There's a small explosion- More noise than force and accompanied by a burst of red/blue light- And a human kid, very young, falls three or so feet to sprawl on the ground with a yelp, somewhere reasonably open. He's young- Maybe seven or eight. Wearing plain but nicely made cotton clothes slightly too big for him in browns and greens, with neat little hide boots and a tiny belt knife and a waterskin and a cloth-wrapped chunk of cheese and jerky that has fallen open. He sits up and looks around.

Count Dooku lives in a universe where most unusual events of this sort tend to be caused by the Force, which is more commonly used for illusions and trickery than teleportation. He is not all that confident there is actually a child in his house.

He pushes himself backwards from his desk, toppling it over in the process, and stands up. "Who are you?"

Oh no, he has run away into someone's house! And they're mad!

He raises his hands and looks for an exit and apologizes in an unfamiliar language.

(Wait, he didn't understand what that guy said either. He should be very lost.

He could try for translation even though he's never done it before... Or save it for a bright flash to try and run away...)

Dooku doesn't recognize the language. He says brief phrases in each of Basic, Bocce, Huttese, Dathomiri, and Togruti. If none of those work - actually, even if they do work, he's not quite fluent in several of them - he'll take out his communicator and turn on the translation function.

Oh are they trying languages? 

Heeeeeee only knows the one, and wants to run away, but also this man threw the heavy-looking desk and his house is weird and he will definitely catch him. So. No. 

Words. Words words words. Words? Words. Words words.

(Not a recognized language. Some vague similarities to several, but nothing solid, all random and low confidence.)

Dooku calls in a protocol droid (fluent in five and a half million forms of communication!) to check if this is a language too obscure for his communicator to know. And while he's at it, he'll also bring in a few guard droids in case there's an assassin hiding behind the innocent-looking Force illusion.

...say, what happens when he tries to feel the child's presence with the Force?

Aaaaah weird constructs. Yeah not running away was the right decision. He's too petrified to talk any more though.

(The force reacts like there's an ordinary human child who recently had something weird and energetic happen to them! There's a sort of trace in the spot he appeared, random noise.)

Unintelligible phrase? says Dooku.

The droids confirm that there are actual non-illusionary marks on the walls from the explosion! One of them pokes the child to see if it can make physical contact.

Ok now he's going to try to run away.

Dooku steps smoothly in front of the only exit. Raising his hand, he ripples the air in front of him, creating a barrier that should gently push back anyone who tries to go through it.

Hide behind the desk?!?

"I'm sorry okay I'm sorry I didn't know I'd be in a house ill leave I'm sorry-" and related babbling.

(The protocol droid does not recognize the language.)

How does one go about consoling a kid while not knowing their language and also not letting them leave because they were at the center of a Force anomaly. He could... communicate with the Force? He's not an expert on telepathy, but he can at least send over a vague feeling of reassurance, if that helps.

He stills, then squints.

Okay. Yeah. He takes a deep breath and then clasps his hands together with his eyes closed.

Okay! How does he communicate anything other than fuzzy sensations...

Well, he can at least start with a name, he supposes. "Dooku," he says, pointing to himself. "Six-LOM," he says, and points to the protocol droid. He points to Nico and then moves his arms in what is hopefully a questioning manner.

-Something twists in the force, very faintly. A tiny shift that might be even less noticeable than the change caused by his calming emotions.

In Basic, he says, "I'm sorry, I ran away, I- Am lost now. I'll leave, I'm sorry, please don't hurt me. This- Will not last long, I can't talk for long-"

What. "How did you get here?" he asks, his eyes narrowed.

"I ran away! I - burned some of my magic. Forever. But I got away."

Magic is a fairly common name for the Force, yes. What the rest of the sentence means is less clear. "I've never encountered any sort of power that would let someone teleport like you did! Nor one that would be... burnable? And what were you running away from?"

Grumpy face. "Well I did it! I wanted to be somewhere else! Be someone else-" He makes a face, and then starts speaking in the unfamiliar language again.

Some obscure Force power? Already mastered at this age... he'll need to check the kid's midi-chlorian count. But that can wait; he expects jabbing the kid with a needle would freak him out even more. "Are you in danger? Do you need any food, or rest, or - could you speak in Basic?"

Apparently he cannot. He's sure saying a lot of things though.

He was just saying things in Basic. "I can't understand whatever language you're speaking, and you've clearly demonstrated the ability to speak Basic, so - "

...did he?

He can't possibly be able to speak another language with the Force. But someone could have been speaking through him, or he could be accessing someone else's memories - that was at least close to inside the boundaries of plausibility.

And if it's a power that doesn't stay with him constantly, that either means it's something that requires a lot of concentration, or it's the sort of ability that only activates under intense emotional conditions. A dark side power.

So this kid, on his current most likely hypothesis, is able use what is likely the Force... possibly the dark side... to teleport... and to read his thoughts without him noticing... at high enough detail to get mastery of a language. Or quite possibly he's getting the details of the ability wrong, but the point is, it's something on that order of magnitude.

This is Chosen One levels of Force power.

Dooku needs to keep an eye on this kid. Still can't talk to him... well, he'll go over to his overturned desk, get out a hologram generator with plenty of stock images, and display holos of food, a bed, and a house, accompanied again by questioning body language.

He can do that but isn't doing the generic translation White is known for?

-Oh, wait, it's a device.

...Okay, anyone would be mad at someone TELEPORTING INTO THEIR HOUSE. So he should try to calm down. Yeah. Deep breath! 

He names the displayed objects, and himself.

"Nico-" He pauses and holds his hands close together. "Close." Fling arms outward. "Far. Nico [is] far far far far [from his] House."

Dooku nods. Holo image of a... no, actually, if he tries to ask whether Nico is hurt then it might mistranslate and look like he's threatening him, so scratch that question for now. How does he ask what Nico needs... can he establish the word "want"?

He takes off his cape - "cape," he says, pointing to it - and hands it to one of the guard droids. Shiver motion. "Cold." Turn back to the guard droid. "Dooku want a cape." Hold out hands with open palms. The droid hands him the cape back.

Turn back to Nico, questioning motion. "What does Nico want? Nico want house, Nico want food, Nico want bed, Nico want cape... what does Nico want?"

...Shrug? "Far [from] house? [Not] house? [I don't understand I'm sorry.]"

Dooku focuses and is able to tell that Nico is confused; that at least is a helpful false positive detector for this communication thing! Oh, and just to check - "If you actually do understand Basic at all times and you just can't or won't speak it, wave your left hand in the air." And assuming that fails... this is probably going to be a very long process, establishing a mutual language. "I don't suppose you'd be able to figure out his language in any reasonable timespan?" he asks the protocol droid.

"I should be able to decode much of the grammar and vocabulary and reach a passing conversational level within a week," the droid replies, "provided that the child speaks several thousand unique words including several hundred for which the meanings are established via images. Is that a reasonable timespan for your purposes?"

"That depends on whether anyone's chasing him," Dooku replies. "But it's probably faster than I could get Lord Sidious here to read his mind at a higher level of depth, and in any case I would prefer not to involve him. So it will have to do."

At the moment, however, it doesn't look like he was successful in asking whether Nico needs shelter or not. Well, he doesn't exactly prefer to leave the option open for Nico to not stay with him, so that may not be a bad thing! He'll just try and gesture to Nico to come with him and the droids to one of the spare bedrooms, and then they can get started on the tedious process of learning a language one word at a time.

It transpires that he wants to go outside.

He'll talk with the metal person and ask how much magic it took to build them and what this does and what that does and apologize again and again, he didn't mean to invade someone's home specifically, he was just trying to get so far away he could never go back because he hates his Dad. But it's more that he hated the situation, the feeling of being trapped, than the person doing it.

Can he go outside yet?

He apparently ascribes complicated emotions and philosophical concepts to the colors of red, blue, green, white, and black. Translating those is frustrating for him. Nouns are a lot easier. He writes out a few hundred characters if given an opportunity; It's a logographic written language.

He can leave if he wants to, right? He's not ungrateful but that is important to him. Right?

6-LOM doesn't pick up on all of that - particularly the parts about magic and colors - but answers the questions they do understand. They're made of metal? Not... that word that seems to map most closely onto the Force.

But they do figure out Nico is asking to go outside. Is Dooku okay with that?

Under different circumstances, Dooku would have to make a choice between letting the incredibly powerful kid out of his sight and making him hostile, but fortunately he is a Count of Serenno and has a hundred-acre garden. Nico can explore it all he wants!

Definitely preferable to the alternative! He says thankful words.

But what is at the edge of the garden? It's not like he wants to just... Leave. But he kind of wants to figure out if he'd be allowed to.

...Maybe later. Nouns for plants! Adjectives! Weather! Food words! Yay......

There's an enormous forest! Dooku's mansion and the surrounding buildings - mostly shipyards, and triangular towers with no obvious purpose - are the only signs of civilization nearby, although if he finds his way to the right balcony he can see a city in the distance.

Also, the sun is starting to set, and the sky is turning purple; is Nico feeling tired?

"It was [morning] when I left, no. The sun just went up. The [stars] are different here!" He gestures upwards. "What are those places?"

6-LOM points out various stars in the sky. That's "Yavin" and that's the "Mandalore system" and that's "Coruscant" - well, Coruscant's a planet revolving around one of the many stars there, which aren't distinguishable from each other with the eye, and they'll need some more words to describe this!

"Oh, the stars have names? I meant what are those things." He points at the buildings in the distance.

6-LOM is starting to think Nico is from a planet that's never received any interplanetary visitors. "Those things are buildings in 'Carannia', the... place where two million persons are."

"Big big [city]. Are there [pirates]? Ah... Arr! Give me all your things and you can go away! If you don't, I hurt you!"

6-LOM is about 70% confident those last few sentences were an explanation of what "pirates" are! They nevertheless place everything they are carrying (just some food and a comlink) on the ground, just in case.

"Is that what 'pirates' are? Pirates hurt you if you do not give them things?"

"Yeah. You can give them things or fight them or run away. Most people give them things."

"Some pirates are here, but not many. I have never seen them. Dooku has. Are you a pirate?"

"Oh, good. I'm too little for that. And I don't want to be a [thief]. I do want to [sail] though. Go places, I mean."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Everywhere! Except my old house. I want to grow my [magic] and learn things and see [pretty] places like this [garden]."

By the end of the night, Nico will have probably fallen asleep even with the time difference. Dooku sleeps for about three hours, because he was up all night learning as much of the language as he could from 6-LOM's recordings.

He nevertheless has 6-LOM wake him once Nico has been observed to have risen, zaps himself with a very small bolt of Force lightning to get fully awake, and checks on what Nico is doing.

He gets tired and goes to sleep eventually, yes.

A few minutes after waking he's sitting on the bed in his room, staring intently and tracing his fingers over an otherwise unremarkable rock he picked up outside.

Such are the perils of waking up in the morning.

"Nico," Dooku says, entering the room. "Can we talk on what got you here, and what you did with talking and hearing? We in this place don't have the same magic. What can you do with your magic?"

"Okay. Yeah, we don't have droids. You used [empathy] on me and that's white... But do you not have the colors at all? And you and the metal guy are learning really really fast, tops amazing! Also, sorry for landing in your house and thank you for letting me stay."

"What are... the colors? And droids aren't magic."

"They obviously are. Uh... The colors are magic. There's five. Everyone gets them, more or less of them. More if you're smart and [determined]."

Some sort of visual representation of Force abilities? - but what does he mean by everyone getting them? "Who has magic, in the place where you came from? And what do the colors do?"

"Everyone does? Red does strong things. Blue does changing things. Green does life things. White does thinky feely things. Black does... Building making things."

Missed a few words, there, but... that's not, as far as he can tell isomorphic to anything he knows about the Force. "Here, most people don't have magic - I have 'the Force', and it has no colors." Unless one were counting the light side and dark side, but that doesn't seem to line up with what Nico was saying about white and black. "Can you do some magic now?"

"....Huh! I can." Mr. Dooku is being calm and reasonable despite a stranger landing on him so he might as well. "Only a little every day. And no blue. I burned it out to get here. And most of my red." He makes a face. "[Theforce] isn't a color? What kind of magic should I do?"

A little every day... does it wear him out? Or is it actually on a cycle of some sort?

Dooku shrugs. "Black?"

He squints, then nods as if deciding something. He grabs a stick, also from outside, and does - something, leaving an impression inside the stick without particular effort. Then he grips it by both ends and pulls, but while it bends slightly, it refuses to break. "Make things tough, most people use it for that. But you can do other stuff." He holds up the rock, which is also Faintly Weird. "This'll go 'fwoosh' a little bit if you throw it! I made it when I was scared earlier, but you should know now."

None of that felt like Nico was using Force abilities, but Dooku can feel something going on in the stick and rock. Dooku checks the stick, and it indeed is difficult to break! What sort of "fwoosh" takes place when he throws the rock?

It lets out a bright burst of light and sparks like a little firework as it tumbles to the ground. This room is basically completely made of metal, so Nico isn't worried about it catching on something.

"I made it hold some red for a little bit!"

...huh. "How do you get these colors? How does not having blue work, and will you get more blue?"

"Uh, by accomplishing things? I burnt it. It's still there, but useless and itchy. I'll get more, but the burned ones will never go away and they'll count against me for slowing down getting more too..."

Sounds closer to Nightsister spells and rituals than anything else. Maybe he has control over some entirely undiscovered aspect of the Force?

Dooku pulls out the midi-chlorian measuring device and demonstrates it on himself, drawing a small drop of blood. "This sees if someone has 'the Force'. Can I use it on you?"

Blood?

"...But why? I'll leave if you want... I don't think I have that..."

"It's not that bad," he says. "I want to know about your magic, and how it is like mine, and how it is not. There was... many many many many years ago, people with the Force, people who can see things before they happen, and they said someone would come. A 'Chosen One' with new... Force things... someone who would change things and - "

Well! He's a complete idiot. "Do you have a dad?"

Glare! "Not anymore. He doesn't count, I hate him. But okay." He holds one hand out.

"Yes. Well. I am sorry, I didn't... they also said the Chosen One would have no father. Ever, even when they were... small and first came into the world. So that's not you. But maybe you do have some of the Force, even if you're not the Chosen One!"

According to the test, Nico's midi-chlorian levels are off the charts!

That is, if the charts are displayed logarithmically, because it's zero.

Zero midi-chlorians per cell, many hundreds below the minimum for any life-form in the entire galaxy, and ten thousand below the level needed to use the Force.

How is he alive. "Nico... can you tell me more about the world you came from?"

Is something wrong? "Like what?"

"Where is it? Is it near our stars, does it have a name, did people come there from another world?"

"It's called [Scope]. It had different stars. And a big brown moon."

"And what worlds was it near?"

Shrug? "I don't know stuff like that, I never got to go to temple-school."

"Do other people from Scope go from world to world like you? Have you met people from other worlds?"

"No, we didn't even go from continent to continent until this weird guy from Faron figured out how to poison the dragons."

Dooku doesn't know the meanings of about half of those words, but he at least understood the "no" part.

"This world is with many other worlds in the [unfamiliar word], and I wanted to see if we've seen your world. Or how near it is. All the worlds we've seen have the Force, and your magic is... not like it. It could change many things about all our worlds."

"Is there a way I can talk to people from your world? I won't have you go back if you don't want to."

"Uhhh... No. I burnt some of my magic to get here. You can do almost anything by burning magic, but then it never ever comes back. Ever. I really don't want to do it again to go home..."

Dooku nods. "6-LOM can talk to you now, if you want. 6-LOM... hears you and talks to you better than I do." Also he's still tired.

"If you don't have white, only theforce, 6lom must be really smart to learn so fast. Sorry for landing on you again. And thank you for your hospitality. I don't want to be a burden."

He does a formal bow and smiles.

(If his magic really is strange here, that might be troublesome later...)

Dooku exits the room, and will now get to sleep. Is there any reason he isn't just using a bacta tank for a few hours a day so he doesn't have to sleep as much?

Repeated use of bacta over long periods of time can lead to increased risk of fatal diseases not curable by known technology!

And "today" is a short period of time, is it not?

...

6-LOM will return to learning Nico's language!

He's kind of tired of talking constantly and would like to exercise instead, by running around the gardens or climbing things. Or learn things. Learning things, especially challenging things like math and 6-LOM's language, is acceptable too! (He mentions in passing that doing difficult things and feeling the right way about them is how you get more magic.)(

6-LOM teaches him some phrases in Galactic Basic, then! And there are plenty of climbable things, although 6-LOM has to first cover the area beneath them with a net.

...He frowns about the net a bit but this is reasonable. He'd be doing chores right now, back home.

"Is Mr. Dooku your boss? Is he a rich guy? Rich people have farms and tall houses back home."

"Yes, he is rich, and... the boss of this world."

"Oh, he's a king."

He seems a lot more nervous all of a sudden.

"Gale Rocks told Kelos White that 'no, we aren't part of Kelos anymore and we don't have a king anymore'."

6-LOM can explain the political structure here. Serenno has seven royal families, each of which has a Count at its head; Count Dooku is the leader of the most powerful and has most of the political power. Serenno also sends representatives to a larger interplanetary government.

How do things work in Gale Rocks?

It was a colony from Kelos, and then Kelos had a big war back home and people were really mad about conscription and taxes and pirates everywhere, and then when they wrote a Declaration of Independence Kelos kind of just went 'fine', and the Baron from Kelos even gave up his power to an elected council of three people as long as he got to keep his fancy house.

Makes sense! What sort of things did Nico like to spend his time doing back home, and is there anything in particular he's looking to do around here?

"I just want to explore some for now, but later I want to go to a school! A place for learning things! My dad wouldn't let me 'cause schools are pretty Kelosian and he hated Kelos. And I want to do magic and find good new ideas about what magic to do."

"There are many schools in Carannia; you can go to one of those if you want. And we want to learn about what you can do with magic too."

They can keep exploring.

"This one is my favorite so far." He spins out multicolored sparkles in his hand, shaping them to mimic a tree, a rabbit, 6-LOM... "And I can start fires and make plants give fruit right away but it hurts the plant and hit really hard with an axe and hold on to fire for later - oh you saw that already - and dry out twigs and tinder and clean my skin." He supports many of these claims with sparkle-shapes. "Oh wait, I can't do the last three right now. I have to earn more blue first. New things are always more expensive. What do you think I should try?"

"Maybe getting fruit from a plant?" 6-LOM says. "We have many plants; using one is fine."

"Do any of these plants make fruit usually?"

6-LOM points out some jogan fruit plants, none of which are flowering yet.

He runs over to one and makes a gesture with his arm, hand moving down with palm up, then touches the jogan tree's trunk and focusing.

A minute passes. The whole tree seems to shiver slightly, creaking. Branches sag under the weight of many fruit suddenly forming and growing, at a speed almost visible to the naked eye.

He blinks and shakes his head. "Oof, this is hard. It's a big plant. I'm gonna run out of green before it finishes. And also it needs a lot of water now."

Then focuses again, and after another minute or two the fruit are something like half-developed, and many of the leaves seem slightly withered and dry. "I'm out now. Can't do any more green today. But I figured out I can tell what plants need too."

6-LOM looks about as impressed as a droid with no visual cues to signal being impressed can look! "Very good! I'll tell the garden people to give it water."

"You didn't know you can tell what plants need? Do you learn new things about your magic often?"

"Magic can do a lot of stuff but you have to figure out the right way to ask it. I was thinking about why making fruit hurts plants."

"It makes it from... things in the plants, that come from the sun, and water, and dirt. If you make the fruit fast, but the plant doesn't have much to make it from, it might hurt it."

"Yeah, I think that's what's happening! It's really cool. I did this when I was hungry and lost but doing it slow might be a better idea, for growing things."

"You could try a little each day, and learn if that grows it a little faster but doesn't hurt it."

"Does green also do things with animals and people?"

"It's not safe to do that if you don't know what you're doing. People kept warning me about it. And I actually believe them because I saw someone's mistake, once."

"What happened? Did someone get hurt?"

"He melted his own arm bones by mistake instead of healing a broken one, and the best doctors in town almost couldn't fix it."

"That's not good!"

"We saw green, and black, and some red, and you don't have blue now... what about white? What do you do with that?"

"That's the lights I showed you! And um - talking things, and thinking things. Like guard rocks that know who is allowed in."

Oh, that's why Nico assumed 6-LOM was magical. "Can white make new people from rocks? Can they talk, and learn things?"

"...Don't think so. Even the healers' pets aren't really people, and they got smarter with Green, not White."

"What other things do the adults from Scope do with magic?"

"Like too many things to even talk about. But I don't know because they wouldn't let me go to school."

"Why not?"

"I told you that already," he grumps, and kicks a nearby rock.

"But why doesn't your dad like schools? Is Kelos the only place that has them? Does he think schools make you like Kelos?"

"Yeah, maybe. The school is in Gale Rocks but it's still very Kelos-y, like the Storm Ward and the baron's house. A baron is kind of like a small king, like Dooku but smaller than that."

"I can say to Dooku now that you want to go to a school in Carannia. He can talk to the school people and get you in."

"I'd like that, thank you! I ran away and wanted to see new places and learn things so school is great! What are schools like here?"

"I haven't seen kids' schools here; I stay at the house with Dooku." 6-LOM calls Dooku on their hologram device.

Well-rested Dooku here! "I can enroll him soon. It's a month into the semester, but I know there are programs set up for sudden transfers that might be able to accommodate him." And of course, plenty of schools would want to respond to a request coming from the Count. "But there are the obvious risks in letting him out of our watch. Tell him to avoid using his powers or telling people he might be from a different galaxy; we don't want this coming to the attention of the Jedi."

6-LOM will translate this! It seems there's a group of warriors called the Jedi who take away children with Force powers, and they might go after Nico if they found out about him. Can he keep quiet about his powers and origin, to make sure they don't find out?

"...Yeah, that seems smart. I don't like it much but it makes sense. At least until I'm older and know more things. Also I know that if I'm a secret to everyone except Count Dooku and you that is probably good for you somehow. Know that I know that, I guess. How do droids work if you're not magic?"

6-LOM will try to explain the concept of a computer, although they doubt it'll go very well given the low vocabulary and Nico probably not having much experience with math. They set up holo-diagrams of wires and circuits sending signals back and forth between buttons and lights, and demonstrate increasing levels of complexity in basic arithmetic. Here's something that lights up a different light from 0 to 4 based on the sum of the buttons pressed on the left and the right (0, 1, or 2 on each side). If Nico can understand how that works, here's a more complex version with larger possible inputs, and here's one that does multiplication.

The more of these electronic pieces there are in a machine, the more math it can do. And people from worlds in this galaxy know how to make them incredibly small - there are about a trillion of them just inside of 6-LOM! And that doesn't just mean 6-LOM is really really good at math, it also means 6-LOM can do other things that people have found ways to model with math. Computers can calculate information pertaining physics, or biology, or the weather, or all sorts of other things about the world. And people have even found ways to make machines that can represent and learn about languages using math - that's what 6-LOM is, a droid who learns people's languages and helps people speak to each other.

...Nico's probably feeling pretty overwhelmed at this point. This is the sort of thing that most people don't learn about until they're several times Nico's age, if at all. Some day he might get the chance to learn more of the specific details.

Yeah, he is gamely trying to follow along, but is pretty confused. He mostly stopped paying attention to the second half.

He has also... Apparently flung up a holo of his own and is playing with logic gates in semi-random configurations. He doesn't seem to be manually directing them. When one part changes, the rest follows almost instantly. Long chains of ands and ors lighting up and going dark as he flickers the start positions.

Wow! That's surprisingly detailed! Is there anything in particular he's trying to do with them?

"I dunno... I'm wondering how people made dragons. Dragons are magic that gets bigger and makes copies of itself. That's illegal. They can get really big and dangerous. But this definitely isn't it I think?"

"If the magic is doing things without people talking to it, maybe it's a little like computers? The things that computers do with math are also done in humans' heads, but the tiny pieces they're made of aren't like metal. Maybe people from Scope are programming magic."

"...please don't make a dragon with your magic. Or anything else like a dragon."

"It sounded more like being alive than being a computer. Also I don't know how so I don't know what not to do. I'm not going to try to make a dragon on purpose unless I think its a really really really good idea for some reason."

"Droids are often... like alive, close to alive. Some people say droids are people, and some say they aren't."

"Why would someone want to make a dragon? Do they do good things sometimes?"

"To blow up their enemies?" He shrugs. "Dragons have been around forever."

Contrary to popular beliefs about Sith Lords and their fascinations, Dooku's first priority on the subject of "exploiting Nico's magical powers" is not making a self-replicating murder monster! That's not even in his top five top priorities! (It is in the top ten.)

But the first priority for a nice altruistic Sith Lord like himself is obviously immortality. Dooku's previous hope for immortality had been mad scientist Darth Plagueis, Palpatine's Master, who had been studying ways to use midi-chlorians to reverse aging. But Plagueis's research had stagnated over the years, and it didn't look like his current methods were going to scale unless he could find a way to generate artificial midi-chlorians.

But if green can be used for healing, then that opens up a whole new range of possibilities for the research! And with Nico being human in appearance but somehow having a way to survive with zero midi-chlorians, this could be the chance to finally crack the problems that Plagueis had never been able to solve!

The next morning, after another 3-hour bacta nap followed by some study of Nico's language, Dooku approaches Nico to ask more questions about what his powers can do. Has anyone invented a method of immortality in Scope, particularly the kind that can scale beyond just one person to the world as a whole? What applications currently exist for using green for farming, or black for building things, or anything else involving magic-assisted production of goods? What sort of magical transportation mechanisms exist? How do governments use magic to help enforce laws? What exactly does Nico mean when he says blue is for "changing things" - what sort of applications does that tend to have in Scope? Is red used for anything besides making people stronger? Are there any known ways for someone to enhance their intelligence with magic?

And most importantly - how does the process of gaining more magic work? When, if at all, would Nico be able to do the kind of magic that the most powerful people in his world can do, and is there any way to speed that up?

He thinks Rulaan of Kelos is over two thousand years old. Most people live hundreds of years, if not more, unless violence happens to them first, because green magic can work on them to keep them going whenever 'being old' starts happening. He's not sure what he means with some of the questions? Of course lots of crops are made with green magic? There's green magic to make prey animals have more babies so there's more of them to hunt? He doesn't know how Lumen or enchanting works. (Lumen is a metal used as a commodity currency, and also in enchanted objects. Charged lumen is bright blue and uncharged lumen is dull grey.) Goverments put you in anti-magic cells or cuffs and into prison (antimagic is blue, or white, but usually blue), or sentence you to fines or exile and take your stuff, or to a few years' labor and make you work but then let you go. They have... Boats? That use the wind along with some magic? And the sawmill uses the river and magic? He complains sarcastically that he doesn't know these things and he'll just have to find out.

He does know how one gains more magic. By learning and experiencing things that call to the best moral virtues of humanity: Red, determination and will and impetus. Blue, creativity and cleverness and craftsmanship. Green, kindness and caring and nurturing. White, empathy and understanding and curiosity. Black, planning and forethought and patient diligence.

"Do you have ideas for magic experiments I can try? Are there things all this exciting technology can't really do that would be cool? That aren't making people young. I don't know how to do that. I want to do it on animals first."

"It sounds like our technology is better than your magic at some things, like making ships, but we can't change life very much. If you can't make people younger right now, then making food is the best way to help people that I can think of now. The best things to do with your magic would be things that stay for a lot of time. You're the only person here with magic, and if you need to do something every day for every person who needs it, it wouldn't help much. But if you can do something like... you change a plant one time, and then it grows more food for all its life, and then it makes new plants that also grow more food... we could make food for the whole galaxy. Could you do that?"

"...Maybe. I can try doing that. I think it's not easy but it's a really great idea!"

The droids bring in some plants! Can Nico do anything to them?

He decides to mess with the seeds, not the rest of the plant. Since those are the part that makes new plants.

Take in more sunlight. Drink more water. Don't let bugs eat you. Make fruit more often.

"You can try growing these seeds but I don't think it worked right. I did something and used up my Green, but... I don't think it's that easy or Kelosian gardens wouldn't be so expensive."

They'll get to growing them, then!

There's another thing Dooku is intensely curious about. Well, two things, which are both answerable with one question. "Can you try something with 6-LOM? With white you can do things with thinking... can you feel what other people are thinking? And can you feel 6-LOM thinking? It would help me learn more about droids." The Force can't detect even the slightest flicker of consciousness from droids, which is often brought up by people arguing they clearly aren't even close to sentient, but presumably it's really just because their machinery is too different from organic matter for the Force to be able to interpret it. Maybe Nico's magic is different?

Oh, empathy and telepathy. Thought-relays for long range messaging are something he knows definitely exists, so:

[6-LOM can you hear this]

6-LOM cannot!

Dooku can! It doesn't quite feel directed at him, more like it's bouncing around and failing to latch onto anything, but he can tell that it's there. And it's not in Nico's language, either; it feels more like it's just the concept of can you hear this, separated from any given representation of that in words. Well, this would be a useful way to get around Dooku's lack of language knowledge if not for the incredibly limited amount of white.

"I heard that," Dooku confirms. "Can you hear me, when I think at you?"

He focuses strongly on the "can you hear me" message, not particularly directing it at Nico to start with. If after a few seconds there's no reaction, then he'll make a more deliberate effort to try to aim his thoughts at Nico to see if the magic picks up on it that way. If that still fails, then he'll try to push the thought with the Force. Any of those go through?

"...Nope, can't hear you."

Well then. Unfortunately he hasn't gotten proof of 6-LOM being sentient - though false negatives seem plausible enough that he doesn't have definite disproof either - but he at least does have a definite answer to whether Nico can read his mind. Barring the possibility that Nico's lying, but he doesn't think that's the case. Or the possibility Nico just used up all of his white, and will be able to read his mind once he has more white tomorrow. Or that there's a skill he hasn't learned yet but will soon be capable of, or that - okay, "definite answer" may have been a bit premature.

Anyway, they can do a few more experiments with what's left of Nico's magic for today! Black is the only one he still has full capacity of right now - can he use black on a few different materials Dooku brings him, so that they can test what happens to them?

Well, this shape of black magic is supposed to hold other magic. His exploding rock from earlier, for example. Can Dooku put Force into it? 

Ooh, are they going to measure how much stronger black reinforcement makes things? Is this the fabled 'science' 6-LOM mentioned???

Yep, measuring how much stronger things are! As well as more advanced experiments to determine what is making them stronger, on a molecular level.

Dooku attempts to use the Force in different ways on a black-reinforced rock. It now kind of feels like the rock has a bit more of a resonance with the Force than an ordinary rock, and it seems to require a lot less energy for him to lift it with the Force. After the fifth attempt he accidentally shatters the rock into pieces.

They can also test what happens in general to objects with black affecting them! What happens to their weight, what happens to their density, what happens to the amount of lowercase-f force required to crack them, and how do these effects differ depending on what the object is?

That should be interesting and fun! Maybe they can also see if he gets better at it over time. The smallest amount of magic he can precisely measure is one whole black point, though, so most of the experiments won't have exactly the same amount of magic.