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Ki'ardi
Contents
Ki'ardi
Beyond the colonies, in the inner rim, not far from where the Corellian Trade Spine and Rimma Trade route meets, lies the Maelstrom Rifts. The Rifts saddle the edges of the Artemis Sector and the Artilles Cluster. Drifting from the established trade routes when travelling through the Maelstrom is tantamount to suicide. Floating invisibly through this maelstrom of gas and light - and almost impossible to reach by Hyperspace - lies the world of Babylos. Here, the entire crust and indeed much of the core of the world, is infused with the strange living crystal commonly known as Artemis Crystals.
These crystals glow with a deep inner light and are attuned to the Force in a way that almost no other creatures in the Galaxy can match. In this serene world where the environment is infused with the Living Force the Ki’ardi stand guard, ever watchful for intruders and a threat to the precious balance of their world for they know… if Babylos were ever to fall to the Dark Side, the universe would be plunged into endless night.
Early History of the Ki'ardi
The discovery of Babylos and the founding of the Ki’ardi lies deep within the ancient past, in the earliest days of the Jedi. When the ancient Dark Side Jedi that would one day become the Sith were cast out from the order, a few ventured out into the then unexplored regions of the Galaxy and discovered the world known as Babylos. In this place they sensed a nexus of the Force more potent than any other in the Galaxy. Sensing and craving the power of the place, however, and still wounded of spirit from their ordeal at the hands of the Jedi, these proto-Sith were unprepared to discover the world inhabited already… by three eternally youthful human women with powers unmatched by the Jedi or the Sith. With seemingly no effort at all the women that would one day be known to the Ki’ardi as the Three Sisters, forced back the Sith from their homeworld and sent them hurtling away into the darkest corners of the Galaxy.
But the Sith are not so easily thwarted. As they licked their wounds, mastered their arts and grew powerful again in the Dark Side, the Sith remembered that strange world they had so fleetingly encountered and eventually they sent back masters of their darkest arts to try again. The Sith hungered for the world’s most precious resource: (not the Artemis Crystals themselves) but the sentient consciousness that had been born in the songs of those crystals, the very essence of the living, feeling, world of Babylos.
The first time the Three Sisters protected their world through sheer force of will. When the Sith returned, more powerful and learned in their dark arts, the Three Sisters called to the only force that could help them, the Jedi. The Jedi arrived with their swords, and archaic still-blaster sabers, and the line was drawn against the Sith and they were held back. Some of the Jedi remained on Babylos and learned the secrets of the Three Sisters and in time they became the Ki’ardi, dedicated to the protection of their world and the nurturing of its hidden consciousness. The nascent Ki’ardi attuned themselves to the world of Babylos, learning the secrets of its power and mined the Artemis crystals to help in focusing their power.
It was during their stays on Babylos that the Jedi learned how to construct Lightsabers using Artemis crystals. The process though, it was learned, killed the Artemis crystal and the Jedi, inspired but unwilling to sacrifice living creatures to create their new weapons, hunted down new crystals to empower their blades. Oddly, Babylos remains the one world where lightsaber cannot be used for the Artemis crystals disrupt the blades as they are generated, triggering terrifying light storms as a lightsaber is activated as the energy refracts into thousands of smaller streams of power instead of forming a single coalesced blade.
Sha'zu Késa and the sith grei
The Ki’ardi hoped never to need lightsaber and blasters and instead sought solitude from the universe but, in time, as was inevitable, the Sith menace returned and, this time, few Jedi could be spared to aid the Ki’ardi. They needed to take up arms against the Sith themselves. At first, armed with blasters, daggers and swords, and facing the mighty alchemically reinforced blades of the Ancient Sith, the Ki’ardi seemed to be fighting a hopeless battle. Even the Jedi that had been sent to help them, now dependent on their lightsabers (weapons liable to fail on Babylos even in the hands of a Jedi Master) were of little aid in turning back the tide.
The solution, though, arrived from a most unusual source. Within the folds of the Ki’ardi order, the mysterious sith grei were as respected as they were feared. Known for the gray cloaks that they wore at all times this secretive order of the Ki’ardi were dedicated to the cleansing of Artemis crystals that had succumbed to the Dark Side. They would absorb the crystals darkness into their own minds and souls and combat it there, turning the crystal back to the purity of the Light.
As the battles with the ancient sith filled the skies above Babylos and blooded the crystal ranges, the sith grei could only watch as more and more crystals succumbed to proximity to the Sith and turned to evil. They feared that they would not have the will and the spirit to cleanse their world. Even if the Sith were defeated their mere presence was destroying the world the Ki’ardi protected.
But the sith grei were devious and in the Sith they saw a power that while evil was perhaps not inherently so. The Sith wielded their dark blades with a mastery that was more than the sword’s indestructible and evil nature; perhaps that could be turned to the Ki’ardi’s advantage and so it was that the sith grei approached the Three Sisters with their plan. Had any other Ki’ardi suggested it, the Three Sisters would surely have turned it down without even the slightest doubt but the sith grei were known for their strange and sometimes dangerous insight.
The Plan was as simple as it was dangerous; for if it failed the Ki’ardi would surely become the thing they fought, servants of the Dark Side. The Ki’ardi were to capture a Sith and force him to teach them the secrets of their martial art (what they called Sâiraté). The Ki’ardi would then take this dreaded art and purify it within themselves (just as the sith grei cleansed the crystal essences they took into their souls) and in so doing create a new, bolder, and purer discipline.
It was no easy task but as the Ki’ardi warriors that had refined this new martial art charged onto the field of battle with their nemeses, their new discipline was baptized in the blood of fallen Sith and given its name on the lips of dying Sith, sha zuu kesssa, an ancient sith curse and a disdainful name in one, meaning corrupted form, or ‘baser art’. The term appealed to those original masters and even as their art matured and evolved, transforming into something fundamentally different from Sâiraté, the name sha’zu késa remained; for anything the Sith disdain must surely be good.
The Powers of the Ki'ardi
The Ki’ardi were born of a blending of four completely different viewpoints on the Force: the Jedi that came to Babylos to protect it, the Sith that came to conquer it, the three sisters mysteriously bound to the world and destined to protect it and the inexplicable and alien power of the Artemis crystals from which the world was born. The Ki’ardi share the vigorous approach to their tradition that the Jedi inspired but are also more passionately involved in their mission and dedication to the goal of protecting Babylos from all who would harm it. In this way, they have borrowed their devotion from the Sith.
More than the Jedi, the Ki’adi see that the human (and the alien) is flawed; that only the Force can guide their actions. In the crystals of Babylos they have found a safe and reliable means to focus their minds but they must accept that it is the crystal that chooses how they will be empowered. Tools that need and insist on being wielded surround the Ki’ardi but they can never be understood, least of all controlled.
The Ki’ardi are no more impressed by rituals or drugs than their Jedi cousins but they see no use for Lightsabers (as they do not work on Babylos) and they are more than willing to seek aid and insight into the Force in others - be they other Ki’ardi, the crystals of their homeworld or even their most dreaded enemies. Ki’ardi make use of powers that allow them to channel the Force through the Artemis crystals, others that allow them to merge their power and still others that turn an enemies power against him.
Ki’ardi are therefore far more likely to explore the sense discipline than Jedi and they are also a little more proficient with some aspects of alter (specifically powers which affect the mind or are invovled in healing). The world of Babylos also has one other important trait when it comes to understanding the Ki’ardi; Force Spirits. On Babylos, even the oldest and weakest spirit can manifest with ease and it is therefore no surprise that the Ki’ardi mastered the ability to become one with the Force long before the Jedi and know more of these arts than almost any other tradition except for perhaps the Sith.
Of course, the Ki’ardi have never hesitated to borrow from their enemies when needed and it has worried the Jedi that it is perhaps the Ki’ardi’s long association (bitter rivalry though it has been) with the Sith that is the source of their insight into death and not the world from which they originate; that perhaps these abilities border dangerously on the Dark Side of the Force.
