Chana

Chanera Thorn was a Force sensitive. She isn't anymore.

It is said that the birth of a virgance in the Force causes tempests that ripple through the galaxy. It is said that those unlucky Force sensitives born as one of those tempests pass through come up differently. That their way in the force is different. That they themselves are Different. Chanera Ruai Thorn certainly is that. Force sensitive from a young age, she entered into Jedi training in the waning days of the Old Republic, under master Shanthius Torr. Despite both their best intentions, it did not go well.

Chana's perception of the Force was forever altered by the passage of the Virgance. She does not see the Force as an ocean of power with a light side and a dark side. For her the Force was always a maelstrom, a swirling, chaotic storm, where light and dark were often entirely mingled, where discipline and emotion could, when things went well, add to each other. When things did not go well, however, the chaos could prove impossible for Chanera Thorn to control.

Chanera proved completely incapable of learning certain basic Jedi skills, such as the famous Jedi Mind Trick. Telekinesis was easy enough. Lifting a swoop was hardly a challenge. Putting it back down without crushing it, by contrast, was always touch and go. And so on. Chana learned Shii-Cho well enough, and was just starting to make serious inroads into Djem So and play around with her own style elements when everything fell apart.

As the Old Republic began to unwind during the clone wars, even partly trained, semi-competent padawans like Chana were pressed into service. After one particularly botched mission left her master wounded, Torr resolved to take Chana back to Coriscant and have her chloistered permanently, a failure of his teaching and her ability to learn. Unfortunately, he died of his injuries while the ship was in hyperspace.

Torr was dead. She had loved him, and he was gone. And there was nothing to be done for it. Even if he had lived, it was clear their relationship had reached its end. Broken hearted, Chana searched her feelings for the right thing to do. Should she obey her master's final wish, even though it would cost her freedom and possibly her life in those tense days, or should she escape? Find her own way? Do something worthwhile with the skills she did have? She knew this: she had no desire to be cloistered. She was just entering the flower of young adulthood, when, had things gone better, she might have tested and been knighted and given the freedom she so desperately craved to go do things. Go make a difference. To go have relationships that were neither particularly deep nor emotional, and thus not proscribed by Jedi tradition. 19 is a frisky age. She stood from her meditation, took her master's lightsaber from his side, and packed her things.

Chana was unable to unlock the ship's navigation computer from Coruscant, so she climbed into an escape pod and bailed out. One of those times in Chana's life where a little forethought, like checking her current location a little more carefully, might have saved Chana some trouble. The navacomputer said they were only 22 light years from Tatooine. Maybe an hour in hyperspace, if that. If only the escape pod had hyperdrive. The escape pod dutifully set course for Tatooine, and informed Chana that flight time would exceed consumables by approximately 40 years. It recommended the carbon freeze option, and would try to maintain power long enough to get her there. While occasionally impulsive, Chana was in no way stupid, and she took the machine's advice. For its part, the escape pod turned off all non-essential systems, confining its power usage to inertial navigation and hazard avoidance. The beacon by which anyone might find the pod in space didn't seem essential. Chana'd told the machine where to go, after all.

Four decades passed. The Old Republic fell. The Jedi were hunted to near extinction, and knowledge of the Force was all but lost. The galaxy convulsed in civil war. The last of the old Jedi order passed within a few lightyears of her pod time and again, unaware. Death Stars were built, The Rebellion blew them up. The Empire fell and was reborn. All these things happened while Chanera Thorn was in carbon sleep

In due time, the pod's sensors detected that it was approaching its long-awaited destination. Tatooine loomed in its sensors, and through the window to the airless pod and its frozen occupant. The pod did what it could to get Chana down safely. It landed at least as well as R2-D2's famous headlong crash into the Dune Sea. Well enough. With the very last of its reserve energy, the faithful machine fired up the defrosting systems, hoping against hope that they were still in good enough condition to revive Chana, and that she might have somehow survived the long, cold sleep. The pod would never know the answer. Its energy all but depleted, it shut its own brain down that the carbon freeze unit might have enough energy to revive Chanera.

And it worked. Chanera was alive. Unlike many, she didn't have the usual side effect of carbonite induced blindness. What happened to her was much worse.

Chana wasn't the same when she emerged from carbon freeze though. The decades frozen, perhaps coupled with the turmoil in the Force of those years - the entire lifespan of the Virgance and then some - had conspired to take her gift in the Force away.

Chanera Thorn was a Force Sensitive.

She isn't anymore.

Adrift in the New Republic era, cut off from the Force, she's begun her new life as a nomad, roaming from planet to planet doing odd jobs and trying to stay out of trouble. She wields a blaster these days, and she's pretty good with it. She has some repair skills. Deep in her bag, under her tools and her extra socks and whatnot lie the only offerings to hope that she has: two broken lightsabers - her own,wrecked by carbon freezing, and her master's, damaged in the fight and by decades in hard vacuum. She carries them in the faint hope that somehow, some day her powers will come back. That one day she'll have the abilities to align new crystals for them both, the one part she can't repair. Until then, this is her life.