JEDI HoloNet

When an interplanetary merchant was meandering through the clustered bazaars and busy markets of one of Vanqor’s larger cities to pass the time while the cargo on his ship was being unloaded for transport, he had no expectation of being approached by a thin woman in scraggly rags, yanking in tow behind her malnourished self a young child far too distracted for his own good. The woman in beggar’s clothing, marveling at the finely polished buttons and delicate fabrics the foreign trader wore, immediately began to introduce herself. She spoke so quickly in a tone so excited that her name was lost in the middle of a lengthy sentence only half-decipherable given how quickly she was talking. From there, she took a deep breath and recomposed herself, then pulled her son in front of her to present him to the trader. The boy looked up with a timid gaze in his eye, blankly staring. He was clearly too shy to speak.

His mother wasn’t, on the other hand. She quickly introduced her son, Joar, and began to recount the situation her son appears to be in. Moving tables, whispering voices, floating objects. The raggedy beggar spins tale after tale of supernatural wonderment to the merchant, mystical events which unfolded all within the comfort of her shack by the pure and unadulterated will of her child. The raw power that the child possesses is nothing like she had ever seen. For his own safety and benefit, the child needed to be taken somewhere his natural affinities could be managed and trained, and pleaded to the merchant to take Joar with him to a temple or academy where Joar could receive training to hone his ties to the force, even making a subtle suggestion that the reward for bringing the son to the Jedi would be quite handsome. After agreeing on a modest price for the child, Joar was sold to the merchant, then loaded onto the his cargo ship later that day.

From there, Joar became even more distant and reserved, keeping to himself in his own bunk while a passenger to the rotund Quarren planning to turn a profit on him. Thankfully, no strange force-related anomalies occurred during the trip, which was something the merchant was quite fearful of. The trip as a whole was surprisingly peaceful, even boring, given all the astonishing stories told to him about Joar’s affinity for strange events. The merchant began to daydream about the kind of money the Jedi order could possibly offer someone such as him for an ideal acolyte. An ancient and politically favorable group such as them, to the merchant, would be eager to trade fine goods or even cold Credits. The promise was so alluring that the trader was willing to take a detour from his normal route and land at a small outpost on the outskirts of Republic territory, where he had discovered from doing some quick research that several recruiters for a Jedi academy were seeking out force sensitive children. The Quarren happily waited in line for an hour and a half with dozens of other adults eager to present a prospective initiate to the Jedi order.

When he and Joar were called into the back, the two were met with a trio representing the order: a taller Twi’lek woman in the dust-coated uniform of a hardy ranger, a human in the robes of a monk, and a Kel Dor, garbed in the traditional attire of a Jedi. The three recruiters asked several questions regarding the nature of the boy, and the merchant recanted all of the anecdotes the mother had provided with almost as much fervor and bewilderment as the mother herself. He boasted of the potential and power Joar held. The Kel Dor, properly trained to gauge a child’s Force affinity, took a bag and emptied its contents in front of Joar. A plethora of toys were scattered across the floor, and the Jedi urged the child to pick which one struck his fancy or felt the most familiar. Joar sat, puzzled for the longest moment, hesitantly making his choice. As the wooden Bantha in his hand slowly began to light up, the Kel Dor paid close attention to see if the merchant’s tales rang of any truth.

They did not.

The merchant didn’t get what he paid for. The dim, faint glow of the toy, designed to reveal the power of a Force user, was more than enough proof of that. In reality, Joar had some affinity narrowly peaking out, barely setting him above an average person, but nothing even close to what was promised by his mother. The recruiter would be surprised if the boy had any ability to do much of anything at all. It was clear that the stories told to the recruiters were fictitious in nature, and the Quarren was not very happy to hear that. The merchant immediately became livid and confused, realized he had fallen prey to the most outrageous scam he had ever encountered, and all the more enraged that he somehow fell for it. In a move to placate the man, and possibly out of sympathy, the Jedi offered to reimburse the Quarren traveler for his expenses. Disgruntled, the merchant cut his losses and left the boy behind, returning to his trade route as quickly as he could to try and make up for lost time.

The recruiters faced a dilemma. Joar’s mother clearly had no interest in keeping her son, given the great lengths she went to in order to con another person into taking him away. The merchant as well seemed compelled to wash his hands clean of the mess and get away as soon as possible. Joar’s ties to the Force were weak and shallow, but the young child had nowhere else to go. The three recruiters spent the evening deliberating the right way to handle such a sensitive case. After much debate and meditation, a conclusion was reached. Due to Joar’s odd circumstances, an unorthodox approach was best taken to see what the Force had in store for him. They agreed to take him to a praxeum on Rannon, given the Kel Dor Jedi’s familiarity with the branch and its reputation for being nontraditional. The hope was that an unorthodox approach would be best suited for an unorthodox case. Over time, however, Joar’s homesickness and separation anxiety grew. He became particularly unbalanced and dour, a very dangerous state of mind to be in for a prospective Jedi. He was shy and unconfident around his peers, and easily discouraged and lacking in motivation. All of these factors accumulated to make Joar an issue to the temple. He remains for the time being, however, under the supervision of the Jedi at Rannon. Nobody, especially Joar himself, knows what will become of his situation.