Author Note
I've been asked a fair few times to write a Jedi self-insert story and while surfing the Net I came across a CYOA by Latkric586 that I thought looked rather good. My setup might not have gotten everything right. I decided against having contacts, a padawan or a clone regiment because it kept things similar and worked better for the character.
This story will jump around the timeline a little so keep an eye on the date as otherwise, things might get confusing. I might even do a sequel if there's some interest and have the MC try to live a life while avoiding the Inquisitors and Vader.
The prologue serves as a summary of the MC's life and therefore spoilers for chapters yet unwritten.
Jedi: Guardian of the Republic - Prologue
"Once you start down the dark path, forever it will dominate your destiny, consume you it will" - Yoda
Kashyyyk. 19BBY
My name during my second life was Thade Bugan. I was a human, a Jedi Knight and very nearly a victim of Order 66.
I picked myself up off the floor and winced in pain. I placed one of my hands where it hurt and did my best to use my Force powers to heal myself. When the pain faded and I was able to move the hand came away covered in blood. I wouldn't die here I'd gotten too good at healing myself and I had the feeling that whoever or whatever had sent me to this galaxy wasn't done with me yet.
With my connection to The Force, I was able to do more than heal myself. I was able to reach out and get a feel for what had happened and where I was now. I could taste blood in my mouth. I could smell smoke, the charred flesh of Wookie and clones, and the burned wiring of countless droids that had fallen in battle.
I managed to pick myself up and find some sort of shelter so that I could focus more on healing myself. For that, I would need to open myself up to The Force and enter a trance. This wasn't something you wanted to do while you were out in the open.
Not that I was able to focus on healing myself for very long once I did find shelter as the Jedi across the galaxy were dying. I could feel it going on and I'd almost fallen victim to Order 66. Which is a lot more dramatic and meaningful when you're living it than seeing it on a TV screen.
People I knew, a few I cared somewhat about, were being murdered by those they trusted. I wondered after I came back to my senses if Padme had been feeling something like that when she died. If I'd been more attached to the Jedi I'd felt dying then I would be worse off right now.
Had she been feeling Anakin's agony as he truly become Darth Vader? The energy field known as the Force connected all living things regardless if you had the means to use that energy so it might not be as silly an idea as I'd once thought.
I'd known that it was coming since my earliest days in the Jedi Temple when I'd begun my second life after my first death due to that virus back on my home planet. I'd known that the Jedi would be almost totally wiped out by Order 66.
Of course, I had tried to stop it by suggesting that Senator and then Chancellor Palpatine was not someone to be trusted, but the arrogant Jedi Master did not listen. After all, how can anyone fool Master Yodo who after the Blockade of Naboo met with the men a few times a week?
I'd given up and tried to live a quiet life in the temple. I'd known that until the Clone Wars started that was a good chance that my time spent as a Jedi would be rather peaceful, although it hadn't been, and I'd thought about running to the far reaches of the galaxy, finding a rock to hide under, and then staying there.
It hadn't been that simple. I'd had nowhere to go and very early on in my career as a poor excuse for a Jedi I'd gotten involved with the Hutts. After that, it would have been very unwise for me to leave the Order and very early on during the Clone Wars I'd killed one of Dooku's favourite minions. So going it alone would have been unwise.
Ironically it had been safer for me to stay with the clones up until the end because they'd been living shields between myself and the people who wanted me dead. Bounty Hunters are rarely stupid enough to go after someone whose part of the Jedi Order the galaxy is a big place and there's a lot going on so it wasn't as if the Sith had been able to devote too much to arranging my demise.
At some point, I'd just accepted my fate. Years of war and resisting the tempting call of the dark side wears away at a person. But as I came out of my hiding space, the burrow of some animal driven away by the fighting I realised that things had changed.
The clones who'd turned on me. I'd beaten them and if I covered my tracks if I made sure the bodies of the clones were destroyed so that no one would know I'd killed them, then the new empire might just assume I was dead. I'd have to destroy this place before finding a way off-world.
I had my own Jedi Inspector, it was small and hard to detect, with the droid arm still going, it had not yet been shut down, Anakin was even now on his way to handle that, I could escape the chaos still going on. I'd have to ditch the ship later, but unlike most spacecraft, its size my fighter had a hyperdrive.
The worlds controlled by the new Empire and the Hutts would never be friendly to me, but they weren't all the galaxy. I'd trained to be a warrior I knew how to fight without a lightsaber I could take on a new identity and become a bounty hunter, or mercenary, or a pilot.
I realised that I could travel to Mustafar and make sure Skywalker doesn't survive long enough for the Emperor to find him. But no it was Anakin Skywalker who brings balance to the Force by killing the Emperor on the second Death Star. Although that wasn't the end of Palpatine.
A wave of pain travelled through my body, making me realise that I was far from ready to take anyone on even a burn victim. Best not to get involved in those events. The Force would balance itself in time and I was free to go and live my own life.
It hadn't been my own life for a very long time. I'd been reborn on Courscant I assumed because I knew for certain was that I'd been left at the Jedi Temple and that since I was very strong with The Force I'd been taken in. Had I shown my connection to the Force from a young age and been feared by my second set of parents or had they thought it best to give me up because they couldn't care for a Force Sensitive child?.
As I grew up in the Jedi Temple the Masters had soon realised that I was far smarter than my peers. Mostly because I'd already had a basic education and partly because I'd become smarter in my second life.
With education being a breeze I'd focused on becoming a warrior because I'd known of the wars to come, and I'd been very good at it. I was agile and tough, I could enhance my body with the power of the Force.
But there had always been my fear. My fear of the future of the war to come that I'd not really expected to survive. It was always there distracting me and if that wasn't bad enough I'd never fully been able to toe the line with the Council. I'd always been a bit of a rebel and it had led to me getting some very dull tasks over the years which only stoked my resentment and made me more stubborn about refusing to see the Force as the other Jedi did.
I didn't think that avoiding the dark side was the wisest course. I believe that the light and dark needed to be balanced within us just like the ancient Jedi once had. This was not an opinion that won me any supporters among the ranks of Master.
If not for the war I doubted that I'd ever have been made a Jedi Knight I should have been shipped off to one of the dumping grounds for those who never got to be proper Padawans. I could have ended up being a farmer as part of the Jedi Service Corps and maybe that would be bearable.
That never happened because after the Battle of Naboo things had changed with the Order and the Masters were worried that the Sith would try to recruit those Force Senstives who didn't drink the Jedi Kool-Aid. So I'd gotten a Master and be sent off on missions that showed clearly that the Republic was dying from a thousand cuts and no amount Jedi would be able to keep sowing up those wounds.
Over the years I'd mastered many uses of the Force, not just the powers that aided in fighting. I had visions of the future, I could sense danger, heal wounds and move things with my mind.
My combat training had gone beyond the use of sabres. I'd learned to fight hand to hand, with knives and blasters. Not normal Jedi behaviour, but I was far from a normal Jedi.
I'd built my own lightsaber. The first had been a simple blue blade, and when that weapon had been damaged during a fight with a dark side user. I'd killed him and taken his weapon as a trophy.
This was not something the Jedi approve of people doing, so I'd ended up using the sabre's crystal to forge my second sabre which I ended up using most of the time. That weapon always served as a reminder that the Sith could be defeated.
My original crystal was destroyed but I found a new one during my explorations of the ruins of an ancient Jedi's final resting place. That crystal went into my spare lightsaber because I can't understand why anyone wouldn't keep a spare sabre, and the two crystals, which seemed to have some life of their own, seemed fine with each other.
The Sith make their kyber crystals bleed in some sense that's why they are red, and what is injured can be healed. Healed crystals made a blade of white, and they are very rare among the Jedi. My sabre, which I should throw away but never could, was normal enough looking, a mostly silver cylinder, only mine was booby-trapped, should anyone other than me try to use the results would be shocking.
Then had come Genosis and I'd survived that. That had to be the work of some higher power because it had been a slaughter. I'd been knighted after that battle as my master had died and they needed warriors on the frontlines.
I'd devoted myself to the path of Jedi Guardian, putting my training in the Lightsaber combat forms to use (I favoured form five and I was willing to shoot someone if needs be) and I tried to actually fight the war that I had prepared myself for. I'd even taught myself how to use Force Lightning, although that had been partly to fulfil my own desire. Besides, there was no point in being a space wizard you couldn't fling lightning from your fingertips.
Once I'd become a knight I'd been given my own Jedi Starfighter that had been upgraded in a few ways and then sent off to fight in a war that was now coming to an end. I'd know that when Courscant had been attacked.
I'd been part of the task force that had been looking into the strange behaviour of some of the clones and we'd gotten a lead that hinted the Dark Lord was on the planet. I'd managed to steer the investigation towards the Jedi discovering that Palpatine was the Dark Lord when Episode 3 started. Again I'd felt as if something or someone had been working against me.
It didn't matter now. Palpatine had won and I was going into hiding. Yet I couldn't help thinking that I could have done something different. As I made my way to my starfighter, hoping that it was still intact I couldn't help thinking back, going over my second life.
As I walked towards the setting sun, and hopefully a means of escape. I asked myself something. Had I been doomed to reach this point because as a Jedi I was just a puppet of the Force or had some Cosmic Entity used me for its amusement? Was a free now to find my own path? Only time would tell.