Jedi Artisan 030

Besides armor, Zane needed to craft something else for the big day tomorrow. Gear was a nice reward, it was something tangible that the Mandalorians all coveted. He doubted they'd give him much face if it was easily earned. Therefore, besides a few martial challenges, he wanted to make something that tested courage, determination, and resolve. 

He was going to make a box that once one placed their hand inside, their deepest fears, and pains were manifested. Inspired by a device from Dune, this would be one of his tools meant to test-and convince-the Mandalorians of the Jedi & their means. After all, it was one thing to lose to a Jedi in a test of combat or skill, there was no dishonor in that. After all, Jedi were legendary existences often requiring entire squads or armies of Mandalorians to kill. However, one tiny little box was harmless, right? Zane couldn't wait to finish the design in his mind, and unleash it upon the public. 

In preparation for this wonderful creation, he had gathered wood from a tree that had grown over the unmarked graves of clansmen festering with resentment. .

The tree had stood beyond the city walls, its roots wrapped around the resting place of a Mandalorian warrior whose name had been lost during an ancient clan feud. The wood was dark, almost black, with pale veins running through it like old scars. Zane had taken only a dead limb, but the grain retained the psychic impression of the ground that had nourished it: grief, loneliness, and the haunting anger at being forgotten coated this piece of lumber like a haunting wraith. 

The second material for this artifact had been carefully chosen to harmonize with the wood. Resting before Zane was a worn & battered piece of beskar. Its previous owner had betrayed his clan for credits, opening the gates of a mountain fortress and condemning those inside. The traitor had been executed, his name struck from the clan records. His armor had remained locked away deep in the Kryze family vaults. No one had known about it, but during his brief search for materials, it had whispered to him. 

Without waiting for the Duke's permission, he had appropriated it for his own use. The ruined cuirass now hovered above the furnace, slowly levitating from left to right as Zane examined it. Unblinking, his eyes were wide as his entire being absorbed every last ounce of this material. Opening himself to the Force, Zane breathed in this bitter betrayal like the finest bouquet, and adjusted his own frequency in the great play that was the Force, adapting the armor's melody to his own. 

Blaster scars covered its front. One pauldron bore the remains of a clan symbol that had been deliberately gouged away. The metal possessed no thoughts, yet psychometry clung to it like a foul odor. Zane could sense the wearer’s final hours within the beskar: avarice, panic, self-justification, and the terrible instant when he understood that neither his enemies nor his own people would ever trust him again.

Zane extended his hand, and the armor effortlessly descended into the furnace.

The tough nature of Beskar easily resisted the flames. It glowed slowly, almost resentfully, retaining its shape long after common steel would have collapsed. Zane increased the heat with the Force, pressing his will upon the metal. 

At last, the breastplate sagged, and began to bubble like boiling water. The clanless armor folded inward and became a hot, soupy liquid.

Zane drew it from the crucible in thin streams. The molten metal wrapped around the gravewood, forming dark bands along its corners. It slowly took shape, forming into hinges, a latch, and an opening in the lid just large enough to admit a person’s hand.

The box itself was not large, barely larger than a woman's jewelry box, but despite its small size, it was sinister all the same. Big packages may be in all the rage in places like Zeltros, but a cursed artifact like this would make the spooks & assassins of Umbara blush with glee.

Zane did not do anything like carve a dragon on it, and left the outside unadorned. Yet on the inner most edge, and the darkest place where light may never shine…he carved his maker's mark. A small, smiling sunflower happy face. That dark power familiar to all Sith, and acolytes of the Darkside focused upon that smiling sunflower, and recoiled like an Anzat bathing in harsh light after leaving their coffin. Any would-be corrupting energies were pushed back, yet, curiously, were not driven out. 

He smiled mirthlessly to himself, working carefully, making sure that the accumulated malevolent energies would not corrode flesh. That they would not drive the prospective ‘enjoyer’ of this device any lasting harm. 

A device such as this could not be allowed to injure its user. The moment a hand was withdrawn, its influence would cease. If the subject’s body entered genuine distress, the beskar latch would release automatically. The box would create no wound, and cause no lasting alteration of the mind.

Its purpose was to reveal to the user their darkest fears, and their most excruciating pain. On the surface, such a device could be used for great cruelty, and act as a dark artifact meant to torture others. Yet in the hands of a Jedi, it was a tool that could enhance meditation, and act as a trial for the heart. 

Zane looked at the box, and knew that it was unfinished. The various components had been gathered, but it needed something. The box needed that special sauce, that small, yet crucial alteration that was the difference from a B+ and a solid, full on A. The difference of a few percentage points was practically pointless when a B+ was already a success, but why would any maker be satisfied with almost perfect? 

His calm, resolute, and often prankster demeanor retreated for a moment of mania. The Force swirled around him powerfully, and the furnace began to creak. All around him tools floated in the air, and the very foundation of the palace shook & creaked. Power unrelenting-like that of a natural disaster or earthquake-shook half of the city as the Force began to unwind. This artifact, this device born of the tired malevolence shook, and shrieked like the hiss of something exceptionally hot being dunked into a barrel of water. Negative energies backflowed, threatening to send hundreds of thousands of people for miles on end into mental breakdowns. 

A strum of the universe passed through Zane's mind, and he reeled that cord in his mind tight, like a fishing wire pulling upon a fish. That cord bucked, and weaved, the Darkside roiled in the background, and those concepts he had taken upon himself warred mightily to be free, to breathe their terrible melody upon Mandalore. To make them pay. 

But his will was unrelenting. 

The Force magnified under his grasp, and his thoughts spun rapidly like a spool of thread. Wood taken from a grave could evoke sorrow. A traitor’s armor could carry guilt and paranoia. Together, they possessed darkness, but not focus.

They required a voice.

Zane crossed the foundry, moving so fast, he practically teleported. Removing a long case from beneath a workbench, he opened its clasps and out sprung the harp he had crafted on Mimban. 

Its frame seemed delicate, but its strings shimmered with a subtle energy. It had been built in a place saturated by suffering, courage, greed, and desperate hope. Zane had shaped it to resonate not merely with sound, but with emotion carried through the Force.

He lifted it out and seated himself before the furnace, and for several agonizing moments, he listened. Whilst the people in the gallery looked down in mute horror, the city seemed on the verge of collapse, and Obi-Wan came running into the room in a hurry, urgency upon his lips, he waited patiently in place. 

The foundry whispered around him. Cooling pipes ticked within the walls. Molten metal moved through distant channels. Far above, Mandalore’s winds scraped dust across the city. That thick, cloying despair, that hatred, and those ancient clan rivalries driving this civil war, he felt them all, and he took them. 

Zane placed his fingers upon the strings, giving a gentle strum. 

The gravewood answered first. Its pale veins darkened as the sound traveled into it. Zane played another note, lower than the first, followed by a discordant third. The melody was not beautiful in any familiar sense. It was grief, pure and final. Evoking the feelings of loss so potent, so resolute, that it was as inevitable as death. 

The box trembled upon the table, and shook like a monster that wanted to be let out of the cage. 

Zane's song became sharper. He drew upon the memory embedded within the melted armor: the dread of discovery, the feverish invention of excuses, and the sickening realization that one had traded honor for something worthless.

Shadows lengthened across the foundry, and a lamp above his head swayed despite the absence of wind.

Zane plucked a high string, and somewhere behind him, a child began to cry. He did not turn, ignoring the cry, because in reality, there was no child in attendance! 

A second voice joined it, whispering his name from inside one of the cold furnaces. Then came the sound of armored boots behind him, marching in perfect rhythm.

Zane played on, and the Force gathered around the box, pressing down upon forcing this newest tool to take shape by both his will, and that of the locals. 

Wonder entered the music alongside terror.

Fear alone would have made the box a crude weapon. Zane needed something stranger: a threshold between the waking mind and the secret world beneath it. The experience had to be horrifying, but also magnificent. It was an encounter with the vast and unexplored wilderness within oneself.

His melody climbed.

Blue light flickered along the harp strings. The molten seams surrounding the box shone crimson, and every shadow in the foundry bent toward it.

Zane’s fingers moved faster, his melody asking a question: What if the thing you fear is already inside you?

Finally. Finally, the lid of the box slammed shut. The sound extinguished every flame in the foundry, and darkness swallowed the chamber.

For several seconds, only the harp strings remained visible, glowing faintly beneath Zane’s hands. 

Resting in place like it was a harmless object, the small box shimmered with a playful child's innocence, as if by simply looking at it, one was tempted to place their hand inside…

Its wood had turned nearly black, while its beskar bands gleamed like spilled moonlight. The opening in its lid appeared ordinary, yet darkness filled it regardless of the furnace’s light. Zane leaned closer to inspect his creation, and something inside inhaled.

The Force surrounding the artifact was not evil. Zane knew evil. He had felt malice upon the many Sith artifacts, artifacts collected over the generations that were too powerful to be destroyed, and collected by the Order. As an Artisan, it was his responsibility to make sure these evil existences were properly contained. 

This was different.

However, looking at it shake in place once more, trying to elicit a jumpscare, Zane could only roll his eyes. 

“Well, you are unpleasant.” He lackidasically sighed, and poked the ‘Terror Box’ with a nearby rod, like a kid might poke a dead body he found by the riverside with a stick. 

The box gave no answer.

He inspected the safety release, tested the latch, and ran an experimental hand over its exterior looking to see if it would try to forcibly snatch his hand. Every precaution & defense mechanism seemed to be in working order. 

There remained only one final test.

Zane was actually quite curious, and like a science research nerd, wanted to see the results of his creation first hand. So. He placed his right hand through the opening.

It wasn't as if he hadn't ‘faced his greatest fear before,’ what, with the Jedi Trials and everything. 

As the darkness closed around his wrist, the foundry vanished from his perception. 

He then found himself standing in the town local square beneath a sky choked by ash.

Mandalorians knelt before him by the thousands. Their armor was battered and scorched, their clan colors painted over in uniform black. Behind them rose burning cities, their towers crowned by the severed banners of conquered houses.

Zane looked down, and found he was wearing armor of his own. His Uneti staff had become a spear, and a lightsaber blade burned at its tip. He was dressed like some Witch-King of old, with runes covering his armor, and a crown of the most potent Darkside resting upon his brow. Its all black brilliance gave him a cold, detached feeling, as if everything could be his so long as he surrendered his laziness, and applied himself. All this would be his. And more. 

At his feet lay Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan knelt beside his master’s body, older now, his face hollow with disgust. Satine stood nearby in chains, trying to hide her nearly nude form from his gaze. 

Zane tried to release the staff, but his fingers would not obey him.

Across the square, Mandalorian children were being fitted with identical helmets. Their names were stripped away and replaced with numbers, and blasters being handed out one by one. 

The kneeling multitude spoke with one voice.

“Command us.”

Zane pulled against the box, but his hand could not move. Terror pressed against his chest. It wasn't the fear of death, nor pain, or even failure. It was the fear that he might become exactly this while still believing himself righteous.

A throne rose behind him, forged from a thousand Mandalorian helmets. Upon it sat a version of Zane who smiled with perfect serenity.

“You knew strength was the only language they understood. Might makes right. The biggest fist wins.” The illusion of himself said. 

Zane’s breath caught. Those had been his thoughts. In the Star Wars galaxy with super weapons, magic powers, evil Empires, and ancient evils, this was one universal truth. 

“Remain in your laundromat, and even your worse nightmare will be realized.” The mirror image said. “So what if you deal with Plagueis? With Palpatine? Another Jedi will fall to darkness, the Vong will invade, not even Luke could save his family from succumbing. It is inevitable.” 

When the vision shattered, Zane staggered backward as the box released him. He caught himself against a workbench, breathing hard. Cold sweat covered his body despite the furnace heat.

At that moment, Qui-Gon Jinn stepped into the light, his robe thrown loosely over his sleeping clothes. His expression remained composed, but his eyes lingered upon the box with profound unease. However, seeing that Zane didn't want to talk, the Jedi in his 40's simply sat down, and began meditating, letting his own zen-like aura act as a balm for Zane's strained spirit. 

Taking a deep breath, Zane tried to smile appreciatively at the Jedi Master, but instead, his face could only reveal a pitiful gasp. 

Mimicking his contemporary, he sat down on the ground, began to deeply meditate, and clear his mind.

Tonight was an ordeal, but tomorrow would bring new opportunities. After all, he still had a mission to fulfill. 

~~~~~~~

AN: I know it's actually been pretty light hearted & smooth sailing until now. I'll mostly keep that tone in this story, but just because everything is all rainbows & sunshine…doesn't mean a good person with power wouldn't be tempted. The galaxy is always in peril. Poor Zane just wants to slack, and make people happy…but as seen when he went to the lower levels of Coruscant, he's dissatisfied with the Republic. It's difficult to be both powerful & moral. Personally, I wouldn't want to be in that kind of position.