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I think the Stormies did it because of the Lars resisting arrest.

Never have the Stormies been portrayed as ruthless blood thirsty killers who kill for the sake of killing.

During the Clone Wars we see them following orders unquestioningly because thats why they were created. So I'm leaning on the Lars breaking the law and the Stormies going a little over board.

I think that they were going to kill them in the first place, though, simply for the fact of having the droids in their possession at one point. Dead men tell no tales, afterall...

They clearly used widebeam kill.

Trek < Wars!

The Jawas are an important and influential species on Tatooine, much moreso than the moisture farmers!

Btw, are Gaffi sticks standard equipment? Just kidding.

Mr CorSec is right. See "TROOPS," the 1998 short film by Kevin Rubio.

Another good point... Grevious was "cooked" by five shots from a high powered blaster, but Aayla's body wasn't reduced to a skeleton from a dozen or so shots from multiple blaster rifles.

In "Han Solo at Star's End" a method of torture used by the Corporate Sector Authority Security Police called The Burning. It involves burning off all the flesh on a limb with a blaster set on low power. It is possible that Owen and Behru probably tried to cover for Luke and being bad liars the stormtroopers went to work on them.

Mr CorSec wrote:Sorry your all wrong

http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/troops/

This is what really happened

"Beru, do you want us to take him in?"

I'm going to quote myself here...

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... ht=burning

...

Also, there is some evidence that Owen Lars and Beru were subjected to interrogation by the stormtrooper squad. One blood-stained skeleton was prone a foot or so next to the stair down to the farmhouse, the other draped backwards over some low crates or the like. Neither was close enough to the stairs that they could have staggered out of the blazing inferno of the farmhouse and then scenically draped themselves; legs with the muscles burned off don't work. Further here is a possibly illuminating quote:

Han Solo at Star's End , by Brian Daley, 1979 (Daley also wrote the old Star Wars radioplay)

"...You Know what I refer to, Solo-Captain?"

Han did. The Burning was a torture involving the use of a blaster set at low power, to scorch and sear the flesh off a prisoner, leaving only blood-smeared bone. Usually, a leg would be first, immobilizing the vicitim; then the rest of the skeleton was exposed, inch by inch. Any other prisoners could be made to watch, to break their will. The Burning seldom failed to obtain answers, if answers were to be hand; but in Han's opinion, no being who employed such methods deserved to live.


Also, in the novel Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of Thonboka, L. Neil Smith, 1983, one of the characters, Klyn Shanga, uses his blaster pistol set at one-hundredth power to light a cigar. Of course, Shanga is from a technologically backward area that was rather brutally assimilated by the Empire, and so his blaster may not be quite up to spec in terms of its maximum output.


There are also references to variable power levels and focus of blasters in the above-mentioned Han Solo novel and its sequels. In Han Solo and the Lost Legacy, from 1980, Han and company are embroiled in a desperate fight with the ancient, armored war robots of Xim the Despot.

Han threw aside the useless assault rifle and drew his blaster, setting it for maximum power. Chewbacca stepped back, removing the magazine from his weapon and taking one of the larger ones from his bandoleer. Han stepped in front to cover him in a stiff-armed firing stance. He squeezed off bolt after bolt, deliberately and with great concentration, into the approaching robot's cranial turret. Four blaster rounds stopped the machine just as it fired in response. Han ducked the heatbeam that split the air where he had stood. As the robot fell, the beam traced a quick arc upward.

[Note: the robots are of pre-Repblic make, heavily armored enough that it takes two men to lift a disconnected head, and about half again as tall as a Trade Federation super battle droid.]

Later in the battle, the gunman Gallandro temporarily saves Han's bacon by shooting one of the robots. Gallandro is using a custom quick-draw blaster pistol similar to Han's:

The war-robot seemed to block out the sky, a machine out of a nightmare. But abruptly its cranial turret flew apart in a blast of charred circuitry and ruptured power routing as a thread-thin, precisely aimed beam found its most vulnerable point. Han scarcely had the presence of mind to take a step back, nearly treading on Chewbacca, as the automaton crashed at his feet like an old tree.


Han commenting on the shot:
"It was him, Gallandro," Han told his partner, "A fifty-, maybe sixty-meter tight-beam shot." The Wookie shook his head in bewilderment, mane flying.

...

In Han Solo at Stars' End, one of Han's compatriots sets a large disruptor pistol to deliberate overload, ruining the pistol, blistering the man's hands, and ruining the front of a CSA Espo troop hovervan. In Han Solo and The Lost Legacy, a shot from a compact disruptor pistol, sends the torso and limbs of one of Xim's war robots in a wild scatter, analogous to the effect of regular blaster bolts on TradeFed battle droids in The Phantom Menace.

The problem with that is the way the bodies are arranged at the threshold of the homestead. It looks like they were killed (most likely shot) while trying to flee the premises. One skeleton is prone just at the top of the stairs and the other looks like it fell backwards on top of something. Besides, what would be the point of using a special blaster setting to completely reduce someone to a skeleton? Skeletons can't talk, and it would be easier to simply shoot the victims once any information was obtained when say, an arm or a leg had been burned.

The fire could have been caused by any number of things from blasters, a grenade or some other incendiary to Aunt Beru's cooking. The stormtroopers could have simply set fire to whatever would burn to cover their tracks. Owen and Beru could have just been left to burn after being shot.

My theory:

The stormtroopers tried to question the Larses, but Owen and Beru wouldn't talk, or the troopers actually did find out where the droids were and decided to leave no witnesses (after all, they killed all the Jawas in the sandcrawler after they talked). The troopers walked out, chucked an incendianry grenade into the home, shot Owen and Beru as they tried to flee the flames and left them and the rest of the house to burn. Or they could have used a regular grenade, killed the Larses then torched the place. Either way, no witnesses, no way of Owen or Beru warning Luke, and no way of tracing the murders back to the Empire.

I always figured the troopers set fire to the place and at gunpoint forced the Lars' to burn to death for being resistant to their interrogation. They probably left once they knew the Lars' woud not get out alive and then the Lars in their last desparate attempt before succumbing to the flames and possible blaster/interrogation wounds, tried to get out of their house and just collapsed at reaching the top.

The area that I saw on fire was where beru came from. I think they fired some shots into the home, and some kitchen electronics made an electric fire. Owen found it first and, was ignited. he ran up the stairs, and unplugged all the electricity so that more power woundn't be put on the fire (hes streesesd and panicked) then, up comes beru. the fire had spead and she had been ignited in another room. she somehow summond just enough energy to get up the stairs, where she collapsed. Owen, over by the moisture vaporater trying to get enough water to put himself out. he then curls up in a ball, not being able to get water, and dies in pain.

(I don't know much in EU, and I haven't read the novelization, so I could have many things wrong)

Hate to stop all the speculation, but as I posted earlier, the events surrounding the Lars's deaths have already been nailed down in the the Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina anthology, in the "Stormtrooper's Tale" about Davin Felth. It's been awhile since I read it and I don't have it on hand, but from what I recall the stormies' CO (Cpt. Terrik) orders the farm put to the torch using the flamethrowers on an HAVr Flying Fortress.

Maybe someone with the book could clarify further, but it certainly wasn't a funky blaster setting that did the job.

gladius wrote:Hate to stop all the speculation, but as I posted earlier, the events surrounding the Lars's deaths have already been nailed down in the the Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina anthology, in the "Stormtrooper's Tale" about Davin Felth. It's been awhile since I read it and I don't have it on hand, but from what I recall the stormies' CO (Cpt. Terrik) orders the farm put to the torch using the flamethrowers on an HAVr Flying Fortress.

Maybe someone with the book could clarify further, but it certainly wasn't a funky blaster setting that did the job.

So what exactly is a HAVr Flying Fortress? Some type of gunship I'm guessing?

An armored heavy assault vehicle, yes. Sort of a tank.

And it's HAVr A9 Floating Fortress, sorry. I always mix that up.

Here's a pic:

+http://www.lusankya.org/hf/floatfort.jpg

http://www.galacticempiredatabank.com/A ... gFort.html

No flamethrower listed as standard, though.

Yeah. Like I said, it's been a long time since I read that story, so I don't remember precisely what happened. It could have been some other incendiary device that the stormies had with them.

Elfdart wrote:The problem with that is the way the bodies are arranged at the threshold of the homestead. It looks like they were killed (most likely shot) while trying to flee the premises. One skeleton is prone just at the top of the stairs and the other looks like it fell backwards on top of something. Besides, what would be the point of using a special blaster setting to completely reduce someone to a skeleton? Skeletons can't talk, and it would be easier to simply shoot the victims once any information was obtained when say, an arm or a leg had been burned.

They wanted to make it look as if sandpeople did it. I don't know if it makes sense for sandpeople to do that, but then again, it makes no sense to kidnap an old woman and torture her to death for no reason either.

The fire could have been caused by any number of things from blasters, a grenade or some other incendiary to Aunt Beru's cooking. The stormtroopers could have simply set fire to whatever would burn to cover their tracks. Owen and Beru could have just been left to burn after being shot.

My theory:

The stormtroopers tried to question the Larses, but Owen and Beru wouldn't talk, or the troopers actually did find out where the droids were and decided to leave no witnesses (after all, they killed all the Jawas in the sandcrawler after they talked). The troopers walked out, chucked an incendianry grenade into the home, shot Owen and Beru as they tried to flee the flames and left them and the rest of the house to burn. Or they could have used a regular grenade, killed the Larses then torched the place. Either way, no witnesses, no way of Owen or Beru warning Luke, and no way of tracing the murders back to the Empire.

What kind of incendiary grenade would burn them down to the bones like that? How much fuel can an incendiary grenade possibly carry in it? Real incendiary grenades can kill people and cause horrible injuries (see white phosphorous) but they don't have enough fuel in them to burn somebody down to the bones like that, and certainly wouldn't do so after being tossed into a concrete structure when the bodies were laying outside.

Here's a picture of the scene:


There is thick black smoke billowing from the workshop area, and we know that C3-PO had an "oil bath", so there are plenty of fuels there. If one rejects the notion that they did it with blasters, I suppose it's possible that they grabbed oil from the workshop, doused everything in it, and then torched it. Even then, I'm not sure it would actually burn Owen and Beru down to the bones like that; real burn victims aren't reduced to skeletons.

Something I've always wondered is why the Stormtroopers went through lengths to cover up their atrocities against the Jawas or Luke's aunt and uncle. Does the Empire actually care about its image that much? I mean, these are the guys who decided it would be a great idea to rule the galaxy through terror enforced by a planetoid-sized planet-killing space station.

Kenoshi wrote:Something I've always wondered is why the Stormtroopers went through lengths to cover up their atrocities against the Jawas or Luke's aunt and uncle. Does the Empire actually care about its image that much? I mean, these are the guys who decided it would be a great idea to rule the galaxy through terror enforced by a planetoid-sized planet-killing space station.

The Senate was either still in function or very recently dissolved. It makes sense that they had orders to keep up a facade in general, even on Tatooine. Even after that, it would have been prudent to cover the iron fist in a silk glove, though few imperials cared about that. One could even interpret such fakery to be against the Tarkin Doctrine (although I wouldn't). One might say that blowing up Alderaan marked the end of the imperial silk glove.

gladius wrote:Yeah. Like I said, it's been a long time since I read that story, so I don't remember precisely what happened. It could have been some other incendiary device that the stormies had with them.

According to the story, it was just a plain old Floating Fortress, armed with two blaster cannon, that was ordered to destroy the farm. Thus, the fire of the two blaster cannon is supposed to have killed the Larses, scorched their corpses down to almost bare bones, and presumably set the farm on fire with a penetrating hit. Just like those two blaster cannon were supposed to have simulated the attack on the Jawa sandcrawler once the stormtroopers themselves turned away, killing all the Jawas in the process even though the corpses looked like they'd taken small arms blaster hits to the center of mass. Overall, it seems implausible.

gladius wrote: It could have been some other incendiary device that the stormies had with them.

I still have to agree with that.
Like Darth Wong said, a grenade or a fire would be unlikely to cause a total loss of flesh like that.
And we've never seen a blaster fire a steady beam like "The Burning" would seem to imply. (not to say that there aren't blasters that can't). And we've certianly never seen an E-11 fire like that.

I'm still guessing a flame/plasma thrower. It's true that the troopers we saw earlier didn't seem to cary one, but since I doubt they walked all the way to the farm, we could assume that such a weapon was stored in their transport.

All that aside, the mental image of a Stormtrooper standing at the top of the stairs pouring a gout of fire into the adobe is too good to easily surrender.

Even if we count out 'the burning', flesh-cooking would be a sensible behavior for a very low-powered wide-angle blaster shot. Repeat several times, and...

ds615 wrote:

gladius wrote: It could have been some other incendiary device that the stormies had with them.

I still have to agree with that.
Like Darth Wong said, a grenade or a fire would be unlikely to cause a total loss of flesh like that.
And we've never seen a blaster fire a steady beam like "The Burning" would seem to imply. (not to say that there aren't blasters that can't). And we've certianly never seen an E-11 fire like that.

I'm still guessing a flame/plasma thrower. It's true that the troopers we saw earlier didn't seem to cary one, but since I doubt they walked all the way to the farm, we could assume that such a weapon was stored in their transport.

All that aside, the mental image of a Stormtrooper standing at the top of the stairs pouring a gout of fire into the adobe is too good to easily surrender.

As far as E-11's firing steady beams...what tool did the Stormtroopers use to cut their way through the airlock door into the Blockade Runner at the beginning of Ep IV? And later on in the film they burn their way through the turbolift door going into the detention center. I don't recall seeing any troops carrying around a specialized cutting tool so perhaps the blaster rifles can be set on a steady beam for close range burnination.

Kenoshi wrote:As far as E-11's firing steady beams...what tool did the Stormtroopers use to cut their way through the airlock door into the Blockade Runner at the beginning of Ep IV?

A TIE boarding craft.

Darth Wong wrote:They wanted to make it look as if sandpeople did it. I don't know if it makes sense for sandpeople to do that, but then again, it makes no sense to kidnap an old woman and torture her to death for no reason either.

If they wanted it to look like the Tuskens did it, why are there no gaffi sticks?

What kind of incendiary grenade would burn them down to the bones like that? How much fuel can an incendiary grenade possibly carry in it? Real incendiary grenades can kill people and cause horrible injuries (see white phosphorous) but they don't have enough fuel in them to burn somebody down to the bones like that, and certainly wouldn't do so after being tossed into a concrete structure when the bodies were laying outside.

The grenade itself would have just started the fire that flushed Owen and Beru out of the home. The stormtroopers carried all sorts of Tusken gear -and banthas!- to cover their tracks when they massacred the Jawas. I think it's reasonable to assume that they carried any number of combustible items and/ or could improvise something to burn away the flesh of their victims, if the fire didn't burn the evidence well enough. They might have even used the special setting on their blasters, if there is such a thing.

I just have a hard time buying the idea that after burning Owen and Beru with blasters after the point of such burning being lethal, the troopers would have bothered to scorch away all the flesh. If they got any info, it's a waste of time better spent looking for those droids. If they didn't get anything, shooting the farmers and torching the house and bodies would work just as well (and be easier) at covering (Presumably, Tusken Raiders do shoot people. ).

There is thick black smoke billowing from the workshop area, and we know that C3-PO had an "oil bath", so there are plenty of fuels there. If one rejects the notion that they did it with blasters, I suppose it's possible that they grabbed oil from the workshop, doused everything in it, and then torched it. Even then, I'm not sure it would actually burn Owen and Beru down to the bones like that; real burn victims aren't reduced to skeletons.

If left to smolder, they can burn away to even less. It depends on many variables. Ibn Fadlan described a Rus funeral pyre turning the body into fine ash in matter of minutes because the fire was unusually hot and the strong wind acted as a bellows.

Maybe I'm stuck on the soldiers being Stormtroopers who like the SS in Eastern Europe, used to set fire to buildings, shoot the inhabitants if they tried to run out, then burn everything to cover their tracks.

Elfdart wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:They wanted to make it look as if sandpeople did it. I don't know if it makes sense for sandpeople to do that, but then again, it makes no sense to kidnap an old woman and torture her to death for no reason either.

If they wanted it to look like the Tuskens did it, why are there no gaffi sticks?

Do Tusken raiders usually drop their weapons apon achieving victory?