Private Initiative

[Darth Virelia]

"Another Generation."

- TAG: Zavik Maltheris

It was a cold, lightless night upon Ruusan.

The world had become increasingly important to Virelia's studies of the Sith and the long decay of their dominion. Here, upon these scarred plains and forgotten caverns, the old Sith had made their final stand. Countless horrors beyond comprehension had been unleashed upon the surface of the planet before darkness itself was finally dragged screaming into the grave.

What remained afterward had never truly impressed her. Mere inheritors. Lesser beings masquerading as gods while still clinging desperately to law, family, morality, and the comforting illusion that the rest of the galaxy was too frightened to pursue the truth waiting beneath it all.

It was a lesson the galaxy had taught Virelia many times throughout her life, and so she had returned once more beneath the guise of rumor and hearsay.

Whispers had reached her ears of a young, masterless apprentice wandering the ruins of Ruusan. It was always a nightmare to track down an individual, yet even the possibility of another soul touched by the dark side was not an opportunity the Tyrant Queen would permit herself to ignore.

Such individuals mattered.

Through curation, teaching, corruption, and discovery, such souls could become instruments capable of reshaping reality itself. Whether the apprentice would prove worthy of investment remained uncertain, but uncertainty had never once discouraged her pursuit of power.

Her agents had already provided a rough estimate of the elusive apprentice's last known position. Conveniently, it rested near another site Virelia had intended to investigate eventually: a buried Sith temple hidden deep beneath the crust of the planet. The thought alone was enough to stir her curiosity.

Snow drifted slowly across the ruined landscape as her shuttle settled against the frostbitten earth. The boarding ramp lowered with a hydraulic hiss into the bitter wind, violet light briefly spilling across the darkness before being swallowed whole by the night. Then came the sound of metal boots descending onto frozen soil.

Virelia emerged in silence.

Obsidian armour drank in the pale moonlight, thin veins of violet luminescence pulsing softly beneath its surface like the heartbeat of something alive beneath stone. Her cloak shifted violently in the wind behind her, though the woman beneath it remained perfectly still, six violet lenses fixed upon the distant horizon where shattered ruins clawed upward from the snow like the bones of the dead.

 

[Zavik Maltheris]

in a small cold cave not far from the hidden temple, 3 metal tables where laid out in a half circle. the left most table was filled with bits of metal and other mechanical components. a few larger parts laid againstthe legs of the table on the ground. the table on the far right had tools. on the middle table lay one of the inhabitants of the planet. what once was a regular human now a twisted combination of machine and flesh. the shoulders where now bare metal joints, the legs fully mechanical digitigrade legs, the lower torso had a large metal band constricting it. zavik was currently carefully removing the mans face. once it finally separated from the skull he said to himself. "finally, you really did not want to let that go did you? do not worry, i will give you a better one of course." as he tossed the face to the side.

he had come to the the planet to explore and examinethe old ruins here but when he arrived at one of the distant settlements he saw a few people competing in a foot race and was struck with a idea he couldn't not work on.