LEGO Star Wars Memories

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My brothers +Caleb Buck and +Jonas Buck and I have a lot of Legos that we have accumulated over the years of our collective childhoods. Most of those are Star Wars Legos, and we had a pretty intricate story going for our Lego universe. We managed to incorporate almost every other Lego theme that we have as well- Alpha Team, Bionicle, Mars Mission, Exo-Force, and more than a few ships that Caleb came up with himself. Now that our sisters have started getting into Legos hardcore, it has made us look back at all of the adventures we sent our minifigures on over the course of the last 14+ years. We went on such a huge nostalgia ride this evening that we typed up as much as we could remember. The early stuff is pretty vague, but the more recent events get more specific. So here it is (note that the numbers are footnotes, but Blogger's text editor is really limited so they look pretty bad.)

In the beginning, there were two mighty empires. Well, one was much mightier than the other. But whatever. Each was led by an identical Emperor. Nobody knows how they came to power, or why they looked exactly the same; all we know is that their Empires have been locked in a terrible bloody conflict for as long as anyone can remember. Except maybe Yoda. But whatever.

Over time the Empire led by the Elder Emperor gained the upper hand 1. Their final epic battle took place on Coruscant and it was there that the Elder came out on top. He knew, however, that he would never be able to fully extinguish the Younger Emperor’s influence from the galaxy. Therefore he made an offer that the Younger could not refuse. They joined their Empires into one, with the Elder Emperor taking control of Imperial City and the Younger Emperor taking control of the spaceport 2.

There was peace for a time. The Empire prospered and the people were happy. There were some, however, whose livelihood depended on conflict. You see, the Empire was so efficient at stamping out crime that the Bounty Hunters were out of a job 3. Inevitably they joined together under the leadership of Zam Wesell and declared war on the Empire.

It was clear that the bounty hunters were at a distinct disadvantage in terms of military force. However, Zam Wesell proved to be a very convincing and charismatic leader and it wasn’t long before she drew the commanders of the droid army (General Grievous) and the corporate leader of Sentai Inc (Caker Baker 4) to her side. Together they slowly began to push the Empire back until eventually they took Coruscant and the Emperor 5 was forced into hiding on one of the last planets under his control: Mata Nui.

Mata Nui is a primitive world inhabited by gigantic beings known as Bionicles. The Empire had set up bases in each of the separate biomes: their spaceport was located up on the mountain, the Emperor’s main bunker was in the rocky area, and they maintained a presence in the other biomes to keep the bounty hunters on their toes.

Most of the Empire’s remaining forces managed to arrive on Mata Nui without being tracked by the bounty hunters. However, there was one Jedi starfighter (pilot unknown) that the bounty hunters managed to attach a tracking device to. After sending a Death Shadow to investigate, the bounty hunters attacked in force.

The Battle of Mata Nui was chaotic and epic. It consisted of many separate smaller conflicts that determined the overall state of the battle. Eventually the only stronghold of the Empire’s was the bunker where the Emperor was being protected. And this is where things got interesting.

Time for a little backstory on the internal politics of each faction. The Empire was mostly completely cohesive; the exception to this was the fact that the Jedi were growing increasingly suspicious of the Emperor’s government. However they were unable to do anything about it because of the huge conflict with the bounty hunters. The Emperor in turn knew that having a group of powerful force users that were not directly part of the government could be a serious problem down the road.

Most of the members of the Bounty Hunter army were loyal to Zam Wesell. The exception to this was the Sentai forces. Sentai Inc was a front for a much larger army that hailed from the planet Kichi. The heads of this army were Mr. Black and Mr. White who were the only remaining survivors of their species, the Sosen. All Sosen were force-sensitive, and they had developed a comprehensive set of martial arts. The rest of the army was made up of humans who lived on Kichi. They were completely loyal to Mr. Black and Mr. White. Sentai Inc was created in order to distribute their weapons and technology across the galaxy in preparation for the day when they would seize control.

The Battle of Mata Nui was nearing its end; the Imperial forces were on the verge of being overrun when Mr. Black and Mr. White gave the order to turn on the other Bounty Hunter forces. This timing was chosen to take advantage of the weakened state of the other factions and to maximize confusion and chaos. The rest of the Bounty Hunters were caught off-guard. Caker Baker was the most confused because he had thought that he was in charge of the Sentai forces. He remained loyal to Zam Wessel because they were madly in love with each other 6. This confused things even more for General Grievous, who decided that nobody outside of his droid network could be trusted. Thus the Bounty Hunters ended up splitting into three factions: Sentai, Droids, and the Diversity Alliance.

Mr. Black and Mr. White had underestimated the strength of the Imperial forces. With the Bounty Hunters in disarray, the Empire started to push back. It was then that the Emperor decided to initiate Order 66 7. Most of the Jedi were taken out right away (only one of each character survived; that is, we eliminated all Lukes except for one, etc) but a few managed to escape into the forest. A group of them including Yoda found the Millennium Falcon. Han Solo was a smuggler currently hired by the Bounty Hunters to move ordinance. One of the Sentai turrets had damaged the Falcon as he attempted to flee when the Sentai coup took place. As Han and Chewy made repairs to the Falcon under the watchful gaze of the Jedi, Senator Leia Organa stumbled into the clearing chased by a couple of infantry tanks. She had gotten separated from the rest of the Imperial Army and her personal guard was dead. After dispatching the infantry tanks, the Jedi decided that they couldn’t trust her not to reveal the fact that they were escaping from the Jedi Purge, so they took her prisoner. These Jedi along with a couple of others who managed to liberate their starfighters decided to head to the coordinates of a planet that the Jedi had discovered but had not had time to visit and explore yet. As it just so happens this planet is Kichi.

The Jedi were in for quite a surprise when they came out of hyperspace to find a large fleet of Sentai ships; their surprise was only rivaled by that of the Sentai pilots. They were quickly surrounded and forced to land on the surface of the planet. There they were taken into custody. 8

Meanwhile Sentai’s coup occurred on every Bounty Hunter controlled planet. In many cases Sentai managed to take complete control of those planets, but there are many that remain under Droid control (usually heavily industrial planets). The Diversity Alliance has become more of a terrorist group, operating with small teams of highly-skilled insurgents. In fact the overall warfare will likely depend less on having huge vehicles than it used to because the resources of each faction are spread pretty thin.

1 Because Ian was older and got more LEGOs for birthdays and holidays. Plus Caleb traded a bunch of his Star Wars sets to Ian for all of Ian’s Bionicles.
2 We realize that this is a shit deal, but we made this up when we were really young.
3 The criminals weren’t happy either.
4 He’s not actually the leader of Sentai, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
5 By this time there was only one Emperor and the other one was his decoy.
6 You can tell that they are in love by the pet names they have for each other: “Cakey Bakey” and “Zammy Wammy.” Yeah, we had no idea how love worked back then.
7 And if you don’t know what that is, get out now.
8 Eventually we are planning on having the Jedi joining Sentai after Yoda discovers Mr. Black and Mr. White.

So that is the state of the galaxy right now. We had acquired a nice map of the Star Wars galaxy with lots of planets labeled, and we figured out which faction controlled which planets. But that was several computers ago and the only version we have is really pixelated and you can't read it anymore. Not to worry, we will soon have a nice version that you can read.

We are also planning on starting up a nice site with pages for each vehicle, character, planet, faction, etc all nicely organized so you can find everything. As we continue our story I will post updates on developments and whatnot.

Never grow up!