The Basics

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When Karr turned thirteen, he started to experience changes. Of course, everyone was going through changes at that age, but unlike Zarado, whose horns started growing longer, or Lara, whose adult coat of fur started coming in, Karr began getting terrible headaches that often came with garbled visions when he touched certain things, sometimes.

“You’re just experiencing growing pains,” his mother, Looway, would say to him, trying to hide her concern.

“Maybe,” said Karr. But unless his brain was growing beyond the size of his skull, he didn’t really get it. And it was changing him. Changing his outlook. At a time when most kids felt like they could take on the universe, Karr felt doomed. And he worried that his “adolescence,” as they called it, wouldn’t be a phase he went through but rather his expiration date.

Eventually, his family took him to a doctor. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with him, so they went to a different doctor. Same result. A third doctor couldn’t help, or a fourth. Everybody in his family had their own guess as to what was happening to Karr and how to fix it, but it all came together in a mess of garbled noise.

One afternoon, after the same old argument about what was wrong with Karr, he was sulking in his room when he saw his grandmother standing in the doorway. She had the oddest smile on her face. Then, almost in slow motion, he saw her lips form the words, It’s time.

“I know what is causing your headaches. It’s the Force,” J’Hara said as she sat on the edge of his bed, wiping the hair out of his face.

“The what?” he asked as if she had just diagnosed a disease.

“The Force,” she repeated. “The Force is what gives the Jedi their power.” His grandmother had spoken about the Jedi before, but to be fair Karr was younger at the time and she might as well have been talking about schoolwork.

That day, however, the Jedi. The Force. The war. It all sounded like one of the fables she used to tell him before bed. But it wasn’t, of course. This time it was a revelation. Karr had been looking for hope. Hope that what he was going through wasn’t something bad but rather something awesome. And this definitely counted as hope.

“What do you see?” his grandmother asked as she looked into his eyes. “When you get these headaches?”

“It’s tough to say. The pain is so great, sometimes it’s impossible to see anything. Like staring at the sun and trying to focus on the solar flares. For a really long time I saw nothing. Just felt a lot of pain. But then one day something changed. I could see and hear…something. Sounds? Words? Feelings? I don’t know.”

“That’s because a new perception has come into your existence. You’re experiencing a gift. Your headaches happen because you aren’t finding yourself in the Force,” J’Hara explained. “Once you figure it out, who knows? You might be able to learn about an object’s past just by touching it. That would really be something, wouldn’t it?”

“Is that what the Jedi did?”

She nodded. “Perhaps a few, here and there. Not many, I believe. The Jedi could do all kinds of things. Maybe if you could find Jedi objects, what you learn from them could show you how to use your abilities properly. How to become a Jedi.”

“How to become a Jedi.” Karr would always remember the day she uttered those words. For as long as he could remember, Karr had felt as out of place in the galaxy as he did in his own skin. His family had always been tailors, middle-class workers, but Karr felt he was destined for greater things. And that day, he was learning it was true.

“Where can we find the Jedi?” he asked eagerly.

“Sadly, they haven’t been seen in decades,” she confessed.

“But how can I learn about the Force properly if I don’t have a master?”

“Life is your master,” she said. “Let the galaxy lead you as if you were its apprentice. It has much to show you.”

“But if I never know when something I touch is going to give me a headache, how am I going to make it through life?”

J’Hara thought for a moment. “I will make you gloves.”

After that, Karr decided to learn as much about the Jedi as he could. Through books, through stories, and if need be, through the headaches. Which was why a good part of Karr’s days was spent searching for things he could touch that might shed some light on the lost masters: robes, weapons, communicators, and of course his most recent acquisition, the stormtrooper helmet.


- Force Collector, Chapter 1


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“Tell me…tell me a bedtime story,” she said with another yawn, or it might’ve been a sigh. “Tell me about your grandmother. She sounded nice.”

“She was nice. She’s the one who told me what my abilities are, and she helped me learn about them. She taught me how to go about controlling them.”

Maize giggled. “Are you sure she was qualified? I mean,” she added fast, before he could object, “how bad were your visions before she started teaching you? Because I’ve seen a couple of them now, and they look awful.”

“They’re not awful. Okay, they’re kind of awful. But it was worse when I didn’t know what caused them, or what they meant, or how I could avoid them. Trust me, Grandma was the first to admit she didn’t have the Force, but she believed in it. She wished she had it. And maybe she wasn’t the most likely tutor, either, but she cared about it. Cared about me. Even though I possessed something she never would. Sometimes I think that’s more important, because she didn’t take it for granted. And when she saw it in me, she did her best to help me reach my potential.” Karr paused. He hadn’t expected to reveal so much, but Maize had that effect on him. “Anyway, she also made me the gloves, and that helped a lot. Someday, I hope I can get good enough to feel things and understand them clearly without the headaches and fainting.”

“And your grandmother thought you could? Someday?”

He nodded, even though Maize couldn’t see him in the dark. He said, “She always believed in me. More than my parents ever did.”

“I know how that feels.”


- Force Collector, Chapter 8


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Maz Kanata went on to explain—in a little more depth than Karr’s grandmother had done—what the Force was and how it worked best when it was in balance. “But balance is hard to come by, these days,” she finished with a sigh. “Now tell me, how does the Force move you, young man?”

“Like you guessed about the gloves, I touch things.”

“Guess? I did not guess!” she objected, but with good nature. “I never need to guess. That’s not all of it, though. You’re not touching anything now except for your bottom on the chair—and that chair has never known anything of the Force, dark or light or otherwise.”

“Oh. Right. Um…I can sort of…I get visions, when I touch things sometimes. Especially if they witnessed great events. The Jedi visions are the ones I like the best. But they do hurt me—they give me terrible headaches—and sometimes I don’t…sometimes I don’t like the things I see….” He lost the thread, thinking about watching himself murder a Jedi Knight. He wanted to confess it to her but couldn’t make himself speak those words.

“Oh, enough of your uncertainty. You’re learning every hour, unless I’m wrong. And I’m almost never wrong,” she assured him, thoughtfully tapping her finger on the side of her jaw. “When I first saw you, I thought you might collapse under the weight of your own pain. But now? You’re uncomfortable, yes. But you’re hardly dying.”

She was right, and he agreed with her. “It still hurts, but…”

“But you’re finding the balance, without even meaning to. You’re finding the place that’s level.” On the desk was a clear glass filled halfway with milk.


- Force Collector, Chapter 16


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