Sullust

[Sheog the Mad]

The Demented Madness dropped into realspace above the unfortunate planet of Sullust, and with it came hunger and madness unrivaled in the galaxy. The ship was a tattered starbarge, scarred from its time under the pulls of the Maw and its master. It was a dead thing, a lifeless hulk propelled by no living crew. A transponder beacon labeled it as the skybarge Soulless Fancy out of Veruna by the Hydian Way.

 

The Hutt pondered the world as it approached. Sullust was the gem of Rimma Trade Route, well known for its mineral wealth. With it under his control, the Sith Empire’s constant hunger for raw materials would be sated, for a time. Would his own?

 

A blubbering sigh echoed across the rusting bulkheads as the ship set down in the quarantined dockyards.

 

Even the Jedi Master, Sarna, had been but a momentary pause in his consumption. Her essence had barely filled him, and only for but a moment. Another blubbery breath, this time of the harsh Sullustian air. Crimson eyes stared up into the polluted skies. Hunger crawled through him, twisting his visage.

 

Around him was a loading yard, all scattered machinery and cargo ships, all waiting for the bureaucrats to complete their lengthy inspections. To pay their tolls and tax their cargos. Dockworkers bustled about, looking busy in the laziest way possible.

 

The Dark Side moved, sparked to action by the Greed and Gluttony of the Maw, overpowering the insignificant emotions of bureaucrats and dockworkers. Beside their simple lusts for credits of leisure, the Maw was an all-consuming desire for more. He could feel the lives about him change, bending unknowingly to the will of Hunger.

 

They were delicious. As each was brought under his control, life began to ebb away. Just as starlight streaked into a Black Hole, unknowing its death until beyond the Event Horizon, so too were the lives about him. The more power he consumed, the more he could devour. Beneath his great bulk he could feel the patterns of the world itself, the echoes of distant tetonic plates, their constant grinding played across his malformed lips. The polluted sky began to shift, unnatural forces overtaking those of Nature. It was not the Hutt’s desire to cause such change, it was but the consequence of such power moving, the physical manifestation of the Dark Side.

 

A storm was building

[Sheog the Mad]

Something like Hunger moved across the surface of Sullust. A Lust for Indulgence.

 

It struck with the fury of a famine. Gluttony in all its forms. Five spectors with it came, all the fell offspring of famine: Laute, that of exotic indulgences. Studoise, that of the excess. Nimis, that creature of unending insatiability. Praepropere, that animalistic instinct of the ancients from which feasts are born before the famine. Last was Ardenter, that fell bastard of Avarice and Hunger, which drove men to horde and devour. All were manifest in the mountain of Filth that channeled the storm.

 

The ground itself cried out in the cravings of famine, churning with ravenous tectonic rage. A Storm rose above Byllurun, the capital of the falling world, and into it, Sheog channeled the very heart of depravity. Avarice and Gluttony ruled and was reflected in the Maw. What could be eaten, was in overindulgence, but still they starved. They were like rats in their warrens, feasting on their own young but still starving. Insatiable. It was all a reflection of the Madness that was the Master of the Krath.

 

Dark clouds began to fall from the sky, ripping into the city of Byllurun with howling wind. It was assaulted from above by the sky, with lightning and ice, while from below the ground quaked in its insatiable rage.  The city was a ouroboros, the populace devouring themselves and each other in an orgy of hunger.

 

At the very heart of the revel, was Sheog. He relaxed, leaning against the stout bark of a Vyspian tree, in a field of death. He took in life itself, ripping it into shreds just as the maw devoured light. Flesh crumbled to ash, bone to dust. He feasted on life and on the emotions of the tortured populace.

 

The Maw had been unleashed.

[Sheog the Mad]

Hunger, that insatiable starvation tore across the planet, spreading out like a ravenous cancer from the capital of Byllurun, taking everything living into the storm. The planet’s heartbeat, those tidal flows of magma that swirled through the planet, took on that of the Hutt, reflected in his madness. There was a volcanic rush, tectonic plates fighting against each other in a mad scramble of fire and groundquakes. Pyroclastic flows reached across the cities like searching fingers, finding the hiding life within and devouring it to ash and fire-gnawed bone.

 

About the Hutt, a world began to die. The power of the Maw had come, and Sullust was crossing the Event Horizon. That life which was not directly consumed, such as fungi and bacteria, began to whither away from the radiation that poured from the atmosphere. The Storm was growing, rippling with radiation and gravitational abnormalities. Sheog consumed everything about him, corpses whithering away, their consciousnesses eclipsed by his own. All that was left was sardonic mimickry of life, shattered bones tottering like zombies through a wasteland that had once been a capital.

[Sheog the Mad]

A flavour emerged from the background, like a fish-head rising to the surface of a good soup, where the eyes seem to stare back at you, waiting to be devoured. Hunger changed its attention from scouring the planetside, upwards towards a new morsel. The flavor of it was somehow familiar, but lost to the fog of time, like a mince-pie you had in a dream, but whose taste you always pursue.

 

The Mountain of Filth stared skyward, beyond the circling clouds, beyond the consumption of the Maw. He could see it now, on the Event Horizon, a powerful force. All he had to do was tempt it to stray further, and he would be sated for a time. Half a planet had died and yet he was still unfulfilled, perhaps this would fill him.

 

Familiarity crystalized, and into the Force the Hutt greeted the approaching one with a wisp of desire, the grumble of a stomach. An invitation to consume. Come and join the heart of the revel, for what fun was eating if there was no one to share the meal with? The Hutt looked down to a small droid nestled in his palm, a trophy from long ago. 

 

<<I haven’t tasted of you since Corellia… My it’s been a long time. If you can't talk, I do still possess your tongue.>>

[Sheog the Mad]

Around the great mountain of filth, a world continued to die, bleeding away into the void of the Maw. The sands beneath his bulk had been sterilized even down to the bacterial and fungal life that had made up the majority of the industrial world’s flora.  The world seemed to shift and surge, tectonic plates crashing like the titans of the underworld beneath the power of the Force.

 

Yet...

 

There was another presence that stood out against the background of death and gluttony. A song that was opposed to the resplendent beat of the heart of the revel. The Wookiee and his Apprentice. The Hutt smiled in the heart of the storm. How many of this Kiralocca’s apprentices had he killed? What was one more death in this storm? A voice leered, distorted by the lensing of the storm, erupting around the Jedi like the volcanoes about them,

 

<<Come then, Kiralocca. Let us have a fight, blade to blade. The fate of a world hangs in the balance.>>

 

A drifting laughter came then from the shifting sands, rippling them like waves.

 

<<I won’t explode a shuttle this time, I swear. Geki is long dead, just as is Ar-Pharazon. Against me fell Darex and Fitt, Dahar and all the others. Will your fate be different?>>

 

The Hutt would await them, in the heart of the broken city, beside a still running fountain. The water had turned an inky dark with the soot of a dying world. He was the heartbeat of the darkness, his veins rooted into the world, a horde of dead about him.

 

((Feel free to join into the duel Johan, I will not kill you no matter the outcome. It'd be a good dueling lesson, feel free to read the dueling guide. I'm happy to walk you through it if you need it, as is WJ))

[Sheog the Mad]

Bleary eyes, yellow and red, set deep into their malformed sockets, stared into the veil of the Force. The Wookie had come to fight, followed by an apprentice, both strong signatures within the Force. A grotesque smile played across the crooked face of the Master of Gluttony and Greed. Those that came for him were bright stars, burning bright and hot, but once a star crossed the event horizon, it could not escape the clutches of the dark.

 

Misshapen nostrils flared, sucking in a slobbering breath as Sheog licked his pale lips with a quivering tongue. They would join the heart of the revel, that torturous display of consumption, and in turn be devoured by the Maw. The Wookie’s voice echoed, and the Hutt stared upon them, incredulous, leaning upon his dark staff as though old and decrepit.  

 

It had called his work… Filth.

 

Barking, twisted laughter, flavored with phlegm and salted with the sighing whispers of overworked, obese breaths. Gluttony’s foul song, that shuffling heartbeat of madness rang out into the winds of Sullust, the storm echoing the refrain of Avarice. The words that came were of two voices, split, but echoes of each other. It churned not only from the Hutt’s crooked tongue, but from the jaws of the withered dead strewn about the fountain

 

...Biters and Reprobates…

 

Sheog’s joyful demeanor was all but gone, replaced by a wicked thing, all faux grace and poise fallen away to the embodiment of the Dark Side. It beckoned the two to fall into its embrace, that temptation to consume. To join in the corruption of soul, for it gave such sweet pleasures. The black stream erupted into a river, rolling in black flame like the fierce Phlegethon, yet carrying a woe deeper than the Acheron. Temptation was beheld within its waters, for it crested in dark fire. It held a dark energy, attuned as it was to the Revel of Gluttony and Avarice.

 

Crimson light smashed through the storm, burning a line of char across the Hutt’s immense side, streaming from the apprentice’s blaster. Pain seared with it, and the Sith Master’s laughter took on an even darker madness. The Wookie’s bladework came next, and the Sith Master lurched backwards, springing back upon his massive tail. There was little point in the attempt to block the Jedi’s blade, but Sheog attempted to give the blademaster some respect to it, using his strength to move one of the three strikes from their intended target with his staff.

 

The other two found purchase, slicing deep gouges into the flabby, thick flesh. Façade dropped away under the combined assault, and the Wookie’s lightsaber exposed rotted, decomposing flesh. Maggots crawled about the wound, white and dark, undead even in themselves, spilling onto the dark ground in wriggling heaps as the Hutt completed his backward leap. He needed distance from their blades. Pain from the combined attack bled into his control, and the great storm above leapt with dark lightning.

 

As if answering to the wounds of their master, the bodies that surrounded the corrupted fountain awoke from death. Scrambling, shrunken forms of unlife leapt to swarm the Jedi, aiming to hold and delay them with a dozen grasping, desperate hands. Their wilted tongues carried the shrieking pain that they felt.

 

They were shambling husks, but sloppy clones of humanity. With a flabby hand in the Force, the Mountain of Gluttony admired his creations, consuming the pain he felt from his wounds. Weapons made from rags of skin, emotions marionetted by inhumanity, a feeble interpretation of the breath of life. They had enjoyed life’s once, but they had turned their eyes from Heaven, to seek Greed and the all-consuming desire for more. More than can ever be gained. All they wanted was to rejoin their revel, the dying joys of gluttony’s overreach. Oh, such beautiful Sin, and these Jedi were stopping them from it. They would tear and howl, seeking to consume the Jedi as though a meal.

 

<<Drink now of the Acheron, revel in her woe, and drown in her flame… Be awash in this... Filth...>>

 

A deep wave came from that broken, black river, as though a dam had burst, bringing with it all manners of evil. It would coil and lash towards the Jedi, aiming to break against them and tear them away into the clutching hands of the undead. It was no longer the waters of Sullust, but some dark and decrepit thing of the Maw. It roiled with dark flames, within which lay the extinguished light of a thousand stars. It waters reflected naught but night, and even then, it appeared as though the fires came as through a dark mirror, for they were made of radiation. It aimed to burn them to nothing but bone.

 

With slow and slithering movements, the great Hutt continued to back away from the Jedi, reaching into the tectonic depths below, inflicting it with his pain, letting it echo into the storm above. His belly roiled, churning with pain and rot. The Jedi would not escape the Maw.

 

((1))

 

((Took damage from Johan’s blaster pistol as well as two of the strikes from Kiralocca. Attacked using an undead swarm combined with a vast wave of radiation.))

[Sheog the Mad]

The Hutt watched with glee as the undead struck, but the glee began to pass into anger as his enemies refused to die so quickly. Though there was not the feast of death, there was pain that would whet his appetite. Perhaps they were stronger than he had envisioned. Would these pitiful Jedi be the last living things upon this cursed world?

 

A blaster shot burrowed into the Hutt’s flesh, rippling into the fat, spilling maggots in their swarms from the torn flesh. The Wookiee’s lightsaber came then, tearing into the flesh and muscle of his face. Its power ripped through him, cutting his lopsided smile far beyond its nature. His flabby jaw hung open now, dripping globs of spit and partially digested food. The pain was truly immense. The corpses, that danse macabre, dropped to the ground, the Hutt’s pain overwhelming his ability to control them. They returned to the Revel, devouring themselves instead of their enemy.

 

The Hutt tried to smile at the irony, but there was no longer the control he needed to do so. Instead he sighed, feeding his pain into the Storm overhead and below. The heartbeat of the ground was beginning to join truly with that of the Revel.

 

One, listless, yellow eye stared at the circling saber as it passed by from its strike. He could hear its defiant heartbeat. In his formal years, in those playful days of ignorance and mass killings, he would have been worried about the possibilities of death, but he no longer cared. The Power he had tasted was beyond the veil of mortality. The world of mortals was but a pale reflection of life as it could be and he was the mirror to the underworld. All the same, a lightsaber was the weapon of a Jedi, and he didn’t care to leave such a thing uncorrupted.

 

Be unto the river, devoured.   

 

Starless night streamed from a greasy hand, reaching to strike at the lightsaber’s handle, at the very heart of its soul. He could almost taste the crystal within, its life calling to him. He would devour its power unto himself, and with it slay its master.

 

Somewhere, lingering upon the wind, came the apprentice’s voice, questioning the power he saw.

 

How am I doing this?

 

The despotic voice was that of a lingering wraith, roiling forth in its hate from the veil of the Force. There was an unsubtle power to it all. It invited the apprentice to partake. To consume. To join the revel of madness, that fell stream from which such magnificent power could be drawn. Deep, guttural laughter came from about them all.

 

Behold, The Dark Side of the Force.

 

There was a sudden charge to that wind that blew about them all. Hair would stand on end, inky blackness playing upon the shadows. The heartbeat of the Revel began to pound loud and fast, a primal call to gluttony, to consumption; to that delightful, devouring greed of the ouroboros.

 

The wounded Hutt’s laughter began to take on a derisive edge, and from the seeping wounds and dripping maggots, dark lightning began to curl and play. His strongest opponent was, for now, disarmed of his greatest weapon, and it would be a cruel mistake. The Master of the Krath opened himself further to the madness that drew him, letting himself seep into the power of the Maw, to feel its pull upon his mind.

 

The Hutt tasted of the emotions on the wind, the terror of the recently dead, the pain and devastation of a planet in its death throes. He would channel it all towards the Wookie and his hapless apprentice. Dark lightning rippled from his flesh, from those seeping wounds, churning the air with the smell of death and ozone, the putrid scent of scorched fat and rot. With a waggling tongue, the Hutt thrust the tip of his ornamental cane towards the two and unleashed the storm.

 

Chain lightning, dark and cruel, would rush towards the unarmed Wookiee and his blaster-toting apprentice, fracturing the wind with the deafening rumble of devastating power. He would cast them into the heart of the storm. The ground shook, a rush of geomantric energy coursing from the storm, channeled as it was through the Hutt.

 

((2)) 

 

((Took damage from blaster and lightsaber throw, loses necromantic control due to damage taken. Attacks WJ's Lightsaber with consuming darkness, attempting to drain the life from the crystal and make it useless. Attacks Johan and WJ with chain lightning.))

[Sheog the Mad]

A great, blubbery sigh echoed across the desolate wasteland that had once been a metropolitan oaisis. It echoed in the storm, becoming resounding of thunder. A weariness. The Jedi had become… Tiresome. Did they not know they were attempting to stop nature itself? That bittersweet embrace of entropy, of consumption. Of decay?

 

Lightning had not felled them, even as the storm raged against them. The loose, split jaw of the wounded Hutt twisted into a smile, lips adorned with hardened phlegm and the wriggling of maggots. The Jedi’s blade had suffered, as had his apprentice. Their emotions reflected into the Force, added to the screaming terror of thousands. Yet their tune was off. They had not joined the Revel, that cacophony of madness, they stood apart; like how the whimpering mewing of an abused choirboy ruined the beautiful inflections of a holy chorus. Crimson eyes flicked from the Wookie to his present apprentice, a malformed eyebrow hooking upwards in derision.

 

The Force moved, the storm reflecting in the stones beneath him. A new sound that had been building across the whole battle. Another tone had joined the heartbeat of madness. That quaking ground had, at long last, answered to his temptation. It had longed to devour, and now it would. The Storm Beneath had joined the rhythm of the one above.

 

The Hutt’s smile widened, letting the lightning die as the Wookie bloomed before him as a beacon of light. It was quite the sight, like some hairy god come to preach the furry gospel to the imbecilic masses. The illumination caused the Hutt to ask the eternal question; what would the offspring of a Wookie and a Hutt look like? What would they name them? Would they lucky and have triplets? Would they care for their aging parents like good fuzzy worms, or would they lock us away in a rest home?

 

A spark of danger.

 

Oh, it had been a distraction, not an invitation. Alora had tried it on him before, but she hadn’t been the Hutt’s type. He preferred the muscular and masculine. And maybe now… Hairy. Crimson eyes looked to his side-satchel, made from the woven fur from Kiralocca from the last time he had killed him. He would put it to use, but after the fight. So, they had decided to run at him. One last charge of the Jedi Brigade, 

 

The blitzkrieg of a Wookie and his apprentice was a treacherously perilous thing. To charge a Master of the Krath headlong was both tactically ill-advised, and a deep study in one’s own mortality. And perhaps a decent way to test the theory of an afterlife. But Kiralloca should know that answer already. 

 

Sheog embraced the storm, drawing himself back to his time within the Maw. It had been an unending embrace of twisted gravity and malformed light. Gluttony and Greed pulled upon his flesh as if desiring to devour him, but the Hutt turned that attention to the elevated steps of the crumbled building that loomed behind him. He offered the temptation of his trap to the Force. They were walking right into it. A dark offering, a sacrifice of Jedi life, but a small price for the death of a planet. He could see a smile twist upon the starless darkness.

 

Light and matter began to distort, as if the Hutt had become a dark prism through which light itself was distorted and warped. To move across distances, even short ones, was a process that took time, and as the blades of the Jedi struck into his supple flesh, the Hutt distorted further. Both lightsabers ripped into him, tearing holes in dead flesh, exploding guts in wet bubbles of superheated rot. He pulled upon the Wookie's lightsaber, tempting the crystal within to join the Revel.

 

And then he was no longer… there. 

 

A booming, wheezing laugh came from the stairs behind where he had been. Sheog leaned heavily on his cane, the pain of the Jedi’s attacks causing him to release the Force Storm that radiated above them. Unfettered by his control it began to shatter the sky. All that was left now, was the other storm that had been brewing for the entire fight; the storm below.

 

His laughter seemed to rip open the cobblestone street, rending it like it was flesh. Molten stone surged at its master’s call, ripping free from the bonds that had restrained. The roadway had become a volcanic fissure and from it came an explosion. A great wave of magma, bubbling and frothing like a Salazian Ale, ripped through the street to reach for the Jedi like spice-crazed Twi’lek, wanting to trade some physical attention for but a few credits. Joining with it, came a rain of superheated ash and stone. All of it surged to consume the Jedi, to banish them from a world whose natural order had been corrupted by the Dark Side.

 

((3))

 

((Was dazzled by the Wookie Presence, took damage from both lightsaber attacks and from it lost control over the Force Storm in the atmosphere. Used the Force to escape close quarters, tempted WJ's lightsaber more, and then attacked with geomancy in the form of a volcanic eruption aimed at the Jedi. It’s been an absolute pleasure.))

[Sheog the Mad]

Time itself seemed to roll out before the Hutt’s bleary eyes, echoes of actions taking form. Ripples from these Jedi, becoming waves across the galaxy, changing the Force itself. Laughter, sardonic and dark boomed across the dying planet.

 

He allowed the indignation of that storm below to consume itself, redirecting its outrage from the Jedi. The Krath filled their minds with the echoes he saw, such disasters and death, the result of their failure here to stop him. The Maw was insatiable. It would consume all life. And they had failed to stop it.

 

The Wookie and his apprentice fell to the ground, as the Hutt devoured the very essence of life. He bound them then to the fate of that world, their Force, their essence attuned to the rhythm of the Revel. The bonding of master and apprentice became a shimmering light that passed between them, appearing like the web spun by an arachoaus catching the misted dew-light of the morning. The Hutt touched that web, letting the soul reaper taste of it. A dark light began to spread across it, or perhaps it was simply the light dying. What was pure became corrupted with excess. Desire becoming insatiable. Appetite to Gluttony.

 

The temptation was there, to devour them in whole, but who would remain to carry the account of their failures here? Was not the greater torture to let them live to see the galaxy die? To watch the light of the stars wink out, one by one, each a testament to their failure?

 

He would leave them to an embittered, broken world. Devoid of all life but their own. He leaned heavily upon his staff, exhaustion sagging his grotesque shoulders. He took from the life of his opponents, sealing broken flesh. The civilians of the city had been fully consumed, and now the rest of the planet was the main course to come. 

[Sheog the Mad]

A breath through uneven, collapsed nostrils brought in the smells of a world, teetering on the edge of environmental chaos and sterilization. It had happened before, many species had faced extinction from climate change, a stars detonation, or proliferated nuclear holocaust, but it had been generations since a planet had died due to the influence of that power which drove him to consume. The last had been on Katarr, and before that at Malachor. Yet there was something new, an encroaching rhythm on the heartbeat of the Revel.

 

The overlarge Hutt sighed, a deep and throaty sound that was accompanied by a spray of globs of phlegm and partially digested food. The matted hair of the Wookie picked up a few wriggling maggots, and large chunk of rancid Ewok.

 

Yet another interloper.

 

The great Hutt was forced back once again, fire from a starfighter stitching the still-molten lava surrounding the fallen Jedi with gouts of flame. The ground beneath him surged against his control like a bantha trying to throw its rider. The yokes of geomancy were heavy indeed. The Master of the Krath leaned again on his ornamental cane, shoulders sagging as if under great weight. Crimson eyes blinked blearily at the newcomer as they disembarked.

 

Mandalorian. Female. Young.

 

The many-lidden eyes squinted, focusing on the creature’s armor, stance, the way they carried themselves. What was Terra doing here of all places?

 

No, no touch of ruin. No rhythm of darkmetal. But there was… fear. The Hutt’s face, even with his torn maw, curled into a wicked smile.

 

A lightsaber’s glow illuminated the swirling ash, bathing the Mandalorian in a halo of light. When it spoke, it was of a mocking tone that smacked of misplaced arrogance.

 

"Is this the part where you belt on about some weird Darkside BS, or go on about some evil plan that's been going on for some vaguely impressive amount of time?"

 

The Hutt’s unsinged eyebrow sagged upwards in relative surprise. He hadn’t even thought to monologue, but now that the girl had said it, he felt in the mood for a grandiose speech. His stomach roiled in protest, a digestive bile building in his gullet. How he desired to eat this creature before him, but first he’d have to crack open the tin can all such warriors billeted themselves in.

 

"I just want to make sure you get it all out of your system before I shove this fancy laser stick down your throat."

 

The Hutt’s many-rolled neck rippled as he nodded to the Mandalorian, considering the words. Greasy fingers held up the ornate staff upon which he had leaned, waving it like a wand in the ash-filled air. His voice came not from his broken jaw, but from the rumbling storm above, each word that of thunder. The ground seemed to bend with his words, and an electricity piqued the air. If the Hutt had any hair, it would have stood on end. 

 

<<I half expected a darksaber. They seem so… in chic amongst your… sort.>>

 

The last word was one of deep distaste, a cycnical hate that surged in a wave of heat from the ground. Orange light streamed from his cane, the blade shimmering with golden lightning as if embodying the storm above. There was a rhythm to it, a heartbeat that echoed in the air, a madness in which restraint was fading. The Hutt latched onto the fear that he had felt before, and into it he pushed his own madness. His pain from the last fight was wearing on his physical form, and a sickening, dark light seemed to leak from his wounds like electrified sewage.

 

<<You see, I have a laser stick too…>>

 

The Krath swung the blade with stubby fingers like it was a baton, like a sugar-high toddler swings at a pinata as he stared across the distance to the Mandalorian. He hoped it would draw the eye, distract his young opponent. He latched onto the storm below, tempting it into the darkening sky, to consume and make the world new in its own image. The forces of change, that which made up the magma of many worlds was so easily bound by promises of rebirth, of exploration, of consumption.  

 

A great rush of volcanic ash belched from the earth before the Mandalorian, followed by superheated lava that seemed to shatter the air itself from its very heat. Magma belched forth, unbridled by the earth, shimmering in the same lightning that bathed the Sith’s lightsaber, for it was a mirror of the Hutt’s unrestrained madness. It would come as a great wave to wash the Mandalorian from Sullust like the vermin her kind was.

 

((1))

 

((Attacked with geomancy in the form of a volcanic eruption aimed at the Mandalorian while trying to distract with rather... unwieldy lightsaber flourishes))

[Sheog the Mad]

A haggard, greasy eyebrow rose in surprise as the Mandalorian just simply, didn’t die. Nor did the Wookie or his other apprentice. The lack of death was simply disconcerting. A flare of anger began to build in one of his many hearts, adding a staccato rhythm to the revel, a dangerous beat. One that pulsed nearly out of control, revealing portions of the madness that had been hidden by the emptiness of the Maw.

 

Blasterfire scorched into the hide of the Hutt, digging deep in a gout of coagulated blood and wriggling maggots that sprayed the air. The maggots didn’t last long in the intense heat of the building volcano, the liquid in their bodies superheating into steam causing them to rupture in small pops of rancid vapor. The pain accumulated within the Hutt’s mind, adding itself to the rising madness. The dark lightning that swirled about the Hutt became more erratic, sparking with blackfyre, dancing to the heartbeat of the Revel.

 

Then the detonation came and there was a new, unnatural rhythm spreading now, trying to unyoke the storm below and unleash what the Sith had restrained. The Hutt smiled, the invitation to chaos too great. What the Maw could not consume it would happily destroy. He didn’t need the city to stand, the lives had all but been consumed now by the howling, ravenous force. Such destructive impulses for a Jedi, perhaps this young one would prefer the natural chaos of the Dark? The Hutt took up a paving stone with the Force, holding it before him like a casual shield against any further blasterfire.

 

The Hutt let the heavy weight drop from his shoulders. To restrain the geological storm had been an act of mercy to the planet, one that had outlived its usefulness. What had been a dribble of lava, became an estuary of steam, ash, and superheated stone. The last act of the Hutt upon the storm below was to redirect its fury from the steps upon which he sat his bulk. It raged out towards the city, to consume and devour what the natives of Sullust had built in their arrogance. The materials from which it had been built had been pulled from its depths, and now it would have its vengeance.

 

Buildings began to collapse in a fury of flame from the unleashed earth. The Hutt gestured to the destruction with a clumsy wave of his saber. His own stomach began to growl, shuddering with an unending hunger.

 

<<Are you sure you aren’t with Mandalore the Bloody? You've destroyed a city!>>

 

Maddened eyes stared at the Jedi Apprentice, the words hanging on the storm above, thunder echoing. The Dark Lightning began to shiver down the lightsaber, reaching for a release. The Hutt’s words were coated in a mirth that was fitting such a show of destruction.

 

<<Your actions are… ures ijaa… Wouldn’t that make you… Kyr'tsad?>>  

 

With a wave of a chubby hand, the Hutt cast the stone shield at the Mandalorian, aiming in an arc to attempt to hit the woman from the side, to cast her into the lavastorm she had created. At the same time, the dark lightning leapt forward in a shriek and crack, reaching to snag the Mandalorian in an embrace of withering electricity.

 

((2))

 

((Took damage from the blasterfire and released the firestorm to consume the city. Attacks with a force propelled stone and chain lightning. Also insulted the Mandalorian’s beloved honor.))

 

Translation: ures ijaa is Mandalorian for without honor

[Sheog the Mad]

The overlarge Hutt let out a blubbering, hissing sigh, which echoed with a crack of thunder. The Mandalorian, despite the power of his dark energy, had denied his corporeal desires for a deeply fried meal.  His stomach lurched, turning and crawling within him, responding to unrequited gluttony. He could hear distant voices, those consumed and turned into his power. A flitmoth speaking into a storm, yet her voice was a clear tone within the Rhythm.

 

Armalite rose into his other hand, held loosely beside the saber-staff, glimmering with the fire of its glow. Ice seemed to shimmer on its blade, curving the light about it into a dark rainbow. The Mandalorian’s words bore the truth, she was child screaming as if against a too strict parent. Strike a Mandalorian in their honor, and they crumpled into a petulant toddler, all tantrums and tears. Laughter echoed in the storm, and the world about the Hutt seemed to grow dark. His maddened mind turned to Maw, and that which devoured the light.

 

<<You do not see my designs. The echoes that shall rise from this place…>>

 

The Mandalorian’s redirection of lightning came swiftly, and Sheog had little time to catch it on his own saber, it wreathing the blade in darkness. His hand sparked and smoked, and the great Hutt let the staff fall to the ground. The lightsaber drove into the surface of the shattered world and remained ignited as a pillar of dark flame. Crimson eyes narrowed.

 

The growing darkness continued to drip from his wounds, pooling like liquid night around him, gliding like mercury upon the ground, seeping like tendrils across the shattered earth, searching, clawing. He would have his satisfaction. The Mandalorian would be a paltry meal, but a morsel nonetheless. Hunger had nearly consumed all his control.

 

When the fire came, the Hutt embraced it. It singed and burnt, boiling away chunks of steaming fat, but his designs were drawing to an end. The Storm withered away, consumed as the Hutt unleashed everything upon the lone Mandalorian. Emotions, passions. Pain coursed through the Hutt, but he dove deeper into the Heart of the Revel, that rhythm of madness from which his power grew. 

 

Rage came as it always did, overbold and unbowed. From that wave of fire would spring Armalite, that great alchemical axe cutting through the air towards the helmet of the Mandalorian. It was bidden by the force, by the spirit of Rage. The blade itself seemed to warp, bound as it was to the designs of its master, each part of the Sith weapon crying to be first to strike lifeblood. The voices of those that had been bound into the blade cried in terror, Jedi and Sith alike; Teravast, Black, Furion, Sarna, Dahar. Five of the greatest had been felled by it, and now corrupted forms of them bade the blade to sink into another victim and strike true.

 

Gluttony followed with its sister in a wave of vomit, spewed from the great Maw of the Hutt. He would bid the fool to suffer, encompassed in an acidic river of rotting, denatured flesh and wriggling digesting undeath. It would rush towards the Mandalorion to devour her in its murky, fetid embrace. Stone smoked where the river ran, contaminating all it touched. He never minded a partially digested meal, and the Mandalorian’s acid-torn flesh would wonderfully tender.

 

Avarice , that bitter jealousy that lurked beyond the stars. It was patient in its attack. Avarice corrupted all power, dripped contempt into compassion, and the bitter seed that poisoned love with doubt. The Master of the Krath had found her within the Maw, where it took all light into an embrace of nothingness so strong was its desire to take. Those grasping, crawling hands of night stole from the ground to leap at the Mandalorian. If she could, Avarice would drag the Mandalorian mewing into the void.

 

The Hutt had become more than an insurmountable mountain of filth, he became that which fueled the Sith; unrestrained passion. The Mandalorian would be the rock upon which three loud-roaring rivers met; Steely rage, one of decay, the other of unfettered consumption. The void had been flung open, the shadows rent, and the true power of emotion had been belched forth in steel, bile, and darkness. The Mandalorian would die in streams of murky flame and noisome mud. She would be the star consumed by the Maw; broken and ripped asunder by forces beyond her understanding. The Heartbeat of the Revel would be disturbed no longer.

 

((3)) 

 

((Lost the lightsaber to lightning, boiled away some extra chub with the flamethrower. Attacked with a three-pronged attack of a force-thrown Axe, Force-Vomit, and a radiation beam. Well done, very enjoyable duel.))

[Sheog the Mad]

Armalite whipped away, its edge gleaming in the fading light. The blade of the great axe glimmered as it drank deeply of the Mandalorian Iron, taking into itself its essence and beauty. It was a jealous thing, always eager to change when it saw something better. A bitter feminine, her name of secrets was Invidia, that serpent’s fang, that biting eye that sets upon the heart dissatisfaction with love. The fell breeze of rot and putrid death carried her back to the hands of her Master, the Lord of all Krath.

 

Before the Hutt lay a broken opponent, alive, but listless. The Mandalorian rested upon the event horizon of infinity, pulled towards doom by a strange rhythm. A Thermal Detonator blinked in a gore-covered hand, lazily counting down to lonely catastrophe. Beneath its shell, the Baradium had taken on the Master of the Krath’s heartbeat, terrible and unending. Invidia’s bitter laughter, grinding and bright as fresh-forged steel, bid it to change, to follow the echoes of its master’s will. The axidate melded to it and with it the rest of the thermal detonator flowed into melted Aurodium, burning, and passing through the Mandalorian’s hands like water.

 

The Hutt returned the lively axe to its worn leather sheathe, the laughter fading into nothingness. The beast of the quiets would utter no more curses. Eyes of yellow-speckled crimson stared at the Mandalorian before him. He could hear her fitful breaths. The creaking gasps of broken ribs. The pain that emanated from her was palpable and as delicious as a dumpling of spiced Ewok. He drank it in greedily, relishing it.

 

Lifting her body before him, The Master of the Krath cast out an image of precious, honorable helmet, casting it to the dust and grime where it rolled aimlessly, no longer bright with electronic color. The hawk-fashioned T-Visor reflected the dying world and the grim colors of death. Brown hair fell in locks about her head, grey eyes fluttering in the fashion of all those that stood on the precipice of death, about to jump into oblivion. A child on the brink of death.

 

<<You were foolish.>>

 

The vile Hutt smiled, focusing the touch of the Dark Side, letting it fill the listless girl with curling, twisting pain. The smokey eyes shot open with a touch of bloodshot terror as the Master of the Dark Side shattered and devoured her mental defenses. With a grubby hand, the Sith Master picked up one of the Mandalorian’s fallen weapons, a modified shotgun, and held it before him like a wand. Her mind fell open to him, for a brief terrified second.

 

<<A father’s gift?>>

 

A great pillar of volcanic stone; obsidian, peridot and granite, rose from the shattered ground to loom behind the Mandalorian. That dripping evil darkness seemed to swirl about the shotgun, running into it with gleeful streams of liquid night.

 

<<Becomes a curse.>>

 

The Great Hutt rammed the Ori’kad through the woman’s chest like a stake, shattering through beskar’gam, flesh, viscera, and spine, to pin the Mandalorian to the pillar like a bug in a madman’s collection. As the twisting metal mixed with the woman’s blood, the shotgun became a lightning rod for the darkside. The death of an entire planet, shattered into reality, forced into the blood like a withering poison. 

 

<<Can you hear their screams?>>

 

And with that, the Hutt left the girl to live or die, tormented in flesh and mind by the wailing dead. The planet had suffered a worse fate than being conquered by the Sith, it had been exterminated and consumed.  

[Sheog the Mad]

There was a new heartbeat within the storm of death and violence. Not a physical one, but one deeply held within the Force. The wind lashed the newcomer, bringing back the macabre perfume of Force-bleached bone and weathered sinew. The Master of the Krath breathed it in, letting the essence of a necropolis king whet his tongue like an old wine, just over the edge of becoming vinegar. Multi-lidded eyes of sulfur-stained crimson stared at the Sith as it fell to its knees before him. The words were like honey, slathered with formalities reserved for the courts of men. A fell diplomat who desired power. Disappointing, but like all broken things, the Necropolis King spoke of the thirst which was the estuary of the Dark Side, but betrayed not the wellspring from which that ambition flowed.

 

The words that spilled then from the Hutt’s misshapen maw were kind, yet firm. Smoke came with them, spiced as if blown from a pipe to whirl about the fallen skeleton, caressing where there had once been flesh.

 

<<I am the master of none, Lord of Bones.>>

 

A shuddering breath that echoed within the ground itself, heaving with a grating, wheezing, laughter.

 

<<Why desire power if you’re already a god? Or are the people of Aaris III so infantile that their praise feeds not that pride that grips your heart, Necromancer?>>

 

The smoke pulled in, and the Hutt’s grandiose nature drew into itself like the waves that retreat from the shore before the tsunamis strikes. He was but now a mountain of a Hutt, scarred and grotesque, no longer reflected upon the landscape like the gods of heaven. Those eyes blinked and stared through the clearing sky, towards the stars of heaven's field

 

<<There is always a lie we tell ourselves when first start down the path to the Dark Side, a good intention upon which we pile those dead and destroyed innocents to let us sleep at night. Rare and cliché are the psychopaths and sociopaths that consume a world for fun.>>

 

The crooked mouth, stained with half-hardened phlegm and partially digested food, curled into a knowing, comforting smile

 

<<So what is it that drives you to power?>>

[Sheog the Mad]

The great Hutt sipped slowly upon the bit of his longstem pipe, watching the deep black of the spiced smoke curl and dance across the briarwood bowl. The smoke took the shape of a small skeleton, dancing about the glowing, embers of tobacco. Crimson eyes, flecked with sulpheric gold stared through the wraith and to the Sith Lord before him.

 

<<Every Sith has roots of power, that if not cultivated into greatness, wither and die into abject uselessness.>>

 

The smoke dissolved away, as did the corpulent form of the Master of the Krath. Smoke shifted and smiled, rumbling with laughter. The voice was still the Hutt’s streaming from formless shadow.  

 

<<Eternity>>

 

The word was spoken in a pondering and cruel way.

 

<<You want to be remembered, and yet throw away the very path to that power.>>

 

The smoke became the shape of the planet Aaris, split half aflame and half a populated with a metropolis the likes of Coruscant.

 

<<Memories. Cruelty or Love. Wanton cruelty makes a man remembered in the bedtales of toddlers and the whispers of wisewomen in their curses. Great works, prosperity beyond measure makes a man loved for generations.>>

 

The smoke smiled, more kindly. The echoes of the dead began to scream in the wind, the wound in the Force raw and ragged about them.

 

<<Unite them before the cause of the Dark Lord. Build of your people a fortress of strength, a wall that can resist the winds of time. From them, either their deaths or their strength, you will be immortal. If you ever desire the elevation of power, do not let strife consume you. It is how the Sith have always fallen.>>

 

A deeper sigh on the winds

 

<<To consume a world, you first know how to reap souls, bending their will to yours, to consume and destroy them.>>

 

The Hutt’s staff revealed itself in that spiced smoke.

 

<<It must be created from the very heart of your power. You must kill someone powerful, and bind their soul to an object. That totem becomes the focus of power, all things flow through it, like a lens focusing light. For myself that lens if the sins of gluttony and greed, the souls of my former master, and that of the grandmaster of the Jedi.>>

 

A great eye winked and the smoke disappeared, revealing nothing more than a dead world.