"It's not bad, just strange."

Shrug. "All right."

"It is okay to do the comfortable thing. It doesn't actually make you weaker. Can make you stronger, sometimes."

"Mm. Potatoes genuinely aren't uncomfortable, though."

"Mmhmm. But the useful part there is having something you do want, not avoiding something you don't. Having something to protect can be very powerful."

"True. I have no intention of accepting spice substitutes for my tea."

"Yeah, exactly."

"Or telling anyone the recipe."

"No complaints from me."

"Good."

"You know, I should probably teach you telepathy anyway; it's not too much more work to learn to block mindreading, if you've got the framework for it already."

"I would appreciate it."

Nod. "Read up," she nods at the datacard box, "and come up with a priority list for me, seems like the way to do it."

"Sensible."

Nod. "And I do technique design, too - we probably don't want to take the time for anything really unique, but if you notice something where having a variant would give us an edge, let me know and I'll see what I can do."

Nod.

"Okay. I'll leave you to it, then?"

"That sounds good."

"All right."

The droid returns to the back room and Pradnakt starts clearing the table and washing the dishes.

The guests leave. Ekkreth returns to the guest house and starts poring over the notes; Karzel starts exploring the art trails.

The sun begins to set before Karzel gets to any of the art; a blaze of color in the sky, and a scattering of reflected color like stars across the land.

Pradnakt's notes are organized by topic: broad, then narrow, then chronologically within each, making it quite easy to figure out where to start to learn a particular technique, and to see what ability it ultimately gives. Unsurprisingly, the largest portion of the collection is devoted to sensory powers - seeing and hearing at a distance; darkvision and other forms of sensory improvement, with a focus on filtering and clarifying what one senses; sensing presences, emotions, awakeness and attentional focus, and surface thoughts within an area; how to form a connection with a specific person to allow yourself to sense those things, plus deeper thoughts and memories, from them in particular; danger sense and other precognition; and how to observe the Force itself, to detect when others are using powers and learn them for oneself. There are also sections on bodily control - how to avoid being drugged or poisoned and how to allow a drug to work in spite of the technique in oneself or others, how to avoid being harmed by heat, cold, radiation, and other environmental effects, how to counter pain, nausea, and other physical conditions, and so on - telekinesis and its uses, mind tricks and related mental effects, force lightning and the effects that can be transmitted through it plus a section on making colored lightning, and so on. There's also a section on lightsaber combat, though the notes in that section are very sparse; it's mostly composed of pictures and indecipherable arrow charts with the occasional word like 'quickly' or 'crowds'. And one on meditation, covering a wide enough variety of techniques to definitely give the impression that Pradnakt did her own research into the topic: increasing the intensity of one's emotions is well covered, of course, but there are also a variety of techniques for inducing them, maintaining them, balancing them to optimize the power of different techniques, and even reducing them without sacrificing the ability to reassert them later. And at the very beginning, there's a section on Sith philosophy, starting with the Sith code and continuing through a collection of other works - poems, essays, snippets of case law, brief history lessons, in no particular order and with notes ranging from multiple fully edited essays to single, sometimes apparently unrelated words.

Hm.

She knows some of this already, of course, Darth Svahe was a horrible Master but he did want to forge her into a surpassing weapon.

A lot of it is new, though. She makes notes of what is where, particularly the more interesting or useful-seeming ones.

Ooh.

Karzel appreciates the sunset-struck art very much, although he also keeps half a force-sense-equivalent-of-an-eye out in case of danger.

It's pretty safe; there aren't even any large animals around, though there is the occasional stinging ant or poisonous plant or docile but venomous snake.

About twenty minutes up the path, he comes to the first installation: it's much rougher than any of the art he's seen so far, a study in wire on the subject of lightning, some twelve feet high at the tallest point and easily six or eight wide, big dramatic strikes branching and splitting until they reach needle thinness; an obvious show of power.

It's a very Sith piece of art.

He should probably be disturbed by how compelling it is. Instead he shoves that thought in a drawer and locks it.

The next piece is not much further on; a low, fairly flat cliff face serves as the backdrop for a shattered sheet of iron, arranged as if in the earliest stages of exploding outward, with rust stains streaking the stone behind it.