Everyday Apotheosis (group training, open to Fringe and allies)

[Ashin Varanin]

RATTATAK
FRINGE TERRITORY
THE UNKNOWN REGIONS

The Cauldron had tasted the blood of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, since its creation. The local powers still used it for Rattatak's oldest tradition, gladiatorial combat. But from time to time, the Lords of the Fringe appropriated it for training purposes.

The stands were packed by citizens of the Fringe, all of whom had signed waivers. Collateral damage was not unheard of at these events.

Arbiter Ashin Varanin, wearing the black uniform of a Fringe Grand Admiral, stood at the center of the Cauldron with her hands behind her back and a lightsabre at her hip, opposite her service blaster. The heat was oppressive.

 

[Hailey Sosis]

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

She took a ride on a transport, into fringe territory she was a minor member of The Panathan Empire. The was a training school there for allies, and she knew she need training after the acolyte duels. She also got injured in a boarding action, against the republic. She wanted to get better at combat, where better to go she thought herself. She arrived and began looking around, for her trainer. She was wearing a sith infantry armour under her robes. As she had learnt armour was not a bad thing in any measure.

 

[Ava Solborne]

Fire. It's hot. No... it's warm.

Why was Ava on Rattatak? She had no idea. Her clues about her parents' deaths had led her to the planet, but she had no idea of where to go next. But she had been offered a chance to go to the Cauldron and see if she can get trained, which was really nice. At least something cool to do while she's on the planet. Ugh, the warmth of the planet was a bit too much for her, but she had tried to comfort herself for the last hour with the fact that shaping fire needs some resistance to high temperature.

Warm is good. Hot is double the warmth. So hot is double the good.

Standing in the Cauldron, wearing a simple set of leather clothes, and her hair being tilted to the right, she had no aura of innocence around her. She tried to be self-confident, she wanted to be more than just a girl she was. She was a strong woman. And she was ready to fight.

Hot brings death.

[ [member="Ashin Varanin"] | [member="Harley"] ]​

 

[Vildras Ferc]

Vildras walked calmly to the cauldron, his black leather armor making small sounds as he did so. As he stood there silently awaiting the commands of someone, anyone, he pulled a glowing sphere from his pocket and twirled it in his hands. "This will be good for me, won't it?" he asked himself. "Yes, yes it will." he reassured himself. Vildras placed the sphere back into his pocket and threw back his hood, his red eye darting around the place, memorizing faces, exits, and weapons. His silver eye was still trying to get used to the light, but he had long given up on it working. "Let's do this."

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Ashin Varanin"] | [member="Harley"] | [member="Ava Solborne"] | [member="Vildras Ferc"]

Managed to escape the prison some time ago, with time being relative ‘some time ago’ could mean a few weeks, months or just yesterday night. Point was, the Fringe Confederation was one of the closer nations to Hellgotha and that was all that really mattered in the grand scheme of things, I doubted I would be here for very long though.

Sooner or later they would be going to war with the Republic, if there was one characteristic the Fringe had? It was being opportunistic, the fact that they hadn’t invaded it yet was only surprising. Anyway, that didn’t really matter right now.

The Grand Admiral had organized a training effort on Rattatak and the General within me would always take the opportunity to study the strengths and weaknesses within a possible opponent.

And so Iwaited for the lesson to start, silently leaning against a wall, perhaps cursing the heat just a little bit.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Harley"][member="Ava Solborne"][member="Vildras Ferc"][member="Nui Akona"]

Took her back to the old days, this did -- disparate groups of neophytes from every tradition or none at all.

Neophytes...and one who definitely wasn't. When a Master showed up unrecognized, he or she got Ashin's attention. Akona was an unknown quantity, an associate of a new recruit.

"Welcome to Rattatak," she said to the lot of them. "My name is Grand Admiral Ashin Varanin; you can address me as Admiral. Some of you have served with the Fringe Confederation, some of you are allies, and some of you are new recruits. Today, none of those distinctions matter.

"At ground level, the temperature in this arena is thirty-five centigrade, and we are in direct sunlight. Our first order of business is ensuring that you can endure the entire training session without heat exhaustion or heatstroke. No amount of strength of will is enough. We'll start with a traditional Jedi skill known as tapas, which allows you to regulate your own body temperature. Tapas is useful acrossna wide range of disciplines, from fire shapers to Sith alchemists to the explorers we send to uncharted worlds. It's saved my life more than any other aspect of the Force."

She spent the next ten minutes explaining how to internalize the concepts of tapas. If they did it correctly, the unbearable heat would feel merely oppressive, still damaging to their focus but not unsurmountable. Once they had reached some level of success with tapas, they would be able to move on to more active training with a lower risk of unconsciousness and dehydration.

 

[Ava Solborne]

Fire can kill us from the inside out.

Ava tried to listen to the woman's instructions carefully. This ability was something that could help her at succeeding in fire shaping, even though it was an invisible force power, which the people of Kro Var mostly hated. Times had changed, methods had done the same. Maybe her father would let her use the power. Because it was near necessary for her in order to learn the powers of controlling fire.

Warm can destroy us if there's too much of that. Or none of it.

Focusing on the technique and what the instructor had told the people, she tried to get a hold of her body temperature, failing at first. It was a difficult thing - control abilities were not something the girl enjoyed. But like she had come to understand, they were most times the most powerful ways to use the force.

The flame is to be controlled.

After a few minutes of trying to get her body temperature to change, she finally understood where she had made a mistake. And she knew how to fix that. With a little bit more concentration on the inside of her body, she managed to get the temperature inside her to change, at least judging by what she felt inside. The 'flame' inside her had started to listen to its owner. Though it was difficult to hold the temperature that way.

[ [member="Ashin Varanin"] | [member="Harley"] | [member="Vildras Ferc"] | [member="Nui Akona"] ]​

 

[Vildras Ferc]

Vildras listened intently to the Admiral's instructions, and focused within himself, attempting to zero in on his bodies temperature.
Control had never been his thing, so he struggled to accomplish this, his focus constantly ruined by anything happening around him.
Finally, he internally screamed at himself, finally getting his body to cool to a bearable temperature.
He struggled to keep it under control, to stay the same, but it was working for now.

[member="Ashin Varanin"]
[member="Ava Solborne"]
[member="Nui Akona"]
[member="Harley"]

 

[Hailey Sosis]

[member="Ashin Varanin"] l [member="Ava Solborne"] l [member="Nui Akona"] l [member="Vildras Ferc"]

Heat was getting to her, the suit was designed for this, if she wore the helmet. Though she had left that on the ship, as it would mess up her hair. She began sweating like a pig, she could not cope in the heat. She tried to concentrate, it did not work, her mind would not settle. Sweat began to pour of her brow, why did you leave the helmet on the ship she thought to herself. She then began to feel weak at the knees, and began to wobble a bit. She almost fell, then looked across and saw others some fell. Then she saw began to recover, how she wondered. She then began concentrate like the admiral said, it took a while and she blacked out. Then she began to cool down slowly, even so she felt sick, and you could see the strain on her face trying to concentrate on this task.

 

[Vrag]

Vrag had kept herself disparate from others, her back flush against the far wall of the arena. Had the sun not been in zenith, her positioning might have granted her an advantage, but the walls had little shadow to offer at this hellish hour. The Sith cursed under her breath and glanced upwards, thankful at least that her visor was darkened; the blazing orb in the sky would've surely burned her eyes otherwise. Still, the time of the day wasn't her biggest problem at the moment.

She turned her gaze away from the merciless star and towards the woman who came to stand in the lodge high up the other wall. Her voice was imposing, and it was becoming clearer with every enunciated syllable that the woman was a leader. The title didn't give her away? Vrag smirked at her own thoughts and pushed off the stone at her back. She circled closer to the middle of the grand arena, listening closely to what the Admiral had to say even as her blue eyes shifted from one opponent to another.

It was hot, that much was true, but it wasn't that hot. She'd traveled her share of worlds in her runaway years, and she could remember at least five planets that were closer to the temperatures of Hell. Then again... Vrag looked down and let out a long sigh. She never wore that much armor back in the day.

Her form — the whole two meters of it — was clad in black durasteel plates; normally, that was an enormous advantage for someone who partook in fights on a weekly basis. Today, though, Vrag wished she'd come in her smallclothes instead, propriety and protection be damned. Still, she wasn't stupid, and she'd had enough experience with hostile climates to adopt the practice of wearing thermo-insulating clothes underneath the temperature-sensitive metal.

The Admiral concluded her lesson about tapas, and Vrag groaned low in her throat, glad that everybody was too far away to hear it. The Force. Her features were drawn into a frown at the thought, but she was left with little choice; cooking inside her own armor wasn't really an option. The firrerreo closed her eyes in a doomed attempt to regulate her body temperature with the aid of a power she barely understood. The control she could exercise over the Force was limited at best, and that was a generous over-estimate. In truth, Vrag could wield it just capably enough to draw upon it when it came to physical feats, but anything beyond that was a mystery for the Acolyte.

Despite the odds stacked against her, Vrag ground her teeth and tried again.

[member="Ashin Varanin"] | [member="Harley"] | [member="Vildras Ferc"] | [member="Ava Solborne"] | [member="Nui Akona"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Ava Solborne"] [member="Harley"] [member="Nui Akona"] [member="Vrag"] [member="Vildras Ferc"]

She'd never been one for Sense powers, but reading people was a forté of hers, and had been ever since her Force-severance to Apprentice some time ago. Immersed in a world of Masters whose Masters' Masters she'd trained or humiliated at one point or another, and unwilling to knuckle under, she'd been forced to prioritize the skills that let her get a handle on the disposition and intention of those around her. And everything she saw and felt and guessed told her that this particular crowd was a little farther down the learning curve than she'd anticipated.

Then again, she'd been doing this kind of internalized corrective focus for about eighteen years, ever since her first imprisonment by the Cult of Shadow. Eighteen years might be longer than some of these people had been accountable, let alone sentients in touch with the Force. Even when she'd been severed, her memories had remained, and her mental habits. She'd flat-out forgotten how difficult tapas had been in the early days, when she was a young teenager just starting her Jedi education.

She stood there in her black dress uniform, hands behind her back, and waited until they'd all had a solid chance to stabilize their tapas control. If they passed out during later training, so be it. She wasn't about to move them indoors, coddle them.

The more so since their loyalties were largely unknown. To get the measure of them, she intended to drive them to the edge of what they believed their capacities to be, and get both them and her in touch with who they actually were.

"There are two crates by the wall. One contains enough lightsabres for each of you to have one, two, or a lightstaff as you see fit. We won't be using training settings today. The other crate contains training remotes. Each of you take one remote.

"This exercise is simple. For the moment, leave the lightsabre offline. I want you to allow the training remotes to hit you with their stinger beams, I want you to learn what that feels like, and I want you to try and reduce the impact with the Force; I'll explain how. Whether you can do that while keeping up your tapas conditioning is up to you: you'll have to make choices based on your estimation of your own abilities to endure and to use the Force."

She then spent ten minutes explaining how to blunt the impact of a singer beam, then had one of the students pull out a blaster cannon and shoot her in the chest without apparent effect.

"Stinger beams and single blaster shots are all you're going to be able to block until you hit Master, and maybe even after. I'm stronger and more experienced with the Force than anyone you've ever met, guaranteed, and this is my specialty, and even I have my limits. This training won't make you a god, but against a shot you see coming, it just might save your life."

 

[Bourne Cavanagh]

[member="Ashin Varanin"] @Vrag @Harley @Vildras Ferc [member="Nui Akona"]

"Well who doesn't want a bit of sting in a fight," came Bourne's amused quip from the sidelines. The Blazing Chain pirate came waltzing in with a swagger, thumbs hooked upon his belt as his grey eyes would sweep the heat of the Cauldron.

He came to a stop beside said crate, and with a shrug plucked a dark gunmetal lightsaber from its depths. A small toss and a flip in the air and he caught it anew.

He preferred the more solid type of swords to handle in his hand; gave more tangibility and weight. But who was he to look down upon a lesson by the former Empress himself?

That's when he caught the brunette at the corner of his eye. Enter the slow crawling knowing grin. And a wink at [member="Ava Solborne"]'s direction.

 

[Ava Solborne]

A saber? Why would Ava need that? She was a shaper, not a Jedi or a Sith. She needed no fancy weapons to stay alive -- no, she used weapons much stronger, yet more difficult than that. Maybe it was all a part of the training which would soon get the group of people to something more advanced, or to a trap.

A controlled flame is a weapon.

The woman took a lightsaber from one of the crates, not knowing what colour it was. Not even caring to take a look. Sabers didn't matter much to her. Then she headed to take a remote and got a bit confused. What would they be doing, after all? Maybe it was a trap? What if Ava was right and they were all there destined to die?

The weapon is stronger than anything else.

Ava didn't notice anybody looking at her, she hadn't developed the ability to understand when somebody was looking at them. She had been told all people have the ability, force-sensitive or not, and that she was weird because of her inability to use that natural ability. Guess she was more odd than she had thought yet. These hallucinations she often saw might have not been the strangest part of her, after all.

But nobody else seems to know a flame's power.

And then she turned the remote on, letting the stinger beams hit her. "Ouch!" she muttered. It was a lot more painful than she had imagined. Good to know these things could be awaiting her in the universe. She listened to the instructor giving a lesson at using a Force power to dull the beams. Another invisible force power Ava detested, but she had to let go of her hatred and do as she had been told. Who knows, it might even save her one day.

Because others don't like flames like I do.

She tried to focus on using both tapas and the new power, but she couldn't. It was truly too much for her. On the brink of fainting due to the lack of energy, she came to a decision. Tapas is not what she needs right now. She must fight against the stinger beams.

[ [member="Ashin Varanin"] | [member="Harley"] | [member="Vildras Ferc"] | [member="Nui Akona"] | [member="Vrag"] | [member="Bourne Cavanagh"] ]​

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ava Solborne"]

"You got the fire in you," murmured a rough-hewn man nearby. He snapped his fingers and a burst of fire appeared and vanished at his fingertips. "But you're not feeling it. The heat in you is fire. The stinger beam is fire. This is your territory; own it."

A training remote continued to sting him throughout.

 

[Ava Solborne]

Ava was so scared by the man suddenly talking to her that she jumped and dropped the unignited lightsaber on the ground. She felt like having a heart attack, but that was obviously some exaggeration. No, nothing bad happened to her besides the little moment of fright.

Fire is mine?

"What do you mean? Do you mean I can control them?" she asked the man, her voice trembling, even shaking. She was not good at talking to other people -- she was and had always been highly unsocial, suffering from a mental illness and strange aggressive behaviour which was initiated every once in a while. Losing her focus made her lose the control over dulling the stings and she got hurt again.

Fire burns me. But it shouldn't.

[ [member="Seren Ordavo"] ]​

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ava Solborne"]

The dropped sabre got a snort. "Isn't that what you just did?"

Another stinger beam came in -- and stopped in front of his hand. It warped, unmistakably flame, like the campfire games Shapers taught their children.

"All this Varanin's teaching you is the same thing any pyro learns before they step into the forge for the first time: how to not get burned."

 

[Vrag]

Vrag's frown deepened as the Admiral's voice rang across the arena once more. Her gaze followed the indicated direction, spotting the pair of crates sitting innocently against the far wall of the Cauldron. She glanced towards her own weapon that lay clipped to her belt, then back at the crates. With a low sigh, the woman shrugged and went to pick up another lightsaber. Having a spare was never a bad idea, after all.

She returned to her spot with the remote in hand, turning the small droid around in the air with a curious expression on her face. When the order came Vrag dutifully activated the machine, barely flinching when the stinger beam collided with her armor.

Well, that solves the issue of priorities, the Acolyte smiled to herself and continued with her valiant attempts to learn tapas. It was an odd feeling, really, trying to reach inside her own body with the Force when she could barely direct it at others. Vrag wasn't one for self-analysis, and to her this thing was simply a Force-enhanced extension of that. A cruel turn of fate, then, that the firrerreo was also a very stubborn person, unwilling to admit defeat even in the face of certain failure.

Almost certain, she corrected herself and reached deeper, her eyes closed. She could feel the blood rushing through her veins; the rhythm of her heart as it beat against her ribs; the sound of her breath rushing from her lungs. Vrag focused on that first, forcing the breaths to come slower, deeper. Her lips parted for an exhale of relief when the hot pressure finally let up, and her mouth curved into a self-satisfied smile. Before she had a chance to fully congratulate herself, though, the sticky warmth surrounding her came rushing back.

"Oh, for the love of..." Vrag let out a string of colorful expletives, directing her frustration at the remote in front of her. When it next tried to shoot her, the Acolyte poured her anger into something akin to a pulse in the Force, pushing it towards the stinger bolt with an outstretched hand. Her mouth fell agape in surprise when the beam never reached her, for it had dissolved upon impact.

Figures, the woman rolled her eyes at her luck and set to the task of regulating her body temperature again. Practice makes perfect, right?

[member="Ava Solborne"] | [member="Seren Ordavo"] | [member="Bourne Cavanagh"] | [member="Ashin Varanin"] | [member="Vildras Ferc"] | [member="Harley"] | [member="Nui Akona"]

 

[Ava Solborne]

Ava felt really dumb now. She was not a great user of the force, even worse at controlling the invisible part of it, so she calmed herself with the fact that she doesn't have to understand anything rightaway. The girl focused on the stinger beams again, took a deep breath and at first, tried to cast the protection of tapas's power onto her body. The temperature of her body came to a point where the strange warmth of the planet had no effects on her body anymore.

Fire outside can't do anything to me.

And then there was the time to get rid of the stings. She closed her eyes and every time she got hit, she imagined the next hit to be less painful. And somehow, it worked. The blasts soon became nearly nothing to her body, until she finally opened her eyes and she managed to use some of the remaining energy to stop one beam from hitting her.

Fire draws us out of energy.

Until she lost control over all of that again. She was not good enough at controlling all of that and focusing on fire shaping. She had to let go of these plans of achievement and do what she was told to -- tapas and blunting the shots.

[ [member="Seren Ordavo"] ]​

 

[Darth Carnifex]

The Emperor of Panatha, and well-known war criminal to the Republic, sat high within the spectator stands surrounded by two of his crimson-clad Praetorian guards. He stared down at the figures far down below in the cauldron with a amused smirk on his face, and a bucket of fried poultry in one hand. He was lightly munching on his snacks as he watched them struggle down below in the heat.

"This is nothing. Drop them on a death world for a month with nothing but a dagger, that's how true mettle is tested."

His munching then continued as they struggled onward.

[member="Ashin Varanin"]

 

[Ibaris Varanin]

Watch? Sure. Sit still? After a while, that was a distinct 'OH HELLS NO'... not that the little squirt was going about saying such things... at least not when she could be heard. Why was Mama so funny about her saying only some words and not others, anyway? Really, she didn't get what the big deal was. There she was, all four-foot-whatever of her, marching right out into the midst of the Cauldron, hoodie tied about her waist and hair put up in an untidy, bulbous mass of... well, hair, atop her head. Someone was bound to stare, and whoever that someone was (honestly, she knew no names around here!) got a big, ol', nasty glare.

"Don't look at me like that! I'm wearing sunscreen! I'll be fine."

Sheesh, what was their problem? She didn't see what the big deal was. Snuggling with Adas was as warm as this, sometimes, and she was pretty darn good about drinking all her water. She wandered right up beside the piratey-looking, suave-ish guy, and nonchalantly plucked a lightsaber hilt from one crate (pulling herself up over the edge to reach one), but when it came to the remotes, her hand couldn't quite wrap itself around one and she was already one hand full with a hilt! How was this going to... her eyes drifted up to Bourne Cavanagh, and she cleared her throat, put on the cutest, sweetest, most innocent expression she could muster, hooking one index finger into her mouth, gnawing a little at the tip.

"Excuse me, mister. Could you... um, you see, I'm vertically challenged and my little hands don't fit around such big remotes..."

Don't ask where she picked that up. A toothy grin overtook the lower half of her face.

"...pretty please, could you help me?"

​

[member="Ashin Varanin"] | [member="Harley"] | [member="Ava Solborne"] | [member="Vildras Ferc"] | [member="Nui Akona"] | [member="Vrag"] | [member="Darth Vornskr"] | [member="Bourne Cavanagh"] | [member="Seren Ordavo"]​