#oc: qatya petheir

[azems-familiar]

the tumblr user formerly known as revanchxst posting kotor fic for the first time in two years?? wild. anyway,

Qatya and Kavar have a conversation during the reception following Revan's promotion.

[azems-familiar]

What in the fuck is T H I S????? holy shit?? Oh my god she looks so good but also WAS NOBODY GOING TO TELL ME THIS WAS A THING I-

A sketch commission for @revanchxst from ipreferfiction! 

Their Jedi Exile from KOTOR 2, Qatya (who is super god damn cute btw)

[azems-familiar]

...........i may or may not be writing kotor/totj fic again tonight,

“Must we exile even her?” Vash asks softly, as the silence stretches and the sun begins to dip towards the horizon. “If she’s penitent-”

“She is the worst offender of them all!” Vrook snaps back, gesturing with one hand. “Among the first to follow Revan to war, according to all reports one of the creators of this planet-destroyer and the one to give the order - what does penitence absolve her of?”

From the other side of the room, Kavar says, “She’s also the only one who came back.” There’s something exhausted and dust-dry in the words, and Nomi slants a look at the other master, younger than her by a little less than a decade, but old enough to recall Ossus.

There are dark circles under his eyes and an unhealthy pallor to his skin that speaks of little sleep and poor meditation, and his aura is locked down more tightly than Nomi can ever recall sensing it during a meeting - as if he’s preparing himself to take on a shadow’s mission once more. She…suspects she knows why, in truth. Not only is Knight- former Knight Petheir his padawan, but he had been the one to bring the infant Revan to the Temple all those years ago, and…there is a set of battered, blackened dog tags around his neck, resting over top his tabard. She hasn’t asked who he knew in the Republic military well enough to be known as their next of kin; the man has never been in contact with his blood family. But grief is a heavy companion, especially when fresh, and the Mandalorian Wars have brought it marching back to their sides once more.

Gaze lingering on the dog tags, Nomi finds herself thinking of Yavin IV, Ulic’s and Exar’s bodies lying across from each other on a temple’s stone floor, lightsabers between them. She thinks of Cay bleeding into the Ossan sand, the light of ten dying stars overhead, crying for his brother, and how it had been ground-shattering fury that drove her in that moment, a scream trapped in her chest and echoing into the Force instead of the air, binding Ulic within his own skin. Something in her had shattered, there on Ossus, something she has never been able to reclaim. Cay had been lost, and then dead; Ulic had cried, and then gone numb entirely, and it hadn’t been her fault but the guilt festers anyway. A deep, secret poison, one she has never let show.

Ulic Qel-Droma chose to redeem himself, even cut off from the Force, she’d told the High Council, as they’d gathered on Coruscant to try to rebuild their fragmented order. He engaged Exar Kun in combat, without support from the Order, and struck him down, though he was killed while doing so. Cay - her voice had hitched on his name - wanted nothing more than for his brother to return to us, and while Ulic’s actions are certainly far too reprehensible to be pardoned, even in death, I’d like to request his change of heart be noted in the Archives. Let him be known as dying seeking atonement, even if only to the Jedi with the clearance to look.

(She doesn’t know what Ulic would have wanted. She never has. He didn’t say a word to her after giving her Exar Kun, or to anyone else, as far as she knows. But when they burned his body, on the Yavin moon, she gave him and Exar a shared pyre. It had seemed…the least she could do for a man she had loved, who had never loved her.)

…to say she understands the weight on Kavar’s shoulders would be an understatement.

“Please,” she says tiredly. “The time to debate this was three days ago, when the votes were cast - and as I recall, we had a debate lengthy enough to rival the Senate. I agree the early vote was…distasteful-” not exactly the word she’d like to use, but as the High Council’s leader she has to be professional- “but we had no way of knowing Knight Petheir would even come back. Revan’s influence is as strong as Exar’s and Ulic’s was.”

Their youngest and newest Councilor, Atris, shifts in her chair. She had recused herself from the vote on young Qatya, stating that their past romantic relationship made her biased, but considering her response to the verdict Nomi wonders if that bias had inclined Atris towards exile, rather than away. Still, the echani woman has looked uncomfortable as the hour for Qatya’s trial draws near.

(The masters were right, Cay, she’d said, tugging him back towards the palace window. Cinnagar buzzes around them, an insect hive roused to furious action. If they don’t leave now, they never will. Ulic must make his own choices, and suffer his own consequences. We’re leaving him here.)

The same tragedies, again and again. How many more times must this repeat? How much more pain, writ galactically in blood, echoing the recent past?

[azems-familiar]

Chapters: 1/2 Fandom: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games), Star Wars Legends: Tales of the Jedi (Comics), Star Wars Legends - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Female Jedi Exile & Kavar, Atris/Female Jedi Exile, Past One-Sided Ulic Qel-Droma/Nomi Sunrider, Past Cay Qel-Droma/Nomi Sunrider Characters: Female Jedi Exile, Nomi Sunrider, Kavar (Star Wars), Atris (Star Wars), Vrook Lamar, Vandar Tokare Additional Tags: The Mandalorian Wars (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), Angst, Light Side Jedi Exile (Star Wars), A Lot Of Musings About Ulic Qel-Droma, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Master & Padawan Relationships (Star Wars), Partially Mute Jedi Exile, (relevant in the second chapter), hi i have qatya on the brain and i'm making it everyone's problem Series: Part 5 of how does a man change the universe? Summary:

“Master Kavar,” Vandar says, his thin, aging voice tight. “I feel I must remind you you were asked to recuse yourself from the matter for good reason.”

Nomi presses her lips together and slides one hand from her temple to her forehead. Wonderful.

“And I did,” snaps Kavar, every muscle in his body tensing - there’s a sharp light in his eyes that hasn’t been present before, and his aura flares with heat before he hides it once more. “I didn’t vote when you decided to exile my padawan to keep her from coming back. I let this farce of a trial stand. I’m here, against my better judgement. But don’t think that means I agree with your verdict. The least you could have done was look her in the fucking eyes before you made your decision.” - Qatya Petheir returns to the Temple for a trial that everyone knows the outcome of. Kavar makes a choice.

[azems-familiar]

For Qatya: what was the most difficult part of rebuilding the Order?

"If I say everything, will you accuse me of looking for an easy out?" Qatya asks, with a laugh. The amused smile settles into something more serious, and she leans back in her seat. "I think the easiest part of rebuilding - I know that's not what you asked, but it's the easiest thing to quantify immediately - was stepping up and taking the position. Despite my status as an exile, I had Atris backing me, and circumstances meant that even most of the masters remaining on Coruscant supported me. I didn't actually reach for a Council position, much less becoming Grand Master, right away; people just started calling me Grand Master, and no one disagreed, and eventually it was made official."

She sighs and takes a sip of caf from the well-loved mug on her desk, which was apparently a gift from her former master, the late Master Kavar, back when she was a padawan. "The first hard thing was just walking back into the High Council chambers. Actually, no, that's a lie - it was setting foot on Coruscant itself. I hadn't been back since the trial after the end of the Mandalorian Wars, and coming back here, and to the Temple, left me with a little bit of a hard time grounding myself in the right time." It's a reference to the PTSD she's dealt with ever since the end of the Mandalorian Wars, which often manifests itself in flashbacks.

"Beyond that, one of the more difficult issues we had to overcome was the fact that the Republic and the people of the galaxy had lost trust in the Jedi Order. The Jedi Civil War did a lot of damage, and very little of it had been properly repaired when the Purge happened. Convincing the greater galaxy that the Order could and would help them, that they were right to place their trust in us again. That the Order would not abandon them again. Oh, the logistical issues were rough, and building our numbers back up took a long time, and as always the Republic Senate wanted too much from us, but those are the problems I expected to have to deal with when I took on this responsibility. I hadn't realized that I would also have to be the one rebuilding the Order's trustworthiness - a task that is, to me, far more delicate and important than the logistics of training padawans when we had barely any knights and repairing and reestablishing contact with the enclaves." She pauses, and then laughs again. "I suppose that's why I'm the Grand Master, and not the Master of the Order."

[azems-familiar]

@ardenigh drew my Jedi Exile, Qatya, as a little gift, and i cannot get over how she came out!! her hair is perfect, the little flower in her hair, her scar, her eyes....

[azems-familiar]

nobody's won and we're safe at the end

for @jedijune for the prompts may the force be with you and faith. could fill others, but these are the two i'm mostly working from.

female jedi exile & kavar, pre-kotor, 4k

read on ao3

They have three days until they’re expected to be on board the Republic fleet and prepared to ship out. The Revanchists, as the news knows their group now, have already been hailed as heroes by almost every outlet and site reporting on the war, even though they have yet to actually join the fight, even though none of them, not even Revan herself, actually know if they’ll be capable of stopping the Mandalorians - it’s because they give people a ray of hope, Qatya knows. Something to cling to, that says that maybe the Core will be safe, maybe the Rim will be taken back, one world at a time.

She can’t entirely blame them. There was a Jedi enclave on Taris, after all; she understands, at least a little, what it is they feel.

Qatya folds a piece of her half-cloak through her fingers and shifts her weight, just slightly. They’ve been offered quarters with the military itself, to stay in if they want; most of the Revanchists aren’t exactly popular with the Order right now, even if more and more knights are joining up with each passing day. She’d been one of the ones to take the offer - after her argument with Atris, and with the fact that most of her friends are following her, staying in the Temple until she has the chance to board the cruiser she’s been assigned to had felt… awkward and strange in a way the Temple never has before. The huge building has been her home since she was a child, and all its warmth and beauty and gentle brilliance has remained a cornerstone of her life even after she began venturing offworld with Master Kavar; it’s the only home she’s ever had, the only home she’s ever wanted to have, and now that things are- tense with the Council, she feels off-kilter, like some essential piece of her foundation has been removed.

That sense will fade with time, she thinks, especially as she goes to war, but for now, stuck in an endless waiting loop, it’s difficult to deal with.

The barracks on Coruscant are a huge, sprawling set of facilities that take up an entire sector of the city and house more than just military personnel - equipment and civilian contractors often reside here as well, and the main headquarters for Coruscant Security Forces. The Jedi have been given an entire building to themselves, and eventually they’ll have to bunk together to save space, she’s sure, but for now she’s alone in the two-person room she’d snagged. It’s probably a good thing, gives her the space to pace, to meditate, to read without drawing attention from someone else, but it’s lonely, too.

But the war is going to be lonely, or at least completely different from her youth in the Temple. She’ll get used to it soon enough, hopefully.

(She doesn’t let herself wonder if getting used to it will be a bad thing.)

There’s a knock on the door and Qatya frowns, for just a moment - she hadn’t expected any visitors who didn’t comm first, hadn’t expected anyone at all who wasn’t a Revanchist or with the military. And she supposes it could be someone from either of those groups, but- they would have commed first, and when she reaches out into the Force, the person on the other side of the door is almost as familiar as her own heartbeat. She shouldn’t smile, likely, shouldn’t expect anything other than condemnation, because she knows the official stance the Council has taken on this war and none of its members truly have the space to let themselves be seen straying from that position, but Force, all the same, there’s a lightness in her step as she stands and crosses the room, sliding the plain durasteel door back into the wall with a press of a button.

“Master Kavar,” she says, and offers him a bow, smiling just a touch as she straightens. “Come in.”

Her master looks tired. It’s the first thing she notices, when she steps back enough to let him into the room; there are dark circles under his eyes and lines in his face and his blond hair is more disheveled than usual. She has to wonder when the last time he slept was. (She hadn’t thought, very much, about how difficult Revan’s declaration would be on the High Council. Hadn’t wanted to think about it, to see the story from both sides, even though that’s a betrayal of every lesson her master had ever taught her. It’s easier to avoid reading nuance into the situation, to see the Council as complacent and uncaring and wrong, even though the hours she’s spent at Kavar’s side during meetings directly contradict that idea. The Council has a reason for sitting back, she knows. They’re playing a long game, though she doesn’t know what their endgame is yet, and she hopes, sincerely, that they come out the victors.

She just can’t accept any reason for sitting back as enough to justify all the atrocities and death happening right now, without their interference. And that is her own personal right.)

“Don’t Master Kavar me, this isn’t a Council meeting,” Kavar says, his mouth curving just slightly, and she bites back a snort and closes the door behind him.

“No, but you are still my master, unless you’ve forgotten that in the four months since you cut my braid,” she teases. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you caf, unless you want to walk down to the mess, but you can pick a bed and sit on it. This one-” and she indicates the bunk she claimed as her own, “is softer, but that doesn’t mean particularly much in a barracks, I’ve found.”

“I’ve lived in worse,” he says, shedding his cloak and dropping down to sit on the empty bed, and she takes a seat on her own, facing him, tucking her feet up underneath her and leaning against the wall. She’s sure he has; he’d never told her about all the missions he’s been on, especially when he was younger, but his work as a shadow, venturing into Coruscant’s lower levels for short- and mid-term cover operations against the criminal underworld is well-documented in the Archives. Having been down to some of the lower levels herself, far below where the sunlight ever touches, she can picture some of the worse he’s probably thinking of. His face sobers as he looks at her, and he’s quieter, more serious, when he asks, “How are you doing?”

She shrugs one shoulder and takes a long breath in and out, willing herself not to start picking at her robes again. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous,” she admits, because denying the feelings will do no good - only through accepting them will she be able to properly let them go. “Revan is so certain, and that certainty is easy to feel when I’m around her or the others, but when I’m alone I… worry. The reports coming in from the Outer Rim are so morbid.” She sighs, blows a rush of air out through her lips, and tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “I don’t doubt my decision - that will never come into question, I swore my loyalty and I meant it - but I have to wonder if we can be the heroes the Republic wants us to be. And some of Revan’s followers are already looking to me, too - you know why, I know why, but it doesn’t make it less intimidating.”

Her unconscious ability to form thread-thin Force bonds with anyone she spends much time with has always been kept somewhat quiet, among the rest of the Order. There’s little she can do to stop it from happening, and the influence she can have on another person’s thoughts is staggering and a little terrifying. It’s one of the reasons she was trained by a High Councilor, why someone with that much responsibility would choose to take a padawan; if she’s anything less than steady in her convictions and her dedication to the Jedi way, she could accidentally twist too many people into following a new path. She’s spent half her life learning control, and she doesn’t intend to let that lapse now - it’s all the eyes on her in something so precarious that worries her, more than the connections she’s formed themselves.

Kavar sighs, his aura flickering with more of the same exhausting living in the lines of his body, but he’s as honest as he’s always been when he answers her. “You’re a good Jedi, Qatya, and I trust you,” he says, seriously, and the statement, the steadiness inherent in it, sends a small tendril of warmth curling through her chest. “This war was never going to be anything but a mess. If we fought, if we didn’t - either way, everything was going to go to hell. But this is your course to follow, and I trust you.”

“Thank you,” she says, softly, and her fingers find a loose thread at the edge of her cloak. She winds it around the first joint in her pointer finger, almost absently, then grimaces when his eyes fall pointedly to her lap before coming back to rest on her face. “You might be the only one who still feels that way about me. About any of us,” and the gesture is expansive, encompassing the entire building, everyone who chose to follow Revan after her first declaration, all the new knights trickling in now that the news has picked up their story, too.

Force, but she doesn’t want to think about Atris, or the argument they’d had. She probably should’ve been expecting her girlfriend to respond as she had - Atris has always been the one more concerned with the letter of the Code and the Council’s decrees, not that Qatya has any idea where she could have gotten her… occasional disregard for the written rule from - but some part of her had hoped that if Atris couldn’t find it in herself to come along, they could at least part ways amicably.

Apparently that’d been too much to hope for.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.” Kavar leans back against the wall, some of the ever-present tension leaching out of his shoulders as he does. “Look, we’re all concerned about Revan, but- you’re not her.”

“I’m not,” she agrees. “But I’m also twenty years old, I’ve been a knight for four months, and if I fall I’ll take everyone I know down with me. I may be less at risk than she is,” and that feels almost blasphemous to say, Revan is a good Jedi and her anger is righteous, is compassion and determination made into a weapon, but Qatya knows that righteousness can be just as dangerous as its counterpart, in the end, “but I’m not sure which one of us would end up more dangerous.” Though, of course, wherever Revan goes, Alek will too, and that tips the scales solidly in one direction. Probably.

Force, what is the galaxy coming to? Even six months ago she wouldn’t have believed it, if someone were to tell her she’d be sitting here across from her master discussing which particular rebellious Jedi will be the most dangerous, in the event that they fall. Surrounded by military-regulation furnishings, in a building empty of the centuries of life the Temple holds, she feels farther away from her old life than she ever has when out on a mission, even when Kavar took her offworld.

“You’re dedicated without fanaticism,” Kavar says, and she can’t help but believe him. “Qatya, you’re one of the best Jedi I know.”

She flushes slightly, looking down at her lap. She’s barely more than a padawan, and Kavar is friendly with the entire High Council; it’s hard to imagine that she could be such a good Jedi, when she has so much left to learn. “You’re flattering me,” she says, and smiles at him, lifting her head again. “Trying to make me feel better, since I’m going off to war without you?” She shouldn’t make the offer, she knows, he can’t turn his back on the Council, there are too many other things going on, but- “You could come with us. Revan would accept you, if I asked her to, and we could use your knowledge and expertise.”

“I know,” he sighs, closing his eyes for half a second before opening them again, and he looks far older than his years. “Before this, I would have. But too many are leaving now.”

It makes sense. Force, it makes sense, she understands, and she can’t hold it against him - the Order will need him here, because their duties aren’t just going to vanish because of the war existing - and she’d known what his answer would be even before she asked, but there’s still something aching in her chest as she looks at him. “I understand,” she says, aloud, more quietly than she’d been. “It’s just that we could use you.” A pause, and she sighs. “I would feel a little less overwhelmed if you were there. But you have your duty, and as a knight of the Order, I won’t infringe on that. I won’t ask you to abandon the Order for me.” As much as some part of her wants to, wants to have her master along beside her as she walks into the unknown, it goes against everything that’s been ingrained in her since she was a child. And now that she’s no longer a padawan- she’s a fully adult Jedi, and when her padawan braid was severed by Kavar’s mainhand lightsaber, it marked her as ready to stand on her own two feet and uphold the Jedi Code across the galaxy, no matter the trials she faces. Kavar believes she’s ready to face them as a full member of the Order, and how can she betray that faith?

“You’re a knight now,” Kavar says, and the words are a reassurance rather than a condemnation. “There are people looking to you like you look to me.”

“I suppose I should think of this as training for when I end up with my own padawan, then,” she says, and curls her fingers further into the fabric of her cloak. “Do you have any advice for me? I may not be a padawan any longer, but I’d rather not walk into this war unprepared, and there’s no one in the Order I trust as much as you.”

He smiles, just a little, at the words. “Trust your intuition, and always remember that the people you’re fighting for are people, not numbers.”

It makes sense. And she’s never quite had an issue with forgetting that before, but she’s also never done this, either, gone off and embroiled herself in a full-scale war. She’s going to be an officer in the fleet, when she’s never done more than work with peacekeeping forces and law enforcement, and that- gods, it’s almost enough to drown her in it, if she thinks about it. The responsibility of it all, with all these people looking to her.

She’s going to have to be very good at control.

“I will,” she promises. “Or- I’ll do the best I can, that’s more honest.” She sighs, offers him a smile. “If you have the time, master- Kavar, would you like to meditate with me? For old time’s sake.”

“Of course,” he says, and she climbs up off the bed, reaches down underneath it for her well-worn meditation mat, unrolling it in the center of the room. She only has the one, but her former master doesn’t complain, just stands up and comes over to kneel down in front of her, a meter or so away.

He probably can’t stay for very long, she knows. He’s already risking things by coming to visit - the Council has to be impartial, neutral, has to be beyond bias where individual Jedi are concerned, or they cannot function properly as a governing body of the Order (and the members on it don’t always live up to that ideal, she knows - Vrook Lamar has always struggled with impartiality where Revan is concerned, seeing in her the shadows of Ulic Qel-Droma - but an ideal it remains, and she would never ask any of them to deliberately break it, especially not her own master). But his presence in the Force has always been steadying, an anchor for her, and she closes her eyes and lets herself sink into that feeling one last time.

The Force flows around her, around them, a river of energy rushing through everything, glimmering and brilliant and beautiful and close enough to touch. She doesn’t touch, just breathes deeply in a rhythm that’s been ingrained since she was a child and spreads her awareness out beyond herself, beyond this room, and lets go.

There is no emotion, there is peace.

Here, on Coruscant, the Force’s currents are filled with life, brilliant and blinding, with a warmth and a light that fills her to the brim. Billions of people call this planet their home, and all their rush of emotion blends seamlessly into the background noise of life that wraps her in a peace she has only truly ever felt here, on this world. A miniature galaxy around her, and her master a steady beacon of brilliance before her, and all the serenity of the universe in her bones, and this - this is what it feels like, to be a Jedi, immersed in the beauty of the living world, and there’s nothing quite like it. She may be leaving all this behind to go off to war, to fight against the most dangerous enemy the galaxy has seen in a long time (because how much of this- merciless marauding is just a leftover from the fact that thirty years ago, the Mandalorians went to war under Ulic Qel-Droma’s command and discovered a taste for facing the Republic across the field of battle?), but the Force will be with her no matter where she finds herself.

There is the Force.

Qatya exhales and opens her eyes, studying her master for a moment, watching him with the added awareness of being not-quite all the way back into her body. The exhaustion that seems permanently engraved into his bones is lessened, like this, and there’s a calmness on his face rarely seen except for in the training salles when he’s fallen so deeply into the serenity of lightsaber katas he hardly seems to know she’s there. She knows that some of the other masters in the Temple consider him to be unorthodox, but Force, there isn’t another master she’d rather be like, when she finally is awarded that title. She isn’t sure she could picture anyone but him, if she were asked to visualize the ideal Jedi. And that, combined with the thought she’d had earlier-

“Kavar?” she asks, softly, and he opens his eyes to look at her. “What… what would you do, if I fell? Or if I simply- went far enough the Order felt I couldn’t come back?”

Kavar pauses, for a long minute, something sober and serious flickering over his face. “I don’t know,” he says, finally, “but… I think, if you ever got to that point, it would be because you’d had no other choice.”

“I’m afraid,” she admits, quietly. “Of losing my way and not realizing it, not even noticing I’ve lost something until it’s already gone. I don’t think that Revan has properly… realized just what going to war, having positions of authority, will mean, but how can I not think about it? I’m going to have to feel everyone I interact with die. And almost none of our followers are masters, we have no one watching to make sure we stay true, and- one only has to look at recent history to see how dangerous that can be.”

She’s hardly even admitted it to herself, but gods, she wants to come home, when this is all over, and pick up the life she’s leaving behind. She wants to have the chance to be a Jedi in an era of peace, and if she falls-

She doesn’t think she’ll fall, but who ever does? 

“It’s dangerous,” he agrees, and she curls her fingers into her palms. “More dangerous than anything since Ulic Qel-Droma, for the Jedi. But your way is inside you, and as long as you remember that, you can’t fall.”

Qatya takes a long breath, in and out, and then again, and she wills the tension to fall from her shoulders. “If you believe in me,” she says, “then how can I not believe in myself? I couldn’t live with myself if I betrayed your trust in me.”

“And what about your trust in yourself?” he asks, and he smiles, and the Force is warm and reassuring around him. “That’s more important than anything I can think about you.”

“It is the master’s responsibility to trust their padawan when their padawan is unable to trust themself,” she quotes from a long-ago lesson in the Temple, “with the intention of encouraging the padawan to develop their own personal faith in themself. In this way, by the time a padawan has faced the Trials and stepped out from under their master’s shadow, they will look forward to the future with confidence, and will be able to extend that confidence to the rest of the galaxy.” She returns his smile and adds, “I do trust myself, master - but it was your faith in me that let me develop that trust, and it still helps, when I find myself doubting.”

“I’ll always have faith in you, Qatya.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she says, and lets out a sigh, climbing slowly to her feet and bending to roll up her mat. “I know you probably weren’t really supposed to come see me - I appreciate you taking the time to do so. It’s… good to remember that there are people important to me here who don’t hold my choices against me.”

Kavar gets to his feet with a bit of a grimace, waving away her offered hand and taking a couple of steps towards the door. “We both had to make difficult choices,” he says. “Even if they weren’t the same ones, you need to do what you think is right.” He smiles, then, and offers her a proper Jedi bow - a rarity from him - and when he straightens, she takes two quick steps forward and wraps her arms around his chest. For a moment, she’s a child again, as he squeezes back, and then she takes a deep breath and straightens her shoulders and steps away from him, letting her arms fall back down to her side. “May the Force be with you, kid.”

“And with you, master,” she says, softly, and bows back, more deeply than she really has to, now that she’s a knight. By the time she straightens and tucks her hair out of her face again, he’s gone, and once again, she’s alone.

The loneliness of the military barracks doesn’t feel as crushing now as it did before, though. Because no matter what happens, out in the greater galaxy - she will come through it herself as long as she stays true to herself, and there will be someone waiting to welcome her home. Maybe not the person she most wishes would - maybe things with Atris have been broken beyond repair, she won’t know for certain for some time - but Kavar is the closest thing she has to a father, and his respect and care for her are more than enough of a reason to return home. And maybe, when she does, she’ll have the chance to properly engage with him as a proper knight, instead of as a padawan looking to impress her master.

There is an entire future spread out before her, once this war ends. And she cannot wait to properly seize it.

[azems-familiar]

Qatya Petheir

(art by foxyartchive)

Qatya Petheir was Master Kavar's padawan prior to the Mandalorian Wars. a Coruscanti native and strong in the Force - though never as strong as Revan - Qatya was gifted with a mind for strategy and a unique ability to form minor Force bonds with the people she spent time with, as well as the ability to sever a person's Force connection. she was very close with her master as well as with Atris (the person who gave Qatya the flower pin she wore in her hair for most of her life), and she struggled with the realization that neither of them were going to go to war with the Republic when the Mandalorians finally properly invaded; Atris because the Council had released an official stance, Kavar because the rest of the Council had voted not to until they understood what was driving the Mandalorians, and he understood the danger. Qatya chose to follow her friends to war anyway, and by very early on in the war she'd settled into a position as Revan's third-in-command, the sapien face to the mask's heroism and rapidly-growing legend.

by the time she gave the order to activate the Mass Shadow Generator at Malachor V, Qatya had fallen far from the bright young Jedi she once was - but faced with all the pain and death and darkness of a planet's utter destruction, she severed her own Force connection rather than let it bring her crashing the rest of the way down into the dark side. she managed to escape the death of the planet, despite the gash across her face she sustained when the facility she and Bao-Dur were in crashed down around her, and she was the only one of the Revanchists to report back to the Jedi Council to stand trial for her actions. the Council chose to exile her, and she spent the next ten years wandering the Outer Rim, hiding and keeping her head down and never looking back. though she maintained she was as far from a Jedi as possible for someone who wasn't Sith, she was never quite able to stifle her kindness, and it left a trail that made it easy for the Republic to track her down when a new breed of Sith began attacking their borders and killing Jedi at a frightening rate, including killing everything on the miraluka world of Katarr.

Qatya resented being brought back into galactic affairs, briefly, but the events on Peragus - an entire station of miners killed just to get at her - and her interactions on Telos, especially meeting Bao-Dur again, reminded her of the duty she'd had when she was younger, and though she'd only ever spent a few months as a knight before the Wars began and she went off to fight in them, Qatya put everything she could into becoming the kind of Jedi the Code and her padawanship had taught her to be, rather than the one she'd seen emulated too often by those in power. she stopped Sion, Nihilus, and Kreia, saved Telos, and brought Atris back to herself, and after everything, she returned to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and established herself as Grand Master of the Order, rebuilding it from the ground up.

she lived a long life, trained several padawans and had a couple children with Atris, and did not get fridged by Drew Karpyshyn on Dromund Kaas. there's a rumor that she left behind a Force ghost, but no one can quite report ever meeting it.

[azems-familiar]

Character Masterlist

so this is an updated version of my last oc masterlist post; it's going to be a work in progress with links being updated as i create bios and whatnot. the end goal is it's going to have all three of my swtor canons and my kotor canon listed here, each character will have a small blurb, and i'll link a bio about each character that has images and a little more in depth description of them and their plot!

under a readmore because it's going to be long.

EDIT: decided to add my mass effect and dragon age blorbos as well, though the dragon age ones are going to be a massive WIP until i finish some playthroughs.

SWTOR/KOTOR

how does a man change the universe?

(kotor fics, solo, connects to swtor canon "like a moth to you, sunlight")

Revan Adarii: a mostly-light-side, incredibly powerful young Jedi with an unprecedented gift for psychometry and a skill with strategy and tactics not often seen, Revan drags herself back to a difficult and painful redemption after falling hard during the Mandalorian Wars and briefly having her memories stripped from her. After the destruction of the Star Forge, she slipped off and started a family with Bastila Shan and Alek, only to vanish into the Unknown Regions for a second time four years later, leaving behind her partners and two children.

Qatya Petheir: young and barely knighted at the start of the Mandalorian Wars, Qatya's gift for strategy and her tireless determination and commitment vaulted her into the position of Revan's third-in-command. after ten years of exile, punishment for activating the Mass Shadow Generator, she returned to the galaxy at large to defeat another Sith threat, finally settling in and rebuilding the Jedi Order as its Grand Master.

canon: start a war

(combined canon with @ipreferfiction)

Lia Vhoss: Lia is a nautolan Jedi knight who served as Satele Shan's padawan during her teenage years. she's one half of a dyad in the Force with her best friend, J'lima Akarr. current Eternal Commander of the Alliance.

Vreila Lanar: Vreila is a miraluka Jedi master and was Syo Bakarn's padawan. a master on the Jedi High Council, she serves as the Republic's and Jedi Order's liaison with the Eternal Alliance and the Master of the Odessen Jedi Enclave.

Kal'vaela Corrin: a cathar soldier who was the youngest and last member of Havoc Squad before it defected to the Empire, Kal is responsible for several of the Republic's top military and intelligence forces defecting and is the CO of Imperial SpecOps unit Blackout Squad.

Vyl Kivan: Vyl is a former twi'lek slave who was freed and sent to Korriban to be trained as a Sith. he had a brief career as Baras' tool, and then as Vitiate's Wrath, before defecting to the Jedi after being pushed to invade Tython. he currently serves as a Jedi master in the Odessen enclave.

Avaanla Ki: known as Darth Aedis, Avaanla is a togruta former pleasure slave, Darth Thanaton's apprentice, the former Dark Councilor for the Sphere of Mysteries, and now serves as one of two co-empresses of the Sith Empire. she also remains the Master of the Revanite cult, though it has much less galactic presence than it used to.

Araala Ki: Araala is a former Jedi knight who fell and turned to the Sith on Corellia. she's the direct apprentice of Darth Nox, the other co-empress of the Sith Empire.

Averr'iis'aloh: known titles for the chiss spy Riisa include Cipher Eight, Legate, and Keeper of Imperial/Sith Intelligence. she currently serves under Theron Shan, Alliance spymaster.

Sa'ziri: Sa'ziri is a twi'lek ex-slave recruited by Darth Arkous into both the Sith and the Revanites. she's a part of the small Sith Academy on Odessen, mostly because she has nowhere else to go.

canon: like a moth to you, sunlight

(shared canon with @sith-shenanigans)

Arielle Tanith: a togruta Jedi knight with the rare power of battle meditation, Arielle spends several years as the Jedi Battlemaster before being captured by Zakuul. she is one of two co-commanders of the Eternal Alliance, leads the Eternal Fleet, and maintains peace in a galaxy unused to anything but war.

Chril'lith'anasin: formerly the Barsen'thor of the Jedi Order, Illitha is a chiss ex-Jedi who walked the tightrope between Jedi and Sith for several years before eventually establishing themself as a Republic-aligned Sith. they are the Rift Alliance's liaison with the Eternal Alliance prior to the two becoming one entity, and often liaise with the Republic on the Eternal Commanders' behalf.

Ktis Kressh: current Empress of the Sith Empire, Ktis is a pureblood Sith and the heir to the disgraced but ancient Kressh bloodline. former pirate captain and occasionally Republic privateer. even-more-former titled apprentice to Darth Thanaton. also a Child of the Emperor.

Callien Ordo: daughter of Jekiah Ordo, champion of the Great Hunt, Callien is clanborn human and spends several years collecting bounties and working with pirates and smugglers. after Zakuul invades and her father is killed, she's drawn back to Mandalore the Avenger's side to become her second in command and frequent liaison with the Eternal Alliance.

Chril'lam'inar: the twin sister of Illitha, Illami is also known as Darth K'imsi, former Councilor for the Sphere of Imperial Intelligence and double agent of the Republic. she now serves the Eternal Alliance's intelligence network.

Niveha Veshari / Niwûihû Wûshaari: Niveha is a pureblood Sith who spends several years serving as Darth Arkous' apprentice before being betrayed and left for dead. she's now a Jedi knight, though she still struggles with the cultural disconnect she feels.

Sozik Veshari: a Sith Lord who formerly served under Darth Serevin, Sozik is a former member of the sphere of Expansion and Diplomacy who served as a diplomat on Voss for several years during the Cold War. after his daughter was betrayed and fled to the Jedi, he left the Empire behind to follow her, eventually finding his way to the Alliance.

canon: hold the hand of the god-child

(shared canon with @ipreferfiction)

Inrokini'kat'rath: Ikatra is a chiss ex-Jedi knight and the current Eternal Commander of the Eternal Alliance. though she once was considered one of the greatest Jedi of her time, she now considers herself a reluctant Sith and is officially affiliated with neither Order.

Aalira Dhey: sister to Mirjal, Aalira is a togruta Cinnagar native and member of the Krath. she's a runaway Jedi padawan and was considered king of the underworld for several years. serves as Vaylin's High Justice on Zakuul.

Vasmi na'Dreshdae: Vasmi is the pureblood Sith former Emperor's Wrath. she knelt to Neyri during the Sith Civil War and now serves as the Wrath of the Sith, Neyri's non-sphere-affiliated right hand.

Akada Szorn: a Ziosti miraluka, Akada is known as Cipher Nine in the Empire and Legate in the Republic. she served under Darth Marr for several years after the dissolution of Imperial Intelligence before fleeing the Empire and becoming an information broker on Zakuul. she serves the Eternal Alliance.

Neyri Qel-Droma: biologically human but culturally Sith, Neyri is the descendant of Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma and is the Jen'ari of the Sith Empire, following a bloody civil war.

canon: the righteous hand of god, the devil you forgot

(shared canon with @ipreferfiction and @sith-shenanigans)

Iaris Kuro: a mirialan man in his early 50s, Iaris is a smuggler of some renown. along with his pirate crew - most of whom he recruited on Rishi, all of them known for their morality, a somewhat rare feature in pirates - he runs supplies for the Jedi Order, maintaining supply lines between Tython and Ossus.

Yatali Kuro: known as Darth Nox in the Empire, head of the sphere of Ancient Knowledge, Yatali is the youngest-ever Dark Councilor in recorded Imperial history. though her past as a Cartel slave and her meteoric rise to power is well-known, her relation to the former Emperor's Wrath and current Alliance Commander is kept quiet.

Qyâsik Dzwokai: Qyasik is the pureblood Sith daughter and heir of Darth Marr. exiled by an Imperial decree the Dark Council couldn't override, she snuck her way back into Sith society as a bounty hunter before becoming the new Empress' political advisor.

canon: this is the road to ruin

Kehree Adull:

Vonyra Dozai:

Zakri Tave: Zakri is a self-admitted heretic Sith Pureblood who, along with zir entire family, was enslaved when zie was a child for that crime. after getting out of slavery and into Sith training due to zir strength in the Force, zie proves zir heresy correct by first taking a seat on the Dark Council, and then becoming the new Emperor.

Kolasei Niket: Kolasei is a cathar bounty hunter who just wanted to prove themself and find a way to survive. instead, when they win the Great Hunt, they find themself forced into joining the culture that genocided their people three centuries ago.

a few final notes: start a war follows the swtor game plots fairly closely in a lot of ways. there's a lot of minor canon divergences, and some characters play different roles than they do in canon, as well as the occasional swapping around of an expansion in the timeline, but it's fairly canon-accurate.

sunlight is fairly canon-compliant through the early expansions and the Zakuul arcs, in terms of broad arcs, but from onslaught and on is heavily canon-divergent, and post-class stories it has quire a few moderate canon divergences.

god-child's canon starts out with an entirely different worldstate in which the Republic fully didn't exist in the majority of the galaxy for a solid fifty years around the kotor era, and that echoes forward into swtor in multiple ways. the biggest story arcs - the class stories, zakuul - remain the same, but everything else is heavily canon divergent, although most of the canon expansions exist in some form or another.

MASS EFFECT

solo mass effect content

Lyrida Shepard: a fully paragon colonist/sole survivor who romances Kaidan, brokers peace between the geth and the quarians, and destroys the Reapers without losing the geth. she survives and builds a family on the Citadel.

unnamed verse shared with @ipreferfiction

Mikka Shepard: the very renegade younger sister of paragon Taryn Shepard, Mikka is earthborn/ruthless and is the Spectre out of the two of them, though she's not the one to sacrifice herself on the Citadel at the end. she romances Javik and is a full biotic.

DRAGON AGE

Desri Surana: a half-elven mage raised in the Denerim alienage before she was discovered to be an apostate and sent to the Circle. Duncan's daughter, though she doesn't know this. probably going to romance a hardened Leliana.

Vivian Hawke: a mostly blue, slightly red mage who romances Anders and campaigns heavily for mage rights both within and without Kirkwall. she supports Anders' decision to destroy the Kirkwall chantry and remains with him after it. her brother Carver is a templar.

Vythral'a Lavellan: First of her clan before she was sent to spy on the conclave, Vythral'a is a very unwilling Herald and a slightly-more-willing Inquisitor, determined to defeat Corypheus and protect her clan. very much loves her people and her culture and would do anything for them. her curiosity and love of unique magic endeared her to Solas, and she falls into a romance with him.

[azems-familiar]

So I discovered this absolutely amazing picrew and decided to mess around with making versions of my kotor trio in it!

A baby Mandalorian wars era Revan

A pair of Sith Revan's, I couldn't decide which I liked better

A kotor Revan, probably on Korriban, so she's definitely not Shala anymore!

The single most accurate Qatya I've ever been able to make in anything before, post-Malachor

And, as a bonus:

Design for the version of Tarre Vizsla I'm developing!

[azems-familiar]

sigh. downsides of starting another kotor 2 playthrough: Qatya now wants a novelization. why.

[azems-familiar]

MY BELOVED I LOVE HER SO MUCH SHE LOOKS SO GOOD AAAAAAAAA

:pleading: could you perhaps,,,, sketch a Qatya,,,, if the inspiration strikes?

Oh the inspiration struck...

(I hope I did her justice!)

[azems-familiar]

WIP Whenever

i was tagged by @sleepswithvillains, thank you lovely for the tag!! i don't have a particularly good section of my current chapter of my Sith Years kotor fic ready (i need to work on that again, but i've just been stuck on it... oops), and while the HP AU chapter is coming along it's getting close to done and i don't want to spoil things, so.... have a snippet of kotor 2 things i was writing after playing through the game again!

“Hello, general.” The voice is soft, lightly accented, and Qatya groans and rolls onto her side, keeping her eyes closed against the pounding in her head, like something has it in a vice grip and is trying to split it in half. Grass tickles her cheek and the hand on her shoulder is a familiar weight, steady and solid. “You need to get up.”

Get up, general, we have to get out of here- “Lieutenant?” she coughs out, and she’s forcing her eyes open against the glare of the sun and the pain before she can think about it. The smell of smoke, and green grass around her, and Lieutenant Bao-dur kneeling next to her to pull her to her feet, and a bolt of adrenaline snaps lightning-hot down her spine and she lurches to her feet, sucking in a sharp breath (rocks falling around her and Bao-dur’s arm keeping her upright and wedged so tightly under her shoulder it keeps him standing, listing into each other like drunks as they stumble onto the shuddering planet’s surface, grass still green beneath her feet except for where their blood stains it, and she cannot breathe through the screaming, aching, endless pain in her skull as a world tears itself to pieces around her on her orders-), and for a moment all she can see is plains fracturing into planetoids and green turning sickly black and ash choking the air from thousands of ships plummeting like falling stars through the sky. “Where-”

“Easy,” he says, soothingly, and Qatya blinks and blinks again and the headache-blur in her eyes resolves itself into a wrecked shuttle and a winding gulch through a set of cliffsides, and Citadel Station a just-visible shadow on the horizon. “At ease, general, you’re all clear.”

Right. This is Telos, and there’s a collapsible double-bladed vibrosword strapped to her hip instead of a lightsaber, and the Force is no more than a whisper stretching out to her across the bond between her and Kreia, and the scar across her face is ten years healed instead of fresh and bloody and raw. All the same, for a moment she can taste the dust of Malachor V on her lips (like an echo, or a promise - and she’s known for a decade she would make all her choices the same if she made them again, but Force, that doesn’t mean she isn’t terrified that going back to war again won’t lead her back to the end of it all once more), and the shuttle’s whining engines sound all-too-much like broken screams in her ears, enough to make her flinch if she lets herself. (She doesn’t.)

“I suppose I don’t have to ask if you remember me,” Bao-dur says, and Qatya tears her eyes away from the planet around them to focus on his face, the familiar warm half-smile that twists the lines of his tattoos, tan skin more weathered than she recalls and horns gone a little sharper, a little less neat and military-precise. “It’s good to see you again.”

It’s been a decade since she saw the iridonian zabrak last; he’d still been in the Vengeance’s medbay when she took a shuttle down to Coruscant for the last time, and she’d trashed her military comm and gotten a new one, keeping only her old personal Jedi frequency attached to a commlink left at the bottom of her tote bag, in case of emergencies. (The only time it’d ever gone off had been something like a year, a year and some months after her exile, a desperate message sent out to the entire Order recalling them to their enclaves and the Temple itself in preparation to fight a war none of them had believed they’d need to face. She’d watched the transmission once, twice, a third time, eyes flickering nearly-hungrily over the familiar faces of the High Council - Kavar stiff and serious and quietly burning, Atris stern and uncompromising but with the faintest touch of uncertainty around her eyes - and then she’d deleted it and shoved the comm away, and packed her bags and made for the deepest part of the Outer Rim, where no one, not even the Jedi, not even Revan, could ever find her.) She can’t deny that it is good to hear his voice after so long, even if the sameness of it and the title send her spinning back into the war she’s been trying so hard to escape - he’d been one of the few she’d regretted not staying in contact with, after she left.

“Likewise,” she says, and when she smiles at him, it’s sincere.

tagging @ipreferfiction @darthsassacre @darthmarrsgf @tarrevizsla and anyone else who sees this and wants to do it!

[azems-familiar]

For the ask game - 5 for your Revan, and 11 for your Exile.

Revan - 5. handwritten or typed?

typed, definitely. she learned how to hand write in the Temple as a child and a padawan, of course, but that's not exactly that useful of a skill during a war, and she let it fall to the side during all the fighting. she could probably pick it back up again easily enough, but she doesn't have the patience for sitting around a lot, so her handwriting is extremely messy and hard to read

Qatya - 11. city or countryside?

both, honestly? she grew up on Coruscant, so the city has always been a home and a comfort for her, but she loves the beauty of the countryside. it's not something she spends much time thinking about, because it's easier to disappear into the chaos of big cities, and for quite a while disappearing is all she wants to do. (the exception to "countryside" is jungle, which will never not be Dxun in her head, all the blood and death three)

[azems-familiar]

for the ask thing! I can't pick just one so 1 for beloved Vyl, 3 for girlboss Revan and 8 for my girl Qatya ✨

Vyl - 1. homemade food or take out?

homemade, every time. something something making food for people is a labor of love and shows kindness. he's not a naturally good cook, and it's not like anyone taught him anything about it when he was a slave or on Korriban, but he spends hours in hyperspace on the holonet looking up cooking videos and teaching himself.

Revan - 3. travel back in time or travel to the future?

hmmmm honestly this depends on what era of Revan we're looking at? mando wars and Sith years Revan would travel to the future to see if she won, if everything worked out, if she really did save the galaxy; post-kotor Revan would do neither, but if she had to choose it'd be the past, to stop herself from going after the Star Forge. SoR era Revan is too focused on killing Vitiate, but i think she'd travel to the past if only to kill him quicker with her knowledge of how the future turned out the first time. and Revan during kotfe/kotet/onward - the swtor expansions after the confrontation on Yavin - would want to travel back to the past, to the few years after kotor but before she and Alek went after Vitiate again, just to have a little more time with the people she loves, who are now all ghosts. man that's depressing isn't it!

Qatya - 8. happy endings or cliffhangers?

this is another one that changes over time. before the war, cliffhangers for sure - she liked the suspense, the intrigue. she was a young teenager, and then a young adult, and she liked the drama of it. then she went to war. then she spent three years breaking herself to pieces for a chance at victory, only to be completely shattered by that victory when it came, and after that- happy endings, absolutely. she wanted the characters, at least, to get everything she didn't, to get the things she's half-convinced aren't real in this galaxy. over a decade later, when she and Atris and her crew are rebuilding the Jedi, she may know that happy endings are possible, even for her, but she still prefers them. she's had her fill of fear and uncertainty.

[azems-familiar]

i don't think i can explain how aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa i am over this, like. this is Qatya after Malachor but before kotor 2 itself and i am SCREAMING at how perfectly the vibes were captured, like. look at her! the green being the same shade as Malachor and the scar across her face and the way she's just sort of. clinging to herself-

not to mention the KREIA QUOTES in the background like, holy shit, the ones you used are perfect and i'm just very aaaaa in general

I drew @revanchxst​​‘s Jedi Exile Qatya Petheir, because I had art block and I needed to power through it. ID under readmore.

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