Data Log 11247 — Journal 0023
G.H.C.-001-Jedi Artifact
Dr Mary Au'Rona
There is a specific inclusion within the Jedi artifact designated GHC-001, that regards the Prophecy of the Chosen One in a decidedly negative light. There's no way to extract every single file on the prophecy, but in general they all tell the same story from a different narrator's perspective. One of these records however, stands out singularly: that of a Grandmaster and Champion of the Jedi Order named Mace Windu.
This part of the journal will focus on his lesson.
Master Windu hails from a human tribe known as the Korunnai of the Haruun Kal system and has a decidedly oppositional stance on the One Who Would Bring Balance. He states: "It is just as likely that [the Prophecy of the Chosen One] is a relic from a long-lost civilization, long-since fulfilled and forgotten, as it is a vision of our future."
As proof of his point, he submits the story of the Baalanra, or "the One of Balance" in his tribe's tongue. He calls it: "The Hope of Haruun Kal."
Haruun Kal was the most inhabited planet within the Al'Har system in the Mid Rim. Master Windu's homeworld was a volcanic world with a harsh climate and nearly unbreathable atmosphere. At the highest points of the volcanic mountains and plateaus, life found a foothold and nature took care of the rest. In these highlands the human tribes called the Korunnai first settled.
These tribes were nomadic hunter-gatherers. They worshiped gods who spoke to them through great, glowing crystal formations they discovered in the darkest recesses of their world. The lowlands of Haruun Kal were too corrosive to sustain anything other than spoliation. But these plagued regions called to the warriors of the Korunnai, challenging them to prove their strength and fortitude, to seek their destiny. They were rewarded with shards of those magical crystals and renown throughout the tribe.
The lore-tellers of the Korunnai said that it was in a time of peace and prosperity that the prophecy was made. A seer told of a dream of the sky burning. From the flames the Baalanra would breathe new life into Haruun Kal. Very basic savior prophecy, but good enough to start a whole new level of cultural identity for their race.
The credit of this legend is unsubstantiated, in no small part by time and lack of sources. No matter the prophecy's origin, Haruun Kal would never forget the words. Master Windu almost winces at telling this part of the tale; he does not appear to enjoy the artistic flourishes natural to a storyteller.
Everything changed for the Korunnai when a Jedi Starcruiser, bound for Republic space after the conclusion of the Mandalorian Wars, charted a shoddy hyperspace route and crashed to their world. the cruiser carved through the landscape, buried down deep in the lowlands and never rose again. The Republic recorded it as a catastrophic failure, even going so far as to close down an old hyperspace byway that connected to the predecessor of the Hydian Way, to avoid such accidents in the future. The Jedi, the cruiser, and its crew were never heard from.
The Korunnai tell the rest of the tale very differently.
The Jedi and some of their crew survived the crash and quickly ingratiated themselves with the natives. They stripped the wrecked cruiser for scrap, but found the unique atmosphere of Haruun Kal was rapidly corroding the salvaged materials. So the Korunnai used an ambergris resin from the resilient portaak leaf to guard against the corrosive effects of their atmosphere.
The Jedi survivors and the Korunnai learned from each other and crafted a sprawling civilization. Nomadic tribes became more sedentary and their Force-rich progeny began to build high temples and complex citadels and cities. In time, the bloodlines would establish a royal hierarchy that ruled Haruun Kal for generations. The mightiest warriors of the highlanders were blessed by the Force and trained in the ways of the Jedi without owing allegiance to the Republic or the Order.
Master Windu believed that the Jedi presence, and their resultant breeding, sent Haruun Kal too far out of balance. There would be a reckoning for their reckless and unwieldy Force growth. It came in the form of another crash-landing; another incident in the atmosphere that pulled a starcruiser out of the sky and again into the lowlands of the savage world. But this was no Republic warship, it was a dreadnought of the Sith Empire.
The dark lords returned from their exile in uncharted space to launch a massive invasion of the Inner Core and nearby Mid Rim systems in 4056 BSI. Warlords of the Sith Empire blitzed the Republic's every means of production. They seized many resource-rich worlds and plotted the second phase of their great war.
Haruun Kal was caught in the middle of the fighting by accident, by all accounts. Sith survivors of their wrecked ship, wasted no time proving that they were unwelcome guests on the peaceful planet. So the natives defended themselves, slaughtered the invaders and thought nothing more of them or the wars being waged in the stars.
The Sith Empire however, did not ignore their lost cruiser the way the Jedi Order had hundreds of years prior. The Sith came with their legions and their armada decimated the surface of Haruun Kal. The highland tribes were forced from their cities and returned to the nomadic ways of their ancestors for their very survival.
I have yet to collect an Old Sith Empire record of this conflict, so it is difficult to say with certainty why they committed such resources to capturing an inhospitable world. It is possible they believed it was a secret Jedi base, or a world rich in kyber. It may have been the discovery of portaak ambergris and a desire to monopolize its use. Master Windu also suggests that the fallen Sith lord in the initial crash was someone of great import to their efforts and worthy of revenging.
Whatever the reason, the Sith took control of Haruun Kal and held it for the entirety of the Great Sith War. The Korunnai waged a guerrilla war against the Sith hordes, which resulted in the enslavement of their world.
A dark lord named Darth Peele organized the surviving Korunnai into slave colonies. The Sith lord and his death squads set the strong to work, and incinerated the old and sickly. It was said that the most impressive tribesmen and women were taken off-world to serve more nefarious ends. Those that remained were tortured and starved, cut off from their families and their society. Their taskmasters drove them to tear down their cities and temples, and strip the landscape of all its beauty and culture, to fund the Sith war effort.
Darth Peele was impressed by the harsh yet resilient ecosystem of his new world and set to extracting its resources. The flora and fauna of Haruun Kal were naturally impermeable to some of the harshest conditions. Domesticated akk dogs who lived alongside the Korunnai for a hundred generations, were enslaved overnight to the Sith and sent to enact their dark will throughout the galaxy. Portaak, brassvine, thyssel and glass-fern were exotic anywhere they were exported and invaluable to the Sith coffers.
Through all the tragedy, the Korunnai endured. They never capitulated, never gave up and gradually accepted their fate of endless suffering. They held on to no hope, only life. Survival was their only means of resistance.
Then, to make matters worse, Darth Peele ordered the mining of the festering lowlands. The Korunnai were spent by their newest task. Haruun Kal's atmosphere made modern mining impossible because portaak resin lost its efficacy under extreme heat or under tremendous friction. They would have to manually dig into the most toxic regions of their world.
They worked in chains, toiling through acid rain, sleet and hail. Amidst scorching summer and freezing winter, together to the death. Many, many died.
Master Windu did not mince words. The atrocities visited upon his people needed to be recounted—he argued through clenched jaw—lest their memory fade from consciousness. The accounts he offers are numerous and horrid. Many were redacted by the Republic, but those things are never as permanent as bureaucrats believe.
I have not the heart, the stomach, nor the will to recount Master Windu's emotional retelling of the hardships the Korunnai suffered. However they will be included within this journal's appendices for posterity.
It was during this time that the lowlands of Haruun Kal were developed around the mining operations. The stripped highlands were left abandoned to rot, while the low valleys became densely populated for the first time ever.
Master Windu argues that when the Korunnai were dying out quicker than they could reproduce, that the prophecy of the Baalanra resurfaced. A soothsayer, one of the last surviving lore-keepers on the beleaguered world, began speaking openly of a vision. He saw "the One of Balance" approaching. The Baalanra would overthrow the taskmasters and expel the Sith from Haruun Kal forever.
It spawned from honest desperation and a good measure of ingenuity. The Korunnai were too weak and most were so far removed from their old lives that they had not the wherewithal to question the wise man's prophecy. Each time he told the story it came with a little more detail and added richness that only increased its value to the downtrodden tribesmen.
Hope blossomed as more of the survivors heard his tale. The Korunnai were uplifting each other, and arguing about things like dignity and the value of labor. Even the dark lord noted a profound sense of communal purpose surging through the colonies. It was completely intolerable behavior. Darth Peele was cunning and saw the seeds of an insurrection in this renewed hope.
He sent his death squads into the camps to strike their homes and burn their food stores. Anything that resembled an altar was desecrated and soiled. Then they dragged the old soothsayer out of his home, through the streets to the capital. The Sith slapped him in chains and paraded him before the many slave camps along the way. Darth Peele gloated at his power and told the Korunnai that their suffering would sustain him, even swell his power in the Force.
Yet the shaman refused to cry out or beg for mercy. He suffered silently as the dark lord reveled in delight. Darth Peele even took to claiming he was the Baalanra himself, trying to steal the hope right out of the hearts of the tribes. By the end of his tour, the dark lord was nearly manic, he was so high on his own victory.
He brought the tired, old wise-man to have him beaten in the public square. The warlord reveled in the torture and truly believed he was achieving a monumental victory that the Korunnai would never recover from. Peele himself struck the final blow that would claim the life of the noble soothsayer.
In the end, the only word the elder ever uttered was: "Balawai."
The Sith lord incorrectly believed it was a concession, and blinded by his perceived triumph declared it the dawn of a new age on Haruun Kal. But the Korunnai knew better.
Every one of them looked on in silent reverie; unblinking, unmoving, as the Sith lord beat and brutalized an old man then called it a great victory. They all, young and old, knew that the shaman named him not Baalanra, but Balawai, or "low-one" in Basic (with an emphasis on being from a low place and never leaving it).
The Korunnai's new sense of community turned to unified, unbridled rage.
The ensuing insurrection and following conflict was terrible and bloody. Darth Peele and his minions were executed and buried in the lowest parts of the deepest mines in the lowlands, then sealed over. The Sith idols were stripped down. Their technology salvaged to found a new, peaceful Korunnai society in the highlands where they belonged. Haruun Kal lost all taste for warfare following the conflict with the Sith.
Those stranded colonizers who were not executed or slaughtered in the revolt, remained in the lowland cities and built their own society. The Balawai of the lowlands and the Korunnai of the highlands maintained parallel existences, neither at peace nor open enmity, but in balance for the nearly 4000 years between the Great Sith War and the Clone Wars.
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The obscure nature of a prophecy tends to insulate it from clear explanations or decisive conclusions. Master Windu expressed his disdain for this fact more than once and I tend to agree with him. There is no way to check the authenticity of the prophecy of the Baalanra because the Republic did not officially bring the sparsely populated world into the fold until the tail end of the Clone Wars. Also, the Galactic Empire went to great lengths destroying cultural history and lore from its colonized worlds. So to date, Master Windu's is the only credible source for the Hope of Haruun Kal.
Nevertheless, Master Windu asserts that the prophecy of the Baalanra is only one of uncountable stories that seem follow the same basic guidelines. He was ahead of his time from a xenopsych standpoint. Indeed every species of higher intelligence must go through a trial of survival against hope. Some species don't survive a prophecy, while others are changed so significantly they're impossible to recognize. It would appear that the Korunnai of Haruun Kal fall between these two parameters.
Master Windu is on record as being a skeptic, to put it conservatively, of the Prophecy of the Chosen One: would he fabricate certain events within the story of Haruun Kal to undercut the validity of the Prophecy? And, as if that weren't maddening enough of a qualification: would someone else—say a Senator, or Jedi Master, or even a Grand Chancellor turned despot—seek to alter Master Windu's record to achieve some discrediting end?
As a disclaimer: hypothetically speaking, it is entirely possible that Mace Windu fabricated the entire story, or certain key events for the express purpose of advancing a propagandist agenda. I do not believe that to be the case because I did a little digging on the man. He is mentioned more than once in the archives for his unwavering commitment to justice and truth. He was Champion of the Order after stepping down as Grandmaster, citing his failure to avoid the open conflict between the Republic and Separatists as his own personal failure.
Also, it bears noting that the purpose of this story resides so far outside the guidelines of a proper Jedi's education. As evidence though, I submit an added record on Mace Windu the person, not the Jedi Knight:
Mace was saved as an infant from an enormous fire that engulfed his village and killed his family. A group of anthropologists found and brought him to a nearby Korunnai tribe for safe-keeping. But his powers were too great for his tiny body to control, so the Jedi Sentinels took him in.
When he returned to his homeworld decades later as a Jedi Master and General in the Republic army, it was to chants of "Baalanra!" The priests ordained him and the children danced and sang for their savior from the stars, offering him gifts in exchange for his blessings. And while they reveled in their messiah, the traditionalists cursed his name in the shadows.
Mace was caught between the ends of their social order and faced the very worst that zealous belief has to offer, made worse to see such pettiness in his own people. Especially such a peaceful and honorable race.
Master Windu was the most vocal doubter of Anakin Skywalker's meteoric rise to fame and glory. Mace described his own experiences with prophecy as crushing, disenchanting and heartbreaking. How much heavier was that weight when it applied to a massive religion, or the fate of the entire Galaxy?
Before the Great Purge, Mace made sure to record that not everyone in the Order believed in the One. Something, or perhaps someone, inspired Master Windu to record this history of his people in protest of fulfilling prophecy.
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