Courier services, may have existed in this galaxy, but they weren’t cheap.
Courier services to Mandalore, meanwhile, were even worse. Fortunately, Gareth at this point had money to burn–he was an ascetic person, and didn’t have too much overhead from supplies. Both points, the money and the materiel, he had the Sith to thank for.
But money didn’t buy the important things. Money didn’t buy family.
He handed off the envelope for delivery, the lump of the little holodisk bumping his fingers as he let the package go. When–not if, he reminded himself, when–it reached its destination, he hoped his words would sway his former brothers.
Send to: Oyu’baat, Keldabe, Mandalore.
Please deliver to a chieftain of Clan Vizsla.
To the chiefs of my Clan,
My name is Gareth Viszla. I don’t expect you to know me, and if you do, it is not for my deeds. It is for those of my father.
My family, my father, my mother, myself. We were cast from the clan and the people’s grace, assigned the horrific appellate of dar’manda for what arguably was not a crime at all.
My father was a mercenary, in the wake of the failed Crusade. He hurt innocents, and in one mortal instant, he hurt a child for money. He did so for the sake of his own family, not out of any petty cruelty or rage.
I do not condone this. I keep my faith with the old Canons, and the ideal that battle is only honorable in pursuit of a higher cause or against a worthy adversary. But I do understand it. I defy you, chiefs of my clan, and I defy my clan and my people as a whole, to tell me who among us lacks the stain of putting the way of the people, and our teachings of strength of arms, to the end of making money. So that we can eat. So that our mothers and fathers, daughters and sons can eat.
You condemned my father as mercenary, but in these times, we all must be mercenaries. We all must eat.
When you cast us out, you stained yourselves as dar’manda. We were of the clan, and you failed to support us. You broke the sacred Six Commandments that define our people.
When you cast us out, you left us like babes in the wilderness. In the cold, instead of in our people’s embrace.
On Nar Shaadaa, my mother and father were murdered by agents of a Hutt who wanted their beskar armor as pieces of conversation. Perhaps this scum saw us and was able to deduce our separation from our people. Perhaps he was informed by another son of Vizsla, who sought to wash away an imagined stain on our honor in blood.
I survived them, by their sacrifice and by my strength and will. My heart beats with the ash of the Taung, and that heart has seen me through trials alone I should not have survived–a young man of barely twenty, alone in the galaxy. I have survived with the burden of my loss, and the pain of my exile from my rightful place among my people.
I now demand that place. And that is all.
*I do not care to bear relics of the clan. I do not care for money or materials. I do not care for anything but your acceptance, my birthright as a Mandalorian and as a Vizsla.(
You would say I am a mercenary, and I would say we are all mercenaries in this future–after all, in the Shadow Crusade, did we not act as thralls to the Sith?
If you would say I am stained by my father’s deeds, are we not all stained by Mandalore the Ultimate’s brutality against the innocent, or Mandalore the Indomitable’s submission?
If you would say I am dar’manda, are you not dar’manda for your refusal to aid your kin?
You cast us out for no crime. You cast us out for, what I can only see as a delayed reaction to the shame of our loss in the last Crusade, and the shame of our atrocities against the galaxy in that great war. You projected your own shame and self-loathing onto those who only wished to preserve their family.
I will not be denied my right by blood and deed. I am a Mandalorian. I am one of you. I am just as much a warrior as any of you, able to fight and triumph despite my alienation. By my own skill and cunning, I forged beskar armor. By my own strength and heart, I have bested deadly foes. If you do not believe me on this matter, I enclosed evidence on a holodisk in this envelope. I will await reply. If you will have me, I will come to Mandalore. If you wish me to have you, I can be found on the planet Viscara.
Gareth Vizsla, from Concord Dawn, of Clan Vizsla
The enclosed holodisk contains a single image–a Mandalorian in dark beskar armor, posed over the corpse of what appears to be a Jedi Padawan, the unfortunate’s lightfoil held in his hand.