Novel References

Rogue Planet

PAGE QUOTATION COMMENTS

1

Wicko District
Anakin's money

4
The garbage pit race was illegal, of course. The authorities on Coruscant tried to maintain the image of a staid and respectable metropolitan planet, capital of the Republic, centre of law and civilisation for tens of thousands of stellar systems.

locations: Status of Coruscant as a capital world. In addition to being the galactic capital (ruling two hundred billion stars, and tens of millions of inhabited worlds) it appears that Coruscant rules tens of thousands of worlds more directly. This is approximately in agreement with the scale that is calculated and is to be expected for the largest galactic sectors. (There are tens of millions of worlds, but apparently only some thousands of sectorial senators.) Conclusion: Coruscant's sector has tens of thousands of inhabited systems.

4
The tunnel master in charge of the race was a Naplousean, little more than a tangle of stringlike tissues with three legs and a knotted nubbin of glittering wet eyes. “First flight is away,” it hissed as it walked in quick, graceful twirls down the narrow smooth-walled tunnel. The Naplousean spoke Basic, except when it was angry, and then it simply smelled bad.

aliens: Naplousean

5
Anakin had been aware of the Blood Carver in line behind him for some time. There were only a few hundred on all of Coruscant, and they had joined the Republic less than a century before. They were an impressive-looking people: slender, graceful, with long three-jointed limbs, small heads mounted on a high, thick neck, and iridescent gold skin.
...
Across the Blood Carver's narrow face, his nose spread into two fleshy flaps like a split shield, half hiding his wide, lipless mouth. The ornately tatooed nose flaps functioned both as a sensor of smell and a very sensitive ear, supplemented by two small pits behind his small, onyx-black eyes.

aliens: Blood Carvers, physical description and status within the galaxy. Presumably a technologically primitive species that has only recently advanced to the point of making contact with galactic civilisation

8
Yoda had put the situation to Obi-Wan with some style a few months back, as they squatted over a glowing charcoal fire and cooked shoo bread and wurr in his small, low-ceilinged quarters.
... His words echoed in Obi-Wan's thoughts as he took an express taxi to the outskirts of the Senate District. Travel time — mere minutes, with wrenching twists and turns through hundreds of slower, cheaper lanes and levels of traffic.

culture: shoo bread and wurr; foodstuffs favoured by Yoda.
location: Senate District, somewhere closer to Anakin's garbage pit than the Jedi Temple.
Indirect reference to the speed and dodging trajectories permitted for Coruscant air taxis.
location: Anakin's garbage pit

9

location: Coruscant garbage pits; explanation of the technology, purpose and function.

14
“You bought your wings from an injured Lemmer. ....”

aliens: Lemmer, physical characteristics unstated, but able to wear garbage pit racing wings.

16
“Flight starting soon!” cried a little lump of a boy even younger than Anakin. The boy had obviously come from off-world, born on a high-gravity planet, strong, stout, fearless, and almost unbelievably grimy. “Wages here for the Greeter? Fifty-to-one max, go home rich!”

character: Greeter

20
... and he had only a few seconds before he smacked himself flat on the lower shield.

The falling time from the launching area of the races to the lower shield is measured in seconds. If Corusant gravity is not more than a few times Earth's, the vertical distance must be less than a few kilometres. It may be as little as a few hundred metres.

21-22
Once at the bottom, all a contestant had to do was grab a scale from a garbage worm, while still airborne,...
Garbage not packaged for export into space was gathered from the pit's municipal territory, mixed into a slurry of silicone oils, spewed from the lowest ring of outfall tunnels, and processed by the worms. The worms took the less toxic garbage and chewed it down to tiny pellets, removing any last bits of organics, plastic or recoverable metal.
Garbage worms were huge, unfriendly, and essential to the efficient operation of the pit. The garbage worms had natural ancestors on other worlds, but Coruscant technicians, masters of the vital arts, had long since bred these monsters away from the limits of their origins. Arrayed in silicone slurry like jumbled nests of thick cable, the slowly writhing worms reduced millions of tons of preprocessed pellets to carbon dioxide, methane, and other organics that floated in thick islands of pale yellow froth on the roiled surface of the silicone lake. Discarded metals and other minerals and glasses sank and were scraped from the bottom of the basin by ponderous submerged droids.

creatures: garbage worms

24
His senses were tuned tp the rythm of that rotating launcher, bigger than the entire Jedi Temple.

technology: size of the garbage pit's canister launcher.

33
Raith Sienar ... walked along the factory parapet. Beside him strolled Commander Tarkin of the Republic Outland Regions Security Force. They might have been brothers. Both were in their early thirties. Both were thin and wiry, with high-arching bony brows, piercing blue eyes, aristocratic faces, and attitudes to match. And both wore robes of senatorial favour, showing extraordinary service to the senate over the past decade.

characters: Raith Sienar; Commander Tarkin.
Outland

33-34,35
Beyond and below the parapet, four Advance Project ships approached completion, black, sleek, smaller than previous models, and very fast indeed.
... “Private contracts with the Trade Federation, several mining firms, others. Very lucrative, so long as I don't sell my very best weapons to the wrong buyers. Every ship I make, I equip with weapons, as you doubtless know. Much more profitable that way, but tricky at times. So I keep the best in reserve ... for my most generous customers.”
.... Each was twenty metres wide, with broad, flat cooling vanes terminating their wings. The compartments were compact, spherical, hardly luxurious.
...
“These, pardon me, look like advanced fighters to me. Very pretty they are too.”
Sienar nodded. “Experimental models for protecting freight haulers on the fringe. The Republic no longer polices some of the most lucrative routes. I presume with the Trade Federation forces integrated, they will once more. ...”

starships: Sienar's "Advanced Project" starships, which bear similarities to the TIE fighters of later generations, and the Sith Infiltrator converted courier ship used by Darth Maul.

34
Tarkin smiled at this answer. “Then I may have useful news for you, .... Chancellor Palpatine has finally forced a stand-down over the Naboo incident. The Trade Federation security forces will soon be disbanded. In the next few months, they are to be assimilated into Republic forces and placed at the disposal of the senate. All will comply — even Outland Mining — or face a centralised and much more powerful military response.”

insstitutions: Trade Federation and Outland Mining. It is interesting to note that the Trade Federation has evaded the full consequences of the Naboo invasion for several years. This is testament to either the Federation's wealth and power, or Palpatine's multi-layered manipulations.

36

“humans are the future”

38

sphere

41

Jedi Temple

47

character: Thracia Cho Leem

51

character: Vergere, a Jedi who will reappear in the New Jedi Order series.

rule of R.

56,59

character: Charza Kwinn;
transport

58

starship: YT-1150

59
aliens: Priapulins

60

Star Sea Flower

61

1/10 tide

62

* locations: Gardaji Rift; Sekot; Tingel Arm

65

SFS Coruscant; Trade Federation

66

Kolhuro

68

Rigovian T. U.

72

twenty million (2.0x10⁷) spaceships

76

Alderaan

78

Ke'daiv

82

reach of law

85

*prancer

86

disruptor

87

dead starship

91

Zonama Sekot

92-93

*Unknown!

97

aurodium

98

YZ-1000

99

destiny & Amidala

103

character: Admiral Korvin

104

classmate

105

Republic forces

106

taxon, Captain Kett

112

woman

116

Kett's uniform

122

Gann

123

time

131

characters: Sheekla Farrs; Shappa

132

Potentium

133

Ferroans

136

* Naboo droids above time

137

Baktoid E-5

139-140

seed-partners

156

* space & time

160

location: Magister's tower

163

Wind, Magister

165

50 years ago

166

hiding from Jedi

171

"loving and patient"

172

Shappa Farrs

178

surface

187

Jabitha; seeds

192

centuries

193

Gensano

198

Jentari

201

* Republic Dreadnought

203

Jabitha & Anakin

208

carapods

210

outsiders

213

Langhesi

214

Vagno

216

n-dissemblers

229

Vidge

230

engines

231

* Rim worlds

243

Fitch

245

ship shape

248

Yuuzhan Vong

257

* fleet

259

troops

263

spirit, Yuuzhan Vong

266

ship

268

C.Mignay

271

Lowtars

274

Yuuzhan Vong

277

Potentium

278

Leor Hal

284

size of sky

285

> 15 years ago

301

ring

308

Tarkin meeting

316

15 minutes

319

foreshadowing

322

masks

331

hyperdrive

338

Seline

340

coda

39
Tarkin could not take his eyes off the slowly rotating sphere, with its massive core-powered turbolaser now revealed. 'Ah' he smiled. 'always a weapon. Have you shown this to anybody?'
Sienar shook his head sadly. He could see the enticement was working. 'The Trade Federation knows precisely what it needs and shows no interest in anything else. A deplorable lack of imagination.'
'Explain it to me.'
'It's a dream, but an achievable dream, given certain advances in hypermatter technology. An implosion core with a plasma about a kilometer in diameter could power an artificial construct the size of a small moon. A couple of large asteroids for fuel... Common enough still in the outer fringe systems...'
'A small crew could police an entire system of one vessel,' Tarkin mused.
'Well, not so small a crew, but one vessel, certainly.' Sienar walked around the display and made large, vaguely desginging sweeps of his hands. 'I'm considering removing the extraneous spheres, sticking with one large ball, ninety or a hundred kilometers in diameter. A more wieldy design for transport.'

technology: Sienar presents a concept for a Death Star scale vessel with a singularly powerful weapon. It is not clear whether the design is meant to be capable of destroying planets; that's probably Bevel Lemelisk's advancement during the Death Star project some decades later. The present weapon may be more of a single-shot “Base Delta Zero” weapon (reference to the Imperial codeword for a naval bombardment to melt the surface of an inhabited planet).
Responsibility for this concept is uncertain. It could be from Sienar himself, or from one of his subordinates, or the product of a think-tank in his company. Was Lemelisk involved, or does he only come into the field at a later date? The question remains unanswered for the time being.
The Superlaser is similar to Turbolasers. Again, potentially just indicating the compound nature differentiating superlasers from turbolasers.
Hypermatter is an established technology, but not on the scale and purpose Sienar envisioned (i.e. “certain advances.”)

69

technology: Sienar's concept for a Death Star scale vessel is named as “Expeditionary Battle Planetoid”.

Rogue Planet
PAGE	QUOTATION	COMMENTS
1		Wicko District Anakin's money
4	The garbage pit race was illegal, of course. The authorities on Coruscant tried to maintain the image of a staid and respectable metropolitan planet, capital of the Republic, centre of law and civilisation for tens of thousands of stellar systems.	locations: Status of Coruscant as a capital world. In addition to being the galactic capital (ruling two hundred billion stars, and tens of millions of inhabited worlds) it appears that Coruscant rules tens of thousands of worlds more directly. This is approximately in agreement with the scale that is calculated and is to be expected for the largest galactic sectors. (There are tens of millions of worlds, but apparently only some thousands of sectorial senators.) Conclusion: Coruscant's sector has tens of thousands of inhabited systems.
4	The tunnel master in charge of the race was a Naplousean, little more than a tangle of stringlike tissues with three legs and a knotted nubbin of glittering wet eyes. “First flight is away,” it hissed as it walked in quick, graceful twirls down the narrow smooth-walled tunnel. The Naplousean spoke Basic, except when it was angry, and then it simply smelled bad.	aliens: Naplousean
5	Anakin had been aware of the Blood Carver in line behind him for some time. There were only a few hundred on all of Coruscant, and they had joined the Republic less than a century before. They were an impressive-looking people: slender, graceful, with long three-jointed limbs, small heads mounted on a high, thick neck, and iridescent gold skin. ... Across the Blood Carver's narrow face, his nose spread into two fleshy flaps like a split shield, half hiding his wide, lipless mouth. The ornately tatooed nose flaps functioned both as a sensor of smell and a very sensitive ear, supplemented by two small pits behind his small, onyx-black eyes.	aliens: Blood Carvers, physical description and status within the galaxy. Presumably a technologically primitive species that has only recently advanced to the point of making contact with galactic civilisation
8	Yoda had put the situation to Obi-Wan with some style a few months back, as they squatted over a glowing charcoal fire and cooked shoo bread and wurr in his small, low-ceilinged quarters. ... His words echoed in Obi-Wan's thoughts as he took an express taxi to the outskirts of the Senate District. Travel time — mere minutes, with wrenching twists and turns through hundreds of slower, cheaper lanes and levels of traffic.	culture: shoo bread and wurr; foodstuffs favoured by Yoda. location: Senate District, somewhere closer to Anakin's garbage pit than the Jedi Temple. Indirect reference to the speed and dodging trajectories permitted for Coruscant air taxis. location: Anakin's garbage pit
9		location: Coruscant garbage pits; explanation of the technology, purpose and function.
14	“You bought your wings from an injured Lemmer. ....”	aliens: Lemmer, physical characteristics unstated, but able to wear garbage pit racing wings.
16	“Flight starting soon!” cried a little lump of a boy even younger than Anakin. The boy had obviously come from off-world, born on a high-gravity planet, strong, stout, fearless, and almost unbelievably grimy. “Wages here for the Greeter? Fifty-to-one max, go home rich!”	character: Greeter
20	... and he had only a few seconds before he smacked himself flat on the lower shield.	The falling time from the launching area of the races to the lower shield is measured in seconds. If Corusant gravity is not more than a few times Earth's, the vertical distance must be less than a few kilometres. It may be as little as a few hundred metres.
21-22	Once at the bottom, all a contestant had to do was grab a scale from a garbage worm, while still airborne,... Garbage not packaged for export into space was gathered from the pit's municipal territory, mixed into a slurry of silicone oils, spewed from the lowest ring of outfall tunnels, and processed by the worms. The worms took the less toxic garbage and chewed it down to tiny pellets, removing any last bits of organics, plastic or recoverable metal. Garbage worms were huge, unfriendly, and essential to the efficient operation of the pit. The garbage worms had natural ancestors on other worlds, but Coruscant technicians, masters of the vital arts, had long since bred these monsters away from the limits of their origins. Arrayed in silicone slurry like jumbled nests of thick cable, the slowly writhing worms reduced millions of tons of preprocessed pellets to carbon dioxide, methane, and other organics that floated in thick islands of pale yellow froth on the roiled surface of the silicone lake. Discarded metals and other minerals and glasses sank and were scraped from the bottom of the basin by ponderous submerged droids.	creatures: garbage worms
24	His senses were tuned tp the rythm of that rotating launcher, bigger than the entire Jedi Temple.	technology: size of the garbage pit's canister launcher.
33	Raith Sienar ... walked along the factory parapet. Beside him strolled Commander Tarkin of the Republic Outland Regions Security Force. They might have been brothers. Both were in their early thirties. Both were thin and wiry, with high-arching bony brows, piercing blue eyes, aristocratic faces, and attitudes to match. And both wore robes of senatorial favour, showing extraordinary service to the senate over the past decade.	characters: Raith Sienar; Commander Tarkin. Outland
33-34,35	Beyond and below the parapet, four Advance Project ships approached completion, black, sleek, smaller than previous models, and very fast indeed. ... “Private contracts with the Trade Federation, several mining firms, others. Very lucrative, so long as I don't sell my very best weapons to the wrong buyers. Every ship I make, I equip with weapons, as you doubtless know. Much more profitable that way, but tricky at times. So I keep the best in reserve ... for my most generous customers.” .... Each was twenty metres wide, with broad, flat cooling vanes terminating their wings. The compartments were compact, spherical, hardly luxurious. ... “These, pardon me, look like advanced fighters to me. Very pretty they are too.” Sienar nodded. “Experimental models for protecting freight haulers on the fringe. The Republic no longer polices some of the most lucrative routes. I presume with the Trade Federation forces integrated, they will once more. ...”	starships: Sienar's "Advanced Project" starships, which bear similarities to the TIE fighters of later generations, and the Sith Infiltrator converted courier ship used by Darth Maul.
34	Tarkin smiled at this answer. “Then I may have useful news for you, .... Chancellor Palpatine has finally forced a stand-down over the Naboo incident. The Trade Federation security forces will soon be disbanded. In the next few months, they are to be assimilated into Republic forces and placed at the disposal of the senate. All will comply — even Outland Mining — or face a centralised and much more powerful military response.”	insstitutions: Trade Federation and Outland Mining. It is interesting to note that the Trade Federation has evaded the full consequences of the Naboo invasion for several years. This is testament to either the Federation's wealth and power, or Palpatine's multi-layered manipulations.
36		“humans are the future”
38		sphere
41		Jedi Temple
47		character: Thracia Cho Leem
51		character: Vergere, a Jedi who will reappear in the New Jedi Order series. rule of R.
56,59		character: Charza Kwinn; transport
58		starship: YT-1150
59		aliens: Priapulins
60		Star Sea Flower
61		1/10 tide
62		* locations: Gardaji Rift; Sekot; Tingel Arm
65		SFS Coruscant; Trade Federation
66		Kolhuro
68		Rigovian T. U.
72		twenty million (2.0x10⁷) spaceships
76		Alderaan
78		Ke'daiv
82		reach of law
85		*prancer
86		disruptor
87		dead starship
91		Zonama Sekot
92-93		*Unknown!
97		aurodium
98		YZ-1000
99		destiny & Amidala
103		character: Admiral Korvin
104		classmate
105		Republic forces
106		taxon, Captain Kett
112		woman
116		Kett's uniform
122		Gann
123		time
131		characters: Sheekla Farrs; Shappa
132		Potentium
133		Ferroans
136		* Naboo droids above time
137		Baktoid E-5
139-140		seed-partners
156		* space & time
160		location: Magister's tower
163		Wind, Magister
165		50 years ago
166		hiding from Jedi
171		"loving and patient"
172		Shappa Farrs
178		surface
187		Jabitha; seeds
192		centuries
193		Gensano
198		Jentari
201		* Republic Dreadnought
203		Jabitha & Anakin
208		carapods
210		outsiders
213		Langhesi
214		Vagno
216		n-dissemblers
229		Vidge
230		engines
231		* Rim worlds
243		Fitch
245		ship shape
248		Yuuzhan Vong
257		* fleet
259		troops
263		spirit, Yuuzhan Vong
266		ship
268		C.Mignay
271		Lowtars
274		Yuuzhan Vong
277		Potentium
278		Leor Hal
284		size of sky
285		> 15 years ago
301		ring
308		Tarkin meeting
316		15 minutes
319		foreshadowing
322		masks
331		hyperdrive
338		Seline
340		coda
39	Tarkin could not take his eyes off the slowly rotating sphere, with its massive core-powered turbolaser now revealed. 'Ah' he smiled. 'always a weapon. Have you shown this to anybody?' Sienar shook his head sadly. He could see the enticement was working. 'The Trade Federation knows precisely what it needs and shows no interest in anything else. A deplorable lack of imagination.' 'Explain it to me.' 'It's a dream, but an achievable dream, given certain advances in hypermatter technology. An implosion core with a plasma about a kilometer in diameter could power an artificial construct the size of a small moon. A couple of large asteroids for fuel... Common enough still in the outer fringe systems...' 'A small crew could police an entire system of one vessel,' Tarkin mused. 'Well, not so small a crew, but one vessel, certainly.' Sienar walked around the display and made large, vaguely desginging sweeps of his hands. 'I'm considering removing the extraneous spheres, sticking with one large ball, ninety or a hundred kilometers in diameter. A more wieldy design for transport.'	technology: Sienar presents a concept for a Death Star scale vessel with a singularly powerful weapon. It is not clear whether the design is meant to be capable of destroying planets; that's probably Bevel Lemelisk's advancement during the Death Star project some decades later. The present weapon may be more of a single-shot “Base Delta Zero” weapon (reference to the Imperial codeword for a naval bombardment to melt the surface of an inhabited planet). Responsibility for this concept is uncertain. It could be from Sienar himself, or from one of his subordinates, or the product of a think-tank in his company. Was Lemelisk involved, or does he only come into the field at a later date? The question remains unanswered for the time being. The Superlaser is similar to Turbolasers. Again, potentially just indicating the compound nature differentiating superlasers from turbolasers. Hypermatter is an established technology, but not on the scale and purpose Sienar envisioned (i.e. “certain advances.”)
69		technology: Sienar's concept for a Death Star scale vessel is named as “Expeditionary Battle Planetoid”.

Return to STAR WARS Novel References.
Return to STAR WARS Technical Commentaries.
Return to Curtis Saxton home page.
Original content is © copyright Curtis Saxton 2000.
Last updated 9 May 2000.
Online since 9 May 2000.

This page was constructed and is maintained by Curtis Saxton <swtc@theforce.net>.
This page is neither affiliated with nor endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd.
Illustrations included in or linked from this page are copyright Lucasfilm Ltd. and are used here under Fair Useage terms of copyright law.
This site is kindly hosted by TheForce.net.