The tea was warm, better than the dirt tinged stew I often make after my trips beyond the temple walls. Jedi Knight Qu’urok set the stage for the day’s lesson. A simple cup, a quiet gathering, and no weapons—this was how we would confront the weight of war. It was a disarming start as I had grown too comfortable with conflict.
Qu’urok’s question—"What do you think about war?"—hung in the air like a storm cloud. In the Ascendancy, war was personal, it was the backroom discussions of nobles and politicians, it was the slaying of rivals. I knew my role in those wars, and I left home unwilling to fulfil it. Now as a Jedi, after my time with the settlement and that corrupt mayor. I questioned the role of Jedi in war. How must we keep the peace? How can we maintain it when we have gone? By whose authority do we act? Thrassk questioned whether war was an aberration or a natural inevitability, I have seen it in the courts and the wilds, conflict cannot be calmed forever. I cannot speak for the others, but our discussion felt distant, theoretical. War, as I know it, is never distant. It is in the faces of the dying and the decisions of the living.
Then came the scenario. I was cast as the neutral party—an independent faction caught between settlers and natives, each vying for control of a resource that could either sustain or destroy them. I listened carefully to both sides, my mind weighing their words like when I line up a shot. The settlers spoke of survival, of sustainability, but their history with the natives was marred by hostility. The natives claimed stewardship of the land, appealing to tradition and reverence for their home, but their accusations against the settlers felt... in hindsight, calculated.
I wanted to believe the natives. Their cause, their passion, felt genuine. Perhaps too genuine. I trusted them too easily, accepted their claims without fully scrutinizing their evidence. By the time I realized they had twisted the truth, it was too late. My trust had tilted the balance, and I sided with the aggressors. I was unable to make peace, neither side wished to live together with their pasts, and a presented future painted in blood.
When the lesson concluded, Qu’urok reminded us that war is the consequence of mistakes—not grand, singular failures, but small, cascading ones. I felt the sting of his words. Trust misplaced. Questions unasked. Assumptions made. I knew this in the Ascendancy, I know well not to trust, but my colleagues… well the truth had slipped through my grasp, and the conflict spiraled as a result.
As I sit here with Nymeria beneath the temple’s starlit sky this night, I cannot stop thinking about how easily I had erred. Back home, in the Ascendancy, we were taught to see war as a failure of foresight. Here, I’d let my own judgments cloud my vision. The Force had guided me to this moment, not to shame me, but to teach me.
War isn’t just battles and bloodshed—it’s the slow unraveling of trust, the accumulation of fears and missteps. If I am to walk the path of the Jedi, I must learn to see with clarity, to question what seems certain, and to act with precision. Perhaps the greatest weapon against war isn’t my saber or a rifle, but the wisdom to stop it before it begins.