-From the perspective of Nizzal-

  A few minutes passed sihe ued enter with that assassin droid. Luckily, that time was enough for me to calm down, mostly. I checked the droid’s destroyed remains once more, with a clearer-calmer mind. I have mao notice a few things whily increased my fusion.

  The destroyed droid was clearly not one of the models of HK killer droids. In fact, it was quite an old type. These have go of the Grey Order’s military serviore than five hundred years, if I remember correctly. It was both good news and bad at the same time.

  On one part, it made me further doubt my initial assumption of actually beirayed by one of the apostles. The only reason I came to that realization to begin with was that, that only apostles could have enough influend freedom in the order to do something like this.

  Still... it was impossible... but I couldn’t find any other expnation... Using force teleportation teiques is one of the rarest aspects of the force. A lot rarer than battle meditation, which you generally could learn on a basic level without any talent at all, you only had to be stubborn enough to do it with ceaseless practice.

  However, that was not the case with force teleportation. It needed a ualent. It is a teique even I ’t uand. In our entire order, only one person could use it profitly, and a few others who had some miniscule talent but nothing that could teleport four people from Courst to Korriban. That person was her than Eqomu, the mirian boy I got to know in the Zyggerian pace, who ter turned out to be a felloostle of the Gray. He was the one who ied the ability, and his memory line’s inator was Darth Jadus, a master of force based teleportation teiques.

  That is why my first thoughts came to this after being teleported here and subsequently assaulted by a droid of our own making. That, and the Sith who was lurking around, but would the Sith truly have mao get their hands on such a dangerous ability? I only hope that it is not the case... This euation was stinking from its core...

  As, an apostle turning against its order is unheard of.

  It is not a ce that the apostles have the absolute trust of the order. They could not betray it... at least I thought it to be impossible. The only actual ce for such a thing to happen was before the apostle had at least once given away his or her archive to another didate, but at that time, they were not even sidered apostles.

  The first chosen person, who hahe archive with the expected care and respect, is a special case. They are deeply ingrained with various types of ditioning siheir childhood to eventually bee an ideal host and foundation to the memory line.

  Those people are the ones who create the archive with their entire existence, but it only truly starts to solidify and bee an actual holo when they begin the first ritual of iance.

  Their personality is what serves as a stable foundation for the following successors. As a stant power of ditioning, from its mere presence, a deeply ingrained sense of guilt would gnaw at any person who would try tainst the order… That is why we officially call the first holders as “The pure ones”.

  They are raised with utmost care, rarely, if ever, allowed to leave the fines of temples and the most well defended and sheltered temple cities whose locations are hidden even from the lesser elders of the Order. They have a safe and enjoyable life of learning aeag, while pletely hidden from the eyes of the public.

  When they are older, they groom their orentices and teach them from a young age until the day es, when they have to give their memories to the geion. After the ritual, a new memory line is officially created with all its rights and duties hao them. With that, the intricate and time-ing process of creating a neostle is done.

  Beyond that moment, the force will be the one who chooses the successors of the individual archives, but before the ritual is done, for the first time, anybody could succeed it.

  This means that basically anyone could take it over from the inator, who has a suffit e to the foro, to be ho, literally anybody could take it, even those who have no talent with the force, but such a person would never be chosen, as he or she would ck the ability to give it away when his or her time came. Which would iably lead to a dead end.

  With the aging of any memory lihe current holder will slowly grow wiser and more aced to the force itself. The holder will learn of its nuances just as the force will grow aced to his or her’s.

  However, familiarity is nothing but a lie, an illusion. A way for the forake you grow personally attached to it. In my case, it eveed avatars to my own likeliness. It would never cease to try to take trol of me, to put me under either one of its wings and turo a piece of its eternal puppet-show.

  It would not stop at ah in acquiring a powerful pie its game. Most would ruly uand what that means. Aernally existiy with all the time in the universe, trying to involve you in a flict that you do not wish to participate in.

  Allow me to phrase it otherwise: you are fucked.

  The force has an unlikely stubbornness. It would influence you to unsciously do certain as, making it all look like pin ce. Small singurly unimportant as that you never even noticed or thought about.

  I as that only scrutinized in the length of thousands of years would draecific pattern, but even that would only appear in specifiditions and only when observed from a certain point of view.

  All those small meaningless as would eventually accumute into an unbelievably intricate trap, one which you would only notice when you are already caught i.

  The Jedi call this process as being much closer to the living force, as it will use our bodies to weave events through time and space, while not even uanding their importahe Jedi naturally embrace this process with all their hearts.

  Even as most of the time, you would never know what was the result of su a. Other times, you will realize the importance many-many years ter, or in our case after several geions of archive holders have passed away. Flowing away in the sea of eime, but not dispersing in it, as their memories are left behind. No… not just their memories…

  That is one of the darkest secrets belonging to the Gray Order.

  We call those who still live after passing on, as immortals. However, that is not the case. It is little more than a narcistic lie, of which I have only learned after I received the authority of the “Ag Grandmaster”.

  In truth, our order has not pierced the true veil of immortality… It is but a fake immortality. Aension of the mind. Ohat is still bound to very much mortal means. It was meant to be a temporary solution, of course… but we ended up stu the process. For over four thousand years now. What a shame… and an irony…

  The dark truth is much more disturbing. A secret I would not share with any jedi, no matter how close I ever came to knowing them. The harsh truth is that the souls and minds of the existing immortals are bound to the bodies of the currently living apostles, the specifies that carry the particur memory lihey once also carried.

  Yes… if you sider all of this, you will realize that I, as the sixteenth of my line, am directly responsible for fifteen other existences. If I die… all the spirits of my masters, along with Revan, will cease to exist, together with their hope to ever gain true immortality, to truly bee oh the force. And this is why the Gray rasp of the future is still g, even when we cim to have the guidings of beings who have bee oh the true force. Because in truth, we were only pretending. Yes, those masters have lived long. Our so called immortal cils are wise beyond the years of most, but they are still incredible far from being infallible.

  After I realized this… and it certainly took some time… but I mao uand why Revan acted the way he did… My as, and my possibly stupid death, would result in his death as well after all. The worst part of it is that no other apostles besides the Grandmaster and the immortals know about this. Because if they did, it would puch pressure and fear on their shoulders, which would iably stop the apostles from getting out into the world. Such a thing could not be allowed.

  The reason is simple: the apostles are the greatest tools for learning and uanding the world as a whole. They are the tools that boost the process of rec a knowledge and st it, at times even sharing it with other persons freely. They are beas of knowledge. Anch down to a safe pce would be terproductive in the long run. With their help, hundreds of years of research could be skipped over, or even thousands. It might be uninal at this point, but yes… It seems that our Order is searg for a way to immortality. But not the immortality of the mortal body, but the immortality of the mind, the soul, if you will. We are searg for a way to truly bee oh the force.

  And treatest shame, it seems that the often ignorant Jedi Order mao beat us toal. They have found a way, or at least at one point, they know how to achieve such a pure state of existeo asd to the step of evolution, and because we teo overlook the Jedi’s existen general from the very beginning of the Gray Order, we have only realized this fact a few hundred years ago.

  Sihen… we have made quite a rge effort to silently infiltrate the Jedi Order, and try to learn its secrets about this particur matter, endlessly reading through their bottomless archives. Their way of st knowledge was beyond ineffit… More often than not, they have stored pletely meaningless data. It was a torture to get through it, but if anything… we had time, sents worked as part of the Jedi Order for years.

  As, the results were disappointing.

  It turns out that the current Jedi have lost the ability and knowledge to replicate what we have been looking for. Their ignorance was overwhelming. To have the most cherished ability that intelligent creatures have wao reach sihe beginnings of self-aware life, and then have the audacity to lose it, fet it just like that… was beyond our uanding.

  And so sihen, we have kept agents in the Jedi order, waiting, hoping that one of them might mao replicate the same achievement which we envied from them so much.

  Some people, like Master Qui-Gon, decided to actively participate in the search for the so-called teique while spending his time as a double agent ihe Jedi temple. He retty inexperienced apostle being the third in his memory line, while taking on an immensely risky mission, with little to no hope of actually aplishing it.

  Still, he supposedly mao find something iing, based on his hat ents gathered from the Jedi temple after his death, but before he could report it et to the end of his idea, he was killed by a Sith called Darth Maul, yes… the same bastard that just tried to kill us a few ho. Master Qui-Gon, being a retively young apostle, was not specialized in bat. He was a researcher, his memory lines previous holders, were also simir in that regard.

  Naturally, he knew how to handle himself. However, he was not a bat type, and likely never expected to actually run into a well trained Sith Warrior in a time of long-sting peace, all that while having to defend his padawan. A padawan, that was not even one of our orders, but a Jedi through and through. And thanks to the never ending irony of the force, this particur person ointed as my substitute master, while I was forced to stay in the Jedi temple. Creating ties among the higher echelons of the aining their i with btant shows of talent and knowledge, while wearing the i face of a cute girl-child belonging to one of the most eye-catg races of the gaxy. Aig bination, oh the highest success rate that my masters could foresee.

  That was why I had been chosen while being a child to take oy of an apostle and ter a grandmaster. My hesitating master, who was riddened with guilt from the thought of f such a burden on me, one he did not agree to but had been forced to do anyway, thanks to his old age, and gradually weakening body. All uhe growing and lingering shadow of impending death…