Ch. 1: Prologue
(52 years after the Battle of Yavin; Ossus)
The planet Ossus, which had served as the seat of the Jedi Order for millennia, was finally being restored to a place of prominence. Tython, Jedha, and Ossus were often considered to be the Jedi Order's three Lost Worlds, meaning that while they may have been planets strong in the Force and thus sacred to the Order, they had been lost over time.
Tython was the homeworld of the Je'daii Order. The Je'daii predated the Jedi by over ten thousand years. They as an order focused on using both the light and dark sides of the Force, believing that it was better to master both in balance than to adhere dogmatically to one side. However, the Je'daii eventually split between the followers of the light and dark in an event known as the Force Wars. The light side users won and became the reformed Jedi Order who evacuated from their ruined homeworld. Tython was located in a dense tangle of hyperlanes and thus travel to and from was hazardous. Because of this, Tython was eventually forgotten about.
Jedha was a desert planet home to the mysterious Ancient Order of the Whills, an order of seers who predated the Jedi and possibly even the Je'daii. They taught the early Jedi much of what it meant to hear the Will of the Force. However, the Whills were hunted nearly to extinction many times throughout galactic history, most notably during the Pius Dea Crusades and the Hundred Year Darkness. Additionally, the Empire had persecuted any groups who still obeyed their teachings, going as far as to blast the planet from orbit with an unknown superweapon. With the Empire hunting both the Whills and the Jedi to extinction and Jedha reduced to rubble, the remains of the planet were forgotten about.
After the Jedi had evacuated from Tython, the remains of their Order regrouped on the planet Ossus. Ossus served as the central headquarters of the Jedi Order until four thousand years before the Battle of Yavin when it was nearly destroyed in a storm of radiation unleashed by a nearby supernova during the height of the Great Sith War. Afterwords, the Jedi Order moved its headquarters to Coruscant, and the remains of Ossus were forgotten about. However, when Luke Skywalker was rebuilding the Jedi Order, he made an effort to recolonize the now safe Ossus, rescuing the planet from obscurity. Even though much of the world was still uninhabited desert wastes, Skywalker had restored the planet to its rightful place as the seat of the Jedi Order.
Grand Master Tholme Vos stood on the edge of the central Jedi temple and stared off into the wastes. At only thirty nine years old, he was the youngest Jedi Grand Master chosen in several millennia. He had long brown hair, brown eyes, a short brown beard, light brown skin, and a brown robe- in short, he looked and dressed like the most ordinary Jedi ever.
Why me? He wondered. But he knew why, or at least strongly suspected why. He was chosen as a compromise. Luke Skywalker was getting old and did not want the Order to become dependant upon him. Skywalker feared that when he died, the Order would fragment- unless he passed on the torch to someone else before his death. Therefore, he had stepped down as acting Grand Master.
Kyp Durron, Saba Sebatyne, Kyle Katarn, Corran Horn, and even Jaina Solo, all high-profile masters, were great choices, in fact, originally Kyp Durron had been chosen. However, Kyp was far too radical in his teachings and militant in his style of governing, which caused almost everyone in the Galactic Senate to become annoyed at not just him but the Jedi Order as a whole. After a series of scandals and military blunders, Kyp was forced to step down after only two years in office, and again the mantle of Grand Master was up for grabs. The most popular candidates were Jaina Solo, a radical like Kyp, and Kyle Katarn, a more conservative master. However, Luke and the other masters wanted someone younger, someone who was part of the second or third generation of Jedi, yet still highly enlightened, to be chosen for the position. An obvious choice was Ben Skywalker, Luke's son. The only problem was that Ben was a bit too young, being only in his mid twenties, plus Luke did not want any type of 'Jedi dynasty.'
In the end, the Council was forced to consider candidates that they would have never even dreamed of putting in such a position of power. Tholme Vos was chosen. He was not the most powerful in the Force, nor the most skilled with a lightsaber, nor the most socially adept, but Luke saw something in him, and he was somehow chosen. Tholme himself was still trying to figure out what was the hidden variable was.
Tholme turned around and walked into the Jedi Archives. Although he was appointed Grand Master just a few hours previously, the Archives were empty, for he had requested that they be cleared of all visitors for that he could have space to meditate on what the Force was calling him to do. The Archives were large, with holobooks and old tomes dating back to pre-republic times. After the Empire had wiped away almost all traces of the Jedi from the Galaxy, Luke and the other masters had attempted to recover any scrap of information that they could find on the Jedi of old. Their collection was impressive, and it dated from the very beginnings of the Jedi to the present era, but it was still fragmentary. As he walked through the hallowed halls, ghostly figures appeared to come to life and step out of the shadows, and he could not tell if they were real or imagined.
From the shadows stepped the great Rajivari, a wizened human male who had been dead for well over twenty-five thousand years, the first Grand Master. He had originally been a Je'daii master who sided with the Jedi during the Force Wars of Tython. After the war ended, he helped found and initiate the Jedi Order and its teachings. However, after founding the Jedi, he became obsessed with restoring the Je'daii. The other masters did not like his actions, and they drove him from his office. In outrage, he had fallen to the dark side which triggered a civil war within the Order. Eventually, he was killed. The spectre of Rajivari said nothing. As Tholme passed, he followed on his right- hand side.
As they walked, the ghostly outline of Qui-Ko appeared. He was the one to finally kill Rajivari before taking up the mantle of Grand Master in his place. Since Rajivari fell to the dark side, many considered Ko to be the first true Grand Master. He had been the one to lead the Jedi from Tython to Ossus during the Great Jedi Exodus. His spectre walked up besides Rajivari's and the two, who had been bitter enemies in life, embraced each other in reconciliation. The two friends followed Tholme.
Next came the shade of Awdrysta Pina, a muscular, flat-faced, and tanned-skinned human male who led the Jedi Order during the First Great Schism. Always looking for a good fight, when a Dark Jedi faction broke from the Order he was the first to take up the fight against them, and he died serving the Order during that ancient conflict. While he lived over a thousand years after the time of Ko, he was still very much a founding legend of the Order. His ghost followed Tholme on his left.
Off to the side of Pina came a older human male with sharp, angular features and short, greying hair. Tholme had seen pictures of Emperor Palpatine, then Senator Palpatine, before he had risen to power, and Tholme thought that this man bore a striking resemblance. This man, Biel Ductavis, was the Grand Master who had seized power in the Galactic Senate after he had led the arrest of Contispex XIX, the former Supreme Chancellor. Ruling over the Jedi as Grand Master and the Republic as its Supreme Chancellor, Ductavis led a crusade against the Pius Dea cult almost eleven thousand years ago. He then passed on the mantle of Chancellor to his children who continued his reform movements. While many remembered him as a tyrant, others remembered him as a hero.
Out of the shadows emerged the ghost of a large plant-like being that resembled an old but humanoid stump. It was Uro Koo, the Neti Grand Master who served the Order during the Second Great Schism and the Hundred Year Darkness, seven thousand years ago. He had trained many of the Jedi who would eventually fall to the dark side in the war. He then helped to lead the Order to victory against the heretics, sacrificing himself to defend Coruscant when he was was well over a thousand years old. He followed behind Tholme.
Joining Koo was the shade of a large, muscular humanoid with a strange upper jaw that seemed to come out of his face. It was the Draethos Grand Master Odan-Urr who fought in the Great Hyperspace War five thousand years ago. He then went on to serve the Order for a thousand years acting as Grand Master during the Gank Massacres, the Third Great Schism, and the Great Droid Revolution. He was murdered by a Sith Lord at the beginning of the Great Sith War, and despite leading the Order through many conflicts, he was remembered not as a warrior but as 'The Great Doctor'- the greatest Jedi scholar of all time.
Taking up the position on the far-right hand side of Tholme was the ghost of a human female who appeared to be made of radiant light. It was Nomi Sunrider, who fought in the Great Sith War before becoming Grand Master and helping to reform the order. She became of the five 'Matriarchs' of the Jedi Order along with Nova, Meetra Surik, Bastila Shan, and her daughter Vima Sunrider. She died at the hands of a Sith Lord during the Jedi Civil War and was venerated as one of the Order's greatest heroes.
On the opposite side was the ghost of a man in long purple robes who had elf-like ears. It was Simikarty, an Arkanian-Sephi hybrid who saw the Jedi Order almost exterminated twice in his lifetime. The first was during the Great Sith War, in the aftermath of which he participated in Sunrider's reform movements. During this period, he wrote the enormously influential Teyan Apologia, which was taken up by the Jedi Council as a manifesto of what the Order should be. He then survived the Dark Purge, in which the Jedi were hunted nearly to extinction. After the Purge, many powerful Jedi, known as the Founding Council, rose to prominence and worked to restore the Order, but none of them assumed the position of Grand Master until decades later. Simikarty was then elected. He put his teachings into effect and came to be known as 'The Orthodox Doctor.'
Taking stride in front and to the left of Tholme was a tall Kel Dor male, Grand Master Zym. He served the Order during the Great Galactic War, when the Sith Empire struck and invaded the Republic three hundred years after the Dark Purge ended. He fought the invaders only to die at the onset of the Cold War between these two galactic superpowers.
On the opposite side of Zym came another spectre of a female human. She was Satele Shan, the descendant of the Jedi Matriarch Bastila Shan. She was chosen to be one of the youngest Grand Masters in the Order's history after the death of Zym, and she served throughout the Cold War and the Second Great Galactic War between the Republic and Sith Empire.
Finally, joining the trail behind Tholme was a master who appeared to be some sort of humanoid rodent. Her name was Fae Coven, a Jenet Grand Master who reorganized the Order in the aftermath of the New Sith Wars, only a thousand years before the present. She was given the position of both Jedi Grand Master and Master of the Order in an effort to reunify the fragmented Jedi Order. Using this re-centralized power, she initiated the Ruusan Reformations, a series of Jedi reformations that saw a return to orthodoxy.
Tholme, accompanied by this impressive host of past masters walked through the Archives as if in a trance. He found himself in the circular Jedi Council chambers which were luckily also empty. Seated on the central chair was an old, wizened little green creature that looked like it had just crawled out of a swamp. He recognized this final spirit immediately. Any Jedi alive could probably guess who it was. It was Yoda himself, the Grand Master who served in the final days of the old Jedi Order and who taught Luke Skywalker himself.
Tholme paused and gave Yoda a bow. The other Grand Masters walked over to the edges of the room and assembled in a circle around Tholme, an entire Jedi Council made up of the greatest deceased Grand Masters in history.
"Step forward, Master Vos," croaked Yoda.
Tholme did so and kneeled before the shriveled green creature. The ghost reached for a lightsaber on his belt. It ignited in a short green blade. Suddenly, he heard another lightsaber ignite, and then another.
Out the corner of his eye, he saw Rajivari pull out and ignite a blue blade, followed by Ko who held a green one. The ancient Jedi of Tython were known to have wielded primitive lightsabers before the technology was lost after the Jedi Exodus.
Pina pulled out a Jedi katana which glowed with its own green light, then Ductavis pulled out his own sword which shone bronze. The early Jedi after the Exodus had taken to using swords since lightsaber technology was lost.
Koo ignited a bronze lightsaber blade. However, the hilt was attached to an extension cord which ended in a back-mounted power pack. Urr held a green blade whose extension cord ended in a belt-mounted power pack. Early lightsabers after the reinvention of the technology did not have energy recyclers. Instead, massive amounts of heat was lost to the surrounding space, requiring a constant energy source.
Sunrider and Shan both held standard lightsabers with green blades. By their day, lightsabers had evolved to the point of being almost identical to modern lightsabers. Simikarty and Coven held ones with purple blades, and Zym held one with a blue blade. They all pointed their weapons at Tholme.
"Tholme Vos," said Yoda putting his lightsaber over Tholme's shoulder as if to knight him, "By the right of the Jedi Order throughout the ages, by the Will of the Force, dub thee, I do- Grand Master of the Jedi Order, servant of the Force."
The Jedi put away their weapons and took up seats around the room.
"Rise, you may," said Yoda, "Brethren, we are."
Tholme slowly rose. He looked around the Council. "Why me?" he asked at last.
The other masters looked around in confusion. "Because the Force, and the Council chose you," said Nomi Sunrider, "Why else?" The other masters muttered their agreement.
"Yes but… " he struggled to find the right words, "Look at you all. I have inherited this position from all of you, passed down through Skywalker- a Jedi no less worthy than anyone here, but I am simply not like him. Nobody alive is like him. Nobody alive is like any of you. I am not like any of you."
The Jedi seemed to be mildly annoyed, and they muttered amongst themselves. "Look around you," said Yoda at last, "What do you see?"
"I- I already told you-"
"No! A closer look, you must take." Yoda took a breath. "Scholars, reformers, yes even warriors, we are. But also ignorant, traitorous, deceitful, even murderous, we are. Led the Order for hundreds of years, I did. Did not see the rise of the Sith, did not adapt to the situation until too late it was. Too slow, too hesitant, too stagnant, I made the Order."
"Master Yoda, it was Palpatine who exploited these," Tholme pointed out.
"Take advantage of these factors, I should not have let him. When too late, it was, staged a coup attempting to kill the lawfully elected Emperor, I did."
"We are Jedi, we obey a higher set of laws than civil laws," he argued, "An unjust law is no law, and an unjust man should be stopped even if just laws put him in power."
"Should have prevented it before it reached that point, I should have."
"I am not any better," said Fae Coven, "It was I who enacted the policies that made the Jedi Order so weak. It was I who did not even consider the possibility that the Sith could have survived and evolved."
"Master, weren't you trying to reform the Order? How could we have known about the Sith?"
"I should have anticipated the worst as well," said Satele Shan, "Under my guidance, the Order was greatly strengthened and militarized to combat the Sith, but at what cost? Our teachings became laxed and many lost their way. Under my watch, the Galaxy almost reverted to anarchy, and even so, conflicts with the Sith continued on for hundreds of years."
"Master, those were desperate times, and you were facing the Sith at the height of their power!"
"If I had done better, Satele Shan would not have had to deal with such impossible odds," said Zym, "It was I who failed to anticipate the Sith invasion, and it was my lack of foresight and planning that led to my death, leaving the Order weak and vulnerable."
"You could not have known about the Sith any more than Masters Yoda or Coven could have," protested Tholme again.
"Perhaps it was I who failed first," said Simikarty, "I was so focused on internal threats that I became the very embodiment of inflexibility and orthodoxy. It was because of me that the Order became stuck looking in rather than looking out for the true threat."
"But your teachings helped to prevent us from falling apart! We needed orthodoxy and strong Jedi morality."
"But did we?" asked Nomi Sunrider, "I came from a time when Jedi could have families and train at any age. In fact, I began my training after I was already a mother. It was only after our Order almost fell apart that I pushed for tighter reforms, but these policies did not stop the Sith from growing. What if I set the Order down the wrong direction originally?"
"But the Order was incredibly decentralized before these reforms. Your reforms stabilized our teachings and made the Order as a whole stronger."
"But why was it weak in the first place?" asked Odan-Urr, "I was the Grand Master before Sunrider. In my thousand years, I made the same mistakes that Yoda did. I became too conservative, too focused on how things are than on how things could be. I became too holed up in my study rather than out in the Galaxy. I was too passive. Under my watch, many turned to the dark side, and I did not stop heresies before they were too late."
"Sometimes that is good! After all, if we were too warlike we would have the opposite problem."
"Now you are learning," said Uro Koo, "We all must walk between two extremes, and we must catch problems before they manifest. I did not. I was Grand Master right before the Second Great Schism and Hundred Year Darkness. Many of my students fell to the dark side and I was unable to stop their teachings from taking root and manifesting in the creation of the Sith Order."
"We cannot control the actions of others, they chose the dark side for themselves."
"Oh but I did try to control others," said Biel Ductavis, "I used to rule the Galaxy after seizing power from a lawfully elected chancellor. I crusaded against a rival religious group and installed a Jedi inquisition. I trained my children from birth to desire power. I groomed them to take over after my death, and did not allow them to live their own lives or to choose for themselves. I thought of myself as a holy emperor. I turned the Galaxy into an imperial theocracy, and the Jedi committed unspeakable atrocities under my rule."
"The Pius Dea were just as evil as the Sith were! Desperate times require us to do things we may not want to do."
"Oh but what if we want to do these things?" challenged Awdrysta Pina, "I was always more of a knight errant, and yet for my skill I was elected to the position of Grand Master. Back then we were less centralized, and yet when a rogue Jedi broke away to create his own academy with his own teachings, I led the fight against them. What a master taught was, back then, none of the Council's concern, and yet I suppressed them. When they broke with us, I did not use diplomacy but charged head first into a fight attempting to quash their heresy."
"It is a good thing though! We couldn't have become an Order of Dark Jedi. We need some type of foundation, not teach whatever you want!"
"But is our very foundation even good?" asked Qui-Ko, "In my day there were many who did not like the way our Order was developing. Some wanted to focus on controlling or taming the Dark in order to understand it. Instead we completely cut it out and sought to destroy it, and look at the sins our Order has committed because of our teachings!"
"But if we would have allowed the study of the dark side, then we would be in an even greater mess! Just look at how dark side teachings manifested in the later schisms, if they were there from the beginning, we would have had many more problems infesting our entire Order. We should prevent our students from falling to the dark side."
"And yet I did," said Rajivari, "In my obsession, I attempted to destroy the very Order that I had created. I became an example of what to avoid and how not to be a Jedi when it was my job to lead and teach the Order. I could have laid a better foundation instead of becoming bitter and resentful."
"What is the point of this?" asked Tholme, "Why are you confessing to me?"
"Because making excuses for us, you keep doing," said Yoda pointing at Tholme, "Have reasons for our actions, we all did. Made mistakes, we still did. Make mistakes, you will."
"Fine," Tholme took a breath, "but please masters, I beg of you, confide in me the wisest thing you have ever learned."
The Jedi looked at each other back and forth. At last Yoda said, "Trust in the Force, always." The other masters nodded in agreement.
Tholme was silent, then at last he said, "Uh, th- that's it? That's a banal platitude, I learned that on my first day as a youngling."
"That's because it's the most important thing!" shouted Odan-Urr.
"Indeed," said the verbose Simikarty, "In five words Master Yoda has summarized all of our teachings. All of our reformations have been to get back to this central truth."
"Aye," agreed the reformer Fae Coven.
"E-hehehe," laughed Yoda, "How true a banal platitude can be, if only you knew."
"I- I understand," said Tholme at last.
"No you don't!" interrupted Awdrysta Pina rather loudly.
"Oh but he will," said Nomi Sunrider.
"All in due time," said Yoda, "All in due time."
A gust of wind blew in from nowhere, and the past masters faded away.
Author's Note: This story takes place, for the most part, in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, that is to say 'Legends.' However, despite this mountain of information in the first chapter, I will try to make it understandable for readers who have experience only in Disney Canon, and this intro is just for effect. For readers who are familiar with Disney Canon, just think of this as a 'what if' filled with many original characters. Also, I will occasionally draw from Disney Canon sources as well as my own past fan works. If you want to read more on some of the events referred to here, you may like my still in progress fic Look Upon My Works Ye Mighty and Despair: A History of Pre-Exillic Sith.
This story started out as a Role Playing adventure that was part fix fic, part revenge fic for the entire post-movies Expanded Universe. However, I will never consciously contradict pre-existing material, I will just work around it. This is also heavily inspired by the short TV series The Young Pope and I have included many references to it.
Also, I have two other fics in progress and two more on the backburner, so I may take a while to update this. I just thought I'd write and publich a chapter to not forget about it. I always appreciate feedback, and thanks for reading.