Protective Posture [Jedi Order Force Shield Training]

[Aran Finn]

[member="Jacen Voidstalker"] [member="Joshua Vantai"] [member="Sor-Jan Xantha"] [member="Travot Ravenna"] [member="Dair Cotarin"] [member="Kon Uulon"] [member="Micah Talith"] [member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"] [member="Michael Sardun"] [member="Haytham Kaze"]

Green eyes with a tint of red watched the carnage unfold in front of him with a scrutinising eye. How their shields held against his wave told him all he needed to know, and would help him tailor his training to their specific needs. He noted with interest that Jedi Xantha did not use a Shield at all ... Well, that doesn't help me at all. Master Na'Varro frowned slightly, letting them all get to their feet and retake their place in the single rank. Thankfully for Padawan Cotarin, that meant that he'd have no chance of clashing noggins with anyone behind.

"Righto, team. Today we're gonna build this power from the ground up. Take it a bit slower, shore up some weaknesses, build the foundations of a strong Force Shield. For you advanced types, we'll work on different shapes for different kinds of threats. Then if you all do well, then I'll teach you how to smack someone with it. Works like a charm."

Alen set himself firmly on the ground, his knees bent as if ready to receive impact. He'd go through this super, super slowly for the beginners ... once he had a clearer idea of who was getting bored with his lesson, he'd move them along to more awesome applications of the power.

"The trick is.." he said as he drew power into himself, welling it up inside of him. Usually, this would not be so prolonged or so obvious, but he was doing this slowly and more ostentatiously for their training value. "Building it inside you first. You build it out there.." He gestured to the air around him. "You've got a lot of ground to cover. A lot to patch up. A lot of areas to concentrate on. So you build it inside of you. Fill yourself with the Force. Close your eyes. Think of what form you want the Force to take. Concentrate on forming a small convex shape. Small, but perfect. Work on it until it has no weaknesses ... smaller is better in this circumstance. They say size matters not, but to the mind it does. Make it easy on yourself. When you can feel your Shield fully formed, open your eyes and find a spot where you want the centrepoint of your Shield to be.." Alen's eyes popped open wide. "There." A shimmering shield, perfectly curved, formed between he and his students. "From within you, simply push it outwards until the centrepoint reaches that spot. Facilitate the transition between within you and outside of you."

"If you build it small first, and then simply maintain that concentration, you should get a Shield without imperfections."

 

[Kon Uulon]

Kon heeded [member="Alen Na'Varro"] 's advice, having understood most of what Alen had said but didn't quite understand 'pushing it outwards'. How can you push something that is a part of you out that is not physical? After taking note of what he and the others were told, Kon closed his eyes and brought all his focus to forming a shield that would have a shape similar to a tower shield, tall and wide enough to cover his legs, torso, and arms, leaving his feet and head exposed though. His eyes then open wide and he somehow feels different. He was right to feel different, because he had just then used Force Shield, a large shimmering shield taking form. Kon tried to suppress his excitement to prevent breaking his focus and succeeded, the large shield keeping form.

 

[Taheera Sollo]

She gulped down the last muja-berry and gave [member="Michael Sardun"] a friendly wave as she passed. Her friendly face melted into trepidation as she saw the class already going on up the hill. She stopped and stared, just beyond the stranger's tree as she internally deliberated the costs of joining in late or just retreating back to the sanctuary of the Academy cafeteria.

The healer-in-training still had her scrubs on from what apparently was a late clinic-shift.

Late. Late. Late.

Setting her jaw, she strode forward and wedged in as inconspicuously as she could next to [member="Jacen Voidstalker"]. Myrtle-ellipses darted around at the shield thrown up by the bearded man, [member="Alen Na'Varro"], a master, probably. Something about size does matter.

She frowned.

She had a little practice with force shields after the sith invasion of Kashyyyk, so she wasn't surprised when the air seemed to warp and shimmer as one formed in front of her. Her shield was more translucent than the demonstration one.

Moving it around, though. That was the trickier part. Her plan was to coax it along gently. Nudge it forward. Instead, it flew toward the master's shield and popped like a loud bubble as it made impact.

Her eyes suddenly found that the grass at her feet was very, very interesting.

 

[H3xle]

Dair, having picked himself up, set himself in a traditional ready stance, feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart, feet facing forward, legs bowed so as to lower his center of gravity. He had a lot of center of gravity to lower, but he was an accomplished fighter, for a padawan, and knew how to give himself maximum balance without hindering mobility.

Next, Dair focused inwardly. Through years of training, meditation had become second nature to Dair. He had done moving meditations, meditations in training combat, meditation in one or two real combats and meditation in the pavilions. Reaching that icy center of himself was second nature, so he fell into the familiar and let the icy power of the force suffuse his entire body. Next, he gathered it all back in and focused it into a shape in his mind.

"If you build it small first, and then simply maintain that concentration, you should get a Shield without imperfections."

Dair mentally repeated the new Jedi Master's words in his head, over and over. He focused on the form, a convex shape that was small. Bucklers were small, convex shields, roughly a foot across. As Dair had been studying his people, he had learned quite a bit about their brand of warfare. Among that style, they still utilized melee weapons made of steel and armor to defend from such. He studied both, letting ideas percolate through his mind. Now he was going to put that study to use. He mentally formed a simple buckler in his mind. As he was a larger man, he made it about double the size of a standard buckler, two feet in diameter and perfectly round around the edges. It was convex and rounded to the front, rather than pointed as some bucklers he'd seen tended to be.

The form was perfectly realized in his head, mental visualization went hand in hand with meditation. Now he had to push it outward, and that was the hard part. Dair always had issue with focusing the powers he had, it was something he spent many hours trying to do. He extended a hand, opening his eyes and picking a spot. He slowly pushed the energy outward, down his arm towards the point he had chosen. Knowledge of physics helped, he placed the two foot convex shield far enough away to make the brunt of such an attack as Master Na'varro had done before break around it and go around Dair's form as well. To be truly effective, however, Dair would need to practice to make it larger, as he had a lot of surface area to cover.

An idea sparked in Dair's mind, he shifted so he was on one knee, arm still outstretched to focus the power. In front of him a shield formed, two feet across and perfectly concave. The exterior of it held many fractal patterns, as everything Dair did had something to do with ice, though he himself still had no idea as to the why of that. Then, Dair set in to maintain it. He kept the visualization in his head easily enough, but it remained to be seen whether the shield would hold yet or not.

[member="Alen Na'Varro"]

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

There was an implicit contradiction in what Na'Varro described, to be sure. She could imagine taking it too literally and ripping her own guts out with a shield she'd materialized inside her. But take it a bit more metaphorically, or take it as describing states of mind and mental images, and...yeah, it just might work. She focused inward, on her center, as if in stance training, then used that perspective to see a nebulous inside as my space and started building the imagined shield in there. It was half a perfect mental image and half a feeling of shield-ish-ness. And it turned out he was right: the process of perfect, sustained visualization was easier when you were thinking about yourself. In this particular field, anyway.

Come to think of it, that made a lot of sense out of the gestures involved in choking, crushing, and shooting electricity. Mara shivered gently and refocused on her shield.

Her last attempt had been strong but narrow, and the Force blast had propagated around the edges like any wave. Pretty clearly, that meant she had to design it rounder -- or with a stronger concept of the kind of coverage she could get from the edges and what lay beyond them. She was vaguely aware that what had happened to her wasn't supposed to happen. A Force shield was as much a concept of 'nope' as a clearly defined shape. Maybe she'd been neglecting the former to try and achieve the latter. And maybe with this new visualization technique for the latter, the former would come through more strongly -- even when she was making her shield wider this time.

A broad, ovoid shield took form in front of her, and she set about sustaining it.

 

[Kaili Talith]

Kai had been here once with mother though those lessons had been primarily held by, well, her mother. This time it was someone else who was in charge of tutoring. This time it was [member="Alen Na'Varro"] -- Laura’s father. She was in good hands to be sure. Maybe not as good as her own father, but one could hardly expect that man to be there to teach Kaili literally everything there was about the galaxy, right?

Having followed the instructions she listened to the man as he spoke. Build it inside of you and expand it. Kind of like sensing others, you remained calm and with time expanded your ‘horizon’ to find what it was that you were looking for. The application was a bit more vertical in this case, of course and unlike sensing you actually did something ‘physical’ with the force.

Upon the teacher’s instructions she took her spot. Slowly building a shield within her Kaili looked to ‘expand’ it further. Did she get it at first shot? No, but she was a quick learner, it ran in her blood. After a many failed attempts she eventually managed to create herself something worthy of being dubbed ‘perfect’ for someone of her age and rank. A round little oval of shimmering light just hovering in front of her.

Sweat ran down her forehead as she called out with a triumphant laughter. The method was there, she understood it even if just a little.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

[member="Alen Na'Varro"] [member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"] [member="Taheera Sollo"]

Jacen took a deep, diaphragmatic breath in through the nose, and gradually let it out through his mouth. He tried to quiesce his mind and all extraneous thoughts. Time seemed to slow as he focussed on the moment. His concentration momentarily lapsed as a young – if older than many – padawan tried to surreptitiously join the line next to him, before immediately crashing her shield into the Jedi Master’s. Smooth.

Knowing that he had once been able to do this was half the battle already won. Though the experienced Jedi knew from first-hand experience that if he didn’t follow through and make progress, that would quickly translate to deep frustration. Back in the day forming a simple barrier had been a relatively simple task. He’d already starting concentrating on the task again, before Na’varro started to instruction, such was his stubborn nature. Or maybe that was simply a determination not to be shoved on his arse in front of the tweenagers again.

In his mind he visualised the shape and form of the shield. Then he reached out to his surroundings, feeling the ebb and flow of the Force and imposing his vision upon it. To him, the manifestation of the shield was almost like cutting a discontinuity into the natural flow of the Force. The barrier gradually extended before him. It was not as opaque as those of his peers, but he knew that was of no particular concern. As long as he concentrated on the barrier, it was firm and gradually extended to cover his whole torso.

Not content with this he dismissed the barrier and immediately started again. In real life, speed was of the essence. He’d rather something he could instinctively call on in a pinch, than spend a minute creating something more durable.

Like riding a speeder, he thought to himself. Hadn’t been this way much recently. The road to rediscovering his abilities had been frustratingly slow, but now old skills were coming back to him more readily. Perhaps it was connections being made in his brain, or maybe even it was a change to his state of mind that allowed such abilities to come more naturally. It didn’t matter. Jacen needed to make a difference to the Galaxy, the philosophy of how he got there could be considered later.

 

[Micah Talith]

Okay, so maybe it was better to not be a bit too brash and just go at it all abruptly.

While his mother had certainly taught him to be instinctive with it, fine tuning was always good practice. Not to mention Laura's dad was a specialist in this. Learning from a different perspective would teach him new tricks.

So, starting small and making sure that his shield was smooth. He would bring up his hands again, only this time, he would focus on a small convex shape as instructed.

The Force would surge, pooling out form his hands and outward in front of him. Drawing more focus, he began to manipulate that energy.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

"Facilitate the transition between within you and outside of you."

You and outside of you.

The phrasing struck the small Anzat as odd. He repeated the phrase over again in his mind. You and outside of you.

Were they training a physical manifestation of the Force? or having a metaphysical discussion about it now? Whatever the case, the boy seemed entirely too surrounded by Guardian type Jedi. Don't put much thought into it, just do it.

That ought to be the new Jedi motto. Just do it.

Stooping down, the child knight picked up a small stick and began using it like a calligraphy brush to etch out a series of formulas and roughed out dictations on the subject. This wasn't a Force power that he had put any stock in previously. But for his interest in the professor himself, the boy would probably still have been in the library familiarizing himself with developments in Outer Rim civilization between 0 and 150 ABY. There had been a rather fascinating digest on Zygerrian artwork in the First Century, Post-Imperial period...

But, he digressed.

The power obviously had its roots in telekinesis, though it was a more crude or tactile manifestation than the small Consular ordinarily brought to mind. If one assumed the Force to be a universal invariance, then the proper aspect ratio for such an application ought to be at the very least proportionate to the kinetic or potential energy which the shield was to oppose...

...well, kark, that just added another variable to the equation.

Reaching up, the boy tapped the end of the stick against his chin, turning his eyes upward as he mulled over a good theoretical approach to the mechanics involved. The description and implications raised were both rather similar to early Jedi writings on Force Push in point of fact, bringing to mind reliefs and illustrated mediums recovered from a Pre-Ruusan temple.

It was also very possible that he was over thinking this whole thing.

...but only slightly.

Standing again, the child closed his eyes for a moment, allowing the factors and equations he had sketched out to come together in his mind's eye. As his eyes opened a moment later, the shield materialized a foot in front of him. It was a small, circular shield -- almost like a buckler of medieval periods -- hovering in the air.