House Keth Commits itself to the War of Light. (Open)

[Taiden Keth]

Echani Perfection in poise and their precision timing. They had tried to see the Echani Rise, and the brewing war called, they would not be left behind. Keth had a part to play in any big war, they were not Jedi, they once were honorable and perhaps again the name would be. Would they find their calling to the light here? Time would tell.

Flawless white brilliance in their clothing, a purity in their strength of spirit. 200 Hundred of House Keth had arrived on board the ship, two hundred of the house guard. Truly they were here for the war, but they had honor, discipline, focus. Melee combat specialists, living through combat and the perfection of war.

This would change them, Taiden was here to reclaim his ancestor's honor, and the Jedi creed. To reclaim his place in the code and the war for the light. A gleaming silver vibroblade across his back, and vibrodaggers at the hip.

An unsheathing of the sword, he knelt down and laid the blade upon the floor, kneeling with it, and resting beside it. The blade of house Keth, committed to this war of light, to bring light into the darkness and take it further than it had ever gone before. Further than his ancestor Raien Keth ever had.

"The Echani Rise with you."

Spoiler

Changing the Sith tags as we speak. He'll be played much more echani in his motivations, taking the fight to the Sith

 

[Manu Xextos]

He had sat in a room staring at his armour. Time cursed with the penalty of centuries of intents, of extrapolations upon the man as he took one more of a lengthy series of deep breaths.
'I should pitch it out the airlock, where it belongs.' He couldn't find out, no where could he see the Kae. What did she look like? Where was she? Did she have Erryn's face? To wear such a signet of centuries past must have been a farce. Had he asked @[member="Kei Amadis"] for new fatigues, he would have received them, yet still Manu would not let go, would not detach from his recently awoken past. In the dim illumination of the small suite, Manu picked up a cloth and began to polish his armour.

Once proud filigree crafted by gnarled Echani craftsmen, old men and women bent low by Palpatine yet still a few remembered time without him. Those had been the ones to craft the new armour for the Kae's Consort. Salvation, it had been called. Pieces of salvation. 'Why hold on to a dead idea?' The Echani, his beloved race that he fought and stepped in tandem with death to save fell in the end to the deeper darks.

Raien had won.

He stared, casting his mind into a farseeing meditation until flickers of light burst onto the hideous black. Two hundred. No, two hundred and one. Achingly, Manu put on his armour and walked. One last go round, then he'd pitch it in the void. One last moment for memory's sake. Erryn had been proud to see her Echanar in it, even on the days of war.

A tug in the waters of the Living Force had the seven foot Echani Knight walking where he hadn't intended. His jaw set as he felt more of it, a familiar twinge but not of the familiarity he was expecting to lurk in the shadows. @[member="Taiden Keth"] knelt with the sword of Manu's most recognized enemy and laid it on the ground.

The Redeemer's breath caught, he stood shoulders back, face forward, his skin and hair a shining white, the articles of his former state wrapped around grieve and chest plate - all decoration but for some mean Echani design. On his hip, two lightsabers and one Echani staff emblazoned with his Houses - the House Najwa, the House Kae. Lips parted. Taiden had every look of the man Manu once knew, hidden on Wodenstam against his brother's evil. Manu's hand touched on the hilt of the Echani staff, waiting for a conflict. Waiting for the inevitable war with Keth.

In silence he bore into Taiden Keth's face, his body language, the supplication of his prone form. In the silence, ocean currents curled round Manu's memories and purged clean the rising bile. He beat his fist to his chest and held the other hand out to levitate the Keth Heirloom up to his vision.

"Echani Rise, oh Descendent Keth I know your face." Manu whispered. His own inner chiding held him back, he knew this Keth visage, but would Keth know him? Had any of Manu's family remained? Was he just one lost Echani wearing a set of antique armour, or would the Consort retain his dignity in the eyes of an aged House which lasted beyond the villainy of its most decrepit member?

"I know your face. Rise and speak." Would @[member="Taiden Keth"] be the Echani who welcomed or exiled Manu from his people till the end of time?

 

[Taiden Keth]

A turn of the head, it was a a small gesture, but concentrated all the weight of his attention on Manu, the remainder of Taiden's body remaining motionless. "I am here to be the light of the Echani, to pay recompense for my Ancestor's actions. I will not be another Betrayer. I lay my life down to change what he brought to us."

Echani's carried the face of their parent, the son of the father, and the daughter of the mother. Taiden thought he knew exactly who Manu was, the ancestor's of the Xextos, his face that of a statue Taiden held important. Exactly what had been done between the two of their family lines was known to him, it was a story that would take an age to tell.

Taiden raised up, offering his sword to the other. To an Echani the blade would be considered as important as his arm, that is what he was offering to Manu. "A Xextos," he nodded once, "this is yours. My life for my ancestor's betrayal." The commitment was there, and it was now Manu's to decide what happened with it. If nothing else Taiden had Raien's gravity in the statements he made.

Standing silently, completely still, an absence of motion, and dressed in the purity of white clothing, as if no piece of dirt could touch its surface. Taiden awaited the judgment of the older man. Not realising just how old Manu was, or even that he was the Manu Xextos of old.

@[member="Manu Xextos"]

 

[Manu Xextos]

"You remember it still?" The ancestral sin maintained in Taiden's bloodline added another breath of a creeping promise. Perhaps influence was a measure of immortality, that it reverberated in crystal clarity long after one passed from one plane to the next. Perhaps it hadn't been a hedonistic momentum which locked the proud bearing of his married House into Manu's imprisonment.

Fingers splayed forward for the blade, Manu could not accept. Would not accept the gift. "Four hundred years of penance." A twinge called him, the aching black pit Raien had impaled in his chest on Sullust which stole his voice and send his broken soul up a mountain until the Dark Mass could be abated, yet not expunged. Manu lived with the fragment of Raien's Sith Heart all his life since, and always would. The crystal sleep had shifted it, frozen and encased in one slim act of love within many of hate. 'Ahani, what have you done?' his last thought and now his prayer.

Manu's hand took the sword. He held it to Taiden's throat, brushing the silver white hair from Taiden's shoulder with the blade and stared.

If anyone had the right it was this man, if anyone had the right to take that penance, Manu stood as the executioner and the worthy judge. Written in his muscle was the story Taiden knew well, yet raw and immediate. No time had dulled it, but increased the ache and dread into a balm of threading agony. 'I lost my wife. My children. I couldn't grow old with Erryn. Every failure, every fight deeper...' He still held himself as one trained by Crimson Guard's daughters, he moved as noble and resolute as he needed to become for his long-dead wife. Echani martial arts must have diverged in four centuries, but here was a practitioner with no root in the present. Manu held the sword, his facial features shifting from wonder to vehemence to mercy to pride. "This blade has lost none of its balance, since last I met with its keeper. In those times, the Dark was swollen and engorged in Keth blood, but not now. Let the past be done."

A pang in his chest, as if somewhere in a crystalline planetoid someone was stabbing at the encasing prison surrounding Manu's spirit. His shoulders and neck flexed and quivered, as the statement gave way to a flowing peace.

Calm, in the face of his hubris, Manu held the sword handle for @[member="Taiden Keth"]. "I admire the literary works of Aiden Keth. My ... ancestors were rescued by Melody Keth and the House of Xextos owes the House of Keth gratitude outside the sword.

I am well met by a House whose warriors are well received for the battles ahead."

 

[Taiden Keth]

Judgment for a family who had been ever in darkness now seeking redemption, carrying a blade that had done so much harm. Echani read from motion. The stance, the muscle, Taiden watched it all. The strike was literally a breath away, there was not the slightest flinch, not the slightest withdrawal. A symbol of his pride and house on his skin, so very close and it would have been a just death for a warrior who bore so much responsibility for all Raien Keth had done to their race. But, for the repeating thought he felt somewhere beneath it all.

Let the past be done.

Xextos, the sword returned from their hand, an offer which might mend a very broken bond. Given to one from Aiden Keth's line, though he bore the Keth name, his body language showed his birth father's just as much as his face. Taiden stood, as calm as he ever was, there was a long pause the silent engagement a mark of respect, and a commitment.

Aiden's heritage, "we still keep the records, those they could save." Taiden's body language flinched slightly downward, he would no doubt have been the scholar his direct ancestor was, if he'd of had half the chance. Instead the fire of the warrior was kindled to carry the Keth family name, but it could be tempered with study.

The house guard, "they are yours," Taiden indicated, directly to Manu. Though he was accepted, and not just into the Army of Light, but his family's past was accepted by the only worthy judge left alive. Non of this lightened his spirit, it was a history drenched in war, and it was all he had studied of his past. It did give him hope in the coming war, while other's might waver, he'd find redemption.

"I vow to be a Jedi." It would take time, "teach me their ways," but the way Taiden stood said it was as much of a commitment as offering his sword.

"Save the Keth name."

@[member="Manu Xextos"]

 

[Manu Xextos]

"What... how did you lose them?" Manu shook his head, hadn't it been a few paltry weeks since last he opened one of Aiden's volumes. "The prose is beautiful, it's a shame." Curious, vocal tenses. To speak in the present of that which was past. Manu paced across the bredth of the troops, stature resolute and commanding confidence and dignity as one who had done so before, in many battle hardened times. He eyed the spreads of their shoulders and the groundings of their feet. They were solid, stalwart as a Keth's Houseman should be. Raien always loved Djem So. As he eyed them all, he knew to add words to their procurement in his wake would diminish the momentum of being led to a different Master. He let his motion speak of battles and tactical minds. 'I will take you proudly into battle, from whence victory will follow.' Manu nodded briskly at @[member="Taiden Keth"] and was about to speak, when the apparition continued.

'Save the Keth name.'

Manu's feet slid from their grounding, a stabbing weakness to his knees. To a Human it meant nothing, to the two hundred Echani present, Manu's foundations rocked from Taiden's blow. 'You ask me, ME to save Keth's name? Me from whom he stole so much?' Nearly ready to grasp the sword afresh, Manu's jaw worked. His lungs heaved and pupils dilated. Save the House of Keth. Redeem them.

Wasn't that the original intent? Back before Raien became Manu's vicious underbelly hadn't a bright faced empathic teenager wanted to make it all better for the Echani he had only begun to know? Hadn't he wanted to redeem Keth once? Hadn't he promised Raia, Melody, even Aiden that redemption would be nigh at his hand? 'How could you ask this of me, son of Aiden, brother of my scourge?' The pain so fresh.

The gentle chiding of the light drifted again to Manu's servant heart. He once again felt the love which made jealous his mother and sent her to fouler places against his name. The divine eminence spoke of living peace, living patience, living kindness and mercy always mercy, forever mercy. The map of Manu's face spoke of living pains, never fading but concealed in recency and compressed now in one slim meeting of the Force's design. The map's curves and borders softened and to the young descendant Manu offered his hand.

"I will teach you what I know of them, for I too took time apart from their ways. Still, the Light is resolute as our keeper. May it be done, would you promise your life to me as my student. As my protege and I your liege? Would you become brother in battle, as our warriors have? I, like the Light, have no business with half measures. We will redeem the Keth Name in the starfire of war, and come out blameless, you and I."

 

[Taiden Keth]

"You have heard of the man that took them." He had no need to say it, his body language was stating the all too obvious and unfortunate fact. For a man who'd been gone four hundred years Raien had taken so much from history, just one more wreck in his wake. Yet Aiden's scrolls might survive, Taiden had never been to the archives at which his direct ancestor Aiden made his home, it was just what had been repeated and handed down to him by his family as a legend. That Raien had destroyed his brother and everything he held dear, burning his home, and their name.

Manu's reaction was weighed and measure, it screamed to life what was ahead of him, reading every detail of how the stance was shaken, the grounding of the man tested. It was natural that a Xextos would harbour this depth of emotion for a Keth, they were of royal blood, but why did this Xextos have such a severe reaction to him?

"What is your name?"

His scourge? Taiden heard the words that followed, but had already dropped back to one knee at the reaction, head bowed, acknowledging just who he was stood before. It didn't seem possible. This was the man he had stood with, locked in combat with his ancestor, frozen in crystal a statue... till today. A living one.

"Together." Taiden said awaiting the call to rise. "Together I will repay you, everything that was taken. Every... single... thing..." Piercing gaze, birthing an inner light and fire of his spirit. Kneeling still Taiden extended his arm warrior to warrior, not the strength in it of Raien Keth, but it was there, the possibility to be the Jedi his ancestor could have always been.

@[member="Manu Xextos"]

 

[Manu Xextos]

"Why? Why would Raien do that, too? Hey there, I know, I'll burn my brother's work. You know. . . you know that is what Raien would do. For spite." The hold Manu kept on his appearance was slipping as the conversation came easier, and as the dawning light entered Taiden's eyes the former Jedi felt that self same release of grace which bore him on his way and cradled his every slumber.

Manu's muscles worked between restraint and release, he battled old convictions and penalties against Taiden's offered grace. Standing before Taiden's bent body, Manu saw out to the collective of men and women who stood in silent witness to the tale of history written across his own shoulders. "My name, House of Keth, is Manu Kae. Born of House Najwa. Knight of the Jedi Order. Lifemate of Erryn Kae, father of Divya Kae, General of the Queen's Guard and woemaker of Raien Keth. I raised Keth's children in my House, and committed to eternal battle with your Ancestor gladly. I awoke from the crystal tomb a couple of months ago and have been searching long for a battle which would fulfill the hatred in my veins for Sithspawn.

My wife is dead. My children, of whom I only held one, are dead and every scant modicum of happiness and peace is in their memory. As my Kae is resting in our Ancestor's arms, I renounce my title as her lonely Consort and take the Title of her House.

Rise Son of Keth, and I, Manu Xextos, forefather of the Royal House, will redeem you."

In this battle to fight Sith, Manu would indeed allow the man to rise, and be redeemed. For Manu the thought came with a terrible urgency. He would cleanse this House and expunge the wounds upon it. He would remake it in images of fairer things. Taiden's words succored him with that hopeful chance of vindication for his ills. All was not for nothing, the nihilist was dead at the hands of the divine. And now the mission could continue as it was meant. "For I greatly miss Aiden and Raia's company. I will remind you of the good in you. That, and I'm gonna need to know your name."

Army of Light just gained one heck of an Echani hit squad.