This thread is for the Star Wars RP Group. Head on over or visit our Discord and say hi if you're interested! Anyone wanting to join in feel free to say that Jedi or related characters are already in the Convocation chamber; if you want to attack the Convocation let me know on the Discord or PM me here and we'll work something out!
Jedi Enclave, Illum
The crystals spun in the air, lazily orbiting one another as rogue asteroids, each was uncut and unmarred, their shape a chaotic formation of billions of years of intense pressure at the heart of some long-vanished star. No tool had been used to grind or shape them, their facets were natural, and the two chief pieces of this constellation had been harvested worlds apart. One in the far-off Adega system, another here on Illum, a lonely planetary outpost of the Jedi Order since time immemorial, that had now attracted mining concerns.
“The Crystal is the Heart of the Blade”
The primary Kyber crystal was a pontite star, that the wielder had found on his first quest, earlier in his training, for a time it had served alone as the heart of his first lightsabre, a shard of purple the size of a finger bone, it had been a longstanding companion, and the weapon that had previously held it had been destroyed a week ago in battle with a dark side adept on Ord Rammel.
“The Heart is the Crystal of the Jedi”
He had come here to find another, he had grown much in the years since he had embarked on his current path, and more than anything he had learned judgement, on a thousand worlds across the galaxy he and his master had travelled and brought a brand of arbitration and justice to those worlds rendered lawless by the destruction of the Galactic Conclave, years past. They had fought pirates and kidnappers, unseated petty warlords and responded to humanitarian disasters. Jedi bandits, Sirenna had called them once, and the phrasing resonated with the apprentice.
“The Jedi is the Crystal of the Force”
There had been no plan, and few were the times when they’d responded to directives from Ethril’s direct sponsors, and even less often had they worked for the Jedi council. instead they had followed the Will of the Force, the numinous field of energy that gave the Jedi his strength and insight. They and their companions had travelled as wandering hermits, at times they had been offered payments, and little had they taken, for at the very least they wanted for nothing in material wealth, a legacy of who his master was and who, indeed, Ethril was.
“The Force is the Blade of the Heart”
Not all of the last seven years had passed in a whirlwind of adventure. They had travelled to other places, the Adega System, where the Jedi Council sat, and satellite academies across the galaxy, at Taris, Cularin, Coruscant and more. They had travelled at times when their companions had gone on their own quests, sometimes to simply keep their hand in in the business of the small trader, while at others they had sought out places strong in the force. It was on those long missions of contemplation that Ethril had first touched the Dark Side of the force, on the planet Lothal. It was there that he had confronted a vision of what and who he could have been, his own limitless potential for evil. The temptation had called to him, that of order. His people, the people he had been raised among, the Great Dynastic House of Sautekh were zealots of order, and that was how the Dark Side had come to him; the power to take the galaxy and order it to his will, limitless power.
“All are intertwined”
He had emerged from that trial with a new assurance; the light side of the force contained all the power he would ever need; as far as he cared to reach there was always more within the Force. The force was the force of others, and the dark side, a form of corruption within it a form of self-love divorced from reality; and like a wound healing over, in the end, the force swallowed those who sought to break it to their will.
“The Crystal.”
He knew that the temptation would return, always it would, it was part of him, as much as anything was, and to master the dark side one had to know one’s self with pure insight. In his trance, Ethril was aware of the darkness within himself, but so much more than that, the living bonds that connected all living things far across the galactic disc and beyond, and even inanimate matter. The crystals before him shone brightly in the force, but the other material that he levitated with them was similar. Diatium power cells, focusing crystals, field energisers and more floated into position.
“The Blade”
He aligned the components together, they settled easily, energies flowing through them, securing each part in place, the force flowed through him, taking the form of the parts and the science as he knew it and making the disparate parts whole, melding and welding and forming them closely. The parts were expensive, the main body of the weapon was a songsteel alloy created only by the Menelmacari who had come to mine Illum, a piece of his home tradition but also eminently practical, resistant to lightsabers. The weapon was a masterpiece of the art, controls built into it allowed it to alter its length, a dual-phase lightsabre, in a curvilinear style reminiscent of his master’s, it was surmounted by a corusca gem at its base, a self-conciously elegant weapon.
“The Jedi.”
Ethril had a time to study the Jedi Arts, and in that he knew his limits, but also his strengths, and he had grown formidable, by any measure. But as yet, he was aware that being a jedi was not entirely what it should be. He didn’t let the thought distract him though. The Will of the Force was his guide; he was a Jedi.
“You are one.”
The blade came together, the last parts fitting into place as though they had always been one single unit, and the completed weapon drifted into his hand, cool, padded across the inner side. He touched his thumb to the ignition stud. A lightsabre improperly built could fail explosively, it would blow the top off the tower. The weapon’s handle thrummed gently and an audible crack-hiss sounded, simmering the air.
“Remember always the Crystal is the Heart of the Blade. Ethril Ricartayl, your training is complete.”
__ __ __
Sirenna Halcyon Alee drew her cloak about her as she stepped down the ramp, letting the cold wind engulf her. She was bundled up like a wampa, wrapped in furs with her face covered by a scarf wound tightly about her head and her dark hair covered by a heavy hat and wrapped over in a furred hood. She had to strain against the wind that blew bitterly over the landscape of ice. She held up a lumen torch in one hand and played it over the structures beneath the ship, six wide foot-panels that kept the ship steady on the uneven ground. She’d chosen the ship for its ability to land anywhere and even after years of service the sleek vessel was unfailingly reliable. She ducked her head into the wells of each of them in turn, playing the light along the lines and cables, “Icing looks good,” she cried, speaking into a portable communication unit, “Nothing serious yet.”
“Good to know. I’m getting a danger reading from leg five,” the voice of her co-pilot, the droid K5-U3 said.
She looked across the ship and stopped, “I don’t think it will matter,” she said, looking up at the narrow shape of the tower, a high spire of ancient stone that rose out of the snow. A pale blue-indigo light shone high up it. “We’re about to get off this iceball.”
Great Civilization Legation Arcology, Coruscant
The Flutterplume soared out of the clouds of the city world, toward the towers that rose in pale white from the endless city-scape. The traffic of the city world was constant and the towers below were laden with aircraft of every type in tight lanes controlled by the droid-brains that occupied the vast planet’s traffic control grids.
Construction in this part of the planet was new, districts that had been flattened seven years ago in the assault by the slaves of the Primordial Annihilator had been purified and rebuilt, the bedrock of the planet re-seeded in the affected areas at considerable expense with rare anathematic minerals, many of them shipped from beyond the Outer Rim by the creators of the towering arcology at its heart. Such things were no impediment to the Jedi, however, nor were the thousands of pylons installed across the planet, concealed as structural frames within a network of towers built to replace the old ones. These were a first step toward mending the true harm the Archenemy had done to the galaxy starting here.
This was only part of the construction work that had been taken however, and the Legation Arcology towered over everything in its district, a mountain of metal that concealed vast atmospheric scrubbers and gardens that were intended to improve the planet’s air quality, expansions of the ancient machines of The Works that had been created, as many other worlds had been, by the Gree Enclave, a people whom Ethril’s master had long ago established trade with.
They had brought those trade links to Coruscant, and returned with expertise in the planet’s ancient systems, and even now Gree Representative droids and the machine-constructors of the Great Civilization worked with the inhabitants to restore the planets’ intestinal structure. It was a learning experience for the C’tani, allowing them and the Menelmacari observers with them to learn new techniques for waste management and infrastructural supply that even they had never experienced before.
The Arcology had other functions other than marking out the edge of the Works, however, it was also a vast residential complex, its pyramidal structure housing thousands who lived and worked providing the diplomatic services for the multitudes of the galaxy. As they approached they could see spires hundreds of meters high that communicated vast quantities of ciphered information to the holonet. The C’tani and Menelmacari had selected their partners carefully in their interactions with the galaxy thus far, and the Arcology’s communications networks were attuned to work with conventional holonet nodes but also with the Intergalactic Banking Clan’s secure networks, which were based around the concept of ‘Galactic Free Holonet’ – that was to say holonet feeds that could be accessible on secure ciphers with non-positional software that allowed information to reach those imprisoned by regimes who might seek to block conventional holonet access.
They broke off from the traffic lanes and swept down to one of the landing bays of the vast building, past the buttresses that held its shield generators, and into the high hangar, where the ‘plume set down.
Sirenna’s hands flicked over the controls and she rose, and the quartet of visitors rose from their seats in the cockpit. A brief trip down to the lower deck in paired rail-guarded elevators allowed them to disembark the ramp, and she went first, K5 following her, the emancipated ‘droid had been with her the longest, from the time they had fled Hutt space and long before.
Ethril followed, and with him, his master, Count Dooku of Serenno, Jedi Master. He was dressed in a style that was at once elegant and underplayed, at least for a noble of an ancient house of the Core. A long cloak of purple-blue hung over his shoulders, pinned with silver, the left clasp adorned with a refan life-crystal, while beneath that he wore a sharply pressed tunic of inky black. The traditional garb of the Count of Serenno.
“This way, please. You are expected,” the voice came from a protocol droid with the customary marks of those who had adopted the emancipatory policies put forward here; a gilded seal across the chest where a restraining bolt interface had been removed and secured. They made conversation, two conversations in fact, one in audible Basic, another with K5 in infrasonic droidspeak, as they crossed the hangar.
The Legation did not use the infamous and feared necron soldiers of the unselfconsciously named Great Civilization, in deference to local fears of machine life, particularly in mind with their progressive policies on droids, instead the Legation’s guards were organic beings. That hardly made them less imposing, however, they were Necili, a breed of heavy synapsid whose creators had been vanquished by the Menelmacari at the start of their modern history. They were a breed of sapient attracted to power, and hierarchy, and being posted to guard the Legate’s chambers was pleasing to those instincts.
The Legate was not only a C’tani, the demonym for the people of the Great Civilization, he was a C’tan, the singularly rare beings whose ancient leadership had coined the nickname. Eratan; less famed than others, he had been present in the galaxy for as long as his culture had. There was no outward sign of that about him, he was dwarfed by the massive guards whose wings stretched in the sunlight under the armourglass ceiling. He seemed human, tan skinned with dark hair and a swept-back haircut that gave him an aquiline appearance. “Come in,” he said.
The reception chamber was high on the southern face of the arcology, commanding a view toward the Conclave House, or at least, where it would stand when rebuilt, and the conformal gel-chairs that surrounded the long oval table that occupied the lower part of the room gave a commanding view over the city.
“Please, be seated,” Eratan said, “would you care for refreshment?”
Sirenna shrugged, “I think we can proceed without, this is Coruscant, time is money.”
“You needn’t remind me,” Eratan said, “How did your inspection tour of the new ships go?”
“Eventful,” she said, “hence the delay. They are however, complete, and fitted to the standards expected,” she said. “There was an effort to destroy them by some sith aspirants,” she added.
“We have them in custody, they are on a dungeon ship to Star’s End,” Dooku said, “they will be no more trouble there.”
“Then all is prepared?” Eratan asked, “I have spoken to the authorities on Jedha and the Coruscanti government has been persuaded to task some of their ships to augment the security garrison. We will also have the Erisavenus and his,” the Great Civilization’s ships were normally sapient, and more than a few used masculine avatars; tradition had to defer to practicality, “escorts deployed to Jedha for the event, they’ll be second key to the local partners in this though. The last thing we want is to have this appear to be an effort by us to co-opt the Jedi Order. We’re interested in sponsoring reform, but that doesn’t work at all if people think it’s a threat.”
Dooku nodded, “It was my idea, and that is how I intend to present it,” he said; pride might not fit well for a Jedi but he had to admit it was perhaps his chief flaw.
“It’s essential that we have at least a chance to bring the Jedi to galactic prominence once again,” Sirenna said, “if ever the galaxy had a need for peacekeepers, now is the time,” she said, “while you were at Terminus, I’ve seen enough to know that the Thrashian departure is going to leave a whole region of the galaxy ripe for conquest by anyone that can put together enough blasters to call himself a warlord.”
How she’d changed, she reflected, she’d spent a long time viewing the Jedi as nothing more than illusionists and myth-makers, many did. Now, she’d seen enough to know what lay beyond Terminus and where the warriors that had sacked Coruscant had crawled from, and that worried her. “The Galaxy needs the Jedi.”
Dooku smiled, “Not so much, perhaps, as the Jedi need the Galaxy.”
The Holy City, Jedha
The Holy City was a candidate for the origin of the Jedi Order, the order had given its name to the moon, or perhaps the other way around. The streets were a chaotic tangle of building and rebuilding, much of it from native low-tech materials, the city had become a point of pilgrimage for millennia, but it had not taken much in the way of money from that, though remnants of the glory days of the place could be seen in the gilded domes of some of the buildings, or the frescoes that still adorned the walls of the city.
To K5-U3 the Force was a mystery, but here on the streets of the city he was hard pressed to pass through the crowds of adherents to the mysterious faith. He wondered sometimes if the concept of devotion was not a manifestation of the ultimate frailty of organics but here and there among the crowds he could see a fellow droid.
He contemplated speaking to them, several were clustered around in theological debate, and it seemed almost as though they were addled, many of them were ancient, he was sure he could see one heavily modified droid at least three centuries old, battered and seated under an awning, dispensing wisdom. Perhaps, perhaps not. K5 followed a creed of self-improvement, and had altered himself many times, but he was not sure the locals would view stark alteration and improvement of the self as the path of destiny as he did. He would think on it.
They had come far off the beaten track, past Coruscant, and out to the mid rim by difficult and treacherous trails, guides were hard to find, but they had been able to procure the route, an old Jedi trail provided by the Count. The systems around Jedha were unexplored, and uncontacted, wild places and pirate lairs.
K5 could scent criminality on the breeze, the whisper of far off encrypted communications filtered in through his antennae and he didn’t need to be able to decrypt them to know that some of them betokened a subversive element, outside the Holy City; the Guardians of the Whills who protected this place were well armed, but their obsession with the temple limited their vision, as he saw it. He had been built as an enforcement droid, and a security obsession still permeated deep in some kernel of his processors, he wondered sometimes if he was paranoid. By the standards of organics, perhaps. But then, by the standards of droids, organics were muggy-headed dreamers.
He carried a blaster, he almost never put it down, a massive piece, a full battle rifle of the latest design, calibrated to put a lethal hole through the chest plate of one of the raiders that had scourged the galaxy lately. That kept criminals away from him. Also the honest people.
The rest of the crew followed in his wake, Dooku and Ethril had donned hooded cloaks and looked perfectly like pilgrims from any of a hundred other sects, they rubbed shoulders with the Brotherhood of the Beatific Countenance, the Disciples of the Whills, the Followers of the First Light or any of a hundred others. Sirenna trailed close behind, she had eschewed any particular covering, she looked like what she was; the pilot of a small freighter.
The Temple of the Kyber was ahead, a towering white edifice of timeworn stone. Pilgrims thronged to it, queuing up to enter the temple, or even to touch its pale walls, while bowcaster-equipped guardians stood watch to prevent any disorder on the sacred ground. He could see them watching him and he shifted the gun to a less intimidating posture, shouldering it.
Count Dooku stepped forward, and reached up to his hood, drawing it back over his thinning pale white hair. One of the Guardians stepped forward and he bowed deeply. K5 knew that the wielders of the force could communicate without words, much as some ‘droids could, and he wondered if they were speaking silently.
__ __ __
The Great Temple’s upper roof commanded a wide view of the plains around the mesa that supported the Holy City, cool deserts expanding to the horizon punctured by rock and ancient statues of the Jedi. Count Dooku sat, his legs folding in a lotus position, a small touch of pain from his knees and hips accompanied it, and he watched his student as he knelt opposite him. For a long moment, they waited, and then Dooku cast himself into the force, the unifying whole that expanded across the galaxy.
The Jedi Master folded his hands, interlacing his fingers before him and steepling his thumbs, there was no chanting, nothing but intense focus, as he reached out to the force, and felt it answer him. The power was one that could only be used with absolute and intense focus, the power by which one could reach out into the force and send a message, not from one to another, but to a whole group. A call, as the hymns to observance echoed over the city, to all of the Jedi.
The Force did not know division, and he knew that well, he did not seek only to reach those who called themselves Jedi, or who were in the good graces of the Jedi Council, he sought out all those who were in tune with the force, what was called the Light Side.
There were no words, and it was not a compulsion, but instead, a message of considerable power.
If he had been asked to put the call into words, it would perhaps have been rendered something like, “I call upon all those who wield the Light Side of the Force to come hence to me, to discuss in convocation the ways in which we can do the Will of the Force, and aid the Galaxy once more.”
__ __ __
Darra was a Jedi Knight. That was her entire identity, save perhaps the Mon Calamari species she hailed from. By the time she arrived at Jedha, perhaps days after the call went out, the city was thronging, and the signs of security were everywhere. Not on the ground inside the city, but beyond it, where fields of ships had been landed in a fusion-formed plane of glassy material. [url=media.comicbook.com/2017/01/rogue-one-concept-art-4-andree-wallin-2500-c-226339.jpg]The temple’s great exterior stairways leading to the temple had been opened[/url] as a special occasion when often these gates were only opened at auspicious times, and the Guardians stood at the bottom of the great temple, while curious pilgrims stared from the ancient walls or from parts of the desert beyond.
It was a disturbing experience, she felt, some of the pilgrims would touch her as if they hoped to draw courage or vindication from her, while others offered children, in the hope that they would be taken as Jedi, and others sought healing, a request that some of the order were at least able to oblige, though she was not so skilled.
The climb was long, and she was almost relieved to finally enter the great chambers of the temple, it was to see a sight that she had never expected to see. The convocation was open to all, and more than a thousand seats had been set out for representatives of the order, in concentric rings hanging in the light-filled chamber beneath the largest kyber crystal she had ever seen, perhaps thirty feet from one shard’s end to the other, light streamed through the narrow windows and glittered off the surfaces of the chamber in rainbows.
Arriving, she was in place to hear the convening address.
__ __ __
“Friends from afar, thank you for coming,” Dooku said, “I know that many of you have pressing concerns that have made choosing to ocme here today a difficult endeavour, and I will take up little of your time,” he said, “We are drawn here to discuss the Jedi Order, or perhaps I should say Jedi Orders, and their role in the future of the galaxy. His tones were stentorian, and he spoke with a calm measure, “My choice of location speaks to our purpose here,” he said, “some say that our order was founded on Tython, others, here on Jedha, or on a dozen other candidate worlds, but perhaps the details matter less than the impact of those early days of the Jedi Order,” he said, “for a Thousand Generations, the Jedi have been the guardians of Peace and Justice throughout the galaxy.”
He stepped forward from his seat, no different to any other save its position on the inner ring of the convocation hall. “A thousand generations. Think on that for a moment my friends, and consider; will there be a time in the future when our successors can say ‘two thousand generations?’ Perhaps. Perhaps not, and perhaps that is as it should be,” he said, “first, it must be seen that the Jedi Order has a purpose, perhaps one acquired all those generations ago here; we are the guardians of peace, and justice,” he said, “not the only guardians by any means, but perhaps the strongest,” he paused, “perhaps not,” he added, “but such things do not matter. Instead, we must ask what we can do now to serve those goals for the galaxy.”
“The Raid upon the Galactic Conclave and the subsequent war have been the unforeseen blow that has set the galaxy on edge. Some entire nations are leaving and pirates and reavers are as I am sure we all know, more prevalent than they have been for a thousand years. This is a crisis to which we, as Jedi, must respond.
“Across the galaxy new coalitions and cultures spread, some of them even from outside the galaxy, and this is an opportunity which we should embrace. For a thousand years we have been one order, but I have asked not only those of the Jedi Order to join us here but those of the orders that have formed practicing the Jedi Arts,” he spread his hands, his gesture taking in Imperial Knights, Ordermen and others. “because this is a time when we must consider what it means to be a Jedi.
“I believe that the fundamental of the Jedi Order is to use the will of the force as a guide to the service of others,” he said, “and I think that everyone here would agree in general terms.”
“Which is where we must begin to discuss what is at hand. We have not been the presence and influence that we should be within the galaxy. We have allowed the Jedi Order to become out of step with the galaxy, and thus with the will of the force. We have become quaint, small. We must show the potentates of the Galaxy that the counsel of the Jedi is not lightly thrown aside.
“We are few in number now; any Jedi may travel to the archives on Ossus, or any satellite academy, and peruse the records of the jedi who have gone before us. They number in the billions, but now there are perhaps ten thousand jedi in the Ossus order. A thousand generations times ten thousand does not billions make, and this is because over the ages becoming a Jedi has become more difficult, a greater challenge.
“The seeds of this slow reduction in our numbers, the increasing caution in recruitment, were sown thousands of years ago, though late in the order’s history, at the start of the Great Hyperspace War; when our order first encountered the corrupted splinter order that adopts the name of the ancient Sith species. Many times have our members defected to that alluring ideology of self-gratification since, and each time they have wrought ruin. We cannot blame our order for caution in this matter, but to bring balance to the force we must consider the truth; fear has blinded us. As my master taught me, fear is the path to the dark side, and yet it is we who live in fear of teaching the ways of the force to those who come to us for instruction.
“We have even renounced love; the Force is the force of others, and yet we forbid ourselves from growing close to others, a strict rule, and a difficult one to challenge without the appearance of self-interest and personal motives; though it is hard to imagine that that decision has not been a part of the dwindling of the Jedi order, when bloodlines strong in the force such as the the Qel-Droma, Shan and Sunrider families, examples well known to all from our history, whose luminaries have even headed our order at times.
“In both the rules of recruitment and in the doctrine of non-involvement our order has changed its opinions many times, most recently a thousand years past at the Peace of Ruusan. After a terrible war in which the Jedi and Sith ground one another to mutual exhaustion the desire was, understandably, that there should be no risk of Jedi falling in the future.
“Fine and admirable, but the Sith are not the only bearers of darkness in the galaxy, far from it, every year seems to bring new darkness and in such times we must ask ourselves; in closing the gates of our fortress have we not hidden away? In seeking total control over our apprentices, and our knights, have we not left ourselves wanting?”
“It is my proposal that we should delegate the training of initiates to Jedi across the galaxy, and reorganize the Jedi order once again to acknowledge the truths of a divided galaxy, and one where the Sith are not the only problem we must confront.”
He walked around the room once as he spoke, before coming back to his seat as he made his final points. “It is my belief that in order to be of service in the galaxy today, the Jedi must first confront the harsh political truth of a galaxy rapidly polarizing into separate states, and retain its traditional independence and seat on Ossus,” he said. “But in so doing, offer to any state that will support one another and refrain from such evils as the slavery of sapient beings,” he did not mention ‘droids here, that was not his agenda here today, “or the wholesale destruction of species, the support of the Jedi as investigators, healers, peacekeepers and even as warriors, at least against those threats such as pirates, traffickers, raiders and religious sects inimical to the force, such as those who have afflicted the galaxy latterly. A delegation of Jedi, and a sub-council should be sent to each such state, in the mould of our brothers from the Imperial Knights of Thrashia, and Ordermen of New Dornalia. And if possible, these orders should be invited into the wider fold of the Jedi Order,” he said. “An open invitation, should it be desired.”
“These are not the days after the Ruusan Reformation. The Sith are still out there, but we should not fear that they lurk between the pages of every book or inside every holocron. We must acknowledge that few in the galaxy wish to give their children over to a training regimen that may as well cast them aside forever, and likewise the rule by which all Jedi must eschew attachment is a barrier for any who would have the talent to join the Order; particularly those who already have strong attachments.
“These,” Dooku said as he sat down once more and looked over the assembled group, “are the changes that I believe the order must make in order to thrive in this new galaxy.”