Shadows of the Empire: Difference between revisions
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[[File:StarWarsShadowsOfTheEmpire 001 4040.jpg|frame]]
''
The novel tells the overall story, focusing on the main characters. The comic book series focuses on bounty hunter Boba Fett's battle to keep possession of the frozen Han Solo. The video game allows players to control new character Dash Rendar, whose adventures in the game weave in and out of the overall storyline.
Throughout each of these, Prince Xizor, the head of the criminal organization Black Sun, finds out why Darth Vader, his bitter rival for the Emperor's favor, wants the Rebel hero Luke Skywalker. In order to gain the Emperor's favor and punish Vader for [[You Killed My Father|killing Xizor's family]], Xizor plans to [[Revenge by Proxy|kill Luke]], while the Rebels try to find Han.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Absurdly Spacious Sewer]]: How Luke, Dash and Lando sneak into Xizor's palace.
* [[The Ace]]: Han Solo's [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]], Dash Rendar. He's annoying even to the characters, but they do acknowledge that [[Ace Pilot|he's a good pilot]]. Luke once thinks "This guy was so full of himself it was a wonder he didn't explode and spew ego all over the place".
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* [[Ascended Extra]]/ [[The Cameo]]: Durga the Hutt, who previously appeared as the [[Big Bad]] of [[The Callista Trilogy|''Darksaber'']] the year previous (set years after this novel), show up as a Vigo of the Black Sun. Xizor pulls a [[Blofeld Ploy]] on him to remind him that he isn't trusted.
** Jabba makes a brief appearance when Xizor talks to him via holoprojector.
** Xizor himself appears in the ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'' as [[Off-the-Shelf FX]]. The existence of multiple Xizors, sometimes even in the same shot, makes the canon status of this appearance questionable.
* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: Rogue Squadron shows up during the escape from Coruscant at, of course, a dramatic moment when the ''Falcon'' and the ''Outrider'' are being hemmed in by Xizor's private navy.
{{quote|'''Wedge''': "Hey, Luke! Mind if we join your party?"}}
* [[Bullying a Dragon]]: Xizor, granted that you're planning to kill Darth Vader anyway, is it really well-advised to go out of your way to [[Troll]] the man so many times while you're busy setting up your plan? He's really sort of infamous as the last person in the galaxy you want to fuck with, especially from within choking range.
** Sure enough, eventually this kills Xizor -- Vader might not have leapt at the flimsiest legal possible excuse to nuke Xizor's entire orbital space station, to the extent of allowing fleeing Rebel troops to escape by targeting Xizor instead, if Xizor hadn't spent so much time and effort earlier in the novel personally pissing Vader off.
** Xizor wouldn't have survived long enough to reach the second chapter if the Emperor hadn't put the brakes on Vader.
* [[But for Me It Was Tuesday]]: Prince Xizor is attacked by a young man named Hoff, who yells "[[You Killed My Father]]" to him, to which Xizor replies, "I'm sorry. Have we met?". It's subverted, however, since Xizor remembers the father once Hoff tells him the father's name.
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Lando, just a little bit. "It's not my fault!" is practically his catchphrase.
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* [[It's Personal]]: On Prince Xizor's homeworld, when Xizor was off ruling his criminal enterprise, there was a hazard lab that a flesh-eating bacteria escaped from, and Darth Vader had the city around it and the two hundred thousand people in that city, "sterilized" (ie. incinerated with lasers) from orbit. This included Xizor's [[You Killed My Father|mother, father, brother, two sisters, and three uncles]]. The way this is phrased actually makes it seem like a comparatively benign decision on the Empire's and Vader's parts - this spared the billions of people on the planet, potentially trillions if it escaped into the rest of the galaxy, from "a horrible, rotting, always fatal infection for which there was no cure".
** [[It Makes Sense in Context]]: Xizor describes the laboratory as one of Vader's "pet projects". It's actually not clear that Vader was personally responsible for the cleanup that killed Xizor's family or if it was just the Imperial officers at hand, but either way Xizor blaming Vader makes sense since if it wasn't for his lab, the planet wouldn't have needed sterilizing in the first place.
** Also, when your setting has easy space travel there is really no excuse for not putting your experimental biowarfare labs on asteroids or airless moons or other uninhabited rocks where, if the virus breaks containment and starts eating everything, you can just burn the rock and say 'Well, we still lost the lab crew but at least there were zero non-combatant casualties'.
* [[I Want Them Alive]]: Subverted. Xizor orders his forces to shoot down the Millennium Falcon, adding that capturing it and securing its crew and passengers would also be acceptable.
* [[I Will Find You]]: Vader's personal mission is to find Luke before Xizor does.
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* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Dash Rendar, eventually. Early on he leaves the ''Falcon'' to fight its way out of an ambush alone because the Rebels had paid him to guide them, not to fight Imperials. Later on - yes, for some reason he was hired again - his arrogance gets several allied Bothans killed and this shakes him, though it can also be read as him being horrified because he'd thought he never missed.
** After he seems to die, Wedge informs Luke that {{spoiler|Dash didn't actually miss, and the missile that destroyed the Bothan ship was an experimental diamond-boron weapon invulnerable to blasters}}.
* [[Jet Pack]]: Though it's fuel is finite, so you, the gamer, has to learn how to manage it.
* [[Kingpin in His Gym]]: Xizor has an "exercise chair" that strengthens his muscles while not having him actually exert himself, though it's also established that he does practice martial arts. Vader cuts down large numbers of lightsaber-wielding droids.
* [[Leitmotif]]: Listen to the soundtrack. Vader's leitmotif is played a few times, and Xizor has one of his own. The composer has expressed regret that he didn't include Leia's Theme.
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{{quote|An excited Falleen who loosed his full pheromonal arsenal was, for all practical purposes, irresistible to a member of the opposite sex. It did not matter what a woman's stance was on fidelity, that she had been a faithful partner to another for years or decades. Falleen pheromones were more potent than the strongest spice. Leia might want to resist him with her mind, but her body would ache for him. There was no antidote save one.
Xizor smiled. He would enjoy administering the single antidote to Leia. He would enjoy it very much indeed... }}
** Parodied in [https://web.archive.org/web/20100703155849/http://3do.jediknight.net/dcm/strips/76.gif this comic strip.]
* [[Mecha-Mooks]]: The battle droids encountered in many levels of the game.
* [[Mildly Military]]: Rogue Squadron, even moreso than in the [[X Wing Series]]. Here, they apparently have free rein to help Luke with whatever, and other than Leia the Alliance High Command is nowhere to be seen.
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* [[Shout-Out]]: "Thix? What is going on down there? Thix? Come in, sector one-one-three-eight, come in-"
** In the N64 version of the game, when Dash locates the supercomputer aboard the ''Suprosa''. If the player steps far enough back and looks at it head on... Looks an awful lot like [[Console Cameo|an N64]] with a ''Shadows'' cartridge plugged in, doesn't it? Also, one of the Challenge Points is shaped like [[Sam and Max Hit The Road|Max]].
** Also in the N64 version, hidden text in the code contains the sentence "and Weena Merkatur [sic] as The Hopping Woman", a reference to [[Freakazoid!]].
* [[Smug Snake]]: Xizor's certainly clever and he's got style, but his arrogance leads him to make several mistakes that end up biting him ''hard''- most notably underestimating Darth Vader.
* [[Super Reflexes]]: Luke gets this when he opens himself to the Force during his fight with Guri - the narration says that he "felt as if he were moving at normal speed, though there was a crackling feeling to his motion, a sound like strong wind whistling about his ears."
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* [[You Got Spunk]]: Xizor to Leia.
{{quote|"[[Groin Attack|So. You resist me]]."}}
* [[You Have Failed Me...]]: After learning that a rescue party broke into his palace, Xizor plans to replace his entire security staff - and those other than foot soldiers, the supervisors, would find their dismissals particularly painful.
** On the other hand, when it comes time to flee the palace, Xizor takes note of the two guards who kept watch over his personal fighter, the ''Virago'' and decides that they would keep their jobs when the situation was taken care of (and possibly even earn a promotion).
* [[You Killed My Father]]: Comes up quite often, actually. Vader killed most of Xizor's family, Xizor [[Driven to Suicide|drove a would-be assassin's father to his death]], the Empire killed Melan's schoolteacher father for espionage...
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Third-Person Shooter]]
[[Category:Literature]]
[[Category:Star Wars Expanded Universe]]
[[Category:Nintendo 64]]
[[Category:Microsoft Windows]]
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