Part 9: The Sewers of Imperial City
Attention! Before you watch this video, it's important that you take a look at this webpage: http://scifi.about.com/od/starwarsg...-expletives.htm
Well, okay, maybe it's not super important, but it will make things make more sense. Specifically, crow and I restrict ourselves to only using the Star Wars equivalent for "shit" in the video.
Star Wars Swear Words posted:
S-word Substitutes
Druk is an alien word for excrement and seems roughly equivalent to the S-word. It appears in phrases such as "a drukload of problems."
Dwang is a euphemism for excrement used by Clone Troopers during the Clone Wars. It appears in Republic Commando: Triple Zero by Karen Traviss.
Holy Sith! is used humorously as a euphemism for its English anagram. (It also appears in a recent Futurama episode.)
Shab is a Mandalorian word for excrement which appears in Republic Commando: Order 66 by Karen Traviss. Shabuir is an insult derived from the word "shab."
Shavit originates on the planet Pakrik Minor and first appears in Vision of the Future by Timothy Zahn. While its exact definition is not stated, we can infer from the similarity to the S-word that it has a similar meaning.
Also, at about 4:40, I incorrectly attribute Dash with killing the dianoga in the comic/novel. Not true. It was Luke.
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Dash's contact is a scummy looking fellow willing to sell out his boss to
Anyways, Benedict Vidkun gives them maps, scans systems, and leads them into the entrance of the sewer. He also wheedles more bribe money out of them for access codes to security grates. Vidkun plans to go home afterwards, but Dash and Luke stop him. They coerce him into leading the way through the sewers. While en route, Threepio and Artoo reveal news that Coruscant port authorities are looking for a Corellian freighter.
Guri reports back to Xizor: nothing unusual has been spotted by security. Xizor is brooding a bit, so Guri points out the obvious: Xizor has never failed to seduce a female before and is now more attracted to Leia because of it. Xizor waves her off and continues to brood. Meanwhile, Vader's spies have found information on planet Fallen relating to Xizor. Specifically, they discover the truth about the biological experiment. You remember, right? The experiment that Vader ordered with regards to a flesh-eating bioweapon? The one where it got loose and Vader glassed a portion of the planet to prevent its spreading? The one where Xizor's entire family was killed? Well! Now Vader knows why Xizor hates him: it's personal! Vader is so pleased that he promises his spy that he never needs to worry about money again.
Nice.
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Luke and co. are now ready to go down to the sewer and begin their attack. Only Vidkun doesn't get a weapon. The Emperor feels a disturbance in the force, and calls up Vader to alert him. Vader later calls Xizor and tells him that he knows about the assassination attempts on Skywalker. He warns him off. Xizor remains neutral, but is now immensely pissed off. Though upset, Xizor is glad to know where exactly he stands with Vader. Leia waits in her room. She can feel something big is about to happen, so gets ready to leave at a moment's notice.
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Luke and co. are trudging through a sewer. Brilliant plan, Dash. Chewie is especially unhappy with his stronger sense of smell. Also because he refused to wear boots. It's actually pretty funny. Dash continues to not be helpful at all.
Ch. 36, Pg.326-327 posted:
Something ahead of them chittered, and there came a pair of splashes, as if somebody had dropped a couple of head-size stones into the inky liquid.
Chewie, in the lead, muttered something. He sounded quite agitated. He stopped moving.
Lando, right behind him and just ahead of Luke and Vidkun, said, "I heard it. It's not my fault you didn't want to wear boots. Go on, it's more afraid of you than you are of it."
Behind them, bring up the rear, Dash said, "Yeah, better watch yourself, Chewbacca! I hear sewer serpents love Wookiee toes!"
Chewie's reply to that was short, sharp, and probably obscene.
A little while on ahead, a dianoga attacks the group. Dash goes to blast it, but Luke shouts for everyone to hold their fire. He cuts it up with his lightsaber--perhaps he still held a bit of a vendetta against dianoga's after the whole Star Destroyer trash compacter incident. Of course, Dash can't help make a snide comment:
Ch. 36, Pg. 328 posted:
"I've seen these things before," Luke said. "Last time I ran into one was in a trash compactor. It nearly got me."
[...]
"You spend a lot of time in places like this?" Dash said.
I thought you were supposed to be feeling remorseful, Dash! Anyways, ahead they find the gates. Vidkun does something with the control panel and they open. Then Chewie slips in the sludge. He puts his hand out to save himself from falling completely in, but now his hand is covered in Coruscant's sewage. This time Lando thinks to make a joke, but, well, asshole comments are Dash's thing, so Lando gets his comeuppance pretty quick:
Ch. 36, Pg. 328-329 posted:
Lando chuckled. "Yeah, be careful, you big clumsy--yow!"
Lando skidded and sat down in the sludge. He came up fast, but not fast enough to keep his backside from being soaked.
Chewie laughed so hard Luke thought he might fall again.
Luke fought his own grin. It served Lando right, but he didn't want to be next, so he kept quiet. Things had a way of happening if you tempted fate.
"You should have worn old clothes," Dash put in.
"Hey, Rendar, I don't have any old clothes."
Best Lando quote in the book.
Anyways, Vidkun wants to go back now that they're at the palace. Dash doesn't want to let him go; he wants Vidkun to go with them where they can keep an eye on him. It quickly escalates as Vidkun reveals a small personal blaster. The first shot misses, but the second shot hits Dash. Dash responds by putting a blaster bolt right in the middle of Vidkun's head. Luke and Lando are worried, but Dash is find. It's literally just a small flesh wound that grazed his hip. He's Dash. He can take a hit--or a million, as we've seen in the LP.
The comic update for this portion of the game is pretty slim. The sewers act as a way into Xizor's Palace and aren't a huge plot point themselves. Of course, leave it to Dash to create some sort of non-existent epic out of the place.
Note that the comic got the order of adventurers wrong. Dash is supposed to be taking up the rear so that everyone can hear his snide comments!
And we don't get to see the ignominious death of Benedict Vidkun either. In fact, Vidkun doesn't even get named. He appears in the comic, sure, and even gets to speak. No one mentions his name though, nor do we see how he met them or what happened to him. Heck, we don't see much of all of the sewers. Those two images I posted? That's it for the sewers. At least in the comic anyways--afterwards, they segue quickly into Xizor's Palace.
Dash, WHY would you WANT to make a journey into the sewers into one of your bar stories? That isn't something to be proud of! (I think he hit his head one too many times).
Track 8 - Night Skies
Joel McNeely posted:
Xizor stands on his balcony, high above the city, contemplative and alone. He had invited Leia to join him, to enjoy the evening light show of traffic, but she had refused. His pheromones had never failed him before. He had been unable to bend Leia's will, and that made her all the more attractive to him. "I will have her."
Meanwhile, Vader stands on his own balcony, also alone, and reaches out to Luke through the Force. "What is it, my son? Why have you come here? Let yourself hear me, reveal your whereabouts and I will come to you." Vader is joined by an aide an informed of the history of Xizor's family. This explains so much. Xizor was not simply a competitor for the Emperor's affections, it was personal.
A quiet treatment of both Xizor's and Darth Vader's themes. While both pieces were composed for an aggressive treatment, here they are played softly, illuminating the rare reflective moment of these two evil beings.
Track 9 - Into The Sewers
Joel McNeely posted:
Xizor's impregnable lair had one flaw in its perimeter security, and Luke had found it. No matter how much graywater recycling is done, there must be pipes to pump away the rest of it. Big pipes. With the help of an engineer named Benedict Vidkun, and at a cost of many hundreds of credits, Luke, Lando, Dash and Chewbacca are on their way to rescue Leia. But first they need to wade through a few kilometers of ankle-deep sewage to get into the palace. They hear sewer serpents splashing around in the silty goop. Luke had already run into one of these in the trash compactor on the Death Star and that was enough for him. When confronted this time, however, his lightsaber took are of the situation neatly, leaving the huge creature's muscular body thrashing wildly in quickly subsiding spasms. After a while they found their target. "There," Vidkun whispered. "There is the entrance to the building."
This piece is the musical equivalent of walking through sludge of unimaginable olfactory repugnance.
That's gross, McNeely.
Shifty sewage maintenance engineer, Benedict Vidkun
While the comic, the novel, and the sourcebook all refer to Vidkun as a gross kind of goblin-like figure, the Hildebrandt brothers decided to draw him as an average-size, average-built man. Of course they did. See the miscellaneous section and compare that to the above image. I dunno what the Brothers Hildebrandt were doing. Some of their stuff looked pretty cool whereas most of it looked pretty goofy (read: everything involving Dash).
Based on Vidkun's name, he really didn't have a chance. His first name is a reference to Benedict Arnold, the American general who defected to the British during the American Revolutionary War. The last name refers to Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian politician who collaborated with the Nazis during WWII.
(No, I did not know all of that off the top of my head. Thank you, Wookiepedia, for telling me which Star Wars characters were allusions to Nazi war-criminals).
Anyways, the saddest part about his story is that he had a wife and Luke and Dash wouldn't let him call her before they went further in. It made sense because they were worried he was going to betray them by giving away their location, but he betrayed them anyways by trying to kill them. Since he died in the fire fight it meant he never had a chance to say goodbye to his loved one.
Thanks for nuthin', crow!
NOTHING!
REPEAT OFFENDERS
● The Outrider
● The Millennium Falcon
● Jetpack
Blind Sally posted:
Dash, trudging through the sewers of Coruscant is not a cool bar story! Also, Luke killed the dianoga. Also, trudging through the sewers of Coruscant is not a cool bar story! I don't care if you had a jetback, you swam through a lake of Xizor's (among others') excrement. No, using a jetpack to swim through a lake of excrement does not suddenly make that acceptable.
Point for Han.
nine-gear crow posted:
Okay, this is more like it. Han may have punched a giant space otter, but he never willingly trekked through a sewer system for any reason. The man has his dignity. Also, I doubt that ‘giant’ dianoga was actually that big. Stop trying to spin trudging through Coruscant’s shit into something heroic, Dash. Han wins this round.
Dash Rendar – 10
Han Solo – 10
Rendar saves Luke and co. from the ambush in Spero's shot:
(Note, do not let Dash "save the day"--he'll let it go to his head).
Dash shoots Vidkun--euuuuaaaugh! What's wrong with your face!?
