Author's Note: I was re-reading some old Legends novels (particularly some Vong War ones and the Courtship of Princess Leia) and I just really love Hapan culture and history, okay? That said what this will be will be a Disney Canon timeline where non-directly contradictory Legends material fills in the gaps. The "SI"-style OC is not technically me, I am using a version of me from if I had not fallen off a cliff and injured my leg and needed to pivot from archaeology to teaching as a career. Thus any experiences referenced through 3 year post bachelor's degree at ~25 are completely legit (even the weird and surprising ones) and anything referenced after 25 is some Indiana Jones inspired fantasy about what my career could have been. (Sometime's referencing my sister who followed after me as an archaeologist herself, a pity we never got to go on an excavation together, I was walking with a cane by the time she got into the field post-Covid).
Chapter 1: The Shadow Cast By the Light
Sinsor Khal, a footnote Jedi dropout and a rather amoral scientist in another timeline. And possibly never existed in a second.
In my new timeline he is a decently respected Jedi Knight who went into the specialization of research and archaeology. I know, because, to steal a line from a better Jedi than I will ever be, he's me.
If only the Council knew what I really was.
But they couldn't, because every time I contemplated sharing any of my knowledge of the previous timeline I got blaring warnings in the Force that to communicate that knowledge would send out a Force Disturbance of a magnitude that I'd be assassinated by Palpatine within a week. Does this recurring warning vision come with the actual power of Force Precognition outside of itself? No of course not, I was not more talented at Precognition than the average Jedi of this era. Which is to say, mostly just when piloting through Coruscanti traffic I was pretty great at changing sky-lanes and dodging illegal racers. I wasn't bad in a lightsaber duel either admittedly.
Though the fact that the vision had changed from being assassinated by Plagueis this year told me that power had changed hands.
Frustrating, as I didn't doubt the amount of damage a forewarned Yoda would do against the Banites. The best I'd been able to do, all in the last year thanks to the appearance of Darth Maul and the death of Qui-Gon Jinn, was sow some minor seeds of doubt about Dooku and my "historical expertise" to convince a few extra members that Maul had been a real Sith and point some fingers towards Dathomir.
Annoying. And honestly rather tragic, Jinn had been a good friend. I had hoped that getting him to train in more lightsaber combat when we were both at the Temple at the same time could possibly have changed the outcome of that duel. Alas, either Maul was stronger than I had thought at this point, or Jinn just didn't really have the killer instinct to finish off a Sith. Obi-Wan's report about the duel had reflected Maul killing Jinn out of trickery as opposed to skill this time, so that could indeed be the case.
Similar to building that relationship all my preparations for Order Sixty-Six had been forced to be personal, soft-power related, or extremely long term.
I'd hunted down dozens of smaller relics of the Jedi and Force Sensitive past, but the crown jewel so far was Silandra Sho's Shield. Was it a complete game changer? Not even a little bit, and it didn't even fit in with my primary fighting style, as I'd been training myself in the direction of the Jedi Shadows of old in an effort to have the skills to survive the Purge if I did not manage to prevent it. I had one plan about that and two plans about what to do if that didn't work. The problem was for stopping the Purge I needed Yoda and the entire Council on my side. For post-Purge survival of the Order I had one plan which required I have the discreet backing of the Order and the other plan, what one might call the 'Oh Shit!' plan, required I infiltrate my home system and conduct a few assassinations and perhaps even a seduction.
You see, Sinsor Khal was not merely a Jedi, he was also a Hapan. A group of wildly discriminatory, Amazon-esque, inbred, genetically perfect, mildly sociopathic, descendants of pirates from just before the Old Sith Wars. However, they lived in the middle of a resource and planet rich nebula that was extremely isolationist and defensible and perfect for hiding a bunch of refugee Jedi in worst comes to worst. As long as I manage to eliminate the Erenada and Chume'da and make sure one of the remaining daughters of Ni'Korish was not of a similar anti-Jedi inclination. As things stood the Hapes Consortium would be more likely to present our heads to Palpatine on pikes.
Yoda really had allowed the Jedi to become too complacent in his time. I respected the Hell out of him in many ways, but his age combined with spending much of his early centuries with Jedi Precognition working perfectly well caused him to lose perspective. He kept the Jedi purely reactionary with no say in the policies they were constantly sent to enforce around the galaxy.
I regularly needed to release my hatred for Palpatine into the Force, but the Republic really did need a good war with the megacorporations on the other side of things to have a hearty excuse to nationalize a lot of the corrupt business interests. But the Jedi would be needed as a guiding light in the aftermath to make sure that they did not simply get replaced once again by new corrupt megacorporations, like the return of the Corporate Sector Alliance I was aware would occur in what I was dubbing the First Order Timeline.
With a bit of mental effort I brought my mind back to the present, on what I was hoping would be one of my final artifact hunts before pulling the trigger on one of my plans.
Devaron was a surprisingly beautiful planet, I thought to myself as I surveyed the mountainous landscape I found myself investigating. It quite reminded me of the jungle adjacent mountains of Peru, which I had never really had the chance to properly explore in my past life, merely doing some archival work for an internship program where my university had paired with the National Museum of the Archaeology, Anthropology, and History of Peru. Jungle tours had unfortunately not been offered without a bit more money than I had had on hand as an undergrad. The number of artifacts museums had in storage and archives was astounding and would surprise any layman who wandered into those basements, quite similar to the Jedi hoarding of Force-related artifacts. The low security vaults at the Jedi Temple were just stuffed to the gills with nominally useless but still semi-Force related artifacts. Or at least artifacts from locations that had yielded truly Force-imbued artifacts and thus everything nearby needed to be scooped up just in case.
"Ruff!" I dipped my head down to look at my F1 explorer droid companion. He was quite helpful for surveying the more wild locations artifacts could be found. Someday soon I was going to head to Yavin 4, but I needed to keep my nose clean for the Council for now.
"What's up, boy? You catch a scent of something?"
F1-D0 had extremely good olfactory sensors and to make up for my one physical deficiency as a Hapan, some of the best night-vision I could upgrade him to.
"Analysis: Herd of three to five Pikhron moving at pace towards us, likely startled by predator." The robotic voice of F1-D0 returned a moment later.
I nodded, but then the Force blared a small warning at me, there was hostile intent from behind the herd. Hostile intent from sapient beings that could be sensed in the Force.
With a frown I tossed out a command, hunting of Pikhron was illegal, "Hide under that embankment, I'll be up in the tree. We'll ambush the poachers and arrest them if possible."
"Acknowledged!" F1-D0 was gone in a blur of noise dampened mechanical joints.
And with a Force enhanced backflip I was moving up one of the large cloud forest trees.
It was but a few moments before three grey-hided mammals with a crown of horns upon their heads came barreling out of the thicker treeline before the ridge.
They made a strange "Brek brek brek!" sound as they stampeded and soon a narrow-profile swoop bike shot out of the trees as well. One Trandoshan driving and a second behind it waving a rifle around like a damned fool.
With a sigh I leapt out of the tree and hurtled through the air on an intercept course. Using the Force I slowed myself down before I hit the ground in a three-point landing and stood up, making sure my Jedi robes billowed dramatically as I held out one hand and exerted a mix of a few different Force abilities to get the result I wanted.
A little technopathy on the engines to bleed some acceleration off and make the rest of the maneuver simpler to achieve came first.
This caused the driver to rev the accelerators in confusion as the bike lost a little bit of inertia as opposed to gaining speed.
Secondly was a mixture of Force Slow and Telekinesis to layer the air in front of the swoop like a field of molasses.
Another way Yoda had let the Jedi become stagnant, modern Jedi were so…uncreative. The Force's limitations were merely an individual's mix of Creativity, Willpower, and Focus. Now, those last two did become exponentially more taxing as you scaled up. But it certainly allowed for plenty of neat tricks so long as one had a solid understanding about what they were visualizing.
And what I was visualizing was the swoop smoothly sputtering out to a stop to tap gently against my gloved right hand.
My left came up and smoothly pulled my hood back off of my head.
"Now, boys. I must inform you as a Knight of the Jedi Order that if you do not cease this illegal poaching I will need to put you under arrest."
"Jedi!" The one with the rifle snarled, while the driver was still looking very confused about this entire interruption of their hunt.
The rifle was swiftly pointed in my direction, however before it could orient upon my head there was a distinctive snap-hiss, and the Trandoshan now had to process the smoking metal located five inches down the barrel of his rifle, the entire front end now laying on the ground nearby.
With another snap the vibrant viridian blade of my lightsaber retracted back into the long silver and gold hilt, where two prongs turned up towards the direction the blade released, the symbol of the Jedi Order etched in gold centered on the main emitter bank.
"That's quite enough of that, now why don't you gentlemen get down off of the swoop bike and we come quietly wait for the authorities, so that I don't have to remove anything more…permanent."
The Trandoshans both threw their hands up into the air and scrambled off of the bike.
Perfect, what a lovely peaceful Jedi arrest.
Only now my search for the Eyes of Laqasa were going to be delayed another few hours as I commed the authorities on Fido's built in Mid-range Holocomm and waited for their arrival.
I wanted to get this hunt done and get back to the Temple damn it! Master Yoda had said the Council should have an answer about my proposal upon my return from this treasure hunt. I was referring to it as such because I was in no way out here planning to do a proper excavation. I was here to fetch the artifact from whatever collapsed hunting lodge I found it in and get back.
"Ah! Master Jedi!" The Devaronian law enforcement officer who picked up the comm answered in surprise, "The entire department was informed you were on planet of course, but we did not expect to hear from you as I was told it was a research expedition for your order?" He trailed off nervously at the end there.
"And indeed it still is, Officer…?" I trailed off, he hadn't introduced himself.
"Apologies! Officer Bors Sdaza at your service!"
"Perfect, Officer Sdaza," I gestured for Fido to angle the Holocomm to show the poachers, "I caught some…big game enthusiasts illegally hunting Pikhron in the jungle here. We need a pick-up."
His face visibly hardened and he snarled, "Poachers…yes we'll have someone straight out."
Well hopefully that emotion meant they'd be getting a fast shuttle.