What do the Jedi and Sith do during their down time? You bet they use the Force to make life easier! That’s the whole point of having down time.

So I wanted to have a conversation between a couple characters that wasn’t just the usual “two people talking in the Drill Hall” setting and decided to have them driving one of the M-113’s downrange for some sort of field exercise– just to move things around a bit.

Sometimes the driver and TC (Track Commander) can have their own conversations through the CVC (Combat Vehicle Crewman) helmets. They have an internal comms system that can sometimes include the squad leader on a third line, although I have only seen this being used on a couple of occasions.

The CVC helmets can also be used as radio headsets to communicate with other vehicles, or receive and pass on instructions to and from other levels of leadership. Sometimes you have to be careful not to mix up your channels, because there have been times when drivers and TCs though they were having a private conversation only to find that a whole platoon of 30 people could hear them talking smack about someone.

And what’s the weird thing on Joe’s machine gun? It’s called a “blank adapter”, and it allows you to fire blanks from a .50-caliber machinegun– yup, those are a real thing. Joe doesn’t have any ammo loaded though, so it is equally possible that they may just be using blank adapters to keep the barrels of the weapons from getting too dirty.

As for Emperor Palpatine using his blue Force lightning to pop up some popcorn? Of course! He’s got to relax and distract himself while waiting for the Rebel fleet to arrive over Endor. The real surprise is that no one knew he was a big fan of the Great Empire Baking Show. Tonight’s episode: a cake in the shape of an AT-AT, with caramelized Bantha milk frosting. Yum, yum.

Until later.