Krath Inmortos

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.

From where she stood beside the tree wartching @Atrid Torsen trying simultaneously slay abd domesticate the monstrous abomination @Darth Calypso had summoned, the approach of another, untamed and raw, caught her attention on an almost subconcious level. Inmortos, the spirit that now cohabitated and, frankly, rules over the enslaved Mandalorian woman had felt it first; his powers saturating the woman’s form as they formed a parasitic symbiotic relationship. He bid her turn and they did to find a stranger adorned in armor kneeling, professing a desire to become not a Mandalorian as portrayed by their mortal outer vestments, but a Sith; a Sith like Fiochmar, the apprentice, who even now battled with the beast in the distance. There was not another Sith in sight. The woman blinked slowly, her eyes flashing a momentary golden yellow glow, as the power of Inmortos took hold. The necromancer saw through her eyes, but not in the way a warrior sees. No, he stared down upon @Thought Bomb, through his armored trappings and mortal form. He stared upon the soul of the man, laid bare before him and he saw it. Not the weak pining of one unfit for anything but to die on the field of battle for a lord who cares nothing for his demise. No, he saw potential, raw power and emotion bellied upon the back of a warrior who sought refinement. Refinement, that perhaps he did not know would come not from the smelter’s fiery heat, but from the cold eternity of the cosmos as it twisted him into a weapon of death itself. Yes, someone like this Inmortos had use of. And if he failed? Another body by which to convey his eternal presence to the galaxy. The air grew frigid about the Sith and seeker, condensing fog from the thick air as it froze on anything within their aura. A subtle side effect of the profane practitioners daliance into the powers of stillness, death frozen in time eternal. Reaching out an armored hand, the woman’s voice spoke firmly, as one warrior to another, “You were right to have come to me. Any lesser Sith would not have seen your potential and cast you upon a bunk with the other rabble.” Except her voice had a frigid icy tone, as if death itself hung on every word, unnatural and imprisoned within the confines of her fleshy tongue. “Rise and if you are fit, become the apprentice of the god king of death eternal.” And as they reached to take the hand of the seeker, the Mandalorian suddenly withdrew, leaving the warrior to stand himself as her arms buckled in pain and she clawed at her face. Across her brow, lumps began to well and pierce the skin, blue soul-bound ice erupting from within, from the mixing of untainted mortal and eternal damnation. The Crown of Desolation that bound Inmortos’ soul across the cosmos to his devestated and desolate homeworld, his font of power itself, the icy Throne of Inmortod. The mortal woman’s eyes rolled back in her head as she screamed, blood running down her cheeks from the furrows carved by her nails and oozing, mingling woth the ichor produced by the crown itself. ”I am Inmortose,” the voice came from the woman’s maw, deep and otherworldly, reverberating with contained power and damnation. “We will join the others as we pay homage to the new mistress of darkness; but to gaze upon they who are worthy you must first prove your own worthiness. A test.” The Mandalorian’s hand pointed into the distance. “My former apprentice, Nok Morliss, has taken my lightsaber and held it faithfully until my return. Retrieve the blade from Lord Apothos and bring it to me as we gather with the others. If you can do this, you will be found worthy to become my acolyte abd learn to break free of your chains.” Slowly the hand lowered and the voice, faded back to the mortal tone of the Mandalorian her eyes having righted themselves, although they were now bloody and pinpointed. “But be warned, when asked what has become of Inmortos, do not tell them of who I am. Carry my saber as a sign of my blessing and damnation. I will reveal myself when the time is right.” Taking the T-visored Mandalorian helm beneath her other arm, they fit it over the crowned head, gingerly covering the crystalline tiarra of somidified soulfrost and gems of eternity. Shooting a glance back at Mavanger’s apprentice as he battled the beast, the Mandalorian shrugged. There was no longer interest in the boy, for Inmortos had found himself an apprentice he hoped to deem worthy of his profane knowledge and power, a new tool to carry his eternal vision to fruition. Inmortos propelled the form of his newest vessel forward, away from Bernon. He had not yet bothered to learn his name. He had to prove himself first. But still, they paused and looked back at the newest Sith hopeful to call out a warning. “Should @Krath Apothos resist, remind him, but for I, he would still be languishing in that Republic prison for his failure to subdue the Jedi Grandmaster’s soul for me on Mon Cal.”

After what could have been hours, minutes, or even days, the woman slowly sat up. Her head was pounding. Even as she sat up, she leaned forward grasping the sides of her skull In pain. Her body hurt. It ached. Everywhere. Yet still, she felt something else. Something seemed to gnaw at the back of her mind, just out of conscious grasp. She could not seem to put her mind on it. As much as she tried, it eluded her, but each time she tried to grasp it it surged with power. The Mandalorian woman’s nerves tingled. She hurt, but she felt so so alive. She sat until she felt the power to move. Picking herself up, the warrioress turned to stare at the ship she had been guarding before looking out to the vast uncharted wilds of this dark planet. Something called to her. Moreover something within her urged her forward away from the ship, out into the wild. A surge of dark invisible power beyond the horizon called to her. Each time the force was darkened by the unseen displays of @Darth Calypso, it drew the woman’s thoughts to the foreign darkness that grew at the base of her skull. And each time she was drawn to it, power surged in her veins and her eyes wluld flash a glowing Sith-yellow for a moment. “Kad Ha’rangir,” she whispered; the name forming on her lips as if out of nowhere. She smiled, the memory coming back in pieces. She could taste her own fear, metallic and foul in her mouth. With jolted steps, she walked forward. A lopsided smile playing across her fractured teeth and face. She stooped to scoop up her fallen helm, leaving her sidearm where it was. Then, without stopping, as if dazed walked straight out into the wilderness toward the draw of dark power. Into the trees, an untouched forest, the Mandalorian wandered. Every step, the dark presence of Inmortos took ahold. She welcomed it, to become the avatar of her god of destruction, of that which represented so much more. Inmortos’ spirit flooded the woman’s unconsciousness, their minds entangling together, symbiote and host, master and servant, mortal and eternal. As they moved into the wilderness, the transformation continued until it was all but complete. When he emerged from the forest, it was to the cry of a great beast as it charged the singular form of @Atrid Torsen. Leaning against a tree, the woman held her T-visored helmet beneath her arm to watch. The force swirled in the area as if it were a living beast itself writhing in turmoil. The hostess of Inmortos smiled as icy cold seemed to radiate from her very subconscious soul.

The spirit of Inmortos swooped about the planet hungering for that which me might devour. The spirit of @Darth Calypso was tempting, but to challenge the newfound lord of their order at such a time as this was undesirable. To do so, there must be a great cloud of witnesses. His glory must be grown, burned upon the memories of all who bore witness to it. The apprentice that trailed in her shadow, @Atrid Torsen, he was within the protection of the warlord @Mavanger. Out of respect, he too would be left, for the time being. The undead armies that followed the queen of darkness were his own; servants worthy of little more than the eternity he had bestowed upon their forms. The world crawled with intangible darkness. It was a darkness that crawled beyond the physical and soaked into the spiritual realm that Inmortos now claimed as his own, a world he sought to return from and command. The armored Mandalorians were something else entirely. Their leader @saberforce was an emotional wall, bound to by the spirits of those closest to him. To touch any of them would invite carnage upon Inmortos’ newfound body should the possession not go according to plan. And yet, they were the only spirits that roved upon this world that were not entirely mindless beasts or servants to the Sith Order of which Inmortos had pledged his fealty in exchange for immeasurable power. The formless form of Inmortos tasted the world of darkness. More. There were more of these marauding barbarians. He had but to find them. As a cold and mighty wind, the lord of death eternal moved, a front blowing across the world until he found them, the ships of the foreigners, guarded by but a handful of the armored acolytes of the way of the Mandalore. Inmortos knew them well, servants of the Sith in their many wars. One of them, carefully selected, would serve anew until, like their brethren, their use had been dissipated in the grand scheme. The winds of Inmortos calmed as an icy chill enveloped the pair of Kom’rk transports. A fog welling up as the heat was sucked from the air itself and in the middle of it, Inmortos descended. The sole watchman began to shiver beneath her plate as she adjusted her sensors to attempt to see through the growing fog. It was just an anomaly of this world, so why did she feel such a sense of growing fear as her fingers began to succumb to the cold. It was as if, as if there was something, someone, out there . . . “Can you feel it?” A voice whispered from the fog. The Mandalorian guardian whipped about her shivering hand dropping to the blaster at her side. There was nobody there. Nothing. “Whose there?” She demanded. “Show yourself!” A frigid laughter echoed in the fog, “But I have; or have you forgotten me already, my faithful worshipper.” The warrior pulled her holster from her holster and spun around. She tried to call for backup, but the comm buzzed dead in her ear. The cold seemed to leech the life from her gear. “I do not know you, but I warn you, we are not to be trifled with. Identify yourself!!” She spun about as her visor began to ice over. “Do you not remember me? Can you not feel it in your bones?” Inmortos feigned offense as his disembodied form coalesced within the fog into a amorphous shape that mirrored his original form, pale blue and translucent. Inmortos blew a wind emanating from his ghostly lips. It blew across the Mandalorian’s neck to raise goosebumps and draw her attention. Trying in vain to see, the warrioress nearly jumped as the icy breath caressed her. She tensed as the cold eeked its way beneath her armor to encircle her heart. Sighing in resignation, she ripped her helm from her head and let it fall, crunching upon the icy grass below. What she saw, took her breath away. Feet from her stood the pale shifting form of Inmortos. Without thinking, she pulled the trigger of her weapon time and time again. Nothing happened, the power of the blast packs drained in their entirety. That did not stop her though as years of training took their course. Fear, hesitation, even the cold, was all pushed to the back of her mind as she grasped the knife she kept strapped beneath her arm and pulled it free. In the same fluid motion, she lunged for the spirit intent on impaling him upon her blade. The Mandalorian stumbled, the spirit of Inmortos dissipating on an unseen wind. With her knife hanging loosely in her hand, the blonde stared up into the cold fog that enveloped her. “Who are you?” She whispered as tears began to well in her eyes and freeze upon her face. ”I am they that dwell beyond The Veil,” the voice whispered in her left ear as the woman turned to look. “I am the Scorekeeper,” he hissed in her right as she spun around searching. “Some know me as Drol” the voice woo’d from behind. “Others call me Krath incarnate,” the voice chortled as it began to whirl about, dizzying the girl. “The Mistress, Andeddu, Father of Shadows, Byllaya, and many more. I am known to all who trod the mortal coil; but to you,” the voice chilled the air as the fog swirled in a vortex about the Mandalorian warrioress, before going silent. Suddenly the face of Inmortos materialized before the Mandalorian’s. “I am Kad Ha’rangir!” He snarled, eliciting a frightened scream from the woman before charging forward upon her face and snaking into her open mouth where he vanished. The body of the woman went stiff and fell backward, landing with a crackling thump upon the frozen ground. Suddenly the fog began to disappear, whisked away on the warm evening breeze leaving no sign but the seemingly lifeless body of the Mandalorian watchman, her helmet and blaster lying a short distance away in the cold wet grass.

Far from the mountains where the Sith Lord in waiting had made her place a dark unnatural storm began to churn. Fed by the less-than-latent dark side energies that transcended the entirety of the place billowing purple clouds began to pour forth from thin air. A tear in the realities of life itself, toxic plumes spiraled outward, unnatural peals of thunder and claps of yellow-green lightning called forth in roars and flashes of ethereal anger. The very air, charged with the energy of the storm became chilled, sucking the warmth out of Ziost itself as the energies were drawn forth and extinguished. And so did the storm continue to grow in size and power until it presented an inky blot of electrified ice across the landscape; until it’s very presence touched the natural order of the world beneath it. Then, and only then, at the heart of the storm, did a portal begin to form. It was a doorway comprised of tombstones and ice and blood, cloaked by a thin black veil, the curtain that separated this world from the next. It was the curtain of death. As snow began to fall, swept to a frenzy of cutting glass by the whipping winds, the veil itself billowed. As if breathed upon by something beyond, a beast unseen and unheard of upon the mortal coil. With a belch the veil swam upwards in a flash of evil green light accompanied by the loudest thunderclap yet. Surging from the gate came a cacophony of spirits, moaning on the wind as they snarled and snapped at one another, at anything before them as they were caught up into the storm itself. After this there remained but one, an ethereal visage of a man, a young and handsome Firrereo, blued and luminescent with the power of the storm. The spirit of Inmortos, no longer content to rule a shadowy kingdom beyond had returned to this workd. But a spirit, he stood unaffected by the storm, and yet unable to write his will upon this world. To challenge those that would see him fall and to punish those that had disappointed him he would need a body. It would not be his own. No, that time had passed. Those deemed worthy enough would serve by will or by force would be chosen. By their hand would they carry out the will of the god king. And when he was through with them? They would be granted passage into the peace that lied beyond the veil. For Inmortos had traveled to the deepest recesses of death and had come eye to eye with abominations unfit for this world. And he had returned. He had returned as much a servant as a king. Bound by profane oaths uttered in accursed tongues forgotten to the cosmic planes of the galaxy, Inmortos had been freed from this mortal coil only to be shackled by something greater. Something that was unspeakable in the tongues of man. He was a broken man. And so, he stood, the power of the storm washing over him. Every clap of thunder, every snap of electric power that dwarfed that of the stars, they powered him, gave his army of spirits a half-life as they began to scream outward into the world of Ziost, a torturous paradise that allowed their invisible near-immortal hands to claw at the edge of reality, to rend the living with tastes of eternal damnation. He stood, for hours until the door itself sealed, vanishing as if it never was. He stood still, until the storm itself came to pass. Hours, days, years, it did not matter. He did not know. Such passages of time were nothing to an immortal shade. But when it was done and the storm had passed and the spirits passed beyond the horizons, only then, glimmering against the moonlight, did the spirit move. Alighting from the ground, Inmortos became a nigh invisible blur of spiritual energies seeking a mortal form to inhabit, a mind to twist to his own machinations, a hand by which to enact his will. Everywhere he went, he heard the whispers. Whispers of invisible spirits that scoured the land looking for weakness to transform, failed lives by which to regain their own failed mortality. He heard them, voices that he had long discredited. He heard them and he listened. They spoke of an army, of a woman, of warriors and servants assembled upon a plain, about a mountain surging with unnatural dark side energies. He heard them and he knew, @Darth Calypso remained. Right where he had left her. Where the new dark lady stood, so too existed the minions of Immortos, torn from Aaris III, the most loyal of his servants, spared by eternal damnation the suffering of their people. And so he streaked across the nighttime sky, billows of blackened snowstorms trailing in his wake, sucking the heat from the very air. He moved, a foul wind, until there, in the distance, he saw them. A mighty host, ten thousand strong, stood as silent undead sentinels awaiting command. Oh would they have their command. A gift to the dark ruler of the fragmented Sith Empire, yes they were; but that did bot mean they had forgotten their true master, reviled him, feared him. They were right too; for now, he held sway not over their lives and undead existence, but over their eternal souls as well. From a great distance the dark spirit circled in silence. He sifted every undead soul, studied the unnaturally bond of bound flesh. Generals and footmen, all kobold-like lizards, strong born from a life of labor. None were worthy of the spirit of Inmortos and yet he had little choice. For they were more worthy than the few other foreigners who even now trod the landscape.

The voice of Inmortos cracked as his hissed whispers of pain radiated outward on the billowing plumes of purple-black smoke. It filled the room. It carried into the halls and recesses unhindered by the vortex of space as it clawed like a feral cat through the station. Every word, ancient and powerful, uttered to bind the spirit world and fray the edges between mortal and immortal. The undead all about him were soon dissolved to dust, their very essence becoming that of the growing torrents of smoke. The prison station itself continued in it’s preprogrammed decent towards the vacant world below. Its rotation increasing in speed as it passed a point where initial dampeners and high tech braking systems failed. The artificial gravity generators were the next to fail. The entire station shook, final death throws as it plunged towards it’s inevitable destruction. Final system reports and scans, prisoner rosters and security reports, were broadcast into the cosmos. The highest levels of encryption protected the broadcasts. They were even more scrambled by the foreign code that played havoc on the station. Inside, death did not need to wait. The door had been opened by the Sith rescue team. Death was invited in the open door, summoned by the gods of chaos. Once inside, it gorged itself on the entrapped spirits of the deceased and the dying, violent and visceral, throughout the station. The raw emotions of the freed tortured beings fed into growing darkness. Inmortos hands wove through the smoke carving long-lost runes in the amorphous air. They glowed for a moment and then were absorbed alongside the haunting whispering chants. Bits of flesh freeze-dried in the smoke and fell from Inmortos heavy hands and head. His robe fluttered in the smoke, aging and fraying in moments what would have taken decades of unaffected wear. In moments where there had been a hulking body of an undead Vurk chanting and weaving the spirits of the undead into the smoke of the mortal world, there stood a ragged rotting body, muscles and sinews and bones visible through the rotting frozen scales skin. Flaking off, the bits of Inmortos were absorbed by the smoke, tying the necromancer’s own mortal form to his spell. Through the yard, the smoke ate away at the existence of any that still lived. Throughout the station the life force of any that remained was tugged upon; drawn closer and closer to the flickering veiled doorway of the eternal. Anyone who was injured stood no chance. They were enveloped in a black mist, their screams vanishing as surely as their bodies until nothing was left but soot that blew down the windswept halls. Klaxons screamed all over the ship. Warnings for those that remained that their destruction was imminent. The mechanized voice encouraged anyone who could to strap themselves in to do so, immediately. Anyone who could not was warned to brace for impact. It would not matter. The impact would be lethal. It was designed to be so. Inmortos’ body continued to fail, his skeleton becoming clearly visible beneath the dissolving gases. Organs tumbled in a bloody mess from their nestled positions within the ancient Jedi structure. Foul smoke filled their spaces, gnawing hungrily at the shell of mortality. Inmortos raised his hands towards the ceiling. His head rolled back on his neck, no linger able to support the heavy sloped skull of the saurian. He screamed. Oh how he screamed. His voice, amplified by the force, rang through the station and beyond. It was pain, pure agony. The spirits reached out from the great void greedy to grab ahold of something tangible. Every invisible clawed hand pulled the very spirit of the necromancer out of his mortal coil, drawing him into the eternal void. Fluids and fuels began to spill from their containers, their vacuum-sealed ports released; explosives designed to flood the station. Elsewhere, crates of blaster compressed tibanna gas tumbled free from their bindings alongside other supplies thrown by the centrifugal power of the plummeting station. And finally, Inmortos voice fell silent. A rift in the force, silent and empty followed it’s wake, as the spirits of the dead, spirits from across the known and unknown cosmos dissolved the last of his vocal cords. The necromancers body fell, hilted and awkward as his bones and what remained of his robes clattered to the floor. The smoke swirled and the spirits whispered, screamed in the minds of any who still struggled to survive, thrown against the bulkheads by the force of the plummeting station as it burned through the atmosphere. Flames trailed from the station. Without a shield, it’s hull became superheated. Armored panels were flung free of the twisting station. Fire clawed inward to do battle with the frigid spirit-filled smoke. It was destruction at it’s purest form. The freezing smoke erupted. The flames raced through the station, a literal fire that transcended the mortal plane burning hot enough to dissolve bodies and durasteel; glowing with such intensity it pierced the realms of the spiritual. The flames consumed the spirits ensnared within, casting their meager immortal shadows eons into the great veiled beyond. The storm of ethereal power crackled as it was consumed by the flames. Within the smoke, the skeletal form slowly began to stand. The spirit of Inmortos, still bound to the bones, overcame the limitations of death. Standing, the necromancer pulled his ragged robe about his shoulders. His vacant eye sockets blindly scanned the smoke as the first signs of the immortal flame began to pierce the thickest billows of smoke that poured from the maw of the necromancer; his words transformed into the pure undead magics of death as they flowed freely from one realm to another. The flames raced towards Inmortos, engulfing the necromancer, shrouding him from the world beyond. They were held at bay by the frigid powers of the dark lord, for the moment. The station continued to gain speed as it streaked an inky trail of midnight black interspersed with flashes of flaming orange and yellow and frigid billowing purple across the sky. Death lived, even thrived, within the station. It was fully enthralled as the bridge between the living and the dead was torn open, the stopper pulled for a moment allowing raw emotions and spiritual apparitions to manifest where they might never do so again; not without a catalyst. And a short time later the flaming station slammed into the forested ground. Within, the immortal flames crossed from the mortal into the immortal, overwhelming Inmortos frigid persona, consuming him. The bones were burnt to dust. The dust was consumed and swept into the eternal void. The presence of Inmortos was swept from the galaxy, cast into void beyond as a huge fireball engulfed the station. The forests shook for miles in every direction blasting trees downwards in an outward angle. The plume of purple fire climbed high into the sky etching an ancient runic symbol of death and eternity into the air itself above the world. It was visible from horizon to horizon. Then it was gone from view, its eternal magics burned not into just the air, but the cosmos beyond, the stars it shrouded. Forest fires began to rage, tracing outwards into the untouched wilds of the world. A flaming crater sat at the impact point, driven deep and wife into the crust of the world. Pieces of twisted jagged metal rained downward for miles. At the impact site, there was nothing left. All of it had been blown free from the force of the station’s detonation. Nothing was left. There was nothing organic, even most of the metals had been turned into dust and ash as it wafted through the air.

All about them the newly dead arose, their crippled bodes, wounds still fresh and oozing, shambling towards their oppressors, foes, and stranger alike with undead ferocity. Those whose bodies had long since been devoured by the incinerators, their ashes little more than space dust spreading across the cosmos, swirled. Their invisible hands grasping at the edges of reality, their assign subtle chills as unseen winds passed by. In this paling of the boundary between life and death, they could reach across the veil, unseen claws rendering exposed flesh as they whispered of the imminent demise of all aboard. For they that were not bound by the mortal world could see what those bound to life could not. They had seen it and whispered amongst themselves, delighted that oppressor, stranger, friend and foe would be joining with them soon enough. It was inevitable as the station continued to accelerate towards the world below, it’s axis becoming the epicenter as the gravitational dampeners strained and began to fail against the centrifugal force. Throughout the station a new series of klaxons began to wail. It meant little as the mechanized voice warned of imminent impact, urging those aboard to brace themselves. Had it been a rogue ship, perhaps; but what the sensors that now triggered the automated sensors now sensed was Nephis VIII itself. All that mechanized warning did was increase the fear that already flowed like a river through the station. Not that it mattered to the droids. They had their orders: no one escaped. Within the control room, panic had set in. The looming doom was taking ahold, empowered by the flow of darkness that now ravaged the station by both design and intrusion. Finally, the first man broke. The thought of his family, a half a galaxy away, his children, going on without a father; it was too much for him. Shoving himself back from his console, the jailer shouted. He could not take it. Running to the doorway he began to shout in panic and fear, a righteous anger boiling over as he bashed ineffectively at the door’s control console. That was all It took. Beneath the professional exterior, the tension broke. The command room broke into chaos as crewmen began to scramble inputting codes in desperation, trying to stop the inevitable, trying to escape. It would be of little use; the station’s designers had taken such a catastrophe into consideration. Their actions meant nothing, or they would not have, had the station not been hacked by an unknown entity at the same time. It should not have happened; but the state-of-the-art programming that had been put into place upon the station’s construction had slowly not been kept up to the highest levels as designed. In a state of chaos, it had been just one other thing that slipped through the cracks. Because of all this, one inadvertent code frantically keyed in on the bridge at just the right moment, at just the right place, on just the right console, had its intended effect, only . . . more so. Every door on the station hissed open. Locked latrine doors where political prisoners had taken refuge; cell doors; access shafts; the doors to the command center; all of them, the entire station was open to to everyone, everywhere. The maze becoming infinitely more complex. That was not what made it even more dangerous though, in addition, the bastardization of the codes opened garbage chutes, access ports, docking bays, doorways to the vacuum of space. In a moment, entire corridors and rooms became vacuum tubes as their contents were sucked into the void of space. The cafeteria instantly was torn asunder via a simple garbage disposal. Doors ripped from hinges, tables and chairs putting dents in the walls as they were vacuumed into a tornadic maelstrom of nothingness. Other areas of the station took similar damage as the temperatures across the station began to plummet even where the vacuum had yet to reach. Back in the courtyard, Inmortos felt the increase of death around the station. The voices of the undead howled in rage and glee at their predicament. His magics had taken on a life of their own. More accurately, regained the lives that had been taken from them. He needed to do little else to maintain it; life, the twisted dark side of the force, together would maintain what he had unnaturally sparked back into creation. He heard the voices as they cackled. He heard their whispers above the cacophony. Their doom was imminent. His, Inmortos, doom was imminent. ”NO!” He snarled. It would not end this way. His eyes flashed with ice as his vision took in Apothos. He would not be destroyed again because of his wayward former apprentice. Akheron, Solus, this unknown Sith imprisoned for crimes that had not even been a blip on the radar of the Sith Empire, none of them were worthy of his death; and as they stood here discussing their philosophies ignorant it seemed of their looming destruction, Inmortos made his choice. Even Mavanger urged that they flee. Stepping forward, the death lord approached the throne of Apothos, lightsaber hilt held before him. “Morlissssssss,” he hissed with a snarl, “do not lose this or,” he nodded at Solus’ mechanized corpse, “my future tool. I will return to you for this when you are free of this prison and I of mine.” The specter of a Sith stepped back, leaving a path towards the door clear, cleansed by the shambling hungry undead that innately bent to his will. The winds of the spirits seemed to blow towards the doorway; or it might have been the touch of the void reaching this far into the station, clawing for one and all. Inmortos hands were already moving, his arthritic hands pained as they danced intricately in the air. “Flee you fools,” he snapped as the force pulled stoppered vials from his robes, elixirs made from a dying world, souls snared at the point of damnation. Ancient words of power, the spells of long lost cultures, death cults, and god-kings that pre-dated the Sith and their dark Jedi ancestors by millenia poured from the Krath Lord’s dehydrated cracked lips. His teeth mashed his tongue as blood and ichor dribbled from his mouth down his robes. Frigid purple-black smoke billowed out of the necromancer’s robes seemingly unaffected by the devolving world around him. Each hard syllable cracked like soft thunder as the magics of long forgotten sinners called forth their ancient spirits from deep within the void, forgotten shadows of eternity. The sacrifices of the world below served as a conduit for the atrocities, the sacrifices, aboard the station all around him. Inmortos had accepted his circumstances, but not his lot in it. The presence of the spirits all around him spoke of yet another means to unnaturally extend his life. He would not be exiting this station, not lime the others. Once again, his body would die here. If all went accordingly, his spirit would be free of this mortal coil; free to possess the bodies of the weak willed and willing as his needs saw fit. The zombies all about him sensed the necromancic energies that radiated from the death lord. They were drawn to it, empowered by it. They salivated as they clawed and gnawed at anyone who dared approach the font of power they desired, that whispered to them the sweet lies thst they might be able to regain their own lives if they consumed enough life energy from others.

Inmortos watched woth a detached horror as the surging amalgamation of bodily fluids, eyeballs, and filth surged down the physical confines of the station. It seemed to be chasing Solus, and yet; in spite of it’s interactions with the physical, only seemed to exist as a metaphysical temporal being of the force and by the force, plucked from somewhere beyond. The icy touch of the specters the necromancer now sought to command coupled with the hissing strikes of the Lord Mavanger’s blades seemed to slow it. And then, as if in some cosmically herculean effort, Solus of all beings, seemed to cast the beast into the ethereal beyond. It was gone. As if it had never even been, save for the warped passageways and crushed metal that spoke of its passing. Inmortos’ reptilian eyes twisted in suspicion. Something seemed amiss, he intended to find out what it was, even here. He rounded on the Sith apprentice of Lord Akheron intent on drilling the knowledge from his crystalline latticework only to watch the entire chassis of the being slump forward. Life leached from all but the core, the physical existence of the wayward apprentice. ”Fool.” He spat, the hostility on his detached voice clearly belaying the anger he felt at such a distraction from their cause. Anywhere else and the necromancer might have invited such a task, to study it, to control it; but not here. And before he could do any more, the spirits were back, more cautious, whispers of hate, lust, and discontent playing at the edges of his consciousness even as they questioned from whence the immaterial had manifest beyond the veil. “Yes. Yes” he responded, waving his hand towards the downed Solus, granting permission to the spirits to manifest within his mortal form. Should the apprentice be strong enough, he would live. Should he not; well, it would be a finality in a lesson that he should not have tampered with that beyond his control. The necromancer had items of more importance to attend to even as the crush of droids before them sparked and fizzled. At least Mavanger had the droids he had desired. From where he hung weightless in the air, Inmortos offered a solemn nod to the harbinger of destruction, a true master of his craft. A silent note of respect for his fellow master of their respected crafts. There was little time for anything else. Time was, after all, of the essence. Behind them the form of Somus slowly stood, jilted and wobbly as it was possessed by the spirits of the damned, enslaved by their fear of that which the dark lord that commanded them seemed to control. With a breath of icy vapors from his outstretched fingertips, Inmortos drifted forward, a ghostly silent wraith. There was more to be attended to. Behind him the spirit-bound Sithling followed, it’s unsteady and tumbling steps the first steps of an infant as it discovered itself. The droid-being clattered along behind. The droid might be of use to Darth Apothos in this prison; and, on a more personal note, perhaps finally his former apprentice could extract the Shard so that Inmortos might again use the spirit of Akheron’s next failed acolyte as his own. This time, a lightsaber might suffice. The entire station was in chaos. As the force surged into crevices and cells untouched for decades, it awoke long dormant sins and desires amongst the accused. Those who could manifest the force trained or not unleashed upon it in utter rage, blowing the doors from their fells and flooding the station with years of pent up rage-fueled vengeance. Even the highly skilled droids, as they cut down swarths of inmates were eventually overwhelmed. Killers, monsters, lords of the underworld regained their bearing and each in their own way began upon paths of revenge and rebirth. And still, the timer ticked steadily downward. The command center sealed and isolated in it’s entirety behind layers and layers of durasteel and phrik and cortosis infused metals. They were safe from the chaos, safe from the ravages of the force, within their tomb. And so Inmortos moved unhindered down the devastated hallways until he entered into the din behind Akheron, Solus lurching to a halt behind the lord of death. He listened as the chaos of the compound howled over the chaoslord’s words, the revolution of suppressed hostilities overcoming reason as bodies were cut down with impunity and droids beat down by overwhelming numbers; and for the first time since being subjected to the unnatural aura of the Force-repellent lizards that lay dead across the station, Inmortos smiled. His dry tongue snaked across his lizardly lipless maw. He could taste it. Death. Fresh, not of ages gone by, spirits entombed bodiless in this orbital prison. No, these were newly fallen, their souls still clinging helplessly to their mortal bonds, shattered as they may be. With a press of cold, Inmortos drifted downwards until his feet touched the cold steel decking. His gnarled swollen fingers danced in the air, a madman’s touch upon the eternal to any uninformed of the black clad’ reaper’s true intent. Ancient tongues spilled in whispers from his mouth that seemed to carry across the cavernous bay in a hiss of wind that blew the icy touch of death across the battlefield. Whispers of the damned, drowned out by the screams of the dying, moved unnaturally as they were carried by the magical words of life and death, incarnation, incarceration, and blasphemy. Across the battlefield, the crushed decrepit forms of those who had only minutes before been crushed to death began to rise. Their faces were twisted in the pains of eternity wrought from the solace of death. It was the only pain they felt, a pain beyond what the living could bear as they were immune to the broken limbs and tortured states of their mortal forms. It was this pain, the magics called upon by Inmortos that gsge them life. He did not need to control them, not that he could not with a wave of his hand; no, they would do what came naturally to the undead. They would seek revenge. The targets of that vengeance varied, fellow prisoners who had wronged them, but mostly the enforcers of an long lost unseen Republic and Empire’s will. unfazed by blaster fire and the touch of the stun baton and boasting the power of their bodies uninhibited by life-saving measures, they struck back, turning the tide until any who opposed them fell silent, dead and lifeless, leaving ichor-oozing shamblers groaning about the battlefield awaiting further instruction in their simple zombified state. ”Lord Apothos.” Inmortos rasped loudly across the silence. “My apprentice. Come.” The body of Solus clattered to the ground before Inmortos. “A gift by which to expedite our departure.”

The mag-locks on the droids feet allowed them to continue mostly unaffected by the sudden shift of gravity, or lack thereof. The last of the prisoners were locked down at last, either in their individual cells or the small mass in the recreation area (if one could call it that). Any resistance was now met with a lethal albeit brutal beat down. There were no life-saving protocols anymore. The only programming that remained intact was to prevent any escape, by any means necessary. Anyone seen or scanned in the hallways was designated a hostile entity. The tuning up of blaster cannons followed by explosive blasts traced after any unauthorized entity. Escaped prisoner, invader, it did not matter. They were all as good as dead. They would all be condemned to death in the next 20 minutes anyway. After that, the planet would be spun into complete and irreparable free fall; a fiery plummet towards an inevitable end on the surface. Drifting against the sealed security door, Inmortos pushed off following after Lord @Mavanger. Moving from cleft to cleft the duo of Sith Masters kept the turrets popping, albeit inaccurately. Even without the force, the necromancer knew that the steely right-hand of the former Sith Empress was a force to be reckoned with. No mere turret would stop him. Inmortos, well, he was dead, technically. Even computers recognized there was no use shooting a dead body. Computers did not need the satisfaction. Still, the inability of the the turret to stop the encroachment necessitated reinforcements. As they passed the halfway point a half dozen armed security droids rounded the corner at the end of the hallway. Stun batons and wrist mounted blasters, it kept the prisoners from stealing them. Disconnected from the droid they would deactivate. Nothing more than a gangly hunk of metal. Pressed into the alcove, Inmortos felt worthless. He could feel the very foreign body he now inhabited deteriorating. Without the force, the familiar horizon of death loomed ever nearer; a one way trip into the beyond. It was not a path Inmortos sought to journey down a final time just yet. He had not yet achieved his goals. The fear heightened his senses. There was little he could do, decrepit and dying as he was. Without the force, he was nothing. And then, it happened. A strange wave seemed to sweep down the passageway. The necromancer’s fragmented body was caught up in the tide. His mind, entrapped within a world of flesh not his own was suddenly immersed in the depths of the cosmos of an eternal silence. The veil beyond the realm of the living fluttered and opened to the eternal blackness beyond. Peace and tranquility, life spread from the tips of the Vurk fingers and toes possessed by Inmortos all the way to the sloping crest atop his head. For a moment, it was as if all the troubles of the mortal plane were swept away. In that moment, Inmortos was at peace. Inmortos was dead and he never felt more alive. Until he was not. On the heels of the peace that came with death, came the dogs. Howling, ravenous, caged unto death and driven to madness before they passed into the great beyond. The spirits of the dead, hundreds killed on the prison station, their bodies long since incinerated, tore past the veil. They flooded the area about Inmortos, a beacon to serve as their servant to the realms of mortality. They assaulted the necromancer’s sensed, blinding him, deafening him. The necromancer doubled over in the air. Pain, the pain of every injury inflicted upon the lives that were not his own, replaced the fear he had felt as it wracked his body. ”No!” He cried out, his voice cracking in pain as his body contorted unnaturally in the air. The air temperature dropped. The humidity crystallizing in an icy glaze all about the Krath master. He was the master of death. Those who failed in this life would not best him. They could not. They had already lost. They needed him and as vengeful as they were, they knew it too. ”NO!!!” He cried in anguish and anger, his mind forcing his body to fought against the rigor that sought to overcome it. Muscles tore as pain shot red-hot pain across his senses. The icy mind of the necromancer began to revert to its natural state, frigid, cold, a lifeless void, unassailable by anyone or thing. As he writhed, Inmortos’ resistance to the spirits grew with each passing moment until his mind had become an icy palace of solitude reaching across the cosmos to the barren hellscape of Aaris III and the Krath’s throne upon the desolate planet. ”NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” He snarled in defiance as his eyes shot open. The pupils that had rolled back into his head centered and began to focus as his clawed hands slammed into the durasteel wall plating strong enough to leave dents. Had his feet not been braced in the alcove, the necromancer would have drifted out into the hallway. Icy wisps snaked from the Vurk’s nostrils. The air about him dropping dramatically well below freezing in an instant. The cold was more than a physical frigidness, it was ethereal, spiritual. It drove back the swirling chaos of the recently released undead wraiths. It slowed them, froze those that did not retreat, their bodiless existence falling invisibly to the floor and shattering in a glassy spray of broken soulfrost. It was cold. The deathly chill offered clarity. It offered silence. And in it, Inmortos could feel the ever expanding presence of the force, freed from the grasp of the sickening mutant repellent that surrounded the station. He could feel the lives of all aboard, Mavanger, @Karys Narat iv-Adas, @Solus, the unknown @Lord Ōk Rägnär, and even his wayward apprentice @Krath Apothos. Yes. He was here and he was alive. If one could call such a miserable existence such a thing. The specters of prisoners passed on sensed the connection the necromancer felt, even if for but a moment, to the technological wizard and they seized upon it to assault one that might be of value to the necromancer; to teach him a lesson for denying them. Several screamed into the prisoner-laden hall to assail the senses and mind of Nok Morliss and anyone else who got in their way. In minutes the entire haul was in chaos as poltergeists and wraiths materialized and vanished intermittently, bursting through walls, droids, and chests with icy touches, blinding sensors and senses. Screams of anger and fear contributed to the din. The droids were hard-pressed to control such a breakdown in order and they began to bash in the skulls of the nearest prisoners to begin restoring order, permanently. Inmortos was only concerned with Apothos for a mere moment before his senses were diverted to Akheron’s droid-y apprentice. The lightsaber crystal seemed to have unleashed some sort of netherworld force monster, a being of rotting multiplying flesh and dried blood. Hunger and death. An invisible being that devoured anyone or thing connected to the force; a monster that did not exist but for the dark side of the force itself; a monster from beyond the veil hungering for life. “What have you done?!” Inmortos mind sparked with icy anger. Meddling in spheres he did not know and had no right to be in touch with, the Shard had seemingly inadvertently stumbled upon something larger than himself. Redirecting his focus from Apothos, Inmortos summoned upon the ethereal chill of the void beyond the grave. The veil that separated life and death billowed in eternity, its subtle echoes felt across the cosmos upon his trailing link to his chilled throne. He cast it beyond himself, the chill freezing the air as it slammed into the rolling boil of force-based flesh that pursued Solus. The spirits screamed after, their hunger being keened onto an even greater target, the monster from beyond the purgatory they had been cast unto. With ravaging hunger and the ability to inflict wanton damage on the frost-slowed abomination. Cold death radiated out from the necromancer. The spirits recognizing a master that could finally give them what they desired.

Inmortos slid haphazardly into a secured alcove out of sight of the turrets bearing down on the hallways. Then Mavanger toppled backwards in the hallway beside him. Bracing himself the necromancer pushed against the sealed cell door until he reached a standing position . Looking to his comrade, the warrior grunted. He was alive. Disappointing. Or it would have been had the Sith had the ability to touch the powers of life and death. As it was, the wizard’s mind felt overwhelmingly cut off from everything he had known for years. He was dependent on the warrior more than he would have liked to admit. Even with his new body, he felt frail, old, aged beyond the natural state of being. ___________________________ Elsewhere across the station, the realization of an assault had become all too clear. The station had been breached. The finality of what that meant had begun to set in across the crew. There was no time for goodbye comms. Each man and woman had been required to complete end of life documents, goodbye letters, wills, and the like. It was a boring task that nobody really took that seriously. The station had stood to this day unaccosted. The clock continued to count down. When it reached zero, they would all die; a station plummeting towards the world below, all exits sealed and antimatter cores primed for detonation. Knowing their demise was near, each member of the crew set about the ending of their lives with grim determination. Safety protocols were removed. Droids designed to secure at all costs had long forgotten programming activated from the main control core. While lethal before, they were contained by a level of protective lines of code. No more. Any resistance would be met with beyond lethal force; preservation of the station was no longer of any concern. Amongst it all, corrupt lines of computer code continued to play havoc across the station. Even amongst the plummeting prison, industrialized cleaning supplies and processing equipment continued to activate and deactivate as if possessed by a phantom. While concerning, it had little overall effect on the prison as it moved towards its doom; that is, until it had replicated enough to touch on the systems controlling both life support and artificial gravity. Bodies began to float upwards, the magnetized feet of the security droids the only thing keeping them grounded. What breathable air remained aboard was all that there was or was ever going to be. In population dense and tightly sealed small areas there was less conscious time left than the plummeting station had remaining. Anyone clearing one meter above the floor was determined to be in flight, a prohibited act. It was an act classified as attempted escape. It was a punishable offense. With restrictions removed, stun batons were cranked to eleven. Anything beyond a brief touch would result in complete bodily incapacitation and death. ____________________________ As he quietly cursed his lack of connectivity to the force, the sorcerer felt a ripple. It felt almost like, like death. The moment that Solus undertook the slaughter of the fragile force-repellent lizards several walls away, the repelling bubble of the force rippled and flickered. For a mere moment those closest to the center of the assault could feel something. For a moment, the force shimmered before its glimmer was forces back beyond the breach by the overlapping bubbles of ysalamir bubbles. In that brief moment, Inmortos could taste it. This station reeked of death. Countless lives had been snuffed out here, forgotten by the galaxy as a whole. Voices of the spirits that haunted the halls of this penitentiary cried out. Unheard by the unattuned, their long stifled cries assailed the Vurk bombarding him with hissing whispers and shrieks. And then they were gone. The silence fell like a blanket and Inmortos blinked heavily trying to understand what had just happened. Bits of information that had filtered through the cacophony floated in his mind. The turret at the opposite end of the hall began to belch volleys of red destruction. Reaching out, Inmortos’ arthritic hand grasped at the now floating @Mavanger hoping to pull him to safety. As he moved, floating upwards with the lack of artificial gravity, the necromancer’s eyes saw through the small security window high in the door. What he saw within was a prisoner who was too dangerous to be released into the general populace. A huge slathering whipid covered in matted hair floated in his cell clawing at the walls leaving deep grooves in the reinforced plating, seeing the floating robed being outside his cell, the monstrous beast launched himself across the weightless room. His weight rattled the door as he slammed into it.

Inmortos’ face was twisted in a way that could only relay the fact that he was probably sick to his stomach. The truth was that was not quite it, not really. His stomach was churning, but not from something he had eaten. This body was not the original vessel of Eligreen, the Firrerreo son of Coruscant’s factory workers. This one had been stolen from an ancient Jedi, he that had imprisoned Calypso, new dark lady of the Sith. It was a body that had been sustained for centuries by the force. In its past life, the living force had flowed through the Jedi. Recently, the spirit of the Jedi had been forcibly evicted and Inmortos had taken up residency. The body now was possessed by the dark twisted powers of death itself. Well, it had been. The bubble of anti-force was doing more than muffling the power of that cosmic energy that held the galaxy together; it was holding Inmortos together on a metaphysical level. By pure force of will, the body remained together, possessed by the spirit of a master of death. He could feel the body falling apart at the seams as it decayed from the inside out. As the ship clanged to a rough landing with the shields flaring back to life behind them, the reptilian Sith groaned in pain, the taste of bile filling his mouth. If anything, the lack of force connectivity seemed even stronger within the prison. If this was where Nok Morliss was being held, they would be lucky if he was only insane. As Solus clanged off the craft and vanished into the malfunctioning bowels of the prison craft, Inmortos could not help but smile weakly. “Always something to prove, the young have.” Akheron followed shortly after. Klaxons began to scream up and down the ship. The bisection of a security droid, on camera no less, was cause for an even higher security alert. Mechanical malfunctions were one thing, but an invasion? That was entirely different. Prisoners would be herded and contained. Those that resisted would be subdued, lethally if necessary. Squadrons of security droids were activated throughout the ship. Blast doors began to slam shut all over the station. Gone was the idea of ever trying to salvage the slowly plummeting prison yard in the sky. With a sigh, Inmortos shoved against his chair, his revolting body creaking to a standing position. Leaning heavily in his cane, Inmortos shuffled forward. The clump of his cane seemed to echo against the very air; a reverberating sign that the necromancer still carried with him the aura of death. Stepping into the landing bay, Inmortos was scanned by the turret over top of the doorway into the station. That doorway was quickly closing; a response to the triggered security measures. The turret did not open fire. Inmortos body was already dead by all scientific measures. Lurching forward, Inmortos fumbled with the chromium hilt that fell from his sleeve into his hand. Catching it before it fell to the floor, Inmortos ignited the weapon. Instead of the usual energized hiss the red blade erupted in rush of whispers. Spirits bound to the blade beyond the touch of the force. The room seemed to darken as shadows grew longer bathed in a deep blood red. Holding the saber in the air the defensive cannons locked onto them. Inmortos could hear them spiraling to life with energy as they targeted the known hostile weapon. Just before they erupted, Inmortos fell forward face planting on the deck plates as his saber sizzled against the slamming doors. The cannons fired. They filled the room with the din of warfare echoing in a cacophony of ear-splitting destruction. Blaster fire to destroy a ship tore into the blast door in showers of slag and sparks. Just beneath it all Inmortos clenched his eyes as destruction broke loose above him.

“Krath Apothos still has use to the Sith, to me.” Inmortos murmured aloud to no one in peticular as he slowly raised a tridactyl hand as if to swat at some invisible pest buzzing about his robed head. “Waste not, want not.” He swatted again at the air, this time with both hands, fighting an annoyance it would seem was unseen by the others. The spirits, giddy with the revelations of such a gathering of Sith buzzed about the necromancer’s head like gnats. Their excitement at the knowledge they had gleaned from the world of the living and impending destruction, addition of souls to their own tortured remnants excited some. Others swirled angrily, Inmortos their only recognized path of release, desiring not the advent upon the orbital platform and sure destruction that was to follow. Here on this placid world they had found a sense of solace; a peace the Sith seemed fated to disrupt. With a touch of the force, Inmortos was able to seat away the swarm casting it into the brush beyond the group. The scrub rustled and cracked as if an animal had been lurking within, only to grow still again as the invisible spirits circled back into the air. And yet, it granted the necromancer a moment of respite as he continued to grapple with this newfound avenue of the worlds beyond. Following the direction of Lord Mavanger and the excitement of the lightsaber-blade-to-be, Inmortos shuffled towards the revealed means of their alightment above. Pausing at the threshold of the ship, Inmortos did something quite unnatural. He inhaled deeply and sharply. It was a gasp of a breath, one that came as much as a surprise to him as it rattled the body of the ancient Jedi he now possessed, as it would to any of the others. He felt it. The aura of the force-repelling lizards seemed to envelope him in their cocoon of repellant, an odd embrace that to Solus seemed to present a mere hiccup against his mechanized for. To the average sentient soul it might be little more than a douse of cold water in the face as their grasp upon the metaphysical was swept away. To Inmortos; however, it was different. Having walked the road of death and strayed upon both sides of the divide, sustained by the force itself, the revelation of the ysalamiri was twofold. First, it served to dull the buzzing twitterpating of the spirits that now seemed to hound him until he could regain a mastery over their kind; opening up a strange aura of peace as he finally became aware of the distant chirping birds and nature that lay behind him and the sterile machine-washed glow of the craft he now stood before. It was almost familiar, line the cousin of an old friend; different but recognizable. Was this what death was meant to be? A sense of peace that washed over one’s haggard life’s work in the final moments? And the final moments were what it seemed, for unlike the others, bound to the trail of life, Inmortos’ newfound body suddenly convulsed as the physical began to react to the unnatural horrors necromancy by it’s very nature enacted upon it. The filling and cleansing of souls, the wresting of control between two consciouses. The sudden ebb of death itself as it reached out from the grave to grasp at Inmortos’ bodily form, recognizing it and him for what they were, an imposter, powerless within the tranquility of the ysalamiri. Lurching forward, Inmortos grasped the frame of the door heavily as he leaned against it, his legs feeling weak beneath him. Clutching the doorway, he stumbled forward, moving from one supportive handhold to another as he leaned on his ever present cane until at last he could turn and fall into a seat. His breathing was ragged as he held up a three-fingered hand, already the onslaught of the grave was beginning to make it’s mark, his green fingers blackened as if by severe frostbite; the sensation of his appendages growing numb and tingling. Without the power of the force, all that held the finality of the end at bay was the will of the spirit of Inmortos himself, unwilling to meet his end. Not this way. Not now. Not ever.