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The Force Always Says Yes [Star Wars]

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Chapter 55: The Republic Doesn't Exist Out Here New
Chapter 55: The Republic Doesn't Exist Out Here​

The An'omarr Monastery was a strange complex of buildings, comprised of four round towers of irregular height, width, and spacing, shunning the symmetry that he realized both Jedi and Sith architecture strived for. The complex was surrounded by an old, worn down sandstone wall, which was utterly covered in posters and graffiti that he could hardly make out. In fact, as he got closer to the temple, he realized the buildings proper were covered in visual clutter as well.

The largest of the rotund towers, somewhere slightly northwest to the center of the complex, had what appeared to be tens of thousands of faces painted in murals across it, of individuals of countless species. Some had been covered in other graffiti, marring the murals with lime green spray paint dripping down the wall.

Nerim tilted his head. "Not what I expected of a religious institution."

Tetha exhaled in amusement. "Certainly not. At least it seems to be open to public admission," she noted, pointing towards the open gates where people had congregated.

They approached, squeezing in through the crowds who were mostly loitering and chattering among themselves, until reaching the gateway. At the opening there were two guards, one a hulking pig-like Gamorrean who hefted a traditional war axe, and the other a scarred and wiry Trandoshan who rested a primitive slugthrower on his shoulder as he leaned against the wall. When they got close, the Gamorrean held out a fat hand to gesture for them to stop.

"Hold it, sssstreet trash," the Trandoshan wheezed, pulling out a paddle-like device. "Gotta give you a sssscan first."

"A scan?" Tetha repeated blankly, very aware of the lightsaber in her jacket.

The Trandoshan gave her a reptilian grin. "Oh? Nervoussss?" He cackled, stepping forward. "Now why would that be?"

Tetha began to step back, but as she did so, the Gamorrean reached forward and grabbed her by the left elbow. Nerim's hand shot out just in time to grab Tetha's right wrist before she could draw her lightsaber. "Cool your jets," he said evenly, as her eyes zeroed in on his. There was a slight panic and sense of betrayal in her expression, but she decided to trust him.

The Trandoshan, who had immediately leveled his slugthrower at the two as soon as Tetha began reaching, let out a rattling sigh. "Yeah, listen to the little guy," he said. "Better to go back in chains than in a box, eh?"

"Chains?" Tetha asked, confused. The Trandoshan swept the two of them with the scanner, which gave an affirmative beep signaling the all-clear. The Trandoshan tilted his head and sneered in surprise.

"Nnnhh?" He hummed in confusion, looking to the silent Gamorrean, who shrugged and let go of her.

Nerim turned to Tetha. "It's not a weapon scanner, it's a slave scanner. It looks for implants."

Tetha blinked in confusion, and the Trandoshan barked a laugh of disbelief. "Oh! Hahahah!" The reptile cackled. "She from Republic space or something?"

"Something like that," Nerim said, shrugging as nonchalantly as he could manage.

The Trandoshan leaned back up against the wall. "Tourists! Always trying to get themselves killed! No, we're just hired by the Cartel to make sure no slaves get in there. The monks have an annoying tendency to free them, y'sssee."

"I see..." Tetha trailed off, rubbing her elbow where the Gamorrean had grabbed her.

"Go on," the Trandoshan waved dismissively.

The two of them walked past the guards, and both let out a sigh of relief. "Thanks," Tetha muttered.

"Sorry," Nerim frowned, "I didn't exactly expect it either. I did some studying on slave implants since...Well, I came into contact with them," he said sheepishly. "They usually have bombs and transmitters hidden inside their bodies, to identify them and keep them from running away."

"Stars..." She shook her head in disbelief. "Barbaric. I'm sure I would have some of those implants too, if it weren't so heavily associated with Hutt slavery."

They looked around. The courtyard was lively, with people milling around alone and in groups, walking from tower to tower, or meditating in the shade next to rock gardens. Despite the all-encompassing visual clutter, the actual grounds themselves were kept quite clean. The guards were hired by the Cartel, but it seemed as though the monastery itself had no security—it was impossible for him to even make out any monks in the courtyard, as everyone appeared to simply be random civilians that had wandered in. For a moment, he worried that the temple had actually been abandoned.

Tetha tapped on his arm and pointed with her other hand to a humanoid protocol droid which was waddling across the courtyard. They approached it, and when its eyes caught them, Tetha bluntly asked "Where are the monks?"

"Hello!" It chirped pleasantly, with a jerky motion. "I do not know where the monks are."

"...What?" She raised an eyebrow.

"I do not know where the monks are!" It repeated helpfully, in the same tone but louder.

Tetha closed her eyes for a moment in annoyance and shook her head. "Do you belong to this monastery?"

"No!" It emphatically answered. "I am the droid of Hanapp O Shutt, a wealthy businessman of high renown! I am attempting to navigate back to the droid bay, but I cannot find my way out of the monastery."

Nerim slowly turned around, and then back to the droid, and pointed over his shoulder to the doorway. "Uh...That way?"

"Hm. That would seem reasonable," the droid agreed. "However, it appears I am programmed to not go through that doorway. How odd."

"How long have you been here?" He asked, confused. "In Republic Standard."

"Roughly sixteen Coruscant years!" It said cheerfully.

Tetha placed a hand to her forehead and let it fall down her face. "Fantastic. Useless bucket of bolts..."

"Why! How unbecoming!" The droid responded, huffing and turning its nose up.

"Don't be mean to it," Nerim frowned.

"It's a droid!" Tetha rolled her eyes. "Why is it even programmed to take offense?"

"Some people find it funnier that way," a fourth voice spoke from behind them. Tetha and Nerim both whipped around, to see a deeply strange figure. He appeared perhaps near-human, but the exact species was difficult to tell for a variety of reasons.

His face had been painted with stark lines and cubic patterns. False eyes painted onto his forehead and cheeks looked as real as—well, at least the ones he assumed were the real ones. His teeth and tongue were dyed black and his lips split by the painted lines, making it impossible to make out his facial expression as he spoke, and his hair seemed to be a mane of feathers—although whether they were natural or not was beyond Nerim's ability to discern. His clothes were fairly concealing and indistinct as well, made of a large brown poncho underneath which poked two gloved hands and roughspun pants that ended in pointy boots.

"Ah!" The droid lit up. "This individual appears to be one of the novice monks."

"Is that so?" Tetha asked, leaning back somewhat in discomfort.

"Probably!" The figure responded. "Either that or someone dressed up as a monk and pretended to induct me as a prank. It's happened before."

"I know exactly how you feel," Nerim smiled.

Tetha raised an eyebrow and looked to the tower whose shadow they stood in, covered in posters and murals. "This is a...remarkably lax place, for a monastery."

"Sort of," the monk admitted. "At least by the standards of other monastics, sure. Now, what are you two doing here?" He asked, tilting his head far too much, almost going upside down like a bird.

Nerim clasped his hands behind his back, and Tetha crossed her arms. "What, we can't just mill about like everyone else?" She asked rhetorically.

"Well, you look like you're here to get in trouble," he said nodding to her. "And you look like you're here to get her out of it," he nodded to Nerim.

Nerim smiled beatifically. "I think you could make a convincing argument it's the opposite."

"Hah!" The monk laughed and nodded, hobbling over to a rock and sitting down on it. "So, what is it? Looking for surgery or something? Can't imagine you wanting to drop those carnates."

"Surgery? Carnates?" Nerim asked curiously.

The monk grinned. At least, Nerim thought he did; the paint morphed along with the monk's face, displaying both a happy and sorrowful face. "You really did just wander in here without a clue, huh? In the An'omarr Order, we refer to our bodies as carnates. Tens of thousands of years ago, we perfected the fundamentals of surgery to change the carnate. To even switch carnates. We developed this technology for spiritual purposes, but many seek us out for more...profane reasons. Many slaves attempt to convince us to remove their implants and change their identities, so they may be free."

"And do you?" Tetha asked neutrally.

"Every time."

The two shared a brief look of surprise and looked back to the monk, who was in the process of retrieving a pipe and lighting it. "What exactly is the spiritual purpose to switching bodies?" Nerim asked.

The monk exhaled a cloud of foul-smelling smoke. "Our goal, ultimately is to release the notion of the self of brain, or the self of carnate, and embrace the self of luumoghra, or of many in harmony. As we switch carnates, we shed our attachments to certain features of the carnates. We begin with the visible body, and then slowly lobotomize ourselves, removing our brains bit by bit until we no longer are our brains, but simply are."

Tetha's jaw clenched, and Nerim paled. "O-oh," Nerim said dumbly.

Tetha pursed her lips. "So, when the droid said you were a novice monk..."

The monk tapped his temple. "Yep. Still got most of it up here. Unfortunately." He cackled. "You can tell I'm a novice because you can recognize me as a monk. My first step was to shed my profane identity and become a monk. The next step is to shed the monk identity and become a person who is nobody in particular. I have been a man, woman, Ithorian, Gand, Twi'lek, young, old..."

Tetha glanced again to Nerim, with a worried expression that asked "Is any of this true?"

Nerim's non-verbal reply was a desperate "I have no kriffin' idea."

"Of course I got kicked back to being a monk, 'cause I keep breaking character," the monk nodded sagely. "Think I could do with less prefrontal cortex, but the old masters won't take it off me."

"And where are these old masters, exactly?" Tetha asked, morbidly curious.

The monk shrugged. "Hell if I know. They could be anyone. You wouldn't happen to be one of them, would you?"

There was a profoundly uncomfortable silence that lasted about twenty seconds, as the monk continued to smoke away. Then he spoke, this time in Basic, instead of Huttese. "So, like I was asking earlier. What are two Jedi doing here?"

Nerim's back suddenly straightened with a start, and the monk's many painted faces lit up.

"Aha! Written all over your face, kid! Eeeh heh!" he cackled.

"I am not a member of the Jedi Order," Nerim quickly clarified.

"Okay," the monk said, taking a drag off his pipe. "So what kinda Jedi are you? If you're the bad kind, hate to tell you this, but we ain't got no money."

Tetha and Nerim shared another glance. "D-do you sense anything?" He asked.

"I really don't think he has the Force," she shook her head in disbelief.

"Hah! It's called 'having been around the block', kid." The An'omarr monk leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Either that, or making wild accusations until one sticks."

"Listen, keep it down, we're—" Tetha looked to either side, to make sure no one was in earshot, "—We're trying to help a friend. Someone else who's strong in the Force, who may have been here."

"A friend, huh?" The monk repeated skeptically.

"Well, more like..." Nerim tilted from side to side, trying to think of how to word it, "...An ally in the cause of not being exploded by slaver bombs."

The monk slowly smiled. "And?"

"And she may have been here," Tetha said lowly. "Maybe a long time ago. We were hoping you could help us track down where she's been taken to."

The monk pointed behind them, to the squat tower covered in murals. "Do you see her face on that?"

The two of them turned and looked. The murals were of a myriad of species, but the only Togruta they saw on it looked very much not like their woman; it was a man with a rather severe overbite and partly covered with a neon green line of spraypaint that pierced through a dozen others to spell out some local gang's callsign.

"Uh, no?" Nerim shrugged. When they turned back, the monk was gone from the rock. Nerim felt a hand clasp around his shoulder and jumped in surprise, whipping around to see the An'omarr monk standing right next to him.

"Of course not! Y'see, every face we paint on there is very meticulously, mathematically arranged from the biometric data of the entire Republic citizenry, and anyone who's ever appeared in the Bounty Hunter Guild's database, among others, which covers the majority of known sentients. Or rather, I should say, it's arranged in the opposite of that data. These are faces that, to the best of our knowledge, have never existed," the monk nodded sagely.

Tetha raised an eyebrow and gently tugged on Nerim to retrieve him from the mad monk's grip. "Your point being...?" She asked.

The monk's face whipped around to them, a feather drifting out of his mane. "The point being, if she exists, she isn't here. We don't keep records of our visitors or acolytes, and we swap carnates regularly. She could have been me and I still couldn't recall her face or name."

Nerim and Tetha quietly contemplated the bind they were in, and Nerim looked back up to the monastery towers and the murals. After a moment, he furrowed his brow. "So the An'omarr don't keep their own records. But you do have access to the biometrics of most of the known Galaxy's inhabitants?"

"Yep!" He nodded.

"Can you take me to where you access these records?"

The monk tilted his head far too much again. "That's deep in the vaults of our monastery. Not just anyone can go in there."

After a moment of consideration, Nerim clasped his hands behind his back and nodded sagely. "Well, uh, you were actually right with your first accusation. I'm a high ranking monk of the An'omarr Order."

"Fantastic! Let's go then!" The monk nodded enthusiastically, waddling forward towards one of the towers.

Tetha slightly frowned. "You should really be more careful what you sign yourself up for."

"It's not like I'm bound to this Order," Nerim said nonchalantly. "I can just take the parts I like and then leave when I'm done."

Her frown deepened. "Oh, I hate that."
 
These Monks sound fun, like a slightly less insane B'omarr Order. I suspect they are decended from similar religious roots, with the similar beliefs regarding the body.
 
MemeKing said:
These Monks sound fun, like a slightly less insane B'omarr Order. I suspect they are decended from similar religious roots, with the similar beliefs regarding the body.
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Yeah, you're on the money, definitely related to them. I've always thought it was kinda funny how little we really find out about the B'omarr and their origins, given how infamous Star Wars is for having an entire 25,000 year long backstory for every onscreen element. They're also just so strange and particular, and bring up a lot of interesting questions. I really enjoy them, and not just because that guy's outfit is probably the most baller fashion in the entirety of Star Wars history.
 
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