We're back! A lot of you are anxious for information on Troy Denning's scarcely-detailed post-NJO trilogy, due out next year, so I thought I'd start by pointing out a very thorough compliation of all the hints we've gotten so far, posted on the NJO Encyclopedia's forums by MrNomAnor. Hopefully that'll tide you over until we get some sort of official summaries. Moving on...

Will we ever see a release of 'Escape From Dagu'? If not in print form, maybe as an ebook?

It's dead. Or "dead, dead, dead", as Del Rey Publicity put it. And if the VIPs' not-too-subtle hints on the TOS forums are taken into consideration, we should probably be grateful. Pablo Hidalgo put it best: "Out of curiosity, if Crystal Star had been cancelled in 1994, would you be so eager to read it?"

It is worth noting, however, that an old Holonet News article mentions Shaak Ti receiving a commendation for her actions on Dagu, so something did happen there. But a cancelled novel has no canonity (which may or may not be a word), so as far as continuity's concerned, that's all we know.

Why does Nom Anor suddenly start pronouncing the word as 'Jeedai' in Remnant when throughout the New Jedi Order he's quite comfortable pronouncing it 'Jedi'? Come to that he is suddenly more conformist to Yuuzhan Vong custom, dispising the old Coruscant foundation of Yuuzhan'tar...

A lot of people seem to have interpreted Nom Anor's feelings about the gods as his feelings about all of Vong culture. Yes, he does reject the gods themselves, but that doesn't exactly make him a GFFAer. Hatred of nonliving technology may have its roots in Vong religion, but it's also a cultural belief, and doesn't require belief in the gods. Just because someone favors abstinence, for example, doesn't mean he's a Christian. In fact, I can think of several instances over the course of the NJO when Nom expresses disgust for Republic tech, not just in Force Heretic and beyond. Sure, he'll use a blaster or an A-wing if it suits him, but that's just because he's practical. He's obviously gotten used to it after all those years in the GFFA, but never is it suggested that he doesn't still hate it.

And I'm not about to go look through all my books, but I'm pretty sure the "Jeedai" thing goes back and forth throughout the series, as opposed to him suddenly changing toward the end. You mention that he's comfortable pronouncing it "Jedi"; does that mean he definitely prefers it that way? If it furthers his own ends, Nom's comfortable with pretty much anything.

What's the actual process they go through in deciding who should die etc? And are new characters created through the authors or the company?

To the best of my knowledge, the only time a Star Wars author has ever been instructed to kill someone was in the New Jedi Order. With all the other novels, the authors are given, at the most, a rough idea of the story's theme and what characters are involved, and the rest, including life and death (though obviously they need permission if they want to kill a movie character, as with General Madine in Darksaber), is up to them.

Wow; seven commas in that sentence. I do believe that's a new personal record!

Anyway, for details on how the big deaths in the NJO were decided upon, I'd recommend reading the roundtable interview that came with the hardcover of The Unifying Force. The short version is this: they thought about killing Luke, Lucas said no, so they killed Chewie instead. They wanted to kill Jacen and make Anakin the hero, Lucas didn't want two Anakins, so they killed Anakin and made Jacen the hero. There's some contention about whether "two Anakins" was really the reason behind the decision, but the TUF interview makes it pretty clear:

Shelly Shapiro: He?s (Lucas) the one who said the alien invaders could not be dark side Force-users, that we couldn?t kill Luke, that we had to kill Anakin instead of Jacen (we had originally planned it the other way around).

James Luceno: His (again, Lucas) objection to Anakin Solo being the main series protagonist was, I think, possible confusion with Anakin Skywalker in the prequel trilogy of movies. There would be too many Anakins out there!

How did Ki-Adi Mundi survive Grievious (in the cartoon) to appear in Episode III?!

Good question! Seeing as how the cartoon just aired a few months ago (not a lot of time when production schedules are taken into account), no explanation has yet been given for his escape (or Shaak Ti's, Aayla Secura's, and K'kruhk's, for that matter). Hopefully we'll find out sooner or later.

One possibility, though purely speculation on my part, is that Grievous decided to intentionally inflict nonlethal wounds so that they could all live to tell the other Jedi about how badly he beat them. After all, we do know he's quite vain for a droid.

As for Sha'a Gi, Tarr Seirr, and Daakman Barrek? Um...they had it coming.

Where does Master Tholme get his scarred eye from?

Another good question. And another, as far as I'm aware, without an answer. Stick this one in the "we may never know" pile, alongside Saesee Tiin's horn.

Do you know where/when I can download the Hive? Is it free? Also, do you have a list of all the e-books and when they fit into the chronology, and where to find them?

All the Star Wars eBooks cost $3.50. You have to order them through an online bookstore like Amazon.com the same way you would order a regular book. They then give you a link to the download file, and the program you need to read it. More information on eBooks can be found here.

For a list of most of the eBooks, check out Del Rey's official timeline here. This has eBooks and regular books, but the eBooks are marked off so you'll know which to look for. There are also links to where you can order them. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to have been updated since The Unifying Force came out, so here are the two new ones: Fool's Bargain, set shortly before Survivor's Quest, and, of course, The Hive, set during The Cestus Deception.

In Shatterpiont it says Mace Windu's padawan was Depa Billaba however while playing Star Wars Galatic Battlegrounds Clone Campaigns it says that Echuu Shen Jon was Mace's padawan. Did Mace have 2 padawans or is this a continuity error?

He had two. Other than that he was in fact Mace's Padawan, almost nothing is known about Shen-Jon's life prior to the events in the game.

I heard through a friend and on on-line chats that during Anakin's and Obi's duel that Anakin falls into a lava pit. What book is this from?

While we won't know the exact details of the duel until Episode 3 hits, the original Return of the Jedi novelization from way back in the eighties mentions something along those lines (although the word "lava" is not used), to explain why Vader's in the suit. Here's the line in question:

We fought...your father fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever--he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker.

Since then, no one in the EU has touched it with a twenty-foot pole. Chances are pretty good that that's what happened, but the novelizations have already proven less than perfect with this kind of stuff, so you never know. If you're really anxious to know for sure, you could always go scan through our Episode 3 spoiler news. I'm avoiding spoilers myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if we had those particular details by now.

What are the different Forms (styles) of lightsaber combat? In Cestus Deception they talk about a couple, and they talk about a few in Shatterpoint. Could you maybe list them, and their descriptions?

The place I go for info on the Seven Forms is this discussion thread at SW.com. Each form is detailed by a number of different people with the help of a number of different sources, thus giving you a good all-around idea of each fighting style.