Darth Traya
Lady of the Sith, the Saarai-Kaar, the Dark Sun
Closed RP
Task One: The Paths of the Assassin
Once Traya sheathed her ceremonial sword, she bid her new apprentice to rise and join her in the depths of the ruined temple, the iron columns and shattered statues were rusted as blood red as Dathomir’s sun. There were scattered bits of pottery, vines crawling across the stone, and shriveled bodies of mummified Nightsisters laying strewn about like discarded dolls. This portion of the temple contained great power, yet it was only an echo..a slightly stronger vibration of what already existed within every stone, tree, branch, and oozing slime fungi that persisted here. Traya proceeded to an area where a far greater power lay nestled. The temple ruins gave way to clearing were Dathomir had reclaimed its natural form; the temple walls had collapsed and gave access to monsterous stone cliff facade, etched with pale primitive carvings. About 500 feet above them perched a vast stone tower, chiseled in the form of a wailing woman with mouth outstretched; small statues of inhuman beings surrounded it’s opening. The cliff isolating the ancient tower showed no obvious handholds in which one could scale.
Traya glanced toward the gaping statue, her perceptions focused upon the power throbbing within, blind to all else. “My apprentice; your first task shall be two fold. Scale this cliff and reach the sacred space awaiting, as you're enduring the rigors of this climb you will need to focus your mind as well and answer my following questions using only the telepathic bond said to exist between Master and apprentice. You will need to open your mind to feel the channel, but rest assured it’s there. ”
She handed Senec a pair of metal grappling claws used more commonly by the Nightbrothers, capable of scaling sheer cliffs.
“These questions shall be simple enough; but will provide me greater insight into how you wish to train within your chosen class of Assassin. As you climb, answer the following hypothetical situations. Imagine you have been contracted to eliminate three targets. The first is a Jedi Padawan and their Master, the most commonly despised foe within a Sith Empire. How would you eliminate them and leave no evidence that a Sith was contracted to do so?
The second target is a non Force sensitive crime lord holding a firm grasp upon Nar Shaddaa. There are many places to hide and strike from the shadow on the smuggler moon and just as many to strike in the open yet go unnoticed ; how would you strike undetected?
The third target, a Dathomiran witch, but not a Nightsister, but rather of a primitive clan, a woman with fierce distrust of males and non natives, and a clan of fellow witches eager to seek vengeance should their sister fall. They may not wield the infamous dark magicks that fester within me; yet the common witches are fiercely loyal and ingenious in living in tune with their planet. Could you use Dathomir itself to your advantage; a planet that doesn’t welcome outsiders?
Within these hypotheticals you may have any tool or power which you desire; I am seeking a narrative in which you would apply yourself at full potential.” the Dark Lady motioned her head toward the cliff face yet showed no intention that she would be climbing it herself.
Response from Senec:
Silence. Senec seemed to kneel amidst a sinuous sea of darkness, the countless whistles and chirps of Dathomir’s wildlife replaced with a bleak buzzing in his ear, the warm breeze that wafted against his face transformed in an instant into an icy cold aura that seemed to cling to him, creeping beneath his robes and feathers and reaching for his heart. Darth Traya herself was gone as he stared, as sightless as the Dark Lady herself, into a void of non-existence.
This, the darkness whispered to him, was what it was to be Sith, what it would always be. A great, eternal darkness and silence in which he must attempt to speak, shout, grope his way through, to discover greatness awaiting him beyond that great void. As he existed now, he could not possibly penetrate the blackness; his old eyes strained, and his ears felt as if they would pop trying to locate some small echo, some fragment that would betray where he was and where he needed to be. But at the same time, he suddenly felt endowed with unimaginable power, full of a confident poise whose absolute zero seemed to challenge the feeble cold around it, roiling with dark energy away from which even the darkness itself shrunk. And then that dark energy stepped forward - and Senec discovered it did not belong to him.
A Sith simulacrum stepped forward, but it was not him, though it looked like him, walked like him, acted like him, yet still here he stood, rooted to the spot and unable to move for the stifling darkness pressed around him. He watched in fascination as his copy pressed through the void, seemingly unconcerned, leaving him to rot as it advanced into the mire and the mist ahead. It stepped farther and farther away from him until Senec watched it reach out, grasp something and pull it open, and suddenly a thousand images poured from the opening it created and flooded Senec’s brain, burning themselves like the shadows born of blinking onto his eyelids and his mind.
In an instant, he was transported to Korriban, rapt as a veritable army of Sith knelt before him, and he drunk in their fear and submissiveness as if it were a feast. Suddenly, he stood amongst a vast throng on some urban world, cloaked in his same humble shell, yet his mind danced far afield, flitting from mind to mind of passersby, discovering their deepest dreams and desires and conforming them to his image. He now stood atop some great surface as a storm flashed around him, and a multitude of enemies pursued him. Yet none touched hiim as he dug into their minds with a vicious flair, their determination washed away as if by the rain around them as they sank into insanity or meek servitude. And suddenly, it was as if he himself had been swept up into this burgeoning flood of images and perceived that it was less of a flood, and more of a whirlwind. Eagerly, he dove into this whirlwind, images of power, greatness, ambition, control, and mastery each tempting him with their own sinister charm. Yet Senec refused to give in to any one of them, pressing past them towards the center of the whirlwind, seeking what lay at its center.
At last he reached the periphery, and, resisting the urge to glance back at the deluge of visions behind him, Senec burst through - and once again found himself in the midst of that great silence. But he was not alone; his simulacrum stood at its nexus, no longer facing away from him towards some unseen door, but now facing him, looking directly at him. Were Senec not sure that this vision was he himself, he might have cowered before its cold stare, unable to move under the paralyzing aura emanating from its depths. Instead he pressed forward, the buzzing in his ear growing to a cacophony of shrieks and squeaks and whines. Finally, he came face to face with the simulacrum. They stood there a moment, silent amidst the shrieking whirlwind of power, regarding each other coldly amidst the frigid storm.
Then in a flash, the simulacrum moved, a great sword now grasped in its hands. The sword swung forward and slashed Senec in the gut, pressing straight forward til the blade nearly burst out his back. His eyes could not move, locked with the eyes of his copy, who twisted and gouged the blade in an agony of pain. The whirlwind slowed, became lethargic, seemed to disappear into the void once again. Silence reigned for one brief instant as unimaginable pain blossomed in Senec’s brain.
Then a vast, horrible cataclysm of motion seemed to occur all at once. The visions once more reappeared, swirling closer and closer together until they enveloped the two Senecs in a cocoon of energy. Without knowing how or why, Senec knew what he must do. Standing up straight, he walked towards his copy, the sword plunging farther through him til it bisected him completely. Yet still he doggedly strode forward until, instead of meeting feather and flesh of his counterpart, he seemed to walk inside his simulacrum’s very form. He turned slowly, grasped the great blade’s hilt, and raised it. His copy’s arms moved with him as if his own as the cocoon of energy moved closer, the shrieking almost unbearable. Senec raised the blade to its full height - and with a burst of energy, he felt his copy’s form fuse into his own, as he achieved full symbiosis with the vision of himself. Everything swirled into a great, white storm-
Senec opened his eyes as the sword of his vision flashed inches from his face, removed from the shoulder where Lady Traya had rested it. Though the blistering warmth of Dathomir pressed once more upon him, Senec clung to the cold stormy depths of his vision and strove to coast on their waves as long as he could. He blinked rapidly, for even the faint, sickly sunlight of Dathomir seemed unbearable compared to the void from which he had risen. Faintly, he perceived words echoing at him, words of unimaginable import and resolve:
“Now, rise my apprentice. For you shall be the only one I summoned here to leave under my tutelage. I shall honor the words of Exar Kun; for if that is your vision than we shall make it a reality.”
And with another great surge, the vision departed Senec, and he was left quite alone amidst the ruined Dathomir temple. He again became aware of his painfully aching knees and joints, of the soreness of his back, bent for so long before Lady Traya, of the faint itches that rode upon his arms as insects preyed upon his flesh.
He rose, mulling over the new title in his head, once briefly held in his past, yet imbued with little meaning, now a herald of greater things to come: Apprentice Senec Tinople.
Though he rose, his head remained bowed in humility, “You have spoken, Master, and it shall be so. What is thy bidding?” He recalled the ancient words, the phrase filling the mouths of a thousand bygone apprentices as they sought the wills of their Masters.
Darth Traya did not speak, her aura quickly shifting from ceremonial grandeur to severe patience. Senec realized that he would have no time to celebrate as she led him through the shattered temple towards a great clearing. Senec craned his neck upwards, tracing the sheer rise of a cliff before them, punctuated at its zenith with a vast statue, resembling a woman with mouth unnaturally open, her face pocked with small creatures who seemed inexorably drawn towards the gaping hole.
Wasting no words, Lady Traya presented the task to her apprentice: to scale the walls of the smooth stone face while, in his inner mind’s eye, conquering a series of challenges presented by her. The task was daunting, and it might have been easier to shrink before the challenge, accept Lady Traya’s wrath, and slink, ashamed, back to Korriban as a disgraced acolyte. Before him surely lay great risk of death, or of mortal injury, or, perhaps even more sinister, failure. But Senec did not cower, nor did he shrink, instead bowing to his master, taking the grappling claws she handed him, and moving forward, his keen eyes sweeping the cliff before him for signs of weakness and small opportunities.
Slinging one of the grapples upwards, he propelled the hook with the Force to drive it firmly into the rock above, then, grunting, began to pull himself up, girding himself in the dark side to gather the pain in his hands and muscles from the climb and fuel himself with it. His eye lighting firmly on a small, slippery outcropping far above him, he began slinging the grapples in turn to pull himself up farther and farther, his determination keeping him constantly moving upwards up the base of the vast cliff. As he climbed, his mind raced with possibilities to solve his first challenge: the subtle assassination of a Jedi Padawan and his Master. He remained solely focused on the climb and the mental task, not allowing his mind to wander, knowing that before the great lady his mind would be as exposed as his own body would be to blaster fire as he climbed. He strove higher til he reached that small, narrow outcropping and gathered himself a moment, surveying the land beneath him, perching-
-atop a communications tower, narrowly observing the warehouse beneath him. Everything was proceeding according to his plan. Wrapped in the dark side, like a shawl hiding his true features, Senec was undetectable to the frantic Jedi Master that approached, sending off alternating waves of worry and resolve as he followed his apprentice’s mental calls for help to the warehouse below. Had Senec had lips, they would have curled in contempt; it had been a laughably easy matter to capture the young Padawan. Off on his own in the city, he had never sensed the thugs who had traced and captured him until it was too late; Senec’s ability to deaden the novice’s Force senses had made that simple enough. Now the Padawan sat amongst a death trap, guarded heavily by a gang of brutish thugs only too eager to carry out Senec’s orders, the bags of coins in their pockets keeping them anchored to their posts.
Of course, the Padawan reached out in the Force now for his Master’s help, as Senec had planned, and like a dog to his master’s whistle, so the Master came to Senec’s. Here he would face heavy opposition, yet Senec had no doubt that he would succeed and make his way to his beleaguered apprentice.
That is, he would surely do so if Senec did not intervene. Senec dropped, feathers rustling in the air; if any had seen him, they might have marveled at the avian display as he glided in to the top of the warehouse, carefully cushioning himself with the Force. The small use of Force energy would flicker at the edge of the Master’s senses, yet he would already be too busy, caught in a maze of heavy blaster bolts and small arms fire to give much attention to it. All of a sudden, Senec would reach out, and as if literal darkness had swept across the facility, the Master would find himself blind, disoriented, his senses deadened and his Force abilities weakened as Senec unleashed a barrage of Force blindness, Deaden Senses, and Inflict Pain. The Master, caught off-guard, would become desperate as he slashed blindly through the maze of snipers and heavy blaster rifles, still in control, yet incredibly disoriented. Senec would reach out, the brunt of his full concentration focused on breaking the will of the Master who struggled beneath the ceiling of Senec’s perch. Now Senec would begin to break into the other’s mind, feed on his fear and his pain, creating a feedback loop that would allow Senec to access greater power yet. Now rather than causing bald-faced fear with his illusions and tricks, Senec would call on a far more insidious art, planting seeds of doubt and despair in his victim’s mind as he began to doubt what was real or not. Illusions would spring up before him, firing blasters, but no sooner had he cut through them than they would vanish, replaced with a blank wall and crossfire from another direction.
In such a maze of doubt, dread, and despair, it would only be a matter of time until Senec’s thugs reduced the Master to a cowering heap, cut apart by countless blaster bolts. Senec drew in the death cry of the Master through the Force, feeding it into the Padawan’s mind, filling the youth with stark horror and despair. Now, rather than on feeding on the panicked Padawan’s fear, he would amplify it, piercing his mind with further despair and grief until his weak mind snapped like a twig beneath Senec’s pressure.
Senec rose, satisfied. Only a few thugs remained. He need only to enter the warehouse and make a few careful arrangement for his narrative to be complete. Clearly these thugs, having seen the bounty on the head of the Jedi pair, had taken the Padawan captive. While waiting for someone to arrive to claim the bounty, they had encountered unexpected trouble when his Master discovered the location of their base and arrived to save him. He had fought through bitter lines of defense, only to discover - Senec picked up a blaster and shot the limp Padawan in the head - that the thugs had panicked and killed their prize prematurely. In a rage, the Master had fallen upon these last few mercenaries, but, in a last-ditch petty effort to take others with him, one of the mercenaries had activated a thermal detonator - Senec used telekinesis to deposit the Master’s body in the safe room and delicately placed a ticking thermal detonator next to the corpse.
The narrative would be more than clear to any who investigated the scene. Any residual dark side energy would be attributed to the last fury of the Jedi Master as he sought revenge on those who killed his Padawan, only to be caught in the fury of a mercenary detonator that brought his own pathetic life to an end. Senec completed his preparations, then moved back to the top of the warehouse. His remotely controlled fighter appearing above him, he jumped-
-and began his climb anew. He was sure that Lady Traya had witnessed the scenario he had created in his own mind and would be satisfied at its conclusion. Now he climbed higher, the crags above him becoming more cracked, easier to find footholds and handholds, but harder to climb as they began to jut farther outwards. His eyes were nearly clamped shut; he now relied almost solely on pure instinct, moving by the feel of the rock and the small dents and ridges that aided his ascent. The pain was already too much for an old Caamasi to bear, but it was trivial to a Sith; with his eyes open, he was merely a weary elderly man, but centered in the dark side like this, drawing strength from every scratch and ache he bore, he practically flew like his long-lost animal ancestors from precipice to precipice.
As he scrambled up the cliff face, he began to focus on his next mental mission. He would have no opportunity to rest as he continued to climb this time; there were no outcroppings of sufficient size for him to pause and catch his breath. As he raced up the slick stone surface, his mind raced with possibilities, his mind seeming to fly far away from his body, lighting on the grimy, urban surface of the Smuggler’s Moon, Nar Shaddaa. He sunk down, merging into-
-the dingy crowd of smugglers, thieves, and immigrants who shuffled along the narrow streets near one of Nar Shaddaa’s many spaceports. Among them, he was unnoticeable; any who looked at him would just as soon forget him, a talent he had developed and refined in his years of assassination and subterfuge. But Senec’s eye did not rest blankly on the pavement before him like the huddled masses all around him. Beneath his heavy cloak, his eye was eager and attentive, focused on a veritable palace that dominated the skyline before him. He had been scoping out this structure for a week now, masquerading as a jack-of-all-trades, doing odd jobs all around this vast complex. But his moment had finally arrived to strike at its heart; today the mob boss who owned the fortress would be receiving guests, and through a combination of bribery and . . . persuasion, Senec Tinople, famous archaeologist, had found himself on the guest list.
As the sun set on Nar Shaddaa’s increasingly dangerous streets, Senec would doff his heavy, drab cloak, revealing a fine tunic, nothing too extravagant for an itinerant archeologist, but nevertheless worthy of his esteemed position. He would enter, unarmed, and mingle amongst the various refined guests, some political, some celebrities, none of them honest.
Nor was he.
For an hour or so, he would merely mingle, engaging in spirited, sparkling conversations about nothing as each guest secretly sized the other up. And he would be found satisfactory in the suspicious eyes of his fellow guests: a scholarly, learned old gentleman with much to say and much in his past - and a faint air of desperation in his eyes. It would be all to clear to the other patrons that this was a man who clearly needed something - perhaps money, perhaps protection - whatever it was, something that clearly needed a swift, and less than legal, solution.
Finally, the man of the hour arrives, and a dozen or so armed enforcers begin to line the parlor as the mob boss begins to make the rounds amongst his guests. To attack him is ludicrously out of the question; to request a private word would only invite suspicion and a swift uncovering of the murdered victim. But Senec did not intend so crude a solution. An incredibly slender, sharpened filament of transparisteel was pinned amongst the filigree and fibers of his tunic. It was an insultingly simple matter to carefully extricate it with the Force and, almost unseen to the naked eye, even less visible amidst the bustle of a frenetic reception, shoot it bullet-like towards the mob boss. Its incredibly slim and pointed blade would slide into his chest without a hint of pain, perhaps a distracted tug at his garments, but nothing more. At this point, no one would be surprised if the increasingly sickened-looking Caamasi excused himself to the refresher, but Senec restrained himself. It would be suspicious if he were to disappear seconds before the demise of the crime lord, and after all, he now had nothing to hide. With studied politeness, he continued to interact with the other guests, all the while a corner of his mind sliding the needle inexorably to intersect with several vital arteries.
When the crime lord collapsed, of course each guest would be under suspicion, would be held in the fortress, painstakingly searched and questioned by the enforcers and the crime lord’s lackeys. But ultimately, among all the many guests, Senec would be found least likely, having the least motive and certainly the least resolve to kill the crime lord. Thus, after a couple days’ imprisonment, they would have no choice but to let him go, their suspicions directed elsewhere. He strode away, not a care in the world, the crime lord dead in his own lair, and none suspecting the lowly Caamasi to be his killer. He smiled with satisfaction-
-and grabbed the upper ledge of the Dathomir cliff. His climb was far from over; the statue of the silently gaping woman still loomed over him, but he had made it as far as the natural cliff would lead him. He dangled a moment, the final task filling his vision and his imagination.
Then, in a flash, he hurled one of the grappling claws, propelled by the Force through the mouth above him, turned it over in his mind and tugged as it came to a firm latch. He had only to scale this last ascent to arrive at his destination. He began to scramble up-
-the cave in which he knew a few Dathomir witches crouched around a fire. He surveyed the scene carefully. He had arrived at the planet by ship, far from his final destination and had trekked through the dangerous jungle wastes to finally arrive at his target. Unlike so many of his targets, as far as he knew, this one had committed no great wrongs against the Empire. He surmised it was a test more of his own strength than a true execution. Nonetheless, this did not overly concern him. Instead, he merely observed his surroundings and began to make plans.
The Dathomir witch sitting within chattered eagerly with her friends. They had been out all day and night on their rancors, hunting and forming greater bonds with their mounts. Though she was exhausted from the long journey, she was filled with excitement at all they had accomplished. Suddenly, she heard a substantial clatter from outside. Exchanging glances with her fellow witches, they cautiously crept outside, six in number, all armed with a variety of deadly weapons used to hunt and defend themselves and carrying torches scooped from their fire. One pointed to the spot where their rancors should have stood. They were all gone, the ropes that tied them in place snapped. Gone too was the witch that had been guarding them - the witch best among them at handling rancors.
None made a sound; they were all well trained enough to know that three missing rancors meant that great danger could be lurking in the trees nearby. Though outwardly they were as calm and as in sync with the others as a trained special forces team, inside the witch, her heart seemed to thump uncontrollably, the exhaustion of the day catching up to her as the night terrors seemed to loom over her. She frantically tried to restrain herself from panicking, becoming grimly determined to protect her sisters. But her fear seemed to keep rising, almost as if it were out of her control . . .
They were now in the jungle itself, leaving the clearing outside of the cave behind. The wildlife seemed to have gone unnaturally silent, none of the characteristic twittering or buzzing of Dathomir’s night filling her ears, only a grim buzzing. She turned this way and that, now only able to see one of her sisters scanning the forest near her.
Then an earth-shattering roar behind her. She whirled as one of their missing rancors lumbered out of the darkness straight toward her. Sighing in relief, she made straight for it. It was plainly agitated by something, but she grabbed onto it, began to go through the motions of calming it. Its breathing slowed as she soothed it, and for a moment she felt things were back in control, all her fear for nothing.
Her hopes were dashed when she heard a scream echo through the forest. The trees returned to absolute silence afterwards, and her only signal that she had not imagined the scream was the frantically bobbing torchlight of all her sisters converging on a single location. Frantically, she seized the rancor’s bridle and began to lead it towards the location of the scream.
The sight when she arrived was grim: the dead body of a witch, her neck snapped by some unseen force. Again her fear skyrocketed, and she could see the stark sadness and anger on her companions’ faces. One whispered to the others that they must stick together from now on, but she had scarcely finished her sentence when the witch felt as if she had been plunged into darkness. It was as if all the torches and moonlight had disappeared, leaving her in total blindness. Her arms flailed outwards, trying to find something or someone to grab onto. Her ears felt as if they had been covered with noise cancellers.
Now she truly panicked; it was now clear to her that either the Nightsisters had come to visit, or else some other dark deadly power had come to prey on them. She began to call out her sisters’ names, trying to find anything that could help her, beginning to walk and then run with arms hopelessly outstretched. Her aimless run terminated in hitting something very tree-like, and she collapsed. She sprang up and looked around.
Two of her sisters stood before her, clearly now frightened and angered out of their minds. Each held a weapon at the ready. The rancor had once again disappeared. Now the three of them began to move forward in a circle, rotating with their backs outwards towards the surrounding forest, one hand touching their companion and one holding a weapon. Their fear had now melted into a cold, hard will to survive, and she felt a greater kinship with her comrades than ever before.
After a few more minutes of this, they resolved to head back towards their cave. Whatever was hunting them plainly thrived in the forest; if they could just hide in the cave til daybreak, they could face their hunter head on with minimal disadvantage. They turned and began to walk back.
The walk back was excruciatingly long and slow. They moved in tandem as before, watching for any threat. It took them nearly twenty minutes to arrive back at the cave, and absolutely nothing happened. She felt inexpressibly enraged at the randomness of it all, at the fact that her unseen hunters did not dare even to face her. Finally they arrived back at the clearing. The witch in the lead froze, and now she too turned to see all three rancors standing before her. Their eyes made her heart drop.
Their eyes were wild and full of darkness. Before their eyes were full of a dark controlled rage, but soft and full of devotion too. That was all gone now, but it was not a mere reversion to their wild state before. These rancors were full of an unfathomable dark rage. There was a moment of stunned silence as the rancors all perked up at the sight of their former masters. Then the Dathomir jungle exploded into a cacophony of wild shrieks, buzzes, and twittering as the three rancors bellowed in unison and charged.
The Dathomir witches were used to taming rancors, highly skilled at controlling the fearsome beasts and calming them until they served the witches. But these beasts were full of a deep desire to kill that went far beyond their usual defensiveness or even their desire to hunt. There was something frankly murderous in the speed at which they trampled towards the witches and began to viciously swing at them.
The witches kept them at bay with their long spears, but they only barely kept the wildly swinging huge claws of the three rancors from sending them flying like rag dolls. Nevertheless, their defense was flawless, though she was briefly distracted by a dark shape that seemed to emerge from the back of one of the rancors and soar above the witches’ heads. Still, all her attention was focused on keeping the enraged rancors at bay.
Another scream, and she watched yet another sister crumple to the floor, the one on the rightmost flank. Instantly, the rancors charged once more, beginning to surround the witches with the relentless tactics of a hunting pack. Even this terrifying sight could not hold a torch to what stood behind them though.
She swore in disbelief. Behind her prowled a Dathomirian ssurian, its reptilian jaws dripping with venomous saliva, its eyes seeming to almost glow with malice. She and her comrade looked at each other and both turned to run; both were exceedingly nimble and could easily lose even rampaging rancors in the jungle beyond. But before they could escape, the great tail of the monstrous reptile swept in front of them, stopping them in their tracks. In abject terror, they put their backs to each other, her sister facing the rancors and she futilely watching the ssurian creep closer and closer, seeming to almost gloat in its inevitable victory.
She spoke swift quiet words to her sister, and they resolved that this struggle would end here, that they would go forth and challenge their beastly foes and die where they stood in battle. She did not watch as her companion charged towards the terrifying trio, tried not to listen as the screams behind her intensified and then quickly stopped. Instead she looked the ssurian in the eye.
Stepping forth, she paced towards the reptile, inwardly surprised it did not immediately pounce. Each step increased her confidence. She was now sure of her demise, but she found a strange comfort in it. With each step, she quickened her pace until she broke out in a run towards the creature. Only a few feet from the creature, she came to an astonishing realization: that she had mastered her fear, and it had scattered and disappeared like the morning dew that had just begun to touch the grass around her.
Newly determined, she raised her spear and charged, then leapt, her fear gone . . .
And as her fear disappeared, so did the ssurian, replaced with a single black-clad figure, its back bent even as it leaned forward with something in its hands.
She could do nothing to halt her momentum. Helplessly, with far too much momentum, she fell towards the mysterious figure, the object in its hands resolving itself into one of her sister’s spears, its tip plunging through her chest into her heart. She came to a complete stop, impaled on the end of the spear, her limp body suddenly very alone in the Dathomir jungle, her remains’ only companions now a trio of ravenous rancors.
Senec slipped back into the jungle and observed from a distance with complete satisfaction. This was a masterwork, a true symphony of dark power employed in the most sinister and sabotaging ways. Each power he had used had only further isolated, scared, and entrapped the lone hunting party, until they finally fell, all victims to his hidden hand or to their own mounts and weapons. With a nod, he turned-
-and found himself standing atop the monument, its jagged teeth behind him as he surveyed the inside of the great statue. His body was truly exhausted, taxed to its uttermost limits by the climb and prompted to go beyond those limits by use of the Force. His mind too seemed to throb with the energy of devising and mentally executing each of his plans, complex and layered as they were. Nonetheless, inwardly, he felt a great satisfaction. Rather than turning to run, he had conquered the seemingly insurmountable obstacle before him, and he now only waited to receive judgment from his master.
Results: 10 well earned prestige
Second task pending.
Tag: @Senec Tinople
Task One: The Paths of the Assassin
Once Traya sheathed her ceremonial sword, she bid her new apprentice to rise and join her in the depths of the ruined temple, the iron columns and shattered statues were rusted as blood red as Dathomir’s sun. There were scattered bits of pottery, vines crawling across the stone, and shriveled bodies of mummified Nightsisters laying strewn about like discarded dolls. This portion of the temple contained great power, yet it was only an echo..a slightly stronger vibration of what already existed within every stone, tree, branch, and oozing slime fungi that persisted here. Traya proceeded to an area where a far greater power lay nestled. The temple ruins gave way to clearing were Dathomir had reclaimed its natural form; the temple walls had collapsed and gave access to monsterous stone cliff facade, etched with pale primitive carvings. About 500 feet above them perched a vast stone tower, chiseled in the form of a wailing woman with mouth outstretched; small statues of inhuman beings surrounded it’s opening. The cliff isolating the ancient tower showed no obvious handholds in which one could scale.
Traya glanced toward the gaping statue, her perceptions focused upon the power throbbing within, blind to all else. “My apprentice; your first task shall be two fold. Scale this cliff and reach the sacred space awaiting, as you're enduring the rigors of this climb you will need to focus your mind as well and answer my following questions using only the telepathic bond said to exist between Master and apprentice. You will need to open your mind to feel the channel, but rest assured it’s there. ”
She handed Senec a pair of metal grappling claws used more commonly by the Nightbrothers, capable of scaling sheer cliffs.
“These questions shall be simple enough; but will provide me greater insight into how you wish to train within your chosen class of Assassin. As you climb, answer the following hypothetical situations. Imagine you have been contracted to eliminate three targets. The first is a Jedi Padawan and their Master, the most commonly despised foe within a Sith Empire. How would you eliminate them and leave no evidence that a Sith was contracted to do so?
The second target is a non Force sensitive crime lord holding a firm grasp upon Nar Shaddaa. There are many places to hide and strike from the shadow on the smuggler moon and just as many to strike in the open yet go unnoticed ; how would you strike undetected?
The third target, a Dathomiran witch, but not a Nightsister, but rather of a primitive clan, a woman with fierce distrust of males and non natives, and a clan of fellow witches eager to seek vengeance should their sister fall. They may not wield the infamous dark magicks that fester within me; yet the common witches are fiercely loyal and ingenious in living in tune with their planet. Could you use Dathomir itself to your advantage; a planet that doesn’t welcome outsiders?
Within these hypotheticals you may have any tool or power which you desire; I am seeking a narrative in which you would apply yourself at full potential.” the Dark Lady motioned her head toward the cliff face yet showed no intention that she would be climbing it herself.
Response from Senec:
Silence. Senec seemed to kneel amidst a sinuous sea of darkness, the countless whistles and chirps of Dathomir’s wildlife replaced with a bleak buzzing in his ear, the warm breeze that wafted against his face transformed in an instant into an icy cold aura that seemed to cling to him, creeping beneath his robes and feathers and reaching for his heart. Darth Traya herself was gone as he stared, as sightless as the Dark Lady herself, into a void of non-existence.
This, the darkness whispered to him, was what it was to be Sith, what it would always be. A great, eternal darkness and silence in which he must attempt to speak, shout, grope his way through, to discover greatness awaiting him beyond that great void. As he existed now, he could not possibly penetrate the blackness; his old eyes strained, and his ears felt as if they would pop trying to locate some small echo, some fragment that would betray where he was and where he needed to be. But at the same time, he suddenly felt endowed with unimaginable power, full of a confident poise whose absolute zero seemed to challenge the feeble cold around it, roiling with dark energy away from which even the darkness itself shrunk. And then that dark energy stepped forward - and Senec discovered it did not belong to him.
A Sith simulacrum stepped forward, but it was not him, though it looked like him, walked like him, acted like him, yet still here he stood, rooted to the spot and unable to move for the stifling darkness pressed around him. He watched in fascination as his copy pressed through the void, seemingly unconcerned, leaving him to rot as it advanced into the mire and the mist ahead. It stepped farther and farther away from him until Senec watched it reach out, grasp something and pull it open, and suddenly a thousand images poured from the opening it created and flooded Senec’s brain, burning themselves like the shadows born of blinking onto his eyelids and his mind.
In an instant, he was transported to Korriban, rapt as a veritable army of Sith knelt before him, and he drunk in their fear and submissiveness as if it were a feast. Suddenly, he stood amongst a vast throng on some urban world, cloaked in his same humble shell, yet his mind danced far afield, flitting from mind to mind of passersby, discovering their deepest dreams and desires and conforming them to his image. He now stood atop some great surface as a storm flashed around him, and a multitude of enemies pursued him. Yet none touched hiim as he dug into their minds with a vicious flair, their determination washed away as if by the rain around them as they sank into insanity or meek servitude. And suddenly, it was as if he himself had been swept up into this burgeoning flood of images and perceived that it was less of a flood, and more of a whirlwind. Eagerly, he dove into this whirlwind, images of power, greatness, ambition, control, and mastery each tempting him with their own sinister charm. Yet Senec refused to give in to any one of them, pressing past them towards the center of the whirlwind, seeking what lay at its center.
At last he reached the periphery, and, resisting the urge to glance back at the deluge of visions behind him, Senec burst through - and once again found himself in the midst of that great silence. But he was not alone; his simulacrum stood at its nexus, no longer facing away from him towards some unseen door, but now facing him, looking directly at him. Were Senec not sure that this vision was he himself, he might have cowered before its cold stare, unable to move under the paralyzing aura emanating from its depths. Instead he pressed forward, the buzzing in his ear growing to a cacophony of shrieks and squeaks and whines. Finally, he came face to face with the simulacrum. They stood there a moment, silent amidst the shrieking whirlwind of power, regarding each other coldly amidst the frigid storm.
Then in a flash, the simulacrum moved, a great sword now grasped in its hands. The sword swung forward and slashed Senec in the gut, pressing straight forward til the blade nearly burst out his back. His eyes could not move, locked with the eyes of his copy, who twisted and gouged the blade in an agony of pain. The whirlwind slowed, became lethargic, seemed to disappear into the void once again. Silence reigned for one brief instant as unimaginable pain blossomed in Senec’s brain.
Then a vast, horrible cataclysm of motion seemed to occur all at once. The visions once more reappeared, swirling closer and closer together until they enveloped the two Senecs in a cocoon of energy. Without knowing how or why, Senec knew what he must do. Standing up straight, he walked towards his copy, the sword plunging farther through him til it bisected him completely. Yet still he doggedly strode forward until, instead of meeting feather and flesh of his counterpart, he seemed to walk inside his simulacrum’s very form. He turned slowly, grasped the great blade’s hilt, and raised it. His copy’s arms moved with him as if his own as the cocoon of energy moved closer, the shrieking almost unbearable. Senec raised the blade to its full height - and with a burst of energy, he felt his copy’s form fuse into his own, as he achieved full symbiosis with the vision of himself. Everything swirled into a great, white storm-
Senec opened his eyes as the sword of his vision flashed inches from his face, removed from the shoulder where Lady Traya had rested it. Though the blistering warmth of Dathomir pressed once more upon him, Senec clung to the cold stormy depths of his vision and strove to coast on their waves as long as he could. He blinked rapidly, for even the faint, sickly sunlight of Dathomir seemed unbearable compared to the void from which he had risen. Faintly, he perceived words echoing at him, words of unimaginable import and resolve:
“Now, rise my apprentice. For you shall be the only one I summoned here to leave under my tutelage. I shall honor the words of Exar Kun; for if that is your vision than we shall make it a reality.”
And with another great surge, the vision departed Senec, and he was left quite alone amidst the ruined Dathomir temple. He again became aware of his painfully aching knees and joints, of the soreness of his back, bent for so long before Lady Traya, of the faint itches that rode upon his arms as insects preyed upon his flesh.
He rose, mulling over the new title in his head, once briefly held in his past, yet imbued with little meaning, now a herald of greater things to come: Apprentice Senec Tinople.
Though he rose, his head remained bowed in humility, “You have spoken, Master, and it shall be so. What is thy bidding?” He recalled the ancient words, the phrase filling the mouths of a thousand bygone apprentices as they sought the wills of their Masters.
Darth Traya did not speak, her aura quickly shifting from ceremonial grandeur to severe patience. Senec realized that he would have no time to celebrate as she led him through the shattered temple towards a great clearing. Senec craned his neck upwards, tracing the sheer rise of a cliff before them, punctuated at its zenith with a vast statue, resembling a woman with mouth unnaturally open, her face pocked with small creatures who seemed inexorably drawn towards the gaping hole.
Wasting no words, Lady Traya presented the task to her apprentice: to scale the walls of the smooth stone face while, in his inner mind’s eye, conquering a series of challenges presented by her. The task was daunting, and it might have been easier to shrink before the challenge, accept Lady Traya’s wrath, and slink, ashamed, back to Korriban as a disgraced acolyte. Before him surely lay great risk of death, or of mortal injury, or, perhaps even more sinister, failure. But Senec did not cower, nor did he shrink, instead bowing to his master, taking the grappling claws she handed him, and moving forward, his keen eyes sweeping the cliff before him for signs of weakness and small opportunities.
Slinging one of the grapples upwards, he propelled the hook with the Force to drive it firmly into the rock above, then, grunting, began to pull himself up, girding himself in the dark side to gather the pain in his hands and muscles from the climb and fuel himself with it. His eye lighting firmly on a small, slippery outcropping far above him, he began slinging the grapples in turn to pull himself up farther and farther, his determination keeping him constantly moving upwards up the base of the vast cliff. As he climbed, his mind raced with possibilities to solve his first challenge: the subtle assassination of a Jedi Padawan and his Master. He remained solely focused on the climb and the mental task, not allowing his mind to wander, knowing that before the great lady his mind would be as exposed as his own body would be to blaster fire as he climbed. He strove higher til he reached that small, narrow outcropping and gathered himself a moment, surveying the land beneath him, perching-
-atop a communications tower, narrowly observing the warehouse beneath him. Everything was proceeding according to his plan. Wrapped in the dark side, like a shawl hiding his true features, Senec was undetectable to the frantic Jedi Master that approached, sending off alternating waves of worry and resolve as he followed his apprentice’s mental calls for help to the warehouse below. Had Senec had lips, they would have curled in contempt; it had been a laughably easy matter to capture the young Padawan. Off on his own in the city, he had never sensed the thugs who had traced and captured him until it was too late; Senec’s ability to deaden the novice’s Force senses had made that simple enough. Now the Padawan sat amongst a death trap, guarded heavily by a gang of brutish thugs only too eager to carry out Senec’s orders, the bags of coins in their pockets keeping them anchored to their posts.
Of course, the Padawan reached out in the Force now for his Master’s help, as Senec had planned, and like a dog to his master’s whistle, so the Master came to Senec’s. Here he would face heavy opposition, yet Senec had no doubt that he would succeed and make his way to his beleaguered apprentice.
That is, he would surely do so if Senec did not intervene. Senec dropped, feathers rustling in the air; if any had seen him, they might have marveled at the avian display as he glided in to the top of the warehouse, carefully cushioning himself with the Force. The small use of Force energy would flicker at the edge of the Master’s senses, yet he would already be too busy, caught in a maze of heavy blaster bolts and small arms fire to give much attention to it. All of a sudden, Senec would reach out, and as if literal darkness had swept across the facility, the Master would find himself blind, disoriented, his senses deadened and his Force abilities weakened as Senec unleashed a barrage of Force blindness, Deaden Senses, and Inflict Pain. The Master, caught off-guard, would become desperate as he slashed blindly through the maze of snipers and heavy blaster rifles, still in control, yet incredibly disoriented. Senec would reach out, the brunt of his full concentration focused on breaking the will of the Master who struggled beneath the ceiling of Senec’s perch. Now Senec would begin to break into the other’s mind, feed on his fear and his pain, creating a feedback loop that would allow Senec to access greater power yet. Now rather than causing bald-faced fear with his illusions and tricks, Senec would call on a far more insidious art, planting seeds of doubt and despair in his victim’s mind as he began to doubt what was real or not. Illusions would spring up before him, firing blasters, but no sooner had he cut through them than they would vanish, replaced with a blank wall and crossfire from another direction.
In such a maze of doubt, dread, and despair, it would only be a matter of time until Senec’s thugs reduced the Master to a cowering heap, cut apart by countless blaster bolts. Senec drew in the death cry of the Master through the Force, feeding it into the Padawan’s mind, filling the youth with stark horror and despair. Now, rather than on feeding on the panicked Padawan’s fear, he would amplify it, piercing his mind with further despair and grief until his weak mind snapped like a twig beneath Senec’s pressure.
Senec rose, satisfied. Only a few thugs remained. He need only to enter the warehouse and make a few careful arrangement for his narrative to be complete. Clearly these thugs, having seen the bounty on the head of the Jedi pair, had taken the Padawan captive. While waiting for someone to arrive to claim the bounty, they had encountered unexpected trouble when his Master discovered the location of their base and arrived to save him. He had fought through bitter lines of defense, only to discover - Senec picked up a blaster and shot the limp Padawan in the head - that the thugs had panicked and killed their prize prematurely. In a rage, the Master had fallen upon these last few mercenaries, but, in a last-ditch petty effort to take others with him, one of the mercenaries had activated a thermal detonator - Senec used telekinesis to deposit the Master’s body in the safe room and delicately placed a ticking thermal detonator next to the corpse.
The narrative would be more than clear to any who investigated the scene. Any residual dark side energy would be attributed to the last fury of the Jedi Master as he sought revenge on those who killed his Padawan, only to be caught in the fury of a mercenary detonator that brought his own pathetic life to an end. Senec completed his preparations, then moved back to the top of the warehouse. His remotely controlled fighter appearing above him, he jumped-
-and began his climb anew. He was sure that Lady Traya had witnessed the scenario he had created in his own mind and would be satisfied at its conclusion. Now he climbed higher, the crags above him becoming more cracked, easier to find footholds and handholds, but harder to climb as they began to jut farther outwards. His eyes were nearly clamped shut; he now relied almost solely on pure instinct, moving by the feel of the rock and the small dents and ridges that aided his ascent. The pain was already too much for an old Caamasi to bear, but it was trivial to a Sith; with his eyes open, he was merely a weary elderly man, but centered in the dark side like this, drawing strength from every scratch and ache he bore, he practically flew like his long-lost animal ancestors from precipice to precipice.
As he scrambled up the cliff face, he began to focus on his next mental mission. He would have no opportunity to rest as he continued to climb this time; there were no outcroppings of sufficient size for him to pause and catch his breath. As he raced up the slick stone surface, his mind raced with possibilities, his mind seeming to fly far away from his body, lighting on the grimy, urban surface of the Smuggler’s Moon, Nar Shaddaa. He sunk down, merging into-
-the dingy crowd of smugglers, thieves, and immigrants who shuffled along the narrow streets near one of Nar Shaddaa’s many spaceports. Among them, he was unnoticeable; any who looked at him would just as soon forget him, a talent he had developed and refined in his years of assassination and subterfuge. But Senec’s eye did not rest blankly on the pavement before him like the huddled masses all around him. Beneath his heavy cloak, his eye was eager and attentive, focused on a veritable palace that dominated the skyline before him. He had been scoping out this structure for a week now, masquerading as a jack-of-all-trades, doing odd jobs all around this vast complex. But his moment had finally arrived to strike at its heart; today the mob boss who owned the fortress would be receiving guests, and through a combination of bribery and . . . persuasion, Senec Tinople, famous archaeologist, had found himself on the guest list.
As the sun set on Nar Shaddaa’s increasingly dangerous streets, Senec would doff his heavy, drab cloak, revealing a fine tunic, nothing too extravagant for an itinerant archeologist, but nevertheless worthy of his esteemed position. He would enter, unarmed, and mingle amongst the various refined guests, some political, some celebrities, none of them honest.
Nor was he.
For an hour or so, he would merely mingle, engaging in spirited, sparkling conversations about nothing as each guest secretly sized the other up. And he would be found satisfactory in the suspicious eyes of his fellow guests: a scholarly, learned old gentleman with much to say and much in his past - and a faint air of desperation in his eyes. It would be all to clear to the other patrons that this was a man who clearly needed something - perhaps money, perhaps protection - whatever it was, something that clearly needed a swift, and less than legal, solution.
Finally, the man of the hour arrives, and a dozen or so armed enforcers begin to line the parlor as the mob boss begins to make the rounds amongst his guests. To attack him is ludicrously out of the question; to request a private word would only invite suspicion and a swift uncovering of the murdered victim. But Senec did not intend so crude a solution. An incredibly slender, sharpened filament of transparisteel was pinned amongst the filigree and fibers of his tunic. It was an insultingly simple matter to carefully extricate it with the Force and, almost unseen to the naked eye, even less visible amidst the bustle of a frenetic reception, shoot it bullet-like towards the mob boss. Its incredibly slim and pointed blade would slide into his chest without a hint of pain, perhaps a distracted tug at his garments, but nothing more. At this point, no one would be surprised if the increasingly sickened-looking Caamasi excused himself to the refresher, but Senec restrained himself. It would be suspicious if he were to disappear seconds before the demise of the crime lord, and after all, he now had nothing to hide. With studied politeness, he continued to interact with the other guests, all the while a corner of his mind sliding the needle inexorably to intersect with several vital arteries.
When the crime lord collapsed, of course each guest would be under suspicion, would be held in the fortress, painstakingly searched and questioned by the enforcers and the crime lord’s lackeys. But ultimately, among all the many guests, Senec would be found least likely, having the least motive and certainly the least resolve to kill the crime lord. Thus, after a couple days’ imprisonment, they would have no choice but to let him go, their suspicions directed elsewhere. He strode away, not a care in the world, the crime lord dead in his own lair, and none suspecting the lowly Caamasi to be his killer. He smiled with satisfaction-
-and grabbed the upper ledge of the Dathomir cliff. His climb was far from over; the statue of the silently gaping woman still loomed over him, but he had made it as far as the natural cliff would lead him. He dangled a moment, the final task filling his vision and his imagination.
Then, in a flash, he hurled one of the grappling claws, propelled by the Force through the mouth above him, turned it over in his mind and tugged as it came to a firm latch. He had only to scale this last ascent to arrive at his destination. He began to scramble up-
-the cave in which he knew a few Dathomir witches crouched around a fire. He surveyed the scene carefully. He had arrived at the planet by ship, far from his final destination and had trekked through the dangerous jungle wastes to finally arrive at his target. Unlike so many of his targets, as far as he knew, this one had committed no great wrongs against the Empire. He surmised it was a test more of his own strength than a true execution. Nonetheless, this did not overly concern him. Instead, he merely observed his surroundings and began to make plans.
The Dathomir witch sitting within chattered eagerly with her friends. They had been out all day and night on their rancors, hunting and forming greater bonds with their mounts. Though she was exhausted from the long journey, she was filled with excitement at all they had accomplished. Suddenly, she heard a substantial clatter from outside. Exchanging glances with her fellow witches, they cautiously crept outside, six in number, all armed with a variety of deadly weapons used to hunt and defend themselves and carrying torches scooped from their fire. One pointed to the spot where their rancors should have stood. They were all gone, the ropes that tied them in place snapped. Gone too was the witch that had been guarding them - the witch best among them at handling rancors.
None made a sound; they were all well trained enough to know that three missing rancors meant that great danger could be lurking in the trees nearby. Though outwardly they were as calm and as in sync with the others as a trained special forces team, inside the witch, her heart seemed to thump uncontrollably, the exhaustion of the day catching up to her as the night terrors seemed to loom over her. She frantically tried to restrain herself from panicking, becoming grimly determined to protect her sisters. But her fear seemed to keep rising, almost as if it were out of her control . . .
They were now in the jungle itself, leaving the clearing outside of the cave behind. The wildlife seemed to have gone unnaturally silent, none of the characteristic twittering or buzzing of Dathomir’s night filling her ears, only a grim buzzing. She turned this way and that, now only able to see one of her sisters scanning the forest near her.
Then an earth-shattering roar behind her. She whirled as one of their missing rancors lumbered out of the darkness straight toward her. Sighing in relief, she made straight for it. It was plainly agitated by something, but she grabbed onto it, began to go through the motions of calming it. Its breathing slowed as she soothed it, and for a moment she felt things were back in control, all her fear for nothing.
Her hopes were dashed when she heard a scream echo through the forest. The trees returned to absolute silence afterwards, and her only signal that she had not imagined the scream was the frantically bobbing torchlight of all her sisters converging on a single location. Frantically, she seized the rancor’s bridle and began to lead it towards the location of the scream.
The sight when she arrived was grim: the dead body of a witch, her neck snapped by some unseen force. Again her fear skyrocketed, and she could see the stark sadness and anger on her companions’ faces. One whispered to the others that they must stick together from now on, but she had scarcely finished her sentence when the witch felt as if she had been plunged into darkness. It was as if all the torches and moonlight had disappeared, leaving her in total blindness. Her arms flailed outwards, trying to find something or someone to grab onto. Her ears felt as if they had been covered with noise cancellers.
Now she truly panicked; it was now clear to her that either the Nightsisters had come to visit, or else some other dark deadly power had come to prey on them. She began to call out her sisters’ names, trying to find anything that could help her, beginning to walk and then run with arms hopelessly outstretched. Her aimless run terminated in hitting something very tree-like, and she collapsed. She sprang up and looked around.
Two of her sisters stood before her, clearly now frightened and angered out of their minds. Each held a weapon at the ready. The rancor had once again disappeared. Now the three of them began to move forward in a circle, rotating with their backs outwards towards the surrounding forest, one hand touching their companion and one holding a weapon. Their fear had now melted into a cold, hard will to survive, and she felt a greater kinship with her comrades than ever before.
After a few more minutes of this, they resolved to head back towards their cave. Whatever was hunting them plainly thrived in the forest; if they could just hide in the cave til daybreak, they could face their hunter head on with minimal disadvantage. They turned and began to walk back.
The walk back was excruciatingly long and slow. They moved in tandem as before, watching for any threat. It took them nearly twenty minutes to arrive back at the cave, and absolutely nothing happened. She felt inexpressibly enraged at the randomness of it all, at the fact that her unseen hunters did not dare even to face her. Finally they arrived back at the clearing. The witch in the lead froze, and now she too turned to see all three rancors standing before her. Their eyes made her heart drop.
Their eyes were wild and full of darkness. Before their eyes were full of a dark controlled rage, but soft and full of devotion too. That was all gone now, but it was not a mere reversion to their wild state before. These rancors were full of an unfathomable dark rage. There was a moment of stunned silence as the rancors all perked up at the sight of their former masters. Then the Dathomir jungle exploded into a cacophony of wild shrieks, buzzes, and twittering as the three rancors bellowed in unison and charged.
The Dathomir witches were used to taming rancors, highly skilled at controlling the fearsome beasts and calming them until they served the witches. But these beasts were full of a deep desire to kill that went far beyond their usual defensiveness or even their desire to hunt. There was something frankly murderous in the speed at which they trampled towards the witches and began to viciously swing at them.
The witches kept them at bay with their long spears, but they only barely kept the wildly swinging huge claws of the three rancors from sending them flying like rag dolls. Nevertheless, their defense was flawless, though she was briefly distracted by a dark shape that seemed to emerge from the back of one of the rancors and soar above the witches’ heads. Still, all her attention was focused on keeping the enraged rancors at bay.
Another scream, and she watched yet another sister crumple to the floor, the one on the rightmost flank. Instantly, the rancors charged once more, beginning to surround the witches with the relentless tactics of a hunting pack. Even this terrifying sight could not hold a torch to what stood behind them though.
She swore in disbelief. Behind her prowled a Dathomirian ssurian, its reptilian jaws dripping with venomous saliva, its eyes seeming to almost glow with malice. She and her comrade looked at each other and both turned to run; both were exceedingly nimble and could easily lose even rampaging rancors in the jungle beyond. But before they could escape, the great tail of the monstrous reptile swept in front of them, stopping them in their tracks. In abject terror, they put their backs to each other, her sister facing the rancors and she futilely watching the ssurian creep closer and closer, seeming to almost gloat in its inevitable victory.
She spoke swift quiet words to her sister, and they resolved that this struggle would end here, that they would go forth and challenge their beastly foes and die where they stood in battle. She did not watch as her companion charged towards the terrifying trio, tried not to listen as the screams behind her intensified and then quickly stopped. Instead she looked the ssurian in the eye.
Stepping forth, she paced towards the reptile, inwardly surprised it did not immediately pounce. Each step increased her confidence. She was now sure of her demise, but she found a strange comfort in it. With each step, she quickened her pace until she broke out in a run towards the creature. Only a few feet from the creature, she came to an astonishing realization: that she had mastered her fear, and it had scattered and disappeared like the morning dew that had just begun to touch the grass around her.
Newly determined, she raised her spear and charged, then leapt, her fear gone . . .
And as her fear disappeared, so did the ssurian, replaced with a single black-clad figure, its back bent even as it leaned forward with something in its hands.
She could do nothing to halt her momentum. Helplessly, with far too much momentum, she fell towards the mysterious figure, the object in its hands resolving itself into one of her sister’s spears, its tip plunging through her chest into her heart. She came to a complete stop, impaled on the end of the spear, her limp body suddenly very alone in the Dathomir jungle, her remains’ only companions now a trio of ravenous rancors.
Senec slipped back into the jungle and observed from a distance with complete satisfaction. This was a masterwork, a true symphony of dark power employed in the most sinister and sabotaging ways. Each power he had used had only further isolated, scared, and entrapped the lone hunting party, until they finally fell, all victims to his hidden hand or to their own mounts and weapons. With a nod, he turned-
-and found himself standing atop the monument, its jagged teeth behind him as he surveyed the inside of the great statue. His body was truly exhausted, taxed to its uttermost limits by the climb and prompted to go beyond those limits by use of the Force. His mind too seemed to throb with the energy of devising and mentally executing each of his plans, complex and layered as they were. Nonetheless, inwardly, he felt a great satisfaction. Rather than turning to run, he had conquered the seemingly insurmountable obstacle before him, and he now only waited to receive judgment from his master.
Results: 10 well earned prestige
Second task pending.
Tag: @Senec Tinople
