Ch. 13: Ajunta Pall: Knight of the Old Republic

After his experience in the cave, Pall requested to go on sabbatical as he felt that he must go study what he found out about. He found the Green Chapel and was able to find a way inside. Inside, Pall found an ancient star map that showed the locations of other planets with similar maps. Pall did not know what species built the Star Map, but whoever it was had built the structure well before the Galactic Republic had even existed. After finding out all he could and taken extensive notes, he left to go find the other star maps.

Ajunta Pall left Dantooine to find the star maps in 6,915 BBY. He plotted the coordinates but came across a problem. One of the planets was not even in charted space, another was in a supposedly dangerous and mostly unknown part of space, another was in known space but in the middle of nowhere, and the last was at least a known planet but was currently under the influence of dark Jedi. Pall sent a message to the Jedi archives on Ossus asking for a detailed report on anything found at the coordinates in question. In the meantime, he plotted to visit the only known planet first.

This planet was Manaan, an ocean world inhabited by an amphibious species known as the Selkath. Recently, a substance known as Kolto was discovered on Manaan. It had healing properties and in an age of constant warfare it could prove to be valuable. For precisely this reason, nearby planets with more massive military and shipping fleets had begun to pander the planet for shipping rights. Large corporations had almost a complete monopoly on the Kolto, and they were determined to keep a firm hold on it as a series of small civil wars were raging all across the outer rim, and a much larger pan-galactic conflict could erupt any day. These companies charged massive prices, and in many locations it was cheaper to just use traditional and barbaric healing techniques like life crystals, acupuncture, magic chanting, leeches, and chemotherapy. To make matters worse, evil and sociopathic Dark Jedi controlled these even more evil and sociopathic large medical corporations.

Luckily for Pall, Manaan was technically a territory of the Republic, even though the native Selkath insisted upon doing business with companies based outside of the Republic. Therefore, Pall could easily go there, but he would have to keep a low profile. Upon arriving on Manaan, he immediately sought out the Republic embassy, as the Republic, in those days, usually set up a type of embassy on any world which it controlled, but on which their presence was not particularly noticeable. The whole reason this process was invented is because the Republic wanted to give smaller worlds, usually in the outer rim, feelings of independence so that they would be less likely to make trouble.

When he reached the embassy, the Republic officers told him that they were engaged in a type of power struggle with the large offworld corporations for control of a direct access to the Kolto. Pall was not interested at first. He asked if they knew of any type of 'Star Map' or anything like that. They said that the Selkath spoke of some type of weird underwater structure near the rift that they harvested Kolto from. They believed that when the land was dry, an ancient race of highly advanced Selkath built it, and they used this small piece of technology as an excuse to propagate rumors that they were one of the first spacefaring species- an obviously bogus legend. The embassy said that unauthorized harvesting of Kolto was illegal and that a submersible in the rift would arouse suspicion. However, they were willing to allow him to borrow one if Pall did something for them.

The problem was that the Dark Jedi often used mind tricks and intimidation to gain the upper hand in business transactions. The embassy was not above engaging in shady activities themselves and said that they are actually waiting for a Jedi to come and launch some type of secret crusade against the 'heathens.' Additionally, there was some valuable data that the Dark Jedi possesed, that the Republic had been trying to obtain for a while, but they could not as the Dark Jedi's force abilities allowed them to sense intruders. Most Jedi would have been appalled at the thought of being used as some type of assassin, but for Pall, the Dark Jedi were a clear and present threat as they denied millions access to affordable medical care and swindled both the Selkath and the Republic out of the Kolto. If they were allowed to continue, their crimes could magnify in severity. Plus, they were Dark Jedi and Dark Jedi are inherently evil. Anyone knows that. Therefore, he would be doing everyone a public service if he killed them. Besides, killing them would be no different from killing them in a state of war as the Republic considered them to be enemies. He agreed as killing them would objectively increase the net happiness of the entire universe.

However, in order to gain access to the Dark Jedi enclave, he would first have to do two things. First, he had to gain the access codes by interrogating a prisoner of war, then he would have to hack into the central Selkath computer to turn off all surveillance. The problems were that the first was considered by some to be unethical depending on what interrogation techniques were used, and the second was highly illegal. None of this concerned Pall who was above all laws as he only answered to his conscience and the Force. Pall spent lengthy periods of time talking with the prisoner who was being very uncooperative. In the end, Pall resorted to invading his mind to look for the information. However, the soldier had been trained to resist mental invasions, and so Pall spent nearly three days slowly eroding his will with drugs and the Force. Pall played back memories of terrible things the man had done in war. The guilt was too much, and he begged for death. Pall told him that the only way to escape was to tell him what he wanted to know. The man did, and Pall released him.

A few hours later, the man went into a coma. At this point, the Republic officers should have seen that Pall was no ordinary Jedi, but they went ahead with the plan. Pall hacked into the Selkath computers and was able to sneak into the Dark Jedi enclave. In the enclave, he encountered four fully trained dark knights and their master. He uses a flurry of force abilities to stun them, then cut down two. A third fell by being pulled into his lightsaber, and a fourth was then thrown against the wall with lethal force. Pall then dueled and cut down the master. However, it was not over. The enclave served as a training facility for the Dark Jedi's force sensitive offspring. Additionally, their non-force sensitive parents were watching them. These parents began shooting at him and he cut them down. The children, who has very rudimentary abilities, witnessed their parents being murdered and they attacked like animals with their training batons. Pall killed them too. He then downloaded the special information and left.

A note on lightsabers and lightsaber combat:

In this era, it was not uncommon for Jedi to use both standard Jedi swords as well as the newer lightsabers. The reasons for this is because lightsabers, in that era, were unreliable and needed to be connected to an extension cord which fed power to the blade from a battery pack worn on the belt or back. This chord was a liability as lightsabers could only function for a few minutes without it. Now, a reader may recall that lightsabers may have been invented by the Rakata and stolen by the Sith, or perhaps it was the other way around, but this is a minority theory. Either way, by 25,400 BBY, the Rakatans had access to lightsaber technology, or as it was known to the Rakata, the 'Forcesaber.' It is also possible that the 'Forcesaber' preceded the Rakata, although this is again a fringe theory.

The predecessors to the Jedi Order originally had access to this technology, but it was lost by the time of the Order's founding. The technology was later redeveloped in a much more primitive form as early as 15,000 BBY although they were not widely used until much later due to their limitations. By the time of the Pius Dea era, (11,987-10,966 BBY) lightsabers (sometimes called 'laser swords' or 'proto-sabers') were used primarily as short lived siege weapons to cut open fortifications quickly like an oversized plasma cutter, but they were also used occasionally in live combat.

The classic 'lightsaber forms' were not developed until much later. In this era, Jedi would usually learn two different styles, one for physical Jedi swords, the other for lightsabers. Lightsabers were on the whole better at deflecting blaster bolts due to their light weight, and that is mainly what they were used for. Swords were used mainly for combat with melee foes. The style developed for lightsaber use was called 'Shi-Cho' while the style traditionally used for sword combat was called 'Niman.' There was a third style called Alchaka which dates back to the very dawn of the Jedi. This style was focused on using the entire body as a weapon; it was highly aggressive and could be used with or without a weapon, although it was highly impractical with the extension cord of an early lightsaber. This style was eventually incorporated into the Teräs Käsi martial art developed by the Followers of Palawa sometime around 24,750 BBY.

However, someone eventually got sick of having to constantly switch back and forth from lightsaber to sword, and the Jedi developed the 'Makashi' fighting style. This fighting style was designed by lightsaber duelists, for lightsaber duelists. It was designed as a way to end the fight with an opponent who used Shi-Cho, although it still was not as effective against heavy swords. As a result, it is likely that Pall was highly skilled in all four early styles.

Now back to the story:

Pall describes the events in his journal. He says that he felt no guilt over killing not just the men but the women and children too. They were enemies as they threatened the very safety of the Republic itself and the untold millions who were affected by their decisions. True, it was a shame that he had to kill everyone, not just the Dark Jedi, but it was not regrettable and therefore he felt no guilt. After all, they had attacked him, and he had defended himself. Everything that he had done was in accord with what he perceived to be the proper behavior of a Jedi master. The Jedi served the Republic, but most importantly, the Force and all living things. The Republic asked him to do it, and he agreed because the Dark Jedi were abrogations in the Force that negatively affected the lives of thousands of innocent beings.

He then boarded a submersible, went to the bottom of the sea, and was able to study the ancient Star Map. He downloaded the data and returned to the surface. He left almost immediately after as the Selkath were on the hunt for a powerful rouge Jedi or Dark Jedi responsible for the deaths of some of their clients.

On the way out, Pall received two transmissions. The first was a huge file containing the information that he had requested from the archives about the unknown planets, the other was a short message alerting him that the Dantooine training facility had been attacked by a rogue Dark Jedi strike team. He immediately went back to Dantooine and found the ruins. Many of the padawans had died, but some had survived. He found Broodica and XoXaan hiding out in the wilderness and tried to comfort them. Both told him that they were leaving the Jedi Order. At first he tried to convince them to change their minds, but they wouldn't budge. XoXaan had decided to take up her family title as Marchioness of Vjun while Broodica, who had come from a much poorer family, was invited to be an adopted member of the household or at least some sort of paid servant. He wished them farewell.

In the aftermath, Pall's thoughts were troubled. As he walked through the rows of graves and the torched remains of the enclave, he realized that the Dark Jedi had done the very same thing that he had done on Manaan. For the first time, he felt guilt. What if he had acted incorrectly? He writes that both the Jedi and the Dark Jedi believed in what they were doing and both had reasons. He looked into the history of the conflicts and found that both parties saw themselves as reformers, and yet, the Dark Jedi were clearly the evil ones. After all, they did not care about the lives of innocents. Pall and the other Jedi killed, but only to protect those innocents. That was the difference. And yet, looking at the carnage they both caused, it was hard to believe.