Fwurg

[Jedi Master Screetor (mask of Storyteller (Brend))]

"Searching yourself for the crystal might be less strange than it sounds.", master Screetor replies with a knowing smile.
Jedi Master Screetor

[Fecta Trigiel]

Trigiel let Jaicen meet with Screetor and focussed on keeping Salia's rambling voice to a soft tone.

[Jaicen Hedoss]

Jaicen thanked the master for his words and returned to Trigiel and Salia with his droid talking: "Since this is a meditation room I suppose I have to meditate to find the crystal. Could you and Salia join me in meditation to pinpoint the location of the crystal?" And adressing Salia specifically: "I know, you find meditation boring, but see it as a test to get the hoverball, sometimes you have to do things you do not like to obtain something you do like even more."

After this Jaicen hovered towards a nice place with his Droid in tow, and shut down his humming hoverchair, hoping Trigiel and Salia woul join him.

[Salia]

Salia kept very, very quiet, not wanting to disturb the Jedi present once again. Going into stealth-mode, she snuck her way from one curtained off area to another, peeking inside at odd angles, finding her way into ventilation shafts and onto statues, all to get a look inside while not being noticed, as if she were infiltrating a Sith facility.

Notably though, Salia's method was not exactly efficient. Rather than planning an efficient route from one side room to the next, she moved criss-cross across the main hall (usually via a ceiling beam or sticking behind the various statues) from room to room in what seemed a deliberate attempt to access them all in a random order.

((Check: 5 = 1 Force Level + 1 Stealth + 3 Fitness -- Sneaking about - is Fitness the right attribute?))
((Check: 4 = 1 Force Level + 3 Intuition -- Picking the correct random rooms))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: Fitness is the character's ability to control their body. In this case, I think it matches well with stealth. Alternative combinations are possible though: if a character is trying to evade being recorded on camera as well, Vision might be strong contender to spot the cameras.))

[Salia]

((OOC: Salia is only trying to avoid making too much noise and because she doesn't use normal logic, she is also hiding from the Jedi, since not being seen will obviously make her more quiet. I recon she's more self-focussed than focussed on anyone else about it though, so Fitness is probably good.))

[Fecta Trigiel]

Trigiel joined Jaicen in mediation, although in meditation the cyborg kept an eye at Salia.

((Check: 12 = 7 Force Level + 4 Intuition + 1 Force Vision -- Keeping an 'eye' on Salia, so he know she is behaving.))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: @Trigiel: Keeping an eye on someone is done with Vision (bringing your check to 14, which approved), even though you are meditating. In fact, I don't think meditating and 'looking out for something' are actions that combined well -- in this case this works to your advantage though.))

With one Jedi actually meditating, a second one sneaking about to search, and the third one meditating while watching out for the second one, the trio of Jedi made an odd team.

Jaicen meditates as he had been thought away from the temple, and focusses his thoughts inward. Blocking out external stimuli he is no longer aware of the other Jedi in the meditation chambers, nor is he aware of the room he was in, nor Trigiel meditating next to him, nor the chair he was sitting in, nor his droid dutifully standing next to him.

Salia, doing her part, sneaks around from room to room. While not very silent or very hidden, she seems to be silent enough not to be seen by the meditating Jedi. She picks this room here, than that room there, than pokes her head around to check on Trigial and Jaicen, then flits off again to check over yonder, doing this several times over. One time she silently sneaks behind master Screetor who, unbeknownst to Salia, opens an eye just as she looks away to see what she is up to before smiling and pretending to meditate deeply again.

Trigiel's meditations are periodically interrupted by him keeping an eye on Salia. Sometimes she is capable of hiding from him for a short moment, before he sees her tiptoeing around a pillar or walking on top of the heads of a row of statues. Every time though, he notices that while she visits rooms and areas in a criss-cross manner she always pops up in the room Jaicen and Trigiel are in every few minutes. In fact, she does so with a much higher frequency then you would think of someone arbitrarily picking rooms...

[Salia]

Salia seemed blissfully unaware of the non-randomness of her movements and continued her search with fierce determination - one advantage of this being the meditation chambers was that there was very little to distract her. Not that Salia normally needed much to be distracted, but currently she was actually focussed on the task at hand.

[Jaicen Hedoss]

Jaicen divides a part of his thoughts to go outwards and asks Trigiel with his own voice: "This is a meditation chamber, so I assumed the goal was to meditate, but how am I going to find the crystal when I only focus on myself and not the crystal, master?"

[Fecta Trigiel]

((OOC: my initial plan was to notice Salia presence trough the force and follow her that way. But it appears I made my post when my mind was absolutely not clear since I made not a single notion towards my intention T.T A well, this worked as well ^^))

"There are different kinds of meditation." Trigiel answered softly, "one kind is to look inwards and isolate yourself from your surrounding. The other kind is to look outwards and notice all your surrounding without paying attention to any detail in special.

When doing so, you might notice that Salia is explicitly fond of this room without knowing it herself. In fact, Salia is almost married to that pouffe over there."

"I wonder when she notices herself." Trigiel added with a smile.

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: Quick question @Jaicen: How do you mean 'divides a part of his thoughts'? Is that a figure of speech, or do you mean that in the way Shebi Ajava (and other Hemet Veolians) are able to divide their consciousness to process multiple tasks at the same time? (I ask because you could have picked up that particular way of telling this from Ajava's meditations, and not be aware that it's a Veolian thing instead of a Jedi thing.)))

As Trigiel explained the different kinds of meditation to Jaicen, Salia tip-toed into the room again.

She did not provide any evidence for Trigiel's theory about the pouffe though. In fact, she completely ignored it this time and instead snuck around at the edge of the room, looking around behind TG-100 until she sees a ventilation shaft she can duck in to to disappear again.

[Jaicen Hedoss]

((OOC: It is more a figure of speech, I meant to say that while Jaicen is meditating, he briefly comes out of it and returns again to the previous calm state.))

"I see and feel this, although she ignored the pouffe this time." Jaicens own voice sounded almost like a normal human voice when he spoke very softly, the raspiness was almost gone, although it would be hard to hear in normal environments. Meanwhile the TG-100 stood motionless.

"How can you look outward with not paying attention to any details, I look outwards, but pay attention towards Salia, which is a detail"

[Salia]

Tip-toeing along the edges of the room until she found the ventilation shaft, she crouched down, opened the ventilation shaft and moved inside. Her motions were almost nonchalant, as if going into ventilation shafts was not only perfectly normal and ordinary for her, but for everyone else as well. Moving inside, she disappeared from view, crawling through the shaft as if it were second nature - in fact, one might wonder if she did this more often.

[Fecta Trigiel]

"Ah, I see," Trigiel answered Jaicen softly with a playfull voice, "all that special training on a distant location and no basic meditation training?" His lower two headflaps formed a smile. "No wonder you returned."

Trigiel closed his eye and focussed on the presence of the crystal.

If he found the presence or even the location, next time when Salia is on the room he says: "You have an interestingly high preference for this room. Follow the force here and you will succeed."

((Check: 13 = 7 Force Level + 4 Intuition + 2 Force Vision -- Noticing the presence of the crystal. Force vision allows seeing the living beings by force signature, not sure if that also works for other things with a force signature and of the crystal here has a signature at all.))

[Jaicen Hedoss]

"Well, I have to focus on my droid if I want to control him, which is a detail and outside. But I have not had any practice on looking outside and not focussing on anything. But since that is the goal of this mission I am going to practice it now. The training on the jedi temple was of course not complete and mainly focused on me being able to participate somewhat normally in society while retaining my force powers."

Jaicen tries to focus again on the outside, just like the way he contacts his droid, without giving any commands and just feeling the general presence of his droid and the space it occupies, feeling the floor on which the droid stands, the air brushing its touch sensors and the status of his lightsaber. He then slowly tries to shift his focus on another subject, Salia, trying to feel the same things and her effect on the environment before trying to follow her movements through the room(s). After that he shifts to several other objects in the room, with the objects getting smaller and more insignificant, before finally trying to focus on two insignificant objects at the same time, then three, then four. He aims to lose the details of these objects slowly and generalize them. Each time reaching further out and focussing on more and more objects, while letting the force flow through him.

((Check: 12 = 5 Force Level + 5 Intuition + 2 Control Machine -- ))

((OOC: I am just trying to explain here how my character would try to meditate, no idea if this is 'correct' and also not if the check is correct))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: @Fecta Trigiel: Force Vision is literally for seeing things. Closing you eyes and using Force Vision together is therefore a completely ineffective stragey for applying it. That said, I do not think that Rank 1 allows you to see things other than living beings by their force signatures -- but this is a moot point here. Without Force Vision your check becomes 11, which is failed.

@Jaicen Hedoss: The explanation of how your character meditates is clear. Note that feeling the world through the droids senses (air brusing and such) is technically a Rank 3 thing. Regardless, your use of control machine is certainly helpful even though it does not help you meditate -- the Force works in mysterious ways. Check of 12 approved.))

Trigiel closes his eyes and focusses his thoughts on the crystal. He slowly tries to envision the crystal. He envisions the crystal's smooth surface... The sharp angles the facets make... The way the light refracts and colours the surroundings when it passes through... Wait! What colour does it have? What shape does it have? Does it even have facets?!

Trigiel's calm meditation quickly comes to an end as he realized he did not know anything about this crystal.


In the meantime, Jaicen tries to focus on the outside. First he meditates on his droid and the space it occupies. As always, he feels the droid's presence in the Force, even though it is only a machine. Then, he shifts his focus away form the droid, towards Salia. Strange enough, he feels the droid's presence in the Force, even though it is not a young twi'lek. He shifts his focus to several insignificant objects in the room, focussing on two, three, then four objects. Without much detail, he feels the droid's presence in the Force, even though it is only a collection of connected objects.

Eventually, his focus reaches further out and generalizes everything. Generally, he feels the droid's presence in the Force. His focus encompasses every single component of his droid, all actuators, all servoprocessors, all stepping servo assemblies, all sonoreceptors, all capacitors, every physical component except one. His attention is drawn to the one unique component of his droid like light to a black hole: fast and inevitable.


At the same time as Jaicen's sudden insight, Trigiel spots Salia looking down into the room through a grate as she crawled through ventilation tube hanging near the ceiling. She seems to delay for a moment as she peers down onto the scene with Jaicen and TG-100, before silently moving further down the tube.

[Jaicen Hedoss]

Jaicen waits a minute to consolidate his conclusions before he opens his eyes slowly and asks Trigiel softly in his own voice:

"Hmm, the force gives me direction: I might have something.
There is one component of my droid which draws my attention, Trigiel. Could it be that the DEM crystal of my droid, is the crystal we are looking for here? That crystal is the main reason why I can control the droid. I can interchange this crystal to another droid and provide some maintenance, with some difficulty, but the exact workings for me are unknown."

"I do prefer though, not to extract the DEM crystal out of my droid to show, let alone give, it to the master. But I think he will be complacent to know that we found the crystals and brought it before him."

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC:

I can interchange this crystal to another droid and provide some maintenance, with some difficulty, but the exact workings for me are unknown."

No you can not.

To be perfectly clear out how Control Machine works: you can attune to a single machine that is specifically built with the idea of attuning through the DEM-crystal. The DEM-Crystal is not a swappable 'Jedi Control Crystal' component, but an integral part of the whole machine that can not be simply switched to another machine. For this power to work, it is necessary that the Jedi has a special link to the machine even before the DEM-Crystal is in place: you built it yourself, or you know it's workings inside-out, etc.

That limitation is in place because otherwise it would be way to good: Instead of being a unique power, it would simply become the 'Jedi Remote Control' power for any machine.))

[Jaicen Hedoss]

((OOC: I disagree,

"Attuning to a machine costs a lot of time. Under normal circumstances this can only be done outside of missions." This means it can be swapped with great difficulty indeed. But it could be switched to another drone I will build over a longer period of time.))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: I think we are actually on the same page ^_^

What you say does not contradict what I said. I agree that you can build another drone over time and taking into account the DEM-crystal, and that it would then be possible to place your DEM-crystal in it and take that drone on a mission.

But in your post you claimed to be able to interchange this crystal to another droid to provide some maintenance. Since you yourself already say that you "will build [another drone] over a longer period of time", you currently do not have such a droid to switch to. Therefore, you can not currently switch the DEM crystal to another droid for some maintenance -- there is no other droid to use since there's not other droid Jaicen has a bond with other than TG-100.))

[Jaicen Hedoss]

((OOC: I meant, I can interchange it after a lot of effort AND I can perform some maintenance on the DEM crystal (And the droid which contains the crystal)))

[Salia]

((OOC: I think we're all in agreement and should get back to the story, otherwise I'll be stuck in the vents forever and who wants that!))

[Fecta Trigiel]

((OOC: I propose to continue any DEM crystal discussion in the game questions thread :)))

[Storyteller (Brend)]

((OOC: Agreed. But it's not my turn to post :P))