I would certainly change Kar’s.

It seems that as a young man, Kar Vastor was fairly ordinary: more in touch with pelekotan than most, but not in any other way unusual. It was the Summertime War that changed him, as it has changed so much on this world.

When he was fourteen, he saw his whole family massacred by jungle prospectors: one of the casual atrocities that characterize this war.

I do not know how it is that he alone escaped; the stories Depa has heard from various Korunnai are contradictory. Kar himself, it seems, will not discuss it.

What we do know is that after witnessing the murders of his entire family, he was left alone in the jungle: without weapons, without grassers, without akks or people, food or supplies of any kind. And that he lived in the jungle—alone—for more than a standard year.

This is what he meant when he said he had survived tan pel’trokal.

The term has an irony that only now do I begin to appreciate.

The tan pel’trokal is a penalty devised by Korun culture, to punish crimes deserving death. Knowing that human judgment is fallible, the Korunnai leave the final disposition of the sentence to the jungle itself; they consider it a mercy.

I would say: it is a mercy they grant themselves. Thus can they take life without the shame of bloodied hands.

In Kar’s case, he faced his tan pel’trokal for the crime of being Korun. He was as innocent—and as guilty—as the Balawai children to whom he was planning to do the same. Their crimes were identical: they were born into the wrong family.

He was, at the time, perhaps a year older than Keela.

But there was no Jedi nearby to save him, and so he had to save himself.

I believe that his ability to form human speech was part of the price he paid for his survival. All Jedi know that power must be paid for; the Force maintains a balance that cannot be defied. Pelekotan traded him power for his humanity.

I sometimes wonder if the Force does the same for Jedi.


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 13