Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Heavy Arms

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
Picture this as one more vignette about one more derivative creation, and you won't be disappointed. As tales go, this one is far from complete. It's an interlude or a cross-sectional slice or a web caught between a dozen tales. It's a point of rare and not-entirely-perfect intersection.

Ashin Varanin, former Dark Lord of the Sith, voluntarily Force severed, now a Jedi Knight again -- and de facto guardian of Korriban. Fond of heavy armor and powerful weapons. Her sword Winterlight tasted the blood of eldritch gods and Masters of every stripe. She sold the sword at a Tatooine swap meet.

She's here on Korriban forging another.

Korriban is a terrible place to forge, she's told, but those who say it'll contaminate her don't know the world like she does. There's nothing evil about Korriban; it's a place of memory, tragedy, opportunity, and uncompromising reality. Ascetic, for a death world. Death by tuk'ata, by pelko, by terentatek -- par for the course. With a collection of sniper rifles and a nest on the Valley's temple, she joins the pantheon of local killers. She knows the world down to her bones, and knows there's no harm in giving this destruction-monument a taste of creation.

Hammer, forge, tongs and bellows are easily found, ingots too; she was once an alchemist, once ruled an empire from this world. The crystal she chooses is a simple adegan variety from a Padawan's broken lightsabre. The process is that of a Force-imbued blade, nothing immensely special, a millennia-old prelude to the protosabre, rediscovered from half a dozen sources in the modern era. She's stripped to the waist save for a breast band and a leather apron, in the golden-sand courtyard behind the Temple. Smoke rises in a pillar, tugging the hammer with it, faltering again and again. The hammer keeps falling.

She knows she's not alone. Korriban, she feels, should be a solitary experience, and she suspects the planet feels the same way, if for other reasons. Whatever the factors, she knows when she has company. She knows this world that well.


[member="Sarge Potteiger"]
 
Korriban, and by extension it's guardian, weren't wrong. Slowly, the clangs of the hammer grew louder, until it was abundantly clear it was no longer her hammer making the noise... but company. Grey armor was burnished red by the dust of the cold world, even as glaring blue lenses of ice settled onto the forge and the woman at its stead.

This wasn't Ashin, even if there was something familiar about her. Perhaps he'd been lied to. Perhaps he hadn't. Stranger things had happened than a white woman going black. Hell, he'd met folk that had changed species in their time.

But that was neither here nor there. A metal sled of ore was being hauled by one massively sized hand, the two and a half meter figure deadset on her and her forge. "Ashin." A mechanical voice booms, distorted but definitely familiar. "You're a little sunburned."

It might have been a joke if he didn't sound so deadly serious. Coming to a stop some distance away, he let the metal strap he'd been pulling fall to the ground. "And decidedly not riddled with cancer."
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

By reflex, when she sees a figure that size, she glances at the perimeter of the courtyard. Her armor lies there in a tidy pile, and her lightsabre. Surpassing sensitivity to racial and medical issues, taciturn to a fault -- Sarge, even before she gets the sense of who it is. But he has an edge she's never felt in him before. She's gotten good, very good, at reading people, even if there's sixty kilos of durasteel involved. Sarge on a good day goes up to eleven; this, in a turn of phrase she copped from Seydon once, is Sarge turned up to twenty.

"You've put on weight," she says without inflection, laying the hammer against the side of the stone forge. The sword isn't ready, isn't remotely ready, just another unsatisfying test run. "If you're here to finalize me, do you mind if I put on my armor first?"
 
"I am here to do nothing of the sort, old friend." He rumbles through just over 180 kilograms of duraplast, beskar and titanium. "I have come, as I so often do... for your assistance." A paw of a hand motioned to the sled. "Phrik. I need a weapon."

He looks to her, then grabs the metal chain of the sled and with one smooth motion propels it with enough force to slide over towards her. "The kilos have piled on, I'm afraid." He adds in a monotone, heavily distorted voice disturbingly machine-like in that moment.

She wasn't the only one without inflection. "A halberd, of sorts, is what I'm after. Large enough to be easily handled by me, and receptive to being imbued with Force power. Can you do this?"

It was likely the dumbest question he'd ever asked, but this was a new body for her, and that meant she may not quite be up to her old snuff, as it were. She'd been expecting a fight, however. That was Ashin through and through in his experience.
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

She can forge phrik; her armor is made of it, for one. Her eyes track the sled as it drifts across the ground toward her. She gets a hand on it, walks it back, slows it down, her body all tension.

"Options are limited with the Light Side," she says, glancing up at the impassive helm. "I no longer have the luxury of bending the laws of physics to suit my needs. A Force-imbued weapon only works, in any genuine way, if the user is the maker; I could make you your weapon, but it would respond best to me, not to you. There's a way around it, maybe, or at least a way to approximate it. I'd need something personal to you, a crystal or gemstone ideally, a piece of metal or something small and hard. I'd also need to lead you in a certain kind of meditation once the weapon's done. I suppose," she adds after a moment, "it wouldn't have to be personal to you -- I think I could do it with a keepsake from someone who shares a Force bond with you. We may not be working with blood anymore, but even the Light Side version takes sacrifice."
 
"Make it work." The man says, pulling out his old lightsaber and quite audibly cracking it in half to expose a small krayt pearl, polished down to act as a crystal for the blade. He tossed it to her without ceremony. "What kind of meditation are we talking about." He asks, crushing the remainder of the hilt under his boot and grinding it into dust.

"And just so you know where we're going, I'm imbuing it with Force Light." Maybe he had really gone up to 20. So far as he was concerned, he was as normal as he'd ever been. He just had a purpose for once.

Even if that purpose was revenge.
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

She examines the pearl with eyes both physical and spiritual; its has no flaws, no damage. Not that it matters for the integration stage. A nice examples, still. "This should do," she says offhand, her attention on the forge and on the juggernaut. There's a stasis niche, and she slips in her glowing half-sword and lays all durasteel aside. One never mixes metal in some vain attempt at finding the perfect alloy; that way lies Subach.

The bellows are well-made, the ventilation well-planned, and the forge carefully designed. It won't burn hot enough to melt phrik, but if he's brought bars rather than ingots -- he has. She wipes her brow pointlessly; the sweat has baked on by now.

The first pieces of phrik enter the forge. "Whose Light? Your state of mind won't sustain it, unless I'm misinformed, and I'm not strong enough to use it anymore." Ben Watts had given her that knowledge, but she'd only had a handful of chances to employ it.
 
"A man by the name of Ember Rekali, and I haven't been this clear headed in centuries, Ashin." He retorts dryly, head tracking like a turret as he looked around and took several massive steps forward. "It's not so much a weapon as it is a tool. A response. It serves no purpose against the common criminal."

That much went without saying, other than to maybe blind them with radiance. "But what it will do is give me something to use against the Darkness and better protect those around me. A means of matching force with force. The more they pull on the Dark Side, the stronger the Force becomes."

Much like any Jedi, he didn't refer to the Force as the Light Side. But if she were rusty she might be confused. It was hard to tell with some folk.
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

"Rekali can use Light? Thought I knew him." The hammer rises and falls, mating bar to bar, offset in a metallurgical counterpart to bounding overwatch. She speaks between hammerstrikes. "And clearheaded's got nothing to do with it, we both know that.

"Let's talk about realistic-" CLANG. "-expectations for this weapon." CLANG. "Forged by A," CLANG. "Empowered by B," CLANG. "Used by C." CLANG. She sights down the conglomerate of bars. "There are some who say that Force Light can overwhelm anything Dark Side; those people are lucky idiots up against people who believe the same. It's willpower and expectations and headfakery, nothing more. It's like the fools who say there's one best fighting style. With this, you'll be able to-" CLANG. "-shear through some shields-" CLANG. "-and some artifacts."

Again she examines the piece, turns it on its brace of anvil and forgeside. "Don't expect to overwhelm any more than you already do. Will it cut, though? Definitely -- almost as well as a lightsabre, and better than an alchemical blade. It'll treat cortosis ore like tissue paper and cortosis weave or alloy like the substandard metals they generally are; it won't care whether or not they'll stop a lightsabre. It'll notch phrik, beskar, alchemical metal, maybe even hack through with enough full-force impacts. Don't get it in a ysalamir bubble; that'll put it to sleep like any other Force-imbued weapon."

The hammer resumes its canto.
 
"And if I do the empowering?" He asks, massive arms folding over his chest, squat helmet studying her as she worked. "What then?"

There was a pause. "And what do you know of my state of mind." He asks, wanting to know exactly how this information disseminated so quickly. Likely Anaya, but knowledge was power.
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]


"If you do the empowering, assuming you can, the blade will be tied to you at a deep level. Get too close to the edge, the Light will stop working. You want Rekali doing that part, to minimize liability. It'll make the blade less powerful than it might be, but more reliable.

"As for how I know..." She smiles without humor and drives the hammer into the bars. "You talk differently. And you may be huddled behind a sixty-kilo helmet, but these days my daily life depends on reading Masters to one extent or another. I've gotten the knack, such as it is."
 
"Mm, helmet isn't quite that heavy." He remarks quietly, which was the equivalent of saying a tsunami was a small swell. "And how do I talk differently, Ashin." He adds. "Although I can't say the answer is a surprise coming from you." Inhaling slowly, he zoomed in on her work with his HUD.

"An answer that skirts giving any actual information is fairly par for the course."

"I've a few other questions. Two, in fact. One." He pulled out a small Sigil of Hope. "Where can I find more of these?"

It was practically cradled between fingers the size of most peoples forearms. "Two, would it be possible to amplify that weapons power in any way. I want something anathema to the Sith, like the flame to the beast. Something they're instinctively afraid of for fear of being burned. I'm not looking to kill with it - the Light, that is."
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

"As the poet says, you can't always get what you want. Doesn't mean it's not worth trying, of course."

The haft is taking form, over two metres long and almost as big around as her wrist. Irregular, still, but getting there. Phrik is nasty stuff, and she's trying to forge it with a stone furnace and bellows. It's a good thing this isn't her first rodeo.

"No need to call it dissembling, Sarge, it was the truth and the full truth. Detail beyond that..." She shrugs. "How am I supposed to put words to how you talk differently? I know my diction swings back and forth from Vagrant to Empress, but a little discontinuity happens when you go undercover for a few years. The way you talk...no, I can't put it to words. If you want to know what I hear, listen to yourself, then listen to some old recording of yourself. You'll see a difference.

"Sigil of Hope?" She gestures with the hammer, pointing at the neat stack of armor. "Mine's over there, cost me an arm and a leg too. It's saved me more than once, but I'm at a place where I can get by without it. Get some good use out of it. As for the other bit, the amplification...there's precious few Force artifacts that work that way, and precious few that focus as a high-level amplification channel. I could see the Fell Star working for that, but Syn has it in a death grip. Could always melt down that toothpick of Moridena's if you can find it -- she ran enough purity tests through that hunk of junk that it might have some extra resonance with Light. If we're talking about instinctive aversion rather than burning, though, that shift in emphasis might be enough to-"

She breaks off, ponders, mulls it over while hammering the haft into shape. In due course she starts with the blade.

"If you want aversion rather than damage or interference with their Force connection, if you want the Force Light to have that kind of emphasis, maybe you can get what you want after all. That'll be more Rekali's department than mine, granted."
 
"Oh, it'll burn. Of that I'm sure. But I'm not hoping for 'nerve endings alight' burn. Certainly enough to cause some pain, however. But yes, that is his department." He deadpans. "And I don't have old recordings of myself. I'll just take your word for it." Blinking slowly, he looked to the one Ashin pointed out and moved over to pick it up and slip it into a pouch.

"I'll find a third one." He says. "I've a few leads unless you've knowledge of where to find another." There was a contemplative noise at that. "I'm not looking for massive power spikes. A small percentage increase is really all I need right about now. It's a prototype. A fledgling idea.

With time, I could likely forge my own amplification device. This will be a holdover."

He paused. "You might want to make the haft a shade thicker." He adds.
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

This is, all things considered, not the best time to add thickness to the haft, but she hammers out a bar, makes it as long as the haft, then splices it in and finishes rounding it off.

"These were made by Matsu Ike," she says. "The Silvers have most of them, far as I'm aware. I don't have leads on others. One was always plenty for me -- not for the Force battery function, but for the mental defense function. A buzzer, you could say, letting you know when you're under the influence. That's what I'm trying to instil into the sword." She gestures at the stasis heater that's keeping her blade warm. "Who knows whether it'll work. But regardless, if you want more of those, go to Shri-Tal or Voss or whatever. Talk to Iella E'ron -- she'll deal fairly with you."

She resumes work on the blade. "What kind of halberd are you after? There's any number of variations, proportions, related weapons that go by that name. Sketch the head in the dust."
 
Kneeling down, finger pressing into the dust and dirt, he began to draw a perfect image of what he wanted. In reality, the image was on his HUD, and he was simply tracing it onto the ground. But she'd not know that. It got the job done either way.

"I'm not fond of the Silvers, but I will seek them out if need be."

He made a strange noise. "I'm not sure if I would be able to find Diana's sword, but I will mediate on my own weapon for some time before deciding a course of action regarding that. Perhaps I can imbue it with enough of myself to make a passable facsimile of what hers did."
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

"Hers was a pretentious trinket made by a teenage Knight who'd never done serious metalwork in her life. It was effective because the people she fought had never seen anything like it before. They feared the unknown. That'll work in your favor, having hers as precedent; they may not fear the unknown anymore, but those stories grow in the telling. Legend, legacy-" Her hammer descends in a cadence. "-whatever."

A thick and simple blade takes form, then a straightforward back-spike and a small, hefty crossguard. She adds mass to the endcap, too; a good halberd needs a certain kind of balance, whether or not its wielder can bend rebar in his hands.

"Now here's one secret that I'm comfortable taking from alchemy," she says, crossing to her gear. She produces a pair of large whetstones, takes one, gets to work on the edge. "Svoltan rhyolite, best whetstones in the galaxy. Nobody quite knows how it does what it does, though some alchemists have made rituals of it, but the edge will last just about forever."
 
"That sounds like her." He adds, voicing his first actual opinion on her ever. In all this time, he'd never told anyone how he'd felt about her, barring that she had more than irked him by leaving him behind on the battlefield. That still angered him a little.

But it was an anger he could control readily. "Good. Last thing I want to worry about is trying to sharpen phrik on a regular basis." Pushing himself up slowly, he watches as the blade takes shape, a smile forming on his face. This would be excellent.

"Why become a Jedi again, Ashin. After all this time."
 

Ashin Varanin

Professional Enabler
[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

"Because I had it all, and it wasn't enough. Love, security, followers, adoration, technological superiority, purpose, justification, reputation, competence, knowledge, titles, assets, money, victory. I had everything that most people would and do kill for. For me, for my life, there's no substitute for a working relationship with my conscience. So I did what I had to do to get that back." She grins, all tooth. "One of the most Sith-like things I've ever done was get busted to Jedi Padawan. Being a Sith, being a real Sith, is about doing absolutely anything necessary to get exactly what you want and be exactly what you want to be. I wanted to be at peace again, or something like it, so I made every sacrifice that got in the way, short of my life -- and when I went to the Five, they only taught me on the condition that I use their teachings ahead of schedule. I'm bound for an untimely death as a just reward for what I've done. And knowing that, I can live with some semblance of peace."

Once the quenched and sharpened halberd has fully cooled, she tosses the massive weapon to Sarge, with a wrenching strain in back and shoulders. "Now you integrate the pearl, meditate on it. It'll take a while. This is almost molecular-level manipulation; do it wrong and the whole thing will be ruined."
 
He caught it with one hand, as one would catch a child's toy, and hefted the pearl with the other. Inserting it into the weapon, he lowered himself to the ground, massive legs folding under his body as he laid the weapon out before him. Meditation had been his calling card as a Jedi.

Should one have need of finding him, he was almost guaranteed to be in meditation. "I won't fail." He says bluntly, silencing his mind and slowing his breath, beginning the process within himself first. Once satisfied, he reached outward, extending the experience to the weapon and the pearl that would mark it as his own.

Thankfully, this was well within his realm of expertise. Even if he had to sit still for days. And so, much as he had done with his saber in the years before, so too did he do with this weapon, binding it to him through the crystal and the Force, merging them until they became a single entity.
 

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