The Death Star, it seems, is in prototype stage. Of all the cities expected to begin development on a planet destroyer, I have to admit that Barcelona was very low on the list. Just under rjyvic (sic) and above Jamaica, I never really thought that those party loving Catalans had it in them. Pick-pocketing and ring roads, sure, but enormous machines of death just seemed so out of character. So it comes as no surprise to learn that those nasty swiss people are involved.

I have begun working my way through The New Jedi Order (TNJO) series of novels. They take place some twenty five years after the end of The Return of the Jedi and a scant five years after the final truce with the Imperial Remnant. The novels detail the New Republic’s defence of the galaxy against an invasion by the Yuzhan Vong, a warrior race that despise technology and have ships made of coral. Add the fact that they have amphistaffs, the equal of a lightsaber in sheer future of sword-ness, and you have a fairly heated battle on your hands. This does not concern me too much to be honest. It is all set in the future or the past or something and bares little impact on my day to day life.

Events in the movies do have an immediate impact though. That shit is not far off becoming a reality and the recent developments in Barcelona stand testament to this. People are developing the technologies to destroy the planets of peaceful peoples and the Swiss are building the triangular prototypes of these technologies in Barcelona. Troubling times.

Folk that have read the other five hundred and seventy two Stars Wars novels that I have not yet read will be able to help fill in the blanks here, but in book three of TNJO there is some talk about an architect by the name of Qwi Xux; the very architect of the Death Star, the Eye of Palpatine and the Sun Crusher. Luke, his wife Mara Jade Skywalker and his nephew Anakin Solo travel to the planet Vortex (I’m serious, the planet is called Vortex. Cool name for a planet, hey?) to ask this chick some questions. She is not much help to them though as she is no longer in practice as an architect, let her registration lapse, no longer in the business of all-encompassing vehicles of genocide. So they go and do something else, I can’t remember what, but it probably involved beating up the Yuzhan Vong with lightsabers and Luke saying something trite about the Force.

It is a shame that Ms Xux featured so briefly, I wanted to know more about her career as an architect, how her practice operated, did they have an open plan office, what sort of printers did they use? Did they use printers? More than this though I wanted to know about her time as a young architect. Where did she learn her skills? Did she in fact work at the offices of Herzog & de Mueron while the Barcelona Death Star Prototype Phase One was being designed and documented? The cover of El Croquis 109/110 is no help, if she is there it is impossible to tell. The people are all too small.

Is Qwi Xux at the offices Herzog and de Mueron learning the art of cold hard indifference from Jaques? If so she must be stopped. Before it is all too late and all is dead and death.