JEDI HoloNet

He would on occasion dream old dreams of the days of his childhood. A mother cradling him in her arms, singing a lullaby he could no longer recall. The sound of drums beating through the halls of some huge metal box, while he lay there alone, holding his hands over his ears. A brother pushing him away as a blazing red sun came to destroy their former home. And then the silence.

Taruk had been born into a pirate-nobility family operating outside the planet of Nagi. At age 5 his tribe, the Shai, were all-but destroyed by a local Republic peacekeeping force seeking to protect their trade routes from the Nagi pirate clans. The Republic, having destroyed the pirate flagship, were now handed the difficult decision of what to do with the dozen or so civilians aboard the vessel – including the youngling Taruk Shai – left orphaned in the wake of the Shai clan’s destruction.

As the officers ensued in a debate of morality and cold-blooded pragmatism, a man in a robe strode between them. A white-haired man in robes whom Taruk would come to know as ‘Master Havenfire’. He stared down at the child with his steely blue eyes, the weathered expression on his face deep in thought. Perhaps the man felt sympathy for having contributed to the death of this boy’s entire family. Perhaps he saw something in him, the ember of a greater purpose whispering and unseen. Or perhaps the grizzled, uncaring man simply saw an opportunity to have someone to carry his luggage.

The boy was taken under his wing. Jedi Master Barun Havenfire was privately ridiculed on the temple of Ossus as something of a “unorthodox” figure. An elderly veteran of some forgotten war who cared more for his own interpretation of the Force than that of the Order’s. He had spent more of his life engaged in missions to other factions of the Force than he had spent in the presence of any other Jedi. And as a result, in his twilight years, it was barely known that he was still a figure of the Order at all.

Taruk was taken under his wing to tour the galaxy in the search of some ‘truth’ of the Force that had thus far escaped old Havenfire. A thoroughly unlikable and bitter man, Havenfire was no easy master to follow. “Old Blind Iron” as he was ridiculed was a well earned name. For fifteen years Taruk endured a rigorous, daily training regime preparing his mind and body for a war that he had never seen and never known.

In 454 ABY, the Ossus temple officially declared Havenfire missing in action. Having lost contact with him for over a year somewhere near Yavin IV, a rescue team was dispatched which searched the system for months. They were discovered alongside a native tribe of Force cultists, with Havenfire bent on learning from them some forbidden secret at the heart of one of the ancient Yavin temples. At the mouth of a Dark Nexus Havenfire was found – in the words of the Ossus Temple’s report – “looting artifacts with the vain hope of speaking to a spirit that the locals claimed to be an ancient god”.

The event sparked vicious debate in the halls of the Council. Not only had Havenfire taken an apprentice without the consent of the Council, there was no telling what he had taught him, whether or not those teachings were in line with the Order’s, or whether or not Havenfire had ‘fallen’ under the spell of some dark entity around Yavin. As the Council investigated further, it was clear that Havenfire had all-but renounced his identity as a Jedi. The locals referred to him as an “explorer” and “prophet” who taught them the ways “between the sun and moon”, and in return they helped him search for forbidden knowledge at the heart of the universe. It did not take long for Havenfire to be exiled from the Order. He left unceremoniously, spending the rest of his days under the persistent watch of the Jedi Shadows until his dying day some years later.

Yet this left the Council with the uncomfortable question of what to do with the young twenty-year old Taruk Shai. An orphan who had, through no fault of his own, been taken under the wing of one of their most eccentric – and potentially dangerous – members. In multiple trials of skill and philosophy they put Taruk to the test to determine his character. And in each test he proved himself capable, intelligent, and good-natured. Beneath the exterior of his master’s harsh treatment and his lack of knowledge on Jedi decorum and formality, lay a warrior and protector worthy of the title ‘Jedi Knight’.

Yet it would always be rumoured that Taruk Shai had received “unorthodox” lessons from his now-exiled mentor. Never showing any signs of indiscretion, Taruk showed a sometimes suspicious level of knowledge that most in the Order would deem uncommon for most Jedi. His connections to many alternative Force factions would sometimes contradict or seem at odds with the specific teachings of the Order. However the Ossus Council, with some pressure from the former Grandmaster, pushed for Taruk Shai to be Knighted and transferred to the fledgling branch at Dunedeen.