Fallen Empires -- An Old Republic Era adventure (Star Wars)

You leave your hands hovering lightly over the controls, take a deep breath, and close your eyes. Inside, you're a mess of emotions: Terror and anxiety are most prominent, but they're not useful right now. Or at least, you're not willing to make them so. Not when you don't need to. Maybe never.

You find some point of peace within yourself, breathing growing deep and regular. You don't stop there, though. You don't merely embrace a passive calm, waiting for the Force to save you. You push past your negative emotions, focusing on the positive: Hope, letting that fuel a determination to do what needs to be done. You aren't imposing your will on the Force — instead, you're acting, and relying on it to help you as a trusted ally.

It's a dangerous line you're walking here, some would say, even as you feel the Living Force, feel how it touches every living creature on this planet, every blade of grass, every jungle predator, every sentient in old Imperial cities of grey durasteel. The feeling of love you feel for them as a collective and for the universe as a whole could so easily be twisted into something darker. Life is risk, though, and you're living in the moment. For now, what flows through you, whatever Jedi purists might say, is still Light. You know the difference. You've been taught well, if not quite typically.

Your hands move again, guided by the Force this time — not frantic, but certain. You will get your good little ship and your evil and awful and evil droid through this, even if X2-L4 is unlikely to actually be properly grateful.

You and the Force manage, somehow, to use what limited control you have to angle Roeza just right to arrest her descent, hitting the right air current so that the angle of your entry isn't quite so calamitous. You miss the ocean on one side, and a small city on the other.

The end result is, you hit the ground hard, but not fatally, landing in a forest amongst beautiful, ancient trees. Which the wake of your small starship does horrible things to. Branches snap, trunks topple, small animals flee for their lives, and you're thrown forward against your crash netting like hitting a wall. Everything goes black for a moment.

When you wake up, it's because something cold and metallic is jabbing you hard in the side, beeping shrilly in time to the poking. "Ow! I said ow! Stop it, Ex-Two!" You grab for the astromech's manipulator arm, but he rolls back away from you while you're still trapped in the netting, chiding you in beeps and clicks, conical head swivelling and forth for emphasis. Evil. And awful. And evil. You're very glad he's okay.

Struggling to your feet, you look around, noting the proximity of the lush foliage to your ship, the sounds of birdsong outside slowly beginning again, the very slight incline of the deck beneath your feet. Not that Roeza has a lot of foot room to begin with. A tiny cockpit, with a tight squeeze back into a slightly larger cabin. Beyond that, an engine room that smells like electrical smoke.

You poke your head into the engine room. Your qualified opinion? It's real bad. X2 pipes something sarcastic at you, you do your best to ignore it, going to check the outside of the ship.

Roeza's side hatch opens with a groaning, shuddering complaint, like it might give up halfway. So... That's working like normal. Less than normal is the wall of twisted wood that this reveals: you're pinned down beneath the vengeful corpses of trees that you and Roeza have recently knocked down.

Ugh.

With a sigh, you produce the object hanging from your belt — oh good, it's still on your belt! — and activate it with a comforting snap-hiss. In the numerous times you'd imagined the first time you'd actually use it outside of training or carefully managed sparring matches, it had always been for something considerably more dramatic than cutting wood.

As you set to work on the unglamorous task, you're taken back several years, to when you were learning how to build a lightsaber to begin with:


It had been another month before you finally managed to build the device humming familiarly in your hand now. In the end, which viewpoint were you swayed by?

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[ ] A lightsaber is a tool
It has numerous practical and symbolic uses, a shield as a sword, and combat is only a small part of why you carry it. Revering a weapon is abhorrent, and it is important to remind yourself that there are other options.
[ ] A lightsaber is a weapon
It is an extremely lethal implement that can kill or maim with a careless gesture. It is a killing tool and should be respected as such, without shying away from it when violence becomes necessary. Ceremonial significance and utility are important, but when you reach for your blade, peaceful options have been exhausted.

While we're here, where did the crystal come from?
[ ] You found it
[ ] You made it

This will have ramifications for the construction and appearance of your lightsaber, as well as how you use it. The same people trained you in any case.

Both votes will be counted together as a set, so please choose one from each list.