What Is the Nature of Hope?

What is the nature of hope?

Besk was told it was a lie. A false conception meant to be conquered in order to become a true Sith. There were many similes. Many metaphors used by brutal minds. Hope is like a mirage. Much like the false vision of water to the thirsty mind of the forced inhabitants of Korriban, hope was symptom of weakness. Hope was something to be purged. It’s the nature of Sith training.

Odd, Besk thought, even as a child acolyte. Why should hope be such a terrifying proposition? Is it truly so far from ambition? From desire?

Regardless, it was to be beaten out of them. Stolen. Ripped away by force. Even sacrificed upon the alter of survival. Brought to Korriban as a child, survival was often the first and simplest test to weed out the weak. They would offer a pen full of children enough morsels for two or three to survive. He did not know at the time how the Overseers would watch and bet on which children would advance to the next stage of culling. How those who had been in those pens only years before would relish in the tradition, watching the pain inflicted upon them mirrored onto the next generation of their rivals.

Besk would survive. He and more of his pen than the average. For he knew even in childhood, energy expended in the service of carnage was energy diverted from survival. Though his pen felt deeply the pangs of hunger and choke of thirst, when the Overseers came to remove the dead, many more hearts beat still in the chests of the acolytes.

So the lessons continued. Pitting fellows to fight against one another. Brutal was the combat, but not wasteful. At this stage, the Overseers were assessing for qualities of warriors. The never-ending fodder to be sent against Jedi and Republic both. Should they rise toward greatness, all the better. But there was no… Hope… that these Sith footsoldiers would be more than malleable instruments to be wielded by Darths and Council members alike.

Scarred but unbroken, the lessons of the Sith began to infect Besk’s mind. Passion leading to power. Power to strength. Strength onward to victory. Victory was to be freedom. Yet once more, in the doctrine was hope to be smothered. In the sands of Korriban, set to menial tasks of digging, scrounging, and fetch; where is the chance for victory? He was not skilled enough to earn a master, not cruel enough to cull his rivals, and not ambitious enough to challenge his superior. So he dug. He searched amongst the already pilfered and plundered ruins for artefacts of a bygone era of Sith. Rummaged for the smallest of trophies and idols that could be cleaned, polished, and set upon the desk of a Lord stationed upon a far away world to act as a conversation piece upon or simply to fill a hole in the room’s aesthetic.

Years past. Hope burned low. Besk functioned as they necessitated. Those around him filled their functionality as well, the young man incapable of forgetting the lesson defied in the pens. Should he assist his fellows, all advanced. So little did the Overseers care for these meaningless digs, the acolytes were left to their own devices so long as they remained productive. It allowed Besk time for study. History was his favorite. And though most Sith would agree knowledge is power, they did little to keep the acolytes from the library. Perhaps it was assumed most could not read. Perhaps it was a test of initiative.

Hope, ever low, was still an ember in Besk’s soul. The stories of those past was solace. Revan. Ulic Qel-Droma and his master Exar Kun. Nomi Sunrider. The many Mandalores. How curious, he thought, the effect of honor and loyalty on the outcomes of so many figures named and revered. How strange it was their divergence from the doctrine of the Sith. Stories of greatness were defined by cooperation and a code of decency. Stories of the fall of the Sith whose tombs Besk aided in ransacking such as Naga Sadow and Marka Ragnos were full of the folly of ego, pride, and unchecked aspiration. The code he spoke, in every written account, seemed to spiral to the disaster of the legend he was meant to emulate.

In knowledge grows choice. One may not see a path with eyes alone, as it may be overgrown and hidden, but knowing there are many paths and even many destinations thanks to searching allows the seeker a larger world. In fact, access to an entire Galaxy.

So hope remained. It dared. It became emboldened.

Hope allowed for a sense of honor to grow. Personal integrity developed in a young Sith. It allowed him to aid his fellows without fear. To encourage cooperation. To foster hope in others. Such a foreign concept in the sand of Korriban, that most did not see it.

It took an outsider, a woman from someplace unlike the Empire, touring the academy to notice. She witnessed Besk assisting his fellows. Witnessed an absence of hopelessness. It piqued her curiosity and led to an offer. A new path. A breaking of chains. A bright, burning, renewed sense of hope.

But that is a wholly different story.