Harry sat still for a bit, trying to figure out a proper place to explain his background, giving them enough information while still maintaining some personal privacy over his origins, "I came from a planet called Earth. Yes, as I said, it literally translates to 'dirt', don't ask me why the name was never changed over the years to something a bit more refined. Probably because at one point on our planet there were over three hundred nations and they probably couldn't even agree what to have for lunch, much less on a name for a planet."
"Also possibly because they were and still are, last I knew, under the delusion that they existed alone in the galaxy. Though to be fair, once more the last I knew, they still have never seen any evidence to the contrary," Harry chuckled softly.
"What about the Force users on your planet?" Aayla inquired, wondering if that might offer some better insight to Harry.
"Magicals or 'Force users' if you must, started organizing and learning about their abilities around seven or eight thousand years ago. And when I left, they were still in existence, despite some close calls with extinction," Harry replied.
"Really," said Shaak Ti looking thoughtful, "The Jedi Order has been around for roughly 25 thousand years, though the Order has nearly been wiped out several times in that time span,"
Harry looked up at her for a moment, but there was no hint of smugness or superiority in her tone or expression.
"As I said there was some close calls for our people too," said Harry, "but knowledge more often than not remained intact, At first it was simple parlor tricks, and then it expanded into rituals, potions, and combat. Though after a certain point, over time, selectively fewer and fewer had access to the most powerful and oftentimes useful spells."
"I have studied history extensively, it's one of my hobbies," Harry said, with a self deprecating tone. "For millennia, my people often served as advisors and leaders of the world, but that all changed around oh … three and a half or four thousand or so years ago,"
"A religion sprang up, inspired by a Magic user of all people. One who faked his death, twice. In the 'holy' books written by his followers, who weren't magical, there was a passage which, as it was translated through a few languages, a drunk orator or five, and possibly a few bad games of charades, eventually came to read as, 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'," Harry shook his head in disgust. "My people became hunted, even though the normal unwashed and uneducated people who lived just about everywhere had no chance of doing anything to even the most basically educated magical adept."
"Still, it was the fact that my people, who largely were responsible for most of the medical advancements and preservation of recorded history of the world, were now seen as demon worshippers or worse because of our abilities. We started getting blamed for anything and everything from famine, to drought, to disease and plague, to simple bad luck," Harry shook his head. "Of course my own people didn't exactly help matters by their own levels of arrogance and condescension in regards to mundanes. It kind of made them easy to blame." "Eventually, it was decided that our entire society would go into hiding, two thousand or so years ago, through a worldwide law that made the use of Magic a secret. So, the society became rather insular, now that they no longer mixed with the mundanes of the world. Of course, as it tends to happen to cultures in isolation, innovation in their small society promptly ground to a halt," Harry smiled ruefully, "New ideas were something they had a severe aversion to."
"Move ahead about three hundred years from that point, to the time when I was born," He saw and ignored all three of the girls as they frowned and start to work out the math on what he just said.
Shaak Ti's eyes widened in surprise first, with Aayla's and Ahsoka's both following a moment later. "Seventeen hundred years?" Aayla asked first.
"Give or take a few dozen," Harry replied, enjoying their reactions before he frowned, "I think."
He ignored the snickering he heard from the hat beside him.
The three Jedi looked back and forth between one another as they processed the words. That wasn't the oldest species they heard about, but for a human to claim that was more than a little startling. Though then again they had all seen that the Force tended to extend the lives of its wielders, and there had been some Jedi Masters who seemed to stop aging completely based on their connection to the Force. Ahsoka was less startled than the other two as she had gotten to know Harry better, though the actual number was still more than a bit startling.
"You weren't kidding about your kind being long living," Aayla stated.
"That's true, but their life spans average 200, possibly 250." Harry chuckled, "Even among my own kind I'm not exactly normal."
He was more than a little put out when there were snorts of amusement from all three women, and the sound of amused chuckling from one sorting hat.
"So why are you different?" Aayla asked, though she had a niggling suspicion already. "I'll get to that," Harry said over the next snort of amusement of the hat. "Where was I?"
"Your auspicious birth," the Hat supplied helpfully.
Harry shot a glare at the hat. He felt it was having entirely too much fun at the moment.
"Yes. Right. That. Well … a Dark Lord was rising in my parents' little corner of the community. Of course he was just the latest in a line of them. They popped up every twenty or thirty years." Harry shook his head, "Centuries of isolationism from mundanes had led to a rise of extreme arrogance among the long-lived Wizard lines. And among a society that was already arrogant, that's saying something." Harry once more had revulsion in his tone. "They had little to no contact with the 'real world' and thus assumed most people still lived in hovels, beasts of burden were necessary for transportation, and lights powered via electricity were a novelty or fad and one that would likely pass."
"This Dark Lord wanted to rule the world," Harry paused as he got a thoughtful look on his face. "Well… that's rather redundant. All Dark Lords seemed to want to rule the world for one reason or another. At least all the ones I ever met. I suppose there might be an exception somewhere. I just don't think I've ever met one."
Harry shook his head from his musing, "I'm not sure whether that particular Dark Lord really believed in it; but he used the cause surrounding the belief in purity of blood. That meant the only magicals who were worth anything in his mind were strictly human, could trace their lineage back at least five generations of purely magical human beings through both parents, and believed the same as him."
"Now, my world is unique, in that I'm aware of almost a dozen fully sentient species that evolved on my world. Humans were by far the most populous, and all other non-human species that I was aware of on the planet were magical in nature," Harry explained.
"Really? That many species? And there were no wars of supremacy or enslavement?" asked Aayla. "Usually if there are even two sentient species on a planet, one seeks to enslave the other, unless they inhabit areas that tend to be mutually exclusive to the other."
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