So, I'm currently in the business of turning my niece into a nerd, since she's finally come of age (old enough to speak and comprehend other's speech), and we had a very interesting conversation yesterday.

 

I was showing her my characters in ToR, and she was asking about their races as I did (her favourite is Chiss, but their eyes should really be purple instead of red so that it's not so scary, or even pink, pink is better, actually yeah pink), and we came to my Jedi Shadow, a female Miralukan. Conversation went something like this:

"But why is she wearing that over her eyes?"

 

"Well you see sweetheart, Miralukan's don't have eyes, so they like to cover up that part of their face so they don't scare other people." (she's 6, I'm simplifying here)

 

"But then, um... how do they cry?"

Ah, the random beautiful kiddy-wisdom. I was completely expecting a "But how do they see?", all ready to launch into a dialogue about the Force and how awesome it was, and she pops out that stunner. I love this girl so much.

 

"Uhm, uh... I don't know, actually. I guess they just don't cry."

 

"But it's okay to cry. Everybody cries." She's a massive sooky-lala, so I'm suspecting this is a repetition of what my sister tells her, but again she's caught me off guard.

 

So it got me thinking. I looked into the Miralukan race a little while ago trying to find out about their physical eyes, and all I could ever come up with were two conflicting tales - that they have lame, un-useable eyes, or that they evolved to have no eyes at all, and empty sockets with skin over them. The second, whilst being a little ew, seems more reasonable, as I can't see evolution bothering to keep the race with dud eyes when they can see so well through the force.

 

Miralukan's do have the full range of emotions; actually I suspect they possibly feel things in a completely more immersive, sensitive and complex way compared to ordinary humans, given their deep connection to the Force (I'll be comparing them with humans because it's the easiest way to get through this). So what happens when those emotions overwhelm them to the point of 'tears'?

 

When ordinary humans get to the point when they feel the urge to cry, the science behind it is quite fascinating. I won't go into detail, you can Google it if you like, but through our tears the body exerts a number of elements that were imbalanced in the body and helping to cause emotional turbulence. Magnesium i believe is one of them? Anyway, that's the science part of why you feel better after a good cry. Tears also work as a secondary defense for your eyes, and to help wash away and cleanse any nasties or rogue eyelashes that might get in there.

 

On the emotional and spiritual side, it is also a way of relieving stress and upset, that may have either been building up for a while or caused by sudden grievous (or sometimes awesome happy-good) news. It is a deep, often uncontrollable yearning to show mourning or joy., such powerful emotion that was can't keep bottled inside.

 

The science side of it tells me the idea of having 'lame eyes' is pretty silly. If the eyes aren't used then they wouldn't need tears for defense and cleansing, which are a tear's primary functions.

 

So, how do Miralukan's express this level of emotion? I already have my own theories and they are all to do with the Force but I'd like to hear from everyone else before I put them forth. How do Miralukan's 'cry'?

Ah children. Wonderful things.

Erhm, well the Miralukan have flesh covering the sockets so they may retain a vestige of a tear duct within the nasal region, so they may very well be able to cry but the function it once served, the cleaning thing, is long gone. Who says they didn't once have eyes? The evolutionary history of a race that sees through the force is bound to be a fascinating one filled with all sorts of twists and turns that we can't even imagine, assuming a laboratory wasn't involved somewhere.

 

Removing that possibility though, or even keeping it but making it redundant, perhaps they cry through the force in some way? Some sort of other emotional connection to others of their species via the force, a disturbance for lack of a better term. We see other humans are upset because of the physical reaction being upset causes, it's not unreasonable that the Miraluka have a 'force' reaction that happens when upset.

Edited July 9, 2012 by Nicoae

I was thinking something along the lines of a Force-cry, yes, and I can imagine it being pretty intense, especially for any other Force-users that may happen to be around. Actually, what I initially thought is that a Force-crying Miralukan would actually inadvertently make any other even vaguely Force-sensitive person around them burst into tears instead. Even so, I wondered if releasing that through the Force could compensate with the actual physical reaction that humans have?

 

Also, completely not denying that they had eyes at one point I've spoken at length about this with a sciency-friend of mine. He and I both reckon it is likely that their ability to see the Force was so far superior versus normal vision that evolution just went "y'know what, screw these eyeball things, I'm puttin' my juice into this awesome Force-connectly thing" and eyes were eventually scrapped for a far superior sense that could do vision and more.

Miralukans were a group of force sensitive humans who left the Republic because of persecution. The world that they settled on orbited a sun that gave off no visible light and they slowly began losing the ability to see using their eyes and began using the Force to detect their surroundings which evolved to become their ability to "see" through the Force.

 

As for the whole no eyes vs. no-functioning eyes thing I prefer the non-functioning eyes explanation the best, It came first and I don't believe evolution works that fast, they only left the Republic a few thousand years before the games time line.

Edited July 11, 2012 by jtjohnson

As I am playing a Bounty Hunter Miralukan, this thread is really intriguing to me. I have been formulating my own sense of how Marinda (my toon) operates in the world. Her backstory being that her mother had the brilliant idea of bedding a Jedi, in hopes of having a force sensitive child. The only thing Marinda inherited from her father was his eyes, so to speak.

 

Another concept that I've embraced is that she can't see colors or finer details. Anything subtlely optical would be lost on her. But being 'force sighted' means it's much harder to sneak up on her and those who are force users tend to stand out more than others.

 

As far as emotions go, I'm of the mind that like most blind people, her facial expressions are very expressive. More animated than that of a regular sighted person because how would they know to school them without actually being able to see their own expressions?

 

Lastly, the debate as to what's under the eye guard. I'm really trying to get a clear answer on this issue. The wearing of the eyeguard to 'hide' their race's distinct trait seems too subserivient to me.

Miralukans were a group of force sensitive humans who left the Republic because of persecution. The world that they settled on orbited a sun that gave off no visible light ...

 

Now wait a second. Why would a group of persecuted, but able-bodied humans choose a star that gave off no light? Besides the other sort of cosmic challenges this would present (is the planet heated by UV rays or X-Rays? Because that sounds safe and habitable! Could it be entirely geo-thermal?), being generally a sighted group of pilgrims, and given the size of the galaxy, surely they could have found another planet, a planet with light, to settle? And what's more, when they got to this pitch-black planet, they presumably didn't use any artificial light sources? They must've been already in the habit of force-seeing to the extent that their eyes would have already been becoming obsolete before their departure.

 

Thoughts?

As for the whole no eyes vs. no-functioning eyes thing I prefer the non-functioning eyes explanation the best, It came first and I don't believe evolution works that fast, they only left the Republic a few thousand years before the games time line.

 

Not to mention that the evolution thing still doesn't work 4,000 years after TOR either, because the Dark Jedi Jerec was a Miralukan, and he had non functioning eyes, still hid behind a mask, so.....

M guess is they still have tear ducts around the empty-eye area.

In the original canon (now called Legends) there were conflicting ideas as to whether or not the Miralukans had eyes that were non-functioning or simply had empty eye sockets. Thus you see multiple different uses of both cases in multiple different comics, books, fanfictions, and stories. However, in the NEW canon, the generally accepted form is that Miralukans do NOT have eyes and merely have eye SOCKETS. This was decided based on the canon integrated in KOTOR 2 with the Appearance of Visas Marr, who does NOT have eye sockets and is one of the few remaining "canon" Miraluka that held a critical role in the Star Wars history and/or storyline.