Tai

Name: Wei

Age: 34

Contact: plurk: zeroq1, discord: nobody#7007, or pm this journal

Character Name: Tai
Canon: Star Wars (Rise of Kylo Ren comics)
Canon Point: After his death
Appearance: https://i2.wp.com/sabersourcing.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/tai-lightsaber-lightsaber-profile.jpg
Age: Early 20s

Character snapshot:

Tai is a student of Luke Skywalker's and one of few Jedi-in-training to survive (briefly) the destruction of their school. He is a kind-hearted and persistent young man who believes heavily in the power of personal choice. As a long-time friend of Ben Solo’s, he was hesitant to believe his friend was lost to the Dark Side, and he tried desperately to get him to turn around, coming very close to succeeding.

World description:

Tai is from Star Wars, in the period between the original and sequel movie trilogies. The wider story takes place in a galaxy recovering from a large scale war that took place a couple decades earlier, resulting in the fall of the Empire that had held control of many populated planets. There is also the Force, an energy that runs through every living thing, and people who wield powers connected to it. Such people are rare, and widely considered a myth to anyone who hasn’t known one.

Those who follow teachings adhering to the Light Side of the Force and use their powers for good are known as Jedi. The Jedi were a larger, more structured order in the past, but were wiped out along with the rise of the Empire. Luke Skywalker was trained by some of the few former Jedi that remained, and aimed to rebuild the Jedi by forming his own small school. The Jedi are perpetually opposed to users of the Dark Side of the Force, which corrupts and is typically used for evil.

History:

Tai’s young life is unknown in canon, so this first bit is how I’ve filled in the gaps. Tai was born into a political family, and expected to follow in the footsteps of his parents as a diplomat. It was a life his older sister took well to, but Tai less so, leading to frustration all around. His Force abilities became visible when he was around ten years old, coinciding with the establishment of Luke’s Jedi school. Once there, the prior tension with his family over his inability to live up to their expectations became a bonding point with Ben Solo, Luke’s nephew, who had grown up with similar turmoil.

What we know from canon is that Tai was among the first Jedi students, following shortly after the school started with just Luke and Ben. He wasn’t the top student, nor did he seek to be, but he learned the ways of the Force solidly enough, and became particularly skilled at picking up on the emotions of others.

He was a part of a three-person group who had been away from the school when it was destroyed, and came back to find the temple on fire and their Master and the other students presumed dead. Ben was the only one left alive, obviously unsettled and claiming that he had killed Luke after Luke had attempted to kill him. When Ben fled the scene, the three pursued. Voe and Hennix demanded justice, but Tai was more concerned about Ben, not believing that he would cause so much destruction without reason. In the end, he caught up with Ben and nearly convinced him to turn back from the Dark Side, but he was killed by another Dark Side user before he could succeed.

What are your character’s mental/emotional strengths?

Acceptance- Tai’s number one strength is being able to accept the reality he’s dealing with, whether that’s in terms of people or situations. He got close to Ben because he was more able than others to empathize with his situation and not judge. At the same time, he seems just as able to maintain a friendship with Voe, who had felt intense rivalry toward Ben. He sees both perspectives and takes them for what they are. When everything went wrong at the Jedi school, he was able to keep it in perspective and worry most about the parts of the situation that still might be fixable, focusing on finding Ben rather than getting overwhelmed by the tragedy of everything else.

A solid self-image- Tai’s repeated advice to Ben is that he needs to be who he is, meaning that it doesn’t matter so much whether he lives up to the expectations placed on him as a powerful Jedi student or as the son of war heroes. Tai himself embodies this philosophy. He believes in following one’s own path, and argues that even big mistakes aren’t irreversible. His own personal steadiness in that belief is what allows him to get through to Ben with it.

Persistence- Once Tai has decided on something, he’s going to stick to it. After the destruction of the Jedi school, and after seeing that pursuing Ben further would be dangerous, it would have been easy to give up on trying to get him back. Tai’s faith in Ben did waver after he killed one of the other two remaining students, but he ultimately returned to his initial plan of talking Ben down, rather than abandoning the chase or assuming he was too far gone to turn back.

What are your character’s mental/emotional weaknesses?
(A note: Because of the way his canon is framed, there are next to no examples of his weaknesses showing, so this section is pretty speculative. I do feel they make sense given what we know and I have endeavored to play him as a more balanced character than canon had the opportunity to show.)

Unresolved grief- In the last few days before Tai died, he had also lost nearly every part of the life he had known. As far as he knew, every person from the Jedi school was dead, save for one he had been traveling with, and Ben, who had been at least a part of the cause of that tragedy. The time between learning that and his death was spent pursuing Ben, hoping for answers, and attempting not to lose Ben as well. Needless to say, he hasn’t really had time to process any of the rest of this, and it will weigh on him.

A need to fit in/be needed- At least as I interpret Tai, his early life was spent feeling not good enough. Much of that was resolved with the shift to Jedi school and him finding what his strengths really are, but canon ripped his Jedi life away from him, and this setting will nerf the powers he’s been training all this time. He’s going to feel very unsteady until he can figure out what role he can play in the community here.

Guilt and confusion over Ben- He doesn’t feel responsible for Ben turning to the Dark Side, but ultimately, he has to deal with the fact that a very good friend of his chose to side with evil, and Tai, for as well as he knew Ben, really couldn’t see it coming, at least not to that extent. He was loyal enough to Ben and determined enough to find answers that it eventually got him killed, without ever turning up much in the way of answers.

What events or circumstances in your character’s past have impacted them the most?

Going to Jedi school- While canon tells us nothing about his young life, I see this as the turning point that allows him to be quite so steady in his belief that things will work out and he can always find a way to be himself. He knows what it’s like to feel out of place, but because he came to the school and studied to be a Jedi, he also knows that he had been wrong to think there wasn’t a place for him when he was younger. He just hadn’t found it yet. Learning more about his Force abilities gave him something to focus in on that he was good at, made his kindness and other-focused nature a strength, and gave him a small, tight-knit community to be a part of.

Friendship with Ben- He and Ben bonded over their somewhat similar childhoods, though where Jedi school was the answer to Tai’s problems, it was really just one more thing that had been forced on Ben. They seem to have balanced each other. Ben needed someone to believe in him and remind him of his own agency. Meanwhile, Ben’s often negative views were a challenge to Tai’s optimism, and that likely contributed to his overall resilience.

Destruction of Jedi school- Pretty literally everything Tai had known for over half his life went up in flames in one night, so that had a big impact, elaborated upon in other sections of this app.

What impressions do others tend to have of your character and how do those impressions differ from who your character truly is?

Whatever impression someone has of Tai, it’s likely to be pretty accurate. He tries to live as a very honest version of himself, and while he may not say everything he’s thinking, he’s unlikely to put up much of a facade. He looks like a kind-hearted Jedi who’s capable of fighting with a lightsaber if need be, and that’s exactly what he is.

What motivates your character?

Tai is motivated primarily by caring for others. He has always been kind, empathetic, and honest. It’s part of what made him not very well suited to politics. He learned the social skills of diplomacy well, but had no patience for political maneuverings or much interest in the specifics of policy. He’s not built for putting that much thought into what might be best for the galaxy on a large scale, but he is very good at understanding what the person in front of him might need, and holds a belief that acting on that level can make a large-scale difference. As a trained Jedi, and therefore one of the most potentially influential people in the galaxy, that’s probably especially true with regard to the life he's known.

He follows the Jedi teachings, though not blindly. Living in a way that makes sense to him personally is important to him, so he undoubtedly has his own interpretations of anything he’s been taught, and he would encourage the same from anyone else. Knowing how the things his parents tried to teach him never sat right with him, and how he only felt things fit after he found a different philosophy, he's not inclined to assume that anything is really one-size-fits-all.

He puts a heavy value on his close relationships. While the other students were primarily invested in pursuing Ben purely to stop him from doing any more damage, Tai was clearly more interested in Ben’s wellbeing, even as he started to wonder whether Ben was actually completely lost to the Dark Side. When he confronted him, he pointed out their close connection and used that as a way to talk Ben down, making it clear how much he still cared about him. It’s very likely that Tai was in love with Ben, though debatable whether he ever recognised it as such. Either way, once he feels a very close connection to someone, it becomes a driving force, and he’ll have a hard time letting go of it.

How does your character handle crisis or adversity?

Tai is, in general, pretty good at keeping a handle on a crisis situation. He’ll see what needs to be done and focus his attention there. Throughout his reaction to the Jedi school being destroyed, he kept his attention on Ben and trying to prevent anything further from going wrong. In general, he’d be able to keep a very level head as long as he can figure out a way to help the situation. Longer-term adverse conditions or situations he isn’t able to immediately do something about would probably wear him down a lot more, though he would still try to focus on where he can help the situation as much as possible.

Skills, abilities, and physical weaknesses:

These are just my immediate thoughts for how to handle things in this setting. Please offer any suggestions if you feel like any of this is off the mark.

Telekinesis- Jedi can move things with their minds. As far as nerfs go, I don’t think this needs much modification, though I will keep it a bit more limited in scope than what the movies show. In this environment, he would have unusual difficulty lifting a particularly large or heavy object.

Extrasensory perception- Jedi are extremely attuned to their environment and can often sense major happenings at a distance or finely predict the motions of things that are close. I would guess that this environment generally leans toward messing with this, and that there would be places this sense would just completely fail, or even cause him to pick up on things that aren’t actually real.

Empathy- Tai in particular is adept at reading the emotions of others. While Tai wasn’t aware of Ben’s secrets, he was explicitly conscious of the fact that Ben had certain parts of himself very well shielded. This one, I intend to leave up to player discretion and will put up a permission form for. The weirdness of his perceptions otherwise in this place will probably cast a bit of doubt here, as well.

Healing- Tai can remove pain from someone who is injured, though it’s unclear whether that does anything to actually heal the wound. For this setting, I’ll assume it doesn’t. This also seems to take a high level of concentration for it to succeed, so it can probably be kept as-is.

Influence- Jedi can plant thoughts into the minds of others. This only works on people who don’t have any defenses against it, and it’s hard to imagine Tai would use this skill frequently. He would probably only try it as a last resort. I am fine with saying this one just doesn’t work at all here, unless it comes up with another player who really wants it to.

Combat- Tai is generally physically fit and trained to fight with a lightsaber. That training would make him capable of fighting well in general, but since lightsabers are weightless aside from the handle, he will probably find any other form of weapon awkward, at least at first. He’s also used to being able to rely on his sense of the environment (see above) so that being affected will throw him off a bit physically as well.

Piloting a spaceship- What it says on the tin. Probably completely useless in this environment, though might make him somewhat able to figure out any other kind of vehicle that might exist.

Inventory:
Really just the clothes he’s wearing. He would have had his lightsaber, but since that’s a weapon, it’s gone.

What aspects of your character are you most interested in exploring in a horror setting?

What we see of him in canon is fairly limited, and while it is him dealing with a pretty horrible situation, that situation also requires him to be the voice of reason attempting to talk Ben back from being pulled into the Dark. I am really interested in seeing what happens with Tai, not only when the events he’s just been through really start to sink in, but also when he has to start over in alone in an unsettling environment. He seems like an extremely resilient and mentally balanced sort of person, and I want to know how well he’ll be able to hold onto his optimism when faced with things that would affect anyone, no matter how stable they are.

What is your character’s mental state upon entering the game?

Primarily, Tai is going to be feeling lost and confused. On top of being alive when he should be dead and stuck in a completely unfamiliar and not too friendly place, his entire world has been flipped upside-down in the few days before all that. He had spent years in the routine of being a Jedi student, only to come back one day to find it all destroyed. It’s only by chance that he wasn’t one of the students to die in the fire, and that’s a reality he has yet to truly confront. The loss of the Jedi school is something he’s acknowledged and moved past out of necessity, but it hasn’t had a chance to really sink in.

Beyond that, he doesn’t really know how much of a part Ben played in what happened. His confrontation with Ben gave him a little bit of insight into Ben’s emotional state, but not much into the practical details of anything that occurred. While he doesn’t feel that he in any way caused Ben to turn to the Dark Side, he is going to wonder whether there was anything he could have done to prevent it. Also, what he doesn't know is likely to eat at him. He had been close to Ben, but obviously there was a lot he’d missed despite that. That knowledge is going to make him feel that much more unsettled as he has to adapt to this new environment that’s completely unfamiliar.

What unsettles and frightens your character? What sort of encounters would chip away at your character’s psychological stability?

After the events Tai just experienced, his trust is likely to be generally shaken, especially if his access to the Force to provide confirmation of what he thinks he knows is proving unreliable. He’s just been confronted with how much he didn’t know about his best friend, so while I think he will be friendly and open with others because that’s his nature, I also think he’s going to be especially wary of the fact that he doesn’t know anything about anyone here. So anything that would give him particular cause to distrust others is likely to hit hard. Tai is also inclined to take care of people, to feel needed and wanted. He won’t do well with being told he’s not needed or doesn’t belong, or simply being isolated.

Helplessness would be another one. It would be difficult to get there, since Tai is actually very good at keeping track of what he can and can’t control and focusing on what he can do. But largely because he’s so certain that there’s always that kind of a choice to be made, if he was ever in a situation where he was truly powerless, it would be terrifying.

Probably anything that brings up Ben will mess with him in some way. On one hand, he knows he was right to have faith in him, because Ben almost did turn back before Tai was killed. On the other, Tai briefly doubted that and he had reason to, even if it wasn’t for long. And on the other other, what does it say about Tai that he was so willing to keep defending Ben, when he still doesn’t really know just how much of the destruction at the school was his fault or why? That his best friend ultimately is the reason all his other friends are dead? That if he was still alive in his world, he’d probably stay latched onto Ben despite everything? Add to that that he’s probably in love with Ben and doesn’t precisely realise it, and the Jedi have a lot of texts warning against being quite so attached to another person. He’s pretty good at keeping stock of his own morals, so on a good day, he’s likely to keep a reasonable perspective on this, but the point of this setting isn’t having a good day.

What horrifying events or genre elements would you like to see utilized in the game?

I always love dream-related mechanics, or anything that allows other characters to get a glimpse into my character’s past or things he might not be saying. Hallucinations are fun, too.

Test Drive Thread: TDM toplevel
Log Thread Sample: What if Tai didn't die? (with genderswapped Ben)
Log Thread Sample: Dead Tai hangs out in Rey's dream