Burning Light

[Audren Sykes]

Location: Voss, Jedi Temple

The time had finally come to build his lightsaber. His lightsaber, not the simulacrum he'd stolen off a half-trained Sith. The first stage, the least important of them all, was completed: he had a physical design. Two of them, actually, one of a more classical and regal nature the other simpler. He wasn't quite sure which one fit better, so he'd chosen the classical. Classics were classics for a reason, after all.

He had the materials needed, some procured through Sanctum stores, some purchased on his own. Echani Graphite would make the core body of the hilt, while Duravlex - an off-white alloy that was highly durable - would make up the outer shell. A diamond would be the main focus, while a sapith crystal would allow for a bifurcating cyclical-ignition pulse as well as enhance the intensity of the blade. Both stones had been found by him, the Sapith on a planet in the Unknown Regions, the diamond on Yavin IV. Other parts were also present such as the energy cell, circuits, insulation and more.

The Sephi had several features he was looking to implement in his lightsaber. Some were based on inabilities of his current blade, such as changing intensity settings from lethal to training mode and back. Others were based on situations he'd run into - though he'd never had occasion to use the blade underwater in the field, he'd tested it and found it lacking. Still others were common issues known to Jedi: destroying a hilt with another lightsaber as well as disabling the blade with pure cortosis. Each of these issues had a known solution, he'd just had to find them. And incorporate them into the design of his hilt, of course.

 

[Audren Sykes]

The basis for most lightsaber hilts was a cylinder. All the electronics and lenses and crystals fit inside that cylinder, and though they were sometimes placed in different locations there was more or less a set order to them. The power cell went into the base of the hilt, focusing crystals could be found somewhere towards the center, and lenses towards the emitter. Fairly simple.

Audren had tapped the same blacksmith he'd used to create his armored robes to create the outer shell of his lightsaber. When he'd brought the design and what he was looking for, the smith had chosen the outer casing's metal, something called duravlex with bronzium accents. The alloy was off-white already, and polish would take it to almost a pure white. The bronzium - only a thin layer in each area - would provide the gold color in certain locations. The shell itself could slip on and off the base cylinder, and would be held in place by understated screws and bolts. It was simple enough to forge.

The final piece fit together nicely, both aesthetically and functionally. The slight grooves in the bronzium towards the bottom provided adequate gripping while the thicker top portion allowed him to instinctively know by touch where his hand was on the hilt. Not so much necessary when he had the Force, but multiple times now he'd encountered situations where he'd entered a ysalamiri Force-nullifying field and so wanted a tactile method as well. Now he could progress to the interior, the difficult parts.

 

[Audren Sykes]

One of the more common issues with lightsabers, yet fairly unknown to enemies, was the inability to work underwater. The solution had long ago been discovered, and had been recorded. During the days of the Old Republic - peace time especially - only Jedi who routinely entered aquatic environments waterproofed their hilts; others made do in one way or another. There had been a particular story of warning he'd overheard, one involving the esteemed personage of Obi Wan Kenobi. He'd been involved with fighting in a swamp - some said it was Naboo - and the water had fried his lightsaber. During the Clone Wars the waterproofing had become widespread. The use had fallen off somewhat since then, but it was still very widely used enough that pushing a wielder into a pool wasn't an effective way to end the fight.

Audren was most certainly not a technical person, and the explanation for it was. Heck, the [i[name[/i] of the method was. Bifurcating cyclical-ignition pulse. He could explain what the words meant individually, he could explain what they meant as a whole, but how to do it? Nope, not a chance. He knew it involved having two crystals in the hilt, but that was about it. Thankfully, the technology was thoroughly recorded. All he had to do was set it up by the schematics. Following instructions...he could do that.

 

[Audren Sykes]

One of the issues that Audren had run into personally was the inability to change settings on his blade. In a training spar with Abaigeal E'ron, he'd had to switch to a training lightsaber from the one he'd come to think of as his. Come to think of it, he'd been lucky that there'd even been a training blade available, they weren't really designed for Knights. Since that point he'd known that was a feature to include on his own lightsaber.

This was again a widespread addition to Jedi lightsabers. Most used knobs to accomplish the feat, but he decided on a slider. A capacitive slider, backed by a color indicator to show whether the blade was at full or training strength. This was his hilt after all, not a common one that was handed out to just any Jedi. Once again, the designs for the feature were well-documented and fairly simple to implement, so long as he followed the instructions. The only difficult part was adapting the capacitive interface to replace the twist knob, but that was again simply following the written instructions. A simple-enough endeavor.

 

[Audren Sykes]

Now came the difficult part. It had been difficult, and this one would most certainly be more difficult than the two customizations before had been. He'd been musing on the topic on and off ever since Arkas, and been doing active research on it since starting to work with the Free Colonies. Cortosis. In its purified form, the mineral/metal was a bane to Jedi lightsabers. Cross a lightsaber blade with a bit of it, whether armor or blade or just a hunk of it in general, and the blade would be deactivated. Not only that, it would be unable to activate for a number of minutes. Given how much Force Users tended to rely on their lightsabers, it was usually a fatal few minutes. However, even an impure version like the raw ore would deactivate the blade, and when formed into a weave with other metals it would stop the blade like it was nothing special.

Research had shown that the root cause of this was some of the circuitry used in the hilt. Dimetris circuitry, it was called. When it hit most cortosis, there was a feedback crash that shut the entire thing down in fractions of a second. Since the dimetris circuitry was widely-used in lightsaber hilt activation loops, it affected pretty much all lightsabers out there. The obvious response was to take the dimetris circuits out of the activation loop - preferably out of the lightsaber altogether - but since schematics didn't label what was dimetris circuitry and what wasn't, things got difficult. Hence the research.

In the end, he'd gotten the information from an electrical engineer, a friend of a friend. He'd never heard of the term dimetris circuitry, but once Audren had described the effect and where it was located in the device...he still couldn't help. What the engineer did do was name another method of setting up the activation loop. The Sephi had written down the name of the method and done research on that. It seemed to match up, but he couldn't know for sure until he tested it. Fortunately, though the name itself differed, this method was also well-documented and he was able to actually implement it with a minimum of fuss.

 

[Audren Sykes]

Fitting the rest of the pieces into place was simply a matter of time and precision, especially since he had the schematics for a dozen lightsabers available for comparison. For second-guessing himself too; by the time everything was in place he'd probably checked over and redone the positioning three, maybe even four times, even correcting the emitter matrix from the original orientation. This was supposed to be the simple part, the hard part was what he'd come to call the 'melding'.

Once everything was where it should be, the Knight shifted his focus somewhat. The hilt was closed up, leaving only the charging port for the power cell accessible. His hand hovered over the switch that would begin the charging process, at which time he would need to also begin the meditation linked with creating a lightsaber. During the time of the Old Republic, this sort of meditation would occur on Ilum, where supposedly a creator might undergo hallucinations. That had been a long time ago though, and loss, rediscovery, and inaccessibility of the planet had led to more common places of creation. Like a workshop in the Voss Temple.

Much less exciting than the hallucinations and premonitions of old.

As the Knight pressed the button, he stepped into the Force. Other Jedi had described 'bathing' the lightsaber with the Force as the power flowed into it, but Audren didn't perceive the Force as liquid. Rather, he wrapped the metal hilt in a tight cocoon of Force energy. More than that though, threads of Force power permeated the hilt itself. They spun down the strands of screws, wiggled into any exposed openings, and generally encased the pieces with the Force. Minute changes started to take effect, molecular changes that he could only sense in the broadest strokes, but ones that reminded him of the Light side-based alchemy he'd witnessed some time past.

The changes had barely started when he felt a surge, something that just felt off. He had the impression of burning hands - both of which were touching the hilt - and the sense that it was about to happen. Without conscious thought, his hands flicked away the hilt and came up to block his face in a crossed position. There were some sparks as the power cell disconnected from the charger, then a gout of flame shot from the exposed end. Had he been watching the hilt, he would have also seen brief light coming from the seams where the pieces fitted together.

No fire alarms began blaring, no sprinkler systems sprayed fire suppressant. This was a workshop, it wasn't unheard of to have spouts of flame. Might not even be a first to have it coming from a lightsaber hilt, who knew.

 

[Audren Sykes]

Audren was fairly surprised to find himself free of burns and shrapnel. The burst of flame had been somewhat directed and had sent the hilt flying at the wall. Yet because of the flame coming out the other end as well, it hadn't even hit hard enough to dent. By the time he made his way to the hilt and picked it up, only some residual heat remained over either end of the cylinder. The duravlex and graphite had done an admirable job of containing the energy. The insides, however, hadn't been quite as lucky.

The light visible in the seams had resulted in melting metal, making it difficult to open up the hilt. Doing so broke several sheets of the resulting metal and revealed an utter ruin inside. The insulation around the power cell had been mostly melted or eaten away, and he was lucky that the cell itself hadn't ruptured. Circuitry had been burned to ash or even evaporated completely, and most of the other pieces were unusable. Of the Sapith crystal he'd installed only pieces were found, shards and fragments of no use to a lightsaber. Curiously, the diamond was just fine, only some ash marring the shaped surface. That he set aside for later.

When the Sephi tried to separate the outer casing from the inner cylinder, he found that he wasn't able to. Though it had survived the destruction - which he now suspected was caused by an inverted emitter matrix - the two parts had melted together in places. Unless he wanted to use this exact hilt again, with considerable work involved to do even that, the pieces were scrap metal. That meant going back to his friend and having him machine more parts. The same parts would be an obvious embarrassment, while using his backup design, the simpler one would be less so. After all, Jedi could carry more than one lightsaber, and it wouldn't be impossible for even the graphite and duravlex hilt to be destroyed.

When the cleanup had been completed, the Sephi commed the blacksmith on a video link. After showing the rough idea, the smith had this time suggested a terenthium-desh alloy, a durable metal but much lighter than the duravlex. It was more suited for the look Audren was going for. A price was agreed to, the fabrication started.

 

[Audren Sykes]

Just a couple days later, the completed alloy casing was delivered. Like the duravlex casing, it slid on rather well. This time though, Audren had specified that several of the parts needed to be separated, as he had an idea he hoped would work. The pommel was separate from the base of the hilt which was separate from the upper half which was separate from the emitter. Yet all fit onto the Graphite cylinder seamlessly. The cylinder itself was cut into pieces, and several inset cuts allowed the outer casing to solidly latch onto the lightsaber-resistant material. Further, latches on the inside of the graphite cylinder allowed the pieces to be tightly held together, not allowing the hilt to fall apart.

As an added security measure, the three interior latches were magnetically sealed to their receptacles when the lightsaber blade was active. At least, that was the theory. While tightly secure in their own manner, the magnetics would make it even more difficult to disassemble the hilt should an enemy even know the latches existed.

The features that he'd originally wanted were still desired, so he redid them. The bifurcating cyclical pulse ignition, the non-dimetris circuitry, even the intensity selector. However, he changed the intensity selector somewhat. Like the latches, he placed it inside the hilt, changing the capacitive touch button to a simple three-point switch that he could manipulate via the Force when the blade was inactive - similar to the latches, the active setting was held in place while the blade was active. Three points for three modes. A full-powered blade of course, essential in the modern galaxy. A training blade, highly recommended and used as a Jedi. The new addition was a harmless beam of light however, the same size and shape and color as a normal lightsaber beam*. He'd gotten the idea from a children's toy he'd seen in one of the open-air markets here on Voss. Though he had no idea if the mode would be useful, he decided to include it anyways.

*

Spoiler

Concept seen in X-Wing: Mercy Kill.

 

[Audren Sykes]

Instead of allowing double-guessing later on, Audren laid out the pieces to the lightsaber in the precise order - and direction - he wanted them. If his guess was right and the emitter matrix had indeed been inverted, this would prevent that mistake from happening. Modulating circuits, field energizers, the diatium power cell, insulation...all of it laid out. Firstly though, he attached the pieces of leather he'd purchased to the hilt. They would act as a grip rather than the ridged pieces that he'd thought to use on his first hilt.

Piece by piece, each part was placed into the hilt, secured, then connected to those around it. He worked from the bottom up, the power cell on up to the focusing crystals and eventually to the emitter. As each piece was completed, the internal latches were closed and secured, resulting in a completed lightsaber hilt. But the completion was only on the surface, he still had to go through the 'melding' meditation. Hoping that he hadn't put anything in place incorrectly, the Knight unlatched the pommel and hooked it up to the charger. A single breath was all he allowed himself before sinking into the meditation and activating the charger.

 

[Audren Sykes]

The meditation had been useful, even eye opening in a figurative way. One of the revelations he'd been granted was that he would no longer be able to lay the blame for undesirable urges - killing, mayhem, or otherwise - at the feet of the corrupting influence of the Sith hilt. This hilt reflected him and no others. From now on he would have to think on the thoughts entering his head and - if necessary - find the root cause and change it. He no longer had an excuse.

When he rose from the meditation, he was hungry and thirsty. More than that though, he was curious. This hilt hadn't exploded into a torrent of flame, and everything else seemed to be in order. Had he actually, successfully created a lightsaber of his own? Only one way to be sure. Rising from his kneeling position, the Sephi thumbed the activation plate. A brilliant orange beam of light shot out to a normal length, then stopped. He swept the blade at the table, remembering which setting his selector had been on. The beam swept through the table with no change. He turned it off and back on, touched it to a table leg. There was pressure, and a small scorch mark could be seen on the leg, but the blade didn't sweep through.

For his test of the full-strength blade however, Audren had a more tangible target. He used the Force to bring the Sith lightsaber from his belt to a hover in midair, the black hilt fully visible against the off-white walls. Another restart, and he swept the blade through the hilt. What was once one single piece fell away in two, the bisecting cut glowing white-hot. The cut also swept through the lone crystal inside the hilt, vaporizing it in an instant.

Yea, it worked.