When a Lightsaber Just Isn't the Same

[Alva Calvarona]

Another foray into the history of Crina and its culture and technology.

In Crina's History there have only ever been a few conflicts that ever truly threatened the stability of the planet and those who dwell on it. Of note the first of the two major conflicts that could be called wars happened when Lady Crina, the first queen and whom the world would eventually be named after, rose up to put an end to the battles between the warring population over the remains of their ancestors colonization and exploration vessel that had crashed long ago. It was after that war that Crina's major period of prosperity, order, and peace began as a new and more effective government was established and the quality of the world's infrastructure and organization improved.

The second major war that occurred was a civil war, a conflict between the Royal Family and its followers against Rebels among the population who decided to resist their rule and authority. Started by a respected and brilliant Practitioner at the time as a result of unrest over the Royal Family's decree that Crina would remain isolated from the rest of the galaxy after contact was made with humans from another world, the war would ensue as Nicoleta led those who tired of the Royalist ideals and who desired to see the rest of what the galaxy had to offer.

This is where this chapter of Crina's history would begin to be told.

 

[Alva Calvarona]

From the beginning of the war, the unexpected rebellion caught the Royal Family and their supporters off guard. Many among the nobility and Royal Family believed their decision was correct due to the immense contentment that pervaded the world. There was little conflict, and there was no oppression on a grand scale. Disturbances of the peace were settled normally with investigation of the Royal Army or with the aid of local or called in Practitioners. For people to be so disturbed by the decision to maintain isolation was not a scenario they had anticipated. Nor was it one fully a result of the decision of isolation.

Many of the people were stirred up as a result of those who were in a fury riling them up under false premises, though that fact was not known to Nicoleta who only desired to make it a clear stance for any who wished to leave Crina. Nonetheless, she would wind up leading these people into many battles against the Royal Army, which resulted in more support for her cause. At the same time it also sparked support for the Royalists, as there was still a significant percentage of the population who desired to not run afoul other galactic powers when their contentment and peace were already assured before.

It was believed that the war would end shortly though as the Royal Army still commanded control of many major centers, and had full use of Crina's navy and shipyards. However, those advantages would crumble in a decisive battle as the rebels led the Royal Army into a trap and a strike on the shipyards and docks was made in an action that allowed the Rebellion to commandeer over a third of the warships on Crina. This event strengthened the Rebellion, but also crippled it as it appeared that Nicoleta disappeared after the fighting was finished at that time. Her death was never confirmed, nor her fate determined.

It would later be discovered she had left to establish an outpost on Rodica to further boost rebel morale, but that her second in command had failed to relay the news, wishing to take command for herself and hope Nicoleta would die in the asteroid fields.

 

[Alva Calvarona]

As the rebels grew stronger with their new resources at hand, but weakened with the loss of their famed leader draining them of morale, Nicoleta's second in command stepped forward to take the renown Practitioner's place. Desiring to take command of the rebel forces and lead them to victory, she knew she would have to take very proactive and drastic measures to make up for Nicoleta's disappearance before the rebels became disheartened and the Royal Army took the opportunity to recover from the blow dealt to them with the loss of their ships and the shocking aggressiveness and rapid growth of the rebellion.

To that end Nicoleta's apprentice, whose name was since stricken from record at the time of Nicoleta's return later and the betrayal was revealed, would sneak into the Cosmina Academy, a place of neutrality and which was not prepared to step into the conflict. Once within she would enter its archives and steal a relic kept within its walls. A Lightsaber, known to them as the First Practitioner's blade. In truth the weapon and tool of the Jedi Apprentice who organized the surviving colonists when they first crashed on Crina, whose teachings would become twisted into the Practitioners Code and Arts.

She would then use the weapon in the next battle, a nervous encounter for both sides still reeling from recent events. As it cut down Royal Soldiers left and right and she danced through the enemy the Rebels soon found themselves rallying once more, though it was a double edged action. For stealing the relic had resulted in many Practitioners of the period choosing to support the Royalists in the cause of retribution to punish Nicoleta's apprentice for breaking into Cosmina and stealing the revered relic for herself.

 

[Alva Calvarona]

Thus the war would continue on in this fashion as the months dragged on. Nicoleta's apprentice would lead the Rebels in a furious display of aggression against the Royalists with the Lightsaber in hand, fighting them back though at the same time the rebellion suffered heavy losses at the same time with the Practitioner numbers within the Royal Army's ranks having swelled in response to the transgression of the relic's theft from Cosmina. The war devolved into a bloody stalemate as neither side gained further traction once more.

That is, until Nicoleta returned.

Arriving aboard the Noble Class Destroyer she had departed on after the rebels had enacted their capture of a number of Royal Navy vessels, Nicoleta soon discovered the betrayal, takeover, and transgressions of her apprentice. Though she was hailed with cheers and her popularity and respect soared for her daring of the asteroid belts in the system to begin an outpost on Rodica, Nicoleta was not one to overlook a wrong. While she could likely use her apprentice's support still, and the woman wielding the lightsaber was an effective weapon on the battlefield, Nicoleta could not hold back in exiling her apprentice and stripping her of rank and name for her transgressions against Crina's people and betraying the rebellion whose members no longer trusted her.

Chased out, the apprentice would not be long in finding herself captured by the Royal Army before she could hide, and would be subsequently locked away until she was broken and forced into servitude within the palace as a warning to what would happen to the worst of traitors.

 

[Alva Calvarona]

However, the capture of Nicoleta's apprentice also meant the recovery of the relic Lightsaber that she had stolen from Cosmina and used to great effect. Not a group to turn a blind eye to the efficiency and potential for such a tool in their arsenal, the retrieval of the weapon was kept under wraps from Cosmina's Practitioners, the Royals feeding them the lie the tool had not been in the apprentice's possession, and only then after breaking the woman herself so she could not, or rather would not, say otherwise.

After their forces had taken so many casualties and the power of the Lightsaber had been revealed to them, the Royalists handed the ancient weapon over to their chief engineers of the time, hoping they could decipher and mass produce the device. They would take apart the lightsaber wielded by the one whose teachings lead to the Practitioners' Teachings. They would dismantle the beloved relic, piece by piece, to learn its secrets. Only to find it yield little. Nonetheless the Royal Family urged them on, for they had been doing so poorly in the war effort in terms of morale that they needed an effective weapon to give them the edge instead.

​And they needed to do so before Nicoleta drove the rebels on or the Practitioners learned of their duplicity with the relic.

 

[Alva Calvarona]

In the end there would be no reproducing the lightsaber. The relic that had sat within Cosmina's walls for so long was simply not something that could be replicated. The technology within it was just beyond what Crina had available, and their understanding could not develop the necessary pieces to close that gap. Nor was there any replacement on Crina for the crystal, something quickly discovered to be an integral part of the construction of the lightsaber, and a necessary component for it to function.

However, while the exact technology could not be replicated, close approximates could be developed. The only truly lacking part would be the crystal. The focusing lens, energizers, and blade emitter all could be created nearly to the same level, but the emitter matrix and power cells could not achieve the same threshold. In the end the pommel of the weapon they were beginning to create would be stubbier and thicker than the average lightsaber's. Not only that, but they would be forced to angle and decrease the size of the blade emitter, resulting in a thinner blade. All the while requiring two power cells to bring the plasma blade to function, and even then only temporarily.

 

[Alva Calvarona]

All the same these weapons soon found themselves being used on the battlefield as the Royal Army equipped several elite units and reliably loyal Practitioners with the Energy Blades they were able to derive from their process of reverse engineering the Lightsaber. While they proved to be less effective than the lightsaber, as soldiers wielding them were not as obviously displayed on the front lines to influence morale, and because they did not have the same level of cutting ability they discovered when the weapons struck armored units such as tanks that used thick durasteel plating and caused little damage, the Energy Blades were kept in production as they were effective at cutting through enemy Infantry's lighter woven or plasteel armor and in addition cut through physical blades on Crina just fine giving the Royal Soldiers an advantage in close quarters.

At the same time though it also lead to suspicions on the part of Nicoleta and the Practitioner community on the whereabouts of the Lightsaber as it was rather odd these new weapons appeared just after the Royal Army revealed they had captured Nicoleta's former apprentice. A few weapons would be caught by the rebels as they took them from slain wielders of the energy blades, but due to the rebellion's lack of production facilties they never fielded them in the numbers the Royal Army could.

 

[Alva Calvarona]

In the end what the rebels did acquire was the lightsaber the Royal's had used to develop their energy blades. Nicoleta's suspicions had led her to believe the Royal Army had indeed taken possession of the tool and used it for their own ends rather than return it to the Practitioners. The Royals themselves had had the relic put back together so they could return the lightsaber to the Cosmina Academy themselves at a later time, though they soon realized while that would have been helpful to their cause, waiting as they had and allowing Nicoleta to raid the facility had resulted in much more dire consequences, as while the Pracitioners began to pull out of the major support they had taken for the Royalist side in response to the relic's original theft. Though they did not take the Rebels side, their lack of support weakened the Royal Army and brought the war back into its stalemate phase, though perhaps that was incorrect.

Seeing as Nicoleta had indeed offered the weapon back to Cosmina, the Practitioners having taken a neutral stance once more looked at the sincere offer and instead allowed Nicoleta herself to keep the revered relic for her own use as their form of final say on the civil war's course for now. It was at this time the weaknesses of the Energy Blade against Lightsabers would be documented, as Royalists noted how their Energy Blades drained their power cells more quickly whenever their soldiers attempted to wield them in defense against Nicoleta wielding the relic in battle.

 

[Alva Calvarona]

Soon enough the yellow blade wielded by Nicoleta would become a rallying symbol for the Rebels, the edge once more returning to them as their hero and leader wielding the revered relic appeared superior to the Royal soldiers wielding their blue blades that did not have the cutting potential of the lightsaber nor could they meet it in battle and last more than ten minutes before shorting out drained while it burned as brilliantly as ever. Nonetheless there was only one Nicoleta, and only one lightsaber. It did not grant victory in every part of the battlefield, and the Royal Army's Energy Blades proved to be highly effective when employed by the Practitioners still supporting them, and their elite units sent to deal with rebel insurgent cells to cripple the rebellion's branching support.

It was at this time that Nicoleta would disappear once again, relic in tow, this time never to be seen again. The Royals have never made the claim of having her assassinated, nor do they appear to have any record of her disappearance or fate. Judging off the previous time Nicoleta vanished from Crina many believed she had made an emergency trip to Rodica, though no ships were detected or seen leaving the planet. The assumption was made someone once more within the rebellion had betrayed her, and thus for a time no leader rose to attempt to take her place lest they receive blame for her disappearance.

The oddity of her disappearance when things appeared to be going well and with no need for emergency and no claims from anyone of killing her has left many Crinan Historians to this day perplexed.

 

[Alva Calvarona]

The rebels would be weakened by the loss of Nicoleta, but at the same time the Royals repeated loss of their advantages were also hurting for morale and had yet to have a decisive leader and hero to lead them, and would not have such until future Lord General Tiberius the Saint took the reigns. Until then the war would cool down to simmer as both sides maneuvered carefully and the fighting devolved into simple skirmishes. Many of which went either way with the rebels winning in numbers, but the Royals coming out in technology.

The Rebel Forces would eventually unite under leadership divided by cells in different cities and villages, all connected to a larger joint command to counter the Royals. This would be the form of their command structure for most of the remainder of the war, and they would gain the edge against the Royals in terms of periods that relied heavily on covert operations and small scale skirmishes. Though they would falter in grander scales of battle especially when the Royal Army would have their own Hero rise up.

All the same it doesn't stop anyone from wondering what would have happened if Nicoleta hadn't vanished. Or where and why or how she did.