'Solitude'

A blessing, and a curse for the soul.

One that we eventually all have to conquer...

The first words of Master Cil-Cil Muzz after he realized and faced with the true weight of his mistake. 

A lithe form covered by thick layers of gray robes and a large cowl covering the majority of her face walked through the narrow, silent and pitch-black cave tunnel. Inside the tunnel a crude staircase was carved on the floor, the young woman was walking upwards on that staircase for who knows how long as the unending darkness swallowed everything around her. Only the sounds of her otherwise silent steps echoed through the waste emptiness. Finally she was getting to the top of that seemingly endless staircase as her form got closer and she was lighted up by a single ray of light as she partly emerged from the darkness. Now that her form was visible the clothes quickly began to lose their mysterious glory. They were full of holes ripped apart and damaged material, parts of it hanging loosely from seemingly random locations. Dust and dirt were covering them in many layers accompanied by signs of quick fixes that had been applied to the robes with crude movements. As if the person doing the repair couldn't see what she was sewing together. 

The young woman stepped over the last stair without looking back and walked a few more slow, calculated footsteps inside the underground cave hall, the cave widened up again, but something was different this time. There was a single continuous ray of sunshine sneaking into the darkness by some sort of a small miracle. In front of her at a roughly circular place that the light hesitantly engulfed in the midst of a pile of grass a single piece of dandelion flower towered above the fragile miniature green oasis.

Finally without any sign, she crumbled to her knees in silence. She stayed there next to the mystical site for a while, then she forced herself to change into a cross legged meditating position. She took up the lotus pose with extremely slow movements, focusing on the smallest of details in her breathing and the right positioning of the limbs and body. After a painfully long time, she was happy with the outcome and she reached out to the force.

She sensed the residual force energies lingering in this place, hidden from most mortal eyes, but not from hers. She prompted the hidden power with a graceful touch of her mind, it made the aimlessly scattered midi-chlorians shudder with excitement, as they slowly morphed into a spring of vigorous energy. The small current quickly grown into a stable flow of force which passed through her tired body slowly lifting away the accumulated fatigue. The force was everywhere, inside the ground, the air, the rocks, in everything. She felt relieved as it washed through her exhausted muscles and slowly reinvigorated them with life. All of these magical things happened at once, but those who were not blessed with a strong enough connection to the mystical force, would never see more than a dirty girl, sitting in a hazy dark room wrapped in the cloth of a beggar. There were no clouds of mysterious energies or lightnings flowing around in the background. Just a tired girl, sitting in a dark place in silence. 

Her eyes were closed, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration, perspiration covering her face from the walk earlier. The once glorious clothes now reminders of  beggars on forgotten backstreet alleys, beaten from the many rigors of life and left to rot in a place where they couldn't bother anyone. Even so, the strangely clouded gray eyes were not drowned in misery as one might have expected from such a sight. The poise of the battered twi'lek was filled with reserved dignity reminiscent of old statues revivifying long dead religious figures. 

Nizzal was sitting in the emptiness alone for who knows how long now, surrounded by the silence of the world, the world of her own subconscious mind. Only the noises she herself created were present in the otherwise complete darkness and stillness. Her eyes were closed as she meditated. The strange light had hurt her eyes which did not see anything similar so distinct from the natural darkness of this place in days or perhaps weeks now. She was used to keeping them shut already, there was no reason to open them, not until now, since the darkness was so thick here, that it wouldn't matter even if she did. The only thing she could trust here was her knowledge of the force, and rationality, at least what was left of it. 

This was why she feared this place. The defensive mechanism of the Archive, what they only call, as the ascend. It is one thing to travel down into the subconscious and witness the workings of the archive, and it is another to come out of that experience alive and most importantly sane. 

The archive defensive system was created in such a way, to harness the most dreadful subconscious terrors of the mind against any intruder who dared to forcefully extract knowledge. It was made to let anyone who wishes to do so into the mind moderately easily, there were a few reasons for that. First, the intruder if powerful enough may damage or destroy the mind of the victim by brute forcing it's way into it.

The second reason is this: anyone who enters the archive will become part of the archive, this means it would be able to steal knowledge from the intruder just as the intruder would be able to learn new information from it freely. This way the archive can gain knowledge and understanding from the intruder, compared to the amount of knowledge the intruder steals from it. Therefore, the more an intruder steals the more it will lose from itself, and the more the archive will be able to understand the intruder's personality, fears... basically everything about them. Only for later to use it against them, when they decide to leave the place the trap will spring around them and the worst of their nightmares will come to life just to hunt them to the end of the world. The more they fight against them the more powerful the abominations will become, it is a truly terrifying trap worthy of the name who designed it, the name of Darth Revan. 

Of course the original users of the archive, are able to access that information through their dreams or meditations. They can also interact with the archive in a more personal way if the need arises through a specific technique which is called the "Meditation of Descent". Such a meditation technique is extremely dangerous and is usually only used, by the apostles of the order, the ones who have several lifetime long experiences. That was what I did some time ago, when I sensed the unnatural movements of the archive as the gears of my personality, my core began to flail around, creating new connections and destroying older ones. It was the only way to oversee and direct the flow of the chain reaction. 

It doesn't matter anymore, I should let go of these unnecessary emotions. She thought to herself while diverting her mind to a more productive direction. Let me, let me share the internal workings of the order with you? Okay... Wait... who am I talking to exactly? No-no matter... no matter. It is not the first time that I speak to myself inside my mind, that is inside my... mind? E-he... Let's not go there... for now.

The apostles... well, it is an often committed misconception that the grey order's every member is a so called apostle. This couldn't have been further from the truth. The order's force sensitive members are a bit above a thousand and two hundred. And for that number of force sensitives we have at the moment about twenty one apostles if I remember right. Only these twenty one apostles are turned into true Archives. In other words general storage type of living holocrons. Saying it in that way is kind of degrading, truly, but in the end, behind the pride and fancy words, that is what we are in the essence of the truth.

Of course we are more than that, but that is the key to everything. We are teachers, guides, and hoarders of memories, historical events in their true bare form. Of course, that much knowledge of the force will result in a reasonable accumulation of power. That is why we are also treated as the main pillars of the order. Forces of nature that if prepared right, and paired with a host blessed by a high enough midi-chlorian count can unleash unimaginable destruction in a short amount of time. I believe if all of us fought together we could basically rip apart a smaller sized planet, or moon. A small feat compared to such characters as Darth Nihilus, but we didn't pay half as high of a price for our powers as he did. There is a limit to the power, the raw energy that one entity can accumulate inside its body. If you grow over the limit, your body will begin to disintegrate and perish into particles. 

This is what happens as the result of the memory transferring ritual. Transferring memories in small amounts is possible without dying but the amount is not even close to be enough to transfer all your memories. To transfer the amount of memories that a mid sized archive holds, which is around two thousand years is basically impossible. To do that, you need to draw on the living force, which is why such rituals are always held in ancient meditation chambers. Those are filled to the brim with layers upon layers of residual energy left behind by ancient practitioners. 

Even so, you need to draw upon your own life energy deeply, and burning life energy over a certain limit, will result in the collapse of the body's molecular structure. Then how is it that Darth Nihilus alone, were able to channel such extreme force energies to drain planets from all life? Simple, he didn't actually have a body at that time, not anymore his sheer willpower, hatred and desire to fill his hunger was what kept together the hollow reminder of the leftover of his mind. His body had collapsed long before he gained such power.

He turned into a force wound manifesting the nature of the dark side in a pure form, he was a partly conscious abomination driven by its never ending hunger to consume more. A cruel fate if there was one. The only way to banish him was to force him to use up his energies, which were burning naturally by every passing second. He was a formidable enemy, but his fate was sealed the moment he lost to his hunger. He would sooner or later perish on his own, as there wouldn't be enough force sensitive to momentarily lessen his ever growing hunger. In a few years he would perish, but at that time, who known's what would have been left from the already war ridden galaxy. He eventually consumed himself as he did with many systems. We have his mask stored in a separate safe room in the treasury of the order gathering dust.

The power of hunger still lingers around the mask draining life energy from anything that gets close enough. It is nothing more than a presumption, but we think that if it drains enough life energy it might just manage to reborn its user. That is why nobody was allowed to go near it since we put it inside that room. It was a few thousand years ago I think. Almost three thousand now, time surely flies by. 

Nizzal, opened one of her eyes hesitantly and looked around the dimly lit place, she probed her body lightly and decided that she still needed some time to rest. With that thought she closed her eyes again and turned back to her thoughts. So where was I originally, I wanted to think about the order's system... after all I need to deal with it soon enough. Oh, yes, that was it the different types of the archives and ranks. 

There are two other types of archive users that we can originally train and teach in the order. Just like the three basic schools of the Jedi temple, which are the consular, the guardian and the sentinel. Here there are the types of me, I guess I would be equivalent to a consular but more, since I not only specialize in the use of force abilities but in everything basically...

Well I guess we don't have anything equivalent for the role of consular here in the end. However we have spies, officially we used to call them by a less intrusive word... he-he, yes that's a pun, okay I will stop... we call them infiltrators, cough... Then there are the warriors and apostles, oh that's me. I had this hunch for a while, but I think this place is slowly turning me crazy, it seems that this is a confirmation of low levels of sanity. I probably just need to distract my mind.

Let me describe the warriors of the order for that perfectly normal reason okay? Of course, you would like that. So... the warriors of the order, these guys doesn't have a fully functional archive they are given a lesser one from the grand masters. The grand masters of the order are capable of manipulating archive memories with extreme finesse.

This means, that they can't manipulate memories that are not stored by some form of archive holocron technique. That is an important distinction, the mind normally stores memories in a much more chaotic way, the archive is nothing more than a specific more orderly reconfiguration of those memories. You basically need to understand the way they are stored to even try to manipulate them, it is much like a special programming language, but more organic and unpredictable.

And that exact way of rewriting them is the technique only grand masters are allowed to know. If you have the technique basically anyone could learn it, who understands the archive internal workings with great enough detail. So the prerequisite is to basically be a few thousand year old apostle.

I guess that makes the possible candidates to a number of maybe ten? If all the requirements are met any user can freely copy part of their knowledge to chosen people without suffering any serious side effect, your head will feel like it is about to split in two but, that isn't really a major side effect compared to disintegration. Of course if they would try to copy all of their knowledge at the same time, it would lead to the same unfortunate result. This way, the warriors only receive a large quantity of predetermined knowledge from the grand masters towards their chosen specialty.

However, this knowledge is not freely given. It is loaded into a weakened version of the archive in an orderly fashion, which only reveals the knowledge to their mind, when they reach the predetermined requirements of certain techniques just like any physical holocron would do. Therefore, the members of the order will not look down upon hard work, they will have a sense of achievement when they reveal the knowledge locked inside of their minds. They are the warriors, who only have knowledge about battle techniques and only as much as their own achievements reveal to them. 

It's like playing a video game you know. Your character has a predetermined set of abilities in your chosen class, and by earning experience points and achievements you are able to automatically learn those abilities as if they blinked into your mind out of the blue. Uh, but well, in a video game you can't learn other abilities on your own, only the exact predetermined ones, obviously here it is not the case. 

The other school is for the spies. This group are basically the same, as the warriors the only difference being that their hidden knowledge is based on spying techniques and undercover operations or assassinations. Oh, I think Rika belonged to this category until she volunteered to undergo another ritual to save the fate of a young memory line that didn't find an inheritor. The force can only elongate one's life to a certain length after all.

Well, she is kind of messed up right now, as she was not someone who could properly inherit the archive unfortunately. Even so, with enough self control, willpower, and a shit ton of luck, she will be mostly fine, however miraculous that is. Yet, inheriting an archive against the will of the force can and will cause unforeseeable side effects for better or worse, possibly both. Even so, it is already too late to think about such things, the deal had been done.

Rika now has to live with her choice. She at least had the opportunity to choose her own fate, many of us can't really speak about such a thing. Most of the masters groom their apprentices and drop the ritual on the top of their heads without any warning. The reason for that is simple, how would you prepare someone to embrace something like the archive? It is impossible to describe it in its entirety, it will mostly scare the hell out of you and make everything difficult. This is of course cowardice from the part of the masters, I know. As they don't wish to see their cherished apprentices turn against them in the last days or hours of their lives. This is why the initiation is done in such a shady way. 

Also, the initiation in itself tells and shows you everything that you ever need to know, therefore there is no reason to prepare further then intermediate force and physical body training. The order can't state this more clearly, the ritual doesn't steal the body of the one who absorbs the flow of the memories. It ads the memories of the master to the apprentice, of course their personality will change as the result. They will change in the direction of the master, because they share the memories and experiences which formed the master's personality, but their original core personality will be still there. Their soul will remain the same only smarter, and wiser.

You can't describe such a thing to the jedi order, their suspicious nature will never accept the use of such extreme techniques fueled by the darkside. There are things you can share with the jedi, and there are things you can't. It is as simple as that and this truth belongs to the latter category.