The Price Of Freedom

By ErikB, in General Discussion

I think POF is a parody - the cover, the over-the-top situations, the fact it's by the maker of Paranoia, the name of the second supplement... I don't feel we were meant to take it seriously. It came out in 1986 when the Cold War was thawing, anyway.

More like TPOF needs a disclaimer sticker thrown onto the box art like this , and replace "Scientologists" with... well... you get where I'm going with this, I imagine?

Oh, I think my Jedi are fairly hypocritical... Self-appointed 'guardians of the world', economical with the truth at best, manipulative and sometimes ruthless. And I think that has some premise in the original movies too :)

One of my aims was to loosen the binary restrictions of the Force as either 'zen buddhist' or 'sadistic monster'. Shades of grey are what intrigue me, and I feel that the Force needs the dark side as much as the light. The jedi are mostly Light, and the Sith mostly dark... but those aren't absolutes. And other 'grey' traditions - like my Alliance Emergents, born and bred for war, are more than happy to draw on the Dark side when facing the Empire. Use of 'anger and hatred' are perfectly acceptable, providing you do it in battle and don't use it against your own.

I feel a lot of the canon Force stuff contradicts itself anyway. If Force-sensitives can't fall in love, as in the prequels, how come Luke and Leia get married and have normal families?

I'm interested in seeing what 'Force and Destiny' have to say, but I'm REALLY hoping they allow for Jolee Bindu types.

In fairness, the EU actually gives plenty of precedent for this, though the EU and fandom has generally tended to use "Gray" as the fastest route to 'obvious power fantasy'...


What Routa-maa describes is due to the Jedi depicted in the prequels being the Coruscant-based Jedi Order with a capital-O, and in particular to a centralizing of said Jedi Order as of 1000 BBY in the wake of what they mistakenly believed to be the extinction of the Sith -- hence stuff like the proscriptions against attachment (except to the Jedi Order) or training adults (perceived to have unbreakable attachments and thus be too vulnerable to the dark side), the centralizing of training at the temple on Coruscant and closure of many "far-flung" Jedi schools elsewhere in the Galaxy, a strictly one-on-one mentoring relationship (of Master and one Padawan) instead of multiple apprentices per Jedi mentor (apprentices here being distinctly separate from the Initiates signified by the children in Episode II), dropping their former military (which had included vast armies and navies alike) and hereditary/noble titles while tying the Order more closely to the Office of the Supreme Chancellor and the Senate, and the "orthodox" eschewing of weapons besides lightsabers... and you might well be considered a "gray Jedi" just for (like Jolee Bindo) dissenting from the Council's centralized hold on "what it means to be a Jedi"!

Hence "splinter faction" Jedi such as the the Altisian Jedi (marriage/families, mingling with non-Jedi in their community, and a tendency to serve as relief workers for underdeveloped backwater worlds), Corellian Jedi (marriage/families and primary loyalty was to their sector instead of the Republic), the Teepo Paladins (acceptance of blasters and other weapons), and the Gray Paladins (a more radical off-shoot of the Teepo Paladins suffused with a more utilitarian view of the Force as a secondary aspect of their lives and who focused on development of non-Force skills and techniques such as martial arts and military skills, and mainly using the Force for augmenting and/or enhancing those abilities), the last of which out of these sects are the closest to both the Force-Sensitive Emergent specialization in concept/premise and the closest to your "Alliance Emergents" in having a far more militant bent, although not "drawing on the dark side"... hence why the Jedi High Council would only look down on or censure these factions and not take more opposing action.


As for one of the more hilarious-for-all-the-wrong-reasons anecdotes about the Old Jedi Order, which makes Jocasta Nu's notorious " If an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist " line even worse ? (She eventually conceded otherwise... right before the sacking of the temple !) Even though the Sith were considered extinct, there was a subsidiary organization within the Jedi Order tasked with finding and destroying Sith artifacts, Sith teaching materials, even mentions of the Sith in history books, so as to prevent their return... why does this sound so familiar?!

... as you can probably imagine, Luke Skywalker, both out of ignorance of some and out of disagreement with others, promptly chucked a bunch of the Old Jedi Order by the wayside when forming "his" New Jedi Order. ;) In Leia's case she didn't "come to Jedi" until later in life, focusing primarily on her political aspirations and duties.

In Leia's case she didn't "come to Jedi" until later in life, focusing primarily on her political aspirations and duties.

Yeah, but she was still 'force sensitive', so by the 'canon' her being a wife and a mom should have turned her into a complete monster who squashes puppies and eats babies :)

Edited by Maelora

Hence "splinter faction" Jedi such as the the Altisian Jedi (marriage/families, mingling with non-Jedi in their community, and a tendency to serve as relief workers for underdeveloped backwater worlds), Corellian Jedi (marriage/families and primary loyalty was to their sector instead of the Republic), the Teepo Paladins (acceptance of blasters and other weapons), and the Gray Paladins (a more radical off-shoot of the Teepo Paladins suffused with a more utilitarian view of the Force as a secondary aspect of their lives and who focused on development of non-Force skills and techniques such as martial arts and military skills, and mainly using the Force for augmenting and/or enhancing those abilities), the last of which out of these sects are the closest to both the Force-Sensitive Emergent specialization in concept/premise and the closest to your "Alliance Emergents" in having a far more militant bent, although not "drawing on the dark side"... hence why the Jedi High Council would only look down on or censure these factions and not take more opposing action.

This is really good. I needed some factions for when Force & Destiny comes out, and looks like I just found some! :)

Muwahaha... in Leia's case, I mean that she just eschewed the Jedi for so long that I suspect that she was just plain unaware (in a "willing ignorance" way) of the old proscription, and by the time she found out, well...

Note again that said factions/sects are not "breakaway" factions, only "dissident" factions. In canon they never eschewed the Jedi Code*, they didn't challenge the Jedi Council's authority over the "mainstream" Jedi Order, and they most certainly didn't challenge the presumption of the Jedi Council to speak for, set the guidelines for, and publicly act as the face of "the Jedi as a whole" (with the Jedi Order as the public image of Jedi, period)...

Trivia : The Corellians had a distinct tradition since millenia before the Ruusan Reformation in 1000 ABY (and to my knowledge they were never accused of being Gray Jedi), Teepo's adherents were only "split from the mainstream" as a direct result of the reforms but had already been following him in the years before that, and the Gray Paladins were in turn an offshoot of them; the Altisian Jedi -- attracted to the teachings of a particular heterodox Jedi Knight named Djinn Altis -- were besides being second-youngest also the only such sect to directly stem from the Jedi Order incarnation depicted in the movies, albeit around a century before Episode I.

* Or rather, their specific dissents with the "Jedi Council-proscribed" teachings were over specific items not proscribed in the Jedi Code, such as the parenthesed items that you quoted, although the Gray Paladins were the furthest from it of the four example sects.

Note again that said factions/sects are not "breakaway" factions, only "dissident" factions.

Yes, that's what I was looking for - factions within the same group who believe different things. Maybe one faction who believes over-reliance on lightsabers is wrong, one who believes they should join the community rather than stand apart from it, one who believes there is more focus in being celibate monks, one who thinks Force-sensitivity is hereditary so jedi should breed (Agh! Midichlorians!!). One who feel they should lead the Alliance as paternal parents, one who feel they should reunite with the Sith because the Force needs both light and dark sides.

All would still be jedi, just with differing views. I suppose if their views differed enough from orthodoxy, they'd eventually break off to start their own Force tradition. Which is what happened to the Alliance Emergents in our game, and those Jedi who refused the Exodus after Order 66 failed.

Anything to drag the Force out of its binary fixation... I love the line from KotOR: "Dark Side doesn't have to mean 'hooligan'!"

Edited by Maelora

Pffft, as if Episode III didn't already prove that line...

Though I'll add though that in canon, the last of those in the first paragraphs is the only one out of those that'd be explicitly cracked down on or "attacked" by the Council and the mainstream Order... though the penultimate of those would probably guarantee at least discreet monitoring for life.

Though amusingly enough, " jedi, just with differing views " was the idea of Force users that out-of-universe predated the Sith sect(s)...

In closing, if I think you are even vaguely hinting at suggesting that Luke Skywalker is a terrorist I will do my best to f*ck up your sh*t because that really impinges on my fun. And if FFG and Disney are smart, so will they.

Uhm... Luke is a terrorist as much as he is a freedom fighter (it depends on your point of view, to paraphrase Obi-wan Kenobi). Now, come over here and "f*uck up my sh*t", although I wouldn't recommend it, I had bad burritos for dinner, you'd be put to shame if you tried... we both would. Icky shame.

Thanks for hitting that one. Luke is a terrorist, a freedom fighter and a rebel hero. He is fighting on the side of a terrorist organization that is trying to violently over throw an oppressive government. He also, from our point of view a hero and a good guy. Although he is a whilny little brat much like his father was, in fact in the very same garage on tatooine. Just remember one groups terrorist s another groups freedom fighter.

Ben Kenobi's words on Dagobah rocked me when I got old enough to figure out what he was saying. George Lucas wanted no doubt that the empire was/is evil, and that the rebellion was/is good, ok, check. The rebellion was made of primarily of former Imperial military organized by three seated Senators and the rest were pretty colorful and not always law abiding citizens. Now Han Solo was a criminal through and through and he never attempte to hide that, he was also an Imperial Officer at one time too.

Anyway, we all share a bond with the Star Wars Galaxy and we populate it and breath life into it from our own point of view.

And the funny part is, how many freedom fighters and rebel heroes have we seen slandered as "terrorists" in real life...? That's where the irony of ErikB's threat (that is what it is) comes from...

And the funny part is, how many freedom fighters and rebel heroes have we seen slandered as "terrorists" in real life...? That's where the irony of ErikB's threat (that is what it is) comes from...

Many revolutionaries are at one point or another noted to have used terror tactics... many upon their own people after coming to power, even.

  • Che Guevara
  • Vladimir Illiyich Lennin
  • Adolph Hitler (did time for it, even)
  • George Washington (the UK bounty on him was quite a price)
  • Sitting Bull
  • Red Cloud
  • Jesse James †
  • William T. Sherman †
  • Fidel Castro
  • Juan Peron
  • Manuel Norriega
  • "Papa Doc" Duvalier

† Not rebel leaders

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