White.

It was the first thought that popped in Hadrian's mind when his ship descended towards Ilum. The world was a white sphere seemingly with no imperfections - it was mesmerizing. The veritable storms of white pulled his mind deep. From mountains to caves, the single colour was dominant.

Cold, was the following thought. After exiting the warm heating of his transport, Ilum was freezing. as much as white was prominent and visible on the planet, cold that came with it encompassed everything.

His ship left immediately after his exit. The warnings given to him before his take off on Temple seemed such exaggerations at the time. The burrowing cold ignoring any kind of protection his robes could provide proved otherwise. For a Knight with limited knowledge of the Magic, this was a very, very dangerous trial. No heating, no food, no water, no protection until he found his crystals... It would've been hell, he was sure.

Hadrian slapped a warming charm.

Water and accommodations were easily handled, it was just the food that was a problem. He never understood why it couldn't be conjured - you could summon, multiply or even transfigure if you had food but no matter what it couldn't be conjured. It was a mystery that he very much like to solve.

Opting to not walk through the mounting snow, Hadrian took flight. From the air, he could see a long distance away. It was a freeing experience, every time he left the ground the ability to move all three directions left him giddy like a child he looked like.

Randomly flying around the white world brought a smile on his face. From his childhood, his enjoyment of exploration had never left - simply ignored. On Tython the flight was still much of a difficult objective, until his experiments on the Temple he never managed to fly with ease. And Temple was never a place he could fly around randomly just for the sake of it.

Quite similar to Hogwarts, in the way that there was always an eye on him, even when he wanted to do nothing but simply fly on his broom.

He gave a lopsided grin. He targeted a mountain way off the distance and sped up, and up, and up. An explosion of air followed by an immediate descent of silence made him aware that he pierced the sound barrier. Not that he gave it much thought - the rapidly moving away scenery entranced him deeply.

Crash!

He was thrown backwards violently but somehow managed to stay in the air. A fast glance around confused him, there was nothing around that he could've crashed - until that is, the massive wave of magic thrown him back once more.

The wave of magic was easily found, but Hadrian for the life of him couldn't find out who was sending these waves of magic.

After the third wave hit him, he managed to stand his ground. The spiking of his own magic gave him much-needed respite and shield from the attack. With eyes furiously moving around, he tried to find the aggressor. He didn't have any more luck than the last time.

"Who are you?!" He cried in frustration as the waves and waves of magic raged around his shield, trying to crush it.

The amount of magic thrown around was awe-inducing, Hadrian wasn't even aware that someone not as connected to magic as he was could even dare to channel. It was something he would expect from Tython...

"A natural occurrence?" Hadrian murmured to himself as he furrowed his brows. While the storms and waves of magic were much similar to Tython, it lacked a certain naturalness apparent in Heca's main world.

Scratch that, he was damn sure whatever was happening on Ilum, they were absolutely not natural. With his senses extended, it was obvious that the cold wasn't either - something or someone caused whatever was going on.

Such a mystery it was. Coupled with the Gree pyramid he found on Tython, it was quickly becoming apparent that the galaxy had a colourful past. There were whispers, rumours of rumours that machines and races so old that the Galactic Republic seemed to have the age of a baby compared to them.

The fabled disturbances of hyperspace noted by the first explorers of Republic pointed to the same mystery as well.

Sadly, this wasn't the time for it - his Trials came first. When he had access to the archives of the Order, he would return to Ilum once more, to see what was going on. It reminded him of his search on durasteel, rather, the lack of success on the subject.

He shook his head. There was no need to hurry.

He turned his attention to his task. Find compatible crystals by following the Magic. Easy. Like he did many, many times when he was in the Temple, he took a meditation position and let himself open to Magic.

The eagerness of it never stopped to amaze him. Every time he opened himself with the intent of asking a direction or an answer, the nearly infinite answers he glimpsed before asking his own question was as amazing as it was terrifying. The magic truly could answer every question he could think of.

Hadrian took a deep breath. Please show me two most compatible crystals for my lightsaber core on Ilum.

All the bright answers filling his mind disappeared - two dots side by side took their place. They were near him, but in a cave deep below. Very, very deep.

He carefully followed where the magic took him. Past the mountain, he targeted before, then follow the coming mountain range until a small opening presented bang in the middle of the steepest face of a mountain that was in the middle of five very different mountains.

If he couldn't fly, it would be impossible to enter without a vehicle carrying him up.

Inside of the cave was surprisingly empty, and not so surprisingly shrouded in absolute darkness. He floated a few meters above the ground, just to make sure he didn't hit anything weird.

Under the light of Lumos he advanced deeper inside. The stalagmites were quite numerous, most had either a pool of icy cold water or just plain ice. He could glimpse blue and green sheen of crystals laying buried inside the rocks and ice.

The caves took a sharp dive, getting larger and larger as it dove into the mountain. The surfaces slowly turned smooth as the cave lost its rock formations and, surprisingly, ice.

Instead, water appeared to be dripping from the ceiling as well as entering from the entrance but didn't freeze. Under the warming charm, it was impossible to tell the temperature. But from the looks of it, the temperature was rising higher deeper he went.

There was a weird humming sound that was becoming more irritating as he continued as well. It was obvious that wherever it was coming from was his objective as well, and it felt weird as hell to him to hear a clearly artificial sound nearly a kilometer deep into a mountain on a planet that had a living population of perhaps 20.

The cave twisted and turned as it got deeper until it opened up to a room that was clearly manmade - metal plates were lining the walls. There seemed to be old consoles and computers all around the room, as well as furnitures like chairs and sofas. A door towards the front had light shining through.

Of course, everything was pretty much in the worst shape possible. It looked impossible to repair even with the most overpowered charm he could handle.

But those were not what captured Hadrian's attention. No, it was something else, something he absolutely did not expect. It was skeletons. Skeletons upon skeletons, scattered around in a circle, rising up upon each other with an empty space in the middle - reserved for a single humanoid skeleton.

He had no idea what to make of it. The skeletons were preserved in the state he found them in for at least thousands of years, the state of the room guaranteed it.

Who were they?

Except for the skeleton in the middle that looked pretty much like a human, he didn't even know what the species were. With an amateur look, he could somewhat distinguish three different species. One of them was a tentacled species that looked like a Parwan, but instead of tentacle foot, it was the hands. Another that was pretty reptilian, with no distinct appearance. The last one was quite a large species that had eyes extended to sides with bones...

That sounded quite similar to what he encountered on Tython. In fact, he would be nice money that they had at least a common ancestor at one point. From their size, limbs and distinctive eyes, it was impossible to not have any connections.

The lack of any magical residue was not helping the mystery. These beings were most likely connected to the magical anomaly that was going on around the planet, but he had no way of confirming.

He examined the remains thoroughly - a pensive could get him the photos. At least it was a start, with photos Luna could start scouring the, admittedly newly developing holonet and any archives he got into.

With that handled, he returned to his task. The feeling was coming behind the door that was illuminating inside, and he stepped through carefully.

It was an empty room with the exception of a column in the middle. The column looked a lot like a natural stalagmite and stalactite not exactly connected, but with very little distance between the tips of both.

At the end on those tips, two crystal were shining, literally. They were the source of the light in the room. A golden crystal embedded in the tip of the stalactite, and a dark purple crystal in the stalactite.

He could feel a nearly physical pull from the two crystals. They were clearly connected to him one way or another.

He summoned the two. A warmth entered his body, and he knew that they were meant to be his - just like how his wands were. They chose his magic and bonded immediately that if there was never a lore of lightsaber mastery, he would be the master of his lightsabers just like the wands. They most likely wouldn't work right for somebody else too.

Crystals were much like primitive focuses. No, that wasn't right. Rather, they had different abilities, instead of boosting the spells, they increased the connection with magic. The fascination of Jedi with lightsaber was much like wizards with wands.

Huh, he thought. It explained the way Jedi evolved through the long years.

Without a wand to delicately craft spells, and instead of having a focus that boosted raw magical connection, the Order focused on using that boosted connection to move fast, jump high, sense the environment and magic, push and pull...

His questions about the Jedi were answered on some level at least. The change a difference in foci caused was absolutely astonishing and would probably cause any historian to drool.

The room started shaking violently. The crystals clearly served a higher purpose than just light sources, as rocks started falling from the ceiling. The cave was collapsing.

He rushed back to the previous room and surveyed it for the last time. Not noting anything of interest, he apparated. The entrance caved in very quickly, and the amount of rubble made sure that he or anybody else was not going back in anytime soon, and not without a lot of effort.

It was time for him to go to the Jedi Temple on Ilum to build his own lightsaber. The place he was dropped off to Ilum was quite close to his destination. In the distance, the Temple was clearly visible as a blue speck between all the white. Buried in a mountain, it was not very large, most likely because it was made to house no more than fifty at a time.

He descended to the ground and entered the Temple. Before he could go deeper, a Master welcomes him inside. "Are you Battlemaster Black?"

Hadrian nodded. "I am."

"Welcome, to the Temple of Ilum. We were warned of your impending visit for your lightsaber construction. Have you found the crystal or crystals attuned to you? We cannot allow you accommodations otherwise, as it was decreed by the High Council for your Trial."

"Oh?" Hadrian raised a single eyebrow. "The others going through the Knight Trials can stay the night in the Temple?" He questioned.

"Yes indeed," the Master answered, curiosity colouring his tone too. "We were asked to not accept you inside if you came for any other reason than to construct your lightsaber and leave. From the information we got from the Council, it was so that you would feel the brunt of the Trial."

Apparently, the Council thought it would be way too easy for him if he had a place to stay. Considering they had no idea of his transfiguration abilities, his trial was clearly designed to torture him. That was totally not nice.

"So the did," he murmured. "Regardless, I do wish to construct my lightsaber before anything else. Can you show me where I need to go, Master...?"

"Telava. Do follow me, please."

They walked under the dim lighting of the corridor. On the way Hadrian had seen no one else - the Temple appeared totally empty except for the one in front of him.

"Master Telava, what is the population of this temple? We haven't met anyone else since the entrance." He asked.

"It fluctuates around thirty," Master Telava answered. "And it is quite normal for us to meet no one here. The Masters that reside in the Temple, myself included, do it as a place of meditation in silence. Ilum is an empty planet, and the Republic doesn't have any records of here."

The silence descended once more. Hadrian had no question to ask, his mind on what he saw during the day and Master Telava didn't seem to be inclined to start a conversation.

They stopped in front of a closed door. "Here it is. This meditation room has the parts and any instructions you'll need. Do you need anything else?"

Hadrian inclined his head. "No, thank you for bringing me here. I will be beginning immediately."

Master Telava nodded and left. Hadrian didn't stare the back of the man, he entered the room.

"Woah."

When Master Telava told him that this room had any part he would need, he was not kidding. From lances to whips, parts for any kind of light-weapon was on display. Some of them were quite intriguing too.

He shook his head. He came here to build a lightsaber and that was what he was going to do. He took one of the consoles lying around and started reading on the subject.

The construction of the lightsaber required a magical trained in at least Telekinesis. The delicate parts could not be connected with anything else, as the weapon filled the nearly 90% of the space it had. On top of that, activation of a crystal as a power source required a connection created from crystal to magic.

That was the reason why lightsaber was not the staple melee weapon of the army. There was no way of mass producing it, and Jedi would never build lightsabers for Republic, no matter how close of an ally they were.

As he started working, he soon forgot the time.


"Naga Sadow, you should stop pushing the Council. The Dark Lord is getting annoyed with you. I fear something bad may come to your head." A red-eyed red skinned man spoke to someone who looked very similar to him, only with brown eyes.

"Master Simus, I don't understand why! You've taught us all our history, and our ancient enemies. Why can't we attack?!" The man called Naga Sadow answered passionately.

"You do know the reason, Naga. We aren't ready for a war that scale, not yet." Simus closed his eyes for a moment and spoke resignedly. From his reaction, it was apparent this was a recurring argument they had.

"When? When are we going to be ready? While we sit here twiddle our thumbs, the Empire grows stale, and we fight each other instead of crushing our enemies. Our resources are depleting, our armies became weak!" Naga Sadow shouted back. He was getting frustrated. Why couldn't the Council understand that they needed to expand, instead of plotting to increase their own power?!

"Because the enemies of our ancestors still live, Naga. The Jedi and their staunch allies the Republic. Our public has forgotten them, considers them no different than a myth, a boogeyman but we know differently. Don't forget, they had driven our ancestors back, destroyed them so thoroughly that few remained." Simus took a deep breath and continued.

"It wasn't until they started breeding that the Noble Clans was born, our clans came along. Their blood flows through our veins, and their enemies didn't consider stomping on all of us!" Simus' voice was rising as he spoke. He was getting in the argument as well.

"Then it is as much an expansion as it is revenge! How dare they kill our ancestors, just because they choose Dark Side of the Force over their self-righteous Light Side? Even if ancestors may not have called themselves the same name, they were still our ancestors, they were the ones that taught the Force to us." They had this talk many, many times.

"I know, Naga, I know." Simus deflated for a moment. "I agree with you too. But we cannot be fractured at the moment - not with their shadow upon us. We need to be strong, if only to survive the coming war." He sounded quite tired. Waiting to see whether an enemy many considered a boogeyman would discover them or not was stressful.

Naga Sadow harrumphed. "So be it, Master Simus. Talk to others and tell them about our enemies, our future. We cannot live in this sector forever, we need to expand." Then, his voice heated. "Don't forget, Master Simus. Our species is the greatest warriors. We are unparalleled in Force. We are the rulers of all. We are the Sith!"