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Before - Legends Revan's Muse (Mandalorian Wars)

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction- Before, Saga, and Beyond' started by Anderson84, Dec 28, 2010.

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  1. Anderson84

    Anderson84 Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jul 15, 2007
    Title: Revan's Muse
    Author: Anderson
    Time Frame: In depth look at Revan during the Mandalorian wars.
    Summary: You are an investigator, or researcher, or just someone very curious about Revan's past. You have been able to get a small gathering at a Corellian bar of Revan's former companions who served with him during the Mandalorian Wars.
    Disclaimer: Belong to Lucas

    Chapter 1 Who is your Jedi, and What does he do?

    I'm going to tell you a story about a man. But not really about a man, so much as a mission. I'm sure you've heard his name, especially if you are one of the elderly and decrepit souls such as I, or if you happen to be of a species with greater longevity than mine, or if you are a student of history, or if you have auditory receptors and have not been living in extra-dimensional space for your entire life. You see, history is a very tumultuous subject, because we sentients never can quite explain it accurately. The present is chaotic. It has no narrative, no cause and effect. For one effect there may be millions of small causes that happened across millenia, but due to our very nature, we have to arrange these events into a narrative. In case you've been sleeping with your head in the hyperdrive again, here is his narrative... in less than one standard minute:

    Popular and charismatic Jedi argues for war against Mandalorians, gathers a... gathering, defies council, goes to Outer Rim, assumes command of Republic Fleet, heroically defeats Mandos, disappears into deep space, comes back, kills people for no reason, declares himself Dark Lord, wars against his own Republic, foiled by beautiful celebrity Jedi debutante, mantle usurped by best bud (mantle usurpation is always a drag regardless of best-bud status), becomes amnesiac, reprogrammed by Jedi, wanders the galaxy looking for fossils with aforementioned Jedi debutante, quintangulates position of massive starship-producing dark-side factory thingy, kills more people, slays previous best-bud-now-arch-enemy, saves the galaxy, gets the girl, bails on her, burns sky for Outer Rim, never to be heard from again.

    Compelling, right? I did that all in one breath. Literally, and that was completely ad-lib. Now, the above is the story that you will be told, and what will most likely be collectively remembered in the histories. Probably because the few people who know the real story (me, for instance) don't have a lot of letters at the end of our names. Well, my name is typically spelled with PhD at the end, which of course stands for "Please handmea Drink."

    I suppose I should start this story at the beginning, but that is so passe. Stories that begin in medias res are so much more interesting, wouldn't you agree? And so rather than just telling the historical narrative as most bulbous-headed academics would do, I will simply pose the obvious questions, and let the events explain themselves. Whether you think he was a hero, or a villain, it really doesn't matter. He did what he did, and he did it.

    The first and most obvious questions is... why in the name of a holy Hutt's backside did Revan turn around and attack the Republic after he just risked his life and reputation to save it?

    Everyone thinks Revan found some sort of super-nasty evil smelly thing out in Wild Space that was so bad that he had to tell all of his soldiers and spacers (who are still loyal residents of the Republic with families there, mind you) that we're just going to have to turn these boats right around and go bomb our own homes after we just saved them from certain destruction. Now I don't want to discredit the moronic Jedi historians who say "he fell to the darkside..." because I'm sure intense analysis was spent on coming up with that highly insightful and original conclusion.

    I'll get into the questions of how he convinced his military to attack in a bit (and no, it's not because they were corrupted by mysterious dark-side energies or drank the red drink...) For now, we'll talk about Revan's discovery. You see, something always nagged at him, like when
     
  2. gaarastar58

    gaarastar58 Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Dec 19, 2010
    An intriguing beginning!

    So nice to hear more from Revan, his past and future filled with such mystery...
    Your descriptions are very detailed and entracing, it makes forming an image on my mind effortless.

    I look forward to reading more!
     
  3. SoA

    SoA Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Apr 2, 2008
    Great start! I really like your narrative style. I'm really interested to learn more about the narrator and his/her group.
     
  4. Anderson84

    Anderson84 Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jul 15, 2007
    Chapter 2 - The History of the Galaxy as it pertains to anything we should care about

    Have you ever wondered why no matter what slick-looking politician we elect, none of them can ever seem to get us out of debt? Whether it's a Selonian, Drall, or Human... a Tri-stater, an isolationist, or radical laborian... nobody can seem to end this nova that we seem to be endlessly bombarded with. And Corellia is not the only system-state with this issue. Not by far. Now, the problem gets blamed on absolutely everything in the disk... Our costly wars tens of thousands of lightyears away, our trillions of credits in entitlements to various peoples all over the Republic, the Corporate Sector Authority playing fast and loose with our economic stability, my wife when there's a sale on Cham nano-dresses, everything. How come we can't get this figured out? No matter how much we get taxed, it never seems to be enough.

    A long time ago, in this galaxy we're in right here, there lived a man named Tyler Sapius Praji. You may know him from your igranation days as one of the founders of the Galactic Republic. You may also know that he was the progenitor of the House of Praji, one of the wealthiest families in our history. Certainly his dynasty remains today, and they still have more money than I could spend at a bar on a taungsday, which is saying a lot. But they've been relatively out of the public spotlight for centuries and I by no means intend to implicate them as dopplegangers in any way. But T.S. Praji set in motion a system in his time that would go on to affect the entire course of the future indefinitely... that is, until Revan showed up.

    When we first discovered hyperspace travel and began our expansion outward, there were no such things as intergalactic banks, and with species after species that we met there was obviously no common currency that we could use. Spacers and traders were very much beholden to a barter system. But imagine how difficult it must have been if someone wanted to trade for a week's worth of food, but only had a superconductor in return. That superconductor is worth about 70 year's worth of legumes, and the opposing trader would probably thump you in the nose with a hydrospanner for even suggesting.

    As different systems were established, each would tend towards its own currency to circumvent the difficulties, and dry the eyes of the booboo-lipped traders. But now, there were multiple different currencies, and each vied against the other for dominance. Praji himself would come up with the one currency to rule them all. But no one would just agree to turning over their currency to some higher power. Unless of course, that higher power was the almighty, just, and fair Jedi Order.

    Certain Force sensitive beings had heard their "whipers of the Force" as they explain it for millenia, and 23 thousand or so years ago, give or take a few hours, they met on a world called Tython and put together their ruminations on what this Force (or Ahsla, as they called it then) was all about. Even then, they split, and they warred, and they destroyed eachother and the very planet on which they met. Long story short, the Light Side monks come out on top and swore their oaths to defend the Republic. Here is where the Praji dynasty would make its move.

    The Perlemian Trade Route had been established, and Core Worlders moved outward into the Slice to search for worlds suitable to colonize. With this expansion came endless economic opportunity for investment, but also an enormous threat. The Legions of Lettow (the Dark Side monks) had risen again and struck back with their full might, not to mention the roving gangs, Hutts, and Tionese. This conflict would come to be known as the 'First Great Schism.' Praji had used much of his influence as a Core Founder to push for the Jedi Order to become sanctioned as the official peace keepers and defenders of the faith. And with the 'crisis' of the Lettow resurgence, emergency action was needed. As such, legislation was pushed through that allowed this monastic brotherhood to operate 'above th
     
  5. Anderson84

    Anderson84 Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jul 15, 2007
    Chapter 3 How about you buy that lady a drink?


    Now, keep in mind, when Revan got out there into the Rim, the Office of Strategic Defense and Outer Rim Command didn't just hand over their fleets to him and his exceedingly young Jedi followers. First, Revan had to negotiate with ORCOM's theater commander and his staff to get read-in on their intelligence briefs. Revan was appalled! The Republic fleet had formed a line, yes an actual LINE... in SPACE. How anybody could fathom that forming a line in space that crossed thousands of parsecs would effectively defend against anything was so agonizingly stupid that Revan almost just killed everyone. But apparently, the reason for the line was entirely due to one reason: the lack of political will from Coruscant. That's right, political WILL, not to be confused with political Steve, or political Gandlehog. The Mandalorians weren't a recognized system-state according to the intergalactic community, and to invade their territory would also be to invade sovereign territories of Serrocans or Empress Tetans or whoever. And doing that can cause rash, headaches, and nasal drip for politicians.

    There had been a contingency plan in the works to scout out routes AROUND the Mandalorian territories into relatively unknown areas of space and find a sort of "back-door" into the more vulnerable holdings of the crusaders. One such area that Revan took a strong interest in was the Quelli sector, within which was a planet named Dathomir. A military junta controlled by the Drackmarrians (from Drackmar) had a brutal grip on its inhabitants, who weren't locals. You see, it was a penal colony. A hegemonic empire called Paecia had dropped off a race of humans and condemned them forever for the crime of creating battle droids, droids that had gone rogue and plagued the Outer Rim. The best intel they could get was basically that the Drackmarrians moved in and owned the place after the Paecian Empire fell. It was fuzzy, but long range scopes indicated they had been doing some basic mining of the planet with orbital lazers and tractor beams. Word of mouth dropped hints of a genocidal campaign against the human condemned to keep them from rebuilding to their previous state of technological prominence and threatening their ownership.

    Now what I'm about to tell you is actually classified above top-secret by the SBI (Senate Bureau of Intelligence). Revan devised a plan to sneak onto the planet, rally the prisoners under a banner of revolution, arm them, train them, and engage in covert guerilla warfare against the Drackmarrians until they experienced enough grief that they would abandon Dathomir. Then the Republic would be left with a good foothold and supply route for sending forces around enemy-held territories. Supply routes are important for gigantic military forces. See, it's really easy to do what's called "overextending your supply lines," which is a big military phrase for "Epic Fail." You don't want send a huge force out into their space without a good secure route to bring them food, ammo, fuel, materials, repair parts, and relief forces. I mean you CAN, but then you end up with lots of spacers floating around as frozen corpses. So remember, frozen corpses = bad, supply lines = good.

    The ORCOM staff thought he caught a radiation spike to the brain or something, but the SBI and the special operations command thought his idea was worth trying. Originally, they were going to try to buy off the Drackmarrians, but they were sleaze bags and not trustworthy at all... just as likely to sell us out to the Mandos as let us pass through their space. So Revan launched onto the surface of Dathomir from a modified drop pod from a random freighter heavily disguised to be a Blood Pact pirate ship, but crewed by spec ops and funded entirely by the SBI. That was the first time I ever met Revan. Because I was the one flying that ship that shot him down to the surface. I figured he'd be dead in weeks. But to my surprise, he showed back up 6 months later at the head of a rag-tag group of rebels having just defeate
     
  6. SoA

    SoA Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Apr 2, 2008
    I really like the way you're telling Revan's story through another character, with his opinions coloring Revan's travels. The picture of Revan he paints, one he really respects, intrigues me.
     
  7. Anderson84

    Anderson84 Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jul 15, 2007
    Chapter 4 Guerrilla Warfare 101, down the hall on your left.

    I apologize for my abrupt departure last night. Can I get you something? Right. Well. Where were we?

    It was necessary for us to insert our team onto Dathomir without the Drackmarrian's knowledge or suspicion of any Republic involvement. It was then necessary for us to bring the required personnel and materials in-system without being noticed.

    Revan picked the strongest of us to go first, sadly it was not I. He brought with him Siu-Bonay and Judisticca. They undertook the daring challenge of climbing into orbital drop pods which I understand are typically used by certain groups of our infantry to deploy rapidly to the surface of orbital bodies.
    Our friends from the SBI had procured a rather accurate replica of a pirate cruiser, taking on the same shape and energy signature of popular vessels used by a cult of fellows known to loot and plunder the region. Revan and his two were locked securely in their pods. The rest of us wished them our fare thee wells; we were to rendezvous again in two weeks.

    Strom, the pilot you met last night, may be able to give you better details on how they made through the Drackmarrian sensor networks and launched to the surface. Although, I believe his debaucherous levels of consumption render him a bit catatonic. Morning is not a time of day he sees often. He returned to us with news of their success and a combat reconstruction holovid:

    "Yeah, we got 'em down there. They're definitely on the surface as we speak...
    Well, we entered into the system here on the anterior side of the distal solar plane. Then short hopped into orbit of the objective about 120 klicks from this exhumer."

    The holovid showed their ship approaching at rapid speed a small orbital platform connected to storage silos. They hadn't but just reached tractor beam distance when a Drackmar patrol showed up and surrounded them.

    "Aright, so right there we basically launched a dart missile right at the silo, that's a typical theft tactic to open up a silo. Check out this maneuver, I am a damn god for flying that close that fast by an exhumer."

    It was quite impressive; in one fell swoop he shot a missile directly into the silo and activated a tractor beam to drag out the contents of the container.

    "That ship croaks by the way." He was a bit displeased with the lack of advanced starship technology at his disposal I believe.

    "So their interceptors have me locked up by the time I got here," he gestured just past his flight path. If the interceptors are able to close into tractor range, he would be slowed enough where the Drackmarrian interdictors could prevent his escape.

    "So I just started launchin' missiles all over without even a target lock, they scattered like pik flies off a superconductor... And that's their pods, right there."

    The ruse had worked. Amidst the hail of missiles flying in all directions, three small drop pods were catapulted gravward, visibly hitting the atmosphere and igniting in re-entry flames. They looked like stray missiles.

    I could scarcely imagine the adrenaline rush that must have gripped my Jedi brethren. But I knew in my soul that they were still, precisely the way Revan had trained us.

    I recall the feeling of being dropped during our rehearsals, as well as my own combat drop weeks later: I would liken it to being entombed, a claustrophobic enclosure with naught but a small navigation viewscreen. The roar of the engines, shaking you violently as they power up to full velocity. Revan must have heard the ions fragmenting and impacting the hull like the finest sand thrown onto durasteel as the deflector shield repelled volley after volley of blaster bolts. Suddenly there is a deafening metallic clatter as the restraint bars release the pod, and a hollow sounding whir from the magnetic accelerator, which is only recognizable after your senses regain consciousness instants later. Once beyond the inertial dampening field of the vessel your body is thrust upward, your innards fight with you to escape. And then silence. Absolute silen
     
  8. SoA

    SoA Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Apr 2, 2008
    Oh no! Chapter 4 ran away leaving us just with a title! :_|
     
  9. Anderson84

    Anderson84 Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jul 15, 2007
    My bad, Chapter 4 is up now.
     
  10. tjace

    tjace Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 11, 2008
    This is great stuff, I especially like the description of Revan's war against the money changers, and the history lesson on Praji (I don't have Hyperspace, so I don't know anything about the guy). I was a bit confused on the later bits at first, I didn't realize you had switched narrators, it makes a lot more sense now. You seem to get Revan better than a lot of people (than me anyway, I can't usually see further into his character than what's in the games), and both of your narrators are really interesting people.
     
  11. Anderson84

    Anderson84 Jedi Youngling

    Registered:
    Jul 15, 2007
    tjace: Thanks man. The story that's being told here is really to fill in a gargantuan set of plot holes in the story you were told in the game. Basically, it will delve deeper into that sort of Zeitgeist conspiracy plot that's been set up, which is kind of a boring story to tell as it doesn't revolve around characters, so I try to use multiple narrators each with their own persona to humanize it. I'll make sure to note who's speaking prior to their entrance.
    Also, I think writers for these games want to make Revan into a master tactician, but don't have the strategic and tactical backgrounds to make that really happen convincingly. So I will get in depth with those aspects explaining Revan's use of things like unconventional guerrilla warfare, assassinations, and asymmetric warfare (which is basically a system of targeting strategic resources as opposed to armed forces).

    And I don't actually have hyperspace either, so a lot of what I have to do prior to writing these chapters is research what's already been written so it doesn't contradict canon, so updates might be a bit slow.
     
  12. SoA

    SoA Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Apr 2, 2008
    Interesting switch of narrators there. I really liked Revan's sermon there, his perspective on the Light and Dark sides is fascinating and really lays the framework for his future 'fall'.
     
  13. gaarastar58

    gaarastar58 Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Dec 19, 2010
    Great stuff. I like the change in narrators, good to see how other folk deal with Revan! Keep Writing.

    Conor
     
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