Celestial/Legends

The Celestials were ancient entities in the Force, the energy field that existed in all things, whose true nature could not be understood by the mortals of the universe. The Force was under the Celestials' dominion, and they manifested into physical beings known as the Ones, Force wielders who were made up of the Father, the Daughter, and the Son.
The Daughter and the Son embodied the Force's light side—life and harmony—and the dark side—death and chaos—respectively. The Father's duty as the Keeper of the Balance between the warring siblings was alleviated when they brought a mortal Servant into their family, eventually becoming the Mother. However, the Mother was fearful of being abandoned as she aged amid the ageless Ones, and committed the Forbidden—drinking from the Font of Power, granting her immortality, and swimming in the Pool of Knowledge. However, the power overwhelmed the woman, corrupting her into a powerful dark side entity known as Abeloth, the Bringer of Chaos.
In order to contain Abeloth's chaotic influence that inflicted terror and destruction upon both the creations of the light and dark sides, the Daughter and the Son united as the Architects to design Centerpoint Station, which was constructed by the Killiks while they were granted usage of the Force by the pair. The giant tractor beam built the Maw to contain Abeloth on her planet in a prison surrounded by black holes and hidden by Sinkhole Station. Centerpoint was also used to create the Corellian system, and was one of many large artifacts that was believed to have been made by the Celestials throughout the galaxy, long before the dawn of the galactic community and even the Rakatan Infinite Empire.
All traces of them disappeared by 30,000 BBY, and what little was known of the Celestials came from xenoarchaeology, as well as the memories of the isolated Killik Thuruht hive. The Jedi and the Sith alike incorrectly theorized that the balance between the light and dark sides of the Force were actually under the guidance of the Celestials.
During the Clone Wars, which was part of a series of conflicts between the Jedi and the Sith, Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One who was destined to bring balance to the Force, was lured to the Ones' residence on Mortis in order to replace the Father; however, the mission resulted in the deaths of the Ones by the Dagger of Mortis, the only object that could destroy the otherwise immortal beings. The Ones' deaths and the ongoing Jedi and Sith wars allowed Abeloth to take advantage of the imbalance in the Force and, after Jacen Solo inadvertently caused the destruction of Centerpoint Station in his attempt to change the future where the Sith ruled the galaxy, free herself from the confines of the Maw to terrorise the galaxy. Luke Skywalker's New Jedi Order was nevertheless able to learn about the Celestials and eventually defeat Abeloth in 44 ABY.
==History==
===Origin===
What little was known of the Celestials owed to the permanence of their cosmological constructions.The Essential Atlas They were considered one of the earliest and most potent cultures of their time that were identified by the colossal objects they had left behind.The New Essential Chronology Their identities were considered largely a mystery due to a lack of information on them. Evidence of their works led many to determine that the galaxy was once visited by these stunningly powerful alien architects. Even their appearance was something of a mystery: the Celestials were said to have malleable form,The Essential Guide to Warfare and another theory held that they were a group of discorporate entities who had perhaps merged themselves with the Force thousands of generations earlier and continued to guide the fate of the galaxy ever since.Darth Plagueis Doctor Insmot Bowen, a pre-Republic specialist, identified a common motif of sinuous patterns - perhaps serpents, tentacles or vines - in the art of ancient civilizations thought to have had contact with the Celestials, ranging from the Ophidian grotesques of Coruscant to similar patterns found on Caulus Tertius and Shatuun. Some held that the Celestials were a higher order of intermediaries whose powers were beyond the understanding of mortal beings.
The origin of the Celestials was unknown: Thuruht, the oldest of the Killik hives, claimed to remember seeing the Ones, a powerful family of Celestials, coalescing out of a geyser on a tropical planet more than a million years before the events of the Clone Wars from 22 BBY to 19 BBY. However, the collective memory of a Killik hive does not make distinctions between fact and fiction like the human mind—any individual memory joined to that of the collective, be it mythology, incontestable fact, or the plot of a holodrama, is history to the Killiks.
Nevertheless, by 100,000 BBY, this spectacularly powerful species had dominated the stars and had made contact with a number of other species in various states of advancement. These included the Gree, Kwa, Sharu, Columi, Killiks, Humans, and Taung. The Columi retreated from the stars in fear of the Celestials, while the Sharu - whose brief expansion period saw their race push Coreward as far as Aargau - went even further and sought refuge in a forced culture of primitivism after attracting their notice. The frightened Sharu buried their cities beneath immense plastic pyramids and drained their intellects in a last-ditch effort at escaping Celestial attention. Similar pyramid designs would later be identified among the Kwa.
The Celestials are known to have conscripted the insectoid Killiks of Alderaan to serve as laborers, and the Killiks were seeded up and down the Perlemian.The Unknown Regions Similarly, the Gree, Kwa, and the Rakata acted as servant races to the Celestials alongside the Killiks. Together, they worked to build astonishing technological projects that ranged from the assembly of star systems to the engineering of hyperspace anomalies.
===Architects===
The Celestials were known to have created a number of projects that took place near Corellia, Kessel, and other sites in the eastern galactic disc. Notable achievements of this race included assembling the Corellian system, the Vultar system, the Hapes Cluster, the Kathol Rift, and the Maw black-hole cluster.
The Corellian system was highly anomalous: chemical composition of the Corellian planets matched no known model of the formation of stars or planetary discs. Mathematical analysis of the system's planetary orbits indicated they had decayed into near-ellipses from perfectly circular orbits, something that was extremely rare. A further 17 star systems had been identified with similar signatures by 1 BBY. Thus it was generally accepted by researchers that the Corellian system had been assembled at some point from pre-existing planets that were brought together by a combination of buried planetary repulsors and hyperspace tractor engines like Centerpoint Station or the Cosmic Turbine. It was believed that the Architects were responsible for seeding the Core Worlds with life and in particular with Humans, though some claimed this was the result of the Rakatan empire. These Architects were held to be responsible for populating the worlds in the Corellian system with Drall, Selonians, and Humans. While the Drall and Selonians were believed to be native to their worlds, it was possible that the Human Corellians were transplanted to their world by the Celestials.
Killiks were believed to have had a hand in the construction of Centerpoint Station, which they called Qolaraloq. In addition, they witnessed the creation of other Celestial wonders such as the Maw and the Vultar system. Killik slaves were also present on Sinkhole Station where they created a pressure seal that was adapted from their own construction techniques that used technology of the station. A suspected Celestial sensory operations complex on Kessel contained planetwide underground machinery tended to by the Bogeys and contained a type of gigantic astronomical observatory detailing the location of gravity wells across the entire galaxy.Fate of the Jedi: Outcast
Pre-Republic specialists believed the Celestials were responsible for the circumferential hyperspace barrier, possibly as a defense against outside interference. They were also believed to be responsible for the chain of hyperspace anomalies west of the Core that bisected the galaxy and prevented travel into the Unknown Regions. The ancient creature known as the Mnggal-Mnggal claimed to have witnessed the golden age of the Celestials. Speculation holds that the Celestials had crafted the hyperspace anomalies that bisected the galaxy in order to separate and isolate the influence of the predatory creature. Other academic speculation held that this barrier had been created to contain the Rakata. Such was the scale of the Celestials' achievements that Doctor Insmot Bowen was prepared to contemplate the possibility of the entire universe being a Celestial construct.
===Disappearance===
Around 35,000 BBY, the domain of the Celestials was usurped when the Rakata slave race revolted. Despite the Celestials' efforts, the Rakata broke through the barrier and waged a war of extermination upon them. The ancient grimoires of the Gree Enclave, which referred to the Celestials as the "Ancient Masters," recorded that their work was undone by curses unleashed by the Rakata, or the "Soul Hunters," which they called the "Gray Swallowing" and the "Hollowers of Beings," and further referred to them as the "Faceless Mouths" and "Eaters of Worlds." Stealing technology from the Kwa, another Celestial client race, they waged a war against the other servant races. Some hypotheses over the hyperspace turbulence in the Unknown Regions claimed that it was created to serve as a barrier between the Celestials and the upstart Rakata.
Information discovered from the Thuruht hive in 44 ABY suggested that the Celestials' decline may have been associated with the rise of the being Abeloth: The Killiks believed that the Force was the dominion of the Celestials and then their power was usurped when the "Bringer of Chaos" emerged. It is known that the Son and the Daughter, two of the Ones that the Killiks claimed were what the Celestials became, approached the Killiks to gain their assistance in the construction of the Maw cluster of black holes. Using Centerpoint Station, the Killiks moved numerous black holes to form a prison for Abeloth, lest she throw the galaxy into chaos and disorder. The Son and the Daughter joined the hive mind and lent the hives their knowledge and their enormous power in the Force. It is believed that after they completed their labors, the siblings left the hive mind and somehow removed the Force powers that they had shared with the hive.
The eventual fate of the Celestials was unclear. They may have been trapped inside the galaxy by their barrier and destroyed by the Rakatan revolt, or they may have escaped through the barrier. Insmot Bowen suggested that they may have withdrawn from this dimension completely. The Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Plagueis mused on the possibility that the Celestials were the ones who, according to Jedi and Sith legend, merged into the Force to control its path.
By 30,000 BBY, the Celestials were nowhere to be found, and the Rakatan Infinite Empire had taken center stage. Similarly, the Killiks vanished from the galaxy and migrated beyond the veil of the Unknown Regions, which was an act presumed to be attributed to the Celestials. After the construction of Centerpoint Station, it was claimed by the Killiks that the Celestials had grown angry with their Kind and had emptied them from their homeworld of Alderaan.Dark Nest I: The Joiner King It was theorized that the Celestials drove the Killiks into the Unknown Regions after they devoured their own homeworld and attempted to lay claim to another planet.Dark Nest III: The Swarm War The Mnggal-Mnggal similarly claimed that it had witnessed the sudden withdrawal of the Celestials from the galaxy in this era.
===The Ones===
Even though all traces of the Celestials had vanished by 30,000 BBY, a family of Force-wielding Celestials known as The Ones were still in existance in the realm of Mortis up until 20 BBY, in which they were killed during a mission undertaken by Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano
At some point, the Father realized that he was dying. Facing his impending demise, he needed to find another to keep the balance between the Son, the embodiment of the dark side, and the Daughter, the embodiment of the light side. Around the second year of the Clone Wars,Star Wars Annual 2011 a transmission containing a Jedi distress code unused for more than 2,000 years was received by Admiral Tenant in the remote Chrelythiumn system. The High Council sent Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano to investigate; the three Jedi were drawn into the mysterious Mortis monolith, where they met the Ones.
After Anakin Skywalker successfully passed a test by subduing both the Son and the Daughter, the Father recognized him as the Chosen One who was destined to take his place as warden of the children.
==Legacy==
Despite their achievements, little evidence remained of where the Architects came from and what was their eventual fate. Many of their extraordinary works and machines were known to have survived the ages with some races claiming the engineering marvel that was Centerpoint Station was a product of their own civilization. The barren Tion Cluster world of Foran Tutha became famous following the discovery of the Foran Tutha star probe. Scholars debated for centuries on whether the fragments of this ancient starship were a remnant of Celestial, Rakata, or an example of early Core technology. This argument continued for five centuries with the true origin of the probe being unknown. Other traces of the Celestials that remained ranged from the anomalous like the Quintarad star group and the Aur Diamonds, to the ruined like the Penegelen Shards and the Ianane Ring, to the obviously artificial like the Ciratu Spheres and the Diatian Clockwork.
In the years of Darth Plagueis, some believed that the Celestials were a higher order of Force beings that guided the events of the galaxy, though many Sith Lords dismissed this theory as such a theoretical line of thinking as to have no bearing on their desire to make the galaxy subservient to their will, since it meant that this was only in the realm of the enlightened elite.
At some point after the Yuuzhan Vong War, the Jedi Jacen Solo traveled the galaxy to learn from various Force sects. On these travels, he met with the Mind Walkers of Sinkhole Station who offered him to enter into the Pool of Knowledge, but he refused as he did not want to become like the Celestials and hold all the knowledge of the universe. In 35 ABY, the Unu Joiner Raynar Thul stated that the Celestials had emptied Oroboro on Alderaan, around ten thousand Killik generations ago, approximately twenty thousand years in Human time. He also claimed that the Killik Colony had built Centerpoint Station and shortly after the construction of Qolaraloq, the Celestials had become angry with them over an unspecified matter. Later, in 41.5 ABY, Jaden Korr encountered debris from a large structure the creation of which he attributed to either the Celestials or the Rakata.Riptide
Two years later, ancient machinery was discovered on Kessel which prompted Han Solo to wonder if it was a creation of the Celestials. The lowest levels of the planet had massive amounts of this technology, and almost destroyed the entire planet. Afterwards, Grand Master Luke Skywalker and his son Ben Skywalker discovered Sinkhole Station within the Maw Cluster. Ben Skywalker theorized that the Celestials may have constructed Centerpoint Station and created the Maw in order to contain Abeloth, who was believed to have some connection to the Celestials. Sinkhole Station, a similar structure to Centerpoint, also had possible ties to the Celestials. Once there, they discovered the body of a dead Killik slave who was involved in the station's construction. The Mind Walkers would tell a transcended Luke Skywalker that they had invited Jacen Solo to bathe in the Pool of Knowledge, but that he declined, stating it would make him too much like the Celestials.
After traveling to the Celestial Palace, the Thuruht hive explained what they knew from their hive mind of the Celestials. This led to Raynar Thul wondering whether Abeloth was a member of this mysterious race, though the Thuruht did not know the answer to that question. The Killiks debated on whether Abeloth was the Bringer of Chaos because of the Celestials desires or because she took such a role after defying the wishes of the Celestials. Ultimately, the Thuruht concluded that the true nature of the Celestials could not be comprehended or grasped by a mortal mind nor could one discern their will.
==Behind the scenes==
Celestials first appeared as The Ones in "Overlords," the fifteenth episode of the third season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, released on January 28 2011. The Ones were described as "what Celestials become" in Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse, a novel written by Troy Denning, and were confirmed to be Celestials in the Star Wars Blog article "Galactic Architecture 101 and the History of Centerpoint Station". Denning introduced the term "Celestial" in his 2005 novel Dark Nest I: The Joiner King, though the concept of a highly advanced "precursor" race that greatly influenced the early galaxy, a recurring motif in science fiction, is much older, most notably figuring in Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy with the debut of Centerpoint Station, revealed to be the Celestials' masterwork. They would play a key backstory role in Denning and his colleagues' work on Star Wars: The Dark Nest Trilogy, Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, and Fate of the Jedi. Prior to The Joiner King, Centerpoint's builders were referred to as "alien architects" in The Essential Chronology (2000) and were given the name "Architects" in The New Essential Chronology (2005).
The New Essential Guide to Alien Species stated that the Rakata might have altered the orbits of the planets of the Corellian System in spite of the fact that The New Essential Chronology had already made it clear that the Rakata weren't Architects.
The Essential Atlas confirmed that the Architects and the Celestials are one and the same and identified several star clusters and astronomical phenomena that were a result of their manipulation. In Darth Plagueis, the eponymous Dark Lord of the Sith muses on the possible fate of the Celestials, equating them with the Ones of Mortis.
According to Jason Fry's endnotes for The Essential Guide to Warfare, a piece of cut content would have involved a transcript where Dr. Insmot Bowen of the Obroan Institute explained that the barrier west of the Core was a remnant of Celestial technology. In addition, he explained that a war was fought between the Celestials and the Rakata. In Part 1 of Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Warfare Author's Cut, one of the revealed cut concepts, a debriefing that was originally supposed to act as the prologue of the book, dealt with the Celestials, including the Rakatan revolt against the Celestials.
==Appearances==
==Sources==
==Notes and references==
Category:Pre-Republic
Category:Sentient species