book excerpts from the real canon

hi this is a sideblog i made purely out of sad salt sounds. feel free to reblog, i'm just here to give y'all good food

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alright. hey guys. I haven't posted shit in a hot second ( the book is still half read ). but this blog is for enjoyment of the EU. if you start shit in my notes you're catching a block. I don't want to see people shitting on the EU in favor of the sequels and disney-canon.

( I'll finish this into a proper pinned post again when I get the ball rolling again on posting ).

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“With all due respect, I seem to be making very little difference here. It’s like trying to move a beach full of sand one grain at a time. I could be replaced easily by any competent physician.” “And you think that your talents would be better utilized elsewhere.” It was not a question. “Yes, my Master. I do.” Master Unduli smiled. Even in the flickering projection Barriss could see those intensely blue eyes twinkle. “Of course you do. You are young, and your desire to be a shining force for good has blinded you somewhat to things all around you that still need attention. But I sense that you are not done there yet, my impatient Padawan. There are still lessons to be learned. Spirits require healing, too, as much or more than do bodies sometimes. I will contact you when I think it is time for you to leave Drongar.” Master Unduli’s image winked out.

—Medstar II: Jedi Healer, Michael Reaves

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His hands and fingers were cold, and the twitching had not abated. Paresthesia, most likely, she decided. She pinched back an eyelid, saw that the pupil was contracted. His breathing was rapid and shallow-it seemed obvious that Phow Ji had been hit with a potent neurotoxin of some sort-Paraleptin, perhaps, or Titroxinate. The Separatists had been known to use such biochems, and worse. If something was not done quickly, he would die. There was no time to call for an evac, even if there was an available medlifter, which was problematic. But there was another way to treat him. The Force. Without even stopping to reflect on the irony of it, Barriss knelt beside Ji. She pulled the dart out, then rolled him over and put her hands on his chest. It occurred to her that it would be quite easy to just let the paralysis of his central nervous system do the job that, only a few minutes before, she had been all too willing to take on herself. But that temptation had passed. She was a Jedi healer. Here before her was a life in need of healing. There was no need to make it any more complicated than that. Barriss Offee closed her eyes and opened her heart and mind to the power of the Force.

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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Barriss rose to her feet-just how, Jos could not have said. She seemed to levitate-one moment she was sprawled on the ground, and the next she stood upright. Impressive as that was, however, it was nothing compared to her next action. As Jos watched in astonishment, the Padawan leapt across the bota field, covering a distance of at least ten meters in a single bound. As she arced through the air toward the droid, Jos saw another flash of light. At first he thought the droid had fired again, but then he realized the glow came from Barriss’s hand. She had drawn her lightsaber. Jos had seen images and holos of the Jedi weapon in use, but he had never before seen one in real life. Barriss’s energy blade was an azure streak about a meter in length. It made a sound like a nest of angry wing-stingers, and, even over the noisome stenches borne on the breeze from the nearby swamp, he could smell the acrid scent of ozone it produced. He watched, openmouthed, as Barriss landed next to the battle droid. Before it could fire again, she struck a single blow with the energy weapon that sheared halfway through the droid’s torso. Sparks erupted, and the droid collapsed.

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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["]Is the life of some-one a hundred parsecs from here more valuable than one in the next room? Can I stand by and let people die without doing everything in my power to save them?" "You didn’t start this war, Zan. You’re not responsible for everybody who gets hurt in it." "Oh, that’s good. This from the guy who once kicked a hole in a wall when he lost a patient to Draknahr Syndrome-something that all of Coruscant Med and a room full of Jedi and Silents couldn’t treat." At a total loss for words, Jos looked at his friend, and saw nothing in front of him but a doctor who took his job as seriously as he himself did.

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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For a moment he just stood there, unable to think of anything to say-which, for him, was a rarity. Finally, he said, "Let me ask you a question." CT-914 continued to shove the bags into the bin, which ground and hummed as it ate them. "How did you feel about the death of CT-Nine-one-five?" Nine-one-four pushed the last of the bags into the hopper. He looked at Jos. "The loss of a trained soldier is... regrettable." Both his speech and bearing were stiff. Jos knew CT-914 didn’t want to pursue this, but he forged ahead anyway. He had to know. "No. I’m not talking about his value to the Republic. I’m asking you how it made you feel. You, personally." CT-914 stood there for what seemed like a long time without speaking. "Were I a civilian," he said at last, "delivered naturally and not vat-born, I could tell you it’s none of your business-sir. But since I’m bound to obey my superior officers, then the answer to your question is that I-personally-was pained by Nine-one-five’s death. We’re all of the same flesh and design, all equal in basic abilities, but he was my comrade in arms. I knew him all my life. We fought together, ate to-gether, and shared our off-duty times like brothers. I miss him. I expect I’ll miss him until I die. "Does that answer your question, sir? I have more trash to collect." Jos swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. "Yes, that answers it. Thank you." "Just doing my duty, Doctor. No thanks necessary." CT-914 turned and walked away, and Jos watched him go, unable to move. Inside his mind, the tiny voice he was growing to hate piped up again and said, You ought to know by now not to ask questions you don’t really want answered. No kidding. If they were all like CT-914, then clone troopers were much more mentally complex than Jos had thought. They had feelings, inner lives, maybe even dreams and aspirations that reached beyond the art of war. And that shifted things into a realm Jos didn’t want to think about. Blast.

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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Master Unduli had smiled and said, "The dark side is always at hand, Padawan. It is no farther away than a heartbeat, an eye-blink, side by side with the bright side of the Force, separated by no more than a hair. It waits to snare the unwary, wearing a thousand disguises." Barriss had heard that before, many times, and she believed what her teacher said, but she had never really felt or understood exactly what it meant. She had not been tempted by the dark side, as far as she knew. She said as much, as they moved to a quiet spot where the grasses had been engineered to grow short and soft, like a living carpet. "We’ll do the Salutation here," her Master said. Barriss nodded. She moved to one side a bit to give her Master space.

"To answer your question, let me offer this: every conscious move you make, from the smallest to the largest, requires choice. There is always a branch in the path, and you must decide upon which turning you will tread. Do you recall the testings of your ability to sense a remote while wearing blinders?" "Of course." This was among the most basic of Jedi skills. A remote was a small levitating droid about the size of a goldfruit that could be programmed to zip about and fire mild electric bolts at a student. With a blast helmet on and the blinders down, the only way to know the position of the orb was to use the Force. As a student progressed in the use of his or her lightsaber, blocking the remote’s bolts became a standard exercise. Since you couldn’t use your eyes or ears to track the device, the only way to avoid being shocked was to let the Force guide your hands. Her Master continued: "And were there not instances when your use of the Force was less than perfect and the training bolts got past your lightsabor?" "Far too many of those instances," Barriss said ruefully. She shook her head. "At times, I felt like a needle cushion!" "And did you ever feel during those times like destroying the remote? Reaching out with the Force and crushing it like a wad of scrap flimsi?" As she spoke, Master Unduli began the Salutation to the Force, a combination exercise and meditative posture that started with a body arch upward, followed by a deep squat and leg-extended stretch to the rear.

Barriss copied her Master’s pose. "I confess there were occasions when I had little love for the training device, yes." "And did you have sufficient skill in use of the Force to have destroyed it, had you chosen to do so?" Master Unduli stood and repeated the pose, ending on the other leg. Again, Barriss copied her. "Yes. Easily." "Why didn’t you? If the goal was to protect yourself from being shocked, would that not have been justifiable?" Barriss frowned. "But that was not the goal. The goal was to learn how to attune my lightsaber with the Force so that I could stop the bolts from striking me. The shocks were painful, but without any lasting damage. In a real fight, with a full-charge blaster bolt coming at me, if I could not block that, I might not have the power to stop a shooter fifty or a hundred meters away from pulling the trigger." "Precisely. But did you know that one student in eight does eventually reach out to destroy a remote? That they usually justify it by saying it is more efficient to stop the source of the damaging bolts than to endlessly deflect them? Laser Pose, please." Her Master lay upon the soft grass, rolled up onto her neck and shoulders, and extended her body skyward, her hands on the ground at her sides.

Barriss also assumed the Laser Pose. "I can certainly understand how they might feel that way. And it makes a certain logical sense, especially given the premise in our hand-to-hand combat training that says pure defense is inferior to a combination of defense and offense." "Indeed. Arch Pose." Hands and feet on the ground, Master Unduli pushed upward and formed her body into a high, rounded arch. "I hear a ’but,’" Barriss said as she followed suit. "And I see that yours could be higher from the ground." Barriss smiled and pushed herself into a more acute arch. Her Master continued: "Many of the exercises Jedi in training must learn-and Jedi are always in training, be they Padawan, Knight, or Master-involve determining what the true goal of the exercise is. You will recall the levitation drill and the bakery."

"As if I could forget that one." "To destroy the remote is, in itself, not necessarily a wrong choice. If you have developed sufficient skill to block the training bolts and you arrive at the decision through logic and with a calm mind, then you can justify using the Force to stop the attack at its source. Some of the more gifted students do just that. But if you do it out of anger, or pain, or fear, or any emotion that you have allowed to control you, then you reach for the dark side. If you offer that the end justifies the means without mindful thought to determine that it indeed does, you have succumbed to the insidious energy. If you remember nothing else from this talk, Barriss, remember this: Power wants to be used. It must be kept under constant vigil, else it will seduce and corrupt you. One moment you’re swatting an annoying training toy; the next you’re paralyzing an offending being’s lungs and choking him to death. You do it because you can. It becomes an end in itself. As a Jedi, you live always on this edge. A single misstep, and you can fall to the dark side. It has happened to many, and it is always a tragedy. As with an addictive drug, it’s too easy to say, ’I’ll do it just this once.’ That’s not how it works. The only thing that stands be-tween you and the dark side is your own will and discipline. Give in to your anger or your fear, your jealousy or your hate, and the dark side claims you for its own. If that happens," Master Unduli said, "you will become an enemy to all that the Jedi stand for-and an enemy of all Jedi who hold to the path of right. Rocker Pose, please." Barriss moved to assume the pose. She said, "And have you ever given in to the dark side, Master?" For a few seconds, there was silence. Then: "Yes. In a moment of weakness and pain, I did. It allowed me to survive when I might have perished otherwise, but that one taste was enough for me to realize I could never do it again. There may come a time when you experience this, Barriss. I hope not, but if ever it happens, you must recognize and resist it." "It will feel evil?" Master Unduli paused in her stretch. She regarded Barriss with what seemed to be great sadness in her eyes. "Oh, no. It will feel better than anything you have ever experienced, better than you would have thought anything could feel. It will feel empowering, fulfilling, satisfying. Worst of all, it will feel right. And therein lies the real danger."

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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Barriss said nothing-she did not trust herself to. Her rage enveloped her like the mud. She trembled under the weight of it. She could feel the dark side surging within her, whispering to her of how good it would feel, how easy it would be to let her rage fuel it and send it ravening for her enemy, to seize her lightsaber, leap after him and bisect him with a single downward slash of the singing energy blade... Phow Ji had no idea how close to dying he was just then. Her rage was such that a flicker of a finger would suffice. He’d never know what hit him-and it would even be justice, in a fashion-was he not, after all, a killer? Yes, he was-but Barriss Offee was not. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but she did it-she resisted the dark side. She lost the battle, but won the war. 

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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To use the Force against an opponent when you were in no real danger was wrong. [Barriss] had been taught so all her life. The Force was not something to spend like a token in a sweets shop simply because you could. Neither was it solely a weapon. So what was left? Her own fighting skills. These were not inconsiderable-Jedi were trained in all manner of disciplines, both mental and physical, and the Masters knew there were times when use of the Force was not appropriate. Even without activating her lightsaber, she was someone to be reckoned with.

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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Jos raised an eyebrow. "Maybe it’s just the heat," he said, "but I could swear that durasteel skin of yours is starting to sweat." "Must be a leaky lube node," I-Five replied imperturbably. "I might note, however, that my olfactory sensor is picking up a distinct whiff of fear pheromone with your genetic tag, Captain Vondar." "How’d you get to be so good at cards, I-Five?" Den asked the droid. "My partner taught me," the droid replied. "He could usually walk out of a game with more credits than he went in with. He’s held more idiot’s arrays than an asylum nurse." "Do you consider yourself to be a sentient organic, like a human?" Jos asked abruptly. "Only when I’m particularly depressed," the droid replied. Jos made a wry face. Before he could reply I-Five continued, "Knowing what I do of organics, however, and of humans in particular, I must assume that your question is sincere, Captain Vondar. I can only answer that, due to a cognitive module superior to most droids of my category, as well as the lack of a creativity damper, I am more sentient than most of my colleagues. Does this mean that I qualify as a ’living’ being? I suppose that depends on one’s point of view. But most philosophers take the position that to be able to ask the question is to have already answered it." Den saw a quick glance pass between the captain and the minder, saw the latter smile slightly. Something sub-surface was definitely going on there. "In the twelve years that I have ricocheted around this galaxy like the legendary Roon Comet," I-Five continued, "I have encountered a great many interesting personalities. Some of them have been droids. I still have gaps in my memory that seem to be connected to some kind of trauma occurring not long after my leaving Coruscant. My self-repair systems are processing these gaps, assembling the missing data from interior hologrammics, but my internal logic circuits won’t allow synaptic linkage to proceed with less than seventy-five percent certainty."

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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Barriss was on her way to the medical ward when she passed a trooper standing in the hall outside the main operating theater. He didn’t seem to be doing anything other than simply standing there, staring at a blank wall. To the unaided eye, they all looked alike, but to one who was connected to the Force, this was not the case. She knew this one. He had been her patient. She stopped. "CT-Nine-one-four," she said. He looked at her. "Yes?" She could feel his question roiling in his mind, and she smiled. "You might all look alike, but you aren’t all the same. Your experiences shape you as much as your heritage. The Force can recognize this." He nodded. She regarded him. "You have no problems with your blood pressure," she said, and it was not a question-she knew it was true. "No. I feel fine-physically." "Why, then, are you here?" She felt rather than saw Jos Vondar emerge from the OT behind her, was aware of him listening. "I helped transport another trooper here yesterday. CT-Nine-one-five." "Ah. And how does he fare?" "I don’t know. He’s still in surgery." Jos drifted over. "Nine-one-five? He, ah, didn’t make it." The wave of grief that broke from CT-914 and washed over Barriss was sudden and strong. To look at his face, however, it was hardly apparent that he felt this deep emotional chord. He said, "Unfortunate. He was"-he hesitated, just a heartbeat or two, - "a good soldier. The loss of someone so well trained is... regrettable." Barriss could see that, even without the Force, Jos picked up on something either in CT-914’s tone of voice or his body language, as subtle as both were. He said, "You knew him?" "He was decanted just after me. We trained together, were posted here together, we were part of the same cohort." CT-914 hesitated again. "He... I thought of him as my brother." Jos frowned. "But you’re all brothers, in a sense." "True." The clone trooper straightened. "Thank you for your efforts to save him, Doctor. I’m going back to my unit now." He turned and strode away. Barriss and Jos watched him go. "If I didn’t know better," Jos said, "I’d say that he was upset." "And how is it that you know better? Wouldn’t you feel upset if it had been your brother?" She half expected him to answer with a wisecrack - his standard response under circumstances like these. He didn’t, however. Instead, he frowned. "He’s a clone, Barriss. Those sorts of feelings are bred out of them." "Who told you that? True, they are standardized, trained, and toughened, but they are not mindless automata. They’re made from the same kind of flesh and mind as are you and I, Jos. They bleed when cut, they live and die, and they grieve at the loss of a brother. CT-Nine-one-four is in emotional pain. He covers it well enough, but such things can’t be hidden from the Force." Jos looked as if she had just slapped his face. "But - but-" "The clones are bred for combat, Jos. It’s what they were designed to do, and they accept it without question. Were it not for war, they would not exist. A hard life as a soldier is better than no life at all. But even without the Force, you felt it," she said, her voice gentle. "Stoic as he tried to be, it came out. Nine-one-four grieves. He suffers the loss of his comrade. His brother."

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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Back when Jos had been a fairly fresh student in medical school, he had frequented a Bamasian restaurant that had become all the rage among his peers. The food was cheap but good, and the servings large; the place was within walking distance of the student housing complex, and it was open all day and all night-perfect for students. Bamasian cuisine was varied, spicy, and something of an acquired taste, but Jos liked it. At the end of each meal, the traditional complimentary dessert was a small, sweet, baked bread ring, about the size of a bracelet. Cooked into the treat was a protein-circuit onetime holocaster. When you broke the ring, the ’caster projected a bit of Bamasian wisdom that glimmered and hung in the air for a few seconds before the organic circuitry decayed. The aphorisms were amusing to the medical students, who tended to eat as a pack for the family-style discounts. Often they would all break the bread rings at the same instant, then try to read the homilies before they faded away. Some of them were real howlers: "Avoid dark alleyways in bad neighbor-hoods." Or "Being rich and miserable is better than just being miserable." Or "Beware smiling politicians..." One evening, when Jos was exhausted from a long series of exams and tricky procedures he had mostly fumbled, and feeling overwhelmed by things he had never thought to see, never even considered might be a part of his training, he had cracked his sweetened bread ring open and gotten a message that had seemed personally crafted for him alone: "Minimize expectations to avoid being disappointed." At the time, it had struck him as oddly useful, if somewhat obvious, wisdom. If he didn’t expect any-thing, he wouldn’t be distressed if it didn’t happen. He tried to plug it into his life, and found it helped. Some-times he forgot, of course. Sometimes he expected to be able to save them all. He was a good surgeon; maybe, given the circumstances, even a great surgeon, and he never expected to lose a patient who had even the smallest chance of survival. When it happened, it was always a shock. And always disappointing.

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reeves

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Barriss couldn’t stop herself. She raised her hand, concentrated, and closed her open fingers into a fist. As Ji took another step, time seemed to slow for Barriss. Ji’s left foot came forward, and as it approached his right, his boot twisted inward, no more than a few degrees - just enough to catch the heel of his forward boot. He tripped. A man of lesser skill would have fallen flat on his face upon the wet ground. And, despite her knowledge that it was wrong, Barriss would have enjoyed that sight. But even as he fell, Ji tucked into an ovoid shape, one arm curving, hand turned inward slightly, so that his motion looked like a deliberate action: he dived, rolled on his arm, shoulder, and back, coming up and turning slightly, a neat gymnastic move that left him standing in balance and facing her. "Careful," she said. "The ground is slippery from the heavy dew." He stood there for a moment, glaring. The sense of menace hung heavy in the air, the currents of it swirling about in the Force like a dark whirlwind. But even as angry as he was, he maintained control. He turned away. Once he was gone, Barriss shook her head at her action. What had she been thinking? One did not use the Force for such childish, trivial things. It was wrong to take such petty action, even against a villain such as Phow Ji. Yes, it could have been an appropriate demonstration, designed to teach, to show that the Force was valid, but she knew this had not been the case. It had been a personal response, driven by anger, and she had known better from the beginning. Great power had to be wielded with great care, and taking an obnoxious character down a level because you thought he deserved it was simply not sufficient justification. It was chasing a fire gnat with a turbolaser. Her Master would have been extremely displeased. She was never going to become a Jedi Knight by behaving thusly. Barriss sighed and went back to her stretches. Her road was hard enough already. Why did she keep strewing boulders in her own path?

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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Back in the Temple, she had once listened to Mace Windu tell a group of students that killing somebody was easy-you could do it with a single swipe of your lightsaber. But living with the knowledge that you had killed somebody would change you for-ever. The Jedi Master had been right-it had certainly changed her. Killing was not a thing you did lightly, not if you had any kind of compassion, or even minimally decent moral and ethical codes. Sometimes, to protect the innocent, or one’s own life, justice and survival demanded a Jedi strike with enough power to lay an attacker low. But the fact that it was necessary did not absolve you from seeing the faces in your dreams, or hearing the anguished cries of the fallen late in the silent night. [...] The Force allowed you to be a powerful fighter, but it also leavened your impulse to do violence. When you knew what you could do with your lightsaber, knew how deadly you were, it gave you pause. Because you could do a thing did not mean that you should... She shook her head.

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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The wounded were being brought in so fast that she had to keep moving or be overrun. She had damped down on her connection to the Force as much as she could; extrasensory experience of this much agony at this close range carried a real possibility of synaptic overload. Even closed down as she was, she could still feel the pain, the fear, the horror of it all pounding and scrabbling at her mind. She swallowed dryly and kept moving. There were some here she knew she could heal with the Jedi arts she had learned, but it would take too long. Not even the Force could mitigate the cold and brutal equations of triage. Ahead of her, Tolk continued moving through the maze of dead and dying, followed by her droid, designating who would live and who would almost certainly die. The fact that they were clones, all identical in appearance, in no way lessened the horror; in fact, in a strange way it increased it-at least that was so for Barriss. Seeing the same body wounded and traumatized in a thousand different ways gave the whole scene a surreal aspect, as if it had no beginning and no end, a perpetual loop of pain and death. She knew she had to focus, had to utilize the resources at hand wisely.

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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Barriss Offee had agreed to do a rotation in the ward because her use of the Force was particularly well adapted to this kind of medical treatment. The Force could not in itself close a gaping wound-at least she did not have that kind of control-but it could help a sick person’s weakened immune system overcome at-tacks from pathogens. As she scrubbed down, the Padawan had other things on her mind. That the transport had blown up had not been an accident-this she knew with certainty. Was that sabotage somehow connected to her mission regarding the bota? There was no logical reason to assume so, but she felt that it was. Was that the Force prompting her? Or was it simply intuition, or even mere imagination?

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves

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She stepped closer, hoping that her nervousness would not show. She extended her hands through the field and placed both palms on the clone trooper’s chest. Then she closed her eyes and opened herself to the Force. [...] Barriss felt the palms of her hands growing warm against the trooper’s belly. She didn’t have to visualize the process-she knew that healing energy was pouring from her into him. No-not from her; through her. She was only the vessel, the conduit through which the Force did its work. An unknown time later-it could have been a minute or an hour, as far as she knew-she opened her eyes and lifted her hands. "Wow," Zan murmured behind her. He was looking at the readout panel. She saw that the trooper was stabilizing. Also, the discoloration had vanished; his skin was a healthy color. "You must’ve been top in your class. How’d you do that?" Zan asked, without taking his gaze from the panel. "I did nothing," Barriss replied. "The Force can heal wounds on many occasions." "Well, it sure worked on him." Zan gestured at the panel. "His brain wave pattern’s within normal limits, and most of the secondary trauma seems gone. Pretty impressive, Padawan." The FX-7 guided the gurney out. By the time Zan had finished changing gloves there was another body before him. "Stick around," he said to Barriss. "There’s plenty more where he came from."

—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves