Tag: injuries

What medical treatments are there outside bacta? My plot requires an incredibly risky escape w someone near death. Would realistic medicine work instead? What are those binders/cuffs (triangular?) called, like in the 2017 Maul comics on the padawan? And finally, what is imperial protocol for bounties/tracking someone down? Thank you in advance!

It really depends on the specific injuries that the person has sustained. A good starting place, if you haven’t already checked it out, might be the medical terms section of my vocab list here. There’s a bunch of equipment and medicine listed there other than bacta, although bacta is normally a staple of medical treatment and is used in many other products. 

If your character is bleeding to death, bacta will probably not be a first step in their treatment/stabilization. Although I don’t know what piece of equipment you’re referring to in the comics (you’re welcome to submit/message me a picture, if you like) I would guess that it may be some sort of tourniquet. Some tourniquets (such as the SGB-543) could apply micro-repulsor fields in specific places to stop internal bleeding, as opposed to various other bandages, coagulants and cauterizers, which stopped external bleeding. Depending on the exact type of wound, different methods would be used to do this; there are circumstances where cauterization is not appropriate, for example, and tourniquets are not necessarily always a good idea, especially if they must be improvised. I’m not a real-life medical expert, though, so you may want to take a look through @scriptmedic‘s blog, since they have answered questions on the topic. 

If there is no significant bleeding (e.g., in the case of a lightsaber wound) but the character is still in critical condition, they would usually be kept in a bacta tank. Bacta is used as sort of a cure-all because it helps regenerate damaged cells, but it takes time to work and the character may need additional life support while they heal. Transporting someone in this sort of condition would be very risky, but could be made possible for short periods of time (for instance, until they got to a ship with a medbay) if there’s a medpac or medkit on hand. Since many ships, even small ones, could be fitted with decent medbays including a medical droid and/or diagnostic computer, that may be a good first stop for your characters. You can find a bit more detail on that in this post. 

As for real-life medicine, there’s no reason you can’t revert to more simple, low-tech treatments in a pinch. However, many of these simpler treatments have different names or alternative versions in-universe, so taking a look through the vocab list and Wookieepedia may help. 

Though they did have their own investigators with jurisdiction spanning most of the galaxy, when trying to track someone down the Empire was often known to employ bounty hunters. All of these sorts of investigations were carried out by the Imperial Office of Criminal Investigations. There’s a lot of information there, so I would suggest reading through that. Take special note of the Imperial Enforcement DataCore and the Imperial Peace-Keeping Certificates; this should all give you an idea of how the Empire does business with registered and unregistered bounty hunters. 

I hope that helps! If you’ve got any follow-up questions, feel free to ask!

~ Jacen

Thanks for the quick answer about the high-powered blaster. <3 For clarification, though: I meant AT-AT commander armor as in the armor worn by General Veers, not that of AT-AT pilots. It certainly looks much less flimsy than the latter and should be able to withstand a few hits.

Yup, Imperial officer battle armour around that time period should have been identical or very similar to either that of an Imperial combat driver (including AT-AT pilots) or snowtrooper armour, depending on the variant. It likely looks sturdier because some of those chest plates included heating/life support systems, which added to the bulk but didn’t provide much extra shielding. Either would be vulnerable to a high-powered blaster rifle at close range.

Hope that helps!

~ Jacen

Would a hit from a high-powered modified blaster rifle (something a bounty hunter would use) possible have enough punch to knock an armored target (in AT-AT commander armor) who’s caught off guard off their feet and burn through their chestplate? If so, can the wound be life-threatening, or is there no such thing as a blaster rifle that can smash through AT-AT commander armor?

I am not aware of any source that says an AT-AT pilot’s armour is significantly sturdier than a stormtrooper’s, so yes, a direct hit from a high-powered blaster rifle could easily burn through a chestplate. That wound could certainly be life-threatening, but it’s just as likely that the pilot would be killed, especially from a close distance. We’ve seen such blaster rifles kill clone troopers from hundreds of feet away, and AT-AT pilot armour is said to resemble Phase II clone pilot armour. 

Hope that helps!

~ Jacen 

Hi! What do we know about treating blaster-bolt wounds? Do they more or less self-cauterize like lightsaber wounds theoretically would?

Sorry about the wait! Basically, blaster bolts may or may not cauterize the wound they make. There will certainly be burning, but they can still bleed. Due to the physics of a blaster bolt, blunt force injuries can also occur. (I discuss this in a bit more detail here and here). Most often, however, the wound is largely cauterized by the heat of the bolt. As a result, they are very difficult to treat without the regenerative properties of bacta, and thus the default treatment is application of a bacta bandage or, if the injury is serious enough, submersion in a bacta tank. The bandages must be changed regularly, and the patient may need surgery if the bolt has hit and burnt any organs, but if they can survive long enough to get treatment they often make a full recovery. 

Hope that helps!

~ Jacen

How well do you think a lightsaber could cauterize a pre-existing wound? It wouldn’t be the most efficient or safe, and you could easily make it worse, but if someone’s bleeding to death, do you think it would work in a pinch?

I think it could work just fine in an emergency, as long as the wound wasn’t too deep. There is confusion over whether a lightsaber always cauterizes as it’s cutting (canon suggests a lightsaber wound should bleed and Legends suggests the opposite), but using it purposefully as a heat source over a few seconds or so would most likely work. It also shouldn’t be too dangerous, if the one using it has a steady hand, because there should be no need to cut deeper. Holding the blade so it just touches the wound should be enough. You may also want to send an ask to @scriptmedic when their ask box opens again, to find out whether cauterization is the right way to go in your scenario.

~ Jacen

So blasters do cause impacts and blunt force like bullets do? I got in an argument once in a roleplay cause my character had gotten nicked and I said the blast broke there bone but they argued it would only burn. Also do bolts ricochet any?

Yes, they can. I would say a glancing blow would have little to no impact force, though, and would probably just cause a burn. I can’t recall an instance of any character getting shot and it breaking their bone, but I suppose it’s possible if they took a direct hit to a bone that isn’t shielded by a lot of muscle or is particularly fragile (like the collarbone). Blaster bolts can ricochet, though its unclear exactly which surfaces can reflect them, except, obviously, for the magnetically sealed walls of the trash compacter seen in ANH.

~ Jacen

I have a character that gets an unfortunate case of Lightsaber To The Face. Its just a graze, but obviously her face is still fucked. How likely is it that she could keep going for a minute or so after her injury?

I suppose that might depend on whether or not she is Force-sensitive. If so, I find it reasonable that she could get back up and fight for a while. If not, then I guess it would be important to know the extent of the damage. If the graze doesn’t touch the eyes or go through a bone she should be alright to fight through the pain for a bit, even without the Force. If it does… well, in real life it would be unlikely, she’d be in a whole lot of pain from the cauterization and probably freaking out if she can’t see out of one eye. But in Star Wars, people rarely obey the odds, so at the least I would have her take a moment to collect herself.

One more side note: if she doesn’t lose an eye or anything, treatment with bacta might be able to completely heal the wound (or leave a light scar), especially if she can get it quickly.

Happy writing!

~ Jacen