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Well the robes were definitely ruined. She shuffled through her duffel sack to find another outfit and saw another bloodstained set of light linen. The same she had been wearing when she had met the Mandalore. The memory causes a shiver to run up her spine. But regrettably the gown was ruined, and she tossed the bundle into the trash receptacle. She did not throw away the dark brown fatigues of the Naboo Royal Starfighters however, and packed them with care into where the collection of dresses once had been in the duffle bag, before donning the light grey tunic that she had been provisioned. She pulled her soft leather boots on, wrapped her torso with the flightbelt she had been wearing for the last week and a half, and placed the gold circlet on her brow. Within a few minutes she was in the designated place her new master had required her to be. She took a seat on the bench and waited.

“Do not let small defeats and dismays bring your spirit low.” She laid her hand lightly on the apprentice’s back as they stepped into the Refugee Triage unit. “You must take each encounter in stride. Do not rely on pride to bolster yourself, and do not embrace dismay. Encounter everything with a desire to learn. I am not disappointed in you, nor do I reject your appeal to become my apprentice. So chin up, and you may want to hold your breath when we enter the ward.” For someone who had trained under the great healers on the old Gala Temple, Sandy still was affected every time she walked into a triage. Pain echoed through the force, mixed with the copper smell of blood, and the stench of vomit, it would bring many able beings to turn and walk away. But it did not deter the young Jedi Apprentice and nor did it deter Sandy. Except the slight tingle of danger that ran up her spine at the arrival of the Twi’lek and her droid. She gave the black skinned twi’lek a look of appraisal, before putting her hand on her apprentice’s arm. Indicating him to put away his training blade, for there was no threat in Keenava’s eyes or aura. She inclined her head to the older woman in greeting then looked back to Ruin. “Thank you for bringing her to me, please give my dearest affections to your master. And best of luck to you in your hunts.” She waved for the Twi’lek to come closer and for her to walk beside young Meku as they began to enter the medical ward. Most of the screaming was dulled by the soundproofed curtains that were strung between each long line of beds, but it was still very audible, causing Sandy to have to raise her voice. “We are here to heal and serve, you are most welcome to join us if you are up for the task. Keep an eye for the black tags. They are the ones that only the force can save.” She would get to know the Twi’lek as they worked, just as she would get to know Meku. There was nothing to be ashamed or nervous about. She was glad the ebony twi’lek had left the shadows of the darkside behind her. And only time would tell if she would be bale to stay away from its temptations. She pulled aside a curtain on a black tagged triage unit and saw a long line of victims, some dozen or so laid out as neatly as possible, hooked up to little more than pain medications to keep them from screaming their way into the grave. She knelt beside the bedside of a silent and horribly burned young woman. Human. Late teens. A survivor of one of the many evacuation shuttles that had been shelled by the sith on their way out of the gravity well projectors. A single glance at the holographic chart explained it, the burns were radiological and had come from one of the decimator torpedoes that the Sith had been using. “Now both of you sit beside me.” She waited until they had knelt beside her then she placed both of her hands onto the huge and seeping wounds. “Watch, learn, and consider.” Her eyelids fluttered closed and she let the force flow through her. Gathering in its tides and waves as she began to reach out to the young woman at her fingertips. Pain, suffering, despair, guilt. It all roiled out of the young woman, like the waves of radiation that had melted and burned her flesh. “Many wounds, both physical and mental, have their source in the mind.” Her voice was so soft. Barely above a whisper as she concentrated. “The body will obey the mind always, even to the point of destroying itself and giving up a struggle it can win.” The force echoed in the young woman’s pain. Flashing horrible memories with each unsteady heartbeat. A life long in its suffering. Slavery, freedom, family, death, despair, agony. Each thought and idea flashed before her eyes like she had been seeing them herself. But deep below the pain, in the farthest crevasse of the memory she could feel the hope. The joy of family, even the sad and resolute joy of a family now gone. A love that could never be taken away. A love that would endure through a long recovery. “In life, even in the pain, there is love and there is joy to find solace in. From the smallest memory or love, or desire, they are enough to carry this woman through what is to come. And when she has recovered enough, she can choose for herself how to go forward.”

What a fucking duel. Just to give you guys an idea, This duel took 3 mods nearly an hour to decide who won because you both did so well and performed so close to each other. You both had good, bad, and fantastic, And even the bad was completely in character and narratively excellent. The idea of two of the greatest Mandalorians alive spiralling through the air in a brutal deathmatch was well portrayed here, from Terra's paranoia and sense of betrayal to Tros's desire to take disarm her and take her alive. If they ever duel again I'll be reading every post. Now, onto the meat of the duel: First and foremost, Terra's final post. In her attack, she grabs Tros's grappling hook and uses it to pull herself towards him to stab him in the collar. It's an excellent move, but grabbing your opponent's weapon and manipulating it for your attack is a very grey area. It works here since the nature of a grapple attack like this is to tether the two fighters, and in doing this Terra isn't undoing Tros's attack or taking actions beyond using it for it's intended purpose- to close the gap. I would not recommend trying this often due to the innate grey area of manipulating an opponent's weapon to your advantage in a closed way like this. Tros, your first post was a bit of a whiff. You made one attack against a target that you were informed was not a part of the duel. While thematic in the situation, and definitely in character, not making an attack in your first post is definitely not the greatest move for a duel post. In the future, I would treat things like this as part of the setup and make your attacks separate for the round. The barest edge was decided in the final post. While Terra is at a disadvantage, being without a jump pack or electronics to alter her course, Tros seems intent to engage her on this front with the intent of using his own blade. The deciding factor was that Terra was approaching rapidly with a long-reaching spear, and Tros hadn't even drawn his blade yet. You both did phenomenally and should both be proud, but Terra is the victor, and has next post.

As the black scarab plummeted towards the surface, the warriors aboard the Rabid Muumuu gave out a victory cheer. Their enemy had lost control and were falling to their doom. Their souls had been defeated, and the ancestors of each kaleesh on board would nod in approval. Death had been dealt to the enemy, and they remained. Agent Qessax however stood perfectly still, eyes widened with horror, and panic began to set in. "Do not stop yet!" Qessax commanded, sobering his men instantly. "We are not out of range! Get us out of range now! Full speed away from the scarab! Loose all scrap and move!" The crew obeyed. Only now under their commanders orders did they see the threat that remained. The explosion rocked the rapid muumuu like a canoe on a title wave. Agent Qessax grabbed the control panel and braced himself as the ship tumbled and shook over itself. Only the distance and the fully charged shields saved the ship from complete destruction, as everyone aboard stumbled and fell over themselves, crashing into panels, walls, and floors.. "Damage report!" The damage was severe. Engines were knocked out. Shields were completely fried. They were sitting ducks. Fear began to set in again in the Imperial agents mind, working in overdrive. "Get those engines working immediately. I don't want to be picked off in our hour of victor-" Qessax stopped. His men were no longer cheering, nor frantically clinging to their posts like scsred animals. They were laughing. Qessax looked down and realized why. His black imperial uniform, usually pressed and well taken care of, had completely ripped along the sides and past his crotch, revealing everything underneath. Qessax, after a moment of comprehension, began to laugh too. "What's the matter you cowards? Ashamed of seeing a rabid muumuu on the rabid muumuu?" The laughter broke into a roar, as everyone cheered, chanted and danced in victory. Each warrior, tense to the very end, relieved themselves of all the stress that had been built up. They had won. They were victorious. True, the costs had been great. Possibly too great for some. But for the kaleesh warriors, who were accustomed to small fire fights and raids, this was a tremendous victory. His elder brother handed the agent his cape to cover up. Having done so, Qessax kicked his boots off and stretched his clawed toes on the metal floor. It wasn't like any imperial would be mad for breaking dress code at this point. All of his clothes had been aboard the… Qessax instantly sobered up as he looked at the wreckage of the Constantine. His mentors corpse laid somewhere amongst the wreckage. A wave of grief washed over the warrior, nearly collapsing forward onto a control board. The one saving grace that prevented Qessax from breaking down completely was his own personal beliefs. The Grand Moff had earned a worthy death after a worthy life of battle. He would be immortalized in kaleesh tales to come. "Men…" Qessax spoke out. "Get the ship's engines working, and acknowledge all orders sent to us. We will move to the rendezvous when we are able"

A moon and its surface-spanning city burning below them. The Sith fleet above them. A star dreadnought in the middle of their formation–or, what was left of it. Far in the distance, a stardock that was being strafed by Sith starfighters. And all around them, scattered wreckage and escape pods, each a pinprick of light that was blotted out by the conflagration of the moon that they had attempted to defend. The Sith were not accepting surrender. Even escape pods had become targets of opportunity in this infamous butchery. At this point, every member of Admiral Slaughter’s task force who was near a sensor readout, from starship captain to gunnery crew to starfighter pilot, understood that they had found themselves in the sort of scenarios throughout the galaxy celebrated with solemnity. This had become one of those days of doomed heroism, when a small band of determined defenders were besieged by an overwhelming force. All of those days ended the same way. They were all going to die. Throughout that overmatched task force, a peculiar breakdown of discipline began to unfold. Not a single sapient shirked their duty. There were no calls to abandoned doomed vessels. Crewmen chose to ignore closing blast doors and alarms of hull breaches, rather than escape and save their lives. Even pilots had begun going down with their stricken starfighters, trying to guide their exploding vessels into a nearby hostile or fire away a few more cannon blasts, rather than trigger their ejection seats. That was exactly the problem. Nobody was leaving their posts. For example, when Piorun was struck by an entire octuplet of turbolaser batteries and was set afire from stem to stern, not a single escape pod alighted from the hull of that doomed Corellian Gunship. She continued to race along the keel of Black Scarab, a burning missile in search of its target. Waggling madly as its helmsman struggled to keep the ship on course despite the fact that one of its engines was burning and another was flickering with unsteady thrust, she eventually found it: the keel hangar of the star dreadnought. The DP20 frigate set its entire reactor output into thrust, trusting that a hundred meter-long corvette crashing into a chamber filled with fuel lines and warheads and replacement starfighters would cause far more damage than its remaining weapons. On the opposite side of the star dreadnought, Vigilant, a Carrack-class cruiser whose memory stretched back to the Open Circle Fleet that had bested Grievous at Coruscant, continued to orbit the command superstructure of Black Scarab. The blocky vessel continued to spit its meager allotment of turbolasers by aid of the Mark-One Eyeball alone–its sensors had been knocked out about a minute ago–in an attempt to score a lucky hit that would disable a shield generator. This was an impossible scenario for a light cruiser, and it soon lost its engines, and then the remainder of its armament and any sign of power on board. L’Ouverture and Gerrera continued their scissors assault on the surrounded dreadnought, heedless of the smaller ships that had turned to target them. The two Victory-class Star Destroyers bobbed in and out behind the cover of Fidelity, relying on the bulk of the disabled MC90 cruiser to protect it from Black Scarab and a few of the Victory-classes. That tough old battle-wagon had had armor blasted off all over its hull from the attempts of the Sith to obliterate the smaller ships… but… then an errant volley was repelled from its hull with a flash of azure light rather than an incandescent spray of molten alloy. A few batteries blasted crimson towards Black Scarab and her entire hull shuddered as a single engine cluster flared haltingly. Gradually and painfully, Slaughter’s flagship was coming back to life. As for Kalidor, when the one-winged eagle was struck by yet another turbolaser volley, several batteries were hit and set on fire with jets of burning charges. Rather than screaming for medics and abandoning the doomed positions, the wounded gunners, some of them clutching grievous wounds in an attempt to stop loss of blood or organs, jumped back into the burning hulks of the great guns. They fired shot after shot at point-blank range until either their guns or their bodies gave way to the fire. The cruiser managed to complete its traverse of the Black Scarab’s keel, only to come to a stop directly under one of its engine clusters so closely that she resembled a parasite clinging to a host. _______ Yeoman Chambers stood by Admiral Slaughter’s side, hands shaking with adrenaline as she held a wired comlink to the Admiral’s mouth. His voice was guttural and strained as he spoke, and his shortness of breath was forcing him to pause every few seconds. “Initiate self-destruct sequence, confirmation code Besh-Senth-Cresh…” a long series of numbers and military phonetic letters followed. Getting the sequence of words correct and in order actually wasn’t important. There were precise contingency codes that Slaughter could recite that would cause him to get locked out of Kalidor’s computers, or dispatching a silent distress signal, but for initializing a standard self-destruct sequence, it was the voice recognition that served as his authorization. This assumed that his voice wasn’t so altered by his groans of pain that his voice wasn’t unrecognizable to the bridge computers. Slaughter cursed again when another direct hit from Black Scarab caused the deckplates to jump under his feet, jostling the transparisteel plate in his chest. That was followed by another curse from the medics at side; blood began to ooze from his abdomen again. “Self-destruct confirmed, counting down five minutes,” came the serene, androgynous reply from the speakers. When that countdown terminated, the reactors aboard Kalidor would detonate with a quantity of force best used to describe stellar collisions. It would cause the hull to fragment like an enormous hand grenade and would spray debris all over the keel of Black Scarab, centering on its wounded engines. “Good. Get me to the helm. Signal…” Slaughter took a deep breath. “Signal abandon ship. Someone’s gotta keep… her steady.” Knowing that he had approximately five minutes remaining in his life did not provide Slaughter with any self-aware moments of clarity. He did not reflect on the fact that he was about to die while refusing to leave his station, in much the same fashion as his deceased wife. He did not think on a life of decades of service to a republic that made him, pulled him out of a Coruscanti slum and put weapons and schooling in his hands. He just stared into the sensor overlay at his command post, glaring at the imposing shadow of Black Scarab as though he could kill it through sheer force of will. It was more than the fact that the Rebel Alliance needed to defeat the Sith flagship, as it was a critical resource that could defeat entire fleets unsupported. He needed to see that ship dead, to have its shade wiped from his memory. Only… the stretcher was not being pushed towards the helm. He was being pulled away–towards the portal of the bridge, towards his shuttle bay. “Sorry, Admiral. Can’t let you do that.” “Besides, she has foot pedals!” chimed in the Twi’lek helmsman, most helpfully. “You won’t be able to operate the controls in your state.” “What! Damn you, let me do this!” Slaughter coughed on something and had to take a deep breath. The medics were now trying to shove something fiendish and plastic over his mouth and into his throat. He pushed it away even as he was being carted towards his shuttle. “Do not–let me take the helm–do not take this from me!”

The Ancillary Justice spit salvos of torpedos, their lingering streaks in the clouding the void of space with telltale trails of impending destruction, her point defense lasers offering an otherworldly glow about the Victory I Star Destroyer as she fought with all that she had against the press of the Sith forces and the fleet about the Raven’s Bane. Beside her, rebel craft fell away like chaff, their shields and lives burned out in the onslaught. Before her, Sith fighters and support craft belched gouts of flame into the void as they were overcome by the furiousness of the Allied press, a final charge. So even as @Mavanger’s message was relayed to Vangar Longfang, he only nodded. An acknowledgement he had heard the announcement nothing more as the Harrower star destroyer that moved to block his path to his prize began to list, explosions rocking it’s bridge and main thrusters. As if in slow motion, the massive steel frames of the warships moved, a silent dance of death above the burning skies of Nar Shaddaa; however, it was anything but slow as the craft plunged through space at bear hypersonic levels in their deadly game. Arcing upwards to come around the floating wreckage, the Ancillary Justice unleashed a final salvo, their rocket trails tracing after the sudden departure of the Sith warship and her few remaining supporting vessels. Vangar cursed under his breath, a tirade of foulness in a language known only to those few of his kind aboard the bridge. In a moment, it was over, the Ancillary Justice turning as if on a hinge to cut through the few remaining craft too disabled to jump that continued to fight. With her own fleet dwindling, the hulking destroyer cut like a knife through bantha butter to join up with the others, her few fellow survivors forming up alongside her in a picket line of Imperial and Rebel defiance against the oppressive weight of the Sith. Fearsome Tie bombers were escorted by flights of X wings. Swift Tartan Patrol Cruisers provided protective screens for a limping Mon Cal electronic warfare ship as it moved to continue the fight, a wounded animal intent on not letting her final breaths be in vain. Together with others, they moved to join up with @Qessax Jal Todda and the Rabid Muumuu and @Beck Pilon, the Fiat Lux and her fleet to drive like the thrust of a hunter’s spear into the side of the Black Scarab, one of the few remaining Sith flagships in the fray. Surging forward, the aged warship’s shields lit beneath the fire of the Sith as it cut through fighter wings and makeshift blockades. She, her crew, and her captain, like a wolf and a fox, were intent on their prey. This time, they would not escape. With the full focus of a predatory beast, Vangar and his crew of Outer Rim cast offs, many unfit for the posh life of the core worlds, gage chase. And yet in the back of his mind, the Barabel commander knew. He turned the short broadcast over in his mind. The Empress had fallen…could it be true? The visage of the Misercordia’s demise flashed in his memory. Surely if she had been found aboard an escape pod, it would be made known. To lose such a figurehead would be a devastating blow and the fleeing Sith knew it. The rebels will break…words said as if a statement of fact; and Vangar could not deny it. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, every soul aboard the Ancillary Justice redoubled their efforts without order or instruction, intent on proving the secondary statement a lie. Vangar’s only hope was that somewhere, safe and secure and far away, the Empress had been reborn anew, a clone of her original self awaiting a triumphant return to her people. With a clawed finger, Vangar pointed at the shield arrays of the Black Scarab. “Bring all fire to bear on the shield generators and open up a transmission line to the remaining Sith fleet.” Soon enough, the grizzled gray scaley face and protruding bladed maw of the predatory Barabel would hoover over the souls of Sith crewman and commanders. “Your fleet is broken. Your commanders flee into the night. Surrender and you will be spared. Do not and you will be destroyed. Long live the Empire.” And then with a quick chopping gesture to his throat, the transmission ended. There was no hesitation. Those who wished to surrender would make it known. The rest would be hunted, trapped, and destroyed.

Silence and stillness. That was the Jedi Grandmaster’s response. Her eyes darted from side to side, from the expressionless mask that the Dark Lord wore, to a sensor readout in the tactical pits of the bridge, to the burning surface of the moon in the distance… to one of the masked shocktroopers at her side. Even if the polished breastplate that the soldier wore hid the rise and fall of his breath, it could be seen in the rhythmic waver of the barrel of the carbine pressed against his shoulder. No, it wasn’t just rise and fall with respiration; the barrel was trembling. It wasn’t just the trembling of an adrenaline rush. Behind the expressionless helmet and opaque eyepieces was a mind just barely beyond the grasp of terror. And back to the void of space. Black Scarab, despite having been the focus of much of the ire of the Rebel Alliance, appeared to still be operational. Some twisted mind was directing most of the carnage against Nar Shaddaa, in imitation of one of the sadistic warlords that Draygo had slain some decades ago–only, she had succeeded in exsanguinating that creature before he could bombard Csilla. Now, she was many kilometers away, confronting the person who employed these butchers. Killing this child wouldn’t change anything–it wouldn’t save a single sapient, wouldn’t put an end to the butchery. It wouldn’t even be personally satisfying. It would barely even be exercise. Whatever its intentions were, Armiena decided that The Force had not placed her on this bridge with the intention of having her slaughter a few thousand more sapient beings. Even if there was still murder in Draygo’s hands, there was now a smile in her eyes–one that made the stormtrooper to her left tense, recognizing the expression of a woman that was about to do something unimaginably risky. Her fingers unclasped the hook of her belt. Before the heavy leather could slip from her waist, she tossed it forward, to slam at the deck before the Empress’ fleet. The metallic clang of the twin lightsabers crashed like the end of an epoch. One of the weapons, a hilt with a helical pattern carved around its circumference, popped free of its clip and rolled away. Bebop, who had somehow managed to roll several meters away without being detained, blurted out a disbelieving mechanical waaaaaat. Draygo just stared the Empress in the eye-slats and flashed the smile of a woman who suspected her imminent death. Her right hand was gripping the fold of her tunic, white-knuckled, in an attempt to stop the arm from shaking. “I place myself in your power, Empress. Fighting you will serve no purpose. If you being your withdrawal, I suspect you will find that the Rebel Alliance is in no position to further prosecute this battle.”