I liked that shout out, too. Good to have that clarity since Ahsoka (and more recently as a direction, Tales of the Empire) focused so much on the Nightsisters themselves.
That said, I still find it curious that Headland chose to use the term witches for this group of women. I fine with them not being Nightsisters, how they weren't connected with Ahsoka's revelations about the Nightsisters, and how they had a strong religious goal in mind (one that isn't entirely clear still). But why "witches" and not some other term? It's certainly not a big deal, just a creative niggle that I'm having.
As
@Commander Troi says, I think it's mostly just an easy shorthand for
"explicitly all female force cult", but it could also be more specifically mean
"explicitly all female force cult that practices ritualistic force use and harnesses primordial magicks".
It could also have a somewhat derogatory connotation too, as if this isn't "proper" use of the force, but a primitive means that steeped in superstitious beliefs or mystical affectations as a means to intimidate and engender fear and awe. Another factor could be their tendency, or at least willingness to lean to the dark side. Even if that's not always necessarily the case, the Nightsisters may have left enough of an imprint on galactic culture from their Witch-kingdom building days for the two to become synonymous.
We've also seen the word "Wizard" and "Sorcerer" used in Star Wars to refer to force use (even if inaccurately), so maybe there's a whole glossary of terms for practitioners of different types of force use. One might even speculate: -
- Warlocks: Like witches, but all-male covens.
- Necromancers: Uses a combination of psychometry and meditation to affect a means to channel the spirits of the dead - or more accuratly; their lingering memories imprinted upon the force.
- Shamans (highly ritualistic and uses psychoactive substances (and nose lizards) to induce force visions, most often found in primitive tribal societies.
- Conjurers: Mostly employing illusion, trickery, and even sleight of hand. Probably mostly synonymous with "charlatan", as they were often not actual force users, just grifters employing simple tricks and spouting nonsense.
- Soothsayers: Use force visions to predict the future via meditation, or ritualistic means.
- Scryers: Like soothsayers, but by a method that employs some sort of external device or mechanism to divine.
- Sages: Philosopher and advisor. Probably the closest to Jedi in outlook, but not so much with the martial practices.
I can see a time in the galaxy where a lot of these things were way more common and widestread, and just about every planetary court and Star Kingdom had some stripe of force user as advisors, bodyguards, or powerbrokers. Most could be fairly weak by what we think of as force users, since perhaps it was the Jedi that discovered midichlorians and they were the new cult on the block and the first to focus on training only those with high m-counts, quickly leaving most of the others in the dust.
Perhaps. I'm looking at it from a purely physical standpoint. You need of material to feed that fire and it didn't feel like that structure had that much. Just a lot of rock and metal equipment. I'm probably just overthinking it.
It's an old mining facility; there could be all kinds of equipment and materials still stored there that could be quite volatile and in deep disrepair.
Maybe once the internal power grid starts to short on one place, it overloads in another starting a lot of small electrical fires in others. Maybe one fire starts in whatever room they store the fuel for those lamps, which I wouldn't be surprised if they also use for cooking fuel, and so is also stored near the kitchen. One might be surprised the sorts of thing that can catch fire easily just in a normal household, even in the kitchen and/or pantry there's things like cooking oil and even certain powdered food can cause quite the explosion if aerosolised (ever seen that
Mythbusters episode with the creamer explosion!?) Once things start exploding, anything else around that can explode usually will, so it can escalate fast!
As I said though; another factor could be the mere illusion of the quick passage of time, thanks to editing. Mae and Osha's room is quite high up near the top of the fortress; even going full pelt it would have taken Mae a few minutes to make it down into the courtyard below. Also Osha would need enough time crawling around in the vents to actually get down *underneath* the main floor when the first explosion hits. Even being able to take a more direct route between levels, it'd take a while.
