"Jedi. I mean you no harm."

Revan hoped the dark side energies searing his insides did not undermine his statement. He could mask almost all of his own direct uses of the dark side, but not his use of the Star Forge. Certainly not a use of it as grand as the one he had just pulled off. His insides roiled. Pain of this magnitude could not be inflicted by physical means alone. Such pain could be used for immense power, but not without a cost. Fortunately, that was not a cost he needed to pay today.

He bore the pain expressionless, decades of discipline more than ample to contain it to a small section of his mind.

Motionless, he directed a stray tendril of power to straighten his robes, an indulgence of his personal preference for order in all things.

- And a guy just randomly appeared in front of him. Someone who feels like they have both good and evil in them -

And who knows Luke's a Jedi, though that knowledge is probably spreading pretty rapidly.

Luke gets to his feet, wary. Not reaching for his lightsaber yet, though.

"Who are you?"

The man was speaking Galactic Basic, as expected, but with a different accent, also as expected. Revan probed gently at the edges of the man's mind, reading off the speech-generation structures and pulling them into himself. When he spoke, his speech was no different:

"I am Rellav Maelstrom. I have traveled far to speak with you."

Revan took a deep but quiet breath. The man was clearly ridiculously powerful, in the sense of raw access to the Force, but he did not have the aura of a master, much less the aura one would expect of the most powerful Force-user of his era. That didn't seem right. Had Revan arrived too soon?

"I'm Luke Skywalker. Where are you from? Who are you with?" His brow furrows. "Are you a Jedi?"

Not the questions Revan would have asked, but he wanted to signal cooperation, so he answered nonetheless:

"I was born on a forgotten planet in the Outer Rim, though I've been many places since then."
"I am not allied with any of the major or minor factions in the Galaxy."
"I estimate that I have more than half of the properties of a Jedi that matter to you."

"Where were you before you - appeared? How'd you get here - without me noticing?"

Bummer. He'd noticed. What to do, what to do. The complete answer would require revealing more information than could be processed, understood, or believed. Untrue answers would be flimsy. What? He's going to claim to have been using a stealth field generator. He wasn't carrying one.

"I used a piece of very sophisticated technology. I would be willing to tell you more in time, but first I have questions for you."

"Luke Skywalker, Master Jedi, who are you with?" 

"If you were looking for me, wouldn't you already know that?"

"You are correct to be suspicious. I was looking for a person particularly gifted with the Force, which happens to be you. That is what I know about you, though I am indeed curious to know more."

"I will be more transparent. I want to work with you. Help you. That is, assuming your goals and motives are not incompatible with my own. To do this, we must trust each other, and to trust each other we must know something about each other. I ask who you are with since it is the question you asked me and presumably speaks to how you think about things, but I am generally interested in the entirety of who you are, what you are trying to do, and how I might help you."

"Note, I have not paid attention to the present galactic matters, so you might find that I am ignorant of many present things, for example, the members of a presiding Jedi Council. I might have a number of foolish-sounding questions. I pray you are patient with me." 

"Jedi Council? - I've never heard of that, but there aren't enough Jedi left for a Council anyways."

"I'm with the Alliance, though the Empire calls us rebels. I'd figure most Force users wouldn't be fond of the Empire, but at least one is."

Revan pondered: "The Empire" – more a Sith name than a Jedi one. Few Jedi. Not even a council. And his search for the most powerful Force-user of the era led him to an untrained youth. For that matter, the galaxy felt barren, in a way: the pinpricks of light side force that dotted the galaxy, the Jedi, were absent. Only now with his senses clearing post-Star-Forge-travel did he notice it.

The Jedi had been almost entirely wiped out. The Sith dream finally accomplished. Revan felt a sadness stir in him. There was so much he hated about the Jedi, but they were half a whole he was increasingly convinced was important. Still, it wouldn't matter in the scheme of things. Not if he succeeded.

"I'm with the Alliance." Ah, so a holdout group possessing at least this Jedi. They assuredly would be bent on overthrowing their Empire and restoring justice and peace and so on and so on. The script for gaining trust and allyship was clear.

"Things are worse than I feared then. I am a man of many talents, Luke, and I would like to help your rebels in your fight against tyranny and oppression."

Luke's fairly sure he's at least somewhat sincere.

But...

There's still that odd - darkness, he guesses - that he'd sensed.

"...Why didn't you already know that?"

Revan sighed internally, a motion perfected over the years. Building trust could be so tedious. No wonder it was one of the later skills he had developed.

"As I said, I traveled far to be here." This was in fact true both for time and distance. "Where I have been for the last many years of my life, I have had no access to any HoloNet that could have informed me about the state of things here, nor did any of the events here touch the places I have been."

"If you would be so kind, at some I'd greatly appreciate a datapad to help me become apprised of recent developments."

"I can get you a datapad, yeah, though maybe not right away, though a lot of the Empire's stuff is censored. Where were you, earlier?"

"Looking for lost technology on lost worlds, the very same that helped me travel here to you."

"Surely you have learnt, Master Skywalker, that technology is neither good nor evil, yet its possession can decide which prevails. I don't need your datapad to guess that the Empire has you outgunned and out-teched, so I hope you'll understand my interest in technology."

"Also, without knowing your exact role within your alliance, I hope you recognize that my frank admittance of knowledge of advanced technology is a considerable sign of goodwill. I'd be happy to talk to your allies, particularly the strategists, and I am confident they would agree on this point."

Luke was likely the only rebel figure of interest, but Trust-Building 201 says sometimes it's wiser to take an indirect path. If a person is not easily swayed with reason, find a reason-amenable confidant of their's, earn the confidant's alliance, and let it propagate backwards through the social chain. Cooperation with extra steps.

He considers this.

He's unsure whether she'd want him to lead this Rellav straight to Leia - and the wider base, of course. The stranger's probably a better Jedi than Luke, and probably can find the base on his own -

He's also aware the Alliance's information streams aren't airtight, and a strange Jedi - oddly unaware of the Empire - with advanced technology could be a huge boon. If it's true.

He pulls out his transmitter, calling Leia directly - "Hey, gonna come in early. Side door still unlocked?" And, pushing across the still somewhat hard to reliably use mental link to her - he found something, he's unsure of this, and wary, but cautiously hopeful, and the something is a person.

She answers promptly, of course. "I'll make sure it is."

And pushing towards Luke - a very firm sense of I hope you know what you're doing.

(She starts moving to an unwatched side door; Luke should be able to head straight for her.)

"Thanks." He likes her so much.

To Rellav: "Well, I can bring you in on my speeder."

Revan was surprised. Then he was surprised at his own surprise. He should know better by now. Of course the man who failed to ask any of a dozen actually good questions to ferret out Revan's motivations would also flip to taking him right into the midst of his allies after a mere few minutes of conversation. People don't reason consistently, but they do usually reason inconsistently consistently.

Yet...something was wrong. How could this be the one?

"Thank you, sincerely. I am ready."

He nods.

And the reason he might've been less hesitant to reveal the base turns out to be that it's literally within eyesight - they don't have clear lines of sight to where Luke had decided to meditate, and their location is obviously obscured (especially from the air), but Luke would've been able to see anything exploding, and Revan would've been able to see it without much walking. It looks like a smuggler's hideaway - a more thorough disguise than simple invisibility, since it'll be hard to entirely hide signs of activity. It's incredibly small, though, especially for somewhere that might claim to challenge an 'Empire,' and very thinly staffed. (In truth, this base is far from anything major, and it's half been an excuse to squirrel Luke away so he can train himself without cutting him off entirely from the Alliance like he would be on Dagobah.)

Getting the speeder in takes only a few minutes, and most of that's taken up by Luke swinging out past the main approaches and to an odd little side route.

Leia meets him there, outside the door. She's put the base on low alert, and let their guards know there's a unknown approximately fitting Revan's description - who isn't to be trusted if found away from Luke or Leia. Nothing of Luke's hopes for him, or the weird sense of surprise from Luke, or the odd feeling of power she's getting off him.

She glances to Luke, briefly, confirming You're okay? (he is) before turning to Revan.

"Who are you?"

The woman had a keenness to her. Revan liked it. Bizarrely, she had much the same aura as her comrade, though she seemed completely untrained in the Force– as opposed to only mostly untrained. And...yes, these two were connected. It was both alike and unlike his own connection to Bastila. Sigh. He would miss her.

"I am Rellav Maelstrom. I was once a Jedi, though I left the order to pursue my own path to improving the world."

Even after recovering from the memory wipe and indoctrination, Revan had used the alternative name on more than one occasion. It was almost not a lie to say that's who he was. Though, if the rest of the alliance were no more educated than Luke, he could have safely used the true and blackened name of one infamous historical figure.

"For the last two decades of my life, I have been in worlds beyond the reach of this galaxy, pursuing my work. My work, however, has now led me to your brother and you. You are my biggest hope." 

That is, assuming he'd performed the calculations correctly...

"We're not related," she says, immediately, though - something about those words sparks an unease in her gut...

"What is your work?"

Revan was amused. Why would she deny it? Then again, the way the young man looked at her... If this era was no different than his own, it made sense that they'd wish to avoid publicly committing a taboo. Well, shaking them up had an element of risk, but also might result in them being off-balance and therefore in a more receptive mood for subsequent discussions.

"I can't tell you everything, not yet, but I will work very hard to avoid telling you anything actively false. I'd be very grateful if you did the same to me. Now, I trust my senses. Do you wish to tell me that if each of you submitted a sample to a medical droid, it would not confirm your biological relation? This is a very easy test to conduct and I don't mind waiting if you want to stand by your statement and prove it. Fear not, I won't judge you for being honest here, such practices don't bother me."

Revan glanced knowingly at Luke, the barest hint of a smirk showing through.

"We're from different planets, raised by very different people. The chances of us being related are astronomically small, and it doesn't matter, anyways."

"Now, my question?"