p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"They put a blaster in your hand when you're eighteen and tell you to kill with it . For a purpose they say . For the good of the republic . To answer a call the Jedi are blind to while they sit in their temples and evaluate a threat that's already at their door . Your friends and what's left of your family give you a hero's farewell and hail you off to war , and you never see them again ; the first casualty in a long list of heroic incentives , and far from the last . For the first time you feel the warped rush of space lurch your heart into your throat . Ot's different than the tropospheric flying you've done before , zipping and whirring on an airspeeder through the mountains of Juranno , and soon you get a taste for it , become as addicted as you do to the cheap cigarras you share with your new comrades-in-arms . You've always had a pension for addiction ./p
p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"Honor is the next sacrifice . There's no honor in killing , not in the way they'd depicted on the posters , drilled into your skull visions of medals and glory during training . It's brutal and far quicker to snuff out a life than you anticipated , and you throw up all over your boots the first time you do it , even if your victim is just some faceless Mandalorian who'd tried to gut you like a nerf with a vibroblade . Netween the bile and the sweat you feel the captain pat you on the back and tell you that you'll get over it . You do , and you get good at it . addicted to it . The higher ups take notice . Nice aim , good kill , well done Jaq . you allow yourself to take pride in that , because you've never really been good at anything . Just a boy from Slderaan with a penchant for slicing things you shouldn't , but now you have this . Even if this leaves you thinking about your victims on a cold military issued cot in the middle of some war ravaged city that won't have a name by the time it's over , blurring the lines between what's real and what's not because sometimes you feel something deeper than empathy when you put a smoking bolt between their eyes . Like you're at the other end of the blaster ./p
p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"You convince yourself it doesn't matter , become numb to it , take up a juvenile card game to bond with your fellow soldiers over a glass of juma , exhausted and brow beaten in between the fighting and the rocket bleached skies . They die and you live . Hate and vengeance replace mercy and justice because you're feeding off a never ending cycle of death and destruction . The Mandalorians slaughter innocents by the millions and still the Jedi do nothing . It makes them just as guilty ./p
p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"And then it's over . Revan the butcher is so much easier to process confined to a holo , a whispered name passed around war camps and smoldering fires . You're taller than most , don't have to crane all that significantly to make them out over the sea of soldiers , all vying for just one glimpse of the catalyst who'd instigated the end of the Mandalorian siege , who'd broken the Republic's chains and led you all to victory . A savior . Their hold on the large mass that's congregated is transfixing , and you burn with devotion , with a determination to chase this figure into the very blackest depths of the galaxy . Prior allegiances be damned . you're loyal to Revan , not the Republic , loyal to the Jedi who'd joined their cause , not the ones that hid and did nothing . You can separate friend from foe , and your only ally stands before you now , commanding your allegiance to the Sith . So you follow , and the last sacrifice you make is yourself ./p
p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"Honor is the next sacrifice . There's no honor in killing , not in the way they'd depicted on the posters , drilled into your skull visions of medals and glory during training . It's brutal and far quicker to snuff out a life than you anticipated , and you throw up all over your boots the first time you do it , even if your victim is just some faceless Mandalorian who'd tried to gut you like a nerf with a vibroblade . Netween the bile and the sweat you feel the captain pat you on the back and tell you that you'll get over it . You do , and you get good at it . addicted to it . The higher ups take notice . Nice aim , good kill , well done Jaq . you allow yourself to take pride in that , because you've never really been good at anything . Just a boy from Slderaan with a penchant for slicing things you shouldn't , but now you have this . Even if this leaves you thinking about your victims on a cold military issued cot in the middle of some war ravaged city that won't have a name by the time it's over , blurring the lines between what's real and what's not because sometimes you feel something deeper than empathy when you put a smoking bolt between their eyes . Like you're at the other end of the blaster ./p
p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"You convince yourself it doesn't matter , become numb to it , take up a juvenile card game to bond with your fellow soldiers over a glass of juma , exhausted and brow beaten in between the fighting and the rocket bleached skies . They die and you live . Hate and vengeance replace mercy and justice because you're feeding off a never ending cycle of death and destruction . The Mandalorians slaughter innocents by the millions and still the Jedi do nothing . It makes them just as guilty ./p
p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"And then it's over . Revan the butcher is so much easier to process confined to a holo , a whispered name passed around war camps and smoldering fires . You're taller than most , don't have to crane all that significantly to make them out over the sea of soldiers , all vying for just one glimpse of the catalyst who'd instigated the end of the Mandalorian siege , who'd broken the Republic's chains and led you all to victory . A savior . Their hold on the large mass that's congregated is transfixing , and you burn with devotion , with a determination to chase this figure into the very blackest depths of the galaxy . Prior allegiances be damned . you're loyal to Revan , not the Republic , loyal to the Jedi who'd joined their cause , not the ones that hid and did nothing . You can separate friend from foe , and your only ally stands before you now , commanding your allegiance to the Sith . So you follow , and the last sacrifice you make is yourself ./p