's like, maybe I don't care. And he just looks there and he's like, maybe you don't. And that's the, but also like that's Luke's superpower. That kid cares. I mean, it's also

his great weakness as we're about to talk about probably. Yes. Yeah. Because she has decided he's the only person who can save her. And save, save card. Well, and she has to go find him. She realizes, does Throne just straight up tell her that Sabaio? Yes, right?

Mm-hmm. Because, yes. Because while in this, he's like, hey, no, because when he's like, look, if you don't, if you don't play ball, instead of being a first mate on a dreadnought, I can just feed you to Sabeoff. Oh, yeah. And he's like, yeah, you're not going to like work with that guy. You're going to wish you've been shot And so she goes a butt Because she has all these like imperial clearances

She goes to Before she even leaves the chimera She's found out where Skywalker is Because he's Wasabayov And so she pulls the Joe Mark coordinates And like unmasks the whole plot From aboard the chimera And so

And then fast talks A random imperial officer who's like get away from that keyboard and she's like what keyboard I want a keyboard and that's right he's like were you messing with this the flying toasters begin to go over the screen I guess

not I guess you weren't yeah I guess you would activate screensaver so it's fine so yeah so she's like I just got to know what I can turn to at this moment got to find Luke not to kill him can't kill him

Not yet. Ask. Yeah. Got to ask him for help. And Luke is all about giving help. Because the vibes are bad. I don't think the vibes have ever been worse in anything we've watched or read or played for a more civilized age. This is the pits.

This is absolutely the worst place in the galaxy is being a citizen of Sabayoth's village. Can you imagine? He just showed up. He just showed up. He'd been there for like a year. And it's just, it sucks so hard now being, living there.

It's like some dude moves into the mansion on the hill and it's like, I'm just going to carry this chair down from the hill and set it down in the middle of the town square. And I'm the king now. And I'm the king. I'll decide how we resolve things here from here on out. You have a council. That's cute.

They're lower beings. So I'll be the one deciding things here. But you can bring me little treats up in my mansion. And when I call for it, that cart better be here. Yeah. When Luke gets there and meets Sabayath, and Sabayath is like, I'll have my driver come and pick us up. like, what the fuck is going on here? Like, who, what are you

talking about? The driver shows up and the damn hovercars made a wood? Like, primarily made of wood? It's like a, it's a hover cart. It's not like a, it's, oh my gosh. I feel so bad for these people. Like Chewbacca, uh, on his way to Onger, uh, here is a poor R2D2 being like,

Luke, We should go. Luke, this place is rotten. This guy sucks. We should go. And Luke is like, I know, Archieu, but. You said that about Dagaba. You know, Yoda was mean to you when we first got to Dagaba.

And Archie was immediately like shoots back with something that is basically like, oh, come on, this was different. Like, Yoda never was like this. Yeah. And he's like, okay, Saba has a harder edge than Yoda ever, ever did. But yeah, the degree to which The thing is Luke is a bit of a sucker here But also

Of course he is They have set up how desperate he is To not have to do it all on his own He's so desperate To have someone tell him about Jedi shit Yes And so even though from the moment he lands He's like

Well I was actually I can't stay here long There's a lot going on But we could We would love to have a Jedi Master come back to the Republican and help us fight the empire. And then, yeah, I have some questions.

But like, mostly here to pick you up. And that's why I'm here. And so I was like, no, you're here because I called you through the force. I don't care about your war. What to the affairs of lesser beings matter to me? And Luke is like, yeah, I'm sorry. Like, I know you called me.

I was trying to get here earlier because I heard the call earlier. But there's like a bunch of stuff happening right now. Hey, one of the twins are going to be ready. well, that's not really a thing I can control. And then he's like, oh, well, it should be. You can, you're a Jedi. You better start controlling.

That's what a Jedi is. And like, we get a lot of what a Jedi is from Sabayyath in these sections, which is fascinating. Because on one hand, you could just throw it all away because it's clear that Sabayat is out of his mind, traditionally, classically mad in the literary sense, right? Like, he is King Lear in the fire. final fucking act, baby. He is gone. Um, but there is also a way that you could read him as like, now wait a second, there's a lot of Jedi out there. Maybe he's just like a kind of like conservative hard right Jedi. Like maybe this is just how he, he was holding him. I mean, now we know this is

Jerusalem. We know this is a clone. We think. Um, we're pretty sure. But we don't know what his perspective really represents. And he talks a good, not a good game, but he talks a consistent game on what he thinks it means to be a Jedi. And it's fascinating to see it laid out. Jedi about being in control. They're about being able to make decisions quickly to project authority. They should use the ability to mind-read people to help them. That is not any sort of any sort of breach of privacy or breach of respect or confidence in any way because you're just helping the person. So you may as well read their mind and see how things really went. That you should make sure that when you punish someone, it stings so they remember the feeling

of the punishment so that they won't do it again, that that's the best teacher is punishment. all sorts of little lessons that, like, are not, they're not what Obi-Wan and Ben Kenobi taught, I sorry, Obi-Wan and Yoda taught Luke at all. But there's enough consistency to them that you could almost imagine, like, oh, maybe some people out here did not like the Jedi because there were Jedi like this out here, right? There is the, he makes this case towards the end of the section where he's like, do you really think that Vader and a few dark Jedi could have killed all of the, Jedi in the galaxy if people didn't fundamentally dislike the Jedi. And Luke is like, no, but

like the other day, they liked me. They liked me when I was like the guy in the bar who helped everybody. And it presents a potential read on the world. We're like, yeah, and there were some Jedi like Luke, and there were some like Sabayoth, you know? And that's a really compelling vision of what Jedi life could have been like, you know? And the fact that the, the ambiguity around Joros's like origin as a clone? Like what does it mean that Joros

is a clone? At what point was he Yeah, where did they diverge? Yep. What was his Jedi training? Like I have so many questions. Because we know Everything Winter says and what she knows about Salingoff is a little bit

concerning to begin with. And that's Joris. That's non-clone. Right. That's the one who was Palpatine. advisor or whatever, right? I have a question. Is Joros written without the two U's in the book? When he's referred to by

Winter? Yes. Yeah. And so when he introduces himself, he writes it with two. He has the two U. He has the two U's, yeah. Yeah. So like the history book's version

is one U. And it's, and we believe the switch happens. We believe, I, Okay, let's see if I'm right about this. I don't know that I'm right about this. Outbound flight happens. Joris is good. Our Joris is on that outbound flight.

Theron intercepts that outbound flight. My read is that Joris helps Thron fuck up outbound flight in some way. And then goes to protect Mount Tantris. Tantris? Is that the name of the mountain? Tantis. Mount Tantric. Joros shows up and kills Joris.

and takes over that place, replacing him, and now we're dealing with Joros. Unless a different Jedi was there, but I'm pretty sure that's Joris, because the last thing that Palpatine told Joris to do was go protect Mount Tantis. That's interesting. Which is, I believe, that's post outbound flight, isn't it? We don't. I used to we not know. We don't know.

So as far as we know, Joris died on out of flight. That is as far as we know. Thron says Joris died there. So a different Jedi. Can't be, can't be Jorosop, Zabayov. Right. Thrawn killed him and he knows he's dead. Then who do we think was defending Mount Tantis before?

Just a guardian, but we don't know. But like that the, because Zan, I think this is probably, I prefer this vision of it. You have your Sif, but then you just have like, dark Jedi. Dark Jedi. Like people just like, you lose it in the way that Sabiof appears to have lost it here, which is like, well, why shouldn't we just, why shouldn't we just, why shouldn't just rule directly? Why should, why should you give people free will? Totally. Just, just

puppet them to do the right thing and just, just moving along. So, but, but there is a bit of how enmeshed is Sabayoff in Palpatine, the original, like how, like, is he part of this conspiracy?

Totally. It's, it's an interesting, what happened here. I guess I should say, there's also, when I, when we first read the guardian of Mount Tantis stuff. I also wasn't even 100% sure if there was, if Jerusalem was the original guardian and he's concocted a fiction in which he's killed the other guy, what really happened is he's gone mad, right? And he's, he's gone dark to the degree that he has, like, pushed down the good version

of himself to, you know, in a sort of kingdom heartsy, I've become, I've killed. You got a really nightmarish, like, prestige version of this is the guardian of the mountain. is always a new clone of a dark, like a dark jetty clone. Of a dark, yeah, that's fine. And then a new one hatches every once in a while because you need to

replace, like the clone gets too, too crazy, too sick. Yeah. And has to be like taken out by another clone. Sure. That's pretty,

ugh. I would, I believe it. Prestige is in the prestige, not prestige as in like prestige TV. I understand that. Yeah, I got you.

Tanks at the end. So the other thing is We start to get indications From the first That first like long afternoon Luke has Asabayov He's got this headache he can't shake He's exhausted

Like bizarrely exhausted He says he could barely He could barely make the walk to the X-Wain To go check on R2 He is just in this like fugue state But he's still with it enough He's like you recognize

This guy is really sick but now he now he's a being that needs Luke's help like our two is like we got to Luke get our Tuesday just like get in the get in the car get in the car we're leaving Luke's like I think I got to bring this guy back I think he really needs me Sabay off electrocuting villagers I need you to learn how to do with this Luke sorry Rob I was just thinking the thing that you just said, though, it does line up because the other thing we know they have in Mount Tantis are the Sparty cylinders, right? Yep. Which are cloning cylinders. Oh. They're tied to the Clone Wars

in some way. Yeah. So it's possible. They're just growing new dark Jedi out there. But were the was, was Joris already dark? We know that he was, we know how Winter described him. Yeah, working for the emperor. Right. Hmm. I don't know. It feels like the guy might have been a bad egg, right? Like, you know, again, he seems like the type of guy who, again, like, if there's a range of how Jedi work in the world, he seemed like one with a hard edge who liked having power and liked having authority. Palm Crell is damn right. Is, is one of his. Well, imagine Mace not at the center of war effort.

Mace shows up to help your village. What are Mace's special skills? Not even Mace would electrify anybody, though. Now, Plocoon would distribute emerald justice. With great respect for life. Yeah. Justice is right there in the name. Emerald Justice.

Yeah. Hey, counsel, I really looked within myself. I know the electricity thing. I know we think it's pretty bad, but like, look, my tracker. My tracker said my heart rate didn't even go up. I wasn't angry. I was super level.

Yeah. well damn your heart rate that resting heart rate barely is just you're on baseline you're down like 80 b wow 80 beats on your age all right well i guess that's the good lightning that's the good lightning so yeah uh it's it's a lighting very clearly the bad lightning luke to to but he doesn't know i love this because it hasn't been a stat it's not like we know we saw the movie good people probably can't do the lightning thing but Luke has only met

a handful of Jedi and he's like I don't know maybe maybe you're supposed to learn the lightning thing maybe Yoda could do the lightning he just never needed to show me that yeah and who knows maybe some Jedi just think

that droids are an abomination creatures that reason but aren't generally part of the force maybe that's a normal thing for Jedi to believe it could be maybe Yoda didn't want to like be rude to R2 but he believed that I don't know oh be one loved R2 hello little friend well oh no that was that was that was a reunion that was a reunion they knew each other yeah but also as part of that version like is that from the original clone or is that like a is that a subconscious right these things are manufactured like me. Like me, yeah.

Because Luke is like, hey, what happened to the other Jedi on the Apon flight? They die. They died. And then I was alone. One of my favorite bits here is the the way that Jerusalem is like, wait a second, you think that I'm working for the emperor. You think that I was

a servant of the emperor, don't you? And he just says it outright. And Luke is like, uh, well, I mean, I heard that I was the last Jedi It was my teacher And then me and then Vader and emperor But they didn't count as Jedi So I was just kind of trying to figure out Like if you were out here

Were you on Are you like one of the Jedi that don't count As one of the last Jedi? Because you seem to have Jedi powers I love that he just says it outright You know And then they do the whole like We have to go do our

Sit in Judgment session Which sounds like the grimest Luke trying to do his Judge Judy thing and saw me up being like why do you keep asking people questions you just take it from their brains another little affectation I like here is for

the bulk of this section he never calls him Luke he calls him Luke at a distance once he like via mind talk but otherwise he calls him Jedi Skywalker over and over and over again like title last name

in a way that I think is like something's happening here so the way that Sabayoth sees the world is really hierarchical in that way you know I am master Sabayoff and who are Jedi Skywalker yeah exactly

exactly um yeah it's great that we started out with Luke in in this book uh doing a mediation and absolutely hating it and like it being just like you couldn't think of a he couldn't think of a worse like he was like yeah that from Yoda you know I learned like some some meditation

skills and stuff and like oh Obi-Wan you know I learned about lightsabers and the force and whatever and but I really do I don't like this part about being a Jedi I don't want to like I don't want to help people. I don't want to do confrontations. I don't want to be like judge and jury. And he's just like in his own personal nightmare within Saviathia. And not to... This is the

thing he needs help with the most. And the guy who's here to help him with it is the worst possible person. Yeah. Yeah. And not to mention is like is is filling the air with like a bad vibe.

With bad vibes. with sleepy with sleepy gas basically with just like fatigue the fatigue zone oh every piece of food I've been around people like this where you're just like oh truly like I just can't be around you anymore I have to get some distance

I'm gonna spring back up the second I get like 20 feet away from you and it's not that you want the best like I God speed God's I wish you the best truly I hope that We have that moment where Because Sabaev has lots of moments

That are a little bit like sundowning type Time moments which are real They're happening to him But also One evening He's just like He is really like stiff as a board Uh oh I got something on my mind

He's like You must be sleepy Luke Go sleep. Are you sure Masas Saba? You seem Get the fuck out Just leave me alone

I need no help And that is him Realizing Mara's hair Which was another thing He tipped too early Where he was like You know there's another Force user out there

And I was like Mara Jave You know about Mara Jave? Puppie dog I'm a puppy dog Pluck Bad assack on every side for all of these people, truly.

But Marr's flying at Joe Mark and having her little dreams of when those two evil, Vader and Luke teamed up on her nice master, her good master, Palpatine, and ruined Nice Mara's beautiful life. She wakes up to the, you will kill Luke Skywalker,

final, final command, final message. And she's like, but not now. Remember Mara? You can't. It's like that Bowen Yang bit in, uh, in, in, in, in, and I'll remember, you can't kill them. Whatever you do, you cannot kill Luke Skywalker. Not yet. You're just going to go back out there and you're not going to kill him.

Uh, she's flying in and Sabayov tries to crash a ship. This is fun. This is a fun, like, how do you stop, how would a Jedi stop someone from arriving via a spaceship? You know, little rocks. Let's fuck up your whole ship. It don't need to be a whole thing. I don't need to do a Star Killer from Force Unleashed, grab the thing out of this. No.

I was thinking about Star Killer here. Yeah. I don't need to do all that. How much do you think, do you think that he was fleeing these rocks while he went? into the mine chamber in front of Luke? Yeah, I do. I was wondering how much of that was like active defense versus like awareness.

You know what I mean? Right, right. No, he was playing a little game of asteroids in his head. So where he was the asteroids. It's good. It's very funny. Mara crash lands in like the cauldron lake that their, uh, that his little castle is above,

uh, a little like volcanic. like and we get an absolutely hilarious bit where she is trying to she realizes that she missed her landing spot and she's got to scale a cliff to get up to where Luke is and then she gets hit by the floodlights from the X wing and our two hates her our two hates her because she's like I'm gonna blow that droid up I can't wait to I can't wait to blow up the little droid. It's so funny. But they have to be,

they have to be team, they have to be teammates for just, for just a little bit to rescue Luke from the hands of Sabioch. And because Luke has not been hearing Artu on the like, the vibes are so bad we got to run. And she shows up and is like, hey, your master's in danger.

The Sabia is no good. And Artoe's like, okay, finally, finally. Guess we agree on something. Didn't expect Mara Jain. But then the bit, the bit, the bit.

where he's like, I'll help you. Hop, not hop in. Mm-mm. You don't get to sit in the car. No, you don't get to sit in the seat. She has to climb on in a landing strut. Yeah. You get to sit on that little skid pad.

Well, her plus her Salilat, Salimiri, Salimiri, there we go, around her neck. She smartly brought one of these damn things. Very important. Didn't stop the little. micro-rock attack because it's too far away, presumably. Yeah. You know, but...

Well, the rocks are only going to lose control in the last 20 feet. Right, right. And throw enough of them up there. Yeah, just toss them up. Yeah. And, uh, but it does help while she, when she arrives, climbing off the strut.

Uh, and it puts a gun on, on Sabaya. It's great. All of the, the, all of the, all of the most sucky people are here together. Yeah, just the worst people. Nightmare Blunt rotation. Oh, nightmare blunt rotation.

Poor Luke. Luke is coughing. Poor Luke. Luke hates it. Yeah, Luke is not having a good time. Luke is having a bad time. He's scared. He got too high, now he's scared.

Ben, is that you? It's not. Poor Luke. I do, so if her, I did wonder if it was kind of an L that she, like, Sabayov kind of tips his hand. Because he knows, he knows that she's, you know, he's like, I know you're an enemy of the grandadmiral. Don't even pretend that you're here on like imperial business. But somewhere in all this, she's like, oh my God, this is like hearing the emperor speaking again. Oh, my God.

Yeah. But I do wonder. I was like, is this, is this kind of an L? Because, like, this guy is like, this is like off-brand, like, truly revealed her at home, I know. Yeah. Well, but maybe this is the beginning of hard

getting over it, right? This is, so this is the thing. Is it like the realization as an adult? Exactly. The person who you were obsessed with as a teen is like, oh, that person sucked actually. I was a weird old man. Yeah, Theron had said that Savagath was insane

and she could indeed hear the, the unsubtle edge of madness in his voice. But there was far more to the man than just that. There was a hard steel behind the voice, ruthless and calculating with a sense of both supreme power and supreme confidence underlying at all. It was like hearing the emperor speak again. And, you know, she doesn't fall to that. And in fact, ends up seeing the way he's projecting his power onto Luke and, you know, steps into counter it via the Salar Miri. But there is a real, like, yeah, I do think it does, it's played straight here maybe to convince us that this guy is a threat in the way that the emperor is a threat. But I do think long term, like, this is that moment

where that person you thought was so cool, you realize, like, what were you doing hanging out with me back then? That's weird, actually, buddy, you know? Um, uh, there's, there's a little bit of like, oh, I'm seeing this person for who they really are a little bit, you know? Um, though, Who knows? We'll see. Well, I'm curious how much longer we have from the Mara Jade loves the emperor bit, you know, of what will finally break it. But, yeah, I feel like it's, it's, the, the expiration date is, is pulling up.

Mm-hmm. I feel there were loads of hands as probably, that's a pretty big breach of trust. That's a big one. That's a big part. Don't get your my hands. She had to go fucking be a stripper. Like, that was her job. What were the other hands?

That's what I would want to know. I just want to know what were the other hands up to. Oh, my child, Lord Vader can't come on this one. He's not built like that. Yeah. I mean, there is a stiff. Oh, poor, poor Vader. Vader can't get down like he used to.

No. If he was still Anakin, he could have. He would have found his way through Jabba's Palace just fine. Yes. I do think the. it is a big open question for the reader. What exactly did Mara J do for the emperor? And I think Zahn is being very smartly vague

because at the end of the day, we are going to need to root for this character and want her to have the living redemption that Vader did not get, right? Like, you know, we've talked before about the wonderful convenience of Vader dying after returning to the light side because it means you don't have to like sit with

how do you reintegrate this person into a society that he damaged so severely like this is the guy behind the depth of countless people Luke doesn't have like watch my mama assemble the tribunal to execute him yeah there is no there is no right exactly there is no

that's my dad yeah sorry we got Nuremberg your dad yeah 100% right like we don't have to live through that because he would need that to happen right and we don't have vader sitting in a cell somewhere being like yeah i deserve this like this makes sense this is or getting executed right which is totally possible um and so it's like well what did marad really do and now the current vision we have for her is she was a courier who she says she sometimes made policy decisions for for the emperor what's that mean how many how bloody are marra jade's

hands is kind of what i'm asking and i think zan is playing very close to the chest so that we can I mean, no, no, no, maybe we'll learn. Maybe we'll have a big, you know, careful breakdown. Yeah, yeah, we'll get a big reveal. Right now it's a little up in the air. But yeah, the fact that there are other emperor's hands, also a big breach of trust. And for what it's worth, like,

I have nothing against Mara going undercover as a dancer. I think that sounds awesome. No, I don't think any of us think. That's a great plan. Absolutely not. It should work. But at Jabba's house? I see.

Yeah. True. That's what I'm saying. The guy feeds strippers to rancers. Yeah. When the party slows down. Yeah. They's just like, man, I am bored.

That's just like a terrible, like, at least like a union. You don't be funny that that girl fell into the rancor pit. Huh? Huh? Huh? And the emperor is like, my precious child. My most important servant. Oh.

It should have been, it should have been, there should have been a, it should have been a, a unionization effort is all I'm saying but that's why they didn't know about each other it seems so they couldn't java java just smashing any any uh any uh any hints of the java dancers not among the emperor's hands oh no yeah i was thinking java's dancers needed to unionize but also so did the emperor's hands yeah i was thinking my 99 m emperor's you know um emperor's hands 26F, 23M are unionizing, you know? Yes, yes. All right, so we're all agreed.

We get special pay when we're doing the stripper shit. Yeah, no, like, that stuff sucks. That stuff sucks, especially for when it's for the huts. Well, it's hazard pay when you go to the huts for sure. Absolutely. And insurance. No, run along my child. Or any...

Fortuna's audition is in two days. I want a hazard pay for any huts. stuff. I want hazard pay for any. I'm on a Star Wars ass Star Wars planet. Like if you could describe a planet by one biome, I get hazard pay because you know it's cold as shit or hot as shit on that planet. Or smelly. Or smelly. Yeah. Oh, so what's up with this planet? Smelly. Giant monsters. Yeah. Pay me twice as much. Yeah. What else do I need hazard pay for in the world of Star Wars. I think any time...

Oh, God, if I'm aboard a big, like, military facility, it's like... Oh, yeah. Super important, but also, like, maybe has a vulnerability. Yeah. If people... If a place has a memorable name, you got to pay me extra to be there. Proper nouns get hazard pay. That's right.

Like, and we're not talking about, like, if I just take a five-minute meeting there, yeah. I'm getting the full day rate for the hazard pay. Like, it doesn't, like... Because in those five minutes I'm there, you know some shit's going to go off. Absolutely. I want to get paid for my miles. Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. Oh, yeah. I would give you 50 cents for every parsec. I travel from my own base. And I will submit my sheets at the end of the week and you will know where I was. Oh, no, my child. If we pay for business class, everyone will know your. your cover story is but a ruse

no dancer no dancer could afford business there isn't even business class to tattooing you'd have to fly private can I get the extra leg room at least the paid the paid for checked bag please

yeah please meet the Wi-Fi I got to bring like 20 outfits and I can't fit it in my carry on it's not going to happen I do like so we get Mara being like I'll just kick your ass right Marr's had a bad week Mara is ready to throw down with Sabayath right now

he's like I could kill you where you stand and she's like let's do it let's go you know what fuck it yeah let's just go but Luke shows up Luke is here Luke steps out of the shadows to be like no wait a second and Mara can barely speak I know

poor Mara Allie what's the vibe on her mouth going bone dry the second he shows up Skywalker A common L, a Mara L you know I I do love this for them I love that like her

like slowly walking towards him with the big force squirrel on her back so he could he could see how he's been deceived that's the moment here for sure yeah right and also her like playing up and in her head like oh i have to go beg luke to help me and he's never going to do that i'm going to be eating all this crow and then luke is just like yeah that sounds right yeah of course the the thing of the salemary being what breaks him from the hold of Sabayad is so fun because it's such an inversion of previously it's that like, oh, these creatures push the force down and that sort of like makes you feel weak if you're Luke. But here, because of the sort of aura that he's been

cast under, like that being broken by the Salamary is a really fun inversion. Well, and to his, like, the thing that Mara remarks on is that Luke basically already knows this guy's gone bad and the Salamary reveals to him how much he's already being manipulated but even before that he's like sorry I gotta go help

I gotta go help Mara bye and Sabayov's like no we can heal the galaxy you know you have to stay here we can heal the galaxy line for him and he said but you you said the galaxy turned on us Galaxy hates us

how are we gonna do that together do it Without us, there's no hope, none at all. And Maris says, maybe you can do it without you. Ooh, okay. Yeah, gass him up a little bit. And she sees that Luke's eyes are, Luke does not respond to that. And she's like, no, wait a second.

I was just gassing him up. I was just talking big about Luke. How come he didn't respond to that? And then she sees that his eyes are half closed. And she's like, oh, okay. But it's not like that. She had a lot of time to observe his good, wholesome. like Jedi sleepiness on Merker.

Yeah, it's true. Where he was baby. Yeah. This isn't baby. He's not just regular baby. This is something else. This is something evil baby. Someone's making him evil baby.

And yeah, freeze him from it. And before she can shoot him, there was another rock at her, which is very funny. It hits her. She does not dodge this. again common mara l and her hand hurts she gets the gun knocked away and she's like owl this is very funny uh and then he starts trying to lightning them luke is blocking the lightning with the lightsaber

and then the homie gets the job done because of course he does r2d2 who everyone's forgotten about just shoots at him with the x-wing guns finally uh yeah finally uh and that like knocks him to the ground knocks him out um he doesn't hit him straight on uh and then they walk over and they're like all right let's mar is like that's right i'm gonna kill him i'll finish it and luke's like no we're not gonna kill him not like this and he's like do you want him to wake up and then we're to fight him again like we just won the fight let's just kill him there's no need to kill him at all we can be off joe mark long before he wakes up she's like are you for real like he is going to be behind us trying to stab us and he's like he doesn't need to be an enemy mara he's ill maybe he can be cured

Luke I need you to remember that he was torturing the civilians down the road yesterday with you there he's gonna keep doing it but he meant he maybe meant well maybe he meant well you're right yeah that one dude did draw a knife that's true it's like it's like it's like space sicily down there where it's like people are like how you you bastard you you screw me out of my day's wages for the farm labor pulls the knife there pulls the gun yeah only sabayath can bring order to those people down there um and yeah she reasserts that he's like he's gotten worse he's gotten stronger he's more dangerous he sounds like the emperor invader and which of course is the worst thing you can say to luke because luke is going to be like but i helped vader i saved

Vader. Maybe I can save his Sabayath, too. Yeah, but Vader was your dad. But she doesn't know that. Because if she did, she could say that. I know. I know. I know. And then brutally like, so Luke trying to mask the fact that on some level he knows this is his baggage. He's brainless. He's like, is it conceded to think I can save

Sabiof? And it's like, conceited is probably not the thing. It's just badly misguided. Right? It's like, there's a reason he's not lying awake nights being like, I couldn't I redeem Palpatine? There's a reason, like, some people got to go. But he doesn't like that train of thought. So he tries to strike up a conversation with Mara. So the Empire find card.

Well, I fucked up. There was an unfortunate situation that happened. I was there was a tracking device on my ship and I drove right to their house and then they came to the house as well because of the tracking beacon that was on my ship

that I didn't notice that's what happened. That's okay though like they did that to me too that's how that's how they got that's how they found the rebel base with the Death Star I blew it up a few minutes later I got a medal for it and everything But, you know

I felt I felt pretty silly For not seeing that that old tracking play Then I killed Tarkin and everyone aboard the Death Star Haven't really thought through that much But oh well So I guess it Maybe maybe it'll work out for you though too You know like one minute you're up

One minute you're down This crazy galaxy, huh? Mara's like shaking with anger The bit where Luke literally says I don't imagine the emperor was pleased

bro you know what her deal is why would you say that to her because he's got no friends I know this is I I

I continue my point I maintain my point that everyone just needs a friend in this universe everyone is just like needs a friend everyone needs some platonic relationships and

everyone would be a lot better off they'd be a lot better off and maybe that's all this will be with Lukumara because they don't really have chemistry they have like there's like a disaster magnetism

but there's not Luke is so puppy dog you know I mean I he is super checked out of it I do think you get the moments of like you get it from Marr all the time obviously with the like oh he looks so nice while he's sleeping yeah that way it works how could he be so relaxed so that's the thing we're going to get the page turn where suddenly he sees her aren't we well or that or but like I also you know in this this question of why he would even bring up the emperor here like sometimes the mouse likes to get swatted by the cat you know like he's really like to the point that he needs friends like he's never had someone obsessed with him like this like even when he he was flirting

with Leah I guess you know she had other options at the time and you know like it's never been he's never had be he's never tested out the ping pong you're right And I think the more that he, like, just sort of, you know, pokes at her to get a reaction, he's going to realize he enjoys that reaction. This is true. I can imagine this. That's the thing, though, is like right now what it mostly feels like, if you do, like I like the ping pong analogy, because mostly it's like, boom, ace, boom, ace. And every once in a while, he like gets to like serve back a little bit. Or he'll be like, boom, net.

And they just completely misses. They haven't actually started volleying back and forth that much yet. They need that. They do need to have those little, and that's what it'll work. That's what it'll start going. So maybe this is the adventure

they need to go on together where they'll build that banter. It is, like, I'm also just not sure Zanzh that kind of author. Sure. Like, I think there's, like, so much of this relationship is people like pulling stuff out of the I do think by the end it is pretty clear like

there is going to be a like a dynamic that is more interesting and intimate than that they have here but I do think also you know there's things that Zahn's not going to make a meal out of you know what I mean like her having nowhere to turn but but Luke is like that scene is set up for you know something right and instead he just no sells it he's like all right let's go but the thing kind of works there is like that's kind of so that's that's so luke right it's it's the you say you need my help i i trust you uh so let's just let's just go on his mission let's just do it um and the i think the i think it is is funny the degree to which she is like prepared for this entire sales pitch like this

entire fight to get him to call in the favor right like you owe card for now feeding you to the empire like I said he should have and he just doesn't he doesn't even make it seem like he really feels obliged to card she just shows up asks for help and he's got nothing else to do yeah which I think is the other part of the characters like well he's a loose ends with his place in the rebellion and he likes helping yeah and and he likes he consistently believes he can save people from their worst selves. Maybe the person you need to save is closer

than you think, Luke. Oh, wow. Damn. Yeah. Physician heal their self. You know? Strongest friends. Yeah, so you know, that's sort of where we leave them is him trying to

just strike up. Let's connect over some things we share in a comment. You know, It's funny. You used to be the emperor's hand. And I kind of helped kill the emperor. Yeah, wow. So much in common.

So much. I blew up a space station. You may have heard about it. What else do we have in common? You know, just having a connection to the force could lead to a connection between two friends. Who could say? perhaps perhaps the friendship perhaps some sort of if not a friendship perhaps some sort of partnership a collaboration will begin here as they infiltrate the chimera to rescue talent card in the next

in the next part of our journey that's this those are the end of this book huh a lot of things moving around yeah we got a lot of a lot of people in places they got to get to other places moving parts moving parts everywhere we said when we move on from this we have four episodes left you do yeah I know I like being in this world a lot

me too this is good I'm like yeah I mean we didn't like step back and talk about like what we thought about this book so far because we're kind of in the middle of it but like yeah this stuff's great this is it this is the stuff this stuff's real like I'm excited to get back to rebels

I'm excited to wrap back around to other stuff that we had. But, you know, and I will say that, like, reading a book is a little more intensive schedule-wise than watching some rebels. But very happy to do it right now because the stuff has been so good. And I think actually, weirdly, it's going to be really useful as we continue into rebels and into whatever, everything that they're going to be doing and that we're going to catch up with that is Thrawn related and that is like this time period related. There's a lot that they have been building in this kind of vague time period

in the live action stuff. So like having this reference is going to be useful. You know, even my understanding is even like bad batches in this time period a little bit, right? So like I'm excited to wrap back around and see if any of that stuff connects, you know? I think it is highlighting as well the there's just not there's too many like major supporting characters just end up not having sauce in in modern the modern sort of Disney plus era of of Star Wars stuff right like I mean talent card is a goofy little character in some ways but

but also like he's kind of fun like the urbane smuggler who's just like I do this this is a hobby to fund my real passion, which is just knowing shit. And like Garm shows up and immediately it's like, where's this guy been all my life? Like, where is the depressing like, kind of has been?

A once, yeah, the has been Rebel General. Where is that guy? I didn't know we were missing him. But Garm shows up there being like, I just want to get bombed out of my mind with people who still think my name means something. It's like Sunset Boulevard.

It's like this close to happening with Han and Garm. And, like, there's just a distinct lack of characters that have that, like, that energy. The, the, they sort of plunk them in a scene. And let's, let's see what gets going. But with that, we've reached the end of another episode of a more civilized age. Our show is produced by Ricardo Contreras and supported by listeners at patreon.com slash civilized. Next time, that's going to wrap on Dark Force Rising. the dark forces will be rising and they will be ending as well on our next episode

what's the name of the next book wait what's the name of the next book the last command much to much to consider okay commander's in check if you're making commands watch out You must leave the fleet. Rumpro. All right. Until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And enjoy some beautiful Twistlers.

Mmm, yummy. Yummy. Thank you.