Faction Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair! [Kainate; Open to TSO & TSC]

[Darth Carnifex]

For several days, they'd been unable to contact Coruscant.

Or anyone, for that matter.

Some sort of interference was jamming all inbound and outbound transmissions, but no one could discern if it was a natural phenomenon of the Deep Core or if something artificial was responsible. No trade traffic had arrived in that period, and any ship they sent out of system to investigate never returned. Eventually, they stopped sending out ships and pulled all military vessels in tight around Byss, forming a reinforced cordon around the entire planet.

Tensions were growing, nerves fraying, as another day passed by and then another after that. It seemed as though they were truly, terribly, alone. Some had already given themselves to despair, while others clung onto the savage hope that not all was as it appeared to be.

That there would be somebody, anybody.

Then...

A signal, realspace reversion. Three craft. Star Destroyer class. They appeared out of the gloom, the infamous wedge-shape of the Galactic Empire's foremost ship-of-the-line. Damage left deep pockmarks across their hull, partially patched up with lattices of midnight black metal. One had lost a deflector bulb, another had its underbelly slit open from nearly prow to stern. All of them had evidently seen combat, and were limping back to the Empire's furthest redoubt in the Deep Core.

The lead ship hailed the defense flotilla, deep azure light filling the command deck as the face of none other than Emperor Solipsis swam up before them. All fell to one knee in supplication, bowing in deep reverence to their holy Emperor. He explained to them that the Empire had beaten back an attempted incursion on Coruscant, but that to do so they had to disable communication to the Deep Core. The defenders of Byss rejoiced, confident that their Emperor had seen to another victory.

Clearance codes bearing the Emperor's seal were transmitted, proving the legitimacy of the three ships. The Byss defense fleet parted to let the Emperor and his ships through, their guard lowered further than its ever been in weeks, perhaps months.

They were unprepared when new signals were detected, hundreds of them, no...

Thousands of them.

From the void came multiple fleets, reverting into realspace right on top of the Byss defense fleet and opening fire. Some ships had been in the process of firing from the moment they started reverting from hyperspace, the opening salvo striking several Imperial ships in mere nano-seconds as the enemy appeared. What they had failed to notice was the cloaked binary beacon the lead star destroyer, the one that apparently carried the Emperor, had been broadcasting on a hidden frequency. A beacon that allowed an innumerable number of warships, galleys, and planetary landers to hyperspace jump right amidst the defense fleet.

Chief among the arriving ships was the Eternal Rule, the nominal flagship of the Kainate. Powerful autocannons pivoted in their mountings, bracketing enemy ships with harrowing volleys of cannon fire. A hole had been punched straight through the center of the defense fleet, and now hundreds and hundreds of landers and shuttles streaked down through the gap. A full assault on the Imperial Control Sector began, with Kainate forces landing at virtually all points of interest. Kainate starfighters, powered as much by the Dark Side as by conventional technology, strafed the airways about the continent-spanning city.

The true target was Solipsis' Citadel at the center of the city, and it was where the bulk of Kainate forces had been concentrated. Shuttles and landers disgorged Immortal Legionnaires, Blackblades, and strand-cast Sith across the landing platform adjacent to the Citadel's great hall. Sovereign Protectors, Imperial Sentinels, and members of the Dark Side Elite rushed forward to repel the invaders, and fighting quickly grew desperate and vicious.

Emerging from one of the landed shuttles was Darth Carnifex, Eternal Father of the Kainate. At His side was Darth Prazutis, Mortarch of the Kainate. Together they were the Dark Dyarchy, the ruling power and architects of the Kainate. That they had both come together displayed the importance of this assault, and also the supreme power now weighed against the defenders of Solipsis' rotten Empire, an Empire collapsing all around then with the Fall of Coruscant to the Sith Covenant.

They may have been the first to make landfall, but they would not be the last. The Empire and fallen and all that remained was to pick its corpse clean.

Darth Prazutis | Taeli Raaf | Ellissanthia ​

 

[Imperius Indomitus]

LORD INDOMITUS
Through Fire and Blood.
Through Justice and Strength.
On the Anvil of War, We forge our Destiny.

​

Byss | Solipsis' Citadel | Memorial Hall

Valoris struck. The edge cleanly cut through skin, sinew, muscle and bone. With a wet splash the head dropped onto the blood soaked floor, its eyes screaming terror, the mouth open in silenced protest. It did not feel any worse than the first one He had executed. And it would feel equally satisfactory when it was the last one that would feel the kiss of Valoris, the declaration of His judgement.

Cultists, worshippers, fanatics, zealots, mindless cravens who followed the mindnumbening madness and irrationality that was the Church of the Dark side. They were not worth to outlast the regime that faltered again and again under the petty pretenses of intention and grand plans that never were nor would ever have been. The Core Summit had shown that the imperial regime was neither capable to understand nor continue its own existence and powerbase.

Imperius had come to Byss when the defeat of them was apparent in an effort to cut out root and stem of Solipsis cult. Even if the act itself was appealing, the fact it was possible and necessary was not.
His fleet had appeared merely an hour before the Covenants and Kainate forces arrived and were hailed as defenders. This was neither confirmed nor acknowledged, but the correct codes were silently transmitted as the Zakuulan ships of Task Force Valkorion moved to close in on the station of the Emperor. A member of the Dark Side Elite and His retinue would be welcomed to come aboard and support the defences.

Ahead of Indomitus Knights and Ascendant Legionaries the Lord Indomitus had disembarked and it had not taken long that when the Byss Defence Fleet came under fire, the 'reinforcements' turned on the puppets of the thrice-fallen Sith ruler. Warriors and soldiers were not primary targets, the Empire and its forces were not largely at fault for their leaders. But those of the Church were not the same.

Fire and steel was their treat.

 

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

If you had not sinned so greatly,
Vahl would not have set a scourge like me upon you.

Dozens of ships emerged from real space, hot upon the heels of the Kainate. Much smaller were they, cruisers and corvettes of a patchwork armada.

They did not make toward the planet yet, leaving the inhabitants to wither beneath the firestorm of Kainate turbolasers.

Instead, they cohered around the shape of the massive Byss Hypergate, taking up a cordon that made their intentions clear.

This far but no further.

The Tuka’ata guard their kills most viciously.

Darth Carnifex

​

​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

Smoke and fire rolled across the landing platform in choking waves as the first volleys truly found their mark.

Darth Prazutis emerged from the shuttle's shadow into a storm of noise, sirens howling from the Citadel's outer towers, blasterfire snapping across the plaza, the shriek of engines as landers pulled away under fire to make room for the next wave. The ground trembled beneath his boots as anti-air batteries thundered from above, scarlet lances cutting through the smoke to reap their toll among the descending craft.

This was not a breach yet.

This was a fight for footing. Even as the Shadow Armada annihilated the fleet elements above, it was far from over. Immortal Legionnaires took to the field, reinforced by a full legion of the Blackblade Guard, among other specially chosen elements and Sith Kabalites were already forming up ahead of him, shields raised before them as they absorbed disciplined, punishing fire from Sovereign Protectors, Stormtroopers and other elite defenders advancing down towards them. The defenders moved in tight formations, weapons blazing as they advanced under covering fire from heavy repeating blasters emplaced along the balustrades. Darktroopers dropped in hard arcs from upper gantries, hitting the platform with enough force to crater stone.

Byss had not been caught sleeping.

Through Xûl-Karzaan, Prazutis tracked the battle as a lattice of intent and motion. He saw firing lines tighten. He saw commanders shouting orders, saw the Dark Side Elite pushing through the chaos to anchor the defense where it threatened to buckle. The Citadel's outer guns were still intact. Its shield still held. Its defenders still believed this could be stopped. It wouldn't be enough. A bolt struck close enough to splash molten stone across his armor. Qâzjiin'vraal drank the heat without complaint. Prazutis advanced two steps and raised His hand.

The air before the Legionnaires warped as an invisible pressure took hold. Incoming fire bent, diffused, detonating early or skidding aside just long enough for the phalanx to surge forward another ten meters. It was not safety, just space. Bought in blood and concentration. A Sovereign Protector broke and charged, staff spinning, blade of energy shrieking as it cut toward Prazutis' helm.

The Mortarch turned slightly. The Protector hit an unseen wall mid-stride, momentum collapsing inward as bones snapped under their own force. The body hit the ground in a broken heap, sliding across the stone to come to rest at Prazutis' feet.

The surrounding defenders faltered, not fleeing, not yet, but recalculating.

Good.

In that brief moment was all it took for the Dark Lord of the Sith to unleash godflame. Arcs of crimson lightning ripped from his hand, twisting an entire platoon to ash in screaming horror. Explosions rippled across as Kainate heavy weapons were dragged into position under fire, crews dying and being replaced in the same breath. Above, starfighters dueled so low their engine wash tore banners from the Citadel's facade. A gunship spiraled out of the sky trailing flame, smashing into the outer stairway and taking a section of it with it in a thunderous collapse. They came in some of the greatest vessels ever forged in the modern era. Xaruls cleaved down scores of TIE fighters while Velakorr bombers strafed the earth beside Mornskarr gunships twisting the fields into a bloodbath. High above thousands of Nyctophage-class Wraith Drones formed great swarms killing everything that moved, a reaping tide. They turned themselves into shields for incoming landers and shuttles, suicidal bombs crashing right into anti air towers detonating in plumes of crimson energy. It was the epitome of dark side engineering in true form butchering its way through the tide of plastoid.

Still the Citadel stood. Still its guns spoke to the ruined skies above. The Shadow Hand didn't look up at the towers. He looked forward, at the palace looming above, at the plaza, the defenders digging in with stubborn Imperial resolve.

"The Faithless have the gall to think they can resist us." He said quietly, to Carnifex, "Perhaps in death may we find use for them." He then stepped forward just ahead of the Eternal Father again, as the assault on the Emperor's Citadel truly began, more arcs of crimson energy launching off His fingertips.

Darth Carnifex | Imperius Indomitus | Hasuras Na-Gerra​

 

[Glissara]

Location: Landing Platform, The Emperor’s Citadel - Byss
Tag: Darth Carnifex Imperius Indomitus Hasuras Na-Gerra Darth Prazutis

​

Death ricocheted off of the walls and tore into the heart of the Faithless. Glissara’s arm-mounted vibroblade slashed through the neck of a stormtrooper, his throat gushing out a deluge of deep crimson vitae as she passed him in a distorted blur of motion. By the time his knees hit the ground, the Shatter Vector was on the next stormtrooper in the squad, launching herself into his chest to drive her vibroblade through his heart. All the while, momentum carried her forward. She planted both feet on the trooper’s shoulders, kicked off of him as he fell, then threw her body into a soaring backflip.

Mid-air, a pair of vibrostars flew from her hands, slicing through the air before burying inside the throats of two more stormtroopers. Glissara landed without breaking her stride, and the stormtroopers dropped their blasters as wet, hacking gasps sounded out from their helmet vocoders.

All the while, Glissara’s eyes widened as spiraling arcs of crimson-hued galvanism lanced through the air, reducing an entire platoon within the plaza to ash and screams. She knew by instinct that it was the work of the Mortarch, and her lips sang out in prayer as she bore witness to the sacred spectacle.

Nevertheless, Glissara was not one to be distracted nor to break her stride in the midst of combat. A pair of darktroopers rounded the corner, and the Shatter Vector was immediately upon them. She hurled a pair of vibrostars, but the warriors swiftly shot them out of the air. Still, the split-second diversion had bought her just enough time to prime her next attack. Her disruptor pistol whined, then silently unleashed two invisible lancets of nonharmonic ethaerium plasma. One of the darktroopers was swiftly obliterated, leaving only his legs intact as his torso and head were blown into nothing. However, the other threw himself into cover behind a nearby cargo container as the bolt meant for him instead vaporized a chunk from a nearby pillar.

The surviving darktrooper returned fire, and Glissara vaulted sideways, skipping laterally in the manner of a stone over water to evade the searing bolts. She dipped low and fired again, her shot destroying the darktrooper’s blaster just as he threw himself back behind cover.

Then, a snap-hiss. A shadow of crimson light bloomed from behind the container.

A lightsaber!

Spoiler: Loadout

• Slipstream Zero Exoskin Mk. I
  
  • Arms
    
    • Modular Attachment Point - L
      
      • FAE/M-02 Energized Forearm Vibroblade Mk. II
  • Energy Shield
    
    • Phase III “Force Avenger” Energy Shield
  • Face Mask
• Glissara’s Enforcer
  
  • Attachments
    
    • 1-5x FAE/S-08 Electro-Sight
    • Phase I “Susurration” Anti-Sonic Silencer
  • Ammunition
    
    • FAE/AM-01-S2 Energy Weapon Cartridge - Ethaerium X Gas and CryoBan Coolant (20)
• Void Helix-type Aerial Vibrostar (12)
• FAE/MDE-01-S1 Semiautonomous Seeker Thermal Explosive (2)
• Miniaturized Infrared Smoke Grenade (2)

 

[Darth Carnifex]

They died in their multitudes, clutching feebly at the ashes of a fallen Empire.

Blasterfire streaked all through the air, staining it with various shades of green and red. The once great reception hall had become a battleground, the mural of the Second Great Hyperspace pocked with so many blaster marks it'd become unrecognizable. Statues of Sith, ancient and contemporary, had collapsed amidst the fighting. The faces of Darth Bane, Darth Sidious, Ashin Varanin, and Daella Apparine all stared up from where they'd crumbled across the floor. The statue of Darth Ptolemis teetered precarious, only to be struck by an intentionally placed rocket and blown apart in a cascade of stone and flame.

Outside, Kainate starfighters buzzed the impossibly tall Freight Complex. Sustained bombardment from laser fire and concussion missiles had left gaping wounds in the Complex, black smoke billowing out as new explosions rocked the spire. Gunships roamed the open decks, door-gunners firing on anything and everything that moved. Soldier or civilian, they intended to take no prisoners.

Darth Carnifex struck the breastplate of a Sovereign Protector with His bare fist, buckling the armor and caving in his rib-cage. Skilled as they might've been, they were no match for a fully trained Dark Lord of the Sith with the full might of the Dark Side at His beck and call. Another attempted to flank Him, but died as his helmet imploded under intense pressure; crushed by Carnifex's power. It took all that they were to just survive for a few moments, but none could ever hope to openly challenge the Dark Lord and live.

"Sweep through the Citadel," commanded the Eternal Father, His crimson blade crackling with hate. "Suffer not the Faithless to live. Bring me the heads of their Dark Side Elite. Their line ends tonight."

Darth Prazutis | Glissara ​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The Mortarch moved without announcement. Where others carved paths through the fighting, Darth Prazutis simply walked into it. Blasterfire converged on him the moment He stepped fully onto the shattered expanse of the reception hall. Imperial Sentinels, Sovereign Protectors, and Darktroopers alike redirected their fire as targeting arrays screamed priority threat across their displays. A storm of energy descended.

None of it reached Him. The air around Qâzjiin'vraal warped under crushing pressure, bolts bending from their trajectories or detonating prematurely in violent bursts of light that washed harmlessly across rune-etched armor. Through the lenses of Xûl-Karzaan, the battlefield unfolded as layered streams of motion, heart rates spiking, fear responses cascading, firing solutions forming milliseconds before triggers were pulled. He stepped through it all like a figure walking against the tide. A Darktrooper advanced to intercept, heavy repeater roaring. The Mortarch's gauntlet shifted slightly, fingers curling inward. The machine seized mid-stride, internal servos shrieking as invisible force crushed plating inward. Metal folded. The unit collapsed into itself with a grinding scream of tortured alloys.


Another came from the flank, vibroblade raised. The Dark Lord turned His helm a fraction. The warrior was lifted from the ground, suspended for a single terrible heartbeat before being hurled bodily through a column hard enough to shatter both stone and bone in an explosion of debris. Still the defenders pressed. Disciplined. Relentless. Imperial. A squad of Sovereign Protectors advanced in formation, electrostaffs locking into a crackling lattice of energy meant to overwhelm through coordinated assault. They moved with precision born of endless drilling, striking as one toward the Mortarch's center mass. For the first time, Prazutis stopped.

The Force answered. The floor beneath the Protectors fractured upward in a violent surge, obsidian stone erupting in jagged spires that broke their formation and cast them sprawling. Before they could recover, a pulse of invisible pressure rolled outward from him, slamming armored bodies across the hall in a thunderous wave that left them scattered among the fallen statues of dead Sith. The murals above continued to burn under stray fire. The hall shook with detonations from without. Screams, prayers, and orders blended into a single continuous roar. War, pure and unrefined. Prazutis advanced deeper into the chaos, neither hurried nor delayed, His presence a gathering pressure that bent the battle's flow wherever He stepped. Around him, Kainate forces surged in equal measure, trading ground meter by meter against defenders who refused to yield their Emperor's sanctum.

No proclamations were made. No victory declared. Only the steady, inexorable application of power, tested against resistance, measured against resolve, as the struggle for the Citadel continued to rage. A black robed figure ignited a crimson lightsaber, shouting devotion to their absent Emperor as he charged forward towards the One-Sith Emperor. Only to find his muscles atrophy with the speed of passing time. Before he could realize his vitality was being drained, he'd already fallen into a fleshless husk, collapsing into ash on the floor unable to resist the power of the Shadow Hand, who still hadn't lifted His hands. "We do not stop until we shatter the spine of Imperial delusion and drown their world in oblivion."

All up and down the tower explosions rocked the exterior as legionaries of the Blackblade Guard breached it in simultaneous coordinated strikes, protected by the waves of Nyctophage Wraith Drones. A coordinated strike above and below to shatter the defenders focus, overwhelming them and forcing them to fight on all sides, everywhere all at once. The Blackblades pushed in from strategic points turning hallways into slaughterhouses that slowed the tide of imperial defenders to the great hall.

Darth Carnifex | Glissara​

 

[Glissara]

Location: Landing Platform → Reception Hall, The Emperor’s Citadel - Byss
Tag: Darth Carnifex Darth Prazutis

The crimson lightsaber’s ignition cast its bloody glow upon the shrouded form of a Dark Side Elite. Nevertheless, Glissara did not so much as falter or break her stride. Launching herself from the nearby pillar, she whipped through the air in a graceful pirouette as a vibrostar flashed from her right hand, drawing the Elite’s attention. The warrior raised a hand to block it, but his telekinesis had only a negligible effect on its Tal’Beskar construction.

The vibrostar bit into his shoulder and a pained grunt escaped him.

In the same breath, Glissara closed the distance before her vibroblade opened his throat in a crimson spray. She leaped over the second darktrooper as his stun baton slashed through empty air. Her disruptor pistol whined once, then fired as she sailed overhead, reducing the darktrooper to a cloud of superheated vapor in an invisible flash.

It was then, right as she landed, that Glissara cut back in the opposite direction. Without stopping, she pulled the lightsaber from the dying Elite’s hands, before briefly glancing it over and placing the hilt on her belt.

From there, Glissara broke into the reception hall and unleashed a massacre. The Shatter Vector threw a flying kick into the chest of a stormtrooper, the ensuing concussive shockwave from the kineite projector integrated into her boots causing the plastoid to shatter as his internal organs exploded, sending him flying into the nearby wall with a sickening crunch. Then, sprinting through the kill, her disruptor pistol spat twice in quick succession, annihilating a pair of stormtroopers in twin flashes of superheated gas. A third shot caught a stormtrooper in his head, leaving only a headless body in her wake as the Shatter Vector raced past him in a dizzying blur!

That was when ten more stormtroopers came rushing into the fray, armed with E-11s and stun batons.

A small black sphere zipped towards the stormtroopers before going off in their midst, immediately vaporizing half of their number in a baradium-driven fusion explosion. An infrared smoke grenade followed, swallowing the survivors in a blinding haze. Glissara closed the distance and moved through the fog in a flickering dance, her vibroblade tearing out five throats in as many seconds as she zigzagged from one stormtrooper to the next.

By the time the smoke cleared, the stormtroopers had been reduced to little more than a ruin of mangled bodies and blackened plastoid.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Slipstream Zero Exoskin Mk. I
  
  • Arms
    
    • Modular Attachment Point - L
      
      • FAE/M-02 Energized Forearm Vibroblade Mk. II
  • Energy Shield
    
    • Phase III “Force Avenger” Energy Shield
  • Face Mask
• Glissara’s Enforcer
  
  • Attachments
    
    • 1-5x FAE/S-08 Electro-Sight
    • Phase I “Susurration” Anti-Sonic Silencer
  • Ammunition
    
    • FAE/AM-01-S2 Energy Weapon Cartridge - Ethaerium X Gas and CryoBan Coolant (20)
• Void Helix-type Aerial Vibrostar (9)
• FAE/MDE-01-S1 Semiautonomous Seeker Thermal Explosive (1)
• Miniaturized Infrared Smoke Grenade (1)

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Acquiring targeting matrix. Systems aligned. Priming autocannons."

Dipping through the smog-streaked clouds emerged a Kainate siege platform, a gargantuan vessel several times the size of an Imperial Star Destroyer and bristling with ten times the firepower. Starfighters danced in swirling dogfights all around its mountainous frame, anti-craft cannons bellowing as the air bracketed with flak. Its shadow cast a terrible pallor over the Control Sector, like a outstretched hand expanding forth to envelop the city in its crushing grip.

Ahead, the Emperor's Citadel loomed large. Moored beside it was the Sepulchre, the mobile headquarters of the Dark Side Elite. The long, dagger-like vessel had been stuck in drydock when the hyperlane to Byss had unexpectedly been severed, and the leading Elite having sequestered themselves in their fortress while the rest of Byss danced on the edge of a knife. Now, the vessel was under assault by the Kainate. Fighters and bombers buzzed the craft in relentless sorties, deep explosions blossoming across the Sepulchre's shields with every pass.

Now it had fallen well within the targeting scopes of the Kainate siege engine, whose cannons were already pivoting to target the enemy battlecruiser. Breaking free of the docking apparatus, the Sepulchre began to rise up the side of the Citadel's spire. After a sustained skirmish around the Citadel spire, an autocannon pulse tore a hole through the Sepulchre's midship shields, and a second burst a gaping wound in the ship's side. As it began to bleed out flames and groaning metal, squadrons of heavy fighters knocked out its engines.

The symbol of the Dark Side Elite began to lose altitude rapidly, plummeting down towards the cityscape below. A moment later, and an explosion ripped the ship in half. What remained crashed into the Control Sector with great force, flattening a large swath of building and spreading fire in every direction.

With the largest enemy craft neutralized, the Kainate began to systematically bombard the Control Sector block by block.

Erasing everything with fire and fury.

Darth Prazutis | Glissara ​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The war answered His command.

It answered in fire.

The reception hall convulsed as shockwaves from the collapsing Control Sector rippled through the Citadel's superstructure. Stone fractured along the vaulted ceiling. Dust and burning debris cascaded down in choking sheets as the distant destruction of the Sepulchre thundered through the bones of the fortress like the death rattle of a wounded god. The Mortarch didn't even break his stride. He advanced through the ruin as if the world were collapsing merely to clear His path. A fresh wave of defenders surged into the hall, Imperial Sentinels with long bladed axes and shields, Darktroopers advancing behind them in disciplined firing ranks while the surviving Dark Side Elite moved through their lines like blades seeking a killing stroke. They opened fire as one.

The barrage struck like a meteor storm.

The air before the Mortarch compressed into a visible distortion, a crushing gravity well that devoured the incoming fire. Bolts flattened against it, stretched into ribbons of light, then detonated in blinding bursts that washed the chamber in searing radiance. The pressure alone shattered nearby transparisteel and tore statues from their pedestals. The sheer magnitude of power shook the ground beneath them. The Dark Lord stepped slowly towards the advancing inferno of fury. He made a small gesture towards it with one of His hands, and the titanic pressure inverted. The front rank of Sentinels folded inward as though crushed by the hand of a titan. Armor collapsed, bodies imploded, shield walls buckling into tangled wreckage as the entire formation compacted into a single mass of twisted metal and broken flesh before detonating outward in a rain of debris.

Still they came. A Dark Side Elite leapt through the carnage, crimson blade carving downward with killing precision. The strike met Prazutis' upraised gauntlet and stopped. The saber's energy guttered and warped, its blade destabilizing as the Mortarch's will smother its cohesion. With a twist of His wrist, the weapon extinguished entirely. The Elite screamed defiance, his full-throated support of their departed Emperor. Time abandoned Him. The Dark Lords death field ripped at his very existence. Armor tarnished. Flesh withered. Bone surfaced through desiccating skin as decades devoured Him in seconds. He collapsed into dust that scattered across the fractured floor, energy ripped from his collapsing form and drawn to feed the Dark Lord.

Around the Mortarch, reality strained. Columns bent from invisible tides of pressure. The floor buckled in expanding fractures that hurled defenders from their footing. Darktroopers were torn apart as gravitational vectors shifted violently, their reinforced chassis shearing under forces their design had never conceived. Where He passed, the battle collapsed into chaos, firing lines dissolving, command structures breaking, courage curdling into raw survival instinct. Imperial officers screamed for formation integrity even as their troops were dragged screaming across the stone by unseen force. Torn apart and scattered into showers of crimson rain spattering the blaster pocked, ruins of the Empire's inner sanctum.

A squad of Royal Guard made a final stand upon the grand approach, force pikes blazing like a cage of lightning meant to contain the advancing Dark Lord. Not even such warriors could break the stride of the Shadow Hand. Out from his hand came a titanic wave of raw, crimson energy. The malevolent power of the dark side made manifest. It struck them with the force of a tsunami before they could even dive out of the way. Such destructive power erased them, reducing their forms into nothing but burning silhouettes, scattering them into ashes before the darkness consumed them still. Behind him, Kainate forces surged into the widening breach. Immortal Legions rapidly advanced claiming the ground the defenders lost, complemented with war droids and those of the Sith Kabal.

Above them the Blackblade Guard advanced through corridors now choked with Imperial dead. Nyctophage Wraith Drones flooded the airspace like a living storm, tearing through defensive emplacements and blinding sensor arrays in waves of predatory motion. The defenders were forced to fight in every direction, their cohesion unraveling second by desperate second. The Mortarch reached the shattered approach to the Citadel's inner ascent. He paused only once. It wasn't from any need to catch his breath, or a stubborn defender delaying the Dark Lord. But to witness the scale of ruin unfolding around Him. To give orders to the Shadow Armada above. "Commence next stage bombardment. Target all priority zones, burn it all."

High above the response was immediate. The Shadow Armada controlling the airspace had moved into full bombardment position over Byss. Once the Shadow Hand's order was delivered, it came down like the wrath of an enraged god. Every vessel unleashed is payloads down to the world below, the sky rained fire. The inferno consuming the Imperial throneworld shook the ground across the planet and choked the skies above with blooming clouds of ash and fires that burned like solar flares. It wasn't enough to see them destroyed, they needed to be desecrated, defiled, slaughtered like cattle and humiliated before the might of the Kainate. As the Dark Lord stood at the base of the ascent a mass of cloaked figures formed around him. They were those of the Shikkari, Assassin-Priests of the Kainate.

"Faithful. Hunt them down. The Citadel is ours to claim. No blasphemers shall escape with the secrets of their failed leader. Make it so. All that lies within belongs to the Eternal Dyarchy." As His orders fell, the masked assassins scattered like blurs in every direction, talons unleashed to gore into the enemy should they desire to flee or make haste with the precious secrets of the Faithless.

Then He moved again, higher into the Citadel.

Darth Carnifex | Glissara​