Thermal detonator

Thermal detonators, also known as thermal charges or thermal devices, were palm-sized, spherical devices that were used as extremely deadly explosive weapons.
==Description==
A military-grade weapon, a thermal detonator—alternatively known as a thermal chargeThe High Republic: Tempest Runner script or thermal deviceThe High Republic: Path of Vengeance—was a grenade-like explosive that held a great amount of power for a small sphere that fit within someone's palm. In addition to being surprisingly powerful for their size, they could only be deactivated by whomever turned them on.Return of the Jedi: Beware the Power of the Dark Side! They would only explode when they were activated, and therefore a secure and stable weapon to carry.Aftermath They could also be programmed to explode after a set amount of time.
Most thermal detonators contained baradium, a highly unstable chemical compound that could blow a two-meter-deep hole in pure permacite. The chemical compound was so unstable that, in certain situations, some detonators have exploded after being accidentally dropped to the ground. This, was due to them having been exposed to too much heat or manipulated harshly. The power of the thermal detonator made it highly sought-after in the criminal underground, which made its price climb to 2,000 credits on the black market.
==History==
===Historical overview===
Throughout the galaxy, thermal detonators were used by militaries and bounty hunters. All the same, their usage was heavily regulated, and owning one illegally could earn its owner the capital punishment in many star systems. An actively beeping thermal detonator was an effective way to quickly clear people out of a tavern.The High Republic: Cataclysm At one point in galactic history, a V-1 Thermal Detonator sank within a body of water.
===High Republic Era===
In 382 BBY during the High Republic Era,Star Wars: Timelines as a path to peace emerged during the Eiram and E'ronoh War through the possible union of Eirami Prince Phan-tu Zenn and E'roni Princess Xiri A'lbaran, a delegation from Eiram attended the funeral of Jerrod Segaru on E'ronoh, where the radical Children of E'ronoh threw rocks at the visiting Eirami. Afterward, Eirami Queen Adrialla voiced her fear that such protesters would move from rocks to thermal detonators, and then to even worse weapons, yet the wedding preparations continued on until completion.The High Republic: Convergence Later that year during the so-called Night of Sorrow, as the Path of the Closed Fist cult fought against members of the Jedi Order, cult leader Elecia Zeveron provided Littles Boolan and Utalir with thermal detonators and told them to plant the explosives across the Path caves, claiming she would drop rocks upon the Jedi. In reality, she intended to escape and destroy the Path, who would become martyrs as she left to continue her rise to power. While fellow Little Tromak was too scared to agree to plant the bombs, Boolan and Utalir carried on their mission until the intervention of cousins Marda Ro and Yana Ro, who prevented their actions.
Deprived of the charges, Boolan ran off into the caves repeating the Path mantra and would later emerge as a major enemy of the Jedi during his adult life.The High Republic (2023) 10 Alternatively, Utalir—who, unknown to all, was Force-sensitive—was targeted by one of the Nameless until the intervention of the cousins, who demanded she return to the surface. After Marda revealed Zeveron's duplicity to fellow Path leader Werth Plouth, who was mortified she would use the Littles to carry out her plot, Marda, who had grown disgusted of the Nameless as the battle dragged on, gathered the Nameless in one place with the Rod of Power and ordered Yana to activate the thermal charges with a detonator Marda had claimed from Zeveron. The explosion opened cracks in the caves that allowed water to rush in, causing a flood that swept away and drowned the Nameless, with the exception of the Leveler. Marda herself was caught in the flood but survived.The High Republic: Path of Vengeance The explosion, however, hadThe High Republic: Cataclysm the unintended effect of collapsing the cave system, flooding and destroying the Path's underground network.
Between 252 BBY and 242 BBY,The raid in the Abrion sector occurred after Asgar Ro became the Eye of the Nihil and before Lourna Dee joined the Nihil.
*Star Wars: Timelines dates the events of The High Republic: Light of the Jedi to 232 BBY.
*Lourna Dee joined the Nihil before Asgar Ro died. The High Republic: Eye of the Storm 1 places Asgar Ro's death ten years before Light of the Jedi, so she must have joined the Nihil before the year 242 BBY.
*The High Republic: Eye of the Storm 1 also states that Asgar Ro became the Eye twenty years before Light of the Jedi, so she must have joined the Nihil after the year 252 BBY. Lourna Dee, the former princess of the planet Aaloth, mined the hold her own ship, the Tycoon Trader, with thermal detonators as a trap for the Nihil pirates. After defeating the boarding Nihil party, Dee herself would join the organization and eventually arise to become one of its Tempest Runners. In 232 BBY, after confirming her friend Geode knew of people who could sell such weapons, Affie Hollow used a thermal detonator against the Nihil during the mission on the Amaxine station. The weapon's weight had felt strange in her hand due to the danger it posed and how unfamiliar she was with actually using one, yet she resolved to use it in order to save her friends. To use it, she set it to ten seconds and threw it against an airlock being used by the boarding Nihil.The High Republic: Into the Dark During the Battle of Galov of 231 BBY, Dee would fake her death for a time by disguising the droid H7-09 in her armor, which she also placed a thermal charge within. The former Nihil Krix Kamerat had created the latch-on thermal detonatorThe High Republic Adventures: Crash and Burn by 228 BBYThe events of The High Republic Adventures: Crash and Burn occur in 228 BBY per the reasoning here. As such, it can be concluded that the latch-on thermal detonator was created by 228 BBY. and plotted to use one against Ro at a supposed peace summit. Indeed throwing the weapon once Ro rejected Kamerat's attempt to rejoin the Nihil, Kamerat's plan was ruined when one of Ro's She'ar bodyguards, Arathab Fal, took the blow for Ro and rushed Kamerat, who was killed alongside Fal in the explosion. In 200 BBY, the bounty hunter Sun Xi wielded a fake detonator, which he threw in the presence of Jedi Padawan Sean. Initially assuming the hunter had thrown a real detonator, Sean would instead be faced with it playing the popular Huttese song Joh Blastoh as one of the ways Xi tried to taunt him.The Vow of Silver Dawn
===Late Republic, Imperial, and New Republic Eras===
In the late Republic Era, the clone troopers of the Republic Military carried N-20 Baradium-core thermal detonators on their persona via the belts of their clone trooper armor. Clones also had access to Class-A thermal detonators for use, as did the B1-series battle droids and BX-series droid commandos of the Separatist Droid Army. The Duros bounty hunter Cad Bane carried thermal detonators.
The stormtroopers of the Galactic Empire used thermal detonators, with stormtrooper armor retaining the N-20 detonator also once carried by the clone troopers. The bounty hunter Caij Vanda carried a thermal detonator on her person. In 9 BBY, Vanda found herself cornered by fellow bounty hunter Boba Fett, who was hunting her for a bounty on her head, and surviving Jedi Knight Cal Kestis, whom she had just betrayed in an effort to claim his own bounty. Vanda threatened both men by pulling out her thermal detonator, but Kestis managed to use the Force to tear it from her grasp and threw it away before it exploded.
Princess Leia Organa, disguised as the bounty hunter Boushh, threatened the crime lord Jabba the Hutt with a Class-A thermal detonator in order to negotiate a deal. The pirate gang called the Warbird gang use the thermal detonators to lure out the jakoosk to hunt it down, and feed the people of the Colossus.
==Behind the scenes==
Thermal detonators first appeared in the 1977 film Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, the first installment of the Star Wars original trilogy. They were first identified in the 1983 film Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi, the final installment of the trilogy.
In the Obi-Wan Kenobi television series, the thermal detonator used by Tala Durith took inspiration from the one held by Leia Organa in Return of the Jedi. Propmaster Brad Elliott bought a Master Replicas thermal detonator and then dismantled it. His team rewired the electronics to behave the way director Deborah Chow wanted it to work in the series. Elliott found that using real merchandise was more efficient than having to resculpt, remold, and repaint something new. The hero version was interactive and could light up.
==Appearances==
===Non-canon appearances===
*LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens
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*LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
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==Sources==
==Notes and references==
Category:Baradium
Category:Grenades
Category:Thermal detonators