Disclaimer: Lucasfilm, Bioware, Disney, et al. and whoever they sell the rights to next own Star Wars and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I write this for fun and not for any monetary gain.
Chapter 19: The Shadowlands
After a long journey in a basket operated by the Wookiee Gorwooken, Revan, Bastila, and their Wookiee escort found themselves in the dark and depressing Shadowlands of Kashyyyk. The scenery was awful enough, but that was not all the Shadowlands had to offer—disturbing animal noises filled the background, punctuated with occasional louder noises hinting at something large and deadly. Lesser beings would have jumped back into the basket instantly, but that didn't bother the couple. However, they had a more pressing concern—a Sith that Revan recognized as Bandon, and two of his minions.
"At last, my search is over!" the corrupted Sith declared, looking at Bastila. "I was beginning to wonder if someone else had killed you and deprived me of the pleasure. Your pathetic disguise might work against the random Dark Jedi, but not against me, Darth Bandon. I have studied at the foot of the Dark Lord himself!"
"You are Malak's chosen successor?" the rightful Lord of the Sith laughed, finding the thought genuinely hilarious. "I don't recall you being particularly powerful or smart, traits deemed rather important when I started the Sith…"
"Who are you?" the usurper's apprentice asked, offended by the remark.
"Am I really that hard to recognize without the robes and mask?" Darth Revan asked rather rhetorically, letting go of his own disguise. "So much for your ability to see…" he mocked.
"Your words mean nothing to me!" Bandon shouted angrily. Trying to make himself sound menacing, he continued, "Unless you wish to beg for your life. No? Then I shall try to make this both quick and painful!" He quickly used Force immunity to protect himself from Force-based attacks—a gesture immediately replicated by the Sith couple—and charged with his two minions.
At Revan's signal, he and Bastila immediately moved forward to engage, leaving Chuundar's minion alone. Rorworr raised his bowcaster but otherwise stood still and did nothing, knowing that his true skill level would be revealed if he was defeated. With a Force wave, the Dark Lord pushed Bandon's minions away, forcing one of them towards Rorworr. The minion was dazed from the attack, and the Wookiee fraud took that as an opportunity to claim a kill and further his own legend, firing at the Dark Jedi. Unfortunately for him, he missed the shot, and when the minion regained his footing, he engaged the Wookiee. Bastila made a show of jumping in to defend him. She ignited her lightsaber in mid-air, immediately impaled the minion with it as she landed, though "tragically" too late to save the fraud from being mortally wounded, solving that problem. After this display, she fired a bolt of Force Lightning at the other minion, who barely managed to snap out of his shock to dodge.
Meanwhile, the true Sith Lord ignited his purple lightsaber, waiting for Bandon to approach. His opponent looked surprised at the colour of the lightsaber, but advanced regardless, and soon started to attack with the aggressive movements of Juyo, which Revan blocked fairly easily, much to Bandon's surprise and consternation.
Some distance away, the remaining Dark Jedi minion was barely able to block Bastila's onslaught with his lightsaber. They exchanged a few blows with each other, but were always blocked. Suddenly, she saw an opening and slammed her blade down hard on that of her enemy. With a Force push on the tip of her own blade, Revan's apprentice easily pushed it aside. Her lightsaber slid down the length of the Dark Jedi's blade, cutting into the handle and making it vanish. Taking advantage of his surprise, she turned her blade back, slashing his abdomen before stabbing it through, mortally wounding her enemy. Recalling her Master's lessons, she drained the life from him to ensure a quick death and prevent a sneak attack with his dying breath.
Meanwhile, Revan soon forced Bandon onto the defensive, with his flurry of attacks too fast to even see properly, at least to someone not Force sensitive. The usurper's apprentice jumped back, giving himself some space, and launched Force Lightning at the victorious Bastila, hoping it would divert Revan's attention. She raised her hand and easily blocked the attack, before deflecting it back. Bandon dodged out of the way, but the rightful Lord of the Sith took the opportunity to re-engage, scoring a hit on his enemy's shoulder while he was distracted. The latter learned his lesson and concentrated on the former for the remainder of the fight. Meanwhile, Bastila also decided to not intervene, knowing she would only get in the way of her Master's insanely fast attacks. And thus Darth Revan and Darth Bandon exchanged furious blows while Bastila watched from the sidelines.
After a minute or so, the true Sith Lord proved the veracity of his claim by managing to completely overcome his opponent's defences, stabbing Malak's apprentice in the stomach. Bandon collapsed to the ground. He feebly tried to use Force drain to heal himself, but both of his targets had made themselves immune. Bastila now joined Revan, standing by his side.
"Im-Impossible," the dying Sith apprentice choked out. "How ca-can a mere Jedi defeat Lord-Lord Malak's Juyo form? No one… except Lord-Lord Malak himself… can-can defeat me."
Revan answered simply, "Because I am Darth Revan." Instead of waiting for a response, he drained the last bit of life from Bandon as a gesture of coup de grâce. He then turned his attention towards Rorworr, still barely clinging onto life. The Dark Lord squatted down, as if he was checking for a pulse. "Such is the fate of all who sell their family into slavery," he whispered into the Wookiee's ear. The mortally wounded traitor was shocked by his deepest secret being revealed, and that proved to be his final thought as he bled out.
He stared at the bodies, shaking his head, wondering just how much of the galaxy was built on treachery.
"What a terrible loss," Gorwooken declared when he approached the scene. "I'll bring his body back to the village. It's the least I can do for a great hunter like Rorworr."
"I am sorry we couldn't do more," the Dark Lord lied. One day, the village will learn the truth, he vowed.
"You two did your best," the Wookiee replied. "The outsiders were too powerful. You fought like I've never seen, and you still struggled against our foe." He carried away the body back to the basket and raised it back to the canopy.
"Master?" Bastila called out when the potential Chuundar loyalist was out of earshot. He turned to face her. "Was Malak's new apprentice really so powerful? Like Gorwooken said, that took you a while."
"Oh, I was just using him as practice," he explained. "All the fights we've had recently ended too quickly for me to practice Vaapad properly against a proper enemy who's intent on killing me. Bandon actually had the skills to resist, and I don't want to confront Malak while being rusty, so it worked out."
"For a second, I was actually worried…" she confessed. "Now, do you know which way the Star Map is?"
"I should be able to locate it through the Force, now that I know what to look for," he answered. Closing his eyes, he reached out in all directions with the Force, and soon detected the familiar presence of a Rakatan artifact—a presence shared by the Star Maps and the Star Forge itself. He turned his body towards it and pointed with his finger. Opening his eyes, he saw a huge collapsed tree.
"I guess that means following that path around this giant obstacle in our way?" Bastila supposed.
"Yes, of course, let's go."
Following the path for a few minutes, they soon reached a fork. One branch appears to be a relatively straight path to the Star Map, and on the other branch, they saw an old man wielding a green lightsaber fighting katarns. The couple instinctively grabbed their lightsabers, suspicious of this unknown actor. They slowly closed the distance. When they reached the scene, the old man had just dispatched the last katarn.
Seeing them approach, the old man called out, "Ah, the damnable racket of battle! Watch yourself, even more of these crawling beasts are hiding in the underbrush."
"Who are you? What are you doing here?" Revan asked.
"I am Jolee. Jolee Bindo," the old man answered. "Follow me to my camp and we'll talk a bit." He started walking away.
The couple followed him, and the Sith Lord couldn't help but ask, "Nice lightsaber. Are you a Jedi?"
"Ah, don't start fawning just yet, I'm too old for it," the old man replied before sighing. "I know a few things, but we can talk about it at my camp. Keep close. It's nearby under a log." He continued muttering, mostly to himself, "Yeah, I live like some burrowing rodent. I fought the Sith… now look at me. Hmph!"
Which Sith? the Sith apprentice mentally wondered.
The old man looks like he's been living down here for more than a few years, so probably not mine, her Master answered back. Probably Exar Kun then, given his age. Unless that other mysterious Sith that Canderous talked about actually existed… but I have my doubts.
They soon arrived at Jolee's hut. "Well, welcome to my home, such as it is," the old man started. "Pull up a stump and be comfortable. We should discuss a few things."
"Indeed? What would you like to discuss?" the Dark Lord of the Sith asked.
"Hmph! I thought you had questions to ask me," Jolee complained.
"And I thought you had important things you wanted to tell me," Revan replied evenly. "Well, fine. Can you tell me about yourself?"
"Ah, what is there to tell?" the old man started unnecessarily. "Jolee Bindo is the crazy old man in the dangerous woods. I'm content with the impression I give."
Not to be deterred by the non-answer, Revan continued, "Surely there is more to you than that. Not every crazy old man wields a lightsaber, after all. And you muttered something about fighting the Sith?"
"Did I? You have annoyingly good ears. It doesn't matter. Those days are gone. Leave them in their graves," the old man answered.
The Sith wanted to facepalm at the non-answer, but decided that it would be impolite, and there was no point in pissing off an unknown actor. "So, are you some kind of Jedi?" he decided to ask.
"I was once part of the Jedi Order, and I command the Force, yes, so I suppose that makes me as much a Jedi as anyone… but what of it?" he asked with a bit of a challenge. "I have seen my share of light and dark, and frankly most extremes annoy me. Of course, I have felt the rumblings of change…"
"It's actually refreshing to meet a Force user who understands the concept of balance…" Revan couldn't help but remark, rather pleased. "As far as I am concerned, there is no light or dark, only the Force and whether you are wielding it for the public interest or not. I am so very tired of those who only see the galaxy through an extreme binary view—either help everyone they come across, whether they deserve it or not, and spare even the worst criminals so they could commit more crimes… or just cruelly murder and steal anything they see. There just doesn't seem to be anything in between…"
"Oh? And who might you be to think like that?" Jolee asked, rather interested.
The Sith noted the old man's interest in him. The Force told him the truth: Jolee knew who he was. Declining to give away too much information, he simply said, "You know who I am. Say my name."
"Yes, I suppose I do," the old man admitted. "You are Darth Revan, and I felt your presence here a few years ago. Is this your new apprentice?"
"Yes, I am Bastila, his apprentice," she confirmed.
"Hmm…" was the old man's entire response.
"So… are we going to have a problem with me being a Sith, and you being a former Jedi?" Revan asked, trying to elicit a response.
"Does it matter? I am not here to judge you," the man dodged the question, again. "You are not like Exar Kun, I can tell."
The Sith Lord didn't quite know how to answer that. It appeared that his apprentice had nothing to say either, so the three sat there for a few minutes in silence.
"So what have you come for?" Jolee asked, deciding to finally break the silence, right before the couple were going to stand up and bid farewell.
Not sure how much he should reveal, Revan answered simply, "To find a supposedly crazed Wookiee."
"Now, do you really expect me to believe that? No, the problems of a few Wookiees would not be enough to bring a Jedi, or a supposedly benevolent Sith Lord down here to the Shadowlands. No, no, it must be something else," the old man responded verbosely. "We both know the real reason you have come here. The Star Map. That has to be it. There is nothing else that would bring you across the galaxy…" The old man rambled on, "Kashyyyk is an interesting place, more so than anyone suspects. If Czerka Corporation knew, heh, the planet would be a strip mine. The Wookiees have their legends that they were not always here, but it is more than that. The trees themselves are strangers…"
What is he talking about? the Sith apprentice asked mentally.
What the old man was saying is that the planet was originally ruled by the Rakata—you know, those people that built the Star Forge? They put a machine next to the Star Map to boost the agricultural production of this planet so they could feed their galactic empire. After their fall, the machine malfunctioned and created all the big trees, her Master explained.
I see, she acknowledged. Is this really that hard for the old man to explain?
He could almost feel the whining tone in her thoughts. The old man was still rambling on, so he interrupted before they ended up wasting the entire day, "Yes, I am very well aware of how this forest came into existence. What's your point?"
"What I am saying is that there are literally walls in your way, and you won't find what you need without my help… and my help has a price," the old man answered mysteriously. "You must do a task for me, and then allow me to join with you. I will then remove certain barriers in your path."
"What barriers? There were no barriers around this place last time," the Sith asked suspiciously.
"Bah, I thought you would just accept what you are told. Fine, I will explain," the old man complained. "Around five years ago, there were several Czerka expeditions down to the area near the Star Map. For some strange reason, most of the explorers died, and the few that survived brought back stories of horror, including the sighting of what must have been a legendary terentatek. Czerka then erected barriers to seal off the horrors," Jolee explained.
That sounds awfully familiar… Bastila mentally noted.
Yeah, it was probably partially my doing… Revan admitted. "I take it, you can't just walk around it?"
"No, Czerka sealed off all known paths into that area," Jolee explained.
"And it's not something that you can just fry with Force Lightning?" he wondered out loud.
"I suppose you could try. It might work, or it might just blow up in your face. And that won't do at all, would it?" the old man answered. "Now, I have successfully gotten past that barrier on multiple occasions. If you just indulge me, I can guarantee you safe passage…"
Revan huffed. "Fine, what do you want?"
"Oh, nothing complicated. Just one small favour," Jolee stated nonchalantly. "Since they began expanding in the Shadowlands, the Czerka have left me alone, for the most part. Until recently, anyway. A group of them set up camp not far from here. Poachers are all they are. I'd like them removed from this place."
The Sith decided to get to the point. "Where are they? How many men?"
"They are not that far from here. There are usually five in the area, as far as I can see," the old man answered, before ranting, "The captain of the lot is the one that earned my ire. Mishandle my garden, will he? Hmph!"
"Which way?" Revan asked again.
"You will see," the old man said mysteriously. "I know this sounds absurd, but I'm old and entitled to work you around a bit."
"Fine… I'll get rid of them for you," the Sith agreed. "Be back in a bit." He turned away with his apprentice in tow.
Why did you agree? Bastila asked. Are we actually going to search this whole place at the whim of a crazy old man?
Well, Hulas did say Rulan was around in the Shadowlands hunting dangerous beasts, so we might as well search the place, he explained. The Star Map seems to affect the surroundings, attracting danger. I don't think a terentatek being nearby is a coincidence…
That makes sense, she agreed. And the old man wouldn't be asking strange questions when he deliberately sent us on this stupid errand.
Heading for the direction of the anomaly, they paused when they stumbled upon a broken droid a few metres away from the footpath.
"What is this?" the apprentice asked, pointing it out.
Revan gave it a nudge through the Force. While it was not the first time he had done so in her presence, she still instinctively thought he was being lazy, using telekinesis instead of moving his limbs. She had to remind herself that the idea had been drilled into her mind by the Jedi Order to stop herself from judging.
In response, the droid started talking in monotone, "Malfunction… my primary motivators are… incapaci… error. Damage terminal. Playback… cause of malfunction…" The droid then started playing a recording with some really bad background noise, but the words were understood. "I don't get it," said some voice. "That merchant said there was salvage down here. We need Matton to work the sensors."
Indistinct noises were heard in the background, but the name Matton reminded the couple of the mechanic at the spaceport. Their interest piqued. The playback continued, "When he gets back we'll… wait… I'm getting something. Oh, it's Eli. Good. Maybe he'll point us in the right direction." Some noises were heard. "Eli! What the…! But you got your money, you double-crossing snake! We had a deal…" the voice from the recording managed to say, before it was silenced by blaster sounds.
"Well, I suppose that answers our question about exactly how Eli was cheating Matton…" the Sith Lord noted with disgust.
"Eli must be punished for his murders," his apprentice decided. "And Matton doesn't deserve to spend the rest of his life enslaved under false pretenses…"
"Yes, let's get the droid head and memory module to use as proof…" Revan suggested. He quickly removed the droid's head with the Force. The remainder of the droid exploded a second later. Luckily, the couple were far enough away to not be hurt by the explosion. He took out a resealable bag, sealed the droid head inside, and put it into his backpack.
"I guess I better remember to not handle broken electronics by hand…" Bastila said mostly to herself. "The Force is actually so useful… Why the Jedi would consider it such a burden and make everyone avoid using it when possible is beyond me," she muttered.
"Yes, and the more practice you do, the better you get," the Sith added, jolting her out of her musings. "Avoiding the Force for 'frivolous uses' actually shoots the Jedi in the foot. It wasn't always like this, for they slowly added more and more restrictions over the millennia. And they wonder why Padawans these days always struggle to make their first lightsaber, always messing up the telekinesis required despite concentrating so intensely, even as they berated all of us for not meeting the standards from the old days… Instead, it should just be second nature if they let us practice it on everything."
"Huh, I never thought about it like that," she admitted. "It makes sense though. If you always use your hands to do what you should have done with the Force, it shouldn't be a surprise when you lack dexterity with telekinesis." She frowned. "Now that I think about it, their argument about overdependence doesn't even make sense. If you depend on computers, you may find yourself lost without them, that is true. But… the Force is a part of you, just like your eyes and ears. We don't try to avoid using our eyes out of fear that we might depend on it, or our ears, or even our hands, so why should we avoid the Force?"
"The Sith have been wondering about that for—oh I don't know—only a few millennia. After all, the Sith code ends with 'the Force shall free me,' not 'the Force is a dreadful burden which I shall carry for the rest of my days,'" the Dark Lord of the Sith quipped. "But yes, it never made sense to me either. If you don't use the Force, you'll never be skilled with it, just like how you'll never develop dexterity if you don't use your hands. Sure, you might be better off in the unlikely event that you couldn't use the Force or lose your hands, but you are just hobbling yourself almost all the time. Really, the only reason I can imagine not using the Force is for fun, like as some kind of a challenge. Maybe I'll make you escape some bondage without the Force… Wouldn't that be fun?"
"I look forward to that, Master," the submissive woman said longingly. "In the meantime, I am going to try using the Force as much as possible…"
"That would be a good idea. Just don't go overboard and tire yourself out," her Master cautioned. "Wouldn't want a repeat of Taris, after all."
Bastila's face reddened as she was reminded of the embarrassing incident. "Yes, Master," she answered obediently.
Hearing an agonizing cry, the couple walked in that direction, eventually finding a Wookiee corpse. The Dark Lord motioned for his apprentice to examine the body, which she happily obliged.
Taking her lesson to heart, she reached out with the Force to probe the corpse, and soon floated a datapad away from the remains. She scrolled through it, all without physically contacting the datapad. Much less disgusting, she observed. Soon, she reached the last entry:
We were fools to come down here, all of us. How can we hope to capture an enemy that can assume any shape, any form?
We lost two the first day. Another three disappeared the day after that. Our enemy's bloodlust knows no limits.
We found Grarwwaar's body last night: what was left of it. If we do not leave the Shadowlands soon, I fear we will all become victims of the Faceless One.
"Sounds like they were trying to track down Rulan," Bastila concluded.
"And blood is still oozing out of the mostly intact corpse," her Master noted. "This Wookiee must have died recently."
"So Rulan must be fairly close," the apprentice deduced.
They continued forward, finding a clearing in the forest, in which there was a Wookiee standing by a campfire. Both of them frowned. There was something wrong with this Wookiee. They quickly prepared themselves for a potential battle.
Walking closer, the Wookiee noticed their presence, and started growling. "Why do you disturb me, human? Grarwwaar comes to the Shadowlands to get away from your kind."
Revan frowned further. Grarwwaar was dead. There was no reason why the dead Wookiee they had just found would lie, nor was there a reason for someone to plant a fake journal on the corpse. So, this must be… a fake Grarwwaar. There was one person who could supposedly assume any form… "Ah, Rulan Prolik," he deduced.
"So, you have uncovered my little secret. No matter, this body has grown tiresome to me. Maybe I can find one more to your liking, human," growled "Grarwwaar." The Wookiee shifted into the form of Jolee Bindo. "Got something on your mind, do you?" the "old man" asked.
What the Jedi? Revan heard Bastila curse in his mind. Is there even a real Jolee Bindo? she couldn't help but wonder. Actually, probably.
Ignoring her mental comment, the Dark Lord Force choked the image of the old man. Unable to breathe, the old man instead shifted into a terentatek, breaking free of the Force choke, sending the pair of Sith flying back in the process. They used the Force to cushion their landing, but they were still a bit sore and winded.
The "terentatek" charged at them, and they dodged aside. Due to its sheer size, the "terentatek" had trouble stopping, and only ended up at rest some distance away from the two. Deciding to heal their injuries, they both started draining the life from the "terentatek" while it tried to turn around. They finished healing just as it managed to start charging again. They switched to blasting it with Force Lightning, which managed to stun the terentatek. As they poured more energy into the Lightning, the flesh of the "terentatek" soon started smoking. Desperate to escape, Rulan shifted into a tach and ran away.
The duo quickly used the Force to augment their speed and chase after the "tach," but it ran into a clearing with many other of its assumed kind, making it impossible to tell exactly which tach was Rulan in disguise.
"Lightsabers!" Bastila swore. "We lost him."
"Maybe if we killed the right tach, he'll revert to his original form," Revan hypothesized.
Channeling her frustration and anger, the Sith apprentice managed an impressive storm of Force Lightning, instantly electrocuting every single tach in the area. One of the tachs turned into a vaguely humanoid corpse.
"Good job, my dear Bastila," the Sith Lord complimented. "You seemed to have mastered the art of Force Lightning."
She blushed a little. "If you say so, Master," she said, finishing with a sigh. "These poor tachs though…"
"It is unfortunate, yes, but it is better than letting Rulan running free to kill more Wookiees or whoever else that comes down here…" he placated her. "It's generally deemed acceptable to sacrifice non-sentient life to protect sentient ones, no?"
"I suppose…" she sighed. "I still feel bad though. Guess you were right. I still feel guilt over the death of innocents, even though they are just animals."
"Yes, as you should. What you did was necessary, however. If we had delayed, Rulan would have escaped. Then, even though you might have saved a few tachs today, how many more Wookiees would die in their place? Never let sentiment stop you from doing what you know to be right, what must be done. You might feel better in the moment, but you do the galaxy a disservice, and the guilt from inaction would haunt you even more when you learn of the consequences," the Sith Master lectured.
"Was this… from personal experience?" his lover asked cautiously.
"Yes," he answered resignedly. He looked very uncomfortable.
"I wonder what Jolee would think of this tach massacre…" she mused, drawing his attention away from the painful memory.
"Nothing good, I am sure, but at least we aren't trying to hunt them to extinction for a bit of cash…"
She quickly checked the time. "I guess we better find the tach poachers now, if we want to set up camp before nightfall," she suggested. Despite the forest canopy, there was still a little light seeping through. When the light went away completely, that was when the truly horrifying creatures awoke. Fighting those wasn't her idea of fun.
"Not yet," he stopped her. He did a quick telekinetic search of Rulan's body and found only a datapad. Unfortunately, it had been fried by Force Lightning. "Maybe use something that doesn't fry electronics next time," he suggested. "There could be valuable information. Ah well, not much you can do now. Try draining life next time. Let's go find those poachers."
"Yes, Master!" she answered, eager as always for his orders.
It was almost evening when they found the poachers.
"Who are you, another civil merchant like that core-slime up on the docking ring?" the leader shouted threateningly at the approaching couple. "This is my territory. I don't make deals and I don't persuade easily, so go back topside. Mess with my profits and I'll see you dead."
Wow, rather touchy here, Revan thought. "I am just passing through. I don't care about what you are doing," he lied rather convincingly.
"A wise move," the commander commented. "Now go do your stuff. I don't care what you do, as long as you don't get in the way of my business!"
What a greedy bastard, he noted to Bastila with disdain. He walked up to one of the guards watching a strange device, who seemed rather bored. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I'm just a guard for this emitter," the man explained. He started complaining, "Why couldn't they have just equipped this lump of tech with a blaster and left me at home?"
"Do you like it here?" the Sith asked. "It doesn't look like a great place to work."
"Of course not!" the guard almost shouted, but thankfully did not, avoiding the commander's attention. "I was promised great pay to do some security guard work here, and all they are doing is slavery and poaching in this hellhole. But I am trapped here! This place might get me killed, but if I leave, Commander Dern will definitely kill me. He already killed a few deserters, and I am not going to get myself killed."
Revan leaned in conspiratorially and asked, "If the commander suffered a tragic accident, would you be able to leave?"
"Yes," the guard whispered back, "but I didn't say anything."
The Sith duo split up to talk to a few other guards, and they all agreed to leave if Commander Dern "suffered an accident." After they finished, they went back to the commander.
"What do you think you are doing, talking to my guards?" the greedy poacher asked. "Did that crazy old man ask you to make me leave?" He laughed in their faces. "You won't persuade my guards to ditch me, because none of them would dare face my wrath. I suggest you give up before I decide to shoo—"
The Sith decided to not let him finish, instead choking him with the Force. He did so without a gesture. Instead, he stood with his arms crossed in front of his chest, watching impassively. The guards approached the scene with curiosity, but did not raise their blasters. The poacher and murderer dropped his blaster and desperately tried to grab whatever invisible force that was holding his neck and loosen it, but to no avail. Soon, he ceased struggling. Revan released the body, which collapsed like a puppet with the strings cut.
"We are free!" the guards shouted with joy. Some of them spat on the body of the fallen commander, expressing their massive displeasure that they had kept hidden out of fear.
"Feel free to take whatever you can find here and get off this planet," the Sith suggested. He left with Bastila. When the others were out of sight, he grabbed Bastila's wrist possessively and dragged her away towards Jolee's hut, much to her delight.
"Welcome back," Jolee greeted back at his hut. "I wonder, have you done as I asked?"
"Yes, we made sure the poachers are no longer a problem," the Sith Lord answered.
"Ah yes, I felt death through the Force. I would have preferred a non-violent solution, but I think I forgot to mention it," the old man complained. "Well, maybe you should have thought of it. Czerka might blame the Wookiees and deploy more troops. Not exactly an outcome you would like, I hope."
"I can't in good conscience allow a man who would force his underlings to work for him on pain of death to go unpunished, especially since he had in fact murdered people and would certainly have faced the death penalty if this were not a lawless land," Revan retorted. "The other men are now free to leave this planet."
"Hmm… that's an interesting way of looking at it," Jolee replied pensively. "I suppose you did the right thing by sparing the guards."
"So, what about those barriers?" Bastila asked, trying to get back on topic.
"I'll take care of it, but it's a bit late to go deeper into the Shadowlands, no? How about tomorrow?" the old man asked. "I hope you brought camping equipment, because I don't have much room in my hut."
"Yes, we did," the Sith Lord answered. Soon, he and Bastila erected a tent for themselves. Jolee offered to cook his latest catch and share it with them, which they gladly accepted. The strange trio sat down around a campfire and started talking…