User:Erik Pflueger

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! A little information about me: I was born in 1972, an art school graduate, and currently the owner of my own architectural rendering business. I've been a Star Wars fan since 1980, and while I've been collecting things concerning the GFFA since that time, it blossomed with the new wave of Star Wars publishing that began in 1991. My collection of books alone now fills two large bookshelves. I used to collect toys and action figures as well, but that's really slowed down in recent years. I still went to the midnight Toys'R'Us opening for the Revenge of the Sith toys. Why? For the experience.

I've been making my own chronologies and encyclopedias since the early 1990s. In fact, I ended up having a very small hand in the Star Trek Chronology, since the book's writers put my name in the Acknowledgements section. My baby in recent years, which rose out of my interest in All Things Palpatine (I had a few TFN forums with that title), has been an in-universe biography of the Emperor and a history of his Empire, in the manner of William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Edvard Radzinsky's Stalin. But these were things I did for myself; I had no real means to share them with anyone but my friends.

In September 2005, that changed: I took notice of the Wookieepedia. Late one evening (7 September 2005), I decided to dip my feet in the site and start writing. For one day, I was known only as 67.8.87.158, mostly throwing up facts about Ulric Tagge, until I figured out how to name myself on this thing. Now I'm identifiable (and I used my real name because I hate pseudonyms even when I have to use them), and hopefully here to stay, ready to use my book collection for the common good. The rest of the prominent writers have made me feel welcome, and we're all here for a common goal.

What's the goal? At the outset, just an online encyclopedia. But I think that the Star Wars Wikipedia has a tremendous potential beyond that. It can surpass the official site's Databank by a wide margin, because there are far less limits on entry size, so we have here a place to include literally every known fact, no matter how obscure, about a given subject. Who knows? Eventually, the writers may be coming to us for research!

My current work - for obvious reasons - is on the Palpatine page, giving it more beef and more description, and expanding it by a significant amount. My first page from scratch, which, even on a site that allows anyone to edit it, is still 95% all mine, is the Beilert Valance page. I also did a lot of work on the Marcellin Wessel page. Servants of the Emperor get big attention from me, but Valance was such uncharted territory that I felt I could get in on the ground floor. It's slow going, what with a job, a girl, and a lot of time away from the computer, but I'm doing it!

Life-Changing Update
Of course I must announce, with the most profound joy I have ever felt, that on 19 November 2006, I was wed to the former Yvette Janet Smith. I have been given the most significant gift anyone can claim: I am no longer alone. And that's just good stuff. :)

Imperial Communiqué #87341.36a
When Imperial Intelligence concluded its investigations, a certain Major Herrit, an Intell officer who performed numerous investigative tasks for both Palpatine and Vader, submitted a brief but very telling primary report, supplemented by nine additional reports. The report read in full:

Palpatine learned much from Herrit’s report: that the Rebel pilot’s name was Luke Skywalker; that he bore a general physical resemblance to Anakin Skywalker; that he was likely born in the general time frame of Padmé Amidala’s death; that he had lived on Tatooine, Anakin’s former homeworld, on a farm owned by a family to whom Anakin had been related by marriage; that he shared with Anakin exceptional piloting skills; that he had been in close contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi and had likely been exposed to Jedi teachings from him; that he and Kenobi had been aboard a freighter that had escaped the Tatooine blockade, and that Vader had later reported captured near Alderaan; that he had been involved in liberating Leia Organa from the Death Star’s detention cells; that he was again aboard the freighter when Vader had allowed it to escape in order to track it to the Yavin system; that he was involved in the Rebel defense at Yavin; that it was likely he who fired the shot that had destroyed the Death Star. If Palpatine had had any doubts after hearing Mala Mala’s testimony, this report cleared them away.

Any one, or even several, of these facts could have been the result of mere coincidence; all of them combined could never be, certainly not to Palpatine, who had never believed in coincidence anyway. With the crystal clarity only available in hindsight, Palpatine would have had little difficulty in reaching the obvious conclusion: that Padmé Amidala had given birth to a son before she died, and that that birth was covered up. It was certainly possible if looked at from the right perspective. Vader had never confirmed for himself that Padmé had died then and there, on Mustafar – his first words after being revived were to ask where she was and if she was safe and well, after all – and Palpatine’s troops did not find her body. But Palpatine remembered seeing a small starship leaving the planet as he arrived, a vessel that must have carried Padmé and Kenobi aboard, off to bear the child in secret. Her body, allegedly still pregnant, had been delivered to Naboo – no one had ever said who had delivered it – and burned according to Naboo tradition, without first being examined in order to confirm the child was still there; as a son of Naboo himself, he knew well that such matters were considered deeply private. As for the boy being found on Tatooine, Kenobi had obviously fled there after crippling Vader, which meant that wherever the boy had been born, Kenobi had brought him there, to live on that farm in the company of family, while he remained close. It all made perfect sense.

But certain facts in Herrit’s report stood out for him against others. Of particular interest to him was likely that this Skywalker was believed to be Force-sensitive, and that Vader knew this; not only knew it, but insisted on it to others – that is, to others, but not to his own master, which can only mean that Vader wanted it kept secret from him (the person Vader had spoken to about Skywalker was likely someone he would have believed trustworthy but would actually have been a well-inserted source of Herrit’s that Vader did not know about). Considering the lengths Palpatine had heard Vader had gone to just to silence everyone who had even heard the name, there could be little doubt of it. All of this reasoning inevitably led Palpatine to the question of why Vader was being so secretive on this matter. Had Skywalker possessed only marginal potential in the Force, there was little for Vader to lose by telling him, regardless of the boy’s familial relationship to Vader. Instead, Vader was carefully guarding all knowledge of Skywalker’s existence, as if that very knowledge was a devastating trump card. Vader would only do so if be believed that Skywalker was extremely powerful. And as the second generation of Darth Plagueis’s decades-old experiment, it could not be otherwise. All the potential that Anakin Skywalker had possessed, before it had been squandered away on Mustafar, would have to be intact in his son; all that, and perhaps even more.