FROM THE MEMORY BANKS OF IG-88 SHEILD GENERATOR FOR THE WAYFARER 22.7.1ABA_

[An astromech droid beeps at Taryn, who nods and picks up a fusion cutter and wipes away the feathers from her face and continues working on the small metal box in front of her]

I figured if I matched the radiation level to set a trigger reinforced by the electric current inherent in the lightening there could be a sort of Force Light Switch effect…no idea if it’ll actually work though…

[Taryn is interrupted by a few quick low beeps from the astromech droid; she scowls at it for a second]

Well of course it’s a bit crazy but I don’t see you coming up with any plans to stop the Emperor, unless you were going to roll in and talk him down with nothing but your shiny astromechanical charm? Or maybe you and Vader could have a circuit to circuit?

[A low tone from the astromech droid]

I didn’t think so. Anyway, what else am I supposed to do? I’ll protect my sedge in any way I can. They’ve finally got a home…I’ve finally got a home. I’ll be damned if he’s going to take this one from us too. I can’t throw star ships or duel with a saber like most of my friends can, so I’ll stick to where I’m better acquainted.

[The droid blares for a second and Taryn sets down the cutters, picks up one of the boxes and starts checking the wires and hooks it to crude looking target assassin droid dummy. Lights of all kinds start flashing at random on the dummy; Taryn watches for a moment and yanks a yellow wire from the small box. The lights all synchronize, flash three times, then go dark. Taryn nods and unhooks the box from the dummy.]

[A few more bleeps from the astromech droid]

Of course Talia isn’t force sensitive, but she doesn’t need to be. She affects the world in a very real, very physical, very precise way…generally with a large gun. She gets us to work beyond what we would normally think ourselves unable to do. I don’t know how she does it, but one word from her and things don’t seem quite so impossible.

[There are a few sparks while Taryn welds the sides of the box together, forming a rough casing. After a few moments checking the power calibrator against the information on her data pad she welds the top of the casing and sets it carefully on the floor next to a dozen or so like it.]

[the droid tones at her for a moment]

Meena manages her own way. She doesn’t fight so flashy as the rest do, but observes and in her patience is able to find and use the cracks she finds in the Empires walls against them. She’ll sneak in and fight from the heart of things.

Jolee takes a more direct approach with the force, quick to action and her very will of it succeeding causing it to be so. Both she and Luke work in a fluid motion together, using the flow and ebb of the battle to their advantage, near perfect in their ability to move as one. Even if Luke is a blind fool where his dad is concerned...

[Taryn looks for a moment at the target dummy thoughtfully before picking up a hydrospanner and removing the left hand of it. The astromech barks a few sharp tones at her]

Settle down, I’m just using it for a base…don’t know if this’ll work or not but every little bit right? And of course Zac is murder with a saber…doesn’t do the number on hordes of troopers like Jolee can, but when he fixes on a target it doesn’t have much longer for this ‘verse. He’ll defend those he takes as friend or family. As much as he helped me during his long sleep, I’m glad for his waking companionship. Even if it scared me to begin with…I’m glad he stuck around instead of leaving…I don’t know if I’dve stayed if he went…

[sing-song like tones from the droid cause Taryn to light purple against her normal blue skin]

I do not!

[a disbelieving tone and her cheeks flush a deep plum]

…shutup. What would you know? It’s not like I only like him for throwing Tarkin out a window…it started a bit there but its not li-

[the droid chitters, then seems to scold a bit]

Oh like he’d ever know. As strong as he is in the force and as fantastic he is at observing people’s behavior, opening their eyes to new ideas, and seeing things distant and future, he’s as clueless about things as any of us non force-ers in some things. He’s changed in the time I’ve known him, taken more responsibility to himself in the rebellion, and even if this ends today he’ll have so much he feels he needs to get done he’ll never even know…

[more sing-song chirps as the droid turns and moves to the doorway to the rest of the ship]

…take another move and I’ll strip you for parts with my mind.

[the droid stops]

I thought so.

[as the droid moves back to the Omwati it picks up the shield generator near the doorway and brings it to her, beeping questioningly]

I’ve honestly no idea. But I’ve gotta try, hope for the best and all that. I can’t throw lightening, but I can try to make it work for me…

[she looks at the pile of detonators in front of her, the droid letting out a long low whistle]

Well, here’s hoping that either this works, or failing all else, one of those do…. I cannot move the world around me as my companions can, but I can use my enemy’s affectations on it to my gain.

[a few more beeps as Taryn picks up the fusion cutter again and starts to take the generator apart]

…you’re right…a little more of a sophisticated wiring for this one…

[Taryn reaches toward the view of the holo-vid before it goes dead]

IMPERIAL SECURITY BUREAU DEFECTION CASE STUDY - TALIA RENN (EXECUTIVE SUMMARY)

Talia Renn (Lt. 1st Class, AWOL) is a prominent member - possibly even leader (intelligence is vague on this point) - of an infamous terrorist cell composed primarily of self-styled "Jedi." Her sudden and dramatic betrayal of the Imperial Navy despite a spotless service record rivals that of Crix Madine (Commander, AWOL) in prominence, and has been successfully exploited by Rebel Alliance propagandists.

The practical difficulties of apprehending or terminating a heavily armed and dangerous criminal with intimate knowledge of Imperial technology and procedures are a matter for Imperial Intelligence and the Imperial Military, and are outside the scope of this report. The COMPNOR Select Committee has tasked the ISB with examining the possible causes of Renn's defection in the interest of preventing further treason and designing suitable counter-propaganda. This document is a summary of the full report.

EARLY LIFE

Renn was born on 5:7:3 on Brentaal IV to Paldamar and Melina Renn of House Renn, one of the Brentaal Houses that dominate the planetary economy.

As the eldest^[1] daughter of a wealthy family, Renn could have been expected to enjoy a life of quiet luxury in preparation for marriage into another prominent family.

However the peace and prosperity of Brentaal IV was severely disrupted during the Clone Wars. Renn's academy admissions essay states that the chaos of this period of her childhood made her appreciative of the order and stability the New Order would bring.

Eleven years old at the time of the Declaration of a New Order, an adolescent Renn was a dedicated participant in early SAGEd and SAGRec programs - graduating at top of her class and becoming captain of her Wegsphere team.

According to Renn's academy admissions essay, her decision to pursue a military career, despite the objections of her parents^[2] and her own Non-huMan status, was inspired by an encounter in which an Imperial Customs squad led by Officer Dalea Trovin rescued Renn and her companions from a gang of smugglers they had stumbled across in an ill-advised trip through a questionable area of Votrad. This encounter with a female officer led Renn to believe that the military was a viable path for her.

ACADEMY YEARS

As Non-huMan guidelines were more lax in years past with respect to non-aliens, Paldamar Renn was able to leverage his business connections to have Talia's application reviewed by admissions officers at The Academy of Carida. The officers felt that her extremely high mental and physical test scores, as well as her impressive determination, outweighed the potential for disruption that her presence would bring.

In retrospect, perhaps it is during her years at the Academy that the first glimmers of Renn's contrarian tendencies can be seen. While outwardly dutiful and exceeding all performance targets, Renn demonstrated clear dissatisfaction with military culture and was widely considered "difficult" in social situations, which limited her opportunities for promotion. She also insisted on entering the Imperial Navy Command Officer School against the recommendation of her advisors. While tactically brilliant, Renn's deficient interpersonal skills and lack of sensitivity to cultural concerns rendered her unsuitable for significant command positions.

Finally, and potentially most damning, was her (presumably romantic) relationship with another high-performing-yet-troublesome cadet, Tyber Zann. While a thorough investigation officially cleared her of any involvement in Zann's alleged criminal activities, the cloud that followed Zann out of the academy cast a shadow over her as well.

SERVICE

Given her reputation at the Academy, assigning Renn proved difficult as most commanding officers were unwilling to take her on. She was eventually picked up by Captain Pamil Tavick, himself at a career dead-end, relegated by choice to patrolling Outer Rim trade routes instead of taking on more prestigious expansion and pacification assignments.

For roughly a decade, Renn served under Tavick, efficiently executing anti-piracy, anti-smuggling, and search-and-rescue operations, as well as several crackdowns on unregulated slave trade. Despite her obvious personality problems (for example, she was markedly hostile toward Stormtrooper units when circumstances dictated that they work together), Tavick promoted her to Lieutenant 1st Class, though she continued to place herself on the front line out of a misguided desire to "lead from the front." (Yet another example of prideful nonconformity?) While unorthodox, her career was of not deemed worthy of attention until an operation on Volik.

TREASON

While the details of the operation are classified at the highest level, we do know that Renn expressed confusion regarding the application of Surface Operations Training Doctrine to the disposition of civilian prisoners during a Priority 0 pacification operation. While she did ultimately give the termination order, she failed to supervise the operation - a telling violation of Doctrine that was (irresponsibly, as later events would prove) overlooked in light of her subsequent role in the capture of several Jedi cultists.

Shortly after Lord Vader's execution of Captain Tavick for unspecified misconduct, Renn, who had never been known to disobey orders or shirk duty, freed the Jedi cultists that she herself had helped capture, and left with them in an audacious and highly destructive manner that would characterize her future activities with her new associates.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Renn's defection sets a dangerous example for those with delusional moral superiority complexes, who may believe that their judgment supercedes Imperial policy. However, if presented in the proper context, her story can instead be used as a cautionary tale to reinforce the tenets of the New Order.

• Renn's admittance to Carida proved an ill-advised exception to Non-huMan guidelines. Her inability to conform to expected social norms despite her high test scores demonstrates that such exceptions are prohibitively disruptive. We recommend that such exceptions no longer be permitted.


• Captain Tavick's long-term assignment to certain types of operations allowed those under his command to develop certain expectations regarding their duties. It is likely that Renn felt entitled to pick and choose the sorts of missions that she would undertake. We recommend exposing all military personnel to expansion and pacification operations on a regular basis so as to ensure greater familiarity with all aspects of Surface Operations Training Doctrine.


• Renn's defection immediately followed her order to terminate civilian prisoners on Volik and the execution of her superior officer by Lord Vader. While many traitors (See: Crix Madine, Han Solo, etc.) believe that they are somehow "above" certain actions necessary to maintain the security of our Empire, we believe Renn's case to be a classically female display of emotional weakness. We recommend subtlety in pushing this explanation in light of certain realities at our rival organization.


• Jedi are known to possess the dangerous ability to influence the minds of others. It is possible, even likely, that Renn has been brainwashed. A successful live capture and Re-Education would be a public relations coup and expose the Jedi for what they are. Unfortunately, the Imperial Military has deemed Renn a high-risk target and is likely to favor termination over apprehension except under impossibly ideal circumstances.

FOOTNOTES

[1] - Perhaps ironically, her younger sister Treena was the one flagged as "at-risk for seditious activities" by her SAGEd supervisors. She has since been conscripted into the Imperial Propaganda Bureau as part of her Re-Education program.

[2] - Renn's parents were themselves apolitical until their recent participation in an intensive Re-Education program (arranged in lieu of termination or imprisonment as part of an agreement with the Brentaal Houses). They have since become vocal supporters of the New Order and are counted among our most important donors.

Recovered from Jedi Archives

2 ABR - Order of the Jedi Archives - Liber Jedorum 20238-1A - Supplicant Thesis - Zach Ouichi

A Introduction to Sun-chii, for Padwan and Knights Unfamiliar with the Tradition

Within the splintered and searching Jedi Order, we struggle to redefine the Order and with it, ourselves. We must abandon or redefine many of our traditions, especially our martial mores. When the current conflict is over, we may disband our armies, decomission our navies, and sunder our armor. With the tools of supremacy, bureaucracy, and control we put both ourselves and the Galaxy at risk. We risk the temptations that the Sith embrace.

We will not, of course, abandon all of them. Our lightsabers are badges of station and our final appeal to peace. Our Order teaches and guides us when the force is unclear. Our tradition of Sun-chii joins them, as a valuable component to the Jedi Way.

Few Jedi still practice Sun-chii, old as it is, and many do not even know of it. Here I will explain it for you, for your edification and consideration.

Sun-chii is a contradiction, a compassionate way of making war. Two Jedi form a long term bond, the Sun-ro. The Sun-ro consists of a consular, the more skilled Jedi. That Jedi is the better arbiter and diplomat, and she focuses her lightsaber training on defensive abilities, frequently excelling in the trick of redirecting blaster fire and warding away explosives with the Force. The lesser Jedi is not encouraged, of course, to neglect training, but it is that lesser guardian who hones abilities in offensive lightsaber combat and pure Force use. The Sun-chii consular is worldly and weathered, a friend who can program a navcomputer and navigate a difficult moral quandry. The Sun-chii guardian is a faithful companion who basks in the consular's direction and wisdom, taking the opportunity that surety and security provides to hone himself to a bright edge, moving in and with the force and piercing through complexity and foe alike.

I am part of a Sun-ro, and I would recommend it heartily. I am that lesser, the guardian, and with that I know absolutely my place in the Order and the Galaxy. My consular knows that she will always have a companion and friend, one who will trust and accompany her until his death. Our Padawan have flourished and before we depart on a long journey, I write this to help preserve this sweet fellowship and the tradition that has nurtured it. My consular Knight, Nalara, is too overcome with characteristic Ithorian modesty to pen this.

-- rest of document continues in Liber Jedorum 20238-1B --

Taryn Xel

In 5 BBA Tarkin altered the course of Taryn’s home world of Omwat. At 13 she was the oldest of a small group of children from different villages taken from their families to be molded for Tarkin’s personal scientists. In classrooms orbiting above the planet they were trained, tested, studied, and cowed into submission. Only a few of them made it through the intense training camps; the children that did not watched as their families and villages were bombed from orbit for their failings, followed by their own execution.

While Taryn was not the Grand Moff’s favorite student, she showed great skill and was transferred to the Maw Instillation. Not knowing if her family was alive, her fear of failure drove her to excel at anything she was assigned. In 3BBA she was put in charge of a crudely carbonite-frozen Miraluka that had been found drifting through space. The life signs where thin and Taryn started her research on the nearly 1,000 year old space oddity and how to safely unthaw him. Tarkin had the Miraluka and herself transferred to the Death Star so that he could closely monitor his new pet project. In the precious little free-time she had Taryn learned what she of his race, managing to teach herself the language but finding no evidence that any of his people remained. She developed a habit of talking to both the carbonite prisoner and herself in the dead language, taking a small solace in the connection it seemed to carry to the man whose family were also most likely dead.

Just over a year ago she received word that all but a few of the Omwati race had been destroyed, those few scattering across the systems to escape Tarkin’s reach. Taryn realized that alive or no, her family was gone and started planning her escape. An opportunity presented itself when a band of rebels boarded and blew up the Death Star, neatly destroying any evidence that either she or the Miraluka ever existed. The past year she has been moving from place to place avoiding the Imperials, gathering the equipment she needed to melt the carbonite, and desperately (though thus far unsuccessfully) looking for any signs of her people.

Zach Ouichee

Zach Ouichee is, by about two centuries, the oldest Jedi in the galaxy. As the Ruusan Reformation took place after the New Sith War in 1,000 BBA, the Jedi order changed. The Jedi laid down their militarism, disbanded their army and navy, forsook armor, and placed themselves under the supervision of the Supreme Chancellor. All of these suited Zach splendidly; he had no taste for war. What disturbed him were the strictest controls placed on the Jedi - the training only from early childhood, the centralization and standardization, and the strict limits on exploration and learning.

Zach loved the wandering in being a Jedi Knight. He loved the exploration, the learning, the richness of life it offered. Balking at the new dogma and rigidity being forced on the Jedi, Zach took a surplus tender ship and started wandering the Galaxy with a few fellowminded Knights and their Padawan. On Ziost, a planet only mentioned in the oldest of archives, Zach and his companions stumbled across Darth Bane, the secretly surviving Sith Lord. Bane cut down some of the fleeing Jedi and pursued the rest when they took off. With a destroyed hyperdrive and shield generator, Zach set a sublight course to the nearby Alderaan system, vented the reactive tibanna gas and fuel rods, and froze the three remaining survivors in carbonite. Zach alone (to his knowledge) survived the process, but he also survived the final torpedo run that shattered his ship.

Drifting through deep and then interstellar space, Zach was picked up by an Imperial survey ship in 5BBA. The captain noticed that Zach was a Miraluka, a now-rare species. Transferred first to the sector Moff's office and then to Grand Moff Tarkin's care, Imperial scientists under the direction of an enslaved Omwati savant found dim life signs and the possibility of ressucitation. Owing to the dangerous and potent nature of the find, Tarkin had Zach and the research team relocated to the newly operation Death Star. The Omwati researcher escaped from the Death Star with Zach's carbonite prison shortly before its destruction.

Jolee's Background

Hopefully, this will spur people to remember that they can post stuff of their own on the blog! Post your characters background, sidestories, feelings, etc. Anything to flesh the world out!


Jolee's (and Master Se'ol's) Background

Jolee was born to Dorin and Vorena Se'ol on Volik, six years after her father had abandoned his position in the Jedi Order. He had been with the Jedi all of his life, taken as a baby from his parents on an unknown planet (though as an adult he ran into a Se'ol family on Naboo.) Eventually, he became an apprentice of Qui-Gon Jinn and later a full Jedi Knight. He earned the title of Master after his one and only official apprentice earned Knighthood. While the Jedi continued to test every child born in Republic lands for Force sensitivity, Master Se'ol was sent to the Outer Rims to locate children still young enough to be taken for training.

While looking for young children to take, Master Se'ol began to contemplate the wisdom of taking children from their parents. This led to questions about other teachings of the Jedi. After listening to a mother plead to be able to keep her son, only a very small infant, Master Se'ol decided that he was done with the Jedi. He was on his way back to Coruscant to inform the Council of his decision, when he stopped for supplies on a tiny, rocky moon called Volik. After wandering the moon for a bit, Master Se'ol decided not to continue on to Corscant after all. He settled on Volik, meeting, and later marrying, a woman there named Vorena. A few years after their marriage, they had their daughter, Jolee. After realizing that his daughter was Force sensitive, Master Se'ol decided to found a small academy, to train Force sensitives he found--spacers and their children who landed on Volik for supplies, children found in orphanges, and others.

Jolee grew up in that academy environment. Her father, who by now had completely thrown out the Jedi Code he was taught, doted on her. While she was encouraged to work on developing her Force powers, she was never pushed. She led a happy and content life with her mother and father, attending lessons when she felt like it, staying home with her mother when she didn't. Her tranquil life was shattered, however, when her mother died in an accident. Her father grew sullen and withdrawn, falling back on the Jedi Code he had learned as a child, denying emotional attachments, including the one to his daughter.

Jolee, fourteen at the time, quickly became both angry and resentful. While others kept training with Master Se'ol, adapting to his new style, Jolee rebelled, and attended training only very irregularly, and then usually only stood in the back with rolling eyes. She spent a great deal of her time exploring Volik, occasionally taking a speeder and disappearing for a day or two at a time. Her time at the academy was usually spent with Egon Pak, the mechanic and caretaker, learning from him and using him as a father figure. Eventually, Jolee's resentment to her father grew to such an extent that she denied her own Force powers, preferring to delude herself into believing that she had none. Any attempt at reconciliation to her father was denied when the Darth Vader led a raid on Volik, killing Master Se'ol and taking Jolee and several others prisoner, an event which starting an interesting turn of destiny.