Force Traditions

The Force has been studied, interpreted, feared, worshipped, and wielded in many different ways throughout galactic history.

The Jedi and Sith are the most influential Force traditions of the SWTOR era, but they are not the only ones. Different peoples and communities have developed teachings concerned with prophecy, discipline, service, knowledge, conflict, physical practice, spirituality, power, survival, and an individual's relationship with the Force.

For roleplay, a tradition helps answer a question more useful than simply what can this character do with the Force?

A Force tradition can shape far more than a character's abilities.

Training may influence how someone understands responsibility, emotion, violence, authority, knowledge, death, destiny, personal ambition, relationships, and the proper use of extraordinary power. It can establish where they were educated, who taught them, what obligations they inherited, which practices they consider dangerous or forbidden, and how they understand other Force-users.

Tradition does not require obedience.

A Jedi may struggle with the expectations of the Order. A Sith may disagree profoundly with their master about what strength means. A Voss Mystic may belong to a cultural framework that outsiders misunderstand. Someone raised within a smaller tradition may regard the Jedi and Sith as distant galactic powers rather than the natural center of their spiritual life.

Characters taught by the same tradition may therefore develop different beliefs, loyalties, doubts, specialties, and relationships.

StarForgeRP distinguishes traditions directly established within SWTOR from additional traditions drawn primarily from compatible Legends material. That distinction matters because an older tradition may be well established historically without SWTOR clearly describing its population, institutions, or accessibility during StarForgeRP's present day.

SWTOR-Era Traditions

These traditions are directly represented in SWTOR or closely related official SWTOR material and provide the strongest foundations for Force-related backgrounds in the current setting.

Jedi Tradition

The Jedi Tradition approaches the Force through disciplines associated with peace, knowledge, self-control, compassion, service, and resistance to the dark side.

A Jedi background can involve far more than lightsaber training. Teachers, duties, scholarship, relationships, institutional expectations, wartime experiences, disagreements, failures, and questions about how Jedi principles should be applied can all shape a character's relationship with the tradition.

Sith Tradition

The Sith Tradition embraces the dark side and places conflict, passion, strength, power, victory, and freedom among its central concerns.

Those principles do not produce one personality or ambition. Sith may pursue military achievement, political authority, ancient knowledge, independence, personal legacy, ideological goals, mastery over rivals, or survival within a dangerous hierarchy. What a particular Sith believes strength and freedom actually require can become one of the most important parts of their characterization.

Voss Mystics

The Voss Mystics belong to a tradition that developed independently of Jedi and Sith teachings.

Outsiders recognize the Mystics as Force-users, while traditional Voss society understands them through its own cultural and spiritual framework. Their visions and the interpretation of those visions have held extraordinary importance within Voss civilization.

For roleplay, that distinction matters. A Voss Mystic should not simply be treated as a Jedi or Sith operating beneath another name.

Baran Do Sages

The Baran Do Sages represent an ancient Kel Dor Force tradition that existed before the Kel Dor joined the Galactic Republic.

By the SWTOR era the tradition had become considerably more obscure as increasing numbers of Force-sensitive Kel Dor received Jedi training. That history makes the Baran Do especially useful for characters concerned with cultural inheritance, forgotten or declining traditions, relationships with the Jedi, and the preservation or reinterpretation of older teachings. 

Order of Shasa

The Order of Shasa is a Selkath Force tradition rooted in the history of Manaan.

Its origins are connected to the conflict surrounding Force-sensitive Selkath manipulated by the Sith during the Jedi Civil War and the uprising led by Shasa. The Order survived into the SWTOR era and remained connected to Selkath concerns surrounding Manaan, foreign interference, and the consequences of earlier encounters with outside powers.

It provides a particularly strong foundation for characters whose understanding of the Force cannot be separated from Selkath history and identity.

Zakuulan Force Traditions

Zakuulan Force Traditions developed separately from the Jedi and Sith and became closely connected to Zakuul's political and spiritual history under Valkorion.

The Knights of Zakuul tied Force ability to service and protection within the Eternal Empire, while the Scions became strongly associated with prophecy, visions, and fate.

The collapse of the Eternal Empire substantially changed the institutions that once supported these traditions. Present-day characters connected to them may therefore be former Knights, surviving adherents, people raised beneath their influence, or individuals reconsidering beliefs and loyalties after the political world that shaped them changed dramatically.

Supplementary Legends Traditions

Broader Legends material preserves additional Force traditions that can reasonably supplement the SWTOR setting.

Their historical existence does not automatically establish their exact population, organization, accessibility, or condition during StarForgeRP's present day. Where SWTOR does not provide that information, character concepts should distinguish established history from reasonable interpretation.

Jal Shey

The Jal Shey are an older Legends tradition associated with an unusually intellectual approach to studying the Force.

Surviving material connects them with scholarship, advising, diplomacy, teaching, knowledge, and mental discipline. Their limited documentation makes them useful for carefully developed scholarly or philosophical characters while leaving many questions about their organization and later SWTOR-era circumstances unanswered.

Matukai

The Matukai are a Legends Force tradition that integrates physical discipline with the development of Force ability.

Their practices connect bodily training, movement, martial exercise, meditation, and harmony between body and mind rather than separating physical development from spiritual practice.

A Force tradition and a Force-using organization may overlap, but they answer different questions.

A tradition concerns teachings: what the Force means, how practitioners are trained, what disciplines or philosophies guide them, what they believe power should be used for, and which practices they encourage or reject.

An organization concerns people and institutions: membership, leadership, ranks, responsibilities, resources, facilities, authority, internal politics, and relationships with other groups.

The Jedi, Sith, Order of Shasa, and Knights of Zakuul all demonstrate that the same subject can possess both institutional and traditional dimensions.

Force sensitivity does not automatically mean membership in a formal tradition.

A character may discover unusual abilities without understanding them, conceal their sensitivity, receive limited instruction from one mentor, inherit fragments of family or cultural knowledge, leave an established order, or encounter the Force without ever joining a larger institution.

Independence does not mean training appeared from nowhere.

The more developed a character's abilities or specialized knowledge become, the more useful it is to establish where that experience came from: a teacher, former affiliation, surviving tradition, text, holocron, artifact, years of practice, or another source appropriate to the character's history.

Knowledge also has limits. An independent practitioner does not automatically understand every Force technique simply because no institution restricts what they may study.

Force-Sensitive

Force-sensitive describes someone's connection or receptiveness to the Force. It does not identify their philosophy, education, allegiance, abilities, or tradition.

Two Force-sensitive characters may therefore understand their experiences in completely different ways.

Dark Jedi

Dark Jedi is best treated as a broad or contextual description rather than the name of one formal tradition.

The term has been applied to different dark-side practitioners, including Jedi or former Jedi who fell to the dark side without necessarily becoming Sith. A character described this way should still have an actual training history, philosophy, and relationship with whatever tradition or institution shaped them.

Gray Jedi

Gray Jedi is an especially ambiguous label and should not substitute for a character background.

Legends material has used the term in different ways, particularly for Jedi who operated independently of conventional Jedi authority or whose relationship with the Order was unusually unorthodox. Popular usage has expanded the phrase even further.

For StarForgeRP, the useful question is therefore what the term means for the individual character.

Are they still a Jedi who disagrees with the Council? A former Jedi? An independent Force-user? Someone trained by another tradition entirely?

StarForgeRP's present-day continuity includes the events of Game Update 7.9: Legacy Reborn.

At Khar Shian, Darth Malgus succeeded in using Darth Nul's reconstructed machine to broadcast his message to Force-sensitive beings across the galaxy. The broadcast has occurred within the shared setting, but its complete effects remain unresolved.

That uncertainty is especially relevant to characters connected to Force traditions.

A Jedi, Sith, Voss Mystic, independent practitioner, untrained sensitive, or member of another tradition may interpret the same experience through very different beliefs. Characters may respond with concern, curiosity, anger, fear, inspiration, skepticism, investigation, or other reactions appropriate to their individual circumstances.

The event should not by itself grant knowledge, abilities, or certainty that SWTOR has not established.

Community-created Force traditions can expand StarForgeRP when they occupy a believable place within the SWTOR-era galaxy without replacing established history or becoming convenient sources of unrestricted power.

A tradition does not need to rival the Jedi or Sith in age, population, influence, or resources to matter.

A family preserving unusual teachings, an isolated community with its own interpretation of the Force, descendants of an older tradition, a regional spiritual practice, or a small movement founded by former members of another order may create stronger roleplay opportunities precisely because their circumstances are limited and personal.

• Where and when did the tradition develop?

• Who can realistically encounter or join it?

• How is training preserved and passed on?

• What does the tradition believe the Force is?

• What responsibilities does it place upon practitioners?

• Which practices are encouraged, restricted, feared, or forbidden?

• What teachers, texts, artifacts, institutions, or communities sustain it?

• How does it relate to the Jedi, Sith, and other Force traditions?

• How large and influential is it actually meant to be?

• What disagreements or divisions exist among its practitioners?

• How have the wars and upheavals of the SWTOR era affected it?

• What relationships, obligations, risks, or conflicts does belonging to it create?

When a new tradition depends upon extrapolation, unusual historical claims, or relationships with established SWTOR events, use Continuity & Canon to determine what should be treated as established lore, supplementary material, interpretation, or StarForgeRP-created continuity.

When developing a Force-sensitive character, consider the history behind what they believe and what they can actually do.

• Who first recognized their Force sensitivity?

• Who actually trained them, and for how long?

• What were they taught the Force means?

• What responsibilities or restrictions accompanied that training?

• Which teachings do they genuinely believe?

• Which teachings do they question, reject, or misunderstand?

• What abilities has their history actually prepared them to use?

• What knowledge or training do they lack?

• Who taught them techniques that are uncommon outside a particular tradition?

• What relationship do they still have with former teachers, students, institutions, family, or communities?

• How do other Force-users understand or misunderstand their background?

• What experiences have challenged what they were taught?

• What might cause their beliefs to change through roleplay?