Chapter 3: Chapter 3
Tanya Kryze
Mandalore, Sundari, Royal Palace
Indoctrination, a simple method of controlling the youth by making sure that they grow up believing what you want them to believe. Religion and governments have been using that since time immemorial. It was such an effective method of control that it would often outlive the governments and religions that spawned its existence. And the Mandalorians had it in spades.
Oh, sure, there was no official religion on Mandalore anymore; from my research, I knew that. The three gods of their religion had basically fallen out of favor with popular beliefs of centuries before. Said religions have been replaced by more of spiritualism or mysticism, the belief in an afterlife, yes, but less of a Valhalla and more of a collective oversoul where all Mandalorians go when they die.
I personally was not very familiar with the concept of an oversoul, but it sounded better than being reincarnated by an entity proclaiming himself to be a god so they can conduct experiments on the human condition.
But those gods are still part of the culture in a way and things created under their influence still affect their society. And now that I was training under one of the moderate believers of those tenets, I was being forced to learn those tenants. Or to be, more exact, I was being indoctrinated or attempted to be, at least.
Knowing someone's trying to indoctrinate you is usually a good defense against such behaviors. Oh, I will admit, said indoctrination was not the worst kind I had ever come across. Apparently, the first thing my new teacher Bo Katan wanted me to become enthralled in and understand was the Resol'nare, or the six cultural tenets that made a person a Mandalorian. I would say to put it simply, but someone had already done that millennia ago, as the Resol'nare was taught by using a simple statement, one sentence: "Education and armor, self-defense, our tribe, our language, our leader—all help us survive." And in its natural language, it came off more as a rhyme.
I had run across mentions of this particular statement once or twice before in my readings, but I had never given it much time, but now I was coming to a quick understanding of its importance in Mandalorian society and I was a bit shocked that I had not been informed about this sooner.
Granted, I could see why I had not been informed; the New Mandalorians were trying to forge a new path and the Resol'nare were a distinctive artifact of their time. However, I did not believe that it was an artifact that needed to be completely forgotten. In fact, it probably could have been used to successfully control the political situation more than Duchess Satine was now.
To break it down though, what did the six actions imply a person must do and how could they have been used to better deal with the situation?
Education, this part of the was rather simple, a parent must educate their child, in the ways of the Mandalorian, something as my adopted parent Satine had not really done. Understandable as the New Mandalorians were trying to reject the warrior ways of the past, but this was a society building tool to create loyalty between father-son daughter-mother so on and so forth rejecting it was to reject the society itself, and it was no surprise that there would be people unhappy with that particular take. I suspected that if I asked a few questions around, I would find parents who had lived outside the city weren't exactly happy with the public school systems that the new Mandalorians had set up over the last decade.
Armor like the preceding element were cultural hand-me-downs, something a parent and child shared. Though there were other materials used in the creation of Mandalorian armor other than the most famous beskar, the idea was that the fallen warriors of a clan or family would contribute their armor to the protection of the next generation. Besides the Royal Guards and police, I had never seen a new Mandalorian wear any armor, and the reason behind this is simple - pacifists didn't need to fight. It was another cultural touchstone meant for keeping generations close together, thrown out for absolute pacifism.
Self-defense follows the same path. Why do you need to defend yourself when you're trying to create a non-violent pacifist society? However, this was the one that was the major issue that could have been used in their favor. Training for self-defense is not a point against pacifism, rather it's a way to protecting yourself; if they were to recontextualize the armor and self-defense into simply protecting oneself instead of focusing on the aggressive elements from their past they could have easily won over more of the nomadic clans.
Tribe, of course, got a little bit more muddled as it seems to be used in places to mean clan or house, but the general idea was working together for the welfare of society, and thankfully that had not been attacked by the pacifist.
Language, of course, referred to Mando'a, the ancient tongue that was the language of the first Mandalorians, and though I had been told my pronunciations of it were absolutely terrible, I had been given a good education and knew how to speak it, so another point for the pacifist is that they hadn't completely abandoned their culture.
The final cultural touchstone was the leader, or the Mand'alor: a Genghis Khan-like figure who would rally the nomadic tribes for war. Duchess Satine had stepped away from using that title in favor of Duchess, which was a more common title from her homeworld of Kalevala, and the homeworld of the New Mandalorian movement. It was not a complete betrayal of the cultural touchstone that had supported their leader in times of war, but then again, this new Duchess title had not been tested.
As long as everything remained peaceful, the society should progress without issue and my safety was secured, but if anything ever happened well, building a stable society on a cracked foundation tended to not go well when something major happened.
As a result, over the last four months, I did put myself into learning everything Bo-Katan was teaching when it came to self-defense. I was a bit rusty compared to my last life and I didn't have my magic to help stabilize some of my shooting, but I was performing within my expectations. She mainly taught me on the weekends, as the public schools I was attending took up the week. In fact, if not for her taking me on the weekends, my school life would be rather mundane and somewhat similar to my first life, dedication to studying and learning as well as self-improvement. Just with talks of space travel and lasers being real in the background instead of kids talking about the latest anime.
That mundane existence would be changed on the weekends and after school. On the weekends Bo would take me out to shooting ranges that have been set up by Mandalorians who were not keen on giving up their weapons but still wanted to keep training their kids in the ways of self-defense. And during the weekdays, as long as I keep my homework well and truly down to zero, something that I take pride in doing nonetheless, Bo quizzes me and tell stories about how the Mandalorians used to be and how they had once ruled a good portion of the Galaxy in their longstanding feud with the Jedi. Reveling in the ancient times when Mandalorians had been a main political force in the galaxy.
All this really meant nothing; as of 700 years ago the Mandalorians had stopped being a such a force when the Republic had bombed most of the planets of the Mandalorian sector into compliance, and considering they had sent ships to cause smaller bombardments as recent as twenty years ago things have not improved for them.
I would have been tempted to point this out, but I was not in the mood to rock the boat, and it was better to let her believe I was falling for this revanchism schlock. After all, I was simply a tool being used to keep Bo-Katan from being more politically active. If Bo believed I was not being swayed by her arguments, she'd most likely renege on her deal with her sister and I would have to deal with the fact that I was not learning how to defend myself should the need arise.
Of course, I quickly realized that if I didn't show more than a passing interest in the subject she was forcing me to learn, that too could also imply that she was failing in her ultimately doomed attempts to indoctrinate me. Which is why I eventually came up with a plan of asking the right questions at the right time to try and stimulate her into giving me information that I was someone interested in but didn't really need to complete the task.
Today was the first day of the two-day weekend, and Aunt Bo took me out to the desert for a practical with explosives. Obviously, Satine did not know this. I was going to keep that to myself, but even I thought this was a rather insane thing to be doing with a ten-year-old. Frankly, Bo was lucky that I was more experienced than my ten years in this world would have given me.
Said explosives were grenades and thankfully she had started me with dummy ones, at first but I saw some real ones underneath the dummy ones so she most likely planned to teach me how to throw a grenade before showing me the devastation they can unveil.
Bo was wearing her characteristic Mandalorian armor, a black bodysuit with gray and crimson plates, with some yellow markings. I hadn't gotten too deep into the tradition of what colors meant yet in my studies, but I suspected some colors were picked to annoy Aunt Satine, considering her constant use of them. For me, I was wearing a simple set of clothing, tan pants, and a white shirt. Nothing too fancy, since we were going to be out in the wasteland and wouldn't run into any of the higher-ups in society. Though air quality was not great, it felt good to be out of the dresses I was forced to wear in the palace.
As I stood looking at the empty desert for miles all around, we had used a speeder car to get out of here, so there was no one who could interfere or run onto the field and cause a problem. I turned to see Bo walking over with a dummy grenade talking to me, she had left her helmet over on a spreader letting the wind catch her red hair.
"All right, kid, show me that the palace hasn't spoiled your Mandalorian heritage. Show me that you can throw better than the faithless."
I raised an eyebrow at that insult for the New Mandalorians, another thing I had found in my research. Then I shrugged and took the grenade, giving it the wimpiest throw I could. As much as I would like to be seen as superior right off the bat, I needed to work up to it in order to make Bo think she was having a noticeable effect on my form. That would help to be more open in conversations with me. The dummy sailed through the air and landed about twenty-five feet away, not a great distance but minimum safe.
"Well if you started running you'd probably do that better than Satine at your age." Bo complimented while backhanding her own sister. Under other circumstances, I might have ignored that comment, but today that served well as my tool to start the conversation I was interested in having.
"You and Aunt Satine used to train with each other?" I said to show interest in this little nugget of information.
"Yeah, back in the day before she went to Coruscant, she was a better Mandalorian than she is today and father allowed her to train with me quite often." Bo said, picking up a couple of grenades from the box she brought over.
"Then the Clan War started and well she wasn't a good fighter and second in line for succession, so father thought it would be best that she was not in the Mandalorian sector while everyone was trying to kill each other. I bet if he'd known that she would have been converted to the new Mandalorians he probably never would have let her off-world." She said, shaking her head, tossed me a new dummy grenade and then attempted to show me how to throw one by throwing one herself.
Following her example a little, to a point, I threw one and increased the range a bit more. I wouldn't have to run away if that one went off.
"Better," Bo said matter of factly reaching into the case near the ground and picking out another dummy grenade.
"In a way though wasn't grandfather right in sending Satine away, I mean from what I've read he was a skilled warlord, and he did die from being part of the clan wars. Not to mention Korkie and my parents." I said the last part a little lower than I was actually feeling, I've never known them and so I didn't actually feel anything for them. However, emotions were a strong thing to play upon, both for me and for Bo.
For me, showing an emotional weakness may encourage Bo to be more open-minded and communicative about things, perhaps more willing to listen to another point of view who knows. And for Bo, well if she took the bait she may think this is an opportunity to warm her way further into my heart and mind for the indoctrination process, perhaps even separate me from Satine's course. Whatever move she made, I would be able to operate to take the most advantage of it, since I'd be thinking with the clearest head of the two of us.
Bo for her part simply let out a tired sign before she said "Yeah, I guess from that perspective you are kind of right, Satine's alliance with the Jedi and the New Mandalorians did bring about the end of then clan wars quicker. Well, personally I like to think your father, Adonai Junior, would have been able to have won the war eventually if he hadn't been taken out like he was.'
"Was my father a good Mandalorian?" I asked to play up the emotions a bit.
Bo simply smiled and said, "One of the best, brave and talented in a fight and smart and charismatic in public." She reached through the dummy grenade in her hand as far as she could. "If I had to guess, you'd probably have been able to toss a grenade from one trench line to the next with an arm like that."
Nodding my head in understanding, I did my best mimic of her and through it about as half as far as she had.
"A much better improvement," Bo said, sounding very satisfied by the throw. "Think it's time we move on to the live grenades."
"Are you sure that's safe, Aunty Bo?" I asked, severely concerned about this exercise.
"Oh yeah, completely safe, Satine was throwing grenades when she was ten, you should be fine."
"Yes, but didn't you say she was a good Mandalorian, doesn't that mean she had a set of armor to wear with this kind of practice? I mean, you're wearing armor after all?" I pointed out the layer of defense she was wearing in case something went wrong.
This seemed to stop her as she looked down at herself and then said, "That's a valid point I hadn't considered…"
It took great effort, not to call her out on this easiest mistake she could make. But then Bo took a knee. And speaking rather conspiratorially, she said in a low tone "this could be rectified, if you don't mind keeping secrets from Satine?"
Ah a sell, frankly I knew I probably shouldn't engage this but, part of me was interested in where this is going. "I can keep a secret," I said, letting a little bit of a lisp slip in, cuteness was always a good way to disarm your opponent.
Smiling, Bo said, "That's good. Well, then it will take me a week or so to get a little field trip for us together, if Satine asks we're simply going to our homeworld to check out the old estates, got it?"
I nodded, quite interested in what the plan was.
Satine Kryze
Mandalore, Sundari, Royal Palace
Sitting at my desk in the Royal Palace, I wondered what kind of game Bo was playing at. I could tell that she was up to something from the moment she had offered to take Tanya to Kalevala, but what she was playing at I wasn't exactly sure. Oh sure, it was the homeworld of clan Kryze and the original estates were located there. Though I personally hadn't been back to the planet in nearly seven years. I suspected that some of the members of her clan, those that still thought that siding with the New Mandalorians had been a massive mistake, had probably turned the old estate into a reliquary for her father.
The old warlord of Kalevala had been a major political figure of the planet, and much of the damage from the Clan Wars had been avoided through his tactical acumen.
Really the peace that Mandalore now enjoyed was a joint effort between her and her father in a way. He was fighting to keep Kalevala safe and secure from the worst of the war, ensuring the New Mandalorians were left with a large portion of power. And when the New Mandalorians combined with House Kryze victory was only a matter of time.
Perhaps Bo thought that her little Tanya would be easily swayed by the majesty and the history of the old estates and the stories of her grandfather. Possibly that's what Bo was thinking, but I doubted that would be very successful.
Tanya was strong-headed and smart, she may be more interested in the old ways than I would prefer, but I doubted she would fall for whatever Bo tried to sell her. Over the last four months Tanya had been more than willing to share what Bo had been teaching her and so far it was well within expected ranges. Literally in some cases.
So if Bo did attempt anything too much, Tanya would tell her as she trusted her to do, But I thought I'd better know for sure that this situation was still under my control. I didn't want Bo turning Tanya into a Martial Traditionalist. I'd summoned her for a meeting in my office, to get a good explanation of what she thought Bo was up to.
As if on cue of her thoughts, Tanya opened the door entering the office, the guard slowly closing it behind her. "Tanya, good to see you, please take a seat." she said, indicating the seats in front of her desk.
Tanya nodded her head and walked over to the offered seats, "good to see you as well, Aunt Satine." A small smile on her face, her blonde hair is so much like my own, framing it.
"We haven't had a good talk in a while, and I was wondering how your lessons with Bo are going?" I asked.
"Oh, they're proceeding quite well, a lot of exercises and fresh air, practicing the blaster, and some close-quarters training, though she's hesitant to do too much of that until I'm older. She's mostly letting me fight some training droids set to their easiest settings."
I nodded, understanding the necessity of the particular training Bo wanted to insure Tanya knew. However, that didn't exactly answer my question on why Bo wanted to take her off-world.
"Has she talked to you about anything else while training?" I asked poking for more information.
Tanya smiled. I took a moment to respond, it wasn't long, but she noticed it. "Well, we talked about grandfather and father. What kind of Mandalorians they were."
Ah, so that was the game, Bo was trying to play 'Your parents are real Mandalorians card'. I doubted that would be very effective, though Tanya may have an interest in the old ways. From what I had observed of citations in school reports over the years, Tanya had the general issues of why peace was important and a collection of books on the economics of the Mandalorian sector on her datapad. Finding out more about her "father" would not sway her from her path.
I trusted my sister to try to convert Tanya, but I also trusted Tanya to be strong-headed enough that she wouldn't fall for it, but the situation was complicated enough that I had to keep an eye on it. Maybe I should look into getting someone to go along with Tanya training, Bo may not like that addition unless she found a good cover story… handmaiden perhaps, or maybe one of the royal guard kids would be willing to play guard for Tanya? I would have to think about it.
"You know your Aunt Bo wants to take you to Kalevala, I personally can't go myself because matters of the state require my attention, so it would just be you and your aunt. Knowing that, do you feel safe going off-world with her on a field trip?"
Tanya simply nodded and said, "I've never been off-world before. I'd be quite interested in the experience, and Kalevala is your homeworld and I kind of want to see what that's like."
That emotionally stung a bit, Tanya wanted to go to my homeworld to see what it was like. Granted, Kalevala was not too different than Mandalore, also a desert world just with more life outside the cities but the idea that Tanya was interested simply because it was where Satine had come from, well it hurt a bit. Not for the first time, I wish I had gone with my gut and not listened to my counsel about handling that difficult situation 10 years ago.
Biting her lip for a moment as I calmed myself and simply said "Alright then, I'll see to it that everything's arranged, perhaps even Korkie would be interested in going with you?" Just because I was willing to entertain the idea of letting Tanya go alone with both doesn't mean I wasn't going to try and make sure someone was there she can trust to tell her if anything weird happened.
Tanya smiled and agreed, "I bet he would like that, I will ask Bo if she's willing to take him along as well."
Tanya Kryze
Mandalore, Sundari, Royal Palace
Well, that went better than I had expected, I had almost assumed at the moment I had been called up to Satine's office I was about to receive bad news and would not be going off-world, an experience I was quite enthralled with the opportunity of.
After all, in my last life, I had been sent back fifty years before the start of the space race. In the life before that, going to space was the domain of government organizations and the extremely rich. This would be a new experience that I was going to enjoy, even if it was probably going to be diminished by artificial gravity.
The only real issue was Bo's plans for the trip would possibly be hindered by having to bring Korkie along, and though I was sure whatever the plans were they were going to be troublesome, I was interested in finding out what her plans were. And I didn't want Korkie to interfere too greatly, he was a good kid and would run to Satine the moment he felt something was wrong.
Thus, I needed to come up with a way to prevent his interference. And really it wasn't that hard at all once I set my mind to do it.
Wandering through the palace, I quickly found my way to his room and knocked rather loudly, waiting a bit before I knocked again before entering his room.
Inside I found him deep at work on his homework, as a possible successor it was not surprising that he was getting a little bit more work than me when it came to his schooling, that and he was a few years ahead of me in the curriculum.
"Hey Korkie," I said loudly, hoping to get his attention. It took me a moment to realize that he had earphones on, probably listening to whatever teenagers of this universe listen to. I found most of it uninteresting, I couldn't tell a Jizz band from a Gliz band, so I sighed in annoyance. I walked up closer and tapped his shoulder, trying to keep my thoughts about how a few employees had tested my patience over the years doing something similar.
Taken by surprise, my brother who had been leaning over his desk jumped up in his chair looking around confused. "Tanya, what are you doing here?" He said when he finally spotted me.
"Trying to get your attention at the moment", I said shaking my head, "but if you mean generally why have I entered your room after I've knocked several times, well Aunty Bo has offered to take me to Kalevala to see the family estates and Aunt Satine was wondering if you were interested in joining us. I'm sure Bo would not mind taking you along if you're not too busy with your schoolwork."
Korkie smiled then looked at his schoolwork before signing heavily. "I would love to come, but mathematics is kicking my ass this week. If you can get Bo to hold off this little trip, maybe I can make it next week, but right now I'm going to have to hope Satine can can spare some time to help my studies for the coming test.
"I will see what I can do," I said fully intending not to, I have been hearing that he was having trouble with his mathematics, so I was not surprised by the answer I received, and it would work perfectly for what I had planned.
I could prevent him from coming on this first trip and then arrange a second one with Bo in a couple of weeks, so that Aunt Satine would be appeased, Bo would get to show me what she wanted to show me, and Korkie could have a moment of thought while visiting our homeworld, and everything would work out in my favor.
Smiling with a victorious grin, I said, "I'll talk to her tomorrow about it, and will see what happens."
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