#so if there is actual information from her backstory that contradicts this then *shugs* whoopsies

[reliciron]

Decided to write out the important bit of my jedi consular’s backstory. 

It should be noted that he doesn’t technically want to die, he’s just very scared of his master and doesn’t see any way to escape. 

That said, at the end of the day he does try (and fail) to die by throwing himself at some jedi, so please don’t read if you’re uncomfortable with that.

Go to the northern reaches of Brentaal IV. There you will find a small Jedi temple: the place where Grand Master Satele Shan first trained.

It has enjoyed relative anonymity since, but this must change.

Infiltrate the temple. Slaughter everyone within. Show the Jedi that nothing is safe from the Sith.

Do this, my clever acolyte, and I will raise you from the shadows.

You will be my apprentice.

Dust kicks up as he races across the northern plateaus on his stolen speeder bike. It will take hours to track properly, with the damage he left behind. But by then he’ll have either completed his mission…

Or he’d be dead.

He clenches his teeth.

She was mad. She HAD to be.

No.

He shakes his head.

No. His master is many things, but not mad.

Just calculating. And he may be a mere acolyte, but he hadn’t survived this long without learning some of the game.

If her words were true, the Sith would send a platoon, or at least a full squad. Make a show of the massacre to demoralize the Republic and Jedi Order both.

One lone acolyte would not be enough to guarantee victory. Indeed, it was very likely that he would not survive the attempt at all, even with 6 years of careful training from his master.

He’d been her faithful servant. Her knife in the dark. She’d liberated him from Rattatak and kindly taken him under her wing as a boy. He’d learned to wear the Force like a shroud. Hide himself from sight and strike from the shadows.

She gave the word, and he carried out the sentence. A name, a picture, a place, and they’d be dead in a matter of days.

He couldn’t be her apprentice. No matter his talent, he was Rattataki. And as far as the anyone else knew, he didn’t exist.

He KNEW this. She’d said it so many times. But now she was offering it to him.

It wasn’t real.

And the impossibility of the task only affirmed his suspicions.

He was not MEANT to succeed.

He did not exist, yet as more Sith and Imperials fell before him it became harder and harder to keep his existence secret. And she would never let him go, not when he knew so much of her secrets.

He was a liability now. One she hoped would take care of itself in a pointless attack on a temple.

He should run. He SHOULD, but he CAN’T.

His throat goes tight and he slows down a bit as the temple’s coordinates loom on the navigation computer.

He’d tried to run once, before he’d truly understood how much of a PRIVILEGE it was to have been chosen by his mistress. He couldn’t recall the ‘how’s and ‘why’s anymore, but he remembered the punishment had gone on for well over a week.

Run and I’ll find you, little one. And I will not be so merciful the next time.

If he tries to abandon his duty, he’d die all the same, but she’d make sure to make it hurt. At least the Jedi would make it quick.

Yes.

If its one thing the soft-hearted fools abhorred, it was making a being suffer.

There was no way out for him, but an end by their sabers would be better than by her hand.

–

It had been laughably easy to enter the temple. The roomy interior had given him plenty of space to cloak himself and slip through without being noticed by the guardians. He’d made it all the way into the empty training room, where he’d entered a vent near the ceiling and used it to gain access to the meeting room.

Inside there were a handful of masters and their attending padawans, likely a collection of the strongest jedi in the temple. An incredibly foolish target.

But that was the point, wasn’t it.

He could have killed a great many by now. Picked off padawans one by one has he slithered through the building. Had he actually believed the lie his master had told him, he would have.

But he didn’t. And now these Jedi were his best chance for a swift end.

As he grips his lightsaber, he wonders, not for the first time, what his mother would have thought of him. He didn’t remember her, or much of Rattatak for that matter. But he hoped he’d grown to be a strong son, one who might have made her proud, had things been different.

He muffles the sound of the grate being opened, curls his toes over the edge of the vent frame, and leaps.

–

The creature had seemed to come from thin air.

A calm discussion with his fellow masters about possible changes to the curriculum one minute, and a whirl of dark robes and red light the next.

By the time he and the others managed to pull their lightsabers, 3 padawans lay crumpled on the floor with the attacker ready to strike again.

The battle had been vicious.

Master Evren nearly had a leg taken off, and Knight Balrus fell in a burst of lightning before Ixal finally got in under its guard to slice up through it’s hood.

It screamed, bringing its saber up in mindless defense as it clutched its smoking face, but it was a futile effort. He followed through, ducking its arm and spinning around behind to carve his saber deep across it’s back.

It folded like a house of cards, crashing to the floor in a heap of dark robes.

Not dead, but also not getting up any time soon.

Healers and medical droids are called, and to everyone’s relief no one was killed. But it still left them with a host of very injured jedi, and a deeply wounded assailant who should have never made it this far.

–

Once the others have been seen to, he and the few other jedi of rank gather in the assassin’s room.

The scans the droids provided them with were both enlightening… and disturbing.

A juvenile rattataki male, approximately16 years of age. Signs of extensive, long-term electrical trauma, 18 healed fractures, and general malnutrition. And that was all underneath the damage he himself had caused in the battle. Evidently he’d blinded the man - no, boy - in one eye, and his final strike had severed his spine. He was now paralyzed from the waist down.

Stars above.

It’s about an hour more before the boy comes to, numbed heavily around his injuries but not sedated.

They needed to speak with him, and it absolutely could not wait.

Even so, none of them are prepared for the tsunami of terror that all but knocks them off their feet.

He chokes and tugs desperately at his restraints, every inch a panicked child despite the destruction he’d wrought only a few hours ago.

It makes his stomach roil to know he’d not fought a man, but a boy.

“Peace, young one,” he says softly. And the single remaining eye fixes upon him.

A muscle jumps in the rattataki’s jaw before his face goes eerily blank, at odds with the fear still saturating the Force around them.

“My name is Master Ixal. I’m afraid you’ve committed some rather serious crimes here today, but I would like to talk, if you wouldn’t mind.” When all the boy does is stare at him, he smiles, “May I ask your name?”

There’s a long stretch of silence before the answer.

“Acolyte.”

His accent is Kaas-ian, but given that he’s an alien, there’s a very good chance that he was a slave.

“Is that your name, or the one you were given?”

He blinks, as if trying to parse the meaning.

“Did you ever have a different name?”

Something small and fragile flickers across the part of his face that is still visible.

“…. Faun.”

He sighs. Good. Not so far gone that he won’t answer questions entirely, “Faun then. Can you tell me why you’re here?”

“My master sent me.”

A sith then. Were they truly so desperate as to use children?

“They sent you to attack us?”

His eye closes and he seems resigned.

“Yes.”

“Who sent you? Are there more coming? Why is the temple being targ-?”

“It doesn’t matter, kill me and be done with it.”

“What-?”

“I killed your people and infiltrated your temple, is that not enough?!”

He seems desperate then, like a frightened animal, and the fear redoubles in the Force.

“Easy now,” he assures, “You killed no one, all those who were injured survived.” He frowns, “And you will not die for it. We certainly won’t be letting you go, but you will live and be treated fairly. But I can promise you, the more you help us now, the easier things will go for you in the future.”

Instead of being assured, the young man barks a harsh, bitter laugh.

“What, future?! I failed to die! Now my master will come for me to correct my failure!” He positively whimpers and shrinks in on himself, “She’ll be so angry! She’ll make it hurt! Why can’t you just kill me!”

They’re all taken aback by the outburst, but as his words start to sink in a sick feeling begins to settle in to Ixal’s stomach.

“What do you mean you ‘failed to die’?”

“You think I am a fool?!” he spits. “What else am I to believe when she gives me such an impossible task and promises rewards I knew could never be!” He sags onto the hospital bed. “I do not exist. She cannot allow me to be tied to her, and I was no longer worth the risk.”

He truly feared this master of his so much that he would willingly undertake a suicide mission? Stars above, what had this woman done to him?!

He shakes his head. They knew the why now, but not the how.

“How did you manage to make it all the way into the meeting room? You would have had to pass several guardians.”

The boy huffs, voice still raw and wavering, but evening out as they entered more neutral territory. “Your security is poor and my master trained me well. I cloaked myself in the Force, muffled my presence, and walked right passed them.”

A hint of pride threads through the fear in the air, but already a few of their number have left, unable to take such overpowering emotions.

Cloaking is a rare gift. That this young man is capable of doing so, well enough to fool full fledged jedi, is both dangerous and intriguing. Between that, his combat ability, and the hyper-projection of his emotions, they were dealing with a powerful force user, no matter his age.

It only occurs to him now that the young rattataki could have likely killed dozens of padawans and younglings before being discovered.

But he didn’t.

An idea starts to form but he’d need to consult his fellow masters first.

“Thank you, Faun, you’ve been very helpful. Please rest for now. We will speak again later.”

The boy looks wary as they leave, but more than likely the sedatives are already being administered through his drip. He won’t be conscious for much longer.

–

The discussion is heated, with several knights and masters arguing against it, but after consulting the Jedi Council, they finally come to an agreement.

They would attempt to rehabilitate Faun.

Turning a sith was notoriously difficult, but his youth would work in their favor.

The skills of an assassin, Force-cloaking especially, where nearly impossible to teach to jedi. Too close to the dark side for many to want to risk learning. But as much as they may wish otherwise, sometimes those skills were needed, and if they could earn Faun’s loyalty they’d have an invaluable ally.

It would be a long and delicate process. Mind healers would be needed to try and break the chains his master had instilled in his mind, and the physical reconstruction and recovery would be just as taxing.

There was no guarantee that it would work at all, but he genuinely believed it was worth a try.

The poor boy had been through so much. With a bit of work they might give him a second chance at a fulfilling life.

Dark-side or no, the Force practically hummed around him in a way Ixal had not seen since young Satele. He didn’t know what part this young man might play, but he had a feeling he may yet prove essential in the future.

This would not be the end the young man had sought, but a new beginning.

======

From there it takes a long time to deprogram him, and they need to install several internal cybernetic bypasses in his spine to get around the damage. At the end of it, he’s got a pretty serious scar that runs from right shoulder to left hip, a few numb patches on his lower back, and his eye is still blinded. He learns to hide his accent, too. And he’s somewhere in his late 20s-early 30s by the time the game starts.

He was sent to Tython as a fresh start for his padawan training, since no one there would know who he was, aside from the Council.

His companions don’t find out until they’re fighting the First Son and Syo tells them to try and get them to leave or turn on Faun. Zenith almost does leave afterwards, but after a long discussion they all stick with him.