Ajunta Pall: Knight Errant

Next, Pall made his way to the planet that would eventually come to be known as Tatooine. On the way, he had many conversations with Muur, who explained to him more about his life story. When Pall neared Tatooine, he had to try a series of short jumps to eventually come close enough to land. Once again, he used the Force to locate the precise location of the Star Map, and he guided the ship to land there.

He landed in the middle of a vast ocean of desert. Not too far away was a series of crags in which the map was located. He and Muur walked through the desert, and when they arrived closer to the crags, they saw that there was some type of strange metal structure standing above a hole in the ground. Pall could sense a weak dark side presence coming from inside, and so he and Muur creeped around the edges looking inside. At the bottom of the hole, something seemed to be alive and moving, but he could not get a good enough view. They eventually were able to scale a small ladder leading up to the top of the structure. Apparently, the facility was some type of water generation machine with a couple of small rooms attached. Moisture would be sucked out of the air and collected. In the living space, he found extensive notes and journals about biology, alchemy, and the Force rituals. (To see more of the history of Tatooine, turn to Appendix B in the back of the book)

Not long afterwards, the owner of the hut, an old lady described as having weatherbeaten features, returned. She demanded to know who they were and they told her their story. She introduced herself as Sorzus Sanguinius Syn, another ex Dark Jedi. She was part of the second or third generation of Jedi who left the Order to join the heretics, who by then had become almost completely dark side oriented. She explained that after the last Alsakan Conflict, her forces had been decimated. She went into self-imposed exile to escape the Jedi and ended up in an old Dark Jedi research station on Tatooine. There, she spent her time working on improving dark side rituals and alchemy, as well as studying the strange forms of life on the planet, such as the monstrous Sarlacc over which the research station was built. Pall, who had previous experience studying alchemy, is greatly interested in her work, however Muur expressed his disgust.

Muur thought that she was the prefect example of just what went wrong. After all, Muur and the rest of the first generation heretics wanted simply to reform the Order, whereas Syn wanted to destroy it. Additionally, for Muur, sorcery and alchemy were little more than methods used to construct trinkets whereas a true Jedi would work to increase all their powers and abilities. Syn mocked this attitude by saying that all his power is moot as through the use of sorcery and alchemy, she hardly had to fight at all. Instead, she could turn her victims minds inside out while trapping them in webs of dark side energy. While neither knew it at the time, these two would become the archetypes for the Sith Sorcerer and Sith Warrior classes in the new Sith Empire. While Muur would later become a renowned sorcerer and alchemist in his own right, perhaps the second best amongst the original Sith Lords, his powers were usually limited by and to talismans and amulets. He prefered to practice all of his abilities, primarily those that would enhance his combat prowess, and as a result, Syn was always ahead of him in alchemy and sorcery. On the other hand, Syn prefered to focus exclusively on her arcane powers and on studying rather than acting. As a result, if she was ever faced with a foe who could not be overcome by sheer force ability, she would be forced to retreat.

Pall listened to their disagreements carefully, but after a while he silenced them and asked Syn if she had seen the Star Map. She answered in the affirmative and led them there. Pall downloaded what he needed and left. On the way back to the research station, Pall asked Syn, to the slight dismay of Muur, if she would mind journeying with them. At first Pall had wanted to leave her on Tatooine, as she was very much a Dark Jedi, but she was no danger to him presently and Pall was hopeful that she and her knowledge could help reform the Order, maybe even she would come back to the light. She agreed and they left Tatooine as a group.

Pall had become convinced that the Jedi Order needed to be saved. He did not call himself a Dark Jedi, or even some type of grey Jedi, instead he thought that he could fix the Order and make it more open to those with different beliefs and skills. Looking at history, this plan was hopelessly naive, and Pall knew it. But he thought it was the only shot they had at healing the Schism, and if there was something they could do, no matter how impractical, Pall was morally obligated to do it. However, Pall's conscience was conflicted. He justified the war and his own killing of Dark Jedi because he believed that they were a grave threat and it was the morally just thing to stop them as they were endangering lives. Yet, the Dark Jedi were people too, many of whom were motivated by their own beliefs of right and wrong. Most importantly, all they wanted was a more free and less hypocritical Order. By sympathizing with them, Pall had to open himself to the possibility, however small it might be, that the Jedi Order was in the wrong. If the Jedi Order was in the wrong, then all the people who had trained him had lied to him. They were responsible for the senseless slaughter, not the Dark Jedi. And this was a conclusion Pall could not accept.

These thoughts occupied his mind as he made his way to the final planet: Korriban. While in orbit, he immediately felt the press of the dark side. As a result, he could not sense the precise location of the Star Map. He contemplated leaving, but they had already made it so far. He eventually convinced himself to touch down on the surface next to the Valley of Golg, which could be seen from orbit. Before exploring, they took many supplies and ration packs.

Over fifty years before Pall's arrival, Korriban had experienced one of its most violent civil wars in centuries- and that's saying something. After the culmination of this war, a Sith king named Dathka Graush ended up ruling all of Korriban. He continued to wage war against all rebels until entire populations were decimated. He used the abundance of corpses to experiment in alchemy, creating untold horrors. However, Graush was eventually assassinated, and one of his sons took over after hunting down the traitors. Because of the constant warfare, the Sith were in a state of disorder with many tribes having little loyalty to the king. Another interesting thing to note is that the technology of this era of Sith history seemed mostly primitive, but there were some modern devices. However, the Sith did not seem to understand the workings of some of their most advanced pieces of technology and instead used it without ever innovating or changing.

Pall and his companions were captured by one of these wandering bands of Sith. They surrendered instantly, hoping that the Sith would know the location to the Star Map. However, the language barrier proved to be a challenge. Pall and Syn were eventually able to develop a way to learn their language via telepathy, but this was only after weeks of using nothing but hand signals and grunts as a primitive form of communication.

The Sith did not seem quite sure what to think of them. They treated them with suspicion, but did not provoke them. Instead they let them tag along as they made their way closer to the center of Sith civilization. It is likely that the Sith wanted to present them to their king. The Sith potentially saw them as the gods come down due to their strange appearances and powerful Force abilities, but they were still uneasy. Guards constantly watched the prisoners, but in all, they were treated more like guests than anything. The three former Jedi learned a lot about Sith culture and history, and they were even able to learn much about their sorcery and other Force abilities by studying a decrepit holocron that the tribe carried around.

One of the Sith in particular caught the attention of the visitors. He was the son of the chieftain and was said to have incredible force potential. His name was Tulak Hord. His power and curiosity stuck out to Pall in particular who spent long hours talking with him. Pall told him about the wider galaxy, and Hord told Pall about life as a Sith. After days of hearing Pall's incredible stories, he wanted more than anything to leave Korriban and explore. Pall was not too thrilled about letting a deranged but powerful native loose in the Galaxy, but the boy had grown on him. Perhaps he could even reform him and he could be part of a new Jedi Order.

Pall had been thinking about the Jedi a lot. He had enjoyed his job as a teacher and was thinking more and more about how great it would be to create his own reformed Order, although he knew this was a pie in space fantasy. However, Pall agreed to take the boy offplanet when the Hord said that he knew about the Star Map. Hord told him about a place known as the 'Valley of the Sleeping Kings,' an ancient burial ground for great Sith kings. According to Hord, in this valley was a strange artefact that he had seen as a young child. When he had approached the artefact, he claimed that it had opened up like a giant holocron. The young boy did not know what to make of it, and left, but he remembered its strong dark side aura.

Pall was interested as this sounded exactly like a Star Map. The boy said that he could convince his dad to take a detour to the Valley, but only if Pall agreed to take him off planet. Pall considered a fair deal to be more efficient than trying a mind trick on such powerful natives, so he agreed. They eventually arrived at the valley in which Hord showed them the location. In the cave in which the Map was contained, Pall had to fight through a bunch of creatures that Syn pointed out to be very similar to Tatooine's desert Wraids. This interested Pall who was convinced that whoever had built the Maps had had a considerable effect upon the development of their vasel planet's ecosystems. The former Jedi downloaded what they needed and planned to leave.

However, the Sith chieftain did not want to let them leave. Hord suggested that he could kill his father and take his place. That gave Pall more second thoughts. However, Pall suggested they sneak out quietly after filling up their water canteens and packing food. They did just that and after days of traversing the desert and crags, they were half-dead when they reached the ship. They quickly boarded and left the planet; all around, the trip had been successful.

By now, Pall had all five Star Maps. He put together their data and it came up with a series of coordinates that were deep in the heart of the unknown regions. However, Pall was hesitant to set off just yet. He had something else on his mind. Pall was determined to come to the truth about the history of the Jedi and so he set a course for Lettow.