Fieldgrey

Shapash slipped through the air, whispering on the wind as spider-silk, the darkmetal blade unlinking itself, binding to the rhythm of its master; the bitter heartbeat of the revel. It despaired the loss of the kill, but understood the need of a lesson. The hunt was a feral thing, of baser instincts, unrefined of glory. Awenydd stepped back, watching the apprentice before her within the Force. He was yet inefficient, but he could focus. The Skad-Mouse dissolved, falling back into the soured blood from which it has birthed. A pale reflection of a broken mind, painted into the physical realm itself. "You can channel emotions into power, even refine them into movement." The Sith Lord held out her pale, scarred hand, bloodied palm to the wind-swept sky. "Now, use them to hunt. Find another acolyte, it doesn't matter who they belong to. Bring them to me." Her face twisted into something of a smile. "You could use strength, but that isn't remotely interesting."

Awenydd stared at the Sithling with a steady gaze of blazing fire, watching the Force move within its veil. Rage, an unfaltering bloodlust. Yet it was ill-channeled. That did not surprise her, few beginners could channel their emotions efficiently. There was power in him, yet most of it dissipated without direction. The Skad-Mouse writhed, dancing in its fear, unable to find a way to escape the power of what held it there. Feeble cries whispered across the bloodstained moss to reverberate louder in the humid, stale wind. The Sith Huntress slipped Shapash from its scabbard, the crimson blade shimmering in the air. The Falx seemed to crawl through the air, twisting and writhing in a mimicry of its frightened prey. Within the Force, now freed from its containment, it held its own distinct, perverse presence. The bitter taste of sanguine pride and the predatory nature of a spider. She dipped the blade into the Skad-Mouse, its tip rending flesh and sinew to dig into the bones of its vertebrae. The formally feeble cries, bubbled into a panicked crescendo and paid blossomed into the Force. “Emotions power us, but power is useless without proper application.” The Sith stooped, holding the intricate handle like a leash, not letting the blade drink its fill of the mouse’s lifeblood. “Channel it all, everything. Bind that power into muscle and heartbeat, nerve twitch and breath. Into one, fatal leap.” She flicked the blade out of the prey, feline eyes sparkling with glee as she watched the mouse struggle to escape with only its top half in working order. Its hind-legs splayed uselessly, nerveless. Torture had its uses, but the creature's purpose was now to die.

Awenydd felt it, tasted it. Consumed it. This sweet memory of the hunt. There was a primordial thrill to it, enough to harness a spark, yet inadequate for sustained fire. There needed to be deeper emotions, baser things which could never be turned aside. She drew her fingers to her lips, tasting the blood once more. “There, your first true knowledge of the Dark Side. It acts through emotions, and bestial predation is one we both share.” The Sith bit deep, dragging the sharpness of her teeth through her pallid flesh. Iron and copper. She added the drips of her own blood to that which stained the forest floor, hers a darker and murkier reflection in the pale light. The rhythm of the hunt, that steady rush of heart-thrill beat within the roots beneath their feet. “Your victory was over a mindless creature, without the curse of sentience and will. It too will feel insignificant when you pass your blade through the throat of a Jedi. Only then you will walk as an equal to any Warrior.” From that bloodied, embittered ground came a new heartbeat, and a small skad-mouse, barely adolescent. Its small white body was stained from what grasped it; a claw of writhing blood, rushing spiders, and wriggling black maggots. Shapash danced beside her, its fingers caressing her flesh “Now take that hunter’s thrill and channel it. Discover this heartbeat, so small and frail, sense its panic and let it feed your blood-lust, but restrain yourself…”

Feline eyes gazed unmoving from beneath twisted locks of unkempt brown hair. The Sith watched the man both in the physical and within the force. The forest floor drank deeply of the spilled blood, but the Huntress stood unmoving. Warriors, especially those of the Bersærkergang, were notoriously unstable. They raged like toddlers after a confiscated sweet. She let him rant, her eyes drifting to the spiders that clawed at the dripping blood, tumbling and tossing like spent leaves in the summer wind. The Sith Huntress took in the rage, its unusual and deep rhythm, melding herself to it. As he stepped, so did she. Calypso had spurned him, and it was easy to see why; Rage and pain were mindlessly boring. So easily manipulated. So easily removed. Blood dribbled down his chin like a tearfall. Her own rhythm desired to taste it, to take in his lifeblood like a portent of death and dispel it into the songs of entropy. To quiet his blood. She pressed into it, embracing and drinking of his pain. She let his ranting hang a moment upon the breeze, unanswered, savoring the complexity of the emotions. Shapash quivered thinking of grinding his sinew, tearing that vibroaxe and blade to atoms and scattering his viscera upon the steps of the Black Pyramid. The spiders began to prance, and Awenydd scooped one up to calm it, her nail-bitten fingers finding only air and delusion. She spoke through whispers that curled across the wind to find the Sith’s ear from a hundred directions; from the creaking of treebranch, the rustle of leaves, the babbling of fountains and from the bending of moss beneath his feet. “You find yourself alone, that is the reality of it, no matter your victories over paltry nonsentience.” There was a haunting and depressing finality to her words. “You say you desire power, and yet you’ve built a horrible dungeon about you on all sides, heated by only one anemic furnace.” Her hand passed before them, illuminating the spilled blood and the echoes of spent rage and pain. “Rage and pain produce no light at all, but rather a vicious darkness that only serves to discover sights of failure." Awenydd stepped, leaning down to run a finger through the blood that now darkened the moss between them. She brought it to her lips, letting it pass over her tongue to bind it to herself. Smoke curled from her sanguine smile. Haematomancy; and into his blood she poured her own tales of wrath. The wounds that drove her to corruption. To power. She drove the pain and rage from him like a whirlwind. Her mind moved to Myrkr, and those bitter years of deprivation. The first lesson would be in the basics. “How do you connect to your power, Fiochmar, when all your pain and rage is spent. How do you find the Living Force?”

Eyes of orange, feline fire stared unseeing into the forest. They were dark and filled with voices and songs unheard but to those corrupted by the Rhythm; that unchanging heartbeat of temptation. It flowed everbeating like the rivers of the Cocytus, that ancient rueful stream of lamentation. The Forest-song was but that, the wailing and mewing of prey falling in their tempo to predation. That was the Force. The slow, inevitable conquest of the hunter over the hunted. The meek dying to feed the strong. Shapash’s fangs sinking deep. Another song, more human than animal. The Sith blinked, staring into the darkness about her. She felt it again, the rhythm of her own heart. Slow, methodical, matching the Forest’s Song. A stifling touch came upon her skin, a thousand hairs brushing. Skittering. Awenydd watched as the spider crawled its way across her naked flesh consuming its prey with tearing mandibles. The skad-mouse turned from flesh and bone to grind and gristle. It’s never so simple, is it? Her scarred hand reached out to caress the spined and victorious hunter, but her fingers only touched rippling water. The darkness retracted its veil revealing that she was laying in a stream fed by ice-chilled runoff from the mountain. Glaciers melting in their seasons to birth new life upon the dry plains below. The Sith’s other hand held the stem of a broken bottle, partially submerged in the creek. Beyond it, rising like a stinking mountain, the splayed corpse of a Roth-Kai, an old bull past its season. It seemed to wriggle in the mire, for the maggots made their tunnels beneath the hide and were rising to pupate in the morning dew. A cloud of their siblings dove and tangled in the cold air, mating to lay their new spawn within the fetid carcass. A few rotflies came near, trying to tangle in the mud that adorned her young face. They crawled at the corners of her mouth, lapping at the tear-ducts of her eyes, exploring the edges of her nostrils, fighting to squirm and twitch within. It was difficult to breathe. Instinctively she bit down, feeling one burst upon her tongue, filling her senses with rancid blight and the taste of putrefactive mold and feculent sulfur. She let the bile dribble from her mouth, returning it to its brothers to feast upon. The Sith Huntress fell back into the chilling embrace of the river, letting her head sink below the current until it rested on moss-blanketed stone. She held her breath, letting the waters clean her as she emptied her stomach of her reverie, staining the clear water with partially digested rot and torn intestine. The feast had been another lie of her mind. In that moment, in the bosom of the river, she longed to perish, to be swallowed up and lost, devoid of sense and motion. And yet a new purpose came from that distant rhythm; Abandonment and victory. Lost happiness and lasting pain. The call of future torments mated with stubborn pride and steadfast hate. The promise of an Echo which would spin fate. Awenydd stood from the river, letting its current carry the corruption beyond the horizon. She dragged Shapash from the quivering mass, flicking the blackened maggots and coagulated blood onto the mats of sphagnum moss and mushrooms that grew upon the river’s banks. Leaning against the harsh bark of a Leylen-Tree, she dressed, covering up her nakedness and the innumerable scars, those from the struggles of war and those self-inflicted on bitter and dangerous nights. To that Dark Pyramid she walked, to the halls of her Master and the calls of a new song. ************ With a scarred hand, the Sith Huntress gripped the hilt of her Falx, keeping the leather sheath against her side to avoid the tangling, grasping hands of bracken and briar. The leather of her boots made only a whisper over the miscast leaves and fallen branches. She was near enough now to sense him entirely, that new rhythm. An abandoned child of Calypso, mistought and fresh from misguided victory overflowing with insolence and pride. Much akin to the rest of the New Sith, barely instructed, bolstered with easy victories, only to pitifully fall screaming upon the blades of the more battle-hardened Sovereign Knights. Such had been the cycle of the Sith for a decade now, dilution and weakness, wrought only by misteaching in hatred, enmity and strife. She passed then from briared woodline, stepping into the smaller entropy of the temple grounds. He was a Sith, a species that had been genocided and destroyed a hundred times in recent memory. They were the same age, but he was built much as Blackmorne was, as tall as a Casperstam and nearly as broad. He smelled of the bestial Warriors, and was on the hunt for greater prey. Her voice babbled from her throat, sick-sweet and challenging. She spread her hands from her side, in a peaceful beckoning. The edge of her vision beheld the spider, sunning itself upon her hand, and yet she felt nothing of its weight “What do you hunt, Fiochmar, now that you have conquered a lowly Terentatek?”

Darth Awenydd slipped the ocular interface up and over her head, fitting it into place with leather strapping amongst her tousled hair. Blinking into new light, the HUD of the interface gave the inside of the RZ-2 A-wing interceptor’s cockpit a streaming display of data. A real-time display gave the number of seconds left on the Shag Pabol Run before the Oktos Nebula would be within micro-jump distance, and beside that and ever-growing calculation of the ever-longer odds against her success. A mournful beep and troodle came from Mynyddog, her S19 Astromech. The Sith Hunter sniffed a disdainful retort, and wrenched the A-Wing out of the starry embrace of Hyperspace. The ocular interface gave a star-map reading, showing their relative distance to Rorak, and the distance to jump to a micropoint 12 light-years outside of Ganath. From there, it was an even longer run against the odds to the gravity lens of Nal Hutta. Mynyddog fed out data, and Fieldgrey’s fingers twitched as she set parameters to the hyperdrive. She let her mind sink into the predatory flow, the Force guiding her instincts, tweaking data to cut their run about Circumtore. She could feel a humming, resounding rhythm rise from behind her, the Superbia's refrain. An alarming beep from the droid made her chuckle, a terrifyingly predatory sound, like a Lyanx dashing the throat from a Nerf-Calf. With a flip of a switch, the A-Wing leapt into the abyss.

A small laugh sprung from the shattered marble wall, Hayley stepping from it with a sudden, delighted spring. Her one, sulpheric eye seemed to sparkle in the light, a dark mirth like a flame within it. Her razor-whip seemed to curl about her lithe form as she stepped, and a predatory grin played across her freckled face. Her voice was gravelly and sharp. “You speak of gods, be they fanged, or hanged, or drowned… Are we not Sith?” Her hands seemed to shake, as if with anticipation. Searching for a trigger to pull or the handle of a blade. “We are gods. Bound to no power but that of our own. Perhaps the Clan Bragnalsau…” She let the insult hang, her countenance growing entirely still. Her one eye stared at Akeron, reminding him of the training on Mykyr through which they had both gone. It had bonded them, but that bond would be broken easily by a challenge to the Dark Lord, and thus to The Court of Madness. “Needs to… Accomplish something of value to consider themselves worthy of stepping from the shadow of pathetic gods.” The Sith Hunter stared then to the droid Sith, the one who called himself a slave. She had been a slave once, it was nothing to glorify. "Does your whelping god delight in death as I do?" A drip of blood rolled from the Sith Hunter's lips, and she let it fall to the ground between them. She had grown tired of talk, of such long speeches with little actually said.

Hayley watched the new, self-proclaimed Dark Lord give her speech. She recognized the presence within the body as an apprentice of her own master. She could smell the corruption of Gluttony upon her, a distant stain that the Sith Lord herself bore. The corruption of Sin touched every member of the Court of Madness, in its own way. The rhythm changed in her mind, and her predatory nature leered from behind her façade of beauty. The Lord Mordecai spoke the words of diplomats, and when he finished, the Sith Hunter rapped her bootheel upon the shattered granite, causing a harsh grating sound. When she spoke, it was with a quiet malevolence. “As the Master of the Krath is currently... Consuming Sullust at the bequest of the Lord... Mordecai... And my brother Vorin is at Lehon..." She twisted a strand of auburn hair about a scarred finger, flashing the assembled Sith with an odius smile. “I possess the authority to pledge The Court of Madness to your cause, if you so desire us. We will stand behind the Dark Lord, as we always have.”

Awenydd stepped into the war-torn palace, her bare feet cold against the shattered marble. The world smelled of rotting flesh, that fell, putridly sweet smell that invaded the nostrils and watered the eyes. Bodies were bloating in the Naboo sun. The Sith Hunter let out a small hiss, striding to a carbon-scored wall to lurk in the background of the meeting. The Court of Madness had more eyes than her own here, and she could feel the distant heartbeat of the Revel. Sheog was himself at war, Vorin following in his master's slimy trail. The Court of Madness didn't care who was Dark Lord or Lady. They all played a part in the Revel.

The echoes were growing louder, a resounding heartbeat within the Force, that of unending suffering. The Sith Lord smiled grimly, staring at her apprentice as he came to terms with his lot, and what the Force had in store for him. She bathed in the echoes, letting the man’s pain and anguish fuel her own power. Master… Was that what she was now? Darth Awenydd had always seen herself as more a tutor than a controlling leader. She was a teacher, but no Master. Such words reminded her of slavery, and she would never curse another with an echo of that type of anguish. It was far better to influence with subtlety and control without direct inference, to dominate the wills of others were the purview of warriors, and it the copper taste on her tongue turned sour. “I am the master of none, least of all yours.” She stared at the man, protective instinct worming its way through the echoes to settle within her chest like a parasite. The woman frowned, flicking her knife between her fingers absently. “You’ll need armor, or you’ll die to some cha’kar with a blaster.” The Sith Lord reached out with the Force, and the Warrior would feel a gentle caress against his chest as she smiled and dragged the blade across her own chest, serrating the skin and drawing a rivulet of crimson down the pale canvas of her flesh. The pain and wound would find its echo upon the warrior before her. Into the rush of their blood she bound the scattered plating at their feet, knitting together mismatched pieces of plasteel and durasteel into a shambling breastplate. It was the armor of the dead, befitting a revenant like the man before him. She lashed it to the wound, binding blood to flesh, imbuing it with the echoes of their heartbeats. She winced from the effort, her own hands trembling from weakness “You have not yet earned the rest. For now bond with it, feel it, make it your own.”

The woman was dying, the Sith Lord could feel that fading anguish in the Force, and it was reflected on the bleeding face before her. She knelt beside the soldier, listening to her painful cries, while she laid her soul bare to the Force. There was a power here, a power in that agony and it began to meld with her own. “Why…” It was a simple question the Sith Lord had heard several times before. Why did Chaos allow so many deaths? The Sith Lord leaned forward, crawling her fingers through the blood that stained the decking, through that growing puddle of crimson. It was warm. So warm. “You are an echo.” Her fingers splashed, sending ripples through the formally placid, sanguine pond. There was something far greater here than just a victim. Fieldgrey smiled, the skin of her lips feeling tight against her teeth. Her mouth was dry. She began to hum, rocking on her knees to an invisible beat. One of the songs that Kyrie used to sing seemed so right in this moment. Her fingers splashed a beat, the moans of her victim became the background of her words. A predator loomed. Something turned and moved within her, exposed to the darkness of the Force “May we dance in our madness-." Her breath caught in her throat and her voice changed as she shifted. An undertone of a bestial purr. "In the morose of your red rain…” Shocked eyes and a scream as the Force took the Sith Lord in its embrace, driving her hand through the chest of the woman before her, dragging out the heart and entrails. The puddle grew into an ocean and the Sith Lord satiated her hunger with the taste of power. Blood dripped from her lips, pouring down her pale throat to wet her tattered clothing. She stood from her feast, her sulpheric eyes becoming fully crimson and animalistic. It was as though she did not recognize him. Something had changed. “You desire replacement and enhancement…?” Her one hand rested on his chest, leaving a handprint of dripping blood. When she smiled, the smile was of a fanged beast. “My gift.” Hayley took her hand from his chest, biting the meat of her arm until blood bubbled from her lips, and sprinkled it upon the droid’s arm. She picked up the vibroblade, letting her blood coat the encrusted gems. With her blood she imbued her malice and the anguish she had consumed. Through gritted teeth she let her victim’s soul pass into it as well. The Sith Lord looked warily at her apprentice, and with another twisted smile, rammed the blade of the weapon into the man’s missing shoulder and then ripped the knife free. The blood on it seemed to bubble and dance, burning into the blade. There was echoed screaming as the soul died, sacrificed for the weapon into a painful doom. The Force took next the droid’s arm, attaching itself to the Sith Warrior, metal binding to flesh with immeasurable pain as every nerve was scorched with a new, alien feeling. The Sith Lord laughed, stepping with bare feet across the drying blood to start the ship’s autopilot system. It was about time for them to leave the cursed planet.

Of the Hunters, those blessed by the Dark Lord with a portion of his power to pursue the enemies of the Dark Side and wayward creations to the ends of the universe: The House of the Silent belongs to those born to beast and bow and to the unparalleled marksmen amongst the Lords of the Sith. They are the most bestial of the Hunters, taking on the predatory nature in a moderated form, slinking in the shadows, stalking their prey from distance and only striking when the opponent is at its weakest or most vulnerable. This Archetype will typically struggle with Hand-to-Hand Combat The House of the Sanguine pervert life-blood itself turning their own blood and that of their victims into a weapon of the hunt. They can fuel attacks with their own blood-energy, bleeding themselves in order to achieve their goals. They are able to consume the blood of others to enhance themselves, to a point; as Sith cannot heal themselves this is a temporary enhancement. They can use the force through the blood of those they spill to see some portion of the past, divine partial secrets (hematomancy), and track their victims. A part of Hematomancy is imbuing the Dark Side into the bone-marrow itself, increasing blood-cell production at an increased rate for use in self-harm rituals, so that the user doesn't bleed out should something go wrong the first time. This Archetype will typically struggle with Mental-Based Warfare Of that House of the Afflicted, that syndicate of torturers and madmen, what can be spoken but of their misdeeds? The Afflicted are Force-sickened to the point of madness and are as dangerous to themselves as to their enemies. Self-mutilation, Self-Experimentation, all to slake the thirst for power that the Dark Side has cursed them with. They are the creators of Sith Amalgamations and hunt for the perverse delight in the deaths of their victims and for the joy inherent in the slaughter. They are the worshipers of the Force’s darkest demons and are generally loners, if not hated by the Council of the Dark Lords due to their unpredictability. Their focus is on pure destructive power and manipulation. This Archetype will typically struggle with Hand-to-Hand Combat ((This is true mental illness, these are the easiest to roleplay badly, do not roleplay these as a joke, or as a quirk. This is an opportunity to write the darkest portions of the mind. Treat it with respect. Don’t be that cringy weirdo.)) The Powers of the Hunters These powers are a baseline ideal, and each should be used differently by the separate houses of the Sith Hunters. Restriction: Hunters can only use their force powers through imbued weapons, their weapons or through their bodies themselves. Powers available to all Houses: Elementalism: The Hunter imbues their chosen weapons with an element that is the reflection of their soul, adding that element to the potential damage. Agility: Hunters are able to easily move around a battlefield through augmentation of their speed and muscles with the Dark Side, gifting them with unnatural movement ability at the cost of decreased tactical sense. The hunt overcomes the hunter, driving them towards victory or doom, even against their fading will. Primitive Weapons: Dual usage weapons are the favorite of the Hunters, such as a sword-whip, a crossbow-ax, bow-sword, etc are all within the purview of the hunter, but due to their reliance on the force, they reject most forms of modern weapons. (Those are the purview of the NFU). Primitive weapons from a more uncivilized age are far easier to imbue with the force and corrupt for the usage of the Sith Hunter. Of the Bestial Soul and Sith Amalgamations: The Sith Hunters are paired with the predator that their soul most closely reflects, so closely so that it is part of their Lordship Trials, as important as the creation of one’s lightsaber. In order to create such a creature, the Hunter must infuse a part of their soul into a broken creature or soldier, binding them into themselves through a force-bond. An example of this can be as simple as the pairing of a Sanguine and a Bloodhound, each paired and in synchrony with the powers of the other, an augmentation of the other. Amalgamations are shattered creations, grown into perverted life from the inspiration of the Force. Amalgamations are more dangerous to the user, as they come from the Dark Side itself and have such demonic entities as ancient Sith Lords or wandering souls bound into them. These creations should be roleplayed as influential and a character unto themselves. The Bestial Soul or Amalgamation can be imbued with the paired element that the Sith Hunter has chosen which will affect the way it attacks and is roleplayed. Due to the nature of the Force Bond, to lose the paired creature is to lose a part of one’s self, and the psychic backlash should be roleplayed as a major weakness in a battle. Duel-Related Rules: The Bestial Soul or Amalgamation acts as an additional avenue for attacks against an opponent, but with increased risk. They are not a disposable NPC, and cannot be one-shot, but the death or wounding of your creation has serious consequences upon the power you can draw upon from the Force. You cannot deflect all attacks onto the beast and if it takes damage it does not count as taking damage by you in a duel. (In essence if all your opponent’s attacks are absorbed by your companion, you aren’t respecting your opponent’s attacks, this isn’t a cheap way to go “see you did hit me, by that I mean my sabercat took the hits”) It is an additional tool in your toolbox, it should not be your main weapon, but an augment to your battle-strategy. House-Specific Powers House of the Silent: Force Camouflage: Disguise your actions within the battlefield to blend into it, making it easier to strike from a distance. One cannot completely disappear, but you have become adept at blurring the edges of your form, making it harder for you to stand out. Broken Arrow: Your weapon sheds mass to add additional fragmentary damage at the cost of impact and accuracy. An example of this would be for an arrow to shatter into several smaller fragmentary projectiles in flight due to the Force's application on their chemical or biological structure. Ensnare: Your traps are an extension of yourself and can be blurred through the same act of camouflage. These traps are rudimentary and effective pieces of force-imbued darkmetal or bone and can be used to help control the battlefield in a duel, or as an attack themselves if your opponent steps into one. House of the Sanguine: Building Trauma: You cut yourself, drawing a wound upon yourself, utilizing the pain and spilled lifeblood to fuel and strengthen your own attacks through your connection to the Dark Side. My Disease Becomes Yours: Drawing from a wound, you imbue your own blood with disease, an element, or dark energy, and attack your enemy with it in a caustic spray of potential damage which is carried through the physical droplets of blood. Bitter Mirror: You wound yourself with your cursed weapon, and the attempted attack radiates through the Force becoming a potential physical attack against your enemy, which can be blocked or redirected if needed. Bloodlust: You are drawn to spilled blood of your enemy, and if consumed, can be used to divine some weakness through hematomancy and to add to your next attack. House of the Afflicted: Torturing Pain: You feed off the pain of others, using it to fuel yourself, and can attempt to latch onto the pain of an opponent and enhance it as an attack in an attempt to destabilize and undermine them. Demonic Liturgy: Your darkness takes form as a single use attack amalgamation of dark side energy which attacks in a maddened, bestial charge of claws, teeth, or whatever form your imagination can attempt within reason. Broken Birth: With an attempt to divine that which is an opponent’s greatest fear or stressor, you can attempt to birth it forth into the mind of your opponent to torture them into submission or convert them to your Unholy Orthodoxy. On Mental Attacks: In the past these attacks have been either hit or miss completely based on the mod ruling. Mental attacks are like any other attack, they cannot auto-hit but they should be well respected by an opponent. If you rip into someone’s mind, the fact that you did that is not an auto-win, and is not an auto-lose like it used to be if you actually respect an attack like that. It should be weighed like any attack given in a duel.

"And what of you Master?" The Sith Lord’s sulpheric eyes narrowed into gleaming yellow slits as she watched her apprentice move through his dance of death, a macabre display of violence. Such displays were paltry compared to the strength of the Force, against the echoes they were to create. What of me? Hayley stared down at her missing arm, gritting her teeth against the pain and twisting her pale lips into a smile. What she was missing the Force would replace. She was the Hunter, a predator, a Sith. No loss would slow her advance in power. Chaos would fall to order. “Gather their weapons and armor, a trophy from each of your kills. From the wildfire springs life. From their destruction your roots shall grow deep.” The Sith Lord pointed to the circle of corpses from Shiro’s first attack with a trembling and bleeding finger “Make your armor, let it enhance your strengths and cover your weaknesses. Remember no Warrior is invulnerable. Forge the first of your raiments.” She heard a shuddering cough, one of those she had burned had yet to fall into death’s hands. Fieldgrey reached out with the Force, dragging the woman behind her as she stepped into the pirate’s discarded ship.

The pain of her own wounds was beginning to creep its way up her veins with each heartbeat, intensified by a growing panic. It set into the base of her mind, eating away at her senses until it was all she could feel. Pain blossomed into prominence as it formed into the spirit of each soul her fire enveloped, and into the physical realm it was reflected in white phosphorous. Skin melted and bone slagged like lead in a blacksmith’s forge. Fieldgrey breathed in a gasp, and it was all gone. No more fire and ruin, all that was left was a few smoldering embers of charred ivory. Her own clothing was burned away, scattered to the growing wind with the souls of those she had slain. She stumbled, the charred skin beginning to flake away from her charred arm. Solidified ash scattered, leaving her with a cauterized stump where her arm had once been. Sacrifice. She stared to where her apprentice battled for his life, using the body of one he had slain to ward off the others. After her onslaught, a mere ten remained to oppose them. The Sith Lord could not help but scoff …Warriors... Never carrying their weight. Her gravelly voice boomed across the battlefield, resounding in a chorus of voices; echoes of the slain and consumed. “Stop playing with your prey, boy. You give them hope… A most dangerous weapon.”

Darth Awenydd slipped through the sky like a falling Tandbet, her body twirling through the air without a sound. The burnt flesh on her arm seeped blackened blood, each drop tearing through the charred skin with waves of pain. In turn the Sith fed on the pain, letting it flow into her hunting instinct. Their scent was driving her towards wildness. Reaching out with the Force, The Sith Lord began to inspire the sandy soil beneath the soldier to join her echo, to whisper the oncoming destruction. Murmuring prophecy washed across the soldiers, and with it came confusion and panic. The Sith Lord’s face contorted into a maniacal smile as the soldiers began to run about in confusion, just in time for her apprentice’s attack. The man’s style of attack was quick to draw attention and the panic turned to anger and fear, which filled her senses until she began to hear every breath exhaled, smell every drop of sweat, and taste the blood on Shiro’s knife. Three men fired blasters haphazardly at the apprentice while two brandished their vibroswords at the man with terrified slashes. The Sith Lord burned. As her senses overflowed, she manifested it into fire, letting it crawl across her flesh. The pain that came with it fed into her power, igniting her clothing and skin. With a predatory shriek she landed like a comet in the center of the mercenaries and smugglers, spinning the fire from her body in another pirouette, casting it about her in a wave of flame. The fire burned through the flesh of those about her like white phosphorus, searing through the sinew to ignite the bone beneath. Their screams would add to the growing echo until it became a cacophony that would drown out life itself.

Darth Awenydd slipped through the air, letting the breeze carry her in her leap, fueling her flight with the pain of her seared flesh. She had rarely felt so alive as she did now. From the scorched and cracked flesh of her arm, little wisps of smoke curled and then was carried away by her next jump. The Hunter could feel the pain pumping in her heart, fueling the fire within, which in turn tuned her senses towards the hunt. She felt bestial, a predator with no fear at the top of the food-chain. She smiled, her lips twisting away from a fiery visage of teeth and flicking tongue. There was something deeper within her that stirred with the flames, even beyond the primal nature of a predator, something new. ‘ Before her, the dunes parted, showing two shuttlecraft surrounded by milling people. Their scent was on the seabreeze, the astringent odor of thuggish masculinity mixed with the sweetness of glitterstim. Drug smugglers. Almost forty in number. The Sith Lord let out a viperous hiss, letting her predatory nature flow through the force to touch her apprentice. She turned her body in mid-flight, letting her body contort into a dancer’s pirouette as she rushed towards the crowd of prey. ((Now is a good time to experiment with your combat writing, but do not be too OP. Find a way to be epic but controlled. Don’t overdo it. Find your balance. Kill/Disable only a handful, and we will work on counter-NFU tactics))

Lord of Flame. Awenydd stared at the shifting ocean, her fiery eyes reflecting the horizon as light broke through the clouds. It was warm on her flesh, striking away the bitterness of the cold that the seafoam had leeched from her flesh. She breathed in, focusing on the pain from her smoking arm. Prey... She took that pain into herself, letting it wash through her emotions, through her soul itself, letting it carry away her fatigue. It was replaced by a new sensation, a more primal thing. The anticipation of a hunt. The Sith Lord felt a swell of pride, like a great tidal wave within the force, created from a thousand echoes’ coalescence. She smiled thinly as the wave of wrath came after. Pride and Wrath were a common enough foundation amongst the Sith, but if her apprentice was not careful, both were easily undermined. There was something near… An escape. Awenydd let the echoes fade into the distance, letting the pain move through her still. She could smell it now, distant life, and an escape. She pressed the pain through the nerves in her spine, settling through the sciatic into her legs. She gritted her teeth against the electric fire and… leapt. The Sith Lord’s jump carried her beyond the black-stained dunes to land on the riverbank at the edge of the beachhead, under the shade of the great burned tree. She waved a hand to her apprentice and leapt again towards the source of her hunt. He would follow her or be abandoned, either through speed or jumping as she did. ((Focus now your power into movement))

As the apprentice worked, Awenydd burned within the ocean, an unending fire of pain and destruction. Powers of destruction were at their heart an ouroboros, providing to in turn consume. The ocean’s waves above had taken a green edge, white squalls forcing them to peak and crash with thunder. She felt wrath above, cloaked in pride, even as her mind was absorbed by pain. The force would answer her apprentice’s desire. A blade would form as he forged into it the warrior’s path. From the waves, the Sith Lord crawled. Her flesh was scalded, boiling, charred. The skin wept from her left arm in trails of smoking rot. She stared at her apprentice with eyes that were wholly different then when she had entered the ocean; they held a maniacal fire within them. The white of her eyes had turned a charcoal black. The irises were as crimson as the Maw Nebula. Her pupils were as dark as the heart of the Maw. She was laughing. Bright laughter that tinkled through the crashing waves. A laughter that would warm the heart of even a stranger. “Come now. Finish you blade, we have a long walk to find a ship.” ((OOC: Pour your everything, every lesson, your very essence as a warrior into this sword of yours. It'll come in handy in the fights to come.))

The ocean tore at the Sith Lord’s body with a thousand ravenous hands, but the flame that seared through her flesh was unyielding, even to the might of the sea. She felt the boiling of the water around her, the ripples it made, those ripples becoming currents of their own to fight against the rhythm of the tide. She could hear a voice singing amongst the roiling currents, she could see a battle. The reckless death throes of a vanishing crusade. The death of the light countless souls swallowed by a mass shadow. The flames boiled against the endless sea as the Sith Lord discovered the next echo to trace. Malachor V…. Far above the churning waves of a burning sea, the apprentice heard a new voice, one bound by a ravaging hunger. It spoke as if through the heart of the dark side, and to his eyes there would be a swirling shadow, as if the soldier was looking upon a starless night, reflected through a dark mirror. “Pride…” The bodies about him began to unravel, flesh unspinning itself as if it were made from nerf’s wool. “Vainglory…” Muscle was exposed as the skin and clothing disintegrated. It looked alive with twitching, but it too turned ashen and faded. “The love of your own excellence…” Bone turned to ash, and all that remained was timeless shadow upon the wave-soaked sand. A piece of driftwood rolled across the darkness to rest at the high-tide line. “It is with the loss of one’s humility that great power is awoken, for pride is odious to both man and his gods…” There was a feeling of a great hunger, all consuming, all knowing. It would creep through the flesh, crawling like maggots through the pores. “Harness it, apprentice of Pride, and with it do great wonders.” ((OOC: Turn pride into a weapon, take two posts to imbue your power into a weapon. It will not yet be your lightsaber, but this is your first step towards attuning a weapon to you.))

Darth Awenydd was overwhelmed, there was so much pain, so much death about her that she was not sure of her own mortality. There were souls torn to pieces before her, reenacting their deaths over and over within the veil of the Force. She saw Cathar families gunned down by blaster-fire, squalling babies steamed away in the turbolaser-boiled sea. Those that did not die immediately were stabbed where they curled and spasmed on the beachhead by shimmering vibrobayonets. Hayley could only feel revulsion. What was the lesson here? A new form stooped to the sand, picking up a glittering Mandalorian mask. It swore revenge. The Sith Lord stared in awe at the lessons of the past. So, this was the echo. At long last. The great violence of the Mandalorian genocide of the Cathar people had birthed the fall of Revan. From him, the Republic changed, the entire galaxy was bathed in the blood of countless wars that stretched millennia. Her sulpheric yellow eyes turned to her apprentice. …What echoes have I started by the training of this one? Electricity sparked from her flesh, the storm of the collapsing wound burning into her. She turned it to the forms she knew, flame beginning to wreath her pale flesh with highlights of yellow, orange, and red. She became a demon of flame, a form of pure fire, her clothes turning to ash upon her. “Apprentice; be the weapon of only yourself. Bow not to the Force, bend it to your will.” With a laugh she cast herself into the churning sea. She would boil it away once more. ((OOC: channel your power more fluidly into your own defenses. Experiment: does inflicting pain on yourself grow or diminish your power? Is pain your only conduit to the force? Find one more, beyond wrath and pain.))

Perhaps I was too eager to see if he was different… Fieldgrey watched her apprentice consume, driven like a hungry beast to feast upon her offering. He was not her first apprentice to fail her tests, but unlike Lucifer, she would not kill him for his lack of wisdom. Her voice was soft as she spoke, and even whipped by the wind the purring subtleties of malice was unmistakable “You wished to show me the power you have taken… But that power is not your own. It is not driven by your strength.” The Sith Lord whirled from her cross-legged position, scattering seafoam and crimson sand about her. In an eyeblink she was standing before her apprentice, the storm at her back. He was taller than her, but she was far from intimidated. She placed a scarred hand on his chest, feeling the beating heart beneath thumping against her palm. “It is a hollow gift, the strength of the another, and one that will consume you as you devour it. The power you feel is that of an ouroboros, ever starving and only able to consume itself…” Her nailbitten fingers slid across his ribcage, and she opened herself fully to the storm. Before it had been but the pull of the even horizon, and now they had passed beyond its rim. If her apprentice was to be saved from this place, she had to make a sacrifice. She would be its conduit. Her voice became faint, “What you have shown me is not the power to conquer the galaxy, instead… you show me how the galaxy will die.” The world fractured. The Sky fell into shadow and evaporated like dust upon the wind. Stars reached their hands for them, but they too fell into darkness, becoming the crying shots of turbolaser fire, ripping through the atmosphere. The ocean began to boil about them, and the death of millions echoed about the pair. The wound in the force was unravelling. “Strength that is not your own is useless. That is the wisdom of strength.” ((OOC: Failure is the path of every apprentice. Take the next post to learn this lesson. Refocus yourself upon fostering what is within you; build your strength again but from the ground up. You will start with no power at all, as the inherent power of this place has disappeared. You have nothing but the pain from your missing arm.))

The internal conflict that played out before The Sith Lord was an echo of the storm, strength fighting against strength. She could feel the dark desired within her apprentice, the promises of untold power. All he had to do was give into the sins of his mind. To embrace the carnality of corrupting power. He was fighting against it and that pleased her greatly. It was one thing to draw power from the Force, it was another to have the Force wield you in return. The Dark Side was a treacherous companion, and its ways were that of Entropy. It corrupted even the fairest minds and set them to great evil. Darth Awenydd had seen it with Darth Ares, Ason, and but never Sheog. The Hutt had his own madness, but he had ever reflected himself within the Force, he made it echo with his strength, and never bent to it. Hunger was moving. It was like the embrace of the void; that great wash of power that was the even horizon of a black hole. She could feel them both… Slipping. The fight of the prisoner had but been a distraction, and with his breaking the true chaos of the storm had been unleashed. With a thought, she shattered the prisoner’s body, breaking every single bone at once, starting with his teeth. The great wash of pain that erupted about them, she channeled into strength. Was this apprentice worthy of the lesson of Strength? Fieldgrey offered it all to the Apprentice, the entire life essence of the prisoner to Shiro. What to him was the raw strength she offered? The mind made some powerless, and to others gave great strength. Here lay the temptation. A man’s will controlled his strength, but it could also allow the man control enough to draw upon the strength of others. She could feel it now, the sands were shaking with each wave in the Force. There was the hunger, a building wrath, a bloodlust that could not be sated. That was her gift, vitality, power, and blood; enough to weather the storm. “Will you consume, or turn away?”

The Sith Lord bristled at her apprentice’s mutterings. The Code of the Sith. Those feeble and meaningless words. He seemed to believe in such mantras. Peace is a lie. There is only Passion. Darth Awenydd’s eyes rolled back behind her closed eyelids, Through Passion I gain Strength. It was true that the power of the Dark Side could be channeled through passions, and such feelings harnessed for strength, but it was meaningless without conflict. The storm raged about them, the surf raging in white peaks, surging about them both. The waters were cold, sapping the warmth from her flesh as she sat upon the bloodied sands. With her own wrath she drilled into the mind of the captive before her. All his fears became exposed, and she utilized them to get deeper into his psyche. Within the veil of the Force, a myriad of swirling images began to manifest, beasts, horrors, nightmares, all for the torment of the man before her, his shrieks of terror becoming lost in the howls of the wind. She would keep his mind from the embrace of catatonia, she needed his fear fresh for her apprentice. Her own words were those of a rebuke, but a gentle one. “Do you truly think you can understand the depths of The Force through an adherence to codes?” She fed the fear into the storm, thunderclaps echoing the man’s screams. The strength of conflict. “We all achieve definition in conflict, it is there we find ourselves or find ourselves lacking.” To emphasize her point, her own battle against the will of her captive was won, the man’s struggle for freedom against the stuncuffs changing its rhythm into something else entirely. The shadow of his mind wanted only the freedom now to slit his own throat. Her apprentice would find his power, or be forever trapped in its pursuit. “Now, strengthen your flesh and fight the wind. Let us see what echoes your conflict produce.”

The Sith Lord looked up as her apprentice surged away, a blossom of energy within the Force. The warped vibroblade shot away, propelled like a slug from a scattergun into a target. She could not see the actions of her apprentice with her eyes due to the curves of the dark dunes, but the echoes her apprentice made in the Force made it all too clear. She began to channel her own wrath, her rage against the chaos. Terror, Pain, and then nothing. He was killing them faster than he could utilize their emotions, but that was to be expected. He was a shining supernova of energy before her senses, but he was dimming swiftly. The way he used the force and the echoes that he cast about him in the sand were sloppy, like the splashings of a child in a tantrum. Darth Awenydd’s own hands continued to draw in the blood-soaked beach, the waves casting themselves around her, but not dissuading her actions. Her scars soaked up the blood, oblivious to the cries of the storm and the sucking of the waves. Pain. That emotion was beginning to echo the loudest, overpowering all others. Her apprentice had been wounded, but not fatally. Anarchy and Entropy were the reverberations within the Force, bleeding away the power from her apprentice into uselessness. As the captive was dragged over the dunes towards her, Hayley reached out with her wrath, that settled and deliberate anger, striking against the chaos that threatened Shiro, that cauterized wound upon his chest. With blood-soaked fingers she withdrew a handful of sand from the waves. From the captive she bound terror, drawing it out of him as she amplified it. She would let the seeds of insanity grow, fed by his worst nightmares. To the captive’s mind, the beach became littered with corpses. Breathing in the man’s panic, she expelled into Shiro’s charred flesh, slapping the sand into the wound, transforming them both. The sand was debased by her rage, falling into its pure silicate form, and bound itself into the wound, knitting the cauterized flesh with a living glass, a true horror of Sith magic. The winds howled their own rage, echoing her actions with lightning, bolts of light shattering the sand about them into glassy spikes, buffeting them with its thunder until the glass pillars became windblown shards. The Sith Lord had to shout to be heard above the turmoil. “I will torture him, you must feed off those emotions to survive this storm. Bind the power of your rage into your flesh, harden it against that which is to come.” With those words said, Darth Awenydd began to carve into the captive’s mind, using her own body as a catalyst for the corrupting power of the dark side. For the captive there was no hope, only the discord of the worst of humanity. ((OOC: The Sith Warrior makes a barrier of their flesh, utilizing their own rage to be somewhat impervious to light damage. You are a novice to this, treat it as such.))

The Sith Lord could feel the Soldier’s manipulations in the Force, a sudden surge of passionate energy that swarmed about the man. He applies violence like an artist, taking a color from the palette and giving it a macabre life. The snapping of vertebrae cascaded over her, for a moment drowning out the sounds of the storm. She let out a small sigh. Yet his brushwork is clumsy, like the futile stabs of a toddler splashing his paints… It was one thing to cast about the force in grand movements, such as in the ending of a life, it was another entirely to act with precision. She stared over the dunes at the remaining soldiers who were setting about camp. They didn’t deserve their fates, but their sacrifice was a vital lesson for a far greater cause. Such were the fates of the weak, eternally the playthings of the strong. Driftwood began to scatter upon the sand, the true power of the coming storm almost upon them. The Sith Lord nodded slowly, watching the Sold-, no her apprentice. “Take them as you will. Use as little strength as possible, and be as precise in your actions as you can. Learn your control. Let their fates foster the strength you will need to weather this storm. The Sith Lord began to draw upon the sand with the blood of the fallen, the crimson pain seeming to creep up the scars in her fingers, like the roots of a great tree soaks up the dew. Her voice was harsh then, "But...Bring one to me alive for the next lesson.”