Do Jedi ruin the rebellion?

By Rozial, in Star Wars: Age of Rebellion RPG

I run several groups. There's force users in all groups. Even though there are some that wish to learn the path of the Jedi, Yoda's statement could still be held true*. Luke could be the "last of the Jedi" in that he is the only one Yoda recognizes as a Jedi.

Second thought is that Luke was the "last of the Jedi" because the galaxy needs him to believe in himself so that he can defeat Vader & the Emperor, so Yoda told him what he needed to hear.

Third thought is that Yoda's connection to other Jedi across the galaxy, as shown in Star Wars Rebels, was only when those Jedi were also in Vergences like Yoda, such as the Lothal Jedi Temple. We have no evidence that he can sense or communicate with those individuals at any other time as his connection to them seems to be non-existant otherwise. If he never comes into contact with them again, it's very possible that he would believe they are no longer around.

The fourth thought would be that they renounce being Jedi at some point and most player characters tend to want to do their own thing, very few wanting to follow the strict path that Jedi take.

The fifth would be that yes, those people are dead or maybe presumed dead.

*From a certain point of view ;)*

I'm firmly in the camp that everything Yoda and Ben say is in service to their goal of honing Luke to be their weapon to assassinate Palpatine. Everything.

So if "Hey, there are more Jedi out there" doesn't serve that narrative, then they lie about it. What are you going to tell him when you are bigging him up to fight for his life "Oh hey, don't worry about it. If you blow this, we have several backup plans" or "You are our last, best hope for stopping Palpatine and saving the galaxy. Don't F this up."

18 hours ago, Desslok said:

I'm firmly in the camp that everything Yoda and Ben say is in service to their goal of honing Luke to be their weapon to assassinate Palpatine. Everything.

So if "Hey, there are more Jedi out there" doesn't serve that narrative, then they lie about it. What are you going to tell him when you are bigging him up to fight for his life "Oh hey, don't worry about it. If you blow this, we have several backup plans" or "You are our last, best hope for stopping Palpatine and saving the galaxy. Don't F this up."

I agree with this.

Also from what we see in Episode 5 by the Battle of Hoth Luke has reached the rank of commander, so he has enough security clearance and freedom of movement that he can move around the glaxy to look for jedis (and he is immediately sent to Yoda by Obi-Wan's ghost). But that's 3 years after Yavin, and in that period he seems to have concentrated a lot more on being a fighter pilot than a jedi, judging from his problems in getting the lightsaber in the wampa cave. So it's perfectly plausible that he never learns, or is never told, about other Jedi, or, if he knows about them, his sense of duty (or turns of duty) keeps him with his squadron rather than go train with them. It doesn't mean he can't spend a weekend training with them from time to time if you want, (where did he learn the Move power? we are never told that ;) ) but he never received full training from anyone other than Yoda.

It's also quite possible that if the Alliance has learned of Vader's interest in Luke, they flat out order him to stay the hell away from any other potential jedi to avoid getting them killed by the Man in Black.

Edited by Lareg

In the new canon comic "Star Wars", Luke's journey of learning about the Jedi and the Force starts earlier than Hoth. He definitely spends more time with the Rebellion but he does learn quite a bit from elsewhere, including a book Obi-Wan wrote about his past exploits (& even some of Yodas).

4 hours ago, Lareg said:

... (where did he learn the Move power? we are never told that ;) ) ...

The new canon novel Heir to the Jedi, while lackluster in many ways, is basically an entire book written to answer this question.

I'm not posting to be helpful . . . (The rest of the group has some really good thoughts you should consider).

BUT!!!

The Jedi are the cause of the rebellion. Their meddling led to the downfall of the republic! Through incompetence and meandering mismanagement, the let the Sith take over, didn't implement order 67 before Palpatine issued order 66. (Order 67 orders the clone troopers to kill the Chancellor if he pulls a coup. I know retcon after the fact of the movie . . ).

Frankly the Emperor is right! The Jedi were a group of self serving, narrow minded, buffoons who really weren't "good!" They tore kids from their homes, and trained and brainwashed the kids to go out and do their bidding. Keep in mind that Qui Gon Jinn refused to follow the order blindly, and headed off in the right direction even though the council decided to sit on their hands and do nothing in light of gross corruption!

Bah! A Jedi? Do not seek after these things! Seek a better way, a better path!

Yeah, I know. Not helpful, but I got to rant about the "Jedi."

21 minutes ago, Mark Caliber said:

I'm not posting to be helpful . . . (The rest of the group has some really good thoughts you should consider).

BUT!!!

The Jedi are the cause of the rebellion. Their meddling led to the downfall of the republic! Through incompetence and meandering mismanagement, the let the Sith take over, didn't implement order 67 before Palpatine issued order 66. (Order 67 orders the clone troopers to kill the Chancellor if he pulls a coup. I know retcon after the fact of the movie . . ).

Frankly the Emperor is right! The Jedi were a group of self serving, narrow minded, buffoons who really weren't "good!" They tore kids from their homes, and trained and brainwashed the kids to go out and do their bidding. Keep in mind that Qui Gon Jinn refused to follow the order blindly, and headed off in the right direction even though the council decided to sit on their hands and do nothing in light of gross corruption!

Bah! A Jedi? Do not seek after these things! Seek a better way, a better path!

Yeah, I know. Not helpful, but I got to rant about the "Jedi."

Well, as Yoda willingly accepted the fact that the full of the jedi order and of the republic, because he could foresee the victory of the rebellion. It makes "cause of the rebellion" very accurate.

1 hour ago, Mark Caliber said:

I'm not posting to be helpful . . . (The rest of the group has some really good thoughts you should consider).

BUT!!!

The Jedi are the cause of the rebellion. Their meddling led to the downfall of the republic! Through incompetence and meandering mismanagement, the let the Sith take over, didn't implement order 67 before Palpatine issued order 66. (Order 67 orders the clone troopers to kill the Chancellor if he pulls a coup. I know retcon after the fact of the movie . . ).

Frankly the Emperor is right! The Jedi were a group of self serving, narrow minded, buffoons who really weren't "good!" They tore kids from their homes, and trained and brainwashed the kids to go out and do their bidding. Keep in mind that Qui Gon Jinn refused to follow the order blindly, and headed off in the right direction even though the council decided to sit on their hands and do nothing in light of gross corruption!

Bah! A Jedi? Do not seek after these things! Seek a better way, a better path!

Yeah, I know. Not helpful, but I got to rant about the "Jedi."

Qui-Gon was the one that really wanted to take Anakin away though...

Also, the choice about the Jedi taking the children with them is always ALWAYS left to the parents or guardians of the child, so ultimately, it's on the parents regarding sending their kids away from their family and home.

Now some people, like the Bardottans, felt that the Jedi were stealing away their children (even though again the parents gave them away) and it strained relationships between them. That was later fixed in the Clone Wars series.

Palpatine & the Sith are more interested in kidnapping children actually, for his creepy science experiments... he sent Cad Bane to impersonate a Jedi and when that failed, he'd just straight up take the kids right out of their cribs & run.

I've always maintained the idea that the Rebellion is aware of quite a few force sensitive people, even people who are training to be Jedis or are surviving Jedis from the clone wars, but goes out of its way to make sure they aren't aware of each other, because that would compromise their security if even just one got captured or turned.

Edited by Aetrion

@Aetrion

That kinda tracks with what happens at the end of Rebels season 1. Fulcrum insists that Hera not go to rescue Kanan, as he's just one soldier and they can't compromise their entire Rebel cell just for him. It was the wrong thing to say but thankfully the Rebels sometimes Rebel against their own organization.

On 1/27/2017 at 5:38 PM, Rozial said:

I just wonder if Luke as a major player in the Rebellion and someone's like "Hey you're a jedi? We just sent like 4 of them over to Polis Massa." It worries me because I really want to keep the canon intact but I don't want to just outright deny my players.

A bunch of the events of the movies center around Luke and Vader being the last force users. Well, Palpatine too.

I have to ask, why are you trying to adhere so close to canon? I'm not saying you can't, I'm just curious as to your reason. It really does limit your players stories.

So long as you don't have an entire party of Jedi survivors of Order 66, I don't see it as being that big of a problem.

Now while Vader might be heavily focused on tracking down Luke Skywalker for reasons, I agree with the prior posters that for a good chunk of the GCW, he's simply regarded as a highly-capable fighter pilot that's earned the trust and camaraderie of one of the Alliance's major leaders and pretty much enabled the Rebellion to pull off one of the biggest military upsets in the history of the Alliance. So while he might be looking for more lore on the Jedi, that doesn't mean that other Alliance cells are going to try and work out a meeting between Luke and the PCs, especially if the PCs are in the same boat as Luke and are only barely trained.

Plus there's the fact that the Alliance is always strapped for capable field agents, so Luke is probably plenty busy on some mission or another for the Rebellion, be it at the stick of an X-Wing or on the ground doing some task or another. That he's ballsy enough to openly carry a Jedi lightsaber probably raises some eyebrows (and perhaps some chuckles from the Alliance leadership who actually met and worked with Jedi during the days of the Old Republic) but they're not going to knowingly sideline Luke for several weeks/months so he can "train to be a Jedi." Technically, his excursion to Dagobah in ESB could be seen as an act of desertion as he had no good reason not to go to the pre-established rendezvous point; Leia at least had an alibi in that she couldn't get to her assigned transport and the Falcon's hyperdrive was on the blink. That Luke came back from Bespin being a whole hell of a lot more capable in a ground fight and actually being able to do Jedi stuff, as well as Leia backing him, probably saved the boy from being court-martialed for the afore-mentioned desertion.

There might be some concern if all the PCs are Force-sensitive, but as long as they're not all claiming to be Jedi or are all openly brandishing lightsabers, I don't think it'd that big of a deal. Over in Legends, there's a wide variety of Force traditions, to say nothing of self-taught savants. After all, while all Jedi are Force users, not all Force users are Jedi.

That's one view on the Rebellion, but I think you can also go with the idea that the Rebel leaders, many of whom have direct experience of just how much of an asset a Jedi can be to your side in a fight, would not just make special allowances for Luke, but actively push him towards developing his Jedi skills.

16 hours ago, TalosX said:

I have to ask, why are you trying to adhere so close to canon? I'm not saying you can't, I'm just curious as to your reason. It really does limit your players stories.

It's mostly that me and my players like to maintain the canon so that their adventure feels like it could be canon if we wanted it to be. If it doesn't conflict with the canon in any way then it's theoretically possible. Also the canon helps to inform world events that can happen that their characters can react to. Another campaign I'm running they're making a mercenary army and they were running from the Empire. But when they heard about the battle of Endor they got in touch with he New Republic and are working with them to destroy the Empire. So because of that I can use a list of major battles from Legends that they can be apart of. They're looking forward to participating in the liberating of Kashyyk.

So you're using Legends material for your group, but paralleling it with canon material. That's an interesting idea. As for your groups jedi issue, there's several ways to handle it. The characters may not self-identify as jedi, even if they do they're probably not vocal about it. Towards the last days of the Old Republic, they jedi had changed quite a bit. They had compromised a lot of their values to protect the Republic. Yoda could have realized this, and indeed was coming to that conclusion towards the end of the Clone Wars. So when he tells Luke he's the last jedi, who follows the original principles of the jedi code, it's because Yoda believed it. To quote Obi-Won, "it's true from a certain point of view". Even this is only pertinent if you decide Yoda was aware of your players group. Yoda was very insightful, but even he wasn't omniscient!

7 hours ago, TalosX said:

So you're using Legends material for your group, but paralleling it with canon material. That's an interesting idea. As for your groups jedi issue, there's several ways to handle it. The characters may not self-identify as jedi, even if they do they're probably not vocal about it. Towards the last days of the Old Republic, they jedi had changed quite a bit. They had compromised a lot of their values to protect the Republic. Yoda could have realized this, and indeed was coming to that conclusion towards the end of the Clone Wars. So when he tells Luke he's the last jedi, who follows the original principles of the jedi code, it's because Yoda believed it. To quote Obi-Won, "it's true from a certain point of view". Even this is only pertinent if you decide Yoda was aware of your players group. Yoda was very insightful, but even he wasn't omniscient!

I had a similar plan of plot with an Age of Rebellion campaign. Canon events formed anchor points for the plot and the PCs interacted with the Rebellion before or after those anchor points. The first adventure was the Perlemmian Haul (which we did) which took place right after Alderaan went dark. The PCs were then to travel to Yavin to aid in the evacuation of the base there. That campaign got pushed back in favor of an Edge campaign we are currently running.

My EotE group has a Kanan-like former padawon with a lightsaber, and we were recently involved in the battle of hoth.

Our group consensus is that Luke gets all the credit for anything our jedi did at hoth.

Another possible answer - the force using PC's are killed off by the Empire after your campaign ends but before Luke was "the last".

34 minutes ago, pnewman15 said:

Another possible answer - the force using PC's are killed off by the Empire after your campaign ends but before Luke was "the last".

That would suck, unless it was agreed-upon in advance by everyone involved.

Well force users who were not trained by jedi arent jedi. So Yoda is not wrong. Or Yoda is just saying what Luke needs to hear

9 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

Well force users who were not trained by jedi arent jedi. So Yoda is not wrong. Or Yoda is just saying what Luke needs to hear

If you need to be trained by a Jedi to be a Jedi, there can't ever have been a first Jedi. So the Jedi clearly are fake! Just a bunch of hogwash mysticism and trickery, clearly.

16 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

Well force users who were not trained by jedi arent jedi. So Yoda is not wrong. Or Yoda is just saying what Luke needs to hear

The latter part, of Yoda saying what Luke needed to hear, has always been my interpretation of his "last of the Jedi will you be" line as he lay on his death bed. I figure Yoda is savvy enough to know from centuries of training Jedi that in Luke's current mental state, if the old master had said, "you're not alone, there are other Jedi out there," then he'd know that Luke would put off the burden/responsibility of confronting Vader, and possibly even try to pass that task on to someone else.

Plus, I suspect that Yoda knew something major was on the not-too-distant horizon, even if the future is always in motion, and had a very strong sense that Luke needed to be there and be a part of it. Whether Yoda fully intended to use Luke as an assassin to kill Vader and the Emperor, or that Luke would somehow be able to reach the kernel of goodness that still remained in Vader, or just that he had enough faith in Luke to trust the boy would find his own path and succeed where centuries of Jedi dogma had failed.

6 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

If you need to be trained by a Jedi to be a Jedi, there can't ever have been a first Jedi. So the Jedi clearly are fake! Just a bunch of hogwash mysticism and trickery, clearly.

I think it's less a matter of training and more a matter of official recognition by an organization. It doesn't matter what I can do or who trained me, I'm not a Navy SEAL unless the Navy says I am.

Otherwise there have to be more Jedi around the Galaxy because you'll have people spontaneously becoming Jedi just by learning how to use the Force in a certain way.

Just make up a new canon; just becuase Luke is the hottest stuffing ever in the canon doesn't mean that the PC's can't share the limelight. Maybe instead of just luke, they all raised a new Jedi order together, with a small council rather then just him, and dealing with the cabal, a gathering of ex-inquistors that are trying to strengthena criminal network. It's very apprant that between episode 5-6. even if he become aware of other Jedi that facing Vader is his destiny alone.

Edited by LordBritish
13 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

or just that he had enough faith in Luke to trust the boy would find his own path and succeed where centuries of Jedi dogma had failed.

This is my interpretation. Obi-wan pretty clearly felt that Luke had to kill Vader, but Yoda didn't explictly suggest that. Yoda may have better learned the lessons of the Clone Wars. Or, Obi-wan may have just been too wracked with guilt at failing Anakin to consider that he could still be saved.