wrennette

i forgot to crosspost this over here :(

not every initiate who attends the gathering has visions that they confront. some just have intense internal dialogue as they psych themselves through the physical hardship of the freezing temperatures, maze-like paths through the crystal caves, and obstacles like slick ice and cave ins.

most jedi won’t talk about what they saw or the conclusions they reached during the gathering, it’s intensely personal. they might talk about it to their master (or another trusted mentor), and eventually their padawan, but that’s pretty much it. the archivists have been trying for years to start an oral history project of jedi recording their crystal quest, but they have very few volunteers (it drives them batty)

as a jedi grows and changes through their life, their lightsaber changes with them. they physically alter the hilt to fit growing hands (or similar appendages) or a shifting fighting style, but the crystal changes too. the crystal grows with them to an extent, and often the jedi will outgrow their first crystal, although not always. some jedi will only have one crystal in their entire life.

no two lightsabers sound alike. no two lightsabers feel alike in the force. some tend to echo the jedi they accompany, harmonizing with their force presence. others - especially when the jedi is in the midst of growth or change - are discordant because the jedi and the crystal don’t always change at the same rate. (this discordance is very different than the feel of a bled crystal forced into subservience to a darksider).

there are fads in lightsaber building - or at least the initiates will try sometimes to echo the aesthetics of a respected older jedi’s lightsaber, or hope for a particular blade colour. usually that doesn’t last long - every lightsaber ends up unique, both in appearance and in the force, although if you looked at a series of lightsabers used by the same jedi, there would likely be similarities. likewise, there are sometimes similarities between a jedi master’s lightsaber and the lightsaber(s) belonging to their padawan(s).

other than ilum, crystals in the temple vault are also sourced from christophsis and jedha with regularity, although kyber can be found on other worlds. some jedi (like mace windu) feel the call of crystals in far off places and go on long pilgrimages to find the crystal that is their best match. generally, the ilum crystal found at the gathering will last through a jedi’s padawanship, and they usually ‘graduate’ to another crystal during the first few years of knighthood. some crystals are reused, often for generations. crystals get picky about who uses them. some are essentially passed through lineages or even bloodlines.

because kyber are semi-sentient, crystals do get ‘fond’ of people other than their main user. often they will become fond of and work well with their jedi’s friends, creche-mates, master, and padawan(s). (obi-wan’s crystal is very fond of commander cody, and obi-wan is pretty sure sometimes that the crystal likes cody better.) a sith or darksider’s crystals hate everyone indeterminately, but healed crystals like rebels-era ahsoka’s will be especially fond of the one who healed them and relieved their suffering.

bled crystals are painful to create and painful to use in a lightsaber. that constant source of pain and suffering can influence the user to perpetrate greater and greater atrocities in a feedback cycle / cycle of abuse that feeds into the dark side of the force. when a sith is forcing a crystal to their will, they have to be very careful not to ‘misplace’ the crystal, as it will try to escape the torture of being bled.

if a jedi is constantly misplacing their lightsaber, they probably really need a good long meditation, because something is wrong and they probably shouldn’t be in possession of a plasma chainsaw at the moment.

when a jedi dies, their hilt is documented by huyang, then disassembled (he keeps a database of every hilt, with listed pros and cons and fighting styles). the crystal goes to the vault, the other components are checked over for wear and tear and then returned to huyang’s stores to be reused. waste not want not. but as a result, lightsabers often carry faint echoes of past users, and balancing those echoes is part of the process of building a lightsaber. psychometric jedi will source newly-milled parts for every lightsaber they build if they’re able; one of the ghosts in your lightsaber getting particularly chatty in the middle of a fight is a thing that happens, and usually when it does the situation is already pear-shaped. some jedi who survive such situations insist that their crystal or the echoes in their hilt showed them their opponent’s weakness, or imbued them with strength, or bolstered their endurance, or, or, or. it’s like the jedi version of the urban legend where hysterical strength makes a mother strong enough to lift a car off their trapped child.

lost lightsabers often find their way back to the temple through what an outsider might call a series of unpredictable and unlikely events. the jedi know this is simply the will of the force. the kyber is semi-sentient after all, and wants to return to a familiar (and safe) place where its will is respected.

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