Page originally in chapter format, all info is here again in one spot so it's a bit long
The level of wince-inducing fangirling in this page is strong in this one
I apologize in advance because... it really is as mary-sue as you can possibly get
Character created in 1977, original page written 2002, updated in the 2010s, updated again 2.20.2022
Also note that this character and her history diverge from canon SW strongly
*Inconsistencies in timing or dates mean I haven't edited it yet or can't get it to jive
"BBY / ABY" refer to 'before/after battle of Yavin', and current date as of the final
portion of the page is around 20 ABY, but her canon diverges around 13 ABY

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See also the bottom of this page for further info!

Karen Kenobi

Gender: Female
Age: Unknown, looks about 30; conceived around 40 BBY, but held in stasis and not born until 12 BBY* into a creche already gathered by Imperial forces
Skintone: Light, Scarred from Battles
Hair: Brown, wavy, sometimes braided, usually loose at shoulder length
Eyes: Blue-grey
Origin: Jedi Breeding Program (even if accidental)
Parents: ObiWan "Ben" Kenobi and Satine Kryze, note that she does not know the identity of her mother until much later in life
Siblings: None Known (possibly cousins on mother's side)
Mate: none known, though her contacts currently among multidimensional people and worlds may change this ^ Bart Wheeler
Offspring: None Known ^ Bex and Kaatam Kryze Wheeler, twins with Bart
Posessions: Homestead/Study Hall on an isolated world far from the center of things, in what had been Sith territory in the Golden Age; Father's blue lightsaber (picked up on the Death Star shortly before escaping); Assorted Sith technological tools (Force-users enhancements and items which run on it); diadem (hard to see) made of similar metal to Beskar Steel, and set with six varying sized Kyber crystals which accent her Force using ability
Current Locations: Sith Temple on Izorrat, distant outer rim; Carramba High School on Twoarth
Skills: Those of a Jedi in training, paired with Sith Technology, Imperial Senate/Beaurocracy, Teaching, Survival, Dragon Riding and Care
Powers: a remarkable Force adept, heavy on the telekinetic and self-protection end, but with skills in telepathy, empathy, sensing (life, other Force users, items), and language. Her skill with learning to speak, read, and understand even very-foreign languages is brought from the Force, but also her mother's genes; given enough samples of either written or spoken/sound cues, Karen is able to learn that language at an astonishing pace, with simple communication within a day, and complex conversation within a month of steady exposure and practice. Also from both her mother's side and the inclusion of Kyber crystals, she has a well organized and strong memory. Her ability to lift items such as pens, rocks, and small animals is good to around 10 meters, heavier items she tends to put hands-on and lift by boosting her own strength. While she can self-heal, this usually comes after a massive amount of damage has been done to her, and she just... doesn't die. She apparently also has been strongly affected by multidimensionality and moving between realms, because she has not aged in quite some time
Weaknesses: Personal Relationships, Fairly Bad Luck, Hot Temper/Battle Weary (gets into fights she really doesn't want to be in), Arrogance at times
Traits: Karen is a conflicted, but balanced individual. She has always known that something deep inside her aches for something new, be it a new technique, a friend, lover or even a pet. Usually she silences this ache by traveling and seeing new worlds, or alternately by returning to her comfortable study home on the other side of the Galaxy. She has a penchant for quips and chatter to distract either herself or an enemy, which was nearly beaten out of her by Vader as she reminded him too much of his own mentor. Occasionally she will lapse into long quiet introspection, even in mid-conversation, but returns to continue a discussion quickly enough for it not to be an interruption.

Early Life, 6 BBY

The curly-haired cherub of a child raced through a clean white corridor followed by three other younglings of purely Human stock. It was rare to see even a slightly non-human or demi-human race among the people of the Empire, especially here in the command center of a major population zone.

Karen didn't know where she was, and didn't much care. She only cared at the moment that she'd gotten into trouble with these bullies and wasn't enjoying their little race.

She huffed and puffed, running in her white cloth dress until she reached a corner, then skidded around it and ran smack into a tall, gaunt middle-aged man. His eyebrow went up sharply, and then he looked up, deftly picking Karen off the floor and sidestepping as the trio of her pursuers scampered around the corner.

They came to a skudding halt, bumping into each other and narrowly missing the Imperial guardsman who attended the Moff.

"And what is this about?" He said, curt but with a faint smile. He wasn't much for children, but he found this one girl to be intriguing. Almost as much as his other charge...

The trio, a boy and two girls, immediately backed off and tried to calm themselves in the face of the Moff. He was intimidating, scary even. He was on Karen's side - he always seemed to be that way!

Instead of stammering or stalling, the boy stood up straighter and said, "she stole a chip from our 'droid project!"

Karen stiffened and gripped her hands into fists. "I did not! You took that whole piece from mine! I was getting it back!"

The Moff coughed, and stared down at Karen who slowly looked up. Though he was not the friendliest of people, she respected him, almost looked up to him as a father-figure since none of the children here had parents.

She put her hand into her pocket, and drew out a small droid controller chip, and held it out as if it were a dead mouse. "Take it then. I'll make another one." She said.

The three went their own way back to the creche chambers where they hadn't really been working on their droid. They were really more interested in taking parts from other kids' projects and seeing if they could get them all to work together in their own.

Karen's project would have to wait, though. She wasn't about to head back to the creche rooms with them. She stood rather angry beside the Moff watching them leave.

"Karen, you don't have to put up with them. They know the rules as well as you do. Without rules to guide us what do we have?"

"Chaos," Karen intoned by rote. She knew the meaning of the word Chaos, though. She believed that it was embodied in the form of three bullies...

"Correct," the Moff said, his 'r' trilling slightly. "Our young Lord is waiting for you in his chambers. If you can make it there without further incident you will obviously be rewarded."

Karen respectfully nodded, and said, "I'm sorry for making you late," she looked at the guard beyond and knew that he was on his way somewhere important. Maybe even for a meeting with one of the Senators or ...

"Never you mind," he said. Almost with a pained sound, he added, "be good."

He really wasn't all that good with children. But Karen never noticed.

Instead, she walked at a quick pace that only a child could muster - arms stiffly swinging at her sides, and her pace almost a flat-out run, except that it was 'walkwalkwalk' down the halls. No running in the halls. Don't interrupt the Senators. Don't ever - ever- play in the power dome. And don't insult anyone.

She made it to the Dark Lord's chamber, buzzed herself in with a code that he'd entrusted to her, and waited her lessons for the day.

***

2 BBY

"The Kenobi girl is certainly showing her heritage," Lord Vader muttered. His lean companion the Moff nodded.

"Can you keep her controlled?" He asked, darkly.

"Of course. Her will is strong, but her desire is stronger, and that has led her to me. Though it is not yet her time to become an apprentice, she will some day become versed in the ways of the Jedi."

Moff Tarkin glanced at him, suspicious. "You are no longer a Jedi, my young friend. They are no more. I'll not have you teaching her their ways."

"Only so as to teach her the Sith," Vader admitted.

They watched as an impressively agile Karen stood on her toes, bare feet gripping a wire as she balanced with a training staff. Swinging objects came through her path, narrowly above the taut wire, and she dodged them as she ran across the room.

She exerted an almost impossible flip. Impossible to those only trained in physical means. Ideal and easy for those like herself to whom the Force was like her own breath. She half-levitated in the air for a moment, turning her body to face the men below, and while bowing to them with a half-grin on her face, she ducked the last obsticle and rolled - on the wire - up to the completion platform.

"You do not need to show off for us," Vader told her, as she climbed down from the 5 foot high wire platform. "Merely complete your training exersize."

"I'd have done it sooner if you weren't in the room," She said, still smiling. She knew there were boundaries of politeness or respect she had to maintain - for all but these two. Though she knew her training was only going to get more intense from here on out, she still felt a strong attachment to both unusual Imperials.

"Get yourself cleaned up and dressed," Tarkin said, "we are expecting some Senators for a meeting, and you should come to the meal. I expect you to be on your best behavior."

Karen straightened, and nodded again. "Yes sir. Are these important Senators, or just Senators?"

Tarkin didn't hide the amusement that welled up onto his thin face. "Important ones, dear girl. So do actually perform as though they meant something to you."

She bowed again, and turned to leave. She heard every word they'd said while she was up on the wire, but wasn't sure what to make of it. Jedi or Sith, they were the same thing to her: embodied in the dark cloaked shape of her instructor, and in no other way.

The other children from the Creche had been either dispersed to outposts as observers or given over as adopted children of Senators, Moffs or other such highly placed members of the Imperial council. But Karen had been requested to remain. Her powers over the Force were substantial - and Lord Vader knew exactly why. He would not underestimate the girl.

Nor would he let her get out of his control. The Moff's careful plan to groom her for the Imperial Council was working nicely. She could already hold her own in conversations among Senators and their well-bred children. She was nine, almost ten, and she was ready to be a Jedi though she didn't know it.

***

"But Senator I'm sure that you realize your economy will be impacted by your decision to retract from the moons." Karen said, holding a glass of pungent juice in one hand. Her dress was a snug one, which fit her body as though it wanted her to grow up faster. Its shimmering green-grey color shifted when she moved. The senator watched her, rather intensely. She didn't like that one bit, and channeled that disgust into something much more productive.

"Economy, yes. Yes." He shook his eyes off the young Imperial's pale skin, and brought them back to her own blue-grey eyes. "Of course I realize it. But the colony moons have done nothing but complain about self-governing since they were established, and frankly I'm tired of hearing it. They might be best left on their own."

"Until they come to realize that their livelyhood is dependant upon their homeworld," Karen added for him, carefully. She sipped her drink, and didn't much like it. It was a clear amber color, not like the red fruit juices and plain water she preferred to drink at social functions. "After all, if you allow colonies to become sovereign so soon after their establishment, how can you keep their growth under enough control to benefit from them?"

At that, the Senator tilted his head and furrowed his thick eyebrows. "... Yes." He blinked. "Yes, you're right. Why... I suppose I've been so used to hearing nothing but talk of independence from them and their lawyers, I've never even considered the impact properly."

I didn't think so, Karen thought to herself. You bulbous fool...

He wandered off to have another talk with his own set of lawyers. Karen felt a presence behind her, and glanced back slightly over her shoulder without really moving.

"He's going to make it harder for the Moons of Galn to become independant," she commented.

Moff Tarkin smiled broadly, an expression which was oddly echoed on the smooth curved face of the young woman beside him.

"Perfect work, dear girl." He told her. "Perfect work."

***

1 BBY

"The blade must be light in your hands," Vader told Karen, "if you are to use it properly."

Karen nodded, holding the metal hilt of a practice blade in her hands. Not so firmly that she couldn't gently spin it around, knowing where the blade was going to be when she had a real light sabre in her hands. She was better at it with one hand, Vader noticed that at once. Perhaps she ought to have two beams? No, just the one.

And all in good time.

They sparred, not-quite-gently, with traditional metal swords. Their blades crossed and clanged loudly, and Karen felt the hilt sting in her hands. With another hour of exhaustive work, the sting was her friend and companion - her hands rang with numb pain, pain that thrilled her.

She spun into the air, leaping to the side of one well-aimed blow. Vader knew the move well enough - he'd taught it to her. But instead of taking advantage of his knowledge and swinging his own blade to intercept her and cut her leg, he spun around himself, and they locked swords again.

"That was stylish," she panted.

"You waste your energy with speech," Vader told her.

Karen then launched a sideways feint, and while her mentor was busy blocking it she used a strong Force blast with her left hand to knock him off balance. He recovered with a graceful cloak-tossing roll, landing on his feet but standing in a tall and familiar way.

Their exersize was over.

"Good. Your mastery over your Force powers is growing. And your use of distraction is admirable."

"You just wanted to end the fight early," Karen quipped. Though she was panting and grinning slightly, she knew that he was going to get all serious on her. So she returned to her 'ready' stance and bowed to him.

"You are almost ready to advance to your next level of training," the Dark Lord asserted, "but you must be willing to put aside ... silliness such as that."

Karen lowered her eyes. "If that is what it takes."

The Death of ObiWan "Ben" Kenobi ... And others? 0 BBY

As Karen neared the elusive goal of having her own light sabre and her own name among Jedi ... or Sith, as she might be called, something changed in the whole fabric of the Empire.

Little more than a year before, almost the same day as her 11th birth celebration, she had been transferred to a gigantic space station. A top-secret hush-hush 'device' which Governor Tarkin, now a Grand Moff, had initiated. This device was too big to be manufactured near any main space lines, since it was secret.

But Karen wasn't all that concerned about being shipped out with him, her Dark Lord, and it, to the manufacturing sector where it was hidden. It was a mobile station, though slow. She knew it inside and out by the time any new news reached their ears.

She and Lord Vader had traded blows more seriously and Karen was on the verge of mastering her skills - though he would never refer to her as a Jedi. She could easily throw Force at people or objects, manipulate it almost as easily as though she was using her hands, heal or hurt with a thought and some concentration.

She could dance through a firefight simulation with ease. The Imperial stormtroopers, or even the elite guard, could not hope to keep up with her moves.

Karen would use her Force powers only to aid, not to instigate, an action. Almost as though they were incidental to her, and not something highly prized.

She did know they were exotic. She had been to enough Imperial functions where she felt tingling sensations from the other young attendees - her creche-mates that she had not had contact with for more than half a decade. They would always recognize one another, these children of dead Jedi.

Or mostly-dead, as the case may be.

Though almost forbidden, Karen demanded to hear more about her history. She knew something about the creche now, through subtle requests and small Force-nudges mentally. A Senator here or Governor there would let drop a secret meant for no one's ears. No one particularly meaning those creche-born children.

Their parents were unknown, but it was odd that Lord Vader would always evade the topic as though he had something to hide. Karen's knowledge came from hidden info-cubes, holocrons, smuggled in to her private chambers by unknowing Force-beguiled targets.

That the Jedi had been made great over the centuries... That was obvious. That they had been decimated in a matter of months by the new Empire was a fantastic tale, but one which she knew was true. Else, why would there not be any other Jedi than her Dark Lord?

Tales of the Sith were much, much harder to come by. She knew they existed, but they were almost impossible to find. On one slightly dangerous trip to a somewhat seedy locale, she managed to corner a Twi'lek into handing off a snippet of information.

So she knew that there was a Master to her Dark Lord. Someone above him. And, she knew that what Vader was doing with her was strictly-speaking forbidden. "There were always two" - taken literally instead of as she believed it had been intended. 'Always' shouldn't have been read as 'only'.

It just didn't sit well, though. Something seemed to gnaw at her now. There were half-truths to be uncovered, glossed over facts to be revealed.

But she didn't dare ask him.

***

With a strangely slight jarring, the Death Star pulled into an attack position. Karen knew the sounds of this great battle station, she knew that the batteries were being powered up - and not for another targetless test.

She was aware that the Grand Moff was angry, so she remained as far from him as possible. Though he was elegantly older than most of the others on the station, he was feared as though he were the Emperor himself.

And the Emperor... Karen had been brought to him only once, and she knew that he was far far too great an evil to be ignored. She feared that evil, even beyond the level that she respected it.

Karen knew when she'd seen him that there was truly darkness and light in this universe. She also knew who her Lord's master was. And why she'd been kept away from him for so long.

She was no longer convinced of what side she would be on, knowing the difference between Jedi and Sith. It was more narrow a decision for her. Now it was laid plain.

Though she was still confused about what the station had to do with everything, Karen knew while walking along its clean, harshly lit metal corridors, that she was finding herself on the wrong side.

As the weapon - the whole station - geared up for the first true attack, Karen wondered what world it was, that they were hovering near. It was a pretty blue-white world. The stars outside the observation windows indicated a major area...

Alderaan? Yes, that would be it. The two big stars nearest and--

When the weapon fired, she was keenly aware of two things: one was the deaths of millions of people, spirits who were suddenly split from any hope of physical form, the population of Alderaan vaporized along with most of the mass of their planet.

The other was a sharp satisfaction coming from Tarkin and others aboard.

An almost eerie calm remained for a moment, but then even the gigantic moon-sized space station was buffeted by rubble and the sudden vacuume of gravity that was left when the planet had been consumed by the great weapon.

They began to move the station out of orbit - what was left to orbit were mere asteroid-sized pieces.

Karen cried, and didn't know why.

***

Everyone was busy. There was some huge activity on the station which commanded all the important-people's attention. None could be spared for Karen, not even from her mentors.

So she chose to observe, to take her time and concentrate. The ease which she clouded minds was equalled only with her knowledge of the ship's internal layout. She knew when the guards would be walking along what corridor. Where the prisoners were, where the communication rooms were set.

She knew that the alarms going off in the prison area would be attended soon enough by dozens of guards. She avoided that area, but... Still, Karen felt something pulling at her. Something she'd never truly known before.

Kin. Not like the creche-mates she had growing up, but kin as in blood of her blood. She sensed too, that there was something to the activities in the prison area, a familiar tang of her Lord Vader. Two somethings, it seemed. One had come aboard earlier, yet he did not acknowledge anything. Or perhaps he had, and unflinchingly steeled himself to whatever course of action needed to be taken.

Whatever. Karen slunk through the darkness between bright lights, shadows cast by sharp wall dividers and metal struts.

The station would never look truly finished. Even if it actually were deemed habitable by general populace, it would always look like exactly what it was: a weapon and a prison.

It had occurred to her that keeping dangerous political and social prisoners in a place that could be moved from star system to system and be used as a weapon capable of destroying whole planets, was not the best idea ever devised. But she was certain that Grand Moff Tarkin had not added that feature - of keeping their prisoners so near the controls of a weapon.

In most ways, the whole place was so secure. Karen had grown up floating between stations, on great star ships, and only occasionally visiting the ground of actual planets or moons. This station had its own gravity well, not made by machinery. It was an impressive piece of work.

It was her home. It was a weapon that had just killed millions.

It housed someone now, that she was drawn to like a moth to a flame.

Who was fighting for his life, to save those others as they ran toward their little crappy-ugly ship.

The moment that she saw him, she knew why Lord Vader had never referred to her family. Here was a true Jedi. Here was purity, flow, Force and respect. A sharp contrast to Vader's elegant evil lines, the sweep of his cape, the harsh breath of his suit's life support.

But here was just a man, as well. One who, at a fairly young age, as many Jedi did, all but accidentally supplied genetic material designed to be used as the next generation of hopeful Force manipulators.

Here was her father. She knew his name, Kenobi, was hers. The irony of his battle was not lost on her: she'd managed to locate rare records of who-taught-whom. Plus, she heard them speaking.

Vader referred to him as his old Master, but she knew he had a new one. A far more powerful one, in the Emperor.

A knot formed in Karen's throat. When her Dark Lord struck through Kenobi's brown cloak, a shattering clarity sprang upon Karen's young mind. Her father was dead. Long live his spirit.

Lord Vader tapped his foot onto the still-warm pile of clothing which was all that was left, oddly, of the man who had trained him from his youth. He had said, that he'd become more powerful than Vader could possibly know.

It was true. But Vader - at the moment - could not see just how true that was.

Karen did, in a way. But she was torn. How could this happen? All at once like this? She was still slightly taken aback by the sickness she felt at the death of Alderaan. Perhaps it tainted her judgement.

But when Vader and his attending guards walked by her, she remained unseen. She darted into the corridor where her father's 'remains' lay, and picked up the light sabre hilt which had become nestled in the cloth. She could still feel his presence on it.

Karen could not see her father's spirit, but she knew it was there, nearby. He had other places to be. Important places. But for just a moment, the strange shimmering form of Ben Kenobi, ObiWan, watched the daughter he had never known existed. Perhaps he was just as unsure as to what to think or do about her, as she felt about herself just then.

Karen moved only when it felt like she ought, when the spirit had left to go tend to other stranger relatives of people she'd known all her life.

She hurried down to where the council chambers were, darkened and empty. Sometimes the members of outlaying regions would come here and be told by Tarkin that they were either doing well or were going to be replaced by those who would willingly do his bidding.

He was not there, when she arrived. She sat at the edge of the huge black table, staring at the metal and pressform plastic and crystaline device in her hands.

She did not deserve this weapon. She was not a Jedi. She couldn't be a Sith, knowing that her Master was hardly on his own yet. He was still being carefully molded by the Emperor.

Karen clutched the light sabre in her hands, and willed it to life. It hummed and made the air feel crispy. It was a pale blue colored blade, a lovely color. She moved it through the air, still most comfortable with it in her right, while her left was occupied with distraction.

That was no trick a Jedi would use... She suddenly thought. Incorrectly, it turned out, but still, she thought the contrast should be more obvious between the light and dark.

The station was moving again, she felt it kick into its slow progressive dance between the stars. It would take a while, days perhaps, to reach its destination.

Karen went to her private chambers, locked the door, and cried again.

***

"What do you mean, 'under attack'?" Karen asked sharply of one of the white-clad stormtroopers, as they hustled toward their stations.

"The station is under attack! Squadrons of small single-pilot fighters! It's hard to believe, but I guess the rebellion is really that desperate."

She let him go, and bit her lip. The station was almost invulnerable. And of course, the rebellion couldn't hope to muster large enough ships with firepower that could actually do any damage to its exterior structure.

And naturally, any normal attack would be repelled by either fighters as they were deploying, or by the onboard lasers. They wouldn't use the main weapon again unless it was targeted at something big and important.

It had taken the three days of their journey to actually repower the batteries. The weapon wasn't designed to be used multiple times in quick succession, but the distances between stars nullified any real problems of recharging.

Karen thought these things and then they festered in the back of her mind. Was she defending this weapon? Was she thinking of the rebellion as a bunch of pests who were good for nothing but to be used as examples to unruly subjects?

Or... Was she thinking that they were doing everything in their power to maintain the proper ways and means of the galactic realm?

It was true that she was torn between thinking ill and thinking they were the wisest people in the galaxy. She was still only twelve years old, not even a teenager properly, her mind and body were still to be in turmoil for years to come.

When the station began powering up for its next true attack, Karen happened to wander over the observation deck where the Grand Moff stood. He was attended by a nervous little man who almost begged him to leave.

"Leave the station? In our moment of victory?" He spat, and added something to the effect that he was absolutely secure here. Nothing could possibly breech the Death Star's defenses.

Others were not so sure. In fact, Karen knew that several other ships had left suddenly in the last few hours of travel. They were coming up around Yavin, a huge red colored gas giant, and on one of the moons lay the rebel base.

Some people had the good sense in their heads to bail when it was obvious that something was wrong.

And it was just in time, that Karen decided they were right. Something was wrong. Lord Vader was out on the surface with his private ship, having a dogfight with a young man who was, though Karen didn't know it, his own son.

The Force was bleeding through them like water through a sieve. She could feel them. And, she felt ObiWan's presence near the younger man.

Yet still she felt a tinge of betrayal, a hint of sadness because Tarkin wouldn't budge. Why wouldn't he leave the ship!? She had learned arrogance from him, if not from Vader. It made him blind - and still he remained behind.

As Karen stuffed her one single bag of belongings into her own 'appropriated' personal craft, punching out of the light gravity well of the Death Star just minutes before it was to fire upon Yavin Four, she gritted her teeth and wished very much that she wasn't going to miss him.

When the station was almost ready to fire, and Karen was out rather deeply into Yavin's orbit, she turned to see it. Its main weapon had oriented upon the moon, and had almost completed its firing phase. She could see the five points of glowing energy pods, as they were about to connect.

And then the station exploded.

Her heart caught in her throat. The Death Star exploded, into billions of pieces of heated rubble, gas clouds, and some small chunks of metal. Nothing was left, after the glow died down.

It wasn't like Alderaan - she watched the pieces drift by and then get caught in Yavin's gravity. They would surely drift down into the great gas giant within days, perhaps getting hooked up into one of the moons' orbits. There was just not going to be anything left.

She felt the inhabitants there too, over a million men, women, and even children, blown to vapor. Karen felt the pangs of anger, regret, and denial start within her.

She fought them, and fought back a sob. It was a weapon, and had been defeated. It was a big killing machine, made by ... Made by perhaps one of the most dangerous men in the Galaxy. A man who she had grown up to respect and perhaps even adore - if he never acted like a father, it wasn't because she didn't think of him that way.

Karen ground her hand past her teary eyes, clearing her vision and focusing on the tasks at hand. She had to get to Yavin Four, and get there without being shot down by their defenses. She had to convince the rebellion that she was going to help them - because she was. Wasn't she?

Her loyalties were crossed, her views were tainted, and her mind was no longer clear. Her journey had just begun.

Beginning to Learn, 0 ABY

Karen dodged the questions that the Alliance leadership had for her. They didn't call themselves the same things that the Imperials did: rebels. They were the Alliance, and Karen did her best to call it that too.

Yes, she was raised by high-ranking officials. No, she wasn't lying when she said she no longer wanted to live that way. Yes, she wanted to help any way she could. And yes, she was a child. A child with clear potential.

Perhaps she'd be allowed to work 'diplomacy' missions. They would be spying on the Empire now, instead of hiding from it or dodging their attacks. The Alliance were a stronger force than the Empire really wanted to deal with.

Especially now that their main weapon had been destroyed. That had been a crushing blow to their collective ego - and Karen knew that certain people would be more annoyed than afraid because of it.

Certain people, meaning the Emperor. He'd be angry, but never furious - he always managed to keep his head when anyone else with that much power on their hands would have exploded with it.

Karen had only brief encounters with the heroes of the rebellion's forces: Luke Skywalker breezed past her and her ship and didn't even give it a second glance. Half the ships in the Yavin Four base had been stolen or pieced together from existing Imperial craft, so her intact personal runner didn't raise as much suspition as she thought it would have.

It would become a valuable tool, in any case. Since she had reason to have been aboard the Death Star, and was known as a 'civillian' on board it, she would have been allowed to evacuate or leave whenever she desired. Of course, no one would ever be able to catalog just which ships did and did not make it out of the station before it was destroyed - there were too many in the battle, and there had been so many lost in the gravity well on Yavin that no one really cared. She'd discovered these opinions and details as she moved through Imperial territories for the next few weeks. She didn't need a security detail, 'adults' to keep this girl safe, but they sent several with her anyway on these journeys. They were well versed in subterfuge, and knew their roles already, but still Karen was edgy.

It was a gigantic loss, but one which the Empire was determined to recover from; that was the take-away from her information gathering.

Karen relayed the Imperials' feeling to the Alliance leadership, and felt for the first time uncomfortable among socialites and high-ranking people. For all her life's work among the Senators, she was now outright mistrusted, if not immediately suspected of treason for the slightest mistake among them. The Senate proper had been disbanded some time before, but now they were returning as economic leaders, or with Imperial titles to keep them from harm.

"It is the beginning of a new era in peace," said one of the ex-senators who represented a free Alliance world. "But it is a peace we must temper with good sense and caution."

The others seemed to agree, and Karen cleared her throat. Eyes slowly, almost grudgingly, turned to her. She saw that many of them were unsure why a child her age was even present at such a meeting. They were seemingly impressed, however, when she began to speak.

"The Empire has much at its disposal. It has worlds of nothing but fuel - gas planets that are syphoned off for transport fuels. It has food producers and machinists coming from every sector. It even - still - has entertainment of all kinds flowering on every world." She gazed at the elders around her, "that is where they are weakest. I have always been able to sneak information about things, about my heritage, about the rebellion, about the whole of sociey that I wasn't able to get by being forward. Most of the time, I got it from entertainers or travellers. Those whose job it is to appear at social functions and be pleasant to look at or listen to - until they leave. They're not meant to be listening in on conversations between council members, they're meant to be juggling."

The others nodded, some voiced a grunting agreement, while others remained silent.

"While I will never presume to have the same exact take on what needs to be done among the new Council, I do know people in it, some of them very well, and I do have contacts there. If any of them can be of use, I am sure that I'd be able to bring them in."

"There are sympathizers that close to the Emperor?" Someone asked, and Karen tilted her head at him.

"Perhaps that's too strong a word... Neutrality is very important when you're not actually representing a specific interest."

"Ah," said someone else. "As one wouldn't kill the messenger for the letter they carry -"

"Exactly," Karen completed, "you don't want to shoot the entertainment if they are enjoyable enough to be brought back. And, of course," she added, "if you're the entertainment, you don't want to step on too many toes - you might wind up getting shot."

The general mood at this meeting began to lighten. If Karen was willing to change sides and sway sympathies among higher ranking planetary leadership, she was worth keeping on.

There were still a number of people who disagreed entirely that she ought to be trusted, but they were just as hard to convince that she was a Jedi waiting for a master. She didn't much comment on that, save for one incident.

Months after being accepted and showing off what good she might be able to bring to the Alliance, Karen met up quite unexpectedly with the princess, representitive from the ex-world Alderaan, Leia.

The young women regarded each other with distrust - but only for a moment.

"You were the prisoner I felt," Karen said simply, "I'm very glad you got out."

"You... seem so familiar," Leia spoke as if in a daze. She was on her way somewhere, with a number of non-human and human Alliance speakers. But she stood dead still and looked over Karen while the others watched.

"Is... something wrong?" Karen asked finally.

"Your light saber," Leia commented. "It just looks a lot older than the ones Luke is helping make. It looks at least as old as his."

Karen glanced down at the device which was slung in its traditional possition at her hip, and touched it with her right hand. "It is at least as old. Possibly older. It was ... my father's."

Apparently, the taste in Leia's mouth went strange, or at least interesting. "I see." She said, curt. Her typical forceful conversational skills seemed to be equalled by Karen's, if only while they were both in a meeting. In person like this, both seemed somewhat uncomfortable.

They were, after all, both children of extremely powerful men. More: their mothers were all but unknown, it was known that Leia had been raised by the royal family, but not properly by her parents. At least Leia had the benefit of a true step-father - neither of the women really knew the truth at the time.

"You are ... ObiWan Kenobi's daughter, then?" Leia finally asked, and the attendants almost froze in their tracks.

Karen duly noted this, but nodded. Her eyes met the rich brown princess' and she replied, "I am. And I intend to do that name justice, if I can."

Abruptly, with the engines of Leia's transport being brought into a howling readiness beyond, the pale-skinned princess smiled and told her, "I'm sure you will do him proud," and hurried along her way.

***

1 ABY

Karen's meditation was interrupted by the sound of a klaxon going off. There was a ship arriving, and everyone was due to help out unloading it.

Everyone else scampered off to get into lines, droids and people alike standing there waiting to offload items or food. Karen stood up and watched this from her treetop platform. She'd managed to get onto a nicely settled planet while the rest of the Alliance were running about trying to fix everyone's problems.

She knew they couldn't possibly do it. No one could. The galaxy was filled to the brim with people - most of them were poor and many of them really didn't want the interference by either the rebellion or the Empire. Karen went down to help, but this would be her last real contact with most of these people for a while.

***

2-5 ABY

Karen had been called upon to do several diplomatic missions, and had publically announced that though she was still quite the Imperial socialite, the devistating loss of the people who had brought her up had made her wish a bit for the quiet life. This was her excuse to her Imperial groups, so she wasn't pursued actively by anyone. She would appear when and where she wanted to. Essentially a free agent to them, but primarily a planted spy for the Alliance as promised to them.

One group of entertainers made their intentions quite clear when they defected from an Imperial entertainment troupe, after she contacted their boss. Information became a bit less easy after a year or so, things in the Empire were shifting again.

The uncertainty of that once-secure social possition made Karen feel a little useless now. So she decided that in the mean time, while things cooled off, she wanted to learn more about herself and her family - the Jedi, and... whatever else she could find. She'd grown into a teenager with grace and strength, and at least now she knew who some of her family was. The rest? She pondered how she'd get access to Kenobi's history, given the Jedi temple on Coruscant had been completely destroyed quite some time ago.

It was where she should have been raised. It was where she could have learned so much more than she had about her Force powers. Her education had been truly strong, but also very stilted toward an unending love of the Empire. None of the creche-children were ever outright told their possition or where they had come from. Most of them didn't care.

When she ran into one of them, on a short mission into a fringe world, Karen almost lost her cover and her composure.

He was a handsome young man, only one year older than she, and she remembered him from the creche. Perhaps he remembered her - by attitude or appearance if not by her distinct Force aura.

They were in a large, domed party house. The place was run by a number of interests, including several Hutts and a rogue Corellian pirate. Their monetary interests obviously didn't much include being taxed by the Empire - nor did they extend to fronting for the Alliance.

Tamblar had gotten himself a good job as a bodyguard for one of the Moffs, perhaps the one for this sector. What they were doing here, was probably none of Karen's business. But clearly, they wondered why she was here at all.

She was after all a bit flakey in terms of where she could be found at any given time, and had that problem of vanishing when things got serious. Or, showing up just before they got out of control.

Tamblar had long before drawn a connection, but his Moff hadn't. Karen tried to maintain a sort of weepy-eyed disposition - and honestly it wasn't hard. When she saw the Moff's sharply cut grey-green uniform it made her think of Tarkin and she got a bit choked up.

"I have to wonder," Tamblar said, "how it is that you're wandering around an illicit house like this?"

Someone else bellowed an offensive remark about that, but everyone ignored him.

Karen looked around at the curved walls, the domed ceiling done in black with blue underlighting. The whole place was filled with people - mostly gangsters or smugglers, drug dealers and whores... A smattering of Imperials whose interests in those things made it their job to be here, and another smattering of Imperials whose job it was to have a good time before being sent back to fight the Alliance.

"I'm actually looking for someone," she said. She felt him reaching out with his Force, just a bit - he was totally untrained but still quite strong. Whose child was he, then? Didn't matter, his Jedi sire or mother was dead long before her own. She shrugged off the bit of manipulative energy as though she were brushing away a fly on a summers day.

The Moff waved them both off, wanting to do his business with the nearby Hutt in private. He felt secure enough that without his bodyguard,he would fit right in with these lowlifes. He didn't recognize the girl, probably one of the kid's girlfriends or something.

Tamblar wasn't so sure that he ought to leave his post beside the official's side, but he did have more than enough curiosity to lead Karen away onto a balcony overlooking the crowded dance floor. When they got there, he casually leaned a bit onto the railing, but he maintained a tight grip on her elbow. He wasn't letting her go any time soon.

"So, why are you really here," he asked, low and serious.

"I'm really here to meet someone."

"And who might that be?" He demanded with a narrow eye.

"Perhaps you, perhaps her," she nodded toward a dark-green Twi'lek, "maybe someone who hasn't gotten here yet. Why is it you're so concerned suddenly about my welfare? I can take care of myself you know."

She eased her elbow from his grip, and stood straighter, watching the dancing. Karen licked her lips, and then blinked a look at Tamblar.

"He's going to get his butt fried," Karen said.

"The Moff? I know."

That made her worry. "Do you?"

"Of course I do. Everyone in this room knows it."

"So you're worried about me getting in the way?" Karen asked sweetly.

"No. I'm worried about the stories you'll be telling your disreputable friends in the rebellion." That did surprise her a bit, he hadn't let on how much he seemed to know. "I'm not part of your little scheme. Look around you, this place makes more money in a night than most people ever see in a lifetime. Any one of the people here could easily land a deal with either party. But they don't. You know why?"

Karen was intrigued, and asked, "no, I don't. Why?"

Hissing, Tamblar told her, "because it's both sides that will lose in the long run," and he spun on his heel to walk back down to the Moff.

Karen watched him, confused, but then saw something else in the corner of her eye. Up on the wall, halfway across the room and on the Moff's side, there was a dark-suited person placing something on the surface of the wall. With the dancing lights and the loud music, the smoke and all, it was quite difficult to see what it was.

She looked around a little more, and discovered two others doing the same thing at intervals around the ceiling.

Karen stood in wonder and a bit of a sick feeling crossed her gut. Tamblar was watching them too - subtley, but he was looking here, there, up and down. There were others among the crowd. Half the people here knew that the Moff was going to be assassinated.

Perhaps except the Hutt he was talking business with...

So when Tamblar gave a little wave of his long fingers behind his back, and the hidden people began to make their moves, there was a clean line of attack that three beam weapons took to kill the Moff. The explosives on the walls all went off simultaneously, and Karen ducked. She helped get a couple people out, and ran back inside.

It was chaos. The Hutt and the Moff were blasted to death, that much was obvious. But what was also obvious was that Tamblar and one of the Pirates were directing people at the tops of their lungs to get out or go this way or that.

They were being the 'heroes' of this event.

It made a lot of sense, of course, to a logical mind. But to Karen it was disgusting. There was no loyalty anywhere in Tamblar. He'd have made a lousy Jedi.

But then, she thought as she entered the building again, so did she.

The blue-white blade of the lightsaber lit up a small path in the smoky room, and people had the good sense to dodge it as they ran past. The tables all had their little lights or candles on them, but some had been tipped over in the firefight, and a couple actually lay in flames.

"Is everyone out?" Tamblar yelled, and even though he heard the proper response from his cohorts, what he also heard was Karen's voice.

"All but you and me," she said. "And it's a shame that the cross fire hit you on the way out... Or was it while you were throwing yourself over the Moff to protect him? Either way. You died a hero."

With his eyes wide, Tamblar began to raise his laser pistol, but didn't even get it halfway up. A spinning blue blur raced behind him, arcing down, slicing through his spine and barely making a singe mark on his nice suit.

It looked just like a blaster wound.

Karen left the building and the planet, in silence.

Conflicted Interests, 6 ABY

"I need to see them." Karen said, but the long-limbed non-human had apparently already closed up shop.

"Sorry," it said, waving a tentacled finger at her, "no more tonight. Come back when moons full."

"That's too long to wait!" Karen said, abruptly slamming a Force-backed fist into the doorway and making her way into the strange little shop. She looked around, pushing back the dark cloak to reveal her angered face. "I don't want to threaten you," she said, "but I need those charts. It's not a matter of moons or mood - it's a personal quest."

"Ah - and that makes breaking in and pushing me around acceptable. I see." It said, several eyes pulling in on long stalks.

"I can pay you, and I'll pay for your overtime. And a lock, if you need it," she glanced at the door which seemed a little less sturdy for her pushing through it. "I just need to leave, now."

The thrumming of power through the shop was the only audible sound, the generators for the block were being shut down for the cycle.

"You cross the wrong people," the shop keeper said, trundling into the back area of the business, "you run like coward."

"No," Karen said, "I'm not running away from anything."

That might have been a lie according to some of her Alliance friends, but to her, it was not.

"That is what you all say... Give me this," it said as it rummaged through old star charts and navigational network cards. "Give me that. Not running away, always running toward something. Big this, treasure. Big that, fame. Never see them again, not I..."

Karen wanted to dismiss the creature's prattle, but she knew that her journey would lead her past dangers that only the bravest Jedi or explorer could face.

And she was no Jedi. Not yet.

Luke had gone on some quest as well, the year before. Shortly after that, everything fell to pieces. The Empire had strengthened itself, built a bigger version of the Death Star.

Every time Karen thought about it, it made her sad and ill. But she couldn't fight with the Alliance this time. She would be of no help. The contacts she had among the entertainers and elite had all but dried up over the years - been killed off or sent away, imprisoned or worse.

Her skills as a pilot were acceptable for transport duty, but her heart wasn't in that. Karen flew dutifully back and forth between diplomatic meeting places, sometimes pitching in trying to convince new leaders to join the Alliance. Sometimes they were successful. Sometimes they were chased away violently.

Karen didn't want to admit that those were the best times. The narrow escapes, the sudden shock of realizing that she'd been stabbed in the arm, even the time she was dragged to the ground and almost raped - the scars those men left were ones that no one ever saw. But it made her heart race, made her blood quicken. Especially when she recalled how many pieces she'd left them in, when she was done fighting and they were done screaming.

She fought in two large battles with the other ground forces, reveling in her ability to weild the ancient Jedi weapon that her father had used. She blocked most laser bolts, but was still unused to the lightness of the blade - missing some shots and taking several hits to her body and one along her leg which mirrored the cut that her prior assailants had made. Karen wound up in a medical center for months recuperating, and by that time most of the battles had turned to starfights again, leaving her to tend the new wounded.

Her heart was not in that, either. She belonged on a battlefield, didn't she? Her senses cried out for it, she could taste the salty sweat, smell the blood and ozone of laser blasts... She could feel the humming of the light sabre in her hands, the sound it made as it passed into the air. That was her life. There was more to her than just her Jedi sire, whenever she was in the presence of some bounty hunters or the markedly rare Mandalorian in armor, she... realized she still had things to learn about herself.

She knew that her goals had been long interrupted by this three year break. Even studying under the Dark Lord was progression. She knew that she could still apply her knowledge to whichever direction her soul would carry her.

"Here. Just take it. I must sleep now. Block is empty. Dark." The alien shopkeeper said, dimly glowing. "You should leave."

Karen left a sizable amount of local currency near the creature's 'in' box, and tried to shut the door of the strange little shop behind her - but it wouldn't much matter. Their race was undergoing its monthly molt and wouldn't be active again for several days.

The chart that it had given her contained the last known locales of several Jedi establishments - but what she wanted was the hidden codes it showed. Only once she'd heard of this technique of open deception in lettering. She followed the logic of things, and looked over the charts in private, on her small ship.

The Alliance would not miss her. Not right now. Besides, she kept telling herself, if she returned a Jedi - like Skywalker insisted that he would - they would be so much stronger than before! Her heart wasn't in that either, though it bore more of a shine than most other directions. Would she be able to locate a master to teach her? They'd been eliminated and all but wiped from the entire history of the galaxy as far as her education was concerned.

Her trail had led her around quite a few odd little worlds, and had managed to home in on several items that helped put her on a path: holocrons displaying historical records and information that had been dated a hundred years before. This place, it had other sorts of records.

Karen could not decipher anything by looking at the text, so she examined the print out of the star chart itself. It was ancient, perhaps older than the Republic. She breathed in the scent of it - the mask of time shrouded it, the smell of the odd shop pervaded it, but there deeply in the plastic-paper was a scent that she only imagined she'd find.

It was a treasure map. But how to read it? She sighed and fell back, looking at it holding it up above her. She was about to give up and try later, when she saw something. As Karen held the plas to the light, there was a faint shimmering. At first she thought it was merely marring in the paper, but this sort of mixture of plastic and fibers could hardly be dented even after several hundred years.

With both hands clutching the paper, she held it up to a light. And there, between the letters of certain stars, were secondary markings. Three worlds - three Sith practitioners.

Sure, they would be long dead by now, but ... If anything survived that was also an out. That was also a way to learn. And if there was one thing Karen was sure of, she knew that she could go either way. Controlling her anger or her conscience, either way would work just fine for her.

***

The first world was a total waste of time. Karen looked at it from above, circling in orbit, and detected a wasteland of surface radiation and toxicity too high for her to even dream of landing. It was also the closest to the Republic's old border. The newest settlement. The more recently tamed, galactically speaking.

Absently she wondered if it had been the native population that blew themselves to hell, or if the Jedi of the old Republic did it for them?

She had been reading up on some of their less well-known exploits. Sure, the Jedi had always been spoken of with reverence and awe.

That was because of their fighting prowess. Not, she soon learned, because of their good reputation among peoples on odd little planets.

Especially not among ones which were Force-sensitive. Even though they claimed to be quite fair and reasonable, calm and never angry, the Jedi were also unhelpful, arrogant, and almost entirely charmless.

When they came to a world which had something they needed, they would be swooning with joy. When they encountered resistance, these worlds would refuse them anything, the Jedi refused to lift a finger to help shift their social injustices or crime problems.

In the weeks and months that Karen traveled the stars looking for these last outposts, getting farther and farther away from the Empire - and therefore the old Republic - she began to wonder if the Jedi ever had done anything to further anyone but themselves?

"He was right," Karen grunted while fixing her ship up, "they were worthless and simple. No goals, nothing." She twisted the wrench around and was satisfied with the results.

When she straightened again there were two native farmer-types standing watching her. Human, but barely. It looked as though they had some variety of bat in their genetic heritage.

"Little lady has a nice machine," said one.

"Don't start with me, boys," Karen warned. "I'm not in the mood to -"

"We don't wanna fight, little lady," said the other, showing off decayed teeth, "we just wanna have a little fun..."

"That's what I thought you were about to say," she said, and with one sharp motion she snapped her light sabre out. It came to life before their eyes, which went wide.

"Now that's no way to greet your friends!" Said the first. He tried to saunter around to get a hand on her, but Karen merely moved a tiny bit to the right, and lopped his arm off at the elbow. The scent of cauterized flesh filled her nose.

And it made her want more.

The screaming of the first music to her ears. He staggered about, trying to pick up his severed limb but he was so shocked that he barely could control the limbs he had left.

Karen swooped over the front of her ship, as the other man tried to run away. She was still quite young, only around twenty, and she was far from useless in a fight. They didn't know that. All this pair knew was that a fairly attractive young woman had her ship break down on their back yard plot and obviously she needed some kind of 'help'.

Karen deftly dropped onto the second man, he snarled and tried to throw a stone at her - which she caught with the aid of an almost-unconscious Force power.

Her hand would have stung with the stone's weight and surface - had it impacted her flesh at all. Instead, it hovered over her hand with her fingers gently coaxing it to spin.

The smile that crossed her face wasn't purely evil. There was a good bit of 'revenge for the abused' in it too. However she chose to throw the stone with far more Force behind it than her attackers really deserved. Striking him, it nearly took his leg off at the knee, causing him to fall to the ground.

Karen moved over him, as he clutched his broken leg. She flicked the light sabre to life again.

And paused. Something back in the corner of her mind reminded her that this was not a murder weapon - this would not be a murder scene in the morning. Her father - her real father - would never approve of this behavior.

"I have places to be. Don't go assuming any wandering girl is weak enough to fall prey to you." She said, and put away her weapon.

Taking off, the pair of scared men bolted as well as they could - supporting themselves on each other - and would speak of a robed Jedi attacking them from time to time.

Karen ran into a dilemma at the same time that she discovered her taste for battle had not waned. She drifted from her path to fight here and there, skirmishes without a big galactic meaning - fights which were only to prove herself worthy of winning. Gang turf, local squabbles.

Another two years passed in this manner. She had long since lost all contact with her Alliance friends, and they had most likely stopped asking about her. Their main worry would probably be that she'd defected back to the Empire. Of course she'd never have done any such thing.

***

9 ABY

"That's quite a scar," the woman said, packing her healing salves back into their box. "Don'tcha want it looked at?"

"It's old," Karen grunted. She glanced down at her right leg. The scar from the rapists' knife was faded beside the slightly brighter wound from the battlefield. "I'm keeping it to remind myself of where I've been."

The old woman pursed her lips, greying eyebrows flickering up, but she said nothing. After all, she only had one ear, and she didn't need it to hear the screaming wounded.

This time, Karen realized that the battles she'd been fighting were not really her own. They were hollow. Perhaps her taste for blood had at long last been saited?

She paid the woman in the local currency at almost double the price on her clinic's door, "thank you," Karen said as she left.

"No, thank you dearie," the woman cackled. As she watched Karen leave with a slight limp, the healer whistled to herself. "That pup's got quite the busy aura. I'd even say she's a bit of a Jedi like m'paw."

"Your paw warn't no Jedi," the woman's equally ancient looking assistant grumbled.

"He was. How d'ye think I came across this bit o' power here?" She waved her bent fingers, levitating a pen off the table nearby, into her hand. She was well known for being a Force using healer, at least known among their local folk. Karen had no idea, but she had been compelled to go there when her still-bleeding wound from the last battle kept her from sleeping.

The pair watched as Karen - healed in body if not yet in spirit - boarded her small weary looking ship and left their world in search of something new. She got back to her search, almost forgotten.

***

When Karen reached the third world, farthest out from the center of the Galaxy and certainly oldest among the civilized planets, she knew that this was her best chance.

There were no people there, she realized, at least not human ones, and not ones which were acutally Sith in origin. Genetic Sith were long gone. And their Force presence had been fluctuating, spiked because of the Empire's tolerance - encouragement? - and Force using folk were actively searching for ways to gain favor with their Emperor.

This search was therefore punctuated with the danger that those Sith-wannabees might pose.

But this... was a real Sith world. Through and through. The huge temple-like buildings which dominated the landscape bore similarities to ones she'd seen before. On Yavin four? Certainly. In books or vids, almost every planet had one or two. They had been similar to Jedi architecture as well, which should have tipped her off immediately about the path she truly was on.

These Sith monuments weren't just for show. They were not celebrating some individual or vainly praying to some unknown god.

They were libraries. Schools. Art galleries.

Karen walked among the ghosts of the Sith dead, millennia old buildings whispered secrets to her.

She began to learn at last.

Back to Basics, 11 ABY

With a breath to clear her head, Karen stepped into a gigantic cavern. Beyond it lay a ruin which was only myth according to the ancient texts that she'd been deciphering for the last two years.

The Force was tremendous in this place. But so too was the great beauty, and the danger. More than once a week she had to try hunting for her food - a task which the cultured girl inside her almost shrank from. She had always been used to having her food prepared for her, Karen honestly barely even knew how to cook.

But she learned. She discovered that by using her Force manipulation she could heat an object to burning temperatures, or chill it down so much that it would not rot in the warm sticky climate. She could also seem to understand things that no living person had read in thousands of years.

That might have been the spirits of the Sith dead helping her. It was almost as if the words meanings were whispered to her in a stilted accent, a tongue learned haltingly from those who had not spoken in centuries.

It might have been that Karen was a brilliant linguist, too, but she would never know. The small metal and crystal pieces of antiquity she found in almost every building each gave her another goal. Putting them all together would surely help her understand.

But to do that meant that she had to cross this dark, strange smelling cavern. It had been filled at one point with swiftly moving water. The walls told her that.

She dug out a small piece of stone which she'd put on a chain, and held it up before her. Concentrating a little, it lit up with an energy that had been stored through it hundreds of times - a thousand years before. A tiny lantern, a Force user's toy.

Karen could fly herself over the bigger pits, if she needed to. But she felt it necessary that she continue her physical training more than her Force use. Karen worked easily at both - this place probably gave her the energy she needed.

From one narrow stone to another, balancing on her toes one moment and gripping with her fingertips bloodied by sharp rock the next, Karen crossed the entrance to the cavern.

The stone dangling from her neck threatened to fall into her face, so she levitated it away for a moment, looking around. Upside down, hanging on over a watery sludge, Karen saw that the next locale she could possibly reach would get her very wet or very dead if she missed.

Gritting her teeth, Karen released the stone with her hands, but clung on with her knees. Balancing on her fingertips on the small outcropping below her, she then launched into the air and flipped hopefully with enough momentum to land on the -

splash - Stone. Didn't happen. She slipped down into the muck, raising steamy tendrils of what looked to be reactive smoke off the water. She hoped it was water.

There were things darting in it, looked like fish. She'd never been big on fish... slimy little things. Toothy too.

One of them began to nibble at her foot, and she'd had just about enough of this mess. Putting an end to this, at least for the time being, she rose from the water unaided by physical means. Karen shook her hair dry - it had gotten rather long and she'd been meaning to cut it. Now would be a good time for that, since it was getting in her way dangling upside down in here.

"That is not pleasant," she muttered, speaking of the smell that her burnt hair made as she cut through it with the light saber on its most minimal narrow aperture setting. It was still wet, and the ends smouldered a bit.

She kicked the mess of curly brown ick-covered hair into the water, and watched as the small fish wrapped themselves up in it. Maybe they'd get caught in it and die. She didn't much like fish. Really.

The next portion of the cavern looked abyssimal. Simply huge, dark... Even with the little lantern powered strongly by her concentrating Force, she couldn't hope to see the far side. She did see long glimmering tendrils of matter coming down from the ceiling: stalactites that had formed long before the Sith had even been here. On the lower side, she saw roiling white shapes, mist.

Hopefully, there was a floor in there somewhere too. Perhaps doused in water, maybe filled with fish. Either way, she wasn't much looking forward to this. But it was long past time to turn back.

Karen flung herself into the air, casting the lantern ahead of her by a few feet at most. It almost choked her, she let it lead her about. The air was cold in here, but there was a warmth coming from a particular direction, so she headed toward that.

The stalactites almost seemed to propel themselves from the ceiling at her. She was flying, but without much control. What she lacked in talent for this effort would hopefully be made up for later - if she survived the wild ride she just embarked upon!

Left, left, around to the right, down! Karen threw her weight into dodging the big ancient formations, almost wrapping herself around one, then bouncing off the next with a thud.

She hoped that the whole cavern didn't collapse from her shout, and she further hoped that the floor was softer than it looked.

***

An hour or more later, perhaps a day, Karen awoke. Her back was in firey pain, but at least that meant she was alive and could feel. Right?

This survival trip wasn't making her happy. She became more determined than ever that she'd find this ancient building she'd been looking for. If it was, in fact, the last thing she'd do.

When she looked up, back and nech aching, the little lantern had continued to burn even while she was exhausted and unconscious. It floated, too. Tugging at her neck a bit.

It was enough for her to realize that she was on solid ground, not broken and watery cavern floor. She tried glancing back, but her neck hurt too much, and she had to force her whole body around to look. Behind her, the cavern was dark and still.

Before her, lay a huge pair of doors. They looked similar to, but so much older than, the other buildings she'd found on this world. This pair were decorated with long stilted lettering or glyphs - older by far than the Sith writing she'd learned to read.

This was a temple. It was a source of pure power. A place that perhaps could help her heal her broken ribs and arm, a place where Karen was sure she'd be able to relax and learn just why she'd really been wandering all this time.

Balance in All Things, 11 ABY

Karen felt the rush of air as the temple doors swung open, and smiled. It was so simple to control things here. She didn't even have to try moving her broken arm, all she really needed to do was to think about the door opening. And it did.

Of course, perhaps - she thought - she could be dreaming, or dead. This all could just be a big fantasy.

She was quite hungry and decided that pain, dripping clothing, burnt smelly hair, aching, and hunger weren't things that ghosts dealt with. She couldn't be dead.

Her feet slapped on the marble floor, an ungraceful sound to welcome her. But there were other sounds. A rush of water, somewhere near by. The calls of birds, above - the ceiling of this building had opened up in parts. Or...

She gazed up, neck burning in pain, and saw that there were diagonals cut out of the ceiling in a decoration which read in the old text: "Haven". The angular text was on almost everything - it half looked like graffiti, collected on walls and doorways as it was.

But this wasn't the same text as that on the big doors. She wanted to find more of that.

Taking a step or two, Karen remembered that what she wanted was to lay down and rest, heal up, and try finding something in her smushed pack to eat that wasn't disgusting with the water she'd been slogging through.

It wasn't long before those things on her list were completed. Though they were made of stone, the architects of this room had designed places for the weary or worshipful to sit. Dust and a bit of decay met her hand as she swept down onto one long platform. She didn't care.

Though her body was broken and her own power source almost completely exhausted, though she hadn't spoken to anyone in more than two years, though Karen was singularly aware of her lonlieness... Karen felt this was exactly the best place in the whole universe to be.

She slept for more than three days, after eating what meager rations hadn't been destroyed by her haphazard trip through the caverns. In that time, the Force pervading the place had come back to her.

"Surrounding us, binding life together," she muttered words that she had never heard her father say - they hadn't been said to her either. But she woke with them on her lips.

She sat up, careful of her wounds - and noticed that they weren't there. All but the most pronounced scars had healed - the one on her leg had remained, but oddly it wasn't the blaster scar. It was the bladed one.

"To remind me where I've been..." she whispered, her weak voice echoing in the big temple. It seemed that this place decided that she was best off forgetting or putting aside those battles. For now, she was home.

***

When Karen exhausted the possibilities of exploring the rooms of the temple, she set about actually taking stock of anything left intact. There were clear indications that parts of the temple had been both raided and ravaged by time. But for the most part, the things she wanted to look over had been left behind.

Gold and gems were always the first things to go, in terms of valuable trade items. So the Sith, or the pre-Sith, who had built their temple and stored their knowledge here did so without using such materials. While gold was a good conductor of electric energy, there were far better elements which took Force powers through them.

What could have been a simple quartz crystal was laced with a pale green ore - that ore stored Force memories built into it by its creator. When Karen picked that item up, her mind was filled with those memories.

More than twelve thousand years old - this temple was older than most of the known galaxy! Karen built a steady cache of information cubes and crystals such as that one, and finally got to sorting through them.

The young girl in her told her she could sell these things to almost anyone - for any reason. They were pretty, they had their uses in art, and if you were a Force user they could be of great intellectual value.

But she had no intention of selling them.

Sharing, yes, but not selling.

Then, around a routine of hunting and cooking, repairing her clothes and gathering what little precious and valuable items might be sellable, Karen learned the ways of a people that were long ago dust.

***

13 ABY

She was no longer a very young teen. But neither was Karen even middle-aged or old. She had a look about her that said maturity - but not age. She was barely twenty five, and had seen more action in her quarter-century than most people in generations.

Her starship had weathered the years on this distant planet well - she hadn't used it for more than a few skips to known spots across the world, but had made sure that all the parts worked and it could get her to the nearest system in. If she needed to, she could sell it along with the other things she'd found and get a better one.

This temple she resided in had been situated over a spot that was perhaps the biggest remaining bastion of Force-enhancing crystal, Kyber or Kaiburr as it had been known in the common languages. It was where she collected a small number of those crystals into a diadem of sorts. She did not realize that the methods she 'developed' for forging them, collecting metals and smelting them back into liquid form, then casting into a thin line to set those crystals in, was one that her mother's family might have used. It felt right, she'd found tools and a forge - and the knowledge of how to use those things flowed just as easily as the Force through her. She had not known anything but the name of Beskar with regards to 'it was Mandalorian steel' - she'd never seen it, the bounty hunters she'd brushed up against wouldn't have let on that their painted and enameled armor was made of such a thing. The techniques they used to refine it were likely all but lost on their worlds, it was very possible that those techniques had originated here on this planet. So she counted 'blacksmith' among her newly gained talents... Though she wasn't sure she'd have the strength to do more than make a simple trinket like this. Plus, the supply of the ore and items she'd melted were in short supply. Probably missed when the last plundering thieves had been through the place thousands of years before.

Her skill with the Force bloomed even more than it had when she was young, when she put that diadem on. She didn't want to appear too pretentious or 'princess'-like. She was still a touch vain, but had been unwilling to attract attention for so many years, she hid the object under her hair - which had grown thick again.

She hadn't been able to determine just how this planet she was on hadn't been rediscovered or even approached by either the Empire or the now-extant New Republic. It was quite far away from everything, but Karen's Force-vision had given her the impression that it used to be more central. Lines of power that still lingered, like the thin scars on her body, reminded her that events of times past could still be learned from.

And learn... she had. It was amazing how much information there was still tucked into these small cubes and dodecahedrons and pyramids that remained scattered across the planet. Great libraries, pillaged for their physical wealth, but all but ignored for their knowledge? Fools who didn't know how to read the script on the ancient buildings would just brush past most of that in favor of the old castle-type places, armories, warehouses.

All this knowledge was more fulfilling than the biggest banquet. Karen knew that she would always be a bit on the hot-headed side, but it had been years since she'd been in contact with people let alone groups or gatherings of them. How would she adjust if she had to be around them? Well, there were instructions on how to deal with that among the holocrons she'd read. They were fascinating, though not always a good fit for human moods or bodies: the ancient people who had made all of this were distinctly not human.

Her mind brimmed with knowledge, almost all of it related to Force use. How to feel through the air at a distance, not just manipulate an item with an invisible twist of power. How to clear her mind of stray thoughts, or focus on one single piece of information, rifling through her own memories as though files in a computer. And more importantly, how to develop new technology. She wasn't an engineer, but - but... long long ago, in the creche, she had been praised as an adept designer. She'd often wondered what her light saber would be, if she hadn't just found her own sire's? And holocrons, well she could make those. Assemble them from thin sheets of broken crystal or glass, fusing them together with metal, and depositing inside them a tiny Kyber crystal that had data flowing through it like a shimmering chunk of her own mind.

She was becoming restless, she did need to do and not just think. Hunting relieved her body of some energy, but it wasn't her body that was so in need of change.

Now it was time to return to ... well, wherever. She had no idea what was going on in the galaxy since she'd left it. Though she pretended not to care, her memories of this world or that moon, this squad or that medic came back to her.

And, her times in the Imperacy as well. She had learned to fondly take those both with a liberal distance. They could do her no good if she didn't learn from them.

What Tamblar had said, that both sides would lose in the end, was very probably the only truth left from those days. The only similarity to the galaxy she knew. Rogues, pirates, smugglers and entertainers were forever.

Karen was none of those things - at least, not mostly. She'd never pirate any ship and plunder it for things that were intended for people already. She had been a rogue - killing even if accidentally and resorting to stealing items or food to get off-world once again. She was certainly not an entertainer, that much was sure. As far as smuggling, it was a vaguely noble profession as far as she could tell. Her contacts in the Empire or Alliance would both freely use smugglers as they knew routes that normal space ways didn't. And they had keys to doors that only certain people needed to open.

Karen wasn't sure what she could offer the galaxy now. She had to determine what if anything her skills would allow for.

She could fight: but she didn't much feel like it any longer. She was an exceptional diplomat... but she no longer knew any relevant information to trade or use to her advantage. Karen had knowledge - that left her with one clear method of re-inserting herself into things.

She would teach, about the Force. That was it. She was mature enough that she'd be respected and taken seriously by teenagers - her primary targets for the information she carried. She wasn't so old that she would be seen as an outsider among those same young people. She'd been in battles - many of them - so she'd have the attention of rowdy or unruly kids (and be able to deal with them if need be).

Yet there were still things that drew Karen away from the central portions of the galaxy. Stars glimmering in the night sky above this unnamed ancient world.

She stood for a long long while, next to her ship which had been packed, and wondered where she should go first, if not back home to the Alliance.

***

"It's not of very good quality." Said the man, his wild eyebrows catching the light and almost making Karen laugh. But she was struggling to maintain enough composure already - not to throttle him!

"Good sir, it does not look like much but this item is more than six thousand years old," Karen said, "it's dingy because it's old." She didn't add like you, you windbag!

Though he didn't look impressed, the man made an attempt to look it over more thoroughly. His eyes were old, but they were keen. Karen detected a tiny fraction of Force power around him, enough that she was drawn to his odd little nook among hundreds in this big open-air marketplace.

There were many distractions, but Karen watched him examining the box.

Finally, he asked, "what does it do, then? I can't have useless junk, even if it is 'six thousand years old'." He finished with a harrumph.

With a glimmer in her eye, harkening back to the way she'd have looked as a child causing mischief, Karen held the box in her hands and whispered, "this."

As she gently concentrated, she felt the light-box come to life. It was a very simple lantern, like her corded stone, but it was bigger and had other uses for one who could figure it out.

The inside of the burnished coppery-bronze colored metal box began to pulse with a faintly green glow. Then, shortly, it gave off a steady white-green light. Karen handed it to the man.

"It is a Force-sensitive lantern, my good man, that's what it's good for. I thought you might like it."

His eyes went wide, and he took in an unconsciously long breath. All his sales-man-like composure had been broken when she began to light the box. He could sense her ability, and felt the box's energy store now.

"I'll ... take it." He said, and then paused. "It's really that old? It's... one of those ... things, isn't it?"

It was as if he deleted the word Sith from his sentence without even thinking. No one mentioned the Sith out here - this was a closer area to their former haunts than the middle of the galaxy, and they might have been better known than even the Jedi.

That worked well for Karen, after that point. The man, whose name was Edmy, showed Karen in to his peculiar little nook in the cliff wall. After a moment of walking - light showing through the Force-cube - they reached what was either his home or a very cramped store.

Probably both, Karen thought, as she saw his curtained-off cot room and a little kitchen. The walls were entirely covered in ... junk. Every color and texture of item she could possibly imagine, and a lot she couldn't, were gathered in piles and stretched across tops of shelves. Bottles held exotic looking liquids and objects floated in some of them. Boxes full of more stuff, wires and electronic components, shards of metal and plastic, were everywhere. The floor was a maze of waist-high stuff.

At least Edmy didn't make any excuses for his clutter. "Now step around those. Don't fall on anything. No guarantees. If you break it, you pay for it."

It sounded like any speech he'd give a shopper - but then he added, "I'm looking for something you should see, now. You wait here. Don't take anything."

...How would you possibly know anything was missing? Karen thought but watched after him as he crept through the maze of his home.

The eerie thing about the place was that it was almost entirely dead silent. Even the small noise coming from the lighting fixtures seemed faint. The huge column of stone that the shop-home was nestled within housed hundreds of other such places - possibly connected through tunnels on the inside. Karen hadn't seen any ladders leading up to the higher balconies up the cliff face, so she had to assume that either they were for fliers or hovering craft, or people who knew their way around the place.

In the silence, then, Karen waited. She wanted to get some cash for this item but realized early on that the locals only dealt with barter anyway. Perhaps he had something left over from another starfaring traveller.

When Edmy came from his inner sanctum Karen knew that he'd found something that was far more valuable to her than a little lantern could ever be.

It was a box, but within were two items. One was a rolled up plas-fiber map similar to the one she'd used to make it out here in the first place. But the other was apparently a key of some sort.

It was laced with the greenish crystals that she'd come to know as Force-enhancers in the Temple. There were different varieties of stones and crystals, she'd even found some very rare red and black ones which she would keep on her person for emergencies. But the green ones were most useful - and thankfully most common.

"I never had use for this..." Edmy admitted, "but I know you can find out where this key leads to. The map ... I don't know. Never been much on maps. I only listen to stories about this system or that." He muttered as he walked a tiny circuit around a cluster of boxes.

"It's meant for a door locked by someone's Force powers." Karen said, looking at the key. It had an inscription on it ... in the ancient language which she had never been able to decode. She'd never found enough of it to learn.

"May I?" She asked, before taking the map out. Edmy nodded, encouraging her with the desperate look on his face. He clearly wanted to know what she'd find.

The map, she held up to what little light was available. It showed nothing more than a few cuts and scrapes - not like her Sith map. So she looked at it in a more traditional light, saw a strange marking around a series of planets which were quite far from there. Again, she could not decode the language.

But she thought about using her Force power on a whim. Something about the tingling key she could still feel sitting in the box made her take a deeper look at the map - but this time with her eyes open to things like auras or Force.

Flowing around the map were lines, words she couldn't read, and a picture of something fantastic.

"Edmy, can you see this?" Karen asked, finally. She turned the page to him, and it looked as though her eyes were glowing like a cat's.

Edmy shook his head, peering at the parchment. Karen took his hand, gently, and moved a little of her own power through him. With a start, and almost pulling away, Edmy realized that she was sharing her ability to see Force lines.

"That's a dragon!" He exclaimed.

"I thought it was," Karen said, smugly. "This map is as old as ... well, the place I got the lantern. I've been traveling a long time looking for things. This is ... Edmy, I can't just leave you with that little lantern box. It's not enough."

Karen made to produce some kind of item or compensation from her somewhat shabby robe, but Edmy wouldn't hear it.

"Now now, young lass, you don't have to worry about that. The lantern is more than enough for me. I'll be able to use it. It won't just be something pretty laying about like the rest of my things." He waved his old hand and almost knocked something down.

"But-"

"No! No buts - I'd never do this for anyone else. But what you just showed me was worth any hour of haggling I've ever done. All I ask," he said with a wink, "is that you show me whatever's there, when you've found it."

Karen slid into an easy, friendly pose, "you don't want to come along?"

He laughed loudly, continued to laugh the whole night through.

***

Edmy pursuaded some of the locals out of a number of little things for Karen, to help her on her way. He found her some new clothing - things which had been expertly dyed and stitched together. They were now re-tailored for her muscular frame by a woman who obviously wanted to comment on Karen's odd collection of still-remaining scars.

She didn't, though. And Karen did not talk about them either. She wound up in a colorful rainbow-fire pant suit that looked quite remarkable under her new dark robe. The old clothing had to be all but thrown away - she'd been living in it and one or two other things for half a dozen years, and it showed.

Eventually, with her ship filled up with fuel and food, items she could more conventionally barter elsewhere, and the stock of her Sith items, Karen bid Edmy and the others who had helped her farewell.

"Are you going to that place now?" Edmy asked, hopeful. He was so boyish when his interests were piqued, and so gruff when he was dealing with some mundane duty.

"I've got to visit some old friends first, but," she held up the map and tipped it at him, "I promise you that I will go, soon, and I'll come back here with whatever I can. If it's a story, that's going to have to do."

"If it's a story I'll be sure to use the little record-box," Edmy reminded her, she'd found a new use for the lantern and taught him how to work it with what meager Force power he had. "But I think it'll be something... bigger."

Karen gave an amused look at him, and at her crappy-ugly ship, "I hope it's not so big I can't carry it around..."

Arrival to Calyeni Caverns, 13 ABY

The trip that Karen took back into Alliance territory led her to believe that there were good and bad times ahead for her old friends. They were now calling their organization the "New Republic" and things seemed mainly sedate.

Mainly - but not completely, and there would always be an Imperial presence lurking about. On the fringe worlds which had actually gained benefits by throwing in with the Empire, those Imperials would remain secure.

It seemed that the deeper back into the core she went, Karen found herself surrounded by happy cheerful people. Except those who had to work even harder to maintain their old standard of living. The division between rich and poor had become even sharper in her absence.

Karen's heart was torn. Should she track down the high-ups from the Alliance? She wasn't even certain most of them had survived the big battles that everyone spoke of. Those battles ended the Empire's reign, but at a huge cost.

Or... She could start looking for some of her old Imperial cohorts. She doubted very much they'd really want to see her, though.

So she decided that even though there was a galaxy worth of newness out there... None of it was what she wanted. She didn't want to rehash her old haunts, she didn't really want to open old wounds. She did, however, need to figure out how best to begin finding 'students'...

Karen made her way into a starport where she intended to trade in her beat up old craft, now a 'classic' by some collector's terms.

Before she actually sold it however, she very carefully unloaded the navigation computer's memory, all the star charts, and every notation she'd made during her decade-long absence. Whoever bought it would have to put in a new navicomp, anyway.

But she would hardly want anyone else wandering through her notes and finding the riches that she'd located - they wouldn't understand how to treat the worlds she had been on.

Karen took the pieces of her ship and loaded them into a carry-cargo unit, along with her other goods. Once the whole little ship was gutted of things she'd use or had owned, she put it up for sale and headed off to a local inn.

She still had a number of unusual items left to barter, and it seemed that she attracted more than her fair share of attention just walking down the street. Her clothing was totally unknown, and the fact that she boldly displayed a light saber on her hip, in addition to the blaster at her other, made her a target.

"So exotic," said one local alien teen. He hung out with three others, only one human among them. They all looked a little hungry and a lot like they'd been kicked out of whatever homes they had lived in.

"I don't think so," another said, "too ... rustic. There's no synth-fibers anywhere on it."

"If you're referring to my clothing," Karen said, offhand as she glanced at them, "you're right. It is rather rustic. Hand dyed, and tailored for me."

Her tone was a warning, which they acknowledged but didn't heed. They followed her all the way down the line of shops she examined, which led down to a rail transport station.

A huge semi-modern looking train sat on the tracks, but it didn't look like it was going anywhere for a while. In fact, it looked like people were camping in it.

When she reached a point near the train's engine, the foursome of youngsters decided to make whatever move they could. She had a light saber. Those were worth a lot.

She had a light saber. Those could kill you in a moment. Karen kept that in mind, when she heard the rush of light footsteps from behind and to her sides. What she didn't count on was the one leaping down from above!

The half-canine looking boy tackled her from above, while she was turning to face the other three. Good tactic, she thought, a little too late. She went to the dusty ground, heavy with the boy on her back. He tried to prevent her from getting up.

Failing that, he tried to hang on to Karen's shoulders as she rolled to her side. That very sort of move had been done on her before... Many years before. She couldn't help but flash back to the foursome of grown men who assaulted her - her temper flared and she went into combat mode.

Flinging the boy nearest her side with a Force blast, he struck the side of the train, and crumpled into a heap below. The one on her back clung on and tried to get a grip around her neck. She took her right arm and grasped his shoulder, tossing him physically off her and into a pile of wood scraps.

Karen looked at the other two, with a menacing eye. But they were tough, these boys. And, they'd already attracted a crowd. Chants of "Fight! Fight!" broke out.

"Keep back, while you can still walk away," Karen warned. Her hand hovered near her light saber, but she didn't want to pull it on the boys. The crowd perhaps, but not the boys.

One of them listened, but the other did not. His black-brown furry skin was covered in dirt and grime, and he actually left a trail of dust behind him as he bolted up to her. Fists flying, he tried to assault her with speed on his side.

Karen moved quickly, but still got hit a number of times. His fists were hard, fingers covered in calloused knots. But she was still a far more talented fighter, and she managed to lock both his hands under her arm, and rendered him unconscious with a pair of knee-blows to his gut. He fell to the ground with a grunt, as his friend tried to back out.

The group of people betting on the outcome of this little spat wouldn't let him go. Of course, they'd probably beat him senseless later on anyway.

Karen let her breathing go back to normal, while the angry crowd tried to get her to attack again.

"I'm not interested in this. This isn't worth my time," she said, low. "Now get out of my way and let me get back to my room."

"So some Jedi wants to run, not fight?" Someone yelled, and chanting began again.

"I'm not a Jedi," Karen said. "Jedi don't know what I've learned. But I'm not in the mood to play with you any longer."

Karen sprung to the slanted side of the train engine, clung on long enough to get her bearings, and then lept into the air using a bit of levitation. She cleared the crowd easily, and found her way back to the inn.

***

The new ship she had was a much nicer model. Sure enough, she'd found a collector of old Imperial junk. He wanted to restore it. She was just glad to be rid of it at last. It smelled.

Though it was fast, the new ship wasn't really as quick in the atmosphere as her old one. But it would do. It had far more storage space, and an area to move around, sleep, and cook in. Those luxuries were not ones found in an Imperial single-person jump craft.

Loading her old posessions onto the new craft, Karen thought again about whether she would head back to the core or not.

Deciding 'not', she pulled out the navicomp and downloaded its contents into the new model aboard her ship. It protested: there were no legally recognized space lanes on that list!

"I don't care. We're not playing in that part of the galaxy." She muttered at the comp, which meekly beeped back at her. Then, after clearing the gravity of the last world in the system, she took out her new map.

The key glimmered in the darkness, but the map still glowed strongly with its Force-text. Someone had concentrated very hard on precise instructions on this map, and embedded it knowing that some day someone would come.

But would there be anything there? The other old maps had little going for them now - the Sith instructors were all long gone and their worlds were wild again. Their society might rise again, but it wasn't likely.

Karen didn't want to just jump into another wild chase, but she so desperately wanted to find out why there was a clear image of a dragon on this map. So she punched in a number of coordinates, which the navicomp told her were ridiculous.

"I'm going to yank you out and leave you on a moon," Karen said. Though the navicomp wasn't a true sentient droid, it certainly thought it was. It shut up.

***

It took several jumps, and a number of weeks between, to locate the place which was listed on the map. The items were probably close to ten thousand years old by now - and stars drift in that time. By a trial and error method, Karen finally located a world which vaguely looked like the one shown on the map.

There was something quite odd about the planet, though. In fact, about the whole system. Surrounding it was a thick gas cloud - but one which was almost invisible to the naked eye. It registered on the navicomp as 'interference', but hardly could be seen while in the ship. She knew it was there, it had a tingle to it - one she'd felt while in the Temple. What exactly was this thing, that bled Force strongly enough to feel at a distance like this? It was not something she'd ever even heard of, though - wait, maybe there had been the hint of such a thing in one of those holocrons. She'd have to relocate it when she got back.

When Karen brought the small craft into the system, she felt something very strange indeed. It was as if her guts were twisting - but not in a bad way. She felt energized and exhausted at the same time. It was as if the Force absorbed her and pushed her back out somewhere else.

The navicomp didn't respond when she tried to plot a course out of the system, if need be. "Great," she muttered. She had little choice but to locate the planet beyond that nebula, which wasn't hard to do, it was right there.

Deciding to head down to the main world, Karen steeled herself for a place long-dead like her Temple world.

What she found was hardly dead. It was a thriving, mostly-human and oddly-not-human society. It was filled with Force users - but their outward appearance indicated that these people treated the Force as if it were magic, not something else.

She guided her ship down into an area which had other craft on it, a flat landing pad for aircraft - or something.

Before she actually got out of her ship, however, she saw something that made her heart quicken. A darkness above, all around.

Dragons.

So they did exist. Just like the map showed. They had long, elegant wings, and whiplike tails. Their skin shone and their armored bellies rippled with strength.

Karen got out, dropping to the ground without aid. She had to find out more. Hopefully, the key which had been included with the map would come in handy - but she wasn't counting on it. Everything looked relatively modern, if strangely made. It didn't look as though she had to unlock anything to get to a dragon or some such quest.

She tied it to the lantern stone cord, around her neck, just in case. It weighed little, but the crystals were a bit scratchy on her skin, not smooth like the diadem she'd forged for herself - Karen hardly even noticed the circlet on her head. So she carefully nestled the lantern and key cord outside of her clothing.

And her clothing seemed to fit right in with everything here. Color filled everyone's lives on this place. The dragons mirrored that.

There were still people with long swords, mounted guardsmen on exotic long-legged mammals, and a thief running about in the market when she found one of those.

It was not so very different from any other world she'd been on. But this one still thrilled her. She could barely speak the language, but she would catch on quickly - plus she had her trinkets of Sith tools. They were immediately requested as trade items, if not as Sith relics than as magical tools.

Everyone - almost everyone anyway - seemed to be proficient at something magical or Force-oriented. Karen realized that she would be able to fit in here, possibly, to pass along her ideas of meditation, and her skills at war.

But she had to go back to Edmy with something. What that something was, would clearly have to be something special.

Bonding at Calyeni

Edmy would flip. This place with the dragons, people of all types, and ... magic, powers, science and technology... Everything seemed to coexist here! Karen was thrilled and she wanted to delve into the mysteries of this library, that book, this big tome.

But more, she wanted very much to see the dragons up close and personal. She got the chance, shortly. When she wandered through one of the big caverns, there were not one but two females on the sands with eggs aplenty around them.

That was as close as she could get, any closer and the dragonesses would surely have her hide. Until she was accepted by them, the people of Calyeni anyway, she couldn't see the dragons.

"I must be crazy," Karen muttered to herself. 'Dragons. I can't bring a dragon back to Edmy. Could I?'

She blinked and looked around. There were lots of little stores with trinkets, and she knew by now (she'd been there for two weeks at least) that her money spent just as well as anyone's.

She went to one stall in a market, and haltingly said, "where - find - gift - everyone?"

The seller at the stall tilted her head, lifted her eyebrow, and blinked. "We don't sell slaves, if that's what you're looking for."

Karen was surprised that she understood the woman so clearly. Why couldn't she make herself understood that way?! "No, no slave... Gift, for someone who has ... everything, already?" She held her hands on a Sith item that gave her ideas for words, and the stall owner nodded.

"Something special. Good, yes, go that way. Flitters, eggs, take a while to hatch. You'll be here a while."

"I - I will?" She stammered.

"Of course. You're here for the hatching, aren't you?"

Without pause, Karen glanced back at the Caverns. "I suppose I am, then."

She bowed to the woman, thanked her and went on her way. The stalls were packed in, but not as hard to reach as those on Edmy's world. She did find one she was interested in, and realized what thewoman had recommended was a little pet for Edmy! Of course - that would have to wait, because she'd hardly want to give him a gift that had already become attached to her!

But then Karen made her way back to the Caverns. She was hustled back into a room, and given a crash course on local events. There were eggs, she'd seen them, but now they were hatching and she was one of the few people who had the talent or been in the right place at the right time, to stand for them.

"I guess that would be great," she said, and allowed the attendant to bring her hastily to the sands. There were a number of beautiful little hatchlings sitting on the sands, near broken eggs, and other still-rocking unbroken ones nearby.

"They've already hatched?" Karen asked, but there were few people paying attention to her.

Several of the already hatched ones walked around until they decided to pair with one another, rather than finding a rider-type to bond with. Karen was slightly disappointed, but then the other eggs began to break open too.

At least two pairs of dragonets bonded each other, a couple stayed unbonded entirely, and a couple others decided to make their way to the candidates. This was all so very strange - but then Karen's life had been quite queer all along, she just hardly realized it.

One of the eggs hatched to reveal a fantastically beautiful black with starry markings, who paired to a man named Tom. He was so lucky, Karen thought.

The biggest egg on the sands broke open to show off twin red-and-whites, with subtle differences in their markings. One of them shook himself off, and walked right up to Karen. He gave off a loud trumpet, and mentally he told Karen, I am right here! You can stop looking! You've found me!

"Brychwynth," Karen said, the name coming to her mind as easily as any Force-given talent. "You're hopeless!" He sat there on his haunches grinning with a little tilt on his head, and she rubbed his chin.

They were about to leave, someone had told her that once the hatchlings come to bond, they'd be hungry and there was always food available where hatchlings could reach it, Karen stopped. There was something pulling at her, almost as though the cord on her neck was being held by someone else's hand.

A teal blue female dragonet jumped into the air, and then ran quickly - almost flying - at Karen too. The dragonet had an almost human sheepish expression on her muzzle when she said, Wait, I ... I really like your clothes.

Again, a name appeared in Karen's mind like an oasis turned real. "So do I, Delyth, come, let's get you two something to eat."

They left the sands at last, but Karen could tell that Brychwynth would be trouble when he stuck his tongue out at Delyth, and she turned away shyly. Karen heard there were several other bondings, and most to each other on the sands, but honestly - she hardly cared about anyone but herself and her two lovely dragonets.

Brychwynth! Annoying pest!

Delyth - shy girl!

Returning to Edmy

Karen helped the pair of dragons to learn everything they'd need to survive. But she also doted upon them, some might say spoiling them rotten.

Brychwynth certainly took advantage of it all, while Delyth was a bit more conservative and thankful for her lot. Both of them grew quickly, into fairly large dragons. While Karen learned more about the local magic, politics and the like, the dragons would go flying together over hill and dale, exploring while she was out. On her return, they would all happily relate everything that they'd done.

Karen realized that before long, they would in fact be way too large to transport on her ship. So she made arrangements to leave early - their training wasn't finished, but then again Karen had other things to do than participate in this war or that dispute, or even involve herself in the fight against the natural enemies of the planet.

She had to get back to Edmy, and back to her goal of collecting students to instruct. Karen readied her ship, and the dragons (who were still about the size they are in the image above, hardly their full size) wandered around in it until they each found their own area. Bry would make a fuss when his blue counterpart wandered through 'his' ship, and privately Delyth would grumble to Karen about how over-possessive Bry was.

Karen made a last trip out to the market, before leaving. There, she picked out two eggs, one was smaller and warmer than the other, and put them in a basket with sand. That would keep the eggs warm, for their journeys. She had bought other things, supplies and food, clothing, and weapons, items to trade and all sorts of interesting books, already.

"You both better get ready. Don't go running around, while we're taking off."

But you never even learned how to ride us yet! Brychwynth complained.

"That's all right, Bry, I'll learn when we have the space. We can't all live in the ship while you guys will grow up to be big like your parents. You won't stay small forever." Karen sighed. She knew the truth: once they reached somewhere nice, she ought to just put down roots and ...

Roots - well, that was where she'd go. They would certainly fit in on the old Sith temple world. Images of dragons flying over the big ruins and the old temples thrilled her, and made Delyth coo with pleasure.

That sounds like a good place to live. We will fly best there. And you like it there too.

"I do," Karen said. "Now, tuck your wings down, and try not to hit anything."

Once everyone was settled, she powered up the ship and took off from the ground. It took some time to get back out to where that tingling nebula was situated, but there she knew was where she had to head. They drifted through it with the same odd sideways-sensation, and suddenly were on the other side back in Galactic space. Karen programmed in the flight coordinates, with a verbal and mental nudge to the dragons to tuck down and stop squirming. Since the navicomp responded properly this time, knowing its last location and seeming to think there had been a glitch (why was it more than half a year after her last command it wondered?) it readied the best course toward the world where Edmy waited. Hopefully he was both patient and... well, alive.

The dragons were almost panicky in this ship's artificial gravity, but then when they hit hyperspace, and were on their way to Edmy's planet, they relaxed.

This is almost like the nexus, said Bry, only slower.

"Slower?!" Karen said, laughing, "this is hyperspace! It's faster than light!"

But light travels at a speed, Delyth reminded Karen wisely. We do not need to travel at a speed, we merely arrive.

Finally, something the two dragonets agreed upon! Karen watched them mutter to one another, and finally decided that they would have to be fine, while she took a nap. It would be more than 80 hours before they would arrive at the planet, three jumps to orient and one to refuel, and she had to keep them from destroying the ship in the mean time... She hadn't realized how far that trip really was. After having made note of the nebula or ... whatever feature it was that clouded her instruments, they were in the same, familiar space she was born into. But they most certainly had not been in that space in any way at Cayleni Caverns. She'd been concentrating so hard on learning dragon anatomy and training techniques there, that she'd hardly had the chance to look up at the night sky. It bore no familiarity to these stars on the navicomp.

***

It was an exhausting couple of days. Karen twice had to separate the young dragons - a difficult feat even with Force-enhanced strength on her side. They would argue over anything - who would lay wider on the comfy spot, who could sit under the starlight-window and watch the streaky stars go by first. If it wasn't one thing it'd be another.

Finally, Karen stomped her foot and yelled, "both of you stop it! You're like -- you're like a married couple! You're supposed to get along!"

We would get along, but we're so different, they chimed in together.

"You are so annoying. Just - ah, thank goodness, we're here..." The navicomp pinged for attention, and they swung out of hyperspace over Edmy's dry dusty planet.

"Now you had both best behave yourselves," Karen warned them. Her ship's arrival to the plateau and cliffside community was welcomed with the typical fare of angry glares and worried scurrying. But when Karen exited the ship, many of the locals couldn't believe their eyes.

"It's that girl! The Jedi girl!" Someone shouted. They would remember her in whatever way they saw fit, but now, she grinned as she descended the plank of the ship, they'd know her for something totally else.

"Where's Edmy?" She called out, and a couple kids pointed down at his nook. "You guys go get him, will you? It's very important. He will want to see this."

"He's seen ships before," Said a shabby-dressed woman, who scoffed at the shine on the ship.

"It's what is inside the ship," Karen said. Mentally, she warned the pair of dragons to stay low, she wanted it to be a surprise. They were arguing already about which one of them was to exit the ship first.

Karen decided that for once, it would be Delyth that came first - because certainly, Bry would demand far more attention later. That settled (with a bit of argument that made the other people around wonder what the noises were inside the ship - a droid? or what?) Karen waited.

Edmy finally trundled up to the top of the plateau, where Karen and the others were standing around the ship. He brightened immediately on seeing her.

"Karen!" He said, and they hugged warmly - they had hardly known one another, yet they did seem as old friends. Karen trusted the old man implicitly, and wanted him to approve of what she'd done. And for once... she had a father figure in her life that was tangible and delightful, someone she genuinely could look up to.

"I want you to meet a couple ... people." She said, when everyone had settled down again. "I want everyone to just keep calm."

That of course made them mutter even more so, but then... Delyth strode carefully out of the entrance to the ship, down the short ramp, and onto the dusty ground. Her brilliant mottled teal and blue colored hide shone in the sun, looking like a bit of ocean flickering on the ground.

Everyone went silent, all eyes upon her. Edmy had wondered why in the world Karen would want everyone out here like this... Until he saw the dragoness.

"That's -- that is a dragon," he whispered.

"She sure is," Karen said, grinning. "And, here's another. My better half and worse half, I think." She waved her hand and the red and white male came strutting out, head high. He carefully did not manage to hit himself on the doorway. He was smart enough to do that much.

Everyone shortly began muttering, the kids especially could hardly keep their calm. Edmy trembled, and took Karen's hand.

"Could I... Are they really real?" He asked, hushed.

"Of course. Come on. Del, Bry, this is my friend Edmy. He's the one who gave me the map to find your home world. You should thank him. Politely," she added to Bry. The pair of dragons, who stood just barely taller than Karen at the time, walked up to Edmy.

Delyth bowed nicely, her blue head gently brushing Edmy's chest in a loving gesture. Brychwynth trumpeted and startled half the assembly, and gave a kind of salute to the old man.

Edmy's eyes ran with tears. Karen noticed this, but said nothing. This was still his moment, anyway.

She went quickly back into the ship while the children and others gathered around the dragons. Both the dragons loved the attention to a degree, but Delyth of course tired of it sooner. Bry would wallow in it until the sun went down if he could.

Karen brought out the basket with the eggs, both of which were trembling now. The smaller of them had lines of cracking on it, and Karen hustled over to Edmy. She placed a little packet of smoked meat on the sand, just in case.

"Here's something for you," Karen said.

"You've done so much already," Edmy said. "What is it?" He peered into the basket, and his eyes went wide again, as his bushy eyebrows shot up. "OooOOh! Eggs! One's about to break!"

"Be sure to feed it," Karen said, "that's what the person who I got them from said. They're going to be hungry!"

Edmy crouched on the ground, basket before him, and watched. The little egg broke up into shards, and a tiny noisy silver flitter showed her wings off. She had barely opened up her eyes when she creeled loudly at Edmy. He helped her with a piece of meat, as Karen looked on.

I'm hungry too, Bry muttered, we've had nothing but that frozen stuff you call meat for days...

"Hush," Karen said to the dragon, and they continued to watch. From the second egg, came a much bigger, but obviously different breed, of flitter. She was green, and more quiet, and had quite the attitude! She took big chunks of the meat that Edmy offered her, and they both hissed at anyone who came too near them. But to Edmy, they gave off a purring and happy noise.

"What are you going to call them?" Karen asked. "And I hope they won't get lost among your things..." Everyone laughed.

Edmy pondered a moment, and then smiled as the little silver flit nestled herself near the crook of his elbow among the folds of his robe. "Well this one reminds me of the color of gunmetal - Gunny is her name, I would think..." The green posed a bit more of a problem in naming, but still Edmy was able to come up with, "Fen, I know a marsh plant that grows her colors. Fen and Gunny."

He announced them and then Karen and he went back to his little nook home. The dragons guarded Karen's ship, largely keeping people from looting it by attracting more attention than it.

***

The little flitters grew quickly, and Karen knew that if she didn't get going soon, she'd never be able to put both dragons back in her ship at all. They were still too young and small to ride, and certainly hadn't practiced at all their teleportation - that was something that Karen was wary of, at the very least.

They wouldn't be getting lost in the nexus just yet, they would have to wait until they were older to try.

Karen bid Edmy fare well, and Gunny and Fen both tittered at her as she boarded her ship.

Blue Sky Weyr - Green flitter Fen; Lantessama - Silver flitter Gunny

At last, Karen punched in the locale of the Sith world, and swallowed a big knot in her throat. Would she see these folks again? She'd traded a number of nice items away to them, knowing they would appreciate them better than some rich merchant or jerk behind a counter at a regular galactic store.

The stars swirled again, and the dragons were silent as they watched them. Finally, a few days of travel later, the ship came out of hyperspace over the shrouded misty world she'd call home for real this time.

Bry's Big Flight

The planet they made their home upon was truly perfect for this pair of dragons. They had the room to fly, and room to grow. And of course, room to argue.

Bry would growl that the female took the best nesting spots on the high ground, and then Delyth would sigh and complain that he always chased her away when the sun was getting to be its warmest.

"There is far more space on that mountainside," Karen said with a low growl in her voice, "than you two could EVER fill. Now go up there separately and - stop - bothering - me."

They noticed that Karen was working on some device, she'd had its splayed contents all over the vast landing room's floor.

Why was she working on something there? Asked Delyth. She knew that our wings would disturb it, I saw little parts flying off.

She wanted the light I think, Bry answered. As they flew up into the canopy over the temple, he nudged her tail with his nose. I am sorry I snapped at you this morning. Your hide is looking very nice, and I should want you to show it off.

... You are joking with me, Bry, you're never nice. Delyth said with suspicion. Why are you being nice all of a sudden?

Well... They found a pair of good ledges that had signs of their own scraping and settling from the last year's worth of basking. They were far enough apart that both could stretch out, without interrupting each other's sun. Brychwynth continued after he'd found the right angle to lay his broad head. I know that you're a bit lonely, but you don't like me as a partner more than I am now.

You have that right, Delyth thought carefully. I do not think you and I should become mates. And I am not ready to be a mother just yet.

But I'm not ready to just sit out your heat, and you're going to be in it soon, Delyth. Bry said, and Delyth gave a little trumpet of shock.

You say that? How do you even know? Karen does not say anything to you that she will not share with me.

I wasn't talking to Karen about it... I was talking to the other creatures here. About you. There are a couple of them that are even big enough to be a mate - but they can't fly.

Thank goodness for that! Delyth exclaimed. I would not want to breed with something that was not my own kind!

Exactly... Why I bring it up... Bry kind of hemmed and hawed. I have not told Karen this, but I think I should go find myself a flight to take my mind off you.

Delyth was silent for a while. You would do that for me, or for you?

Both, Brychwynth admitted. I would like to compete, and there are no other males to puff up against yet, here.

Yet?

Yet - there might be more people to come, Karen is lonely.

I know - she will not admit it. Delyth nodded, and fanned her wing out. But I am just not ready yet.

Would you be willing to be here alone, if I went? I do not know if places take dragons alone without riders to ... file their paperwork.

There is paperwork to mate?! What humans think of! They have problems!

Something else we agree upon! Laughed Bry. They quieted down, and for a long bunch of minutes, they were thinking alone. Until Bry nudged into Delyth's mind again softly. Some day, I would like for us to pair up. To see your markings and mine mix. Not yet, though. I would not do that if you did not agree.

He heard her pick up and fold her wings back, and looked up a bit to see her gazing at him from across the little bumpy terrace.

You mean that, and I appreciate that. Thank you, Bry. I promise you - some day. We will fly together. And perhaps when you have flown some other times, you might be good enough to catch me!

She tittered and flew off the side of the mountain, as Brychwynth muttered to himself.

***

"Why didn't you tell me about this?" Karen asked, as the pair of dragons sat in the hall and watched her pace. "I mean, one of you here alone? Will that be safe?"

Karen, my love, my heart, I am a dragon. And I can fly - and hide in here if I have to, from other flying things. I will be all right, and you will find him a good partner. Keep him away from me for a while.

"You're okay with this?" Karen shot at the female, who nodded. "Well.... I guess since you've talked it over, I can't really refuse. But what about this flight you want to be in? Where is it again?"

It is at a spaceport, sort of. I heard about it through the nexus while I was exercising. Bry said.

He'd been practicing, as they knew the Nexus better than Karen knew hyperspace. They teleported all the time, when they were playing hide and seek or when they were trying to evade those airborne predators. Through the Nexus there was information to be had, and Brychwynth had found out about a new place needing flying males.

There is a flight, a beautiful rainbow green. Her rider is a woman, but I do not know if they have to ... well, stop you from being my rider or something.

"No one could do that, my love," Karen laughed. "And from what I saw at the Caverns, there were plenty of women riding male dragons, and men on females. It's okay. I hope."

They settled things up and Karen put her 'toys' away. She might need some things to barter, while out, so she collected other small tradable things in addition to what little clothing she had and such. Delyth nuzzled her rider warmly before they departed.

I will be here when you get back and I expect you to tell me all about this place you've found. And, she nodded to Brychwynth, I expect you to tell me how you expertly caught this green.

With a bit of amazement, then, Karen mounted up the medium sized red-white, and bid her teal-blue companion farewell. "Off to Star City," she said, and they went in search of the place.

***

Unfortunately, Brychwynch didn't win his first big flight. However, another opened up with a very odd twist. The breeding project almost guaranteed that he'd find a partner, and when he did, the results were marvelous!

Now, on their way back to their temple home, Brychwynch and Karen were joined by the young male Rycynrebth. However... They were also joined by Rycynrebth's ... rider.

She clucked and hemmed and was in constant motion. Unless Karen scowled at her, in which case she would freeze perfectly still - her plumage hardly daring to fall if she thought Karen would be unamused.

"Geanna," Karen said, "you know you're welcome to come to the temple."

"It's an awful place," she harrumphed. "Look at it," she waved one of her feathered hands around, "it's just so cold and dreary. It needs ... some oomph!"

With that, the grouse Kin strutted off to locate ... whatever it was she needed to make herself a home in the temple.

Additions and the Song of the Universe, 17 ABY

Karen was somewhat surprised to find the temple had new inhabitants when she got back from a hunting trip.

"Well.... who have we here?" She said. The gigantic black-midnight colored male shifted his head, glowing embers of his eyes turned to her. Mentally he grumbled to let him sleep. "Ooookay," she replied. But then was struck by the fact that he was seemingly guarding another dragon.

A female, tiny - at least to Karen's eyes after spying this gigantic indigo.

"Are you lost?" Karen asked.

"No," replied the butterfly-winged creature. "But I am not found either. I am uncertain, where my path is."

Karen put down the swamp deer she'd caught, and wondered where Bry and Delyth were.  They'd spent a lot of time together after coming back with Rycynrebth. Where he and Geanna were, Karen wasn't sure.

"You didn't eat her, did you?" Karen asked of the midnight shaded male, who Karen named simply Midnight, since he wouldn't say any more.

No, I did not eat her, she is out collecting reeds or branches. Perhaps she is making a nest, Midnight answered.

While it was a relief that she was alive... Karen wondered what new little tapestry or thingie would appear in her home next. Sharing her huge 'digs' with dragons was one thing. But living with a female that would insist upon making a picket-fence-house out of an ancient Sith temple?

"She is hardly all that bad," Finir announced, fluttering. "She means well. I must listen to my heart and remain here, there is so much that needs to be done - and you know what I mean, Karen."

Their hearts could both hear the song - but only the Tecii was truly wracked with guilt over not joining others of her kind. But here, she was going to be able to fight - balance needed its guardian too.

Midnight is a birthday gift from Sunstone

(gift?) from Aanu'sil

Nexus and the School, 18 ABY

Because the dragons were capable of moving through space, time, and apparently dimensions, Karen was able to greet quite a few new faces whenever they would jaunt about. 'Come see this place', they'd say, and she would. Generally riding Delyth but sometimes choosing Bry, she found herself in places brimming with danger, or with fascinating people.

One of those places turned out to be a school - situated on a bizarrely double-sphere planet called Twoarth. The specific place they went simply bled power. Not just the Force, but magic, mutation-based psionics, you name it. It was barely two days that she had been on this world, enjoying the gorgeous beach and ironically dry weather, that a number of people came to discuss something with her. That being: they wanted her to teach at this school.

Hadn't she... wanted to teach back at home? She had yet to find any students, though! Here, they were all but crawling out of the woodwork! She still wanted to establish a more specific Force-user enclave, but now she knew she'd be able to tap others for hints and tips.

Thus it was that Karen became a professor at Carramba High School. Easily learning the ways of the locals, but also easily able to traverse back and forth to her home! The dragons enjoyed trading off bringing her to and from the site. She actually arranged for Midnight to bring an entire class of Force users to her temple, on a field trip that lasted through their 'summer vacation'. That the big indigo dragon willingly participated in this was certainly special.

Time seemed to be wonky, she realized, because when she looked up next, she'd been tenured for a decade, and had five full time students and one 'fallen Jedi' assistant at the Temple. Taking a break from Carramba as they were remaking some of the dragonry structures (there were now entire squads of dragons, including Bry and Delyth, who loved to perform stunts and help with heavy lifting, but they needed to expand the campus facilities), Karen returned home and concentrated on these much more local children.

And she felt tremendously at ease with them, now. Mellowed over the years, apparently, though she didn't look a day over 30 she had no idea just exactly how long she'd been alive. To her, this was just fine. Life in the galaxy at large had been rough, stagnating progress among the New Republic and seeing the rise of numerous factions bent on slicing up the galaxy's richest planets. Force users were still apt to be hidden, still only showing off their abilities when they knew it was safe.

While they had people to look up to, like Luke and his sister, there were also still folks that were hunting Jedi for the remnants of the Empire. A pair of those hunters came to Karen's world once.

Their weapons remained on display - not used - in the history chamber of her school. But stranger things were yet afoot - not just with the odd feeling that the galaxy was shifting around politically and socially. Her physical spot in it was ... different. Some of the stars were not in the right places, if she ever used her starship's navicomp it complained that things had moved a little here and there. Not everything was off, but some planets just... didn't seem to exist, while others were bustling in their place.

It was Finir who suggested that she just move with the rhythm. This was how the world was meant to be, she said, "oh, and we will have visitors, some of them are quite interesting. You will like them."

** Canon and others arrive** (Gonna just bullet list this)

-- They greet the Kaminoans

-- As a group they make sure to assess each skill set and needs before sending off to other worlds

-- The Kaminoans and a few others head out to Carramba on the regular and even become instructors

**

There were more surprises in store when they returned to the temple's large jungle-covered peak. A dragon, not really a surprise, but one who coyly shifted from four legs to two! She introduced herself with a fancy bow as Chiren, and already had the attention of the young students in the area. And where Geanna would be frazzled with the amount of attention, Chiren thrived on it. The temple students would be in good hands... paws... under her single-eyed gaze!

Name: Brychwynth (BRY ch' win th)
Gender: Male
Size/Shoulder/Length: medium-large 10' s / 45' l / 55' ws
Colors: body brilliant red with mottled white muzzle, socks, tail, and wing fingers; wings shiny red and white; eyes light green
Features: nearly Pernese, Illubrillan, with color variation; four legs with paws having 3 claws, two wings with 4 fingers and elbow strut, and claw wrist; hide skin, equine head with small knobs, tail tapers radically and has spade
Powers: Winged Flight, Bry is quick and sturdy in the air, and can lift quite a bit of weight, particularly uneven objects
Teleport, every time he and Delyth begin 'playing' it's because he's teleported behind her or above, surprising her, and off they go! He can jaunt over 5 miles in a quick burst, or to a specific location with concentration, but also has a remarkably strong Nexus teleportation allowing him to move through realms that Karen has hardly dreamed of
Telepathy, he has a strong mind and communicates with grace and force, to basically any creature within range. He has an odd ability to communicate with 'regular' animals, anything that has a vague sense of self can give him information or warning and take commands to a limited extent
Assisted firebreath, though he has adapted a bit to chewing other flammable substances than traditional for his ancestry, Bry seems fine without using it. When he did use flames it was expertly as a snipe up to 300 meters, able to cause extreme damage to living things without interfering with nearby flammable terrain
Parentage: Anoushith + Laloith, see below for extended parentage and offspring
Origin: Calyeni Caverns, clutch 2
Other Info: annoying, aggressive, bold, and with a heart of gold
Bond: Karen and Delyth, multibond

Name: Delyth (DELL ith)
Gender: Female
Size/Shoulder/Length: medium-small 8' s / 38' l / 48' ws
Colors: both body and wings are cyan heavily mottled with darker teal-blue, wingsails slightly faded; red eyes
Features: four legs with paws having 3 claws, two wings with 4 fingers and elbow strut, and claw wrist; hide skin, equine head with small knobs, tail tapers radically and has spade
Powers: Winged Flight, with superb endurance and grace, Delyth trains with diving, swoops, and aerial stunts frequently. She is usually relied upon to carry Karen, but doesn't normally heft trees or boulders like Bry
Teleport, whenever Bry starts shit with her, she first zips away quickly and can not just catch up to him on his jaunts, but appear behind him rapidly to play tag, and he readily admits that she's better at quick skips and hops. She can traverse the Nexus though generally follows Bry's lead there
Telepathy, speaking with a gentle and caring voice, she reaches Karen and Bry, and the other dragons in the area easily. She cannot speak with those 'local animals', but other draconic creatures sense her
Carries assisted firebreath, has never had access to 'firestone' or coal, and thinks it's disgusting. Any offspring she has may also carry the ability to produce it, but may modify it to be unassisted
Parentage: Nadezhdath + Savitrith
Origin: Calyeni Caverns, clutch 3
Other Info: dedicated, gentle, somewhat defensive, but confident in her own abilities
Bond: Karen and Brychwynth, multibond

Name: Rycynrebth (rye sin REB'th)
Gender: Male
Size/Shoulder/Length: large 13' s / 52' l / 35' ws
Colors: body pale purple with white-silver muzzle, feet, and belly from chin to tail start, tail tip, and wing fingers; wingsails black, crest and tail spade white; eyes light blue
Features: Illubrillan Supermutt
Powers: Winged Flight, Rycy is slippery in the sky, far more agile than most others around in fact, and likes to show off if he can get away with it. He doesn't need to carry his 'rider', and would hardly have noticed if she clung to his neck anyway!
Teleportation, like most of his peers he is able to move between spaces, and his skill is strongest with locations he's familiar with. He can simply teleport and doesn't need to be in mid-air to do it. World-wide locations can be reached with little effort, and he's practicing with Nexus movement, and with some concentration and preparation has begun following his sire to Carramba and back
Telepathy, can communicate at any distance to his rider, and to other dragons within about 10 miles
Firebreath, unlike his sire he can produce fire without chewing any firestone or coal. His fire is not all that hot, but he uses it to warm rooms or light hearth fires for Geanna
Parentage: see below
Origin: The Bower at Star City - BWR breeding program, Generation 2
Bond: Geanna, a grouse Kin from somewhere not in any way this universe
Other Info: Little is known about this sleek purple boy, beyond the fact that he is fiercely protective of his bond, somewhat like his sire in this regard. He seems to be kind of the moody emo kid of the group, and that's saying a lot given the group.

Geanna is a grouse kin, she's adorable, fussy, a home builder and organizer of everything under the sun.
Name: Geanna
Gender: Female
Age/DOB: ~30, unknown dob
Origin: Appears to be from a dimension that isn't Karen's
Family: none known
Other: while most folks adore her, she still gets quite flustered with too much activity and seems much older than she really is in her 'now go play outside with the other kids while gramma does her chores' mentality
Height: 4'2"
Weight: hardly anything, she's a bird!
Hair: none, has a feather crest
Eyes: yellow, usually surprised
Appearance: a grouse kin, with dull brown-rust colored feathers having black and white, grey, and soft tan speckling and markings; she does wear accessories, but doesn't need clothing particularly
Genetic Abilities: a strong attachment to Ry, she can communicate with him at virtually any distance, and seems comfortable with lots of smaller pet-like creatures as well, she cannot exert any particular command over them, but Ry is good enough for her!
Skills: quite a few home making skills and can cook like crazy, also sewing and repairs of small items and minor construction
Personality: as above, jumpy and a bit timid, but in 'her' kitchen she rules supreme!
History: no one really knows how she came to be at a dragon hatching, but she did go home with her dragon ... not to her original home? Ry wanted to see his sire's world and they just kind of stuck with it.

Name: Midnight
Gender: Male
Size/Shoulder/Length: huge, 22' s / 130' l / 140' ws
Colors: inky black with gritty iridescent shine in strong light; wingsails slightly lighter grey-indigo also with a gritty shine; fire orange-red eyes
Features: semi-pernese sorta, four legs, two large wings, hide skin, very long 'horns', tail rudder; aside from overt similarities he's massive and black, and pernese aren't really that big nor that color
Powers: Winged Flight, when Midnight rises into the air it's either with a massive crouched leap, or simply teleported into the air where he spreads his massive wings. He's the size of a train, yet he is graceful and accurate, and can pass without a trace somehow. When he speeds over the landscape however, he can and does cause a massive wake of wind below and behind himself, or uses his tail to make quick turns that may uproot trees just by the wall of air. He can lift ... pretty much everything. Midnight's favored time to fly is indeed night time, you will never know whether he's overhead unless he wants you to detect him
Teleport, a truly magnificent teleporter, able to move both locally (generally within a kilometer at most) and through the Nexus to wherever he damn well pleases. However he can also clearly maneuver between times, even to the point of almost duplicating himself in numerous locations at once. It's likely that he also can produce a pocket dimension outside of time, where he sequestered Finir while she recovered from her own travels.
Communication, Telepathy and Verbal Speech, though you have never heard his voice, because he may be too low to hear. He can detect thoughts, emotion, and overall well being of those nearby, and can communicate thoughts and concepts up to 100 miles distant
Firebreath, the light in his eyes is the barest hint of the strength of his flames. He is huge, and thus has huge fire, which he can manipulate from a belched cloud of superheated gas, to a broad fan of fire almost 50 meters wide, to a 200 meter long ray that burns anything in its path, and he can keep up most of those forms of fire for hours during a fight
Telekinesis, though he doesn't often show it, if you watch how he flies, it's mostly his psionic power getting him into the air or stopping without causing a ripple. He negates his own wake, and other such effects, and doesn't really do much detailed manipulation with the power
Parentage: unknown
Origin: birthday gift to Shard from Sunstone weyr 2004
Other Info: though he and Finir showed up at the same time, Midnight seems to have been there longer, and spent time on this planet without bothering to inform Karen or the other dragons. He may also be Force sensitive, but since he's basically about as grumbly gruff as you could possibly be in a dragon, no one has been bold enough to ask about it. If there's any danger to the area, the planet in fact, Midnight will be the first in the air and the last to land in a fight. He protected Finir when she arrived, and though she was much smaller than him at that time, he may have been 'sequestering her' in time; again, no one dares ask about this. He wouldn't tell you the answer anyway.
Bond: none, though he is very clearly interested in remaining with the temple and protects it as though he belongs there

Name : Finir Shiilin Buidi (fin EAR she EE lin boo EE dee)
Gender: Female
Size: large, 16'1" s / 70' l / 100' ws
Colors : body brilliantly white with rich black gemstone-material; orange solar collection panels and antennae; wings black with narrow red striping
Species : Tecii, four legs, two large wings, tail, and extra bobs and antennae; hide with 'solar panels' and 'gems' on skin; head with forward facing faceted eyes, large fluffy antennae; Tecii wings, besides being very large and often beautiful, produce varying amounts of electricity and energy, the reactions which occur on the wings of the dragon allows them thrust in the outer reaches of space, outside their gas rich nebula. The solar plates which appear in different sizes all over the Tecii body, are able to take light and convert in into energy and warmth which can be used by the body in the absence of food. However, only with a very strong light source can the solar plates sustain an active Tecii, when out of the range of powerful star light a traveling Tecii will drop into a hibernation which will last until the dragon closes in on a star or another source powerful enough to keep them in a conscious state
Specie Abilities (Seen In All Tecii):
Verbal Speech, With voices capable of producing a wide range of sound the Tecii language is complex and hard for most other species to pronounce, thus the Tecii are often forced to learn a wide range of other languages (which they are very good at). Some may use mimicry to communicate as well, as they are often talented at the trick and can pick up new sounds very quickly.
Senses- hearing, as the dragons can hear sounds of all known octaves with their large complex antennae. Their eyes are also very sensitive, able to pick out light wavelengths that are far out of the average zone, the most clear being ultraviolet light. However this sense is lax in its clarity, as Tecii compound eyes are not designed to pick out fine details, but rather to navigate large nondescript areas, specifically the Pala Nebula. Tecii sensation, though no more complex than the average draconic specie, is highly specialized in calculating temperatures and energy levels, both needed for survival in the harsh environment of space
Winged Flight, sweeping high and slow through the foggy clouds of this planet, she is often spotted by careful eyes, but also heard by anything with ears, she sings while she flies, and can cause ripples in the air as if skipping stones on a lake
~Exposed space travel- All Tecii are able to transverse space without external aid
~Energy manipulation- The electricity produced by Tecii wings can be controlled by most members of the species and is sometimes used as a weapon
~Sonic projection- The Tecii voice can produce noises loud enough to be considered equivalent to sonic booms, and may also be used as a weapon
Very long lifespan (5000 years+); long maturity process
Diet - omnivore, but also can process light using solar organs on wings/body for low-energy needs
Can breed with any similarly sized dragon, 3 year gestation, 10 'spore' eggs laid, only one might have Star Speech as an ability
Other Abilities (Rare):
~Telepathy, seeks strong minds to commune with, because her Star Speech often bleeds out into her mental language
~Star Speech- This rare ability allows the Tecii who possesses it to decipher the universal song which the sensitive Tecii hearing picks up readily, and some even claim that prophesies can be made by these Tecii through the song's meaning. She has tuned herself to sense things regarding this specific world, its dangers, and its inhabitants
Parentage: Unknown (giveaway?)
Origin: gift from Aireona/Aanu'sil 2005
Personality : Finir is an insightful dragon, somewhat haunted, and always lost in her thoughts. Her Star Speech ability allows Finir understanding of the universal Song, once worshiped by her people, and to her dismay will often disclose prophetic information about different people. Caught up in the confusing and sometimes painful music, Finir is often faced with a harsh decision, whether or not to seek out the beings whose futures have been proclaimed and give them a chance to fight their fate, or to surrender to The Song as the Tecii have done for thousands of years.
On this planet residing in the presence of not only several dragons but surrounded by the Force, Finir has come to terms with her lot in life, and also occasionally gives warning to Karen about her prophecies, sometimes they're rather specific and close by, and they have ways to communicate over these distances now? Fascinating. She tends to fly during the day into the clouds, and has a very good view of the forest and mountains thanks to her senses. She notices immediately if there's anything amiss, such as a fire or storm coming.
Bond: none, she is sponsored by Karen and protected by Midnight

Copyright Information - And an update for the 2020s and beyond

After so long, I finally dove into the rest of the Star Wars works in film - almost all of them anyway (the only movie I have yet to watch is Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith, and some of the much-later sequels), and revived my love the universe. With the release of Episode 7 Force Awakens, it stuck me back into my 10 year old self and made me remember what it was like to have Big Ideas about this franchise. I ate up the Clone Wars and Rebels (not the 2003 version, but the 2010s) which absolutely cemented certain things. It's caused me to reevaluate some bits about Karen that had never even been possible before now. Thus: she has a mother. She has a deeper history that she has never even known about. It doesn't much change how she got to having dragons, but it definitely makes her more of a character with a past than one springing out of a kid's brain.

On the note of her mother: Satine Kryze would have been a teenager at the time of Karen's conception, and that would have placed them too far back in the timeline for Karen to be a teen on the Death Star (she originally was 18, not 11 or 12). I've had to fiddle and futz, but I'm not going to rewrite everything, just suffice to say that the child wasn't born until after Satine was dead, and was handed off to the Jedi by attendants of the family. If Kenobi was told about this, he wouldn't have done anything anyway, in my opinion. Even if he was in love with Satine, and 'would have left the Jedi order' for her... he didn't. Aside from the genetic history and potential clashing with the Mandalorian culture, most of Karen's story would remain the same either way.

(Original, written in 2002)
Obviously, I did not write or produce Star Wars. George Lucas did. He owns the franchise which I quite literally bought into at the ripe age of 10. In 1977 I saw Star Wars for the first time, and was in awe. It remains one of my favorite movies of all time.

I hated Empire Strikes Back. I detest Return of the Jedi. I cannot comment on how little I liked Episode 1, and I never even have bothered to see Attack of the Clones. To me, my Star Wars universe begins and ends with Star Wars alone. Well, Star Wars and the very fine novel by Alan Dean Foster, "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" and perhaps a couple of the Han Solo stories, and a smattering of comic books courtesy of Dark Horse.

Beyond those, the Star Wars universe almost doesn't exist for me. The only parts which I respect greatly were in comic book format, in the "Golden Age of the Sith" line. Where we learn that the Sith were a once great people, divided as most civilizations are between war and peace, between internal and external forces. Force-using people who developed great tools to aid them.

In creating Karen Kenobi when I was but a child, I inserted myself into a universe which at the time was filled with wonder and life. I've never "retracted" my character and I've never made any excuses: I put her in because I wanted to belong to that greatness and wonder. I continued to alter her course of existence by tempering her original 'insertion' with sensible alterations of the published works - she wasn't actually with the Rebels until she made it to their base shortly before the Death Star was destroyed. She was never with them on any of their 'adventures' because she just doesn't have the right to be. She's not 'in' the stories. So I have diverted her away from them, while still remaining as true as I can to the existing materials.

I mean no disrespect to the creators of Star Wars or any of its subsequent productions. I certainly mean no harm, and I wish not to detract from the 'official' works of LucasFilms. Without those films and works, not one piece of fan-fiction would ever have been written by this particular individual. I wrote my first actual pieces of coherent fiction based in the Star Wars universe, and I continue to write in my own worlds and other pieces of fan-fiction, to this day. Some day I hope to inspire others to write (and I have, in fact) in my own unique places.

I only intend to pay my respect to Lucas and the rest of the creators of Star Wars by producing a work such as mine. All of this is from the heart, and none of it is from the pocketbook.

Any of my own takes on things in the Star Wars universe, however distant from the original movie, are my own and are tempered by half-read or watched images, dreams and sheer fantasy. Unless otherwise stated and linked, everything on my pages, including words or artwork, is considered ©2022 Lethe Katherine Gray/Droppin the Fork productions, and is neither going to be reproduced in the form of a novel or other published effort, nor allowed to be removed from this site for any reason by any individual or corporation. No reproduction of any content allowed.

Dragons are linked sometimes to old unavailable sites but those that have current sites are updated.

Karen Kenobi(s) (kenobii?) in the top bar drawn in 1977, 1978, 1989 or so, Veriria's Place dollmaker, center drawn in 1990 and colored 12/2/02, Doll Divine viking maker, and two City of Heroes renders.

Edmy photo and background image taken by me at the Mos Eisley Party of 1999 at Sue Dawe's place, altered slightly. Isn't it neat?

Image of caverns done by Campbell in Bryce, no longer present on the internet.

Image of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin found on the Star Wars site character database - it's a gorgeous picture, I think. Tiny little image of Vader vs Kenobi found on a fansite and is obviously a screen shot or scan of a small item. I didn't scan it myself.