I: Beginnings
Nima Tyruti remembered her mother's face. It was so much like her own, and each time she looked in the mirror she saw herself growing into it. If there was much of her father in her, it was like the waters that were drawn down so deep from the wells of the village, a place merely of her mother's stories, and barely even that, that there was no flavor except the water itself.
She'd passed on stories, memories, and her face to her daughter. For she owned nothing, but memories she had to spare.
Nima's mother's face, lined with care as it was, sticks in her memory. Her skin was a soft, but rather light blue, and she had soft green eyes. Her face was gently rounded, though a strong chin stood out, though it was softened by the way she framed her lekku against her face. Her lekku had an odd purple pattern that someone had long ago said was 'like the waves.' It was this that her clan was known for, their own little flair.
Her clan had been traders, diplomats, and only occasionally warriors, in the southern reaches, where the people were kind and the fungus was sweet. That was what Nima was told, on those starships, in those first three years, going from venue to venue, with strange, cruel people covered in bizarre amounts of hair. At least to her young eyes, it all seemed absurd; though of course her mom had fake eyebrows, as if she needed them. Humans struck her, even back then, as a little weird.
She remembered clinging to her mother as she hummed, in that rich voice of hers, tunes from old Ryloth. Her mother taught her to read and speak both Ryl and Basic, patient and so detached from what she must have been doing for her slavers, five years distant from her home, and surely so lonely.
Nima woke up at night, year after year, with the same memories turned into confusing, senseless dreams. Not visions, at least not at first, but something entirely different. Dreams that seemed to interrogate her past, as much as recount it. If things had been different, she might have never escaped. Certainly the decision to smuggle Mala to Coruscant was greedy, but she must have been making good money, she must have been worth it, in the venal imagination of those slavers.
They hadn't counted on Jordyan Bell. But when she looked back, it was odd, the tricks the mind played. Try as she might, she couldn't remember the exact moment of freedom nearly as much as the moments after, when she left her mother, and the moments where she'd been huddled next to her mother, the slavers pacing, annoyed at the fact that the ship had been stopped for an inspection. But they were confident that their bribes would set things straight.
They hadn't counted on Jedi.
She presumed, because she'd been told, that there was a discussion about her. That something was decided, at some point.
Jordyan Bell, or Master Bell as he introduced himself, took her to the temple, and even spent a day or two showing the young girl around, still so young that she had to be carried.
"This is your new home," he said, gently. "I'm sure you'll meet all sorts of friends."
*******
The Temple was a place of calm. That's what she first appreciated about it. It was a place where people didn't just leave, at least not without a reason. It was stable, it was steady, and she loved the wide-open feel of the temple. There were grand vistas here, without concern for space, without desperate need to pack in sentients and call them cargo. There were beaches down in the lower levels, and menageries that the children were taken to when Master Dornhea, wizened and yet still sharp-tongued, tried to teach them animal biology.
There were the spires, five of them, for each of the four Councils and the sacred central Tranquility Spire. Initiates had to memorize them. The High Council tower in southwestern spire, where the Jedi decided the course of their entire Order and discussed things with the Supreme Chancellor, among others. The Council of First Knowledge had the northwestern spire, and they were in charge of education, as well as the archives and the library. Then there was the Council of Reconciliation, which handled diplomacy, and kept contact with the Senate, and was in charge, ultimately, of trying those Jedi thought to have strayed from their path. The final council, meeting in the Northeastern spire, was one few Initiates wanted to be too close to. The Reassignment Council was the one in charge of AgCorp and all of the various places where--to the initiates minds--the washouts went.
So they always tried to spend their free-time watching the comings and goings of Knights and Masters from three spires… but avoided the fourth, so fearful were they of somehow being noticed or getting in trouble. They dreamed of the adventures they'd have, the lives they'd save, and most of them couldn't imagine teaching the galaxy, or working as a glorified nurse, let alone using their force abilities merely to grow food.
There were a lot of places to explore, on top of the Spires, and the Temple wasn't the kind of place that out-of-shape people could truly enjoy. It was just too large. The Jedi practiced exercise even from a young age, and even the oldest Master tended to be able to get by, even the ones so old they never left the temple, and spent their time in meditation and study.
It was on some slave ship that Nima was born. It was in those moments where her mother held her and told stories that she first took root. But it was in the temple that she blossomed.
It became a home, just as her mother had been. Just as she still was, in a way, even after all of these years.
The Temple was a home, the Jedi were family: it seemed so natural to her, so obvious, that when the time came, when the war started, she wandered around shocked for a while, just unable to believe that sorrow in such great doses could poison--even briefly--the temple.
It was just the start.
********
Jordyan Bell was an odd introduction to kind humans. After all, he was a man whose face was given over to a thick, greying beard, and wild peppery hair, though she'd seem holopics of him back when he was younger and clean-shaven. But his beard, and the hair, only made his brown eyes seem more intense, his nose sharper, his features more memorable, for all that Nima had always wondered as a child whether it was scratchy to have a beard like that.
Every time he visited the Temple, he always stopped to check in on her, sometimes bringing her some small toy from his own missions. A ball, a wooden doll, little objects that they didn't begrudge a young Initiate having, as long as they understood that the purpose of a Jedi wasn't to acquire material goods.
And of course, food was always a popular gift, since the cafeteria had to cater to so many species that the food was often regarded as bland, even if it was also healthy.
She ate what he brought, and smiled and asked him about the missions.
He only said so much, but his eyes seemed to say it all, and there was the way he felt in the force, like hypermatter contained within an ion engine. Only a little of it ever seemed to escape, but it was enough to power starships, enough to give him an almost fearful intensity.
He was a Jedi who gathered allies, who debated points endlessly, who didn't stop at 'well enough' when it came to his passion: freeing slaves and ending slavery. It was inspiring, in a way, though she knew that it had to be exhausting to other Jedi to be around him when he wasn't fond of them.
And he was quite unfond of more than a few Jedi. It wasn't all of them he disliked. And when he was with her, he was quieter, more at peace. He liked her, and she was also proof that he'd helped someone, an accomplishment.
Understanding that took a while, and even years later she still wasn't sure how much that drove him, but nobody who worked as fast and hard as he did, even into his fifties, could be secure in his accomplishments.
There was so much more to do, he'd say sometimes.
"Hey, Nima," he said, just two weeks before Geonosis and the world changing. "I'm going on a bit of a mission, I might be gone for a little while."
"Where are you going, Master Bell?" Nima asked, looking up at him, her lekku twitching curiously.
"There's been a series of raids in the Alranlikan sector. Slave raids. It seems as if there's tension there, and it's in the Outer Rim, so if I don't get involved, who will? The Judicials? They're too busy with Dooku's folly. So I have to do it instead."
Nima frowned. Everyone had been talking about Count Dooku and the Separatists, and nobody had really convinced her one way or another about just what they wanted and what they'd stoop too.
"Do you think the peace talks will break down?"
"I think they might. They'll be at least limited fighting. I'm not sure what form it'll take," Jordyan said. "But… I can't imagine it ends easily. I don't know the details, and this isn't the Force telling me it. But something like this, a crisis like this, corruption this deep: it can't end except by violence." He sighed, though his eyes and mouth, thin and drawn, didn't look quite as sad as his words. "Not this late into the process."
"I hope they can talk it out," Nima said.
"I've met Dooku. If there is a peace, he'll spend months drawing out the debates slowly. He's old, and has patience. Whereas I'm old and without time to waste." Master Bell shook his head and said. "If you need anything, or you have any problems with your lessons, you can always ask for Knight Nuren." Veize Nuren, a Clawdite who always teased him when he was around, joking about his beard. He never reacted, but since he never told her off, he couldn't disapprove that much.
She was one of his friends. He had more than a few of them, interested in slave rights and fighting for it. It was almost a network.
A nice woman, really. Nima smiled. "I'll keep that in mind, Master Bell."
He reached down and patted her shoulder, and not her head or her lekku, which were starting in on another growth spurt. Too many people thought her lekku were theirs for the touching. They really weren't.
"Good. Study hard, work harder. I'll return, and we can talk again then." He considered it and shook his head, frowning a little more. "Or perhaps practice."
Nima nodded. He wanted her to do her best. She liked that, liked having so much expected of her… now, at least. It made her feel important, respected. Loved.
*******
The Force came in a thousand hues and shades, it flowed through almost numberless beings. To Nima, it was the well that could never run dry, the feeling that would never run out. The force felt, in her quiet moments, as if she was wading into a gentle pool. Her thoughts were ripples, disturbances on the calm balance of the pond, and so she had to submerge them, to act and not think.
To be a Jedi was to listen to intuition, to know not only to feel, but
how to feel. It was control and yet freedom. It was dancing on the edge of a railing--a feat that Nima had done before, just for fun--and knowing at every moment that there wasn't even a chance of falling.
When it worked, when she sank
deep beneath the Force, she was the water itself, and when she fought as the water, she was unthinking and yet wise power.
In a place like the Temple, the force felt almost familiar, as if it were alive, and poking and prodding at her. It was everyone else here, their own grasp of the Force, the way that they shaped the waters.
That, she thought, was why a place could feel like the dark side, as Master Bell had once said of a slave hold on a smuggler ship. Concentrated emotions, concentrated sapience, could leave a lasting impression, and so the Force at the Temple had a different 'taste'--as Victor Moreno termed it, the fellow initiate brushing back his blue-black hair and smiling at his own teasing references to his budding psychometry--then it did anywhere else.
Of course, to truly know that one way or another, Nima would have to leave the Temple. And when she did, it'd be either as a Padawan… or as part of the Service Corps.
Now, there was a thought that kept the Younglings up at night, before the galaxy changed, and there were far more pressing fears to haunt a Jedi-to-be.
There were worse things than a life in AgCorp.
They learned that thanks to a place they'd never heard of, some planet called Geonosis.
******
Numbers in the night shed their own sort of dark light.
After the battle of Geonosis, with over a hundred and eighty dead Jedi, including some of the best of the Order, the bodies had to be dealt with. It felt cold to say it like that, and yet this was the truth.
There were ships sent, and cryo-pods were loaded up and stacked as if the bodies were so much plastisteel. And almost all of the Jedi bodies returned home, those for whom any part could be found, to the only place that they could have called that.
The Initiates, the Masters, everyone from the oldest to the youngest turned out to stare at the pods on the hover-platforms as they filed in. There were not enough Jedi skilled in preparing bodies, not really, just a few old Masters, and so they hired locals, patriotic and curious--staring at every initiate as if they were strange monsters--to help. To help while staying in an outer atrium, far from the center of the Temple. Nothing much to see except some architecture.
Dignity was difficult to imagine, but as much as possible the Jedi were changed, or so people whispered, into clean robes, their blood wiped up, their bodies prepared.
The original plan had been to burn four bodies each night, in the traditional Jedi funereal practices, followed by a sort of reception to remember the dead, and mourn them.
Few of the Initiates were invited to the first set, or to the second. Classes stopped as Masters stepped out to weep, sorrow that was not denied but was embraced: all were one with the force now, but grief still tugged at every soul. Those who knew nobody, who saw over a hundred deaths, could only be shocked at the outpouring of grief.
Yoda was cloistered day and night answering questions and worries as the galaxy seemed to burn. His door was open so constantly that one began to wonder when he even slept. Those who slipped in left comforted, usually, or at least more composed.
Then came second night, the third night, only twelve done and yet the very temple itself seemed to shake with the sorrow that built up and crashed upon all at the most unexpected of moments.
On the fourth day, they picked ten Knights and Masters and burned them all on the same night, though still separately. There wasn't time, in all of that, to give each dead the respect and the memory they deserved. Old Masters, too old to go out, too old to quite grasp the scale of the death and the war, grumbled at this, muttered that it wasn't right.
Some of the Initiates thought the same, but Nima instead waited, each day, for Knight Nuren not to be dead. She'd died leading some sort of infiltration force, to go after the factories, or--something.
Nima wasn't yet the war-hound that most initiates would become, war seemed to her too far away to think about in reference to a woman she'd cared for. So she'd tried to focus, and tried not to cry when her death was thrown together with the other Knights.
On the sixth day, those that remained were grouped into three Categories. Padawans one day, Knights the next, Masters after that. A mass cremation, so many ashes after each night that all of the tears in the Temple couldn't wash them away. Not distinguished, not held apart. Defiled, some Jedi muttered, though the war pressed on all, and there was no time. On the eighth day it rained, and the Masters had to wait, and everyone held their breath as the first reports of the war itself began to leak in, slipping like a vibro-dagger into a Temple still caught up in its own sorrow.
Nine days later, at last the act was done. There was still some dissatisfaction, for of course, there was the paradox of the Jedi. They weren't supposed to grieve too deeply, let it control them, but they were supposed to remember and honor the dead, they were supposed to care for others. With so many deaths coming so fast, there was no way to deny the grief, to set it aside. For those nine days, grief and sorrow were the Masters, and Jedi the inexperienced Padawans. Not everyone was bowled over, Yoda seemed unchanged, at least on the outside.
And Master Windu? He'd left. Of course he had. There was a war on.
There was a war on, and as the procession of death wound on, day after day, Nima watched the Temple empty as the Jedi sought chances to go off and fight the war, go off and try to forget what the Temple had become.
Jedi were empaths, they felt as others felt, at least the ones who knew what it was to be a Jedi, and so even those who hadn't lost anyone could get swept up in the vast tidal waves of sorrow crashing over the Temple. Even those who tried to remain stoic couldn't help but cry, even if it was in private. As long as they didn't let grief overwhelm them, control them, then it was acceptable, or so many argued.
But it almost did that.
There would be a pall cast on the Temple for months, one that would lift only once people began thinking as warriors, began following the war and worrying in ways that at least dulled the pain.
But even then, the Temple was never quite the same.
*******
Almost a month after the last Geonosis Funeral, things were in theory back to normal. All of the usual classes were being taught, though now there was talk about getting together classes on tactics and strategy, and people whispered about the strange happenings. There were battles all across the galaxy, and already there was a bizarre superweapon employed by the Seps.
People asked, "What's a Dark Reaper anyways?"
People shook their heads. Or shrugged. Or sorrowed still.
But Initiates trained, just as they always had.
In a side-room the various Youngling Clans gathered en masse to study the ways of the force. This side room, which some called the Pink Room, had bare walls and a bare ceiling, but the floor, covered in tiles that formed a mosaic of shapes and shades of pink and purple, seemed as if it were from some very different place. Who had decided to have a room tiled so? Was it some art by a Jedi? Was it just chance? Either way, Nima liked the room, and the class itself was rather popular.
Master Jin'sh, a quiet, peaceful Bispinan--a species with four horns and rough, cattle-like skin--gave each of the Younglings a set of balls when they started the class, at six years old. One was a hard, red rubber ball, the other a softer, fluffier white ball.
Their task was to compete against each other and learn how to work with the ball using the Force. In one game they'd bounce the ball against the hard tile ground and then try to use the Force to slow its descent, or even hold it in place. Or they'd try to use the force to launch the ball at the far wall, and then sometimes catch it. Or they'd play tag, but only with the softer, fluffier ball.
The kids treated it like a game, but it had real value. The class was divided by age, and the tests and challenges only grew harder as they grew up, until they almost stopped being games.
This was the class where the ten and eleven year-olds learned, and it was going well, working with ball races and bounce-catch, when Master Jin'sh turned, feeling a presence before they did. A human Knight, a man with blonde hair, stepped in and bowed. "Master Jin'sh. You are needed. It… shouldn't take too long."
"Bah. Very well. Younglings, please sit and meditate among yourselves. I shall be back." And then he stumped off, ducking his head instinctually as he left, though the door wasn't so low that his horns would get caught on them.
Which left the two-dozen or so children to whisper among each other. Well, some of them meditated. Katarina certainly did, the human girl the sort for whom 'five meditation sessions a day' was the lower limit. But Amada, the other Twi'lek her age--in Clan Bear, dark green, and born safe and sound on Ryloth--was cheerfully debating with Cho Okbia, a very partiotic Mon Calamari girl who always followed the actions of the Galactic Senate. And others were pacing, or talking of lighter things such as what lunch would be like. Or why Master Jin'sh had been dragged off in the first place?
Wessen, a shy, retiring Quarren, a girl who always seemed to be hovering at the edge of any group, was trying to meditate.
Trying was the word for it, because a red ball kept smacking into her, not so hard that she was going to bruise, but hard enough to hurt. At first she didn't seem to realize who was doing it, but in the Force to anyone paying attention, and from the grin on his face, it was clearly Aydan Vyerly, a large, somewhat ugly human male who was reckoned as one of the best lightsaber duelists of their age-group, however little that meant.
More than that, the red-haired boy was a bully, and someone who was disliked by more than a few people, though when he wanted to be polite--such as with the teachers--he could be.
Finally, after almost a minute of this, Wessen spoke up. "Why are you doing this? Please stop." She was looking right at Aydan.
Aydan stood up, not even bothering to deny it as he smirked, and waved an arm. His ball looped around to smack her in one of her face tentacles again. "You should leave," he said, loud enough that other people could hear it. "You're not good at fighting, you'll just die stupidly in the war. If you left, or joined Ag Corp or something, then you wouldn't be in our way." He forced out every word, glaring at her and walking up to her as she shrank back from him. "Got it?"
"N-no."
"You think you deserve to be a Jedi? You can't even stand up for yourself. You're not weak in the force, sure. You aren't like that older girl everyone talks about. But you're not any good, you hear that, Wessen?" Aydan snorted and stomped the ground next to her.
She all but leapt up. Some of the other kids turned and glared at him, and yet none of them wanted to confront him.
At least not here. Perhaps they had plans, perhaps they thought that Master Jin'sh would notice, though in Nima's experience they sometimes did, and sometimes didn't. Besides, she didn't like bullies, or people who lorded their abilities over others.
Nima Tyruti decided to do something about it.
But what? (Choose 1)
[] Try to get some other people involved. Nima has more than a few friends, and she knows how to talk to people. Try to confront him with a group, and make him back down from his actions when seeing group disapproval.
[] Nima knows people. Talk to him, try to figure out why he's lashing out. Nobody is just a jerk… or, well, not entirely, and there has to be some reason.
[] Nima is good at arguing and debating. All sorts of Jedi are needed, even if it's true that Wessen isn't great in a fight. Argue him down with reasonable points!
[] Go and comfort Wessen. She's in need of help, and that matters more than punishing Aydan or proving him wrong.
[] At the next Saber practice, get into a duel with him. Defeat him, or try to. He thinks he has the right to decide who deserves to be a Jedi when he's just an Initiate like Nima, Wessen, and everyone else?
[] Tell Master Jin'sh as soon as he gets back. The proper authorities need to know, and surely they'll correct his behavior… though he's taken such punishments before without stopping.
[] See how he likes being hit with a red rubber ball!
******
A/N: So I do realize there's a lot of fanon that goes into this. But Jedi have Funerals, we know they do. That implies grief and mourning, and Yoda organizes a wake of sorts in Dark Rendezvous where they recount memories of the dead. Clearly, Jedi focus on remembering a life well lived and processing through the grief, but that means they know grief exists and don't deny it, in its proper place (a qualification that every civilization that has ever existed has followed, with differences on what the proper place is). What is dangerous is being swallowed by grief, drowning in it.
And over a hundred bodies breaks down the very individual process of remembering each solitary life. Jedi have never had to deal with this many deaths so close together, and without any time to cope without before having to go to war.
That, combined with the empathy that being a Jedi involved, made me imagine a system just breaking down, and what that'd mean.
I tried to be a little vague with at least some background events. I don't really know that much about the Dark Reaper crisis, but it was an early thing, and so I could mention it was background, just as with the death of the clawdite Knight. Another victim of covert-ops stuff? Who knows?
Aydan, well. You'll see more. Hopefully all the characters and actions make sense.
If you have any complaints, or canon questions, feel free to ask them.
Also, feel free to ask
@NemoMarx too, especially mechanical-ish stuff.
NemoMarx is the co-GM.
