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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic #46
"DESTROYER" PART 2
As with all my “production notes,” consider a “Spoiler Warning” attached. Please read the books first.
It had always been my intention to wrap up the "Jarael arc" that
followed "Vindication" sometime in 2010. The fugitive arc, though it
had included sections which probably more rightly belonged to Jarael's
storyline, had run three years; I saw Jarael's storyline as reaching
its conclusion earlier. "Destroyer" was a big piece of it; "Demon,"
always planned to follow it, would provide all the answers -- I had no
clear picture of how long that story should be, but I knew what would
happen there.
So the decision to bring the series' run to a close with the
round-numbered issue #50
involved fewer changes than might be imagined. You can always stretch a
comics story out to whatever length you want, by adding action scenes
and elaborating on subplots; aiming toward a specific destination
really helps you find the core story.
"Destroyer" was an example. I had originally considered it for three
issues, which would have shown scenes which, while interesting, didn't
add a whole lot. Seeing Zayne actually being captured by the Crucible,
for example, was inferior to throwing him right into the fights. We'd
have learned more about the muscle Gryph hired to help free the
Crucible's slaves -- but they would have been introduced to no future
purpose in the story. Jarael's conversations with Malak and Shel
likewise were interesting, but both diluted the emotional impact of
Zayne's story -- and our sense of his being alone in an alien and
threatening world. We could all already visualize Jarael's conversation
with Malak anyway, and her exposition at the beginning of the final
scene fit with the frenetic, out-of-breath feeling I wanted her to
bring to it.
So where three issues had us popping away repeatedly for interludes
with the searchers; rethinking it as two issues boiled it down to its
core moments and consolidated the searchers' plight into a single
interlude. These were very easy changes to make, and they served the
main goal, which was to allow me to begin "Demon" an issue earlier.
Having a clear milepost in #50 then caused everything to fall in place
in a four-issue story, the same length as "Vector" and "Vindication."
The Crucible exists pretty much as envisioned -- a traveling Parris
Island, a boot-camp that never ends. The intention, beginning with
"Dueling Ambitions" and moving forward, had been to imagine a form of
slavery where servile labor was only one part of a larger picture. The
Crucible exists far from its forgotten origins, but still does what it
was designed to do. The plights of the castoffs and the "success
stories" are intertwined with its activities -- but they're not the
main purpose. Thus, references to "recruits," "press gangs," and
"general orders."
This was the first issue to be released after Dark Horse announced the
series' impending conclusion to retailers at the Diamond Trade Show in
Baltimore. (I attended the event for Dark Horse, promoting the upcoming
Mass Effect title.) While it was clear that the news would reach the
general public via the online reporters present, while writing the
issue I never spent much time thinking of the how the news might
influence what readers took away from the story. The conclusion to
"Destroyer" was already dramatic as it was -- and as Brian Ching
drew it, it's one of my favorite scenes in the series. For the readers
who knew something even bigger was about to happen, it simply held that
much more drama.
TRIVIA
- This issue's cover is by Jim Pavelec, an
artist I hired when I
was an editor at Comics
Buyer's Guide and Scrye
years ago. He's drawn a
number of horror-themed books for my former company, as well as lots of
work for role-playing and trading-card games. I was very pleased to see
him hired for this cover; it's definitely one of our creepiest!
- The
"muscle" Gryph refers to was considered as a reference to Valius Ying's
old gang, on the Oroko; as noted, we wound up not pursuing that angle.
Any of them who didn't wind up in the Mandalorian camp on Jebble would
have likely retreated to Republic space.
- Zayne's conversation
with Elbee on #40, we
now see, was not with Elbee at all. Just one of
those things that reads one way once, and another way when more facts
are available.
- We included Volgax in the Star Wars Atlas.
- Jarael's
age is something we'd been planning to reveal for a long time, and this
was the right moment, as it underlined how little Zayne really knew
about her. At a glance, the age difference probably doesn't signify
much to most readers. But when you're nineteen, it's a bit of a wider
gulf -- especially when you've been trying to show that you deserve to
be taken seriously. It might be more April-June than May-December --
but functionally, at that age, everything's relative.
- We previously mentioned Ieldis in #29.
- The
Gladiator -- now repaired -- actually does not carry the Pit
structures, though we do see it looming on its way offworld. There's a
separate vessel for that. The Gladiator is more cruiser-like in size.
- We
actually tipped the survival of Goravvus over in the KOTOR Campaign
Guide. We needed a noble and a corporate operator, and I knew he had a
future waiting. Escape would likely have come on the vessel Raana Tey
arrived in; Del Moomo took Shel and the constable's kids out in the
vessel he and Gryph arrived in.
- There was a very
subtle clue to
the real meaning of Jarael's name in the name of Bar'injar -- whose
name includes a -JAR suffix for his position, as named in #44:
"Magister Protector." (And no, Chantique's name doesn't include the
formal suffix -- she kept her name as it was when she was in the
Crucible the first time.)
