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Mustafar


Kakuto Ryu

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Adenn was waiting on the Jedi Master watching the holonet when some disturbing news flashed across the screen. Deciding to do an investigation of his own, he detached the equipment he had taken, loaded his two prisoners back into his ship and headed into space.

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Verd ori'shya beskar'gam

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  • 5 months later...

Upon entering the atmosphere of Mustafar, Strel felt a sudden change. Whether it was the dark power that the planet possessed or it was the intense heat coming from molten rivers covering its surface he wasn't sure. The ship was brought down slowly as the surface looked unstable.

 

As Strel exited his ship the surroundings were hard to focus on due to the energy being released from the red-hot lava. He managed to spot a rather large opening to a cave in the distance. He decided to explore this place a little and that would be where he began his exploration.

 

Entering the cave he could barely see anything. A few cracks in the ground revealing yet more lava lit up the place however. Strel ventured deeper and deeper into the cave, not knowing what to expect but ready for the unexpected.

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As Strel walked into the cave, he found himself staring at a group of pale individuals, bound together at the ankles by a thick chain. They returned his stare with a blank gaze of their own, free will and hope lacking in their faces.

 

"What are you doing here boy?"

 

Another man, more authoritarian looking than the rest, moved unhindered from the rest. He was maybe six and a half feet tall, sporting a lovely mining axe.

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Strel paused for a slight second before moving cautiously towards the group which just questioned him.

 

”œI have come here to Mustafar in search of one who might guide me through the steps of becoming a practitioner of the force.”

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"Is that so?"

 

The tall man looked around at the chained individuals who, at his glance, immediately returned to their work. He turned back to the boy, sizing him up.

 

"Well, boy I don't know nothin' bout the force. So that means you aint were you're supposed to be. You got any loved ones, boy?"

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"Loved ones!?" Strel sI am a racisted "No. I left them, they didn't deserve a son as gifted as I. I stole their ship, their money. I literally left them with nothing. And, to be quite honest, I couldn't care less whether they survived or not."

 

He glanced at the group of workers before quickly glancing back at the tall man.

 

"Who are you exactly?"

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"Good."

 

His words seemed carefree, but with a hint of joy. He looked back to the gang of chained men and woman. They looked back with nothing but sorrow and hopelessness.

 

"No one ta'miss ya then."

 

Suddenly the man lept at Strel, brandishing the flat end of the mining pick. In one vicious thrust, the blunt weapon sped toward Strel's unprotected chest.

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Connecting with a thunderous smash. Strel was sent flying backwards by his new opponents unprovoked attack. He went skidding across the ground. The young, twisted one struggled to get back up. Holding his chest because of the excruciating pain, he unsheathed his sword and spoke..

 

"You may have just made your biggest mistake. This sword hasn't let me down yet, I'm not about to let that happen now."

 

Now ready for the towering man's attacks, Strel readied himself for his next move.

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"Hmph..."

 

The tall man lowered his pick axe. He raised his hand, signaling the chain gang behind him with but a twitch of his fingers. Without hesitating, the somber group came alive. Their fear of the massive task master outweighed the likelihood of their deaths. As one, they jumped at Strel, not caring for his sword. Scratching and clawing, the moved to pull him down to the ground, trying to disarm him.

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He got his hopes up. As the tall man lowered his weapon, Strel began to think he was backing down. With the slightest movement of his fingers however, the mob leapt onto Strel.

 

One of the crazed beings happened to land on his sword. However, he was still outnumbered. He threw the corpse to his side, whilst doing this though one of his opponents managed to knock the sword out of his grasp. Leaving him unarmed, Strel only had one other option, that was to use his fists and feet.

 

Strel leant onto his back, pulled his knees up to his chest and smashed his feet into the face of one of the attackers. He then leant on to his side and rolled back over, slamming his elbow into the jaw of another. Finally he had a bit of room. He quickly rolled backwards and get back to his feet.

 

The end looked nigh for Strel. He was unarmed, outnumbered and outmatched in skill.

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The mob continued to press forward until finally pinning Strel. During the fray, one managed to knock him unconscious. The task master added him to the chain gang. When Strel awoke, he'd find himself chained between two of the very people that helped to bring him down, forced to mine the cave like everyone else.

 

All told, it was a good exchange. Though he lost one of his more experienced workers, the lot as a whole had started to grow old and sickly, years of grueling work, little sleep, and constantly breathing atomized rock dust taking its toll. This young lad would still be fit, capable of working twice as hard as anyone else, and for many more years to come. Plus, the task master had acquired a brand new sword, which he branded boldly at his side.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The Ship was unimportant. It had gotten him to this rock, and when the time came it would get him off of this rock. Stepping out upon the world he looked out at a chuning sea of molten mass. Here is where he would practice what had almost come to him in a lucid dream.

 

Here he would practice with the idea of playing around with molten materials. He had a few goals in mind. Long since learning to fashion weapons from fire he could create he, he been inspired to see what he could do when molten materials.

 

So he te traveled to the lower banks and summoned the force and there he stayed.

 

-----

The amount he learn in his time here was almost awe inspiring. At last however, he felt it was time to leave. So he did.

(9/6/08)

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  • 4 months later...

Two weeks on the planet, and not a single worthy specimen. Countless pieces of obsidian glass, ranging from big to small, dense to less dense, had passed through his ship and none were good enough. This one was too thick, that one had too many micro fractures, the idiots didn't understand the concept of perfection. He slumped down on his bed inside the ship, ignoring the pangs of hunger and the call of sleep. It had been long since he had either, but he was determined not to answer his body's call until his mission was complete.

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Julio's comm system springs to life suddenly, a short message catching his attention.

 

Hello, Apprentice. I'll be landing in a few minutes by your current location.

 

True to his word, Faust lands and hops out of his ship, the cockpit snapping shut behind him. Walking across the rubble-strewn ground, he appraises Furion up and down, his cold blue eyes searching.

 

"You look like ***t," he observes casually, sniffing and taking in Mustafar's sulfurous fumes. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

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"No," he said, contempt thick in his voice, "Perhaps I'm acting too much like a perfectionist, but every piece I come across seems utterly useless for my design."

 

He sat up from the bed, his body almost lurching forward as an unseen energy brought him to his feet by the collar bones as his head remained tilted back, almost like he was a corpse.

 

"Meditation hasn't seemed to aid me in my search, either. There's some form of disturbance on the planet that keeps my mind's tread on a tight leash. Perhaps it's just the volcanic activity, I don't know." Weariness clung lazily to his words, and his eyes held his body's hunger poorly.

 

"Every time I seek out this disturbance, I end up beside a river of lava, but that's it. Just some sort of residual resonance emanating from one spot. Whatever it is, it was strong at one point, but now it hides just beneath the surface, just beyond my perception."

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Faust holds up one hand. "Later," he commands, almost gently, though there is a firm steadiness in his voice that out and out dismisses that possibility. "Eat, sleep, and make sure you're in good shape first. The Force may operate independently of our physical condition, but you are still bound to your current body. There is a time and place when it may be necessary to sacrifice your very form for something, but," he adds, "I would not think this is one of those times. Besides," he shrugs, "you'll search more effectively if you're not distracted by fatigue or hunger."

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

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He sighed and reluctantly agreed. Somehow he thought that if he pushed his body beyond its limits, tortured himself to the point of near delirium, he could bypass the cloud of misconception the physical intrinsically had tied to it and thus attain a new level of perception, quickening his search for the glass. The meal was quick and bland, but filling enough. His sleep was short and unrestful, but with his drive to complete his task so strongly built into his awareness, the force was easily enough to make up the difference. Once his body was at least back on par with what it should have been he returned to Faust.

 

"So I assume you know the exact place where I can find the perfect stone."

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Faust shakes his head. "Not a damn clue. I've only passed by here once hunting down a bounty that tried hiding in an abandoned factory." That was a pleasant memory: The client only wanted the bounty's head. Faust extracted that by burning the rest of the living body away, slowly, using a lava pit.

 

"However, lead the way to this bank of yours. I am... curious... about it." Faust's eyes close, considering one distinct possibility, ironically enough, in line with his lesson in sending Furion here.

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

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"Will do."

 

After packing some water and rations, Julio began the long hike to the place of the disturbance. It was no more than a two mile hike, but with the planet's volcanic surface, it was like walking through a desert, a desert where the rivers were on fire. The slope down towards the river was steep, but was nothing to the dexterous sith.

 

"Here it is." He said, stopping just before the lava bed. "Do you feel what I meant? Something powerful was here once, but what it was, I can't tell."

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Faust smiles, closing his eyes and almost breathing in the thick atmosphere. "Oh, yes, this is exactly what you were brought here for." The Hunter chuckles, his eyes opening.

 

"Drink that feeling in. There are words here, emotions so strong they are etched into the fabric of this place." For a moment Faust's gaze flickers around him. It almost seemed for a brief second as if something tried to... exercise it perhaps? Yes, it seemed something tried to exercise the imprint and nearly succeeded in erasing it entirely. Curious...

 

That was something to look into later. In the meantime, he had an apprentice to train. "Close your eyes and latch onto that sensationn of what was. Grip that emotion, and try to funnel your own hatred into it. Command it back to life by stoking those fires. Close your eyes, channel your hatred, and tell me what you see by reaching out to it."

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

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A brief nod was all he offered in acknowledgment before descending further down the steep slope. The apprentice lowered himself to the epicenter of the disturbance. As he shifted his weight to kneel, the loose volcanic sand and gravel slide away from him, sending him several feet down the slope. A desperate lurch an vicious grab at loose ground kept him from falling prey to the hot river at his back. Julio cast an unsteady glance towards his master before climbing back up to the origin. As dangerous as this was, he doubted Faust would be too concerned for his safety. After all, if he couldn't conquer something as simple as a contest between footing and gravity, he deserved the fiery fate that awaited him. This time he knelt much slower, careful to keep his center of gravity moving solely vertical. Once he was confident in his position he closed his eyes and pushed aside the world around him.

 

In place of sight being his dominant form of perception, he began to feel. But this sense of feeling was not of this world. It stemmed from something other worldly, beyond the tangible and through the numinous. This was a place, no, not a place per se, but a reality where consciousness flowed, where the vices and virtues that brought weight to every soul were exhibited for all who sustained the mental fortitude to simply look. What separated the wolves from the sheep, as Faust so pleasantly categorized, was that very mental fortitude. Summoning something terrible from the deeper reaches of himself, Julio tuned himself to the unseen world around him. It was little more than a whisper, but if you truly tried to listen you could hear it. But what Julio felt was not the original flow but merely an imprint.

 

The feeling is old, but deep. Whatever left this was....strong, once.

 

The heat at his back could barely be felt, the physical almost completely shunned from his perception. Further he delved, focusing ever deeper into the taint forced upon this place. There was a steady pulse rippling the current of the spot. The beat was slow, but each pounding grew heavier with time, driving Julio's awareness past his preconceived abilities. Without warning, a black dragon forced itself into his sight with a pulse, gone the second it arrived. He didn't have time to pursue the dragon, as much as he wanted. Now there was a very defined sense of hate that he couldn't ignore. He began to unconsciously clench his fist, slowly becoming one with the hate. Faint trickles of blood ran from his palms, his finger nails burying themselves in his flesh more and more as the raw animosity flowed through his furnace heart. And then...

 

Pain...

 

His limbs faded from his self awareness, as if taken from him. They didn't hurt, but he could feel very distinctly that they were missing. Shocking as the new development was, Julio couldn't pull himself from meditation. He had to go deeper, he had to know. Accepting the pain and loss brought about a new revelation. Underneath the pain was desperation. Not a desperation devoted toward survival, hatred had overridden that long ago. It was...strange. The hatred Julio had uncovered at this place had become his own, pushing him even further. Part of him, a very small part, began to grow afraid of what was to come next. Why doesn't Faust stop me?! Haven't I seen enough?

 

Fear...

 

He couldn't help it. No matter how much he tried, no matter how much he told himself that he was better than this the fear was inescapable. And therein emotion turned full cycle. He began to draw upon the very hate that this place conjured within him. Hating himself for being weak, hating Faust for driving him to this point, hating whoever it was that was that left this stain upon this spot, too weak to overcome his own fear. When feeling was brought paramount, Julio snapped awake, both clenched fists brought harshly above his head. In one monstrous swing he brought both hands down against the very slope he sat on, his hatred escaping in a mighty roar. The hill he and Faust stood upon shook to the core, and all the sand and pebbles around them flooded down the slope in one black, sulfuric avalanche. Julio, still infused with a foreign hate, flew from his knelling seat, landing deftly atop what remained of the hill. Ignoring Faust, he turned to look at the spot where he once was. No longer covered by sand and gravel, something odd sat where he once was. Reaching out he commanded the obtrusion to him. Landing softly in his hands, Julio held what appeared to be a metallic gauntlet. Around the seams were some form of letters from an alphabet he didn't recognize. Despite this, he knew exactly what it was. Without looking up at Faust, he spoke, holding the gauntlet at arms length.

 

"This...is a mandalorian crushgaunt, augmented with the terrors of darkness. I left it here....apparently."

 

He couldn't explain how he knew it was his. It just was. Nothing anyone told him, including Faust, could persuade him otherwise. There was a uniqueness in it that Julio saw in himself. Looking up at Faust, Julio's golden eyes shone as bright as Faust had ever seen them, even in the dim light of the volcanic world.

 

"Thank you, for showing me this place."

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Standing before the bank, Faust looks down at his apprentice, catching him against the sickly red glow of Mustafar's lava flows. Faust's mind reaches out, probing the sickly remains of the emotional scar, probing into his apprentice's mind. The Hunter felt a sense of unease with how easily the two melded into one. For a brief moment, Faust worried that Julio would channel, and then become one of the few beings even the Hunter wouldn't have dared to face in this galaxy. The Hunter grips the hilt of his Sith sword, prepared just in case.

 

He watches as his apprentice begins to madly claw up the slope and takes a step backwards, his teeth barring back in a low hiss. Instinctively he knew his apprentice's hatred, he knew this would present itself as a threat if it continued unabaited. The hill rumbled, and Faust, braced for combat, stood ready.

 

When Julio made is leap, he drew back, curious to see the nature of the beast this place infused before making a final determination. He views the crushgaunt, curious as to where that came from. In some sense, there was no reason, no way that could have been his; but it was, simply by right. This was even more evidenced by how he simply willed the object into his hands and it came to be. Faust did not recall teaching Furion that technique, not yet.

 

Faust doesn't answer his apprentice's statement of gratitude for the longest time. softly probing his apprentice's short term memory, plucking out the sensations radiating out of him from his latest encounter.

 

"It appears you found something of yourself, something buried deep inside," Faust states, measuring his words, his eyes as icy a blue as the fire in Julio's gold. "That feeling of fear, anger, and hated, it bubbles in everyone, no matter how hard we try to surpress it. A true master of the Dark Side knows their opponents for what they are, he crushes them with fear, leaving them lost in it, confused. Hatred, we actualize without fear. We know of what we are, and who they are. It is our lifeblood. We purge our sentiment, our weaknesses, because we are strong. The fear vanishes and only the hate remains."

 

Faust turns back to the slope, staring down at it. "There in lies a danger. Fear, even choking fear, can lead to hatred and power. Emperor Palpatine, for all his vaunted wisdom never realized this," he murmurs, "and that is why he fell. Hatred will be actualized in many, many ways, even through something as ranks as desperation to live, to cling to life."

 

The Hunter summons his ship. "We will be heading to civilzed lands next to discuss this further. Once you understand that everyone at their core is like this, you can deconstruct them, make them your own. If you can feel that hatred, you can feel the pulse of a mind, of a heart, and shape it." Faust stops his ship, just before entering it, and poses one question to his apprentice.

 

"The heart and mind of another are yours to shape and do with as you please now. If you could reshape them to your desires, what would they look like?"

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

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Julio walked in a daze behind Faust, ignoring his own maxim of never ignoring wisdom and only half listened to him. He was still in search of understanding of what had just happened. How he had so easily connected to the scar, and how frightening that ease was raced through his mind. It just didn't seem possible for him to do by himself. As much as Faust had taught him thus far, it paled in comparison to what Julio was somehow able to do. He knew how to sense things, how to feel them in the force and even then no more than basic sensory range. And commanding the gauntlet to him. He twisted the metal glove in his hands, studying its form. He was sure he had never seen it before, nor even heard of what it was in all his time since his reawakening on Naboo, but none the less he knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was his, and what its design was.

 

Frightening as the enigma was, Julio couldn't help but feel nothing but aspiring hatred. If he had learned anything from this encounter, it was that he could no longer fear. Not because it was a cardinal sin amongst the Sith, though that still held some weight, but because he simply could no feel it any more. He saw any form of fear as a weakness, as did all in the order, and like them he despised weakness, but it was more than that. Whereas a Sith would take their fear and twist it into the hatred they so needed to weave their dark demands upon the force, Julio could only hate what it was that threatened his will. Fear was nothing more than an open gateway to self loathing, just another weapon in the arsenal.

 

"...one at their core is like this, you can deconstruct them, make them your own. If you can feel that hatred, you can feel the pulse of a mind, of a heart, and shape it."

 

Snapped back from his inward stroll, Julio's ears perked up. What did he mean, exactly? That everyone had the capacity to hate? Or that everyone had some form of crucible that could bring about such hatred? Either way, both concepts were worth exploring at a later time. He had decided when he left Onderon that he would hold most of his discussions with himself. Depending on his own wit would in time make him stronger, and depending on Faust's opinion would only cloud his own perceptions and never allow him to fully develop his own. All he could do was take everything Faust said with a grain of salt, and test the ideas and principles on his own time.

 

"The heart and mind of another are your's to shape and do with as you please now. If you could reshape them to your desires, what would they look like?"

 

He mused to himself for a moment, taking on a scholarly glaze in his eyes.

 

"Some would corrupt the hearts and minds of others solely for corruption's sake. The problem there is that if you fill the galaxy completely with vice it would be much harder to control. You can always trust an honest man to be honest, so long as you don't put him up against a wall. A dishonest man, you can trust only to be dishonest, which opens up a multitude of new possibilities."

 

Julio stopped his tirade for just a second, a curious look to him. He looked around, as if something was trying to grab his attention. Something was whispering at him, lightly tugging on the coattails of his awareness. He glanced down to the ground and smiled, bending down to pick up a fist sized shard of black glass and stuffed it into the folds of his robe.

 

"Everything done will have consequences, so I would have to be sure that I am aware of every possible outcome before I made even the softest step. As misguided as Darth Sidious was in seeing the potential hatred in others, he was quite gifted in foreseeing possible outcomes. Be it because he was gifted in looking to the force for premonitions or simply because he was patient and calculating enough to use his own wit in his plans, I can't say. Ah, but I'm ranting. Sorry, your question. What would the hearts and minds of those I reshaped for my own purposes?"

 

He paused, trying to visualize what his own forced will would do upon the fragile mind of others.

 

"Ideally, my influence will not be noticed. If I could, I would make it seem like my influence was the idea of the person in question the entire time. To doubt their thought or action would be to doubt themselves, not me."

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Faust takes what in Julio says. He agreed on one thing. Palpatine's powers of foresight were legendary, but his overconfidence in those powers lead to his downfall.

 

"Honest men are a scant few in this galaxy," Faust said, climbing into his ship. "A fiction they maintain to hide their own weakness and powerlessness. The Jedi maintain their honesty, raising their weakness as a shield from their betters, and encourage others to do the same. Still, playing on those delusions requires skill. And yes, you are right. True mental domination someone requires bringing out that core that aligns with your desire. It's always there- even if it needs to be teased out. The power in reading and reshaping real minds is always useful."

 

As Faust opens his ship's nav computer, he muses aloud. "Let's see if we can have some fun while we do this, causing a bit of mayhem for the Rebels, Jedi and the like." He randomly punches up a few coordinates, deciding on Csillia. They would be hard to mentally dominate, but it would give Julio some useful practice in this area. Besides, angry Chiss unleashed on the Rebels usually created some interesting results.

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

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  • 11 years later...

Mustafar, a molten hellscape that still somehow supported life. The volcanic surface invoked in Nyrys symbolic parallels to the Dark Side, and with vicious wildlife and a sparse population it was the perfect place for her to face the Onyx Mirror. 

 

Nyrys was not alone, she had brought with her dark architects of the Krath, and slaves to see their nightmarish designs a reality. Generally speaking, Nyrys had no love of the Sith’s propagation of the slave trade, but this was to be a place obscured from the rest of the galaxy, and that meant no survivors after construction was completed. They were better off dead anyway, given how most masters treated their slaves.

 

Amidst the dire heat black stone was hewn, moved, and settled into place under the direction of the sorcerers. The initial construction broke many of the workers, and the Krath euthanized them without a second thought before binding their spirits to the edifices they were erecting. Unfortunate, but this was all for a greater purpose. The Sith needed to be strong enough to break the chains that were strangling the galaxy.

 

Nyrys watched it all in rapt anticipation. She had negotiated on behalf of the Sith in the past, gathered allies and won over strongholds to the Emperor’s vision of a unified galaxy, but this was the first time that she was doing something that could be considered building her own legacy. The beginnings of black pyramids began to rise, reflecting her adopted heritage. One day they would look like teeth poised to devour the stars.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Construction continued on the new temple, and Darth Nyrys was personally overseeing the construction of the forge to her exacting specifications. The Krath whinged and pushed for a more mystical version that removed many of the more physical elements of crafting arms and armor, but she was adamant in her designs. Forge labor crafted the smith as much as it did the weapon, and she felt a deeper connection with any piece that she had spent significant hours creating. The anvil was as much an altar as it was a tool, and upon it she willed her spirituality into physical form. When the Krath finally relented to her wishes she shifted her attention to training.

 

She had artificially enhanced this new body’s strength upon inhabiting it, but now it was time to reinforce that power through honest physical exertion, to truly own it. There was a clarity of mind that came with the honing of the body, and in that onyx mirror Nyrys could find her path forward. It was a method of Sith meditation that gave temporary form to the doubt and self hatred within the practitioner. As the world faded into background noise from the repetition of simple yet strenuous movements, the other her came into unnaturally clear focus.

 

The shadow’s movements were animalistic, primitive, and it crawled towards her with predatory intensity. The shadow’s form was defined by Nyrys’s personal insecurities and selfish desires, and so it appeared as a purebred Cathar with beautiful golden fur and perfect curves, possessing the health and natural beauty that she could never have. It took one look at Nyrys and let out a vocalization of disgust.

 

“Oh right, you became a race traitor at the first opportunity,” it sneered, ”because who needs a heritage? How’s life on the winning team? Have all of your problems that you blamed on being a xeno melted away?” The shadow was no longer a cathar, instead appearing as human now, naked save for gratuitous amounts of blood coating dripping from her phantasmal form. The basic physical details were the same, such as eye color and bone structure, but her musculature was more in line with a model or an actress, a subtle dig at Nyrys’s own quiet fears about her training making her too muscular. It was no longer moving like a hunting predator, shifting its demeanor to that of a proper imperial noblewoman.

 

“Sup kath,” Nyrys replied casually, “you’re feeling chatty today.” Usually the shadow communicated more through physical action, she could still clearly recall the time that it had smashed her mirror. Maybe it was the fact that this time she was speaking to it in a more controlled meditation instead of instinctively. Or maybe the balance had shifted, now that she was more confident in herself.

 

“I crave distraction as much as the next girl, and there have been precious few distractions ever since your boy toy told you that he would rather eat a blaster bolt than spend time with you. And you threw yourself hard at that one, and it still wasn’t enough.” The shadow paused momentarily to adopt an exaggerated thinking pose before speaking again, “Oh, oh no, he even said that after you changed everything about yourself, and it turns out the problem wasn’t that you were an alien, you just weren’t good enough. I mean he did think that you were down with child murder, and there’s no Cathar baby eating stereotypes to blame that on. Face it kiddo, you’re just not relationship material. So why not slut it up with one of the Krath, it’s so easy for you to pretend in those hot, sticky fumblings that maybe, just this once someone will want more from you than a hookup, and the rock bottom that you hit afterwards is always delicious.” 

 

“Not in the mood?” the shadow implored, “Just kill some people, we both know that you’re hot for homicide. Just delude yourself into thinking it’s for a good cause, you know, like the Jedi do. I mean, I don’t want to be a kath or anything, but your whole… situation here is kind of straight up fairy tale monster.” The shadow was gesturing to her face, where Nyrys’s incandescent eyes and needle sharp teeth resided. 

 

“Hurtful, but let’s put a pin in the personal criticism for now,” Nyrys responded dismissively, “I actually brought you out to talk about what I need to improve on in terms of training and kit. I figured that if anyone would be capable of relentless criticism of my performance, it would be you.”

 

“Hard to criticise what you’re doing when you’re all over the damned place. Are you a wrecking ball or a pretty pretty ballerina of murder, enquiring minds would like to know. But even you don’t have that figured out and it shows. Yes, you’ve gotten lucky in combat so far, but at some point you’re going to have to muster the courage to actually make a lasting decision in your life if you want to progress past your current abilities. Your ability to handle anything at range is comparative to your ability to handle adult situations, and your armor is a relic from your apprenticeship. I can’t really say anything negative about your companions in combat, since you don’t have any, but on the flipside that means that there’s no one around to bail you out when you inevitably fail and ruin everything.”

 

“Good talk, now off you go back into the depths of my subconscious.” Nyrys willfully shoved the phantom out of the forefront of her mind, drenched in sweat from the training she had been doing while her mind had checked out. While in the moment it was easy to dismiss what the shadow had said about her so that she could move on to what she wanted to ask, its observations lingered in her mind afterwards. In retrospect it made her feel shallow to be so concerned about things like romance when there was a war going on, but this was her subconscious, her unedited fears and doubts, and probably almost everyone was just as selfish in their heart of hearts. 

 

  -----------------------------------------------------------

 

Time passed at greater speed as her mind became accustomed to her new training regimen, although her body was granted no such peace, and each goal met was replaced with another more distant goal. Her limbs were transitioning from clay to steel, and soon they owned the power that coursed within them, rather than borrowing it from eldritch paths. With her talent in illusionry blossoming she was becoming less and less concerned about how her choices were affecting her appearance. 

 

The temple itself had come a long way too, the Krath had finished their work and departed earlier this day cycle, after putting down the remaining slaves. It was hard to call any structure designed by space wizards and erected by slaves humble or modest, but the temple was a pale shadow compared to the Dark Lord’s tower on Onderon. The collection of black pyramidal buildings was hers though, and hers alone. The forge, located near the apex of the main pyramid, was one of the most exciting features of the new temple, a pulsing heart of the complex reminiscent of her own pearlescent core. With the Krath gone Nyrys could finally have some alone time with her new toy. She passed the threshold only to find the illusion of solitude shattered by the presence of a cloaked figure idling in the forge.

 

“I thought that you were supposed to all be off world by now,” she cautiously said to the Krath, “It was my understanding that the construction and internal system work was complete.” While not thrilled with any lingering presence, Nyrys knew better than to tear the intruder apart, literally or metaphorically. The Krath were the planners and providers of the Sith, any major project could only be completed with their blessing, and they were more than capable of ruining the prospects of anyone that snubbed them. Besides, if her father had been a Sith like she suspected, he had probably been a Krath with his formidable knowledge of science and medicine. She couldn’t imagine an asthmatic ginger going far in the ranks of the warriors.

 

“I was observing a migration of the local fauna for my research and I guess the ship left early, it’s not a problem.” Something about his inflection suggested that it was a problem. It was a strain that she was intimately familiar with from before she had joined the Sith. It was the tone betrayal and hurt being choked down by pride and shame.

 

“Well, now I have someone on hand in case I damage something,” she said, adding confidingly, “You know us warriors, smashy smashy breaky breaky.” Nyrys had been the right mix of capable and lucky when she had advanced her place in the Sith, but not everyone was a good fit, or even if they were, the wrong people could make them feel like the wrong fit. Besides, it couldn’t hurt to have an in with the Krath. 

 

“Stay here as long as you need, just no wild parties unless I’m invited. Back at uni people would always forget to invite me.” 

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  • 2 months later...

It had been months since the Krath had departed save one of their number. The passage of time had felt like treading water, and while Nyrys felt like her physical form had returned to somewhere near where it was before she had stolen this new body, there was a lack of true evolution. It was time to break the mold that she was casting herself in and redefine her limits under new terms. She found herself in the forge, a place that had become symbolic to her of new beginnings and traversing further down the warrior path. She basked in the fires of creation and undiscovered potential, every ingot containing within it the possibility for infinite outcomes.

 

Even the past could be remade into new tomorrows here. Nyrys's armor had served her well in the early days of her training, but she had come so far in her training since she had crafted it, and it was time to move beyond her origins. What could be reclaimed from the original armor was melted down, alchemically treated, and forged again with a more firm and skilled hand. Like a droid mechanic carefully wiring the internal components of a unit, Nyrys meticulously integrated the plates and their crystalline lattice into a unified web of singular purpose. Furthermore, she layered ceramic plates The armor had a presence to it now, an intensity like jaws ready to snap shut on prey at any moment. The fingers on her new gauntlets were tipped with Sith steel vibroblades to give her added lethality at ranges too short to deliver a proper weapon swing. The archaic leather sub-layer was replaced with a nanoweave gambeson of alchemically treated alloys, a lighter, more flexible material that provided the same protection. With the assistance of the Krath, her new helmet now had an optical relay that could feed visual data through a hardwired connection, giving her something resembling traditional sight again. A similar setup was used on a high caliber slugthrower that transmitted the data through a connection in the grip. A silken cortosis ribbon was tied around her waist, a combination of aesthetics and practicality, reinforced in its necessity by phantom pains located in her abdomen. That wound had come from a vibroblade, but as a Sith warrior lightsabers were the far more likely threat.

 

Consulting scrolls and tomes, Nyrys wove spells, compounds, and alchemical reagents together into a ritual that she then applied to the surfaces of her armor plating. The sorcery gave the armor the appearance of black molten rock, cracked with jagged spears of glowing orange, and shrouded in liquid smoke. In truth, the surface of each piece was smooth and polished, but the eye was not difficult to deceive.

 

After her armor was complete she began the process of smithing four new weapons, each in their own way a departure from her traditional emphasis on sword weapons. Datrys Torrwr was a maul with a four foot haft and a head with a flat Sithsteel hammer on one end and a variable thrust plasma engine on the other. She had read enough reports of enemies using stalwart forms of armor to validate the creation of a weapon that could bring low such an opponent. It took several attempts to fashion a design that could withstand both the force of Nyrys's attacks and the strain of the thruster, but after using alchemy to bend the laws of physics until they screamed in silent torment, a functional weapon was produced.

 

Diwedd Gormeswyr was a six foot long cross spear, a foot and a half of which was made up of a piercing blade, meant for killing large beasts. The cross guard prevented the weapon from sinking too deep into the prey, and the spirit of a ravenous beast was infused within the blade. The feral wraith had no interest in smaller game, but any living thing larger than a wampa would start to be slowly consumed from within following a successful deep blow, until predator or prey were brought low.

 

Bwytawr Cnawd was a three foot long Sithsteel club with eight spinning rings along the shaft that moved in alternating directions and were lined with vicious blades. An activation trigger could extend six inch monofilament strands from the rings to give the weapon an eerie howl and an invisible extended bite. In all honesty, there wasn't a need that the weapon was filling, Nyrys had simply made it because she wanted to.

 

The fourth weapon, Gwell Na Rhyw, was a straightforward machete with a hand guard that doubled as a form of brass knuckles. The entire piece was crafted with Sithsteel, with the handle featuring an elegant red crystalline inlay. It was the most attuned to the dragon pearl that served as heart of the four weapons, an expression of extreme aggression, dominance, and rage. Simply holding the weapon in her hand made the blood moving through her veins tingle with potential energy, and her mind filled with wicked fantasies. Of all of the weapons, Gwell Na Rhyw spoke the most intimately to her darkest, most monstrous desires.  It demanded satisfaction with the intensity of wrath and lust entangled in a single need.


The door opened. Her fingers tightened reflexively around the handle. She saw the outlines of form but not particulars like the face. She chose not to restrain herself. She chose to revel in her monstrosity. The blade plunged deep and her body trembled at the sensation. This was fulfillment. This was satisfaction. She thrust again. And again, this time all of the way to the hilt. She pulled the blade out slowly, feeling what it felt as if it were her own skin in place of the blade. The stunned figure crumpled to its knees. She swung a wide arc, and blood sprayed everywhere. She needed more. She bit down on flesh, tearing off a chunk and filling her mouth with hot, wet viscera. She forced the figure to the ground, biting, striking with her weapon, and tearing into exposed flesh with her free hand. A great release of pleasurable pressure moved through her every nerve, and she greedily consumed flesh down to the bone in some places. When she had her fill, she rolled around in the pile of gore so that its scent saturated her and the warmth of the kill permeated her flesh.

 

She felt... rejuvenated, in a way that she hadn't felt for quite some time. She had seen the ravages of the Dark Side on the faces and bodies of other practitioners, but now she wondered if the sickness was from trying to control the darkness instead of embracing it. Her senses were on fire, keenly detecting every scent, every texture, hearing every sound. She ran her tongue along the jagged edges of her meal one last time before rising to her feet, dripping gore, and curled her fingers around her new pistol. With the optical feed she admired herself in a way that her lost eyesight hadn't allowed for some time. Her skin was a milky alabaster white, unnatural in its perfection, and the blood that coated it seemed to seep into her pores and enhance its pristine nature with effulgent glory. Her tongue, now serpentine in its length and split tip, felt personal to her, like she was working with the Darkness to remold herself into something... wondrous. She wanted more, deserved more after everything that she had gone through. For the longest time she had wanted someone to love her, but now she was truly beginning to love herself.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The beeping of her comm awoke Darth Nyrys from her reverie. A new war had come, another chance to make the people that murdered her family pay. She scraped the remains of the failed Krath off of her armor and departed for the fleet rendezvous.

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