Baylan Skoll was never chosen to be a padawan, in this essay I will...
(this is only going to look familiar to a handful of you)
Warning, long post below with excerpts + notes about "The Jedi Path" by Daniel Wallace
"Everybody thinks they know what a Jedi is-that we all serve in the Army of the Light and fight the Sith Lords, or that we're all lightsaber battlemasters and starfighter aces. It just isn't so. Jedi can serve the Republic in other ways too. The Jedi Service Corps is an honorable alternative for any graduating Initiate, and he or she should be proud to serve among its ranks. When most initiates hit early adolescence, they seek to pair up with Masters to begin their Padawanship apprenticeships. If you are not selected, then what? You can try again the following season, but eventually, the Temple Instructors may tell you that you've run out of chances-and then the Reassignment Council steps in. So I'm thinking there was just something Baylan couldn't get; Maybe even the connection to a Jedi Master, he just didn't seem like the kind of Jedi that should have been on the battlefront, he was more of a homebody Jedi, like Yoda, or even Jocasta Nu. Maybe, after failing so often, the Reassignment Council steps in, and I see him joining the Educational branch, staying at the temple to help teach and to help in the archives, one of these devouts of the pillar of knowledge. A Note in the Book From Palpatine: "I imprisoned the surviving Jedi Service Corps Members on Byss. Even the strongest were easy to turn to the dark side." Maybe Baylan was one of these survivors, and while it's clear he didn't go full dark, what did he have to do to survive? Knowing that the younglings he'd so caringly guided were lost to the Force, that the world he'd devoted himself to studying and understanding was gone, and that this new world was just dark, and it was an 'adapt or die' situation The Jedi Path section about the EduCorps: The Education Corps, or EduCorps, consists of Scholars, teachers, and archivists. All Jedi are expected to be teachers to some degree, but the EduCorps goes far beyond that. They work under the supervision of the Temple's Chief Librarian and spend most of their days cataloging and translating. So my thoughts here are, as an archivist who spends his days combing through Jedi Holocrons, he would hear about the Mother, or Abeloth, would read about these Mortis Gods and have an intimate understanding. And when the Jedi were killed, he could recall these stories, he was the last one alive who'd ever heard them from the holocrons, after all. He would be able to remember the powers these holocrons detailed the gods as having, would trust that if anyone could save their history, it would be them, but only the Mother sounds powerful enough to stop the Empire. Finding Shin was a mistake. He was no Master, after all. He'd been granted the rank of General in the republic like all the others, yet he didn't command an army, he worked in libraries and traveled to conquered/liberated worlds to read their texts and to enter their stories into the history of the republic. He goes to a planet in the expansion zone, and he meets a child, there are so few left in this world, no one for him to share his stories with, that when she displays force sensitivity, he takes her, just as the Jedi had done to younglings all those years ago. And he trains her, he gives her a Padawan's braid and he calls her Initiate, and when it's time for her Initiate Trials, he is happy to accept her as his Padawan, like no one had ever done for him. And Shin is so attentive and an amazing student, just like the younglings in the temple, but he cannot burden her with the knowledge of Abeloth. Does not want to ruin the perception he knew she was creating of the Jedi, but he also keeps her training limited, 'The old ways led them to ruin so we will create our own,' 'yes,master' etc etc
