Roqoo Depot

Lightsaber Combat and the Sword of the Jedi

Star Wars author Troy Denning provided some interesting discussion on Facebook. The question posed to him was what form of lightsaber combat would Jaina Solo be most likely to use. Troy’s answer delved into some pretty good depth and it’s worth reposting.

Also, quick question–Which form of lightsaber combat would you think Jaina most likely to use? My thoughts were since she had a standard, single-blade that she either used Form III (like Obi-Wan), Form IV (like Yoda and Qui-Gon) or Form V (like Anakin Skywalker). The post-ROTJ novels don’t expand that much on lightsaber combat, so I just wondered what your thoughts on this would be.

Troy Denning: Well . . . I’m of the Bruce Lee school of thought here, that the best style of martial arts is no style — that is, that a master practitioneer matches his/her style to the situation. That’s the way I’ve written Jaina in the recent past, and the style that I see her employing now. If pressed, I’d say that Jaina’s home form is Juyo (VII), and that she’d slip into Shien (V) if Juyo wasn’t working and she didn’t see an obvious weakness that suggested another form.

From my understanding Juyo had the potential to push its wielder to the dark side, and the only light sider who mastered it was Mace Windu, and it was renamed Vaapad. His Padawan who learnt it slipped to the dark side.

Troy Denning: Yeah, that’s what it says in “The Essential Guide to the Force.” But we’re working on the edge of forward continuity with Jaina, and she’s had her bout with the dark side and overcome it. To my way of thinking, she’s quite capable of controlling her emotions (that’s what Invincible was about) and, as the Sword of the Jedi, more than a match for the physical and mental challenges of Juyo. Plus, she’s wise enough not to be teaching Juyo to apprentices!

On the other hand, I don’t see her using Juyo like Mace did — with the “dark side loop.” She’s more than capable of allowing her emotions to feed her strength, and of exulting in the physical aspects of combat (see Chapter Ten of Apocalypse, and pretty much any her action scenes there). But she doesn’t embrace her darkness the way Mace did in Shatterpoint — I guess that’s why I didn’t call it Vaapad.

And, to tell the truth, I’m not sure how much the modern Jedi think of lightsaber combat in terms of the whole Forms paradigm, anyway. I don’t refer to the forms in my books mostly because I don’t want to bog down casual readers with too much esoteric detail (and stopping to explain that stuff can really kill an action scene). But, also, I have big doubts about assuming that the modern Jedi teach combat skills using the same system as the Old Republic Jedi. Even if they have access to the details of the program, they do a LOT of things differently, so I would think they viewed the different forms a bit more organically, as parts of a whole. Again, going back to the Bruce Lee comparison, I think they would strive to have a “style of no-style.”

Posted By: Skuldren for Roqoo Depot.