SO, CADENIS: what was he like before the war? what were his relationships like with the crew? what's his relationship like with ishev, for that matter, and what does ishev think of him? does he leave any other sort of legacy behind that's still around in the swtor era, or possibly even later than that? tell me thiiings
This is two questions, so, the answer comes in two parts!
also behind a cut because LONG
I. Before The War
Cadenis was approachable. He’d roam his assigned ship and get to know the vessel and the people on it, passing through corridors and stopping to talk if he had a moment, making an effort to get to know the temper of the various departments and have a sense of what they did, sitting down at mealtimes and joining in with conversations in break rooms. Whenever he led troops on the ground, he’d make an effort to remember their names and he never, ever sent them in where he feared to go. He was visible, and he was approachable, and he was everything the other Jedi weren’t.
See, a lot of them didn’t make time for the soldiers under their commands, the ones they’d go lead into the thick of the battle. They spent their off-duty time circling in Revan’s orbit, awaiting new orders, or they’d be grouped up together meditating or training or - whatever Jedi did. How many men were assigned to ships led by a Jedi but only saw that Jedi when it was time to get sent into the battlefield? Saw the robed figure as s/he intoned orders and a benediction as they walked onto shuttles to fight and bleed and possibly die, but never caught a trace of them any other time?
Not all crews liked their Jedi, but Cadenis’ always loved him.
And he loved them back. That was the source of his strength, and the source of his pain. Cadenis was a man who made connections easily and naturally, spent a minute talking to someone and felt a rapport, saw them every day and felt a kinship with them. He was a man who always struggled with the non-attachment that was pushed on him by his Masters, questioning their definitions of what counted as attachment, asking questions about if the love and compassion they were supposed to feel for all beings counted as attachments, and if not, when did it cross the line, and what if love for others is what gave you strength…
What he found, when he went to war, was that this form of love cut both ways. His men knew that he cared for them, that he took interest in them, that they would follow him into the fight because he would never ask of them what he would not do himself - and because of this they fought all the harder for him, determined to make their general proud and live up to what he expected. He inspired them to be great. Because of the faith in him they provided (pouring off them in radiant waves in the Force), he found himself becoming greater in the Force, capable of doing so much more with their support behind him. Because he was made greater, because he knew them so well, their losses took an ever-greater toll on him.
When other Jedi - when Revan - lost soldiers and ships, they thought of debark pieces broken and missing. When Cadenis lost soldiers and ships, he ached as though parts of himself were carved away.
(He always put so much of himself into others, and in turn they put some of themselves into him. It did, in fact, eat away at him whenever the men he’d invested himself in died. And in the end, is that what destroyed him at Malachor? That the death throes of a world in the Force struck him badly is no surprise - but was the fatal blow not the deaths of the many thousands of combatants he didn’t know, but the sudden screaming and absence thousand that he did?)
Part II. Cadenis’ Legacy
Cadenis had two biological children of his own. One showed Force sensitivity and was trained in the Order he worked on restoring. One showed none, and chose to return to Alderaan and the ancestral family.
With him, Cadenis entrusted a precious legacy; his lightsaber from the days of the Mandalorian Wars, data pads containing copies of his journals from the War on through the final confrontation with Kreia on Malachor V, and a holocron containing his reflections on war and the toll it took on the soul of a Jedi. All of those held historical value he wished to see preserved but did not want to entrust to the broader Order archives.
The most unusual treatise was one on the nature of attachment. Though there had been several committed couples working on the rebuilding of the Order, Cadenis knew that the attachment doctrine was always in flux, and that sooner or later someone would want to restrict relationships instead. He was firmly convinced that forming attachments is what saved him, and wanted to preserve that knowledge somewhere it would remain, believing even if the Jedi managed to ‘misfile’ his on-the-record statements, that his knowledge would survive and make its way to where it would be needed the most.
Three hundreds years later, a descendent of his line becomes a Jedi, and falls in love, and finds his way to the holocron that Cadenis recorded and his son Nidur preserved in the archive - well, he is pleased to know the comfort it brings.
He left a Force ghost imprint behind, as well. It’s not constantly active, he has a dormancy, but things can trigger to pull him back into presence. Cadenis has kept a light watch on the Teral line, and when Ishev comes into being, it catches his attention - he knows there is the touch of the Force around the child but he isn’t showing as a Jedi, and that’s the kind of mystery he loves to consider. Cadenis provides a silent companionship through rough periods in his adolescence, and sometimes Ishev thinks he sees a sad, solemn man out the corner of his eye. He would have warned Ishev against joining the military if he could have - he knows the pain of being a soldier and he doesn’t want that for his line, he would have encouraged him to pursue being an artist or an academic.
Ishev doesn’t become fully aware of him until his mother dies and he sees a man in his fever-vision-dream who goes to soothe him. The second time Ishev sees him, it’s on Oricon, and Cadenis exerts what protection he can around Ishev’s Force-presence until help arrives to save him.
Once Ishev goes to Tython for training, he’s able to dig into the archives and learn about Cadenis, who he was and what he did. The name had barely ever been mentioned back on Alderaan, and all he knew was that there were “some Jedi ancestors, once upon a time”. He finds himself moved by what he learns about a man who seemed to exemplify unending compassion for the world around him combined with the desire to keep others safe - he wants to live up to that legacy and be the kind of man Cadenis would have been proud of.
(He already is that man, and Cadenis is already proud.)
A fun fact: Given his relationship with Bao-Dur, Cadenis has an Opinion on Teral men falling in love with Iridonians - it’s endlessly funny that history seems to be repeating itself.
