Chapter Text
STAR
WARS
THE LEGACY ANTHOLOGY
Episode I: The Knights of Ren
It is a time of peace for the galaxy. For six months, the Force has been in true balance for the first time in thousands of years. The redeemed BEN SKYWALKER, last living member of the Skywalker family, is the one responsible for this balance, having defeated his former master Darth Plagueis and ended both the Jedi and Sith Orders. Now adrift in the galaxy on his own, Ben has spent months searching for a new purpose for his life.
Realizing he is now one of the only trained Force sensitives in the known universe, and that the galaxy is potentially vulnerable to any threats that may arise without a group of Force users to defend it, Ben decides to reform the KNIGHTS OF REN, the order which he formerly led, this time as an order that uses both the Light Side and the Dark Side equally - an order of balance.
With this new purpose, Ben Skywalker now begins the path to recreating his order, starting with what he believes to be the first step: finding and retrieving as many Holocrons - both Jedi and Sith - as he can, so he may use their teachings for his Knights. Ben heads to the city planet of Coruscant, where a merchant is waiting to meet with him, claiming to possess knowledge of the locations of several of these Holocrons….
The airspace around Coruscant was busy, as usual. Passenger and industrial cruisers came and went, taking their cargo to far-off worlds or the tourists within their cabins down to the planet where they would spend their days gawking at the city planet and all it had to offer. Six months after the Siege, life on Coruscant had returned mostly to normal. Only mostly, though - the number of travelers to Coruscant was a bit lower than it had been before the New Sith Order had arisen, mainly due to the now lowered trust between the Republic government and its citizens, and the sudden relocation of the Senate back to Coruscant. It would be a while before people were ready to forgive the Senate for essentially abandoning the rest of the galaxy, but in the meantime daily life on Coruscant continued, only really slightly affected by the shift in galactic power.
As all these ships were coming and going, another ship arrived, emerging silently from hyperspace. It was a sleek, silver colored shuttle, with two large, sweeping wings that were angled diagonally upward from the main body of the ship. As it flew towards the planet, sunlight glinted off its hull, highlighting the newly painted Aurebesh name on the side of the shuttle: the Ray of Hope . With a gentle hum of its engines, the Hope descended into Coruscant’s atmosphere. The shuttle soared over the tops of elegantly carved metal skyscrapers, the midafternoon sun making it seem almost like the hull was glowing. Below, the skyscrapers stopped after a few moments, leaving a large clearing showing a circular hole, its bottom unseeable save for a large blur of shining light signifying street lamps and neon signs thousands upon thousands of meters below. Similar lights extended up the entire length of the hole, giving it the appearance of a massive tunnel carved into the city that extended to the planet’s very core. Within the hole, hundreds of small ships, mainly freighters or civilian shuttles, exited and entered various levels.
The shuttle slowed, and began to descend deep into the tunnel. There were 5127 levels on Coruscant; the Hope ’s destination was on the 3233rd, well into the Coruscant underworld. Most normal, unarmed civilians would never even dream of going down this far into the city. But the pilot of the Ray of Hope was neither unarmed nor a normal civilian.
Entering one of the tunnels leading to the rest of the desired level, the shuttle flew along it and into a veritable maze of skylanes and corridors. After what seemed like several minutes of winding through the level, the shuttle finally slowed, and turned towards a dimly lit landing pad. With a whine of engines, the ship’s wings angled to be completely vertical, and landing gear extended from the bottoms of the wings. Finally, the shuttle landed with a dull thunk , and the whine of the engines lowered and then disappeared as the ship shut off.
A Duros technician strode onto the platform, datapad in one hand, and gave the ship a wary look as he waited for its pilot to emerge. He didn’t have to wait long - a moment later, the boarding ramp lowered from the shuttle’s main body with a hiss of hydraulics. Another moment later, and the pilot’s boots, and the hem of a robe, appeared at the top of the ramp. “Stay with the ship, BD-1,” he heard a male voice say, sounding a bit echoey, like it was being filtered through a mask of some kind. The technician assumed the man was speaking to a droid. Then the man descended the ramp, and he got a good look at him. He’d been right: the man’s voice had been filtered through a mask. His face was covered by a medium grey mask with a single lens with silver lines around it. The rest of his wardrobe wasn’t any less strange, either: the man’s whole body was covered by a brown robe, complete with gloves and a hood drawn up over the mask. And on the man’s belt were two silver metal objects, one a simple cylinder with a few attachments and another more T-shaped. The technician thought the whole ensemble looked familiar somehow, but as the man approached he put it out of his mind. Business first, speculation later.
“Do you have a landing permit for this zone?” The technician asked the man as he stopped a few feet away. “No,” the man replied simply. He wasn’t surprised - very few people ever had landing permits for zones down here, as typically whatever business they had here was less than legal. And the less evidence of their illicit activities there was, the better. There was a short, awkward pause before the Duros looked down at his datapad and began typing into it. “That’ll cost you extra, my friend,” he said. “About 650 credits.” The man continued to stare at him beneath the mask. “That’s a bit expensive for a docking fee, wouldn’t you say?” he asked. Strangely, he didn’t sound angry like most people did when they heard the amount of credits they needed to pay. Yes, this man was certainly unusual. The Duros shrugged. “It’s what it is,” he replied. “You can either pay or go find another landing pad.” There was another pause, before the man reached into a pocket in his robe and pulled out the right amount of credits. “That’s what I figured,” the technician replied as he took the credits.
As he turned and walked away, he realized, finally, what the man’s appearance reminded him of: he looked like one of those Jedi that used to be based on Coruscant. And those cylinders… he looked back at the man nervously. The Jedi had been gone for a while, he told himself. This guy was either trying to pass himself off as one or completely oblivious to how his outfit looked. Still, the lightsabers could well be real - many had ended up on the black market after the Jedi Purge, and plenty of people would probably kill to have one - and anyone with a lightsaber, magic powers or no, was dangerous. The technician turned away again and kept walking, determined not to come back to the landing pad until the man was gone. Whatever he was here for, the Duros wanted no part of it.
/
Ben Skywalker watched the docking attendant go silently. He’d felt the man’s nervousness at his appearance; it was quite clear in the Force. The odds of other people having the same reaction were significant, but he didn’t particularly care all that much, especially not down here. If people were nervous at his appearance, it was their business. Besides, it might help keep any opportunistic thieves from trying to pickpocket him, which was a real concern in the Coruscant Underworld. Without a word, Ben strode off the landing pad and into the crowd on the walkways.
Ben had never really been to Coruscant before, not when it was at peace - his first time here had been during the Siege, and that had hardly been a sightseeing trip for anyone involved. Now, however, Ben was privy to the sights of Coruscant’s daily life this far down, and he saw that all the stories he’d been told of the Coruscant underworld were true. This deep underneath the top layer, it may as well have been perpetually night, the only light sources being the street lamps and neon signs that lined the walkways. The light threw everything into sharp relief, deep shadows and dim, flickering lamps making everything seem more run down and dirty than it actually was. That wasn’t to say things were clean, either; cleaning droids were rarely seen down here, either too busy higher up or attacked and salvaged for parts to sell by the many impoverished people who lived down here whenever they did manage to show up.
And there were indeed many people down here; the walkways were as crowded down here as they were up above on the surface, maybe even more, the only difference being the people here had far less money to their names; many wore clothes that had not been washed in a very long time, and there were more than a few faces peeking out from behind trash in the many dark alleys that lined the paths. Vehicles sped by on the skylanes constantly, heading higher or lower as they pleased, and between them, the crowds of people, and the noises of machinery and the buzz of neon, it was never quiet here.
As Ben made his way through the city, his predictions were proven correct: many people shot him nervous glances, some avoiding him entirely, making a wide berth around him. He couldn’t have cared less; it had been a very long time since the opinions of strangers had bothered him. Besides, he wasn’t planning to stay very long anyway. He made his way through the nervous crowd, ignoring their stares, eyes fixed firmly ahead beneath the lens of his mask, heading in the direction of the coordinates he’d been given.
The place at the coordinates was almost the literal definition of a hole in the wall. Its neon sign was no different from the ones around it; in fact, if Ben hadn’t had the coordinates and the name, he wouldn’t have noticed the place at all. But he did, and so he approached the doorway of the building and looked up at the sign. It featured the image of a cracked goblet being filled with some sort of liquid, likely intended to be alcoholic, and the wonderfully appealing name of The Shattered Glass written in Aurebesh on the bottom of the sign. Clearly, all the good names for bars had been taken already. The doorway itself was no less appealing: it had a door that had clearly closed once, but now seemed rusted permanently into the open position - likely, the bar ran 24/7, so shutting the door had never been a necessity, and it wasn’t like a door would prevent people from robbing a place down here. Inside the open doorway was a short hallway lit with dim, flickering lights, providing just enough illumination to pick out the bits of trash no one had bothered to clean up trailing all the way to the inner door at the end of the hall to the right. With a quiet sigh, Ben strode forward into the hall, then down to the inner doorway, and inside the bar.
The inside of the bar was better lit, with brighter lights that didn’t flicker, but that was about the extent of the improvements; it was still dirty, with various stains on the floor of who knew what that had been there for untold lengths of time. The counters and tables were slightly better off, though not by much, mainly because the day’s patrons were busy dirtying them. The place was much larger than the hallway that led into it, but because of the sheer number of tables and benches crammed into the space it somehow felt more cramped. The bar counter sat opposite the doorway, a rack of glasses and bottles lining the wall behind it along with various dispenser machines.
The bar itself, and most of the tables, were crowded, showing the bar was far more successful than its outward appearance would suggest. The heritage of the patrons was quite exotic as well; Ben could only name about half of the species he saw, and some of the ones he couldn’t name were so bizarre he seriously had to wonder for a moment whether some of them were the result of genetic experimentation, or crossbreeding. There were a few droids in the bar, as well - odd, since droids didn’t drink, but probably they were either serving staff or brought by patrons. He quickly pushed thoughts of the strange patrons out of his head. He had a mission, and he would not be deterred from it.
He headed over to the bar, stepping into an unoccupied space against the counter and turning to the bartender. It was a Trandoshan, and a female, though it was a bit difficult to tell the difference in the genders sometimes. After finishing a discussion with another patron at the counter, she turned away from them, and noticed him. Her eyes narrowed slightly at his appearance, but she headed over to him. As she stopped on the other side of the counter from him, she placed one hand out of sight beneath it, and Ben didn’t need the Force to know she was grabbing hold of a concealed blaster, likely one of several under the counter. “Can I help you?” she growled, her voice carrying a tone of disinterest masking suspicion. Clearly, she was used to dealing with potentially troublesome patrons, and considering his appearance, Ben probably seemed like quite a bit of trouble.
He began broadcasting an aura of calm around him through the Force, hoping to lower her suspicion, if only a bit. “I’m looking to meet someone here,” he explained, the mask’s vocoder helping to broadcast his voice over the noise of the other patrons. “Darand Yruthor. He told me I could find him here.” The Trandoshan’s suspicion didn’t vanish, but it did lessen, with the space in her emotions immediately being filled with exasperation. “That man keepss strange company,” she hissed, rolling her eyes a bit. With the hand that wasn’t beneath the counter, she pointed to the corner of the bar left of the door, where a table sat, currently being occupied by only one patron. “Thank you,” Ben said, and he stepped away from the bar. “Don’t causse any trouble,” the bartender called after him, a warning in her tone. She didn’t need to worry; Ben didn’t plan on starting anything.
As he approached the table, the man - Darand - looked up, and Ben got a good look at his face. He was a human, middle-aged, light skinned, and balding, with rounded features that betrayed perhaps a bit more than a healthy amount of daily food intake, and a sparkle in his eye that clearly showed why he had his career as a black market dealer. He wore a simple dark suit that was both elegant and unimposing, somehow simultaneously. The man rubbed his pudgy hands together excitedly as Ben arrived at his table and sat down across from him. “Ben Solo, I presume?” Darand asked by way of greeting, his voice holding the same barely restrained excitement that flared in his eyes.
“Skywalker,” Ben corrected. “Ben Skywalker.” Darand waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, Skywalker, of course,” he said casually. “Now, let’s get straight to business, I have other clients expecting me soon.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small data stick, and it was hard to believe such a small and simple object could hold such important and precious information. “It was far from easy, and I had to call in more than a few favors, but in the end, I got every scrap of information I could find for you. I’ll be honest, quite a few of the leads on here are more rumor than anything concrete, but you did say ‘anything and everything’, so that is what I gathered. In total, there are twenty-seven potential leads to individual holocrons on here - both Jedi and Sith ones.”
He held the datastick out across the table, and Ben reached out and took it, slowly, almost reverently. Here it was: the beginning of… everything, really. His entire future. Potentially the future of the entire Galaxy. All starting from the information held in his hands. “This information is quite valuable, you know,” Darand spoke up, drawing Ben back to reality as he looked up to meet the other man’s expectant gaze. “I hope you have the payment you promised me.” Ben allowed himself the smallest of sighs as he put the datastick carefully away in his robes and drew out Darand’s payment, held in a medium-sized leather pouch. Nothing in this galaxy was free, Ben knew, not even information. Especially not information.
This information was particularly demanding; several thousand credits, and, more notably, Ben’s old Kyber crystal, the cracked red one he had used until recently. He had been quite incredulous when Darand had requested that particular item, and it had taken him a very long time to reach a decision about whether or not to give it to him. But in the end, Ben had decided that the future of the Galaxy was too important to deny Darand what he requested, if it meant getting the holocron locations. Still, he had made Darand promise several times he would not sell the Kyber crystal to anyone dealing in experimental weapons, or attempt to replicate the crystal in any way, shape, or form; synthetic Kyber crystal manufacturing was a secret he did not know, one that had died with the Jedi and Sith orders, and he preferred it stay that way, for everyone’s sake. Of course, no amount of promises from a man like Darand could truly mean anything, but Darand was smart enough to know that if Kyber-based weaponry ever surfaced in any capacity, his life would very quickly be forfeit. Ben had far fewer reservations about killing than the Jedi did.
Despite this, Ben still didn’t like the hungry glint in Darand’s eyes as he grabbed the bag from Ben’s hand, and pulled it open to eye the glowing crystal lying on top of the mound of credits. Glancing up at feeling Ben’s gaze through his helmet’s visor, Darand rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, I know, no weapons research,” he said, dismissive once more, as he closed the bag. “You made it abundantly clear. I’m not stupid enough to cross the Chosen One, believe me. It will make quite a collector’s item, though.” Ben’s gaze did not lessen in intensity at all. “Make sure it doesn’t become anything more than that,” Ben emphasised one last time for good measure. Darand nodded, and this time Ben could feel a bit of sincerity from the man, even if it only arose from his wariness of him.
The awkward silence that grew between them was interrupted by a noise from across the room; both men turned to see a fight had broken out, between a drunken Sullustan and an Ithorian. As they watched, the Sullustan threw a wild punch and missed, stumbling heavily, and the Ithorian immediately kicked the man in the stomach hard, sending him sprawling to the ground on his back, where he promptly groaned, rolled over onto his hands and knees, and vomited violently onto the floor. The Trandoshan bartender shrieked in outrage, and now the Ithorian looked extremely nervous.
“This place has seen better days, I’m telling you,” Darand muttered grumpily, taking a sip of the drink that had lain untouched since Ben sat down. “Used to be a high-end establishment. Went downhill when the last owner died.” Ben sincerely doubted the accuracy of that statement, but he decided it wasn’t worth his time to ask about it. “I should be going,” he said instead, standing up and turning back to Darand. “Yes, yes, I should be too,” Darand sighed, looking down at his watch. “As I said, other clients are expecting me, in decidedly nicer venues than this one. Until we meet again, Ben So-- Ben Skywalker.” Which will be never , Ben thought with disdain. Darand put the bag with his payment away and began finishing his drink, and Ben took that as his cue to leave. Without any further delay, Ben turned and headed out the door of the bar and back out onto the streets of Coruscant, wanting nothing more than to be back on his ship and away from this planet.
To his dismay, he found the route he had taken to get to the bar was blocked off; a speeder had crashed into the walkway, rendering it impassable, and a large crowd was gathered to gawk at the scene, apparently having nothing better to do with their time than bother the emergency service workers. With a sigh, Ben turned away from the scene, looking for an alternate route. He spotted an alleyway nearby, one that turned at its end and likely let out onto the walkway he needed to take. It also likely held less than reputable people waiting for an opportunity to rob someone, but Ben was fairly certain it would take more than any Coruscant mugger had to even injure him at all.
He entered the alley and headed down towards the turn, hearing the noise of the crowd fade behind him along with the light of the street lamps, to be replaced by the noises of hissing steam pipes and whirring machinery and the lights of scattered dim bulbs that sat atop power boxes and the like. The sudden quiet after a near constant cacophony of noise was almost calming, in a strange way.
So of course, something had to happen to break the calm. As Ben had predicted, and in fact sensed as soon as he had entered the alley, there were people in the alley, and he was almost to the turn at its end when they stepped into view, two from around the corner he was walking towards and two from behind him. He had hoped they would be smart enough to let him pass - clearly he had been giving the street thugs of Coruscant too much credit.
“This is our territory, stranger,” one of the thugs in front of him said, attempting to sound threatening. To Ben, having witnessed Plagueis and all his terrible might, the thug just sounded pathetic. “And we don’t like strangers in our territory.” The thug pulled out a short vibroknife, and Ben leveled the man with an extremely unimpressed look from beneath his helmet. “I’m not interested in a fight,” he said aloud, addressing all four of the men. “But I won’t hesitate to kill you if you don’t let me pass.” To their credit, the thugs did not give a cliche overconfident laugh. Instead, the lead thug narrowed his eyes angrily and raised his knife. “Go ahead and try,” he growled. “Maybe you get one of us, but you ain’t takin’ on all four.”
The thug could not have been more wrong, and he discovered that as soon as he lunged.
It was over in an instant. Ben’s saber snapped from his belt and into his hand faster than the eye could follow, the violet blades appearing not a second later. In one large stroke that was almost a full one-hundred and eighty degree arc, Ben decapitated three of the thugs, their bodies falling to the ground with the hiss of cauterized flesh, the heads falling beside them with dull thudding noises. At the same time, Ben used his other hand to raise the lead thug into the air with the Force, and with a quick jerking motion, snapped the man’s neck. His body fell to the ground at almost the exact same time as the other three. All in all, the confrontation lasted less than three seconds.
There was a very long moment of silence, broken only by the humming of Ben’s lightsaber, the purple glow from the blade casting the four bodies into sharp relief. Then, silently, Ben shut off the saber, and placed it once more on his belt. And with that, he continued on his way, stepping over the bodies to round the corner of the alley and keep walking back to the landing pad where his ship was waiting.
/
Thankfully, the rest of the walk back to his ship was quick and uneventful, and soon enough, the Ray of Hope was emerging from the Coruscant underworld, and shooting off back up into the sky, leaving the city planet’s atmosphere. For Ben, he couldn’t be leaving soon enough, and if he never came back to this planet it would be no significant loss. He sighed wearily, letting himself relax as the sky outside the cockpit window darkened until he could see the stars again.
Beside him, BD-1 hopped up onto the console, letting out a questioning beep. He had been silent on the ascent, seeing Ben’s obvious tension, but now that he seemed calmer the little white droid was curious whether Ben had gotten what they’d come for or not. “I got the information,” Ben said to the droid, smiling at his curiosity. In the months since the late Cal Kestis had gifted the droid to him, he’d come to like his new companion. The droid was useful, and playful, and had a sarcastic streak that distinctly reminded Ben of Artoo in some ways. And, if Ben was honest, the droid was kind of cute, too, with his rounded photoreceptors and the way he used his legs to express himself.
He reached into his cloak and pulled out the datastick. BD chirped in celebration, hopping up and down a couple times, then leaned forward so Ben could plug the stick into the droid. With a whirring noise, BD turned to the empty space behind the pilots’ chairs and a hologram flickered into existence. Ben turned his chair to look. It was a map of the entire galaxy, marked here and there with yellow dots signifying the locations of holocrons. Each dot had a small box with information near it, giving the name of the planet it corresponded to, said planet’s coordinates, and the number of holocrons that were supposedly located there. There would probably be more information available too, but Ben probably had to focus on one specific location to access it.
All told, there were nineteen planets marked, and twenty seven holocrons to find split between them. This was going to be a long journey, but Ben knew that if he could get his hands even half of the holocrons listed here, it would be a wealth of information, and plenty to kickstart a new generation of Force users. The possibilities of the future were laid bare, plotted out before him, and Ben found he was actually excited to begin his quest. BD beeped a question, asking where they were off to first, sounding as eager to get started as Ben was. Ben pondered that for a moment, looking at each of the marked coordinates in turn. Deciding that one planet was as good as any to start, he picked one at random, pointing to a world located on the Outer Rim, close to the border with the Mid Rim. “There. Kerabor,” he said, reading the name listed in the box. BD beeped in confirmation, and he deactivated the hologram, and let Ben take back the datastick, then turned and plugged his scomp link into the nav console, setting the ship’s course for the selected planet.
When BD chirped that the coordinates were all set, Ben turned back towards the viewport and placed his hand on the lever to activate the hyperspace drive. With a feeling of determination and eagerness for the coming journey, Ben pulled the lever, and then the stars outside warped and elongated into streaks of blue and white as the Ray of Hope shot into hyperspace, and Ben was off, and the adventure had begun.