Not Without Cost

I think if you really want to know what kind of a person Thrawn is, all you have to do is to look at the Empire of the Hand, which is described thusly on Wookieepedia:

“…a confederacy composed of native species that Grand Admiral Thrawn founded in the Unknown Regions that adopted the order and efficiency of Emperor Palpatine's New Order, but without the Emperor's megalomania, the Tarkin Doctrine, and the institutionalized xenophobia…

…an original combination of Chiss and Imperial tactics personally arranged by the Grand Admiral, such as respect of the enemies, careful consideration of soldiers' lives, surgical strikes, demonstrative invasions, preventive strikes and the significant use of intelligence gathering.”

So the Galactic Empire at its most effective without the tyranny, bigotry, fascism, and compulsory membership. Not bad for an organization founded by a warlord.

Also, for anyone who is unfamiliar with the more obscure Legends Thrawn books (pssst! you’re missing out, I gotta say 😉), the Hand is like the little group of friends he made out of the aliens and Chiss at the end of Lesser Evil. Now take that, add everyone in the seventh fleet, and multiply it by a couple tens of thousands, and you have an idea of what it was like.

Plus they eventually developed Chiss-built star destroyers and Stent. How dope is that?!!

Ok but Eli Vanto is from Wild Space which is on the opposite side of the galaxy from the Chiss according to these maps so…

STAR WARS HYPERSPACE TRAVEL TIMES: As a disclaimer, a lot of this is going to come from Legends info, but I feel reasonably confident in using them because LFL does still operate on things like this very often.  You can’t count it as hard canon, not until it appears in some story or guidebook or is confirmed through word of god, but until then I’d give it a solid 80-85% chance of being accurate. As a secondary disclaimer, you also can’t count on this to always hold true in-universe for stories because often times things happen “at the speed of plot”, meaning there’s no way Sidious should have been able to get to Mustafar to, uh, rescue Anakin as fast as he did, unless we’re assuming Anakin hung around on Mustafar for like eight days after killing the Separatists and then another eight days before Sidious found him.  (Well, I guess if anyone could survive on hate that long, it’d be Anakin.  We know Maul survived on hate when he should have died, too.  But, realistically, I think we’re just not supposed to think about it.) RESOURCES: - The excellent Astrogation Computer, which will calculate the travel time for you!  It doesn’t have every system, but if you know a nearby one (check the galaxy map to find a nearby planet) you should be able to get an accurate travel time.  Some examples above:  Coruscant to Naboo with a premium hyperdrive engine is 6.65 days.  Coruscant to Mustafar is 8.16 days.  Coruscant to Naboo is 7.96 days.  Etc. - Star Wars Galaxy Map, which should have all the major planets if you need to find where something is to use in the above calculator.  You can do a search if you want to find something specific, too!  You can also check the hyperspace lanes that are nearest any given planet. - Black Cat’s Hyperspace travel times is another good place to start to get the chart above for basic travel times and an overview of some of the things that can affect travel time. THINGS THAT CAN AFFECT TRAVEL TIMES: - The quality of your hyperdrive engine.  The better quality your engine is, the faster you’ll get there.  The above travel times are calculated based on a 1x multiplier, but if you have a crappier hyperdrive, your time is going take significantly longer. - Whether or not there is a hyperspace lane that has been cleared for a continuous journey and all objects cleared out of the way.  These are incredibly valuable to own the rights to/have access to. - How much stuff (planets. stars, asteroids, nebulae, etc.) is in your way, since you can’t travel in a straight line, you can’t go through stuff without getting exploded.  This is why hyperspace routes are so incredibly valued, because you can travel much more quickly and safely on pre-established routes.  (It’d be a really bad idea to try to plot your own course because celestial drift or unknown/unmarked celestial objects would be all over the place.) TRADE ROUTES/HYPERSPACE LANES THAT ARE AVAILABLE: These are the major ones, though, there are plenty of smaller ones that you could also use, but wouldn’t be as extensive or possibly as safe as these: - Nexus Route (Canon + Legends) [x] - Unknown placement, but it was a major route that connected Republic and Separatist spaces, this is the one that Even Piell died to get the coordinates for after he told his half to Ahsoka. - Rimma Trade Route (Canon + Legends) [x] - Notable for connecting to Sullust and Eriadu. - Perlemian Trade Route (Canon + Legends) [x] - Notable for connecting to Felucia and Taanab. - Hydian Way (Canon + Legends) [x] - Notable for connecting to Malastare and Yavin. - Corellian Run (Canon + Legends) [x] - Notable for connecting to Coruscant, Ryloth, Corellia, and Christophsis - Corellian Trade Spine (Canon + Legends) [x] - Notable for connecting to Corellia, Duro, and Hosnian Prime.  It intersected with the Rimma Trade Route in the Inner Rim and with the Hydian way in the Outer Rim territories. CONCLUSIONS: The above travel times should factor in hyperspace lanes in the calculations, as well as which ones may be close together but require going slower or making more stops because it’s more densely packed in the Deep Core, where there are a lot of stars.  Whereas, out in the Outer Rim, there’s less you have to navigate around so you can just zip through more quickly. BONUS: - Have a Legends map of Republic Space vs Separatist Space vs Hutt Space, to give you an idea of where it would be safe to travel and where it wouldn’t be. - Bigger version of the (Legends) Hyperspace lane map via Wookieepedia.

Fuck. Yes.

😭😩🥹😍

@foreverforty2 It’s an illustration from her beautiful fanfiction, Miithrawn. You can find it HERE

Thank you so much for sharing that with us! And of course thank you for your help, I’ll be forever in your debt! 

A wonderful blooper from “The Trouble with Tribbles”— the camera is solely on Leonard for Spock’s reactions while the rest of the unseen cast (Kirk, Scotty, McCoy) say their lines and fake laugh.

This is just as funny with the sound off.

when orion became optimus and immediately got that aching sadness in his eyes you can see in every other version of him i cant do this

His Eyes Speak by forever_42 / foreverforty2

- Star Trek Fanfic - Vulcan/Human - Male/Female -

Chapter 4 - Consummation (aka THE SMUT) is up on AO3.

Hi!!! I loved the fifth chapter of Rakul and the third chapter of Shimsiam. I'm so happy that you are writing them, and I'm always excited when I see you upload a new chapter 🥰 I was wondering what stories inspired you to start writing about demons. Can you recommend some? 👀

Hello and thank you so much for the Ask! While I can’t think of any one story that inspired my Demon original characters, in my notes from 1/31/22 just over one year ago, I reference a few movies as story and place inspirations: Maleficent, Legend (1985), and The Last Unicorn. I’d written a little over 1k of a story, inspired by the dark and romantic lyrics of the song “The Killing Moon”, about a demon Thrawn who finds a teenage girl, Elise (female Eli) in the forest, captures and seduces her, then takes her to the Black Fortress as an offering to the evil Demon King there (demon Emperor Palpatine), but in the last minute lets Elise escape from the rest of the demons and he is imprisoned. Elise helps him escape his prison cell, but she is severely injured and near death as he flies her away from the Fortress. So there are several elements of that story that DID end up becoming part of Rakul, but that specific story is one of my few truly abandoned ideas. And it was reborn into Rakul and the sequel to Rakul, which will feature demon Thrawn and demon Thrass, as well as Elise as female Eli once again (which is at least half written, but the exact ending point is undetermined at the moment). That sequel was begun on Feb. 2, 2022, and the first chapter of Rakul was begun Feb. 23, 2022 and published on AO3 2/25/22. Anyway, most of the inspiration for all of these stories was simply some dark song lyrics and a certain mood. I actually didn’t start reading a lot of romance novels until later in 2022, and I actually haven’t read any demon stories like mine before, so there isn’t any specific novel I could recommend that inspired my demons unfortunately.

Finally, there IS a very lovely romantic fanfic about demon!Thrawn and human Eli already on AO3:

discuss

:o