Aspect of Nihilus
Somewhere in the Hoth System...
Precise coordinates unknown...
[[Ambience]]
How do the long lived define death? How does one unfettered by the nuances of time view the finality of those short lived? How would one who has seen and lived so much orchestrate their own release from mortal coil?
These were the questions that rattled through the mind of a being staring out towards the frigid wastes of Hoth from the emptiness of space. Questions engraved into thoughts that had lingered longer than they cared to remember. For what were thoughts but empty notions when bound to the endless cycle of wandering through the void of space on the wings of a vessel all but clinging to wisps of it's former function. Or at least that would have been how it was viewed from space as it was approached by a much larger vessel that had detected it's long, and suggestively archaic, distress beacon. The question of how long it had been adrift were negligible once those who beheld it understood that it was a craft from an era long past.
The craft in question, as shambled as it was against the shimmering backdrop that was the solid white planet of Hoth, was that of an ancient Republic model transport; or what the more modern historian would have understood it to be: An early model Hammerhead Corevette sporting a rusted paint job over what had once been the traditional orange and black of the designs origins. Where such a ship had come from would likely have crossed the minds of onlookers, but akin to the question of the duration of it's travels, such details were trivial. For the scrappers that had happened upon this craft cared only for the metals and goods they could find within it's hull. They were in this for the glory of their find.
Or they would have been. Were it not for what they found within their choice vehicle of prey.
First it was one, then it was two and then none. For it had become something of a local supersition that this particular ship was cursed. Hidden during larger portions of the planet's cycle, latched ominously into the orbit of one of Hoth's moons, nothing but ghosts and the cursed dead were assumed to reside upon it. Left there to rot and exist in a solitary eternity until one felt the strong pulse of the Dark Side that exuded from it's interior. One that had only recently become detectable as though a being aboard the ship sought to be found, or the ship itself wished to be explored once more.
Whichever it was, whether it be being or mere presence, the people of the Hoth system dared not go near it. If only death awaited those who entered it, their own ships having joined it in it's dead orbit, what other fate could await it than to exist yet again for another many cycles to come?
That question, as unlikely as it seemed, would soon be answered. Though the being that remained had yet to know this.
