Private But While We Are Here

[Jend-Ro Quill]

"We all live at the edge. One step, we are gone. But while we are here, we live." — a maxim of the Central Isopter death cult​

Exegol just kept dying, the Isopter cultists whispered, adrenaline thick in their voices, and they were uncomfortably right.

The observatory station looked out over the mere suggestion of a planet. Colossal debris still churned, years since competing rituals had crushed Exegol like overripe fruit in two children's hands. The cultists arrayed at the panorama watched the spectacle with equal greediness.

They'd barely wavered in the hours since Quill had arrived on their observatory. Their occasional chatter held a deep, hushed glee. Their wasplike masks and sepulchral robes trembled with enthusiasm. They loved Exegol for its ongoing ruination.

Some claimed they'd watched it happen — known days in advance that the world would be destroyed. A talent like that could save lives, forewarn of xenocides and superweapons. Quill had made his usual polite inroads toward learning it, and they'd laughed. "We aren't the teachers," the masked cultists said. "Watch. Exegol will teach you."

So watch he did. He'd visited with the elders of a hundred worlds; he knew a thing or two about engaging sincerely and without preconception. But feth did the Central Isopter people not make it easy. At their best they had serious things to say about loss and mortality. At their worst they were disaster tourists — on the order of a Coruscanti noble on a photo op, or a Jedi dreadnought dropping ration packs.

What am I doing here, Quill kept asking. Silently — but not silent to the cult — the planet kept eating itself.

---

OOC/ I've given a handful of interested people a standing invitation to hop in on this if they feel the urge, for vignettes or whatever. All kinds of potential angles.

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Eloise stared out the bridgeport window at the ongoing destruction of Exegol. "So the Jedi helped to blow this planet up?" she asked, either talking to her ever-present master Amani Serys , or whoever else was in earshot and appropriately sagelike. "Seems kind of dickish."

She hadn't been there when it happened. The annihilation of Exegol. Amani was, but then Amani had been at every major galactic event of the past decade or so. Eloise imagined they all started to blur together once you witnessed the seventh or so history-making moment.

The cultists aboard this station apparently had the power to predict where the next big disaster would hit. Eloise thought along similar lines to Quill. It was an ability which could make a huge difference, if more people had it. Maybe even powerful people in high places, like Senator Alicio Organa . But she doubted they would or could take the time to learn, especially since it required one to sit and stare at the slow-mo decomposition of a dead world like a morbid alternative to watching paint dry.

Eloise would keep trying regardless.

Jend-Ro Quill​

 

[Alcuin Rhunn]

Robed and garbed in a strange manner for a human, and wearing a scowl that was more passively fixed that actively worn, Alcuin tromped to the windows in heavy boots of spacers leather. He was dressed as well as an traveling craftworker or tradesman might be, which is to say his clothes bore some signs of work, particularly on the trim and sleeves, and his belt had faint crease lines that aged leather gets. Drumming fingers along the exotic looking hilt of a knife tucked into said belt, he held in his other hand a shard of the planet that they looked out over.

The cultists could be his key to finding rumor of his people's lost home. The sundering of a race into two, and the destruction of a planet by the birthing of a Force-borne consciousness would likely have registered on their scales. They had told him Exegol would teach him their ways, and so he turned the shard of fused rock and iron and glass over and over in his hands as the Anefilt let the sensory powers of his people wash over it, faint echoes and whispers of the Force speaking from the pieces of the shard.

To any watching without the Force, he was just a grumpy looking human staring out the window. To those with a mind for it, he faintly hummed with the same frequency in the Force as the shard in his hand, as the remains of the planet outward. An odd trick, that.

Jend-Ro Quill | Eloise Dinn

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

"So the Jedi helped to blow this planet up?" she asked, either talking to her ever-present master Amani Serys, or whoever else was in earshot and appropriately sagelike. "Seems kind of dickish."

Quill tore himself away from the churning panorama that used to be Exegol. As he gathered his words, a shroud-wrapped Central Isopter cultist interjected with quiet enthusiasm. "Two duelling rituals," said the cultist. "The first was the Wall of Light, the greatest Jedi power. It seeks in vain to purge the inevitable dark. It causes disproportionate agony and destruction. The Jedi used it to obliterate the sacred fourth moon of Yavin long before the Dark Age - planetary firestorms, annihilation of the Massassi species, total ecological devastation. When I was a child, the Jedi used it to burn a huge swath of Mirial; contemplating that ruin is what brought me to the visions of the Isopter. Now, at long last, they've done it again." Other cultists nodded appreciatively. "They used a special vessel of some kind to intensify the ritual and drive this Wall of Light into the planet's heart. And the counter-ritual, the Maw's release of extraplanar beings, the great crimson beam jutting up from the world...ah, even in vision, it is transcendent. Between those rituals, absolute annihilation. Absolute majesty. My life's greatest regret is that we could not get through the Red Honeycomb Zone in time to witness it."

Quill had left the Order - what, thirty years ago now, more? - because of Jedi war crimes. The cultist's words were a miserable and familiar story, objectively callous but also hinting at some potential for deeper awareness. The Central Isopter said, after all, that to stare into sights like these was to understand a universe that contained them. To understand how such things could be, and such people.

"I've done it and had it done to me many times, one on one," he said.

The verbose cultist's head snapped around. "How much physical damage did it cause?"

"Well, none to me, but I haven't been a Darksider since I was a young man. It's not pleasant." He took up his cane and limped away from the railing to take a seat at the very comfortable viewing couches nearby. "Use it on a Sith, agonizing, sometimes burning, sometimes lethal, a last-ditch choice and one I've often regretted being part of. Use it on a whole region with enough Dark Side present...this, this is what can happen when all you care about is the purge."

The cultist gestured at the panoramic window. "Yavin, Mirial, Exegol...do you think there's a way to convince the Jedi to do this more often?"

Quill shook his head and wiped at stinging eyes. "You'd need to ask a Jedi."

To any watching without the Force, he was just a grumpy looking human staring out the window. To those with a mind for it, he faintly hummed with the same frequency in the Force as the shard in his hand, as the remains of the planet outward. An odd trick, that.

The resonance sank into Quill's heart in this difficult moment. It was subtle but real, and perfectly tuned. Quill found himself relaxing, just a notch.

 

[Amani Serys]

Amani had not been back to Exegol since the climactic battle. It felt like a different life from that which grew out of the ashes of the Second Great Hyperspace War. And now that the planet was gone, there wasn't exactly anything to return to. But on some level, she recognized it was subconscious hesitance to return to chaos the Jedi had helped unleash. She hadn't been a part of the ritual herself— Amani was on the ground, engaging with her old enemy Surea— A name she she had not reminded herself of in years. But knowing what had been done raised many questions she wasn't comfortable answering on her own.

"So the Jedi helped to blow this planet up?"

The healer inhaled deeply, preparing to formulate a measured answer, but one of the cultists beat her to it. Despite his obvious reverence, the cultist explained the events too plainly to refute. "That is… the essence of it." Amani admitted, "The Jedi sought to purify Exegol's corruption, and that of the Darksiders operating there. To do so they used a massive station that acted as a Force amplifier. Rather than let that happen, the Brotherhood of the Maw unleashed extraplanar entities with which to fully destroy the planet."

"Yavin, Mirial, Exegol...do you think there's a way to convince the Jedi to do this more often?"

"You'd need to ask a Jedi."

"I'd certainly hope not." The Jedi interjected, "Purging Exegol was a last-ditch effort to extinguish the Maw— A joint assault by the Alliance, the Ashlans, the Empire, and well, pretty much anyone who wasn't part of the Brotherhood— And it still feels…" Amani could't find the word for it, but the negative connotation was clear. She liked to think the New Jedi Order had cleaned up their act significantly since the days of their war with the Sith Empire. She wouldn't have bothered to join them if she didn't. But they were bound to have some splotches on their record all the same. Was that an acceptable casualty of being such major players on the galactic stage? Of being at the vanguard of a war effort? If it had been just about any other planet as their target, Amani would have renounced her involvement. But did that make Exegol's purge justified? She wanted to believe so. Whether or not she did, the Chief Healer could not herself say. "What do you think? If a planet is nothing but a barren refuge for Darksiders, does that make it okay to purge? To destroy, even?" Amani posed the hypothetical to her padawan, her tone even and not swaying to one side or the other.

Eloise Dinn - Jend-Ro Quill - Alcuin Rhunn​

 

[Alcuin Rhunn]

A snort, derisive and sudden, came from the human appearing Anefilt and the master craftsman spared a moment from his meditation to speak a few words directed at the healer who spoke the same words the Jedi cult had spoke since they nearly broke Tython before the Republic. It was a reason many Anefilt inherently distrusted both them and the Sith. Self-righteous and self-assured of their own purity.

"What is death for the fly is life for the spider, and nothing qualifies you to judge one holy and the other profane to this extent..."

With a gesture at the shattered horrors the Cultists worshipped, his next words were clearly not for the Jedi pair, having said his piece to them they were dismissed without rancor or hatred, but out of boredom casually. A very brusque attitude to most, but common and acceptable in his people's society.

"You speak of Exegol, but I speak of a planet once inhabited by a race that strained to rise beyond the force of Death you worship by melding technology and the Force, and doing so sundered their people and destroyed them... I speak of Daeria... Do you know this tale?"

Jend-Ro Quill | Amani Serys | Eloise Dinn

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

"There are other questions I can't answer," Quill said from the viewing couch, agitated and - he knew - thinking out loud more than was wise. "How many actually died on Exegol? Who made the call; who in the Alliance has the power to decide a whole world's disposable? If they saw the need to burn another desolate planet like, say, Hoth or Pagodon-"

"These are distractions," said a Central Isopter cultist with enviable calm. "Indignation and cognitive dissonance alike. They are safe, familiar paths the mind uses to avoid the unavoidable. Face what you see with honesty, and Exegol will teach you."

Distractions did abound. Those stiff, cocoonlike robes really did remind Quill of burial shrouds, of wrapped dry corpses in the Pilgrim's Path on Jedha. The robes, he realized, might actually be coffins. Wearing their own caskets wherever they went seemed like a very Central Isopter thing to do. Meanwhile, a purple-and-white R7 with red accents skittered past. It was a precious relic, a cultist had mentioned earlier: a droid specialized for operation on Exegol in ancient days. Its red photoreceptor glared balefully.

Quill refocused on what Alcuin Rhunn had said that was creating such a stir. "Daeria," some cultists murmured. One said: "We know the story of the story, but not the tale as you would tell it. None of us have been there or know where it is. Do you know the path?"

Amani Serys Eloise Dinn

 

[Eloise Dinn]

One of the cultists jumped to answer her question, though his answer was a little hard to follow. The old man cut in, getting into a back-and-forth with the Isopterian, while Amani added in her two creds.

"What do you think? If a planet is nothing but a barren refuge for Darksiders, does that make it okay to purge? To destroy, even?"

"No," Eloise replied immediately. "The planet didn't ask to be occupied by Dark Siders and 'corrupted'. At the end of the day, it's just a rock floating through space. Blowing it up to purge the Dark Siders on it is dumb as hell. The Dark Siders will just move on and survive anyway, like cockroaches escaping a house on fire. It's unnecessary destruction. How does that serve the Force?"

Who got to decide the planet ought to be purged, anyhow? She nearly posed the question, but the old guy beat her to it. Alas, the cultists tried to put an end to the conversation. They weren't here to discuss the morality of blowing up planets, or the use of Force Light, or anything really. They were here to watch and learn from Exegol.

"Is this place a Wound in the Force, or was it one already because of the Dark?" she muttered, looking out at the fires below.

Jend-Ro Quill Amani Serys Alcuin Rhunn

 

[Amani Serys]

"Well, to play devil's advocate a little further, the Wall of Light isn't an explosive force. We're talking about incinerating any trace of Darkness, and leaving behind, well— A rock floating through space," She repeated the Padawan's descriptor. The celestial body remained, albeit environmentally sterilized. So if the planet was already nothing more than lifeless earth, then what?

"...How does that serve the Force?"

"It got rid of the Maw." She said plainly. More questions flew, as well as some incendiary remarks, prompting Amani to drop the defense. The Cultists cut it short themselves, insisting they simply focus on Exegol here and now.

"Is this place a Wound in the Force, or was it one already because of the Dark?"

"I don't that there's a conclusive answer. The only sources we have a few, and very old." Amani answered, "Supposedly Exegol was once a fertile, vibrant world. Then the Sith arrived and extinguished it all, creating what we have now. Or, what we had, prior to the last battle."

"I would assume the vergence formed after the extinction event, which would have echoed through the Force dramatically."

Jend-Ro Quill - Eloise Dinn - Alcuin Rhunn​

 

[Loxa Visl]

A lot of words were being spoken.

A lot of emotions being felt.

A lot of chaos spinning in the beyond.

Of the three things occuring in tandem, only the very latter held any connection to the woman sitting on the bench, gripping a metal staff, wearing aviators with her hood pulled over her head. Despite the destruction a stone's throw away, it was cold here. The sort of cold that held meaning.

Loxa would not, could not join the conversation. She did not know the words well enough to understand much of it, and knew them even less to manufacture meaningful responses. But with the bedlam on display? That she could talk to. That she thought she could understand.

Perhaps if she got closer. Into the thick of the conversation outside.

Loxa stood finally as discourse churned into speculation, into the unknowable, and headed for the nearest exit. Time to find a shuttle and a very brave pilot.

 

[Alcuin Rhunn]

"I was there the day the planet was ripped asunder by storms from the beyond. I felt every death of my kinsfolk seconds before they put me to sleep and fired me into the distant stars."

He looked at the voyeurs with sudden emotion firing in his eyes, their crass questions igniting a long smoldering flame in his breast. Anefilt were patient, slow to anger, but when they were roused... The vibration between Alcuin, the shard, and the planet outside seemed to sharpen and keen in pitch, almost a perfect harmony now rather than similar resonance. A tuning fork coming into tune with the note hanging in the air.

"I helped draw the plans... I do not need to know Exegol to know the knife edge of it's demise. I am the blade itself. Daeria. Do you madmen know whence it went, or are your ramblings as nonsensical as your worship?"

Jend-Ro Quill | Amani Serys | Eloise Dinn | Loxa Visl

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

"Is this place a Wound in the Force, or was it one already because of the Dark?" she muttered, looking out at the fires below.

"I would assume the vergence formed after the extinction event, which would have echoed through the Force dramatically."

A cultist nodded eagerly. "That is what made Exegol so special initially, yes. The opposed rituals of scourging and summoning might have cancelled each other, but they destroyed a world, and a world's destruction is always an affront, an impingement, dare I say a breach of the weak little natural harmonies. Destruction is intrinsically itself no matter who has the honor of carrying it out. So the wound you feel built upon the original, but it is of its own kind, fresh and unable to scab over."

Daeria. Do you madmen know whence it went, or are your ramblings as nonsensical as your worship?"

If the cultists were offended or angered, Quill couldn't say, but Alcuin Rhunn certainly got their collective focus. Quill got the feeling the smith was perilously close to being asked for his autograph as someone who'd helped kill a world. That it hadn't happened suggested the cult had at least some self-preservation instincts.

"The resonance you feel, the ache of the cataclysm, could lead you to dive straight and true into Exegol's heart, could it not?" said one. "We know you are a maker. You could so easily make a compass to lead you inexorably down that long fall. Perhaps you could make a compass to lead you along another path of resonance, to another vista as profound as this one. We do not have the path to Daeria. You might."

Loxa stood finally as discourse churned into speculation, into the unknowable, and headed for the nearest exit. Time to find a shuttle and a very brave pilot.

Quill had been excited to meet Loxa in connection with this trip; their encounters had always been pleasant. He could use something pleasant just now. He took up his cane and hurried after her, step step-tap, step step-tap.

"Loxa," he said, raising his voice just a little as he followed her through the exit. "Looking for some...fresh air?"

They were of course on an asteroid space station.

 

[Eloise Dinn]

"It got rid of the Maw."

"And absolutely nothing else could be done to achieve that which wouldn't involve blowing up a planet, right?"

"I don't think there's a conclusive answer. The only sources we have are few, and very old. Supposedly Exegol was once a fertile, vibrant world. Then the Sith arrived and extinguished it all, creating what we have now. Or, what we had, prior to the last battle. I would assume the vergence formed after the extinction event, which would have echoed through the Force dramatically."

A cultist nodded eagerly. "That is what made Exegol so special initially, yes. The opposed rituals of scourging and summoning might have cancelled each other, but they destroyed a world, and a world's destruction is always an affront, an impingement, dare I say a breach of the weak little natural harmonies. Destruction is intrinsically itself no matter who has the honor of carrying it out. So the wound you feel built upon the original, but it is of its own kind, fresh and unable to scab over."

Scab over? "What, you mean like redemption? Healing?" Eloise's brow furrowed. She supposed that was the tragic element she saw in all this. Exegol may have been rendered barren by the Dark Side, but there had been a chance, however small, that it might have been able to bounce back. Destroying it also destroyed that possibility.

A woman who had been observing the proceedings abruptly got up and left. The old man hobbled after her. Eloise glanced at Amani. "Do you believe in capital punishment?" she asked. "That execution for particularly heinous crimes is morally acceptable?" She imagined the answer would be no, if only because her mother was alive and in prison, having been put there by Amani and Alicio Organa , in spite of everything she had done. They could've killed her, but they hadn't.

"Why did you let my mother live, and Exegol be destroyed?"

Amani Serys Jend-Ro Quill Alcuin Rhunn Loxa Visl​

 

[Alcuin Rhunn]

For a moment the smith stepped perilously close to a cultist, his eyes shining with rage, and it seemed he might actually take action. But eventually is better senses prevailed, and he stepped back, shaking his head as he took in the words.

"A compass. A psychometric transponder, basically. Why did I not think of that. If I find it, you're welcomed to visit the grave of my people as thanks. Even if you are like unto vultures."

Jend-Ro Quill | Amani Serys | Eloise Dinn | Loxa Visl

 

[Loxa Visl]

She had not expected company, but it was not unwelcome. The witch turned her gaze to the old Jedi, his familiar face reflecting back at him in the lenses of her aviators.

"Quill," Loxa smiled at the man in the same way she might smile at a fresh mug of tea, then nodded, "yes. This One think to see is not enough." Her boots pushed through the pause given for him and down the narrow hallway to the lift. The pair of them created a staccato symphony of metal-assisted movement between her staff and his cane.

Step - step - tap - step - tang - step step - tap...

"Mas ... to join," she made a vague gesture in the general direction of the destructive cacophony beyond, offered a face and a sound that suggested she was not wholly certain of her word choice, tried again, "to learn dance."

Not quite. They reached the end of the hall and Loxa stopped at the lift gate, pressing the button and stepped in after the hiss of an opened gate.

"Make friend of chaos."

That felt better. The witch's smile shifted to the enjoyment of strange brew.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

<Make chain to song?> he said in the portion of Paecean he'd absorbed or conventionally studied here and there. <You put face close to Exegol?>

He glanced back the way they'd come, catching the edges of the impassioned conversation, and opted to follow Loxa into the lift.

<A bird flies quietly,> he said in half-remembered idiom.

The lift headed down toward, he was fairly sure, the docking bays. Several visitor ships were here, connected and unconnected, and a few strange or hardy souls used the Observatory as a gas station. You could catch a ride easily enough. Quill couldn't recall if Loxa lived like that or had a ship of her own; had they ever discussed it?

<What bird is yours?>

---

Back in the Observatory's main gallery deck, the cultists were waxing excited about the interchange between Amani Serys and Eloise Dinn . They felt the moment was portentous. For the moment, none of them commented.

Others were paying equally close attention to Alcuin Rhunn . "We would enjoy that greatly," one said. "This contemplation is our most meaningful sustenance. Even vultures need to eat."

"Vultures," said another. "That is kind of you. It's nice to be understood."

 

[Amani Serys]

"No…" Amani replied slowly, expectant of an obvious follow up. She settled her hands behind her back, and turned to face her padawan as the second question came.

"Why did you let my mother live, and Exegol be destroyed?"

An eyebrow raised. There was a pause. "…You ask that as if I single-handedly made the choice," The mirialan looked back out the viewport in contemplation, before she continued, "I didn't play any part in that conclusion. Only the highest of higher-ups were privy to such talks. I was not, and still am not, of that position," There was another pause, some discomfort on Amani's part made audible by a sigh, "It isn't the decision I would have made if I were there. But… I accepted the decision as one of war."

"And it's there that the real difference lies. We were at war with the Maw, and in the name of galactic defense that required action. It's nice to pretend every battle can be won with words. I try to be optimistic, always have been, but I refuse to let it blind me to reality anymore." There was simply too much at stake now. Too much she had already lost because inaction was seen as more virtuous than any reaction.

"Taking life should never be easy. But there are some who will exploit every second chance you give them. And every second chance is more injured. More dead. And if you can't take them in alive… Sometimes the alternative is the only choice left."

"Your mother was subdued nonlethally. Murdering her would have been an act of cold blooded anger, not self-defense. But I will not lie to you, Eloise— If I had engaged Rhiannon, and could not take her in alive— I would have done what I had to, to protect not only myself but you, Alicio, and everyone else."

"Purifying Exegol doesn't make me happy. But as I said, I accepted it. What I don't accept was its wholesale destruction as a celestial body. And as I also already said, that was never in the cards for the Jedi. The Maw, however…" She gestured again at the planetary ruins, "Still, it holds a unique, and unenviable distinction as a world of nothing more than rock and shadow. If it had been any other world, any other world— Hoth, Abafar, hell even Korriban— I never could have gone along with the Wall of Light. But I don't accept the argument that any of those are comparable in good faith, or that this outcome leads to some slippery slope. No. It starts, and ends, at Exegol."

Eloise Dinn - Jend-Ro Quill - Alcuin Rhunn - Loxa Visl​

 

[Eloise Dinn]

"…You ask that as if I single-handedly made the choice."

"Then who did?" Eloise grumbled. Her question was phrased in a way that made Amani's actions seem more extreme than they really were, but she couldn't take it back now.

"It isn't the decision I would have made if I were there. But… I accepted the decision as one of war. And it's there that the real difference lies. We were at war with the Maw, and in the name of galactic defense that required action. It's nice to pretend every battle can be won with words. I try to be optimistic, always have been, but I refuse to let it blind me to reality anymore."

Eloise stared at Amani, brow furrowed. "So you wouldn't have destroyed Exegol if it were up to you, yet it's fine that it happened? It's acceptable so long as you're not the one making the choice?"

Amani's answer to the question of Eloise's mother was in much the same vein. She deferred the decision to spare Rhiannon's life over to Alicio, who had managed to subdue her beforehand, all while claiming she would've done things differently. Her sighing and rational posing with her hands clasped behind her back were starting to grate on Eloise. By the Force, didn't it boil her blood seeing people make decisions she knew were wrong, especially decisions that resulted in mass destruction? Didn't it enrage her? How could she just stand by and passively accept it?

"It's not the same," she muttered. "My mother is a person with free will. Exegol is a planet that was corrupted and used by the Sith. Either one could've been redeemed, but the difference is my mother would have to choose it. Exegol has no say in the matter. It's just... It's like destroying the Force because some people used it for evil. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater." Or because its parents did bad things.

"Purifying Exegol doesn't make me happy. But as I said, I accepted it. What I don't accept was its wholesale destruction as a celestial body. And as I also already said, that was never in the cards for the Jedi. The Maw, however… Still, it holds a unique, and unenviable distinction as a world of nothing more than rock and shadow. If it had been any other world, any other world—Hoth, Abafar, hell even Korriban—I never could have gone along with the Wall of Light. But I don't accept the argument that any of those are comparable in good faith, or that this outcome leads to some slippery slope. No. It starts, and ends, at Exegol."

"Well feth me, I sure hope you're right about that." She didn't quite believe it would start and end with Exegol.

Amani Serys Jend-Ro Quill Alcuin Rhunn​

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

It starts, and ends, at Exegol.

Several cultists visibly wilted with disappointment.

 

[Amani Serys]

"Alliance high command did."

"My mother is a person with free will. Exegol is a planet that was corrupted and used by the Sith. Either one could've been redeemed, but the difference is my mother would have to choose it. Exegol has no say in the matter. It's just... It's like destroying the Force because some people used it for evil. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

"You're not listening," A touch of exasperation crept into her demeanor now, "Picture an outcome where the Brotherhood fails their ritual. They're unable to summon the destructive forces they intended, and only the Wall of Light is initiated. It sweeps over the planet, purifies the vergence, severs the Force from all the Darksiders. What happens to the world itself?"

"Nothing. This isn't like Yavin IV, where firestorms incinerate entire ecosystems. There is no ecosystem; No collateral civilian populace, there's not even indigenous fauna!" Amani rubbed her eyes wearily. Why was she defending this so much? It didn't help that Eloise was so keen to put the weight on the shoulders of Amani and the Jedi for the whole endeavor, "You mention potentially healing the world to its original state. Do you know what that would require? What the very first step would be? It would be purifying the darkness that has sunk its way into the very earth itself. Before that, there could be no reformation. The Wall of Light could have been the first step. But you keep equating what we did, with what they did."

"I carry the blame for a great many things in my life, Eloise. The Maw's choice to destroy a planet won't be one of them." Not hers. Not the Jedi's. The Maw's.

Eloise Dinn​