Naril

Broken Skies: War in the Eversky

Heya! Sorry, I've been shackled to a CAD project that took on a sudden urgency (I love not having to pay for parts)!

I'll have a PM to you in a little while, @Bazmund. :3

Stellar Fleet: The War in Heaven ( Wing Commander/Freespace inspired Space Opera)

I still want to run that character that made your brain hurt, Myke. I may be interested. :3

Broken Skies: War in the Eversky

Mm. I'll express a tentative interest. I have a very weird idea that just started coiling through my brain, and it might work here. :3

Star Wars - Rancor Company

Oh, um. Gosh. Thanks, Sep. :3

I'll have a new post very likely this evening. Hooray!

Star Wars - Rancor Company

Quick, barked introductions, bad food, and not enough sleep - Selas had expected rough conditions on an Alliance ship, but she still found herself taken by surprise. Besk - or Alpha-32, she supposed - could barely stand to look at her, and she could hear the venom in his voice whenever he spoke her name. Dark, serpentine shapes in the Force whirled around Besk when thought of his new charge, she could see that much. That power had gathered itself to him, a heavy stormcloud that towered and billowed when they met, a tension pressing toward violence that Selas found she would have had no response for. For a moment, she’d considered that her time in the Rebellion might have ended there. Though Besk had obviously pushed past the urge, she didn’t find herself admiring the courage of someone fighting against how they were made. Rather, she couldn’t help but wonder when his self-control would snap, and whether a small piece of history would repeat itself.

Not the finest foundation upon which to build trust, she had to admit. She couldn’t help but feel the trepidation around Besk when he’d handed her the data spike, and she saw the way that leapt to every other member of his group. If she were being honest with herself, she wasn’t entirely sure they were wrong.

But there had been no time to dwell, there had barely been enough time to sleep. For Selas’ academia-adjusted schedule, there certainly hadn’t been. The ship had dropped out of hyperspace with the same sliding tension she always felt, and with that had come a flurry of activity. More shouted orders, the sounds of armor being buckled on, the calls of comrades in arms to one another. She watched the Force move between these people, saw the bright web that linked one person to another, whether they realized it or not. In the hangar, she watched pilots strap themselves into fighters, and the whole became greater than either of them were alone, the entire squadron a separate pattern pressing against the endlessly shifting, swirling movement of the Force with their own striking power. Further down, another group of what she could only assume were other foot soldiers gathered, their heads bowed, quick, quiet words flowing between them, each syllable binding them together in subtle, shining ways.

And now, in the belly of the shuttle, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with armed and armored soldiers of the Rebellion, all the uncertainty, all the fear and doubt settled, coalesced, became something so bright and strong she felt like she could reach out and touch it. Movements became less nervous, minds became more clear, purpose and will becoming something fierce and bright, the brilliant center of a comet burning though the Force. Selas took a long, slow breath and let that feeling slide through her awareness, felt it take some of her own anxiety away, felt her heart beat a little slower, her breath coming a little deeper, a little more even. Not invigorated, exactly, not refreshed…driven, perhaps.

Selas saw her fate, her own place in the Force, entwine with these people, and then she noticed something else. Behind her and to one side, she felt someone’s attention on her. Orren, she thought, sifting through the flurry of names she’d learned in the last handful of hours. Not drilling into her, not a lash of expectation, and not the sharp spike of…well, the sort of tension she’d learned to make a hasty retreat from. His was something else, something almost reverent. Selas smiled to herself - maybe Nazik was right, maybe there would be someone she’d be able to help see further than the end of their blaster barrel. When the shuttle’s belly thumped against the Majestic’s hangar deck, she made a point to turn to Orren and give him a nod and a small smile.

An armored fist banged against the door, and Selas brought her attention back to the moment. The bang came again, louder, this time followed by a voice roughened by deathsticks and alcohol.

She leaned over to Besk and whispered, “He’s knocking on that door,” she pointed to their left, “Open the one on the other side, claim that one’s stuck. When he comes around, I’ll open this door,” she pointed to their right, “and then slip out. I don’t think anyone has a clear view there, and they’ll never know I was here. When I get the data spike into a terminal, I’ll click my comm open three times. Sound good?”

She didn’t expect an acknowledgement, and she didn’t receive one - for all she knew, that had been the trooper’s plan in the first place. Still, she saw him open the far door, and the rest of the group make their way into the hangar, looking for all the world like the roughest sort of mercenaries. She heard an exasperated groan, followed by what sounded very much like cursing in a language she didn’t understand, then heavy footsteps moving from the left-hand door, around the back of the ship, to where Besk and his troops stood.

Heart pounding in her ears, the moment the mercenary stepped out of view of the right-hand door, Selas yanked on the release lever inside. The door swung out and up, and she slipped out and behind the bulk of the front of the shuttle before it rose to the top of its travel. She took a couple of quick, deep breaths through her nose, stepped around the bulging side turret, and pressed herself against the shuttle’s hull, felt the cold soak through her clothes. A moment later, she heard Besk’s voice, already in an argument with the mercenary. Good, that would keep his attention somewhere else, at least.

Selas turned her head, closed her eyes, focused her senses to fill the hangar. The space was crowded with vehicles and crews, and even the Keep’s hangar wasn’t so loud. All the same, while she knew there would be computer terminals here, there were too many people, too much open space. She needed somewhere smaller, somewhere she could control, and preferably somewhere with a door she could close. If the plan went right, even an inexperienced crew would figure out where the data spike was, and she knew the Keep and her fighters would have a much more complicated time if the Majestic’s weapons came back on-line halfway through the mission.

Somewhere other than the hangar, then. The file she’d been handed - and had all of half an hour to examine - had included maps of corridors and areas near the hangar too, or at least a reasonable idea based on the ship’s expected design. Ahead and to her right, there would be a door leading further into the ship, then to a series of corridors that would lead to a control room. The only problem was that there were at least two people between her and that door, working on what she could only tell was some kind of armored, bipedal walker. She could see the bright point of a welder in one person’s hand - that would mean they were wearing goggles, and small noises wouldn’t reach them. That was good, but the other one was going to be a problem. He had put down his tools and walked further into the hangar, suspicion plain in his body language. He turned his head this way and that, twisting to look around. He expected trouble. His body was tense, his senses flared into the world around him. Heavy, scarred fists curled into balls at his side, muscles twitched along his frame. A supicious trap on a hai trigger. Not good - but not entirely bad, either.

Besk continued speaking, and Selas pushed her breath between her lips in a long, slow stream of air. She’d prefer to have waited for an opportunity to present itself, but she could already feel a spring-coil constriction wrapping around Besk, one that would snap and scythe away into violence sooner than later. Another deep breath, and she dove a hand into her pocket, pulled out a piece of debris the size of her index finger, something she’d stopped off the hangar deck before they’d left. Just a piece of a starfighter, slag from a turbolaser’s glancing blow, something knocked loose and forgotten. Even to her senses, its weight was something that drifted through her awareness, something hard to focus on.

She took another pair of quick breaths, hefted the slag, then pushed herself off the shuttle’s hull. A pair of quick step and Selas turned, then whipped her arm around, sending the chunk of metal on a high, high arc - but not toward the more suspicious of the two men. She watched the piece of metal rise, the wispy imprint it made on the Force like a curl of smoke. She sent it where, all things being equal, it would have landed behind the suspicious man, between him and the man with the welder, and considerably to one side of where Selas wanted to go. But the moment the metal fragment left her hand, she focused on it, and sent tendrils of her own will out though the Force, wrapping her intention around and though the scarred, battered thing. She watched it crest the arc it would move though, she watched it fall. She watched it gather speed…

And at just the instant before it would have hit the ground, with a twitch of her hand, Selas sent the fragment flying with considerable force into the back of the suspicious man’s head. She head the wooden thunk it made against the back of the man’s skull, heard him stagger with a pair of heavy thuds. She felt the man’s attention whirl wildly through the room, then settle on the man with the welder, hunks of bright slag flying from his torch. The suspicious man stomped over to the welder, kicked the torch out of his hand, grabbed him by the front of his jacket and hauled him up, cursing in Huttese the whole time. In seconds, the two were in a screaming argument just the side of fisticuffs. A second after that, unable to entirely keep the grin off her face, Selas had slipped by them, unnoticed and unheeded, her feet moving with perfect, silent strides.

She touched the controls on door back to the hangar, winced at the way they screeched closed. Rather than freeze to see if anyone was coming, Selas took her leave on silent feet, padding away from the door precisely because someone might be coming to see what that sound was about. She couldn’t feel anyone nearby, which didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t anyone, but she didn’t care to leave this to chance. She crept further into the ship, down one set of corridors, up one ramp, then another. To her relief, she didn’t encounter anything more dangerous than a box of electrical couplings left in the middle of a hallway. Another few meters and she jammed her hand against a control panel, which buzzed with the universality of an access-denied message.

Kneeling, Selas reached into her jacket again, pulled out a few small tools. In the space of a breath she had the control panel off the wall, exposing the complicated circuitry behind it. She focused her senses on the tangle of wires, and in her awareness the patterns of circuits and wires, logic and countermeasure spread out in front of her. She knew how to read them, or at least she knew how to read this one. With quick, deft hands she probed, clipped, jumped, teased, prodded, and under her breath, cajoled, and in the span of a dozen heartbeats she heard the door swish open.

Ahead, the tiny room looked out over the hangar from a dozen meters off the deck, the array of weapons and vehicles spread out in uneven islands of activity. She saw Besk from above now, saw him speaking with the hazy outline of a hologram, and saw his limbs gesticulating more and more wildly. The swirling, crackling cloud of potential around him lanced out to the other members of his group, and Selas knew she had no more time. She stepped into the room, sweat suddenly prickling her forehead, and reached into her jacket again, pulled the data spike out.

“Hey,” she heard a voice from behind her say, “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

She turned, and realized that she’d been focused far too closely on Besk and his men. The man behind her was taller than her by a head, rail-thin, and if she had to guess, only a little more than half her age. A dozen different choices crackled out though her mind in the skin of a second, then Selas moved. She put one foot on the console, pushed herself up a meter’s height with her other leg, then launched herself laterally at the man, using the last of the leverage of her shove off the console to twist her entire upper body around, the data spike held in one hand. She felt the blunt end thump into the man’s temple with a sound like a stone being dropped on a board, felt him reel to one side. Her feet hit the deck with velvet pats, and she reached up to catch the man around the neck with her free arm, yanking him further off-balance. She dropped the spike, reached to her belt, pulled out the single-use personal stunner she’d brought along, and pressed it to the back of the man’s neck, barely a second after he’d managed to choke in a breath.

The Force swirled around her, the man, and the stunner for a moment after she pressed the activation stud, and she could feel the electric zap even though her free arm, making the skin a little numb. Then Selas felt the awareness drain out of the man - he wasn’t asleep, but he was insensate. She’d been hit by one of those stunners before, and she did not envy the headache he would have when he woke up, but at least that wouldn’t be her problem. She let him down to the floor with all the gentleness her haste could lend her, snatched up the data spike, and clicked it home in a terminal on the console.

A moment later the terminal started to spin and twirl of its own accord, and Selas could see the pulses of energy moving down the console and out into the ship, seeds carrying a future that was about to make everyone’s day much more complicated. She pulled the comm out of her belt and clicked the channel open - once, twice, a third time, then clicked it back and took a step away from the console. Below her, the fight was still going on between the two she’d distracted, but that couldn’t last much longer.

Selas knelt again, reached into her jacket for the last piece of equipment she’d brought with her, and pried the console cover off on this side of the door. She reached in again, but this time just attached a device to the complicated nest of wiring in the door, touched a few buttons on it, and slid out of the doorframe. The door swished shut behind her, locking the hapless man who had discovered her in, and Selas’ feet took her several meters further down the corridor before she heard the loud bang that meant her little device had exploded, destroying the lock mechanism and, hopefully, welding at least one of the bolts into its own frame.

She started moving more quickly now, knowing that being alone in the next few minutes would not be a great idea - and then the ship’s alarms blared, filling the corridors with light and noise, and the air with a startled intensity. Apparently, someone on the Bridge had noticed that the Majestic’s weapons had all just fallen offline, and decided that everyone on the ship needed to know about it.

Her feet made almost no noise running across the hangar floor, and this time she felt the attention of one of the brawlers latch onto her, heard one of the men make a startled noise, start to pull away from the one she was pretty sure was the welder. She skidded around a piece of broken ion cannon, leapt over a table with a half-assembled battle droid, and pulled her comm from her belt.

“Bes…oh, damn it, Captain, I think we’ve got their attention,” Selas hissed into her comm unit, hoping against hope that Besk’s helmet was soundproof, “I got the spike in the computer system. It’s in a control room overlooking the hangar, and I destroyed the lock, but someone found me before I got it in. I stunned them, but if they wake up before we’re done, the ship’s fighters are going to have a bad day.” She felt a gathering tension behind her, threw herself into a slide that took her beneath a table at the same time a blaster shrieked, the bolt banging into the plasteel surface over her head. She tucked, rolled, used her momentum to come back to her feet and slide behind the bulk of another half-restored shuttle, “What happens now?”

Star Wars - Rancor Company

The Force moved strangely in hyperspace. Unlike the ship's sensors and communication arrays, Selas was not rendered blind to the outside world after a jump, but her perceptions did change. Her awareness wasn't dulled or blurred, and she didn't feel impared - nothing like the way she felt after too much Corellian brandy. Not quite like a missing or sour note in a symphony, either, everything seemed just like it should be, but somehow, subtly, not. A favourite song played in a different key, but otherwise flawless, perhaps. Not quite a distraction, but something difficult to ignore, all the same. This feeling was nothing new, Selas sometimes felt she spent more time in hyperspace than otherwise, but she never quite got used to the strange, prickling tension.

She sighed and swung her boots down from the console where she'd propped her feet. The shuttle was a handful of meters long and half that wide, just barely large enough to hold a hyperdrive and two people - maybe three if they really liked one another. She took a pair of steps to a tiny counter and pressed the power button on an automatic kettle, a sharp beep piercing the dull hum of the hyperdrive.

"Ooh, tea?" The pilot said, clicking a couple of controls into place, "I'll have some, if you're making."

"I thought you might," Selas said with a smirk, "I swear, Nazik, you're the laziest person I've met." All the same, she knelt and pulled out two dented and scratched metal cups from the fist-sized cabinet below.

"I told you, I'm only with the Rebellion because no one else would have me." The Twi'lek woman grinned, and Selas felt the infectiousness of her smile without having to turn around.

Selas laughed, "I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to be reassured by that."

Nazik shrugged, "I can't tell you what to think, Professor. But you shouldn't worry. I've only crashed once." She thought for a moment. "No, twice. No, wait...well. That one shouldn't count, it was only-"

Selas cut her off by pressing a steaming cup into Nazik's hands. She made a pleased sound, and took a long, luxurious drink from the cup, her eyes closed, her expression one of unalloyed bliss.

"That's the same blend it's been for the last three days," Selas said, settling into the shuttle's other chair.

"I know, but we're almost there. This is probably the last cup I'm going to have for the next year or so. And the best company, too." Nazik took a smaller sip, then pulled in a long, deep breath of the fragrant steam. "That sounds like two reasons to savour every moment."

A smile crept onto Selas' face, and she took a drink from her own cup. "So, what am I about to get myself into?"

"Well, normally I'd say that I have no idea," Nazik said, "The Alliance just sends me all over the place without telling me why. 'Nazik,' they say, 'Fly to this moon in the end of nowhere,' or 'Nazik, take this general to visit his wampa farm' or 'Nazik, take this bomb to...' well. I probably shouldn't finish that." She took another sip, another shiver of pleasure passing over her face.

"But the Keep? Yeah, I know about that one. You hear stories, sounds like they can do the impossible. Full of old clone troopers and Mandalorians, and captained by someone who likes droids better than people. If I were to guess, very military, very..." She sat up ramrod-straight, squared her shoulders, shifted her hips in an exaggerated parody of a march.

Selas barked out a quick laugh, "And any idea why I'm being sent there?"

"Oh, like I said, the Alliance doesn't tell me anything. But if you want my opinion...oh, hang on." Nazik swivelled back to the front of the ship and started running one hand over the console, flicking switches and dials with deceptive speed.

The shuttle slipped out of hyperspace, and Selas felt a tension against her senses relax, the music of the galaxy back on the right key. She leaned forward, holding her own cup while Nazik continued to manipluate the shuttle's controls. The ship ahead loomed large in her awareness, a whirling forge-glow of will and purpose. She could feel the lives of the people aboard, not individually, but by the subtle weight they put on the Force. The ship itself, cared for, cursed at, clung to by her crew, gleamed in Selas' mind, almost alive in its own right.

And while she watched, she saw the ship's turbolaser turrets arm and start moving toward their shuttle.

"Nazik?" Selas said, letting a piece of her concern into her voice.

"Yeah, I sort of thought Command might have forgotten to tell them we were coming." Nazik leaned forward, jammed one finger against the comm, "Alliance Frigate The Keep, this is Alliance courier shuttle AR-381, under orders to deliver...um, one second." To Nazik's right, two red alarm lights started blinking, each one labeled with a Twi'lek curse word.

"Uh, Alliance Frigate, how about we start with authorization codes then, right?" Nazik said, and now she set her tea to one side, frantically moving to key information into the console. One of the red lights stopped blinking, became solid red, "Oh, for the love of...stop targeting us!" Nazik yelled into the comm, a shrill edge creeping into her voice.

The second alarm light went solid, and Nazik's eyes went very wide. Selas could see that the frigate's turbolaser batteries had locked onto the shuttle, and she swallowed against a sudden hard lump in her throat. Nazik bent over in her chair and, after some scrabbling, pulled out a data slate and started paging through it, her fingers flying. She muttered something about when the last code change was. After a moment, she straightened back up, the slate held in one hand, and rammed the other back down on the comm.

"That's the latest Alliance authorization code, you paranoid lunatics!" Nazik shouted into the microphone, "Stand down your targeting systems! I'm here on orders from Alliance High Command for a personnel delivery!" She took her hand off the comm controls, tossed the slate down to one side, and put her hands on the shuttle's controls. "If they do start shooting, I'll try to get us out of here until we can sort out what's going on." Nazik swallowed.

"And how likely is that?" Selas could see a tension weaving its way through the Force, touching the shuttle and the frigate ahead. It wound tighter and tighter, like a child with a rubber band.

"Well," Nazik said, "Those things were built to kill fighters."

"You know," Selas said, "I've really appreciated your honesty in the last few days."

Nazik pulled in a breath, and was interrupted by a harsh, mechanical voice buzzing across the comm system. "Alliance shuttle AR-381, you are cleared for docking in hangar bay one. Are you in need of supplies?"

Nazik pressed the comm, "I need a case of whiskey, a spice cake, and eight hours alone with your loneliest fighter pilot. But since I'm not going to get any of that, I'll settle for fuel and a few ration packs."

"Acknowledged," came the reply, and the circuit shut off.

"You want to know why I think you're here?" Nazik said, guiding the shuttle in a slow, deliberate approach to the frigate's hangar.

Selas put her cup to one side, tried to get her heart to stop racing. "Of course, Nazik. I did ask."

Nazik chuffed out a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, and shook her head. "I think Command wants someone to remind these people what they're fighting for - and that they're not just fighting."

-----

A few minutes later, Selas found herself in the buzzing hive of activity on the Keep's hangar deck, her bag over one shoulder, and being borne along more by the currents of unceasing activity rather than any deliberate action. Nazik had helped Selas get her things and see her off the shuttle, and she had, to Selas' surprise, turned down an offer of a canister of tea. She had, instead, asked for a kiss - which, all things considered, had been a request Selas could hardly refuse. A moment later, though, and the pilot had gone off to harangue a hangar technician, while Selas turned her attention to every direction, searching for someone who might be able to tell her at least where to go in order to avoid being run over by cargo lifts.

She didn't have a problem keeping her balance while she walked over a deck littered with cables, hoses, and abandoned parts, her feet picking with nimble grace over a seemingly-endless debris field. Selas didn't need her otherwordldly senses to know that something bad had happened here. Every breath she pulled in brought the acrid tang of burnt and tortured metal or the coppery smell of blood. To every side, the Force spun in patterns just this side of chaos, whorls and arcs connecting one person to another, to a machine or their fighter, or fraying out into the world, sorrow and loss and fury looking for an outlet.

"Oi!" Came a voice to one side, and Selas had to pull her attention back to the moment, "Who the hell are you?"

"Oh, um," Selas said, "I'm...your new...crewmember?" She said, suddenly aware that she had almost no idea how to introduce herself on a fighting ship. "I'm supposed to meet someone called Besk."

The man's eyes widened, "Besk? Well...all right, then. You have orders?"

"I have this," Selas said, and reached into her coat to pull out the data slate she'd been handed at Command. The motion swept her jacket to one side, and the man sucked in a breath and took a step back.

"Is...that...?" He said, pointing at her coat.

Selas held the slate out to the man, and kept her voice carefully even, "It is."

"Oh." He looked back at Selas' face, and took in some important detals for the first time. "That might be better than orders, ma'am." He took the slate anyway, but Selas couldn't tell if he actually read it before handing it back.

"Captain Besk is probably near the briefing room right now." The hangar tech listed off directions, "Although I don't know how long he'll be there. You might want to hurry. Oh, and...you don't need to keep that hidden, ma'am. Captain Besk won't like it, but if I know him, it'll be better if he knows up front." With those words, he squeezed past Selas, heading further into the hangar.

Selas sighed, and tucked the slate back into a pocket. She pulled her saber hilt out of her jacket, and regarded it for a moment. It seemed to shine, to burn even more fiercely than usual, here among this sorrow and chaos and madness. She had never carried it openly. She felt like it was a badge of an office she didn't hold, and never would. It was a symbol of something so much greater than she could be, but...she looked around, and thought that maybe, these people needed that symbol. Like Nazik said, something to remind them that they were fighting for something.

She clipped the weapon to her belt, felt the unfamiliar weight. With every step she took, it batted softly against her thigh, reminding her it was there. She liked that. She straightened her spine and shrugged her bag higher on her shoulder, stepping around crew and machinery. Many of the ship's lights were out, but that posed no trouble for her. In a corridor, she brushed past two tired-looking men, and she felt their gaze on her as she passed, a murmur spreading like a wake behind her. Down one corridor, up a set of stairs, past a damage control team working with only a force field between them and hard vacuum, and at last, to the briefing room.

The Force moved in a slow, sinuous path around Besk. Selas had met a few older clone troopers, but none of them smouldered like this man. He wasn't a bright splinter against an encroaching darkness, this man was smoke and ash, he was the forge-fire's tightly-leashed ferocity. His life bound him to his purpose, and that purpose could be a woesome one. But unlike those who would only destroy, Selas could see this man's intimate bond to those who walked the same path, the unity and loyalty he commanded and deserved. And she saw the fury boil out of him as she walked toward him, the saber clinking gently against the hook on her belt. Selas felt that tide rising, swallowed, and stepped into it.

"Captain Besk," Selas said, offering the slate with her orders on it to him, "My name is Selas Tariim. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Star Wars - Rancor Company

Character Name: Selas Tariim

Age: 33

Species: Miraluka

Gender: Female

Appearance: Selas is not exactly what comes to mind upon hearing that she’s spent much of her life in academia. She is tall for a woman, her figure one of lean, dangerous lines, with scars on her hands and a smirk curving her lips. Her skin is a rich olive, touched by the sun of a hundred worlds, her dark hair falling to her shoulders and threaded with first shining strands of silver. Unlike many of her people, an unusual genetic expression has left her with a pair of blind, milky-white eyes, which she only rarely chooses to cover with the traditional Miraluka cowl or blindfold. Her features are playful and puckish, even flirtatious at times, the tilt of her brows and the set of her body conveying a serene, but not distant, confidence. She has a warm contralto voice, with a ready laugh and a light accent, consonants made liquid and vowels broad, and sharp as an obsidian knife when the need arises.

Selas’ dress sense is more practical than anything else, and she’s most often found in boots, trousers, buttoning shirts, and a comfortable jacket. Most of her clothing has plenty of clever pockets, and she usually has a few useful things clipped to her belt, including a thigh holster for a blaster. While everything is well-made and well-tailored, the materials are carefully chosen to not make noise, and to not restrict her freedom of movement. Selas prefers darker colors - deep blues, slate greys, and rich browns, and is very rarely seen wearing armor.

Rank: Professor (Associate), University of Agamar, Department of Xenoarchaeology

Role: Non-military / Force user

Unit: No permanent assignment

Skills:

- Force Savant: By her race and upbringing, Selas intimately understands the Force, its strength, and how to work her will with that power. She lacks the discipline and finesse of a lifelong member of the Order - but she is to be reckoned with in her own right.

- Duelist: Selas has spent her entire life around members of the Order, and while never a part of it, she has learned much. She is fluent in some forms of lightsaber combat, though these skills have rarely been tested to their limits - at least in part because she takes care to ensure that they aren’t.

- Thief: Even since before the fall of the Republic, Selas had a profound fascination with getting into places she shouldn’t be. She moves like a shadow, quick and silent, and has a broad knowledge of bypassing locks, overriding security systems, and disabling enforcement droids.

- Academic: Raised by an Archivist and taught the value of preserving the past and passing learning to others, Selas actually is an accomplished professor. She has contacts - and maybe even friends - in unexpected places, and can lend legitimacy to travel in the name of “research.”

- Performer: Selas is a fine singer, and collects songs from the places she goes. She often hums them to herself, even when she knows people are listening.

Weaknesses:

- You Are Not A Jedi Yet: Selas knows much, much more than she is supposed to, but is not a fully trained member of the Jedi Order. Those who have undergone specific and extended training, especially in saber combat, will likely outclass her.

- Suddenly Silenced: Being so tightly bound to the Force leaves Selas vulnerable to the movements of that power around her. The Dark Side tears across her psyche like a saw over bone, a sensation she lacks the mental discipline to entirely push away from herself.

- Hunted Down: Selas’ mother was a Master in the Jedi Order, and a subject of Order 66. She, and the Knights she trained, have been hounded down - but the hunters are very aware that she had a daughter.

- Needs A Protocol Droid: Selas is not familiar with military protocol, and was delivered to the Keep by Alliance command, unasked-for. She furthermore disrupts planning by pointing out things that should not be destroyed, if possible, because they’re of value to current and future historians.

Equipment:

- DL-18 blaster pistol, in a thigh holster. This weapon has been modified to feature a shorter barrel and be somewhat more compact.

- Bypass Tools - A selection of useful devices and tools to gain entry to secured facilities. The entire kit is much too large to carry with her with any stealth, so Selas picks things that will likely be most-useful when on a mission and takes a small selection with her. She is not always right.

- Knapsack - Usually on a cross-body strap.

- Small knife - A small knife, for cutting things that need to be cut.

- Comlink with earbud and haptic-feedback mode, where it only produces a sensation against her skin for simple messages.

- Jalis Tyral’s Lightsaber - This weapon belonged to Selas’ adopted mother, Jedi Archivist Jalis Tyral. Selas has modified it gently to fit her own hands and fighting style. She keeps it hidden most of the time, in a custom-fitted holster inside her jacket.

- A small, locked chest, with a handful of small treasures of the Jedi Archives inside.

History:

A dark room, a bright light, a metal chair at a metal table. Pageantry, of a sort, meant to put anyone approaching the Rebellion uneasy. They had learned hard lessons about accepting anyone who professed a desire to join the fight. Their own goals might be noble - but the tactics used against them could be anything but. Still, Selas wondered why they bothered. Certainly, the Rebellion would know that illumination would mean almost nothing to her. She could feel the chair, the lamp, and even the man leaning against the wall where the light didn't reach. Each were each outlined in her awareness, her peculiar sight, by the whirling, coruscating patterns that connected and flowed around everything in the universe. She heard the door lock behind her, then turned her blind eyes toward the man, an eyebrow raised.

“Ah,” he said, “I didn’t know whether to believe them.” He spoke heavily-accented Basic, vowels drawn out, the rhythm unsteady.

Selas took another step, put one hand on the back of the chair, and remained quiet for the moment. She did not sit.

The man let out a soft sound, halfway between a grunt and a chuckle. He pushed himself off the wall, brought a ciggara to his lips. Selas saw the Force wrapped around the lighter the man brought between his cupped hands, tight strands of will and memory twining around and through it, through him. A totem, a tangible memory of someone long gone, if she were to guess. Even the flame burned with a tight fierceness in Selas' perception, the pattern it made bursting apart when the man clicked the lighter closed. He took a long pull, blew out a spicy, sweet plume of smoke that Selas could smell more than see. he pushed himself off the wall with one hand, the other holding his ciggara, and crossed the few steps the pool of light.

“You’re Selas Tariim. Miraluka. Adopted daughter of Jedi Master Jalis Tyral, one of the people who survived Order 66. Lost both your parents as an infant and raised by Tyral, possibly out of a sense of penance. Your birth parents were field researcher staff at the Temple, and were killed due to Tyral’s negligence at the site of a Sith tomb. Am I right?” This close, Selas could see that the man had an artificial left arm, and that the neural bridges hadn’t knitted together right. She could hear the constant pain in the man’s voice.

“You’re ahead of me, if you want the truth,” Selas said, bringing her attention back to the man’s face, “I don’t know much about my birth parents.”

“She kept that from you? Not very Jedi.”

“She blamed herself. I know she thought their deaths were something that could - should - have been avoided. More than that, I never asked. I could see the ache, the anguish that memory caused inside her.” She took a breath, “Master Tyral raised me the best she could. She didn’t owe me anything, and I wouldn’t cause her that kind of pain.”

The man grunted, took another pull, blew out a cloud of scented smoke. “My adjunct tells me that you’re pretty well accounted for up until the Clone Wars. Not really trained at the Temple, not really part of it, but growing up there, spending your time in the Archives with Tyral. Not a lot contact with other kids your age, except in classes with...less traditionally-minded Masters. A certain amount of friction regarding things you learned and really weren't supposed to know, smoothed over by your mother's influence. We lose track of you for ten years after the Clone Wars, until you show up again on a planet in the Outer Rim, in trouble with the local authorities for breaking and entering, theft, and apparent smuggling, while you claimed-"

Selas cut in, her voice sharp, “Am I supposed to be impressed that you can collect holonet news and pull keywords from file archives? Are you trying to intimidate me with the idea that you can write an essay with citations? None of this was secret. None of it’s even interesting. Of course you lost track of my mother and I after the Clone Wars, that’s the kind of thing that happens when one of you is marked for death and the other is unusual enough to be an enormous target.”

“Then what were you doing for those ten years? Ten years when a Jedi Master would have been invaluable to the Alliance, ten years when all we needed was any beacon of hope, any sign, any momentary flicker of the Light?” The man snapped, his voice suddenly a harsh rasp.

Selas’ throat was suddenly tight, her skin flushed, and she fought not to raise her voice. “I was a child when the Temple fell. You know what happened to most of the children there, yes? Or, for that matter, what happened to anyone else? There was no way to fight, no way to stand your ground. The only choices were death or flight, and my mother chose to run. We packed up a few things that couldn't be left to burn and we ran, and we didn't stop running for years."

She leaned forward, both hands on the back of the chair, her voice still a crisp, tight hiss, "For years, we didn't stay anywhere for more than a few days, knowing that every moment we were hunted. We ran further and further into the Outer Rim, and the Empire's hunters followed us. For years, the only news we heard of the Order was when another survivor was cut down, and the galaxy would get that much darker. I grew up knowing that anyone I met could be looking for a little blind girl, and for much worse reasons than even the usual ones."

"You want to know what my mother spent those years doing? Why she wasn't trying to find your Rebellion, why she wasn't offering herself to you as a figurehead? She was raising me. On starships, in alleys, in rooms where the Imperials were a wall's thickness away, she taught me to think, made me do sums and conjucations. She showed me how the Force moves, how to make sense of what I saw, what I felt every day, and the power of the Light. She taught me the importance of knowledge, the value of passing the lessons of history onto others. She taught me to fight for myself and to protect those who can't stand on their own, and she taught me to love a world that wanted to kill me. She knew there had to be another generation of..." Selas' voice faltered, "That walked in the Light. Your Rebellion could never be so important that she would trade it for the chance to raise a daughter who understood that."

"She raised you to be a Jedi?" The man scoffed, his words edged in curling smoke.

"She raised me to make my own choices," Selas said, her voice almost under her own control.

"And your choices led you to being arrested."

Selas couldn't help herself, and a tiny smirk tugged at one corner of her mouth. "The funny thing about being on the run during your...formative years, are the useful little things you learn. What will be missed, what won't. I didn't have my first kiss until I was in my twenties, but I knew how to dismantle the locks on a shopkeeper's storeroom when I was fifteen. I was raised by a Jedi...but even she understood the realities of a fugitive life. But after a while, the hunting seemed to taper off. That long, dark cloud that seemed to follow us everywhere seemed less intent. We moved to somewhere a little more civilized, and tried to get a little more settled. Almost a decade on the run, and spending a week in the same place felt...weird."

She turned her gaze down, almost lost in thought. "Agamar has a wonderful university, and they're very welcoming of new students. I barely had to alter their records. They probably would have let me in besides, but...well. It never hurts to be certain." She smiled, "Their xenoarchaeology department is unbelievable. I felt like I had come home. There was so much information, so much to learn, to many stories to find. I won't pretend that I was the greatest student - any of my professors would give lie to that. But I loved field work, and they always needed students to swing a pickaxe. And once, they sent me to help excavate a crashed starship from the Old Republic days, and...well."

"Well?" The man stubbed out his ciggara, tapped the box for another.

"You know the Archives and the museums on Coruscant were looted by Imperials for their own collections, yes?" Selas said, "I'd heard the rumours, and this excavation was not only on the same planet - but the same province - as one of the worst offenders, someone who'd stolen ancient artifacts and texts because he wanted to have them just to himself. I found where his house was, and found that it wasn't very well secured - he never expected anyone else to come and take the things he'd so rightfully stolen, hm? So, one night, I...disproved him of that notion. The locks took ten minutes, and the sensors and alarms inside were good...but I'm better. I gathered up a few of the more-portable things and headed out. I thought I had gotten away clean, since the transport back to Agamar was leaving in a couple of hours." She smiled ruefully.

"Turns out he got up earlier than I expected. There were calls to port authorites and docking permits were revoked, and all manner of nonsense, and then a search of my bags, and then an arrest." Selas adopted a parody of an innocent look, "As it happened, though, I grabbed several things that the University had been trying to get on loan from Coruscant for decades, and had never been able to get their hands on. So, after about a week with the University's lawyers calling up obscure salvage laws, I was released, the Imperial got a receipt for his artifacts, and the University got to study them for at least a couple of years."

"And since then, you graduated, and went to work for the University," the man said, "With a career that keeps you mostly out of your office and classroom, often on planets with no communication for weeks or months at a time. You seem to have everything you could want."

"We both know that isn't true," Selas said, bringing her attention back to the man's face, the grin slipping off her lips. "It wasn't bad, no. Sometimes I almost forgot the truth. I kept reminding myself that this couldn't last, that I had to keep a low profile. But the hunting never stops, does it? And the Empire grew and grew, and things got worse and worse. I knew there wasn't going to be an end. For a couple of years, I thought I could pretend. I had fun. I went on a date. I had sex. But there was always a shadow, and it got closer."

She closed her eyes. "And then we heard the news, the first time in a long time. Another survior of Order 66 hunted down in the Inner Rim. Then another. And I made a choice."

This time, the man stayed silent, except for the crackle of the coal on the end of his ciggara.

Her voice sank a little lower, "My mother traveled with me, most of the time, when I was working for the University. They usually didn't know, but she helped keep me safe. And while we made our way through the galaxy, I asked her to teach me what it meant to be a member of the Order. Not...not to be a Padawan, or a Knight. I think we both knew then that there would be nothing like enough time for that, but...what it meant to her to be a Jedi. She taught me songs and stories, histories and riddles. I learned how the Archives had been ordered, how many times Archivists had tried to change it."

"And she taught me other things. I understand the Force, but making it move the way my mother could was...difficult. She told me that the purpose of the Jedi's power is to protect those who can't themselves. That walking in the Light sometimes meant violence. And she told me that sooner or later, it would be time to stop running. And she because of that, she gave me, over years and years, some of the Order's most precious knowledge, their closest-held secrets. She gave me a trust that I will have to work every day for the rest of my life to live up to, because she believed in me, and in the Force, and in the Light."

Selas took several breaths, and when she spoke again, her words shook. "She died six weeks ago. The Empire's hunters, they caught up to us on Tasariq. There wasn't enough time to get back to the shuttle, even if we both ran for everything our lives were worth. And she turned to me, and she told me I had to run, that she would make time for me."

Straightening, Selas took one hand off the chair that seemed now to be bracing her upright, that without it she might fall. She reached into her jacket, pulled out something that gleamed in the bright light. Against her own senses, she felt the thing as a surging, piercing, brilliant splinter against the Force - as intimately familiar as her own hand, and but wrapped in the memories, the will of another. Something that wasn't hers, but had given itself to her.

"She gave this to me," Selas' voice wasn't quite hoarse, but close, "And she walked down a hall filled with men with blasters, with nothing in her hands. I felt her die, but it wasn't from those weapons." A tear fell from one blind eye and down her cheek, "I felt the darkness swallow her light. Like something was torn out of me, raw and bloody."

"It's a nice story," the man said, and he stubbed out his second ciggara. "A nice tragedy. And you even have a dead Jedi's weapon, good prop. But tell me this - why are you here? If you're telling the truth the Rebellion wasn't important to your mother, and it sounds like it's never been important to you. We're not a grief counseling service, and we don't need more people with suicidal revenge fantasies, and we especially don't need people with weapons they don't know how to use, so I ask you, Miss Tariim, why are you here?"

Selas took a deep breath, and stood straight, taking her hands off the back of the chair in front of her. She looked at the man, saw the distrust, the fear, the annoyance flickering within him. She took another breath, and made herself relax, letting her senses rise away from her, the infinities that made up even this small room sleeting through her mind. She raised the hand that held her mother's lightsaber, the brilliance almost painful against her senses, and she focused her will on it. Through cracks, crevices, secret places and hidden catches, she wound her will around and through the weapon, weaving a web of her own power through it. She opened her hand, and the hilt stayed in the air while she brought her hand away, fingers making small patterns in the air, quite like if she were working a string puppet.

With a series of small clicks, the weapon came apart, each piece moving with slow precision away from every other, staying in place where Selas willed them to be. After a few breaths, the weapon lay entirely disassembled, the fire-orange gem at its heart spinning lazily. Selas' fingers still moved, slowly, cradling and guiding the strands of her her will wrapped around the saber. She turned her head to look at the man.

"I'm here because I'm making a choice," Selas said, her voice even. Not emotionless, not distant, just even.

The pieces of the saber started to click back together, slowly at first, then each piece moving a little faster, though none without control. She moved her hand toward the weapon, her fingers wrapping around the hilt an instant after the final piece slotted into place. She held the saber at her side.

"My mother stayed away from the Rebellion to raise me," she said, in the same tone, "She thought bringing another person into the Light was worth everything she could have done otherwise. I see the darkness to every side, and I choose to stop running, and I choose to walk in the Light. I choose to fight with the Rebellion."

She took another breath, and put the saber hilt back in her jacket, "If you'll have me."

Supporting Cast:

Xalen Dal - The man in the story above. He is one of the Rebellion's recruiters, and reveres the legends of the Jedi more than the reality. He wants saviors, and has received mortals. Smokes like a chimney, has a badly-attached artificial arm that causes him permanent pain.

Taneel al'Khar - Selas' superior at the University. She is perfectly aware of what Selas is doing and why, and is a willing co-conspirator against the Empire. Able to provide official-enough documentation for certain kinds of travel to certain areas, in order to assist with keeping a low profile.

Ranim Sulten - A Zabrak who sells cheap shuttles, in good shape, with no questions asked. Selas has dealt with him extensively over much of her life. He doesn't know her full name - after all, no questions.

The Long Night

Hi Fizzy! <3

The Long Night

Hi!

Okay, I decided I have some more questions.

- To the extent you can (I understand the desire to keep certain story elements close to your chest), what's the "end goal" for our characters? Are we, as characters within the story, going to be accomplishing something permanent, like making the nights less dangerous, or ending the cycle of literal feast and famine permanently?

- Do our characters have an understanding of why they were brought (or dragged, or forced) back to the world of the living, or are they just clawing their way out of the quiet earth to a view of "hey, monsters," and thinking "I was good at that!" This is really just to set an idea of tone - if this is a story about fighting monsters comparatively without context and to a goal the characters don't understand that they're furthering, that's fine, but I'd like to know that up front.

- Do our characters know that other heroes have returned to life? In fact, do they have any knowledge of one another at all?

- "Whatever powers there are" - Are these gods? The "Will of the Force?" Wild magic? A Jungian collective unconsciousness pressing against the fragile walls of a shared reality? An ancient and hyperintelligent artificial consciousness laced through the crust of a world it couldn't save when it was built, but tries now to preserve civilization through the creation of metahumans in an attempt to feel like its own creation, philosophically, was important?

- The more I think about this, I really just want to write a Mistborn. Can I do that? :3 (Ha ha, only serious. Maybe. Kinda?)

The Long Night -- monsters, mystery, magical abilities, unreasonably slow planetary rotation

@DeltaV - Thanks for responding! I love how much thought you've put into this, and how in-depth your answers were. :3 When an OOC comes along, I'll be there!