Akoofa Baran's holocron
From Chimaera Roleplayers
Contents |
Introduction
Master Akoofa Baran was a kiffar Jedi Shadow. Around 1000 BBY he was assigned several undercover missions and he was told to go alone. Between missons he created a holocron with information he wanted his padawan to have if he died before resuming the training. During all the years that passed until the present days the holocron has belonged to several people and has been carried across many different places all over the galaxy before ending in the hands of its current owner, Drackos Shadat.
Story
The holocron was created by a Jedi Master and Shadow named Akoofa Baran, that lived around 1000 BBY and died in the Seventh Battle of Ruusan under the command of Lord Hoth, the Jedi Master leading the Army of Light.
Akoofa had a twi'lek padawan named Leemar Nitt, but when the activity of the Brotherhood of Darkness increased he was often send in undercover missions to track and assassinate Sith opperatives and the Jedi Order told him to go alone to better keep a low profile because two opperatives would just have cried master/padawan too loud, making his task harder. His padawan was assigned a new master until Akoofa was able to train him again, but he created a holocron during his travels just in case the worst happened and he couldn't resume the training of Leemar.
His intuition proved right, he died during the Seventh Battle of Ruusan, but Valenthyne Farfalla recovered the holocron from his corpse and brought it to Ossus, from where years later was sent to the Jedi Temple in Coruscant. Leemar could never see his master's legacy: he wasn't at the battle but was intercepted and killed by a Sith assassin when he was on his way to Ossus.
The holocron was first accessed after the Ruusan Reformation, to record in the Jedi Archives what information it held. The gatekeeper asked the jedi knight that had accessed it about Leemar, but he didn't know who he was, he had never known the padawan and the list of casualties during the New Sith Wars was too long to remember a single name. Thus, the gatekeeper never knew Leemar was dead.
When the Dark Side presence apparently decreased because of the changes that Darth Bane introduced in the Sith Order, the abilities of a Jedi Shadow were not specially needed and there were enough masters and knights alive to teach them. Because of that, the holocron remained unused for almost a millennia.
It was near the end of the Clone Wars when someone was interested in the holocron again. A young ithorian jedi knight, intrigued by how Darth Sidious was able to remain hidden even from the senses of Master Yoda, took the holocron hoping a Jedi Shadow of times long gone could have teachings to improve his senses and maybe detect the Sith Lord.
Unfortunately, before he could even access it for the first time Order 66 was issued. When it all happened he was visiting a facility of the Agricultural Corps, and as soon as the Clone Troopers attacked he realized it would be a slaughter because the members of the Agricultural Corps had received their only training as younglings and the Force was weak on many of them.
Decided to help them escape he stopped a young woman, sensing a certain strength in her. The ithorian gave her the holocron and told her to protect it and never let it fall in the wrong hands, and then he ran to fight the clones. He fought bravely but was soon overwhelmed and was killed, although his sacrifice allowed many people to escape to the lower levels of Coruscant, where without their usual clothes some of them could mix with the rest of the population and remain unnoticed.
The woman, a human named Nerea Shadat, quickly encountered his husband Artios and both left Coruscant as fast as they could. They found shelter in Alderaan, and when the Alliance to Restore the Republic was formed they were in the first groups to joined it.
Nerea never tried to open the holocron but always kept it with her, trying to fulfill what she promised to the brave ithorian who saved her life, but she died when the rebel cell she belonged to was ambushed by imperial troops in Dantooine in 17 BBY. With the last strength she could gather, she used her bare hands to dig a hole where she hid the holocron, so the stormtroopers couldn't find it if they checked the corpses after the battle.
In 3 ABY Nerea returned in some form of spiritual presence to haunt his son, Drackos Shadat. As she never became even a padawan her limited control of the Force wasn't able to successfully comunicate with Drackos, he rather suffered visions, dreams and nightmares that made him border insanity. Before completely losing touch with reality, he was driven to the old battlefield where his mother died and, directed by the visions, recovered the holocron.
As soon as he put his hands around it his mother's presence started vanishing, making him recover the sense of what was real and what was not. After his friends Xhaba and Lee-Lou found him and he recovered in the Dune Sea clinic, he tried to access it but neither him nor his master Akron were able to do it.
When they were in Kirtania after the defeat of the imperial inquisitor sent after Akron, Drackos had fulfilled the requisite of having confronted the Dark Side, and the gatekeeper sensed it and finally manifested for Drackos for the first time.
Later it was also accessed by Tsotha-Lanti, who decided to use the knowledge it contained to ease his task of teaching several apprentices.
The Gatekeeper
Personality
Akoofa Baran was an old school Jedi, thus the gatekeeper takes great care on what is better let an user know. He will only go in details when is activated by a Force user alone and, being a Jedi Shadow, he simply can't understand teaching advanced techniques until he senses the apprentice has achieved a great mental strength and discipline, and a lack of Dark Side emotions. He will never let the holocron open if he senses the slightest taint of the Dark Side around him, and it will open only to Force users who he senses had defeated the Dark Side (be it in combat against a Dark Side user or metaphoric defeat having faced it and resisted the temptation).
Appearance
Akoofa Baran was 175 cms tall and of average weight. He had long black hair, and his facial tattoos were pale green, but in the form of a hologram it is very difficult to notice them. Due to this a Force user accessing the holocron will probably think Akoofa was human. He always appears wearing traditional jedi robes.
Contents
Specialized in fighting Force users and sharing some traits with the Jedi Sentinels, the list of things Akoofa wanted his padawan to learn was oriented on tracking and fighting the Dark Side, and organized it in different and well divided stages.
First stage, mental and spiritual preparation:
- Philosophical speeches and explanations to help a Jedi to focus in his task against the Dark Side.
- Meditation focused on making the user a very disciplined and mentally strong being, ready to overcome all difficulties.
Second stage, tracking and identifying the menace:
- Force Sight, to see more clearly any sources of the Dark Side.
- Comprehend speech, to be a better spy when tracking Dark Side users.
Third stage, getting close to the target:
Both powers oriented to try to approach Dark Side users unnoticed.
Fourth stage, fighting Dark Side users:
- Lightsaber Form V: Djem So, an aggressive combat form that is very useful against other lightsaber users.
- Force Absorb, to turn the Dark Side attacks into something useful for the jedi.
Fifth stage, after the fight:
- Although Akoofa didn't know Force Healing, something that would have required more time to learn than he could devote, he had a wide knowledge on first aid, and medicinal plants and herbs for emergency medical care if he was injured during his duties when he was far from civilized areas that could provide standard medical treatment.
