On Coruscant, Ree made yet another report to the Council while the others tried to pry useful information out of Zan. He summarily refused to tell them anything he didn't think they desperately needed to know unless they took him with them, although it has to be said that he wasn't terribly good at keeping his mouth shut. Helpful facts kept popping out. Eventually, the group agreed to let him come along, because he seemed fairly harmless and it was just easier than arguing with him. Besides, he was right when he said he might have useful knowledge along the way.
The night before they left, Ree was awakened in her room at the Jedi Temple by the strong scent of reptile. She woke to find a monster in her room, which she killed. Standing over its now very dead-lizardy-smelling corpse,Ree looked around in a WTF?! manner to spot a dark figure on her balcony. Seeing she'd noticed it, it leapt off with her in pursuit, jumping down onto a waiting speeder.
Fighting it, Ree realized her opponent was a cyborg. She was able to subdue him, but before she could return to the Temple, her captive was nearly assassinated by a woman dressed all in black, wearing a bandage over her eyes.
Well, darn. Anyway, she got back to the Temple, and various people were fussing over the monster in her room. They didn't seem too surprised to see her marching in the front door, dragging an unconscious bad guy behind her (actually, they sort of seemed to expect it; what else would a Jedi do?). But they did get her another room for the night.
The next day, her companions, who'd stayed on the ship, found a crispy-dead cyborg lying outside the ship. SAR had electrified the hull to fry anyone who tried to break in. He's really kind of crazy. Anyway, they were able to match Ree's description of the woman to a species called the Miraluka. They look perfectly human...except that they have no eyes. Every Miraluka is able to "see" through the Force, though most of them are not Force-sensitive beyond that. The Miraluka had an embassy in Coruscant (not that that's a shock), and the thought was that possibly someone in the ambassadorial staff had done this. But was she on their side, or had she assassinated the man to protect herself?
Questions for another time. Onna said she'd look into it, but it would be delicate work to do so without offending Senators. Meanwhile, the crew had a ship to chase down.
Taking Zan with them, along with Erin (though Drath stayed back, again), the crew went to the intersection between spacelanes where the ship had been reported most often. Three inhabited star systems were close by, but what drew their attention was the Dark Side-tainted moon.
The moon seemed largely barren. Two things drew their attention: first, the Sith temple, and second, the apparently crashed old Jedi ship.
They decided to check the Jedi ship first. The outer halls of the ship were empty and very spooky. They found some kind of monster--Ree recognized it as a Massassi, which startled the hell out of everyone since they were all supposed to be dead--impaled on the wall near the airlock they came in through. Further into the ship, they got attacked by levitating lightsabers, harassed with freaky messages written on the walls by invisible hands, and had to fight off zombies. One whole chamber--apparently what used to be a children's barracks--was full of dead bodies laid out on the beds. When the group passed through, they all sat up and screamed. The crew ran. Then they just decided to go around the training hall, where all the lightsabers lying around activated at once and pointed right at them.
While running one of these gauntlets, an odd thing happened. On of the chairs throwing themselves at the characters seemingly bounced off Zan as if he'd shoved it away with the Force. Ree pointed it out after they got to safety, but Zan declared he knew nothing about it. Kedrihm'Val made a joke (mostly a joke) about him secretly being a Jedi Master in disguise. Had an odd look on his face for oh-so-brief a moment, though. Still, he seemed utterly non-Force sensitive, and that's not something you can really fake, right?
Eventually, they reached a computer panel. Oola was able to find that the inner parts of the ship still seemed to be inhabited. She sent a message to the bridge to let the people know they were friendly (it's really not wise to surprise a whole crew of wary Jedi), and after a while, they were allowed in.
After everyone made sure of each other, the Jedi were fairly forthcoming. They had a precious cargo, they said, that they needed to get back to the Jedi Temple. They were unwilling to say what it was, but the ship had a huge enclosure built onto the top, as if they'd attached a building or something. Many of these Jedi were fairly old, though they had a bit of a settlement going on, and the ship predated the Empire. They were willing to talk about the phantom ship the crew was looking for. Apparently it had originally been their people, who'd been too impatient or unwilling to sit still while bad guys kept zipping by, so they'd snagged a ship, crewed it, and gone off to fight evil around the spacelanes. That ship was now independent, though it kept up loose, informal ties with this Jedi transport. After the characters explained what was up, the Jedi agreed to hunt it up so they could ask it questions.
The Jedi also freely shared what they knew about this moon. It had always been full of Dark Side energy since they'd gotten there, but it had always been very quiet. Only in the last few years had monsters and Dark Side spirits begun roaming the place. Pretty weird, they agreed. They knew about the Massassi, saying they thought there were three of them, but they were glad to hear that one was now dead.
Oh, yes, and how could I forget? When they described Dalt, the crew knew him. He'd been one of them, they said, but had left with the Jedi who went off in the ship. Inconcievable that he'd have been able to go poke the Sith temple without their knowing...and yet, the crew suspected that that was exactly what he'd done. Perhaps he'd left and come back in secret later on.
But these Jedi had quite a shock when they heard about the events of the last twenty years. Oh, they'd known about Darth Vader and the Emperor (who apparently had used that Sith temple as a personal retreat--which by the way led to some urgent questions as to why he'd have left these Jedi alone all that time), but the overthrow of the Empire, the resurgence of the Jedi...a Skywalker as Master of the Order? These things they wot not of, and were uneasy. They decided they needed time to talk it over.
Meanwhile, the characters were left to themselves. Eventually, they got bored and suspicious, and decided they'd better find out what was going on around here. Their investigations revealed that the big attachment on the ship was the Library of Ossus. Holy crap. Everyone'd thought that thing destroyed, and here it was, safe and sound. Maybe that's why the Emperor had left the Jedi alone? If it was a question of keeping it intact and letting the Emperor get it, they'd probably have destroyed it, and he might've wanted that knowledge.
In the end, with reassurances from the crew, the Jedi decided that the knowledge was too precious to risk, and decided to return to Coruscant and the Jedi Temple. The crew helped them fix their ship (which had some problems with the stardrive) and off they went, with the Starwind following to keep guard.
The Jedi were quite surprised to see that turning up on their doorstep.
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