Private Forged In Faith

[Domina Prime]

I HEAR THIS VOICE KEEP ASKING ME
IS THIS MY BLOOD OR IS IT BLASHEMY?

Ark of Ha'rangir

Adelle Bastiel ​

The Grand Forges were alive, as alive as any beast that breathed flame and devoured ore.

The air shimmered, thick with heat and the tang of metal vapor. Firelight danced along the ribbed vaults of the chamber, each rib forged from starsteel harvested from the carcasses of dead ships. The heat was so intense that lesser beings would have blistered within seconds, but Warpriest Prime thrived within it.

Her armor, the black-and-bronze plate of the Warpriest, lay carefully disassembled across a sacred rack. Its surface still bore the dust of a hundred battlefields, yet none dared clean it but her. Stripped to the waist with violet cloth wrapped across her chest, her obsidian scales glimmered with hues of molten gold and pale crimson, each movement sending ripples of reflected light across the chamber.

Four arms worked in orchestrated unison, a divine engine of precision and power. One pair held the billet steady with tongs of beskar, the other brought the hammer down in methodical rhythm. The sound was titanic. clang, clang, clang!

Each strike a sermon to the forge-god she served.

Drums echoed from the walls, ancient instruments beaten by acolytes in adjoining chambers. The rhythm built in perfect harmony with her strikes, merging sound and ritual until it became impossible to tell where music ended and the hammer began.

And then she began to sing.

Her voice, layered and resonant, filled the hall, a deep contralto steeped in the old tongue. The lyrics told of worlds broken open like eggs to birth warriors, of gods forged from pain and steel, of the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. Her hymns were not songs of peace, but of endurance. The celebration of agony transmuted into creation.

She reached into the furnace without hesitation. The flames licked eagerly at her hands, caressing the heat-proof scales that adorned her forearms and shoulders. She pulled the glowing steel from the fire bare-handed, her claws hissing where they met molten light. The billet screamed, its temperature dropping as she slammed it against the anvil.

Clang. Roar. Clang.

Each blow sent ripples of red energy coursing through the air, a visible hum of her will manifesting through her craft. Sparks clung to her body like stars. Beneath the shadow of her forge-mask, five eyes gleamed with unholy focus, the central one fixed on the steel's soul, the others flicking rapidly, assessing the molecular shimmer of its form.

She murmured between blows. Prayers shaped as equations, invocations spoken as metallurgy.

"Heat, devour. Shape, obey. Soul, awaken. Rise, blade of the gods."

When the final strike fell, she stopped. Silence. Only the hiss of cooling metal remained.

The weapon-to-be, still unformed...rested in her palms like an infant of fire and promise. She lowered it reverently into a basin of sacred oil, where it hissed and steamed, the scent of burned myrrh filling the air.

Dima straightened, her massive form silhouetted against the blaze. The light painted her like a goddess carved from magma and fury.

In this crucible, she was not priest nor ruler.

She was creator, destroyer, divine artisan. And the forge was her cathedral.

 

[Adelle Bastiel]

Fire.

It always dredged up painful memnii, memories licking at the edges of her mind like the flames themselves. But the Grand Forges of the impressive Ark were a far cry from Coruscant's underworld. The heat pressed in and through her armor like hands trying to get under her skin. Smoke from the forges added an acrid bite to the air, an undercurrent to the scent of their burning fuel. And the noise. The cacophony was on the verge of painful, hammers striking metal all over as smiths worked their craft.

Adelle kept to the walls as she walked and watched, keeping out of the way of the craftsmen as they worked. Her muscles groaned and ached, begging for rest: she'd come here after training with her beskad, testing herself in the training rooms against the zealous warriors of the Ark. Bruised and worked to the point of failure, her body screamed for respite. But the problem she'd encountered in training demanded a solution: no matter how much she trained and drilled and sparred, her beskad felt like a dead weight in her hands. And after relying on her lightsaber for so long, a weapon attuned to her very essence, she felt as clumsy as an infant. It was embarrassing. It was frustrating.

Attunement to a lightsaber came with its creation. Finding the crystal, meditating, piecing it together--it was a ritual that required a person to listen to their own soul and find its echo, then strengthen that bond until they were nigh indistinguishable. So Adelle had come to the Forges, hoping to glean something from the creation of weapons and armor that might help her wield a weapon that moved with its own weight.

One hammer seemed to ring above the others, and as Adelle ventured deeper into the vaulted chamber, quiet as a ghost, she saw why. The creature wielding a hammer seemed monstrous in its--her, she noted, strength and size. Even from a distance, Adelle could tell this being towered over her and noted the absence of the Force in her presence. This must be the fabled Warpriest she'd heard spoken of with reverence. Manic, ferocious, an embodiment of shereshoy--a lust for life, and utterly devoted to Kad Har'angir. Domina Prime. Sometimes said as invocation, sometimes a whisper of motivation. Larger than life, certainly. Four arms worked in unison at the anvil. Each stroke hammered a rhythm and drums from somewhere resounded in the air, adding to the percussion of the hammer.

The singing caught her off-guard. Adelle had not thought the Mandalorians--and particularly the monstrous Warpriest--relished songs or singing. The hymns faintly echoing throughout the Ark, she had assumed, were only done for the necessity of invoking ritual or Kad Har'angir's name. The language was not the Mando'a she was learning but it was similar. Prime's voice was a lower register than most females but still melodic and carried the emotion of her words enough that Adelle could glean some meaning from the songs.

Adelle watched the Warpriest work, something hypnotic in the rhythm of blows, of practiced hands working seemingly of their own mind. Finally the hammer rang out one last time, and Prime gently laid the metal to rest in a tank of scented oil, filling the air with a burning fragrance. This, then, is what it would take to create a Mando weapon she could feel. It would be a long journey--perhaps if she'd grown up in Mandalorian society, she'd have learned this like she'd learned the process of creating a lightsaber among the Jedi.

Well, a long journey was better than wielding dead weight.

Adelle made to slip away, to seek out an instructor. Based on what she'd heard, she dared not interrupt the Warpriest herself.

But then again, who better to learn from? The worst she could say was no. Adelle didn't want to think about the worst she could do.

She lowered herself to her knees, legs screaming with soreness, and raised her voice. "Will you teach me your artistry?"



Domina Prime

 

[Domina Prime]

I HEAR THIS VOICE KEEP ASKING ME
IS THIS MY BLOOD OR IS IT BLASHEMY?

Ark of Ha'rangir

Adelle Bastiel​

The molten air rippled like a living veil as Dima turned her head, five eyes fixing upon the kneeling stranger with an intensity that could burn through plate. Her shadow stretched long across the forge floor, rippling over chains, anvils, and the hundreds of discarded fragments that bore witness to her labor. For a long moment, the only sound was the hiss of cooling metal, and the low hum of her breathing, deep and resonant like a slumbering beast.

Then, the Warpriest exhaled.

Smoke and embers rolled from her nostrils, scattering through the haze like the dying breath of a volcano. Her scales glimmered wetly beneath the forge light, each plate edged in firelight as she reached for a cloth and wiped the oil from her claws. The motion was unhurried, ritualistic, as if cleaning blood from a blade after a holy act.

She didn't speak right away. Instead, she studied Adelle in silence. Not with suspicion, but with the curious, dissecting eye of a sculptor assessing raw marble. The weight of her gaze was tangible, pressing against the girl's chest as surely as the heat in the room.

When she finally did speak, her voice carried the resonance of the forge itself, a low thunder, cracked and beautiful.

"You kneel before flame without flinching. That's good."

Her tail swept behind her, slow and deliberate, stirring the smoke into curling shapes that framed her like wings of ash

"Most turn their eyes away. The forge has a way of showing one's truth. Fire purifies, or devours. The weak run. The strong endure. The worthy..."

She leaned forward slightly, her tusked smile faintly visible beneath her half-removed mask.

"...They learn to dance with it."

Domina gestured with one clawed hand, and the great furnace beside her flared open like a beast's maw. The light painted her obsidian scales in shifting golds and oranges as she reached into the flame once more, unflinching and withdrew the unfinished blade she had just tempered. She held it up so Adelle could see its surface: raw, radiant, imperfect.

"This is not yet a weapon," she murmured, her tone soft but commanding. "It is will made half-real. It must be taught to breathe before it can bite."

She turned the blade, tracing a molten line down its center with her claw.

"You've felt it, haven't you? That your beskad does not move with you, does not sing with your blood. You wield it, but it does not yet know you."

Her words rang with strange familiarity, almost as if she had glimpsed the girl's thoughts. Dima knew this because for many years during her time as a foundling she often felt the same in her beskar.

Prime placed the blade down upon its silk rest, turning her full attention to Adelle now. She prowled closer, graceful despite her size. The floor plates bending faintly beneath her weight. Her claws clinked softly against the girl's armor as she touched it, scraping at the Durasteel like a jeweler testing the purity of gold. Sparks hissed and died in the space between them.

"Unbalanced. Soulless." She tapped the chestplate with a talon, the sound sharp. "This armor was made for you, but not with you. There's a difference. And until you learn that difference, every weapon you wield will feel like a stranger in your hand."

Her head tilted, eyes narrowing as she seemed to weigh something unseen. Then, she chuckled, a deep, amused sound that reverberated through the forge like a drumbeat.

"You ask if I will teach you. You should know, I do not teach mortals to make slabs of metal. I teach them to create ART."

Her grin widened, feral and mischievous, revealing the serrated tips of her teeth. She leaned close enough that Adelle could smell the faint metallic tang of her breath, like smoke and oil.

"My artistry is not a trade of technique. It is communion. Fire to flesh, thought to steel. It takes vision, passion, a willingness to bleed and burn. If you do not love your craft..."

She paused, flicking the last of the molten gold from her fingertips onto the floor, where it hardened into tiny, glimmering coins.

"...then your creations will never love you in return."

Domina turned away then, the great muscles in her back shifting as she walked through the haze toward a rack of unfinished weapons. Her tail lashed once, the motion almost teasing.

"And as for compensation..."

She rolled one wrist lazily, claws glinting with faint humor.

"I find the worth of a student in what they can endure. Pain. Pressure. Expectation. Perhaps...you'll find a way to surprise me."

She glanced over her shoulder, five eyes narrowing again with predatory amusement.

"Stay if you like, little one. Watch, learn, burn. But if you wish to forge something worthy of the name 'Prime,' you must first offer something of yourself. The forge demands it."

She lifted her hammer again. The sound of the forge roared to life. The drums began anew.

Each strike was a sermon, and each spark that flew from her anvil seemed to whisper the same silent command.

Burn. Transform. Endure.

 

[Adelle Bastiel]

Five eyes turned toward her. Adelle did not turn her head away, meeting the burning gaze. She'd learned that Mandalorians expected their challenges to be met, and to at least have one's full effort behind it even if they failed to overcome it. So where a padawan might bow or a supplicant of a religion might avert their eyes in deference, she matched.

Prime's words brushed uncomfortably close to the memnii. Fire. Blood. Wires. Adelle breathed in the heat and smoke of the Forges, the burnt incense of the oil. This was not Coruscant. And she had endured the flames there. If Prime would teach her to make a weapon that would be an extension of herself, then Adelle would dance with the flames.

She stayed steady and relaxed as the Warpriest stalked closer, claws dragging across her armor. The sound was different from the Dark Sider's metal talons, examining and appraising instead of controlling and corrupting. A clawtip struck the cuirass, strong enough Adelle could feel the sound in her body. And Prime confirmed what she had come to suspect: the armor fit less like a second skin and more like training weights.

"You ask if I will teach you. You should know, I do not teach mortals to make slabs of metal. I teach them to create ART."

The declaration brought a smile to her lips. For all the many differences between them, the looming Warpriest sounded just like her Caamasi Jedi master, Master It'kla. As gentle as he was, he'd been strict with her lightsaber footwork, going so far as to teach her to dance just so she could learn lightness of foot. "This is an artform, my old padawan," he had said. "But you treat it like a drill." There was passion in Prime's voice, just as there had been in Master It'kla's. Yes, she could learn another art. She needed to keep her hands busy anyways.

Domina Prime strode away, a dangerous amusement in her voice, but inviting Adelle all the same to watch and learn. She staggered to her feet, her body screaming with protest after having been still for so long post-training, and stood closer to see what the Warpriest crafted without getting in the way. Soemthing in Prime's words resonated in her head even as the she-creature began to forge again. Adelle reached up and removed her helmet, blowing out air as the oppressive heat of the Forges hit her skin. She clipped it to her belt and focused all her attention on watching the hammer strikes: where, how hard, the effects of the blow. Sweat ran anew through her short hair, trickling down her forehead. Adelle wiped the beads away from her eyes, determined to learn.

She did have a problem though: Domina Prime had been clear something must be offered to the forge before she could even attempt to work the metal. As a Jedi, she'd had few enough possessions as it was. And she had to pawn a few things off just to make it into Mandalorian space. There were her weapons but offering something someone else gave felt wrong. Unworthy. Neither could she give up her saber; that was as much a piece of her as her lungs.

But . . . she could bleed. Prime wanted her to give her heart and soul to the art? She could do that. Not the palm, despite what the holodramas seemed to think. Too many delicate parts there, too much use required of the hands. Not to mention it was painful as osik. The back of the arm would work.

Adelle watched until she was sure she could at least hit the billet without injuring herself before she moved back over to the wall and began to reverently remove her cuirass, pauldrons, and vambraces, setting them out of the way and placing her buy'ce on top. She leaned her beskad against the wall momentarily as she stripped the armorweave bodysuit to the waist, the tank top undershirt beneath drenched and clinging to her skin. The hot air from the Forges provided little relief, but it felt marginally better. Adelle took up the blade and set it against her left forearm. A slight pressure and her skin split cleanly, crimson coating the edge as she dragged the beskad down the back of her arm. For all of her problems with it, it had a sharp edge.

No use waffling over whether or not her offering was good enough. Adelle shoved the blade into the forge, the radiating heat searing her skin like a sunburn. Blood trickled down her left arm and she flicked the tickling drops away. While it was shallow, she really should have thought about bandaging it after cutting. Well, it was done now. Adelle turned to face the towering Warpriest, having to crane her head back.

"What must I do to give steel a soul?"



Domina Prime