Private A Life of Iron and Flame

[Renn Vizsla]

The Quiet Before Memory

The dusk over Roon settled like a cloak of embers, warm against steel and stone. From the balcony of the keep, the Warden of Roon stood alone, hands resting on the cold railing as he watched the dying sun spill its final gold across the horizon. His armor lay stacked on the table behind him; only the flight suit clung to him now, half-zipped, scarred from the day’s drills. Sweat still clung to his brow. His muscles hummed with the memory of exertion.

But his mind…

His mind was far from here.

It wasn’t often that Renn paused long enough to let the past speak. Leadership demanded presence. Death Watch demanded resolve. Mandalore demanded strength. He had carried those expectations like beskar chains for years, chains he did not resent but had learned to bear with stoic acceptance.

Tonight, however, the silence reminded him of another world. A smaller world. A world of dust, iron, and exile.

Concordia.

The moon where he was born, or forged, depending on how one judged such things. The breeze shifted, cool and sharp, and for a moment he could smell the mines again, hear the distant echo of hammers, and taste the metallic tang of iron dust on his tongue.

His fingers curled slightly against the railing.

He had not thought of his childhood in a long while.

And yet, the older he grew, the more he led, the more he bled for Mandalore… the more essential it felt to remember where it began.

Not for sentiment.

But for truth.

His gaze drifted across the valley. The fortress lights flickered like stars fallen to earth, and soldiers below trained in the courtyard, their voices distant, their movements sharp. Young ones. Determined ones. He watched them with a faint, almost unconscious pride.

Because once, long ago, he had been one of them.

And so, with the night settling into stillness, Renn allowed himself the indulgence of memory.

-----

Concordia did not raise soft children.

Its soil was thin. Its forests sparse. Its mines deep and hungry. Life there was not meant to comfort; it was meant to shape. Renn grew up in a settlement that most Mandalorians never spoke of, a place where warriors went when they had lost too much or refused to bow to another clan’s authority. Outcasts, exiles, hard-liners, and old rebels, they had raised him.

As a boy, he saw faces carved from stone by grief and war. Men missing limbs. Women bearing old scars that split across their skin like lightning. Elders who had once fought for visions of Mandalore long since extinguished. Every one of them carried history like a blade.

They taught Renn that honor wasn’t inherited.

It was earned.

Every day.

Through sweat, steel, and the discipline to rise when beaten.

He remembered mornings where the frost clung to the cracked soil, and he and the other foundling youths stood barefoot in the cold to practice stances. He remembered the sting of a wooden staff against his knuckles, his shoulders, his ribs. He remembered being thrown again and again until he learned to make the ground part of his technique rather than his grave.

And he remembered the lessons.

“Strength is not dominance, boy. Strength is responsibility.”

“A warrior with no history is just a brute with armor. Learn who came before you. Learn why they fought.”

“Pain is a teacher. Listen to it.”

Renn absorbed every word.

From the elders, he learned the sagas, stories of Tarre Vizsla, of the Gauntlet Wars, of the fall of Sundari, of the schisms that shattered the Mandalorian people a dozen times over. Some children grew up wanting to wield a blade. Renn… Renn grew up wanting to understand why blades were ever drawn.

That curiosity never left him.

Even now, it whispered inside him.

One memory surfaced more vividly than the rest, a day he had not spoken of in years.

He could not have been older than thirteen. His armor training had just begun, and he still wore hand-me-down plates that pinched at the shoulders and rattled at the joints. The elders called him stubborn, quiet, too observant for his age, which in their tongue meant not stupid enough to die early.

The morning sky had been the pale blue of cold metal. Frost coated everything. And before the sun even crested the cliffs, Renn had been thrown into the pit.

A ring of stone.

A circle of sand.

A single opponent.

A Nik’tal youth three years older and nearly twice his weight. Broad-shouldered. Mean-eyed. The kind of fighter who mistook size for invincibility.

“First Trial, Renn Vizsla,” the elder instructor had barked. “Win, and you keep your armor. Lose, and you train bare for a month. Learn to value what protects you.”

The match had been brutal.

The Nik’tal fought like a hammer, heavy, loud, and certain of its own victory. Renn, smaller but quicker, had moved the way his teachers drilled him: low center of gravity, angled steps, elbows close, eyes sharp.

But the Nik’tal was strong. Stronger than Renn had been prepared for. A blow to his ribs had sent him crashing against the sand. A punch to the side of his helmet had rattled his teeth. The crowd, mostly other foundlings, had watched in tense, silent judgment.

He remembered tasting blood.

He remembered his vision swimming.

And he remembered something else, a flicker of anger. Not at the pain. Not at the unfairness of the match.

But at the thought of losing his armor.

His right to wear it.

His place among the others.

That anger did not consume him.

It focused him.

He shifted tactics. He let the Nik’tal swing wild. He stepped inside the boy’s reach and drove his forehead into the bridge of the Nik’tal’s nose. The crunch echoed through the pit. The older youth staggered. Renn swept his leg out from under him and brought the butt of his practice blade down across the boy’s chest.

The Nik’tal didn’t rise.

Renn remembered the sound of his own breathing. Harsh. Frosty. And the elder’s voice, gravel-thick but approving.

“Good. You think before you strike. Remember that. A Vizsla wins with mind and steel.”

That was the day they began to truly see him.

And the day he began to see himself.

----

Renn’s fingers drummed quietly on the balcony rail as he stared into the Roon sunset, the memory fading into the wind.

It was strange how clear it still felt. How sharp. Concordia etched itself into a warrior’s bones. But the path did not end there. It only started.

The Death Watch found him at seventeen.

Or perhaps he found them. Hard to say.

They came to Concordia recruiting, tall shadows in cobalt armor, carrying themselves with a pride that no clan feud or political shift could tame. They were legends made real. The kind of warriors children pretended to be in training pits.

Renn remembered standing before them in the square, helmet held under one arm, meeting their visors without flinching. They had asked him why he wanted to join.

He had spoken little.

“Because Mandalore is broken. And someone should fix it.”

Not an answer other recruits gave.

But the Death Watch liked that.

They took him in.

And Concordia’s dust gave way to fire.

-----

Wind brushed past Renn’s cheek, warm and carrying the scent of the valley below. Night descended with slow certainty, and Roon’s moons carved pale arcs across the sky.

He breathed in, steady.

Memory was a dangerous indulgence for a leader. Too much looking back, and you missed the knife aimed at your present. But he was not reminiscing for weakness. He was remembering for clarity, never to forget the path he’d walked and why he walked it.

And Death Watch…

That chapter was just beginning.

He exhaled slowly, eyes closing.

There was more to tell. More to reflect on. More that shaped him before Roon, before the title of Warden, before the clans looked to him as a symbol of unity and iron resolve.

He let the next memory rise like the tide.​

 

[Renn Vizsla]

D E A T H - W A T C H

The wind shifted as the moons climbed higher, bringing with it the faint sounds of training from the lower courtyards, shouted orders, the crack of shockstaffs, the thump of bodies hitting packed soil. Renn’s ear caught every rhythm without effort. He had lived in those sounds for so long that silence felt more alien than battle.

He opened his eyes.

The balcony lights had come up behind him, washing the stone in a soft amber hue. His helmet sat on the nearby table, its T-visor turned outward toward the dark. For a moment, his own reflection stared back at him, faint and distorted. Death Watch blue, silver trim, the faint scarring of a hundred engagements etched into the metal.

Once, that color had meant something very different to him.

He let his gaze drift from the helmet back to the horizon and let the next layer of memory unfold.

-----

The Death Watch didn’t make a ceremony of recruitment.

They didn’t need pageantry. They were the pageantry.

Renn remembered standing in a stone hangar on Concordia, the air heavy with the smell of fuel and cold metal. The other recruits, a dozen in total, lined up beside him. Some were older, scarred veterans drawn back in by ideology. Others were barely more than boys and girls, hungry for glory, for songs, for the chance to carve their names into Mandalorian history.

Renn stood with his back straight, his helmet cradled at his hip, dark hair cropped short, eyes steady. The officer in cobalt armor paced in front of them, a tall man with a voice like a vibroblade drawn across stone.

“You’re not here to play hero,” the officer said. “You’re not here to chase your own legends, or impress your clans, or collect trophies. You are here because you believe Mandalore should be more than a memory or a museum piece.”

He stopped in front of Renn and looked him over through a dark T-visor.

“You believe that, Vizsla?”

Renn met the visor without flinching. “I do.”

The officer’s head tilted slightly.

“Then understand this: Death Watch doesn’t just fight our enemies. We fight our own weakness. We fight the softness that has taken root among our people. We fight complacency, cowardice, and compromise. We tear it out by the roots. That is the oath.”

One by one, they spoke the words, repeating each line as it was called.

“Mandalore will not fade.”
“We will not bow to weakness.”
“We will rise through war, or be forgotten.”

The phrases etched themselves into Renn’s bones, carving new lines over old scars. He understood the anger behind them, but where others felt only rage, he felt something more complicated, a purpose, yes, but also a question:

What shape should Mandalore take if it rose again?

That question would follow him for years.

-----

Death Watch training made Concordia’s harsh instruction look almost gentle.

They woke before dawn to physical drills that pushed muscles to failure and then demanded more. They ran live-fire obstacle courses where the price of sloppiness was not a bruise, but a burn. They sparred in armor until their limbs shook, until weight and movement felt natural, until they bled through the underlayers and still drove forward.

Renn endured it without complaint.

Pain, he already knew, was a teacher. Here, it was an entire academy.

But for all the drills and live engagements, what set him apart wasn’t only how fast he learned to move in full kit or how steady his blaster hand stayed under pressure. It was what he did in the few hours between battles.

When others collapsed into bunks or sought out the crude relief of cards and ale, Renn found his way to whatever passed for a records room. Some bases had proper archives. Others had crates of scavenged datapads, half-corrupted holorecordings, fragments of old campaigns. He combed through them all.

He studied Mandalorian wars across centuries, the great Crusades, the conflicts with the Jedi, the fractures between New Mandalorians and traditionalists. He annotated troop movements in old battles, calculated casualty ratios, noted which leaders adapted and which broke.

Patterns emerged.

The clans tore each other apart as often as they faced outside threats. Once-glorious armies bled themselves dry over stubborn pride and short-sighted vendettas. Mandalore never lacked warriors; it lacked cohesion.

One night, after a particularly grueling combat exercise, his squad commander found him alone in the dim light of the records vault, helmet off, eyes skimming a tactical map projected in pale blue.

The older man leaned against the doorframe. “Most new blood collapses by this hour. You memorizing the names of the dead, kid?”

Renn didn’t look away from the map. “Memorizing their mistakes.”

A short, sharp laugh. “Arrogant.”

“Practical,” Renn replied. “If we don’t learn why they lost, we’ll repeat it. Different planet. Same grave.”

The commander studied him for a moment, then stepped closer.

“You think you could have done better than them?”

Renn turned the projection, cycling through data overlays. “I think they didn’t have to lose as much as they did. That interests me.”

The commander’s visor tilted. “What’s your goal, Vizsla? You trying to become some war college instructor?”

Renn lifted his head. “No. I want to make fewer widows.”

That answer drew a long silence.

Then the commander nodded once. “Good. Remember that when the shooting starts. Death Watch has enough warriors who only count kills.”

From then on, things changed.

Commands began dropping him into tactical planning sessions. He listened more than he spoke at first, but when he did speak, he asked questions no one else did.

“Why are we reinforcing this front if the enemy’s supply line is exposed here?”
“What happens if this clan we’re relying on turns their coat halfway through the engagement?”
“If we push for total destruction, what do we gain that a negotiated subjugation wouldn’t already give us?”

Some bristled at his tone. Others heard intelligence beneath the bluntness.

He was still young. But he was no longer just another rifle in the line.

-----

The first real test came on a dead world no one sang about.

Baras’kath was an Outer Rim dustball that had once been rich in ores and now housed nothing but scavenger gangs, raider chiefs, and a few scattered mining settlements clinging to old infrastructure. For Death Watch, it was a proving ground, a place to test emerging leaders away from the politics of home.

The mission brief had sounded simple: suppress three major raider factions who had been preying on Mandalorian supply convoys, break their leadership, and force the survivors into either subservience or exile.

In practice, it was anything but simple.

Renn’s unit, Squad Keld, though at the time the name meant little to the outside galaxy, dropped into a canyon complex under cover of night. The raiders had stolen heavy weapons, including old anti-air emplacements that made high-altitude passes risky. The plan was to infiltrate, destroy the emplacements, then call in gunships to mop up resistance.

It went wrong immediately.

The raiders had an informant somewhere in the chain. When Squad Keld reached the anti-air site, they found decoys. By the time they realized the trap, the canyon mouths were already closing, not physically, but with heavy fire. A dozen emplacements lit up the sky, forcing Death Watch gunships to break off.

The squad commander took a hit early. Not dead, but down, leg armor slagged, pinned behind a chunk of shattered rock. Communications were jammed. The raiders moved in from multiple directions, driving the Mandalorians into a tightening kill box.

Renn’s heart pounded, but his mind didn’t freeze.

He saw it all at once, the elevated positions, the overlapping fields of fire, the way the raiders funneled them away from the canyon walls and into the open. It was a classic encirclement pattern executed by people who had likely never read a tactical primer in their lives but knew every inch of the terrain.

“We hold here!” someone shouted over comms.

“Idiots, we’ll get buried!” someone else snarled.

Renn’s voice cut through the noise. “Quiet.”

To his own surprise, they listened.

He jerked his chin toward a narrow spillway on their right, a steep descent choked with debris, leading toward a clogged drainage tunnel that disappeared beneath the canyon floor.

“They want us to stay above ground,” he said. “So we go under.”

A trooper sneered. “You want to crawl into their sewers while they rain fire on us? You volunteering to go first, Vizsla?”

“Yes,” Renn said, already moving. “Stay here and die if you like.”

He sprinted, jetpack flaring just enough to carry him over the worst of the open ground, then cut thrust and dove into the spillway. Blaster bolts carved the air around him, sparks dancing off his shoulder plates as he crashed into the rubble and slid down the angle.

The world narrowed to dust and darkness. A moment later, another armored body dropped beside him, then another. Squad Keld followed. They were Death Watch, stubborn, but not suicidal.

The drainage tunnel was barely wide enough for them to crawl single-file. Old mineral sludge clung to the walls. The air was thick and stale. Above them, the canyon roared with battle, muffled explosions, the whine of engines, shouted orders.

Down here, there was only their breath and the scrape of beskar on stone.

Renn moved at the front, using his helmet’s scanner to map the tunnel network. The system was old, incomplete, but he pieced together enough to see where the main outlets surfaced: beneath one of the raiders’ primary gun nests.

Perfect.

They emerged like ghosts beneath the enemy position, cutting through the floor grate in silence. On Renn’s hand signal, the squad surged upward in a coordinated burst. Blaster fire shredded the raiders before they could properly respond. Grenades rolled into adjacent positions, blooming into concussive force.

Within minutes, the kill box had a new owner.

From that vantage, they systematically dismantled the encirclement. The raiders, who had felt secure a moment earlier, suddenly found their guns turned against them. Confusion rippled through their lines. Death Watch gunships seized the opening and roared back into the fight, laying down fire with ruthless precision.

By sunrise, the canyon belonged to them.

The squad commander walked with a limp, helmet tucked under one arm, as he approached Renn where he stood overlooking the battlefield, bodies scattered among blackened rocks, smoke drifting upward.

“You disobeyed a hold order,” the commander said.

Renn didn’t turn. “The order was wrong.”

Silence.

Then a rough chuckle. “You’re lucky you were right. That tunnel stunt could have killed all of us.”

“It would have killed fewer than staying put,” Renn said. “They were closing every angle. The only vector they left open was the one they didn’t think we’d be desperate enough to use.”

The commander studied him for a moment.

“You see the field like a holomap in your head, don’t you?”

Renn frowned slightly behind his visor. “I see what happens if we do nothing. That’s usually enough motivation.”

The older man clapped a hand on his pauldron. “Get used to briefings, Vizsla. Command’s going to want your mind involved before the next mess.”

That was the first time anyone called him battle scholar to his face.

The nickname stuck.

-----

Back on Roon’s balcony, Renn unconsciously traced the curve of an old scar beneath his flight suit, a thin line across his lower ribs where a raider’s desperate shot on Baras’kath had slipped past his plates. He’d patched it in the field with a stim, a sealant patch, and a curse.

So many of his scars had easy stories. A battle. A blade. A blaster bolt.

The harder marks were the ones left inside.

On campaign after campaign with Death Watch, he saw the same patterns play out: local warlords crushed, corrupt regimes toppled, Mandalorian banners raised over fortresses that had once belonged to cowards and tyrants. It felt righteous. It felt necessary.

But he also saw something else.

He saw how quickly some of his comrades turned conquest into sport. How they relished fear in a population’s eyes more than stability in its streets. How they spoke of glory more than of the people who would live under the rule they carved.

On one world, a newly defeated governor knelt in chains at a Death Watch commander’s feet. The man had been corrupt, that part was genuine, but his soldiers had already surrendered, and his people had not risen against him. They were afraid of both sides.

The commander raised his blaster.

Renn stepped forward. “Killing him gains us nothing.”

The commander didn’t even look at him. “It gains us a reputation.”

“With whom?” Renn asked. “The locals we now expect to feed and shelter our garrison? The convoys we want them to repair? Fear will hold them for a while. Respect will hold them longer.”

The blaster stayed aimed. “You getting soft, Vizsla?”

Renn’s voice stayed flat. “No. I’m thinking past tomorrow.”

The silence stretched.

Then the commander holstered his weapon with a growl. “Fine. Put him in a cell. See if his people behave better with him alive to blame.”

Later, in private, the commander had jabbed a finger into Renn’s chestplate.

“You keep doing that,” he warned, “and some will call you weak. Detached. Overthinking.”

Renn had met his gaze without flinching. “If I wanted mindless killing, I’d have joined a raider gang. I joined Death Watch because they claimed to fight for Mandalore.”

He paused.

“I intend to hold them to that.”

That was when Renn began to understand something vital: power wasn’t just about who carried the biggest gun. It was about who defined the purpose of that gun.

On ever more missions, when strategy needed a calm voice, when a squad needed someone who could read more than the enemy’s formations, who could read a situation, people began to look to him.

He didn’t ask for it.

But he didn’t run from it either.

The sounds from the courtyard below began to fade as training cycles wound down for the night. Roon’s sky deepened into a rich, endless blue, scattered with stars. Somewhere in the lower halls of Everholt Keep, the clink of armor and the low murmur of troopers drifted up like distant waves.

Renn straightened slowly, muscles protesting in familiar ways.

Death Watch had shaped him. Concordia had forged him. But there was still the matter of Roon, of how a soldier and scholar of war found himself not just on a battlefield, but on a throne of stone overlooking an entire world.

He picked up his helmet from the table, hands lingering for a moment on the cold metal.

Then he set it back down.

Not yet.

For just a little longer, he let himself stand between past and present, feeling the weight of both.