5. Lop’s Lightsaber, Lop and Ochō
After Lop, an enslaved native from the planet Tau, is adopted by the planet’s clan leader, she grows up learning to love and lean on her new family as they all live under the Empire’s rule. Lop and her adoptive sister Ochō become close, but their ideas about how best to protect their clan from the Empire leads to an ideological split that tears their family apart. For different reasons, both Lop and Ochō are surprised when they first lay eyes on their family’s most sacred treasure: an ancient lightsaber that’s been passed down from generation to generation after its initial owner taught one of their ancestors the way of the Force. For Ochō, the shock’s due to the fact that their father deemed Lop worthy of inheriting the gift despite her being adopted, but for Lop, the blade’s significance goes much deeper. While Lop and Ochō doesn’t spend much time trying to explain what the Force is or how it works, it illustrates how it’s something that instinctively manifests in those who are open to the ways in which the Force tends to pool in families it wants to bring together.
