virtualvoyages: A woman with brown hair and small tattoos under her eyes faces the viewer (Captain Jezari)
I don't care who tries to tell you what about Taris, stay away from it. It's a rakghoul infested cesspit and I don't want to have to come smuggle your ass off it because you fell for the brochures and now Governor Asshole won't let you leave.  I mean it.  There is nothing there except swamp, rakghouls, pirates and toxic waste.  And people who fell for the brochures.

The customs official's a jerk, the governor just cares what it looks like to the people back home, and the soldiers have been stuck there so long they're losing it.  The damn planet needs warning beacons, not resettlement.

Seriously, I don't care if your great-great-great-great grandwhatever had land there, it's not worth it. 

Not than anybody'll listen to me.

Damn being an upstanding citizen.

virtualvoyages: Young woman with brown hair, almond eyes, and a slightly rounded face (Novani)
Coruscant is nothing like I imagined it would be.  I mean, it's a city-world of shining towers and the beautiful senate building we've all seen on the news, and an amazing amount of traffic I'd be afraid to try to navigate without the Force, but...  I knew it was hit hard in the war, I knew the temple there was destroyed.  I didn't think there would still be people displaced and struggling.  I didn't think senators, senators would take advantage of them.  I thought if anywhere would have the power and the funds to rebuild properly, it would be Coruscant.

There are whole sectors law enforcement has given up on!  This isn't what the Galactic Republic is like.  How can we have abandoned our own on our capitol world!?  Something has gone horribly wrong somewhere.

But I don't have time to fix it.  I never realized being a Jedi would mean that I'd have so many problems to solve that I can't solve them all.  At least not at the same time.  How can I be powerful enough to be our best hope against one problem, but not powerful enough to find out what's wrong with the Republic?

Unless it is all the same problem.  Everything is connected by the Force.  Maybe in finding and curing the other Jedi afflicted by the Dark Plague I'll heal the Republic, too.

Master Yuon wasn't ill, not in the conventional sense.  Somehow, she was given this... this mind plague that hasn't been seen in a long time. The Sith who created it is dead, but some other Sith must be using his teachings to bring it back.  But I learned a technique for freeing people from the Dark Plague, and so I have to find the others who've been infected and free them.  I was able to save Master Yuon and I'm sure I'll be able to save the others.

I hope.

At least I have Qyzen by my side.  He knows so much more about the galaxy and he's very strong and wise.  I don't know what I'd do without him.

virtualvoyages: Young woman with brown hair, almond eyes, and a slightly rounded face (Novani)
I'm now a full fledged Jedi, although I still have so many questions I'm not sure I'm worthy of that title, yet.  Master Yuon is gravely ill, and I'm accompanying her to Coruscant, where surely they can save her.  Qyzen is here, too.  Not only is he worried about Master Yuon, but he's decided I'm the Herald of the Scorekeeper - the Trandoshan goddess.

I don't know how I feel about that.  I'm flattered, though I shouldn't be, but Qyzen has seen and done so much that it means a lot for him to think so highly of me.  And it seems even more arrogant to be sure he's wrong.  Perhaps a young Jedi could gain the favor of his goddess, maybe even as a way for her to help him.  Poor Qyzen felt so dishonored by being captured alive by Nalan, I was really worried about him for a while.  Being captured alive is the worst thing that can happen to a Trandoshan.  But now, he feels he can regain his honor - his points - by accompanying me.  I can't actually think of a better guide and teacher, now, than Master Yuon herself, if she recovers.  No, she must recover.  She's too wise and too important.  And I like her.

Though something of a Jedi can remain after death.  I spoke to Rajivari.  To his...his force ghost.  He wasn't what I expected.  He helped me to stop Nalan, and he gave me a lot to think about.

I've done so much.  The Council agreed to help Nalan, and the pilgrims, and even, in a way, the Flesh Raiders.  And yet, there's still so much I don't know and so many things I don't quite understand.  But with the Force and Qyzen to guide me, maybe I can be everything I'd hoped a Jedi could be.

virtualvoyages: A youngish man with dark hair has his head slightly cocked to one side (Kyrian)
One cannot refuse the Sith, so when one asked me to investigate a cult of force users, I complied.  This cult has a "secret" compound not far from the city and has apparently been drawing both Sith and Jedi to it.  As the only force users I've met who weren't highly unpleasant were neither, I can't say I was looking forward to infiltrating a compound of both.

The cult proved to have no concept of secrecy at all, and might as well have posted welcome signs.  They are also, as far as I can tell, completely insane.  They worship a long-dead Sith named Revan, who apparently began his force using career as a Jedi, and have found an altar in a cave near their encampment.  This altar supposedly cleanses their initiates through death.

What it actually does is force lightning one into unconsciousness.  Have I mentioned my growing dislike for force lightning?

Between their unusual use of an ancient security system and the number of battles to the death an initiate has to fight before becoming a full member of their organization, I'd already decided they were no threat to the Empire by the time I meet their leader.  (By my calculation, at the rate the group shrinks with each new member, they should have eliminated themselves by the end of the year.)  As it turns out, the group believes that the Emperor is Revan, and that he's currently imprisoned by the Dark Council.  (The latter isn't impossible.  The Dark Council has far more control than it should.  The former is doubtful, to say the least.)  I would deem them loyal, if extremely misguided.

However, they did provide an opportunity to sow dissension among the Sith.  That might technically be treason, but I believe it's for the good of the Empire.  We would be much better off without the Dark Council's influence, and the Sith are the best weapon against the Sith that we have.

I can at least hope that the new conflict among the Sith will distract Jadus.  That would be to Imperial Intelligence's advantage, as well as my own.


virtualvoyages: A woman with brown hair and small tattoos under her eyes faces the viewer (Captain Jezari)
It'd make me feel all charitable if Coruscant hadn't turned out to be such a dung heap.  And if that lying thieving traitor Skavak hadn't gotten away.  Now he thinks he's hunting me.  I can't wait for him to catch up.  If all the other people he's conned don't catch up to him first.  He was even trading with the Empire!  What an idiot.

He left me another of his girlfriends on my ship.  She seems to think she can order me around just because she's got a line on some dead guy's fortune.  It must be pretty good or Skavak wouldn't have put up with her.  I'll work with her, but if she keeps acting like I'm the hired help, I'm dropping her on the next planet and she can sell her pretty jewelry to get home.

Between her and Corso, I'm thinking about buying ear plugs.

I'd rather work with those crazy droids the Republic's trying to ally with.  They were even starting to make sense.  Or poor Miel.  You know it says something when I'd actually think about teaming up with a cop.  Damn Skavak.  That's another dead guy he's responsible for.  If Skavak does catch up to me, I'll get revenge for him.  Nicest cop I ever met.
virtualvoyages: Young woman with brown hair, almond eyes, and a slightly rounded face (Novani)
I know we're supposed to be serene, never passionate, but forbidding love seems wrong.  Love is a good thing, isn't it?  And if you don't love - if you don't care about people - isn't that the Dark Side?  I don't understand.

And some of the masters are... not what I expected.  They're so judgmental and... I don't know.  They're more like bureaucrats than scholars.  It doesn't feel right.

I'm so confused.

Why doesn't the council allow us to properly protect the Twi'lek pilgrims?  I know they're here illegally, but that shouldn't matter.  And if we had, then one wouldn't have stolen Rajivari's holocron and be going down the dark path.  Doesn't that make it our fault?  Something we should have prevented?

I will have to meditate.  Or ask my master.  Or one of the other masters who are more like what I expected.  Maybe Master Quilb or Master Till'in.  Maybe they can make it seem right.

virtualvoyages: A woman with brown hair and small tattoos under her eyes faces the viewer (Captain Jezari)
I rescued a hacker from... actually, I don't even know where to begin on the situation here.  Coruscant is just as corrupt and messed up as Ord Mantell.  Maybe worse.  Everything's all sparkly if you've got money, but if you're a refugee, forget about you.  This is why I just do my thing.  The Republic's a crock.

So, I rescued a hacker.  Skavak had paid her to make his past go away.  I got her to put his past back, and then some.  Now he won't be able to walk past a checkpoint without being jumped by the Republic.  And he can't go to his underworld contacts because Kixi also fixed it so he looks like a snitch, or worse.

That'll drive him out.  Then I just have to nab him before somebody else does.  Or find my ship and steal it back while he's busy being a tug of war rope.

As long as he pays and I get my ship back, it's all good.
virtualvoyages: A youngish man with dark hair has his head slightly cocked to one side (Kyrian)
I learned a valuable lesson today: it is unwise to show too little respect to a Sith.  Darth Jadus seems to believe he can requisition me as if I were a piece of equipment, or a slave.  I work for the Empire, for Imperial Intelligence, not for the Sith, and no amount of force lightning will change that.  Though it does bloody hurt.

I regret my earlier flippancy about the possibility of the Sith finding ways to execute me for a hundred years.  I believe they actually could.  At the very least, I'm certain they have ways of prolonging an execution over the rest of my natural life.  It's an inspiration to make absolutely certain I am never caught doing anything questionable.

I will try to be more circumspect in my future dealings with Jadus, but even Keeper seems none too fond of the man.  Though Keeper may not be fond of anyone.  He is unusually displeased with Jadus's attention to Intelligence, I'm certain of that.  I wonder he knows exactly what Jadus is up to.  I know Keeper isn't concerned about the fate of a junior field agent, even one as competent as I am.

My mission has provided a little compensation, though, in the form of an inventor's beautiful daughter.  She's rather spoiled, and I fear she may shortly become an orphan, as her father has made some very poor choices, but she proved a most pleasant way to gather information.  I hope I can reason with her father.  I really do prefer diplomatic solutions.

And now, I'd best be diplomatic with Kaliyo.  She was amused by my meeting with Jadus, but I don't think she was entirely pleased by my meeting with the inventor's daughter.  Though she may have hoped I would ask her to join us.
virtualvoyages: Young woman with brown hair, almond eyes, and a slightly rounded face (Novani)
I arrived on Tython today to begin my training as a Jedi.  I'm so excited, it's all I can do not to go around grinning.  I must try to remember that passion is not the Jedi way.  But it's so hard.  This is what I've wanted, all my life.  And I'm finally here!

The planet is beautiful and Master Yuon Par seems very nice.  I think I'll like training with her.  The only bad thing is that there are savages here, called Flesh Raiders, who are a threat to the temple and us students.  We're safe enough in groups or with our masters, but alone it can be dangerous.

Still, I'm so happy to be here!  No, I must remember that I will be a Jedi.  I must meditate and learn to remain calm, no matter how happy I am.  There is no passion, there is serenity.
virtualvoyages: A woman with brown hair and small tattoos under her eyes faces the viewer (Captain Jezari)
I'm chasing my ship all over the damned galaxy.  And now I've got a pet farm boy.  Just what I wanted.  Okay, he's not really a farm boy, but sometimes he acts like it.  Good in a fight, though.  And knows some interesting people.

Skavak - the damned ship thief - managed to get off planet with my ship.  Turns out he's not a separatist.  He double crossed them, too.  I don't know what he's up to, but he's going to be sorry he ever met me.  And even sorrier he stole my ship.

Getting off planet was a trick, even with the spaceport open again.  There's a bounty on my head now, thanks to Skavak.  And it turns out he was playing Viidu's girlfriend, too.  Only it turns out she wasn't Viidu's girlfriend, she was Skavak's.  Before he ditched her, anyway.

And, yeah, I mean was.  She shot Viidu when he caught her talking to the separatists.  So I shot her.  Maybe it wasn't right, but I couldn't just let her walk out of there.  Not after what she did.  If she'd just tried to get me killed, okay, she didn't succeed, fine, she can walk.  But Viidu was harmless.  All he wanted to do was survive this mess.  And she shot him for no good reason.  I don't care what he walked in on, that was her mistake, and she could've talked her way out of it.  She sure tried to talk me into letting her go.

Damn Skavak.  If he hadn't stolen my ship, Viidu would still be alive.  And so would Syreena.

I need a drink.  I need several drinks.

And my ship back.
virtualvoyages: A youngish man with dark hair has his head slightly cocked to one side (Kyrian)
Congratulations.  If you're reading this, you've broken all of my encryption, and that is no mean feat.  I almost wish I'd met you.  Though, I fear if I had, one of us would be dead.  I much prefer to think that I'm on a sandy beach somewhere, sipping a drink and enjoying my retirement.  Somewhere the Empire will never find me.

A man in my position would have to be a fool to leave a journal, even one as heavily encrypted as this one, but I suspect I'm already a traitor twice over and I'm fairly certain they can't execute me more than once.  Though, with the Sith, one never knows.  I have no intention of ever finding out; I suspect the Sith have incredibly nasty forms of execution.  I also very much doubt that I'll stop at two treacheries.  They might well find a way to spend the next hundred years executing me by the time I've finished.

My first mission took me to Hutta, with the plan of seducing one of the Hutt crime lords to the Empire.  (In the metaphoric sense, that is.  There are things man was not meant to know, and Hutt mating rituals are one of them.)  Aiding his business and sabotaging his competitor would - and did - do the trick nicely.

I had no difficulty winning over one of Nem'ro's trusted lieutenants as "The Red Blade", though in the future, I will try to avoid using cover identities that belong to actual people.  It leads to complications.  Not that those complications interfered with bringing Nem'ro to the Empire.  In that, I succeeded admirably, by anyone's standards.

However, I suspect that Keeper would be less than pleased that I allowed a Force sensitive boy to escape the Empire with his father.  The fact that his father has no love for the Republic, either, would hardly help his case, or mine.  But I am not fond of the Sith, and it would take a cold man to kill a boy's father in front of him.  I'm clever and composed, not heartless.

Which is why, when Keeper ordered me to kill Javis, the lieutenant I'd won over, (After a Sith attacked his sons, ruining our attempt to bring him to Imperial allegiance.  Have I mentioned my distaste for the Sith?) I urged him to leave the planet, instead.  Keeper must suspect, since Javis rescued his surviving son and, as the message from Keeper noted, he's the only one who would have taken that risk.  Either Keeper doesn't care, or my success is more important than the fine details, such as whether or not I follow orders to the letter.

I'd like to say I'll be careful, but I won't.  I will count on being too skillful and too valuable to kill without airtight evidence that I've gone against the Empire's supposed interests. Which means I will have to keep my new partner happy and entertained.  That she's an assassin and has no apparent love for the Empire works nicely to my advantage.  I should point out that I am, in fact, loyal to the Empire, though not to all factions within the Empire.  But anything that Keeper offers Kaliyo will be tainted by her dislike of the Empire, which puts him at a disadvantage.  I seem to amuse her enough to outweigh the fact that I, too, am Imperial.  If Keeper hopes she'll rein me in, he's sadly mistaken.

Keeper may also be playing an even more dangerous game than I am.  And I'm sharing rooms with an assassin not known for remaining with any employer for long.

I do love my work.
virtualvoyages: A woman with brown hair and small tattoos under her eyes faces the viewer (Captain Jezari)
Before I landed on this forsaken hell-hole, it was all the same to me.  Republic, Empire, separatists, whatever.  If they had the money, I had a ship.  But the damned separatists stole my ship!  That's enough to make me take sides.  And not theirs.

Even if the Republic slobs playing solder here aren't much better.

I know, I know, the Republic's supposed to be the shiny beacon of whatever and all that crap.  But from what I've seen, they're no better than the Empire.  And I'm not about to start hailing the Sith or whatever they do over there.  Okay, maybe the Republic's a little better.  It's funny that a place run by Sith, or wannabes anyway, is such a humans-only club.  And you'd think they were run by Jedi, as uptight as they are about everything.

Though this place could use some Jedi, even if they are boring.  They'd put a stop to some of the crap I've seen.  At least if they're half what they're supposed to be. I don't see them signing off on torture or making refugees run mine fields for food.  Or turning a blind eye to it, like everybody here.  And I'm the criminal?

The sooner I get my ship back and get off this rock, the better.  This is no place for an independent minded business person.  Especially when the only people here I don't want to shoot - besides a few other business people - are the refugees.  And they don't have any money.

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