First Reply Into The Darkness

[Tamsin Starfall]

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Theme: Into The Darkness
Location: Coruscant after the fall
Equipment: Twin Omens | Multi-Tool | Stars Enchained | Mind Crown

The conclave had ended and the small figure of Tamsin Starfall walked through the broken city alone. Her dark cloak dragging on the ground as she walked through the smoke and debris filled streets of the upper parts of the great city. Deep in thought on her next steps forward just her and the demon that lived in her. She despised it but yet it was the only family she had left, the only thing that now fought at her side.

Her sights drifted to the broken and crumbling buildings, the signs of conquest on this world once more. They said this place scarred and cursed, from what the demon had told her she was sure it was. It was haunted by so many new and ancient lords but perhaps the demon was right that they might together be able to revive it. It was the one good act she felt the demon had done planting the garden deep below in the depths of the sewer of this place.

As she walked, she came to a dinner, all its windows shattered and its doors broken off its hinges. Her steps turned as she felt something pulling her to it. It wasn't the pull of the force just a pull of curiosity that had struck her.

As she approached her booted feet crunched on broken glass and she moved past the broken doors. It was eerie almost how the dinner was empty devoid of life but still plates of half-eaten food and now cold cups of stim still sat out. The people here left quickly when the attack happened.

The Dinner was one of those retro styles she had seen on the holotv but had never actually been too. She walked past several booths, her left hand running along the edge of the now empty tables as she did so. Until she came to a booth at the end of the row, it was clear other than some broken glass on its seat and tabletop. Gently she brushed it away and sat down.

She looked out the now glassless window, out unto the torn landscape of the city. She reached into her cloak and pulled out pack of those things her sister used to smoke. She couldn't remember the name of them and the package was unlabeled. Her hands fiddled with the package as she just stared out past the city at the skyline.

 

[Morta Izanami]

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Via Dolorosa - by Tiamat

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Location: Coruscant
Tag: Tamsin Starfall

Morta Izanami tilted her head, emerald eyes glinting with a soft, wandering curiosity as she gazed upon the dust-choked booths and shattered glass, now visited by a stranger. "Ah now, only the dead do haunt where the living once thrived; more's the pity," she whispered in lilting dark tones, a wistful smile ghosting her lips, "for I did love this wee diner so."

The witch moved from her shadowy conclave, and lingered near the counter's fractured edge, one gloved finger tracing idle patterns through the dust wrought from its demise. Her gaze drifted to the newcomer, slow, measuring, and bright with a wolf-like curiosity, taking in every detail from boot to brow as though she were a storybook figure strayed from her proper page.

A crooked smile tugged at her lips, amused more than wary, as neon light flickered weakly above her raven-colored hair, its white streaks capturing the remaining souls of the light, like a dying halo; the last breaths from a dying diner.

"Ah now," she chimed at last, her voice lilting with playful mischief, "the Sith are a thorough sort; true artisans, almost engineers of destruction." She cast a sweeping glance about the ruined booths and caved-in ceiling, feigning a theatrical sigh. "Shame they couldn't leave this place alone, but then again," she added with a soft, flirtish lilt, eyes dancing back to her, "the food they served was terrible anyway."

 

[Tamsin Starfall]

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Theme: Into The Darkness
Location: Coruscant after the fall
Equipment: Twin Omens | Multi-Tool | Stars Enchained | Mind Crown
Tag: Morta Izanami

Her eyes were still gazing out the broken window as the sultry words enter her ears. Her head did not turn though as she smelt the air around, the perfume undeath filling her nostrils. What was speaking to her was dangerous, yet Tamsin knew she was worse. Well not her exactly but the thing that shared her body was.

"Was the food not rare enough for your taste?" She asked still not yet turning to look at the woman behind her. Her hand fiddled with package of drugs in her hand. "I will warn you now my blood is poison." It was the truth her blood was infected but not with something that would kill a person living or undead but transform them.

"You know this, Dinner? Tell me something about it's history?"

 

[Morta Izanami]

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Via Dolorosa - by Tiamat

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Location: Coruscant
Tag: Tamsin Starfall

She waved the woman's comments away as though they were no heavier than pipe smoke in a warm tavern, a playful, lilting laugh slipping from her lips like a fiddle's teasing note. "Ah now, the rareness o' the diner's fare is a matter for poets an' liars alike, based sorely off one's personal views," she said in a soft soothing cadence, eyes glinting with mirth, "but fret not, Miss, I've a taste only for the wicked souls, an' that judgment rests on me own reckonin'; and I have no favorable taste to poison." She flashed her vampire fangs in jest, a roguish sparkle dancing there, before adding with a sly tilt of her head, "A history lesson, is it? Ah, me truest specialty, so it is."

The witch drew herself up upon the dusty countertop as though it were a storyteller's dais, her knee-high boots swinging idly while her fingers traced idle circles through the settled grit. Her voice, when it came, was wrapped in the soft lilt of old cold, dark shores. "Ah, this place now, it weren't always a hollow shell an' sighin' wood, duracrete, and metal," she said smiling.

"It was raised by two, sister an' brother, bright-eyed as dawn over green forests, buildin' these walls with hopes stacked higher than the bottles and food crates behind the scenes. They served all manners o' exotic fare an' drink, sayin' they'd make a difference in the district, feedin' bellies an' liftin' weary hearts; but sorrow came early, the brother passed beyond the veil, an' the sister, brave soul, carried the dream alone upon her back."

She leaned slightly forward, her golden gaze glinting in the dim light, voice lowering like a conspirator's hymn. "An' carry it she did, so well that even the grand folk o' the once Galactic Senate took to darkenin' her door. Oh aye, senators in fine robes, slippin' in for food, spirits, an' the comfort o' shadows where pryin' eyes an' listenin' ears dared not linger. Deals were whispered over steaming plates, alliances poured with amber drink, or cold and steaming beverages, an' secrets weighed heavier than credits upon these very counters. For a time, it was a fine place; warm, lively, hummin' with the quiet thunder o' history bein' shaped between bites an' toasts. But the food, ack."

Then Morta gave a soft, crooked smile, one edged in rueful humor. "But the Sith, ah, they thought otherwise, so it seems. Mayhap they've poor palettes for "good" food an' better company; or mayhap their strike upon this diner were but a cruel accident o' war's blind hand, not me place to whisper a judgment upon folks. Still now, the true villains in the tale…" She clicked her tongue lightly, fangs glinting as she spoke. "Why, that self-proclaimed Galactic Empire; loud in their promises o' protectin' citizens, yet silent when places like this fell to ruin. An' that, me dear, is the bitterest taste o' all."

She slipped lightly from the countertop, boots kissing the floor with a hollow tap, and she brushed the dust from her backside with unbothered grace, as though the ruin itself were but stage dressing. She cast the woman a sidelong look, curiosity glimmering beneath the silk weight of her gaze. "So, tell me now, what manner o' nightmares, or dreams, led ye wanderin' to this now forsaken diner? Nothin' in this wide cosmos happens by chance; mayhap ye were drawn here by unseen threads, or simply opened the wrong door, either way, ah, out with it, lass. Your turn to weave a story."

 

[Tamsin Starfall]

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Theme: Into The Darkness
Location: Coruscant after the fall
Equipment: Twin Omens | Multi-Tool | Stars Enchained | Mind Crown
Tag: Morta Izanami

Tamsin smirked to herself and turned her head finally to look at the woman as they perched themselves on the countertop. Tamsin's eyes pitch black unless you stared into them deeply enough where you could see a burning orange ring around the iris. She listened intently to the story of those that built this place and phases of time that passed over it. She did not say a word as the creature before her weaved her tale so elegantly.

As the story moved by a picture had been weaved in her mind of this place before this moment in the here and now. She could see it all around her for a moment the sister, the loss of the brother, and the secrets being spilled on the walls. Then it came to her, the question raised as the woman before asked for a tale.

"Not a dream, always a nightmare. You say your judgement is laid on the wicked, then I am the black abyss." That orange ring around Tamsin's Iris seemed to grow ever so slightly, getting a tinge brighter. "You want a story very well."

Her eyes stared directly into Morta's but it wasn't exactly like they were staring into them like they were staring right through her. "The last time I walked upon this desecrated corpse of a world I was pulled from the land of the dead summoned to end all life upon it's surface." How long ago was that time was so weird it was hard to remember.

"Well not me exactly, a version of me. This skin suit I wear is fairly young created for a purpose." The words of Tamsin and the Demon that slithered under her skin melded and spoke as one as the eyes started to glow orange.

"High above the city I was summoned into a landing craft by a shaman of the Maw. I was Rhand then the most destructive force that only sought to snuff out all life and bring about sweet entropy. I had snuffed out life on Byss and Csilla at that point, brought destructive force to the Valley of Dark Lords. I have laid more worlds to waste then you could imagine and killed uncountable numbers."

It wasn't a brag just a matter of fact, and her tone did not seem proud nor sad about it as she spoke. The Demon cared nothing about the lives it had taken but the girl whose body this was had to live with the torture and memory of all the destruction it had caused.

"Summoned I came to destroy, end this place once and for all. But high above those that had let me take lives of so many on Byss now came to aid the same alliance they once sought to destroy. Came to stop the destructive force they once used themselves against the alliance."

It was funny to the demon, how allies always eventually became enemies. Then how some enemies became allies.

"They threw me from the craft I was summoned into. I remember the fall and a moment of darkness then I woke up and…" Tamsin looked over her shoulder out through the broken street towards where crumbled statue was. "I landed right over there, I saw this dinner. I thought to myself, what a peaceful simple life the people who ran it must have. I wondered to myself, if reality wasn't so broken, if I could of had such a life. It was but a momentary thought."

She turned back to the woman on the counter Tamsin's eyes having turned fully into infernos of sulphuric orange. "You saw who the people here were, heard the secrets whispered in these walls by Alliances and Empires. I only ever saw an empty dinner after war ravaged it. The people here never mattered to me nor the words they spoke. Figments of a reality I rejected so long ago. Yet I was responsible for so much pain in their lives. The Empire that crumbled today was built on the foundation of what the Maw started. Today I stand on the side that destroyed the last remnants of that foundation. So, in brief nostalgia of a nightmare made me walk this path. That's why I came here but the girl…"

She once again pointed to herself. "….She came to find who she was and who she will be." She gently grabbed the unlabeled pack of Cigarra's that had belonged to Tamsin's sister. "Tell me, do you believe in fate?"

 

[Morta Izanami]

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Via Dolorosa - by Tiamat

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Location: Coruscant
Tag: Tamsin Starfall

The witch continued to sit upon the dusty countertop, still as a carved figurehead upon an old seafaring prow, her golden eyes fastened upon the girl as though even a blink might scatter the tale to the winds. She listened, not merely with ears, but with the quiet gravity of one who had gathered centuries of sorrows not her own. As the 'voice' within the girl spoke of summoning's, being the cold, still hand of Death, and the eventual casting aside, Morta's expression dimmed to something thoughtful, almost mournful.

Her gaze drifted then to the diner's broken window, stealing outward to the bruised sky beyond, as if trying to mark the very patch of skies where the demon had fallen, like the last ember cast from some holy war in the firmament, the defeated hurled down from radiant heights to ash and exile below.

Her fingers tapped once against the counter's edge; a slow, contemplative rhythm. "Ah now, bein' discarded," she said at last, her voice steeped in her thick brogue, "that's a hard drink for any soul, or entity, to swallow. They seldom cherish what stands beside 'em 'til the hour comes they're starin' at the empty space where it once was. Truth be told, they needed ye far more than ever ye needed them; but pride's a blinder thicker than any fog."

She tilted her head slightly, studying the girl anew, not with fear, but with keen, curious regard. "I'll confess, in the centuries I've haunted this galaxy, I've never met a Demon before, flesh to flesh as it were; though I've heard the Nightsisters whisper o' such entities in their shadowed rites. So, as ye stand my first, well now, pleasure to meet ye, truly, Rhand."

She folded one leg over the other atop the counter, posture easy but her eyes sharpened with ancient knowing. "As for Fate, ah, those all-encompassin' hags," she went on, a faint smirk tugging her lips, "forever muddlin' in mortal lives with their threads an' shears. Them, I'm familiar with; their touch lingers in more tales than I care to count. Do I believe in it, this grand Fate?"

She recalled, as a young child, the stories told over fires from the elders in her coven back on Kashyyyk; on those nights when the village gathered together to hear the Wise One's speak, but then, her mind was young and unshaped, and she believed they were stories conjured to put fear in the minds and hearts of both children and doubters. Only had she paid more attention to the story's morals, she might have avoided her current state of being undead, but her pride tempted the hags; and she paid the ultimate price.

She gave a small, thoughtful hum. "I'd say only a fool tempts Fate outright, an' fouler still the one who rebukes those weavers an' string-cutters too carelessly. For whether ye name it destiny or mischief, there's power in the hands that spin a life's thread; an' wisdom in not tuggin' it overmuch."

He gaze lingered upon the possessed girl, upon the Demon within as much as the flesh without, her expression a curious weave of sympathy and intrigue. "So, where d'ye wander from here, Rhand? Will ye be seekin' vengeance upon the hands that wronged ye, whilst this meat suit o' yours walks her own soul-searchin' road? For it seems Fate's woven our paths together tonight, a Demon and a Witch, an' I'll have ye know, I'm no stranger to revenge; nor to a grand adventure."

 

[Tamsin Starfall]

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Theme: Into The Darkness
Location: Coruscant after the fall
Equipment: Twin Omens | Multi-Tool | Stars Enchained | Mind Crown
Tag: Morta Izanami (Sorry for the delay)

The demon in the girls let a wicked little grin cross her face at being called Rhand. One of many names she had collected over her very long life. She knew well she would gain even more overtime. Still being called, that did bring her a small bit of pride.

"Oh, I assure you, you have met many demons. There are many, we all have our own reasons and natures. Not all are so willing to show themselves the way I do." The Demon knew many like itself, walking in human skin playing pretender to the will of the fates. Yet all of them had defied it in some way or another. All had their own agendas and goals, hers was to see the end.

"Only whispers from my sisters of Dathomir. Interesting, how the mighty have fallen from the truth. They used to be able to create demons." The demon hadn't step foot on the world since the day of their exile. It was among the places it had yet to return to since coming back to this existence.

"The Fate's are indeed a cruel old shrews." Older than the demon itself though they had once long ago tried to correct that problem. It hadn't gone exactly as planned and now that soul was stolen from them locked away in a prison they could not yet reach. Yet one day it would find the key and take the power she was owed.

The undead woman before was right the fates always seemed to know how to keep you from totally usurping there power. She could feel it sense it that perhaps this woman before her had once attempted to fight the fates and paid a price. Then the demon had done the same but she had no regrets for anything she had done or what she would do.

"My vengeance isn't on those that wronged me in the past. They are dead, I have seen their last dream crushed. They are ashes in the wind, no my war is who it always has been with the fates. The people who live with in it that are puppets to it are just temporary distractions. "

The demon cared little for the people of this existence, she didn't really see them as real. Figments of fates imagination, roadblocks to stop one from seeing the truth that fate was the enemy not each other.

"So, I doubt the fates brought us together, to start a war against them. As for the girl and her path it is to gain power and knowledge then be sacrificed for my full return." She didn't hide it the girl trapped in her mind in this moment already knew that truth. The girl had tried to fight it but all those who offered to help her fight that fate were gone now. The Demon held all the cards.


"So do you want to help me kill the fates?"

 

[Morta Izanami]

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Via Dolorosa - by Tiamat

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Location: Coruscant
Tag: Tamsin Starfall

She sat in a hush that seemed older than the silence itself, listening as the Demon's voice uncoiled through the air like a ribbon of power drawn from some netherworld. She inclined her head at intervals, a slow, deliberate motion; not in submission, but in acknowledgment of certain barbed truths that pricked her curiosity.

More than once her lips parted, as if to interrupt, to press a question into the wound of its monologue, yet she restrained herself with visible effort, fingers tightening within the folds of her dark sleeves. There was a scholar's hunger in her stillness, a predator's patience; she would let the creature empty its abyssal lungs before she began her dissection.

Then came the proposal.

The Demon's proposal coiled through her thoughts like a blasphemous litany, to kill fate itself, and she found her mind circling the notion with dreadful fascination, wondering whether such a primordial execution could be wrought by will and cunning alone, and whether the ancient architect of suffering did not, in truth, deserve the judgement.

"Well now, isn't that a proposal to set the mind turnin' and the heart pacin', the kind that keeps a soul awake long after the body has rotted away," she said, a cold smile curling on the edges of her lips.

The very idea was intoxicating and profane, an intrigue so vast it threatened to eclipse reason, for what greater rebellion could there be than to lay hands upon destiny and silence its tyrannical pulse?

The witch's laughter was soft, almost lilting, yet it carried an undercurrent of sepulchral mirth as she tilted her head and regarded the Demon with a sidelong gleam. "To kill Fate, is that it then," she mused, her voice winding about the moonless dark with a cadence touched by distant unmarked tombs.

"Is it that simple then, just to draw the blade and strike it clean; or is it only a fool's bright fancy, good for warmin' the hands on a cold night and nothin' more?" Her fingers slowly traced idle sigils in the dust, as though testing the weight of the thought. "Ah, I've me quarrels with that high and haughty fate meself; that grand arbiter who stitches sorrow into the hems of lives and days, then calls it necessity."

Her gaze sharpened. "So tell me now, Rhand," she said softly, her thickening brogue weaving strangely with the cosmic dread that pressed in from unseen gulfs, "How, tell me true, are we to cleanse the galaxy of fate itself? Will we scour it off like rust from old iron, or go chasin' it through the very marrow o' the stars and drag it down shriekin' from whatever high throne it's claimed?"

There was no mockery in her questions, only a terrible curiosity, bright as hellfire and hungry as the void between worlds.

"Because if it's a thing that can be done at all, then we'd be doin' the whole o' the galaxy a grand service, and no mistake," she said, a fierce light dancing in her golden eyes. "And if fate itself has aught to say against it, well then, fate be damned and welcome to our quarrel."

 

[Tamsin Starfall]

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Theme: Into The Darkness
Location: Coruscant after the fall
Equipment: Twin Omens | Multi-Tool | Stars Enchained | Mind Crown
Tag: Morta Izanami

She listened to those words the undead woman spoke woven with poetic energy. Spoken with a silver tongue for words of wickedness and dominance. Yet the Demon had heard such words spoken before though not with such eloquence. Those who wanted to defy the one true hand that guided this reality. All those who wanted to fight a war that seemed to have no end, all of them eventually bent the knee.

"The Empire that fell today, at the hands of a covenant of sith. They once believed they could make a new foundation, unbound by fate." She thought once more back to the Maw, what they had wanted or at least what most of them had wanted. To think they became such a disgusting perversion of themselves in the end.

"They broke though and bent the knee, to fight a war against fate is not as simple as drawing a sword. For fate can turn that weapon you thought was made of unbreakable steel to rust dust."

She lamented all those who had forgotten the path she still walked. Those who had lost the vision she still sought.

"You see then I look at people, worlds filled with them. When I think about the people that once held congress in this dinner and the vision of what if my life had been different more like theirs. I see the corruption of fate's influence, how it twists suffering into the norm."

All those people on those words going about their day to day, no dreams beyond what they do. Stuck in the rut of the mundane as others have the power to lift them out but don't. The Jedi who liked to play pretend hero's of salvation but had never once even slowed the cycle of war this Galaxy had endured. All of them figments of fates corruption from top to bottom.

"There is no saving the Galaxy or this reality, it is lost fully infected. If your pet is deathly sick, it hurts but the humane thing to do is to put them down. To kill fate, you have to destroy everything it infects. Once it's all gone only then can something be built free from it influence. You can't just kill a portion of it as the covenant has done here today, or it will just reinfect it. You have to kill it all, you have to destroy it all. As I see the Galaxy and this reality has to end. Those that lead the purge will then have to build something new but can't be apart of it for we are touched by the infection. Carriers if you will, immune to its effects but can cause it to spread once more."

A somber notion that, the death of everyone and everything in the Galaxy just to fight fate. Yet the Demon knew that was the only way, it was a long daunting task to undertake, she herself had started a long time ago. She had seen so many give up on the dream of something better and let the infection of fate's corruption take them.

"Fate will fight back it always does but you can stay ahead of it. You can learn to read its shifting pathways to victory. There are teaching more powerful then then both the Jedi and Sith could imagine, found by others who had tried to fight fate. Yet, to learn them you have to believe that this Galaxy, this existence is doomed as is everyone in it, even yourself. Once you fully accept that can you start to see the paths to fighting fate."