[POISON TREE]
"Hello friend,
I know. It's been awhile, hasn't it? I haven't spoken to you since I begun working for the N&Z after we met the guy behind the veil. I'm sorry. You will have to forgive me. Moving between Imperial and Naboo space takes a long time, and I've been coming or going a lot lately. Sometimes I feel like you've been following me wherever I go, and there are other days when I don't think you're there at all. Suffice to say I think that we're both a little lost as to where we are and where we want to go, so, please, take the time to hear and listen to what I have to say. This is a rare moment when I get to be honest. Bare with me. I have been a liar for a long time.
The first thing that I know what you want to know is who I am. Calling myself Her-- being referred to as this preposition-- has been confusing for you to say the least. Everyone has a name.
Even me.
You probably think I am Alicia Drey but I am afraid that you would be mistaken. She died a long time ago. It's hard to know when given the fact that my master believed that Darth Ayra had survived the affliction which was said to have plagued in her final year. Whether she succumbed to her illness after the fall of the One Sith, or if she was stabbed to death all those years later, after the Summit of Governments, know that I am not her. It is just like Bane liked to say. There can only be two.
So then... I have to be Ella Nova, right? Sorry. That isn't me either. It is hard to say what happened to the old Knight of the Republic. They say she was caught at the end of the One Sith Wars and imprisoned in the Black Pyramid to die in circumstances that no-one really deserves. My master told me a tale of how the old Jedi broke free from the prison with Ayra's help and how those events paved the way for them to meet the Nomad on Kalist. I watched one of them die a few years ago. It could have been Nova or it could have been Ayra that we found in that cryochamber. The rumours, myths and circumstances surrounding this elusive Sith and forgotten Jedi are difficult to distinguish between fact or fiction.
All I can confirm is that they are both dead, and the strand-cast that was made to impersonate them was strangled to death as well. Every betrayal has a price.
So if I am not Drey or Ayra or Nova then who am I?
'A master never reveals him or herself'. This axiom remains true all these years later after I was first told it. Whether you remember him as The Nomad, or as Darth Mendacium, or as Darth Kakus-- it all remains the same and just like how you don't know who I am then it would make sense that I don't know who he is either. Ayra's successor. A follower of the Rule of Two. The founder of The Diarchy. Who knows? You'll notice I am distracting you. I don't want you to know who I am, and although it might be the most pertinent question when it comes to observing my misdeeds, it isn't the most important one. We're ghosts, and we come or go whenever we please. Just ask both of his sons.
So, if this confession isn't about my identity, then what is it about? What is the point of talking to you-- my silent, quiet friend looking on from the dark? Is this one of those times a Sith Lord monologues to themselves to make them feel important and powerful? Does my self-awareness frustrate you? I confess that I have been frustrated for much of my life. We will both have to continue learning about how to deal with it.
The past two years have all been about Thandon, you see. I am close to seeing the endgame come to fruition one way or the other. You've heard how those people from Dromund Kaas or Jutrand talk. This is the moment they would tell you that Thandon and all those worlds caught inside the web of it's nebulae are all going to fall to the mighty Imperial Confederation. That, with thanks to my machinations and cunning mind, that there will be Imperial flags raised all across the Esstran and Corporate Sectors as my Grand Plan comes to it's natural conclusion.
At last, after a half-century of scheming and plotting from the dark, we have reached out and snuffed out the lives of our adversaries as we seek revolution. Something about a tapestry and how those of us woven into it as we traverse the galaxy (as Bane had done before us) would see to the end of the Sith Order as they know it so that it can be returned back to it's true form. But that would be me lying, and as I told you at the start of this confession, I am not here to lie to you. The truth is I don't know what happens after Brosi. There is a fine line between catastrophe and ruination. Which ever way the pendulum falls I will go with it regardless.
Now you're asking yourself why, right? You do not talk back so it's hard to know what you're thinking but if I were you that is what I would be asking after all of that. Why have I been targeting Thandon for all of this time? Is it really just about the Rule of Two? How... obvious and small. Just another one of 'them' who couldn't fall into line and fight their way up through the ranks all the way to top. I couldn't earn it so I had to circumvent it and drive other, powerful people to fight for me-- to eliminate my competition and weaken my adversaries for me. I must be such a weakling-- a mere coward who works from the dark who is too irrelevant, too weak and tiny to grasp 'true' power among the elite in the modern day incarnation of the Sith Order.
'Why are you trying to destroy the Sith Order?'
I am not Darth Ayra, who-- in her final years-- murdered her master and reconstituted the Rule of Two nor could I be called Ella Nova in pursuit of revenge against the Dark Lords of the Sith who destroyed the Galactic Republic at the end of the One Sith Wars. Up until now, if you have been following, then either of these concepts would make sense, wouldn't it?
It's like the old man said. 'A master never reveals him or herself'.
You are just going to have to keep watching. Quietly. My silent witness to all that I wreak or wrought.
I won't apologise again."
x
