A Zealot and a Bookworm

[Coren Starchaser]

This was happening, apparently. Part of his reintegration to the Galactic Alliance was to understand those that had been here when he left. That meant he was meeting with the Triumvirate, well, at least the two that mattered for how Starchaser was, Nemo Ven and Omai Rhen. The former was easy, and understood what Coren was having to deal with, to an extent. It wasn’t that the Mon Cal was happy about the desertion, but Coren was proving himself, and that was why he was slowly getting his command back. But Omai Rhen, that was a different situation.

Coren Starchaser was a Force journeyman, never fitting in anyone place, or religion. A student of Sith, formerly, of Jedi, of the Aing-Tii, and practices of the Wardens and Grey Paladins. But one thing that was constant about Coren was that he was a zealot. He was the type to throw himself headlong into battle, and to the chagrin of the Jedi Order, he enjoyed it. Coren was the one who would keep fighting, and do what needed to be done to take down the Dark Side. That was his weakness, and a strength. What he needed, though, was to learn. There was much the others in the New Jedi Order could teach Starchaser.

And much he could teach others.

It wasn’t so much an order as a suggestion wrapped in an order. He was to meet with [member="Taeli Raaf"]. And that was just what Starchaser was going to do, however, on his way to the meeting, he was tearing through the data he could access on Raaf. He was, after all, someone who was always concerned with the Alliance, and seeing that Raaf was at a time, a Sith, did put a note of concern on Coren’s mind. However it seemed that the Wrath of the Sith Gabriel Sionoma was adjusting well, so maybe there was hope. Hell, even Sarge had gotten on his case.

But it didn’t matter right now. For now, all he needed to do was catch up to Taeli Raaf. The Jedi Master was off on some sort of expedition. Coren wasn’t quite sure, but if Raaf was chasing down anything regarding the Jedi, he wanted to know. Maybe not the most shining example of a Jedi, but Coren knew what they stood for, or what he thought they stood for. Having made it to one of the worlds on the edge of the Alliance space. He wasn’t sure what was found, just that it was something. Having jumped out to the system in the Tachyon Rising, the Corellian bartered himself a civilian airspeeder and made his way towards the location that Raaf was to be found. Did she know he was coming? Probably. Coren was a very… specific feeling in the Force.

------

Looking back from where he was though, Coren could see the airspeeder below. The structure that he found himself at was large, and built into the side of the mountain. Using a mixture of the Force and physicality, Coren was making it up the side of the cliff, sure, there could have been a more easy route, but it didn’t look like there was any place to land the speeder near the ruins. Scaling the cliff, he looked back down. His white Henley shirt already showing signs of sweet, with his chest holster holding his pistol, and lightsaber in a satchel, the Alliance zealot was pulling the line he used to scale the cliff up as he looked around.

A low whistle escaped him.

“Something about this place.” He muttered to himself. “Alright, now if I was a Jedi Master…” He began to make his way forward, stepping under the moss encrusted archway.

[member="Taeli Raaf"]

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Coren Starchaser"]

"One would look up," she called down to him from the top of the archway. Dressed in a lighter tan version of the standard Jedi robes with a pair of spectacles on her face, and a book open on her lap, she looked much like the archivist and bookworm that she was. With a soft snap, she closed her book and gracefully jumped down from the archway to the stone below. She had been expecting Coren for awhile now, a message from the Grand Marshal letting her know he was sending the brash Jedi Master to her. His presence in the Force had also been a dead giveaway, a contained storm of righteousness and, dare she say it, determination to fight the darkness through any means necessary. Here was someone that she could use.

"Welcome to Bpfassh, Coren," she said with a smile, landing lightly, book tucked under her arm. "More specifically, the ruins of an ancient Jedi praxeum from I believe was the Clone Wars."

The Grand Marshal had dispatched her to the ruins to discover what had caused its destruction, relying on her more exotic skill set. What she had discovered so far would be troubling for the aged leader of the New Jedi Order, not that she was concerned by her discoveries, but she wanted to observe the place a little while longer.

"Did Grand Marshal Rhen explain why he sent you here?" she asked, giving him a curious expression to go with her soft smile.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

See, the thing with talking to oneself? It meant you were probably going crazy. Or really intelligent, he hoped. Most likely crazy though, yeah, almost definitely. He shook his head when he spoke, seconds before looking up. Right, he didn’t expect that. More suspected she’d be somewhere looking at… he didn’t know. Carvings? Harvesting lightsabers and hopefully kyber from the mountain side. You know, things like that. He was just being hopeful. Or stereotyping. Still, he gave a half of a laugh as he looked up at Taeli, definitely looking out of place on top of an archway.

He knew that Taeli was one of the masters who seemed to fall in line with the New Jedi Order, where Coren, well, he didn’t. He didn’t fall in with anyone, even among those who were anti-establishment, he didn’t fit in with. Or at least that was what he kept telling himself.

“Praxeum here? From the Clone Wars?” Wasn’t htat the last time the Jedi were truly militarized? Sure, they all were wiped out by a pair of Dark Siders, and the Jedi were doing better now. Most of the time. Why was he sent here? “I think it was an exercise. Apparently, you’ve got a bit more finesse than me. Something about two sides of the same cred chit.” He shrugged as he continued to take in the surroundings, hearing animals, but not sensing any immediate danger.

[member="Taeli Raaf"]

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Coren Starchaser"]

"I guess one could call it an exercise," she said, quirking another smile at him. "I'm the leader of a very small group in the New Jedi Order, the Jedi Inquisitors. So, you could say that I'm the more tactful route for your particular brand of fighting against the darkness. We're tasked with tracking down dangerous artifacts or locations and locking them away, or investigating possible dark side corruption within the Order itself. A safeguard, if you will, to avoid something like what happened her occurring."

She glanced around at the ruins, almost hearing through the past what had happened. She did notice that Coren seemed... a little on edge, marking his surroundings, eyes darting ever so slightly, ears perked, listening for sounds or anything dangerous nearby.

"You need not worry about animals coming near us," she explained. "They tend to stay away from places like this, where tragedy occurred."

 

[Coren Starchaser]

An exercise, for sure. Coren knew that he was seen as a remnant of the Jedi Sentinels and the Shadows. He was the type who would relentlessly hound the dark side. What he was needing were others like him. In the early days of the Alliance, he was seen as a patriot just as often as he was seen as a radical. What she started to say next was something that took Starchaser by surprise. “Inquistors, huh?” Taking a second to allow her to continue, he nodded.

“Hunting down corruption, I can see, and preventing the use of tainted artifacts and locations. All this sounds very good.” There was an unmistakable grin on his face. “It makes the most amount of sense. Let history prepare us for what could happen.” Even if it didn’t come to pass, protecting the Alliance from the dark side would be reason enough.

“Not animals, necessarily, its… the ones that think.” Aliens, humans, whoever, whatever, that were going to make their way here. He waved the thought off, with a physical move of his hand. “What have you found so far here? And how many strong is the Inquisition?” Was he going to call it that? He knew his history, he knew what it was the Sith had done.

Still.

[member="Taeli Raaf"]

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Coren Starchaser"]

Ah good, he seemed intrigued by her notion of Inquisitors. She had a feeling the notion of an internal Jedi force devoted to hunting down any dark side artifact or place that might corrupt the Order from the inside might appeal to him. Having been with the Alliance almost since its foundations, she knew the stories of the zealous Coren Starchaser and his crusade against the darkness.

"Well, like I said, it was a tragedy from what I've been able to gather," she explained. "Speaking with some of the locals before coming here, and my own observations of the ruins and leftover records from the place, apparently the Jedi stationed here fell to the dark side, every single one of them. If you feel closely enough, you can still feel a slight taint clinging to the stones. Master Yoda led a detachment of Jedi here to put down the rogues, but that is all I've been able to discover. I have no idea how or what form the battle itself took."

She did sense his disquiet about calling them Inquisitors though, and she knew why. The name itself was steeped more in Sith lore than Jedi.

"As for the Inquisitors, it's just me and a few trustworthy Knights," she said. "For some odd reason, most Jedi don't seem to like the idea of an investigative body for the internal workings of the Order. Some people have the gall to call us zealots, looking for corruption where there isn't any. From... personal experience, I know all too well how the dark side can lurk and twist without anyone knowing, and before we know it, we have a Sith or more infiltrating our Order and corrupting all the Jedi."

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Any chance that there were others out there, like him, in the New Jedi Order, or the Fringe Forcers. He knew how he was branded, but Starchaser was a military man first, and Force user second. He followed Nemo Ven, and the fact that Omai showed up and had a similar view? It just helped solidify his position, with both sides of who he was. Some people just took the galaxy at face value, and maybe they were bitter about the way the galaxy was going, that Darkness and Light were playing a game of capture the flag, and trading the galaxy’s people on one side or the other. But he knew it was more than that.

He looked the ruins over, the area, just as he was listening to Raaf. Falling into the Force, Coren was looking out, not so much to the unifying Force, but the living Force, the one he knew he could access easier. His hand was out, and he was breathing deeply, concentrating. “Yoda…” He knew the name, from the books he had seen. The holocrons spoke of the little green Master. He fought off one of the big Sith back in the day, well, almost. Still, it plunged the galaxy into darkness, but then it made room for Skywalker.

“May have been a strike, but I know that the Jedi who fall, can be redeemed? Happened with Vader, if the legends are true.” And really, they were legends, after all. But Raaf came back, and he still had hope for Harrison. Maybe he could pull someone out of the First Order, and set them back. The intel that could be gained…

“Pretty sure that’s why they gave that job to Sentinels, and Shadows in the past.” One, it sounded less… Dark Side, but the second, Coren figured, that most didn’t know the Shadows were even there until it was too late. Or, well, rather, not too late. “Yeah, its why we need to get rid of the Sith. Start rounding up their artifacts and translating what is safe, destroying the rest.” History was worth learning from, but there was a reason the capital was a world full of lava.

[member="Taeli Raaf"]

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Coren Starchaser"]

"Well unfortunately, unless you have a way to travel us back in time to see what happened, that might be all we get from this site," she sighed. "I've been here for days, but there isn't really anything left here. Looters through the ages, Jedi or Sith that have come through and pillaged the place, even animals carrying shiny objects off. The ruins of this praxeum haven't been preserved all too well, considering other sites are much better preserved."

He wasn't too far off on his other comment, that traditionally the role of stamping out dark side corruption had fallen to Jedi Sentinels and Shadows in the past. The Galactic Republic had had those positions, the Silver Jedi too, but... they just didn't sound right for the more militant Alliance. The Shadows maybe, possibly even a devoted subsect of the Inquisitors, but no... the New Jedi Order had been founded to fight against the dark side, to stamp out the Sith and their ways. An Inquisition put home just how seriously they took it. Such a cruel irony then.

"I feel like there is an underlying question in that last statement for me," she said, a small wry smile in place as she sat down on the ground and invited him to do so as well. "I'm sure the Grand Marshal or some reading material let you know about my past... affiliations."

 

[Coren Starchaser]

“Well, they say the Force can accomplish deeds that are not expected by most.” And the Aing-Tii did Flow-Walk. Not that Coren was about to even attempt to do that. No, folding space, the very matter of reality, was one thing, but time? Yeah, that was one thing Coren Starchaser didn’t frak with. He knew what he’d do with it, and it wasn’t a very nice picture. “Sometimes we can’t save everything. But we need to focus on what we can save.” And relics, well, they weren’t always what one should worry on. Some of it, yes, the way to pass knowledge on, but even logging where places were, the Force Nexus, they provided images to those who were wise enough to listen.

And look.

“Its not the place… well, the physical place, that we should be preserving.” He looked at her. “And safeguarding.” As for the Jedi positions. Inquisitors were one thing, they were something in lore that was very specific, and lay fear in the heart of the light side, and its followers. Maybe Raaf wasn’t too far off the mark. He wasn’t sure.

“I know about you, Raaf. And maybe that’s why I’m here. To watch you, to hear what you have to say, to see how you approach this issue.” Maybe she was just who they needed. “But, not everyone is free of the dark side, its what keeps us grounded, and on the right path.”

[member="Taeli Raaf"]

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Coren Starchaser"]

"No, I agree, it is the traditions and ways of the Jedi that need preserved and safeguarded," she said, nodding at him. "Maybe because I started on the other side of the line... and maybe because it is honoring my sister's legacy that I strive to stay in the light, to help fight back against the darkness. Maybe that's because I have a zeal to protect the knowledge of our predecessors, or that could be because I grew up on one of the largest university worlds in the galaxy."

She added that with a real smile. She was, to this day, very fond of Lorrd.

"You must have questions for me though, more than what you probably read in whatever you were given on me," she continued. "Don't be shy, speak your mind, Coren. I have a fondness for straight talk that I simply don't get enough of during my days."

 

[Coren Starchaser]

He wasn’t one for tradition, not in the sense that he always followed it. Coren had a unique way of dealing with the Force, traveling from different groups and learning new ways to use the Force. What he needed from the Jedi though, was the sense of calm, and purpose, and yes, the tradition. The galaxy defending tradition of the Force. It was what constantly brought him in line with the Alliance goals. Sure, he didn’t feel he fit in any of the defined archetypes of the Order, maybe the Aces, and Sentinels, but they were the sense of purpose that the galaxy needed.

The Aing-Tii, the Grey Paladins, and the number of fringe groups he had seen in the Unknown Regions provided only a piece to a greater tapestry that was Coren’s purpose in the Force. “Corvus, your sister right? Good Jedi, one of the best, something the old produced that was done right.” Corellian by birth too, if Coren recalled correctly. But university world. “Which? Lorrd?”

He craned his neck to the side, popping the upper vertebrae. He was going to crack his knuckles but as he moved his hands, before even joining them, he didn’t want to come off as aggressive. If he knew what he thought he knew of Raaf, she definitely knew who he was. No chance that she didn’t. Not that it bothered him, but if he was concerned with what he had in mind, something was going to have to give.

“You. Former Sith, but you came here. You are leading a group called the Inquisition… Why not reinvigorate the Sentinels? Why that?” He wasn’t at the point where he distrusted her, well, not beyond how much he did with most people who came from the Sith, or any Dark aligned group.

[member="Taeli Raaf"]

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Coren Starchaser"]

"Yes, Corvus was my sister and Lorrdian raised," she replied, smiling. At least now he was being blunt about his unease about her being a former Sith and her Inquisitors. Such negative connotation for the words, at least when Jedi viewed them. It was honestly refreshing to deal with someone who was naturally suspicious. Helped to keep one on their toes.

"Before I answer, did you there were such things as Imperial Sentinels, Dark Jedi enhanced by Palpatine to serve as bodyguards and enforcers, and the Sith revived the practice under the One Sith," she asked rhetorically. "I ask that because one could argue that even Sentinel has a bad history when it comes to the Jedi and Sith conflict. So, did I know about the association one might think of when they think Inquisitor? Yes, I knew. Did I care? No. It's just a title for someone who is searching for the truth and trying to root out heresy towards their organization. I could have gone with Investigator, Sentinel, Shadow, Inquisitor, Seeker, Covenant, or any other number of titles for the group. Neither Light nor Dark owns a word, well except Jedi and Sith. Those seem very well locked down, don't you think?"

The last part of her statement was added with a small joking look.

"You could even say I'm trying to help dissociate the word from what Palpatine created," she added, almost as if it was an afterthought.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Was he arguing with Master Taeli Raaf, the one who stayed in the Alliance when he left and went to get his own answers? It certainly looked like it was going in that direction. Starchaser had his beliefs and the way he stuck to his guns. The thing was, he never really connected Taeli and Corvus. Sure, the latter may have thought him a firebrand, and she wasn’t exactly wrong, but there was respect for the homeworld. “Never spent much time on Lorrd, myself, passed through a few times though. On my way to somewhere else.” He was always on his way to somewhere else. But well, small talk wasn’t so bad, maybe he’d learn a few things about her.

“Sentinels were a Jedi idea first. The Empire used them, but they were different. And hell, the Shadows? No one was supposed to know about them. If you had a Shadow after you, internally? Already screwed.” And maybe there were people worse than the Shadows, the ones who really took a dark sider, or sympathizer down. He didn’t want to consider that. But he knew that he would jump on that in an instant. Probably why he kept close to the military, after all. Should a situation go south, he’d need their help.

“Yeah, they definitely own the meanings of those.” A small smirk crossed his features. Looking at the ruins again. “An inquisition though, was combating heresy. A sentinel, that’s standing as a guardian against it. Just my own feeling.” He’d bring the Sentinels back if he needed to. Not now though, not with Taeli.

“What did you learn about this place? Anything… outstanding?” Get her working, he could watch her, see what he learned.

[member="Taeli Raaf"]

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Coren Starchaser"]

"And there is no one saying there isn't room for a Sentinel to guard against corruption, and an Inquisitor to investigate anything that might get by the Sentinel," she replied. There were enough Jedi in the New Jedi Order that both organizations could recruit reasonably well, once the others realized the severity of the situation. That would become apparent before too long. "By all means, I think the reformation of Sentinels is a marvelous idea. I think, if you reform them, our two organizations would be able to work well together... and safeguard the Alliance and Jedi from the dangers we both know lurk out there."

Or here, she thought.

"Well, anyways, the ruins don't really offer a whole lot more," she said, getting up to walk around and make a demonstration. "They indicate the architecture style of the Jedi from the later stages of the Old Republic, a blending of Ossus and Coruscanti styles, with a mix of the local culture's use of stonework. It also speaks to the mindset of the Jedi of that time of a life of simplicity, hence the lack of any signs of habitation. All in all, besides the sight still being tainted from whatever occurred with these Dark Jedi and Yoda's strike team, there isn't much left here at all to learn."