Revan In Xanadu (Part 1)
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{{#if:Jigsaw green.png|}} | Xanadu story universe |
{{#ifeq: |User| Part One of Revan in Xanadu | Part One of Revan in Xanadu}}[[Title::{{#ifeq: |User| Part One of Revan in Xanadu | Part One of Revan in Xanadu}}| ]]
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Author: [[User:{{#ifeq: |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}|{{#ifeq: |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}]] [[Author::{{#ifeq: |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}| ]]
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"So, who are you supposed to be?" The woman handing out badges couldn’t possibly look less interested. Despite the brightly-colored staff badge and the eye-searing blue of the bunny-ear headband lying over her curly black locks, she clearly had other places to be right now. The mall, no doubt. She looked like late teens, early twenties. My age or younger.
"I am Revan Redeemed, former Dark Lord of the Sith." I’d been practicing a neutral voice that could be high male or low female for as long as I’d been working on the costume. The effect was helped along somewhat by my full face helmet and hood. Despite knowing that she must have seen dozens of costumes vastly superior to mine, a part of me wanted her to be impressed.
She wasn’t. "Uh huh. I didn’t see anything like that in the movie." She popped her bubblegum noisily. It stank of artificial grape. What a multitasker, I thought wryly, resigned to the truth. Chewing gum, counting the dues, and speaking. Why is she talking to me? Is it because there’s nobody waiting behind? If I had still been in my normal clothes, I would have felt cowed by her dismissive tone and ignored her comment. But wearing Revan’s robes, insufferably hot though they were, made me bold.
"That’s because Revan lived four thousand years before the rise of the Galactic Empire. Not all Star Wars games are based on the movies. Forty years after the defeat of Exar Kun-" Her face twisted a bit in a sneer as she cut me off.
"Uh huh. Sure. Spare me the details, I’m not a fan. Okay, everything looks like it’s in order. You just barely made it into this ‘koter’ SIG." While it disturbed me that she was so ignorant of the best game in the world, it was only to be expected. Layfolk are, after all, everywhere. I might have been upset, had I not been Revan. Nothing phased my Revan. Not for long, anyway.
After a brief delay for hidden weapons checking and a bit of sighing at the too-bright pass that was slung around my neck, I was through. Xanadu. Maybe not the best choice for me. I had never been to a convention before, and I probably should have started small. Or at least come a day early so that I could take in the sights.
I’d actually planned to wait for my friend Nathaniel. We would have changed in the room I had rented for this purpose and gone in, in costume, together. At the time I’d thought that only his help would let me face this many people. I’m chronically shy in crowds, after all. Classic wallflower. But then I’d donned the robes for the first time since I’d finished fitting them and realized something important. The robes made me feel as if I was her. Looking at me, people would see Revan. And Revan would not hesitate. There was something incredibly liberating about being her. I imagined that my body moved on its own, without my commanding it to do so.
And here I was, trying to find my way across what was probably the largest science fiction-fantasy convention in the country. Consulting the map proved to be confusing, and I didn’t trust the giggling fairy princess who pointed a direction. Slightly uneasy, I turned around a few times. Before long I saw, fixed in the narrow visor of my paper-mache mask, a robed figure that looked familiar.
I took a chance, walking up to it and speaking as if I knew her very well.
"Juhani!" She whirled and performed a classic double-take. Unseen, I smiled.
"Ah, Revan!" While this girl’s costume was not as convincing as my own, mostly because she couldn’t cover her face and her nose was too snubbed, the red Knight Robe, the heavy black eyeliner, and the yellow contacts were recognizable as an imitation of the Cathar Juhani, a feline Jedi from the same game as Revan. Her mock-Russian accent sounded hesitant.
"Are you- I mean, Did you fall to the dark side?" I grinned beneath my mask at her question, and responded boldly with a quote.
"I didn’t ‘fall’, Juhani. I had my eyes opened." Under the dusting of facepaint made to look like the stripes of short fur, "Juhani" smiled. Blinkered by the mask, I turned my head to look through the narrow horizontal slot. At this range I could only see sections of her face- the problem with Revan’s mask was that I, personally, could not compensate for restricted vision with the Force- but it looked like she also had plastic vampire teeth behind her lips.
She broke the fourth wall, speaking without the fake accent. "You’re from the General Discussion boards, right? Lots of Revans there. I saw a bunch of photos on the costume thread. Yours looks familiar – um... huh... Are you Redsaber-5?"
Behind the mask I grinned like a fool, oddly and wholly pleased. I didn’t recognize her, unfortunately, but hopefully she’d let that pass. I made no attempt to conceal the smile in my voice. "Exactly! My real name is Ha-" The "Cathar" shook her head and I stopped speaking.
"Let us leave names out of this," she said lightly, inoffensively. "Real or forum, I am Jedi Knight Juhani, and you are?"
"I am Female Revan, Prodigal Knight. Between the game and its sequel. My memories of life as Darth Revan are only beginning to return in full. Soon I will disappear to combat the True Sith, but not yet. I’ve just returned to my old robe and mask, because I’ve become enamored of them."
We touched gloved hands, mine black pleather(salvaged from a set of battered biker’s gloves) with red plating on the backs, hers a sandy-colored cloth with a marker applied. A bit of plastic at the end of each finger symbolized small claws. Like my own costume, hers was most convincing at a distance. Neither of us would be winning prizes, but we certainly looked better than the people who’d just picked up noses on strings or whatever was selling in the cheap section of the Dealer’s Room and called it a costume. I also thought we looked cooler than some of the fursuiters, the ones wearing baggy pajama-type things anyway, but I may have been biased.
"Come now, I will guide you to the room we will be staying in. I’ve been here for a few days, so I know where things are. Roughly." I accepted her help, placing my hand into the crook of her proffered elbow like a courtier. Half blinded by the mask, what else could I do?
It took a while and some ... navigational hazards. A large, orangy-colored Care Bear flirting with an admiring conventioneer whose costume was along the lines of "furry pajamas" blocked the way for a while before "she" squeaked a farewell and minced off. Somehow we managed to get pinned near a set of vendors dispensing fried edibles out of trays who were trying to sell their wares to some shockingly out-of-shape "superheroes" who should never have been allowed within five hundred feet of a Spandex costume. We barely escaped a confrontation between an armored knight in blue jeans and a seminaked nunchuck-wielding "girl" whose Adam’s apple was just a touch too prominent to be ignored. "Juhani" and I were teased by an Episode Two-style clone trooper who saw our shiny lightsaber hilts and demanded "Generals! What are your orders?" before having a hearty and distinctly un-clone-like laugh. "Robots" with the look of tinfoil creations from some low-budget Japanese live-action show grabbed at us before I, emboldened by the thought of being Revan, told them to run along and play. To my surprise, they obeyed. We had a brief run-in with some random skimpy-clothed fox-girl who, mistaking my companion for someone else, demanded to know why "Juhani" didn’t have "proper cat ears and a tail", but she gave up after catching sight of whomever she’d been looking for.
At couple of those nightmare convention tales I had heard over the Internet turned out to be true. One was that people sold the most bizarre pornographic art conceivable. Another was that about nine-tenths of the crowd had not bathed since the start of the con. Sweat, body odors, flat beer, reeking old cloth, and subtler, harder to define scents all combined into a miasma that in some places was drank in rather than inhaled.
There were a lot of sights I barely caught, what with the narrowness of the visor. Some good, others less so. I couldn’t help craning my neck and staring at an oriental dragon made of four people who seemed to have stolen it from the Chinese New Year, and there were some very impressive horse-type costumes. I saw hints of what looked like talent shows or perhaps simply skits on stages, and elsewhere heard snatches of filk that could be promising or terrible. Cosplayers with all levels of skill photographed each other and hugged and got into exhibitions. Xanadu was a major event for various fandoms, and today, the last day of the convention, the day Eric Winters handed out the prize money, the fans were going all out.
Eventually we got to the KotOR SIG room. It was just a door away from an unofficial gathering of more people in clone trooper armor. Half of them saluted. I supposed it wasn’t surprising that there were so many here... the infamous 501st, serious Star Wars cosplayers who made up the world’s largest Imperial costuming organization, was here openly, after all. I’d seriously considered joining - I was over eighteen, after all – but I wasn’t sure if my villain costume quite counted as "high quality", especially compared to what existing members had created.
Compared to most of the chambers here, ours, the room of the KotOR players, was on the small side. But there was only so much money we could raise in a hurry, and as expected only about twenty or thirty of us could come. It was still the first time I’d seen fellow fans in person, outside of the campus at Midtral anyway. KotOR was only a highly influential game set in the Star Wars universe; there were only so many people who could attend Kublai Con. Xanadu wasn’t the same thing as Celebration, after all. None of this was official.
There were two other Revans in robes, one of them in the white Star Forge Robes that I had stained so often that I’d gone for black instead, one Zaalbar who really looked more like a Chewbacca suit but carried a sign saying "I am Zaalbar; call me Big Z", three blue Twi’leks who might or might not be Mission Vao, someone with a repainted Maul mask as Bao Dur, a number of Bastilas, and a rather chunky battered HK-47 visible in the doorway, as well as various people in less distinctive outfits who could have been anyone from the Exile to Canderous. And there were more people that I couldn’t see due to the damn mask. Some looked hellishly halfhearted, but others...
"Maybe this was a mistake;" I muttered. But it was too late now; "Juhani" was plunging into the chaos and I felt it was my duty to at least visit. I’d paid the dues, after all...
And it was easier with the mask on. Easier to imagine that I was Revan, competent and impressive. Not Hailey, who was decidedly neither.
Even so, after less than a half hour, I was drained. Twenty-odd people in one room managed to create a lot more noise than should be humanly possible, and the long black robes that had been overwarm early on had become sweltering. The holes I’d drilled into my strapped-on mask weren’t working so well either; air didn’t pass through as well as I’d wanted it to. It seemed that all the water I drank passed straight out of my pores, hardly pausing to hit my stomach. The icepacks I’d stuffed into pockets after reading advice on Howstuffworks.com worked pretty well, but they couldn’t quite make it cool. But Revan would not have shown discomfort, and perhaps wouldn’t even have noticed, so I did my paltry best not to be affected.
As it turned out, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. I ended up doing a lot more listening than speaking, but tossed my two cents around more than a little anyway. Since we didn’t have anyone particularly well-known here, there weren’t any panels, just talk. It wasn’t too different from many of the forum discussions I’d had, except that I was here, not at a computer. I didn’t need Nathaniel here to "break the ice", not when I was Revan.
The thing about playing Revan is that he or she can be anything. You pick the face, you decide on male or female, big and strong or delicate. You decide if he or she is Dark or Light. You customize all kinds of statistics- intelligence, charisma, wisdom, strength, dexterity. Everyone who plays the game has a different Revan.
Despite my resolution not to feel the heat, I was working a black-gloved finger into my high vinyl collar, trying to coax air over to my sweat-drenched inner clothes, when a messenger in a frat-style toga with rubbery horns on his head ran in. He shouted what sounded like "Intercom’s down in this wing- the Awards Ceremony starts in five minutes!" and dashed off again, panting.
I moved my head in a wavy motion, looking for faces. The mask looked awesome and made me feel anonymous, but it was a damned nuisance. The Velcro straps that held it on my head were tangling and snagging my hair painfully. The inside was also starting to condense; beads of water from my slightly sour breath were trickling down to my chin and soaking me. Eventually I framed the visor slit around a girl who wasn’t already occupied.
"Revan Redeemed, in Darkside robes for old time’s sake," I told her casually.
"Nice mask. I’m a bit too lazy for anything fancy, so I’m some random Jedi from Dantooine - my character is Rhea Dorin. Took ages to make the gi and I had to borrow the boots, but I think it was worth it." She was a bit younger than me, I suspected. Not yet out of high school.
"Hmm. Do you really want to go to the awards ceremony?" I wouldn’t mind seeing it, but I would definitely need a guide. I might stumble over just about anything, otherwise. It’s hard to look dignified and mysterious if you’re sprawled on your belly. In an hour or two, when our SIG breaks up and we all drift away, I should take the mask off and just wander around, see what people have made. I won’t be the only one.
Yes... that seemed like a good plan. With so many anime fans in attendance, there were sure to be people selling DVDs and manga and assorted action figures. Surely I could find something from a series I favored...
"No, I won’t know anyone there. Besides, no way am *I* going to win "Best Costume" or whatever they’re doing." A disappointing revelation, but I had only been curious, after all. And I wasn’t going to ask, not after seeing her obvious disinterest. Hopefully someone from Midtral was taping it and I could see a highlights reel or something later. Over the Internet, maybe.
I spoke with "Rhea" for a while. There was a minor rule about not discussing "who you really are", but we ignored it. This was actually her second convention ever - she’d been to a minor one back in September- but she still had little more idea of what exactly happened than I did.
Oddly, it grew easier to keep a conversation with each sentence. I suppose it’s true that when you forget yourself it’s easier to relax into a role, although the topic had ranged on to a real fourth-wall-breaker: why so many forum members were juvenile Darkside jerks.
In the process we walked back towards the entrance of the room. The knot of white-armored clone troopers had in fact gotten larger. Maybe they wanted our room. Some looked pretty bad, but others looked truly professional, as if they had just stepped out of the movies. There’d been a rumor on the Internet that Temura Morrison, the actor who’d played Jango Fett, was coming to Xanadu, but I personally didn’t believe it. There would have been signings – and signs advertising the signings - otherwise. In a typically Revan move, I leaned back slightly and crossed my arms to study the troopers for a moment, then swung my head back to find Rhea. She had followed me, and stood closer to my side, but I had no trouble finding her. I knew where to look.
And then the world changed.
I’ve heard a few descriptions about what it felt like. Some people - me included – felt it just before it hit. When it hit, some were dizzied or disoriented, overcome with faintness. A number of psychics, some of them Jedi, blacked out, as did most of those attending the actual Awards Ceremony, although others remained conscious. Some felt ill. Others were wracked with pain or fear or delirious joy. A few people claim that they "saw" it as it overtook them, like a wave or something. I’ve even heard that for some, it happened slowly. And of course there were one or two who, despite the changes, felt nothing of the change itself at all.
My experience was... interesting. I felt it just before it hit; hundreds, thousands of tiny pressures, of thoughts and emotions and muted voices, all around me, all of them hushing for a moment. I was calm. Centered. Not uneasy in the least.
That calmness was overtaken by the strangest sensation. Somehow it was both agony and the most wonderful thing I had ever felt, washing over me, warm and cool and smooth and spiky all at once. Like a jolt of electricity, it ran from fingertips across my heart to my toes, brushing the crown of my head like a blessing, blossoming through my cells.
It passed through and remained inside of me, tingling and pulsing in every cell of my body; my legs buckled, and I fell, first to hands and knees, then to the ground. My vision, what there was of it through my helmet, faded to black.
I know I was only out for a few minutes, but it felt like hours before I came to. Hours of... dreams. Of purpose. Before I opened my eyes I felt it. An awareness. I knew that something had happened. Something big. Bigger even, to me, than the whole Xanadu transformation thing. I had reclaimed something so impossibly big and wonderful that beforehand I could barely conceive of its existence, as a blind man can barely grasp the concept of color. It was as if I had been blind and deaf and dumb and all of a sudden light and sound and speech were mine - at first, it was all meaningless, painful patterns, but then-
I opened my eyes, but I didn’t need the visor to see. Part of me cringed and fought, but for the rest it was as natural and easy as taking a deep, deep breath of clean air after years of shallow, fetid inhalations.
I pushed myself off the ground and swung my head back to look at the room I had been in, an instant and an eternity ago. I saw someone else in long armored robes, black and gray and red, but not like mine; burned, tattered, and damaged. He had collapsed on the floor. A red and black and gray mask was in his gloved hand. And a young woman in a tan bodysuit with a loose tunic-robe knelt at the head, palms on bloody temples, eyes closed.
Forging a bond, I knew, to keep him alive. She was Bastila, and he was Revan.
As I was.
Am.
Is that even possible?
Yes, it is. I am Revan.
No! I’m a teenager, a college student, cosplaying-
And I am also Revan.
I can’t handle this. I can’t handle this at all.
I brought my gloved hand up to my face. Such detail! Black gloves, like leather but not, as thin and supple as a second skin. It was protected by plates of muted reddish armor, the same color as my armbands, parts of my mask, and my breastplate. The black and gray robes obscured the rest of the armor, but it was there, underneath. The kind of thing I could have worked at for months and never gotten quite right.
The kind of thing I had designed with a great deal of careful thought. Mandalorians, too, wore dramatic armor with T-visors. It was wonderfully mysterious and helped to inspire fear, as well as having practical uses. I had wanted that same effect, but I hadn’t wanted to appear too Mandalorian.
No- no! I’m not Revan! I can’t be!
More than the costume had changed. That wonderful big feeling of greatness? It bound everything. I could feel things through it. Like I was connected, linked, bound to them. With- everything. The figures before me on the floor, the floor itself, the walls, the air.... not just in the room. Everywhere. As if I was one cell in the body of the galaxy, one note in a symphony, one word in a tale, I was a part of it, related to every other part and, unlike them, aware of this. If I allowed myself, I could get lost in it.
I paced past comatose Rhea, Bastila and the fallen Dark Lord. Another Bastila, in more conventional robes, was sitting against the wall, knees curled into her chest, staring blankly at nothing at all. She felt... right. I stopped beside her, reaching for the words that she needed to hear. They came, of course. They always do.
"It’s not your fault." Her head jerked up, startled, and she stared up at me with wide, pleading eyes. Part of me melted... I firmed my resolve. There were things which needed doing. And this was not truly the woman I knew. She didn’t know me, but someone like me. And yet entirely different. Male, for one thing.
"I forgive you." I told her. What was I forgiving her for? Oh, the mindwipe. Which was probably being performed even now on the bloody figure behind me, unless the shock of becoming Revan right after the bridge was hit by turbolasers had done that. On the Star Forge, when I- when Revan! had redeemed her, she was forgiven for that, and for falling to the Dark Side.
But this was not my Bastila. I knew that. The Force told me.
I can’t handle this. This isn’t me.
The girl who looked like Bastila stammered, "I... I know. But I cannot forgive myself. I failed you. I... I don’t know what to do." I touched her chin and nudged, slightly. She stood shakily. Her eyes swept across my face, and I realized that she was looking for my eyes. Well, this could be interesting.
I knew that I didn’t look like the Revan she wanted me to be. But I could make her think that I was, if only for a moment. It was easy. Just the lightest touch on her mind, and I could see what she wanted and become it.
I sank both my hands back through the opening of my hood, as far back as my ears, and found the catch, where the front of my helmet met the back piece. Strange. I distantly remembered using Velcro and straps that tied around my head, but this was much better. With a slight tug, the mask came free. I looked into her eyes and met her pleading gaze calmly. It was clear to my senses that what she wanted from me was direction.
I gave it to her. "Use your Battle Meditation. Calm the crowds. I do not expect you to make everyone become still and peaceful, love, but every little bit helps. We don’t want riots." Love?! Admittedly it wasn’t a name I would normally have used, but if it helped... I smiled reassuringly, just a bit, and she nodded and sat in a lotus position, taking a deep, slow breath. It would work. Hopefully. I felt exposed without the mask, and so I latched it back. The visor helped me focus.
I looked-
"This is so wrong." A voice said unhappily. I turned, cloak cape swinging, to see Darth Malak climbing to his feet and looking at himself with dismay. I hesitated, then approached him.
Part of me felt no surprise at his appearance, but... somehow a computer screen fails to show how tall Malak was. Wide-shouldered, bald, with striped tattoos on his pale scalp, he was a head and a half taller than me, even leaning forward with knees slightly bent. He looked somewhat different than in the game, robed properly rather than villainous and without the signature prosthetic jaw. The bold tattooed stripes on his head were unchanged, but his skin was less gray, his eyes blue rather than yellow.
I’d played the game. He had been my- no, Revan’s best friend and lieutenant. Then when we- when they had become Sith, he had turned traitor. In the Sith tradition. But I did not feel threatened. This wasn’t the man I had grown up with. He had less independence in him, for one. He was used to obeying. There was hardly any fire or ambition in him; he felt... young. Pliable. Looked it, too, actually.
I can’t handle this. Not now.
He noticed me watching him with clear unease. "Revan. I don’t want to fight you. Please. I’m not M- I’m not who you think I am. Really."
"Of course you’re not," I said as smoothly as I could. My throat was starting to hurt, making my voice raspier and more unpleasant. Not something I wanted, but it would recover in time. A thought occurred to me. "How old are you?"
"I’m... huh. Eighteen. And... fourteen. That’s not right... Revan... if you are Revan... what’s going on?" Much younger than me. Interesting. He thought I was about to attack him, yet he looks to me? I was intrigued.
"I might as well be," I allowed. I felt a twinging in my awareness. Elsewhere, I knew, people weren’t standing around talking things out. I had better do something about it. "Look, will you follow me? I could use help."
His response was so automatic that I suspected it was reflex, not a decision. "Yes."
Rapidly, I flashed a thought-probe in and out of the young man who looked like Malak. No real ill intent, no deception; confusion, though, a desire to do well, and a strange, deep welling of trust. He wanted guidance? Well, I could give it.
"Then I can trust you."
I can’t handle this. I just can’t.
"I should have stayed home..." he moaned, but as I started to walk he followed as closely as he would had I snagged his hand and pulled.
I paused at a woman who looked like Juhani, apparently the one who had brought me to this room. Black eyelids accentuating scared yellow eyes that didn’t seem to have whites made her look alien, but I ignored this. And the expression of adoration which followed when she recognized me. She wasn’t mine, I wasn’t hers. She blinked as she realized this for herself, and settled.
"Keep the calm, Juhani. There will be trouble if some of us wake up and start fighting. You know how to slow them down, let them think." Willing saliva into my mouth, I swallowed, trying to soothe my irritated throat. It didn’t really work.
"I- yes. I will keep the peace until you return. But- you are not going alone, with him?" She glanced up at the one who looked like Malak, who was rubbing his face and muttering. Beneath my mask I smiled.
"I can trust him, Juhani. May the Force be with you." The thought dawned that I would probably never see her again.
I strode forth and pulled my lone follower out of the room and into more chaos.
Clone troopers were everywhere. Some were semiconscious; others had formed a defensive square, tracking their black blaster rifles to follow every movement. They hadn’t yet fired, thankfully.
One saw me and looked past the dramatic armored robe and mask to notice a lightsaber hanging from my belt, as if it were a magnet and his gaze was a needle. "General..." he breathed. Other clones turned their heads and saw me, emitting a relief that was almost palpable. Part of me was uncomfortable about this, part... wasn’t.
Oh, that’s right... Clone troopers call all Jedi either ‘Commander’ or ‘General’, and obey them to and past the point of self-sacrifice. Up until they get the correct signal and attack these same Jedi...
I just can’t handle this!
"How do you know I’m not a Sith?" I asked, half serious, half amused. I shook my hooded head before someone could come up with an answer. "Never mind. Men..." My confidence faltered for a moment as they all looked at me the way drowners see air, nakedly desperate. My surety returned in the same instant that it had left, along with an inkling of what I had to say and how I had to say it. Loose wording, certain tone.
"Hold your positions until you have judged it prudent to move. You are authorized to use force in defense of yourselves or others, but practice strict restraint. No casualties unless absolutely necessary. Do not take orders from anyone, even another Jedi, if they conflict with mine." My voice was calm, firm, and confident enough to reassure even the most cowardly of recruits. The clones all straightened, their world having realigned itself.
I received a set of salutes and "Yes Sir"s. They were ragged, but they would do. Already the troopers looked more professional, forming up into a more solid position. Even the young man who looked like Malak, standing behind me, felt more assured, and I hadn’t even addressed him.
The Force twinged again. A death. Without another word, I strode ahead, still trailed by my follower.