Chapter 5: I'm Sensation
32 BBY
Baylan sat and meditated inside his private rooms at the Jedi Temple. The furnishings were sparse: just a sleep mat and writing desk.
Reaching out a hand, Baylan summoned the Force and immersed himself in it, letting it bind him to his surroundings. Sense the life and activity in the courtyard just below his single window. The younglings playing with holoballs, practicing their own Force abilities by keeping the toy in the air. The roots of the Force tree reaching into the soil, where it stood planted in the center of same courtyard.
The sound of footsteps, approaching his quarters at a hurried pace.
Baylan felt his eyes snap open, and he tensed at the anxious and excited presence that was closing in fast. He felt his essence in the energy field brush up against hers.
His fellow Padawan, Gellayria Coxswain, burst into his quarters without knocking. She appeared out of breath, her eyes – as bright blue as a kyber crystal of that color – were dancing with excitement.
"Baylan! Did you hear the rumors?"
Baylan sighed, coming to accept that his meditation was henceforth ruined. "What rumors, Gellayria?"
Gellayria's eyes shone. "That Master Qui-Gon Jinn encountered a Sith Lord on Tatooine!"
Baylan frowned in bemusement. He almost wanted to chuckle, and only just refrained. "Is this the newest fairy tale to go alongside your belief in Peridea, my dear fellow Padawan?" He rose to his feet with an air of self-importance, sweeping out of his quarters and matching his admittedly close friend step for step through the corridors, on a path in roughly the direction to the High Council's chambers.
He and Gellayria had grown close without him really meaning to. Baylan had always been of the opinion that his fellow Padawan and chief rival when they were Initiates was a little quirky and odd. Head in the clouds. Starry-eyed.
As evidenced by what Gellayria prattled next, sounding almost breathless with wonder.
"That's not all, Baylan. They say that Master Jinn has discovered the Chosen One himself. The one who shall bring balance to the Force."
Baylan swayed to a halt for all of a brief moment. His shock flickered ever so briefly onto his face before he and Gellayria resumed walking. At first blush, the promise of a Chosen One would seem like another one of his friend's fairytale, except that there was a prophecy on the very subject. Fairytales, Baylan had no use for – there was almost always no verifiable proof to support them. A prophecy, on the other hand, while it had just as little evidence, was a vision of the future. And visions often came from and were blessed by the Force itself.
"Who is this Chosen One?" Baylan drolled, pretending to sound disinterested.
"A slave boy. Poor," Gellayria chittered. "The other Padawans say that Master Jinn and his apprentice have brought the boy before the Council to be tested." Her eyes were as round as the moons that orbited Coruscant.
"Baylan? Do you suppose they shall consent to his being trained?"
At this, Baylan snorted. "Oh, I should think not. It would all depend on how old the lad is. If he is anything more than a standard year or two cycles old, the Council shan't take him."
Baylan and Gellayria emerged into the bustling thoroughfare of the main atrium. Right away, Baylan noticed how there were clumps of Knights and Masters huddled together, speaking in low tones.
"Where are our brethren? Where are all the Padawan learners?"
"In the library with Master Nu, most of them," Gellayria reported. "My Master wanted me to stay and continue my studies, but…. I just couldn't!" she beamed with excitement.
Baylan side-eyed her with bemusement. Sometimes, he just didn't understand her. If he lived to be 100 year cycles old, he would likely never understand her completely.
The two Padawans now approached the closed doors to the Jedi High Council's chambers. Gellayria pressed her ear to the durasteel. She frowned.
"I can't hear anything."
Baylan struggled not to roll his eyes. "That's because it is durasteel, my dear. Try reaching out through the Force."
Gellayria did so, closing her eyes. Baylan felt her presence in the energy field surge even as she was standing right next to him. He stretched out a tendril of power himself, trying to press his very essence through the durasteel plates, down the long, thin entryway beyond and into the very inner sanctum of the greatest of Jedi.
All at once, he was left swamped by an overwhelming presence, so powerful that it threatened to drag him under and drown him out. He caught a flash of sandy-blonde hair. An image in his mind of a small boy, which passed like a fleeting shadow, too fast for Baylan to even estimate how old the boy was.
Next to him, he felt Gellayria gasp, and then the essence of one of the Masters on the Council brushed up against Baylan's, sensing his presence and startling them both.
In a flash, what little of the Council's chambers that could be penetrated telepathically shut like a steel trap, freezing the pair of curious Padawans out.
Gellayria reeled back, shaken by both what they had seen, and also by how fiercely they had been driven back by those who, it would seem, were now a witness to galactic history.
"We'd better go…." Gellayria whispered. And she scurried back through the atrium, on a path back to the Jedi Archives.
Baylan followed in her wake, his brain spinning. He was shaken by what he had uncovered. It would appear that the emergence of a Chosen One, from a pauper's planet in the Outer Rim was true (he hardly knew anything about the planet Gellayria had spoken of, Tatooine, aside from it being a desert backwater, but he resolved to find out).
Far less certain was the rumor as to whether or not Master Qui-Gon Jinn had encountered and done battle with a Sith Lord. Seeing as what little evidence he and Gellayria had gleaned had not pertained to this rumor, Baylan was still tempted to dismiss this story out of hand as just another one of Gellayria's tall tales, though this was weak. Even so, the Sith had been extinct for a millennium at least, according to Master Tapal! An enemy combatant trained in the Jedi arts, roaming the larger galaxy and daring to challenge a respected Master like Qui-Gon Jinn seemed about as plausible as Purgiils migrating to a planet not of this galaxy.
As for the boy, Baylan hadn't gotten a good look through the Force, but he had to believe from the glimpse he had seen that the lad, Chosen One or not, was too old to be trained. The Jedi Council should reject Master Jinn's petition to have the boy enter the Academy as an Initiate on principle. Forget about being accepted by a Master as a Padawan learner.
Gellayria and Baylan entered the Jedi Archives. They nodded to some of their fellow Padawans and to Master Jocasta Nu, who was patrolling up and down the long rows of tables and in between the towering shelves of holobooks and holograms.
Splitting off from his friend, Baylan perused the shelves until he reached the Ts; everything categorized in the Archives was mostly written in Basic, though translations in languages from Aurebesh to Huttese to Shyriiwook were available for the non-humanoid Jedi who lived and studied here.
Baylan procured every data file that there was on the forgotten desert wasteland and retreated over to a secluded worktable to begin his investigation. He largely kept to himself, hunched over his research.
A blue schematic of Tatooine floated before him. It was land ruled by the Hutt crime lords. The basic economy was fueled by forced labor, slaves being its engine. Oh, to think that the one who would bring Balance to the Force had been born in a place so low! …. A romantic notion, perhaps, one that Gellayria, with her sensibilities, would buy into easily.
The Chosen One…. Balance….
Baylan started as it occurred to him: could the discovery of this child have anything to do with Mortis. Could the Mortis Gods, those omnipotent beings who were said to yield all power and authority over the Force itself, explain the miracle that was this Chosen One?
Baylan scuttled back into the Archives' shelves, procuring every data recorder and holocron that spoke of the Mortis gods: the Father, and the Son, and the Daughter. Taking these treasure troves of knowledge back to his workstation, he studied and analyzed voraciously.
Would these three even permit a Chosen One to walk among them? Wield their power? And if so, what would possess them to endow a mere slave boy, a gutter rat, with this power? If it was believed that the Son served the Dark Side and the Daughter was a handmaiden for the Light, with the Father keeping them perfectly balanced like weights on a scale, then what was the purpose of even needing a Chosen One to achieve Balance?
Baylan knew and harbored a great respect for that which he did not know, those mysteries of the Force that still proved elusive to him.
Yet he was determined to uncover every smooth river stone, leaving none unturned. He was resolved to unlock every mystery of the Force that he could, not so he could achieve mastery over it for his own sake, but to understand that most wonderful of energy fields which shaped these cosmos and bound them together.
He would not daydream of fairytales, as Gellayria did. Baylan only dreamed of the truth. From his own experience and from his Master, he had learned: truth comes to us all in our time, in our turn. And he would have the truth. He would unearth whatever it was that could be verified as truth – and follow that truth wherever it may lead.