Starfleet Jedi

The other night I was watching TCW: "Supply Lines" when I noticed this line:

Obi-Wan: "The planet Toydaria is two-thousand parsecs closer [to Ryloth] than the nearest fleet."

This states that the closest fleet to Ryloth, besides the one there, is well over 6,000 ly away. That is a huge gap for a supposedly galactic war. Particularly in a galaxy that is estimated to be medium in scale.

At one point the admiral in charge of the fleet over Ryloth states that if they do not receive aid, the entire outer rim garrison could be wiped out. This provides a possible explanation. Since this is such an early episode in the Clone Wars timeline it is possible that the Republic has only just begun its outer rim campaign. So this one garrison is far from the primary conflict area currently confined to the inner systems. But that is still a huge gap.



EDIT: I fixed the name of the episode from "Battle Lines" ...which is a DS9 episode

I kind of thought along the same lines when I heard that line, especially with the whole "modest sized galaxy" bit. Enough so that
I threw together a quick graphic to better visualize the implications at the time. I remembered my old photobucket account and threw it up there right quick (I don't know if there are any preferred recommendations for photo hosting within the community, but at least that site is better than I remember it being.)




As so many EU sources like to put everything in that corner of the galaxy, I followed suit. Also, I seem to recall some inferences to the majority of Republic loyalists being closer to the core, while more of Separatists were clustered in the "mid-rim," though I'm not sure how reliable that information is. Either way, there did seem to be a trend for both forces moving to what (I always assumed) were the lesser developed, generally less fortified worlds in the outer rim in order to (again I assumed) gain an edge over the other in terms of territory and resources without the need to engage in more costly engagements on the generally more developed central worlds.

At any rate, I placed a series of 6000 LY radius circles nearly reaching the outer rim of a small, medium and large galaxy to try and put it in perspective, at the time I was thinking more on how this would compare to various galaxy sizes, I think it's safe to say a 3000 LY diameter dwarf galaxy is out. :P

Any way, whenever I tried making any detailed sense of it before I only ever ended up with a headache, there are so many variables, still, I tryed to roughly imagine Ryloth being somewhere within the radius of Toydaria, and seeing what kind of hole that put in Republic fleet presence with respect to the galaxy as a whole. Visually, it doesn't look as bad as it sounds, unless I goofed something up, (I threw it together in a hurry, then almost completely forgot about it.)

A few other points I did find noteworthy, the supplies came from an undisclosed location, and were already on Toydaria when Organa was first contacted. It's never stated where the blockade runners originated from, it seems likely they were part of one of these fleets that are over 6000 LY further from Ryloth than Toydaria, in which case transporting the supplies to the fleet may have been part of the problem (why not meet them half way otherwise?), or perhaps the runners were operating from an independent base, and traveling the extra distance to pick up the supplies from the nearest fleet (that couldn't leave for whatever reason) was a factor. One factor I noted was that the runners were only depicted picking up supplies on Toydaria, but I imagine they could/should have refueled while they were there.

At any rate, the best I can figure is that the Seperatists have a significant presence in the region, otherwise why not just use an empty planet, or simply dock in space and transfer the supplies, in which case the Republic really was manipulating technicalities, using the neutral status of Toydaria to resupply in enemy dominated space. And I'm getting another headache, have fun sorting out the trivialities, I'm out!