Heart's Eye View - Prologue

REVISED I'm rewriting the first few chapters of my fanfic to make it more accessible to people less familiar with the game, and to make it match what I feel are the standards of the later chapters. The Prologue and Chapters 1 & 2 are being written from scratch, while Chapter 3 will be a combination of the old chapters 2-3 with heavy rewrites. I may alter other chapters as well. Consider this my Special Edition.

Disclaimer: George Lucas and Bioware own everything. I'm merely having some fun in their playground. Besides which, I'm just a poor, unemployed history major so suing me will get you nothing but the rights to my student loan payments.

Prologue

I don't understand how this happened. It goes against all that I was raised to believe. A Jedi does not love. It is too dangerous. While it may be a positive emotion, it is so easily twisted in jealousy, anger, and hatred that it is to be avoided. Emotional attachments are a danger, an easy road down to the Dark Side. A Jedi must be at peace, free of emotion and passion. Yet I cannot change the fact that I have fallen in love, against all the teachings and wisdom of the Order.

When did this happen? When did I decide my feelings were more important than the tenets of Council? I am Bastila Shan, a padawan of the Jedi Order. For as long as I could remember, the Order had been my life. It seemed like a lifetime ago, that I lived on Talravin with my parents. My father was a historian and an explorer. My mother was his assistant. They had met during school and had been partners ever since, my father liked to joke. At age five, I was given to the Jedi Order at my mother's insistence. There I trained under Master Vrook Lamar at the Jedi enclave on Dantooine. The Jedi believed I had a great gift in the Force, though it took years for it to fully manifest itself. Just after the close of the Mandalorian Wars, I had my first manifestation of Battle Meditation, a rare gift that allows the user to influence of even large-scale battles.

The Mandalorian Wars was where everything had begun to go wrong. The Mandalorians, an aggressive near-Human race that lived beyond the Outer Rim of civilized space, had begun attacking worlds along the Rim. At first the Republic cared little for turmoil so far from their borders. The Mandalorians did not stay on the outskirts of known space for long. Soon they were attacking the outermost systems of the Republic.

The Senate came to the Jedi Council on Coruscant and begged the Order for assistance. After almost a week of deliberation, Master Nomi Sunrider of the High Council of Coruscant delivered their response to the Senate personally: the Jedi could not provide aid to the Republic at this time. When pressed for a reason, all the Council would say is that there was a dark shadow in the Force over the Outer Rim and to rush headlong into a war out there might spell disaster if the Jedi were not properly prepared.

Suffice to say, the Senate was not pleased with this news, nor were many of the order. One knight, Revan, the youngest knight in the history of the Jedi at only age 20, began to protest against this lack of action. In the space of a month, he had rallied nearly a third of the Jedi on Coruscant to his cause. Without the sanction of the Council, he and his friend, Malak, led these Jedi to assist the Republic against the Mandalorian threat.

The Council renounced these Jedi as renegade, and provided them no support or advice, which made little difference. Revan was a tactical genius; his passion for history and culture had taught him a great deal about warfare, and soon he turned the Mandalorians own tactics against them. He crafted a set of blue and silver battle armor, complete with mask, in a style reminiscent of the Mandalorians. His masked visage became feared by all who stood against him, and some say, even his allies.

He stripped worlds of their defenses to protect "essential" systems, and lured the enemy into ambushes and into over-extending their lines. He calculated rightly that the Mandalorians had little interest in worlds that could not fight back, and devoted their attention to worlds they felt would provide more a challenge to their perverse sense of honor. The High Council looked on with trepidation at his actions, but the Senate of the Republic offered only praise and commendations.

For almost four years, he waged a war of attrition against the Mandalorians. Finally he forced a confrontation over the world of Malachor V. The Mandalorians had gathered all their number for one massive assault, intended to bring about total victory or defeat. They outnumbered the Republic forces by almost five to one. Revan had somehow planned for even this. His engineers had assembled a shadow gravity generator on a scale unseen, to create a gravimetric storm that sheared many of the enemy ships into shrapnel. It also had the unpredicted effect of shattering the nearby world's own delicate gravitational balance and Malachor V and its population of 100 million sentients died to bring Revan his victory.

The devastation was so shocking that Revan offered a personal duel to Mandalore, to bring an end to the war. That duel has become a legend in only a few short years. I won't bore you with reciting what you doubtlessly already have heard a hundred times in cantinas across the galaxy; Revan's victory is a matter of historical fact. The Mandalorians quietly surrendered to the man who had so thoroughly bested them. To drive home this fact, he ordered the survivors disarmed and had their weapons and Basilisk war droids destroyed in front of them, before letting them return to their worlds.

It should have ended there, but it didn't. The next day, Revan took his most of his fleet and departed for the Unknown Regions. His last communiqué to the Senate stated that not all the Mandalorians had surrendered. He intended to pursue them should they decide to continue their harassment of innocent worlds. A few ships chose to return home or were too badly damaged to undertake the expedition, led by Admiral Saul Karath. They were treated to a hero's welcome and many chose to retire after that. It seemed that we had a happy ending, but the masters knew better.

Among the returning heroes was one of Revan's foremost generals, Nalto Kann, the first and only Mandalorian Jedi, raised by the Order after he was found orphaned on a distant world after Trandoshan raiders had devastated its colony. He was the only Jedi to return from the war, and he offered himself up to the Council for judgment. No one knows exactly what took place but those already behind the sealed doors of the council chambers. All that is known is that Kann was exiled beyond the bounds of Republic space. Some say the Council even stripped him of his ability to use the Force, a punishment not used since the fall of Ulic Qel-Droma during the war with Exar Kun. This tale, however, is not about Kann.

Just a year later, the Republic was suddenly struck by a two-pronged invasion force from the Unknown Regions. Half a dozen systems fell within a matter of days. Reports of alien ships with advanced technology poured in from survivors. It was believed a new race had decided to make its presence known. A few days after the first attacks, the Senate received a communiqué from Revan, who had announced to all that he had taken the title Dark Lord of the Sith! His armor now stained black, he proclaimed his intention to conquer the Republic and offered them a chance to surrender unconditionally. The saviors of the Republic had returned home at last: as conquerors.

That was two years ago. Since then, the Republic had fought a slowly losing war against the newly christened Darth Revan and his apprentice, Darth Malak. Obviously, the Jedi did not remain absent in this war. I was summoned by the Council to assist the Republic with my Battle Meditation. With my help, the Sith were kept from achieving total victory, though all knew it was only a matter of time.