Krath Inmortos

The mummy-shrouded being that held the fractured soul of Inmortos and a thousand other souls stood silently. He canted his head as he heard the Shard’s mechanized words. He was not wrong, entirely. Aaris III had been sacrificed in a show of loyalty to a fallen Sith Lord, and it would remain a lifeless husk for all eternity.

Before he could respond, the Shard’s former master responded. A ship full of lives had come indeed been sacrificed in the foolhardy venture of the Sith above the Alliance stronghold world. It had been glorious if not disastrous for the Sith Empire; just as the prophecies had foretold. Akheron was wrong in one point; however, Inmortos did have a ship, crewed by the very linnorms that had been cut down over Nar Shadaa; well, what was left of them at least. Their souls.

“Such a ritual, Lord Akheron, I fear may destroy the minds of my brothers, for to share my wounds would be to share in the deaths of the legions that now flow through my veins like blood. The ritual

to return you required much more than drawing you from beyond.”

Turning his gaze to the shattered form of the Shard, Inmortos would have been smiling if it could have been seen. As it was, his voice contained a judgmental stereophonic laughter.

”But you are wrong Lord Akheron, for to be a Lord-Captain one must have a ship. Behold.”

Inmortos raised his arms toward the distant citadel, her academies and zigguraut, underground chambers and more. The ancient pyramid of a long forgotten people ringed in soulfrost that rivaled durasteel, crewed by the souls of the damned, and powered by the very veil between life and death. From where they stood, Inmortos could feel the earth rumble beneath his feet. Great cracks permeated the frostbound planet as great ancient thrusters birthed the necromancer’s undead vessel from the death-bound world.

”Perhaps together we can reclaim my soul and rebuild our fleet.”

As the dust of the battle settled and the storm of darkness faded into the icy bleakness that was the reality of the world, the mummified remains of Inmortos stood. Picking himself from the ground where he had been thrown, he was a silent sentinel as the spirits within thrashed within their mortal bounds. He stood; unnatural and unholy as he oversaw the lording of the petty stone. Beneath his wrappings, the solidified face cracked in an unseen smile. Time would tell if this young vain thing had a place amongst the Sith, much less the true masters of darkness; and time, was a fickle

mistress. He stood, watching, for as much as his natural time had elapsed, he had the reserves of eternity at his command. The more pressing matter, it would seem, was one of immediacy. The cravings of young Sith were bent on conquest. That carnage would feed the eternal

void from which Inmortos was born and bound. And so, as the butcher directed the stone to him for a verdict, the consciousnesses within the god-king whirled in possibility.

Slowly, as if creaking in pain and suffering, Inmortos lurched forward, a single finger waggling the air as he regarded the three Sith before him, each bound to him, their fates intertwined with his own. This cult had its uses yet and the dragon of myth would still serve to consume the galaxy.

The voices of Inmortos spoke, carrying in the air, projected from a thousand angled and directions as they warped and warbled in a destructively seductive cacophony.  ”No one will follow a captain without a ship.”

”No knee will bend to a lord without a holding.”

”This clan,” he gestured toward Akheron and then pounded a fist to his own chest as plumes of dust billowed from the impact, “survived when the rest of the Sith fell. We continue the fight even now.”

”And yet,” the necromancer turned his icy burning gaze to Dictum, “we have another here.”

“One who was bound in the times of glory and the fall. It is not right that we discuss family business in such company. And so, I shall pass my judgement upon the Shard when it is but it and I, alone; when each bound to our cause and,” he paused eying both Dictum and Solus, “any outsiders are removed.”

In the distance the towering ziggurat of Inmortos’ throne loomed in the shadows of the dissipating storm. The remainder of his academy for gifted individuals surrounding it, laid out in chaotic order, like grown chicks bound unnaturally to a mother hen. It sat a compact gathering of mazed streets and frozen catacombs, an enigma against the desolation of a world sacrificed to the darkness, a holding flayed and laid bare as a burnt offering before the avatar of darkness, an avatar Inmortos believed was his right to possess.

“And so, Lord Akheron, it falls to us.” The chaotic hilt of Inmortos slid into the mummy’s hand. Whispers of the spirits trapped within both his body and blade hissing in gleeful agony at the temptation of death. “One of your crew has blasphemed the name of the Fanged-God and for this a sacrifice is demanded, penance paid in blood. Another stands here as an equal, and yet remains unbound to the welfare of the brotherhood.”

”Still, without his sacrifice, I would not stand here now. Whet say you, a master of cloth and a master of iron until they prove themselves worthy? Or shall we cut them down where they stand?”

The mummified remains slowly sat, an ancient body swathed in tightly rolled bandages. Slowly through a slit in the grave clothes two charcoal eyes flickered and burned in the blackness within. Slowly the being turned to regard @Lord Ōk Rägnär. The stillness of the air was interrupted not by anything of this world; instead, on the still air carried the currents of damnation, thousands of souls, some from the hellish beyond, other bound by profane oath and ancient spell, scraps of powerful Sith and shards of necromancers called forth from beyond the grave all shackled to one fractured portion of a power, of a being who commanded the veil itself: Inmortos. Yet the being was not Inmortos, not fully, the thousands of shattered souls filling the void of what lacked in substance for the fractured god-king. And when he spoke, no mouth moved or words formed to part through parched lips, instead the stereophonic voices of untold

suffering blended together as one and carried on the frigid still air.

”Your sacrifice has been found acceptable and your reward shall not be wanting. And yet,”

the mummy inclined it’s head as if listening to something in the world above,

”I sense I am needed elsewhere.”

The battle between @Karys Narat iv-Adas and @Solus carried on the backs of the spirits that roved the storm-bound forsaken world. It called to the beast of a being that was as much a part of Aaris III as it was Inmortos himself. The mummy’s eyes swept back to Dictum.

”Ascend my ziggurat. Within my throne room, setting at the foot of the dias, you shall find your reward.”

Far above in the ripping icy winds and cascading storms, the spirits that served the god-king manifested a single translucent gemstone, jagged and frigid in beauty. All Dictum need do was survive the storms and spirits, resist the temptations to touch the beckoning cold lusts of Inmortos’ throne and the jewel would be his.

And in a flourish of dust, the mummified remains, the souls entrapped within vanished, traversing the lines of the veil to escape the doorless room.

Moments later, the mummies man materialized in the blowing dust and ash of the plains that contained the battlefield of the Sith Warrior and his Apprentice. His lidless eyes took in the carnage from afar, the waves of the force washing over him, through him as the thousands of spirits took it in, felt it, tasted it, digested it.

And just as Akheron removed Solus’ scomped arm from his body, a great wave of the dark side itself swept the field sending shrapnel and debris, dust, ash, and anything not bolted down (which was everything) flying. Even the mummified beast of Inmortos was thrown a great distance; landing in a heap of dust and shrouds.

___________________________________
 

OOC: Dueling/Promotional Ruling as per the request of @Karys Narat iv-Adas and @Solus

I am not a mod, but I consulted with the Dark Lord @Pheristroch, who is a mod.

Here is what I discerned as issues:

-Akheron basically took zero damage and trounced all over Solus’ attacks. The one illusion he fell for had no negative impact on him in the overall scheme of the duel

-Solus’ final position is terrible for any win scenario

-Akheron did not seem to respect his opponent’s attacks, regardless of rank differential

-Akheron sort of kind of god-modded in that he called the comparisons of speeds between he and Solus and defined his opponent’s ability and made himself better

-Solus took barely any damage, especially against a warrior of master rank

A couple other notes:
-Solus is not an assassin, yet. He is training toward that goal, but does he have the right to the full assassin skill tree as an apprentice? I do not think so

-Saying one uses an ability and then not going into full detail of it is lazy roleplaying, reference it sure, but dive into it, describe it so the mods do not have to go scouring just to understand what the attack is

-There is a major power disparity between master and apprentice

-Akheron is wielding armor and weapons he is unfamiliar with, as a warrior this is a minor issue at best, but still, something that probably should have had some effect on the fight itself

Positives:
-Solus’ abilities as a Sith prove him worthy of advancing to the rank of lord; however, he seems more chained to his notions of cult worship than he was before

-Akheron’s warrior powers were on full display and he really was in his element

As to the ruling:

-This is a Kaggath. Both parties adhered to it’s precepts

-This duel’s purpose is to determine if Solus is prepared to be advanced to the rank of Sith Lord

-Victory is overall irrelevant to the ruling on promotion

Therefore, given all of this, I rule that this duel is a DRAW. As it stands, Solus is outranked and has no hope of victory; however, he acted valiantly in the duel. Akheron’s two levels of rank carried him far; the errors in rules; however, prevent me from being able to award the victory. 
 

I will note, I do not think any of this was intentional on either side and I applaude the story-telling and cooperation you both put into this duel. You both worked toward the greater story goal as you posted. The power of the dark side was on full

display. Well done!

The decision of promotion now rests with @Karys Narat iv-Adas as Solus’ master. If you choose to promote him, Akheron has the next post. If you opt that he has not succeeded in his trials, the next post will go to Solus.

Well done both of you. As to how you resolve the Kaggath at this point, that is an IC choice that is up to you and as per our agreements, I have brought Inmortos to the barren plains in regard to this.

—————————————————

The dark side swirled, present and growing in the storm as a force maelstrom began to form, unchecked and unharnessed. It would soon destroy anything that remained in this lifeless plain.

Far above, the storm continued to engulf the bulk of the world, both the citadel/academy and the barren wastes of duned snow and crumbled mountains. Thunder and lightning arced and rang across the world interrupting the droves of windswept snow and ice. None kf that mattered however; not here, this far below. Here the chill came from something else. The stillness seemed to creep to the bone.

The library, stores of dark tomes, forbidden sorceries, cursed objects and more seemed to stretch out endlessly deep beneath the surface of the planet. Ancient catacombs and frost-formed passageways that morphed and shifted beneath Sith sorceries and ancient mysteries teetered on the edge of reality as they twisted beyond the veil of death and back. Contained within the magics of the vast storehouse of forbidden knowledges and cursebound ancients, the vault of Inmortos remained, untouched and yet, trespassed. It was here that the assassin Dictum had returned to try and broker a deal with the god-king of death himselt.

Spells older than the Sith itself, dark curses from beyond the edges of the galaxy, and malevolent wraiths bound in their pots and lanterns shifted in the still air atop the robe draped mummified remains of an unknown body. Dark icy auras, the call of death itself, seemed to emanate from the corpse.

As the assassin affixed the bloodstained saber hilt of Inmortos, the spirits shackled within were torn from the great beyond and cast into the tomb. With hissing screams they erupted with the red blade as the saber seemed to spring to life.

From the shadowy recesses of the unadorned burial chamber, the lurching servant of Inmortos seemed to materialize, a grizzled being of whose very life had been claimed and shackled; bound not in life, but in death to serve its god. The once high priest of Aaris III bound to a dead form no longer his own, an eternal caretaker. The dead form’s voice was barely a whisper as he laughed at the assassin’s words. ”You are mistaken.” he hissed as an outstretched finger pointed beyond the Sith Lord’s shoulder. 
 

There looming larger than life itself, as if to engulf the entire room, was the growing ghostly visage of Inmortos. His grotesque form barely visible beneath the ethereal blue of his cloak offset to a sickly black shadow in the glow of the humming spirit saber.

”Lord Dictum.” 
 

he spoke, his voice pained. 
 

“my soul is bound to this place and yet stretched across the cosmos. I am bound to the world beyond by oaths beyond mortal understanding and yet bound to this place. My work is not yet complete. Your service shall see its just reward.”

he spoke of the Baptism of Blood that had drawn Akheron back from the tortured hellscape he had been cast unto. He alluded to the ancient spells that ensnared him as he had passed unto death and imprisoned him to this reality. Stretching out a rotted ghostly hand, the wraith moved as if to plunge it into the man’s chest, icy crystals materializing where ethereal and mortal met. A gentler soul might have taken its time, expertly carving a portion of what was desired; but not Inmortos. The existential pain that racked his body quivered even as his bony fingers clasped the very soul of @Lord Ōk Rägnär and raked across the surface before finding a spiritual crevice within his chest. The gnarled pointed digits of the necromancer, shackled to this world by magics that superseded death itself, pierced the man’s soul and with a heave that shuddered the entire burial chamber and beyond tore forth a shattered, ichor-bleeding portion of Dictum’s eternal soul. 
 

The visage of Inmortos seemed to flicker for a moment as pain unexplainable washed over the room causing spirit, shade, and shambler to cry out in pain. A mighty wave of unnatural necromancic energy toppled the undead servant who had been present in the room as it rocked the bedrock that contained the burial chamber itself. The former priest fell to the ground, his form crumbling to dust as it plumed into the air, a fog of death itself. The spirits of Inmortos’ saber shrieked before vanishing with the spirit that remained of Inmortos. The blade itself sputtered before it fell silent, the bloody coating drained from it’s now shimmering black hilt, the power of the souls and crystals that powered it depleted, drawn forth by the unseen spells that even now continued to wind their wills, bound to a path set forth by eternity past and future.

And then, just as suddenly as the room had eruoted, it fell deathly silent. The tormented vortex of darkness replaced by a heavy frigid stillness that threatened to suffocate the minds and hearts of any ensnared within. As Dictum dealt with the physical and spiritual consequences of his soul being rend in two by the necromancer’s undead power and ancient spells, a shrouded hand clasped the edge of the stone sarcophogus, the deep echo of such a simple movement echoing through the very force itself as something was given unholy unnatural rebirth. Ever so slowly, the mummified creature within began to rise.

The storm itself seemed to recoil for the moment, the winds dying as heavy snow continued to fall all about the challengers. Thunder rang in the distance as if to shake the citadel itself and atop  the towering barrqcks Akheron had just exited the massive beast of Aaris materialized, clinging effortlesslesly to the crenelations   As it watched the proceedings below play out; seemingly held at bay as its hunger filled the air with the snow.

The hilt at Akheron’s side rattled and buzzed against the Sith steel armor he wore and in the stillness a flg of spirits descended from the storm, the sky, seemingly from the very planet itself. They hissed and screamed in agony, telltale signs of their eternal torture in the world beyond even as they sought refuge, shadows in this world, but servants to a god-king that transcended both who yet was bound by the shackles of inevitable truth. Yea, even a Sith sorcerer powerful enough to command life and death with a sweep of his hands, one day would owe the tax of the ferryman. From the cloud of swirling wailing spirits emerged a blackened haze, a wraith that brought bore before it and with it an otherworldly chill that touched all before it, sapping power and strength from bone and steel alike. Amalgamous in form the mighty wraith approached the Sith, master and apprentice. Slowly it began to take form. The heavy cloak of the necromancer was gone as was his skeletal form; what remained was a testament to the ravages of the dark side, to walking the precipice between two worlds and refusing to be contained by either. A humanoid form devoid of color and life, his body shriveled and twisted, muscled flayed out and long flowing hair, once colored as the rainbow muted to  blacks and grays matted down the figure’s back and face. Pain and suffering from a thousand lifetimes were rolled out like a scroll on the visage of the body that approached. Ancient words etched in blood across every surface of exposed flesh that told of the sins committed by its bearer in life. A tattered robe of sackcloth was all the visage was afforded for decency and even that had been rent and torn asunder, flayed by invisible whips and hellfire.

The being approached, walking atop the deepening snow and leaving no trace of it’s pacing. It cold pained eyes glistened with unseen power as the shackles

of death, of the oath and ritual that had, for the time, bound Inmortos, materialized as he stretched out in an effort to strike both Solus and his master.

Through the agony of his soul, tortured beyond recognition, the spirit of the god king of death himself was defiant. For as pained and crippled might he appear, his every movement was that of eternal

command, a shackled king, and yet a master of the eternal and damned.

Stopping to stand between the two challengers, the god king looked first at the mechanized man of metal, then to the steel encased warrior.

”I see you have found my gift”

he spoke, his voice barely a whisper, yet it carried louder than the storm that raged all about them. It’s authority apparent as even the great beast above recoiled in tense hatred and animalistic fright, a shrill

hiss of defiance winding into the winds above. The very pain and tortured undying of a soul betrayed on the breeze.

”The tears of the dead flow freely in this place and their eternal sufferings now clothe your body, drawing strength and life. Even now your life, saved by my oath, serves my will and shalt free me from the shackles of eternity.”

He spoke explaining the curse and blessing bestowed upon the trailings of predestination before he continued, his gaze burning with an ethereal chill as he stared beyond the carapace of Akheron into his very soul. Slowly he turned his head from master to apprentice, the same burning frostfire weighing the Shard against the malevolence of eternity.

”And this right, this Kaggath, I have heard it proclaimed. By the rite of the Sith, I shall see it enforced in this life and eternity; for to break it is to resist the final shackles that lie unbroken by any Sith who has come before and to offer your body and soul up for eternal punishment beyond my hand.”

As he stared, his eyes boring into Solus with a sickening hatred, he continued.

”And of this, your soul shall be damned to a world In which your tricks, your spider, hold no sway. You shall be cast into a lake of eternal fire and yet frozen beyond all understandings of pain. Every second shall be like an eon as you endure new and unheard of tortures at my hand; for you are too weak for this world, a mere stone unable to function without the crutch of a slave, driven by fear of an unseen master’s lash you have yet not felt. And why should you not? For you defy a god who by his very nature has allowed your heresies to build, a god by whom you cannot seek to understand lest beat. You defy your master. You prostrate yourself before a beast of madness. That very madness you will transcend in this defeat, as the legs are plucked from your spider one by one. You defy me, one who would give you eternity; one who has overcome the very god you seek to defy.”

A cold shackled hand passed across both acolytes of darkness as Inmortos stepped forward to stand directly  between the two. He outstretched gnared and teisted hands to place a palm against the metallic chest of each. Searing cold seemed to arc forth as frosty blackened handprints appeared on both.
 

“By this you are bound.”

he hissed as his body faded from sight, first his shackles and then his form, leaving not but his words, mark and bitter fold a testament to his presence. And as he vanished and the winds of the storm rushed in to throw cutting ice and ravage once more, his words whispered to the apprentice, 

“You are but a slave to the madness, a master known not to you but upon the surface; shackled so that you might never become what you are destined. You are already defeated and can blame no one but yourself. You could have been mine and in the end, it is inevitable. You shall.”

And as the spiritual entourage screamed off into the storm, the spirit of Inmortos departed. Drug back to the hellish eternity or to lurk atop his throne remained to be seen, but he had appeared and bound the Kaggath within the law of the Sith and within the confines of eternity. Above, the mighty beast of Aaris stirred, no longer repulsed. It could sense the mark of death upon both and before the day was out would seek to devour each. Slowly, hanging by a thread of neuranium, it’s eight massive legs clacking against the wall, mandibles tasting the storm-swept air , the beast began to descend. To tarry he for but a word would invite another challenge, the challenge of life and death outside the bound of Sith rite and law, a sure defeat before the games could even begin.

As the heart of the storm crashed overhead, so too did the beast-king of Aaris III. It’s razor-tipped legs that moved with grotesque grace were lithe and light but brought forth a needled hammer as they exploded soulfrost, ancient duracrete, and immortal ice with each rapid strike of blinding ferocity and hunger. Egged on by the dark side, a simple mind deranged by the touch of eternal damnation and brimming with vengeful hunger, the beast struck again and again paying no heed to the striking blades of the assassin as they clanked fruitlessly against it’s armored appendages. The blades carved furrows in the blackened carapace of the beast’s armored limbs and the poison hissed as it met mortality and was repulsed; it’s bite being consumed by both storm and the dark primordial poisons that flowed through it’s veins. The first of many appetizers had presented itself and the predator would have given chase had it not been for what happened next.

An explosion of the force erupted to draw the fell beast’s attention as a creature of metal and stone turned to flee in pursuit of  another tasty morsel. Its mind warped by the darkness, such a monster knew the call, could taste the fruits of victory as it began to salivate, giant globules of steaming acidic venom slathering from its mandibles onto the frozen ground below. With such dexterity and agility its kind were known for, the beast could not hope to catch the source of darkly erupting power, @Solus, but it mattered not; for to hunt, its kind had other methods. Augmented by the veil and the vengefulness of the dark side itself, it moved.

The storm crashed. Peels of thunder filled the air. Wind and frozen pellets of ice tore through the air seeking purchase on flesh, earth, and whatever may foolishly stand before it unguarded. Turning, the fury of the storm enveloped the beast its crimson eyes to glow, all that could be seen before the eight blood-red rubies vanished into the thundersnow. 
 

Traversing along the razored edge of the veil, the beast ceased to exist within the mortal realm; transiting between death and damnation and the living. Time and space meant nothing, able to live between the worlds that had birthed it. The beast

moved, unshackled by the laws of nature existing within the nothingness until it sensed it, the surge of force power as it highlighted the blinding rush of mechanized daemon. Bending its abdomen, the beast spat forth tethers of eternity-corrupted nature, sticky strands wrought as pliable frozen neuranium. They leapt from the frozen air of the storm, materializing with the beast in an expansive entangling web toward the Sith apprentice before he might strike at the the ill-armored prey of the beast.

With a guttural hiss that sent sprays of venom flying in the wind, the beast turned to see his red-fleshed quarry dart down a hallway into the citadel of Inmortos. The beast’s daggered appendages scraped and clawed at the entrance to the hallway as @Karys Narat iv-Adas made his way deeper toward the unlatched door of Inmortos’ storehouse of hand-crafted experiments and creations.

Realizing the futility of such efforts, the beast seemed to dissolve into the storm itself transcending between the mortal and immortal planes waiting for the opportune moment to strike.

The frozen world of Aaris III was swept by biting winds. Torrential storms of lightning and ice ravaged across the globe, slamming into the sprawling academic citadel of the necromancer, a school for the gifted and forgotten of the galaxy; and yet it stood a skeletal testament of ice to the final embrace of death, empty, save for the few parasites that crawled about it’s skeletal frame. And on the razored edge of the winds, the essence of the world, rent by the force an unnatural tear, carried the invisible minions of Krath Inmortos cast into the tear even as their brethren poured forth from the purple cloud ravaged skies.

Their eyes, their eyes were many, invisible and all-seeing as they descended like a fog over the city swirled by the vortex of winds and ice. Their voices whispered, lost by the winds as they carried beyond the veil, across the cosmos to their dark master. In the stillness of an alcove, seemingly untouched by the winds where drifts of icy powdered soulfrost gathered, a shadowy formless essence formed above the snow. It gestured out and drew the apprentice, @Bernon Mrrgwharr, inward. 
 

“MY servant,” 

the voice hissed, more snakelike and otherworldly than ever was the voice of the god-king as his whisper carried forth on both this life and the next.

”Take the Master of blades and rage to the armory. Deep within the city. Carry none but your shrouded blade before you and the spirits will part. Deviate from the path and thy blade will not stay them again.”

The ghostly visage began to twist and morph as an icy breeze seemed to billow down from above. The powdered snow of soulfrost pluming up and mingling with the blackened soul’s shadow. Rapidly it began to fade and just before the gloom of the Master Sorcerer vanished entirely, a final whisper flowed out.

”Heed the teachings of Akheron and learn how he can be struck down.”

——————————————————

Elsewhere on the world, the winds drove a singular servant, one bound to the devastation of Aaris III and uncontrolled even by Inmortos, held at bay from the citadel by transfiguring spiritual power. It was power that twisted flesh as the souls of man and beast alike were rendered mutant and grotesque. It was not Sith alchemy, but the madness of death itself as it played across a simple mind until it was destroyed. Uncontrollable by lash or will, manipulations of the dark side or healing light.

It’s massive form was shadowed by the storm, a storm that was bound to it’s heart by the torn veil itself. It was a storm that made the beast all but invisible to the

eye, both inner and mortal. The deathly hiss of it’s breath carried with the wind, betraying a hunger as it’s pointed armored legs carried it easily over walls and stories structures. With the casting of the god-king into the beyond, the shroud of protection offered by Inmortos’ necromantic power faded enough to allow it entry. It hunted now, searching for that which it had been denied for what could inly be described as eternity, it’s soul transcending time as it was condemned to the mortal plane.

And then it happened upon them, the Sith gathered above the world, @Solus, @Karys Narat iv-Adas, @Lord Ōk Rägnär. With the rush of plumed breath in a venomous hiss of anger, the towering beast brought it’s eight legs crashing down, spraying razored eruptions of eternity-bound ice into the air. It’s massive fangs clacked in the air as it sought to hunt the dark signatures it could sense through it’s eight blood red multifaceted eyes that seemed to shine against it’s ashen body.

As the final spirit shattered into oblivion a cold stillness seemed to fill the room as icy ethereal fog rose up from the blood soaked coffin. It continued until, in moments, the room was awash in slick freezing mist that prevented any sigh further than inches past one’s nose. The force itself seemed to fog as well, lending an otherworldly cold chilled stillness to the silent room. The only thing that betrayed anything within the blinding darkness was a scrape across the stone floor followed by the soft gurgle of blood as something or someone was immersed within.

A cracking voice rasped through mist, it’s tone otherworldy and tired. 
 

“The God-King of Death demands that those bound to him in blood maintain this sacred tomb until such a time as he returns to claim his throne.”

For an instant, the fog seemed to lift, revealing a single frail shambling being with greasy gray hair hanging lose about it’s face, standing where Inmortos body had laid, but lay no more and then, in an instant, it was gone. The library materialized about the remaining Sith. It’s stillness even more overwhelming than the icy mists; but it too stood for but a moment, daring any fool to reach out for the forbidden knowledges contained inside. Any who did, would suffer the wrath of curses older and more sinister than the Sith Order itself.

“Grow in the force and become a force of death and when the eternal Inmortos returns, the wrath of the Clan will be felt the galaxy over.“

the voice cried out.

And in a flash, the accursed library and forbidden tomes were whisked away as if a great wind tore it from the pages of reality itself to be replaced by a great winding stone staircase that ascended upward in the flickering torchlight and oily smoke up into the base of Inmortos’ ziggurat.

and then the voice of Inmortos carried across the wastelands of the world…

“Blood and ichor will flow again. Souls frozen for all time.”

Deep within the swirling chaos of the greet beyond, within the empty void kf tormented souls that had passed from life unto death, the spirit of Inmortos stirred. He had been cast there, his soul exchanged for that of @Karys Narat iv-Adas on the distant world of Aaris III. Once lush and vibrant, the world itself shone like a beacon of dark nothingness amongst the stars, eternally scarred by the machinations of the dark side. And even as the Sith warrior awoke there, so too did the spirit of Inmortos, stirred to action beyond the veil of death as one unknowingly sought communion with him once again. Torn from his restful stillness and jolted across the eternity of the greet beyond, the spirit of Inmortos was wrest back in shadow to the realm of the living, to the very world upon which he, the god-king of death had awoken the new dark lady of the Sith, @Darth Calypso. 
 

And as the goblet clattered to the floor of the shadowy shop in Coruscant’s underworld, a bazaar that offered anything for the right price, it landed, unnaturally so; standing as if set there by an ethereal hand reaching. from beyond the grave.

A great wind seemed to billow through the shop, blowing open doors and windows, sending ancient manuscripts fluttering in the air. Heavy tapestries and bannered fluttered in the surge before it passed; the shop returning to heavy stillness as suddenly as it had been disrupted. On that wind, the spirit of the necromancer surged between worlds and in a flash, he appeared; a skeletal form with rotted hanging flesh cloaked in shadow and heavy blackened robes, within the mind’s eye of a stranger, @PBdub , as he stared into his eyes from within, an otherworldly chill emanating forth from the master of death. He reached out, as if to touch the young human’s pale

flesh; to drag a cracked and hagged nail across his hand. He spoke, his voice barely a whisper, although it carried with it the weight of death and eternal damnation with every syllable. 
 

“Our paths are now bound. Our souls entwined.”

At Elliot’s feet the goblet began to fill. Steaming hot sickly blood pooling up from within, a font of unknown origins. As it filled the image of Inmortos grew fainter.

”Return the chalice to my throne before the hounds of hell are unleashed to fetch me.”

and with that, the cup seemed to fill to the brim and stop, the steam dissipating into the air as the blood within seemed to freeze over; binding itself to the jeweled chalice.

And as the vision of Inmortos faded, a ghostly sight was offered before it too vanished; a vision of a sprawling icy palace, a university of the damned and the sole being that stalked it, the clanking metals of @Solus as he searched for the crypt of Inmortos, the stone sarcophagus of bubbling blood, surrounded by Akheron, @Lord Ōk Rägnär, and Inmortos’ warrior apprentice @Bernon Mrrgwharr deep underground as they were plagued by the spirits of the damned.

As the Shard’s demented craft broke real space high above Aaris III, it was met by nothing but an otherworldly stilliness. It was a stillness that seemed to carry an ethereal chill on an unseen wind that touched the soul. Below, the storm-ravaged barren world of dust and ash lay dormant and lifeless. Scans of such a planet told the same tale; there was naught but one lifeform, a single blip that sporadically seemed to appear and vanish across the surface of the world.

For those that knew, the densely packed and slowly sprawling citadel of rising icicled towers and barracks stood; a deathly still tribute to a world that no longer was. The Aaris Academy for Gifted Beings; but, it too stood desolate and silent, sapped in subtle auras of darkness and death, of ice and shadow.

Deep below the surface, within the frozen mantle of the world, a doorless, windowless funeral crypt stood undetectable from above or below. All that stood out in the room aside from the trio of darkness and death shrouded Sith was a single stone sarcophagus brimmed with boiling steaming blood; blood called forth from beyond the grave; blood bound across eternity by profane oaths and curses that aged beyond the dawn of the Sith to the origins of darkness in the mortal realm.

The ravaged chanting of Inmortos was all that broke the stillness as he plunged his apprentice and fellow Sith’s spirits and consciousnesses past the veil into a realm of eternal destruction, despair, and damnation. From above, the necromancer watched through his third eye as his apprentice goaded the spirit of the fallen Akheron from it’s tormented hiding amongst the legions of the tormented dead, taunting it even now with his weakness until he broke free intent on the savage vengeance Inmortos knew the Sith warrior to be capable of. And chase he did driving Bernon before him intent on the slaughter until he was caught up in the darkness imbued honeyed words of hell that flowed from the lips of the assassin. Only then did the profane magics of necromancy stir, clasping the crushed and decimated body of Akheron, destroyed beneath the very world he had sought to rule. With a greet cry, Inmortos’ wrenched his body backwards, a demon-tormented fisherman drawing an invisible line as he wrestled to land a prized catch, condemning it to an unnatural existence within his domain of choking fumes and blinding pain.

Tumbling to the floor, Inmortos released the hands of his comrades, thrashing and convulsing as the bridge between eternity and momentary, eternal and mortal was connected. In that moment, a great thunder rolled across the entirety of Aaris III, visible even from orbit. The gap betwixt life and death bridged and the tormented soul and form of Akheron were drawn back into the world of the living; an unnatural crossing against the flood of souls trafficked from life to death upon the River Styx.

The blood within the coffin boiled, spilling over to soak the ground around it abd sloshing violently to coat @Bernon Mrrgwharr and @Lord Ōk Rägnär in scalding crimson life and death. The curse-bound blood sought to draw the life from them both and draw their souls into the eternal void. And as this happened the crumpled form of @Karys Narat iv-Adas materializing within the blood, the cursed bodily fluids filling his lungs and orifices with burning unnaturally stolen life; the lives of thousands stolen within the Baptism of Blood.

And even as Inmortos grew still and silent, the powers of darkness having taken their toll, the bridge broke. Snapping into infinite shards of darkness that radiated from the world in pulses of unnatural green evil before vanishing, the bond between mortal and eternal was destroyed, swarms of angry spirits filling the room as they sought to exact revenge on those who had so callously violated the natural order; tearing flesh and rendering bodies they sought to simultaneously possess and consume all within the room, any exposure not covered in the blood of the ritual or the aura of the god-king of death himself.

An unnatural scream filled the room, but it came not from the necromancer or from the hissing spirits. No; it came from the tormented and crushed form within the sarcophagus, from Akheron himself as he expelled the blood from his lungs and all the pains of death that had been laid upon him on Falleen were brought fresh upon his devastated body. He had life, stolen as it was; but the torments and healing of the wounds inflicted by the Jedi would remain alongside the mental agonies of having tasted of death and being wrestled from it, a testament to his damnation in both this world and the next.

The whole of the library shook, tomes and sacred texts tumbling freely as the temperature seemed to plummet. Suddenly the long shadows and eerie blue flames of the library were extinguished in frigid shadow; nothingness that seemed to erode the physical world about them all until they tumbled into what felt like frozen eternal infinite.

And then as fast as they fell, they would

impact the cold smooth stone of a nearly unadorned room; the smooth windowless and doorless icy walls of Inmortos’ crypt. All that interrupted the empty box of a room was a simple stone sarcophagus jetting up from the center of the room, all carved from one single stone. The room still shook, the after effects of their transit. With a crash that fractured the silence, the stone lid of the coffin tumbled to the floor in a flash of night. Suddenly, standing at the head of the box was Inmortos clad in his dark flowing robes. He reached out with his skeletal hands to become both @Bernon Mrrgwharr and @Lord Ōk Rägnär from the floor forward to the coffin’s stone edge. 
 

“Well done,” He wheezed as his freezing gaze beheld his apprentice’s newfound form. “You have taken the first steps beyond the mortal chains which bind you. Survive and one day you shall break them entirely. Break the bounds of the mortal hold about your spirit. Then you will become the scourge of the dark side, capable of taking any and all that you desire, of carving reality to your will. To begin these steps, become one of the Bladeborn and with your frozen blade slay ten lightsaber wielding foes.”

Looking to Dictum, a twisted smile crossed the rotted falling flesh that remained on Inmortos’ face. “For your name has been scribed upon the final page of the tome. Even now, I can taste your soul in the cosmos, condemned to the finality that binds you. You have joined a pact with eternal damnation. You are it’s avatar upon this plane until

it calls you home.”

As he spoke, blood began to fill the coffin, materializing as if from the very air, the levels growing until it was filled to the brim with steaming crimson liquid.  Leaning against the edge of the sarcophagus, Inmortos beheld the liquid that filled his final resting place. A single ripple disturbed the surface, a droplet of blood escaping as it passed over Inmortos’ finger. “Our brother, Akheron, has had his soul cast into the void; fallen in battle as a warrior ought to go.” @Karys Narat iv-Adas Looking up, Inmortos’ eyes flashed. “He is bound in the Baptism of Blood and I have not yet concluded the business for which his soul has been cleansed in death.”

“Give me your hands,” Inmortos commanded, extending a skeletal hand draped in rotted flesh to both his apprentice and Dictum. “Plunge yourselves into eternity,” he opened his mind to the others. “Reach out to Akheron’s soul, his body ensnared worlds away. Remind him of his failure Bernon, for you now stand where he has fallen; a warrior worthy of the gift of Inmortos. Stoke his spirit until it seeks to destroy you and then, flee. Return to me, lest the Sith’s spirit destroy you and possess your physical form.”

Inclining his head toward Dictum, Inmortos hissed, “Should he succeed, draw the body of Akheron’s fallen form into this place. For in the shadows, that which are not can be and those which do not exist are given form.”

Throwing back his head, Inmortos began to scream, to chant cold ancient indecipherable magics from beyond history. The room plunged into shadow as the steaming blood began to boil and churn, steam filling the air and turning into ice as specters and wraiths pierced thr veil and began to scream, their jnvisible claws tearing at the flesh of the sorcerer, assassin, and warrior.

((Good job you both! Now for the next step, resurrecting our fallen comrade, @Karys Narat iv-Adas who fell on Falleen. Once your portions of the ritual are complete, we will return Akheron to life in out location. Welcome to Necromancy!))

The eternal vortex of the void swirled as it was touched by the minds of mete mortals. Dark tendrils of ghostly smoke seemed to waft from beneath the door as it creaked and rattled gently in it’s frame. Mortality and eternity clashed together as the veil swayed in an unseen icy breeze that seemed to sweep across the room.

Nothing. The door remained sealed and the temperature of the room began to drop, thin layers of icy mist beginning to materialize in the air and coat everyone and everything contained within.

To fail again would be to freeze, their souls encased in ice until they could be harvested.

The storm far overheard thundered and cracked with electricity as the aura of the world cracked with the sudden surge of dark side energy emanating from deep below the surface. A grisly purple hue spread over the citadel as the thin veil of death blew open and unleashed specters of a thousand wars of a thousand years upon the empty streets. The invisible guardians given pale form and limited substance as the Maze below channeled the newfound power of the Inmortos’ apprentice and the Lost Sith into the dizzying power conduit of soulfrost.

Structures of fearsome authority began to erupt from the world as the darkside power drew from the souls unleashed and the formation of Inmortos’ Sith academy began to take form. One by one the hellspawn reborn souls were ground by the storm into dust, their eternal form contained within the deep blue hues of eternal soul ice that formed dormitories, classrooms, towers and crenellations.

And deep below the world, Inmortos laughed as he felt the darkness seek to tug his own soul into the void of his creation. The dark side demanded sacrifice. It was the way of power and when it could no longer draw upon the physical it sought to leech the eternal.

Within the Maze, nothing changed. The world remained cold and dark, illuminated only by the faint blue light of the whisps. Yet again, both apprentice and lord had found themselves confronted by the inevitability of the dark side, of eternal damnation, death, and the realms beyond. Their power had been exponentially grown and exploited by the winding conduits of frozen souls that made up the Maze and it’s excess gave way to Inmortos’ master plan.

As death’s cold grasp encircled the souls of both ensnared Sith and sought to claim them, they had responded. His apprentice had lashed out, claiming his birthright as a son of the darkness. Clasping a cursed blade in his hand, he was baptized in the cold fury that transcended the raging fires of hate and as the Maze rematerialized about him a great steel door seemed to loom before him as tall and wide as the gates of the great forgotten cities of this world. Fitting his position, even as he came from years of stagnation, Dictum fought and yet gave himself over to the power that Inmortos knew, a power so forsaken by so many Sith. It was death itself, incarnate and omnipotent. And as Dictum gage himself over to his despair and claimed control over the eternal

void of destruction, a single invisible door within the forsaken lab came into existence. Beyond it was a unremarkable room within which the transfigured Bernon stood accursed blade in hand, beyond him stood the great weighted doors that led from the Maze and into the frozen hallowed halls of Inmortos’ library of the ages. All that remained to enter was this final test, the great guardian doors, bound not by lock or key, but frozen shut by the grasp of eternity itself. To enter in the lord and apprentice would be forced to pool their newfound power, a strength of will equal to that of the undead keeper of the crypt that lay beyond.

The eternal tunnel yawed to the left as @Bernon Mrrgwharr’s mind scraped against the edges of sanity, as his mentality nearly forced his body almost to the point of death. He was mere moments from dying, from lashing out on his own emotion to touch the dark side when he clawed himself back into the physical world, the strength of a warrior. Had Inmortos been watching, he would have smiled. In the end, he would know; but for now, the overwhelming sense of loneliness told the necromancer’s apprentice he was alone.  
 

So as Bernon rounded the bend, the walls, the ceiling, even the floor faded from existence, faded into absolute and total nothingness and Bernon was left tumbling. Here there was no light, no heat, no cold, not even darkness. There was nothing to grasp, nothing to feel; in fact the mortal senses would scream out in pain as they were inundated with absolute nothingness, the void between life and death, the veil that fluttered. Here time would cease to exist, a thousand years would pass in a second and a minute would carry on for a millennia. To exist here was unnatural, even more so than passing into the realm beyond. To exist here was to condemn one’s own soul to eternal loss, lost to the void. 
 

Here, Bernon would be forced to confront his own inner demons, to have his own mind claw at the edges of his reality until he was driven to madness. Then and only then, when he was driven beyond the brink would he have no choice but to lash out with his deepest and darkest raw emotions; to grasp the force and drag himself free from the void, to the damned world of the living on Aaris III or beyond the veil into the eternal embrace of death itself.

((Great posts. Explore the inner workings

of your character. Allow him to be forced beyond any physical limit that he might be saved from. Force Bernon to lash out, to grasp the force and use it in a raw and wild grasp at survival. To become a true Sith one has to realize the power of the force, how much greater it is than he and the power that it presents to one who can control it. This gives you a chance to delve deep into Bernon, his inner workings or his backstory and then get wild and weird with the force. Don’t forget, the dark side always has a price to pay.

When you succeed, find yourself back in the maze. The dark side will guide you to the library.))

The spirit of Inmortos swirled through the stormy air, carried upon the winds of the never ending maelstrom as he descended toward the dead world below. Without a physical body, Inmortos passed through the frozen soil. He descended deep into the dead world traveling along untapped veins of soul frost that leeched outward from his ever expanding necropolis of silent solitude. If this was to become the academy for wayward youths that already had applicants, frozen dormitories and classrooms would need crafted. These piercing veins were the first signs of that creation. As long as Inmortos sat upon his throne the creation would continue led by his own hand and strength of will. He did not worry about the Sith lord and apprentice below in the maze; for if they survived, they would be forced to contend with his sacred library and it’s keeper.

____________________________________
 

As @Lord Ōk Rägnär stepped into the laboratory, he was inundated not with the hissing whispers of spirits or the overwhelming power of the dead world and the narrow veil between life and death. Instead he was greeted by a silent stillness only interrupted by the soft bubbling of of the boiling beakers, cauldrons, and vats of different colored chemicals, concoctions and potions. The laboratory of Inmortos was covered in a heavy layer of dust and yet it seemed as if it’s keeper had just stepped out. Acrid spirals of steam and smoke curled into the vaulted ceiling of the lab; it’s ice covered stone block build and lack of venting this deep underground allowed shifting hues of blues and browns and green to collect and pool above. 
 

As soon as Dictum entered, the door behind him vanished, sealed in stone and soul frost, cut off from the world around by Sith magic and miles of the soil and stone of Aaris III. Stone benches and tables were covered in ancient pre-Sith formulas and manuscripts in a variety of languages. Against the far wall lay the mummified form of a dried out long dead being, hulking in nature and covered in degraded fur. It could have been a wookiee, a whiphid, a yuzzem or some other beast of a being, it’s body split open and dried from the arid cold air. With the arrival of the Sith Lord, the lab seemed to purr back to life, roiling and bubbling as the thick steam filled the air. It was only a matter of time until the toxic gases began to play at Dictum’s body and mind. Then and only then would he finally be confronted by the single disembodied voice of the lab’s sole resident. It would speak but once when Dictum sought an escape.

”Your escape is Death’s door, become that  which you fear and touch the heart of they that can speak to them you once loved.”

((Dictum, we spoke in DM. Here is a chance to explore your hallucinations with a bit of chemical guidance and spiritual stimulation. Happy to chat further about opening the door or finding an assassin-y way around the entrapment. Once you are free, feel free to find yourself standing in the frozen cobweb strewn shadowy entrance of Inmortos’ library))

The massive doors yawned open with a frigid creak revealing four separate hallways beyond that stretched forward into the darkness. The distant dripping of soulfrost, wept from the eternally tormented souls bound within the walls of the crypt. To trod in such waters would invite eternal suffering. The frozen blackness seemed impassable as the air itself seems to claw at the warmth of their exposed flesh, creeping tendrils of death seeking to pluck the warm life forces from their hearts. And yet, as the doors thudded open, their echo carrying into the eternal night below Inmortos’ tower, a pair of wisps seemed to materialize from the air. Cold, blue, and eternal spirits of savage servants from beyond the realms of the Sith come to guide the travelers to safety or, perhaps, certain doom. Their hunger and hatred was palpable. Regardless, their cool electric glow was all the light that dimly pierced the blackness; all that awaited was the choice made by the mortals who stood at the maw of what would very well eventually become the necropolis of the god-king himself.

The force itself seemed almost frozen here, attempts to pierce the veil and divine what was to come seemed impossible. To try would invite assault from unseen assailants, tearing mortal flesh to shreds.

The hallway to the left yawned off into the darkness before descending sharply downward along a slick path with few handholds. At the bottom of the unclimbable slope was a shallow pool

of collected soulfrost drippings, unnaturally cold and able to freeze flesh solid in an instant, it was the same material infused into the limnal blade Inmortos had gifted to @Bernon Mrrgwharr. To touch it was to have the energy sucked from your body instantly, lethally if one did not rely on the stagnant force itself to sustain them, to draw what little life could be leeched from the rock of this dead world.

The lefthand center passageway continued straight, unmolested

for what felt like eternity; for, in fact, it was. To turn around would result in an eternal path back, never to find the entrance. Wandering along the unblemished glass-like diamond ice, one would contend with their pale reflections, twisted and contorted by the dark side, prophesies of futures yet to come, of the eternal damnation that awaited the lost wanderer. Only when one succumbed to their madness would a bend in the path appear.

To the right, beyond where the light of the wisp touched, regal spiraling stairs led upwards into a collapsed passageway of jagged ice and soul-sucking frost. If one could traverse this ruse they would find themselves in a strange and frozen laboratory. Bubbling concoctions and potions lined the walls as the doors the wanderer entered through vanished, entrapping the trespasser in a windowless doorless room as the fumes from the potions begin to fill the room. Each one a mind altering concoction and poison that would effect the senses, sap life, and draw the ensnared deeper into their own subconscious, bringing the specters contained within to life, making them as real and deadly as any living thing, if not more so.

The final passageway, the middle right looked identical to the others, and yet it was littered with unforeseen traps, spikes that would erupt from all sides seeking to impale the wanderer, vats of soulfrost that would dump unseen from the ceilings, false T-intersections where the floor would drop out into eternal abysses that seemed to never end until the wanderer passed from the realm of the living into that of the dead where they would be separated from their bodies and their very souls set upon by demons clawing their way up from the abyss. Even as the air temperature continued to plummet, sucking the life from all who passed, freezing their muscles and  slowing their reactions the path would wind forth until eventually the trespasser succumbed to the traps, only then would they be forced to contend with the darkness, calling upon it for survival or be destroyed.

—————-

Far above, Inmortos sat upon his throne, motionless as his spirit escaped his body to wander his world. He had work to attend to and an apprentice to train. A necromancer’s work was never done.

(( @Bernon Mrrgwharr, pick a passageway and explore how it affects your character. Dive into the depths of what makes him tick. Allow yourself to be pushed to the brink and beyond. Let this post find you at the brink of failure or beyond; then next post allow yourself to grasp the force either by sheer will, accident, or whatever, and pull yourself clawing from the brink of destruction.

@Lord Ōk Rägnär you do your thing brother! Pick a passage and allow the darkness to guide you as you come to the edge of sanity and reason. Allow your fledgling assassin skills to begin to manifest

Pick DIFFERENT passages))

Inmortos watched with a disconnected nonchalance as bees of Falleen’s assault became known to the group. In truth, he had known of such treachery before the communique had arrived. His spiritual brethren inbound by the mortal chains of time and space had seen the launch of Imperial warships and felt the haughtiness of the Jedi as they made themselves known, spied hidden amongst the populace that Lord Akheron had professed such control over. As the transmission ended and eyes returned to the skeletal Lich King, Inmortos stalked to his throne. Spinning he sat in his still empty splendor, the emperor eternal of a world deprived of all the side of light proclaimed to protect; a mere facade for their own power and shame. Raising a single hand, Inmortos waived @Karys Narat iv-Adas and @Solus off.

”Go. Attend to the mortal needs of your world. If it grows to dire for you to handle alert me and I shall rend your holdings as splendid as my own.”

And with that, they were gone from his mind and his sight. He had no army at this time to offer and remembering the words of their new Sith Lord, @Darth Calypso, knew that to involve any more Sith in such a reckoning would be a disobedience and threat to the nature of the Sith itself.

Inmortos turned his lidless eyes toward @Lord Ōk Rägnär, an ancient Sith of mystery who had come to him for power, and his apprentice, @Bernon Mrrgwharr, a warrior of clay waiting to be shaped. Inmortos guestered about the throne room. 
 

“My world is yours.”

”But be warned. A dead world is even more treacherous for the living. It may serve your life better to plunge into the churning maw of Falleen alongside Akheron and his servant. There, you will at least die with honor.”

Inmortos slowly stood and approached Dictum and Bernon, “I sense more in each of you though, potential to touch the infinite.” 
 

Turning to Bernon, he smiled at his shivering form. “If you wish to become a true warrior of the Sith, you will need to surpass the strength of mind and body any military of THIS galaxy can offer you. To contend with the horrors and atrocities you must endure, you will need to bind yourself to the darkness and be warned, she does not give freely. Take this,” Inmortos held out a sinew draped hand and a rapier-like blade twirled and arced through the air, leaving a wake of crystalized icy air in it’s wake. “a limnal blade. Exercise caution my apprentice or you will find your place in my army sooner than you may have hoped.”

Walking onward, Inmortos hands did not touch the doors that exited into the dias, although they extend and a burst of wind crashed them open, allowing the storm’s bite to flow inward on a flurry of razored snow. “Little lives upon this world anymore, even the spirits are few. You shall not come to this tower uninvited again, lest you seek to challenge my lordship of this world. Deep beneath the foundations of stone and soul and ice lies a forbidden library. Within it lie countless tomes, relics of lost civilizations, accursed magics, and knowledge no mortal mind may grasp. The knowledge you seek is held within. To reach it you must trespass within the Maze of Insanity. There you will find your will tested by your deepest fears made living. You will be sapped of all your mortal strength and will. Give yourself over to your darkest desires, deny your mortal shackles, let the most primal instincts of your soul serve you; only then will you find the entrance. If you fail, your soul will become mine for eternity. Your test is not finished yet though. You must find the ancient texts laid out for you by the darkness. Touch naught but they; for any trespass into the forbidden may rend your mind beyond repair.”

The two Sith would need to descend the tower in the storm, wander the empty dark dripping halls of ice, find their ways to the depths of Inmortos’ fortress and then force their way into the hidden Maze of Insanity where only the most depraved spirits roamed and cursed and snares awaited any who dared trod within. If they remained together, the darkness would whisper to them until they turned upon one another, but separated they would be easier prey to the maddening of their own minds. 
 

((Lets make this a multi-post quest. 1st post: Finding the maze beneath the citadel and ziggurat. 2 or 3: Entering the maze and encountering the traps within. Feel free to delve into your characters’ own weaknesses as you are brought to the edge and pushed over, being forced to rely on the darkness (even untrained) to survive or be destroyed. 1 post finding the entrance to the library and then we’ll go from there. I will offer ambiance and response/GM as needed. Once inside the library, I have a few other surprises to test you both. There you’ll get some training in your given path.)) 

@Lord Ōk Rägnär‘s humility spoke to the spirit of Inmortos. The man acknowledged his place and yet asked for that beyond his station. It was the way of the Sith and such a bold request would be honored. Such a request would have a price. If it could be paid, the stores of knowledge that predated even the Sith and Jedi orders waited decyphering.

But before a response could be generated or carried across the unnaturally cold still air they were interrupted. A great crashing wind blasted through the darkness carrying a biting deathly chill. The doors that led to the balconies all burst inward as snow and ice billowed into the still unpierced gloom. Ringed in frozen white snow and ice, the fractured scorched body of the linworm shambled into the throne room.

With a thunderclap, the invisible spirit of the necromancer crashed into the billowing power of the storm and spirits that had carried the sacrifice to Inmortos’ throne. With a flash if icy lightning the entire room erupted in cold white light and then in an instant, the darkness was back, taking over as the visage of Inmortos atop his throne shattered into a million pieces.

In the darkness, the robe-draped skeletal frame of Inmortos rose, carried by an icy aura as the wraith given substance cracked and popped as the Lord of the Dead tested his new form, the tendons popping and cracking with each spiraled joint. Slowly he drifted across the room until the form settled atop his throne and the winds died down leaving nothing but the stillness, the darkness, the cold. A faint blue light began to glow on Inmortos’ naked skull; icy spears jutted through the smooth bone. His crown that bound him to the power of this world, to his throne, erupted confirming the blessing of Inmortos’ eternal spirit upon this latest host.

The wind roared and then died. The icy tendrils of death seemed to slowly crawl across every surface with ethereal frost, and the lidless eyes of the lich king surveyed those who stood before him. A frightful smile played across the skeletal lord’s face, “Welcome my brothers and servants.”

”My apprentice,” he beckoned to @Bernon Mrrgwharr  as he reached for the fractured saber hilt. “You have proven worthy in this. Let it be that you are worthy of greater things than this. A test then, remove your trappings of your prior life. You will not need them. Where you will go, the darkness will provide. Cast them into the vortex outside this sanctuary.”

Turning his gaze to @Karys Narat iv-Adas “My blood-bound brother,” he hissed, “May this sanctuary serve as a base of operations until your men are strong enough to claim another world for your own. Your men may reside within the frozen barracks below, but they may not trespass within this sanctuary or the inner chambers of my eternal crypt. Those that do so will be consumed.”

The stillness of the room seemed to mute the deference of his apprentice. Inmortos would have to admit, he was surprised the untrained had come this far and seemingly unscathed overall. It was a testament to the vast pools untapped of power that lay nestled in the man’s mind. That, or Akheron and company had done well to protect him until he was ready. And yet, he had brought the saber, even know held it towards the frozen form atop the throne as an offering. A cold invisible finger would seem to pass across his apprentice’s chin; chilling and dead, yet a fleeting gesture of approval, a rarity indeed and the promise of training soon to come upon this cursed world.

To Ōk, Inmortos felt his presence. It was young in the scheme of the eternal darkness, but it carried with it an age of experience, of a dynasty of darkness. It was almost, almost recognizable, as if the souls of those that preceded this recently rescued Sith Lord were familiar to Inmortos, faces without names, identities lost upon the fringes of one’s mind just out of reach. Regardless, Inmortos recognized the deference the worldy blind Sith paid in his silence, and it was to he that the disembodied voice directed his first query. “Welcome Forsaken Lord of the Sith. My spirit recognizes these others, but you . . . pray tell, why have you come to the halls of the forgotten and the damned?”

Inmortos undead gaze fell across Akheron, the muscle to Inmortos’ magics, his equal in the physical application of the force while Inmortos touch played with what lay beyond. They were joined together in accursed oaths and profane ritual. Baptisms of blood and fire, and the former had called his fellow pirate lord to this forsaken hold, the throne of Inmortos, and a enclave from which to return retribution to the galaxy, a home to begin to see that the Sith, the name of Inmortos was never forgotten. The Sith had spoken true, Inmortos’ oath fulfilled, the Necromancer loosed upon the galaxy until called upon to serve the order of the moment.

And finally, the undead gaze of Inmortos passed over the twisting envies of Solus as they were sucked into the void leaving naught but stillness and cold in their wake. At least he was not speaking, perhaps his master’s brutal ways were finally showing results. Yet his unchecked emotions betrayed him. He would never have this power and the cold press of nothingness promised just that. 
 

And if Akheron could not tame the gravel, Inmortos was still more than willing to temper him in the ice cold flames of death’s forge, a frozen crystalline conduit for Inmortos’ eternal power bound into a blade.

And as the stillness pressed in from all sides the frigid fog that separated this world from the next seemed to thin, the icy blue crowding along the edges of the room as the dejarik board of eternity seemed to shimmer in the darkness as if from a long ways off.

Somewhere far below, the body of the fallen linworm smoldered, fractured and broken against the frozen snow. Spirits of the dead swirled around it, accepting the offering of another soul unto the void.  Smoking and hissing the body lay there, dead; and yet, after several minutes, a hand began to twitch.

((Want to give @Lord Ōk Rägnär a chance to answer before bringing Inmortos back in my next post. Then we’ll get rolling!))

Seated atop his frigid throne, the icy cold grew to encompass the wraith that was Inmortos. Within he was but a pale blue shadow of his former, a ghost of a man, beautiful and ethereal. His outward appearance; however, was frozen in place fixed to his throne that sat deathly still as a font of raw eternal stillness. The power of absolute nothingness frozen for all eternity. 
 

The stillness was interrupted by only one thing. The ravages of the howling storm outside were silenced within the inky black darkness of his throne room. Even the light could not reach his throne. The last gasps of a dying world had faded completely, damned to a fate worse than death. The roar of the cosmos was lost beyond the foggy veil. Even the tendrilled reaching grasp of the force, of the dark side failed to carry the whispers of any of the worlds outside. And the damned, the dead, they knew better than to whisper here in this hallowed hall. No, the only interruption that carried on the billowing winds were the petty arguments of the nature of the dark side, of Sith philosophy. Inmortos had libraries of such drabble stowed within his frozen libraries below and from more learned sages than these, they that sought power beyond their grasp.

And so the spirit of Inmortos trembled and the storm outside followed suit. Clashes lf thunder and bolts of sizzling lighting erupted from the storm as blinding snow and cutting ice began to whip on the wind. Those that survived the ascent would be found worthy to step foot within his throne room. Spirits of the dead, foreign and chained to this world after the decimation of her native peoples flew through the storm, cackling and shrieking as they sought to torment the fateful Sith who climbed the external circling stairs that spiraled higher and higher about the ziggurat that held the throne of the god-king.

Before they could enter the diased balconies that circled the throne room, a bolt of lightning split the sky and struck the body of the fated linworm, the pilot, one of the chosen acolytes of the sky pirates whom @Karys Narat iv-Adas and he had commanded before their destruction over Nar Shaddaa, fell, toppling from the railless stair steps and plummeting into the storm below with a scream as his body ignited in flames. He would be dead before he hit the ground, if he did in fact hit the ground, obscured by the storm, far below.

And then the rest of the group made it, their condition and wear their own. Who knew how long the ascent had taken them, how many times they too had fallen into the storm only to land atop the drifting snow at it’s base. When they entered; however, the sounds of the storm died away completely as it ravaged outside. Within the throne room the inky blackness and deathly cold muted sounds and colors as their very breaths crystalized before them and the cold played at exposed bits of flesh and metal. And in the darkness sat the visage of Inmortos, frozen atop his throne, the world about him, in this room, radiating with all the power, all the overwhelming unnatural unbreakable stillness of his domain. It was here that time itself might freeze in place and here that the veil between life and death was gone, leaving only an icy bridge upon which to cross, a coat of frozen fog the only separation between the two, a veil to freeze the souls of any damned that sought to cross over uninvited and to suck the life of any living who dared cross without proper penance. 
 

and in the stillness a single voice seemed to radiate in the cold.

”Our lord Inmortos welcomes the living damned to that where even the dead fear to trod.”

Aaris III; a once lush jungle-covered world inhabited by primitive diminutive kobold-like lizard-men as they swelled within ancient cities build into the jungle. Now, it was all gone. The jungles burned to nothingness. The seas boiled until their cracked beds were bone dry. The cities reduced beyond rubble to ash and dust. Even the people, erased from the cycles of life and death entirely. This place did not smell like death, for in it’s destruction, it had transcended it. Aside from the one survivor dropped upon an Alliance world and the undead army bound to @Darth Calypso as a gift from

Inmortos, there was nothing left. It was if they had never existed. Even their souls shattered so that they too along with their bodies could never be raised again. The world was vast and empty. Desolate as storms ravaged across the world unchecked by natural or artificial

barrier. The climate cataclysmically altered in passing bands of searing heat and unbearable cold. Aaris III was a world destroyed, a testament to the power of the Sith, the Dark Side, of Lords @Karys Narat iv-Adas and Inmortos, and even to the touch of the Shard Sithling @Solus who someday would adorn the crowned brow of Inmortos and act as a conduit of his will.

Life was gone from this place and in it’s stead even death was naught to be found. Vast swathes of emptiness from horizon to horizon were all that remained.

The only thing that broke the landscape as it was lashed by eternal lightning-laden blizzards was a towering ziggurat of soul-bound ice, soulfrost morphed and twisted to hold the throne room of Inmortos high above his kingdom and within it’s dripping dark frigid interiors, atop a dias of skulls and ice sat a magnificent icy throne that seemed to warp and morph the room

So that it was at the center, the focus, and dwarfed all within it’s presence. Below, icy walkways and frozen barren gardens twisted outward from the base of the tower leading to a fortress, walls and towers, halls and dungeons, all that sat atop a deeply buried library of ice, guarded by spells and incantations, wraiths and lethal traps: the secret library of Inmortos, gathered, stolen, and summoned from the dredges of history. Profane and lost texts that detailed ancients rights and civilizations long lost to eternity, forbidden magics even by Sith standards.

Outside, butied within the dust atop a webbed nest existed a solitary being, a caretaker of sorts, neither living nor dead, a Sith abomination whose invisibility and poisons haunted and hunted the world and consumed any that dare trespass upon these sacred profane grounds.

It was to this place that the veil between life and death split the sky with a monstrous clap of thunder. Souls, imprisoned for ages within death spewed forth to herald the return of their newly crowned god-king. And from this cleft descended an ethereal form, a ghost, a specter, a wraith; a being of form but not substance, a true embodiment of that young Firrerreo man cursed by the dredges of Coruscant so long ago. Inmortos, and yet, Eligreen, drifted down unsullied by the winds and darkness, cloaked in a veil of the damned, the very winds lashing put from his translucent form as he touched down upon the open balconies of his throne room. From there, he drifted to his throne, up the skulled stairs and turned to sit. As his ghostly form and his throne connected a flash of dark power erupted, consuming the tower itself in roiling clouds of deathly ice and lightning. The god-king was upon his throne once again. He only hoped that his servant @Bernon Mrrgwharr brought him a more suitable host this time, upon which he could exercise his will once more.

Even as Inmortos’ possessed body dissipated into the air, a spray of blood and ichor, the spirit of the dark lord was loosed; an ethereal being amongst the rising waves of darkness that seemed to roil from the very soil at their feet. A harsh wind seemed to draw back the legions of spirits loosed upon the field until

inly the few most powerful or local remained to haunt the fringes of the mind. @Darth Calypso’s words carried across the field and as she finished, the very breath of Ziost, a breeze, carried the essence of the necromancer upon it, his quiet whispering words to play upon her ears alone, 

“Blood has been spilt. The ancient codes appeased. Hail the new Lord of the Sith”

and then the voice was gone sweeping out across the landscape before being swept towards the veil, drawn back to that final resting place once again, not yet condemned to remain there. Before he could be dispersed completely however, he reached out, a skeletal ghostly finger of cold tl rake across the minds of @Karys Narat iv-Adas,  @Bernon Mrrgwharr, and finally @Solus.

To his fellow blood-bound Master, he wordlessly bid, a thought, a memory, of Aaris III, of the destruction they wrought there, of his grotesque tower of ice and a desire that his apprentice be brought to him there, alive or dead.

To his apprentice, he cast forth a cold and lustful desire, a task infinitely more and yet so simple he had filfilled it already, only to fail in the final stretch:

”Fetch my saber to me upon my throne.”

And finally, he passed over Solus, a cold disembodied soft laughter that faded into the sky. A reminder of experiences past and present and eternal.

And then, as if he never was, the presence of Inmortos passed from this realm into the next, a tortured soul, a king amongst the sodomites. He had accomplished that which he was bidden to do and now would attend to his affairs elsewhere in preparation for the great purge. Who said there was more use in life than death? Inmortos found it quite the opposite. The dead made much more obedient slaves.

Inmortos shifted slightly, his blade angling to brace for a blow that never came his free hand weaving an intricate spell by his side. If he had elicited this type of response, even in the cold, it meant only one thing. He, they, were winning. He felt it, her wrath, her rage, boiling over as she landed. She was almost within reach, within saber-striking distance of even a withered scion of death. She was close enough that even through the fog and snow he could see her outline, her saber only illuminating @Darth Calypso further.

Raising a withering undead hand, Inmortos began to form ancient words of power; but before he could do so, Calypso unleashed a storm of her own. The burning maelstrom of the cosmos turned towards the lord of the damned. It took Inmortos by surprise as the heat blasted the lifeless body that he now possessed and sent it careening backwards. The body glove offered what protection it could before it succumbed to the force of the blast, sizzling as it turned ashen and was blown away and consumed by the blast. Ethereal screams assaulted the woman’s eardrums, the undead woman’s ears. They mingled with the whispering cries of joy and hatred brought forth by the wraiths and spirits crossed back to the lands of the living. 

The body flew backwards through the air, Inmortos blocking out the screaming assault, shutting it up behind a wall of a spectral choir that screamed beyond natural hearing and simply releasing his power on the Mandalorian’s hearing

Landing at the edge of the battlefield with a squishing splurch amongst the rotted bodies of his fallen army, the necromancer lay there amongst the dead, amongst his people; a stark reminder of who he was, that which he had not yet overcome; at least, not entirely. Inmortos lay there, his host’s dead body burnt, scorched, and oozing blood and frigid ichor. The pain would be unbearable, had it been his own pain. One of the benefits of already being dead was that the corpse, suddenly spiritless and lifeless, felt none of it. Inmortos felt none of it The blast burned her, her skin, her hair, it melted and twisted her face and body from the outside leaving bubbling oozing flambéed flesh in it’s wake.

And yet, through the pain, the screams, all of it, Inmortos remained. He was more than a simple spirit within a body. He was Inmortos. He was eternal.

He lay there, the muscles of his host tensing either from the natural reaction of the dead or Inmortos’ innate control. With his spirit bound lightsaber still casting it’s crimson hues, the Mandalorian’s fist clenched white about the hilt and slammed downwards into the ground. The built up sorceries flowed freely. The snow packed surface cracked as the silvery hilt clanged into it, fracturing the powerful hilt’s exterior as a gutteral hysterical laugh erupted from the twisted lipless melted maw of Inmortos’ host.

It is finished.
 

Power. It flowed from everywhere. it came from everywhere. The bodies of the 10,000 fallen all about him. The air. The assembled Sith. The reborn Ziost held together by twisted black magics as dark as the necromancer’s soul. Even the veil. All of it. Their power. It was sapped in an instant, drawn into the powerful vacuum of the void. The temperatures about the battlefield plummeted, winds drawing inward to tear any vestiges of hope or heat away as the power of the battlefield was drawn into the spell, into the nothingness cast beyond eternity. The veil, thinned by the saber and it’s dark passengers and blackened sorcery, the same saber that now served as a conduit of the god-king’s power, tore all but in two, unleashing torrents of the damned upon the battlefield to swirl and cleave at any that stood in their path. Great spears of ice erupted from the ground in spiraling circles about the necromancer, shards of frozen eternity piercing through the power-sapped air. They cut into the air between Calypso and Inmortos, withering before the attack, but continuing to spiral outward as the dead hand of Inmortos clenched the activated saber hilt tighter still, her burnt skin cracked as even the bones beneath it began to strain beneath the undead power commanding the spell.

And still, Inmortos laughed; an insane cackle. If she but knew, he was already dead. She would not, could not, kill him. His chains were not her chains. Her chains would be her undoing.

CALYPSO V INMORTOS ((3))

Power, by it’s nature, it is not created, nor is it destroyed. It simply changes form.
 

Such a scientific fact, while true, was brushed away in the great inhalation of the  god-king of death. As Inmortos sought to drain the power of she that would make false claim to the mantle of lord of darkness, the power that flowed from her, drawn by the world around them was nigh but endless. The little heat that remained in the air from Inmortos’ cryomantic display of power was whisked away, dissipated into nothingness. The frail legion of undead, an artificial gift from Inmortos to @Darth Calypso upon her resurrection at his hand, fell away like chaff, their soul-bound corpses collapsing where they stood. Their weapons clattered to the ground. The necromancic energies that bound these undead soldiers unnaturally to the realm of the living were sucked away and dissipated in the cold, drawn unnaturally from them into Calypso and from her into the host of Inmortos to be rendered no more. And yet, the vessel of Inmortos inhaled, the attack only ceasing as the physical limitations of the Mandalorian body he possessed reached it’s limits.

It was then that Calypso spoke, her attack rebounding in turn. Fiery red bolts of jagged energy, energy drawn from the world about them arced through the air even as Inmortos’ host exhaled in brief. The bolts struck the woman’s flesh with an explosion of power, of dark raw energy coalescing with the infinite icy stillness of eternal damnation. It sent Inmortos and his host careening backwards with the sheer kinetic energy the attack possessed. They landed amongst the recently fallen foot soldiers of Aaris III. The rotted bodies of his servants cushioning their blow as they sank amongst the fallen. Still the energy pressed on, playing across the fallen bodies, exploding some in bloated gouts of rotted flesh and ichor as it reached for the necromancer within the bodies, searching for the living amongst the dead. Lancing forth it would have found it’s mark, the still sizzling flesh of the possessed warrioress; but for the scourge of Inmortos, his will, and her strength of a lifetime of battle fighting off the residual energies of the initial blast. A crimson beam erupted upward from the mass of bodies, not followed by the telltale hiss of a lightsaber, but accompanied by the press of spiritual whispers and chants, of eternity unbound. The world about them muted to a deep red as all other color seemed to be leeched from the world. Whispering voices cackled with glee, sinful souls bound within the blade itself inviting their eternally tortured comrades from the world beyond; the veil of separation between this present mortality and eternal damnation beyond growing thin.

Inmortos eyes flashed a wicked yellow as he, as she, as they stood; the blade held before them like a wizard’s wand, extended outward in one white-knuckled hand catching the crimson bolts of retribution on it’s burning hissing shaft of energy. The darl lady’s power coursed upon the blade as it was transformed into an ethereal energy and in turn wrought unto the veil, parting to allow the spirits of eternal damnation to flood all bit unhindered into this realm. They cried out. They screamed. They chanted. Their emotions plagued the battlefield swarming and overwhelming the forces of mortality of their feeble emotions. The vengeful spirits sensed their keeper’s will and coursed onto the field of battle. Without direction, they felt the force, they could sense Inmortos’ raw emotion beneath his frigid facade and they followed it. They could feel Inmortos’ dark desires for @Bernon Mrrgwharr, his future in the god-king’s hands. They hated it. Did he not know that Inmortos was theirs alone? They could feel the blood oaths that bound @Karys Narat iv-Adas and @Solus to the god-king, the despise he felt for the one who would become his next blade. They could feel the oath sworn by their keeper to she that he now fought. They could feel his disdain and his devotion to his oath. The dead, wraiths and specters, phantasmal ghosts and amorphous spirits hated the living and they that they found they sought to destroy. With chanting wails and unearthly screams they swarmed their targets, physical protections of little use against a extraplanar foe. Seeking to destroy them, reason abandoned, they screamed through the billowing fog and wind to seek and to tear at their flesh with unseen maws and claws; physical wounds from an ethereal foe.

And through it all, the energy of Calypso’s assault crackled and sparked against the cursed blade of the god-king. A wicked smile played across the Mandalorian’s twisted face, her face half-burned, her blonde hair singed as bits of charred flesh fell sizzling and black to the snow. Her pain was palpable and yet she did not cry out, her body overtaken by the will of Inmortos and her spirit and mind ensnared within his power. They hissed, her Mandalorian voice carrying like that of the eternal whisper of the spectral dead across the field,

“You know naught of the chains I suffer.”

With a yellow flash of power, Inmortos’ jade-bound eyes fell upon the very soul of the dark lady. It was old. It was grotesque. It was coveted by Inmortos for the power he could drain from it. With a glance and a surge of ectoplasmic power his will wordlessly called forth a trio of smokey demons from beyond. It did not matter from whence they came. It did not matter what they sought, they were called into this world by a flash of necromancic power and bound to Inmortos so long as they were held within this mortal plane. Their will their own, their power that of the dark keeper of myth and legend, these inky black splotches of smoke in the fog made to set upon Calypso, the first to fall within their gaze, and with that they attempted to smother her with distractions and despair, to cloud her connection to the world about her, the force, and to life itself with their hateful false claims of her histories torn from the depths of Tartarus. They screamed and whispered, working to weave their taunting and mesmerizing sinful distractions as they made to close in upon her in the fog.

And as he stood, knee-deep in the bodies of those who had sworn their adoration to him, his gaze beholding Calypso through the eyes of the eternal judgement of the force, he struck.  The spirit within his host twisted in agony, a useful tool, but so too an annoyance; for even as he drew upon her lifeblood, so too did his foe. If she sought such power, a shadow of the power that Inmortos possessed; well then, she would have it and know herself judged unworthy. With her free hand, the necromancer wove a brief spell in the air across the Mandalorian’s chest pressing her own fingers inwards into her flesh. A cry of anguish, warbled with evil glee escaped their mouth, the glowing eyes of Inmortos never leaving Calypso. The spirit of the Mandalorian was cleft from the body whole, cast out of it’s living form leaving in it’s wake a pure muscled body, albeit singed, under the domain of the god-king of death. The spirit was unstable, unable to maintain a pure form having been plucked prematurely from existence. It howled in pain. It did not matter. Inmortos cast the spirit off, careening towards Calypso a pale translucent figure vaguely reminiscent of the host. Rapidly she broke down as she charged. In moments her spiritual existence would implode, a fragmentation grenade in reverse, drawing all about it inward at lethal velocities. 
 

The creeping doom of the ice left it’s mark as the snow and wind and fog billowed about them, and while Inmortos commanded the powers of stagnation, of eternal stillness, he was still a necromancer; a master of the dead and the bridge that stretched between mortality and the infinite. It was in that that his full mastery was on display, the legions of the damned called forth at the edge of Inmortos’ control, to make war on their god-king’s behalf. Standing there amongst his fallen worshippers, saber clenched like a magical wand of power, Inmortos trod the veiled edge of mortality and madness. He would stand here, his ancient oath to the Sith of eternity past culminating in this moment; to ensure that the Sith traditions and magics were answered, lest the order be cursed anew, again.

Calypso v Inmortos (2)

The Mandalorian Inmortos amalgamation stood listening to the newly proclaimed Dark Lord on high. It was the same rallying speech given a thousand times by a thousand different would be lords; and yet, a smile played across the woman’s face, for she knew. She knew. Inmortos knew. This war was not over. It had never been over. They were just the next cog in the machine of eternal damnation. They would do their part and then they would fall away, forgotten chaff all but they who struck their sigil upon eternity. All, but eternity, those bound by immortality. All but Inmortos, the god-king of death itself.

And yet that was what was missing as @Darth Calypso pontificated from

on high. She claimed a throne of blood. Inmortos had been there since her rebirth. She had no claim to this throne, this world,  these people. She spoke of the weakness of words, but her claim was only just that: words. When she had been reborn, she had shed no blood. @Karys Narat iv-Adas had shed blood. @Solus had spilled blood. Inmortos had spilled blood. The trio summoned to her crypt to bring forth she that stood now before them. But she, the self-proclaimed Lord of the Sith, had not cemented her claim in blood. The harbingers of her return, lords @Mavanger and @Darth Nyrys and @Exodus had carved the path for her, a path of destruction, of blood, marred on the force their feeble marks upon the eternal scroll.

And so he listened, his eyes scanning the feeble few who remained loyal to their ancient right, the legions of undead that now stood ready to ‘serve’ Calypso; the undead of Inmortos’ eternal plan. None stepped forward to fulfill the ancient bond. None dared throw themselves at the mercy of the dark side to do what need done. The shard had merit, Inmortos could feel it. He would still adorn the god-king’s saber some day; so was his destiny.

And as Calypso and her suckling apprentice leapt to the ground, she called forth a challenge. The crowd rustled and none dared move, none but . . .

Bernon ( @Thought Bomb ) the necromancer’s newfound apprentice. Inmortos could sense the turmoil in him, raw and untamed. He would be shaped into a great cleaver of darkness. In time. For now, he must be brought to heel. As the heavily armored warrior knelt and spoke, he produced the saber of Inmortos for all to see. Surely Akheron and the saber crystal Solus would know of Inmortos new form; his ambiguity, a powerful wraith on the wind betrayed into one body, the body of a slave.

The Mandalorian’s eyes rolled back painfully in her skull as the ire of Inmortos was aroused; and yet, a smile played across her face. To disobey, an eternal sin; and yet, the courage to do so so openly. It would be acknowledged as well.  Such an act would need punished. To disobey publicly, one must right the wrong equally. To kill this vessel of sin; however, would be premature and would reveal a weakness of the god-king.

Stepping forward, the gauntleted hand of the Inmortos-bound woman, brushed Bernon’s shoulder gently. With her free hand, she reached up to remove her T-visored helm. She tossed it aside, her face ravaged by the claws of her own fingernails, blood caked and cracked as it oozed between the cracked scabs mingled with the ichor of pure darkness, her eyes white and bloodshot, their pupils bound in pain backwards in her skull until the rage of Inmortos was sated, the tiara of impermeable soulfrost bound to her skull and a symbol of Inmortos claim

to the body and to his throne world Aaris III, as ashen and desolate as it now was. “My apprentice,” she hissed as she raised her hand and one by one tugged at the fingers of her armored gloves, dropping them to the ground. “You have done as I instructed.” Her icy white hand gingerly played across the intricate ultrachrome of the hilt in his hands as the whispers of her spirits within manifest curling up the Mandalorian’s arm like snakes return to their master. She grasped the hilt, her knuckles whitening even more if such a thing was possible. With hilt-clenched fist she backhanded her apprentice with a feeble blow that radiated upon the force in a surge of rage to knock him back. Stepping forward, her bloodshot eyes rolled back to behold the human, “defy me again and your punishment shall

be eternal!”

Steppibg forward, she began to strip the cumbersome Mandalorian armor that had been the facade of the god that now possessed her body. Each piece fell to the ground as she walked along the assembled Sith and their armies. “You claim a throne of naught but words,” she dropped another piece of armor with a thud in the snow that was beginning to accumulate beneath their feet. “The ancient blood rights remain unfulfilled.” The woman turned, her eyes flashing a wicked deathly yellow as they locked for a moment with the mechanized eyes of Solus relaying a simple message, one even he could attain. ‘Should the apprentice of Inmortos interfere, destroy him’

”You claim to be a god, to rule the chaos of the Sith and yet,” they gestured to the assembled Mandalorians under @saberforce, “was it not they who unfurled your royal carpet in blood? Was it not we three,” she gestured to Akheron and Solus, “who released you from your mortal bonds? Did not the Sith who scourged worlds, scarred the force, and languished in life pave the way for you to awaken from your blissful slumber?” Reaching the end of those assembled, Inmortos and his host turned to walk back towards the middle of the open area betwixt pyramid and assembled. “You claim a throne already claimed.” They came to a stop directly in front of Calypso and perhaps twenty-five yards back. The dark echoing voice of the god king boomed on the winds as they turned cruel and cold, it’s cold bite clawing at metal and flesh. “You claim the throne of an imposter, of an exiled spider who may yet rule from afar; and yet, you have shed no blood for it. As emissary of the dark empire, master of death, god-king of the damned, and one who has seen eternity and not slept idly by, I invite you; prove yourself worthy.”

Cold air billowed from the Krath in rolling clouds of icy fog mingling with the wind and untouched by it’s growing howl, mixing with the snow to shroud the black-body suit clad frozen acolyte (possessed body). The winds continued to plummet the temperature and without a word, Inmortos hung his hilt on his belt, the wind itself turning as to his will to drive at the self-appointed queen, to drive her back with a headwind, the edge of the storm.

Biting her lip in concentration, blood and ichor spilled forth as the host of Inmortos’ will exhaled deeply through her nose like a reek preparing to charge. Even possessed as she was, as the cold tendrils

of death played about her soul, she was still fresh, a child of Mandalore born and bred for battle. And then they struck, as she pushed the last remnants of air from her lungs, Inmortos struck at the fear that encircle her soul and she inhaled. A deep startled gasp that crystallized the air, the force, as she went to draw air into her lungs and by it suck all of the heat and warmth, the powers and energies of the battlefield away to dissipate them into frozen unending stillness.

Cold and frigid darkness fell over the battlefield as the winds blew and an unnatural permawinter drew upon the dark forces that bound this world together. All who were there would bear witness to the death storm of eternal stillness unleashed by the god-king and no one would walk away untouched by his bitter touch. In the midst of it all stood Inmortos, his challenge apparent as the forces of eternal damnation came at his beck and call. 
 

CALYPSO V INMORTOS ((1))

The slight lurch in the Mandalorian woman’s gait was the only outward betrayal of Inmortos possession; inly betrayal that was visible behind the helm and armored plates that is. As they walked they seemed to grow heavier and heavier, but for the moment they remained, an outward facade to shadow the true turmoil of being inhabited by the spirit of Inmortos while still living. Even now the warrior woman’s spirit tasted the turmoil of her inhabitation and regret bubbled to life deep within only to be frozen in the fearful inward gaze of death itself. Death. It would be a welcome retreat she thought somewhere in the recesses of her mind. While the warrioress seemed to maintain control of her body, it seemed that in spite of her desires to howl at the sky, to tear off her armor and ravage each and every one of these dark men and women of magic that stood before her, she could not. Fear and the urge to inflict the pain that now ravaged her on others was almost blinding in excruciation and yet she was paralyzed to it all, her will disconnected from her body but by the overshadowing will of her god. And in that fear and rage a reminder embered, she was serving her god, painful as it may be.

Stopping on the fringes of the assembled Mandalorians, where the Sith were assembled they stood, her body angled oddly, held straight but almost hunched in her armor. A cold aura seemed to radiate in the air around her as the presence of the god-king of death inhaled through the foreign feminine nostrils. He could sense it, almost smell it before he was drawn to it’s hidden location through the T’d visor. There in the boot of his newest project he felt them, their bound torments contained within the silvery handle. They called to him in sweet whispers of lust and hopeless desire. A smile played across the hidden face of the woman, it was Inmortos’ twisted smile splayed across her face.

The lord of death’s icy gaze lingered for a chilling moment on @Thought Bomb before silently turning to behold the rest. There were so many gone. So many who claimed to be the most powerful  had been destroyed, fled to beyond the bounds of civilized space, abandoned their oath and feigned dedication. Their ranks were thin, thin enough that Inmortos was surprised to see a Mandalorian clan, ancient servants of the Sith, even there. The power of the Sith was not what it had been; but with so few, their power was manifest even more; a deeper well

of power from what to draw with fewer greedy hands. Their eyes settled on @Darth Calypso, an ancient Sith reborn from the ashes of a war that had never truly ended, a war Inmortos still fought and would never forget. In the end, they would all know of these Sith, the true heirs of power, of Inmortos as the galaxy was frozen with his name the final cry on their lips. All they need do now was wait. These Sith, old and new, had heeded the call. Now let this ancient dark woman prove her worth.