Zayne doesn't get his memories back until the very end of his loop meaning he has to sit down and recontextualize the entire last year of his life because What Even Was That
(on the other hand, these sort of catastrophically weird events seem to happen to zayne at least once a week, so at least he's somewhat primed to deal with it? like, the timeloop can't be *that* much worse than the Demagol reveal, right? or Haazen and Lucien's eleventh-hour redemption?)
sometimes Revan chooses to play the loop out normally until a certain point, and sometimes they go full throttle from day one, meaning every so often Ferroh gets to watch Revan walk up to ten-year-old Initiate Alek and decapitate him in the training hall, or take Padawan Alek out for a mission and return alone and bloody, or stab Knight Alek at their side mid-battle with no warning, or finally slay Mandalore and then turn around and fire on Malak's ship.
on one occasion Revan wakes up and goes on a rampage through the Dantooine Enclave, anakin-style, killing everyone who Fell in the original timeline. a lot of them were still kids at that point, but they're still future sith, right? ...right? the only thing that stops Revan from killing them all again in the next timeline is the realization that it's far too close to what the covenant did with the Rogue Moon prophecy. they call up Lucien immediately to scope out if he's actually been in a timeloop this entire time (he's not), because what if he was? what if those padawans really *were* future sith? Revan never found out what happened to Zayne in the original timeline. what if he was a sith? what if he was *Nihilus*?
sometimes Malak survives, and then he and Ferroh get to watch Revan invade twelve planets and nuke two others in the span of three days, or ditch the entire war and make a beeline for mystery coordinates in the middle of Wild Space, or drop off the map entirely and turn up eight years later with an army of crazed cultists.
sometimes Revan tells them about the loop- and Malak and Ferroh who've spent the past year following Revan's visions halfway across the galaxy believe them, because why not?- and sometimes they don't. and when they don't know about the loop, they don't even have the luxury of knowing the original Revan like Meetra and later Zayne do- they just think Revan's completely insane. so in some loops they leave the crusade. Ferroh leaves to go be a hermit hiding from Revan's day one sith empire. Malak joins up with Zayne's crew just to escape Revan's sudden madness, because he can only handle so many one-sided conversations in which Revan seems to be talking to an entirely different version of him.
Meetra wakes up and immediately checks Revan's holopedia page because *what did they do this time*. it's the worst day of her life but it's different every time as the result of whatever Revan did, which means it's the worst in a uniquely horrible way *every single time*.
Zayne wakes up on the last day of his loop and realizes exactly what happened, and given how much the padawan massacre affected him, his survivor's guilt for what he could have done if only he knew about the loop hits even worse. and the next day, even if he survives, his memories fade again, and he's just left with the knowledge that he should have stopped *something* but he doesn't know what that something is, just that it's the reason why the galaxy's so messed up. and he's left like that for the rest of his life.
yesss they're all having a uniquely Different horrible timeloop experience. Revan's loops are usually around 25 years, and they're stuck watching themself fail for centuries upon centuries. Meetra's getting slammed with back-to-back Malachors for weeks on end. Zayne gets the galaxy's worst case of survivor's guilt dropped on his head the moment things are finally looking up for the crew.
Meetra wakes up one day and the holopedia entry is empty. nobody's even heard of a Revan. she searches back years and finds an article, dated eight years before the war, of the tragic suicide of a young Jedi on Dantooine. she wakes up the next day to a call from Chancellor Revan demanding that the exogorth fleet be sent to destroy a mystery planet called Nathema. she wakes up the next day and watches Revan kill Mandalore and then themself. she wakes up the next day and Revan's breaking down the door demanding to ramp up the superweapon production immediately. she wakes up the next day and Mandalore Rohlan is calling to say he's captured Captain Malak and the rebel fleet, and can she let Revan know once they get back with the droid army? she wakes up the next day and the Sith Covenant is firing on her fleet, and also Admiral Davik Kang would like to know if he's supposed to nuke Coruscant before or after Mandalore is dead. she wakes up again and again getting dropped in the middle of a rapid-fire AU parade. and she doesn't even have enough time before her memories fade to figure out how Revan even managed to do it this time.
not only is Revan getting mindwiped, they're pretty much forcing themself to get mindwiped every single time! they're preparing for it, and stashing instructions to soften the worst of the disorientation, but they're also spending fifteen years with the mindwipe hanging over their head. after the first day, they don't even remember *why* they need to get mindwiped, just that they *do*! and after the revan reveal, they're immediately hit with the realization that technically the Council performed the mindwipe, but *they're* the one who forced events to happen just right for the mindwipe to happen. that not only are they Darth Revan, and Revan of the thirty-some other timeloops, and that the Council mindwiped them, but that ultimately *they did this to themself*.
why not both? lets say Revan tried the politician thing a few times- the first time, Supreme Commander Malak stayed with the order and died on Malachor. another time, they left before they even met him, and Dorjander Kace became the Jedi face of the war; Battlemaster Alek was appointed to the Dantooine Council to train a mindwiped Revan after Zhar Lestin died in the war. and another time, they left at the last minute and Malak stuck with them, and the political side of the war was engineered by Chancellor Revan, Vice Chair Alek, and "definitely just a regular protocol droid please do not inquire about assassination protocols" HK
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2087
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