Private Burning at Both Ends

[Pel Grennin]

"This planet sucks," said Master Sergeant Qual Nottiner. He was sitting in a wheelchair in the promenade of the facility that was hosting Pel and his activities on Odacer-Faustin. The planet was cold, constantly bombarded with blizzards and there were few distinguishing features. An arctic world, there was life here, enough that the air was breathable, but it was a harsh place, and few lifeforms could endure here, and fewer still could thrive.

"It's not exactly my first choice, but Lord Rashnul has been generous to us. I'll see about us getting a more suitable location for the hospital. You'll have more to look at than rocks and snow," Pel assured him, "Though I'm unsure of what it is you're doing out of bed here in the first place."

"I'm dying, Pel. I've been dying for almost ten years. If I'm going to do it, I'd rather die here on the promenade than in my room, watching reruns of holovids I've seen a thousand times."

"Just so. Can I bring you a last meal? One final drink before you go?" Pel asked. The Master Sergeant grinned up at Pel.

"Keep 'em coming, I'll let you know when I've had my fill."

"You're a man of appetite, Qual. I'm sure you'll eat and drink our host out of his home," Pel assured him, "I'll be right back with your last requests."

Pel went off to retrieve some food for him and his old friend, something that the old Stormtrooper would be able to digest, given his age and failing health. Qual Nottiner and Pel Grennin had been paired together for more than thirty years, when Pel had been a Sith Apprentice under one of the now-fallen Sith Empires. Qual had been part of the Great Galactic War when Pel had been stolen from his family as a child. They had met during the Oblivion Crisis. They were closer than friends, closer than family. Qual had been Pel's greatest teacher. There were no lessons from the Sith that had ever come close to what the veteran Stormtrooper had taught him.

Pel returned with a plate of some of Qual's old time bar favorites - calamari rings. These were a poor imitation, with low fat and low salt, but it was, at least, real calamari rings. In his other hand, he brought simple low-sugar juice. Upon Pel's return, he found that his old friend was being accosted by Rol Nottiner, Qual's grandson, who he had raised.

"You need rest, and we can't have you wandering around unsupervised!" Rol insisted.

"I'm in a public place. If I die here, people will notice, don't worry, Rol," Qual growled. He saw food that Pel was holding, and grinned - only for it to sour when he realized that it was the proper alternatives that was forced onto him.

"There's no need for concern, Rol, your father is with his doctor. Sorry, if I'd known you were joining us, I would have brought you a drink, as well," Pel declared. Qual set up the tray he had on his wheelchair to accommodate the plate and drinks. Rol shrugged.

"I can't help but worry."

"I know, Rol," Qual sighed, patting his son on the arm, "If there's one thing I did right, it's teach you to be reliable. But my diagnosis is inevitable. Pel says there's nothing he can do more than make me comfortable, and I'm a lot more comfortable eating...This than sitting in a hospital room. So eat these with me, that's an order."

Qual took a ring and dipped it. It wasn't actually bad, just not the same as his old indulgence. Rol smiled, and obeyed his grandfather, and then Pel took his turn.

"So that Jedi was something else," Qual blurted. Pel nearly choked on his ring.

"Yes, he, um, was quite adept. I didn't expect to be so outclassed so easily," Pel admitted. He patted his chest where a bacta patch had been sewn onto his skin. It would restore his muscles over time, and he'd already received grafts to accelerate the process. Qual let out a huff.

"Well you've been cooped up in the lab for a while. Taking things easy. That Jedi is what you needed. Never stop marching, Pel. If you're nOt mArrrrchiIng yOu'Re dyyyyyiiiiing," Qual insisted. Pel blinked his eyes and shook his head. The room started to seem to elongate, and the faces of Rol and Qual stretched and warped. All the sounds fluctuated in volume and slowed down. Before Pel could even ask aloud what was going on, he was in the throughs of a Force Vision.

Garric Wrennar Darth Empyrean

OOC: The idea is that Pel and Garric have a Force Bond, so we would be having the same force vision that will bring them to the same investigation.

 

[The King in Red]

Pel Grennin Garric Wrennar​

​

The world around Pel stretches and warps, the promenade's stark white walls melting into shadows. Faces become a blur—Qual, Rol, and the cold halls of Odacer-Faustin fade behind a sudden wave of flickering lights. For a moment, he hears the echo of Master Sergeant Qual's rallying cry—"Never stop marching…"—but the words distort, replaced by a deep, metallic thrum.​

​

When Pel regains awareness, he stands in what seems to be an impossibly vast medical bay, its ceilings arcing like a grand cathedral, the floor dotted with chart tables that blink with holograms of galactic trade routes. Each route pulses like a vein, carrying the Galaxy's lifeblood from system to system. Yet black blotches ooze along these pathways, corroding them from within—hyperlane collapses set off by some cosmic infection. As Pel instinctively steps closer, the display zooms in, revealing silhouettes of twisted, emaciated figures—Starweirds—gnawing at the edges of charted space. They lash out at convoys, devouring vital resources and leaving entire regions bereft of aid.​

​

Above the diagnostic table hovers a flickering readout with a single, half-scrambled word: Cal—ad—ne. Pel senses the Galaxy's heartbeat falter with each syllable, a failing machine in desperate need of intervention. It feels like he's at the bedside of a dying patient with a once-brilliant mind—a Celestial creation—now corrupted and turning against itself. The deeper he gazes, the more the infection seems… treatable, if only the right remedy can be found. As a doctor, Pel recognizes that discovering a cure demands relentless investigation, cooperation, and perhaps the willingness to operate in treacherous territory.​

​

Then the scene vanishes. In a jarring instant, Pel finds himself trembling back in the promenade, low-sodium calamari rings scattered at his feet. Qual and Rol's voices float in from the periphery, thick with worry. But the Force-driven images remain sharp in his mind—a Galaxy in crisis, rotting from within, and a name that resonates like a cryptic diagnosis: Calladene.​

 

[Garric Wrennar]

Garric was in the Jedi library in the temple on Corusant. It had been a few months since he had been freed from stasis and had a run in with the Duros who called himself 'Dessico'. During that encounter, he recalled an odd phenomena had occurred. It was one he was familiar with, but couldn't understand was happening: Force bonds. Garric had made connections such as that in his youth. It allowed the communication of feelings, thoughts and images across distances and granted greater coordination in battle. Through such connections, the Force easily flowed, sometimes allowing one's will to bolster the strengths of the other, or possibly to draw upon their strengths. So, here he was trying to find if there was an answer to force bonds being made unintentionally.

He thought back to his encounter and recalled he could somehow tell the state of an old Stormtrooper, with not much life left in him. He also recalled a strange sense of familiarity with him, one that the Duros seemed to knowingly have. Whatever the Duros had done with him while he was in carbonite clearly resulted in force bonds being forged by accident. Thankfully, in Garric's opinion, he had yet to feel anything regarding the Duros since his escape, reasoning that they must be too far apart for even the bond to directly connect them.

After scouring through a fair amount of texts, he decided to call it a day. As he made his way to his room, he suddenly got a painful headache. The world around him blurred and silenced itself as he ended up collapsing onto the floor.

He awoke in a grand medical bay, with seemingly no direct end in sight. The floor seemed to be a hologram of star charts, pulsing as though it were a vein in a grand body, yet with darkness oozing over them, corroding them. He knelt down to look closer, reaching out to touch it as it changes into the twisted image of a Starweird, causing Garric to back up. The image was that of many of them tearing through ships, consuming their cargo, people suffering from a lack of aid. He looks up and sees the word 'Cal—ad—ne' flickering above a diagnostic table. The word flickered and every time, Garric felt the heartbeat of the Galaxy, but it was faltering like he had never felt. Yet, something gnawed at him, urging him as if to say 'it can be healed'. He was no stranger to force healing, but something like this shouldn't be possible. Even so, that feeling in the back of his mind only grew.

Before he could properly wrap his head around anything, he jumped up, finding himself in a bed in the medical wing. His breathing was sharp yet heavy, as though he woke up from a nightmare that had never ended. A nurse checked on him, having him go through a multitude of tests to make sure he was okay. Despite completing them, what he saw remained at the forefront of his mind. There was one word that seemed almost etched into his brain, one thing he was thinking the whole time, even as he shuffled through everything he saw: Calladene.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Pel Grennin

 

[Pel Grennin]

"Celestial...Celestial..." Pel flipped through books and recordings, his forehead sweating as he flipped through every source he had.

"Pel, you need to slow down. This isn't going to solve itself in a day," Rol insisted. Pel had explained his vision to his children and his friends. Qual had little patience for getting involved in "Sithspit" issues, and was off somewhere making some Stormtrooper recruit miserable with his tall tales. Rol, however, owed his career in the Navy to Pel and his connections, and saw him as a sort of uncle. His position within the Empire of the Lost had been an awkward one, and with the ISA organizing itself into the Imperial Commonwealth, Rol was between commands, and had time to spare.

Bawrad and Novik were of little help, as they, too, had visions at the same time. But theirs had been vastly different, and seemingly unrelated to Pel's.

"I can't stop thinking about that damn Cathar," Bawrad admitted, "I'm sorry, father."

"Have you found anything?" Pel asked. Bawrad shook his head.

"Nothing to do with this Calladene," he said.

"Celestials are so mythical they're practically fiction, father. You can't let this vision become obsession. You'll risk everything if you find nothing," Novik pointed out.

Pel slammed his hand against the panel he was looking at, letting out his frustrations. He stopped when he realized he'd cracked the screen.

"It can be fixed," Pel muttered.

"Pel, you're a doctor, not a metaphysicist. What do you expect to accomplish if you find this Calladene? We don't even know what it is. Is it a person, a machine, a planet? What are you going to do to fix it?" Rol asked.

"I will!" Pel held up his hand in a fist, "I will find it, first. The Imperial Commonwealth requires security and surety right now. The economy is weak. If I can fix Calladene, then we can secure the Commonwealth. I can..."

"Pick apart the problem one thing at a time, father," Bawrad said, echoing Pel's own lessons, "You know it has something to do with the Celestials. If you find something to do with them, then maybe it will set you on the right track."

"Right. Right. The Starweirds, they were...They were devouring ships. Probably...Opportunistic. Taking advantage of the situation rather than the cause. The Jedi attempted to hunt them down, or capture them. The Sith would bait them to devour their enemies. If I could capture one...Perhaps talk to it...It might know more," Pel reasoned.

"You want to capture one of those things?" Rol asked with a scoff.

"It's one option. The other is that we find...Something, anything, to do with the Celestials, and hope that it points us towards Calladene," Pel continued.

"Tall order either way," Baward reasoned.

"Are we generally predisposed to fits of obsession, father? Because I keep thinking about this Lightsaber that I saw. I can't get it out of my head," Novik admitted.

"Yes," Pel admitted, rubbing his hands together, "Which means...I don't think we can be of much use to one another. We should...Reach out for resources. Try and find help beyond ourselves. I've been meaning to...Talk to some of my contemporaries, anyway. Celestials...Starweirds...You know, either way, my best bet..."

"What are you thinking, Pel?" Rol asked.

"I would need either access to a Sith or a Jedi repository of some kind. I'm not about to go diving into either one's space, so I'll need..." Pel tapped his fingers, "Easier to try and catch both...Where would they overlap...Without being secured...Yavin. Yavin Four, it has served both the Sith and Jedi. The New Jedi built one of their academies there. It was recently wiped out by...Something, so even if they're recolonizing it, it should still be vulnerable to infiltration. If either Order held any information about it, that's where we-I-should look."

"You won't go alone," Rol said.

Pel smiled, "Of course not. You get our ship ready, and I'll make other preparations."

Rol nodded, and sighed, "Easy. I'll just...Go and get us a ship."

Garric Wrennar

 

[Garric Wrennar]

After leaving the medical bay, Garric made his way back to the library but to search for something different this time: any reference to Calladene. He thought back to his vision as he read through text after text. The Starweirds were consuming the cargo of ships, destroying them. It made no sense to him. He had encountered a Starweirds once when he was younger, although briefly and he wasn't it's target. He was a Knight at the time and part of a convoy when another one of their ships was attacked. Garric saw it kill all Jedi on that ship, but then it left. It's prey were force users, not the cargo from ships. It wasn't right, even for such a creature.

Then a thought struck him. Back during the Old Republic, it was common belief that Starweirds were a Sith creation. So, maybe he'd find an answer about their behaviour in Sith space. He immediately brought up a map of the galaxy and decided on his first destination for his investigation: Takodana, right at the edge of Sith and Republic space.

He hurried himself to the hanger bay for a ship. This was his problem and he would deal with it himself, until such a time when it is clear he can't.

 

[Pel Grennin]

"You know, this goes a lot easier if you just give me what I want. It's not like I'm asking for anything particularly dangerous, I'm trying to stop something horrible. See, this is why I came in disguise, I knew you wouldn't listen to my perfectly reasonable request for information," Pel said to the Jedi Librarian he was holding up in a Force Choke. The Jedi struggled and squirmed, clutching at his throat while Pel sorted through the Yavin IV archives. Pel tapped his mouth, thinking.

"Although I do suppose I am looking for information that you would consider Sith in origin, and that, of course, would be something you would want to protect, so that does seem a bit more reasonable. I'll tell you what, I think I've thoroughly established a hierarchy of power here, so why don't I set you down, you help me find what I'm looking for, and you can talk to your Masters about this whole intrusion once I'm gone, yeah?"

Pel opened his hand, and the Jedi librarian collapsed to the ground, gasping for air and coughing.

"I'll give you a moment to compose yourself."

The Jedi pushed himself against the wall, taking in big gulps of air through wheezing air.

"There you go, it's all right. Your throat should be sore for a few weeks, but you'll be fine."

The Jedi had enough composure to shoot Pel a dirty look. Pel smiled at him.

"Now, Starweirds and Celestials. I need a cross reference between the two. Any kind of relation. Failing that, the oldest description of a Starweird you might have on record. Don't fret, I'll be making copies, the idea of taking information from a library permanently is such an uncivilized thing to do."

The Jedi, staring daggers at Pel, managed his way back to the terminal, and ran the search.

"This is all...Restricted...Information...I need..." the Jedi wheezed. Pel held out a code cylinder.

"Don't ask where I got it," Pel said, handing it to the Jedi. The librarian inserted the cylinder and, sure enough, it had the authorization codes of a Jedi Master. THe Jedi offered it back to him, but Pel shook his head.

"After this it won't do me any good. Consider it a gift, it should offer the Order a bit of closure," Pel said.

"What...Are you...Looking for?" the Jedi asked.

"I'm looking for something to do with Starweirds and their possible relation to the Celestials, I was very specific in my request," Pel said, "But I suppose there will be Jedi looking for it, too. I'm looking for something called Calladene. I assume it's a star system."

"Calladene..." the Jedi typed into the terminal, "That's...It's knowledge...contained in a Jedi...Holocron. I only have references...to it...In the system, nothing in any....of our data cores."

Pel sighed, "So I would need to remove the Holocron from your library...And here I just said I wasn't going to remove anything from your library, I'm terribly sorry about going back on my word like that."

"You can't...open the Holocron...without a Jedi, you-"

"My friend, Jedi are easy enough to come by these days. Let's go and get that Holocron, and - I know this might not mean much to you - but I promise once I'm done, I'll make sure the Holocron ends back up in Jedi hands, yeah? Is the download finished?"

The Jedi handed Pel the data core.

"I can't...Bring you to...The Holo-"

"I know you would rather die than compromise your Holocron vault, I understand. But I can still just take back my cylinder, kill you, and go and get it anyway. Would you rather that I go tearing through your Holocrons, trying to find the right one, with you left here, a corpse? At least this way, you'll have a record of what I'm looking for and what I've taken. Sure, I had to muscle and sneak my way in here a little bit, but I've not been unreasonable. Look at me - in the Force. I don't want to hurt you. I'm only here for information, and I need that Holocron."

The Jedi looked him up and down, "You're a very odd Sith."

"Oh, please don't insult me by calling me a Sith. I build things for a living. Now, are we getting that Holocron, or not?" Pel asked. The Jedi bit his lip, and then led him to the Holocron Vault. Using the deceased Jedi Master's codes, they were able to retrieve the right one in short order.

"Excellent work, my friend," Pel said once he had it in hand, "Now, here's how I'm getting out of here. My disguise is intact, aside from you. So you're going to accompany me back to my ship. You're going to come with me to the nearest Jedi-friendly star system. I'll drop you off there, with only a sore throat. I'll even pay for your room and board while you're there, how does that sound?"

"Why would...you do that?"

"Well, you see, it's like I said. Jedi are easy enough to come by. But there's a specific Jedi I'd like to come by, and for that, I'll need your help. So, why don't we take a walk through the jungle, and I'll tell you all about it."

Garric Wrennar

 

[Garric Wrennar]

Garric had spent the better part of a week searching Takodana for any reference to anything related in his vision, specifically Sith texts that had been on the planet last time he was here. While he knew the chances of them remaining here were slim, he had held out hope for the slim chance they were. Now, his search was nearly at an end before he would think about his next move. Here he was at his final searching location: an old Jedi temple on the planet. He heard that the planet was now, technically, within Sith space, so there was the chance they raided it, and the chance they may have left something behind.

He spent a few hours searching the run-down temple itself before moving down to the catacombs below. It was surprisingly peaceful, he found, wandering through the halls below the temple, maybe because it reminded him of his youth. Back then, he and his friends would always stroll the halls of the temple, some of them curious if there were any secret passages. As he was lost in his thoughts, he finally found the place he was looking for: the holocron vault. He then spent a few days going through every holocron he could find, only for them to all turn up with nothing worth-while. He sighed as he placed the last one back into it's slot in the vault.

He decided now to calm down. he took a breath and began to meditate, to decide his next move. However, he began to sense something else in the room. Something darker. He searched and eventually found a holocron belonging to the Sith. It has a small crack in it, but not too severe to have damaged information inside. Even so, that didn't matter since he couldn't open it in the first place. His thoughts then drifted to a certain Duros, who served as his introduction to the new Galaxy. Garric sighed and muttered under his breath; he really hoped he wouldn't regret this.

He began to make his way back to his ship so he could begin to search for that Duros with the force. If he manages to find him, and find a Jedi holocron, they may be able to figure things out, and Garric had an idea of how to do it. Once he finds the Duros, of course.

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Pel Grennin

 

[Pel Grennin]

It was Pel that found Garric Wrennar first, so to speak. Not directly; the Duros Inquisitor had remained true to his word to the young Knight, dropping him off on Felucia. Although it wasn't under Jedi or Galactic Alliance control, it was, at least, friendly enough to Jedi that the Knight had been able to find a way back to the Temples, where he set about trying to find Master Wrennar as a priority. Given the nature of the theft, the Jedi Order took it quite seriously.

"Master Wrennar, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance," the Knight said, and he recounted the events on Yavin. The Duros had, evidently, posed as a Jedi, and had access to Master level access codes from a Jedi who had died decades before, but given the chaos of this century, had been overlooked. The details the Knight gave did not match the Duros that Garric had dueled - no face markings, and he had two organic eyes. However, these things could be covered up or faked.

"He was intent on acquiring a Jedi Holocron. He knew he needed a Jedi to open it, and said that he had you in mind for it. Asked me to send a message to 'an old friend', I assume that's you, Master? He said for you to meet with him 'Where the dead envy Coruscant.' Will you be needing assistance? We can pull together a strike team to arrest him."

On Charros II, Pel's vessel was not hidden; anyone who would come looking for a parked ship would certainly find one, in the ruins of what had been the capital spire of Charros II. Pel would be waiting, with a lunch set for three, when his old friend arrived, going over all the reports he'd gathered cross-referencing the Starweirds and the Celestials, trying to find anything of relevance.