Give us a blindfold, give us a blade

[Ylva Alfrún]

​

Ylva Alfrún​

University of Aldera​

Alderaan, 805 ABY​

"This isn't the first staff event you will have attended, Master." Gespar churned out through his facial tentacles, which twitched hesitantly. Ylva leaned back in her seat and twirled a lock of chestnut brown hair around her finger, sipping at her mug of caf as she lay in thought. "In fact, you've attended several such events in the past and I feel it is good form for you to contin--" Ylva cut him off with words of her own as she was not truly paying attention.
"If all life is dependent upon the atomic and particle interactions that compose it, which are in turn dictated by the laws of the physical universe, then does free will even exist, or is it merely resultant from these interactions?" Ylva broke her gaze away from the wall before her and turned to face her Padawan, who's Quarren features were twisted in an expression of confusion.
"Master, I..."
"I am suffering a crisis, Gespar." Ylva snapped lightly, "There's no evidence to support the existence of free will save for our apparent ability to make decisions for ourselves. On the contrary, atomic scanning can tell us precisely why a specific emotion was elicited, or a certain disease capable of spreading throughout a life form." She shook her head, the Jedi Code was not written with free will in mind. It was written in the spirit of obedience, subservience, to something greater than oneself. And yet the two were not mutually exclusive. Curious.
"Master, is everything alright?" Gespar asked inquisitively. Ylva arched an eyebrow and shook her head. "No. It is not. But this is a conversation for another time. How fare your studies?" She demanded. The Quarren nodded, "They go well. The Nursing program here is intense, as you said, and yet I find it...invigorating. I may prefer a medical degree, when all is said and done."
Ylva shook her head, "They are two different paths, nursing and medicine. Nursing is the path of a Jedi, a path of service to the weak and the ill. Medicine is a clerical path that does not favor forming a relationship with your patients. It lacks the personal touch. You would be disappointed as a physician, Gespar, knowing how much empathy you hold for others."
Her Padawan smiled, an awkward expression for a Quarren. His facial tentacles curled and separated, exposing his toothed maw. "It is one of my greatest strengths," he stated matter-of-factly. Ylva smiled in exchange and nodded. "It is indeed, my student. About the event...I will attend, but leave me to complete some reading. Return an hour before we're to leave, so I can prepare."
Gespar nodded and dipped his head, then backed out of the door to Ylva's office and sealed it behind him. Ylva locked the door via the inner panel with a thought, then looked across the room to one of the bookshelves lining the wall.

Outside, twisting spires and mountainous peaks filled the landscape, with green, wind-swept plains looked to be an ocean below. Landspeeders cruised over the grassy hills and valleys, and starships departed from within the city of Aldera, taking to the sky. "It's all just an intricate series of atomic interactions..." Ylva muttered to herself before looking back to the bookshelf. She stood, gathering her robes and walked over to the case, searching out the flimsi-book she was looking for. Once she had, Ylva cracked the book in her hands, letting the spine rest against her palm as its covers fell open. Inside the large, leather-bound manual were hollowed pages, and sitting within the space a small, aluminum case.
Ylva pried the small case from its hidden container, setting the leather-bound manuscript back on the shelf. She returned to her chair and rested the volume on her desk, flipping open the clasp holding it shut and looked upon the writing within.

It was a small book, one she'd acquired on Ziost, the ancient surrogate homeworld of the Sith species. The volume itself was an anthology of philosophy from some of the older Sith practitioners, some of which dated back to Ajunta Pall and the first Great Schism. The anthology predominantly focused on the collected peace works of the Sith which were little more than deviations from the Jedi Path. At the end of the day they made powerful arguments that bore none of the extremity of the later Sith.

One passage in particular resonated with Ylva, and was the primary cause of her dissonance with the Jedi Code.

Sometimes Ylva read the passage aloud to herself, wrote from memory. She did not need the book; on the contrary its contents rested entirely within her mind. But she enjoyed being able to run her fingertips over its roughshod pages, and by heightening her senses with the Force she could feel the print itself against her skin, like a blind person reading braille. History, disjointed as it was due to the dark ages of the Gulag Plague, had never vindicated her Order in their pursuit of the Sith. What could have been a peaceful dissonance became a vitriolic war that had raged ever since between two sides of the same coin; the Jedi and the Sith. Their unrest had caused death and sown chaos for millennia.
Even so, Ylva did not hold on to the past, that much of the Jedi Code she honored. The Order of the present was relatively peaceful, and Ylva did not hold current practitioners to the crimes of their forebears. The failure of the Jedi in the eons following the first Great Schism became that of the Sith as they solidified their ideology. As the great destroyer of evolving thought, ideology was immobile, unwavering, dogmatic. It solidified negativity and promoted stagnation within schools of thought. She'd seen it happen of capitalism, selectivism, religion, and within the Jedi Order. Similarly, the Sith Orders of history and the present fell victim to this failure; promoting the ideology became more important that the philosophy it was based upon, and this was used to excuse atrocities across thousands of years.

Ylva struggled to decide what to do in the midst of it all. She could only work so hard within the Jedi Order before being refuted and ejected by its leaders, and she had her responsibilities as a Master and an educator to attend to. Yet it gnawed at her, day after day, year after year, and drove a wedge further between her personal philosophy and the Jedi Code.

"Conjunction..." The word came unbidden to her lips. Ylva looked up from her book, a puzzled look on her face. "Conjunction of what? The Jedi and the Sith?" Ylva chewed on her lip for a moment. When broken down, the Jedi Order promoted peace-keeping through agents that maintained emotional balance and objectivity. On the other side, the Sith promoted peace through the freedom of oneself to design and define their own actions. One one side of the coin, Responsibility, the other, Freedom. Either in extremes led to Fascism and Anarchy, respectively, both incompatible with civilization. Balance, not of Dark and Light, but of Freedom and Responsibility, were the keys to a peaceful society. Ylva considered this for some time, and over the next many years, would strive to solidify her new philosophy in the minds of her students, starting with Gespar.

[member=Darth Venefica]​

 

[Ylva Alfrún]

Ylva Alfrún​

University of Aldera​

Alderaan, 844 ABY​

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"Another year, another student." Ylva mumbled to herself. Across the room from her, Gespar looked up from his datapad. "Did you say something, Master?" He asked. Ylva glanced up and realized she'd been speaking aloud. "Hmmm, yes...This student...Nalik Navar...she intrigues me. Her work is already so similar to my own train of thought it makes me wonder if I'm being plagiarized." Gespar stood, setting his 'pad on the hosting table before him and walked over to the desk. "If you'll allow me..." he asked; Ylva handed him her datatablet and for a moment he glanced over the paper displayed in silence before returning it to her. "It appears she's read the Sith classics with your hat on, Master. Her analysis differs clearly enough, though her conclusion remains the same as yours: The Sith path is one of peace."
Ylva smiled, "A conclusion you yourself reached some years ago, my wondrous student." Gespar smiled, then returned to his seat. "You know, you might consider inviting her to one of our talks." Ylva looked up at her former Padawan. "Do you think it wise? We've spoken of them to no one, in all our years together." Gespar's facial tentacles curled upward toward his maw. A nervous expression, Ylva recognized. "We need not speak of anything...subversive, at first. Not until we have gleaned if her arguments are purely academic or genuine." Ylva smiled, "Extend the invitation. Set it to tomorrow evening. If she is unavailable, the end of the academic week." Gespar's facial tendrils relaxed and he nodded, stepping out of the office to make contact with Nalik Navar. The woman was Human; Coruscanti, to be exact. A native Jedi, as was Ylva herself, taken by the Order shortly after her birth. The Navar's studies had focused on theology, history of cultures, and philosophy. As she dug deeper into Navar's past publications, Ylva began to glean a sub-set ideology within the woman's work. Arguments for passivity on behalf of the Order in Galactic affairs were rampant, as were other non-interventionalist ideas. She had successfully debated in academic exercises for the case that the militant nature of the Jedi-Republic relationship had ensured continued warfare between entire populations for generations. Ylva rarely found Navar attacking the dogma of the Jedi Order itself, though this was understandable. Ylva herself rarely spoke openly regarding her disillusionment with the Order, opting to practice her philosophy in secrecy for the time being. When she did, it was always in an academic setting, giving her the room to blame her views on argumentative reasoning. As long as she was merely challenging the minds of her students, the Jedi Council could never hold those views against her, not officially, at least.
Ylva turned her chair and looked out of her office window across the plains of Alderaan. The wind was slight, like a reedy woman, withering through the trees and over the grasses. Ylva reached toward her belt and drew the lightsaber from it, holding the weapon before her and looking over its gleaming curves. She'd owned the device for decades and rarely ever had to draw it in violence. Ylva had considered for years taking a vow of pacifism to bolster her Sith ideology of peace, yet she'd never felt the time was right.
"Perhaps...the time...is..."

"Master." Gespar stepped back into the room. Ylva set her lightsaber atop her desk. "She has agreed to tomorrow night." Her student reported with a tone of pleasure in his voice. Ylva nodded, "I look forward to it," she replied.

[member=Darth Venefica]​