Character Sela Basran | Jedi Master

[Sela Basran]

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Sela Maris Basran

Age	Early 60s
Species	Human
Gender	Female
Height	5'4" | 163 cm
Weight	140 lbs | 63.5 kg
Force Sensitive	Yes

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Sela Basran doesn't give 'Jedi Master' so much as she gives 'librarian' and 'gossipy auntie' and 'probably buys tea by the cannister'. A human woman, appearing to be in her late forties or early fifties, she is at the shorter range of medium height, with a gently rounded build that does not say warrior. Her skin is warm brown, with the faint softening a jaw and cheek that comes with age, and the fine lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes that come from years of squinting at text and half-smiling at people. Her face is sometimes open and expressive, but there is often a reserve in it, a quietness at the eyes that tells those paying attention that she is watching more than she lets on. Her eyes are very dark and very alive: soft when she's listening, glittering and sharp when she's turning a thought over. Her eyes can be incisive, inquisitive, and prodding.

Her hair is thick and was once dark brown, though it has now gone primarily to salt and pepper, with distinct streaks of silver-white that frame her face. Left to its own devices, it would fall in soft waves around her shoulders, but she almost never leaves it to itself. Instead, she wears it in a practical bun or knot, pinned in place with a plain metal stylus or pen. Wisps often escape around her temples and nape no matter how neatly she pins it in place, but Sela doesn't seem to mind. Often she wears her silver-white streak in a curl at her ear in a way that looks, according to some younglings, quite cool.

Sela's posture tends towards relaxed. She stands straight enough, but often with one hip lightly cocked, a sleeve pushed up where she's forgotten to smooth it down, fingers absently worrying the edge of a notebook or a pen or a teacup. She walks with an unhurried, almost ambling gait inside the enclave, but there's nothing uncertain about her footing. She is steady, and if she wants to move quickly, it's startling how fast the calm, self-effacing 'librarian type' becomes precise, economical in motion, and -- if necessary -- absolutely lethal.

Her clothing is standard Jedi garb, softened and personalized. She favors layered robes in muted earth tones worn over lighter tunics. The fabrics tend to be comfortable, worn-in, rather than stiff. Her belt carries a well-maintained but plain lightsaber hilt, often half-hidden by the fall of her outer robe, and some pouches bulging with pens, folded flimsies, and the occasional datapad. Around the enclave, she usually trades boots for soft shoes or slippers or, if she will be outside when it's warm, sandals. In her own quarters late at night, she is likely to be barefoot. She almost always wears a small magnifying device on a chain around her neck: part tool, part talisman.

Up close, there are small details that stick out: faint ihnk stains on her fingers and occasionally on her nose; the way her brows lift when she's skeptical and draw together when something hits a nerve. She smells more of tea and paper and clean fabric than of anything else. Nothing about her screams 'effective combatant' until suddenly you've seen her in motion. Then it's impossible to forget that the mild, slightly rumpled woman with the kind eyes and the streaked grey hair -- the one who looks like somebody's auntie -- is perfectly capable of putting an armed man -- or more -- on the ground before her tea has a chance to cool.

INVENTORY

Lightsaber, magnifying glass necklace, pen, datapad.

PERSONALITY AND BELIEFS

Sela Basran is, at the very fundamental core of her personality:

• Kind, without being soft: She cares deeply about people as a concept, and people as individuals, but there is nothing saccharine or cloying about her. Her concern comes in practicalities. Rather than, 'are they happy and comfortable' it's: are their needs being met? are they making good choices? are they being honest with themselves?
• Patient, but not endlessly so: Sela Basran will sit in silence with someone for a long time, allowing them space to find their own words. But the minute they start to dissemble, or go over old ground that will not help them move forward, she is known to sharply (but quietly) cut in and advise them of their error.
• Socratic, to the very bone: Her primary tool, honed over decades of life, is the question. She seldom tells people what to do, what to think, or how to feel. She asks and asks until they say what Sela is trying to uncover. Then, it is harder for them not to accept the truth of the matter, since they're the ones who identified it.
• Emotionally observant: Even without the Force, Sela reads people well. Tone, posture, word choice -- and the choice to not use words at all -- are all tea leaves that she can read. She doesn't use this emotional intelligence to control people, but rather to understand where they really are before she pushes or pries.
• Dryly funny: Sela's humor is bone-dry, occasionally borderline rude, but rarely ever mean. A well-timed one-liner or eyebrow lift from her can pop a ballooning drama without dismissing anyone's feelings. She has a gift for calling out nonsense gently and humorously.
• Unshowy and self-effacing: Sela doesn't posture or loom, and is perfectly content to be mistaken for a harmless old auntie with tea. If anything, she prefers to be underestimated, because people are more willing to show who they are to someone they don't feel the need to impress or fear.

Through her many years as a Jedi -- nearly 5 decades of it, now -- across varying orders, Sela has cobbled together her own philosophy on the Force, colored by her upbringing on Nethira and her work with the Jedi Orders that she has interfaced with for years. She believes in honesty over purity. In her view, no one is pure, and attempting to present oneself as such is hypocrisy. The Jedi Orders who have angled toward asceticism have always been prone to failure, because it is not human nature to live that way. It does no good to pretend not to be angry if you're angry, to pretend not to love someone if you love them. The danger, to Sela, lies in pretending not to feel what you feel, because then your choices are based on a fiction, on what we'd like to be true, rather than what is.

To Sela, attachment is dangerous but not evil in itself. It is not sin. She has seen love and all of its complications -- grief, fear of loss, jealousy -- turn people into monsters, as well as anchoring people to their best selves. The question for her is whether the attachment serves as a justification or a tool that makes giving into dark impulses easier or not. For her, codes are tools, not gods. In Sela's experience, nothing -- nothing -- is infallible, and that includes every Jedi Code ever written. She finds the Shirayan Code to be better than most, but still it is not perfect, not above question.

Her view of the Force itself is that it is the quiet current that exists around everything and ties all together. She hears it as a constant invitation to choose well -- not as a vision or a voice but rather as some kind of inner check, a second conscience. Her approach to ethics is that she must always be prepared to be responsible for consequences. That means for doing what she has been told she oughtn't to do, and for doing that which she has been commanded to do. She is haunted by both in equal measure: times when she obeyed without questioning and people suffered, and times when she disobeyed and people got hurt. It has created an almost merciless streak within her to interrogate herself and others into considering the consequences of each action, or a corresponding inaction, and asking one's conscience if one is prepared to own it, regardless of whose authority ordered it. She has a strong belief that all the galaxy's people matter, not just the high nobles and the Jedi, but the ordinary dockworkers and riverfolk, moisture farmers and merchants. She has a strong sense of compassion and a strong sense for boundaries.

Among other Jedi, she respects rank but resists pedestalizing. Disagreements with others, including other Masters, are respectful but firm. With Padawans and Knights, whether they are her students or not, she is at her best: patient, understanding, endlessly willing to give of her time and energy to younger members of the Order when they are in difficulty. Her door is, metaphorically if not literally, always open.

STRENGTHS

• Radical Honesty: Sela is very good at noticing when she's rationalizing, minimizing, hiding behind doctrine. She may still want to do those things, but she catches herself and corrects course. She is brutal with herself, but tries to be gentle with others. If she can.
• Emotional Intelligence: Reading subtext, body language, and tone is almost instinctive for Sela. She can often spot grief, shame, attraction, and fear long before people say the words, but she tries to use these insights to guide questions and guidance rather than to manipulate.
• Unflappable: Almost too calm under pressure, Sela finds that crises make her quieter and more focused, not frantic.
• Elementalist: In addition to her abilities with a lightsaber, she has a natural affinity for elemental Force techniques, particularly earth and fire.
• Cultural / Class Fluency: Although Sela began her life in the slums of the Caldrin's Reach docklands, she has transcended her humble beginnings to be able to speak to almost anyone without condescension, from dockworkers and farmers to Jedi and Senators and nobles.

WEAKNESSES

• Regret's Companion: Sela carries a lot of regrets, from the love she let her mentors talk her out of and Nethira's injustices to missions gone wrong and students she couldn't reach. In quiet moments, long nights, she can sometimes become mired in regret and self-doubt.
• Over-Interrogation: Since she could speak, Sela Basran has been asking questions. She has been known to occasionally push too far, ask one too many questions, or press someone who isn't ready, always thinking she is helping.
• Aversion to Vulnerability: Her Socratic style of teaching, as well as offering support to troubled students, can be incisive and make people feel vulnerable. She is better at dissecting other people's pain than in showing her own. She will downplay her weariness, loneliness, and fear until she is alone, if at all possible.
• Meddlesome: Due to a natural affinity for reading people, Sela recognizes that she can unconsciously steer them with questions towards outcomes she thinks are safest, which isn't necessarily always what the situation calls for.
• High Expectations: She expects a high level of self-honesty because she demands it of herself, but sometimes forgets that she has had decades of practice. When someone cannot look at themselves with that level of frankness, she can misread it as stubbornness or self-deception rather than incapacity.

HISTORY

Sela Basran was born in Caldrin's Reach on Nethira, a minor trade world in the Nethis system in the Outer Rim. The world is arid and terrestrial, existing primarily as a stop along a third-tier trade hyperlane more than anywhere people ever intended to end up at. It has a reputation among spacers that operate in that area as a place to refuel and reprovision. She was born in a cramped, noisy building that her parents owned; a boarding house for dockworkers and medium-term workers occupied the first two floors, which her mother ran, while the family lived on the third floor. Her father was a bookkeeper for a small shipping company.

Her inquisitive nature was present from the very beginning. Her sensitivity to the Force showed itself first in a very practical way. A damaged repulsor crane dropped a cargo crate in the docks and Sela, nine years old at the time, shoved a worker clear and, without understanding how or why, caught the falling weight with the Force, just enough that it didn't crush him. A visiting Jedi Knight saw the impossible physics, the uncanny timing, and the surge in the Force. After a great deal of family argument on the matter, Sela left with the Jedi, promising to return one day.

Joining the Order as a late recruit, Sela was always a little older, a little more grounded in the unglamorous reality of life outside the temples than most of her peers. She proved to be a quick study, both in the Force and in people. Her teachers recognized in her an innate scholarly aptitude that lent itself to mediation, de-escalation, and diplomacy. Sela ascended the ranks quietly, steadily, and over time. Along the way she had her first serious brush with problematic attachment: a deep, quiet love that developed over the course of a year-long assignment on a far-flung world suffering mysterious illnesses. It was not the dramatic kind of love affair that holofilms were made about, nor did anyone die in the aftermath. The Masters in charge of the mission saw the signs, understood the danger, and advised Sela to let go. She complied, almost without thinking, and spent a long time trying to reconcile whether she had done the right thing, despite doing what her mentors told her was the appropriate thing for a Jedi.

Later, serving in austere Outer Rim operations, she watched decisions justified by the words "the greater good" crush small communities that looked a lot like Caldrin's Reach. She saw rules and codes used to justify suffering in ways that echoed the corporate crackdowns of her childhood. This combination -- losing love to doctrine, later learning that the young man had grown into a fine Jedi healer who went on to die in a senseless act of infectious disease, and seeing the Jedi Code wielded like a blunt instrument -- left hairline fractures in her faith in the Order's culture, although she remained loyal to the ideals of what the Jedi represented in practice: justice, service, hope.

Later, after attaining the rank of Jedi Master, Sela took a sabbatical from her duties and traveled to Naboo, intent upon learning about the Shirayan Jedi Code and the emerging High Republic Jedi Order. Officially, she was a visitor, a visiting intellectual. In practice, the Shirayan emphasis on seeking understanding and self-knowledge, community responsibility, balance, and ethics felt like revelation to her. The Force, she realized, was not nudging her to write a paper, but to uproot herself and settle there. After a period of uneasy back-and-forth, Sela formally transferred her allegiance to the Jedi Order, seeking to find a place as a teacher, researcher, ethicist, and support.