Son of a Clone Trooper - This Doesn't Look Like Nar Shadaa

The Force is a strange thing.  The stories I have heard just don’t seem to compare when I see what’s happening in my life.  It’s as if it has a plan and nothing I can do will alter it.  Did it want me to come around full circle, or is this just a bit of closure to an open part of my life?  If it is coming around full circle, does that mean I am going to get dead?  I certainly hope not, I rather like being alive.  Of course, I rather liked it on the Sanctuary Moon too.  I also thought I was headed to Nar Shadaa, or at least that’s where I told the navicomputer on the shuttle to take me.  Instead, my landing pads are sitting in the soft soil of one of the most dark and foreboding planets in the galaxy.  I should be mixed in with smugglers and gangsters right now enjoying a drink at a cantina.  Instead, I am here, the place where my life began.  I am on Dathomir and I am not quite sure how it happened.

Needless to say, I had to leave the Sanctuary Moon.  It was a wonderful place despite the goraxes, Mandalorians and Imperials, but unfortunately when old iron lung himself, Darth Vader arrived, I knew it was time to beat a hasty retreat.  I am not sure why he was there, and I didn’t want to find out.  Of course it wasn’t all blue skies and sunshine either.  I spent a bit of time imprisoned in the Mandalorian (they called themselves the Death Watch) bunker.  That wasn’t all that pleasant, but when I explained my situation to them, they decided that they would have some fun with me (knowing I was far from properly trained).  I had to have a duel with one of their warriors.  Were I to win then my freedom would be granted.  On the other hand, were I to lose, well, we’ll just say that I wouldn’t be breathing long enough to even be a slave to them.  As fate would have it, I was pitted against the guy who properly whooped up on me down by the lake.

The duel pretty much picked up where we had left off, with me trying to escape his savage blows.  He used me like a training drone and just beat on me for what seemed like forever.  None of my attempts at a controlled attack using The Force or my lightsaber had done any good.  He pushed through my lightning; he rolled off my telekinetic pushes and dodged every swipe of my lightsaber.  I must have inherited my father’s resilience though because I a managed to stay conscious through it and moreover mount a counterattack.  Bleeding, swollen and in significant amounts of pain, I turned to my instincts alone.  Suddenly I was bouncing around like a rubber ball in zero gravity all the while dodging his every move and counterattacking with strikes from my saber and flesh searing blasts of lightning.  Credit must be given where it is due though.  My opponent’s armor was first rate and he was tough enough to withstand nearly everything I threw at him.  It wasn’t until I tapped into a power I didn’t realize I had that I won the fight.  I literally compressed the air around him, making it heavier and more oppressive by the second, sealing him in a telekinetic prison and eventually squeezing the very life out of him.  It earned me my freedom as well as a reprieve from the bludgeoning I had been taking.

I headed back to my camp and prepared to relax and enjoy the fact that I no longer had any major worries on the moon when a pang of panic hit me. I couldn’t put my finger on why it happened or what it was, but I did have a sense of where it was coming from.  I followed the feeling to its source and found myself hiding in the bushes and watching what must have been an entire legion of Imperial troops climbing out of transports.  One of them was Vader.  He was barking orders, choking the odd officer with his mind and coordinating the troops when he stopped and just started scanning the perimeter of the staging area.  Things went on around him but he was looking for something and I could only assume it was me.

I quickly and quietly returned to my camp and threw my emergency escape gear into the shuttle and took off.  I mean if I could sense him, then he surely could sense me.  I punched in the coordinates to Nar Shadaa and jumped into hyperspace.  Now, here I am, not on Nar Shadaa but on Dathomir and contemplating my next move.  I can feel The Force all around me and also similar feelings to those I felt with regards to The Emperor’s whipping boy in black.  That can only mean there are lots of Force users here.  It could work to my benefit though by masking me into the mix.  I am guessing that’s not my reason for being here.  No, my guess is that fate has the cruelest of jokes in mind; a reunion with my mother.

Even as I am typing this I can feel her through some tendril of The Force that connects us.  She is aware of me as well.  I don’t know how I know, I just know.  Every bit of my rational mind is screaming for me to leave, but I am compelled, beyond all reason, to stay.  So here I sit, writing this holoblog hoping that I am not making a mistake; wondering if perhaps this could be a good, rather than a bad thing.  She is an experienced Force user after all.  Perhaps she could teach me things and help me to understand and use this power better.  In the meantime I think I will stay aboard the ship and survey the landscape from relative safety.  From what my father told me, this place is crawling with things that would love nothing more than to literally have me for dinner.  In the time since I started writing this I have already seen a spider twice my size and two rancors wandering about and that doesn’t even touch on the countless skulking eyes I can feel upon the ship.  It’s better in here than out there.