Star Wars recently revealed another weakness of the Jedi’s most famous weapon, the Lightsaber.
The Lightsaber is the pinnacle of fantasy swords, a weapon that combines technology and magic to create one of the most iconic fictional weapons. Every Jedi and Sith are tasked at some point in their life to construct a unique weapon of their own, and as such many truly unique weapons have been created. Over the decades, the Lightsaber has become the symbol not just of the Jedi, but of the Star Wars franchise itself. When Obi-Wan Kenobi handed Luke Skywalker his father’s Lightsaber, he described it as “an elegant weapon for a more civilized time.”
Star Wars: The High Republic, initially promoted as Project Luminous, consisting of various stories from the Star Wars franchise set during the “High Republic” sub-era of the Age of Republic roughly 200 years before the Star Wars films and 800 years after the fall of the “Old Republic”. This was set long before the Jedi retreated into the Jedi temple on Coruscant, foolishly cutting themselves off from ordinary people, becoming so afraid of the dark that their light ceased to shine in the darkness.
Although it was also a time of great danger as an expanding Republic found itself confronting terrifying new threats, a destructive pirate group called the Nihil and an evil-minded race known as the Drengir ancient allies of the Sith. These threats come together in Cavan Scott’s novel The Rising storm in which the Jedi learn of an unknown weakness that can sabotage their very Lightsaber.
Numerous sub-plots in one of the book’s introduces a scientist named Manteesa Chekkat who has developed what she calls a nullifier. Mantessa Chekkat was a Kuranu female inventor. She and her daughter, Klerin, attended the Republic Fair on the planet Valo, hiring the mercenary Ty Yorrick to protect them. Chekkat intended to offer to sell the prototype of a recainium-powered four-seven nullifier, a device that disrupted energy weapons, including blasters and Lightsabers, to Senator Tia Toon for his Defence Force Program. Upon activation, the nullifier floods a circle 10 meters in diameter with radiation that disrupts any energy weapon, from the humble blaster to the sacred tool of the Jedi. The prototype is bulky, but Manteesa envisions creating much smaller devices that can be planted on ceilings inconspicuously, rendering Jedi unable to use their blades in the area around them.
Made of Mandalorian steel, Star Wars has carefully established limits for the powerful Lightsabers. But the new twist is a very surprising limitation of the Lightsabers, in that it means it is possible to create areas where Lightsabers simply don’t work. This is because recainium radiation generated by the nullifier is damaging to organics and disrupts more than just Lightsabers.
Even the Empire never seem to have developed recainium nullifiers. They wouldn’t have cared about the harmful effect of recainium radiation on their Stormtroopers, but the more generally unruly effect of the nullifiers would have meant they were considered clumsy and ineffective.
Although, by the time of the original trilogy the Jedi were believed to have been wiped out, and there have been hints the Empire even stopped looking for Jedi. By then, there would have been no point bothering with installing nullifiers and training troops to operate in areas where their energy weapons were disrupted. Hence, it makes sense this particular Lightsaber weakness was never exploited in the main Star Wars saga.
