Iridonia -- a cruel and unforgiving place for any person, even a Zabrak. Dai Dai was born to a poor mother and even poorer father, whose income was almost entirely based upon running errants for a local smuggler. The jobs were small, and the pay was even smaller. But it put food on the table, in small quantities. Why on Iridonia they decided to have a child, however, was anyone's guess. Perhaps they had hoped that in due time, he would fill the shoes of his father or perhaps do something greater. It seems they were correct, but they had aptly misunderstood the meaning of 'something greater.' Perhaps they had imagined young Dai Dai a smuggler or a crimelord. But he was none of these things. He was a troublemaker, surely, and in a way that only a young boy can be, but he was not criminal material.
Perhaps it was for the best, then, that the young clumsy boy was whisked away by a Jedi Knight that was passing by and, in a stroke of good luck, detected force sensitivity in the boy. His father was easy to convince -- a few credits for his spawn, and the promise that more would follow. His mother not so much -- for all her flaws, she had always been a good mother. And who was to say what would become of Dai Dai out there in the galaxy? She would rather see him safe, in the arms of his mother, working hard for some crimelord like her husband did -- a mediocre life, but far removed from the politics of Coruscant or any other 'far away places.'
Ultimately the Jedi Knight was succesful in convincing her that, in fact, being a youngling was perhaps the safest thing to be in the Galaxy -- and, well, most younglings didn't exactly become knights. There was always the agricultural corps. Ofcourse, his mother couldn't sense what the knight had -- that while Dai Dai was not a particularly smart boy, there was no shortage of potential in him, as far as the force went. Dai Dai could become many things, but an agricultural corps member would not be one of them.
The Knight took him aboard his ship, and Dai Dai has never looked back. On the ship, the Jedi explained many things to him -- about the force, what it means to be a Jedi, and many other great tales that Dai Dai scarcely remembers. About the force and the true meaning of being a jedi, that was something that a young boy had no interest in -- but stories of heroism and combat, now those were
tales.
This attitude remained true for Dai Dai during his studies -- while he worked hard, his mastery of the more refined and cultured aspects of the training were generally barely good enough. Despite his great connection to the force, it appeared to be the case that while being connected with, and sensitive to the force was one thing,
understanding it and how it flows is another matter entirely.
Ofcourse, being Dai Dai, the boy got on with sheer luck -- and a helping hand here and there from his friend Ahsurah, whom he was in the same clan as. The two got on like best friends almost immediately, and this was precisely the type of 'luck' Dai Dai was gifted with -- the luck to always meet the right people, step the right way, do the right thing. If it weren't for his quite apparent force sensitivity, some might have even said that he had simply lucked his way into the temple.
Dai Dai made it to the Jedi Tournaments without a care in the world, and went through them in much the same fashion. He blundered and lucked his way through, unlike his friend Ahsurah, and managed to become a Padawan with (relative) ease -- it seemed that his connection to the force was strong enough that it allowed him to use it as a sixth sense to a much higher degree than peers of his age in spite of his lacking understanding of the more academic understanding of the force, or how it worked. In essence -- the force was simply an extension of his body much like a lightsaber becomes an extension of your body with enough training -- only that in Dai Dai's case, this extension seem to come naturally.
As a Padawan he became indentured to Jedi Knight
Kashar V'raar as his student -- Kashar attempted to instill some form of knowledge and discipline into Dai Dai, but found Dai Dai to be lacking the motivation and drive for the former. The latter, however, he found Dai Dai to be extremely susceptible to, and in fact, he surmised that Dai Dai's lack of regard for more intellectual pursuits was
not a matter of discipline, but rather the lack of a sufficiently powerful motivator for a sort of intellectual breakthrough. Dai Dai was simply not challenged enough to get interested in what the force
truly was rather than what his elementary understanding of the force
told him it was.
In order to report this to the council, he and Dai Dai returned to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant after a successful mission to impede a criminal organization in their efforts to provide weaponry to a terrorist cell on a distant planet. Dai Dai was under the impression that Kashar was simply delivering a mission report; the truth was that Kashar was going to report to the council that he found himself lacking a sufficiently powerful enough ability to motivate Dai Dai to improve his understanding of the force, and to request their opinion on the matter -- after all, it would be prudent to help Dai Dai understand the force better, rather than continue to allow him to subside on just his uncanny and unnatural connection to the force.
This meeting with the council would never come to be. As the two moved through the hallway of the temple, Dai Dai on the right of his master, Dai Dai felt a sudden pull in the back of his mind -- as if someone or something was calling to him -- and stopped momentarily to turn around and investigate. When he saw nothing, he turned back, just in time to see Kashar step into the middle of a crossroads in the hallways. The unmistakable sound of blaster fire alerted Kashar -- and he skillfully and with resolve deflected the bolts of the blasters using a rapid movement with his saber.
Had he not stopped and looked back, it seems likely that Dai Dai would have had an unfortunate ending to his life at the hand of these bolts. Instead, he was still halfway through the hallway they'd come in through.
A second lightsaber activated, this time straight through the chest of master V'raar -- and in a final act of heroism that would come to be the defining characteristic of Kashar V'raar time and time again, he extended his hand to the right -- towards Dai Dai -- and commanded him, ".. run!" knowing all too well that Dai Dai was too stubborn to listen to such a command.
A sudden force overcame Dai Dai, sending him to his behind, sliding across the floor in a whirlwind back down the hallway they had just come through. When he slid to a halt, the lightsaber through Kashar's chest disappeared, and the figure that had used it on the poor knight stepped into the hallway.
Dai Dai remembers his voice not even coming past his throat as he tried to yell the name of the man who had committed this atrocity; a man he had come to revere as a hero, "Anakin!"
But his words had no effect; rather than stop the man in his tracks, to wake Dai Dai from this bad dream, he continued on his way towards the padawan, and yet again Dai Dai felt that pull in the back of his mind, that voice echoing the command of his former master, "run!"
He scrabbled to his feet, turning around and running towards the exit. Once more, a sudden pull, this time at his feet -- no, towards his feet. Stumbling over his own feet, he leaned forward, putting his hands on the cold floor to try and retain balance. Not a second later the whizz of a lightsaber flew over his head, and then immediately whizzed back towards its owner.
After that he stumbled for real, falling onto his side. Anakin was after him, and for once Dai Dai felt he was completely in over his head. All those missions with Kashar, all those criminals defeated with words, the force, or
force.. it wasn't good enough to prepare him for this. But he had to try.
His hand extended towards the panel on the side of a door, Dai Dai closed his eyes and focused, and then...
whzzzz.The door slid closed.
It wasn't much, but it'd buy him enough time to get to his feet and
run. Where to, he didn't know, but he had to keep going -- not to the main exit, where the fighting was just subsiding. He ran, and ran, through the many corridors, and through a stroke of good luck and a few lucky "pulls" that he wasn't even sure if he was imagining them or not, he managed to find an unattended exit in the form of a transparisteel window that had been blown out by a thermal detonator -- or multiple.
Dai Dai tried to flee deep into the city, though his every move was halted by the clone troopers he had once thought their allies. Movement was getting trickier the more time passed since the incident, and Dai Dai's luck would eventually run out.