Private Lifestyles of the Rich and Alchemical

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"The only one of those I know is the Merrill version - I carried one when I was Korriban's Jedi Watchman. Sliver of Mimban crystal, I want to say, but I think there was more to it. I never disassembled it to see how it worked. Jal Shey, now..."

But she couldn't recall. The details eluded her, maybe because of all the trivia and opportunities she'd sacrificed for specialization, maybe because of age.

"No," she said at last. "Not as such. She dabbled in it over the years, but there's no Great Spencer Holocron floating around. Sorry."

She couldn't shake the nagging feeling that Spencer might have made one, ten, fifteen years ago - but the memory refused to coalesce.

 

[Dissero]

"Mm, damn," he was experiencing the same niggling thought himself, "all I have of her creation is the Phobis Holocron but that's not nearly close to what we need. Too one-dimensional, three or four at best. We need all facets of Spencer for what I'm thinking. I'll be needing that hair sample, too. We'll take a look at whatever else you brought to see what can be put to use but-"

Dissero stepped down toward the center, coming to stand at Ashin's front, "For now, you are the best source of her that we have. These," he indicated the stones surrounding her, "are a family heirloom: Shamalain Meditation Stones. There are twelve in total, and each stone embodies a different facet of being. We're going to make an amplifier crystal for your Force Bond, but in order to do that you must be able to access each of these facets to encapsulate it in its entirety. Your job is to meditate until you have unveiled each stone's identity."

He didn't tell her that it took him years, nor that Solaiel was the only person he knew to have accessed all twelve stones in less than one year. Ashin was a Force Master who had lived and experienced more than anyone else he knew. She had the drive to work quickly and honestly, if anyone could do it in record time it would be her.

"This will take some time," he did admit that, "I know you are eager to move on this and find Spencer but I implore you to be patient."

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Muntuur Stones for the soul." She raised an eyebrow, trying to hide deeper disquiet. "Is that the level of difficulty we're talking about? And if we're discussing different facets of being, should I be...imprinting....this exercise as myself, or as...reflecting...Spencer? I'm struggling to find the right clear words here. There's probably a need for a shared vocabulary, but I suppose that's the nature of working in deep water."

 

[Dissero]

"For an Apprentice, yes. For you? Maybe not quite so challenging," he offered politely, "but truly I do not know how difficult it will be for you. The language of the soul is complex and multi-faceted, just like a person. For this step, you must unlock each one on your own. Only then can you begin to orchestrate the lexicon that is your Force Bond with Spencer's soul in the next."

He backed away toward the exit, "I have faith that you know most of them very well."

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Ashin laughed under her breath as Dissero left. "You give me too much credit, old friend. I'm not known for self-knowledge."

The padded central rest offered a decent view of the large stones, and she'd gone around the circle before sitting. Some of the symbolic language felt intuitive - the triangles had an iconographic earth/air/fire/water bent - but she hesitated before committing to that interpretation. And even if four of them were elemental, that left her with no idea what the other eight might be.

She thought back to an old Sith conception of the Force as pneuma (conscious thought), aperion (matter, time, and physics), and anima (life energy) - but didn't see any obvious ways to map those to the four cylinders and four rectangular prisms. Not one-to-one, no more than the Jedi way - the Living, Cosmic, and Unifying aspects of the Force - should map in. Or the five aspects of the Wellspring - Anger, Serenity, Joy, Confusion, and Sadness.

Somewhere at the confluence of the old Sith way, the old Jedi way, and the far older Wellspring way, she'd find the truths that had inspired Dissero 's ancestors to conceive of the Force through these twelve stones' mostly-unknown aspects.

A trio of compatible strategies presented themselves. One: begin with what she could probably identify, the four elemental stones. Work them through, get a better sense of the stones' nature, and hopefully pick up other stones' meaning in an intuitive way. Two: work her way through the three Sith aspects, the three Jedi aspects, and the five additional Wellspring aspects, and see if any stone or stones resonated with the attempt. Three: see what stones resonated with each other, and begin to guess based on commonalities of concept.

Ashin picked a stone, the one that was probably Water. In her mind's eye she retreated to her battle with the outlaw tech Triam Akovin in a crippled, submerged facility. Horrendous, implacable water pressure threatened to crush them both. Triam had won the fight, which imprinted the memory deeply. In one metaphorical hand, Ashin held that side of water. In the other, she balanced it with her familiarity with the Lake Country of Naboo, water's tranquility. And to that she added the desperate thirst of being Korriban's Jedi Watchman, and much farther back, homeless on a ruined slumworld. Virtually all carbon-based life depended on water for its existence and survival and propagation. Most of her body was water, not just a sloshing bag but a teeming self-contained ecosystem housed in-

Other stones tugged at the back of her mind. She drew a sharp breath, eyes still shut, and felt resonances, commonalities, overlaps. The first strategy was working. So was the third. But far too slowly.

She switched to the second. Water had no special connection to any one of the five emotional Wellspring aspects, did it? It meant Sadness as easily as it signified Joy or Tranquility. Focusing on the latter two would interrupt her depth of connection to the Dark Side, so that was a whole other limitation. She chose Sadness and dove into the grief of Spencer's death. And yes, she found herself resonating with that aspect of the Water stone. But also another stone: one of the rectangular prisms. Another sharp breath, let out shakily. That stone was Death. Its familiarity hammered home on her. She knew it intimately the moment she recognized it, deeper than she'd connected with Water.

If Death was one of the rectangular prisms, Life had to be another. By the second strategy, she concentrated on the Wellspring's work, the great flow of the Living Force back into the Cosmic to be re-formed and reborn, and another rectangular prism clicked. Not to the same extent: she'd always been better at death than life. Childbirth came to mind, though, the three daughters she and Spencer (mostly Spencer) had raised. The life she'd created alone while dabbling in alchemy. More profoundly, the lives she'd saved deliberately, the worlds she'd protected. But she kept thinking back to the girls: Ibaris, Quinn, Noelle.

She'd have to come back to this one; Life was not particularly intuitive, or at least seemed to mean less to her. She had the distinct feeling she'd been here for hours already. She'd connected well with Water and Death, and identified only three others: Life, Air, and Fire. Anger reared up in her, impatience with herself that this apprentice exercise was foiling her. From Life she switched to pondering and communing with anima, the energy of life, whether thinking or unthinking, and felt a slight and puzzling resonance with another of the rectangular prisms. Life, death...what else went with life and death?

She opened her eyes. Night had definitely fallen.

 

[Dissero]

He left with a faint smile on his face and a shake of his head. Perhaps she did not give herself enough credit.

The early evening waned into the twilight hours. The boy had scrubbed dishes twice, for good measure, and tended to his nightly routines under the watchful eye of his father. Dissero excused him to his hour of games and made his way down into the lower levels of the home. No word yet from Ashin, which was to be expected, so he would spend some of this free time plucking through his crystal inventory for an appropriate vessel to use.

He kept a healthy selection of most types, as varying as his side projects could be, and he'd stored up a decent count of lightsaber crystals for the day that his children would begin crafting their own. Lately there'd been no need for the crafting of weapons or powerful artifacts. His life had long since shifted focus from the arcane to the mundane - not that family life was a bore. He found he rather preferred it. Years spent mostly alone in his workshop or forge had made the man lonely for social interaction. Made him forget the humanity inherent in his blood.

Surrounded by family and friends, now, he couldn't fathom how he'd ever given it up to begin with. Truth of the Darkside's pull was frightening at times.

Velvet lined boxes sat neatly on a row of shelves bearing golden inscribe plates as identifiers. Verie, at some point while searching for her own appropriate lightsaber crystal, had taken it upon herself to organize the lot of them. He paused at the box of Aur Diamonds, pondering if one of high enough grade could do the trick. While not a traditional unit used among Alchemists (Dissero wasn't certain that he was the only one to make habitual use of them) they had proven themselves adaptable to most needs. He moved on, following the innate feeling that they weren't quite right for the job.

Fikranns and Lignans had impressive qualities all on their own, but their tendency to lean toward the Darkside immediately dismissed their use. This item had to stand as a compass between both dark and light. Favoring one over the other would upset the balance required.

A Kunda Stone, he thought, now there was some potential. Their ability to focus power and energy wasn't wholly unique, but it was unique to their traits. He pulled the box and inch forward from its resting place and decided to come back to them.

The Kyber Crystal box was where he fully stopped. Their natural qualities of energy concentration and Force resonance spoke to him for this project. The trouble was he couldn't be certain if the box would contain the appropriate crystal. It would need to commune easily between both Light and Dark, translating the essence of a Force Bond between the two. Kyber Crystals had been used for many amazing feats, but only Ashin would be able to tell if one of the crystals in the box would be up to the task.

He pulled the box, touched a finger to the lock on the side and opened the lid. A mixture of sizes, shapes, and states appeared to him. Some larger, unrefined, others smaller and ready for attunement. The lid closed with a snap and he moved on, tucking the box under his arm.

The box marked Qixoni he knew to be rather empty. Upon inspection he found only two and pondered the idea that he could have sworn there were more of them. Perhaps he had shipped them off to one of his shops. He chose the finer of the two, set it securely in his pocket, shut the case and replaced it on the shelf.

The Lava Crystals went unremarked in his mind. They simply weren't right for the job.

He stopped, last, at the Adegan Crystal box. Though technically Kyber Crystals in and of themselves, their specialities were in their origins - or so it was said. Dissero pondered if a high-quality pontite might just be a good alternate should the Kyber Crystals prove insufficient. He pulled the box and stacked it atop the first, checked his chrono, swore under his breath, then headed back upstairs.

"Gabe you have ten more minutes and then it's lights out."

He could hear the child groan at the prospect of bedtime from down the hall. Setting the boxes down on the kitchen counter he moved to grab a glass from the cupboard and filled it with cold water. He needed to check in on Ashin.

Dissero didn't knock, but entered quietly, actively dampening his own Force presence so as to disturb her as little as possible. When he found her eyes open he paused just beyond the circle of stones surrounding her, "Brought you some water. If you're hungry I can get a plate of snacks together. I can't meditate properly when I'm hungry."

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"This isn't meditation, this is work. But don't worry about the snacks. There's an obscure technique attributed to Luke Skywalker - drawing nourishment from the Force, like some kinds of Sithspawn that hibernate for a few millennia at a time."

Her stomach growled.

"...but I'll admit I'm not good at it. I want to work at this for another few hours. If you happen to put something together, I could grab it from the kitchen when I'm done, whatever strange hour that happens." She gestured, and the glass of water floated to her. "Thank you, Dissero - you're a wonderful host. What do you have there?"

The stack of boxes suggested alchemical supplies. He'd mentioned-

"For making an amplifier crystal?"

 

[Dissero]

A good natured expression of humor touched his face at the sound of her stomach. He decided that perhaps one of Verie's favorite bowls of protein snacks she made for enduring Force practice might be just the ticket ... he only hoped Gabe hadn't eaten the rest of the salami.

"You are neither Sithspawn nor Luke Skywalker, though I am sure you could give the latter a run for his money," Dissero stepped into the circle, "I'll rustle something up and leave it on the island for you."

A glance was given to the boxes, "Indeed. Options. Boxes of options. You will need to select the crystal that will be used in order for this compass to work true. It must speak to you in a way that befits your bond with Spencer; only you will know if one of these carries the right resonance."

Two boxes were set down beside her on the dais, "Kyber Crystals. In alchemical terms they should provide the perfect amplifier but I can't say if any of those I have here will be the right one," he opened the first box and turned it to face her, "if not, we have some alternatives."

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Dissero knew his craft and trade: Ashin lingered over each handpicked kyber crystal. But she only appreciated them in an abstract way, disconnected. Nothing called to her. This could well be another time when she'd regret a lifetime of throwing stones instead of reading ripples - or as Skywalker allegedly put it, shouting instead of listening. Her senses had suffered from choosing brute strength over a long career.

She stilled her thoughts and put Spencer first, as if everything here could fade away.

Through passion I gain-

Her breath caught. There it was: a nudge, a tug, a flicker of not just intuition but recognition. An ice-blue kyber shard zipped from the box into her hand.

"Do I use it as a point of focus while working my way through the stones?"

 

[Dissero]

"Mm, not yet. May I?" he indicated the shard, taking it to turn over in his hand, scrutinize within his palm.

"Small but refined. Seems to have some faint inclusions, those shouldn't be of any trouble. They're character traits, not flaws. Heavy ... for its size." All in all it seemed a good, solid choice. The only choice if Ashin's intuition was any indication. He shut the case to prune possible distractions from sight.

"You only get one shot at attuning the crystal so you can't afford any distractions. All twelve of the stones must be identified before you move on to that step. Trust me, once you have them all worked out it will make the attunement a breeze. Comparatively speaking." He added the crystal to his pocket with the Qixoni. It would do them some good to get familiar with one another seeing as how they would be working together for the foreseeable future.

Friends. They were to become crystalline friends.

"I'll get those snacks out for ya, but feel free to raid the kitchen as necessary. Make yourself at home, Ash. The guest suite at the other end of the house is yours for the using - don't discount rest from your work." He could feel his fatherly ways seeping into the conversation and he regretted none of it. "I'll get started on everything else."

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

After he left for the night, the meditation took a frustrating half hour to resume. Hunger and pride were the main culprits. In the end she bulled through and entered the necessary state of flow without needing to retreat for a snack.

She dwelt on life and death in combination - anima - using the latter to clarify her grasp of the former. One couldn't conquer ten thousand worlds and retain much innate respect for life. Distance kept coming between her and the Life stone - she kept most living things at arm's length, her daughters included. The stone eluded her.

Seeking a different angle, she moved to aperion. She felt a certain resonance with the four elemental stones, of course, but also with two others - the unknown rectangular prisms that kept company with Life and Death. Aperion encompassed mass, energy, time, physics in general - the material world. Somewhere in that broad category, she would find at least one of those unknown stones' identities, and ideally both.

In a practical sense, she'd most often employed aperion as tapas - controlling her body temperature in extreme circumstances - and lightning and the refutation of kinetic energy bound up in self-protection. She ran through those familiar techniques - lightning arcing back and forth between her own hands harmlessly - until the sizzle echoed around the warming room and she felt perfectly cool. When silence fell, she felt certain that one of the stones understood what she'd done, that it represented and was connected with energy at a deep level. Energy, then, with a capital Esk.

That left the fourth prism. It resonated with aperion but had no real commonality with Energy, Life, or Death. At a guess it meant substance, mass. Testing that, though...

There was a way, an old way, a technique she'd learned from her grandfather Je'gan Olra'en, Darth Shule. Another Luke Skywalker special: the ability to ground yourself, connect yourself so thoroughly to the core of the planet that you couldn't be moved out of your place. It had served her well in connection with her self-protection techniques. She reached out through the Unifying Force to the familiar, waterlogged core of Naboo, and connected as deeply as she ever had. She settled deeper into the padded dais until it creaked under her effective mass.

Nothing. And after all that work, that long day, she didn't have near enough energy or time to test the other aperion-related possibilities.

She padded down to the kitchen, ate quickly, and passed out in short order. At a guess she would sleep until noon.
Dissero

 

[Dissero]

In relative Nabooian terms and weekly timeframes, it was the weekend now. Which meant the house and its occupants were at the mercy of a nine year old boy eager to do his favorite weekend things. With luck and thoughtful planning on the architect's part, the guest suite was well-removed from the open studio setting of the main household. Even in the early hours, the boy's exuberance had a difficult time traveling the long hall, several closed doors, and separate floor to Ashin's snoozing form.

It wasn't until about around noon that something else might disturb her. A smallish shuttled settled down in the meadow nearby, its engines rumbling through a crisp fall afternoon. Gabe peeled himself from the house and ran yelling and hollering to the newest arrival.

"Morning," Dissero greeted Ashin as she rejoined the wakeful and living, "breakfast for lunch work for you? Got some fresh eggs and bacon from the market here."

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Thanks for that. I'll take the eggs - bacon always sets my heart racing. Not as young as I was." She perched in one of the tall, short-backed leather chairs at the kitchen island. "If it wasn't abundantly clear, I was up until an unholy hour. Even after I left the meditation room, it took me a good while to fall asleep. I borrowed a notepad from a drawer in here."

She flipped past several jumbled pages and displayed what she'd come up with.

"I've fully connected with Death, Energy, and Water. I've also identified Life, Earth, Air, and Fire. The rest...well, I'll figure it out. No hints, please."

 

[Dissero]

"Eggs, no bacon. You got it. Toast?"

Eggs from the basket on the counter cracked into a bowl, skillet back on the stove. A pinch of salt, a good crack of pepper, whisk. Dissero leaned to eyeball her notes, incapable of stopping the slight smirk from creeping onto his face, "No hints ... but ..." He raised his brows, "Maybe a nudge? You're overthinking things. Everyone who does this as an adult always does. Our challenge is that we know too much and forgot how to think in straight lines."

"DAAAD!" peace and quiet shattered. Gabe flew in through the side door, leaving it wide open for a new face to follow him, "You didn't tell me I was going to SPACER CAMP!"
"I didn't? Oh, uhhhh ... surprise!" he winked at Ashin.

A tall and smartly dressed man with long, platinum blond hair strode in, quietly closed the door behind him, and stepped into the kitchen.

"When do I go? Am I going now?" Gabe pawed as his father, yanking at his belt.
"You leave today. Guess that means you better pack up, huh?"
"Awhhh DAD! You coulda TOLD ME," and off he zoomed. To pack, presumably.
"My nephew, Rune Shamalain ," Dissero introduced the man, "he's the D.O. over at Ceto Engineering and Technology Operations."
"It's a pleasure to meet a friend of Dissero's, Miss?" Rune did not offer her his hand, but stood a polite distance away and gave her a short but respectful bow of his head.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Ashin Varanin," she said without inflection, and took Rune's reaction or lack thereof in stride. "It's been a good while since anyone called me miss."

CETO had popped up on her radar more than once, mostly because of its roots on the eponymous waterworld in the Vagrant Fleet's long-ago stomping grounds. But what she couldn't recall-

"Successor or competitor of Dashiell's operation?"

What she wanted to do was ignore the blond and get back to...figuring out how, exactly, she was overthinking.

 

[Dissero]

"Ah, competitor," Rune replied. He gave no indication of shock or awe at Ashin's name - he wasn't exactly privy to her history or her feats. He'd been dead during her popularized reign of the galaxy, for lack of a better term to describe his state of being.

"DAD I CANT FIND MY SHOES!" Gabe from his room.
"On your feet, Bud," Di called back.
A pause ... "NOT THOSE SHOES."
"Check the washroom."

"Ashin is doing her first run of the Meditation Stones. Remember those?" Di said from the stove.
"Mm," Rune nodded, the faint traces of a painful memory entering his expression, "how could I forget."
"We all ran the gamut of those stones as kids, soon as our Force powers started manifesting we were put in a meditation room with them."
"Are those ... notes?" Rune inquired in a rare show of open curiosity toward a stranger. He moved a bit closer, peering at the doodles from a smaller distance, "Stuck on the same one that got me."

Dissero placed a plate of scrambled eggs and toast on the counter before Ashin and excused himself to help his son pack.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Rune Shamalain

"Just...doodles," Ashin said with a shrug, digging into the eggs at last. They really were very good. "I was getting nowhere with the Unifying, Living, and Cosmic Force, but the old Sith tripartite model seems to be providing traction. Your uncle says I'm seriously overthinking it, but for the life of me I can't figure out how."

Unlearn what you have learned, a forty-year-old Jedi memory whispered. Learn like a child.

"I don't suppose their names are inscribed on the bottoms of them or something."

 

[Dissero]

The woman knew her stuff. Rune afforded her a mild look of amusement, "If they are, then we have all been played."

His gaze of frigid blue shifted to the sounds of Gabe babbling in excitement in the background, "Look at those stones the way that boy would," he gently tapped a finger on the counter, "with great simplicity. May I show you something?" Rune gestured to the notebook and gently drew it toward him using the Force. He turned the page, produced a pen from his suit, then spent a moment doing a doodle of his own.

He turned it back to Ashin when he finished.

"What are the next symbols in the sequence?"

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"A bisected heart - halfway through the floor, if you like. But the next, no clue." She grimaced. "I'm admittedly terrible at puzzles like this. The third symbol here - is it a four-leafed plant, something vaguely anatomical, the heart reflected about the axis of the line...?"

A snort of something halfway between disdain and embarrassment.

"For the record, my formal education ended at fourteen when they shipped me off to the Jedi. This sort of thing..."

 

[Dissero]

"It's not an exercise to make you feel stupid," Rune replied, "just to show you that sometimes the answer to something is more simple than you think."

He moved his hand and extended his pointer finger to cover half the first symbol, vertically, revealing a 1.

He then moved the finger to cover the next, revealing a 2. Then a 3 and a 4.

"More adults than you think never get it until a child shows them. Dissero spent a week on it until Gabriel looked at it for three seconds." He offered a casual shrug, "We know too much."