Lightsider

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This article is about the in-universe game. You may be looking for the story with the same name.

Lightsider was an ancient and risky Jedi game.[1] The Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker bested the Dark Jedi Kam Solusar at the game while on the Space City above Nespis VIII, turning Solusar to the light side of the Force.[1][2]

Behind the scenes

Lightsider was originally intended to be the focus of the story Lightsider by Tom Veitch.[3] However, due to creative differences the story was never published.[4] Nevertheless, the events of the story survived through a brief mention in the novel Dark Apprentice by Kevin J. Anderson.[2] Other sources would go on to mention these events, including The Essential Chronology, The New Essential Guide to Characters, and The New Essential Chronology.[1][5][6] The Dark Empire II audio drama depicts a lightsaber duel between Skywalker and Solusar at the Space City, in which Skywalker ends up the victor and turns Solusar to the light side. It remains unclear whether this duel was Lightsider or something entirely different.[7]

The game was to have been played on a game board with 50 blue and red pieces representing the Light and Dark Side, and they would be placed on colored concave crystals, with green ones representing systems such as Alderaan and Ottethan, the black and white center cluster representing the center of the galaxy and one of the endgame goals, and other colors not having any particular meaning. The colored spaces were to be conquered from the "outer edge" toward the center. By placing a piece, the connective Force "circuit" completed by a player touching one of the lightsaber-crystal-like pieces, one player could force the other into what was a hallucination, or a spiritual plane of the Force, containing a "quest", in other words a location and setting of of the first player's design. Once there, the scenario was mutable by both players' wills. Events could be as unrealistic as transforming Rancors into Tauntauns just by speaking that it should happen, or as realistic as watching a large battle play out between two fleets of ships. The placing of a crystal piece could also simply result in the two players having a lightsaber duel. Through each "quest", Luke and Kam Solusar were attempting to sway each other to their respective sides of the Force. After Luke wins one of these, he places his piece on top of Kam's, but it is not clear whether this was actually meant to be part of the official gameplay. Unless one player surrenders, the game continues until all pieces have been placed on the board. Kam claimed that in the ancient days, a game of Lightsider could last for weeks.

Appearances

Sources

Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 The Essential Chronology
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Dark Apprentice
  3. ↑ GalaxyCollector "ComicScan: Comics That Almost Were" — Star Wars Galaxy Collector 4
  4. ↑ Premium-Era-real The Star Wars Literature Compendium on www.geocities.com (original page now obsolete)
  5. ↑ The New Essential Guide to Characters
  6. ↑ The New Essential Chronology
  7. ↑ Dark Empire II audio drama