Unreviewed More Musings of a Warlord and Empress

[Mercy]

"What has the world come to... that I am starting to enjoy writing these things down?"​

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

Intent: To create another piece of journaling straight from Mercy’s annoyed scribblings.​

Image Credit: NA​

Canon: NA​

Permissions: NA​

Links: Mercy | Musings of a Warlord and Empress​

GENERAL INFORMATION

Media Name: More Musings of a Warlord and Empress​

Format: Holobook​

Distribution: Unique​

Length: Medium​

Description: Another entry in Mercy’s attempt to organize her thoughts, written after her return to the Core from the Outer Rim. The entries begin with her frustration over Vestra Tane’s death and the renewed burdens of rule, before turning toward the question of contingency and Mercy’s first crude attempts to test whether her body remains hers even when part of it has been severed.​

SOCIAL INFORMATION

Author: Mercy​

Publisher: N/A​

Reception: Very limited reception since the copies only reside on the datapads that Mercy herself uses. However, Mercy is not known for her OpSec, so her datapads linger around Throneworld for anyone to pick up and read. They have been known to fall in the hands of regular guests of Throneworld from Srina Talon to Arris Windrun to new arrivals like Efret Farr .​

CONTENT INFORMATION

The compilation can be roughly divided into three chapters.​

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Chapter 1: The Return​

Mercy’s return from the outer regions back to the Core forms the angriest and most aggravated part of the full entry. It touches on the revelation that Arris Windrun murdered Vestra Tane . For most of the chapter it might read like Mercy is particularly upset about Tane’s murder, and part of her is. The more immediate frustration, however, is practical. Mercy is angry that she now has to find a third Triumvir, that Vestra started a conflict she could not finish, and that she managed to get herself killed in a way Mercy considers stupid.​

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Quotes​

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The girl always possessed more balls than sense. It is what I liked about her, but it is also what ended up killing her. Don’t start a challenge you can’t win. I mean that literally, if you start a challenge, make sure you win it. Losing is the worst fate for a Sith. Worse than death, worse than losing a limb. If she had wanted to kill Windrun, she should have made sure she got it done. Drop a fucking ion bomb on her, lure her into a dead zone and launch an EMP, anything. It doesn’t matter how you win, as long as you do.​

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Now what? Who is gonna replace Vestra? Who is the big fucking nerd that will cover our flanks when we need to know something about the lore of the Sith? If Arris was our ace and I am the muscle, then Vestra was our brains. I hate reading. I didn’t realize how much reading there was until she was gone and suddenly my table is full of paperwork to handle. I have off-loaded it immediately, of course. No way I am going to read that nonsense, but it’s about the principle of the matter.​

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Maybe Lysander. That boy… every day I am more proud of him. What a little diplomat he has become. I took him on as an obligation to an old acquaintance, he knew that, we all did. But every day afterwards he has proven himself twice-fold. He is part of a new generation that will outshine us all, I know that in my bones. But is he ready for the title? He has the makings of a Lord, yes, but I need to think about this.​

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Damn you, Tane, you should have had a contingency to stay alive.​

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Chapter 2: On contingencies and limitations of organic flesh​

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This chapter loops back to some of the musings Mercy had in her first entry. The limitations of her particular specialization of the Force. The fact that she cannot and is not interested in the more esoteric nature of the Force. The idea of conjuring up Force Storms, mind-controlling armies and other forms of the Dark Side does not appeal, but she notes that day by day she feels her own potential is growing, even if it is not outwardly obvious.​

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Quotes​

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Each body is unto itself a nation. It’s a quote I like, even if it is not meant to be taken literally, but why not?​

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There is one benefit of being Empress. Anything I want, I get, without argument. In the morning I was musing how useful it would be to have laboratories I could use for my own experiments. I guess it was in earshot of one of the Graspborn. By evening they handed me the coordinates to a lab on Tython, under the oceans. Apparently it had belonged to an alchemist of some note back in the One Sith days and they had been cataloging it for Covenant use. I would never admit this, of course, people would be far too smug. Being the Empress is still more of a pain in the ass than it has benefits.​

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The aides are annoying. I am trying to push the limitations of my own body, but every time I try to do something, they keep fussing over me. Yes, I can cut off my own hand, no, we don’t need any preliminary scans for that. It’s like they think I am their patient, but the only reason they are there is because I don’t like toasters and somebody needs to mop up when I am done.​

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Chapter 3: Experiments​

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Mercy details the first of her renewed experiments with her biological form and the possible applications that go beyond self-healing and strength enhancement. The chapter is still crude in scope. It remains a collection of scattered thoughts and scribblings, centered on Mercy's first attempt to test whether a severed part of herself can remain part of herself in any meaningful sense.​

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Quotes​

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I had a funny thought. What if I could control my body even when part of it is separate from me? Why not, after all. What is the difference between feeling the Force inside of me, and feeling it in a severed limb some distance away?​

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I tried it out immediately. I cut off a finger and tried to feel it, even when it was separated from me. After a while, I could feel it like a ghost on my hand, and then I followed the trace to the inert piece of meat on the table.​

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It began to crawl after some pushing and prodding from myself. Then suddenly it leaped in the face of one of the aides. Their high-pitched screams were hilarious by themselves.​

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But it also has potential, I think.​

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A piece of the whole remains part of the whole.​

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I will have to keep working on this and see what can come out of it.​

HISTORICAL INFORMATION

Mercy began these entries after returning to the Core from time spent in the Outer Rim with the Sith Lords of the Order, like Srina Talon . The return immediately soured her mood. Vestra Tane was dead, Arris Windrun had killed her, and the Covenant’s balance had shifted in a way that left Mercy with more work than she wanted and fewer people suited to do it.​

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The first part of the compilation is angry, though not cleanly sentimental. Mercy’s frustration with Vestra’s death is tangled with disappointment, contempt, inconvenience, and the practical problem of replacing a Triumvir. Vestra had been useful. Vestra had also lost. And it was left to Mercy to reconcile both those ends with one another.​

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From there, the entries turn toward the idea of limitations and experimenting. Mercy begins with the political limitations after Vestra's passing, but it quickly spins into Mercy still believing she has too many limitations herself and wanting to break through them personally. One by one.​

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The final section marks the beginning of her renewed biological experimentation. At this stage the work is still crude and exploratory. Mercy is not recording a finished breakthrough, only the first proof that a severed piece of herself might still be reached, felt, and moved through the Force.​

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Later writings may expand on these experiments in more extreme directions. This entry is mostly notable because it shows the moment Mercy’s irritation with death, failure, and bad planning began turning back toward her oldest obsession: the refusal to accept limitation as a permanent condition.​