Ashin Cardé Varanin
Couple bodies in the garden where the grass grows
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: Resubmit the Jaquenta - a place for explorers and lost souls, with fixed formatting and links.
- Image Credit: "Holy Trail" by Alexander Forssberg, found at https://www.deviantart.com/alexson1/art/Holy-trail-522474108
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: Partially inspired by the Gates of Grontessiant from Star Wars, the King’s Roads from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, the Imperial Warren from the Malazan Book of the Fallen, and the Nexus from Star Trek Generations. Original submission, contest won.
SETTING INFORMATION
- Landmark Name: The Jaquenta, the Narrow Roads. The original name is an ancient Taung word that meant ‘running far on your second wind,’ and was generally complimentary.
- Classification: Canyon network
- Location: Netherworld
- Affiliation: None
- Size: Medium. Comprises hundreds of linear kilometres of spiderwebbed, interconnected, narrow canyons and crevasses.
- Population: Sparse
- Demographics: A resting place for the restless. The living and dead who find themselves here are often frustrated, driven, aimless, struggling with the existential question of purpose. Some find a destination, by chance or by effort. Few wind up where they anticipated or planned. This has been going on for, conservatively, hundreds of thousands of years. It’s not uncommon to run into a Taung or a Rakata or some other ancient species.
- Accessibility: You can stumble into the Jaquenta from any corner of the afterlife. All it takes is a driven and frustrated urge to keep moving, keep going, when you don't know where you're trying to go. Those who crave a non-specific destination 'somewhere out there’ can easily find themselves wandering the canyon trails.
- Note that merely wanting to get out of another corner of the Netherworld generally won't do the trick, or the Jaquenta would be home to a good portion of the galaxy's sapient dead. The Jaquenta’s occupants express this principle as ‘You find the trail by running to, not running from.’
- Description: Foggy canyons and occasional tunnels, all of gray stone, all so narrow that only two or three people can pass each other. Single file is best. The stone walls are high and treacherous enough to foil all who aim to climb or fly up: the bravest or least gravitationally-bound adventurers report no end or top to the steep walls. The canyons remain at least marginally lit, though infinitely tall walls should block out all light. The mist has a bit of a glow, but maybe not enough to account for the lighting. A certain timelessness overtakes the Jaquenta’s occupants; many have reported speaking with fellow wanderers who are, or should be, unutterably ancient. Virtually everyone in the Jaquenta has been there a comparably ‘long time,’ but can’t define how long. Extinct species like Taung and Rakata are certainly represented among these somewhat confused but driven wanderers. Note that the subjectivity is generally at the level of timeframe, not perception: just about everyone has been there a comparably ‘long time,’ regardless of whether they’ve been dead for ten years or a million. There’s still, however, an element of fading. The very oldest souls tend to be nothing more than whispers with at least one foot elsewhere.
POINTS OF INTEREST
Crossroads villages have sprung up around three- and four-way intersections of canyon trails. These villages tend to be places of barter, storytelling, music, temporary society, and wayfinding. Their population is highly transient and rarely more than a couple of dozen souls at a time. An outsider would find one of these nameless villages to be the best spot to find directions, wisdom, or just the sight of a pre-human Mandalorian playing dice with a Killik and a Gree.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The Jaquenta canyon paths are as old as sapient life’s conception of the afterworld as a place of eternal wandering. As such, the Jaquenta may be one of the oldest parts of the Netherworld.
Tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, many of the souls who found themselves in the Jaquenta were Rakata, Sharu, Gree, Kwa, and Killik. In later centuries, wanderers included Sith Purebloods, humans, Taungs, Duros, and Columi. The full galactic milieu is now represented. Even Confusion, one of the archetypal Five Priestesses, has been known to visit. Ruined shelters, shrines, barricades, and meeting places pay homage to intertwined millennia, stories forgotten even by their participants.
Unlike many other parts of the Netherworld, the Jaquenta did not see an especially great influx during the Second Akala Crisis. Most of the people who disappeared into the Netherworld had a concrete sense of where they wanted to return - and/or were overwhelmed with a need to get away from their Netherworld circumstances. As they say in the Jaquenta, you find the trail by running to, not running from.
After the Crisis resolved itself, and explorers began to probe the rifts on Corellia, Naboo, Mandalore, Dathomir and so forth, a few of the living began to walk the Jaquenta paths. One of these was the Sith blacksmith Azel Moran, who ventured forth to mine iron ore from veins in the stone walls. (He found it to be attuned to the place’s strangeness, but otherwise just iron.)
On her quest to resurrect Spencer Varanin in 864 ABY, Ashin walked the Jaquenta for a time. In conversation with the locals, she learned how to reach the Dreaming Dark and rescue her wife.
NETHERWORLD INFORMATION
- Gate: If a living being had the proper mindset -- deeply invested in searching for something nameless and perhaps impossible to find -- and a reasonable familiarity with the Netherworld, it wouldn’t be hard to wind seeing or walking in the Jaquenta due to any number of circumstances. The Jaquenta has no concrete gates in the realm of the living, and its branching canyons can connect to any number of other Netherworld locations.
- Most commonly, those who enter the Jaquenta hail from places where pointlessness and ennui are strong, such as the Behelian Canyon or the Labyrinth.
- It’s fairly common for wanderers to find themselves exiting the Jaquenta at places that speak to purpose, such as the Oasis or the Field of Blades -- even if it takes a very, very long time. Stumbling into the Behelian Canyon is also a strong possibility, and one of the main ways in which the Jaquenta's wanderers may eventually dissipate into the Cosmic Force.
- Transitions to or from the Jaquenta have been known to occur in tandem with Whisperstorms.
- Lucidity: Moderately lucid but somewhat variable. Azel Moran was able to mine ore from the stone walls, for example, but those walls apparently have no top edge. The main element of surreality is the Jaquenta’s relationship with time: most of its occupants really have been there an indeterminable ‘long time,’ no matter whether they died ten years ago or before the construction of Centerpoint Station. Those occupants, however, tend to be coherent and lucid.
- Hostility: Most locals have better things to do (i.e. traveling somewhere nameless) than cross an outsider, unless the outsider significantly obstructs a canyon. In those cases, outsiders tend to become permanent and incorporeal residents, the hard way.
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