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Hi all. The staff and FLs now know the ending of the timeline, so I'm sharing it here as well so the Sith team can discuss it too.
As a head's up, this is going to be a really long thread. There's a lot of backstory that I feel we need to give, because not everyone here was around for past timelines, and I want to make sure everyone is on the same page with how the legacy of those timelines is going to come into play in the finale. So apologies for the length of this thread.
If you have questions or feedback, please feel free to post it.
The idea of balance goes back to the ancient Je’daii Order, the Tythonian precursor of the Jedi Order that existed before the Force Wars. In the time of the Je'daii, the Force was in a neutral state. Balance was the neutrality between light and dark, the equal weight between chaos and harmony that defines human nature itself. The purpose of the Je'daii was to keep the Force in balance; as they kept the peace between the light and dark within themselves, it fed into the Living Force, the energies of which are channeled into the Cosmic Force. But when the Je'daii split into light and dark sects, and the Jedi Order arose from the ashes of the Force Wars, the Force started feeling something new. It felt the prevalence of light, and the absence of darkness.
Nature abhors a vacuum, so the Force, in its primal state, reacted. Darkness slowly began to spread. It started out small. First it was Rajivari, one of the founders of the Jedi Order who attempted to destroy the Order he helped build. Next came Adena Kheldrommas and the Cult of the Darksphere, which wrongly discredited the idea that you could follow the dark side of the Force without being evil and murderous. Then came Xendor and the First Great Schism. These were all small events, but they were eventually going to build to something bigger.
That bigger event eventually arose during our third and fourth timelines, in the era of the Alsakan Crisis and the Great Hutt Wars. During the Alsakan Crisis, Jedi Knight Sarina Lightell disagreed with the direction of the Jedi Order in trying to make peace between the Old Republic and the Alsakan Union after the Alsakans took control of Coruscant, a peace that Grand Master Banik Kelrada was trying to push for. Sarina wanted to undermine Banik's leadership, not for any nefarious purpose but to try to get the Jedi to build a better Order. One of the people she talked to was Talzea Keldroma, a Jedi Knight and Banik's lover. Talzea already disagreed with Banik over bringing peace between the Republic and the Alsakans, instead wanting to fight the Alsakans, and what Sarina says convinces Talzea that they are right. What Sarina said inadvertently convinces Talzea to break things off with Banik, which happens right after the Alsakan Vicar, Lharra, was assassinated and Banik was falsely implicated in the crime.
The Vicar's assassination led to the Conclave on Ossus, where the Jedi Order discussed how it would respond to the assassination and move forward in the war. Sarina used the Force to try to influence Banik and her own husband, Jedi Master Edo Tesu. She was able to get inside Banik's head because he was emotionally compromised; the assassination and losing Talzea created cracks in the wall of his mind. Instead of slightly influencing them to air their disagreements, Banik and Edo ended up fighting. Edo lost his hand, and Banik imprisoned him for treason.
After Edo’s arrest, Banik came to his senses and released him. Sarina visited Edo that night and told him about her idea to leave the Order and humiliate Banik, as well as admitting to influencing them both. Edo was outraged, and the argument turned into a fight. Despite only having his left hand, Edo was powerful enough to overwhelm her. However, in her desperation, Sarina managed to make a crucial hit on Edo and killed him. She panicked and hanged Edo’s body from the Jedi Enclave's courtyard tree. The following morning, she blamed Banik once the body was discovered. This created the Second Great Schism, with at least half of the Jedi fleeing with Sarina to form the Ospion Guardians.
The Ospion eventually made their way to Conscio, an ancient world that Xendor once had a base on, and they found Xendor's teachings. Once they did so, they began falling to the dark side. Sarina realized that the Ospion were turning away from her intended purpose of creating a better Jedi Order, and she fled the Ospion once she was unable to convince them to turn back. Many years later, during the Great Hutt Wars, she returned to the Jedi to pay for her crimes, but was instead lured into a trap set by Banik, who had been forced out of the Jedi Order and became mad with rage. Banik had spent years searching for Sarina to get revenge, and so they engaged in a tense duel.
Sarina was killed in the duel, but Banik found no peace in her death. Despite having spent years tracking her down, with killing her being his singular goal, he was still empty inside. He realized that Sarina was the catalyst for what happened to him, but not the driving force behind everything that went wrong with his life. She led the Jedi away from him, but ultimately it was the Jedi who made the choice to betray him. He realized he needed to take vengeance against everyone who wronged him, not just Sarina, so his lust for revenge led him to deciding to take over the Ospion -- now known as the Dark Jedi of the Bogan -- and destroy the Jedi as he destroyed Sarina.
Once in control of the Bogan, Banik put in motion a plan to turn them into the Bogan Empire, and he decided to lead them back to Conscio after they had left a decade earlier. Banik knew about the legends surrounding that planet, where the Sith King Adas ruled as a god thousands of years earlier. Before Adas was killed by the Infinite Empire, he swore to his followers that the descendents of his people, also gods to the planets in Adas' empire, would return. Banik claimed that he and the Bogan were the fulfillment of that promise, so the people of Conscio and the surrounding sector swore allegiance to the new Bogan Empire.
In the years that followed, Banik built his empire throughout the region. As he did so, he felt something strange happening in the Force. As he and his empire became more powerful, the Force began to feel different. He meditated on this for a long time and realized that the building of his empire, the first true dark side empire, was changing the nature of the Force itself. He came to see that the balance of the Force had been shifted to favor the existence of a dark empire. The Force was never intended for this purpose, but the Force often controls people just as it obeys their commands.
Once he realized this, Banik abruptly abdicated his throne. He realized that because the Force was forever on a dark path, he did not have to destroy the Jedi. His revenge would be his legacy: the Jedi would be forced to pay for their sins over and over as each new dark empire arose. He found Talzea, now the Grand Master of the Order, and told her what had happened to the Force. He also told her that he was ready to die. He handed her Sarina's sword so they would both feel like it was Sarina who killed him; even now, even after everything, Banik was still obsessed with what Sarina did. But Banik knew that Talzea, who still loved him, would not just simply execute him, so he attacked her and forced her into a position where she had to kill him. After he was mortally wounded, he noted the futility of using Sarina's sword, but said that wherever she was, he hoped she was suffering.
Talzea, at first, questioned what Banik said about the Force, but in time she too realized that he was telling the truth. She became the first person to put forward the idea that if one person can shift the Force into imbalance, another person could one day shift it back. Talzea's words were the origin of the Chosen One prophecy. Talzea also allowed Banik's Bogan followers to return his body to Conscio, where he was buried in a tomb deep within a valley. These few Bogan followers were eventually killed, and Conscio was left a barren wasteland after it was bombarded by the Hutt Empire. But the red-skinned species who dwelled there, known as the Sith, lived on, and the world eventually took on a new name.
Korriban.
After thousands of years, Banik was proven right, as the imbalance in the Force allowed for the rise of the Sith on Korriban. The dark side teachings that caused Ajunta Pall and the other first Sith Lords to be cast out of the Republic were Bogan teachings from Banik's time. What Banik turned the Bogan into, a group designed for revenge against the Jedi, is what the Sith became. His actions led to the Sith and all the horrors they inflicted against the galaxy. His tomb also became the first in what the Sith eventually called the Valley of the Dark Lords.
But just as Banik's words were prophetic, so too were Talzea's. Anakin Skywalker was born to be the Chosen One. However, when he fell to the dark side, he gave up that destiny. As Obi-Wan Kenobi told him on Mustafar, "You were the Chosen One." His use of "were" became quite literal; Anakin's destiny was forsaken in the fires of Mustafar. As a result, once Anakin killed Darth Sidious, it did not destroy the Sith or bring true balance. It destroyed Sidious and resulted in a temporary shift back towards the light, but that shift did not last. Anakin's true legacy was being the progenitor of the bloodline that would one day restore balance. Anakin's destiny to shift the Force back into balance became the fate of his line, rather than his own fate. In the end, the destiny was passed onto Lana. She is the true Chosen One who will finally undo Banik's mistakes, and ultimately return to the Force to the state it was in during the time of the Je'daii Order.
It all goes back to the Force Wars and what that kicked off by creating light sects and dark sects. Like the slow mutation of evolution, it took over ten thousand years, but the Bogan Empire eventually arose. The actions of Banik Kelrada in forming that empire, using conditions that could not have happened without that imbalance, gave the Force its first taste of dark empire. It processed that information, it learned from it, and as the powers of the Jedi grew, so too would the Force’s desire for a stronger empire. That led to the rise of the Sith.
This leads to questions: if there is an army of 10,000 Jedi and an army of 10,000 Sith, is that not balance? What is balance? If balance is equality between chaos and harmony, then the eternal wars between the Jedi and Sith could fit that definition. Yet, trillions die in the process, in every war across time immemorial. True balance, the one Lana will bring about, is a return to the neutral state. No armies of light. No armies of darkness.
As time went on, the Force learned more and more. It is a garden, with its own ecosystem and its own internal logic. In a way, it became sentient. It had a will of its own. When Anakin was born and the Jedi believed him to be the Chosen One, the Force reacted. Darth Vader was its reaction. Its will led Anakin to his fall, and to forsake his destiny as the Chosen One. In that instance, the will of the Force ensured that it was not brought back to true balance, because true balance is -- and forgive the crude metaphor -- a factory reset. If you reset it, you essentially kill the soul of the Force itself, and the souls of all who have joined it. The Force, after all, is a living memory; to bring it back into true balance, you destroy the souls of everyone - Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon Jinn, Luke Skywalker. Everyone who had ever died. They are the energies of the Living Force, the collective soul that feeds the Cosmic Force.
That is why the Force acts in self-preservation. It is in constant struggle with itself. As it represents everyone and everything, it naturally does things to bring balance to itself but then must react to stop it, using the tools of balance. That is why a Chosen One can be born, but why the Force would then try to stop it. Chaos tries to bring harmony and harmony tries to bring chaos. Andraste is born to be a destroyer, and Lana is born to be a savior. The Force wants to kill itself and save itself. That means the Force exerts a will to stop those who try to bring balance. The Force itself becomes not an enemy, but something that stands in opposition to the heroes of the galaxy. It is a moral grey area; is it even acceptable to bring balance to the Force? Are the lives of those who might die more important than the souls of those who have already lived?
The ultimately ending begins with Kara Vaalki finding Lana and telling her what happened to Jhon Cordatus in their last encounter: Jhon was gravely injured. For reasons unknown, this has severed his connection to the Force, losing his affinity to the Force and his ability to dream, and leaving him in a coma for many months. When Lana finally speaks to Jhon for the first time since learning that he had kept her parentage from her, he sends her on a path to learn more about the balance of the Force and the secret histories stemming from the Je'daii.
Meanwhile, Kara, Jhon, the Bogan leader ACE, and the Bogan twins Aiden and Elliot Lightell go to Korriban and investigate Banik's tomb. Once they are there, Lana also joins them, having completed her own investigations. Once there, they find the spirit of Banik Kelrada, which has been tied to his tomb for fourteen thousand years and has become broken, rambling, and incoherent. Also there is Sarina, but they cannot see her. Banik knows she is there, even though she never reveals herself to him, which binds the two in a purgatory of sorts. But the arrival of Kara alters the balance of power. The sword of Edo Tesu and the arrival of Tyrn Lightell - Sarina's descendent, Kara's former husband, and a monster created by tragedy -- cause the spirit of Edo Testu to appear along with Sarina. Sarina possesses Tyrn, while Edo possesses Kara, and they act out a final apology before finally moving on. Kara comes to her senses and kills Tyrn, gaining her revenge.
With Sarina gone, a suddenly lucid Banik reveals the truth: he had never been broken. He endured for thousands of years. Sarina had remained behind to keep him in check, but she too fell for his deception and believed it was safe to move on. She was wrong. It is then that Banik reveals his final plan and revenge: the Valley of the Dark Lords, and indeed Korriban itself, is a superweapon of the Force. Millennia of Sith spirits with enough dark side energy had become powerful enough to further disrupt the balance of the Force, and forever plunge it into darkness. The weapon, which Banik activates before he is finally destroyed, allows one person the ability to essentially become the will of the Force, altering it to their design -- a feat that millennia of Sith Lords, even Darth Sidious himself, had tried and failed to accomplish.
The activation of the valley causes a rift in space, causing Tython and Korriban to almost merge in a way (think the alignment of the realms in Thor: The Dark World). This powers a temple on Tython, one that will allow someone to ascend. That someone is Andraste, who discovers the temple and wants to use it to ascend to the will of the Force, like she almost briefly did while she was destroying Coruscant. The group on Korriban moves to Tython to attack her. She strikes them down, toying with them to an extent. They are not even worth killing. Lana is beaten as well, and is knocked unconscious before Andraste enters the temple.
At the same time, there is a massive battle between the Jedi Order and the Sith Order (just the Jedi and Sith; not Rebels or Imperials). We envision that most of the NPCs for the two Orders will be present, as well as any PC who wants to sign up, because this is a monumental battle. The Jedi are there to try to stop Andraste from ascending. The Sith, meanwhile, are trying to stop the Jedi. At this point in time, the Sith think Andraste ascending is a good idea, because it means more power for the Sith and that Andraste can finally destroy the Jedi and the light side once and for all.
While unconscious, and as the battle rages on around her, Lana has a Force vision in which she meets the spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine. They discuss the prophecy of the Chosen One and what it means to bring balance to the Force. Obi-Wan explains that Lana is pivotal to the galaxy not because of strength or power, but because there is a decision that she has to make that no one else can. He also shows her glimpses of the past, where Andraste was a young girl who wanted a brighter future, and in many ways was much like Lana herself - before she believed Lana was dead, allowed the monster to consume her, became the Empress. In the end, Obi-Wan offers her a choice as well: she can die here and be at peace in the Force, or she can return to Tython where she will also die -- but where she can die as the Chosen One. When Lana comes to, she and Andraste have a final confrontation. Andraste beats her again, leaving Lana near-death, and Andraste begins to ascend. For a brief moment, she steps into conduit between Tython and Korriban and is aware of all of existence.
This is when Lana has to make her final choice, but she does not see it as a choice between salvation or damnation for the galaxy. Rather, she sees it as a choice between salvation and damnation for her mother. Lana wants a bright future as well; she wants to live a normal life, have normal friends, fall in love, have a family, and do all the things a person is supposed to do. But she sees through the facade of the monster that Andraste has become. Andraste wants her power not just because she's power-hungry, but because she wants to rise above those she thinks mock her and torment her. Andraste, at her core, is still that frightened little girl who was deprived a normal life. Lana, who understands that her own life was much better than what she thought it was, wants to give her mother a chance to live. Lana chooses to give up her own future in favor of giving her mother a future, a true sacrifice.
With her choice made, Lana leaps into the conduit, using the Force to protect Andraste and sacrifice herself. Andraste has the Force torn away from her, but she survives. Lana's intervention destabilizes the conduit, and the Force approaches a critical mass. Aiden and Elliot harness the Force and manipulate it, each standing on one planet - one to heal Tython, the other to destroy Korriban. They are successful. Everyone else on Tython has the Force torn from them as well, as the Force has been irrevocably changed. The living memory and collective soul of the Force begins to die as well. (Note: When we announce the Battle of Tython, we will say something like "By participating in this thread, you agree to whatever staff-imposed consequences may result from it." That way we can maintain the mystery, while giving people the choice to opt-in or not.)
As a result of her actions, Lana dies. The Star Wars archetype is subverted; the parent lives, and the hero child dies a sacrifice. Lana has surely always wanted a normal life, but it’s that happiness and that future that she would have to give up when she decides to save her mother and bring balance to the Force. A hero’s life is a lonely one, and she makes that sacrifice because she loves her mother. After everything Andraste has gone through, she deserves to find a way back to peace and redemption far more than Lana needs a family or a life. Lana knows that, so she makes the sacrifice needed to bring balance to the Force.
Because balance of the Force is like a factory reset, the very nature of the Force has changed, hence why many people have lost their affinity towards it; they essentially have to learn a brand new Force. All Force artifacts are inert. The holocrons are dead, and all records of the Jedi and Sith contained within them are gone. But the Force is not totally balanced yet; it is in turmoil as a result of the destabilization wrought by Andraste and Lana, spreading both chaos and harmony throughout the galaxy. Lana represented the balance of the Force itself, so when she exerted her own will in the conduit, it brought the conflicting nature of the learned Force to forefront. This will be the setting of the final few weeks/months of the timeline, as the role-players determine the outcome of the war in the midst of this Force cataclysm.
After the Battle of Tython, there are more battles to fight. There are more temples and other Force nexuses across the galaxy, including on worlds such as Yavin 4, Dagobah, and Lehan. Tython was only the central one. After the destruction of the Tythonian temple, these other temples and nexuses start to go haywire. This is part of the Force being in chaos. The temples are feeding a lot of that chaotic energy, and thus need to be destroyed to help calm things down. And with the Tythonian temple gone, it is no longer possible to harness the power of the conduit, ascend, and become the will of the Force. The Sith had one shot at that through Andraste, and they lost. As a result, the power of these temples is purely destructive. If they are not destroyed, the galaxy will be ripped to shreds and every living being will die.
To destroy these temples and nexuses, the Jedi and Sith must work together. Alone, they do not have enough power. Light and dark alone cannot destroy the temples. Following the example that Lana set, only balance can destroy the temples. Light and dark must work together, as one. Also following Lana's example, the destruction of these temples and nexuses require sacrifices. One Jedi and one Sith must sacrifice their lives in order for these locations to be destroyed. Doing so represents balance within the Force, a chain of events that Lana created. This furthers the idea that Lana is not the endgame for the balance of the Force. She is the catalyst, the only one who can start it, but it is up to the galaxy to finish it. The prophecy of the Chosen One is about shuffling the deck, not resetting the board completely. And, very importantly, this prominently brings members into the story as well, and makes many people part of rebalancing the Force.
Here are some details about how that will work. If we are going to assume, with TAC and Weiss' permission, that the bulk of Jedi and Sith NPC forces lost the Force on Tython, then that adds something interesting to the PCs who go to destroy the temples. It narrows down the amount of people able to sacrifice themselves, thus making their ultimate sacrifice that much more important, and it also means that the groups going after the temples are some of the few Force users left. And indeed, the destruction of those temples and nexuses will also remove the Force from anyone there as well. Which means everyone who participates sacrifices themselves in some ways, just without everyone dying.
The staff will also effectively play the Force in these threads. Like we laid out earlier in this post, the Force is sentient. It does not want to die or be reset, in some ways. So the Jedi and Sith who go after the temples would encounter the Force as their opposition, that way it's an actual struggle. And we could say that, if they lose those battles, the Force wins. And we all know what happens if the Force wins. This ensures that the Jedi and Sith remain important, even if they're not part of the galactic war anymore, and gives them real stakes to overcome.
Because the Jedi and the Sith are contending with a cosmic war, that leaves the secular factions to fight the galactic war. The idea of having the Lana and Andraste plot end before the rest of the timeline, and the idea of the Jedi and Sith beginning to reconcile, is, partly, about wanting to give the governmental and military side of the galaxy the opportunity to determine their own futures, free from the Force wars that have defined the galaxy for thousands of years. This honors the promise we made many years ago now, that while the staff would developed the mythology, the outcome of the war was up to the entire site. So by having the Jedi and Sith focus on the temples, without battling each other, it makes the final weeks of the war solely about the Rebels, the Imperials, and the Hutts. Which is not to say that Jedi and Sith cannot participate in those at all, but it is no longer about them or their war.
The end of the timeline is a period of reconciliation and understanding. First, what of Andraste? She now lives never remembering what her daughter did for her. The last thing she remembers is becoming the monster; the Empress is dead and the Padawan lives again. She remembers some of her life, and she remembers who Jhon is and their good times together, but not her daughter. Not the Empress. This is her redemption. Some might say that Andraste losing her memories cheapens her story, because it takes away the memory of everything she did. On the contrary, her redemption is about finding her way back to what she once was and what she could have been. Just because she loses the memory does not mean it takes away the pain or the unease. Her actions lessen the pain, but the reaction is that she doesn’t understand the pain. Which can be a whole lot worse; you feel awful about something but, no matter how hard you try, you cannot figure out why. As Jhon will say, “All I know is that redemption is pain and grace.” She has peace, but a painful peace. It is an empty peace that she can never fill, at least not in her mortal life.
For the rest of the galaxy, they begin the process of healing. At the end of the war, as the secular factions decide what their galactic governing structure is going to look like, the age of the Jedi and the Sith comes to an end. In order to heal the Force, the Je'daii ideas of balance must return. The remaining members of the Jedi and Sith Orders return to Tython and continue the process of reconciliation, a reconciliation made possible by the Chosen One and that started with the destruction of the temples. They must find the balance between chaos and harmony again, and keep the Force healthy and good as the Je’daii once did. They must make things right, for themselves and for the cosmic order, to fully repair that world and then, perhaps, the universe. This makes Lana and the prophecy of the Chosen One a catalyst, rather than the end itself, and allows the timeline to end ambiguously rather than with a cliche'd happy ending.
Though they cannot dream, as they have lost the Force, their children will be able to dream, as they are born into a world awash with this renewed Force. They will see flashes of a galaxy that once was, of a saga that has come to an end. This is not to inspire them to necessarily use this new Force, but to become doctors, writers, artists. People who will make the galaxy flourish again, and move beyond the wars that had nearly destroyed it time and time again.
These dreams of a new generation also lead to questions. Is it the collective memory coming back? Did it ever really die? Ultimately it does not matter. What really matters is not losing sight of the struggle. That is what redemption is, as Jhon says: pain and grace, a redemption that the galaxy must face as well. And the fact that Jhon, Kara, and others who were on Tython are still alive is important as well. They know everything that happened. Whenever they die, those memories will become part of this new Force. What will grow from the seeds planted through their eventual deaths, and the deaths of those who know the rest of galactic history? Will the souls of all those who died return? Will the Force remember itself, but remain in balance? Will that mean the Force can finally learn to be content with its natural state? Perhaps, too, if Lana became the first memory of the new Force, there can be hope. Maybe things will actually be better this time, and the Force users of Tython will keep the universe in balance.
Those are questions that cannot be answered, but that is ok too. In the end, sometimes the questions and the hope they breed are more satisfying than the answers.
In that way, these dreams are the legacy of the living memory of the galaxy. It is also a nice way of hinting at the reboot of the site itself, even with the reboot having no connection to this timeline.
Life goes on. The saga invariably continues.
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Hey guys. Over two years ago now, Boli and I had our first conversation about what we wanted the end of the Star Wars Legacies mythology to look like. Those ideas have developed since then, and we recently presented our vision for the end of the timeline and, indeed, the nearly eleven year long SWRP mythology to the rest of the staff. With the staff on board with the idea, it is now time to present this vision to you. This thread will outline the plan.As a head's up, this is going to be a really long thread. There's a lot of backstory that I feel we need to give, because not everyone here was around for past timelines, and I want to make sure everyone is on the same page with how the legacy of those timelines is going to come into play in the finale. So apologies for the length of this thread.
If you have questions or feedback, please feel free to post it.
The Road to Star Wars Legacies
The idea of balance goes back to the ancient Je’daii Order, the Tythonian precursor of the Jedi Order that existed before the Force Wars. In the time of the Je'daii, the Force was in a neutral state. Balance was the neutrality between light and dark, the equal weight between chaos and harmony that defines human nature itself. The purpose of the Je'daii was to keep the Force in balance; as they kept the peace between the light and dark within themselves, it fed into the Living Force, the energies of which are channeled into the Cosmic Force. But when the Je'daii split into light and dark sects, and the Jedi Order arose from the ashes of the Force Wars, the Force started feeling something new. It felt the prevalence of light, and the absence of darkness.
Nature abhors a vacuum, so the Force, in its primal state, reacted. Darkness slowly began to spread. It started out small. First it was Rajivari, one of the founders of the Jedi Order who attempted to destroy the Order he helped build. Next came Adena Kheldrommas and the Cult of the Darksphere, which wrongly discredited the idea that you could follow the dark side of the Force without being evil and murderous. Then came Xendor and the First Great Schism. These were all small events, but they were eventually going to build to something bigger.
That bigger event eventually arose during our third and fourth timelines, in the era of the Alsakan Crisis and the Great Hutt Wars. During the Alsakan Crisis, Jedi Knight Sarina Lightell disagreed with the direction of the Jedi Order in trying to make peace between the Old Republic and the Alsakan Union after the Alsakans took control of Coruscant, a peace that Grand Master Banik Kelrada was trying to push for. Sarina wanted to undermine Banik's leadership, not for any nefarious purpose but to try to get the Jedi to build a better Order. One of the people she talked to was Talzea Keldroma, a Jedi Knight and Banik's lover. Talzea already disagreed with Banik over bringing peace between the Republic and the Alsakans, instead wanting to fight the Alsakans, and what Sarina says convinces Talzea that they are right. What Sarina said inadvertently convinces Talzea to break things off with Banik, which happens right after the Alsakan Vicar, Lharra, was assassinated and Banik was falsely implicated in the crime.
The Vicar's assassination led to the Conclave on Ossus, where the Jedi Order discussed how it would respond to the assassination and move forward in the war. Sarina used the Force to try to influence Banik and her own husband, Jedi Master Edo Tesu. She was able to get inside Banik's head because he was emotionally compromised; the assassination and losing Talzea created cracks in the wall of his mind. Instead of slightly influencing them to air their disagreements, Banik and Edo ended up fighting. Edo lost his hand, and Banik imprisoned him for treason.
After Edo’s arrest, Banik came to his senses and released him. Sarina visited Edo that night and told him about her idea to leave the Order and humiliate Banik, as well as admitting to influencing them both. Edo was outraged, and the argument turned into a fight. Despite only having his left hand, Edo was powerful enough to overwhelm her. However, in her desperation, Sarina managed to make a crucial hit on Edo and killed him. She panicked and hanged Edo’s body from the Jedi Enclave's courtyard tree. The following morning, she blamed Banik once the body was discovered. This created the Second Great Schism, with at least half of the Jedi fleeing with Sarina to form the Ospion Guardians.
The Ospion eventually made their way to Conscio, an ancient world that Xendor once had a base on, and they found Xendor's teachings. Once they did so, they began falling to the dark side. Sarina realized that the Ospion were turning away from her intended purpose of creating a better Jedi Order, and she fled the Ospion once she was unable to convince them to turn back. Many years later, during the Great Hutt Wars, she returned to the Jedi to pay for her crimes, but was instead lured into a trap set by Banik, who had been forced out of the Jedi Order and became mad with rage. Banik had spent years searching for Sarina to get revenge, and so they engaged in a tense duel.
Sarina was killed in the duel, but Banik found no peace in her death. Despite having spent years tracking her down, with killing her being his singular goal, he was still empty inside. He realized that Sarina was the catalyst for what happened to him, but not the driving force behind everything that went wrong with his life. She led the Jedi away from him, but ultimately it was the Jedi who made the choice to betray him. He realized he needed to take vengeance against everyone who wronged him, not just Sarina, so his lust for revenge led him to deciding to take over the Ospion -- now known as the Dark Jedi of the Bogan -- and destroy the Jedi as he destroyed Sarina.
Once in control of the Bogan, Banik put in motion a plan to turn them into the Bogan Empire, and he decided to lead them back to Conscio after they had left a decade earlier. Banik knew about the legends surrounding that planet, where the Sith King Adas ruled as a god thousands of years earlier. Before Adas was killed by the Infinite Empire, he swore to his followers that the descendents of his people, also gods to the planets in Adas' empire, would return. Banik claimed that he and the Bogan were the fulfillment of that promise, so the people of Conscio and the surrounding sector swore allegiance to the new Bogan Empire.
In the years that followed, Banik built his empire throughout the region. As he did so, he felt something strange happening in the Force. As he and his empire became more powerful, the Force began to feel different. He meditated on this for a long time and realized that the building of his empire, the first true dark side empire, was changing the nature of the Force itself. He came to see that the balance of the Force had been shifted to favor the existence of a dark empire. The Force was never intended for this purpose, but the Force often controls people just as it obeys their commands.
Once he realized this, Banik abruptly abdicated his throne. He realized that because the Force was forever on a dark path, he did not have to destroy the Jedi. His revenge would be his legacy: the Jedi would be forced to pay for their sins over and over as each new dark empire arose. He found Talzea, now the Grand Master of the Order, and told her what had happened to the Force. He also told her that he was ready to die. He handed her Sarina's sword so they would both feel like it was Sarina who killed him; even now, even after everything, Banik was still obsessed with what Sarina did. But Banik knew that Talzea, who still loved him, would not just simply execute him, so he attacked her and forced her into a position where she had to kill him. After he was mortally wounded, he noted the futility of using Sarina's sword, but said that wherever she was, he hoped she was suffering.
Talzea, at first, questioned what Banik said about the Force, but in time she too realized that he was telling the truth. She became the first person to put forward the idea that if one person can shift the Force into imbalance, another person could one day shift it back. Talzea's words were the origin of the Chosen One prophecy. Talzea also allowed Banik's Bogan followers to return his body to Conscio, where he was buried in a tomb deep within a valley. These few Bogan followers were eventually killed, and Conscio was left a barren wasteland after it was bombarded by the Hutt Empire. But the red-skinned species who dwelled there, known as the Sith, lived on, and the world eventually took on a new name.
Korriban.
After thousands of years, Banik was proven right, as the imbalance in the Force allowed for the rise of the Sith on Korriban. The dark side teachings that caused Ajunta Pall and the other first Sith Lords to be cast out of the Republic were Bogan teachings from Banik's time. What Banik turned the Bogan into, a group designed for revenge against the Jedi, is what the Sith became. His actions led to the Sith and all the horrors they inflicted against the galaxy. His tomb also became the first in what the Sith eventually called the Valley of the Dark Lords.
But just as Banik's words were prophetic, so too were Talzea's. Anakin Skywalker was born to be the Chosen One. However, when he fell to the dark side, he gave up that destiny. As Obi-Wan Kenobi told him on Mustafar, "You were the Chosen One." His use of "were" became quite literal; Anakin's destiny was forsaken in the fires of Mustafar. As a result, once Anakin killed Darth Sidious, it did not destroy the Sith or bring true balance. It destroyed Sidious and resulted in a temporary shift back towards the light, but that shift did not last. Anakin's true legacy was being the progenitor of the bloodline that would one day restore balance. Anakin's destiny to shift the Force back into balance became the fate of his line, rather than his own fate. In the end, the destiny was passed onto Lana. She is the true Chosen One who will finally undo Banik's mistakes, and ultimately return to the Force to the state it was in during the time of the Je'daii Order.
What does Balance of the Force mean?
It all goes back to the Force Wars and what that kicked off by creating light sects and dark sects. Like the slow mutation of evolution, it took over ten thousand years, but the Bogan Empire eventually arose. The actions of Banik Kelrada in forming that empire, using conditions that could not have happened without that imbalance, gave the Force its first taste of dark empire. It processed that information, it learned from it, and as the powers of the Jedi grew, so too would the Force’s desire for a stronger empire. That led to the rise of the Sith.
This leads to questions: if there is an army of 10,000 Jedi and an army of 10,000 Sith, is that not balance? What is balance? If balance is equality between chaos and harmony, then the eternal wars between the Jedi and Sith could fit that definition. Yet, trillions die in the process, in every war across time immemorial. True balance, the one Lana will bring about, is a return to the neutral state. No armies of light. No armies of darkness.
As time went on, the Force learned more and more. It is a garden, with its own ecosystem and its own internal logic. In a way, it became sentient. It had a will of its own. When Anakin was born and the Jedi believed him to be the Chosen One, the Force reacted. Darth Vader was its reaction. Its will led Anakin to his fall, and to forsake his destiny as the Chosen One. In that instance, the will of the Force ensured that it was not brought back to true balance, because true balance is -- and forgive the crude metaphor -- a factory reset. If you reset it, you essentially kill the soul of the Force itself, and the souls of all who have joined it. The Force, after all, is a living memory; to bring it back into true balance, you destroy the souls of everyone - Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon Jinn, Luke Skywalker. Everyone who had ever died. They are the energies of the Living Force, the collective soul that feeds the Cosmic Force.
That is why the Force acts in self-preservation. It is in constant struggle with itself. As it represents everyone and everything, it naturally does things to bring balance to itself but then must react to stop it, using the tools of balance. That is why a Chosen One can be born, but why the Force would then try to stop it. Chaos tries to bring harmony and harmony tries to bring chaos. Andraste is born to be a destroyer, and Lana is born to be a savior. The Force wants to kill itself and save itself. That means the Force exerts a will to stop those who try to bring balance. The Force itself becomes not an enemy, but something that stands in opposition to the heroes of the galaxy. It is a moral grey area; is it even acceptable to bring balance to the Force? Are the lives of those who might die more important than the souls of those who have already lived?
The Battle of Tython
The ultimately ending begins with Kara Vaalki finding Lana and telling her what happened to Jhon Cordatus in their last encounter: Jhon was gravely injured. For reasons unknown, this has severed his connection to the Force, losing his affinity to the Force and his ability to dream, and leaving him in a coma for many months. When Lana finally speaks to Jhon for the first time since learning that he had kept her parentage from her, he sends her on a path to learn more about the balance of the Force and the secret histories stemming from the Je'daii.
Meanwhile, Kara, Jhon, the Bogan leader ACE, and the Bogan twins Aiden and Elliot Lightell go to Korriban and investigate Banik's tomb. Once they are there, Lana also joins them, having completed her own investigations. Once there, they find the spirit of Banik Kelrada, which has been tied to his tomb for fourteen thousand years and has become broken, rambling, and incoherent. Also there is Sarina, but they cannot see her. Banik knows she is there, even though she never reveals herself to him, which binds the two in a purgatory of sorts. But the arrival of Kara alters the balance of power. The sword of Edo Tesu and the arrival of Tyrn Lightell - Sarina's descendent, Kara's former husband, and a monster created by tragedy -- cause the spirit of Edo Testu to appear along with Sarina. Sarina possesses Tyrn, while Edo possesses Kara, and they act out a final apology before finally moving on. Kara comes to her senses and kills Tyrn, gaining her revenge.
With Sarina gone, a suddenly lucid Banik reveals the truth: he had never been broken. He endured for thousands of years. Sarina had remained behind to keep him in check, but she too fell for his deception and believed it was safe to move on. She was wrong. It is then that Banik reveals his final plan and revenge: the Valley of the Dark Lords, and indeed Korriban itself, is a superweapon of the Force. Millennia of Sith spirits with enough dark side energy had become powerful enough to further disrupt the balance of the Force, and forever plunge it into darkness. The weapon, which Banik activates before he is finally destroyed, allows one person the ability to essentially become the will of the Force, altering it to their design -- a feat that millennia of Sith Lords, even Darth Sidious himself, had tried and failed to accomplish.
The activation of the valley causes a rift in space, causing Tython and Korriban to almost merge in a way (think the alignment of the realms in Thor: The Dark World). This powers a temple on Tython, one that will allow someone to ascend. That someone is Andraste, who discovers the temple and wants to use it to ascend to the will of the Force, like she almost briefly did while she was destroying Coruscant. The group on Korriban moves to Tython to attack her. She strikes them down, toying with them to an extent. They are not even worth killing. Lana is beaten as well, and is knocked unconscious before Andraste enters the temple.
At the same time, there is a massive battle between the Jedi Order and the Sith Order (just the Jedi and Sith; not Rebels or Imperials). We envision that most of the NPCs for the two Orders will be present, as well as any PC who wants to sign up, because this is a monumental battle. The Jedi are there to try to stop Andraste from ascending. The Sith, meanwhile, are trying to stop the Jedi. At this point in time, the Sith think Andraste ascending is a good idea, because it means more power for the Sith and that Andraste can finally destroy the Jedi and the light side once and for all.
While unconscious, and as the battle rages on around her, Lana has a Force vision in which she meets the spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine. They discuss the prophecy of the Chosen One and what it means to bring balance to the Force. Obi-Wan explains that Lana is pivotal to the galaxy not because of strength or power, but because there is a decision that she has to make that no one else can. He also shows her glimpses of the past, where Andraste was a young girl who wanted a brighter future, and in many ways was much like Lana herself - before she believed Lana was dead, allowed the monster to consume her, became the Empress. In the end, Obi-Wan offers her a choice as well: she can die here and be at peace in the Force, or she can return to Tython where she will also die -- but where she can die as the Chosen One. When Lana comes to, she and Andraste have a final confrontation. Andraste beats her again, leaving Lana near-death, and Andraste begins to ascend. For a brief moment, she steps into conduit between Tython and Korriban and is aware of all of existence.
This is when Lana has to make her final choice, but she does not see it as a choice between salvation or damnation for the galaxy. Rather, she sees it as a choice between salvation and damnation for her mother. Lana wants a bright future as well; she wants to live a normal life, have normal friends, fall in love, have a family, and do all the things a person is supposed to do. But she sees through the facade of the monster that Andraste has become. Andraste wants her power not just because she's power-hungry, but because she wants to rise above those she thinks mock her and torment her. Andraste, at her core, is still that frightened little girl who was deprived a normal life. Lana, who understands that her own life was much better than what she thought it was, wants to give her mother a chance to live. Lana chooses to give up her own future in favor of giving her mother a future, a true sacrifice.
With her choice made, Lana leaps into the conduit, using the Force to protect Andraste and sacrifice herself. Andraste has the Force torn away from her, but she survives. Lana's intervention destabilizes the conduit, and the Force approaches a critical mass. Aiden and Elliot harness the Force and manipulate it, each standing on one planet - one to heal Tython, the other to destroy Korriban. They are successful. Everyone else on Tython has the Force torn from them as well, as the Force has been irrevocably changed. The living memory and collective soul of the Force begins to die as well. (Note: When we announce the Battle of Tython, we will say something like "By participating in this thread, you agree to whatever staff-imposed consequences may result from it." That way we can maintain the mystery, while giving people the choice to opt-in or not.)
As a result of her actions, Lana dies. The Star Wars archetype is subverted; the parent lives, and the hero child dies a sacrifice. Lana has surely always wanted a normal life, but it’s that happiness and that future that she would have to give up when she decides to save her mother and bring balance to the Force. A hero’s life is a lonely one, and she makes that sacrifice because she loves her mother. After everything Andraste has gone through, she deserves to find a way back to peace and redemption far more than Lana needs a family or a life. Lana knows that, so she makes the sacrifice needed to bring balance to the Force.
The Final Battles
Because balance of the Force is like a factory reset, the very nature of the Force has changed, hence why many people have lost their affinity towards it; they essentially have to learn a brand new Force. All Force artifacts are inert. The holocrons are dead, and all records of the Jedi and Sith contained within them are gone. But the Force is not totally balanced yet; it is in turmoil as a result of the destabilization wrought by Andraste and Lana, spreading both chaos and harmony throughout the galaxy. Lana represented the balance of the Force itself, so when she exerted her own will in the conduit, it brought the conflicting nature of the learned Force to forefront. This will be the setting of the final few weeks/months of the timeline, as the role-players determine the outcome of the war in the midst of this Force cataclysm.
After the Battle of Tython, there are more battles to fight. There are more temples and other Force nexuses across the galaxy, including on worlds such as Yavin 4, Dagobah, and Lehan. Tython was only the central one. After the destruction of the Tythonian temple, these other temples and nexuses start to go haywire. This is part of the Force being in chaos. The temples are feeding a lot of that chaotic energy, and thus need to be destroyed to help calm things down. And with the Tythonian temple gone, it is no longer possible to harness the power of the conduit, ascend, and become the will of the Force. The Sith had one shot at that through Andraste, and they lost. As a result, the power of these temples is purely destructive. If they are not destroyed, the galaxy will be ripped to shreds and every living being will die.
To destroy these temples and nexuses, the Jedi and Sith must work together. Alone, they do not have enough power. Light and dark alone cannot destroy the temples. Following the example that Lana set, only balance can destroy the temples. Light and dark must work together, as one. Also following Lana's example, the destruction of these temples and nexuses require sacrifices. One Jedi and one Sith must sacrifice their lives in order for these locations to be destroyed. Doing so represents balance within the Force, a chain of events that Lana created. This furthers the idea that Lana is not the endgame for the balance of the Force. She is the catalyst, the only one who can start it, but it is up to the galaxy to finish it. The prophecy of the Chosen One is about shuffling the deck, not resetting the board completely. And, very importantly, this prominently brings members into the story as well, and makes many people part of rebalancing the Force.
Here are some details about how that will work. If we are going to assume, with TAC and Weiss' permission, that the bulk of Jedi and Sith NPC forces lost the Force on Tython, then that adds something interesting to the PCs who go to destroy the temples. It narrows down the amount of people able to sacrifice themselves, thus making their ultimate sacrifice that much more important, and it also means that the groups going after the temples are some of the few Force users left. And indeed, the destruction of those temples and nexuses will also remove the Force from anyone there as well. Which means everyone who participates sacrifices themselves in some ways, just without everyone dying.
The staff will also effectively play the Force in these threads. Like we laid out earlier in this post, the Force is sentient. It does not want to die or be reset, in some ways. So the Jedi and Sith who go after the temples would encounter the Force as their opposition, that way it's an actual struggle. And we could say that, if they lose those battles, the Force wins. And we all know what happens if the Force wins. This ensures that the Jedi and Sith remain important, even if they're not part of the galactic war anymore, and gives them real stakes to overcome.
Because the Jedi and the Sith are contending with a cosmic war, that leaves the secular factions to fight the galactic war. The idea of having the Lana and Andraste plot end before the rest of the timeline, and the idea of the Jedi and Sith beginning to reconcile, is, partly, about wanting to give the governmental and military side of the galaxy the opportunity to determine their own futures, free from the Force wars that have defined the galaxy for thousands of years. This honors the promise we made many years ago now, that while the staff would developed the mythology, the outcome of the war was up to the entire site. So by having the Jedi and Sith focus on the temples, without battling each other, it makes the final weeks of the war solely about the Rebels, the Imperials, and the Hutts. Which is not to say that Jedi and Sith cannot participate in those at all, but it is no longer about them or their war.
The End
The end of the timeline is a period of reconciliation and understanding. First, what of Andraste? She now lives never remembering what her daughter did for her. The last thing she remembers is becoming the monster; the Empress is dead and the Padawan lives again. She remembers some of her life, and she remembers who Jhon is and their good times together, but not her daughter. Not the Empress. This is her redemption. Some might say that Andraste losing her memories cheapens her story, because it takes away the memory of everything she did. On the contrary, her redemption is about finding her way back to what she once was and what she could have been. Just because she loses the memory does not mean it takes away the pain or the unease. Her actions lessen the pain, but the reaction is that she doesn’t understand the pain. Which can be a whole lot worse; you feel awful about something but, no matter how hard you try, you cannot figure out why. As Jhon will say, “All I know is that redemption is pain and grace.” She has peace, but a painful peace. It is an empty peace that she can never fill, at least not in her mortal life.
For the rest of the galaxy, they begin the process of healing. At the end of the war, as the secular factions decide what their galactic governing structure is going to look like, the age of the Jedi and the Sith comes to an end. In order to heal the Force, the Je'daii ideas of balance must return. The remaining members of the Jedi and Sith Orders return to Tython and continue the process of reconciliation, a reconciliation made possible by the Chosen One and that started with the destruction of the temples. They must find the balance between chaos and harmony again, and keep the Force healthy and good as the Je’daii once did. They must make things right, for themselves and for the cosmic order, to fully repair that world and then, perhaps, the universe. This makes Lana and the prophecy of the Chosen One a catalyst, rather than the end itself, and allows the timeline to end ambiguously rather than with a cliche'd happy ending.
Though they cannot dream, as they have lost the Force, their children will be able to dream, as they are born into a world awash with this renewed Force. They will see flashes of a galaxy that once was, of a saga that has come to an end. This is not to inspire them to necessarily use this new Force, but to become doctors, writers, artists. People who will make the galaxy flourish again, and move beyond the wars that had nearly destroyed it time and time again.
These dreams of a new generation also lead to questions. Is it the collective memory coming back? Did it ever really die? Ultimately it does not matter. What really matters is not losing sight of the struggle. That is what redemption is, as Jhon says: pain and grace, a redemption that the galaxy must face as well. And the fact that Jhon, Kara, and others who were on Tython are still alive is important as well. They know everything that happened. Whenever they die, those memories will become part of this new Force. What will grow from the seeds planted through their eventual deaths, and the deaths of those who know the rest of galactic history? Will the souls of all those who died return? Will the Force remember itself, but remain in balance? Will that mean the Force can finally learn to be content with its natural state? Perhaps, too, if Lana became the first memory of the new Force, there can be hope. Maybe things will actually be better this time, and the Force users of Tython will keep the universe in balance.
Those are questions that cannot be answered, but that is ok too. In the end, sometimes the questions and the hope they breed are more satisfying than the answers.
In that way, these dreams are the legacy of the living memory of the galaxy. It is also a nice way of hinting at the reboot of the site itself, even with the reboot having no connection to this timeline.
Life goes on. The saga invariably continues.
