OOC: This will largely be a story-based thread, as my characters uncover the secrets of the Interstellar Empire's Jedi Order, and light the fire of rebellion. It will lead onto other threads of course, but in this one I'm more than happy for other people to have characters join the search, or provide information. Any specific ideas, hit me up with a Telegram. Obviously, I ask that all replies are of a decent quality! I now have a volunteer to own the system, so if anyone else wnats to get involved, please TG me in the first instance. Looking forward to writing with you!
Trinity City Campus, University of Nimbus
Nimbus IV, Outer Colonies, the Interstellar Empire
“Who were the Jedi? That is a dangerous question, with an even more dangerous answer,” Professor Dewson Vance said quietly, but in the sudden hush of the lecture theatre everyone could hear him. “If you want me to tell you, I will tell you, but know that just for listening to this the Imperial Security Bureau could detain you… so if you want to leave, now is the time.”
Kandar Novastar looked around at his fellow classmates in the sizable lecture theatre, no one moved. This was Nimbus after all, the very edge of the Interstellar Empire, where many still remembered the time before the Usurper, and one of the last bastions of free speech. There were several hundred of them, the majority of them were human but there were aliens from all over the eight worlds that made up the Interstellar Empire, all of them were eighteen years old, or their species equivalent, and all were eager to learn. Professor Vance’s history of the empire course was a popular one, if for no other reason than that it didn’t pull any punches on what had happened nearly fifteen years previously, and yet few had believed that they would touch a subject like this. The word ‘Jedi’ was one that was whispered, even the mere mention of their name was often enough, as Professor Vance had said, to bring down the ISB, their destruction protecting the last Emperor from the Usurper was the stuff of legend, although to hear current Imperial propaganda on the matter, it was the Jedi who usurped the last Emperor, before turning on the man they had chosen to replace him.
No one had expected anyone to ask about the Jedi, certainly not so soon, and certainly not for Professor Vance to answer.
“The Jedi were an Order of men and women from all the species of the Empire who studied and used a mystical energy field known only as ‘the Force’, the origins and exact nature of which is known to very few outside of the Jedi Order, it simply rejects every attempt by science to understand it,” Professor Vance began, looking around at the utterly silent lecture theatre. “For many centuries they served the Empire, unswervingly loyal to it as an institution, no matter who sat on the Stellar Throne, at least until the Usurper came along.”
The Professor looked around at his class.
“So the question that arose to those of who knew about the Jedi a decade and a half ago was simple, after generations of staying out of political strife as long as the public were protected, why did they oppose the Usurper, and why did he destroy them so utterly?” Professor Vance continued. “The brutality and oppression with with the Usurper and his regime have treated the people would have been reason for them to resist him, but it is unlikely that they knew that at the time, so there must have been something else.”
The Professor brought up an image on the display of a Jedi Knight..
“There is also the question of how exactly they were defeated, the Jedi were extremely competent in the martial theatre, they could stand alone against a platoon of soldiers, they were not invincible, but they were formidable,” The Professor explained. “So the question becomes how were these people defeated, in strength and in the seat of their power as quickly as they were, and how was it that none of them managed to escape.”
The Professor smiled thinly.
“Now some of us who have dared to study the Fall of the Jedi have suggested that they were simply overwhelmed by a sheer force of numbers, and it is certainly true that there were thousands of troops sent into the Jedi Temple that dark night, the vast bulk of the regime’s most loyal troops,” The Professor commented. “However some of us don’t believe that, as much as the Jedi Temple was a place of learning and study, it was very much a Fortress as well, we have come to one conclusion that there is another-“
The Professor was suddenly cut off by the banging of the doors at the top of the lecture theatre and the shouting of soldiers as they stormed into the lecture theatre. Kandar watched in shock and dismay as the ISB Stormtroopers secured the room in a quick and efficient set of movements, clearly this was something that they were very good at. The Stormtroopers were the elite of the Imperial Military, or at least they were since the Rise of the Usurper, and the ISB were the most trusted troops the Usurper had. Once they had secured the room, keeping all of the students and the Professor under the guns of their blasters, a pair of ISB Officers in their distinctive variants of the normal Imperial Military officer’s uniform, heavy blaster pistols strapped to their belts. The two Officers strode down the steps to the front where the Professor was still stood, remarkably composed given that he was now being secured by two Stormtroopers. No doubt he knew exactly why they were here, he was a known critic of the regime and he was a scholar of the Fall of the Jedi and the Rise of the Usurper, it was only a matter of time, and that time had apparently now arrived.
“Dewson Vance… you stand accused and have been found guilty of seeding dissent and sedition against the Emperor, or encouraging rebellion and of high treason,” the older of the two ISB Officers said coldly. “Your sentence is death, without the possibility of appeal, therefore it is to be carried out immediately.”
The ISB Officer took his blast pistol out of its holster and levelled it at Professor Vance’s head, with no hesitation he squeezed the trigger, a single red bolt leapt out and slashed its way through his head and buried itself in the wall opposite. A shocked gasp echoed around the lecture theatre as the man’s students watched his death at the hands of the Imperial Security Bureau. Then as if nothing had happened the two ISB Officers and the Stormtroopers left the lecture theatre, leaving his body where he had fallen. The gathered student body remained silent, frozen in their places, not quite accepting what had just happened in front of them. Everyone had known that the Usurper’s Regime had tyrannical tendencies, but by and large they were merely stories from afar, they had never really affected them out here on Nimbus, not like this. The sheer audacity and impunity with which the ISB and strode into the lecture theatre and silenced one of its critics spoke volumes about how much power they truly had, even out here on the frontier. They would later discover that two police officers had been killed trying to make the ISB go through normal channels, trying to make them follow the same rules that everyone else did. But the Imperial Security Bureau didn’t follow the same rules as anyone else, hell no one really knew if they followed any rules at all, it certainly didn’t seem like it sometimes.
Kandar sighed heavily, he had a bad feeling that this was only just beginning.
Civilian Vessel Dewson Vance
Nimbus IV, Outer Colonies, the Interstellar Empire
Three years after the death of its namesake the Dewson Vance, a YT-2400 Light Freighter, climbed steadily out of the atmosphere of Nimbus IV and towards the bustle of the orbital space. A lot had happened since the death of Dewson Vance, his murder by the Imperial Security Bureau had provoked protests, which had escalated to riots, across Nimbus, until Imperial Stormtroopers had been deployed to restore order, by firing indiscriminately into the crowds, after which an intense crackdown had been enacted across Nimbus and the rest of the Outer Colonies of the Interstellar Empire, finally bringing the full might of the Usurper’s Tyranny to bear upon his most distant subjects. Thousands had been arrested and executed outright, more had been disappeared in the dark of night, never to be seen again, and yet more had been persecuted in some way by the regime. It had not been an easy time to live on Nimbus, or any of the two other worlds in the Outer Colonies, and it was still dangerous.
There were whispers of rebellion, or at least resistance, all over Nimbus whenever the Imperial Security Bureau’s agents were out of earshot, and across the Outer Colonies there was a growing sense of discontent over the tyranny of the Usurper and the economic and social restrictions he was now piling onto the sheer atrocity of it all. Unlike the Inner Colonies and the Core which had been under his iron boot for over a decade, despite the atrocities wrought upon them the Outer Colonies still had some fight left in them. It was nothing serious yet, passive resistance to authority but that was a start, and in time it would hopefully develop into something more. The fact that the question of resistance to the Usurper was even being discussed at the popular level was a massive development, for many years the inclination, especially in the Core and the Inner Colonies, had been that it had been a matter for the nobility, not for the populous, and that if they kept their heads down they wouldn’t be affected. The Nimbus Crackdown had put an end to that fantasy, and for those that had watched their Professor gunned down in front of them, it was all very personal.
Two such students who had graduated from University with a Degree in Imperial History, or at least what passed for it these days (through no fault of their own), and a growing hatred for the Usurper and the Empire he had perverted, were Kandar Novastar and Lana Sunfell. They had met in the aftermath of Professor Vance’s Execution, and although they had not developed a romantic connection they had felt drawn to each other, and had developed a fast and extremely close friendship over the past three years. It hadn’t been all that much of a difficult decision when they had left University to join up together and go searching for adventure… anything to get them away from the Empire for a while. They had managed to rescue some of Professor Vance’s research from the ISB, indicating that there was a secret Jedi Enclave far beyond ‘known’ space, so they had decided to go searching for it. The chance to see first hand a place where the Jedi had once inhabited was one that neither of them were willing to give up, especially given the interest that they had developed in it over the past three years.
“Star Destroyer at two o’clock,” Lana commented as the rumbling of the atmospheric transition subsided as they finally reached orbital space. “Looks like the Implacable.”
Kandar glanced over at the attractive human female that was his travelling companion before looking where she was pointing. Sure enough hovering menacingly in orbit was the Imperial Star Destroyer Implacable, one of three such ships that was tasked with ‘defending’ Nimbus. Kandar felt a tingle of apprehension as he watched it, the ship that was now called the Dewson Vance was technically stolen. Lana had used her feminine wiles to seduce its own into a drunken stupor before the pair had absconded with the vessel. It was highly unlikely that he had woken from the cocktail of drugs that Lana had slipped into his drink, to avoid actually having to sleep with him in order to steal his ship, but knowing that they were flying a stolen Starship under the very nose of the Imperial Navy was enough to get the blood pumping to say the least. But the Star Destroyer continued its lazy, if foreboding, orbit around the world with next to no attention paid to the small freighter’s flight.
“Looks like the words not out about us yet,” Lana commented. “That’ll have changed by the time we come back though.”
“Yes, but hopefully things will be different by then… hopefully we’ll have found something that will help the resistance get an upper hand over the Tyrant,” Kandar nodded. “That being said, let’s hope this resistance we’ve all be hearing so much about actually gets off the ground, otherwise no matter what we find it won’t make a damn bit of a difference.”
“Then get’s out of here,” Lana replied, leaning forward and gripping the controls for the Hyperdrive and pushing it forwards, propelling the small freighter into hyperspace. “I’ll stand the first watch if you like?”
Kandar nodded again and headed for his cabin to get his head down. The cabins for the Captain and the First and Second Mate were very close to the cockpit, in compartments off of the main living space, whilst the smaller passenger cabins as well as the cargo bay and other compartments were arrayed around the disk of the freighter’s starboard side. Kandar slipped into his cabin and lay down on his bunk, not bothering to remove his tunic or get under the covers. It had been a frantic and emotionally tiring few hours as they risked everything to escape, so it was perhaps hardly surprising that he fell into a dead sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Over the next few days the Dewson Vance picked its way through various star systems far from the Interstellar Empire, following the hints and clues that Professor Vance had located. Upon arriving in a system they followed the clues until they found another one, it was remarkable perhaps that no one else had stumbled on this trail before, but then again Kandar and Lana were lucky enough to have all of the pieces to this particular puzzle. They picked up a third member of their crew when they got into a bar fight on some alien world, this Twi’Lek woman had waded in to help them and the three of them had beaten a hasty retreat. They had offered to drop off the woman, Dasha Zhagel, at the nearest free port but she had declined and requested to come along with them, and given that they weren’t exactly in a position to give up a spare pair of hands they had filled her in on their quest, and she had eagerly agreed to come along, for she too was from the Interstellar Empire, and had grown up on stories of the Jedi.
About two months after they left Nimbus they arrived in the latest system on their list. Kandar had the helm and the other two were in their cabins, this was after all fairly routine by this point. Except for this time instead of the dead system that they were expecting the sensors almost immediately announced that there was another ship in the system… and it had turned towards them...
