The ORIGINAL Clone Wars

[Mojomoe]

Heya, all! Thought experiment.

I'mma need you to dig DEEP into your memories here. I'm talking early 80s.

When you saw the original trilogy as it came out, and they mentioned the Clone Wars... You immediately had an image in your head. What was it? Before all this newfangled nonsense came out, what did you picture the whole "Clone Wars" shebang being about?

The REAL Clone Wars, with a young Alec Guinness as General Kenobi, and Sebastian Shaw as Anakin Skywalker. R2 figures in there... somehow. And there were clones of... somebody?

[Zarn]

I always imagined it as a war between the vatbred, faceless minions of a proto-Empire and the 'trueborn', the factions that did not allow clones to exist, and so on. For me, the clone armies (I thought there'd have to be several, as each clone would likely have a given skill or propensity for something) would function much like the droid armies of the Separatists.

I also imagined a young (17 years or so) Anakin Skywalker as a hotshot fighter pilot there, driving his Y-Wing or something into the hordes of faceless clone minions, trusting in his rudimentary sense of the Force to keep him safe, to see actions before they happened. I pictured a cocky Obi-Wan who started to instruct Anakin Skywalker in the ways of the Force in between sorties, in the squad break room - onlookers in awe of the minor telekinesis that Anakin displayed.

All this added to the arrogance that Anakin felt, leading to his fall to the Dark Side. And I had armor in there that looked a lot like Boba Fett, too. 'cause Fenn Shysa and Tobbi Dala.

[shootingwomprats]

Well at that time I was about thirteen and to be honest, at the time there wasn't much about cloning, genetic manipulation and such as we have now. I do remember quite distinctly though I envisioned the Clone Wars was more than just a civil war, yes it included like-minded political entities within the Republic but also factions outside the Republic.

Keep in mind I was a child of the later part of the Cold War. We had NATO, the UN, we had allies, there was "them" the Warsaw pact, then there were neutral and proxy countries. This is how I envisioned the Star Wars universe.

During this conflict I envisioned massive clone armies swarming over battlefields, bred for the purpose of killing the enemy. They did not have strong personalities and were fearless and quickly grown.

Besides the trooper clone they would also clone dangerous animals and sometimes genetically manipulate certain characteristics to make them more suitable to the battlefield.

There were also genetically created creatures with specific purposes and once this was created it was the template to be cloned. I remember quite clearly a creature like this from the Marvel run of the Star Wars comic. It appeared in issue no. 28 "What Ever Happened to Jabba the Hut?"

Han and Chewie ran into a creature called a Stone Mite. It was a living biological weapon from the Clone Wars that manufactured a strong acid that could eat through almost anything. Typically found in swarms they were released to devout a planets resources. Not sure if this meant natural or developed.

I guess even as a kid my version of the Clone Wars was grittier, darker and more politically motivates than the prequels. Gee and George you only had 20-30 years to come up with something better.
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Don Diestler
Host, Shooting Womp Rats
The D6 Podcast
http://d6holocron.com/shootingwomprats
@swd6podcast, Twitter

[Barrataria]

[cheshire]

I imagined that the Jedi had some idealistic cause for participating in the wars; that there was something lofty that really meant something to them.

And though I didn't have the historical comparison at the time, I envisioned the clone wars something like the Punic Wars. It wasn't just one war, but a series of engagements that spanned years, and one war was not completely contiguous with another. As in, it was a series of wars, separated by years from each other, but having a commonality of being fought with (or against) clones.

I think I remembered my first surprise with the PT that the republic was using clones to fight rather than fighting against them.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[Bobmalooga]

I wasn't sure what to make of it, being that I was 5 when I first heard of the clone wars. As I got older and once I started playing the RPG my thought on the matter was that it was like the Korean War, which my grandfather had served in. A war that happened just long enough ago, at least for Luke, that it was presented as having happened a generation or two before...I figured that Ben had to be in his 50s-60s so that meant it had to have happened 20-40 years ago.

I just assumed, probably like a lot of people, that it was a war against clones of some kind (hence the 'clone wars'...)

I felt cheated and let down by the prequels since they never lived up to my ideas of what this was all about.

I tell you what would be an interesting source book for someone to do for the game and it would certainly have to be a fan source book...If someone would gather up all the clone war and pre-civil war references from the RPG and do a WEG Clone war source book...now that would be neat.
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No matter where you go, there you are...

[griff]

I was born a month before the release of ANH. Much of my ideas of the clone wars was something my mother would say to me after returning home from playing outside "Look who dragged himself in from the clone wars". Being a five year-old boy in Hawaii playing outside all day was a dirty job (more than once having to change cloths before lunch, than going outside again). I always thought that my mom knew something about the clones wars that I didn't, so I thought that the clone wars were dirty and destructive to the entire galaxy an all encompassing conflict that would seem endless at the time. Like many others I thought that the Clone armies were the enemy of the Jedi. When the rumors of episode one was coming out I thought that it would be of the clone wars along with episode two which was where Anakin would become Darth Vader and Episode three would be about the "Dark Time" which the Empire would rise out of.
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"EXECUTE ORDER 67. Wait a minute, that doesn't sound like order 67..... No, wait. Yes, yes it does. EXECUTE ORDER 68" Palpatine's last moments - robot chicken.

[Whill]

[Whill]

[Mojomoe]

These are all FASCINATING answers!

Whill, to answer your question, I mean specifically before any canon information came out about the Clone Wars. I suppose for some that would be pre-prequels, and would include the Thrawn trilogy. For me, it means the period pre-Thrawn, where the only info came in snippets from ANH dialogue, and what was in the Guide to the Star Wars Universe.

I'm seeing a lot of commonalities - Jedi as clones, or Jedi *fighting* clones. The idea of the Clone Wars being some years removed from Palpatine's rise is also interesting... And I also remember the spotty references to cloned Stormtroopers.

I suppose I always assumed a war including a multitude of Mandalorian warriors, of which Fett was maybe a survivor. Perhaps they were even the clones, against the Jedi?

The reason I ask is I've been considering an art project, doing something with what I always imagined the Clone Wars to be about, rather than what we got. Perhaps a movie poster, keeping more in line with the original trilogy and logical extrapolation. Old-style ships, for instance. I like the Y-Wing idea .

[RyanDarkstar]

Before the prequels, I assumed the Clone Wars were much like many of you describe: clone vs. clone and/or super commandos. Plus, like Battlefront 2, using old clones vs. stormtroopers definitely adds to a series of Clone Wars.

I also thought this would have been cool: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Epic_Continues.

Kenner really surprised me with their idea to continue Star Wars after Return of the Jedi with toys based on a new clone war. I wonder if they would have included a comic book or package info to further the saga.
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Currently playing D&D 5E and painting an unholy amount of miniatures.

[Bobmalooga]

Is it just me, or has the art for Atha Prime showed up somewhere before? Isn't it in the WEG stuff? I'd almost swear it is in one of the books somewhere and I am thinking Platts Starport guide, maybe...
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No matter where you go, there you are...

[RyanDarkstar]

The picture Kenner used for Atha Prime is taken from a preproduction sketch of a Imperial Royal Guardsman. They also used the same picture for the Reborn Emperor's giant Imperial Sentinels in Dark Empire.
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Currently playing D&D 5E and painting an unholy amount of miniatures.

[Zarm R'keeg]

Pretty much 'regular' Republic soldiers (recruits, a standard army) fighting cloned soldiers of some unknown, external force, with the Jedi (a force of a few hundred ronin-esque warriors, far more hermit/knight/wandering peacekeeper than an organized religious order/army like a we got... a group of independant, one-man army warrior-monks who were a lot heavier on meditation and not so randomly acrobatic, who traveled alone, without oversight, to wherever they felt called or needed. More like Knights of the Round Table- a select few titans that were often out on individual quests.).

They fought on the side of the Republic against the clones (after all, you don't name the war after your own soldiers, you name it after the guys that you're fighting)- while Starships far more Flash Gordon than Naboo Starfighter in style clashing in space. As an alternative, as Whill mentions, another possibility was both sides (the Republic and their unknown enemy; I definitely assumed the Empire wasn't involved) fighting each other with Clones as proxies... although in that scenario, I never pictured the Jedi as allied with Republic clones, but ('fool idealistic crusade') charging in as a third party to try and end the war and the barbarity of throwing these happles clones at each other. After all, the Jedi kept the peace.

Truthfully, I can't remember now which was a more common assumption in my youth, but both were scenarios I entertained primarily growing up.

Also,

[Mojomoe]

Again, this stuff is fantastic. It gels with a lot of what I'm remembering as my own expectations and imaginings of the day.

One thing I was discussing with my wife recently I thought was an interesting idea - it always bothered me that they just had this evil, dark, fearsome armor ready for Vader, when we've never seen anything like it before. The only other thing it's similar to is... Stormtrooper armor. I.e., infantry armor intended to strike fear and deflect damage.

I instantly had this neat image of thousands of evil clones, all wearing black, Vader-faced armor and carrying blasters marching against the forces of the Republic. Then at the end, they crown Vader as the greatest among them, their general. His face, then, is the face of the Clone Wars.

As I mentioned, interesting...