#taung

[glimjack]

Mandalore the Ultimate in Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi - The Sith War (Published 1995-1996)

[mandalorianhistorian]

Taung appreciation post

Manda’lor the ultimate

[dustbunnyprophet]

Mandalorian Dating Systems and Calendars

After spending the whole afternoon developing a dating and calendar system for the Mando-centric fic I’m currently writing, I ended up with not one, but two different systems (and some headcanons about the Galactic Republic dating system).

For simplicity’s sake let’s assume the Galactic Republic uses predominantly the year of the Ruusan Reformation epoch for their dating system. The year 0 ARR (After the Ruusan Reformation) corresponds to the year 1000 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin). The calendar system is the Coruscant-based standard one with the year’s length being 368 days. The date notation is yyyy.ddd (e.g. 948.126 ARR is the 126th day of the year 948 After the Ruusan Reformation).

Mandalore was founded in 9991 BBY so they began their dating system with the Founding of Mandalore (FoM). I headcanon the Taungs decided to keep their calendar system unchanged after leaving Coruscant and eventually colonizing Mandalore which means a Mandalorian year has 368 days just like the Galactic Republic one. Unlike the latter, however, the Mandalorian year begins 67 days later (e.g. 9253.1 FoM, the first day of the year 9253 since the Founding of Mandalore would be 262.68 ARR). 

Why a 67 days discrepancy? It would be weirder if they were synchronised.

Since I cannot imagine the New Mandalorians would want to use the FoM as their dating system, and considering the movement began after the Mandalorian Excision, the New Mandalorian Calendar (NMC) system will use the Excision (738 BBY, 262 ARR, 9253 FoM) as year 0. The length of the year and the New Year are identical to the traditional Mandalorian calendar system.

So basically

0 BBY = 9991 FoM = 738 NMC = 1000 ARR

Cheat sheet:

BBY: Before the Battle of Yavin

FoM: Foundation of Mandalore

NMC: New Mandalorian Calendar

ARR: After the Ruusan Reformation

Some notable dates of Legend/Disney canon events in the various dating systems:

934 ARR (9925 FoM, 672 NMC, 66 BBY) Jango Fett is born

940 ARR (9931 FoM, 678 NMC, 60 BBY) the Mandalorian Civil War begins

943 ARR (9934 FoM, 681 NMC, 57 BBY) Obi-wan Kenobi is born

948 ARR (9939 FoM, 686 NMC, 52 BBY) the Battle of Korda VI is fought; Sheev Palpatine is elected Senator

955 ARR (9946 FoM, 693 NMC, 45 BBY) Obi-wan Kenobi becomes Master Jinn’s padawan

956 ARR (9947 FoM, 694 NMC, 44 BBY) the Battle of Galidraan is fought; the Stark Hyperspace War begins

959 ARR (9950 FoM, 697 NMC, 41 BBY) Anakin Skywalker is born

961 ARR (9952 FoM, 699 NMC, 39 BBY) Anakin and Shmi Skywalker are sold to Gardulla and begin their lives on Tatooine

[panther-os]

landback in star wars but it's the clones after the war with their taung ancestry talking about coruscant

also please note that humans in gffa canon are only possibly native to coruscant while taung have confirmed indigeneity so looking at the human track record throughout the rest of the galaxy uhhhh *coughCough* colonizers *coughCough* (also please note that while the wiki is up to date with current canon there are still lorebooks out there from when it was canon that humans had no homeworld at all and probably came from outside the galaxy)

anyways

the Senate: you're going to enslave us and impose martial law!!!

the clones: like you did to us? lol no we just want a homeworld where we can make sure that the people and the planet are all treated ethically and respectfully and since a bunch of us died for you, this was the worst front in the war for us, and it's also our ancestral homeland the capitol seems like a good idea. you can still conduct business here! you can still run the Republic from here and we'll join! you just gotta be decent people and respect any local laws that are put into effect

all the already decent senators support this wholeheartedly

[krazykupid]

Okay I gotta ask about 'What the Kriff do you want' that just made me laugh. Hilarious WIP title.

YES! I was hoping someone would ask about this one!

It's a prequel to "What The Force Wants". It follows the Taung evacuation of Coruscant. Or at least this one clan of Taung, they crash land on a primitive inhabited planet (of an alien species of my own creation) leaving a fraction of the clan alive. Ora'Ore, a Taung who has just recently reached majority, was injured in the crash leaving him partially blind.

Enter Diinal the daughter of the tribe's leaders. She is fascinated by the Taung and goes out of her way to involve herself in their daily activities, despite the vast language barrier.

Ora'Ore wants nothing to do with her, she reminds him too much of the zhell in her appearance. Even though the other Taung have no such issue. (it's the first red flag of blindness affecting him) Diinal refuses to leave him alone.

No matter what Ora'Ore does she comes back. "What the kriff do you want?" is what he asks every time he sees her approach him.

[drdamiang]

[direwolfrules]

Star Wars As Star Trek AU: Maul

Maul is the Khan/Seska of this AU. He just keeps showing up. Like, my god dude, get a hobby. Learn to knit.

In this AU the Dathomiri Zabraks are the descendants of Augment Zabrak Soldiers banished to the planet after the Iridonian Eugenics Wars. Or something, I might just retcon this later when I’m more awake.

It's always super dangerous when Maul shows up because he's a super soldier with a hate boner for Captain Kenobi. It all started when Obi-Wan was a young lieutenant serving under Captain Qui-Gon Jinn, and now it's just gotten out of control. Honestly, you cut off a guy’s legs once…

Maul has tried everything from hiring mercenaries to kidnap Obi-Wan to just brute forcing it, and each time he loses, screams "KENOBIIIIIII", and vanishes into the ether.

His obsession with killing the Captain at some point morphs to desire to hurt then kill him. Which is inconvenient on several levels for everyone involved.

Commodore Admiral Adi Galia, one of Obi-Wan’s friends from his days serving on the Maverick under Captain Jinn, was on her way to inspect a base or sign a treaty or something when the ship she was on got a distress call. Waiting on the other end was Maul, who was kinda hoping for the Resolute to show up but hey, a friend of Kenobi’s is almost as good as his found family right?

At a certain point Maul finds out about Satine and Korkie’s true connection to Obi-Wan and he gets all murdery just thinking about it. Luckily for him, the House of Vizsla needs to get Satine out of the way before she discovers their part in the Galidraan Massacre. A fight ensues, Obi-Wan’s cursing out the nature of communications jammers, and at one point Satine jumps in front of a stab meant for Korkie.

Satine doesn’t die, because I’m making her and most Mandalorians have at least a little bit of Taung blood in them, and I’ll elaborate on this more in another post, but she’s got some back up organs and therefore doesn’t die, but she does fall into a coma. No one but Maul and the highest ranking Vizslas know that part of the reason Satine was targeted was Galidraan.

I’m unsure how Maul dies, or if it’s at Obi-Wan or Korkie’s hands, but I do know he dies in Obi-Wan’s arms

[daonek]

I need to fix the face and head but I think it looks alright atm what do you think?

[ice27coldink]

Life Changed (Freestyle) is over 10k streams 🌍 On Boomplay

[ice-6caydesqueen]

Wanting to draw my Taung/human hybrid revan but sick as hell right now

[kad-dala]

An eclipse would hold a significant cultural importance because of "Maker comes to unmake" and the battle against Zhell under darkness of presumed volcano eruption.

I imagine Orthodox families devoting the total eclipse time to pray to Kad Harangir.

aww shit, ummmmmm mandalorian holidays?

Ooh. something I haven't thought much about, honestly, lmao. so bear with me as i completely 100% make stuff up lkasdjflkjasd galactic calendars are absolute Hell and mandalore doesn't abide by anyone elses rules so they do their own thing; apparently canonically mandalore's orbit is 366 days (boring) but the day is 19 hours (not boring!)

because the word for ten is two-fives i'm going to say five is an important number and that years are grouped into fives. there's some kind of big sort of 'yule' or 'new year' holiday at the end of every fifth year

also: mandalore, geographically, is apparently two-third's the diameter of Earth; however, Concordia is obviously fucking Massive if it has a breathable atmosphere, meaning Solar Eclipses are probably pretty common and could conceivably cover the whole damn planet every time they happen. so, there's like a mandalorian holiday every time there's an eclipse where you just bugger off to cook with family and don't have to go to work, and watch the eclipse with the kiddos (i'm not going to think about how absolutely insane mandalore's tides were before the oceans got boiled off).

Mandalore *used* to have pretty dramatic seasons (re: somehow being subtropical in many areas and having absolutely Bitter winters in the north and south) until the Dral'han, so seasonal holidays still exist even if they're a lot Less important than they used to be. Harvest festivals are a thing in like every culture and mandalorians are no exception - they're just a lot Bigger of a deal in places like Concord Dawn where most people are farmers asdklfjsdl

I imagine there's several holidays that maybe the NM tried to ignore a little bit re: celebrating the return of warriors after notable crusades or wars, wherein people are supposed to visit family maybe? just called various Homecomings

the date of the Dral'han and the date of the battle of Malachor V are probably pretty dour 'holidays', days of mourning etc. days where you recite your Rememberances in their entireties (tho you maybe should be doing it a lot more frequently than that lol), share stories from those past, etc. I can't decide if it would be good or bad luck to have a child born on one of those days but it's Some Kind of Luck or portent for their future birthdays are less important, but i'm sure after a successful verd'goten and the kid and mentors and whatnot get home it's a big Family Bash, passing the kid around to look at their shiny new armor lmao

there you go some stuff i pulled out of my butt

[ranahan]

The Mandalorian Proletarian Uprising

Disclaimer: this post is 100% headcanons. I support your fandom-ordained right to make whatever kinds of headcanons and interpretations you want, even if they annoy me. That being said… I have some of my own.

You know how there’s a fraction of fandom who hold that the Old Mandalorians were a warrior elite who were oppressing the masses, and the New Mandalorians were the people rising up against their overlords? At least I’ve been getting those posts on my dash.

And at first I was annoyed, because that’s mushing together two completely different periods of Mandalorian history. And I have a half-written essay in my drafts about the demographics of historical warrior societies and how Mandalorians aren’t all warriors, actually.

But then I changed my mind. Because you know what? The Taung do seem to have been exactly the kind of bastards who committed several genocides and enslaved entire planets to their war machinery, either as soldiers or for churning out weapons and ships in factories. And yes, they do seem to have held that only Mandalorians had real souls. And that one had to be a warrior in order to be a Mandalorian, and the plebs aren’t mentioned. Which absolutely does make it seem like they were an oppressed and possibly (probably) an enslaved class.

So instead of brushing all that under the rug and crying about how my favourite blorbos aren’t imperialist assholes acshually, let’s say all that bad stuff happened. Let’s engage with it. Because there could be an interesting story here—good stories are all about conflict, after all.

So when did the people rise up?

So the first question is to ask when. And this is the part where I’m going to swerve left from the narrative I presented at the beginning of this essay. Because those genocidal warrior elites that annoy some fans? They were Taung. Who went extinct near four millennia ago. So that rather pushes back the date of our uprising.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like the masses rose against their evil overlords during the heyday of the Taung—they seem to have been going strong right up to the Battle of Malachor V, after which they are supposed to have gone extinct.

But then I remembered this little aside in this other headcanon essay of mine (which is also a good background to my headcanons):

As an aside: do you think the Mandalorians had a civil war afterwards? Now that these armies non-Taung Mandalorian warriors settle on Mandalorian worlds, where the previous non-Taung populations were little more than slaves? Did they fight it out or did they open up the clans again, for anyone willing to join?

So what if they did fight it out? Imagine this:

The Mandalorian Uprising after the Battle of Malachor V

The aftermath of the Battle of Malachor V is said to have been 300 years of diaspora and disarray for the Mandalorians. Let’s imagine what might have happened during those years:

The Mandalorian Empire has swept through the galaxy, gobbling up worlds and turning them into cogs for its hungry war machinery. Citizens of conquered worlds have two choices: join the Mandalorian armies or become a slave in their factories churning out ships, weapons, and munitions. The first option is presented as a chance to become a Mandalorian warrior yourself, to become one of the elites and find fame and glory and gold on the battlefields. The truth is that most of the press-ganged soldiers are little more than canon fodder.

The Mandalorian plague has seemed like an unstoppable tide, but suddenly Malachor V happens. Entire Mandalorian fleets have been vaporised, along with the Mand’alor himself and his top brass. The tide turns. The Mandalorian succession is in the air; their leadership in disarray. The Republic starts swiftly taking back the recently conquered worlds. The Mandalorian armies splinter.

And now many soldiers leave to find their fortunes among the wider Galaxy. But more of those ragged armies limp back to the Mandalorian home worlds and what territories they can keep a hold of. And now they try to settle down to governing them, according to their ancient laws and practices.

Only during the Mandalorian wars, the Mandalorian armies have grown exponentially. And they were grown almost entirely from the non-Taung populations. At the start of the war, clear majority of Mandalore’s citizens were Taung. At the end of it, they’re a small minority.

Many newly-minted Mandalorian warriors do buy into the warrior elite’s way of life—it benefits them, after all. But there are still huge tensions between the wish to return to the ancient ways of the Taung and the need to change how their society works in order to adapt to their completely different demographics. And maybe that tension holds for a while, maybe even decades. But eventually it snaps and a civil war boils over, because the warrior elite—now a small minority—cannot suppress their conquered masses forever.

And maybe that’s another reason why the Taung went extinct. They can’t have been all present at Malachor V, so I’ve previously suggested that they were effectively absorbed into the population, until a multitude could claim Taung ancestry, but there were no pureblooded Taung left. But maybe that extinction was helped along by the guillotine à la French Revolution. Maybe their oppressed subjects finished the job.

And unfortunately—like is often the case—it’s not just a single civil war. Like is won’t to happen, many people try to climb to the top and become the new king to replace the old one. So for decades or centuries, the Mandalorians suffer intermittent power grabs and uprisings, until they eventually settle on a new form of life and government.

Effects on Mandalorian culture

So why didn’t the Mandalorian culture go extinct? A large part of that is because the oppressed people, after throwing down their oppressors, adopted their customs as a mark of their new station in society. For better or worse, they too have been living in Mandalorian society and those are the customs of the free elites they know. If their own customs have been sufficiently suppressed, it might be only culture they know. This is not unusual if you look at irl history either.

Another part is that large parts of the Mandalorian armies (the cannon fodder) joined in on the fight. And many of them had been living as Mandalorian soldiers for years or even decades. It is their way of life too now, for better or worse.

The Mandalorian culture survives, but it is completely transformed. Anyone can be a Mandalorian now, regardless of blood. The old gods are abandoned in favour of belief in shared oversoul. Old philosophies and values are reinterpreted, and conquest is abandoned in favour of survival.

One of my favourite fanons is that Mandalorians have an abiding hatred for slavery. But I never knew how to justify it. And this here could be where it started—this slave revolution on Mandalore. Henceforth no Mandalorian would ever be a slave again.

And this could also help explain one of the dichotomies of the Mandalorians: how are they such consummate soldiers, yet have such problems with being governed? And this could be where the ethos of accepting no overlords could have been born. Mandalorians know having a tighter chain of command would make them more effective—but they also know what it would cost. And they would never take that bargain. It’s forged into the very soul of their national ethos, just like liberté, égalité, fraternité is forged into the French: Vode An.

Vode An makes for such a good working class motto, doesn’t it?

tldr:

Yes to Mandalorian peasant uprising against their warrior-elite overlords. But make it happen after the Mandalorian Wars, not in the modern days. Although you could certainly still see some ripple effects, internal tensions and biases to this day; just look at USAmericans, slavery and racism.

As always, this is just one possible way things could have gone down (and of course there can be more than one civil war in a people’s history). But I rather like it because it could explain some of those seemingly incongruous parts of the Mandalorian culture.

[mandalorianhistorian]

Mandalorian culture master post part 1

  (Not Disney era, which is not canon in the eyes of the og fans)  

The Beginning of Mandalorian Culture and Lineage  

 A millennia before the battle of Yavin 4, Mandalorian history began with the Taung. These shadow warriors once lived on the core world, Coruscant, before their enemies drove them from the core into the outer rim, across the galaxy, and far into wild space. 

The clans travelled from planet to planet on orders from their war chief, who interpreted the will of their extinct gods. The names of the gods were; Kad Ha’rangir, the all-seeing god of trials and tests; Hod ha’ran, the trickster agent of fickle fortune; and Asasuum the god of sloth, an enemy whispering and seducing promises of peace. During this time, many planets and their people fell to these Mandalorian. 

These Mandalorians went everywhere across the galaxy until they found the Mandalor system in the outer rim territories. There had been no sapian lifeform on Mandalor until the Taung came to the planet. 

They wanted to prove they won the planet, so they hunted the mythosaur, massive creatures that roamed the planet. Once done, they left the mythosaur bones on the plains as proof, and used the skulls for the clan's symbol. 

 The Taung then inhabited the planet permanently and began raiding other planets on crusades for their gods. 

[rooksunday]

i wanna write eldritch clones

the problem is deciding what flavour. they’re all so delicious!

[fuckyeahemmett]

Excerpt from an ongoing shared Star Wars AU

Below is a short piece of fanfic from my RPG group's ongoing supplemental prose. The concept of the Taung Lodge and the characters of Garrth Corvuud, Verse Tillthe, Wyndell, Yor, Resh, and Seht are all the original creations of my friend the GM. Vital is my OC who I portrayed in a prior campaign and fill in with when she shows up as an NPC. Shel Croft is the original creation of my other friend who played her opposite Vital in that prior campaign.

A long time ago when we were still in the planning phase of their campaign, I asked the GM whether it would be alright for me to play a Mandalorian. He replied that he had been burned out by other players choosing to play Mandalorians without giving much credence to the narrative precedents and lore (Canderous, Bo Katan, etc.), so that if I was willing to give it at least a modest effort, he would approve.

I don't do things by halves.

(I don't like Karen Traviss, but I do use the conlang, and I try to be thoughtful and creative with judiciously taking what I like from canon and Legends, and reasonably progress the narrative of Mandalorianness through the writing.)

I share this as an attempt at exemplifying what a Mandalorian funeral might be like, and what the elegy style could be. If you like the writing, please let me know. If you don't, I'll be curious for feedback, though the intended audience of the rest of the playgroup has already seen it so I'm satisfied.

When the five survivors of the Taung Lodge had at last returned to the Dewback Stampede, it wasn’t long before Vital summoned them together in the central deck of the craft. Wyndell bore a small drum, and Vital held a metal flute called a bes’bev. Resh watched as the other four produced keepsakes of their fallen comrades, whether retrieved from the bodies of the fallen in the depths of the hive or reverently taken from the effects in their respective berths. They passed the items around, regarding them carefully. A bone, a shell casing, an engraved stone, a ring. 

At length they arranged the four items together on a small table. Wyndell struck her drum once. Vital put the bes’bev to her lips and blew a brief dolorous phrase that cut through the air of the hunting craft like a knife. As one, the five Mandalorians breathed deeply and recited the following:

Aay'han

“Mhi su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, mhi partayli, gar darasuum:

Garrth Corvuud be Kryze Aliit,

Verse Tillthe be Saxon Aliit,

Bhai Fynch be Rook Aliit,

Lairk Enog be Tal Aliit,

Mhi dinu'gar runise bah Ke'gyce be Ijaa.

Par gar shereshoy, vor entye.

Mhi kar'tayli gar darasuum.

Mar’e!

Udesii.

Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la.

Mhi ori, gar aru'ese ne'kar'tayl’udes."

[Translation:

Remembering and Celebration

We are still alive, but you are dead. We remember you, so you are eternal:

Garrth Corvuud of House Kryze,

Verse Tillthe of House Saxon,

Bhai Fynch of House Rook,

Lairk Enog of House Tal,

We commit your names to the Canons of Honor.

For your passion, we accept a debt.

We will know you forever.

At last!

Rest.

Not gone, merely marching far away.

We swear, your enemies shall never know peace.] Then Wyndell struck the drum again. Vital returned the bes’bev to her lips and blew again, a different melody, a repetitive and muscular sound. Wyndell struck a beat with the melody as it rolled through the spacecraft, and she, Seht, Resh, and Yor sang the ancient song Vode An.

[crackedopen]

FINALLY

DONE