She finishes inspecting the major varieties of crystal, and hums thoughtfully.

"I think I'll still grab other crystals, but I think the emeralds will be most helpful to my purposes."

"For explainable reasons, or...?"

"Of the crystals here they naturally lean the most towards what I'm going to need them to do. And if you want a more detailed explanation that'll take longer but I can try."

She starts carefully unpacking emeralds from foam to store in the foam and cloth lined containers in her bag that she brought for precisely this purpose.

"I'm kind of curious."

She continues sorting crystals as she talks. "The reason why, if I can contact anyone in my galaxy, it'll be Occlus, is because I have a Force bond with her. When we were in the same galaxy we could already send each other thoughts over long distances. The problem is that this is a much longer distance. I can still feel that she's alive, and presumably vice-versa, but I need something to help magnify my ability to speak with her and cut out all of the stuff that gets in the way. Honestly, it doesn't even need to be perfect, I just need to get through enough that she can sort of grab hold of the strengthened connection and throw her absurd power at the problem and see if that works."

"I see. So it's - sort of an amplification array? And emeralds are particularly amplifying, or particularly amplifying of the things you need to amplify?"

"Essentially, yes. More the latter than the former, and they're - more equipped to become the thing I need to be than already being such."

"Aha."

"But they might not work, I haven't done something like this before."

"Good luck."

"Thanks. If it doesn't work I have other ideas, but this one seems like the fastest and easiest. If I were Occlus I could just - throw a ton of power at the problem and be done with it, but. I'm not Occlus."

"What - I apologize if this is a rude question - what causes differences in amount of available power?"

"It's not a rude question. A lot of it's innate. Some Force sensitives just naturally have more to draw upon from the start, but that's not all of it. There are ways to gain power, with sufficient attention and the right sort of mindset, but it's to be approached with care. Doing it too quickly is dangerous, physically and mentally. You could burn out your own body and hasten your own death by old age, or accidentally drive yourself mad. Just the change in power itself can be dangerous - I mentioned the drawbacks earlier? The more powerful you are the more dangerous they can get."

She's gotten all the emeralds she wants; she starts going through the other crates for other gemstones.

"I tend to lean on finding more efficient ways to use my power than trying to expand the well I have available, which sort of makes me an anomaly for a Sith Lord. It means I'm not likely to go insane anytime soon, but it has its downsides."

"Yeah, I think I can see the shape of that tradeoff."

"It's not a pleasant one if not taken seriously. I'd say that at least a third of the Sith's problems are brought about by a desperate hunger for more power, without any care towards what getting it will do."

He nods understanding.

"And if you're curious, I have a respectable baseline power level, but often I'm comparatively weak to other Sith, because I'm very cautious about adding to it, and often they're... not."

"A distinction which seems to speak well of you."

"Thank you."

"Well, you're my favourite Sith Lord, after all."

Snort.

"Woe unto me if you ever find one you favor more, I won't know what to do."

"I assume you'd compete to reclaim your title."

"Competitions between Sith Lords can get quite messy indeed. It might be wiser to weather the confusion to avoid the collateral damage."

"Collateral damage is a pretty immediate disqualifier in competitions for my favour."

"Ah. So perhaps we could manage a competition free of collateral damage. If we try hard and believe in ourselves. Is there a particular kind of competition you'd prefer?"