[C Of K]

Originally Posted by Delvo

Is there something about the Force that compels it to have outlets, so that if there aren't enough Force-users out there it's compelled to randomly attach itself to some more new people?

Well, the force has shown itself to be more than just a stagnant pool of power for people to draw off of. In GL's vision, the force has a purpose, and a will, and moves events in the galaxy to accomplish its own ends.

In this sense, Luke is a dutiful servant of the force, listening to it as it guides him to find new jedi. But many of the members of the new jedi order were born after the fall of the Empire, in which case the Empire had no means with which to find these people.

They certainly had incentive to find them wherever they could, at least to kill them even if not recruit them, especially the more powerful ones who didn't become Emperor's Hands.

Actually considering the burdens of running and Empire at war, the Emperor probably had little care to kill people with sensitivity to the force unless they were already trained to use it. Few people could become sufficiently adept jedi on their own to pose any kind of threat to the Empire. The only reason Luke caused any kind of disturbance in the force, was because he had been trained to use it by Ben Kenobi in ANH.

But the Emperor also couldn't afford to recruit many of these "Hands" either. As far as I know, the "Hands" didn't know about each other. Could you imagine trying to keep a couple hundred of them separated? 0.o

And the most likely source of new Force-users is the children of known ones anyway, and those were all wiped out by the end of TRotJ except for Darth Vader's two children.

How many children of known ones could there have been? Anakin was probably one of the few who would even dare go that road before the rise of the Empire. After the rise of the Empire, any surviving jedi did too much running and hiding to consider having children for the first few years. Even after a few years, most would probably be too disillusioned to attempt raising the jedi order again. (especially with their own children)

Obi Wan was probably not disillusioned a.) because he knew Yoda was alive and b.) because he had direct contact with Qui Gon Jinn. But the powers of most jedi were probably very diminished during the dark times.

I've been wondering something about the search for new Jedi after the fall of the Empire. How can there be so many, and how can so many of them not be rather weak?

Regardless of everything I said above, there probably is too many. It's likely however, that many of these jedi are weaker than you assume. But few jedi were ever portrayed as incompetent, so perhaps they don't come off as being weak...

Based on all of that, the Skywalkers should be just about alone in the galaxy... maybe a few stragglers or random new cases here and there.

Agreed. I think if there were not so many, better stories might be told. But horses for courses, of course.

we've got quite a large amount of Force-using ability out there. How could these folks exist without drawing the Empire's attention but then still be noticed by the New Republic? The New Republic's search method ("investigate reports about people who seem too lucky") certainly can't be a vast improvement over the established earlier methods.

In conclusion, I don't think it has as much to do with search methods, so much as it has to do with searching in general. By the time of ANH the Empire had likely stopped searching for jedi. Luke was doing almost nothing but searching at the time he became a jedi master.