Entry Fifty – Days After Geonosis, Three Hundred and Forty
The number of hidden treasures to be discovered in the underworld is infinite, the surprises endless. Strange unknowns wondrous and terrible both. Most are not easily found, carefully confined to places obscured from outsider eyes.
Darkness below stirs up the status quo. Strange occurrences unfold as a result. Passed along a list of references and hearsay lengthy enough that only the Force could sustain it, I received a suggestion from Mr. Logas that I should meet with a particular personage identified only as a Trifold Priestess. Such an untrustworthy source would not have received my attention save that Major Kayi, of all people, vouched for the relevance of this individual.
I expected a religious figure. That was not wrong, but she was also a highly trained and remarkably capable Force Adept. One with no common origin with the Jedi.
It is still difficult to believe. Almost, though not quite, it would be easier to accept that I merely imagined the whole affair. The existence of such a group on Coruscant, directly beneath the greatest stronghold of the Jedi Order, seems positively ridiculous. Yet if the priestess is truthful, and I cannot find any reason why she would lie, her organization is anything but alone.
I am placed in a tricky position, consequently, for she asked me to refrain from reporting the existence of her people to the Order. I confess I remain unable to quite make up my mind on that account. I really need to search the archives and see if they are already mentioned somewhere. Perhaps this is not a discovery at all, merely the resurgence of something we have forgotten.
The priestess herself is a curious case. She is a Kame, a human-derived species that emerged alongside two sister species, the Kime and Kume, on the same planet. It must have been a very particular set of pressures to produce that outcome.
She claims her priestesses are not warriors, but instead specialize in prophecy and counseling. She offered several ominous statements, derived from visions, relaying the activity of YH-life, though they were hardly the most coherent pieces of discourse. Invocations of 'great cycles,' vergence points, and conflicts at the heart of all life surely make for excellent sermons, but they provide little practical advice. The only true piece of clarity she could provide was a strident declaration that a strike is coming. She believes all YH-life moves at the direction of a single consciousness, and that it is very close to enacting its plans.
She also said that all visions pointed to me as a key figure in halting the blow that is to fall.
Not long ago this suggestion is one I would have discarded immediately. I am not a knight, nor am I particularly strong in the Force. The idea that I hold some potent destiny is absurd.
Yet in this conflict there is no one else. Moreover, if only by default, I have become the leading expert in YH-life. I probed the harvester strands and found a countermeasure, and the enemy has tried to eliminate me. Perhaps, before this is all done, there will be some critical piece of knowledge I must impart. I hope not, I do not think I am ready for such a burden.
In support of this belief, the priestess insisted on instructing me in the use of the Force to make barriers, a trait she claims as a specialty. All attempts to explain that I already knew how to do that fell on deaf ears. I only indulged her because it seemed like a useful sort of distraction. I did not expect to learn anything. Broad projections of the Force have never been something I could master.
Stumbling through the exercises was truly embarrassing. I may only be in the Medical Corps, but I am still a Jedi, and Jedi are not supposed to be inferior to some tiny tradition of obscure Force Adepts in any capacity of the Force.
But now, as my thoughts turn to them again, I have to confess that there is something oddly intuitive about their approach. Rather than pushing a bubble of energy into place, as Jedi do, these priestess seem to discern and bolster pre-existing faults in the fabric of space. There is a certain self-reinforcing efficiency to the method. I suppose I shall have to actually pay attention to the other two lessons I accepted out of diplomatic impulse.
I doubt even this technique, should I somehow master it, will allow me to make any sort of formidable obstruction, but it has been so long since I really had the chance to study the Force that I feel like trying regardless. Just for the chance to make progress, however slight.