#when i'm a packrat and i'd much rather not

[greyias]

Oooh can we get the backstory to the dualsaber thing? Sorry if I've just missed the story before </3

Certainly! If you prefer backstory in fic form, it's delved into a little bit here and here, buuuut the simpler version is:

The out-of-game explanation is I'd had these items equipped for a while when I started seeing connections between them and the story, especially as I was going through Shadow of Revan and the first half of KotFE.

Items in question: Twin Satel Shan dualing sabers paired with purple-black striated crystals

In-universe expalnation, I kind of have a thing for weird connections in the Force and them weaving their way into characters' lives in subtle ways. And there's two explanations that sort of go together.

First off, the hilts (which is why I have such a mighty need for the dualsaber version)!

We see Satele's original dualsaber broken in the "Hope" trailer when she and Jace face off with Malgus during the Battle of Alderaan. This battle is what leads Satele and Jace to having the affair that produces Theron. In my headcanon, she keeps the ruins of the hilt*. Vague handwavey “the Force said so” (or the fact that she does seem to be a bit of a packrat when you poke around her camp on Odessen. Her mother’s journals, mementos of Ngani Zho, mysterious childrens’ toys, pictures of beautiful mountains, a locket with a picture of teenage Theron she in theory shouldn’t have, etc)

* -- this may actually be quasi-canon(ish)? If you're a Force Sensitive character and run through Chapter 12 of KotFE, look very closely at the hilt that Satele gives you in the cutscene. While there's a bit of a gilded color to part of the hilt, the swirls are the exact same on the above. Ergo, Satele does give you her hilts at some point... (at least as force sensitive baby, I'm sure the gun/cannon/etc you get are equally pretty. But obviously that kind of throws the "gives you her old lightsaber" bit out of the water if you're not actually building a lightsaber)

When Grey is forced into being a thrall for Vitiate at the end of Chapter 2, it’s implied by the game that the Knight, or rather, the Knight’s body was forced to do something very bad, as indicated by Orgus’s dialogue when he helps breaks Vitiate’s hold over them. (Not to mention the whole Orgus sidequest on Rishi). After escaping the fortress, Grey keeps trying to clean her original lightsabers, but she can never seem to get the bloodstains out (even though they’ve been scrubbed clean).

She can’t even wear them or look at them anymore, something that Satele picks up on during the debriefing with Scourge and the Council regarding Vitaite’s “NomNom the Galaxy” Plan**.  Before Grey and company depart for Belsavis, Voss, and beyond, Satele takes her aside and helps her craft new blades, helping providing the hilts as well as offering some calm/meditation help. The idea being that what was once broken can still be mended into something new, something stronger.

(** - That’s the canon name for it, I’m sure. No need to look it up on Wookieepedia).

And because I’m a bit of a sap, it has this roundabout way of connecting her to Theron, as the action of the blade being broken led Jace to make his mad dash, suicidal charge with a grenade to save the woman he loved, and ultimately led to Theron being born. And Grey’s love for Theron is part of what leads her into darkness, but also what pulls her out of it again and again.

SO.

If Grey is to have a dualsaber when the game lets me add a secondary combat style (which is definitely going to be Shadow, because I need stealth like burning on her when running dailies. Seriously it would make my life so much easier) -- then she needs to be able to attach her current two lightsabers back into the original dualsaber form. It just makes sense, yannow?

Now the crystals... that’s a bit more complicated and I haven’t quite explained it in full. But it’s a mix of a bunch of headcanon and lightsaber crystal lore from old and new canon. 300 years prior, perhaps riiiight about the time a certain Pureblood Sith literally stabs Meetra Surik in the back and turns on Revan, a twin pair of lightsaber crystals begin to grow on Ilum, facet by facet. Huh. Weird.

A few years prior to the Treaty of Coruscant, a little baby, pre-Padawan Grey starts having nightmares and visions of something calling to her in the dark. The Force being, well, the Force, is murky and not super clear in all of this, and eventually her guardian figures out that the Force is calling her to Ilum to claim her lightsaber crystals. This opens up a can of worms for him unrelated to this story, but she enters the crystal caves and follows the crystal’s songs to what look like ordinary, clear crystals.

The moment she touches them and pulls them from their resting place, they turn a deep, dark purple hue with black streaks running through it. Naturally, as a child that’s already been a bit traumatized by an encounter with the Sith, she freaks out and begs her guardian to hide them away, as she thinks it means she’s somehow tainted and dark. She puts them to the back of her mind, and almost forgets about them. And I mean, Orgus Din gifts her all of the components she needs to make the pair of sabers on Tython, so no one has to know about those dark crystals she’s got hidden away.

Until years later, she’s put under the thrall of the SIth Emperor. And those colors the crystals took on seem almost familiar:

Almost fated to be. Don’t they?

But yeah, not sure if the devs meant for the purple-striated crystals to resemble ValkyVitiateTenepants creepy dark-side power so much, but since they do (especially if you use his teleport ability in Chapter 9 of KOTET, the smoke is almost the exact same color), but since it does? In a way, for my little headcanon verse anyway, the crystals sort of represent that connection between Grey and Vitiate in the Force. That future that Scourge forced by grabbing onto one vision in a thousand and deciding to make it happen.

It’s not all him of course, she has her own issues, beyond him and even Theron, the color is also a reflection of her own inner demons. She still has lingering issues from losing her parents and with her family. At some point, I’m thinking possibly after whatever Legacy of the Sith throws at her (I haz fears after that Dantooine Flashpoint), she is reunited with both of her brothers, and all three of them eventually wind up confronting the man that murdered their parents. It’s all very dramatic, in typical Highwind fashion.

When Grey killed Vinn Atrius after he stabs Theron, the guilt almost drove her to the breaking point, and it took her a very long time to work her way through it. When the confrontation with their parents’ murderer happens, the man is unarmed, and she sees that Draike is about to drive himself off that same edge, she basically steps in to deliver the killing blow on Draike’s behalf, intending to spare him from that. It’s what finally breaks through her brother’s bloodlust, and other than Draike maybe, er, kneecapping the guy, he decides that his love for his estranged sister is stronger than his need for revenge.

(Meanwhile, this is like the second or third time their poor baby brother Ben has met his older siblings and he’s just all “?????” over the whole ordeal. )

TL;DR -- this incident is what finally mends the fence between Grey and Draike, and they develop a much healthier sibling relationship after it. It also allows them both to close the door on what happened to their parents and move on. The next time Grey is taking apart/maintaining her sabers, she meditates on the crystals, and the change from the deep, dark purple hue to a soft, purpleish gray that is almost white***.

*** - This is similar to what happens to the crystals that Ahsoka obtains from the Inquisitors hunting her. Meditating and healing the crystals that had reflected the darkness of their owner.

So uh... that might have been a more in-depth explanation than you were hoping for? 😅 Apparently even when I’m trying to write short, I can’t help but create super lengthy explanations.