Nothing within the GAR, certainly. And nothing that could serve the same aesthetic role. However, all Alliance personnel wore identification plates opposite their rank insignia, and Imperial pilots and officers carried identification cards (also called identichips), although higher-ranking personnel supposedly use their rank cylinders for the same purpose.
That probably wasn’t the answer you were hoping for, but good luck anyway!
~ Jacen
One of the only things I’m coming up with for the heavy machinery bit would be binary load lifters, particularly the CLL-8 model because it was used by the Empire. It can lift tonnes upon tonnes, and is considered reliable and hardy, but lacks any significant artificial intelligence. It can’t really react to its surroundings, so your character could have had their hand crushed due to a fumble on its part. As well, the training regiments the Empire uses are so intense, often going so far as to drop cadets into live-fire situations or hostile environments, that they could have been injured during a training mission. That extends your options to things like falling rocks, failing repulsorlifts, being shot down and crushed by their own fighter, etc. As for actual, proper heavy machinery, there isn’t a whole lot of information available.
For the exploding thing, you’re probably going to want to do something related to the propulsion systems of a starfighter. If something went wrong with the coolant feed (e.g., it was damaged in a fight) and an engine was also damaged (or was faulty from the start), it could overheat and/or explode. This is really a hard one, because by the time of the Resistance there were very few technologies that could be considered dangerous or faulty, and none that were used by the actual organization. You would have to inflict some kind of damage on the part first, and any safeguards would have to be disabled. At least that means you don’t have to use any one specific component.
I think this is going to take a bit of creativity on your part. Try to come up with a plausible scenario that could result in the kind of damage you need, and run with that. I hope I could at least be some help!
~ Jacen
In some of the older EU books, like the X-Wing series, it is just called e-mail or mail. There is such a thing as a hololetter, but that uses holographic images so it’s probably not quite what you’re looking for. By and large, communications aren’t really done by text, although plenty of people refer to sending messages without showing us how. The various rebellions throughout the timelines are particularly known for sending messages by word of mouth or by personally delivering datacards with information on them, and never sending transmissions. If you really need a text-based message, your best bet might be to just refer to it as a message and keep it vague.
I hope something here works for you!
~ Jacen
The only thing I know of that is intended solely for playing music is just called a music player. However, it’s a whole lot more common to use various holographic devices to play music on, because “music players” are a bit antiquated. You might use a holopad, holoprojector or holo-player, especially if you have a recording of the artist or a dancer to go along with the music. They all mean basically the same thing, in this case. A plain old datapad could also play a recording, as most came with headphone ports and the ability to play sound, and those are extremely common.
I hope one of those works!
~ Jacen
Sorry to say, there is no such device. Anything sending transmissions that far needs a bigger power source than, say, a comlink. However, you could do a couple things. One, get a regular old comlink message to someone who has access to a subspace or hyperwave transceiver, someone within about 50 klicks of your character. Two, have the character themselves get to a more powerful transmitter, like you would find on a ship or maybe a private building.
It’s also important to note that the Empire shut down large portions of the HoloNet (the network used to carry hyperwave transmissions), causing the Rebellion a lot of trouble when it came to communicating with each other. It also didn’t cover a lot of the Outer Rim, but there were secret channels used by the rebels. Subspace transmissions were not routed through the HoloNet, but they did take significantly longer to reach their destination, and they were easier to intercept. Think about which would work better for your story.
I hope that helps!
~ Jacen
These are words I’ve either had to look up for myself, or saw them written wrong in fics that otherwise had decent spelling. Directly copy-pasted from the file I keep for myself. Heavily weighted towards SWR terms, as that’s the fandom (sub-fandom?) I write in for the most part.
capitalized: Jedi, Sith, Rebellion (some contexts), Outer Rim, Padawan
lower-case: holocron, stormtrooper, dark side
unknown capitalization: various race names; the word for “referring to the Empire”; master (when used to refer to a Jedi’s relation; such as, what Obi-wan was to Anakin)
planets: Malachor, Mustafar, Atollon, Dathomir, Jedha, Mandalore, Ryloth, Lira San
names: Zeb’s last name (Orrelios), the Bendu
not sure how to spell: crystal in the lightsaber (kyber), alphabet (Aurebesh), that one fruit (meiloorun)
other stuff: “datapad” is one word, TIE fighter, medbay (one word), clone trooper (two words, no caps), comlink
other stuff I need to look up: Zeb’s weapon-thing, communication device, caffeine beverage
Thank you for sending this! I’ll get these added to the list
These are called holoprojectors. They can come in a bunch of different sizes, but they’re generally all called the same thing. There are some instances of handheld holoprojectors being referred to as holopads (which comes from the term holoprojector pads). If you’re talking about, for example, the ones the clones carry, it’s your choice which term to use.
On that note, I’ve been working on a list of vocabulary which will be linked in my blog description and home page when it goes up. If you or anyone else would like to suggest stuff to include, go ahead and do it! @pomrania especially, because you gave me the idea to do it in the first place.
I hope that helps, and don’t be afraid to ask if you need more help with terminology!
~ Jacen
Yes, there seems to be nothing stopping you from doing this. I would guess that the holoprojector would need to be modified in some way to display text from a keyboard. I couldn’t tell you exactly how because I am not an expert in real-life technology and I don’t know of a case like this being mentioned in-universe. Just keep in mind that in the time period you’re writing in, a holoprojector cost somewhere around 1000 credits. If your character can afford this, you shouldn’t have a problem.
I hope that helps a bit!
~ Jacen
For your first question, it’ll depend on the context. Both are quite popular (although flimsi declined in use through the time that the Empire was in charge), but if your character isn’t getting it back then I would say a flimsi would be better than a datapad, especially if you don’t want a trace of the information. Flimsiplast dissolves, by the way. However, you could use a datacard for the other character to put in their own datapad instead of giving them an entire datapad, that would probably be much more common.
The plural of flimsi (referring to the sheet, not the material) is not mentioned as far as I know. I believe the word itself is never actually pluralized, so you might say “sheets of flimsi” rather trying something like “flimsis” which is kind of awkward.
Data storage is mostly digital, be it personal or on a government-wide level. Most people own a datapad because they’re pretty cheap, and datacards are very widely used. Plenty of people do still keep stuff around in a hard copy form, like flimsiplast journals, but most day-to-day things are done digitally. It’s basically a lot like how we store our data today.
Books as we know them are considered pretty archaic in Star Wars. When printed, books and other large compilations of data are done on flimsi, but these are rare. Holobooks are much more popular, and those are stored on thin crystalline boards or, if you don’t want to be so official, in the form of a file on a datapad.
Hope that helps!
~ Jacen
I certainly do! Let’s see if we can find a weapon that works.
First, I think a lightsaber pike would likely fit well with your character’s background with a staff. You could give her either a double or single-bladed one; the double-bladed ones are typically associated with the Jedi Temple Guards of the Old Republic, and the single-bladed ones are used by Sith and associates. That’s just historical, though, and I don’t think your character’s alignment with either side has to influence her weapon if you don’t want it to. If you went with a traditional lightsaber pike, with two blades, there might be some question as to how she got it, just because it was used pretty much exclusively by the Temple Guard. Also, the fighting style is nearly identical to that used with a double-bladed lightsaber (saberstaff). Really, the only difference between the two weapons is the length of the hilt and blades, so if you think a saberstaff would be too advanced then the double-bladed pike might not work. A single-bladed one might be used more like a lightsaber than a staff, so take that into consideration as well.
Something else you might want to look into is a force pike. They’re somewhere between a lightsaber and a staff, with a vibro-edged tip to deliver strong electric shocks. The settings can be adjusted; at the lowest, it’ll give a very painful shock, higher settings can cause paralysis or death. Turning it all the way up will let it slice through bone and thin armour. The style of fighting required by a staff, which involves a lot of stabbing motions, would fit well with this weapon. It’s also a whole lot cheaper than a lightsaber pike, if that would be an issue for your character.
And perhaps one of my personal favourites, a vibrostaff could also suit your character well. Like other vibroweapons, the vibrogenerator in the hilt causes the blade to vibrate so fast that a glancing blow could take a limb off. Most are double-bladed, but you can get single-bladed versions, and while it is a light weapon, you’re not going to get the problem where a staff-wielder has to get used to the weightlessness of a plasma blade. A lot of them also have cortosis weaves, which allow them to block blows from a lightsaber or deflect a blaster bolt. It’s not deadly in the way one would consider a saberstaff deadly, but it would definitely get the job done. It is quite long, though, with a three-foot hilt and a two and a half-foot blade, so consider if your character might be too short for it.
This has gotten long, but I also want to propose an electrostaff. If you’ve seen The Clone Wars, they’re the things that Grievous’s droid guards carry. They can block lightsaber strikes, and they have emitters on each end with different power settings, ranging from incapacitating to deadly.
So yeah. There are tons of options for you to choose from. Feel free to ask for specifics or more recommendations if you want, I could probably talk about this all day. A lot of these weapons are very similar in design and/or purpose, so consider the image you want for your character and pick something to match.
I hope that helps!
~ Jacen
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