neverjoinyou | lastvoyages IC Inbox

[Luke blinks. He has so many questions]

Well, that's... Okay. I have a couple of concerns. First, the kyber crystal--which for the record, where did you even find one?--might not explode while simply in your possession, but the problem comes when you activate the saber. If there are imperfections, or if it's not aligned properly, it could explode once you attempt to focus energy through it and, more importantly, in the process of limiting that energy to contain it. I guess you could do that through other means, but I'd be really certain that you'd done that.

Second, while it doesn't take the Force to simply wield the blade in a very basic sense, the immense energy combined with the lack of... I guess normal physical weight? Means it's probably a lot harder without certain reflexes that the Force provides.

I'm not saying either thing is impossible, but I am saying that in my limited experience, there's a reason they're used by Jedi. But like I say--that's limited.

I asked for one from the Admiral and to my surprise he gave it to me.

Is there a way to tell whether the crystal has alignment issues? I'm guessing the Admiral would not have given me an imperfect creation, knowing the risks.

[Luke chews briefly on his lower lip.]

Honestly, the only way I know is to use the Force--the only time I've done it, it involved meditating over it for hours, aligning things far more minutely than I could have done by hand. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. Let me think...

[How to translate that feeling into technically useful instructions?]

Okay. So basically, you're looking for a few things; cracks, air pockets, and crystal formation. Right? So you'd want to test it for any detectable variant using a few different instruments; like, if you used a spectrometer and a really intensely powerful microscope? Then again, you're probably right--the Admiral probably didn't give it to you in order to blow us up.

Which means the trick'll be in the placement, and you just want to be sure that you're really precise in the component alignment process. We're not talking landspeeder repair, here. You want as much precision as you can get.

[Then again, Luke's pretty sure that Hux's engineering experience required some measure of... precision.]

Thank you.

Do you mind sitting in with us when we go to turn it on for the first time? I'm certain I can find everything physically there, but it's the metaphysical part of it that has me lost.