Is the Force Dying?

[GreyJediMaster]

Since the first War the Jedi have been repeatedly driven to the point of extinction and then emerged as something new. Eventually,inevitably the Republic fell, as Kreia predicted Millennia before. Then the New Republic, with only Luke and his students.

 

but in some of the comics, Luke's Grandchild is some bounty hunter loser.

 

If this is what happens to the Heir of Darth Vader, surely the Force being brought into balance is just a metaphor for light and dark joining and becoming obsolete? Or is there no balance, is it simply that all the religious branches of Force users have all misinterpreted the Force as a Force, and not a being, a conciousness that uses force sensitives to keep history moving?

 

As Star Wars history has progressed, more and more has been lost, Jedi asnd Sith have become less powerful through evolution

 

or maybe thats it: maybe the Force is de-evolving.

 

What do you think?

[kingofsquid]

So the New Republic fell?

[Mandalore The Shadow]

The bringing balance to the force thing ment that there would be the same ammount of jedi and sith because of him and there were: Darth Vader and Darth Sidious and Obi-Wan and Yoda

[Astor]

The bringing balance to the force thing ment that there would be the same ammount of jedi and sith because of him and there were: Darth Vader and Darth Sidious and Obi-Wan and Yoda

 

Not quite true, but I can understand how people can reach that conclusion, though.

 

Originally, the Dark Side was an 'aberration' - it's just a corruption of The Force. 'Bringing Balance', in the Jedi Prophecy referred to destroying the Dark Side completely - but this is, in reality pretty difficult.

 

If you follow only the films, then Vader brought balance to The Force when he rejected the Dark Side and killed Palpatine - vanquishing the Dark Side.

 

But, in reality (or at least, EU terms), the Sith continued, in the form of Lumiya's Sith Order, and then with the Emperor's return, followed by Darth Caedus, and then 90 years later with Darth Krayt's rise to power as the new Emperor.

[Master Shake]

R.I.P Force, he was a good guy.

 

Astor Kaine is right though.

[Lord of Hunger]

Perhaps there is no Dark Side or Light Side. Perhaps the Potentium is right. Or even perhaps the Force is merely a conduit through which positive and negative emotions are converted into energy and transferred throughout the universe. And perhaps the Force is not an entity and is devoid of arbitrary morality systems.

 

And perhaps Kreia's greatest hope, that the Galaxy might live on without the Force, that life can exist without the Jedi and Sith, may come true. Perhaps Endor, Yavin, the worlds destroyed in the two Galactic Civil Wars and the Vong War have all become hundreds of Malachor Vs without anyone noticing, and are slowly freeing life from the Force.

 

Perhaps Cade will be the first of many to achieve enlightenment and reject these false concepts of light and dark, be truly independent of Jedi dogma and Sith wickedness. Perhaps he will, like Revan, like the Exile, be his own person, either with or without the Force.

 

Perhaps the world of Anakin Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi, Padme Amidala, Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewbaca will die. Perhaps there will be no glorious rebellion against the Evil!Empire. Perhaps the Fel Empire will return to power and be (like it already was) a just one. Perhaps the Imperial Knights will replace the Jedi and Sith. Perhaps Sia Fel will go on to ascend to the throne latter and conquer the sexism of the Moff Council, and have a prosperous reign. Perhaps the Galaxy will forget about aspirations for a democracy that never even existed.

 

But then again, this is Star Wars and such a future will be against what Lucas wants. Because Cade WILL reject the Dark Side and become a Jedi, and the GA will return to power and the Empire defeated again and the Sith die only to return yet again.

[Gurges-Ahter]

I don't think it's possible for the Force to "die". In the SW universe it's ever-present, and life isn't possible without it. There's a symbiotic relationship that exists between the Force and all life that surrounds it.

 

That being said, I don't think there is any shortage of Force-sensitives in the Luke era compared to the KotOR era. It's just a different point in history that yields a different set of circumstances for what the Jedi Order is comprised of. With all of the Jedi and Sith purges that have occurred it's been necessary for both orders to start from scratch a few times, with a little help from holocrons on a few occasions.

 

So, no, I don't think that the Force is de-evolving - people are people and by their nature they prohibit the maximum potential that the Force allows.

[Blix]

Yes, yes it is. Echoes all around us.

[Ctrl Alt Del]

@ the Force balance issue: When Lucas created Star Wars he clearly demonstrated his Manichaeism. Therefore, independently of what some rather moronic EU writers may say, there'll will always be Good and there'll always be Evil, forever clashing and keeping the flowing river going.

[Darth Avlectus]

Not that I can really see, but I never rule out the possibility.

 

In a way, I'd say the force mended itself. If it acts through everyone, then it acted through The Exile, b/c Nihilus might otherwise have succeeded in that.

 

I'd say aside from that incident which could have basically brought death to all life, that it is cyclical. Having up swings and down swings.

 

There is a certain 'way it all works'. Combine that with sentient or sapient beings who are self aware, that is the basis for comprising light vs dark.

 

That is my take on it, anyway.

 

 

Not quite true, but I can understand how people can reach that conclusion, though.

 

Originally, the Dark Side was an 'aberration' - it's just a corruption of The Force. 'Bringing Balance', in the Jedi Prophecy referred to destroying the Dark Side completely - but this is, in reality pretty difficult.

 

If you follow only the films, then Vader brought balance to The Force when he rejected the Dark Side and killed Palpatine - vanquishing the Dark Side.

I also noticd how the force was sort of a more universal intangible thing, and that there didn't used to be such thing as "force sensitive or not force sensitive". My, how things change. But yes, I remember before the original trilogy was remade that it was referred to this way. Kind of a different era and different mindset for a different period. back then it was the late 70's to early 80's. A bit more the mystical side of things. Simpler. Now, not so simple and it has to have "more to it" than in times past.

 

But, in reality (or at least, EU terms), the Sith continued, in the form of Lumiya's Sith Order, and then with the Emperor's return, followed by Darth Caedus, and then 90 years later with Darth Krayt's rise to power as the new Emperor.

 

Well, so far as I know, after Darth Caedus there was no real connectivity to Darth Krayt, save maybe for one loose end that may have contributed to it.

 

MAJOR SPOILERS to anyone who has not read the Legacy series of comics and the issues I'm referring to...

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However from Anakin Skywalker's era, one slipped through the cracks (meaning became a loner and thus had no need to flee the empire) and fell into darkness during that time. Then stumbled upon what was lost and long forgotten artifacts and remnants of ancient sith.

 

Since the first War the Jedi have been repeatedly driven to the point of extinction and then emerged as something new. Eventually,inevitably the Republic fell, as Kreia predicted Millennia before. Then the New Republic, with only Luke and his students.

 

but in some of the comics, Luke's Grandchild is some bounty hunter loser.

 

No I think it was his great-great grandchild, remember this is ~100 years later we're talking. Besides I kinda like the "ah F*** it" attitude of Cade Skywalker. He isn't a dork that way.

 

Hmm, well, as to what you said above that, I'd say it merely supports the theory that it is an oscillating, revolving thing. Just like reality, it has a heartbeat. Ever changing all the time; and yet this dynamic never changes about it.

 

If this is what happens to the Heir of Darth Vader, surely the Force being brought into balance is just a metaphor for light and dark joining and becoming obsolete? Or is there no balance, is it simply that all the religious branches of Force users have all misinterpreted the Force as a Force, and not a being, a conciousness that uses force sensitives to keep history moving?

I do not think it is possible to vanquish one side or the other completely. Even if all were killed, it is still possible for someone in the future to pick up a holocron or something which remained from the past--something to slip through the cracks. With TOR coming out I wonder just what exactly that will sprout into. What stuff will have eluded the jedi and the sith.

 

You are right, though, there are other factions besides those two. Just never made it as prominently. Which is real pity.

 

As Star Wars history has progressed, more and more has been lost, Jedi asnd Sith have become less powerful through evolution

 

or maybe thats it: maybe the Force is de-evolving.

 

What do you think?

 

I don't really know. I don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't read the comics, but I'd somewhat disagree with the devolving to less powerful analogy in a few particular cases.

 

At your own risk:

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Like how Kaness Murr, an ancient sith who learned immortality by his talisman was immensely more powerful than other jedi and force sensitives, and yet for all his power, Cade Skywlker lured him into his undoing and destroyed him by destroying the talisman where others had failed--just off his natural power alone.

 

Also, how Darth Krayt's apprentice and friend Darth Wyyrlok has been growing in power, lately and has hold of ancient holocrons of familiar ancient sith lords.

 

Perhaps there is no Dark Side or Light Side. Perhaps the Potentium is right. Or even perhaps the Force is merely a conduit through which positive and negative emotions are converted into energy and transferred throughout the universe. And perhaps the Force is not an entity and is devoid of arbitrary morality systems.

 

Well, maybe, maybe not...it's uncanny sometimes how ironically things will happen.

 

"Sometimes I'm not convinced the force doesn't have a sense of humor."

--Master Kavar

 

It might not be individual as people who use it, but I can't say either way.

 

And perhaps Kreia's greatest hope, that the Galaxy might live on without the Force, that life can exist without the Jedi and Sith, may come true. Perhaps Endor, Yavin, the worlds destroyed in the two Galactic Civil Wars and the Vong War have all become hundreds of Malachor Vs without anyone noticing, and are slowly freeing life from the Force.

 

Perhaps Cade will be the first of many to achieve enlightenment and reject these false concepts of light and dark, be truly independent of Jedi dogma and Sith wickedness. Perhaps he will, like Revan, like the Exile, be his own person, either with or without the Force.

 

Maybe, however I see that for every end there is a new beginning. (If for no other reason than to continue to bring in money.)

 

Sure, I'd love to see more Dash Rendar and pre jedi Kyle Katarn characters with central roles.

 

From a pragmatic POV..."and then will arise another force sensitive--perhaps not of the past kind, but similar." Or sometihng like that.

 

Perhaps the world of Anakin Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi, Padme Amidala, Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewbaca will die. Perhaps there will be no glorious rebellion against the Evil!Empire. Perhaps the Fel Empire will return to power and be (like it already was) a just one. Perhaps the Imperial Knights will replace the Jedi and Sith. Perhaps Sia Fel will go on to ascend to the throne latter and conquer the sexism of the Moff Council, and have a prosperous reign. Perhaps the Galaxy will forget about aspirations for a democracy that never even existed.

 

I wouldn't speak too soon about the force without light vs dark:

 

For the imperial Knights, the veil has fallen. They serve the force embodied through their emperor, but if the emperor should fall to the dark side, they must remove him and find a replacement.

 

Now that certain things have come to pass, I see perhaps a rift growing between the imperial knights, possibly of light vs dark again. However I do think that this empire actually has a leg to stand on and isn't really all that different from the Republics of past and present. If the imperial knights are not dissolved or fought to extinction. Right now I'm uncertain about that. Especially b/c Roan Fel has basically disappeared off the map.

 

There are too many variables that are unknown at this time.

 

There may well be a truce between Jedi and their imperial "cousins". If Imp. Knights became prominent, the situation may be that jedi will sit and wait patiently. The imperials may have their own internal problems after a time. In other words a grudging truce between them, as well as coexistence of Empire and Republic.

 

But then again, this is Star Wars and such a future will be against what Lucas wants. Because Cade WILL reject the Dark Side and become a Jedi, and the GA will return to power and the Empire defeated again and the Sith die only to return yet again.

 

From an editorial POV, I think Lucas will always want there to be at least some hint of "jedi, sith; republic, empire". Though we may well be approaching a period where that is minimal.

[Gob]

Since the first War the Jedi have been repeatedly driven to the point of extinction and then emerged as something new. Eventually,inevitably the Republic fell, as Kreia predicted Millennia before. Then the New Republic, with only Luke and his students.

 

but in some of the comics, Luke's Grandchild is some bounty hunter loser.

 

If this is what happens to the Heir of Darth Vader, surely the Force being brought into balance is just a metaphor for light and dark joining and becoming obsolete? Or is there no balance, is it simply that all the religious branches of Force users have all misinterpreted the Force as a Force, and not a being, a conciousness that uses force sensitives to keep history moving?

 

As Star Wars history has progressed, more and more has been lost, Jedi asnd Sith have become less powerful through evolution

 

or maybe thats it: maybe the Force is de-evolving.

 

What do you think?

 

I'm fairly certain that the Skywalker bloodline gets just a little bit weaker with each generation, or at least with each non-Force sensitive brought into the picture. For instance, Darth Caedus is probably only slightly stronger than Anakin in RotS, if at all, despite being about ten years older and having much more training. Also, Cade Skywalker (bounty hunter loser) abandoned the Force for a long time. He's pretty strong after he rediscovers it, though.

 

Also, the Jedi and Sith aren't becoming weaker. George Lucas has said that the Jedi Order seen in the prequel trilogy is the prime of the Jedi, so I don't see why they'd get weaker.

[aner21]

I think that rather than growing weaker, they've been losing knowledge.

How many times have the enclaves been attacked and their holocrons either destroyed or robbed? The first destruction of Ossus came with a terrible price, since thousands of years of knowledge were lost.

Many force techniques were "rediscovered" during the NJO, but who knows how much was lost because of Order 66? And I don't mean just holocrons I mean teachers.

Cadeus received traning yes, but only that which the NJO managed to retrieve (don't forget Luke's training was incomplete at best, he taught himself for the most part) Anakin received training from the Old Order, which was probably far more complete.

I think it has nothing to do with their sensitivity but rather their training in Cade's case his training at the start of the comics was that of a padawan for example.

[Allronix]

I honestly cannot look at the situation of Star Wars and not think of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Green Sky. The world of Green Sky was founded by a pair of doctors who fled a war-doomed Earth with a ship full of psychically-gifted orphaned children. The problem came when the children grew up, and the doctors disagreed on whether or not to tell their charges about the horrors they escaped. One doctor said "Let them know everything." The other said "No, the only way to prevent history from repeating itself is to NOT tell them."

 

The doctor advocating knowledge wound up dead under suspicious circumstances, and his followers banished to a form of Undercity while the rest of the population were told that the dissidents were eaten by monsters living beneath the ground.

 

Only an elite handful, chosen for their extraordinary psychic gifts, were ever taught the true history. They were given intense education and high honors, serving as judges and administrators. They were considered apart and above the ordinary Kindar population, and while they weren't held to celibacy, they were forbidden families and "special" attachments. And within even that Order, there was a secret society that found any Kindar showing signs of the "Dark Side," and jailed them beneath the ground.

 

For an indeterminate number of centuries, the society did an awesome job of purging every possible Dark Side aspect out of them. They no longer had a word for "anger" or "weapon." It was very much a society where there was a place for everyone, everyone to their place. Rituals existed for everything from greeting a new friend to caring for the sick. For any kind of mental pain, there were chants, meditations, and a sacred, narcotic berry. The only thing they needed to fear were the (imaginary) monsters beneath the ground.

 

Like any Utopia, there were catches, and they started to snowball. Abuse of the sacred berry was rampant. The population's psionic skills were fading. Even the mighty elite were no more psychic then the average Kindar plucked off the branchpaths, though they kept THAT fact under wraps. Meanwhile, the descendants of those dissidents trapped underground had formed their own society, but were slowly starving to death. In purging their Dark Side, they had braided their own noose.

 

And while Green Sky's society was turned upside-down and redeemed by a fellow named Raamo, an escaped under-grounder named Teera, and a handful of allies, the GFFA is nowhere near so lucky. Luke tried, but he was going up against way too much history and lost.

 

The Force is the web of life, the pull and push of life to sustain itself. Nature is capable of great compassion and great cruelty. It's True Neutral or Chaotic Neutral. Long ago, some mystics on Tython figured they could pull some strings on the Force to do some pretty nifty things. Since sentient beings are flawed, they started to dissect it, classify it, name things as "Light" or "Dark," and try to fit it to ideology. So, we get Light Siders on one end, Dark Siders on the other, and moderates skewered by either side. The problem is that the Force does not like being mangled. It's weakened if one side or another dominates. The further it's tipped to one side or another, the nastier the recoil when it attempts to right itself - see Order 66 & the Ruusan thought bomb. So long as sentients use the Force, the Force will use them back. This is why Jedi and Sith are doomed to shred the galaxy every few decades or centuries. The Force will survive those who use it, and by reducing of the power levels of those who are able to mess with it over the centuries, the Force is probably doing itself a favor!

[ShinDangaioh]

And that is probably why the Zeison Sha on Yanninbar have not lost any strength or knowledge over the eons. They are like the Sith species of old before the Rakata and exiled Dark Jedi messed them up: they live in symbiosis with the Force and focus on independance, suvival, community and family.

 

I was going through the various RPG products and compared the Jedi Order and the Sith species from before the rise of the Legions of Lettow to two other orginizations.

 

Zeison Sha-The Sith species before King Adas

Matuki-The Jedi on Ossus(ossify?) before the First Schisim. Basically, they both focused on self-improvement.

 

The Force isn't getting weaker; the Jedi and Sith Orders are ossifying(think Petrified Forest). The other Force using traditions have remained strong and viable for the most part. I think the Krath is the only one that has gone extinct and it got replaced by the Order of Sasha on Mannan.

[Knight Of Honor]

Just wanted to bump up an old discussion that is actually interesting. Something these forums are devoid of these days

 

Perhaps there is no Dark Side or Light Side. Perhaps the Potentium is right. Or even perhaps the Force is merely a conduit through which positive and negative emotions are converted into energy and transferred throughout the universe. And perhaps the Force is not an entity and is devoid of arbitrary morality systems.

 

And perhaps Kreia's greatest hope, that the Galaxy might live on without the Force, that life can exist without the Jedi and Sith, may come true. Perhaps Endor, Yavin, the worlds destroyed in the two Galactic Civil Wars and the Vong War have all become hundreds of Malachor Vs without anyone noticing, and are slowly freeing life from the Force.

 

But can life exist without the force. I dont think so, and here is my theory:

 

Just like in our own understanding of the Universe there is one omnipresent element which created and now sustain all life. Energy! It is eternal, it can not be created nor destroyed, only transformed from one state to another. This is what i believe the force was always intended to be, the only constant in the Universe. That which created all life in the first place. I remember Yoda say: "Life creates it, makes it grow.. luminous beings are we, not this crude matter". Yes. He say that life is what creates the force, and that is true. But life could not erect from nothing, it needed a spark of creation, and this spark is energy, or in the SW universe; the Force. Then life is created, and it begins to evolve, from simple atoms, molecules to stars planets and galaxies, and in the end living beings. Then all this life starts pulsating and it creates and emit energy, makes it grow wherever life is present. So life and the force is connected, but life could not exist without the force, however the force is eternal, and it will always exist independent of life. So no, the force is not dying, it cannot die.

 

Thoughts go back to Kreia and her desperate attempt to find answeres and to get revenge on those she holds responsible for her own failiures. She is a very bewildered and lost old woman, who is at the end of her bitter life. Its kind of tragic, but she still does some good in the end. She trained and managed to motivate the Exile to destroy such monsterous abominations as Nihilus, something that only the Exile had the potential to do.

 

But to kill the force, which was her ultimate ambition was a twisted illusion she had aquired in all the pain she had been through in her life. Imagine a twisted or half delusional priest wanting to kill God, because he blames God for all the horror that he has caused. When in fact it is the living beings and their choices that creates pain and horror in life, and causes scars in the force itself.

[Nick Vader]

Knowledge and Jedi training will never be lost. For Yoda's, Obi-Wan-Kenobi's and Anakin's knowledge survives. They became force ghosts, remember ? Their knowledge will live on for eternity.