Star Wars Prehistoric — Chapter Two: The Awakening of PRIS

(A fan story)

Chapter 2 — The Awakening of Pris (Short Version)

This is a story that did not echo through time. A story of a world lost and the one soul that shaped an order.

The discovery of the Force, the rise of the force sensitivity, and the inevitable descent into darkness began as most things, small and unassuming.

Beginnings are never what they seem.

I. The Ararat

When the Ararat left Earth, it carried life, the remnants of the Earth, the so called best, brightest, the survivors, the fearless and fearful. A thousand years of human history, the stories of fifty billion ancient humans, in a ship the size of a city.

It carried memory.

The ship was a relic even then, a marvel of engineering from a lost golden age. Nine kilometres long, layered in titanium-ceramic composites, laced with the last miracles of Earth’s quantum science, it was not a ship, but a city in motion.

The upper decks were reserved for the Vanguard, descendants of Earth’s scientific and political elite. They lived in wide boulevards lit by simulated skies, under domes that projected the constellations of a home they would never see again. They preserved the arts, the archives of history, the last seeds of knowledge and culture. They wore flowing robes of ivory and gold, their garments woven with tiny memory crystals that told stories in shifting light.

They held the dream of Earth’s perfection in their minds, even as they reshaped its history to suit their needs.

Below them, in the ship’s sprawling middle decks, industry pulsed. Hydroponic gardens grew endless rows of protein flora. Atmosphere processors turned carbon dioxide back into breathable air. Water was recycled, reclaimed, and filtered through the ancient bones of the ship.

And far below, beneath the soft hum of life, the Commons lived.

It was not a life, not really, it was sacrifice.

The Commons were descendants of the workers, engineers, and fabricators who had built and maintained the Ararat’s systems. Over the generations, their role became their identity. They lived in shadow, in the forgotten mechanical underbelly of the ship, where the lights flickered and the walls sweated moisture.

They laboured unseen, keeping the vessel alive.

No one spoke of the early revolts, of the workers who tried to claim a voice, a share. Those memories were quietly erased from the ship’s central databanks. All that remained was silence and the endless hum of duty.

II. The Children of the Dark

PRIS was born on Maintenance Deck 7G.

Her earliest memories were not the false suns above the Vanguard gardens, but of metal corridors stretching endlessly, of the way the ship moaned under strain, like an old creature suffering silently in the void.

Her parents worked near the fusion cores, repairing conduits and replacing worn components. They were ordinary in the way that only the truly forgotten could be. They loved her quietly, taught her what they could. How to read the temperature of a pipe by touch, how to hear the difference between a normal vibration and a dangerous one. How to find safe places to sleep, hidden from both the dangers of the ship and the dangers of other people.

Then came the accident.

A plasma vent ruptured.

There was no warning. No chance. One moment they were there; the next, they were ash and air.

There was no mourning in the Commons, only survival. PRIS was absorbed back into the machine, another shadow in the ducts.

It was there she met Thalen.

A little older, broader, with hands calloused from years of labour, Thalen carried the quiet rage of someone who had seen too much and been given too little. He taught her how to barter, how to avoid the patrols, how to move unseen through the labyrinthine maintenance shafts.

Where PRIS was silent, instinctual, Thalen was hungry for knowledge. He hoarded old data slates, piecing together fragments of history erased from official records. He told her stories of Earth as it was, not as the Vanguard pretended. Greens and blues, wild and terrible creatures, a place of wars and dreams.

And he spoke of older things, myths buried in the ship’s forbidden archives. Of orders that guarded ancient wisdom, wielders of a magic that could bind and break the stars.

The Ashla and the Bogan. Light and shadow.

Most called it superstition.

PRIS listened, but did not believe.

Not then.

III. The World Above

Once a cycle, the Vanguard held the Concordia Festival.

It was a relic of Earth’s last unity, a ceremony to remind themselves of their mission, their supposed purpose. To seed new worlds. To carry the torch of civilization across the endless dark.

PRIS, curious beyond caution, found a way to watch.

Through a crack in an old access panel, she saw a world she had never imagined. Skies as blue as faded memories. Gardens filled with trees bearing fruits she had only seen in salvaged textbooks. People in gleaming garments, their faces untouched by hunger or fear.

The Vanguard moved in slow, graceful processions. They wore symbols older than the voyage itself, a star wrapped in a circle, an echo of Earth’s ancient seals. Their banners fluttered in artificial breezes, holographic stars swirling above them.

It was there she saw Caius Renn.

Young, barely a man, but carrying himself with the quiet certainty of someone who had never needed to doubt his place in the world.

Their eyes met.

He should have looked away. Should have called the guards.

Instead, he crossed the floor, reached into a basket, and pulled free a brightfruit. He knelt and handed it to her, a smile flickering across his face.

It was the first kindness she had ever known.

The guards arrived moments later. She was dragged away, the fruit crushed underfoot.

But the memory remained.

IV. The Dark Quiet

The Ararat drifted deeper into the intergalactic void.

No stars shone here. No radiation hummed. The ship’s shielding, designed to protect against the noise of the cosmos, became unnecessary. For the first time in its long voyage, the ship floated in pure silence.

And the silence spoke.

It began slowly.

A whisper at the edge of thought. A feeling of presence when no one was there. Machines malfunctioned in ways that defied explanation. People dreamed dreams that were not their own.

The Commons called it the Dark Quiet.

PRIS felt it most keenly.

She could sense the ship’s moods. Feel its pain. She walked through the maintenance tunnels with unerring instinct, arriving at failing systems before alarms sounded.

The Force, that ancient, unseen current, was awakening.

Not magic.

Not myth.

Life itself, in its purest form.

V. Fire and Ash

The Ararat crossed too close to the remains of a collapsed star.

A storm of radiation tore through its shields, igniting systems, collapsing bulkheads.

The Vanguard, following cold equations of survival, sealed the lower decks. The Commons were sacrificed, expendable.

Amid the chaos, Caius Renn found himself trapped near a failing transit hub. The ceiling groaned, fractures spider-webbing through the supports.

PRIS was there.

She felt the danger, the tension in the metal, the scream in the air.

She reached out, not with her hands, but with her mind.

And the world obeyed.

The debris froze, suspended by invisible threads. The air shimmered with unseen power.

She pulled Caius free, dragging him clear of the collapsing structure.

When the fire crews arrived, they found her standing among the ruins, the wreckage still trembling in the air.

It was the first true emergence of the Force.

And it would not be the last.

VI. The Divide

PRIS was taken to the upper decks.

The Vanguard dissected her life. Blood tests. Neural scans. Genetic analyses.

Within her, they found what they had only theorized: midichlorians, ancient symbionts resonating with fields beyond human science.

She was not an accident.

She was an opportunity.

They spoke of breeding programs, of harnessing her abilities to create a new caste of rulers, Force-wielders who would ensure the Vanguard’s dominance over any world they touched.

PRIS refused.

Among the researchers, Thalen watched.

He had risen, in his way, given access to the upper decks by virtue of his association with her. For the first time in his life, he was not invisible.

But it was not enough.

PRIS rejected the Vanguard’s offers. She spoke of balance, of humility. She turned away from power.

Thalen saw only betrayal.

The Force whispered to him too, but in a different voice.

Not of peace, but of domination.

VII. The Rebellion

Caius, torn between his heritage and his gratitude, came to PRIS in secret.

Together, with the help of a forgotten service droid named R3-V, they escaped.

In the depths of the ship, among the forgotten and the broken, PRIS found her true calling.

She taught the Commons how to listen, how to feel the currents of life around them.

She did not promise power.

She promised freedom.

The rebellion began not with weapons, but with belief.

The ship itself seemed to awaken. Systems failed at opportune moments. Bulkheads sealed and unsealed with unnatural precision.

The Force was alive.

And it had chosen.

VIII. The Legacy

The Vanguard fell.

PRIS did not claim dominion. She formed a council, a gathering of those attuned to the Force. They would guide, not rule. Protect, not conquer.

They called themselves Keepers of Balance.

In time, they would be known by another name.

IX. The Shadow

But not all followed.

Thalen watched as PRIS became something untouchable, beloved by many, but not by him.

In the shadows, the Force whispered.

It spoke of freedom through passion. Strength through conquest. Victory through domination.

He listened.

And in the dark corridors where the ship’s light no longer reached, he made a covenant with himself.

A new order.

A new code.

He would not serve balance.

He would impose his will.