The Abandoned

[Darth Nyrys]

The Abandoned

 

Over a decade ago, on a world of too little consequence for its name to be remembered, necromancers were dispatched by the Sith Empire to assist in the conducting of trench warfare. The campaign had been a bloodbath, and the use of Sith that could raise the dead seemed to be an obvious choice. However, nothing had prepared the Sith for the nightmare that they would be entering.

 

The fighting was so brutal and indifferent towards the Sith belief of triumph through superiority that the sorcerers had to strip away many facets of their beliefs that catered to ego and ritualism, instead relying on blending in and the soldiers around them to survive, rather than their own exceptionalism.

 

The meatgrinder would continue to churn for years, breaking down anyone that survived it into the same rust red coated shell of a person. When the Galactic Alliance was formed and the Empire was largely disbanded, this particular hellhole was simply forgotten. There was no extraction, no orders to stand down, only silence followed by a sudden stop in resupplies. There’s no telling how many soldiers and Sith eventually made it off world on their own, but none of them survived the experience intact. 

 

Driven by a hatred for the government that they believe abandoned them, and unable to escape the battlefield that so ruthlessly molded them into something so incredibly broken, these necromancers have returned to the Sith Empire expressly to get vengeance on the people that they believe have failed them.

 

Abandoned Spells and Abilities

 

Razorwire Labyrinth: A maddening sprawl of creeping razorwire infests the battlefield, snaking around terrain objects and choking once open fields. Something about the sprawl of metal feels… hungry, and anyone that has the misfortune to fall into it will suddenly find it quite able to coil and thrash like a serpent. The more the wire claims, the more it expands across the battlefield, like hellish creeper vines.

 

Storm of War: Extensive use of chemical weapons turned the rain into a vicious acid that scourged the vegetation and scoured and pitted metal. While the rain is by no means deadly to larger creatures, it has a catastrophic effect on the environment and can quickly convert a beautiful landscape into the rust red slurry of mud that haunts their dreams.

 

Echoes of Destruction: Resonating throughout eternity, the eardrum shattering force of massive cannons has burrowed deep into the minds of these necromancers, and they are able to call upon it with eruptive force as a concussive sonic blast. 

 

No Respite: The necromancer calls forth the vermin and pestilent beasts of the world to feed on the wounded and dying. The fauna summoned are by no means imposing combatants, but they can overwhelm soldiers on the verge of death, and exacerbate wounds by crawling through torn or sundered armor.

 

Poison Mists: Both sides used poison gas in the trenches so often that not wearing a mask was an almost certain death sentence. Every soldier that served remembers the eerie uncertainty of ambiguously human shapes in the murderous fog as allies and enemies intermixed in close quarters. The necromancers can conjure memories of that wretched obscurity onto the battlefield. While not a perfect approximation of poison gas, the clouds that the spell conjures do carry a chemical burning sensation when inhaled, and can cause minor muscle tremors.

 

Nobody Ever Leaves: The necromancers watched friends and allies cut down in numbers beyond counting, seeding the soil with blood and hate. No matter what planet the Abandoned are on, no matter who they are fighting, it is always the same battlefield, the same war. Amidst the churning mud and blood lie the broken bodies of their fallen comrades, bursting out of shallow graves and corpse piles to fight alongside their own even beyond death. These revenants are men who have fought beyond the measure of human endowment that grace had given them and are naught but vessels of fury and desperation, abandoning any semblance of tactics or restraint for brutal melee. Their rifles, having long ago expended their last charge or broken under the conditions, are little more than bludgeons or hafts for bayonet blades. Some, having lost their rifles in the chaos or abandoned them for more suitable tools of trench warfare, and instead bring cudgels, entrenching tools, and combat knives to the slaughter.

 

An Abandoned necromancer can call upon the aid of one revenant soldier per rank of Sith that they possess. By the conclusion of the duel, each revenant will die again, with the necromancer being unable to stop it. While everyone else sees the revenants as the rotted, shattered corpses that they are, the necromancer sees them as the men and women they once were. Revenants only carry melee weapons, and due to the spontaneous nature of their eruptive entrances they cannot be kitted out with special weapons or armor prior to combat. While not possessing any form of superhuman strength, they are the zombified manifestations of soldiers in full adrenaline mode, and trained close combat fighters.

 

Something Like Standard Issue: While serving with their allies in the trenches, the sorcerers modified their robes to be more like the armor of the soldiers, modified to sport gas masks and bolster against fragmentation and concussive force. Black ritual robes were often traded for thick layers and trench coats to keep the biting cold of night at bay. Everything developed a rust red or grey patina of mud that inexorably soiled every piece of kit.

 

The Abandoned wear medium midgrade trench armor designed to protect against indirect weapons fire and grenades, that also conceals their rank and importance as Sith sorcerers, provided they aren’t openly displaying their Force powers.

  

Don’t Be Special: The Abandoned learned early on that brandishing a lightsaber was a surefire way to get singled out by snipers, or bring down artillery or an airstrike on their position. While the motivations of the Sith may have been a mixture of self interest and a desire to protect their fellow soldiers, ultimately many of the Abandoned traded in their lightsabers for trench shields and scatterguns. Both are standard issue but sturdily constructed, the shield being a durasteel engineered plate with a bracing hook on the rim for the scattergun.

 

Forward Patrol: Revenants with distorted features prowl and advance along the periphery of the necromancer, looking for threats. Should they find the enemy, they issue a cry that is equal parts tormented wail and trench siren. 

 

Rage Unending: The necromancer’s mental instability results in every enemy they face appearing as the enemy that they fought so long ago in the trenches. As long as their PTSD remains untreated, they will resist empathy and compassion from enemies(or people that they believe to be enemies) with paranoia, fear, vengeful disgust, and extreme distrust.

 

Malignant Gravemaker: An ensorceled entrenching tool carried by these necromancers as a focus in lieu of their lightsabers. It is with this tool that they buried their closest comrades and fought tooth and nail in the most desperate encounters. By calling upon the Dark Side and plunging the shovel into the ground, the necromancer can rend a terrible furrow into the ground, seemingly uncovering a mass grave that erupts with bloated corpses gnawing and biting at anything living within reach. Their mouths and fingers carry the rot and plague of the trenches, and will give rise to rapid infections and disease if not treated quickly. To anyone else that examines the bodies, they will be revealed to be eyeless and noseless facsimiles of people conjured by the spell, but to the necromancer they will always appear as people they buried.

 

The entrenching tool is a serviceable weapon of last resort with sharpened edges that allow it to function as a hand axe of sorts. It does carry within it potent necromantic energies that can be incredibly toxic if the head bites into flesh. That being said, no form of “shovel-fu” ever emerged, and it should never be seen as a primary fighting weapon, only an act of desperation. A sorcerer is still a sorcerer, even if you give him or her a blunt object to swing with.

 

Transitive Suffering: The necromancers of this war were so afflicted that their condition became like a contagion, seeding itself in the minds of others that were suffering from untreated PTSD. Even Dark Side relics created by the Abandoned can have this corrupting effect, allowing this strange tradition of sorcery to spread beyond those who were there. The infected suffer months of severe, hyper realistic nightmares that shatters their ability to tell the difference between truth and seeded trauma. Over time the process mentally hollows them and replaces their original sense of self with this new assumed identity of a wartorn Sith sorcerer.