LAST EDITED ON Oct-10-01 AT 01:41 PM (EDT)

(a brief entry)

A lightsaber is a handmade technological weapon which generates a tightly focused plasma field in a magnetic bottle. The blade can generate heat within the magnetic field in excess of 5,000 degrees Centigrade, but the magnetic bottle protects the wielder from the heat. The weapon can cut through virtually any known substance, given enough time, although the cuts are nly clean in the sense that they are usually cauterized.

It's very important to note that all lightsabers are -handmade- according to methods which, despite detailed analysis of artifacts from the Golden Age of the Jedi Order, we still don't understand, except that it involves the alignment and energization of crystals. The mass-produced beamswords so popular among thugs and pirates during the Interregeneum are vastly inferior to true lightsabers, with a higher energy consumption rate, a lower plasma temperature (and thus a reduced cutting capacity), and most importantly a much lower level of durability.

It is, in fact, -illegal- to call a mass-produced beam weapon a lightsaber, thanks to the Galactica Court case Assoc. of Galactic Antiquities Dealers v. TaggeCorp, in which the antique experts of the galaxy demonstrated that the beamswords not only worked on a different principle from the true lightsaber, but was inferior to it in every demonstrable capacity, and thus Baron Tagge's attempted trademarking of the term 'lightsaber' for his company's product constituted false advertising.

Tagge chose not to have the Galactica Assembly overturn this court case, probably because by this time forty TaggeCorp sales agents had been killed by dissatisfied customers expressing their own opinion on the matter.

Legend has it (see JEDI ORDER) that true lightsabers could only be crafted by Jedi Knights or Masters. If this is true, then either the lightsabers are durable beyond belief, the Jedi kept multiple blades, or the things are still being made, because lightsabers are much more common than most artifacts from the Celadon/Atlantis and Yoma/Santovasku imperial era. A non-working but repairable lightsaber, when you can find one, will usually run SalCr5,000, whereas a working model will run twice that much. Lightsabers whose ownership can be traced to a specific Golden-Era Jedi (or even Sith) can bring ten times that much from collectors or historians. One of the greatest cons of recent history, the sale of a lightsaber purported to be that of the legendary genocide Darth Vader, cost the mark over a million credits before the fraud was revealed.

Lightsabers are generally covered by the same weapons laws as blasters or firearms, although there are exceptions. For more information on such laws (and on evading them), please consult the section on BEAM SWORDS.

--- Redneck (yay, more useless trivia of questionable accuracy)

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