Awesome / The Thrawn Trilogy

• Thrawn using his Ysalamir to No-Sell C'baoth's Force Lightning. The latter's response to a Muggle somehow standing toe-to-toe with him like that is priceless.
• Thrawn's "Reason You Suck" Speech to C'baoth when C'baoth seizes control of the minds of the Chimaera's crew.
  "It's a minimum of five days to Coruscant from here," Thrawn said coldly. "Five days during which you'll have to maintain your control of the Chimaera's thirty-seven thousand crewers. Longer, of course, if you intend for them to actually fight at the end of that voyage. And if you intend for us to arrive with any support craft, that figure of thirty-seven thousand will increase rather steeply... I merely present the problems you and the Force will have to solve if you continue with this course of action. For instance, do you know where the Coruscant sector fleet is based, or the number and types of ships making it up? Have you thought about how you will neutralize Coruscant's orbital battle stations and ground-based systems? Do you know who is in command of the planet's defenses at present, and how he or she is likely to deploy the available forces? Have you considered Coruscant's energy field? Do you know how best to use the strategic and tactical capabilities of an Imperial Star Destroyer?"
• In the first book, Thrawn gets cloaking shield technology, but ships using the cloak can't see through it with their sensors or communicate with outsiders, so they're completely blind and deaf. Being Thrawn, he still comes up with brilliant plans to use the technology to great effect:
  • Thrawn attacks New Republic convoys, limiting the number of freighters the New Republic has, then launches major attacks on three worlds, heavily damaging them and requiring the New Republic to step in and begin reconstruction, difficult due to afforementioned lack of cargo ships. So Ackbar has some surplus capital ships converted into lightly crewed transports at the shipyards of Sluis Van (closest shipyard to the three affected planets). Thrawn then steals mole-miners, puts them in the cargo bay of a freighter with some TIE fighters and hides the inside of the ship with the cloaking shield. He brings the ship into the Sluis Van system, blows it up and releases the mole miners to burrow into the hulls of the converted capital ships, inserting four or five stormtroopers to kill the skeleton crew and seize control of the ships for his own use. This plan only fails because Lando Calrissian happened to be present, and even then the New Republic ships end up being badly damaged so Thrawn still benefited to some extent.
    • Even better, when the plan is foiled by Lando's intervention, Captain Pellaeon waits in trepidation to see how Thrawn will react to seeing his work undone... and Thrawn calmly orders an immediate, well-ordered retreat. There isn't even any Tranquil Fury. He then gives Pellaeon a short-but-sweet speech about knowing when to fold 'em, solidifying himself as one of the most clever villains in all of fiction.
      Thrawn: This is a setback, Captain, nothing more.
    • The icing on the cake? Pellaeon had considered this exactly the sort of operation they should use C'baoth and his super-duper Jedi Mind Trick for. Thrawn disagreed, stating that his study of the Sluissi meant that he could know the precise time of the attack so that the TIEs and mole miners would be within the shipyard when the Imperial fleet showed up to cover the retreat of their new warships. Meaning that, of the three highly effective uses for cloaking shields Thrawn developed, only one required Jedi levels of Force-assisted coordination and communication. In other words, only one tactic required overcoming technological limitations with space magic.
  • Thrawn has two cloaked Carrack cruisers towed into position just under where a planet's planetary shield will be when it's switched on. He then openly comes in with the Chimaera and they raise the shields. He fires at the parts of the shield that the hidden cruisers are situated under and gets Joruus C'baoth to use his Jedi powers to communicate through the cloak so the crews of the ships fire at the planet exactly in time with the Chimaera`s shots hitting the shield. From the planet's perspective, it looks like the Chimaera has a new superweapon capable of passing straight through their shield, and they promptly surrender.
  • To neutralise Coruscant, Thrawn has 22 asteroids fitted with cloaking shields, then brings a fleet of ships into orbit of the planet and has them use their tractor beams to fling the cloaked asteroids into orbit. But he also has them run a power surge through their tractor beam emitters many dozen more times (which, as the asteroids are invisible, is indistinguishable to the New Republic from launching a real asteroid). The result is that Coruscant can't risk lowering its planetary shield in case an asteroid hits, but has no idea exactly how many asteroids were launched, so has no way of knowing if it's accounted for them all or not.
    • Interestingly, the New Republic's count of total "cloaked" tractor beam firings is accurate. . . the ships in Thrawn's task force managed fire the tractor beams (real and faked) 237 times, and the New Republic counted 237 tractor beam firings during the battle. But they still can't be certain they didn't miss any during the battle, and they quickly surmise that Thrawn wouldn't have squandered the resources 300 cloaking shields would take, so they know he's using a smaller number. They just don't know what, specifically, that smaller number is. They even figure out how the firings were faked, though that doesn't help them figure out which firings were genuine and which were faked.
• It's offscreen, but Yoda's fight with the Dark Jedi was pretty clearly this.
• C'baoth gets plenty of impressive moments throughout the series as well. While Thrawn was able to talk him down from it, C'baoth did manage to simultaneously take over over 37,000 members of the Chimera's crew, placing the entire Star Destroyer under his mental command. Other feats include coordinating military strikes across galactic distances, showing that C'baoth's mastery of the mental aspects of the Force were great indeed. By the end of the trilogy, he's being compared to the Emperor in terms of power and ability.
• One of C'boath's best moments doesn't even involve his Force powers or combat skills. When Thrawn offers him greater power, C'boath simply makes a And Then What? speech and mocks the Imperial leaders for thinking that true power is controlling dozens of anonymous systems you never see instead of a small town or city where you can control everything that happens.
• Mara learning the truth about the Emperor's Last Command:
  Mara: Who's this "son of Vader" you're expecting to show up and help us?
  Noghri: He travels with you. You serve him, as do we.
  Mara: You mean. . . Skywalker?
  Noghri: You did not know?
  • Awesome because it's the true start of Mara's complete break from the Emperor, because she finally sees through the lies he built around her to control her, even from beyond the grave. And because it demonstrates clearly the unshakeable faith the Noghri have in Luke and Leia.
• The very first scene of Heir to the Empire. Thrawn gets ambushed by a task force that seriously outnumbers him. He sacrifices a TIE fighter to gain some information, then calmly explains his plan to Captain Pellaeon. Timothy Zahn doesn't even bother describing the actual battle, aside from a single line to end the chapter:
  "An hour later, it was all over."
  • Pellaeon's reaction makes it even sweeter: when Thrawn orders the Marg Sabl closure maneuver he comments it's too well known and the New Republic commander will never fall for it, only to go in utter disbelief when he sees he did fall for it.
• Leia learning the truth about when the battle that ravaged the Noghri homeworld actually took place. Her whole time there, she's heard the maitrakh address Khabarakh as "thirdson," and assumes this means "third-born son." Then Leia and the Noghri are reflecting on motherhood in general, when the maitrakh notes that she sent all four of her sons to the Empire's wars, three of them died far from home, and the fourth returned home a cripple who died shortly afterward. Suddenly, Leia realizes that "thirdson" can't mean third-born, since all the maitrakh's sons are dead, and the maitrakh confirms "thirdson" means "son of my son of my firstson." Then Leia asks how long ago the battle was, and the reply is forty-four years. Leia is somewhat upset, since she and Chewie has placed the amount of arable land the Noghri have as being the result of about eight years of decontamination work. Though the exact numbers are somewhat undermined by the Prequels establishing the Clone Wars happened only thirty or so years ago, and Anakin Skywalker never could have come to the Noghri as Darth Vader during them, it's still a chilling moment, and Leia's immediate quest fueled by righteous anger to reveal the Empire's treachery is breathtaking to behold.
  • The maitrakh then guarantees Leia the chance to speak her piece before the Noghri dynasts, by turning out damn near the entire Noghri population to march on the capitol alongside Leia, meaning that whatever Leia has to tell them, they can't just sweep the whole thing under the rug.
    • In defence of the timing issue mentioned above, it could be that Noghiri years are slightly shorter than the years Leia is thinking, so the battle could still have occurred just after the Clone Wars and still fit in with subsequently-established canon.
      • She does say this, telling Leia by Imperial dating this was thirty four years ago, which may just about fit what the later timeline was shown to be.
• Luke Skywalker is a walking Moment of Awesome. While he often gets overlooked due to the series introducing fan-favorites Thrawn and Mara Jade, Luke continues to show why he's the hero of the series.
  • Despite repeated attempts directed by Thrawn personally, Luke is one person the Empire never manages to capture. And while Leia also managed to escape repeated capture attempts, she always had Han, Chewie or the Noghri to help her, and Thrawn never personally lead the capture attempt. Luke was alone save for R2 and his X-Wing, and Thrawn used the full resources of a Star Destroyer to try and capture Luke, only for both attempts to fail.
    • Luke does technically end up exactly where the Empire wants him when he goes to see Joruus C'baoth on Jomark. But Luke almost immediately realizes that Joruus is insane, and is furthermore not the kind of mentor Luke wants to help him resurrect the Jedi, and most especially not to teach his niece and nephew. It takes Luke a little bit longer to realize that C'baoth is actually working with the Empire, but he had the relevant points figured out by sunset of his first day talking to C'baoth.
  • When Luke finally decides to stop holding back, almost no one can stand against him. The elite Noghri squad sent to capture him lasted only as long as Luke attempted to subdue them without hurting them. When time constraints forced him to use lethal force, they went down with little effort on his part.
  • Luke is often able to end fights based on his presence alone. More than once a conflict ends simply because Luke Skywalker showed up, making everyone involved stand down.
  • Once Luke is trapped on Myrkr with Mara, in the middle of the ysalamiri anti-Force zone, she expects him to be panicked and flustered. But, if you pay attention to the source movies, the Force was only one tool in a Jedi's bag of tricks, and Luke proves that by being Brought Down to Badass. He escapes from Karrde on his own, uses some quick thinking to talk Mara into sparing him and R2 due to their usefulness, uses Artoo to establish communications with Karrde, and manages to defeat a wild vornskr without the Force (and hold it off initially without his lightsaber). Mara, almost against her will, develops respect for his abilities. And then...
  • Luke takes out an entire stormtrooper detachment and the troop transport they were on by dropping a multi-ton archway on top of them. What others acknowledge as even more impressive is that he did it without using the Force. Even the normally unflappable Talon Karrde was almost rendered speechless when he saw the results.
    Karrde: "One man...and without the Force, too."
    • This is the result of Luke having a Sherlock Scan "Eureka!" Moment. He realizes the area just before the archway is the perfect place for an ambush... and if he realizes it, the Imperials realize it, too. And indeed, they start altering their formation to prepare for a possible attack. And of course, that's exactly when Karrde's people intended to attack. So Luke trips Artoo, quickly tells him to alert Karrde's people (through Threepio) to wait until the stormtroopers are at the arch before attacking. (Lando gets a minor moment himself here, attempting to convince Aves to agree to Luke's suggestion, despite the arch giving the Imperials better cover than Karrde's people had intended, and then when that fails forcing the issue at blaster-point). Once the stormtroopers are in the arch with a hovering military vehicle setting down to give them perfect cover, Karrde's people have no clear shot while the stormtroopers can just pick them off... but the Imperials have nowhere to escape once the arch comes tumbling down. And, again, this isn't Luke's Force-powered Jedi insight... this is just his years of experience in the Rebel Alliance.
  • Luke is able to settle a dispute between two aliens, earning the respect of everyone involved. One of the aliens was a great admirer of the Jedi, and even when Luke makes a ruling against him, the alien accepts it as fair. Later, when C'baoth forces Luke to take a position of leadership, Luke's decisions are much more fair and reasonable than C'baoth's, showing Luke isn't as bad a mediator as he thinks.
    • It is made even better at the start of the incident when Luke observers that quarrel happening, and one of the arguers turns to him with "I call on Jedi for judgement!" When everyone insists, Luke is taken aback, but eventually realizes the sheer respect that the Jedi are regaining in the galaxy by his example.
  • When dealing with an overwhelming number of stormtroopers aboard one of the Katana ships, Luke calmly tells the others that he'll handle it. How does he do so? By picking the location of the battle. He makes himself an obvious target, deflecting blaster bolts until all of the troopers are in the corridor he wants. Then he slashes a long gash in the ship's wall, opening the hallway to the vacuum of space. The blast doors behind the troopers comes down, sealing them in, while Luke jumps backwards before the blast doors behind him close. The stormtroopers die from exposure to vacuum.
  • When Mara Jade is forced to eject from her starfighter, a glancing blast from an ion cannon disrupts the electronics of her escape rig, leaving her without a locator beacon for the other ships to find her and with quickly depleting life support. As the book says, it would be impossible for any ship to find her in the debris left over from the space battle. But for Luke it was "nothing at all".
  • Luke is tracking the Empire's clone transfer points, following a path Grand Admiral Thrawn laid specifically to throw the New Republic off the track, and once Thrawn figures out Luke is the one hunting them, arranges his capture. On a planet with an extremely fast rotation that results in very short days and very high winds, the cities are built on bluffs and have very tall walls to deflect the wind. Luke finds himself at the top of one of the walls, stormtroopers with ysalamiri and aerial patrol craft closing on his position, seconds to act. Waiting for the right moment when the sharp angle of the sun will conceal the blade of his lightsaber, Luke cuts a small notch in the wall, tears off some of his tunic to wrap one hand, then falls, cutting a groove with his lightsaber that his fingers slide through to carry him well down and away from the approaching Imperials. It's incredibly clever, yet still the kind of swashbuckling action that makes up the very best Star Wars.
  • Luke generally has a low opinion of his skills and abilities with the Force, feeling that he's weaker and less skilled than Master Yoda or C'baoth. Yet he only actually tests his Force Skills against C'baoth once, during a Force 'tug of war' over the Clone Luuke's lightsaber. Luke is actually able to match C'baoth evenly, and only loses eventually due to the pressure on his mind due to the clone's presence in the Force screwing with his mind.
  • Likewise, Luke is able to fight evenly with his clone despite the clone's presence greatly impairing Luke's skill (due to the nature of flash-grown clones effect on the Force). It's implied that Luuke is actually being controlled by C'baoth, so Luke's essentially fighting C'baoth in a copy of his own body, yet he not only holds his own, but would have won several times if not for the impairment or C'baoth essentially cheating. And even then, he's able to use the surroundings to sucker the clone into a fatal mistake that leaves it open for Mara to kill it.
  • Luke is able to help Mara take down C'baoth, not through any use of lightsaber skill or massive display of power, but by using the right amount of power in a small but intelligent fashion. Rather than get into a Force duel with C'baoth, Luke simply undoes the restraints on Karrde's pet Vornskrs, dangerous predators who target aggressive Force users, and watch as the Vornskrs attack C'baoth, distracting C'baoth so that Mara can once again go in for the kill.
    • Mara gets one here for another very intelligent use of power. C'baoth is dropping rains of pebbles from the mountain's ceiling on everyone to restrain and hamper them. Mara's on a catwalk, and noted to be apparently trying to sweep the stones away with her lightsaber, making no headway. Later, the narrative returns to her... and she was actually cutting gashes in the catwalk beneath her, letting the stones fall down below her, keeping her from being trapped under them.
  • Luke and Mara manage to break Karrde out of an Imperial Star Destroyer, right out from under Thrawn's nose, with nothing but the skills Mara and Luke personally bring to the table. Luke's Jedi training and Mara's intimate knowledge of Imperial procedure and access to a special hard-wired security code in Imperial ship computers known only to top agents like her. Even when Thrawn realizes how Mara is accessing his ship and has the main computer shut down to hamper them, they still make good their escape.
  • Luke's patience, kindness and compassion with Mara eventually turn the woman who hated him and wanted to kill him into a close friend, and then later his wife.
• When a group of Imperials try to raid the first meeting of the future Smugglers Alliance, the only phrases that can do justice to the brief firefight are Mugging the Monster and Curb-Stomp Battle. About fifty Imperials are killed in less than a minute by a group that they outnumber and only one Non-Action Guy smuggler dies. Two highlights of the skirmish are three ex-mercenary smugglers gunning down a whole squad of attackers in five seconds and a woman who initially comes across as Mazzic's bored mistress turning out to be a bodyguard who uses her hair decorations as lethal throwing knives.
• Karrde takes it upon himself to act as a spymaster for the New Republic and cheekily has his techies hack into their bank accounts so he can pay himself without asking for permission first (given the need to avoid red tape until Thrawn is beaten).
• Darth Sidious gets one for the sheer cunning of Delta Source. He exploited the sound-noting properties of certain trees, planting them in a room in the palace, hooking up devices to translate the chemical changes in said trees back into sound vibrations, and having the audio transmitted to a receiving station. And he did it all using organic components, no electronics for a counterintelligence sweep to pick up.

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