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Kol Skywalker's Last Stand - Analysis
June 22nd 2023, 12:27 am
Purpose of Thread
The main feat Kol is known for is holding back tides of Sith Lords and stormtroopers, creating a mound of their bodies, while letting a group of Jedi and younglings escape. This thread seeks to bridge a connection between this feat and some of the writings of Matthew Stover, from The New Jedi Order: Traitor and Revenge of the Sith. The third and final section will highlight the sheer scale and potency of Ganner and Kol's respective feats.Table of Contents:
I. Kol's Last Stand (this post)
II. Connections to Stover's Ganner and Kenobi
III. The Potency of the Last Stand
I. Kol's Last Stand
- Jan states that Ganner's Last Stand was the inspiration for Kol's.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060716120105/http://undermine.net/tracy/mirth/eu/062506legacy1.htm, Legacy #1 Chat, Sunday, June 25th, 2006, #eu on irc.holonet.org
- As for how many Kol killed, as a bare minimum Ostrander has said that any Sith we see on-panel who aren't among those pouring Force Lightning into Kol at the end, can be safely assumed to be dead.
John Ostrander, Forum Post
- Cade notes that it took "half a dozen" Sith to take Kol down, which is presumably a figure for how many were shooting him with lightning.
Legacy #7, January 2007
- In the flashbacks to Ossus, we see Cade and Shado merely on their way to the landing pad are completely surrounded by Sith.
Legacy #6, November 2006
- We see in the flashback depictions of the fight that Kol is at any given time fighting in a sea of red lightsabers.
Legacy #6, November 2006
- Finally, when Kol is hit by the lightning it's depicted as hitting from virtually every direction.
Legacy #8, February 2007
- And it's worth noting that the intensity of the lightning Kol was hit by was sufficient to burn out his lightsaber crystal.
Legacy #12, May 2007
- ILS
Re: Kol Skywalker's Last Stand - Analysis
June 22nd 2023, 12:27 am
II. Connections to Stover's Ganner and Kenobi
The following is an analysis of all the thematic, narrative and Force-mechanic connections made between Ganner and Kenobi, as well as between Ganner and Kol, and at times, between all three Jedi.Ganner’s Last Stand
First up is Ganner Rhysode’s Last Stand in New Jedi Order: Traitor by Matthew Stover. Posted below is the full passage of that fight.- Spoiler:
The New Jedi Order: Traitor, Matthew Stover, July 2002
These are the key quotes we need from the above passages.
- Spoiler:
“No. You have to go. I have to … Ganner, listen. I need you to understand. The only power I have—the only power any of us have—is to be who we are. That’s what I’m going to do here. Be who I am.”
Jacen shrugged. “Then I lose. When you start to become who you are, the first thing you learn is that there is nothing to fear.”
Ganner didn’t move.
Illumination burst within his brain.
In that instant, everything finally made sense. He understood what Jacen had been talking about. There was nothing to fear.
He understood the power of being who he was.
He didn’t even really have to know who he was. He could decide.
He could choose, and act.
Suddenly, his life made sense. His life had been a story of pretending to be a hero. Well, he thought. Okay, then.
His nausea had vanished. It wasn’t even a memory. No more weakness. No more uncertainty. Doubt and fear had disappeared along with the nausea.
Here was the weapon of a hero. A real hero. Not a playactor. Not a pretend-hero, like Ganner had always been.
But this weapon was now in Ganner’s hand.
I don’t have to be a real hero, he thought. A dazzling, old-Ganner, forget-the-consequences-and-have-some-fun smile dawned on his face. He shook himself and years fell from his shoulders; his eyes lit up, sparking like arc gaps in the red-lit gloom. He felt shiny as a war droid and twice as tough.
I don’t have to be a hero, he thought in silent wonder. All I have to do is pretend.
“Like I said, I’m just the sidekick here,” he said carelessly. “My job is to make sure the real hero lives long enough to do his. That whole ‘needing to be a hero’ thing has always been my greatest weakness.”
He bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. “Stand aside! There are thousands of warriors out here! You cannot hope to stop us.”
“I don’t have to stop you. All I have to do is slow you down.”
A sharp buzzing crackle made Nom Anor jump. From the shadow’s hand sprang a meter-long bar of vividly sizzling amethyst.
“You want me to move?” The shadow beckoned with the blade of light. “Come on and move me.”
“There are thousands of warriors out here,” Nom Anor repeated, waving a futile fist. “You are only one man!”
“I am only one Jedi.”
“You’re insane!”
The man’s answering laugh was deep and long and bright, full of joy and freedom. “No. I am Ganner.”
He spun his shining blade in a dazzlingly complex flourish that illuminated the arch around him, making it shine like a rainbow frame for the pure, animal grace of his body.
“This threshold,” he announced through a happy grin, “is mine. I claim it for my own. Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don’t give a damn.”
His flourish ended with the blade slanted before his chest, and his teeth flashed in the gloom.
“None shall pass.”
They come at him one at a time, an endless stream, each warrior in turn charging toward honorable single combat.
Then—
They come two at a time.
By the time they begin to come in groups, they have to scramble over bodies of their dead comrades to reach him. A pile of bodies.
A pile that becomes a wall, a rampart.
Ganner Rhysode builds a fortress of the dead.
These are mere flicks of melody in Ganner’s symphony of the Force. The Force does more than give him strength, more than lift him, spin him: the Force surges though his veins to tune his heart to the rhythm of the Universe.
He has become the Force, and the Force has become him.
He is not directly aware of the sequence of his death; time vanished along with fear, and doubt, and pain in that eternal second when he surrendered his self-command. Standing in the archway, waiting for the Yuuzhan Vong, Ganner realized that this, right now, right here, was what his whole life had been for.
The day of his birth set his feet upon this path; every triumph and tragedy, every foolish stunt and humiliation, each random useless twist of cruel fate built a pressure within him, piled up in tidal surge behind the dikes of his control. Those dikes had been built by his parents, trying to smooth the rough edges of his arrogance; they had been built by the mocking laughter of his playmates, when they jeered his every attempt to impress them; they had been built even by Luke Skywalker’s Jedi training—“A Jedi doesn’t show off, Ganner. Fighting is not a game. For the Jedi, combat is failure. It is a tragedy. When blood must be shed, a Jedi does so quickly, surgically, with solemn reverence. With grief.”
Ganner tried for so long, tried so hard to be what everyone told him he was supposed to be, tried to control his flair for the dramatic, for the elegant, the graceful, the artistic, tried to be a good son, a good friend, a humble man, a good Jedi …
But in the archway, he finds the end of trying.
There is reason no longer to resist the truth of himself. Playacting the hero’s part is not only permissible—
It is necessary.
To hold the archway it is not enough to merely wound and kill, is not enough to be calm, and surgical, and grieving.
To hold the archway, he must not only slaughter, but slaughter effortlessly, carelessly, laughingly. Joyfully.
To hold the archway, he must dance and whirl and leap and spin, calling out for more opponents. More victims.
He must make them hesitate to face him.
He must make them fear.
He had spoken the words: he had found a magical incantation to crack the dikes within him and unleash the flood.
None shall pass.
He wields the blade of a fallen hero, but now he is the hero, and it is others who fall.
He is rising.
The Force thunders through him, and he thunders through the Force. Letting slip the bonds of control, leaving aside conscious thought, answering only the surge of his passion and his joy, he finds power undreamed of.
He has become the battle.
He is not directly aware of the corpses that litter the tunnel, that his feet nimbly avoid of their own accord.
He is not directly aware of the warped sheets of durasteel that he has drawn from the wreckage of the Great Door, sheets that spin and tumble around him to become anvils for the hammer of thud bugs and shields to shelter his flanks.
He is not directly aware of the coral-embedded statues from the Atrium that he has caught in his Force-powered dance, immense figures of the species of the New Republic that seem to come to life to fight in his cause, statues that lumber and rock and fall, crushing dozens and hundreds, remaking Atrium into abattoir.
No more is he aware of the texture of the coral that lines the walls, or the quality of the light, or the number of his opponents. Has he faced a dozen? A hundred? How many have been pulled back to safety after taking disabling wounds? How many lie dead in the brimstone smoke?
He doesn’t remember, for there is no memory. There is no past. There is no future.
He is not even aware of himself. Nor of the Yuuzhan Vong. He has become the warriors he fights, slaying himself with each who falls. There is no longer any such thing as a Ganner Rhysode; there are no more Yuuzhan Vong, no more Jedi.
There are only the dancers, and the dance.
The dance is all there is: from whirl of quarks to wheel of galaxies, all is motion.
All is dance.
All is.
I guess it was inevitable, Ganner thinks with a twinge of melancholy. Sooner or later, the bad guys always bring up their armor.
This is about to be over; he cannot face such a beast supported by infantry—and yet the Force offers him one last trick.
Though the Force is blind to the warriors and the tank beast and the coral around them all, in it Ganner can feel the duracrete walls of the Senate, which form the Well’s skeletal structure; he can feel that the tunnel had been cut through any number of load-bearing members—he can feel that the duracrete around him is crazed with stress fractures, half broken already, and sagging under the unimaginable tons of the coral that surrounds it.
Ganner smiles.
The tank beast roars a gout of concentrated acid; with the Force, Ganner angles a shard of the Great Door to form a durasteel shield that sluices the acid to one side, so that it splashes to one wall. Coral smokes, dying, liquefying instantly. The shard of the Great Door begins to melt.
Blast bugs zing toward him from the warriors, and the melting shard dances before him, deflecting them into the acid-burned wall. Their explosions splash liquid coral and duracrete splinters.
Above their heads, the building groans. Warriors flinch, glancing upward in sudden fear. The tank beast howls.
Ganner laughs. The Force is with him, and he has become once more the dancer.
He has become the dance.
With the Force, he reaches into the duracrete around them all, and he begins to shove.Jacen stared up at the mouth of the tunnel. He could see it now, choked with rubble. Then the platforms around it began to sag, to crumble, and slide down the bowl toward the slime pool. Even the gloom-shrouded ceiling high above seemed to droop, and he felt a warm hand on his shoulder, and heard a warm whisper in his ear: Go.
It sounded like Ganner.
The New Jedi Order: Traitor, Matthew Stover, July 2002
Key takeaways:
- Ganner makes a last stand against hundreds, if not thousands of Yuuzhan Vong, killing all who stand before him, making a virtual mountain of their bodies.
- When Ganner is finally overwhelmed by the Vong's war machines, he opts to bring down the entire structure of the building on top of himself and the remaining Vong, and Jacen feels this as the world shaking around him as he sees bridges and platforms collapsing.
- The key to Ganner's newfound power is threefold:
1. A commitment to simply be who he is, without pretence; to be Ganner
2. Complete surrender to and immersion in the Force, to the extent that Ganner ceases to see himself as a distinct individual, but at one with everyone and everything around him: the ship, the Vong he's fighting, the battle itself, he is all of it.
3. To fight without conscious thought.
Stover's Kenobi
Next, we’re going to look at the eerily similar portrayal Stover gives to Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Revenge of the Sith novel. Below are all the relevant passages.- Spoiler:
Revenge of the Sith, Matthew Stover, April 2005
- Spoiler:
He doesn’t even need to reach into the Force.
He has already let the Force reach into him.
The Force flows over him and around him as though he has stepped into a crystal-pure waterfall lost in the green coils of a forgotten rain forest; when he opens himself to that sparkling stream it flows into him and through him and out again without the slightest interference from his conscious will. The part of him that calls itself Obi-Wan Kenobi is no more than a ripple, an eddy in the pool into which he endlessly pours.
There are other parts of him here, as well; there is nothing here that is not a part of him, from the scuff mark on R2-D2’s dome to the tattered hem of Palpatine’s robe, from the spidering crack in one transparisteel panel of the curving view wall above to the great starships that still battle beyond it.
Because this is all part of the Force.
He is all sixteen of the super battle droids, gleaming in laser-reflective chrome, arms loaded with heavy blasters. He is those blasters and he is their targets. He is all eight destroyer droids waiting with electronic patience within their energy shields, and both bodyguards, and every single one of the shivering Neimoidians. He is their clothes, their boots, even each drop of reptile-scented moisture that rolls off them from the misting sprays they use to keep their internal temperatures down. He is the binders that cuff his hands, and he is the electrostaff in the hands of the bodyguard at his back.
He is both of the lightsabers that the other droid bodyguard marches forward to offer to General Grievous.
And he is the general himself.
He is the general’s duranium ribs. He is the beating of Grievous’s alien heart, and is the silent pulse of oxygen pumped through his alien veins. He is the weight of four lightsabers at the general’s belt, and is the greedy anticipation the captured weapons sparked behind the general’s eyes. He is even the plan for his own execution simmering within the general’s brain.
He is all these things, but most important, he is still Obi-Wan Kenobi.
This is why he can simply stand. Why he can simply wait. He has no need to attack, or to defend. There will be battle here, but he is perfectly at ease, perfectly content to let the battle start when it will start, and let it end when it will end.
Just as he will let himself live, or let himself die.
This is how a great Jedi makes war.
He is simplicity itself.
That is his power.
General Grievous lifted the two lightsabers, one in each duranium hand, to admire them by the light of turbolaser blasts outside, and said, “Rare trophies, these: the weapon of Anakin Skywalker, and the weapon of General Kenobi. I look forward to adding them to my collection.”
“That will not happen. I am in control here.”
The reply came through Obi-Wan’s lips, but it was not truly Obi-Wan who spoke. Obi-Wan was not in control; he had no need for control. He had the Force.
It was the Force that spoke through him.
Grievous stalked forward. Obi-Wan saw death in the cold yellow stare through the skull-mask’s eyeholes, and it meant nothing to him at all.
There was no death. There was only the Force.
He didn’t have to tell Anakin to subtly nudge Chancellor Palpatine out of the line of fire; part of him was Anakin, and was doing this already. He didn’t have to tell R2-D2 to access its combat subprograms and divert power to its booster rockets, claw-arm, and cable-gun; the part of him that was the little astromech had seen to all these things before they had even entered the bridge.
Grievous towered over him. “So confident you are, Kenobi.”
“Not confident, merely calm.” From so close, Obi-Wan could see the hairline cracks and pitting in the bone-pale mask, and could feel the resonance of the general’s electrosonic voice humming in his chest. He remembered the Question of Master Jrul: What is the good, if not the teacher of the bad? What is the bad, if not the task of the good?
He said, “We can resolve this situation without further violence. I am willing to accept your surrender.”
“I’m sure you are.” The skull-mask tilted inquisitively. “Does this preposterous I-will-accept-your-surrender line of yours ever actually work?”
“Sometimes. When it doesn’t, people get hurt. Sometimes they die.” Obi-Wan’s blue-gray eyes met squarely those of yellow behind the mask. “By people, in this case, you should understand that I mean you.”
“I understand enough. I understand that I will kill you.” Grievous threw back his cloak and ignited both lightsabers. “Here. Now. With your own blade.”
The Force replied through Obi-Wan’s lips, “I don’t think so.”
The electrodrivers that powered Grievous’s limbs could move them faster than the human eye can see; when he swung his arm, it and his fist and the lightsaber within it would literally vanish: wiped from existence by sheer mind-numbing speed, an imitation quantum event. No human being could move remotely as fast as Grievous, not even Obi-Wan—but he didn’t have to.
In the Force, part of him was Grievous’s intent to slaughter, and the surge from intent to action translated to Obi-Wan’s response without thought. He had no need for a plan, no use for tactics.
He had the Force.
That sparkling waterfall coursed through him, washing away any thought of danger, or safety, of winning or losing. The Force, like water, takes on the shape of its container without effort, without thought. The water that was Obi-Wan poured itself into the container that was Grievous’s attack, and while some materials might be water-tight, Obi-Wan had yet to encounter any that were entirely, as it were, Force-tight …
While the intent to swing was still forming in Grievous’s mind, the part of the Force that was Obi-Wan was also the part of the Force that was R2-D2, as well as an internal fusion-welder Anakin had retrofitted into R2-D2’s primary grappling arm, and so there was no need for actual communication between them; it was only Obi-Wan’s personal sense of style that brought his customary gentle smile to his face and his customary gentle murmur to his lips.
“Artoo?”
Even as he opened his mouth, a panel was sliding aside in the little droid’s fuselage; by the time the droid’s nickname had left his lips, the fusion-welder had deployed and fired a blinding spray of sparks hot enough to melt duranium, and in the quarter of a second while even Grievous’s electronically enhanced reflexes had him startled and distracted, the part of the Force that was Obi-Wan tried a little trick, a secret one that it had been saving up for just such an occasion as this.
Because all there on the bridge was one in the Force, from the gross structure of the ship itself to the quantum dance of the electron shells of individual atoms—and because, after all, the nerves and muscles of the bio-droid general were creations of electronics and duranium, not living tissue with will of its own—it was just barely possible that with exactly the right twist of his mind, in that one vulnerable quarter of a second while Grievous was distracted, flinching backward from a spray of flame hot enough to burn even his armored body, Obi-Wan might be able to temporarily reverse the polarity of the electrodrivers in the general’s mechanical hands.
Which is exactly what he did.
Durasteel fingers sprang open, and two lightsabers fell free.
He reached through the Force and the Force reached through him; his blade flared to life while still in the air; it flipped toward him, and as he lifted his hands to meet it, its blue flame flashed between his wrists and severed the binders before the handgrip smacked solidly into his palm.
Obi-Wan was so deep in the Force that he wasn’t even surprised it had worked.
"In fact, Obi-Wan, I believe that of all living Jedi, you have the best chance to defeat him.”
But for you? What weakness does Soresu answer?”
“That is so like you, Master Kenobi,” the Korun Master had said, shaking his head. “I am called a great swordsman because I invented a lethal style; but who is greater, the creator of a killing form—or the master of the classic form?”
“I’m very flattered that you would consider me a master, but really—”
“Not a master. The master,” Mace had said. “Be who you are, and Grievous will never defeat you.”
So now, facing the tornado of annihilating energy that is Grievous’s attack, Obi-Wan simply is who he is.
A roar of the Force blasted Obi-Wan back into a wall, smashing breath from his lungs, leaving him swaying, half stunned. Anakin stepped over bodies and lifted his blade for the kill.
Obi-Wan had only one trick left, one that wouldn’t work twice—
But it was a very good trick.
It had, after all, worked rather splendidly on Grievous …
He twitched one finger, reaching through the Force to reverse the polarity of the electrodrivers in Anakin’s mechanical hand.
Durasteel fingers sprang open, and a lightsaber tumbled free.
Obi-Wan reached. Anakin’s lightsaber twisted in the air and flipped into his hand. He poised both blades in a cross before him. “The flaw of power is arrogance.”
“You hesitate,” Anakin said. “The flaw of compassion—”
“It’s not compassion,” Obi-Wan said sadly. “It’s reverence for life. Even yours. It’s respect for the man you were.”
He sighed. “It’s regret for the man you should have been.”
Revenge of the Sith, Matthew Stover, April 2005
If you don't already see the similarities between Stover's two portrayals, fret not, because I've broken down the specific ideas and themes Stover uses for both Ganner and Kenobi.
Don’t Be The Hero, Relax
Both Ganner and Kenobi were at one time uptight; Kenobi was too rigid and could never relax, and Ganner was obsessed with proving himself the hero. Eventually, both have an epiphany whereby they can stop taking themselves so seriously, release their built up tension, and bask in the simplicity of being unexceptional; of not being the hero. And in that unexceptional simplicity, they overcome their greatest flaw, their greatest weakness, and find power.Ganner
Suddenly, his life made sense. His life had been a story of pretending to be a hero. Well, he thought. Okay, then.
Here was the weapon of a hero. A real hero. Not a playactor. Not a pretend-hero, like Ganner had always been.
But this weapon was now in Ganner’s hand.
I don’t have to be a real hero, he thought. A dazzling, old-Ganner, forget-the-consequences-and-have-some-fun smile dawned on his face.
“Like I said, I’m just the sidekick here,” he said carelessly. “My job is to make sure the real hero lives long enough to do his. That whole ‘needing to be a hero’ thing has always been my greatest weakness.”
Kenobi
Obi-Wan sees so much of Qui-Gon in Anakin that sometimes it hurts his heart; at the very least, Anakin mirrors Qui-Gon’s flair for the dramatic, and his casual disregard for rules. Training Anakin—and fighting beside him, all these years—has unlocked something inside Obi-Wan. It’s as though Anakin has rubbed off on him a bit, and has loosened that clenched-jaw insistence on absolute correctness that Qui-Gon always said was his greatest flaw.
Obi-Wan Kenobi has learned to relax.
He smiles now, and sometimes even jokes, and has become known for the wisdom gentle humor can provide. Though he does not know it, his relationship with Anakin has molded him into the great Jedi Qui-Gon always said he might someday be.
It is characteristic of Obi-Wan that he is entirely unaware of this.
Being named to the Council came as a complete surprise; even now, he is sometimes astonished by the faith the Jedi Council has in his abilities, and the credit they give to his wisdom. Greatness was never his ambition. He wants only to perform whatever task he is given to the best of his ability.
He is simplicity itself.
That is his power.
"In fact, Obi-Wan, I believe that of all living Jedi, you have the best chance to defeat him.”
But for you? What weakness does Soresu answer?”
“That is so like you, Master Kenobi,” the Korun Master had said, shaking his head. “I am called a great swordsman because I invented a lethal style; but who is greater, the creator of a killing form—or the master of the classic form?”
Be Yourself
Part of letting go of all pretence, rigidity and tension, part of being able to relax, is accepting yourself... the simple act of being yourself, and nothing more. Therein lies the path to power.Ganner
“No. You have to go. I have to … Ganner, listen. I need you to understand. The only power I have—the only power any of us have—is to be who we are. That’s what I’m going to do here. Be who I am.”
Jacen shrugged. “Then I lose. When you start to become who you are, the first thing you learn is that there is nothing to fear.”
Ganner didn’t move.
Illumination burst within his brain.
In that instant, everything finally made sense. He understood what Jacen had been talking about. There was nothing to fear.
He understood the power of being who he was.
He didn’t even really have to know who he was. He could decide.
“There are thousands of warriors out here,” Nom Anor repeated, waving a futile fist. “You are only one man!”
“I am only one Jedi.”
“You’re insane!”
The man’s answering laugh was deep and long and bright, full of joy and freedom. “No. I am Ganner.”
Ganner tried for so long, tried so hard to be what everyone told him he was supposed to be, tried to control his flair for the dramatic, for the elegant, the graceful, the artistic, tried to be a good son, a good friend, a humble man, a good Jedi …
But in the archway, he finds the end of trying.
There is reason no longer to resist the truth of himself. Playacting the hero’s part is not only permissible—
Kenobi
He is all these things, but most important, he is still Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“Not a master. The master,” Mace had said. “Be who you are, and Grievous will never defeat you.”
So now, facing the tornado of annihilating energy that is Grievous’s attack, Obi-Wan simply is who he is.
Be Everything Around You
Once you become self-aware, truly just yourself, you begin to realize that the divisions between yourself and others are far less distinct than you once believed... and eventually you realize that the difference between you and me is mere illusion - the battle is a dance, and you are the battle, the dance, the dancer and everything else.Ganner
He is not directly aware of the corpses that litter the tunnel, that his feet nimbly avoid of their own accord.
He is not directly aware of the warped sheets of durasteel that he has drawn from the wreckage of the Great Door, sheets that spin and tumble around him to become anvils for the hammer of thud bugs and shields to shelter his flanks.
He is not directly aware of the coral-embedded statues from the Atrium that he has caught in his Force-powered dance, immense figures of the species of the New Republic that seem to come to life to fight in his cause, statues that lumber and rock and fall, crushing dozens and hundreds, remaking Atrium into abattoir.
No more is he aware of the texture of the coral that lines the walls, or the quality of the light, or the number of his opponents. Has he faced a dozen? A hundred? How many have been pulled back to safety after taking disabling wounds? How many lie dead in the brimstone smoke?
He is not even aware of himself. Nor of the Yuuzhan Vong. He has become the warriors he fights, slaying himself with each who falls. There is no longer any such thing as a Ganner Rhysode; there are no more Yuuzhan Vong, no more Jedi.
He has become the battle.
There are only the dancers, and the dance.
The dance is all there is: from whirl of quarks to wheel of galaxies, all is motion.
All is dance.
All is.
The Force is with him, and he has become once more the dancer.
He has become the dance.
Kenobi
There are other parts of him here, as well; there is nothing here that is not a part of him, from the scuff mark on R2-D2’s dome to the tattered hem of Palpatine’s robe, from the spidering crack in one transparisteel panel of the curving view wall above to the great starships that still battle beyond it.
Because this is all part of the Force.
In the Force, part of him was Grievous’s intent to slaughter, and the surge from intent to action translated to Obi-Wan’s response without thought. He had no need for a plan, no use for tactics.
He had the Force.
That sparkling waterfall coursed through him, washing away any thought of danger, or safety, of winning or losing. The Force, like water, takes on the shape of its container without effort, without thought. The water that was Obi-Wan poured itself into the container that was Grievous’s attack, and while some materials might be water-tight, Obi-Wan had yet to encounter any that were entirely, as it were, Force-tight …
He is all sixteen of the super battle droids, gleaming in laser-reflective chrome, arms loaded with heavy blasters. He is those blasters and he is their targets. He is all eight destroyer droids waiting with electronic patience within their energy shields, and both bodyguards, and every single one of the shivering Neimoidians. He is their clothes, their boots, even each drop of reptile-scented moisture that rolls off them from the misting sprays they use to keep their internal temperatures down. He is the binders that cuff his hands, and he is the electrostaff in the hands of the bodyguard at his back.
He is both of the lightsabers that the other droid bodyguard marches forward to offer to General Grievous.
And he is the general himself.
He is the general’s duranium ribs. He is the beating of Grievous’s alien heart, and is the silent pulse of oxygen pumped through his alien veins. He is the weight of four lightsabers at the general’s belt, and is the greedy anticipation the captured weapons sparked behind the general’s eyes. He is even the plan for his own execution simmering within the general’s brain.
He is all these things, but most important, he is still Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Be The Force
The reason it is possible to be nothing but yourself, completely unexceptional, free of any pretence of being anything greater than that... and, simultaneously, to be everything and everyone around, friend or foe, from the smallest atom to the battle raging around you and the galaxy itself... is because all of that is just part of the Force. By acknowledging what you are, you acknowledge your part in the Force, and you become the Force.
Ganner
These are mere flicks of melody in Ganner’s symphony of the Force. The Force does more than give him strength, more than lift him, spin him: the Force surges though his veins to tune his heart to the rhythm of the Universe.
He has become the Force, and the Force has become him.
The Force thunders through him, and he thunders through the Force. Letting slip the bonds of control, leaving aside conscious thought, answering only the surge of his passion and his joy, he finds power undreamed of.
The Force is with him, and he has become once more the dancer.
He has become the dance.
Kenobi
He doesn’t even need to reach into the Force.
He has already let the Force reach into him.
The Force flows over him and around him as though he has stepped into a crystal-pure waterfall lost in the green coils of a forgotten rain forest; when he opens himself to that sparkling stream it flows into him and through him and out again without the slightest interference from his conscious will. The part of him that calls itself Obi-Wan Kenobi is no more than a ripple, an eddy in the pool into which he endlessly pours.
The reply came through Obi-Wan’s lips, but it was not truly Obi-Wan who spoke. Obi-Wan was not in control; he had no need for control. He had the Force.
It was the Force that spoke through him.
The Force replied through Obi-Wan’s lips, “I don’t think so.”
There are other parts of him here, as well; there is nothing here that is not a part of him, from the scuff mark on R2-D2’s dome to the tattered hem of Palpatine’s robe, from the spidering crack in one transparisteel panel of the curving view wall above to the great starships that still battle beyond it.
Because this is all part of the Force.
Fight Without Thought
When you become one with the Force, and thus one with all of your surroundings and everyone in them, when all the illusionary divisions fall away, you no longer need to think to fight. Every decision made by your enemy is made by you, because who is your enemy but you? Who are you, but just another part of the Force?Ganner
He is not directly aware of the sequence of his death; time vanished along with fear, and doubt, and pain in that eternal second when he surrendered his self-command. Standing in the archway, waiting for the Yuuzhan Vong, Ganner realized that this, right now, right here, was what his whole life had been for.
To hold the archway it is not enough to merely wound and kill, is not enough to be calm, and surgical, and grieving.
To hold the archway, he must not only slaughter, but slaughter effortlessly, carelessly, laughingly. Joyfully.
To hold the archway, he must dance and whirl and leap and spin, calling out for more opponents. More victims.
The Force thunders through him, and he thunders through the Force. Letting slip the bonds of control, leaving aside conscious thought, answering only the surge of his passion and his joy, he finds power undreamed of.
Kenobi
-The Force flows over him and around him as though he has stepped into a crystal-pure waterfall lost in the green coils of a forgotten rain forest; when he opens himself to that sparkling stream it flows into him and through him and out again without the slightest interference from his conscious will. The part of him that calls itself Obi-Wan Kenobi is no more than a ripple, an eddy in the pool into which he endlessly pours.
In the Force, part of him was Grievous’s intent to slaughter, and the surge from intent to action translated to Obi-Wan’s response without thought. He had no need for a plan, no use for tactics.
He had the Force.
That sparkling waterfall coursed through him, washing away any thought of danger, or safety, of winning or losing. The Force, like water, takes on the shape of its container without effort, without thought. The water that was Obi-Wan poured itself into the container that was Grievous’s attack, and while some materials might be water-tight, Obi-Wan had yet to encounter any that were entirely, as it were, Force-tight …
A Trick From the Force
With such a clear understanding of the world around you and your place in it, with such effortless self-awareness, it becomes very simple to trick your opponent and bring an apparently hopeless situation squarely into your favour.Ganner
I guess it was inevitable, Ganner thinks with a twinge of melancholy. Sooner or later, the bad guys always bring up their armor.
This is about to be over; he cannot face such a beast supported by infantry—and yet the Force offers him one last trick.
Though the Force is blind to the warriors and the tank beast and the coral around them all, in it Ganner can feel the duracrete walls of the Senate, which form the Well’s skeletal structure; he can feel that the tunnel had been cut through any number of load-bearing members—he can feel that the duracrete around him is crazed with stress fractures, half broken already, and sagging under the unimaginable tons of the coral that surrounds it.
Ganner smiles.
The tank beast roars a gout of concentrated acid; with the Force, Ganner angles a shard of the Great Door to form a durasteel shield that sluices the acid to one side, so that it splashes to one wall. Coral smokes, dying, liquefying instantly. The shard of the Great Door begins to melt.
Blast bugs zing toward him from the warriors, and the melting shard dances before him, deflecting them into the acid-burned wall. Their explosions splash liquid coral and duracrete splinters.
Above their heads, the building groans. Warriors flinch, glancing upward in sudden fear. The tank beast howls.
Ganner laughs. The Force is with him, and he has become once more the dancer.
He has become the dance.
With the Force, he reaches into the duracrete around them all, and he begins to shove.
Kenobi
-Even as he opened his mouth, a panel was sliding aside in the little droid’s fuselage; by the time the droid’s nickname had left his lips, the fusion-welder had deployed and fired a blinding spray of sparks hot enough to melt duranium, and in the quarter of a second while even Grievous’s electronically enhanced reflexes had him startled and distracted, the part of the Force that was Obi-Wan tried a little trick, a secret one that it had been saving up for just such an occasion as this.
Because all there on the bridge was one in the Force, from the gross structure of the ship itself to the quantum dance of the electron shells of individual atoms—and because, after all, the nerves and muscles of the bio-droid general were creations of electronics and duranium, not living tissue with will of its own—it was just barely possible that with exactly the right twist of his mind, in that one vulnerable quarter of a second while Grievous was distracted, flinching backward from a spray of flame hot enough to burn even his armored body, Obi-Wan might be able to temporarily reverse the polarity of the electrodrivers in the general’s mechanical hands.
Which is exactly what he did.
Durasteel fingers sprang open, and two lightsabers fell free.
He reached through the Force and the Force reached through him; his blade flared to life while still in the air; it flipped toward him, and as he lifted his hands to meet it, its blue flame flashed between his wrists and severed the binders before the handgrip smacked solidly into his palm.
Obi-Wan was so deep in the Force that he wasn’t even surprised it had worked.
A roar of the Force blasted Obi-Wan back into a wall, smashing breath from his lungs, leaving him swaying, half stunned. Anakin stepped over bodies and lifted his blade for the kill.
Obi-Wan had only one trick left, one that wouldn’t work twice—
But it was a very good trick.
It had, after all, worked rather splendidly on Grievous …
He twitched one finger, reaching through the Force to reverse the polarity of the electrodrivers in Anakin’s mechanical hand.
Durasteel fingers sprang open, and a lightsaber tumbled free.
Obi-Wan reached. Anakin’s lightsaber twisted in the air and flipped into his hand. He poised both blades in a cross before him. “The flaw of power is arrogance.”
Kol’s Last Stand
Legacy #1, June 2006
"We hold them here. There's no escape from the landing pad except with the shuttle - and no way to the shuttle except through us."
"Listen to the Force, Cade. A Jedi's first concern is to preserve life. Protect the younglings with your life, son."
"I am Kol Skywalker, servant of the Living Force! None of you will pass!"
You're putting your own wants - your own desires - ahead of your duties - ahead of the needs of others!"
"Back! Only death lies this way!"
"Master!"
"Go."
Stand, None Shall Pass
When you're deep enough into the Force that you realize that saving the lives of others is the same as saving yourself, you can stand your ground against any attack without flinching.Ganner
He bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. “Stand aside! There are thousands of warriors out here! You cannot hope to stop us.”
“I don’t have to stop you. All I have to do is slow you down.”
A sharp buzzing crackle made Nom Anor jump. From the shadow’s hand sprang a meter-long bar of vividly sizzling amethyst.
“You want me to move?” The shadow beckoned with the blade of light. “Come on and move me.”
“This threshold,” he announced through a happy grin, “is mine. I claim it for my own. Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don’t give a damn.”
His flourish ended with the blade slanted before his chest, and his teeth flashed in the gloom.
“None shall pass.”
Kenobi
This is why he can simply stand. Why he can simply wait. He has no need to attack, or to defend. There will be battle here, but he is perfectly at ease, perfectly content to let the battle start when it will start, and let it end when it will end.
Just as he will let himself live, or let himself die.
This is how a great Jedi makes war.
Kol
"We hold them here. There's no escape from the landing pad except with the shuttle - and no way to the shuttle except through us."
I am Kol Skywalker, servant of the Living Force! None of you will pass!
Back! Only death lies this way!
Reverence for Life
What does it mean to serve the Living Force, truly? What does it mean to live in the present moment, undisturbed by the past or the future? It means to recognise that which is most important in life: life itself. A Jedi knows that the preservation of life, the reverence for life, the Living part of the Force, is something worth sacrificing your own life for.Ganner
He doesn’t remember, for there is no memory. There is no past. There is no future.
He is not even aware of himself. Nor of the Yuuzhan Vong. He has become the warriors he fights, slaying himself with each who falls. There is no longer any such thing as a Ganner Rhysode; there are no more Yuuzhan Vong, no more Jedi.
There are only the dancers, and the dance.
Kenobi
“You hesitate,” Anakin said. “The flaw of compassion—”
“It’s not compassion,” Obi-Wan said sadly. “It’s reverence for life. Even yours. It’s respect for the man you were.”
He sighed. “It’s regret for the man you should have been.”
Kol
"Listen to the Force, Cade. A Jedi's first concern is to preserve life. Protect the younglings with your life, son.”
I am Kol Skywalker, servant of the Living Force! None of you will pass!
You're putting your own wants - your own desires - ahead of your duties - ahead of the needs of others!"
Be Mindful of the Present
When you hold life as sacred above all else, time vanishes, along with fear and doubt. The present becomes the infinite now. You are at one with your surroundings, in service to life itself - there is no death, there is only the Force.Ganner
He is not directly aware of the sequence of his death; time vanished along with fear, and doubt, and pain in that eternal second when he surrendered his self-command. Standing in the archway, waiting for the Yuuzhan Vong, Ganner realized that this, right now, right here, was what his whole life had been for.
He doesn’t remember, for there is no memory. There is no past. There is no future.
Kenobi
Somehow, mysteriously, the cloud that has darkened the Force for near to a decade and a half has lightened around him now, and he finds within himself the limpid clarity he recalls from his schooldays at the Jedi Temple, when the Force was pure, and clean, and perfect. It is as though the darkness has withdrawn, has coiled back upon itself, to allow him this moment of clarity, to return to him the full power of the light, if only for the moment; he does not know why, but he is incapable of even wondering. In the Force, he is beyond questions.
Why is meaningless; it is an echo of the past, or a whisper from the future. All that matters, for this infinite now, is what, and where, and who.
Kol
I am Kol Skywalker, servant of the Living Force! None of you will pass!
Wield The Blade of a Fallen Hero
If, in the duty to preserve life, a hero falls, the Jedi takes up the blade of that fallen hero and honours his sacrifice by reaping a bloody toll, and against such a foe none can pass.Ganner
He hefted Anakin’s lightsaber.
“We both lose unless”—he spoke slowly—“unless somebody doesn’t let them in.”
“You have to play the hero,” Jacen said sadly. “Even if it kills you.”
Ganner squeezed the blade to life, and stared at its sizzling purple shaft. Here was the weapon of a hero. A real hero. Not a playactor. Not a pretend-hero, like Ganner had always been.
But this weapon was now in Ganner’s hand.
He had spoken the words: he had found a magical incantation to crack the dikes within him and unleash the flood.
None shall pass.
He wields the blade of a fallen hero, but now he is the hero, and it is others who fall.
Kol
I am Kol Skywalker, servant of the Living Force! None of you will pass!
Pile Them High
Ganner
They come at him one at a time, an endless stream, each warrior in turn charging toward honorable single combat.
Then—
They come two at a time.
By the time they begin to come in groups, they have to scramble over bodies of their dead comrades to reach him. A pile of bodies.
A pile that becomes a wall, a rampart
Ganner Rhysode builds a fortress of the dead.
Kol
A Final Message
When the Jedi has given his life to save another, he tells them to go, to live to fight another day, and to honour his sacrifice.Ganner
Jacen stared up at the mouth of the tunnel. He could see it now, choked with rubble. Then the platforms around it began to sag, to crumble, and slide down the bowl toward the slime pool. Even the gloom-shrouded ceiling high above seemed to droop, and he felt a warm hand on his shoulder, and heard a warm whisper in his ear: Go.
It sounded like Ganner.
Kol
Master!
"Go."
- ILS
Re: Kol Skywalker's Last Stand - Analysis
August 11th 2023, 2:39 pm
III. The Potency of the Last Stand
The following is a collection of evidence showing how unanimously Ganner's Last Stand was received as one of, if not the, greatest lightsaber displays in the history of the EU.- Jacen "couldn’t reconcile the pompous, arrogant, slightly silly Ganner he’d known most of his life with the transcendent power and profound joy he’d felt through the Force. How had Ganner gone from the one to the other? It didn’t make sense."
- Vergere states: "You need not like someone to love him. Love is nothing more than the recognition that two are one. That all is one," and that "Ganner knew that, at the end, more fully than even you do,” “That knowledge is the seed of greatness.”
- "He was born to be a legend."
- Vergere has a vision of the far future, and "In that vision, I saw a new figure in the mythology of the Yuuzhan Vong. Not a god, not a demon, but an invincible giant called ‘the Ganner.'"
- "They will come to believe that the Ganner, the Jedi Giant, is the Guardian who stands before the Gate to the Lands of the Dead. It is the Ganner—and his forever-blazing blade of light—who stands eternal guard to prevent the shades of the dead from passing back through the Gate, to trouble the living."
- She closes with, "the words engraved on the stone of the Gate, in an arc above the great head of the Ganner: they’re in Basic."
- “In deep-carved block letters, it reads: NONE SHALL PASS.”
New Jedi Order: Traitor, July 2002
- Ganner was "venerated" by the Vong after his last stand, something considered heretical to the Vong priesthood.
- Some even "revered" Ganner for his power.
- “The power of the Jeedai has brought into question that the gods favor the Yuuzhan Vong. They believe that Yun-Harla and Yun-Yammka are aligned with the twins Jaina and Jacen Solo. And some of the heretics, here on Yuuzhan’tar, have in the last weeks begun to revere a being they call the Ganner. Ganner, of course, was the name of the Jeedai who gave his life at the battle of the World-Well.”
New Jedi Order: Destiny's Way, October 2002
- About Ganner, Shimrra states: "This is the energy blade taken from the Jeedai who killed you in great numbers in the Well of the World Brain. The one whom so many of you hold in reverence—Ganner. Think of the blade not as an abomination, then, but a holy relic of that warrior’s might."
New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force, November 2003
- "Ganner Rhysode had died and become a legend among the Yuuzhan Vong warrior caste."
- "Ganner had brought much of the Atrium down."
New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force, November 2003
- "The three of them, along with Leia, Mara, Nom Anor, and the droids were standing on a trembling ten-meter-diameter platform that overlooked the Well of the World Brain—a colossal bowl of yorik coral that climbed more than halfway to the vaulted roof of what had been the Great Rotunda."
- "Jacen had said that the circular platform and the cantilevered bridge that accessed it were a hundred meters above the dhuryam’s pool, but either both had been redesigned and rebuilt at a lower tier after being destroyed during Ganner’s last stand, or the nutrient level of the pool itself had risen, because the platform was now scarcely five meters above the turbulent surface."
New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force, November 2003
- Anakin's lightsaber was "wielded by the Jeedai Ganner against so many of my warriors."
New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force, November 2003
- Ganner's last stand is one of "The Most Memorable Moments of the Expanded Universe."
- It is one of "the best battles, the most tragic scenes, the best deaths."
- General Grievous' feats during the Battle of Hypori in OCW Chapter 20 are part of this list of moments, as are Ventress' duels in OCW chapters 17, 18 and 19.
- Anakin Solo's death was given an "honourable mention."
- Also included are Vader vs Maul in Resurrection and Luke and Lumiya's first duel.
- Despite that, Ganner's last stand is a "memorable lightsaber moment" that "stands out above all others."
- "In an inspirational feat of heroism, Ganner Rhysode goes against the grain of his personal weaknesses, his own self-doubts, and his own fear of death."
- Ganner "surrenders to the Force, places himself between Jacen Solo and the Yuuzhan Vong masses, and gives us one of the most action-packed lightsaber fights in Expanded Universe history."
Insider 83, August 2005
- There were "thousands" of Vong present.
- Ganner "bought time by guarding the building entrance, massacring hundreds of Yuuzhan Vong with a flashing lightsaber and the battle cry, 'None shall pass.'"
- "Ganner eventually perished under the weight of the assault, but earned the respect of the awestruck Yuuzhan Vong."
The New Essential Chronology, October 2005
- "Rhysode, a Jedi Knight, had died on Coruscant during the Yuuzhan Vong war, fighting—and killing—more enemy warriors in personal combat than perhaps any other combatant in the war."
- “Can you think of a better name for someone fighting a delaying action?”
Legacy of the Force: Exile, February 2007
- "The old Senate Rotunda has been converted into a fluid-filled chamber holding the World Brain."
- "Ganner buys Jacen time by holding the Yuuzhan Vong guards at bay, whirling a lightsaber in a furious display of combat. Though Ganner eventually falls under the crushing advance of dozens of Yuuzhan Vong. . ." "Ganner’s spectacular sacrifice draws the attention of many Yuuzhan Vong, who have slowly come to respect—and in some cases revere—the power of the Jedi Knights."
Essential Reader's Companion, October 2012
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