Fiction Activity

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Kadrol Hauen had been fascinated with extinct species of Fauna since he was a young boy. Learning about the ancient beasts let Kadrol drift into his own imagination where he lived alongside these mythical beasts. An imagination where even the most dangerous of beasts could become his friend. Through the years, his imagination would become focused on hyper-realistic scenarios and less on more fantastical things. Though his general love for these creatures would eventually fade, the memories were stored away and Kadrol unknowingly took a liking to History.

When Kadrol was twelve, he was reintroduced to the world of these beasts in a class at school. During this unit, Kadrol also learned about Paleontology’s sentient-based counterpart: archaeology. At this point in his life Kadrol was more intrigued by the empires of the past, such as the Old Republic and the Sith empire. He also found ancient battles quite intriguing: ones before droids were able to be mass produced as they were in the Clone Wars. The Jedi and Sith orders and the evolution of the lightsaber were, in his opinion, the most fun to learn about.

The following year, Kadrol was recruited to the Dark Jedi Brotherhood. In his first few months, he had begun to notice all kinds of Brotherhood funded archaeology digs to uncover ancient artifacts from the ancient Sith as well as the ancient Jedi Order, as well as to fill in holes in what was known about these Force users of old. He had immediately asked his master, Brimstone, if he could take leave and participate in a few of these archeological digs. While on these archeological digs, Kadrol himself never actually discovered anything particularly special, but he did try to gather information about them based on where they were found and the things they were found with.

That was two years ago. Now the Pantoran had returned from a self-inflicted exile from the Brotherhood, and was now going on archaeological digs again. Today he had arrived at one of the newest dig sites the Brotherhood set up, and Kadrol was assigned a much more hands-on role. The site was located on the ancient Sith homeworld of Korriban. Many graves of the ancient Sith Lords had already been excavated by groups from as early as a thousand years ago, but this expedition wasn’t focused on the graves of the ancient Sith, but rather the places thought to be the site of long forgotten temples and other ritual sites.

When the Acolyte arrived from the moon of Ragnath in the Caperion System, the dig site had already been marked off into a five by five grid by a series of metal rods stuck into the ground periodically and tied to another rod with a thin twine of sorts. This method helps the archaeologists record where each artifact was found to try to formulate a story to piece together the past. It also helped with delegating others by assigning them a section to dig in. From the location of the camp, the sections were marked vertically with letters, and horizontally with numbers. Kadrol was one of five people assigned to section B5.

Day after day, the team would go into the section and dig. When an artifact was found, the person who unearthed the object would call for a mapper to record the location, and then they would carefully uncover the object using a brush, chisel, and other small tools. Usually the object was a piece of pottery or simple jewelry, but a special item would come up every once in a while. Whenever something special was found, Kadrol was rejuvenated with a thirst to discover something unique once more.

**Two Weeks after Kadrol arrived on Korriban**

Kadrol enjoyed digging on the site. He found the job like a sort of a game: whoever found the coolest or rarest thing was the “winner.” The morning was just like any other on the site: everyone would wake up at the brink of dawn to eat and get dressed before heading out to the dig. Kadrol woke up wearily. The constant early mornings were not something he was used to. When he was training, his master, Kylex, usually didn’t come to get him for training until midday. As he headed out, he couldn’t help but watch in awe at the sunrise over the reddish planet.

Reaching the site with his tools, the Acolyte started in the same spot he had left off on the previous night. He needed to dig down about two meters for this dig. He dug for about an hour, as everybody else arrived and started digging their spots, when he thought he saw something shining in the ground. He climbed out of his hole, which was a waist high hemisphere in the earth, and grabbed his trowel.

The Pantoran jumped into the hole excitedly and began to dig out the dirt on top of the shimmering golden object. It took him another hour or so uncover the object, revealing it to be a scepter of some sort. It was around one and three quarter meters in length. The half Kadrol had dug out so far had something engraved in it: probably some ancient language used by the Sith. The golden rod was adorned with rubies and it had a dragon’s head shaped on the top. Excitedly, Kadrol used his comm link to report in his findings. A few minutes later, a vehicle drove up to his section, and the mapper designated to his section stepped out with a map of the findings in the section. He used a measuring device to mark the location of the scepter from the side of the section, and made a mark on the map. Kadrol now had permission to finish digging out the scepter. The vehicle stayed where it was parked until Kadrol had painstakingly dug out the rest of the beautiful scepter.

He and another archaeologist put on fresh latex gloves and carefully wrapped up the scepter to insure it wouldn’t be damaged on the way back to camp where it would be analyzed. If the head of the project deemed it of enough value, Kadrol might even be assigned to learning about his discovery, but for now, he would continue to excavate.