Cathar

[Fieldgrey]

…You speak as though your great Sith Empire will never be overthrown. The Infinite Empire was destroyed. Xim the Despot fell to my master’s Hutts. The Old Republic crumbled to dust and tyranny. All great Empires fall, why not yours? How much longer do you think that Spider’s web will last?

 

*****

 

Cathar.

 

The Sith Lord breathed in the recycled air, braiding back her loose auburn locks into a tight plait that ran down her shoulder. She could feel unease in the force, the tenderness of a wound long since scarred over. Entering a flight path into the navicomputer, she analyzed the readouts from the planet.

 

Ocean. Islands. Settlements.

 

The Krath frowned in distaste.

 

Peace. Life. Growth.

 

She didn’t know what she had expected, the war had been millennia ago, but part of her had expected a wasted ruin like the world from which they had just departed. Another breath and revulsion turned to simmering rage.   

 

…What did you expect… For this journey to be easy?

 

Fieldgrey felt it then, a thread of lingering chaos. The disorder that was underlying the unease. She brought Triple Six into a decent towards the coastline of the Ambaryle Sea, a place of only wilderness. She could feel the starship’s subtle agreement to her plan, and she pressed her Wrath into the nature of her ship and felt a shift.

 

Triple Six seemed to roar as it dropped through the atmosphere, and she could feel the chaos buckle with terror. The spirits remembered the clouds parting with the fire of the Basilisks. She set the ship to land on a sandy bluff a kilometer from the ocean and walked back towards the landing ramp. She whistled to the nightsisters and Sith soldiers.

 

“This world has had peace for generations, but this world is the vineyard in which the Mandalorian Crusaders planted the seeds of their own annihilation”

 

She licked her lips as the landing ramp unsealed itself, dropping away into sand. The smell of salt and sea-rot was a welcome relief to the stale recycled air.

 

“Set up a camp, secure a perimeter.”

 

To the nightsisters, she spoke seperately

 

"We must find the wound, where the force is scarred and broken."

 

The Sith Lord stepped onto the white sand, letting her leather combat boots sink into its embrace. She stared up at the stormclouds overhead and smiled.

 

...I must find that which was sown in terror and holocaust and reaped in full at Malachor V. 

[Fieldgrey]

…You reek of death; you carry it on your cloak and in your hair, but it is not the odor of viscera or lifeblood spilt, but that of corruption. The loss of life’s goal, you’ve fallen off the path. You’ve died to life and been reborn in true strength. Life be damned. Your darkness holds the power to conquer it all…

 

*****

 

The sand radiated warmth into the blackened leather soles of her boots as the Sith Lord walked. There must have been enough sunlight before the clouds had gathered in order to imbue such heat into the shifting dunes to give it such incalescence. It matched almost perfectly with the passionate wrath that boiled at a low simmer within her skull.

 

The Krath despised the heat, abhorred the sunlight that trickled through the approaching rainclouds. The distant rhythm of the ocean’s waves was the cadence of her loathing for this world. Her sulpheric eyes followed the Nightsister’s hand to where it pointed, the mouth of a gorge from which spewed an estuary of darkness.

 

“Shiro.”

 

The Sith Lord contemplated the fractious soldier with a challenging scrutiny. His failings and haughty disobedience were a blemish she was reluctant to overlook. Fieldgrey condemned it all.

 

“Follow.”

 

The ground changed from white sand to blacked delta with pools of stagnant water. The Sith Lord observed that no life grew here, there were no avians that she would have normally found stalking the swamps where rivers met oceans. It only smelled of rot. The dark loam was pierced by great tree-roots that snaked through the muck and dove into the depths of the ponds. She followed the roots to their distant source; where the gorge ended was the shattered remains of a great tree. Its size, even burned and broken as it was, astounded her.

 

…Adun-Levennia

 

Had the tree been more than a fire-torn stump, it would have stretched 3 kilometers in diameter. As the group approached, she could see that the darkened river swelled at its base, making it almost impassable. The Krath knelt into the muck at the rivers edge, letting herself sink into the putrid mud. She placed her scarred hands into the rushing water, letting the coolness of it clear her mind. There was a great power here. 

 

“Secure the area, we set our camp here.”

 

Hayley let her eyes drift shut and she focused on the river, inviting it to surge around her. The rain began to fall and the firth rose to great it. It came now to her waist, but the Sith Lord only smiled. The knew she could harness its power.

 

“Give me time, and I will tame the waters.”

[Fieldgrey]

…What do you do when you find weakness in yourself? Do you try to conceal it from the galaxy? Even if it’s shrouded in your very soul, your weakness will be found by that which lurks in the darkness. If you hide weakness, you build your foundation of strength upon a flaw. The hardest battles are fought in the mind…

 

*****

 

The estuary loam was uncomfortably lukewarm as it began to envelop The Sith’s kneeling form. Hayley was a woman of extremes, stim needed to be scalding and bathwater frigid, so the mediocrity of the water provoked her wrath. The anger focused her meditation, and the Krath concentrated it on the misery of the beachhead. The corruption that lingered in this place was like the smog that had choked her slum on Nar Shaddaa, everpresent but ethereal.

 

I can feel the evil... 

 

The Krath tried to grasp it within her mind, yet it slipped away. She beckoned the waters to rise, but there was no change to the rush of the cloudy water.

 

...but why can’t I hold it?

 

The Sith Lord’s pale fingers clutched at the mud beside her, dragging fistfuls of the clay against her chest as she spasmed in an uncontrollable physical manifestation of her frustration.

 

Am I not strong enough? 

 

There was a change in her, an open door; and doubt rushed in. Her eyes were closed, and she could feel the tears welling up from the burning in her sinuses. Had she brought the Nightsisters on a wild Mynock chase?

 

You are a failure. Rotten. Weak. Cursed.

 

A small, pathetic whimper rose in her throat, strangled back by reluctance of a broken spirit.

 

Why are you so fragile?

 

Pale fingers tore into the blackened mud and the inky rush swept her up in a surge of savage power. Suddenly she was choking on silt as the river took her from the shore without even a splash. There was no personification to the barbarous power of it.

 

Go on, feel sorry for yourself, drown in your weakness.

 

Brackish water strangled her, seared her nose and eyes. The currents forced her down to the depths of it. She clawed desperately for purchase. 

[Fieldgrey]

What are you thinking? I can tell… You’re afraid. Your doubt, that weakness is like the shadows of your steps. That darkness, it just builds and builds, growing stronger until it overshadows your soul. You might try ignoring it, but it’ll always be there waiting until you’re at your most vulnerable… It’s suffocating.

 

*****

Coward.

 

The Sith Lord's battle against the darkened water grew feebler as her doubt began to overcome her strength. She could see nothing in the inky darkness. She reached out to the Force but it did not form to her as it once had.

 

Why would the Force answer you?

 

Her clawing hands found purchase, the arms of the soldier Shiro. He had come to her in the water, to pull her to the safety of the bank. He felt then like someone else, a stranger with an ancient power. She wanted to vomit the water in her lungs and stomach, but something held her back. She wanted to breath.

 

A Mandalorian mask. A stench of death. Heroism forged from witnessed horror.

 

There was a lightness to the presence that offended her very soul. Her fingers grasped the Sith soldier’s armor as the water swirled on the bank. It was repulsive. The weakness of heroism.

 

Jeedai. Revanchist

 

He had to find his own strength. To rely on ancestors was weakness. Her lungs burned for air. She wanted to strike out, to rend the flesh from his bones, but still the Force did not answer.

 

Why would the Force answer to weakness?

 

The Sith opened her eyes and stared into the mud but she could only see one thing: Her own insignificance. She was nothing against the power of the Force.

 

Embrace it.

 

A stream of darkened water dribbled from the Sith’s mouth as the Nightsister wrapped a towel about her shoulders. Hayley did not feel its touch.

 

Embrace it.

 

She could not feel the Force here, because it was bound to the suffering of the land. It was broken here. She only felt the force through Wrath, but that was only but one lens through which to see the force.

 

Embrace it.

 

It was wrath. That was her weakness. She had only felt the force through the cardinal sins. Her master’s greed and gluttony. Furion’s Sloth. The Lust and envy of Ar-pharazon. Her wrath and pride. Tears burned her eyes, but she could not fight them back.

 

Embrace ME.

 

And she did. 

 

Agony. Pain. Sorrow. 

 

Raw emotion burned into her soul as a new fire. An endless suffering worse than death. The river erupted behind her into a frothing nightmare of power. Backwards she leapt, dragging her two companions into the heart of the brackish river.

[Fieldgrey]

...What do the Sith do with the weak? Those born into infirmity and retardation? What does the Kathari den-mother do to the runt? Does it allow it to howl with the pack at the majesty of the light of the rings? No. It is crushed and trod upon. To allow such life to continue is to defy evolution, and the strength it brings. 

 

*****

 

Rage and Sorrow

 

A species boiled away in the waves by a cruel tempest of fire birthed from the inhumanity of victorious pride. Dispassionate extermination of the weak.

 

Abstract holocaust. 

 

The brackish water burned her tongue filling her nostrils with wildfire. There was such power in the emotions of the river. A rebellion against death. The destruction of this place by the mandalorians had been almost sterile, but it had left a wound in the force nonetheless. Why were the emotions of the weak overcoming her?

 

There was a light in her mind that pushed against the darkness. A ghost that lurked behind her subconscious. 

 

Kyrie.

 

The Krath brought her own emotions into the river, with a rawness she had only reserved for her nightmares. She screamed without voice into the darkened water. Why did she live and her sister was left to rape and torment and dishonourable death? The mute girl who had sung her to sleep had been left to rot on that rusting world. 

 

You survived because you are strong enough to overcome chaos. 

 

Black water filled her eyes with grainy soot. Her nostrils smelled not the water but the blood of her mother on the carpet. Her ears heard not the rushing of waves as the river met the ocean, but the belaboured cries of her sister’s torment. 

 

The Sith Lord cried. 

 

Her ugly tears combined with the water, merging into the pain and sorrow of that place. Pain was replaced with a dark mirth. The delicious taste of survival. 

 

Her cries became laughter. 

 

She rose from the waves rebirthed. The darkness of the river rushed into her, drowning the ghost within. Upon her tongue she formed the ocean, casting into it her weakness as a smith applies flux to impure steel. 

 

Awenydd dragged herself from the waves, as haggard and maddened as the storm that grew upon her tongue and within the skies above. She dropped beside the nightsister and vomited upon the crimson sand. 

 

Purified.

 

Water and bile the colour of a squid’s ink splashed into the sand, bringing with it a deep malice. A crystal of tainted seafoam formed from it as the Sith applied her wrath. Ochre it was in color, the light consumed and scattered in clouds of red and black. It shone in the sand with the flames of that place. It cried for massacre.

[Fieldgrey]

...Does the Maelstrom cry for the ships it drives upon the reef? Does the saber-kath hold itself back from the death-strike? Nature’s charter is written in strength, it does not weep for the weak and the dead. Why should a Sith? 

 

*****

 

The Krath’s hair whipped about her face with the power of the rising storm, cloaking her visage behind a curtain of auburn braids. Salt and sand reflected the power of the Sith’s energies, nature itself in rebellion to the wound in the Force. A vortex around which the dynamic evil of that place raged. The crystal, in its mottled ochre luminescence, hummed and shrieked, engraved with the discordant terror of the Force.   

 

...I am the Blooded Drexl.

 

Her concentration shattered, and so did her crystal. All her hope turned to dark vapour, to be scattered by the wind. A small distraction, a heresy to the darkside, and all her work undone. No lens through which she could wield the full power of a genocide. 

 

No...

 

Pure malice raged through her spine, seething through her body in a bitter mimicry of the waves behind her. Hayley grasped at the fading energy, attempting to lash it with her soul’s anguish, but her own flesh was a lamentable focus. 

 

One life is not enough. 

 

The Sith’s sulphuric eyes fell upon the Drexl’s squad, wrapped in their pathetic mortality. The waves moved and the wind cracked. Salt and sand whispered into the Drexl’s mind, preying on his delusions of grandeur. Every creature believed their lineage to be a prophecy. The whisperings would begin, crawling through the sands as if out of time and born of memory. 

 

“...power to make the universe right. To be the best of the Armageddons.” 

 

Darth Awenydd gave the whispers a tug, to bring the attention to the Nightsister’s work. The voices became male and commanding in their suggestions, as if tapping into ancient historical knowledge of long-dead scholars. 

 

“Such runework can only be done through lifeblood. Such a girl should know that. Such weakness.”

 

The Sith Lord concealed a smile with a painful groan

[Fieldgrey]

A Sith’s strength comes from their internal focus; their inherent passion. Whatever it was for the Sith that tempted them to the darkness with a promise of power. It comes not from long lost arts or visions, that is but a facade behind which demons lurk. The false prospect of strength that lies outside the self.

 

******

 

...Lineages. 

 

The Sith Lord watched the Imperial trooper lose an arm, and yet harness the force like a Master. And not even as an apprentice. It made her angry to see the man so full of power he had not earned. The Force was swirling around him like a swarm of locusts, feeding off the power of the place and the man’s raw energy. 

 

She spat into the dirt. 

 

Disgusting waste. 

 

Wrath was tempting her now. Such raw power was so easily spent into chaos and bloodshed. She had now before her a choice, to strike this Shiro down before he became a problem, or to train him as a tool for her to use. 

 

No one would miss a lowly Sith trooper and his squad. 

 

Hayley stalked up to the man, tentatively placing a hand on his shoulder, before ramming her other hand into his wound. She had no interest in the man dying of blood loss, if he was to die it would be by her hand. To the Nightsister she spoke softly, 

 

“Use his blood in whatever ritual you need, I feel this mission was a waste of time. That is my responsibility and I beg your forgiveness for it.” 

 

Forgiveness was not of the Sith, but she felt she needed to ask it. The distaste of failure sickened her stomach. Wrath turned the illness to flame through her foci of pyromancy, her rage catching fire, and her hand cauterized the Trooper’s wound. It was a sickening animosity, one borne of her abuse and she bit back tears in its usage. That shard of her soul was not often used. 

 

“Take my ship and return to the order if you must, I release you from this quest.” 

 

Her words were tinged with the bitterness of failure. The perfume of burning flesh and ichor swirled about them in the seabreeze, a salty and pungent aroma of death. As the wound was sealed, she drove into the man an intense pain, alighting his nerves with agony. She collected some of his blood in a vial for future study, as a Krath the study of genetics and bloodline was of great value

 

“Wake up, fool.” 

[Fieldgrey]

The Sith Lord sunk into the sand beside the Imperial Soldier, letting the wet, dark sand grind against her skin, watching the darkness overtake him. This Shiro was different from the one that had come to this tomb of a world before. He had begun to surrender to his passions. 

 

At long last. 

 

The Krath’s pale lips tugged upward into a grin as she watched the trooper commit murder through her sulpheric yellow eyes. His blade had taken them both through the throat, and she caught his muscular arm in both of her slender ones. With a quick twist she disarmed him and then let him collapse into her arms. 

 

He had expended too much power for too little training, and his body was not yet used to the feeling of the darkness. It called to them both, but unchecked it only added to the chaos of their surroundings. She stared at the two men he had cut down. Their crimson lifeblood leaked into the sand, mixing with the surf to turn it into a froth of blood and foam. 

 

“Let’s bring it back to the basics, apprentice.” 

 

She added the last word to check him under her own power. She would take him on as Sheog had her, molding her to power through a path of discovery. Hayley extended a hand before him and smiled faintly. 

 

“I feel the force and its strength when I immerse myself in wrath. It is a sin, one of the seven, those baser passions that the Jedi would deny.” 

 

Anger rose within the Sith Lord and she passed it into Wrath, that strong and uncomfortable passion that so easily twisted her. 

 

“I want you to meditate and find that focus. Feel it in the blood you spilled without seeing it. Describe all you feel to me. Leave nothing unsaid. ” 

 

((OOC: It should take you two to three posts to truly meditate and touch that power. You cannot control it yet, but it must tempt you.))

[Fieldgrey]

...Murderer… 

 

The Force taunted him. It drew him into the rage of the past. The Sith Lord closed her eyes, flicking the blood-slick knife between her agile fingers, spinning drops of blood into the sand where they left flecks of crimson in fragile trails. The surf came and consumed it, washing away the lifeblood with a quiet indignity.

 

“You fought injustice and were branded as a kin-slayer, a murderer…” 

 

Matter of factly. The last word she spoke with bemusement, as if the title meant nothing more than a nutrition label on an imperial ration. Her words turned as cold as the wind, 

 

“This world has twisted you? Have you no responsibility?” 

 

The knife flicked at the air, making a soft whirring as she spun it. 

 

“You wash your hands of their blood and blame it on your past.” 

 

The knife stopped and touched the cauterized flesh of Shiro’s missing limb. A warning.  

 

“Focus!"

 

She bit back her words from a yell. Rain pattered across the sand and a cold wind blew, splattering the sand and bodies without care for their training or the dignity of the dead. The blood around them began to steam.

 

"What does the rage desire?" 

[Fieldgrey]

The soldier seized in her arms, and the Sith Lord let the man’s weight carry them both into the sand. The boy could taste the power, and he desired to devour it all. He could sample, but could he use it? 

 

But oh was it a different beast it was to wield a power like this...

 

She smiled down at him, her sulpheric yellow eyes filled with profound sadness of such depth it would be like looking into the maw itself. Loss.

 

“As they say, Shiro, Chaos is a ladder…” 

 

Her mind turned to the old days under Sheog’s domination. To those like Geki and Ar-Pharazon, or to Lucifer. They had created chaos under a similar guise, they would set the galaxy on fire and reap the harvest. A dark visage crossed her face for but a moment, she could feel the inherent power of this man. 

 

Would I dare unleash him upon the galaxy? 

 

The Sith Lord cradled her apprentice’s head upon her lap, shielding it from the waves that swelled around them. Her ears were filled with the crashing of surf, but her eyes could only see fire. Who would rule in the ashes of such a galaxy? 

 

If he desired such power, she would have to mold him. He would create such disorder, and such discord always created echoes in the Force. Would those echoes be enough?

 

“And what comes after your war? After your rage is all but spent?" 

 

((OOC: Try to use it. To show me the power of that rage, but you must fail the first time. Two to three posts of failure should be sufficient. The Power of the Force is illusive until you can create your foundation.))

 

[Fieldgrey]

The Sith Lord listened to the soldier with a slight smile, watching the man fight in his internal dialogue. The struggle between one’s personal dogma and the will of the force was eternal. Her own challenge of struggle and power was continuously at odds. She slipped her fingers into the wet sand, hiding the scars that patterned them from the oncoming storm. Her voice had a purring tone to it as she burrowed her fingers through the sand around her

 

“An eternity of war and rage…” 

 

The Krath tipped her head back, letting the wind whip her hair about her, a reflection of the storm’s ferocity in auburn locks. The storm was almost upon them  now, the gale engorging itself with brine, mutating the waves before them into murderous whitecaps. The dark ocean became bright with the swell, driven by the chaos of the storm. It was a foretelling of the echo they would create together in the Force. Immense enough to break the force itself. 

 

Hayley hated it, chaos. That disgusting disorder which brought death and dismay to so many. She had to fight it, to bring the vicious cycle of conquer and entropy within which innocence was devoured. Wrath burned, she could feel it within her veins, rousing her into power. It was like a drug, giving her such power, but every feeling was stained by it, that bitter hatefulness. She would that addict's end one day, that she knew.

 

“Feel that rage within you… Take it into yourself. Hold it to you like an ember and give it life.” 

 

She breathed in slowly, and repeated herself with emphasis. Perhaps the man would find some power within himself. 

 

“Take it into yourself. Make it a fire. Make it a wildfire.” 

[Fieldgrey]

The Sith Lord watched the soldier as he became immersed in the tides of his emotions. She could feel the swirling energies of Rage, and the familiarity of Wrath, that unholy demon that lurked in her own soul. The girl flipped the vibroknife from hand to hand, watching the man as he let the Force fill him. 

 

Hunger… 

 

Beneath the surface a gnawing feeling began to eat away at her sensation. There was a draw of power in this place, and the acolyte in her lap was drawing attention within the veil of the Force. Fieldgrey could feel eyes upon her, lecherous, wanting. She shuddered, spinning the knife into a whirling blur. 

 

The soldier moved to face her, and she caught sight of the power within his eyes. There was a reflection of the hunger within them. They were crimson, flecked with gold. Just like Sheog’s. She closed her own eyes against the thought. His hunger was always there, waiting. 

 

Power draws power. The more they touch, the more they want. 

 

The Sith Lord stretched out an arm to the soldier, letting the tattered tunic fall away to reveal the scars of torture. She leveled the knife to his face before opening her palm and balancing the blade by its tang on her forefinger. The vibrating blade wobbled in the wind. 

 

“Take that storm…” 

 

She spun the blade on her fingertip, it staying impossibly balanced

 

“Cast it out like a net. Capture this knife as if it were a fish, and draw it to you.” 

 

((OOC: The seemingly simple act of telekinesis is not as simple as it is in the movies, take your time binding your power into an object before you attempt to move it. Fail, once.))

[Fieldgrey]

The Krath could feel the storm. Before her was pure rage, but it was uncontrolled, and a pale reflection of the true power of the Force. As inferior as it was, she could feel the echo it was creating. This place amplified and distorted the expressions of the soul, as through a mirror darkly. Around them a hurricane was forming, inky black clouds warping and reforming into a massive stormfront. There was something else at its heart, a gnawing hunger. 

 

Footsteps…

 

The soldier’s concentration began to wain, even as he had shifted to the knife she held. Even so, she could feel a small tug upon it, enough to upset its balance. Darth Awenydd watched the blade wobble upon her finger, letting a grin twist her countenance. 

 

He touched it, he has potential beyond just the swirling of the force. 

 

Reaching out, she snatched the blade from the air as it began to fall, turning her attention to the shocked troopers on the dunes beside them. Another test for the man.

 

Old loyalties or power? 

 

Frustration was building inside of him. A deep well of untapped potential. The Krath slipped out her own wrath, letting it wriggle across the dunes towards the soldiers like a wave of devouring snakes. The dark sand shifted beneath them and she dragged them before the sitting Soldier. Their cries were stifled by thunder as light cut through the sky above them. Her voice was like that of a sand-panther, a concentration of mocking danger. 

 

“What would you do unto them? What does the Force command?” 

 

The fallen blade hovered between them, an electric sheen shimmering across its blade. Into it she willed her own Wrath, hallowing the blade for the will of the Dark Side. No matter his choices, he would gain his first true lesson. The blade began to warp and darken, like a sheet of flimsiplast thrown into an ironsmith’s forge.

[Fieldgrey]

How easily men are corrupted by power… 

 

Darth Awenydd watched as the Soldier killed the two men, his former soldiers without so much as a hesitation. Her sulphuric yellow eyes took in his baptism in blood, with dispassionate interest. The way the Dark Side moved was always unique in its new believers and was worthy of study. She filed away its corrupting influence on the Soldier before her. 

 

So often the Dark Side moved its Warriors to meaningless slaughter, to purge everything around them, and to leave them alone among the ashes of their own inconsequential triumphs. What use was that? Why did the Force move men to slaughter those they could easily rule, or at least dominate to their own will? 

 

Her own master had not killed without reason, only to feed his hunger, but he was Krath, not Warrior. Lucifer had killed without so much as a thought on Mykryr and he had named himself a Prince of Warriors. 

 

So this was the Warrior path, to always fight to show one’s strength. 

 

The Sith Lord rose from the sand, the sand falling away from her tattered robes and tunic in wet clumps. She brushed a scarred hand through her auburn hair and stared at the Soldier, taking him and his choices in. 

 

“If the force commands, do it, but do not slay without reflecting on the reason…” 

 

She stepped to one of the dying men, listening to his feeble, gurgled screams. She breathed in, letting the emotions fill her. The Storm was coming, and she could feel the beats of its wind upon her back. 

 

“Pain, suffering, terror. Those passions feed our darkness, let those victories add to your strength. Take within yourself such things, let it nourish you.” 

 

((OOC: Let the emotions of those you kill fill you, feed you for the next victory. It must sustain you for the next fight. Channel this victory to conquer telekinesis and demonstrate it. You are still a novice in this and it will require great concentration.))

[Fieldgrey]

The Sith Lord could feel the Soldier’s manipulations in the Force, a sudden surge of passionate energy that swarmed about the man. 

 

He applies violence like an artist, taking a color from the palette and giving it a macabre life. 

 

The snapping of vertebrae cascaded over her, for a moment drowning out the sounds of the storm. She let out a small sigh. 

 

Yet his brushwork is clumsy, like the futile stabs of a toddler splashing his paints…

 

It was one thing to cast about the force in grand movements, such as in the ending of a life, it was another entirely to act with precision. She stared over the dunes at the remaining soldiers who were setting about camp. They didn’t deserve their fates, but their sacrifice was a vital lesson for a far greater cause. Such were the fates of the weak, eternally the playthings of the strong. 

 

Driftwood began to scatter upon the sand, the true power of the coming storm almost upon them. The Sith Lord nodded slowly, watching the Sold-, no her apprentice. 

 

“Take them as you will. Use as little strength as possible, and be as precise in your actions as you can. Learn your control. Let their fates foster the strength you will need to weather this storm.

 

The Sith Lord began to draw upon the sand with the blood of the fallen, the crimson pain seeming to creep up the scars in her fingers, like the roots of a great tree soaks up the dew. Her voice was harsh then, 

 

"But...Bring one to me alive for the next lesson.”

[Fieldgrey]

The Sith Lord looked up as her apprentice surged away, a blossom of energy within the Force. The warped vibroblade shot away, propelled like a slug from a scattergun into a target. She could not see the actions of her apprentice with her eyes due to the curves of the dark dunes, but the echoes her apprentice made in the Force made it all too clear. She began to channel her own wrath, her rage against the chaos. 

 

Terror, Pain, and then nothing. 

 

He was killing them faster than he could utilize their emotions, but that was to be expected. He was a shining supernova of energy before her senses, but he was dimming swiftly. The way he used the force and the echoes that he cast about him in the sand were sloppy, like the splashings of a child in a tantrum. Darth Awenydd’s own hands continued to draw in the blood-soaked beach, the waves casting themselves around her, but not dissuading her actions. Her scars soaked up the blood, oblivious to the cries of the storm and the sucking of the waves. 

 

Pain. That emotion was beginning to echo the loudest, overpowering all others. Her apprentice had been wounded, but not fatally. Anarchy and Entropy were the reverberations within the Force, bleeding away the power from her apprentice into uselessness. 

 

As the captive was dragged over the dunes towards her, Hayley reached out with her wrath, that settled and deliberate anger, striking against the chaos that threatened Shiro, that cauterized wound upon his chest. With blood-soaked fingers she withdrew a handful of sand from the waves. 

 

From the captive she bound terror, drawing it out of him as she amplified it. She would let the seeds of insanity grow, fed by his worst nightmares. To the captive’s mind, the beach became littered with corpses. Breathing in the man’s panic, she expelled into Shiro’s charred flesh, slapping the sand into the wound, transforming them both. The sand was debased by her rage, falling into its pure silicate form, and bound itself into the wound, knitting the cauterized flesh with a living glass, a true horror of Sith magic. 

 

The winds howled their own rage, echoing her actions with lightning, bolts of light shattering the sand about them into glassy spikes, buffeting them with its thunder until the glass pillars became windblown shards. The Sith Lord had to shout to be heard above the turmoil. 

 

“I will torture him, you must feed off those emotions to survive this storm. Bind the power of your rage into your flesh, harden it against that which is to come.” 

 

With those words said, Darth Awenydd began to carve into the captive’s mind, using her own body as a catalyst for the corrupting power of the dark side. For the captive there was no hope, only the discord of the worst of humanity. 

 

((OOC: The Sith Warrior makes a barrier of their flesh, utilizing their own rage to be somewhat impervious to light damage. You are a novice to this, treat it as such.))

[Fieldgrey]

The Sith Lord bristled at her apprentice’s mutterings. The Code of the Sith. Those feeble and meaningless words. He seemed to believe in such mantras.

 

Peace is a lie. There is only Passion.

 

Darth Awenydd’s eyes rolled back behind her closed eyelids,

 

Through Passion I gain Strength.

 

It was true that the power of the Dark Side could be channeled through passions, and such feelings harnessed for strength, but it was meaningless without conflict. The storm raged about them, the surf raging in white peaks, surging about them both. The waters were cold, sapping the warmth from her flesh as she sat upon the bloodied sands. With her own wrath she drilled into the mind of the captive before her.

 

All his fears became exposed, and she utilized them to get deeper into his psyche. Within the veil of the Force, a myriad of swirling images began to manifest, beasts, horrors, nightmares, all for the torment of the man before her, his shrieks of terror becoming lost in the howls of the wind. She would keep his mind from the embrace of catatonia, she needed his fear fresh for her apprentice.

 

Her own words were those of a rebuke, but a gentle one.

 

“Do you truly think you can understand the depths of The Force through an adherence to codes?”

 

She fed the fear into the storm, thunderclaps echoing the man’s screams. The strength of conflict.

 

“We all achieve definition in conflict, it is there we find ourselves or find ourselves lacking.”

 

To emphasize her point, her own battle against the will of her captive was won, the man’s struggle for freedom against the stuncuffs changing its rhythm into something else entirely. The shadow of his mind wanted only the freedom now to slit his own throat. Her apprentice would find his power, or be forever trapped in its pursuit. 

 

“Now, strengthen your flesh and fight the wind. Let us see what echoes your conflict produce.”

[Fieldgrey]

The internal conflict that played out before The Sith Lord was an echo of the storm, strength fighting against strength. She could feel the dark desired within her apprentice, the promises of untold power. All he had to do was give into the sins of his mind. To embrace the carnality of corrupting power. He was fighting against it and that pleased her greatly.

It was one thing to draw power from the Force, it was another to have the Force wield you in return. The Dark Side was a treacherous companion, and its ways were that of Entropy. It corrupted even the fairest minds and set them to great evil. Darth Awenydd had seen it with Darth Ares, Ason, and but never Sheog. The Hutt had his own madness, but he had ever reflected himself within the Force, he made it echo with his strength, and never bent to it.

Hunger was moving.

It was like the embrace of the void; that great wash of power that was the even horizon of a black hole. She could feel them both… Slipping. The fight of the prisoner had but been a distraction, and with his breaking the true chaos of the storm had been unleashed. With a thought, she shattered the prisoner’s body, breaking every single bone at once, starting with his teeth. The great wash of pain that erupted about them, she channeled into strength.

Was this apprentice worthy of the lesson of Strength?

Fieldgrey offered it all to the Apprentice, the entire life essence of the prisoner to Shiro. What to him was the raw strength she offered? The mind made some powerless, and to others gave great strength. Here lay the temptation. A man’s will controlled his strength, but it could also allow the man control enough to draw upon the strength of others.

She could feel it now, the sands were shaking with each wave in the Force. There was the hunger, a building wrath, a bloodlust that could not be sated. That was her gift, vitality, power, and blood; enough to weather the storm.

“Will you consume, or turn away?”

[Fieldgrey]

Perhaps I was too eager to see if he was different…

Fieldgrey watched her apprentice consume, driven like a hungry beast to feast upon her offering. He was not her first apprentice to fail her tests, but unlike Lucifer, she would not kill him for his lack of wisdom. Her voice was soft as she spoke, and even whipped by the wind the purring subtleties of malice was unmistakable

“You wished to show me the power you have taken… But that power is not your own. It is not driven by your strength.”

The Sith Lord whirled from her cross-legged position, scattering seafoam and crimson sand about her. In an eyeblink she was standing before her apprentice, the storm at her back. He was taller than her, but she was far from intimidated. She placed a scarred hand on his chest, feeling the beating heart beneath thumping against her palm.

“It is a hollow gift, the strength of the another, and one that will consume you as you devour it. The power you feel is that of an ouroboros, ever starving and only able to consume itself…”

Her nailbitten fingers slid across his ribcage, and she opened herself fully to the storm. Before it had been but the pull of the even horizon, and now they had passed beyond its rim. If her apprentice was to be saved from this place, she had to make a sacrifice. She would be its conduit. Her voice became faint,

“What you have shown me is not the power to conquer the galaxy, instead… you show me how the galaxy will die.”

The world fractured. The Sky fell into shadow and evaporated like dust upon the wind. Stars reached their hands for them, but they too fell into darkness, becoming the crying shots of turbolaser fire, ripping through the atmosphere. The ocean began to boil about them, and the death of millions echoed about the pair. The wound in the force was unravelling.

“Strength that is not your own is useless. That is the wisdom of strength.”

((OOC: Failure is the path of every apprentice. Take the next post to learn this lesson. Refocus yourself upon fostering what is within you; build your strength again but from the ground up. You will start with no power at all, as the inherent power of this place has disappeared. You have nothing but the pain from your missing arm.))

[Fieldgrey]

Darth Awenydd was overwhelmed, there was so much pain, so much death about her that she was not sure of her own mortality. There were souls torn to pieces before her, reenacting their deaths over and over within the veil of the Force. She saw Cathar families gunned down by blaster-fire, squalling babies steamed away in the turbolaser-boiled sea. Those that did not die immediately were stabbed where they curled and spasmed on the beachhead by shimmering vibrobayonets.

Hayley could only feel revulsion. What was the lesson here?

A new form stooped to the sand, picking up a glittering Mandalorian mask. It swore revenge. The Sith Lord stared in awe at the lessons of the past.

So, this was the echo. At long last.

The great violence of the Mandalorian genocide of the Cathar people had birthed the fall of Revan. From him, the Republic changed, the entire galaxy was bathed in the blood of countless wars that stretched millennia. Her sulpheric yellow eyes turned to her apprentice.

…What echoes have I started by the training of this one?

Electricity sparked from her flesh, the storm of the collapsing wound burning into her. She turned it to the forms she knew, flame beginning to wreath her pale flesh with highlights of yellow, orange, and red. She became a demon of flame, a form of pure fire, her clothes turning to ash upon her.

“Apprentice; be the weapon of only yourself. Bow not to the Force, bend it to your will.”

With a laugh she cast herself into the churning sea. She would boil it away once more.

((OOC: channel your power more fluidly into your own defenses. Experiment: does inflicting pain on yourself grow or diminish your power? Is pain your only conduit to the force? Find one more, beyond wrath and pain.))

[Fieldgrey]

The ocean tore at the Sith Lord’s body with a thousand ravenous hands, but the flame that seared through her flesh was unyielding, even to the might of the sea. She felt the boiling of the water around her, the ripples it made, those ripples becoming currents of their own to fight against the rhythm of the tide.

She could hear a voice singing amongst the roiling currents, she could see a battle. The reckless death throes of a vanishing crusade. The death of the light countless souls swallowed by a mass shadow. The flames boiled against the endless sea as the Sith Lord discovered the next echo to trace.

Malachor V….

Far above the churning waves of a burning sea, the apprentice heard a new voice, one bound by a ravaging hunger. It spoke as if through the heart of the dark side, and to his eyes there would be a swirling shadow, as if the soldier was looking upon a starless night, reflected through a dark mirror.

“Pride…”

The bodies about him began to unravel, flesh unspinning itself as if it were made from nerf’s wool.

“Vainglory…”

Muscle was exposed as the skin and clothing disintegrated. It looked alive with twitching, but it too turned ashen and faded.

“The love of your own excellence…”

Bone turned to ash, and all that remained was timeless shadow upon the wave-soaked sand. A piece of driftwood rolled across the darkness to rest at the high-tide line.

“It is with the loss of one’s humility that great power is awoken, for pride is odious to both man and his gods…”

There was a feeling of a great hunger, all consuming, all knowing. It would creep through the flesh, crawling like maggots through the pores.

“Harness it, apprentice of Pride, and with it do great wonders.”

((OOC: Turn pride into a weapon, take two posts to imbue your power into a weapon. It will not yet be your lightsaber, but this is your first step towards attuning a weapon to you.))

[Fieldgrey]

As the apprentice worked, Awenydd burned within the ocean, an unending fire of pain and destruction. Powers of destruction were at their heart an ouroboros, providing to in turn consume. The ocean’s waves above had taken a green edge, white squalls forcing them to peak and crash with thunder. She felt wrath above, cloaked in pride, even as her mind was absorbed by pain.

 

The force would answer her apprentice’s desire. A blade would form as he forged into it the warrior’s path.

 

From the waves, the Sith Lord crawled. Her flesh was scalded, boiling, charred. The skin wept from her left arm in trails of smoking rot. She stared at her apprentice with eyes that were wholly different then when she had entered the ocean; they held a maniacal fire within them. The white of her eyes had turned a charcoal black. The irises were as crimson as the Maw Nebula. Her pupils were as dark as the heart of the Maw. She was laughing.

 

Bright laughter that tinkled through the crashing waves. A laughter that would warm the heart of even a stranger.

 

“Come now. Finish you blade, we have a long walk to find a ship.”

 

((OOC: Pour your everything, every lesson, your very essence as a warrior into this sword of yours. It'll come in handy in the fights to come.))

[Fieldgrey]

Lord of Flame.

 

Awenydd stared at the shifting ocean, her fiery eyes reflecting the horizon as light broke through the clouds. It was warm on her flesh, striking away the bitterness of the cold that the seafoam had leeched from her flesh. She breathed in, focusing on the pain from her smoking arm.

 

Prey...

 

She took that pain into herself, letting it wash through her emotions, through her soul itself, letting it carry away her fatigue. It was replaced by a new sensation, a more primal thing. The anticipation of a hunt.

 

The Sith Lord felt a swell of pride, like a great tidal wave within the force, created from a thousand echoes’ coalescence. She smiled thinly as the wave of wrath came after. Pride and Wrath were a common enough foundation amongst the Sith, but if her apprentice was not careful, both were easily undermined.

 

There was something near… An escape.

 

Awenydd let the echoes fade into the distance, letting the pain move through her still. She could smell it now, distant life, and an escape. She pressed the pain through the nerves in her spine, settling through the sciatic into her legs. She gritted her teeth against the electric fire and… leapt.

 

The Sith Lord’s jump carried her beyond the black-stained dunes to land on the riverbank at the edge of the beachhead, under the shade of the great burned tree.

 

She waved a hand to her apprentice and leapt again towards the source of her hunt. He would follow her or be abandoned, either through speed or jumping as she did.

 

((Focus now your power into movement))

[Fieldgrey]

Darth Awenydd slipped through the air, letting the breeze carry her in her leap, fueling her flight with the pain of her seared flesh. She had rarely felt so alive as she did now. From the scorched and cracked flesh of her arm, little wisps of smoke curled and then was carried away by her next jump. 

 

The Hunter could feel the pain pumping in her heart, fueling the fire within, which in turn tuned her senses towards the hunt. She felt bestial, a predator with no fear at the top of the food-chain. She smiled, her lips twisting away from a fiery visage of teeth and flicking tongue. There was something deeper within her that stirred with the flames, even beyond the primal nature of a predator, something new. ‘

 

Before her, the dunes parted, showing two shuttlecraft surrounded by milling people. Their scent was on the seabreeze, the astringent odor of thuggish masculinity mixed with the sweetness of glitterstim. 

 

Drug smugglers. Almost forty in number. 

 

The Sith Lord let out a viperous hiss, letting her predatory nature flow through the force to touch her apprentice. She turned her body in mid-flight, letting her body contort into a dancer’s pirouette as she rushed towards the crowd of prey. 

 

((Now is a good time to experiment with your combat writing, but do not be too OP. Find a way to be epic but controlled. Don’t overdo it. Find your balance. Kill/Disable only a handful, and we will work on counter-NFU tactics))

[Fieldgrey]

Darth Awenydd slipped through the sky like a falling Tandbet, her body twirling through the air without a sound. The burnt flesh on her arm seeped blackened blood, each drop tearing through the charred skin with waves of pain. In turn the Sith fed on the pain, letting it flow into her hunting instinct. Their scent was driving her towards wildness.

 

Reaching out with the Force, The Sith Lord began to inspire the sandy soil beneath the soldier to join her echo, to whisper the oncoming destruction. Murmuring prophecy washed across the soldiers, and with it came confusion and panic.

 

The Sith Lord’s face contorted into a maniacal smile as the soldiers began to run about in confusion, just in time for her apprentice’s attack. The man’s style of attack was quick to draw attention and the panic turned to anger and fear, which filled her senses until she began to hear every breath exhaled, smell every drop of sweat, and taste the blood on Shiro’s knife.

 

Three men fired blasters haphazardly at the apprentice while two brandished their vibroswords at the man with terrified slashes.

 

The Sith Lord burned.

 

As her senses overflowed, she manifested it into fire, letting it crawl across her flesh. The pain that came with it fed into her power, igniting her clothing and skin. With a predatory shriek she landed like a comet in the center of the mercenaries and smugglers, spinning the fire from her body in another pirouette, casting it about her in a wave of flame. The fire burned through the flesh of those about her like white phosphorus, searing through the sinew to ignite the bone beneath.

 

Their screams would add to the growing echo until it became a cacophony that would drown out life itself. 

[Fieldgrey]

The pain of her own wounds was beginning to creep its way up her veins with each heartbeat, intensified by a growing panic. It set into the base of her mind, eating away at her senses until it was all she could feel. Pain blossomed into prominence as it formed into the spirit of each soul her fire enveloped, and into the physical realm it was reflected in white phosphorous. Skin melted and bone slagged like lead in a blacksmith’s forge.

 

Fieldgrey breathed in a gasp, and it was all gone. No more fire and ruin, all that was left was a few smoldering embers of charred ivory. Her own clothing was burned away, scattered to the growing wind with the souls of those she had slain. She stumbled, the charred skin beginning to flake away from her charred arm. Solidified ash scattered, leaving her with a cauterized stump where her arm had once been.

 

Sacrifice.

 

She stared to where her apprentice battled for his life, using the body of one he had slain to ward off the others. After her onslaught, a mere ten remained to oppose them. The Sith Lord could not help but scoff

 

…Warriors... Never carrying their weight.

 

Her gravelly voice boomed across the battlefield, resounding in a chorus of voices; echoes of the slain and consumed.

 

“Stop playing with your prey, boy. You give them hope… A most dangerous weapon.”

[Fieldgrey]

"And what of you Master?"

 

The Sith Lord’s sulpheric eyes narrowed into gleaming yellow slits as she watched her apprentice move through his dance of death, a macabre display of violence. Such displays were paltry compared to the strength of the Force, against the echoes they were to create.

 

What of me?

 

Hayley stared down at her missing arm, gritting her teeth against the pain and twisting her pale lips into a smile. What she was missing the Force would replace. She was the Hunter, a predator, a Sith. No loss would slow her advance in power. Chaos would fall to order.

 

“Gather their weapons and armor, a trophy from each of your kills. From the wildfire springs life. From their destruction your roots shall grow deep.”

 

The Sith Lord pointed to the circle of corpses from Shiro’s first attack with a trembling and bleeding finger

 

“Make your armor, let it enhance your strengths and cover your weaknesses. Remember no Warrior is invulnerable. Forge the first of your raiments.”

 

She heard a shuddering cough, one of those she had burned had yet to fall into death’s hands. Fieldgrey reached out with the Force, dragging the woman behind her as she stepped into the pirate’s discarded ship.

[Fieldgrey]

The woman was dying, the Sith Lord could feel that fading anguish in the Force, and it was reflected on the bleeding face before her. She knelt beside the soldier, listening to her painful cries, while she laid her soul bare to the Force. There was a power here, a power in that agony and it began to meld with her own.

 

“Why…”

 

It was a simple question the Sith Lord had heard several times before. Why did Chaos allow so many deaths? The Sith Lord leaned forward, crawling her fingers through the blood that stained the decking, through that growing puddle of crimson. It was warm. So warm.

 

“You are an echo.”

 

Her fingers splashed, sending ripples through the formally placid, sanguine pond. There was something far greater here than just a victim. Fieldgrey smiled, the skin of her lips feeling tight against her teeth. Her mouth was dry.

 

She began to hum, rocking on her knees to an invisible beat. One of the songs that Kyrie used to sing seemed so right in this moment. Her fingers splashed a beat, the moans of her victim became the background of her words. A predator loomed. Something turned and moved within her, exposed to the darkness of the Force

 

“May we dance in our madness-."

 

Her breath caught in her throat and her voice changed as she shifted. An undertone of a bestial purr. 

 

"In the morose of your red rain…”

 

Shocked eyes and a scream as the Force took the Sith Lord in its embrace, driving her hand through the chest of the woman before her, dragging out the heart and entrails. The puddle grew into an ocean and the Sith Lord satiated her hunger with the taste of power.

 

Blood dripped from her lips, pouring down her pale throat to wet her tattered clothing. She stood from her feast, her sulpheric eyes becoming fully crimson and animalistic. It was as though she did not recognize him. Something had changed. 

 

“You desire replacement and enhancement…?”

 

Her one hand rested on his chest, leaving a handprint of dripping blood. When she smiled, the smile was of a fanged beast.

 

“My gift.”

 

Hayley took her hand from his chest, biting the meat of her arm until blood bubbled from her lips, and sprinkled it upon the droid’s arm. She picked up the vibroblade, letting her blood coat the encrusted gems.

 

With her blood she imbued her malice and the anguish she had consumed. Through gritted teeth she let her victim’s soul pass into it as well.

 

The Sith Lord looked warily at her apprentice, and with another twisted smile, rammed the blade of the weapon into the man’s missing shoulder and then ripped the knife free. The blood on it seemed to bubble and dance, burning into the blade. There was echoed screaming as the soul died, sacrificed for the weapon into a painful doom.

 

The Force took next the droid’s arm, attaching itself to the Sith Warrior, metal binding to flesh with immeasurable pain as every nerve was scorched with a new, alien feeling.

 

The Sith Lord laughed, stepping with bare feet across the drying blood to start the ship’s autopilot system. It was about time for them to leave the cursed planet.

[Fieldgrey]

The echoes were growing louder, a resounding heartbeat within the Force, that of unending suffering. The Sith Lord smiled grimly, staring at her apprentice as he came to terms with his lot, and what the Force had in store for him. She bathed in the echoes, letting the man’s pain and anguish fuel her own power.

 

Master…

 

Was that what she was now? Darth Awenydd had always seen herself as more a tutor than a controlling leader. She was a teacher, but no Master. Such words reminded her of slavery, and she would never curse another with an echo of that type of anguish. It was far better to influence with subtlety and control without direct inference, to dominate the wills of others were the purview of warriors, and it the copper taste on her tongue turned sour.

 

“I am the master of none, least of all yours.”

 

She stared at the man, protective instinct worming its way through the echoes to settle within her chest like a parasite. The woman frowned, flicking her knife between her fingers absently.

 

“You’ll need armor, or you’ll die to some cha’kar with a blaster.”

 

The Sith Lord reached out with the Force, and the Warrior would feel a gentle caress against his chest as she smiled and dragged the blade across her own chest, serrating the skin and drawing a rivulet of crimson down the pale canvas of her flesh. The pain and wound would find its echo upon the warrior before her.

 

Into the rush of their blood she bound the scattered plating at their feet, knitting together mismatched pieces of plasteel and durasteel into a shambling breastplate. It was the armor of the dead, befitting a revenant like the man before him. She lashed it to the wound, binding blood to flesh, imbuing it with the echoes of their heartbeats. She winced from the effort, her own hands trembling from weakness

 

“You have not yet earned the rest. For now bond with it, feel it, make it your own.”