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The ORIGINAL Clone Wars
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Mojomoe
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 10:19 pm    Post subject: The ORIGINAL Clone Wars Reply with quote

Heya, all! Thought experiment.

I'mma need you to dig DEEP into your memories here. I'm talking early 80s.

When you saw the original trilogy as it came out, and they mentioned the Clone Wars... You immediately had an image in your head. What was it? Before all this newfangled nonsense came out, what did you picture the whole "Clone Wars" shebang being about?

The REAL Clone Wars, with a young Alec Guinness as General Kenobi, and Sebastian Shaw as Anakin Skywalker. R2 figures in there... somehow. And there were clones of... somebody?
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 2:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I always imagined it as a war between the vatbred, faceless minions of a proto-Empire and the 'trueborn', the factions that did not allow clones to exist, and so on. For me, the clone armies (I thought there'd have to be several, as each clone would likely have a given skill or propensity for something) would function much like the droid armies of the Separatists.

I also imagined a young (17 years or so) Anakin Skywalker as a hotshot fighter pilot there, driving his Y-Wing or something into the hordes of faceless clone minions, trusting in his rudimentary sense of the Force to keep him safe, to see actions before they happened. I pictured a cocky Obi-Wan who started to instruct Anakin Skywalker in the ways of the Force in between sorties, in the squad break room - onlookers in awe of the minor telekinesis that Anakin displayed.

All this added to the arrogance that Anakin felt, leading to his fall to the Dark Side. And I had armor in there that looked a lot like Boba Fett, too. 'cause Fenn Shysa and Tobbi Dala.
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shootingwomprats
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 3:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well at that time I was about thirteen and to be honest, at the time there wasn't much about cloning, genetic manipulation and such as we have now. I do remember quite distinctly though I envisioned the Clone Wars was more than just a civil war, yes it included like-minded political entities within the Republic but also factions outside the Republic.

Keep in mind I was a child of the later part of the Cold War. We had NATO, the UN, we had allies, there was "them" the Warsaw pact, then there were neutral and proxy countries. This is how I envisioned the Star Wars universe.

During this conflict I envisioned massive clone armies swarming over battlefields, bred for the purpose of killing the enemy. They did not have strong personalities and were fearless and quickly grown.

Besides the trooper clone they would also clone dangerous animals and sometimes genetically manipulate certain characteristics to make them more suitable to the battlefield.

There were also genetically created creatures with specific purposes and once this was created it was the template to be cloned. I remember quite clearly a creature like this from the Marvel run of the Star Wars comic. It appeared in issue no. 28 "What Ever Happened to Jabba the Hut?"

Han and Chewie ran into a creature called a Stone Mite. It was a living biological weapon from the Clone Wars that manufactured a strong acid that could eat through almost anything. Typically found in swarms they were released to devout a planets resources. Not sure if this meant natural or developed.

I guess even as a kid my version of the Clone Wars was grittier, darker and more politically motivates than the prequels. Gee and George you only had 20-30 years to come up with something better.
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Barrataria
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

shootingwomprats wrote:
Keep in mind I was a child of the later part of the Cold War. We had NATO, the UN, we had allies, there was "them" the Warsaw pact, then there were neutral and proxy countries. This is how I envisioned the Star Wars universe.

During this conflict I envisioned massive clone armies swarming over battlefields, bred for the purpose of killing the enemy. They did not have strong personalities and were fearless and quickly grown.


I am too, and while I always thought of the Clone Wars this way too, I never realized it as relating to that (although the Evil Empire had obvious overtones although the clothing and whatnot was more Nazi Germany in style IMO).

I read the Star Wars novelization about a million, billion times, so that's really where I formed my vision of the wars. First, the bit from the Journal of the Whills says nothing at all about the Clone Wars in discussing the Emperor's rise. So, I figured the CW happened before the Emperor's rise, and that they didn't directly lead to it.

Second, Obi-Wan's descriptions and comments (and Leia's note that Ben fought with her "father" in the Clone Wars). Assuming the Empire was about 20 years on, I figured the Clone Wars took place about 20 years before that, when Obi-Wan was about 20. Now I'd call it 40 BBY.

Ben described the Jedi as the "guardians and guarantors of peace and justice in the Republic". That to me described something like Renaissance-era Jesuits or modern day military advisors. The Republic would have had no standing army, because why? After 20,000 years there would have been no need for one.

So, the Clone Wars would have been the last great enterprise of the Jedi. Scattered across a thousand worlds they would have rallied planetary defense forces to battle the clone armies. Kind of like the Freedon Nadd uprising in Tales of the Jedi, against "dark Jedi", which is what Dan/Don's comment about animals brought to mind.

So, to me the Clone Wars would have been hugely draining on the Jedi, and the Republic Navy, weakening both and paving the way for Core folks to consolidate power over the government and elect an Emperor, who would have had an easier time in exterminating the Jedi since many had already died, ranks had thinned, field promotions made for weaker leaders, and so on.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 7:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I imagined that the Jedi had some idealistic cause for participating in the wars; that there was something lofty that really meant something to them.

And though I didn't have the historical comparison at the time, I envisioned the clone wars something like the Punic Wars. It wasn't just one war, but a series of engagements that spanned years, and one war was not completely contiguous with another. As in, it was a series of wars, separated by years from each other, but having a commonality of being fought with (or against) clones.

I think I remembered my first surprise with the PT that the republic was using clones to fight rather than fighting against them.
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Bobmalooga
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wasn't sure what to make of it, being that I was 5 when I first heard of the clone wars. As I got older and once I started playing the RPG my thought on the matter was that it was like the Korean War, which my grandfather had served in. A war that happened just long enough ago, at least for Luke, that it was presented as having happened a generation or two before...I figured that Ben had to be in his 50s-60s so that meant it had to have happened 20-40 years ago.

I just assumed, probably like a lot of people, that it was a war against clones of some kind (hence the 'clone wars'...)

I felt cheated and let down by the prequels since they never lived up to my ideas of what this was all about.

I tell you what would be an interesting source book for someone to do for the game and it would certainly have to be a fan source book...If someone would gather up all the clone war and pre-civil war references from the RPG and do a WEG Clone war source book...now that would be neat.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 2:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was born a month before the release of ANH. Much of my ideas of the clone wars was something my mother would say to me after returning home from playing outside "Look who dragged himself in from the clone wars". Being a five year-old boy in Hawaii playing outside all day was a dirty job (more than once having to change cloths before lunch, than going outside again). I always thought that my mom knew something about the clones wars that I didn't, so I thought that the clone wars were dirty and destructive to the entire galaxy an all encompassing conflict that would seem endless at the time. Like many others I thought that the Clone armies were the enemy of the Jedi. When the rumors of episode one was coming out I thought that it would be of the clone wars along with episode two which was where Anakin would become Darth Vader and Episode three would be about the "Dark Time" which the Empire would rise out of.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 3:55 am    Post subject: Re: The ORIGINAL Clone Wars Reply with quote

Mojomoe wrote:
Before all this newfangled nonsense came out, what did you picture the whole "Clone Wars" shebang being about?

The REAL Clone Wars, with a young Alec Guinness as General Kenobi, and Sebastian Shaw as Anakin Skywalker.

This seems to be a loaded question. May I ask to which 'non-real' "newfangled nonsense" you are referring? The Clone Wars cartoon? The prequel films? The post-80s Thrawn Trilogy ideas about spaarti cylinders and mad clones being enemies of the Republic in the Wars?
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 3:56 am    Post subject: Re: The ORIGINAL Clone Wars Reply with quote

Mojomoe wrote:
Heya, all! Thought experiment.

I'mma need you to dig DEEP into your memories here. I'm talking early 80s.

When you saw the original trilogy as it came out, and they mentioned the Clone Wars... You immediately had an image in your head. What was it? Before all this newfangled nonsense came out, what did you picture the whole "Clone Wars" shebang being about?

The REAL Clone Wars, with a young Alec Guinness as General Kenobi, and Sebastian Shaw as Anakin Skywalker. R2 figures in there... somehow. And there were clones of... somebody?

I knew from the film alone that the Jedi Knights were on the side of the Republic, but I don't remember giving any thought to the details of the Clone Wars from watching the film alone. I cite three late 70s and early 80s sources that primarily informed my imagination of the Clone Wars mentioned by Obi-Wan and Princess Leia in ANH.

The opening of the Star Wars novelization (1976) made it clear that the Republic transformed into the Empire with the rise of the Emperor.

Whill wrote:
... a source from January 1978 (Star Wars Official Poster Monthly 4) states that stormtroopers are all clones from groups of genetically identical humans. The article even mentions that a previous attempt at creating clones fully-formed to adulthood in growth tanks was an utter failure, so then they switched to raising the clones from childhood. It says that the unruly stormtrooper kids are raised in harsh prisonlike conditions. These "nasty little orphans" have only "the sheer unparalleled joy of a good raid" on their minds. Their military training makes them extremely arrogant, and of course they are brainwashed from the very beginning to believe they are special and serve proudly. As adults in service of the Empire, stormtroopers "are allowed liquor and women." (Yes, it really says that!) Multiple groups of clones implies that the clones may not all be clones of the same person, which would explain why they were not all the same height or had the same voice.

That 1978 stormtroopers article was reprinted in The World of Star Wars: A Compendium of Fact and Fantasy from Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (1981), but it fell into obscurity after that.

I also had A Guide to the Star Wars Universe (1984) which says, "Boba Fett's work dress was a weapon-covered, armored spacesuit of the kind favored by a group of evil warriors defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars."

Stormtroopers were armored clones on the side of the Empire (which used to be the Republic). So unlike a lot of fans that never encountered the early references to stormtroopers being clones, I had the idea of the Republic side of the Clone Wars having clones (that later became Imperial stormtroopers when the Republic became the Empire). However, from the reference to a group of evil armored warriors fighting the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars, I admit that I assumed that the enemy of Republic also had clones, and thus the Clone Wars were named that because the force of both sides of the war featured armored clones. The Republic clones had numerical superiority, but the enemy clones had better armor. I also considered that enemy clones may be a product of the earlier attempt at creating clones fully-formed to adulthood in growth tanks (as opposed to stormtroopers), and that idea was supported by The Thrawn Trilogy in the early 90s saying that the enemy of Republic had mad clones made through this method. I can't recall ever being too concerned as a child about what the Clone Wars were fighting over and who exactly the Republic's enemy was in the conflict, but the opening crawl in ANH does start out with, "It is a period of Civil War." That "period" could have gone back to the Clone Wars, and so the Rebellion against the Empire could have been another war in a series of civil wars in this time period.

So I was right about the Republic using clones in the war that later became stormtroopers, but it ended up that the enemy had a droid army instead. In my SWU now, my early ideas are all salvaged. The prequels show that both sides of the war were actually under the control of Palpatine, but the side that was supposed to win, the Republic, had the superior clones while the side that had to lose, the Separatists, had the inferior droids. In my SWU the singular war that RotS refers to ending is the Great Clone War. After the battle droid shut-down signal went out several more simultaneous localized, shorter term Minor Clone Wars broke out in the early Empire, and several of those involved the Separatist split-off forces using spaarti clones against the stormtroopers (thus clones vs. clones), and some of the surviving Jedi even joined these early rebellions against the new Empire. Some early pre-Geonosis proxy wars, the Great Clone War and the resulting Minor Clones Wars are collectively known as The Clone Wars, to explain why Obi-Wan and Leia refer to them in the plural.
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Mojomoe
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

These are all FASCINATING answers!

Whill, to answer your question, I mean specifically before any canon information came out about the Clone Wars. I suppose for some that would be pre-prequels, and would include the Thrawn trilogy. For me, it means the period pre-Thrawn, where the only info came in snippets from ANH dialogue, and what was in the Guide to the Star Wars Universe.

I'm seeing a lot of commonalities - Jedi as clones, or Jedi *fighting* clones. The idea of the Clone Wars being some years removed from Palpatine's rise is also interesting... And I also remember the spotty references to cloned Stormtroopers.

I suppose I always assumed a war including a multitude of Mandalorian warriors, of which Fett was maybe a survivor. Perhaps they were even the clones, against the Jedi?

The reason I ask is I've been considering an art project, doing something with what I always imagined the Clone Wars to be about, rather than what we got. Perhaps a movie poster, keeping more in line with the original trilogy and logical extrapolation. Old-style ships, for instance. I like the Y-Wing idea Smile.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 7:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Before the prequels, I assumed the Clone Wars were much like many of you describe: clone vs. clone and/or super commandos. Plus, like Battlefront 2, using old clones vs. stormtroopers definitely adds to a series of Clone Wars.

I also thought this would have been cool: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Epic_Continues.

Kenner really surprised me with their idea to continue Star Wars after Return of the Jedi with toys based on a new clone war. I wonder if they would have included a comic book or package info to further the saga.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 8:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is it just me, or has the art for Atha Prime showed up somewhere before? Isn't it in the WEG stuff? I'd almost swear it is in one of the books somewhere and I am thinking Platts Starport guide, maybe...
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 7:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The picture Kenner used for Atha Prime is taken from a preproduction sketch of a Imperial Royal Guardsman. They also used the same picture for the Reborn Emperor's giant Imperial Sentinels in Dark Empire.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 4:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pretty much 'regular' Republic soldiers (recruits, a standard army) fighting cloned soldiers of some unknown, external force, with the Jedi (a force of a few hundred ronin-esque warriors, far more hermit/knight/wandering peacekeeper than an organized religious order/army like a we got... a group of independant, one-man army warrior-monks who were a lot heavier on meditation and not so randomly acrobatic, who traveled alone, without oversight, to wherever they felt called or needed. More like Knights of the Round Table- a select few titans that were often out on individual quests.).

They fought on the side of the Republic against the clones (after all, you don't name the war after your own soldiers, you name it after the guys that you're fighting)- while Starships far more Flash Gordon than Naboo Starfighter in style clashing in space. As an alternative, as Whill mentions, another possibility was both sides (the Republic and their unknown enemy; I definitely assumed the Empire wasn't involved) fighting each other with Clones as proxies... although in that scenario, I never pictured the Jedi as allied with Republic clones, but ('fool idealistic crusade') charging in as a third party to try and end the war and the barbarity of throwing these happles clones at each other. After all, the Jedi kept the peace.

Truthfully, I can't remember now which was a more common assumption in my youth, but both were scenarios I entertained primarily growing up.

Also,
Zarn wrote:
I also imagined a young (17 years or so) Anakin Skywalker as a hotshot fighter pilot there, driving his Y-Wing or something into the hordes of faceless clone minions, trusting in his rudimentary sense of the Force to keep him safe, to see actions before they happened.

covers my thoughts quite nicely. Which, base don Anakin's apparent age, meant this took place a good 40-50 years prior. A young Obi-wan took Anakin on unofficially, training him either in secret, or just out on the front and separate from the war effort- a somewhat arrogant and unlearned Obi-wan, who thinks he can teach 'just as well as Yoda.'


I assumed that the Empire was a separate external force as well- possibly one that came in and conquered in the aftermath of the Clone Wars... or possibly a fifth column that rose up and overthrew the Republic from within via a charismatic Palpatine... one that consolidated power slowly while a turned Anakin Skywalker secretly began killing off Jedi, traveling to wherever these warrior monks to travel and mediate and assassinating them, one at a time- before being found out by Obi-wan, confronted, and dueled... a move on volcanic slopes that both created Darth Vader as we know him, and forced the hand of the conspirators or army to move in and overthrow the Republic. (Again, with this happening years after the Clone Wars, as Barrataria describes).

I never saw any Mandalorian involvement... but then, to me, Mandalorian stuff primarily came in with the EU, and there wasn't really anything to suggest their culture or nature in the films (just Fett himself, whose armor could've been as unique and non-representative as Vader's for all I knew).
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 5:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Again, this stuff is fantastic. It gels with a lot of what I'm remembering as my own expectations and imaginings of the day.

One thing I was discussing with my wife recently I thought was an interesting idea - it always bothered me that they just had this evil, dark, fearsome armor ready for Vader, when we've never seen anything like it before. The only other thing it's similar to is... Stormtrooper armor. I.e., infantry armor intended to strike fear and deflect damage.

I instantly had this neat image of thousands of evil clones, all wearing black, Vader-faced armor and carrying blasters marching against the forces of the Republic. Then at the end, they crown Vader as the greatest among them, their general. His face, then, is the face of the Clone Wars.

As I mentioned, interesting...
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