You want to know how I got inducted into this crazy group? I’m not sure exactly why, but okay, then.
	The first thing you have to understand is that this happened a long time ago. Back then when the Brotherhood was allied with the Imperial remnant faction called the Emperor’s Hammer. We split off a few years after I joined… I’m not entirely sure why; I was on leave at that point. There was drama, some fighting, until finally folks decided they’d had it and there was this whole schism. Some clans left, some stayed.
	But that’s a few years after I joined, like I said. At the time, I was still active in the Bounty Hunter’s Guild chapter in the Minos Cluster - the Lyarnan system, if that means anything to you. They also had worked out an understanding with these Emperor’s Hammer guys, and the short version was we got a free hand on what we did as long as we didn’t break some of their rules - no hunting Imperial military personnel (unless they were the ones that posted the bounty), we couldn’t have first-line military gear (though we got past a lot of that by simply using civilian designs and then modifying the hell out of them locally).
	Anyway, I was at the Guild chapter HQ, in between bounties, when I get called into an office. I figure that someone posted a bounty and either specifically requested me, or one of the brass hats had decided that they should specifically assign it to me. It happened - not often, but often enough. So I go into the office and there’s the head honcho, a guy named Trench, and two guys in black robes. You probably can guess where I’m going with this. So anyway, it turns out that the Dark Brotherhood, of all people, had decided to send their guys after an acquisition and they wanted a bounty hunter to help them. More like be their stalking horse, I figured, but as long as I got paid, I was fine with that. I’d survived the job before, anyway.
	So, I can’t talk about what happened - client confidentiality, you know. But it turned out afterward that these two Dark Jedi were after a second target - namely, myself. I was briefly wondering why they’d pull this whole song-and-dance rather than just find me and burn me down somewhere, but then they told me that it wasn’t to kill me - rather, it was to recruit me.
	You can imagine the skeptical look on my face at the time. Sure, I knew the Force was a real thing. I’d seen these Brotherhood guys do their thing, and I’d even once seen one of Skywalker’s Jedi pull their act, as well. (It wasn’t anything to do with me - I’d just happened to be in the crowd when the lightsaber came out.) But, as far as I’d known, I wasn’t able to do anything of the sort. But they explained what had drawn their attention - a couple of solo assaults I’d done for the Emperor’s Hammer - one on a small listening post and another on a New Republic fighter base, both hits went quick and clean. I’d thought I’d just been good and lucky. They… believed differently.
	And so I ended up getting drafted. Well, I say “drafted.” If I’d really wanted to, I probably could have refused. Maybe. They didn’t come out and say I’d be killed if I didn’t join, they just… heavily implied it. I suppose I can see how they were leery about having a Force-sensitive bounty hunter running around. Anyway, they put me in the Krath Order (to this day, I don’t know why, I’d have gone Obelisk, myself, and I obviously did when I had the chance), and I spent a few weeks at the Shadow Academy. Back then, it was based in an old Krath temple on the planet Eos in the Aurora System. As a Krath student, a lot of my time was spent buried in various scrolls and artifacts. Oh, I got trained in various Force powers and the basics of Form One, but most of it was stuff on lore and ritual. Looking back, I think it was better for me, as I knew how to take care of myself in combat, and it gave me a much better grounding in the Dark Side than I might have gotten had I started out as an Obelisk or a Sith.
	After a few months of that, I was placed in Clan Naga Sadow. House Marka Ragnos, more specifically. And it was worked out that I could remain active in the Bounty Hunter’s Guild, but I was specifically instructed that I couldn’t use the Force or, once I earned my knighthood, my lightsaber while I was working for the Guild itself. At first, I had to visit the Academy where one of the Elders there would use a ritual to bind my Force abilities somehow. And, believe me, it was less pleasant than you think. After a while, I taught myself how to… blend in with the Force, I guess would be the best way to describe it.
	For the record, I don’t think the Clan leadership was exactly comfortable with having a bounty hunter on their rolls. (Ironically, the Guild leadership thought having a Dark Jedi on theirs was absolutely wizard. Yes, one of them actually said “wizard.” I know.) And having to run back and forth between Eos and Lyarna for various assignments and missions wasn’t exactly the most relaxing thing to do. Those first couple of years I’d have sworn I spent more time in the cockpit of my ships than I did with boots on the ground somewhere. But, I actually enjoyed the work, and I managed to work my bounty hunter’s skills in with my Force abilities rather well, if I do say so myself.
	Probably the best example would be a mission I got to find a particular Sith artifact from the Galactic Cold War. I don’t even know what the damned thing was - I was told that if I found it in a crate or container - as I probably would - I should leave it in said container. But anyway, I was tossed into my ship at the time - a modified Buado-class yacht. I’d gotten her tricked out to be a bit faster than her spec sheet, with a bit more of a punch than most of her class, and with a few stealth mods. Nothing like the StealthX or RC-2 Twilight scout ships, mind you, but enough that I could tail someone without being noticed. Anyway, so I flew off to Telos, and things went okay until I actually tried to enter into the old Jedi academy that Palpatine had leveled - or at least, that he thought he leveled. I had to crawl through about a half-kilometer of ventilation shafts, but eventually I managed to get in. I found the artifact stored exactly where I had been told it was, but on my way out, I ran into a trio of smugglers. Turns out that they’d found the Academy’s old hangar bay and had been using it as a transfer point for years. And, of course, they assumed I was there for them and started lighting my end of the amphitheater we were in up.
	Oh, don’t look at me like that. You’d be surprised how often things like this happen on missions we do. It’s almost cliche.
	Anyway, inasmuch as I enjoyed a good firefight in those days, I really wasn’t interested in finding out if that big-ass case I was hauling around was blaster-proof. So, I decided to use an old bounty hunter’s trick on them. Well, my version, anyway. See, most bounty hunters wear jetpacks so they get some extra mobility. And, to be fair, so did I, for a time. But not so much when I was able to use the Force. I jumped up onto a crumbled-down section of the roof where some girders had twisted down, and then used the Force to knock the whole group on their butts, then followed up with a grenade set to detonate on impact. One explosion later, and I didn’t have anything more to worry about.
	You see, I think if there’s one thing the Jedi Sentinels have right, it’s that they actually use more mundane skills along with their Force abilities. Blaster marksmanship, slicing, all those neat and dirty tricks that the normal folks have to learn that a lot of us Force users - on both sides of the aisle, mind you - consider “beneath us.” Those skills can save your life one day. So my advice is to keep on learning and practicing things that don’t need the Force to work. You never know when an ability to pick a lock or shoot someone’s eye out at a hundred meters will come in handy.
	Dammit, I’m rambling again. Why did you let me do that? I’m gonna go get a drink.

DJK Kant Lavar (Obelisk) / Battle Team Shadow Gate of House Qel-Droma of Clan Arcona [GMRG: I] [SA: III]
AC-ToSH / DC-CP / GN-BL / SN-BL / Cr:1R-3E-1T / CF-BlF / CI-PC / LS-AgL / S:3Rm-6U-2De-3Dec