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spectraspecs-writes · 3 years

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Leviathan - Chapter 100

Link to the masterpost. Chapter 99. Chapter 101.

@averruncusho @ceruleanrainblues @chubbsmomma @strangepostmiracle thank you for reading, you get a tag. @skelelexiunderlord thank you for support, you get a tag.

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Harder than I thought, it would seem. I haven’t had so many cuts on my hands since I did field work in a prairie full of razor grass. You know, that tall grass that cuts you when you walk thought it? You never bleed from it but it hurts for a long time afterwards. But several cuts and a couple hours later, I manage to get Shaela Nur’s crystal into my blue lightsaber. I started with my purple lightsaber but for the life of my I could not get the crystal into the fitting. And when I went to my blue one, the first time, when I activated the lightsaber the crystal flew out and ricocheted off Davik’s swoop bike and hit me in the head. I guess I’m just not having a good day today. But I think I’ve got it in there nice and tight. I swing my lightsaber around, making sure the crystal won’t fly out and hit somebody else in the head. That would be hilarious but not very easy to fix when I’m away from a workbench. I spin my lightsaber with a flourish.

And I hit something.

Shit, shit, please don’t be a person. I turn around to T3’s panicked beeping. Oh, shit, that’s even worse than a person. “Oh, God, T3, I’m so sorry, are you okay? I had no idea you were in here!” He chirrups and whirs, very discombobulated. “I can fix that, I promise! I am so sorry. Can you still move okay?” He beeps in the affirmative. “Okay, good.” I dig into my pockets for my droid tool kit before I remember I gave it to Carth to hold on to. “Damn it,” I say softly, then look back at T3, “I’m going to grab some parts from the cargo hold. Go to the cockpit, I’ll be right there.” He chirps and whirs off, sparking where I hit him. I hit the secondary power coupling - it’s fixable but it means he’ll have diminished functioning until I can fix it. Which I can do no problem, this isn’t the first time I’ve done it, but I’ve never had to do it because I hit it. I am really not having a good day.

Thankfully, the cargo hold has the parts I need, so I take them into the cockpit. Carth is in there, we’re in hyperspace. “Hey,” he says, “What’s wrong with Teethree?”

“Secondary power coupling, can I have my tool kit back?”

He reaches into his pocket and hands it to me. “Kept it safe, just like you asked,” he says, “What happened? He just rolled in here, sparking.”

T3 turns his head and beeps. I scoff a bit. “Thank you for trying to spare my feelings, T3, but HK had nothing to do with it, it was all me,” I say, “I’m rerouting all functions to your primary coupling, it might tickle a little. No, this was all me, I accidentally hit him with my lightsaber.”

“Anything you can’t fix?”

“Thankfully, no, I just need to replace the coupling, I’ve done it before.” I gently pry the coupling out with my spanner. “I’ve never had the problem be my fault before, but…” I sigh. “I’m almost done, I just have to fasten this into place.”

“Why don’t you stick around when you’re done?” Carth says, “I could use a copilot.”

I smile at him. “I appreciate the invitation but I’m not sure you’d want me,” I say, “I’m not having a very good day, I might really do something wrong.”

“I still want you here,” he says.

I chuckle a bit, tightening the coupling into place. “You might regret that. Rerouting power back through the secondary coupling.” As power flows back through, there’s a small spark, which is normal, and T3’s eye lights up as he runs a diagnostic. “All good?” T3 beeps, and I release a sigh of relief. “Good. I am so sorry I did that.” T3 beeps again, forgiving me. “Thank you. I’ll be more careful next time.” T3 chirps and rolls off. I roll up my toolkit and sit down in the copilot’s chair with a heavy sigh. “I really hope my day starts picking up from here.”

He glances at me, starting to say something, but does a double take. “What happened to your head?”

I raise my hand to where he’s looking. There’s a scar there, still bleeding just a little. Didn’t realize there was a mark there. “I got hit in the head by a lightsaber crystal,” I say, running my hand over it to heal it.

“And your hands - Gods, Rena, what were you doing?”

“Turns out, modifying your lightsaber is harder than it sounds,” I say, “For those of you keeping track, today has had two terentateks, fighting a Sith master, getting betrayed by his apprentice, the political collapse of the Sith Academy on Korriban, cutting my hands, getting hit in the head by a lightsaber crystal, and knocking out a droid’s power coupling.” I say. “I could really use something good right about now.”

Carth tosses his head. “Well,” he says, “I’m about to change hyperspace routes. Once I do that it’s almost a straight shot to Manaan.”

“I’ll keep my hands to myself, then,” I say, “The way my day’s going, I might knock us off course.”

Carth smiles, and he gently pulls us out of hyper speed. Brings the ship around to change routes. Another ship in the intersection - I wonder where they’re going.

“DAMN IT - hold on!” Carth shouts suddenly, and I grab onto the seat. He spins the ship around quickly, and I hear T3 down the corridor spinning out.

“What? What is it?”

“Sith!” he says quickly, “I’m gonna try to lose them!” He pushes the controls as far forward as they’ll go, to go as fast as we can, but we aren’t moving forward. “Damn it, come on, I know you can get out of this…”

“Can’t we just go to hyperspace?”

“If I just jump to lightspeed now, we won’t be on any route, we could hit an asteroid belt or a rogue planetoid and end up dead in space.” He punches a few controls, but it’s no good. The ship slowly spins around again, and we face the huge Sith vessel. Carth keeps frantically pressing controls, but it doesn’t look like it’s doing any good.

Bastila rushes into the cockpit with Canderous behind her. “What happened? What's going on?”

“Sith Interdictor ship,” Carth says, “They were waiting for us on the hyperspace route. We're caught in their tractor beam.” Finally, he slams his hand on the control panel. There’s nothing he can do.

“Do you recognize the ship?” she asks.

“It's the Leviathan,” Carth says with a sigh, “Saul Karath's vessel. My old mentor.”

This day just doesn’t seem to be getting any better. “I have no idea how we’re going to get out of this,” I say, “but gather everyone into the main hold. We need to figure this out.”

A minute later everyone is gathered into the main hold. Carth tells everyone what’s going on, then says, “Admiral Karath taught me everything I know about being a soldier. He was a legend in the Republic fleet, and a hero to me. Until he betrayed us. When the Sith attacked my home world, the Leviathan - Saul Karath's flagship - was at the head of the fleet. My family was destroyed that day and my wife died in the Sith bombardment.” Nothing I can say will comfort Carth, and I know that. So silently I take his hand. Remind him that I’m here. “I know, I know,” he says, talking mostly to me, “I'm not going to do anything stupid. I won't throw our lives away in some mad quest for vengeance.” And then he looks at everybody. “But if I get a chance to kill Saul during our escape, nobody better get in my way.”

I should try to stop him, I know. Vengeance can lead to the Dark Side. But at the end of the day, Saul’s done terrible things, not the least of which is a massacre, and he should die for his crimes. If killing him helps Carth heal, I can’t stop him. But Bastila feels differently. “Talk of an escape is somewhat premature, don't you think?” she says, “We don't even have a plan to get out of this mess yet!”

“I'll admit it won't be easy,” Carth says, “Saul's no fool and he won't underestimate us either. You can count on plenty of guards watching every move we make.”

Bastila thinks for a second. Then she says, “Maybe Admiral Karath doesn't know how many of us there are on board. We all have special talents; talents we could exploit so that one of us could stage a rescue. We just have to figure out who has the best chance to avoid capture so that they can come and rescue us later. It's a long shot, but it's our only hope.” She looks at me and Carth. “He will probably be watching the three of us far too closely for any plot involving you, me or Carth to succeed. It's going to be up to one of the others to get us out of this.”

“Well, if we're going to pick someone to save our skins we better do it quick,” Carth says, “In another minute we're going to have Sith troops marching up our loading ramp!”

My mind rushes through a half-dozen plots - HK could come out firing, T3 could pretend to be deactivated, Jolee could use the Force, we could throw gizka at them - but then I see MIssion frantically waving her hand in the air. “Ooh! Ooh!” she says excitedly. So I look at her. “I can break out of anything! Maybe I can goad the guards into making a mistake!”

“What sort of mistake?”

“If I get them mad enough, they might put me in a separate cell to punish me. With them focusing so much on you three I might be able to sneak out of my cell and come rescue the rest of you!”

Zaalbar loudly objects. “No, it’s too dangerous!”

“It’s a risk we have to take, Big Z!” she insists, “I can slice my way free from any security cell! Don’t worry, I can pull this off!”

“Mission, are you sure?” I ask. It’s a solid plan - the Sith could kill her, but that’s a risk we take with any plan, and I doubt they will kill her. Not so soon after her capture.

“Yeah, Rena,” she says, looking at me solemnly, “I want to do this.”

The ship shudders. “Hold on!” Carth says, “They're dragging us into the docking bridge!”

I move quickly over to her. “Get to the starboard quarters,” I say, “Make them come to you, fight on your own turf.”

She nods. “Got it.”

“Fight dirty, curse, piss him off. Insult his mother, if you run out of ideas.”

“Absolutely.”

I hug her quickly. “Good luck.” She nods and starts to move off, but I stop her one last time. “Hey,” I say, and I place a hand on her shoulder, “Go get ‘em.” She smiles, and runs off to her place in the starboard quarters.

This is certainly in the running for the worst day of my life.

#star wars #knights of the old republic #kotor #autistic artist #fiction #specs writes stuff #kotor fic #rena visz #oc #fem!revan #ls!revan #carth onasi #bastila shan #mission vao #t3-m4 #leviathan #chapter 100

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3piox · 7 years

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kotor character meme

based on this post :3 this got long as hell but it’s very self indulgent and mostly just for myself but i wanted to post it. under cut!

REVAN

NAME: vivza sanstar (i wanted to be EXTREMELY star wars-y. it’s no yolo ziff but i’m still pretty happy)

GENDER: f

APPEARANCE: this one! i basically cast gong li. a la darth maul, much shorter than you might expect but threatening enough to make up for it (5′5″ but no napoleon complex, she’s VERY confident)

FAVORITE HOBBY: swoop racing. lol. or riling people up. she’s very into arcania, specifically into the force equivalent of universal string theory and quantum mechanics. she like, wrote papers on this stuff and everything. her ‘chill mode’ is banging ladies and building, like, rube goldberg machines. but she doesn’t really have a chill mode so.

BIRTH PLANET: tatooine. jk. a lush planet! some part of revan still loves the sense of rain through warm tropical canopies. her parents were normal people, maybe one mildly force sensitive. they were proud to send her to the jedi as a baby, but never recognized her in the famous war hero -- revan named herself that, and her birth name is lost to the sands of time. revan doesn’t spare them much thought.

PERSONALITY: scorpio/sagittarius cusp. lol. inventive, clever, outspoken, always ‘on’ in a way, but also laidback, the spirit of a wanderer, sees no limits. do or do not, there is no try? yeah, she always does. cocky, naturally. brutally analytical -- she can compartmentalize like nobody’s business, one of the things that made the mindwipe easier to take. totally utilitarian, but grows more empathy after the mindwipe. a strange, compelling gal with a frat boy’s sense of humour.

KREIA: “fine, master.” see above, about compartmentalizing? she can do this with relationships too. she loved kreia as any student loves their teacher, but once she felt kreia had nothing else to teach her, she was on to the next. kreia did not take well to this. when revan came back like nothing had changed, kreia was hard pressed to put her bitterness behind her, and revan saw it as criticism which her ego could not take, so their reunion didn’t last long. once again, revan took what she needed, and left.

kreia still loves her, and she had dreams where they both got their redemption and stood shoulder by shoulder again, but -- she was too much of a realist to ever dwell on that. revan obvsly loves hilarious slammin’ frankness (see HK) and i believe kreia taught her that and it’s something she really admires about her. “speak your mind, padawan”

MALAK: best of bros. malak was a shy kid, very quiet, reserved, and like so many others was drawn to the sun of revan’s personality. she took him under her wing (figuratively, as he’s always been MUCH BIGGER than her) and she’s been treating him like a little brother/padawan since they were knee high. she loves telling people what to do, and malak was appropriately obedient while also having some fire to him. war forged them into closeness again after they drifted apart in their knighthoods, and malak followed her into hell with a grim smile. i think the turning point in their relationship wasn’t malak’s bitterness about being relegated to apprentice, but because revan -- who, while blunt to the point of rudeness at times, was ultimately very fair-minded and protective -- turned from teasing figure to a bully. malak felt emasculated and, well, one thing led to another. after realizing who she was, revan felt compelled to try and redeem malak, to prove that she wasn’t some fluke, and she mourns him still.

EXILE: in my fantasies? they FUCKED.

but seriously. i think there’s something to be said about revan sending the exile to die and thus probably not liking her very much, but for my revan and exile, it’s more a matter of revan’s utilitarian brutality overcoming any feelings she had. the exile was a threat because of her own sway, charm, and growing reluctance with the war -- the exile was talking about going home after malachor, and revan couldn’t have that. she was already thinking about the future, about parting ways with the jedi order and what she needed for that, which included jedi loyal to her and her alone.

before the war: while they were a few years apart in age (exile older) they were very similar, being charming prodigies and all, and i think the council was afraid of them meeting. their paths rarely intersected until knighthood, where they were goaded into a spar that still lives in legend in the halls of the dantooine temple. after that they had a friendly rivalry, but their personalities clashed enough that real socialization wasn’t a hobby of theirs. the exile did get along more with malak (they were both quiet types) so that was another connection they had.

after malachor v, the exile obviously survived, and she came to revan to tell her that she was returning. (she felt it was the courteous thing to do.) revan was angered, but she knew she couldn’t control the exile, so she let her go. they didn’t meet again until wild space and the exile rescuing her. the fact that they didn’t have a deep connection only increases revan’s shock at the exile doing this for her.

“I didn’t think you liked me very much,” she jokes.

“I don’t,” the Exile says. “But I do my duty. Come along.”

after that, they start to develop a real relationship, because pretty much no one else in the galaxy knows what they’ve been through

HERO OR TYRANT: revan told herself she was doing it for the good of the galaxy, but the truth is, she fell before she even really recognized this other threat. she had an ego (practically a god complex) and it drove her to do what had never been done before to prove her greatness -- she didn’t go to war to save people, she went to war because she knew she could stop the mandalorians. and they had to be stopped! so it was easy to justify.

she ISN’T the type to destroy the galaxy -- she’s fascinated by it’s variations and complexities, and it’s her playground, so she did want to keep it safe. she would have done anything to save it, and to her, anyone who would argue with her methods just wasn’t #deep or #woke enough to see that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. she was probably the kind of kid who pulled legs off bugs, not a sociopath but the pursuit of knowledge, of truth, overwhelms everything.

MEMORIES: she was a spice smuggler and arms dealer, lol. i like to think the council picked that shady background because they wanted to cover up for what THEY saw as an unavoidable moral bankruptcy of character.

her birth planet was kept the same; they used a single mother and an absent dad in place of her single, female master, but also had her mother die young -- ‘vivza’ had to make her own way in the world. a han solo heart of gold type. the whole backstory was #fake but the council knew all the best lies are truths (from a certain point of view ...) so they kept her personality as intact as they could, maintained her most influential memories thru a different lens -- her relationship with her mom mirrors her one with kreia, some of the people she saved stayed the same even if her method was different, she still likes geek shit, etc.

i think there wasn’t really a whole real person’s worth of memories in there -- that would have been absurd to craft -- i think they just impressed the basic bio facts into her, empathized some stuff, then let the force and her own mind fill in the rest. and waking up on the spire, how would she know this wasn’t natural, the gaps of her memory and the like? she’s practically a newborn in some ways -- she doesn’t know that’s not what minds are supposed to be like, and so much of ‘original revan’ is there that she doesn’t feel broken. she kind of thinks she has amnesia for a while? but also doesn’t feel amnesiac. it’s a weird sensation, needless to say.

finding out these memories were fake was really, really hard for her. not so much because she’s attached to them -- since stuff like her mom and her smuggling days weren’t real it’s almost like they’re a dream to her. but the violation of it -- that really disturbed her. her identity was something she was used to trading on, as revan as as vivza the smuggling queen of the outer rim, and she felt like nothing after finding out. she desperately tried to claim again and again that she was vivza but with each moment after the reveal the name becomes more and more like a stranger to her.

she doesn’t get her memories back in some huge flood, but she gets lots of visions of the past and the force/her mind subtly corrects and aligns some of the fake memories even more into a shape she once knew and she does start remembering things naturally over the years. a lot comes back when she’s alone in wild space. she comes to accept that she’s revan, but she’s scared of the idea of being her old mind -- she doesn’t like the person she was as a sith. she misses the ignorance of being vivza. vivza is, to her, both a punishment and a forgiveness, an old home she can’t return to, and something she could never have but wished to keep.

vivza hated the sith. revan knows the sith can be redeemed. knows why you would become a sith. this dissonance is the one thing she really keeps from her days as vivza.

ROMANCE: bastila, duh. you give me that forbidden jedi romance with a prissy british beauty who has a deep connection with ur character, and i’m gonna smash that. she’s definitely revan’s type too. she likes someone she can rile up lol. the #reveal was a cold shower. again, massive violation, and a big gulf between them because in her mind bastila was this perfect jedi who had already ended their relationship for that reason, and now -- there was no way for them to reconcile.

after everything, bastila was scarred by her own fall and her complicity in revan’s mindwipe/use as a tool. revan and her danced around each other for months after the war, both obstinately focused on rebuilding the republic/the order, but they still had their bond and revan knew bastila was deeply conflicted just as bastila knew that revan was reconciling more and more with her old self. one night revan comes to comfort bastila after a dream, and they talked all night and all day until the night again. after that, they tentatively rebuilt their relationship. and revan totally knocked her up w the ~magic of the force~ right before she had to go.

sadly, they didn’t have much time together before revan went jetting off. bastila misses her like she misses a limb; she’s in a haze as the galaxy falls apart around her. revan does better b/c she’s still little miss compartmentalization but when she dreams at night, alone in empty space, it’s bastila she dreams about. a very deep, mutual love and respect between them.

FAVE CREWMEMBER: canderous was a HOOT -- after the reveal, revan was like “godDAMN, is the reason i love listening to canderous’s awful war stories because i was THERE?” -- they’d spend hours in the back, drinkin’ brewskies and making non-PC jokes LOL. also, jolee. she loves his views on the code -- it doesn’t matter if she’s vivza or revan, she appreciates a man who knows you can love without letting it rule you. his repeated insistence that she was some kind of dark thing really stuck under her skin; when he finally gave her his whole-hearted approval it really meant something. she never got that from kreia or any other master; some part of her responds to hearing it from him. also, they both like messing with people. all their conversations were just her acting the grumpy padawan and him the snarky master LOL.

after she learns who she was she daydreams that if jolee had actually been her master, she wouldn’t have fallen.

ENDING: the LS ending i’m a sappy good guy. bastila lives!

POST GAME: in short: revan and her pals try and restore the republic and the order and she patches things up with bastila, but soon is compelled to rush off to try and deal with this problem all on her own. it’s a redemption of sorts but also -- well, remember how i said her ego compelled her to dominate the galaxy? well, her ego also says that saving the galaxy isn’t ‘enough’ to prove herself -- she has to keep doing more, more, more. this restlessness will never fade.

she goes thru hell out there in unknown space, captivity, torture, the insanity of loneliness, all that fun stuff. the exile rescues her and it takes months to come back home. she’s been gone for like, so many years. she’s back just in time to talk to canderous about not starting another war, but she’s also tired as fuck. mostly she just wants to sleep.

bastila hovers but says nothing. it drives her up the wall. they have a big, big fight, and it looks like they’ll NEVER TALK AGAIN OH NO when bastila gets over her pride and takes her to see their kid -- still not force sensitive, but being raised in the order. “I see the heights he will rise to,” Bastila says. “Don’t you? Don’t you see everything we’ve built? Our legacy?” and revan knows she never wants to leave this woman’s side again. the only time she feels her soul settle is when she’s lost in bastila.

they have an extremely delayed honeymoon period and actually get married and all that fun stuff. probably stuff happens but w/e i just want to maintain that they’re HAPPY but also kind of codependent and leave the galaxy to sort itself out for the most part -- they build up the jedi to staggering new heights in part just to keep another wall between themselves and the rest of the galaxy that has done nothing but stress them out for all their lives. retired lesbian’s, y’all.

jolee ends up in hiding and helping escaped jedi during kotor 2. he probably dies but i refuse to think about this. so in MY version he eventually turns up, grumpy and probably missing some body parts, insisting he DOESN’T want to have anything to do with anyone, but ends up a member of the high council anyways. the exile helps a lot, actually; she’s the sort of steady mind and “ok listen buddy i actually got KICKED OUT of the order so like, let’s talk.” please imagine him living like a long ass time and yelling at initiates to get off his metaphorical lawn and yet being super popular with them. mission and zaalbar travel a bunch and this leads to the whole business venture. i like to think they spent some time on kashyyyk where she became an honorary wookie and has a wookie name and everything ..... just like my headcanon for han solo lol.

canderous rebuilds the mandalorians (more on that below.) carth is ofc an admiral and he really looks out for bastila when everything goes to shit. he totally gives revan a piece of his mind for leaving bastila and all of them when revan comes back, but as ever with carth, he goes from nuclear to chill in about .5 seconds and then they’re bros again. when vaner (who might have a diff name in mine because that one is LOL) becomes supreme chancellor carth is like, head of his security. he’s totally uncle carth even if bastila and revan aren’t traditional parents lmao. i didn’t save carth’s son (bc i didn’t realize i could ....) so carth definitely puts his parenting urges in there. i like to think he ends up adopting some war orphans down the line, idk.

RANDOM STUFF: she’s not an amazing fighter lol. or tech savvy or any of that. she main strengths are her mad charisma and her out of the box clever thinking. and a very crude application of the force ie i just spammed force wave through most enemy fields lol. before her mind wipe she was a really good brawler? like, she’d be from the anakin & luke skywalker school of “angry overhead chops at everything” lightsaber combat but her real love was just fucking throwing down. she was good at it too. i think the council sort of undid a lot of her fighting skills but they couldn’t erase her body memory so she has a very confused reaction between brain and body that makes her clumsy in fights. it gets better with training but she never totally shakes that particular lobotomy to her talents that the council did to hamper her ‘just in case.’

EXILE

NAME: bree rahanna

GENDER: f

APPEARANCE: this one! like her. tall af -- a bit over 6′. swole. powerhouse. she wields a double-bladed lightsaber and when she’s bearing down on you on the battlefield, you run. ear piercings, beaded hair (always trying new hairstyles), loves accessorizing. looks great in green. very beautiful, but she doesn’t think much of it. very jedi-like ‘my body is just a vessel’ attitude.

FAVOURITE HOBBY: definitely not swoop racing. she likes computer stuff -- the sort of impersonal element. even droids are a bit too much like people for her tastes at times. she’s an introvert, basically, she’d rather just write code and repair ships and such. she used to love to meditate before her exile -- after, without the force, it was just depressing. replaced it with music -- singing by herself, listening to others, she’s basically always humming. she likes how it fills up empty spaces. a bit of a hoarder -- in another life, she’s the kind of person who likes antiquing, and as is, she just collects various bits and bobs that catch her eye.

FROM? GOING?: i like to think she came more from the mid-rim. maybe like (na)jheda. was a little older when she was brought to the temple, maybe 4 or 5? it gave her a bit of a healthier concept of family/relationships. child of a single father who felt that he couldn’t provide for his daughter the way the jedi could. bree thinks of him, but also thinks it would be awkward to ever visit, since the jedi are her family now. she’s always wanted to go where she feels wanted and needed -- her greatest fear is stagnation.

PERSONALITY: capricorn. ambitious, practical, patient, fond of plans and figuring things out -- but she doesn’t like when things don’t fit her worldview and can get very #negative. she’s actually very charming -- her steady way of speaking, dry sense of humour, and habit of looking at whoever is talking like they’re the only person in the galaxy make her very popular, and she’s got a leader’s heart through and through.

but she doesn’t consider herself charming because she’s not like, say, super gregarious cult leader revan type charming. she wants to be her best, and she has a deep sense of faith and loyalty -- she accepted her banishment from the order, would later accept their attempt to cut her off from the force again, and decided to return to the order once she felt worthy of it, not the other way around.

BETWEEN THE WAR AND PERAGUS: she’s on the very edges of known space, not paying much attention to anything -- there are rumours of a war out there, but it’s not immediate to her. working as a repair person, she drifts in and out of various systems, relieved that nobody out there seems to know what a jedi is, that the faces are so different from everything she’s known. she’s a bit of an oddity wherever she goes, so she takes to hiding herself under masks and cloaks and the such, and thinks of revan whenever she does. wonders how revan’s identity maybe got lost when she first put on that mask. wonders if she lost herself.

she’s very, very lonely -- she craves the stability of real relationships, a real routine and a home, but she feels like she shouldn’t, she can’t, out here. people are still drawn to her, but she turns them all away. her exile was just as much self-imposed as anything else.

REVAN: well, all of the above in revan’s section. from her side of things: she sometimes envied revan. most knights did; revan was the shining golden child of the order, and plenty were compared to her and found wanting. bree was one such; she never received the same kind of praise revan did. her ability to draw people to her made the council suspicious of her and she found herself under much scrutiny, and she rebelled by becoming a surer leader, gathering friends to protect her from the disregard of the council. revan, on the other hand, seemed beloved by all, with very little trouble.

these feelings, combined with the general clash of their personalities, means that bree always felt wrong-footed around revan. maybe this is what saved her; revan’s regard would make any person feel empowered, but bree’s reluctance to see them as friends meant that she didn’t get hooked on the idea of power. as is, it marks the differences between them; revan only creates the illusion of empowering others while keeping all control/power for herself, but bree genuinely does this, genuinely boosts people up. she’ll never know that revan was jealous herself of bree’s real connections; revan could feel lonely at times.

bree didn’t think revan would fall; like obi-wan about anakin, it was kind of a, “i trust my shady pal to reject the dark side.” she didn’t even realize that revan had fallen after malachor; she just thought revan couldn’t face what they’d done yet. it was a bit of a shock for her to come back to known space and learn that revan had gone FULL SITH and then gotten redeemed and saved the galaxy while she was away. it makes her realize she doesn’t know revan at all. this unexpectedly saddens her; her own time away from the order has allowed her to become more wholly critical of them, and she thinks that revan and her always had more in common than she’d care to admit.

it’s this, and knowing that revan is needed, and everything revan represents about herself and the war -- this is why she goes after revan in wild space, and this is part of her healing process. both of theirs, really, as they discover on the long trip back home.

ATRIS: bree doesn’t really ‘get’ her effect on others, so she has a hard time reading their feelings. it’s the flipside to the deep pull/ability to form bonds that she has: she brings people in, but she has no idea what to do with them when they’re there. atris is an example of this. she and atris were contemporaries and very good friends, but when atris came to realize the depth of feeling she had for bree, it scared her. she retreated into her histories and watched bree from afar, and bree was like, “um ... i think my friend doesn’t like me now??? ouch okay ... i will releasemy angst about this into the force and move on” and atris was like “oh i see how it is she’s forgotten about me, friend to all is friend to none!”

this righteousness (and sense of betrayal) continued when bree followed revan into war, but as the archivist recording the war and seeing its atrocities she found herself feeling guilty -- not just for doing nothing, but also for allowing bree to go off alone. she feels that bree, like so many others, has fallen for revan’s charms and it sparks envy in her. if only she had the nerve to do what revan and bree did, if only she were bolder, like this matched pair of sun and moon that revan and bree are -- an undeniable, natural force. she knows these feelings aren’t jedi-like and tries to smother them under anger at their treachery, but she continues to nurse this jealousy and it fuels her later actions.

she didn’t feel as triumphant about exiling bree as she thought she would, though.

bree was hurt by atris’s negative feelings for her, and when it came to their final battle, all she wanted was a reason why. atris’s explanation of her feelings was not at all what she was expecting, but it was a relief to know it wasn’t just b/c atris saw some horrible thing in her. she didn’t want to kill atris -- in atris’s own fall, she saw what could have happened to her if her own jealousy of revan had become dark. she thinks of her and atris as two sides of the same coin in a way, and atris would be humbled to learn that bree sees them that way, since she felt unimportant to bree for so long.

KREIA: bree LOVED kreia because i loved kreia. her relationship with kreia was alike to her one with revan -- she felt kreia walked on a knife’s edge but figured it wasn’t a risk because she knew her. their bond was the deepest one she’s ever felt, since she never had a proper master. in many ways bree was starved for some teacherly affection lol so she clung to kreia. she didn’t agree with kreia’s utilitarian/nihilistic views (she’s more a ‘sacrifice herself first and foremost’ type) but she respected kreia’s wisdom. she flourished under kreia’s teachings, and her greatest hope was that she could teach kreia some things in turns -- they say a proper master/padawan relationship goes both ways.

kreia was also someone who seemed to really understand what she’d been through -- bao-dur was also in the war, for example, but he didn’t have to make decisions the way bree had to. kreia knows what it is to make hard choices, and bree respects that. basically, kreia made her feel less alone. she would have done anything to redeem kreia in the end -- she came to terms with the fact that she didn’t fall (as she long suspected, since she was exiled) but the line between a jedi and a fallen jedi is a very thin one indeed. she realized she does believe in redemption, truly madly deeply, and if kreia had surrendered she would have welcomed kreia back with open arms.

kreia loved and respected her too, and to me her death was akin to malak’s -- changing after so many years as a sith would have been the hardest thing they could have ever done, but revan and bree would have stood by them. like revan, bree mourns kreia’s passing. she likes to think that sometimes, she can still feel kreia, hear her as a whisper in the back of her head giving her advice, but that’s just a fancy.

MICAL OR BRIANNA: both! #MODS

REGRET: yes, definitely. her guilt about the war and malachor is strange -- because she cut herself off from the force to avoid the pain of it her brain sort of refuses to touch on it too closely, glosses over the details of what she’s done. it’s a quiet, pervasive sort of inner melancholia. yet she also stands by the fact that she did what she did to help the galaxy and she would do it all over again if need be -- she doesn’t believe in excuses, it’s more like, she’s very practical about the WHY of her doing it and accepting and seeking punishment for her culpability after the fact. she never wants to go to war again, that’s for sure -- but i think she can never regret the war to the point of never having wanted to do it in the first place because the idea of the war being pointless would shatter her.

TRAUMATIZED BY VISIONS: i think she was never the type to have much of the ‘unified force’ visions type, so the vividness of the experience was very weird for her. but she’s a good egg, so it worked out -- she rejected malak’s offer, she helped the republic soldiers (which made her realize that while she WOULD do it all over again, she would try and do it better, which is maybe a fallacy but she can be stubborn when she digs her heels in about something.) she defended kreia against her companions -- because from her POV, her companions were baselessly attacking kreia purely for being a sith when kreia hadn’t done anything yet and could be brought back. (she tried to just knock them out, but ofc kreia killed them all. she vows that if, in reality, kreia were to ever hurt her other friends she would do something about it. she won’t have their blood on her hands again.) some of this was seeing malak reminded her of revan ... and of course, revan is the final vision.

the sight of herself as a darksider at revan’s side was the most unsettling part of the experience, actually. it was the moment she realized just how important she could have been to revan. revan was also the only one she couldn’t tell herself was a vision even though intellectually she knew it to be -- this was no thought exercise, no abstract vision from the force. this felt so real it was like she had actually fallen for a second. if she hadn’t been able to fight/slay revan, she would have been more fucked up, but still -- she’s a jedi and i think like? she ultimately treated the experience like the knighthood trials she’d had to do -- it’s not pretty to face the dark corners of your mind, but you must.

ROMANCE: lesbian triad with brianna and visas, natch!

LS/DS: lightsided all the way, baby

THE ORDER: now THERE’S a kettle of fish. otoh, the jedi are her family, her calling, her meaning. she’s a believer, and she accepts her punishments and that she could have had more faith in the council. otoh, being exiled from the order was a punch to the gut -- she’d have preferred execution, tbh. she was relieved to learn they hadn’t cut her off from the force but it stung that they had let her go on for all those years without the force, believing it a punishment, like they were piggybacking on her self-inflicted suffering to teach her a lesson. she sees their failings. she felt betrayed.

but she is a very level-headed person, and she’s not a blind follower. she has always been the type to question her masters. she thinks there are valid reasons to leave the order. she doesn’t by-the-book the code, more doing what the force tells her is right (no wonder she was so lost those years of travel! she had no guidance of any kind; she didn’t know how to be a person, it was a lesson she needed to learn.)

ultimately, she is a jedi. for the first chunk of the journey she tried to hide from it, didn’t use the force, didn’t dress in the robes, didn’t identify as one and was defensive if someone called her a jedi. but coming to dantooine changed something in her -- she felt it would be callow to enter the temple dressed like some merc with a blaster. so she gave in to her lightsaber and her robes and entered as a jedi. the most important part was meeting the lost padawan thief -- in the girl’s childlike inability to survive/over-reliance on her master she saw what she wasn’t. she was a grown woman, a general, a knight, a master, someone who had survived a decade with no force, someone who had never needed a master to hold her hand. she knew right then that she would always be a jedi, and that there was more to being a jedi than simply calling yourself one.

so she started to heal in her relationship with the order going forward. she started to talk more openly of jedi practises to her companions, and started to train them. she didn’t want the jedi order to die. she knew it was so much more than any one person, or even a temple of people -- it’s something necessary, and sacred.

POST-GAME: yes, fully reconnected with the force. and yes, as mentioned above, she finds revan. it’s a thrilling journey. bastila didn’t want her to go -- “the order needs you” “i’m a jedi, not a bureaucrat” “you are more than that. you are a light, a leader, a guiding star. i cannot --” “and yet, you will.” her friends wanted her to leave even less, but they understood it was something she needed to do, and were touched by the trust she placed in them. brianna totally tried to sneak into the cargo hold of her ship. visas joined her. bree had to practically carry them both out, lol.

when she comes back with revan she’s surprised to find people still want her to lead, not revan. revan is all “omg sis please .... half of them are worried i’ll go sith again the other half don’t even know who i am ..... you’re the one who rebuilt the order” and yeah bree for grandmaster i don’t make the rules that’s just how it is. more jedi come out of the woodwork as things settle down and the order starts to flourish again and bree HATES having to deal with political types and all that but she does it because well. she gotta.

her life is pretty quiet lol i actually think if any drama happens it’ll fall more on revan’s head than hers but if revan gets into trouble bree is there in a heartbeat. they’re bonded now (not force-wise, spiritually) and have become like sisters. bree probably outlives revan and it hurts.

POST-GAME FOR COMPANIONS: mira, mical, brianna and visas all become jedi. (mira and brianna after the game’s timeline because i could NOT with them for some reason lol ...) my atton died </3 and bree mourns him in quiet moments where she plays pazaak in her head against his ghost. visas turns out to be surprisingly good with younglings -- it’s been so long since she’s seen young lives brimming with the force, and it reminds her of home. and the kids LOVE her -- everyone wants visas as a master. there have been fistfights over this. (it took her a long time to accept being called master, side note.)

brianna is NOT good with kids and is like “i shall focus on improving security ...” but she totally creates a brand new form that really integrates hand-to-hand with lightsaber combat. it’s very popular. brianna also tries to go home but the sisters never do forgive her. (it’s hard for her loved ones to watch; she always needs to be told she has a new family.) canderous re-establishes mandalore and starts getting some ideas in his head about a new conquest to build up pride again but that’s when revan comes back and is like “no, bad boy, down, sit” and like, no mandalorian legend will EVER admit that the Savior of the Mandalorian Peoples Canderous Mandalore was totally whipped by a jedi. instead they focus on infrastructure! politics! social securities! other exciting things!

mira becomes something of an errant knight -- she’s not really into the trappings of the order at all, but she calls herself a jedi in honour of bree and the training she got. she likes to travel around and just help out where she can. she’s still very good at finding people; bounty proceeds mostly go to families of the victims of whomever she catches and other times it’s just like, finding a lost little girl. she loves it, and it’s a hell of a lot easier with the force. i also bet she leaves a trail of broken hearts all over the galaxy lol.

mical works in the archives and bree likes to be like “hey you worked for the republic go talk to their representatives for me” and he only lets her get away with this 1/2 the time. the other 1/2 he’s like “you must forgive me i have holobooks to sort ....” and then disappears for like, a week, into the stacks. bree always has to send someone in there to find him and then inevitably they’ll learn he actually dipped out to go track down a rare copy of something or another on a planet a trillion miles away and he’ll be back in a month with super rare items and a mild “oh sorry you were looking for me?” it drives her up the wall.

t3 and hk go with her when she retrieves revan and stick close to the both of them for the rest of their lives, natch.

RANDOM STUFF: unlike revan, VERY good at fighting and tech stuff and all that. she’s mad talented. she has a lot of random skills that she happens to be AMAZING at, like, baking and droid design and fake crying and poetry writing and all this stuff. everyone’s used to saying “well, bree probably knows how...”

the punchline is that she SUCKS at flying and the idea of swoop racing makes her want to vomit. revan loves that there’s this one thing she’s VASTLY better at and will challenge bree to flying/driving/swooping related challenges that she knows bree can’t help but accept even though she HATES it. it’s a running joke in the order that their famous, powerful grandmaster can’t even use a speeder without something going horribly wrong.

the running theme of all of these is I HAVE SUFFERED ENOUGH I DESERVE A SOFT EPILOGUE. also, as with luke in canon, and revan in swtor ‘canon’, i think there’s this ‘need’ you see in various fictions where a great hero cannot live a normal life in the ‘after’ -- they must either die, or disappear. it’s like we can’t accept the idea that they could be ‘ordinary’ and ‘brought down.’ that it’s a disservice to their story in some way. but one of my favourite fantasy authors is tamora pierce and i always loved that her heroes get to live, get to marry and settle down and appear in future stories centered on new heroes. i love the idea of a living legend who just wants to be a person like anyone else. i’m not opposed to further drama in their lives, keeps it spicy, but yeah -- i want revan and the exile to be around, to have to deal with the ins and outs of daily life, to do the hard work of rebuilding the order, the republic. i want them to be tangible beings. so. that’s my take on it.

#kotor character meme #kt #exile #revan #i should post my fanart but #im shy #*

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