Sorin's feet quickly hit the hewn steps of the temple; at this point he placed the kicking Hesper on her own feet again, instead grabbing her by the upper arm and pulling her up the steps. She stumbled behind him, staring over her shoulder, wincing, at the chaos left in the wake of her burst of telekinetic energy. His jaw was clenched, the only thing in his mind the loud desire to get to the relative safety of the Temple interior, and words he had written many months prior—phrases and stanzas of doom and glory, lauding the priestess he protected, repeated like mantras. In his other hand he held his ignited pike in a vise grip, ready to swing its blazing silver blade at any danger in their path.
Then the cry: "Shields activated!"
Their relief was palpable; Hesper's head whirled, eyes searching for Sorin's. Apollyon pushed past, as did many others. It was a race to safety, Sith scrambling for refuge as Horuset was blotted out by the activation of a shield of crimson energy. Sorin held Hesper's gaze but briefly before giving her arm another tug. "Come, let those who hurry be saved. You need to get inside."
The doors of the Temple were already creaking closed, and blast doors were beginning to descend. Hesper gathered her skirts as she stepped over the threshold into the Temple—a place she hadn't been in what felt like eons. It was hauntingly familiar, and she ground her teeth as her eyes swept over the entrance hall. As the doors thudded shut behind her, she let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding and shook Sorin's hand off her arm. "Thank you," she quietly spat at him, with no small amount of irritation. She certainly didn't need to be manhandled by her own Guardsman.
Biting back a retort to her venom out of respect, Sorin said nothing in return, instead pulling off his veil and turning to take account of how many of his men had made it inside in time as they were bodily pushed from the entrance into the banquet hall. He counted black-shrouded heads—two, four, eight, twelve… twenty had made it inside. Twenty-one including himself. And, looking around again, he noticed he'd already lost track of Hesper in the crowd. He swore quietly to himself: Curse her tiny stature!
But Hesper was on a mission of her own: Now inside, she had turned her razor-focus on finding Apollyon. Hesper felt that if anyone had answers, it would likely be her. Hesper's sistren apprentice—and rival, it would seem. She watched Apollyon push through the crowds, on her heels a handful of others, including her ally, Xarxes, and pass through a side door. Hesper followed quickly after, swiftly diving through the fray. Finding his charge again as she passed through the same door, Sorin followed.
Up a short spiral staircase, Hesper stepped out onto the lowest battlements, where many forerunners of the Sith Empire had already gathered: Apollyon, Kain, who was already asking the questions on Hesper's mind, Xirr, Catalyst, Volacius, Krayt, Xarxes. She inserted herself into the lineup along the railing of the battlement, sidling up quietly beside Xarxes. He was hurt, she knew—it was apparent in the Force. Without speaking, she placed a hand on Xarxes' armored side, sending a pulse of dark healing through her fingertips into his body, enmity and malignancy her fuel. A strobe of emerald sorcery, and Xarxes could perhaps feel his cracked ribs beginning to heal…
"I refuse to believe our world is lost," Hesper spoke, responding to Krayt's words as she pulled her fingers from Xarxes' side. She considered the tunnels both Krayt and the Balosar apprentice mentioned; keenly, she tried to peer into them, casting her net of presaging outwards toward what lay below them. And as she looked with her mind elsewhere, she surveyed the battle below them in the red sands; even with the shields up, Sith still quarreled below with straggling zombies. Already, they were dangerously scrambled. Wounded, shaken, and now quite possibly trapped. Hesper twitched. She wondered if Lieutenant Valantin's message to their troops had gone through. Was there any possible way the Auspex, Haruspex, and Magus were on their way from Bosthirda? And what of the Sibyl II? Admiral Ontos? She thumbed through her mental list of resources. Of course, her people had their own assets, as did nearly everyone else standing on the battlement—ships and armed forces and the like—but none of it would do them any good if they were sieged in the temple. As clearly, outside the glimmering red shield was a death trap. Particularly to anyone who did not wield the Force to the degree as those trapped within.
Their options were slim.
Krayt's suggestion of utilizing the tunnels to escape into the valley was attractive; like Catalyst, she was beginning to think that engaging with this army would spell death. This would likely not be the only battle. They were wildly unprepared to wait out a long siege (Hesper gathered that Apollyon had not planned much further than a feast and an execution, because truly, how would she have known to plan for such an attack? Hesper silently cursed herself for not arriving sooner with her warning), their numbers were already thinning, and if there was no way to pull in backup if messages to offworld forces failed to go through, then they would have to turn to far craftier methods of waging war. She didn't like the idea of any strategies resembling guerrilla warfare against an army such as the one on their doorstep, but… it could be their only option. And should they need it, Hesper might even exert her power to shape fate: as they would need every edge they could get.
Clenching her jaw, she turned to Apollyon, fixing her with a glowering stare. "Apollyon," she said, "what is your suggestion?"
Powers used:
Dark Side Healing - 4 (to heal Xarxes' broken ribs)
Farsight - 5 (to see into tunnels as they currently are/in the near future)
Preparing to use Darksight - 10 in the next few posts if necessary
The flash from the blast in the traffic lanes subsides, returning the streetscape of Hutta Town to its usual dusky neon glow. The teenage human’s eyes scan for the Iridonian and Gran, finding the latter half hidden behind a shipping crate. His eyes lock onto the three eyed alien, like the photoreceptor of a holocamera, his vision focuses on the target. Both hands grasp the crate. His upper torso exposed. Three eyes bulging upon their stubby little stalks. Scanning the area further, he locks onto the Zabrak, nearby to a guard barrier separating the foot traffic on the level from the speeder traffic in the skylanes below.
In the same moment the screams from below pierce his conscience. The droid had clearly carved a path of wreckage through the traffic lane, however the young man had not considered the implications of his actions. He had endangered many innocents, and likely killed several.
Rushing to the barrier, he peers over the ledge to find a Metrocab having ploughed into the facade of an apartment building. The screams, just audible above the roar of the traffic lanes, are either coming from the occupants of the speeder or those going about their lives in the now ruined dwelling.
Casting his gaze back to the Iridonian, the young human weighs his priorities.
IC: Apprentice Kielor Dungeons beneath the Sith Temple, Korriban Present
The copper mask skitters across the floor as Ermir deftly sidesteps not only the poorly executed attempt from the apprentice, but also the gout of flame let loose from the throat of the Sith Master. A flash of ember glow illuminates the stairwell through which Apprentice Dymos had absconded, as a burst of fear is sent through the force; manifesting in Kielor’s mind as a cry for help from within the tunnels below.
Despite the failed attempt to deprive Ermir from his connection to the force, Kielor’s attempt did provide enough of a distraction to allow Xiannarr’s melee attack to pierce the Overseer’s defence. The crimson blade of the Dread Master sinking deep into the shoulder of his rival. A short bitter scream, and a smoking hole; tell-tale that the strike was successful.“Kielor, get out of here you're only going to get in my way,” shouted Xiannarr, not moments before being swept off his feet by a wave of telekinetic energy unleashed by Marcus Ermir. Xiannarr’s head smashed into the stone palmet of the entryway through which Kielor had retreated with an audible thud, leaving little more than a minor head wound and a trickle of blood. The apprentice stepped back as the Dread Master stood to his full height, addressing Ermir just as the man depressed the activation switch of his own lightsaber, the crimson blade bathing the entrance to the stairwell in ruby light.
“You will both die for this outrage!” Spat Ermir, and Kielor knew that his life was now in the hands of Master Xiannarr. He couldn’t retreat as the Dread Master had commanded, not only because it was not who he was, but Ermir was between him and the stair to the tunnels. If Xiannarr did not want his help then he would abstain, however he would need to hold and see this out. It would be lunacy to return to Lady Apollyon’s call with an outraged Ermir at his back, not knowing whether the Overseer would survive to strike him down in the myriad of dead ends in the tunnels below.
Then came the telepathic message from his Master, General Invadator. Not so much a message, no words or images were formed, just the overwhelming feeling of dread. It was as though she herself expected to die, or perhaps that she expected them all to die. What cataclysm was upon them? Something had gone terribly wrong upstairs. Part of him wanted to feel gratified that his earlier feeling had been correct, if it weren’t smothered by the concern deep in the pit of his stomach; like a spice grub gnawing at his insides.
Then the klaxons sounded. Followed by the announcement through the temple’s public address system. The temple was under attack, laid siege to.
For Kielor, it was unthinkable. Who could hope to stand against the gathered Lords of the Sith? But for his master to be so concerned, then surely there must be a force powerful enough to pose such a threat.
His knees felt weak. Heavy.
Maybe he should retreat? Leave the two Masters to their standoff. Seek The General and gain an understanding of what had befallen them.
Then came the cry for help from below. Dymos was in trouble. She was the only one who had immediately followed Apollyon’s orders. She was in the tunnels alone, and she was in danger.
Kielor didn’t especially know Keres, but she appeared to be a likeable woman, and was strong in the force. He looked to the stairway entrance. He wanted to rush into the depths to find her. He’d always been a sucker for a damsel in distress; anyone in distress really. It was something which he had just always done. He helped people who needed it. He looked to Ermir, his fury still palpable despite the blaring warning from the klaxons. Xiannarr sunk into a defensive stance, and in a calm and measured tone attempted to pause the scenario with Ermir, calling for a truce so that they could heed the call to arms.
The apprentice would await his response. If Ermir agreed, then he hoped to be able to reach Dymos before it was too late. If the Overseer would see this through then Kielor would stand aside while the two masters tore each other apart, at least until his way to the tunnels was clear.
Chapter V: Release Combo IC: Ānhrā Māhnîu & Darth Sedicious. Location: Underneath the Wrath of Vader stern, space above Korriban.
Freedom:
Finally the fortunes came in their favor as the gigantic dragon rose straight into the ship’s thrusters. Scarlet particles tore through its scales, viciously peppering the massive beast as the Reaper slid by underneath it.
The Jen’nu felt their incoming freedom, phosphorescing from the stars beyond. He knew, life still remained in the void of space. A lustral shout snarled from his fanged mouth. ‘’Go. Go! GO! Get us past the interdiction field!’’
Sedicious sank to one knee, still plunged deeply in the oceanic current of energy known as the Force. Sweat was frozen upon his face. Whether it was due to fatigue borne of his Force usage, the sheer intensity of his anger and anxiety, or both, was a question he left for the moment he was freed from the wraith’s gangrenous grasp. Viewing with the etherial eyes of Battle Meditation, he saw dragon and rider flung forth by the will of the Jen’nu.
By skill or fortune, they were bathed in the terrible plasma of the colossal ghost ship that passed by with maximal alacrity, gaining speed infinitely in the void. Sedicious' allies required no words. Every suggestion he gave Ānhrā Māhnîu was wordless, and every command he gave 114D without voice, as per the gift of the ancients. For the ancient Sith coordinators never spoke to their underlings in the crimson fire of battle, knowing the will of the masses was theirs to puppet, and thus each command was instantly and completely obeyed.
Sedicious, learning from the mistakes of the ancients, did not attempt to puppet his allies.
At least not here.
Not yet.
He did not need to reinforce his associates’ command to burst into the freedom of beyond the gravity well. And so, with the ship managed, he clasped his hands together, feeling his spirit’s metaphorical muscles start burning, and focused his meditation once more, bolstering the traitorous dragon as he had been his own allies. It would soon be subdued or dead, and all that was left was harassment, mere distraction.
Sith Illusions and Battle Meditation, a pairing nearly as old as the Sith themselves, was the constant unbroken in this tsunami of dark chaos. No illusion could last for long, if at all, against the might of the saturnine dragon rider…
At least, Sedicious thought, none that sought to damage him.
He began to weave a new illusion, a swarm of man-sized bats knitted from the flesh of humans. Their skin was stretched like wings, their horrifically clawed hands flapped with their disgusting capes of fair, rotting flesh, a bony proboscis lurching from its spine; their intestines, lined with innumerable porous holes, sprayed in a nauseating trypophobic symphony of discharge, spewing all manners of bodily fluids, from stomach acid to blood to semen. Their stomach, most bloated, shone in an utterly blinding brilliance, the seizure-inducing, perpetual strobe of a rainbow kaleidoscope, meant to slow, if only by mere milliseconds, the mind of the tyrant.
From their decaying esophaguses, they screeched with a sound so sharp it could decapitate a rancor. And they would rush the rider in a suicidal maneuver. A grotesque image, to be sure, but one fresh in his mind, an image from an unusual holomovie Sedicious had often enjoyed.
The Reaper’s fire had seized, their cover under Sith Illusions returning as the ship receded. Thrice the distance from the enemy, the spectacle shouldn’t endanger them, Sedicious thought. Ānhrā Māhnîu had eyes for nothing else however. Gazing back through a sideways viewport, his slit pupils could be measured in atoms. Once again the Force, his Force, reached through the void of space. The dragon and its rider had openly attempted to hunt him down and kill him, along with the others in the ship. Penance was due.
And so as Sedicious pushed his mental imagery, the Jen’nu shoved his physical fancy through space. He had already decided on what would happen first. The giant lizard would be pushed back into the bloody thrusting exhaust of the massive ship. Even if it may not kill two, it would hopefully kill one. And then they would finally make it out. For a third time that day, four minds were one as 114D re-set the course and activated the hyperdrive.
Powers used: Battle Meditation - 4 (bolstering Sedicious and his allies, as well as Draa'zekyl, and eroding Cruor)
Sith Illusions - 4 (concealing the ship and attempting to conjure a swarm of horrors to distract and attack Cruor)
Force Channel - 1 (active) Telekinesis - 4 (Attempting to push Draa’zekyl into the thrusters)
Mind Trick - 2 (Attempting to maintainin Draa’zekyl's animosity towards Darth Cruor)
The force wave from Hesper as she lashed out sent many a ghoulish skeletal frame flying back into the air, in addition many of those around her were caught up in the same energy. Draconis felt the tug on the cable as the cyborg vaulted away as he loosed his grip allowing the free cable to fly freely out of his hand and into the air. The skeleton is still partially ensnared by it,
The groaning hord refused to relent Draconis looked over at the cyborg, now gathering himself after a hard impact. “Cyborg.” Draconis yelled, calling his attention to potentially draw his attention back towards the temple. Draconis moved with a swiftness as he dodged and weaved his way to the temple entrance as the main door was closing.
Draconis crossed the threshold into the temple for the first time in a long time.
There was nothing left to do but submit to the power of the Force as she hacked away at living skeletons, narrowly being missed by the telekinetic blast issued by the Priestess. Some of those around her were not so lucky, one being Lord Vexx. She could almost feel in her guts how hard his head hit, and she didn't even need the Force for that. But try as she did to work her way towards his position to help fend off the hoarde, she could not reach him without taking a mortal wound. True to form, though, he made it back to her and their Master, even as they retreated towards the Temple.
Once she made it inside, she pressed a hand towards Lord Vexx's plated head. "Don't argue," she warned quietly, applying what healing she could to his battered brain.
They were safe, but only for so long.
"What the hell was that?" she spat to no one in particular, taking in her surroundings and the people who'd made it in. Her apprentice was in, thank the Force, and she called out to the other one, hoping to act as something of a homing beacon.
Powers used:
Telepathy
Transfer Force (not the whole damn thing)
COMBO POST IC: Darth Solus, @Reatith Blodraald ,@Cardun Vrek (Mavros) I.e. The Dark Red Squad Location: Hanger/Near Hanger, Korriban
Mavros could sense no danger ahead. The force had shown him the way was clear, and that only Reatith appeared to be in the hanger. It was odd that no one else had yet made their way there, but hopefully they wouldn’t be delayed for long. He wanted to leave now. The sirens were blaring, alerting all within the temple to the ongoing attack. Apollyon’s people had finally recovered enough sense to activate the alarms.
About bloody time.
Hopefully the others would be organising some sort of defence against whatever those Pyramids were sending out to attack them. There hadn’t been any sounds of explosions, so it seemed that an orbital bombardment had not yet started. He could only guess what was attacking the Temple, and none of those guesses made him feel any more confident.. Many Sith would likely die today, judging by the reactions of their leaders to those Pyramids, but Mavros wouldn’t mourn them. His survival was his primary concern.
He continued down the corridors, heading in the direction of what would hopefully be their way out, checking behind him every few seconds to check that Lord Solus and the younglings were still following. His commlink activated again, and he could hear the voice of Lord Solus’ apprentice echoing out of the small speaker, addressing both Solus and himself. He listened closely without lessening his pace.
*************************************
The blaring alarm startled Reatith, and when he looked back, the figure was gone. The worst possibilities ran through the apprentice's mind. First the Force seemed to be completely out of his grasp and now their one way off the planet was most likely sabotaged. He felt completely useless, like a child calling for its parent, something he had never felt before in his life. But he wouldn't let his pride get the best of him. Lord Solus was much more equipped to eliminate the threat. The Umbaran was almost completely worthless.
He leaned close to Roshkas and pushed a button behind his head, activating his comms.
"Commandant, I spotted a possible threat in the hangar behind the rhydonium canisters. We may have a makeshift bomb awaiting us. What is your command?"
Solus turned to his Comlink and spoke into it.
“Investigate the threat but don’t attempt to defuse it yet. Have Roshkas connect to the mainframe. If we want to evacuate people, those shields will need to come down.”
"You heard the Commandant, get working on those shields, I'll keep looking for the threat." Reatith said before deactivating the comm unit.
“Understood. My Lord, it may be best to keep the younglings back until we know it's safe for them to continue.”And so they don’t get in my way. Mavros added more to himself. He quickened up, now running through the corridors at full speed, lightsaber humming more violently as it cut through the air. He soon arrived at the hanger, just able to see the security shields active beyond the hanger’s opening. Not good. They couldn’t evacuate anyone with those kriffing shields up. The hanger was shrouded in darkness, far too dim for Mavros to see if anyone or anything was hiding in the shadows. Frowning slightly, he turned to Reatith, catching his breath.
“Show me what you’ve found. Lord Solus is following behind me.”
*****************************
Solus’ mind filled with what was before him. Mavros’ assessment was confirmed by his own precognition. No danger immediately ahead. But there is still a threat outside. The croan hushed the children behind him, but their fears were well founded. Even the strongest of sith feel fear, the choice of where to go next is what really matters.
“It’s just the sirens, young apprentices, it’s just the sirens.”
The Commandant gazed back at the younglings. Each had their own prickling of fear surrounding them.
“Children!”
Solus’ voice came out as an officer. A well practiced commander. His next step was clear in his mind.
“Pay attention to my words as I can only say them once.”
The Consulate’s masked face turned to regard each of the children and made sure their attention was held.
“I need Sith with me now. Take up positions near me. Watch our back so enemies do not catch us unaware. If any of you see anything or anyone you do not recognize, inform me immediately. I need all of your focus on this task. Understood?”
The Commandant did not wait for a response. His words were not even meant for him, No, his words were for the children. A focus was good for controlling the responses of children. They would be able to help and easier to handle. Hopefully the croan would see this as well.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to keep the children out of the hanger while I investigate with my allies. Do you understand?”
Solus’ tone was direct and implying the potential threat before them. Every word more of a hint to an experienced individual than a direct pronouncement of what lies ahead. Mavros’ voice echoed a distance in front of them. As of right now, the words were unintelligible but he was clearly talking to Reatith.
*********************************
Despite his failures he reached out to the Force once again, peering into the hangar to attempt to find who or what was lurking in the shadows as Roshkas began working on bringing down the shields temporarily. He quickly and stealthily moved toward the fuel canisters just as Mavros came sprinting toward him.
“Show me what you’ve found. Lord Solus is following behind me.”
Reatith watched and listened closely as Mavros spoke in rushed bursts between heavy breaths. The Umbaran waited for him to finish before responding.
"Behind the rhydonium canisters on the far side. Just before the alarms went off I caught a glimpse of a figure between two of them."
Mavros’ eyes narrowed as he looked over to the canisters Reatith indicated.
“Odd. I sensed no one in here apart from yourself. Which leaves us three possibilities. The figure you saw has cloaked its essence, it was a droid, or it was never there to begin with.” He said, reaching out with the force once more to try to get a better perception of the hanger.
"Don't mock me! I am not as useless as I may seem. There was most definitely someone there. Would you really want us to blow up as soon as we take off, just because we failed to check?" The Apprentice stared him down, his anger at his superior seemingly unfounded, especially in the situation they found themselves.
Mavros gave Reatith a cold glare in response to his words. “I was not mocking you. I was simply stating the possibilities. Be careful what you say, Apprentice. We will check the hanger, but do not take that tone with me again.”
He paused for a moment before responding. "Yes sir."
Mavros said nothing more, and turned towards the canisters that Reatith pointed out. Still continuing to reach out with the force, both of them slowly made their way over towards them, lightsabers held ready in hand whilst Mavros held his left out ahead of him, ready to utilise the power of the force should any threat emerge.
Solus’ boots clicked in the distance. Slowly growing louder and louder. His static anxious aura reaching the two Sith in the Hanger just before he arrived. His eyes scanned and his mind reached into the force for guidance. His hand went up signalling for the younglings and the croan to halt. Before he left he turned back to the group that had followed him this far.
IC: Rayge Vigör Walkway near the border of the Desrini District, Coruscant
The sharp smell of iron barraged his nasal cavity as Rayge witnessed the Padawan's skull be flattened beneath Dorrian's talons, giving way to a cascade of blood pooling out from his wounds. The immediate sensation of disappointment engulfed him as he kicked himself for not being the one to end the Jedi but at least it was a fellow Sith who had the honor. Rayge shook his head, an outward display of dissatisfaction in himself but before he could sink any deeper into disappointment the howls of an all too familiar beast could be heard booming across the locale. Scanning the ever erupting battlefield Rayge was able to lock on to the flailing creature. "A Rancor?" He mumbled to himself with cofusion ever-present in his voice. He focused more on the improbable scene, the rancor seemed to be acting as an ally and had taken out several members of the federation on its own, although it was still confronting 3 others. Reaching out with the force Rayge tried to sense his comrades to regroup and to see if any of them had any explanations as to how this Rancor found its way here. Quickly able to find Dorrian and Pythonus due to them being nearby, he struggled with the direction that Omegon's force signature seemed to be flowing from. "No, that can't be right," he thought to himself. The signature was coming from the Rancor itself. Concentrating harder he was certain, as unbelievable as it was the Rancor was indeed Omegon.
Since the enemy was retreating and all the current threats were eliminated Rayge decided to follow Pythonus. The 2 racing to help Omegon quickly finish off the 3 remaining Federation Officers so they could rejoin with the others. Saber still ignited, Rayge sprinted across the rubble garnished street flipping and vaulting over obstacle after obstacle as he rapidly closed the distance between Omegon and himself. Just as he was with a few meters of his fellow Sith he grasped his extended hilt with both hands activating a hidden switch while twisting the hilts releasing the 2 of them from one another and allowing his saber staff to convert into 2 single bladed sabers. The 3 soldiers were too close to Omegon for Rayge to be able to reach out with any bit of the force and bombard them with lighting or even a push. So instead of risking friendly fire, Rayge waited for his chance to physically strike his newly found prey. Just to give Omegon a heads up to prevent himself or Pythonus from becoming accidental victims of his ferocious strikes, Rayge reached through the force trying to telepathically notify Omegon of their presence.
"We're here, brother..."
Hopefully, Omegon's newfound form wouldn't hinder the mental message.
Cordé stood in the midst of the throne room, an unmoving pillar of silence. Vision swirled around her.
“No,” she whispered, though it was more to the carved reliefs before her than anyone in the room.
Her muscles were frozen, as they were in the nightmare that entranced her. She broke her vision and her attention went instantly to Nathemus.
She only caught the blur of her father, taking her mother away, hurriedly as Marasiah rose from the brink of death.
An aborted call of “wait!” nearly left her lips, but he was already gone. The others seemed to have their own plans. While she reeled, Gar Stazi arrived with Lord Kain, who quickly disappeared back into the temple.
Lord Voidwalker was giving orders, as well. But they could not risk the Federation they had worked to protect.
“Mother wants him to live. She ordered the Federation leaders kept alive and unharmed. They do not need to fight or come with us,” came the warm, clipped Coruscanti of Cordé as she followed the trio into the antechamber. Her fear had settled, or perhaps it had simply been masked by the objections she had to Voidwalker’s orders. “But I’m sure Marasiah appreciates a weapon.”
“There are people who want to kill him out here. Sia and Stazi are safer here. I will go ask mother and father to return. Since they know me best, they will trust me best, and I will find K’Kruhk.”
She had put palm to her chest then folded her arms by the end of her statement.
A shadow crossed the periphery of her vision. Primordius stood in the doorway, looking up at Sol with pleading eyes of sky blue. Cordé silently motioned for him to go back inside. He took a step back but still lingered.
She nodded back to the throne room and then to Gar Stazi, who she assumed was likely very confused but would prefer her plan of keeping them safe inside. “Stay with Lady Maladi, stay away from the blast doors, and keep them alive.” She peered into the room. “Lord Nathemus, I will be back in a few minutes.”
She moved away from the group before they could process or deny her instruction.
She glided through the antechamber, the adorned fabric of her outfit jingling in an echo of her mother.
She frowned, looking past the empty banquet hall into the shadowed beyond. There was a gathering, there. Her eyes, like obsidian in the darkened halls, glittered with flame as she overhead the conversation. Temptation tugged her towards them.
“Mother! Father!” She called, turning the other way. They would be no help for her. Many of them seemed to wish for her parents’ death.
She rounded the corner, spying the shimmering frame of her mother sitting on the stone floor. Her father stood there, a sentinel among the crimson Knights behind him.
She was floating, immersed in the starry darkness of the unconsciousness. It was brief, only brief, seconds. Yet by the time her eyes opened and her muscles responded to her command, she was looking up at the austere white and black of Nihl’s face and the worn stone of the ceiling of the corridors beyond the Throne room. She blinked away the fringes of darkness, clouding her vision.
Marasiah had lived.
The Force began to return to her, speaking to her through the essence of the woman she had saved - where there had been nothing, there was now warmth. Then, there was everything, a barrage of life and death that momentarily made everything lurch. Her breath caught. Her eyes remained open as darkness and light washed over her, every last flickering aura in the Force returning to her senses.
Her hand found its way to Nihl’s neck, a silent summoning of his attention before she could speak. There were words, staining the tip of her tongue, waiting to be spoken. She waited, a second more, knowing well that she was as safe as she would be in the Nagai’s arms, given the circumstances. Her eyes blinked away heaviness.
“My love,” she murmured, the words faint, gossamer, struggling to find purchase in reality, as if she were awakening from deep sleep. She blinked away tendrils of fatigue and the last throes of dizziness. She swallowed and finished her thought, the warm lilt of her voice returning. “I am alright.”
She shifted in his arms, wrapping her arms around his neck so that she would no longer be deadweight, and looked around. Her Knights were there, having evidently pursued the Sith Lord in a presumption that she was in danger. It was the opposite. It was merely a rare effect of such a power, one she had experienced more than once before. Perhaps it was the infant nestled within her womb that had contributed to her spell, or the panic and malefic darkness that surrounded them. Her eyes lingered on him, for a moment, mind yet awash with the Force and all it contained. She considered having him take her elsewhere, thinking that perhaps she and the others would be safer away from Venomis. She decided against it.
“Thank you,” she began, again, her voice soft. One of her hands flit to his cheek in a gesture of appreciation. “But we should return to the others.”
She slipped from his grasp, feet finding the floor. Her strength had returned and her mind had begun to clear. She turned to look behind her, sensing the chaos beyond.
Her chest heaved a moment later, and her hand outstretched in a lurch that brought her to the rough hewn stone of the corridor’s walls. It was not exhaustion, no. It was far worse. It was agony, the glow of a sun dying and submerging them in darkness. There were few spots of shimmering light, but none so powerful as this.
Her blood chilled as she recognized the dying light. For a moment, only a moment, her thoughts swirled in a tempest. He could not die. Her fear was quickly resolved by exasperation.
For Goddess’ sake.
She shut her eyes, chanting vacantly in the Vahlan tongue. The whispers filled the corridor. Her hands steadied herself against the wall. The others were nearby - but none of them had saved him. Had any of them attempted? Perhaps. It did not matter. She could feel the pall of death upon his spirit. She could feel him slip away into the realms beyond, as the tide recalling itself into a great sea. She had only moments.
There was uncertainty within her. She had only just awoken. The Force had returned to her, she was no longer weak, but she had only just awoken. Certainly she would not even consider...
She did not consider it. There was no time to do so. Her hands rose to her waist, entwining with each other as the Force flourished about her. The corusca of her gown caught, crackling as she slid down the wall, sitting with her chin pointed towards the light of the flickering brazier. She said nothing, her hands clutching her dress in her silent ministrations.
She was mercy. She was fate.
She found him. His signature was unmistakable. She delved deeper, her mind reaching out to swathe his in tendrils of fate. She found his mind as she did, an ancient thing illuminated by the rays of waning sun from the cold death of a star.
The threshold of his mind beckoned to her, but not with any urgency. It was simply there, a peaceful glow that trickled into the path of chaos, limning the threads of fate with gold. It materialized into the familiar, the whiphid master standing metres from her, in shade. He seemed to notice her, but then, he did not.
She blinked. He vanished, for a moment. There was only darkness. In the darkness, despite his waning spirit, he was life.
Heat clung to her skin, sweat clung to her brow. War screamed around her. Around them, the percussed cry of blaster fire. It was indescribably loud, every last pull of the trigger pounding in her ears. The detonators and mines only made it worse - she could not tell her own heartbeat from the irregular thumps of distant explosions.
The calls of clones rang out. The modulated voices were mostly indiscernible - she was not used to the front lines. Had their base and the medical bay within not been a casualty of the battle, she would not have been on them. Danger flared around them, but her body did not respond. She was exhausted, in both the ethereal and the tangible realms, her eyes weighted by the Force.
Vision came to her, allowing her to reopen her eyes and centre herself. They were no longer alone.
She was surrounded by the past.
Men, armoured in white, moved only metres behind her. Their footsteps pounded the grassy field beneath them, mud and smoke mingling around their feet.
K’Kruhk was grace and speed, leading them towards her - towards a distant objective. Her hands were outstretched, she knelt upon the soft, rain-soaked ground. She recalled her arms, they came back to her as fists, gloved and covered in blood. It was not her own. It was a man’s, shattered plasteel and scorched flesh all that was left of his chest. He sputtered for air. He was haphazardly propped against supply crates.
“Doc,” he wheezed, the sound crippled by both flail chest and pneumothorax. She reached down and held his hand. Bacta and blood mingled there as he gripped it. There was nothing more she could do. He was a man, he had a soul, as she did. His eyes, glazed, centred on hers. It was a face she saw a million times. It haunted her dreams, agony relived over and over through the hundreds of his kin she had seen live and die. It was not a ghost she would ever forget. His voice faltered. “Don’t let me go.”
Her chest tightened.
She had done all she could.
She could feel his fear, the deep suffering he experienced in his final moments. The medication she had given him would not be enough, she knew. It never was. Her teeth clenched. She gripped his hand more tightly as his grip loosened and his muscles failed him.
“I won’t, Tango. I’ve got you,” she lied, her voice a murmur in the clash of war around them. There was a brief flash of reassurance in his eyes, quickly overcome by his realization. His mouth moved to speak, but it failed to make any sound beyond a wet gurgle. She hushed him with a gentle whisper, a warm susurrus that paled in the face of death’s frigid grasp.
In the distant halls of the Sith Temple, decades and parsecs away, her strained breath escaped as his did. The vision was no longer simply a simulacrum of reality, of chaos, that their mind could comprehend. It was a memory, spun before her eyes. Her hands splayed on the stone as she relived each second in pained detail. Her face contorted into a grimace.
She looked up as the man slackened against the arm she had moved behind his neck. Her fingers rose and quickly closed his eyelids.
She resisted the urge to scream, to release her growing despair. Her own eyes shut. She rubbed soot and mud from her face with the back of her hand. It did nothing, her gloves only sheening her face with blood. The salt of a tear - spawned of exhaustion and despair - mingled with it. Anguish panged in her chest. There were more, dozens more. Even the stretches of irrigation trenches ran with ash and blood. She could not save one - how could she save them all?
All that surrounded her was death and destruction. Smoke billowed from fractured ground near her. The once verdant surface was pocked with scars of cannon fire and grenades. What had once been a home perched on the grassy knoll ahead was now only annihilation. She hoped it had not become a tomb, instead.
The Whiphid on the crest of the near horizon turned to her, studying the man in her arms as he passed into the Force. He was illuminated by light, his robes dancing about him with the bluster of wind.
“Master Jedi,” she called, her throat tight.
It was where the memory converged. A century ago, she had said nothing, only returning to her duty with the shadow of an irreparable grief weighing on her shoulders. In her mind’s eye, he vanished into the throes of battle, darting off into the oblivion that awaited. He had seen her, noticed her, as he had noticed all the death and crippling destruction of Teyr. But he had continued on.
This time, he remained.
The eyes of Kára Volshe, skin stained with bacta and blood; thin frame clad in the unmistakable combat uniform of a Republic physician; met the eyes of the Whiphid master. There was grief and weariness in both of their gazes.
A gunship shrieked overhead. She slipped the man from her arm. She hoped briefly he would resist, but knew he would not. His pauldron, seared with the gold of the 415th, clacked against the plasteel crates. Her hand extended, wordlessly, as she rose. Her heart pounded in her ears. It was slow, steady, overtaking everything she could have said.
I’ve got you.
Her quiet reassurance echoed in the chaos of war, wafting in the distance between them as the tattered banners of the Republic fluttered in the acrid wind. This time, she did not lie. There were dozens of men she could not have saved. There were dozens of lives they would lose, this day. The Jedi Master was no more, or less, worthy.
But unlike them, unlike those who fate had claimed, ripping from her desperate hands, she could save him.
Her hand remained outstretched, silently beckoning to him.
The incisions of his Whiphid eyes remained unblinking, and he did not move from the hill. “Dark one,” he said, quietly, almost reverently, as if in respect for the most ancient enemy of the Jedi. His hat, unmarred, sat proudly atop his head. “There is no death, there is only the Force. Where I go… There is no pain.”
She did not drop her hand, though she allowed him to speak. It was eminently Jedi of him, to accept chaos with such grace. But she did not simply let him continue - she could not simply let him continue, unaware of the Galaxy’s nearing fate.
“A darker enemy is upon us,” she said, her voice a whisper that cut through the bygone battlefield. “I will not impose my will on you. But you are needed, lest the entire Galaxy fall prey to annihilation worse than any war, any invasion it has seen. Millions, billions, of innocents will be subject to their terrors and suffering. Korriban is not all they seek.”
The fringes of the sky darkened with flash of lightning and rumble of thunder, though it had been golden light that flooded the fields moments ago. It was if speaking of him had brought him to the tenuous realm of chaos they stood within.
“The Galaxy needs you, now, more than ever, as it needs Marasiah. As it needs Stazi.”
K’Kruhk chuckled. It was not a sad thing, nor did it hold judgment, only the depth of wisdom, and a life long-lived. His tusks shook with the movement. “You Sith seek to beat death with a stick,” he said, in his gravelly voice. “But the Force cannot be subjugated to your will, only bent to the point it lashes back. Whatever dark force besieges the galaxy, it does not need K’Kruhk. If it did, the Force would not be calling me now.” He raised his hand, voluminous sleeve sliding down the furred length of his alien arm. “Farewell, dark one. May you serve the Force well.” The inversion of the Sith aphorism was clearly intentional, a reminder, and a gentle rebuke.
“Wait,” she said, the urging soft, still not imposing upon him. But there was an urgency that flooded around her, that immersed them both. She moved forward, mud and foliage beneath her step. Her hand remained extended. “Please. Hear me. I will release you, if you wish, in the end. But hear me. See what I have seen. Live what I have lived.”
In the distance, above the muted echoes of blasterfire, carrying across the grim battleground of Teyr, came a word spoken by neither of them.
“Mother?”
Cordé’s voice came from beyond, as if she were among the mud-spattered troopers. The ethereal form of Kára Volshe hesitated, for a moment. The word warred with her from the moment it found purchase in her mind. Her eyes, no longer gold, but a silver-limned viridian, near instantly lost their resolve. The determination to convince him faltered, at war with something greater. There was fear, glittering there, but it was not fear for merely herself. The Galaxy was there, in the inky depths of her eyes. Every sun, every moon, every life.
She was not asking him for her own selfish desire.
She looked back to K’Kruhk, attempting to hide the glimpse of vulnerability. It failed. “Please,” she said, scarcely a whisper. Perhaps it was foolish, perhaps he was correct. Perhaps she merely sought a ghost of the past, some lingering reassurance from the Jedi General who had once kept her safe. Perhaps she sought exactly what she asked of him, to aid her in saving the Galaxy.
But she did not wish to let him go.
K’Kruhk only let his hand fall in response, and turned his back, earthen robes retreating over the hill towards the endless pastures beyond, where the sun beckoned with greater potency than Volshe’s most desperate pleas. It called to Volshe, too, to give up the great fight, to follow K’Kruhk over that hill to that final mystery that awaited all living things, to at last rest from her endless striving. Perhaps her parents awaited her on the other side, the first husband she had lost. Perhaps nothing awaited, save for the bliss of unknowing oblivion, an eternal sleep under the last memories of the sun. But whatever pulled her towards that infinite horizon, it was the call of the Force.
She did not run after him, only stood in the war-torn battlefield of Teyr. She could not save a man who did not wish to live. She could only watch him go, silently hoping that he would turn back.
She was mercy.
But it was fate.
He went alone, he left her alone, the chaos of the battle not even seeming to notice his departure. It simply continued on around the void he had left. Sunlight fell on the crest of the hill where he had once stood. There was only light there, nothing more.
He was gone.
The cries of war rang in her ears as her eyes opened. She realized, then, she was shaking, her face stained with the tear she had shed in the celestial realm. Her muscles ached, her mind drained by the effort it had taken to simply encounter his spirit - let alone attempt to coax it back into the realm of the living.
“Domina?” The sound of Nihl’s voice washed over her. He was crouched beside her, his eyes narrowed and scanning over her in assessment.
Cordé stood off in the distance, her face creased with worry.
“K’Kruhk is...gone. I could not...I could not save him,” she said, almost breathlessly. She hoped the explanation would be sufficient. She lacked the fortitude, in that moment, to explain what she had witnessed.
Instead of standing up, as she likely should have, Volshe pulled the ornate, golden cigarra case from where it was tucked away and lit a single ambrian cheroot. The fragrant pink smoke flooded around them as she exhaled that first breath, the first rivulets of clarity percolating in her exhausted mind.
She sat, quietly, unmoving. A moment of silence in reverence of what had been...and what was to come.
Her strength was waning. She needed to regain it. She already knew what she needed to do next, and it would be no easy feat. K’Kruhk’s death had only complicated things much greater. It had not changed her initial plan.
Her lip briefly curled, anger flaring in her chest. Not simply at herself, for her failure; nor at K’Kruhk, for his stubborn refusal; but at the monstrosities beyond the Temple walls for challenging her will. Despondency followed it. She stifled it.
“Mother, we can’t stay here,” Cordé said, softly, urgency in even the stance she took. “I saw what is coming. It is darkness and death, and not much more. There is only one path I have seen where we escape. I’ve only seen one we can—“
“Fierfek,” Volshe hissed, into the darkness that surrounded them. Cordé blinked and froze, but did not flinch. Nihl’s hand alighted on Volshe’s shoulder at the same moment. It offered her only a glimmer of reassurance in the darkness that weighed on her, now. She focussed on it instead of what seemed to be the hopeless future around them, willing the Force to return to her, waiting for the tide to return in its ebbs and flows.
She sighed. It would do her no good to avoid the inevitable. Her hand beckoned to Cordé, as it had beckoned to K’Kruhk. “Show me what you have seen.”
Cordé nodded and moved to show her mother what she had witnessed. Her daughter’s hand was cold as it wrapped around hers, but she did not notice for long - the touch immersed her in the memory.
The threads of fate converged, one by one, into oblivion. A void of nothingness. There were few that led anywhere but the shuddering darkness they all perched on the precipice was. Cordé inhaled sharply. There was a second vision. A wafting scent of decay, the cold pall of death. A tomb? It smelled of a tomb.
Then, there was a third. Their worst fears were confirmed. Her breath was caught in her throat by Stygian claws, black ichor smothering her in a frigid hall that smelled of rot and the tang of blood.
The vision faded. Her daughter withdrew.
She took another drag of her cigarra, smoke curling from her lips and dissipating in the cold air of the hall. Silence was all she could summon.
Volshe shook her head. “We must leave this place, but I need time,” she said, up to Cordé. “I must regain my strength. I must protect us all, even before we can concern ourselves with escape.”
She let her head fall back again, against the rough-hewn stone, summoning the Force to her aid. It lapped at her, in small waves, at first, then larger ones that crested over her with a warm reassurance.
“Majesty, your daughter is right. We cannot remain here,” one of the Knights said, from steps away. The corridors were perilous. They lacked the protections of the other sections of the Temple.
“I only need a moment,” she retorted, but the Knight was unimpressed with her assessment, looking to Nihl. She was overwhelmed, by death, by fear, though she would not ever admit such.
“Do not,” she whispered, eyes narrowing. She did not wish to be seen in such a predicament. She did not wish to appear weak. It meant nothing to her that she was the opposite, that she had pulled Marasiah from death, that she had just attempted the ritual of essence transference only moments emerged from the throes of unconsciousness. All that mattered is how one like Krayt would see her in the aftermath. Weak, when all the Sith knew was strong. Powerless, as she felt. “I can walk.”
She attempted to, the cigarra dangling from her lips as she stumbled almost-drunkenly to her feet. Her strength had not yet returned. She still needed a minute. More.
Do not, she warned again, this time silently, only her eyes communicating her thought. She knew he might well ignore her protests in order to keep her safe, but regardless, she started off whence they had come - with slow steps and a shuddering hand on the wall.
~
POWERS USED:
Essence Transfer
GM Note: Corde's usage of Heartshadow rolled a 19 + Modifier of 12 against a DC of 10, and succeeded. Effect Roll was 6 + 6 + 3, achieving moderate success. Corde is able to perceive threads of the future leading to a ragged void in the Force; only one veers away, but it is tinged with tragedy and death, and smells musty, like a tomb. The threads leading to her thoughts of capture show herself and Volshe in dark metal passageways of black oil, their throats being opened by the black-lacquered claws of a man in white; these possibilities hold no hope.
GM Note: As K'Kruhk has already died, Volshe's attempt at essence transference is a challenging feat. A DC of 15 will be given to Volshe's attempt at using essence transference, and a simple d20 will be rolled without modifiers. The d20 roll is 14; the attempt fails, and the spirit of K'Kruhk passes on.
IC: Commander Threntel Border of the Desrini and CoCo Districts, Coruscant
Night had fallen upon the western hemisphere of Coruscant.
The City of Spires was the glittering multitude of dreaming starscrapers sprouting from the mists of the forgotten underworld to reach for the wheeling veil of distant suns. It was the endless whine of repulsorlift engines racing through the neon-glowing darkness, a thousand gleaming lights of scarlet and viridian threading through canyons of durasteel like a murky mirror-image of the rainbow bridge that trailed across the sky above, the rings of a shattered moon daubed across the star-spattered expanse by the Yuuzhan Vong of yesteryear. It was a hundred thousand years of history and an infinite present; sweat-soaked partygoers dancing in the strobing fog of underground nightclubs, soot-stained labourers plodding down lowered boarding ramps for a long night-shift in the Works, crowds of the wealthy and privileged treading the crimson carpets of the Galaxies Opera House to the staccato-flashing of holocam droids.
In a cantina in the Uscru Entertainment District, an azure Rutian Twi’lek, celebrating her first-place graduation from Imperial University, placed her hand on a male Balosar’s wrist, gently redirecting his attentions. “I’m fine, thanks,” she said, raising her Vorzyd martini. “I already have a drink.”
In a thousandth-storey apartment atop the lofty monolith of 500 Republica, a mother rocked her baby in a crib, desperately attempting to soothe his ceaseless cries. “Please,” she said exasperatedly. “Mommy has to see the ambassador in the morning. Shhh. Just go to sleep, little one, just go to sleep.”
In a chilly corner office within the colossal rotunda of the former Senate Building, the Sith governor interlocked his fingers behind his shaved head, leaning back in his leather chair with a smile. He had just received word that the Vapid had arrived. The last of those pesky Federation fighters, holed up in the distant Desrini District, were about to be overrun, clearing Coruscant of all resistance. Already, he pondered how he should open his report to Regent Apollyon. A commendation of Commander Threntel would endear himself to the military, when such inevitably leaked, but lambasting the centurion and elevating himself would reap its own rewards. He could worry about it in the morning, he decided; he had stayed up late for the news, but now, the warmth of the residence beckoned.
None of them knew they had but minutes to live.
The walkway near the border of the Desrini District and CoCo Town was strewn with bodies. Twisted by death, their blood-streaked hands reached for the heavens in clutching rigor mortis, the contortions of momentary agony flash-frozen forever beneath a fine powder of permacrete dust. Their shattered visages were the faces of war, horror draped over despair. “Keep your hands on your head!” Threntel shouted, blaster rifle lowered at the blue-uniformed officers emerging from the rubble behind cowering resistance fighters in the camouflaged garb of civilian militia.
The assault had played out perfectly. Caught between the dogged pursuit of the Imperial lines, and the ambush of Deleritas’ reinforcements from the side, the Federation fighters had been chewed to ribbons by the lethal crossfire, escape prevented by the blockade of speeder bikes. A hundred had died in a second. All the while, their rear had been harried by the artillery repositioned by Vesper and the particle beams of Tinople’s gunship, while hope bled from their ranks beneath the swinging claws of Omegon, transformed as he was into a great rancor. As soon as they had seen the frightful profiles of Shadowsun, Rayge and Pythonus heading for them in the fog, horned demons pinning them against the grim waterfall of collapsing bodies and a wall of blaster fire, the few surviving officers had raised the white flag of surrender.
The last battle of Coruscant was over.
Now, the remaining Federation fighters were being shepherded towards the shuttles in the speeder park behind, black-armoured Stormtroopers surrounding them on every side; the MAAT bearing Tinople had landed beside them. Rand Ko, having emerged from the ruins of Dex’s Diner on Vesper's orders, prodded the back of an officer with the hilt of his lightsaber. “Move along, move along!” he shouted, gesturing for a trooper to retrieve the pistol lying discarded on the ground. The captives were to be taken back to the garrison in the Senate District. The governor’s orders; no doubt, he wished to squeeze them for every bit of information regarding the whereabouts of the Federation fleet.
Threntel was too exhausted to even think of such things. The sun had yet been high at noon when the engagement had begun, and now, after hours of combat, gloaming had given way to night, and the adrenaline was fading. There was still work to be done, he knew. Medics were treating the many wounded and placing the dead in body bags. The prisoners would need a constant escort, until their security was assured. A detachment would need to be sent into the sidestreets with scanners, searching for any stragglers.
“Knight Deleritas,” he barked into his comm/link, raising his wrist towards his helmet. “Have your men…” He trailed off, and Rand Ko turned, frowning, a sudden cold washing over him in the Force.
There was something in the sky.
Behind the towering tombstones of distant starscrapers, beside Coruscant’s second moon, a strange aether was coalescing against the black. It stretched across the sky from the east of a forgotten dawn to the west where the sun went to die, a band of ashen malachite fainter than the waning moon, malignantly radiant, a corpse-light that illuminated nothing.
A night mist? No. Mist did not trail through the air like the scelerous hand of a long-dead god, reaching for the surface of Coruscant below. Mist did not descend with slow, creeping certainty, in tendrils of grasping green. Mist was cold like a forest kissed by midnight, leaves and dew and rain; the cold that filled Threntel now was empty as the void, not the cold of nature, prickling the flesh, but the cold of spiritual desolation, seizing the soul. It was the cold of death.
“What… What is that strange sight?” Threntel asked the night.
And the night answered. A distant wail pierced the air, the dreadful screech of a woman. Another followed but a second later, and then another, deeper, male. Threntel looked wildly about, backing away. “What… what is happening…” The Stormtroopers and their prisoners stood transfixed.
The Force was screaming. To those sensitive to its currents, a death-cry was rising everywhere. And above, lurking in the black gulf beyond Coruscant, a bottomless pit in the Force, an abyss staring back with a baleful gaze, a singularity vaster than any black hole.
Words could not describe the ruinous power, and even Threntel, blind to the Force, found himself losing all capacity to speak, a single tear inexplicably trailing down his cheek. To him, what lurked above was the cancer that had claimed his son, smiling with mirthless satisfaction across a thousand days of torment. To Vesper, it was the betrayal of the Dark Lord, scorn and humiliation and solitude, and all that had broken her soul. To Omegon, it was the dueling pits of New Dolla, violence without reason, the theft of childhood and the death of friends. To Deleritas, it was the nightmare that had plagued him from his earliest years, and the void left by parents he had never known. To Tinople, it was the fall that had crippled him, every ache and pain of old age, and the fears of a life wasted before encroaching death. To Rayge and Shadowsun, it was the cruelty of rhymeless ridicule, the abuse they had endured from birth for skin colours they had never chosen.
It was the power that turned brother against brother, sister against sister, mother against daughter, father against son. It was the power that rotted the fabric of the cosmos, that wrought evil from good, suffering from happiness, destruction from creation. It was the death of the Force, the death of all life, the final fate of oblivion that awaited the universe. It was the father of all shadow, the Dark of eternal night, and it thundered with endless hunger.
OOC: There is no need to check usage of Force powers or melee attacks in the prior round, and they may be considered successful if desired. Feel free to have fun wrapping up the battle, if you wish, before responding to the prompt.
The lower battlements measured ten meters from the doorway at the top of the stairs to the short, crenelated parapet ahead, and thirty meters wide. The entrance was on the left side, three meters rightward of the wall of a central turret built atop the entrance hall, while the edge of the terrace on the right represented the edge of the temple itself; the expanse of Korriban was spread, in all its dire splendour, both ahead and to the right. The back wall bore an unlit torch between the entranceway and the great mural of Ziost, with higher battlements above and behind.
The snow-capped trees of the mural’s holopainted forests gleamed in the reflected red light of the translucent electron shield and the low desert sun; the malevolent glare of the latter was concealed from sight by the tower on the left, but its blood-hued effulgence spilled across the sandy plain ahead as it sunk behind the mountains to the west. Any other evening, the students would have been training in ancient kata upon the tiled stone beneath the watchful eyes of overseers, lightsabers red as the setting sun. Any other evening, the vista would have been a thing of raw majesty and sanguine beauty, the power of the dark side made manifest through the savagery of nature.
Not now. Now, the dance of practiced battle gave way to war in all its panicked reality, and the elements of Korriban conspired to leech all hope from the final defenders of the New Sith Order, the bitter desert cold bringing with it the chill zephyr of desolation and the necrotic perfumes of endless rot. Where Horuset had once illuminated a vast desert of infinite possibility, an arid expanse of mighty monuments and crypts whispering with promises of plunder, now its arterial glow only illuminated the rapidly dwindling hopes of a besieged bastion, an acrid sea of animated bone roaring with the promise of doom.
From her vantage point beside Catalyst, the mural framing her forlorn form behind, Apollyon could see it all. The death of the New Sith Order and their ill-fated imperium, in all its moribund multitude.
The ghouls trapped within the shields were hurling themselves at the walls of the temple, their unfortunate victims desperately leaping from the landing below towards the merlons between the battlements’ crenels. Noxia made it, landing safely beside a heavy blaster emplacement, but Mirtis and Metus were less fortunate, for Catalyst’s telekinetic power had been loosed in a startled reflex, and Noxia’s prized lieutenants were hurtled back the instant they floated into view, falling into the reaching hands of the skeletons below. Mirtis’ hardy Trandoshan frame spared him cripplement, but the impact was still hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs and fracture his ribs, while Metus, hanging onto his arm, was less fortunate still, skull smacking into the stone with lethal force. Adding injury to injury, the claws of the ghouls raked the two unfortunate Sith, leaving deep wet gashes, and the dead crowded around the dying with teeth gnashing and swords flashing.
Zyldek was spared a similar fate thanks to the more merciful hand of Kain, and the badly-wounded Chagrian was telekinetically pulled to the battlements beside Noxia, landing in an ungainly sprawl. Stormtroopers weaved around his prone body to seat themselves in the open-top blaster turrets placed at every third merlon, and the scent of ozone filled the air as the swivelling artillery pumped plasma into the ranks of the dead. Some of the shots splashed harmlessly on the interior electron wall of the shields, while others hurled bone and sand into the air with each recoil of the massive barrels. Xarxes, ribs mending under the ministrations of Hesper, added his own firepower to the fray, reaching through the shields with a lash of Force energy, hurling a dozen ghouls to the sands.
Beyond the translucent field, more horrors were massing; an ocean of bloated corpses sodden with black oil weeping from every rotting pore, snarling crimson-skinned cacodaemons bearing the same jagged halberds of their skeletal vanguard, and colossal Terentatek taller than the temple walls, chained to the ominously advancing profiles of archaic siege towers.
The pyramids in the sky above had been joined by the vast wedge-shaped profile of a terrible warship, raining yet more of those strange transport pods to the sands. At first glance, one might think it was a Star Destroyer, sinking through the tropopause, but the mist of high atmosphere obscuring its jet-black hull betrayed its great distance–and its impossible size. Its ragged shape, the frayed infrastructure of a ghost ship nigh half-the-size of the fabled Death Star, was sickeningly familiar to Apollyon. Only one warship in the Sith fleet was so massive. A ship that had vanished two years ago, along with its dread captain.
The Wrath of Vader.
Apollyon’s breath hitched in her throat, and her onyx eyes instantly fell back to the malefic army assembling in the miasma, squinting, searching. All she could see were the tiny distant figures of the enemy, the glowing yellow eyes of the red daemons in their thousands. And then the distant sounding of a trumpet pulled her gaze to the right, and her heart stopped in her chest.
A hundred meters yonder, near an ancient obelisk sprouting from the Wight Wastes, a figure in ink-stained white stood with hands clasped in dark delight beside a frightful assembly of black robes and cruel masks; the skulls of men and beasts, the snarling metal visages of Tuk’ata and Rakata, rusted iron contorted into caliginous countenances just barely discernible in the gloaming gloom. Two were veritable goliaths, taller than the ten eidolons around them, yet they were not who drew Apollyon’s gaze.
The wraith with no mask rode forth on his great black steed, shrouded by a cloud of dust kicked up by six galloping legs. A roar went up from the alien army at the sight of that horned horse and its terrible rider, and Darth Dreadwar the Magnificent raised his gauntleted hand of shadow, empty hood sweeping left and right!
The necromancer had arrived at last, and behind his eldritch mask of eyeless horror, Darth Venomis smiled, the cheeks of his vessel splitting with the unfamiliar motion, leaking black oil. The Lord of the Thirteen was a talented general, if one given to pomp and pageantry, and the remainder of his Shadow Council, arrived with him, were capable lieutenants.
Or perhaps not.
The battlelord had not brought his dragon; not a simple oversight, otherwise he would have surely descended in the troop transport that had conveyed his kindred. No, he had crawled through the folded fabric of space itself, tunneling through a thousand kilometers of atmosphere to apparate upon the sands. Had he not been instructed to alight upon the Wight Wastes for the sole purpose that, when the hour was come, he would sow terror astride the great wings of his fell drake? Perhaps he was so foolish as to think his towering bulk would blend in with his fellow shadow lords, that his evident failure would be overlooked.
As the necromancer rode out in front of the Massassi, indulging his ego, Venomis eyed the battlelord, tasting his recent history with a flick of his perception. “Yilyau samatef,” Venomis spoke, a nauseating slither through Cruor’s mind, trailing slick poison. “Hatak. Tel’kanti hadatu, satewe Ssither. Dawu sabâti, Waru Rakata parwu. Yawaha tya, hapareth tizi, hebne yah’ha mid natra haudred draxu.” Where is thy steed, battlelord? Answer. The Ssither assemble in their tortuous hordes, the Rakata gather in the shadow of Waru, yet among such ranks of disciplined perfection, thou art surely lost.
Venomis’ question possessed the sincerity of a serpent. He had already pilfered that which he wished to know; Draa’zekyl was dead by Cruor’s hand, a single swift blow, enhanced by the preternatural strength of the Force and the titanic power of a Gen’Dai, putting an end to its brief revolt. The battlelord, distracted by a stray ship of insignificants, had cost the Tsis their fiery display. No matter. The battlelord had other uses, if the shadow slayers failed.
“Gri’ak satiyu adiyu, yunoks Taral, drazkul sumanuk de tyûk sutu. Setan sutekh Sith’ari hazka azgul. Grashu jaduzka Xen Gaal? Senti aminthiyat sibi grottha, Mortis haktaya Rabi’tabul shâsot, Pesegam kitkat siwu ryagnor.” Perhaps thy strength will serve us better than thy cunning, little protector, lest the supreme god need find another apprentice. Canst thou not feel Him, Cruor? The final seal is broken, and He is risen from Mortis, for Haretisch did not struggle to play his part. Do not displease Him when His eye turns to Korriban.
Venomis’ smile had not drooped the entire time. “Askontu kiraktak nu hotep atef.” He is not as forgiving as I am. And then he turned away, as the Lord of the Shadow Council rode past them, and the Massassi raised their fists.
It took a second for Apollyon’s heart to resume its beat.
What–
It–
He–
Fragmentary thoughts raced through her mind, like scattered driftwood in a stream, drowning out the voices of her peers, their every panicked utterance of escape and stratagem. Every scrap and shred of her master’s training, every heuristic of reasoned thinking, fell before the onrushing river of demented bewilderment. Somehow, Darth Dreadwar had returned.
Apollyon had never given up hope. His disappearance was too sudden, too inexplicable, she had told herself, Insipid’s excuses of seals and Celestial traps too nebulous and too treacherous, never daring to use final words like “dead,” “gone.” She had never sensed him, not until now, not until that abyssal absence in the Force tore across the sands of Korriban like a wind of glacial cold. But she had never given up hope, seizing on every scrap and shred of evidence, kneeling as if in prayer every night, feeling the bond she had once shared with her master… and in the solitude of the darkness, comforting herself that she could not feel the frayed edges of a bond severed, that perhaps the utter silence that met her desperate pleas was not the silence of a spirit departed.
She had waited six hundred and sixty six nights, for this very moment. She had endured ridicule, disdain, and the greatest mockery of pity. Even after the disappearance of Insipid supplanted the vanishing of Dreadwar, even after the civil war had washed all thoughts of return from the Order’s collective mind, she had believed her immortal master would defy the rumours of his death. She had staked her claim on it, her reputation, her life, fighting thrice a dozen pretenders to defend the emptiness of a throne.
She had waited for the return of her Emperor. Her master. For that day his whisper crawled through their bond, his presence opening to her once more.
But the bond remained icily silent, his presence the uncaring sovereignty of a singularity, and the trumpets that heralded his coming were the trumpets of the enemy. Darth Dreadwar had returned… at the head of an army.
Her onyx eyes tracked that void within the hood, feeling only the apathy of death, across a chasm of incalculable distance. Her mind raced with her heart, thoughts flitting around a single question.
Why?
Why had Dreadwar returned? Why had Dreadwar vanished? Why did he ride with an army of fleshless skeletons and red-skinned demons, as if he was their leader, their general?
Why am I not down there with you?
Her master’s whisper echoed in her mind, not the mental caress she craved, but a memory. Never underestimate any enemy, my young apprentice, he had said. For neither we nor they are characters in a play, and they will never be caricatures like the villains from a holodrama; know that they, too, are capable of their own intelligent planning, schemes that would put Maladi to shame, out of sight, out of reach.
Another whisper, another memory. To fathom an obscure plot, merely observe the results, and consider who benefits.
Other voices raced through her head, not the voice of her master, but the voices of history, of holocrons and dusty tomes, snippets of a puzzle flying in its myriad pieces through Apollyon’s mind.
You must go where Revan did, into the Unknown Regions, where the Sith, the true Sith, wait in the dark for the great war that comes.
Darth Dreadwar had appeared from the Unknown Regions–
Another surge of apprehension, confusion giving way to a dawning horror.
It paved the way to Korriban, the remnants here. And he came because Malachor, like Korriban, lies on the fringes of the ancient Sith Empire, where the true Sith wait for us, in the dark.
Into which the New Sith Order had fled, divided, unruly, fighting amongst themselves even as they retreated before the advancing Federation–
You thought that the corrupted remnants of the Republic, the machines spawned by technology that Revan led into battle, were the Sith? You are wrong. The Sith is a belief. And its empire, the true Sith Empire, rules elsewhere.
Only to find something older and fouler in the darkness beyond Mobus, a force that tore their fleets asunder–
There are a hundred different threats out there that would freeze your blood if you knew about them.
A force of relentless horror that Dreadwar had steered them from, a saviour appearing from the black to unify them beneath his rule–
You remember the devastation of the Yevethan Great Purge? There were things in the Unknown Regions that would have made it look insignificant, save we were there and stopped them.
And the attacks had ended, their attackers never identified, as they spilled back into the Outer Rim whence they had come, forced to make war on the Federation for their very survival, Dreadwar’s cunning strategies softening the galactic government such that the New Sith Order could rebuild their fallen Empire–
And in the time of greatest dread, when the nemesis devours all, there shall come a saviour marked by Ragnarok, unto whom was born…
Mitth’res’pheie.
A new strand of thought, separate from the others, ripped through her mind. A different memory, promoting itself to her conscious attention. Two years ago, she had uncovered a prophecy in the archives of Grand Admiral Thrawn, a prophecy drawn from the ancient Sith. Two years ago, she had led a team to unravel the mystery of that prophecy. The recovery of a missing fragment, from the tomb that turned out to be Dreadwar’s own, had provided more questions than answers; a single name, seemingly of a Chiss: Mitth’res’pheie. Further investigation on Dantooine had not resolved the mystery, only warned that Mitth’res’pheie came from the Unknown Regions.
In her final desperation, she had turned to her master, ancient and learned in all mystery, to resolve it for her, to at last explain the uncanny coincidences and strange references, to make sense of it all. But he had not. An entire year of investigation had ended without climax, forgotten on the eve of the next annual feast, when the war against the Federation abruptly began.
The attack that had been launched without warning or preparation, a premature war that had divided the galaxy against itself, broken by a disappearance that had thrown the Empire into chaos, a hundred factions fighting for parsecs of fractured space…
Think it from the enemy’s point of view, where they do their own intelligent planning…
And Apollyon realised what should have been obvious from the very beginning.
Mitth’res’pheie was not the name of a Chiss.
Mitth’res’pheie was an anagram.
It was an anagram for what came from the unknowns. A coded warning from Naga Sadow, scrambled by Grand Admiral Thrawn, of what silent terror lurked in the darkness. The enemy that besieged the temple, that mysterious enemy they had faced in the Shadow War, that enemy the ancient Sith Lord known as Ku’ar Danar saluted like subjects…
The Sith Empire.
The true Sith Empire.
The revelation blasted through her mind with the force of a dam breaking, drowning all agony and horror, washing away the last gasps of confusion with the crystalline cold of dreadful certainty.
The red-skinned aliens, chanting in their thousands, were the Sith species of yore, believed extinct for untold millennia. True Sith. Undiluted, pure, ancient beyond measure, the progenitor of the philosophy that had corrupted caliginous remnants of the Jedi, and birthed every Sith Order of history. Revan must have known, and descended into the darkness to save the galaxy from them. Traya, the first Traya after whom Aurelia had taken her name, had known too. Palpatine had feared them, sending Thrawn into the Unknown Regions to investigate, to build up the Empire of the Hand as a bulwark–
And, and the Nagai and Tof and the Ssi-Ruuk and the Yuuzhan Vong had all invaded from the unknowns, from far-flung satellite galaxies and hidden fiefdoms, and that was just too much coincidence, too many foes in a two-decade timespan, and, and Palpatine had been brought back by undead lords of the ancient Sith, and Marka Ragnos had risen, too, Exar Kun, Valik Kodank, Dathka Graush, Darth Andeddu…
Luke Skywalker had deduced a hidden mastermind, puppeteering every unlikely paroxysm of chaos and bloodshed, softening the galaxy in preparation for attack… He had come to suspect Lumiya, but no, Lumiya’s death did not end the coincidences; a time-travelling spaceship of ancient Massassi warriors, a lost tribe of Sith descended from the old purebloods, mysterious shadow spirits in the Chilloon Rift, and an ancient dark side entity known as Abeloth, driving the Jedi to the brink of apocalypse.
And Lord Shadowspawn had claimed he came from the Unknown Regions, from sorcerers more terrible than the Sith, and Bataal Bandu had claimed ancestry to the Sith species, allegiance to a Sith Order that opposed Darth Vader, and the New Sith Order, the heirs of Vassago and Cruor and Krayt… Just another pawn in a line of pawns. A vassal, witting or unwitting, a weapon to be smashed against the galaxy, lacerating it, macerating it, readying it for the final hammerfall. Had Vassago known? Cruor? Nyna Calixte, the mysterious manipulator who had brought the New Galactic Empire and the New Sith Order together, and brought about the Sith-Imperial War and the rise of Darth Krayt? These things, Apollyon did not know.
But she knew who had pulled the strings, who had played them all like fools while hiding his higher game in plain sight, the ancient enemy who had placed himself at the very top of the New Sith Order’s hierarchy, and posed as their leader and saviour...
He was the bane of the Dominion of Darkness, of the Acolytes and the Dragons, and now he rode out against the New Sith Order he had once ruled, an army of death at his back.
When one finally thinks of the correct hypothesis, all reality aligns behind it, every snippet of history, every half-remembered conversation, every peculiar coincidence and manipulation. The results of an obscure plot: a galaxy wartorn and divided, its every faction fractured further into its own infighting fiefdoms, the infrastructure of civilisation verging on collapse after a century-and-a-half of ceaseless, unremitting conflict. The one who benefited was obvious.
And now, at last, they had unveiled themselves, the cruelty of their malice laid bare.
Krayt was right. Korriban was lost.
“There is no escape,” she finally spoke, voice cracking. Kain’s question had only unlocked the floodgates of despair, and against that black wave that was the theft of all hope, Volacius’ suggestion only seemed the height of folly. “No battle meditation will drive mindless dead to rout, nor break the power of their master. Look, over there, by the obelisk.” Her hand clutched at Catalyst’s arm, directing his attention to that distant figure of doom. “The black horse. Do you see who rides against us?”
She let go, laughing bitterly. “There is no escape,” she repeated. This temple was built by him. The Emperor. Krayt may have possessed knowledge of secrets Apollyon did not; she was aware he had once concealed a million cybernetic troopers in hidden catacombs beneath Korriban’s surface. But whatever Krayt thought he knew, the dread-king would know in fullest measure. “Do you think some escape tunnel, if it even exists, would not be accounted for, that…” She trailed off. She was already tracing through all the ways in which Dreadwar would have planned for such, all the cunning manners by which he could have turned the Temple’s subterranean depths against them, when the words of Catalyst's apprentice caught up to her.
“I did not order any apprentices to train in the tunnels,” she said. “Who told you this? What were you doing in the tunnels?”
Apollyon was not the only apprentice of Dreadwar who sensed his presence. Beside her on the battlements, Hesper burrowed into the Force, mind tracing along Krayt’s proposed escape route in pursuit of answers. Flashes of confused imagery darted past her mind’s eye in the darkness; a black robe ascending crooked stairs two at a time, no, wait, black robes plural, and they were descending, not ascending, fleeing through catacombs of stone, the dead screeching behind them. Two great slabs of cracked rock, closing upon them. Power wrestling with her own, ebon armour glinting in the black. And then, a light at the end of the tunnel; was it the silver of moonlight, or the faintest glow of reflected sun? In the muted colours of her vision, frayed around the edges in blurred distortion, it was impossible to see, but she could feel the relief radiating from the black robes, the resolve to fight another day.
Surrounded on all sides by death and darkness, the tunnel was the only thread through the eye of the needle. The Order’s path to victory.
Hesper! came a scream. And then she felt cold, and pain, and the black robes were retreating from her, racing towards the light while the ground tilted up towards her, and her vision terminated. Nothing could be seen beyond. The darkness was the darkness of Dreadwar’s hood, as his presence filled her mind’s eye with terrible familiarity, and wrenched her back to reality.
In the storage room below, Arach’s search for the necromancer led her to that same caliginous singularity. Most disturbingly, it was not the most powerful presence on Korriban; the wound in the Force behind it, weeping contagion, was vaster still, warm and corrupt, like a man dying of fever, where the necromancer’s presence was ice and malice. But there was no mistaking the subtle threads in the Force leading from the skeletal horde to their puppeteer, nor any mistaking the aura of her former master.
Nor were the apprentices of Dreadwar the only ones to feel a great disturbance in the Force. There was a rising note of discord in the Force, a whine of protest beyond the range of human hearing, and save for those otherwise distracted by battle, there was not a single Sith in the Temple who could not sense it. It emanated from far away, from beyond even the walking rupture in the world that was Dreadwar, a distant scream, echoing through the Force, rising, building. And it was Kain, Darth Kain, who felt it keenest–for the scream was mingled with the scream of his celestial mother.
A death-scream, wrenching at his chest, crying out in terror, before it fell suddenly silent. A great eye flashed in his mind, lidless, striated in shadow and flickering with malachite flame, and then Kain would feel himself falling, falling, away from that split-second flash of horror, into the dreary and abysmal desert of a galaxy where Abeloth was no more.
OOC: There is no need to check Noxia's attempt at Force Jump, Mirtis' attempt at Levitation, or Metus' attempt to latch on. However, Catalyst is unleashing a Force Push at any who attempt to leap onto the battlements (anticipating hostiles to attempt the same), and after confirming Catalyst's intent, this friendly fire is rolled against their DC; Catalyst rolls 7 + 20 + 10 for a total Attack Roll of 37, and this fails against Noxia but succeeds against Mirtis and Metus. Damage is 5 + 6 + 3 + 4 + Damage Modifier of 2 for a total of 20 Damage; Mirtis' HP is depleted from 26 to 6, while Metus' HP is depleted from 20 to 0. Due to the Sith Battlelord ritual, Noxia may choose to redistribute this damage among the bonded trio in the manner of her choosing; otherwise, Metus would be dead, and a final death post may be written. There is no need to check Catalyst's attempt at telekinetically retrieving a drink.
Kain's usage of Force Pull rolls a 14 + 21 + 10 against a DC of 10, and succeeds; the Effect Roll is 1 + 4 + 1 + Effect Modifier of 5, and achieves moderate success; Zyldek is pulled upwards, but lands flat on his face, aggravating his injuries but subtracting no HP. For Zyldek’s usage of Force Lightning, a 15 + 9 was rolled, surpassing the DC of a single zombie pursuing him, and inflicting 5 + 6 Damage, depleting its HP to 7. There was no need to roll for his preparation to use Makashi.
Cruor’s usage of Force Punch rolls 7 + 23 + 10 against a DC of 23, and succeeds; Damage is 2 + 2 + 1 + 4 + 3 + Damage Modifier of 5, depleting the dragon’s HP to 0. Draa'zekyl is dead. Cruor’s usage of Fold Space is straining the limits of what I arbitrate as possible even with 5 Skill Points in the power, so I will be rolling a d20 without modifiers against a DC of 15; the roll is 18, and succeeds. The Effect Roll is 4 + 5 + 3 + 4 + 5 + Effect Modifier of 5, and the maximum/intended effect is achieved.
For her usage of Force Sense, Arach rolls a natural 20, and automatically succeeds. I see no need for an Effect Roll, and Arach successfully senses the puppetmaster she seeks. Her attempted usage of Dark Side Tendrils is a Sith spell, so will need to be continued for a second continuous round to complete the attack and begin dice rolls.
Hesper’s usage of Farsight rolled a 17 + 21 + 10 against a DC of 10, and succeeded; the Effect Roll was 3 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 2 + Effect Modifier of 4, a moderate success. Due to her preparation of Darksight and usage of the word “presaging,” I interpreted her usage of Farsight in a mingled manner that would ordinarily be more accessible via Foresight. Hesper’s usage of Dark Side Healing rolled 9 + 21 + 10 against a DC of 10, and succeeded; the Effect Roll was 2 + 6 2 + 6 + Effect Modifier of 4, and 20 HP is added to Xarxes’ current HP, repleting it to its maximum of 35.
I-Ron’s usage of Telepathy rolls a 4 + 13 + 5; as Apollyon is currently distracted by despair and shock, I will be rolling this against her DC rather than the ordinary DC of 10 for friendly telepathic communication, and the attempt is not heard by Apollyon.
Xarxes’ attempt at Telekinesis rolls a 19 + 13 + 5, and succeeds; Damage against (arbitrated as) twelve zombies is 3 + 3 + 4 + 5 + Damage Modifier of 4, depleting twelve zombies’ HP from 30 to 11 (as if they are outside the shields, they must be different zombies, with full HP), and successfully smashing them together and into the sands.
Volacius' pyrokinetic attack on the zombie rolls a 9 + 16 + 5, and succeeds. Damage is 5 + 3 + 5 + 5 + Damage Modifier of 4 + Damage Bonus of 1, and the zombie's HP is depleted to 0, but it remains animate.
Krayt's usage of Force Speed does not need processing, as all players were permitted to reenter, so it may be considered automatically successful; there is no need to process the buff of Control Pain at this time. His usage of Force Healing rolls 19 + 19 + 10 against DC 10, and succeeds; Effect Roll is 1 + 4 + 3 + Effect Modifier of 1, and Krayt's HP is replenished to 33.
IC: Darth Talon Entrance hall, Sith Temple, Korriban
“Get out of the way!” Talon shoved aside the Shadow Guard as she lurched away from the computer console, tearing from her belt a baton of yorik coral similar in texture to the guards’ own armour. A beam of scorching white shot from the emitter at the end, terminating a meter in midair, excess heat instantly radiating away as an aura of bleeding crimson.
She had taken only a moment to broadcast the dire warning of battle to the Temple’s loudspeakers, before rejoining the fray with lightsaber ignited. The doors had sealed all but the screams of the damned, but two of the rotting revenants had already made it inside. Her lekku wrapped around her neck as she somersaulted through the air, spinning with the sinuous grace of a water dancer over the lowered head of the seated Thana, before landing in a careful crouch beside Xxys, between the ghouls and the blast doors.
It had taken Pravum a second to recall that the skeletons’ pole-arms doubled as projectile weapons, and that second had cost him; his dodge was just a hair too slow, and two of the whirling lanvarok discs sank into the left side of his abdomen, chewing through fibrous black threads and an inch of flesh. Against the preternatural sharpness of ancient Sith alchemy, even synthweave had its limits. The other discs scattered harmlessly against the wall with a metallic clatter, but whether it had been the pain blossoming from his side or the sight of Sparky falling, distraction had wrenched at Pravum’s focus, and his telekinetic rejoinder only caused the skeletons to skid backwards two feet.
Unfortunately for Talon, it was at that moment she had struck, and she cursed as her blade went wide, slash missing the left ghoul’s femur by an inch. "E chu ta!" Then there was a crackle and a flash, and Talon covered her eyes with her free hand as the skeletons momentarily turned into black silhouettes, surrounded by a brilliant cobalt halo of Xxys’ Force-summoned lightning. But the undead neither twitched nor trembled, and the skull of the right ghoul spun one hundred and eighty degrees to face the Sith assassins behind it; its legs ambled backward with the impossible speed of unnatural animation, as quickly as if it had been running forward.
Talon sidestepped, readying another strike while blinking back against the afterimage burnt onto her corneas, only for Xxys to pull a hell-spawned bellow from the depths of the Force, and she shrieked as she desperately attempted to cover her ears, taking another step back. Her left ear was mercifully sealed, but her lightsaber prevented her from truly plugging her right. “Stop!” she shouted, barely able to hear herself over the ringing in her ears. And then the ghoul was lunging, and Talon was leaping, and all blurred into the dance of battle.
She did not need to hear the music to execute its rhythm; to the veteran assassin of two Emperors, combat came as naturally as breathing.
Plasma and metal screeched, as lightsaber and lanvarok clashed, and Talon ducked and wove around jabs and parries. The skeleton was singed in a dozen places in as many seconds, yet nothing slowed its mechanical pace. “Draconis!” Talon shouted; she had recognised the Rattataki at once, and had no time to ask the pertinent questions, like where he had been for two years. “Can you pin it down?”
They needed to restrain it, to buy time to figure out how to put it down for good; a prolonged battle only endangered the scores of wounded limping towards the banquet hall. The ghoul was already coming perilously close to where Invadator ministered to Grievance, energy passing from her gloved palm to the bone-white cybernetic cranium beneath.
The other ghoul, meanwhile, pressed its relentless attack against Pravum. The lightsaber pike of a Shadow Guard flashed, shearing away a skeletal arm, but the ghoul did not make the slightest move to defend itself. Instead, holding the lanvarok in its left hand, it jabbed the pointed head of the halberd towards Pravum’s shoulder.
OOC: Xxys’ usage of Force Lightning rolls 15 + 19 + 10, and succeeds; Damage is 6 + 3 + 2 + 1 + Modifier of 2 for a total of 14 Damage, reducing the two zombies’ HP to 0. Xxy’s usage of Force Bellow rolls 13 + 19 + 10, and succeeds; there is no need to roll Damage as the zombies, despite being at 0 HP, remain animate. Pravum’s Force Wave targeting the skeletons rolled 2 + 18 + 5, and failed, and fortunately did not surpass the DC of any Sith specified to be in close proximity; I want to be careful about keeping powers properly differentiated per their descriptions in the OP, so will not be using the usage of Telekinesis (Move Object) as a Defense Roll in lieu of the proper defensive telekinetic power, Force Barrier.
The zombies’ attack on Pravum rolled a natural 20, and automatically succeeded. Damage Rolls are 1 and 6, and Pravum’s HP is depleted from 35 to 28.
As Grievance is inside and not currently engaged in active combat, there is no need to process his usage of defensive powers at this time. Draconis’ usage of the Force cannot be statistically processed at this time, but his attempt to use Force Speed to return to the Temple can be considered successful. Skyllan did not post this round, but can be considered to have made it safely inside, if desired. There is no need to process Thana’s buff at this time.
Invadator’s usage of Telepathy rolls 14 + 19 + 10 against a DC of 10, and the Effect Roll is 1 + 1 + 5 + 6 + Effect Modifier of -3, and her attempt to call to Kielor like a homing beacon barely succeeds, a weak signal in the Force. Invadator’s usage of Transfer Force rolls 17 + 19 + 10 against a DC of 10, and succeeds; the Effect Roll would ordinarily be 2 + 5 + 5 + 6 + Effect Modifier of 2, however as it was specified she was not attempting to transfer Force energy to the maximum of her ability, I will be treating it as a lesser usage equivalent to 3 Skill Points rather than 4, ergo 2 + 5 + 5 + Effect Modifier of 2 for a total of 14, and 7 HP is added to Grievance’s own while 7 HP is subtracted from Invadator’s. Grievance’s HP is replenished to 26, while Invadator’s is reduced to 28.
IC: Ermir Marcus Dungeons, Sith Temple, Korriban
“Very well.” Ermir smiled, extinguishing his lightsaber, raising his hands as if in peace. But then his free hand jerked forward, and with it a bolt of white-hot lightning, flaming violet, smashing into Xiannarr and flinging him to the floor with violent force. Muscles seized, skin smoldered, and Xiannarr’s nostrils were flooded with the acrid scent of his own flesh burning, as the dark side energy tore through him in convulsion after convulsion.
And then, after six shuddering seconds of scorching agony, the lightning abated, fading back into the Force whence it came. Ermir was breathing hard with the exertion, but he did not miss the opportunity to thumb the ignition of his lightsaber, carmine blade hissing back into existence as he stalked towards the fallen Xiannarr.
He could sense the apprentice in danger, of course. He was neither deaf to the Force nor deaf to the dire announcement, a voice he well-recognised as belonging to the toothsome Talon. But Xiannarr and Kielor had attacked him without provocation, and on Ermir’s list of priorities, aiding an acolyte unable to defend themselves against whichever training droids lurked in the tunnel below ranked, most generously, at third, after finding out what the kark was going on upstairs, and killing those who had dared assault him.
It was at that moment a woman’s voice, high, rasping and cruel, screeched through the dungeons. “Ur-kaa, Jidai! Jen’sassi, kri! Vexok savaka!” Keres had reached the top of the stairs behind Ermir—and the shadow slayers were hot on her tail, a pitted sword slashing out of the darkness below to crash against the stone of the dungeon floor!
OOC: Ermir Marcus’ attack rolls 17 + 15 + 5, and succeeds; Damage Rolls are 4 + 4 + 5, and Xiannarr’s HP is depleted to 15. There is no need to process Kielor's buff at this time.
IC: No one Hyperspace
The stars elongated into familiar streaks, and the TIE Reaper lurched forwards, into an encroaching whorl of churning cerulean. The cockpit flickered with reflected blue flame, and at once, Sedicious’ grasp of his illusions fled from him, his mind snapping back into his body as the hyperdrive put a thousand kilometers between him and his target in the barest fraction of a second.
It had taken until the very edge of the Horuset system to escape the grasping fingers of the interdiction field, torturously stretched minutes interspersed by seconds of knife-edge combat, but at last, the TIE Reaper had won free. So close to death’s door, now the gates of the heavens had opened to Māhnîu and Sedicious, hurtling them towards the Dromund system at a thousand thousand kilometers per second.
Nearby in cosmic terms, Dromund Kaas was nonetheless unfathomably distant in an absolute sense, and to traverse the Kamat Krote would make for a long journey indeed. A journey without entertainment, it would seem, for the spy bugs Al’Zhaelor had left at the temple’s entrance had been trampled underfoot by the onrushing horde of skeletal warriors, and conventional holographic communication was scarcely possible in hyperspace. But a single red light was blinking on the cockpit’s communication panel nonetheless; an audio-only message, received just prior to lightspeed launch, perhaps while distracted by the wraith and its drake.
OOC: As Cruor and the Reaper have departed the scene, and the dragon is dead, there is no need to process any of the attacks attempted in the prior round.
IC: PEKA Hangar, Sith Temple, Korriban
A startled electronic whine split the air, and a droid darted out from between the rhydonium canisters. It resembled a spider, only taller than it was wide, with a conical, gold-plated chassis atop four skittering legs, and a metal thorax suspended less than a foot off the floor. Those who had frequently interacted with the upper echelons of the Temple would recognise the droid as PEKA, an ancient Rakatan guardian droid recovered from an expedition into the Korribanian crypt of Soa, reprogrammed as the personal robotic companion of Apollyon.
For all Blodraald’s protests of a presence, Mavros’ deduction of a droid had proven true.
The top of PEKA’s chassis swivelled, its single yellow eye blinking, and a series of strange, electronic splutters emanated from its concealed vocoders. If I-Ron’s apprentice Welko had been present, perhaps the meaning of its warbled speech could be derived, but as it was, no one present spoke the ancient language of the Selkath.
Left outside the hangar by Solus, the younglings stirred, heads turning to one another, a few shushing each other, at the strange noise. The crone narrowed her eyes, but sensed no danger, and called out to Solus as loud as her croaking voice allowed. “May we enter, my lord?”
Roshkas, meanwhile, had found a dataport in the hangar wall to access the mainframe, but his success had terminated there; the mainframe was available to him, by and large, but the computer barred his every attempt to access the shield controls. The electron wall that now surrounded the entire temple could only be deactivated with Apollyon’s highest security codes—or from the shield generator at the top of the former Emperor’s tower, sprouting from the interior courtyard of the temple.
There was something else, however, that only a droid as perceptive as Roshkas could read within the data; signs of tampering. A strange, garbled signal was emanating from some other dataport or console, from beneath the temple itself.
OOC: Solus’ Precognition rolled a 7 + 18 + 10, Mavros’ Force Sense rolled a 5 + 15 + 5, and Reatith’s Force Sense rolled an 18 + 5, against DC 10. All three succeeded, and as all three were attempting to sense or presage events that have now occurred, I will be assuming full success without need for Effect Rolls; the hangar is clear of lifeforms and danger, and the vision Solus had seen was the sudden appearance of PEKA.
IC: No one Library, Sith Temple, Korriban
The library had rapidly emptied at the blaring sirens, and Jester was alone in the dusty expanse, surrounded on all sides by towering shelves of books and datapads. The yellowed data display cast an eerie glow on his pale Myke features, as it flickered to a new screen.
Supernatural Encounters: The Trial and Transformation of Arhul Hextrophon was written in faded Aurebesh letters across the top, seemingly a holographed copy of a physical book, but a swift scroll through the text would reveal the contents had been redacted. Pages and pages of blacked-out lines.
Whether due to oversight or lack of caring, the table of contents had not been redacted, however, or at least not all of it:
Prologue: The Life and Death of a Historian Part I: The Trial
Chapter 1: Division and Debate
Chapter 2: Prelude and Contention
Chapter 3: Dichotomy
Chapter 4: Fugitives in Space
Chapter 5: Secrets of the Keeper
Chapter 6: Mistress of Fusai
Chapter 7: The Hellhoop
Chapter 8: The Testimony of Cindel Towani
Part II: Journey Into Otherspace
Chapter 9: The Graveyard of Lost Ships
Chapter 10: Dialogue in Darkness
Chapter 11: Sigils in the Underworld
Chapter 12: Tales of the Watcher
Chapter 13: Keeper of the Secrets
Chapter 14: The Horror from Beyond
Chapter 15: A Droid’s Tale
Part III: Firstborn of the Celestials and the Architects of Madness
Chapter 16: Songs of the Eternal
Chapter 17: Progeny
Chapter 18: Shapes of Things to Come
Chapter 19: Their Cold Sovereignty
Chapter 20: The Human Diaspora and the Battle of the Zhell and Taung
Chapter 21: The Ruination of Alashan and the Cosmic Wars
Chapter 22: Dimension of Darkness
Chapter 23: Spawn of the Architects
Chapter 24: The Empyrean Wars
Chapter 25: The Sith Empire
Chapter 26: Wutzek and the War of Temporal Planes
Chapter 27: The Left-Handed God
Chapter 28: Horliss-Horliss Throws a Shape
Chapter 29: The Killiks and the Ones
Part IV: The Verdict
Chapter 34: The Testimony of Leia Organa Solo
Chapter 35: A Droid and His Maker Epilogue: Transformation
IC: Darth Nihl Returning to the reception room outside the throne room, Sith Temple, Korriban
“Mommy!” Primordius called out, breaking away from Sol and Voidwalker just as they headed for the doorway, and toddling over towards Volshe. Nihl’s every instinct was to support the Empress, to offer her aid as they gingerly returned to the reception hall, but he knew optics were everything to her, everything to the Sith, and quashed the impulse, instead readying himself to catch her if she fell. Primordius lacked all such awareness, and instantly went to hug his mother’s leg rather aggressively, endangering her careful balance.
Deianara had other concerns.
Her senses were more finely tuned than her brother’s, her native power in the Force greater; that imbalance had made itself clear to Volshe from the moment spoons had begun levitating above Deianara’s crib, only weeks after her birth. She reached up towards Sol’s hand, tugging on her sleeve.
“Sol, Sol,” she repeated, a wide smile breaking out on her face. “Daddy’s here! Daddy’s here!”
That icy singularity, pulling on the threads of reality, was as familiar to Volshe as it was to her daughter. A ragged wound torn in the fabric of the Living Force, devoid of all life and warmth, as ancient and uncaring as the stars. The graveyard of Nilrebmah had alighted upon Korriban, in all its malignant majesty.
Nihl paused, furrowing his brow, steadying himself with a hand. “No,” he whispered, eyes downturned to the ground. “No.” He had spent years at the foot of the Dread Throne, before that gangrenous void, and he could see that same expression of awful familiarity cross Maladi’s scarlet features. There was no mistaking the presence.
“Dreadwar,” Marasiah Fel hissed. Trailing behind Voidwalker, beside Gar Stazi, the Federation triumvir had regained her feet, and her knuckles whitened around the lightsaber in her hand, as if in memory of that terrible day she had fought the Emperor of the Sith.
Yet the void of Dreadwar was not all Volshe would sense. There was a pull more distant yet more painful, like hair being tugged from a scalp, or like part of herself was… What? The feeling was indecipherable, indescribable, like the loss of a sister who never was. A distant scream, echoing across time and space from a tower of darkest black, rising from the wastes of an unrecognisable world. The Force shuddered, and then the dreadful glimpse receded, filling with desolate cold.
Nearby, I-Ron’s personal communicator chimed. A return message from the Temple’s sensor array staff, text only. BOGEYS ARE VISIBLE ON ALL SENSORS, BUT NO BURST OF CRONAU RADIATION WAS DETECTED WHEN CONTACTS APPEARED.
OOC: There is no need to check I-Ron's usage of mechu deru at this time, as it is merely supplementing what is possible with conventional technology.
IC: Necro Solaar Departing the communications chamber, Fountain Palace, Hapes
Goledriel’s attempt at a yelp was strangled in her throat, as she fell to the gleaming marble floor with a painful smack, futilely reaching for the invisible hands digging into her windpipe just as Traya’s amphistaff wrapped around her ankle. Her veins were trying to escape from her neck, purple and ugly, and her face was rapidly turning a desperate red.
“Might I suggest simply killing her?” Necro offered, mildly. “It is imperative we suffer no distractions, for the fleet must be ready within hours.” The Stygian Caldera was far from the Hapes Consortium, and the Transitory Mists would slow deployment as it was; it was imperative they waste not a minute, or else Dromund Kaas would receive warning from Korriban before the Hapan fleet arrived. “My lord desires the fall of the Dromund system with all haste.”
Flailing on the floor in helpless instinct, rocking back and forth in vain to shake off her attacker, Goledriel strained out words from her sealed throat. “Please,” she gasped, “s-spare… Ack… My…” Whatever else she intended to say was lost in a gruesome gurgle. If Traya did not abate, the ducha would surely be dead within a minute.
In the throne room, meanwhile, a smattering of nobles turned a blind eye, as two Twi’lek sisters with unusual white skin sauntered towards the throne, blaster pistols strapped to their hips.
OOC: For her usage of Force Choke, Darth Traya rolls 12 + 19 + 10 against Goledriel’s DC of 10, and succeeds. Damage is 2 + 2 + Damage Modifier of 4, depleting Goledriel’s HP from 10 to 2. For her attack with an amphistaff, Darth Traya rolls 7 + 19 + 10, and succeeds; as Traya’s post states she is attempting to drag Goledriel to the balcony, rather than necessarily kill her, we will assume success in ensaring Goledriel, without depleting HP.
The occasional twitch still wracked Omegon’s hands, his muscles remembering what it was like to tower over the battlefield, ripping and tearing with impunity while blaster fire bounced ineffectively off his armored hide. The battle had been over for hours now, and night had fallen. Once Deleritas had completed his flanking maneuver, the battle with the Federation was over, even if they didn’t know it yet. Senec’s air support, the power of Rayge and Shadowsun, and the distraction of Omegon’s shape change were enough to route the enemy and leave them waving white flags of surrender.
Now, the captives marched in neat orderly lines, shackled and manacled together and escorted by Sith Troopers pressing blasters to their backs. There were men and women of all ages and species, and the one thing that united them was their hatred of the Sith. Omegon couldn’t help but sneer in disgust beneath his helmet. Were they truly so short sighted to believe that life would be better under their weak handed bumbling? No, far better that the Sith rule, implementing policy without need for the slogging monotony of the federation senate and corrupt politicians. Coruscant was thriving, and the Jedi were fighting progress simply out of their own blindness and refusal to see the truth. What a waste.
In any case, they would make good slaves on the mad cliffs of Nilrembah or the unending sandy wastes of Korriban, mining smokestone, durasteel, and rhydonium. He had no pity for them; after all, everyone had their role to serve within the empire, and those who denied its rule were swiftly shown reality. Checking his Datapad, Omegon sighed. He was supposed to be leaving in the morning, and he should check in with the crew of his cruiser soon. He knew that he was missing the feast on Korriban, but to put it bluntly, such an event was simply far too boring for his tastes. He would much rather send an emissary or representative than to go himself; after all, what were they doing there now? Probably nothing more than sitting around drinking wine and arguing about who should take the seat of the Emperor, while ignoring the conflicts and collapse going on all around them. This kind of pointless bureaucracy was exactly what he hated, and he found himself wishing Lord Dreadwar, the true Emperor, would just appear as if from the abyss and take his seat back. Then, everyone could get back to work and stop squabbling.
No, Korriban’s feast halls were not the place for him. He would rather be hunting federation loyalists or trawling ancient Sith worlds looking for abandoned lore and knowledge. Perhaps testing himself in dueling pits or leading a campaign against a rebellious planet, but until he was powerful enough to actually contend with the Lords of the Sith, he had no desire to sit around while they debated pointlessly. Far better to trek through the Stygian Caldera, forge new weapons and experiments on his cruiser, or explore worlds he had interest in from Zeffo to Belsavis.
He was pulled from his thoughts by a gasp, a collective inhalation of fear taken not just by the prisoners, but by Sith and Federation alike. Omegon felt it, then. A tingling cold, chilling him to his bones and triggering an ancient instinctual fear. FLEE NOW.
The urge was almost impossible to resist, and almost unconsciously Omegon took a step back. Turning, he looked up into the sky and saw what was causing the commotion: a massive ethereal hand was reaching across the sky, larger than what Omegon thought possible, covering the moon and grasping at air. It was no solid hand, but rather seemed to be incorporeal in nature. But its lack of solidity did not make it feel any less dangerous. FLEE NOW.
Omegon had spent many hours in the presence of Emperor Dreadwar, by far the most powerful Sith in the empire. His very presence was known to cause weeping, fear, and terror. Omegon had, over time, become used to this aura and even to a degree come to accept it as a challenge that strengthened himself. After all, the Emperor exuded not just fear, but incomprehensible power, and standing in the Emperor’s presence had made him feel relevant, strong, and important. It was intoxicatingly fear-inducing and empowering, and yet in comparison, Dreadwar’s presence felt like that of an ant compared to what came next. FLEE NOW.
Blood seeped from his nose, and he fell to his knees on the ground, unable to stand and unwilling to fall prone. His armored knee plates crushed rubble beneath him, and the uneven ground inflicted aches on his knees, and yet he felt none of it. All was terror. His mind was not with his body, but instead dwelt on memories of sadness and fear. New Dolla, watching his friends and family fight and die for status and wealth. Betrayal, seeing those he trusted turn on him for advancement. The cold satisfaction of revenge, overcoming adversity and surpassing his peers, and yet even then there was nothing but loneliness. FLEE NOW.
Eyes snapped open. Omegon turned and saw Pythonus rising from the ground beside him. Both had fallen simultaneously, and now both rose. A simple nod passed between them; they both knew what they must do: Flee now. Death incarnate had arrived upon Coruscant.
“RUN!” The words tore from his lips, and he leapt forward, sprinting at the empty MAAT. They would need a craft to either get themselves to the nearest starship or into orbit to hijack one of the thousands of civilian ships waiting there. His feet slammed into the ground in a crashing staccato, but all he could hear was his own heartbeat pumping in his ears. Pythonus was beside him, echoing Omegon’s movement like a reflection, feet and arms pumping in unison as they powered towards their means of escape. Leaping in, he glanced back at Senec, Deleritas, Shadowsun, and Rayge. “Make haste! Death has come upon us.” The last sentence was spoken at little more than a whisper and was not an attempt at communication but rather an utterance of fate. Did they truly have any chance at escaping the power that had arrived over Coruscant?
He shook his head, dispelling the cloud of despondence. He could not allow fear to slow his reactions; he needed to use it to speed him along. Slipping into a seat inside the troop hold, he clicked the harness around his broad chest plate. It was snug, but it would do the job. Watching, he saw Pythonus enter the Copilot seat and begin the takeoff sequence. Hopefully one of the others in their crew would be able to work with Pythonus to get the craft aloft. As the engines rattled and the ship began to rise on its turbolifts, Omegon’s mind raced with plans of escape and departure.
Pythonus
Desrini District, Coruscant
Pythonus’s mind would have been shattered to fragments if not for Omegon’s presence. The arrival of the presence in the sky put them both back through their most terrifying memories from New Dolla, and the fear and pain they had experienced there. But as Omegon stood, Pythonus felt a strength well up within him, and he stood as well, beside his leader. Escape was all he could think of, but he steeled his nerves. This may be a god, but he would defy it to the end before he would accept death.
As Omegon moved, sprinting towards the ship, Pythonus moved in sync. They needed to get to the MAAT, Pythonus knew, and get off this doomed planet. It was hard for him to comprehend that the capital of the Galaxy might be destroyed, but he pushed down his fear and confusion. Now was the time for action, and Pythonus knew he would likely be needed to help fly.
Leaping into the Pilot seat, Pythonus began the takeoff sequence, watching as those outside the ship began weeping, crying out in terror, and collapsing to the ground. What dread apocalypse was this, that left the population of a world screaming in agony? Again, Pythonus felt himself wondering at the massive import what was going on around him. This was a moment that would be written down in history books. Well, it would be if anyone survived to tell the tale, and if the Galaxy survived the coming of this ancient God.
The engines of the ship lit up and flared with energy, and Pythonus checked to make sure the doors were open for his allies. Hopefully Senec, Rayge, Deleritas, and Shadowsun would follow his commander’s direction and get in, and swiftly too. They had no time to waste, and if they didn’t get in immediately, he would be forced to leave without them.
As the engines whined, he opened a line of communication to Omegon’s Strike Class medium cruiser, the Aximand. “Aximand, this is Pythonus Primaris. First directive, get off planet immediately. There is some form of astral anomaly over the planet, presenting immediate danger to all of us. Set the Navicomputer to jump to Anaxes and tell the pilot droids to continue the takeoff sequence even if everyone onboard dies. Anyone not onboard now, leave them. Broadcast military emergency codes so no one tries to stop you and use the canons to shoot the docking clamps if they don’t immediately release. You need to be off planet as soon as is physically possible. We will attempt to rendezvous in orbit, but if either of us cannot make it, jump anyway. This is an Alpha level priority.”
Pythonus felt the engines of the MAAT rumble beneath him, and he flexed his fingers on the control sticks, preparing for flight. If the Aximand couldn’t get to orbit in time, they would commandeer a civilian vessel and meet it at Anaxes. Regardless, they had to leave. Now.
Senec watched fire engulf the cowards of the tattered resistance and smiled. The Imperial assault had been as sudden as it had been devastating. One moment, the resistance held its own against an entrenched battalion of Imperial troops; the next, Sith Knights ripped and tore their way through their front lines, leaving a trail of dismembered corpses and blood in their wake. A wave of speeder bikes slashed through the unguarded resistance flank, sending the whole fighting force into stark horror and confusion. And as Senec’s MAAT bellowed overhead, particle cannons sending turbolaser emplacements melting down to crush their helpless crews, the gas chambers igniting into gouts of incinerating fire, their foolish foes had no resolve left.
So they had turned their backs and ran, and with that, their fates were sealed. Perhaps a stronger commander might have succeeded in mustering a safe and tactical retreat. But there were no strong commanders here, and the rabble turned in terror and fled. The heavily armored Sith Knight who had directed Senec’s fire pushed forward with a determined wave of Imperial troops, a score of lasers flashing into the retreating backsides of the enemy and knocking them down in droves. Now, as Senec watched their pitiful foe scrabble to escape, hundreds of terrified minds fueling him with strength, he was filled with malicious glee.
He retrieved his cane from the gunnery pod’s floor and exited, striding to the cockpit and leaning over the pilot’s shoulder.
“Pilot!” he barked hoarsely, “Move over the retreating enemy force. It is time for me to enter the fray.”
The pilot looked back at him, and Senec could sense an aura of bemusement coming from him, his unusual species and age no doubt just as much a mystery to the naval sergeant as to the officer who had briefed him. Nevertheless, he wisely refrained from remarking on this, wordlessly gunning the ship low over the confused mass of resistance soldiers. Deftly, he drifted the gunship to the side and opened the bay doors, giving Senec a nod and a thumbs-up, “Good luck, sir.”
“There is no such- oh, never mind,” Senec snapped.
Hooking his cane on his robed arm, he stepped lightly out of the hovering gunship and plummeted to the ground, cushioning his fall with the Force and landing nimbly just behind a pair of resistance soldiers.
“Hello there,” he remarked brightly as he fiddled with the top of his cane.
The first soldier turned and regarded him with blank confusion, just in time for a red blade to jet out of the cane’s uncapped interior and plunge into his heart. Senec turned to the other with a sorrowful look, “Youths these days have no respect. Imagine not having the decency to return a friendly greeting from an old man!”
With a wave of panic, the soldier went for his blaster. Only he didn’t. His arms remained slack at his sides, his attempts to turn and run equally thwarted by the mysterious paralysis that had overcome him. Though he could not move his limbs, the fear that consumed him could be seen in his dilating pupils and tremoring body.
Senec stepped toward the man, regarding him with a kindly smile, as soldiers raced blindly past them, far too caught up in their own survival to pay any attention to the odd vignette unfolding in their midst, “Now then, son, I said hello to you. What do you say back?”
“He-hello?” the soldier quietly stammered, muscles continuing their futile attempts to move.
A loud crack! echoed through Senec’s new friend’s skeleton, as one arm seemed to be forced back unnaturally and unwillingly. The soldier let out a strangled scream as Senec held a hand to his ear, “Tut tut, that just won’t do. Speak up so an old man can hear you. How are you today, old chum?”
“I-I-I-I'm ok. Sir, please just-”
He broke off his sentence with another yowl of pain as his other arm snapped and Senec gave a curt shake of his head, “Don’t lie to me, boy! Of course you’re not ok. Both your arms are broken! Now what kind of conversation can you expect to have with people if you’re just going to lie to them, eh?”
The soldier remained silent in mute panic. Imperial forces could be seen charging headlong towards them with lusty war cries.
“Now, I’ll give you one last stab,” Senec said, deactivating his cane-saber pike and jabbing one end of the cane jauntily into the soldier’s ribs. “Since I’m a sporting conversationalist, I’ll let you start this time.”
A tense silence hung between them, broken only by Senec’s pal’s frantic hyperventilating and moans of pain. Senec slung an arm around his chum, and the soldier could feel cold metal against his neck, “That simply won’t do. Ask me a question, my dear friend.”
“What do you want?” the soldier asked shakily, “Money? I can give you everything I have if you’ll just let me go. Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg; I swear I’ll beg. Just-”
“I want a bloody good conversation, damn it.” Senec hissed. "But since I apparently can't have good . . . "
Blood began to ooze out of and into the soldier’s throat, causing him to gargle and gag desperately.
“I’ll just have to settle for bloody.”
He gave the soldier a small push, sending him sprawling face-up to the ground, arms limp, unable to right himself, nor stanch the flow of blood slowly suffocating him. Senec watched him coldly, a blood-soaked dagger with a wolf’s head in one hand and the pike portion of his cane in the other, “I suppose a ‘good evening’ would be wasted on you.”
He sighed and looked around as Imperial forces began to rush past him for the final clean-up. Wearily, he dug out his personal comm, “Evade, take a shuttle down to my location. I need a blasted cup of tea.”
------------------
As the last dregs of light vanished over the horizon, Senec drained his cup and set it aside on the metal hull underneath him. He cast a listless glance to the droid who sat beside him atop the MAAT, “Look at all those stars, Evade. Point out to me the star system that I should be in right now.”
The old EV-class droid paused a moment, his photoreceptors twinkling. Then he pointed, “There, Master.”
Senec glared at the droid. “Well, Tython is hidden in the Deep Core, so I’m looking forward to hearing what in blazes you’re pointing to.”
“The Yavin system, Master. By all rights, your rotting corpse ought to be there to this day.”
Senec balefully watched the hustle and bustle of Imperial soldiers and resistance captives below them, “My rotting corpse will remain here on Coruscant if this fragging gunship doesn’t take me back to Tython soon.”
“That’s true, Master,” the droid said sympathetically, patting Senec’s shoulder, “With as old as you are, you could keel over from old age any day now.”
The Caamasi swatted away the droid’s hand with annoyance. He stretched, feeling his back protest in agony as he cast a glance at the ruined cityscape around him, “The only consolation is that I’m told this is a historic moment for the Sith. Reportedly, this was one of the last major forces standing against the Empire on Coruscant. Coruscant is back in the hands of the Sith for the first time in more than a century.”
The droid turned to regard the toppled cloudcutters around them, “And what a prize we’ve won, eh, Master?”
Senec snorted, “I might be more comforted by my presence at such a historically significant moment if I weren’t already conducting historically significant research on Tyth-”
But his nagging complaints were driven from his mind and from his tongue when his wandering gaze turned back to the sky.
The stars were going out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It descended like the final curtain of some twisted play, the stars each taking a bow as they vanished from sight. Everything that had transpired in the galaxy, each government that rose and fell, every devastating war that sprawled lightyears across time and space, every single person that had ever lived, from immortal emperors to the most wretched Ugnaught slave: they were all just a charade. A quaint, fanciful, little drama of wars among the stars that played itself out on a small stage, each actor meekly entering and exiting on cue as it played out for the amusement of its audience. But now a curtain blacker than the darkest void began its descent on the galaxy, and there was no story left to tell, no actors to strut across the stage with vain ambitions of galactic domination. Every single being on that little stage called Coruscant stared up and came to a horrifying, mind-shattering conclusion.
Their story was over. It was time to shed their theater masks, their fake faces, and face their audience eye-to-eye. For, at long last, he had come to pay them a visit.
The air of Coruscant was thick with the screams of those who tore their faces away and looked on reality with their own eyes one last time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Senec fell.
The darkness seemed to draw closer as he fell, as if it pulled him upward into its embrace, a thousand tongues lashing at him, coiling around him, whispering to him as they viciously welted and tore his body.
“Fool,” one whispered to him in the voice of a former archeological student of his.
Senec fell farther.
“Failure,” came the voice of his master.
Senec fell faster and hit the foliaged floor with a sickening crack.
“Freak,” said the muttering archaeologists around him.
Panicked, he watched them slowly disperse, moving back to their tasks, as he lay dumbly on the ground, unable to move, unable to even call for help. His spine was shattered, his body permanently paralyzed. Slowly, the jungle crept up on him as his colleagues disappeared one by one, the dig concluded, the temple reclaimed by nature. Moss crept over him and ate into him, swarms of insects drained his blood, and the sun dried and cracked his skin until weeds began growing between the cracks. Then his skin began to swell and pop with violet blisters, flaking away and melting as it rotted into a detestable miasma. His cracked, hollow bones began to stick out, becoming roosts for the vultures that tore at his flesh, until nothing was left but hollow bones crawling with ants.
Then a voice whispered into his empty skull.
“Forgotten.”
And the voice was his own.
---------------------------------- “Master!”
Senec sat up with a jolt, shaking uncontrollably, hands reflexively clutching at his body to see if the rot was still there. His hands found soft fabric and grasped it tightly, on the verge of tearing it, as his wild eyes tore away from the sky and fastened on the concerned droid hovering over him.
“That was quite a fall, Master; are you alright?”
Senec stared at him blankly, his arms falling to the ground, his brain barely registering that they fell onto cracked duracrete, rather than the smooth metal hull where he had sat before-
Senec stared back up at the sky and almost fell back into it. His taloned fingers began to dig into the cracks of the pavement as he struggled to conquer the insanity and subdue it.
I am the master of my own mind. If I die, I will do it on my own terms. I will not be swallowed by the void. I will not be forgotten. I will live. I will-
“Run!”
The eerie silence that had filled the walkway exploded into chaos as the black-armored Knight sprinted towards Senec. In an instant, Senec felt power surge back into him as captors and captives alike ran in every direction, futilely fleeing the veil that draped all of Coruscant in eternal blackness. He leapt to his feet, swinging his shoulder out of the way as the Sith Knight charged past him and into the gunship, closely pursued by another armored Sith, who sprang into the pilot’s seat and began flipping switches.
He exchanged wordless glances with Evade, who gave a small nod and clanked his way into the cockpit, taking the copilot seat and beginning takeoff preparations. Senec called his cane to his hand from where it still sat atop the gunship and entered the troop hold. Seeing the Imperial pilot who had dropped him off curled up in one corner of the hold, quaking in terror, Senec grabbed the pilot by the collar and dragged him out of the ship, flinging him onto the duracrete, where he simply lay, whimpering. This time, though, Senec had no sarcastic quip as he turned and reentered the troop hold, nodding silently to the Knight.
For once in his life, Senec Tinople was lost for words.
The guns and screaming had ceased finally, now only the deafening silence left in the aftermath of war, smoke rising from the smoldering wreckage of the now devastated Republic front line. The smell of burning flesh and fresh blood still tor at Dorrian's nostrils as he watched the last remnants of the Republic being marched away toward whatever fate awaited them, caring little for their survival.
Twirling the now-defunct Padawn's lightsaber in his hand he allowed himself to smile briefly, feeling what little of his essence resided within the weapon still. The cold metal feeling slightly alien to him, knowing full well the touch of the Light Side of the Force. He hooked the saber to his belt as he stood quietly thinking to himself.
This is a fine trophy. Soon my chambers will overflow with them.
He was unsure if it was the bone-chilling cold that washed over him or the screams of thousands of individuals that began to violently rend their bodies asunder, perhaps it was the overbearing, oppressive dread that settled over Coruscant, whatever it washed nearly collapsed at the combined feeling of it all. Only one word permeated his mind and body;
Void
Slowly turning his head and glancing skyward, his whole body shaking and screaming at him to run or hide, what he saw he could hardly comprehend. He collapsed to his knees, his immense strength no match for the endlessness he saw above him. Terror seeped into every pore of his body, the endless ridicule, and mockery of his past, the fires that stole his father from him danced happily in the skies overhead. The screams of his mother at the thought of losing her child, his horrific torture on Nar Shadda, all of these horrors flooded every single particle of his body.
He sat for what seemed like a lifetime, tears streaming down his face, mouth agape at the overwhelming intensity of it all. In the back of his mind a voice, distant and weak, screamed at him to listen. Every time the voice spoke, it was a little louder, until he could finally hear the message.
No Sith dies on their knees. RUN! Regaining a moment of control of his body Dorrian reacted without thought, scrambling to his feet, clawing at the dirt and rubble beneath him to gain as much distance as possible from that thing. Seeing his fellow Sith having the same idea he headed with them in a mad rush toward the nearby MA-AT to leave this now cursed planet. HEaring the engines already priming he made a mad leap from where he was to the back of the transport, landing just inside the back ramp, nearly tumbling into Omegon and Pythonus. He grabbed onto a nearby set of straps and simply held on as the transport readied to leave, unable to form words through the massive lump in his throat.
IC: Darth Kain, the Beloved King of the Stars Battlements, Sith Temple, Korriban
It had been a wail of the purest agony. A cry of desperation, defying the very death that sought to rip her from this world. It had been in vain.
The blade sliced through her. It tugged and pulled as it went, dull and rusted. A sea of crimson poured forth as the dagger parted her flesh, warm and abundant. She had lost all ability to scream now, her lungs spent and her throat hoarse. The offworlder could do naught but stare, mouth agape in silent agony, as they tore him from her.
The child spilled from her split belly, covered in blood and a thin layer of vernix caseosa, attached still to his mother by the cord in which their lives were shared. She watched, tears rolling down her bloodstained cheeks, as that same blade severed his last connection to her forevermore. “Please,” she whispered. That was her only protest, her only possible action to take against the horror that lied before her. It felt like she had been cut in half and hung to dry, a slab of meat to be feasted on by the ravens. There was nothing she could do.
A zabrak cradled the stillborn babe, nestling it in his arms. Like the rest of this tribe, these madmen and women, the man was tattooed from horn to toe in peculiar markings. Each of them were as bare as the child, their bodies displayed in reverence for this cursed ritual. Either side of the zabrak was flanked by a row of his peers, though they knelt before him. He had been chosen. This was his destiny.
One word was chanted to the heavens as he approached the fire, as he approached the means of resurrection for their fallen leader. It was a word their chief had spoken often, even as he lay dying on his deathbed. He was old and wise, but most of all, revered. The clan knew that without him, there was no clan. And they had to plead with her, their goddess, to bring him back. An exchange would be made. The life of an unborn child for the life of the greatest man they had ever known. And so they called to her, chanting her name in unison.
“Ma’dri.”
Mother.
The zabrak stopped before the great pyre, the heat of the flames bathing him in oppressive warmth. He took one last look at the pitiful, wretched thing. Its eyes were closed. It did not move. Whatever hesitation he could have had was taken from him long ago. This was no longer a child. It was an offering. It was not meant to be born to the exile and the offworlder. It was meant to be hers. And she would have it.
He tossed it into the flames, the added tinder sending sparks and smoke into the cold night sky.
They had called for her, and she had arrived. They could not see her, nor hear her as she slithered past them, around them, enveloping them. Her eyes were the stars twinkling in the heavens above. Her arms were the breeze that swept past the napes of their necks, sending shivers down their spines.
This cult had demanded she give life to the dead man. But all she could feel was the death of the child. She cared not for the bleeding woman, who was in the final moments of her own life.
The stars were her eyes. The wind was her embrace. And the flames…
The flames were her womb.
Life poured from the mother to the child, fire filling him rather than burning him. A moment passed, perhaps two, before his first heartbeat began. Then another. And another. The Force radiated from him like a supernova, her power passing into him as if through an invisible umbilical cord. His heart grew stronger, fiercer. The flesh cracked and split like an egg, peeled away in magnificent horror as the child’s new, true form came to be.
His eyes opened. And they were as hers.
He smiled. And it was as hers.
He moved. And he was as hers.
The cultists shrieked in terror as the thing crawled from the flames, its pale, sickening flesh making contact with the dirt. Madness had taken them to a place none of their minds had dared venture. A place where this child, this Dark Messiah, was their god. And they… they were naught but filthy, vile creatures. They had to be burned away. The filth had sunken too deep. It was in their flesh, in their bones, in their souls. None of it could survive.
Manic, they tore into one another, their dirty, sharpened fingernails piercing begrimed, horrid flesh. Some sought to end it quickly, or so they believed, leaping into the great fire directly. Anything to appease him, anything to appease the Son of the Mother. The Beloved Prince of the Stars was born.
And she had been with him, every single day. Even when he did not know it.
She was there in that ship as it traveled to Kashyyyk, sitting across from him as she concealed his beauty. “It is for your survival,” she whispered, “so you may come back to me.”
She was there when he landed on the homeworld of the Wookiees, keeping the repugnant monstrosities of the Shadowlands at bay. “None shall come to harm you,” she cooed, “this I promise you.”
She was there when Hassan arrived years later, the only man with the heart capable of raising a child such as hers. “He will protect you,” she purred, “or he shall die.”
She was there, every night, as he stared into the stars, wondering when he would be freed from the clutches of his father’s killers. “You shall have your revenge,” she snarled, “and you will see me again.”
And she was there, on the station of the slimy Kubjo the Hutt, when he learned the truth. “Fulfill your destiny,” she said. “I will be watching, waiting.”
She was not here now.
It had been a wail of the purest agony. A cry of desperation, defying the very death that sought to rip her from this world. It had been in vain.
He had not noticed that Zyldek had survived, landing face-first all the while. He had not noticed the words Apollyon spoke. He had not even noticed the approach of their enemies, led by the wretched wraith he once considered a mentor. His eyes were blinded, darkness overtaking him. His ears were deafened, the silence of her absence overwhelming him. He was not in this world, or the next. He was in the void, a child desperately calling out for his mother. She did not answer.
Lord Kain had collapsed to the ground, falling onto his knees, hard. His chest heaved. His eyes poured. No matter how hard he tried, he could not catch his breath.
What he had felt before, months ago, when Insipid and his ilk had thrown her into a star… that had been a mere fraction of what he felt now. That had simply been an avatar, a single vessel of her power. But this? This was all of her. There was nothing left of the woman that had given him life, the woman that made him who he was today. And though Volshe remained, she was not that same woman. Those memories, those pieces of life that shaped the very course of Kain’s journey, just died. Permanently.
He was alone.
No, not alone.
Kain’s eyes desperately scanned for the source of the voice, a voice he remembered as vividly as hers. But Hassan was nowhere to be seen.
You are just a memory.
Your memory.
Kain whimpered, his breath escaping him yet again.
Go home to them, son.
It’s too late. She’s gone. We can’t--
Your mother’s gone. But what she fought for, what you fight for, that’s not gone.
His breaths grew even, slowing.
I don’t know if I have the strength to save them.
A wave of warmth washed over him, like the comforting embrace of a man who knew all too well what he was facing.
You do.
He returned to his feet, slowly, deliberately. The Beloved Prince… he had only been given one indicator of the monster responsible for this. And it was all he had needed.
The eye. The vile, viridian eye that stared at him every time he opened the dreaded holocron. A fiery gaze that exceeded even his own, one that preached death and destruction on a level beyond that of any mortal creature. A being he had heard of in legend, in encounters with cults and supernatural entities, in myth. One he thought not real until spoken of by the Emperor, confirming some level of legitimacy to the stories. But this, this was certainty. Undeniable proof. The Left Handed God was real.
And he killed Kain’s mother.
His gaze turned to a furious blaze, focusing on the dark gathering of demons and devils at their gates. Darth Dreadwar. Darth Cruor. Darth Venomis. All who served Typhojem would die.
Ermir smiled, the insincerity of it was lost on Xiannarr. The Overseer extinguished his saber, lifting a hand in peace. Xiannar fell out of his Soresu stance. ‘Had Ermir listened to reason, this would be a first,’ the Dread Master thought, ‘maybe we can get out of this… whatever it is.’
Suddenly, Ermir jerked his hand forward, spewing a bolt of white-hot lightning at Xiannarr. Currents surrounded his body, as the lightning threatened to consume him. Flung back with a grunt, Xiannar hit the ground hard. His lightsaber spun to a corner of the hallway.
“You son of a schutta, you festering piece of Dianoga dung. How dare you, you had one shot to survive this and you blew it, now die you pathetic Kreetle.” Xiannarr blew up at Ermir, as he gradually rose back to his feet. “You want to play with the force, Huttspawn … let’s play”
Hands now free and unencumbered shot forward. Xiannarr focused all of his hatred on Ermir. Left hand, mechanical and shiny, jutted forward seeking to hold and drain Ermir’s force reserves, the right hand, followed soon after, this one seeking to drain Ermir’s life. He would rue the day he didn’t take up the peace offering.
Powers used
Drain life -3 (right hand)
Drain force-3 (left hand)
Hours...minutes...the turn of time seemed to intensify and diminish just like the throbbing of his hearts, one moment a rapid rhythmic dance and the next a calm delayed skip. After what seemed like mere minutes, the barrage of weapon fire they once found themselves under had switched over to an onslaught of Sith and Stormtroopers. Now all that was left were piles of rubble scorched with blaster marks and corpses strewn about like litter on the streets. Rayge glared as the remaining survivors were being led by to what he could only assume was their inevitable demise. They would've been better off dying on the battlefield as a true warrior should but given their surrender he already knew no warriors were standing before him other than his Sith brethren.
Pacing around the general area where his comrades all loitered, Rayge began to be overcome with an immense chill something unusual given the current weather conditions. A feverish sweat followed close behind it coupled with extreme fatigue causing an overall hazy feeling. Nausea soon followed as Rayge found himself slumping to his knees the clatter of his armor cracking the ground beneath it, flashes of past transgressions enveloping his subconscious like a thick smog threatening to engulf everything. Memories of his parents, Eaoni and Undonn surged through his mind erupting a slurry of emotions; hate, anger, love, regret, grief, all ravaging him emotionally as he sat crumpled on the ground. Internal screams echoing throughout his entire being shattering him to his core. Recalling the blood on his hands and the sight of the life leaving their eyes while tears flooded his own as he was to blame for their end. The blood rapidly expanded climbing him like irritated insects until he found himself fully coated in the warm thick liquid. Just as he was about to blackout the blood became his armor a symbol of the sacrifices that were made for him to acquire it.
"RUN!"
Omegon's shout reverberated through him shattering the bloody armor snapping Rayge out of his comatose state. Shaking his head in an attempt to clear the haze from his thoughts Rayge bound to his feet rapidly glancing around at the horror that seemed to be erupting around him. Every living creature was noticeably stunned except for their cries of horror, stuck staring at the sky, pausing for a moment Rayge adverted his gaze upwards sharing in the horrific sight of a corporeal-like hand slowly engulfing all of Coruscant with plans on devouring the entire planet, then the galaxy. His eyes darted about some more locking onto his fellow Sith who were already scrambling towards a shuttle, "An excellent idea," he thought to himself as his voice seemed to have escaped him. Shaking the frozen comatose-like feeling Rayge dug deep down channeling his hatred and the fear of those around him to propel himself forward towards the ship. He quickly gained ground stretching each stride further gradually turning each step into a leap, vaulting over obstacles not looking back.
As he neared the MAAT he heard the engines roaring, preparing to take off with one final effort he pounced onto the vessel grabbing at anything solid, using his physical strength to hoist himself up into the cockpit where shuffled himself across the floor promptly putting his back against a wall for more stability and clutching anything loose to keep from falling out. His eyes once again darted about locking with his fellow Sith who all seemed to be mirroring the fear and urgency he was himself emanating.
IC: Darth Xirr The Battlements, Sith Temple, Korriban
Xirr paid almost no heed to the approach of the others after him. How could he when the scene unfolding on the freezing dunes outside the forcefield was so dire? More pods descended from the heavens, now falling from what looked to be a massive star destroyer larger than any Xirr had ever seen, except for one. Creatures far more formidable than skeletons gathered on the sands now, ready for a final assault, and one that would remove the New Sith Order from the galaxy if they were successful.
As Xirr’s hazel eyes glinted in the last light of Horuset he focused his vision further outside the shield following Apollyon’s gaze, then he saw him. Memories flashed before the Armored Lord’s vision of a time long past in this very temple. The monolithic obsidian doors to the throne room swung open to invite a much younger Xirr inside where the Dread Emperor resided.
Then he was back in the Tomb with the others, Coatlec as he was known then, Viscretus, Catalyst, Apollyon, and more. A piece of himself would always be left behind in that tomb, but now the implications were even more serious. Connections formed in Xirr’s mind that had never even been put to thought before this very moment. The deathly realization hit him just as it did the others. This was a battle unwinnable by brute force or by skill and tactic. The only way to win… was not to fight.
Darth Dreadwar galloped through the ranks of the undead on a steed black as night, his terrible faceless visage scanning the battlefield as the True Sith prepared their final assault. But there was something else, a terrible protest in the force, a void that surpassed the aura of even Dreadwar and the others. One that Darth Kain seemed to feel more keenly than anyone else.
Apollyon’s shaky announcement brought Xirr back to reality “There is no escape.” She repeated, Xirr found himself in agreement. Dreadwar had ruled over this very temple for longer than Xirr could remember, he knew every nook and cranny, every secret entrance and exit, he knew the docking protocols, the security codes, every weakness that the temple held no matter how small. The Necromancer knew it all.
The usually jovial Darth Xirr, said nothing as the realization set in. He had been in many situations that may have seemed unwinnable, he had been faced with insurmountable odds, but nothing like this. This time Xirr stared death itself in the face, or in this case lack thereof, and so did the rest of his order.
“If there is no escape” Xirr began, looking to the others “Then we fight. We fight to the last man. We show them that they will not have Korriban while we still draw breath,” he concluded, checking his armor and weapons as he readied himself for the battle that he believed inevitable,
“Unless anyone else has another idea?”
She felt him and her eyes snapped open. No! It can’t be! The power she was building up paused for the moment.
They said he was dead. I thought- she remembered when her master disappeared, and absently traced the thin scar on her arm. Her shock turned to guilt and regret. I should have investigated. I should have donesomething.
Arach pushed her feelings down. I need to see! She stood and rushed from the room, stumbling slightly due to her haste and her legs being semi- asleep. Arach climbed the battlements just in time for her to hear Apollyon’s defeated, “There is no escape.”
She saw the entire battlefield. A chill ran down the assassin’s spine as the full magnitude of what exactly they were dealing with became clear. And, yes, she saw her former master. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she felt for the old master/ apprentice bond, then hesitated.
Surely Apollyon would have already tried to make contact. Arach’s gaze slipped to the other woman, thoughtfully. Judging by her disheartened fellow apprentice’s disposition, Apollyon had gotten nowhere.
Arach turned her gaze back toward the battlefield. She needed to know for herself. She opened herself up to her former master’s presence. She felt his freezing malice. Her golden eyes narrowed. Something felt… different. Was this how he truly was and had been, though she hadn’t noticed? Or has time dimmed her memory? Master…? She asked, quietly, with confusion and sadness.
The power she still retained, strained against her control, reminding her that it was still there. Arach brought her attention back to it. She knew she had to release it, or disperse it. She closed her eyes. Her decision was made.
The energy within her resumed growing as she focused on the legions of undead outside of the shield.
Arach distantly heard Apollyon saying that she hadn’t sent apprentices to the tunnels. The assassin diverted just enough attention to say, “The tunnels probably need to be watched. They can be used for escape, or as a way in.” Then, returned her attention to the building energy.
Arach opened her eyes and chose her target. Maybe she could sow a little chaos and confusion of her own.
When the energy was ready, she aimed a small distance away from Dreadwar and released.
The flash of the Force lightning silhouetted the ghouls in a dazzling azure aurora. The rotting creatures danced in the crackling lightning and smoke rose from their now charred bones, but they did not succumb to the searing energy bolts. The thunderous blast of the Dark Lords voice rang the ears of those nearest him as he sent the energy coursing into the zombie...to what seemed, no effect.
The head of the closest fiend spun on the spine like a child's toy top, stopping in what would appear the reverse postion. A wisp of smoke drifted across its rancid visage and Xxys could feel its gaze fall on him. With a howl of its own, the festering pile of rotting flesh lunged at its attacker, it's body still facing in the opposite direction as its glowing eyed head.
Xxys took a half step back and noted that a red skinned Twi-lek had alighted next to his position and had caught the side blast of his Force imbued bellow.
'STOP!' she shouted
"Kriff! They usually fall down after I do that!"
Xxys expounded as his breath returned from his bellow.
'Draconis, can you pin it down?' she cried as she sprung forward to engage with the ghoul, her saber flashing against the zombies lanvarok stalling its advance.
Xxys used this opportunity to send a barrage of Shadowstrikes (3) aimed at the head and torso of the ghoul like a bareknuckle fighter in an attempt to pummel it against the dura-steel door and destroy it, or at the very least unbalance it enough so his, or the Twi-leks blade, could put the creature down for good.
Xxys followed a half step behind the Twi-leks advance as he sent the invisible Force strikes at the lurching zombie, and moving to the opposite side of the ghoul, Xxys slashed with his saber in a compact righhanded, left to right, backhand cross cut, ment to keep his blade traveling away from the Twi-lek and cleave the ghoul across the beam of its head through the baleful glowing eye sockets.
IC: The Sedriss, Dark Lord of Death Location: Throne Room, Sith Temple, Korriban
So many things happening. Everything was happening all around them. Yet eerily, nothing was happening in the throne room now. Now, in this instance. Nihl and Volshe had returned. It merely took her a few moments to regain her composure. Marasiah had also regained her equilibrium. She was clearly uncomfortable amongst the Sith.
When his sister and her mother re-entered the throne room a few moments earlier, they were clearly shaken. But whatever shook them then could not compare to what came next. The child confirmed it. The daughter of the Emperor.
He was here. This enraged the Sedriss, and the glowing Force energy from the cracks of his skin transformed from a pale blue to an ever darkening orange. His eyes also morphed into their own scarlet hue. The feeling of betrayal by one he held in such high regard. Revered. Worshipped, even. It was unlike any other rage he'd had before, and with years of Eternal Hatred now under his belt, rage was no stranger to the Dark Lord.
//The dead have taken command of Korriban. And their Lord rides commanding them, yet dooming us. If God has returned in His glory, yet returns to kill His subjects, what kind of God is He?//
Spoken words were hard to come by to convey the feelings the Shadow Hand had. The very title of Shadow Hand now held no meaning, as he was Emperor Dreadwar’s Shadow Hand. Yet Emperor Dreadwar led the charge of whatever damning force was now invading Korriban.
In a single moment of clarity, everything now made sense to the Sedriss. In the Tomb years back, he believed there was a connection between Dreadwar and Ku'ar Danar, the Dan'ari. If he was right, then his inkling that this is a retaking was also confirmed.
//If Dreadwar is the Dan'ari as I suspected, then he leads the assault of the ancient Sith Empire. To them, this world does not belong to us. But I will defend it. We will defend it. For we are the New Sith Order, forged and reforged.//
"Deianara is right, Empress," the Shadow Hand stated. The void of the Emperor was recognizable to anyone who had come near Him. "If Dreadwar is returned, Sith will follow him, even if it means their own doom. My Apprentice may be one."
When the Sedriss' words left his mouth, he turned to face the YVH chassis of his Shard Apprentice. I-Ron's religious fervor towards the Emperor was great, as was the Sedriss' own, but if God could betray His followers, He certainly did not deserve to be followed. Perhaps his old Apprentice I-Ron would follow his Master in lieu of the God-Emperor he so revered. "I-Ron, God has betrayed us. He leads the army of the dead to besiege Korriban and kill us all. He is no longer our Emperor. He is no longer our God. Follow me, your Master, and my family, and we will destroy him together."
His hands remained firmly grasping his weapons, still ready to strike at any moment, hoping the dead come for the throne. But they hadn't. Yet. His next charge was his newest Apprentice, the Arkanian Nacros Telcontare. "Nacros, my strong Apprentice, stand by me in our darkest hour. Our bond will carry us through."
Finally, his gaze diverted to Cordé, Darth Kaos, his sister. "Sister," he intoned. His voice was ominous, but he still held hope, even among a great deal of newfound anger towards Dreadwar. "Stay on your guard. Dreadwar is powerful. And he can appear as anything and everything he wishes. But the bond our family shares can overthrow him. If he comes to kill and destroy us, let me be the Lord of his Death."
Mini-Combo with Sol Kira and Lord Nathemus, GM approved “autohit” for Lord Nihl.
IC: Empress Volshe The Throne Room, The Sith Temple
The mercurial night of the dark side, of damnation and dread, had cast over the Throne room as she entered it. But she did not fear it - nor did it surprise her. There were many things she feared, in that moment. The claws of damnation that reached through the Force to her, that sought to claim her demise, spawned from the one called Venomis. The army of undead ten thousand strong that unsettled her as she felt it’s sea of cold void battering at the Temple’s doors.
Then, there was fracturing of something far beyond, something her mind could not yet comprehend. It was as if her breath had been stolen from her, wrenched from her chest.
It was not fear that she felt as the night-black aura of Dreadwar percolated around them. It was not terror that swept her into its arms.
It was rage.
Yet it was no inferno. It was a cold rage, magma simmering in the depths of a planet’s crust. There had been months to temper her ire, to turn it to something more sinister.
The sweet, soft voice of her youngest daughter, excited, only spurred the rage deeper, sending its molten splinters into her sinew, her bone. It was innocent, the child had no collection nor idea of what was to come. It was almost heart-breaking...if she had not prepared for the eventual inevitability.
“Stay with the Knights,” she said, to the twins both, quietly. Nathemus was correct, in everything he said to Cordé and the others. “We have to stay inside. It is not safe outside.”
Her eyes levelled with Lord Nihl’s, the gold dull until it caught the spark of a brazier’s light. It was a glance that whispered a thousand words, every last one spoken in the hushed susurration of countless nights. It was a quiet recalling of every last moment of torment and fear she had witnessed, of the touches of dark devotion, aimed to soothe her wounded soul. Three decades, captured all in that brief dance of firelight upon the surface of her aurodium eyes.
Trust. A trust that had perhaps once been shaken, but had now grown into something more akin to the fall of night, or rise of day; eternal, inevitable.
She turned to the others, the crystalline gown sighing as she strode to the dais upon which the massive throne sat. There was temptation there, longing, as she stood before them, gown trickling down the stairs behind her. Her demise flashed before her eyes, coldness leaching into her bones, as if the river of her gown had become glittering frost, lacing up her spine and wrapping her in what felt as the darkest winter nights of Serenno.
She felt bare.
She did not underestimate her own power, not in any sense. But she imagined this was how Darth Sidious or Tenebrae had felt, when facing the depths of Chaos itself.
Her foot found the first step, cold yet seeping into her pale skin. The second followed. The third, then, a moment after.
She ascended, the firelight bathing her in glittering inferno of crimson and gold, a Phoenix rising from the cimmerian darkness that pooled at the end of the steps. At its peak, at the very zenith that she had sought for decades, she turned.
Her mind reached out in that moment, slowly unfurling into tendrils of obsidian silk. Each thread wrapped about every last Sith she knew, every servant and Lord, every acolyte and overseer. It sought purchase in every last mind of those who surrounded her, from the battlements to the depths of the dungeons below.
“Dreadwar is here, but that is not the Dreadwar we know,” she said, her voice echoing through the seemingly unending darkness, towards the grotesques that reached for her from the blackest shadow. “The Emperor died in the damnation that was Atale. He ceases to be.”
Her lips pressed briefly into a line, her next words forming from the tempest that was her mind. She had thought for years, now, on how she would put an end to him. Countless hours, weeks, months, dedicated to how she would destroy the Emperor of the Sith. Yet she had not thought on how she would speak such terrible truth to those who worshipped him.
“This is not your Emperor. This is a twisted soul who has been corrupted by the very evil beyond these doors, who desires your damnation - not salvation - at his hand.”
“Perhaps we can save him, but I do not know. We must save ourselves, first, for as I have feared...he has become no more than a soldier to evil itself,” she said, quietly, her hands falling to her rounded abdomen.
The scarlet silks shuddered above her, as if her very words had offended them. Her carved throat caught her breath as she turned and settled herself upon the throne. Her fingertips curled about the frigid armrests, jet black talons taking hold of her prize. It perhaps would be short lived, but it did not matter now. Her gaze fell upon those before her. “I am your Empress. I will defend you. To arms. We shall fight, so that we may leave ...and live to fight another day.”
Those last words were but a whisper through the Force. Perhaps they would even be unheard. Perhaps all she had said was unheard. It mattered not, to her. If the words had been spoken to only herself, it served as silent reassurance, a solidification of her resolve.
“Hail, Majesty,” came the call, the Knights bringing a fist to their chest, heads bowed in reverence.
“One thing remains, before we face our likely annihilation,” she said, hand outstretching palm down in a summons. There were gods on the battlefield, and Chaos itself writhed. Their demise seemed set, as if every moment might have been their last, as if it were only seconds before their very existence was the last moments of a dying star. “Lord Nihl, my dear.”
Her summons moved to the Princess Sol Kira, next, as the Nagai moved with warrior’s grace and ascended the steps. Her palm was now up, fingers floated in the darkness, curled in gesture. She rose, her free hand reaching and taking the Nagai’s hand the moment he had mounted the steps. He was a whisper of dusk, to her sigh of dawn. “Kira.”
There was a breath, a moment of silence as Korriban warred with chaos beyond the cavernous room.
“Marry us.”
“I don’t know if I can do that?“ She said, looking to the Empress. The demon’s laugh echoed through her head, pointing even more attention to the thought she already had: She had never been to a wedding. She walked to them, Deianara following and standing beside her brother. She ascended the steps with them, taking each one carefully lest she experience the same fate as Loharr.
She stood before them now, looking between the Empress and Lord Nihl. “If we make it off this planet, we’ll do something more formal than this.” She said, trying to lighten the mood. She tried to think about what she had heard in stories before, of the things Korrian would tell her as bedtime stories. But they were just that, stories. What did she know of love?
She thought of Trev. Of the few moments of love she had known. Was he still alive? Was he out there somewhere, would he still be smuggling spice? But one thought rang true through her mind, if he were here she would want the same.
“To be tied with someone in marriage, no matter where the vows of marriage may occur, is to to be tied with someone in love. And I have yet to know a truer love than that you both hold between yourselves. With this bond, you will be together now and for the remainder of your days.”
“Empress Volshe, do you wish to take this man as your husband?”
Nihl stood entirely still for a moment, not even breath rising in his chest, his eyes searching the Empress’, as if she were a beast in the far horizons of Korriban. Questioning. They melted into understanding in a single blink, quickly enough the moment could have been missed.
“I do,” she said. Her breath escaped with the words, her eyes not leaving his for a moment. It was not what she imagined, but when the entire galaxy was on the brink of demise, it was enough.
“Lord Nihl, do you wish to take this woman as your wife?”
“I do,” he responded, near instantly, though the words were measured, ever-placid. His other hand twined with hers as his intonation faded in the cavernous room. There was more than a glimmer in his gaze, now. Her own eyes were ablaze, as she was, both of them steeped in the light of the braziers that surrounded them.
“Then by the power invested in me by… well, you,” She paused, smiling amusedly at the Empress, “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss.” She said, turning and walking down the steps carefully. Once she reached the bottom, she looked at the two and smiled.
Their kiss was chaste, but the Force flared around them as it lingered, their auras as the rays of dawn caressed the icy chill of a bleak winter morning. It was a moment of tense passion, decades of expectation culminating in a breathless moment at the brink of eternity.
The Empress pulled away first, but her hand found purchase on the Nagai Lord’s bicep, where the line of dark, tribal ink met the white of his skin.
“Domina,” he whispered, a breath as light as limn of frost. There was no smile on his lips, not as there was on hers, but she could feel the encompassing warmth as his hand moved to rest upon the small of her back.
Her head turned, her hand falling, her voice ringing clear to all who had witnessed the union.
“Hail to the Emperor. Long may he reign.”
She smiled to him, so very coyly, as the declaration hung in the air.
Emperor of the Sith. Of the Galaxy.
An aspiration he had held for decades, realized in a moment most unexpected. Perhaps they would die, in minutes, hours, or weeks. But the warlord who had claimed swathes of Nagi, who had brought the Jedi to their knees in the massacre of Ossus, who had reigned with her, who had conquered at her side, was no longer simply a dark lord.
He was Emperor.
He brought her hand to his lips, pressing them to the soft, pale skin. She withdrew as he did, returning to her place in the throne.
Her mind had withdrawn from those who she had hoped had heard her claim, but had not withdrawn in its entirety. Her essence remained there, seeking to remain present in the minds of both the weakest and most hostile. As if it were a second breath, her sweetly venomous aura was unfurling, she was reaching out beyond those of the Temple, to the sprawl of the Valley and the desolate sands beyond, even further - to the stratosphere, should there be weaknesses in the defences of the True Sith forces. Tendrils of darkness touched the minds of not only those insignificant within the Temple - servants, and their ilk, not those she knew and respected - but, all those insignificant beasts that roamed the Valley beyond. Her eyelids fluttered as she focused upon her intent, the whites visible in a briefest glance as they shut.
“Lord Nihl. If we should need to abandon the throne, and we likely shall, we will go to the lowest levels so that we may attempt an escape undetected. If I am otherwise occupied, you will bring me there. The rest of you will come, and you will protect the Empress Fel...the Admiral...and my heirs,” she whispered, her hand rising as the Force about her roiled with her arcane magic. “Lord Nathemus…”
Her sentence did not end with words. Instead, it was punctuated in the silence of her consciousness lapping at his mind. It was a warm coaxing, no malevolence within it. It was a mother’s hand, reaching for him, beckoning him to hear her.
The Sedriss felt a subtle nudging toward his mind when the Empress spoke his name. Her message was not one that could be conveyed with words, but it would be shown. He therefore kept his mind open to her message, whatever it may be, hoping there was no cruel intent behind it.
Her mind was awash with the magic she was preparing to summon. Threads of pale gossamer, pulled from the fabric of chaos, sewn into reality though they did not belong. Life, from death, a twisted manipulation of the Force’s Will. They would flash before his eyes, would he accept her wordless communication.
The dead will rise again as ghouls such as these, by my own hand, and Shiraya willing - you will double their number with illusion...
Her head fell back, lithe fingers curling about the armrests as she wove her intent into the depths of Chaos. She gasped as she did, the Force plunging her into its depths, drowning her in its twisted malevolence. There was a gentle whisper that escaped her and flooded past the ethereal fingers that reached into the minds of both beast and man alike, servants and shyrack, trooper and Tuk’ata, calling them to her will as if they were children summoned to her side. She wove carefully about the minds of those she knew, trusted, and released them from the siren’s call that echoed through the Force.
As once the souls of Ziost fell prey to the vile claws of Vitiate, so too would the souls of Korriban.
She would focus on merely half of those whose minds she had touched, who had fallen prey to her insidious temptation, who had answered the saccharine call of divinity and stumbled into the depths of their conscious mind to welcome her...
She would will them to die.
Her eyes flickered, lips moving in silent incantation of her will.
It would be, ideally, only moments before her order was followed, and their minds had ceased to be, their souls slipping into Chaos.
Yet their souls would not know rest. They would rise again, this time as ethereal thralls of what they once were. She could see them, in the depths of her own mind - hundreds of malevolent phantasms spun from the essence of chaos, eyes sparked with crimson as they lurched from the sands of Korriban and lumbered through the Halls of the Temple, seeking the enemies they had faced.
Her dynasty was wrought, in fire and brimstone, iron and blood. They had challenged an enemy they believed was weak.
She would not see the Order fall. The Sith would stand against them, the true Sith, not merely those in name.
~~
POWERS USED:
Mind Trick — 5 Beast Trick — 3 (+ 1 from Shard of Conkesta) Reanimate Sith Shadow-Ghouls - 5 (preparing)
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