Author's Notes

This fic is an attempt at an old dream of mine. I absolutely love the two Knights of the Old Republic games. To me, they are the best thing to come out of the entire Star Wars universe. Revan is great, the Exile is great, overall writing is great, and the gameplay is pretty sweet too. The joy of playing a Light Jedi Consular frying crowds of enemies with Force Storms and then going back home to your Jedi girlfriend should be experienced, not talked about.

The prequel movies… Those had a lot of potential that was mostly wasted, in my opinion. Still, the universe and the characters are the greatest playground a fanfic writer can imagine. There is just so much excellent stuff! The races, the planets, the Jedi, the Force.

So let's try and marry KotOR and the cinematic universe, shall we? There are a number of Revan/SW movies fics already out there, but none of them scratch that particular itch I have. This one will be about humor, reasonable faithfulness to canon, and smart characters who are powerful enough to be fun but not powerful enough to simply breeze through everything.

I have an outline for the full story and the complete plot of the first three chapters, so I'll see how this goes. Depending on the feedback, this fic will either sizzle out there or continue to glorious completion.

I don't own Star Wars, Disney does. Let's hope they will treat the franchise with the care it deserves. Meanwhile, I'm not making any money off this.

Timeline, deviations from canon, and other notes are at the end of the chapter.

Forced into the Maelstrom

The Force on Kashyyk was wild and potent, which is why Dooku often came here. He liked to think of himself as a man in his prime, and could do so as long as he didn't start counting how many years he had spent in self-professed top shape. Yet there was nobody else on the Council willing to do anything about the Republic or the trap the Order had got itself into, so he had no business admitting he was getting old.

This trip, however, wasn't an excuse to feel the Living Force of Kashyyk fill his bones and revitalize him. He'd talked to his old Master about it, and while most of the Councilors didn't want to admit it, he and Yoda knew that the Dark Side was growing in power. The Force had become difficult to navigate during meditation, and it was likely that soon they wouldn't be able to glean any insights into the future from it at all.

Lower Shadowlands were exactly the way he remembered them. As they made their way toward the ancient Jedi shrine, Dooku didn't turn his lightsaber off even once.

"How many of those damn Kinrath are here?" asked Larka, liberally spraying the area with heavy blaster bolts. His enthusiasm was such that Dooku had to deflect a few when they came too close for his liking.

The bulky Mandalorian was a mercenary that had been travelling with Dooku for a while helping the Jedi Master when he wasn't annoying him. He had tried to get rid of the bloodthirsty bastard a few times, but Larka was good, and Yoda wouldn't let him go on missions without backup. Some might have called it pride, but Dooku rarely teamed up with other Jedi, as they often were more hindrance than help. While soldiers and mercenaries weren't Force-sensitive, they were arguably better partners for someone who was used to being the only one in the melee.

"An army," said Dooku, cutting a poisonous beast in two, splashing green guts all over Larka's Mandalorian armor.

"Then how the hell do we beat them?"

"We kill them until the hive realizes it is better to just let us be. We aren't the only predators down here, and with every Kinrath we kill, their colony becomes more vulnerable."

Dooku couldn't blame Larka for the occasional blaster bolt fired in his direction, because the Shadowlands were aptly named. Stinking steam rose from the wet ground making it difficult for them to breathe, and the foliage above let almost no light through. Luminescent poisonous plants and dwarf ferns that fed on chemical reactions in the soil covered the ground. Little else grew around the giant wroshyr roots that tore through the ground like the fingers of a cannibal trying to get to the good parts of a corpse. Maps were only marginally useful when a root could sprout from the ground and block a passage, or an enormous beast of one kind of another could burrow through a patch of ground, creating a highway through the jungle.

Dooku fought with eyes closed and almost exclusively relied on the defensive Soresu form, only switching to mobile Ataru when the ground became too treacherous for a style that depended on sure footing.

In a last ditch effort to destroy the interlopers, the Kinrath hive threw ten of its warriors at them. A giant arachnid tried to drop on him from a branch above, but Dooku had sensed it in the Force and rolled forward while switching off his lightsaber. He felt Larka throw something and suddenly he could see light from behind his eyelids. Must have been a glow stick.

"Die, you creepy bastards!"

Larka was about as bad with words as he was brilliant with a gun. A Kinrath launched itself at the Mandalorian and he turned it into mincemeat, but at the same time six of its friends decided to make a meal out of Dooku. He switched to Ataru, cursing how in shape he was. He was far too fit to jump around like a monkey.

He sidestepped a venomous stinger to the left, cut the appendage off, and then pushed himself off the beast with a Force push, evading three more stabs. One of the animals didn't have the time to stop and pierced its brethren's hide forcing a screech from it. Dooku, landed on top of a Kinrath and plunged the lightsaber into its brain, but it managed to scratch him in its death throes. He felt a temptation to curse, but that wasn't something a Jedi would do.

The other Kinrath backed off, waiting for the poison to take effect. He could focus and counteract the effects of the toxin using the Force, but Dooku was afraid that one of the Beasts would lunge itself at him while he was distracted. Still, it was turning out to be less and less of a choice as the scratch on his left biceps started to burn as if it had been made with molten steel and not a stinger.

"Hey, Jedi! Remember that time on Nar Shaddaa?" asked Larka.

"Not that, Larka!"

Dooku barely had the time to switch back to Soresu, when his ally stopped firing at the Kinrath (after killing two more) and turned his blaster at Dooku. A stream of bolts flew at him, and the Master had to root himself completely to be able to deflect everything at the Kinrath. It was a technique he himself had developed while he and Larka had been pinned down by a criminal gang on Nar Shaddaa, but damn him if he didn't hate this trick. What it required was one man with a heavy blaster and good aim and one master of Soresu—the most defensive of lightsaber forms developed thousands of years ago, back when blasters had first gained prominence. The problem with heavy blasters was that they normally were too bulky to quickly get rid of multiple targets spread out over a large area. Moving the gun took effort and it needed to be steadied properly before firing it in order to avoid the shots being spread all over the place. Typically, such weapons would either be used in bottlenecks, or the shooter would be forced to gun down one enemy, turn, gun down another, turn, and so on. Dooku had found a way around that.

Unfortunately, it required him standing in the middle of a circle of enemies and being continuously fired upon. Fortunately, Larka was a damn good shot and all of the bolts came from one direction in a steady narrow stream. For someone of Dooku's experience it was child's play to simply redirect the bolt into Kinrath's faces. Or it would be, had he not been poisoned a minute before. When it was done, Dooku fell on his knees, wishing he could have thrust the lightsaber into the ground to support his weight. Instead he turned the weapon off, clipped it to his belt and sat on his heels, calming his breath. Larka stayed silent. Dooku had taught him that interrupting a Jedi when he needed to rebalance himself wasn't a good idea. Jedi were obligated to always appear serene, except when in meditation that was aimed toward attaining that same serenity.

Dooku forced his body to break down the poison and got up. They walked on in silence.

There were minor fights with various jungle inhabitants as the two of them continued, but they handled those easily. Soon, the old shrine appeared. Dooku walked up to the ancient stone building the color of ash and ran his fingers across its rough surface, like one greets a long-lost family member or lover. Here on the surface Kashyyk, surrounded by millions of tons of Living Force and standing on top of a Nexus, he could feel the Force as clearly as in the days before the veil started to solidify across the galaxy. Once again, he was reminded that civilization wasn't good company for spiritual growth and wondered whether it was a sensible idea to have the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in the first place.

"Guard me," he ordered and pushed open the ancient doors.

Like a Jedi of ages past he made the same pilgrimage they had ventured on. His soft shoes stepped into the grooves they had worn in the stone; a lone lamp switched on, flickering like the last desperate firefly trying to push back the dark. There were no cushions, no waterfalls, no manicured trees—even withered ones. There was, however, an old harsh slab of stone he sat on. And then there was the Force.

Dooku lowered his mind into a deep trance with the practice of someone who spent a major part of his life in meditation, in this state of pure will that had little to do either with wakefulness or dreams. Down and out he went, expanding his awareness to the forest around him and starting to sense the ooze of darkness that was clear to him now that he was surrounded by life on all sides. But meditating on the nature of the dark veil wasn't why he had come here.

Instead, Dooku went inwards. He thought he heard blaster fire from outside but didn't stop. The heavy doors were closed firmly shut behind him, and nothing had wandered into the shrine since he had last visited more than a decade ago. Nothing would get in now either.

Instead of going broader Dooku concentrated his attention into one point and went deeper until he could feel the Force around him. Minutes might have passed or hours—it was difficult to determine.

"Please, we need help," he sent out into the calm vortex of energy that had a consciousness of its own according to some and was nothing but a silent unavoidable companion to life according to others.

He sent plea after plea, question after question. Then there was a barely perceptible lilt around his consciousness, and then the vortex turned inside out, throwing a wave of angry red at him and expelling him from meditation.

"Dooku! The Kinrath are back! Get your enlightened ass here!"

He would meditate on what had happened later. For now, Dooku got up, switched his lightsaber on with the familiar snap-hiss, and went out to help his ally. After all, he would need Larka to safely get back to the surface later.

###

The war lasted a hundred years.

Both sides gave their all; both pushed the knowledge of the Force beyond even their own imagination; both had brilliant tacticians; both knew how to corrupt and subvert the other. In the end, it came down to who was better and more sincere at manipulation. Duplicity could only take you so far—it was the honest desire to help that finally determined the future.

"Gods, that feels good," Vehlah Mir said, trying to melt into the table she was lying on.

Revan nodded and put a bit more power into his fingers.

"Mmm… This is why I like you Jedi. You know how to relax."

The former Sith Lord only grinned and moved his hands to the sides of her neck, gingerly working out the small kinks before using his considerable weight to break through the tension of her muscles. Vehlah moaned.

"Yeah, that's something I don't understand," Revan said. "Isn't the Dark Side supposed to be all about following your desires? Why is there no pampering? When I ran things for the Dark here in the Republic, there was pampering."

The woman tried to shrug, but he gently stopped her from moving. She was lovely and limber, although stressed. She also helped manage the Imperial Library.

"Sshh, Miss Mirr. Don't move or we'll never get this done. You do want to know what comes next, don't you?"

His guest stopped struggling and once more lost herself to the pleasure.

Revan respected the Emperor as an adversary. The ancient being had unimaginable power and a formidable military, which they had been able to hold back during the opening years of the conflict only because of his access to the Foundry. Oh, he'd told the Council he had destroyed it, and they even went to check, but Revan wasn't the best strategist in the Order's history for nothing. The Foundry could produce anything, so he made a couple giant hyperdrives and hid it in a nebula. It was due to years of non-stop droid and military vessel production and the aid of Tab, who often preferred to be called the Exile, that the war didn't engulf the entire Republic when it started.

Still, the Sith came, expecting to carpet-bomb Coruscant and cripple the Republic's political structure before grabbing a part of the Rim and starting to push into the disorganized Republic. The Emperor had sacrificed a significant part of his fleet for this maneuver and even Revan and Tab's combined abilities weren't enough to foretell the time of the attack exactly, so they knew the Senate would be lost. Which was why they had been grooming replacements for all the major senators for years.

After the opening move Revan and Tab revealed themselves, gained military support easily thanks to their reputation, and deadlocked the Sith forces in the Outer Rim worlds. Regardless, what the Emperor had done was impressive, because the Sith controlled mere dozens of inhabited planets compared to thousands in the republic, but every citizen of those worlds was a warrior, trained to be ruthless in combat. They were organized and strong in the Force, and even Revan couldn't magically turn the apathetic Republic into something as efficient. Thankfully, the Republic was much larger, so they were able to hold the Empire back.

However, despite his talent for strategy and governance, there was one thing the Emperor completely sucked at, and that was keeping his people happy. Which brought him back to the Togruta in front of him. She had been captured as a child and brought up as a Sith Assassin (a rare case of non-human Sith), but all of that was irrelevant. By that point Revan made his way down to her legs and his job as a masseuse was getting more difficult because of all of the squirming.

"I mean, not that I mind—you are beautiful—but don't the Sith have sex?" he asked, honestly curious for once. The woman that he had to hold down was absolutely gorgeous if orange skin and lekku were your thing. He? Revan was very cosmopolitan in the regard. She shouldn't have had any problems, and Revan knew from all the infiltration work in the Empire that the Sith were much less uptight about sex than the former Jedi Order. Although the preferences they developed were often… unusual.

Mirr opened her eyes and looked at him with dilated pupils before laughing, the rest of tension draining out of her. He could feel the black sludge of the Dark slipping out of her, leaving behind the far more playful and tolerable red lightning. Aggressive and assertive but not hateful.

"Have you even seen a Sith lust chamber, Revan?"

"Of course."

"Do you remember anything there that doesn't have spikes? Or chains with spikes? We are supposed to cultivate anger, fear, and pain at all times. If you are a Sith, you never surrender to pleasure."

Mirr seemed genuinely amused now. She turned on her back and stretched. She was naked of course. Fit as all Sith were, it made for an enticing display.

"Point," Revan said. "By the way, do you have any idea what your Emperor was thinking when he decided that sending a female Togruta to me as an infiltrator would be a good idea?"

Vehlah pouted, grabbed Revan's wrist and pulled him on top of her.

"I'm sure the great Revan can talk and work at the same time. You promised me I'd never want to go back after all, and I still do want to go back. A little."

"Liar. You know that you will still be able to see me whenever I'm free after you join us, right?"

"Yes, but this way is much hotter."

###

Meanwhile, somewhere else a Sith Lord was trying to convert one Atton Rand to the Dark Side. It wasn't going so well.

"You will submit!" Darth something screamed, sending a pathetic stream of Force Lightning at Rand, making him twitch a bit. "I will break you, pretentious Jedi scum!"

Rand looked at the nameless human in front of him and rolled his eyes. There was a reason he was always sent on this type of missions, that being his complete mastery of Force Dissociation—a handy technique created by Tab after a particularly serious hangover. It allowed the user to separate themselves mentally from their body, using it as a puppet and not feeling any pain or pleasure.

Currently Atton was mentally making adjustments to the beef stew recipe—he was going to cook it for everyone this week. The lightning barely registered.

"Why don't you break?!" the Sith screamed into his face. Atton could swear the spittle was Force-charged because some of it managed to get up his nose. Rand sneezed. Ew. He knew he had to wrap this up quickly, or Mira would come and get upset. Torturing someone's friend in front of somebody tended to get them upset even if the torture was this inadequate. If Atton didn't turn this around, the Sith would probably be turned into a kebab.

"No offence, kid—" said Atton.

"I'm thirty-five!"

"Good for you, kid. But seriously, your conversion technique sucks. You are supposed to alternate between pleasure and pain—not that it would work—and look for pressure points. All you are doing is badgering me with the same stuff over and over and over."

The human thought about it and then nodded.

"We have slaves," he said. "Women, men, children—whatever you like."

Atton resisted the urge to bang his head on the wall he was chained to, then reconsidered, and succumbed to the temptation. Dull thuds echoed around the room.

"Hey, are you all right?" the Sith asked hesitantly, as if doubting his prisoner's presence of mind. "Or sane?"

The Jedi couldn't handle it anymore.

"What the hell is wrong with you? What kind of torturer are you? Who offers children to a Jedi? Why would I need a sex-slave? We Jedi have done so much for the Republic, I can just land on Ryloth and have a ten-day orgy with very enthusiastic Twi'lek women!" he said, paused, and continued. "Not that many men are less enthusiastic—just not my thing."

The Sith stared at him for a few moments before sighing and unchaining Atton.

"So, Twi'leks… Tell me about them."

Happy that he would now make it to dinner, Atton didn't have any qualms about sharing some of his more randy experiences that involved the galaxy's favorite sex industry race.

"So this one time we were smuggling a shipment of military-grade lubricants, a crate of gizka, and a platoon of Twi'lek commandos through a Sith blockade…"

###

The Emperor looked at the crowd of Jedi gathered before him who had somehow bypassed all of his security. In front of him a man stood in Sith Lord robes, playing with his braids.

"What is the meaning of this? How did you get in here?" the leader of the Dark asked.

"Backdoor in the library," the one with the braids answered. "Pleasure to finally meet you. I'm Tab."

"Where are all my guards?"

"Ah, I see the Dark Side initiation didn't come with the common courtesy manual. Very well, the cook slipped a bit of hormones into their food. They are crying somewhere, sharing their previously suppressed feelings. Turns out they have a lot of those."

The Emperor stared unflinchingly into the distance, only now getting the terrible feeling that he had missed something in his plans. He should have really suspected something when the Dark Council left to do a surprise inspection of the Sith training facilities. More and more apprentices were startingto go beyond anger, fear, and hate to draw power from the Force, and the Council had been curious.

Standing up and summoning a Force whirlwind to buffet away his attackers, the Emperor thought that he could have really used five to twenty powerful Force practitioners right now. The wall of Force slammed into the enemy Jedi lifting them off the ground, but they didn't seem deterred. Everyone and their mother started flaring their energy to break his hold and a few took out disruptors and started firing at him while still being in the air.

Now, disruptor weapons are the galactic equivalent of fighting a rhinoceros with a supersonic titanium toothpick. If you hit, you are bound to do some damage, but only so much. However, it is their ability to bypass any shielding and the fact that they can't be deflected with a lightsaber that make them as dangerous as they are. Because of how much pain a disruptor causes an impact, that type of weapon had long since been banned the galaxy over.

The pain also made it one of the best guns you could fire at a concentrating Jedi. A pulse from a short-haired human female hit the Emperor in the shoulder and the briefest moment of hesitation allowed the enemy leader with the name of a pet launch a counter to his whilrlwind that put all his enemies back at the ground. The enemy Guardians launched themselves into Force Leaps toward him just as some of his guard started to pour into the palace—obviously, one cook couldn't poison them all…

This was when the Force Storm started. He had heard the rumors, of course. Of the Light Side Jedi who had made the Dark Side his bitch and reached the levels of Mastery in the offensive powers that was beyond even the legendary Sith of old. He had discounted them as the usual drivel spewing from the mouths of those inferior to him. That had been a mistake.

An area fifty feet in diameter exploded in surges of lightning, writhing against each other like demented snakes and sounding like a box of firecrackers thrown into an inferno. Incidentally, it was also blocking the main entrance to the hall and instantly cooking the apprentices that had rushed in. Even from a hundred feet he could feel their nerve pathways being fused with the flesh and the Force itself being torn from their bodies becoming food for the storm.

Absent-mindedly, the Emperor tossed two Guardians away from him with a Force wave, breaking a few bones and hopefully killing at least one of them, although the Zabrak Jedi definitely looked too tough to suffer much damage. As the enemies went out of the fight, he moved to erect an energy barrier around himself only to see another man come out of Force concealment mid-leap from behind the Zabrak. That was supposed to be impossible, but that word didn't really apply to his worst nightmare.

The man who had been operating in the Empire space for more than fifty years. The man who had cost him more Sith than anybody else. The worst thing was, he didn't even kill the Emperor's people—he turned them. Not even to the Light—the Emperor knew how to fight that. The tell-tale mask wasn't even necessary to identify the worst that the Republic had ever produced—Revan.

There was a snap-hiss of the double-bladed rich-gold lightsaber as the man twirled toward him, dodging a Force Push in the air. Just as the Emperor moved to grab his own saber to block, he felt the signs of a Kill power being directed at him. Despite Tab's reputation, it took the Sith only a moment to throw off the effects but that was enough for Revan to close the rest of the distance.

There was a swish in the air and the Emperor's body fell on its knees, the head rolling five feet away.

###

They were symbolically separated into two sides, although at this point nobody would have considered the Republic and the Empire at war. Well, except the lawyers on both sides, but everyone hated lawyers.

Nar Shaddaa had been chosen as the place to finalize the final peace agreements after the century-long war. The spokesman for the Dark Council was the one to start—an old woman with grey hair and disturbingly pale eyes that reminded Tab of his old master.

"We stand here today to officially recognize the Republic as being worthy of continued existence. Back when the war started, our enemy was weak, it's only redeeming quality being their size and economic power. Today they have rid themselves of most of the corruption and turned into a federation for civilian matters while being centralized in military ones," she looked at her counterpart, the Supreme Chancellor. "We have watched these changes. Now that the shadow of the former Emperor—may Force Lightning take him—is no longer over us, we think we have more to learn from living alongside the Republic than from fighting them."

The Chancellor nodded and stepped forward.

"In turn we acknowledge that the Empire is just another state and not the evil we thought it was. We would like to think the Jedi order and the Maelstrom Jedi in particular," he said, nodding at Revan and Tab who stood to the side. "Without their sacrifices and willingness to bridge the gap between our peoples, who knows what damage this war could have done to both sides. Things being what they are, most fighting had been limited to combatants and droids, and there will be no reparations."

A dark cloud passed over them and the light from Nar Shaddaa's star reached down to shine between the drab buildings. A rare sight. Tab turned his head and winked at Mira who blushed in return. He then smiled at Revan—his oldest friend.

They had won.

###

The Ebon Hawk was a mess. Sometime during the third hour of the party Mission and Visas decided to have a competition in pole dancing and it all went downhill from there.

HK-47 and G0-T0 stood in a corner (G0-T0 hovered, actually), looking at the bacchanalia.

"Open Disgust: Meatbags."

"Revolting."

The two had been with everyone from the start, and their circuits told them they should feel satisfied that the Emperor had finally been defeated, but the sight of Atton and Mira exchanging saliva in the corner combined with the amount of alcohol bottles thrown around and the fact that Tab had taken to chasing girls and giving them small shocks, eliciting giggles… It was too much. It was enough to make non-organics long for being able to vomit.

"I miss Kreia," said the Handmaiden, plopping down near them.

"Reluctant Agreement: Despite being a meatbag, she was tolerable. Barely," said HK-47.

Revan staggered out from the portside living quarters, poured himself a glass of something that gave off smoke, and gulped it down. Handmaiden raised an eyebrow.

"Bastilla," he said, by the way of explaining. "Thought she had to prove to me she is the best. I can hardly walk."

Both droids decided enough was enough and powered down. Handmaiden got up.

"I'll go and put Mission and Visas to bed before they decide to have some other competition, Master Revan," she said, frowning. "Last time we needed to calm them down with tranquilizers."

Revan nodded absent-mindedly and poured himself another drink when Tab plopped down next to him, his hair standing on end.

"Ionize," he explained. "You just had to teach everyone Ionize."

Revan shrugged, noted that Tab had an empty glass in his hand and poured him some of the smoking liquid.

"Do you think it was a mistake?" he asked. Tab raised an eyebrow, and Revan clarified. "Turning the Order into this, I mean."

Tab shook his head, making his braids whip around. He was pretty drunk.

"You forgot what the Order had been before our changes? How they refused to fight the Mandalorians and you had to become a Darth? How they wiped your memories? How they sent me into exile? How they tried to kill me? Screw that."

Revan smiled faintly and nodded.

"You have to admit it though, this is a insane."

"We knew it would be like this when we created the Maelstrom Oath. Plus, the rebuilt temple of Dantooine is a lot mellower. Although I wonder how things will turn out now that they can be in open contact with the Sith," Tab said, chuckling. He clapped his thigh and stood up. "Now, I'm feeling inspired! Want to have another go at that Holocron?"

The former Dark Lord thought about it for a moment before nodding and picking up his mask from a nearby table. He had left it there when Bastilla had abducted him for what she endearingly called 'cuddly time'. Apparently, suppressing all urges until well into your twenties and then tasting the Dark Side gave a person one hell of a libido and quite a few fetishes. Good to know that it wasn't just him.

He force-pushed from the cushion without even noticing and both of them went to the infirmary which doubled as a holocron-viewing room. There was very little need for medical equipment on a ship that was full of Jedi as skilled in the healing arts as the two of them were. Revan was no slouch, but he had been a Guardian before his Fall, and even all those years later most of his abilities focused on lightsaber combat and neutral Force Powers. Tab, however, was a Councilor through and through, wielding both the Light and the Dark with equal mastery—even if the Dark took more effort to corral into working for someone of his morals. The point was that if something didn't kill a person outright, Tab could instantly stabilize them and heal them to full health in a few hours. This was why the infirmary had only the bare necessities, and one wall housed more than a hundred receptacles for both Jedi and Sith holocrons they had gathered during their travels all over the galaxy and didn't want to place into the Order headquarters library for one reason or another.

Revan levitated the box they'd been working on and jostled it into life with a touch of the Force. After a short flicker of white light, an image appeared.

"My students."

"Hello, Kreia."

The image chuckled without mirth, the sound resembling dry leaves, blown along sand.

"You still insist on using that wretched name, Exile. You should call me Traya now that the mask has been stripped from me."

Tab had discovered the holocron in the ship's cargo hold shortly after his fight on Malachor V where he had put the two final Sith Lords to rest. One of those had turned out to be his own Master, but even after she had died in his hands, he was still unable to think of her as a Sith.

"You keep saying that, but I don't see it." Tab smiled. "I've known you a lot longer as a Grey Jedi. In addition, your Force Ghost isn't red, so…"

So large was her desire to continue teaching the dangers of straying too far one way or the other in the Force, that Kreia didn't pass on. Luckily, she wasn't bound to the planet where the energies of the Dark Side would have no doubt corrupted her sooner or later. Instead, she manifested near Tab from time to time, lecturing her apprentice even after her death.

"We'd like to work on the technique," Revan said.

Kreia had been one of his Masters back in the day, but he wasn't to her what Tab was. Which was good for Kreia, he supposed, because Tab knew that Revan didn't have his patience. He would have sent her right to her afterlife. Or Bastilla or somebody else would, because the old witch had the habit of appearing during… private moments.

The hologram pinched the bridge of her nose and said, "You are drunk, Revan. You are drunk and asking about a Force technique theorized to open a portal into another dimension." She groaned. "Why, why did Tabook befriend you? Teaching you one time was more than enough for me."

"I'm not drunk," Revan said. "You know what my tolerance to alcohol is."

The hologram glared at him for a few moments before hanging her head.

"I see there is no dissuading you," she said. "Just remember that whatever path the Force opens, there is always a reason why it does so. And what is good for the Force isn't always good for us Force users."

"Yes, mom, I remember Force is an Ironic Bitch 101," Revan said. "Now let's go over the theory and we'll try again. After all we did just solve this galaxy's most pressing problem, so me and Tab can finally focus on research into the Force—there is so much we don't know yet. And the partying. We'll be focusing on the partying too."

"Your immaturity is the only thing in the universe without limits, Revan. Let us go over the theory of travel between dimensions one more time and then you can get that deplorable Sith holocron out."

They spent two hours working on the fundamentals behind the technique with Kreia and some ancient Sith scholar whose holocron was so damaged that the man didn't even remember his own name anymore. While the Exile fiddled with the stash of crystals they had brought for this purpose, Revan wrote down the mechanics of the experiment they were about to do. The theory the nameless Sith had come up with ages ago was that the Force was not only the unifying principle behind everything in their own galaxy, but that it also joined all Life everywhere. That there was one Force, even if there were many realities, and this is why Jedi and Sith would sometimes feel unexplained jolts in it when seemingly nothing out of the ordinary happened around them.

While his ideas had some merit, as evidenced by the Sith spending resources to preserve his knowledge, the theory had never been properly tested. Early experiments proved that there was an unexplained echo that manifested when channeling the Force into objects that conducted it especially well, but the problem was that the echo was hollow, like something was missing.

Revan and Tab believed that what the ancient Sith hadn't considered was the fact that there were two sides to the Force, and both would be needed for something as profound as this.

"Ready?" Revan asked Tab, having finished writing.

Tab stretched a little, shook his hands, then put them in front of him, palms forward and fingers spread.

"Yes. Start slow."

Revan held the biggest crystal they could find in the crystal cave on Dantooine. He concentrated, and Tab, standing opposite his friend, saw the cerulean waves with crimson embers start to spread through Revan's eyes. Even among the Maelstrom Jedi the former Sith Lord was special—the only one capable of channeling the Light and the Dark at the same time.

Of course, Tab had tricks of his own. The Jedi Master closed his eyes and let himself go deeper into his subconscious, navigating among the hundreds of bonds that went from him to people all around him. Those of the Ebon Hawk crew were the thickest and easily recognizable, but there were also others, connecting to people he could barely remember. A Wound in the Force they called him. Some called him a vampire, latching on others with forced bonds. Even all those years after he had become all that he was, people were still afraid. As long as they did nothing stupid, he didn't do anything about them.

As Revan said, if they didn't give you some capitalized title, then you haven't done anything worthy with your life. He easily found Revan, a beacon among all his bonds. The Exile slowed his breathing, focusing on the movement of air in his nostrils slowing down and on the sensations that passed through the bond with his friend. He could see through Revan's eyes, feel the power flowing into the crystal he held. It began to glow brighter, throwing shadows on the walls. In a corner of Revan's vision, Tab could see himself sitting on the floor, meditating. He went deeper.

The light wavered, trying to break apart into different aspects of the Force, but Tab didn't permit that. He rebalanced the Light and the Dark in what Revan was supplying and forced his own will upon the energies, making them stay together. While Revan was the core of the technique, Tab provided power and control that had allowed him to master Dark powers in the past without falling from the Light.

He could hear a voice.

"Please, we need help— I need to find some way— If the Jedi won't take a stand against the Republic's corruption—"

He could feel Revan's exultation. The thoughts they were hearing—and he recognized them as thoughts now—weren't from their galaxy or their time. Here, no one had accused the Jedi of passivity in decades. Satisfied with the results, Tab started to pull back when he felt Revan pour even more power into the stone and also levitating three more crystals in front of him.

No, no, no, Tab thought, struggling to keep the crystals from exploding into their faces.

With how deep Revan was in his own trance, their small victory must have felt easy to him, while in fact it had already been a strain on Tab's abilities. With four crystals, sweat started pouring down the Jedi Master's forehead.

The voices came again, this time with an image. A vision.

A dark blanket, crawling across the galaxy that looked almost like theirs, but not quite. Someone who might have been Vandar Tokare's elder brother meditating (they still hadn't learned the species of the diminutive green master).

"The years too many lived have I, yet challenges too few faced I have. The darkness push back we must, yet unclear is the way."

Tab could feel Revan's pang of irritation at the being that looked so similar to the one that had robbed him of his memories. Suddenly, the green imp opened his eyes in the vision, jumped up into an Ataru stance and activated his lightsaber.

"Show yourself you will!"

The connection cut and went to a small boy, maybe eight or nine, looking as a Toydarian threatened a woman who showed a strong resemblance to the boy. There was no irritation in Revan this time, because he recognized customary slave disciplining for what it was, but hate rolled of the boy even through dimensions.

The image shifted again, and they saw a man slightly past his prime on the bottom level of Kashyyk, meditating at an ancient Jedi shrine. The voice was the same they had heard the time before.

"An agent of change is needed to heal the Republic. If only we had an external enemy—"

It all melded into a rainbow of images then, jumping from one Force sensitive to the next—a kaleidoscope of people and places. Tab could barely contain the power Revan was pumping into the connection.

A metal finger touched him on the shoulder and his concentration faltered.

Tab was ejected from the trance and back into his own body. What happened next went in slow mention, perhaps as an aftereffect of the technique. The four crystals now orbiting himself and Revan crackled and then cracked, releasing waves of light from rapidly spreading cracks.

"Shields!" commanded Revan.

Tab didn't even think before obeying; after decades of facing combat together following each other's orders came naturally. He would never know what would have happened had he tried to contain the crystals instead of wrapping himself and his friend in the strongest bubbles of Force he could conjure up—enough to stop tank-mounted blasters.

The stones shattered, releasing interweaving tendrils of blue and red into the tiny medical room, filling it with tentacles of Force, swirling and merging with each other. It took them no more than a second to morph into a whirlpool of pure power that, as any respectable whirlpool would, sucked both of them into it. There was a brief sensation of being squeezed into a tiny tube, a flash of light, and then only a sensation of falling.

In the now empty room, HK-47 was left crumpled by a wall.

###

Dooku felt a nudge from the Force for the first time in years. It was a small thing, something that happened often when he was a youth, but lately such guidance had become scarce to the point when only Master Yoda could reliably glimpse future paths more than several months ahead, and even his old master needed to be deep in meditation in order to do so.

Dooku wasn't in meditation, in fact he was playing holo-chess against the captain of the diplomatic vessel he had been assigned for his current mission. He had had his share of meditating on Kashyyk. Not it seemed to him like something had been angry of him circumventing the veil, if only for a while, because getting away from that shrine hadn't been easy. All the teeth, claws, spikes…

Dooku's hand froze over his rook, and he frowned. There was something… a web or a lattice… a map. Yes, a map, but something was wrong.

"Captain, could you take us through Route 1452?"

The captain was human too, a man by the name of Harak Tok. They had been on assignments before, and he had been ferrying Jedi all over the galaxy for the past twenty years.

"It will mean another two days of travel," he said.

"Yes, I know. But there is something there. Like a cry for help or an unexpected path."

The man nodded and relayed the orders to their navigator. Dooku returned to the game.

He couldn't explain it in words, but it felt as if a blade punched a hole through the veil that had been clouding the senses of Jedi all the galaxy over. An explosion of light, both serene and angry, and it happened near his position too. Not following up on that when only yesterday he had been praying for some sort of sign on Kashyyk would be foolish.

Dooku was many things but foolish wasn't one of them.

End of Chapter Notes

That had more exposition than I would have preferred. Alas, just a guy with a keyboard here, not the second coming of Ernest Hemingway.

I didn't want to bloat the foreword at the beginning of this Prologue, but boy do I have things to say about the Star Wars universe and what I hope this fic can become. My previous main fic, Eye of the Sword (set in the Fate/Stay Night universe), is almost done, so I'm looking for a new large project to work on—this is one of those ideas.

About Star Wars. It is one of my favorite fantasy universes. Although many might disagree, the Force is basically magic in my opinion, and it is all things Jedi and Sith plus the multitude of species and cultures that are the main appeal of the universe for me, not the technology stuff. Plus, you know, some of the best writing ever in the history of entertainment was gifted to us by BioWare in Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2.

That being said (sad? Go, horrible puns!), I'm not a Star Wars fanatic. I've watched the original trilogy and the Phantom Menace, found out I was allergic to it and then skimmed through the Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith. I've played both KotOR games several times and read maybe two books. As such, my knowledge of the universe is limited, so I plan to heavily rely on wiki and just go off-canon whenever it suits my purposes. If I make any major mistakes in the timeline or something, please point it out. Otherwise remember that the main purpose of this fic is to throw Revan and the Exile into the cinematic universe and to enjoy the ensuing chaos. I plan to focus on character building, romance, combat, force powers, philosophical debates, and so on. Going super-deep into history and geography isn't in the works.

Now, what is canon here? Light-side KotOR 1 and 2 are canon game wise. For those of you who didn't play the games this means that our protagonists are two ridiculously powerful Jedi both of whom saved the Republic and both of whom are of rather low opinion of the traditional Jedi code (no attachments and all that crap). They do, however, get nerfed when going into the cinematic universe, primarily because in KotOR they are way more powerful than anything in the movies combat-wise.

The Old Republic (MMO game) never happened, as far as this fic is concerned. First of all, it doesn't work in this story, and second, it is a bottle of foul stool-water writing-wise. Very much quantity at the price of quality. The Sith vs. Republic war that canonically takes place more than 300 years after Revan's uprising starts some fifteen years after it in this fic and lasts until the start of this story when Good Guys Win™. Also, the Exile is male. I had played the game as a Light Side male Consular that chugged Force Storms around and strangled people to death and I'm not about to give it up, because some poor chap had to shoehorn a predictably heterosexual romantic tension between the Exile and Revan ('To me she was . . . more,' Revan says). Blegh.

Now about the movies. We will start some way before the events of Phantom Menace and I will try to keep true to the characters by re-watching some stuff and looking up the wiki, but there will be changes in the plot from the get-go. Honestly, I don't see this going beyond the Clone Wars timeline-wise and I'll try to introduce as many changes as I can without overcommitting. To be honest, I'm not a fan of writing done by Gearge Lucas in the prequels, because it's overall sloppy and far too focused on CoolPowerz™ and Angst.

As I've mentioned this is an experiment, so your feedback might be the difference between me cancelling this story in a few chapters and finishing it. I'm especially interested in stuff like whether you'd like more exposition and world-building, more romantic stuff, more combat with CoolPowerz™, more Jar-Jar… Although if it's Jar-Jar, something is not right.

If you have ideas for this story, don't hesitate to PM me. A fresh perspective often helps.

Stay shiny.