Author’s Note and Foreword
As is customary with any publication of mine, I am always wanting to induct my newest readers into the light-hearted and self-depreciating style of my writing with the briefest of forewords as to the nature of this documentation and its primary purpose in enlightening as to the travels that I undertake whilst visiting yet another region of space unknown to the Empire as a whole.
We shall begin with simple introductions, then, as so there are no doubts as to my intentions and purpose. My name, dearest reader, is Sir Tycho Shay the Second, Esquire, Knight-Errant of the Tapani Empire. As is customary for one of my social standing and rank, I was given leeway by my gracious father to head out into the galaxy in search of my own purpose and place in this world. Through great trials and tribulations, and many a duel with fellow saber-rakes, I found that I was exiled from the Empire (temporarily) due to a misguided attempt at furthering my own station with a lightfoil rather than my brain. With naught but a small loan from my father, a beat-up old yacht and my faithful manservant Talathi at my side, I set out from the Empire to explore and expand upon my family’s glorious place in the annals of history.
It is there, amidst the stars of the Galactic Republic, that I found myself learning of the state of the Jedi Order and its subsidiary peoples. It is therefore perhaps in my best interest, and indeed my duty, to expand upon this knowledge that I had known so little about. After all, other than the Cleansing a few years back (in which my own father earned his title!), who could say much of what we know in the Empire of the Jedi’s involvement in galactic affairs? So startling was it for me to learn, when I headed out, that the Jedi are not only the Republic’s own counterpoint to our knights, but that they own and control no property, that I decided it in my best interests to record my adventures in this foreign land to see what other great things might intertwine and spark interest.
In the following extracts from my own journals, lovingly edited by my manservant Talathi, you will find my recorded adventures in this land, torn apart as it is by a great and destructive Civil War. Through it all, I hope to expand on the Empire’s understanding of both Jedi and Sith, and all those that lay in between, while maintaining my honor throughout.
And so, with this brief introduction out of the way, we will begin with how I arrived on the planet Viscara, and quickly took to its dangers and trials as a way to further my own skills.
Part I; The Doomed Arrival
As previously mentioned in the forward, I arrived in the Viscara system with naught but a humble old yacht and a small loan from my father’s treasury. It was then, arriving at the local spaceport, that I found myself immediately barraged with the first few sensations of note in this system! For one, the very first thing that hit me, was the smell. That’s not to say that it’s an unpleasant aroma to be avoided, so much as that it was a different, strong, overpowering sensation to step from the perfumed interior of my yacht to the staryard of a working-man’s mining station.
There, of course, the first major difference between the Tapani Empire and the Republic reared its head, as a working-class individual with no regard for proper introductions forced himself into my presence, clearly assuming (despite my attire and the attire of my servant, Talathi) that I was like him; another yokel to be thrown to the wolves.
“New to the System, are you?”, he asked, in an accent that is difficult to understand. It took me a moment to quite process exactly these words, in fact, before I was able to give an answer.
“Yes, of course,” I said, humbly, bowing. “Sir Tycho Shay the Second, Esquire, of the Tapani Empire; at your service.”
And rather than return my introductions and understand how vastly mistepped his assumption that we were equals were (something that was to become quite common, dreadfully so), he nodded to himself. “Lots of your type are coming through here, looking for work,” he said, looking through me more than at me. “There’s always something to be done. If you ask the secretary, she might give you something to do.”
Well, I was at the very least intrigued by the prospect of something to do, and - since I had been forced to leave my lightfoil at home - decided to undertake the process of moving forward with this little endeavor. Rather than encourage such behavior by responding to the man and his natural disdain for respecting one’s betters, I proceeded to ignore him, heading further into the station to find this ‘secretary’.
Naturally, with Talathi at my side, we were able to locate her before long. And with a rather disdainful lack of grace, she proceeded to order me (a nobleman!) to do her dirty work. It seems that through the dreadful mismanagement of the Czerka corporation or whomever it was that owned and operated that sad, nearly-forgotten mining station, they had managed to lose control of more than one type of droid in the sub-basement.
Of course, it was then in my duties to proceed and head to said basement to try and use what martial skills I had to make the area safe for the lower working classes. Talathi headed off to do whatever it was he did whenever I wasn’t around, and I, armed with a blade I purchased from a rather shady looking Mon Calamari, headed down to disassemble more than a few errant droids!
A dreadful combat it was, with metal electro-blade singing into the hull of many a droid, their blaster shots ringing through emptied hallways of sparking cables and desiccated remains as the scent of ozone and fuel permeated the air! But cleave through them I did, slowly coming to understand the weight and feel of a more tangible blade than a lightfoil might offer. Years of youth wasted as a saber-rake came to mean more than you might think, for I took to the blade naturally, and learned fast how to dodge the blasts flying my way and where to strike to make the most of its electric shock.
It all climaxed with the hunt for a dastardly colicoid that had escaped confinement on the levels; something that I was informed seemed to happen, almost on a daily basis! Shocked, I was, to learn how incompetent and yet reliable these happenings were; and so I proceeded down to where the beast had made its nest.
The battle was fierce, but brief. It managed to lay more than a single hit upon me, ripping my arm and biting into flesh while its monstrous roar scared my dearest Talathi into a corner. But through perseverance, skill and bravery, we won the day!
Alas, it was while we were away from the ship that disaster struck. Someone (we are as of yet unsure who)[1] left it unlocked, and through that gross mistrust of the station’s staff and residents, a great evil was put upon us. Some thug or another from a disgracefully low class system stole the yacht! Naturally, I was as distressed as any other at losing what I can only describe as our home for the majority of our travels up until that point, but as Talathi was quick to point out, we had no one to blame and it was pointless to dwell on.
Then, with nothing but our bootstraps, the small loan from my father, and the martial skills I’d honed through years as a saber-rake (and Talathi’s own working class abilities), we decided to do what no nobleman before us had done in many a year; to work, live, and breath as a working class individual on an unknown planet, until such a time as we might find and retake our yacht.
Quickly, I took to finishing the tasks granted to us on the station, clearing both myself and my manservant passage to the planet’s surface as fast as one might and purchasing a disappointingly small apartment with a fraction of our funding to act as a base of operations.
The locals needed help with many small tasks; collecting fur and teeth from the local wildlife for blankets and other such menial products, culling said wildlife for the benefit of travel purposes, delivering packages to far-flung seedy bases. It was all beneath me. And yet, I persevered. With Talathi at my side, we fought and earned our first credits (I donated more than half of my own share to Talathi as a reward for his faithful service and dutiful needlework in sewing up my clothing, of course).
It was then, as I was exploring the wilderness and indulging in a fantastical bit of adventurous undertaking, that I discovered to my astonishment that this planet was not only home to a wayward clan of violent Mandalorians that preyed on the locals, but also to a sect of Jedi. Jedi!
Many tales in the Empire speak of the glorious Jedi that came to help us in the Cleansing, when we drove the Sith from our lands and established the long-standing peace that followed with the cleansing of the dastardly assassins that had up to that point seemed to plague our noble hearts.
It was through this that I also learned (rather late, I might add) that the Sith were also present in this wing of the galaxy, and in great numbers! That Jedi and Sith, ever natural enemies, were at war amongst themselves and that the Republic was at war with a rather new government formed from the remains of Revan’s army known as the ‘Sith Empire’. I’m rather paraphrasing at this point, than get into great detail, but it is - well, important for later, you might understand.
And so, with disastrous start and hopeful end, my adventure began with a clear goal in mind; I would seek out these Jedi, train myself to be more capable against the wilds of the world, and (with the help of my dear Talathi), fight the growing evils that plagued this sector of space to the best of my abilities.
And publish anything that I did for those reading back home, of course.
Talathi’s Footnotes:
[1] If I say only one thing to this entire piece of writing, it’s that there’s a reason the ship’s controls can and should be left to me.
((Originally made in Google Docs. Link to original formatting. ))