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A mission that should be “No Big Deal” turns out to be anything but, in the first of the High Republic Phase 3 “Tales From the Occlusion Zone” stories in Star Wars Insider. Punch it!
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Raw Episode Transcript:
Hey, Rebel Rouser, I’m Allen Voivod, and this is Star Wars 7 by 7, your daily dose of Star Wars joy. Thank you so much for joining me for it. We had some catching up to do because there’s some storytelling from phase two of The High Republic that we haven’t talked about here on the podcast, and also some storytelling that took place across a bunch of phases. That would be the tales of light and life or stories of light and life, that collection of short stories from The High Republic that was released a month or so ago.
But we’re already jumping into phase three with storytelling because Star Wars Insider Magazine came out with their first story of Occlusion Zone tales. And there will also be a new High Republic novel coming out next month. So yeah, it’s going to be a bit of a busy time in High Republic storytelling coming up.
But for us today, we’re going to talk about No Big Deal Part 1, which is the story that’s in issue 222 of Star Wars Insider Magazine. This is going to be a bit spoilery, but not totally spoilery.
As I said, it’s part 1. Presumably, if they do it like other stories in the Star Wars Insider collection of tales that they’ve done, there will only be two parts on this one. They have done some single-issue stories, but they’ve never done a three-parter yet. Who knows? Might happen anyway.
This one’s from Lydia Kang, and it features our heroes again, Joss and Pikka Adren. We saw them in phase one storytelling, and at the time, they were project managers helping with the construction of Starlight Beacon. Since then, they have become members of the Republic Defense Corps, basically joining right after the fall of Starlight Beacon. So after the events of The Fallen Star, they’ve been in it for a little more than a year at this point.
And we find them on Eriadu, which is a planet probably best known for being the homeworld of Governor Wilhuff Tarkin, a couple of hundred years from when his storytelling happens. I got to say, I guess what I was carrying around with me from the Tarkin novel was that Eriadu had some civilization, but was mostly just wild jungle and filled with animals that would just eat you. And so it was a real test as to whether you can survive on the planet.
But there’s a whole other history, I guess, for mining and stuff with the clone wars and all that. So maybe not as crazy a place as I might have remembered. There’s civilization there. At least we have civilization depicted during the High Republic era.
Something that I don’t think we necessarily have a real feel for just yet is what the boundaries of the Occlusion Zone are. So the Occlusion Zone is basically the area of the galaxy that is underneath the Nihil control. It’s not as simple as saying it’s part of the Outer Rim Territories, for example, because Eriadu is in the Outer Rim.
But there is something that’s called a Stormwall, which is basically the place in the galaxy that is dividing the normal free galaxy, if you will, from whatever is happening in the Nihil-controlled part of the galaxy. That setup you need to know because the story itself has a derelict ship near the Occlusion Zone Stormwall, and it turns out that it’s a Nihil ship. And so an Admiral is going to send Joss and Pikka off to investigate and hopefully be able to salvage an engine and some communications parts because that might be a way for ships to be able to make their way into the Occlusion Zone.
So apparently, this Stormwall can’t just be flown through, like you need some Nihil technology to be able to get through it. Supposedly, with the last transport that went by and scanned it and saw it there, there hadn’t been any of the life signs detected on it. But by the time Joss and Pikka get there, either they find out that that was a trap or they find out that they just didn’t get there fast enough and other people are arriving and it could be a really bad scenario.
And suddenly, things aren’t working on their Republic Longbeam. It just has filled with static on the comms, and then shipboard systems start going out, and there’s no explanation as to why this is happening. That’s basically where we get left on the cliffhanger.
There’s something going on with a character named Ebbe Casset, who is the niece of Heddy Casset, and that character is important all the way back to phase one of the storytelling. Hedda Casset was the pilot of the freighter, cargo transport, the Legacy Run. That was the ship that got attacked in hyperspace and ended up breaking apart and creating the Great Hyperspace Disaster.
Hedda was the pilot of that ship and managed to save some people on the ship, but obviously wasn’t able to prevent disaster from happening, not her fault by any stretch of the imagination. But very cool that she was able to save some lives somehow in the process.
But yeah, something unusual seems to be going on with Ebbe Casset, the niece. I don’t know, it just feels like Lydia Kang is setting something up with her. She wanted to go on the mission with Joss and Pikka and ultimately was rebuffed. And yeah, there’s just something odd going on with her. So yeah, we’ll have to see what happens in issue 223 of Star Wars Insider when that comes out and find out what the exciting conclusions is going to be.
I’m glad that we’re getting to check out phase three storytelling. It’s been a while, and it’s also been a while since we talked about any High Republic stuff, as I said. So yeah, I might have to look back at phase two and see what there was to learn from the rest of the storytelling that we haven’t covered yet. But that’ll do it for now and for today’s episode of the podcast.
And it just remains to me to say thank you so much for joining me for it. As always, may the Force to be with you wherever in the world you may be.