03 Tuba's Lightsaber Story

Written by: Tuba and posted on: May 1, 2013

“Revenge.”  That single word disturbed the stillness of the sprawling cemetery.  Jedi Hunter Pel “Tuba” Morba looked up and surveyed the graves and memorials to those who fell during the attack on Aurora Prime.  Simple anonymous grave markers, ornate crypts and towering obelisks remembered the dead in the scenic paths of the Aurora Memorial Cemetery.  The Sith reflected on how this tranquil site was transformed from bustling town, to charnel inferno, to a simple yet elegant resting place, now filled with trees and grasses.  A light breeze gently waved through his black cloak and caressed the surrounding foliage.

Tuba knelt at a modest granite headstone, memorializing his wife and two small daughters, who fell on that infamous day, seared into oblivion in the first few minutes of the turbolaser barrage.  Valna was the love of his life, and making a life with her and subsequently with their children made Tuba renounce his anger years before and give up the ways of the Sith.

“You wouldn’t approve of this,” Tuba mused bitterly, “In life you quenched my anger, but no more, and your killers still roam free.  At last we have a target to strike.  At last we will avenge you.  With a final test, I can take my place at the vanguard of those who will strike back at your murderers.”  He touched the gravestone and murmured “Valna.  Tessa.  Jiloy.  Goodbye.”

Tuba rose and walked directly north from the grave, passing other mourners, but giving them a wide berth.  ‘This next step I must accomplish alone,’ he thought.  The bright sun shown down and warmed the verdant landscape.  ‘It was a day like this one, so brilliant and alive, when the sky rained fiery death; when the Force revealed my true purpose’.

After a few kilometers, the carefully tended memorial grounds gave way to the blackened outlying areas, still untouched by the cemetery’s reclamation.  As his anger simmered, he considered his actions that brought him here.  Some might consider him reckless or foppish given some of his past antics, but beneath it all, lay the vast reservoir of rage few had witnessed. 

Tuba continued directly to a large crater, indistinct from several more surrounding it, except in its significance to him.  He mantled the edge and slid down the 30 meter slope to the crater’s bottom, stopping at the wreckage of a what was once a home.  “Here,” he announced to no one.  “Here you were slain.  Here I was reborn.  Here I will complete my training.”

Tuba removed his cloak, revealing a small backpack, from which he produced several components, removing them individually and laying each reverently upon the cloak.  A handle, lens, emitter, power cell, and other parts were placed in a spiral pattern.  Finally the crystals emerged, two Corusca gems obtained in a Validus raid, and a single Qixoni that once belonged to Valna Morba.

Tuba knelt in a ready stance and marshaled his anger.  The components levitated one meter, but maintained their spiral pattern.  Motionless, Tuba recalled the instant of his family’s death, how their passing hammered through his Force senses dulled by years of disuse, igniting rage from the kindling of love and happiness.  The components swirled in their spiral formation, ever faster as the Sith’s hatred built.  “I wanted to wrench their ships from the sky!”  He screamed.  Other syllables followed but were too primal to be coherent as anything but animal rage.  The spinning components blurred into a flashing contracting disc, their speed threatening to ignite the very air.

The disc contracted further as components joined in the lethal assembly.  Rage contorted Tuba’s features as he focused like never before, pouring concentration into this centrifuge of hate, expelling all impurity and weakness, leaving only perfect dark precision.  The Sith became a lens for the power of the Dark Side as the Force energy crescendo peaked in the final connections. 

The now-small disc slowed and resolved itself into a single 30 centimeter cylinder as Tuba swayed with the dissipating energy.  He rose and reached for the lightsaber, which smacked solidly into his right hand.  Tuba took a moment to admire the craftsmanship of the weapon, the red-gold hilt adorned with Sith calligraphy copied exactingly from an ancient Krath tome.  With the merest effort, he envisioned the internal switch and pressed it with the Force.  Immediately the blood-red blade sprang to life, shimmering with golden arcs, signifying not only the Sith order, but his quest for vengeance.

“Quaestor Montte will appreciate the color scheme,” Tuba observed with a thin smile.  He strode purposefully out of the crater, deactivating the blade and placing it on his belt.  The cloak and backpack were left behind, as Tuba departed the last vestiges of the life that was, to realize his true calling.

After leaving the crater, Tuba activated a commlink.  “Master,” he spoke, “It is done”.