Occlus, of course, has no idea what a kobold is. She also has no idea why there is apparently a cantina instead of a turbolift, but her reaction to uncertainty is always to proceed in a direct fashion to eliminate it. She approaches the creature that looks like a cross between a Chadra-fan and a monkey-lizard.

"What are you, why are you selling teleportation, and is said teleportation the reason for the unexpected appearance of the cantina?"

The kobold takes a moment to decide how to reply - fear and curiosity dance together behind a thick layer of confidence - but answers quickly enough, with a hint of a friendly smile: "I'm a kobold, I'm saving up for a helicopter, and no, this place just does that. The bar can explain; they didn't do it either, but they're here all the time and know more about it than I do."

"The bar can- why is the bar a droid? Never mind, I'll just go ask it. I'll be back."

She walks over to the bar. There doesn't seem to be any obvious interface, so she'll just try talking- ah. Napkins with writing. How... efficient. She collects her free drink, which is effervescent and purple, makes a note to further investigate the bar's library-like properties later, and returns to the kobold.

"So, teleportation magic. How, exactly, does that work?"

"The main limitation is that my magic can only teleport things to set places, and I have to go to the destination before I cast the spell in order to aim it, unless you want something that does random destinations, in which case I need to know what kinds of places you want the spell to connect to - air quality and temperature and gravity and stuff. Aside from that, it's pretty versatile - I can do portals in walls or teleportation traps on floors, or make jewelry or other items that teleport whoever's wearing or touching them when they're activated, or just cast on you directly if you prefer, and I have enough options for trigger conditions that it's unusual for me not to be able to figure out how to get the result someone wants. You will want me to cast on something durable, if you go with an object, since if it's badly enough damaged the spell will break, but Bar can help with that if need be."

"Where did you acquire this capability? I've never heard of similar technology, and I don't recognize your species. Are you from somewhere in the Unknown Regions?"

"Oh, I'm from a different universe. That's also just something this place does, though my magic lets me cheat; I can teleport in whenever I like instead of having to wait for a door."

"I see. Is this ability common, where you're from? And I would like to see a demonstration, if you don't mind."

"Not very common, no. Would you like a demonstration of something in particular?"

"Say, a portal from the top of this table to that one over there." She points.

"Sure, that should be in range from here..."

She closes her eyes, focusing... something very interesting is happening in her mind; it's not an emotion, not even slightly, but Occlus' emotion sense can pick it up anyway, as if it wants to be seen. There's not enough detail to tell anything beyond that it's there, though, and after a few seconds it fades away.

All of the tabletop except a two-inch rim and the bit under the sign have been replaced with a hole, with the other table's top two or three inches under it. The kobold reaches in and knocks on the other table, and the sound can be heard emanating from both the table and the portal.

Huh. That sensation is interesting. And worrisome. Occlus has enough experience to be wary of anything that wants to put itself into her head, so she'll not look too closely for now. She puts her hand through the portal, and touches the other table. It feels real enough.

"Interesting. Is this a learnable skill or is one born with it?"

A pause, a look - she's not liking where this is going.

"Learned, why?"

"In my universe, we have a sort of magic called the Force." Occlus gestures and a nearby chair rises up and spins around. "I know of no way to achieve such effects as this portal with it. Therefore, it seems likely that your magic is an entirely different sort of thing. One is born with Force potential, if you have none it cannot be taught, shared, or transferred. But since your magic is not like the Force, that rule may not apply. Hence my question. How much would you ask to teach me? I am prepared to pay extremely well."

The kobold nods, and considers this answer.

"Do you want it for some specific purpose? Is there someone you have in mind to teach once you know it, maybe?"

"In my experience, it is useful to have as many advantages as possible. If they are advantages unknown to my enemies, so much the better. I can think of many ways I might employ this power, but at this time I have no intention of sharing it with others."

She nods an acknowledgement, and collects herself - fear is ascendant over curiosity, now, and confidence has shifted to readiness; it's easy to guess that she's prepared to teleport away if this exchange goes badly.

"Sorry, but no, then. My home situation is complicated; there isn't an amount of money that would make up for me being away long enough to teach someone, even with the time paused there."

"Pity. I will make do with a few static portals then, if you are still willing to sell those."

And if this strange creature is still willing to do magic for Occlus, she's going to pay closer attention to what is happening in its head when it does.

The kobold's fear fades back to its usual background level, and she nods. "Sure."

She taps the top of her sign, making it rock slightly on the table, which has the effect of breaking the portal spell and returning the table to its usual configuration. A second tap, on the base, opens a portal to the bar in the back of the sign. "Bar handles the pricing for me, and it varies by world, but if you already have pretty good tech and some magic it shouldn't be too bad, even with this being unique for your world. What kinds of portals did you have in mind?"

"I maintain a sort of archive. It would be useful to have an item that would permit me to access its physical contents when I am off-planet for one reason or another. I also suspect Bar may be able to provide me with the location of a certain historical site I have been trying to track down for some time. If she is able to, I would also like a portal from my archive to the site, for ease of cataloging the relics contained therein."

"That sounds easy enough. How big is the archive, and do you have a way of getting your things to a set spot in it? If not, I can make something that will open portals to each thing's place, but that's obviously a bit more effort."

Curiosity ascendant, now. It's a bit unusual how easily she slips between that and fear.

"The archive is quite extensive, but I already have a system in place that will retrieve arbitrary artifacts upon request. All I need is a way to get them into my hands without having to go down to the entrance."

Nod. "I can definitely do that. How big is the largest thing you might want to teleport?"

"Slightly larger than your sign here."

She nods, again, and then she pulls a loop of string from a bag on her belt and casts on it - the sense of something interesting happening is there again, but it's not any clearer, and this spell only takes a second or so to cast.

"This is what I use to get things from my world while I'm here," she explains, pulling a fresh raspberry out of the portal. "It's hard to beat it for portability, even having to use something sturdier than plain string. Or if you want something that's a little less obviously magical, I can set a similar portal into a container of some sort."

Raspberry: nom.

"What is the significance of the sturdiness requirement?"

"When I cast a spell, it has to be on an object - or part of an object, or more than one object, but for the purpose of the spell, whatever I pick to cast on counts as a single thing. If that object is damaged, like a crack or something, the spell might break, and if any part of the object is removed from the rest, it definitely breaks. I can adjust how sensitive it is to the first kind of damage when I cast the spell - on the most forgiving end I can get a spell to stay on a pool of water for several hours if it's not disturbed too much, and anything solid will be fine indefinitely - but the item having to stay in one piece is a hard limit. So string works fine for me, but you'll want something you can handle without having to worry about it fraying or anything."

"Tell me more about trigger conditions. What sort of range do they come in? Ideally, I'd want this device to be usable by only myself, with conscious intent to do so."

"I can use anything or any combination of things that physically affect the enspelled object as triggers, including sequences of things. I can't have the spell directly detect if it's you trying to activate the spell or what your mental state is, but I have a couple other more minor kinds of magic that might help with that - I can make things glow faintly in different colors, and enspell things to detect the presence of magic and a few basic things about it at sight range, so if I cast a spell on you to make your fingers glow when you wanted to activate the portal, and then have it check for your kind of magic, my kind of magic, and a specific pattern of touches with glowing fingers, that should be pretty secure - my kind of magic doesn't break when cast on living things, so that's not an issue, but you do need to know that if your kind of magic can detect mine, you'll noticeably have that spell forever, even when you aren't using it."

"Hm. Can your magic make more specific observations beyond the fact that I have Force potential? There is a way in which my Force signature is unique that I would be confident in using as an identity verification measure."

"I can tell you have five of something that seem different from the background magic, if that's what you mean. If having them at all is unique enough, that will be easy; if five in particular is the thing to check, I think I'll need to watch you for a while longer to make sure I have a clear enough idea of how to do it."

"Having them at all is unique. I think combining their presence with a specific touch sequence will be sufficient. I will go requisition the an appropriate vessel from Bar, and determine if she has the final piece of the map I need."

Occlus gets up and walks over to the bar. After some discussion, she returns with a simple durasteel hoop and a largish stone tablet.

"I will need to consult with my other references, but I believe I can find what I seek with this. How much will you be charging for your services?"

"So that's the portal to your archive, and then portals to and from the place the map is to - I can cast several spells on the same object if you'd like quicker access to a few things you use most often or would want in a hurry, too, using different touch patterns, and there's a question of how long it will take to get to those places; I can pull some tricks with the door here that might help with that, but what it'd be without that is a good starting point."

"In that case, I will ask for two additional spells on the archive portal, one where I enter a different sequence and one where someone other than me enters the original sequence. I will have to verify, but my research suggests that the end location should be less than a day of travel away from where I was before I came in here."

Bar produces an itemized bill with all the services discussed listed. Occlus glances at the total and deems it acceptable.

The kobold nods. "Great. I'll go grab my gear; are there any particular risks I should be aware of?"

"As long as you stay close to me, no. If you wander off and touch things at random, I will not be able to guarantee your continued mental and physical integrity. I cannot vouch for the safety of the ruins, but a portal just outside will suffice and should not be unduly dangerous. It also occurs to me that you probably do not speak Basic, will the translation effect persist outside of the bar or should I make alternate arrangements?"

"I can see magic on things just as easily as on people, if that's what you're worried about with touching things, but I'll stay close unless that seems like a bad idea. If I do end up teleporting away, check for me at the last place we rested; I'll either be there, or be here watching through a portal - if it's too dangerous to meet up there I'll try previous ones, but I might not remember all of them. And the translation effect doesn't carry over, but I have a thing for that."

"Very well." Occlus will just sit here and wait for the kobold to be ready.

She's only gone for a few minutes. When she comes back, she's wearing a slightly different set of pouches on her belt, two necklaces, and a pair of fingerless leather gloves. "Ready when you are."

Occlus goes over to the door and opens it. Outside the door is a featurelessly boring grey hallway. She steps through, and holds it for the kobold.

And the kobold goes through.

Assuming Occlus isn't already walking away, the very first thing she does is check what the area looks like to her mage-sight, so she can teleport back here if she wants to later.

There is not a whole lot of interesting going on in this hallway.

The door they came out of was supposed to lead to the lift, so once it closes Occlus will open it up again. No bar this time, so she gets in and waits for her companion.

There's plenty interesting in the place-signature of a new world, even a boring part of it.

Looking at it doesn't take long, though; she follows Occlus into the elevator promptly and with only a moderate spike of nervousness/curiosity.

Occlus types something into a console set on the wall, and the lift moves smoothly downward. When the door opens again, there is a short hallway with a heavy door set into the far wall. Occlus goes over to the desk that's about halfway between the lift and the door and confirms her identity with the guard there. The heavy door swings open. She beckons the kobold to follow her inside.

Follow follow.

The next room looks similar to the first, but the door at the far end is bigger and heavier. There is no desk or living guard, but three droids stand in front of the door, carrying what the kobold may or may not recognize as weapons. Occlus does not approach the droids, but walks over to one wall and indicates an area on it.

"I would like the other end of the portal to be here."

And focus. Can she see what the kobold is doing when she casts the spell?

Focusing doesn't help; Occlus is simply not getting enough detail in the first place.

She only has a handful of seconds to look, though, before the kobold's attention shifts away from the wall, and then a moment later she's startled out of her trance entirely.

"Can I see the hoop?" She composes herself before asking; the startlement barely made it to her body language at all. "And do you have codes in mind?"

Alas. It was a long shot.

Occlus passes over the hoop and demonstrates the first code. Tap tap tappitytaptappity tap.

Enspelling the hoop takes longer than anything the kobold has done yet, and involves tapping it both with her finger and against the ground and walking a short distance from Occlus and then back, focusing the whole time. After a couple of minutes, she offers it back: "There's the first spell; the rest will be quicker. Give it a try?"

Tap tap tappitytaptappity tap. Portal?

Portal!

Just as advertised. How nice. Occlus reaches through to test it.

Seeing one's own arm emerge from midair is pretty weird, at least the first few times you do it. In this case it's appearing from a spot about a foot from the wall, at a comfortable height for picking something up from a table scaled for human use, and oriented the same way it would be if it was more conventionally attached.

"Archivist," Occlus says to the droids, "record this for reference."

"Recording function active."

Occlus moves her arm around for a few seconds more, then withdraws it. Tap tap tappitytaptappity tap?

Portal: ceases to be.

"I also made it so it'll shut off if it gets too far away from you; I can undo that if you'd like though."

"No, that won't be a problem. The other location I wish to have a portal to is outside." Occlus walks back to the lift.

Follow follow, again. Less nervous about the lift, this time.

And here is a landing pad with several speeders parked on it! Occlus goes over to one with a closed cabin.

"Will being on the other side of the window from a location be close enough to portal to it?"

Nod. "The sense I'm using is more like touch than anything else, but I can extend it a few meters before I risk getting disoriented, more if I take my time or can follow an obvious path."

"Good." Into the speeder and then up into the air. Very, very far up into the air. Occlus takes them up about thirteen kilometers, and hovers.

"This spot will do. I would like both of the alternate portals to lead here."

...interesting choice. The hoop isn't big enough to put someone bigger than like baby-sized through, is it?

Only if they were very cooperative.

The kobold will not be particularly alarmed, then. Mage-sense, go.

"All right, I've got it," she reports after a few seconds, and then she gets started on adding the spell with the original code to the hoop.

If interrupting Occlus to ask for the second code doesn't seem like a bad idea, she'll do that too, and have the hoop complete by the time they land.

Occlus is amenable to being interrupted, the speeder has an autopilot. She provides the second code when asked (Tap tap taptaptappity tappity), and lands the speeder without incident.

"It will take several hours to complete my analysis, and I will not be available to escort you for that time."

"That's fine. Is there someplace I can put a temporary portal to Milliways, so I can wait there?"

"The hallway where we came in will be fine." Occlus is going to take the lift to there, unless the kobold would care to make a portal for them both.

Portal, no, but that's not the only way she can do things. She offers Occlus her hand: "teleport?"

This could be interesting. Occlus takes the offered hand.

It's certainly more abrupt than the portal: they were there; now they're here.

The kobold fishes a roll of painter's tape out of one of her belt pouches and affixes a piece of it to the wall, then creates a portal next to it that leads to Milliways' main room. "This one has a simple on-off trigger, just tap the tape. I might go up to my room for a nap while you're working; Bar can fetch me if I'm not around when you come to get me."

Occlus nods in acknowledgement, and closes the portal once the kobold has gone through.

Now, to work. First, she makes adjustments to the archivist droids' programming so that they will deliver any items she requests to right in front of the place the portal opens, so she can just reach out and take them. She has them fetch the other pieces of the map to the Lost Temple, and retrieves them through her portal-hoop. Yes, this could be very convenient indeed.

As for deciphering the map itself, the runes prove as resistant to translation as ever. But the final piece she obtained from Bar proves to be the key and several hours later, the hidden coordinates reveal themselves at last. She checks the result against a galaxy map, and there is a star system, right where it should be. Occlus smiles in satisfaction. Time to go retrieve the kobold.

Tap on the tape, and enter Milliways. Is she in the main area?

Yup, there she is over there, curled up on the couch watching an educational holofilm. She's too intent on the ...what is that, algebra?... to notice Occlus immediately.

Then Occlus will walk over next to her, and wait for an appropriate pause to announce herself.

The kobold looks up as soon as Occlus is clearly headed in her direction, and by the time she's within speaking range she's teleported the holofilm emitter back to the bar and stood up. "Ready to go?"

"Yes. Travel time will be approximately eighteen hours, you may wish to bring something to occupy yourself with."

The kobold nods and pats one of her belt pouches. "I'm good."

Follow follow?

Follow! Portal to lift to pad to speeder to spaceport to ship. Occlus sets the course, then retires to her cabin to meditate.

The kobold explores the ship a bit (very conservatively, really; a door that doesn't open on its own is a door she's not going through), determines that teleporting to it while it's in motion would at very least be a hard problem, and finds a good spot to settle into, where she'll have a good chance of noticing when Occlus leaves her room but won't be in the way of anything that might happen in the meantime.

Her distraction of choice is a sketchbook and a set of colored pencils, and between puzzling out diagramed versions of the algebra she's been learning and sketching some of the things she's seen so far today (Occlus, the droids, a credible attempt at what Occlus' magic looks like to her magic-vision, the teacher from the algebra holo's striking outfit, Occlus' planet from thirteen kilometers up...) that will keep her busy for a good six or eight hours. Does anything interesting happen in that time?

Towards the end of that time, Occlus comes out of her cabin and gets some food from the galley. Holding something that resembles a rice cake, she walks over to where the kobold is sitting.

"It occured to me to wonder if you could make an item that can teleport to the ship, even if it moves from planet to planet."

"I don't think so. I was trying to figure that out earlier, and unless I have a clever idea, the closest I can come to teleporting to spaceships is to have a spell that finds the nearest ship to a set point in space and uses that as the destination, and even that would only work for ships close enough."

"Planets travel through space, and are rotating in addition to that. The wall of my archive is not stationary in an absolute sense, it just doesn't change position relative to the planet. Is the trouble that the ship would be a smaller frame of reference?"

"...probably? The sense that lets me see what traits of my surroundings I can use to cast with doesn't translate to regular concepts very well, unfortunately. There are things about being here that are different from being on the planet and stable or close to it, but comparatively few of them, and they all seem to be things like the light level or the air quality, not something I'd trust to tell this ship apart from another one."

"Well, if you happen to have any clever ideas before you leave, I would be interested to hear them." Occlus returns to her cabin.

The kobold nods. "I'll see what I can do."

She spends a little while working on that, but before too long, it's time to sleep. She relocates to the quietest spot from her exploration earlier, borrows enough blankets from Bar to make it acceptably comfy, and settles in.

If nothing interrupts her, she'll be back to her original spot in about six and a half hours, well-rested and reasonably well-fed.

Occlus doesn't emerge until it's time to take the ship out of hyperspace and make a landing. The kobold can follow her into the cockpit, if she wishes.

You know what, yeah, that sounds neat.

Occlus is seated at a complicated-looking panel of instruments. Outside the viewport, there is a twisting field of elongated star-lines. Occlus pulls back on a lever, and these snap back into hard points of sparkling light. A large, greenish planet rushes up to fill the center of the window. Occlus taps out a few commands, and frowns at the result.

"It seems we're not going to be the only ones here. The sensors show another ship parked near the temple, probably from the Republic."

The kobold is a little distracted checking out how regular space is different from hyperspace, but responds after a slight delay: "what does that mean for us?"

"Potentially that this trip has been for nothing, if they've opened the temple. Even if they haven't, they could still make the process of exploring it difficult."

Occlus considers for a moment.

"It's local night at the temple. I'm going to set down on the far side from where the other ship is and hope to approach the temple undetected. If the seals are unbroken, I will attempt to open them in such a fashion that they can be resealed, and have you make a portal to the inside entryway."

"I might be able to teleport us in, if we can get close enough. A few meters range on my sense is the minimum, under poor conditions; I can potentially extend it quite a bit farther than that. The main risk is that I'd get the wrong room, and that risk increases with distance, but I can make a portal to look through before we go ourselves."

"That could potentially set off any traps that would be disabled by opening the seals. I prefer to take a cautious approach when it comes to these things. If there were a larger Republic presence I might risk it, but not for just one ship."

Nod. "All right. Stealth gear, then." Not a question, but question-adjacent.

Occlus nods, and begins the process of landing the ship.

The kobold gears up without any further questions, then - a set of claw guards to stop her from making unwanted tapping noises on hard surfaces; a wad of blue goo, changed to black with a drop of liquid from a tiny vial and glooped to her belt; a pair of goggles in blue and purple, strapped on under her ears and perched on her forehead for now.

With those done, she starts rearranging the portals on her belt pouches, pausing for a long few seconds to watch with her mage-sense as the ship dives toward the planet. She hurries through the rest of the spells, and returns to observing for the remainder of the descent.

When the ship's artificial gravity turns off, she flinches slightly, but comes out of her trance a second later without comment.

Occlus brings the ship in low and close to the ground, and settles it in a depression not too far from an overgrown set of ruins that must be the temple. She starts flicking switches, shutting down most of the ship's functions, but leaving it ready to depart with very little warm-up time. With that done they can exit the ship and start moving towards the temple.

Occlus is fairly good at sneaking, if perhaps not quite as practiced at it as the kobold.

It would be kind of surprising if she was as practiced as the kobold, yes. Once she's worked out where they're going, she starts taking an active-but-supportive role in picking their path, pointing out the occasional less obvious alternate route or suggesting that they split up through tricky patches where two people moving together would be especially obvious, and taking the trickier path for herself in such cases.

In such a fashion they cover the distance to the temple with relative speed. When they get there, Occlus finds the main entrance, which is a door covered in strange runes set into what looks like a low hillside. There is a stone courtyard in front, and two high walls bracing either side of the hill. Examining the door, Occlus smiles.

"It hasn't been opened yet. I need a moment to determine the correct sequence."

The kobold nods, and moves off a little way to keep watch without disturbing or being disturbed by Occlus.

A minute or so later, Occlus jerks her head around suddenly.

Jedi. Wonderful.

"Hide," she hisses at the kobold.

The kobold disappears.

A brief, quiet hiss informs Occlus of her chosen hiding place, a bit of fallen rubble close to the door. A moment later, a ring of ground around it, too wide by half to step over, glows very faintly red for a second.

Occlus makes an arcane gesture and mutters something incomprehensible, performing a ritual to blur the Force signatures of anyone in the area.

Three robed figures appear at the front of the courtyard, with lightsabers drawn and lit. One blue, one green, one yellow. Blue speaks.

"Sith. Back away from the door."

"No."

"We don't want to hurt you, Sith," Blue lifts his lightsaber to point at Occlus. "But we will if you force us to."

Occlus turns all the way around, and suddenly lifts her arm to send a blast of lightning at Yellow. He's knocked off his feet and goes flying backwards. The other two charge at Occlus, who ignites her own saber to meet their assault.

Blue and green sheets clash against bursts of crimson. There is a whirlwind of activity, and the green saber winks out, followed shortly by the blue.

Occlus sheathes her saber, and gestures to pull Yellow over to her. He's dragged along the uneven ground and comes to rest at her feet. She kneels down to ask him softly, "How many of you are there?"

"S-s-seventeen," he stammers. "P-please don't ki-"

Occlus snaps his neck before he can finish the sentence, and stands up.

"You can come out now."

The kobold emerges from her shelter and looks around with a sigh. "Now what?" She asks, quietly.

Internally, she's sad, but resigned: Yep, this sure is a way the world is, sometimes.

"Now I go deal with the rest of them before they can realize that these three are dead. You can stay here, I doubt any more will make it this far."

"Does that..." No, wrong question. "What happens if you don't?"

"They call for help and it becomes very much harder to explore this place."

Nod. "Does talking to them work? Might it help if I talked to them? I can get them away from their gear first if that will stop them from calling for more."

"They have a... philosophical objection to the existence of my kind. If you can separate them from their comlinks that will certainly buy some time for you to talk if you wish to try, but I cannot allow them to report a truthful version of events at any time."

Deep sigh. "Nope, that's elves, not tigerfolk." Elves: terrifying monsters; tigerfolk: dangerous, but possible to talk around from their deeply misguided state. "All right. I'd rather come if you don't think that's a bad idea for some reason; I'm not a fighter, but I might be able to help anyway."

"It may get somewhat chaotic, and it will be easier for me if I don't have to keep track of you as a non-target."

Nod. "Reasonable. I'd like to at least be close enough to see, though." Because otherwise she will worry about this newly-sympathetic human who's proposing to go fight fifteen spellbearers of unknown capacity.

"Then I will blur your Force signature to make you less easy to detect. As you are not Force sensitive, this should not adversely affect you."

And assuming no objections are immediately raised, Occlus will go ahead and do that.

The kobold does check whether this is reversible, first - doesn't leave any magical residue or anything afterward, right? But assuming the answer is yes, she has no objections.

She spends a moment peering around, once the effect is applied, considers for a moment, reaches into a belt pouch to shift the contents around slightly, and then nods. "Ready when you are."

The effect is fully reversible, and will in fact wear off in a few hours.

Occlus makes less of an effort to be stealthy on this trip. It doesn't take long for them to reach the Jedi encampment. There are three large tents, arrayed in a semi-circle around a pavilion with open sides. The ship is parked just beyond. There are no people visible outside.

"Stay back, and keep your head down."

The kobold nods, and in fact picks the lowest available spot to lie in; she can make herself a portal to watch through, after all.

Step one: disable communications. Ionizing the atmosphere will do the trick temporarily. Occlus unleashes a storm of lightning across the camp.

Step two: prevent escape. Occlus manifests five ghosts around the edges of the camp. Each erects a barrier that will stop anyone trying to pass.

Step three: eliminate targets. With Force-enhanced agility, Occlus leaps into the camp. Alerted by the lightning storm, the Jedi wake up and attempt to defend themselves. They fail. Occlus is moving too quickly, and still has surprise on her side. The line of her saber marks her progress. Occasionally it is interrupted by a green, blue, or yellow flash, but never for long.

Five minutes later, it's all over. Occlus walks calmly back to where she left the kobold.

The kobold stands again when she sees Occlus coming. If she doesn't make an attempt to interact, she'll fall in behind her to head back to the ruin.

Occlus looks at her quizzically. What's she upset about?

Shrug. Sigh. "I wish the world was a better place, where things like that didn't have to happen."

"The world is what it is. I make the best of what I have. Now that they are dealt with, it is no longer necessary that the portal be inside the temple. A good-sized one in the courtyard outside the entrance would be ideal, but one anywhere in this general area will serve."

The kobold nods, and offers her hand for a teleport.

Those bracing walls would hold a big portal nicely, if they're in good enough shape.

Occlus accepts the teleport.

The walls have stood for this long, they'll probably survive until Occlus is finished with the place. Would bracing them interfere with the portal?

Not if it doesn't remove any part of the existing wall where the spell is, or if it's done before she casts. She doesn't mind sticking around for that, either, if Occlus would like her to teleport in workers or something.

Occlus'll handle that later. Probably at the same time she gets Intelligence to do the cover-up for the seventeen dead Jedi, though she doesn't mention that.

Is the wall of her speeder pad a workable destination for the other end of the portal?

Does it have any bits that come off?

Nope!

Then it's a perfectly good destination.

Portal; portal.

Occlus smiles.

"I believe that will satisfy the terms of our contract. I assume Bar will handle the conversion of the payment, do you need my presence for that?"

"No; they can handle it." The kobold pauses to consider her priorities and loyalties for a moment before saying, "I'd like to be on your ship when it leaves; I have an idea for something to try, for being able to teleport to it."

"Very well. Let me call in some people to watch this end and deal with the bodies."

"...I was planning on doing that, actually. Dealing with the bodies." She cares quite a bit about that, in a highly ambivalent sort of way.

"What are you planning on doing with them?"

"Burying them. Or... I'm not sure that's translating correctly? Close, anyway. I expect it'll bother me less, to do it properly, than it would your people." Which isn't to say that this isn't going to bother her, because it is, but it's better than any of the alternatives she expects are on offer here.

"...if you feel strongly about it, I suppose that will be fine." Occlus can always have to bodies retrieved and properly incinerated after the kobold leaves. "I will make my other arrangements while you do that, then."

The kobold nods, bows slightly, and goes to gather up the three from the courtyard, arranging them gently and making sure each has its lightsaber before teleporting it away; she goes with the last one herself.

Occlus calls in guards for the site, and sets them up with explosives and orders to collapse the wall holding the portal if enemies come. She also gets some people from Intelligence to take the Republic ship away and arrange for a suitably fatal accident to befall it, along with a story to be fed to whoever might be waiting for the ship to return.

That done, she returns to the task of opening the temple doors. Without the requirement that they be resealable, this proves a fairly straightforward task, and the entryway is every bit as promising as the texts she has describing the temple. She brings in her virgin-dig team, and sets them to the task of beginning the rest of the exploration.

Dawn has broken, and the sun is rising higher in the sky. Is that kobold finished with the bodies?

The kobold is nowhere to be found, actually. It seems that she took the bodies and several items from the Jedi campsite and teleported off while the people from Intelligence were working on getting into the ship, and no one has seen her since.

Occlus will go back to the temple then. If the kobold returns before the end of the day, any of Occlus's people can point the way to where she might be found.

The kobold returns in the middle of the afternoon, sweaty, dusty, sore, smelling faintly of smoke, with dried blood on her arm where she accidentally cut it on a sharp rock, and exhausted. She doesn't ask about Occlus, but settles into a reasonably visible shady spot near the ship.

Occlus doesn't emerge until the sun has almost completely set. 

By that time, the kobold has had a bath and is back to fiddling with her sketchbook. Her mood is still subdued, but thoughtful.

She doesn't react to Occlus's reappearance from the temple beyond glancing up and scanning the area, but if she approaches either the kobold or the ship, she puts her sketchbook away and stands.

"We can take the ship into orbit now, if you are ready."

 Nod, follow.

"There was something I saw when you were landing the ship that I think I can use to make a portal that will stay with it, but I'm not sure what it was. Can you start the ship up slowly, so I can tell you when I see it again?"

"Yes."

Panel of switches, flip flip flip. Pre-flight diagnostics. Prime the engines. Activate the repulsors and rise off the ground. More power to the repulsors, and the ship goes higher and higher until they're far enough off the ground to cut in the main engines. Zoom.

 The kobold trances through this, and when the main engines come on, she reports, "that, part of it."

Occlus continues to fly the ship until they are entirely out of the planet's gravity well and could enter hyperspace safely.

"Unless jumping to hyperspace would fill in the final piece, I would prefer to return to the planet now."

"No, go ahead."

Trance, again, and after several minutes she pulls out her sketchbook and traces a top-view outline of the ship from the top, then begins drawing in the gravity conduits.

Occlus lets the autopilot handle most of the work involved in getting the ship back down, and watches the kobold's sketch take shape.

When she's done she offers Occlus the pad. "What I'm seeing is mostly there; I still don't know what it is. I'm kind of limited in what I can do with it - the planet has one too that's very similar, and it changes when you turn it off and turn it back on again. But I think if you were able to leave that on all the time, I'd be able to link a portal to it and have the portal's destination follow the ship around."

"That is the ship's artificial gravity system. It is not designed for prolonged operation in natural gravity wells like those generated by planets. I will look into altering it so that it can be safely left on, but that will likely take considerable time."

Nod. "I can sync this universe up to Milliways for a while, if there aren't any regulars here-and-now to be inconvenienced by that; I'll have to ask Bar. I'm thinking about syncing it up for a week or two anyway, that was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about."

"How does this 'syncing' work?"

"I leave a little portal open somewhere, either from there to here or from here to there, and it keeps time moving the same way in both places. Otherwise it doesn't; if I just go back to Milliways and then teleport here, it might be a hundred years in the future or a hundred years in the past, and there's no way to get to a specific time."

"I have no objections as long as the portal is small and somewhere I can watch it. But I suspect it will take on the order of months to years to solve the problem and then implement the solution."

"I'll need to sync you to my world, in that case, and I can check back every season or so."

"That will be fine. If you appear in my hallway, I can arrange to have a droid there that will direct you to my current location."

Now they have landed, and Occlus is going to go back inside to see what progress her team has made.

...all right, she'll talk to Occlus about Jedi-related infosec later, then. It's probably a better idea to get some background information from Bar first, anyway. She finds someone reasonably in charge looking, waits for them to stop being busy, asks where she should put this end of the portal so it can be watched, is pointed to the correct person to ask this of, waits again, and eventually gets back to Milliways.

First order of business: sleep. Second, though: What does Bar have on Sith and Jedi? Any textbooks? Those are probably a good place to start; propaganda-ridden, of course, but in a case like this, what won't be?

There are a variety, ranging through the several thousand years of history these groups apparently have. Some are written by Sith, more by Jedi, and there are even a few by apparently neutral parties.

Where would she like to focus her studies?

She'll limit it to overviews at first, until she has better questions than 'what is their deal?'. One by a Jedi and one by a Sith, to start; say the most popular of each written within the last twenty-five years.

It seems that the Jedi and the Sith were once part of the same proto-group of Force-sensitives, millenia ago when the nature of the Force was first beginning to be explored. An ideological schism split the group, and the faction that would become the Sith fled to the rim of the galaxy, while those that would become Jedi stayed near the core. Each developed in isolation, until technological progress made travel easy and routine, and brought them back into contact. The rift in philosophies had only widened during their time apart, and war was an inevitable consequence. The conflict has continued, sometimes intermittently and through proxies, until the present day.

How reasonable of the proto-Sith.

What else can she find out about this philosophical difference?

It seems to stem from the manner in which each faction accesses the Force. The Jedi do so through clarity and selflessness, the Sith use passion and selfishness. Sith characterize the Jedi way as foolish and weak, Jedi call the Sith misguided and evil.

Rrrr??? That is a really weird way to divide those concepts up; passion/selflessness and clarity/selfishness would make much more sense, if one has to divide them up in the first place, which, why?

Not that she's going to take the time to look for an answer to that question at this juncture; it's not going to solve the actual problem here.

Misguided how? Evil why?

As an extension of their philosophy, the Sith don't care about anyone but themselves. Even intra-faction, infighting has cost them almost as much as external conflict. There are countless reports of Sith atrocities, war crimes and the massacre of civilians. Some Sith sources seem proud of some of these.

...

All right. What's the range of Sith responses to the atrocities? Is this a bad to worse scenario, or are they more all over the map?

(Of course when the expanding humans found the Sith they didn't, like, stop, that would make too much sense. Seriously, what is it with humans and having a collective death wish?)

Response range from "well done, those scum deserved death" to "you should have killed more" to "meh".

Well then.

When both sides in a conflict agree on something, it's pretty safe to assume it's true.

All right. Jedi next. To what degree are the clarity-rather-than-passion guys also assholes? This one might be a little harder to determine - try the neutral-party stuff, this time, and also look into their magic system to see if there's something they could have done in that first encounter before jumping right to 'magical swords'. (There is anyway, it's called 'talking', but that one she already knows about; what else are they skipping?)

At their best, the Jedi are the exemplars of peace and justice their propaganda claims them to be. At their worst, they are responsible for atrocities as bad as any of the Sith's. All in the name of the greater good, of course. Jedi history tends to quietly gloss over these incidents. 

As for their magic system, the category of "things the Force can do" is quite broad. Potentially relevant are the heightened empathic sense many Force-users possess and the technique known as "mind trick".

Mind trick? That sounds pretty horrifying, but on reflection she can probably set her defenses up well enough that it won't be very dangerous to be around someone who can do that. If she decides to make an attempt at detangling this whole mess rather than just washing her hands of it, anyway. (Also, she has a better idea now of why Occlus jumped so quickly to fighting. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes.)

Atrocities. Okay. Focus on the less scary thing. Can she figure out anything about how they handle those aside from 'cover them up'? Say, what happened with a particularly well known one, and what happened with a particularly unknown one, as recently as Bar can find good information about? With a particular focus on what happened to the Jedi who made the decisions there.

The less well-known cases seem to sort of disappear, and the Jedi involved are seldom mentioned again. It's unclear what happened to them. Of the well-known cases, one in particular stands out. Around three hundred years ago, there was a Jedi by the name of Revan who instigated some sort of civil war. The Jedi Council eventually captured Revan, but was unwilling to just kill them. So instead, they were brainwashed and implanted with a false personality. This worked for a while, but the real Revan eventually reasserted themself and went on to heroically save the Republic from an invasion. The Jedi consider this a redemption story.

...right. Okay.

Do the Jedi seem to make a habit of various-degrees-of-brainwashing people? Can she find anything on why they thought that was preferable to attempting to kill Revan in a more traditional sense?

The Jedi Council doesn't seem to publish internal memos that might shed light on their decision-making process in a form that Bar can retrieve.

Joy. If she wants to know she'll have to go ask.

(Bar, you are such a good friend, thank you for your help.)

Does she want to go ask?

She does like Occlus. Knowing more about Sith culture just throws them further into relief - they've been respectful of her. They've been careful of her, even. They're distant, yeah, but living as a fighter during a war will do that even before taking the effects of the culture or the magic system into account. Their people seem well taken care of, from what she can tell - she might go back and observe that a little more closely, but she's pretty confident in her impression there; Occlus is inclined to cooperate, work together with people, not to the degree she's used to seeing at home, but at least on the higher end of what she's seen from humans. Certainly as Sith seem to go, and even as humans in general go, Occlus is a pretty decent one, as far as she can tell.

She doesn't want Occlus to die. She doesn't want Occlus to have to worry about dying. She probably can't do much about the other Sith, in that regard, at least directly, but the Jedi seem like at least a slightly more tractable problem.

And the other Sith... really should not be left to keep doing what they're doing how they're doing it. She doesn't have a personal attachment to hang that feeling from, but it's still people being hurt; just because she doesn't know them doesn't mean they don't matter. Her people mattered, back when it was them and the elves; she would have wanted someone to do something about that, if they could. The situation isn't so different here.

...and, there she goes. Yeah, she's not going to be able to walk away from this one. All right. How does one find Jedi to talk to? Do they have, like, a place, that she can get to by sneaking onto a spaceship or something?

Their current headquarters is on a planet called Tython, deep in the galactic core. No ships departing from anywhere she's already been will be going there, it's going to be at least a two-, more likely three-or-more-step journey.

Yeah, but 'core' means 'populated', doesn't it? She can totally do a portal to a random crowded spot in that universe. Or two or three, if the first one is unfavorable. Bar can probably even match the view from her portal to various tourist brocures to identify what planet she's found.

Hm. If Tython had cities, she'd aim for spots with the right climate to maybe find it, but it doesn't; she'll try whatever gives her the best chance of finding a nearby planet with a spaceship heading there, instead.

The first portal she opens shows her a vastly extensive cityscape. Buildings stretch in all directions, farther than she can see. Bar is able to identify this as the Coruscant skyline, the capital world of the Republic. The Jedi used to have a temple here, until the Sith destroyed it.

Not bad, she'll take it. (Bar, a map of the city please? Thank you.)

How recently was this temple destroyed? If it was recent enough that they're likely to still be upset about it, she'll head on to Tython, but if not it might be worth seeing if she can find some Jedi just here.

It was some twenty-odd years ago. She might be able to find a Jedi, especially if she concentrates her search around the Senate building, which is that squat mushroom-shaped one.

Twenty years ago is iffy, but if she'd have to wait more than five days for a ship to Tython, or if getting there would take more than ten days total, she'll give it a try.

She's not going to go look for a Jedi to talk to now, in any case. First - unless doing it now would mean she misses a ship - she needs to go talk to Occlus.

Occlus: still at the ruins. The kobold can catch her outside, if she goes now.

Excellent, she'll do that then. She has a good enough mage-sense map of the place to avoid appearing where she'll startle anyone.

Occlus notices the sudden appearance of a kobold while she was walking to the mess tent and changes course to go over to her.

Convenient.

She nods a greeting and gestures that they can continue to the mess tent if Occlus would like. "I'm thinking of going and trying to talk to some Jedi," she starts with, as they're walking if that happens. "I think I might be able to get them to... back off, a little, if I talk to them when they're calmer. I want to make sure I don't accidentally lead them to you, though, and I'm not sure what I need to be careful of to avoid that."

She wants to... talk to the Jedi? Why in the galaxy...?

Occlus will walk back towards the tent. "With your magic, you won't have to worry about a ship leaving traces, so I suppose you're principally worried about information security?"

Nod. "This whole universe is new to me; I don't know what things might turn out to be unusual enough to be clues, and I don't know enough to make up a story about where I'm from and how I know what I know - and how I don't know what I don't know - that isn't just the truth."

"Don't talk about me by name. Don't talk about this temple or what happened to that expedition." Occlus gets a tray of food and sits at an empty table. "Bring whatever mental defenses you have."

Nod. "I don't have the name of anyone here; kobolds don't use them, I'm not in the habit of asking. I don't know the name of the planet, either, or the other one's." Follow follow, portal, food. (If Occlus seems interested in it she offers her a piece.) "Avoiding talking about the temple and the expedition will be harder without a story to replace it, but I expect I can manage it or I wouldn't be going. Mental defenses..." subtle shudder. "Yes; I was doing some reading back at Milliways and it's obvious I'll need some protection there. What I'm planning to do is enspell myself to automatically teleport back to Milliways if your kind of magic is used on me; could you help me test that to make sure it works before I go?"

"It will need to have an exceptionally quick response time, but yes, I can help you test it."

Nod. "Thank you. I do expect it'll be fast enough, but I have a backup plan for if it's only close. It's definitely good enough to stop me from talking, though, I've used similar spells before." Nom. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"If you do mention you made a deal with a Sith, you can expect to be treated with suspicion at the least. That alone may be cause enough for them to attempt to examine your thoughts." Occlus has finished with her food, she stands to put the tray away and walk back outside.

Nod. "That's easy enough to work around." She teleports the remainder of her meal away and stands. "I can cast the spell to test now, if you're not busy."

"Very well. Do you wish to test other sorts of influence besides the mental?"

She considers. "I'm not trying to defend against mental influence in particular, and I think I have a good enough idea of how your magic works to get everything - it does seem to be all one thing and just applied differently. But checking for weird unexpected things is always a good idea."

"Tell me when you are ready, then."

It only takes a few moments. "Ready."

Occlus tries a mental attack first. Can she pry the secrets of magic out of the kobold's mind-

The instant Occlus' magic touches her, she's gone.

A few seconds later she reappears. "That seemed to work."

Alas.

"Yes, it did. Shall we try something physical?"

Consider, nod. "Something not too flashy; I have another spell on that might trigger first otherwise."

Occlus attempts to swat the kobold with the Force.

Again, the instant it touches her, she's gone.

"I felt that, but only barely - I could tell you where it hit me but not how strong it would have been."

"Then I think the only category you will have to worry about is if something is thrown at you with the Force, but that is, in respects other than propulsion, strictly analogous to a more ordinary attack. I assume you already have defences for that."

Nod. "Thank you."

"Do you have any other topics you wish to address with me?"

"No, that's everything. I'll come back afterward if there's anything you need to know; would you like me to check in regardless?"

"That will not be necessary." Occlus waves a hand absently in the kobold's direction and returns to the temple.

All right, let's do this.

Milliways first: Instructions with Bar that if she turns up acting weird, to please treat it as a magical emergency; here's a couple magic-dispelling potions from her stockpile for the healers to try in that case. Re-check her defensive lineup; anti-Force spell is obviously on, and she'll also teleport here in case of extreme fear, moderate pain, or moderate blood loss; better to leave the startlement spell off, if she's going to be hanging around a city (is she going to be hanging around a city, what does Bar have on spaceship schedules), but she'll turn that one on once she's at her destination. Translation necklace, shield necklace; skip the gloves this time, if a fight breaks out she's not hanging around long enough to need them. Sketchpad might turn out to be useful; pull all the pages relating to Occlus out of that. Go over her story, what order she wants to present things in. Final check: Is this still something she wants to do?

Yep, yep it is.

Coruscant, here is a kobold. Hopefully you don't find her too alarming.

Coruscant: entirely fails to notice her. There are a bewildering variety of sentients in every size and shape imaginable, nobody pays one little kobold any attention at all, unless they bump into her.

Bar didn't have any scheduled trips to Tython, but there was one ship that is registered as having just come from there.

The kobold tolerates crowds of strangers but certainly doesn't like them; if checking the ship might let her skip hanging around waiting for a Jedi to pass by, that's what she's going to do. Between the map and her ability to teleport through inconveniently guarded barriers, she should have no problem getting into sight of it: Any magical people there?

Not at present. There are a few droids puttering around, refueling the ship and doing general maintenance tasks, but the bay is otherwise deserted.

Ah, well, it was worth a try. She notes its location signature, just in case, and then blips back to her starting point and approaches the Senate building, keeping an eye on the crowd for Jedi and the architecture for good spots to sit and observe.

She spots a Jedi exiting the building as she gets close. It's an older woman, with grey hair and a confident bearing.

Kobolds: good at sneaking around. Where's she going?

Back to the ship the kobold just visited!

Convenient!

When she gets to the ship, there's a kobold waiting for her in a visible spot nearby, making eye contact like they were expecting her.

"Hello there. Were you waiting for me?"

Satele smiles. She doesn't sense any hostility from this person, strange as they are.

The kobold nods with a bit of a grin. "You'll probably find this hard to believe, but I'm visiting from another universe, and I think I might want to help with your Sith problem." She pauses for a quick beat, then continues. "Before you try reading my mind, you need to know that I have a different kind of magic than yours, and for now, if you try to use the force on me I'll disappear back to my own world; I might allow it later, but I'm working on limited information right now and it's not a risk I'd like to take yet; I'm sorry if that's rude."

Satele blinks. Magic? Another universe? Deal with her Sith problem?

"I would certainly like to here more of this, but perhaps it would be best if we continued somewhere more private?" She gestures towards her ship.

The kobold nods agreeably and follows her in.

Here is a well-appointed stateroom. Satele takes a chair near the middle of the table.

"Please, sit. I think my first question is about the existence of other universes. I suppose your 'magic' is related to that?"

She sits across from Satele. "More or less. Different worlds have different magic systems; some have more than one, or none at all. Most of them are not very much like the force, or like each other. Mine, for example, is mostly based on making magic items, and doesn't have an emotional component to it at all; I personally am best at teleportation spells, which I understand your system doesn't do." She trances for a moment, then gestures to the chair to her right before teleporting to it.

Satele Shan is Grandmaster of the Jedi Order and is perfectly in control of her flinch reaction.

"No, it certainly doesn't," she murmurs. Louder, "You said something about the Sith?"

Nod. "I met someone from your world a few days ago; it's kind of a complicated story," flare of worry, "but they mentioned the Sith and the Jedi, and I was curious, so I read up on you a little, and it sounds like you have a real problem here. I'm not sure I can help, and I'm not actually sure we're going to agree on what me helping might look like, but I wanted to at least come and check."

"Why don't you tell me a little more about the person you met?"

The kobold pauses, briefly, in a you-have-made-a-misstep sort of way. "They're not likely to be involved in this."

She's trying not to let this come to the fore, but it's still there, if muted: She cares, fiercely, about this person. Not because she's getting something from them, not because it's someone she trusts, or finds likable, or enjoys being around; actually, almost because she's not, and doesn't. Because everyone needs to be cared for; because the people it's hardest to care about are often the ones who need it most. Because you don't just give up on people. Because you can only get to the point of everyone being okay if you care about everyone being okay.

And she doesn't trust the Jedi to be on board with that: Here's the warriness of someone who knows on a very personal level what it's like not to be on others' priority list at all, in terms of being okay; she's not concerned for her own self, here, now, with that, but it's still a very personally important issue; not the most important one, but not something she'll be budged on easily. At the same time, there's a sort of detachment: It is correct to care about people and want good things for them, and she wants the Jedi to do that, but in something like the sense that one might want good weather; there's nothing she can actually do about it, and she fully accepts that she's going to have to work with whatever reaction they have; the unwanted reaction will limit her options, perhaps sharply, compared to the wanted one, but she's fully ready to accept that if it happens. And from another angle: Even with all the resources she and the Jedi can bring to bear in the best case, and no matter how much she wants it, it might not be possible to arrange for that person to be okay, or it might not be possible without harming other people; she's not ready to give up yet, but she knows that she might come to a point where she needs to, and she won't hesitate to if she finds herself there.

And then she tucks that whole knot of emotion away, neatly; it's clearly a practiced shift, from that to focused productive diplomacy. "But I can tell you a bit about how we met, if you'd like; that'll also give you a better idea of some of the resources I might be willing to offer."

"All right," says Satele. Perhaps a fuller story will emerge in time. "Let's start with that, then."

Nod. "So, one of the places I can get to with my magic is called Milliways. It's magical itself, with several interesting properties; one of them is that anyone, even people with no magic at all, can get there. Nobody quite knows how the magic works, but sometimes when someone opens a door, instead of it leading to the place they wanted to go, it leads to Milliways instead. Some people find it once and never again; some people find it regularly; there's really no way to tell how it's going to act for any particular person. While they're there, they can meet people from other worlds - that's how I met the person from yours - or do a number of other things, including borrowing or buying books and other things from Bar, renting a room, traveling to other worlds - though there's no guarantee that they'll be able to get back, without some other way of doing it. While someone is in Milliways, or if they go through Milliways to another world like I've done here, time doesn't pass in their world; when they go home, they'll find everything just as they left it. I've been going there regularly for three years of my home world's time, trading magical items made with my world's magic for things made with other worlds' magic, or selling them, or sometimes giving them away when I meet someone who would be especially helped by that."

"How enterprising of you. So you met a person from this galaxy in that bar?"

"Enterprising..." she considers, for a moment. "Sorry, this translation spell is strange sometimes for unfamiliar concepts. It is, I suppose - I'm not planning on asking for anything from you, though, I'd consider it unethical to."

"What are you offering, then?"

"Well, it depends on what we can agree about, mostly." Grin. "Anything from casting a few spells for you to teaching you my kind of magic and giving you permanent access to Milliways."

"That is certainly a potentially generous offer. What are the issues on which we would have to agree?"

"I don't have a complete list; remember I've only known you exist for a few days, I haven't had time to learn very much about you or your world's situation. One thing I do suspect might be an issue is that I'd rather the Sith not actually be harmed - I haven't tried it yet but it may be as little as a few hours' work for me to find a completely uninhabited universe to move them to, instead."

"That would be impressive, if you could manage it. But one unfortunate truth I've had to realize over my life is that the lure of the dark side is strong. So long as there are Force-users, there will be those who turn that power to evil ends. Removing all Sith from the galaxy now will not solve our underlying problem."

She nods, and considers this for a few moments. "I have at least most of an idea, for that. It definitely requires teaching you - not necessarily Jedi, but at least a closely allied group - my magic, though, so I'll want to be very sure I'm not going to end up giving you a bigger problem than the one we're trying to solve - my magic isn't corruptive, but it can still be very harmful if misused."

"What are your magic's capabilities?"

"In general, casting a spell creates a magical object; spells can also be cast on people or animals, and the term for people with spells cast on them is spellbearers. A spell cast on an object lasts until that object breaks - I'm using a kind of specialized definition of 'object' and 'break', there, but your first impression should be close enough - but a spell on a living thing is permanent until they die. Every spell has an effect, and one or more triggers that start or stop or modify that effect. Anything that physically affects the enspelled object can be used as a trigger, and in the case of spells on living things, mental states can also be used. In addition to that, I'm able to cast spells that detect the presence of magic and some basic things about it; I can definitely cast a spell that differentiates between your kind of magic and mine; I might be able to cast spells that detect certain uses of your magic, or between someone using it in a Sithlike way and someone using it in a Jedlilke way, but I'll have to actually see those things in action first, in order to know what the spell should look for."

"For effects, teleportation is my main one; the main limitation on that is that in order to aim at a specific destination, I have to have already been close enough to it to see its magical signature, but I can also cast spells that look for places with certain qualities - usually physical things, but I can also aim for the presence or absence of people; I found you by looking for places with large crowds - and give a random destination that fits the criteria. Aside from that, it's pretty versatile; I can do portals and teleportation traps and jewelry that teleports its wearer and so on. I also know how to generate very faint light, which can be used with the magic detection trigger to enspell someone to be able to see nearby magic."

"I see. That is a unique skillset."

Satele considers for a moment.

The kobold considers, too.

"Hmm..."

"I hadn't known, before, that your magic has a risk of corruption - am I right about that? - and now that I think about it, I wonder if it might not be safer for me to take a more active decision-making role than I was planning to, in light of that. Not - it's still your world, I'm not going to be deciding anything on my own, but... it's a cultural thing, for me, it's already fairly taboo for someone to have as much power as I do even without being in a position to make big decisions that affect others. I'll have to think about that."

"I would have to know more about you before I could agree to that. You seem to genuinely care about the welfare of this galaxy, but with so much at stake I cannot base my decision on a few minutes' impression. Tell me some things about the world you're from," she invites.

"Of course." She's pleased at this. "I'm not in a hurry."

"I'm a kobold; we're one of... I don't know the exact number, but probably twenty or thirty species of people on my world. We're very low-tech - the whole world, the state of the art is steel and crossbows and I don't think anyone has printing presses yet, but also kobolds in particular aren't as advanced as some of the other species; I've been trying to introduce the idea of farming, without a lot of success. We do all right, though," a fond grin spreads across her face, "our real advantage, compared to the other kinds of people I've met, is how good we are at looking out for each other, having a society where it's hard for anyone to make too much trouble or get too hurt. We live in tribes of about a hundred people, which is small enough that everyone knows everyone else pretty well - and we have to know our tribemates; very few of us can speak, so we have to know each other well enough to understand each other by body language."

"The Republic would be happy to export whatever technology we can provide you. Maintaing a functional society through only nonverbal language sounds difficult, most advanced species I know of have sound-based communication."

She grins and bows, insofar as that's possible while sitting. "I appreciate the offer. It's... not really worth trying, though. Kobolds as a rule won't interact with non-kobolds; many won't even interact with other kobolds outside their tribe. I'm kind of strange." Amused grin, then seriousness again. "Relations between the kobolds I know and the other species in our area aren't very good, especially in the last few decades, which is our fault as much as theirs, kobolds aren't the best of neighbors - there's a cultural issue; kobold tribes hold all their resources in common, and consider keeping personal property to be antisocial; hiding things from each other to be found is a game, and so is stealing from other species, with a genuine lack of understanding that that might be upsetting apart from the need to replace things. Again, I'm not your average kobold with this, but it's a fundamental enough part of the culture that I can't really do much about it even though I understand what the problem is. And fault aside, we've had a really rough time in those conflicts, so even though things have been fairly calm recently - and getting better; my teleportation magic is a new thing, and I've been applying it in ways that steer us away from those problems - the first reaction to anything new is still definitely suspicion, from almost everyone."

"Inter-species diplomacy is something Jedi train for. I understand how it can be a difficult problem at the best of times."

She nods. "I considered it a bit of a calling, actually, before I got my magic, working with the tigerfolk. The main problem there is that they don't believe that we're people - the lack of talking is usually the issue. I was making some pretty good progress on convincing them otherwise, I think - they travel in family groups and it wasn't very common for me to see the same ones more than once, but I was starting to sometimes meet ones that had heard about me from others, and already believed or were at least curious."

"These things begin with small steps. You were doing a good and noble thing. I only wish more of my Jedi could focus on such endeavors, rather than being called to this war we fight."

Another grin and bow, at the compliment. "I'd like to see that too."

Satele smiles back. 

"So, what can we do to make that happen?"

She pauses to consider for a moment. "Well, the first thing I'd like to do is get to know the Jedi better; I'm not sure what the best way to do that is, but I expect it means staying in this world for a while. I'm... not exactly on a schedule; coming here through Milliways means time pauses in my world while I'm here and here while I'm in my world; I do need to go home every fifteen or twenty days and spend time with my tribe, but aside from the fact that I might forget things while I'm gone that doesn't mean much for you. I could help you with a project; working together with people is a good way to get to know them, in my experience."

"I need to return to Tython to inform the Council of the results of my meeting with the Senate. You could accompany me and spend some time at the Academy. I'm sure you can find something there that will interest you."

Nod. "That sounds like a good idea. Is there anything I should know about the Academy?"

"There will be many Jedi there, some of them quite young. Despite that, it is a place of learning and contemplation, I always find it restful."

"That sounds nice." She grins.

"...by young do you mean children? If so, I should probably know more about that before we get there."

"What are your concerns?"

"The kobold approach to childrearing is... unusual, according to what I've learned about other cultures. We seem to develop at the same rate as humans through our mid-twenties, but young kobolds are allowed to make decisions for themselves much earlier, starting at seven or eight years old, and we're considered adult members of our tribes at twelve or so. Part of how we do that is by not shileding our children from very much - someone under the age of seven will generally have an adult with them at all times, but the adult is there to help them learn to do things safely, not to stop them from taking risks. That's probably not how things work here, and I'd rather not risk upsetting anyone, if there are things you expect your children to be kept away from or other cultural differences."

"The Jedi take a similar approach, but I can certainly understand your caution. When we arrive, I will pair you with someone who can show you around and answer other questions like that you may have."

Satele will go set a course for Tython, if the kobold has no other pressing issues to raise.

She doesn't.

This trip sees her experimenting - quietly - with spaceship-following portals; the loop of twine in her pocket keeps its lock on the stateroom as expected. She'll turn up to watch, quietly, if she notices Satele doing anything interesting, and makes herself available for conversation, but if left to her own devices, she mostly continues filling her sketchbook.

Satele will solicit a few anecdotes about the kobold's life and offers up a few of her own non-war-related stories in return, but otherwise generally leaves her to her own devices.

They arrive at Tython without incident. The dock is quiet, there are no other arrivals or depatures today. Tython is a lushly green pastoral sort of place. It is rather pleasant.

Pretty.

Where to first?

Just off to the side over here apparently! Satele beckons over someone standing there.

"Knight Morillo," she calls.

"Yes, Master Satele?"

A redheaded young woman comes over.

"I have to attend a Council meeting. Would you be so kind as to show our guest around?"

"Of course!" 

Master Satele walks off. Ana turns to the kobold.

"Hello! Jedi Knight Ana Morillo, at your service."

Grin, bow. "You can just call me 'the kobold'; my people don't use names."

"That's kind of strange but okay! You can call me Ana. Did Master Satele tell you very much about this place? Do you know what you want to see first?"

Ana's cheerful mood is infectious. "I don't know very much at all; I'm from very far away, and I've only known that Jedi exist at all for a few days. I'm interested in learning more about you, though, if that brings to mind any obvious suggestions?"

"Like, me in particular or Jedi in general?"

"In general, but your story might be a good start? I don't know what it means that you're a Knight, for example."

"Okay so there's three levels of Jedi you can be. First is the Padawans, that the kids and anyone who hasn't passed their Trials yet. Then the Knights, that's most of us. You get to be a Knight by passing your Jedi Trials. And then if you demonstrate you have exceptional quality, the Council can promote you to Master."

During this explanation Ana walks over to a speeder and gets in. 

"Let's start with a look around the grounds from above and then we can land and go see stuff up close afterwards. Sound good?" 

That's not the best of signs, the term for a normal Jedi being basically 'fighter'. They've been at war for a long time, sure, but...

She doesn't let her ambivalence show on her face, though, and climbs into the speeder as well. "Sounds good to me. What are the trials like?"

"They're meant to challenge you, to test that you've really learned the skills a Jedi needs to go out into the galaxy. There's five altogether: Skill, Courage, Spirit, Flesh, and Insight."

There's the academy below them. It's large, but it melds smoothly with the surrounding land, all gentle curves. There's a courtyard in front, with a group of Padawans listening to a Master speak.

The kobold nods, and is distracted from asking any more questions about that by the view.

"How many Jedi live here?"

"I think there's about five or six thousand of us on Tython? Not everyone's at the Academy, there's outlying posts and stuff, but most are in or near the main building."

Curving around the back and side of the Academy, gardens and parks become visible. Ana brings the speeder in for a landing at a pad near the wall of the building.

She nods, relieved. "I probably don't have to worry about crowds, then - I don't know how people manage, in cities."

"Can we go join that group over there?" she gestures toward the courtyard with the Padawans in it.

"I think you just sort of- mostly ignore everyone else? Like, they're there and they exist, but more like scenery than people? Wow, that sounds kind of bad when I say it like that."

Here is the group of Padawans, they're all around eight years old. Ana goes to stand at the back. The master is explaining the safety rules for the practice dueling they're about to engage in.

"...and remember, if your partner says 'quarter', stop immediately. We don't want anyone to get hurt today."

The kobold sticks close to Anna and watches the proceedings with interest.

Well, no, actually first she takes a moment to get a location-signature. Does anyone notice that she's doing something weird?

Ana looks over at her, but doesn't interrupt.

The kobold is slightly confused at the attention, but doesn't comment.

What are the Padawans up to?

At the master's direction, they've split up into pairs and begun to run through a series of exercises with wooden practice swords. Swing/parry, swing/parry, thrust/dodge. Switch roles and start over.

"What was that thing you just did there?" Anna whispers to the kobold. "Was that the magic Master Satele mentioned? It looked really cool."

Well that's worrying.

She gives the Padawans a significant look - let's not disturb the proceedings, here - and heads back to the entrance, motioning for Ana to follow.

"Yes, it was. I didn't realize you'd be able to see it. How much did you see?"

"Not, like, a whole lot, but I could tell you were doing something. It was almost like your magic wanted me to see it."

"All right, that's... that sounds okay. My magic is taught telepathically, it comes with a limited form of telepathy at touch range, I wasn't expecting something that's supposed to only pick up emotions to notice it. And it sounds like it doesn't actually show it to you, but I'd like to be very sure of that; my magic is dangerous in different ways than yours, but it still is dangerous, and one of the ways is that if you try to use it without practicing in the right ways first it will kill you."

"That sounds very unfriendly! I will try not to accidentally learn your magic."

"Yeah. I've cast around Satele, too, though - I need to know if I need to go warn them."

She steps back from the conversation, and spends a few seconds working it out, muttering to herself and gesturing. "I think the answer is no but let me go ask-", and after another moment of interestingness, she disappears.

A minute later, she's back, much calmer, holding a paper napkin with some incomprehensible markings on it. "Yeah, it's okay. You can't learn my magic that way at all. Apparently you could if you actively read my mind, especially if I was casting at the time, but I already have a spell to prevent that, it's safe."

"Okay, I won't worry too much about it then! And also won't try to read your mind. D'you want to watch the Padawans some more or go see something else?"

Satele did tell Ana about the magic but didn't tell her about the defensive spell. Huh. Good sign, that.

The Padawans weren't actually all that interesting; did they see any other people from the speeder that she might try observing?

There were a few people walking around in the gardens, or they could go explore the inside of the Academy.

The kobold is inclined to assume that the insides of buildings are private; on the other hand, humans are weird.

"Let's try something else." Also, she doesn't actually know what there is inside those buildings.

"Sure! Do you like libraries? We could go visit the library."

"The translation spell I'm using is actually really bad for reading with. It does videos just fine though?"

"Videos... you mean like two-dee projections? We might have some of those, this place has been around literally forever. Most of the non-written stuff is holos, though."

"It does holos too, that's fine. Spoken rather than written is the important thing."

Library!

Library! Several rooms full of shelves that are themselves full of books! Several more rooms full of holocrons! And just for good measure, a few rooms of holo-recordings!

Not Ana's favorite hang-out spot. She actually tries to avoid it as much as possible. Nevertheless, she knows it well enough to help the kobold find anything she wants to look at in particular.

Books!

Holo... whats?

Holocrons! It's a thing that contains a vast amount of information, as well as the personality matrix of the Jedi Master who created it. The personality serves as a sort of gatekeeper/guide to the collected lore. Useful for Padawans studying by themselves, ahead of the curriculum. Ahem. Not that Ana knows anything about that, of course.

Personality matrix, huh? How does that work?

Ana's not sure exactly! Something to do with Force-sensitive materials and the Jedi in question "imprinting" a static copy of their mind-state into same. You have to be pretty strong to do it, though.

Oh, that sounds all right then. Weird, but all kinds of weird stuff is all right if it's strictly voluntary.

(She does not say that last bit. She has a modicum of diplomatic sense.)

...there wouldn't happen to be one of Revan, would there? She's read that story, it seems like they'd be interesting to talk to.

There is! And Ana knows just where to find it! She likes Revan, too.

Here is a holo of Revan!

"Hello there, you're speaking to the holocron of Revan, Darth not included, so if you're planning to freak out and try to throw my holocron into an incinerator, please reconsider."

"...hi!"

This is kind of weird. Also, is Ana hanging around? "...one second."

"I might be a while," she tells the Jedi. "And I'm going to be going over some really basic stuff, probably. I can come find you when I'm done?"

Good, that's Ana shoo'd.

"Sorry about that. So, I'm not a Jedi, I've got a really unusual situation I'm working with, and I'd like some advice. I don't know much about how holocrons work; is this something I can talk to you about?"

"Sure you can! Revan definitely interrogated at least six holocrons before making me, so I bet I can help you out more than most."

Weird.

"All right. I'll get right to it, then: I'm from a different world. We don't have the force; we do have other magic that's very different. No Sith; it can be misused, but there's only the normal kinds of temptation to do that. I don't know very much about this world, but I've read enough about the Sith to know that I'd like to do something about them - except, I'm just one person, I can't fix a problem on that scale by myself. The Jedi seem like the obvious people to ask for help, but just because one side of a conflict is bad doesn't mean the other side is good; I don't want to teach them my magic and then a thousand years later this world has an even worse problem than it started with. And it seemed like you'd have a... useful perspective, on that issue."

Nod. "Yeah, I can see that. Do you want me to answer questions, or give you a summary of what Revan thought of the Jedi when he made me? Or both, both is an option."

"I have some questions, but I bet I'll have better ones after the summary." Grin.

"Okay! So how much do you know of the history of Revan? Because this is much easier if I just tell that story and go, 'So after that, this was Revan's opinion of the Jedi and the Sith,' but if you know most of it you can skip right to the end part where I just say his opinion, save yourself some time if you're running short of it."

"I know the story, at least a common version of it. I'm not in a hurry, though."

"Does that mean you want story time? Because it sounds like you want story time."

She chuckles. "I am interested in your perspective."

"All right then, I apologize for parts of this where I can only speculate, because Revan's head had some proverbial holes in it by the time he made me. Don't know what he didn't put in me, sorry."

The holocron clears its throat, even though it doesn't need to and doesn't have a throat. It's for effect.

"So! Once upon a time, Revan was a Jedi. You're shocked, I know. He actually made a pretty good Jedi, from what I can tell, at least before the Mandalorian Wars ever occurred. Except then the Mandalorian wars did occur. To make sure we're on the same page, the Mandalorians invaded the Republic, and were winning, often with some really horrible methods, and the Jedi weren't helping to fight them. The reasons why they weren't are many, and some of them have been added in retrospect by Jedi that want to justify their own history so they always look like the infallible good guys. While Revan had knowledge of their reasoning, he did not have actual, direct memories of arguments that occurred at that time, so everything I could say on the subject is speculation and the opinion of a man that is the exact opposite of non-biased, so I encourage you to seek out other sources for a more complete picture of the situation."

Here is the grin of a kobold who has access to an interdimensional library. "Sure, I can do that."

"Good, good. Revan's outlook on the Jedi's reasoning was as follows: they thought themselves peacekeepers and caretakers, not as warriors, and as such did not want to get involved in a war, that exposure to the face of war would bring about a number of Jedi falling to the Dark Side, that the problem was for the Republic to handle and they would eventually, even if it took them a while to stop losing, that it wasn't really a problem at all because it didn't directly affect them, and most interestingly, that they thought that the Mandalorians were a front for something else, and they didn't want to play into the trap."

"Huh. Were they?"

"I have absolutely no idea!" says Revan's holocron brightly. "I don't, and in fact can't get updated historical lessons, so everything that happened after about four months after the end of the Jedi Civil War? No clue about, you'll want another holocron, or like, a historian or something. I'm a fancy holocron that can remember people between sessions, but I am not that fancy. I can offer the suspicion Revan had from that point in time, if you want it, and weigh in if you go run off and read about history and tell me what actually happened, if you just like hearing me speculate, but - yeah, no idea."

"...it would take me about two minutes to find out, I bet. Would you like me to?" She looks around; Ana's over there keeping an eye on her. "I shouldn't take you with me, but I can bring a list of questions if there's other things that you think might come up, it won't take much longer to get answers to ten questions than to one."

"Eh, sure, let's make this history lesson slightly more complete and slightly more Revan-flavored, I'm fine with that. Uh - if you have any information on where Revan disappeared to, that might come up, he was planning to disappear somewhere, but specifically did not give me that information. Again, couldn't tell you why he did that."

"That one I might not be able to find out, but I'll ask."

She catches Ana's eye, to make it clear that she hasn't wandered off somewhere, and...

Hi, Bar! Yeah, good progress, they're less scary than I was expecting. Can't stay long, I'll be back to fill you in later. What can you tell me about the Mandalorians' motives in the Mandalorian War, and also, do you know where Revan ended up after the Jedi Civil War?

...excellent, I'll read that when I get back there. Nothing on Revan? Yeah, I'm not surprised, thanks for checking.

Hopefully Ana is not too alarmed?

Ana noticed the kobold's disappearance, but didn't have time to get too worked up before she returned.

It seems that the Mandalorian leader at the time, called Mandalore the Ultimate, wished to transform his people from simple raiders into a major galactic power. He instituted a number of reforms, including allowing aliens to become Mandalorian, and set forth on his plan of conquest.

Ana gets an apologetic head-bob before the kobold returns to Revan's holocron.

"Hello again! Everything researched to your satisfaction?"

"Mmhmm. We couldn't get anything on where Revan went." Read, read, ugh this is so slow, she really needs to get around to actually learning to read so the spell will work properly... "It looks like the Mandalorians' motivations were fairly straightforward? So if they were a front, nobody ever found out about it."

"Huh, well. That's the danger of speculation. Sometimes you're just wrong."

Nod. "So, what happened with this war and Revan?"

"When we last left off, Revan decided that the Republic being conquered by the Mandalorians was not a thing he was okay with. Bias warning, I'm about to brag about my creator. It's totally justified. When Revan decided he was not okay with something, he was very clear about it. So of course he helped turn the entire war around by leading an army with a bunch of Jedi that decided to help, through some combination of Revan being ridiculously awesome, and some combination of you know, people dying en masse being, you know, bad. Which worked, by the way, the Mandalorians were successfully defeated. Yay, everybody's happy, the traditional structure of the galaxy is preserved, surely nothing can go wrong now that you have a young leader who has the complete and utter loyalty of just about everyone that follows them."

This gets some chuckling, and then a more serious nod.

"So Revan didn't recall his logic at the time of my creation, but he did have some vague impressions of his own emotions at the time. He recalls being - the term I want to use is afraid of something. Convinced that his job was not done. That there was some greater threat than the Mandalorians out in the Unknown Regions. So - there he went, with his best friend in tow, and when they came back they had decided that clearly the only way to save the galaxy was to conquer it. ... It's not quite as crazy as it sounds, because while the Republic is many things, 'efficient' is not one of them, and having a strong leader organizing it and neatening the place up would go a long way, but - yeah. It was a little bit crazy." Disappointed sigh.

Nod. "Yeah."

"He then tracked down an ancient factory called the Star Forge, retrieved his army of loyal soldiers that were still ready and waiting for him, and bam. Galactic conquest ensued. Revan was uh, very good at it. So good that if he hadn't of been betrayed by his aforementioned best friend, he might have actually managed it. But instead, he got betrayed by his best friend while the Jedi were trying to capture him.

"This is where things get a bit fuzzy, because Revan was not entirely sure about the exact circumstances that occur here. The story he was told by the Jedi council was that the betrayal's after effects included 'brain death,' and that in order to salvage him at all, they had to put a new set of memories into his head. Which is possible, he was hit pretty bad, but the Jedi council did conveniently give him a set of memories that were specially crafted to try to get him to be as loyal to the Republic and as easy for them to manipulate as possible, and they did really want to know the location of the Star Forge. Which, of course, maybe he could lead them to, if he were loyal to the Republic and easy to manipulate."

She makes a face, and glances around again before speaking. "The story I heard was that they decided to do that rather than kill them. Which is exactly the sort of behavior I'm worried about, really, especially if it's agreed to be wrong enough that they'd lie about it - I'd actually say that they did kill them, and were very rude about what they did with the corpse, even if it tuned out okay in the end."

"Hmm, no, I don't think they successfully overwrote his personality," says the holocron. "They might have tried to kill him, but they didn't manage it. He had some holes in his memories, but from what he could tell, he was still himself in some very fundamental ways. Some of the details of this are very personal, though."

Nod. "I care less about the part where they didn't succeed than the part where they tried at all, anyway."

"Oh, fair enough, it's pretty messed up and Revan wasn't at all happy about it. I just have to stick up for my creator. He was himself in the end."

"Oh, that's what I meant, sorry, about it turning out okay."

"It's quite all right. No offense taken. ... I'm not even sure I can be offended, no one's managed it yet."

"Well, I'm still going to try to avoid being the first."

"Thanks for that! Anyway. Before I continue with history, I have a question - you described Revan using 'they' pronouns, earlier. Would you rather I use those when describing Revan?"

She blinks in surprise. "Yes. Please. I've just about gotten used to that from humans but it's still not comfortable."

"Sure thing. I apologize for not realizing sooner, I'm usually better about noticing that sort of thing. But from now on I'll use they pronouns for everyone. Ready for continued story time?"

"Excellent. Thank you. Yes."

"You're quite welcome. From here on out I have much better information to go on and don't need to be as vague, because Revan's memories are no longer damaged. How much detail of what occurred would you like?"

She considers. "I don't think I know enough to answer that question. On one I can always come back later, but on the other, the more I know about things the better chance I have of realizing when I should come back." Further consideration. "It might help for you to know that when I say I don't know much, I mean I spent a day researching with my friend who can summon books - and we were a couple hours in before we worked out that Sith really are bad news and that wasn't just propaganda - and that's about it. I've been on Tython for less than a day, and you're the third person I've talked to here. Most of the things I don't know, I don't know that I don't know them yet."

"Hmm. How long has it been since the Jedi Civil War? Or, to be precise, how long has it been since I was made?"

"Around three hundred years, but that's... not really important for what I'm hoping to learn from you? I'm not going to make any decisions today, I'm planning on observing for at least a few months before I make any big decisions. But I'm in a position where... I don't want to see them doing something that I'd consider bad but they don't, and judge them the wrong way for it and leave people to get hurt where they wouldn't if I'd been more open-minded, but I also don't want to see them doing something that is, actually, a violation of the values they're supposed to be living up to, or something that I'm not familiar with that they think is okay and really isn't, and not realize that it's a problem. I don't mind learning history if it'll help with that, but it's not really what I'm worried about here."

The holocron considers this, then nods.

"So gloss over the details and focus on the philosophy and Revan's thoughts, is what I'm hearing. All right, fair enough. As long as you go listen to other people, too, I don't know everything.

"Revan was never really sure what plan the Jedi had for them after the attempted brainwashing, but the Jedi didn't get their perfect scenario. Instead, the ship Revan was on got attacked by Darth Malak, the aforementioned former best friend. Revan, just barely finished with the procedure of attempted brainwashing, fled on an escape pod to a nearby planet. There they weren't alone, there was another survivor from the ship they were working with, and they made friends on the planet, but they weren't in any position to be manipulated by the Jedi. The only Jedi around to manipulate them, Bastila Shan, had been captured in the wake of their escape pod crashing into the planet, and wasn't in any position to do it. Somewhat hilariously, Revan was the one to find and rescue them, and only after they'd been running around for weeks by themselves, unsupervised. The Jedi let it slide, because Revan was still loyal to the Republic, just like they'd tried to program, and Revan seemed perfectly nice and helpful and like the sort of person they'd wanted to aim for. So - they tolerated eccentricities. They tried to get everything back to plan, with what I can honestly say was only minimal success, and only because Revan thought it was a good idea on its own merits. In the end, the galaxy did get saved, so even if they didn't quite get what they were aiming for, they got what they wanted."

Revan's holocron rubs his chin thoughtfully. "Occasionally, Revan wondered what would have happened if they hadn't of acted like the Jedi had expected. If they hadn't of been completely on board with saving the Republic from Malak. They never got their answer, or at least they didn't before they made me. So, something to be aware of - Revan didn't know what would have happened if they'd stopped playing along. Even if the Jedi didn't try to brainwash them again, they had no reassurance that it wasn't potentially on the table. In a way, one could say they were being blackmailed. Revan didn't stand for it forever, of course, they later told the Jedi Council to, quote, 'take a magical adventure to the nearest quasar,' but in the early days, even though Revan had managed to avoid brainwashing, they did not have much choice."

The kobold nods, thoughtful and obviously not pleased.

"Revan also saw a situation where a Jedi master decided to push their pupil to fall to the Dark Side. On purpose. In order to help them grow. Which can almost sound okay, if you spin it right, if you make it about showing the student both sides of the coin. Except it involved traumatizing at least one student into hating themselves and falling to the Dark Side because they thought that was all they could do. That they were damned, forever. They were left like that for a while, and while they were there, they caused nearby animals to become more dangerous to the nearby settlers.

"Then, what Revan considered to be worse, Revan was asked to deal with them. With no specification as to how, or detail of the history associated. Revan was - well, Revan was Revan, so they didn't interpret that as 'kill them to protect the settlers' and instead interpreted it as 'help someone when they're in a very bad place,' and ultimately redeemed and befriended them. But if anything in that sequence of events had gone even a little bit wrong - if the fallen student had decided to leave the planet, if the fallen student had thought that being irredeemable meant that the only way to save themselves was to take their own life, if someone had been seriously hurt by the wildlife they'd stirred up, if Revan had just accepted what the Jedi Council had handed them at face value..." The holocron trails off, then shakes his head. "I think you should watch for Jedi arrogance, and Jedi making decisions about risk that aren't really theirs to make. Because it was never any of them that were in danger, it was the student, it was the settlers, it was the wildlife. And they deemed risking all of them acceptable."

Nod.

Sigh.

"Okay. That runs into an issue I'd already noticed, and... I think if I arrange it the right way, I can actually turn that into an advantage. I don't actually want to be in a position to decide how problems are solved, here - veto power, chosing not to give them resources I think they'll misuse, yes, I'm comfortable with that, but not anything active; it's a cultural thing. But it seems like I should anyway, and if I'm going to, I can do it in a way where if they're going to do that kind of thing, I'm in a position to notice it."

Revan's holocron nods.

"Just as long as you're careful, too. The trouble with being surrounded by idiots is you default to thinking you're always right, and forget that no one is ever always right."

She chuckles. "No, I know that one. And I'll be visiting my tribe regularly; if I start getting arrogant they will notice and they will do something about it."

"Oh, good," says Holocron Revan, obviously pleased. "I'm glad they look out for you."

She grins, fondly. "It's what we're for, is looking out for each other. Not the only thing, but."

"...anything else I should know?"

The holocron pauses to search through his memory banks.

"Mostly just reassurance that there are good Jedi, really. Ones that are actually good, not - thinking they're good and putting others at risk. Oh, and you might want to look up Jolee Bindo, Revan always thought they were insightful about the nature of Jedi and the Force."

She nods, and bows. "Thank you."