Leaderboard

Throughout the trip up the side of the sinkhole, Darth Calypso listened without comment or expression. As Akheron gave her an overview of the history she had missed, she sat back and absorbed it. The 1000 years of peace, the rise of the Galactic Empire and the near destruction of the Jedi. The rise of the Galactic Alliance, and the new Sith Empire. The moonfall of Coruscant and the rebirth of the Rebellion. When Akheron finally reached the present, Calypso sat back. "It's all the same," she said, an edge of disgust in her voice. "1000 years and the galaxy is still just another one of the endless variations of the same tired holovid that's been playing since the Unification Wars." Her eyes lowered, and a hint of profound tiredness entered her voice. "When the Sith finally won, things were supposed to change. The universe would change. The strong would rule and the weak would serve, the way it was always supposed to be. Not this...this," she said, at a loss how to sum up everything that didn't make sense about the galaxy. How the talented were pressured into using their gifts for the good of the incompetent. How weakness was celebrated and encouraged. How the ones who actually earned their lives through their own strength were pushed down, lest they upset the whining, fat nerfs sucking on their own filth. Her hands clenched. At that moment, the first rays of sunlight reached the crumbling edges of the warehouse walls and fell onto the ancient Sith. It bathed her in a golden-orange glow, and she looked up at the sudden warmth on her skin. "Strife would free us all," she continued. "The Sith were in charge, they should have won." A grimace crossed her face. "But they stopped at the finish line. They took the mantle of a stagnant galaxy as a victory prize...and then they lost it all. Our paradise, our truth, gone." The warehouse ground to a halt as it crested the edge of the sinkhole. Calypso stood as it did. "I have work to do." Her voice was matter-of-fact, the restrained passion vanished. "You are all still here, so I assume you'll be working for me until further notice." She held up a hand to forestall Akheron. "Yes, I know, you are only escorting me." She turned to give the Brasganu Sith her full attention. "Remember these words." She used the term as a statement, not an insult. "Belief is the brother of passion, and is a powerful tool. However, a true Sith lets nothing rule them but themselves. Explore the strengths of your faith, not its limits, and you will find power untapped." She smiled. "I foresee great things from you. Stay with me, and we'll tear the galaxy down to rock and ash." She turned to Inmortos. "You...you have taken a great step today. Thousands of souls and the spirit of a true Jedi stood in your way, and you still had victory. You are a Master of the Sith arts, for no one else could have survived that kind of trial." She smirked wryly. "You may even be able to teach me a thing or two about the more eclectic forms of our arts. However, I urge you to examine yourself. The most subtle chains that bind a Sith are the ones they forge themselves." She paused as she thought back to her own moments of enlightenment, her own glimpses of true freedom. "Find these chains, and be as ruthless with them as you are with your enemies. A god can have no part that is ungodly." Finally, she turned to the strange abomination. "As for you...you intrigue me. There's something off about you. Something twisted. Or perhaps..." she paused, then shook her head. "I have seen an age's worth of Sith, and I have never seen anything that even began to resemble what you are, or what you seem to be becoming." She smiled, something predatory gleaming in her expression. "I hope to see it come to fruit. And I sincerely hope you survive the process." She turned to address the three as a group once again. "Necromancer, gather my army. Whichever one of you has a ship, get us and my new troops aboard." Her tone was not curt, demeaning, or even arrogant. She spoke disarmingly casual, as if to old friends. The ease at which she slipped into the attitude might have been eerie to some, and indeed it had in her long ago past. She did not order. She did not demand. She just...talked. And she expected others to listen. Hidden underneath her informal attitude though, her power simmered. The Dark Side moved around her like the current of a whirlpool, and it was readily obvious to anyone with the senses to see why the Dark Side Nexus had formed around her in particular. Darth Calypso had achieved what many other Sith strived for all their lives. She had broken her chains She was free.

"Necromancer, gather my army. Whichever one of you has a ship, get us and my new troops aboard." “If you and my master both allow it…” Solus spoke up quickly, eager to prove himself again. “Allow me to lead the way. I have a natural sense of direction and memorization. You will not fail in trusting me.” …trusting me With that Solus quickly rose and began to lead the way. Every word he said was true, and he was eager to prove it to this newfound ‘ally’. As he had discovered in the Naboo abyss, and as he stated earlier to his master, Shard physiology seemed to have a natural sense of which direction was north, and in turn, a decent ability at navigation. But there was more to what Solus wanted when he lead the way. Part of it was to show he was useful to this female, despite not knowing if she was an ally or not. The rest was that he wanted some time to think to himself. The conversation the group had, with the history of the state of the galaxy, had revealed much to the Shard. Most of his learning had been military and spiritual, not historical. Most of everything Solus had seen so far was through those kinds of lenses, with a perception focused on the Fanged God himself. But having received a crash course in galactic history, Solus had to process the fact that life had just kept going. And more so, some galactic events he had known about beforehand without realizing it. The death of a previous sith emperor by his own apprentice. The crashing of the moon into a populated planet. Exterminations and rebirths. Deities fighting deities with blades of fire. So many events, all witnessed at one point or another by the shard. What did this mean? Even as Solus led the way, he couldn’t find an answer. The Shard stopped, surrounded by piles of debris and trash. The shard only stopped because he realized he had made a deal of progress ahead of the others and needed to allow them to catch up. As he waited, Solus glanced down at his own chassis and almost gasped in surprise. The flesh, the meat…it was all gone. Having journeyed far enough from the epicenter of the dark side nexus, the thing that had clung to his body so easily no longer carried the fuel to maintain itself. It had faded away into nothing, revealing the old, rusted and practically useless metal beneath. “I guess part of the reason we came here included salvage for new parts…” Solus commented and began to sift through the metal. One group of parts stood out. A humanoid metallic shape, with a short stature and large eye sensors. Plucking it from the debris and holding it by a breaking leg, Solus studied it and nodded approvingly. While partially broken in places, the parts from his current chassis would serve to fix it. Plus, its height actually suited Solus. In his time with the chassis given by the sorcerers, he had grown accustomed to being short and agile. This larger, more oddly shaped chassis was bothersome. “Yes, yes, this will do…” Solus commented. He turned his head at the approaching footsteps. The party had finally caught up. “Just past this way, the heat becomes unbearable” Solus warned the others, carrying the droid chassis with one arm. “I suggest you find a way to protect your skin, wouldn’t you agree wax-man? “But beyond here, the transports await us. Come! The galaxy awaits us!”

Oh but now the demons were so close. He was on the precipice, and his vision swam with forms both light and dark. Ghosts now pressing close enough that he could feel their breath on the back of his neck and their smell intoxicating. How he longed to step across the threshold, past the body at his feet, past the staring bridge crew, past the viewports and into the fire of the planet below. To embrace the destiny the cloners had set him on so many decades ago. To be bathed in fire and glory. That was what he was designed for right? And who was he to spit in the eye of his creators? Somewhere in the back of his head he knew he still had the choice to step away. To order his ship to stand down, order an honourable surrender, and spend his life in peace. That would be the right decision, it could not make up for the trillions of lives he had helped snuff out in the Sith’s mad dash for power, but it would set him on the right path. He let the idea float in his head for a moment, letting the possibilities of redemption tempt him. But it was not too tempting. It was the hard choice, and he had already come so far to turn back now. What good was it to start a fire mission only to turn around when it came to the firefight? The decision would come knocking on his door and he would open the gates. Afterall, he would just slip back into this again if he made the hard choice. He was just delaying the inevitable, and he deserved this one choice. He would walk the easy road. The road to glory and damnation, and how his heart rejoiced in the choice of it. As officers screamed about some corvette crashing into a hanger, his bloodsoaked hand dropped to his belt and slid the DC-15 blaster pistol from its leather holster. How had it gotten bloodsoaked? He did not remember, but something about the warm stickiness of arterial blood on his hands brought a lifetime of memories streaming through his head. The familiar and well worn grip of the DC-15s pistol felt as much a part of him as his own arms. “It’s hard the first time lad. You pull and pull, your arm shaking as you look into their eyes, you almost pray that the blaster doesn’t actually fire. But it does. It does, and then you feel the rush of it. You feel the line between human and immortal god fall away. You get to do something only the gods can do.” Delta could feel those steadying hands holding his wrist, straightening them on the blaster pistol. The voice was that of his Cuy'val Dar instructor, one of the many ghosts that skittered in the back of his mind, but now clear and distinct. Back then he had been looking into the eyes of one of the imported manual laborers that had been recruited to Kamino. The fear in those eyes had delighted him. “You get to sever the soul from its body.” The blaster pistol went off in his hand, its pure blue energy bolt lancing into the back of the flight control officer’s head. Pitching the man headfirst off his pedestal and into the pit that surrounded the command deck. A slight shift of aim and another blast of energy snatched the life out of the captain in charge of the bridge, another slight shift of aim and the TAC officer screamed for the last time in his life. Three more shots, and three more promising lives were snuffed out. It was a delicious carnage, and the bridge crew were completely defenseless. It was like shooting nerfs in their cages. One of his officers managed to fire off a return shot that struck him in the side and did all kinds of damage to his internal organs. But he was still standing. And the officer died from a quick snapshot to the face. It was easy to herd the cadets and unarmed crew into their pits, and as he fired into their defenseless positions, he felt nothing at all except the dull ache of his side. It didn’t take a minute to finish the slaughter, and he did not hear their screaming or their begging, or the shouting and hammering on the other side of the secured bulkhead doors. Or the dull thumping of rebel turbolasers hammering against the shields. He walked the few steps to the captain’s seat and sat down, ignoring the trickle of brown burned blood that blotched his crimson uniform. Instead he pulled up the holographic console and typed a long series of commands. Highest level passwords, and administrative keys, and he secured the bridge and control of the ship completely. He pushed the engines to their maximum thrust and set the trim into place at a sharp downwards angle. Waiting until the globe of the burning planet was filling the forward viewscreen completely, then evened out the engine thrust to account for the damaged engine. It would not take long at all for the final part of the plan to come to its fruition. Down and down came the Black Scarab, accelerating with both the might of gravity and the full thrust of its remaining banks of engines. The last scrap of Empire, the last vestige of the Sith Armada that had terrorized the galaxy for the last half a decade now hurtled towards the burning Ecumenopolis. Eating up the kilometers of distance to the surface in seconds. And leaving the mostly destroyed rebel fleet behind. The vessel would serve as both grave and pyre to the old Vigo of the Black Sun. There was no retreat for the most faithful of the Sith’s servants. And when the Scarab struck Nar Shaddaa it entered into the cityscape like a knife, cutting downwards into the meat of the planet. The shields finally failing in a flash of energy as they leveled thousands of city blocks. Only then did the Super Star Destroyer detonate. Taking all hands, and all pursuing rebel vessels with it. Sealing the tomb of the last Sith Empire in senseless death and fire. But the clone commando had found his damnation at last.

The Jedi Council (and Discord Usernames) Master of the Order, Armiena Draygo - Jedi Ace (DoktorOblivious#5589) Master Sandy Sarna - Jedi Counselor (Scout#6019) Master Kirlocca - Jedi Guardian (TrosArdell#3468) Master Leena Kil - Jedi Healer (Watcher#1906) Master Kyrie Eleison - Jedi Exorcist (FieldgreyFox#6967) Introduction to the Jedi Order “Even the Sith are not our enemy. Not really. Our enemy is power mistaken for justice--the desperation that justifies atrocity. The Jedi’s true enemy is the jungle. Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm. --Jedi Master Mace Windu, 21 BBY To the rest of the galaxy, the Jedi are fundamentally a paradox in motion. We are the heroes of a thousand cheesy holodramas, and we are the unseen hand that nurtures civilization and justice. We are swordsbeings of unsurpassed lethality, striking down fiends with every strike of our terrible swift sabers… and many of us are Healers as effective as a full team of medtechs. Some of us are pacifists. We are diplomats and starfighter pilots and soldiers and scientists and explorers with decades of experience… and lastly, some of us are hermits who will go years without speaking a word to another sapient. It’s a bit… difficult to be everything to the galaxy. The truth is more simple. The Jedi are the servants of the engine that sprang life into motion: the unseen Force. We serve it by helping to create the conditions required for civilization: just governments and peace. To that end, we prepare ourselves in whatever way necessary to serve it, whether that means study and meditation to polish our minds or physical training to sharpen our bodies. We will travel anywhere that is necessary to serve it, whether that means the seats of governments, a negotiation room, a lecture hall, a hospital, or a battlefield. Whatever the environment, our duty is to nurture sound, just government--to protect the powerless and innocent--and to end the predations of the venal and bloodthirsty. It’s a nomadic service and a difficult life by necessity. It’s not just the constant need for self-improvement and introspection, but learning how to quiet your own will and listen for the whispers of The Force is… unintuitive to most. The reward is extraordinary--we get to share that struggle with a brotherhood that is emulated by none other in the galaxy. The Jedi Philosophy: There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is The Force. So wrote Odan-Urr many centuries ago in an attempt at clarifying the Jedi Code. Many are the Jedi who wish that they could have listened to the old Draethos expound on his ideas--including yours truly. And those five lines were supposedly an explanation of the original Jedi Code from even deeper in the memory of time. Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet The Force. Truly, it is an intersection of poetry and philosophy. I have no doubt that the evocative nature of the Jedi Code has had something to do with many of the misconceptions concerning the Jedi--for example, whether we are allowed to display emotion, or if our training does not strip away the ability to feel it at all. Or to experience the deep, consuming passion of an artist, or to love a friend or companion, or even to grieve for those that we have lost. Those last have been especially harmful and are patently untrue. The very idea of surrendering your own will to follow that of The Force is a consuming, passionate notion. And I would argue that a Jedi, living the difficult life of unbiased service is incomplete without love--whether this is the passionate love of romance or the abiding, unconditional love of another sapient being for the mere fact that they are another feeling, thinking creature in a vast, empty galaxy is immaterial. But I am digressing. Numerous philosophers have attempted to elaborate on these lines with more prosaic guidelines or tenets, one of which can be summarized briefly:: The life of a Jedi is one of service to those in need. Jedi are the guardians of civilization. Governments change with time, but justice does not. Jedi act in the interests of the latter, not the former. The Jedi train to use and understand The Force, parallel to uncounted traditions throughout the galaxy. A Jedi values all sapient life, whether that is one million, one thousand, or one person. A Jedi uses The Force for knowledge and defense, not for conquest or personal gain. A Jedi is a thinking, feeling being like any other. They are mindful of their emotions, but do not allow themselves to be used by them. Living beings are more than mind and matter; death is not the end of existence. As Jedi, we have chosen a life of service and self-abnegation for the greater good of the galaxy. This life would be difficult enough in times of peace where we would be spending months or years as nomads away from our homes. But we are not at peace--in the current state of emergency in the galaxy, we are all going to face traumatic experiences that can break less disciplined beings. It will be impossible for us to deny the intense emotions of the days before us. A battlefield is a whirlwind of intense emotional experiences, and with the political upheaval and atrocities that we are sure to witness, we will have to find a way to let our emotions free and expel our pain so we will be able to even function. Our service requires a life of endless self-improvement, of constant training and study to better serve The Force and our fellow Jedi. In the chaos of battle, amidst intense suffering and when passions are running wild, a Jedi will have to find a way to be the eye of the storm. I don’t have an answer for the final line of the Jedi Code. We’ve all lost friends in our time. I can only hope that when this life is done, mine will be waiting with a smile and a bad pun. Service Becomes Leadership There is a significant paradox of the Jedi Order that needs to be addressed: that of the political position of the Jedi in the secular galaxy. Jedi are discouraged from seeking public office or assuming command positions in the military, and yet we are often seen as the leaders of the galaxy. Example–no one remembers Valorum save as the very definition of mediocrity, but any Coruscanti can rattle off a bunch of trivia about Kenobi or Yoda. When conflict erupts that no politician or diplomat or–Force forbid–a fleet of warships can resolve, who is called to intervene? A Jedi is almost invariably seen as an acceptable mediator to both parties. A series of meetings and an arbitration later, disaster is averted. Or during an active battle, with artillery thundering and trenches and countertrenches being dug in and great batteries of shield generators rendering the horrible bloody affair a terrible stalemate, two Jedi can slip through no man’s land and render a position untenable with a lightsaber thrown into the a vital weakpoint. Such an intervention necessitates a negotiation and a peaceful end to the conflict before the sheer volume of the bloodshed makes anything but decisive victory unacceptable to either side. Or another example: a plague befalls a continent and millions of sapients are put in danger. A Jedi Healer is dispatched to assist in studying the contagion, tend to the afflicted, and comfort the bereaved. The Jedi are implicitly trusted in these scenarios–it doesn’t matter where the Jedi needs to go, what resources they expend, or what security clearance they require–people tend to accept without question that their actions are in service to the collective good. And in those remote spans of the Unknown Regions, where starcharts are unreliable or completely unavailable, the Jedi are especially valued as the guidance of The Force assists with the perilous task of navigating those stars at faster-than-light speeds. So many colonies and vessels in the farthest reaches of the Unknown Regions owe their survival to the timely intervention of a single Jedi and their Padawan. By necessity, we cannot simply follow our shortsighted political preferences or some moronic personal prejudices–our service is to The Force. We must carefully weigh the merits of all parties regardless of our predilections. The great irony of our position is that through centuries of dedicated, selfless service to the galaxy, taking no note of political affiliation or economic status or language spoken, the Jedi Order was transformed from an obscure cloister of ascetics into an essential component of the galaxy’s political order. We are something of an unquantifiable factor to the rest of the galaxy–every terrible endeavor involving billions of sapients or trillions of credits must take into account the following variable: what if the Jedi intervene? We cannot simply be predicted to act towards the benefit of any government or even the Order itself. Over the course of millenia, through continual service to noble values, our service became leadership. –Armiena Draygo, Master of the Order Ranks in the Jedi Order (In Draft) Hopeful: While some prospective Force-Sensitives are discovered by deployed Jedi Knights and taken on as Padawans, it’s more common for Jedi to begin their ways by making their way to one of our Praxeums. It’s often not an easy journey these days, with the aggression of the Sith Empire and the spacelanes clogged with refugee traffic. They have few official duties outside of attending classes and drills and learning as much about the Force as they can without direct one-on-one training. They even have access to most of the Archives--outside of Holocron guardians--hangar facilities and the mechanists. It’s a charmed existence. Padawan: The teachers in the Praxeums do their best, but learning to use The Force typically requires a more personal relationship that can be difficult to achieve in a drill environment. Such is the necessity of the Padawan-Master relationship--typically a Jedi Knight or Master taking a single apprentice into the field, to learn through empirical experience and one-on-one training. It’s a difficult time in the life of a Jedi. Even a prodigy in The Force needs the tempering of experience, and as far as self-defense… the Sith love to prey on those that they perceive to be less capable of defending themselves or less certain of their own convictions. The real difficulty of the training, of course, isn’t the drilling. Or the endless hours of meditation, or the constant travel. It’s coming to grips with the fact that, as a Jedi, you will have chosen a difficult life--a significant one, to be sure, but a third of the galaxy is going to want you dead, a third will hop to their feet and call you “Master Jedi”, another third will take cover and hope the shooting stops soon, and a last third believes the nonsense from the latest holovids. This is where, on a quiet night with trusted company, I start to rant. To choose the life of a Jedi is an inherently irrational decision. Our lives are frequently dangerous, constantly on the move, sometimes hunted by adolescent bastards who follow a philosophy that isn’t even a proper antithesis to our own. To choose this kind of life requires more than just conviction--it requires passion--it requires believing in something with such ferocity that it consumes your life and if you’re not willing to crumple it up and throw it away in pursuit of those beliefs… I’m digressing again. By the time a Padawan is ready to take their Trials and make their first acts as a bona-fide Jedi Knight, they need to be armed with more than a lightsaber. Jedi Knight: In draft Jedi Master: In draft Jedi Grandmaster: Hello there. The most important thing that I’ve ever learned about leading these people is that the Order does not belong to me. True, I frequently have to order Jedi into the field for an uncertain future, risking life and limb, but I’m just borrowing it for a short time. It existed for a long time before I was born, and Force willing, it will continue long after I’m dust. I would find this leadership position were it not for the assistance of my Jedi Council. From the very beginning, I chose four Jedi whose judgment I trusted implicitly. I did not particularly care whether they were Jedi Masters or Knights, or whether I had served with them personally or not. I would trust these extraordinary people with my life, or with someone else’s life, and as far as I’m concerned, their presence in any crisis might as well be my own. One of my personal endeavors established something of a virtual Council Chamber on the HoloNet, to be used in the frequent event that we were not present in the same location… and this is where my author breaks the fourth wall and advises frequent out-of-character coordination with the Council for significant in-character and out-of-character matters, and even the Dark Lord of the Sith for generating entertaining content for other players.