Chapter 11 – Haven't Got A Hat


Paying no attention to her comrades, Aina sprinted through the woods towards the sound of battle. She heard the hissing noise of a lightsaber cutting through flesh, which was immediately followed by a shrieking roar of pain. There was only one creature on Eshan that made that kind of sound – the fearsome vargur. It was a quadruped about two metres in length and covered in thick, white fur that was used to fashion Echani clothing in colder climes. Hunting the vargur was a dangerous task, however, as they were quite capable of ripping a man to shreds with their teeth and claws.

Standing against the vargur was a most curious little man ("little" being how Aina described every non-Echani male). He was dark-skinned, completely bald, and like Carth he had adopted the crude and barbaric practice of maintaining facial hair. The vargur leapt back and forth, occasionally lunging at the Jedi, only to be driven back by his lightsaber. He had already wounded the vargur several times, judging by the cauterised gashes on its flanks, but it took more than that to fell such a vicious beast.

With her hand on her lightsaber, Aina pondered whether she should join the fight. Whoever this Jedi was, he was quite adept, despite his somewhat advanced age. He and the vargur continued circling each other, both looking for an opening. But then the creature became aware of Aina's presence, and having sufficient intelligence to realise it could not win against two armed opponents it immediately turned tail and bolted into the woods.

The Jedi deactivated his lightsaber and glanced over at Aina. "Blast you! You scared it off! I was hoping to skin that thing and make it into a nice hat to keep my head warm in winter. Now I'll have to go find another one and provoke it into attacking me."

Aina gave the Jedi a menacing glare and began walking towards him. "Who are you, and what are you doing on my homeworld?" The rest of her companions soon caught up with her, much to the Jedi's displeasure.

"Bah! More of you? Get out of my yard, you hooligans! Kind of hard to be hermit when people keep pestering you about the nature of the universe. Go on, get! Jolee Bindo commands you!"

That was a name Bastila was evidently familiar with. "Jolee Bindo...so this is where you've been all these years."

Aina glanced over at her. "You know this man?"

"By reputation. He made the foolish decision to get married and subsequently left the Jedi Order, though all this was before my time."

"Don't act like I was the only one! Eh...now where was I? Oh yes, get out of my yard!"

"This is my homeworld, not your 'yard'!" Aina began walking towards him again, refusing to be intimidated by this Jedi.

Jolee ignored her protests and, like so many others, decided to point out her towering stature. "Wow, they grow em' big here, don't they? How's the air up there?"

She crossed her arms. "I see you intend to be childish about this. Very well, we shall be on our way, but I would advise you to be more courteous to any Echani you meet. Many of us are not as forgiving of off-worlders than I am."

Aina began moving away, but Jolee stopped her. "Now wait. I can tell you and your friends must be on some big important mission, because you probably didn't come all the way out here looking for me. So why don't you tell me who are you and what you're doing out here, and if I'm feeling generous I might decide to tag along."

"If you must know, I am Aina Kaamos, and this is Bastila," she said. "The Twi'lek is named Mission, the Wookiee is called Zaalbar, and the ugly one is Carth."

"Hey!" Carth called out.

Jolee looked over the group, largely with disdain. "A Wookiee, huh? I spent a good ten years on Kashyyyk before coming here. Nice enough place, I suppose, but the constant shrieking of those blasted tachs wore a bit thin after a while. Made it hard for me to hear myself think! And their hides are useless for making hats, too. So I packed up my things, hopped on the nearest freighter, and I don't remember the rest of the story, but somehow I ended up here."

Zaalbar spoke mournfully, and though Aina could not understand what he was saying, it was clear that coming to Eshan had dredged up some unpleasant memories.

Without being asked, Mission provided the translation. "Big Z says this place reminds of home, though the trees aren't as big. He's sad 'cause the Life Day celebrations are going to be starting in a few days and he can't be there with his family."

"What is 'Life Day'?" asked Aina.

Zaalbar made a noise that impressed upon her that this topic was very much off-limits. "It's not something they like to talk about, apparently," said Mission. "He says it's too sacred. And too embarrassing."

"He's right, you know," added Jolee. "Life Day isn't for outsiders, something I learned the hard way. If you ever wonder where the hair on my head went, well, now you know. I saw a lot of terrible things down in the Shadowlands, but that...gah! I don't want to talk about it!"

"You will find Eshan no less harsh," Aina said. "It was a great risk for you to come here. We Echani slay the elderly and infirm, so that they will not become a burden on us."

Jolee looked taken aback by her statement. "Eh...really?"

"No."

"Look, I'm sure this all very amusing," Bastila interrupted, "but I believe you said we need to reach our destination by nightfall."

"You still haven't told me what you're doing here," said Jolee, "so let me guess: the Sith are rampaging across the galaxy, and you people are the only ones standing between the Jedi and complete annihilation. And stopping the Sith means flying across the galaxy, going from world to world, solving problems that no one else could solve until you showed up, then crawling about in some tomb or cave looking for little crumbs of information about some superweapon that blows up stars or tears holes in the fabric of space or something. Maybe the Sith have it, maybe you want it, but the whole thing ends with you locking lightsabers with some blustering idiot calling himself something stupid like 'Darth Sipid' or 'Darth Perfututum'. Maybe along the way you learn something horrible, like finding out your whole life has been a lie...or finding out how nerf sausages are really made. Yecch! " He let his words sink in for a moment, a look of smug satisfaction on his face, and then asked, "So...how'd I do?"

"I'm impressed," Carth said. "You got most of right. We're looking for something called a 'Star Map' somewhere in this valley. If it's like the one we found back on Dantooine, it should bring us closer to finding something called the 'Star Forge'. We don't know what that is, exactly, but we suspect it's how the Sith are managing to create such huge fleets of ships in such a short period of time."

Jolee just nodded. "Yeah, yeah, 'Star Maps', 'Star Forge', got it. My guess is that this Star Forge is totally indestructible, but blows up if someone so much as hocks a loogie down its exhaust port."

Aina took out her datapad, currently displaying a map of the area with their location of the Star Map marked. "This particular Star Map is about five kilometres south of here, on the far side of the valley."

"Yeah, I know the place," said Jolee. "Some old crypt or tomb or something like that. You like tombs, don't you?"

Aina began walking away, not even looking at him. "I doubt that is what it is. We cremate our dead; we do not inter them in the ground."

"Well I never went poking around in it, so how would I know?" he snapped. "Bah, let's just get going!"

As they walked through the forest, Aina would stop every few minutes and take a long, deep breath of the cool air. Those who never left their home planet would never experience it, but there was a distinct, uncomfortable sensation one had when standing on an alien world. A difference in the strength of the planet's gravity, the composition of its atmosphere, or the length of its day and night cycle made certain that off-worlders would never truly feel at home anywhere but on the planet on which they were born.

Behind her, Carth, Mission, and Bastila were all making it painfully obvious that they had never set foot on a heavily-wooded planet before, as they were constantly stumbling over the roots and branches that lined the forest floor, and while they did not complain about it, they were plainly uncomfortable with the cold temperature. Seeing that they were falling behind, Aina climbed atop a large outcropping of rock in order to get a better view of just where they were going. A narrow brook wended its way through the valley floor, but what caught her eye was a small village that straddled the brook. It consisted a few dozen homes, constructed from timber in a style that had not changed in several thousand years, and at the centre of the village was a stone obelisk upon which the villagers would have chronicled important events.

"There is a settlement not far from here," she said, stepping down from the outcropping. "Perhaps they can tell us more of this 'tomb'."

"Huh, I doubt that!" said Jolee. "I go there every now and then, and they don't much like me. And I don't much like them, either! Then again, I'm old and don't like anything. Except hats."

"Wait," said Carth, "I thought you said you were a hermit? You know, you can't be a hermit if you regularly interact with people."

"All right, all right, so I never really mastered that whole 'hermit' thing. Too much of a people person, I guess. Besides, they say spending too much time alone makes your head go all funny."

Aina stopped. "And you are living proof of this, I presume?"

"You know, you got a lot of mouth for a Jedi..."

She ignored him and continued on her way. It was not for long before they reached the village, and without looking she could tell how Carth and Bastila would be reacting to the sight of it.

Any off-worlder who looked upon this place would have been convinced that the Echani were a primitive, pre-industrial race, and there was some truth to that. The people who inhabited the remote regions of Eshan tended to reject modern technology and live in the same manner as they had thousands of years ago. There was a tendency for other Echani, particularly those who dwelt in the warmer regions to the south, to romanticise these individuals, but the truth was that their existence was a difficult one. Living in a region with a climate that could be devastatingly harsh and surrounded by woodland roamed by wild beasts, these Echani had to possesses a toughness and resilience that went beyond what was expected of those who lived in more forgiving environments. "As hard as a northlander," was an expression applied to any Echani who displayed exception tenacity and endurance.

This particular village small enough that it was not marked on any map, and that was probably how its people preferred things. As the weather was warm, most of the villagers were outside, some going about their daily work, while others enjoyed moments of idleness. A pair of children – siblings judging by their identical appearance – fought each other with staves, while other children stood watching them, no doubt intensely curious to whom would be the victor in the boys' fight. A repetitive metallic pinging sound could be heard through the village, and the source of the din was a smith hammering away at sword atop an anvil. This was not a vibroblade or a vibrosword, or any kind of weapon enhanced by technology. This was a plain sword, a weapon fashioned from hardened steel, no different from one used in ages past.

Carth took all this in with a look of both bafflement and amusement on his face. "When you said there'd be many strange things here, this wasn't quite what I expected. I feel like I've stepped into a time warp."

The villagers were evidently quite familiar with Jolee Bindo, as one of them instantly recognised him. Judging by his reaction, the Jedi was not well-liked by these people.

"You again?" said the Echani in heavily-accented Basic. "Are you here to drink all our wine, or are you just going to torment us all with your rambling stories that go nowhere?" When he saw Aina, he began addressing her in the Echani language, speaking with the distinctive northern dialect. "I apologise, kinsman, if you've been forced to put up with that one."

"I've been forced to put up with a great deal since falling in with this lot!" she declared, speaking her native language and confident that none of her travelling companions could understand her. As Eshan was economically insignificant, there was no reason for off-worlders to learn the language of its people. "The Twi'lek and Wookiee I do not mind, but my fellow Jedi Bastila is an insufferable bore, and Carth, the bearded one, is apparently incapable of trusting a soul."

"He sure is ugly, too!" answered the Echani. "Get him out of here before I throw up just looking at him!" Carth said nothing, but his uncomfortable expression indicated that he suspected he was being insulted.

"But I'm afraid we haven't the time to talk," Aina continued. "There are some ruins to the south that we have come investigate."

"Oh, those," he said ominously. "You'd best speak to our chieftain Kyllikki if you're going there. She's in the great hall, near the sweat lodge."

It was not long before the sharp smell of cooking fires reached Aina's nostrils, and her stomach growled in response. How much better the food would be here, for it was real food – not that rubbish the Ebon Hawk's synthesizer put out. Perhaps these villagers would even have Echani ice wine here, though she doubted they would be willing to share it.

The great hall was a long, narrow structure, constructed from wood like everything else in the village, and marked by a blue banner flying above the door which depicted the twin moons of Eshan surrounded by a field of stars.

"Um...look," said Carth, "if it's all right with you, I think I'll just wait outside until you're finished."

"No one is going to attack you, if that is what you are worried about," said Aina. "I was not being serious when I suggested you may be challenged to a duel."

"It's not that, it's just that I get the feeling the people really don't like me. I mean, the way they look at me..."

"Your facial hair gives you the look of an uncouth savage," she explained. "Remove it, and you will not get such hostile looks."

Carth scratched his beard. "My facial hair...?" Despite Aina's reassurances, he elected to remain outside.

The hall was as plain on the inside as it was on the outside, with the only extravagance being the intricate carvings on the pillars supporting the ceiling, which bore a similar motif the one Aina had etched into the hilt of her lightsaber. Two rows of tables ran the length of hall, with enough chairs to seat several dozen individuals, though only a few people were present at the moment. A hearth burning the middle of the hall provided light and warmth, with smoke exiting through a hole in the roof. Carth and Bastila were no doubt thoroughly baffled as to why anyone would voluntarily live in such an unbearably primitive way, but to Aina it was entirely understandable. In many ways, advanced technology was a crutch, a distraction, or worse, an obsession, and to live without it required a strength and endurance she admired.

Kyllikki, the village chieftain, was an older woman, wearing a blue and white gown and sporting a wreath of leaves around her head, which Aina took to be an indication of her status. She sat in a chair that looked to be carved from a single piece of wood taken from an enormous tree, no doubt for the purpose of illustrating the occupant's leadership role. Yet Kyllikki's slouching posture and the bored look on her face indicated she was less than thrilled with her position. She sat up when Aina approached her, however, and she immediately fixed her eyes upon Mission and Zaalbar, staring at them with a mixture of surprise and suspicion. Aina reckoned that this woman had never set eyes upon an alien before.

Her expression became noticeably more hostile when she saw that Jolee was among the group. "I was told we had visitors, but you must be a hapless lot if you've fallen in with the Hairless One."

"I'll have you know that I once had plenty of hair!" Jolee retorted.

"Was that before or after the universe began?" said Mission.

"Why you...," he growled, casting her an angry glance before looking at the village chieftain.

"The children gave him that name," Kyllikki explained, "but I would prefer he be called 'The Witless Bard' for that is what he truly is. He comes to our village every few months, eats our food, drinks our ice wine, and gives nothing back except his 'tales' that he says have some profound wisdom in them, but serve no purpose but his own amusement!" She turned her gaze to Aina. "And what is your name, unfortunate one?"

"I am Aina Kaamos of the Most Noble Order of the Heart of Winter," she said proudly, "and first of the Echani Jedi."

Jolee was not impressed. "Oh, I had no idea, your highness."

"Then I welcome you to our village of Raunioilla. You say you are a Jedi? Yes, I can sense the Force within you, though it is but a mere sapling...much like yourself, I assume."

"And what have you heard of the Jedi?" Aina asked. She had not expected there to be a Force-sensitive amongst these people.

"Matchless warriors and peerless wielders of the Force, though I suppose not all the stories we've heard are true. I understand that the Hairless One once belonged to them, though he has since been thrown out...likely for boring them to death with his rambling, pointless tales."

"The Jedi regarded me quite highly, you know!" said Jolee. "They'd come from all over the galaxy just to hear my pearls of wisdom. And they knew a thing or two about respect, not like these mouthy little-"

"Oh shut up," said Kyllikki, rolling her eyes.

Aina cleared her throat, trying to steer the discussion back to their reason for being here. "We are heading to the ruins south of your village," she said, speaking in the Echani language, "and we would appreciate any information you have on them."

Her face went blank. "And why, by the ancestors, would you ever go to that accursed place? The ruinous power is strong there."

"You mean the dark side?" said Bastila.

"That is your word for it? Whatever you call it, there is dark power there, one that no Echani ever brought to that place. We do not who first carved out those ruins, though their malevolent intent is clear. I'm afraid I can say no more than that, for none of us have ventured into those depths."

"Hmph," Jolee grumbled, "aren't you all supposed to be fearless Echani warriors?" He posed in a mock gesture of fright. "Oooh, tombs! Scary!"

Aina had nearly had it with Jolee's irreverence. "I suggest you start showing the respect that is due! You cannot demand it from others while showing none yourself!"

"I'm old, and I can be as irreverent as I want to be!"

"Now you see what me must put up with?" said Kyllikki. "He is utterly impossible to deal with. And I have not even mentioned his obsession with hats..."

"Are you blind? My head is bald! This planet is cold!"

Bastila, too, had quite clearly had her fill. "Enough of this! If you have nothing else to tell us, then we will be on our way."

"Are you sure you don't have any hats you could spare before we go?" Jolee asked.

From beside her chair, Kyllikki picked up her staff and flung it at Jolee. "Get out!"

Things were not going much better for Carth outside. Somehow he had attracted the ire of a young Echani woman, who was had just finished delivering a lengthy string of insults in her native tongue. It was a thoroughly impressive bit of vulgarity, combining every profane expression the woman could think of into a single sentence so offensive it would make a hardened bounty hunter blush. She finished her tirade by giving Carth a hard slap across the face before storming off.

Aina shook her head. "I live you alone for but a few minutes, and you have already gotten yourself in trouble. What did you do to offend that poor woman?"

"Nothing, I swear!" he protested, rubbing his cheek. "She just walked by, I said 'How do you do?' and the next thing I know she's screaming in my face!"

"I suppose she did not like the look of you," Aina said with a shrug before moving on.

(What she did not know was that, in the particular dialect spoken in this part of the Eshan, the phrase "How do you do?" sounds identical to a phrase that can be translated as, "Frak the eighteen generations of your ancestors.")

"I guess I should consider myself lucky I didn't wind up married to her. Who knows how things work with warrior races."

Aina shot him a dirty look. "'Warrior race'? Is that how the galaxy sees us?"

"Well, everything you do seems to involve fighting and violence in some way or another."

"Look around you – we are artisans, smiths, shopkeepers, farmers, builders, and hunters. How could one build a society of nothing but warriors? Who would grow our food, make our clothes, or craft our weapons?"

"I...um...uh..."

"Every Echani has trained for battle, but there are only a few who hear the call of the warrior."

"I used to hear the call of the warrior, too," said Jolee. "Or maybe that was just tinnitus."

Aina knew there was no use in educating Carth about Echani culture; he would never understand her people, and in all likelihood she would never see him again once their mission was complete. But she wondered if this was how people in the galaxy thought – that all races and species could be distilled down to a single trait.

Almost immediately after leaving the village, the trees closed in behind them so tightly that it seemed as though they could have been hundreds of kilometres from civilisation. The air was cold enough for them to see their breaths, and while Mission, Carth, and Bastila were shivering from the chill, Aina felt no discomfort. She dreaded the thought of travelling to Tatooine, a world she knew to be an arid desert, ravaged by the searing heat of two suns. The typical Echani could not tolerate the heat at all (hence their tendency to wear white clothing), and they would find the dry, dusty environment of a desert world completely inhospitable.

"I sense the dark side here," said Bastila, who desperately trying to avoid showing how uncomfortably cold she was. "It is the same feeling I had when we were exploring the ruins on Dantooine. Whatever race built these places must have used the dark side to power their technology."

"Then that explains what happened to them," Aina replied. "The ruinous power inevitably destroys all who use it."

"You're right, of course. That is the way of the dark side – that all things must end in death. Remember that should you ever face the temptation to use it."

"I am well aware of the danger of the dark side, Bastila," she said, annoyed. "Echani tell many stories of those who succumbed to its power and the chaos they wrought."

"That is another thing I wished to mention. The chieftain of that village was a Force-sensitive, and from that I can assume that other Echani are Force-sensitive as well. The Echani are not newcomers to the Republic, and yet you are the first Echani to join the Jedi Order. I find that odd."

"You assume that any one who can use the Force would rush off to join you at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps they would prefer that their talents be used in the service of their people, rather than submit to the stifling, joyless lives the Jedi would impose on them? I have seen what Master Atris has done with Yusanis' daughters, and I do not envy them their fate."

"Despite what you've said, I'm afraid your people have not truly experienced the destruction wrought by those who have fallen to the dark side. It is unwise to leave Force-sensitive individuals to their own devices. Only the Jedi can provide them with the knowledge and discipline necessary to resist the dark side."

Once more she wanted to hit something, with Bastila being the object of her wrath. Never in her life had she encountered someone so wilfully blind to the truth. Was Bastila unaware of how many Jedi has fallen to the dark side recently? Or perhaps she did realise it, but she was too afraid to admit to herself and to others? It made Aina wonder what Bastila was truly like, not as a Jedi, but as a person. Every word she spoke sounded as though it came straight from some Jedi book of doctrine, and nothing about her seemed genuine or honest.

A woman like Bastila would find few friends on Eshan, she reckoned. In the Echani language, there was a word – kaerha – that was variously translated into Basic as "authenticity," "genuineness," or "verisimilitude," but which most Echani translated as "being true to one's own spirit." It meant, quite simply, behaving in accordance with one's true being, without attempts at dissimulation, concealment, or dishonesty, and the Echani reputation for bluntness of speech was merely a reflection of this concept. One who failed to display kaerha would be seen as someone with something to hide – someone who was attempting to present herself as something other than what she was. That was how Bastila would be seen on this world – someone unwilling to show her true spirit, because she knew that those who looked upon it would not like what they saw.

"Do not presume to lecture me on what my people ought to do," she said quietly, letting a measure of hostility creep into her voice.

As they went deeper into the woods, the air grew colder and the forest around began to change, almost imperceptibly at first. The trees grew twisted and crooked, with black, gnarled roots and branches that reached out like the claws of some monstrous creature. They further they went, the thinner the trees became, and the few that grew in this place were stunted and sickly in appearance. Even the grass refused to grow here, leaving the group with only bare stone to walk across.

But it was more than dead and dying plant life that indicated something was amiss. Aina's ability to sense disturbances in the Force was still greatly underdeveloped, but even she could feel the dark side aura that surrounded her. Perhaps it was because she was on her homeworld, making her more attuned to anything out of the ordinary, or maybe it was merely the sheer strength of the dark side here. It was like a presence, a presence that had no place in the natural order of things.

After nearly half an hour of walking uphill across the other side of the valley, the group at last reached the entrance to the ruins. It was in the middle of a large crag of grey and black rock that rose straight up from the sloping ground, and it was obvious that someone had forced their way in, as the stone was marked with deep cuts and scores.

"These are the marks of a lightsaber," Bastila said. "There's no doubt that Irenaceus and Revan must have come here."

Jolee chuckled. "'Revan'? That's a funny name. Is that one of the Sith we're going after?"

"Revan is dead," Bastila replied. "He was Darth Irenaceus' master, and we believe he was killed by his apprentice, who then became the new Dark Lord of the Sith. But I'm afraid we know little of Darth Revan beyond that."

"People in that village like to call me 'Revan', you know. I don't know much of your language, but they always kept saying that word when talking to me. One day I saw this man hunting in the woods with his son, and when hecatches sight of me he gets angry and starts calling me 'revan' over and over. His kid gets this funny look on his face, like he doesn't know what's going on, and he says something to his dad. Now I've picked up a few Echani words here and there, so I knew he just said 'Father, what's a 'revan'?' And then he points at me and says, 'That, son, is a 'revan'!'"

"It is a vulgar word in our language," Aina explained. "It was most certainly not complimentary. If you refer to Echani by that word, you can expect a fight."

"Hmph, I should have figured they were insulting me. Never once showed me an ounce of hospitality, they did!"

Though she knew better than show fear in front of others, these ruins radiated such malevolence that Aina found herself hesitating before stepping into the gloom. She did not know what she would face inside, but she found herself reflexively gripping the hilt of her lightsaber. They had barely gone more than ten metres into the crypt before the darkness became overwhelming, and the air was mouldy and stale. From somewhere down below she could hear throbbing, droning noise that did not sound the slightest bit natural.

Carth activated a glowrod, driving away some of the darkness that surrounded them, though it only illuminated a few metres in any direction. From the noises he was making, Zaalbar was having the worst time of it; Aina assumed that Wookiees did not care much for being underground.

Without warning, there was a sound like an explosion and the ground shook beneath them, nearly throwing Aina off her feet. Cracks and fissures began appearing in the ceiling, which quickly started to collapse.

"Run!" Carth cried.

They sprinted down the tunnel as the roof gave way entirely with a roaring crash. Through the Force Bastila held a portion of the debris above her head, but the sheer weight of it all soon overwhelmed her. It was enough to buy the group several seconds, however, allowing them to escape the shower of rocks and debris that would have surely crushed them into a bloody pulp.

When the dust finally settled, they looked back to find that the entrance was now behind several metres of rock, and even the power of the Force could not clear a way.

Mission was positively exasperated. "Oh come on!"

"That was deliberate," said Bastila, wiping the dust off her robes. "The Sith must know we're retracing Irenaceus' footsteps, and I imagine they've sent people after us."

Carth examined the heap of rock blocking the tunnel. "More importantly, is there another way out of here?"

"There is only one way to find out," Aina declared, striding ahead into the blackness.