Just Girly Things

After having picked through all of Vowrawn’s dialogue, I think I’ve pinned down the actual reason the empire chose to invade a Core world despite the odds.   

The Battle of Corellia was a military disaster for the Sith Empire. That goes without saying. The outcome was a temporary hold on the planet at the expense of a tenth of their forces and a good chunk of their resources. 

But victory wasn’t the end game.

In fact, I believe the whole campaign only existed as a smokescreen for Sith politics. 

I found out it wasn’t truly Darth Decimus leading the military campaign despite being in command of Imperial forces. It wasn’t Darth Baras despite being the head of Military Offense. It wasn’t Darth Ravage despite being the head of Expansion. It wasn’t even Darth Marr. 

It was Darth Vowrawn. 

That’s right. The head of the Sphere of Logistics and Productivity. 

Yes, it’s true his sphere tends to overlap with military affairs… but to be given the full reins to this kind of operation when there were others more qualified? Hmm.

But Vowrawn is good at numbers. He’d have to be in his position for so long. So why was the Battle of Corellia going sideways? Why even choose that particular planet?

 Now this is where I’m jumping to pure assumptions but I do believe Vowrawn deliberately set out a full-blown incursion knowing it would be met with Corellian resistance. In fact, I think he counted on it. It meant Baras would be forced to turn much of his attention to the battle because, lo and behold, the man is still in charge of the Sphere of Offense even as he claims to be the Voice.

With Baras distracted, Vowrawn is able to dismantle his power base on Corellia with far less trouble.

But why would Darth Decimus let Vowrawn overshadow him in this? 

Decimus strikes me as a gloryhound in both his actions and his interactions. Then I remembered this little tidbit from the SWTOR Encyclopedia:

Vowrawn saw a man he could use as a patsy and installed him in the Dark Council so he could utilize him for this very purpose. Decimus owes him his seat and thus cannot object when Vowrawn comes knocking. Though I imagine Decimus doesn’t have much to complain about since Vowrawn gave him the chance in the spotlight while he works backstage. 

Vowrawn deliberately put an incompetent military leader in command of Corellia so all his loud fumbling covered up his own motives. 

Vowrawn weighed the loss of Imperial resources against the long-term consequences of Baras usurping power and decided, yes, the sacrifice was necessary. 

isn’t he beautiful

listen to the SOUND when he bites

He is NOT, however, either the largest crocodile ever captured in Australia OR the largest ever in captivity.

A slightly larger crocodile has been reported (though not yet comfirmed) to have been captured at 5.58 meters.

And while the famous Brutus of the Adelaide River was estimated to be just slightly larger than Cassius at 5.5m, he was driven out of his territory by a younger and even larger crocodile, who as a result has been given the name, The Dominator.  He is estimated to be just over 6m.

This is Brutus, with an appropriate caption:

It is believed that he lost that arm in a fight with a Bull Shark.  

The Bull Shark lost.

THIS is the crocodile who kicked him out.  The Dominator:

And that’s STILL not the biggest.  

The largest living crocodile ever reliably measured was Lolong, who for the 1.5 years between his capture and his death was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity, at a whopping 6.17 meters (20 feet 3 inches) and 1075 kg (2,370 lbs).  He had been feeding on both humans and very large livestock in the Bunawan creek in Agusan del Sur in the Philippines.  It took 100 people all night to drag him to shore during his capture.

And here’s why:

Since then Brutus developed a habit of hunting and eating Bull Sharks.

Here’s him with a prey.

And if you thought that you’ll be safe if you just stay out of Australia then think again!

Meet Gustave the Nile Croc.

This crocodile became almost legendary for both it’s size and the habit of hunting both livestock AND humans.

So how big is Gustave?

No one is sure. Since he was NEVER captured.

His estimated size is of at least 5,5m  but some give him over 6m.

The terrifying parts are:

1) He is still growing having only about 60 years.

2) Adult crocodiles often perform a gesture of submission to him - something usually done by young crocodiles toward adults - Gustave is just THAT BIG.

3) His sheer size makes it difficult for him to catch agile prey Nile crocs tend to feed on - hence why he developed a habit of hunting either larger prey like Hippopotamus or creatures which are not good at spotting danger in the first place like livestock and humans.

And this is NOT ALL.

Gustave actually has a noticeable scars on his body - he was shot at east 3 times and stabbed with a spear or something similar at one occasion.

He lived to tell the tale - my question is:

What happened to that one dude who attacked Gustave with a spear?

THIS is Gustave:

And he is the PERFECT CROCODILE.  He is the perfect example of what I mean when I talk about (as I do) how the morphology of extremely large crocodiles adapts to the changing physics of their bite.

This is a typical adult Nile Crocodile:

And THIS is a god among his kind:

This is it, folks.  The Final Form.  THIS is what peak performance looks like.

Crocodiles and physics have an interesting relationship.  Crocodiles have, by a CONSIDERABLE MARGIN, the strongest bite of any animal on Earth.  EVER.  Scaled up estimates (based on Nile and Saltwater crocodiles) give the extinct Deinosuchus an estimated bite force MORE THAN DOUBLE the recently updated Tyrannosaurus bite estimates.  Living crocodiles have bite forces measured in the range of 5000 pounds per square inch, for an individual around 15-16 feet.  It is estimated that modern crocodiles in the range of 18-20 feet would have bit forces around 7-8000 psi or more.

That’s a problem.

Because a crocodile’s skull is only designed to handle so much pressure.  Go beyond that limit and the force of impact when those jaws snap shut could literally shatter their own skulls.

But evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting crocodiles, so PHYSICS ISN’T GOING TO STOP THEM.  What ends up happening in the skulls of these extremely large crocodiles is they will increase dramatically in mass to compensate for the increased forces.  A crocodile’s skull is almost exclusively solid bone, with only minimal space for nasal passages, a surprisingly advanced brain, and some slightly porous looking framework that helps the bone distribute the force over a larger area.  The effect is by far the most pronounced in Nile crocodiles, which most regularly feed on larger prey and need to make use of all that power.

Compare, 26 inch skull:

vs 29 inch skull:

Both of those are Nile crocodile skulls (or rather, replicas thereof).

And just for fun, here are the skulls of completely different (and very extinct species), Deinosuchus:

and Purussaurus:

The bigger the crocodile (within a given species), the more massive the skull needs to be to compensate for that UNBELIEVABLE bit pressure.  This is one way to see from a distance whether you are looking at a normal sized crocodile:

and a truly extraordinary individual:

One of the things about Gustave that’s so impressive is how healthy his teeth look.  A lot of large crocodiles, in their old age, have very worn down and often missing teeth.  They do replace them many times over a lifetime, but when they get very old this slows down.  Gustave, at least in every picture taken of him, had teeth that were in very good condition.

Even crocodiles much smaller than Gustave’s reported size (probably similar in size to Dominator or Lolong) tend to have smaller or more worn teeth:

than the pinnacle of his kind: