#Swart Swifto

[tinky-dinky]

The Cuy’val Dar

Following on from my Jango post, I want to talk about the Cuy’val Dar.

The same warning as that post applies. This is largely my speculations based on canon, but not actually canon.

A note about Legends canon: Unless it is directly contradicted by the current canon, I choose to include Legends canon as canon.

So, the Cuy’val Dar (Mando’a meaning those who are lost) are the trainers Jango recruited to train the clones on Kamino. There were one hundred of these trainers, and seventy five of those one hundred were Mandalorians. The other twenty five were probably bounty hunters and general mercenaries.

Of the seventy five Mandos, we only know the names of 12 of them. Two, Isabet Reau and Dred Priest, were Death Watch sympathizers if not full on members. The other 10 have no stated allegiance but it’s my speculation that at least some of them were True Mandalorians under Jaster and Jango.

There are two whom I am almost certain were True Mandalorians. Kal Skirata is said to have known Jango for years, so he was obviously at least affiliated with the True Mandalorians. He was found by his adopted father, Munin Skirata, when Munin was on a mission with a group of mercenaries. My guess is those mercenaries were Jaster’s people, and possibly even included Jaster himself.

Rav Bralor was a close friend and comrade in arms of Kal Skirata’s long before Kamino, so obviously if he is a True Mandalorian, it stands to reason that she must have been one too.

There are two others who are potentially True Mandalorians. Llats Ward isn’t stated to have any particular affiliation but his chest plate has a whacking great mythosaur skull on it, which is the sigil of the True Mandalorians. Of course, it’s also just a generally important symbol in Mando culture, so Llats could have it on his armour for entirely different reasons.

Miij Gilmar, the trainer of the clone medics, wasn’t born a Mando but became one after he married a Mandalorian woman. She was murdered, unfortunately and he vowed revenge. It’s noted that he had a deep hatred for the death watch allied Dred Priest and Isabet Reau. My speculation is that his wife was killed by Death Watch and he may have joined (or already have been part of) the True Mandos to avenge her.

There is one more trainer I want to discuss in detail. His name is Cort Davin, and he was a Journeyman Protector on Concord Dawn. Obviously this is the same profession as Jaster and Fett Sr, so this suggests he may have been a colleague of theirs. It does seem that he stayed in the Journeyman Protectors until he was recruited into the Cuy’val Dar, so I don’t think he was a proper member of the True Mandos, but he could have been their ally.

We know virtually nothing of the remaining five named Mandos of the Cuy’val Dar, B’arin Apma, Swart Swifto, Wad’e Tayhaai, Vhonte Tervho and Walon Vau. I have no idea if any of these people were True Mandalorians. It’s possible.

A side tangent about Wad’e Tay’haai: one of the few things I could find about him is that his preferred weapons were a traditional Mando spear and a bes’bav. A bes’bav is a Mandalorian flute that doubles as a stabbing weapon. Of course the Mandos have a musical instrument that is also a weapon. Of course they do. It makes me wonder how many other musical weapons exist in Mando culture. And how many other things Mandos have made into weapons. Many, many things probably.

Anyways, this brings me onto the point of this post: why would any True Mandalorians would agree to train the clones despite it going against their well established code of protection over children? And how did Jango feel about these people that were once his?

It’s my personal speculation that any True Mandalorians that joined the Cuy’val Dar on Kamino did so for a number of reasons. The New Mandalorian pacifists were in charge on Mandalore, so anyone wishing to keep their culture couldn’t stay there. I can’t imagine that Mandalorians are welcomed in many places in the galaxy, so it’s possible some of them joined because it guaranteed a place to live and a source of income and food.

Some might have joined out of loyalty to Jango. Perhaps they thought he wouldn’t allow the clones to be treated badly and by the time it became apparent that he would, they couldn’t back out. Perhaps they wanted to help him and therefore help the clones.

I doubt any of them were actually told what they were being recruited for. It was a secret, after all, and I don’t think telling a bunch of Mandalorians ‘there’s a facility where they’re cloning children to be trained as child soldiers for a war in which they’re likely to die’ would go well.

Honestly, I just find the Cuy’val Dar quite interesting. Who are these people? Why did they agree to come to Kamino? What did they feel about the clones?

[archeo-starwars]

Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Warfare Author’s Cut, Part 2 – Ancient Coruscant

THE BATTALIONS OF ZHELL AND THE TAUNGS

Jason Fry: As published, Warfare offers a translation of the best-known section of  Dha Werda Verda, an epic about the ancient battle between the Zhell and the Taungs. This “modern” exploration of the Zhell and Taungs was fun, and I liked how it connected the ancient era with the Mandalorians and the Empire. But it risked feeling redundant — and with Warfare way too long already, it was a logical cut.

Erich Schoeneweiss: I think it’s important to note the circumstances that led to some of the edits we had to make. The last thing I wanted to do was cut anything Jason wrote, but he was contracted to deliver a manuscript at a specific word count and far exceeded that. If this had been a novel that wouldn’t have been as a big an issue, but the Essential Guides are illustrated full-color books. We have a tight budget and set of book specifications we work with, and page count is one of those key specs. A longer manuscript means more pages, which means the book costs more to produce. Jason made some edits on his own and submitted the manuscript knowing we would have to make some more. It was a collaborative effort in deciding on the additional cuts, and this is one of them.

Reprinted From Imperial Center Today, 2 ABY:

A LONG TIME AGO…

The Zhell and the Taungs Are Names to Conjure By, But the Truth About These Long-Lost Combatants Is Hard to Pin Down

By Eschul Shaywa

The Zhell and the Taungs have been powerful names here on Imperial Center nearly as long as civilization has existed on our planet — and that’s an awfully long time. Their names adorn ancient neighborhoods that claim some connection to long-ago battles, as well as new developments whose builders want a patina of tradition for their durasteel and clari-crystalline palaces.

But how much do you really know about these ancient warriors? Talk to scholars, and they tell you the only thing clear about the Zhell and the Taungs is just how unclear their histories are. But that isn’t to say we know nothing: Researchers on several worlds are working tirelessly to knit together scraps of legend and bits plucked from archaeological discoveries, in hopes of one day reconstructing the ancient chronicles.

The outlines of what happened some 200,000 years ago are known to every schoolchild: The 13 nations that made up the Battalions of Zhell spent centuries clashing with the forces of the Taungs. During one of their skirmishes, a volcanic eruption destroyed the city of Zhell, shattering the Battalions’ power. The assembled Taungs watched in awe as ash blotted out the sun and rained down upon them. Taking their opponents’ destruction as a sign of divine favor, the Taungs christened themselves Dha Werda Verda, the Shadow Warriors, and celebrated their victory in the epic poem of the same name.

In its entirety, Dha Werda Verda encompasses more than 700 verses divided into 11chapters and written in the language known as Notron Cant, whose subtleties continue to defy translation. But most people know only a fraction of the ninth — the 10 verses popularly known as “The Maker Comes to Unmake.” No matter what school, junior academy or crèche you belonged to, if you’re Coruscanti you either memorized the strange syllables of these 10 verses for recitation or had a schoolmate who did.

But there’s something odd about our veneration of an ancient epic, notes University of Byblos historian Mesh Burzon.

“We believe the Zhell were humans — perhaps the original human population that took to the stars when Imperial Center was known as Notron,” Burzon says. “The Taungs were not human. If the account of the destruction of Zhell is even vaguely accurate, it was a monumental disaster for humanity. So what you have is the descendents of those who survived a near-extinction reciting the poem their oppressors composed to celebrate the event.”

As Burzon explains, the Zhell nations were battered by the loss of their capital, but not broken: They recovered and drove the Taungs off Notron entirely. The Taungs emigrated to the Outer Rim and eventually settled Mandalore, named for a legendary clan leader. From this new homeworld they became the scourge of the Republic, routinely raiding its outlying worlds and sometimes penetrating the very Core.

The Mandalorian clans valued loyalty to their ferocious warrior code above all else, a quality that would eventually transform their society. A later leader, Mandalore the Ultimate, admitted humans and other species to the Mandalorian ranks. As it turned out, Mandalore the Ultimate was the final Taung to lead the clans.

“The Taungs are now extinct, but their ways have been preserved by the Mandalorians — a human culture, ironically enough,” Burzon notes.

Hu Jibwe, scholar of military history at the Salmagodro Grand Academy, notes that there is another song popularly known as “Dha Werda Verda” — the Mando’a war chant known as “Rage of the Shadow Warriors.” During the Clone Wars, some Mandalorian trainers taught this chant to their clones, and it became a hallmark of those units. It’s rarely performed today, so if you have a chance to see it, take advantage: The chant and ritual dance are mesmerizing, particularly if the dancers follow Mandalorian tradition and drum out the rhythm on the chest or back of those next to them:

The ash of the Taung beats strong within the Mandalorians’ heart. We are the rage of the Warriors of the Shadow, The first noble sons of Mandalore. Let all those who stand before us light the night sky in flame. Our vengeance burns brighter still.

The gauntlet of Mandalore strikes without mercy. We are the rage of the Warriors of the Shadow, The first noble sons of Mandalore. Let all those who stand before us light the night sky in flame. Our vengeance burns brighter still.

But as Hu notes, “Rage” is far more recent than Dha Werda Verda. The best-preserved record of the Taung epic poem, written in Notron Cant and housed in the Baobab Archives on distant Manda, contains none of the verses of “Rage.”

“It’s my belief that ‘Rage of the Shadow Warriors’ dates from the reign of Mandalore the Ultimate, when the Taungs knew they were being eclipsed,” Hu explains. “I’ve always thought it a poignant work — a plea that the Taungs not be forgotten by the newborn culture they knew would outlive them.”

But what of the warriors on both sides whose valor is remembered in Dha Werda Verda? Of them we know almost nothing, academics say.

“Two hundred thousand years is an almost unfathomable amount of time,” says Arhul Manaxa, scholar emeritus at the University of Rudrig. “Not even the histories of the Columi date back that far. There is no agreement whatsoever about the site of Zhell, when exactly the battle took place, or if it even did. All has been buried — by kilometers of city and eons of time.”

Manaxa notes that many scholars have struggled to explain how the Taungs could have emigrated from Imperial Center to the Outer Rim after their defeat.

“We know of no species able to travel through hyperspace 200,000 years ago,” Manaxa says. “This leaves us with a few different possible explanations, none of which can be proven or disproven. Perhaps the Taungs were capable of faster-than-light travel, and invaded Imperial Center. Or perhaps the Taungs were native to Coruscant, and the Zhell were the invaders. Perhaps the dates are wrong, and the conflict in fact took place far later, when the Core was being explored by the eldest species of the galaxy. Or perhaps it never happened at all.”

Nor, says Hu, can we say anything about the Battalions of Zhell, or the Taung legions that confronted them.

“When enthusiasts stage recreations of the battle they tend to use replica great axes and swords known from the excavation of Taung burial sites on Roon,” he says. “But by the time the Taungs reached Roon these were ritual objects — species capable of traveling through hyperspace don’t still rely on edged weapons. Nor do you find such weapons still used by societies as sophisticated as the Zhell nations. It’s as if you staged a recreation of the Siege of Ramsir with the Imperial Army limited to parade sabers.”

Hu says he knows it may be unromantic to imagine the confrontation at Zhell occurring between armies that possessed aircraft and atomic weapons. But he urges us to look deeper and examine the qualities of Dha Werda Verda that have kept the poem alive for eons.

“All we have is a poem, but what a poem!” he says. “The image of the Maker appearing to unmake the world has inspired artists for as long as artists have existed. The mere names of the generals awaken something within us: What schoolchild hasn’t felt his heart race at the mention of Rexutu the Unconquerable or Olhak the Reaver, or mourned the inevitable downfall of the mighty and noble Doom of Ulmarah?”

In case the words of academics don’t stir you, let me close with a more personal story. I recently attended a performance of “Rage of the Shadow Warriors” alongside Swart Swifto, who served as a trainer for the Grand Army of the Republic and later the Imperial Center Guard.

After the final shouted dralshy’a died away, I told Swifto about the latest academic thinking about the Zhell, the Taungs and Dha Werda Verda. I was curious to see what this veteran defender of Imperial Center would think about the irony of a Taung war poem giving rise to a Mandalorian tradition, and that tradition in turn being passed on by Imperial Center’s guardians.

Swifto shook his head impatiently at me.

“I hear what you’re saying, Miss Shaywa, but none of that is important,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that the poem was composed by some Taung, or that Taung wanted to kill an ancestor of ours, or what weapon he wanted to do it with or what language he spoke. The Taungs and the Zhell were enemies, but they were also part of a brotherhood, one that includes all living beings who believe in a higher cause and are willing to fight and die for it. If you’ve been in battle, if you’ve entrusted your life to other soldiers who are just as scared and confused and noble and brave as you are, then you’re a part of that brotherhood. No matter what you look like.”