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Darth Nyrys

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  1. Nyrys regarded Ca’aran’s image with disdain. Time had put distance between their fight, but she had been focused on other things since then, and had not really parsed through her thoughts and emotions on what had happened. Buried under time’s dust was a smouldering magma flow of emotions that threatened to seize control, and probably would have if she wasn’t acutely aware that the Dark Lord was evaluating her. She had a choice between revenge and ambition, but maybe the math would make the correct answer clearer. In the interest of furthering her apprentice’s training, Nyrys had left the command hub to join the battle directly. Now with the help of a technical officer she reviewed the data of what she had missed. The Sith coalition had traded up across the board, losing three cruisers in exchange for destroying three capital ships, and while it seemed like the terrorists had managed to recover their objective, it wasn’t anyone worth the blood price that the enemy had paid today. A small team would have been far better suited for this objective, but it looked like someone in the enemy command wanted to make a show of force. The outcome certainly could have been worse. “As much fun as it would be to use this moment to settle personal scores, I think that Delta is a tool that we are currently misusing. He’s a hammer, and Black Sun was trying to use him like a screwdriver. If we use him in the proper capacity, it will be a solid investment to retain him, we just shouldn’t expect him to perform in any capacity when it comes to screwing. But don’t worry Delta, we know how to handle tools in the Sith Empire.” A lot of Sith had a tendency to refer to Darth Vader’s methodology when disciplining officers without realizing the underlying context that Darth Vader was a career soldier surrounded by incompetent and untested officers who advanced more through political games than merit. Killing officers over impossible situations wasn’t inspiring better performance through fear, it was throwing homicidal tantrums. “If it pleases your Imperial Majesty, that is my judgement. Besides, nobody hates Delta more than himself, to live is its own punishment for him.”
  2. “It’s less about how others would feel about my choices, or even the uglier choices that I’ve had to make, and more about finding a path that reflects my true nature. Everything I was taught about morality growing up was in regards to being a good person or a bad person, but I don’t feel like a person at all. I feel Other, but not profane. Sometimes I feel like a lioness running down hares, bound only by the laws of nature; other times I see injustice and I feel compelled to rip and tear like an avenging angel. I am not meek or mild enough to be a person, I am too principled to be a beast, and I am too mercurial to be a saint. So I want to be a monster from a grim fable, a blood drenched reminder that actions have consequences. Something outside of morality so that I can hurt people the way that they deserve to be hurt. I want to be a righteous devil, baptized in the hot blood of the ill intentioned as a pack of like minded wolves watch me with genuine faith. I want to be the fire that burns away the rot and stagnation from galaxy, naked and indiscriminate with insatiable hunger. You know, typical girl stuff.” Nyrys steeled herself for the next bit, because if she misjudged her place it could end poorly, but if she didn’t show initiative she had no right to what she was asking. “And I’d like to do all of those things from the Throne of the Warrior. I’m hungry enough that I won’t rest on my laurels if you see fit to have me by your side as your martial counsel, and I will never betray you like the Wolf is said to have. I will complete any trial you ask of me, if you find my qualifications uncertain.”
  3. “My King.” Darth Nyrys gracefully stepped onto the bridge, a vision of unearthly carnal beauty fresh from the slaughter of lesser men. She sauntered towards Exodus still riding the twin highs of victory and the consumption of vital essences, and came to a stop far closer than what would be considered a respectable distance. She knelt before her Dark Lord, head bowed in supplication, but then she looked up at him, brilliant emeralds adrift in a sea of crimson. She took her time looking him over, after all, he was a lot to take in. The first time she met him she had been overwhelmed mostly by terror, as is appropriate for who he is, but now she had her wits about her enough to shamelessly objectify him. Unfortunately, however, Darth Nyrys knew enough about history to know what happened to women that fell in love with emperors, and she had no desire to fade away into a footnote in the history books, she had come too far. Even if she really, really wanted to climb that man like a tree. Down girl. Through sheer force of will she redirected her thoughts to more pressing matters. She had to focus on the long term and remember that there were other man trees to climb with fewer political and professional consequences. “One of my apprentices has slain a Jedi in single combat without aid, and as is our way I have bestowed upon him the name Darth Truaillidh. While his combat aptitude is acceptable, I think his greatest contributions to your reign will be in the Krath domains of alchemy and the creation of sithspawn.” She presented Exodus with the data core that Truaillidh had given her earlier. She was still kneeling before him, as he had not permitted her to rise yet. No matter, she could stay on her knees for as long as… No, bad brain. Motherpfasker. “Also, if it pleases you, would you permit me a conversation about the nature of monsters? I feel more and more distant from the person I was, in terms of what I feel is right and wrong, and being a good monster wasn’t a course they offered at uni.”
  4. The wet crunch of a body hitting the deck brought Nyrys out of her indulgent reverie. Her meal came back to his senses and briefly started screaming before she tore out his throat with her teeth. The ragged tear let loose a stream of hot blood, like popping the cap off of a shaken carbonated beverage, and still rather in the moment, Nyrys laughed gleefully. The wound on her abdomen had closed, and only ached dully thanks to the sudden infusion of consumed vitality. Even before she looked, part of her knew who it was that fell, but seeing the broken form of the Jedi settled a great deal of worry in her heart. It was the Sith way to let apprentices stand or fail on their own merit, but if Drago had been lost today it would cost the Sith more than just another sword arm. The apprentice had a true gift for Sith alchemy that could yield exponential returns on the investment of training him, provided he survived long enough to reap those benefits. For a brief moment the astral form of the Jedi was visible, before it rejoined the Force, or whatever it is that Jedi do when they go all blue and see through. Probably something involving drum circles and deep discussions on how pleasantly unassuming the color beige is. Hard pass. She had been too young to really dwell on her own mortality before, but it now occurred to her that immortality was a very real goal that she could achieve. Putting aside the factionalist rhetoric, Nyrys knew on a personal level that her choice would always be to viscerally experience life over sterilely understanding it. Examining life had only ever brought her fear, doubt, and self loathing. The Jedi claimed to serve the natural order, but what if that order was fundamentally flawed or otherwise imperfect? If so many people didn’t fit into the Jedi’s worldview, was it really representative of the natural truth of the galaxy, or just another incomplete splinter of an unknowable divine truth? If one thing was certain, it was that Nyrys wasn’t going to silently fade away to appease one wacko cult’s dogmatic vision. Like so many others, she came into this galaxy broken, but that wouldn’t keep her from fighting like hell to make a place for herself in it. Her apprentice approached her, as polite and proper as ever, despite having just cut a man to pieces. “My wound was entirely on account of a shistaven with a way too big vibro-scimitar, and not on anything you did or didn’t do. You have slain a worthy opponent in single combat with no aid. Arise, Darth Truaillidh, for in claiming your place in the galaxy through murder you have earned a place in the legacy of the Darth name. Now see to your own wound, I don’t think I need to lecture you on the hazards of untreated burns. After you have been tended to I will present you to the Dark Lord, if it suits him.” Darth Nyrys departed the bay with pride in her apprentice, and headed to the bridge to learn the current state of the space battle.
  5. The brutish marshal, underestimating the wickedness of her blade, intentionally let it bite deep into his shoulder and seized her with his free hand, lifting her up to skewer her with his scimitar. Pain brought back memories of the crucible, and her daily torments there. It was a sacrifice vindicated by her ability to function in spite of overwhelming pain. In the marshal’s feverish attempt to kill her, he failed to notice the state of his arm. The flesh beneath the fur bubbled and festered with unnatural speed, and when the pus filled bubbles popped, they revealed vacant craters where flesh used to be. The failing arm collapsed through sheer putrefaction before he could go fishing for vital organs, and she slid off his blade and back onto her feet. A spinning kick to the marshal’s groin doubled him over, and a solid right hook to the head knocked the man unconscious. She whistled for deck security, and ordered them to secure and stabilize what was left of her opponent, after taking a selfie with the incapacitated opponent and sending it to the Dark Lord. She would just as soon kill him and end his suffering, but her apprentice might want samples for his studies and various… projects. For her own part, she left a deeply ingrained mental scar, engraving the illusion of her dead family on his mind. While the wound was not immediately terminal, it was certainly leaking a great deal more than she would like. Fortunately, the good marshal had brought snacks with him, in the form of a squad of Galactic Alliance marines. She perused their catatonic forms before finding one that looked extra appealing, and ordered security to take the rest away. Her apprentice hadn’t finished yet with the Jedi, so she took her six pack snack pack to a secluded part of the bay and started consuming his body and soul, while his mind was enveloped with a sweet fiction. Occasionally, brief millisecond flickers of fragments of reality would break through, but surely this was better than dying to a blaster bolt or getting disemboweled by a cursed blade? Maybe her manwich wasn’t the only one enveloped in a sweet fiction… But as she consumed him, she felt undeniably better, both in terms of her wound and her internal self. Acts of predation had always had a natural ease and appeal to her. Growing up, she had written it off as getting even with xenophobic snobs that made her life hell, but now she had to wonder if it was something else. Was the night her nature, and if so, what did that mean? She had studied a lot of religions at uni for her major, and a constant was a necessary darkness. If she was to be a righteous devil, what devilry would truly nourish her soul? ((3-day Capture and release on Mythos))
  6. With her enemy making no effort to press her, Darth Nyrys was able to collect herself from the self inflicted trauma of the emotional attack and skulk closer. The way of the assassin was very different from her warrior roots, turning strength into weakness rather than directly measuring strength against strength. One was more suited towards bettering the galaxy, the other towards bettering herself, both were important. Darth Nyrys heard all of the marshal’s words, but would not be baited out prematurely, or breach operational security to point out that she had been on Mandalore to intercept the Crusaders, only leaving when the Dark Lord had called his banners to respond to this latest rebel atrocity. Instead, she gathered her rage, her sorrow, and her pain in a deep inhaling breath, focused that energy into a weapon, and upon closing a good deal of the distance, released it along with ending her sound dampening illusion in a Dark Side infused banshee cry. Her intention was to turn the Shistaven’s acute hearing against him, maybe even rupturing his eardrums and ruining his balance. The near silence that she had been permeating through the hangar from the start of the fight was like sharpening the blade of this attack to a razor’s edge. The energy itself carried a great deal of negative emotions, and the terror on Dark Sun Station was coalescing enough that Nyrys could tap into it for additional power. Pushing the offensive, Nyrys followed the shout with a series of thrusting strikes with Brathiad Gwynt. Fear and anger would make the necrosis from any successful strikes course through the marshal’s veins. The sword’s cursed blade blazed with green flame upon hearing yet another excuse for the rebellion’s murderous actions as it was driven forward. Her strikes were practiced and meticulous, capitalizing on her greater blade length advantage and more melee oriented armor. "I showed up when my people needed me, that's why I'm here today. To stop monsters too self righteous to realize what they are doing is wrong, like you." ((Nyrys vs Mythos 3))
  7. The strange and archaic weapon had a greater spread than Nyrys anticipated, and as a result it still clipped her shoulder armor and sent her spinning, although her training kept her from losing her footing completely. She recovered by extending her left leg, bending her right, and lowering her center of gravity with dancer like poise until she reached a predatory stance. “Did it ever occur to you that by that logic you’re just as guilty of your own side’s massacres? I’m from Kuat, and my people were builders on one of the civilian ship manufacturing stations. They had no part in this damned war, and they were slaughtered anyway. Maybe you can explain to them why they had to die?” It was like vomiting acid and tears, crafting and projecting this illusion. To take those happy images of her cousins, aunts, and uncles, and twist them into representations of their mangled corpses. What remained was virtually inhuman, but with just enough humanity to bring about that unsettling connection. Their flesh was burnt into grotesque mockeries of human faces, and their movements were disjointed and fitful, the bones and muscles that supported them broken and torn by incomprehensible force. The little bodies clutched the remains of favored toys that they had once held for reassurance as the New Republic murdered them all with self righteous zeal. However, despite their monstrous appearance these were no boogeymen or phantasmal chimera meant for attacking. They were effigies of sadness and mourning, weeping as they shambled and crawled towards the marshal. All of them had the same one word question on their blistered lips. “Why?” A chorus of scared and confused voices erupted from the amassing crowd of bodies as they circled and pressed in on the Shistavanen. Nyrys herself stood in the background, clutching a nearby console and trying to choke back tears from having to imagine her family this way. Her blade was ready to guard but she made no move to attack. She drowned the room in an even deeper quietude, one so heavy that you would have to strain to hear even shouting. Only the whispered question was permitted to be heard easily in the room. ((2))
  8. OOC((Incapacitation of NPCs was agreed upon over Discord, I’ve also agreed to no NPCs interfering with the Mythos duel on the Sith side.)) After a time, the ramp fell, and a Jedi shot out of the hold and up onto the maintenance catwalks like a small rodent on methamphetamines. Her apprentice dutifully followed him up, knowing what was expected of him in this encounter. Nyrys, not keen on having her apprentice’s test interfered with, turned her attention to the disembarking rebels. At her suggestion, their minds perceived their weapons turning into venomous snakes and striking at them until they collapsed into a catatonic stupor. Well, all of them save for a Shistaven canid. She had studied them in her sociological trends of sapient predatory species class at uni, they were physically capable with the keen senses that were part and parcel of being a superior hunting species. In many ways they were similar to the Cathar, in a poorly refined, underevolved sort of way. Budget Cathar. But an intriguing distraction nonetheless. Unnatural silence began to infect the air as an otherworldly fog flooded into the bay, a crimson bank of obscuration. It was an obvious illusion, but knowing that it was an illusion did not necessarily lift it’s suffocating pall. The fog did not reach the catwalks, Nyrys had been sincere in her position of not aiding her apprentice in his test. Darth Nyrys drew Brathiad Gwynt as she started to feel the dread and suffering of the innocents on Dark Sun station. When military ships were hit with ion cannons, the crew knew the appropriate procedures, had equipment to survive, and knew that engineers would be working to fix things. A junior banker living in an econo hab block as a wage slave wasn’t going to have any of those reassurances as the station went dark, the power doors stopped working, and the life support died. It was going to be Kamino all over again. Blistering fury gushed through Nyrys like molten steel and she flowed through the fog like a quicksilver apparition, darting in with a light probing strike from Brathiad Gwynt before departing with preternatural speed back into the fog. Mockingly playful laughter accompanied her during the attack, sourceless and disconcerting. “I can feel them dying right now, you know. How can you claim to care about the innocent when you always so casually sacrifice their lives in horrific ways? The Crusaders rampage through the core and you do nothing but hide, but a military strike against a civilian space station and suddenly you’re all patriots of justice? COWARDS, ALL OF YOU!” Duel Post One Darth Nyrys vs Mythos
  9. Slipblades are Sith swords designed primarily for thrusting that allow the blade to “slip” through the handle, allowing the blade to extend and recede at the will of the wielder, even to the point of extending fully out of pommel and effectively reversing the orientation of the blade. Warriors and assassins with sufficient skill (lord rank) can temporarily launch the blade in a thrusting motion beyond the confines of the handle, but after that initial launch if the next movement is not a return to the handle the blade’s momentum slows to normal telekinesis speed and any further actions require traditional telekinesis control. The slipblade is a new weapon design and its properties in the hands of a master have not been demonstrated, but greater versatility in its ejected state is a solid supposition.
  10. OOC((Duel request for Mythos and Aidan's stunt double aboard the Scarab)) A black canvas painted with fleeting streaks of red, green, and blue, along with the occasional orange or blue blossom of explosive energy lay before Darth Nyrys. In another respect, it looked like a top down perspective RTS game, something she would have played with her friends during the Before. This wasn’t her first time being on a warship during a battle, but it was the first time that she had seen the Jedi maintain enough of a spine to commit to an extended firefight. She hadn’t been present at Onderon for the second battle, but she had read reports and according to them, the Jedi ran after only minimal contact. Apparently here they had sought to isolate the Black Sun fleet and overwhelm it with the help of their allies, the fragmented remains of the Galactic Alliance and the treacherous Imperial Remnant. Failures and oathbreakers were fitting company for the hypocritical Jedi. On paper, the Jedi sounded like heroes of legend, warrior mystics dedicated to protecting the light and the people that carry it. Selfless individuals who wielded power but never owned it. Goodness in a vast void of apathy and cruelty. The reality however painted a far less compelling picture. Cultures genocided for failing to step in line, children stolen away from parents and forced into cult like indoctrination, slave armies of clones, planets burned or worse for picking the “wrong” side. War didn’t make heroes, only popular monsters, and the Jedi had been fighting this war for as long as the Sith had. Nyrys didn’t begrudge the Jedi for the life they chose, in different circumstances she would find it admirable, but their need to force others to surrender to their beliefs was unforgivable. Remembering her mother and father sitting her down and telling her that her Grammy and her aunts and uncles and cousins were all gone still brought forth palpable feelings of grief, loss, helplessness, and rage. It was a massive emotional wound shared by the survivors, and it was left untreated until it festered and became infected. When the Jedi saw what had been born of their actions, they admonished the weeping and the wounded for having such a darkness growing within them, and denied any wrongdoing. So much for champions of justice. The Galactic Alliance would later pardon the Jedi that committed the murders, and he would quietly slip away from the public’s narrow focus as new scandals and controversies arose. But his legacy remained, and the Kuati people would never forget the crimes of the Jedi and the Rebellion. Now that legacy of violence had come to Dark Sun Station, and while killing its adherents would bring no meaningful justice to the dead of Kuat, it might just save the civilians on the station. She cast herself into the infinite chaos of interwoven connections between candle flames in the Force, a web of silver strands reflecting a sourceless iridescent light. After some searching, she found what she was looking for amidst the swirling confusion. “Prepare bay epsilon for a shuttle seizure and inform gunnery that I want this enemy shuttle tractored in. I expect things will go smoothly, but just in case, be prepared to seal and vent the bay should things take an unexpected turn.” The junior officer took the datapad with the shuttle designation and moved with purpose to execute Nyrys’s orders. Nyrys took a moment to regard the Dark Lord, inscrutable as always as he observed the battle unfolding. She wondered if her efforts had been enough to satisfy his expectations for a new agent. Perhaps her doubt was baseless, but it kept her sharp and always looking for ways to better herself. “The Dark Lord is the will, and we are the blade.” She punctuated the motto with a salute of thumping her hand over her heart while holding her sword just below the hilt on the scabbard. Gathering up her apprentice she departed to meet their new prey. “The next phase of your training will require that you overcome an enemy of some ability, an adept of the Force like yourself, in single combat. I will not aid you in this trial outside of preventing outside interference, and failure most likely will result in death. May you find your worth in your sword’s poetry.” The pair arrived at the bay and at Nyrys’s instruction took cover as the gunnery crew began reeling in their prey. “Situations like this, find something that you trust to not fail under enemy fire, and wait for them to blow their load on the charge. They’ll always start with something meant to make people duck or leave cover, deny both, remain level headed, and when they get in range make a clean strike.”
  11. The Scarab was immense, a bigger, blacker expression of the Dark Lord’s power than even the spire on Onderon. As much a status symbol as a machine of war, the Scarab offered far more logistical support to the Sith aboard it than most capital ships. For the first time in what seemed like too long, Nyrys had access to a forge again. Forging arms and armor were in their own way snapshots of Nyrys’s life. Whatever she made reflected the trials she was facing at the time, a moment of conflict cast into permanence Sith steel and sorcery. She bid her apprentice observe her as she worked, for his own edification. She was proficient enough with the Force to shape the metals through will alone, but she was fond of the traditional methods of hammer and anvil. The heat, exertion, and rhythm allowed her mind to wander to other places, to rummage through deeper ambitions and desires. The fleet was rallying in totality so she had time to work in depth on her new weapon. Gwn Marwolaeth was an excellent all around blade, but Nyrys wanted something more specialized towards thrusting in the advent of combat in tight spaces.The blade was forty inches long from guard to point at full extension, with a two handed grip and guard. A combination of technology and sorcery allowed the blade to secure or slide through the hilt and out the pommel, creating a blade that could shorten or even reverse direction at will. She called it a slipblade, and she was rather pleased with how it turned out. The next stage of the work was new territory for Nyrys, a process of cursing the blade so heavily that it was essentially poisonous. The maleficence of the curses would cause necrosis upon a successful stabbing, filling the body with lethal toxins. The curses were tattooed onto captives, who were then flayed, and the flesh was wrapped around the blade and burned until it transubstantiated into maladictive runes. Nyrys wrote curses of vengeance for Kuat, and for her loved ones that had died there. The steel blackened and radiated an ethereal glow of sickly green. “I will call you Brathiad Gwynt.” She spent a great deal of time familiarizing herself with her new weapon and sparring with Drago, who was getting to be solidly average with the lightsaber. She still took a sample for cloning purposes anyway. Sorcerers were… vulnerable during their early periods of training. With her new weapon she headed to the bridge of the Scarab to stand with the Dark Lord in his crusade.
  12. The stay on Mandalore had changed over the days of sensor silence, drifting from tense preparations to idle hours spent training beneath a specter of uncertainty. Some thought that the Crusaders were building up their forces for an overwhelming assault, others believed that the horde had buckled under its own explosive expansion and imploded. Lissi had coordinated with the Mandalorians to retain some combat instructors for 03, both to sharpen his unarmed combat skills and to strengthen ties with the locals. While she could certainly deliver a lethal show of force while unarmed, Nyrys’ own methods were far removed from the precision strikes prevalent in 03’s style, instead capitalizing on the presence of heavy armor, leverage, throws, and bending things in ways they were not meant to be bent. Engineering versus artistry and all that. Drago was thriving in his research, completing his assignments with thoroughness and imagination. While her two apprentices conversed, a dispatch came in for Nyrys, from Onderon. War had come for them after all. It was only a matter of time really. She sent a message to an old mentor on Korriban, along with a healthy sum of credits for the work if he chose to accept the offer. There were too many fakes on the market to trust a third party on this matter. After the present storm was weathered she could teach her apprentices how to forge their own arms, but for now they would get acceptable substitutes. At least one Sith would need to remain planetside as a sign of Sith presence to the Mandalorian leadership. At first glance Drago seemed the natural choice, his training was about to bear serious fruit, and while having some martial background, he wasn’t the brawler that 03 was. However, without supervision, his desire to experiment and insatiable curiosity could easily lead to a faux pas that might damage or even sever diplomatic ties. Better to leave the nascent warrior among his own. Besides, sooner or later, Drago would need to face the enemies of the Sith. “Sons of mine, the Dark Lord has called his banners and mobilized the fleet. While I had hoped to have time to teach you to craft your own weapons, we have been summoned with a great deal of urgency. So for now, I have gifts for you. When I was an apprentice on Korriban, I gained a reputation for my work in the forge, where I studied under the forgemaster. A Sith of higher rank sought me out for my talents, and thought that they could secure my services through death threats. This Sith underestimated me, thought that our difference in status made me harmless. Suffice it to say, I ate her and took her weapons. It’s not our place in the world that defines us, but how hard we’re willing to fight for a better position. I don’t want to have to bury either of you, so I’m going to teach you how to push yourselves outside of what you believe are your limits. Drago, this was Lady Keenava’s lightsaber, you will take it and join me in answering the Dark Lord’s summons. May you find your worth in the coming conflict. Zero Three, you will remain here as a symbol of good faith to the Mandalorians. I have arranged for you to study under some of their weapon masters, you will learn everything they have to teach you, and you will impress them with your discipline and drive. Here you will find your voice, and achieve respect in their eyes. These people are of good warrior stock, so build a life here, find a lover if it suits you, and begin to meld our ways with theirs. You’ve already started to speak with us, but on Mandalore you will truly find your voice. My gift to you is these knives, Sith crafted and able to extend on chains like a whip, and a Massassi Lanvarok which will find its way here shortly, a weapon of great history and significance in Sith culture.” Darth Nyrys knew that both apprentices would struggle with their assigned tasks, but that was the point. To make them flourish through conflict. Speaking of conflict, she had her own issue to resolve so that she could be focused on the battle. She needed to get past the guilt and do the right thing. Lissi was right where Nyrys expected to find her, in her personal quarters. Nyrys had caught her watching her sleep more times than she cared to count. There was an intensity in the girl’s eyes whenever she saw the Sith, but Nyrys doubted that she had always been that way. This was a monster of her own making. Lissi, unaware of Nyrys’ intentions, closed the distance to kiss her. Nyrys had been such a child when she twisted the poor girl’s mind. What had once felt like a moment of empowerment and growth now only served to make her think of a child’s finger painting gone horribly wrong. It was a bitter lesson that could only be learned through personal experience, absolute power and complete certainty were not immune to bad decision making. She had pfasked up majorly, and all of the fallout had landed on somebody that didn’t deserve it. Maybe this was why so many Sith were moral relativists or had wholly given themselves over to the Darkness, to hide from the consequences of their actions. Nyrys wasn’t going to hide from what she did, not anymore, but she wasn’t going to abandon her philosophy over a mistake. But what even was her philosophy anymore? In the beginning she had endeavored to only harm the wicked and the guilty, and for the most part was successful. But her power had a smaller footprint back then. Now she felt like a giant timidly trying to move without stepping on ants. A shark cannot survive in a fishbowl. And yet even her new powers were miniscule in impact compared to the larger conflict, which routinely toppled or destroyed the lives of billions. The Jedi claimed to be heroes, but they had abandoned whatever light there was to be found in the galaxy in favor of dogma and self righteousness. Maybe one day the illusion could be shattered and a new faith could restore the light to the galaxy instead of trying to claim they owned that light. Maybe that was her philosophy now, burn away the past mistakes that haunted so many to create a better galaxy. She wouldn’t just break her own chains, she would break the chains that bound the galaxy in its brutal cycle. She would start with burning away her own chains. She put her hands on Lissi’s neck… “You’ve always been better to me than I ever deserved. This isn’t about you doing something wrong or not doing something right, it’s just the only way I know how to get back to the person who deserves you, and whom you deserve. I don’t expect forgiveness from you, but I hope you find some measure of happiness in her arms.” She squeezed. It needed to be with her bare hands. It needed to be personal. The looks of shock and betrayal cut deeper than she expected, but she held the course. Even when the light left Lissi’s eyes, when her feeble attempts to struggle stopped and her body went limp, she held the course. She kissed Lissi’s forehead like a mother kissing a child goodnight, and then she drew the girl’s soul into her crimson heartstone. Moments later, Lissi’s remains were naught but ash and cinders. The ashen figure, unable to maintain its own integrity, collapsed and coated the room in grey. The color seemed appropriate, Nyrys had always been a liminal being. Neither completely human or alien, unwilling to see herself as completely good or evil, broken yet thriving. A vagabond of blurred identity in a galaxy often clearly defined in stark black and white. “Now your chains are broken too.” She left the room unburdened. ================================ A shuttle arrived for them, privately booked and with the captain fully expecting a mindwipe. Nyrys didn’t want her new ship getting marked as a Sith one this early on. She had started Drago on basic form training, he was already familiar enough with the aspects of sword fighting such as footwork and spacing, and the biggest obstacle was getting him adjusted to the weightlessness of the blade. She had him training against a remote currently, out of fear of straight up murdering him if she entered the training circle against him. Not because he was doing anything wrong, she was just struggling with the realities of having a healthy body for the first time in her life. Her emotions were tempestuous, everything hurt, and after one of the crew members had suggested sweets as a potential relief she ate so much that she got sick and spent an even more miserable period of time hunched over a refresher. The human digestive system was clearly designed by a drunken deity, a total jerk, or someone completely unable to commit to decisions. Possibly all three. When she had been mostly Cathar, it was simple and delicious. As a meatavore it was all meat all the time. Now it was meat and fruit and vegetables and dairy and grains, but not too much of any one thing or else it was misery and vomiting. Making up your pfasking mind, stomach. She had also lost a great deal of range in terms of her senses, but in that area the Force had stepped in to make up the difference, and then some. The way she experienced the world was different now. Emotions and experiences had color, texture, even taste. Some were saccharine or savory, others sour or bitter. Waiting in line tasted like unflavored oatmeal. Which was a thing that she now knew the taste of. The spectrum of how she fought and moved had widened too, although that was on account of her assassin training and not her new body, mostly. Her fitness regimen was much more balanced between strength and agility this time around, and her flexibility and coordination were things that actually existed now. She was experimenting with enhancing her mobility through the Force, and misdirecting opponents through illusionry. Every day she strengthened her bond with Gwn Marwolaeth through an intense training regimen. The sword had been a part of her since its creation, but now there was a familiarity to it that allowed her to wield it with ease. She embraced 03 before boarding the shuttle, he would have access to her ship which was practically a flying luxury house, and a credit account that she had set up for him, but money and nice things couldn’t solve everything. She worried, but she also knew that he was strong, within and without, and had survived many tribulations that had broken others. She handed him the lanvarok as a final gift before parting. “May you find the strength to break your chains.” With those words, they parted, and Darth Nyrys and Drago headed to rendezvous with the Sith fleet.
  13. Drago’s return heralded the continuation of Nyrys’s instruction in the beliefs and methods of the Sith for both of her apprentices. When separate, she could rely on both of them to pursue self improvement without any prodding from her. Both were loyal, and both were driven. “Students, it’s time you learned the code that provides the foundation of all Sith teachings and philosophy. I will speak it, and then go through it line by line to elucidate its meaning.” “Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.” Even after all this time, saying the words was like conducting electricity through her entire body. The code wasn’t just a historical curiosity, or piece of dogma remembered through rote study. It was a philosophical map to a higher state of being. Instructions for achieving some measure of cosmic divinity for people who actually experienced the cosmos, rather than distant gods. “Many scholars have speculated that the first line was conceived to directly challenge the Jedi code, but I believe that the line has merit on its own. To live is to experience want, need, joy, loss, love, and pain. Peace is an illusion, a false opiate chased by fools who are too afraid to live a life of passion. We were made by the cosmos to be creatures of desire, to stand by the people that matter, to pfask the people that kindle our inner flame, to bring about the lamentations of those who wronged us. Love so hard you leave scars, and tear the stars out of the sky if they align against you. To do any less is to deny your truth. In the second line we learn the source of a Sith’s power, life itself. Not vital energy, although we can and do manipulate and consume that, but rather the experiences that define us, mark us by going through them, and the experiences we crave so deeply that we would break the natural order to pursue them. Seek out your passions, feed the fires that they stoke within, become a walking inferno of the realized self. There is no well of strength deeper or closer to you than your own heart. Strength is limited in application until it is refined into power. The strength of your desires is like a block of the finest marble, waiting to be sculpted by your hands into something magnificent. In heeding my training you will receive the tools necessary to craft marvels, altering both yourself and the world around you. Basic tools and skills will be progressively refined into advanced instruments and specialized masteries. But power alone will not satisfy you. The fourth line is often taken simply as a justification for the acquisition and use of power as a means to achieve victory, but I believe that there is more to it than that. Many Sith become so focused on hoarding power that they lose sight of what their actual goals are, consumed by the need for more power. But power without victory is a meaningless achievement that accomplishes nothing but turning the Sith into a numb and hollow husk. Power is a means, but never let it become the end. Our victories free us from living small and meager lives, opening our eyes to our true potential and revealing unconquered horizons of existence unbound by mortal concerns such as ethics or legality. What you are passionate about will almost certainly shift or evolve into something that your former self would find alien and incomprehensible, or at the very least quite impossible. Before I joined the ranks of the Sith, I was studying to become a university professor focusing on history, and I was a fragile little thing that hopelessly swooned over men who never saw value in me. Now I’m a warrior huntress who wields a sword quenched in her own heart's blood and parlays with world leaders. To be a Sith is to be free of all bonds and limitations, to make the world how you feel it should be, not some indifferent place of random and meaningless encounters. The Force is an unthinking and uncaring entity, a lobotomized god that has no goal or purpose other than what we give it. We are the ones that give existence meaning, the ones who value what life truly is, the ones who steal fire from the gods and use it to achieve the impossible.”
  14. At first there was a moment of internal doubt upon hearing 03’s spoken word, or more specifically the emotion behind the word. Most days she barely felt like she had a full grasp on all matters Sith, and yet here was someone genuinely responding to her as an authority figure. It would have been even more disorienting if she hadn’t been cautioned about impostor syndrome at uni. It was a common issue in academia, the feeling that you were not the person that others saw you as. While Ailbasí had always sought the attention and approval of others to combat her feelings of insecurity and estrangement to the world, she had never achieved any sort of lasting validation or acceptance. Even with her closest friends at uni she would sometimes feel less connected than everyone else in the group, or question if they included her out of pity. But that girl was dead and gone. Literally. Out of that womb of suffocating fear and depression was born a beautiful and terrible monster, informed by Ailbasí’s past but not shackled to it. Where Ailbasí had failed, Darth Nyrys would rise above. She may not have full mastery of the Dark Side yet, but it does serve her will and passion like a Lady is served by her supplicants. Ailbasí would have second guessed the show of support, stuttered out a line or two sheepishly while blushing, and continued to perpetuate her own self defeating perceptions. Darth Nyrys saw it as a seed for something greater. She now possessed the power and charisma to inspire others to follow her lead. It was no longer about finding her own worth, it was about testing her worth against newfound ambitions, and grooming others to find their strength under her banner. “03, I don’t believe we ever discussed the nature of our relationship during your education under me. The Sith use the terms master and apprentice in reference to the mastery of the Dark Side and an individual who seeks to obtain that knowledge. But it’s so much more than that. Both Drago and you are essentially inheritors to my legacy, truer heirs than even my blood descendants, should I choose to have any.” Darth Nyrys put one hand on 03’s cheek and the other on his shoulder. There was a traditional laundry list of emotions and concepts associated with the Dark Side, anger, fear, lust, death, war, and so on, but the darkness was so much more than that. Family, for instance was in truth the selfish desire to see your own line succeed beyond all others. It was family that she invoked now as she laid hands on him. She had even considered adopting familial titles for her line, but apparently that was already a Krath sorcerer thing. “You are as a son to me, and I will guide you as the mother that remade you in darkness to be whole again. You have suffered greatly before you came to me, but I promise you that through my teachings that tribulation will be repaid sevenfold in fortune and glory. And one day, when you are ready, you will stand where I have stood, and offer a greater existence to someone you know deserves it. So trust me. Confide in me. Above all else, learn from me. I won’t judge you for what questions you ask, only for what you fail because you did not ask. If you really don’t feel comfortable asking me about something, you can always ask Drago. He bolstered you at your weakest when he could have used the opportunity to establish dominance. Perhaps in time you will be able to offer him the same protection in return. For now though, I want you to think of all of the questions you want to ask me. Then do a couple of sets of fast punches and heavy punches. And then try to think of more questions, and so on and so forth. While you do that I am going to work on a gambeson for you, a token of favor from your Lady and a sign that the Sith Empire proudly acknowledges you as their own.” Darth Nyrys took 03’s measure and began work on the gambeson for some time, her experience with fabric from cosplay allowing her to add sharpness to a simple design without compromising its effectiveness. The item itself was made of layered armorweave, black with orange accents. Traditional Sith colors were red and black, but both she and her apprentices had displayed a natural affinity for fire, so the deviation seemed logical. Some time later, her second apprentice came calling upon her in her private quarters. At first she had thought that his intent was to ask questions regarding the reading that she gave him, but she was quickly proven wrong when he bent the knee and offered her his sword. Similar feelings of accomplishment flooded through her again at this show of loyalty and respect for her teachings, but she knew that this apprentice would react better to reason than emotional appeals. “You honor me Drago with this gesture of service. It is known that the Chiss rarely seek counsel or learning from others, so I will not take this gesture lightly. As long as I have your sword you will continue to have access to my knowledge and guidance, thus all will prosper. I want you to seek passage to Cathar to recover your ship and return here, so that we can begin installing a lab for you to further your studies of biomancy. As you progress, you can begin to explore other aspects of Sith sorcery. Also, when you return we will begin the process of constructing your lightsaber.” She bid Drago farewell leaving her alone with Lissi. It sounded silly but of all of her sins since joining the Sith order, this was the one that she felt most guilty about. She had broken the woman’s mind out of convenience, not necessity or uncontrollable instinct, and she had far more than ghosts to remind her every day of what she did. She could free Lissi in the terminal sense, but part of her knew that was more a selfishly motivated desire to be done with the situation than an actual moral solution. Maybe just be straight with her, tell her the truth that will hurt in the short term but free her in the long run. People recover from broken hearts all of the time. But she had really done a number on her, the girl’s mind was totally pfasked, what if she killed herself over it. Lissi was kissing her now on her neck, and Ailbasí, looking for anywhere else to look, noticed marks on her arm. “What’s this? Is someone on the ship hurting you?” other than me. “Oh, no, just when you aren’t around I can’t feel anything at all unless I hurt myself. At first when you told me that you were my world I thought you were just feeding my a really cheesy line, but now it feels like the central truth of my life. Don’t worry though, the only thing that really hurts me is the times that you ignore me.” Pfask karma, pfask it with a molten metal rod. Time to drop tactical truth proton torpedo. Just be direct, concise, and prepared for tears… “Look Lissi, I don’t know how to… I never… aww hells, I’m terrible at this.” Apparently old Ailbasí isn’t completely dead, or returns on occasion in zombie form to torment her with awkward conversation. “Oooooh, you’ve never done this before, don’t worry, I’ll show you what to do.” Ten out of ten performance. Pfasking gold star right there. Ailbasí queen of awkwardness back in full form. Couldn’t keep a guy if her life depended on it, but now about to hook up with her accidental fake girlfriend because words are hard. ================= Afterwards, Ailbasí felt more than anything disappointed with herself that she couldn’t wave a magic wand and make herself happy about this, have some kind of silver lining. After all, the whole gender thing aside wasn’t this what she wanted from a relationship? The intimacy had been awkward, like an overly invasive spa massage, and just not the release she wanted out of her encounters. But the affection and tenderness were there. A sweetness that Ailbasí hadn’t found anywhere else. The problem was guilt. Guilt brought out the fumbling nature of her old self. Guilt was her last chain to break before she was free to live as the best version of herself. Even as she taught her apprentices she had her own lessons to learn.
  15. “Well look at you, my dear apprentice, you’ve filled out quite nicely with the proper care and sustenance. I’m thrilled to see you finding your health again despite the state that you were in when you first were sent to me. Not everyone could bounce back from that like you did. I’m proud of you.” Just like parents would affect how children would raise their own offspring, Darth Nyrys’s training was affecting how she would train her own apprentices. She certainly knew the value of harsh treatment, but she felt like there was little she could do to top what he had been through. Better to take the pieces and reassemble them into what best suited her needs. And if kindness and support bolstered his loyalty to her even better. “Goodness” could be pragmatic, and faithful allies were priceless in the world of the Sith. Lately 03 had seemed reserved but polite, mindful of the servants that tended to him. You never knew with slaves, sometimes their pasts would grant them great empathy towards others, and other times they would transform into the monsters they once served to prove to themselves that they had finally gotten out from under. But the softness with which 03 moved and acted could not wipe away the rage she had seen when he fought. He was like a pressurized inferno inside a teddy bear. “I will be working with you next on exploring the properties of transference and energy, in particular, life force and thermodynamics. I think it will compliment your style well, and it’s something I have a great deal of experience in. Drago, I have some scrolls and tomes for you to begin studying biomancy from. It should be a smoother transition from scientific perspective than some of the more esoteric sorceries. Not to mention less likely to cause an untimely death.” Drago was a quick study and rapacious reader, the kind of student that studied for the sake of knowledge rather than to achieve a specific purpose. He had less of a raw connection to the Dark Side than 03, but his mind could leverage that connection to his own form of greatness with the right education. With how much the initial training had drained him, laboratory work would allow him time to build up his core reservoir without allowing his intake of knowledge to stall out. It was said that the Dark Lord had an affinity for the Dark Side monstrosities that roamed Onderon, cultivating a sorcerer that could create new dark wonders for him was a political investment. Furthermore, a skilled biomancer could turn even the most meek into a serious combat asset, and the Dark Lord would need troops for the coming campaign. “Often we speak of the Force as a distinct entity that exists as its own form of energy, but I think that is inaccurate to some degree. I think that the Force is more like a spiritual neuronet and medium that allows us to interact with and manipulate all of the energies and physical laws of existence. In all of my studies, I’ve never seen the Force exist in a vacuum as a power source, it’s always facilitating the transfer or consumption of other energies. For us Sith, most commonly that is emotion and sensation, along with the echoes of past wrongs. The Jedi seem to draw on whatever surplus energy exists naturally. They would be comical in choosing to be janitors over being gods if not for their penchant for the genocide of anyone that disagrees with them. Anyway, manipulating energy. Once you realize this basic truth, you can begin to explore ways to transfer, disperse, or excite energies of various types through the Force. I was brought into the galaxy through Sith alchemy, my parents were incompatible species but they wanted a child together, so one of them made it happen through alchemy and genetic science. I was often sick growing up, and myself and others always just assumed it was because I was a hybrid and that came with medical issues. Upon joining the Sith, it became apparent that my body needed to take the life force of others to correct an internal deficit. My first “feedings” were chaotic and brutal, and I remember very little of them, but they led to the first time in my life that I felt truly healthy. The process should be less uncontrolled for you to learn, since you aren’t going off of instinct and desperation. Also, since we’re on foreign soil as diplomatic representatives, I want you to start with practicing the manipulation of thermodynamics, we can use that as a lead in to vital energies later. Remember that thermodynamics isn’t heat and cold, rather movement and stillness of particles. Once we have better access to living subjects we can work on the transfer of living energy through strikes. Striking an enemy is a display of force, and force is the root of which all other authorities are derived. The Force acknowledges this most primal form of conquest, and allows a trained warrior to use it to lay claim to the life energies of others. With practice and discipline, you will be able to sustain your fighting style with the vitality of those that would oppose you. I have one of the valets out and about to retrieve a cut of rail meat for you to practice on. It will be similar to punching a person and also react comparably to any heat changes. In between practice sessions we will work together on crafting your first set of armor. I will provide the materials but whatever you complete will belong to you. Drago, I want you to read through the teachings of Morth Senizen, Kos Vellator’s saga of Korlioth, this surgical case file from the records of Darth Visector during his Alabaster Church period of work, and this treatise by Darth Mellisidae on a theoretical Sithspawn biome that could sustain itself through parasitic interactions with neighboring areas. Then I want you to decide if you want to pursue viral, alchemical, surgical, or parasitic methods of Sithspawn creation, and speculate on three morphologies you think would be of value to create. Once you have a theoretical foundation to work off of, we can move to laboratory experiments, although if you choose virals as your preferred vector we’ll need to have access to a proper clean room. I’ve read some particularly gruesome horror stories about biological agents that weren’t properly contained and got out."
  16. Sith Assassin Guide What are Sith assassins? Assassins practice a blend of stealth, social, and mental powers to further the goals of the Sith from the shadows. Whether an assassin focuses on being an invisible killer, masterminding great political schemes, or driving their enemies mad through mental manipulation is up to the player. Assassins are also not limited to those archetypes, and this guide is more of a tool for inspiration and establishing themes than creating hard and fast rules or immutable character templates. In more tactical/gamified terms, assassins tend to be lightly armored strikers and debuffers that kill through precision and exploiting vulnerabilities, and survive through speed and misdirection. Veteran players will be available and willing to mentor new writers that want to improve their craft, but assassins are generally recommended for experienced writers. Our current lead assassin is the Dark Lord Exodus. Key concepts: Fluidity, misdirection, agility, adaptation, stealth, speed, power of perception, poison, mind games, multiple approaches, illusions, unexpected movement, invasive Assassins and recurring themes Politicking: While warriors and sorcerers incidentally gain political power as they pursue their endeavors, assassins often actively seek political power. This unfortunately makes other Sith quick to question whether an assassin deserves the position they occupy, especially when it comes to Sith lords, but by the time an assassin reaches master rank they are generally regarded as proven. While there absolutely are assassins whose ambitions exceed their capabilities, it is worth noting that assassins also have the most training and natural aptitude for leadership roles. From an assassin’s perspective, they are the best suited to leadership, focusing on the larger picture, and are simply doing what is best for the Sith. Alternatively, an assassin may find a skilled warrior or sorcerer that lacks political savvy and offer to serve as council and emissary. In this way an assassin can advance themself through the rise of their ally while largely remaining in the shadows. These situations can be mutually beneficial as long as both Sith understand and respect the power dynamics and roles involved. Mortal ties and fake lives: Assassins are more likely than any other type of Sith to keep or develop ties with people and organizations outside of the order, both to accrue power and to keep their social skills sharp. Pretending to be able to relate to lesser beings is a skillset that requires practice and upkeep. Some assassins also develop ties to serve as emotional fuel for their powers, or because the Dark Side makes using people for pleasure and personal gain so easy. Rarely, Sith will seek out lovers, family, or friends from their lives before the Sith order, but that often ends in tragedy. Some Sith will maintain a family mimicking the motions others go through in advancing politically and professionally. Spouses in these arrangements are almost always either highly independent and occupied with their own lives, or so susceptible to mind tricks that their daily lives are almost like waking dreams of whatever patchwork false reality the Sith wishes to give them. Often these marriages and their offspring are treated as afterthoughts, unless any children possess Force potential, but some Sith cultivate them like gardens and compare them with other Sith in friendly competitions and wagers. Such games can quickly turn torturous or even deadly for the people caught in them. Mind games and control issues: Sith assassins have a penchant for (or some might say obsession with) mind games, controlling the information available to and perspectives of people around them. As self titled masters of manipulation, assassins always want to feel in control, even if that control is not direct. They want to feel like everyone is a piece on a board that they can move when the time comes, and when they can do so, they want people to know who is in charge. On their more benevolent days assassins want to be considered solution finders and match makers, but that’s just the opposite side of the same coin. When an assassin finds themself not in control of a situation, they tend to react in one of three ways, leaving the situation, hiding until they can understand the situation better, or doubling down on their skills of mind control and manipulation to force control over those around them, or at least the most susceptible person. Showmanship: Assassins don’t just focus on results, they focus on how they can multiply the effect of those results through performance. They make difficult feats look trivial, and mundane actions look flashy. There is music in their steps and poetry in their plans. For many, they embody power, desire, intrigue, and temptation. The assassins have a reputation to maintain, and they expend a great deal of energy doing so. Patience: More than the warriors or even the sorcerers, the assassins practice patience. Their games can play out over years or even mortal lifetimes. There is no bigger picture than the one that assassins focus on. This may make them seem indifferent to more immediate concerns and setbacks, but that’s only because they are. Powers Duelist’s cloak: An illusion power that focuses on concealing rather than deceiving, the duelist’s cloak let’s the assassin conceal his or her footwork and core stance behind a flowing illusionary robe that leaves them their full range of movement. Phantom step: When the assassin dodges or disengages, for a split second multiple illusionary instances diverge in probable directions and maneuvers to foil attempts to predict the assassin, lead shots, or score attacks of opportunity. OOC( I want to emphasize again the brevity of the illusion here to specify that this is not to create a mid duel shell game, rather just to increase survivability while disengaging an enemy.) Painful truths: The assassin uses illusionry to adopt the persona of someone known to the opponent, and speak with their voice. The goal of the power is not to deceive the opponent by adopting a false appearance (in fact the target often can intuitively detect the deception almost immediately), but rather to damage the enemy’s composure with uncomfortable truths and unspoken doubts. This power works best when the assassin either has been surveilling the target or has performed some sort of invasive mind reading attack. Mind pick: This power lets the assassin project the victim’s mindscape onto reality. While in use, reality, memory, and imagination bleed together to make an amalgam scenario where the assassin can attempt to call upon painful memories or hunt for information by trying to prompt the target to think about it. (Originally this was going to be an opposed romp through the target’s mind with both parties oblivious to real world events, but there was too much potential for other participants in battles to gank one person or the other mid mindscape duel, either trolling or as part of an underhanded one two punch combo. Instead it’s a blend of mindscape and reality to allow both participants the ability to react to events nearby.) Dreadful Morpheus: The assassin can deep dive into the mind of a sleeping or unconscious victim, devoting their full energies to exploring the depths of the dreamscape. While mind pick allows the user to peruse the surface of a target’s mind, dreadful morpheus allows the Assassin to actively dig for memories through neural pathways that connect thoughts and ideas, or to implant dreams into the victim’s psyche. Think of the connection between thoughts as like navigating wikipedia through links. The assassin must start somewhere unprotected, and outmaneuver the victim by approaching the information they need through an unexpected angle. With this power the assassin has a great deal of control over the dreamscape elements, similar to the monster from Stephen King’s It.(Since only the aggressor is making a gamble here with the other party already unconscious or asleep, I felt more comfortable with a deep dive here, rather than giving a player incap on demand.) Gale Blade: Less a distinct power and more a refined aspect of telekinesis, this skill lets the assassin affect the arc that a blade or other weapon travels in when thrown. This should not be treated as a homing attack, but rather the ability to throw around cover or in a manner that returns the blade to the hand without sacrificing lethal momentum. The assassin should already be visualizing the arc before the blade leaves his hand. Gale blade also preserves the momentum of a throw even after impact. Grasping Fetters: This simple ritual allows the assassin to treat a throwing weapon as the point of origin for telekinetic throws, holds, and pulls, allowing them to apply resistance from unexpected angles. Alternatively, the assassin can treat the weapon as sort of telekinetic grapple point to swing or redirect their movement with. Shadow Lash: The assassin relies on distraction and controlling the battlefield, and this application of illusion exemplifies their ability to strike unexpectedly at range. The lash that the Sith appears to conjure allows them to deliver painful strikes with considerable reach. While the pain is illusionary, that makes it no less vicious to the senses of anyone struck. A Sith Lord can create more complex illusions where the lash touches, especially if it entangles a limb or weapon. Flesh might bubble or become covered in cancerous lesions, or weapons may rust and crack, it’s all a matter of personal preference. Cloak of Lies: This illusion power allows the assassin to appear as someone that belongs in an area. It doesn’t replicate an existing person’s appearance, but rather just extrapolates an appearance of an appropriate look of a low key identity. For example, the Sith may look like a janitor, secretary, security guard, or office worker. The power doesn’t force people to believe that the Sith does in fact belong in the area (that’s the realm of a straight up mind trick), but it does lower the chances of people noticing them to begin with. This power works best in locations where staff or security are too numerous for everyone to know each other. Sudden Reversal: The assassin uses the Force to form an invisible barrier momentarily for them to springboard off of, allowing rapid changes in direction, aerial course correction, and otherwise impossible maneuvers like double jumps. This power can also be used to reduce falling impact by breaking the descent into multiple segments rather than a long fall. Sinister Brand: The assassin can mark a victim’s soul like ranchers brand cattle. The power is not a direct link, but rather an affliction of the spirit designed to be readily recognizable by the Sith that embedded it. Once a Sith has branded a person, it becomes significantly easier to pick them out in the Force. The more insight the assassin has into the person, the stronger the brand becomes, not only making them easier to track, but also metastasizing the darkness within. The weak willed find themselves becoming more ruled by their passions and less able to function with a clear and calm mind, eventually becoming slaves to impulse and their own dark desires. The iron willed (read PCs) won’t be dominated by the mark, but must wrestle with their own inner darkness more as the brand grows in power. It’s important to note that Sinister Brand does not appear as foreign or alien to non Sith that observe it, instead it appears to be someone losing control of their own demons. Empathic Delirium: The assassin unleashes a deluge of emotional energy onto the mind of a target, attempting to overwhelm the victim and throw them off balance in a fight or make irrational decisions while suffering from a state of severe emotional imbalance. The power can only project Dark Side related emotions like fear, jealousy, lust, and anger, and the more tone appropriate the emotion is, the more effective the power is. As with many other mental powers, understanding your target is key to getting the most out of this application. Toxic chemistry: This power allows the assassin to manipulate a victim’s response to fear and excitement. The neurochemistry of a sentient brain has the same trigger response for both, and the brain tries to file it afterwards according to various parameters. By adjusting those parameters, the assassin can seduce with terror and make the victim fear healthy attraction to others. OOC(This power is meant more for use on NPCs to recruit cultists and PCs that have consented for the purpose of storylines, as always, ship responsibly and remember to respect other players’ boundaries.) Lingering Doubts: A more subtle tool in the assassin’s mental arsenal, Lingering doubts allows the Sith to implant a thought, mental image, or short scenario into the victim’s mind, or tag a memory that the assassin knows of. Whichever route the assassin chooses, the power creates a small but nearly indelible mark in the victim’s psyche, causing the mental payload to be repeatedly brought to the surface of the mind. This is not a brute force mental attack, but rather the means to slowly make people question themselves or others, what they want, and who they are. Shadow Step: The assassin is adept at manipulating their weight and center of balance, allowing them to move silently and traverse over loose material like snow instead of through it. Particularly skilled practitioners can use this power to walk on the surface of fluid bodies. Storm Dash: With a powerful burst of TK energy, the assassin flings themself in a direction of their choosing. This power allows the assassin to change direction or misdirect opponents easily, but is more draining than sudden reversal. Death by Inches and Degrees: Originally a warrior’s application of the Force, Assassins who favored piercing weapons adapted this power with a more subtle approach. This power prevents a Sith from thrusting too deep into a target, using telekinetic control to stop the blade the moment a killing strike has been delivered. When engaging multiple targets, this is crucial in making sure the assassin is not hindered by having their blade too deep into the enemy. Nightmare Lurch: Through illusion and focused muscle control the assassin moves in disconcertingly unnatural and erratic ways. This can be used to both intimidate and to confuse opponents. Blood Echo: The assassin can cut themself and use the blood to broadcast a false ping of their presence in the Force. The range of this power is roughly twenty meters, and it pairs well with throwing knives. A Truth Amidst Ten Thousand Lies: The assassin floods the Force with thousands of potential strikes to conceal one attack that lacks any kind of Force guidance, making the attack both less accurate and less likely to be deflected by Force users. Punish the Weak: By probing through the Force, the assassin determines which opponent is most vulnerable to being overwhelmed quickly. This should not be treated as a variation of Shatterpoints, as it does not reveal how to strike or guide the attack, it’s simply sizing up opponents through preternatural abilities. ------------------------- A discussion on stealth and invisibility: I remember a while back watching a video on Force use that used the example that a Jedi could fly, but the strain of using that much Force for an extended amount of time made it impractical, especially when other forms of conveyance were readily available. I think a similar argument could be made for invisibility in that it is feasible but not practical for an assassin of any worth as they have powers and skills that let them operate at a lower baseline of Force use. During downtime a Sith may choose to indulge in invisibility in a place with enough supplemental Dark Side energy, such as a Sith temple or personal lair. Should the Sith decide to do this outside of their lair, they will forgo their Force senses and quickly become fatigued from extended use. Passing out while invisible means passing out without the aura of self that traditionally protects Force users, leaving the Sith vulnerable to Dark Side spirits. ------------------------- Poisons: Sith Poison is an oft mentioned aspect of the Sith arsenal, but its applications have been glossed over or used more as a justification for bringing Jedi to the Dark Side. Here are some alternative interpretations of side effects from poison as it spreads. Breathstealer: Swelling in the throat makes it difficult for the enemy to catch their breath, and impossible to do so quietly. Blinding Hypocrisy: This poison dilates the eyes to an extreme degree, making bright lights unbearable and even normal light sources difficult to look at. Trembling Doom: Micro spasms and muscle twitches course through the victim’s body, making fine motor control difficult. -------------------------- Forms of Control Political Office: Excepting times of overt Sith rule, assassins who hold power through politics are the most at risk for having their identities compromised, but the rewards for maintaining a public persona of power can be monumental. While we’re all familiar with the heights that Palpatine rose to through politics, even on a smaller scale the Sith can be afforded opportunities and tools of great value. I assume we’ve all seen the movies so this entry is more of an acknowledgement of the method than a complete overview. Cults: There are several avenues that Sith can use to establish cults and secure recruits, and while cults may not have the direct power of some of the other entries in this section, the inherent secrecy and zealous nature of cult members provide their own advantages. The recruitment process is made easier by the fact that Sith actually do have access to mystical powers, instead of just relying on charisma, subverted faith, and drugs. Furthermore, assassins can use the Force to erase memories and manipulate perceptions, allowing them to control the experiences that members have completely. The vast majority of Sith cults are cons to gain power and influence, but on rare occasions the cult leader might actually be a true believer. The Sith are indifferent to this as long as the cult serves its purpose, but players should keep rule 6 of the universal Force guide in mind if they go this route. It’s also a good idea to avoid the “everyone was a cultist the whole time!” trope. Some Sith dispense with pretense and simply form cults around their Sith personas, but these groups are used more to attend to ego than accomplish any secret objectives. The exception to this is power players who don’t want to admit that they’re in a cult and think that because they have lunch with Darth so and so they’re totally in the inner social circle of that Sith. They are not. But they are still useful. In terms of writing, it’s better to portray cultists as people that came from somewhere and were consumed by this hidden life rather than just faceless bodies that do whatever they’re told. Cultists should have their own internal logic for doing what they do, whether it’s seeking power of their own, wanting a sense of belonging to something larger, or even because they’ve been brainwashed by the Sith, but relaying that information gives depth. Celebrity: A Sith who uses celebrity wields an indirect and difficult to anticipate power. Celebrities have access to places and people that might otherwise be unreachable, and while they can’t directly control their fans, they can have a disproportionate effect on public opinion. Managing stardom’s never ending demands can be hellish for a Sith, but the money and fame can be intoxicating. Some Sith cheat and use mental control to attach themselves to a celebrity as part of their entourage or as a lover or agent, controlling a star from the shadows. This is a far more viable method for active Sith to utilize celebrity over the long term. The Devourers of Stars are a group of Sith assassins and body hoppers who offer a third option, abducting celebrities, taking over their lives, and then publicly burning out when their usefulness expires or a new celebrity catches their eye. Media: There are two different ways that assassins can exploit the media. The form most commonly associated with the Sith is the use of propaganda, whether in the form of defamation of enemies, propagating anti-xeno sentiment, glorifying Sith accomplishments, and vilifying enemy factions. Propaganda is rarely one hundred percent successful, but it doesn’t need to be as long as it convinces a suitable percentage of the masses. A more subtle approach involves Sith masquerading as investigative journalists to perform character assassinations with surgical precision. Even pillars of virtue can be twisted under the corrupting touch of an assassin, or at least convincingly made to look like a monster. Amusingly, if an assassin ever decides to take the role seriously, they’re actually quite capable Crime: Criminal organizations allow Sith to achieve their objectives through unexpected avenues, provide excellent financial resources, and generally don’t mind that they are working with evil space wizards should the subject arise. Many Sith cultivate ties with smaller criminal organizations or even local street gangs to act as muscle or perform simple but less than legal tasks. Some Sith even form their own criminal syndicates, after all, Sith powers are especially suited for crime. While such endeavors are more time intensive than a simple business relationship, the profits are notably sizeable. Alternatively, some crime lords have built significant empires before discovering that they were instinctively using the Dark Side to enhance their command. Business: Corporate and Sith psychology tend to go hand in hand, and the perception of Sith seemingly having limitless resources is fed largely by their mastery of the corporate sector. A Sith Lord can use the Force to manipulate deals, force acquisitions and mergers, and cause untimely deaths for rivals. Assassins that have mastered the Sith hive mind power can create soul crushing never ending crunch periods, causing mental breakdowns and collapses from physical exhaustion. -------------------------------- Lairs: A lair is many things to an assassin. It’s a temple to the self, where they go to recenter after a deep infiltration mission. It’s a walk in multi story closet where they perfect disguises and hand craft their looks. It’s a theater and a funhouse where the assassin can torment unassuming guests or impress their fellow Sith with displays of grandiose illusion. It’s a trophy room of their favorite kills and deceptions. It’s a workshop for designing concealed weapons and mixing deadly poisons. It’s a study for planning future missions and reviewing intel. It’s a powerful conductor attuned to the assassin’s soul. Lairs are meant for plot and not PvP (luring the enemy to your super secret nerve center is not a sustainable strategy). It’s a chance to explore the psyche of the character outside of their on mission personas and look at what matters to them. Lairs are too personal to be part of locations like major Sith temples or other areas with major through traffic. Sample Lairs A forgotten tenement in a rundown part of the city serves as a lair to an assassin who grew up in poverty and favors targets of wealth and hedonism. After he kills them, he binds them to one of the crumbling and rotten apartments to exist in squalor for eternity. An abandoned theater serves as a shared home for a close knit troupe of assassins who reenact their favorite kills on stage for friends and potential clients. Occasional squabbles between members turn the theater into a nightmarish phantasmal killing ground, but amends are made in time. A manor home that has outlived its foundations. Reluctant to lose such an important memory, the assassin has allowed a family to move in and renovate, completely unaware of the Sith’s presence. The family is now the Sith’s new chew toy. -------------------------------- Sith Assassin Fighting Styles (These are sample styles and by no means the end all be all of Sith assassin combat styles.) Treacherous Blade: This fighting style focuses on baiting, redirection, and punishing enemy attacks. To the untrained eye it may seem like a reactive style, but in truth the Sith is controlling the flow of the duel by feigning vulnerability and drawing out strikes. The style lends itself to parrying weapons and off hand strikes, along with limited special armor use on the hands and feet. While many techniques of the style can be used in full armor, true mastery requires freedom of movement, speed, and maximum awareness. Hidden Path: With so many Sith assassins using concealed weapons it was inevitable that a style would develop that catered to their usage. Hidden Path is a precision fighting style that achieves victory by systematically crippling the opponent. Depending on the weapon, Hidden Path will target joints, arteries, and pressure points until the enemy is unable to effectively retaliate and a killing blow can be struck. Poisonous Little Death: As the name suggests, this style focuses on poison usage, almost always as the opener. Rather than endeavor to deliver a killing blow, the intent is to distract the victim from getting help or otherwise neutralizing the poison, while also pushing the heart to beat faster and therefore spread the poison more quickly. The style is acrobatic and ostentatious, relying both on physical theatrics and illusion to harry and startle the victim into a state of reactionary panic. Spiral Ghost Dance: An evasive style that has the assassin perpetually engaging and disengaging to capitalize on advantageous moments and prevent the enemy from pressing any sort of attack. If the enemy is skilled in close quarters combat, the assassin keeps distance and distracts or throws off the the enemy’s balance with throwing knives or lanvarok disks, only closing when the enemy is overwhelmed. If the enemy is a ranged combatant then they are given no room to breathe as the assassin dogs them relentlessly. ------------------------------- Rituals and other diversions Rituals of youth and beauty: There are many variations that have been developed by the Sith over the years, but ultimately the general metaphysical mechanics are the same. The young and beautiful are sacrificed, or at least have their youth and beauty drained out of them to a crippling degree, and the vital energies are imbued to some medium that the Sith can apply or imbibe to absorb them. In terms of results, many consider it the most effective and undetectable. Sith who rely on it must be prepared to routinely invest time in performing the ritual, and increasing the number of sacrifices as they age. The greatest issue with this method however is the eventual development of a mental condition that makes the Sith begin to perceive flaws and imperfections in their appearance, despite no observable change to anyone around them. If pressed to explain what they think is wrong, they tend to be at a loss for words, desperately trying to grasp a way to communicate what they are seeing but usually falling back on words like “blight” and “rot”. This condition tends to manifest three to five years into using the ritual, and slowly worsens over time, although no actual perceivable deterioration occurs. Ritual of Tainted Perfection: An attempt to provide a solution to the creeping madness of the sacrificial rituals, this one concentrates Dark Side corruption into a single feature that becomes undeniably warped. The rest of the body ceases to change or age, other than to grow more fit and attractive with the accumulation of Dark Side energies, however the corrupted feature proportionately continues to worsen. Clawed fingertips may metastasize into arms covered in scales, black eyes might start weeping blood continuously, a serpentine tongue that constantly tastes the air might start imbuing words with an otherworldly tone. While many Sith consider it a worthy tradeoff or even relish in the reactions they get to their mutated appearances, their warped visages undeniably out them as Sith, which can be problematic for infiltrators. Sith who work wholly within the Sith Empire such as government officials benefit from propaganda portraying the mutations as noble sacrifices made in service to the Empire. Black Rite of Apoteras: If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is not any quest for supreme beauty flawed? Is it not better to sculpt perceptions than the body? Apoteras is about embracing one’s own monstrous nature and forcing people to love it, rather than trying to sculpt a perfect body through sorcery and lifestyle. Upon performing the rite, the Sith’s body rapidly transforms into a corrupted state of “otherness” that is alien and monstrous. Each transformation is unique, and unsettling to look at. Or it should be. The horrific underlying power of Apoteras makes its disturbing form inexplicably desirable to those that behold it. Witnesses are acutely aware of their revulsion for the Sith, but are overwhelmingly compelled to also desire it, as if driven by some sense of morbid curiosity turned unhealthy fixation. -------------------------------- Sith Assassin places of power The Broken Halls: A locus of Dark Side energy in a dilapidated castle overrun with phantoms and dessicated Undying who have outlived their usefulness. An intricately woven veil of illusion covers the grounds to make the denizens fair and delightful to look upon, and the decor and structure well maintained, but this illusion varies from most in that it is only visible to those skilled in the art. To the uninitiated, the Broken Halls is a desolate place of nightmares, wandered aimlessly by shriveled and gangly monstrosities. That is why the assassins come here to train in intrigue. A novice must learn to hide their reactions behind a pale mask of lies, to convincingly profess love to unspeakable horrors, to smile and make small talk with feculent courtiers who smell of offal and rot. The Theater of the Gods: An ancient fane located in a partially submerged cave network where primitives used to go to seek the wisdom of their divinities, researchers would later discover that the stories of mythical encounters were tied to a mixture of hallucinogenic mold spores, plants with mind altering effects in the water, and natural gases that bewilder the senses and steal away focus. While no mechanical lighting is installed in the fane, the molds and algaes in the caves are bioluminescent with a wide array of colors. The Sith have begun using the caves to practice mental warfare, learning how to cope with an uncooperative and deceitful mind of their own and also how to effectively alter the minds of others. There are a number of cenotes that connect to the cave system, and masters are known to toss apprentices down them to see if they can make it out from the deepest parts of the caves. Not all do, many dying due to starvation or the paranoid delusions of their peers. Some become the madness that they have consumed, learning to live in the caves in a state of permanent delirium, and becoming a serious hazard in their own right. The Impossible Labyrinth: Built to test the skill and determination of assassins through massive free for all brawls, this structure is a grand maze with overwhelming verticality set within a massive gyrosphere, allowing the whole structure to spin, tilt, or even invert itself at its master’s whim. Furthermore, the entire interior is kept pitch black. Its creator shares the video feeds with a select few, who watch its bloody proceedings for entertainment. Still Lake Manor: A strangely placid manor adjacent to a calm fog shrouded lake, the peaceful location certainly does not strike one as a Sith holding. Inside the manor the furniture is dated but of high quality and appears barely used. The servants are obedient and attentive, and the head butler will readily hand over keys to new guests that open any door in the manor save for a wing on permanent reserve for Luxia Ravelle. Still Lake Manor is largely seen as a token of favor given out by the Dark Lord to Sith that have earned his attention, and sometimes, it is exactly that. Other times, however, when a rival Sith’s star starts burning too brightly the Dark Lord sends a very special invitation to the would be challenger. At first glance, their treatment seems the same as any other guest’s. Over time however, they may start to notice holes in their recent memories, and that they drift off more easily than normal, but it’s easily explained by the sedated atmosphere and copious amounts of food and wine. Things unravel however as the periods of missed time grow from minutes to hours to days to months to years, until suddenly it’s decades that are unaccounted for. Time has passed, because if the Sith struggles they can remember random details from what otherwise seem like gaping holes in their memories, and they can be prompted to remember certain events, but what they can recall is limited. Eventually they fade away entirely, lost to old age and a catatonic mind. But it has only been a week or two. The Time Drinkers are a secret (even by Sith standards) group of assassins that report directly to the Dark Lord and possess a very specialized skill set focused on numbing and circumventing a Force user’s ability to detect threats and external manipulation. The initial blackouts are caused by sedatives delivered through whatever means are most likely to be consistent with the current Sith. Sometimes it’s food or drink, sometimes it’s skin contact. Sometimes it’s in the bed sheets or the freshly laundered clothes. During the blackouts false memories are implanted but buried deeply to make them seem distant and the incompleteness implies memory loss, and the Time Drinkers use illusion to appropriately age all of the staff for bouts of wakefulness. The staff seems familiar with the daily habits of the Sith because they put them there. Throughout the process, the dosage sizes increase until finally the Sith fades away. A perfect murder through stagnancy. Worldbuilding The Charybdian Hollows: Imagine beings so filled with vain self loathing and envy for the lives of others that they became singularities among a sea of stars. Drawing in light and sound, joy and warmth, the Charybdian Hollows spend most of their existence as featureless shades, faces distorted by reality’s inability to handle their non identity. While in this state, the hollow feeds on the world and the people around them, creating an aura of disquiet and suffocating ennui. Upon reaching a satisfactory level of satiation the hollow devours it all en masse, transforming from a desolate singularity to a brilliant star. Exuding powerful charisma and raw force of personality, the hollow explodes into the public eye, burning through their energy stores at breakneck speed. The high may only last a night, or at most a few days, but during that time the hollow is the life of the party, the center of attention, and the object of desire in the minds of everyone around them. The Godbeasts of Onderon: While the implications of Exodus’s seeding of Onderon with the Dark Side will be seen to some degree planetwide, none were more deeply affected than the Beast Lords. Some tribes feared the changes brought on by eating corrupted beast flesh, and other tribes simply tried to endure it as a new facet of survival. A handful however sought mastery over this newfound power. Considered mad by the other tribes, they had their greatest hunters, shamans, and chieftains gorge themselves upon the meat of Sithspawn. Most were driven mad and heavily mutated by the Dark Side taint, but a select few of profound spiritual strength mastered the power that they had consumed and became monsters with insight ascendant. The hunters became quadrupedal beasts with fangs that could tear through durasteel and hardened skin that was as resilient as heavy armor, their bodies growing to the size of a landspeeder. The shamans and shamanesses, trained in the path of walking between two worlds, became bestial hybrids, able to evolve their own bodies to adopt the traits of the beasts they had eaten. The chieftains found a higher truth and became as dragons. While many understandably mistake the Godbeasts as warriors, their animal cunning and preference for stalking prey makes the assassin arts of highest appeal to them. The Godbeasts that spiritually guide their tribes also use the illusive powers to craft powerful internal journeys of the mind and to walk among their tribe unseen. The Procurers: While assassins are largely assumed to use their skill sets for murder for obvious reasons, there are other very lucrative outlets that they can be put to. The Procurers are Sith specialized in providing for the special needs and rarefied tastes of their fellow Sith. Alchemical components, ancient texts, rare ores, people of a specific type, whatever the Sith need, the Procurers can provide for a price. While some requests can be obtained easily through legitimate means, the majority involve theft or kidnapping. Procurers love solving puzzles and beating challenges, and security systems and guards are like high stakes puzzles and challenges that try to shoot you. The harder the heist, the more Procurers are into it. The Procurers routinely confound museum and private collection security teams, and have absconded with an astounding number of members of planetary royalty. For these mystical thieves, wealth is almost an absurd abstract of which they have an overabundance of and yet little use for. Even the most high tech thieving gear does little to put a dent in their carefully hidden bank accounts. As such, Procurers have something of a reputation for frivolous and nonsensical spending. Some of it could be considered vaguely charitable (sometimes they tip service industry people so obscenely that they never have to work again, or they might build a school or a hospital to impress a romantic interest), but to them it’s just finding amusement in their fortunes. The Kennel Masters and the Friends of Luxia Ravelle: Two groups of Sith assassins that enjoy a symbiotic relationship occupying the galactic party scene. The name Luxia Ravelle is a myth spoken of in reverent tones by bon vivants and hardcore party goers alike, an urban legend synonymous with extravagant bacchanals and wild excess that sounds too grandiose to be true. There are people you know, people that claim they know Luxia and can get you in. They don’t look exceptionally beautiful, well connected, or even the partying type, and yet there they are, insisting on being able to accomplish an absurdly impossible thing. They’re coworkers, book club members, friends from sabacc night, and shy college students. But you humor them, you say yes, and then that weekend they deliver you into paradise. The drinks are the best and worst kind, the kind where you don’t realize how much you’re drinking, and drugs are on the house upon request. Maybe you hesitate at first, you’ve never done anything like this before, but your friend dives in headfirst. A transformation takes place and they’re no longer a quietly average wallflower, even though they look the same now they’re an eleven and everyone wants to be around them and you want that too, even just a piece of that. That’s how they get you to swallow the hook. There are two types of predators working this hunting ground, Trainers and the Friends. Trainers are Sith who use access to the party as a carrot that quickly leads into a cycle of blackmail and increasingly severe tasks. The ones who stop trying to fight back are called hounds, and that is where the group gets the sobriquet of the Kennel Masters. The services of their hounds can be purchased for the right price by other Sith… The Friends are the actual party runners, using illusion where necessary to create the grandiose extravagances of the party until it can reach its own critical mass with bodies. They use that same talent with illusionry to kidnap and impersonate people that nobody pays attention to. The Friends have less of an interest in making people do bad things for them and more of an interest in making people want to do bad things. These assassins use an umbramantic ritual with the bacchanals as a focal point to infect people with darkness, nurture that darkness, and then feed on it. When the party bloats to sufficient size, the Friends consume all of the guests not claimed by the Kennel Masters in a cannibalistic bloodbath that rejuvenates their flesh and makes their power swell. When the Friends emerge from the cocoonlike mound of half eaten bodies, they now wear the features of their former guests, and the legend of Luxia Ravelle continues. It is unknown if there even is a Luxia Ravelle, or if it’s just another part of the theatrics... The Kind Ones: A peculiar breed of Sith Assassin that has an unusual path to power. A Kind One will enter the service of a household appearing as a member of the staff through illusionry. In larger households they will often go unnoticed, but in smaller or more perceptive families a great deal of confusion may arise over an unknown but helpful individual that no one can recall hiring, or even seeing beyond a brief moment of passing. Superstitious people may even whisper of ghosts or otherworldly beings. But over time, the family and the staff come to accept the mysterious entity as being benign, both through its actions and a general sense of kindness surrounding any passing encounters. Furthermore, a sense that the being’s presence is a secret of utmost importance to keep from outsiders infiltrates the minds of everyone. After some time of enjoying the quiet industriousness of the Sith, either the matriarch or patriarch of the family (Or sometimes both, if the Sith has their eye on an heir of age) will begin to suffer a wasting disease that burns through them quickly. Exploiting the grief of the survivors, The Kind One will assert more and more influence into the lives of the household, replacing the lost parent as a romantic partner and cementing their place until they become the head of the household. If the children are well behaved and useful, The Kind One will allow them to persist, but if they rebel against its presence it will kill or otherwise remove them from the board of the game that it is playing. While the goal may seem like a crass desire for material wealth and possessions, and sometimes that is exactly what it is, more often The Kind One has a more sinister purpose for its manipulations. It was not just wealth and privilege that attracted The Kind One to the family, but some nascent spark of Force potential. While rarely do any of the members have enough talent to be Sith in their own right, they carry enough power to virtually ensure Force sensitive offspring and also have proven that they can function in a family unit, and that is the true prize that the Kind Ones seek, future soldiers for the Dark Lord’s forces raised in secrecy. The assassin does its best to both protect and grow the family, dealing with threats both without and within. It is harder on its own children than the original heirs, in a calculated move that both makes the original children more sympathetic to the half outsider, and inures the Sith child at a young age to hardship. In fact The Kind One often appears to spoil its stepchildren, fattening the lambs for a coming slaughter. If the Sith children appear to be lacking in Force ability by the time they come of age, The Kind One shows them how slaughter their step siblings and steal their power for their own. The Kind One does not aid the Sith children in this, that is not the way of the Sith, and if the originally family overcomes their murderous stepkin, the Sith will instead channel the power of their failed offspring into the survivors, ensuring that either way a crop of new recruits is harvested. The Kind Ones represent the usurpation of family and the desire to twist a loving place of sanctuary into a means to an end. While The Kind Ones are probably better as NPCs due to what actual play for them would be like, I’m adding them here because they also make for great character background fodder, if the player chooses to be one of The Kind One’s descendants or surviving stepchildren.
  17. Mandalore burst into view before long, Cathar not being a great distance away, comparatively speaking. Lissi handled arranging a meeting with the powers that be while Ailbasí addressed her apprentices. Having a personal assistant was fantastic, she should have gotten one earlier… “I know that this all seems rather sudden, but time was of the essence. The Crusaders are slowly working their way towards Mandalore, razing planets as they go. This gives us the opportunity to extend an offer of aid to Mandalore as the foundation to a new alliance. The Mandalorians would be an excellent replacement for the absence of the wayward imperial forces. With the size of the crusader fleet, they’ll need us, and that gives us a foot in the door on negotiations. For now I want you to practice connecting to the Force, and if necessary, rest. The ship’s crew have been instructed to attend to your needs, including food, so be sure to eat and recover. There will be difficult days ahead.” She left her apprentices to their own devices while she went to her quarters to prepare for what was sure to be a very long and tense meeting. This was where Samira’s taste in clothes would come in handy. She chose something professional and powerful, with enough metal accents to invoke the idea of armor without actually wearing armor. She of course had armor, but wearing that to peace talks would give the wrong idea. She didn’t wear a mask, instead painting the red patterns of her people over white face paint, suggesting approachability while still being definitively Sith. “Lissi darling I want you to arrange for a tattoo artist after the meeting, someone reputable and precise. This new body is fantastic, but I need to make some alterations to make it combat ready, and that mojo is going to work better with the right markings.” --------------------------------------------------------------- “I don’t know how you expect us to trust you or your people.” said one of the Tetrarchs wearily while rubbing his temples. “No need for trust, it is clear that the Crusaders are on a warpath for your planet. You don’t want your people reduced to drugged up sociopathic savages, and we see the value in protecting your way of life.” Ailbasí’s voice was level and patient, she was prepared to be regarded as a deceiver. “Deals with Sith never end well for the people that make them, but you have to know that we won’t become your butchers because of this, for all we know Terra is following your orders.” “A reasonable concern, but the teacup terror is a rogue former asset, has been for some time now. Besides, my offer is not what you expect. The Dark Lord does not want you to become his terror weapons. On the contrary, you will have full control over how you pursue your strategic objectives, as a separate arm of the Dark Lord’s forces militant. Any planets that you subdue will be spared the lash of his more… blunt and cruel instruments. This is an opportunity to not only secure the future of your people but also save trillions from gruesome fates. The Galactic Alliance is shattered, and the Jedi have mostly vanished into confines of their temples. We may not be the miracle that you prayed for as the beast began its charge towards your planet, but we do bring true hope that your people can overcome this threat.” --------------------------------------------------------------- It was hours before the Tetrarchs came to a decision, but it was the inevitable one given the circumstances. Encrypted comms were sent to Onderon to begin planning a joint defense of Mandalore. --------------------------------------------------------------- The process of getting the tattoos was amusing in a sense, the artist thought that she was some delicate thing, and oh are you sure you don’t want this floral pattern or this bit of poetry. In the end though, the work was done competently and cleanly. While the artist couldn’t know this, the symbols were Sith spells used for conducting the Force through the body like additional muscles. She would regain her strength fully in time, but for now she was able to emulate it through the Force. With the right ingredients… -------------------------------------------------------------- “Sam, what’s going on here, we’re supposed to be on Cathar but suddenly you have us take off with no warning and none of the crew will even tell us where we are. Saskia says she thinks she saw warships outside.” Ailbasí raised her eyebrow quizzically at the group of strangers on her ship. “Who are you again?” she asked. “We’re your friends, you had us come with you to that ridiculous backwater planet so you wouldn’t die of boredom. Hey, what up with the face paint and the tattoos?” the apparent voice of the group pressed. “They’re necessary. Unlike you. Samira is dead and you will be joining her shortly.” No one could scream as they were choked to death in mid air, their mortal energies siphoned into the spells tattooed on her body. One of them had the most beautiful braided blonde hair, and Ailbasí spent a good period of time using illusionry to learn to make her hair appear similarly styled and colored by studying the corpse. When she was through with them, she drained the last of their vital essences and they collapsed into dust. “Apprentices, your favorite teacher is back!”
  18. 03 was the first to replicate the effect, a surprise in itself since she had only expected them to maybe move or slightly bend the utensils, but his gaunt frame suggested a litany of abuses that might fuel his rage. Even if his mind had been obscured, pain and misery had a way of seeping into ones bones, where they could never be forgotten. Drago was following the principles, but struggling with the execution. “Visualize what you want to do here, but push here.” She pointed to his head, then touched his chest in reference to his heart. She knew Drago didn’t like to be touched, this was a measured gambit to spark off a reaction. Her own focus was disrupted by her comm chirping. It was from Lissi, and contained a link to recent news from the holonet. Ailbasí was a student of history, she knew what the final result of the current events would be, what it would mean for her. She sent a highly encrypted query on Sith channels and received a near immediate response clearing her request. Perhaps the Dark Lord truly was following her progress. The Best Behavior was too associated with her at this point, so she decided to gather what she needed, along with her new apprentices and take her new host body’s ship. Maybe when Ca’aran got over his woe is me, whiny kath, bantha poodoo he could catch up. Or maybe she’d be gone by then. Either way, the Opaline Fox departed because it was time to save the pfasking galaxy.
  19. Ailbasí exhaled in frustration and left the bed to get dressed. She had enough of her pre-Sith clothing to throw together an outfit that relatively fit her. There were apprentices that needed training and she certainly didn’t need to be dealing with this right now. “I know what I’m going to be doing, exactly what I told you just a moment ago. I can’t speak for you, but I really hope you get professional help for your survivor’s guilt and or depression that you’ve got going on. We had a nice thing going, and then you tell me that most likely you’d trade that in to eat a blaster bolt? Pfask you! Pfask you, Ca’aran! I may not be your dead little blue eyed Jedi dream girl, but I deserve a hell of a lot more than being treated like a convenient time waster until you can convince yourself to pull the trigger. I died for you, was it too much to expect that you would try living for me?” Ailbasí stormed off, not waiting for a response. She doubted there was anything he could say right now to make things better, and plenty of things to make it all worse. She came into the room that her apprentices studied in like a roiling stormfront. Her anger spiked the pressure and heaviness in the room, and there was a pregnant pause before she spoke. There was an intensity in her voice that hadn’t been there before, but it didn’t seem to be directed at anyone in the room, at least not yet. “Change in plans, I’m going to be teaching you how to use pain to affect the Force and fuel different techniques. Pain isn’t the only way to manipulate or empower the Force, but it is one of the most intuitive, and its intrinsic nature means that you will want to get it right as quickly as possible. Each of you has already touched the Force with my help as part of your training, I want you to see if you can find it now on your own. If necessary, use pain to find it instinctively, but that shouldn’t be necessary. It’s quite like discovering a group of muscles you never knew you had.” Darth Nyrys placed a trio of spoons on the ground to serve as impromptu training implements and levitated her spoon demonstratively. She touched one of the floating figures and experienced the phantom memory of her arm being rolled up like a sleeping bag, accompanied by a quick succession of bone breaks. She didn’t need the added juice right now, but she wanted to be thorough in presenting the process accurately. The spoon twisted and contorted under her influence before going as molten hot as her anger and spraying across the far wall, leaving small beads of metal smoking in the wall. “Expectations create limits in our minds of what we are capable of, but pain and dark emotions have a way of pushing us beyond those limits. You will pay for each dark miracle with blood and tears, but heed your ambition and your desires and it will give you everything you want. You may begin.”
  20. Ca’aran was silent for some time, and Ailbasí let him know that she didn’t need an answer right away. For the time being, she floated over her datapad and used it to access the Sith’s vast collection of electronically recorded tomes and scrolls. The fear of loss of self still haunted her too much to pursue the path of sorcery, not to mention her unspoken worries that such heavy use of the dark side might cause her body to warp and diminish. In the past when she couldn’t find acceptance or validation amongst her peers being wanted or lusted after had been the closest substitute she could manage, and it had gotten her by. As she continued down the path of the Sith would her ability to connect with people fade so much that she’d have to rely on manipulating desire just for a brief feeling of closeness again? She dove into texts, manuals, and scrolls on illusionry, finding the principles and methods of the craft to be far more intuitive and natural to her than anything else that she had studied. She devoured the knowledge hungrily and wondered if should have started her studies as an assassin. But the lessons she had learned as a Sith warrior about her own limits and how to push past them were invaluable. An idea for a ritual began to form, and she started plotting it out on her datapad, a flurry of notes and illustrated arcane sigils. She would need to make sacrifices… of other people this time, but it could lead to a more permanent means of protecting her body from the ravages of the Dark. For now though, she would practice the fundamentals, temporarily changing features like eye color and hair color, and temporarily conjuring shapes and symbols.
  21. Ailbasí laid down next to Ca’aran on the bed, her head in his lap. The sense of safety she now felt underscored the vulnerability of her new body. It had been a long time since she needed someone to feel safe. In simpler times this feeling of security would have felt nice, but now it ate away at her with nervous energy. “I feel exposed right now in this new body, weak. So much of my training before was tied to my physicality, and now that physicality is all soft and squishy. If body hopping is going to be one of my natural aptitudes then I need to train in things that don’t depend on me being built like a sexy tank. Which means study and practice for me, not to mention learning how to be a human and not needing to survive on the life energy of others to be healthy. We still need to secure a holding on Cathar, but I have an idea for that. I need new clothes because apparently I can’t go half a standard cycle without having a drastic physical change, maybe we can send your new purchase out to find me some things to wear? Whoever this person was, their wardrobe is a bit too corporate empress for my taste. You are always welcome to be by my side, but I don’t really know what it is that you do. I mean, are you using up all of your vacation days with Black Sun to be here or are you so well off at this point that you’re semi retired? Or am I getting you in trouble for stealing you away for so long? Does stealing you make me a cat burglar? Damnit, that pun only partially applies now…”
  22. Ailbasí nodded, wrapped a garment around her face, and looked into the burning remains of her bathroom. Seeing metal glinting in the flames, she gestured to it and with some tugging it came loose and found her hand. It needed to be cleaned, but at least it was back in her possession. “As much as I would love to show you the new me in depth, I need to go check in on my scientist and my murder hobo, make sure that they aren’t killing each other. I promise I will be back soon and we can talk.” She… did her best putting together an outfit that relatively contained her new dimensions, put a black robe on over that, and donned her Sith mask. She may look different now, but that would not compromise her ability to look her role as Sith instructor. The new apprentices would have questions, but that was a good thing. Darth Nyrys walked into a solid beatdown in progress, She wasn’t sure if it was the juice that she had given Mister Snuffles or if his appearance had concealed a greater talent than she expected, but he was unleashing on the poor Chiss like a proper warrior. Well at least the foundations of one. He would need to be honed, reforged from a blunt instrument into a proper blade. The chiss, to his credit, had survived long enough for Ailbasí to die, transfer bodies, and return to the ship, so that meant he was made of sterner stuff than most academics. She gestured and Mister Snuffles was forcefully removed from the Chiss before more permanent damage could be done. Then she took back what was left of the vitality she had given him. He would learn how to secure his own supply in time. “Impressive, most impressive. It’s good to know that we won’t need to dispose of any more bodies today. Although slightly concerning neither of you heard a grenade going off a few rooms over. But that could just be the sound proofing on the ship. I’m not going to hide my situation from you, it’s of value to your education. My original body was a construct and it suffered an integral failure that left me with a choice, murder everyone within a certain radius to repair it or find a new body to serve as a host. While my situation is somewhat unique, the Dark Side will make both of you face similar choices as you progress down the path to power. This is a road of sacrifices, sometimes your own, sometimes the people you care about, sometimes people you’ve never even met before. There are two truths of the Dark Side that you need to be intimately familiar with as we train. The darkness does not respect those that aren’t willing to both seize control of the situation and suffer for their craft. The darkness will consume you if you don’t respect it’s primordial vastness. You must be ruthless in your self inventory when deciding how much of the Dark Side you can control, or you will be swept away. Both of you has a speciality that you are clearly leaning towards, but my first goal is to make sure that you survive long enough to get there. I am going to leave a book of sorts with you to study for the night. Then in the morning I am going to attack you. If you overextended yourself to the point of being unable to defend, you will die. If you don’t study it enough, that is a lost opportunity.” Darth Nyrys placed a black fur bound book on the floor, and gently removed the strap that kept it sealed. She remembered when they removed that skin from her. Crystal pages floated up to form a circle in the room, each one of the ten manifesting a three dimensional image of a body in a different energy color. “This is a Sith pain map, courtesy of the Cartographers of Flesh in the crucible on Korriban. It will teach you the methods and effects of various strikes and pressure points on the body, but each lesson will require you to experience the pain. It will push you, but you will learn a great deal. I will have my crew bring you both meals since you did well sparring today, but I am leaving you to make your own decisions regarding how to approach this. The crew will also show you to your quarters for the night when you decide to retire.” Ailbasí left her apprentices to their own devices and returned to her room, and to Ca’aran. She took off the mask and disrobed before hugging him deeply. She stood on the tips of her toes to kiss him on the forehead, this was intimacy on a deeper level than just lustful need. Some things couldn’t be said with words. “So, I know you’ve been around some pretty pfasked up Sith. And I’ve done some pretty pfasked up things, to get here. But I don’t go out of my way to be mwahaha evil. At first I did what I needed to survive, and now I’m at the point where I do what I need to for us to have the kind of happiness we deserve, but when able I try to minimize the cost, or make the cost come out of people that I feel deserve it. Doesn’t always work that way, but that’s what I try for. Is that okay with you?”
  23. Ailbasí sighed. She had hoped to just explode into the room and for him to just know, like in the fairy tales and romance holos. But this was neither and he was a veteran soldier, both cynical and skeptical, especially of happiness. She needed to dig deeper until the truth was unavoidable. Even with her human nose she smelled smoke and burning meat, heard the wail of fire alarms. He was probably burning her body. She didn’t blame him. “Did you spare the hairpin that I used to stop myself? My mother gave it to me… But we’ve both had a nasty shock today so I would understand if you didn’t. I don’t know if the body hop was a one time trick or not, so please don’t shoot me. Even if it isn’t, please don’t shoot me, this body is kind of amazeballs and I want to keep it. I need to check in on blue man group and Mister Snuffles soon, but if you want to get acquainted with the new me before I do, go ahead. I know this is crazy, but that’s just how my life is on a daily basis, Ca’Aran.”
  24. She remembered dying, taking her own life to save the lives of those around her. She remembered a warm serenity of detachment that could only be found in void. But she did not remember this face in the mirror, and when she tried to recall things from her past they felt like two separate lives sewn together in a patchwork quilt. She tested her connection to the Force, and was surprised to find that not only was she still able to sense and exert, but that she was not actually far from her apprentices or Ca’airan. Not that she had a great deal of range with her general sensing, but she had created a Force bond with Draygo right before she had died, and that had allowed her to trace her way back spiritually in a direct manner. She had always kept her powers off of Ca’airan out of fear that she would somehow damage or twist him. She knew, now more than ever, that he was afraid of certain aspects of her life, and that he had some pretty terrible assumptions about her. Ailbasí really didn’t know if creating a Force bond between them would help things or make them worse. Hell, would he even be into her looking however she did now? “You’ve got to be pfasking kidding me, how did I end up in a human on a planet full of Cathar?” She focused on the mirror now, every second passing brought further clarity to her mind as the previous occupant continued to fade away. She was a few years older, and like most humans lacking fur save for a mane, a long and vibrant red one. Her muscle mass was greatly reduced but the mass she had was in all of the right places and that made her smile a wicked smile. The nightgown she wore was quality both in material and design, she recognized the brand on the label and it was the kind of clothing that people bought to show that they could afford to buy it. With more certainty she left the refresher to better explore the person she had stolen. The closet was a further exploration into the fashions of the chique and overly wealthy. These were things that the girls who used to tease her at school would wear. Ailbasí could feel a latent sense of pride in the collection, appearance was paramount to this person. Adjacent, a massive expanding jewelry wardrobe held enough pieces of quality to buy a few planets. “Sam?” a soft distinctly feminine voice came from the bed and for the first time Ailbasí felt a pang of guilt for this. She had stolen someone from this woman, most likely permanently. She rummaged for stolen memories of intimacy and found none, and at first thought that this was a one night stand, but something drove her to dig deeper, beyond memory of moments and into memory of hopes and anticipations. For someone so heavily wired towards order, propriety, and planning, an unexpected seed of romance must have been alien and awkward. Following the threads led to moments almost charmingly innocent in their fumbling and naive quality. Holovids portrayed romance as a certainty between beautiful people that wooed each other by impressing them through overcoming trials and revealing hidden strengths, but outside of the camera’s lens romance was about exposing vulnerability. At least any kind of healthy relationship. Ailbasí had her share of cheap knock off romances in her search for some sense of connection and feeling wanted, and they had mapped out a painful awareness of the differences between love and what she was getting. This, however, was something so much more. Samira had found a real connection, and while she hadn’t found the words to express it yet, it would have been beautiful. The timidity of her approaches offered verifiable proof that this was something special to her, and frustratingly fragile. It was infuriatingly natural and unasked for to an observer who had sacrificed so much of herself for something similar and had yet was still fighting tooth and nail for for it. It occurred to her that she could adopt this life rather than stealing it. Walk away from the Sith and the path of boundless slaughter. Steal happily ever after and fly off into the sunset. It would remain somebody else’s kind of perfect, however. She knew what she wanted and who she wanted it with, and this wasn’t it. But for the first time she was done holding back on what she had bought with her own suffering, or accepting the hand that the galaxy had dealt her. She put on a mask of caring and approached the side of the bed. Lissi was not here for the reasons Ailbasí initially assumed, Samira had been through a hellish day, and Lissi had suggested a girl’s night in. Too much wine led to a passed out administrative assistant and another night where love’s confession was delayed. But now she was awake, and Ailbasí needed to do what Samira couldn’t, granted for very selfish reasons. She would twist Samira’s interest in Lissi into a lie to pretend that the switch happened earlier so that she could steal that emotional foundation for her own ends. “There’s something that I need to tell you, a secret that I’ve been carrying with me for awhile now. You may have noticed that things between us have been different lately, and that I’ve seemed like a different person lately. I’m not the person I was when we first met. Literally.” She reached out to the wine bottle and it levitated gracefully through the air to her hand. She feigned taking a deep draw and then handed the vessel to Lissi, urging her to drink as well. “I was sent to imitate Samira on behalf of the Sith Empire, but in the process I… well… you… oh screw it.” Ailbasí leaned in and pretended she was back on her ship with Ca’aran, kissing Lissi like she was hopelessly in love with her. She had never particularly had any interest in women in that way, but her history with men had given her more than enough experience in feigning interest and passion. “I don’t want to lose you when I finish my assignment, but if you help me complete my objectives I can take you with me.” Lissi had an appropriate degree of shock on her face, her mouth agape at the partially true revelation being delivered to her. She was hesitating, and Darth Nyrys couldn’t allow that. She reached into Lissi’s mind and twisted it until it was where she needed it to be. On some level could feel things breaking inside the woman’s mind when she did it. “You want this. You need this. I am your world.” Lissi parroted the words while tears welled up and streaked down her cheeks subconsciously. The tears turned into giggling as Lissi remembered that this was what she had wanted, this was the best night of her life. She would do anything for Sam. Anything. Darth Nyrys held her for a bit, kissing her on occasion to sell the illusion and let her pet’s newfound mania settle in. She would use Lissi as an insider to this woman’s life and exploit it to its bedrock. Time to get hers. When she tired of Lissi she used the Force to make her drift off into sleep. She changed out of her nightgown into a more appropriate outfit and packed a bag since none of her old stuff would fit her in this new body. She also grabbed Sam’s commlink and datapad, there would be homework to do. She exited the ship skipping down the ramp and feeling like a million credits as she walked back to her ship. The Best Behavior was where she had left it, which was a relief since she had told Ca’aran to take the apprentices to Korriban, thinking that death was going to be a more permanent affair. Her access code lowered the ramp and she strode in unchallenged. Ca’aran, clearly having thought he had lost her, had made quite a mess of her common room. She walked up behind him, putting her arms around him in an embrace of comfort. “Shhhh, I’m back now, I came back for you. I know you thought you lost me, but I’m kind of goddamn amazing and more than a bit magical. New body though, I hope you like it.” Now she understood why on a planet of Cathar she had ended up human. She hoped he liked her new look, she chose it for him.
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