GM Update
Korriban tagsets due Sunday | All other tagsets due Monday
IC: Darth Dreadwar
Hangar of the Sith Temple, Korriban
Korriban tagsets due Sunday | All other tagsets due Monday
IC: Darth Dreadwar
Hangar of the Sith Temple, Korriban
A receding black robe drew Dreadwar’s eyeless gaze, and the Dark Lord raised a hand of shadow towards the open doors of the hangar. An armoured assassin was bounding down the stairs beyond, taking the steps two at a time, and as the fleeing figure shouted at others presumably approaching on the lower floor, Dreadwar at once recognised the deep baritone, however strained by the urgency of his flight.
Darth Xxys.
No sooner had Dreadwar gathered the Force to him, ready to tear soul from distant body, than did an unexpected entourage round the corner to burst into the hangar, and Dreadwar stayed his hand. He had not seen them ascend the stairs, nor sensed their approach down the hallway from which the two dead fools had emerged, yet as their countenances became clear in the dim light, any lingering surprise at their stealth dissipated; obscuring one’s signature in the Force was no great feat for one such as Kára Volshe.
His runaway bride had brought his heirs, it appeared, and three other Sith he well recognised as the warlord, his foolhardy son, and the alchemist, as well as a fourth insignificant he did not. For one who had absconded with his children in the dead of night, and fled Zakuul without the slightest hint of appreciation for his generosity, Volshe displayed a brazen sort of bravery indeed to dare stare directly at him. It would have been polite to lie prostrate.
“We are what you desire,” she swallowed; at least her voice had the good sense to shake. “Me. Your children. And so we have come to surrender, to serve your cause.”
That seemed unlikely. While it was possible that Dreadwar had succumbed to a cognitive bias, in ascribing far greater intelligence to his intended consort than she actually possessed, it was overwhelmingly more probable that Volshe was exactly as cunning, in her own base way, as he had modelled; a sufficient number of private predictions had verified to indicate Dreadwar possessed an accurate if excessively thorough understanding of her behaviour and intellect. His mental model of Volshe, having committed to the folly of her vanity and lost the protection of his goodwill, would not surrender unless she had no other choice.
His mental model of Volshe would, however, think that feigning surrender was an appropriate risk to take if she thought she possessed the means to destroy her Emperor. She would not be fool enough to think a thermal detonator or other such crude trap would have a hope of working, but there were snares she might think were appropriate to use against that which she thought was a disembodied spirit, and it was not impossible she possessed knowledge of the means by which Insipid had delayed him for a time. One with no awareness of the illusory arts by which Dreadwar projected the phantasmal seeming of his being would not realise that Insipid had been spectacularly lucky in activating the Rakatan mind prison at the exact moment Dreadwar had been imbuing his essence into Ardeur’s form, and that such tactics would ordinarily be ineffectual against a simulacrum.
If she had brought such a snare, or equivalent, it would likely be concealed on one of the children’s persons, deducing Dreadwar would separate them from her… or perhaps not. After all, Volshe’s sensibilities prohibited her from truly following the cold calculus of logic to its necessary conclusion. Nonetheless, there was no risk in playing along; whether Volshe was truly inept enough to sincerely surrender, or whether she was attempting some gambit, he could think of no means by which she could truly harm him. He would have her send the children forth, lulling her into false security either which way, and then, once the twins had achieved a safe distance from the group, destroy the others upon the spot.
All of this was thought through in an instant, seven millennia of practice in the arts of rationality transforming heuristics into instinct, and there was not the slightest discernible pause before that carefully cultivated whisper of terror bled forth from the empty hood.
"Bid the children approach me. I would not have you retain hostages. Then cast your weapons at my feet, turn to the wall, and kneel at once, placing your hands upon your heads; do not call upon the Force at any time, or you die upon the spot." Tricking them into disarming themselves was but a secondary and wholly unnecessary goal; if Dreadwar appeared appropriately cautious in handling their ostensible surrender, threatening their death in the same black breath, they would be less likely to think his mercy implausibly magnanimous, less likely to suspect their death lurked seconds away regardless.
More importantly, the command would place Volshe in a difficult position; if Volshe had concealed the crux of her scheme upon a person beside the heirs, she would have to find some contrived and convenient excuse to subtly circumvent his orders, in spite of the fact that a sincere Volshe would not be so clumsy as to risk her death over such a tiny thing. If she did not obey his instructions to the letter, then that meant she had calculated defiance—however innocently guised—was worth the risk, and Dreadwar’s suspicions would be confirmed.
Sure enough, Volshe grasped for an innocuous-seeming excuse to disobey. Ah, so it was this red-haired girl Volshe had identified as Sol, an acolyte or apprentice by her lack of presence in the Force, who held the trap; yes, yes, one who thought themselves cunning might think Dreadwar would underestimate a random minion, particularly if Primordius was placed tantalisingly within reach alongside.
Dreadwar permitted the girl to approach, and when her fist shot forwards, a wall of telekinetic power immediately arrested her arm mid-swing. The clenched hand undoubtedly concealed the trap, as punching the shimmering shield surrounding the Dread-King would serve no purpose. How predictable.
Volshe’s theatricality was hardly convincing, either—likely a gambit to maintain innocence, in case the attack failed—and she would not escape punishment. Dreadwar extended his hand, at once moving to devour the fools before him, and for a half-second, the cortosis claws of his gauntlet merely hung aloft in midair. No life-force flowed into his waiting palm; the group, it appeared, possessed no souls to consume.
Illusions?
Dreadwar laughed. This was no attempted assassination at all; this was a gambit to buy time, for any clever combatant knew thirty seconds was all the difference in the galaxy, and it had worked! At last, it appeared, Volshe was thinking like him. “Clever girl,” he hissed.
Nonetheless, his hypothesis needed testing, and any true empiricist knew that, to avoid the pitfalls of confirmation bias, one always sought to disprove one’s hypothesis first. Dreadwar had already been readying a telekinetic wave to destroy the craft in the hangar, to rob the defenders of their first hope at escape, and he unleashed his power at once, so that he might kill two hawk-bats with but one stone.
When Sol turned to dust, and the others were hurled quite convincingly towards the wall, Dreadwar updated his probability estimates. Mere illusions would not respond to telekinesis, not unless the caster was both clever and reflexive enough to feign such, and, save for the unlikely case of holographic training droids, the possibility of holographic projection was ruled out as well.
A trickery of telepathy was impossible given Dreadwar’s prodigious mental defenses, and Volshe was unlikely to know the art of crafting Sith phantasms; besides, if she had pilfered such techniques from his hoarded lore, Dreadwar suspected his attack would have drained the victims to which the phantoms were bound. That left only one possibility.
Similfuturus.
He resumed his pace forward, fingers slicing through the air in the shape of a circle, ignoring Volshe’s attempts at confusion. Her imitation of Abeloth, that hoary suzerain of the Maw, was amusingly appropriate, although her pretenses of treachery were unconvincing—there were no traitors among the ranks of the New Sith Order, or Dreadwar would have known of such—and her attempt at Venomis, however disconcerting, merely babbled something oddly out-of-place about the worlds of the Chorlian being a beacon for the shadows beyond. “Suttachwituskak,” Dreadwar replied, the incantation rapid and precise, no more than half-a-second spent in casting.
Green energy blazed forth, striking the projection of Volshe in the chest, and the image dissipated. With the lazy curl of a finger, the remaining doppelgangers were dispatched, and Dreadwar proceeded into the hallway beyond the hangar, immediately descending the long flight of stairs opposite.
There was no sign of Xxys, but four hulking golems of wood and glass were advancing down the lower floor hallway towards him. It was unlikely Volshe had given animation to their forms, given that she had already dispatched projections, but the fact that both sets of enemies were resistant to his most awesome powers of destruction indicated whichever sorcerer had raised the golems had benefited from her counsel. Pressed to their limits, his former subjects were thinking. They were actually thinking.
Remarkable.
Still, even crude mockeries of life were not immune to the savageries of time, and as Dreadwar advanced, flame torches flickered out in their sconces, and darkness flooded the air, as if heralding its master’s coming. Only he was immortal; only he could defy death. The golems were but unlikely blips of organisation amid the seas of black infinity, and without titanium will to conquer the natural flow of the cosmos, they stood no chance against the acceleration of aeons. As concentrated entropy flowed around their forms, their glass organs turned opaque, sand trickling from between rotting ribs of wood, and the fine strands of Force energy holding together their constituent parts began to unravel, like the fraying threads of an ancient rope.
Their gait became clumsy, collapsing legs no longer supporting such great weight, and as the eldritch currents of shadow lifted from the passage, the four golems shattered against the floor.
All the while, Dreadwar had not ceased his slow and relentless march forwards, tattered cloak trailing across stone tiles as he approached the leftward bend ahead. It was then that a great gout of flame blazed forth, a violent flash of white accompanying a billowing cloud of fire and a crack louder than any thunder. The explosion consumed Dreadwar in an instant, blistering heat meeting deathly cold, and for a moment, the entire hallway was a roaring serpent of compressed flame. Then the walls ruptured, freeing the fire to lick the temple’s exposed insides, and stone crumbled, giant chunks of rock slamming into the scorched-black floor as the ceiling gave way, revealing the upper floor passageway above.
When the great light faded, and the fire receded to individual tongues of flame flicking from cracks in charred masonry, all was blackened ruin. Yet Darth Dreadwar stood, surrounded by floating boulders, that same strange sphere of malachite energy flickering around him. He was unharmed.
With a flick of his finger, the boulders were promptly cast aside, but the passageway ahead had caved in completely, and even Dreadwar’s prodigious powers of telekinesis would not clear such obstruction in a timely fashion. Dreadwar stepped forward nonetheless, the cruel tip of his cortosis sabaton extending ponderously in the air for but a second, and then with a dull boom, his foot fell upon the floor of the banquet hall. Ruin was no longer his surroundings; the collapsed passageway was, all of a sudden, twenty meters behind him, and far more pleasing scenery greeted his eyeless gaze.
Screeches and screams filled the hall, as Darth Dreadwar appeared in the midst of a panicked crowd as if materialising from the very air, standing where Nihl had stood only a minute earlier.
TAG: No one (atlthough processing @Darth Xxys' and @Helkosh's attacks)
OOC: There is no need to use Telepathy to command one’s golems, and Pravum’s usage can be considered an automatic success.
Unfortunately, Yenøh’s continued presence in a shuttle must incur the Damage Roll from Dreadwar’s successful Force Wave targeting the hangar’s craft from last post (regardless of the attempt at Conceal Essence, which, rolling a 5 + Modifiers against DC 50, would have failed to hide her). Damage was 3 + 4 + 5 + 5 + 6 + Modifier of 5 + Bonus of 10, and as Yenøh’s maximum possible HP could only be 20, her HP is reduced to 0; Yenøh has died of Dreadwar.
Dreadwar’s usage of Bolt of Hatred rolls 14 + 25 + 10 against DC 46, and succeeds; Damage is 1 + 5 + 6 + 4 + 1 + Modifier of 5, depleting Volshe’s Doppelganger’s HP to 0. His usage of Telekinetic Kill rolls 11 + 25 + 10 against DC 40, and succeeds; Damage is 2 + 2 + 4 + 3 + 1 + Modifier of 5 + Bonus of 10, reducing Nathemus’ Doppelganger’s HP to 0.
Dreadwar’s usage of Darkshear rolls 5 + 25 + 10 against DC 10, and succeeds. Damage is 5 + 5 + 4 + 2 + 2 + Modifier of 5, reducing four golems’ HP to 0. Xxyx’ mines will be arbitrated as an automatic success against Dreadwar, with 5d6 (20) damage; this is countered by Dreadwar’s Protection Bubble, which negates 5d6 (5 + 4 + 4 + 2 + 5, also 20) Damage without modifiers, and Dreadwar’s HP is not affected. Dreadwar’s usage of Fold Space rolls 14 + 25 + 10 against DC 30, and succeeds; Effect is 22 + 5, and his attempted teleportation is achieved in full.
IC: Darth Apollyon
Underdelve beneath the Sith Temple, Korriban
The dark maw of Karness Muur peeled back as if in a distorted grimace, a frightful illusion of optics and shadowplay as the flames of Volacius’ sword shed a faint if hellish light on the six-foot-by-six-foot cavity ahead.
The opening was indeed a tunnel, and the broken stalactites and stalagmites that served as Muur’s curiously receded teeth suggested a once-natural formation that had been concealed with the unhappy visage. Nonetheless, the throat of the tunnel displayed clear signs of sapient repurposement, for six feet beyond the mouth’s claustrophobic threshold, the roughly circular passage opened up into a larger affair, around thirteen feet in diameter, and apathetic, unhewn sandstone gave way to antediluvian, unhallowed limestone bearing all the terrifying marks of unnameable excavators.
The sides of the tunnel had been chiselled away into crude walls, and it would have been tempting to describe the shape of the new passage as quadrilateral, perhaps trapezoidal, if it weren’t for the fact that the ceiling remained the stubborn arch of a circle. Whether it was the flickering light of Volacius’ sword to fault, or some eldritch geometry that circumvented all Rotkanian reasoning of Euclidean complexity, the exact dimensions of the tunnel defied easy description. What could not be doubted was that the tunnel had been deliberately fashioned to impress such dubious conclusions upon all unfortunate enough to behold it, with straight walls here and sanity-bending curved walls only a few feet further, as if confusion and madness were the architectural principles of whichever nameless forebears had carved some natural tunnel into such a passage of horror.
Beside the omnipresent cobwebs, which suggested some lurking infestation of k’lor’slugs or kinrath, mural sculpture was the dominating feature of the tunnel’s tenebrous and decayed decor. There were sinful and sinuous arabesques laced throughout the cyclopean masonry, and those learned in obscure architecture would immediately recognise the winding, tentacular style of ophidian grotesquerie, those loathsome reliefs of Caulus Tertius and Shatuun which such esteemed historians of the antiquarian galaxy as Doctor Insmot Bowen had dared attribute to abominably mysterious, pre-Republic precursors known variously as the Celestials, the Architects or the Old Ones. Would that such terribly suggestive patterns be the only source of horror!
There were other pictures, decadent and despicable, counter-sunk in low relief beside the bulging serpentine tracery of the grotesque arabesques, background depressed around three inches from the natural wall of the tunnel. Not even the sickening, censored conceptions of long-dead Asenec, the Mad Croke who had defiled The Despotica and incensed the galaxy with hateful poetry, nor the vile visions of Soshu Londahl, that elusive Ithorian who had depicted The Fourth Precept, could imitate the absolute abhorrence and malice of this foul artistry.
For all the creative and cultural diversity of the galaxy and its many races, it would become obvious, at this moment, that the styles of every civilised world nonetheless bore some residue of humanity, some hint of the republican and familiar, no matter how alien its inhabitants. Yet these reliefs were so utterly foreign and archaic as to induce malaise bordering on nausea, the woozy imprint of some incomprehensibly ancient past, concealed from all species’ eyes, now horrifically and readily apparent to all those who stooped beneath Muur’s stone lips into this waiting den of wickedness. The history they depicted, if indeed the scenery described any history of this world, was staggering in its obscenity and strangeness, and not even famed cyprian Yosyro Modoll could have stomached illustrating the orgiastic rituals of flailing, frothing madness beneath floating black caverns and grinning maws of perversity that the reliefs depicted in such shocking if primitive detail.
Although of prodigious antiquity and base aspect, the skill with which the stone had been worked was nothing but preternatural. Beyond and behind the more obvious blasphemies were strange hints of something at once more nebulous and macabre, crisscrossing lines and optical trickery lending a phantasmagoric tinge of illusory dreamscape, as if there were deeper, more fantastical layers to the crumbling, dust-laden artwork that could have only been perceived and appreciated by beings with more than two eyes. Even scenes of relative mendacity, depicting flayed, unhuman columns of bowed slaves pressed to the construction of primitive stone houses and megalithic ziggurats, possessed this ominous, unconscious underlay of menace, as if the pyramids being raised bore the subtlest hint of an apoplectic, conical face, or the windows of the too-large houses stared with an unseen, baleful gaze, a million glaring facets of some greater eye that had been deliberately and hypnotically concealed.
Cartouches, niches and hieroglyphs provided some merciful interruption to the vile and violent imagery, although the anthropoid fetishes within each niche were only marginally less horrific, tiny, snarling stone idols of three-fingered, three-toed bipeds with hulking shoulders, bent backs and stub-nosed, vaguely simian faces with tendrils dripping from each drooping cheek. Those who had seen the enemy from the battlements would recognise the familar shapes of the strange, crimson-skinned savages besieging the temple behind their vanguard of carrion, and indeed the shared identity between the enemy outside and at least certain of the entities depicted could not be plainer, for one relief, on the far side of an ithyphallic totem of soapstone, still bore the pigments that untold aeons had worn away from the others. In this scene, one of the red-skinned cacodaemons, joined by a lepidote, blue-skinned alien more readily recognisable as a Draethos, kneeled before the same black horror that littered the other reliefs in a multitudinous variety of monstrous and anthropoid forms. The charcoal paint applied to all such depictions of this chthonic entity shone with a strange, sticky sheen.
The hieroglyphs offered few clues, however, as to this omnipotent omnivore’s identity, nor did they provide context to the atrocious scenes. Although there was a passing resemblance to the glyphs used by the ancient Sith, clearly the dialect employed was beyond the comprehension of even the most linguistically- and historically-inclined of the New Sith Order, for the queer symbols spelled out unpronounceable and garbled nonsense, often in repetition as if knowingly redolent of some blasphemous spoken chant. MNGGAL MNGGAL, THARAGORROGARAHT and DARR TAH were detestably common refrains, as was a particular, peculiar phrase of singular anxiety and frightfulness: EA EA FH’NGLUI MNGGAL’NAFH TYPHOJEM AZNAK WGAH’NAGL PHTAGN.
The stench emanating from the tunnel was almost unbearable. The coppery tang of freshly spilled blood and the obnoxious effluvia of involuntarily loosed excrement had intensified, as Catalyst dragged the bodies of the slain apprentices to the tunnel’s entrance, but the malodorous air clogging the lungs of those brave few who approached Muur’s stony countenance carried a smell far fouler than that of the recently deceased; an old, wasting death, mingled with a third scent that only the most discerning nose could differentiate from the overwhelming staleness of dry decay, a fainter, sweeter rot, redolent of mold and sickly moisture, that grew stronger if one approached either side of the tunnel’s walls.
Only Xarxes, at once cursed and blessed by the penetrating vision of the mqaaq'it, could perceive the source of, at least, the most dominant odour.
The tunnel was more than a subterranean passageway; it was a catacomb. Fifty feet past Muur’s gaping maw, near a bend in the tunnel only Xarxes could see, a flock of shyrack, disturbed by the sudden light, swept past rows of pitch-black recesses and adjoining ossuaries. Although the emaciated, mummiform bodies interred within these latter crypts could not be made out, the myriad of fleshless skeletons resting in the less extravagant recesses could not be mistaken, and the odd, mineralised texture of many implied decomposition had given way to partial fossilisation.
Too many of the skulls sported oddly sloping foreheads and pronounced brow ridges, with eye-sockets larger than anything belonging to humanity, and the claws of their skeletal fingers numbered three. It would not be difficult to deduce that their toes, concealed by the wispiest tatters of unfathomably ancient raiment or simply the darkness of a distance even Xarxes’ gaze could not penetrate, numbered thus also, and the terrifying antiquity implied naturally led one to conclude the beings to which these calciform remains belonged had been, at least, the autochthonous inhabitants of primordial Korriban, if not the elder, tendrilous and undoubtedly scarlet-skinned spawn of distant stars from a primeval age before Korriban had yet been formed. A tremendous hatefulness hung like a miasma over those distant racks of skeletons, and perhaps it was this cloud of intense agitation that repelled the touch of Noxia’s reanimating powers, as if the spirits she desired to restore to what few bodies of unwholesomely preserved flesh yet remained in the unhallowed crypts refused to answer the call of one so far separated by an uncrossable black gulf of incomprehensible, malevolent remoteness.
The eye of Xarxes was not the only means by which the frightful depths of the tunnel could be plumbed.
The mind’s eye could probe further still, and although they could not see the distant bend in the tunnel, much less around it, a vague tangle of feeling and extrasensory perception conveyed something of what lay beyond to Catalyst and Feros, a bewildering, crawling chaos of fugitive moods, memories of a future not yet lived, and impressions of an unknown distance in time and space. There was the sense of a large, open vault, and a faint reddish light suggestive of a twilit moment or location beyond the tunnel’s oppressive darkness, but Feros alone—or rather, the draconic daemon whispering within his skull—would recognise the chamber, however dreamlike and distorted, as the subterranean headquarters and breeding grounds of Darth Krayt’s once-fearsome Sith troopers, secreted away beneath the mountains of the Valley of the Dark Lords amidst a nest of deadly Annihilator starfighters.
Yet the vision was scarcely one of certain escape. Catalyst, focusing on the geography of the tunnel itself, perceived some dire obstacle barring passage, while Feros, drifting along the currents of uncertain futures, heard only screams, shrill and fearful and utterly awful, strangely mirroring the diabolical depictions of sapient sacrifice lining the palaeogenic walls in their pictorial bands. Even Xarxes, senses fainter than his kin, could perceive squalid shapes flickering in the black, malign powers breaking through stone, and the unmistakeable cry of Apollyon, begging for salvation. Even if, the Force revealed, an undignified crawl or stooping ambulation would deliver one safely through the oppressively ungenerous opening, it was obvious that some great calamity lurked in the tunnel ahead.
It was perhaps a mercy, then, that Apollyon lacked such gifts to scry distant places and distant times. She stood upon an island of blissful ignorance, lit by the faint bloodshine of gathered lightsabers in the great vault behind, amid a cavernous sea of black infinity. Her attention was yet occupied by the first mysterious doorway some distance away from the newly revealed tunnel, the ostensible hypergate of presumed Gree construction that, if Volshe spoke true, connected to that distant world or dimension of blasted black sands and lightning-cracked night whence all nightmares came.
Despite the dreadful chill permeating the chamber, sweat continued to bead upon Apollyon’s brow, and as she went to again wipe away the excess perspiration, she noticed her hand felt equally clammy. Whatever manner of physiological shock had befallen her at the sight of her master’s treachery had evidently not worn off, and there were other signs, too, of poorly suppressed panic and distress; the painful thumping of her heart within her breast, breath that came just a little too rapidly and too labouriously even for such a hasty descent down the thousand crooked steps behind. Kain’s words did nothing to lift her spirits, and indeed soured them, for she could only think that there was no time to waste on vainglory and gesture.
Nonetheless, she held her tongue, whether out of respect for her sister’s choice in partner, or out of a desire to not waste time yet further, even she knew not. Xiannarr, on the other hand, was lashed quite thoroughly, for such chastisement would not hinder them as a pointless reprimand of Kain’s already concluded posturing might. “If you’re going to illuminate anything with a fireball, Xiannarr,” she snapped, “go and do it. Don’t just talk about it.” And then she turned to Viscretus, seeking to make herself useful, bare feet splashing in the brackish water between the hypergate and the tunnel.
The instant the control console reached the hands of the true Volshe, a band of arterial light extended from the primitive machine, flickering like the striations of a scanning laser as it traced its way from the tips of the Vahlan’s toes to the crown of her head, and then the screen of the datapad dramatically changed. The Nautolan thrall’s fiddling had coaxed out only the following:
ANSWER SECURITY QUESTION TO GAIN STAGE 1 ACCESS: WHAT IS DEADLIER THAN HATE, YET FLOWS WITHOUT LIMIT?
ENTER SECURITY PASSCODE MITTHRESPHEIE TO GAIN STAGE 2 ACCESS:
ENTER SECURITY PASSCODE MITTHRESPHEIE TO GAIN STAGE 2 ACCESS:
Now, however, the screen flickered to an altogether more promising row of Aurebesh lettering.
BIO-SIGNATURE IDENTITY RECOGNISED: EMPRESS OF ZAKUUL. STAGE 2 ACCESS GRANTED.
Beneath, a single command was offered—not the option to reprogram the destination that Volshe had desired, but a command made all the more significant as the sense of ever-rising danger spiked to an appalling wave of imminent lethality rolling from the eldritch, abysmal doorway, and the vision of approaching sable cloaks and grinning death-masks flashed in Kain’s mind like some accursed afterimage of Aing-Tii clairvoyance. The command was simple:
TAGS: @Darth Kain, @Admiral Volshe, @Catalyst, @Undying Master Xiannarr, @Voidwalker, @Hadzuska_The Jester, @Keres Dymos, @skira, @Zareel Jhenan´doka, @Volacius, @Drakul_Xarxes, @Darth Thana, @Sith_Imperios, @DarthFeros (for power usage only), @DarthNoxia (for power usage only)
OOC: Noxia’s usage of Reanimate Sith Undead rolls 3 + 19 + 10 against DC 35, and fails; the powerful spirits in the Temple’s subterranean crypts resist the call of the caster.
Xarxes’ usage of Farsight rolls 3 + 18 + 5 against DC 10. The attempt succeeds, and Effect is 2 + 2 + 4 + Modifier of -1 results in weak probing of the target area. The usage of Precognition rolls 17 + Modifiers against DC 10, and succeeds, with an Effect of 2 + 1 + 3 + 1 + Modifier of - 1, resulting in weak precognition.
Feros’ Precognition rolls 10 + 19 + 10 against DC 10, and succeeds; Effect is 5 + 6 + 1 + 1 + Modifier of 1, a moderate success. Catalyst’s Farsight rolls 10 + 20 + 10 against DC 10, and succeeds; Effect is 6 + 1 + Modifier of 2, a weak-to-moderate success. Catalyst’s Telekinesis rolls 10 + 20 + 10 against DC 10, and succeeds; Effect is 4 + 1 + 4 + 6 + Modifier of 2, and Catalyst succeeds in dragging several targeted corpses over to the tunnel at a moderately fast pace.
Thana's usage of Pyrokinesis appears to be for the purpose of creating a fire golem, and this can be considered an automatic success, with the Animate Golem power being a Sith spell that will take a second turn of concentrated effort to cast. Mirtis' attempted healing rolls 11 + 15 + 5 against DC 20, and succeeds; Effect is 3 + Modifier of 3, and Thana's HP is replenished by 6.
IC: Darth Wyyrlok IV
Entering the dungeons, Sith Temple, Korriban
With a great rending and screeching of metal, the colossal blast doors protecting the banquet hall from the invaders were torn asunder, just as Darth Wyyrlok, fourth of her name, whirled towards the stairs leading down into the dungeons.
She was not the only one to seek refuge in those lower levels, for out of the thousand adherents of the Sith yet occupying the gargantuan banquet hall, a great many had been plied by Volshe’s will to follow her and her Nagai consort without hesitation, and upon the golden-haired sorceress’ retreat, had at once surged, like a flock of hawk-bats wheeling about, from the passageway leading towards the hangars to the unhappily narrow stair of the dungeons’ opening passageway. The jostling and buffeting of the crowd around her was a thing of singular violence and anxiety, as hundreds of Sith desperately attempted to pass through the eyes of the twin needles that were the only two stairs leading into the dungeons, and there was a dreadful, agonised cry rising into the air, sufficiently shrill to drown out even the tumult of panic.
Wyyrlok dared glance behind her as she shoved acolytes out of her path, and in that moment, dearly wished such overwhelming forces of natural curiosity had not twisted her neck. From a stair adjacent to the adjoining entrance hall, leading up, Wyyrlok knew, to the forward battlements, a group of bizarre, amphibious creatures descended into the scattering crowd, their gait utterly peculiar and alien, horrific, twitching eyes, undulating at the tips of fleshy, grotesque stalks like the fronds of twisted, scarlet-tinged sea-weeds, affixing their intended victims beady, unhuman glares. But this abominable sight was not what caused her heart to seize in fright, no matter how vicious the slaughter they precipitated against those unfortunates nearest them, no matter how eldritch and abysmal their dark powers over the Force.
Nor did the sight of three shadowed horrors, entering the temple with hands and fists raised as if their dread powers had been responsible for breaching the temple’s gates, set her mind aflame, as did that unthinkable, inconceivable horror that defiled the very sands of Korriban with its horrid, patient and painfully slow advance beyond the doorway. For a moment, Wyyrlok’s eyes simply slid off that blasphemously white-robed figure of luciferous malignancy, as if her mind refused to recognise the reality underneath that deceptive, decadent and decay-stained cowl of pale death. But her eyes, her optic nerves, her splintering mind, could not find such refuge, for that white-robed abomination was only surrounded by forms of equal horror. An ocean staggered forwards, a bubbling, protoplasmic, seething mass of black oil running like necrotic blood, sprouting oozing, dead and dissolving forms like pustules from a film of liquid skin, more horrific by far than the mercifully fleshless skeletons that raced ahead of that miasmic horde of madness.
The white-robed figure was not even glancing in her direction, yet she could feel its putrid gaze all the same, see, with senses beyond the mundane, the black gulfs of its eyes, the repugnant and idolatrous windows that opened unto nightmare realms hitherto unknown to all sapience. Her mind was alight with the fire of pure, hateful venom, her body burned with the fever of plague, and her forked tongue flailed from frothing, rabid convulsions that could have been epileptic seizure or inexplicable, insane prayer, as that white-robed abomination slithered beneath the threshold of the temple’s entrance, the hem of its garment stained with the vile filth of its own profane essence, the sea of execrable horror flowing forth behind.
Wyyrlok bit her tongue with sufficient force to draw blood, as she wrenched her enraptured gaze, with the most stupendous force of will summoned from unconscious caverns of desperate survival, from the revolting god of rot, as the stench of sickening moisture and mold flooded her nostrils to mingle with the sweat of the panicked bodies beside her. She heaved and shoved with all her might, lightsaber at last igniting to impale the most stubborn lessers who hindered her path, and with titanic effort, slipped through the opening thus created to bolt down the stairway into the long, familiar passageway of the dungeons, past the iron cell in which Talon had imprisoned that first, fateful intruder of bone.
Wyyrlok did not see the smile that creased the aeon-preserved lips of that apocalyptic deity sent from blighted, unlighted halls beyond the Gunninga Gap, nor the unholy chariots of scelerous sorcerers as they rode over the bodies of the Temple’s defenders strewn about the dais outside, nor the snarling, scarlet-skinned warriors who drew their swords in tandem with the ghoulish legions beside them. But she could hear the distant cries, as the Sith yet packed in the dining hall began to die, lightsabers futilely slashing at flashing spears and halberds, lightning hopelessly fading before powers of devourment that stripped the very Force from the doomed defenders.
One particularly brave warrior rushed past Ruthic and Raspir to accost Darth Cruor beyond the gates, crimson blade of plasma swinging toward the immortal Gen’Dai’s thigh, as its Zabrak wielder screamed defiance. Rotting faces laughed about him. Such folly! Such amusement!
Wyyrlok tried her best to tune out the ever-rising sound of battle and bloodshed, no matter the sharp increase of its feverish pitch, as she raced down the passageway towards Hesper and Arach ahead. The twin columns arranged by Feros and Grievance, for the purpose of an orderly evacuation into the stairway leading into the underdelve at the dungeons’ far end, were beginning to buckle, as dozens of desperate Sith surged through the passageway from the banquet hall and began to collide with the lines ahead. Wyyrlok could recognise familiar faces among the crowd—Mavros, Blodraald, a Devaronian overseer, even that soulless brute of an apprentice who had repaid the generosity of her tutelage with attempted murder—but in that moment, all Wyyrlok saw were obstacles to her path, bodies interposed between her and the sanity-stripping enemy that now poured into the temple unhindered. The worst offenders were the younglings teeming around her waist, slowing her progress to a crawl, as more bodies began to smash into her from behind.
“Lose the crechelings!” Wyyrlok screeched, voice barely carrying to the passage’s terminus, as she waded laboriously through the diminutive crowd. What strategic value did children possess? “They’ll slow us down!” Best to clear the passage by leading them into the dungeon cells lining either side, seal the doors for the Order’s worthiest to pass. Anything to live, anything to hasten retreat, anything to put behind her that glimpse of walking blasphemy which yet seared her senses!
It was then that a prodigious boom reverberated throughout the dungeons, and at once the walls began to shake, the iron doors of cells and classrooms rattling in their frames. A four-legged, golden droid, skittering towards Hesper like a spider, loosed an electronic squeal, as sand and dust was dislodged between cracks in the masonry, falling to the passage floor. Wyyrlok spied Darth Talon, at the passage’s end, turning back for only a second, before the Twi’lek disappeared into the furthest doorway on the right, beginning her hasty descent down the thousand crooked steps of broken stone that led into the underlevels lurking beneath. A second boom rolled through the passage, and it was then that chunks of rock began to detach from the ceiling near the opposite doorway on the left, and a great, billowing cloud of dust began to expand from the stairway to the Emperor’s tower.
Wyyrlok pushed forward with redoubled urgency, gasps of exertion released as puffs of frozen vapour, as the temperature in the increasingly perilous dungeons fell further. Strange, cerulean energy was swirling over her head, an ethereal mist whipping around Nathemus ahead, but she paid no mind to whatever eldritch sorcery the Lord of Agony was weaving about him, not even when the winds spoke with a guttural, gravelly voice unknown to her: “Fool! You summon us to our destruction!” There was no time for distraction, no time for hesitation, no time to waste on asking for directions like a pitiable fool, when sheer inertia and body language told her the underlevels below were what Hesper and her compatriots were shepherding the survivors towards. The dungeons were verging on collapse!
TAGs: @corinthia, @Arach, @DarthNoxia, @dragonsith13, @Grievance Vexx, @Reiis Invadator, @Metus, @DarthFeros, @Darth Xirr, @Nacros_Telcontare, @Kielor, @Jihadi Quartz, @Darth Nathemus, @Helkosh, @Darth Solus, @Cardun Vrek, @Darth Xxys, @Reatith Blodraald, @Darth Cruor
OOC: Cruor’s usage of Battle Meditation is a buff + debuff that will largely be processed during friendly NPC and opposing PC actions, but it would be appropriate for PCs to feel unnatural despair or fear pressing against their minds as the Battlelord’s power takes hold. There is no need to roll for Aura of Uneasiness or Battlemind... yet. There is no need to roll for other players’ buffs this round.
Nathemus’ usage of Invoke Spirits succeeds with a roll of 18 + 20 + 10, and the Effect is 16 + Modifier of 1, and the spirits of Wyyrlok III and Malgus are summoned, but do not appear in physical form. Nathemus’ hostile attack with Sith Illusions rolls a 9 + 20 + 10, and does not overcome the DC of any of the Shadow Councillors targeted; the illusory ghouls fail to land a strike on the three entering the temple presently.
Hesper’s use of Telepathy rolls a 19 + Modifiers + Bonus of 3, and succeeds; Effect of 18 + Modifiers allows Sorin to receive the message with full clarity.
After consultation in PM, the exact effects of Draconis’ usage of Psychometry and Flow-walking will be redacted from this OOC note, but rolls of 11 + 22 + 10 + 5 and 15 + 22 + 10 + 5 against DC 10 and DC 35, respectively, allow the powers to succeed, with Effects of 5 + Modifiers and 35 + Modifiers, respectively, achieving complete success in his desired goal. His usage of Farsight rolls a 6 + 22 + 10 + 5 against DC 10, and succeeds; an Effect of 18 + Modifiers allows him to sense a path of potential escape ahead, i.e. the long stairway leading away from the dungeons into the underlevels beneath the Sith Temple.
Cruor's HP regenerates by 5.
IC: Cruella Vandron
Sith Imperial Garrison, Axum
The twin moons rose into a saturnine Centaxday sky, waxing gibbous in the late afternoon light afforded in the utmost reluctance by the receding sun of Solis Axum behind a dour and doleful cloud layer of sullen stratus and capricious cumulonimbus. A sour drizzle faintly drummed its dismal beat against the cold, metal carapaces of planet-spanning industry, fume-belching factories, towering smokestacks and the sunken spires of starscrapers the crude if titanic answer of sodden soil to the equally abysmal atmosphere weighing with imminent oppression above.
Strangely, the beginning of Axum’s workweek saw scarcely little speeder traffic crisscrossing the river that divided the heart of its urban sprawl. Save for the noisome vapours hissing from fabrication facilities and manufactories, the whole city seemed oddly quiet, collective breath held with astraphobic anxiety before a coming storm. The miserable metal pyramid of the Sith garrison, emplaced on the eastern bank by the victorious forces of Darth Insipid two years prior, wore none of its usual, churning uniform of aerial activity and vehicular manoeuvring, a single amber light, positioned at the top of some spindly communications antenna, blinking silently above a singularly disquieting complex of permacrete and duranium.
Its three surviving occupants huddled around a computer console sprouting from the centre of the blustery, frightfully exposed tarmac of a muddy landing pad resting at the garrison’s overhanging base, surrounded by the adjoining buildings of abandoned barracks. Faint steam rose from two plasmic blades of azalea and azure held aloft in the hands of Cruella Vandron, as her eyes swept what little could be gleaned of the horizon between the mercifully obstructing barracks. Although the glow of her lightsabers risked betraying their position, it was more of a comfort that she would not waste time in their ignition, in case another ambush should fall upon them. “They’re coming,” she hissed, spying the movement—distant enough to seem eerily silent, rather than the monstrous clanking she had associated with their proximity—of the eldritch enemy marching up the river bank.
Nothing in her proud heritage, the blood of Crueya and Theala, could have prepared her for the utter abnormality and horror that had befallen Axum that fateful Centaxday morn. Nothing in her privileged training in the artifices of Korriban, the hidden histories and caliginous philosophies behind her tutelage in the prized Sith arts, could have accounted for the enigmatic and antiquarian pages of the Arturum Galactinum coming to life before her disbelieving eyes, the third wonder of long-dead Vicendi’s famed list of twenty galactic mysteries revealing itself as some nightmare from dimly remembered, pre-Republic phantasy from which Cruella dearly wished she could awaken. Save for uneasy dreams of shambling forms and horrifically clanking metal, nothing in the preceding week of mundanity and routine, overseeing orientation to Apprentice Airskipper and Acolyte Bordst upon their reassignment to the garrison from Korriban’s distant academy, could have prepared her for the awakening of the Brass Soldiers of Axum.
Thirty-five thousand statues, composed of contorted horror more than any alloy of copper and zinc, oxidised by the ages to an uneven shade of discoloured turquoise horribly suggestive of antiquity greater than even the legendary Azure Imperium. Thiry-five thousand statues that had baffled every scientist and scholar, that had inflamed the imagination and birthed every manner of frightful myth and legend, tales they had not been sculpted by some forgotten mortal hand, but that they represented some primeval, dubiously humanoid army from days before the first Coruscanti had colonised Axum by sleeper ships, variously sealed by some benevolent protector deity of inconceivable age or transformed by the malediction of some malefic magician. Thirty-five thousand statues that had drawn tourists and visitors from worlds far and wide, preserved against the elements by a vast hall of cyclopean masonry, a thoroughly-monetised attraction of eerie mystery and fantastical culture amongst the drab expanses of industry and urbanisation.
Thirty-five thousand soldiers that had marched forth at the break of dawn from the great museum that had revealed itself their mausoleum, laying waste to all in their path, butchering civilians, policemen, and Stormtroopers across long hours of ineffable savagery. Thirty-five thousand soldiers that could not be slain, but slew all who attempted thus. Thirty-five thousand soldiers that marched even now towards the Sith garrison, abandoned by its commanders in their hasty and cowardly flight while its personnel were slaughtered in the streets, with evil intent behind their ancient weapons of brazen terror.
Vandron turned to the Devaronian and half-Korun beside her, grimacing in discomfort as a gust of wind spat rain at her face. “We can only hope they received the message.”
The last hope of the garrison’s last defenders, upon finding the landing pad as empty and lifeless as the spaceport to the west: a single audio transmission sent to the Strike-class medium cruiser the garrison’s computers had detected entering the Axum system. The message was as simple as it was terrifying: “This is Dame Cruella Vandron of Axum Central Command, requesting immediate evacuation from the Sith Garrison’s western landing pad at coordinates 344.6, 668.9. Everything within fifteen miles is dead, Sith Masters evacuated without us. The Brass Soldiers of Axum are alive—and destroying everything in their path. I repeat, the Brass Soldiers of Axum have come alive, and are destroying everything in their path.”
On the bridge of the Aximand, Captain Teracotus stood in stunned silence. He had learned all Twenty Wonders of the Galaxy in his youth; undoubtedly most of the crew had, assuming typical schooling. This… This was… This was… “My lord?” The ensign asked, in a hushed voice of disbelief and awe.
TAGs: @Tobbi Airskipper, @Darth Kratos, @Kint Dranlor, @Senec Tinople, @Dorrian Shadowsun, @Rayge, @Oberleutnant Deleritas
IC: Necro Solaar
Approaching the throne room, Fountain Palace, Hapes
“I know many things of days gone by,” Necro smiled cryptically, keeping pace with the Queen Mother as she walked—nay, slithered—through the halls of her palace. “I am no Sith, and neither are you, Miraluka, but my world fell under their shadow long ago, and it is my purpose to serve as grotthu.” Necro’s pronunciation of the ancient Sith word was pristine, the “g” guttural and the “t” flicked like spittle from the intersection of teeth and tongue, again displaying that eerie familiarity with an extinct language long since forgotten by history.
Only the most learned of Sith archivists knew of the bygone breed that had lent their Order its name, a tendrilous, scarlet-skinned race of horrors whose ancestral religion had been adopted by fallen Jedi long after their empire’s fall. The Sith—true Sith—had been divided into four castes: barbarian warriors known as Massassi, priestly practitioners of black magic known as Kissai, alchemical masters and engineers known as Zuguruk, and, lowliest of them all no matter Solaar’s tone of pride, the Grotthu: servants, slaves, cultists and conquered, a medley of species to serve the red masters.
Was Solaar speaking of the Sith Empire, that once-mighty fiefdom left shattered by its Emperor’s disappearance, the very fascist imperium Dreadwar now directed Traya to assail? Surely not; such ancient terminology had long ago fallen out of favour. Although hints of the Sith Order’s primordial origins yet remained, from the believed homeworld of Korriban to the red dye and tribal tattoos once plied by Darth Krayt, no caste system had been employed by any known incarnation of the Sith cult for over five thousand years. Grotthu had, at best, become an obscure epithet, much like Sithspawn and Sithspit.
“The goal of our assault,” Necro continued, shifting the thrust of his reply to Dhe’s query, “is the utter annihilation of the Jedi. I do not speak of the Jedi in the employ of the Galactic Federation, for my master has already seen them quite thoroughly routed, and their remnants shall be destroyed by other means. I speak of the fallen Jedi and dark acolytes who call themselves Sith, who fight with the weapons of the Jedi and adorn themselves in dark mockeries of Jedi apparel, who believe in foolish Jedi conceptions of some omnipresent yet somehow divided life-energy called the Force, who fight for glory and power and do not recognise that life and all its achievements, all its creations, is a futilely flickering candlelight before the infinite Dark. Even stars burn out.”
Solaar laughed. “Perhaps my answer has too much the sound of recitation,” he confessed. “I am no philosopher of Rhand. But I know true power when I see it, and I know to be content in its service. Glorious purpose?” He laughed again. “There is no glory. The only purpose is death, and the only true power is the power to destroy.”
The entrance to the throne room, vast and resplendent, came into view ahead. Two Twi’lek sisters, skin pale as Solaar’s own, were racing past the threshold, clearly in a hurry to leave, blaster pistols held in bone-white hands. Solaar’s smile faded as he slowed his pace, fingers dropping to his own holdout weapon.
TAG: @Darth Traya
OOC: Traya’s usage of Alter Image was pre-approved for aesthetic reasons. Dhe’s usage of Force Cloak rolls a 1, and will be considered an automatic failure due to a novice’s lack of fine control.
IC: No one
Empty space between Korriban and Bosthirda, on the Kamat Krote hyperspace lane to Dromund Kaas
In the darkness of space, energy the shade of lunar mist began to take form, strange aether coalescing into faint and macabre forms above frozen, twitching corpses. From the cockpit of the Reaper, spectral teeth and spindly claws could be perceived, as seven spirits of ethereal aspect, more horrifying than any Starweird, separated their ever-sharpening outlines from the ghostly nebula beyond.
For all their oily presence in the Force, their stationary hovering was terribly suggestive of patient waiting, not in ambush, but in anticipation of the Jen’nu’s command.
On the bridge of the Executor-class Star Dreadnaught Auspex, that doonium colossus Lieutenant Ar'váez had summoned from Bosthirda to Korriban at first sight of the diabolical pyramid-ships, this bizarre and peripheral activity remained unseen. The distant Reaper, cloaked and hidden by gossamer illusion, was on the far side of the strange, classical war galleys that approached with an atavistic air of mechanical malice, and attention was altogether captivated by the perfect grid formation of the unresponsive alien fleet.
Escorted by the Haruspex and Magus, the Hesperian flagship had fallen afoul of the same gravitational mines that had delayed the Sibyl II’s sojourn to Korriban. Yet where Admiral Ontos had been harried by Federation interdictors, the commanders of these three behemoths saw only the strange ships that rumours had ascribed to mysterious new allies of the Federation, and it was obvious that the definitively Federation half of this joined fleet had been blasted to ruin.
A single audio transmission was broadcast to the war room on distant Korriban, traversing the interstellar cosmos at tremendous speeds, courtesy of hyperspace relays, faster than even light: “We read you, Lieutenant Ar'váez. We have been pulled out of hyperspace between Bosthirda and Korriban. There is a fleet here, possibly Federation, unresponsive to hails and a warning shot. Engagement appears to be imminent.”
TAGs: @Ānhrā Māhnîu, @Darth Sedicious, @corinthia
OOC: Anhra rolls 11 + 18 + 5 against DC 30, and succeeds. The power takes Effect with 3 + 2 + 3 + Modifier of 2, a moderate success that results in seven spectral dead being reanimated.