Ashin Varanin
Professional Enabler
Image Source: Star Wars: Lost City of the Jedi
Intent: To codify what I've been building, or rather rebuilding, over the course of several threads: a favorite obscure canon location from my childhood.
Classification: Hidden temple
Location: Yavin IV, continent of Wetyin, hundreds or thousands of kilometres from any major temples, several kilometres below ground
Affiliation: Field Marshal Ember Rekali
Population: Unpopulated at this time
Defenses: All four vertical lift shafts have the following defenses:
- Four sets of horizontal two-foot-thick turadium blast doors
- Sensor-nullifying top hatches
- Pressure, temperature and atmospheric analysis sensors at various points
- Atmospheric containment fields at various points, rated to withstand chemical and biological agents
Points of Interest:
- Library/former Jedi archives: Once some of the most comprehensive in the galaxy, the archives were destroyed over eight hundred years ago. The Archive Building now contains little except average library datafiles, and the datafiles and nav tapes which Ember's old ship Singing Justice brought from the pre-Dark Age galaxy.
- Former terraforming station: The Lost City's original purpose was to re-seed Yavin IV with life after the Jedi Order's Wall of Light killed everything on the moon. That purpose was completed long ago, and the terraforming machinery is non-functional, but has been preserved.
- Entranceways: The old entrances and access shafts have mostly been blocked off, and three new ones created. They generally comprise a long vertical turbolift tunnel with a camouflaged hatch on the surface. The turbolifts' modest power signatures are shielded from sensors by dense rock and by the hatches, which have minor sensor diffusion properties. Small speeders can use the vertical shafts in place of the turbolift pods; no parking or other structures are located on the surface. One of the three shafts is capable of allowing a light freighter to descend; this shaft contains ion blasters.
- Main entranceway: The ancient main entranceway was a circular wall of green stone, covered in plant growth, a forgotten ruin like the tens of thousands that sank beneath the jungle millennia ago. Though the turbolift and main door are now fully functional, the exterior remains largely submerged in trees and vines. Various ancient statues near the door have been transformed into Watchers by Ember and Chloe Blake. They can repel trespassers with powerful Force barriers, and require significant influence and expertise to circumvent. Compounding the challenge, there are enough of them that clearing one statue's obstruction takes long enough for other statues to recover; they both protect each other and reinforce each other's barriers.
- Housing facilities: The original domed houses have been restored to functionality, and maintenance droids keep them clean in anticipation of a potential need. These homes are capable of housing thousands if necessary. Powerful, expensive life support machinery, and significant long-lasting food stores and replicators, are ready in the event of a potential need to stay underground.
- Deep vaults: Ember is custodian of the most powerful Force artifacts the Mandalorians and their contractors have recovered from worlds like Thule and Dromund Kaas. Several artifacts, including the Mirr, are encased in nullification resin and top-of-the-line security both mechanical and electronic. They cannot be sensed through the Force unless removed from their resin blocks. Other safely stored artifacts include the Asli Krimsan Holocron and Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsabre. So far as the Mandalorian Field Marshals and Mand'alor know, Ember has secured these artifacts somewhere on Yavin IV.
- Training grounds: Ember has created a well-stocked training facility suitable for both Jedi and Mandalorians. Apart from a duplicate set of Muntuur stones, the facility has a wide variety of training gear and environments.
- Ceilings: The ceiling of the cavern has been heavily stabilized and reinforced; it is fully as durable as the access shaft blast doors.
Description: The Lost City of the Jedi is located in a massive cavern many hundred metres beneath the jungle of Yavin IV. Well-lit by redundant geothermal power, it comprises some fine examples of rebuilt millennia-old Jedi architecture, including hundreds of domed houses. It is, as in former times, maintained almost exclusively by droids. Immense amounts of dense stone protect the Lost City from even the most focused and specialized sensor scans. Some side chambers and tunnels protrude from the main cavern.
History: A very long time ago, the Lost City of the Jedi was rediscovered by Luke Skywalker and quietly shelved. With the destruction of its caretakers and archives, it had little to offer, and a respectful silence fell over the ancient subterranean structure. One of the new Jedi Order's Knights, a half-Vahla named Ember Rekali, happened to visit the Lost City, and was struck by it, aesthetically and spiritually. Later -- far, far later, when Rekali had lived a full life, gained and lost a family, spent subjective decades and objective centuries in an extragalactic star cluster comparable to the Tyus Cluster, and missed the Dark Age entirely -- he found himself training Mandalorians in the Force, at the temples of Yavin IV where he himself had been trained. He came into money, a lot of money, and his thoughts turned to the Lost City.
He found it much as he'd left it, utterly forgotten during the Dark Age as the footnote it had been since the Skywalker era. And he injected twenty-five million credits into it.
He was, at this point, a Rally Master in the Mandalorian clans' armed forces, with some degree of authority and a well-recognized stewardship over Yavin IV. Construction droids and careful, quiet shipments of supplies, plus his own background as an electrician and construction worker, allowed him to rebuild the Lost City to some semblance of its former glory. He kept the location and the construction effort absolutely secret, known only to his first mate [member="Allyson Locke"], his student and friend [member="Chloe Blake"], and his granddaughter. To all who know or investigate Ember, he lives aboard the Coronet or in the jungles of Yavin IV. The Lost City of the Jedi remains secret as of yet. Although the Order of the Grey has moved into the main temples of Yavin with Ember's permission, they are located hundreds of kilometers from the Lost City and would have no reason to suppose that one little stone ruin is any different from the thousands of others scattered across the planet.
Links: Rebuilding (also established here and here; mentioned or worked with in various other threads)
