Governments - Part 1

  The Republic. The Empire. Everyone's heard of them, including you. How can anyone claim to be a Star Wars fan and not know the Republic and the Empire. The easygoing, peace loving society of the Republic, and the disciplined, order-craving Empire.


  But what about the Galactic Alliance? The New Republic? The Fel Empire? The Imperial Remnant?
The One Oreder? Man, you've got some learning to do. Let's jump into it.

    Ah yes, the republic. Usually the good guys, infallibly the distant silhouettes on the horizon of the moral high ground, with the sun behind them and the hordes of evil beneath them.
But let's cut the crap. At it's heart, this government is a ruthless, backstabbing, political nightmare, sheltered in bureaucracy and deception. From panzy ass bothans sitting in dark rooms plotting their political moves, to shining figureheads and leaders, there's always a battle going on within it's workings and always danger.

    Originally formed almost 25,000 BBY, it was cut and pasted together with promises of mutually beneficial trade, dispute resolution, through military might if necessary and enforceable security. It's supposed to have sustained itself for that 25,000 years with barely any military, just scrounging one up if a threat arose, and lasted in relative peace.
Peace until the dark times. Until the Empire.

  Strength. Discipline. Power through fear.
This is how the Galactic Empire ruled.
It was founded in around 19 BBY by Emperor Palpatine, although the general idea has been around since the formation of the Sith and Jedi (various forms of imperial government existed before the GE, there were no structured, dominant Empires.).
See, originally the Sith and Jedi were one single faction. They went exploring, and the Jedi found Tython, and the Sith found Korriban. The Force was strong on those planets. Tython had an abundance of light side energy, Korriban had alot of Dark Side energy. Over time, the Sith and Jedi grew apart, much like the mental embrace of two spirits adrift in a sea of conflicting ideology. So the Empire had a bunch of wars with the Republic, and eventually took 'em over from the inside in 19 BBY, and it lasted a good 30 years or so.
Then Luke Skywalker was like "hurr durr my family's dead ima go overthrow a multi-system galactic government with the most powerful military in history, and make out with my sister." so that happened.
After that, the remnant of the Empire, headed by Admiral Thrawn, led a guerrilla campaign against the nubile and still mostly impotent New Republic. After the New Republic won that war for absolutely no reason, Admiral (then captain) Gilad Palleon took over, and retreated to Bastion. There he stayed with his empire, governing the much smaller group of planets that elected to stay in the empire from the relative safety of the fortress-world.
Then he got involved helping the Galactic Alliance against the Sith Order of One in the Second Galactic Civil War.
Also, Jessica, or Isabella, or Jennifer Fel or whatever her name is is a giant whore. Go die in a fire, Jessabellifer. Sincerely -

-People Who Understand Why Women Make Shitty Imperial Knights.

The 501st Legion

  Remember the clones in the gunships in the Geonosis arena? Remember the clones that stormed the Jedi temple? (bear with me through the prequel references), the clones that killed all of the jedi in the second half of ROTS? The Stormtroopers that boarded Leia's "diplomatic" frigate?
All the handiwork of Vader's fist. The legendary 501st legion.

  Specially trained during the Clone Wars to be the Navy SEALs of space, they totally raped a buttload of droids. After they won the war with the Seperatists (I like calling them the Confederates Without Slaves), they were deployed by the Emperor as his personal Jedi hunting battalion. They were deployed to Kashyyyk, Ord Mantell, Corellia, Bothuwai and a number of other Jedi-friendly worlds to eradicate to infernal Jedi scum. After he believed all the Jedi were dead, he used them as a strike team to take out key Rebellion outposts and bases.

  After the Rebellion revolution and the re-descent into bureaucracy, and the "New Republic"'s treaty with the majestic Galactic Empire, the Imperial "remnant" to most New Republic sissies, the New Republic became the GA (the Galactic Alliance), with the GE and the NR under one banner, and it lasted in relative peace for about 100 years, up to 130 ABY, when the new Sith Order of One took control of the galaxy, the GE was forced into a guerrilla war against the Sith. The Empire AGAINST the Sith. Imagine that. Aaaanyways, Emperor Roan Fel resurrected the 501st from the tales and testimony from the old glory days of the 501st, and used it to strike at the Sith from their heavily fortified planet-base, Bastion.

                                           Emperor Fel's 501st assuming the position


The story of the 501st is still an open and blank book, with plently of room for expansion. In any era really. Clone Wars, Galactic Civil War, the Yuuzahn Vong War, the One War. I really hope that the authors at Lucasarts (WITH NO HELP, ADVICE, CONTROL OR INFLUENCE FROM GEORGE LUCAS) expand this amazing facet of the Star Wars galaxy.

Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO

  So, I've been playing WoW now for about 5 years, and I'm a hardcore Star Wars fan, so obviously my ears perked up when I heard there's a Star Wars MMO in the progress. So I googled Star Wars MMO, and found Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's being developed by Bioware, the same Canadian company responsible for Mass Effect 1 & 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, which I LOVED for their dialogue and story.

  I've been following this game since it's announcement in early 2008. Bioware has said that in addition to combat, economy and society, this MMO will have a fourth "pillar", story.


There are 8 classes, and as of now 3 races. Just like in WoW, there is a Dark Side and a Light Side, like Horde and Alliance. The Light side has the Jedi Knight (melee damage, tank), the Jedi Consular (magic damage, heals), the Smuggler (range damage) and the Trooper (range damage, range tank).
The Dark Side has the Sith Warrior (melee damage, tank), the Sith Inquisitor (range damage, heals), the Imperial Agent (range damage) and the bounty hunter (range damage, range tank).

It's set 300 years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic, a singleplayer RPG Bioware developed in 2001. The Sith and the Jedi are at war, and planets and alliances are arrayed against eachother, yadda yadda yadda. Each player ets his own ship, and possibly the ability to purchase bigger ones later on. Along with standard MMO 3rd person combat and party/raid combat, there is also gonna be space combat. Shooting stuff in starships. Sheeyuh.The choreography and precision in the fighting animations adds a HUGE amount of realism to the game (from what I can tell from the demos), and the graphics and visuals look absolutely superb for an MMO.

There will be just as much dialogue, story and character development as you would expect from a Bioware game, and possibly more. All in all, I'm SUPER stoked for this game.

Blasters

   From Han Solo blowing Greedo away in the bar to Leia grabbing a stormtrooper's blaster rifle and covering Luke in the detention area, to Boba Fett's strange looking blaster rifle he shot at Luke on Bespin, blasters are and have always been an integral part of Star Wars. Smugglers use them, armies use them, bounty hunters use them, hell, even most 100 ABY + Jedi use them. They might be clumsy and random, but they're also cheap and devastating.




   Let's start off with something simple, an Imperial E-11 blaster carbine.

  Short and light, E-11 was made by BlasTech industries during the Empire's 19 year fight with the Rebellion, also known as the Galactic Civil War. You might recognize it. Why? It was only in EVERY SCENE WITH A STORMTROOPER EVER. Yup, remember leia taking Luke's gun and telling to jump in the garbage chute? What was she holding? Remember the Ewok's assault on the power generator on Endor? What were the stormtroopers holding? Up to 50 years after the Empire's fall, you can find references of E-11s being used by private security, bounty hunters, smugglers and even some private armies. All in all, the E-11 was an influential blaster in Star Wars.


  Now, how a blaster works, is that it uses a gas (Tibanna gas is the most frequently mentioned, most likely because it was part of what Lando harvested on Bespin), and the gas flows through a series of chambers, until it is eventually superheated into a bolt of ionized protons. Then release the valve and BAM, a glob of superheated electrified gas shoots out and melts your opponent's face off. Why do we still use conventional firearms again?

  Another famous blaster is the DL-44, or more commonly known as Han Solo's blaster pistol.

  Han Solo's personal DL-44 was illegally modified to shoot hotter gas more frequently, but who'd have expected anything different from Han Solo himself? Other people who carred the DL-44 heavy blaster pistol were Mara Jade, Luke Skywalker's wife, and Rebel anti-armor squads, who used this as a sidearm.




In conclusion, what would Star Wars be without blasters?
For addition specs and descriptions of blasters, refer to the internet.

Super Weapons

You all know the Death Star, the small-moon sized, planet destroying ball of testosterone charged AWESOME. But what about the Galaxy Gun? Dark Reaper? Centerpoint Station? The Eye of Palpatine? The Planet Killer?? Geez, you really don't know anything. Let's get started.

   The Death Star. You've all seen it, and marveled at it's destructive beauty. Originally designed to be an inter-system weapon to intimidate rebellious planets into submission, it destroyed Alderaan, princess Leia's home planet. Despite the massive PR against it, and every admiral in the imperial navy saying not to do it again, and they probably wouldn't, that bitch Leia's like "herp derp my family's dead and I don't have my favorite playground anymoar" so they launch an attack on the death star based on plans she stole and hid in R2D2. Due to a technical oversight in the plans, a small fighter was able to shoot a torpedo down a service shaft and blow it up. So the empire builds another one and it got blown up before it was finished getting built.

Centerpoint Station, sittin' pretty in the Corellia system that it created. Yeah, created. It pulled different planets, asteroids and a sun using its huge magnetic puller majiggy. It's believed to have been built by the Architects, a.k.a the Celestials, up to a million years BBY. These Celestials are also believe to have constructed The Maw black hole cluster. It's 350Km long and 100Km wide, and it has a superlaser, much like the death star except bigger, and it has an interdiction field it can project and pull ships out of hyperspace.
The only times I know of it being used are during the Yuuzahn Vong war by Thrakan Sal-Solo, Han Solo's cousin, because Jacen Solo is a dictator and Anakin Solo is a giant faggot, and Thrakan was the only one with the balls to do it, and during the Second Galactic Civil War, aka the Corellian Insurrection.


To see more superweapons, refer to the wookiepedia article superweapons.




In conclusion, FEAR THE EMPIRE!

Why The Phantom Menace Blows

I've mentioned it before, but here it is, Red Letter Media's Plinkett review of the Phantom Menace. All credit goes to them, excellent job. Be educated, fellow starwroids!

The Mandalorians

   Elevated to mythical status by Boba Fett, Mandos have always been the quintessential Badasses. Whether it's taking out a senator, blockading the Jedi temple or fighting a war for the glory of their people in the Great War, they've always been the family-oriented, bounty hunting, strange-language speaking warriors in awesome armor.

                                                                        Some Mandalorian Warriors


They originally started out as a humanoid species called the Taung, 200,000 years before the first death star blew up. They got in a war with the 13 human tribes of coruscant. So they left to the outer rim, conquered a planet, started living on it, and became a warrior culture. Also, they started doing it with humans until they became humans, with slightly denser muscle tissue, and a mental condition called "triggerable psychosis", where they can focus all of their mental power to ending a fight, literally becoming a ball of rage. They choose a leader through a few different ways, either gladiator-style fighting, elections, war heroes or espionage. These they call Mandalores.

   
                                                Mandalore the Ultimate and Cassus Fett


In about 40 ABY, Boba Fett became the Mandalore, but there was a microbe in the air preventing him from even setting foot on Mandalore again or he'd die. So that sucks. In 45 ABY, the Mandos were hired by Admiral Natasi Dalaa, the head of the GA, to assault the Jedi temple and retrieve some prisoners. They failed because the authors of that series are a bunch of faggots with no respect for the mandos. And to top it off, they blockaded the Jedi temple and killed a sweet, innocent Jedi girl. Poor, poor girl. Nevermind the fact she could have killed them instantly with her mind. But she was wearing a skirt, so it was totally cold-blooded.


   There are a bunch of Mando fan club and cosplay sites, such as Mandalorian Mercs, The Dented Helmet and the 501st Legion. They make their own armor and helmets, weapons and stuff, and be all cool and stuff. It's pretty awesome. Heres some dresser uppers.

In conclusion, Mandos rock, you don't if you don't like em.