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generalpierrotdameron · 11 months

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Iskat Akaris has spent much of her time as a Padawan traveling the galaxy with her Master Sember Vey, collecting artifacts and lost knowledge for the Jedi Archives. But after being recalled to the Jedi Temple, Iskat and her master are sent on a rescue mission. One that will change the futures of the Jedi Order, the Republic, and Iskat herself.

As the shuttle thundered through the atmosphere of the arid planet Geonosis, Iskat struggled to shut out the staggering cacophony of sensory input and focus on finding her center amid the chaos. This wasn’t just a rescue mission — it was a military operation. The Jedi were soldiers now, but they weren’t fighting alone. Thousands of clone troopers had appeared, seemingly overnight, to join them in supporting the Republic; there was even a clone flying their ship. After years of relative peace throughout the galaxy, the Jedi had swiftly mobilized to do their part as protectors of democracy, justice, and freedom.

Iskat was thrilled . . . and also overwhelmed.

She steadied her breathing and closed her eyes, one hand wrapped around her amulet, and the rest of the Jedi around her faded away to stillness.

There is no emotion, there is peace.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

Master Klefan had urged her to turn to this mantra in the early days after the accident, and Master Sember had repeated it with her many times. The words were stamped on her brain, on her hearts. They transported her to the quiet within, made her feel as if she were the Jedi she was meant to be: calm, cool, collected, peaceful.

Reflecting on the Jedi Code almost made her forget Tika, but did she want to forget—?

No. She couldn’t think about that now.

That was years ago.

It hadn’t happened again.

Her teachers had seen to that, as had Iskat.

She’d studied. She’d practiced. She’d gained the control demanded of her. And now she was on a rescue mission, surrounded by Jedi Masters, Knights, and Padawans. She’d never drawn her lightsaber in real combat before, but it wasn’t her courage or proficiency that worried her, that made her two hearts beat so loud she was certain Tualon could hear them from beside her. She risked a glance at her fellow Padawan, with his glossy black lekku and look of determination.

“You ready?” he asked with an encouraging smile.

“As ready as anyone,” she answered.

Which wasn’t entirely honest. She felt more than ready. But Jedi were supposed to be humble and modest, and she knew that Tualon was a stickler for that sort of thing and didn’t want to appear too cocky. She admired him for his humility — as well as for his outgoing nature and genuine altruism. Tualon was the sort of Jedi she wished to be, the sort of Jedi she admired.

If she was truly honest with herself, Iskat had to admit that while she had no doubts about her dexterity, skill, or bravery, after yesterday’s duels with Charlin and Onielle, she had new doubts about her ability to handle herself when the stakes were high and a weapon was in her hand. She’d expected better of herself. And although no one had mentioned the incident with Onielle, she could feel the stares of her fellow Padawans as they sat beside their masters, buckled into place while they hurtled toward the desert sands of Geonosis. She could feel their eyes on her, sense their uncertainty.

Seated across the ship, Master Klefan Opus caught her eye and offered a nod and an encouraging smile. Iskat returned it, grateful to know that one master, at least, had faith in her.

She hoped that faith would not prove misplaced.

“Have you seen combat before?” she asked Tualon quietly. “On missions, I mean?”

He turned toward her to whisper. “A little. Master Ansho usually handles that sort of thing himself, but I helped fight off some bandits when we were escorting a senator on a diplomatic mission. Thankfully all our training — it just falls into place. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but we had to protect the senator. How about you?”

“We’ve never even drawn our lightsabers,” she admitted. “Usually, Master Vey and I either stand over a counter to haggle like normal customers, or some old adventurer invites us into his tent for tea. It’s all been very peaceful.”

She looked around the ship, which juddered and shook as it plummeted toward the planet’s surface. The air was thick and still, reeking of fuel and sweat. There were nearly twenty Jedi altogether. She wondered what sorts of adventures the other Padawans had experienced, if it was unusual for a Jedi of her age to be this inexperienced with actual combat.

“Do you think—” she began.

“That’s enough chatter,” Master Vey murmured from her other side. “It’s almost time. Remember your mantra. Concentrate on your breathing exercises, my Padawan. Don’t let the chaos in again.”

Iskat’s skin didn’t show a blush, but she felt the heat of shame at being reprimanded in front of Tualon and the others. Considering what they were about to face on the planet below, a rousing speech would’ve been more appropriate than public censure, or even some whispered reassurance. Tualon went silent and looked politely away so as not to entice her with further conversation.

Iskat’s long, red fingers wrapped around the cold metal bench as she closed her eyes and silently recited the Jedi Code again.

There is no emotion, there is peace . . .

The words became a comforting rhythm in counterpoint to the ship’s engines, a focal point that brought her consciousness into a state of calm where she was beyond shame, beyond worry, beyond fear.

“Landing in T minus three minutes,” the clone pilot announced.

Although she knew there were thousands of clones just like him headed to Geonosis, the pilot was the first of the Republic’s new troopers that Iskat had encountered. She had no idea what he looked like under his armor. How old he was, what color his eyes were, if he was more prone to smiling or frowning. All she knew was that his voice was sharp, his skills as a pilot were immaculate, and they would soon fight side-by-side.

The Jedi had surprisingly little intel regarding the mission; they only knew that Obi-Wan Kenobi had been ambushed by the massing Separatist army. Every available Jedi in fighting form was on a ship right now, just like Iskat. Unlike her missions with Master Vey, she had no way to know what role she would play, but she was excited to be among her fellow Jedi and pleased that the masters had deemed her skilled enough to take part in such an important undertaking.

She would prove worthy of their trust. She would follow their orders and embody their teachings. She would be part of the team that saved the day.

And yet, there was this persistent thought that kept breaking past her barriers, a pesky unwanted whisper wondering what might happen if instead of calming herself and quelling her emotions, Iskat relinquished the control for which she’d fought so hard and allowed the Force to fully flow through her. What strength might she find in that surrender? What power might she find beneath layers of repression? What might she accomplish now that she was facing actual adversaries instead of other children on a training field?

She clutched her amulet and banished the thought with the same energy she’d used to silence the cloying voice of the Sith artifact. This was a dangerous way of thinking. The Jedi Code existed for a reason, and history taught that those who stepped off the path often found tragedy. True greatness came from peace. From knowledge, serenity, and harmony. Iskat wanted to be great, and she wanted to do honor to the Jedi. In addition to Sember, other masters would be watching her closely during this mission. Her performance here might influence her future within the Order.

The shuttle whined and shook as it slowed, gravity pulling at Iskat’s bones. The metal under her boots trembled, and as if she could already feel the hot sun outside, sweat beaded on her lip. They were close to the surface now, and she imagined that if she could see through the viewport, she would look upon a world of sand and spires, bright orange striped with harsh black shadows.

It was almost time.

They were almost there.

It felt as if she were about to cross some important line, like this rescue — now seeming very much like it would become a battle — would change things forever, both for the Jedi and for Iskat herself.

She could not forget how close she’d come to washing out in the Jedi Tournament, how horrible she’d felt waiting for a master to claim her as a Padawan until Sember Vey had, to Iskat’s great surprise, stepped up in what felt like the last possible moment. She sometimes worried that between the distracted teachings of her master and the mistakes she made in the past that she required more observation and guidance than other Padawans, that everyone was all too aware that Iskat was lacking as a Jedi and might ultimately wash out for good.

There was no way she would let that happen.

The shuttle’s thrusters went to work as they landed, and Iskat’s stomach swooped with excitement. If only she could see out the shuttle’s viewports and begin to take stock of the battle to come. They’d been briefed on Geonosis, on how the hive mind worked, but they wouldn’t know what they would face here until they were on the ground and received more specific orders.

After a bouncing thump, the ship went still. The door slid open, harsh light burning into a space packed with nervous bodies clad in brown robes. Iskat struggled to release her chest harness but managed it before Sember had to unbuckle her. Her feet were numb as they hit the metal floor, but her fingers were already wrapped around her lightsaber.

As the Jedi all stood, Master Klefan Opus blocked the open door. He was an Askajian, and he usually kept himself overhydrated so that his epidermal sacs would swell, making him seem jolly and giving his eyes kind wrinkles in the corners. Today he had chosen a more slender and agile form, and Iskat was fascinated by the change in his demeanor. Usually a mild-mannered center of calm, he now clasped his lightsaber at his side and gave off a determined air. He held out a holoprojector, and an image of Mace Windu appeared, lightsaber ready in his other hand.

“Klefan Opus here,” the master said. “We’re on the ground, to the northwest.”

“Welcome to Geonosis. We need your detachment to help secure the arena where Count Dooku is preparing to execute Obi-Wan, along with Anakin Skywalker and Senator Padmé Amidala.”

There were gasps and whispers around the shuttle. Why was Skywalker here? And how had a senator become involved?

#sw books #Delilah S. Dawson #Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade #i'm bored to death of the prequel era but why not

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archfey-edda · 4 months

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Version 1 - Imperial puppets

#star wars #star wars fanart #spoilers #inquisitor rise of the red blade #iskat akaris #tualon #star wars books #I need to stop drawing during lectures but it helps me listen #I didn't realise these two were in comics until I was halfway through lining them #whoops

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inquisitor-apologist · 2 months

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hi I would personally LOVE to read thousands of essays on your thoughts about the inquisitors, so if you feel comfy posting them just know they will be received with gratitude :)

Alright, I’ve got a 4-hour car ride, so nothing but time.

The first thing that I’d say is absolutely essential to my understanding of/obsession with the Inquisitorius is that they’re expendable. Both in-text and out-of-text, they’re disposable and that is absolutely essential to their whole existence.

On the Doylist level, the Rebels team created them/reincorporated them to canon to be the replaceable early series antagonists. They're there to build the characters up to face the real threats of Maul’s temptation to the dark and Thrawn’s existential threat to the Rebel cause. The rest of the Star Wars media that shows them only reinforces this.

In Kenobi, they're there in the background, to set up Reva (who is, in the show, functionally not an Inquisitor) and Vader, in J:FO they're scary bad guys meant to be defeated and killed for Cal's growth (though, notably, J:FO is one of the only pieces of Inquisitor media that views them as victims worthy of empathy), and, while I haven't read (all of) the Vader comics, they're in the Vader comics, not in their own stories.

On the Watsonian level, they’re a sort of… buffer between the true power of the Sith and the public. They’re the one attacking the regular Force-sensitives and taking babies (someone much more qualified than me could probably talk a LOT about the very interesting ways the Jedi, Empire, and Inquisition (like, come on) parallel and draw from Judaism and historical antisemitism) and they’re the ones the Rebellion direct their anger about the Jedi Purge at. It’s easy for the two masterminds and main perpetrators to hide behind the atrocities of a dozen faceless subordinates.

This is really clearly shown in Kenobi, where the Inquisitors are dismissed as “Jedi who turned to the dark side. Now, they hunt their own kind”. They’re not seen as victims who’ve been forced into self-destructive monsters, but as the perpetrators of their own genocide, personas that they readily claim. I mean, Reva is literally a survivor of the Temple Massacre who was turned into one of the Inquisitors that Obi-Wan dismisses as traitors. They’re very convenient, effective, scapegoats.

That’s honestly a very underrated part of Palpatine’s genius; one of his most important traits is his ability to manipulate the media. By creating the Inquisitors and delegating most of the work of completing the Purge to them, he distances both himself and Vader from any public outcry against the actions of the Inquisitorius (and, to some extent, their own actions), allowing Vader to be seen as a more legitimate military officer and extension of the Emperor’s will, which is itself legitimized by that distance.

The lines between the Emperor, Vader, and the Inquisitors are also very important. There's a very clear distinction between the Sith and the Inquisitors in of autonomy, which is the second thing that defines my view of the Inquisitors. The Inquisitors are largely pawns for Palpatine’s ends, manipulated and indoctrinated kids, and as such there’s kind of a spectrum of the Empire’s Force-sensitive hierarchy between Sidious, Vader, and the Inquisitors.

Sidious is the first extreme, where he chose everything; he Fell on purpose, became a Sith on purpose, consolidated power and killed the Jedi on purpose, became Emperor on purpose. And then there’s Vader, who very much chose to Fall, kill the Jedi, and become a Sith, but he was manipulated and pushed to it by Sidious. He chose, but Sidious kind of underlies all those choices, driving him to them. Lastly, the Inquisitors chose nothing; they were hunted and persecuted by Vader and the Sith, then tortured and indoctrinated to serve Sidious, brainwashed into continuing to serve. It’s really a gradient of autonomy, if you think about it; Sidious is the only Dark Sider afforded full choice, both by the narrative and in-universe.

The Inquisitors are, fundamentally, kids ripped from their family and people, tortured and indoctrinated into self-loathing and anger. They don’t get names; they’re told they were born wrong and tortured until they believe it, then pressed into service, because, while they might have been born wrong, they were also born useful.

This is why I kind of hate the idea of Inquisitors who choose to join, and one of the reasons I’m not particularly inclined to read the new Inquisitor book (also it apparently implies that the tortured inquisitors were actually just. Force-brainwashed??). One of the most interesting and most fundamental things about them is that they are victims of horrific genocide coerced into becoming their own oppressors. If you take that away, you make them so much less interesting—they turn into stock evil traitors.

The protagonist of the new Inquisitor book is, from what I’ve gathered, a jerk who was already half-fallen in the Clone Wars and who seized the chance to gain more power with the Empire. That’s just diet Vader, and I, personally, have seen too much of both real Vader and diet vaders, so I’m not interested.

So, uh, @stellanslashgeode, you asked me for my thoughts on Iskat Akaris, here they are. Sorry it’s probably not what you wanted.

So, like, there’s my opinion on the fandom-and-canon obsession with Inquisitors who chose the Empire. We literally haven’t seen pretty much anything about how the normal inquisitors join, can we focus on the actually interesting stuff? The Inquisitors' lack of autonomy, their lack of choice, is a huge part of what fascinates me so much about them, because it's very unique. Let's not take that away.

Another piece of why I think the Inquisitors are so interesting is how their abuse at the hands of the Empire shapes them, though this part has more speculation than the stuff above due to lack of clear information.

In canon, we know that inquisitors go through fucking hellish initiation criteria (“Isolation! Torture! Mutilation!”), stuff that absolutely breaks them until they no longer believe that the Empire can be stopped at all (“You can’t stop the Empire!” “She said something about becoming an Inquisitor… like it’s inevitable”). We also know that, however it happens, it's very fast and effective. The Vader Comics are set just months after Order 66, and there's already at least ten fully initiated Inquisitors.

Unfortunately, we never directly see the exact initiation protocols the Inquisitors are subject to, but we do get quick glimpses, like in the flashbacks from J:FO, and with Reva in Kenobi. Right now, I want to look at what those flashbacks from J:FO, together with the dialogue above, tells us about what exactly happens to Inquisitors.

In the flashback, we see Trilla, strapped to the torture chair that Cere's in later in the flashback, being subjected to Star Wars' favorite kind of torture, weird electricity chairs. I'm going to call them shockseats, just to distinguish them from real-life electric chairs. We transition from the torture to some time later, when Second Sister has been fully turned, wearing the Inquisitor uniform and everything.

That, annoyingly enough, is all we get to work with. It's basically the "Being tortured makes you evil" trope, but Ninth Sister's dialogue gives it some nuance. She says "Isolation! Torture! Mutilation!", and, well, we just saw the torture part, and I'm guessing the mutilation is the whole thing in the comics where Vader teaches the Inquisitors by cutting their limbs off, so that leaves isolation, which I think is probably a very significant part of the process.

Based on the vault vision and the Fortress Inquisitorius section in J:FO, most of the Fortress's prison has a kind-of panopticon feel, with see-through energy shields, guards everywhere, and several prisoners in one cell, so I'm guessing there are probably some deeper isolation cells. The isolation is probably where most of the indoctrination happens, because we never hear anyone saying anything during the torture scenes.

This is mostly headcanon from the scraps we get, but I'd say initiation probably goes something like this: 1. a survivor is captured 2. They're taken to Nur, and tortured on the way there (per Rebels) 3 The timeline here is annoyingly unclear but I think the ‘isolation’/indoctrination comes before the rest? 4. They're tortured in an attempt to get them to turn to the Dark Side 5. They're somehow fully initiated into the Inquisitorius with their full title and uniform 6. They're trained ('mutilation') 7. They're a full Inquisitor

obv I have headcanons (ie a full-on not-really canon-compliant system that I think works better than the disjointed 'being tortured makes you evil' bits we have now, but I'm trying to stay as canon-compliant here as possible) but I think this is about what we get in canon, and it’s kind of necessary to have a vague idea about what probably happens in order to understand them, and dang is this very important to basically their entire self-concepts.

In Kenobi, Third Sister is hated by all the others, probably for not going through what they did. We see throughout the show that she’s just as good, or better, than most of them, but because she wasn’t tortured (or, at least, not to the same extent), the rest despise her. She does the exact same things we've consistently seen all the other Inquisitor's do, but she's punished and derided for it. In J:FO, Second Sister goes out and threatens civilians in order to draw Cal out, and everyone’s fine with it, but when Reva does it, everyone hates her.

There’s no rational reason; she does exactly what they do , what she’s been taught to do, but she’s treated differently. The only reason for this, in-universe, is that she’s the only Inquisitor we know of that wasn’t brought in for being a Jedi—she explicitly hides that she was one. The rest of the Inquisitors clearly do hate each other, but it’s on a different level with her, because they do not see her as one of them. She wasn’t a Jedi, and thus she didn’t go through the same things they did. There seems to be a sort-of trauma-induced bond between the other Inquisitors. They hate each other, but they all see each other as Inquisitors, largely the same as them. They don’t share that with Reva because whatever happened to them didn’t happen to her, to the same extent.

Connecting to my earlier point about Inquisitors who chose to join, I think that that's WAY more interesting than a bunch of jerk coworkers who just decided to be evil.

These people were family in the Jedi, and then their whole family died as they watched and heard and felt it in their brains, and they were chased and hunted and tortured until they broke and brought back together, warped and different and told to call each other siblings—and at this point, aren’t they? They were raised together in the bowels of Nur, subjected to the same horror and misery; they’ve been through everything together, in the worst way possible, constantly competing and fighting and killing for anything they can get. Who else could understand them in any meaningful way?

I'm getting off-topic, but the physical abuse and torture of the Inquisitors seems fundamental to their identity, even if we don't know exactly what it entailed.

So, with the isolation and indoctrination, I think it's fair to say that there's probably quite a lot of mental abuse there. The Dark Side, in itself, is pretty horrible mental health-wise (the Jedi actively use cognitive behavioral therapy just to prevent the possibility of the Dark) and being literally tortured and forced into it must be like. so much worse. Plus, isolation has been shown to be really fucking awful for your brain and the Inquisitor’s utter hopelessness (they literally do not believe that the Empire can be stopped and are really angry at anyone who tries) kind of seems like the whole being unable to believe that things can be better and getting angry at people who try to help part of depression?

Basically I don’t really know enough about mental health to say definitively, but I’m guessing a core part of Inquisitor Initiation is like. Insane mental abuse to get them to crack.

This last bit is less supported, and I know even less about it, so I’m going to keep this real brief, but I think there’s a possibility of some sexual abuse as well? This is a pretty big thing in fanon with the Grand Inquisitor, and then there’s all the creepy pervy stuff with Seventh Sister that she did not learn from the Jedi, but that’s as much as I’ll say for that because I know nothing about this kind of thing.

So, those are really the three things that define the Inquisitors to me: their expendability, lack of autonomy, and how their abuse defines them. I could write more on this, but this post took a fucking month already, so I’ll stick to those points.

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steepedfoxglovetea · 2 months

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That’s it, that’s the plot.

#star wars #inquisitor rise of the red blade #iskat akaris #star wars shitpost #now this is sithposting

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kaaragen · 9 months

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Rise of the Red Blade thoughts

One of the things I’ve long been asking for is for canon to do something to address the Inquisitors. We partially got that with Kenobi, but Reva is more of a special case. But with Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade we do finally have something that does, so it behooves me to add my thoughts. We do get a lot of interesting bits from this book - including, at last!, some canon Seventh Sister backstory!

(Minor spoilers ahead - though if you’ve read the Darth Vader comics you know how this story ends)

First of all, on a story level, it’s entertaining and I think does a good character dive on why Jedi fell and became Inquisitors. Ishkat Akaris is the POV character and she provides an interesting angle on struggles with the Jedi Order. She’s neurodivergent, and while not specified I’m picking up ADHD. She struggles and never quite gets the support she needs. But she is an unreliable narrator, and there is a particular Roshomon incident from when she was young that we return to again and again, getting some different perspectives. Though the narrative (in true Roshomon fashion) never says which was the ‘true’ version so you’re just left with the various ‘certain points of view’. But as a look at someone’s personal journey to the Dark Side, where at of the steps seem plausible and fair from their perspective, it works really well.

But what the book is great for is showing, better than other canon material I’ve come across, what the war does to the Jedi. Communications are poor. Information is sketchy. And young, inexperienced and over promoted Jedi are being sent out as commanders into highly stressful situations. And it really shows how the sheer stress of the war, and how this starts corrupting the more inexperienced Jedi, as the pressure to achieve results in impossible circumstances starts leading them toward ‘quicker and easier’ answers, with even the brighter and more devoted Jedi starting to fray by the wars end.

It maybe doesn’t deep dive as much as I would like; and the timeline is a bit wonky in places (according to this the Jedi had the clone army before they went into the arena on Geonosis which ??), but as far as canon goes I think it’s one of the best explorations on offer.

There’s some other tidbits as well:

Confirmation that if you don’t connect with the Force regularly you will lose sensitivity to it and have to ‘relearn’ as per Kenobi.

We get a bit more in how the Inquisitorious works. Basically a perverse form of the Jedi Order. There are candidate Inquisitors, and when you ‘prove’ yourself worthy you get a Name (eg X Sister). Which was hinted at in Kenobi (the use of ‘Reva’ over Third Sister to emphasise her outsider status)

That said, numbering system still doesn’t make sense to me. I think the implication is supposed to be the number is the order in which a candidate ‘proved’ themselves, but I find it hard to believe that Trilla was the first one to do so. Particularly not as it says Fifth Brother joined willingly and Tenth Brother was already half-way there at the start of the war.

The Agricorps are back baby!

And some canon Seventh Sister backstory! To which:

She’s a little older than Ishkat, whose about 19/20 when the Clone War kicks off. So my rough guess would be that she’s about 25ish when Order 66 happens. So Seventh is definitely a Jedi Knight - which does tie with her line of dialogue to Ezra mocking Kanan for not achieving the rank.

She was Aayla Secura’s Padawan (asterisk on this one - the exact line is ‘trained by’ which is a little vaguer, but Padawan reads to me as the intent.) This would constitute a lore revision that Mirialans are only Padawan’s to Mirialans.

Something absolutely horrific happened to her to make her an Inquisitor. Which you might think ‘of course it did’; but Ishkat meets Second Sister and hangs out with Ninth Sister and specifically mentions sensing something appalling happening to Seventh. So yeah, we’re talking orders of magnitude bad in comparison.

(For those wondering who read A New Dawn Breaks: none of this will affect Sorfelia; I already had something terrible planned 😈)

So overall, I’d say it’s worth a read. And if you’ve read the comics there’s some fun Easter eggs here and there as well!

#star wars #inquisitors #rise of the red blade #minor spoilers #seventh sister #my thoughts

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