Line #37 Headscratchers/TheThrawnTrilogy


1	[[WMG: Whatever happened with that crystal gravfield trap thingy?]]
2	You know, the MacGuffin they fought a gigantic battle over in ''The Last Command'', and it turned out they never needed it cause they already shot down all of Thrawn's cloaked asteroids? Why did they even ''have'' the battle at Bilbringi, anyways?
3	* Mainly Thrawn's genius at work. He'd figured out that the Tangrene preparations were fake and Bilbringi was the real thing, and moved his fleet to crush the New Republic forces. Though Karrde had provided evidence that all twenty-two asteroids were down, most of the political figures on Coruscant wouldn't be convinced by just a smuggler's word - hence the Bilbringi assault was as much giving a sop to them so they'd shut up. Of course, Thrawn never counted on the smugglers being present, and he certainly didn't see Rukh until it was too late. As for the [=CGT=]...it's never mentioned again.
4	** Also, OP, your idea of the timing is off. Karrde told them about the asteroids either not long before the raid had launched, or after. While ''Star Wars'' has never been concerned with how its SubspaceAnsible works, nor whether you can receive or transmit messages while in hyperspace, it wouldn't be unrealistic to [[HandWave assume]] that, by the time High Command got word, it was too late to call everyone home.
5	*** Ah, ok. [[SincerityMode Thanks, guys!]]
6	*** Actually, I'm pretty sure it's your timing that's off, not the OP's. Karrde gives the New Republic the evidence that there were only twenty two asteroids when he's on Coruscant. After having done so, he and Leia fly from Coruscant to Wayland; from what I recall at least a week's flight. They arrive on Wayland during the raid on Mt. Tantiss. Pellaeon receives word of this raid during the Battle of Bilbringi; depending on how you think the interstellar communication works, either concurrent to, or after, the events on Wayland, but obviously not before. Therefore, there was at very minimum the span of time it takes to fly from Coruscant to Wayland between when the New Republic was told that they'd taken care of all the asteroids and the start of the Battle of Bilbringi in which they could have called off the attack, had they been willing to trust the evidence given to them by Karrde.
7	* There were other, not-inconsiderable tactical goals. Primarily, proving Grand Admiral Thrawn is capable of being outsmarted (though that one was dead a-borning, since he anticipated their real attack and saw through their fake preparations), and cripple one of the Empire's major remaining shipyards.
8	** Not to mention proof that all the asteroids were gone would be provided.
9	** It was mentioned that not everyone on the Advisory Council or the military high command would be willing to take Karrde's word for it that there were only 22 asteroids, so they needed the CGT to prove there weren't any more.
10
11	[[WMG: Thrawn, Noghri, and Skywalkers]]
12	Thrawn knew from the start that Leia is Luke Skywalker's sister. He knew that the Noghri had a near-religious awe of Darth Vader. But he still sent them after Vader's kids. That seems a little unwise, doesn't it? ''Literature/ShadowsOfTheEmpire'' has a villain not nearly as brilliant as Thrawn realizing that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker. ''Tattooine Ghost'' has that being common knowledge on Tattooine. If a SmugSnake could figure it out, if random people on the street knew, ''Thrawn would have known''.
13	* CanonDiscontinuity strikes again. Or perhaps ArmedWithCanon. There's never been any real consensus about how many people knew that Vader was Anakin Skywalker, especially in 1991 when Zahn was writing. (Remember--''Tatooine Ghost'' and ''Literature/ShadowsOfTheEmpire'' were written '''years''' later.) At the time, the assumption (and {{Fanon}}) was that no one knew, and the records were spotty at best (easy enough, with the Emperor centralizing power and eliminating "dissidents")--so Luke and Leia ran with it, and the official line was that Anakin Skywalker ''was'' a Jedi, but Darth Vader killed him in the purge along with all the others, and Luke and Leia were his children, who were hidden away by Obi-Wan (at the time, Owen Lars was believed to be ''Obi-Wan's'' brother) and Bail Organa respectively.
14	** Also keep in mind that Vader ''gave'' the Noghri to Thrawn before he died. Thrawn knew that the Noghri had a serious honor-fixation, and didn't believe they'd go against their rightful lord even on the behalf of the children of their previous lord. Of course, he was wrong, and it was one of many relatively minor miscalculations that ended up adding up and bringing him down.
15	* To add to what's said above, it's made clear that as far as Zahn thought at the time, it wasn't widely known what Vader's fate was and what happened on the Death Star: Mara was certain that her false vision that Vader and Luke both turned on the Emperor and violently killed him was true until Luke corrected her (and did not know that Vader was Luke's father until the Noghri told her on Wayland), while Karrde believed that Darth Vader was still alive and that the Empire might find and recover him one day.
16	* It seems clear that in Zahn's tales, the events aboard the Death Star II were never made public. And in honesty, keeping it quiet seems to make more sense. I can't imagine Luke publicly announcing, "BTW, Leia and I are Vader's next of kin, so if he ever blew up your grandpa/Gundark/planet, killing us is really the only remaining way for you to take vengeance on him."
17	* Thrawn had several weaknesses, despite his brilliance. One of those weaknesses was a tendency to underestimate or look down on things he could not fully understand nor personally experience - such as the Force, or the Noghri's traditions of honor. Another was his arrogance and pride - note the flashes of anger, even rage, when his orders are defied. Third, these traits lead him to leave the unexpected out of his planning, and he rarely anticipates that any changes will occur which he does not expect. Ultimately, Thrawn didn't string together the ideas that a) the apparently docile Noghri would ever defy one of his commands, b) the fact that they might identify Vader's family by scent, c) that Vader's child would have enough standing to warrant some measure of protection from him, and d) that his deception of the Noghri would be discovered, and backfire in such an explosive way.
18	** The above seems off from what we see of Thrawn. Thrawn shows precisely zero indication he looks down on anything simply for not understanding it. And he shows anger a handful of times in this trilogy, predominantly while dealing with C'baoth and Mara (in the latter case only when she directly attacks him), and mild irritation with Ferrier. And saying Thrawn doesn't plan for the unexpected or deal with it well suggests not having actually read the books at all. If anything, Thrawn's biggest problem is over-thinking. He leaves people like C'baoth and Mara and Karrde and Ferrier alive (especially the last) LONG after any reasonable person would have decided to cut their losses and kill them because he has ''too many'' contingency plans and in some their being dead would be a problem. As for not stringing together the Noghri situation, of course he wouldn't assume the Noghri would defy him, he's got an (in-story) forty-year track record of thinking they wouldn't, and the rest of the assumption hinges on him considering how they'd respond to an heir of Vader. Thing is, ''absolutely no one in the galaxy not directly personally involved with Luke and Leia on extremely intimate terms has any reason at all to think such a person exists.'' Even Mara, who has literally spent time mentally linked to the Emperor himself, has no idea who Luke is until she asks the Noghri on Wayland who they mean with this "Son of Vader" stuff. His problem isn't that he doesn't think it could happen, it's that he's missing a critical piece of information. He is in fact the best contingency-planning antagonist in either EU timeline, but even he can't plan for a circumstance he has no idea is even possible.
19	*** Thrawn may knew that Vader is Anakin Skywalker. But Noghri almost certainly did not knew that at all. We don't know, how long ago Darth Vader visited Noghri the last time, but it clearly was sufficiently long ago, that the absolute majority of young Noghri (which represent the majority on Noghri outworld) simply could not meet Vader personally. And thus they probably have no clue about the Vader's scent and could not compare. The Khabarakh was probably the statistical anomaly, who was old enough to actually meet Vader & remember his scent.
20
21	[[WMG: Thrawn's armor, and lack thereof]]
22
23	* On his first visit to Wayland, Thrawn is shot with an arrow, that penetrates his uniform but bounces harmlessly off the body armor underneath. OK...but what if they'd aimed for his unprotected head? His grand plan to rule the galaxy goes right down the tubes. Surely a helmet or something couldn't have hurt.
24	** He might've had a helmet. Zahn's writing is infamous for being sparse on details... He doesn't in the comic book adaptation, but then again, that's the same comic where Noghri are seven feet tall and built like the Hulk.
25	** Another issue is that nearly all training with projectile weapons is to aim for center mass. The head is a smaller target and thus harder to hit, plus has those little things like solid bone structure which would have deflected any shot that did not have a significant angle of attack on the bones, resulting in a painful, possibly even debilitating, but survivable wound. Also, AnnoyingArrows to the contrary, if he had not had armor on, even a wound from an arrow in a less vital spot in the body would have been debilitating and required immediate medical attention. As for body armor and his death, Zahn pointed out that the body armor wasn't all that comfy and he didn't wear it if he didn't see a need for it. The bridge of your flagship is usually safe from personal attacks (especially ''by your own bodyguard''). Usually...
26
27	[[WMG: Killing C'baoth.]]
28	* After C'baoth takes over the ''Chimaera,'' right after they hit Coruscant (or don't hit it), why didn't Thrawn kill C'baoth? He easily could have snuck some ysalamri to an area around the mad Jedi, killed him, and cloned a more stable version (which was his plan).
29	** If memory serves, Thrawn was planning to do just that, AFTER the battle at Bilbringi, which is why it never came to pass. Thrawn believed he had more pressing concerns, like smashing the New Republic fleet, and waiting didn't really impact his plans (though it might have if he'd lived, but Luke and the others would have destroyed Mount Tantiss whether C'baoth had been there or not).
30	** Also, C'baoth left for Wayland almost immediately after that incident, which put him safely out of Thrawn's hair for the time being; Thrawn seems to have intended to crush the New Republic first, ''then'' turn his all his attention towards his unstable ex-partner. (C'baoth, it should be noted, also seems to have been scheming to turn the clone armies against Thrawn.) Basically, Thrawn had two enemies (C'baoth and New Republic), but felt that the former could wait a bit while he dealt with the latter, while C'baoth himself probably wasn't operating on any sort of timetable that would make sense to anyone but him.
31	** Plus, as Thrawn himself notes when Pellaeon objects to C'baoth being confined in the Emperor's chambers and throne room of Mount Tantiss, C'baoth is really in the safest place they can put him right now, a mountain littered with ysalamiri who are blocking out the Force. Thrawn even anticipates that C'baoth may have had some sabotage attempted within the mountain (which had, using Covell's troops to plant explosives on all the ysalamiri), but apparently the current garrison was unable to find and undo it before Luke and Co, attacked and distracted them.
32
33	[[WMG: Thrawn's death.]]
34	* Thrawn's death, specifically the attribution of the line, "But it was so artistically done," to the Grand Admiral. Why do so many readers, indeed even the comic adaption, attribute the line to Thrawn? As the paragraph reads:
35	-->"Thrawn caught his eye; and to Pellaeon's astonishment, the Grand Admiral smiled. 'But,' he whispered, 'it was so artistically done.'
36	-->The smile faded. The glow in his eyes did likewise... and Thrawn, the last Grand Admiral, was gone."
37	** It seems clear that it's ''Pellaeon'', not Thrawn, that says the line. Pellaeon is in shock that Thrawn was just killed by Rukh and that Thrawn just calmly dies with a smile...
38	** It still seems a bit ambiguous to me. It's not entirely improbable that it could have been Thrawn saying the line.
39	** I always took it as Thrawn, myself. I'd honestly never even considered, or heard it said, that it could have been Pellaeon before reading this entry. Besides, it just seems more like a Thrawn thing to say, IMO.
40	** The statement is completely out of character for Pellaeon, but perfectly in-character for Thrawn. Not to mention that the pronoun generally describes the noun closest to it in a paragraph, which means that the "he" was describing Thrawn.
41	** The subject of the paragraph is Thrawn. Omit the prepositional phrase 'to Pellaeon's astonishment' and no doubt of the speaker's identity remains.
42	** In general, when using a pronoun, its use is supposed to take the place of the subject that was last mentioned. In this case the last subject is not Pellaeon in the phrase "Pellaeon's astonishment" but Thrawn in "the Grand Admiral smiled." The pronoun follows that statement and would therefore refer to the Grand Admiral.
43	** Regardless of who ''would'' say it, it could only be the Grand Admiral. Captain Pellaeon was struck in the throat by Rukh as part of the same assault and could barely speak when ordering the retreat. One would think that, for the sake of sheer consistency, if he DID whisper the line, it would also be similarly forced or raspy.
44	** During a convention in Southern California, Timothy Zahn confirmed that it was Thrawn who said the quote. See video here [[https://youtube.com/shorts/PW83P4fpnb8]].
45
46	[[WMG: Crystal gravfield trap strategy.]]
47	* There are a lot of things I don't understand about the final battle for the CGT. I know what it is and why the New Republic wants it, but why exactly does the Empire have them? If Thrawn knows they're the target, why wouldn't they simply be moved? Or replaced with a decoy? Or rigged with explosives to ensure the NR doesn't obtain one? Or modified to provide false positives and ignore some (but not all) cloaked objects, adding another layer of paranoia and confusion, something we all know is right up Thrawn's alley?
48	** By the time the attack was launched, the Republic doesn't need it anymore and are ''really'' attacking to seize some initiative from Thrawn's relentless advance. Any defenses the CGT had are irrelevant, we never see it and the Republic never tries to take it.
49	** [=CGTs=] clearly have more uses than just detecting cloaked masses, since there wouldn't be a need for them since a practical cloaking shield hadn't been in use until Thrawn's offensive. So the Empire had them because they were useful for something. Thrawn didn't move them because he needed bait to draw the New Republic fleet into an engagement of his choosing.
50	** If the CGT were moved, there would be the risk of New Republic Intelligence catching on. Which might change the timetable of the Bilbringi attack or even cause it to be called off entirely. Now moving the ''Tangrene'' CGT, that would've fit quite well with Thrawn's plan because if discovered it would've given the impression he'd been fooled by the New Republic's plan. But for all we know, a CGT might be something that's not particularly easy to move on short notice. As for sabotaging the Bilbringi CGT as a contingency plan in case the New Republic managed to take the shipyard... well who says he didn't? But if he did, it wouldn't have mattered. Rigging to show false positives wouldn't have worked since filling the area of detection with turbolaser fire and hitting nothing would rapidly expose the deception. And if the CGT was rigged to ignore some cloaked objects, that would've been ineffective because the New Republic really had destroyed all of the cloaked asteroids.
51	** You're assuming that the CGT is easily replaced. It clearly isn't, when there are less than a half a dozen in the GALAXY, according to the New Republic's Intelligence Service. It's described as "semi-rare," probably indicating that it's a well understood technology, but one that isn't manufactured often. Why? I suspect that it may have relatively few uses (that can't also be done by other types of sensors), be too large or delicate for common installation in starships, and perhaps most likely, is ''REALLY EXPENSIVE'' to manufacture! The Empire is strapped for resources and manufacturing capacity, enough so that conquering one major agriworld makes the difference between being able to adequately feed the crews of 150 or so new cruisers; and that the loss of one Star Destroyer is not merely an embarrassment, but a potentially serious blow to the Navy's ability to fight. Thrawn often errs on the side of not disposing of people when you might expect him to - Ferrier, Mara, C'Baoth - so he is certainly not likely to sabotage an expensive piece of equipment unless he has a desperate or VERY strategically useful reason. He probably doesn't expect the asteroid blockade to last indefinitely anyway...
52
53	[[WMG: What happened to the Katana fleet?]]
54	** It was seized by Thrawn, and used by the various cloned troops at his disposal. After his death, it and them were likely folded into the other remnants of Imperial forces throughout the galaxy.
55
56	[[WMG: Why did Thrawn send C'Baoth off alone with one of his best generals in ''The Last Command''?]]
57	* Okay, so Thrawn and Pellaeon clearly know C'Boath is an insane control freak who can control people's minds. He does it repeatedly. So why does Thrawn send him off General Covell and his best, handpicked troops, onto a ship with no ysalamiri on it? He clearly didn't ''plan'' on what happened, and yet it seemed blindingly obvious; a skill C'Baoth even uses in front of Thrawn and threatens to use again. What the hell?
58	** He's shown as mind-nudging Pellaeon earlier, remember? When he sends that message to set up the ysalamiri sabotage at Mount Tantiss? It's not impossible that he set up a similar sabotage for ysalamiri that were ''supposed'' to be on his transport.
59	** It was simply a matter of him having a power that Thrawn knew nothing about. C'Baoth had never before demonstrated the ability to permanently alter a person's brain like that. The idea that he might seize control of Covell and his troops on the trip to Wayland was probably considered unimportant, because as soon as he entered Mount Tantiss that control would be broken by the ysalamiri.
60	** The "best and brightest" handpicked troops were on their way to Mount Tantis in order to be cloned. As far as not putting ysalimiri on the ship, it's clear that C'baoth would have detected the lack of Force on the ship (or approaching the ship, if he were allowed on board first), and would have refused to go.
61
62	[[WMG: How does it make any sense that the Imperial remnant has a shortage of manpower?]]
63	The plot of the trilogy is that Thrawn solves the Imperial remnant's manpower shortage with the cloning cylinders and then gets control of the Dark Force so that the clones will have ships to fly. How does this make any sense? The Katana fleet consisted of 200 dreadnaughts, which would typically have required a crew of 16,000 men, although that number had been cut to 2,200 in the case of the Katana fleet. But let's take the larger number: 16,000 x 200 = 3,200,000 men. To put that in perspective, the United States put approximately 16,000,000 men under arms in World War Two, at a time when the total American population was about 130,000,000. At the end of the Cold War, when the US had an all-volunteer force, the US Armed Services still had more than 3.2 million men under arms, at a time when the American population was about 240 million. Are we seriously to believe that the Imperial remnant at that time did not control at least one planet with a population in the billions that they could have recruited from? Was the Imperial remnant's problem really a lack of personnel? Besides which, the Katana fleet was lost for almost sixty years. Are we seriously to believe that after sixty years of micrometeorite strikes, those ships had any use except as scrap?
64	* 1) Thrawn was cloning ground troops and vehicle crews, not just ship crew, so the figures of needed personnel were much higher. 2) It's established early on that most of the current Imperial military is made up of "young men and women, most conscripted from their homeworlds by force or threat of force." The Empire doesn't enjoy the "support" (if that's the right word) it had when Palpatine was alive, most Imperial planets don't want to be Imperial anymore, and you can only get so far with conscription before it's more trouble than it's worth. Conscripted soldiers are also not the most loyal. 3) The Empire still had functional shipyards, and were still churning out Imperial Star Destroyers, which would also need crew. Thrawn's cloning breakthrough just meant that they were churning out troops faster than they were ships, so he needed an infusion of warships to get the ball rolling. 4) The 150+ ''Katana'' fleet Dreadnoughts couldn't turn the tide by themselves, but did make enough of an immediate difference that Thrawn could make more daring and more effective attacks, and the first thing he did was take Ukio, an agricultural planet, to obtain the food supplies he'd need to sustain his ever-growing military. 5) The ''Katana'' fleet was stranded in deep space, not much out there to impact them just standing still. Besides, Karrde mentions that the ships were active when he ran into them, so they may have still had their low-grade particle shields (the kind designed to protect against micrometorite impacts) up.
65	** Plus, y'know, armor.
66	*** To add to the first response, the EU canon states that after the Truce at Bakura the Remnant itself was fractured and fell into fractioning off systems where admirals or even single starship captains declaring themselves independent warlords, all trying to hold on to their meager scraps. As xenophobic as most of the Imperial Fleet was, not every Imperial commander heeded Thrawn's announcement of his return, like the [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pentastar_Alignment Pentastar Alignment]] and the [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ciutric_Hegemony Ciutric Hegemony]]. Thrawn himself was only able to trust six Star Destroyers from Bastion (the Remnant core worlds), and he ''still'' had to fill the ranks with conscripts. In all, it kinda adds a little more impressiveness to Thrawn, when you consider how much he nearly accomplished almost single-handedly; had he more of the Remnant to support him, the Empire might have risen once again.
67
68	[[WMG: Why did the Republic destroy Delta Source?]]
69	Once they figure out that Delta Source is the plants in the Grand Corridor, why didn't they use that knowledge to give Thrawn misinformation? That could have been very useful in the lead-up to the Battle of Bilbringi. Instead, by destroying, all they did was let him know that they had discovered it.
70	* Delta Source was located in a ''very'' public place, eavesdropping on everything said there. Getting every single being who passed through on board with the disinformation campaign, without one single person accidentally spilling the beans, would have been ridiculously complex. Besides, by destroying it and rendering the Imperial Palace safe again, they scored a major morale victory.
71	* Also, just the discovery of Delta Source itself would have been recorded and relayed by Delta Source (there's a scene shortly before its discovery that shows it is not discriminating when it comes to relaying what it records). Remember, they had to dig down a loooooonng way under one of the trees to find the actual transmitter, and there were a whole line of trees still operating nearby.
72
73	[[WMG: Why was the Republic trying to recruit smugglers?]]
74	What I mean is, the Republic had a shortage of cargo ships, so they sent Han to try to persuade smugglers to do legitimate cargo hauling. That makes no economic sense. Smugglers are already cargo shippers; they just don't pay customs duties. If you want them to go legit, all you have to do is lower customs duties to the point where it makes more sense to pay customs than to run the risks of smuggling. Hasn't anyone in the Republic ever heard of the Laffer curve, or whatever the long-time-ago, galaxy-far-away equivalent is?
75	* The Rebellion's need isn't just to get the smugglers to start hauling legitimate cargo, it's to get the smugglers to haul ''their'' cargo. The main reason they wanted to recruit smugglers isn't because they wanted to reduce their crime rate but because they were having a fleet logistics problem and needed more hulls to move military supplies to the front and needed them in a hurry. And thus they need smugglers; if you're going to ask people to fly cargo ships into and out of a war zone, then they'd need to either be your own naval transports (which are already running at max capacity and then some), or else experienced freelance blockade runners... i.e., smugglers.
76	** I'm not sure where you're getting that from; I don't recall the novel saying that. I seem to recall in the novel that the smuggler Han spoke to at the beginning said something about smugglers not giving up smuggling because they liked the thrill and because the Republic would levy large tariffs. But leaving that aside, if that's all they wanted, why not just pay them to do it? Or, if they can't afford to, why not just conscript them, or requisition their ships? They are in the middle of a war, after all, so if there really is a critical shortage of cargo vessels for military purposes, that's a sufficiently exigent circumstance to justify taking the ships.
77	*** As I recall, the smugglers weren't worried about tariffs (for one thing, the Republic would not be ''charging'' tariffs on their own government shipments, and for another, tariffs are something paid by the owner of the cargo being imported into the jurisdiction, not by the freight handler), they were worried that it was a police sting operation to get the smugglers to come in willingly at which point the Republic Navy would just arrest them and seize their ships. As for 'just seize the ships'... in addition to the fact that smugglers don't stay in business very long if the authorities know where they're stashing their stuff, it's not just the ''ships'' that the Republic needs (as you point out, there's any # of commercial hulls that they can requisition), it's also their ''crews''. The Republic Navy is already overstretched, so even if you gave the New Republic a bunch of shiny new spaceships, they'd lack experienced people to fly them. And to get smuggler crews, you need willing cooperation from smugglers.
78	*** Another supporting bit is the frigate captain griping right before Sluis Van kicks off about his warship having been temporarily demilitarized and forced to serve as a glorified transport. If you're pulling Nebulon-B's off the firing line during a war and using them to move stuff around, then you are ''seriously'' hurting for military freight transport capacity.
79	*** Right at the start of the first book (chapter 2 actually), Han gives his spiel about the deal the New Republic is offering and notes that they're looking to pay for ships to move goods around. The smuggler he's talking to notes that they're not likely to be interested in taking the jobs because A) They don't trust the New Republic not to try and arrest them for past crimes if they come forward to take the deal and B) They can probably make more money illegally shipping those same goods than the New Republic would be willing to pay them. Kind of hard to conscript someone who already makes a living keeping away from law enforcement too...
80	* Han specifically points out that the smugglers' potential customers won't be paying the kinds of tarrifs and taxes that make smuggling worthwhile, probably because the New Republic did exactly what you're suggesting, and didn't apply those taxes because they wanted the smugglers' assistance. Whether they wanted the smugglers to provide specifically military transport or not is a separate question, all Han says is that they need them to "get interstellar trade going again." Which still means that they need the smugglers on the payroll, mind you -- it does the NR no good if Planet X needs Planet Y's yearly MacGuffin crop, but the smugglers only want to ship Plotonium because it has higher margins.
81
82	[[WMG:How can the clone of Jorus C'Baoth refer to HIMSELF as "Joruus C'Baoth" and not realise he's a clone?]]
83	Do clones have some kind of automatic mental tick that makes them automatically pronounce the name of any clone, themselves included, with an extended "uu" sound? Joruus can pronounce Luke's name perfectly normally, but then introduces Luke's clone at the end as "Luuke Skywalker", so clearly he's aware of the difference. But he reacts with first surprise, then incredulity when Luke tells him that he's a clone, clearly not believing it.
84	** Hate to reach for the copout answer but, well, the guy is insane. And insanity by definition can ignore the bleedingly obvious. In his mind he simultaneously thinks The correct name was always Joruus while saying Jorus. Or his mind is simply incapable of conceiving he is a clone of someone else. He could have even created memories to fit his own delusion of changing his name and ending up on Wayland. In the end, yeah it's not a problem when the insane guy's logic makes no sense.
85	** Possibly his name was actually pronounced 'Jaw-roose' (instead of Jaw-russ) in which case the extra 'u' wouldn't have altered the pronunciation much. Everytime he heard the name he heard it pronounced the same way it always had been.
86	** In keeping with the above copout, the ORIGINAL C'baoth was unstable-to-insane. It's possible that using some sort of internal InsaneTrollLogic the clone has convinced himself that he's a clone and yet he is also the original.
87
88	[[WMG:For that matter, who thought it'd be a good idea to grow an accelerated clone of an Old Republic-loyalist Jedi master with the Emperor's Spaaarti Cylinders anyway?]]
89	* Well SOMEONE had to have ordered C'Baoth's creation from the cell sample that Thrawn theorised had been taken before Outbound Flight. The most likely candidate is that the Guardian created C'Baoth (since he was in charge of protecting the safehouse) but the question remains... why? Especially since the C'Baoth clone would eventually kill the Guardian.
90	** It's stated ''in this very trilogy'' that the original Jorus C'Baoth worked closely with Palpatine before being sent off with the Outbound Flight Project. It wouldn't be difficult for Palpatine to have gained the sample...and Palpatine might have done the cloning job himself, seeing potential for a new partner. Heck, ''Literature/OutboundFlight'' suggests that [[spoiler:Joruus C'Baoth's insanity might not have been Spaarti clone madness after all, since the original exhibited similar tendencies.]]
91	** Above spoiler kind of opens up a plot hole as [[spoiler: Thrawn should KNOW that there's a very good chance C'baoth isn't just clone madness and not be thinking that maybe growing a replacement was a good idea. He met the original, he knows said original was crazy, and while he wasn't really infallible that seems like a bad enough idea he wouldn't even need anyone to explain why it's a bad idea.]]
92	** To spackle the plot hole mentioned above, as revealed in backstory it may be [[GoodIsNotNice a stretch to call Thrawn outright evil]] so it might seem superficially petty, but he and the original C'baoth had a very nasty encounter which contributed directly to [[spoiler: the death of Thrawn's brother, the death of C'baoth's apprentice, the apparent deaths of everyone on Outbound Flight, and also involved Thrawn's first experience being Force-choked.]] With the clone programming he's developed and the ysalamiri, it's possible the notion of having a supply of clones he can use and dispose of made from someone he has personal reason to hate is him taking a moment to PayEvilUntoEvil. (And anyone who's read ''Literature/OutboundFlight'' probably doesn't have a problem with C'baoth as the target.)
93
94	[[WMG:Bounties on Luke, Leia, and Han]]
95	* In the first book, Luke says he doesn't think there's any bounties on him, his sister, or his brother-in-law at the moment. Why in the galaxy would the Empire ever ''not'' have bounties on them? Short of Mon Mothma or Admiral Ackbar, there's nobody the Imperials should want more!
96	** Because the Imperial remnant is disorganized and doesn't have the money or manpower to waste on trying to get heroes of the Rebellion (who are likely to be extremely well protected at all times, not to mention their own formidable abilities) killed. Not to mention that it would seriously piss off the New Republic to hear about it and would likely be cause for a more direct and forceful push to destroy the Imperials.
97	*** At this point, the Bounty Hunter's Guild is still in disarray and not re-established after Boba Fett caused the entire Guild to collapse on itself. The Imperial Handbook mentions that where hunters are concerned, "the highest bid makers the rules," meaning they tend to side with the faction that has the most credits. With the Remnant controlling less than a quarter of the systems they once held, they clearly didn't have the credits. Also, it's made fairly clear in The Bounty Hunter's Code that dealing with the Imperial Security Bureau is nothing short of a headache, having to pay extra fees and submitting nearly useless paperwork just to move "acquisitions" between system borders (to say nothing of the bribes). Any excuse to avoid dealing with them at this point (even if based on morals) is probably a valid one at the same time.
98	*** Also, the simple reluctance of causing an escalation on Imperial side: if they start to place bounties on New Republic prominent personnel, the New Republic would probably retalite the same by offering bounties for Imperial leaders. And since New Republic is richer and (until Thrawn campaign) seems to be close to winning the war, bounty hunters may be quite reluctant to work against it.
99
100	[[WMG:Controlling Niles Ferrier]]
101	* In the second book, Thrawn makes sure that Ferrier will do as he's told by rigging his spaceship with a time-delayed bomb. But Ferrier is one of the galaxy's best spaceship thieves. What's to stop him from just ditching his ship and grabbing a new one?

Context Headscratchers / TheThrawnTrilogy