Valarauko
Location: Military History and Military Art Museum, Thustra
Neryn tilted his head to one side, then to the other, studying the target of his focus with an unblinking, almost avian intensity.
The piece was called "Cast From Heaven" and depicted the dramatic plunge of a damaged starfighter from low atmosphere. It was, on its surface, the sort of gauche military-inspired work that lined the walls of every Sith fortress in the galaxy. He had to admit that while the subject matter was banal enough, the skill of the artist was prodigious.
The painting focused largely on the transparent cockpit of the toppling fighter, writ large in the foreground. One could see the panic in the pilot's features, the tightening of his gloved hands on the controls as he tried in vain to wrestle his dying mechanical beast into compliance. The image was damnably photorealistic, while injecting just the right amount of subtle exaggeration to really sell the fear of the poor fellow's last moments.
Bright orange flames licked hungrily at the interior of the cockpit, blackening the pilot's flightsuit and causing the seals around the control panel to bubble and run like wax. Neryn could almost feel their heat, though fire was to him more refreshing than threatening.
There were other details, too, subtler ones that could be missed amidst the all-too-human nightmare of the foreground focus. The battle did not appear to be going well for the pilot's own side. The air around him was full of laser-flak and the smoking trails of SAMs, with several similar fighters portrayed mid-explosion. In all likelihood, everyone in the image was doomed, or would be were they not frozen in time.
Neryn found that particularly poignant. An instant of failure, immortalized forever on paint and canvas. He had no idea if the image was depicting a real battle, or if he was just looking at the artist's tired commentary on the manifold horrors of war. Whatever the case, it was a rawly-emotional piece, ugly in the extreme. Unlike many, Neryn believed ugliness to be as valid as beauty, so far as art was concerned. So long as it made the viewer feel something, it had served its purpose. Neryn unquestionably felt something when viewing the piece, though it was likely not the feeling the artist had intended to invoke.
Neryn had seen the painted pilot's panicked look in the faces of others before. More often than not, he was the cause, but that didn't stop him from appreciating the work. It was a fine little snapshot of the humanoid condition, one man's emotional state juxtaposed against the grinding industrial slaughter behind him.
He decided he liked it, and further decided that it would look better on his own wall than this one. He would be back for it later.