I'm a Pilgrim, I'm a Stranger (Jedi)

[Jorus Merrill]

I'm a pilgrim, I'm a stranger​

Cast upon the rocky shore​

Of a land where deathly danger​

Surges with a sullen roar,​

Oft despairing, oft despairing,​

Lest I reach my home no more.​

​

Misty vapors rise before me.​

Scarcely can I see the way.​

Clouds of darkest hue hang o'er me,​

And I'm apt to go astray​

With the many, with the many​

That are now the vulture's prey.​

FIRST JEDI TEMPLE
AHCH-TO
GALACTOGRAPHIC COORDINATES UNKNOWN

Jorus found himself humming a desolate old tune of supplication. The island, one of many on this world, lent itself well to serious pondering. The Great Holocron had told him that the root word for temple stemmed from a ceremonial idea of centrality, of divination, of taking one's bearings in relation to the universe. The ancient Jedi had taught that a Jedi should meditate outward; excessive focus on the self had been spiritually lethal to many. For years now, Jorus had balanced the needs of the Jedi with those of his family -- a difficult edge to walk. He'd turned his back on more than one fight as a result, and made dubious allies and dubious choices. Like any man, he supposed, he'd accumulated his share of shames both public and private.

In search of purity, the kind that made a mirror for self-examination while teaching broader truths, he'd recalled the holocrons. He'd been Master of First Knowledge to the entire scattered Jedi Order for more than half a decade, a position he'd resigned. He'd been custodian of the Great Holocron, the Codex of Tython, and the holocron of Tionne Solusar, some of them for years at a time. That, and in all history, there were maybe a handful of instinctive astrogators who could match him; when he wanted to find a place, it generally got found. He'd always felt an urge to seek this world. Tython had always struck him as too contrived, too developed, too formal, to be the true origination of the Jedi. Monasticism -- this place and its stone huts, built by hand -- spoke of vows of poverty, and of refinement through self-discipline over long years of contemplation. Jorus didn't have years. What he had was a powerful need to take some time and ponder what it meant to be a Jedi. What actions his oaths required, what attitudes they forbade, and questions that hadn't occurred to him yet. As he knelt on a mossy slope over a rocky bay, he tasted a colder, less welcoming wind than the island climate where he and Alna had raised Mara. This wind demanded sterner stuff. The air tasted of sacrifice.

He'd brought a small shipload of devout, staunch Jedi from here and there. He'd spent too long keeping spiritual things to himself, too wary of others' lack of readiness. That attitude, among others, deserved re-examination.

Because in the end, in one military engagement or another, fighting for ODF and the Underground and the Sanctum in its day, he'd killed so many people. Thousands upon thousands, many of them in person, others with a casual press of a starship's trigger. He wasn't sure what weighed on him more: the faces of the dead, or the suspicion that he should have felt more when destroying capital ships full of life. War made too many demands of a Jedi, and he'd been a Jedi at war for a very long time. The wind scoured away the moisture from his eyes. He dug deep and hoped for clarity. If he could find it anywhere, it would be here.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

Character's entry cleared by [member="Jorus Merrill"]

---

One hundred years.

For one hundred years, he'd served the Jedi and never once questioned why he did. Choice had never been a factor, so the question itself had been moot. When he'd been found and adopted on Corellia, his parents knew as soon as his species had been confirmed that the Jedi would be coming to take the infant boy from them. It was the law of the Old Republic. All Force Sensitives had to be trained. Those unfit for service as a Jedi served at the Republic's pleasure in the Jedi Service Corps, the AgriCorps. Rare was the case where a Force Sensitive returned to the normal citizenry. Even rarer still was a Jedi who left the Order. Such a thing was scandalous.

He tried to honor his Corellian heritage, but when ever it conflicted with the ideals or traditions of the Holy Order of Jedi Knights, he'd always deferred. Respected the Council. Undertaken their commands and been answerable to their inquiries. Most of which were intended to support the Republic. He'd fought in the Hyperspace War, the Yinchorri Rebellion, the Clone Wars...

Lived through the creation of the Galactic Empire by the skin of his teeth, and when he'd arrived here -- in the present -- purely by happenstance or coincidence, had immediately gone back to doing what he'd done for all of the last decades of his life.

He'd taken up the cause of the Galactic Republic. Sat at the foot of the masters of this new age and tried to return to a normal life as a Jedi. Except, Ossus found him disquieted. And so he'd left, and lost himself in the Outer Rim. Working his way toward Wild Space as he had as the padawan to a Jedi Sentinel. Looking for the lost places where history had long abandoned knowledge for wisdom.

He'd met a group of like-minded individuals there. The Levantine Sanctum. Voyaged with them to worlds like Tash-Taral or Arda, and had begun to get a renewed sense of his place in this universe. Maybe not as a Jedi, but as an archaeologist. An explorer. A history teacher.

The Levantines had treated with the Order of Silver Jedi, and formed a Coalition. Jedi who weren't part or parlay with the Galactic Republic. It had been a concept wholly incomprehensible to someone who recalled an age when the Republic was the galaxy. All stars burned as one.

He kept ties to the Jedi of this New Republic, and gradually drifted apart from the Coalition and their Silver Jedi. Again, he returned to the Outer Rim and this time encountered the Techno Union. More to that, he encountered an old friend. Someone he'd known and fought beside in the Republic. So he settled. Shared his concerns. Obtained access to research and knowledge. Knowledge, he could use not only to better himself but also to re-invigorate the company he'd undertaken as a personal quest to bring commerce back to the Corellian Sector.

No longer was he a Jedi without ties or attachments to the galactic community. He was a business man. Entrepreneur. A contributing citizen, who cared for the livelihoods and families of his employees. He might not have been the best Jedi, he might not even have been a good Jedi, but he could at least set a goal for himself to be a good citizen in this new era in which he'd found himself.

It is said that those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.

A Republic prime minister -- the modern name for what Sor-Jan knew as the Supreme Chancellor -- took power. Raised a clone army. Declared martial law. It was all too familiar, except Sor-Jan was not a lone Jedi surrounded by clone troopers any longer. He was a person with friends, allies, and resources. He joined with the Techno Union, feeling for the moment as though he had the chance to do the Clone Wars all over again, and this time take the side fighting against Chancellor Palpatine.

It hadn't been about Prime Minister Lasedri, a person Sor-Jan had never even met. It had been about trying to fix a mistake in his past.

...by making new mistakes in the present.

Draco, his friend, had turned to the Sith for help. In turning against the Galactic Republic, Sor-Jan had found himself fighting against other Jedi, and fighting on the same side as the very evil he'd spent a century championing against.

The Sith were evil, but what of the Republic? What of the Prime Minister's actions? Did that not beg a response?

No matter what he did, no matter what questions he asked -- or even how he asked them -- the only answers he came away with were all wrong.

Now he realized, he'd never thought about why he was a Jedi. Except, could he ever not be Jedi? It was everything he thought he knew about himself. It was the only life he'd ever known.

Yet, somehow, that life seemed to have gone horribly wrong. And the young Anzat found nothing seemed right anymore. Not himself. Not the Republic. Not the Jedi. Not the Force.

What was any of it for? The wars, the training, the taking of infants from their families... What had any of it been for?

In his state of disenfranchisement, the boy had stumbled across a master. And followed him back to the only place that ever felt familiar to him. The unknown. A place off the map. Off the grid.

As he meditated, the Anzat never once looked for answers. He was trying to find the questions.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Sor-Jan Xantha"] [member="Ilias Nytrau"]

Managing his expectations, not sure if he felt hope or if he even wanted hope, Jorus stretched out to the Force and tried to feel...anything. Anything but the warp and weft of hyperspace, the planetary mass shadow's permutations and combinations, the best vectors for nearby safe jumps or long-range, personally significant destinations. Space and hyperspace, and he felt nothing else. Not the history of this place, not the emotions or the presence of those he'd brought with him.

Not even here.

He reached out a hand, eyes open, and a pebble trembled on the ground. That pebble caught and held his attention.

"Wrruf?"

"Yeah, I know." The pebble shivered, skittered, rolled off the cliff to bounce into the iron-gray sea. Was this feeling disappointment, or just the efflux of the concerns that had brought him here? "Maybe one of these days."

"Burrwarrgh."

"Me neither, Beyyr." Jorus stood, brushing off his knees. "I just figured if it could happen anywhere, it would be here. How're the kids?"

The hulking silvertip Wookiee whuffled. It seemed like the Anzati -- at least twice Jorus' age, no matter how he looked -- was deep in his own meditation, and that was a good thing. Jorus' astrogators, the Baobab Astrography people, folks from Charal and the Underground, were meditating too. Some of the other Jedi were ranging around the island, exploring the ancient stone huts. Maybe they'd been rebuilt or excavated a time or a dozen times. Guano alone should have covered them, and the elements should have worn them down over a thousand generations. But maybe this place really was something special. Reality had been known to bend, fate and probability shifting for the benefit of the Jedi as often as not, according to principles at which Jorus could only guess.

"Let's get the boats out."

There were some kinds of meditation that worked best with movement, and for instinctive navigators some sorts of movement were better than others. With repulsor cleats, Jorus and Beyyr -- himself a Claatuvac Guild starfarer -- guided small sailboats out of the hovering D'Lessio down by the shore.

 

[RC 212]

[member="Jorus Merrill"] [member="Sor-Jan Xantha"]

Vassara sat a little ways off int eh distance. Atop a stone mound, ringed by a small garden. She was lost in the maze of the ruins, purposefully so. A place like this was a place to clear the mind, cleanse the spirit. Her spirit was certainly tainted. The Expeditionary Fleet had laid waste to hundreds of pirates, ending lives across the stars. Even as a Padawan she had been wild and out of control.

Between various engagements she felt even less in control now. So much so that after the recent battles pf Mandalore and the before the next campaign she needed time to think. This was also the perfect time to practice some Jal'Shey crafting, in the presence of a powerful force nexus such as this, radiating with the life giving energeies of the force.

Breaking from her thoughts she stood and began to remove her boots. She tossed them aside, near her pack and rummaged through the rough canvas backpack. She was stripped down to shorts and a dirty white tanktop, gear laid neatly aside.

Something metallic shifted in her pack and she snatched it. It was a small campstove, running on a powercell. Something that she loved. She set it down, lit it and set her metal canteen upon it. Stimcaf was brewing in the canteen, a warm aroma mixing with the musty smell of the garden.

It was then that she sank into meditation, cross legged. Her eyes closed and she breathed deep, feeling her navel expand with fresh crisp air. Her heart slowed, her mind became ever stiller as if it was the recovering surface of a pond with a stone cast into it.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

No matter what his age in years, Sor-Jan was a boy.

Restless energy compelled him to move, so that the adolescent vampire stirred from out of his repose and started walking about the island. Not in any particular direction, nor with any purpose. Save, perhaps, to stretch and expend some energy from the muscles that had started to cramp and stiffen during the prolonged meditations that had offered no respite to the weary Jedi.

At a certain point, training kicked in and the boy was digging in the grass and dirt with his bare hands. Exposing bits of stone and masonry which had worn or weathered away from time or exposure to the elements. Picking at the past, he moved from place to place, in his mind crafting images. Factoring dimensions. De-constructing the evidence of what might have been and trying to re-construct an idea of what this place may have looked like...

Not hundreds... Thousand? Thousands of years ago?

It was distraction, but as his brooding was getting him nowhere, a distraction was a most welcome escape from the problems gnawing at his conscious mind. He was an archaeologist. There was history here. He could not stand upon it and not ask the obvious questions. Who had come here? What had they built? And why?

Perhaps some of the answers and some of the questions he searched for were not in the present, but in the past.

[member="Vassara Raxis"] | [member="Jorus Merrill"]​

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Sor-Jan Xantha"] [member="Vassara Raxis"]

As the last of the boats settled into the little harbour, a few Padawans and Baobab astrogators headed out to sea, learning the craft of instinctive navigation. Jorus gripped a gunwale and began to lever himself in, then paused as a big hand descended on his shoulder. Beyyr leaned close and whuffled in Shyriwook. After a long moment, Jorus let go of the boat and stood, folding his arms.

"You think so?"

"Uma."

"How long have you..." He grimaced. "You've got a point, you do, but-"

The Claatuvac navigator and Underground flag officer patted Jorus on the shoulder affectionately. "Awa, dryan."

"A little on the nose-" Jorus raised his hands. "Fine -- I'll do it, you're right." What he'd agreed to sank in. "I'll do it," he said again, more quietly. "Good luck out there. Don't scratch my boat."

"Chuffchuffchuff."

Jorus let out a shaky breath and scanned the slope. Xantha was up there investigating the ancient temple, Raxis was meditating by a camp stove, the Baobab folks and the Padawans were out on the bay. Beyyr had been right: there was nothing left to do for them, no task he could take to divert himself from the question this place asked him. The duty it demanded of him.

The hovering assault cutter D'Lessio had, among its many accoutrements, a certain locker that the students had used on their way here. Jorus got out a lockbox, then another and another, and began stuffing their contents into a shoulder bag. He made himself move by instinct, selecting items as easily and thoughtlessly as he could select hyperroutes. The Force surged within him, a confirmation and exultation that he couldn't quite acknowledge. He settled the bag over his shoulder and hopped down from the hovering cutter's wing to the shore, then began the long climb back up to the temple.

He found a place that felt right, a ledge overlooking the sea, and knelt in the grass. His eyes drifted shut as he set the bag before him.

"I don't know who I'm talking to," he said. "I've listened to a lot of Jedi talk about what happens when -- well, bottom line, if I'm right, I'm talking to the Force and I'm talking to all the former and future identities in it, souls waiting to take form, immortal things that remember this place when it was alive. I'm talking to enemies and strangers and allies and friends, in some mingled and half-asleep state. I'm talking to the Force. Maybe I'm praying, I don't know. I'm a half-decent Jedi. I've made mistakes, I've been prideful, I've let my anger get the best of me once or twice over the years. I've done things that've brought me closer to the Force but not closer to the Order -- put my focus on my family, though it took me too long to realize I needed to-"

He fell silent. This wasn't a confessional, and he needed to focus.

"I think I always wanted to be better. Different. Unique. That got so ingrained in my bones that I think it held me back on a technical level. Real intent, right? It's the best explanation I have for why I can't even move a pebble. But I liked that frustration. I enjoyed feeling like I had...moral high ground for having challenges that no Jedi had. How deep must that have gone to cut me off? Or maybe it was about responsibility. I've had power and I don't always like it. I don't like what it makes me do. Maybe I just didn't want to be the Jedi Master in the brown robes leading the clone army and waving the lightsabre and sitting in the ugly chair and handling the Senate. Maybe I just didn't want a moral duty to be the one who got up close and personal every time. Maybe I'm a coward.

"I don't know why I have this block, but every solution that's come to mind centers on me. And if there's one thing I know for certain about the Force, it's that it can change you if you want, if you let it. Look at what I used to be, and look where I am now, rocky path or not. Sure, there's so much farther to go, I'm so often disappointed in myself, but...

"...but I want to want this. If I can want this anywhere, it'll be here. Help me be more than I am."

He raised one hand, palm toward the bag, eyes still shut. He knew what was in it; he'd put everything in there himself. Multiple choices for each category. Metal clinked on metal, once, twice. The bag shifted. He opened his eyes and found a handful of electronic modules bobbing slowly in the air. He sighed in acknowledgement of a burden as the pieces clicked together, one by one. There was more to it, a long meditation that perfected the fit and attuned the object to him, and he began that now as it began to take form. For the first time in his life, in a way that didn't involve hyperspace, he touched the Force as it flowed through the world around him.

"Thank you," he said quietly, "and I wish I meant that more."

Snap-hiss.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

There was some kind of carving in the stone.

A relief? Some kind of decorative feature or artwork perhaps? Whatever the answer, the elements had worn the stone nearly completely smooth in all the centuries since, leaving only suspect and assumption as the basis for what the notches in the rock might have been.

Even something with such permanence as a Jedi Temple was still subject to the passage of time. Quickly forgotten, as though it had never existed at all. A humbling, stark reminder for all of them that they were less sands in an hourglass and more like dust in the wind. Or, perhaps, the young archaeologist had spent far too much time among ruins and had forgotten how to simply exist in the here and now.

Occupational hazard, he supposed.

Even as his fingers brushed against the cool, weathered rock, the boy was aware of a... convergence in the Force. Not a disturbance, per se. This was something more constructive. More fluid. As the boy looked up from his studies, he was aware of the Nextor shard that he carried. Taking hold of the Obsidian lightsaber that he carried, his face was bathed in the dark blue light of a plasma that flowed from out of the weapon in rough, almost violent pulses. As though bucking against the confinement of its energy.

Lowering the weapon, the young Anzat saw a smilar glow out by the water. Squinting, he could make out a shape. Tall. Humanoid. The strange master that he'd come across. [member="Jorus Merrill"] or something like that. He was holding a lightsaber in his hand but, thinking back on it, Sor-Jan didn't recall seeing the man with one the entire voyage here.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Making his way from down the hill, the boy started toward the strange master. The man was standing on the spot where the boy had sensed the sudden swell in the Force. Had he encountered a vision? Experienced something in the mysterious ways in which the Force moved around them?

Bowing his respects toward the man, the boy stopped a short distance away, as he asked, "Master, is ought amiss?"

 

[Ilias Nytrau]

[member="Sor-Jan Xantha"] | [member="Jorus Merrill"] | [member="Vassara Raxis"]

He'd found himself a ledge and had been sitting there for some time, legs dangling, eyes on the horizon out over the waters, while others tended to their needs in this place, meditations, taking in the peace and supping on the light-permeated atmosphere, feeding their spirits. Something that he himself partook of daily in a manner of ritual, almost like clockwork. Of all people, he would be the predictable one to be engaging in that restorative, waking rest, and yet he was not.

He was just... sitting, taking silent joy in the breeze that peeled moisture from his face and tousled the months-untrimmed mop of fire atop his noggin. Feeling what he could feel without delving in and seeking deeper meaning and understanding. Not feeling the need to sink himself in the floes, to steel himself against the darkness that always, always encroached on the fringe of his senses, his psyche. A predisposition he could never be free of, but he had maintained his path in spite of it these eight-hundred-and-ninety-five years. Here on Ahch-To, he did not meditate, because he didn't need to.

For once. For once, he could just be and feel it around him, treat with it, without the concern of blackened interruption. So few places in the galaxy allowed him this, so he sat, reclining against the rocky earth on his palms, letting his skin get cold and thinking on the life that could be had, with so much water and so little contiguous land. Smiling when he felt the Force sing out, and casting a glance over his shoulder towards the centre of this occurrence.

"Everything has its time," he whispered, "everyone has his."

He turned and looked back out.

"It is never too late, hm?"

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Sor-Jan Xantha"]

The process had felt like imagination; the weight of the sabre should have made it real, but instead it dissociated Jorus from his senses for a moment. Sor-Jan's voice came through, but flat and distant. Jorus blinked himself back to the here and now. "Generally, yeah. Right this second, not so much." For the first time, he looked down at the thing he'd built. Simple enough -- no frills, no nothing, the kind of sabre a youngling might build out of the same stock component types. Some of the casing elements had rolled around the bins for a while; he ran his thumb along battered dark metal, skin catching on scratches and small dents. He'd figured that if he ever built a proper lightsabre, it would look non-mystical, the way Corran Horn's sabre was said to be made from a speeder bike handlebar. What he'd made couldn't be called fancy, but it was unmistakably Jedi. The blue-white blade was narrow, drawn to a long thin point; he didn't have a clue what kind of gem was inside. Probably a mid-grade Ilum crystal, if he remembered right, kathracite or something. He shifted his hands and pressed the blocky activator with his left palm. The blade snap-hissed away to nothing, leaving a faint smell of ozone.

He looked up at Sor-Jan and hefted the inert sabre. "Very long story short -- I've never used the Force for anything but navigation, especially hyperspace. Beyyr convinced me to get past whatever was holding me back, if I could, and I figured if it could happen anywhere it would be here. And it worked. Sabre came together in midair, when I couldn't even move a pebble yesterday. Probably won't be able to do it tomorrow either, but we'll see how it goes. Bottom line, I'd say today's a good day, not a bad one." A shrug. "But it means I've got to do more, be more, if I can. Now I'm just hoping I can learn how to use this thing half-decently. For better or for worse, I'll be expected to use it now that I've got it."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

Beyyr adjusted the sails, pulling ropes that felt tiny in his hands. Tacking against the wind was an art. Admittedly, Beyyr's artistic talent lay elsewhere. Except with quintessence sails, and solar sails to a lesser extent, space propulsion didn't involve currents like this. Well, no, come to think of it, there were certain similarities to working with repulsors and gravity wells. Wouldn't that be a thing, he thought. Starships that handled like real ships of the sea.

The lateen-sailed boat skidded back and forth, sawing its way against the wind, then looped back to the harbour. The wind filled the cloth triangle in earnest then, shoving the boat to a respectable and exhilarating speed. A lesser speed than repulsors or even propellers could muster, true, but all the more satisfying for the work it had required. As Beyyr's heart swelled, he felt the Force answer -- no, something else. His eyes found a pair of silhouettes on a high bluff. One of the young ones, and Jorus. Jorus held a blue-white lightsabre, which had caught Beyyr's eye; as Beyyr watched, the sabre deactivated, and the two continued to speak. The old Wookiee bared his teeth in satisfaction and returned his attention to the boat and the sea.

Well done, General. At long last, well done.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

His first lightsaber?

How interesting. [member="Jorus Merrill"] was possibly the most curious master that the young Anzat had ever come across. And considering he'd lived during the time of Tera Sinube, so that was saying something. "The construction of a lightsaber has never been viewed as any small feat," the boy offered, bowing his respects in a wordless offer of congratulations toward the man.

And a man he'd only just met, yet he'd been given the opportunity to explore histories the Jedi knew nothing about. "If you require any assistance in learning to handle it, I'd be grateful for the opportunity to re-pay you," the young knight offered simply. Ahch-to was hardly deserving of his simple observations. The boy would love to do a full archaeological survey here, and yet, such would almost seem to be disturbing the peacefulness that made just being in the presence of these ruins re-vitalizing.

"Seeing this place is a priceless opportunity," Sor-Jan noted aloud, though whether for Jorus or merely himself... even he couldn't have said.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Sor-Jan Xantha"]

"Repay? For-? Oh, the ride." Jorus scratched at the back of his head in mild social embarrassment. "I was going to come here anyway, had some perfectly good passenger cabins going to waste. You don't owe me squat. But I'd owe you if you'd help walk me through the basics. I've taught and practised enough hand-to-hand to know just how much work's involved in picking up a new set of muscle memory -- or teaching it. Can't start soon enough, I guess, if you're saying now works for you."

He eyed the deactivated weapon and pressed the bronzium switch again. The cool blue-white blade flared to life. He swung it experimentally, at some range from Sor-Jan, getting a feel for the weight and balance. "I've had the basics of using a basket-hilt, single-edge saber, a solid blade." And some combat experience; he'd faced down the Frangawl with that sword, and put it through a rakamat's eye at one point. "Close enough to some kinds of Makashi, from what I'm told. I know how to breathe and start motion at the ground, and that's pretty universal. Other than that, not a lot of bad habits to break, far as I'm aware. Past that, I'm hoping I'm the next best thing to a blank slate."

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

Curiouser and curiouser.

"Interesting," the boy mused aloud, crossing his arms as he seemed to think for a moment. Shii-cho? If the man already had formal training in fencing, that might be too rudimentary for him. And Makashi was one of the forms that Sor-Jan hadn't studied, so picking up on that line of thought was a non-starter. The remainder; Soresu, Ataru, Shien, or Djem So, would all depend on whether the man's instincts were to defend or attack. Avoid or engage.

"Let me see your natural instincts," the boy offered, igniting the lightsaber in his hands. The nextor crystal supplied a rough, unstable looking blade. Bringing it up slowly, the boy's face was awash in the indigo light of the Obsidian weapon while he waited for [member="Jorus Merrill"] to ready himself.

Not leisurely, but at a good clip, the boy sent three strikes out toward the man. All were simple Shii-cho. A diagonal slice aimed at the man's left shoulder. A horizontal sweep to his right side. And a vertical chop aimed for the center of his head. All the while, the boy was watching to see how the man responded. Would he hold his ground? Step back? Step forward? Hold the line, or press an attack? Block or counter?

Those answers would give the youth better insight on where the man's instruction ought better be focused.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Sor-Jan Xantha"]

"Sounds like a plan to me."

Jorus found himself raising his elbow and pointing the blade down and to the left, a basic one-handed, inverted guard. The posture worked well enough regardless of what foot was forward, so long as you didn't take too deep a stance or expect to face anything massively powerful. It limited his offensive options to a straight flick and a whirling cut the other way, but he'd never felt too constrained that way. As the orange Knights Obsidian sabre hissed down at his shoulder, he met the cut a handspan below his blade emitter and stopped it dead. Twisting his elbow up a little farther, he pointed his sabre at the ground with enough force to meet and block the lateral cut. He un-torqued his arm to bring his sabre up into a high block, pointing to the left. Left block, right block, upward -- a natural flow between the three motions, like a slow-motion pinball bounce.

As Sor-Jan's blade recoiled from the block, that right elbow came in, Jorus' wrist and forearm rolled, and the flat of the sabre scythed down at the left side of the younger Jedi's neck. Well, a spot a handspan short of the neck. He had no illusions about Sor-Jan's ability to handle the strike, but strikes with lethal intent had their place in training, and this was not it.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

He had good flexibility.

Excellent economy of motion with subtle movements of his joints. Ataru? At the same time, his defensive instincts were on point. He flowed from one intersection to the next seamlessly, in a way that suggested Soresu's theory of perpetual motion.

The last move proved to be the key. No sooner had Sor-Jan's blade bounced away than the young Anzat realized he was in danger. True to his being, the boy's instincts were to revert to Soresu. Blending the energy and motion of the blade springing back from the impact with [member="Jorus Merrill"]'s block, the boy allowed the blade to spin so that he held it in a reversed grip as he passed his arm over and around. The blade close to his body, in what seemed like an 'orbit.'

At the same time, he ducked his head and stepped off to the side. The Obsidian blade met the Jedi lightsaber in a watershed block just an inch above the boy's shoulder and less than that from his head.

He could have tried to use the block to raise the blade up, allow it to pass overhead, but instead the boy broke from the engagement. Sidestepping as the orbit completed it's circuit, so that the boy faced the man with the lightsaber held in front of him in a standard guard.

Some would have said that reckless. Sor-Jan would have said he got what he was asking for. This was a Jedi Master and a veteran knight practicing the deadliest art known to mankind. "I'm thinking Form Five," Sor-Jan remarked, as the choice seemed to make itself. Likewise, the decision between Shien and Djem so was readily apparent as well.

Bringing his lightsaber up, the boy dropped one leg behind him as he brought the lightsaber up so that the blade was angled up and back over his head. "This is the opening stance," the youth supplied, waiting to see if the man wanted to mirror him or continue learning as they were.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Sor-Jan Xantha"]

"Five, you say."

You couldn't spent six, seven years with the Great Holocron in your care -- a couple of'em with it under your crash seat in a lunchbox -- and not get the big picture. In an academic and theoretical sense, he knew about the fifth form, the differences between Djem So and Shien, the tricks that other forms didn't quite mirror. Form Five had never interested him, but neither did the rest, and it had been a long time since Jorus based his functional decisions on his personal interests. That way lay the sort of childishness that led ostensible Masters to collect powers, tricks, and honours. Some old line about a serious mind flitted through his.

"Works for me." He mirrored the stance, sabre held above his head, pointed up and back. Tionne Solusar's holocron held a story of a tea-master challenged by a Sith. The tea-master went to a Jedi for help, and the Jedi told him he didn't have time to learn the art of the sabre. Instead, the Jedi taught him this exact posture. The Jedi knew the tea-master had spent his life perfecting his focus. From this stance came two basic strikes: a straight downward blow and a looping low cut. With the right strength of focus, the tea-master would be sure to kill the Sith and die in the attempt. When the tea-master met the Sith, the Sith perceived that the tea-master had the unerring split-second focus to make any victory Pyrrhic. So he left.

A fable, nothing more; Tionne had said so. It never addressed why the Jedi didn't simply fight the Sith in the tea-master's stead, or why the Sith didn't just choke the tea-master at range. Even so, Jorus had taken the tale to heart.

This wasn't storytime, so he didn't share the story. Instead, he just feinted high and dipped low, a vertical cut transitioning into the actual attack: a lateral strike for the side of Sor-Jan's left leg. The strike was shorthand for the fable, which Sor-Jan might know; it was common enough in some circles.

"Like so?"

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

The hardest thing of being a hundred years old was that he'd spent the bulk of his time as a Jedi in the study of what was known as Niman.

The hybrid form. He'd emerged from the Academy with a good working knowledge of Soresu, so his master had told the boy to focus on Shii-cho, Ataru, and Djem so. After he'd become a Jedi Knight, he'd spent a decade on each of those forms, so to understand how they were different. But, more so, how they were the same. How they could work in tandem with one another. He could appreciate them in isolation, but used them in combination.

Except for Soresu. Which, as [member="Jorus Merrill"] has just seen, was what the boy fell back upon when he didn't know what else to do.

But, as such, it was very difficult -- if not against his nature at this point -- to react or demonstrate a single form. That feint and the strike at his leg. The boy wanted to step through with Soresu and follow-through with Shii-cho. But, while useful in actual combat, the name of the game was to demonstrate Djem So.

Of course, Sor-Jan was a Consular. To say that Djem So was not the 'fad' among Jedi Archaeologists would have been the understatement of the century. Still, the youth let go his conscious mind and allowed muscle memory from those years dedicated to the study of Form V to take hold. As his blade connected with the man's, the boy came forward. The blade turned up into a riposte aimed at the center of his chest.

He was careful to rock back on his heels, so that if the man wasn't ready to guard that the blade would come up short of his chest.

"Good," the boy noted, in the odd moment in which he could take a breath. With his instincts, and whatever training he'd received, the man seemed a natural with it.

...though, thinking back on it, why hadn't the Jedi fought the Sith?

The tea-master parable had always bothered him for some reason.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Sor-Jan Xantha"] had the edge for speed; that was certain. The boy's block transitioned into a thrust for Jorus' chest, and though a clockwise whirl aimed to catch the stab and toss it to the right, the parry didn't arrive in time. Jorus nodded in acknowledgement that he was dead.

He might not have the motions down, but he'd seen an awful lot of Jedi training in his time, and more to the point he knew what a moment's hesitation looked like. He'd had similar problems when first learning to combine the shockboxing and grappling he'd grown up with. From Sor-Jan's interests, demeanor, instincts and size, Jorus would be willing to bet the boy focused on Niman. Niman got a bad rap as the watered-down consequence of trying to make yourself superhuman by combining every fighting style. The Great Holocron had been pretty clear, though, that there was no worst style, just as there was no best style. Exar Kun had won some brutal victories using the Diplomat's Form. In the end, once Jorus got a taste for how the styles actually felt, he guessed he would probably go the Niman route. Too many other things to do. A resistance to fight and so forth.

Jorus resumed the introductory Form Five stance, sabre high. "What are my options from here?" he said. "The old tea-master story -- you know that one? -- just talks about the downward chop and the low cut, but I've also seen Jedi do things like this." He twisted his wrists, one way then the other, sending out the flat of the blade's tip at Sor-Jan's head from the boy's left and then right. Near-horizontal cuts with little power behind them, leaving him wide open, and they snared his forearms up something awful, but needs must.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

As [member="Jorus Merrill"] sprang another attack at him, the boy countered with a vertical block, rotating at the torso. Shii-cho. Then rotated the other way, as he lashed out to meet the man's blade in a block that was more of a strike. Ataru.

Okay, so he sucked.

"The tea-master parable pre-dates Yoda," the Jedi historian noted. Did he know it? He'd written a paper on it during his 'initiation' into the Consular branch of the Jedi Order. He'd even gone so far as to have made a journey to Ossus -- back during the time when the planet's atmosphere had been unable to sustain life -- in order to search for evidence of its origins in history or in literature. "It's never made a lot sense to me," the boy confessed.

Raising his lightsaber into the familiar stance, the boy said, "The opening stance is merely a teaching tool." There were some techniques associated with particular forms, but those had merely been adaptations on a theme that were new at one time. And ingraining one's method to rote repetition bred complacency. And predictability.

...said the laziest Jedi Archaeologist ever.

"All of the forms are more philosophy than fighting style." Okay, now he was showing his Consular roots. To a Jedi Guardian, or more so a Weaponmaster, them were fightin' words. "The moves and techniques have only the significance you give them, within the basic premise of the style." Wielding a lightsaber in any form, even Shii-cho, required a great deal of creativity and versatility. And no small measure of spontaneity, given the need to think on one's feet.

"Djem So uses offense in place of defense," the boy said, weaving the sword down. The Soresu discipline bled through in how the teen kept the blade near his body as he executed a fluid sweep, cutting a large X in the air before him. "The primary distinction about its practitioners is their use of the Force to augment their natural strength."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Sor-Jan Xantha"]

Jorus took a half-step back as the sabre hissed through the Soresu X. "It's coming together now," he said. "Why Five might fit me best. In the unarmed combat styles I use, ideally every strike is a block and vice versa. Not a lot of distinction. I suppose it's the same principle behind differences in blaster deflection, too. Soresu makes sure none get through, Djem So sends them right back where they came from, when it's possible."

A brisk wind kicked up, challenging his balance. He adjusted his footing instinctively, without regard for what the perfect Shien footing might be. Again, he spun the sabre by his side one-handed, trying to get a better sense of its balance and weight.

"What're your opinions on velocities?" he said. "The way I learned hand-to-hand, my teachers were big on kata, and I've felt it's served me fairly well over the years. I've never nailed down an opinion on velocities for sabre learning, though. Never been sure the effectiveness carried over from hand-to-hand styles. You've pretty clearly dabbled in most of the forms. Any words of wisdom about which ones work best with velocity training? I...spend a lot of time alone, for one reason or another."