Private Convergence of The Cursed

[Domina Prime]

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ᚺᛖᛁᛚ ᛊᛖ ᚺᛁᚾ ᛖᛁᚾᛁ ᛊᚨᚾᛁ ᚷᚢᚦ

Vytal Noctura ​

The skies above Dathomir churned like an open wound, seething with black clouds that flashed with silent lightning. The shadowed world had always kept its distance from Mandalore's domain, its witches whispered of in fearful tones, their rituals dismissed as heresy by those who feared what they could not understand. Yet Domina Prime, Warpriest of the Iron Creed, did not fear them. She saw them.

Where others saw witches and monsters, Dima saw kin.
Cousins cast into exile. Daughters of the same storm.

It was they who had shown her the secrets of spirit and metal, of blood and flame. It was their whispers that had guided her hand as she reforged her mortal shell into living Beskar, every plate etched with runes and sigils drawn from their spellcraft. The divine blade she carried—The Witchfang of Ha'rangir—had been birthed through their black alchemy and tempered in her prayers.

Now, as the great city-ship The Ark loomed above Dathomir's endless night, its radiant underbelly carved a wound of light across the planet's sky. A dichotomy of holiness and heresy, iron radiance against crimson storm.

Within the command sanctum, Dima stood before the viewport, the holy scripture of her clan gripped within her lower claws, its ancient pages breathing with the rhythm of the engines. Behind her lay the offerings she had prepared, a collection of crystalized eggs, glowing with soft inner fire. These were the unborn Dovahdrakes, creatures of divine war, bred in the molten foundries of Prime. Their light pulsed gently, alive with promise.

With a flick of her wrist, the command was given. The Ark's tractor arrays roared to life, and a massive beam of energy split the heavens, turning night to day. The surface below was bathed in ghostly luminescence as Dima stepped forward into the hangar's open maw.

"Let the children of war commune with their cousins of shadow," she murmured.

Then she fell. Ams spread, cloak unfurling like the wings of a descending angel. The tractor beam caught her mid-descent, slowing her fall into a measured, ceremonial drift. Around her, the eggs followed in perfect formation, hundreds of luminous orbs suspended in the light as if stars themselves were returning to the world that birthed the night.

The Ark above hummed with celestial reverence, casting her down in a procession of light and faith.

When her boots touched the soil, the light dimmed, and only the whispering winds of Dathomir answered. She stood still amid the quiet, the sacred tome in her lower hands opening of its own accord. Her voice rose in chant, a hymn in the language of gods and ghosts. The runes carved into her Beskar flared alive, each glowing symbol thrumming with unholy light.

From the empty air, her holy blade emerged, called forth by her incantation, a blade not drawn but summoned, burning with spectral fire. Its hum sang through the void like a heartbeat, a siren call.

And in the forests, something stirred.

The witches of Dathomir had heard her song.

Domina smiled beneath her visor. "Let the kin of flame and night break bread once more, O cousins mine~"

 

[Vytal Noctura]

D A T H O M I R

Equipment: The Blood of Dathomir Armor | Nightmother's Ward | Artifacts Ring

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"See the bond between the spirit and the body? How it is divided and sinks into the animus of the living?" Vytal whispered softly into the ear of a Sister that sat with their eyes wide open. Spiritual possession was real even if offworlders couldn't bring themselves to accept it. And Vytal had tried to help them accept it. The Nightsisters, however, understood. Well, the young would once women like Vytal taught them. It was important they understood how things worked so they avoided their pitfalls.

Emerald eyes peered at the sentient being they'd brought to the center of the Circle. The focus of attention. It was no small thing to unravel the hooks a spirit of the Nether could sink into another. If someone wasn't terrified of just how easily control was lost they weren't paying attention.

Her eyes slid to the side as another woman entered with a silent bow. It was time, then.

Vytal lightly laid a hand upon the shoulder of her Sister before a nod was given for another to take over the instruction. They'd been expecting a visitor, and they had just arrived in orbit.

"Have any Covens shown signs they weren't convinced?" she asked after they'd slipped out of the ritual hall at Sanctum Inferis Arce. Domina Prime was not one to worry much over the trifling matters of social politics. How the arrival of The Ark in orbit of Dathomir could be viewed as an invasion by the Mandalorian Empire by those that had yet to be convinced of the warrior culture's good intentions.

Fortunately, Vytal had always listened to what the spirits of the Nether had to say, and today they'd been particularly animated. Word had been sent out ahead of time for whatever Covens happened to be nearest Domina's arrival not to attack. Their 'true' intentions would be uncovered by Vytal. Toward that end, however, if Domina tried to bring The Ark any closer to the planet or started unloading a large number of people... Well, the Nethermother hoped the animated woman had learned not to needlessly test the mettle of Witches.

The Sister said a few hadn't directly responded, but at least no unusual rituals had been performed of late. Good enough, Vytal thought.

Glyphs began to glow along a wide archway as Vytal drew near. With a flare of green fire, the landing where Dima had set foot appeared framed by stone. Vytal wasted no time as she stepped through and appeared out in the wilds of Dathomir where flora or fauna alike might hungrily dine on the unaware.

"Domina Prime," the crimson-scaled pale native of Dathomir called out, "what brings such a fervent believer of Kad Ha'rangir to our dark shores? Have you come to sing and feast about one of our fires beneath our red sun?" Since her return to Dathomir, Vytal had embraced the moniker of Nethermother instead of that of Nightmother or Greatmother; with how often she tended to matters away from home -- even in the Nether itself -- she'd not wanted to leave even one Coven without their leader. The title also set her apart in that capacity as well. Better that than 'Warden' which the Mandalorians used to refer to her position as liaison between worlds.

Domina Prime​

 

[Domina Prime]

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ᚺᛖᛁᛚ ᛊᛖ ᚺᛁᚾ ᛖᛁᚾᛁ ᛊᚨᚾᛁ ᚷᚢᚦ

Vytal Noctura​

The radiance of colors clashed in the gloom as the Nethermother stepped from the woods. The black-barked trees and crimson mist shivered under the pull of unseen gravity, the divine light of The Ark cutting a wound through Dathomir's endless night.

The Warpriest stood at the heart of it, a monolith of Beskar and prayer. The beam that had ferried her from the heavens now split the dark around her, her silhouette burning like a living sigil of her god.

At her knees lay the circle of Dovahdrake eggs, set neatly around the cratered sword whose light thrummed like a living heart. The Warpriest's four arms moved with ceremonial precision, arranging each relic as if constructing a temple upon the soil of shadow. When her name was spoken — Domina Prime — the towering figure stilled. Her helm turned, then bowed, lowering to the ground in reverence.

She did not speak immediately. Instead, her claws traced the cracked, smoking earth beside her blade. Her voice, when it came, carried the strange timbre of reverence and madness intertwined, like a sermon whispered by a storm.

"Funnily enough," she murmured, her voice a curious melody against the thrum of the beam, "I don't think I can truly sing."

Her clawed hand gestured to the crystalline weapon embedded in the dirt, a relic born of both witchcraft and Beskar, of both hymn and curse.

"But the blade sings. It sings where I cannot. I hear it... humming. Like a whisper through my marrow. A song from the void that I am too mortal to hear."

She ran her claws along its mirrored surface, the runes carved by Nightsister hands glowing faintly beneath her touch. Then her tone softened, becoming something dangerously close to gratitude.

"I came to thank you," she said, her head lifting toward the shadowed Witch. "Your covens gave it voice. You gave me voice. The song, the soul...OUR soul~"

Her words faltered as another presence stirred in her mind. A second tone mingled with hers, low and dissonant, a faint echo of Furyia's imprisoned essence. It lingered in the air like smoke before being devoured by Domina's will.

"Her soul~" she finished, softly. "Bound to mine. And she tries to consume me still, but..."

A cruel smile rippled beneath her mask.

"Faith burns hotter than corruption."

The earth pulsed faintly as the beam above them dimmed to a warm, amber glow. The runes across her armor flared, and she rose to her full, daunting height, the balance between devotion and defiance incarnate.

"So I came bearing gifts," she said, gesturing toward the eggs whose crystalline shells shimmered with inner light. "The ichor that binds me now binds them, and I offer them to my kin."

She reached up, unclasping her mask and setting it upon her hip, revealing the cluster of eyes beneath, all bright, molten, and inhuman. When she looked upon Vytal, there was no hostility there. Only wonder.

"We are kin, aren't we?" she asked softly, lifting one of the luminous eggs aloft, the reflection of Dathomir's red sun glinting off its shell. "Iron and ichor. Blood and flame. Both born of war, both abandoned by peace."

The egg pulsed, faintly echoing the rhythm of her heart.

"Tell me, sister..." she whispered, voice deepening, reverent and dangerous. "Will the shadows accept my light?"