There is, in all things, balance. On a world in the Outer Rim, buried in a library beneath a stack of ancient texts that were either waiting to be scanned into a more useable form, or waiting to just fall apart, I found reference to what I believe to be one of the ultimate tools for balance. For all that we hear of the Sith and their great power, no one ever speaks of how the light side should counter it, aside from force of will and faith in the bond shared by all living creatures. It is my belief that the object mentioned in the text I transcribe below, the so-called “Eye of the Sun,” may have been created specifically to counter the depredations of the dark side.
Begin Transcription:
In the weeks before the Battle of Ruusan, when it became clear that the warriors of the dark side would have with them a great many weapons of the Force, the Jedi gathered together and adopted the task of creating a countermeasure. This countermeasure would be less a weapon, and more a defense. The form this defense might take remained unclear; it was decided by the Masters present that those among them who best understood the act of creation would convene in a quiet place on a distant world. There, they would let the Force guide them. They would create whatever the Force bade them create, and when they were done, they would take their creation and use it against the Sith.
It was never clear that this would work, nor was it at all clear what form it would take. The task itself was the thing. The task, and the goal: To find a way to return balance to the battle, to undo the advantage the Sith“wizards” seemed to have, by virtue of their twisted creations.
The world they found was remote and barren, all rocky soil and craggy peaks. The Masters set themselves to work, alternately meditating and shaping, with their hands and with the Force, the thing that would become their finest work. They felt the rightness of the thing; born of need, to be a defense against a looming dark, it wanted to be made. It wanted to be in and of the galaxy. So there, amidst the rocks, among the tiny lizards that were the planet’s only life, lizards that scurried up and over boots as if they were nothing but more rocks to be climbed, the Masters worked. They trusted in the Force to guide them. The Force guided much, much more.
As they worked, the world grew around them. Green shoots began to emerge from between rocks that seemed older and less likely to breed life than the pale suns that hung in the sky. Flowers bloomed. The earth around them trembled, and water began to flow from the base of one of the great mountains, forming a stream that grew into a river. The tiny lizards hurried from rock to plant, nibbling at the vegetation, nibbling at one another. There was excitement in them. Even they felt the connection to the Force. Even they knew that their world was changing, would be changed forever.
All of this was not lost on the Masters. They saw their work, and saw that the Force was with them. The thing itself, the object of their creation, had begun to take form. A glowing orb, it rested atop a bowl-shaped rock, hovering micrometers above the surface of the stone. It radiated warmth, light. Vines crawled across the ground toward it, twined with one another, wrapped themselves around nearby rocks and shook them down to dust. The rocks disappeared, crushed or consumed or covered by the growing vegetation.
And still, the Masters worked.
Asked later how long the creation took, none of them could say. The rising and setting of the sun became meaningless to them. The Force was all around, tangible in the growth of the world as much as the growth of the sphere. As the rocks were ground to nothing, more greenery emerged, more shoots, more leaves, more flowers. Thin stalks with thinner branches began to grow, shimmering and glistening, rinds shifting color with the pulsing of the sphere. The sphere was not done, but it was close, and it seemed to both feed and take nourishment from the growing world. Closer they came, and closer still.
The work was tiring. The Masters woke with their minds filled with the sphere, closed their eyes still feeling the Force moving through them, creating, and dreamed of the sphere as they lay in the new-grown grass, beneath pale clouds shrouding a starscape that sometimes peered through, silver eyes between folds of a misty blue-black curtain.
Then, one morning, just after dawn, they woke. The suns hung low in the sky, creeping above a horizon that had been grey-brown when they landed on the world, but which now shimmered, green and wet. The Masters stood and walked to the sphere, where it hovered above the stone bowl. They gathered together, and they felt the Force very strongly with them, and the surface of the sphere shivered. The sky grew brighter, then dimmed. The Masters looked up as one sun slid behind the other. The ground shook beneath their feet and the looked down at the sphere.
The sphere looked back at them, one brilliant yellow eye – and then it blinked. It blinked, and the ground trembled and cracked. The stone bowl turned, and the sphere slid to the ground, and it sank, and as it sank the stalks grew into trees, and massive trunks of great trees sprang complete from the ground, trailing vines and dripping leaves that fell like green rain.
Then the second sun emerged from behind the first, and the jungle was still, and the sphere was gone. Only the stone bowl, now a gentle grey hump beneath a tree whose bark shifted and shimmered, marked where it had been.
This was, the Masters saw, where the sphere needed to be. The Force had brought them here, the Force had guided their creation, and the Force would see their creation well-used. In time. Now they would return home, to find the Battle of Ruusan two years gone. They would only tell the story of the world they had seen once, to an archivist, because they believed that someone must know what had been created. The sphere, with its power of life, they named the Eye of the Sun. They spoke of it with reverence. They spoke of a feeling of safety in its presence, a feeling that the dark side could not touch them, could not see them at all. They spoke these things of the Eye… Later generations spoke of it not at all.
End Transcription.
Other references to the “Eye of the Sun” are scattered. I’ve not found this detailed a narrative anywhere else. Obviously, it’s largely metaphorical. But the Eye itself… it’s mentioned in other ancient sources as well. I am certain it’s out there. I even think I know what planet it’s on.