Private Centenary on Jutrand

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Quinn-

I understand you're teaching at the Academy on Jutrand - congratulations! You might know that the Pomojema is slated to visit Jutrand to evaluate new students and rituals. While I've been on leave lately, I plan to catch a ride with them. Looking forward to hearing all the new ambitions.

This was not the Pomojema's first visit to Jutrand in its decades of operation, but being at the heart of an empire came with changes. Arranging a suitable landing site had been, as Ashin understood it, challenging. The independent academy vessel reared over the cityscape like an implacable glacier scouring away paleolithic life. When Ashin came down the vast ramp, this majestic place felt small. The big ship and the big ramp had been designed that way, designed to give that impression to both its passengers and its observers.

Various meetings and greetings began. Ashin, on leave but terribly important, met and greeted and detached herself as soon as practical, and went in search of Quinn Varanin

The day had a private and unrelated significance. As near as she could tell from her own fragmentary records and worse memory, today was the one hundredth anniversary of Ashin's first Jedi training. In her quiet way, she aimed to celebrate.

 

[Quinn Varanin]

Quinn received the message between classes, having recently filled her schedule more with apprentices and private lessons. After Woostri, the woman had become one of the more requested professors. It was nice feeling the slight recognition from her mother and others around her. For some time now, the Princess had felt almost invisible - hiding in the shadows of those before her.

Eagerly, she moved to meet the woman after her meetings. Quinn ensured Kirie and Kaila had their days filled; her priority was Ashin Cardé Varanin . There was news she wished to share with the woman and question her about her adventures pertaining to Empires and Sith.

Donning more casual attire, the young Echani waited for her mother to wrap up the last meeting. A part of her hoped that Spencer had arrived with her, but Quinn didn't sense her birth mother. A slight childish ache gripped her heart, but she decided to look at the positives and enjoy Ashin's company. "I hope the day hasn't been too boring. I can't imagine the adventures you had to have and then having your day filled with meet and greets. I guess that's retirement?" Quinn smiled softly; there was an air of confidence, something that she had been missing the last time the two had spoken.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Between the formalities and now, she'd disposed of her mask and black armourweave robes. Like Quinn, she dressed casually just now, even unobtrusively.

"Thankfully a rare occurrence now. Shaking hands and mumbling proud respects was the price of catching a ride, from a certain point of view. And the price of access."

She gestured around at the academy setting, which was large, grand, suitable for an empire.

"Does teaching suit you? Is it something you'd see yourself doing for the long term?"

Subtext: after all, you've got ambitions.

Quinn Varanin

 

[Quinn Varanin]

Quinn looked around the academy and thought quietly about teaching long-term. The gaunt faces of some of the professors, Sith had grand schemes but never the ambition or the skill to do what they wished. Instead, they fed them to the elite academics of Jutrand Academy. Her brow furrowed as her fingers piano-tapped the bottom of her lip. "No, I don't think it would suit me long term."

She mused at what even brought her to the faculty. "I started because I didn't know what to do with myself. I've always felt kind of leftover. Ibaris always had her adventures and the Dark Empire, then Noelle had Eshan and her children." Quinn tried to sound happy for her sisters, but a part of her always envied them. "Then there was me, tossed between two powerful Sith who couldn't decide if they wanted me or enjoyed the idea of me." She shrugged; it had gotten easier to talk about Vesta and Alina after the fact. Their actions still hurt her, but she always had a bleeding heart like Spencer.

"Srina has helped; she's done good by you and Mom. Helped me find that self-worth I've been lacking." Quinn nodded, "After Susevfi*, I realized that while I'm not living a life like my sisters, that doesn't mean I'm anything less."

A smile crossed the young woman's face. She had finally found her stride but was forever the late bloomer like Spencer. "What made you realize you wanted to coup Moridin? How did you even fathom doing something like that to him? He was strong, wasn't he? Like Carnifex and Empyrean?"

*Susevfi Quinn was captured after pulling a Marie Antoinette died on board the Mors Mon, where Srina willed the Force to resurrect her

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Ashin laughed at that and meant it. Passing acolytes or functionaries glanced her way and moved along.

"I don't know that I ever told you - here's part of the story I don't talk about so much. I may have put together my little coalition, walked in bold as brass, but Moridin didn't put up a fight, not that time. He was more than happy to hand over the throne. He was so powerful that the empire was beneath him. It bored him, I believe. The kinds of power that mattered to him - absorbing millions of souls and so forth - were radically different and much less... administrative. I've held several kinds of supreme administrative power, like Spencer and Noelle. It's truly not for everyone."

 

[Quinn Varanin]

Quinn blinked in disbelief; the books and records told such a different story. As Ashin continued, she couldn't help but laugh as well. "To know that the history was embellished makes me laugh. I've taught that battle, the gathering of your coalition, but to know that it was just handed over is almost insane." She could see it, though. Darth Moridin seemed to enjoy the chaos of the dark side. Ruling an Empire almost seemed dull to someone like him.

"I don't think Byss has ever recovered if my memory serves me right. Still, a part of me feels that Empyrean would do the same." Quinn had an inkling, mostly gathering what she could from Srina, the Empress. "I feel like his soul wishes for quiet with my godmother." Shrugging, Quinn knew there was probably a bit more to the story - one that she had yet to inquire about.

"Administration duties aside, I could make a good change to the Empire. There's so much tension that I feel it's ready to burst at the seams. The ambitions of young Darths cannot see farther than their noses, and the old guard wishes never to let go. I fear my peers more than the old."

Quinn watched as acolytes and other professors wandered by, some recognizing the pair slightly but knew better than to interrupt. "I wish we would return to something united, a single ideal to expand and flourish. Fall back to the ways of the Sith instead of this internal bickering. Seeing how easily the Empire came together on Susevfi and Woostri against the Jedi - it's like the Force is showing us what we are capable of - yet everyone feels so short-sighted."

She laughed softly, "I feel foolish to think I could make the changes necessary to unite the Empire, but I could taste it, feel the change right at the tip of my fingers. How did you convince people to follow you?"

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Ashin chewed on that for a long few heartbeats. She led Quinn aside into some gallery or other -- statuary and plaques, every academy had them -- and spoke more quietly.

"Take all of this with a grain of salt, dear, because your situation is not mine and your empire is not something I know well.

"I made it clear that I would do what I meant to do, and would keep doing so whether or not anyone joined me or approved of my intention. I did arrange certain allies, both in and out of the Sith, and others were welcome to come along, but my choices, my momentum, weren't contingent on anyone's support. I suppose I used narcissism to temper my common sense. And because I was willing to do the work and take the risk and nobody else was, they came along for the ride.

"Let me circle back around to my point about Moridin. There are different kinds of end condition, different ways to be the most you can be. His million-soul state was one; a throne is another, or a corporation, or a book, or a cult, or a weapon, or a family, or a trophy room, or a lecture room, or a hermitage. All of them satisfy different kinds of people so much as anyone can ever be satisfied. If you think about yourself in ten years, what do you want to be doing, day to day?"

 

[Quinn Varanin]

Quinn let her eyes wander to the artwork and statues depicting the Great Sith. There was even a statue of her parents, though it was nothing like how she knew them. Quinn let Ashin's words sink into her mind, forcing her to look to the next ten or twenty years. Where did she see herself? Quinn chewed on the inside of her lip as she tried to let her mind wrap around where her journey could lead her.

"I want to rule; I want to unite the Empire. Ten years…" Just saying it out loud felt awkward. "I'm scared I won't survive it. I was meant to unite Susevfi and bring them into the fold of the Empire, but I failed." Shaking her head, self-doubt started to crack the mask she had created. "That was just a moon, a city - What if -" Her voice quieted; once again, she was a child, withdrawing slightly, searching for the strength she needed.

Was she just like the overzealous and ambitious Sith she scoffed at?

"What if I fail again?" She realized her fear. She had always felt she followed in the shadows of her parents, her sisters, and everyone who had walked the same path before her. She feared being a stain upon a legacy. "I can't fail again."

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Forgive the Jedi platitude, dear," Ashin said briskly, "but failure is a superb teacher and is also inevitable."

At which point she thought better of this kind of response. Quinn was opening up to her in a way that didn't call for external solutions or this kind of it'll-be-fine dismissal.

"For example," she said, more gently, "Spencer would have handled this moment differently. She might have told you that her failures had taught her
a great deal. Wariness, pragmatism, perspective, even empathy. She might have reminded you that you're immersed in an environment that sees every misstep and doubt as a vulnerability to be exploited or to be viciously, proactively defended beyond all sense of proportion. An environment that makes this kind of fear seem rational. But you have it in you to be smarter and more sensible than your environment. You have it in you to recognize that fear is only your biology - informed by your surroundings and experience, to be sure - and thus your reaction to fear is within your control as surely as a throat you're choking. So, dear...what do you think Spencer would tell you to learn from your fear? What of it will you discard, and what will you keep?"

 

[Quinn Varanin]

Ashin was asking a lot about the girl who had just spilled her fears onto her mother's lap. Quinn watched Ashin, searching for an inkling of the same comfort Srina or Spencer would have given her. It was then she remembered how Ashin worked. Her advice wasn't wrong—but it was also not very comforting. A sense of concern or even confusion wrinkled the young Echani's face.

"You're trying." She laughed, "You're right; Mom would have definitely taken this a whole different path. But I feel like Spencer does despite everything having a touch of the old Jedi ways."

Quinn cupped her own face as she sighed. Everything Ashin said made sense - even the mirror of what Spencer would. Sighing, Quinn digested everything, "Knowing her, she'd tell me to use it as a weapon instead of shying away from it. And even more so, it feels like everyone is an enemy." A soft blush crossed her as her eyes avoided Ashin's gaze. "I've been fortunate to find close allies - ones that I feel are intimately loyal."

She valued it in her parents; they were fiercely loyal to each other, and she wanted it. "I think it's a good step for allies within the mess of enemies."

Finding a bit of her voice again, Quinn nodded. "I'd take everything that Spencer would say and your own advice - Failure is inevitable and a lesson, but some failures have a lesson that is a final lesson. So avoid those - while learning quickly as much as I can."

Quinn sighed and smiled at her mother, "You're terrible at giving advice, you know that?"

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"My advice is tactically sound-"

The clumsiness of that reply, bitten off or not, took her breath away even after decades of blundering her way through parenthood.

"It's in our blood," she said at last. "Our family has...five generations, I think, of relationships as fraught and stiff as I grew up with. The things I've told you over the years are..." She fought for words now, reckless of whatever farseers or flow-walkers or psychometrists or eavesdroppers might listen in on this moment. She was well past the point of caution. Quinn's rare openness, trust, even vulnerability demanded nothing less.

Ashin took out her lightsaber, the plain thing she carried for instruction, and its simple red blade snapped to life. She sketched a circle in the stone floor.

"This is the sum of what a child needs to hear from a parent," she said. She slashed it in half with a bubbling red line. "This half is what I should have heard, and didn't." She bisected that half into halves. "This quarter is what I've tried, in my way, to give you. The other quarter is things I've never had the words for. Things I couldn't pass on because I never learned them or never cared to teach myself. Thank the fates for Spencer and your godmother. If you break the cycle, they'll be why."

She rubbed at one eye sternly.

Like fuck would she tear up on Jutrand.

 

[Quinn Varanin]

Quinn watched as Ashin explained things. She was always the tactician and strategist, to the point that a diagram was now the focal point of their conversation. She watched and listened to the woman explain things, showing her faults and strengths. The Ecahni's face softened as she continued to listen—there was a hint of it, potentially beyond Ashin's own realization.

She wondered if Ashin felt she failed her children. In reality, she didn't; she had helped give them life. There was no perfect way to raise children, and as Quinn grew older, she understood the sacrifices her parents had made and the reasoning behind their choices.

Seeing Ashin rub her eyes, Quinn smiled. "Don't be hard on yourself. I wouldn't be here or have accomplished what I have without you." her gentle laughter echoed between them, "I've been told by those who know you - I've inherited your stubbornness, among other things." Quinn knew, despite her parents being who they had been to the galaxy - at the end of the day, they were just two women trying to keep it together. Stepping forward, Quinn wrapped her arms tightly around her mother. One-half of her existence was of Ashin's own power; there would never be anyone capable of denying that.

"Your advice is very tactically sound, Mom, I love you - I hope you know that."

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Her first instinct was to reciprocate the affection briskly and move on. That felt like the kind of instinct that belonged to someone controlled by fear of vulnerability. The kind of instinct someone developed if they grew up in an environment much like this.

Not her, but someone.

In defiance of such weaknesses, she held the hug two, three, four heartbeats longer than normal. "I love you too, dear," she said into her daughter's hair, and didn't say it in any kind of a perfunctory way.

She stepped back and waved her hand, and the chart of molten stone smeared itself flat to cool. "I love you too," she said, more quietly. "Holding the throne brought me no happiness except for a very few people I met there. Taking it was the real joy. The plan, the audacity, the self-determination. That's where the satisfaction is. Coup for coup's sake."

 

[Quinn Varanin]

Quinn stepped back and adjusted the sweater she wore. Moments like this weren't as ordinary as she would like, but the Princess took what she could. Spencer had been the comforter, and after her was Srina. Both women had a stoic air, but only their children and loved ones knew the truth. Quinn smiled and nodded, listening to her mother's words once more.

"I look forward to the adventure; I've already enjoyed it so far. I've made a lot of companions but also a lot of enemies." Shrugging, Quinn tried to think of something more to say on the matter. "Maybe I'll take the throne, do what I need to do, then give it up to the next uppity, Darth, who wishes to carve their name in history."

She could already tell who would want to challenge or marry her for their time in the sun, but Quinn realized through the conversation with Ashin that they were more alike than she had initially thought.

"I want to travel the stars and see what is beyond Eshan and the Empire. Meeting interesting people and finally killing this really annoying Jedi." Quinn felt her brow furrow, thinking of Colette. "She was such a brute, like a wild animal jumping into the air and strangling me till I was on the ground." Her disgust bled into her words as her upbringing on Bastion and Jutrand began to show.

"No matter, I think in 10 years I see myself as once Empress - but also someone who has chosen to map the stars and see the galaxy."

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"I'm glad to hear it. Every regime has a shelf life." Instinct suggested diving right into who Quinn wanted to train to fight against, who her actual obstacles might be, what mark or impact she wanted to leave behind, what aesthetics or ideals she'd use to gain a following. Instead:

"There's an awful lot to see. Millions of habitable worlds in the interstices. No empire controls everything within its borders. If you like, you could find new sights for eternity." A word that always had subtext around Ashin, who was over a century old.

"You're contemplating an even more dangerous life than you already lead. How much do you know about immortality?"

 

[Quinn Varanin]

Quinn nodded along with Ashin's agreement. The moment it was mentioned the life she would choose after the throne was far more dangerous, the Echani gave her mother a knowing and smug grin. She knew life was dangerous, having grown up with parents who ventured into that life.

"I know it's dangerous, but I want to feel alive while I am," Quinn responded almost wistfully as she thought of that lifestyle. It was tempting to see and learn about the stars and beyond.

Her dreams were brought back to reality as Ashin asked about immortality. Quinn knew very little, just beyond that her own parents were far older than most figured. "Immortality?" she echoed and then thought, "Very little, mostly things that have come up surrounding you and Mom."

Her smile turned sheepish. " Of course, I have wondered about how you and some others have been able to obtain it. Having that ability would open so many doors."

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"There are several ways, suitable for different situations, and I'd like to teach you at least a couple of them before you start your project. For everyone's peace of mind."

She explained, knowing that Quinn would know some or all of the stories:

• Essence transfer, Palpatine's way of taking a new body after his death, the power that Ashin had used several times but could not use again.
• Binding your spirit to a location or object as Exar Kun and Callista had done, and shifting to latch on to a person as Freedon Nadd had done.
• Ssi-Ruuvi entechment and certain derivative technologies that could allow a person to live on in electronics, such as a ship or droid.
• The deeper method of becoming one with the Force, likely out of reach.

"I'd like to spend at least a day showing you each of the first two. It's not something you can practice," she said drily, "so learning it perfectly at a theoretical level is best."

 

[Quinn Varanin]

"I do remember most of these, of course, the first two being what they are." Quinn pondered. She understood roughly their theory and their creation, the first being what led to the creation of the power that could make life—such as herself.

"I would like that, but what's scary is that without practice, how does one know they can do what they need to succeed?" The uncertainty brought a weariness to the woman. As much as she wanted this power, she also feared what would happen if, at that moment, she needed it and there was no way to perform.

Exhaling out her fears, she needed to find a semblance of trust within herself.

"I want to learn, particularly yes, before I head into this next chapter of my life."

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"None of this is guaranteed," Ashin admitted, "and I shouldn't give you the impression that it is. I've lasted a century and half a dozen bodies, some cloned, one stolen, two engineered in different ways. There have been consequences from doing it so often. There's a reason none of the great Sith emperors are still around. I believe Palpatine's final death was a botched essence transfer. Sooner or later, a few hundred or a few thousand years down the road, we all make mistakes. I certainly did.

"My first transfer wasn't a battlefield setting. If you've ever heard of Val'Ryss Zankarr, she oversaw it and prepared the body. It was about as gentle a step from theory to practice as you could imagine, but it did take...will, and technique, and resilience, and not a little courage. Death is terrible and best avoided.

"I will say, though...to be part of the great currents of energy that knit our galaxy together, to hold true to yourself and hold on to your identity and will, and then to claim a new body and take your first breath -- it's like nothing else you could ever experience."

 

[Quinn Varanin]

"Would you say this power required the will to live to outweigh the weight of death?" Quinn asked carefully. It was simple—probably far too simple for the technique Ashin was describing—yet it made sense. Everything Ashin spoke of seemed to be someone's desire to live.

"Does it get easier the more you do it? The more practice?" Quinn paused, wondering what it was like to wake up in another body - another face. The prospect of it sowed some hope in the Echani. Though to think of herself as not Echani, not the face that had brought joy to those who cared about her.

Though it did not look like Noelle, it made her want it more. "Like you said, all good things finally come to an end: Empires, adventures, and even lives. I do want to pick when and how I die if possible - I know it's rare, but I'd like to have at least some control over that."

Ashin Cardé Varanin