#C'baoth

[purringysalamiri]

One of my favorite parts in heir to the empire.

[tikkisfanart]

The Return of Thrawn… and C’baoth?

Story hypothesis of how The Bad Batch season 3 could re-canonize Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire

(Spoiler warning for The Bad Batch season 2, and The Mandalorian season 3)

Before the Ahsoka show came out, I figured I would read the Thrawn books to prep for the show. Even though the first several books were de-canonized after Disney bought the franchise, I feel that Dave Filoni has tried to be respectful to Timothy Zahn’s original character of Thrawn and his story. I feel like it could still be possible to bring back a lot from the original book, Heir to the Empire.

First off, I want to just point out that the events in Ahsoka do not necessarily have to replace the original story. In Heir to the Empire, we are not given the “how” of Thrawn’s return. In fact, he was a mysterious warlord that the original saga heroes didn’t know existed until he just suddenly showed up. The first season of Ahsoka could just be the bridge between Rebels and Heir to the Empire to explain this return.

Even though there are some things in the new canon that has changed, I do think there are other things that could still be revived through the final season of The Bad Batch. Anyone else who has read Heir to the Empire may have thought about this too, but I just wanted to share my hypothesis.

Mount Tantiss, and the Guardian

In Heir to the Empire, Thrawn travels to Wayland—where Mount Tantiss is located. While there, Thrawn seeks the Guardian and wants him to take him to the emperor’s storehouse inside the mountain. He encounters a strange, old man who says he could lead him to the Guardian. The old man takes him to the crypt of the Guardian and proudly proclaims that he killed the Guardian.

Mount Tantiss is the secret cloning laboratory of the new empire in The Bad Batch—the one where Omaga and Crosshair are being held. I suspect that “the Guardian” of Mount Tantiss is Dr. Royce Hemlock.

As the story continues, the man claims to be the jedi master Joruus C’baoth. He actuality turns out to be a clone of the dark jedi Jorus C’baoth, who disappeared before the Clone Wars. In Ahsoka, perhaps Baylan Skoll could have been the “replacement” dark jedi for the new canon. However, I feel like they could still bring C’baoth back.

Force cloning

I hypostasize that in The Bad Batch the secret project that Hemlock wants Nala Se to work on is the cloning of the dark jedi—but not just the cloning of the man, himself, but also the cloning of the ability to wield the force.

I know some people suspect that Omega is an experiment of this kind of force cloning. Perhaps she is. I actually suspect that all the original members of the Bad Batch might be as well. Perhaps the attempt to clone force sensitivity is what gave each of them their special enhancements. However, the difference is that they cannot wield the force. Force wielding is what Hemlock wants Nala Se to clone, and it actually does work. The clone of C’baoth can wield the force.

That brings to question: if force cloning is possible, why does Moff Gideon have trouble with it? In The Mandalorian season 3, he admits that this is why he needed blood from Grogu—because he needed a force sensitive subject to clone force sensitivity. But why doesn’t it work for him? It is well after The Bad Batch, so why did he not have the knowledge to complete it? I suspect that the knowledge was lost when Mount Tantiss fell, and that is something that The Bad Batch may just explain.

The Clone Rebellion and the Fall of Mount Tantiss

There is no question that at the end of The Bad Batch, there will be a final battle at Mount Tantiss to free Omega, Crosshair, and all of their clone brothers.

Before reading the Thawn books, I suspected that during this inevitable infiltration the Zillo beast would play a big part and possibly be the downfall of Hemlock. However, my hypothesis changed when I read Heir to the Empire and clone C’baoth claimed to have killed the emperor’s guardian. I do think the Zillo beast will still play a big role in the fall of Mount Tantiss, but it will not be the one to end Hemlock. C'baoth will be. It would be poetic irony: the project that Hemlock obsessed so much over would ultimately bring his demise.

Mount Tantiss has returned from de-canonization, so it is possible that the Guardian, force cloning, and C’baoth may all be brought back as well. They could all be revived in the final season of The Bad Batch, paving the way for the Heir to the Empire movie. Perhaps not everything in the original canon has been lost. On the other hand, perhaps Dave Filoni and the creators are planning to actually take it all in a different direction, but I can see how they could still bring back the original canon if they want. But that is just my hypothesis. If anything, I hope you enjoyed my nerdy ramble.

[mayhaps-a-blog]

Well I've been saying this wrong this entire time.

[Description: a screenshot from the 20th Anniversary Heir to the Empire annotations, reading: C'baoth, incidentally, is pronounced SA-bay-oth, with the first vowel pronounced like the a in has. If I'd realized how hard it was going to be for everyone else to figure out, I would have changed the spelling.]

[gadmiral-thrawn]

OMG GUYS I JUST WATCHED BAD BATCH S3 E1 AND THEY R IN MT TANTISS JDJRJEJEKSKDKJS. THEY ALSO WENT INTO TJAT WEIRD CHAMBER THING AND WERE TALKING ABOUT MAKING A CLONE WITH AN M-COUNT JDJDJSJSKOSKS. WHAT IF THAT WAS C'BAOTH????!????? HDJDKDIDI CUZ I THINK M-COUNT MEANS MIDICHLORIAN COUNT HJEKSKSMAKKSKA

[iskelan]

Last one of Thrantober 2023

I was really tired but managed to finish in time!

[incorrectstarwarslegendsquotes]

hey i've been trying to reach you telepathically why haven't you responded

Joruus C'Baoth

[dapurinthos]

“You can tell when they're going to happen now?” At least this question is accompanied by movement. I’m not capable of manhandling Sifo-Dyas out of the Archives, but Dooku certainly is. “Visions are complex neurological events. A complex neurological event always has a prodrome and a postdrome. It's just a matter of figuring out which occurrences are part of it.”

[hydr0phius]

The sheer rage that Jorus C'Baoth induced within me throughout the duration of Outbound Flight. My goodness.

And the fact that nobody put him in his place either. I get that he's an intimidating dude but I'm sure that if you nineteen jedi knights, padawans and masters gang up on him, he'll stop yapping.

Lorana Jinzler, my beloved. You deserved so much better than him and I wish you'd lived long enough to know/accept that completely.

[theya-art]

I love so much this trilogy, the villains: Grand Admiral Thrawn, Captain Pellaeon and the mad Jedi Joruus C’baoth are so interesting and especially this is the beginning of Thrawn!! I decided to draw a little Ysalamar because they’re so cute!! This drawing was so ambitious and long, I mixed a lot of traditional medias and some details was fixed with Procreate.

[purringysalamiri]

paternal thrawn content my love

[charmwasjess]

Yooooo! What if George had the plans for the Prequels down back in the 90s and Joruus C'Baoth was secretly a Count Dooku clone?

GEODE MY MAN! What's up??! I love this ask so much because it made me do the thing I like best: run down a rabbit hole that ends with me dragging out Lord of Misrule and re-reading Christopher Lee’s delightful, if vaguely bemused chapter on filming AotC.

So, Dooku’s origins: while I think Lucas had profound, interesting thoughts on Dooku’s character outside of his obvious tropism, I always thought he created the character predominantly FOR Christopher Lee and classic film villain homage. You know: Count Dooku/Count Dracula, the cape, the tastiness of having Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing in his original trilogy and needing a fitting cultural icon from that same golden generation for his new one... 

But in the memoir, Christopher Lee’s own account of getting the role kind of contradicts that? His agent - unsolicited by Lucas - suggested a meeting with the Star Wars casting director might be a good career move. Christopher Lee, agent, and casting person all had a very nice lunch and didn’t talk about Star Wars or Dooku at all. (AotC was already entirely scripted at this point.) That was it. A couple weeks later, Christopher Lee got a call saying he was Dooku, if he wanted to be. 

This is very, very funny to me because it implies that Christopher Lee’s Dooku audition was “having a nice lunch” and he nailed it so hard he got the job with absolutely no other follow up. It also seems to imply that Dooku was already written well before any association with Christopher Lee and any references were belatedly tacked on.

—This rambling is all probably missing the INTERESTING point you’re actually making: that Joruus C'Baoth predates Dooku’s invention and that he and Dooku share significant parallels. Star Wars is all too happy to cannibalize EU storylines, reiterate, and repeat. I’m sorry to say that I don’t know Joruus C'Baoth well enough to talk very articulately on the minute differences, aside from the wiki-level obvious similarities of them both being disillusioned white haired older human Jedi of similar generations and interests, who both were personal friends of Palpatine prior to their fall. Sidious seems to have been very interested in the flower of that Jedi generation and badly wanted one. Dooku’s Jedi friendgroup and peers seemed very attractive to him as a potential influences/points of attack in both Legends and Canon - Joruus C'Baoth, Dooku, Jocasta, Sifo-Dyas, and now even Rael all seemed to have some levels of exposure to him and potential influence, unwitting or not.

Is Joruus C'Baoth a proto-Dooku? To return to meta for a minute, this is something that came up a lot in the fandom between Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones because when Dooku was premiered ahead of Attack of the Clones, everyone was pretty pissed off about the character, for a number of reasons including

Great, after all the athletic glamor of the duel of the fates we’re going back to old man battles??!

Asajj Ventress’s concept art was floating around and people theorized the new Sith/villain would be a badass woman

We all thought Yoda was Qui-Gon’s Master for some reason that I can’t remember and we were mad about it being this new guy with a stupid name

But most importantly, because the central narrative thing in Dooku’s story is a Jedi who is corrupted and becomes a Sith, and we’re already doing that with Anakin. And, apparently, Joruus C'Baoth.

I'm not sure that accurately answers your question, but I sure did blow off an hour of boring work on it, so truly, thank you, friend. :D <3

[tbookblurbs]

Dark Force Rising - Timothy Zahn

4/5 - Crazy Jedi, Luke being too nice for his own good, Leia with some killer diplomacy skills

Leia works to get the Noghri to join the Republic, Luke is insecure about his use of the Force, Mara is still weirdly attached the the Emperor, and Han is a worrywart. <3 love him <3

Solid second installment as well! I liked Luke's internal battle in this novel, his worries about his capability to teach and understand the Force were very real and grounding and I felt they added some depth to the character. It also made it all the more satisfying when Luke tells C'Baoth to fuck off, for all intents and purposes.

The realization that the Noghri were kept in their subservience by force by the Empire is a really good example of giving a tangible evil that the Empire has an active hand in. Like obviously we all know that the Empire is a fascist evil overlord state, but seeing the cost of it in people and welfare makes the whole situation that much more hard-hitting.

As with any good trilogy, the second book ends on a loss. They've won the battle but lost the necessary ships and supplies. They've fended off the Empire, but the Thrawn has other tricks up his sleeve. All stands on the precipice!

[mariocartoon85]

My AU Thrawn Trilogy AU Recast (Part 2)

Thrawn- Ludwig Koopa (Super Mario)

Gilad Pellaon- Jimmy Valmer (South Park)

Luuke Skywalker- Jeffy (SML)

Rukh- Boshi (Super Mario)

Joruus C’baoth (Super Mario)

[incorrectstarwarslegendsquotes]

Han Solo: Hang on a minute. Why should we take any notice of some half-crazed, rogue Jedi who's appointed himself judge and jury to the whole galaxy? Why should we kowtow to his judgement? Joruus C'Baoth: BECAUSE I HAVE THE POWER TO SNAP YOUR BODY IN TWO LIKE A DRY REED! Han Solo: [terrified] Good answer, man! Good answer!

[magnetarbeam]

Dumbass AU where C'baoth left compulsions in the heads of the clones in Thrawn's army that would have made them loyal to him over Thrawn if C'baoth and Thrawn's disagreements came to that, except the specific phrasing was that they'd serve "the Jedi Master."

So when Luke starts the Praxeum, what's left of those clones start defecting from the Empire to serve Luke, as he's the Jedi Master.