Knowledge!
The greatest currency in the known universe, it is worth more than all the credits imaginable and more useful than any tool ever invented. And not only is it currency and a tool, but also weapon. Knowledge can bring an entire civilisation to its knees or bring another to rise within a matter of hours. Truly knowledge is the greatest. . .object (for want of a better word) in the universe. It is as old as time itself and as wide as known existence. And it never dies.
As long as there is one person with breath on their lips and someone to listen, one person with a pen in their hand and someone to read, a person to preach and a person to believe then knowledge lives on, through the rise and fall of people, cultures, buildings and even planets, never fading, never dying.
It was knowledge the fascinated young Jedi Padawan Rah Trelk as he sat cross-legged in one of the many courtyards on the Jedi Temple built upon the city-world of Coruscant beneath the slowly-dying light in the sky, tinting it a light orange as speeders flew over head, making fantastic new sounds as they scooped the air over their individual shapes. He sought to gather of much of it as he could, piling a limitless tide of information into his brain (and datapad), learning new things every day about the Jedi, their message of peacekeeping and so many others things that his datapad was nearly three-quarters full now of facts and figures all about the races of the galaxy and their planets and the flora and fauna that Rah had garnered from sleazy cantinas on his four month journey here from his homeplanet Gand.
Of all the information he had gathered on them in the recent week and a half he had spent with them there were two things about the Jedi particularily that left Rah's brain in a knot. The first of these were the weapons the Jedi used-- lightsabers. He had taken one hot afternoon in the archives (and the archives to Rah were like putting a child not only in a sweet shop- to give a long and unecessary metaphor -but in a sweet shop filled with free money, yo-yos and robot-space-pirate-waiters who had English accents) spending time one one of their delightful holographic interfaces, carefully taking apart the lightsaber of a long-dead famous Jedi who's name had now left the Gand's mind and seen what, in simple terms, made a Lightsaber tick.
Apparently a padawan, during their training (another thing Rah had made sure to check up on when he had recieved the formal letter that he would soon become Padawan to a Master- but to whom and when it had not said much to the Gand's confusion) must construct their own lightsaber for the reason that every Jedi's lightsaber was unique in its own way. This fact had startled Rah as he had made sure to check how many Jedi had existed over the years and had given up trying to reach the bottom of the list after three hours and the idea that every single lightsaber belonging to every single one of those Jedi had been unique floored him. This put worry upon his shoulders (or gristle-based shoulder-like structure connected to his neck, in this case) that perhaps he would be the first Jedi to do it wrong, accidentally copy someone else's. After all, it seemed so awfully hard-- you had to assemble it using only that mysterious. . .well, from what words Rah had heard spoken of it it sounded like some kind of energy. . .the Force, that was what it was called. You had to assemble your lightsaber using The Force on an almost microscopic level, making sure it all held together, fitting in place, all those little pieces like the lens, the matrix emitter and the hundreds of other tiny little pieces that weren't even mentioned in the archives except under obscure almost unrelated files. And then you had to learn how to fight with them, and there were different forms and colours and ways of holding the lightsaber and it made his brain throb to try and hold it all together.
And all that was just one tiny part of becoming a Jedi. You needed to pass difficult trials and accomplish tasks and. . .meditate. Meditation was the perhaps the third hardest thing Rah had heard about of being a Jedi. It meant you had to completely empty your mind, become one with. . .The Force or whatever they called it. How could he empty his head when it was constantly buzzing with thousands of tiny facts that just happened to pop into his head? It got worse when he was nervous, completely random little pieces of useless trivia would pop into his head when he was trying to concentrate or talking to someone important. He had remembered talking to a Jedi Master the other day about whether he had been accepted as a Padawan yet and he had started reciting the Iridonian national anthem for no reason at all. The Master had smiled akwardly and left. Rah had felt his glands inflating with embaressment as the Master walked away and he had heard the giggles from the group of young in-training Jedi across the hall. He had stormed off to the Archives to sulk.
And then after the trials he had read that you got Knighted and there was a ceremony, but when he had asked a fellow Padawan he had recieved a redundant snort. Apparently nobody recently had had such a thing. And then he had read Padawans had to grow an obligatory ponytail that was cut off when you ascended to Knighthood.
This of course had made Rah panic immensely as, being a Gand, he could not grow hair on his bulbous head. When he had hurriedly confronted a passing Master about this he had been told with a light chuckle that non-humans were excempt from this ritual. Once again the hushed chuckles of his fellow learners had sent Rah off to the Archives in a sulk.
But all that was miniscule compared to The Force. That mysterious power that "flows through all living things." It was the Jedi's greatest weapon-- but he had been corrected on this. Never call The Force a weapon, or a tool. It wasn't even an energy, as Rah had been told. Apparently it was a "metaphysical, binding, and ubiquitous power," to take the words directly from the Master who had informed Rah's mouth. It cannot be controlled, but directed or altered temporarily by those who are "force-sensitive." The fact that he was force sensitive is what got Rah's entire village killed. It meant one who could feel the force. Rah found this strange, as he had never felt an invisible metaphysical binding power his entire life. But he had been wrong. The Force had always been there, not guiding, not helping, not even watching, but existing, just in the background, out of reach but always there. Apparently the Jedi Master who would train him (who ever he- or she -was) would open him to The Force, allow him to alter it as the Jedi did. But what the Master who held lectures for those who had come seeking training (who's name now eluded Rah) stressed that The Force should never be used for evil, just as a Jedi himself should never use his skills, whether they be with a lightsaber or with the use of The Force, for evil.
This was how Rah learned about The Dark Side.
The Lecturing Master had spoken of those who were Force-sensitive who gave into anger and hate. Those who abused their gift. They were found by dark force-users (who's name could not be said at the lecture for the attendees were not yet Padawans and therefor could not be trusted) and were taught like those in that lecture hall were due to be, but not of how to keep balance and order, but were corrupted and learn-ed of chaos. Their blades were said to be of deepest red (this was why few Jedi choose red as their lightsaber's crystal) and their clothes of darkest black. It was then Rah knew that these were the people that had slaughtered his village. His heart had been heavy and the Master's words had filled him with anger. Silently he had sworn to protect those who would have their lives destroyed by the Dark Side.
But after the lecture the Master sought him out and took him aside, sensing the anger in his heart. And he told him this was wrong, and this was the path to the Dark Side and that anger lead only to suffering. The Dark Side was a tempting path, but it is one Rah's conscience could never let him take.
All this knowledge had been crammed into the Gand's head over the past week-and-a-half and it felt as if his cranium were about to split in two. All this information on the Jedi and training and apprehension about his new master. Who were they? Would they like him? Were they kind or strict? All this weighed upon his head like a great throbbing predator, ready to attack and overload his head with knowledge. He didn't even know when he would begin training proper. For all he knew his new master could walk up right now. . .
The greatest currency in the known universe, it is worth more than all the credits imaginable and more useful than any tool ever invented. And not only is it currency and a tool, but also weapon. Knowledge can bring an entire civilisation to its knees or bring another to rise within a matter of hours. Truly knowledge is the greatest. . .object (for want of a better word) in the universe. It is as old as time itself and as wide as known existence. And it never dies.
As long as there is one person with breath on their lips and someone to listen, one person with a pen in their hand and someone to read, a person to preach and a person to believe then knowledge lives on, through the rise and fall of people, cultures, buildings and even planets, never fading, never dying.
It was knowledge the fascinated young Jedi Padawan Rah Trelk as he sat cross-legged in one of the many courtyards on the Jedi Temple built upon the city-world of Coruscant beneath the slowly-dying light in the sky, tinting it a light orange as speeders flew over head, making fantastic new sounds as they scooped the air over their individual shapes. He sought to gather of much of it as he could, piling a limitless tide of information into his brain (and datapad), learning new things every day about the Jedi, their message of peacekeeping and so many others things that his datapad was nearly three-quarters full now of facts and figures all about the races of the galaxy and their planets and the flora and fauna that Rah had garnered from sleazy cantinas on his four month journey here from his homeplanet Gand.
Of all the information he had gathered on them in the recent week and a half he had spent with them there were two things about the Jedi particularily that left Rah's brain in a knot. The first of these were the weapons the Jedi used-- lightsabers. He had taken one hot afternoon in the archives (and the archives to Rah were like putting a child not only in a sweet shop- to give a long and unecessary metaphor -but in a sweet shop filled with free money, yo-yos and robot-space-pirate-waiters who had English accents) spending time one one of their delightful holographic interfaces, carefully taking apart the lightsaber of a long-dead famous Jedi who's name had now left the Gand's mind and seen what, in simple terms, made a Lightsaber tick.
Apparently a padawan, during their training (another thing Rah had made sure to check up on when he had recieved the formal letter that he would soon become Padawan to a Master- but to whom and when it had not said much to the Gand's confusion) must construct their own lightsaber for the reason that every Jedi's lightsaber was unique in its own way. This fact had startled Rah as he had made sure to check how many Jedi had existed over the years and had given up trying to reach the bottom of the list after three hours and the idea that every single lightsaber belonging to every single one of those Jedi had been unique floored him. This put worry upon his shoulders (or gristle-based shoulder-like structure connected to his neck, in this case) that perhaps he would be the first Jedi to do it wrong, accidentally copy someone else's. After all, it seemed so awfully hard-- you had to assemble it using only that mysterious. . .well, from what words Rah had heard spoken of it it sounded like some kind of energy. . .the Force, that was what it was called. You had to assemble your lightsaber using The Force on an almost microscopic level, making sure it all held together, fitting in place, all those little pieces like the lens, the matrix emitter and the hundreds of other tiny little pieces that weren't even mentioned in the archives except under obscure almost unrelated files. And then you had to learn how to fight with them, and there were different forms and colours and ways of holding the lightsaber and it made his brain throb to try and hold it all together.
And all that was just one tiny part of becoming a Jedi. You needed to pass difficult trials and accomplish tasks and. . .meditate. Meditation was the perhaps the third hardest thing Rah had heard about of being a Jedi. It meant you had to completely empty your mind, become one with. . .The Force or whatever they called it. How could he empty his head when it was constantly buzzing with thousands of tiny facts that just happened to pop into his head? It got worse when he was nervous, completely random little pieces of useless trivia would pop into his head when he was trying to concentrate or talking to someone important. He had remembered talking to a Jedi Master the other day about whether he had been accepted as a Padawan yet and he had started reciting the Iridonian national anthem for no reason at all. The Master had smiled akwardly and left. Rah had felt his glands inflating with embaressment as the Master walked away and he had heard the giggles from the group of young in-training Jedi across the hall. He had stormed off to the Archives to sulk.
And then after the trials he had read that you got Knighted and there was a ceremony, but when he had asked a fellow Padawan he had recieved a redundant snort. Apparently nobody recently had had such a thing. And then he had read Padawans had to grow an obligatory ponytail that was cut off when you ascended to Knighthood.
This of course had made Rah panic immensely as, being a Gand, he could not grow hair on his bulbous head. When he had hurriedly confronted a passing Master about this he had been told with a light chuckle that non-humans were excempt from this ritual. Once again the hushed chuckles of his fellow learners had sent Rah off to the Archives in a sulk.
But all that was miniscule compared to The Force. That mysterious power that "flows through all living things." It was the Jedi's greatest weapon-- but he had been corrected on this. Never call The Force a weapon, or a tool. It wasn't even an energy, as Rah had been told. Apparently it was a "metaphysical, binding, and ubiquitous power," to take the words directly from the Master who had informed Rah's mouth. It cannot be controlled, but directed or altered temporarily by those who are "force-sensitive." The fact that he was force sensitive is what got Rah's entire village killed. It meant one who could feel the force. Rah found this strange, as he had never felt an invisible metaphysical binding power his entire life. But he had been wrong. The Force had always been there, not guiding, not helping, not even watching, but existing, just in the background, out of reach but always there. Apparently the Jedi Master who would train him (who ever he- or she -was) would open him to The Force, allow him to alter it as the Jedi did. But what the Master who held lectures for those who had come seeking training (who's name now eluded Rah) stressed that The Force should never be used for evil, just as a Jedi himself should never use his skills, whether they be with a lightsaber or with the use of The Force, for evil.
This was how Rah learned about The Dark Side.
The Lecturing Master had spoken of those who were Force-sensitive who gave into anger and hate. Those who abused their gift. They were found by dark force-users (who's name could not be said at the lecture for the attendees were not yet Padawans and therefor could not be trusted) and were taught like those in that lecture hall were due to be, but not of how to keep balance and order, but were corrupted and learn-ed of chaos. Their blades were said to be of deepest red (this was why few Jedi choose red as their lightsaber's crystal) and their clothes of darkest black. It was then Rah knew that these were the people that had slaughtered his village. His heart had been heavy and the Master's words had filled him with anger. Silently he had sworn to protect those who would have their lives destroyed by the Dark Side.
But after the lecture the Master sought him out and took him aside, sensing the anger in his heart. And he told him this was wrong, and this was the path to the Dark Side and that anger lead only to suffering. The Dark Side was a tempting path, but it is one Rah's conscience could never let him take.
All this knowledge had been crammed into the Gand's head over the past week-and-a-half and it felt as if his cranium were about to split in two. All this information on the Jedi and training and apprehension about his new master. Who were they? Would they like him? Were they kind or strict? All this weighed upon his head like a great throbbing predator, ready to attack and overload his head with knowledge. He didn't even know when he would begin training proper. For all he knew his new master could walk up right now. . .
