Liin Terallo
Character
The first collapse had been dismissed as exhaustion. The second became rumor. By the third, people had stopped discussing it openly and instead began exchanging information in quieter conversations, spoken behind closed doors and lowered voices. Fear among Force Users rarely spread loudly. More often it moved this way instead; carefully, cautiously, as though naming a thing too clearly might somehow invite it closer.
The stories differed in detail, but not in feeling. A Jedi Knight meditating within a temple enclave had abruptly collapsed mid-trance, striking the stone floor hard enough to fracture it beneath them. A Sith traveling the Outer Rim reportedly lost all connection to the Force in the middle of combat, the interruption so sudden that witnesses initially mistook it for injury rather than absence. Others described lesser effects. Disorientation. Nausea. Panic severe enough to leave even experienced Force Users visibly shaken.
One account, however, lingered longer than the others. “It felt like reaching outward and finding there was nothing there to reach toward.” Not suppression. Not resistance. Not the familiar void created by ysalamiri or known forms of interference. But something else. Something quieter. The Force had not felt blocked. It had simply....not been there.
Speculation spread naturally after that. Ancient weapons. Sith experiments. Jedi failures. Forgotten artifacts uncovered where they should not have been. Every theory carried conviction for a few hours before giving way to another. What mattered more was the pattern beneath the noise. Every reported incident had occurred within the same region of space. And those affected did not emerge unchanged.
Liin ignored the reports at first. Not because she found them unbelievable, but because they aligned too closely with something she had spent too long trying to leave behind. Even so, she read every account she could obtain, quietly cross-referencing locations and testimony until the inconsistencies began to fall away and a far more uncomfortable shape revealed itself beneath them. The descriptions were imprecise, distorted by fear and imperfect recollection, but the sensation preceding each collapse remained disturbingly consistent. The moment the connection ceased. Cleanly, completely and as though it had never existed at all.
Her serum had once produced something not entirely unlike it during terminal degradation. Not identical. Smaller, temporary, and artificial. But close enough to leave an uneasy stillness settled beneath her ribs long after she had closed the reports.
The request for her involvement arrived shortly afterward. Anonymous. Brief. Devoid of introduction or explanation. Only a set of coordinates accompanied by a single line: You understand what this might become.
For several long moments, Liin simply stared at the message in silence. Then her gaze drifted toward the storage case resting untouched near the far wall of her quarters. Biomolecular samples. Research fragments. Remnants of work she had once sworn would go no further than it already had.
She almost deleted the message. But instead, sometime later, she found herself preparing for departure without fully remembering when the decision had been made....
The region itself appeared unremarkable upon arrival. No visible instability scarred the landscape. No signs of conflict or environmental collapse lingered among the canyon shelves and weathered stone. Only silence stretched across the abandoned monitoring outpost built into the rock itself, half-buried by years of drifting sand and neglect. There was too much silence. Even the wind seemed quieter here.
Liin moved carefully through the dim corridor beyond the entrance, her gloved fingers brushing lightly across dust-coated control panels while weak emergency lights flickered somewhere deeper within the structure. The air carried the stale scent of disuse, but the dust along the floor told a different story. Someone had passed through recently not long ago. A disturbed layer of sand near the threshold. A maintenance hatch left partially open. Footprints softened, but not yet erased by time.
Liin slowed near the entrance to the central chamber, her attention settling not on the room itself, but on the faint sound of movement somewhere beyond it. Deliberate. Not environmental. Someone else was already here. For a moment she said nothing, simply listening while the dim light cast shifting shadows against the old walls around her. Then, at last she spoke: “You are either very informed,” Liin said calmly into the silence ahead, “or very irresponsible.” A quiet pause followed before she continued, her ears and eyes on full alert. “But you are not lost.”
The stories differed in detail, but not in feeling. A Jedi Knight meditating within a temple enclave had abruptly collapsed mid-trance, striking the stone floor hard enough to fracture it beneath them. A Sith traveling the Outer Rim reportedly lost all connection to the Force in the middle of combat, the interruption so sudden that witnesses initially mistook it for injury rather than absence. Others described lesser effects. Disorientation. Nausea. Panic severe enough to leave even experienced Force Users visibly shaken.
One account, however, lingered longer than the others. “It felt like reaching outward and finding there was nothing there to reach toward.” Not suppression. Not resistance. Not the familiar void created by ysalamiri or known forms of interference. But something else. Something quieter. The Force had not felt blocked. It had simply....not been there.
Speculation spread naturally after that. Ancient weapons. Sith experiments. Jedi failures. Forgotten artifacts uncovered where they should not have been. Every theory carried conviction for a few hours before giving way to another. What mattered more was the pattern beneath the noise. Every reported incident had occurred within the same region of space. And those affected did not emerge unchanged.
Liin ignored the reports at first. Not because she found them unbelievable, but because they aligned too closely with something she had spent too long trying to leave behind. Even so, she read every account she could obtain, quietly cross-referencing locations and testimony until the inconsistencies began to fall away and a far more uncomfortable shape revealed itself beneath them. The descriptions were imprecise, distorted by fear and imperfect recollection, but the sensation preceding each collapse remained disturbingly consistent. The moment the connection ceased. Cleanly, completely and as though it had never existed at all.
Her serum had once produced something not entirely unlike it during terminal degradation. Not identical. Smaller, temporary, and artificial. But close enough to leave an uneasy stillness settled beneath her ribs long after she had closed the reports.
The request for her involvement arrived shortly afterward. Anonymous. Brief. Devoid of introduction or explanation. Only a set of coordinates accompanied by a single line: You understand what this might become.
For several long moments, Liin simply stared at the message in silence. Then her gaze drifted toward the storage case resting untouched near the far wall of her quarters. Biomolecular samples. Research fragments. Remnants of work she had once sworn would go no further than it already had.
She almost deleted the message. But instead, sometime later, she found herself preparing for departure without fully remembering when the decision had been made....
The region itself appeared unremarkable upon arrival. No visible instability scarred the landscape. No signs of conflict or environmental collapse lingered among the canyon shelves and weathered stone. Only silence stretched across the abandoned monitoring outpost built into the rock itself, half-buried by years of drifting sand and neglect. There was too much silence. Even the wind seemed quieter here.
Liin moved carefully through the dim corridor beyond the entrance, her gloved fingers brushing lightly across dust-coated control panels while weak emergency lights flickered somewhere deeper within the structure. The air carried the stale scent of disuse, but the dust along the floor told a different story. Someone had passed through recently not long ago. A disturbed layer of sand near the threshold. A maintenance hatch left partially open. Footprints softened, but not yet erased by time.
Liin slowed near the entrance to the central chamber, her attention settling not on the room itself, but on the faint sound of movement somewhere beyond it. Deliberate. Not environmental. Someone else was already here. For a moment she said nothing, simply listening while the dim light cast shifting shadows against the old walls around her. Then, at last she spoke: “You are either very informed,” Liin said calmly into the silence ahead, “or very irresponsible.” A quiet pause followed before she continued, her ears and eyes on full alert. “But you are not lost.”