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Krath Inmortos

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  1. Incling his head to the offered chalice, Inmortos lifless eyes gazed up at the master-of-hides. It was a cold gaze that seemed to sap the strength from the officiant of the ceremony. Reqching up, Inmortos’ skeletal hands grasped the silvered ornate goblet. Drinking deeply, the sorcerer could taste the lost lives within the liquid, their accursed deaths as sacrifices to the Fanged God. They were now sacrifices to him. The vileness of the act, the dark side of the force, touched the nevromancer deeply, pricking his connection to his ziggarauted throne swirled in desolation on Aaris III. The depravity of the Fanged God mixed abd mingled with the hideousness of the God-King as the blood ran down his chin and leaked from a variety of holes in his body until it soaked his black robes and dripped unto the icy floor beneath Inmortos’ feet. The darkside swirled through the room, slowing only as it pssed the frozen aura of the cryomancer. Voices of the dead, voices of the Fanged God’s aspects, whispered in cursed tongues to any ear that was attuned to the force. Inmortos knew the power of the blood, the power of blood spilled during profane force-imbdued ritual, the power of life forces freed from their mortal bounds, the power of desth itself. “Death. Remembers all.” the Lich hissed on a cloud of frozen breath into the cold air as he turned to regard Solus. His eyes bulged from his head where white patches of skull and peeling bits of flesh mingled with the blood about his mouth. “And Death,” his vlice lowered to barely a whisper, “is my friend.” As the ritual came to an end, Inmortos slowly rose to his feet, his joints cracking and popping as he leaned on his cane. The sacrifices one endured for ultimate power. Descending the stairs, Inmortos tegained his sarcophagus. A great wind rattled the temple hall lifting the heavy lid and set it back atop the coffin, sealing the necromancer inside. The crumpled body of Inmortos’ servant rose from where it had collapsed on the floor, it’s body and bones twisted in painful and unnatural angles. Flopping his head forward, the servant’s eyes rolled forward again, possessed by the spirit of the necromancer. “To my ship.” The body lumbered along guiding the repulsor-carried coffin back to the luxury craft of the god-king. A small troop of linnorms from the EMBRACE OF DARKNESS following along. As the stone coffin slowly ascended the ramp of the ETERNUS. “Tell the crew to prepare for the arrival of their new commander, the god-king Inmortos.” The dead servant garggled before he too turned and lumbered up the ascending ramp of the ETERNUS, disappearing into the cold black maw within. The linnorms returned to their own transport and escorted the ETERNUS towards the looming Sion Heavy Escort Carrier EMBRACE OF DARKNESS. The shadowy ship blackened out the stars behind it, her red lights blinking a constellation all their own, a constellation that signaled certain doom. Into the shadows of the cruiser, the linnorm escort and the Eternus moved; docking within the main hangar, surrounded by aggressive Acklay Interceptors. An icy presence filled the hangar causing the soldiers and engineers within to recoil. It seemed to draw the energy from the room as if the vacuum of the cosmos beyond the barrier was hungering. The hiss of the boarding ramp lowering let loose plumes of icy fog, respunding with a loud gong as it touched the deck. Out of thenrolling clouds of icy air, a dark apparation materialized, the visage of death itself. Inmortos, lord-captain, god-king, lich, necromancer, cryomancer, Sith now laid claim to this vessel as his own. His robes rippled on an unseen icy wind as he glode through the halls of the ship. Frost climbed the walls and coated the floors in his passing, sealing doors and dimming lights. Entering the bridge, all eyes turned to the dark being. He was not like those who had come before him. These were a band of pirates, had been for generations, dedicated to a dark and violent religion. It was a religion that this black-robes thing now embodied, a vision of it that they rarely spoke of. No longer were they led by a warrior. No, now they were born upon the tide of mystic energies and invisible prophecies. Work ground to a halt ad the warriors and crewmen of the EMBRACE cast judgement upon their new leader. Inmortos felt it too. He might have undergone the ritual and been inducted into their ranks; but he was not a warrior with holos of his triumphs to glory over, nor did his body exude power and fear beneath bristling arms, armor, and muscle. To gaze on Inmortos was uninpressive save for the aura of cold death that spawned from beneath his robes. Word of Aaris III had made it’s way amongst the ranks, but to the pirating linnorms, even those who had walked the surface and engaged in the slaughter, the power of Inmortos seemed unbelievable. Without proof, confirmation of what they had heard in whispers, they would never respect Inmortos. These were men of action and action was what they required. A sorcerer might be useful in a quandary; but in battle these crewmen desired a warrior. The Master of Iron, he who had overseen the ship up until this point approached the doorway where Inmortos stood. It was tradition amongst the Clan that anyone could make a challenge for leadership. He would not stnad to take orders from such a weak-looking bag of bones, no matter his unsettling aura. Letting a spiked chain fall from his armored arm, it drug along the deck of the bridge sending up a shower of sparks in the dimly lit room. “A challenge,” he growled, raising his arm, confident that this would be an easy kill and he would retain his position of leadership. The massive chain erupted into the air as the Master of Iron began to spin it about over his head. With each pass it seemed to vibrate the air with a dull low ‘whum. whum. whum.’ Inmortos eyes surveyed the crew. It was clear they had no doubt that their newly appointed lord-captain would be short-lived and quickly forgotten. Raising a single twisted skeletal hand, Inmortos pointed a single bony finger at the approachibg muscle-bound armored linnorm. The diadem within the inky shadows of his cowl sparked blue for an instant as a great wind came up within the bridge. It tossed datapads and toppled chairs. Anything that was not secured or belted down was at risk of beibg ripped from it’s place. Consoles sparked at the changes in pressure. Pointing his finger to the approaching warrior, the winds grasped the massive chain and brought it down. In an instant, the momentum of the weapon was turned against it’s owner. Hurled at superhuman speeds the chain wrapped itself about the man, it’s spiked tendrils embedding in his flesh as it choked the life outnof him, his blood spilling to the deck plating. Grasping at the chain, the Master of Iron stumbled backwards trying to free himself from his own tool as he fell back with a clang against the floor. The winds died in an instant. The stillness in the room was filled with sparking showers of energy thst poured from damaged lines and consoles and the anguished growls of the Master of Iron as he struggled in front of everyone. Inmortos stood still, his eyes hidden in shadow watching the former leader. “I am Krath Inmortos.” he spoke, his cold voice resounding with power about the bridge. “Scourge of Aaris III. God-king. Immortal. Master of death. Sith Lord. And now, Lord-Captain of this ship. Serve me and know that unlimited power is at your fingertips.” The glare of his eyes sapped the power from the linnorm on the ground until he lay there, gasping for air. Icy frost encrusted the downed linnorm until he was encased within a cocoon of life-ending ice, smothering the man to death. Stepping forward, Inmortos sat in the now vacated command chair. “Prepare for out jump to hyperspace. He who proves himself in battle against our enemies by bringing me the most souls shall be made my new Master of Iron.” In an instant, the bridge burst back to life. Crewmen, sailors, soldiers, and linnorms aline leapt into action. Soon the bridge was returned to 100% efficiency and the dead warrior removed, his soul drawn from his body by Inmortos in front of all; a testament to his power over life and death. And with that, Inmortos ruled the ship.
  2. Upon being summoned, the singular mobile corpse, possessed by the spirit of Inmortos himself, rose to greet the emissary. His empty soulless eyes stared blanky as he nodded to the summons to the great temple. From within the ship the great stone sarcophagus rose carried by repulsors. It lumbered down the ramp where it was met by the singular possessed undead. Placing his hand atop the sealed funerary box they followed the emissary towards and into the temple, a trail of frozen ground and frigid air in it’s wake. Inside the towered temple the drums resounded off everything. At the steps before the altar, the undead servant and mineral crate came to a halt. Raising his hunched head, the undead vessel brought his cold empty gaze unto the Master of Hides. “The unholy Father’s will be done upon us all.” he hissed through broken teeth. The beastly being’s eyes rolled back in his head as a look of pain and anguish came over his face. Slumping onto the stairs, the lifeless body gave way to the spirit of the necromancer. It burst from the undead’s mouth into the air, only a quasi-visible wraith that shrieked as it swirled about the temple sapping energy in it’s wake before it dove into the massive stone cover and into the dead body of the Lich-King. Exploding upwards, the lid scraped against the crate and slammed into the floor with a sickening crack. In an icy plume of fog, the skeletal master of Aaris III rose, his boney hands grasping the edges of his coffin. Pulling himself upwards, Inmortos’ booted feet touched the smooth floor of the temple, splays of ice arcing across the floor where they contacted. Raising himself up from his hunched swarthed form, Inmortos stood straight as darkness and the force-torn veil of Aaris III’s desolation rolled from his form in icy plumes of fog, connected by the icy diadem that glistened from beneath the inky black mawed hood of Inmortos’ cowl. “The Father of Dust awaits each of us. Even the great dragon will be consumed in the end.” Calling his heavy cane to himself, Inmortos leaned upon it, a heavy weight that seemed to contrast the man’s slim robed form. The weight of what they had done on Aaris III connected to where they stood now across the cosmos. Inmortos stood as the font of the devastation, cold and lifeless. Slowly, the necromancer moved up the stairs, one step at a time. Each tap of his cane resounded with ripples in the force, the touch of doom. At the top of the dias, with creaking bones and popping joints, the god-king knelt before the different visages of The Fanged God. He was not a dragon. No, he was in kinship with a different aspect of the darkness, an eternal aspect, the inevitable entropy and decay of the entire cosmos.
  3. The Eternus was quickly flanked by a Falleen fighter escort as it broke hyperspace trailing after the Linworm-laden craft of the other Sith. There was little to fear, as a bastion of Lord Akheron, some level of display was expected and on my civilized worlds port authority escorts of some manner were standard procedure. The spirit of Inmortos was tied to the body contained in the stone sarcophagus. Even so, it inhabited the undead pilot who silently followed the directions relayed over the radio as the yacht began it’s gentle descent to the planet. Coming to a landing, the craft sat, sealed and devoid of movement and motion. The only detectable lifeform aboard wad that of the terrified lizardling.
  4. As the other Sith departed his tower, the cold darkness of Inmortos’ inner soul radiated on the force as it heaved and strained beneath the unrelenting onslaught of death until it, death, was all that was left. In the distance, Inmortos felt the dakr beast’s birth. Formed from his own machinations and magicks, mingled with the dark powers of the warrior and mentalities of the Shard, the beast was drawn to the evil font within the force. Any survivor was hunted down, bound in durasteel-strong strands of web and their soul and life were sucked from their bodies. Nothing but a husk was left; a husk that quickly dissolved into dust that was carried on the ever present winds that tore over the destroyed surface of the world. So too was the world left behind in the wake of the Sith. The world was devastated. The jungled burned and the seas boiled. Cities had been torn down. The humid sun-filled skies were replaced by a force-fueled maelstrom that coated the planet in a gray blizzard that would not weaken for years. Fire and ice, cold death, destruction and stillness, the world was a message to the galaxy to any who might defy the will of the Sith. Rising from his throne, his tower the only remaining structure that was not devastated on the world, protected by the force and power of Inmortos’ magic, Inmortos moved through the darkness. He grasped the shoulder of the young lizard. She withdrew at his frigid touch with a gasp. “Feel it,” the Lich whispered, his voice rattling the bones within his head. “Take it all in. These were your people. You are the last. You are my herald to bring the truth to the galaxy. Soon you will be among friends.” The girl began to sob. Clenching his fist, Inmortos seized the girl in an icy telekinetic grip and ripped her from her bonds where she had been secured. Walking to the edge of his tower, the ETERNUS rose to level itself with the balcony. The only occupant an undead body of a Mon Cal plucked from the watery world during Inmortos’ rule there. Stepping off the balcony, Inmortos stepped onto the extended gangplank drawing the girl in with him. The door closed behind them. Depositing the girl in the corner, she was given free reign of the sparse interior of the ship. Inmortos moved to the main chamber where he gently lay down in the stone coffin raised upon a blackened dias. The 2 ton stone cover slid shut atop, sealing the beast within. Inmortos soul left his body swirling about the cabin before coming to possess the undead decaying fish-being. Keying the comms, Inmortos’ slave activated the holo screen projecting images of the Linworm fleet commanders now under Inmortos’ command. “Fall in with the fleet until you receive orders from your new Master. We will accompany Lord Akheron and the fleet.”
  5. The onslaught of Linworm forces added to the sheer chaos that had taken ahold of Aaris III. Death was present everywhere. No prisoners were taken. None left alive as the magics of Inmortos spread like a frozen silent stain across the world, radiating from the Lich as an epicenter. The decent of warships into the atmosphere, spilling their loads of death in waves of energy and craft levelled who sections of the world, sending flames and greasy ink-comored smoke into the sky where it melded with the dull overcast of death. It was here, one could taste death on the air. It was here that the force itself rolled and churned and was then extinguished as it was drawn into the cracks the Sith carved within the very realities of life. Solus, Lord Akheron, Krath Inmortos, where they went, the silence of the grave trailed behind as a cape fit a king. High in the tower, the young girl watched in absolute horror. The ability to speak striped from her in absolute fear. The demon-droid that had bound her only added to her fright as he spoke now in tongues she could understand. No reassurances of life were enough as she was forced to behold the carnage of the only home, the only people she had ever known. Over the rising tide of icy soulfrost-bound liquid, Inmortos moved as a spectre. He carried no weapon in his malformed hands. His robe and infused crown of ice his only markings of grandeur. None stood in his way; for all that might were touched by the cool hand of crystalized eternity well before they beheld him. He moved as if through a garden of statues, each one perfectly capturing the pain and anguish of the frozen body within’s last surge of emotion. There was fear. There was agony. There was rage. There was defeat. Each one a twisted display of what would become those who sinned against the Sith with their pride and ungratefulness. Their souls bound forever beyond the horizon, unable to live and yet unable to die. Useless to the necromancer and untouchable by the healer. They were truly gone. Whatever heavens or hells awaited them left gaping forevermore. As the city was laid waste about him, Inmortos moved towards his tower. It was a pinnacle, shrouded by ancient spells and entrapments, shielded from the onslaught within an eternal grasp of Inmortos’ icy power. Gone were the walls and labyrinths. No more guards or mazes stood to keep the tower from the people. The people were no more; their lives extinguished across the world. Snuffed out as if they never were. The crumbling foundations that remained would be turned to dust in a short time as the storms of the world unleashed themselves with pure intensity. There was nothing to stop them as the world itself grieved the loss of it’s facade, born back to a primordial time before life came to exist on the rock. Ascending the tower, Inmortos found Somus and his charge. “You have done well Apprentice. I will see to it that you are rewarded in kind.” He hissed, a mixture of pleasure and pain permeating his voice as utter coldness filled the throne room and spilled forth from the balcony in hazy waves of destruction. “I would ask but one more thing. Turn the fiery breath of The Dragon unto the seas. Boil them. See to it that nothing of life remains hidden from your sight. Once this world is purged, we will take all that we have learned to a galaxy that opposes the Sith.” Reaching into his robes, Inmortos removed a heavy skeleton key of polished brass. He handed it to the assassin. “This will grant you access to the subterranean levels of my tower. There within my libraries lies a laboratory. In it are potions and elixirs. Use them. Pour them Into the sea. Destroy all life there and perhaps, if you are strong enough, a Sithspawn demon might emerge to complete the rending of my world.” ”But be warned.” He added with earnest. “To touch my library, invites death beyond that your crystalline shell could imagine or behold.” With a skeletal hand, Inmortos caressed the girl’s face. Even as she was bound, her flesh recoiled in terror at the cold evil that exuded from the cryomancer. Without a word, Inmortos turned. He plunged himself into the darkness of his throne room and made his way ro his throne. Turning he sat, his hands finding their natural places along the great armrests. For one last time, Inmortos the god-king of Aaris III would sit enthroned over his people. He would lead them to the end; for he was their king. Outside overhead and across the world, loud cracks shattered the sky as all heat began to be drawn from the world, consumed by the vortex of power that was a god enthroned. In it’s last, the world would know it’s place, at the feet of the Sith.
  6. The frigid soulfrost soaked into the hard packed tunnels and catacombs beneath the ancient mechanized city. Their icy tendrils a death of cold fear that sapped the lifeblood and soul-stuff from the victims caught within it’s grasp. As Inmortos moved, so did the icy touch of death spread until it became a self-powered force of death that spread outwards, soaking into the soils and sapping the life from the jungles beyond with it’s deathly touch. Trees withered and fell, the green lush life that shrouded Inmortos’ death cult city and distant villages dying as if winter came upon them in an instant. The snapping of limbs echoed through the stillness of the jungles as it contained everything in an eternal tomb of cold stillness. Animals, plants, even the force slowed into silence at it’s touch. When it reached the outlying villages, it was as if a curse of old had been cast upon them. Cries of anguish and pain pierced the air in hot steamy breathes only to be choked out of existence. And it continued to spread, growing as it fed on the eternal entropy of nothingness; a cold wake of emptiness in it’s shadow. And as Inmortos moved, so too did the levels of freezing liquid rise until they began to bubble forth through sewers and toilets and basement entrances. Screams filled the city as the people, his people, were driven into the streets or consumed in icy pallor, their bodies twisted and broken in grotesque forms, statues to showcase the absolute power of darkness. Their very souls consumed and obliterated; condemned to eternity between worlds, neither existing or passed on, useless to the necromancer, useless beyond their pain and anguish stilled in the freezing wet air. Such was a world that would serve as a testament to those who defied the Sith; to those who would refuse to embrace the gifts granted to them by the rule of the Dark Lord. Such a world had been plucked by Inmortos, a chosen jewel, to complete his own crown; but now in icy eternal stillness, would stand as a testament to the zeal by which those who served darkness would go in the service of their lord. Emerging from the catacombs, a flush of soul-snaring ice water crashing behind and about him; Inmortos entered the panic-stricken streets. Not one of those who had worshipped at his feet clung to him for salvation. They did bot beg for forgiveness, for that he would have granted. Instead they raced about in fear as their ways of escape were cut off by tendrils of ice and soulfrost, and frigid damnation. Raising his hands the waters crashed about him, freezing all they touched. Inmortos own breath clouded on the air, mingling with the last breaths of those he had sought to save. Their cries fell silent about them. Overhead, the gray clouds churned as the vortexes of temperatures and humidity mixed and mingled. Thunderclaps rolled like heavenly invisible beasts across the sky. I. The distance, jagged fingers of lightning leapt downward to ignite the dried and dead jungles, an inferno that clashed and contrasted with the stillness. It was two sides of the same coin, icy death and raging destruction, a symbol of the Sith that carved their place on this world. It would all end the same, in ash and dust, eternal stillness across a world devoid of all bit the barest of life. In the distance, billows of smoke poured upwards, the blacks and grays mingling with the sky. It was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. The winds of the storms w the tower and the world, uncontrolled by the Sith, a byproduct of the devastation as it tore outwards across the world. And through it all, Inmortos moved, a specter, Dust, a god-king, the herald of damnation to the unworthy, a servant to the dark lord Nyrys, kin to the Fanged God himself. Cold was his crown and ice his mantle, his scepter a dagger of undead, and his cloak death itself. Raising the communicator, Inmortos rasped. “Lord Akheron. Crystal of The Blade of Darkness. Bring the ships in closer. Reduce this world to rubble. Unleash your servants. Kill the rest. Stack the unfrozen bodies as cordwood, a gift the Empress from our unholy triad. Leave those bound to the ice.”
  7. Inmortos watched as Akheron dressed. He did not watch the Sith warrior, his gaze remained outward down the steps unto the gathering of shadowy clad agents of death. As the Tsis covered his face to step up beside the Lich-king, Inmortos spoke, having considered the man’s lengthy offer. “Let it be so. We shall feast together on blood and souls.” Looking out to the amassed crowd of sorcerers, he spoke again. The necromancer’s voice was a low hiss between his exposed cracked teeth. “Your gifts are most welcome. The limnal blade can be used to sap their souls” he spoke referencing the gift he had given Akheron. “But be warned. These apprentices of mine have been trained in the arts of death and dying.” Raising his hands, Inmortos’ melted boney fingers flicked up and down manipulating the deep stillness of the force that pooled beneath the waves kf fear that were beginning to cascade about the city. Inmortos’ dry raspy tongue flicked across the fronts of his teeth. He could taste it. They knew something was going on. The air cracked as icy spikes materialized from the street up. They angled inwards forming a crisscrossed palisade of razored spears preventing any escape. ”My gift for the Clan.” He hissed to Akheron as he turned to disappear into the temple _________________________ At the base of the tower, more necromancers began to gather. Their chants rose through the air up towards the top of the tower, their ancient words calling forth ancient powers from beyond the graves buried and forgotten beneath the surface of the world. All of it. It all needed to be purged. Death beyond the powers of even the greatest necromancer to return. _________________________ Back into his burial chamber. Back down into the catacombs. Inmortos was carried by the winds of his own cryomancic power; a fast-moving wraith of icy death. In the depths of the catacombs, through the walls of stacked bodies, he moved. He could feel the lingering power of death. Extending his hands as he walked, the god-king of Aaris III raked his boney fingers against the exposed bones. A scratchey ratcheting sound followed in the winds that carried him. The very power of souls leeched from the bones, pooling as icy waters in the floors of the catacombs. Drawing from the bones throughout the underground, warrens froze, cementing families in place, settling an eerie stillness, a stillness even absent in death, within the graves. The icy waters began to pool until they coated the floors in slick frigid liqiud. To touch it invited death and over it, the Lich-king flowed like a nightmare. The cleanse of Aaris III had begun.
  8. Slowly the necromancer picked himself off of the hallowed floor, standing as tall as he could face to face with the warrior. His robes were tattered revealing a mixture of rotted peeling flesh and bleached skeletonized bones; the truth of being an accursed Lich. Neither dead, nor fully living, bound in the gray shadows of twilight. Reaching forward, he places a withered skeletal hand on the muscled shoulder of Akheron’s mutant arm. Before he could speak, Somus clanked into view, babbling unintelligibly as he jerked and heaved towards the door. “Your apprentice. He has been filled with the power of the Baptism.” Clearing his throat, Inmortos called to the apprentice. “Find a youth. Bind him in my tower. It will be a witness to our sacrifice.” Turning back to Akheron his voice lowered, “that is if you will allow it? The dark side does not bequeath these gifts without goal or gain. A power like this demands sacrifice. These people are ungrateful, more so they seek to usurp my power. They do not understand the gifts they have been given or the sacrifices such a gift entails. You and I, perhaps even your follower, know this. Our service to the Dark Lord comes with sacrifice. Take your gifts. Join me in one final great sacrifice. Together, we will burn this world. Have your servants gather what treasures you may desire as payment.” Inmortos turned, his skeletal form gliding ghost-like towards the doorway of his temple. Stopping he looked out over the city as it splayed outward, the horizon captivated by the towering swirled blue ziggurat. Staring out over the world he had been given godship over, Inmortos regarded it for a long moment. The words of Sheog hovered in his mind. He knew what he had to do. Did he have the strength? Suddenly, a flash, deep within the god-king’s mind’s eye. A world of ash, blown on the wind, clouding the sky. Sulfur and brimstone, death, seared the nostrils. All that remained was one spiraling tower. A world destroyed. The force heaving in grief. And then just as suddenly, he was back. A vision. It had been a vision. Letting go of the mantle he had instinctively gripped to remain standing, long boney indentations left in the soft gold, Inmortos turned back to the interior where Akheron stood. Raising his hand, ripples of then force swirled. The sacrificial dagger that lay within the empty pool careened through the air. It landed heavily in the undead Sith’s outstretched hand. His arm dropped several inches as the weight settled in. It was heavier than before. Laden with the deaths it had inflicted, the razored blade vibrated with the number of lives held within the void. All it would take was a death wrought by the blade to unleash a life within transforming foe to friend; crushing one life and soul to make room for one bound unnaturally to this plane. “Solus.” He called out after the mechanized monster, “death here is a different matter. These lizards are primitive and vicious. They carry the power of the necromancer. Bodies must be vanquished and souls crushed. On Aaris, the dead do not remain so for long.” ”Akheron. These ships you brought me. How might I command them? Bend them to my will and together we will turn this vibrant world into a cursed graveyard. Even the force will be dead here, a testament to those who defy the will of the Sith, a message to those who might defy the Lord of Darkness.”Inmortos turned, gliding back into the temple. He whirled by the Sith Warrior carried on an aura of icy breath back towards his burial chamber. Within he cast off his tattered robes, his elixirs and weapons clattering to the floor. From a skeletal mannequin, Inmortos withdrew a splendid cloak of refined denebrillan star silk and wrapped it about himself calling his tools and blades uoward, concealing them in his robes. Clasping his blackened saber hilt in his morphed hand, Inmortos activated his accursed weapon. A blackened void erupted from the hilt. It drew in the light, casting long shadows as steam rolled off the weapon bathing the area about the necromancer in fog. “COME.” the voice of Inmortos carried on the force itself as it spread across his citadel, broadcasting from his throne in the sky. ”I am calling my necromancers to me. They will assemble here, at my temple, or outside my throne room. They are the key to the eternal resurrection and damnation of these people. Kill them. Destroy their souls, a sacrifice of my power to the force and the Dark Lord. Then kill the rest, casting their souls beyond the void to to the nether regions of the force.”
  9. Inmortos stood silently, the hateful chanting of his minions a backdrop to the impromptu training offered by Master to Apprentice. This was not his place and he would allow it uncontested for it furthered his own agenda. As the warrior disrobed, Inmortos watched with keen fascination, taking in the old wounds and tattoos. The mechanized limbs almost caused the necromancer to lurch forward, to grab the hulking Sith; but he refrained. He was a warrior; if he chose to take these limbs into the pool, he would need to be strong enough to weather what was to come. If he could not, he was unworthy the titles he carried. As the Tsis slid into the hot volatile blood, Inmortos’ eyes were called to the mechanical chassis of Solus. In the warping vortex of the force, he could feel the shard reaching out to touch the sea of churned icy power. Slowly he exposed his true self, a crystal, and wavering in the air currents plunked into the boil of blood, quickly vanishing from sight. Inmortos knew what must come next, as did his followers. To toss a stitched amalgamation of corpses into the pool would birth a Sithspawn powered by the lives of countless other tormented lives and souls. To do so to the living, the willing, changed the formula. Ancient magics were often best left untrifled with. Raising his skeletal hands into the air, Inmortos seemed to direct the howling symphony of the cabal’s chants as they dissolved into vicious screams of forgotten tongues and forbidden spells. The air itself, cold and dead, pulsated with an otherworldly life, like that of a heartbeat of a massive monster held just beyond the veil. The candelabras along the walls seemed to dim before they were snuffed out by the vortex’s cold icy breath. The room was bathed in inky black for but a moment until arcing spears of ice traced invisible lines through the air, crackibg and arcing like a solidified extension of force lightning. The ice glowed, a spiderweb of eerie blue that caused the blood to appear black. It raced forward and in a moment struck each necromancer acolyte in the chest with an explosion of fiery dark side power. Their bodies tumbled forward into the pool, each landing with a splatter before it was violently expelled outward and upward in a gout of blood red flame. Tossed to the edges and corners of the chamber the bodies fizzled and burned melting the icy tendrils as they were turned to vapor in the swirling air. Blood flowed from open wounds and gaping mouths, winding towards the chaotic pool. The wind howled in the temple. The temperatures began to solidify everything it touched and in the din, the banshee wails of madness erupted from each fallen servant of the god-king mixing with the tempest of dark side power and wind. In it, Inmortos stood at the head of the pool, his hands raised upwards, bathed in the flickering red light of the burning bodies. He looked like a demon called forth from the deepest pits, hewn from the chamber floors of hell itself. Gone were the chants, gone were the hateful acolytes. What remained was Inmortos, the manifestation of the dark side itself, and the two Sith in the blood. The blood would burn acidic and hungry against the unnatural extensions of Akheron, seeking to dissolve them and not stopping there as they sought to eat away at the body they were sewn to. Bathing the Shard entirely, the blood seemed to search and prod for any cleft or crack upon which it could slither towards the center of the stone, to touch and intermingle with it’s soul. Inmortos stepped forward, his rotted feet submerging into the blood on the first step as he looked above into the vortex calling the spirits of the hateful dead necromancers, bidding them towards his outstretched undead hands. They screamed; their ethereal voices driven to madness by their darkness fueled deaths; unable to leave the chamber and commanded by he that was neither alive nor dead. They continued to scream until they coalesced into one shimmering unstable vortex between Inmortos’s hands. The bone of the Lich-king began to smoke as the raw spirits dissolved bot just flesh but any semblance of life. Holding them there in the dark side maelstrom Inmortos screamed. “ODAKLE SI DOŚAO, VEZAN VEČOM ZA MOIU VOLIU. BUDINSLOBODAN NIKAD VIŠE JER SI MOJ U SMRTI KAO U ŽIVOTU. TVOJA MOĆ VIŠE NIJE TVOJA; VEZANI GRIJESIMA VAŠIM ZA DRUGOGA. IDI!!!” His voice howled into the vortex seeming to both draw from the presence and feed into it, fueling the necromancer’s power as he heaved the sphere of burning souls downwards slamming it into the blood. Upon touch the sphere shattered the final eternal death screams erupting as the souls spread across the pool and were enveloped by the blood in fiery columns of eternal destruction. The bodies were quick to follow as they turned to ash whipped by the wind and clasped by the darkness until they seemed to cease to be or ever existed save for the fires that burned where the bodies once had laid. Inmortos, still smoking as pain radiated from his melted hands, reached into the deep sleeves of his heavy robe. Gingerly he removed the sacrificial dagger he had been presented. He felt it’s weight, the weight of deaths innumerable. Using it, he slashed himself, tearing his robes to ribbons and raking deep grooves across the rotted flesh that still covered some of his body. Blood and ichor flowed freely down the bleached exposed bone and tattered robes until it reached the pool he stood in. “KREV Z KRVE, ŽIVOT SE ZNOVU ROZIL. VŠECHNY SILNICE MEANDEUJÍ, ALE MAKONEC VESOU K POŠETILOSTI.” He chanted as he set about mutulating his flesh, strips of rotted meat abd flesh splashing into the ever increasingly tumultuous bloody pool. The heavy liquid lapped at the god-king’s With each surging wave within the pool, the pulsating presence’s power was bound to the blood until it grew even heavier, as liquified steel. It clung to the bodies of Akheron and Solus and pulled at them, seeking to burn away any impurity of life, of the mind, to wash them anew and to fill their voids with life. For in these two presented a dark hope, a folly once given up eternally begotten. In every man there was life, and where life ended, death. The lives of those slain, ensnared within the pool fought one another, clashing against one another like saber against saber. The strongest life forces would bind themselves to the shadows of death found within those in the pool and be carried unto the promise of new life upon their backs. The blood at Inmortos’ feet retreated from the cold stench of death that carried upon his aura. For he was an enigma, one who might give the gift of the life of another, but unable to partake himself. He stood alone. Casting the Sith blade into the blood, a plume of smoke and fire erupted as if lava spewed forth from a fissure. The blood pulled the heavy weapon downwards into the abyss, the same abyss that sought to drown the lives of Akheron and Solus; to snuff them out and fill them anew, vessels of escape from the torments of undying back to the world of the living. The blade, saturated with death itself, was quickly consumed, it’s power leeched and replenished into an unholy weapon of might and ritual deep within the pit. The very seams of reality seemed to strain above the pool, a monstrous presence straining against the binding shackles of reality and time. A deep and wicked voice bellowed in a strange tongue rarely heard by those of mortal ears; and one that when heard would drive those who heard it beyond the brink into utter madness. “PUB RAWS LI TUS PLIGIS TXHUA LUB NEEJ POOB UBDOS KUV SAW HLUA TXHUA TUS TUAG NPLIG TAU KUV TCOM NYEM UA TXHUA YARN RAU KUV YUAV THIAB PUB RAWS LI LUB TEEB” Even Inmortos shuddered at the words, tumbling backwards to fall upon the stairs in a pile of his own bones and robes. He looked up just as a searing bolt of red lightning arced from the void and struck the blood filled pool. With a thunderclap the room erupted in a blinding flash of red. In that moment, all life ceased within the confines of the temple. Death, souls, they mattered not as the beast that was the netherside of the force itself consumed all. A black hole void of insatiable hunger; and then it was gone. For what could have been minutes or days, but in truth was hours. The temple lay a desolate and barren waste until the force retreated, bound once again by the shackles of the living force. The blood was gone. At the bottom of the stone pool lay the Shard, the Tsis or what remained of him, and the dagger. Esch swelled with unholy energy, life that was not their own that cried out for vengeance. Beside the pool, Inmortos lay, a mass of bone and blood and ichor. And as the unnatural life that he possessed returned to him, Inmortos had but the strength to right himself, to feel a clarity wrought by the purge of the darkness. He knew what must be done and he looked towards the coming battle to complete it. He needed more. With a dry rattled cough, he wheezed. “No soul must be left unsundered. Take what you can. Destroy them all. This world will serve as a catalyst to the power of the dark side; to the dark lord.”
  10. The chanting continued into a crescendo of long lost languages and words, spells that wove the very fabrics of the force and bound it with unnatural intricacies to the blood itself. The surface of the pool began to gurgle and sway. The thick concoction stirred to to life, the life of the lost contained within it’s very earthen grasp. And as the voices rose, so too did the blood until it danced atop the pool like it was being pelted by vicious drops of invisible rain. It was the force bound to the life. Inmortos turned back to Solus, reaching his free hand up to drop back his deep cowl revealing a skeletonized face, a liplessly framed maw of ragged teeth, lidless eyes, and rotted flesh peeling from the bleached bone beneath. “The spirit may be willing, but the body is but a vessel, weak . . . and replaceable, unable to contain the power of the dark side.” Stepping to the edge of the pool, Inmortos gestured again bidding them enter. “No sacrifice is without cost Lord Akheron. You know that to defile a fellow Sith invites retribution by the Dark Lord. This gift is for me as much as it is you. It is my contribution to the fall of the Rebellion. What you do with this power afterwards will be to the glory of the Sith Empire, to the praise of our Empress, and the rending of the force itself. ” Steam rose from the writhing blood. The temperatures of the air within the Temple plummeting to below freezing in mere moments until the only source of heat within the hall was the viciously churning blood itself. Focusing his unblinking eyes on the Sith Warrior he spoke, his voice low. “Your servant speaks of things he does not know Lord Akheron.” He smiled, his skulled face twisted in evil delight as he extebded his hands in gracious explanation. ”The secrets of the Father of Dust are not to be trifled with. You know this. Enter the blood. Receive the gifts offered by the shedding of innocence. Taste true darkness. Become invigorated with the powers of a true Sith. Powers of life that transcend death. Powers of death that envelope life. Be consumed by the lifeblood of eternity and transformed into servants of The Maimed Beast made whole.” Yes, Inmortos knew of these servants of the Fanged God. Their religion as ancient as the spells he himself controlled. They both extended beyond the meager origins of the Sith people. Inmortos had studied their manuscripts in his quest to control death itself. In them he found a fanatic zeal that rivaled his own. He would enable these servants of the Fanged God to serve their deity, to serve the Sith, to fulfill Inmortos’ oath. In return, they would be filled with the lives of countless beings not their own, with souls shackled to the blood seeking release; unleashed upon a galaxy unknowing and deserving of destruction. In their path, Inmortos would call forth the legions of the dead. Their lives and deaths serving to advance his own agenda of immortality. Stepping backwards, the chanting of Inmortos’ acolytes hung in the frigid air as the temperatures continued to plummet. The lizards’ green-hued skin paled and turned blue, their bodies shaking as their very life was drawn from their cold-blooded bodies, lost to the cold bottomless hunger of stillness. And yet they chanted onward, knowing the punishments that would await them should their magics fail. The necromancer-king looked at the Sith Warrior and his Apprentice. His voice grated lowly and with power. “Enter the blood. Be unshackled from that which holds you back.” His words were cold and commanding. He would not offer such a gift again. To rebuff him would be to insult the god-king’s hospitality, to insult Inmortos himself.
  11. A wicked smile crept across Inmortos’ face. “To kill. It seems so simple to the uniformed. When one is a master over the gateways of life and death, things become . . . complex young saber stone.” He addressed Solus as he stood. Inclining his head to Akheron he offered a bow. “Your gifts are of great kindness; but we both serve under the Dark Lord. We are brothers in the Sith. No gift is necessary from an equal.” Not that he would not take them. Reaching forward, Inmortos grasped the sacrificial blade in his hand. He felt the weight it bore, a dark soul-pulling weight; bearing the weight of the countless lives. It was heavy in his hand. “This blade,” he spoke reverently, “has spilled immeasurable blood. A fitting gift my friend. Come.” He gestured to the duo as he walked, slowly and purposely towards the inner stairwell, a much safer, albeit dark and cold, descent than the narrow windswept stairs outside. “We should test out this new tool. Did you not come for a Baptism?”He tucked the gift into his swirling black robes. It was a lonely descent bare of the pomp, circumstance, and servants usually afforded a god or a king. It was more like a decrepit miser alone in his castle; yet the palace seemed to yield to the dark shadow of a man, the Lich. Leaning heavily on his staff, Inmortos led the way through the dripping stairs and halls. “Soulfrost.” He said of the drips, pointing out a pool of it on the floor. “Avoid it lest you wish to be frozen in time. Nasty way to lose a foot. The sword I gifted you Akheron, is bonded with it. It will draw energy, even from souls, and dissipate it.” Moving through the winding inner channels of the necropolis, Inmortos followed a map only imprinted on his mind. In truth, the tunnels moved with the will of the dark side, bound to his crystalline throne, bound to Inmortos by way of the icy soulfrost diadem fused to his skull. He continued to speak as they moved. “Look at my body saber stone. You thought you destroyed me on Naboo. In truth, you released me from the forces that sought my indentured servitude, from my weak form. Now, I rule here as a god. To punish such a people who controlled this power, to destroy them takes more than snuffing their lives like candles.” It was an admission, Inmortos had willed his death at the hands of Solus. An orchestrated plan to return to his own world, this world, a world that seemed revolted by his mere presence. And they continued, into the underground of the city, the crypts and catacombs of an ancient people long forgotten. Here Inmortos fell silent. The ancient pale of death reverently held in the air. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, were buried here. Their lives and even their deaths forgotten; but in those deaths they served a greater purpose. Such was the way of Inmortos’ own undead legions, only . . . only these had died willingly for the greater good. He could taste it. Such devotion made him feel sick now. Their descendants so fallen from their honorary lineage. Through undisturbed dust and heavy cobwebs they moved until they found a stair. Upwards, finally, into a holy sepulcher full of splendid jewels and precious metal laden furniture. It was a burial chamber fit for a king, containing all that was needed in the afterlife. The treasures of systems and worlds. Even some of the treasures of Apothos’ storehouses of artifacts on Mon Cal. “Behold. My crypt. Touch not the cursed treasure. It will bring death” Central to the room, a gold covered sarcophagi bearing the visage of Inmortos, but in his prime, sat open. It’s silken lining showing impressions of having been used. Walking to the only wall that was not gilded in depictions of Inmortos’ life abd power, the Lich king ran a skeletal finger along the ruins carved into the stone. He muttered and mumbled the words as he read. It was an ancient forgotten tongue that predated even the Sith; a language from before the galaxies had been explored. Ancient spells that secured the tomb. The walls began to shake and the great rune-inscribed stone rolled back from the mouth of the crypt exposing a glistening temple on the other side. It was the Temple of Inmortos. The chanting was apparent as soon as the stone was moved away. Nearly one-hundred shrouded necromancers raised their voices, their spells caused the ornate statues and decorations to swirl in the heavy force-laden air. It was unnatural and evil. It was worshipful, ancients chants of unforeseen power. Inmortos had raised the best and brightest of the force-sensitive children of the lizardfolk up as necromancers in his own image. They ruled the people in his place. His power, was their own. As the dark master came into the sight of his acolytes, their disdain was palpable, as was their fear. Before, Inmortos had not cared. The words of Sheog still played at the back of his mind. What was the good of it all. None of this was what drew the eye of any who were brought into this inner sanctum. A full-sized pool of churning blood, deep and long. One could easily submerge within. “Blood.” Inmortos spat the word. “Sacrifices to the god-king gleaned by ad from the warriors of the Sith, of The Spider-King himself. Gifts to a loyal servant.” Inmortos stepped up the golden gilded steps that descended into the pool. His eyes surveilled his acolytes. Their chanting continued uninterrupted, but their eyes; their eyes darted too and fro, glancing at the Sith who had entered the room from the sealed burial chamber. ”Do you feel it my brothers? Step into the pool, wade into it’s warm embrace. Feel the taste of life on your tongues, knowing it is mine to command. This is the Baptism of Blood and I, Inmortos, the god-king of Death, will induct you into the grasp of the death and will bathe you in the life of the lost.” Before the Sith could enter however, Inmortos’ hand shot outwards to catch Solus in the chest. He stared at Akheron. With a furor in his bulging lidless eyes he whispered, “No machine. No technology. Just the naked body and soul; lest the blood boil and the initiate become a sacrifice!” The voices of the necromancer cabal rose with fervor all about them. They knew what was about to come and they hungered for another life to add to the pool.
  12. Inmortos sat. He was unmoving, as the dead. His rage at the people, his people, was palpable. It manifest as a deadly humid cold that rolled from he and his throne. In the force, it was a heavy blanket in the void, a snow covered stillness that reached as far as he could perceive, a calm deathly cold stillness uninterrupted. It was as if the force itself was heavy and frozen within the grasp of his undead furor. And so he remained until he felt a disturbance. Something above. A presence he had known before. The thick clouds that extended over and out from his city thickened in innate reaction, the winds high up in the atmosphere increasing to a howl. The people of Inmortos had little in the lines of air defenses, a few anti-aircraft emplacements from the smugglers that he had routed upon his ascension to godhood. There was little need. The powers of cold and death were enough. The people could retreat to their underground boroughs. Inmortos slowly stood, staring at the ceiling as if he could perceive through the icy ceiling. It was the stench of the shard that had tried to slay him on Naboo. A smile twisted the rotted flesh across the exposed bone of his face. This would be a surprise. Something else. Something he had felt on Solus and on his former apprentice, Apothos, the touch, the mark of he who had trained them. The Sith Warrior, Akheron. They had come at his behest afterall, to receive the anointment of blood; and oh would there be blood. Such would be the wound in the force with the powers death that Inmortos would bestow upon them; should they survive it. Channelled through the power of his throne, Inmortos called to the legions of undead. They may despise him, but he had given the him life. He alone held the power to control them, to bend them to his will; and he would do so now. Assembling a Legion of armored and armed undead, decaying and mangled, murderous and hungering, Inmortos directed them to the sole landing pad within his citadel, alongside where his own shuttle sat. These blackened grotesque lizards would meet the envoy of his fellow Sith. Should they prove true, they would escort him to his throne room. So they stood, the legion of undead. Buffeted as the craft landed, they stood, staring unblinkingly with cold lifeless eyes in the cold heavy air. As the craft opened to regurgitate it’s passengers, the undead commander of the legion, a musclebound beast with fractured linbs and head dangling at an odd angle, one eye lolling from his eye socket, stepped forward. In his hands he held a wickedly barbed spear of blackened metal. “Our Master Inmortossss bidsss thee welcome Lordsss of the Sssssith. He hassss commanded that we are to essscort you to his throne room where you may beg pennance for your ssssinssss.” The undead’s voice dripped with scorn and hatred as his forked tongue flicked in and out trying to smell the new arrivals in the snowy air. Forming around the Sith, the rotting undead encircled Akheron and Solus and their escort of linworms, leading them through the city; their short bodies carving a path through the ever falling heavy snow. In the near distance, rose the necropolis of Inmortos, crafted from alchemically formed ice and soul frost. Thick jagged walls encircled a castle of darkness, the middle of which rose spiraling to the clouds in an intricately carved ziggurat that seemed to radiate extreme cold, drawing the gray light from the air and casting the world around it in shadows. At the massive sealed gates the legion stopped until unseen guards pushed open the doors with a slow yawning creak. Inside, darkness and cold reigned in the absolute still silence. None of the legions dared break it. There was no one inside it seemed. If they were, thy were well hidden in alcoves and winding halls. Through it all they marched, weapons held at the ready to subdue any that tried to escape with undead violence of steel, tooth, and poisoned claw. They dod not stop until they reached the narrow winding steps that curved to the right up the exterior of Inmortos’ tower. The winds whipped loudly above, sending shards of snow and ice tearing like razors through the air. It was here the escort stopped, parting to allow the party access to the narrow stairs that circled upwards about the exterior of the massive spire. “Climb. Those who live will have gained an audience with our god.” The lizard spat before returning to the ranks where they stood, motionless. The thick walls of eternally frozen souls and suffering emotions were slick with the wept overflow of the damned, weeping from the very pores of the ice, slowly solidified by the cold winds; an ever expanding growth of Inmortos’ throne. Atop the spire, a walkway rhat was a mere foot and a half wide, curved to connect to the balcony of Inmortos’ throne room that overlooked the world below. Within, the balcony turned into the pressing darkness of the frozen throne room. Atop a dias of dozens od icy stairs on his massive throne of power, a conduit of Inmortos’ world power, sat the Lich King. He was slumped against one arm rest, his jaw agape and maw hanging open. He looked dead and even the force was dead around him in this room. As those who survived the climb to the throne room entered, Inmortos slowly righted himself. His body creaked and cracked. His skeletal joints popped. Any smile or sense of joy was gone from his face. Seeing the Sith he asked one question. “Did you feel it? They hate he who has given them eternity, he who plucked them from the gutter unto eternal salvation.”
  13. DEATHFROST: (Necromancy & Cryomancy) hallowed burial grounds, haunted by the dead contained within, they draw the heat from the summer sky creating an unnatural chill in the air. With the skill of a necromancer, one skilled in the manipulations of the absolute stillness of lifelessness, can recreate that sheer unnatural cold stillness all about them. It clouds the force with an ethereal dark stillness that strives to obscure and hinder the natural flow of the light side of the force, just as it frosts viewscreens and displays cracking or clouding them in an effort to make them opaque and unusable. In a battlefield’s chaos, it is an unnatural calm that claws at the minds of the unprepared; for Peace Is A Lie. Deathfrost can also be harvested and kept within silvered vials. When consumed it can severely strain one’s connection to the light side of the force, inflicting massive amounts of pain as it feels like all of the goodness is frozen away within a victim’s body. When applied directly to vliewscreens and other transparent surfaces they immediately become opaque and spiderwebbed with fingers of ice. THE FROZEN FLAME: (Cryomancy & Pyromancy) Where a pyromancer can be defined by the unbridled emotions of the dark side, a cryomancer is defined by the absolute stillness of the void within their soul. Combined, the Sith Sorcerer’s emotions are viral and deep; completely contained if not controlled in an absolute display of willpower. Allowed to show in carefully controlled applications of power, the sorcerer emits flaming gouts of eerie blue-green flames that do not burn, but draw the very heat from whatever they touch, destroying everything in their path with icy tendrils of absolute destruction. These flames can be applied to any pyromancy spell, directed from the frozen hands of a skilled cryomancer, or erupted into being wherever suitable sustenance to feed the frigid flames within a 25 foot radius of the caster. These flames once born take on a still life of their own; silently sublimating whatever they touch, molecule by molecule. *This spells mechanically serves to create cold blue-green flames with all the powers and destructions of fire, but with cold as a defining factor instead of heat. FROSTFLAME BLADE: (Cryomancy & Pyromancy😞 Using the powers of the frozen flame, a Sith sorcerer can forge a Sith steel blade of unparalleled beaty. Even the most simple of weapons glisten with a deadly spark that speaks to their unnatural birth. Ever razor sharp, a frostflame blade can grapple with the superheated plasma of a lightsaber, disappating the weapon’s slicing heat instantaneously into the surrounding air as cool steam. This does not disable an opponent’s weapon, only served to make the weapon capable of being used against a saber-wielding foe. The weapon can only be broken by being completely submerged in a superheated bath or reforged by a smith trained in the arts of how it was forged. Frostflamed Sith steel is difficult to manipulate, requiring a surgeon’s precision in the force. It can be used to craft fine blades, but is too difficult to maintain to during the smithing process make broad weapons such as axeheads, shields, or armor. SACRIFICIAL FIRES: (Necromancy & Pyromancy) Sacrifices, profane and holy alike, are performed by Necromancers all the time. It takes a keen mind to recognize the power contained within the sacrificial arena. Most often, fire is involved. Drawing those flames off of the burnt sacrifices, a Krath seals them within a glowing orange bulbous flask. Unstoppering this flask, a practitioner can empty it onto a living being, the concentrated flames seeking a soul to release from it’s mortal bonds. Smashing the bottle in combat, causes an eruption of sacrificial flames that can burn flesh to ash trying to free any souls within their grasp. A user must be cautious, lest the fires find no target and seek to consume their caster. Sacrificial fires will burn intensely, but otherwise like normal flames against inanimate objects as they seek out life to consume. THE LAST BREATH: (Cryomancy & Necromancy) At the moment of death, the deceased’s spirit leaves their body. With skill and a bit of luck, a Krath trained in death and stillness can solidify that ethereal escape as it passed from the body forming it either into a grotesquely beautiful figurine of the deceased’s soul or a spherical pearls of blue-hued soul. These pearls can be used to craft exquisite jewelry of unparalleled value. The statues used to adorn the displays of the wealthiest eclectic collectors. When cracked, the soul is released in a death scream that can be unnerving to the unprepared, releasing all the pain and agony of death and being trapped on the mortal plane beyond one’s time. At the moment of it’s release the fractured soul moves like a burst of howling wind, buffeting the target. It might overturn the unsecured or unprepared, ripping at the target’s body and mind to stop their advance or do away with light cover or unsecured armor/protections. FLAMING SHAMBLERS: (Necromancy & Pyromancy) It is a simple thing to reanimate the dead, to send them charging mindlessly into battle clawing and gnawing at whoever they can grasp. Single-minded in their focus they are undeterred by pain. It is equally easy to ignite these fallen warriors as they charge adding flaming chaos to their repertoire of bludgeons and claws. When they fall, the zombies burst into flames, unusable afterwards. A caster can reanimate and ignite 1 flaming zombie for each level, rudimentarily directing them to attack their foe. The following round the zombies will ignite in gouts of flame. ARMOR OF THE INNOCENTS: (Necromancy & Cryomancy😞 Sacrificing innocents, a master Krath smith can bind hundreds of extinguished lives into a cold steel forged piece of Sith armor be it a helmet, breastplate, gauntlets, etc. This heavy armor is lightweight but able to withstand immense amounts of damage. The armor cannot be integrated with any level of technology as the spirits bound in the piece play havoc on any systems. In exchange, the armor can be used to lend an aura of fearful unnerving whispers about the immediate area of the user clawing at the minds of both the wearer and his foe. It is possible to craft an entire suit of this armor for a Sith Warrior; he being the only one powerful enough to wear it. Individualized pieces can be worn by anyone. The more armor worn the greater the area of effect and level of distraction afforded to the wearer. This ranges from direct contact, with soft terrifying whispers hissing terrifying nothings for a single piece of armor to several feet using a full suit; the whispers presenting like a never ending cacophony, cold and unrelenting. MINDFIRE: (Necromancy & Pyromancy) Having learned the profane paths of death, and knowing how to traverse these planes, has gifted necromancers with an innate vision of how things are and what they can be. Mastering the power of the flame, a skilled necromancer can use the purging fires of destruction to eradicate the illusions of the Jedi and deceptions of those Sith who doubt their power. Burning away the deceptions of the mind, leaves the caster with a clarity of mind sharpened by the pain of the flames. The caster can use this power on himself or on another with a touch to the temple and a flash of burning fire. PEACE OF THE DEAD: (Cryomancy & Necromancy) The devoted Krath knows that peace is a lie, that there is only passion, but that the two are not mutually exclusive. Rare amongst the Sith, the Krath who knows the power of stagnation, knows that he can encase the power of the dark side, the passions that so readily destroy his brethren, in a void made of death and destruction. This creates an unnatural deathly stillness, a peace that gnaws at the very edges of one’s soul. It is here, alone, that the caster feels most at ease. If left in it too long, the unorepared can be driven to madness. Screaming self-mutilation and blind attacks erupting from the weak minded and painful twitching desires for action playing at the minds of all who are touched; restlessness taking hold and urging action, any action. To be left still in this void of despair is unnatural. With great application, a sorcerer can encompass the area about him. Sitting in silent stillness, the Krath opens himself up to the void beneath the swirling vortexes of the force. The longer he sits, the greater his area of effect. The caster remains a beacon of shimmering darkness, a black hole that cannot be hidden. This is a battlefield effect that cannot target individuals but is an area of affect focused on the caster. EXTINGUISH THE LIGHT: (Pyromancy & Cryomancy) Whereas a pyromancer can cast and guide uncontrolled flames, one also trained in cryomancy can with a gesture extinguish those flames, freezing them in ethereal stillness at the source. It is as if one flipped a switch and shut off the lights, transforming the crackling warmth and light of the fire into a cool stillness of shadow. Alternatively, the cross-trained pyro-cryomancer can transform the gaseous flames into a solidified wall, their warmth turned to cool glass obscuring whatever is within and behind. The glass can be easily shattered into razored shards and flames broken away from their fuel source will quickly be extinguished when reverted to their natural flamed form. This wall is not meant to provide more than light cover and can easily be broken by a focused attempt of a foe. It does; however allow for the manipulation of sight lines and plays havoc on infrared, heat, and motion sensors with the sudden shifts in temperatures. DISAPPEARANCE UNTO DEATH: (Necromancy & Cryomancy) With a few profane utterances, the powers of death and stagnation can be easily called upon as a cloaking robe. Settling it over one’s self the caster becomes invisible to all but the naked eye and the effect remains sustained in combat for 1 turn for each level of power held by the caster. This allows the sorcerer to hide from sensors and the like for a short period of time (1-3 rounds of battle based on level), akin to an assassin; however anything beyond this short time frame and the spell dissipates without sustained focus. Outside of combat, using a concentrated effort the caster can sustain the cloak indefinitely; however, the caster cannot engage in other profound displays of force use or agility while focusing on maintaining the blanketed cloak, lest he risks breaking the concentration of the spell by elements of acrobatics or incantations of the force.
  14. Back inside the silent crypts of his frigid necropolis, the lizard body borne Inmortos stalked. Through angled winding corridors, up and down stairs, splashing through deathly cold puddles of soul frost that solidified in icy layers on his robes, he moved until he came to the winding stairs that led upwards. Upwards through the cold and dark, empty stillness in a winding circular spiral that finally opened up into the frozen throne room of the god-king himself. Seeing his lifeless body slumped atop his soul bound throne, the body Inmortos inhabited lurched forward, his mouth falling open as his chin hit the floor. A whisp of ethereal vapor exhaled as the body returned to it’s lifeless state. Wafting upwards through the still heavy icy air the spirit of Inmortos passed through the rotted lips and maw of the skull exposed Lich, the shadow of life returned to it’s roost. With a flicker, Inmortos’ eyes rolled forward, bulging from the dark recesses of his black cowl. He sat up, his boney fingers clawing at the edges of his throne, pulling him upright. At his feet, his undead servant slowly pushed himself upwards, “Thank you, my master,” the lizardling spat. Inmortos sat, his mind a whirling vortex. It was not the cold coolness of death, but that of a soul, a mind tormented. They did not love him, the rabble. They did not need too. For they were the cattle from which he chose to love. The worthy, the chosen, elevated beyond even their peers, a chosen few amongst a chosen people. They would love him and in time, teach the masses to love as well; to love as he loved his mother and father. They would remember him, with love; as he remembered them. ”Rise.” He hissed to his servant. The undead scrambled to his feet. “Your gift is appreciated. Ask, and your reward will be yours. Anything you ask, up to a kingdom of your own.” The undead man shuddered, a chill of opportunity, a courage of ignorance granted by the dark side. A glimmer shone, perhaps, even now, months of service, pained on a metaphysical level, not dead, but not alive either; bound in a purgatory between two worlds; perhaps, this was a worthy sacrifice. Eons of torture bound in each minute of being finally collected enough to now warrant a reward, a release from this eternal condemnation. ”Freedom.” The undead lizardling hissed. “I want my life back.” ”What??” Inmortos snapped, his eyes flashing a cold danger, his temper rising. What could he mean? ”I wish to live, to love, to feel. To live and die with my family. To return to my brood and barrow in the jungle.” Slowly, Inmortos rose as the lizard spoke. The diminuative soul was so lost in the perception that perhaps his nightmare was ending that he did not recognize the cold frothing rage that sublimed from the Lich’s exposed bones. An icy fog poured from his orifices as Inmortos soul sank into a tepid eternal pool of nothingness. This one did not love him either. He pled to be released from the greatest gift the god-king could grant. This was not love. He spat upon all Inmortos gave to him, desiring a return to his unelevated primitiveness. And then, a ripple. On the unblemished surface of the eternal stillness that was the depth of the untouched force. It moved. With it so did Inmortos; his body not his own, a vessel of the darkest most ancient twisted roots of the force itself. His hand shot outwards, carrying the force of time immortal. The neuranium sacrificial dagger in the hilt of his Ithor wood cane erupted, sending splinters of sacred wood in all directions. The blade flew, an extension of the necromancer’s will, burying itself in the lizardman’s throat with a gurgle of blood. A sacrificial blade, designed to pull forth the lifeblood of the chosen and to draw their soul upwards for harvest, the weapon would do the same now. Empowered by the deepest recesses of the darkness of the primordial force, the blade sunk itself into the gargle sunset bound blood of the undead, his body sucking at the weapon and drawing it inward. And outward came the twisted soul of the undead lizard, a soul freed from life by death, but bound to a plain it was not meant for. Striding forward, Inmortos cradled the soul in his skeletal hand, as if a mother caressing the face of a child. It was a thing of beauty really, cracked as it was bound to a plain it had been freed from. Inmortos mind drifted to thoughts of his own mother, how she had loved him and cared for him. How she was gone, forgotten and discarded by the galaxy. He felt anger at the thought that she who was so beautiful, who meant so much to him, had been so easily cast aside. He loved her and it had not been enough! And these, they did not even love him. He had tried to give them what he had desired, what he needed. They rejected it, spat in his face. Inmortos’ hand snapped into a fist crushing the soul within until it’s light went out. It was no linger bound to this world, but neither would it be freed to the next. It was crushed, destroyed, gone as if the life had never existed. The dead body fell to the floor. It was useless for any sorcery now, a husk whose resources had been exhausted. Inmortos sank back into his chair a heavy sigh escaping his mouth. The masses did not love him. Those given his greatest gift did not love him. There was but one more, his priests. Surely they loved him. They worshiped the ground he walked upon did they not? Taught all that they knew, the powers of life and death. Even now, they gathered in the Temple of Inmortos preparing the profane rituals.
  15. Inmortos sat in the dark for hours. The only sounds that broke the ethereal dark stillness were the nevromancer’s raspy breathing and the howl of the wind outside. The storm was blowing a wintery gale unto the city once again; an outlet for the power that condensed within the cracked soul of the Lich-king. As he sat, slumped forward in his throne, hands holding his head resting atop his knees, Inmortos’ mind whirled, considering all that had taken place on Sullust. The Krath Master Sheog had power that Inmortos could only dream of. And yet he wanted just a sliver of it. That meeting had relayed a truth long hidden, Inmortos would need to do more to be remembered for eternity. Deep below in the snow-blanketed citadel, the people that Inmortos has favored to bring from darkness to light lived and prospered. They did so under his authority. He had pulled them from their primitive mire and gave to them that which he too sought, eternity. Surely they loved him for it. Didn't they? Wouldn’t they love him for all time, worshiping at his temple long after he had gone from among them? The idea nagged at his mind over the hours until it became an all consuming thought. He could not put it from his mind. His people, these people, loved him. He gave them no reason to hate him, to fear him, or cast him in any light but that of their savior. He knew it; but he had to hear it. With the snap of his cold boney fingers, the heavy winter silence within the throne room was shattered. The snap echoed on the dense thick air seeming to echo out the doors and throughout the tower. Within moments a single tiny lizardman materialized in the darkness. He was swarthed in dark heavy robes, the unnatural spark in his slitted eyes speaking to his undead nature. “Yessss my master?” He hissed as he bowed low, clasping an ornate staff in his right hand. ”I require your body.” Inmortos responded. “It will be returned once I have completed my walk among our people.” ”It issss assss you desssire my master.” The lizard coo’d without looking up from the floor. In an instant, the heavy dead cold air was whipped to a frenzy. It pulled at the robes of the undead necromancer and his master. The winds of the storm outside blew through the throne room with an icy blast. On that surge, Inmortos’ soul leapt from his body into the maelstrom until it was carried to the reptilian necromancer. Pitching it’s head back, the lizard’s mouth gapped in sheer pain and horror as the spirit of Inmortos dove inside taking root within the being’s chest. In the throne, Inmortos’ body slumped, lifeless. The winds died in an instant. The heavy cold air returned. Inmortos, inhabiting the body of the undead priest, suppressed his servant’s spirit as he took control. Lifting his free left hand, Inmortos fanned his clawed fingers as he looked at them through slitted eyes. His tongue whipped out of his mouth, forked and snakelike. He tasted the heavy air. It tasted cold. It tasted of death. ”Many thankssss” he hissed, his voice that of the lizards. Turning, Inmortos made his way to the stairs and began the great descent to the city below. He followed the winding paths and hallways of the soulfrost necropolis until he stood before the great wood-hewn doors that separated his private sanctum from the lives of his subjects. There, he paused. He was still alone. He had no need for guards here. His people loved him enough. Taking a deep breath, Inmortos calmed himself. He was about to receive confirmation of that which he knew to be true. Leaning against the doors, he pushed them open and set off afoot through the drifting snow into the empty streets of his citadel. The wind blew high overhead and the snow wafted down. The streets were empty as the last rays of the planet’s sun flickered through the hazy storm cover. Inmortos knew where to go. It was meal time and that meant the lizards, his people, were gathering for their evening meal and communal time in one of the many great halls he had them erect throughout the city. Making his way to the hall, Inmortos slipped in a side door. There he was greeted by a trio of spear-toting armored guards, living ones. They stared into his eyes and labeling him a necromancer, and an undead one at that, led him, rather more forcefully than he would have expected, to a pen of like-looking undead in a corner cast in shadows by the roaring hearthfire. “Another of Inmortossss’ssss exxxxpeeramentsss.” One of the guards hissed as a fourth lizardman, opened the gate to the miniature palisade, reaponding, “Pray that it is not too late for the elders to recall him from beyond.” the guardian of the gate added forlornly as he stared into the blank undead eyes of Inmortos’ host. Scrunching his nose, Inmortos went along with what was happening, confused by the act as he was jostled into the docile herd of undead lizards. Shouldering his way to the wickered fence, Inmortos could feel the heat of the flames as pots were removed from the fires and bits of meat and exotic jungle vegetables were removed and the gathered people fed. They started with the young and the old. Even they, however, got distinctly small servings. As he watched, Inmortos heard a child blaspheme his holy name only to be fearfully shushed by a parent or elder with a warning that Inmortos had spies, eyes and ears, everywhere. The longer he watched, the more he saw of the same. An ungrateful people who distrusted his gift of immortality. A people who lived in fear of catching the eye of Inmortos or the hungering attentions of his cabal of necromancers. The Lich-king felt the heart in the chest of his host grow heavy. These people did not love him. They despised him, feared his wrath, as should any from their god, he though. But in this sobering realization, Inmortos saw a glimmer of hope. Perhaps these did not love him. They were the fools upon whose backs this glorious eternity was built; ungrateful wretched peasants, nothing more. His priests, those who served him and rules at his command, surely they loved him; as do they who have been granted the gift of eternal servitude without pain or cold or death. All he would need to do was get out of hear. In this body, his force powers were limited and while these would be punished, they who dared to complain about the gifts they were given beneath the stoney visage of their god-king where they supped; that would not be yet. And so for hours, late into the night, as the wind and snow blew against the wooden walls and shutters, Inmortos stood, an unmoving undead, listening to the complaints of his people as they cursed him for everything from the food on their plates to the cold that he had summoned to protect them. Nothing, it seemed, was good enough for this wretched ungrateful people. At the end of the night, the guards opened the gates and led the undead to the doors, pushing them into the mounting piles of snow; but not before flicking handfuls of black glittering dust in each undead’s face first. When they did this to Inmortos, he felt his face burn and had he been a living being, he would have sneezed. Such a reaction was missing in the undead. As he stumbled into the snow, Inmortos’ mind began to blur, a bulk of the evening, it seemed, was trying to disappear in a haze. But they would not succeed, bound in this body, Inmortos’ soul was still strong in the force. Even as his undead body writhed against the magical powder, the necromancer called upon the force to preserve his own mind. As the other undead eventually righted themselves and set off through the snow towards their assigned positions, Inmortos picked himself up. Using his staff, he cut a path through the snow back towards his ziggurat and throne. He had learned things; but the thoughts of one great hall was hardly enough proof to prove that they did not love him. They had to. If they did not; well, he would use these blasphemers as a lesson. They would love him, just as his servants loved him.
  16. Inmortos’ shuttle broke the perpetual cloud cover over the forgotten city that now housed his towering ziggurat and expanding citadel of lifeless ice. From within his black sarcophagus, the Lich-king slowly sat up. He could taste the life within this world, beings, the press of the jungle, all of it. It was invigorating. It spoke of untapped power. It’s stench mingled with the tumultuous odors of the force. Massive sacrificial pits and fires belched smoke, putridity, and heaving force injuries high into the cold wintery sky. The thin snow-choked air churned with the powers of death and the darkside. Slowly, as with great effort, Inmortos clasped the edges of his crate with boney hands. Pain radiated outward as his joints clacked and the god-king of Aaris III stood. He shuffled to the viewport to gaze out at the city below. Reclaimed from the dense jungles, the forgotten cities and technological traps were laid bare, engulfed by the expanding crystalline walls of soulfrost and ice. The people, living in squalor beneath the surface, had scurried like rats before Inmortos had come. He had elevated them from their despair, bringing them civilization and purpose beneath his protective wings. All he asked of them was their lives. In exchange, he offered them that which he craved the most, immortality. Inmortos mind hovered on the words of the great quivering Hutt master. He could be loved. Didn’t these people love him now? Did they not worship him, the very ground he walked on? They loved him. Right? And love, wasn’t that why he was doing all this? It was his love for his father and his mother, forgotten by everyone, everyone but he, that had led him to where he stood now. No one would forget him. No one would forget the name Inmortos. These people, they loved him. The corpse at the helm brought the ship in to land. Inmortos stared out the window lost in thought the entire time. It was easy to control the mindless dead. It did not even require thought for such a simple task. As he stepped from the gangplank, Inmortos leaned heavily on the smoothed hilt of the dagger affixed within the top of his cane. All that came to meet him was a small cabal of necromancers. Sorcerers trained by his own hand in the arts beyond death. Surely they loved him. He had given them the keys to all but his innermost sanctum of his kingdom. So why did he feel nothing but disdain from these lizard men as they laid their eyes upon him? Did they desire him to never return? To take what he had built for himself? Would these people remember him if all they wanted was to take the gifts he so freely gave? The whole thing made him sick. Inmortos shouldered his way through the diminutive wizards. He had no time for them, not if their joy would not be the penance they paid to be in his majestic presence. Inmortos stalked to his ziggurat and ascended the circling stairs upwards into the sky. Within his cupped throne room atop the world, Inmortos slumped into his icy throne. His power radiated with his confliction, magnified by his throne and crown. His anger oozed from his rotted flesh and poured like ichor-filled blood across his bleach-white exposed bones. These people, surely they loved him, even if those he had granted the most power to did not. To be loved for eternity, spoken of as the great provider of an eternal existence worth living. That was what he desired. To dedicate that love to the might of the Sith would only exponentially magnify his legacy. So why did he not feel it was so? Why did he, Inmortos, the god-king, feel so alone? The walls of his throne room oozed soul frost. The frozen temperatures crystalized Inmortos’ undead breath. Within the dark side writhed and twisted echoing Inmortos’ internal conflict. Outside the first flakes of snow began to fall as temperatures dropped across the jungled continent, progressing into a winter storm.
  17. In a blink of an eye, the massive quivering Master of the Krath was gone, as if he had never been there in the first place. Inmortos was alone on this barren world. The life of the planet and by extension the force itself choked into a chilling stillness, both natural and unnatural in its crushing greatness. In that, Inmortos felt his anger at the wriggling mass disappate, drawn from his body like heat to ice; leaving only a cold, death-like stillness behind. It was empty, and in that emptiness, there was power. In that power, Inmortos felt a glimmer of peace, but more, he felt the suctioning black-hole-crushing draw of the nothingness to devour all. The Hutt’s words still held heavily on the air and weighted on the Lich’s mind. Aaris III were his. Tools bent to his will and that of none other. They existed for his benefit; and yet Sheog desired him to transform it into a show of unity towards the same Sith Master who desired to return their stranglehold on the galaxy to the forces of good? It was enough to churn the necromancer’s stomach bile and yet, already his mind was turning the instructions over in his mind. His final resting place, his legacy, turned over to another or destroyed in a show of submission. It was not in Inmortos’ nature. Yet, it was made palatable by the promise of greater powers drawn from such an act. Holding a skeletonized hand up to view it, Inmortos reminded himself. The way of the necromancer demands the greatest sacrifices. Spinning on his heel, Inmortos marched towards his ship. He, the only living being left upon the world, felt utterly alone. It was glorious, yet fear-inducing. Such power. He needed to escape; to make this power his own. But the sacrifice, would he, could he, be enough? As his ship took off, Inmortos took one last long look at the devastated world before he returned to a death-like rest. Such was the power of the dark side. He would not forget this sight; for soon, it would become his own.
  18. ORGANIZATIONAL TITLE: The Brethren (or Brotherhood) of The Sacred Bowl *referred to as “The Order” by it’s members ORGANIZATION TYPE: Insular Amoral Dark Side Religious Fraternity MEMBERS: Approximately 30 monastic acolytes known as Apostles LOCATION: Deep within wilderness of Ryloth’s side of eternal night AFFILIATION: Dark Side Worshippers, Diviners, Treasure Hunters POWERS/ABILITIES: Divination, Longevity, Memory Manipulation, Dark Side Controlled Hive Mind, Treasure Hunting & Hoarding ICON(S): A dark side infused bowl bound to the core of the planet containing an elixir of liquified dark side magic _____________________ SANCTUARY: On the dark side of Ryloth, a daunting stone sanctuary looms upwards on the rocky plains. It is invisible to the naked eye except for the dull yellow light that shines through the monastery’s windows. Not that it matters though, no one ever comes wandering this far from the habitable zone willingly. Just to get here required more than a day’s journey by speeder. The rocky terrain all but prevents anything larger than a single-seated snub fighter from landing anywhere within a survivable walking distance. Inside, great fires radiate heat to keep the cold of the Nightlands at bay. Their heat barely touched the furthest reaching quarters; making them habitable, if frigid. This alone made the quarters used for little more than sleeping beneath great piles of furred blankets. The majority of the time, acolytes were found in the great sanctuary, tending the fires, or working in adjacent rooms. The thick wooden doors enter directly into the sanctuary, timeless and worn. They rarely open and never to unknown travelers. This fact alone has contributed to the death of the few who have stumbled across their locale. _____________________ RESIDENTS: The resident Apostles of The Sacred Bowl number barely more than thirty. They hail from across the galaxy and never more than one from any particular race or world. To have more than one would be to taint the seasoning of the maker. The head of the order is currently a wizened human from Coruscant who sports a white beard that he keeps tucked into the belt about his waist. The acolytes of the order are all adorned in thick gray fur-lined robes of black. The furs harvested from predatory beasts that creep about the Nightlands. Force use by the residents is not a requirement for acceptance; although to lead, one must be. Over the ages that the order has existed, these users have augmented their sanctuary of solitude to withstand all manner of outward attack. Upon acceptance into the Order, each Apostle undergoes a 12-year indoctrination in which they are purged of all but the most basic life sustaining memories from their past lives. Each memory is carefully replaced with one divined from The Bowl to make the acolyte feel as if they have been within the walls of their sanctuary for eternity. A byproduct of this extremely painful process is an extremely extended life expectancy and resistance to disease. Although some of that may come from living at near freezing temperatures for so long. To be accepted, adherents must show that they possess powers of divination or sufficient funds so as to be used by the order to attempt to regain their former glory. Apostles of the order skilled in any of the plethora of types of divinations across the galaxy are sought after by those who have heard of the Brethren, of which there are few; for they are known for their abilities to find lost items of value and to predict the way in which a petitioner would die. Of course, this comes at great cost, and those who cannot pay for the services are killed for their heresy. _____________________ BELIEFS, HISTORY, & ICON: The Brethren of The Sacred Bowl cling to a dogma that they claim was unearthed alongside a crystallized skeleton beneath their shrine. Using the force, the founders of the order learned how to manipulate the crystals of the skeleton to craft exquisite tools, constructing a smooth receiving platform. Calling upon the force and amplifying their strength with the crystals, the founders were able to summon supplies and equipment to them from across the known and unknown universe, amassing great wealth that they hoarded within their frigid halls. They continued to raid the galaxy from the safety of their shrine for centuries, stealing priceless treasures and baubles from any that they might divine with their sacred rituals. This continued, and would have carried on unendingly, had the order not stumbled across a void in the galaxy. Deep below the Unknown Regions, a black void prevented the divinations of the order. Using the crystalized skeleton to enhance their powers to channel their sight, the members of the order were able to catch a shadowy glimpse of a table set with simple wares shrouded in shadows. It was for but a moment before the darkness blocked them out again despite any attempts at enhancement. Growing desperate, the diviners opted to do the unthinkable. They would attempt to blindly tear the table and wares from their original location to their own without knowing their exact location. Such was their thirst for the power they believed such items would convey to the holders. Uniting, the diviners encircled their summoning disc and began to chant, cutting themselves and drenching the crystals in the life-power of their own blood. The crystals glowed and dark vortexes began to open calling across the known galaxy seeking the items of their desire. It was then, that all went wrong. A massive clap of thunder exploded as eruptions of pure force energy erupted from the crystalized bones as they fractured and shattered into dust. The acolytes were thrown for miles and the winds of Ryloth increased with unholy fury. As they picked themselves up, crawling back to their shrine the faithful found it in shambles. More importantly, the summoning platform was cracked into thirty different pieces. In the center sat a blackened bowl filled to the brim with an even darker elixir. Try as they might, the crystalline dust was lost to the wind and the platform unable to ever be mended. The bowl sat atop a jagged rectangular slab permanently fused to the soil and stones of the planet. It was tethered by dark side energies to the core of the planet. The only way to free it would be to crack the world itself in half, just as the order did when they originally summoned the bowl to them. Unable to even lift the bowl or move it in any way, the diviners set about trying to rebuild their fractured existence. Using the jagged remains of the platform, stones hewn from the Nightlands, and peddling their treasures for other necessities, the sanctuary that now stands was constructed in hopes of crafting a new channelling device. They failed. The bowl was smooth and unadorned. It’s surface was black and unreflecting of any light. It was almost as if it drew light inward. Inside, the even darker blackened elixir radiated the dark side of the force on it’s scorched fumes, casting a veil in the force over the entire area. Try as they may, the elixir always remained at the same level, even if one sought to drain the bowl. In times of great stress or danger, the liquid would ripple as if reacting to unseen vibrations in the force. At times, the bowl would begin to steam, releasing poisonous vapors in billows that would cause any who inhaled them to collapse and burst like pressurized bags of blood and bodily fluid. The only way to keep the vapors at bay were regular infusions of sentient blood into the elixir. Every member was required to infuse the elixir with their own life bloods, connecting their very lives to that of the bowl becoming less and less individualistic and more a member of a shadowy interconnected hive mind dedicated to the service of The Sacred Bowl. _____________________ Today, the order exists as a shadow of what their own legends paint them to be. They seek to regain that power by any means necessary, purchasing crystals and profane knowledge in attempts to divine a path back to their former glory. All the while, they work in near silent labors endeavoring to bring about an unseen goal placed longingly in their hearts by The Bowl.
  19. Bowing low before the quivering mass of dark power and mass, the Lich shivered in fear awe awe. He heard the deep rumbling words of the Krath Master and in those words, felt his own inadequacy, his fear that he was not enough. He was afraid he was not enough. He would not be remembered. The force itself settled unnaturally, as if it was dying and crystalizing about the skeletal being as the Hutt stopped his questions. The words cut into his soul, deadening the man of dead flesh and lifelessness. Slowly he raised his head to take in the powerful gelatinous mass. His voice came in raspy whispers whispered that grated against his calcified vocal cords, “The people of Aaris are nothing. They worship me from a place ignorance. Their accolades are but a gear to fuel my machinations, to pay the tax unto the crumbling Empire of the Sith. They stave off the gnawing tendrils of lesser Sith who desire nothing more than meaningless baubles and fleeting feelings of power and control that are all too quickly swept away by the rising sun or pressing tide of the force. I seek so much more.” With crackling and popping joints, Inmortos rose, leaning heavily on his dagger-handled cane. Always prepared to sacrifice the life force of another to delve deeper into the aspects of the force that even the Sith found forbidden. “Eternity,” he rasped angrily as he hungrily eyed the Hutt. If he would not teach him, perhaps Inmortos could sacrifice such a disgusting font of power to cleave the force in two. “What I desire is to not live forever, nor to command the legions of the eternal. I wish to be remembered. The galaxy will shudder at the sound of my name long after my life has been lost to the fogs of time.” ”Teach me how to consume worlds so that I might boil the force, render it down to it’s bones; to rip the very fabrics of reality that they might never be repaired. I wish to create a hole in the force, The Rift of Inmortos.”
  20. The desecrated world of Sullust; it’s devastation expanded outward into surrounding space. It was so potent that as the Eternus entered it’s aura, the necromancer, who had been reposed within his sarcophagus in a state of death sat straight up. So strong was the odor of absolute destruction, of total death, that they were like a beacon shining clearly through the fog of the wretched being’s existence. A rotted tongue lapped at the skeletal lipless maw of the Necropolis King. Leaping from his coffin, the undead, rotted skeletal being hurried towards a window looming out over the looming world. He had to see it for himself. With failing eyes, Inmortos took in the fires that could be seen from orbit. With a blink his view transitioned to that of another world, unseen by most moral eyes; and it was in this sight he delighted. Total devestation. Nothing remained alive on this planet, no plant, animal, fungal patch, or being, save for one. It was this one that Inmortos had come for. It was this one who he had sensed in his visions; a great greasy blotch of black power that oozed life. With the wave of his hand, Inmortos directed his undead pilot, a ravaged soul of Aaris III aristocracy supplanted in a Sithspawn werewolfish body, to take them in to land. He would not take his eyes from his prize. Had the glands remained, he would have salivated at the thought, the darkness he was seeking. As he was; however, such an act was inpossible, and the ichor that oozed about his mouth did little but to coat his yellowed fractured teeth in shimmering black slime. As the ship settled to the devastated landscape amongst plumes of ashen dust, Inmortos donned his nanosilk robe of midnight. Calling his heavy walking stick to his skeletonized hand, he descended the boarding ramp, alone. This font of darkness, this devourer of worlds, was to be his and his alone, unfit for the eyes of lesser beings. For even amongst the gods there was a hierarchy. In it, Inmortos knew his place. He, Inmortos might have been a god of death and the stillness of time, but he was not yet their king; not yet. Shuffling forward, concealed entirely in his flowing robe save for his white-boned hand atop his cane, the necromancer trailed an odor of death and a wake of it’s icy grip. He paused at the sight of the great Hutt, fresh from battle. The being’s aura within the force was something else entirely. That was what he saw, unconcerned with the jiggling physical form. Blacker than that which he could yet create, Inmortos was taken aback. To be in the presence of such vileness was another sense in and of itself. His cane fell from his hand into the ash and dust, whipping up plumes of fine cancerous powders as the Sith Lord fell to his knees with a surge of pain through his body. With head held low, Inmortos raised his hands above his head in reverence to the despicable being before him @Sheog the Mad. Here was someone who possessed the powers that Inmortos coveted for himself, for eternity. “My master,” he wheezed, his voice shaking in awe and fearful recognition of his own pale skills. “I am Krath Inmortos, Lord of the Sith, Reaper of Mon Cal, and god-king of the people of Aaris III. I have come to kneel before your power and learn of how you have done,” his hands spread to either side gesturing to the dead world about them. “I beseech you. Show me how to attain this power.”
  21. The monthlong period of feasting and ceremony began with roars of excitement. Games would be played to determine the greatest and weakest amongst the people. Victors would have their souls torn from their bodies, implanted in both mechanized and biological dark side creations, minsters born from the minds of Inmortos’ high priests. Such an eternity was seen as an honor and vast crowds gathered to watch the bloody and violent games. Prisoners of war were sacrificed with great pomp and circumstance, their blood allow to pour down the steps of the great elevated temples to their god-king. Smoke from great fires mi by led with the icy gray skies above as the lifeless bodies of these sacrifices were cooked. They were devoured in the great feastings that spanned well into the night at the close of each day. For each life taken, souls were gathered, transformed into jade riches or harvested as soul frost to be added to the ever expanding necropolis of Inmortos. Death ran as freely as blood down the streets of the jungled fortress of ice nestled within Aaris III. From the furthest villages and encampments came more. Devout followers who sought the favor of their deity. They brought with them shackles prisoners; those who had resisted the globe-encompassing expanse of Inmortos’ will. Forced to bow before the innate and grotesque throne of jagged ice, their throats were cut and their blood flowed to the ground, making the icy floors of the ziggurat red with blood. With the rising sun of each day, the icy expanse of the city glowed pink with blood and ice. Catacombs became torrented rivers of blood that gargled and flowed beneath the city. And through it all, fear, awe, and worship fueled the bottomless expanse that was the dark side, carving deeper into the untouched depths of the force itself. From his throne, Inmortos sat overseeing it all from within his minds’ eye. Each death tugged at his ragged soul, fracturing it and drawing it deeper into the mine of the force itself. Even the air over the city twisted and warped with the ravages wrought upon the life forces of this world. Inmortos’ body twisted and bent with the waves of the force; contorted in pain as he gave himself over to the depravity of his worshippers. Gritting his teeth until they shattered, he cried out. Bits of tooth, blood and ichor spew from his mouth as an ethereal undead wail rose into the air. It smelled of pain, drenched in power, upon it was born the fears of Inmortos, the fears that gave him power. The cry carried upwards tugging the darkness with it until the skies above were blanketed in a whirling pitch of blackened darkness and icy shooting tendrils of blue lightning and permafrost. And still, he clung to his throne of soulfrost, his knuckles whitened and bulging with the pressure. Electric blue tendrils of power arced from the Reaper’s throne to the crown upon his brow. It bound all of the dark evils of this world, any sin committed within the shadows of the ever growing spire, to Inmortos himself. It served as a grounding rod against the universe powering death and timelessness through Inmortos into the world around him. Within the fortified cityscape below the revelry groaned to a halt as all attention was directed to the font of undead energy that magnetized their works to it. The priests and necromancers were the first to give themselves over to the draw of doom. They gave their minds over to the madness. With knives, teeth, and claws, they tore their flesh and clothes, spilling from their homes and temples as they danced with abandon in the streets. Like a fast-moving plague it spread as the madness touched warrior and cleric, slave and peasant, living, dead and undead alike. None would be left untouched as sin and evil reigned freely beneath the wicked sky. Temperatures dropped and the flowing blood began to coagulate into cold molasses moving sludge. Still, they danced on. The wind began to howl and tear at any that was not secured, tearing life from the maws of many. Still, they danced on. Each that fell was reanimated by the power that seemed to swirl and surge about the Necropolis of Eternity. Empowered by the touch of the eternal lifeless state of being an undead, immune from pain and aging and pleasure and warmth, caught in a twilight existence a soul unnaturally ensnared in a prison that sought release. Still, they danced in. Within his tower, Inmortos’ body was overcome by the power of the darkside. His muscles caught and spasmed snapping his very bones with their power. His eyes rolled back in his head as every nerve in his body burned with the touch of fiery death, frozen in an instant entombed in a bed of lifeless numbness. Against his throne, his fingers snapped and nails shattered. His tongue wagged about his mouth, flicking blood and bone onto the undying scream. The very blood within his body boiled at the surge of power in the force. His flesh, dead already and reanimated, peeled backwards in pages revealing his ichor bound twitching muscles. And just as his unnaturally woven facade could bear no more, his scream faded, the last echoes of it carrying forth to the maelstrom that crossed both this planet’s plane and beyond death into the hellscape of eternity contained within the force. With his scream carried the pieces of blood and flesh that has been shorn from his body, leaving a skeletal visage of cracked bones and tendons, blanketed in burnt tattoos of flash-frozen nerves. Broken bones were held together with fear and pain, leaving a cannibalized skeleton moist with blood and slacked off flesh, dripping ichor, seated where the vessel of Inmortos had sat. And as his mind touched the expanse, it was washed in the surge of time itself from the conception of the universe to it’s final end in blackened fire and absolute cold nothingness. It reached upon the expanse across the cosmos, over people and worlds, tasting of the deaths of the countless forgotten. Sensing them, the heart of Inmortos tensed and raced. This would not be his fate. He would not become one of them. It did not matter, in pain and cold he was forced beyond that which a mortal mind could be capable of. It ravaged his very being, tearing it apart and stretching it beyond shape and recognition. Just as suddenly, his attention was caught, drawn to a point within the cosmos. He reached for it, a beacon of blackened power beyond what he could fathom. And as he reached, he felt his skeletal fingers claw at the surface before the maelstrom spat him out. Back unto his throne on Aaris III, broken, twisted, and transformed. Overhead, the storm let out a deafening peal of thunder. Such a journey that had seemed to have taken moments had in reality been weeks, drawn from the powers of the maddened dancing and death below until all but the strongest had died. Even the undead had grown silent, collapsed in heaps, worn into oblivion. The storm pelted the citadel and ziggurat with sheets of icy rain and wind as it blew itself out. Within his tower, atop his icy throne, the desiccated corpse, or what remained of it, that was Inmortos breathed. In a sibgle icy exhalation that rattled bones, the necromancer stood. He was hunched. To gaze upon him was to gaze upon the ravages of death itself. Bits of flesh and muscle clung to the fractures skeleton that composed his mortal vessel. Lidless eyes rotated in the sockets of an exposed skeletal face. Bone, flesh, and death held together in fear and pain. Calling his fine black cloak to cover his putrid form, Inmortos stood. He was the visage of a lich king of yore. His lipless mouth formed a single word, “Sullust.” Whatever the power had been to solely consume an entire world was now upon the surface of Sullust. Inmortos knew he had to learn this power; to tap deeper into the force than he had even now descended, to give himself fully over to the depravity of the dark side so that he might achieve his life-ending goal. Seizing upon his cane, the Reaper made his way from his tower. Through the frozen blood drenched streets he wandered. Amongst the fallen in exhaustion and death, wiped by the very powers that had now crafted him he moved raising up the most grotesque and powerful where he found them to form an entourage as he made for his ship. Those that remained would eventually rise, by the whip or word of his faithful priests this world would continue. It had to. It was all part of his grand vision. Arriving at his vessel, Inmortos’ boarded and they departed without another though; vapors of icy fear and pain trailing in his wake.
  22. Krath Inmortos

    Naboo

    An encrypted communication was relayed from the holonet for Akheron and his apprentice: The pale blue three-dimensional image of a scarred lizard being with an eye patch appeared, filling the screen, a bloody knife held in his hand. His priestly robes belayed a dark religion with skeletal ornaments hanging in a heavy breastplate down his. “My master invites you to come and partake in the Baptism of Blood during the Feast of Souls on the necropolis world of AARIS III before the upcoming slaughter.” Screams of pain and dying echoed behind him before the transmission abruptly ended in a scramble of static.
  23. Amongst the dark chill shadows of Inmortos’ sprawling ziggurat, within the windowless throne room at the center, encased in a ice of deathly etherealness, a lifeless husk sat embedded on the throne of Inmortos. Far below, across the once overgrown jungled city, amongst the sprawling citadel of soulfrost, carcass, and stone, millions of lizardmen toiled. Covered in the shadows of the ziggurat, their voices rose, a chaotic symphony of anguish and devotion. The cries of the dying carried above the din as lives were extinguished beneath the blades of lesser necromancers; Inmortos’ choice servants set to carry out his will in his absence. It was these same dark practitioners that had first sensed the death of their master’s physical body across the cosmos. It was these who now performed the black rituals to bring their master back to them. For days they danced and cut themselves, sacrificing those chosen by divine lots, their soul stuff harvested to lend power the profane and arcane. and as the power built a bridge was made across the sprawling chasm that separated life from death. To summon such a cursed soul required the powers to reach into the deepest recesses of beyond and struggle against the eternal bonds of divine punishment. From the deepest depths of hades they wrought Inmortos fractured frozen soul; summoning it back to the material plane. There, in blood and ice they bound the soul to the freshly hewn body atop the throne. Sinews and bones shorn from sacrifices, knit together with dark magics, the body quivered as the highest necromancers anointed the frozen corpse in cursed blood gathered from the sacrificial altars across the city. Their cries filled the dark hall. The force itself shuddered beneath their reality-warping words. After days and nights, finally, the body itself shivered as the cool touch of Inmortos returned to his throne world. A dark presence filled the room as outside, above the city, storm clouds began to swirl in an icy storming vortex centered on the tower of the sorcerer’s power. Beneath the blood drenched ice, eyes blinked. With a great heave, the soul borne ice cracked and splintered, cascading down the from the body leaving the pale naked grotesque form seated atop the throne. All that he wore was an icy crown of souls infused by forbidden magics to his brow. The wave of cold that burst from the body as the soul of the Reaper inhabited it was enough to freeze solid every necromancer in the room. It bound their final moments of pain into eternal statues of torment; their final sacrifice. A single cold breath emanated from Inmortos’ body as he tasted the final sacrifices in the air. A dark smile twisted across his face. This fresh body already torn from the hands of death, but a temporary vessel; a vessel of power nevertheless. He could feel his death with the apprentice Solus. In his death, Solus, a Sith, had granted Inmortos a victory of his very own. He was home. Standing, the necromancer felt every joint in his body resist. He felt every muscle strain against the ravages of life. He forced his will upon the frankensteined body. It was his. This body, like this world, like the Sith upon Naboo, would bend to his will. Raising a hand, Inmortos called a fine black robe to him. The force itself carried it across the room to swarth his nakedness, shrouding him in mystery and darkness. From beside his throne, a cane rose to his hand. The monstrous wizard leaned on it heavily; the task of living anew sapping his strength. Faintly he could hear the chants and cries of those below. He could feel the deaths of so many rising on the frigid air that clung to his Necropolic citadel. They strengthened him as he knew every sacrifice of life powered his own and in their death each servant would continue to serve for eternity. They would be bent to the necromancer’s will evermore. Here in his throne room, Inmortos’ power felt unending. He knew to achieve his eternal goal he must leave it, for now. Before he did so, the frozen soul of Inmortos reached out into the frozen plane of the force, carried by the interconnected web of death that spread across the galaxy. He sought the glowing abyss that was once the life world of Naboo, for upon it he knew that the apprentice he had sought to instruct might still be found. In the stillness of death he sought to touch the mind of Akheron’s pet, to let him know that he had failed. Inmortos lived and as long as he did so, the lesson remained incomplete. Leaving his throne room, I mortos made his way through the pitch blue still catacombed tunnels of soul-bound ice and death. Pools of weeped waters, excess of emotions in death pooled in the corners, yet unharvested by his minions. Inmortos ignored them. He descended the stairs until he emerged upon an ice-ringed balcony closer to the bloody rituals of his servants, those that worshiped him a god. Stepping into sight, a hush of fear and awe swept over the cityscape as activity ground to a halt. Here was their master, he who granted life, granted death, granted immortality. Raising his hands into the air, Inmortos spoke, his voice a harsh and crackling hiss that carried on the stillness. “Let the Feast of Souls begin!”
  24. Krath Inmortos

    Naboo

    Inmortos’ senses piqued at the resurgence of the apprentice in the force. A wicked looking smile of glee crossed the wizard’s face. The force surged as Solus used his emotionally charged power within the force to wrench his pinned weapon free; tearing the saber hilt and the chunks of trailing ice from the ground spinning towards Inmortos. The blade illuminating midair, as if born by a chaotic unseen wraith. The echoes upon the force clashed with the absolute chillings molecular stillness of death that exuded about the necromancer even as his whirling orbs carved centuries of undoing into the stones and air about him Like an unseen ripple in the force, as if a beast plucking a bird from the glassy surface of a lake, Inmortos struck. With precision, he moved but once as he faded back into the ethereal nothingness of beyond. With a wave of his hand, a single orb of unmaking zipped to intercept the cataclysmic whirling crimson-bearing weapon. They collided midway from where the weapon had been wrought free and Inmortos. Quickly the energies began to devour the external casing of the hilt, entering the haft itself within milliseconds. Delicate relays, safety mechanisms, and more all destabilized in an instant. The contained energy loop of the the lightsaber lost integrity and without guidance and energy still pouring through it erupted in a blinding explosion of fiery red plasma. The concussion of the blast shattered the ice and echoed off the remains of the devastated structures that surrounded the square. It was, quite literally, like a bomb going off. The concussive blast was enough to easily circumvent the vortex of destructive energies that streaked around Inmortos. It knocked him backwards, falling to the ground, a surge of pain emanating from the frail magician. His protective orbs shot out, uncontrolled as the necromancer’s concentration was broken. From his place on the ground, Inmortos was offered but one advantage, he saw the airborne predatory form of Solus falling at him from the sky; his fist reared back to deal a skull crushing blow at unnatural speeds. Even as unnatural as his connection to death, dying, and beyond was, Inmortos was still a mortal being, controlled by thoughts and reflexes. The instinctual response to imminent pain and injury about to be inflicted by the heavy metallic fist-les charge of the Sith-bot had the decrepit man moving without thought. He was a man of flesh and blood; and yet, he was more. Like a dark pool of unfathomed depths, murky to the eye and gnawing to the soul, Inmortos instinctually tapped that same energy as well. With a howl breaking his lips sounding like a torched fel beast, he raised his hands. Instinct and the force convulsing as one. In his hand he still clasped his weapon, the signature weapon of a Jedi corrupted by his own dark magics. The blackened blade erupted towards the imminently inbound Solus, pulling light and warmth from the air. Like the dance of gods the world seemed to shimmer and stand for an instant before the great metallic chassis crashed into Inmortos, driving his blade into the apprentice and crushing the Sith sorcerer beneath his weight. A surge of dark side energy erupted outward as Inmortos blade found it’s mark and Solus fist his own. Plumes of dust, debris, ice, and mist billowed from their contact, obscuring the view of onlookers for a few seconds. In that moment, Inmortos blade flickered and died having found it’s mark. As the dust cleared upon a single gust of icy wind, one could see Solus’ battered and sliced chassis atop Inmortos’ crushed frame. Neither moved. In that moment, the pain that radiated from the reaper’s bent and broken form stilled. His body went slack as a death-like state overtook the man. A cold wind blew, and a single snowflake landed squarely atop Solus’ cracked photoreceptor for a moment before vanishing on the wind. In that instant, a cold ethereal hand passed through the apprentice and a disembodied voice spoke to the crushed being’s soul. It was a voice carried on the force, One that could not be heard by any other. “So you think you have won? Death is my ally; my weakness made strength.” And then one of the orbs of unmaking, still bound to it’s master’s dying wishes, crashed into the fallen sorcerer’s cursed saber hilt, the process of unbirth beginning anew. And the life of Inmortos was snuffed out.
  25. Krath Inmortos

    Naboo

    Inmortos blinked. The chaos that unfolded was the mark of darkness in motion. Had the apprentice listened? The next moments would tell. The cacophony of antiquated slug throwers echoed on the air. The powdered stillness that followed, broken by the cries of the luckiest linworm as his life was ended in a tearing and rending of flesh. The cold dark sorcerer licked his lips. The taste of death like a sweet garnish to his nose. He knew the moment the sickly servant’s life drew to a close. With a swift gesture upwards, Inmortos tore the soul free from it’s shackled existence; still warm to the touch. A shade of the now-dead servant arched upwards with an otherworldly scream, a translucent ghost with his face contorted in the agony of death and the pain of undying. His existence now held in the controlling grasp of Inmortos’ skeletal hand. Turning his attention back to the glacially shorn and torn training field, the wizard’s weak eyes surveilled the mists. The Sithling was gone from the pool of positive-sapping potion. He reached out on the darkness, feeling the shifting waves of dark emotions. His presence was one of deathly calm. He could not feel the apprentice either. A smile played across his face. The stone had not died. No, he would have felt it. Yet, Solus was gone. He had listened after all. Twisting his elevated hand, Inmortos commanded the restless spirit. It’s emotional state twisted and screamed in agony. He cast the spirit forward towards the nearest outcropping of ice. The spirit followed his command arching and charging forward with an otherworldly cry. Crashing into the ice, the spirit detonated, creating an implosion that shattered ice and drew it inward unto a singular point with deadly needled points. Bringing his second hand up to his waist, Inmortos began to mumble ancient words of power, of decay and entropy. He called forth inky black orbs of ethereal nothingness. They swirled in a vortex about Inmortos carving furrows in the ground as the stoney surface of the ground disintegrated at their touch. Sulphuric plumes of choking smoke clouded the air about the sorcerer as the orbs spun violently and chaotically. Anything they touched would degrade at frightening speeds, their lives accelerated beyond death to a point of unmaking. The power of absolute destruction, pure offense, would serve as his shield and protection until he could cast it onto the shell that contained the shard; until he could see Solus again. He would learn or be destroyed. And if he fled? Inmortos did not even entertain the idea. The stone wanted to be a Sith. Cowardice was not in his frame.
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