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The Helvault -- Nespis VIII


handofthrawn

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During the flight, Solus started to experience several conditions. He showed his anxiety with randomly activating and deactivating most of his joints, looking like a twitching madman. Several moments of confusion seemed to surface when he would randomly begin to ask someone where they were journeying, only to correct himself and pretend it was nothing more than a joke. Any medically inclined people on board would’ve recognized this as symptoms of withdrawal, and had he been organic, would’ve been sweating and feeling nauseated. 

 

However, Solus found one thing to focus on that seemed to help his symptoms, and ironically, it was the Yslamari. 

 

“Fascinating creatures, aren’t they?” Solus commented to no one in particular as he tapped on the glass that held the small lizards. “Of these four, their average length is little more than 1 foot. And it seems they are attached to feeding tubes via their claws. What is it that they are feeding them?”

 

Solus adjusted his sensors again and again. “Ah, liquid! Nutritional liquid. Fascinating. Let’s see, the temperature of the container…70 degrees. Very warm. Boiling them would be a difficult task I'd imagine, but freezing them… hmmm…”

 

Solus reached up and continued to adjust his sensors over and over. Various schemes and plans were beginning for form in his head, each one begging to be put into action. Entirely focused on the task ahead of him, he had found something to distract his feelings of withdrawal from the dark side of the force and the impossible geometries. 
 

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Unbeknownst to Ōk, the recreation yard he found himself within sat upon the outer skirts of the station under a transparent plasteel ceiling that gave a beautiful view of the sky above. Blinded as he was, all he could do was relive what he had previously seen through memories and what he had felt. On occasion,  certain sounds, feelings, and smells could aid his imagination into what his surroundings would appear as. But only his sight within the Force could confirm or deny what he could think up.

 

Klaxons erupted in the distance, quickly followed by repulsion and the scurrying of bound feet as the guards began to escort prisoners in caused Ōk to notice and rise from his laying position. Attentively, he listened, hearing the comm chatter of malfunctions and possible malware erupted from their guards positions and a smile crossed his sunken face. It seemed Helvault wasn't all what it was made to be, and he rather enjoyed knowing that his captures were experiencing such a pain.

 

As the inmates were brought in, the guards began to gather everyone into the yard's center, Ōk included, as he felt a cold steely hand grasp his arm and mechanical orders were barked in guidance to join the others. Irritating, but Ōk followed suite and soon found himself admist those whom were brought in and had arrived earlier. There was simply too many for Ōk to properly access the situation any further as the comm chatter was soon drowned out by both basic and alien languages and a few disgruntled inmates aching to cause trouble, the fog of their rebellious nature's thick enough to cut.

 

One fight broke out in the crowded area, causing a simple but effective collective of inflared tempers to lash out in random intervals, and before Ōk could even react, he felt his form pushed with the momentum and from a nearby tussle as he was thrown into a nearby lifeform at his rear (@Krath Apothos). Reeling from the inmate, he turned to the being an spoke a singular sentence, his tone formal and yet unapologetic, almost coyful. "My bad."

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Dictum.jpg.0f5717fd74fdc4ee9bfc91ffc3fa3457.jpgDarth Dictum

 

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" - Edgar Allen Poe

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The floating fortress hung silently in orbit over the pristine world below. From the outside, nobody could tell anything was amiss. Even from within, aside from the fee glitches that seemed to be popping up in the network, all seemed relatively, well, normal. Of course, mealtime was 15 minutes late. That was almost unheard of. If anything, the station ran like a machine, punctual, routine, boring.

 

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Prisoners were gathered together in the bulbous opaqued recreation area-another of the many built in security measures. Nothing was there by chance. Normally only a handful of the best-behaved high priority inmates were allowed in there at once, if at all. The fact that a majority of them, 112 to be precise, were gathered there now under the watchful scanners of three dozen armored, tamper-resistant, stun baton wielding security droids. Behind the screens and within the secured  corridors where prisoners never went, the limited crew of the station were on high alert.


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Things were wrong. Lights flickered and computer screens flashed. The finer workings of the station were under attack from an unknown unseen attacker. In the main control room, the lights flickered and powered down for a full thirty seconds within the secured core of the station. Then the power returned. The computers began to power up in a secure mode. All outside communications were cut off. The station was cut off. Emergency protocols instantly went into effect. None but the stationed warden could override it; and that cybernetic Rodian was currently swinging a stun baton in the yard trying to break up what was fast becoming a riotous brawl.

 

Blast doors slammed into place cutting the yard off from everywhere else. Automated turrets deployed at every junction point and every hallway. Anyone not bearing a security-encoded chip would be turned into holey cheese as the turrets locked onto them and opened fire.


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As the station began to go into anciently encoded lockdown procedures, the external protective  measures of the ship flickered, once, twice, three times. Then they powered back up. A minute later, a flicker, once for ten seconds, twice for ten seconds, a third time - ten seconds. Then back to normal as the ion turrets began to power up again scanning for threats.
 

Security measures fully engaged, the ship began to slowly rotate. The thrusters briefly fired beginning a slowly accelerating decent towards the planet below. The main computer screen in the control center began to flash a countdown. If order was not restored in the next thirty minutes the station would enter the planet’s upper atmosphere, unable to be salvaged as it plummeted towards the mountain ranges below. 

 

 

 

 

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With all the troubles the Helvault began to suffer, the shields were among the ones no one realized went down for a few moments. No one except the pilot of the shuttle that is. 

 

Solus nearly fell as the ship jetted into the landing bay, nesting itself into a landing position.

 

“Well everyone…” Solus announced one the ship had landed. “This is where I’ll be making my own way. I will attempt to locate you all once I’ve succeeded in my glorious mission. Just make noise as you see fit. After all, us Sith are good at that…”

 

Without waiting, Solus exited the ship. 

 

The landing area was surprisingly not busy. Whether it was because a majority of droids were needed in other areas of the station or trying to handle the glitches that the system was suffering from, Solus had no idea. He had no clue that the station was having so much trouble. 

 

“Well, this looks easier than i expecte…” Solus started to say as he broke off a direction separate from the others. As if on clockwork, a turret nearby suddenly opened fire on the small droid. 

 

“Yipe!” Solus screeched as he jumped back, narrowly avoiding a flurry of blasterfire. 

 

“Not going that way..” Solus muttered as he peaked around the corner. 

 

“HALT!” A robotic voice boomed . 

 

Solus turned and found himself face-to-face with one of the station’s security droids. Or rather, face-to gun with the droid's left arm blaster rifle. The thing towered over the small droid like a rancor over a reek.

 

Identify!” The LV8 ordered, pointing an activated blaster rifle into the Shard’s sensors. 

 

“Eek! Erm, I mean…” Solus momentarily began to panic, but quickly recomposed himself. “Unit S-0L115, analysis droid.”

 

The security droid said nothing for a moment as it beeped and hummed in thought. “I was not aware an analysis droid was needed in this area. Identify your mission and parameters”

 

Solus adjusted his sensors, as if he was studying the droid. “Are you an out of date security droid?  I am here to check on the wellness of the creatures onboard the station. Both sentient and non-sentient. When was your last system update?”

 

“2 days, 5 hours, 23 minutes and 54 seconds ago. Next scheduled update is within 24 hours.” 

 

“Well no wonder then!” Solus waved a finger at the droid, easily two times his size. “Your latest system update would’ve included my specifications and codes. But here I am unable to get through any doors thanks to your blasted security system!”

 

“Error” The LV8 noted. “Security system of this unit is completely fine.”

 

Solus gave a grumbling sigh. “Not you, you piece of junk. Those turrets are shooting at me, making it impossible to perform my mission within parameters”

 

 The LV8 paused again to think and then stepped around the corner. Due to the security chip it had in its hardware, the turrets never opened fire on the security droid. Even when it itself opened fire and destroyed the turrets with one shot from each arm.  Solus jumped slightly from each shot. Whatever he was expecting, he wasn't expecting the security droid to be so...direct. 

 

“Threat to analysis droid deactivated” LV8 stated. “You are now able to continue with your mission of analyzing further subjects.”

 

Just as LV8 began to turn away, Solus spoke up again. “Ah ah! Hold on! What if there are more faulty turrets? I need you to guide me to my next location. Uh….” Solus had to stop and think. “Section…45, area b?”

 

The LV8 looked down at the miniscule Solus as if in thought again. Then…

 

“Roger roger. Follow this way”

 

With that, the hulking machine turned and made its way forward.

 

“What do you know…” Solus mused to himself, following the droid closely. “Even without the Force, I’m still better than everyone else...”  

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Akheron held onto the sure of the shuttle as it violently lurched forwards. He noted how the mighty space station before them seemed to be headed towards the planet...that was not good. They would need to sort that particular problem out quickly or the mission would end much more swiftly than they wished, most fatally at that for not just the prisoners but also themselves.

 

As the ship entered the hangar bay, he could feel the violent descent. The space station shook and rocked about, sending anything not sturdy across the bay, he just narrowly avoided being hit by a rogue crate left by one of the stations droids, as he exited the craft and attempted to steady himself. He felt the wind whoosh past his face as it shot past, banging and sliding before hitting the far wall with a loud thud once it passed. He spoke up once his apprentice had disappeared to accomplish his own task.

 

 "Looks like the station has become unstable. I don't think we have long, someone must attempt to stabilise this station if we are to accomplish our objective or we shall all meet our end prematurely and meet the Fanged God before due time. Perhaps one of the prisoners might know where the command centre is so we can right this internal place and at least walk straight."

 

 With that Akheron motioned towards the other direction Solus had gone. He assumed that would be the correct direction to go, but it was a guess...he had not been here before afterall. Looking out for any turrets, he quickly ducked behind a wall as a droid came down the hall on patrol. He waited until it passed before striking, igniting his lightsaber he attempted to split it in two, made harder by the fact he was without the Force currently. But he was trained for this. He was a Sith Warrior, a destroyer of worlds...and he would surpass this obstacle to end any in his way. 

 

It was difficult but he accomplished his goal. Leaving the droid corpse where it lay, he proceeded onwards looking on the wall and ahead for any sign of where to go next. 

https://jedirp.net/topic/4851-trodai-narat-iv-adas-darth-akheron/

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 "Only in my pain, did I find my will. Only in my chaos, did I learn to be still. Only in my fear, did I find my might. Only in my darkness, did I see my light." - Darth Akheron

 

I survived the Great JNet Outage of 2012

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Inmortos’ face was twisted in a way that could only relay the fact that he was probably sick to his stomach. The truth was that was not quite it, not really. His stomach was churning, but not from something he had eaten. This body was not the original vessel of Eligreen, the Firrerreo son of Coruscant’s factory workers. This one had been stolen from an ancient Jedi, he that had imprisoned Calypso, new dark lady of the Sith. It was a body that had been sustained for centuries by the force. In its past life, the living force had flowed through the Jedi. Recently, the spirit of the Jedi had been forcibly evicted and Inmortos had taken up residency. The body now was possessed by the dark twisted powers of death itself. Well, it had been. The bubble of anti-force was doing more than muffling the power of that cosmic energy that held the galaxy together; it was holding Inmortos together on a metaphysical level. By pure force of will, the body remained together, possessed by the spirit of a master of death. He could feel the body falling apart at the seams as it decayed from the inside out.

 

As the ship clanged to a rough landing with the shields flaring back to life behind them, the reptilian Sith groaned in pain, the taste of bile filling his mouth. If anything, the lack of force connectivity seemed even stronger within the prison. If this was where Nok Morliss was being held, they would be lucky if he was only insane. 
 

As Solus clanged off the craft and vanished into the malfunctioning bowels of the prison craft, Inmortos could not help but smile weakly. “Always something to prove, the young have.”

 

Akheron followed shortly after. Klaxons began to scream up and down the ship. The bisection of a security droid, on camera no less, was cause for an even higher security alert. Mechanical malfunctions were one thing, but an invasion? That was entirely different. Prisoners would be herded and contained. Those that resisted would be subdued, lethally if necessary. Squadrons of security droids were activated throughout the ship. Blast doors began to slam shut all over the station. Gone was the idea of ever trying to salvage the slowly plummeting prison yard in the sky.

 

With a sigh, Inmortos shoved against his chair, his revolting body creaking to a standing position. Leaning heavily in his cane, Inmortos shuffled forward. The clump of his cane seemed to echo against the very air; a reverberating sign that the necromancer still carried with him the aura of death. 
 

Stepping into the landing bay, Inmortos was scanned by the turret over top of the doorway into the station. That doorway was quickly closing; a response to the triggered security measures. The turret did not open fire. Inmortos body was already dead by all scientific measures.

 

Lurching forward, Inmortos fumbled with the chromium hilt that fell from his sleeve into his hand. Catching it before it fell to the floor, Inmortos ignited the weapon. Instead of the usual energized hiss the red blade erupted in rush of whispers. Spirits bound to the blade beyond the touch of the force. The room seemed to darken as shadows grew longer bathed in a deep blood red.

 

Holding the saber in the air the defensive cannons locked onto them. Inmortos could hear them spiraling to life with energy as they targeted the known hostile weapon. Just before they erupted, Inmortos fell forward face planting on the deck plates as his saber sizzled against the slamming doors. The cannons fired. They filled the room with the din of warfare echoing in a cacophony of ear-splitting destruction. Blaster fire to destroy a ship tore into the blast door in showers of slag and sparks. Just beneath it all Inmortos clenched his eyes as destruction broke loose above him.

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Darth Mavanger watched from the cockpit as his fellow Sith left, with Akheron and Inmortos charging headfirst into the frey. He closed his eyes, trying one more time to feel the Force. This was a place designed to hold and kill people like them- Those who's power relied on the Force and its machinations. They would get themselves killed like this. His armor rested heavily on him, moreso than usual. He would be slower, less coordinated, but even still he was confident that he was one of, if not the most dangerous lifeforms on the entire station. He rose, walking towards the still-cloaked exit ramp. He took one last deep breath before darting out of the craft.

 

The force of his impact on the hangar deck still rattled the floor plates, and as he sprinted towards the prone form of Inmortos, his mind cleared. It was no longer clouded by the hate and anger that the Dark Side fed on, though the emotions were still there. His fury was not so easily calmed, but for now, it would take a backseat to the mission. Inmortos's plan had worked, and the blast doors had been torn apart by the station's turrets, with naught but twisted metal and burning slag remaining. He could see the turret reacquiring it's target, and he pushed himself harder.

 

He reached down, grabbing the old necromancer by his clothing as the turret whirred to life again, firing a slew of deadly bolts behind them. The station's AI had adapted, and the bolts were no longer strong enough to tear open durasteel, but they impacted his armor as he crossed the threshold, launching him forward as he dropped the Necromancer into cover, his cloak smoking from the impact as he lay motionless for a moment, merely grunting at Inmortos to signal his survival. The bolts hadn't pierced his armor, but they had rattled his body from the impact.

 

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“Unit S-I23” Oogoo’s vocalizer’s monotone emitted. “Please scan P3, he seems to be suffering from some sort of malady in his right back leg.”

 

The analysis droid nodded and went over to the massive aquarium tube that held several tens of the lizards together. Each lizard inside was attached to the central feeding unit inside, so no doubt it wasn’t going hungry, but Oogoo cared for the Yslamari all the same. If one was feeling discomfort, he wanted to know why. 

 

“Sir, P3 seems to have damaged one of his claws. Must have gotten stuck when it was trying to move.” P3 reported back, still looking the lizard over.  

 

Oogoo floated, or rather, swam, over to the tube, wanting a better look while being 35 feet up in the air. The Celegian raised a loving tentacle up to the glass and pressed against it, much like a human youngling would do with their fish tank. 

 

“Awww, did little P3 cut his little toe-bean?” Ooogoo’s vocoder emitted. Despite its monotone, the vocader plugged directly into the floating jellyfish’s brain still somehow projected the emotion  that Ooogoo had for his wards. 

 

The lizard inside made a couple of wounded chirps, its pain obvious. Ooogoo focused, projecting her own natural telepathy to the lizard, trying to convey that everything would be ok. The Yslamari quieted down and didn’t even flinch when S-I23 injected a pain medicine into the afflicted area via the feeding tube.  

 

“There, there, you see? All better…” Oogoo cooed a bit more before turning to the analysis droid. “Make sure little P3 gets a daily regimen of extra nutrients and pain medicines until his claw is healed. 

 

The droid nodded in acknowledgement but Oogoo had already turned away to look at the other 29 tubes in the massive chamber. While some beings would have considered this job mind-numbing at the very least, doing nothing but fill out paperwork, keep an eye on a lot of lizards, and oversee the droids who actually did keep an eye on the lizards, Oogoo loved it. The ritual, the consistency, the non-excitement, despite being in one massive prison. Being a natural telepathic that his species was known for, he always had company with the lizards in a way not many beings had.

 

A klaxon alarm blared out. Oogoo felt a rush of annoyance and confusion as the Yslamari became frightened at the noise. She tried to calm the lizards, but that was a pointless task. There were too many to calm down. Instead, she swam to where the alarm was coming from: The door. 

 

“Odd” Oogoo stated to no one in particular. “I am not expecting any visitors. S-123, my replacement isn’t for another two years, correct?” 

 

S-I23 confirmed it. Oogoo became more confused. Visitors were extremely rare. Unannounced ones more so. With the entire chamber filled with poisonous cyanogen, the only beings that could enter without a protective suit were droids and himself. The ‘perfect security protection’ the authorities called it. Oogoo preferred to call it the ‘perfect isolation chamber’. 

 

The inner sealed door opened. Standing before him was a LV8 security droid and another analysis droid.

 

“What is the meaning of this?” Oogoo demanded. 

 

The security droid didn’t reply. Instead, it looked at the analysis droid, diminuative compared to the large security droid. “Here is section 45, unit S-0L115.”

 

“Excuse me, what is the meaning of this?” Oogoo demanded again. 

 

The LV8 turned to Oogoo. “I must now get to the section 18 to attend security alarm. Please remain here until the situation has been handled.”

 

Oogoo’s vocoder groaned in annoyance as the droid left. “Stupid security droids. Too rigid.” 

 

The Celegian turned to the new analysis droid. Something was odd about the droid. It wasn’t built like the others, its wiring was in odd locations, and its parts looked a bit rusty. But that wasn’t what was bothering Oogoo. Even as it stood, looking at Oogoo, adjusting its sensors, something about it felt off. 

 

“Unit…what was it? S-0L115? Stupid number…”

 

The droid didn’t react. It only adjusted its sensors further. Oogoo shuddered as the thing looked him over and over. He felt like his yslamari felt occassionally. Being studied by something he didn't fully understand. 

 

“Hello? Droid! What’s your malfunction droid? And what is that at your side?” 

 

Oogoo reached forward with a tentacle to grab the cylindrical device at the droid’s side. 

 

The droid reacted quickly. Much too quickly for an analysis droid. Its hand went to the device and activated it. Swinging it, the red blade emitting from it cleaved the tentacle apart. Oogoo would’ve screamed in pain, had the blade not slashed the vocoder next. It sparked and exploded with energy, sending Oogoo flying backwards and crashing into one of the tubes, shattering it.  All the Yslamari, both in the broken tube and the other tubes, felt their protector’s mental screaming and began to screech and click in their own language of pain. 

 

Solus didn’t stop with the floating brain. The other droids were reacting, moving for the alarms or blasters. If he still had access to the force, he could race across the room in a flash of an eye, but without it, he was forced to resrot to running after them. 

 

Thankfully, they were only analysis droids, restricted by their programming and unable to overclock in anyway. They could not sprint like he could, nor aim like he could. They were made to study and analyze, not combat. Solus on the other hand held no such restriction and pushed his gears and parts further then they were meant to go. Within minutes, each droid was cut down. 

 

“Well that was unnecessarily annoying…”  Solus commented while sheathing his blade again. “Now, onto the important stuff…”

 

Solus moved to the control panel of one of the undamaged tubes. 

 

“Lets see, lets see…” Solus mused out loud. “Temperature controls…temperature controls, where are you, temperature controls, ah! There you are. Now let's lower the temperature, shall we? Hmm, how low can we go? Lower, lower…

 

That won’t work

 

Solus froze. “Excuse me?”

 

That won’t work. The temperature. The tanks can only go down so far. Its a… safety feature

 

Solus looked everywhere. “Wha…who is this? Who is talking to me?

 

I am

 

Solus turned around. The floating brain was still laying next to the broken tube, the yslamari no longer screaming. It was only then when Solus realized all the lizards were not screaming. 

 

“You? But…thats…”

 

It is my way the voice spoke. The brain thing raised its slashed tentacle, to emphasize the fact that it was speaking telepathically to the Shard. 

 

“But…the lizards..” Solus pointed at the Yslamari.

 

The force has no use for me. I am simply…connected. Like them, it is simply biology, nothing mystical. Limited, but useful. It is why they hired me

 

Solus approached the blop of a brain and placed a foot on a tentacle. The yslamari screeched as the thing’s pain communicated through each other. 

 

“Fascinating…” Solus released his foot. Instantly, the lizards stopped screeching. “Telepathy without the force. You are a fascinating thing…”

 

 The same could be said for you. What are you? You are droid but not droid? You are organic but not organic?

 

“A Sith. And a Shard. A crystelline being” Solus commented, and then realized what he said without thought. This telepathy was making the Shard more loose then ever. 

 

I see. And you want to kill my babies. Well it won’t work. 

 

“Ya, the temperature like you said, you bulbous ball of brains. Thankfully i can always do this…”

 

Solus reactivated his blade and attacked another tube. The thing shattered, leaking water, and lizards everywhere. Instantly the things started to screech and scream as Solus continued slashing the bodies over and over. 

 

“Aheh? See? So I can't be as finesseful as I want, but I can still…

 

Solus stopped. Oogoo was talking to him again. The voice, as strange as it was, communicated with the Shard like a soul speaking to another. 

 

Oogoo was laughing. 

 

You think too little, lonely Sith. There are more throughout the station. You can kill these, but the Force still won't work in here. 

 

The brain thing started to levitate slowly. It was a struggle to be sure. More than once it fell back over on itself. But it tried over and over again, much to Solus’ confusion. 

 

This station has the Yslamari all over the station. This is just a breeding and shipping area. When one dies, I make sure a replacement is sent. If one needs more nutrients, I make sure my babies get what they need.  

 

The Celigian laughed harder, Solus’ shard starting to throb in pain from the intensity. 

 

Did you think it would be that simple to kill my little ones?

 

Solus clenched his fists. His own vocader screeched as he swung the blade again, aiming for the floating brain’s other tentacles, slicing them cleanly off. The lizards screamed again as it tumbled to the ground. 

 

No! Stop, there is no point in hurting me!

 

This time Solus didn’t stop. He stepped onto the brain’s last functioning tentacle and began to poke the blade into Oogoo’s  soft exposed body. 

 

“If it's not a simple matter of killing your babies, then maybe you and I can come up with something more complex, you stupid sack of sheltering scum!”

 

The room was filled with the sound of screaming lizards as Solus began his first experience in torture.

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Being more cautious than before, Akheron made his approach as finally he found something resembling a map, most likely for any sentient patrol that were stationed on the now falling prison. Looking, he noted his position and how far he was from his objective. He imagined the prisoners would likely be gathered in a mess hall of some sort...somewhere where they could be kept an eye on during the current chaos. Somewhere they could be managed, although if he knew Krath Apothos like he did, that wouldn't last long. He would soon notice something was wrong and take advantage of the confusion. 

 

Either he would or another prisoner, time would tell. Looking on the map, he noted it's location before heading that way. 

 

It wasn't long before he ran into his next obstacle, a turret. It opened fire almost instantly, forcing the Sith Warrior to duck into a alcove and determine how to disable it, a task which was usually made easy by the Darkness. Without which he was more vulnerable than usual, at least until his apprentice found a way to dispose of the lizards. Yslamari, how he despised the creatures even if sometimes they had a purpose within the Fanged God's plans. Thinking on his feet, Akheron used his saber to slice a small section of wall and dividing it in two, the Sith Lord threw a section out into the hall towards the turret.

 

A momentary distraction at most, that would merely divert attention away. But a moment was all he needed. As the turret locked on he used what little precious little time he had to advance before ducking into the next section, catching two bolts to his armour in the process as the turret turned to try and track his movements. Feeling the impact, he just managed to evade a fatal encounter as another bolt struck the wall beside him. Briefly hiding, taking a breather, Akheron recalled his early training with Sheog The Mad and others. He focused upon  his own strength using it to not submit to the pain. 

 

 He was a weapon of the Sith and he would prove his worth. 

 

Throwing the second piece, as the turret again turned to track it and blast it to oblivion, Akheron ran using his might to proceed with cutting to disable the infernal machine as he made it underneath it. Slicing upwards, made difficult by his lack of the Force, Akheron finally had success but not before catching a bolt to the left arm. Wincing in pain, he focused on his task at hand. He would not allow the pain to stop him, he would not falter in the face of the opposition. For he was death incarnate come for the prison.

 

He was servant of the Fanged God, a Sith Warrior bred to bring destruction upon all the enemies of the Sith and his own. A destroyer of worlds that brought souls for the Fanged God to feed upon and in turn empower Akherkon himself in turn via his Dark gift. Yet even without his Dark gift, he would not stop. A Sith Warrior was more than that, much more. 

 

Using the natural Rage he had inside, born from within himself and not empowered by the Force, he forced himself to continue. Soon be came upon some kind of maintenance hatch, sliding it open, he went in and proceeded towards whatever awaited at the other end. 

 

He hoped his apprentice would restore the Force soon. He missed it's call, the Darkness enveloping him and allowing him to truly express himself.

https://jedirp.net/topic/4851-trodai-narat-iv-adas-darth-akheron/

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 "Only in my pain, did I find my will. Only in my chaos, did I learn to be still. Only in my fear, did I find my might. Only in my darkness, did I see my light." - Darth Akheron

 

I survived the Great JNet Outage of 2012

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Inmortos slid haphazardly into a secured alcove out of sight of the turrets bearing down on the hallways. Then Mavanger toppled backwards in the hallway beside him. Bracing himself the necromancer pushed against the sealed cell door until he reached a standing position . Looking to his comrade, the warrior grunted. He was alive. Disappointing.

 

Or it would have been had the Sith had the ability to touch the powers of life and death. As it was, the wizard’s mind felt overwhelmingly cut off from everything he had known for years. He was dependent on the warrior more than he would have liked to admit. Even with his new body, he felt frail, old, aged beyond the natural state of being.

 

___________________________
 

Elsewhere across the station, the realization of an assault had become all too clear. The station had been breached. The finality of what that meant had begun to set in across the crew. There was no time for goodbye comms. Each man and woman had been required to complete end of life documents, goodbye letters, wills, and the like. It was a boring task that nobody really took that seriously. The station had stood to this day unaccosted. The clock continued to count down. When it reached zero, they would all die; a station plummeting towards the world below, all exits sealed and antimatter cores primed for detonation. Knowing their demise was near, each member of the crew set about the ending of their lives with grim determination.
 

Safety protocols were removed. Droids designed to secure at all costs had long forgotten programming activated from the main control core. While lethal before, they were contained by a level of protective lines of code. No more. Any resistance would be met with beyond lethal force; preservation of the station was no longer of any concern.

 

Amongst it all, corrupt lines of computer code continued to play havoc across the station. Even amongst the plummeting prison, industrialized cleaning supplies and processing equipment continued to activate and deactivate as if possessed by a phantom. While concerning, it had little overall effect on the prison as it moved towards its doom; that is, until it had replicated enough to touch on the systems controlling both life support and artificial gravity.

 

Bodies began to float upwards, the magnetized feet of the security droids the only thing keeping them grounded. What breathable air remained aboard was all that there was or was ever going to be. In population dense and tightly sealed small areas there was less conscious time left than the plummeting station had remaining.

 

Anyone clearing one meter above the floor was determined to be in flight, a prohibited act. It was an act classified as attempted escape. It was a punishable offense. With restrictions removed, stun batons were cranked to eleven. Anything beyond a brief touch would result in complete bodily incapacitation and death.

 

____________________________ 
 

As he quietly cursed his lack of connectivity to the force, the sorcerer felt a ripple. It felt almost like, like death. The moment that Solus undertook the slaughter of the fragile force-repellent lizards several walls away, the repelling bubble of the force rippled and flickered. For a mere moment those closest to the center of the assault could feel something. For a moment, the force shimmered before its glimmer was forces back beyond the breach by the overlapping bubbles of ysalamir bubbles.

 

In that brief moment, Inmortos could taste it. This station reeked of death. Countless lives had been snuffed out here, forgotten by the galaxy as a whole. Voices of the spirits that haunted the halls of this penitentiary cried out. Unheard by the unattuned, their long stifled cries assailed the Vurk bombarding him with hissing whispers and shrieks.

 

And then they were gone. The silence fell like a blanket and Inmortos blinked heavily trying to understand what had just happened. Bits of information that had filtered through the cacophony floated in his mind.

 

The turret at the opposite end of the hall began to belch volleys of red destruction. Reaching out, Inmortos’ arthritic hand grasped at  the now floating @Mavanger hoping to pull him to safety. As he moved, floating upwards with the lack of artificial

gravity, the necromancer’s eyes saw through the small security window high in the door. What he saw within was a prisoner who was too dangerous to be released into the general populace. A huge slathering whipid covered in matted hair floated in his cell clawing at the walls leaving deep grooves in the reinforced plating, seeing the floating robed being outside his cell, the monstrous beast launched himself across the weightless room. His weight rattled the door as he slammed into it.

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Mordecai's eyes snapped open as he drifted into the air and the Force rippled around him, even if for just a moment, sparking the quiet rage he felt deep within his chest. His respite, it seemed, was over. There was pain, but pain was not his enemy. He grabbed the bulkhead, pulling himself to the wall as he glanced at Inmortos. The Whiphid smashed into the cell once more, and he looked out. A shame- He had hoped that the local populace would relish their freedom, but it seemed this one wanted them dead. It mattered not.

 

"Follow us, and you will be slain where you stand."

He glanced at Inmortos, motioning him to follow as he began to move deeper into the station, pulling himself along the wall. He could hear the blaster fire throughout the station- It seemed that his compatriots had trigger the alarm. They would have to move fast if they wanted to find Apothos and escape in time.

 

"We have much work to do, and I doubt our whiphid friend here is the only one who will try to kill us on sight. We must find a droid- more than likely, they will have a registry of prisoners for us to use."

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For an undefined amount of time, Solus got lost in pleasure. Despite being only adept at best in the infliction of pain, or perhaps because of his inexperience, he became lost in the moment. Each slicing cut, each prodding stab, each brutal blow and stern question made Solus rise in elation. The cries and shrills of the Yslamar around him only added to the bliss. 

 

Only the loss of gravity made Solus realize how much time had passed. 

 

“Kriffing son of a kriffing…!” Solus cursed as he grabbed onto the broken tube before floating too far from the ground. The loss of gravity was another new experience, but unlike the torture, it was not a welcomed one. 

 

Its…too late… The voice of oogoo taunted in Solus’ shard. The brain floated gently upwards as well, unable to move at all. The loss of all his limbs and the amount of pain he was suffering from made any form of locomotion impossible. 

 

The Station…is falling…

 

Solus tried to ignore the voice. The torture had been enlightening, but not in what he had hoped for. He needed a way to kill the lizards, and quickly. Who knew how his compatriots were doing? Without the force, he had no means of sensing his master’s progress. He needed to focus. He needed to find a way…

 

Solus looked down at the ground. Floating several feet off of it made it look different. Solus wondered. 

 

“Lets see, you said that this is the breeding and shipping area, right bulbous brain?” Solus started, not caring for an answer. An adjustment of his sensors revealed several places in the floor that needed maintenance. Some spots were slick with Oogoo’s fluids, Others were dented from heavy footsteps, like passing guards. 

 

One such dent caught the Shard’s eye. 

 

Solus pulled himself and floated gently to the floor. Using the small hook on the hilt, Solus caught himself on one of the dents, and placed a metal hand on the floor. 

 

“You aren’t the only unique one on this station…” Solus bragged. “I can sense things too. Not brains unfortunately, but i have a knack for not getting lost. And you know why? Electromagnetism. I can feel magnetism, like that from poles on planets and batteries. I can’t sense people per say, but large amounts of energy is doable.  And there…”

 

Solus tapped the floor with his hilt once before wedging the hook into the lightsaber resistant material. “Is a lot of energy down here. Energy used to…”

 

Solus grunted and groaned, both vocally and with his own metal joints as he pried the floor piece up, revealing a large, crowded section of tubes, vats, generators and processors. 

 

“...help maintain your baby's nutritious milk.”

 

Solus didn’t need the Force guess how much panic came from Oogoo’s realization. But to add to the worry, Solus, continued. 

 

“You see, your lizards prefer their food at specific, warm, temperatures. Helps keep them plump and healthy. Makes their repellent abilities more potent. And to keep the food at that temperature, as well as to power the pumps that move the nutrients, the station has these generators to regulate it. And generators and batterries always require the same stuff all droids have in them…”

 

Solus had crawled into the crowded, claustrophobic area and activated his blade, opening up one of the generators. Inside, the liquids of battery acid began to leak out, almost hissing. Solus laughed as he moved his blade to a tube and touched it, making a small hole. The almost watery but almost sludge-like nutrient mixture continued to shoot through, mixing in the deadly acid that dribbled inside.

 

“And like you told me during our torture, its feeding time. And because this is the central breeding area of the entire station, it stands to reason that all the feeding tubes connect to these ones…”

 

Solus began to giggle as he squirmed through the area, damaging more generators and causing more acid to leak into the nutrient-dense material, until each one did their newly appointed task. He became almost giddy with his work. By the time he pulled himself back out where Oogoo helplessly floated, he was cackling.

 

“Oh it is so amazing! Its so great! The Fanged god’s work is being done!” Solus cried out as he floated upwards into the air, spinning slightly, blade still in hand. Already the effects of the tainted nutrient material were taking hold. The Yslamar that were connected to their feeding tubes absorbed the acid directly through their claws and into their systems, guaranteeing a quick, but painful death. The ones in the room he was in already were giving their last croak. 

 

“This is my goal! My achievement! To kill and to kill without care! How masterful my art is now, how beautiful my craft is! With these deaths, more will die by my Master’s hands, and by his hands, my god’s hands, hahaha! I am brilliant! I am perfect! I am…”

 

Solus never finished his sentence. The Impossible Geometries rushed back into him full force, overwhelming every single sense he had. For a moment, Solus became lost in the geometries, a blibbering shape amongst the congruent and pulsating stars and spheres.  It was a complete and utter bliss that filled the Shard up, a complete awe at the unspeakable sublime that flooded him.

 

Then, that which dwelled beyond the outer spheres, rushed with it too. To another Force user, it was just another facet of the Dark side, but to Solus, who had long become a beacon for that which dwelled between and beyond stars, recognized it as something else entirely. 

 

Solus began to scream and panic. Returned to his senses and floating helplessly in the zero gravity, he witnessed the walls take a new shape, twisting and bending over themselves. The flesh that grew from the cracks made the metal groan. Bulbous and bleeding eyes sprouted and grew, all completely focused on the helpless thing that hung in the air. The fingers, pincers and tendrils that stretch out from the ichorous scabs to grab the Shard moved through the air unimpeded by the lack of gravity. 

 

“No! No! Not again! Someone, help!” Solus panicked and freaked. He reached towards the floating body of Oogoo, hoping that perhaps the brain would help. But all he found was a corpse, being devoured by a gibbering mouth and a pair of fangs, green saliva splattering everywhere and blood draining upwards onto the ceiling.

 

Solus swung his blade wildly, trying to turn back the flesh. The sizzling muscles and skin cut by the weapon only stopped momentarily, as more and more flesh flooded in to wrap themselves around the Chassis. The mouths spoke Solus' name, with dialect un-transcribable. 

 

For the time Solus had been under the protection of the Yslamari bubble, he had been sane. He had been disconnected from whatever madness this was. Without them, he was a target for their maddening hallucinations. 

 

Restrained and immobile, Solus could only scream as the flesh touched his very Shard and seeped themselves through the cracks given by that Tree on Nar Shaddaa. A vision flooded his thinking as he lost all control. A floating station in a sea of black, with a fleshy spider-like thing sitting on top, the mark of the Fanged God on its face.

 

Solus screamed as he blacked out, the force briefly rippling with dark echoes of the Shard’s flooding madness. 

 

Later, the doors to the room exploded outwards. Solus came flying out, swinging his blade and screaming like a madman. Lost of his faculties, Nothing more than his base instincts drove him forward. Find his master. Find someone. Find anyone. Get away from the thing that was chasing him. The flesh would follow, but he would fly faster. The flesh would ignore everything but him, but he would fight faster. He would find someone. Anyone. His master, a lowly linnorm, Mavenger, even that stupid useless good-for-nothing excuse-of-a-corpse necromancer. Anyone might help him hold off that which followed him. That illusionary, non-existent all powerful thing that chased him, eager to swallow his very essence whole. 

Edited by Solus
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The mag-locks on the droids feet allowed them to continue mostly unaffected by the sudden shift of gravity, or lack thereof. The last of the prisoners were locked down at last, either in their individual cells or the small mass in the recreation area (if one could call it that). Any resistance was now met with a lethal albeit brutal beat down. There were no life-saving protocols anymore. The only programming that remained intact was to prevent any escape, by any means necessary. 
 

Anyone seen or scanned in the hallways was designated a hostile entity. The tuning up of blaster cannons followed by explosive blasts traced after any unauthorized entity. Escaped prisoner, invader, it did not matter. They were all as good as dead. They would all be condemned to death in the next 20 minutes anyway. After that, the planet would be spun into complete and irreparable free fall; a fiery plummet towards an inevitable end on the surface.

 

Drifting against the sealed security door, Inmortos pushed off following after Lord @Mavanger. Moving from cleft to cleft the duo of Sith Masters kept the turrets popping, albeit inaccurately. Even without the force, the necromancer knew that the steely right-hand of the former Sith Empress was a force to be reckoned with. No mere turret would stop him. Inmortos, well, he was dead, technically. Even computers recognized there was no use shooting a dead body. Computers did not need the satisfaction. 
 

Still, the inability of the the turret to stop the encroachment necessitated reinforcements. As they passed the halfway point a half dozen armed security droids rounded the corner at the end of the hallway. Stun batons and wrist mounted blasters, it kept the prisoners from stealing them. Disconnected from the droid they would deactivate. Nothing more than a gangly hunk of metal. Pressed into the alcove, Inmortos felt worthless. He could feel the very foreign body he now inhabited deteriorating. Without the force, the familiar horizon of death loomed ever nearer; a one way trip into the beyond. It was not a path Inmortos sought to journey down a final time just yet. He had not yet achieved his goals. The fear heightened his senses. There was little he could do, decrepit and dying as he was. Without the force, he was nothing.

 

And then, it happened. A strange wave seemed to sweep down the passageway. The necromancer’s fragmented body was caught up in the tide. His mind, entrapped within a world of flesh not his own was suddenly immersed in the depths of the cosmos of an eternal silence. The veil beyond the realm of the living fluttered and opened to the eternal blackness beyond. Peace and tranquility, life spread from the tips of the Vurk fingers and toes possessed by Inmortos all the way to the sloping crest atop his head. For a moment, it was as if all the troubles of the mortal plane were swept away. In that moment, Inmortos was at peace. Inmortos was dead and he never felt more alive.

 

Until he was not.

 

On the heels of the peace that came with death, came the dogs. Howling, ravenous, caged unto death and driven to madness before they passed into the great beyond. The spirits of the dead, hundreds killed on the prison station, their bodies long since incinerated, tore past the veil. They flooded the area about Inmortos, a beacon to serve as their servant to the realms of mortality. They assaulted the necromancer’s sensed, blinding him, deafening him. The necromancer doubled over in the air. Pain, the pain of every injury inflicted upon the lives that were not his own, replaced the fear he had felt as it wracked his body.

 

”No!” He cried out, his voice cracking in pain as his body contorted unnaturally in the air. The air temperature dropped. The humidity crystallizing in an icy glaze all about the Krath master. He was the master of death. Those who failed in this life would not best him. They could not. They had already lost. They needed him and as vengeful as they were, they knew it too.

 

”NO!!!” He cried in anguish and anger, his mind forcing his body to fought against the rigor that sought to overcome it. Muscles tore as pain shot red-hot pain across his senses. The icy mind of the necromancer began to revert to its natural state, frigid, cold, a lifeless void, unassailable by anyone or thing. As he writhed, Inmortos’ resistance to the spirits grew with each passing moment until his mind had become an icy palace of solitude reaching across the cosmos to the barren hellscape of Aaris III and the Krath’s throne upon the desolate planet.

 

”NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” He snarled in defiance as his eyes shot open. The pupils that had rolled back into his head centered and began to focus as his clawed hands slammed into the durasteel wall plating strong enough to leave dents. Had his feet not been braced in the alcove, the necromancer would have drifted out into the hallway. Icy wisps snaked from the Vurk’s nostrils. The air about him dropping dramatically well below freezing in an instant. The cold was more than a physical frigidness, it was ethereal, spiritual. It drove back the swirling chaos of the recently released undead wraiths. It slowed them, froze those that did not retreat, their bodiless existence falling invisibly to the floor and shattering in a glassy spray of broken soulfrost.
 

It was cold. The deathly chill offered clarity. It offered silence. And in it, Inmortos could feel the ever expanding presence of the force, freed from the grasp of the sickening mutant repellent that surrounded the station. He could feel the lives of all aboard, Mavanger, @Karys Narat iv-Adas, @Solus, the unknown @Lord Ōk Rägnär, and even his wayward apprentice @Krath Apothos. Yes. He was here and he was alive. If one could call such a miserable existence such a thing. The specters of prisoners passed on sensed the connection the necromancer felt, even if for but a moment, to the technological wizard and they seized upon it to assault one that might be of value to the necromancer; to teach him a lesson for denying them. Several screamed into the prisoner-laden hall to assail the senses and mind of Nok Morliss and anyone else who got in their way.

 

In minutes the entire haul was in chaos as poltergeists and wraiths materialized and vanished intermittently, bursting through walls, droids, and chests with icy touches, blinding sensors and senses. Screams of anger and fear contributed to the din. The droids were hard-pressed to control such a breakdown in order and they began to bash in the skulls of the nearest prisoners to begin restoring order, permanently.

 

Inmortos was only concerned with Apothos for a mere moment before his senses were diverted to Akheron’s droid-y apprentice. The lightsaber crystal seemed to have unleashed some sort of netherworld force monster, a being of rotting multiplying flesh and dried blood. Hunger and death. An invisible being that devoured anyone or thing connected to the force; a monster that did not exist but for the dark side of the force itself; a monster from beyond the veil hungering for life.

 

“What have you done?!” Inmortos mind sparked with icy anger. Meddling in spheres he did not know and had no right to be in touch with, the Shard had seemingly inadvertently stumbled upon something larger than himself. Redirecting  his focus from Apothos, Inmortos summoned upon the ethereal chill of the void beyond the grave. The veil that separated life and death billowed in eternity, its subtle echoes felt across the cosmos upon his trailing link to his chilled throne. He cast it beyond himself, the chill freezing the air as it slammed into the rolling boil of force-based flesh that pursued Solus. The spirits screamed after, their hunger being keened onto an even greater target, the monster from beyond the purgatory they had been cast unto. With ravaging hunger and the ability to inflict wanton damage on the frost-slowed abomination.

 

Cold death radiated out from the necromancer. The spirits recognizing a master that could finally give them what they desired.

 

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On 8/26/2022 at 12:25 AM, Krath Inmortos said:

Bodies began to float upwards, the magnetized feet of the security droids the only thing keeping them grounded. What breathable air remained aboard was all that there was or was ever going to be. In population dense and tightly sealed small areas there was less conscious time left than the plummeting station had remaining.

 

When Nok had felt the floor go out from under him, he'd fought to keep from losing his calm. Blind, suspended in the air, not knowing which way was up or down, (or how far away down actually was) was a disconcerting experience. It was ignorance, and ignorance was weakness. Nok had kept his head, breathed in and out, forcing himself to remain calm and listen for the clank clank of the security droids and their maglocked feet.

 

When the audible hum of their stun batons powering up filled the air, Nok had to fight the sudden rush of renewed fear. He'd felt those batons once before, and judging by the louder volume and deeper pitch, this time they were at a higher setting. A significantly higher setting. All around the room, short and mangled cries of pain mingled with the unmistakable sound of electrical discharges and the meaty thump of metal batons hitting bodies.

 

Then the Force returned.

 

Nok screamed.

 

All around him, the fear, anger, hate, and pain of the prisoners washed through him like a tidal wave through a spider web. The oncoming current stripped him inside and out, and for a moment Nok didn't know where he was. He didn't know who he was. There was no thought, no words, no understanding. He was just instinct and fear. Blindly, his mind flailed at the torrent of energy all around him, desperate to grasp something, anything, to halt his tumble through the roiling maelstrom of energy, to anchor himself to the reality that he was certain was very important even if he didn't know why.

 

He reached through the torrent of emotion swirling around him as if reaching through a curtain, and he touched something. For an instant, he touched everything.

 

Understanding returned. He remembered this. He remembered the Force.

 

The Force was in everything. It ran through all life, all worlds, all space. It touched and bound everything in the galaxy in one, vast network of flowing energy. And Nok...he could touch it. He could control it.

 

Nok stopped screaming. A low, rasping, wet sound like an old motor struggling to turn over began to come from his dry, chapped mouth.

 

Apothos was laughing.

 

Apothos could see everything now. The emotion of the prisoners panicking as the droids went to work on them was a bonfire to the Sith's senses, and the technology around him stood out stark to his sense of mechu-deru.

 

In particular, the security droids caught his attention, and not simply because they were working their way in towards the center of the crowd of floating prisoners where Apothos was, but because they showed up strangely in his senses. Warped, in a way. Like someone had taken an oil image floating on water and stirred it around until only the barest distortion of a shape remained.

 

Ah...so that was it. Smart. The prison had used the circuitry reinforced and specially made to resist mechu-deru. It made sense that a place like this had done their homework. Droids already were difficult to take over, and this rendered it near impossible.

 

Of course, that didn't render Apothos helpless.

 

His warped, shriveled, sickly gray body shivered and turned in midair, like some old, feeble beast waking from its sleep. A gnarled hand stretched out, almost casually, and pointed at the nearest droid approaching the center of the crowd of suspended prisoners. A thread of his will traced out from it.

 

The hum of the droid's baton got louder. Confused, as this was not something it had experienced before nor was it in its operating protocols, it held up the baton for inspection. Then the baton exploded.

 

The blast shattered the deterrent device, sending several pieces of shrapnel into nearby prisoners, their sharp explosions of pain like fireworks to Apothos' Dark Sight. The droid itself, mere inches from the epicenter of the blast, jerked back violently, its feet still firmly locked to the floor. As it struggled to rise back up (tough machine), its eyes flickered, and Apothos could sense that it was blind, the blast having knocked some connection loose in its photoreceptors.

 

His crooked finger drifted to another droid. With a clunk, the droid's feet came off the floor, its maglocks deactivated. It waved its arms and legs uselessly in the air, 

 

Yes, these droids were resistant to his control. But a machine was a machine, and there was only so much you could do to protect from a simple change. Like increasing the power flow, or cutting a circuit to a hard-wired function.

 

16 hours ago, Krath Inmortos said:

Several screamed into the prisoner-laden hall to assail the senses and mind of Nok Morliss and anyone else who got in their way.

 

Apothos saw the spirits before anyone else. For a moment, he was confused. These were beacons that radiated pain and anguish, but they were wrong somehow. Not quite there, like a sound just at the edge of your hearing. The prisoners renewed screams when they entered the room clarified what Apothos had begun to suspect. Spirits. The chill in the air, that faint sense of malice at the edge of his mind. Inmortos was here. And he'd sent a gift.

 

The spirits tore through the crowd of prisoners, making a beeline for Apothos, somehow sensing his potential power and (like all weak fools) wanting it for their own.

 

A trio of them entered into his body, wracking him with pain and bitter cold. Apothos moaned, the sound resembling nothing so much as a death rattle. However, if he was a frail, wizened wreck on the outside, he was a thunderstorm on the inside. The spirits howled in rage and confusion as Apothos grasped them with his mind and tore at them, piece by piece, his spirit holding them with bands of lightning-charged iron. This was not the first time he'd dealt with spirits. His trial to earn the title of Sith Lord had been over a contest such as this, and these spirits were far from being as numerous or as malicious as those dread souls had been. He took his time tearing them apart, relishing their anger, then their fear, and then their panic. Like animals caught in a trash compactor, they struggled to escape the trap they'd thrown themselves into.

 

Then they weren't anything anymore.

 

The other spirits peeled away from Apothos, sensing what had happened and moving to easier prey. Fine. They could have the meat. Apothos wanted the metal.

 

With a gesture, the security droid drifting through the air was ripped from its place and sent cartwheeling through the crowd of floating prisoners to collide with a crash into the malfunctioning blind droid still recovering from the explosion of its weapon. The two were caught up in a tangle of metal limbs, and struggled to extricate themselves from each other. Then the floating droid was drawn back by the invisible force again, and then promptly slammed into the blind droid.

 

Like a child banging toy blocks into each other, Apothos smashed the droids into each other in a cacophony of crunching metal and sparking circuits. Their heads deformed under the repeated impacts, their bodies bent and buckled. Then, finally, with a whine of servos powering down, the droids stopped functioning all together.

 

Apothos smiled.

 

Apparently, the other security droids had finally identified him as the threat. Perhaps it shouldn't have taken so long, but to their eyes he was nothing but a crippled neimoidian floating in the air, twitching his fingers. Apothos sensed one line up a targeting lock, the coded confirmations of the droid's weapon systems sounding out in his brain like the ding ding of tiny bells.

 

With a gesture, Apothos telekinetically shoved the droid's arm aside as it fired, and its rounds of blaster bolts lanced through the crowd of prisoners, wide of their intended target. With a closing of his fist, the blaster stopped firing, power suddenly cut as a peculiar power drain emptied its capacitors.

 

Apothos's fingers danced like a conductor's. Droids everywhere across the room suddenly began disconnecting from the floor, their maglocks mysteriously failing. Garbled garbage code flooded the minds of others, slowing their movements to a crawl as their processors fought not to drown under the sudden barrage. Some droids fired, only to find their blasters had been dialed down to below training level intensity, barely stinging the prisoners they hit.

 

As for the two Apothos had destroyed, he spared them a few thoughts, weaving the spell he needed and filling it with his will before returning to his work. The mangled bodies, devoid of any controlling intelligence to resist him, began to warp and bend. Metal twisted and reshaped itself, circuits tore away and realigned, and cables split and reattached in new, unfamiliar configurations.

 

The droids kept coming, and Apothos was struggling to keep up with them. He couldn't take them down permanently, they were too tough and too well protected for that. His little malfunctions were working well, but when numbers overwhelmed him, he'd be forced to take more direct action.

 

As he worked, his creation of the two destroyed droids began to take shape. A crude throne, with maglocked droid legs holding it firm to the ground.

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Just as Dictum managed to release the words from his lips to the being before him, an explosion of chaos wrecked the room like the birth of a new star system. It started subtle, the shifting of the metallic ground beneath his feet and the sinking feeling in his gut as the klaxons blared violently in his ears. And in the silence of the moment, it's escalated, as he felt the stinging sensation of the baton as it struck against the back of his head and sent his reeling into the floor beneath him as the artificial gravity turned this former playground into a living nightmare. But nightmares were the thriving nutrition for a being like Dictum and in the moment, found ample amounts of bliss.

 

Screams echoed above the resounding klaxons and hum of the batons before the static sounds of electricity intertwined, a symphony of anguish and torture between lashes as Dictum contemplated his bitter end. Blood dripped from his head and muscles ached from bruised flesh, his emotions pooling into a cup of bittersweet remorse that this could be his end and his conscious threatened to subside. But in that moment, clarity would come to his aid. Like the spark that ignites the flame, the echo of sight flooded his mind as the Force returned like a breath rushing to fill one's lungs. And in the moment, time stood still.

 

Suspended above the floor, Dictum gazed upon the paths that the Force flowed vibrantly through, it currents painting a picture against the canvas as he gazed upon his blood and spit that had knocked from his blinded form. He could feel the pain, the anguish, the hatred and the despair that echoed not only around him, but through him. And in that moment, the moment he could finally see and feel as the void washed away, Dictum smirked. He had finally awaken and a reckoning was about to take place. Noticing the baton that threatened to strike again, Dictum twisted his form grotesquely, and placed his left foot into the metallic frame of the machine that was programmed to subdue him, and sent the Droid toppling.

 

Power was Dictum's ultimate goal, his purpose, and his reasons. With power came seclusion, came peace, and came his reality. Until the day that no other could surpass him, power was his struggle. And he fueled his power with the misfortune and suffering of others. And while he came to enjoy the solidarity of this confinement, he did not enjoy the vulnerability it had placed upon him. He would much rather not to endure such suffering. And suffering was all he had known here, despite the relaxed life he had led here.

 

Grasping at the lingering baton left behind by the disconnected droid, the chaos that ensued and rippled throughout the the playground only intensified as a sudden chill entered the fray, the spirits of the dead flickering in and out of existence as they claimed more souls to join their ever-growing legion as Dictum looked on in his suspension. He grinned devilishly,  not knowing who held such power, but recognizing the darkness they grasped. In silence, he chuckled, for he knew the Sith had arrived and the feeling of a new day he had felt had became reality. It was time. His father's Order had returned. And he would join them in their plight as a Sith Lord. For he was Darth Dictum, Lord Ōk Rägnär. 

 

Floating in suspension, Dictum sat lotus style, as the baton crackled with full output before him, his mind flowing upon the currents of the Force. With the arrival of the Sith, and the realization that a pupil had been amongst the prisoner masses, it was time to reveal himself and welcome them. "Hello Darkness, my old friend..."

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Dictum.jpg.0f5717fd74fdc4ee9bfc91ffc3fa3457.jpgDarth Dictum

 

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" - Edgar Allen Poe

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Progress was easy, even without the use of the Force. At least, at first. Turrets with pre-programed targeting algorithms were easy to fool, and as long as they killed them faster than the station's systems could adapt, they would stay ahead of the curve. That was, until the programming realized that turrets alone couldn't stop them. A squad of Droids pressed towards them from a separate hall, and Mordecai snarled under his mask. He'd hoped to find a straggler, to give them time to find the registry. Instead, he'd gotten an entire security detachment. He ran forwards, his blades cleaving through droids like they were made of paper, stun batons bouncing off of his Sithsteel armor, blaster bolts trying desperately to keep up with his sporadic movements.

 

The only thing that slowed him was the return of the Force.

 

All at once, it hit him. Death. Anguish. Grief. Betrayal. Thousands of spirits, finally free from their eternal prison, finally able to find a vessel for their wrath. Even he could feel it, despite his unfamiliarity with the Necromancers' skills. But the feelings they forced on him, they were more familiar than most counted on. He didn't resist- He knew the burning rage in the souls of the departed. Left here, forgotten, nothing but death as their destinies were robbed of them. He let the fire rekindle in his chest, he channeled the emotions of the spirits around him.

 

As the necromancer behind him screamed, and the droids in front of him fired another volley of shots, he felt them impact. Most were absorbed by the armor, but a few hit the less protected joints at his shoulders and elbows. He hissed, sneering. The ghosts around him cried for revenge. They tried to take control, to force their will upon him. They had no true hold over his psyche, however.

 

Death had tried once before to claim him, and it had failed. The Force had dragged him back to this accursed war, to fulfill his purpose of establishing an unquestioned peace across the galaxy. He darted forward, the power of his rage fueling him once more as he sliced through the remaining droids with ease with the help of the Necromancer. He turned, nodding respectfully. The other Sith's power had grown since they last met- A harbinger of things to come, it seemed.

 

He turned in time to see Solus peel around the corner, followed by a beast he'd never witnessed before. It was horrific, a snarling mass of rage and decay that seemed to destroy anything in its path. But Darth Mavanger recognized it for what it truly was. A puppet of the Dark Side, the amalgamation of the horrors of this station. Loss, pain, regret, and obscurity. And beneath it all, a desire. A hunger. But not a hunger for life. He knew this desire well.

 

It desired death. It's own, or anything that got in its way.

 

He would grant this kindred spirit its wish. That, or it would grant him his.

 

His momentum carried him towards the beast, his oil-slicked blades cutting through grasping appendages and roiling flesh alike. The incarnations of his fury and grief, his greatest weapons, not just blades in his hands, but extensions of his body and of his will. The beast landed blow after blow against Darth Mavanger, but he pressed further in.

 

"Let me grant you peace" he whispered in the chaos.

 

The beast's death, or his. That was the only option.

 

 

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Akheron proceeded to continue along the large maintenance shaft he now found himself within. He noted the lack of gravity as his feet rose from the ground, allowing his body to float in the air and forcing him to effectively 'swim' to manoeuvre himself. Using his fete, he propelled himself along the shaft, lightsaber held out in front to light the way now the lighting was failing. Soon enough and he found an exit.

 

Moving into the corridor, looking about he noted the coast was clear at least for now. Floating along, he wondered how the others faired...that was before he felt it. The change. He felt the Force as it returned, like a flood had washed over him and baptised him in the fires of his own Wrath. A smile gripped his lol beneath his mask as now he could finally express himself. He would be allowed to be himself again and truly be the destroyer that some claimed he was.

 

Allow him to truly serve the Fanged God and serve up any souls who resisted, and destroy the droids who would bar his path. 

 

Moving along he came across a group of a dozen droids, a patrol sent to hunt down the one who was causing such commotion in the area. To hunt him. Surging forwards, with the Force he shot like a torpedo using the lack of gravity and the Force to surge forwards and dispatch his most current victim, behind the group was a sentient, one of the few who had been sent to hunt with the droids and keep order. The turrets above were easy enough to fool, at least until they adapted, and so he acted quickly. Using his lightsaber to redirect blaster fire into the droids, destroying two instantly with the redirected fire before he used the Force to go send another crashing into another behind it against the wall in a pile of metal and twisted wires. Moving through the droids quickly, dispatching each with no compassion or mercy, a being driven by pure Wrath and Rage, the sentient human started to panic as his protection was whittled down to the last four.

 

Running, he ran down the hall where he his behind a wall and attempted to call for backup only to find radio silence as the station continued it's self destruction. 

 

Akheron soon finished the last droid, crushing it like paper under his control. Then he was and felt them, two vengeful and pain filled spirits who desired to inflict suffering upon both himself and his adversary. The human was easily overcome, clutching his head he howled out, a gluttural, unnatural scream that echoed down the hall as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body became no longer his own. Feeling this new threat and seeing the change from the cowering form he had once been to a being of insanity and rage filled fury, Akheron acted swiftly.

 

As the possessed human swung his stun baton with unnatural strength, the Sith Warrior countered with a well placed lightsaber strike to arms, severing both simultaneously as he propelled himself to the left side, slicing as he passed. Removing his head after, he released the souls only to be assaulted himself.  As they entered his mind Akheron fought back inflicting his will, his Rage and Wrath...directing it to assist with evicting the unwanted new tenants. The battle of his body continued, as he shook and the hall rocked with the Force. Until at last he won out. Overcome by the sheer power of his Wrath and Rage, they were destroyed and cast into oblivion. Dropping momentarily, he recovered himself before continuing until he came upon a large sealed blast door. Above which say two automated turrets and guarded by a group of sixdroids. All who were now staring at the Sith Warrior.

 

Hell broke loose as he drove into an alcove. Focusing himself he stepped out, pulling a turret from it's placement and smashing it into one droid before crushing it and another together against the wall. Surging onwards he proceeded to deflect and redirect blaster fire from the remaining turret into the next droid, placing himself so the droids stood in the line of fire. Cutting down another two droids he pulled the remaining turret and smashed it into the back of the head of one of the last two droids, knocking it forwards as Akheron impaled upwards into it's brain and sliced down to the torso rendering it no longer a threat as it collapsed destroyed. 

 

Facing the final droid, he took several bolts to his armor, and another to his right arm, causing a wince as one bolt made it through a joint and hit the flesh beneath. Pulling the droid towards him, he reflected bolts back into it before ducking under a swing from the buzzing electrified baton it held. Attempting to cave his head into pulp. Removing that arm as he passed under it's guard, he twirled his lightsaber around and removed it's other blaster arm before crushing the droid with the Force. Dropping the carcass, he looked upon the blast door. Behind he could feel both Krath Apothos, the other powerful darksider and several others, he could feel the chaos ensuing and feel it.

 

Focusing his energy, his Rage and Wrath the Sith Warrior placed both hands forward and attempted to force the blast doors open. Metal creaked and squealed against itself as it was unnaturally pulled apart and forced open. Before long it gave way, blasting inwards into whatever lay behind it. Through the gap, Akheron floated and for the first time in years placed eyes upon Krath Apothos. 

 

He spoke up.

 

 "I am Darth Akheron, Lord of Rage and Wrath. Sith Warrior and your path to your freedom. Although we come for one, those that choose to serve the new Dark Lady, the champion of the Fanged God will be given the chance for vengeance upon the galaxy and the Alliance for your imprisonment. Refuse this offer or hinder us in any way and you shall fall here and now, to die with the station. Souls for the Darkness. Make your choice quickly, wisely....here and now. For you shall not be given another chance."

 

 Looking towards Krath Apothos, he spoke up.

 

 "Krath Apothos, we have come for you. It seems you still have some allies among the Sith...despite your fall. You were not forgotten, and still it seems have uses."

 

He looked to the stranger near him, lotus positioned and spoke.

 

 "I can feel the Darkness within you stranger...it is strong. You feel like a Sith. If I might enquire, what is your name. You seem like you may be of use to the new Dark Lady Calypso. To the Fanged God from whom our Dark gift was truly given. But I have been wrong before about someone. Tell me that I might gain your measure...and perhaps vouch for you when the others arrive. Should you prove your worth and usefulness to our cause."

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 "Only in my pain, did I find my will. Only in my chaos, did I learn to be still. Only in my fear, did I find my might. Only in my darkness, did I see my light." - Darth Akheron

 

I survived the Great JNet Outage of 2012

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More than once, Solus felt the flesh swipe at his metal feet. Each time Solus flinched, barely avoiding the meat that sought to claim the Shard’s essence. The Sharde moved frantically, pushing off each piece of wall and floor that he could in order to gain speed. When security droids fired upon the flying Analysis lightsaber-wielding droid, Solus almost ignored them, only cutting them down as an afterthought. Those he missed he hoped the flesh would be momentarily distracted by.

 

It wasn’t. It was born beyond and it existed beyond. Life gave it form and form gave it life. Droids did not exist to it, and it did not exist to the mindless circuits of droids. It existed in the Force, and the Force was perverted in it. It sought to devour those that gave it life, and in its own twisted way, give life to those it devoured. It existed only to those that would allow it to exist. The Shard gave this thing life, and it would infest it. 

 

Solus peeled around a corner and saw the others. 

 

“Thank the Force, save me! Get this thing away from-”

 

Solus didn’t finish. A flesh covered pincer grabbed the Shard and began to pull it back into one of the thing’s many blubbering, bleeding orifices. The Shard had given the thing its form, and now it would complete the process required of the Shard. 

 

The sudden chill from the necromancer’s spell caused the thing to suddenly slow.  The spirits that swarmed the mass of flesh caused it to turn from blubbering to gnashing. The tendrils lashed out wildly at the ghost-like things, with new eyeballs and limbs sprouting in response at these things, but with the sudden cold of the thing and the immateriality of the spirits, it was a difficult battle to say the least. 

 

Then, when the warrior Mavenger began to attack, the thing turned from gnashing to moaning. These enemies were pains and annoyances, but simultaneously, life giving. They believed in its essence, and thus, gave it life. It would wound them, destroy them, and show them the madness it was born from. The Madness. The Madness and the Death that awaited everything that existed. 

 

This distraction was what gave Solus the opportunity to escape it’s clutches. Between the spirit’s attacks and Mavenger’s onslaught, Solus broke free and flew towards the others. Crashing into a wall, Solus turned and looked back at the fight that battled between the monstrosity and the others. They were fighting the thing back. But for how long?

 

“Stop!” Solus yelled. “Leave me alone!” 

 

Solus blindly reached into the Force and at the thing that had pursued him. Its incalculable mass and weight was born in the Force and in its own weird way, was tethered to him. By reaching into the force, he would seize that tether, and through sheer will, anger, fear, and even a little bit of envy at its power, throw it back to the void that it was summoned from. 

 

The thing pulsed and ungulated as it pounded at Mavenger, who’s blades caused delightful but excruciating pain. The spirits that attacked were imitations of what it was, slowing but not damning. Irritating but not Only when the symbol of the Fanged God burned on all of its unblinking eyes, as Solus and it connected for a moment in the Madness that existed between the two, did the thing actually screech. All these things were too much for it. Mavenger was destroying its flesh, Innmortos destroying its mentality, and now, Solus destroying its very essence. 

 

Then it disappeared. The flesh that crawled on the walls faded into nothing. The blood and puss that leaked everywhere simply evaporated into the air. Cast out from this place, it returned from beyond outer spheres. Back to the beyond where the Temple stood its studious watch. 

 

Solus, spent from effort throwing the beast, fell over, batteries drained and crystal black into another Force vision.  Only his limbs randomly moved of their own accord, as the Shard’s voicebox repeated the same phrase over and over. 

 

“dne eht reven si dne eht reven si dne eht reven si dne eht reven si dne eht…"

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Inmortos watched woth a detached horror as the surging amalgamation of bodily fluids, eyeballs, and filth surged down the physical confines  of the station. It seemed to be chasing Solus, and yet; in spite of it’s interactions with the physical, only seemed to exist as a metaphysical temporal being of the force and by the force, plucked from somewhere beyond. The icy touch of the specters the necromancer now sought to command coupled with the hissing strikes of the Lord Mavanger’s blades seemed to slow it.

 

And then,

 

as if in some cosmically herculean effort, Solus of all beings, seemed to cast the beast into the ethereal beyond. It was gone. As if it had never even been, save for the warped passageways and crushed metal that spoke of its passing. Inmortos’ reptilian eyes twisted in suspicion. Something seemed amiss, he intended to find out what it was, even here. He rounded on the Sith apprentice of Lord Akheron intent on drilling the knowledge from his crystalline latticework only to watch the entire chassis of the being slump forward. Life leached from all

but the core, the physical existence of the wayward apprentice.

 

”Fool.” He spat, the hostility on his detached voice clearly belaying the anger he felt at such a distraction from their cause. Anywhere else and the necromancer might have invited such a task, to study it, to control it; but not here.

 

And before he could do any more, the spirits were back, more cautious, whispers of hate, lust, and discontent playing at the edges of his consciousness even as they questioned from whence the  immaterial had manifest beyond the veil. “Yes. Yes” he responded, waving his hand towards the downed Solus, granting permission to the spirits to manifest within his mortal form. Should the apprentice be strong enough, he would live. Should he not; well, it would be a finality in a lesson that he should not have tampered with that beyond his control.

 

The necromancer had items of more importance to attend to even as the crush of droids before them sparked and fizzled. At least Mavanger had the droids he had desired. From where he hung weightless in the air, Inmortos offered a solemn nod to the harbinger of destruction, a true master of his craft. A silent note of respect for his fellow master of their respected crafts. There was little time for anything else. Time was, after all, of the essence. Behind them the form of Somus slowly stood, jilted and wobbly as it was possessed by the spirits of the damned, enslaved by their fear of that which the dark lord that commanded them seemed to control.

 

With a breath of icy vapors from his outstretched fingertips, Inmortos drifted forward, a ghostly silent wraith. There was more to be attended to. Behind him the spirit-bound Sithling followed, it’s unsteady and tumbling steps the first steps of an infant as it discovered itself. The droid-being clattered along behind. The droid might be of use to Darth Apothos in this prison; and, on a more personal note, perhaps finally his former apprentice could extract the Shard so that Inmortos might again use the spirit of Akheron’s next failed acolyte as his own. This time, a lightsaber might suffice.

 

The entire station was in chaos. As the force surged into crevices and cells untouched for decades, it awoke long dormant sins and desires amongst the accused. Those who could manifest the force trained or not unleashed upon it in utter rage, blowing the doors from their fells and flooding the station with years of pent up rage-fueled vengeance. Even the highly skilled droids, as they cut down swarths of inmates were eventually overwhelmed. Killers, monsters, lords of the underworld regained their bearing and each in their own way began upon paths of revenge and rebirth. And still, the timer ticked steadily downward. The command center sealed and isolated in it’s entirety behind layers and layers of durasteel and phrik and cortosis infused metals. They were safe from the chaos, safe from the ravages of the force, within their tomb.

 

And so Inmortos moved unhindered down the devastated hallways until he entered into the din behind Akheron, Solus lurching to a halt behind the lord of death. He listened as the chaos of the compound howled over the chaoslord’s words, the revolution of suppressed hostilities overcoming reason as bodies were cut down with impunity and droids beat down by overwhelming numbers;

 

and for the first time since being subjected to the unnatural aura of the Force-repellent  lizards that lay dead across the station, Inmortos smiled. His dry tongue snaked across his lizardly lipless maw. He could taste it. Death. Fresh, not of ages gone by, spirits entombed bodiless in this orbital prison. No, these were newly fallen, their souls still clinging helplessly to their mortal bonds, shattered as they may be.

 

With a press of cold, Inmortos drifted downwards until his feet touched the cold steel decking. His gnarled swollen fingers danced in the air, a madman’s touch upon the eternal to any uninformed of the black clad’ reaper’s true intent. Ancient tongues spilled in whispers from his mouth that seemed to carry across the cavernous bay in a hiss of wind that blew the icy touch of death across the battlefield. Whispers of the damned, drowned out by the screams of the dying, moved unnaturally as they were carried by the magical words of life and death, incarnation, incarceration, and blasphemy. Across the battlefield, the crushed decrepit forms of those who had only minutes before been crushed to death began to rise. Their faces were twisted in the pains of eternity wrought from the solace of death. It was the only pain they felt, a pain beyond what the living could bear as they were immune to the broken limbs and tortured states of their mortal forms. It was this pain, the magics called upon by Inmortos that gsge them life. He did not need to control them, not that he could not with a wave of his hand; no, they would do what came naturally to the undead. They would seek revenge. The targets of that vengeance varied, fellow prisoners who had wronged them, but mostly the enforcers of an long lost unseen Republic and Empire’s will. unfazed by blaster fire and the touch of the stun baton and boasting the power of their bodies uninhibited by life-saving measures, they struck back, turning the tide until any who opposed them fell silent, dead and lifeless, leaving ichor-oozing shamblers groaning about the battlefield awaiting further instruction in their simple zombified state.

 

”Lord Apothos.” Inmortos rasped loudly across the silence. “My apprentice. Come.” The body of Solus clattered to the ground before Inmortos. “A gift by which to expedite our departure.” 

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In the darkened silence of his mind, Dictum recessed, letting the living reality and the retreated moment of revelation exist symbiotically as he ravenously gasped at the flooding gates. For far too long he had been starved, blinded, and empty that the negative emotions around him were gluttonous, and like a starving animal, he gorged himself profusely. His mind's eye rolled with ecstasy as his body warmed against the boiling blood within him, strength finding waves of glory as his muscles constricted and relaxed against the darkening tide that flooded around him. And when he had had his fill, his blind eyes opened themselves to the course.

 

Like a beast, he reacted. Though his form ached with unfounded use, the Force that torrentially swirled about him sustained him as he turned his own and those he fed upon upon the oblivious masses. Fear, regret, murder, existence... they were all his to command as he tore into the veil and made it his will. Tendrils of the Force lashed outward, adding fuel to the fire as souls found wanting were thrown to the wolves and his assault became villainous. And in his hand remained the conduit, where his saber would once have sat.

 

For the souls that hungered for life, he gave them the dead and unwanted. For the mechanical that defended, he gave aid to the purgatory that the strong found themselves lingering. And for those who attempted to turn their gaze upon him, he ushered in an eternal darkness from wince they would never see again, only the remnants of a blinding flash. For he had become a harbinger, a ferryman for those who found themselves lacking any potential other than the purpose they served unto him. This was Dictum and it was his undeniable truth.

 

And as Flesh and Metal became a part of the canvas, an unfamiliar and yet powerful voice ( @Karys Narat iv-Adas) echoed through the Force louder than the rest, a presence that exploded into existence. Covered in the the flesh and liquids of his former inmates, hovering like a silver haired angel of death, Dictum turned to meet it.

 

"I am Darth Dictum, son of Darth Ragnus, and what you see is my undeniable truth." He spoke through the veil of the Force, his voice monotone in a child like grievance as he stood center mass amongst layers of dead amidst the spirits unleashed and their feast he bequeathed. "This is my decree."

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Dictum.jpg.0f5717fd74fdc4ee9bfc91ffc3fa3457.jpgDarth Dictum

 

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" - Edgar Allen Poe

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On 9/6/2022 at 7:56 PM, Karys Narat iv-Adas said:

 "Krath Apothos, we have come for you. It seems you still have some allies among the Sith...despite your fall. You were not forgotten, and still it seems have uses."

 

On 9/8/2022 at 10:09 AM, Krath Inmortos said:

”Lord Apothos.” Inmortos rasped loudly across the silence. “My apprentice. Come.” The body of Solus clattered to the ground before Inmortos. “A gift by which to expedite our departure.” 

 

Apothos should have felt humiliated, and was mildly surprised when he wasn't. Both of his former masters, rescuing him from a prison he couldn't free himself from. How better to undercut his own power? But it wasn't humiliation that welled up inside him. It was excitement. No, that wasn't quite right. It was anticipation.

 

His stay in darkness was over. And he was more than free. He was better for it. This time Apothos wouldn't forget what he'd been, and what he still was. He was a schemer. He was a criminal. He was a liar. He was a dealmaker who came out on top time and again, no matter what or who he had to claw past to get there.

 

A throne? A world of his own?

 

How could he have thought so small?

 

He'd thought like a petty conqueror, trying to take a world and hold it. The galaxy, the real galaxy, wasn't made up of worlds. It wasn't made up of heroes and villains, or ships and armies, or even ideas and causes. The galaxy was made up of things. Stuff. Products. Resources. They flowed between stars, a vast network of deals, contracts, and promises carried in the holds of countless ships. Fortunes rising and falling. Nations made rich or made to collapse. Planetary politics decided not by the will of the people, but by the wax and wane of capital.

 

That had been Nok's arena, where he'd been content to carve off a luxurious life from the margins. And it would be foundation of Apothos' empire. If he could take hold of that flow... control it...direct it...then the galaxy would be his without anyone even realizing he was there.

 

No throne to break, no neck to chop, no flag to burn. Just shadows and numbers, the tools of subtler Sith.

 

But first...

 

Apothos examined the droid body in front of him. 

 

On 9/8/2022 at 3:24 AM, Solus said:

Only his limbs randomly moved of their own accord, as the Shard’s voicebox repeated the same phrase over and over. 

 

“dne eht reven si dne eht reven si dne eht reven si dne eht reven si dne eht…"

 

He frowned. Something was off. It took him a second to realize what it was. This...well, it wasn't a droid, so...this thing was giving off emotions. That's how he knew it wasn't a true droid. It's maddened panic was actually impacting the Force, enough that it shone like a brilliant torch to Apothos' Dark Sight, but was still almost lost in the reactor-level explosion of negative emotion the station was currently engulfed in. But still, its body was that of a droid. But when Apothos reached out to manipulate it with his mechu-deru, he found himself rebuffed. Not by specially designed circuitry, but by latent willpower. It was like the resistance of trying to manipulate the mind of the strong-willed, the subject fighting back out of instinct more than conscious thought. Truth be told, Apothos wasn't sure if this thing had any conscious thought left.

 

He absentmindedly reached down and grabbed hold of the maglocked chair he'd constructed from droid parts, and pulled himself into it. Cables snaked around his waist, strapping him in. The legs clanked loudly as the chair obeyed its rider's will and circled the prone mechanical form.

 

He looked up at Inmortos and smiled, his sickly gray skin stretching taut around his mouth.

 

"What an interesting find. I'm curious where you found it, but now isn't the time."

 

Apothos gestured, and Solus' limp body rose into the air and moved to the back of Apothos' throne. More frayed and scorched cables extended from the overlapping metal plates at the back of the chair, and secured the droid body in place.

 

Apothos turned his sightless gaze on the rest of the gathered Sith.

 

"I suggest we leave immediately."

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Akheron observed as his apprentice started talking in backwards riddles yet again. It appeared yet again had he dived too deep down the hole, into the abyss and got caught up in it's snare instead of exercising caution as he had warned...behaving like a reckless bantha. And now he paid the price for it. This time Akheron left him to his current fate, another lesson to learn from. Or so was the idea.

 

He would either learn or he would be cast aside, he was beginning to become tiresome. 

 

He spoke briefly to the Shard, impressing his point across harshly and with a hint of Anger. 

 

 "Do you never learn my apprentice? Did I not tell you to be cautious...or are you purposefully ignoring my advice. No matter, you shall remain as you are for the time being, consider it a lesson in humidity, in not indulging in such reckless behaviour endangering our objectives. When we are out of here you my apprentice and I are going to have a long talk about this continuous interference and you shall find a way to end it. Once and for all...if you fail then you shall be cast aside. My patience grows thin with your reckless pursuits, control yourself and your mind or I am done with you. Enough is enough."

 

Turning to Dictum he spoke, replying to his words.

 

 "I do not think we have ever met before. That being the case I welcome you to the Order, Darth Dictum, son of Darth Ragnus. Join us and we shall see to it the Alliance and Jedi will pay in vengeance for your imprisonment and denying you access to the Dark gift. Denying you your passions. A new Dark Lady has awakened as I said and as the new champion of the Fanged God, she will lead us to truly be free to explore our proclivities without restriction. She has summoned us, can you feel it? She calls for all who would call themselves Sith to serve and prove their devotion."

 

Finally turning to face Krath Apothos, he spoke again.

 

 "It was not Master Krath Inmortos who found him..but I. He is Solus, a new addition to the Order and to Clan Brasganu, of which I am now joined. He is a Shard, essentially a crystalline being sentient and strong with the Force. An Assassin in training, although sometimes I do question why I picked him given his reckless nature. But you are correct, we must move and quickly before this place becomes our tomb, you may use my apprentice for now but once we are out I shall require him back and in one piece."

 

 With that the Sith Warrior turned for the nearest exit, hoping the others followed as well as any prisoners smart enough to notice the Sith group were the best way out of there.

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 "Only in my pain, did I find my will. Only in my chaos, did I learn to be still. Only in my fear, did I find my might. Only in my darkness, did I see my light." - Darth Akheron

 

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As the Sith before him spoke, Dictum casually listened. He had never been a part of their Order before, unlike his Father and his former Master, so comradery had never truly interested him. Nor did the politics and subservient measures. No. He was a creation of chaos and unbridled gluttony. That was his only interest. So as the Sith spoke of champions, dark gods, and devotion,  it fell upon deaf ears and his form slouched callously, almost resentful and lazily. 

 

"You mistake me friend." Dictum spoke, his monotone voice almost disdainfully irritant. "I hold no value to politics, religion, nor duty..."

 

His mind's eye fell upon the few that had gathered here and took in the moment, reveling in the carnage and dismay they had brought upon this failing system of metal and flesh, a symphony of chaos and destruction. A smirk appeared across the hindered view of his face beneath the white of his lengthened hair. In that moment, his slouched form returned to his former stiffened state.

 

"I do, however, hold value in the masterpieces I create." He finished, guiding his hand across the canvas that surrounded them, the macabre of death that had became this void. "Lead the way to your Champion. I have heard her call for some time now."

 

As the others came to agreement, the smirk remained. While the others may have placed value in ambition and duty, he only sought to sow seeds of chaos and paint pictures of despair. They may have came solely for their failing comrade, but he had found interest in their methods. He would follow them, for now, and see what masterpieces they could create. After all, an artist studies the work of others, if only to improve their own form. And after his time at Helvault, his form seemed to be a bit rusty.

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Dictum.jpg.0f5717fd74fdc4ee9bfc91ffc3fa3457.jpgDarth Dictum

 

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" - Edgar Allen Poe

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Darth Mavanger snarled as they entered and he heard the other Siths' words. As they spoke, the station was in freefall, flooding with dangerous droids, hostile prisoners, and force-bound horrors, and yet they stood around posturing as though for court. He glanced back towards where they came from- it seemed to still be open, albeit a path of much resistance.

 

"You all speak to much. First we escape, then we can introduce ourselves. If you are Sith, follow us. If you are not, find your own way off this hulk. We have no interest pursuing you."

 

He glanced at Apothos- Another lost to the battle of Mon Cal. Pain flashed in his chest- It was a battle that had claimed too many able warriors. At least Apothos could be recovered and rescued. The self proclaimed Darth Dictum, claiming title and position within the Sith Empire, although he was a stranger to the order. The veteran Lord Akheron, a warrior who's combat ability he'd been made aware of long before Nar Shaddaa. With these collected Sith, not only would the Empire survive, but he would with luck retain loyal allies within while he undertook his self-imposed exile. His glance drifted to Inmortos, nodding.

 

"We have what we needed. We should return to the ship."

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All about them the newly dead arose, their crippled bodes, wounds still fresh and oozing, shambling towards their oppressors, foes, and stranger alike with undead ferocity. Those whose bodies had long since been devoured by the incinerators, their ashes little more than space dust spreading across the cosmos, swirled. Their invisible hands grasping at the edges of reality, their assign subtle chills as unseen winds passed by. In this paling of the boundary between life and death, they could reach across the veil, unseen claws rendering exposed flesh as they whispered of the imminent demise of all aboard.

 

For they that were not bound by the mortal world could see what those bound to life could not. They had seen it and whispered amongst themselves, delighted that oppressor, stranger, friend and foe would be joining with them soon enough. It was inevitable as the station continued to accelerate towards the world below, it’s axis becoming the epicenter as the gravitational dampeners strained and began to fail against the centrifugal force.

 

Throughout the station a new series of klaxons began to wail. It meant little as the mechanized voice warned of imminent impact, urging those aboard to brace themselves. Had it been a rogue ship, perhaps; but what the sensors that now triggered the automated sensors now sensed was Nephis VIII itself. All that mechanized warning did was increase the fear that already flowed like a river through the station. Not that it mattered to the droids. They had their orders: no one escaped. Within the control room, panic had set in. The looming doom was taking ahold, empowered by the flow of darkness that now ravaged the station by both design and intrusion.

 

Finally, the first man broke. The thought of his family, a half a galaxy away, his children, going on without a father; it was too much for him. Shoving himself back from his console, the jailer shouted. He could not take it. Running to the doorway he began to shout in panic and fear, a righteous anger boiling over as he bashed ineffectively at the door’s control

console.

 

That was all It took. Beneath the professional exterior, the tension broke. The command room broke into chaos as crewmen began to scramble inputting codes in desperation, trying to stop the inevitable, trying to escape. It would be of little use; the station’s designers had taken such a catastrophe into consideration. Their actions meant nothing, or they would not have, had the station not been hacked by an unknown entity at the same time. It should not have happened; but the state-of-the-art programming that had been put into place upon the station’s construction had slowly not been kept up to the highest levels as designed. In a state of chaos, it had been just one other thing that slipped through the cracks. Because of all this, one inadvertent code frantically keyed in on the bridge at just the right moment, at just the right place, on just the right console, had its intended effect, only . . . more so.  
 

Every door on the station hissed open. Locked latrine doors where political

prisoners had taken refuge; cell

doors; access shafts; the doors to the command center; all of them, the entire station was open to to everyone, everywhere. The maze becoming infinitely

more complex. That was not what made it even more dangerous though, in addition, the bastardization of the codes opened garbage chutes, access ports, docking bays, doorways to the vacuum

of space. In a moment, entire corridors and rooms became vacuum tubes as their contents were sucked into the void of space. The cafeteria instantly was torn asunder via a simple garbage disposal. Doors ripped from hinges, tables and chairs putting dents in the walls as they were vacuumed into a tornadic maelstrom of nothingness. Other areas

of the station took similar damage as the temperatures across the station began to plummet even where the vacuum had yet to reach.

 

Back in the courtyard, Inmortos felt the increase of death around the station. The voices of the undead howled in rage and glee at their predicament. His magics had taken on a life of their own. More accurately, regained the lives that had been taken from them. He needed to do little else to maintain it; life, the twisted dark side of the force, together would maintain what he had unnaturally sparked back into creation. He heard the voices as they cackled. He heard their whispers above the cacophony. Their doom was imminent. His, Inmortos, doom was imminent.

 

”NO!” He snarled. It would not end this way. His eyes flashed with ice as his vision took in Apothos. He would not be destroyed again because of his wayward former apprentice. Akheron, Solus, this unknown Sith imprisoned for crimes that had not even been a blip on the radar of the Sith Empire, none of them were worthy of his death; and as they stood here discussing their philosophies ignorant it seemed of their looming destruction, Inmortos made his choice. Even Mavanger urged that they flee.

 

Stepping forward, the death lord approached the throne of Apothos, lightsaber hilt held before him. “Morlissssssss,” he hissed with a snarl, “do not lose this or,” he nodded at Solus’ mechanized corpse, “my future tool. I will

return to you for this when you are free of this prison and I of mine.”

 

The specter of a Sith stepped back, leaving a path towards the door clear, cleansed by the shambling hungry undead that innately bent to his will. The winds of the spirits seemed to blow towards the doorway; or it might have been the touch of the void reaching this far into the station, clawing for one and all.
 

Inmortos hands were already moving, his arthritic hands pained as they danced intricately in the air. “Flee you fools,” he snapped as the force pulled stoppered vials from his robes, elixirs made from a dying world, souls snared at the point of damnation.

 

Ancient words of power, the spells of long lost cultures, death cults, and god-kings that pre-dated the Sith and their dark Jedi ancestors by millenia poured from the Krath Lord’s dehydrated cracked lips. His teeth mashed his tongue as blood and ichor dribbled from his mouth down his robes. Frigid purple-black smoke billowed out of the necromancer’s robes seemingly unaffected by the devolving world around him. Each hard syllable cracked like soft thunder as the magics of long forgotten sinners called forth their ancient spirits from deep within the void, forgotten shadows of eternity. The sacrifices of the world below served as a conduit for the atrocities, the sacrifices, aboard the station all around him.

 

Inmortos had accepted his circumstances, but not his lot in it. The presence of the spirits all around him spoke of yet another means to unnaturally extend his life. He would not be exiting this station, not lime the others. Once again, his body would die here. If all went accordingly, his spirit would be free of this mortal coil; free

to possess the bodies of the weak willed and willing as his needs saw fit.

 

The zombies all about him sensed the necromancic energies that radiated from the death lord. They were drawn to it, empowered by it. They salivated as they clawed and gnawed at anyone who dared approach the font of power they desired, that whispered to them the sweet lies thst they might be able to regain their own lives if they consumed enough life energy from others.

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On 9/19/2022 at 9:53 PM, Krath Inmortos said:

Stepping forward, the death lord approached the throne of Apothos, lightsaber hilt held before him. “Morlissssssss,” he hissed with a snarl, “do not lose this or,” he nodded at Solus’ mechanized corpse, “my future tool. I will

return to you for this when you are free of this prison and I of mine.”

 

Apothos accepted the hilt of the lightsaber, something that might have been a smile on his face. How interesting that out of every Sith here, it was him that Inmortos handed his weapon to. There was something in that, something that might be of use later.

 

But, as Apothos had said before, now was not the time.

 

"I must agree," he said to the armored Sith who'd suggested that the group get a move on. "We leave now."

 

With a lurch, his cobbled mechanical throne stomped across the metal floor, magnetized feet keeping it from rising off the ground. With his movement being handled by the basic subsentient mind of his chair, cobbled together from fragments of droid processors, Apothos was free to use his own mind for other things. He extended his sense of mechu-deru into the system around him, and was immediately assaulted by flashes of alerts and alarms coming from all over the station. He did not see the code itself, like a computer might. He only gained an impression of the information running through the system, much as how seer might sense events halfway across the galaxy. It was not technological skill, but simply an esoteric form of magic.

 

The station was awash in confusion, even in the datastreams. Apothos sensed mangled code and garbled commands from some catastrophic malfunction, and for a moment he was lost. However, he sorted through the impressions, examining each carefully, until he spotted what he needed. Security alerts, notices of damaged turret emplacements, calls for droid reinforncements. In Apothos' mind, the alerts painted the path that the Sith had taken to get here, and led to where they had no doubt landed their ship.

 

Apothos' chair picked up speed, full on sprinting down the halls. Any turret that managed to target him was assaulted with garbage code, and any droids that stood in his way found their maglocks suddenly deactivating. Apothos was back in his element.

 

He raced towards his escape.

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Upon a vision of the Galaxy's swirling vortex, they weren't even a speck of the cosmic dust that could be combed through. One would have to have prior knowledge of region, sector, planet positioning from the system's home star, and planetary grid coordinates just to pick up the enflamining space station as the atmosphere of Nespin threatened to swallow of it up. But to look through the Force, one could see the center of the darkened storm growing from its location no matter how the magnification. 

 

And within its calm and serene center, sat this group of Sith from all walks of life and afterlife, Dictum there to bare witness and testify.

 

Whether philosophy, or designation, or whatever topic was mentioned in this moment was of little consequence upon the Force's itinerary. For in this moment, they made it their will with concentrated power, the outcome no different than what they allowed. They were Masters of their own destiny, and the Force was only a mere pawn. For this was the truth of the Darkside, the truth of the Sith, and not even the Jedi could do anything to stop it.

 

As the others came to agreement of exiting the station, Dictum's gaze shifting between each as they spoke, he simply nodded when it came his turn to interject. The vacuum of space was on the verge of threatening their livelihood and the dead stood upon the precipice, guiding them to safety. As the others began their trek, so did Dictum, using the Force filled hysteria to propel himself, a simple and yet complex unification of push versus pull, and allowing those with weapons to handle the onslaught of opposition.

 

It wasn't until they had nearly reached their destination when a familiar sing-song presence reached out to the young Sith, causing his momentum to stop if only briefly as curiosity took a momentary hold upon his psyche. There, within the confines of barracks, hidden within a tucked away locker were his things, a memory of his own arrest flashing back through his mind.

 

Upon Alpheridies, a former member of the Luka Sene with silver hair folded away atop his crown assaulted the Orligaric Council with twin Sith Swords that ached for their deaths.

 

Shaking the moment from his mind and focusing his rage, Dictum called out to their blades and what remained. When the group arrived at the ship, Dictum would be in tow, his possessions reclaimed.

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Dictum.jpg.0f5717fd74fdc4ee9bfc91ffc3fa3457.jpgDarth Dictum

 

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" - Edgar Allen Poe

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Akheron looked on in interest as the necromatic romances took on a new form he had yet to see. A wraith, both living and dead that seemed to float like some kind of ghoul. As the risen dead were drawn to him, Akheron followed after Krath Apothos and his apprentice, who was still drained it seemed after his reckless behaviour and attempt to right his wrong.

 

He looked on as the two hurtled off like some kind of rocket or high speed rail train on metal legs. 

 

As the station began to shake more violently, Akheron focused the Force and kept place with the two, his lightsaber making him seem like some kind of a red blur as his speed increased to match their momentum. Dodging debris, loose metal, rubbish and droids he advanced like a escaping wind, a torrent of Darkness that sought to allow his escape and allow the Lord of Rage and Wrath to make his way to the shuttle. Noting how Darth Dictum disappeared, he was curious where he went and why. But had no time to ponder more as he approached the shuttle wit the others. Following after Krath Apothos and Solus he waited for the rest to catch up to the trio.

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 "Only in my pain, did I find my will. Only in my chaos, did I learn to be still. Only in my fear, did I find my might. Only in my darkness, did I see my light." - Darth Akheron

 

I survived the Great JNet Outage of 2012

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Darth Mavanger didn't know what Inmortos had in mind, but his own objective had been accomplished. The Helvault had been breached, and Apothos had been retrieved. Anything past that was secondary to getting those who had accompanied him off the station. He pushed through, just behind the wake of the remaining Sith forces as they filed towards the hangar. Upon their arrival, he swiftly boarded, firing up the engines of the craft.

 

"Brace yourselves."

 

As the Helvault plummeted towards the planet, a glowing meteor hurtling towards it's inevitable demise, the shuttle rocketed out. To the naked eye, it seems no more than a piece broken loose by the forces of re-entry. Yet another pillar of the false peace of the Rebels and their government- More willing to consign the souls aboard to death than to give them a chance at freedom. The shuttle rattled violently as they escaped the vortex left behind by what was now a glorified fireball.

 

He stood, removing his mask and moving to the passenger section of the craft. Their allies would be here soon, and there was much to be discussed. He nodded his head at the new arrivals, his eyes decades older than they had been months past.

 

"Krath Apothos. Did you think I would let an ally rot in a cell? It seems you made an ally of your own while inside." he said, motioning to the unknown party with a gauntleted hand.

 

"We lost much at Mon Cal, and at Nar Shaddaa. Now, we rebuild."

Edited by Mavanger
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It appeared that Inmortos was going to re-join them through another method, Akheron noted as he stayed behind even as the station fell about him. As the Helvault fell he saw potential in the wreckage...for the future. Resources they could use once it had settled and to help rebuild ships. As the shuttle vacated the station, Akheron held himself secure as it rocked about and shook from the attempt to escape the forces working against it and the debris.

 

Once clear like a few of the other shuttles, commandeered by escaped prisoners, some of whom opted to follow them to a new fate and life, Akheron approached the front of the craft before using a console to send a highly encrypted, military issue communication to his waiting flagship. Which had been waiting just outside the system for the Sith to complete their task before it would show itself. As the crew and the second command had been ordered too. 

 

Soon enough and it turned up, now repaired since it's last adventure.

 

As the shuttle made it's way, he removed his own mask in mutual respect. Placing it under one arm, as he too opted to speak.

 

 "The Darkness and the will of the Fanged God works in mysterious ways my friend. There is a plan for us all even if we do not know or understand it at the time, it seems it is not done with Krath Apothos, or any of us just yet. It is true we may have fallen but only so we will arise from the ashes even stronger than before. Such has always been the way of the Sith. As you said, now we rebuild and when next we meet the Jedi and their puppets we will not be so easily silenced. For now a new, more worthy Champion has awakened, one who will see us to a victory I feel. The winds have changed yet again."

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 "Only in my pain, did I find my will. Only in my chaos, did I learn to be still. Only in my fear, did I find my might. Only in my darkness, did I see my light." - Darth Akheron

 

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