The Force Always Says Yes [Star Wars]

[shukkets]

Nice.
Thanks for the chapter.

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 62: The Jedi Way​

After bandaging Tetha's wound as best they could with the supplies in the medical room, Nerim dragged Kiali to her feet with one arm and helped steady Tetha with his other, and began moving as fast as they safely could towards the armory. After all the screaming had stopped, the halls were deathly quiet, interspersed with ungodly loud gunshots echoing from below. The Hutt's feasting hall was empty, but a slight trail of slime made Nerim aware they were walking in the same direction.

As they walked, Kiali carefully limped in front, her shoulder firmly in Nerim's grasp. She looked at the Zabrak Nerim had killed, and shuddered. "W-where is the Mistress?"

"The Sephi?" Nerim replied dully. "Dead."

Kiali let out a huge breath of relief at that, curiously.

"Why?" Nerim asked.

"She's the one that controls our bombs. Not Yenchara. Sometimes she hands out bomb controls to higher ranks for missions away from home, like Vena."

Nerim's brow furrowed. "You mean to say you're implanting bombs in yourselves?"

Kiali looked down. "They said it was the only way to ensure we'd stay loyal to each other. The coven would allow no men, no love, and no escape."

"Barbaric," Tetha said in a raspy voice.

"How long until it goes off on its own after losing signal?" He asked.

"Couple hours" Kiali turned around slightly, still walking forward at Nerim's behest. "Where are you taking me?"

"To the Republic. You're under arrest for accessory to the murder of Fae Coven."

She didn't respond to that—barely even reacted. Just looked down and kept walking. It occurred to Nerim that he technically didn't have the authority to arrest her, anyways. Although, he was in Boonta right now. Everything went in this jurisdiction.

He boarded the elevator which, surprisingly, was working. He supposed the Hutts heavily reinforced that system, seeing how difficult stairs and ladders were for them. They began to slowly crawl downwards. The gunfire got louder as they did so, and Nerim took Tetha and Kiali to the side, away from where the door would open. When it opened, he was glad he did.

A handful of stray shrapnel shot in as the doors parted, and the gunfire became unbearably loud. In front of them were the two Hutts, twitching and crawling down the grand hall with uncharacteristic urgency. They were skirting behind some of the bars and platforms where musicians played. Throughout the rest of the hall, though it was nearly pitch-black, Nerim could make out the glinting of beskar, dodging Syaniids, and something...else.

A smaller Mandalorian drew his blaster and fired, lighting up the room for a brief moment; it had survived on account of having been in the reinforced armory when the ion cannons went off. The Syaniid, a Zeltron, deftly dodged around it and moved in to the Mandalorian. She jumped atop him, tumbling them both to the ground, and then wrapped around his leg and twisted, dislocating it from the hip.

Suddenly one of the shadows raised a rifle and fired. Deafening noise and blinding yellow light lit up the room as the Syaniid was washed in a hail of slugs. The bullets that missed her poured onto the Mandalorian, breaking and bouncing off of his armor, creating yet more shrapnel that bounced back up at her. "Up, up!" The vague outline of shadow yelled in Saarkanian, as brass casings sprinkled along the floor. Suddenly the shadow disappeared again—a speaker from the music set crashed into the space where the Saarkanian just was as if it had just been tossed by a tornado.

"Filthy little slaves!" Skissa roared, picking up a wroshyr wood table and slinging it like it was made of packing paper. It spun and landed on a corner next to the Mandalorian, and the extremely durable wood didn't even scratch, bouncing off the floor and into a wall, where it continued ricocheting around the hall. "I'll have you all fed to the Sarlacc for a thousand years!"

Another shadow reappeared, and then another. A hail of gunfire pelted him, mostly bouncing or stopping and tumbling off his Hutt hide. The few that punctured seemed to have little more effect on him than a cactus needle to a Gamorrean as he roared incoherently.

Yenchara slid behind him, much more composed, and happily using him as a distraction. In her hand, he sensed something...and he pulled. He held his hand out, and Arwain's lightsaber ripped away from hers, flying through the room and into his grip. She turned her head, looked at him, and her eyes sharpened with sudden surprise and recognition. Then, she smiled, and slid behind a doorway, slamming her fist into an emergency panel and pulling the lever. The large blast doors slid shut, and she sealed herself in the safe room.

Skissa turned his head just in time to see it lock, and then screamed again in frustration. Nerim offered his shoulder to Tetha and grabbed the crook of Kiali's elbow and then began leading them forward, towards the middle of the room where the Mandalorian lay. "K'atini!" Nerim said, kneeling down to the Mandalorian.

"Can't walk," came the voice from under the helmet, undeniably that of a frightened teenaged boy.

Nerim grit his teeth. "Onto me, c'mon," he offered. The boy grabbed onto his shoulders, lifting himself up in something halfway to a piggyback ride, one foot still on the ground. As he did so, a number of other Mandalorians and Saarkanians entered the room, beginning to unload every weapon they had into the Hutt. Nerim called upon the Force and pushed forward, leading the group through the door into Skissa's staff halls. It didn't take too long from there to reach the armory.

The halls around the armory were packed, walls of beskar in the form of Mandalorians in firing lines blocked the path while short Saarkanian operatives in ultrablack armor moved like living silhouettes beneath them. They parted for Nerim as he carried the three others towards the line, and then he saw Jianno, angrily shaking a Saarkanian by the shoulders and screaming at him.

She turned to see Nerim and Tetha just as another Mandalorian grabbed the teenager off of his back and a Saarkanian operative took hold of Kiali, and Jianno's face broke for just a moment with a tightening of her upper lip. Then she rushed towards them and placed a hand on each of their cheeks, looking each in the eyes with pure gratitude. "Burc'yase. Vor entye. Vor entye."

Nerim was unable to say anything. Tetha weakly smiled, despite not understanding the words. "Where's Arwain?" She asked.

Jianno frowned. "In the armory room. We're about to extract. C'mon, we'll get you medics."

Nerim moved with her towards the room, which had been entirely emptied of equipment, and now housed only wounded Mandalorians and Saarkanians. Arwain laid flat on her back, eyes closed, almost reminding him of the way Fae slept. A large scorch mark in her upper torso made it obvious she had been shot.

"We were escorting the creche and after she got shot she...She went quiet," Jianno said in a choked voice, fists clenched. "It's a bad one."

Nerim knelt down and looked her over, and nodded slowly, raising his head back to Jianno. "She's entered a Force trance, to stop her body from degrading. She should be okay...after a couple months of healing. She can't wake up though, or else it'll get worse—"

He felt a hand grasp his wrist, and he looked down. Arwain had one eye opened, just barely, and squeezed his wrist. "Good job, Apprentice."

Nerim grabbed her hand and ripped it off of his wrist, and scowled at her. "Get back in your trance!"

She laughed weakly, and then cringed in pain. "It's important to support your students," she mumbled, her eyes closing.

As she went still and fell into the Force again, he stared at her motionless form for a few moments. His throat tightened. He was still holding her hand in his. Sweat dripped into his eyes, or something, and he closed them and focused on breathing.

"Alright, everyone!" A Saarkanian's voice rang out in Huttese. "Wounded first, we are leaving!"

It only took a few minutes of mad rushing and the arrival of Saarkanian paramedics to place Arwain on a stretcher and get her, along with the rest of them, onto one of the two dropships. He felt a lurch as they raised into the air, and then once they entered the hangars of the warship, it quickly jet out of the atmosphere. The warship docked in orbit with a medical aid ship that had been procured for the capacity to remove as many slaver bombs as possible within the less-than-an-hour timespan they had to do so, but the best of the Republic was on it. Jianno left with the rest of her kin onto that ship.

Tetha and Arwain meanwhile were shuffled away to the operating rooms on the warship infirmary itself, seeing as they were much lower priority and didn't have bombs to dispose of. Nerim wasn't allowed to follow behind. The military ship apparently had strict procedures about that.

Eventually he was left practically alone in the hangar bay, beyond a few Saarkanians running around performing their duties. He stood in still, awkward silence for a minute, and then decided to sit down. He placed his back against an ammunition crate and rested his head against it, and his eyes grew heavy. He breathed out and felt as if something that was gripping him let go. Like he was allowed to relax now, finally.

"Master Jedi!" A Saarkanian's voice startled him. He jumped in place and stood up quickly.

"Huh, what?" He answered, unsure if he had fallen asleep or not, or how much time had passed. He looked down at his chronometer. Not 20 seconds had passed. He sighed, and rubbed his forehead, looking at the officer that had approached him. "What...? Also, I'm not a Je—"

The officer placed a metal disc on the floor, and a hologram appeared above it. The Governor stood hunched over a desk, thumbing through datapads and documents. The hologram was strange, picking up on everything in his room, leaving a blank space where his body would be, save his eyes. Noticing the call had connected, Vseyav lifted his head. "Nerim?" He raised an eyebrow. "Where's the rest?"

"I'm what you got," he shrugged, face still covered in blood and hair wet with sweat.

"I see..." He placed a hand to his chin, his fur rippling with color, though the monochrome hologram did not depict exactly which. "Well, I wanted to say first, good job. I've been monitoring the situation. We received word that the Dark Jedi has been taken prisoner, and the Mandalorians have made it out."

"Thanks."

"There is something I wanted to alert you to, however..."

"Okay."

Nerim stared impassively at the hologram as Vseyav tested the waters. Finding no recourse, the Governor sighed. "The deal has changed a little. Again."

Nerim's brow furrowed. "How so? We already got everyone."

"That's the problem, now," Vseyav sat on his desk, popping out his canteen and drinking from it. "Gotta figure out what to do with them."

"...Take them to Saarkane?" Nerim asked, bewildered. "You were going to house them as refugees."

"Can't," he said, unapologetically but also without spite. "Our legislative and judicial branches have aligned against me. My hands are practically tied, now. I can still direct the warship you're on, since I have a private contract with the Gran Protectorate for that. But consider Saarkane to be an unsafe location for you until the end of the proceedings."

"...The..."

"The impeachment proceedings," he took another swig.

"Ah."

The two men stared at each other, and then Vseyav stood up. "Look, kid, I don't have any pull outside my borders. Especially not now. I can't get you anywhere to house them. But if by some unholy miracle you know any other spagozda who's willing to take in a couple hundred Mandalorian refugees, I can get you there. So if there's even a snowball's chance in hell, I need you to take the shot, because I really don't want my last official act to be dispersing hundreds of Mandalorian slaves without citizenship randomly throughout Republic space."

Vseyav looked at him with forlorn hope. "I'll make a call," Nerim said tiredly. Vseyav did a half-hearted salute, and closed the call. The officer waited expectantly, ready to dial in. Nerim provided him the address, and after a few minutes, the hologram sparked to life again.

Aesha and her father, Jarroa, took up the nook of the hangar he had nestled in. They looked rather confused—even Jarroa, who spoke first. "Hello, Saarkanian vessel? Why are you calling my dau—Nerim?"

Nerim looked up at them, dried blood caked around his mouth and wet sand caked against his cheeks, dark bags under his eyes and hair matted with sweat. The collar of his coat was ripped and he was standing in front of an ancient box labeled ammunition. "Elder Jarroa," he greeted.

"Where is Master Arwain?"

"I'm what you got."

Jarroa was quiet for a moment, and Aesha spoke up, stepping closer to the center. He could see her robotic legs, now. "What's wrong, Nerim? Are you in trouble?"

"Yeah," he admitted, not quite able to say anything else just yet.

Aesha's expression grew determined, and she held a fist over her heart. "Absolutely anything you need, you just tell me."

Jarroa nodded. "You saved my daughter's life. You are a Jedi friend to Cathar, and we owe you a greater debt than I can express."

"Yeah," Nerim repeated, staring at the immaterial hologram before him, his face reflecting the pale blue light. He looked down. "Well, first off, I'm not...I'm not a Jedi anymore."

The room was silent again. When he looked back up, he saw Aesha's aghast face, and Jarroa's pursed lips. Aesha was the first to speak. "Those—those bastards! They exiled you?!"

"Yeah."

"For saving my life?!"

Jarroa's face was stoic, but his jaw was clenched in contained anger. "What about Chey-Linn?"

Nerim was still and expressionless, beyond that visage of fatigue. It was so, so hard for him to speak right now. Every word took everything he had left in him.

Jarroa slowly nodded and looked down. "I see. I see how it is. Before the trial even got underway, they've already made their decision..." He was still for a moment, and then smashed his fist against the wall. He looked back to Nerim. "Consider it Cathar's position that you are a truer Knight than the Coruscant Order's own," he growled, dangerously invoking schismatic language that Nerim was trained to avoid. "Now, what can we do for you?"

"Anything, Nerim!" Aesha echoed.

Nerim stared quietly at them for a few seconds, his lips turning downward. In his heart, he had already accepted defeat. "Don't make a promise you can't keep."

"I would go to war over this!" She shouted, pounding her fist and palm together.

"Calm yourself, princess," Jarroa tempered her.

"I'm not going to ask you to go to war. Or hurt anybody at all," Nerim clarified softly. "I don't want you to stand against anyone. I just need help. But it's a lot. I'll understand if you say no."

Jarroa and Aesha both nodded. "Master Nerim, we would never refuse to grant you aid," Jarroa replied. "Cathar isn't a rich world, but what we have, we will share."

Nerim reached up and wiped his nose, taking a breath. "Long story short, I'm currently responsible for around six hundred Mandalorian refugees from outside of the Republic. They've recently been freed from slavery, and I need somewhere to house them."

He looked up at the Cathar, unsure of what to expect. Both had tensed up. But right away, Aesha nodded. "Okay," she affirmed.

Jarroa was slower. He looked down, deep contemplation in his features.

"Elder Jarroa?" Nerim asked.

The large Cathar looked back up to him, as if interrupted in thought by an inconsequential question. "Of course. We said anything. I will begin setting up a place for habitation."

Nerim's shoulders sagged down, and his eyes burnt again. After everything that had happened that night, he had almost forgotten what it was like to be told yes.


________________________________________

Spoiler: A/N

Aaand that wraps up Arc 6: Boonta! Sorry this one had such a staggered release and took a while, things have gotten much busier in my life. This has been a very transformative arc for Nerim and the other characters in the cast, and the transformations will come to fruition in Arc 7: [REDACTED]. I already have a plan for the final arc, and have started writing it. Of course, this arc, having ended, is now owed a vignette, and it will be a very special vignette indeed...The wordcount kinda ballooned on me...

While the Arc 6 vignette will come out tomorrow, I am thinking about going back and properly finishing the Utapau and Cathar vignettes before the while of Arc 7. We'll see. They've both been kind of difficult for me to write to a point that I'm happy with, due to stylistic shifts I was attempting. Might just have to rewrite them entirely. But I'll ignore them if it ends up giving me writer's block when I could be working on the story proper.

 

[Amrynel]

Wow, Nerim needs a hug (paging Tetha, paging Tetha, please hug your Jedi when you are out of surgery).

Thankyou for the story!

 

[shargle]

Oh man that's going to be rough.. proud of Elder Jarroa and Aesha to be able to reach out a hand in peace to their ancient enemies, even if only as a favor to Nerim.

 

[Hyenanon]

Wow, Nerim needs a hug (paging Tetha, paging Tetha, please hug your Jedi when you are out of surgery).

Thankyou for the story!

Click to shrink...

Yeeeah, I tend to make characters that need hugs for some reason...

 

[shukkets]

Nice.
Everyone survived this time.
Thanks for the chapter.

 

[Psyentific]

Nerim looked up at them, dried blood caked around his mouth and wet sand caked against his cheeks, dark bags under his eyes and hair matted with sweat. The collar of his coat was ripped and he was standing in front of an ancient box labeled ammunition. "Elder Jarroa," he greeted.

"Where is Master Arwain?"

"I'm what you got."

Click to shrink...

Is this what the kids call "Aura"? Because I'm sensing a pretty intense one right now.
What a badass...

After everything that had happened that night, he had almost forgotten what it was like to be told yes.

Click to shrink...

Stealth title drop.

 

[TroubleFait]

Stealth title drop.

Click to shrink...

Makes me wonder if the title isn't entirely true when it comes to the Dark Side. Didn't the Force get mean and ill tempered earlier?

 

[Hyenanon]

End Of Arc 6 Vignette: And I Got Caught Right In The Middle Of It​

She knew it was going to be difficult.

After seeing the youngling win the Initiate Tournament like that, she knew it would be difficult. Younglings weren't supposed to fight like that. In her opinion, they weren't really supposed to fight at all, although the Council that she was always on tense terms with disagreed on that matter. But if not her, then who? Who was going to take that Padawan? Not a Jedi on Coruscant wanted to deal with that kind of trouble. If she wasn't going to be the Master, then who?

Besides, they had a lot in common. After all, if not that Padawan, who would fit her better?

So, she knew it would be difficult, and she kept a brave face and pretended as if it was easy, because no child wants to be told that they're a problem child. Well, she thought she knew, at least. Then, she thought she knew how bad it was going to be when her Padawan came back from Ilum, being studiously avoided by the other Padawans, who gossiped in hushed tones and shut up quickly whenever an adult attempted to listen in.

She only actually knew how much trouble she was in when she heard the Grand Master mutter that she wouldn't trust any Master but her to raise such a problem child. And she still didn't know why everyone was so cagey about the Gathering on Ilum.

So she carefully rushed into the Room of a Thousand Fountains without looking like she was rushing, and searched for her Padawan without looking like she was searching. Finally, and somewhat ungracefully, she poked her head through a bush and saw her student sitting in a clearing.

"Welcome back to the Temple, Fae," said Fay.

Fae cracked one eye open. She was sitting in a perfect meditative seiza, with a beatific smile and an aura of pride about her. Her white hair and rat-like features occasionally made her seem almost like an old lady, despite being at the tender age of 4 and a half, roughly the Jenet equivalent of 15 to a Human, or 35 to a near-Sephi like herself. So too, did Fae's aura make her feel old. The Force flowed through her with not just the strength, but the control of an old Jedi Master. It was unlike anything they had seen.

"Thank you, Master Fay," she said, trying not to show how excited she was. Apparently, she was quite happy with whatever was making everyone else nervous around her. That made things more difficult.

"How did the trip go?" Fay asked cautiously, entering the clearing and sitting across from her student.

"It went well," Fae said with extremely forced humility. "My lightsaber is completed. I cannot wait to begin training with it! It feels so...different from the training sabers. We're so much more connected."

Fay smiled gently at her. "That's great. Good job, student." Fae beamed at that. "Did you get along well with the other Padawans?"

Fae seemed genuinely puzzled at that question. "Uh, yes. Of course. I mean it went fine," she replied, shrugging. "We spoke and trained together on the way there, but everyone was busy on the way back with their own lightsabers."

So she was still, somehow, unaware of her pariah status. But something must have happened during the Gathering to make people avoid her. "We spoke before you left on the Gathering, and how it's often a mentally and spiritually difficult process, unique to every Jedi. How did it go, for you?" Fay carefully probed.

Fae grinned again. "It was wonderful! I was given a vision!"

Fay stared blankly at her. She had a wonderful vision? The Force gave out positive visions? "Is that so?"

"Yes!" She bounced in place.

They held eye contact for a moment. Fae was obviously waiting for Fay to ask what she saw in the vision.

Fay placed her fingers together and spread them out. "Listen, Fae. I know that it's very exciting to get your first lightsaber. It really is a magical moment, and it is a sign that the Force has invested much trust into you. But I have to question. Do you know what the purpose of a lightsaber is?"

"To defend the weak!" Fae answered instantly.

"And what is the purpose of a Jedi?"

"The selfsame!" She replied confidently. "The Jedi, the Blade, and the Force are one."

"No," Fay said.

Fae blinked. "...No? What do you mean, no?"

"The purpose of the Jedi is to make the Galaxy a better place."

Fae's eyes narrowed. "That's synonymous with defending the weak."

"Not necessarily," Fay said softly. "There will be times where the evil and the weak are one in the same. There will be times where there are no innocents to defend, yet evil must still be confronted. And there will be times in your life where there are no evils to slash at. There will be times where you must not defend, but provide, or listen, or fade into the background radiation all together."

"Okay..." Fae acknowledged cautiously. "...But...say we were in involved in a large Galaxy-spanning war, between a liberal democratic Republic fighting for peace and justice, and a loose band of Sith Warlords constituting a tyrannical and genocidal superstate. In that case, my role in making the Galaxy a better place would be to defend the weak."

Fay's expression became more stern. She didn't like how often her student brought up the ongoing war. "It's important to retain a clear sense of priorities, Padawan."

Fae bristled at the way she said the word Padawan. "It seems clear to me."

"When you clear your mind, when you are free of emotion and disquiet, does the Force really call you to war and violence?" The Master asked rhetorically.

"Yes," Fae said simply, and Fay knew she was telling the truth.

"...Yes? What do you mean, yes?" Fay's eyes widened, and her lips tightened. "Fae...what did you see in your vision?"

"Perhaps you wouldn't understand," Fae stood up resentfully, turning and walking away. "You don't even carry a lightsaber. What would you know about it? How can I learn anything about this from you?"

"Fae!" Her Master barked sharply, and Fae froze, slowly turning back around. Fay stood up, and brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear. "If you think lightsabers are the best—or only—way to defend yourself, then I fear you haven't been paying attention." Fay slowly and smoothly widened her stance, holding her arms in a ready position, palms facing outwards. "If you are so eager to learn lightsaber dueling, then prove to me that your opponents will even need a lightsaber to defeat you."

The Force whipped into a whirlwind around Fay, and leaves swirled around her on the breeze. She could feel the sudden attention of two dozen Jedi throughout the garden snap to her. She did not like fighting, and so she did not carry a blade, whose only use was battle. But she was, after all, the most powerful Jedi alive in this dark age, much moreso than the Grand Master on Coruscant. If she were to fight, she would win.

Fae stared at her, entirely unafraid. She unhooked her lightsaber hilt and held it above her head in both hands, smoothly sliding her foot across the grass and entering her own ready stance. There was a shift in pressure, and the Force whipped around her, spinning opposite to Fay's own flow. "You underestimate me, Master," she said with a steely glare.

"We'll see," Fay replied, similarly unimpressed.

Then Fae activated her lightsaber, and the glade was bathed in Republic Red.

Now, Fay knew how much trouble she was in.



___________________________________________________________________________________



To Fay, the passage of time was far different than it was to Fae. Her race was already naturally inclined to take their time. Fay was 30 before she became a Padawan. She outlived her Master before she made Knighthood. Twice. At age 90 she was Knighted, and at age 146 she was recognized as a Master. And all of this was before she unlocked the secrets of agelessness.

To her, a Coruscant year was a trivial thing. It was made all the more glacial by the nearly thousand years of war the Galaxy had been consumed by; though the seasons came and went, and the front lines shifted and warped, nothing ever seemed to change even on the scale of centuries.

The last 4 years she had spent training Fae had been the longest, most grueling process of her life. She felt as though it had already been half of her lifespan.

For Fae, it actually had been half of her lifespan. Fay couldn't imagine how long it felt for her.

When Fay entered her mid-sixties, she felt an all-consuming sort of shame and embarrassment. Everyone in the Order then had treated her as if she were...disabled, in some sense. She was older than many of them would ever live to be, and yet, she felt like an unsafe and unaware child. She had the skills, the devotion, the will; she had passed great tests of her spirit and body. She just...wasn't ready. She was a child.

Fae, in a mirrored way, faced the exact same and opposite problem. It was her 8th birthday, and she was just about convinced that she deserved to be on the Council by now. She wasn't entirely wrong.

So, Fay decided, it was important to celebrate whatever milestones they actually could. She was determined to at least make Fae feel appreciated in some way, and she always knew the exact way to cheer Fae up.

Fae smiled happily and kicked her legs on the high stool at the ice cream bar, enjoying a mouthful of what might be every flavor on the menu simultaneously. She turned 8 today, but Jenet development wasn't exactly like Human or Sephi; they stayed in their prime for the majority of their lives, so physically she was perhaps the equivalent of an early-20's Human, same as Fay now. Despite that, Fae always seemed like she was born as a little old lady, and any display of her actual age seemed uncharacteristically silly. Fay smiled and tried not to laugh at the dollop of ice cream on Fae's cheek.

"H-hey," Fay heard to her side. She turned her head, and saw an obviously quite nervous Zeltron, a young man with a head of messy hair. "M-my name's Zaalan," he said, trying hard to smile in a charismatic way.

Fay glanced to the side of the room, where his friends were obviously silently cheering him on. She smiled slightly, and then looked back at him. "Hello, Zaalan. I know what you're going for, but I'm sorry, it wouldn't be appropriate," she said. He frowned, and then she telekinetically lifted her spoon into the air.

"A—a Jedi!" He laughed in astonishment. "Oh my stars, I'm sorry. Sheesh, no wonder you're so...Um...Have a nice day!" He said, scampering off.

She turned back, chuckling under her breath. Ever since she hit her mid 90's, she was approached pretty much every time she went out. She had it on good authority she was considered ridiculously attractive by near-Human standards, although she never really had any feelings of the sort, so it was hard for her to judge.

Fay looked back to Fae, who was now glowering.

"Student, it's unbecoming to be so jealous," she warned smugly. She didn't exactly get it, but she knew it made Fae jealous, and there were precious few things that could do that nowadays.

"I have to deal with this every time we go anywhere," the Jenet growled. "I've had to deal with it at home! You're the only Jedi I've ever known to be propositioned in the Temple!"

Fay shrugged humbly. "I don't entirely understand it myself."

"Neither do I!" Fae pouted. "I don't get why anyone would be into an old hag like you."

"Watch it," Fay's eye twitched.

The two of them ate in silence for a few minutes, and then Fae spoke again. "Master, about my progression in the Order..."

Fay wilted a little. "Student, you were doing so well. It's been months since you last asked when you would take your Knighthood trials."

Fae wrinkled her nose. "Because I realized it's silly. It's silly to pretend I should be held back to Knight, let alone Padawan. I should be recognized as a Master."

Fay sighed. "You are so impatient. You still have so much to learn."

"Like what?"

"You have to study the legal code, for examp—"

"Master, I read the entire code last week," Fae scowled. Being a Jenet, she had perfect photographic memory. It didn't guarantee understanding, but an instant recall of all pertinent information let her at least fake it convincingly. Fay literally couldn't come up with enough material for her to study before she had finished the last assignment.

"I...see," Fay looked askance nervously and took another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. "Well, beyond that, you should also know that raw power can't substitute—"

Fae turned on her seat and faced her Master. "I think it's time we start seriously considering if I'm the Chosen One."

Fay nearly spit out her ice cream. "What?! We've all acknowledged that you're gifted, but—"

"I beat the Battlemaster in a duel yesterday. Three times in a row."

"Well—the Coruscant Battlemaster..." Fay weakly protested. "The Dantooine Battlemaster is, you know, way stronger."

Fae stared at her, annoyed. "I have lifted all six of the Muntuur Stones. No one but you can do that. Most Grand Masters can't manage three."

"That's—Well, the prophecy says that the Chosen One will be born of the Force. We found you with your parents as part of a litter," Fay argued on a technicality.

"It's all the Force," Fae crossed her arms.

"Tch! Do you think the ancients used the term 'born of the Force' for no reason?" Fay countered.

A vein bulged on Fae's forehead. "Maybe they meant borne of the Force, y'know, in the same way your body has borne many STDs you fat old crone—!"

"You insolent little ankle-biter!" Fay shouted, grabbing her by the collar.

"Hag!"

"Brat!"

Zaalan watched with concern as the girl he had asked out got into a fist-fight with a little old woman, and both of them used the wrong insults.



___________________________________________________________________________________



When Fay heard the news that Master Skere Kaan had gathered a league of Jedi Knights, proclaimed a Schism due to the Order's ineffectiveness in fighting the Sith, and lead an exodus to crusade against them, her heart jumped into her throat. She sprinted through the Temple towards Fae's room like a madwoman, first thinking it was inevitable, then impossible, then inevitable again...

She skid to a stop and punched the control panel, causing the door to shoot open, and saw that Fae Coven...wasn't there. She looked desperately, and saw that despite her absence...all of her belongings were there.

An Ithorian Knight poked his head in through the door. "Master Fay? Is everything alright?"

Fay whipped around. "Where's Fae?!"

"She's in the nursery," he answered calmly.

Fay didn't even respond, unable to believe it. She just ran. Impossible. Inevitable? Impossible...?

She burst through the doorway into the nursery and saw her loyal Padawan happily cooing over one of the babies, while another tugged on her hair. Fay exhaled with so much relief she nearly dropped to her knees. "Student...! Oh my bright student, thank you," she said wearily, walking over to Fae and throwing her arms around her.

Fae raised an eyebrow. "What? Did you think I was going to join Kaan's little army?"

"Yes! No! Kind of," Fay admitted with struggle. After all, every year that passed, Fae's quite justifiable assumption that she was being held back became even more justifiable. Fae was a 30 year old woman, now. Half her species' lifespan.

"I would've," Fae easily admitted, "Only, I hate his guts."

That made sense. Kaan was a mere boy, a Human of 20-something years old. Around the time of Fae's birth, several other children with exceptional strength in the Force began to appear. None nearly as quickly developing as her, but young Jedi such as Skere Kaan or Hoth grew unnaturally powerful. And they were universally Guardians, masters of combat. It seemed almost as if the Force had grown tired with the thousand-year-war. A new Chosen One candidate appeared every few years, in a way that seemed less and less like gifts to the Order, and more and more like tomatoes being thrown at a bad act on stage. Some had started informally referring to them as the Titans.

Only, since nobody knew how to deal with any of them, they all were treated completely differently. Opposite to Fae Coven, Skere Kaan was granted practically every liberty and accolade he asked for. The Council even gave him Mastery and a seat on the Council to try and placate him. Many Jedi knew it was a stupid idea, but Fay knew all too well the worst aspect of it was not the corruption of the Order or the spoiling of Skere Kaan; it was to invoke feelings of injustice in Fae.

But, blessedly, Fae had inherited at least one thing from her Master; a deep antipathy for the Council. It seemed like by the time she was 10, Fae had actually stopped caring altogether about her rank. In the same way she rejected Knighthood for how silly it would be, she soon came to feel as though it would be nothing but a comical burden to sit in on Council meetings. So, like Fay, she sort of just...avoided the limelight when times of promotion came. In the same way Fay could have been a Grand Master but studiously avoided it, Fae seemed to have become completely comfortable with existing as a Padawan forever. She never wrote down a thing she accomplished.

The cagey Council seemed relieved at the lack of pressure, and never brought it up themselves. So Fae remained an unremarkable Padawan, accomplishing nothing on the books but some volunteer work with the younglings. Of course, everyone actually in the know was well aware of her. Everyone just pretended they didn't know where she was whenever a Sith Warlord attempted to make an incursion into the Inner Rim, where the Republic's borders stood. Or why the warlord disappeared.

Another old Master came by, and Fae handed off the baby to her. The two Fays began to walk through the halls. "I must admit," Fay smiled weakly, "I had such a bad feeling about this. I worry for you, student."

Fae scoffed and rolled her eyes. "You should. This is intolerable. Every year the Republic's borders shrink, and we do nothing about it."

Fay frowned. "We have been building up strength. I know it is difficult, but we are a democracy, and we have been in a war of attrition for a thousand years. Everyone is tired of fighting. There's not a constituency out there that wants to go on a war of revanchism."

"Of course there are," Fae scowled. "They consist of all of the constituencies we abandoned. Just because they can't formally vote anymore—due to occupation—doesn't mean the people of the Mid Rim don't want help."

Fay sighed. "I understand. And I agree," she looked down. "But the Jedi need the Republic. A schism will only lead to more warlords."

"I am beginning to think some warlords are better than others," Fae replied with a warning tone. "The Supreme Chancellor is a Jedi, for goodness' sake. Why can't we just push forward? My only possible conclusion is that the Jedi are not all that interested in defending the Galaxy."

"We still need senatorial support—"

"Fae!" A man's voice shouted through the halls.

Both women's heads whipped around. "Which one?" They both asked with practiced annoyance.

Master Hoth, another of the dangerous generation, approached. He was flanked on either side by several other Knights, and his face was deadly serious. "The younger," he nodded to Fae.

Fae turned and gave Fay a grin wider and smugger than she had seen on most Hutts. Fay's eye twitched.

"You have heard of Skere Kaan's exodus?" He asked. He stood tall and powerful, much moreso than the average Human—more comparable to a Wookiee, in some ways. He was quite hairy as well, his face covered in his long locks of hair and thick beard. Despite his somewhat unkempt appearance, he was surrounded with a radiant shell of Light, a constant vergence in the Force. Even with his back to the window of Coruscant's skyline, his own light outshone that of the sky's. It was impossible to mistake him for anything but one of the Titans in the playground that was the Temple.

"Nope, I don't keep up with the news," Fae responded flatly and facetiously.

"You have sensed the Darkness in him," Hoth said sternly, ignoring her prods. "I was certain he would have approached you to join him, but I am glad to see you did not."

"I told him to kick rocks," Fae replied, hands clasped together behind her back. "I get the feeling I'm going to have to tell you the same thing in a few minutes."

He shook his head, and gestured broadly. "Look at this place. This Temple. This Council. They have yet to even formally exile him from the Order, despite causing a Schism! They still pretend he is just a wandering Master."

"They're a bunch of idiots," Fae rolled her eyes. "You should have never let them rope you into their ranks."

"I am beginning to think you were correct on that," he said pensively, looking down to the grand red carpet on the floor. Then he looked back up to her. "That is why I am asking for your help. I, and some of my closest compatriots, have decided to go on an expedition to return him to the Temple."

Fae slowly blinked. "Are you stupid or something? You're going to get yourself killed. You aren't strong enough to watch my back."

Hoth pursed his lips. It was difficult, near impossible really, to offend him. But he took the words of those he respected seriously. "Fae, I have always admired your strength and the wisdom with which you use it. I know we are not nearly so far apart as our ranks would suggest. But I am the Battlemaster now. I scarcely know what more I could do to earn your respect."

"Oh, the Battlemaster, eh?" She smirked, her eyes narrowed to a thin slice. "Big deal. I lost all respect for that title when I was eight."

"The Battlemaster of your youth was wise, but suffered from his age and a lack of experience," Hoth reasoned. "I am in my prime, and I have tested all of my Forms against real, live Sith. I have displayed a mastery of Shii-Cho, Makashi, Soresu, Ataru, Djem-So, Niman, and even Juyo. I have dominated battlefields with the sub-Forms, Jar'kai, Sokan, Dun Möch—"

Fae's eyes shot open. "Wait! What was that last one?"

"Dun Möch?" Hoth raised an eyebrow.

"The one before that."

"Soka—"

"Sokan this," Fae said, raising her hand. With a thundering roar and an audible snap of wind, Hoth was sent crashing through the grand window behind him, tumbling into the open air of Coruscant. The Knights that had gathered scattered, some running to the window to watch his controlled descent, others diving to the ground near the walls.

Fae repressed a laugh, placed her hands behind her back, and turned around and kept walking with closed eyes and a beatific smile.

It wasn't an entirely unusual incident in those days. Fae wasn't always on top. They were always trading blows. They toyed with each other in ways that would destroy the average Jedi. That was just how the Titans were.

___________________________________________________________________________________



"I'm done, Fay."

"But—" Fay tried to protest, knowing it was useless.

"I'm done!" Fae hissed, packing the small satchel she would keep all of her belongings in. "There's a Brotherhood of Darkness, an Army of Light—everyone from my generation except me is gone!" She stopped packing to point at herself. "They've all left the Order, and carry out wars and genocides completely unhindered in the Mid Rim! And the Council won't even recognize them as Fallen!"

"I..." Fay began to reach out, but then retracted her arm. It was true. Fae had spent the last six hours arguing with the Council that the Jedi Order should at least disavow Skere Kaan, who was now styling himself 'Dark Lord of the Sith'. They refused.

The reports were too scattered and unreliable, they said. And it was true that the holonet was down, and it took months for couriers to arrive with news of the Outer Rim, and the most reliable reports were that Skere Kaan and his crusade spent most of their time targeting Sith Warlords, and they argued that Kaan was savable, and that matters were not helped by Hoth and his Army of Light declaring war upon them and forcing another Schism, and that it would be unbearably shameful to have to acknowledge another Lost Master, and that putting up a statue of Kaan in the archives would be very inconvenient.

Halfway through a sentence, Fae turned on her heel and began walking out. She quite literally and quite visibly lost all hope of changing the Jedi Order from within mid-word, and decided to leave.

"Are you joining the Army of Light?" Fay asked, scared of an affirmative, but more scared of any alternative.

Fae snorted. "If they want, they can join me." She slung the satchel over her shoulder, and abandoned her childhood room like it was a table at a diner. "The Brotherhood is staging across the Mid Rim, for an invasion into the Expansion Region. The only Republic world out that far is Kashyyyk, and it's a meager exclave. If the Sith manage to surround it and cut off communications, they'll be able to conquer it before the Republic even realizes it's gone, and then everyone is just going to vote to declare them a lost cause instead of fighting back over it."

"How do you plan on stopping them?"

"I'm going to go to its neighbor worlds, and I am going to kill Sith, and I am going to keep killing Sith until they realize it's a bad idea," Fae said coldly, striding through the hallway with purpose.

"Padawan, I..." Fay pleaded quietly.

Fae stopped and turned to her, face contorted in anger. "Spit it out, Master."

"I know for a fact that you are not the Chosen One."

Fae's expression dropped, replaced with an absolute stillness, bereft of any emotional content.

Fay brushed her hair aside, a nervous tic that Fae was quite aware of. "Several years ago, when Kaan and Hoth both set out, I went into deep meditation. I wanted to know what your role was in all of this. I pleaded with the Force to tell me, I begged and begged until it showed me."

"Fay...What did you see in your vision?" Fae asked evenly.

"You will not wipe out the Sith. You might damage them, but somehow, one day, they will kill you. I've seen it," Fay shuddered, the memory replaying in her head. "Everything was blurry. But I know that if you go to war, you will die. You were like a candle that was...snuffed out. It is my worst nightmare."

Fae stared at her Master for a long moment, and then her shoulders relaxed, and a smile broke out on her face. The Force, so tangled and tattered as it was in those days, suddenly seemed full, and whole, and tranquil around her. "Thank you, Master," she said genuinely.

"...What?" Fay's brow furrowed.

"Even in your worst nightmares, I don't fall to the Dark," she smiled beatifically. "It means the world, to have someone believe in me like that."

Fay blinked in shock, and then Fae turned and continued walking away. She began to jog after her. "Fae! I cannot follow you!"

"If you want to help me," Fae said without turning, "Take actions to change the Republic, as drastic as I am taking to change the Rim."

Fay stopped, and stared. Her precious Padawan might have still been walking in front of her, but she was long gone.

Goodness, Fay thought to herself, fighting back tears. When did she get older than me?



___________________________________________________________________________________



The War of Light and Darkness was over. The Sith were all dead. So was Lord Hoth, according to the reports. No one knew if any of the Titans survived. Things had changed so much, so rapidly, that there was scarcely a Jedi who even remembered the terminology. But Fay still did.

When the Army of Light returned to Coruscant, many people expected a grand parade fleet, with tens of thousands of capital ships each housing hundreds of Jedi. What they got was a single shuttle which popped out of hyperspace and then immediately broke down in orbit, with a handful of battered and wounded Knights arriving as couriers with the last reports on Lord Hoth's final battle. The report could simply be summarized as: Everyone is dead.

Then, there was nothing. Nothing at all, for three months.

Fay mourned. And she worked through her mourning. She did everything in her power to remove the Jedi from the Senate, and with help, the new secular leadership began to institute a vast number of reforms. The Council was practically dissolved. The entire leadership structure had fallen apart, and almost all of the responsibilities and departments they had taken on were requisitioned by the Republic government. Even the High Council itself was commandeered to some extent, with a seat reserved for an observer from the Senate. By the end of the war, all of the Grand Masters had died. So began a great meeting of all of the Masters of the Order, to determine what the new direction of the Order would be.

Slowly, it became apparent that the Army Of Light was not completely destroyed. There were, in fact, hundreds of Jedi Lords, who still ruled over fiefdoms and lordships throughout the Mid and Outer Rims. Most of them simply hadn't bothered to return to the Republic, or to the Order, which had more or less shifted from a policy of not acknowledging their exodus, to actively enforcing the distance between them. That is, except for a few Jedi Lords, who would return to pledge loyalty to the New Republic.

Over time, Fay realized a strange commonality. Almost all of these Jedi Lords and their lands could be plotted like a line on the Galactic map, as if a force was going from world to world and enforcing their obedience. A line that could be traced back to...Saarkane. A small inconsequential world near Kashyyyk, which was mostly notable during the war for being a particularly horrible grind for the Brotherhood of Darkness, owing to the local Jedi Lord, Fae Coven.

The legend spread until, with great anticipation, a beautiful ship known as the Wellspring arrived in the skies of Coruscant, trailed by several dozen Jedi Lords, as if Fae was personally dragging them by the ear back home. She barely had time to land before the great political crisis of the Ruusan Reformations had an obvious solution placed in front of the Senate and Order both; just pin it all on Fae Coven, the last Titan left standing.

Fay didn't get to see much of her beloved student for quite some time. Fae was always busy with some business of enormous proportions or another, and she didn't particularly like talking about it, or the war, or much of anything that had happened since they split, really. She mostly just wanted to eat ice cream and bicker about their age, or whine that she still wanted children, or laugh about the fact that she was still technically just a Padawan, seeing as nobody ever Knighted her. The Council of First Knowledge decided to just pretend she was Knighted before she left the Order to crusade for record-keeping's sake.

Over time, Fay realized, things had really, truly changed. For the first time in her life, things had changed.

Fay still felt like she was barely an adult. That century and a half she had spent being alive might as well have been nothing but the few years she spent with Fae. She had been frozen by that war. Everyone had. It was a thousand years of winter on the Galaxy. And now, Fae Coven promised a thousand years of spring to make up for it.

But every now and then, Fay could tell, the new Grand Master cast her gaze out upon the Galaxy. She was once the renegade, the untrustworthy student with an irresponsible Master, who chafed against the Order's strictures, attempted to change it for the better, and then gave up on it entirely. Now that everyone had realized how deeply they needed her, their dependency formed a far stronger leash on her than their discipline once had. But she still felt trapped, from time to time.

After everything that transpired, Fay finally knew how her student felt, also. She had grown so tired of Coruscant. And there was so much more she could be doing elsewhere, now that it was no longer a war zone.

So, one night, Fay packed her satchel, while Fae watched with concern in her posture and grief in her eyes.

"You're really leaving, then?" Fae asked.

"I leave for missions all the time," Fay replied.

"We both know this is different."

Fay smiled. "You kept telling me about how much the Republic was struggling to project law and order in the Outer Rim. I figure this is the least I could do to help, given how much weight is on your shoulders."

"You could always join me. I never said that there could only be one Grand Master at a time," Fae offered.

The Master laughed. "I've come to understand I'm something of an irresponsible sort. Political power is not for me."

The Grand Master smiled ruefully. "What, you think I can do any better?"

Fay looked down at her precious student, and smiled sadly. She leaned down and wrapped her arms around the Jenet, hugging her tightly. "You're so much better than you know. You always have been, even at your most arrogant," she laughed. "You're a much wiser Jedi than me. That's why...I can't do this. Don't think this is sanctimony. For me, the principles of non-attachment are not a virtue. They're a protective shield. I...I can't bear to hold onto something for so long. I'm just not as strong as you. I have to abandon and wander, or I will die."

Fae looked up at her Master with sorrowful, but understanding eyes. "I love you, Master."

Fay felt the warmth of that thousand year spring flow through her, and squeezed Fae tighter. "I love you, my Padawan," she said, and kissed Fae's forehead. "And I promise, I will love the Outer Rim, just as much as you love the Republic."

Fae sniffled, and punched her lightly in the arm. "Don't get too comfortable, hag. I'm gonna get the Republic out there too, sooner or later. You're not gonna be able to avoid me forever."

Fay grinned. "It's a big Galaxy."

"And I'm kind of a big deal," Fae countered, trying to keep her lip from wobbling. "Are you not going to take a Padawan with you? There are many younglings who could use a good Master..."

Fae was incessant about convincing every Knight and Master in the Order to take on a Padawan. All the moreso to her in particular, since Fay swore not to. But Fay just smiled and ruffled the little old woman's hair. "That's forbidden. You can only have one Padawan at a time. Maybe one day, if you become a Knight. But you're a little young for that."

 

[Straw_Man@Large]

Just when you had accepted Fae was gone, then there's a tearjerker chapter of Fae and her Master.

 

[Hyenanon]

Just when you had accepted Fae was gone, then there's a tearjerker chapter of Fae and her Master.

Click to shrink...

No one's ever really gone.

Threw up a little in my mouth writing that

 

[jackieCU]

God I need to reread all of this again

 

[TroubleFait]

No one's ever really gone.

Click to shrink...

Article:

"Somehow, Fae Coven returned."

Source: Disney's sequel to The Force Always Says Yes

 

[Hyenanon]

Article:

"Somehow, Fae Coven returned."

Source: Disney's sequel to The Force Always Says Yes

Click to shrink...

I was asked jokingly a while back what I would do if Disney tried to adapt this story and the answer is I would probably enjoy it very much, but I have a particular fondness for people recollecting my writing incorrectly, and I find the Disney sequel films very ironically enjoyable. Actually I don't know if anybody has noticed this yet, but throughout this arc I spoofed several quotes from the sequels at times I thought were comedically appropriate, in the same way I've spoofed prequel and OT dialogue. They were usually some of the lesser known ones, though, like "Give it to me again, slow" or "Can't imagine why".

I've worried from time to time I would run out of prequel dialogue for the chapter titles before the story is over, but I think I'll be able to just squeak by. Of course there's still untapped goldmines in the making of documentaries for vignettes. If I ever make non-canon joke chapters, they will definitely use sequel dialogue for chapter titles. Fae Coven just walking back into the Council after the Saarkane mission confused as to why everyone thinks she is dead, simply titled "Somehow", is a big contender.

 

[Psyentific]

I wasn't expecting that.
Oh. Oh, I wasn't ready for that at all.
What a lovely little tale, such fondness in my heart now.

 

[EvilLlamaHypnotist]

I was expecting Fay to go back, get mad, and run after them at the end the whole time. I guess this makes more sense though.

I wonder, did she ever even meet Arwain?

 

[Hyenanon]

I was expecting Fay to go back, get mad, and run after them at the end the whole time. I guess this makes more sense though.

I wonder, did she ever even meet Arwain?

Click to shrink...

Well, Arwain did claim to have briefly met her before, but honestly...

"Yeah, that's it," Arwain nodded, happy with the answer. "I've only ever met her while I was out on missions. She's very nice! And pretty."

"Of course she is," Fae's eye twitched again.

Click to shrink...

...Wouldn't put it entirely past her to be lying solely to annoy Fae...Arwain is absolutely the type of person to create grand elaborate lies solely to claim she fucked your mom.

 

[torac]

Currently pausing my read-through after chapter 46 to unload some thoughts and speculation before I forget them.

I do not get Grandmaster Fae as a character.

The dynamic of unorthodox roving masters and apprentices and how they interact with the order is neat. Masters protecting their unorthodox but still-Jedi Padawans from the judgment of the stuffy council makes sense. Classic underdog dynamic.

This utterly fails if you are the most powerful and undisputed ruler of the entire organization and have been for centuries. This fails if you have shaped the very order and doctrine and personally taught many of the most powerful members. Fae is the person who defined what it means to be a Jedi, who has reshaped the order in her image. For there to be such a huge disconnect between her judgment and the unanimous judgment of every single council member, something has gone fundamentally and catastrophically wrong.

I have some ideas that might somewhat account for this situation, but all of them paint her in a pretty bad light:

1) Fae has been withdrawn and at least mentally absent for long enough that the whole culture of the order slipped away from her. Given the extreme disconnect, this might as well mean centuries of absence and neglect, only to be broken out of her funk by Arwain. Given how old she is, how obsessed with prophecies she seems to have been, and how she was focused still on the Sith, this seems like a real possibility, even though it is not shown on-screen. This mental degradation and living in the past would also neatly explain the on-the-surface stupid and ultimately futile murder-suicide attempt in which she killed herself. She was simply done with life and only hanging on because of duty and Arwain.

2) This is intentional. Fae mentioned that absent the Sith, the Jedi are their own primary enemies. She intentionally weakened the order for centuries, making the sedentary and calcifying their doctrine into almost-useless self-defeat, so that the risk of Jedi-based enemies of the Republic is reduced. This is fundamentally based on seeing Force users as separate from "normal sapients". A higher class of being that should not interfere with its lessers aside from protecting them. Similar, perhaps, to the Star Trek doctrine of non-interference. Very arrogant, but internally consistent. In this case, the exile of Arwain and Nerim is just according to plan. The Jedi are successfully crippling themselves.

Of course this whole mindset makes no sense to me and rubbed me wrong the moment it came up. For one, the Jedi are not the only force users, and she herself fully believed in the return of the Sith. Even worse, their "solution" to fallen or unorthodox Jedi is to hand them money and send them out to live unsupervised in the galaxy. If you truly think they are a danger or will fall to the dark side, this is the single most stupid thing to do. You are not just crippling yourself, you are empowering the exact sort of people you don't want to exist.

3) This is an exception for Fae. If Fae shaped the council and doctrine, then those should represent her general attitude and belief. This aligns with everyone calling Arwain her soft spot. In this case, the world is consistent, but Fae is a nepotistic tyrant, who carves out exceptions for her own select cycle while enforcing the rules on others.

This might be a Dumbledore situation, wherein Fae is obsessed by prophecy and treats the prophesied protagonist differently than the rest of the world. Protecting Harry/Arwain instead of reforming the system.

 

[TroubleFait]

Of course this whole mindset makes no sense to me and rubbed me wrong the moment it came up. For one, the Jedi are not the only force users, and she herself fully believed in the return of the Sith.

Click to shrink...

Maybe she believed not in the Sith returning from the dead, but in some Jedi creating a schism in the Order and birthing a new Sith Order from within.

Even worse, their "solution" to fallen or unorthodox Jedi is to hand them money and send them out to live unsupervised in the galaxy. If you truly think they are a danger or will fall to the dark side, this is the single most stupid thing to do. You are not just crippling yourself, you are empowering the exact sort of people you don't want to exist.

Click to shrink...

Exile works if you're afraid of moral corruption. Chase them away so that they may not corrupt the rest.

Remember, that Fae faced the Sith not when they followed Bane's Rule of Two, but when they have thousands of members engaged in a frontal war against the Republic. Some exiled individuals will never amount to much, in her mind.

 

[Hyenanon]

Currently pausing my read-through after chapter 46 to unload some thoughts and speculation before I forget them.

I do not get Grandmaster Fae as a character.

The dynamic of unorthodox roving masters and apprentices and how they interact with the order is neat. Masters protecting their unorthodox but still-Jedi Padawans from the judgment of the stuffy council makes sense. Classic underdog dynamic.

This utterly fails if you are the most powerful and undisputed ruler of the entire organization and have been for centuries. This fails if you have shaped the very order and doctrine and personally taught many of the most powerful members. Fae is the person who defined what it means to be a Jedi, who has reshaped the order in her image. For there to be such a huge disconnect between her judgment and the unanimous judgment of every single council member, something has gone fundamentally and catastrophically wrong.

I have some ideas that might somewhat account for this situation, but all of them paint her in a pretty bad light:

1) Fae has been withdrawn and at least mentally absent for long enough that the whole culture of the order slipped away from her. Given the extreme disconnect, this might as well mean centuries of absence and neglect, only to be broken out of her funk by Arwain. Given how old she is, how obsessed with prophecies she seems to have been, and how she was focused still on the Sith, this seems like a real possibility, even though it is not shown on-screen. This mental degradation and living in the past would also neatly explain the on-the-surface stupid and ultimately futile murder-suicide attempt in which she killed herself. She was simply done with life and only hanging on because of duty and Arwain.

2) This is intentional. Fae mentioned that absent the Sith, the Jedi are their own primary enemies. She intentionally weakened the order for centuries, making the sedentary and calcifying their doctrine into almost-useless self-defeat, so that the risk of Jedi-based enemies of the Republic is reduced. This is fundamentally based on seeing Force users as separate from "normal sapients". A higher class of being that should not interfere with its lessers aside from protecting them. Similar, perhaps, to the Star Trek doctrine of non-interference. Very arrogant, but internally consistent. In this case, the exile of Arwain and Nerim is just according to plan. The Jedi are successfully crippling themselves.

Of course this whole mindset makes no sense to me and rubbed me wrong the moment it came up. For one, the Jedi are not the only force users, and she herself fully believed in the return of the Sith. Even worse, their "solution" to fallen or unorthodox Jedi is to hand them money and send them out to live unsupervised in the galaxy. If you truly think they are a danger or will fall to the dark side, this is the single most stupid thing to do. You are not just crippling yourself, you are empowering the exact sort of people you don't want to exist.

3) This is an exception for Fae. If Fae shaped the council and doctrine, then those should represent her general attitude and belief. This aligns with everyone calling Arwain her soft spot. In this case, the world is consistent, but Fae is a nepotistic tyrant, who carves out exceptions for her own select cycle while enforcing the rules on others.

This might be a Dumbledore situation, wherein Fae is obsessed by prophecy and treats the prophesied protagonist differently than the rest of the world. Protecting Harry/Arwain instead of reforming the system.

Click to shrink...

Interesting thoughts, thank you for sharing them! I was going to respond briefly but I got excited and wrote a wall of text whoops lol

Without spoiling anything, I think to some degree, all three are true. Fae is not enthused about the process of leading the Order, and as several things you've already gotten to have implied, she's somewhat absent about it (Not keeping detailed records of her own doings, her rather fatigued and jokey demeanor during council meetings, etc.), and it's also the case that she's not necessarily the best suited for it. There's a very real reason she's so relieved when she sees the Sith Lords: Not necessarily because she's tired of life, but moreso because she's a Guardian and a warrior at heart--a soldier, even--and things finally make sense to her again once she has an enemy before her.

As for the second part, it's also important to note that in Fae's time, the Sith were largely made up of Jedi who had intentionally left the Order or been kidnapped. The Sith were originally a splinter group from the Jedi, and throughout their existence a large portion of their membership were former Jedi, so she's always hyper-aware of the fact that if Sith were to return, there is a large chance said Sith would also be a Jedi. She also does indeed come from a long history of viewing Force Users as fundamentally different beings than non-Users, which as briefly noted, is something that Nerim uniquely lacks and is part of the reason why he's so good at getting along with people.

Exile is a peculiar punishment, and it's not very elaborated on in any of the works I've engage with in the universe, but it makes a sort of sense, to me. One of the things that's important to keep in mind, which I find a lot of Star Wars media only briefly touches on, is that the Jedi are specifically invested with a great amount of responsibility in state matters. It's actually, in a way, not exactly up to them. In fact, on the section of heresies in The Jedi Path (Fae Coven's book, in-universe), it explicitly underlines that to some degree or another, the Jedi don't actually have the privilege of exploring spiritual matters to their greatest possible depth, because the Order's primary priority must be to act as servants of the Republic. In that light, exile can actually mean something quite different from a declaration of someone's evilness, but rather of their unsuitability to act as a public servant. If a Jedi committed a murder, they would be kicked out from the Order, yes, but they would also be imprisoned for the secular crime of murder.

Exile and exile alone happening to someone is a rare instance of stating that someone is untrustworthy of having so much power invested in them, but without any secular, explicable reason that a mundane court could hear, and to some extent that means the Jedi have to admit that this isn't entirely their ballgame. Something that also has to be noted is that the Jedi Order actually isn't capable of forcing people to stay; unlike the military, any Jedi can simply leave the Order on a whim whenever they want, and the Order isn't allowed to stop them. I think this points towards a general feeling that the Order doesn't actually have the right, in this era, to really restrain people who they suspect of being spiritually "wrong" or dangerous. They can monitor them with Jedi Watchmen (who do check up on exiles), but beyond that, the best way they have to pre-emptively keep them from doing anything is to just ensure they have opportunities for a peaceful life, hence the stipend (which coinidentally also incentivizes said exile to stay within Republic space). Outside of that, their hands are actually tied, and they have no choice but to accept that outcasts might become Dark Siders, and wait for the first blow before they retaliate.

I think the Jedi would probably try a litany of sneaky tactics to keep people from leaving the Order or being exiled, like assigning them Temple duties to keep them under defacto house arrest, or reassigning them to the Jedi Service Corps and then sending them away to some backwater planet that acts as a defacto prison, but this has to be balanced with three important factors, which is the independence of the Jedi (who, once they become Knights and especially Masters, seem to be able to more or less go where they want to), the ability of Jedi to leave at will (if they say "I want out", you must let them go), and the fact that if they're in uniform and using a lightsaber when they snap, the damage can be utterly immense (A single manic murder episode by someone who looks identical to a Jedi can have massive political implications), and exile is a last resort for when you can't keep them under your thumb but they're not explicitly leaving and you can't trust them in uniform or around other Jedi who they might lead astray. They couldn't keep Nerim under their thumb (Arwain has full authority to do more or less whatever she wants with him), and they were convinced he was just a bad fit for the religion.

As for Fae's soft spot/nepotism; it definitely exists, she is more lenient with Arwain and Nerim than she would be with other Jedi, although the extent to which that's because Nerim is genuinely different from other exile cases in a subtle way that only Fae can see, or just because she's attached to him, is deliberately a little fuzzy and debatable. That said, the fact that she's done this twice already in this generation I think definitely implies she's, as a general rule, willing to drop the gauntlet when she suspects the younger and more naive Council Masters are missing something.

Ultimately I think a lot of the disconnect between Fae's instinct and the Council's doctrine, despite Fae ruling the Order for nearly a thousand years, comes down to a few key elements and questions. One is how capable Fae really is at shaping the Order (She does admit frequently that she constantly fails to teach her students the lesson she's intending to, and they often end up "disasters"), another is just the nature of how Fae is constrained by what the Order is and must be (As a civil institution and one with a Council-based power-sharing structure baked in), and another more complicated one is how much Fae actually personally believes in the things she is teaching and acting out.

One element that I think really sheds some light on who she is, is that Fae (like Arwain), is a little bit facetious, and sometimes tells her students what she thinks they need to hear rather than what she thinks is actually true. At this point in the story, who Arwain is has more or less cleared up, but she was very aware of how little Nerim knew about her and how the Knighthood worked, and was/is very willing to use misdirection and lies of omission in order to try and prod him into learning what she perceives as important lessons. I very deliberately gave Arwain a lot of dialogue that echoes Palpatine, in fact, and intentionally left in some foreshadowing that she may be secretly evil, or at least unhinged in some way. I wanted people to question her and get a sense that she could have gone bad, even if it turned out she's not, and in doing so question why she teaches in the way she does. In a sort of similar vein, I think it's worth questioning which portions of Fae's doctrine she believes are spiritually true and righteous, and which portions are some sort of compromise and why.

 

[torac]

Without spoiling anything, I think to some degree, all three are true. […] I got excited and wrote a wall of text whoops

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I'm glad to see! Quickly after posting, I had the urge to add that each is probably at least slightly true, as well as an apology in advance. I hope my post didn't come off as harsh. The story is very engaging, which is why I thought about the deeper motivations of surface-level contradiction in the first place. I enjoy having a complex and flawed character in it.

unsuitability to act as a public servant

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Good point. I'd been looking at it from the perspective of Jedi as Force users generally, not as a specific subtype/job.

They can monitor them with Jedi Watchmen (who do check up on exiles), but beyond that, the best way they have to pre-emptively keep them from doing anything is to just ensure they have opportunities for a peaceful life, hence the stipend (which coincidentally also incentivizes said exile to stay within Republic space).

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Good! I assumed it would be a bit like this, but could also see the danger. If Sith Holocrons are bad, then a rogue force user would be worse.

What I didn't consider is that dark side force use is probably not a criminal offence itself. Only what you do with them.

Nerim is genuinely different from other exile cases in a subtle way that only Fae can see

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I don't really get the Jedi hate for Nerim. Especially the recent Padawan was so clearly one-sided that I would not even consider punishing him. By technicality, he might theoretically be considered to be the first to draw his lightsaber on her. However, he only did that in defence of a civilian, and she is the one who actually attacked. Not to mention that she intentionally did the opposite of her master's explicit orders, broke the law several times over, kept escalating, and actually fell to the dark side.

The only actual problem I see is him having a girlfriend, and I consider his master and grandmaster to be the main culprits there, with both encouraging the connection.

The fact that he didn't even get a hearing is the most crazy part. Completely goes against the whole "patient and calm" façade they have going on. Trial in absentia with a forgone conclusion.

deliberately gave Arwain a lot of dialogue that echoes Palpatine

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Didn't notice that. I did notice some Sith-y tones in her dialogue with her own resolution. Been too long since I've read proper Palpatine dialogue.

Thank you for the lengthy response, and for the story!

 

[Hyenanon]

I'm glad to see! Quickly after posting, I had the urge to add that each is probably at least slightly true, as well as an apology in advance. I hope my post didn't come off as harsh. The story is very engaging, which is why I thought about the deeper motivations of surface-level contradiction in the first place. I enjoy having a complex and flawed character in it.

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Not at all, I enjoyed reading it!

I don't really get the Jedi hate for Nerim.

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This is something I plan to get into a little bit more in the final arc, especially in regards to how the Order views the fiasco at Cathar, but as the Masters express in Chapter 46, there is some disagreement within the Council as to how contemptible Nerim really is. The thing they were in unanimous agreement on is that he was not compatible with the Jedi path, spiritually, and that wasn't going to change, and that alone is reason for exile. Some Masters believe that not being a Jedi as a Force User is inherently morally bankrupt, so they treat him as such, but others think that it's okay to not be a Jedi, and voiced some discomfort at how he was treated. They just agreed he wasn't a Jedi. And to be fair to them, if you had asked Nerim at any point prior to that arc, he would probably vociferously agree with their diagnosis. Of course, Arwain, Fae, Tetha, and Aesha disagreed vehemently on that front. They definitely see something in him.

Thank you for the lengthy response, and for the story!

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Thank you for your thoughts! My favorite part of writing stories is seeing people's analysis of them and hearing their questions and speculations, and it makes it a lot more fun for me.