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Jedi

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Table of contents

1 The Force 2 History and Structure of the Order 2.1 The Dark Side 2.2 The Dark Times, The Empire 2.3 After the Civil War 2.4 The New Jedi Order 3 Major Jedi 4 See also 5 External links

The Force

History and Structure of the Order

The life of a Jedi was one of sacrifice. Those who showed an aptitude for the Force were taken at birth or soon after to train in the Jedi temple on Coruscant, where the order was headquartered. From the outset of their training they live a life of simplicity adhering to the Jedi Code which forbids having material possessions or emotional attachments. This training was initially done by a venerable, experienced Jedi until the individual was sufficient enough to start the journey of a Jedi.

Their members progressed through three levels of rank: first the Padawan an apprentice who begins training under a Jedi Knight at a young age, about 12, then Jedi Knight, and finally the level of Jedi Master. There are three types of Jedi, the Jedi Guardian, the Jedi Sentinel, and the Jedi Consular. Eventually they could become a member of the Jedi Council which acted as a governing body for the order and an advisor board for the Republican Senate. A speculative fourth level also exists following a Jedi Master's passing over to The Force, therein becoming a Jedi Spirit. A Jedi could have only one apprentice at a time, and was required to promote the current apprentice before taking another.

Among other tasks, the Jedi eventually became responsible for law enforcement and peacekeeping in the Galactic Republic (though they were considered neither police nor an army.) The order came to be known as the guardians of justice. To that end, they use The Force and extensive training to become extremely formidable in battle. Their traditional weapon was the lightsaber which in the hands of a skilled wielder, could be more than a match for most opponents even when they are armed with ranged weapons. A common task for the Jedi is to construct their own lightsaber.

The Dark Side

The consequences of a Jedi falling to the Dark Side of the Force were quite high, not only for the fallen individual, but for many others as well. Such Jedi were normally referred to as either Dark Jedi or as members of the Sith order. In an earlier time, Dark Jedi had battled extensively with the Jedi. The Great Sith War, which took place 4,000 years before the Battle of Yavin, had serious reprecussions for the galaxy. Many Jedi were killed in this war.

About 1,000 years before the Battle of Yavin, after many years of fighting with the Jedi, and amongst themselves the Sith order was believed to have died out. In fact, only two Sith Lords - a Master and an Apprentice - had survived. For the next 1,000 years, the Sith order quietly continued on, biding its time until conditions were right in the galaxy for them to resurface.

32 years before Yavin, the presence of the Sith again became known to the Jedi. Two Sith Lords, the Master Darth Sidious, and the apprentice Darth Maul supported the blockade of Naboo. After Darth Maul had died, the Jedi knew that somewhere in the galaxy there was still one member of the Sith still active, but they were unaware of the existence of Sidious. During the next 10 years, former Jedi Count Dooku fell to the dark side, and became the new apprentice Darth Tyrannus. Dooku and Sidious arranged the Clone Wars as a way of consolidating Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's hold on the galaxy. (It's widely believed by fans that Sidious and Palpatine are the same person, but it has not offically been confirmed.)

After the Clone Wars, the Jedi Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side. He suffered grievious injuries during a fight with Obi-Wan Kenobi. After the fight, Anakin became Darth Vader. The injuries he sustained required Vader to receive prosthetic devices to keep him alive.

The Dark Times, The Empire

The novels written after the original trilogy indicate that the Empire took steps to exterminate the Jedi and any family members. Corran Horn's grandfather was a Corellian Jedi named Nejaa Halcyon, who had died in the clone wars. Halcyon's friend Rostek Horn married Halcyon's wife, adopted Corran's father Valin "Hal" Horn, and altered the records concerning the Halcyon family. He did this to protect Hal and his mother from the Empire's Jedi hunters. Hal kept the knowledge of Corran's true grandfather from him, because revealing that knowledge would have made Corran a target as well. As a result, Corran only learned of his true heritage when Luke Skywalker discovered his past, and shared that discovery with Corran.

The Emperor also trained a number of "Hands," or those who had the potential to use the Force as his personal agents. Through the Force, he was able to relay orders to his agents. Mara Jade was one of his agents. She had been discovered to be Force sensitive at a young age, and was taken by the Emperor for training.

The actions of Luke Skywalker and his relationship with the Force were a principle plot device in the films. As a sign of how desperate things had become, Luke was taken into the Jedi fold as a young adult instead of during infancy.

After the Civil War

Four years after the death of the Emperor at Endor, Luke had discovered the wreck of the Chu'unthor on the planet Dathomir. The Chu'unthor was a starship that had served as a mobile Jedi academy, which had crashed on Dathomir. Dathomir was the home of Force sensitive "Witches," who were the descendants of a fallen Jedi banished to that world. Master Yoda had left the instruction materials from the ship behind with the rest of the ship. 400 years later, after defeating Witches that had fallen to the Dark Side, one of the natives gave Luke the instruction materials that she had kept safely since the time of the crash.

Due to Luke's lack of knowledge with the old ways of the Jedi order the new generation of Jedi were very unorthodox. He established an academy for teaching many students the way of the Jedi which is much different to the "one student, one master" way used by the old order. The academy was established in the old temples on Yavin 4 that the Rebels once used as a base until the Battle of Yavin. He allowed his students to have personal possessions and had no rule against a Jedi having emotional attachments to friends and family, which was forbidden by the old order. Also, students were taken in at a much older age than previously. Most members were already well in to adulthood before they began training.

What Luke didn't know was that Yavin 4 had been a base for the Sith Lord Exar Kun during the Great Sith War. He wasn't aware that Kun's sprit had been trapped in the temples all that time. As a result, Kun was able to influence one of Luke's students. This student, Kyp Durron, eventually fell to the dark side for a time while under Kun's influence. Durron destroyed several star systems in the Sun Crusher. Meanwhile, the students at the academy were able to finally destroy Kun's sprit. Freed of Kun's influence, Durron surrendered. Durron returned to the light side of the force, and became one of the first new Jedi.

Luke eventually turned the academy into a center that would provide basic training for potential Jedi. He began pairing Jedi who had gone through that training with a more experienced Jedi, much like the master / apprentice system used in the old order.

The New Jedi Order

After the war with the Yuuzan'Vong was over, Luke realized that the order would have to further adapt in order to survive. His experiences had led him to believe that the Force was not either exclusively light or dark, instead it had many shades of gray. He felt that strong emotions, such as anger, were not in itself evil, that rather it was the intent of the person that mattered most. Luke also had come to believe that nearly everyone had the ability to touch and use the Force, it was not just limited to Jedi. He felt that individual Jedi would need to discover their own paths, that some may be called to contemplative life, while others would be called to take a more active role in galatic affairs.

Major Jedi

• Yoda
• Ulic Qel Droma (of the Great Sith War)
• Mace Windu
• Obi Wan Kenobi
• Anakin Skywalker before he became Darth Vader
• Luke Skywalker
• Qui-Gon Jinn
• Corran Horn

• Sith
• list of places by Jedi
• Jedi as a religion in censuses

• "Jedi Census". GonMad, No Original Thought. 2003.
• Census 2001, "390,000 Jedis There Are; But did hoax campaign boost response in teens and 20s?". United Kingdom
• "''The Jedi Order'"'. Databank > organization, starwars.com.