IC: Darth Traya
Location: Balcony of the Palace
The lack of enthusiastic response regarding Traya’s utter betrayal of the ritualistic Hapan matriarchy came as little shock. For months she’d contemplated this reversal, and the ramifications it would entail. She’d felt a vague stirring that for ill or prosperity; she would be the final Chume of Hapes. Whether Hapes was destroyed in the terrors of war, or upended by Traya’s own actions she could not know in her visions.
If she went into the annals of history as the last, then she would do so as her true self. A traitor that spat in the face of tradition, that defied insular apathy.
What did come as a rippling shock was the utter failure of her attempt to drain the life from the Ducha.
No….No….It’s Nihilus…..he’s devouring the planet…..devouring the Force…
She took a breath to steady herself.
No….no, he can’t be here. Not yet.
She knew from extensive study of what happened when a planet was devoured by Hunger. Every living being, Force-sensitive or not, would be in tremendous agony. Pleading for mercy. She might have even heard a single word, or perhaps a similar scream. The Force would be useless in the midst of such an attack, every attempt all at defense crushed as the life energy drained from every single organism. Traya studied the records because she coveted the power. It was the ultimate betrayal upon the fabric of the Force, to render a planet stripped of all life to satiate the clawing hunger within her. Hapes would have been shrieking in its death throes if Nihilus were here, not squabbling in political games. She knew because when she mired in the petty underhanded games of Hapan politics , bloodthirsty urges to consume the planet filled her dreams. If she possessed the power Hapes would be as empty as Katarr after the Lord of Hunger consumed it. Sometimes she wondered if it was a biological memory, passed from Miraluka to Miraluka, of the unseen and unheard death that befell them. But the urge to consume had to have been born from the spirit's vile corruption upon her.
Alas, such a ruthless punishment was below her level of power. It was merely a spice dream. As distant as the possibility of birthing her child to term.
But there were still other possibilities, to twist the population to her whims.
“You will be the ruin of Hapes!” the mewling quim of a Ducha spat with ire. “Kill me Lorell lover, kill me!”
As soon as she pleaded Traya found her interest in the prospect waning.
“Lorell Lover? You throw the truth in my face as if it is supposed to be an insult.” Traya offered a kind smile. She did not deny her prophetic ruin of Hapes, nor make any further obvious attempt on Goledriel’s life, rather she urged her amphistaff’s tail to coil around her waist to free her hands. The steely scales slid down a bit on the ducha’s ankle, but the head promptly reared up and gapped open to reveal a pale, fang rimmed maw, and spat a spray of venom aimed directly at the Hapan's eyes.
Traya’s attention turned fully to the incensed crowd. She spread her hands wide as if embracing each rattled soul, then wove her hands back toward her chest as is to crush them for their lack of vision.
“Hate me. Despise me. Rail of injustice if you will. I bring you all the bitter truth. Mark my words, soon you will hear of the threat we face. Parcets, light-years, and the Transitory mists mean nothing to it! Women, men, and children mean nothing to it. I granted the gift of rare sorceries to the courts, now I grant all of you my guidance in overcoming an unseen threat in our most desperate hour! Perhaps your eyes and perceptions are currently blind to the threat, but I shall not allow Hapes to remain defenseless!”
As she spoke she focused her mind on the irate masses, to the indignation of the women, and the men aimless after being granted their liberation. The men were rapists, pillagers, assassins, slavers, and kidnappers. All crimes the women also committed in their lust for power. Perhaps Aurelia possessed the wisdom of an outsider… the men and women were the same to her. As she focused on as many individuals as she could, she envisioned quelling their minds.
She sensed her illusion within the throne room was being interacted with, yet it was serving its purpose. It remained there as a slight distraction, she didn’t have the energy to lend it full theatrical performance.
Her bejeweled hands began to move in a weaving, hypnotic pattern.
Location: Throne Room
“I think not. Nothing personal, Queenie '' sneered one of the Twi Lek’s before she fired something with the aura of a blaster.
Aurelia rose from the throne, and activated her preferred grey lightsaber, and attempted to swing the plasma blade to defend herself. Yet the assassin's trained hand proved faster, and she crumbled back against the coveted throne with blood blossoming against the white silk of her left shoulder. Her gizka squealed in alarm and went skittering to the side of the throne
“Oh, you little shutta…” she gasped in agony.
“How much do the services of assassins sent by my court run these days? Perhaps we can bargain?”
As she spoke a malignant golden tendril manifested from the illusions limp left hand, yet there was no power within this image unless the spectators chose to accept it as the truth.
Powers Used
Force Illusion: 3 (sustained)
Qazoi Kyantuska: 4 (preparing)
IC: Dhe Ta’ Dlav
Location: Facing the balcony
Dhe regained a sense of calm, even amidst the growing disapproval of the crowd. He’d tried to persuade Aurelia Chume that showing mercy to the males would bring nothing but despair, and conflict, yet she clung fervently to the teaching of Darth Traya the First. She proclaimed Hapes as stagnating and apathetic.
In public, when Dhe was not hiding his gender, Aurelia treated him as one did all Hapan males. But in privacy, she showed him affection, and equality he’d never before beheld in a woman. Perhaps it was her training among the Sith that granted her the perspective that a man could be as powerful as a woman. That a man possessed untapped potential.
He believed he knew his place in all this….to rally the men. Men he’d raided with, drank with, and brutally dismembered young slave girls with, to distract them from the fact he couldn’t achieve arousal enough to violate the spoils of raiding. Historically speaking he might be the King, yet if there was a Hapan name for such a thing, he did not know it.
For now, the title he might possess with this changing of the tides was of little interest. His duty was to his Queen, his wife, and the mother of his child. His duty now would be to see the Queen Mother safely off Hapes.
He would have been more confident if he had time to operate in the shadows, his body concealed by shadows, and essence cloaked by the Force, but such a luxury did not always present itself. Rather he needed to rely on swiftness and the elegant subtlety of poisoned needles. From the jeweled waistline of his dress, he chose a slender metal needle coated with hemotoxic venom milked from serpents of Dathomir.
“You will be the ruin of Hapes!” the ducha spat at the Queen Mother as the Force appeared to betray her. Given the vision, the unholy disturbance in the Force they both felt, it was little wonder the Force did not obey. “Kill me Lorell lover! Kill me.”
Aurelia’s hideous amphistaff sprayed venom, an attack that had the potential to grant the duchas wish slowly, and also granted the distraction he desired. Melding himself into the Force, he flicked his hand in a blurred throw that he intended to be imperceptible to Hapan eyes. The quill-like metal needle was aimed to pierce the ducha’s heart. Death via the Lorell lover sounded quite poetic to him.
Aurelia addressed the crowd to little avail, but Dhe suspected merely word was not her intention. He noted the swaying of her hands, a movement he could not forget. That same swaying of her hands had concluded his attempt on her life and condemned him to serve her as a slave, at least at first. An insidious spell of the mind…she must be given every advantage in her attempt.
Still augmenting his movements with the Force, Dhe pulled free the Gun of Command bequeathed to him by the Queen Mother and rapidly fired an electromagnetic pulsation at each of the nobles that surrounded her. He took careful aim to spare Aurelia and the pale stranger beside him. Based on Aurelia’s actions it appeared that one supported her cause in some way.
Dhe briefly immersed himself in fantasies of executing the noblewomen the way Lorell raiders had been dealt with for eons, forced into suicide via the Gun of Command. If that vengeance was within the grasp of the males, he would personally help Aurelia fan the flames that destroyed Hapes.
Powers Used:
Force Speed: 2 (poisoned needles and Gun of Command)
Tag @Darth Dreadwar
