The Galaxy Ends With You
I looked over my shoulder at Darra. She was breathing raggedly, the blood flowing freely from the wounds the mutant reeks had given her before we'd managed to take them down, the jungle air wet and heavy as I tried to catch my breath. Out of the forest, a three-headed, winged bright yellow lizard the size of a small freighter crashed through, roaring a challenge to our possession of the clearing. "Right, time to run," I said, and she agreed. We started to make our escape into a cavern the lizard wouldn't be able to follow us into...only to find it the nest of a K'kayeh dragon...and the mother wasn't very happy we'd arrived.
I blew out a breath. "Fine. No other options." I focused my mind, my brow knitting in concentration and a hand reflexively pointing at the dragon. A moment later, a jagged line of lightning surged forward from my hand at the dragon, making it twitch and shriek. My other hand angled to intercept the other threat, blasting it with another line of lightning, the wattage making Darra's hair stand on end but arresting the hydra's progress for a bit.
"Seriously, Riphath? You've had that the whole time and you've been playing around with dash attacks and just stabbing things?" Darra asked me incredulously. "You got anything else you've been saving for a rainy day?"
I tossed her two small round tokens, both
red with a black tribal-tattoo marking on them, off-center. "Pillar of fire. Not a technique the Jedi would teach you."
"Hey, you just threw around Sith Lightning, so far as stuff the Jedi wouldn't do? Pretty sure you're ahead of me on that score," she said, eyes alight with manic glee at the number of damage dice she was rolling.
"Lot more fun than you were expecting when I said I had a nerd game we could play on the way back to Tython, right?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
She scoffed, counting up the damage and announcing that the hydra's body burned to a crisp and the heads dropped to the ground harmlessly.
I'd rigged up a droid brain to GM Corridors and Chests and programmed in the Soulbound class, which seemed to fit myself and Darra rather well. Merged hit points, merged skills, psionic abilities based on held tokens that could be acquired and upgraded in a variety of ways, and the ability to rapidly gain and "pass" psionic focus. It was a totally different system from how...just about any other class worked, but I'd put it on par with sorcerers and the like.
I'd picked up Darra on my way back to Tython and suggested playing the game as an exercise in tactics and working together. We were several days in, stopping mostly for food and sleep. It was a lot of fun, and suggested to me that there might be value in developing games like this for the Tython Jedi; just because they weren't an arm of the Republic's military didn't mean that they didn't need to develop the ability to solve exploration and combat problems.
We landed on my usual landing pad and reported in to the Council. They informed us that when searching through the files we'd discovered in the past they found additional references to another Jedi Temple on the continent. Given that we were "the premier exploratory archaeologists" of the Jedi on-planet, in their words, they suggested we go check it out.
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"Exploratory archaeologist sounds rather a lot like the people who are best at poking old things with a stick and not dying if something decides to poke back," I said as we saw the temple in the distance.
Darra laughed, helping guide me around a fumarole. The next temple was built around a volcano. It had previously been active and was still heating the groundwater to the point it would bubble and boil and break through the earth, causing it to vent and react with the atmosphere...resulting in some very pretty rocks, some very smelly gasses, and some extremely hot and extremely acidic water...and the wildlife adapted to the environment.
We found our way in and saw what clearly looked like a reception desk. I did what I could to start up the old computer systems and load files off of them, while Darra checked for threats. "Welcome to...Voor Tape? Vur Tay-Pay? Teep? Look, Bendu isn't exactly my third language, let alone my first."
Work orders. Work orders from all over Tython, thousands and thousands of years ago. Swords, staves, and pikes for a place called Stav Kesh; some to be left blunted. A training temple, apparently, in the "Ice Giant Range" on the "Fire Plains". I wasn't sure if that was symbolic language or what, but maybe people who spent more time here might.
Writing implements, art tools, to a place called Bodhi. A temple of arts, perhaps, given they were being shipped to what seemed like an idyllic island. Interesting, that the proto-Jedi were thinkers who studied calligraphy and theater as much as pragmatic sciences, industrious crafting, and combat skill.
References to schematics from "the cradle of ideas", a place called Anil Kesh, said to be over The Chasm. I think we went there before, the place with the library and the classrooms and dormitories, the big metallic spider planted across the enormous canyon that threw static at Darra's Force sense. If that place was a cradle of ideas, this place was a crucible of physicality. You couldn't let your mind wander here, or you'd wander into a pool that would burn you; whether that was acid or sheer temperature was academic really, it would hurt like hell nonetheless. It focused the mind, to be sure, the need to be absolutely present in your current reality and neither examining the past or predicting the future.
The orders went on and on. I was sure there were at least a dozen of these places. The Jedi Masters would be fascinated, I was sure, and if they weren't, the Abyss Watchers would be. I'm sure if I got my findings to Public Cola, he would be fascinated and likely send archaeology teams once we got the blessing of the Tython Jedi, perhaps in some form of cooperative expeditions. "One of us, one of them?" I thought aloud.
"One of who?" Darra asked me.
I gestured to the computer bank. "I think I hit the motherlode. References to numerous other temples, with the sorts of crafts they often used. If nothing else, I imagine the archaeology arm of the Watchers might be interested. Maybe send Jedi with each group to keep them honest and share what we find so we are all enriched. Each side thinking to themselves 'one of us, one of them' with regard to the teams."
Darra smiled to herself. "It's worked pretty well so far, I'd say."
"Yeah, well, part of that might be related to my own personal version of the galaxy beginning and ending with you," I said, pulling her into a warm embrace and an equally warm kiss.
A/N: References to a number of other proto-Jedi temples.
@Publicola , feel free to go nuts on the archaeology stuff.
There's kinda a
lot going
on.
Also, apologies for the double post. I ended up getting to finish it after all.
...At what point do we start thinking about asking someone else to take over as QM? 
