A/N: So I'm going through and giving this fic a long-overdue (second) makeover, and the process will be a lot messier than it was on my account on AO3, because I'm not done. So as chapters update here, later chapters will make less and less sense as far as consistency and characterization goes. I am essentially rewriting EoLaD. I'll leave notes on the fic summary to say where I am on the updated version.
If you are just discovering this fic, welcome. If you read it a long time ago and are returning to it, welcome back. It's about to get a whole lot bigger and more involved. Some notes on the overall story and its progression:
1. This fic largely follows the video game storyline of the 2003 Knights of the Old Republic RPG. It eventually goes AU as far as Legends are concerned, but my issues with canon have more to do with the novels and Old Republic MMO material than most of what happens in the game itself. I don't like where Legends goes with who Revan was, why they did what they did, or what eventually happened to them. So:
2. Revan was a woman in this story. She was not in and of herself nonbinary, but she is often referred to with they/them pronouns when other characters describe her because she did purposely present a genderless, species-nonspecific image during and after the Mandalorian Wars for PR reasons. This presentation may or may not have included body modification garments under her robes, because my Revan is in fact very obviously female outside of uniform, although tall. Aithne Moran, the identity the Jedi constructed for her after Malak fired on Revan's flagship, identifies as unambiguously female and heterosexual.
3. My Revan is also ten years younger than Revan is speculated to be in Legends. I did this for two reasons. First, because the Revan who split the Order is said to have been "young," and I wanted Anakin Skywalker, prodigious young, not JFK young. Second, because if I HAD made Revan a dude, the canon game romance with Bastila, who is VERY young, still a Padawan and in her early twenties at the latest, would've been really creepy if Revan was thirty-eight in KotOR. So, no. Carth's thirty-eight. Revan's twenty-eight or twenty-nineish to begin with.
4. There are no True Sith or secret Sith Empire that was the "true" reason Revan "fell" to the Dark Side, or used the Dark Side in order to conquer and prepare the Republic. First off, that makes Revan way too perfect and genius to believe. Second, I hate, hate, HATE the canon story of what happens to Revan in the Old Republic Legends timeline. Give the poor, broken-down former Sith Lord a break. So, in this continuity, Revan is given the dignity of falling to the Dark Side on her own, through a combination of moral shortcuts in the Mandalorian Wars, arrogance, and the corrupting influence of war that has been shown in canon Star Wars materials to have a bad effect on Force users. Also the Star Forge itself. Revan also gets a chance after the KotOR storyline is complete. (Just a chance, though! She doesn't escape the trauma of everything she's been through without a mental scar.)
5. This fic has more concern with the youth of KotOR than it did before or the source material has. Over a decade out from my teens myself, I now realize that Mission and Dustil are both children who go through horrific trauma over the course of the Jedi Civil War, and whose experiences deserve more than a shrug and a "They'll probably be okay." So, we're going to think about Mission's abandonment by her guardian at the age of ten or eleven and her adolescence as a most likely homeless youth from a frequently fetishized species in a horrible, gang-ridden slum. We're going to talk about Dustil violently losing his entire family at around the same age, about his kidnap, brainwashing, and Stockholm Syndrome as a captive of a bunch of psycho, murdering Force users. We're going to acknowledge that no one just gets over seeing their entire homeworld burn, let alone a child.
6. In a similar vein, we're going to pay attention to the fact that everyone on Ebon Hawk has their own story and struggles, and they're all worthy of consideration. Carth moving past a tunnel-vision focus on a self-destructive revenge is no less important than Revan's story. Bastila's transcending the Jedi dogma? Juhani finding her confidence in the same Order? Mission's search for the meaning of family? Zaalbar's definition of his lifedebt while indebted to one of the most capable beings in the galaxy? Canderous's shattered culture and missing purpose? Jolee's redemption as a teacher? All important.
If you're with me for any of that, thanks. I'll probably still take forever.
LMS
