I decided it was time for me to fill this out now that I'm planning on eventually creating a new rewrite, so here it is. If I'm unclear on anything, please inform me and I'll do my best to clarify it for you.
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Are you focusing on the Clone Wars?
Yes, I will with the first two episodes. The Third Clone War, specifically.
Who are the Clones?
The clones are the warriors of Atha Prime, the head clonemaster of Spaarti Creations. Originally created to serve as soldiers in the Republic Army in battle against the Separatist droid army during the Second Clone War, when Atha Prime turned rogue he activated dormant subliminal commands planted in the minds of the clone warriors, aligning them to his cause against his former allies.
How does the War pertain to them?
The clones are genetically augmented and mentally conditioned to serve as unquestioning foot soldiers and cannon fodder for the clonemasters against their enemies. They have little to no will or personalities or their own.
What about the Clone Wars would cause Obi-Wan to refer to them as an "idealistic crusade"? What were the ideals? How was it a crusade?
Atha Prime has a vision of creating a vast empire based on the ethics of forced eugenics, bioengineering, and genetic purity. It's not hard to see why Jedi like Obi-Wan would want to crusade against someone like that.
How does Cloning become irrelevant by the start of Episode 4?
Following the end of the Clone Wars, the Senate passes a motion making cloning illegal. Palpatine obviously disregards this law for his own purposes, but for the more common citizens of the galaxy, cloning is largely unavailable and far too expensive to take advantage of.
How is cloning limited to the point that the whole story doesn't get consumed by the idea of clones replacing major players?
This is a hard question to answer. If the bad guys don't have any sample of your DNA on hand, then you're in the clear. If they do, though ... who can say? It's not a question I can easily answer. It'd be an interesting venue to explore in a peripheral story, though.
Is the War 'Symmetrical' (i.e. WWII) or is it 'Asymmetrical' (i.e. Iraq War or the OT Empire vs Rebellion)
Symmetrical, more-or-less.
Does your story feature "soldiers"? Who are they? Are the main characters soldiers in the War? Leia's and Ben's comments seem to indicate that they were.
Both Anakin and Ben serve with the Empire (yes, Empire, not Republic; more on that later) against the Spaarti clone warriors, but for the sake of my story, I won't be dwelling on that aspect of their lives very much in my PT, at least not with Ep. II. Bail Organa also shows up as a soldier for the Empire in Ep. I.
Who are the armies? Does the Republic have its own army, or do each of the independent planets have their own armies? Who is the enemy large enough that this is a full scale war?
The Empire has its own army, but various independent planets do possess their own personal armies. They are, obviously, at war with the Spaarti clone army. Of course, there are a number of other - lesser - foes the Empire has to deal with, like the Mandalorian remnant which survived the First Clone War.
What are the objectives of both sides in the War? What are they fighting over?
Atha Prime is fighting a war of conquest, striving to wrest control away from the Empire and take his place as Emperor, hoping to shape the peoples of the galaxy through selective breeding and genetic cleansings. The Empire, of course, is against this.
When did/does the War start?
If we're referring to the Third Clone War alone, then it began in 54 BBY, fourteen years before Ep. I. If we're referring to all the Clone Wars together, then they began in 78 BBY.
How does the War end?
I imagine the Empire slowly but surely wears away at Prime's forces until they just fall apart and are annihilated. As I'm not going to concentrate on the Clone Wars themselves, the final battle(s) will occur offscreen, months after Ep. II.
Do you show Obi-Wan receiving training from Yoda?
No. Obi-Wan will have finished his training and attained Knighthood by the time of Ep. I.
Do you show Anakin receiving training from Obi-Wan?
Yes, to a degree. Most of Anakin's tutelage will occur between Eps. I & II, though.
Are Obi-Wan and Anakin friends? When do they have the chance to establish this friendship
Yes, they are friends. Their friendship will be developed over the course of Ep. I and be fully established by Ep. II, where it will begin to fall apart as Anakin is drawn towards the dark side.
How many years before Episode 4 does your story take place and how old are the main characters?
Ep. I will take place in 40 BBY, Ep. II in 35 BBY, and Ep. III 19-18 BBY. Obi-Wan will be twenty in Ep. I, twenty-five in Ep. II, and fourty-one-to-fourty-two by Ep. III; Anakin will be fifteen in Ep. I, twenty in Ep. II, and thirty-six-to-thirty-seven in Ep. III; Nashira (Anakin's eventual wife) will be eleven in Ep. I, sixteen in Ep. II, and thirty-two-to-thirty-three in Ep. III.
Will you show Yoda?
In my story, Yoda has been in self-imposed exile on Dagobah for over a hundred years, so he will not be a major supporting character and will not be present during Ep. I and Ep. II. I will show him briefly, at the end of Ep. III, but he will not be referred to by name.
Will you show that Luke has a twin sister? Named Leia?
I may show that Luke has a twin, but I won't identify her as Leia or even specify her gender.
Will you reveal that Anakin becomes Darth Vader?
Yes, but in an ambiguous way. More on this below.
If not, how will you protect this surprise? It must be some way that when the viewer sees Darth Vader in ANH, that he doesn't assume or even begin to wonder if that is Anakin under there.
We will see Anakin fall into a molten pit, we will see him crawl out, and we will see Palpatine collect him and eventually have him rebuilt as a cyborg, but his face will never be clearly seen by this point and his name never mentioned. To elaborate, read the below.
Will you employ the "Other Apprentice" ruse? That suggests that Obi-Wan had an apprentice named Darth Vader that turned to the Dark Side and killed Anakin?
Yes, I will. In my story, during Ep. II, after Anakin has left for the dark side, Obi-Wan gets swept up in a battle on another planet. During that battle, an infant child named Darth Vader is orphaned and Obi-Wan, recognizing the child's potential in the Force, decides to become his guardian and raise him as a Jedi. Eventually Darth grows up, and proves himself to be a skilled apprentice. However, Darth also has the misfortune of being both insecure in his own abilities and emotional, and this proves to be his undoing once Anakin resurfaces as the Dark Lord of the Sith. Anakin, seeing that Darth has the potential to become a powerful acolyte in his restored Sith Brotherhood, begins to tempt the Jedi apprentice with promises of proving himself and realizing his full potential through acceptance of the dark side. In the end, Darth is swayed by Anakin's words and his joins the Sith. Eventually, Anakin and Darth confront Obi-Wan on the volcanic world of Sullust, where they engage him in battle. As Anakin wounds Obi-Wan and prepares to kill the Jedi, though, Darth turns on Anakin, and slices the Dark Lord's sword arm off to save his foster father. Enraged, Anakin calls one of Darth's two lightsabers to his remaining hand, and they engage in a duel. At the end, though, seismic activity causes the cliff they're battling on to break apart, and Anakin and Darth both plunge into the magma below. Anakin forms a protective barrier to protect himself from the intense heat, and he survives, but is horribly wounded and suffers brain damage, resulting in partial amnesia. By the time he is reborn as the armoured cyborg, he has forgotten more than half the details of his life, and believes that he himself is Darth Vader, not Anakin Skywalker. Vader does eventually regain his lost memories, but that is later on in the timeline, years after Ep. III but long before Ep. IV.
Will you have surprises in your new PT? Will it affect anything that we thought we already knew in the OT? Be careful, you will most likely just tick people off, unless it is done EXTREMELY well.
I going to switch things up a bit in regards to where Luke is taken to be raised following his birth. In my story, when Obi-Wan and Nashira decide to seperate the twins and raise them on seperate worlds, it's decided that Luke will be taken to be raised by Yoda on Dagobah, not by Owen and Beru on Tatooine. Luke is transferred to Tatooine three years after Ep. III, when an Imperial Inquisitor - a Dark Jedi tasked with seeking out hidden Jedi for recruitment/execution by the Emperor - arrives on the swamp planet and discovers the two Jedi living there with their young charge. After a short yet fierce battle, the Inquisitor flees Dagobah, seeking to report his find to his masters. Believing that time is short, it is decided that Obi-Wan should take Luke to Tatooine and place him in the care of his aunt and uncle, leaving Yoda to stand against the Empire alone. So Obi-Wan leaves in his ship for the desert planet, believing he is leaving his master behind to face annihilation. Unbeknownst to either Jedi, though, is that the Dark Jedi was slain by another rival Inquisitor before his could report his find.
How does the Jedi/Dark Jedi/Sith conflict play into the back story of the War, if at all?
It doesn't, really. Various Dark Jedi individuals/factions end up involved in the wars for various reasons, but none of them are the cause of it. Dooku - or Doku, as I call him my canon - is the leader of the Separatists and the adversary of the Republic during the Second Clone War, but that war occurs a long time prior to my PT and plays no part in my story here.
If it doesn't, then how does Anakin end up falling to the Dark Side and becoming Dark Lord of the Sith?
For some reason or another, Obi-Wan and Anakin end up getting stranded on a deserted planet that once was ruled by a Sith sorceress. While exploring the Sith ruins of that planet, the spirit of the sorceress is awakened, and she attacks the two Jedi. The ghost shows them a series of visions, first of the past, during the golden age of the ancient Sith Empire, of the awesome power of the Sith Lords, or their grandeur, and of the peace and prosperity they brought to their subjects, but then she shows them a vision of future where an unstoppable army of Dark Jedi led by a powerful dark side sorceror rises to power and brings the Empire to its knees, ushering in an era of pain and misery under the heels of a brutal magocracy. After the visions end and the Sith spirit dissipates, Anakin comes to believe that only the power once weilded by the ancient Sith can counter and defeat the might of this prophesied dark side army. So it is, after the two Jedi find their way off the planet and after Obi-Wan fails to assuage his fears, Anakin leaves the Jedi and plots a course to the empty worlds of the fallen Sith Empire. Anakin eventually makes his way to Korriban, the ancient tombworld of the Sith, and it is there, within the tombs of the ancient Dark Lords, he entreats them for their aid. The Sith spirits awaken and, after forcing Anakin through a trial by fire, agree to bestow their knowledge on him and crown him the new Dark Lord of the Sith.
If it does, then how does the Galaxy allow for a Dark Jedi/Sith/Palpatine to be left in charge of the Empire when all is said and done?
Easy - they don't know. And, even if they did know, who's to say they could do anything about the situation?
How many Jedi are we talking about here? A handful like the OT? Two-three handfuls like the GPT? Or a lot a lot?
Prior to the Clone Wars, there were enough Jedi in the galaxy to serve as peacekeepers for the Republic, which consisted of about a million worlds. I'm no mathematician, but I assume such a peacekeeping force would have to number in the billions at the least in order to provide adequate protection. During the Clone Wars, though, many Jedi were killed, with entire Jedi sects wiped out, so that, by the end, there weren't nearly that many Jedi left. Following the Great Jedi Purge, most of the Jedi who didn't fall to the dark side and join the Empire were slain, leaving only ten thousand survivors who went into hiding.
How many Dark Jedi/Sith? Please say not 2 per movie.
There are numerous Dark Jedi, but their numbers aren't nearly as large as that of the light side Jedi - only millions at the most.
As for the Sith ... Since I'm taking the Tales of the Jedi comics and other closely-related material as canon in my universe, I'm going with the idea that the Sith were driven to near-extinction following the Great Hyperspace War and the Great Sith War. After Exar Kun, the Dark Lord who initiated the Sith War, was defeated, the most of the few remaining Sith in the galaxy either turned away from the dark side or were discovered and wiped out by the Jedi. By the time of the Clone Wars, the Sith were little more than an ancient, half-remembered memory, their mighty temples and palaces ruins, and their heirs usually little more than primitive shamans on backwater worlds. So, when Anakin becomes the Dark Lord of the Sith, he becomes the first Dark Lord since the time of Exar Kun and the first real Sith in thousands of years. The Sith spirits on Korriban charge Anakin with seeking out and uniting the remnants of the Sith for the next several years in between Eps. II & III, and he eventually forms a new - but small - Brotherhood of the Sith consisting of only a few dozen members.
What kind of powers do the Jedi/Dark Jedi/Sith have beyond those seen in the OT?
I imagine that, in the thousands of years following the events in the Tales of the Jedi comics, the Jedi lost many of the powers that were once available to them. So, where they once had the power to cut darksiders off from the Force and direct large armies through battle meditation, they were now limited largely to powers like telekinesis, precognition, and similar powers - the more fundamentalist sects weren't even capable of ascending their physical bodies into the Force like their ancient forebears once could. As for the Sith and Dark Jedi - they pretty much have the exact same powers shown in the films and EU, such as firing non-Force lightning-based energy blasts from their hands and modifying lifeforms through the dark side of the Force.
What is the Galaxy's general response to Jedi? Are they all assumed to be heroes? Or are people more like Han where they think that it's all religious nonsense?
That depends on a number of factors. First of all, there are a number of different Jedi sects and denominations; the more liberal/less legalistic Jedi are looked upon fondly, while the ultra-conservative/fundamentalist Jedi are seen as self-important elitists at best and evil child-snatching cultists at worst. Also, opinions vary depending on location; Jedi are common place within the inner rim and core worlds of the galaxy, so individuals there tend to see them as demigods/genetic supermen, but there are fewer Jedi located in the mid and outer rims, where the Jedi tend to be viewed by the people more as parlour magicians in possession of sophisticated technology or just highly trained warriors with no special powers or abilities.
How do your Jedi dress? (Please say it's not in "I'm disguised as a hermit" robes.)
That depends on the Jedi. The Jedi of the largest sect tend to wear dark brown-and-black robes and cloaks (think of some of the TPM concept art by Doug Chiang), while other Jedi denominations may follow a different dress code, or no dress code at all. Freelance/non-denominational Jedi - such as Anakin and Obi-Wan - follow no dress code and tend to dress casually.
How organized are the Jedi? Are they like a police force in space (like the Green Lantern Corps?) or are they more like wizards that are off doing their own thing and maybe have some form or correspondance or a council every now and then? Or something less than that?
Again, that depends on the sect/denomination/individual. The largest sect acts more like a police force, while other, lesser sects go along the spectrum in regards to hierarchy and organization.
Where does the Empire come from? From within the crumbling Republic or without? If from within, are the forces that cause the crumbling also responsible for the War and are they manipulating to create an Empire as in George's PT?
The Empire was formed prior to the events of my PT, at the end of the Second Clone War. My backstory goes that, as the Second Clone War drew on, politicians with ties and loyalties to the military rose to positions of influence within the Republic and many were elected into the Senate, driving the Republic to become more militaristic. When the Separatists were defeated and the Second Clone War ended, the militarization of the Republic reached its peak, and it was reformed into the Galactic Empire, with Cos Dashit - a very skilled admiral in the Republic navy who had proven himself a master strategist in battle and a skilled leader - becoming the first Emperor. At this point the Empire was a rather cold entity and far from the benificient organization that was the old preceeding Republic, but it would only become the tyrannical, dominating regime it was shown to be in the OT and EU after Palpatine rose to power.
How do the droids fit in to your new story, if at all?
I'd be giving them brief cameos in each of the episodes, and nothing more. I'd like to give them supporting roles like that in the OT, but I wouldn't know how to do that without having them interact with the main characters, which I do not want to do.
How is Anakin seduced by the Dark Side? What convinces him to serve the Emperor, the Empire and the Dark Side for 20+ years before allowing Luke to show him the error of his ways.
I've already described how he was seduced to the dark side. As for how he fell under Palpatine's sway ... In the years between Eps. II & III, Anakin served the ghosts of the long-dead Dark Lords faithfully, fulfilling each of their every whims to the best of his ability, all because they had promised to give him the knowledge and power of the dark side they possessed to keep that foreseen dark army from rising to power. As the years went on, though, the Sith continued to hold back, giving Anakin only bits and pieces of knowledge in the dark arts, but not nearly enough to counter the threat he knew was coming, so he eventually grew dissatisfied and impatient with the Sith spirits.
In time, the Sith spirits declared to Anakin that the resurrection of the Sith Brotherhood was at hand, but there was a obstacle in their path which served as a threat to their plans - Palpatine, the President of the Imperial Senate, who was, in fact, the dark sorceror Anakin had seen in his vision. Tasking Anakin with the duty of assassinating Palpatinet, the ancient Sith spirits sent him off to Coruscant, promising that went the time came they would aid him in battle against the President. Anakin penetrated the Senate building and entered Palpatine's office, where he engaged and easily defeated the President's Jedi bodyguards. He was no match for Palpatine, however, and was soon defeated, unaided by the Sith ghosts who had promised him their aid. Palpatine then revealed that he knew who Anakin was and why he was sent to kill him, and that the Sith had tricked Anakin - they weren't going to aid him in his quest to stop the dark side army from coming to power; in fact, they were trying to create it - a corrupted Jedi Order led by Anakin himself in a crusade to resurrect and restore the Sith Empire. With that, Palpatine offers Anakin to join him, to aid him against the Jedi should they fall and become a threat, to keep the Empire from falling the Sith. Anakin accepts, and becomes his servant and apprentice.
Who is the main protagonist in your films? Luke is clearly the main protagonist in the OT. In my opinion, the gPT has problems because the protagonist changed with the movie billing: E1 - QuiGonn Jinn, E2 - Obi-Wan Kenobi, E3 - Anakin.
I'm thinking Obi-Wan, but Ep. II may gravitate towards being more Anakin-centric.
