Difference between revisions of "Nya Halcyon"

"A Jedi is a Jedi, first and foremost, and only. For a Jedi to divide his attention between the will of the Force and the will of others is to invite disaster."

―Jedi Master Hoche Trit

For Jedi to marry and bear children is against the code, yet Fionn Halcyon and Berit Selki (not unlike other Corellian Jedi) defy the code, get married and conceive a child, all without the knowledge of the Jedi Council on far Coruscant. The daughter they named Nya grows up in the relatively "safe" community of Corellian Jedi of whom many have a history of defying Jedi regulations, with both her parents as her teachers.

Fionn Halcyon

"Have we had any contact from the Temple?"
"Received a coded retreat message, we have."
"It requests all Jedi to return to the Temple. It says the war is over."
"Well, then we must go back. If there are any stragglers, they will fall into the trap and be killed."

―Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Bail Organa

Berit Selki

Her father's last deed as a Jedi, however, was implanting the need to rescue and keep his daughter safe into the clone commando who towered over him, readying a last strike. The commando, already terribly conflicted over his orders and trying to come to terms with what he has become, strikes him down and kills him, but Fionn Halcyon's last command gives his tortured soul the necessary fuel to overcome his initial inbred loyalty to his superiors. Taking up Fionn's lightsaber, he strikes down the rest of the clone squad and escapes.

On Corellia, young Nya feels the death of her parents, but cannot understand that death. She tries to alert her guardians to what she has felt, but they - not being Jedi themselves - do not want to believe her, and try to convince her that she must be wrong and is probably just afraid of being left behind.

Hours later, an already scared and confused Nya finds herself snatched from her bed by a monster dressed entirely in black, and to her unfiltering mind the flood of emotions coming from the "murderer" - for such he seems to see himself so strongly that it is her first impression of him, too - is so overpowering that she can't even find the chance to alert her guardians and falls unconscious. The commando takes her on board of a ship, and then far far away.

But there is something about the man that he is keeping from her, those terrible dark emotions that she first sensed from him, and she doesn't feel safe with him at first. She is afraid to find out why her father would send this man and would not come in his stead; and true to her fears, the man - Darven he tells her to call him - explains that her parents are truly forever gone. Something in in his words tell her he is not lying about this: she now has the confirmation of her worst fears, and then there is only emotion. Pain. Loss. But also anger. They are what she feels, and when the first wave of her raw emoitions has passed and left her feeling raw and a different kind of being, she realises what she sensed from Darven: his feelings mirror her own. When questioned, he tells her that he mourns the loss of his brothers, who died because of him. Her initial fear of him overridden by a sense of kinship, she casts her fears aside and accepts her rescuer fully.

Darven

The two of them travel through space for long months, daring only to stop at the most outlying spaceports. At such times they only leave the ship in disguise - an injured father, face heavily bandaged, and his small child - stocking up supplies. Darven does not dare show his face because he has explained to Nya that it is a face too widely known, belonging to any of the million and more soldiers of the Empire, and it would be too dangerous were he to be recognised as a clone dressed up in civilian clothing.

Bereft of the chances to train as a Jedi child should, she looks to Darven for guidance, and indeed the clone teaches her much of the ways of the warrior as he once learned them. Yet she sometimes gets the feeling that he is holding back, that he seems to think he should not be showing her this. And there are times when he refuses to teach her, and encourages her to remember the Jedi routines her parents showed her. But she senses bitterness behind that encouragement, and it is confusing.

And as Nya grows older, her finely attuned force senses make her realise that the bleakness at the bottom of her companion's heart comes from something deeper than the simple loss of the brothers he had; she begins to notice the subtle hints the man's conflicted soul is leaving behind for anyone but a child to read. She slowly starts to question the truths she was told by him, willing to accept that he might not be telling her all because he wants to keep her safe. But unable to harbor any ill-will against her "hero", she keeps such thoughts and observations to herself, not wishing to harm him with harsh words for she senses that he's as vulnerable as she is.

After three years of travelling through space the credits he "liberated" from her parents' accounts run out and the pair is forced to settle down somewhere and earn a living. And Darven takes her to the one planet he seems to know best, in spite of never having been to it - they make their way for Mandalore.

The only family they have left

Thus cornered, her friend's volatile emotional barriers start cracking and he reveals one morself of truth that she'd not known before - and one that makes understanding his motives easier to her: he tells her that he came too late to save her father, and had to kill his brothers to be able to go and save her - something for which he made himself an outcast amongst his brothers and had felt terrible guilt and remorse ever since, even if it meant he had done the right thing. He explains that there are some clones on Mandalore that might recognise him and in their eyes he is guilty of fratricide; she would have no future staying with him, on the run, and the only thing they could both do now was to turn around and face their different heritages - she by training to become a Jedi, and he by doing what he has been trained for, and Mandalore was still the best option to do that.

She doesn't question him any more; it makes terrible sense to her even if she does not want to accept it. It puts his grief and his motivations into a new perspective - one that is easier to understand, makes her cling to him all the more for his "sacrifice". Yet now Nya knows his decision to leave her with the Jedi is final and for the best. Darven has become the closest thing to a family, and to the girl this is important, now more than ever - yet now she can only ask him not to forget her. The same emotions she sensed from him the night she met him are coming back, the closer they get to the Jedi, but they no longer frighten her because she now understands him. Emotional herself, she wants the last hours with him to be something to remember fondly, and they spend their last hours together comforting each other, holding on to the other, sharing memories of their times together so that neither of them could ever forget. But eventually, they reach their destination - the place where the Jedi lives, and in front of her eyes Darven transforms himself into a fierce looking Mandalorian warrior, and with every piece of the armor that he puts on she feels him erecting a wall between her and him.

The Jedi turns out to be a human man in his late twenties who goes by the name of Gotab and does not at first agree to let her stay. He is no longer a Jedi, he claims, he gave up his former life for his present one. But then Darven sends Nya outside of the Jedi's modest home, and talks with him, and finally comes out and tells her she can stay. There is a finality in his voice, and terrible pain. Something got said in there - she can feel it, but she has no way of telling what. Darven bids the girl goodbye and walks off, without another word or even a glance back. But she can feel his pain long after he vanished from her sight.

Training to become a Warrior

He also teaches her healing, although she is not a natural as he seems to be at it. He teaches her how to fight with a lightsaber, and gives her the saber Darven retrieved from her father when she gets good enough with the practice blade. And above all, he teaches her the ways of the Mando'ade, and trains her in the ways of the warrior. He teaches her about her responsibility towards other creatures, and listening to her conscience and her sense of good and evil.

And every now and then, she senses Darven's presence. He is watching over her. It makes her very happy that he has not forgotten her, but also very sad that he will not come and see her. She knows that Gotab can sense it, too, and she can feel his irritation at the clone's visits. She senses with crystalline clearness that there is something left unsaid, something that she should know about, but she cannot ask Darven and Gotab will only shake his head. Still, the visits fill her with gladness.

The years pass. They travel to other planets, to study other civilisations, to meet other people; but more often Gotab leaves without her, taking the boy instead who lives with them sometimes when his other uncles are not there to look after him. At such times when she is left behind she is free to embrace the life of an ordinary child, but on Mandalore that only means embracing the life of a true warrior as children are considered adults following their verd'goten - their coming of age - at thirteen. And she had passed that trial with flying colors, earning her the right to call herself a true Mandalorian warrior.

• Able to absorb large amounts of Force energy, and out of necessity learned to draw even the minutest amount of this energy out of her surroundings
• Trained as an actress, able to augment her speech with the Force and thereby gain advantage over others - she rarely used this, however, as she considered it "child's play"
• Able to influence others' visual senses by overlaying them with her own - useful for throwing of her enemies in an attack by forcing them to act and react to her liking
• A natural talent for languages, able to understand the meaning of conversations in foreign languages through her Force-gift, and even able to understand some birds and beasts
• In earlier years unable to move even a pebble through the Force unless "charged" with absorbed Force Energy, she learned to overcome this by drawing on the smallest source of such energy available
• Found she had a rare talent: the Force Scream - if used during a fight it will throw anyone nearby into a near-catatonic state, thus effectively disarming them. Unfortunately this would also affect her severely and render her unconscious for a short time, thereby negating any advantage she might have

For information about the person behind the character and an overview of alternate characters, see Mara