Darth Nyrys

“I feel like I traded one form of doubt for another. I was having… concerns about what the Sith path was doing to me, and whether I wanted to keep running down it. I thought that I was having a moment of clarity, like waking up from a bad dream, and all I wanted to do was lay my head down and rest. I thought that I was finding some sort of closure or peace with the galaxy, but I now know that I was just losing my way, losing my grip on what I had become. When I came back, disillusioned of the peace that had momentarily seduced me, I was convinced that I had failed because I was too weak by measure of raw power. I started down a new path blindly chasing what I thought would give me the power I needed, but in the end I just felt disconnected from myself, trading away pieces of who I was for phantom promises.” She moved her hand across his forearm, springing the vibroblade into action, the surface distorted by constant motion. With casual curiosity she pressed the blade through the palm of her hand, and noted that she only felt an odd pressure, no pain from its razor kiss. Blood oozed from the wound with languid hesitation. “I feel so very numb, a dispassionate observer of my own existence. I think I know how to find my way back to myself, but I’m going to need your help to do it. You’re an anchor point whose fetters I can climb to reach that place again.” The longer that she inhabited this state of being, the more abhorrent it became to her. It was a hollow shell of porcelain, devoid of passion, and sensation, and thrill. She pulled strands of desire from one of the ghosts that haunted her lover, and in a stolen moment of passion she tore off his helmet and pressed her lips against his. For the sweetest moment some measure of her forgotten vitality was present, but it vanished with damnable brevity. It would take more wraiths and faded echoes than had ever forlornly tread upon the worlds to truly recapture the storm and the fury of her vibrant lust for life, or even just her regular lust. In spite of the pain that he had caused her, Ca’aran had always been her favorite, and nostalgic aches in her still heart told her that it was best that he was the one that was here. “It’s hard for me to show you right now how much I’ve missed you, but I’ll do my damnedest. Especially once we’re alone.” The shuttle landed, with the pilot giving a look to ascertain that they were sure that this was the location. She departed the shuttle with an otherworldly grace that might have been mistaken for gliding with her legs concealed by the dress draped around this cage of frail bone and rotten flesh. Taking her companion by the hand, she led him into the murk and decrepit opulence of her new bed of bones. The grand double doors of the entrance foyer retreated inward at her approach, granting them passage inside. The manor whispered to her, its insides quaking and groaning with anticipation at what it thought was a meal meant for it. Ravenous shades gathered along the periphery of reality, forms coiled to pounce at the new presence. “I’m going to mark you up with blood before we get started, and draw some of your blood. Don’t worry, it won’t be from anywhere arterial. Once the ritual starts, think about me and only me, I’ll be doing my best to hold your attention and keep you focused, both with my feminine wiles and a bit of sorcery. The basic idea of this ritual is to use my power and your desire to have me be alive to force reality to conjure up a living vessel for me to claim. You’d be amazed at what the galaxy will offer you if you spank it hard enough. Oh, and you’ll want to take your armor off, because you will get wet on this ride.” The sorceress began using the coagulated blood from the wound on her hand to mark her lover with runic sigils of power, desire, and obsession. Whispering in his ear she wove a gossamer web of need, desperation, and thirst. It was a potent but fragile spell, she didn’t want to break his mind like the last person that she did this too. “With blood of the hated enemy, taken by blade, I mark the petitioner and make our intentions known. We seek to make whole what was stolen from us, to break and reform the world to what should be rather than what is.” She took Ca’aran’s arm, biting down until crimson joy gushed into her mouth. It was like putting her tongue on a reactor powering a city, and for a brief moment she considered exploring this new path. This was different from her past experiences with cannibalism, more akin to the act of seizing life energies, whereas before it had been about sensual consummation and physicality. She swallowed and felt vital fire sweep down her throat and surge through her limbs. It took every ounce of her willpower to finish the invocation instead of jumping the Ca’aran… the gun and ruining everything. “WIth blood of the petitioner, given in sacrifice, I anoint the vessel and the one that was lost.” She could have handpicked a new vessel to inhabit, stealing another life, but she was done with being other people. She tore off the dress, it was never really her anyway. Calling upon her own hunger, she drew in the wraiths around her like flitmoths to an open flame, consuming their ancient passions like an ashen banquet. “Now we turn that which makes life into that which defies death, and if the natural order protests, well, bite the pillow. Now Ca’aran, do it! Don’t hold back, and think only of me.” They pressed together with manic energy, and while there was no sense of instinct or animal desire to guide her, she pushed herself physically and spiritually to make the moment dominated by her beguilement. Dark figures came out of the blackness, chanting in ancient Sith dialects. She hadn’t expected any spectators, but between the dire necessity of the ritual’s success and the heady cocktail of stripped passions that she had just consumed, she just went with it. She felt the emotions fading, slipping away. She tried harder, desperation and panic now starting to take hold. It didn’t matter. There was no faking it till you make it here. It was soul crushing as the last sands of passion slipped through her fingers. Her body went limp with despair, too depressed to keep up the facade of life, and her face disappeared beneath the turgid waters. She couldn’t actually drown, being undead and all, but wishing she could was an absolute mood that she was having. From somewhere deep in her primal core, a repressed terror broke from its chains and surged through her mind like a wailing banshee. She had no idea where this lost memory had originated from, but it was definitively hers, and in spite of her inability to recall any details, felt foundational to her most dearly held convictions. The fear of drowning struck her like a tidal wave, but she repositioned her lover’s hands to keep her under. This was what she needed, a connection to a formative moment so strong that it had followed her beyond the veil of death. Fortunately for Ca’aran, her current form was too feeble to do anything more than thrash around as he kept her submerged. The universe twisted and cracked a bit, and then a smell like burnt ozone pervaded the room. She kissed her lover long and hard, even if the ritual wasn’t done, he was, in the infuriating way that males were. She felt the same now, but surely there had been something in that moment. “Was it good for you too?” She felt something inside of her, a presence both unrecognizably alien and intimately familiar. It blazed like thermite inside of her and for the first time she was really glad that she couldn’t feel pain. Her abdomen became distressingly swollen as the invader swelled in size and intensity, tearing her apart from the inside. She felt a call from within and she followed her own voice to a new place. Within, both storm and inferno gained wicked strength until an explosion of dark and strange creation and the cage of feeble bones and rotten flesh was broken. The raw intensity of the ritual’s final opus vaporized the murky waters into steam, blanketing the room in obscuring clouds of wet heat. Darth Nyrys rose to her feet atop the ruins of her old body, and for the first time ever, she felt like she was exactly who she was meant to be. Her skin was an angry red, and her hair black silk. Her face felt neither human or cathar, possessing protrusions unfamiliar to her. Most importantly though, her body breathed and felt and sang with vitality. “Do you think that we could get delivery out here? I feel like I could eat an entire nerf by myself.”

Round Three Fleet Results Attackers Defensive Actions |Alexandra| detaches from |Anastasia| |Phobos| Guards |Aeneas| |Fleet Commander Starfighter Action| Interception(Forward Deployment) Attackers Offensive Actions |Aeneas| attacks |Wings of Glory| which takes 8 DPS |Fleet Commander Starfighter Action| Bombers Inbound on |Wings of Glory| 3 dps (Covered by interceptors, reduced two points to shield damage) |Fleet Commander Starfighter Action| Bombers Inbound on |Wings of Glory| 3 dps (Covered by interceptors, reduced two points to shield damage) All Task Forces retreat Defenders Defensive Actions Defense Heavy Brawler Escort: Hammer and Anvil (Colossus) is covering Golan Engineering Support Cluster: Bucket Brigade (Chariot) is covering Phantom's Spear Mobile Disruption Escort: Net of Hate covering Phantom's Spear Interception (Forward Deployment) Defenders Offensive Actions |Vulcan| attacks |Sairdonga| for 8 points of DPS, launching ordnance at Sairdonga that will hit next round |Sith Resurgent| attacks |Alexandra| which takes 6 damage |Phantom Spear| attacks |Alexandra| which takes 4 damage (This includes the minus two penalty for stacking fire and the partisans) |Through Power, Victory| attacks |Anastasia|, but is intercepted by |Alexandra| for 4 damage (AWC attacks at fast speed) |Golan| attacks |Sairdonga| for 4 damage Bombers Inbound on |Sairdonga| (Veteran Destroyer), Forward interception shifts one damage to shields Three Bombers Inbound on |Romanova| for 9 damage(One of which from each attack is converted to shield damage by forward interception) Technical errors reduce shields on the |Sairdonga| by three, it's probably nothing... Technical errors reduce shields on the |Anastasia| by three, must be a bad motivator... Technical errors reduce reduce shields on the |Misercordia| by three, checking for mynocks... No cloaked ships detected

"I mean, with bestest friends pants are usually optional, but if you want to be a prude, yeah, we can find some pants for you. As for equipment, there's a full on military base here, or if you want to get creative I'm about to set up a workshop at the new place that I'm working on turning into an evil lair, as one does." Darth Nyrys gestured to Delta's soldiers, "Lets get some clothes for the man so that you crazy kids can finally get some rack time." The troopers quickly found some measure of clothing for the magical angry hobo, no doubt motivated by the mention of a brief reprieve. As they searched, Nyrys felt a familiar presence begin to claw at her mind, a part of herself that she had thought lost. She had commissioned smugglers to retrieve her gear lost on Corellia, expecting it to all be a slagged into useless hunks of scrap with naught but sentimental value, yet the energies were too strong for that to be true. The beast that struck you down did not linger, instead trusting in the lie that the Light is greater than the Dark. Much that could have perished was allowed to persist, and the fire was greatly doused by your own choices and the spirits of our dearly departed kin. There's a way back, if you wish it my dear alley cat, or you can continue on this new path with my guidance. "I wasn't strong enough to defeat her, even at the height of my rage my attacks were cast aside casually. If I want to protect the people I care about I can't hold back, I need to embrace a deeper darkness, even if it will cost me." You were beaten by a master that was using both the light and the dark, with a skill set practically tailored to specifically ruining a warrior's day. I have no reservations about you learning sorcery, but do it for the right reasons. Besides, the galaxy has a tendency to balance out these occasional imbalances in the Force, I've seen it happen time and time again over the years. "There's never going to be peace is there?" You had peace when you died. You don't want peace, you want justice. All of those years growing up on imperial human centric worlds and going through education surrounded by xenophobic little goblins who constantly got away with breaking every rule that you tried to exactingly follow, you raged against the injustice of your plight. Peace is a lie, but the dark side offers many pathways to true and meaningful vengeance. Just focus on what matters, the galaxy will never stop burning, but we can choose who gets used as the kindling that keeps the blaze going. "I've been running from asking this for a long time, but is Mom okay? Something had to have happened to you or else you would have picked up a comm instead of... haunting me, I guess." She misses you, but the disease that once ravaged her is gone, destroyed by my sorcery. I had to die to pull it off, but your mother was worth it, and it also gives me the ability to keep a spectral eye on you and dispense sagely wisdom when you need it. But right now you need to be scampering off and forging your destiny or whatever it is you crazy kids call it these days. Nyrys was sure that the soldiers were used to seeing Sith do weird stuff like talking to people who weren't there, so she didn't worry overly much about what they had just seen. They exited the hospital with haste only to find a woman outside of marked determination and purpose. Her intent came off of her like waves of heat and windborn sand, balanced with the refinement of an educated upbringing. The woman had the potential to be a valuable asset to the order, if her training didn't break her. But there was a name held tightly in her mind, and Nyrys wasn't one to poach apprentices. "Looks like you have a new friend waiting for you. Maybe you should have waited on the pants. We'll be at this location if you decide to join up with us." She pinged the coordinates and contact info to a freshly provided comm. ----------------------------------- The museum staff, quite used to getting shipments of bizarre origin for their mysterious masters, simply hauled the crate off while one of the foremen transferred payment over to the smugglers, double the agreed upon amount as a bonus for the speedy recovery. Darkwatch would take the package to its final destination, for the sake of security. ----------------------------------- Crisis averted, the pair headed back out, with some prisoners with jobs and her gear heading out to meet them on site. Officially, she had tagged Ca'aran as performing special duties, which in a way was true. Unofficially, she had hoped that he could be a distraction from her new... situation. Alas, the sensations and passions of mortality were muted to her now. The memories of those things were there, and she longed to feel them again, but they eluded her like the details of half remembered dreams. She had a decision to make. As they left the safety of the city walls and plunged into the wilds, the compound and the mansion within loomed malevolently at the edge of her senses. The half sunken nature of the mansion appealed to her in her current state, a resonance that at the time was hard to explain. Dead things belonged beneath the surface.

Round Two Fleet Results Attackers Defensive Actions |Alexandra| Guards |Anastasia| |Phobos| Guards |Aeneas| |Fleet Commander Starfighter Action| Interception(Forward Deployment) Attackers Offensive Actions |Romanova| + |Sairdonga| Attack |Wings of Glory| 12 total DPS |Death Harvest Catchers| Attack |Phantom's Spear| Dealing 4 dps and reducing Incoming DPS by 2 |Sith Eaters| Attack |Sith Resurgent| but are intercepted by |Net of Hate| dealing 4 dps |Aeneas| attacks |GSDP| but is intercepted by |Colossus| which takes 8 DPS, launching ordnance at Wings of Glory that will land next round |Anastasia| attacks |Phantom's Spear|2x Bombers inbound 6 dps (Covered by Forward Interception, turning hull damage to shield damage) |Fleet Commander Starfighter Action| Bombers Inbound on |Sith Resurgent| 3 dps (Covered by interceptors, reduced to shield damage) |Fleet Commander Starfighter Action| Bombers Inbound on |Sith Resurgent| 3 dps (Covered by interceptors, reduced to shield damage) Defenders Defensive Actions Defense Heavy Brawler Escort: Hammer and Anvil (Colossus) is covering Golan Engineering Support Cluster: Bucket Brigade (Chariot) is covering Sith Resurgent Mobile Disruption Escort: Net of Hate covering Sith Resurgent Interception (Forward Deployment) Defenders Offensive Actions |Vulcan| attacks |Aeneas| 8 points of DPS, launching ordnance at Sairdonga that will hit next round |Sith Resurgent| attacks |Alexandra| which takes 6 damage |Phantom Spear| attacks |Alexandra| which takes 2 damage (This includes the minus two penalty for stacking fire and the partisans) |Through Power, Victory| attacks |Anastasia|, but is intercepted by |Alexandra| for 6 damage |Golan| attacks |Romanova| for 4 damage Bombers Inbound on |Sairdonga| (Veteran Destroyer), Forward interception shifts two damage to shields Bombers Inbound returning from artillery deployment Bombers Inbound returning from artillery deployment Bombers Inbound on |Romanova| for 3 damage(Two of which is converted to shield damage by forward interception) Technical errors reduce shields on the |Sairdonga| by two, it's probably nothing... Technical errors reduce shields on the |Anastasia| by two, must be a bad motivator... No cloaked ships detected

The truth about her father was an unexpected revelation that rocked the foundations of her sense of identity. Dark Lords didn’t retire and start families, they either died at the hands of their sworn enemies or their covetous allies. But Dagon had vanished, right before the formation of the Galactic Alliance, believed by the GA to have died at the Death Star battle, but only tagged as missing by the Sith. Dagon had been considered one of the more egalitarian Dark Lords, much to the chagrin of some of the more hawkish Sith under him at the time, but many of the Krath revered him with the sort of devotion normally reserved for divinities. Records suggested that Dagon had been integral in the restoration of the study of Sith sorcery, often referring to him as the father of modern Sith sorcery, and was highly sought after for his craftsmanship. She did the best that she could to gather herself, glad that the weapon that Delta had handed her could function as a walking stick and keep her on her feet. “Oh, Delta is just very shy meeting new friends for the first time, it makes arranging playdates so bothersome sometimes. Can't get him out the front door without promises of candy toys. If attacking you was our intent, we would have done it already, from orbit. You have something of a reputation, Master Ryu. I know that Sith don’t always play nice with each other, but for what it’s worth my father fought beside you, you would have known him as Dagon. I believe that he made at least one of your hammers”

Round One Fleet Results Attackers Defensive Actions |Alexandra| Guards |Anastasia| |Phobos| Guards |Aeneas| |Fleet Commander Starfighter Action| Interception(Forward Deployment) Attackers Offensive Actions |Romanova| + |Sairdonga| Attack |Vulcan| 6 total DPS | Death Harvest Catchers| Attack |Wings of Glory| Dealing 4 dps and reducing Incoming DPS by 2 |Sith Eaters| Attack |Phantom's Spear| Dealing 4 dps and reducing Incoming DPS by 2 (Intercepted by Net of Hate) |Aeneas| attacks |GSDP| 8 DPS resolved next round |Anastasia| attacks |Phantom's Spear|2x Bombers inbound 6 dps (Covered by Net of Hate, turning hull damage to shield damage) |Fleet Commander Starfighter Action| Bombers Inbound on |Sith Resurgent| 3 dps (Covered by interceptors, reduced to shield damage) |Fleet Commander Starfighter Action| Bombers Inbound on |Sith Resurgent| 3 dps (Covered by interceptors, reduced to shield damage) Defenders Defensive Actions Defense Heavy Brawler Escort: Hammer and Anvil (Colossus) is covering Golan Engineering Support Cluster: Bucket Brigade (Chariot) is covering Golan Mobile Disruption Escort: Net of Hate covering Destroyer Group [Rail guns]: Phantom’s Spear Interception (Focused Deployment) on Heavy Brawler Escort: Hammer and Anvil (Colossus) Interception (Focused Deployment) on Destroyer Group [Missile TF]: Sith Resurgent Defenders Offensive Actions |Vulcan| attacks |Aeneas| 8 points of DPS resolved next round |Sith Resurgent| attacks Carrier |Anastasia| but is intercepted by |Alexandra| which takes 6 damage |Phantom Spear| attacks Carrier |Anastasia| but is intercepted by |Alexandra| which takes 4 damage (This includes the minus two penalty for stacking fire) |Through Power, Victory| attacks |Romanova| for 4 damage |Golan| attacks |Aeneas| for 2 damage (Damage against artillery halved, rounding up) Bombers Inbound on |Sairdonga| (Veteran Destroyer), Forward interception shifts damage to shields Bombers Inbound on |Aeneas| (arrives next round) Forward interception shifts damage to shields Bombers Inbound on |Aeneas| (arrives next round)Forward interception shifts damage to shields Technical errors reduce shields on the |Sairdonga| by one, it's probably nothing... No cloaked ships detected

The 237th defensive response armada exited hyperspace, joining its brothers and sisters in arms in the defense of Fondor from the rebel terrorists. The Myrmidon began spewing out clouds of TIE Hunters, while Catastrophic Oracle and Wayward Serpent moved into attack positions. Promised Razor: 9/9 Lamia: 3/3 Cassandra: 2/1 Sibyl: 2/1 Egeria: 2/1 Pythia: 2/1 Temple of Vipers: 9/9 Coiled Hatred: 3/3 Nidhoggr: 2/1 Moin: 2/1 Goin: 2/1 Svafnir: 2/1 Myrmidon: 25/25 Green Advanced Warfighter Cadre (Cruiser, one frigate, four corvettes, 1 XP) Catastrophic Oracle The Promised Razor is an Insidiator class Xian'tii cruiser using state of the art components seized from the Mon Calamari shipyards. Its captain, a man of Onderonian stock, is said to consort with necromancers who provide him with grim auguries. Rumors abound of a significant portion of the crew being undead raised from crew lost at Corellia. The Lamia, an Ardent class frigate, and the Vigil class corvettes Cassandra, Sibyl, Egeria, and Pythia serve as support vessels providing cover from enemy fast movers. Green Tactical Support Escort (Cruiser, one frigate, four corvettes, 1 XP) Wayward Serpent The Temple of Vipers is a Gladiator class imperial cruiser whose command crew was handpicked by Karalynn Ladrimayne from her former academy classmates while she was in recovery from wounds suffered at Corellia. The officers are hungry and eager to prove themselves, especially after the standard that Ladrimayne set in her first battle. The Coiled Hatred, an Ardent class frigate, and the Raider class corvettes Nidhoggr, Moin, Goin, and Svafnir offer antifighter support. Green Precision Strike Carrier (Capital ship, 1 XP) Unforgiving Rebuke The Myrmidon is an Impellor class carrier crewed by clones from the recently restored Kamino cloning facilities. The ship's hangar bays are primarily occupied by slews of TIE Hunters carrying heavy ordnance. Sith commanders are hoping that swarm tactics will allow more successful contact than slow moving bombers that are often picked off by the more agile rebel craft. The ship is currently playing host to a team of Imperial cloning science officers who are evaluating clone performance. The Myrmidon's captain is a falleen specifically selected for a low empathy rating due to expected pilot losses.

Genesis Vs Rose ruling After reading through the duel, I felt that the most poignant issue to address was Genesis's approach. While we feel that a strategy focusing on defense is viable for winning duels, that strategy must build up to a believable win condition, and I did not see anything presented as to why Rose would cease fighting. (Side note for future reference, any kind of bladed hit on the crease of the arm, if referring to the inner elbow or armpit, is a very bad time due to how much blood moves through that part of the body). Result: Victory for Rose Cariadus

“You know my father? I mean, I knew that he was involved in the Imperial Science Division, but I didn’t think that he would have crossed paths with you. Even after he retired he was a workaholic, so I imagine that it must have been rather difficult to pry him away from his work back in the day. Regardless, sometimes failing brings the world into clearer focus. I think that my brief stint with mortality opened my eyes to certain truths while also quieting inner doubts. There was a brief moment where I thought that the Light might hold some measure of peace for me, but all I found in the end was apathy and false platitudes. Choices matter, people matter, you matter. I was angry when we had our falling out because it made me feel like I wasn’t enough to save you from your doubts, but now that I’m older and arguably wiser I think that what’s important is that you are important. You may be a clone, but there are no men like you. Trust me, I know from dating half the galaxy. So now I want you to know that if I lost you, it truly would be a loss, not just another soldier fading away into casualty reports and data ledgers.” This wasn’t the time or place, but Nyrys wanted to accentuate her words with a physical connection. She settled on the illusionary sense of her hand on his shoulder, followed by an ethereal slap on his rear, because inappropriate behavior was just part of who she was. She wasn’t thrilled with her lack of tools to enact change at the given moment, but she was too stubborn to back out now. She wove her fear and her longing into tendrils of ambiguous darkness, her own path still too uncertain to call upon specific spells. For the moment she was wrapped in oil and smoke like a bound devil, the profane energies quivering in anticipation and whispering from the void that she was pulling from.

“Yeah, I’m familiar with the name, he was one of the more conquest oriented Dark Lords, ambitious and deadly, but not needlessly cruel. Overly enthusiastic about violence, perhaps, but not a deviant like Ar-Pharazon. If he has shown up, I wonder if we’ll see others come out of the shadows? I would very much like to speak to a sorcerer like Dagon or Darth Oblivion were they to return. As far as what I was afraid of, well, sorcery involves embracing the Dark Side on a whole other level than being a warrior or an assassin. To a warrior, the Dark Side is a mountain that you climb, your progress largely determined by physical ability, and once you reach the summit you can fortify it and use the position to your advantage against your enemies and in finding new mountains to climb. It’s dangerous, but the dangers are readily apparent, and the terrain is largely unchanging. To an Assassin, the Dark Side is understanding and manipulating psychology and sociology, with the Sith both playing instruments and conducting an orchestra. They leverage small amounts of the Dark Side with precision to create great change, mastering cause and effect to weave nocturnes that can alter the course of empires. Sorcerers though… there’s no barrier between you and the Dark, other than the ritualism of our spells and rites. It’s like being on the surface of an ocean full of sea monsters in a little raft, with storms on every horizon and your legs dipped in the water. It’s far easier to fall into those depths and come out something else entirely. I’ve tried to be careful, to distance myself from the family and friends of my life from before I became Sith so that they wouldn’t suffer from my choices. Some of what we do is toxic, and the only way to protect people from it is exclusion. Sith sorcery though, it takes those attachments and turns them into fuel, into raw power. So to truly excel at the Dark Arts you need to let people in, but also believe in something so hard that you’re willing to destroy those people to achieve it. I mean, yeah, you can bulk sacrifice people to get the same result, but I don’t know if that’s better or worse. There was a point where I considered walking away from it all, leaving behind the anger and the pain, but when I died on Corellia the peace that was offered to me I could not accept because I could not look the other way and pretend that my suffering and the transgressions against the people I care about never mattered. I can find no peace or bliss in willful denial. I’ve come to the realization that one way or another I’m not going to survive this war, but perhaps my sacrifice can lead to someone else finding a way to end it, or at least finding a greater measure of happiness than was ever possible for people like us. So yeah, I’m going to take my little raft out into the storm, but I’m doing it so that people like your daughter can potentially see the other side of this pfasked up mess.” Nyrys tried to sigh, but realized that she wasn’t actually breathing outside of what was needed to speak. In truth, her raft had already left the dock, and she could see the waves rising. Ca’aran had a new ghost clinging to him too, the woman that had been with him at the gathering feast after Dark Sun Station. Every meeting meant seeing new scars, and this war was like a sarlacc, slowly digesting everyone that was in it. The shuttle touched down, but Nyrys did not feel the familiar rush of adrenaline or the throbbing of her crystalline heart, yet another thing that the aberration had taken away from her. The disconnect from her own mortality did allow for a more detached, clinical awareness of her situation though. It was a shift from feeling her situation to observing it. The distance made her feel as if she wasn’t even present, numb to the potential mortality of the situation on account of her liminal state of existence. Which was a comfort, if rather cold, given her current lack of weapons or armor. “If things get rough, prioritize taking the shot over protecting me. Death can claim no grip on me, and I will not see your troops used as fodder over a matter of pride.”

“I wish that it could have been under different circumstances, but it’s definitely a relief that you recognize me this time. I ran into something… unnatural out there, something that my training hadn’t prepared me for. It was like a Jedi, but feral, rabid in its devotion to the eradication of darkness. It could attack the darkness directly, and after it bested me it destroyed all of my gear and amulets. Total kath move. But also an opportunity to leave behind what was holding me back. I found a place beyond the city walls, steeped in the Dark Side. I think that I am going to use it to further my studies and delve into sorcery. When I was walking the path of the warrior, I always felt in control of the powers that I was calling upon, but I don’t think that any power that I can fully control will be enough in the end.” Delta’s comm began to beep urgently, calling him away. But one of the advantages of being a Darth was that she could largely move about the base as she wished, so Ca’aran would have an extra ghost haunting him today. “Sounds like they’re playing our song, care to show a girl a good time?”

Darth Nyrys examined the girl with dead eyes and could feel that in some ways she too was broken. Not by Delta’s hand, but she had been born ill-fated. Delta had been a relatively new part of the foundling’s life, before then she had been… adrift. How peculiar. The revenant descended the steps with inhuman grace, walking across the surface of the mire as if it were ultra dense gelatin. She could feel the longing, the fear calling out from the girl’s broken heart, in spite of Delta’s efforts to tape it back together. There was so much power here, ready to be plucked like a ripe fruit. It roiled over her like waves of intimately remembered mortality. She could just reach out and take it… But Delta would surely figure out what happened, and that would complicate the whole getting laid thing. Instead she brushed the girl’s cheek with a gesture resembling affection soiled with underlying yearning. She had never been a paragon of restraint to begin with, and she knew that she had come back even more broken than usual. Although truth be told, she had been unraveling even before she died, this was just a new kind of strung out. Her life had a rhythm of extremes, heightened once she joined the Sith, ever swinging between sour depression and manic overindulgence. “How adorable, coming to my rescue just like your father. He’s a better man than he gives himself credit for being. But there is no point in staying here a second longer. Would you do me one more kindness and conduct me back to Iziz? This is the kind of place that eats up sweet little girls like you, and I would not wish such a fate upon my gallant hero. We can talk about cute guys on the way to Ca’aran’s place.” Even for her short time here, leaving this place felt like leaving the safety and comfort of her family’s home. But she had obligations to attend to, and needs to satisfy. She would be back soon, she promised.

It was not like Delta to knock. Nyrys didn’t have any weapons on her, and this puppet that she had fashioned for herself didn’t have the raw physical power of her previous bodies. It certainly wasn’t frail, but its speed could best be described as languid, and its strength was tenuous. Her connection to the Dark Side however crackled with unmitigated intensity and intimacy. She favored her second mask, it resonated strongly with this place and it was something disarming that would give her time to develop a plan of attack. This was a Sith world, but then again, this was a Sith world, and it’s not like this place would be getting visitors still. She heard a child’s voice tentatively prodding at the darkness. Peculiar. A deceit? She probed back. No, definitely a child, or at least someone at that messy point between being a child and an adult. Alone... possibly? She didn’t sense any other living people. She reached out with the Force and opened the grand doors of the foyer. The first floor was still flooded up to the waist with murky water, a fact that no reasonable expenditure of power could conceal, so Nyrys didn’t bother trying. From the balcony along the grand staircase on the second floor she watched the intruder enter her newfound abode. Despite being generally unremarkable, there was still something strangely familiar about the girl. She had the same pretty colored mane as Nyrys’s prior host body, but there was something else, something deeper that resonated about her. “This is a dark place, little one. I have no cause to eject you from here, I have as little honest claim to this place as you presumably do, but tread carefully in these shadows, their whispers tell me of hunger and longing. I won’t begrudge you if you choose to leave, but should you decide to linger, praytell what is your name and what brings you here? I have some time before my… companion arrives, and perhaps you might entertain me in the meantime.” The words felt alien compared to her normal way of speaking, but the mask brought with it its own idiosyncrasies. Not to mention that her voice was doing that thing that ghost voices did in the horror holovids that made it sound ethereal and otherworldly. The words seemed to come from the house itself, rather than from her mouth. The house wanted to add the girl to its collection, she could feel as much through her newly formed connection, but the strange sense of familiarity urged her to hold it back. There would be others, she promised it silently. In time, both would come to prosper from their dark pact.

Non-existence dissolved into a wave of emotions, warm and intimate, as if to say “At last, you have come home”. A tension that she hadn’t realized had been building up had finally been released, and desperation was replaced with effulgent joy. Even though she no longer had eyes to feel heavy, there was a gossamer blanket of fulfillment that enticed her to drift off, to unravel into her base elements. She could feel the infinite collective of everyone that had come before her, reunited into a single divine prime. There was no pain here, no sense of loss or regret or sadness. All that accepted the light, even in their last moments, were welcome here. There was no judgement to be passed, no consequence for malignant deeds and choices. Once she had seen the Force as an entity balanced between Light and Dark, each equally powerful and necessary as the foundation of existence. Here though, the truth was laid bare. There was the will of the Force, and there were those that challenged its wisdom. The Force was a naive idealist, espousing tolerance over justice, acceptance over action. There was no Dark Side of the Force, just people who refused to accept the road that the Force all herded them onto. Some of them were wicked, but others rebelled against Force’s indifference to the cruelty and humiliation that they had been subjected to throughout their lives. Apathy was not a resolution or a balm to the wounds of the victimized, and in time the wounds festered. The Force had gone all in on this noble notion of universal harmony and togetherness, using its agents to crush anyone that opposed it. How many lives were broken or erased, worlds shattered and spoiled, just to uphold this status quo? Peace is a lie, she understood this now beyond just the ideas of inner peace or political peace. If Heaven was the sacrifice of self to bolster a shared lie that in the end nothing truly mattered as long as you agreed to ignore the wrongs done to you, then the Force wasn’t just misguided about the nature of evil, it was complicit. There needed to be a cost. There needed to be punishment. There needed to be vengeance. There needed to be a devil to balance the scales and suffer the self righteous and the hypocritical. It was a pleasant fiction, the dream that the Force was trying to lull everyone into, but her eyes were open. She could not stand idly by as the galaxy was abandoned to moral equivocation by both the mortal and the divine. She would be the villain that the weak and the wounded needed. She would rebel. She tore herself away from the embrace of the Light, from comfort and joy, and severed herself from its touch. Her chains were broken. In her more feverish and frenzied thoughts she had dreamed of arriving at this place, of becoming a righteous devil. She knew that it in many ways meant self annihilation, leaving behind both old desires and the foolish belief that she could maintain absolute control over her course through existence. She screamed wordlessly at the infinite prime sprawled out before her, an expression of rage, abandonment, and misery. It didn’t seem to notice her. She wondered if the Force even could understand those emotions. It would be made to understand them. Turning back towards the physical world, she saw a field of indigo stars peppering a white void, dark beacons of discontent that called out to her. Time and distance fluctuated with the inconsistency of dream logic, until she found herself walking upon familiar ground that she had never been to. She had no body, but she still tread forward on the muddy earth into the marsh water, following the siren song of regret. There was a seed planted here. Beneath the frigid, stagnant swamp, the muck and the mire had claimed many bodies. This was once a dumping ground for discarded dolls and other toys that used to belong to unsavory men. Men who did things, unspeakable things, to the people they lured away from family and home. She laid down in someone else’s grave and made it her own. She wrapped the bones in the memories of flesh and sinew, weaving a simulacra of life so that she could find some measure of function from the remains. It felt like wearing a vacsuit that somebody else had just taken off, unfamiliar and off putting. She forced herself upwards, ploughing through the cool wet mud and silt until it gave way to colder bog water. Temperature was a thing that she was aware of on some level, but it no longer carried with it the same urgency as when she was alive. She didn’t really know what she was now. She certainly wasn’t alive, but she also far too present to be dead. It was as if she had renounced the whole business of living and dying altogether, and had come back to the physical plane as something that simply ticked the box next to the word “other”. There was another presence inside of her, the tattered spiritual remnants of her new ride’s former owner. On the marshy bank, Darth Nyrys vomited up the water and filth inside of her, and looked at her reflection in the water. It was hideous, a mess of bone, deteriorated flesh, and severed muscle. That wouldn’t do at all. She plucked a memory from the wraith’s echoes, and put it on like a mask. She was prettying herself up in the shuttle’s refresher room, about to meet the man of her dreams. It had taken all of her savings to book the trip, but she had been assured that she would be taken care of when she arrived. No more stupid traditions or rituals, just partying and living an actual life in a real city. Sorry it didn’t work out for you, girlie. The earnest stupidity of young love made for quite the exceptional face. Even better, she was a cathar again. She headed towards the lights of a nearby city and the opportunities that it promised. It was his city, and as damaging to her pride as it would be, she needed to report the circumstances of her failure to the Sith. What she encountered was unlike anything that her training had prepared her for, a rabid Jedi with the power to burn away the darkness. She also found herself thinking about Ca’aran. Her own experience with death had revealed how seductive the idea of final resolution could be, and she realized that he hadn’t been slighting her with what he had said. He ought to know that heaven was bullshit and that he was way better off alive. She carried some ghosts of her own, and… She hadn’t reached the city limits yet, but a walled building loomed before her, despite being partially submerged in the swamp. It spoke to her with a strange kind of decrepit majesty, whispers from the rot and the ruin of misery, betrayal, and rage. Kindred spirits. She crept inside, moving quietly more so that she could observe the place without her presence disturbing it than any sort of fear. The raw, bloody emotions that she felt here were so much more genuine than what had been paraded in front of her when she had died. The mansion had clearly once belonged to a family of great importance, and was adorned with finery, elegant baubles, and other trappings of wealth and power, or at least the rotted and tarnished remnants of them. She let the place wash over her, permeating her bones with dismal energy, until it was a part of her. The pathos here was so intoxicating that her body wanted to writhe as the thick syrupy vibes washed over her in unctuous waves that sent tremors through her. Following the wisps of abandoned memories, she headed to the daughter’s suite in the upper east wing of the home, feeling the weight of eyes that she could not see upon her. The dead that clung to this place did not seem to know what to make of her. They would learn in time. There was enough here in the mildewed closet to assemble a workable if rather outdated outfit. She sat down at a dust sheathed vanity and looked at the monster in the mirror. There was a time that this face would have outraged her, but she didn’t need to submit to misfortune anymore. She tugged on pieces of memory soaked into the vanity and its mirror until she had pried enough strands loose to weave them into a glamour, reinforcing what she had already made to conceal herself with. There was power in the way that we remembered the dead, and like any other power, it could be seized for one’s own use. She didn’t make herself look beautiful though, that wasn’t part of the plan that was forming in her head. She made herself look hungry, desperate, and manic, the kind of broken that scared off the sensible ones. The kind of sensual crazy that was often found in stories about demons and witches that drove men who thought that they were above knowing better into ruin. She went on to start threading the manor with the same energy. Houses were a lot like people, with their own identities and personalities. Houses remembered, houses ached, and sometimes houses wept. But houses also craved to used, to fulfill their purpose even if they were too sick and insane to properly care for the people within them. To that end, just like people, houses could lie. They could pretend to be stable, and warm, and clean. They could whisper anything in your ear if they thought it would get you to pass through their threshold, to stay a little while longer. Of course the lies could only be sustained for so long, but first impressions and all that. She found an old barely functional comm unit, state of the art for its time but laughably archaic by today’s standards, in the study where it took up an entire wall. She paid no mind to the desiccated body hanging in the corner of the room as she sent her message. He would most likely come, after all she had vouched for him when the Dark Lord was ready to express his displeasure.

Ruling on the Terra and pals vs Shimsinblimp and Zalis duel Reading this duel really felt like reading two adjacent fights, and in the interest of coming to the most accurate ruling for what happened I'm going to treat it as such. In the Terra vs Zalis part of the fight, it was clear that Terra was in her element in this fight, and Zalis's attempts to compromise her visibility weren't landing. This culminated in a final charge by Zalis on Terra's position that left Zalis exposed to significant fletchette fire with little to mitigate it. Terra vs Zalis: Terra In regards to the firefight between Shimsinblimp and Terra's squad, both sides gave and took punches well. I do know that we have an updated set of retinue rules under construction, but what I saw here felt unbalanced, especially against an NFU with no squad of their own. The retinue often felt like five additional PCs each with specialized gear for handling specific problems rather than a small squad of NPCs meant to support their PC with additional fire, and a number of the weapons they use were laid out in a way that traditional damage mitigation options like armor were not plausible. I believe that everyone was acting in good faith, but that the retinue was being used in a way that exceeded the mechanical role that it is meant for, even moreso given that this was not a duel vs an FU and I am evaluating them without the contributions of their PC owner. Terra Retinue vs Shimsinblimp: Shimsinblimp All that being said, I think that it would have been better to have avoided the 2v1 format to begin with, given how things clearly turned into two distinct firefights, and I'm wondering if the setup of the duel factored in to the portrayal of the retinue.

Necromancy Among the Necromancers are found the wisest and most arrogant of the Sith sorcerers in equal numbers. Necromancy is a shared path by both those who seek to command death and those who seek to understand it. Knowledge of death offers sorcerers a variety of abilities, though often at great cost to their mind or body. Necromancy is also one of the most common disparities for Dark Siders outside of the Sith tradition to learn. Many powers listed are designated as belonging to one of the two subtypes of necromancy, tied to the two opposing factions the Necropolis Kings and the Forlorn Veil. The two groups have a murderous rivalry that has spawned from their competition over a vital common resource, the dead, and even masters can find it difficult to force the cooperation necessary to learn the opposing faction’s necromantic secrets. Echoes in the Flesh: Early on in a Necropolis King’s studies, the first steps of reanimation are discovered. This spell turns corpses into basic subservient automatons that rot away quickly from saturation of death energies. Simple minded and slow, these zombies are best used as menial labor or to scare civilians. Unlike more advanced spells, this incantation is using imprinted energy of the person’s life rather than overturning death. Invocation of the Remembered: A highly advanced ritual to bring about the return of a departed individual. First, the body is ritually rendered down to bones, lacquered, and laid out on an altar amidst items and trinkets of personal significance. The necromancer and his or her assistants write down memories of the person on strips of cloth anointed with oils and begin laying the strips over the bones. If the early stages of the ritual were performed properly, the cloth will hang in the air suspended, clinging to a form that no longer exists. The more strips that are provided the more substantial the revenant will be, and variation in the memories is also important to create a complete picture. For example, a widower seeking to bring back his dead wife who only uses romantic memories will create a revenant only capable of being a lover and having no concept of existence outside of that framework. Madness often awaits such fractured creatures. Upon completion of the ritual, a Nin’tash is created, a sort of Dark Side ghost but with greater physical presence than is normally associated with specters, something like a hybrid between a ghost and a ghoul. Sacrifices and offerings allow the Nin’tash to maintain its corporeality and sanity to a degree, but if the altar is neglected, or the Nin’tash is drained to the point that the offerings are not enough, it may go feral temporarily and attack the living to gain sustenance. The consumption of raw life energies is highly addictive, and even carefully restored Nin’tash may devolve into Derriphan spirits if they develop too much of a taste for it. Regardless of how well fed they are, Nin’tash skin is always of a deathly pallor and room temperature. Their words echo unnaturally, although the degree to which this happens is dependent on how complete the ritual was and their current state of fulfillment. If a Nin’tash can exist long enough without devolving into a Derriphan while still accumulating energy, it can reach a critical mass where it ceases to be a simulacrum created from memories and is remade as a sentient being. Such spirits are coveted by necromancers like a gardener with a prized rare orchid. Nin’tash dislike being far from their tombs, and as such serve better as guardians of temples and laboratories than traveling companions. Some Sith will create Nin’tash of hated Jedi enemies known for their compassion and peacefulness, and intentionally starve them to turn them into blood crazed killers, although admittedly without access to the Force. Dark Jade Eyes: By attuning themselves to the energies of death, necromancers can gain insight into the past, at the cost of awareness of the living. While this spell is in effect, the necromancer can see artifacts left behind by Force use, observe emotional moments that occurred around a death, and discern the value of souls. While the first use of this spell requires a ritual to open the mind’s eye, later uses are just a matter of refocusing perception, a process that takes one to two minutes. A Sleep Like Death: The necromancer enters a comatose state of deathly stillness, with their vital signs becoming undetectable and their presence in the Force distended away from their body. While in this torpor the Sith becomes akin to a Dark Side spirit, although tethered to the area around their body. Soul Extraction: The highest quality soul material comes from extraction at the point of death, which makes this spell’s ability to finish off defeated opponents with soul theft invaluable for soul connoisseurs. Soul extraction requires that the sorcerer be focused on the victim, but not necessarily the one to deal the killing blow. Sometimes powerful Sith will have necromancers accompany them into battle to ensnare the souls of their fallen enemies, offering a cut of the reaping in exchange. Some souls are too powerful for this spell to extract, in such cases a shard is obtained while the rest disperses into the ether. (This is to explain PCs returning with souls post soul extraction) Gravemist: At the Veiled’s command, ethereal fog pours into the area, dampening long range visibility, but making it easier for the restless dead to manifest as apparitions. The effects are felt particularly in areas of conflict and past atrocities, where the dead are both angry and plentiful. These specters are not capable of harm on their own, but they make it hard for enemies to distinguish living threats from echoes of the past, even with the Force. Bleak Eviction: With a series of slicing finger motions the Veiled attempts to seize the soul of its enemy with spectral threads and temporarily tear it from its fleshy confines. This spell sends forth necromantic distortions through the air, as if the gestures are emitting echoes of where the fingers tore at reality in cutting lines. Should the attack land, it tries to rip the soul out of the body, but against more competent threats it’s more likely to temporarily paralyse a limb while the soul is knocked out of alignment. Just like with normal attacks, getting hit in the head with this spell is worse, temporarily reducing the victim to a vegetative state. Realignment for a nonfatal hit is quick, rarely lasting more than a couple seconds, and some people recover even faster. Claim the Empty Vessel: With dark rites and sinister incantations, an apprentice necromancer can leave their own body to inhabit a recently deceased corpse. The necromancer’s own body is unconscious for the duration of the effect, and if the necromancer is slain while in the new host body it still takes three days for them to their original body as per the rules. Having their own body destroyed also initiates the three day respawn process. The deceased body will appear relatively alive until the next sunrise, at which point a build up of necrotic energies will putrefy the corpse into obsolescence and the necromancer is expelled back to their body. The necromancer cannot use the Force while inhabiting the body, outside of necromancy spells that involve perceiving or interacting with spirits. If the necromancer is in space, the duration of the effect is roughly half a standard day. Cursebound Sentinels: The necromancer can bind the restless dead to a location or object, allowing their wrath to be triggered by trespassers or thieves. Necropolis Kings often use this spell on cadavers in and around their tombs to animate corpses to strike down would be grave robbers, while the Veiled protect their most valuable relics and libraries with bound wraiths that torment the uninvited into madness. Soul Shatter: Such is the power of a Necropolis King that they can disassemble the inner bindings of a restless dead in the palm of their hand and then launch the unstable entity at their enemies with implosive results. The effects of this spell are equivalent to a fragmentation grenade except in reverse (imploding instead of exploding, and the shrapnel coming from the objects in the area around the implosion instead of the soul itself), and the necromancer can only destabilize one wraith per round. Furthermore, once destabilized the time to implosion is only a rough estimate and cannot in anyway be stalled or combined with any catalyst for greater yield or area of effect. Once destabilized, the former ghost is visible to the naked eye and can be spotted and avoided like any other attack. The Kings have a reputation for intentionally casting this spell in front of the Veiled to spite them. This spell cannot be used on PC souls. Prison of Jade: The process by which Necropolis Kings convert large quantities of soul stuff into tradable currency. The ritual is not an efficient or delicate process, and a considerable amount of the total energy harvested is lost, along with most of the defining traits and qualities of the souls, but it allows the Kings to convert entire battlefields worth of corpses into easily portable wealth. The origin of the jade coins came from Sith finding regular currency of little worth when dealing with other Sith, as amassing great wealth is a trivial matter for the Sith. Jade coins, on the other hand, can fuel the construction of relics, temples, rituals, and machines of war, making them a representation of meaningful power to the Sith. As such, the Kings are financial powerhouses in the Sith Empire, controlling the flow of new currency. Gravetide: With this spell, the Necropolis King roughly animates corpses to blindly charge (or otherwise move towards, limbs are often not a guarantee on Star Wars corpses) their opponent and tackle or otherwise lash out at them. The corpses will not use weapons even if they are still holding them, and after the initial attempt they will decompose into obsolescence and be untargetable to raise again. The number of corpses that a necromancer can simultaneously animate is dependent on their rank, an apprentice can only raise one at a time, a lord can muster between two and four, while a master can raise all corpses within their immediate locus of control. Sepulchral Resplendence: Necromancers who treat death as an unexploited resource from which they can draw armies and commanders from are inevitably drawn down this path of defilement and grandeur. Constructing massive tombs to serve as places of power with which they raise silent ranks of undead soldiers, the Necropolis Kings essentially stripmine graves to build sprawling armies of corpse minions. The dead are not cunning or skilled warriors, but they are many and relentless, and have no qualms about obeying even the most psychotic orders of their masters. Most of these undead are unarmed, but warriors and soldiers who were buried with their weapons still clutch them on these new battlefields. Sith tombworlds such as Korriban were known for burying armed guards alive with their lords to serve them in the afterlife, and so armies that are raised on such worlds have a higher percentage of armed warriors. Sith Lords who walk this path are instrumental to the process of directing and sustaining their forces, but Sith Masters can weave incantations that allow their armies to outlast their own mortal span as long as there are other Sith(PCs) to direct them. These mass resurrections destroy any traces of individual hauntings, making certain grave sites a massive point of contention between the Necropolis Lords and the Forlorn Veil. Unlike traditional NPC soldiers, the presence of undead swarms should be treated like an environmental hazard that ebbs and flows through cities and battlefields. They aren’t fast(they can’t move faster than walking speed) or skilled enough to threaten even marginally competent PCs on their own, but their sheer numbers press in on a character’s ability to maneuver and interfere with their actions with grasping hands if left unaddressed and allowed to close. Necromancers that are focused entirely on controlling their forces to the point of having no weapon readied can fuel them with dark vigor, allowing them to run and respond to basic commands beyond murder everything. Masters that are using this approach can passively raise corpses that haven’t already been raised and are in their direct locus of control. The Dark Side corrupts the Necropolis Kings by consuming their minds with an obsession regarding their legacy, driving them to build great temples, statues, and monuments. They demand carefully scribed personal histories and detailed portraits so that their greatness may be remembered in the coming eras. This maddening fascination with posterity ages them rapidly, turning their hair grey, their eyes dull, and their skin sallow and loose. Most Necropolis Kings will never see their grand designs completed, or the truth of how their legacy has been recorded, as their eyes fail well before the rest of their bodies do. But they are too vain to concede or even imagine such a defeat, so their minds deceive them with visions of ages past, during other times of Sith glory. Masters of this path are often deluded into thinking that they are fighting the wars that they once read so eagerly about as apprentices, completely oblivious to current events. Implements of the Old Hatreds: The Necropolis Kings are obsessed with the collecting of ancient relics, and the Sith swords of bygone conquerors are a particular favorite. Their most prized pieces will drive them to do the unthinkable, willingly conduct business with the Forlorn Veil. The Veil can bind a wraith of considerable skill in swordsmanship to the blade, allowing the necromancer to wield it just like a real Sith Lord. Relying on the wraith’s expertise is dangerous, as the spirit is contemptuous of any Sith that lacks the training to use the sword properly on their own. As such the wielder must focus on resisting the influence of the wraith while fighting, effectively reducing their rank for casting by a level. Wielding such a weapon while maintaining control gives the wielder sword skills equal to a warrior a rank beneath them, but offers no benefit to Sith that are already trained in the warrior arts (For them it’s treated as just a regular Sith sword). This does not allow players to subvert the rule regarding canon character relics, players should instead reference non canon historical Sith. ((Clarification, letting the bound Sith spirit take over is not a means to go super saiyan, it's getting your soul yeeted into the void while something that is not your PC joyrides in your body. Toll of Ages: The Necropolis King taps into the energies of decay and entropy, manifesting them into orbs of unmaking that swirl around the sorcerer trailing sulphuric dark smoke clouds. The general area around the necromancer begins to erode and rust over, with anything coming into direct contact with the spheres degrading at frightening speed. The necromancer can widen the orbit of the projectiles to effectively launch orbs at enemies, or keep them close as a deterrent. It should always be possible for an attacker to reach the necromancer, but a direct charge of unbroken momentum is likely to end poorly. The higher the rank of the sorcerer, the harder it is to detect and pursue an opening. People that are touched by the orbs are aged rapidly wherever contact is made. Ancestral Jade Conqueror: Many necromancers are obsessed with studying and documenting the lineages of Sith warlords and generals, in the hopes of finding the most capable and powerful warriors to resurrect as servants. Braving tombs brimming with curses and traps, the necromancers bind the spirits into canopic vessels that are placed within carefully constructed effigal bodies. Enslaved to the necromancer’s will, these dark slaves serve as their hands on distant battlefields. Mechanically speaking, this is a flavorful way for necromancers to use the Champion rule to create a Sith Warrior golem or a Sith Empire NFU general golem. The components used to bind and maintain these creatures are of equal sturdiness to a human body, with internal components that are as vital as organs for the living. Alternatively, these golems can be constructed to serve as a means for the necromancer and their more useful allies to cheat death. Without the narrow focus of bound servitude though, occupants of these bodies often quickly succumb to madness as their minds fail to properly adjust to their new artificial bodies. This offers an alternative to respawning through cloning. Power Behind The Veil: While the Necropolis Kings seek power through innumerable mindless servants and vast sepulchral temples, the Forlorn Veil prefer more subtle methods. Seeking out the most bitter and observant wraiths, these necromancers entice them into dark pacts as hidden agents in the dark places of the empire. Acting as spies and saboteurs, these ghosts often serve to enforce loyalty and punish disobedience and failure among the necromancer’s living agents, although some serve the Dark Lord as spymasters keeping watch over the higher echelons of the Sith Empire. The necromancer can bind loyal wraiths to objects and locations that are attuned to the Dark Side, making them blend in rather easily in the Sith Empire and among its operatives, but absurdly noticeable amongst the Jedi and rebels, making them far less useful for spying in enemy territory. A necromancer can hold active contracts with a number of wraiths equal to twice their rank. The necromancer can summon wraiths to deliver reports on what they have observed, regardless of distance. The wraith’s awareness is limited to the general area of the object it is bound to or the area of the building it is haunting. Renunciation of Mortality: One of the greatest seductions of the Dark Side, this profane ritual is synonymous with the Forlorn Veil, and counted as one of their greatest triumphs even in its imperfect state. Upon completing this dark rite, the Sith is removed from the mortal coil, becoming a static presence that does not age, hunger, or die. Both unliving and undead, the Sith now exists in a twilight state on the threshold between worlds as a transient wraith that steals bodies. There is an indifference about the Veiled that have undergone this transition, being so distant from pain and death, that allows them to treat wounds with utter disregard. While this is often a boon, it also has a tendency to make the Veiled apathetic towards defensive measures like armor or vampiric healing in combat, and unlike other Sith they cannot boost their spiritual strength through physical pain. A necromancer can still be dismembered sufficiently enough that they abandon a body, which is treated as a normal duel loss death, and they are treated as looking for a new host body over the next three days. Mechanically speaking, new bodies should be found on Sith held worlds or neutral worlds that hold significance to the character. In the darkness of night and deep places where the sun cannot reach, the Veiled have an ethereal glamour to them, akin to how romanticized works portray ghostly figures. In direct sunlight though, their true ghastly nature is revealed. In places attuned to the Light, their reflection can also reveal them for what they are. Given their immortal state, the Veiled also suffer from a deep paranoia regarding other wielders of the Force, seeing them as the only potential threat to their deathlessness. Pact of Vengeance: Sometimes the bodies that the Veiled inhabit still have a wraith anchored to them, a harrowed soul with similar aims or at least trauma that can be subverted to the whims of the necromancer. The spirit can be coaxed or coerced into offering up details of their life and context regarding people they knew and places they had been, but that’s only the beginning. Necromancers have three paths that they can pursue with regards to their involuntary cohabitants. Some necromancers simply use the wraiths as a quick fuel reserve, sacrificing them at the earliest convenience for a quick boost of energy. Others might use the wraith to get their bearings in the new body and plot revenge against whoever killed them, leading the wraith on with false promises of aiding them in finding resolution. The third and most time consuming option is to embrace the wraith’s suffering as the necromancer’s own, internalizing the pain and hatred while feeding the wraith’s vindictive nature. This last option creates a codependent relationship where the Sith and wraith fuel each other's worst tendencies and behaviors. The necromancer becomes, for lack of a better term, haunted, and the wraith can reach across the veil into the physical world to interact and make its presence known (In terms of affecting a duel, the extent of the wraith’s potential would be at most simple tasks like turning on or off lights, closing or opening doors, temporarily manifesting or moving objects with enough bludgeoning force to disrupt or hurt someone, but not majorly wound them, and not striking with any particular accuracy or precision.) Dark Passenger: The Veiled imbues a nearby wraith with a small measure of their power and attempts to propel it onto an enemy. During this phase of the attack the wraith is visible and avoidable, moving at the same speed as a charging humanoid, and able to move through walls (the necromancer still needs to know where precisely the target is for it to connect). While the wraith can do simple course changes, if the opponent can dodge it then the wraith will be distracted and stop its pursuit. For anything outside of their own psychodramas, most ghosts have less of an attention span than goldfish, so the spell’s range is not indefinite. The effects of this spell should it land vary depending on the target, with Force users finding their concentration threatened by alien thoughts and emotions, and non Force users finding their more sensitive gear like comms, sensors, and scanners heavily disrupted and behaving erratically. When the ghost departs, it takes a measure of the victim’s vital essence with it, a spiritual wound that leaves them cold, nauseous, and often irrationally panicked. Death Touch: A spiritual scalpel in the Veiled’s toolkit, this spell tugs a touched victim’s fears regarding death to the forefront of their mind with startling intensity. When used in combat, the intent of the necromancer is generally to disrupt their opponent’s concentration or hinder their ability to react effectively. Outside of combat, the effect is more subtle and insidious, with victims potentially being unaware that a spell is being cast on them. Light siders often see the emotional fallout from their death and how people would be left to suffer should they die, with the specters of those potential futures blaming them for their woe. The war against the Dark is cast in a futile light, a fool’s crusade that sends people to mass graves instead of their proper place in the galaxy. Dark siders see everything that they’ve worked towards fall apart or be forgotten as “lesser” individuals surpass them in their absence and mock their legacy, and underlings that they believed to be faithful raise glasses to the demise of their former master while furthering their own plans. Amoral survivalists are confronted with amorphous dread and the terror of non-existence. Burden of Regret: Another of the Veiled’s more subtle powers, this spell discreetly foments the idea that the victim needs to do or confess something before it’s “too late”. While the necromancer can choose a fabricated and unlikely desire, doing so has a very real chance of undermining the curse, as the victim might realize that an outside force is at work. Ideally, the necromancer wants to leverage a plausible desire to manipulate the victim into acting a certain way. Skeleton Key of Despair: Whereas Burden of Regret focuses on the fear of leaving things unfinished, this curse tries to encourage self destructive and short sighted behaviour with the embedded notion that the victim is going to die soon so they might as well act without inhibition since the end will come for them before the consequences do. If applicable, the victim will attribute their sense of foreboding to an appropriate upcoming event such as a major battle. Cistern of Sorrow and Chains: The Veiled can transform a location into a place for keeping wraiths that they have collected during their studies, much like other sorcerers construct libraries to house their collected lore. Generally speaking, places that are already conducive to haunting work best, particularly places that have an extended history of pain, misery, and hatred. Like the Veiled themself, the place and any objects within it(including deceased bodies) become caught in a liminal state, tearing at the edges but not neglected beyond usability. Wraiths have increased potency within the bounds of the location, and are able to interact physically with the living if they choose to. If the Veiled has already completed the Renunciation of Mortality rite, then they can move about the area in either their possessed body or their wraith form with ease, and their physical body will not decay while they are out of it. Emotions in the cistern well up and saturate the area, moving through people’s skin in currents as if they were permeable and things like woe and anger were like weather phenomena. Wraith infection is also significantly easier and potent. The place itself often becomes a sentient Dark Side nexus that inherently desires to claim more dead within its bounds as wraiths, and people that die within it are more likely to leave behind restless spirits. Death Masque: The Veiled can manifest the appearance of a dead person, either someone they killed or even just is known to them to be dead. In this way they can confront the living with specters from the past, eliciting dread, regret, and loss. For some, the experience can shatter the mind, and these people become convinced that a dead loved one or slain enemy has come back to haunt them. The form manifested is clearly dead, this is a tool for psychological warfare, not infiltration. Alternatively, Death Masque can be applied to a place that the necromancer has used Cistern of Sorrow and Chains on to temporarily conceal the rotting and tumultuous nature of it. For a few hours to a few days, the place will seem deceptively welcoming and definitely not crawling with angry ghosts. The unwitting people that enter it feel a false sense of belonging in the place, as if by staying there they could be part of the location’s gilded legacy. As the blood begins to seep through the walls, the false notion that something of value could be found here or some innocent soul could be saved if the victim stays replaces the initial lie within. Haunted Blade: Forlorn Veil necromancers can bind wraiths to their lightsabers, imbuing them with unnatural quietude and grisly aura. The blade’s energies seem to subsume all other light, casting the world around it in brutal subdued (usually red) tones that devour all other colors. The weapon does not emit the standard lightsaber sound, instead sounding like hushed whispers and dark chanting. Dark Side wraiths and grisly specters are drawn to the crimson beacon, and find the veil between the realms of the living and the dead significantly more thin. They use this opportunity for mayhem with gleeful abandon, lashing out at the enemies of the necromancer by throwing objects, disrupting technology, and should the necromancer be of significant power such as a master, inflicting physical wounds that look like the flesh was torn at with feral mania to such a degree that unseen fingernails rent angry furrows into the skin. These attacks are by no means lethal or incapacitating, but they can be incredibly distracting, and sometimes quite painful. Furthermore, these attacks are not being performed by the Necromancer directly, allowing them to focus their power on other fronts. If necessary, these weapons also prove effective in dispatching unruly or rebellious ghosts, shattering them into a spray of broken echoes and incoherent memories. The Veiled prefer to preserve their toys if possible, but that doesn’t always stay their hand, especially if one of the restless dead is foolish enough to directly challenge their authority. Hellweaver: While the Veiled may be reluctant to admit it, certain problems require a more firm hand than what the restless spirits they command can employ. In such cases, the Veiled find themselves dependent on assistance from the Necropolis Kings to undertake a ritual that creates an unholy champion through a fusion of Sith relics, ancient remains, and a wraith bound to the Veiled. Resurrecting ancient Sith is a notoriously risky prospect, most of them are more interested in restoring their own power than following orders, and would only feign loyalty until they were ready to betray there would be masters. Like any true Sith however, the Veiled figured out a way to cheat the system. The Hellweaver ritual consists of making a rigged contest of wills between the dead Sith and a bound wraith, with the living Sith feeding massive amounts of power into the wraith to allow it to overpower the ancient Sith ghost. Once the dead Sith is subdued, the two spirits are merged into one being that has the Sith’s power but also the wraith’s bond to the necromancer. The amalgam is bound to a Sith mask which is placed on a physically bound person wrapped in bands of cloth bearing elaborate spells and curses. The darkness within the mask begins to seep into the person before taking root on their face with an evil that slowly burrows through the rest of their body. When the ritual is finished, the Veiled now has a bound agent of significant power to act as their hand in the mortal world. In mechanical terms, this is a way for the Veiled to gain a Sith Warrior or Assassin champion. Haunting Condemnation: The Veiled can infuse a restless spirit with a measure of its power so that it can confront someone that it blames for wronging it. Sometimes used in battle to undermine the focus of an enemy, but primarily used for psychological warfare and to punish enemies. This spell does require the necromancer actually tracking down the ghost in question and binding it, and the ghost actually having a grievance that it believes to be true. Sith masters, however, can summon smoke demons to assume the likeness of the dead and make whatever false claims that they want. Eye contact must be made, the victim must be marked in some way, or a cursed object worn for this spell to begin. The duration of the curse varies depending on how it is afflicted. Eye contact is brief but intense. A marked target remains cursed until the mark is removed. Someone that wore a cursed object remains cursed until the object is destroyed or cleansed. The longer duration curses tend to be more active at night, but the victim might catch the spirit watching them during the day out of the corner of their eye. The Peculiar Madness of the Veiled: With great power comes an exceptional amount of neuroses, and the Veiled are no exception to this rule. The further along in their studies that the Veiled progress, the more its conceits affect their minds, particularly after the completion of the Renunciation of Mortality ritual. The ways that this can express itself are many and varied, but certain key traits remain consistent. First among them is that because much of the Veiled’s power lies in making deals with specters, and because the dead are always watching, the Veiled are obsessive about keeping their word and honoring contracts, even if it requires them to go against their own nature or work cross purpose to their own designs. Granted, it is a position that they had to put themselves in, but it can still become rather problematic at times. They do however draw a very distinct line between keeping their word in an official capacity and lying in casual statements. The second consistent trait is a deep and overwhelming paranoia of being watched at all times. It’s not an entirely unfounded fear, given that the dead are always watching, but in most cases the dead that are present are not bound to any master and are only around because they’re stuck there. In the mind of the Veiled though, every restless spirit is a potential spy, and everything that they do is being, observed, reported on, and judged. This paranoia heightens as the enemies of the Sith weaken and scatter, allowing Sith the freedom to pursue buried vendettas. A third common consequence is fear of the loss of self and falling to the influence of others. Many Veiled work so closely with some wraiths that they notice traits and quirks infecting their own personalities, sometimes accompanied by alien thoughts. As time goes on, especially after the Renunciation ritual, the Veiled begin to question more and more what thoughts and feelings are their own and which ones are only echoes of past lives. The fourth flaw is an obsession with connections between the Veiled and people, places, and things. Since so much of Sith Sorcery is based on occultism and pageantry, most veiled believe (incorrectly) that strong connections enhance their necromantic powers in the same way that ghosts are empowered by their fetters. This draws many of them to seek out and remain in unhealthy situations because they believe that it will enhance their otherworldly power. Granted, some might consider this standard Sith modus operandi, but it’s more pronounced with the Veiled, and more akin to extreme apophenia as they pursue scenarios that by insane metrics they believe will yield the greatest power. After all, every ghost they find is defined in its power by how broken it was in life. Bleak Usurpation: The Veiled can perform a rite similar to Claim the Empty Vessel, but instead of putting their own consciousness into a corpse, they implant a specter into a subdued mortal of weak will, often having been drugged or otherwise made compliant. The specter can temporarily live again, using the body as its own, but they have to kill and consume a person at some point in the first night and every three nights after or else their borrowed body will rot away until it cannot sustain their spirit. Jailer and Savior Alike: While the Veiled have extreme difficulty in developing and sustaining positive emotions like love, obsession and fixation come readily to them. This spell binds a specter to someone that has had the misfortune to catch the necromancer’s eye. It’s dormant during the day, but will actively protect the victim at night, both from threats and the (perceived) romantic advances of anyone other than the necromancer. If the victim, who may not even know that their hidden admirer exists, continues to court others and be receptive to advances, the psychotic ghost will begin lashing out at them just as it does to “threats”, angry that the victim is slighting its master. The curse requires seeing the victim, but most Sith wrongly believe that it also requires marking the victim in some way or secretly hiding a curse bag in the victim’s home Forlorn Talisman: The Veiled can, with careful study and laborious incantation, crystallize a wraith and its final moments into a synthetic jewel of considerable beauty and power. Each jewel radiates the emotions of the wraith’s final moments, and the Veiled are known to keep carefully curated collections of souls that they feel best embody the emotions of the Dark Side. It takes significantly more time and effort to manifest such an object compared to the jade coins that the Necropolis Kings mint en masse, making them both significantly more valued and more coveted. In terms of intrinsic value, jade coins are often significantly more valuable due to the sheer bulk of souls that they can hold, but master artificers needing souls of specific quality and traits pay exorbitant fees for the jewels, along with Sith elite who see them as symbols of status. Non Force users that wear them tend to go rather mad if they subject themselves to extended exposure.

Church of the Forlorn Saints “Across a thousand worlds, the Sith Empire shields its citizens from the dangers of the rebel, the alien, and the false prophet. It’s durasteel clad soldiers embrace the vulnerable populace and place their own bodies in harm’s way. They are champions and heroes of order and security, should they not be lauded as such? Should not the Sith that lead them fearlessly into battle be venerated and worshipped as the vigilant saviours that they are? When threats from within the Empire seek to poison and mislead the righteous and the just, do we not owe it to those that bled on the altar of sacrifice to take up arms? We may not be soldiers or gods, but we are indebted to their great sacrifice to carry the blade and the torch against the insidious forces that would ruin our homes and destroy our families.” The Church of Forlorn Saints is a militant religious group and warrior cult that devoutly believes that the civilian populace owes a debt of blood to the Sith Empire, and that all citizens should be prepared to serve as militia if needed. Few outsiders can relate to the zeal with which its members deliver their sermons, but the church will take in anyone, even those that the rest of society has forgotten. Initiates who join just for a roof over their head and steady meals are quickly and thoroughly indoctrinated by the order’s spiritual leaders, who are readily familiar with the best ways to undermine the cynicism and distrust of the downtrodden, and addicts find new purpose as their addiction to drugs is replaced with an addiction to hatred (and sometimes other, more exciting drugs). The church owns its congregation by saving them. Initiates have simple weapons and armor, often used piecemeal with their old clothing and weapons from life on the street. The most martially skilled members of the church are gifted with Dark Side relics that whisper to them at night and scream exultant battle cries into their minds on the field. Utterly devoted to the cause, these zealots obey orders without question, hacking apart the armed and unarmed alike. They may not have the technology and advanced warfare training of traditional soldiers, but their faith allows them to perform duties that would make otherwise loyal soldiers question their dark masters. The church refers to these men and women as the Exemplar Saints. The members most fanatically obsessed with service to the Dark Lord and his agents are often assigned to serve as bodyguards and aides to Imperial officials, particularly ones that have no combat experience of their own. Occasionally, an initiate who catches the eye of a Sith will even be blessed with the opportunity to serve on their personal staff. Necromancers in particular value these servants as they are easy to bring back into service after a fatal intervention, given their attachment to the Sith serving to anchor them. They are called the Silent Companions, as many of them take vows of silence as part of their duties. For those that have learned to be resourceful and clever before coming into the care of the church, the twin roles of scavenger and tinkerer are put in their path. The church often has more initiates than funds to arm and armor them, and the Vestige Bearers (Church Rats in less polite company) are responsible for making the often meager resources of the armory stretch as far as possible, salvaging and repairing equipment from battlefields. Given the mental acuity needed to perform their tasks, the Vestige Bearers tend to be more resistant to the corruption of Sith artifacts, allowing them to reclaim them from fallen Sith with less risk than some of the more unquestioning initiates. Vestige Bearers are often the most likely to advance within the church’s internal hierarchy, and even those that don’t hold official titles can wield influence over other initiates by influencing who does and who doesn’t get equipment and repairs. Vestige Bearers who show specific aptitudes and a detached clinical nature receive education in medicine and cybernetic modification. These pit doctors and battlefield surgeons are taught to place efficiency and speed over any other concerns, and have a reputation as indelicate butchers. These doctors are also responsible for the harvesting and preparation of the church’s own dead, reclaiming cybernetics and preserving corpses for the Sith to use at their leisure. Unlike a lot of other Sith medical personnel they won’t use the opportunity of you being on their table to experiment, they have no such lofty ambitions. So if you’re wounded and don’t want to get turned into a Sithspawn, and you have no issues with a complete lack of bedside manner or unnecessary scarring, check in with your local Crypt Raven. Not everyone has the martial aptitude to march with the Exemplars and Companions, or the mental acuity and technical skills to serve as a Vestige Bearer. For the plainer initiates who come into the church with faith but little else to offer, a life of menial service, common drudgery, and the occasional literal sacrifice await them. As much as some people might like to imagine that the church is composed entirely of holy warriors and priests, half if not more of the initiates simply don’t have what it takes to serve in one of the higher orders. These initiates are used to fulfil low ranking but necessary roles, often under the direction of more accomplished disciples. When the priests and priestesses need sacrifices for rites, these are usually the first ones tapped for “special assignment”. These unfortunates are referred to within the church as the Sable Heart. Very rarely, a member of the Sable Heart will snap, and through some measure of cunning and deceit, murder one of their superiors, usually in response to a long line of abuses. Rather than being punished (provided the motive wasn’t treason against the Sith Empire or the church), the initiate is taken aside and evaluated on their abilities as a spy. Those that pass the test are trained in secret to be the unnoticed eyes and ears of the church, utilizing the preconceptions of the initiates to move with practical invisibility through the halls of the faithful. As a secret arm of the church, they have no proper name, but the priests and priestesses often refer to them as church mice or little birds. The priests and priestesses of the Church of the Forlorn Saints are all Force sensitive, but often not enough to complete training as a Sith. The church is a way for powerful families that produce children of middling potential to save face and give them a respectable path to pursue in Sith society. The Church of the Forlorn Saints is not the only church to practice this approach to recruitment. That being said, any initiate stupid enough to mock them for it is in for a bad time. The clergy primarily serve to recruit new initiates and ensure that their wolves(Sith clergy don’t lead a flock, they lead a pack) are properly focusing their hatred towards the enemy and remaining devoutly loyal to the Sith Empire. They evaluate initiates for placement in the various branches of the church, and decide when an initiate is worthy of a relic, or in need of its guidance away from the false paths of compassion and mercy. Before battle, the clergy may choose to dose their charges with combat stims, which are delivered under the guise of incense filled censors. They rarely have enough mastery over the Force to have meaningful Force combat skills, instead using their meager talents to detect spiritual weakness and incite rage. Similar to the Krath, the church uses familial terms, with the clergy being addressed as Mothers and Fathers by the initiates. Truly powerful Dark Side users are a rarity amongst the clergy proper, but not unheard of. The church offers opportunities for both power and to study a multitude of Dark Side relics, not to mention access to exceedingly loyal minions. Most citizens of the Sith Empire either fear their dark masters or consider them too distant to really think about, but the initiates truly revere the Sith and the Dark Side with a blind love and devotion that can be addictive. Sith of this nature who join the church often do so in the role of archivists and artisans, creating Sith relics within the church workshops while enjoying open access to its vast libraries of knowledge about relic creation. Others were once initiates that managed to slip through the Empire’s screening process and grew up in the church. These Dark Side adepts are hard believers in the cause, whose faith emanates like a roaring fire around them, warming the devout and terrifying the unbelievers. The most powerful of these workers of dark miracles are said to be able to bestow others with the ability to manipulate the Dark Side of the Force. The church calls these practitioners Hallowed Paragons. The most sly and charismatic initiates find themselves being reinvented as symbols of the church, examples of what devotion and ability can achieve. The days of dented piecemeal armor and dull blades are behind them, instead the church now outfits them with properly fitted gear made specifically for them. Old scars are erased under the care of doctors who actually went to medical school, and vitality is restored through the profane blood rituals of Krath biomancers. Some are even rumored to have implanted pheromone glands similar to the Falleen and Zeltrons. These initiates form the public face of the church, especially in regards to the media, recruitment rallies, and wealthy patrons. While the church doesn’t have an official name for these ambassadors to the world at large as they are introduced as run of the mill initiates, in house communications refer to them as Masks or the Masked. Should an initiate show both martial prowess and a mind for tactical and strategic thought, they may be exalted to a command position within the ranks of the Exemplars or Companions. These are the hardline veterans of the church, having survived countless battles, and often countless injuries, but continuing to follow the path of the devout warrior unswayed. These crusaders are the most likely to be uplifted by the Hallowed Paragons into Dark Side Force sensitivity. They use their powers to guide their brothers and sisters in battle, and drive them into zealous furor. They are known as Dark Prelates. On extremely rare occasions, initiates that served in combat roles will age out of service, and be retasked with overseeing the church’s vaults of Sith relics and advising newer initiates in need of wisdom from someone that walked the same path. Most artifacts within the vaults have a grudging respect for them on account of their ability to survive for so long, although a fair bit of cursing and arguing can often be heard coming from the vaults as the keepers quarrel with their charges. They are known as the Sepulchral Archivists by the church.

Ruling for Xar Vs. Beth Andromina This is probably one of the more unusual duels that I have had the pleasure of reading, but it definitely was a pleasure to read. Both combatants were forced to confront hazards that took priority over their opponents, and approached this framework in interesting ways. That being said, Xar was perhaps a bit overenthusiastic with his approach given that he did not have a landing strategy. Gravity was the real antagonist in this duel, and while Xar could potentially "survive" the fall in the sense of keeping his CPU operational, I feel that his frame would be compromised enough for Beth to have an insurmountable advantage planetside in finishing things off. I think that it's also worth mentioning that as written in the databank, it's questionable if a drone would have the problem solving capacity to try and ram someone if its blaster failed, since creativity and outside of the box thinking are specifically mentioned as flaws for this model. Winner: Beth Andromina and gravity.

Fulgurmancy Fulgurmancers believe that the key to ultimate power lies with understanding and charting the hidden truths of the Force. Enlightenment will bring with it true mastery of the cosmos. Similar to cryomancers, fulgurmancers have a predisposition towards building temples, but rather than being massive monuments to the architect’s ego, fulgurmancers build these towering edifices to channel and intensify the Force. While many Sith, even among the warrior and assassin callings, practice alchemy for dark ends, fulgurmancers delve into the art on unparallelled levels in regards to non organic materials, zealously testing new alloys and compounds for their interactivity with the Force. Fulgurmancers are the kinds of people that constantly swear that their work is on the verge of a massive breakthrough. That isn’t to say that their work is fruitless, it just isn’t producing results as quickly as they feel it should. Results being limitless cosmic power. Understanding the truth is an obsession for fulgurmancers that extends beyond their scientific pursuits, making them a hotbed for heretical doctrines and philosophies. Their propensity for entertaining all angles tends to get them into trouble with more direct Sith, but also can yield unexpected opportunities. Pivoting Strike: An extrapolation of Sith lightning, this spell allows the sorcerer to discharge lightning into power lines and other conductive materials, control the direction traveled, and cause a second discharge to hit a target from an alternate angle. Cartographer’s Cane: A conductive device used for delivering controlled pulses of energy for the purpose of mapping the flow of energies both mystical and mundane. And also a balance aid, because conducting all of that energy makes fulgermancers twitchy at the best of times, especially after the Delving. The Delving: A transformative internal journey of self discovery, where the fulgurmancer maps their own energy pathways by shocking themself to the verge of death (Or beyond the verge of death, if they’re bad at sorcery). The ritual allows the sorcerer to learn the most efficient and effective ways to channel their personal energy, and creates a foundation of knowledge for how they can enhance that power with amulets and architecture. A Fulgurmancer that has gone through the delving and is not wielding any weapons and is focused entirely on attack casts fulgurmancy spells at a rank higher and with significantly more momentum imparted upon contact. The process is not without its side effects. A fulgurmancer who successfully completes the ritual is constantly storing and discharging electrical energy on touch. This makes them suffer from constant twitching that can occasionally ramp up to heavy spasming. The interplay between metal armor and their body becomes unbearably painful, even with insulating layers. Physical contact with other people creates a sustained current, which the sorcerer can either direct entirely to the other person or suffer half of it to spare the other person the full brunt of the discharge. Sith War Amulets: These specially prepared gauntlets are created in pairs by the most committed fulgurmancers and attuned to their greatest monuments. Once the amulets are affixed, they bind with the flesh and cannot be removed except in death or through lengthy hours long rituals. The amulets serve as focal points for the fulguermancer’s destructive energies, disintegrating most people and objects that touch them. This makes most weapons and equipment that is handheld unusable to the Sith, but also allows the sorcerer to conduct the Dark Side into a more refined energy to attack with. These Force blasts are more concentrated than traditional Sith lightning, making them more precise and capable of traveling at greater speeds. Perceive the Flow of the Cosmos: The Sith is able to “see” the presence and movement of electrical and Force energy. The clarity of this sight is improved on targets that have been struck with the sorcerer’s lightning, an impact pulse from a Cartographer’s Cane, or physical contact after the sorcerer has undergone The Delving. Know the Enemy: This spell allows the sorcerer to anticipate and predict a mapped opponent’s attacks by observing the movements of electrical impulses and Force energies in the body. Subvert the Enemy: A further refinement to Know the Enemy, Subvert the Enemy allows the sorcerer to play havoc on a mapped opponent’s neural system, using spasms to blunt attacks and cripple defenses. The World is Not Worthy to Feel My Tread: By altering magnetic fields the sorcerer is able to hover over the ground as if wearing a repulsor rig. Shocking Rebuke: The energies flowing through the Sith are eager to escape and will find a new home in whomever strikes them in melee combat. The Breaking: When people need incentive to see things the fulgurmancer’s way, a sorcerer will turn to this spell. Outwardly the attack looks like a sustained current of nonlethal electricity, but in truth the effects are far more sinister. The Breaking is a torture spell that strategically burns out parts of the victim’s mind that allow them to resist the will of the fulgurmancer. Things like compassion, courage, and resolve are slowly stripped away until only a broken servant remains. Victims of this spell are clearly afflicted and make terrible spies and saboteurs. (No, you can’t do this spell in its entirety during a duel. Best if used on PCs who have agreed to its use or NPCs.) Suppressing Storm: A barrage of lightning bolts that are meant to disrupt and demoralize enemies. The attack is the antithesis of precise, instead robbing enemies of their own precision. Impact is loud, bright, and explosively concussive enough to put people off of their footing if detonating in close proximity. Spear of Khlorithian: A channeling spell that can only be used during a storm or or near a large power source, the sorcerer commands a number of lightning bolts into their grasp before unleashing them as a single, precise bolt. This attack can be defended against by PCs like a normal Force lightning attack, but allows the sorcerer to contend with hard targets like AT-ATs. Lash of Subjugation: A chain lightning stun spell used by sorcerers to subdue future prisoners with jobs, because those sprawling towers aren’t going to build themselves. Mark of Annihilation: Creates a talisman that can be thrown to magnetically seal on a target’s metal armor, acting as a homing beacon and intensifier of Dark Side attacks. Traveler of Distant Stars: Astral projection with caveats. While projecting, the sorcerer is in a vulnerable state. How much the sorcerer sees depends on how close their projected self is to a talisman that they have crafted or a structure designed to serve as a beacon for astral projection. People with Force bonds can also act as anchors for sorcerers, although the anchor can resist. Projecting does not convey pinpoint navigation or GPS, just because you are projecting onto a person you are bound to does not mean you know what planet they are on. Astral projections are vulnerable to Force attacks, and a dead projection means a dead sorcerer. The sorcerer cannot use Force powers while they are projecting.

Cryomancy All those who obtain power fear that the same cycle will cause them to lose that power in due time. Cryomancers study the metaphysical forces of stagnation and stillness to cement any power they achieve. By stagnating the Force and preventing natural cycles from occurring, the cryomancer creates a frozen well of power to draw upon. This methodology is extremely corrupting, leaving the Sith with a doll-like appearance, with their skin becoming pale and rigid, and over time cracking to reveal black ichor underneath. Cryomancers are able to solidify the souls of sacrifices and defeated enemies into a material called soulfrost, which they use to construct labyrinthine citadels. These sorcerers readily support the Sith war effort and slave trade so that they may easily obtain the resources to expand their domains. As cryomancers prefer to spend most of their time in their frozen lairs, many of them amass great archives to both pass the time and to entice other Sith to perform tasks for them in exchange for access to their archives. While cryomancers don’t use traditional Sith sorcerer powers, their ideology is incredibly Sith oriented. This disparity is a good pick for new players upon reaching lord rank, as apprentices may have trouble acquiring the resources needed to make this disparity shine, but the concepts of it are easy to learn. Cryomancy spells and rituals Creeping Doom: The cryomancer conjures metastasizing ice crystals on the ground and walls that expand and try to envelop the sorcerer’s enemies. The ice hates heat, life, and motion, and wants to silence it all in its smothering embrace. Anyone caught in the expanding ice is in for a slow and painful death as it entombs them and saps their life force while cutting off their oxygen. Enemies killed this way find their final agonies preserved for the cryomancer to add to their collection. This spell requires continued focus for the ice to expand, and should be used more as a means to force enemies out of cover like a fragmentation grenade than a stand alone threat. A wise lord uses the downfall of others to gild their own throne. A victory not capitalized on in full is a wasteful, thrashing bout of foolishness. Hope Denied: With a great inhalation the cryomancer sucks the life, heat, and energy out of the area in front of him, leaving only cold misery behind. While not a lethal spell, it can effectively shut down any build up of energies by enemies and leaves those afflicted open to a pressed attack. What is the strength of a lord who cannot hold to their own power? Hope and courage tremble and flee at the coming of my desolation. Glare of Cruel Disdain: The cryomancer attempts to overwhelm an enemy that they can see with unnatural chill, trying to shatter focus and disrupt aim. Limbs seize and tremble, resisting the will of their owners. It doesn’t matter how right you feel, or what you think is at stake when you strike at me, in the end your fate will be the fate of all fools. Garland of Winter Blossoms: While the cryomancers prefer their frozen kingdoms to the light and lustre of the outside world, they are not always immune to the charms of its inhabitants. This ritual is equal parts binding ceremony and indoctrination, a mockery of the institution of marriage, and turns the victim into little more than a blankly staring puppet. The sole respite for any victim to this ritual is that the cold no longer affects them, but that’s hardly any consolation for the half life that they must endure. Stripped of personal will, infected by the sorcerer’s own darkness, and forced to watch themselves obey the sorcerer’s every command as if in some suspended nightmare dreamstate, these cursed individuals quickly go mad while also being consumed by Dark Side corruption. People of considerable will find the ritual instead targeting their grip on reality, driving them into a delusional state that rationalizes their obedience to and obsession with the Sith that bound them. (Intended for use on NPCs, PCs require direct consent) In time all creation will be frozen belike your heart, and the rule of our sovereign desolation will be undeniable. Unlike our misguided kin the dichotomy of light and dark does not suit me, so I will remake creation as I see fit. The Jedi were right to pick a side in an attempt to make it prevail, they just picked the wrong one. Throne of Oppression: This cryomantic ritual is core to the beliefs of the cryomancers and begins the journey of their greatest works. Upon gathering enough souls to sculpt the necessary soulfrost, the cryomancer crafts the central heart of a new frozen temple. No cryomancer has ever truly finished their grand artifice, as their ambition is boundless, but to an observer these temples swell to hauntingly grandiose proportions. This ritual is the source of the unnatural chill that perpetuates the soulfrost structure, and a necessity to creating any kind of permanent layout. The darkness that emanates from the throne is so suffocating that the light cannot reach it from beyond its walls, attempts to disrupt the ritual must be made from within the throne chamber itself. In long lost Ryllacethos a forgotten princess sits a frozen throne. She bides her time plotting as she awaits the return of her intended with a gift worthy of her hand in marriage. Upon her necklace is set the frozen heart of an ancient flame, and empty rings await its last few embers. Crown of Desolation: Another ritual for cementing power, the crown of desolation creates a mystical link between the cryomancer and their temple allowing them to channel the bitter cold into the world around them. At this point the cryomancer has internalized the stillness and is unaffected by cold and can move unhindered across ice and snow, however the ravages of the Dark Side feed on the festering power of stagnation, twisting and ravaging the cryomancer’s body. There is no lasting escape from this, as even if the cryomancer steals the body of another, deformity will rapidly consume the new shell. Cryomancers that choose to embrace this power find their ability to excel in the physical techniques of the warrior and assassin paths hobbled, and powers from those paths based on strength, endurance, and agility are treated as being performed as a rank lower, and master level physical powers become unavailable. A cryomancer with this power that is using cryomancy with no weapons drawn or readied and is focusing entirely on cryomancy spells treats their attacks as being a mastery level more powerful. In battle the cryomancer becomes a fount of bitter cold, sapping the life out of those around them and inflicting painful (but not lethal for PCs or tactical NPCs) harm to any that stay in the aura for too long (Like all cryomancy spells, this is not an attack that absorbs the energies/life that is lost). A cryomancer doesn’t kill their enemies, they wait for them to inevitably die. When the cryomancers earned the favor of an ancient Dark Lord for averting a foretold doom, they sought the boon of forming a new dynasty to cement their future place in the order. The Dark Lord’s son gifted their chosen sorceress with a ring that made her the fairest to gaze upon, and she treasured this token and would spend long hours gazing at her illusory beauty in a mirror. In truth, her visage had been so twisted by corruption that none could bear to look at it. Shrieking Wail of the Accursed: The Cryomancer shatters a soulfrost talisman to unleash the tormented souls bound within. Driven mad by their confinement the souls scream in agony as they streak through the air, rupturing eardrums and emanating chaotic energies to disrupt the light. Curse of Hollowing Despair: Unsealing a crystal phial, the cryomancer releases a miasma of distilled despair that clings to any living or powered things that it touches, sapping away both emotional and technological energy. Victims of the curse suffer immediate severe depression and apathy, and machines afflicted by it struggle to function on the barest minimum of power. The cone of effect is short but broad, reaching ten feet away from the sorcerer but spreading thirty feet wide. Curse of Howling Agony: Opening a bottle of purely refined agony, the cryomancer unleashes a narrow vortex of freezing winds and razor sharp ice crystals. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the trajectory of the curse is swarmed by the ice crystals relentlessly while being slammed back by one hundred fifty mile per hour winds. The cursed ice shards crawl over the bodies of the accursed, flaying but not killing them. The area of effect for this vortex is five feet wide and eighty feet long. Curse of Weeping Regret: Shattering a bottle with a fat belly and slender neck, the cryomancer releases an oily concoction of shame, self loathing, and regret. The hydra-like unguent substance spreads out to a radius of fifteen feet, entangling and affixing itself to anyone unlucky enough to be in range. While it can feed off of a target’s own negative emotions and psychological burdens, it is also able to infect victims with the inner darkness used to create it. In these cases, the victim experiences the alien memories and feelings as if they were their own dark secrets. Malevolence of Eternities: Within the halls of a cryomancer’s abode, the walls do occasionally weep a distillate of suffering that collects in torpid pools in the depths. These wells of curse laden water are used by the cryomancers as an unholy medium for the creation of limnal blades that carve frozen paths through the air, freezing joints and turning armor brittle with a touch. Victims that have survived being struck by a limnal weapon have reported feelings of extreme numbness, apathy, and despair, along with energies of both a physical and spiritual nature being sapped away. Limnal blades are so potent in their purpose that they cannot be wielded by someone wearing metal or powered armor without the armor ceasing to function. A limnal blade can serve as a conduit for the cryomancer to channel preternatural cold into surfaces and inanimate objects, but with significantly less efficiency than a Stillblade.(These weapons do not in any way store or absorb energy, they only bleed away the energies of the enemies and objects that they strike) The same misery wept waters can be used to treat textiles and metals for armor, although only Sith warriors have the stamina and strength to effectively battle in a full suit of cursed Sith steel armor, making such things a common item of trade between the two castes. Both forms of armor sap the energy and momentum of attacks, in particular ranged attacks, but only the metal variant offers significant protection from melee strikes. Attempts to wield both limnal blades and cursed steel armor have been fatal at best, with the sum energies overwhelming and killing anyone that has tried. (This statement is not meant to be read as a way for your character to show how amazing he or she is at mastering the Dark Side, it’s a warning that you will die if you attempt it, and the other Sith will point and laugh at you.) Stillblade Chrysalis: Using profane sorceries and offering up foul sacrifices, the cryomancer denatures a lightsaber crystal to create a darkness that devours rather than a light that blazes. Often one of the first steps that a new cryomancer takes on the path, the weapon becomes a focusing conduit for their inner darkness. While activated, frost crawls across every nearby inanimate surface, and freezing mists emanate from the cryomancer, partially obscuring their outline and movements. If used with Crown of Desolation, the cold is significant enough to blot out thermal vision. If used with Darkness Reigns, the cryomancer is treated as being a rank higher. The cryomancer must be actively wielding an activated Stillblade to gain these benefits. As a weapon, Stillblades are interchangeable with lightsabers in terms of damage and materials that are resistant to lightsabers. Casual Dismissal: The cryomancer conjures a spear of ice, either from water in the air, a nearby body of water, or souls, and uses it to strike down an enemy, preferably while they are restrained by ice or otherwise incapacitated. While the cryomancer is capable of making the spear travel quickly, they often prefer to make the attack appear effortless like the name suggests while they put down defeated foes. The penetrative power that a cryomancer can muster depends on their rank as a Sith, but the attack must always be a single spear that originates from the cryomancer's general area. It is not a fire and forget attack, requiring dedicated focus throughout the spell, but in return this makes the attack significantly harder to deflect or redirect through counter TK. Deny the Coward: The cryomancer can slowly seal off doors, tunnels, or hallways with soulfrost walls. The creation of these obstacles is too slow to be useful as an effective mid duel defensive move against attacks. Maw of Inevitability: The frozen surfaces around the cryomancer metastasize sharp spikes like teeth, creating a plethora of deadly traps for drained and weakened enemies to be driven into. Tyranny of Winter: A cryomancy ritual of intricate invocations and complex sigils, this is the cryomancer’s answer to enemies that would try to press them with hordes of troops and mechanized assaults. The battlefield is consumed by a blanket of white and visibility dwindles to nothingness as bitter winds and snowfall obscure all vision. Superstorms meander through the blizzard flash freezing anything caught in their eyes. Infantry are forced to take cover or freeze to death, and machines find their inner workings failing in the extreme cold. While the cryomancer is channeling this spell they cannot leave the ritual area or hide their Force presence in any way. The storms cannot be used to target specific PCs or NPCs, think of the spell as a means for mass suppression of armies rather than a way to snipe high value targets. Darkness Reigns: Cryomancers can choose to manifest their TK as a blast of freezing winds. Upon reaching the rank of Lord, the winds are able to persist for a few seconds beyond the initial blast. At master rank the winds become a persistent channeled effect, ending only when the master loses concentration or chooses to end the effect. A master that is using a Stillblade or Crown of Desolation’s unarmed power boosting option can treat the use and upkeep of this spell as an innate passive ability, although doing so reduces the intensity to more like walking into a strong headwind, difficult but not insurmountable.

Cut off from her access to the Dark Side, and untrained in the Light Side to any degree that could charitably be referred to as proficient, Ailbasí did what she could to at least reorient the attacks to land parallel instead of perpendicularly. The arrow shafts shattered on her armor, but the stilettos struck with ruinous force even on their sides, and one that had remained unturned pierced through near her shoulder. The fire that the attacks burned with could no longer find any purchase on her soul, having already let go of the Darkness within. She didn’t even have a weapon drawn. Maybe it was the severe trauma, burns, and blood loss talking, but she could swear that she felt strange alchemies within her, the transfiguration of fire and blood resulting from the transgressive use of holy flame on someone who had chosen a new path… or at least had abandoned the old one. She didn’t know what the future held. Maybe her story ended here, after all, her connection to the Dark Side was gone, so there was no guarantee of a repeat of what happened the last time that she had died. She could find some measure of acceptance with that, she just hoped that if that was the case somebody else could put down this monster before it hurt more people. ((Closing Defense))

Nyrys grinned behind her mask, thrilled to have such a capable opponent. Every challenge was an opportunity to improve one’s measure, and the greater the adversary, the more a warrior was forced to grow. Or perish. This one would be a boon to Nyrys’s reputation if she could be put down. Trusting in her skill, the warrior let her blade leave her hands, sending it into the dirt with explosive force behind the Jedi. This freed her body to move significantly faster, and she evaded the thrust spear tip by twisting her torso sideways which progressed into a roll away from the Jedi. She felt the Jedi trying to burn away her darkness from within, and rather than flee from it she spiritually leaned in on the attack. Fire burned indiscriminately, and the connection between the two put her enemy’s own wrath and hunger within range to be set ablaze with equal conviction. She could feel her own appetite for the consumption of mortal flesh slipping away, and while it limited her power, that desire had always seemed… alien to her, having never been particularly gluttonous before she became a Sith. Perhaps it had been imbued upon her by her first master, Sheog, who was known for his cannibalistic gluttony. She wanted to lash out at her enemy, to destroy the Jedi in an overwhelming display of force, but she had grown so much since her earlier days of recklessly charging every obstacle head on with her newfound power. A direct confrontation of strength and spiritual power would be foolish and just playing into the hands of her opponent, she needed a different approach. So she put aside her own passions and propelled herself back into the miasma of smoke and flame that was enveloping the field. Neither light or dark, but a being of dusk. She had hated the weakness that had defined her old life, and in the clarity of the flames that burned her hunger, she realized that she could not excuse away the sins of the strength that had defined her new life. “You need me to fight to justify the sickness that you’ve been nurturing inside of you. Because the more monstrous I am, the more excuses you can make to feed your own pfasked up delusions that what you are doing is necessary. But the truth is you’re just as broken as I am, trying to force some measure of control on a galaxy that is beyond anyone’s ability to rein in. I am not your villain.” Phantoms of past versions of herself gathered around her, snapshots of her in times of weakness and strength, and she broke the chains to each of them in turn, until only her new truth remained. The ghostly figures each had a measure of the Jedi’s flame blossoming within them until they each became a pyre. They surrounded and closed in on the Jedi with haunting deliberation, each one a torchbearer of the exorcist’s own hypocrisy, conjured to bring her own flame back to roost. Even as they left her, Nyrys knew that she wasn’t alone, the memories of her family that she carried with her were more than just her last moments, and they stood by her through vengeance and forgiveness, because that’s what family did. “I no longer need them, but I think that you still do, so hack away at the shadows of the past if it suits you. When the fires die, there will still be enough of me left to go on living. I wonder if the same can be said about you?” ((3))

A two pronged attack was being hurled Nyrys’s way, making her thankful that she had not simply charged in. This allowed her to pick her poison, so to speak, and that was an easy choice. Most Force wielding duelists used their powers of telekinesis to move objects and other people, but assassins were taught to think about applications of the Force in unconventional ways. Of the two choices, the fire was by far favorable to the puncturing bite of the stiletto, so in the precious fractions of seconds that Nyrys had, she exerted her will to evade the blade and face the flames. Her armor blazed with eldritch pathways and dark glyphs as hungry flames washed over her. The fire was unnatural, and bit at her like a rabid hound, while the force of it sent her flying backwards. She recognized some of her own hunger in the bite marks. Split second moments of self reflection crashed and tumbled through her brain, questioning if she was truly on the right path. Faces of friends, of happiness, of shared moments crept into her psyche. And yet, her hunger had never been an expression of inner greed, but starvation in a galaxy that often had no place for people of the “wrong” species. It was through her pain and rejection that she had found the people that had come to mean the most to her, other than her parents. Her flesh sizzled under the relentless heat, nerves screaming in agony before falling strangely silent. Mustafar and working in the forges had to some degree prepared her body for how to fight through intense heat, but this was something that even surpassed those experiences. Nothing could have ever truly prepared her for this. Even as the monster inside of her raged at her to get up, to charge forward and tear the thing that had wounded her apart limb from limb, a great lethargy fell upon her limbs. The blast carried her back with such momentum that she actually slid on the dew slick grass once she hit it, eventually coming to a stop several meters away. Would it be so bad to just let things end here? She felt so tired, and as she lay in the grass she could see beyond the liminal sky into the void beyond, a place without pain or despair, only silence. Wouldn’t that be nice? She felt a hand on her shoulder, and looking over saw one of her little nephews on Kuat, ginger haired and freckled, he wanted to show her something. She must have fallen asleep on the couch, studying for school was always wrecking her sleep schedule. One of her uncles made a joke about cat naps, but it was the good kind of joke, not one soaked in acid or venom. Something was cooking in the kitchen, these family gatherings always meant lots of food. Frankly Ailbasí didn’t know how her aunt did it in such a small kitchen. Every year her father would offer to host, but none of them ever had the leave to be able to get away from the docks. It seemed like mandatory wartime work shifts were never going to go away. Her nephew started to say something, but was interrupted by a cough. He got out his medbreather, asthma was fairly common in their family. A deep coughing fit tore from his lungs, and soon was echoed throughout the tiny habcube. This wasn’t asthma. The coughing did not cease, and black smoke began erupting from everyone’s mouths and nostrils. What had once been joy upon everyone’s faces was replaced with panic and terror, and blisters of melting flesh started blooming across their skin. Ailbasí felt the heat too, coming from her armor? A final wave of incinerating heat surged through the room, and Ailbasí was back in the park. She hadn’t been there when the Jedi had attacked Kuat, but the burns that she had just now received had given her a new intimate understanding of how her family had died. She saw them now, the way she always saw them in her nightmares, nightmarish parodies of her family covered in weeping burns and denuded by the raw heat of the turbolaser blasts. They gathered around her with twitching, broken gaits, and seeing them made her desire feel shameful. They pressed in on her, but as they laid their hands on her she did not sense judgement from them, only sadness. This was her family, and even through death they were here for her. They picked her up off the ground and came together in a great embrace. She could feel them giving her their pain, their sorrow, their regret, and in time each one had melded into her armor and her soul. Their faces could now be seen amidst the molten surfaces of the exterior, a mark of the truest form of sacrifice. She had wept for their loss since the day she had found out about it, but now she had a greater understanding of their pain, and it had come to reside within her. A ring of fire roared outward from Darth Nyrys, woven of pain and memory. The nearby trees ignited and the grass steamed off its sheathing of dew before also succumbing to flame. Only the Jedi, protected by its innate Force aura, remained untouched. Darth Nyrys looked upon the creature in front of her, and saw in it the same hatred and obsession that had been with the Jedi and the rebels when they had set Kuat to the metaphorical torch. When Exodus had asked her about her place in the Darkness, she had told him that she had wanted to be a righteous devil, and before her she saw someone worthy of the most vicious torments. She would strangle the vile sinner with its own chains and cast her into a pit of flames whose black smoke would form pillars rising up into eternity. Sacred wrath blazed through her muscles, consuming the false peace that her wounds had tried to seduce her with. Readying her sword, she gathered the smoke and heat that the world was bleeding around her and advanced with terrible focus. Her sword blazed with anticipatory revel and roared a primal, wordless battlecry across the ether. She launched into another lateral movement, but this time she used the Force to redirect her momentum as she closed into a direct charge. The smoke that she had gathered was imbued with the thermal, concussive, and spiritual energies that her armor had stored from the Jedi’s attack, a screaming malformed thing made of both their souls, and launched as a roaring wave with the intent to push aside the Jedi’s spear and disrupt her song with smoldering ash. Hot on its heels came a downward diagonal strike that sought to capitalize on the potential for an opening. The blade was nearly weightless on the rise but fell with meteoric force, the unseen power of a Sith warrior who properly wielded a Sith sword was in the manipulation of the interaction between the physical world and its mechanical energies. What to an outsider looked like a simple sword swing was both an expression of physical and spiritual might, the unity of purpose expressed from without and within. "Choke on your own hypocrisy, you motherpfasking kath!" ((2, forgot to number post 1))

Whatever stood before Nyrys was no Jedi. That much was apparent now. There was a sickness to her that felt unnatural even to Nyrys. Unlike the Sith, who mastered the Dark Side and used it to achieve their own goals, this thing was enthralled by the darkness, like some kind of zombie or rabid beast. “Clearly you are in pain,” Nyrys spoke in firm, measured words as she drew Gwn Marwolaeth, “Allow me to offer you some measure of peace.” The warrior adopted a boar’s tooth guard, right foot forward and blade angled downward. Advancing quickly but not at a full on charge, she moved towards the peripheral, ready to dart away or deflect an incoming attack as needed. The spear was a defensive weapon, and engaging an enemy required careful consideration, and foolishness was a great way to get skewered. So rather than charging in, Nyrys called upon her assassin training, fanning the flames of hunger and rage that she felt within her opponent. She was no stranger to either emotion, and ever since her first Force bond, with the Krath master Sheog, she had an intimacy with starved frenzy and the thrill of consuming others.

The Sable Blade, a Sith shuttle from the Fair Lady of Iziz, finished it’s microjump from the orbit of New Centerpoint to Corellia, and began its descent to the world’s surface. The planet was slowly choking itself under the mantle of industry, a fate shared by many worlds that were entangled in the webs of the intergalactic military industrial complex. Kuat had the foresight to build their production facilities in orbit, but many other worlds had sacrificed their own viability in exchange for the vast amounts of credits that the business offered. The grime and oil covered most of the populace like an unctuous outer layer, as if to subsume them into the machines that they serviced. Many had resigned themselves to their fates as part of the colossal contraptions that served the shipyards, but others fought against the crushing of their spirits. Ironically it was the shackles of industry that most likely fueled the populace’s obsession with ships and piloting, ships were freedom, the chance at a life unbound to the gears and the ceaseless grind. Those that could fly, fix, or con well enough were able to escape the planet’s clutches, to break their chains. It was a perfect example of the Sith code at work, the ordinary becoming fodder for the great, while the truly talented rose to live a life of their own. Such people were always interesting, and Nyrys looked forward to meeting them once Corellia was liberated from the Alliance’s yoke of mediocrity. The shuttle landed, and the Sith warrior disembarked alone. She had Gwn Marwolaeth sheathed to her back, and Gwell Na Rhyw thrummed excitedly in its sheathe on her hip. The two blades could be considered to represent the twin driving forces within Nyrys, the sword being her dedication to the warrior path, her discipline in training, and self improvement, and the machete embodied her passionate side, her embrace of the visceral world, and the acceptance of her own desires. She was drawn to a rare jewel in Coronet City’s cityscape, the botanical and zoological gardens. There was the sense of confinement and hunger in the air, an iron bulwark sealing away a savage hunger that was bordering on starvation. Oh and there were animals there too. But as cute and boopable as the durni were, Nyrys’s focus was narrowing in on the the pangs she felt of an emaciated beast that conjured the image of an axe, a sharpened edge empowered by raw force. The park was closed, with the sun on the verge of setting or rising, Nyrys didn’t know and it looked like it could go either way. She stopped at an unattended snack cart, and after perusing the options she grabbed a few bars, leaving some credits on the cart’s surface. The Sith Lady pressed onward into the botanical section, finding herself amidst a grove of trees. In spite of the constructed nature of the park, this place resonated with natural songs, and Nyrys wanted to run, and pounce, and hunt. The Jedi liked to claim that they had a monopoly on the natural world, but in truth the Sith could be equally at home amidst the wilds, although it stirred a different part of the psyche in them. She spotted the one that she was looking for, a sleight woman with ebon locks and violet eyes. At first glance she looked human, but decidedly inhuman tendrils were protruding from her mouth. Nyrys’s unnatural eyes saw within her a coiling hunger, held within a steel ribcage that glowed whitehot with focus and rage. In another life the woman would have made a fine Sith warrior. She took out one of the snack bars and tossed it in the woman’s general direction. “For the love of all the stars and planets in the sky, we can go grab a meal before we do this, but at the very least, eat the motherpfasking Crunchamunch bar. I could literally sense your hunger from low orbit. Like I can ZapaMap us a nearby diner or something and we can get you some food, my treat. Are they not feeding you guys, or is this like a body image issue thing, because sweetie, you don’t have to kill yourself for some impossible male standard, you look great.”