White Current Can Kiss My Orange Nurkan [Faction Training]

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

This thread is open to all Red Raven and Rebel Alliance Force Users who'd like to partake.

Almania. ​

Right in a little pocket of neutrality between three factions. It was only a matter of time before one of them took it. Particularly since it might be the Primeval who wound up with their claws on it, and Chiasa had 25 million reasons to believe she didn't want to be on any planet owned by them.

So risky as it was, she went while it was still unheld. It had a group she was very interested in, and considering the fact that they firmly believed authority was an illusion and everyone should serve only their own desires, it wasn't hard to find a pocket of them willing to do business with the enterprising criminals.

Chiasa and those who had chosen to come were waiting in the clearing they'd been given the coordinates for. The Twi'lek checked her chrono.. Twenty minutes past the agreed upon waiting time. She sighed, but stayed. This was too good an opportunity to learn something utterly over powered and stupid that shouldn't exist and people ought not to be allowed to use to pass up.

"Well. You are patient, but not very observant."

A voice commented, just behind her. The Twi'lek very nearly jumped out of her tiger-striped skin. She turned, hand going almost automatically to the shotgun at her waist. Funny how quickly the body picked up new habits. Yellow eyes took in the tanned, dark haired female watching her with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

"Nakisai, I assume."

"Mmm. You got here on time at least."

"You've been standing there this entire time?"

This thought did not sit well with the Twi'lek.

"I was sitting over on that rock to start with, but yes. I was here before you landed."

The woman seemed amused.

"This is good no? Surely you would not trade so generously to learn a useless ability."

"This is true."

The Twi'lek grudgingly agreed.

 

[Nohemi Allaneh]

​

"The Fallanassi are pacifists, are they not? What could they send against us?"
"Being a pacifist isn't the same as being helpless. The Fallanassi have many defenses."​

―High Lord Sarasu Taalon, and Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker​

​

​

The exodus of the Order along with the surviving Pydyrians had all but happened over seven years ago. Thousands of people, under the threat of three mighty powers, had long ago conducted the long arduous process of packing and uplifting their belongings from the only home they ever known.

It would not be a reckless abandonment, but one carefully overseen to ensure that none who would come long after their departure would be aware of their destination. Nothing was left behind, save the magnificent silver and gold veined stone ruin that once housed the Order in itself -- a ruin that would not tie to them at all.

It would be as if the Order of the White Current had never been there at all. Not a single trace of their culture, their history, their ways was left.

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

...except for an old associate of [member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]. Nakisai, the woman, promptly dissolved into a floppy-haired man with a young face and old eyes. The White Current was a gateway to many abilities some considered to be...unsportsmanlike.

"Hello, Chiasa."

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

"Shule!"

The slight, largely concealed grumpiness of the Twi'lek was gone in an instant, eyes dancing merrily. She did not know [member="Shule Windspeaker"] very well, but she had enjoyed their interactions however brief in the past, and certainly would not mind knowing him better. She did not like people she did not know one upping her, and that is how she had perceived 'Nakisai's move. Until it had proven to be Shule. It also helped that he was male. The Twi'lek could get a bit.. competitive within her own sex.

"I am twice fooled then. And need twice as much help it seems. An intricate illusion you wove for me, and I knew it not."

And it had been. Had any of it been real then? The group she'd searched out and made contact with? Perhaps not. It didn't matter, if he was willing to train her and hers to make sure they were protected as well as they could be she didn't care. The Unkindness was always her priority, particularly of late. There was a countdown on, and at the end of it, she suspected she would be dead. She was determined that the Ravens would endure.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

Shule shrugged. "Everybody's got a thing. Some people crochet."

The last vestiges of the illusion faded away, and he scratched his head. "I think we both understand that there are some seriously unscrupulous people who use what I use. I've been hunting them for...rather a long time, in one way or another. There's such a thing as non-proliferation, you understand. I heard what you were after, and I didn't want you catching the wrong kind of attention. I'm fairly sure I can help you and your friends, but it may not be exactly what you're after. For one thing, not every Force-user can learn the White Current; for another, some people who'd register negative on a Force test can learn the Current. It's also worth noting that learning it requires a certain frame of mind and a lot of patience. I've been doing this for..." He hesitated, then shrugged. "Centuries, really. Your people won't be able to get around experts' shielding after a few days of training, but we may be able to lay the foundation."

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

"May your hunt bear fruit."

Came her flat reply. Was the Twi'lek vexed by said unscrupulous people? That would be a safe assumption. Bad enough to be outclassed in all offensive manners, that someone who could have taken her with relative ease in a fight should also be able to appear and disappear at will..

"Even if they cannot learn it, they can at least understand it."

I will find other ways, if I can just understand how the damned thing works! Does not register in the force, cannot be seen, cannot be heard, electronics do nothing.. There is a way around this, and I will find it.

"They are dedicated, my su'si ercio, lay them a foundation and they will build, even if it takes time. Or they will not, but they will have been given the opportunity."

This much I can do for them. As for myself.. Centuries. I do not have centuries. Do I have years even? Maybe.

Still, the revelation that he himself had been around for centuries was interesting, and one that Chiasa filed away to be examined and dealt with at a later date. His words also were taken into account. Would she have the right frame of mind? If not she would have to change. It was that simple, and that difficult. She wasn't sure if she was patient, but she knew she was persistent.

[member="Shule Windspeaker"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

"Now, and I say this with all respect, it's possible you're actually dealing with other kinds of illusion instead of the Current, or alongside it. At some levels, in some situations, various kinds of illusion can be nearly indistinguishable. If you're dealing with illusionists, and related security concerns, there are some fairly basic countermeasures that anyone can use. There are no guarantees, of course, but there are factors you can inject into most situations that will make it more or less easier to detect or obstruct illusionists, regardless of type. A lot depends on mental resilience, relative Force strength, distractions to the subject or the illusionist, the kind of illusion being used...anyways, let's look at some factors.

"First off? Dust. Smoke. An absolute master of the White Current or mentalist illusion will still leave footprints and swirls in the air, though you might not notice them for a few seconds or minutes. The same thing goes for large-scale illusions, like in atmosphere or space. Integrated atmospheric monitoring systems, planetwide, are wonderful against all kinds of stealth infiltration. Reentry is fast. Clouds get tossed around. Same goes for dense nebulas, gas giants...

"Second, tripwires. Monofilament will do an awful lot. The point isn't to overcome the illusion, it's to overcome the illusionist.

"Third, nets. Net guns, big Conner nets, tanglefoot projectors, anything like that.

"Fourth, area-of-effect. Sonic weapons are your absolute best friend. Wide-angle Force pushes, shotguns, riot guns, ballistakinesis, even automatic weapons. It's very hard to keep yourself undetected while you're rapidly running out of functional eardrum. Or blood. Very good when combined with airborne dust, incidentally - if you suspect illusionists, pour some dirt or chalk down a shotgun.

"Fifth, doors. Force-field lockdown, physical obstruction - you may not be able to detect your enemy, but he won't be able to get anywhere. I have a friend, another White Current master, who snuck onto a One Sith station over Coruscant and led the whole place on a merry chase -- but he couldn't get anywhere, and ultimately had to leave without succeeding in destroying the place. Even after he took down the Sith Lord who ran the station.

"Sixth, pressure plates. The White Current, if properly used, can hide you from sight, sound, and every kind of sensor known to man -- but I've never yet seen it trick gravity. If you really want a ship or facility impermeable, line every corridor with pressure plates, link them all to a central system, then link that system to location trackers on all your crew...and then have the system watch for discrepancies.

"There's a reason the Current is rare; most can't learn it. But there are other ways to deal with illusionists."

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

That was one of the positive and negative aspects of dealing with very powerful force users. Centuries. They often heard the words underneath your words. In this case the Twi'lek was entirely fine with it, and took no umbrage. Good that he knew what she actually wanted. Needed. These solutions were simple. Of course these were largely defensive solutions. They didn't help her when she was out and about, unsuspecting. Not that she was ever unsuspecting these days..

Still, she could see to it that her domains were protected at the very least. That her home was safe. That the home of her su'si ercio was safe.

They are all I will leave behind.

There were also easy additions to her own kit she could make, and her mind was already racing with possibilities to hand over to the Ravens tech and weapon producers. Not many of hers were actually force sensitive to begin with. If she could find a way to see to it that all of them had the tools they needed..

"This is useful. I would just as rather not have these.. Unscrupulous individuals able to enter my sanctums with no way to detect them. A person likes being able to breathe occasionally. These things are easy."

She still doubted she would feel safe. But then when did she ever? One instance only, and that was rare enough. Still, one did not need to feel safe, one needed only to feel prepared.

"These I can do at home. What of when out in the galaxy? I assume this is when it comes down to if one is able or not. I can only take defensive measure when I know there is a threat."

[member="Shule Windspeaker"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

"Well, that's where it gets complicated," he admitted. "I'm a specialist in illusion with a secondary specialization in Sense-related abilities, and even I can't see through every illusion every time. I can if I suspect it's there, if I focus just right -- and there's more to that if you're talking White Current -- but I don't know of anything that can make anyone fully immune to every kind of illusion. I can teach you to be aware if someone's using mentalist illusion on you, though overcoming it is up to you; you can teach yourself to watch for the flaws in most kinds of bent-light illusion; but when it comes to the White Current you generally need to immerse yourself in the Current at a fairly high level in order to see through it. I've also had some success with straight-up Force Sight, but don't quote me on that. And maintaining all that as you walk around? Very difficult. What you might want to look into is constant short-temporal-range precog. There's nothing better than knowing that droid assassin is going to shoot you five seconds in the future. It doesn't give you much of an edge against illusion...but it does keep someone like me from walking up behind you and cutting your throat. Short-term, five- or ten-second precog is definitely worth your time, and it can be maintained."

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

The Twi'lek had been paying attention before. Now she radiated it. Every ounce of attention and concentration that was usually spent being mindful or her surroundings was suddenly and entirely focused on one [member="Shule Windspeaker"]. She still intended to get this White Current business settled and would find a way to learn it one way or the other, but what he'd just said was of more immediate and personal interest.

A being with a seventy million credit bounty over their head being hunted by the One Sith, Primeval and any and all of their allies plus whatever freelancers decided to step up to the plate was understandably interested in the idea of knowing what was going to happen. Five seconds was enough. In some cases five seconds was eternity.

Constant short-temporal-range precognition.

"This is not something I had heard of."

She allowed. Really, assuming they could be kept out of her home she didn't care if half the beings in the galaxy wanted to walk about unseen, as long as they were not a threat to her.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

"What do you think you're doing when you're sparring against a training remote?" he said. "Anakin Skywalker reputedly had a pretty good sense of everything that would happen within ten seconds, but that was a Skywalker, so take that as you will. But I've never had much trouble sustaining three to five seconds when I felt it was necessary. The key element of it, interestingly enough, is the same principle that'll let you take your first steps toward discovering whether you can learn to use the White Current -- and it's absolutely crucial for actually learning the Fallanassi techniques.

"See, as any given Force-user gets stronger, they face an important choice. They need to decide whether to throw stones into the pond or read the ripples; Luke Skywalker used to say that it's hard to hear when you're shouting all the time. The more power you exert, the less you can feel. More accurately, your rate of increase in Sense powers will decrease. There's literally a one-to-one tradeoff between sensing things and altering things. It's sort of a forgotten principle, but it's demonstrably true. To be able to be really good at short-term precog, and to be able to feel and affect the White Current, it helps to make a deliberate choice to focus on sense over power. To learn to listen to the Force, even to the will of the Force, will make a massive difference in your life...and in your skillset.

"You can train with remotes on your own time, and I'd recommend setting up an obstacle course where your allies and training partners...well, jump out and attack you at random. Droid snipers with stunguns are also ideal, but be prepared to get knocked out a lot -- there's nearly nothing better than a droid sniper for taking down a Force-user. But let's start with learning to listen."

He crouched and drew with his finger, or at least made comparable motions -- his finger never touched the ground. For lack of anything more significant to write, he wrote out the Jedi Code.

"This is called current-scribing. I'm leaving a message written on the fabric of reality. Current-scribing is a fairly high-level skill -- but being able to perceive current-scribing, after a very tranquil sort of meditation, is a classic method of testing whether you can learn to touch the Current. Go ahead and meditate, try to listen, and see if you can start to perceive what I've written."

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

Training remotes. What was he mental? She felt no need to get shot or shocked in the interest of training. Still, if it meant she was going to be able to avoid having her throat slit perhaps it would be worth it.. Fine. Training remotes and obstacle courses. At least she already had an ungodly number of droids, so that part was easy enough.

In fact.. The blocks around the Dragon Palace Casino had been entirely bought out by the Ravens and sniper droids had been placed almost everywhere. It would be easy to add a few hundred other droids and swap the snipers to non lethal rounds for a set period of time given to training. It could be good training for the non force sensitives as well. Always find ways to make the Unkindness stronger, better prepared.

The bit about sensing versus altering caught her attention as well, and a slight wrinkling of her noise communicated what she thought of that. She'd suspected it was true, the whole idea that you could be the best at absolutely everything seemed much more like some impotent teenage boys wish fulfillment wetdream quite frankly. Any mature adult knew you had to make choices and live with them.

Of the two which did she prefer? That was easy. Sense. You could always just use technology to put the hurt on someone, but if you didn't know they were there..

So, meditate and read his message on the fabric of reality. Sure. It might be worth noting at this point that Chiasa had very strong opinions about meditating, and how it was largely for twits and people who had time to sit about doing nothing. But if she had to then fine. So be it. The Twi'lek gracefully lowered herself to her knees, and settled back to sit on her heels. While she could stay still and look peaceful like a pro, clearing her mind was not something the Twi'lek had ever really accomplished. There was too much to do, too much that needed her attention, too many worries, concerns, plots and plans, schemes, dangers.. Still she tried. Oh how she tried. With eyes both closed in an apparently relaxed fashion, and then open and fixed on the offending area. Neither seemed to work.

All right. Fine. She looked away, thinking. This was most decidedly not working. So find another way. Where there was not a path, forge one. White current. Somethingsomething ripples, extended water metaphor. Listen. Not with ears. Nor even with Force precisely, though that was tied to it. Listen for the shape of things to be revealed. Allow that whatever he had scribed could not be seen, but it effected things. Writing on reality. So there would be.. ripples, static, echoes. You couldn't see the thing itself, but you could find the shape of it, and if you tried hard enough, listened well enough, you could figure out what precisely it was the shape of. It was a bit like a sighted person trying to learn braille. It was hard. The static was easy enough to find, now that she'd thought of it that way, but deciphering it. She felt the shape, it was trying to make it make sense.

Still, she was determined. And even better, she was good at patterns and puzzles. Once she got the first, the rest came easily. Likely if he'd scribed something entirely at random it would have taken even longer than the considerable time that had already elapsed.

"I think it may take more than that to have me running off to the Temples love."

She commented with amusement to [member="Shule Windspeaker"] with a quirk of her brow and a smile.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Feel, don't think. Use your instincts. Or as a combat trainer of mine used to say...get out of your own way." Deliberately, he poked her forehead. "I'm a mentalist by trade, but I don't need to read your mind to know that you've got fifteen things going on in there.

" Now, we can brute-force this. So to speak. Meditate until it works. Or we can take a stab at an alternate method. The stillness you're after is similar to the clarity a sniper needs. I'm thinking it s a safe bet that you know how to shoot. Now, I happen to have brought a scoped rifle. Maybe if you line up on something, you'll be able to find peace."

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

There were rather a lot of assumptions going on here. Training remotes and sniper rifles. She could shoot enough that She generally hit her target if it wasn't too far away. With a shotgun or a holdout blaster. None of this sniper rifle business. But all right. She'd already figured out the message, if this alternate method was quicker and easier, that would be good to know as well.

"What only fifteen? I'm doing well then."

She commented wryly accepting the rifle. She gave it a quick once over. Declan had insisted she knew weaponry enough that she could shoot just about anything in a pinch, just not necessarily well. Apparently he was concerned about her dying because she couldn't figure out how to switch the safety off. Which was fair considering she'd never handled a ranged weapon before she'd had him give her lessons. Still. A little faith people, just a little faith.

She switched positions, lying prone and bringing the rifle to aim on the woods.

Yep. Sure do have a sniper rifle. Going to shoot some trees.

Would you make an effort? Our life might actually depend on this!

Right yes, sorry. Okay. Sith assassins are after me again. Red bastard is likely out there again, find him.

Eye on the scope, the Twi'lek slowly wove the story for herself. There was an enemy in the woods, easily believable when you had so many and she had to find them, just a glance. Life depended upon completing this task. Silence, stillness and focus. Scan.

And with her attention deadset on the woods and her senses open and keen, the message she'd struggled to find and decipher by listening to the static it caused was suddenly there. It was damned odd to say the least. It didn't suddenly appear, it was as if it had always been there and she was just noticing it now. It still had a tendency to flicker out of her awareness when she paid too much attention to it, which honestly was causing a slight ache to develop in her head, but.

Interesting.

So if you were looking you could deduce based on the static, the ripples, or if your senses were properly open and your mind was quiet you could perceive directly.

"I quite like passion and chaos though."

[member="Shule Windspeaker"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

Shule chuckled. "Zero surprise here." He looked away from the prone Twi'lek, squinting out over the landscape at the trees. "So -- you can learn to perceive the White Current. That's a huge step right there, but there's a world of difference between reading Current-scribing, which is meant to be read, and perceiving something that a Master of the Current is actively trying to hide. The same goes for seeing the truth behind high-level illusions, which is almost the same, but not quite. To do all that, you need to be able to immerse yourself in the Current at a pretty high level. Which means dialing down all that passion and all that chaos. The White Current is about peace, tranquility, and subtlety. Don't make that face."

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

"I am going to make this face, I think my face may in fact get stuck like this."

Came the slightly disgruntled reply. This could be a problem. It could be worked on of course but still. Bother. The Twi'lek could do subtle. She could do subtle like nobodies business, but it was kept effective by the occasionally outbursts that kept people from expecting subtlety. Peace and tranquility though.. Admittedly, the Twi'lek was a creature of emotions, prone to passions, rages and loves, sudden storms. Could she control them? Likely, given time and dedication. Did she have the time? Maybe. She could try in any case. Likely a little more control could only help in all her endeavors.

Being peaceful and tranquil didn't mean she had to be nice. It just meant her decisions would be better thought out. This bit of self-justification done, the Twi'lek sighed.

"That is not something I can do in one day, no matter how hard I think about puppies and rainbows and.. I don't know, oatmeal and young people being respectful to their elders."

[member="Shule Windspeaker"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

"Funny," said Shule, voice dry, "that was sort of what I was trying to tell you. And don't knock oatmeal. Get some dried fruit in there, a little blue milk, maybe some bran..."

I am an old man. At what point in the last eight hundred years did I become an old man? His eyes flitted over the prone Twi'lek. Possibly a dirty old man. Feth. No need to go all Dragonsflame.

"Come on -- up. You're not going to learn the ways of the Fallanassi by sunbathing. And pass me that rifle -- time to get the hang of reading Current-scribing without an aid to focus. Then we move on to something you'll either love or absolutely hate."

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

"Pft, as if I listen when people are laying out restrictions, don't be ridiculous. I'd never get anything done. And remind me not to stay over at your place for breakfast."

Would it come back to bite her one day? This absolutely stubborn refusal to accept limitations? Almost certainly, but it was also what saw her rise from property to heading the largest criminal organization in the Galaxy, and she wasn't nearly done yet. The impossible was only labeled as such but people who weren't trying hard enough.

Strive, dare, accomplish, evolve. Her own personal brand of chaos was not the kind that was necessarily malicious, it was more akin to embracing the random chance that had seen primordial ooze decide that perhaps it would be a good idea to evolve into a sentient. Total order was stagnation, and that was one thing the Twi'lek could not abide.

"I suspect it would be much more popular and wide-spread if you could. There you are, when you want to revamp the Jedi way of life and make it more appealing, find a way to do it while sunbathing. Free marketing advice, you're welcome."

She rose from her prone position, handing over the rifle. No aid. All right. What had the Rifle and the scope provided? Something to focus on, to quiet her mind. But on a more basic level, it had made her the hunter, the predator sniffing the wind. She supposed this went against the peace and tranquility part at first glance, so she revisited it. Circling the idea. Finding how to make it fit. Not predatory like a bounty hunter, with all their thoughts and motivations. Predatory in the most basic sense. A piece of a larger ecosystem. No great rages or passions, simply doing what it was made, designed to do in order to survive. Playing it's part. Circle of life and all that.

In this her own stripes could be a lesson, an example, and this amused her. She allowed the amusement for a moment, and then moved past it. A familiar move, she'd been a diplomat for a while after all.

The static was easy to find. Could the two methods be combined? Search and find and then hunt out the disturbance to see it clearly? This seemed like the best idea to her. Easier to hunt when you kenw you were hunting something. The Twi'lek had always had a baser part of her mind. A more feral side. Not a completely separate personality of course, there were simply two parts to the whole that made up Chiasa. The civilized one who could plot and scheme, and the other who survived and fought. There was a reason Twi'lek were born with sharp teeth, and a reason they were often filed down. They were a species that though they were known for being eye-candy, slaves, dancers, were not entirely tamed. Not yet.

So. Search with civilized mind, find the static. Then loose the hunter, who did have almost unlimited patience and focus. Meditation was one thing. Sitting there accomplishing nothing when there was so much to do. Single minded tracking though, this was something else. This was doable. And easily. The message jumped into view again. This was done several times to ensure that she could.

Of course, she knew exactly where he'd written it and was reading a message that she already knew the contents of. There was no reason to expect it would be so easy otherwise.

"Love or hate? You are not helping my repressing of passions at all. Now what, command me oh Windspeaker, current-scriber, immerser-of-the-uninitiated!"

One thing that could be counted on, though it was likely a half step back as far as control went was that once she was on the trail of something, once that instinct had been awakened, she was single-minded and enthusiastic in her pursuit.

[member="Shule Windspeaker"]