Sha'kajir meant sitting down for a meal, and had come to refer to a truce or cease-fire. Skirata found that remarkably apt in this case. Everything could be resolved over a meal, the neutral territory where you said what you had to say and everyone was treated as kin, at least until the meal was over. He was still negotiating his cease-fire with Uthan.
Vau managed a smile. "Mij'ika seems like a new man since he's found someone to discuss bacteriology and congenital urethral obstruction with him. If only everyone was so easy to please."
"Not at the table, I hope."
"It's all big words, Kal. You won't understand the really stomach-churning medical detail."
Skirata ignored the jibe without even trying. A year ago, maybe less, it would have started the old fight going again, but they both found their differences weren't worth the effort now.
I have no frame of reference for these statistics, but I am hesistant to trust Kal on anything involving psychology. That said, I think it’s the only time he comes up this chapter, so let’s hurry up and ignore him.
I just. I-
He wakes her up in the middle of the night by ordering a robot to shoot the biohazard containment. He then proceeds to try a lightsaber on the biohazard containment doors. When Uthan rightfully thinks he’s insane, he explains he’s worried about security. Eventually, after some discussion, she agrees to temporarily move her staff while leaving the virus in place. Hokan reflects again on how it can’t be clones he’s facing here because they’d be too docile.
Then we get to the part I care about, which is Darman’s pov with Etain. They’re back in the barn, still hiding, and Darman is exhausted. More than that, he’s exceedingly perplexed by Etain, who isn’t at all the Jedi Officer he was expecting.
I don’t know, I just kind of like this scene. Etain almost, but not quite touching him and worrying when she feels something wrong is in the Force. She’s still a Jedi Officer to Dar, not his crush yet, so he’s extremely polite in the way of someone whose afraid of being an inconvenience.
Poor Darman, honestly. Etain has reasons for not meeting his expectations, but it’s a really rude awakening/flash of culture shock. Even if I wouldn’t exactly call Jedi “the civilian world”. Not GAR, no, but not civilians either.
Etain shows him the holographic plans she’s been carefully hiding this whole time, and he’s relieved, But he’s also surprised that she doesn’t know the objective, or for that matter about the GAR or the war. He has to explain to her that he’s a clone. But honestly, they’re pretty equally confused by each other:
Etain is probably the character with the most detail description of her physical appearance in this series, honestly. But I’m really glad that for once KT didn’t go for the “is the woman fuckable” route and instead just focused on how alien they both seem to one another.
Also, Etain just chronically puts her foot in her mouth, no matter how hard she tries.
Listen, this timeline still makes no sense, but at the very best this implies that Kast Fulier got a communication through the single Nemodian communications tower that none of the characters can use without being found out at any other point in the story, discovered that the Clone Wars had begun, and just decided his Padawan for whatever reason didn’t need to know that there was war and a bioweapon?
Also, that they had been sent to Qiilura to investigate before the war broke out but Uthan, who is solely working on the bioweapon, was sent afterward, in which case why would they be there to begin with? You can’t tell me Ankkkit and Hokan posed a galactic military threat on their own, much less one that required Kast and Etain to go under cover for so long. But I will literally never get answers to this.
Etain is upset by the fact that there’s only four members of Omega squad (she’s having trouble wrapping her head around the fact that “four ten year olds [are] going to storm Uthan’s complex” which is understandable from her point of view, but makes Darman feel like shit especially because “she looked absolutely crushed, like he’d disappointed her just by showing up”. As far as first meetings go, this one’s pretty rough.
But despite Etain being in over her head and managing to saying all the wrong things, she looks at Darman and... decides he needs to be fed.
Again. foot. Mouth. She’s incredibly impatient/brusque/disbelieving in this scene, and it hurts from Darman’s pov. But I can’t say I would handle it much better.
How did Omega never once even see Rav Bralor? Or the one Isabet Reau? And if these are Mandalorians, how were the numbers that skewed? I have questions, Karen. Also, man, did the Kaminoans set the clones up for massive disappointment,
:[
Again, Etain’s brittleness here, all her shortness with Darman, is deeply rooted in her fear that she not only can’t live up to his high expectations, but that she’s not going to be of any use to anyone at all.
Etain points out that what the squad thinks is Uthan’s facility is actually the Separatist garrison and they need to warn Omega before they run into all the droids. But Jinart closes the chapter by interrupting them, and Darman promptly puts a gun to her head.
(I wish that meant I didn’t have to deal with her next chapter.)
TL;DR Recap: Birhan attempts to chase Etain away but is dissuaded by Jinart. Darman is puzzled by nature and also severely sleep deprived. Hokan is sexist and Uthan is introduced.
Starting Kal Count: 7. Ending Kal Count: 10.
We immediately open the chapter with another Kal quote. And not even an interesting one. But that ups the Kal Count to 8.
The scene we start with though is from Etain’s pov. Birhan our vaguely contemptuous farmer, is throwing clods of dirt at Etain and telling her to “GTFO because this is all your fault” essentially.
(Etain plays the scape goat a lot. It’s a trend. Realistically though, he’s afraid of what Hokan will do if he’s found sheltering her, given the “militia” burned people and their livelihoods last chapter.)
Etain still has no idea who Jinart is, but Jinart tells Birhan he’s being stupid. Etain tries and fails to mind influence him with yet another quote about Etain’s lack of control over the Force when it’s most needed. Jinart shoves Birhan around a bit and tries again to persuade him by basically telling him he can either get murdered by the Republic or keep Etain as a kind of human MiracleGro:
This quote is one of the big reasons that I headcanon that Etain was never really going to be happy as a mercenary farmer’s wife living in rural Mandalore with Kal, or happy in a rural/agricultural setting, period. Her strongest associations with agricultural life are the AgriCorps and Qiilura- failure and trauma. The narrative flat out tells us “agriculture spelled failure”.
And while that might be resolved eventually with a character arc (that she doesn’t get) ag life flat out doesn’t provide the sense of purpose that Etain is so desperate for. There’s nothing dishonorable about farming, but Etain sees it as “life on a backwater planet, talking to grain” and through out the series she strives for the opportunity to make a real difference to other people. Misguidedly at times, I’ll admit, but I don’t think she could have ever been content with what was being offered.
Anyway, Jinart steers Etain back in the direction of the barn. Etain is getting understandably paranoid, but there’s some narration in this scene I just don’t get?
I have SO MANY THOUGHTS about this scene. Enough that I’ll probably make a separate post later. I’m trying to keep my posts brief, I really am, but I pull so much from these couple of pages for Etain.
My first thought is that it’s really, really fucking weird to put Etain’s digression about Jedi values of anti-attachment here, relative to this barn...as opposed to like, idk, a reflection on her life versus the clones’ later.
Of fucking course the barn isn’t home. It’s a place she’s been hiding from people who want to kill, torture, or rape her while behind enemy lines on a military mission and the owner of the barn just directly threatened her, if ineffectively. “No loves, no attachments” well, yeah, you’re surrounded by enemies and your teacher was just tortured to death. “At least it wouldn’t be hard to tear herself away from here.” Well, no shit. Was that ever even a realistic option?
Then we immediately get the highlighted exchange with Jinart, and again, I’m repeatedly struck by how differently Omega’s grief versus Etain’s is frame. I’m not saying that Etain’s statement is wrong, or even out of character necessarily.
But it’s super detached, again. Granted, the clones don’t spend time weeping on screen. But their grief at losing their respective squads is brought up repeatedly. The prologue and most of the first chapter are either Darman realizing he’ll never see his squad again or Niner and Fi’s heartbreaking conversation about it. It plays into Niner’s repeated fears for Darman and his anger with Atin. It plays in to Atin’s seeming callousness towards Darman. Etain has a scene later where she asks Darman if he misses his brothers, and he goes quiet and hurt and the weight of the scene rightly falls on her like a hammer.
While Etain... I’m not saying it doesn’t affect her actions; it very visibly affects her paranoia. But it’s never handled quite like grief, if that makes sense? At least not after the initial death.
Speaking of paranoia... Jinart really has no call to be offended that Etain is suspicious, given what’s happened to Etain over the last several weeks and the fact that Jinart spends much of the rest of the novel insinuating she’s naive and useless. Etain has every right to be paranoid, all things considered. But then we get this contradictory mess of a conversation:
The soothing bit doesn’t make sense to me. But I’m biased because I dislike Jinart based on the whole scope of the series. And again Etain grieving and feeling alone and hating being alone in grief makes sense, but the framing of this quote is super weird. Especially as the farmers haven’t demonstrated and “home”-like behavior or even family loyalties on screen.
But we’re finally moving on from this huge ass rant about this scene as we open onto Darman crawling through an open field with his kit and generally being overwhelmed by the sheer openness of everything+ the physical strain when he’s already wounded and exhausted. During the course of this, it comes up that Dar is still desperately hungry, so he starts thinking about what wildlife might be edible, and then about Kal and uj cake.
Kal Count is increased to 9.
Darman is exhausted and fatigued, and most of the section, while interesting, can just be boiled down to him trying to motivate himself to keep going because he’s terrified he’ll miss the rendezvous with the rest of Omega Squad. The same kind of bird that brought down his ship in the first place eats the remote he was using to scout ahead, so he swears at it. There’s another mention of Kal teaching them to build defensive fortifications which ups the Kal Count to 10.
But there’s also a fair bit of fascination as he’s experiencing nature for the first time. He takes his helmet off to smell the breeze, soaks in the stream, and is captivated by his first view of the daywings, which makes you think he is kind of a small-details guy.
...Dar....
anyway, he falls asleep eventually without much more of note happening in this section. We move to Ghez Hokan introducing the reader to Separatist scientist and would-be creator of the anti-clone bio weapon, Qail Ovolot Uthan.
I appreciate Uthan a lot as a character, despite her later handling in Imperial Commando: 501st, but this particular introduction still makes me cringe.
I legitimately can’t tell if this is how Traviss thinks of this character, or if this is deliberate characterization of Hokan via his descriptions of Uthan, but ugh.
Hokan: She knows I can’t be seduced, but she still wants to seduce me!
Ugh. The man is also way caught up his own ass in terms of what he thinks other people think of him. He doesn’t want to sit in Uthan’s brocaded chair because it’s “too decadent” but does it anyway because otherwise he would be addressing her while standing like a servant. Dude, you need some therapy. What’s the Mando expression? All helmet, no head?
Anyway, I really, really like Uthan here actually. She’s super ruthless, and even if she’s not a great person, ruthless and somewhat ammoral female characters are a fun rarity. I wish that KT could have kept it up throughout the series rather than making her into “bitter lonely career woman”, but look how casually she decides her work is threatened and then which of her associates she needs to cooly dispose of to prevent that happening:
The smartest thought Hokan has had so far is the recognition that if she’ll arrange to dispose of Ankkit, she’ll do the same to him, honestly. But when Uthan sees him hesitate, she goes right for the kill and presses just the right button to utterly manipulate him. He even recognizes it, but is unable to not be convinced.
She tells him that the clones are clones of Jango Fett. And of course he goes all Death Watch and Mandalorian Honor about it.
Honestly, Hokan. And then we finish the chapter with the thing that really makes me question his intelligence:
“To make them proper men again?”
this is the third time I’ve said it.... but how the fuck do you think viruses work, Hokan?
Forged by Ékin, the Dwarven God of Crucibles and Death (and creator of the Dwarves), the Six Weapons of Splendor were the most powerful weapons known to the many peoples of Uthavyathin. These weapons contained great might; able to summon massive storms, crack the skies, shatter the earth, and even level whole forests. They were cast from a mighty and splendorous alloy of steel and platinum, Sigûŕd; known in common as Mythsteel (save for Négänkûrdäk, which was wrought from a diamond as black as night). These weapons were gifted to each of the mightiest Dwarf-lords and the people they reigned over; one for each Dwarven Kingdom.
Each weapon could be wielded by anyone, but the great powers of these mighty arms could only be wielded by those of the same Kingdom as the weapon; i.e. a Volcanic Dwarf of Rôdbŕäk could only wield the powers of Rôdbŕäk’s weapon. Furthermore, the runes of power upon each weapon were visible only to those worthy the wield the weapon to its full potential, i.e. while a Dwarf of Rôdbŕäk could wield the Kingdom’s weapon and its power, only those worthy could use the weapon’s power at full capacity. Those worthy of the weapons typically were born once every three generations of Dwarves (i.e. about every nine-hundred Uthan years, or roughly every one-thousand, four-hundred, twenty-two real world years.)
The first and most powerful Weapon of Splendor was Négänkûrdäk. The only of all these weapons that was not cast from Sigûŕd, Négänkûrdäk was wrought from a diamond as black as night. Known as "Lightcatcher" in Common, this sword was able to "catch" light, trapping it in the blade, before releasing it in a blast of fire and fury. Négänkurdäk was lost, stolen by a Déthräll of the Deep Hells, and has not been seen since, as no mortal has gone to the Deep Hells and returned. It is said, however, that once Négänkûrdäk has been returned to the Dwarves of Nämönäldr, the Dwarves will enter the greatest and longest Golden Age they have ever seen.
The second was an axe known as Þrimyô, which translates to Common as "Thunderous." Þrimyô was able to crack the skies with lightning and create thunderous echoes. It remains in the hands of the Dwarves of Älgôlðr.
The third was another axe, known as Önþä, or "Feller," as it could create fierce winds able to level entire forests. It remains in the hands of the Dwarves of Dimäldr, and is in use by the Dwarf-Lord Tôŕäs.
The fourth was a warhammer, known as Rôdköät, or "World-Quaker." It can level entire mountains and cause magma to blast out of the ground and engulf everything. It is currently in the possession of a Dwarf-Smith, Ŕödrik of Rôdbŕäk.
The fifth was yet another warhammer, known amongst the Dwarves as Stŕäkr, or "Strife" in Common. It can devour the life force of all who oppose the wielder (should the wielder be worthy, that is) It belongs to the Dwarves of Fyellgrimr, though it was lost many centuries ago when the previous, long-forgotten owner died.
The sixth was a final warhammer, known as Þîntäk, or "Scorcher." It can summon huge blasts of fire and can even smelt iron in an instant. It belongs to the Dwarves of Fyällûndä, and is currently awaiting a new worthy wielder.
"A great and mighty warhorn made of wood echoed from upon Westhill. Legions upon legions upon legions of Orcs had arrived, and those mighty and proud warriors charged towards the armies of darkness, their footsteps thundering and their cries of battle bellowing and their wardrums thumping. The Orcs tore through Raxus’ forces with ease, overwhelming the Ogres and Trolls and Giants and Hags."
"As the Dwarves neared the hilltop upon which Raxus commanded, known in these days as Bôik’s Hill, they soon realized that the armies of darkness had surrounded them, and that they were out of the range of the cannons. Still, they fought on, till only a thousand remained, then five hundred, then one hundred still stood. The Dwarves of yore prepared for their last stand, ready to die if only to give their people some time."
"The battle began as Giants and Ogres, Trolls and Hags charged towards the Dwarven ranks. Suddenly, thunderous booms echoed throughout the land and great flaming balls of iron rained down upon the Outervoid forces, exploding into clouds of ash and shrapnel. Dwarven cannons were a mighty force; one that should never be underestimated."
"What remained of the Dwarven army rallied, forming the infamous Dwarven shield wall; an impenetrable object made of stainless Dwarven steel, unmovable by forces of neither men nor nature."
