thefinaljedi | Appointments

[Luke feels the stranger approach long before he arrives, a faint tremor in the Force heralding the arrival of another sentient being, albeit an unfamiliar presence. He's not expecting company but plenty of people come by the farm these days so it's not enough to put him on his guard. He keeps on about his business till he needs to leave the shed. No worries, Knives.

Carrying out a bucket of water for the little droids watering the various plants, Luke makes himself known to the stranger. He's a little surprised to see a man who looks a lot like Vash, but not quite, and with a different presence. But he waves all the same as he begins pouring.]

Morning. Something I can help you with?

[Vash's default setting is friendliness. Knives' default setting is wary suspicion. It doesn't show itself visibly, only a detached sort of neutrality instead as he turns, abandoning his pursuit of a cricket amongst the veggies, and straightens up. To his credit he doesn't startle when Luke pops up, possibly because Luke's not attempting anything like stealth and is carrying a bucket of water and not a weapon.

There's no mistaking the fact that checks for aforementioned possible weapon, or that he's studying the jedi, however. He doesn't bother to try to hide that.]

Is this your farm, or do you merely work here?

[He sounds something like Vash too. Probably relatives of some sort; twins aren't that uncommon. Even his voice is studied neutrality, giving way to neither friendliness nor hostility.]

[Well, the reaction alone is enough to set him apart as a not-Vash. He's got no problem with someone poking around, and no reason not to be friendly even if Knives is screaming wary. Neutrally wary, but still wary.]

I manage it, yes. Wouldn't call it mine, but I'm the one that takes care of the day to day.

[The answer seems to satisfy the dark-haired plant. Few people claimed direct ownership of much of anything in Luceti and now was no different. Perhaps it was due to the transient nature of this place. It doesn't lower his levels of wariness any, relaxing around a human simply wasn't going to happen, but having an answer was enough for now.

Which means almost idly he goes looking for that cricket again.]

And all of this grows more or less by itself, I suppose. Add seed, add a disgusting amount of water, stand back and watch. Do you eat everything you produce here?

[Entire cities would go to war over the amount of water on this farm alone, back home. It isn't a precious commodity here though, and it's hard to shake the idea that it is. There is a small pause.]

Not .. hn. Not exclusively, presumably you share with others. More, if all of this is part of your diet in some fashion.

[The clarification, he supposes, might be necessary. He's seen the way certain species (like Saiyans) can really pack away the food. They probably could eat everything growing here and then some.]

Edited (because I fail at copypasting, a few days late.) 2013-06-23 07:04 (UTC)

[The way the man states his questions, as not quite questions, gives Luke a moment's pause. He can't help but raise an eyebrow at just how...odd all of this actually sounds]

I do eat some of it, yes. Primarily, it's meant to be a failsafe though. I'm going to guess you are relatively new to Luceti, so you might not have heard. The food we have here in the village is provided by the Malnosso. There have been incidences where they haven't been able to feed the population here and food became scarce for a while. They are, after all, fighting a war. The farm is intended to give us a bit of a buffer so we don't have to have them feed us.

[Shaking his head, he goes on.]

Better to be as self-sufficient as possible, without the need to rely on people who could potentially turn on us.

['Why' would make more sense if the reasons why and background were more understood, but he's not particularly keen on divulging that. The answer Knives is given draws an absent nod, however slight. Foresight was a good idea.

There's a flicker of something very unpleasant when the Malnosso are mentioned. Slavers, thieves-- The thought's banished quickly, before it can agitate him too much.]

I am unsure you will be able to produce enough to feed everyone in this cage for long. Unless there is more than one such location as this?

[Slow, thoughtful, actually taking the time to make a few estimates. Knives is very good at those estimates.]

Especially with the appetites of some. Do you also grow animals for eating? ... Even though they are capable of speech?

[Luke looks out over the field and shakes his head.]

Not for long, no. There's also a mikan orchard and an apple orchard but those are fruits and not vegetables. Either way, we've got crops from last year in cold storage, and these will go the same way. Generally the shortages only last a few days at most, and a little bit of food is better than people going hungry.

And obviously, it would require rationing.

[Luke looks back at the animals. Specifically the bantha.]

No. They're more for work, honestly. Especially the big one. Work animals more than anything. If it's necessary, then yes we'd eat the pigs and things though.

[For a time, Knives doesn't respond. At least he does actually think things through before saying anything, even if his usual biases inevitably come into play. The intricacies of what a farm needed to run successfully were mysteries, and not ones he really cared to investigate. ... Too much.

That Luke doesn't eat the animals is a point in his favor. 'Necissary' might be different from one person to another, but it was better than constantly devouring them.]

The big one would feed the most people.

[He doesn't dwell on it.]

The world I come from has.. nothing like even a farm like this. Deserts are unkind to what would be gross waste of water. Here it seems commonplace, though what you use even for irrigation for these thirsty plants would be enough to cause inter-town wars.. It's ...still strange. Even though I've seen it daily since arriving here.

He would, but he can also do the most work, carry the most food, and pull the largest plows.

[Luke nods at the explanation. And actually smiles, nostalgia plain on his features.]

The planet I'm originally from is like that. Tatooine has binary stars, and the only kind of farming we do is pulling moisture from the atmosphere with vaporator technology. It'd be impossible to do anything like that there, but after I left I took it up as a hobby and a means to feed some of the students at my academy.

[He offers a hand in greeting, not sure if it'll be taken or not.]

I'm Luke. Luke Skywalker.

The lack of vehicles extends to farm equipment as well then, I take it.

[It's not quite a question. He hasn't seen a single car, truck, or vehicle of any kind. Most technology seemed very subdued at best, things like clocks and watches. Why hadn't anyone simply built more?]

.... My world was also a binary system, with a half-dozen moons as well. The desert alternates between rocky and sandy, the few species that live there suited to it, besides humankind. The only 'farming' that existed was the enslavement of my people and abusing them until they used their natural power to supply food and water to humanity. There were no gardens, no true forests, nothing like this. There is only one place where even a tree grew, and that supported by the will and gifts of one of my Sisters, trapped underground.

[Nothing changes in the tone of his voice as this is said, but black hatred boils up beneath it, the sort that could and has led to the massacre of millions. Knives throttles it back down neatly; he's had a lot of practice. Luke wasn't using his kind to keep this place growing. Only, as far as he could see, the dirt, sunlight and water.

Something close to serenity is easy enough for Knives to recapture, replacing the moment of violent dislike completely, though he eyes the offered hand roughly the same way someone might regard being handed a poisonous snake. But after a moment, with extreme reluctance, the offered hand is taken. Knives is careful to not squeeze in the process. Humans were so fragile.]

Knives Millions. I'm somewhat new to this prison.

[Luke can't help but sense that hatred, and while it makes him wonder he also knows better than to pry. Especially where Lucetians were concerned. There were enough people with pasts as checkered as his own, after all.

Luke's grip is surprisingly strong. Too strong, in fact. The cybernetics, and his own attunement to the Force had pushed him well beyond human standards. With a shake, he nods and retracts the hand.]

I thought so. I didn't recognize you, and I've been here over a year myself. If you don't mind my asking, are you from a starfaring civilization as well?

[Simple politeness, instead of curtness or hostility, is a real challenge to pull off when dealing with humans. Ignoring fifteen centuries of habit takes Knives quite a bit of effort. The best way: focus on other things.

Like the grip from a hand that felt cybernetic. The shift of cables under false skin and metal bone beneath that felt distinctly different from an ordinary and fairly fragile human hand. It's far more lifelike than he's used to seeing in prosthetics, but a strong grip doesn't seem to cause him any harm at least.

It's just.. interesting. He hadn't been able to tell at all, til then. If Knives' attention is diverted to the replacement hand, it's probably for the best.]

That's a surprise. Most people recognize me by virtue of thinking I'm Vash. [Which he didn't much like, but identical twins were identical twins, and he dealt with it by a different haircut and black hair instead of Vash's healthy blond.]

.... Technically, yes. My kind are more the engines than the passengers, but we are capable of space travel. Most of the travelling through space for proper passengers and crew is done in cryosleep to get from world to world but it's possible.

[He wondered if the Earth coalition had figured it out; it took them much shorter time to reach No Man's Land than it did for the original colonists to arrive.] ..I imagine once a safe faster-than-light method of space travel is found, 'spacefaring' will be a more appropriate term.

I don't know Vash well, but I've met him. I just assumed you were related, but you feel different. Your presence, that is.

[He quirks his head, his own curiosity now caught]

Your kind?

Apparently 'experiments' and 'shifts' are so common that several simply assumed I was he. It is ...refreshing to encounter someone who knows otherwise so quickly.

[Which seems genuine enough. It might be a common headache for identical twins, even though they rarely spent a lot of time around each other. It's true that at their most base points both Vash and Knives are very alike, but everything built on it.. well. Vash won't have the same issues with racist hatred that his brother has.

..Probably for the best.]

We are not human. [He seems willing to clarify, and there's nothing really imperative behind it, it's simply information.] We may look like them, and sound like them, and even act like them at times, but we are not. We're plants. Not like the ones growing here, closer to 'power plants' than anything related to a vegetable. Vash and I are the only living male members of our species. The rest are female, and most of them live in a communal mind-link. We are outside it, and thus are 'independent'.

[Knives pauses, turning a bit to consider Luke directly again.]

You are human, are you not? Is your species space-faring? You seem too .... calm to be a member of the parasitic and virulent sort of humanity I know of.

[Calm isn't the word he wants, which annoys him. But it's the closest he can get.]

[Luke absorbs that little bit of information without blinking. Human-like aliens are one thing he's more than passingly familiar with. It's a little strange, certainly, but nothing too shocking for Luke.]

Yes, I am human. My galaxy is a starfaring one, as well though we've developed faster than light transit. We can cross the galaxy in a matter of days or sometimes hours depending on the Hyperspace route. And as for my...calm...I am a Jedi. A peacekeeper in my galaxy.

[There's a brief moment of displeasure; Knives doesn't like humans. It's only for his missing true brother that he even bothers to try to be nice.]

Rarely do 'peacekeeper' and 'calm' go hand in hand, in my experience. Presumably being ... a 'jedi' does more for it than simply being an enforcer of supposed peace. Did your people develop the technology themselves to cross space, or steal it from others?

[Vegeta's people were parasites in that fashion, it made sense that other races would be too.]

[Luke's not sure he likes those prickles, but he shrugs them off for the moment. Knives is obviously a paranoid man.]

A Jedi is able to sense the Force. A kind of energy field that binds all life together. It...in some ways...makes us more than ordinary beings. In simple terms, it's a bit like magic, chi, or chakras. It's more than that, but that's an important part of being a Jedi.

And as for that, I honestly have no idea. Space flight technology has existed for over 25,000 years, and Hyperspace technology for nearly 10,000. Nobody is precisely sure.

[It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. ... Though now that he was on a different world, maybe it really was paranoia.

The explanation he's given doesn't quite.. make sense, beyond 'it's something like magic', which he'd been encountering more often in luceti than any other time in the past century and a half.]

And this somehow influences your temperament? I know little of magic, chi or chakras, such things have little influence where I'm from. But the energy of life..

[Maybe that. Maybe. It's put aside, without the thought being completed. Twenty-five thousand years was a lot longer than humanity's had most any form of technology, as far as he knew. It must have come from some other race, but whether given or taken would be ..long lost to time.]

One would think that would be the sort of thing to keep in the record books. The harnessing of fire. Discovery and utilizing of electricity. When and how spaceflight became so commonplace that cross-galactic journeys aren't the task of lifetimes..

It does. It has a calming influence, if one meditates on it enough.

[Luke smiles sadly at the commentary on time.]

Knives, I don't even know much about my world's history from sixty years ago, let alone centuries. War is a pretty constant thing, and it destroys a lot of the libraries. Not to mention propaganda.

['A calming influence'. Knives will withhold judgment on that one, until he has more information to work with. Meditation certainly never helped anyone where he was from. And what Luke follows it up with only lines certainty in that it doesn't help anywhere else either. The brief glance Luke's given is terribly, bitterly unsurprised.]

Pathetic.

[There's no real anger behind the word, but he does mean it.]

Species too stupid to know to not destroy everything they come across seem overwhelmingly common in the universe. I'd hoped to find out that my own people and the sandworms aren't the only peaceful races in existence, but the only commonality in almost every species I've heard of so far is how mindlessly hell-bent on warfare you are. The rest of us will be better off when you finally drive yourselves to extinction in an orgy of ignorance and ruination.

[It might be a peculiar statement to make, but Knives clearly doesn't consider himself among those violent peoples. Maybe he isn't; he's paranoid and suspicious, but he doesn't seem inclined towards destruction without considerable provocation.]

[Luke doesn't bristle, he doesn't react at all really. He just replies in a flat voice.]

Have you never dealt with oppressive governments then? Some men are mad for power, or just want to hurt people. And in my world, sometimes those people find themselves in positions of power, or with similar powers to my own. The reason wars happen is because ideologies clash. And because sometimes people can only stand so much. I've been in a war since I was eighteen. I'm aware of how pointless it is, but if someone tried to take your home and your life, would you defend yourself or not?

I've dealt with oppressive governments.

[Something dangerous edges into his tone, but it's restrained. Control is something Knives has long learned. A lack of it led to disaster.]

Those that made the mistake of opposing me I gave to the desert. Those who imprisoned and leeched off my people, I made pay blood for blood. And when their oppressive governments came to stop me..

[His smile is thin, humorless. Knives knows plenty of war.]

Those too were shown the ...errors of their ways. Don't think to lecture to me of what one might do to protect home, life and people. Because of that terrible task, to save my people and my home, hundreds of millions of human lives were reduced to one shattered city. But I didn't destroy their histories and works. Only their lives. One cannot learn from mistakes if there is no lesson left behind.

[Knives turns to watch the single sun rise, still half-expecting a second to rise with it.]

Perhaps your painfully short lives is why you wage war so carelessly. I sickened of bloodshed in a handful of decades, and kept on only to preserve my kind alive and safe. I was the only one who would, who could rise up and fight back. Ideology? Ideology alone kept me from wiping out the last remnants of mankind on my world, then taking the ships they came to kill me with and burning them from the galaxy.

[For Knives, it's a speech. The dangerous tone had long since bled out, leaving only weariness. He sounds, seems, much older than his apparent mid-twenties.]

I know plenty of warfare, Luke Skywalker. Of oppression, suffering and pain. But I learned ..am still learning, to walk away. To put hatred and fear aside and try to believe in someone else's foolish dreams for a better future. It isn't easy. His belief that life can be lived in harmony and peace is ignorant and stupid. It's a naive dream, but I've chosen to believe in it. Perhaps it would do your kind some good to do the same.

[Again, Luke silently bears it, calm, cool, and collected.]

Perhaps it's our short lives. I don't know about that. I'm human, and I can only speak from what I know. But putting aside emotions and trying to build a better future is exactly why the Rebellion rose up in the first place. And why others have. I don't know about your world, and I don't like using such blanket terms, but the people who've caused these wars, the Sith, are truly evil beings. They're consumed by their own lust for power, and they've stopped at nothing, time and time again, to take control over the entire galaxy.

That, Knives, is something the Jedi will not allow. They are our dark mirror, our opposite, and for the last thirty years they've ruled my galaxy. I won't bore you with the details, but when they're purging entire sentient races from existence and destroying planets with billions of lives on them, it goes beyond hatred and fear. It comes down to right and wrong.

Maybe we'll learn a better way in the future, but for my people there's only so many options when it comes down to fight or die.

[For a moment, when the plant smiles, it's not the thinly veiled unpleasantness from before. It seems almost genuine, and a touch sad. And it makes him look a lot more like his brother.]

There's always other options, if you look for them. I didn't think so for a long time, but that less-- [He pauses, shaking the thought off without completing the sentence. Thinking too much on his brother, his real brother, and the things that Vash had done, hurt too much in his absence.] Right and wrong, justice and injustice, are constructs of civilization; and civilization, as you know, is very, very easily rewritten. What you might call murder another might call revenge, or justice, or even mercy. Even 'truth' and reality itself is a matter of perspective.

[The smile fades.]

I should like to be bored with the details of these Sith and their rule, actually. If there is true, genuine evil I would like to know what it is before I encounter it, if I am not already in that category myself. This place draws all kinds.

[Knives isn't evil. He's troubled and damaged and violently suspicious but he has a stronger grasp on the light than the darkness. Did trying to change from the killer he was matter in the face of 'right and wrong'?]

I'm not sure the Empire or the Sith could be written as anything less than evil. They've wiped out entire star clusters, destroyed suns and planets, and poisoned more worlds than can be counted. [All true. Luke's voice gets a slight edge to it now. He doesn't really like thinking about Alderaan, or what they did to Mon Calamari, or Taris, Dantooine, and other worlds in just his lifetime alone.]

But if you want to know more. The Sith are an order of Force Adepts as well, tapping into the Dark Side of the Force. It's viewed as a quick path to power, and the Dark Side actually twists the body and mind. They use fear, anger, aggression, and hatred to draw out more of the Force and it leaves them scarred and in some cases quite mad. This is converse to the Jedi philosophy which, while not perfect, rarely leads to destructive rage and madness. As for their rule...well, there have been several times they've had great power but the most recent one was by far the most successful.

Thirty years ago, a Sith Lord masquerading as a politician managed to gain a lot of political power in the Republic Senate. He used this influence to spark a war, and as it came to a close he took complete control and staged a military coup that killed the majority of the Jedi protecting the people. He turned the Republic into an Empire, and put into place a harsh government, proclaiming himself Emperor. Some of his policies included harsher treatment for non-humans, xenophobic slavery, experimentation on living sentient life, and even women not being allowed to hold rank in the military anymore. Several species were brought to the brink of extinction and entire worlds were harvested for funding to create superweapons. One had the power to destroy a planet in a single shot, another could do the same to a star. They were used a few times, and billions if not trillions died. Ruling through fear was their goal, but a rebellion formed, and the Emperor was defeated. He's been dead for about three years now but the Empire still fights in his name.

[6/20, Sometime around sunrise. Actions!]

[moar actions]

[all the action...]

[brand new action]

[Shiny new action] Sorry, I'm sort of out of town most weekends and I get a bit slow.

[Somewhat tarnished action] It's okay! I spend my weekends fishin'! :D

[action in need of varnish] It's okay! I spend my weekends fishin'! :D

[Lemon scented Pledge action]

[Squeakily varnished action]

[Action set in a dishpan to dry]

[Action set in a frypan to fry]

[Action with a side of bacon]

[Action with a slice of ham]

[Action and eggs with a muffin]

[Action and chicken with a biscuit]

[Action lightly poached]

[Action with a pinch of garlic]

[Action seasoned with too much pepper]

[Action seasoned with too little soy]

[Action with peppers and onions] AND VERY BELATED AAAAaaa sorry

[Action with steak and potatos] s'ok

[Action with an apple]

[Action with a pair of pears]

[Action with a stolen pear]

[Action with a borrowed peach]