A Link to the Past
Tyro Torwin was often called a master of the Force. It wouldn't be empty bravado to call himself the best practitioner of the Blazing Chains techniques in the galaxy. But he had no delusions of his understanding being complete, or even rudimentary. The Blazing Chains was useful, but unlike many other Force sects, it saw the Force merely as a tool to be utilized for survival.
And for many years, that had been good enough. Torwin could laugh at the Jedi and the Sith for treating the Force with the reverence they did. He treated the Force as a mere tool, albeit a useful one, and he was just as strong as many Jedi Knights he had seen in action.
Then Lady Ciaran changed that. The Blazing Chains didn't typically use the type of Forcesight all Miralukans natively had, though Torwin had discovered it himself and implemented some form of it to shoot without looking. But the sheer ease with which she saw boggled his mind. Torwin had to concentrate and stop moving in order to see even muddy outlines of life. But Ciaran navigated as if her eyes worked perfectly.
That had challenged him, but the idea of Forcesigh becoming so natural was justified easily. Miralukans practiced Forcesight constantly since birth, whereas he had discovered it as an adult and rarely used it. It only made sense that they were more skilled with it than he. But when he discovered that Lady Ciaran, in fact most Force users, could glimpse the future through the Force, Torwin's belief in what the Force was shook once more. He himself had never experienced that, and no member of the Arcblade Fleet he had ever talked to mentioned it either.
Still, he could accept this. The visions as they were described were never set in stone, never perfect, helpful clues at best. The Blazing Chains ignored the Force as anything other than a way to move things with the mind. It made some kind of sense that a sect that looked at the Force in the opposite way would develop equal but opposite techniques.
Then came the biggest blow to his own non-faith. Darth Vectivus, a Sith Lord long dead, had taken form as a phantom of sorts, and still resided in his manor. Which Ciaran had somehow talked him into giving to her. So Torwin took a sabbatical, leaving his classes to themselves with only hope that they wouldn't crash the Oracle by the time he returned. The other revelations about the applications of the Force could be reasoned away, but this required personal verification.
"For the last time, I don't need a dental plan! I dead for all things sacred!" Torwin almost didn't believe his eyes. But if his senses were failing him this drastically, there was no real alternative but to treat this as real.
"I'm not here to make you sign anything." said Torwin. "I only wish to talk."
"What about?" asked the phantom of Darth Vectivus. "It had better not be that timeshare nonsense again. I can't leave the damn manor."
"Not that. The Force. Of what you are, and how it came to be." said Torwin.
"Usually we Sith put everything on a holocron for our apprentice to read once he kills us. It's a dumb tradition. I have requirements on most of my knowledge, but killing me isn't one of them. But in either case, why should I tell you?" said Vectivus.
"I am Tyro Torwin, Lady Ciaran's adviser on the Force. I am in charge of training those with the potential to use the Force in the Abyss Watchers." said Torwin. "But many techniques of the Sith and Jedi are foreign to me. I wish to learn, so that I may better understand what the Force is."
"Hah!" laughed Vectivus. "People have been asking that for millennia, and we're no closer to the answer. People thought they were onto something with mitichlorians, but those are just an indicator of the Force. A result, not the cause. If you want to know what the Force is, I can't tell you. And I'm pretty close to being part of it."
"I don't care about the theories, the ins and outs. I want to know what the Force is capable of. I've lived with it for decades, used in everyday, but I continue to learn of new ways it could be applied, with what seems like no limit. I mean, you're not dead! If someone had asked me even a month ago I'd have said the Force was not capable of such a thing."
"No Darth slapped on front of your name, no pretentious robes or philosophy. You're clearly no Sith of Jedi. What Force sect are you?" asked Vectivus.
"Blazing Chains raiders, former lieutenant of the Arcblade Fleet." said Torwin.
"Ah, the telepathic gun people, that explains it. The Unexplored Territories are a bad place to be if you want to steal everyone else's techniques. Sith and Jedi have known of 'Force Ghosts' as they call them for centuries. Anyone strong enough with the Force can do it pretty easily. But that's just a facsimile of life. A Force Ghost has your memories, but it doesn't have your mind. Just limbo, unable to parse new information. Can't even hold a conversation all that well."
"You seem rather well spoken." said Torwin.
"That's because I'm not a Force Ghost, I'm a Force Phantom. Instead of smashing myself into the Force to leave an imprint, I tied the Force to my soul, which I then tethered to something in reality. I'm not actually dead. Just on a kind of highly functioning life support." explained Vectivus. "There is no true way to cheat death. Prolong life, perhaps indefinitely, but no true escape."
"Still, even that is far more than I've ever thought of using the Force for. I simply redirect blaster bolts." muttered Torwin.
"Are you good at it?" asked Vectivus.
"What?"
"I asked if you were good at redirecting blaster bolts?"
"Perhaps the best in the galaxy." admitted Torwin.
"Then there is no shame in not knowing the limits of the Force. No one does, and any who claim to are lying, idiots, or both." lectured Vectivus. "We use the Force for what we need to. I was a businessman, and so I used the Force in ways that helped me achieve my goals. You were a pirate, and so you learned to use the Force in ways that made you untouchable on the battlefield. In a way, you have likely cheated death more times than I."
"Heh, perhaps so." Philosophical crisis resolved, Torwin thought of the chaos his classes had no doubt caused in his absence. "While I'm here, is there anything you wish me to teach to the Abyss Watchers' Force users? I'm in charge of teaching them, and since we technically hold the same position, you are too. Since you're rather limited in location, I can take any teachings you have back to them."
"I think I might have a holocron or two lying around. Not sure how useful my techniques would be though. I studied very basic things or very, complicated niche things with little in between." Said Vectivus.
"I'll see what I can work into the curriculum."
AN:
We have hit the limit. Now for the real question, if we do one more,will
@Dr. Snark react like a computer trying to compute the value of pi?
but I'm inclined to keep her with the Wesker mission).
