The Road to Story 160

The facts and history behind Lightsabre’s most important story of 2002

By Mark Newbold

While it has taken eight months for this story to arrive on the site, and while it was originally meant to be Story 150 that told this particular tale, the path that has led to Chancai Falls is a long one that winds back a surprisingly long way, back into 1980’s audio stories and early 1990’s roleplay sessions.

The origins of the New Underworld Age-era were rooted in an initial idea by Mark Newbold, following on from ideas hacked out between the group. Originally known as the Underworld New Age, this was simply meant to be the next era after the apparent deaths of both Glann Cipple and Dressel.  A new dawn for the underworld and a new beginning for the Setnin Sector.  October 2000 saw the first story in the New Underworld Age (recently rechristened the Prelude to Invasion-era after the realigning of the Chronology sections), a story by Jonathan Hicks called Seeds of Destruction. It dealt with a perceived threat to Setnin from the outside, and laid the seeds of what would turn into the Ki-Ki invasion.  Originally, the threat to Setnin was to have been fought by the Janites, the trouble-making inhabitants of Janos who had caused so much strife in the sector.  But as the story progressed and Jonathan took the lead in driving the plot, the Janites went from potential saviours of the sector to allies of the enemy.   Mark Newbold followed this with The Vast Horizons, a story that layered more political shenanigans into the mix.  But it was Jonathan’s novel And They Shall Have Their Revenge that really caused the stories to explode.  Adapting a novel he had previously written into a Setnin setting, this properly introduced the Ki-Ki and the factions and players that made up their number.  A full novel length story, it was this that made the Ki-Ki such a visible and well-defined threat, and from there on in it was easy to see the threat they posed.  In Back to the Setnin Sector Jonathan brought Drate Galletti, son of the real Goah Galletti, back from the Core Worlds of his birth to learn the heritage of his dead fathers insane clone, and Louis Turfrey began his Setnin Jedi plotline with Moving House, which saw Blake De’Athe and the Jedi’s he was training move into their Paladin Base on Rai.

In Word Gets Around Mark introduced Tannis Rixx, an ex-Janos Executioner who had travelled the galaxy to learn more about life away from Janos and who now worked for the Cipple Sisters Brea and Bessa.  Seven years later Rixx was destined to become the leader of the Setnin Defence Force (S.D.F) and have a major impact on the course of the war.  It was at this point, hitting a rich vein of creativity that Jonathan added a batch of Ki-Ki based stories that showed their constant inner politics and their attacks at the fringes of the Setnin Sector.  From Walking Through the Past through to Fools Seldom Differ four years later he expanded on the Ki-Ki and showed them edge ever closer to actually instigating full-scale war with Setnin. 

An alteration in the Chronology layout precipitated the New Underworld Age being split in two, and in the new sections, Jonathan Hicks’ The Spark would now be the first story in the new New Underworld Age.  Fitting for such a vital story in the plot, The Spark being the true start of the conflict as the Ki-Ki, through a tragic misunderstanding ignites the conflict and begins their push into Setnin.  At this juncture, the story of the Setnin Jedi and their training came to the fore as Louis pushed on with Arrow of Time, the death of bounty hunter-turned-Jedi Tarr Ranth in The Last Battle and Second Chance, breaking the plot only to tell of Ranths wake in Requiem for a Bounty Hunter.  In Trial by Fire we were introduced to young Jedi Knight Jeddess Essar, in A Meeting of Minds we met the shadowy Raven Corporation and in The Hunter Returns we are reacquainted with Daemon Garr. We also meet Maanu Ejjapi again in Back into Action and saw the election of Tannis Rixx as S.D.F leader in The Enemy of My Enemy by Paul Squire.  Seeds of Rebellion by Louis introduced A-desandian trader Jan Lomona into the plot and as ever Jan would have a major impact on the plot and the war in later stories.

With the Ki-Ki taking the Euphoria Station in The Last Bastion, and forging their way towards the heart of Setnin, When Push Comes to Shove by Mark saw more involvement by Lomona and the Trac-Tran Transit Company, Ryath Centaur and the Iron Claws, and vitally brought Squadron Indigo of the New Republic (sidelined from the conflict due to clever political manoeuvrings by Sheu Ho-Travi, a New Republic representative secretly in league with the Ki-Ki) to the S.D.F.  With more Setnin Jedi tales (The Prodigal, Retribution and the return of the Worldship Rinsome in The Wanderers) the final devastating push on Setnin became more and more inevitable, leading to the events of Story 160, Chancai Falls. 

Now, after the taking of Chancai by the Ki-Ki, what fate awaits the Setnin Sector?  Will she be submerged into the greater Ki-Ki empire, or fight back and survive alone?  Will the underworld rally to fight, or will the New Republic enter the conflict?  Or will another party enter the proceedings.