How many Jedi were there, anyway?

[Agback]

G'day

Does anybody but me remember old Ben Kenobi telling young Luke Vader that the Jedi used to be the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy? How many people do you figure that takes?

Now I read that there were ten thousand Jedi serving the Old Republic. Were there other Jedi serving somebody else, or were those ten thousand spread out pretty thin?

Does anybody but me get the impression that George Lucas is not really comfortable with astronomical numbers?

Regards,


Agback

 

[Lily Inverse]

10,000 Jedi is the cannon number. However, there is ample evidence that Jedi aren't the ONLY guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic, just the most important / elite. Even a completely peaceful world like Naboo trains and deploys a limited security force, complete with their own custom starfighters.

 

[Ds Da Man]

I wonder if there were actually different sects of the jedi. I mean, while some were more complaicent, I wonder if some of the other jedi were a mixture of light and dark. Grey jedi, lone wolves sick of meditating while innocents were forced into slavery. We see Darth Vaders fall, but he looked to have numerous character flaws anyway. I would've envoked some punishment on the sandmen if I was jedi also, though I would not have killed them all. Surely there could have been some rational, yet forceful jedi. (There is in my campaign. )

 

[Neo]

The Jedi seemed to achieve a lot more in the way of ensuring peace and justice throughout the galaxy by reputation alone as opposed to an actual physical presence. And i assume this became the case because of thier success and fame from the Sith Wars etc..

As such i do not think thier actual numbers mattered much, although I think it is stressed quite well in the films that there was always less Jedi than enough and that thier numbers were stretched very thin.

 

[Siridar]

A whole lot, yet still never enough.

10,000 is just too round a number for my tastes. Who knows how many are just out there using the force for good, not necessarily abiding by the Jedi Council's rules? Force users who aren't considered "Jedi"

 

[Tonguez]

A whole lot, yet still never enough.
10,000 is just too round a number for my tastes.

Ghenghis Khan divided his armies into squads of 10 warriors, with 10 squads forming a 'platoon' and10 platoons forming a regiment and 10 regiments forming an army (thats 10000 warriors) - anyway just an interesting aside really

BUT I think that that 10000 is quite 'realistic' if you think of the Jedi as the Elite of the Republic Force.
Of course the Republic also had its standard Military and Peacekeeping forces, as did each planet within the Republic, the Jedi were just the elite few who maintained diplomatic peace rather than military peace...

 

[saduff]

10,000 is a really small number. With all the planets and star systems that the starwars universe contains.

 

[Ranger REG]

Doesn't the Old Republic have a standing professional military organization? Or do they govern by their own local planetary militia?

 

[Lily Inverse]

Doesn't the Old Republic have a standing professional military organization? Or do they govern by their own local planetary militia?

I don't think the Republic has any sort of army or millitia under its command by AotC. Instead, there are local security forces in every star system for the purposes of handling day-to-day affairs, and the Jedi to settle large, interplanetary disputes.

Remember, the Neimoidians were quite certain their embargo was over when the Jedi showed up to "force a settlement." If two Jedi are considered that dangerous by most of the galaxy, then 10,000, in untroubled times, might actually be adequete. Of course, the movies don't take placein untroubled times, because that would be boring.

 

[nameless]

Sure, 10,000 jedi is a considerable number when thought of as a cohesive unit. But 10,000 jedi is probably not enough to stick one on each planet of the republic, let alone the fact that there are hundreds if not thousands on Coruscant alone. Galaxies are big, containing hundreds of billions of stars. If only one in a million stars had habitable (by high tech terraforming type standards) planets, there would still be tens to hundreds of thousands of habitable planets. I realize that I'm just pulling numbers out of the air, but the point is that 10,000 is a miniscule number in astronomical terms. The jedi may very well be that elite, but they are hardly a peacekeping force to be reckoned with in that case.

-nameless