Annihilation Clash of Destiny

[Matsu Ike]

OBJECTIVE: Crystal Assembly
ALLIES: Jedi Connel Vanagor
ENEMIES: Sith

The aftershock of distant explosions, the sizzle of blaster fire and the silent screams of clashing lightsabers were a persistent hum in the Force, a discordant symphony to which Matsu was only half-listening. Her primary focus was the chamber itself, a cathedral of crystal and energy. The Empire's response, she knew, was a coiled serpent. They would let the invaders wear themselves down against the station's endless ranks of soldiers and zealots before unleashing a calculated, overwhelming tide. It was a predictable, yet effective, strategy for a beast of this scale. But Matsu was not here to be predictable. While Connel laid his more conventional explosives, a worthy and satisfyingly destructive endeavor, the Jedi Grandmaster worked on a subtler, more fundamental level. Her bare hands, palms flat, rested against the cool, pulsating surface of the largest Lignan crystal. To anyone else, it would have felt like a solid, unyielding monument. To Matsu, it was a song of atoms, a lattice of molecules vibrating with infused dark side energy. It was there and she could manipulate it.

Her eyes, reflecting the light of stars from a thousand corners of the galaxy with gaps like polished obsidian, partially altered focus as she plunged her consciousness into the aart of the small. She didn't need to shatter the crystal; that would be messy, unstable, and potentially catastrophic at this proximity. Instead, she began to persuade it to be something else. A low, resonant hum, distinct from the station's own industrial drone, began to emanate from her touch. The air around her hands shimmered, not with heat, but with the visible stillness of fabrics being altered at the smallest level. Under her fingertips, the perfectly aligned atomic structure of the Lignan began to… soften. It wasn't melting in the traditional sense. It was delaminating, its fierce crystalline bonds gently, irrevocably persuaded to release their hold. A fine, glittering dust of crimson motes began to float away from the main structure, not falling but drifting aimlessly, like ash from a silent fire. The fine, glittering dust of the neutralized crystal drifted around her like a nebula of extinguished malice. This was good for a start, a proof of concept on a single component. But the chamber housed a network of these crystals, a symphonic array designed to focus unimaginable energy. To disarm the weapon, she needed to do more than silence one instrument; she had to alter and manipulate the entire rooms contents to sabotage the chamber.

She breathed in as sslowly her mind was contemplating what was there... several scenarios as Connel was there to be able to keep threats that might come here. Things were quiet but she was dividing her consciousness into several aspects to handle the larger scale manipulation. Weaving her mind through the metal aand crystal... and air. Her mind continued to push throughout the stations as she had mapped it previously... there were still more people while she reached the edge of it.. the tram lines and gift shops.. the hanger bays as there were conflicts happening around all of them. Outside she could see more and she was able to focused her mind to observe parts of it while she was becoming larger... observation across it all and she felt Ashin was here.. the powerful darksider was around as well as one or two others who were different then the normal sith and darksiders.... but she still expanded herself reached out to become larger as she wanted to swallow it and mentally her consciousness were checking on more of it. She had other aspects and thoughts worrking on the manipulations of the atomic struggle of the crystals and chamber itself. Alterring the fundamental parts of it would help and hopefully whoever was going after the ritual were making progress.

 

[Mercy]

Allies: Herself
Opp: Darth Solipsis | Romi Jade | Inosuke Ashina | Odria Kaelthron
Others: Meliant | Hasuras Na-Gerra | Sars Sarad | Arris Windrun

This was starting to drag and not in a fun way.

No one had ever warned Mercy that a Kaggath or any duel, for that matter, could be boring. But that was exactly what Mercy was experiencing here and now. The hints of boredom. That and she was getting concerned that this one would end exactly as the previous one. Herself coming out of it, declaring victory, but unsatisfied by the experience.

Her body angled towards the engagement, aiming to finally strike against Solipsis herself. To interrupt the duel, instead of giving the Jedi more time.

"Reinforcements."

Mercy blinked as Gerra's voice filtered through in her mind.

She glanced away from the battle and towards the gap created from the Destroyer's impact. Out there, with enhanced vision, Mercy could see parts of Gerra's fleet detaching.

Beginning to approach the floating spire instead.

What, you thought, I might not be able to heist the Death Star... so I might as well heist the Dark Lord? Mercy responded to Gerra through their mental connection, colored with amusement. Fine, but do not forget he is mine. I came here to finish the Kaggath, one way or the other. I might be dying of boredom here, but that hasn't changed.

 

[Connel Vanagor]

What is left
UNDISCLOSED
LOCATION - Death Star III

Michael, Gabriel, Azrael, Sariel, Raphael, Jeremiel, Connel, Raguel
[Any text in brackets signifies comm-link usage and not face to face conversation]

The chamber smelled like ozone and old promises. Matsu’s touch on the largest crystal sent a ripple through the Force that felt like a bell struck at the edge of hearing — a small, impossible thing becoming wrong in the nicest of ways. She was doing something that could not be shouted; she was undoing songs at the level of atoms, and the sound of it was beautiful in a way that hurt.

Connel watched her as she worked. She looked ridiculous and immeasurably deadly all at once: hair floating, eyes like fossilized stars, humming some nonsense rhyme to a door like it owed her money. He could feel the crystals fall away in a shower of red motes where she’d asked them to let go. That was her: chaos with a scalpel.

His job was uglier and quieter.

She sent him a thought — light as breath, impatient. “Keep moving.” he could have moved. He had hands full of things that would have made very loud punctuation marks. Instead he let the thought settle into his chest like a coin. ~“[COLOR]Finish the job[/COLOR]”~, he answered, wordless. The Empire would have its body—if he could spare them the weapon.

He didn’t think of himself as heroic in that moment. He thought of the Vanagor line, of knives slid into the dark, and of his father’s hands teaching him how to be an edge. This wasn’t a chance to prove anything to the Order. This was the only language the Empire respected: pressure. He was going to push where it hurt.

The station’s map throbbed in his head from the stolen comm-chatter and from the small, constant threads Matsu kept opening and letting him touch. Tram lines, service bays, prize corridors where soldiers leaned like bored dogs — they were all routes and rhythms. Connel threaded his way through vents and maintenance crawlways like a thought made visible, pockets of gunfire and shouted orders folding around him.

Connel did not go for subtlety because to him, subtlety is a courtesy to those who deserve it. He set things to make noise, to make men run and make commanders curse the names on their rosters. By doing so, Connel siphoned time from the station so that when the ritual’s dancers tried to pivot, they would hopefully find their feet gone. He rerouted attention; made corridors echo with wrong alarms; and fed false commands into a trooper’s channel and watched units shuffle into tidy little graves of their own making. None of it required finesse — only cruelty, and a mind that liked the way control tasted.

They came for him in groups. Someone always did. They believed in armor and orders and the safety of being many. That did not bother Connel at all. He worked them like a machine. Close, disable, shove, press, leave. A few still tried to make noise. A few thought themselves brave because of a corporal’s braid. They learned quickly that bravery tastes like a snapped bone.

He said very little.

“Orders don’t keep the dead warm.” at the Corporal shouting orders. “You won’t be missed.” at a patrol trying to cordon him off.

Words are a luxury on the edge of a blade. His voice was a thing for necessary things. When Connel did speak, it was the Ariel way: short, flat, cold. Those were the nails he drove before the hammer hit. Men saw the look behind his mask and understood in their marrow that this was not a duel; it was a verdict.

There was a part of him that wanted to show off — a thin, childish part that wanted to stand in the open and be a storm. He swallowed it. Showing off wastes time. Instead I gave them the thing they feared most: certainty. No flourish. No challenge. No mercy.

At one junction, a squad tried to form another cordon to cut off Matsu’s route. He let them think they might hold it. When the first line of men rushed forward, they met the e-web He’d laid earlier — a curtain that answered with hot light and malfunctioning ordnance. Their blasters hiccupped and died. They staggered; they bled radio commands that got routed into nowhere. Connel moved in the gaps, a shadow using their noise against them. One by one they fell into silence, and the silence did what I wanted: it made places for Matsu’s bright madness to pass through.

It felt good. Dangerous things make a certain music in the gut. Connel let it play. If he could not stop the weapon by hands alone, then he would bleed it until it could not sing true.

Another corporal spat at him once — loud, small, cruel. “You’re just a boy playing at a mask,” he sneered. The world narrowed. Connel answered with a hand to his chest, the kind of hold taught to men who break things for a living. He inhaled and found the light cut off. You die for orders, he said, and the sentence was like a last currency. He did not answer.

Each action did not simply take life; it moved weight. It shifted the station’s attention, its resources, its time. The ritual’s priests could not be everywhere, and the Empire could not move faster than he could make them count their losses. If Matsu could braid the crystals wrong, he made sure the empire had fewer hands and less time to fix what she broke.

Between fights Connel breathed in scents of weld smoke and singed hair and the metallic sweetness of blood. He thought briefly of fathers — of mine teaching him how to stand when everything wanted him to fall. Connel thought of the Vanagor creed in a new, harsher light: not the noble sentiment, but the truth it hides — that sometimes you must be a weight on a world to keep it honest.

As the tram screamed on above, and Matsu’s laughter threaded through the lattice of his attention, Vanagor let one thought ride down to her: ~Don’t wait for me~. It was not disobedience. It was promise. If he died in the ribs of that station, then let the Empire feel the hole.

When the last squad Connel had been watching funneled into his trap, the corridor became a theater of short, sharp violence. He danced through it—close, brutal, efficient—each movement a whispered lesson in anatomy. When a trooper reached for a fallen comrade’s weapon with shaking hands, Connel met his wrist with a light that would not go out and ended him without theatrics. When an officer shouted that reinforcements were coming, Connel smiled under his mask. Reinforcements were a resource. Resources can be burned.

Blood was a stain on plating; Connel left it neat. He left no messages. That was not his trade. When he paused at the mouth of the service duct, Connel then looked up at the crystal vault and felt Matsu’s work like distant thunder. The lattice she was reshaping would not fall apart tonight. It would, however, sing wrong when they tried to aim it. That is enough. That is mercy.

Before he folded into the shadows again, Connel found a man who had been the loudest about duty. He gasped in the ruin of a doorway. Connel crouched, level to his eyes, and said one thing ConnelI knew would be carried in nightmares for years:

You let nice things die on Coruscant. This is what you get now.

He understood then that his sanctity of order had been a lie. His last look was not at Connel but at the stars visible in the Death Star’s latticed vents — tiny impossible points of home he would never see again.

Connel slid away, letting the station close like a mouth. He left trails of mayhem small enough to be believable and precise enough to be lethal. If Connel died here, so be it. But the thing Matsu whispered later — the small, private laugh in the Force — told him she would not let him die where there was no meaning to it.

Night and Day(his shortsabers) hung at his hips, dark as a promise. He walked back toward the tram’s roar and toward the red light of the Crystal Vault. The station had been bent tonight. It would not be whole again for a long time.

If the Empire tried to use what they left behind, they’d find their weapon sang like a broken harp. If any trooper lived to tell the tale, he’d have seen a shadow with two blades and a voice like an empty room.

Either way, they would remember that the Vanagor line did not end quietly. They would remember that the Mirror Creed takes no prisoners.

Matsu Ike • Dark Forces
Personal Effects - Omega Squad Loadouts - Shadow Sanctuary - Enterprise​

 

[Da'Razel]

Objective 3
DEATH STAR III - HAD ABBADON

Equipment: The Furnance | The Kotjontû
NPCs: 8x Karsta Raka | 2x Green Warden
​

Chapter 4: The Scheiterhaufen
Direct Tag: Phaelissia | Lirka Ka | Helix
​

Kandora pulled the trigger, leveled her sights, and fired. Her aim was true, but Phaelissia the machine incarnation that stood before her was truer still.

Still perched over the scope of her blaster, she couldn't help but loser her gaze to the mesmerizing dance of flames that attested to the culmination of their ritual.

She fired once more, and missed. That fleeting lapse of focus cost her dearly.

Before she could readjust, motion behind her sent a jolt of cold, instinctive fear through her body. Her eyes darted to the side, her head turning with them and then came the burning agony of metal rending flesh. A scream tore from her throat.

She stared in horror at Helix the abomination of dark metal that had struck her, a shimmering monstrosity of jagged blades, a cruel imitation of a predator's fang speckled jaws glinting in the firelight.

She had been a fighter all her life. As a child on Eshan, she had known nothing else. She had killed before her age reached double digits standard years. Trenches, duels, skirmishes, she had seen the Empire's titans tear each other apart on Arkania.

And so she knew death. Instinctively, she recognized its arrival.

Even whilst she tasted the sour bile sting her throat, she swallowed her fear and embraced its arrival. For in all her years of conflict, the warmth of the flame she had found at the side of her Saint had taught her that death was not an ending, only a passage. The fire of her God-Emperor would guide her onward into the next great journey.

She turned her head away from her killer toward her final work, just in time to witness it.

A gilded, incorporeal shape, flames flickering, licking, twisting over themselves like sinew and flesh knitting over bone. The outline of something humanoid. Something immense.

All that death, all that worship, all that power, siphoned into this moon sized wound in the Force. Guided by a ritual thought long forgotten, an experiment of belief to breath life into a dead craft, conceived by the Saint of Flame himself.

Kandoras head snapped back under the crushing force of the chakram that ruptured, bone and the soft tissue that laid beneath. She dident feel the second one, that tore her leg off right under her knee. Her eyes closed. Her body fell mute.

But her spirit drifted, knowing she had completed the final task her Saint had entrusted to her.

They had birthed Living Fire.

A towering giant took its first step.

From the pillar of flames, a flickering silhouette of a foot emerged, then a shin, a knee, a calf, and at last, as if the crouched titan were tearing itself from its throne of fire, two massive palms, each the size of a TIE-fighter, burst forth to haul its colossal frame upright.

At last, a featureless face crowned by a burning pyre loomed above the startled congregation, a head wreathed in living flame staring down upon those who had summoned it.

As the final limb tore free from the inferno of broken humanoid coals, the fire recoiled inward, drawing upon itself like a sudden wind sweeping through closing gates.

The chamber drowned in geysers of molten red and yellow. Smoke scattered like frightened insects, swept aside by the rising heat. The temperature spiked, the very air warped, difficult to breathe beneath the oppressive presence of this living incarnation of fire.

The avatar towered before them, its head still bowed, for its full stature rose higher than even the hangar's vaulted ceiling.

At its feet, like a child before its parent, stood Salafir, staring upward in reverence at the product of his devotion.

For a moment, awe shone in his expression, then dread crept onto it. He felt the toll of his expenditure as the full backlash of the ritual surged through him.

The rite had been born of an ancient Sith design, a fragment of forgotten scripture, rediscovered on Athiss and reworked under the Saint's hand. Under the guidance of alchemists and magisters of the Church, Salafir had been chosen as its vessel, the conduit through which catastrophic energy would be channeled. But now, that strain overwhelmed him.

His skin blanched to ash-white, hardening and cracking like parched earth. Splintered fissures spread across his limbs as his flesh calcified. His eyes widened in horror as his fingers crumbled from his palms. He turned weakly to his last remaining comrade, whispering,

"Brother…?"

And then he burst, collapsing into drifting gray ash, his remains scattered by the heated gusts like sand in the dunes.

Nearby, Gazim fell to one knee. His first assault, a full-bodied charge, twisted into a low, desperate swing as his foe Lirka Ka ducked beneath him, the opposing blade grazing his calf and drawing blood.

He turned toward the giant that now loomed over all of them and rasped, voice trembling in fury and faith alike:

"Burn these heathens."

Those would be the zealot finals words, as the firebrunst that came would sear the giant to the bone.

For the giant of flame required no command. Like a bird knowing north from south, it needed neither guidance nor teaching. It was born knowing its truth. It existed to tear the galaxy asunder.

To ignite worlds. To flare brighter than suns. To consume all until only light remained.

It was bound to a single will, to the distant light that was embroidered into its being, and in that bond it found its purpose.

With a mouth that could not speak, it screamed.

Its blazing form cracked, arced, and lashed outward, and then erupted in a cataclysmic storm.

Waves of fire burst forth.

Heat so fierce that the walls themselves began to weep molten metal, so hot it could set breath aflame, cook organs, and boil bone.

It cried its first mute cry, a whipping and cracking of flames, and in that infernal wail, it heralded its birth to the galaxy.

​

Chapter 2: The Sentinel of the shrine
Direct Tag: Thurion Heavenshield | The Lord of Hunger | Deonis Laythar | Darth Vinaze | Vireth | Janus Vipsanius | Voldran Molf | Eina L'lerim-Vandiir | Onrai | Dodhorn Harert
Indirect Tag: Shannic Wulf | Darth Carnifex | Kann
​

Da'Razel watched in sorrow as the life signs of his three children flatlined, their profiles fading one by one from his roster display.

Salafir, the youngling they had been gifted by a local diplomat upon Champala a tribute send as a truce, a Force-gifted child traded for the lives of his people. The ambassadors act of heresy cost them him dearly. The Saint had burned his entire bloodline in penance, all but that boy, that boy of hatred and promise.

Kandora, the veteran, a lost soul who, as few before her, had glimpsed the truth of the God-Emperor's warmth. She had understood the testament of what they sought to achieve, had awoken from the veil of lies, and grasped the divine chaos that ruled their universe.

And Gazim, the silent hulk, the menace forged in the gladiatorial pits where they had found him, the last surviving slave, drenched in the blood of the Mawite zealots who had enslaved him.

Their sacrifice had not been in vain. Never before had Da'Razel felt the Force stir in such a way, not as others described it, not through gentle flow or vision. But now, he felt it: the heart of the giant, the molten core of living flame smoldering within its chest.

Living Fire.

Unbeknownst to him, a lone intruder had managed to slip past his sentinels and stir the conflict in the sanctum beyond the massive gate he guarded. The Saint of Pyre bowed his head in prayer.

He prayed for his lost flock.

And for what their devotion had birthed.

Spoiler: NPC Infomation

Name: Kandora [Deceased]

• Force User: No
• Appearance: Scarred Echani woman, ritual burns across face and arms, synthetic augmentations, wears red robes over armored scout gear
• Strengths: Tactical awareness, precision, speed
• Weaknesses: Lacking strenght, heavily reliant on implants
• Equipment: Data-slate, blaster carbine, echani ritual dagger, heavy cybernetic implants

Location: The Scheiterhaufen | Speech

---

Name: Gazim [Deceased]

• Force User: No
• Appearance: Towering Devaronian, large size, body covered in ritual brands, wears heavy crude armour
• Strengths: Immense brute strength and endurance, brutal pain tolerance
• Weaknesses: Slow, lacks subtlety and tactical depth
• Equipment: Massive Vibro-axe, carbonite steel gauntlets

Location: The Scheiterhaufen | Speech

---

Name: Salafir [Deceased]

• Force User: Yes
• Appearance: Young Chagrian male, skin tattooed with Sith runes, scorched robes.
• Strengths: Talented Dark Sider, excellent swordsmanship.
• Weaknesses: Young, overconfident, unstable in prolonged combat.
• Equipment: Twin Dolovite blades, medium cortosis weaved armour

Location: The Scheiterhaufen | Speech

---

Name: Tú

• Force User: Yes
• Appearance: Givin, skeletal humanoid, draped in crimson robes
• Strengths: Sith Alchemist, supportive healer and enhancer for zealots
• Weaknesses: Physically fragile, dependent on his lantern for full potency
• Equipment: Crystadurium Ritual lantern, sacrificial dagger, Ultrachrome line robe

Location: Sentinel of the shrine | Speech

---

Name: Inquisitor Rael Orvax

• Force User: Yes
• Appearance: Human male of Brentaal IV, encased in segmented armour, black-and-crimson robes, a visored helm
• Strengths: Formidable melee combatant, disciplined tactician, strong endurance
• Weaknesses: Heavy and slow, over protective of his cult, easily angered
• Equipment: Electro-scythe, Dallorian and Ultrachrome alloy armour

Location: Sentinel of the shrine | Speech

---

Model: Green Warden

Location: 1x Sentinel of the shrine [Deceased] & 1x The Scheiterhaufen

​

 

[Phaelissia]

Location: Chamber - Death Star III
Thread Objective: Clash of Destiny
Mission Objective: Stop the ritual.
SO: Lirka Ka Helix
GE: Da'Razel

A skull, flash-frozen and fractured. Both of Phaelissia’s chakrams found their marks, their impacts echoing with sharp thunks of sundered armor and splintered bone. The cultist’s robed form collapsed, bisected at the skull and leg severed cleanly at the knee.

Phaelissia planted her feet and came to an immediate halt as her chakrams hissed back into her waiting grasp. Pale features went flush as the chamber’s conflagration took shape before her synthetic gaze, forming a massive, humanoid silhouette that stood taller than a battle walker. The hulking entity—a fire golem—took its first steps from the fire that had birthed it, head bowed as it regarded the scene transpiring at its feet.

The golem screamed, unleashing a noise that was equal parts ancient and resonating, sending shockwaves of superheated air rushing through the chamber. Phaelissia staggered back, the heat washing over her even as her suit’s Arkanian shielding flickered, struggling to dampen the extreme heat. It was then that golem’s fiery form lashed out, waves of fire bursting from its arms in a torrential arc.

Phaelissia reacted immediately, sheathing her chakrams even as sweat poured from her brow. Her bodysuit could withstand the heat for a time, but not for long, particularly when it came to a walking avatar of fire.

An avatar that itself was a blasphemous corruption of the Goddess’ own element.

The cyborg raised her arms, palms angled towards the incoming tide of flame. The air howled as shockwaves erupted from the implants in her palms, carving a temporary channel through the fire and sparing her flesh from immolation.

Still, the oppressive heat remained. And its temperature was swiftly climbing toward an unbearable zenith.

Phaelissia’s eyes gleamed as the elemental behemoth advanced. She briefly studied the beast, seeking out the nexus of its fiery heart via the infrared sensors in her cybernetic eyes. Once more, twinned beams of ultra-cold, ionized CryoBan struck out from them both, lancing towards the golem’s head in an effort to extinguish the primal fury at its source!

Spoiler: Loadout

• Frostfire Azalea
  
  • Arms
    
    • FAE/M-02 Energized Forearm Vibroblade Mk. II - R
• Purifying Lash
• Freezing Fates II
• Cybernetics and Augmentations

 

[Odria Kaelthron]

Attention: Darth Solipsis | Meliant | Sars Sarad | Arris Windrun
Mercy | Romi Jade | Inosuke Ashina | Hasuras Na-Gerra​

Spoiler: tl;dr Action Summary

• The damaged Sovereign's Pride fires a broadside of ion cannons and mass drivers at the approaching Sabaoth destroyers, trying to force them back from intercepting the drifting throne room
• Odria flees the Sovereign's Pride

--------------------------
​

In the midst of wailing klaxons and horrible rattling, Governor Odria Kaelthron managed to shakily rise from where the impact had thrown her. She'd taken harder hits than this as a private security officer, direct blasts and physical impacts that only armor had prevented from punching right through her... but she'd been a younger woman then. Now, being tossed around for the entire battle was taking a severe toll on her increasingly frail body. Cuts and bruises were piling up. Her left arm dangled uselessly, broken between elbow and shoulder in this latest fall.

She needed a way out. Her ship had been somehow hijacked, the wills of its crew overridden by the will of the Emperor in a way she could not remotely begin to understand. He had been willing to make tremendous and terrible sacrifices to carry out some strange and unknowable plan, one that placed his own life at great risk. Had it been an attempt to trap his foes? An effort to increase his absorption of the dark energies growing within the Death Star by orbiting it like a tiny moon? Something else entirely? Kaelthron had no way to know, and did not remotely care.

What she needed was an escape pod and a way to quit this horrible system for the safety of Byss.

"Kaelthron to Glory of the Throne," she managed to gasp out, lifting her comlink with her intact right arm, "delay your jump. Prepare..." she hissed in pain as the ship lurched, causing her broken arm to swing. "Prepare to receive my escape pod." The return transmission was, as the others had been, garbled and full of static. The governor had no way of knowing whether it had been received at all. But her best hope to get out of this alive was to make it to one of the two surviving vessels of Task Force Kaelthron, on their way to withdraw from the battle.

As she limped toward the bridge turbolift, Odria glanced back toward the forward viewport. It seemed that the Emperor might have made a terrible miscalculation. Vessels from the Black Sun fleet were closing in on the detached throne room, circling it like akk wolves. They had been revealed as traitors, which came as little surprise to Odria - why trust criminals to do anything except lie, steal, and betray? No matter what favorable deals they had made with the Empire in the past, they would only ever look for their own opportunities and advantages.

Granting them any position in the defensive line, or any access to the battle station, had been foolish.

Perhaps the Emperor had planned for this also. The zealots aboard the bridge of the Sovereign's Pride, who had crawled zombie-like back to their duty stations after the impact, seemed to believe that everything was proceeding according to the Emperor's plan. But Odria was not so certain. She had seen a great many Force-infused demigods, beings beyond ordinary mortal understanding, rise and fall during more than seven decades of life in the galaxy. Most of them, she had found, had fallible mortal minds and hearts no matter how great their arcane power.

As if to confirm that this pending interception was unintended by the Emperor, the gunnery crews of the Sovereign's Pride lashed out at Hasuras Na-Gerra 's approaching Sabaoth destroyers. The Imperial III-class Star Destroyer had taken a brutal beating that day, first in combat against the Confederation and then in its glancing collision with the Death Star, but it yet had guns to spare. Batteries of ion cannons and mass drivers fired broadsides at the Sabaoths, intending a one-two punch to knock out shields and then smash hulls - or at least to force them back.

Odria didn't wait around to see if the Emperor's latest puppetry was enough to prevent Grand Theft Throne Room.

She was finished with his schemes. She wanted only to survive this madness.

The bridge turbolift opened for her, thankfully still intact, and began its descent. None of the rest of the bridge crew, still lost in the Emperor's strange arcane commands, followed. Odria descended alone, clutching her arm in an effort to keep it immobile, to the lower deck where escape pods were housed. She was too spent to run, but managed an urgent walk toward the pods. Cycling the first one she reached, she climbed inside. It would've been cramped if full, but it was designed to seat at least five, so there was ample space for her in its durasteel confines.

Now to test her luck one final time. She wanted no further part in this battle.

Whether one of her remaining vessels would pick her up, or whether she would die drifting...

... well, it was all out of her hands now, wasn't it? There was both anxiety and an odd comfort in that.

​

 

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

Watch the Throne
Tears on the mausoleum floor
Blood stains the Coliseum doors
Lies on the lips of a priest

Several Sabaoth destroyers broke off from the main group and accelerated toward the spinning spire of the detached throne room.

Fine, but do not forget he is mine. I came here to finish the Kaggath, one way or the other. I might be dying of boredom here, but that hasn't changed.

The Imperial III-class Star Destroyer had taken a brutal beating that day, first in combat against the Confederation and then in its glancing collision with the Death Star, but it yet had guns to spare. Batteries of ion cannons and mass drivers fired broadsides at the Sabaoths, intending a one-two punch to knock out shields and then smash hulls - or at least to force them back.

Behold, o mighty muse of fire
​

Allegedly, the corsairs of the Vahla arrived to support the Hapan battle dragons and the rest of the Black Sun Syndicate's Crimson Fleet in defense of the Death Star. In reality, they were rabid wolves who seized upon opportune prey.

And they were all fresh, having stayed well back from the fighting.

Aboard the Sunfire Judge, Utu-Gar, first-captain amongst the warlord's armada sank deep into a trance of Sith battle meditation, syncing with the other Vahla captains, and began directing the ships into position.

"Captain, the crippled Star Destroyer is warming up cannons!"

"Weather the storm."

"Captain!"

"We are the Ember of Vahl. We burn brightly, we burn brilliantly, and if the goddess Vahl chooses this moment as our end, then we will burn in glory. All ships - deploy full complements. Thrusters full ahead. Engage the enemy more closely."

In moments, Sabaoth fighters and bombers swarmed out of the hangars of the destroyers as all ships accelerated toward the spinning spire of the throne room.

"Utu-Gar, I shall be the first to reach the enemy," came the voice of a captain across the comm. Utu-Gar could feel his eagerness in the Force.

"Erramun, let us see how quickly the famed engines of the Serpent carry you."

Utu-Gar squinted through the forward viewport as dozens of batteries lit up cold vacuum, the Star Destroyer firing all its remaining strength at them.

Desperation.

The Sunfire Judge trembled and Utu-Gar had to seize a railing as unbolted objects flew into the air around the command center. A brilliant fireball blossomed in the vacuum, just ahead of them. He closed his eyes. Ah, Erramun...

Witness us.

"The Serpent is gone, Captain."

He already knew.

"Onward."

Another explosion rocked their flotilla and another of their destroyers disappeared in flames. Only three remained.

Yet, now their squadrons reached the Sovereign's Pride and commenced bombing runs on their gun batteries, targeting the ones facing the Sabaoth destroyers. They sought to rake the surface clean of emplacements, preparing for what came next... for two of the destroyers drew alongside before finally unleashing their own salvos. Brutal, point-blank broadsides of ionite rounds - capable of piercing conventional shielding, as they targeted shield generators, life support, and remaining gun emplacements to create an opening.

Boarding harpoons hissed through space, aiming to pierce the hull and dump coma gas into corridors as six thousand wrothful and ruinous Vahlan corsairs prepared to board the much larger ship.

Meanwhile, Utu-Gar took the Sunfire Judge low and sought a twofold attack: harpoons ripped through space, targeting the throne room's spire, but the captain would not be denied.

"Lock onto them with tractor beams. Pull the spire with us and prepare docking procedures. Ready the hyperspace engine."

Mercy Odria Kaelthron Darth Solipsis Romi Jade

 

[Meliant]

DEATH STAR III
THE UNFORGIVING VOID OF SPACE

Attn: Odria Kaelthron
CC: Hasuras Na-Gerra Mercy Arris Windrun Darth Solipsis Romi Jade

​

Thwumph! ​

​

Something struck the governor's escape pod. It might have only been a large piece of debris, except for the subsequent plodding thuds that suggested someone either walking - or dragging themselves, rather - along the outer hull above her.​

​

Meliant's helmet appeared abruptly on the other side of the pod's monocular viewport. Deformed from heat and cracked from impacts. There was transparently nothing inside that armor, but it still moved like a living thing, and Orida could feel it looking at her in spite of Meliant's lack of eyes.​

​

Oh, poor admiral. Alien words reverberated directly within her mind, and they left a feeling like cold fingers raked across the scalp. Are you having a bad day too?​

​

Never mind that Meliant attributed to her the incorrect rank. Members of the command caste were all indistinguishable to him, especially with their silly little hats. He laid a hand along the viewport and drummed his fingers against it. He was short one by this point.​

​

What's a little dereliction of duty between friends? Heheheh…​

​

Around them, Syndicate ships were descending on Sovereign's Pride and the severed spire that still housed their beloved Emperor…​

​

…And someone else Meliant now had a bone to pick with. He pointed at Orida, finger pressed against the glass.​

​

Steer this thing towards the throne room, or I crack it open.​

​

In addition to words, telepathy allowed for a somewhat intimate sharing of emotions. The dreadful sensation that this was not a hollow threat was inescapable.​

 

[Yorunarr Ahan-Yan'Sharlim]

TAGS
Lilianna L'lerim Cesare Demici Kael Varnok

WRATH OF GOD
7

​

ACCESS HALLWAY (INFIRMARY GREEN), ABOARD THE DEATH STAR III,
APPROACHING ATRISIA, CORE WORLD TERRITORIES (903 ABY)

<"Saint Actual to Mask One! Infiltration successful, proceeding to main objective now.">
<"Not my operation, lad. Just tell me when its done, you know I didn't approve this action.">
<"Neither did I, Your Majesty. Neither did I.">
<"Worth it, though?">
<"We'll know soon enough.... I have a feeling I might be expecting company. Saint Actual out.">
​

Keeping his leader up to date on progress pertaining to the leader's other young ward, the young Saint was wise to handle last-minute tasks before he endeavoured the great leap that defined him, whatever that was expected to be. Tancred's mentors were known for flying off the handle, but unlike their predecessors, they were also known for seeing merit in the art of negotiations, and it was this latter aspect that had been influencing the Aavenian most of all. Yet there was still that former part resonating strongly within the young Saint, that ever-improving, ever-evolving inner man of action, crying out for a chance to endeavour the impossible; but something happened, and much alike the nature of his Novanian mentor, Tancred's heart would choose a hidden, third option.

Completely unaware of the foresight shown in doing so.

~=Cesare wishes to help Aaven and seeks the Emperor's fall… Ella only wishes to torment us.=~
~=Please, Tancred… please try not to get yourself killed before you arrive... and promise me you'll be careful!=~​

Innocently chuckling to himself, the Aavenian could not help but feel like his inwardly-made decision was just given tenfold justification, and all the young Saint needed to understand his sister was a sympathetic ear, and sympathetic enough to hear what Lilia was trying to say between the lines. Thus making Tancred's quest make all the more sense in his mind, seeing every intricacy, and all stemming from receiving the final puzzle-piece from Lilianna; to say the young Saint was grateful would have sold his thankfulness short, especially in finding a better of two paths as a result of his sister's revelation, clicking every last nuance into place like nature and wonder had finally found him.

Tancred would make a peaceful choice, working toward Lilia's ultimate safety in a way that nobody else could even think to consider, and with agreeable terms in abundance to hash out with his expected counterparts, he knew there would be much to discuss. A promising sign for the young Saint's chances of walking out with Lilia, and bloodlessly at that, and despite the challenges he was still likely to encounter, not even Ellayina could wipe smile from his face in these moments. Not with specific powers considered, and with more yet to test out at the perfect moment, the Aavenian would knowingly reveal all the reasons why he would be seen as a Peacemaker forevermore.

'Oh, how the old-heads are going to laugh about this one.'

~=Worry not, Lilia. If they reveal themselves, I choose instead to parley.... I will negotiate, we will talk. So, I promise to be careful, and with that - I also promise to be wise.=~​

One old mentor taught the lessons of sound that he had not initially wanted to impart, another would tell of realms in the mind when he should have been teaching parries and ripostes, but in sheer contravention to the misgivings and apprehension in both mentor's teachings, Tancred had given both masters their own shares of pleasant surprise to behold. The culminations of both lessons would be on full-display before long, and for all it's powerful wonder, not one concern of moral issues would surface, not with the young Saint a proven exemplar already. Barran's approval was already given officially, before and after his efforts to make advancements in the methods of his guardians, thus the only worry that could possibly remain were those for Tancred's safety, and the ramifications of failing in their obligation to his parents.

But the lad was old enough to step out as his own, responsible man, and with that, old enough to take the risks that defined him.

​

'Thank you, Ashla. Eternally! This was the lesson you were trying to impart all along, I see that now.'

​

 

[Casaana]

Mission: Deactivate Shields
Gear: Fighter, Naboo Armor, Blaster Pistol, Satchel of Explosives, Republic Lightsaber W/Stun Crystal

The Sith's attack shook Casaana to her core, and she wasn't even the target of his slash. Looking over the raised barrel of her heated blaster, she saw the crumpled flooring where he'd sprung forward. The young Jedi blinked, stunned, and then came to Brandyn's aid by cross-stepping in and taking a stab at Drystan's arm before ducking back and guarding herself from potential retaliation. "I know exactly what you're thinking, and it's a terrible idea." She called back to Brandyn, stress creeping into her voice.

She retreated again, leaving her partner to fend off the Sith on his own, trusting him to keep her safe while she rigged up their charges. Weapons stowed, she shucked the satchels and dug into them. Their blast settings were already maxed, so she began the process of wiring them together while she figured out how to set a detonator. Her thoughts raced, there was no way to know how long the lift would take to reach the shield control room. Wire it into the control panel? That'd take programming, and she didn't have the time or material. Detonate with the opening of the door? How to set it to do so with the door open?

Wrapping the straps of each satchel charge around the other, Casaana tied them tight together right as the doors opened. Scrambling into the lift, she jabbed the button for the doors to stay open and pulled in the charges after her. Looking around the interior of the turbolift, she hoped something came to her, because at this point she only had one idea, and it was a terrible one.

Brandyn Sal-Soren Drystan Creed​

 

[Luvaen Malstadt]

​

Allied: Galactic Empire
Opposition: Corazona von Ascania
Location: Death Star III | Nondescript Corridor
Objective: III

He stood and watched. He watched as the Chiss died slowly in front of him, life fading from her eyes and lips as her body went still. Then his gaze fell to the Rodian once again, observing how much anxiety and terror twitched across his figure. There was no rhyme or reason to despise these would-be warriors as much as he did, yet it was so.

He'd been programmed this way. Like a machine. Each bead of sweat falling to the floor felt like a soothing ripple through the Force as Luvaen slowly walked towards his final target; however, he could feel something more beyond the intoxicating distress, something that rested just on the cusp of the reality at hand.

It was her... the woman that approached him with a fire burning in her gaze. Her stride was unshaken, without challenge as suddenly the world itself seemed to roar with a type of disgust at the actions that had taken place prior to her arrival. A disturbance of great magnitude displaced the faceless shadow as his footing was knocked free of confidence.

Luaven found himself struck with a swift, blunt force that shattered his visor entirely - his face and left eye becoming scratched and lacerated by free bits of debris from his armor. He lacked the proper reflexes or timing to defend himself from what was to come next. Intense burning engulfed the left side of his body as his remaining eye witnessed the complete severing of his arm, lightsaber still ignited and clutched within his fist as it fell to the floor.

His vision was blurred, barely useful.

The Force around him writhed and pulsated with venom, anger flowed like a river and howled in his mind like a raging wind. This was true animosity, true hatred. Luvaen struggled a great deal to remain steady as his focus was teetering on the edge of falling into unconsciousness and sharp determination.

He stumbled, weakly raising his right arm towards the woman, the space around him ruptured and sparked from the damages sustained by the crash that cost him a great deal in their short introduction to one another.

Silence still held his tongue. No matter how great the suffering.

No matter what he would lose.

"What you aim to protect is the same thing that would destroy you," she hissed.

Perhaps she was correct. But the same was also true for her comrades.

Their desire to protect their beliefs led to their undoing.

 

[Arris Windrun]

Allies: Hasuras Na-Gerra
Opp: Dark Forces | Open!

A communications node was not exactly what Arris had in mind. However, she endeavored to make do and heard Sars Sarad , who seemed to be in his own kind of trouble. Earlier, she might have said, "Hey, don't get yourself killed." Instead, rage and frustration poured through her, as did the razor's edge of paranoid fear given her recent (and very first) exposure to the vacuum.

The cyborg replied with a curt nod as Gerra ordered her to seize an ion engine. A wishful desire, but she would have to compromise the network before rooting deeper. So, she decided to try an approach that carried with it significant risks.

She reached into her jacket and withdrew a hacking module best suited for bounty hunting, but given its extensive suite, she had a use in mind. The cyborg removed her jacket and plugged the device into a port located along her collar. It looked a little silly, but she could already feel the AI interfacing with her higher functions.

How fucked would I be if it hacked me instead? She mused coldly.

Then, she popped off a fingertip and revealed her own cyberjack - promptly connecting it to a nearby console. The technopath reached out through the Force, guiding the AI as it moved quickly to crack the system and grant her access to the wider node - then, hopefully, the station beyond. She was looking not for vulnerabilities, but defenses, anything that might inhibit the AI.

Connections with compromised security stations were not figuratively firewalled; they were literally burnt out, their conduits melting to slag rather than transmit hostile signals. They could not be wirelessly accessed, did not connect to some kind of cloud network, but were instead hardwired for this precise purpose.

She could sense it... The countermeasures have been fired many times, and searched for such intrusions; the fingerprints were quite obvious.

Nuh-uh.

Her will poured across the console, across every pathway the AI attempted to access, and meant to isolate the countermeasures before they could warn higher systems of any "unauthorized" commands, tricking them into believing their security operations were successful. A crude solution that ran the risk of overloading her, given that, unlike the Death Star, her co-processor was not designed to withstand this level of throughput.

It would likely take a skilled counteroperative - or even a team - to shut her gambit down, and she already worked to extend this vulnerability across as much of the station's network as possible. Perhaps even systems that Darth Carnifex 's Typhojem still ran amok.

 

[Odria Kaelthron]

Attention: Darth Solipsis | Meliant | Sars Sarad | Arris Windrun
Mercy | Romi Jade | Inosuke Ashina | Hasuras Na-Gerra​

Spoiler: tl;dr Action Summary

• Odria complies with Meliant 's demand to steer her escape pod toward the throne room
• Odria's last two Exactor-class Cruisers move in to attack the vessels trying to capture the throne room

--------------------------
​

Ordinarily, an attack on an Imperial III-class Star Destroyer by six thousand boarders would have been...

... well, laughably inadequate. Such vessels carried ten thousand stormtroopers, in addition to more than thirty seven thousand crew. The boarders would be outnumbered eight to one. But the Sovereign's Pride had already been through a battle that had nearly annihilated it. There had been hull breaches on multiple decks, and each had resulted in casualties. Odria had no idea quite how many casualties; she had stopped bothering with the damage reports after the Pride had managed to withdraw back to Imperial lines, assuming she'd have ample time at Byss to review them.

As the Governor watched the corsair vessels launching their attack through the viewport of her escape pod, their boarding harpoons sinking into what had been her flagship, she idly wondered how the battle through its corridors might go. She privately doubted that the Emperor's bizarre control over her bridge crew could possibly extend to every last crewmember, but she suspected that they would all fight to the last - the Empire was young, but its training regimen for army and navy was designed at least as much to instill zealotry as it was to create competent soldiers.

If six thousand Vahlans could overcome however many defenders were left - likely still at least six times their number, hunkered down in every room and corridor to lay ambushes for the attackers - they could theoretically take the ship. Minimum crew to get it moving and make a jump to hyperspace was only about two thousand, if you didn't worry about things like firing any of the weapons. And one had to account for the fact that they were experienced pirates, presumably expert boarders. It was unlikely they could fully seize a ship of that size without getting reinforcements...

... but it wasn't entirely impossible. Especially not after the things she'd seen today.

But the Governor had written off the Pride as soon as she'd clambered into this escape pod. Knowing when to cut her losses was the skill that had kept her alive this long. She was no brainwashed zealot of the Emperor, just an opportunist, a woman gambling her tactical acumen in an attempt to turn her governorship into a seat on the Council of Moffs. She wondered now if she ought to have been content with ruling a single planet, instead of risking it all to support the Emperor's mad bid to fight the entire rest of the galaxy at once. She might have finally overplayed her hand.

There were a few survival supplies in the escape pod, including a first aid kit. Odria opened it one-handed and gingerly pulled out a quick-seal splint. It was difficult to wrap around her upper arm one-handed, but thankfully the device straightened itself automatically, gently squeezing to straighten and immobilize the broken bone. There was also an injector of local anesthetic, which the Governor injected into her shoulder. She needed to keep her wits about her, but reducing the worst of her pains - the arm was but one of many, after all - would help her think.

The cruiser Glory of the Throne slowly grew larger in her pod's viewport, and she felt a moment's hope.

Thwack. Oh, poor admiral. Are you having a bad day too?

Odria stared dully at the seemingly-flattened set of armor that had attached itself to her pod's viewport like an insect smeared across a speeder's windshield. Add another mark to the tally of eerie, impossible things she'd witnessed since the beginning of this battle. The voice in her mind grated against her psyche, bringing with it a trickle of emotion that was not entirely her own - a sense of threat, and of inevitability. "You're mad," the Governor replied, her voice flat, her lips pressed into a thin line. "This is madness, and it will kill us both." Damned fanatic.

He probably couldn't hear her anyway. He was outside the pod, in vacuum, and she was no telepath.

Just when she had begun to hope she might actually escape, she had once again been pulled back in. She was reminded of a report that had come across her desk as Governor of Dremulae, one that had mentioned a tourist who had drowned in the Sea of Translucency. He had been a strong swimmer, but had gone out too far and become caught in a riptide. No matter how hard he struggled, he had found himself pulled back from the shore again and again, further and further out to sea. In time his strength had failed, and he had died before rescue crews could reach him.

The will of the Emperor was her riptide. He and his Dark Side Elite cultists seemed destined to drown her.

But like the swimmer before his end, Odria was not willing to give up until her last reserves of strength were exhausted. Perhaps there was still some slim chance of an escape if she complied with this... burnt, flattened man. She turned the escape pod's clumsy controls toward the orbiting command spire. The craft was slow and imprecise, intended only to be steered in the vague direction of a planet or rescue vessel, but the spire was still orbiting lazily; she would be able to get them close. Of course, with boarding harpoons and tractor beams locking onto the throne room...

... well, it might not be there for long. If these criminals managed to steal the Emperor himself, Odria didn't want to be there for it. It was hard to imagine a group of pirates actually overcoming the man proclaimed as the Sith'ari, but towing him out of the system - after his own artifice had caused him to be separated from his battle station - would certainly disrupt his plans for Atrisia. It was the most audacious heist Odria could imagine that might actually have some chance of success. And if she was in the throne room when it was towed away to some distant pirate lair...

... well, the Sith'ari would likely find some way to survive, but she doubted that she would.

The escape pod drifted in toward the throne room, its bulk shearing off one of the boarding harpoons that had been launched to grab the drifting spire with a crash that rattled Odria's bones. Not that it would matter overmuch; the tractor beams would hold the spire even if every last harpoon was detached. The Governor idly wondered what the pirates' next step would be; they could certainly try to tow the throne room around the system, but they would not be able to jump to hyperspace while maintaining tractor beams. They'd need a secure physical connection to jump with the spire.

A lot more than mere harpoons and cables, which would never take the strain.

Already Imperial vessels from the defensive cordon were noticing the Crimson Fleet's betrayal. The last two vessels of Odria's task force, the Exactor-class Cruisers Glory of the Throne and Eternal Rule, were moving in toward the pirate vessels attacking the throne room; given the choice between saving the stricken Sovereign's Pride and saving the Emperor they were fanatically devoted to, they clearly felt they had no choice at all. Their turbolasers and ion cannons opened up on the pirate destroyers, complicating their attempted heist significantly as they came under fire.

More ships would arrive soon - Star Destroyers pulling back from the main fleet to combat these traitors.

But Odria had to look to her own survival. She glared out at the flat man and gestured at the spire.

She'd gotten him close. They were right beside the throne room. Surely that was sufficient.

 

[Dark Forces]

NPC Opposition For:
Arris Windrun
​

Spoiler: tl;dr Action Summary

• The Howl_Runner gets in... but accomplishes its intended purpose of bounty data retrieval
• A massive data burst flows back into Arris's brain

--------------------------
​

The code from the Howl_Runner.exe hacking tool slid smoothly into the Death Star's systems. Designed to be near-undetectable, it was much more difficult for the station's systems to notice. Rather than being isolated as the nodes around its entry point were burnt out, it slid like poison through the Death Star's digital veins, collecting the data necessary for it to achieve its intended purpose. It was a clever tactic, one that might allow the clever technopath a means of entry - a foot in the door, so to speak, avoiding the scorched earth defenses that had blunted other cyberattacks.

But there was a disadvantage to using modules for purposes they'd not been meant for.

The Howl_Runner was a bounty hunter's tool. It had been designed to search through facial recognition and fingerprint data on the systems it compromised, scouring the dataset for lawbreakers. For a hunter seeking marks in seedy places, it was an ideal way to find targets who were hidden among the countless ordinary innocents in the area. Unfortunately for Arris, narrowing down didn't really work aboard the Death Star for one simple reason: there was a posted bounty on every single member of the Imperial military and government, from the lowest trooper to the highest Moff.

And so the module jacked directly into Arris's cybernetics began to feed her data - the data of the 1.6 million crew and garrison of the Death Star III. It showed her exactly what it was designed to show a hunter who might be pursuing a lone target, or a handful: their faces, their fingerprints, their ranks and roles. The data came on in a relentless stream, ten thousand faces and names surging into her mind every second for three straight minutes, the Howl_Runner completing its exact intended purpose with terrifying, nauseating, overwhelming efficiency.

The average person might briefly meet 80,000 people in a lifetime.

Arris Windrun was being introduced to the intimate details of that many people in eight seconds.

And as many again in the next eight seconds. And the next. And the next. And the next. On and on it came.

There was no skilled counteroperative to detect her gambit, and certainly not a team. None of the Empire's defenders could match the might of her technopathy. But that very strength, and her own cleverness, might well serve to be her undoing. An ordinary human brain can process about 1 billion bits of information per second - which equals about 0.125 gigabytes. Arris, of course, might have implants to increase her processing speed - perhaps by as much as tenfold. She could perhaps then manage 1.25 gigabytes of information processed every second, lightning fast.

A file of fingerprint and facial recognition data, on the low end, might take up a mere 2.5 megabytes.

80,000 of them would equal a data stream of two hundred gigabytes per second...

... two hundred times that superhuman level of processing power.

For an ordinary human being, cognitive overload results in confusion, fatigue, irritability, decision paralysis, memory issues, impaired thinking, even high blood pressure. For a machine, information overload results in slowdowns, unresponsiveness, freezing, crashing, and overheating. Who could say exactly what would happen to a Talusian mutant cyborg, transformed by the power of the Dark Side? Certainly it seemed likely that the poor Howl_Runner itself would burn out when confronted with such a concentrated stream of potential bounty targets.

 

[Subject 1503]

ATRISIA, CORE WORLDS
Aboard the Death Star III

Srina Talon
​

The way she stood firm, even under the thunderous slam of his fist against her - it was no wonder she had been set as someone to test himself against, she was powerful, madwoman or otherwise. He could feel it in the way she held the lock of their blades, but he could also feel it in the subsequent waves of energy that began to wash over him. Between the shockwaves that surged from her and the way the hallway around them creaked and broke, it was hard to maintain his stance, but he did not relent until she moved first.

He was sent aside as she twisted, his own blade coming around to just catch her own when the counter-strike came. Sparks flew and the sound of their blades clashing echoed down the hall as he kept on the defence, not letting a strike through even as she only probed his armour and his defences. In a way, her words had truth to them - he was a child in a sense, only one of malice and misdeed rather than anything natural.

He was so focused upon her, on beating back her own assaults and seeking his opportunity to cut her down, that he had barely noticed the tendrils of darkness that began to gather and swirl their way toward him until it was too late. He was entangled, webbed by her own darkness and bound to a stillness. It would have been the perfect opportunity for her to cut him down - it was a failure - but that was not what she moved to do. Instead, he felt her presence working on the helmet he wore, the mask that had been laid upon him.

It began to give slowly, easing back until it revealed a sharp jawline, stubbled and smooth, free of any scarring and marred with pale flesh. It would only be a few more moments before more was revealed, before she saw what it was she sought - but all he felt was an opportunity, to amend failure and find opportunity, instead...

To her side, a bulkhead panel broke free from the wall, surging toward her. It wasn't something he expected to strike true - but it was a momentary distraction, the sort that allowed him to find a weakness in his bindings. His arm wrenched itself free, and with a burst of energy he blew himself back and away from her, free of the tendrils that had held him in place - pulling the helmet back firmly upon his face.

"You would have been wiser to kill me, than play your games - madwoman." The vitriol in his words was ripe, though his anger was as much with himself for allowing himself to be caught so - he would not allow it again. Around them, the hallways still creaked and groaned, the bulkhead was torn apart from their battle and barely holding itself together, it would only take the slightest push for it to fall into cascading failure, for pressure to being crushing the hallway itself like a can underfoot.

That was what he focused on.

Pouring his anger into the air itself, the feeling of pressure grew and the walls steadily began to twist and compress inward like a rippling wave out from him. If she would stay and fight, he would let the station's walls themselves crush her bones to dust - no more blades to clash, only a raw and brutal violence.

​

​

​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Allies: Hasuras Na-Gerra
Opp: Dark Forces

It worked! The skeleton key worked with ruthless efficiency, and no word from the countermeasures.

Yet Arris should have seen it coming. Her AI was a multitool; she didn't need to utilize any more of its features than she intended to, but perhaps in the rush of it all...

And so the module jacked directly into Arris's cybernetics began to feed her data - the data of the 1.6 million crew and garrison of the Death Star III. It showed her exactly what it was designed to show a hunter who might be pursuing a lone target, or a handful: their faces, their fingerprints, their ranks and roles.

The sudden level of throughput was felt immediately - overtuned processors running beyond capacity, rapidly gaining heat, and warnings screaming inside her skull. Flames began to rush out of discreet vents located along her arms and legs. Amidst what little flesh and blood she had anymore were tubes of coolant running through her system, which proceeded to freeze into a thick sludge as a failsafe maneuver to prevent implants from literally melting inside of her.

"Ghhhaah!!!"

It was not a pain or displeasure that could be dampened, and so the Cyborg began to experience the full brunt of excruciating heat, followed by the brutal chill that dropped into the many negatives.

She had to act fast. Desperation fed every intention and means left to her disposal. Her co-processor worked overtime to boost her acuity and lashed out at her stupidity.

Live! Live! Live! It screamed at her.

Arris pushed her willpower further into the system, tracing a path along every compromised route she created, with the sole desire of redirecting the surge of data into another system within the Death Star's network.

So then... Was it luck? Was it the will of the Force? Because when Arris found Fire Control within the network, she didn't recognize it for what it was, other than a convenient place to dump the data of the 1.6 million records, or however much of the truly unfathomable datastream she had hijacked.

For a machine, information overload results in slowdowns, unresponsiveness, freezing, crashing, and overheating.

Without a second's delay, she made the decision and began to dump the records into any of the eight computers - if not all of them, she wasn't terribly picky about it, given her life-threatening state. However, it was also at this point that Arris collapsed onto the console while still wired in. Her sense of self became a blurry thing.

"Gerra..." She muttered more like a droid than a person just as her vocalizer failed, too.

 

[Revna Marr]

SO Allies: Darth Caedes // Srina Talon // Naamino Zuukamano // Haro Aven
// Gerwald Lechner // Madrona A’Mia
// Lina Ovmar // Elmindra Xitaar // Taeli Raaf

Direct Target: Deonis Laythar + NPCs

Other Tags: The Lord of Hunger // Onrai

Gear: Lightsaber
​

Revna felt the indignant stir of rage before it verbally made itself known when the so-called ‘anointed servant’ of the false Sith’ari opened his mouth once more. He told them all that they ignored him at their peril - and the Sith woman felt a dark smirk tug at the corners of her mouth as their enemy opened himself to the flow of hate and conjured streams of Sith lightning, directed towards her and the young Zabrak warrior with her.

Energy shifted around Revna as her free hand lifted, almost magnetically drawing her foe’s lightning straight into her palm. For a moment, she seemed to vanish behind the bright bolts of Dark Side energy. Pain lanced through her hand and wrapped around her wrist and forearm as arcs of what should have been debilitating lightning crawled its way up her left forearm. She let the pain fuel her further as she absorbed the arcs of electrical current, her grin turning dark and wicked.

“I was made in the storm, heretic.” Revna purr-growled as power swelled within and around her; “Your tricks won’t work on me. But I thank you for the gift…” she said with a dark laugh of joy - just before she returned the bolts of lightning back towards him, and this time they carried the purple-red hue of her own form of lightning. The shadowy tendrils of the hungry Void continued to slither and seek their prey - acting as if they had a mind of their own. Power, life and energy continued to pour through the Void Hunger as other tendrils drained life away from those they touched and channeled it into her form, her chill aura deepening further as black frost like material began to form on the ground beneath her, and wherever she stepped. The sound of the black ice crackled and crunched underfoot as she pressed forward, her saber still humming in her hand at the ready, eager to taste blood.

Nearby, Acolyte Naamino did his best to avoid their foe’s burst of lightning, managing to sidestep a good portion of the arcs though some of it managed to catch him. He pushed through it admirably, before pressing his attack more directly. She could feel the Dark side shift around the youth, felt him pull on it and call it to him - before directing a Force blast towards their foes. She kept an eye on him and his whereabouts - if only to keep him relatively safe from the seeking Void tendrils.

Just at the edges of her senses and extended awareness, she could feel him recognize her presence. For better or worse, the strange creature that was the Lord of Hunger was now aware of her, and he was coming. She wasn’t sure yet if he would prove to be an ally or an enemy in this, and so she braced herself.

A moment later, the monstrosity was bursting through a nearby wall, making his fell presence known. Dread and despair radiated from the being like a thick fog, intermingling with the void-like chill of annihilation that draped itself over her like a funerary shroud.

Hunger noticed Hunger - a face off of two predators who, though similar in some ways, were different in many others. The temptation to latch onto and feed directly from that source of power coiled through Revna’s mind, but she recognized it as a desire of the Void and not her own. She resisted the temptation…for now.

“...have you come to take your share of the offered bounty?” the Void seemed to ask through her voice, the sound of it shifting from feminine to something else as she spoke. “...how nice of these heretics to provide such a feast...”

 

[Meliant]

DEATH STAR III
THE UNFORGIVING VOID OF SPACE -> THE SEVERED SPIRE

Attn: Odria Kaelthron Mercy
CC: Darth Solipsis Romi Jade

​

"You're mad," the Governor replied, her voice flat, her lips pressed into a thin line. "This is madness, and it will kill us both."

​

Orida had to think the words before verbalizing them, so it seemed Meliant "heard" her anyway.​

​

Captain, captain… A voice crooned in her mind. A surprise demotion, though perhaps not purposeful. Your concern for my safety is touching. Don't worry. The will of the Emperor shall protect us both.​

​

Surely he was not being as sarcastic as he sounded. That would be heresy, among other things. Meliant was looking away from the viewport now, gazing at the drifting spire, which was now being perforated by boarding spears. Death - real death - would never reach him. He had it on the greatest authority, itself reinforced by dark sorceries alien to this sad, tortured little galaxy.​

​

The governor eventually obliged and steered him closer. Yes. Like a good mule, all she had needed was a little kick. Meliant considered using the escape pod as a battering ram to get him through the glass, but thought better of it. The Emperor was likely in deep focus. No need to upset his concentration.​

​

Meliant kicked off from the pod without so much as a 'thanks' and landed elegantly against the spire's dramatic viewport. He placed one hand flat along the glass and, after a moment, deep cracks splintered out across the surface. It shattered, sending glass shards spiraling lazily into the throne room and revealing an egress just large enough for him to drift through.​

​

With one hand, he pulled himself through. With another, he found one of the holes in his chest left by Windrun's slugthrower and tore it open wider. ​

​

A dull, red glow had begun to emanate from within the armor. The Dark Side was welling up within Meliant: fed on the ritual, fed on proximity to Darth Solipsis, fed on the terror and misery of the war tearing Atrisia apart.​

​

Something unpleasant was soon to transpire.​

 

[Drystan Creed]

DEATH STAR III

"Give me everything you've got."

Drystan's words were calm despite the torrential outpour of his strikes. Normally, with most fighters, each subsequent blow would falter—losing power or speed as exhaustion took hold. Maintaining maximum output with every follow-up attack was a feat few could manage, even among the most seasoned warriors.

However—

Drystan's onslaught was unrelenting. Speed and strength remained at their peak, each swing of his crimson blade delivered with full, precise intent. Though his style appeared straightforward, it was efficient, consistent, and unnaturally exact—all the marks of true lethality.

Brandyn's Force push finally interrupted the rhythm, halting the storm for only a moment. Casaana's intervention drew a reactionary sidestep, but not before her saber's plasma grazed the plates along Drystan's arm, igniting the black metal in heated orange hues.

The push found its mark, hurling him into the wall with bone-rattling force. Durasteel buckled and collapsed under the impact, filling the room with the crash of metal and dust.

"Ouch."

A brief daze passed; Drystan shook his head, debris cascading off his shoulders. Yet, instead of fog, the collision seemed to bring clarity. Watching the Jedi scramble for the elevator, he realized something he had momentarily forgotten.

"Oh, right."

He brushed off the remaining debris, rising to his feet. Not good—they were already advancing. Perhaps something more drastic was in order.

Extending his left arm, a red light flared from his palm. The prosthetic began to glow as the temperature spiked, burning away the remaining fabric and exposing the black metal beneath, now shining like molten ore.

A parting gift—befitting his character.

FWOOSH!

A blazing red beam of plasma erupted from his palm, cutting through the air with deadly precision as it streaked toward Brandyn Sal-Soren . It was fast, focused, and merciless—a promise to punch through whatever defense dared to stand against it.

Brandyn Sal-Soren Casaana

 

[Voldran Molf]

Information

Shadow Lord, Prince of Nightmare, Dream Lord​

"Galactic Basic" | <"Mandalorian"> | ["Úr-kittat"] | ~"Telepathic" communication ~ | << comm. channel >>​

Objective: Perform the ritual.
Location: Death Star III
Equipment: Armour | Sword || OPBC-01m

Allies
Darth Solipsis | Darth Vinaze | Ibaris Varanin | Deonis Laythar | Kann | Cesare Demici | Aphon | Da'Razel | Janus Vipsanius | Open
Enemies
Corazona von Ascania | The Lord of Hunger | Onrai | Open for a story, not for duel​

Voldran could see that he was not the only one who had stopped chanting; others had too those who were frightened or shaken by the arrival of Ashla’s Avatar in the chamber. But it seemed he was not the only one who noticed it; Darth Vinaze did as well, and almost immediately gave a command to the sithspawn on what to do. The man sighed inwardly, weary and heavy-hearted; the woman’s arrival was indeed the best thing that could have happened, for it meant there was a chance the ritual had somehow been successfully sabotaged.

Perhaps the Emperor’s will would not come to pass. Voldran would have rejoiced in that above all else; yet even so, he was already chanting again, though he had fallen silent when the command was given. A command was a command, and it still served the interests of the Galactic Empire, so Voldran had little choice but to obey what Darth Vinaze told him. He tried to resist it, to refuse, to leave the acolytes in fear… but he could not. He heard his own voice, and felt his lips move, but it was not him who wished to speak those words.

"Come on, continue the ritual… we’re almost at the end!" he commanded the others, his tone deep and threatening.

It was as if the others had woken from a dream; they were able to tear their attention away from the Avatar and the Sith Lord, and return it to the ritual. The chanting resumed or rather, continued with renewed strength for not everyone had stopped before, only a few, but now everyone was once again doing their part. After that momentary lapse, the power of the Dark Side began to strengthen once more, thickening the disturbance and the presence of the Force. The ritual and the chant went on.

As they reached its end, the chanting began to sound almost like a hymn in a temple; a litany to a god or a saint. This one, however, was addressed to Darth Solipsis himself, and to the Force to Bogan. It was, in essence, everything that stood as the perfect opposite of Ashla. The darkest essence that existed in the galaxy; pure destruction, the Dark Side itself. It was as though they were about to open the very gates of hell… and in a way, they truly were.

The chanting and song became ever more rhythmic; almost beautiful, in a haunting, dreadful way. To anyone who could see through the Force, it was clear that the Force vibrated with the chant, the words and energy blending into one. Ripples spread across the galaxy and perhaps beyond, into other dimensions. With the final note, it was as though an immense explosion erupted within the Force, radiating in every direction through space, time, and beyond to carry out the Emperor’s dream and will…

The ritual had reached its end. All that remained was to wait and learn the outcome. Would it bring the result they desired, or fail utterly? Voldran felt only disappointment that the ritual had been completed. He sincerely hoped that despite everything, it would fail and that the Emperor’s plan would not succeed. Yet one thing was certain: he could already see, both within the hall and outside, smaller and larger wormholes opening and closing…

Last post.​