The Rebel Faction

“What makes the Jedi inferior to the Sith?”

Dioan Silk repeated the question.

“What makes the Sith superior to the Jedi?”

The teacher set his students with a deep, penetrating stare. A dark empathy unfolded around him and, opening to the Force, flowed out across the assembly. Their emotions, their feelings poured through him. The taste of their potential stirred something inside of him. Others were easier to read then others but, in the end, none kept their secrets from him.

Doubt and arrogant presumption radiated off of one student; an oddity in that, of those gathered, he seemed to display the least potential. Dioan Silk made a mental note.

“Though you may not know it, this is the most fundamental question that divides Jedi from Sith. Billions of lives have been spent in pursuit of the answer to that very question.”

“The dogmatic answer, the simple answer is this; the Jedi make themselves weak because they ignore and repress their passions, their anger.”

“For now, that is your answer.”

“The truth, however; is much more complex.”

“What makes Sith better then Jedi?”

“You’ll have to learn that for yourself,” he shrugged. The black, billowing robes trailed behind him as we walked, the hood tumbling back from his head when his shoulders bunched. “When my lessons end, you will know. If you do not; you will be dead.”

“In fact, that is where we will start. Each of you will answer that same question in turn. You will do so now.” Lord Silk pointed a finger at one of the students. “You will go first.”

A human of perhaps seventeen standard years rose up on his heels. Clad in the clothes of a Kuati rebel and wearing his hair in long braids, the boy resolved to look fierce. He failed. The boy, trembling despite the set of his jaw, spoke in an uncertain voice.

“The Jedi are pawns! The galaxy has never been safe or secure under their rule. Only the Sith have ever forged a strong, united power in the Galaxy. The Empire and the New Order prove it! The Sith are better then the Jedi for a thousand reasons but they claim to be the perfect little protectors of peace when in truth they are just stooges to a corrupt government.”

Dioan Silk smiled and was silent for a moment before nodding. “Good. Sit.”

“Next.”

Leonidas beamed a malicious smile at the cocky student that had just sat down after reciting his text-book answer. His arrogance shall be his downfall.

Leonidas circumspected the room, waiting to learn the views of others. But it seemed as if they too, were playing the same game. Slowly, as if to agitate the others, Leonidas rose to his feet and looked down upon the rest of the students with an expressionless face. Slowly he turned around and began to speak as his eyes fell unblinkingly upon Lord Silk,

"The Sith are those who feed upon their emotion, whereas the Jedi hide their true feelings. This is their fatal weakness, many Jedi have fallen to the Sith simply because they are weak in holding their emotion inside them. This is why the Sith are better. The Sith are better because they are free. Many of the Jedi have fallen to the Dark side, especially during the mandalorian wars. But do you know of any Sith that have truly turned to ways of the Jedi? The title of peacekeeper that they take is always bastardised by the blood they shed in the past."

Content with his answer, Leonidas sat down, purposely avoiding everyone else's gaze.

Amusing…

Lord Silk mused. He had not moved, not batted an eye during the display.

A sensation of darkness, of deadly death radiated from the new arrival. This was no student. Strength in the force manifested in him. It dripped to the floor and washed over the meager souls of the apprentices. This was a knight. Strong in the Dark Side, was this one.

He spoke. With his voice emanating from the depth of his being he spoke in tones of silk and gravel. Contrasting tones, uncertain notes; it was a general unpredictability instilled in him by the Dark Lord Maim, a trait he in turn had learned from the last real Dark Lord, Lord Sidious.

“You would do well to heed the advice of your betters,” eyes like pitch turned across the students with the weight of a dozen battlefields weathered. “But in the end…”

His eyes lifted, darted, focused on Ryyk.

“All you have are words,” he lifted a palm.

Almost audible and on the edge of sensation, like the bass rumble of a thousand stampeding nerf, the atmosphere vibrated. It tasted as though lightning would strike, as though the heavens stood ready to split themselves and pour down upon them the thunderous mass of a billion years storms. The air sparked and sputtered.

And an iron hand, invisible but perceived without doubt, descended upon Xylan Ryyk. The weight of a thousand invisible nerf fell upon him.

A visible shockwave ripped around him. Concussive force rent the air in twine and burst outwards.

He did not sag, the Lord Silk, but rose from his seat as though upon a blowing wind. No finger moved yet, somehow, his robes fell open.

Glimmering in the low light, looming over the new Knight, Lord Silk towered above the rest clad in his crimson and coal Sovereign Protectors garb. Slung from his hip hung a weapon, half light-saber and half pike too large and too small to truly be either.

One foot in front of the other, Silk descended the few steps towards the now kneeling Knight.

“What is the difference between the Jedi and the Sith?”

He gestured and, with that gesture, pulled the upturned palm of Ryyk into the air before him.

The presence he had imposed upon the man held true though he gave no sign of outward concentration. It was as though he had installed magnetic locks within his knees and palms, as though he had somehow turned the dirt to steel, such was the attractive force that bound him in position. Waves of disrupted normality radiated, washed from the polarized limbs. The paradox expanded outward and altered the very physics of perception as they did.

Lord Silk gazed upon the palm and his face softened. And then, in a flash, he brought his own fingers up and around, slashing them down across the proffered palm. Blood appeared and welled up along a single lengthwise lasceration. The blade vanished.

“Do they bleed different then we?” He shook his head. “No, they do not.”

“Do they die different then we?” He gestured towards the space previously occupied by the student dispatched prior to the new arrival. “As you have seen, we do not.”

“Do we use a different power?” Again, he gestured. The Knights hand thumped to the ground again. “We do not.”

“What makes the Jedi different from the Sith is how we use our power. It is how we bleed and it is how we die. These are the things that make us different then the Jedi…”

Silk turned, ascended the dais and resumed his position. As soon as he did, the hold upon Xylan Ryyk relented.

“You,” he waved a hand over the assembly though his eyes locked on Ryyk. “You are what make the Jedi better then the Sith.”

He sighed.

“And here ends the lesson. You will all stand and make your way outside and find there a circle of broken sod. Remove your garments save those that protect your decency,” he smirked, “and prepare for physical combat.”

“You will adhere to the words of your superiors. The young Knight will select the combatants, and on his gift, may select the first opponents.”

Though doubtful in the extreme, Lord Silk half wondered if perhaps the Knight would forgo the lessons and select Dioan for himself. That would be amusing, perhaps even insightful, but this was a simple test; would it be glory, or would it be power?

... jumping ahead a little.


Lord Silk strode through the halls of the Sith temple, his billowing onyx and crimson robes trailing behind like so much dark side efflux. The first of his training sessions with the new batch of apprentices had been adequate but, as he realized very early on, these were children not soldiers. These were petulant little children with more raw power and ability then sense or skill unlike the warriors, the soldiers he had worked and trained with for the majority of his professional years and unlike the men he was used to working with these students expected to treat with some special and individualized accord that he simply could not rationalize. Soldiers spoke only when told to and supplied only the answers that their instructors had drilled into them where as these young and enthusiastic young men and women each possessed a unique and self-obsessed perspective that each, in turn, felt he or she had to voice or otherwise make known. Regardless, Silk had trained countless men and women during his career and these would be no different. Eventually they would subscribe to his methods, they would soon have little choice.

These thoughts, among others, swam through his consciousness. His body, seemingly of its own design, ambled through the halls and corridors of the Temple without any particular sense of direction or ambition. He was dwelling on the faces of his new students, contemplating their answers to his simple questions, their body language and, every bit as importantly, the non-physical aspects of their being. Blessed with an affinity for empathy, despite Lord Maim trying to destroy it in him, Silk had cultured an ability to read the emotional state of a person without being directly affected by it, and in so doing, form a more complete picture of the personality in question.

Moving through the corridors, which were almost totally isolated at this late hour, a handful of figures appeared in his wake. These were not his students, though they had at one time been. In fact, these men were the last of his loyal servants and brothers in arms from the now disbanded Crimson Empire. They had survived with him on Yinchorr and had been liberated, so to speak, alongside their leader, by the very Imperial task force that had been dispatched to obliterate them. Similarly alongside their displaced leader they had been deposited with the Sith and, somehow, had become the personal retinue of Lord Silk, Sith Knight. Each man wore a robe not unlike his own and each man hid his face behind a mask of woven fabric leaving only their pale white eyes (an after-effect of their prolonged exposure to the sands of Yinchorr) to stare out from that otherwise indistinguishable surface. Their exact number remained unknown but was assumed to be in the area of one or two hundred individuals. It had been their task to build the training Dojo and it was in that structure that they tended to habituate. And like moths to a flame, they seemed to come out of the wood work whenever Silk was around.

A half dozen of the robed figures had accumulated, following behind Silk at a respective distance, before he realized where he was.

Lord Silk raised a curious eyebrow and studied the plain doors before him. He did not recall coming this way nor did he seem to have intended to enter the residential barracks. Fanning his fingers Silk pressed his palm against the smooth surface and extended himself beyond the obstacle. The force filled him widening and expanding his perceptions beyond the corporeal world. A powerful pretense met him on the other side of that door, a presence ripe with potential force energies. He recognized the sensations for he had felt similar feelings from one of his supposed students.

A thought moved through his awareness and Silk formed a fist. Prepared to rap upon the door, he paused at the last moment and regarded his folded knuckles. He chuckled and stepped back from the doors.

Silk gestured with two fingers. The men in their robes broke into two teams, three men to a group, and formed up on either side of the door with their backs pressed to the door. Lord Silk grinned and raised his palms.

Extending himself outward again the Sith began to manifest a physical reaction to his ethereal desires. Lines of perspiration formed on his forehead and, straining, he pressed shut his eyes and reached outwards.

And the doors of the students room virtually exploded outwards in a shower of broken shards that, pausing in mid air, turned on their points and swarmed back into the room like a hundred angry insects. Without missing a beat the men pressed against the walls drew their weapons, long double bladed, double edged swords and charged into the room behind the cloud of debris. They roared their battlecries and raised their weapons up over their heads.

“Defend yourself Palestar,” declared Lord Silk. “You are attacked!”

He would teach this petulant whelp to miss one of his lectures.