User blog:Brandon Rhea/Some background on the Battle of New Centrif (TCO)

Galactic Battlegrounds was a badass game. It was a strategy game like Starcraft, only set in the Star Wars universe. One of the more interesting things about it was the back story that allowed the writers to flesh out what happened during the Invasion of Naboo. What it showed was battles in towns like New Centrif, Parrlay and Harte Secur, all of which took place between the initial landing of the invasion forces and the taking of Theed.

In Star Wars: Episode I - The Chosen One, I decided to depict one of these battles. I chose New Centrif because the purpose of that battle was to destroy a communications array to prevent alerting Coruscant about what was happening (although in the ASWS, it’s to prevent them from warning the capital city). I created some characters, including a mayor and a security captain, in order to give it a more personal touch and then I wrote out the battle.

The scene sucked.

I rewrote it again later, but I still didn’t feel comfortable with it so I chopped out the whole battle section, keeping only the stuff leading up to it and after it. Then I spoke with Edward Oliver, who is a military person, about helping me write a better battle and he was able to help me with it. It now has a great, gritty feel to it with descriptions and emotions that put you directly into the battle, which was exactly what I intended to do from the beginning but wasn’t able to until Oliver began helping.

Because I don’t know if I’m going to officially establish this in the novel, I just wanted to point out that (CAUTION: HERE BE SPOILERZ) the communications array in the ASWS version of New Centrif is destroyed during the battle, although Queen Arcadia does receive the transmission that the mayor sent out to her. After the battle, the Federation forces proceed towards towns like Harte Secur and Spinnaker. Finally, they make their way to the capital city of Ogana. This was despite the best efforts of those who died in New Centrif. Unfortunately for the dead, the battle turns out to be one of those battles were noble in purpose but futile in execution. They tried to help their planet but had absolutely no chance of doing so because of their small numbers.

Oh well, there’s always more battles to be fought. ;)