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EXPANDED UNIVERSE LEGENDS: BEFORE THE SAGA

References may be incomplete, misfiled, out of order or simply wrong. I am not much for the EU and many of these come strictly by hearsay. Feel free to contact me to suggest new relevant information, correct a problem on these pages or share your favorite Exar Kun / Captain Kirk slash fic.

A word on cho sun.

So it’s come to my attention that the dorks in charge of the Expanded Universe decided to give a name to the act of cutting someone’s arm or whatnot off in lightsaber combat. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would indicate some very troubling things with respect to the necessity for such a term. Come to think of it, why does English have ‘to defenestrate’? Who felt the lack?

Anyhoo, they call it cho sun. According to Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force, it means ‘to dismember’ but in practice it means, well, you see where we’re going with this.

I find all this hilarious, if only because of the importance of the similar-sounding word “chosen” in the Star Wars universe. YOU WERE THE CHO SUN ONE!

TALES OF THE JEDI

Ever notice how all Expanded Universe titles sort of run together after a while? It's like there’s maybe twenty words they can use and they just have to keep recombining best they can.

So in Knights of the Old Republic, about four thousand years before the Battle of Yavin, Cay Qel-Droma loses his arm in a fight against the Royal Guards of Queen Amanoa of Onderon. Well, I’m already lost. Here’s a picture.

I didn’t even know there was a Cay Qel-Droma. But I knew about Ulic. True story. I even knew about in him in high school but then I made the mistake of telling a girl about him and then she wouldn’t have sex with me.

Anyway, Cay bonds an XT-6 droid arm to his body to fix things. That's actually pretty clever and you’d think you'd see more of that. Just think, maybe Anakin coulda been saved at the end of some other of the Jedi project if Luke had just grabbed some passing mouse droid and hotwired him into his father’s lung.

Okay, so in the unfortunately titled The Freedon Nadd Uprising something similar happens. It’s sort of like Anakin. Lose your arm once and you’re an easier target for more. A whole lot more.

What made you think I was finished… what on Earth made you think I was finished. This is from Sith War. Jesus. I’m not even going to comment. Just sit in the corner and weep quietly.

The guy fighting him in this one is Ulic, by the way. I told you about him and then you didn’t have sex with me.

I don't know what's funnier, the fact that this Cay guy loses the same arm three times in one series, or the fact that each time he shouts “My arm!”, just in case the reader isn’t following the story. It must become a reflex with this guy. He coughs violently in the morning and shouts “My arm!”… he gets something in his eye and shouts “My arm!”… he burns his mouth on hot soup and shouts “My arm!” If I were him, next time this happens, I’d shout “YOUR arm,” and I think that would confuse the bad guy just long enough for me to pull a daring escape.

JEDI VS. SITH

When Jedi and Sith fight, someone’s bound to lose something. And I’m not talking about change in a vending machine.

In this comic book, we get lovely foreshadowing when Darth Bane injures his hand to prove that, in his own words, “Pain means nothing to me.” He sticks his hand into a fire. If this doesn’t sound cool, consider rumors kicking around the ‘net that Christopher Walken was going to play Darth Bane in a flashback somewhere. Now that’s cool, huh? Of course now all I think of at the name Bane is a strangled plummy accent behind a mask. People of Gotham, take control.

Anyway, at some point a battle occurs. General Charny, a Jedi, fights Githany, a Sith. And they used to be lovers. He has a lightsaber, she has a Force whip, and she chops off his hand. I think I saw this plot once on Frasier.

Some girl named Rain (apparently Richard Pryor is her father) learns that her friend Tomcat (apparently a, um, cat is his father) is going to risk his life defending her from either Darth Bane or Christopher Walken (I didn’t actually read the comic). She makes his lightsaber-clenching hand explode. With the Force. Somehow. Apparently there’s a Force power that makes hands explode. I deem this cool.

Darth Bane spares him due to his hand injury. For some reason. Then they all go out and rent Christopher Walken movies.

KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II: THE SITH LORDS

So in this here video game, named for the seminal film The Lords of Flatbush, Darth Sion chops off the hand of his former master Kreia. I wouldn’t know much else, I stopped playing video games after figuring no one was ever going to top the Zelda game for Super Nintendo.

DARTH MAUL: SHADOW HUNTER

Darth Maul gets his own novel. A thousand fanboys rejoice and wet their pants.

Hand-chop number one isn’t seen, only referred to. Obi-Wan is looking for a Jedi called Darsha Assant; a green-haired member of a street gang called the Raptors recounts for him the compelling tale of her chopping off the hand of a rebellious youth named Nig.

But of course the moment you’re all waiting for is for Darth Maul to chop off someone’s hand. And he does, toward the end. Lorn Pavan the information broker learns not to mess with Sith people.

And that’s the gist.

I enjoyed this novel for what it was. I was going to do an English paper on it, but unfortunately we were assigned the topic of homoerotic fiction in the Victorian era. (I know that sounds like an immature joke. It is, in fact, an actual English course I took in college. Somehow I still ended up gainfully employed despite my impractical educational choices.)