I wasn't saying I liked Travis's work all I was saying was that I liked the Culture. Now I will say I like the idea of Mandalorian Iron which can withstand a lightsaber strike. But it was prone to overheating and didn't protect the neck or joints. So advantage and disadvantage.
That's as good a point as any for another topic.
Lightsaber Resistant Materials: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I actually love these. I mean, I'm a sucker for a good fight scene, and this:
Is pretty emblematic of what lightsaber resistant materials bring to the table: a chance to switch up duels and give another character a cool or defining weapon. Things like the vibrosheilds of Kar Vastor's Akk Gaurds, to the electrostaffs of the MagnaGuards' and even the corotis weave blades of KotOR, all follow that same basic idea.
I'm a lot more ambivalent about lightsaber resistant/proof armor though, for a few reasons. The first is that lightsaber duels are an iconic part of Star Wars, and one I admit to greatly enjoying. Adding armor in changes the dynamics of those fights a lot, and I'm not sure if that's for the better, especially given Star Wars has always functionally been a verse where blasters are dangerous to pretty well anyone- and anything that can stop a lightsaber will probably block a blaster. The second is that its generally not present in visual media, which means introducing it makes a lot of characters, particularly from the Clone Wars era, look like idiots. This ties into the third reason I'm pretty ambivalent: authors using it to either one-up other characters via 'look at this shiney thing they have that was never present originally' or to just use it as a lazy way to ramp up threat levels- 'oh no this enemy is completely invincible because of super armor' or 'Corran Horn is in trouble because his lightsaber mysteriously shorted out!' is not exactly compelling.
That said, there is a place for it- but it need to be rare (to avoid the 'everyone from canon is idiots' problem), and counters need to exist- if nothing else, so there still can be duels. The basics for that are joint strikes and heat transferal. Yes, applying physics to lightsabers
is not a good idea, but the scene with Qui-gon melting his way though a blast door is an excellent illustrated example of 'why you never want a lightsaber touching you, armor or not'. The more advanced stuff is Force Techniques, in the form of something like Mace's shatterpoints or Exar Kun's use of the Force to make a lightsaber cut better, or in terms of rock beats scissors- the properties that stop a lightsaber might not be the ones that stop a blaster or a vibroblade.
That said, basically nothing is going to stop bad authors from using it poorly, as I'll demonstrate when I get to cortosis. But first, I'm going to start off with some of the better materials- which also tend to be the ones least used. There may be a link there...
The Good
I'm going to start off with my go to baseline for how to do this properly: phirk. A dark hued, light and durable metal, it was mainly produced from one planet and thus rare and expensive as hell. It also falls under 'resistant' rather then proof as far as lightsaber resistance goes: it has been cut by lightsabers on occasion. The weapon that used it that everyone will recognize is the electrostaffs of the MagnaGuards in RotS, but it was also apparently what Palpatine made his lightsaber hilt from. It is also supposedly (Wookiepedia again) used to armor the Dark Trooper droids from the
Dark Forces game, but I tend to take that one with a substantial grain of salt: there are no lightsabers in that game, and I'm not sure the game's lore itself backs this. Anyone that's played through the game, do you know? Regardless, that one is sketchy at best, given I don't think lightsaber resistant materials were really part of the EU at that point.
Anyways, it hits on most of what I would consider the points for a good material: rare, effective, but not absolutely so. Its fairly workmanlike, in that it has no special cultures tied in or fancy special properties, which means its easy to drop in places. If one was to assign the lightsaber resistant properties of the Z6 riot control baton- the weapon used in that clip from TFA- to a material (canonically its a function of the tech in the weapon) this would be my material of choice.
Another of the better materials is ultrachrome, the material used in Akk Gaurd's vibroshields. This one fails the general rarity test- it was used in star ship armor at one point, though perhaps not the cost one- militaries are known to sink as much money as needed into certain projects, and given its a nice shiny material it may have been in high demand for command vehicles, though that is speculatory. It acts as a superconductor (note: I have no clue if this is technobabble or not, but I'm betting yes), spreading the energy from a strike across it surface, preventing a lightsaber from melting through by diffusing the energy. It also outright deflects blaster bolts and bullets: its tough stuff. That said, past a certain point the whole thing hits it melting point all at once and the whole thing slags- which thinking on it might be why they stopped using it for ship armor.
It's pretty much only officially used in
Shatterpoint, though in
The Jedi Path Palpatine mentions he took the shields from there and outfitted some of his Inquisitors with them. Its not the most ideal material, mainly for the proliferation issue, but the heat conductivity balances out a lot. I also just like the idea of re-purposing old starship armor for melee weapons.
Armorweave is heavily on the resistant end of the spectrum, in that it
might turn a glancing blow. Basically, if someone is a fighty type and they have a cape, this is the stuff. Vader, Dooku, MagnaGuards, even Phasma from TFA, though in her case its more a status symbol then something expected to be used. You get the idea. As an aside, if one wanted to incorporate some of the cloak techniques from some schools of fencing into a lightsaber duel, this would work well for that- though the cloak would be shredded after.
Though not a material, I should mention Force Alchemy blades here- basically, weapons made through forging techniques combined with the Force. These tend to be able to stop a lightsaber, though an improperly forged one probably wouldn't. There's all kinds of EU silliness attached here- nexus of Force energies increasing power, Jedi only made katanas (
fuck that noise), these blades being able to do everything a lightsaber can, etc. Headcanon wise, their tough, sharp swords that their owners might have imbued with special powers if they were good smiths, otherwise they just have the reputation of prior owners and maybe an echo of them imbued into the blade via the Force. Anything else would be a function of its wielder- deflecting blaster bolts with one would be because that is a technique it wielder mastered, not innate quality of the sword. Ultimately though, the lightsaber is a better weapon: easier to make, repair, cuts better at the baseline, is basically unbreakable and its easier to carry. These are archaic relics even by Jedi/Sith standards- which means some nutbar is still using them.
The Bad
There are three named materials I consider to be bad examples of lightsaber resistant materials, at least as far as weapons and armor go- one is impractical, one is dull and its properties are better used by other materials, and the last involves Karen Traviss. Ok yes, its beskar, and she's basically the only reason its here. But I'll hammer off the other two first, then dig into that clusterfuck.
Neuranium is a weird one: outside The Jedi Path it is never mentioned as being used for weapons, and it kinda seems a sub-optimal material. It's primary quality is it is physics warping dense, and thus, heavy- its so dense a milometer is sufficient to stop an sensor cold, and heavy enough that attempts to line a ship with it would render the ship to massive to fly properly. Oh, and its extraordinarily expensive. The main story I know that uses it is the RotS novelization, where Palpatine has had his lightsaber inside a statue made of the stuff- it notes the office had to reinforced to hold the statues weight. He turned his lightsaber on via the Force and it burned it's way out over the course of a several seconds. So its only moderately lightsaber resistant in that it doesn't get cut like hot butter, and is probably just to heavy to make an effective weapon or armor out of it. The only reason I mention it at all is
The Jedi Path does, and I think the author just goofed there.
Songsteel is from the Living Force campaign from Wizards of the Coast, the same place that gave us Darth Rivan from the New Sith Wars. And... its mithral. Basically. It's pretty extraneous- no particular properties to make it stand out, and other materials do the same thing and fill the same role, and it just feels excessively fantasyish, though that last one is subjective. Honestly, I'd just stick to ultrachrome or phirk over this.
Alright, now the big one: beskar. I'm using Traviss's word for it because she's the one that made it into a special snowflake monstrosity, as opposed to its rather less special introduction in
Tales of the Jedi. Mandalorian iron, when it first appeared, was basically just 'its lightsaber proof, mostly' with the mostly coming from Exar Kun's reaction to the stuff being to lightsaber harder and cut straight through. It also disappeared when the Mandalorians actually showed up in the comic- at least, no special attention is drawn to it, and if any of them could stop a lightsaber with their weapons I didn't see it. Even during Ulic Qel-Droma's duel with Mandalore the Indomitable has him put his lightsaber away when the Mandalore chalanges him to fight with Mandalorian weapons- and then promptly sucker punches him once the lightsaber is away. Ulic steals a spear from one of the watching Mandalorian warriors to finish the duel.
Following that and looking at the train of cites on Wookie, it pretty much disappears after that, only being mentioned again in KotOR II- not shocking, as KotOR II mentioned pretty near everything that existed in the EU at that point. That is, until
The History of the Mandalorians (a Star Wars Insiders article) which gives it a single paragraph mini-blurb, which doesn't even mention the fact it can stop a lightsaber. It was still clearly a sideshow, an interesting footnote if you liked that kind of thing.
Skip forward a year, and Karen Traviss puts out
Triple Zero (her second book for the EU) and the article
The Mandalorians: People and Culture. And suddenly, it's not a footnote anymore, but a central aspect of the people, a trend that keeps going heavily in her books. And this is where problems start happening. There are, in my mind, two reasons for this. The first is Traviss is, for a mil-scifi writer, actually pretty bad with tech, including implications there of. So she can't actually figure out reasonable limitations and weaknesses for her techs, especially since she has no fucking clue what Star Wars normal is- I've talked about her research policy before, no need to belabor the point. The second is she is not trying to- the intent was to clearly to make the Mandalorians as 'badass' as possible, which in this case means 'actually nigh invincible'.
The net effect was, suddenly every Mandalorian of note had everything proof armor, at least as far as small arms go- I'd have to go digging for anti-vehicle examples, and I don't hate myself that much. This is on top of the super guns she established, jet packs, genetic supremacy, the bestest warrior training, and Jesus Christ I just can't. You get the point regardless. Then she singularity bombed the supply side of things in
Legacy, giving the Mandalorians so much of the stuff they were making fighters out of it, never mind personal arms and armor. Said fighters were predictably wanktastic.
OK, but why did this make Mandalorian iron a bad material? Because it was the underpinning and symbol of the complete supremacy Traviss wrote into them, turning them from gadget guys into setting warping invincible assholes. And this did not match with anything any prior media had shown- not the KotOR era stuff, not the Tales stuff, and most critically, not the movies, including the big one for this time period:
Attack of the Clones, given Mace cut Jango's head off with no problems. And it continued causing problems down the road, because the authors were unwilling to ignore the stuff, so you saw it being incorporated into building on Mandalore wide scale in supplementary materials in the Clone War era (dammit Jason Fry, I get the symbol you were going for, but that did not help the proliferation problem). Admittedly, the TV series took its lightsaber properties out to the back and shot it, so it was less of an issue- aside from everyone who remembered what it was to begin with bringing the whole problem full circle.
Now, aside from Traviss' wankery, could this be a good material? Pretty emphatically yes, but it would need to be something of almost mythic rarity and corresponding value, a prized relic of the clan and such. It would fit with the kind of warrior culture the Mandalorian's typically project, and their focus on the glories of the past. But Traviss tainted it pretty hard, something for which I'm actually pretty sad about- but not that sad, because as I noted before, beskar was never really core to the idea of Mandalorians to begin with, outside Traviss' twisted version of them.
The Ugly
If beskar represents the worst in terms of wankery and setting warping, then cortosis represents what happens when authors cannot be consistent and build a material through a game of telephone spread across multiple media sources, and when author maybe don't think the implications of their thing through. For you see, cortosis is a very rare, brittle, fibrous material that is one of the hardest materials in the galaxy, useless for anything, widely used in weapons, armor and shielding up to and including on starships, is impervious to heat and energy, and breaks if you step on it to hard. Oh, and it stops lightsabers perfectly, occasionally shorts them out for a variable length of time, and takes damage from lightsabers like any other material except for the fact they tend not to active to long, limiting the damage done.
Everything I just said has been true at some point in the EU. Which is why cortosis is the ugly: its a ruinous mess of a material with no consistent properties at all, and god damn I'm glad they jettisoned it. Of course it cam back, but seems to have lost all lightsaber resitive properties in the new EU: now it can redirect blaster bolts.
Yeah, moving on...
To unpack this mess a bit, It all started with either Zahn or Stackpole, and I honestly don't know which. It first appeared in
I, Jedi (Stackpole), but was explained in much greater detail in the
Hand of Thrawn books (Zahn), and both books it appeared in came out bare months apart- and the authors were known collaborators. So I just blame them both for starting this mess.
For something that would become such a major part of the EU, it was introduced with surprisingly little fan fare. Actually, it was a full bore diablous ex machina in the climax of
I, Jedi, suddenly shutting down Corran's lightsaber when he struck the leader of the Jensaarai in the final battle- while Luke was beating the crap out of five of them in the background, with a lighsaber, and them in lightsaber shorting wonder armor. All without touching their armor. Oh, and they had previously beat another half dozen, also in armor, without finding this out. I suspect they expected Zahn's book to make it out first, which would have provided context for this. As it is, in
I, Jedi its a bit of a WTF moment. There are a few notable points though: it did not actually stop Corran's lightsaber. In fact it hurt the person he hit badly enough they dropped their own lightsaber. It didn't cut their hand off, which was his actual goal with the strike, but it also damaged the armor. It also offered no protection against a stun bolt- and I presume little protection against an actual blaster bolt, which is later confirmed in
Vision of the Future, the second of the
Hand of Thrawn books. Its largely described as fiberous- the Jensaarai armor is described as
woven- and Mara says its to crumbly to actually make thing out of, and later it starts flaking from being walked on.And again in
Vision of the Future it only stops a lightsaber by shutting it off- which means that it still cuts in the moments before the lightsaber crashes. Further, you can basically instantly turn the lightsaber back on again with no ill effects- Luke and Mara spend hours chipping away at a wall of ore with no ill effects.
Overall, it was blatantly not meant for weapons- actually, it was largely meant to be useless, as noted in the text. You do run into the same problem that you do with the ysalamiri, in that it really hits the 'why the fuck isn't everyone using this against the Jedi' problem spectacularly hard. This was actually something of an issue with Zahn's handling of the Jedi in general- he tended towards hard trumps pulled out of a hat. In short, unless you assume this stuff is again practically mythic in its rareness, it breaks the setting- which between the Jensaarai all having armor made of the stuff and later developments is not the case. I don't think this was deliberate- there was clearly some thought given towards keeping this from warping the setting- but it starts getting clear fast the instant the stuff comes up in a discussion centered on weaponizing it. Now, it's actually less setting breaking then it might first appear: the short 'cool down' time between shutting down the saber means that anyone that knows what to expect can counter it by the simple expedient of flicking a on/off switch, assuming you couldn't automate the process or install some other tech based work around. Which could be intentional as a 'do not warp the setting' feature: the old Jedi would have known the counters on the rare occasions it shows up, making it a only marginally useful rare trick that mainly worked on Luke and Corran due to their lack of a knowledge base.
Unfortunately, it didn't stay like this for one, very simple reason: video games. Most of the early era games that had lightsaber combat-
Knights of the Old Republic,
Jedi Outcast- incorporated cortosis as the reason why melee weapons and armor weren't getting cut right and left, and I suspect there were technical limitations behind that, as well as game mechanics. Basically, it meant weapons and armor could stop a lightsaber blow, though it lost the shorting ability. Latter sources change this to cortosis-weave, to distinguish it from pure cortosis and the varying properties of the two. Darth Bane: Path of Destruction accounts for most of the rest of the game of telephone: there it is portrayed as super hard metal with funky energy properties that made most forms of mining useless (and killed people on skin contact), so shitty mine conditions for early Bane were go. Oh, and was common enough to be widely used in starship construction. So entirely the opposite of what it started as.
At this point, we are way past the proliferation problem: every game was tossing cortosis armed opponents at you like candy if you were using a lightsaber so you could do melee combat. And the back translation to non-video games was lacking (because no one wanted to warp the setting that much books wise, aside from Traviss), which makes a definitive answer to 'what do Jedi do when confronted with someone wearing armor of this stuff' hard to answer. And then the comics got in on it, increasing the time it shorted a lightsaber out from 'restart device' to 'several minutes'. This version is
outright and completely setting breaking, because it makes lightsabers an idiots weapon to wield, or sufficiently sub-optimal every Jedi should have been carrying a backup weapon. And it started showing up increasingly as the Clone Wars era Dark Hourse comics progressed- I'm not certain if it was just one author or a general trend though. That said, iIt's also one of the points I will positively roast the Legacy comic on (the other is the resurrection of the fucking Force Solar Beam) because they gave an
entire fucking organization this. Because... fuck it I have no clue why, its bloody stupid and the Imperial Knights did not need a 'win lightsaber combat forever' weapon.
Sorry for the rant, but that version drives me bonkers, because I really love lightsaber duels, and that version of cortosis removes them as even remotely logical result.
Overall, most of the issues with cortisis and it lining up with the larger verse are solved by scaling its rarity way the hell back- only spec ops forces should have needed the stuff in KotOR anyways, so it easy to justify there, and most of the rest of games can be ignored as 'video game mechanics'. The differences between the ore and the weave can basically be chalked up to alloying properly, assuming you don't want to just go all the way back to the start of the stuff and make it borderline useless- though that ship has largely sailed. The lightsaber shorting properties are something I'm a lot more ambivalent about, but at least in the initial version its more of an additional tactical option that doesn't oblivate others. The latter is just a straight up lightsaber combat 'i win' button, and is ergo terrible.
Headcanon for cortisis:
Ore: The ore is rare as fuck, and quite valuable for doing really wonky things to physics. Small amounts are used in high end starship components, due to said wonkyness. Its also resonate with the Force in some way, because that's just an easier explanation for 'how the fuck does this even work'.
Cortisis-Weave/Alloy: Even rarer, as you need Force users to make the stuff. I mostly go with this as a bit of an explanation for the Jensaarai, seeing as their armor is their thing- and linking it in explicitly to the Force is in keeping with other martial traditions while keeping it seperate. It also explains the rarity of the stuff while the necessary organization can still lay hands on it- mostly force users expecting to face lightsabers.
Refined Cortisis: the shorting stuff. You need a truly talented forger to make the weave and maintain the shorting properties of the ore. It does mean that only the leaders of the Jensaarai will have the full special armor- in my mind, its a mark of masterhood for them. Rare beyond belief: you almost never run into this, which preserves the 'trump card' quality of the material that is so often is used for. It also means that finding someone to make bullets of the stuff is not a simple endevour, and most 'jedi hunters' use other methods.
Phew. This took longer then I thought, I might start responding to stuff now.
