Mon Calamari/Dac

[Krath Inmortos]

The S-161 “Stinger” XL, Eternus, pierced the cloud-covered sky of Mon Cal. It’s massive wing and exterior-mounted engine were starkly offset compared to the more bulbous craft built by the natives and the more traditional craft  that plied the spacelanes. It did not matter; however, for this was the craft of Darth Inmortos, a little known Sith Lord, who preferred to while away in obscurity allowing his contemporaries to provide him with the clay he needed to complete his grand designs. 

 

It had been simple enough to acquire landing permissions to the burgeoning criminal world that was seeping through the cracks of what had once been a stronghold of goodness and light. Scans of the ship would reveal no discernible lifeforms aboard; an empty vessel that had a very biologic-sounding individual at the comms.

 

Lying in repose, like a vampire of yore, the gold-skinned Firrereo looked sickly and pale. If one did not know any better, one might think the Sith Lord,amongst his trappings of sparse gear and mountains of jade was coming to his place of final rest. 

 

The pilot on the other hand had a look about him, his head held at an odd angle; having been snapped by a single blow to the back of the head from Inmortos’ neuranium handled walking cane. A cane that now lay in the seemingly dead Inmortos’ hands. The light was gone from the pilot’s eyes. In fact one eye seemed to bulge excessively from the socket, a result of the blow. Still, the lifeless pilot brought the ship in carefully and expertly towards the wide open landing pad designed to accept diplomats and representatives. Truthfully, it was the only spot capable of handling the ship and it’s obnoxiously lengthy counterbalanced wing. 

 

With a gentle rotation, the wing and engine righted themselves and the craft came to land on the pad to little pomp or circumstance. Such was the way of Inmortos, he had not declared his identity or true cause. It was not needed. Having Imperial transponder codes had been enough to gain clearance for landing with little question.  Those on duty ought know better than to press too hard of a vessel bearing an emissary of the Sith. 

 

As the ship settled, jets of steam erupted into the cool night. Exhaust ports  gave up their pressures of travel at long last. Hisses and creaks settling until all that could be heard was the warm lap of the waves against the edges of the pad.

 

Void of starlight, the landing pad was bathed in the faint glow of the adjacent city and the few guide lights that had not been destroyed or stolen in the uptick of criminal activity. It was all set against the inky blackness of the rolling sea that claimed much of the world as her own; only pierced by the occasional blip of light from a nightly fishing vessel or far off floating deepwater platform.

 

It was against this scene that the hatch of the Eternus swung open. It was silent on her well oiled hinged until the door slammed against the side of the ship with a resounding gong that pierced the night only to be swallowed by the bountiful call of the sea; lapping against any intrusion until it wore the invader to dust. Consumed into eternity. Forgotten against the backdrop of the rolling tides.

 

Striding forth, with a decided unnerving gait, a stride that cries of pain to any that beheld it, but with none of the audible or palpable agony, came the broke-necked pilot. His blood-drained skin reflecting the poor lighting in a way that one could only describe as etherial. Craning his bloated and lopsided head from side to side, his shoulders heaving to make up for the work the neck could not complete, the death-stained corpse cackled, “Where is your magistrate? Bring him before me.”

 

The living dead spoke and stood there, his eyes glazed and staring vacantly into nothingness. For several minutes he stood before finally collapsing in a pile. The odor of death beginning to rise from his body almost immediately, as if decay had been held at bay and now rushed to catch up.

[Krath Inmortos]

The lurching being blinked once, forcibly, as the attendant ran away in fear. It was almost palpable, that fear, it was so strong. Still, it did not matter. Such things mattered little to the dead. For that was what this being was, the dead; his corporeal shell reanimated by the spirit of the  ragged Sith within the ship. 
 

Not even making a motion to shamble forward, the dead stood their awkwardly, simply watching the world unfold. It was always interesting, taking in the galaxy from the eyes of another. Colors shaded just slightly different and senses dulled. As if a pilot expertly settled into the cockpit of an advanced craft, so it was for the spirit of Darth Inmortos within a host body.

 

With the arrival of the droid escort and their leader, the force swirled as two fonts of power brushed one another. He felt it, not physically within the husk, but on a more spiritual level. The power welled up within the approaching being. No matter of exterior decor could hide what Inmortos saw within; dark swirling power waiting to be unleashed.

 

With a bony crunch and pop, the shambler craned his head atop it’s broken neck, looking over the battle line that drew up before him, a sole emmisary.

 

With a ethereal gurgling cry, the shambling corpse lunged forward. One oversized large inertial plod towards the Nemoidian before it crashed to the decking. With a ghostly sigh, a whisp, no more than a shadow of the wind, escaped through the body’s mouth, swirling upwards into the atmosphere. On it, tendrils of chill arced gently outwards into the air. Meanwhile, the body, now left to succumb to nature’s call, hurried began to befall the punishments of rigor and livor mortis. The twisted broken neck cracked and popped, echoing across the deck as the muscles tensed one final time, snapping the head upwards at an even more unnatural angle. The skin sagged in an instant, the putrid odors cadaverine, putrescine, hydrogen, and dimethyl disulfide started to permeate from the body, rising up in the still air. There before all that beheld it, the usual hours long process of death unfolded in seconds as the rigor of the bent and flexed body relaxed into a state of final flaccidity.

 

As the changes overtook the body, the wraith that had been released upon final forced exhale circled and swirled in the air. A shimmer of light upon which all the dsrkness that was bore by the deceased was carried back unto the resting ship to return to the unnaturally unmoving body within. Finding purchase within it’s unnaturally twisted natural point of rest, the spirit settled and the eyes of the pale gold firrereo fluttered open; each eyelid heavy with the weight of death.

 

Ever so slowly and carefully, the nightmare-clothed figure sat and then stood, a veiny knuckled hand reaching out for the cane that had been tumbled aside. Grasping it and with what seemed to be extreme physical effort, the bony being stood; his  seemingly feeble frail body shrouded by the abyss-hued nanosilk robes that flowed in layers across him. Visible beneath his cowl in the shadows born within were a lair of glassy yellow eyes, shrouded by pale gold skin.

 

Clutching the cane, the dark visage began to walk, slowly, as a wizened elder of some primitive society. Each footfall was gentle yet wrought iron firm with decision. Each heavy thud of his cane resounded with an authority of movement born by those only who were sure about their direction. And slowly, ever so slowly, Darth Inmortos descended the ramp into the air of Mon Cal’s night.

 

With his slow steady pace, the spectral sentinel approached Nok and his mechanized guards. With each thud and step, he took them in with his chill-piercing eyes. Coming to a stop just short of their mass, Inmortos inhaled deeply, allowing the warm humid night air to flow through his nose, across his tongue, and into his prematurely aged lungs. Upon the air, where one might taste the saltiness of the sea or the pulse of the city, Inmortos tasted something else. He tasted death, untold millions lost to the call of the expanse of the sea-covered world. With a brush of his tongue, snake-lime as it crept from his cracked and dry lips, he brushed the darkness of the one who stood before him, tasting the fount of power that was there and seeing within to feel and size up the sorcerer’s very soul. “Magistrate,”  his voice scraped, a gravelly undertone offset by the rattle of phlegm deep within his own throat. He beheld the eye covering of the green-skinned royal before him. “The incantations foretold of your comings, he paused before sinisterly adding as if a thought that he had to consider before voicing, ”and goings.”

 

Turning to regard the sea that stretched beyond the inky blackness of the clouded sky, a smile cracked the pale gold of his face.  “You have amassed for yourself a world richer in wealth and resource than you may even know. Once released, darkness may swirl here beyond eternity.” The unsettling wizard-of-a-being turned back to face Nok, stepping closer, within reach of he if he but stepped out and lunged. Inmortos kicked the body of his fallen undead transport, releasing the odors of death exponentially anew about them. His voice dropped to a whisper, grating and raspy across the stillness of the night. As he spoke his hand slid beneath his arm within the hanging folds of his robe, passed the cursed saber he carried hidden within, to grasp a small bag and withdraw it. “I do not ask something for nothing. As a man of business and darkness, this will be greatly arousing to you. Let us cement a bond in life and death; in more than blood. Eternity.”  The small blood-red silken bag was weighty to be held as Inmortos offered it forward on spindly arm outstretched from the warm recess of it’s sleeve. Within, 30 coins of jade, each a soul taken by the necromancer. Wealth and power twisted as one. 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Leena Kil

[Krath Inmortos]

Inmortos regarded the agent of darkness that now offered to take him from the platform. It was expected. From beneath his cowl, Inmortos saw that the Nemoidian still carried his physical being, a sign that he had not given himself over the the ravages of the dark side. Still, he regarded the Nemodian, there was a reason that this world had been placed under his watchful gaze.

 

Silently and slowly, with a deliberateness that carried with it the same aura of finality as the pronunciation of death, Inmortos nodded his consent, his gnarled hands withdrawing into the folds of his oversized sleeves as he shuffled alongside Nok Morliss flanked by the clanking droids; their mechanized steps blending with the heavy dull thud of his Ithorian wood cane weighted by the concealed blade atop it. Inmortos did not move as quickly, but each step was made with finality and control as he set the pace without a word. Dark invisible tendrils of evil radiated from the openings of his robe, as if the nanosilk somehow contained the reaper within. 
 

Upon entering Nok’s ornate office, Inmortos leaned heavily on his cane as his head turned to the left and then the right, scanning the room. Silently he searched for the collection of ancient, cursed, and forbidden tomes and relics he knew that the Sith before him sought to collect. A veritable collection of immeasurable power in the hands of one that did not know what he had. It was enough of a thought to audibly make the Firrereo’s teeth grate and grind. 
 

As the mechanized chair was offered, Inmortos perched his spindly frame atop it, barely sinking into the plush cushioning. He was a perched like a rock-vulture prepared to swoop in at the first sign of weakness. Extending from his nightmare-hued sleeves, the pale gold hands of the wraithe within templed together; his long boney fingers barely intertwining at their tips. Their log cracked nails scraped against one another as the dark being regarded the lavish wealth and life of the one before him.

 

As Nok spoke, Inmortos’ sickly cold yellow eyes bore down on him, staring beyond the green mottled skin and lavish trappings. He regarded the man’s soul, the darkness that swirled about them and urged to fill the room with it’s power; if only it had the proper receptacle. Nok Morliss had so much potential. It needed to be but released. The Dark Lord had different priorities for having appointed such a short-minded Sith to oversee such a potent world. It was a world that Inmortos sought to claim for his own use. A lesser informed being would have felt that the force had willed such a situation. Inmortos knew better. Nok Morliss appointment to this world was the herald to prepare the world for true greatness.

 

“You have amassed a wealth that even you do not know the value of Nok Morliss. Your world, your baubles, I desire them. Not for the wealth and power Nok Morliss desires in his mind. For more. For eternity.” With a haunting gesture that seemed to stir the very air of the room with a faint cold breeze that seemed to emanate from everywhere but nowhere, Inmortos gestured to the bag of jade coins. “There is immeasurable more where that came from. From the depths, the last treasures of life can be seized and used to empower Nok’s machinations. If only you knew how to unleash that which desires release from Nok’s soul. If only, your fears did not stop you, Nok Morliss, you could rule this world as a true master, beholden to none.” Slowly, Inmortos leaned forward, the odor of death shedding from the shifting of his robes. In a voice barely above a breath he whispered, “Beyond the webs of the spider.” The warlock sat back, his body creaking like a rusted hing, his voice returning to his usual rasp,  ”With me, Nok could be free of his fear and you could rule. All I require is the forgotten of this world. The industries and living wealth of the world are yours to exploit. The cold dark recesses mine. What say you?”

[Krath Inmortos]

Inmortos sat as he felt the ripples of Nok’s anger. It coursed after the Nemoidian like the train of an exotic cloak trailing behind it’s wealthy benefactor. The Sith Lord sat there unmoving, his emotions unstirred by the attempted show of power. ‘So many Sith are too content to show their power to claim the here and now, rejecting the powers of the ages, the powers that extended beyond time.’ A slow twisted smile crossed Inmortos face, his lips cracking to reveal his yellowed and jagged teeth. A soft chuckle escaped from his dark maw as he slowly stood, one hand on his knee to brace as he pushed his other hand against his cane and hefted his form from the chair.

 

Inmortos shuffled after the droids. Their guidance was stifled and stiff, hurrying the ailing Firrereo forward at a pace that initially pained the wizened Lord. With each hurried step, a dark evil aura began to emanate from the black robed being; the aura darker than the midnight robes that swished about  the thin form within. The darkness dampened the pain of his footsteps. It fed on something deeper, opened up by the decaying form of the Firrereo as his natural healing abilities fought against the inevitable darkness. It was as if the darkness fed on the very decay of the Sith Lord’s form, a form that every move of the dejarik board progressed one step towards the inevitable. It would be on his terms though. He would welcome death on his terms. This sureness and pride of purpose were dark and twisted and it was this that gave the swirling darkness it’s power. The dark tendrils crept from beneath the lord’s cloak clouding the area about he and his escort in a slight haze that darkened. In that cloud the spark of life was choked and death reigned supreme. Anyone they happened to pass hurried to get away from the shuffling Sith and his escort, spurned by the touch of cold death at their souls, an inexplicable fear that had them withdraw their breath in a hiss as they hurried for warmth somewhere else.

 

Eventually, the droids deposited their ward in his room. Inmortos was left alone. He had come to this world alone. In fact, he was used to being alone within the passages of time. Yet, here, in his ornate fish-themed room, Inmortos knew he was not alone; not here, not in a room provided by another who desired the power of the Sith.

 

Inmortos surveilled his room with little regard. The gently curving lines of the bedframe cradled the thick mattress. The smooth furniture blended in with the room as if it belonged. The window seamed effortless with the wall, providing a view out over the city at large; at least what was above the seas that stretched out into the inky blackness of the night. He surveilled the room and cast it aside at a glance. With a hiss of inhalation, the corners of Inmortos mouth drew in the air about him with a breath, the temperature dropping suddenly as the lights flickered and extinguished bathing the room in darkness. The pale glow of the city below the only light. It softly outlined the shrouded man within the room in a cold aura of blue.

 

With a flourish of his hands into the air, a surge of cold laced forth. The sleeves of Inmortos robes falling back and exposing his thin bony arms. Icy tendrils laced forth through the air, crystalizing the floors, furniture and walls, as they zig zagged forward. The whole of the room was soon filled with his ritual chanting in a long forgotten tongue. Icy fingers spread out until the floors were solidified in a sheet of ice; and still he chanted, driving the ice onwards. Inmortos did not stop until the ice embraced the door in a thick sheet of life and energy craving ice. Only then did he lower his arms. The Firrereo’s breath escaped his lips in a clouded puff of moisture as the vapors crystallized against the frigid air.

 

Here within the icy tomb of Inmortos own creation darkness crept. It did not swirl. It was too cold. Even the Sith lord’s robes stiffened against the cold. In this cold though, only one life remained, any other choked out in an eternal tomb of cold stillness. Machinery ceased working and energy was drained into the ice, lost against it’s cold embrace. And yet, the cold aura only briefly extended from the room, stopping when the chanting ceased; leaving Inmortos truly alone in a crypt of Nok’s choosing.

 

Turning, Inmortos shuffled to stare out the window. He smiled widely. There was no joy in his twisted evil grin. His smile was one of power. The icy crypt a shield against the outside world for when, inevitably, Nok Morliss would come calling.

 

“So you want to taste of the power and freedom that I offer.”  Inmortos whispered darkly as he hefted his cane, grasping it by the smooth Ithorian wood length. The Neuranium handle had to but tap against the ice-embraced window to send arcing popping cracks along it’s length and breadth. A second tap shattered it into icy spears of death that rained down into the night below “See what I offer for the cold and dark places Nok Morliss.”

 

Inmortos’ hands began to wave back and forth, his gnarled bent fingers twisting dark intricacies into the cold air. The force began to curl about his hands, drawing tendrils up from the ice in blue whisps of pure cold power. They twirled and wound about Inmortos form mingling with the vengeful darkness the Sith lord poured into his hissing incantations;

 

 “Ddyfnduffern, copa oeraf y mynydd, galwaf allan stiller amser yn dragwyddol. Chi yw fy ngorchymyn. ymchwydd ar bopeth a welir ac nas gwelwyd a'i flancedi yng nghofleidiad tragwyddol y gaeaf. O'r awyr rwy'n galw taranau'r nos allan. Ymchwydd gyda'ch pŵer. Ymunwch â dwylo gyda'r tywyllwch. Ymunwch â dwylo gyda'r oerfel. Blanced y byd o fy mlaen mewn cwsg tragwyddol. Rhwystro geiriau ein gelynion. Malu eu machinations i stop gan eich cyffyrddiad. Diffoddwch y fflamau sy'n disgleirio bywyd. Dewch â'r tywyllwch oer y mae bywyd yn ofni ei gydnabod”

 

Inmortos chanted as his arms swirled faster and faster, even here in the cold lifeless dungeon he had constructed energies surged forth; regurgitated from their icy tombs. The dark skies above swirled as an icy wind blew from the sea increasing in intensity as the temperatures across the city began to plummet. A thunder clap shook the skies as the clouds poured forth the darkness they contained within their vorpal vortexes.  If it was possible, the skies grew even darker blotting out the faintest edges of sunrise as it fought to break free from the horizon. Darkness was king here. Continuing his chanting, Inmortos gave himself over to the storm. His presence in the force surged out beyond his vision, calling the dark powers of nature to him. Icy winds twisted the blackened clouds as thunder and lightning raced across them. The temperatures continued to plummet until even machinery would begin to gum up and freeze. Through it all, Inmortos harsh force powered voice chanted into the gathering storm. Cold dark power poured into the storm giving it a life of it’s own; one even Inmortos could not control. Still, he poured power into it as the ice at at his exposed fingers turning them from pale gold to a blue-hued metallic. Darkness swirled and Inmortos pressed on until the first flakes of cool snow whipped through the air, icy razorblades carried by the force of nature. And they continued to fall, multiplying with each passing chant and incantation until even they blotted out the dark clouds above. Amongst the blinding swirl, lightning struck randomly, seeking out it’s own targets with no master to direct it. Thunder crashed in the distance and at the center of the storm stood Inmortos, his robes thrashed by the winds and his frail form rocked and buffeted in the jagged circular embrace of the broken window.

[Krath Inmortos]

The shattering of ice into shards of jagged razor needles that whipped into the storm accompanied the frozen doors of Inmortos’ room being forced open.  The cold slick floors and walls sapped the life and energy out of the very air as it sent the dwindled surges of energy up into their master. Inmortos was aware of the breach. He had expected it to come as the storm reached it’s zenith and remained there; held in full white tempest by the intricate gestures of the deathly white knuckled hands and cackles of ancient words before they were swept up in the gale.

 

As the snow continued to whip, drifting even in the open window, Inmortos slowed. The city was blanketed in an uncharacteristically heavy covering of snow. Doorways, even entire narrowed streets drifted shut buffeted by the winds that whipped off of the icy sea as it began to solidify and crystallize against the walls and docks of the citadel.

 

Turning his whitened face towards the Neimodian as he took a chair, Inmortos frozen face cracked into a twisted smile. Black bubbling ichor ran from between the Firrereo’s teeth and across his rough colorless lips. He lowered his hands, his robes falling to obscure them once again. Outside, the storm suddenly began to slowly fall back into line with the laws of nature. It would continue for hours; but the winds bit slightly less and the storehouses of snow began to empty their overabundant warehouses in the clouds.
 

The darkness that swirled around and through Inmortos tempered and fell off leaving in it’s wake the image of a frail being swathed in black nanosilk. Snow and ice clung to the robe, weighing it down, pulling at the man’s sleeves. Waves of exhaustion radiated from the Sith Lord as the sapping of his energies caught up with him. Even his Firrereo abilities could not keep up with the tac that the dark side demanded. Inmortos thin skin, bruised from within as his very vessels gave way to the taxman. Some of these bruises formed beneath the man’s frozen cracked skin, spilling forth dribbles of lightless black delicate ichor until it dripped with pops of hissing heat onto the frozen floor.

 

Falling more than leaning, Inmortos caught himself on the couch within the cold room and less than gracelessly reclined into the crunching frozen cushions. Looking up at Nok, the Sith Lord blinked heavily.

 

“Power comes with a price. Too many are unwilling to pay it fully. Peace may be a lie, but fear is not. Fear holds too many of our brethren back. You seek this power don’t you Nok Morliss?” Inmortos wheezed through clenched teeth, taking in a gasping deep breath before he continued. “I can help you find this power. You have sought it in many places, the most wise being the totems of past masters of the darkness. From that, I hope you have something that I desire; a sword, a dark evil sword possessed by a malevolent spirit that seeks to overthrow the user’s mind. If you have such a damned razor, I will teach you to overcome that which you fear. I will guide you towards freedom. Inmortos fell back in his chair, the darkness washing over him in waves as his soul fought to survive in it’s tattered vessel.

 

Outside, the winds still buffetted the tower upon which Inmortos room topped. The broken window caught the raging blizzard and wafted glistening flakes of snow through the room. Against this nigh-heavenly sight the storm sucked any warmth the building fought to provide. Below, the storm clouded the entire city, leaving the exposed tower alone amongst the storm; a ship lost on the waves of the storm, anchored only by the unseen.  
 

As he lay there, tendrils of darkness crept along the ice grasping for Inmortos, seeking to draw him into the blackness of the eternal abyss of gloom and murk.

[Krath Inmortos]

“. . . heh . . . “

Inmortos chuckled beneath his breath as he felt the force curl out from Nok. There was potential yet; and yet this man, this worm, made demands for that which Inmortos considered beneath him, even beneath a Sithling who was still feeling for his own power.

 

Turning, Inmortos gingerly raised his legs to recline and rest on the frozen divan; the cushions cracking under the pressure of his stickly figure. He allowed the exhaustion from his display of power to sweep over him in a wave, his eyes fluttering shut. The room was filled with a stillness interrupted only by the swirling jetties that interrupted  the glistening particles of snow and ice that hung in the frosty air.

 

“My hands shall be staid from your holdings; but do you only desire equality Nok Morliss? Or do you desire more? A great many Sith lords are equals in the eyes of the empire and yet they are cut down, cast aside, and forgotten, contented to feed upon the scraps dropped to them from the table of the Spider. And for what price? An unattainable eternal demand of servitude and loyalty, to stay your hand at the order of one who knows not of the ravages we are capable to bear?”

 

Inmortos eyelids slowly opened as he regarded the Nemodian in his room, an icy breath of wind from the storm outside sweeping in to flutter the bed curtains and pull at their robes before a shattering crack of thunder in the distance seemed to call it back.
 

“I sense a greater darkness in you though Nok Morliss. It is a darkness that needs unleashed to blossom into true power. Equality is a desire of the weak. You are not weak. So I ask you again Nok Morliss, what do you truly desire? For this blade that you have fettered away, to augment my own goals, I offer to pay a price in riches or in power, dependent upon your desires.”

 

Inmortos eyes fell shut again as he turned his head to point upwards, his body shrouded in his robes, the dark tendrils of the force swirling about him like icy serpents of death.

 

With a deep sigh, the Firrereo’s breath bloomed into the air in a fog that crystalized above him. “Perhaps you can think upon it and we might dine and exchange our prizes and you can answer then. Such an exchange would be befitting a more noble locale. For now, my body desires rest.”

Edited February 3, 2021 by Leena Kil

[Krath Inmortos]

Inmortos lay in a state between deep sleep and death for countless hours, his body temperature dropping to a level where it would barely register on thermal scans. Outside the storm ravaged and eventually blew itself into dissipation against the setting sun of the following day. The air over the city was cleaner, colder, and crisper than any could remember, the pollutants and particulates having been wrenched from the skies and thrown down beneath feet of powdery icy particulates.

 

As his eyes opened, Inmortos’ eyelids cracked against his frozen skin, black bloody ichor beginning to ooze from his skin as it cracked anywhere it had been left exposed to the life-sapping cold. Slowly, ever so slowly, the Sith Lord stood and regarded the clear skies and setting sun. There amongst the lengthening shadows in his room, the darkness swirled beneath Inmortos feet, pulsing up through his body as he beheld the city below. Even now, the local government struggled to offload the drifts of snow into the endless expanse of sea.

 

Turning, the sorcerer called his staff to his hand, the heavy handle of the half-concealed dagger smoothly finding rest in his hand. Leaning on the Ithor wood cane, Inmortos slumped forward as he shuffled from the room.

 

It took him some time, but Inmortos made the grand dining hall of Nok Morliss just as the meal was being served. His gliding steps across the snowbanks carried the lord mysteriously over that which would have inevitably delayed him.

 

As the ornate doors swung open on an unseen wave of death, they slammed into the walls; a herald to the arrival of the solitary being. The resounding echo announced Inmortos arrival. With careful steps, each taken with the finality of one walking to the executioner’s block, he made his way to the table, his robes swirling about him darkly.

 

With a scraping screech, Inmortos drew back his chair and lowered himself into it, not a being of age approaching death, but a solitary beacon of dark power.

 

Turning to face Nok across the table, Inmortos lowered his hood to reveal his cracked and bleeding face, his sagging skin and stringy hair marking the toll of darkness; offset by the intensity of his eyes. “The fish smells extravagant Nok Morliss. Let us sup and then get to business.”

 

[Krath Inmortos]

The Sith Lord gently leaned his cane against the table, the hilt of the walking stick and knife handle clunking heavily against the ornate table. With a raised hand, Inmortos readily tore a chink of flesh from the meatiest part of the massive beast, calling the still steaming massive hunk of meat to his own plate.

 

As soon as it touched down, the man’s frail hands lashed out to pick up the flesh, seemingly ignoring the heat as he sunk his teeth into the fatty whale flesh. The melted fat ran down his hands and arms and coated the man’s mouth and face. He ravenously tore at the meat like a half-starved orphan who had not eaten in weeks and did not know when he would see food again.

 

Finishing his meat, Inmortos reached for a foreign piece of shiny green fruit, the fatty juices dripping fro his hand as he loudly suckled the juices from his other hand. He only paused when the fruit was in hand and coming towards his mouth. With a sharp crack, he bit into the delicate fruit, chewing it aggressively and swallowing before taking another bite.

 

Before the fruit was gone, the Sith Lord was wrenching another piece of meat from the carcass. That too he devoured ravenously.

 

And so Inmortos’ continued to devour the food before them for the better part of an hour. His portions much more than a normal man ought be able to eat in one sitting. He only paused when his plate was again clear and he had licked every last bit of flavor from it. The man’s robes were stained with dried bits of fat, runs of drying liquids tattooing both his robes and skin about his face, hands, and arms. With a full belly that pushed against the flowy robe, Inmortos reclined in his seat with a sigh. 

 

“Excellent meal Nok Morliss. Now shall we to business?” The Firrereo fished a small stoppered flask, covered in what seemed to be fine ash that had set upon the glass so long as to obscure the jostling liquid within, from his robes. With an air of authority, he placed it on the table before him. “I bring you what I have offered. You just need the strength to survive the power that you seek. Did you bring the blade?” he queried, his hunger for the weapon palpable in the air. As if an afterthought he added, “Have you a lightsaber Nok Morliss?”

[Krath Inmortos]

A smile cracked across Inmortos face, the grease of his meal congealing in the corners of his mouth. “Goooooood.” he hissed gleefully as the force twisted and cracked in the air, the accursed blade coming into view.

 

A dark glee emanated from the shrouded Sith Lord. His plan was beginning to come together. He could not take his eyes off the weapon. He could feel it’s evil desire contained within it’s form. All part of the grand plan. It called silently, subtlety on the force, for anyone who could hear it; any mind and body that it might control to wrought it’s original owner’s darkest most base desires. To control such a weapon would unfathomably escalate the Necropolis Lord’s skills in bringing about death, death upon which to build his legacy. He just needed to best it.

 

Inmortos’ eyes stared at the weapon, regarding it hungrily, a predator pondering how best to take down it’s prey without being gored.

 

With a raised hand, he carefully shepherded the gilded box the sword had lifted from out of the table into the open room, gingerly enveloping the weapon in it’s padded embrace. He then maneuvered the box towards him, gingerly depositing it on the table in front of him. He could not take his eyes off of it as he stooped close to take in the ancient intricacies of the filigree covered sheath and hilt. Even the ancient battle damage was in a word, “exquisite.” He breathed the word in awe. The closer he was to the blade, the more he could feel the still tormented soul within the weapon, it’s owner long dead, searching for a host. Inmortos licked his lips hungrily. He wanted to grasp the hilt of the weapon, to draw it from it’s sheath, to wield it in a flurry of devastation. Scanning the weapon end from end, Inmortos resisted. He knew the dangers. He would not expose himself or the power before him to Nok Morliss. If the Nemodian did not know what he was giving up, it was not up to Inmortos to correct him. They had a deal.

 

Tearing his eyes from the weapon, Inmortos slammed the lid of the case shut, it’s latches swinging shut on a wave of dark power, sealing the sword within. It would remain there until Inmortos was in a safe location from which to combat the wraith within and master it. Glancing at the sloshing liquid in the aged vial, sealed with an unknown animal wax, Inmortos’ focus shifted again to Nok across the table. “They are the hallmark of our order, yet they may be your undoing.” He spoke a vague dark warning about the weapons he had just asked about as he tapped a gnarled and chipped fingernail atop the ash-infused glass. “The power you crave, the key to the doorway lay within. Drink it to the last drop Nok Morliss. But, only if you are strong enough to withstand the storm. Are you, Nok Morliss? Are you prepared to journey beyond the power you now have? To risk it all, to gain eternity? Take it, Nok Morliss, the power is at your fingertips to seize, if you crave it.”

 

With that, Inmortos tipped the stoppered vial forward, but before it could clatter to the table it arced through the air. The Sith Lord gingerly deposited the vial in front of his host. “Take. Drink. Such a cordial has not been tasted by mortal man in millennia.”

[Krath Inmortos]

Inmortos understood his host’s hesitation, even if it was masked behind an aura of excitement. He would have been shocked and disappointed if the self-proclaimed ruler of this world gad unstoppered it and downed the concoction without a hesitation. It would have made him just another pawn of the Sith, like so many mindless warriors that prowled Korriban and the like. This one though, craved power; yet was wary of it. He might go far if his love of corporeality could be realigned.

 

Inmortos did not rise as his host left. In fact, he barely raised a hand in wave as some sort of casual dismissal. Both parties seemed to have what they had come for. For the cameras that undoubtedly watched them, it would seem so. There was more. These traded barbs of Sith machinations were but the opening piece exchange on the dejarik board of their relationship.

 

It was only a matter of time before he was called back to deal with the piece Nok Morliss had claimed as his own. Surveilling the encased sword before him, Inmortos knew he had his own trial to undergo. 
 

Inmortos patted his bulging belly after Nok left. He diverted his gaze to the remains of the feast before him. He was full; full enough that the idea of another bite repulsed him.

 

Calling his heavy-headed cane to his hand, Inmortos pushed his chair back. It’s ornate legs scraping loudly across the equally decorative inlaid floor. He rose to his feet, reaching out to cradle the wooden box and it’s dark blade beneath his free arm. He could feel the tendrils of evil grasping at their bonds, their hunger seeking an outlet, someone worthy enough to take on the mantle the weapon’s previous master once carried. He could feel it. Inmortos knew he was not the supposed worthy warrior  the spirit sought. It did not matter; he had no doubt that he could master it. It was mind over matter. It was that simple. With the dark side as his weapon, he would master this dark dirk just as he mastered death.

 

With his trophy tucked away and his cane in hand, Inmortos turned. He did not need Nok Morliss servants. They were no more than spies and pawns; spies and pawns that were living, not Inmortos’. The skeleton of a man shuffled out of the hall and down the walkways back towards his ship. It was the only place on this world that Inmortos felt that he could expose himself to the dangers of the sword. Inmortos had read and read, he academically knew what to expect; but he was not going to allow Nok or his henchmen to see him in such a way; not that Nok would not have his own turmoils to address. That concoction had been altered especially for the Nemoidian, not biologically, but for his soul. It would open him up to the faintest suggestions, make them real, plunge the Nemodian into a world of his own creation. All he needed was the right nudge and his deepest fears, innermost turmoils, and faintest neuroses would become a reality that bound the Sithling to his own soul. Inmortos would return to him when  the time was right, to conclude his baptism of darkness. For now though?

 

As the door of his ship sludged shut behind him, Inmortos heard the locks engage. It was a simple enough distraction to pull the heat from the air, and seal the exit amongst a tomb of permafrost inside and out. It took some time, but the ship was soon enough encased in an opaque crystalline tomb of stagnation made matter, frigid and lifeless.

 

Only then, when he was sure that he was entirely alone did Inmortos set down the ornate wooden case atop a workstation table. Gently, with almost a holy reverence, Inmortos undid  the clasps and opened the box. As he did, a wave of invisible lust poured over him, inviting anyone who felt worthy to clasp the carved hilt of the needled black blade. The Sith runes seemed to almost glow a soulless black that radiated as it drew in the light about them. Inmortos could almost hear the desire to destroy radiating from the weapon, all he need do was reach out and take it and the battle of wills would begin.

 

Reaching out his knobby hand, Inmortos clasped the weapon. A surge of darkness pulsed from the weapon up through the Sith Lord’s hand. Inmortos’ veins bulged and vibrated beneath the tidal surge of power. He sharply drew his breath, inadvertently lowering the temperature  in the ship by several degrees. 
 

Move number two was underway.

[Krath Inmortos]

On instinct, Inmortos inhaled. It was as if he had been struck firmly in the gut by an unseen beskar fist. He would have doubled over but for raw fury that seemed to course from the aura of the blade through his hand and through his form. It was as if liquid fire boiled his blood within the prematurely-aged necromancer’s veins. Accustomed to cold, Inmortos cried out in pain. It was not in words, but a bestial roar of pain, of agony, of rage.

 

The blade pulsed in the Sith’s hand. Through the fog of pain and smoke of rage that coursed through the air and his body, Inmortos tried to steel his own mind against the spirit contained within the blade. It fought him. It sought to contain the spirt and will of the wizard so as to use his body as a vessel to accomplish it’s unfinished will.

 

Inmortos was no mere mind to be trifled with, possessed as a toy and cast aside when the fun was over. No. He was a master of more than his own physical form. He was a Lord of the Sith, a practitioner of the most profane arts, one who bent the force to his own will and was not controlled by it. If the force bowed to him, this spirit would be no different.

 

Still, as he fought, every nerve ablaze, he was not victorious. Yet, he was not victorious yet. 
 

 “You are not worthy. You are but a morsel; chewed, forgotten. Give me your body. I will give you a flash of worth before you die.”  A masculine voice reverberated throughout the ship, rattling the walls and toppling anything not secured. It spoke with disgust and disdain. It’s formless words seemingly spat from unseen lips. It had measures Inmortos and seemed to have found him wanting. In those words, the presence of the ancient spirit entrapped in the blade surged, grasping at Inmortos mind.
 

Inmortos could feel the spirit’s blackened tendrils of hunger clawing at the fringes of his mind. He tried to form words to respond. He couldn’t. All that escaped his mouth was a slurred “Guuuuuhhhhh,” as a strand of saliva drizzled downwards from his lips and dangled from his jaw. Even forming the words in his mind seemed lacking as Inmortos felt the spirit’s hold cementing.

 

“Weak. Pathetic. A vessel to carry me to a more worthy slave.” the dark voice scoffed. The whirlwind of it’s power intensified within the ship. It tore at the icy walls Inmortos had crafted sending shards of glassy blades into the air before melting them in the heat of it’s rage. The words that emanated from the void before now fell from Inmortos’ own maw, the spirit having gained a foothold within the mind and body of the frail Sith.

 

Inmortos could feel his control being torn from him. It slipped away, cell by cell, as the spirit claimed any recess of his mind not possessed by the power of the dark side. Any portion of Inmortos that he had not gilded in dark desire was endangered. He was not conquered; not yet; not by a long shot. Inmortos felt the spirit surging against his weaknesses. His physicality may have been his vulnerability; but where his form lacked and his mind was ravaged, his will would prevail.

 

Inmortos buried himself in the darkness of the force itself. He called forth the darkness of death, the despair of life, and mentally threw it back against the warrior spirit. The spirit betrayed itself. Powered by passion and rage, it was a herald of death and destruction. Inmortos, on the other hand, was not a mere herald. He was a master of death, toying with the line and breaking it, shaping death and life as he saw fit. Most Sith reveled in destruction and that is where Inmortos would succeed. They tore down, he used the darkness, used death, to build. Visions of impregnable fortresses and frozen impassible tundras filled his mind, thrown up in defense to the destruction the spirit threw forth in unrelenting assault.

 

As the battle for Inmortos’ mind raged, elsewhere within the city another battle was commencing. Nok Moriss had consumned the elixir. The mysterious draught had been crafted to Inmortos’ direct specifications. Amongst it’s chemical properties, it bound the consumer to the necromancer. It’s catalyst; the force itself, a poison beyond the realms of simple medicine and one that would prevail until it was purged in its entirety.

 

In that moment, Inmortos felt the bond pull taught, like a chain of darkbess that linked Morliss’ soul to his own. It was a distraction. It was enough. As Inmortos’ attention was turned to the plan that he had all but forgotten within the maelstrom, the malevolent spirit sensed the recession of the tide and swelled against the momentarily weakened walls of Inmortos mental defenses. It was enough to pull Inmortos back to the battle at hand. Nok Morliss was unimportant now. This vorpal blade and it’s dark passenger were more than the Sith had expected. Something this powerful had been held in the collection of an unknown Sithling? How? What other secrets did the blind lizard possess?

 

They were thoughts that passed briefly through Inmortos’ mind before being seized and consumed by the gnawing hunger of the spirit. It was taking more and more. Inmortos sank to his knees, both hands wrapped white-knuckle tight about the hilt of the weapon. Even it’s weight was too much as the blade fell to the floor, slicing into the durablast flooring several inches. Inmortos could not release the blade if he tried. The spirit willed it. It would claim Inmortos as it’s own. It would use his frail body to once again bring havoc to the stars until a more suitable warrior might be found. Inmortos mind continued to fall, secrion by section. The distraction had allowed it to breach the walls of dreams that had repelled it. The spirit began to sift, consume, weigh and evaluate Inmortos’ deepest secrets, his darkest desires. The Sith lord laid bare like a book of yore. Each a weapon in its’ own right to one that knew how to wield it.

 

Words were unimportant now, all the spirit had to do was poke a memory, drag it to the surface and expose it and Inmortos did the rest.

 

The death of his parents.

 

The deaths of countless others, buried and forgotten.

 

The initial concern with death before the galaxy returned to a normal flow. Each life snuffed out as if it were nothing.

 

The corpses of the reanimated dead, stripped of individuality and purpose beyond the will of the necromancer.

 

All of these memories swirled with countless others of rejection, failure,  hopelessness. Each memory opened Inmortos up more, allowing the spirit to dig with impunity through Inmortos. It was almost as if the spirit took a sick glee in torturing the Sith. It’s laughter carried in the force itself, dark and evil and entertained entwined with hunger and rage.

 

This continued for who knew how long. Inmortos’ defenses had been overwhelmed. His body was all but possessed. The spirit delighted in Inmortos’ suffering. It continued to dredge up painful memories, morph them, combine them, rewrite even happy ones all to destroy the man within and leave whatever remained a quivering mass of ethereal plasma that could not harm a thing.

 

It was then that the spirit pulled forth the core that had carried Inmortos to this place. The fear emerged from the depths like a specter of yore, swathed in the billowing robes of death as it stared down into an unmarked grave. It was a grave that contained Inmortos himself. Alone on an uncharted world without a soul to be seen or sensed. Buried, dead, forgotten before he even cooled. No one and nothing to remember his name. Fear. It was palpable. It was everywhere. It was everywhere. Fear drove Inmortos even if he would never admit it.

 

The spirit of the sword cackled in glee as it shoved the memory against the last vestiges of Inmortos’ being. Crippling fear thrown against a forgotten death. It was a fear that Inmortos had used to drive himself. It was his base. It was his core.

 

Inmortos felt the fear. It was a fear he had sworn he would conquer. It was a fear that drove him and gave him purpose and power. It was that fear now that gave Inmortos pause as he fell back against the onslaught. He could not be driven any further. He would be forgotten in an instant.

 

And so it was that fear that Inmortos clung to. It could not be twisted or morphed into anything worse. He had held it and nurtured it for years. Grasping this fear, Inmortos cast it onto the spirit in an effort to drive it back. He would not be conquered, not by this. He had seen fear. He did not fear this spirit. He only feared what would happen if he failed. He would not fail. Like a bludgeon, Inmortos flailed his core like a chained mace against the lesser weapons formed from his own shadowy mind. He had one fear that he had mastered and from it, all others would be driven back.

 

The ancient spirit continued to fight, casting whatever it could grasp at the weapon Inmortos clung to within his mind.

 

On the deck of the ship, Inmortos’ body flopped forward driving the blade deeper into the floor and the hilt into his own gut. The glowlamps surged and burst in a chain reaction one after another. The icy cold about them surged with the internal surge of Inmortos responsive assault to retake himself, bathing the darkness in an icy grasp that fought against the fiery rage of the spirit.

 

Ever so slowly, the spirit gave up the mental ground it had claimed. It refused to be cast back into the blade. It refused to be imprisoned for eternity once again. So as it’s own power was forces back, it followed whatever lines of escape it might find, grasping, shaking, and manipulating whatever it could find. Memories, feelings, emotions all were weaponized and cast about in a maelstrom of destructive energy.

 

The easiest means of escape: the phantasmal chain that bound Inmortos to Nok.

[Krath Inmortos]

Inmortos lay on the deck of his own ship panting. All about him the air swirled within invisible jetties, buffeted by the ragings of the dark side of the force. In his hands, he still clasped the hilt of the cursed rapier. He would not let go. He refused. Even if he could, the spirit within clung to him with such strength that he would not have been able to unwrap his fingers from where they were frozen about the hilt.
 

Blue icy tendrils laced down the length of the weapon equally as they traced intricate lightning-like patterns along the veiny bulges of the decrepit Sith Lord’s arms. A combination of the dark forces that dueled for control within the void. Cold, dark, and devoid of life; the siege continued. The spirit’s anger surged against the inky walls of fear that Inmortos cast to meet it. He would not be forgotten. All would know his name. No damned spirit condemned to an eternity of servitude imprisoned within a single blade would stop it. He would die one day. Not today. He would die free and resting upon a throne of power, not whilst striving to achieve it. “Not. This. Day.” he snarled grasping the icy cold nothingness and hurling it against the attack.

Icy winds surged from Inmortos’ mouth entering the maelstrom, lowering the temperature within several degrees. Ice and death held back the inmortal

memory of the current    
 

fires of rage and lust. Even as the Spirit fought to keep the ground it had gained, it slipped against the slick freezing exteriornthst coated the core, coated the soul of Inmortos. The more it grasped, the more he pushed back.

 

The spirit refused to be contained. It would not be driven back to his eternal prison. He had tasted freedom and knew he had but find a host to wield his power. A victim to carry forth his will until he could grow in strength, taking another host, then another and another until he could reform a body of his own. It would be one forged by hate, lust, desire, passion; sustained by the desire to lay waste to all in his path.
 

The colossal clash of a titan of yore and the immortality of a life that existed in the present and would for eternity rocked the the ship, cracking the ice it was embedded in. 
 

Inmortos slowly backed the spirit from the recesses of his mind and body. He forced it backwards, condensing it’s power into a smaller and smaller space in his body. It held against being forced back into the sword. Eventually as it flailed and raged, rocking Inmortos’ body, causing his limbs to flail and the sword to slash against the walls carving deep furrows, the spirit began to bleed. It would not be crushed. It would not be contained. So it bled.

 

Finding a way of escape from being pinned against the aura of the blade, the spirit found an opening. It surged forth. Distance did not matter, what mattered was that it allowed the spirit to escape the crushing press of crystalizing tendrils of ice and the darkness of death. At the other end, another maelstrom raged. It was different, defenses and attacks were thrown about with little concern for the newly arrived presence.

 

The spirit followed the bridge that linked Inmortos to Nok, a creation of the elixir. Behind it surged the cold tendrils of ice and voids of death that Inmortos pushed after it.  “You will not escape me!”

 

Into the maelstrom, the spirit threw itself, his rage and desire mingling with the chaos of the storm as it sought a foothold from which to fester and grow. It would find a servant and with it, be it Nok, Inmortos, or another, he would rule.

[Krath Inmortos]

It took hours for Inmortos to drive the spirit entirely from his mind and body. He never let go of the sword, even as he slumped to the floor. The Sith Lord’s limbs lolled to either side of him as he gasped for air in the still coolness of his ship.

 

In the distance Inmortos could still feel the spirit as it beat a trail down the path of least resistance. It howled and slashed digging for freedom. The Sith Lord did not care. For a moment, the struggle was over. How long he lay there, the decrepit Sith did not know. It was hours more. Hours in which Inmortos’ hunger manifested. His fingers tightened around the hilt of the blade. With it, he knew he could stride forth with an edge to control the living. In death, he would be remembered forever.

 

Carefully, Inmortos began to pick himself up from the frigid durasteel floor. His breath hung crystalized in the air. Adjusting his disheveled robes, Inmortos’ cast his gaze about for a place to secure his newfound weapon. The ship was destroyed. The power of the force had torn the nearly empty craft asunder. Arcing wires hung low, light panels flickered against the shadows, the smell of melted plastics and electrical burning hung in the cold.

 

And then things changed, the calm was beset by an audible howling and a wind that whistled through the ship coming from nowhere and everywhere. The demanding spirit careened back along the expanse that joined Inmortos and Nok. It’s hunger, hatred, and darkness struck Inmortos’ mind like a jackhammer, sending the Sith Lord sprawling back to the floor with a crash. The sword nearly leapt from his hand, but Inmortos reached up grasping it  with all the strength he could muster.

 

With a new surge of vengeful power, the spirit drove it’s claws into Inmortos’ soul only to be met by an icy wall of hunger. The spirit’s claws raked the ice, opening wounds that sucked it in. Inmortos would consume it. There was nothing this long dead spirit could offend or offer, imprisoned within a vorpal blade, cursed to an existence of servitude to a worthy master.

 

Inmortos was that master. He knew it. He would make it so.

 

With a cry of anguish and anger Inmortos allowed the spirit to flow into his soul, to rake it’s vengeful claws against that which made Inmortos who he was, to taste life and inmortality. With a colossal heave that caused the temperature to drop significantly, freezing any moisture in the air, and drawing on the life forces in all directions for miles, casting a shadow of the reaper on any it touched, Inmortos grasped the spirit within the icy walls of death of his own soul and funneled it along a slippery slide. Back along his arms and into the weapon itself, the Sith channeled the spirit before slamming his mind shut against the call of the weapon imprisoning it back within it’s cage.

 

Inmortos could feel the spirit rattling within the weapon, raging for release. It longed to rule, to destroy, it would not allow this weak sorcerer to contain him. Inmortos could hear the spirit screaming in the back of his mind. Eventually he hoped to tune it out; but for now, Inmortos was content to have conquered the blade and inhabitant within.

 

Picking himself up from the floor again, Inmortos leaned heavily on the ravaged wall beside a jutting spear of twisted metal clung to by icy tentacles that crackled with electric energy. Regarding the blackened blade in his hand, Inmortos shoved the weapon between his belt and robe. It was not a deserving place for such a forbidden evil blade. It would have to do.

 

His eyelids were heavy. Inmortos’ soul was ragged. The Sith Lord’s power was ravaged and hungering. He had won. That is what mattered. Even as he felt weakened, Inmortos was not defeated. Slowly the Sith extended his hand out into the air before him reaching along the drug-induced tendon towards Nok’s soul. He felt the power, the emptiness, the greed. He smiled darkly as he twisted the tendrils of life all about them, pulling them along towards death and driving that energy along their bond. Life and death blended together as it surged from Inmortos to Nok grinding against one another in a cacophony of gnashing teeth and a maw of destruction.

 

“Morliss, this spirit is mine. Now taste the truth. Life and death stretch beyond mere things. Use them or be consumed by them; lost within their grasp.”

[Krath Inmortos]

From his tomb of a ship, encrusted in ice, Inmortos felt the irrefutable power of desperation, desire, and the festering of rage at being denied. It swirled together on the tendrils of the purest energies of the force. A twisted smile parted the Sith Lord’s mouth, ichor dribbling from the corners. He cackled quietly in the silence. Finally, the baron of Mon Cal had felt the truth. Finally he had traversed beyond. He could now learn the deeper truths that transcended mere life, time, space, and the physical worlds so many bound themselves to. Nok Morliss would be forgotten. In his place, an unforgettable nova of darkness would erupt.

 

With a wave of his hand, the Firrerreo called his heavy Ithorian wood can to his hand, the metallic hilt smooth against his fragile flesh. It was time. With slow heavy footfalls the Sith left his ship, the icy encasements shattering at the necromancer’s touch, his heavy midnight robes hanging loose about his form.

 

______________________________
 

 Thump.   Thump.   Thump.

 

Inmortos’ cane fell heavily against the uneven floors that had once been Nok Morliss’ secure medical facility. An orb of entropic energy had been all it took to gain access to the twisted and warped hallways. Darkness reigned here. It was a presence that fell heavily upon the mind and soul. Pedestrians and passerbys gave the area a wide berth unsure of what was going on, but innately feeling the somber unholiness of the place.  As if the cracked roadways and twisted building jutting upwards was not enough.

 

The hallway was silent save for the spray of sparks that occasionally fell from a twisted fixture like a waterfall of yellow energy. These flashes of light were all that illuminated the Sith Lord’s way. They were unneeded. Each tap of his cane, each footfall carried with it a sense of eternal forboding. Each step was sure across the uneven jagged surfaces that had been twisted by the maelstrom of Nok’s fruition. Inmortos mind churned, a vortex of unfathomable depth. His conscious plodding mingled seamlessly with the numerous histories that were contained in his decaying mind. 
 

Reaching what had been the last secured door before Nok’s private medical chamber, Inmortos did not stop. The blast door that dangled by a power cord was of no concern; nor was the door that had been driven through the wall and lay crumpled in the hallway. Inside it was black. Electricity crackled unseen behind the walls. There was not a photoceptor to be seen. The mechanized temple of the Nemodian had been rendered void. Within Inmortos sensed one thing, one life; and it was devastated. It was unleashed.

 

Moving forward, the Sith Lord slowly and directly made his way to the heaving Sithling. He poked the mass on the floor with the worn end of his staff. “Get up. You have been weighed by the force and found acceptable. Do not lie like the dead or be treated as such.”

 

Inmortos waited until the wretched husk of a being slumped himself to a standing position. Then with a heave he pulled the neuranium ceremonial dagger from the end of his cane. The wooden haft tumbled to the ground with a clatter. The heavy weapon hung in the air, an unholy energy reverberating about the blade. Without a word, Inmortos lunged forward, ubtil his blade pierced Nok’s flesh. “O waed yn tywallt bywyd. o fywyd, marwolaeth. Mewn marwolaeth mae meidrolion yn cael eu hanghofio i ddifrod amser.” Inmortos chanted, his voice low and crackling with dark side energies. He drove the blade deep into the rotted flesh of the Nemoidian; the Sithling’s blood spurting and spewing forth in warm sticky gouts.

 

 

“Goresgyn amser,”  he growled. The energies of Nok’s lifeblood literally boiling forth into the air in a steam that the necromancer inhaled. Nok slid from the blade and fell to the floor in a puddle of his own blood. Standing over the once-apprentice, Inmortos regarded him in the dark, his voice booming through the still air as it swirled with mystic energies. “Cwympo marwol. Codi anfarwol. Krath Apothos! Gods do not bleed!” The Sith Lord fell silent, waiting to see if Nok would rise and fill his newfound name. It was not a Darth. It was more apt, more ancient, more befitting one of which Inmortos would stride beside for a time building his own sanctuary. This man would become like a god to these lessers. They would serve him and in the shadows, in their deaths, they would serve Inmortos. No, he was no darth. He was more. This wretched sorcerer before him was a Krath, not bound to serve and fall in battle, but to carry on his faithful charge unto eternity. 
 

“Rise!”

[Krath Inmortos]

A gleeful evil radiated across Inmortos twisted face at the sight of Apothos rising up, his body contorted by darkness. The continued writihing and twisting that intermingled with the visceral pain that the newfound Sith Lord willingly subjected himself to only made the necromancer salivate, bloody phlegm running freely down his face. 
 

As the Nemodian spoke, Inmortos was struck by the sinister darkness that radiated on the man’s words. Gone was the sniveling businessman and his cowardice, his small desires of power to keep himself afloat in his cushioned lifestyle. Here before him now was a being that had overcome those chains and would do infinitely more given the time. 
 

“Like Nok Morliss used many names, so do I. Darth Inmortos strikes fear. Krath Inmortos is eternal. Study your histories as I and learn. Darths are tools. Show the semblance of service, as a darth. Seize power, true power, a Krath.”

 

”Come. The force is ripe.” Inmortos turned and gestured. His slow heavy footfalls echoing in the darkness. With a swipe of his hand, the ceremonial blade returned to it’s sheath within the Ithor wood cane. Thump. Thump. Thump.

 

________________________
 

Through the winding city the duo shuffled, a cloud of shadow followed them. The wind blew stiff and cold. Down alleys and streets, up stairs and lifts. Ascending the tallest spire, beyond the reach of the lift, up shaky ladders and out a rusted door, the two exited into the cloud-filled sky. The city was barely visible below.

 

Here the wind buffeted them. The tallest spire in the city swayed precariously beneath them. “Fear. Wind. Death. Heights. Let the fear feed you. Embrace it.”

 

Looking upwards, Inmortos began to climb between the waiving antennae and sensor suites. Hand over hand he climbed until he clung to the uppermost spire, designed to catch and ground lightning from the violent ocean storms the world was known for. Here, there was barely enough room for the two sets of feet that were the Sith Lords’. Placing his back against the icy spire, Inmortos howled into the wind. He grasped Apothos’ hand, helping him to the spire, his frail frame bellying a secretive strength. Hefting the Lord up, Inmortos hissed into the Nemoidian’s ear, Let us call down the vortex. With it, the city and world will be cemented in the tendrils of darkness, within your grasp, forever. The cities yours. The seas mine.”

 

Releasing the Krath, Inmortosnstared out into the vastness, beyond the horizons. Here, high above the world Inmortos could taste the energies of life that radiated from the world. He also could taste the death energies waiting for eons to be mined by one willing to profane themselves. By binding his powers with Apothos, Inmortos knew they would exponentially power one another. What one could not control, two could not help but seize.

 

The wind whipped the dark necromancer’s robes in a fury about him. Raising his hands to the sky, he let forth a blood—curdling screech that was torn from his lips before it could carry beyond his maw. It was then that he began to chant. Inmortos’ hands whipped about in the air tracing invisible sigils into the wind to be carried across the world. He felt Apothos’ power. He drew upon it, combining it with his own.
 

The temperatures began tp plummet as ice formed about them on the spire and in the air. On the wind the crystals were whipped tearing at robes and flesh flaying Inmortos flesh until blood and ichor flowed freely. Still he writhed in his evil dance calling forth the energies of death from the deep, manipulating lives to spark the deceased back to an eternal servitude.

 

Below the waves began to crash, whipped to a frenzy by the rising maelstrom of the force. Ice and snow tore through the air, coating the city below in a slick of ice. Those who were near death, the old and feeble, the sick and dying; they were pushed towards the maw of the open grave. Embraced by death before they were ready. The fell into the eternal rest of death, but inly for a moment. Their death energies pulled them back to the world, binding their carcasses to Inmortos will.

[Krath Inmortos]

As the winds whipped about the duo of Dark Side practitioners atop the seating spire, so too did the tendrils of dark side power. It manifested at first as a faint fog, but it grew exponentially. It expanded outwards until it seemed the whole of the ravaged sky across the city was one raging vortex of clouds, ice, and thunderbolts. It was enough to ground even the heartiest of ships trying to leave and turn back the most daring pilots on sea or air trying to approach. Amongst it all, countless faint strands of light and energy seemed to buzz forth, congealing and separating at whim. Life energies of the immeasurable dead lost to the expanses of seas and watery graves combined with the tendrils of life lost that hovered about relics of the dead scattered throughout the city.

 

All of these energies rose upwards as if in sheer defiance of the maelstrom that buffeted the worldscape in every direction. High into the air the alien orbs streaked until they blended into haze-ish glow that enveloped the sorcerers.

 

Inmortos let out a bone-chilling scream into the winds as he extended a frail filleted hand out before him, blood dripping from it before being torn away by the winds. Beginning to clasp his open hand into a fist, Inmortos drew the orbs, the streaks, the amorphous blobs of foggy ligjt and energy into his hand. The light extinguished in a blink as Inmortos hand closed into a knuckled fist.

 

Raising his fist into the air, Inmortos sleeve fell to his shoulder. His newly revealed pale flesh was instantly set upon by the ravaging weather and powers of the transforming force. Forcing his fist as high as he could, Inmortos opened his hand casting the light upwards in a short burst of light into the crushing vortex. It vanished in an instant, the power being dispersed in the storm until it rained down as an indistinguishable fine mist across the city.

 

Clinging to the spire, Inmortos felt the power of the force surge through him with unholy might. For an instant, Inmortos felt the power of every life that he had touched. It flowed through him. It touched his own life force. It ravaged his single life as it entered and exited his body in an instant. The vacuum left Inmortos destitute of all but the faintest glimmers of power. He pulled unnaturally against the force, willing himself to stay concision, to survive. With this energy he clung to the spire alongside Apothos. For hours he hung there, clinging to life as the storm ravaged itself into nonexistence with the rising of the sun.

 

Below the city and seas appeared normal, untouched by Inmortos’ sorcery. Below the surface however, the Sith’s magicks took ahold. They bound the city itself to the energies of the dead. Trespassers, defilers, those who sought to overthrow the rule of the Sith, who would dispute their claim to the world, would be met by waves of undead hordes drawn from the seas and catacombs with no other purpose than to destroy they that dared to desecrate the hold of the Sith here. The spell was complete. Inmortos was spent.

 

Reaching about the spire, Inmortos grasped for the hem of Apothos neck with a blood crusted hand. He pulled the Krath close. In a deathly whipser Inmortos hissed, “Geonosis. Take us to the gathering. Power beyond this world is within our grasp.”

 

 

[Krath Inmortos]

In close formation with Apothos’ ship, the Eternus dropped from hyper. The bridge was cold and empty save for one black-shroud being who stood at the helm. The temperature in the ship was just enough to preserve life, bearing back the eternal embrace of the emptiness of the cosmos. The phrase ‘like a meat locker’ was only apt in that it barely touched on how cold it was within. The edges of the crafts view panes were spiderwebbed with frost.

 

The dark lord shivered momentarily against the cold, a vestigial reminder of his still somewhat mortal body. He had departed Aaris III before his ritual had been completed. The man longed for nothing more than to continue his construction on his tombworld, a legacy to remembered across tome eternal; but with his power came responsibility. A responsibility to the more carnal ventures of the Sith Empire; and so he had returned with Apothos to his throne to obtain crafts of war upon which to carry the legions of his undead servants, to subjugate the galaxy and in that allow Inmortos time to cement his own legacy in stone, blood, and ice.

 

With slow deliberate movement, Inmortos surveilled the orb before him. Mon Cal, that perfect jewel, hung weightless against a backdrop of stars. The flaws of the world wrought by the weakness of Nok Morliss, a weakness now carved free of his flesh, glimmered like cracks on the world’s surface.

 

A dark presence emanated from the ship, connecting with the lingering sorcerous necromancy Inmortos had left in place upon this world. If it had been a test of his abilities, the stating power of the magics, even this far away, boasted of unseen success. The status of the bodies reclaimed from the deep was another matter entirely, one of which had yet to be seen.

 

Yet something was wrong, Inmortos could feel it, a chaos not of Sith machinations blended with the cries of recent and long ago rendered evils that echoed from the world. Surveying the cosmos, Inmortos pondered as to the location of Apothos vast fleets. Had the one he had unshackled been deceiving him all along?

 

With a determined depression, Inmortos keyed a comm directly to his comrade. His voice was a harsh grating whisper, cold and heavy, in a word, lifeless. “Apothos. Your world smells of chaos wrought not by our hands. Revolution unto a god is sacrilege. Punish them.” He lifted his finger from the comm before adding with a hiss, “Or I will.”

 

So much water. So many servants cast unto the deep and forgotten by their brothers in arms and loved ones. So much potential. This world was truly a gem to behold and with the proper urging could be transformed into an icy tomb of immortality; but first, it must be crushed.

 

The Eternus angled itself, not waiting for Apothos reaction and began a sharp descent towards the planet. Whatever was going on would be dealt with. Permanently. All the Sith Lord needed was a place to land. The shipyards were open and known to Inmortos to contain the prizes of his brother. They mattered little to him; however, the ships and knowledge contained within would be of great use in establishing Inmortos’ own contribution to the Sith war effort. Then at last, he might be left to his own devices, to eternity.

 

The Eternus landed softly in the midst of the yards, a flurry of armed deepguard noting the ship’s arrival and logging it as the dark lord’s. A token emissary stood to greet him as the clunk of his cane heralded his decent to the planet.  “Go.” he waived his hands at the droids, sending them off to their more oressing tasks of suppression.

 

With a grandiose wave of his hands, dark ripples of energy cascaded outwards from the Sith, swarming back unto the ship like a pack of ravenous howlrunners clawing atop one another until they surged within and awoke the slabs of undead stacked within the hold. Within minutes an entire squadron of diminutive lizardfolk armed with jagged evil spears and blades and clad in bulk plate and mail trudged forth. The life was gone from their eyes, replaced with a hunger; obedient, subservient, and deadly. The first of Inmortos undead servants from Aaris III to be blessed to be chosen by their god and carried forth unto the stars. At home, they had already become the stuff of legend.

 

Across the city, chaos seemed to reign in the moment, as even now the hordes of Apothos magicks brutally restored order to what should have been a lesser servant race.

[Krath Inmortos]

He felt it. Inmortos felt the dark rippling of the force currents as soon as the Mandalorians burst into the atmosphere. It made him grin, a sickly smile of bloodstained yellowed and blackened teeth. It was a flavor long remembered, to when the Sith and warriors of Mandalor had bathed together in blood side by side. That dark fealty was a power few could command. Not in life at least. Inmortos cackled as he made a mental note to resurrect the dead shield maidens and berserkers at battle’s end.

 

For it was to be a battle. All around him, landing craft had rained down from the sky. Their steeled shells spewed forth legions of commandos unto the city, Apothos’ City, a City of the Sith! It had been fortuitous that they had returned, almost as if the force itself willed their presence upon this world; called forth to defend with dark savagery that which was theirs to claim. 
 

Looking to the sky, Inmortos could see the battle beginning to unfold above, the swarms of Mandalorian riders a herald for an unnatural pairing. Inmortos head whipped downward as if he could surveil in a glance. Children of the light, children of weakness, they were here as well. Worthy sacrifices perhaps?

 

With his eyes narrowed, the Sith Lord could see the beginnings of an assault across the massive duracrete field that made up the largest shipyards in the floating city. He stood amongst the warehouses and construction bays, but in the distance the sound and flash of blasters foretold of death. Inmortos licked his lips. Ah death.

 

With a wave of his gaunt sallow hand, Inmortos wordlessly directed twenty of his hundred undead lizard primitives to aid in the defense of Apothos’ divine sanctuary of finance, the unholy halls of Mon Cal Shipyards. Clad in angled blackened plate and mail, bearing weapons of medieval evil nature (spears, swords, etc) the diminutive lizards fell into a haphazard charge, their hissing battle cries heralding their chaotic advance on the men, women, and droids pushing against the entrance of Apothos’ sanctum.

 

Without waiting to see if his undead minions would succeed, Inmortos turned and approached the  nearest hulking enclosed ship bay, a rickety stair provided all the access he needed. With a thought he directed the eighty remaining kobold-esque undead to surround the structure. No access would be allowed, wilingly.

 

Hand over hand and step by step, the prematurely aged sorcerer ascended the rocking stairs, the winds beginning to whip his heavy robes about him as they began to grow and crescendo following the chanting rasp of the Krath’s voice as it formed ancient words that were carried forth by the wind and the tempestuous roil of the dark side.

 

Gaining the roof, Inmortos leaned into the wind, clasping his ithor wooded cane against the  howl. With steps as sure as the encroach of death itself, Inmortos walked to the center of the roof.

 

Once there, the Sith Lord’s voice rose as he threw back his head howling his accursed tongue unto the winds. His staff fell to the room with a clank as the Sith’s hands preoccupied themselves with repeatedly tracing profane sigils unto the air and wind, each born and carried forth into the darkening sky.

 

Across the city and centering upon the sorcerer, radiating out in etching arching bands of cold, the temperatures began to plummet. It would take some time, but soon enough even the seas that lapped at the city’s edge would begin to crystalize, frozen in the embrace of darkness, death, and eternity as the warmth was sapped from them.

 

Overhead, deep dark clouds began to channel themselves into existence, exploding exponentially over and over again with each unholy cast of Sithly magic. They began to poor forth sheets of driving rain that froze to whatever it clung to. The city that was bathed in darkness by the rebels own assault would fall even deeper into the black as the power of the Sith sought to block out the very sun. And still the temperatures fell and the winds howled their ethereal call.

 

Across the city, liquids began to solidify, fuels began to gel before solidifying in time.  Joints froze. Engines seized. Lives began to wither against the onslaught of winter’s beauty unleashed once again upon the city and world.

 

Still, Inmortos chanted; his words were torn from his lips by the wind. His body sho with the cold as it overtook him. He felt it. The pain of frostbite and beyond wracking his body. That pain drove him, focused him until he looked to be half mad with pain and dark enthusiasm, his frail body dancing in the wind as he traced the darkness of his soul unto the world before him. His cloaked ripped with rage against the frail being’s body, held in place against it’s will as it sought to free itself unto the grasping teeth of the wind.

 

In the distance, thunder pealed out in a chasing cacophony across the city; lighting raining down haphazardly without aim or cause. In centered locals, the wind s began to form themselves into grasping funnels. And all the while, the temperatures continued to fall.

 

Eventually the cold caught up with the onslaught of the weather and the droves of falling rain turned to sleet and then to snow. Driven like innumerable falling shards of glass on the wind, the snow carved farrows into anything soft and exposed.  
 

Bathed in the glow of dark side energies, Inmortos allowed any control of the storm to supersede him as he poured forth energies into the blizzard.

 

 

[Krath Inmortos]

Inmortos danced. His body flailed about almost as if he were possessed. The cold winds tore at his robes. The razored snow and ice tore at his flesh leaving infinite furrows against his pale taut skin. It did not blossom a rosy red against the onslaught of cold. It could not. The Sith Lord was becoming one with the storm, his own body encased in an aura of cold timeless death. Still he danced on.

 

His rooftop perch was swept free of the droves of snow that fell sideways from the sky, carried by the force of the maelstrom. In the distance thunder cracked and rolled, it’s own power unchecked as it rained down flashes of firey power from above.

 

The winds blew. The weight of the darkness of the force Inmortos’ only anchor against being swept downwards. Ice accumulated across any surface it might cling to even momentarily and snow began to drift in deep dunes of crystalline power wherever the wind deposited it to lie.

 

And yet, Inmortos danced on, pouring more and more power and hatred into the storm. He hated these fools who thought that these worlds were worth saving. He hated they they sacrificed their lives so wantonly for something so mortal. He hated the Sith domination. He hated the rebels. He hated the overlords who ground his parents into oblivion. He hated the very idea that this could happen to him. He feared it and reviled it and that gave him power. He raged in anger at the waste this battle created; that it tore him from the one thing that mattered, eternity. His emotions fueled his dance. His frostbit fingers carving their unholy sigils into the biting wind. His words torn from his mouth and lungs to fuel the feast of immortality the storm carried upon it’s fronts. The blood and ichor that seeped from his wounds blossomed into icy shards binding the sorcerer to the storm itself.

 

He was the storm. He could not be stopped until all that he hated had been cemented in ice, ceased in their tracks to be redeemed by his own hands in death.

 

________________________________
 

The undead soldiers that Inmortos had ferried with him from his burgeoning fortress world stood guard; sentinel statues amidst the chaos. Their undead muscles froze and solidified in the cold. They felt no pain. They did not shiver or seize. They stood. When the time to move would come upon them, they would quake and snap. Pain that would fell a living thing was nothing to them. Broken limbs and torn muscles were merely a hindrance to be overcome.

 

The twenty undead lizardfolk progressed asa barbaric mass against those assaulting the slowly closing doors. The hissed and cries and bit and clawed and struck with their fanged metal weapons. Driven back and knocked down by the overwhelming firepower of the rebel force, they kept getting up, dragging deadened limbs or crawling forward with their hands, raging the whole time. The only way to stop them would be atomization or destruction to a point that they flopped on the ground, no longer a threat. They felt no pain, their vision burned red with the master’s will: destroy.

 

It was the gift of their god. Their will for no more pain, no more loneliness, no more death. Elevated above their mortal peers to demigod like status back on their homeworld.

 

The assault pressed forward unhindered even as an explosion rumbled in the building behind their prey.

 

Even when the ground opened up swallowing some of them, there were no cries of pain, no whimpers for mercy. Instead they clawed their way out, burnt and smoking, focused on the hunt.

 

__________________________________
 

Elsewhere about the fringes of the city, the sea gave up her dead without question. Long since having crawled forth from the depths, summoned by profane powers, the long dead of Mon Cal surged forth, oozing, shambling, and even crawling. Some carried ancient and not so ancient weapons akin to their time of death; many advanced empty handed, hans clawing for flesh and anything that got in their way. Their skin and sinews hung as ragged as the remnants of their clothes.

They came and they kept coming, clamoring up the city sides and across the ice. Wheb the ice broke beneath their crush, the fetid remains of Mon Cal, Quarren, men and women, and more pressed on and up. They were called by a darker purpose and they would not be denied. They were the dead of Mon Cal brought back unto unlife. Pain did not hinder them. Cold and loss of limb were but a hindrance to be overcome. At the city’s edges they pressed and inward they drove en masse, ransacking anyone and anything in their paths. Locked doors gave them pause, but even then the crush of their weight was enough to overcome but the greatest of security measures. Those unfortunate enough to be caught in their midst and grasp were devoured and destroyed until their mangled bodies rose upon the necromancic energies that radiated from the swarm; joining their undead kin.

 

_______________________________
 

The pipeline explosion shook the structure Inmortos’ used as a perch. He was so lost in his neurotic dance that he hardly noticed, stumbling only to right himself and continue to throw himself into his profane ritual.

 

((OOC NOTE: Both the blizzard and the undead horde are environmental hazards brought to bear in the environment that is the battlefield and skies above and seas beneath.

The NPCs that Inmortos brought with him are not environmental , but are simply flavorful NPCs.))

 

 

[Krath Inmortos]

The hordes of undead pushed deeper into the city, their rotting corpses pressing through the snow, pressing each other forward when the elements or defenses hindered them. The city was overwhelmed. The necromancer’s defensive measure was not designed to preserve. It was a spell, a sorcery meant to corrupt and destroy. With gnashing teeth and tearing claws and fingers, the swarm advanced, their cold deathly touch only amplified by the elements.

 

_________________________________

 

In the shipyards, the sorcerous powers of Inmortos painted him as a beacon in the force. He was the epicenter of the storm and from there he poured power into the storm, it’s power beyond his control as it ravaged the city and the seas beyond.

 

In the turmoil of the vortex overhead a pair of missiles churned through the chaos focused on the highest energy output of the storm: Inmortos himself. They were tossed by the winds and buffeted by the snow and ice that coated their hulls.

 

The dark lord sensed the power of the incoming weapons even before they became visible. His hands slowed their tracing of the intrinsic and profane as he redefined his focus. Staring up into the whiteout, the Sith clenched his fists in defiance. As the missiles began to appear as faint outlines in the flying snow, Inmortos inhaled deeply pulling any of the residual warmth in the air towards him. The missiles lurched and jolted as they closed in rising and falling on the currents of cold and colder; slamming down into the rooftop of the overgrown hangar, detonating on impact. The missiles erupted and the entire western portion of the structure, large enough to construct one of many of the Mon Cal’s massive vessels in, collapsed with a thunderous ground shaking rumble.

 

The weapons’ payloads were detonated in a fiery expulsion, launching them into the maelstrom. Their biological flesh-eating particles were detonated into the building and whipped on the wind currents of the storm dispersing them across the storm.

 

Inmortos stood there, the force a whirling vortex of darkness about him as. The building he stood in collapsed in plumes of dust, ice, fire, and snow all enveloped by the storm. Inmortos vanished into the collapse. The hollow building settled into the cracked ground.

 

All about the undead lizards tensed, pulling themselves from the rubble where it consumed them; grasping their weapons as they moved to guard their quarry yet.

 

Overhead, even without the fuel of the dark side to grow and power it, the storm was strong. It would be hours before it would begin to dissipate; but without fuel, it’s edge was lessened.

_________________________________

 

For minutes, the rubble stood unmoving. Then it shifted, subtly at first. Over and over again the duracrete slabs shifted and quaked, their rumbles shaking the grounds about the shipyard as a large slab that had been held up by a standing portion of the wall collapsed. In a sulfuric plume of smoke and ash, blackened spheres of cracking darkness erupted through the falling slab. Their smoke mixed with the storm overhead. The ground shook as the rest of the duracrete slab crashed down. In the middle of it, a hunched form crouched covered in snow and dust. Orbiting about this form were a dozen spheres of the same black energy of decay and entropy trailing smokey sulphuric gases and bathing the necromancer in a cloud that stood against the call of the biting wind. 

 

Slowly standing, the dark visage rose. His robes were ragged and torn, their deep black grayed by the snow and ash and dust. Burnt holes peppered the deathly cloak. Extending his hands out from the thick sleeves of his robe, Inmortos’ hands were pocked with deep and horrid burns from the hex missiles’ payload. Bones and ligaments were exposed against the skeletal hands, blood and ichor pooling and coagulating in the cold as it dribbled out of the wounds. Reaching upwards, the Sith Lord pushed back his hood. His face was ravages by the weapon, a large portion of his skull exposed to the elements. A swath of Inmortos face was missing from his nose across his right cheek and up along his temple. Ichor and blood flowed slowly down his face, bit at by the wind and the cold.

 

Half dead and frozen between life and death, the Sith Lord called his staff to his hand. With a thumping walk forward the orbs of destruction carved a path before the necromancer until he approached the edge of the rubble.

 

Turning his head to the sky, Inmortos let out a howl like that of a lich of legend. He called his lizardly warriors of death to him. Their muscles ground and churned against the bite of the cold as they snapped to lifely movement making their way across the windswept whitened battlefield towards their master.

 

And through it all, Inmortos hands started to move again, calling forth the deepest recesses of the force. He reached deeper than the most crushing depths of Mon Cal’s oceans and high into the sky. He drew the darkness from these unseen heights and depths, calling it, controlling it, bending it to his will. He poured this power back into the storm, his hands tracing runes of power and destruction into the storm.

 

The only things that kept the Mandalorian weapons from destroying Inmortos was the cold and the dark lord’s natural healing abilities. The frozen particulates dissipated across the city in the maw of the storm. Al they need do was be warmed by the world’s sun to renew their deadly quest. 

Edited May 20, 2021 by Leena Kil

[Krath Inmortos]

The screaming fireball of Nok Morliss’ ship was enough to draw Inmortos from his fervor. Even as the whitened surround of the city’s cold grasp ensnared and shrouded the world mere feet in any direction across the city, the vastness of the explosion tore over it all. The heat of it erupting in a cosmic inferno that signaled above the storm-swept chaos below that the battle was far from settled.

 

Allowing his fueling of the storm to cease, Inmortos regarded the maelstrom that he had breathed essence into. It, like the undead that surged all around him now, had taken a life of it’s own. It would be several hours before it would dissipate from the intensity it now bore down upon Mon Cal and Coral City. The Sith lord’s glowing essence within the force faded some as he breathed a sigh of relief. Such a conjuring was a signature weapon of the cryomancer and yet the act drew a price from the caster. The Sith’s skin was frozen and blackened, in places by the ichor that clung clanily to his ice cold skin; in others by the frostbite that had taken hold of his exposed flesh. Coupled with flayed flesh that exposed some of his skeletal features beneath from the biological weapon of the Mandalorians and Inmortos was a visage of the reaper himself.

 

And yet, over the howl of the storm, another howl pierced the winds. They were almost indiscernible against the blizzard until too late. The bombs and ordinance of the Mandalorian onslaught erupted in explosions across the surface of the shipyards. They sent billows of flame and duracrete into the wind, crating the ground and punching holes in buildings. All about Inmortos the hellfire of the children of Mandalore fell.

 

The dead surged still, unaffected by the incoming doom. Those that were caught fought to pull themselves forward, the pain meaningless. Only the truly valorized were halted in their undead singular aggression.

 

Around Inmortos those that were not cut down by the assault were felled by the necromantic powers of evil. The Sith Lord tore the essence of life from their bodies forming them each into swirlibg vortexing spheres of deconstructive power that whipped with fury and frenzy about his frail form. They swallowed the bulk of the debris that sought to tear at his flesh and render him into countless pieces.

 

And even then, a pulse of light side energies radiated across the darkness that clung heavily to the world only shadowed by the dark powers Inmortos had come to recognize as that of Apothos.

 

It would do no good for the Nemodian to fall. This world was his to command and Inmortos had many resources still to harvest from here before he tired of the sniveling lizard.

 

As the onslaught of bombing ceased, Inmortos waived the remainder of his ubdead kobold-lizards off, directing them to find they that were assaulting the shipyards and end them, to swarm the tower up and down and to not cease until death was all that remained.

 

Inmortos threw himself into the press of undead. He was carried by their writhing bodies and hands quicker than any mere mortal might be able to traverse. With a glance and a thought, Inmortos directed his chaotic carriage towards the spire from which Apothos called down his dark machinations.

 

The battle surged greater here. Blaster fire and the screams of the damned and doomed pierced the howling winds.

 

At the entrance to the tower formed a band of rebels. They were fools. They would die as fools.

 

The snow crunched underfoot as Inmortos approached slowly; the ice beneath a hidden temptress awaiting a foolish surge of physicality. The wind whipped the snow, icy razors of pain and suffering to exposed flesh. Only the dead did not surge, withdrawing at a mental break issued by the black robes being of death and darkness.

 

A wolf and his dogs. That is what Inmortos observed before him. With a blink of his eyes he surveyed not their physical forms but their souls. The towering wolfman would make an excellent addition to his retinue; but first, he needed to be broken.

 

Some men used the lash. Some used affections and awards. Others used tortures unspoken of in civilized society. Inmortos was different. Those ways were so uncivilized and wasteful. The answer was simple: death. The dog would be broken by his death, reincarnate a subservient soldier at Inmortos’ beck and call.

 

But Inmortos was not devoid of manners. Even death had some manner of decorum.

 

From within the depths of his cowl, held in place by ice and ichor, he licked his lips tasting the souls of those he was about to vanquish. Summoning the dark waves of the force, he enveloped himself in the swirling vortexes of it’s power.

 

Drawing the hilt of his saber from his sleeve, Inmortos clutches the haft of evil before him like a dark priest might carry his sacrificial blade. His staff clattered to the ground beside him. With a deathly hiss the blade erupted. Instead of bathing the blowing snow in a hue of red or any other color, the blade did the opposite. The denatured crystals within created a blade of infinite blackness that drew light unto and into it, shadowing the world about the wielder. Frigid mists radiated from the sorcerer obscuring his form and winds seemed to radiate from him in an outward direction. With the hum of the blade, evil seemed to break free of his chains and an unholy roar of phlegm and blood surged forth from Inmortos. It was a call of animalistic and mythical power. It was a call of the ancients. It called for battle.

 

((Pre-duel set up between Mythos and Inmortos. The weather and the undead mentioned here are environmental hazards from the battlefield, not NPCs.))

Edited May 25, 2021 by Leena Kil

[Krath Inmortos]

Inmortos stood there, his guttural cry sending the wolfman’s dogs running. All about the two that still stood, like a fluid pulsating wave that defined the amoebous edge of their battlefield, the hordes of undead surged against a seemingly invisible barrier, held back by a mental tick issued by the necromancer himself. They would not surge, would not move towards the Shistaven as long as their master deemed it so. If one were to come to close however, they would not be controlled outright. Such was the power over the entity known as death. The only place about them that was not a mass of moaning hungering dead was the spire of Apothos tower that Mythos had sent his pups into as if it would protect them. 

 

His shouting voice fell to a hiss, Inmortos regarded the sole soul that lingered before him. He was an alpha dog; a dog that bore it’s fangs in defiance of certain doom in hopes that it might intimidate this unknown foe.

 

Today, this dog would learn it’s place.

 

Today, the dog would be put down.

 

Blinking once, the man whose soul was as cold as his flesh, concentrated the power that flowed through and around his body. He called forth the forces of death and timelessness that were heralded by the cold and directed them with an unblinking glare of cruel disdain towards the wolfman. He sought to convey an unnatural chill even more frigid than the arctic winds and snow that flew about them; to shatter the dog’s focus and disrupt his aim, causing von Howlster’s muscles to seize and tremble resisting the will of their owner. With a glance, the Sith Lord showed his power. He had not even moved from where he stood, his blackened blade crackling against the blowing snow.

 

But to freeze the mutt was not enough. This dog had bore his teeth to a superior and needed to learn his place. Inmortos knew enough about the ways of life and death to know such a challenge could not be left to stand. 
 

With a skeletally knobbed hand clenching his wicked saber, Inmortos used the other to gesture menacingly, drawing a single undead forward, a rebel of unknown background or breeding. The only known was that this interloper he had fallen to the scourge and been absorbed amongst them. With a clenching of his fist, the undead crumpled to the ground his soul manifesting in the dark man’s palm. With a twist of his hand, the dark waves of the force destabilized the soul of the rebel and Inmortos sent it careening forward towards the wolf. A wraith of the fallen rebel surged forward with a scream, charging towards the rebel leader, unable to recognize his once ally or stop his advance. He would only stop when he reached the Shistaven’s location, the destabilized soul going to implode in upon itself. It was akin to a fragmentation grenade in reverse and would seek to draw deepguard, snow, ice and anything not bolted down upon itself with lethal velocity.

 

Accompanying this shattered soul, a trio of undead surged forth from the mass, commanded by the will of the necromancer. Animalistic beasts in a shambling rush, they sought to claw and gnaw and tackle, bind and ravage the wolfman to the frozen ground. Inmortos pressed their corrupted minds to the point of breaking, all it took was a touch of their mind by one who understood death. Tearing past the dark man clad in his deathly robes, the dead charged for Mythos.  And still, he stood.

 

((1))

 

((Powers are drawn from The Cryomancer’s Guide and from The Necromancer’s Guide. Both are linked here for perusal. I tried to include some description of the power’s potential effects in the post.

 

ACTIONS:

 

-Glare of Cruel Disdain directed towards Mythos

-Used Soul Shatter on an undead to seize it’s soul and destabilize it, sending a ghostly figure of the former owner towards Mythos’ current location. This is fragmentation grenade for a sorcerer. The only exception being that instead of exploding, this implodes upon a point of singularity  

-Gravetide used to send three undead surging towards Mythos to try and take him down, the dead coming from behind Inmortos and passing by him to go towards Mythos))

 

[Krath Inmortos]

The billows of smoke were enough to obscure the sorcerer’s vision, if but for a moment before the winds of the storm began to carry them away. It was enough. As the whispy necromancer’s eyes searched for the signature soul of the wolfman, he moved forward, his blade held at the ready. Such a dog was not worthy to die by such a hallowed weapon, but if he wanted to play these games Inmortos would not hesitate to smite him in whatever way became necessary.

 

And then he struck. Inmortos barely caught the soul-bound canine’s surge out of the corner of his eye as he scanned the battlefield. On instinct, the sorcerer spun, his singularity-fueled blade whirling in the snow and smoke as a surging blast of wind erupted from the Sith lord’s very being. The chaos that followed was immediate. 
 

Inmortos blade tangled with that of the wolf’s, his foe’s physiciality a power that Inmortos could not hope to meet head on. The surge of wind from the Krath raged towards Mythos, sucking away heat in the air and attempting to drive the warrior back by the power of the force, the power of nature’s life-claiming fury. 
 

Allowing the wind to throw him back on the waves of the force, Inmortos flew backwards towards the spire of Apothos, landing with a clatter on the frozen ground.

 

The dog’s blade had been parried in part by the saber and Inmortos flung away from the brunt of the injury by the dark winds of the storm that he commanded. And yet, the wolf’s blade had not entirely missed it’s mark, tearing a gash in the dark lord’s swirling robes and tracing a track of blood and ichor across the Sith’s thin-skinned hip.
 

Blade still in hand, Inmortos righted himself to a crouch, his robes still swirling about him in the tempest he drove towards his foe. With his free hand, the Sith touched the ground, the force surging forth from his frozen hand into the ground sending erupting spines and spikes from the frozen ice-covered ground outwards from his location in every direction, snares of certain destruction should the dog charge him again powering upwards and outwards in a shielding ring of destruction.

 

And still, he glared at his foe. It would not due to let the beast from his site again. Inmortos’ eyes simmered with hatred and pain powering his unholy gaze of cruel disdain as he sought to stare into the rebel’s heart and soul, to freeze it in place and lock his musclebound body in a statuesque pose of pain.
 

“Stay down dog.” he hissed, his voice billowing out on the steam of his breath. 
 

Never again would Inmortos allow such a lowly mortal to touch him again. He would see to it that this dog was frozen solid. From that crystalline statue, he would draw forth the dog’s very soul. Such a powerful essence would be used to build his temple, his entombing monument of eternity. The dog’s soul was worth more than his body. After this battle, the dog’s body would be too frozen to be of much use in the ensuing battle. 
 

((2))

 

((ACTIONS:

 

Tangled Inmortos Stillblade with Mythos weapon to divert the brunt of the attack while simultaneously using Darkness Reigns to blast Mythos with a surge of icy wind and blowing Inmortos back to create space between the combatants. Some damage was still taken from Mythos’ blade.

 

Landing, Inmortos used Maw of Inevitability to send a surge of icy spikes erupting from the ice and snow covered ground outwards and pressing his Glare of Cruel Disdain in a renewed surge.

 

NOTE: Inmortos as a cryomancer and necromancer is not directly seeking to deal direct damage in a conventional sense, but is seeking to entirely shut down his opponent, freezing him and hindering him until he can no longer stand against the powers of entropy and death. ))

 

 

[Krath Inmortos]

Inmortos eyed the wolf even as he righted himself, his pulsating blade still in hand. The freezings mists rolled from the activated blade about the Sith mage. His gaze did not falter, his vision following the swift movements of the wolf. It was due to this evil-fueled gaze that Inmortos saw as the moving blur of fur and fang tossed an explosive into the air overhead. The sorcerer’s lips twisted in a smile of evil glee. The dog was rushing his encircling array of razored spears and shards of ice. The fool.

 

As the explosive detonated overhead, Inmortos  winced, his eyes squeezing shut out of some bit of primal survival reaction still carried in his decrepit and defiled form. And as his sight was obliterated in the moment, ending his continual glare of disdain, the Sith laughed. It was a deep rasping cackle of glee that carried over the battlefield; magnifying as the wolf threw itself onto the spears of ice. He could taste the blood in the wind-whipped air. Like a dog, this rebel had thrown himself forward, unable to calculate a safer path to it’s goal. So focused on it’s rabid intent that it did not care what could befall it before such a task could be completed. 

 

With his vile saber in hand, Inmortos lashed out. He did not need his eyes to see, for he was a creature of thebdarkness, a servant of the black eternal abyss. His was the vision of the ancients. His was the vision of the gods. His was the vision of the darkest realms of the force and it was this that he allowed to speak to what remained of his tattered and shriveled soul. Twisting Inmortos, drove his saber forwards into the storm of emotions that painted his attacker. He directed a broad sweep and stab of his black blade of despair towards the dog’s maw. He was not a bone to be chewed upon, cast away from the master’s table. He was the master, this battlefield his table, and this dog an infidel to be put down.

 

Even so, the dog’s claws raked against Inmortos’ arm. It was a touch. It was pain. The dark man’s flesh split beneath the canine’s rabid talons. The touch, the pain, was all he needed. The dark energies of the force rejoiced in their servant’s pain. Inmortos’ face twisted in pain and rage. How dare this dog touch him again!

 

Inmortos’ blade flurried blindly against the wolf, the winds of the gale surging once again to try and drive him back unto the spears of death. The wolf’s claw-filled paw that raked the sorcerer’s arm were met by the touch of icy flesh. Inmortos own hand, the one free of the saber, came down atop the muscled tendons and fur of the dog, the deepest recesses of the force pouring forth their storehouses. From the lowest depths of hell, Inmortos called the absoluteness of nothingness. No heat, no life, pure still death. With a touch, Inmortos loosed these powers unto the world, their frigid grasp expanding, seeking to draw the wolf into their gasp, a frozen statue, breath sapped from his body, life imprisoned for eternity in a moment of time. Rapidly these tendrils exuded outward, seeking whatever they might touch, so as to entomb whatever fell to their grasp in an eternity of timeless ice and death.

 

((3))

 

((ACTIONS:

-was blinded by the flash grenade, but guided by the force and close proximity of Mythos’ raw emotions.

-moved his saber to intercept Mythos’ bite attack to simultaneously seek to skewer Mythos in the face.

-Used a blast of wind coupled with some indiscriminate slashes of his saber to try and drive Mythos back into the spikes from last round. 

-Received lacerations to the arm from Mythos’ claws, using the skin to skin contact to try and freeze Mythos via a direct touch attack of Creeping Doom.))

 

[Krath Inmortos]

Locked in physical combat was a place that Inmortos did not desire to find himself, especially with a rabid dog such as Mythos. He felt the beast’s anger, it whirled within the blowing winds in an invisible vortex of power that buffeted  and empowered the very darkness the Sith was drawing upon. The heat of that passion became ice cold as it flowed through Inmortos and back out into the rebel commander. The icy tendrils snaked along the wolfman’s body, freezing muscle, bone, and blood in an ever expanding grasp of ice. 
 

His bladed hand caught in the rebel’s mechanized paw, left Inmortos feeling even more exposed to the incoming surge of teeth and rage. With a cry, the cryomancer did the only thing he could do, he fueled the ice that branched from his fingertips.

 

Overhead, Inmorts could sense the clash of light and dark as Kirlocca and Apothos sought to best one another. Even if he was bot coherent enough to know what it was, the chaotic surges of darkness only empowered the Sith more.

 

And then it happened, a horrible darkness erupted across the cityscape. The wailing and gnashing of teeth was but a whisper compared to the dark tear wrought upon the natural world. Apothos’ own machinations had struck a blow, in unison as only droids might, killing thousands in an instant. Apothos had sacrificed his own subjects. Nothing was beneath him. Nothing would stop his quest for power. Without a conscious thought on it, Inmortos’ face twisted in evil glee. The Necromancer’s tongue lolled from his mouth like a beast  trying to taste the meal that it sought. He drew the power inward sending it cascading forth in an unhindered flow of heat-draining, life-sucking power. Mythos began to crystalize, the cool blue of absolute timelessness and lifelessness metastasizing across Mythos’ furred skin and armored form. It moved rapidly across the dog, cementing the canine in a twisted statued form of his final rage; his teeth, mere inches from Inmortos throat. And still Inmortos poured the energy of absolute nothingness from his hand ibto the dog, a ragged growl of anger searing from his mouth. Grasped in the dog’s dying grasp, Inmortos was trapped until the energies of cold and darkness overwhelmed the steeled mechanics of the arm, causing it to split and crack and rupture beneath the onslaught of cold.

 

Ripping his arm free, Inmortos stumbled backwards still clutching his saber. He blinked and regarded the frozen figure before him, sparks fizzling from his exploded arm. Shaking his head, the Sith lunged, hacking away at the dog’s arm with his saber as he sent bits of frozen flesh and electronics clattering to the ground. He howled into the wind, the force feeling his raw emotion and feeding off it. The gale force winds whipped the snow into a fury about him and did not relent until the frail sorcerer tired of his onslaught; the dog’s stump of an arm reduced to nothing but a frozen stump.

 

Stretching his back, he righted himself from his display of anger at having been touched, no attacked, by such an inferior animal. Inmortos lowered his arm that clutched his saber, deactivating it with a hiss. The force responded to this act even, the winds about the dark lord subsiding briefly before being picked up by the storm overhead.

 

Inmortos regarded the rebel before him. He had fought and his soul bellied a being of power, power that yet existed within the frozen corpse that stood. Reaching into his robes, Inmortos produced a stoppered flask of milky white etherous liquid. Opening the bottle, the Sith approached, holding the flask near the frozen being’s snarling maw. Beneath his breath he chanted ritually, his words a long forgotten tongue of ancient forgotten magicks. He called to the soul of the dog, drew it into his throat until it streamed from between his teeth and into and unto the bottle. Catching what he could, Inmortos chanted until the vial was full and overflowing. Only the. Did he stop. He stoppered the flask with a squelch, stepping back to regard the soul-drooling statue with disdain. It was not his entire soul; bit it was enough. He would use it to the furtherance of his power, perhaps embed it into his throne or the walls of his citadel. Maybe even, with such power contained within this liquified shard, he would use it as a portion upon which to craft a crown worthy of his brow.

 

He brushed the thoughts away with a wave of his knuckled white hand. Those were for another time. He regarded the dog again for a moment. He had tried and failed, as the Sith knew he would; for what else could be expected of a dog. There, amongst the maelstrom of force and weather, of death and dying and undying, Inmortos put the dog from his mind. He had other matters to attend to. Turning, Inmortos raised a single hand. It wavered in the air for but a moment before he let it fall. As he did, the command that held the hordes of undead back was broken and both the Sith and Mythos were swarmed by the hungering lifeless throngs.

 

As he made his way through the surge of his own creations, they parted before him. Behind him, he could hear the slobbering and snapping as the zombies claimed another unto their own.

 

Inmortos eyes glanced skyward; somewhere amidst the gale his partner danced the dance of death. If he were to fall, Inmortos had a plan for his body as well.

 

 

______________
 

Elsewhere throughout the city, the throngs of undead continued their tireless advance. Scores more continued to crawl from the seas. Where the ice, cold, and wind had not forced open sealed entrances and walls, the press of thousands of undead often did. Pressing inwards, upwards, and downwards, the legions of death were met with fear and revision wherever they went. Where two were cut down, three more surged to fill their ranks. Where innocents fell, their deaths were but a final moment of sanity before they joined the throng. Into the city, into the buildings, into the depths, the horde advanced, caring not for preservation of life or matter. They tore at whoever or whatever was in their way, their singular goal apparent: destruction of anyone or anything that might hold life.
 

Beneath the water line, the city itself began to crack, trickles of water erupting into torrents as even the mechanized safety measures of the city failed beneath the accursed  machination’s of Apothos’ mechu-deru. The dead surged with the water as it cascaded downwards into the city beneath the city, a city beneath the waves. Icy torrents of destruction that bit and tore without thought of who or what was before it.

 

And the city, floating upon the once pristine, now frozen seas of Mon Cal lurched mightily as the water began to reclaim her birthright.  

Edited June 4, 2021 by Leena Kil

[Krath Inmortos]

Inmortos tore his eyes away from the unseen scene above, what became of Apothos was not a mantle for the necromancer’s shoulder; not while the Sith still breathed anyway. All about him, the undead surged, their countless eyes relaying to the shadow-clad skeleton of a man the goings on of a city in turmoil and hopelessness.

 

Even now, the city itself quaked beneath the lord of death and time eternal. Still, the rebels pressed on, intent on some unfathomable fools’ errand to try and lap up that which had rightfully fallen from the master’s table. The city would be lost. Inmortos was sure of it. He had seen to it. There were other cities that Apothos could ply his trades upon. This one, this one would serve as an example for all who opposed the Sith, and as warning to these so called rebels that their meddling came with a price; one too great for them to pay again and again and not be clasped in the steel maw of darkness and despair.

 

And yet still, they fought. 
 

Carried by his surge of undead, Inmortos flew through the city. His legion of undead lizards had fallen to unknown forces. They were a worthless sacrifice and yet, Inmortos found that those people, they who worshipped him as a god in life and death, their sacrifices here pulled at the strings of his withered heart. Those had been his minions, sacrificed to serve him and butchered senselessly by these usurpers to the throne world of Apothos. Apothos would pay for them. These rebels would pay for them. 
 

And so, back towards the shipyards, the surge carried the dark lord. The canted spire that once was the pride of the galactic industry, battered, broken, listing and frozen barely stood. Hordes of undead surged through the shattered doors and windows. They deposited Inmortos inside the devastated  main entry hall. The security post was vacant and decimated, Apothos’ deepguard having followed their programming and seeking out insubordinates and degenerated.

 

Clutching his heavy cane in hand, Inmortos began his slow shuffle through the hall. He felt the force whirling lime a tempest, clawing in hunger for more blood, more death.

 

Making his way throughbthe complex, Inmortos followed the call, the taste, of death. It led him to a locked door; blast doors sealed by the security countermeasures. What was behind it tasted other-than-heavenly. The taste of death was almost overwhelming. With his free hand, Inmortos slammed it into the door with a resounding gong. The sorcerer’s nails dug into the metal as wisps acidic rose beneath his palm. Energy poured forth from the dark side manifesting in tendrils of rapid aging and unmaking. The door began to crumble before the necromancer’s magic; slow at first, but as the door gave way, it clattered to the floor before him with a resounding bang about the hangar.

 

Inmortos surveyed the scene within. The icy air was a remnant of his magics and he welcomed their cool embrace. The undead and dead littered the floor, some stacked like cordwood by the rebels. Behind him, more undead surged, held at bay by the will of the sorcerer. He regarded the rebels with a sick curiousity. They certainly looked like mortals, but their souls . . . their souls did not exist? They were droids! Blasphemous creations, tools of Apothos will. They were of little use to Inmortos; but their smoking husks may yet be of use to his fellow lord of Mon Cal. With what they carried in their cores, the rebellion could be quashed for eternity. The mortals, well, their souls would be added to his trove of souls gems. Treasures to be ferreted away in his vault.

 

Standing there in the shadows, Inmortos allowed the dark bess of the force to swirl about him, manifesting as a cold breeze that whistled towards the door that contained the rebel forces. With a sharp crack, the Sith lord’s blackened saber hissed to life, it’s blackened energized blade drawing heat and light towards the abysmal maw of it’s existence. Steam and fog curled from the hilt, bathing the Sith in an ethereal fog of war painting him a cloaked specter; the embodiment of death itself.

 

“It is the end rebels. Be gone.”

[Krath Inmortos]

Inmortos cackled wildly as the robots reacted as robots might be expected to. These machinations were no better than their masters that programmed them and it was for those souls that the necromancer craved; not these bits of rubbish. Yet there were still souls here to be claimed and they that threw their lot in here would be devoured. The dark sorcerer’s wounds from the battle before had healed, a byproduct of his distinct heritage, leaving the visage of death prepared for action beneath his tattered robes. This battle would be his and these abominations would be cast aside.

 

The sound of blaster fire no more than began to erupt and the Sith lord was already flurrying into action. His feet did not move. The dark tendrils of the force surged with his unhinged desires and passions as his hands flicked upwards using the force to heft the fallen blast door from the ground, slamming it down between the dark lord and his foes across the bay even as some charged at him. The door created a buffer to absorb the withering display of destruction as the rebel blasters played their song of doom against the door. Inmortos was left sheltered for the moment, only his undead in the hall behind him as company.

 

It was simple telekinesis, taught to even the most basic force using apprentice, slammed the door designed to handle such an onslaught back into the ground as a shield. With the touch of his hands upon the back of the door and the floor itself, the iciness of Inmortos’ void-filled soul crept out in all directions, drawing the life and power from whatever it happened to touch, tasting the energy of the fire that crested about the fringes and absorbing it in it’s bitter embrace. The ice solidified the door to the floor. It craved life, energy, motion of any sort. Whatever was caught in it’s expanse of icy doom would find itself clawed at so as to bind it where they met, freezing muscles and sinews and transforming moving cogs and gears into frozen hafts. Even as the flames licked the front of the door, ice crept along the back; a duel of eternity and destruction, a duel of competing dark side manifestations. This was Inmortos’ power. This was the power of the dark side made manifest.

 

All the while, Inmortos whispered beneath his breath, a cursed spell torn from the skin-bound tomes of an ancient unholy order brought back to the world of the living. The very foundations of the force seemed to reverberate with the power of the forbidden words calling out to the dead that lay stacked behind the rebel force.
 

Clawing their way back to existence, their souls re-bound to their tattered bodies, imprisoned and tortured, four of the dead rose up. Hulking musclebound dock men, their minds ragged and unreasonable, pushed beyond the limits of life, torn across the horizon of death, rose and charged. Their minds were simple, pushed to a point of utter rage, directed only by the curse of the dark side’s power chanted in a whisper by the necromancer.

 

Righting themselves the undead charged the rebel firing squads, the graves’ tide seeking to charge, claw and tear at the droids and soldiers. They sought to drive their death-fueled passions into they that the dark side drove them to destroy. The lives, the power sources of these rebels would be extinguished if the freshly undead not ceased.

 

((1))

 

((Used basic telekinesis to set the blast door up as a shield from the spray of incoming blaster fire across the bay and to catch the burst of flames from HC-42’s charging attack. Inmortos used Creeping Doom found in the Cryomancer’s Guide to cement the door in place with ice, sending ice outwards to attempt to ensnare the advancing rebels while simultaneously chanting so as to use Gravetide, found in the Necromancer’s Guide, to reanimate four of the dead that the rebels had stacked near them prior and send them after the rebel attackers (Emma & Co.) ))

 

[Krath Inmortos]

With his saber ignited still in his hand, Inmortos crouched beneath his makeshift shield. Duel explosions rocked against either side of the ice-held door, buffeting the Sith lord in ripples of destructive energies that threatened to send him tumbling end over end had they not simultaneously buffeted him, sandwiching him between in a vortex of noise and power. Instead they ruptured his eardrums, sending echoes of pain radiating intensely through the firrerreo’s cranium. The intensity of such a cacophony threatening to overwhelm him, but for the pure evilness of the dark side that coursed through his body. Such a frail thing. It was held together but by the sinews of darkness and the powers of death that he commanded. The closer he was drawn to the maw of eternity, the less entombed by mortality he was. The more he died, the more powerful he became.

 

And as his body was buffeted by the power of the blasts, his icy expanse ceased, remaining; hungering where it lay, only repulsed slowly by the licking flames. The Sith’s mind no longer planned. He no longer thought as a higher being, his mind ravaged by the dark side and assaulted by the soldiers of rebellion. He gave himself over to the call of the darkness, to the unnatural indomitable will  of those that sought to control him. He lashed out, calling on the powers of eternity, the winds of change rushing to his call even here in this that would be the tomb of all that attempted to stand against the power of the dark side. About the room, the wind howled in a gale force surge of sweeping power attempting to upend and hurl whatever and whoever was not bolted down. The dark side still had use of this decrepit servant. His loyalty had yet to be rewarded. Where he might fail, the darkness would not and in full display it shook the plating of the walls and careened bodies and debris, crates and tools about turning them into missiles of deathly intent. The end game of darkness was destruction and Inmortos was a loyal bringer of such sacrifices; his body a conduit of the darkest depths of depravity. And as the straightline winds tore against and through the hangar, Inmortos gave himself over to laughter, evil, maniacal, and crazed. It carried on the winds filling the room with his lunacy, his mind opened completely to the call and grasp of the powers of darkness.

 

In the depravedness of his lost mind, another spirit lurked, awaiting a chance to strike, to seize power and return from it’s shackled imprisonment. A dark presence cursed and bound not to Inmortos vorpal blade, but to another weapon that hunt at his waist, an ancient sword, carried by rampaging Sith warlords of bygone eras, still thirsting for destruction; for destruction was the true language of the dark side. It had once sought to claim Inmortos and been bested by the necromancer, but now, here, in the heat of this frozen battlefield, it fed off the powers of chaos, of destruction, of the dark side. Sensing Inmortos undefended mind, the spirit struck, lashing for control of the man’s physical form. The spirit had need of a vessel, that was all. As evil as the purity of the putrid dark side, the force bent to it’s will. And as it seized some of the control over the rabid ravaged mind of Inmortos, he drew the sword, his body succumbing to the will of the spirit. 
 

The spirit saw  through the eyes of Inmortos, he felt through the senses of the Krath, and his will tangled with that of the necromancer. As HC-42 charged, the tendril of ice grasping at the robot’s servos, the assassin droid shielding the dark lord from the bulk of incoming fire. Such fools, unwilling to sacrifice each other for a greater goal. Swinging his sword wide, his weapon clashed with the heaving electrified weapon of the droid, blocking some of the blows and redirecting the forceful strikes away from his core as the weapon burned and singed the Sith’s robes and papery flesh, knocking the sorcerer back beneath the bot’s greater strength. For each blow, each nerve that seized and cried out in pain, the darkness flowed into the recess hewn by the weapon and as the spirit-laden ancient blade crashed against the staff, Inmortos other hand, swung his blacked bladed saber downwards in hacking motions towards the droid’s head and shoulders, seeking to sever servos and sensors before driving the dark weapon inwards in a stab towards where the droid’s heart ought to be.

 

((2))

 

((Was ohysically buffetted by the explosive bladts of the grenades, eardrums rupturing and Inmortos’ mentality fraying against the onslaught of his mind, opening him up to the darkside. Inmortos unleashed a blast of winds afross the battlefield attempting to sweep his enemies off their feet and/or buffeting them with other airborne projectiles.

Giving himself over to the warrior spirit that inhabits his Sith sword, Inmortos clashed with HC-42, taking some blows on the extremities due to the droid’s superior strength and lashing back with his black-bladed saber at HC-42’s head and shoulders before trying to stab him in the “heart”))

[Krath Inmortos]

The darkness howled, it’s gutteral animalistic cry escaping Inmortos’ ichor dripping maw as much as the wind howled tearing the building apart at it’s seams from the inside. In an instant, two more lives were snuffed from existence. Their deaths only fuelled the unnatural fervor of the deranged Sith monster clad in black.

 

The spirit within the blade wrestled for control, it’s power tapping that of the dark maw and empowering the sorcerer’s frail body in grotesque and unnatural ways. Yanking back on his weapons, even as the spitting stream of fire began to pour forth from the metallic assassin’s clawed hand, the man that was Inmortos gave himself fully over to the dark demented dreams of the dark side. No more were his petty aspirations anything when overcome by the pure intensity of infathomable darkness.

 

Death was all around them, the spirits of the dead beckoning they that would join. Their ethereal claws grasped for the next to fall. They whispered on the winds, shrieking cries of endlessly  eternally unsatiated desire. They cursed the blaster bolts turned less lethal. They cared not who died; all they hungered for was another to add to their ranks. Theirs was the will of the dark side, wanton destruction at whatever cost. Any attempts to enlarge their ranks would they support. Sacrifices must be made! 
 

Leaping with force imbued energy, the flames of HC-42’s attack scorched the fringnes of the man’s robes about his feet. He arced upwards, driving his glimmering Sith blade towards the leeping Leep in hopes of impaling her head on his ancient blade even as she unleashed a bluish cone of energy against his face. It burned. It stung. The grasp of the weapon raced down every nerve within the necromancer’s body. Inmortos’ momentum carried him tumbling over the top of the flame-spewing assassin droid, landing with a wind-spewing thud against the decking just as the onslaught of stun bolts erupted from Emma and her entourage tearing through the air towards where Inmortos had been, betwixt they and their comrade; but there no longer.

 

The dark being’s hands twitched against the power of the blast. Stunned for but a moment, he lashed out from the ground, his saber and sword slashing viciously at the droid’s lower portions in an attempt to dismantle him by will of force alone. The power of the darkness coursed through him, amifying his pain, turning it to power, drivig back the effects of the stun blast. The withered wizard’s only reprieve was his vicious cries of agony that spewed incesently from between his chipped and blacked teeth. The flames that singed about his ankles only added to his pain as he righted himself to his knees so as continue his flurry of maddened strikes even higher on the droid midriff. 

His blistering skin was of little consequence beyond the pain that fueled his cries. As they caught on the wind and careened about the room, the darkness joined with the pain of the cries. It twisted and attempted to corrupt and destroy, trying to wither flesh and age metals and electronics anywhere it might touch.

 

He was a servant of the darkness. His life did not matter. All that mattered was that destruction served a sufficient sacrifice to the darkness.

 

((3))

 

((Turned himself over to the full authority of the dark side and the malevolent spirit seeking to possess him. He lept clear of the majority of the array of stun bolts, stabbing at Leep’s face midjump before being struck in the face by a bolt and falling to the ground on the other side of HC-42, leaving the droid between he and Emma & Co. Inmortos’ robes were ignited at the bottom edge, burning the man’s skin, the pain fueling his dark side power. From the ground, Inmortos slashed viociously and crazily at HC-42’s legs and midsection, righting himself to his knees, all the while screaming in pain; the dark side carrying on his voice in an attempt to prematurely age and corrupt whatever heard it/it touched.))