Star Wars: Guardians of the Whills

by Greg Rucka

There had been the devoted attendants of countless faiths, all dedicated to the veneration of the Force in their own ways. From the Brotherhood of the Beatific Countenance to the Phirmists to the Weldsingers of Grace to the followers of the Central Isopter and more, and of which the Disciples of the Whills were but one, though perhaps one of the most prominent due to their place in the Temple of the Kyber.

Once, Chirrut had heard a pilgrim asking a Disciple just how old the temple truly was. “How old is the Force?” the Disciple, Kozem Pel, had answered. Chirrut Îmwe thought that was a very appropriate answer.

Chirrut Îmwe was not a Jedi. He was not, by any definition, a Force user. But what he could do, what he had spent years upon years striving for the enlightenment to do, was—sometimes—feel the Force around him.

transmission out of Lothal filled with defiance and hope and inspiration.

He tried to find the speaker through the Force, reaching out for a sense of him, and what came back to him was an emptiness, a frame built of sadness and grief, filled with pain and rage and, deep within, an ember of light.

“The Empire has hounded me across the galaxy. Planted spies within my cadre. They tried to assassinate me on Errimin, poisoned me with teccitin. I was sick for months. On Ghita there was a sniper who missed by centimeters. They sent an astromech droid laced with nanoexplosives, and it went off and killed four of my best people, and again I was wounded, but I survived. That time, Fortuna said to me, ‘You are lucky. The Force is with you.’”

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