Kyriaki
Dark Phoenix
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Codify a companion for Kyriaki established in rp. Also to create a Gungan that defies the usual stereotypes associated with this species.
Image Credit: Here. One must imagine the Gungan as a Force ghost, and very scarred.
Role: A Force ghost who acts as a spirit guide to Kyriaki and makes sure she stays the course...by any means necessary. Morgak is the embodiment of retribution, a vengeful spirit whose heart aches for justice against the butchers of her people.
Permissions: N/A.
Links: Spirit of Vengeance, Ring of Lamentations, The Valkyrie's Diary, What Goes Bump in the Day, At Home In The Cobwebs & The Lies, Kyriaki, Tephrike, Sentinel's Rest, Government of the Greater Sith Imperium, Dominion of Light, Disciples of the Vader, Republican Guard, Sibylla Laskaris.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Age: She was in her mid-twenties when she died. Now she would be in her late thirties, but since she is a ghost this is pretty meaningless.
Force Sensitivity: Knight
Species: Gungan Force Ghost
Appearance: Morgak died a long time ago, and now only exists as a spirit, having been able to anchor herself to the physical world due to the Bone Forest and now her bond with Elpsis. Her spirit is bound to the Ring. When she chooses to manifest, she takes the form of a haggard, battle-hardened Gungan female, who is usually clad in dirty, battered armour. In that form she is missing an ear, and her face bears a nasty scar. Sometimes blood seeps from her wound and eyes. Her yellow eyes are fierce. Her stance and bearing are that of a grizzled, grim warrior.
SOCIAL INFORMATION
Name: Morgak. As a partisan, she was nicknamed 'The Spike' for what she did to humans. When the humans built a railway to 'develop' her homeland and make it easier for them to deport their victims to death camps, she started torturing captive humans with railroad spikes.
Loyalties: Herself, the Bone Forest gestalt collective, Kyriaki, Tephrike.
Wealth: None. Morgak was murdered in a brutal genocide, and now exists as a spirit. She possesses no financial assets, and is frankly not interested in material wealth. Nor does she have any need for it. Her only goal is vengeance against the butchers of her people.
Notable Possessions: None, except in some way the Ring of Lamentations since it presently houses her spirit. One could say that she shares it with Kyriaki.
Skills: Morgak is - perhaps surprisingly - very knowledgeable about first aid, basic field medicine, and cooking. In life she was a talented hunter and fisher. These skills are not relevant for her anymore per se, but she can use them to help Kyriaki by instructing her how to do things properly. She has considerable knowledge of anatomy...and knew how to put this to good use not only to treat the injuries of allies, but also for the purpose of torture. Impaling is one of her favourite execution techniques. As she puts it, only an idiot impales a human the short way. As detailed further below, she is a potent Forcewielder. While no savant, in life Morgak was a skilled combatant, who could use a variety of melee and ranged weapons. She favoured twin axes in melee combat. This is less relevant for a spirit, but she can provide instruction to some degree.
Languages: Her mother tongue is Gunganese, but she can also speak and understand Basic, Togruti, and some Nautili. In contrast to the racialist stereotype, Morgak is very articulate. She responds aggressively when people expect her to speak like a 'primitive'.
Personality: It is hatred that drives Morgak. Pure, utter hatred for the oppressors who butchered her people. She is a relentless warrior, who perished in one of the worst genocides in Tephrike's history...but her spirit endured. Gungans are commonly stereotyped as clumsy buffoons, but she is anything but. Morgak is practical, ruthless and more than capable of cruelty. When the Vaderites came to enslave and eventually exterminate her people, she swore that she would not meekly submit to the slaughter. She entertained no idealistic delusions about her position. It was a hopeless war. The best she could ask for was to show the world that she, and her comrades had taken a stand against impossible odds and not been led like lambs to the slaughter. For there was no justice in the world. In the end, her people were murdered in mass shootings or in death camps, and the butchers built settlements upon the killing fields after incinerating the bodies. But she endures, as a vengeful spirit. Her unbeating heart aches for retribution.
It goes without saying that Morgak plain despises humans, whom she contemptuously calls apes. She will show no mercy to the 'ordinary humans' of the Vaderites' Imperium who claim to be innocent, but profited from the genocide all the same and built their fortunes on the blood and bones of the innocent. She is caustic, acerbic, suspicious and all too eager to give advice on how to inflict vengeance, such as the correct way to skin or impale a Vaderite. She has considerable expertise in both, and enjoys inflicting pain on the oppressors.
In her heart of hearts, she still mourns for what was lost. Her home, friends, innocent children - all lost and forgotten by history. But she remembers. Sometimes the memories of happier times provide her with a brief respite, but it only makes her feel the loss more strongly. Due to her roots, she has a lot of respect for nature, and the way the Vaderites have despoiled it disgusts her. Morgak is caustic, quick to suspect deceit and incredibly slow to trust.
Her relationship with Kyriaki is transactional. Morgak's usual attitude towards her host is dismissive, cold and she is quick to reproach her whenever she believes the clone is getting too close to the Vaderites. She has a habit of calling her 'ape', like she does with every human. Morgak is not shy about inflicting mental torment on the young clone while she sleeps, showing her just what her Vaderite 'friends' did to innocent aliens. Such as by manipulating her dreams so that Kyriaki experiences what happened in a extermination camp...from the perspective of a Gungan victim who was murdered by the Vaderites.
She is, however, invested in Kyriaki succeeding in her quest. She strongly doubts her chances of success and is very sceptical of Kyriaki's methods...but it is at least a chance to hurt some Vaderites and repay them for the horrors they unleashed on the free people of Chios. Like almost all Tephriki, Morgak has never left the planet, and is thus rather ignorant of the outside galaxy. Nor does she care about it, unless she sees a way to advance her cause.
Her horizon is strictly limited to Tephrike. She would undoubtedly be contemptuous of her Gungan cousins in space. Tephrike has been isolated for centuries, and so her view of history has been somewhat distorted. For example, she believes that Jar-Jar Binks was a cowardly collaborator who sold out his people to the humans. Then again, the Gungans only got a senatorial representative after the Battle of Naboo, and he was clearly subordinate to Amidala...so maybe she is not wrong about Naboo being an apartheid society.
On an idiosyncratic note, Morgak is actually a fine cook and knows all manners of Gungan recipes. She is perpetually critiquing human cuisine. She is also surprisingly fond of Kyriaki's doormice. Vaderites treat doormice as a delicacy. Disgusted by this, Kyriaki saved a bunch and made them her pets. Morgak actually approves of this.
COMBAT INFORMATION
Weapon of Choice: Above all the Force, as she is a spirit.
Combat Function: As a spirit, Morgak is not a direct combatant. It's mainly that she acts as another observer, taking advantage of her potent precognitive and telepathic abilities. Thus, she can help Kyriaki watch out for threats and enhance her bond partner's situational awareness. But she can also be unleashed to attack and drain, distract or mentally torment enemies when needed. Morgak is a spirit, and thus susceptible to certain enchanted weapons and sorcerous techniques. The same applies to Force null zones. At the same time, her incorporeal nature makes conventional weaponry mostly ineffective. Bullets, blaster bolts and conventional swords will not harm her. The same applies to lightsabres, unless they possess certain crystals or enchantments that enables them to harm spirits.
Force Abilities (Force Users Only): Morgak is especially capable of using Force illusions and mentalism to distract, terrify and mentally torment her foes. She specially in forcing them to face shameful, humiliating or hurtful memories...such as by compelling a soldier who committed atrocities to relive them as the victim. Unsurprisingly, Memory Walk and Force Fear are among her favourites. Moreover, she can utilise Force Drain, obscure her Force aura and has a potent command of telepathy. Her Sense abilities are very strong. Her most powerful ability is that of Mindscape, which generates an environment within one's mind to trap and ensare them, though this is very draining. Once she had Force healing abilities, but now she has a potent command of Force Affliction. Moreover, she can use Force Scream, unleashing a howl of hatred on her foes.
Strengths:
- Intangible to anyone not strong in the Force.
- Strong in the Force, especially in regards to mentalism and illusions. She can draw upon the power of the Ring, and her Force bond with Kyriaki.
- Being a ghost limits her ability to interact with the physical world.
- Force null zones obviously impose constraints on her ability to manifest and affect the world around her.
- While a Force spirit typically doesn't have to worry about being harmed by conventional weapons, Force enchanted weapons, sorcery and so on are still a threat.
Today, Morgak is less person and more concept. She is vengeance personified. But it was not always so. Once she had people she loved, family and community. Before everything was taken from her by one of the most evil regimes imaginable. She is the product of a devastated, war-torn planet where the Dark Age never ended. When the Gulag Virus ravaged the galaxy, Tephrike descended into chaos. Cut off from the galactic trade it depended on, it experienced social and economic collapse. War, famine, the plague and other diseases killed millions. With the federal government unable to weather the storm, and warlordism on the rise, the local Jedi assumed a protective stance. Believing that they were the last Jedi in the galaxy, they staged a coup to restore order.
But this caused the planet to descend further into chaos. Good intentions were led astray, as the Jedi were corrupted by power and strife, establishing a totalitarian theocracy. Foes arose in the form of the Disciples of the Vader, a genocidal, human supremacist cult that established a breakaway state after their attempt to eclipse the light failed, and the Republican Guard, a revolutionary vanguard movement that sought to break the tyrannical reign of Force-Users, by any means necessary. The Vaderites established a totalitarian regime built upon the bedrock of slavery, human supremacism and Vader worship. Non-humans only had value to them if they could be exploited as servitors or slave labourers. Otherwise they would be murdered via mass shootings, chemical weapons or being worked to death.
Morgak was born on the island of Chios, which lay on the fringe of the Sith Imperium. Largely populated by Gungans, Nautolans and Togrutas, it had enjoyed some relative autonomy. Life was hard, and the three races warred with one another for control over fishing grounds, fertile land and trade routes, though peaceful trade was perhaps as frequent as strife. But they were free, for a time.
Then the Vaderites planted their flag upon Chios. After a bloody struggle, the natives were forced to submit, though initially Vaderite interference was limited. The Vaderites imposed draconian tithes and imposed restrictions on freedom of movement. The best land was stolen from the natives so that it could be exploited by human junkers. However, at first the humans were content with practicing a form of indirect rule and made the Togruta monarchs responsible for keeping 'order'. The native leaders had to meet 'recruitment' quotas for forced labourers, who would toil on the estates of the human landowners or be sent abroad for often backbreaking labour in the mines and factories. Only a small number ever allowed to return to their homeland.
However, with every year that passed the humans' demand for land, and forced labourers grew more rapacious. With every year, the the noose around the neck of Morgak's people tightened. Until the Vaderites revealed their genocidal intent. This was the world Morgak grew up in. At first, her childhoo was relatively insulated from the horrors inflicted by the Vaderites. She was born in a Gungan coastal settlement called Otoh Voglin.
"I see a thriving community built over the water of a protected lake. It starts out as a bird's view of the settlement, but becomes more detailed as I'm shown more and more of the place. The huts are big enough to accommodate one or two families and have access via a hatch directly to the water. They're also clean. I see no toilets though. Do they, um, do their business in the water?
Regardless, the Gungans use wood or reeds for the roof and the walls and pylons are made of timber, no doubt felled from the forest I can make out on the mainland. They're not uniform in colour either. Colour's been added with cloth, shells and dyes to make each hut a unique residence.
A boardwalk connects the settlement in concentric circles. In the centre, the largest house seems to belong to a chieftain or leader. I can see Gungans emerging from the water with fish they've hunted or kelp they've farmed. There's a market on the mainland where people sell their wares. To my surprise, they're paying with coins. I didn't think they had…real currency. Gungan females wear sea shells as jewellery. And at a reasonable distance from the market, I see latrines. Now I feel very foolish for assuming they'd dump their excrement in the lake." - Kyriaki
The Gungans of Chios lacked the advanced technology of their Naboo kin, and so the settlement was built on and near the water rather than beneath it. Far from being the hapless, clumsy savages the Vaderites stereotyped them as, the Gungans were gatherers, fishers and traders with a strong communal spirit and deep spiritual roots. Her father Tuorn was a tribal shaman who was educated in the ways of the Force, and the religious mysteries of her people. Her mother Maja was a medicine woman, complimenting Morgak's father. She was also a hunter for bringing in food and protecting from the beasts. Her aunt Ganda Fril was a travelling merchant, who did business with foreigners such as the Togruta of Gorkana by trading sea shells, fish and treasures from the bottom of the ocean and bringing back jewellery and goods the Gungans could not produce themselves.
During a massive storm Morgak's younger brother Nava Fril was thought lost. Despite Vaderite ignorance, Gungans could breathe underwater, they were like whales in that they could hold their breath a long time. So duringthe storm their hut was washed out. Morgak jumped in and using the Force unconsciously held her breath long enough to find her, using Force Sense to locate her sibling, too. She found her sibling unconscious and close to death and pulled them to the surface. Her mother found them out on the sea, huddling on an improvised 'boat'. She was able to bring the pair back to safety.
It led to a profound change in Morgak's young life, though she was still a child. Force usage was not unknown to the Gungans of Tephrike. Overall, they settled into the neutral area of the Force. To them the Force was like a tide. One could not fight the tide, they must go with it, but they could guide themselves in its currents. Thus began her training as a shaman. Her father would teach her to follow the tide, but also stress the importance of temperance. Though the Vaderites were still exercising a 'light touch', they viewed alien Force-Users as a threat to human supremacy. Training and gatherings took place in secret in groves, swamps and the sea.
When she was still young, she was fishing with her family, and encountered humans for the first time in her life. The humans were rude and abrasive. First they insulted the Gungans as primitives, then they threatened them and forced them to leave their catch. Angered, Morgak almost lost her temper, but was held back by her father. At the time Morgak did not realise that this was just the start. Someone who had been raised in a communalist setting like her could not fathom the evil the Vaderites would unleash. However, she soon noticed that their lives were becoming more and more restricted. Suddenly her people were prohibited from using a sea that had been a traditional hunting ground, not to mention of spiritual value to the Gungans.
When some Gungans ignored this, they were harshly punished and the settlement was forced to 'pay reparations for trespassing on private property'. Thus was the command of an arrogant human official, who visited her village while being carried in a litter carried by alien 'workers' and surrounded by Togruta mercenaries. From her aunt, Morgak learned that Gorkana had been bombarded by the Vaderites. Massive trawlers began to prowl the seas, even beyond the one that had been 'reserved' for humans. Morgak saw how they were destroying the natural seafloor habitat. Bottom-dwelling plants and animals were being destroyed.
The business of her aunt Ganda was also adversely affected. With their freedom of movement restricted, the Gungans had to acquire 'passes' that determined where they could and could not go. Once Morgak, who had been acting as a courier for her aunt, was caught by some Vaderite militiamen and accused of 'smuggling contrabrand'. The human thugs beat, humiliated and maltreated the young girl. It took the intervention of the elders to secure a release, and her aunt had to pay a bribe. While she was incarcerated, Morgak met Gungan labourers who left the village 'for work'. They were forbidden to speak to her.
Morgak threw herself into training. As part of her initiation as a shaman, she underwent a symbolic initiation connecting between the sea and land by being lowered into the depths of the water for several hours. As a final trial, she was tasked with diving to a coral reef where the influence of the Force combined with careful tending had created beautiful geometric patterns where a shaman could contemplate and commune with the spirits. This communion was supposed to enable a shaman to survive for days underwater while in trance. The journey was not without peril, for there were dangerous sea creatures a shaman would have to combat, placate or evade.
Morgak was successful in reaching the sacred reef, but found that it had been defiled. In their greed, the humans had drilled for gas and so the coral was now mostly dead or broken. It no longer sung to the shaman. Moreover, many creatures of the sea had perished, and the pollution caused by the gas drilling was spreading. Morgak was greatly angered and distressed by this cruel act of defilement and wanton destruction. Her people were outraged when they heard the news. Word soon spread to other Gungan settlements. There were many who argued for retaliation, yet others urged caution, fearing that the humans would oppress them even more brutally.
Amidst all this, Gungans started to fall sick. Morgak's mother threw herself into helping her sick kin, even a the risk of her own health. But their medicine seemed to fail them. Swiftly, the humans moved in, declaring a 'quarantine'. Despite her protests, her brother Nava was taken in for 'preventive treatment' after he started showing some of the symptoms. Morgak had to be physically restrained from assaulting the human doctors and guards. Rumours spread that her people were being deliberately infected by the humans. According to one story, the humans had spread the disease by selling them contaminated blankets. And the Gungans decided they had had enough. Elders and shamans from different clans convened in a grove deep in the swamps, where the humans feared to tread. There they swore a sacred oath.
Morgak's father Turon was hesistant at first, but came to see an uprising as a necessity. The humans were not going to stop after all until they had won or were stopped. Her mother Maja was very vengeful. Her son and her homeland had been taken from her. She would take both back, and the humans would pay for their crimes in blood. Her aunt Ganda was more hesitant. She was not uncaring, but had seen the devastation the humans' war machines had wrought. Her travels had convinced her they could not be beaten and driven away like a rival tribe. Thus she tried to distance herself from the rebellion, continue trading.
Morgak, though still young, was one of those Gungans who took the oath to fight for the sea, the land and freedom. The first human she killed was a police officer who had come to her home with a couple Togruta auxiliaries to 'carry out an inspection'. She knifed him in the back. Other young Gungan warriors, enraged by all the abuse their people had suffered, stabbed him as well. His bloody body was given to the sea. The auxiliaries who tried to seize her were killed with bullets or poisoned arrows or fled. The Imperial military authorities declared that one hundred Gungans would be executed for every human soldier killed. The uprising spread like wild fire.
Her family abandoned their home just before a Vaderite drone strike. The clan retreated deeper into the foreboding swamps. On account of her youth, Morgak initially served in a support role. Comms could be easily intercepted, and the Gungans did not have easy access to them, so they made use of couriers to deliver messages. She learned how to memorise coded messages, stay hidden and out of sight and smuggle contraband. She was aso a scout, keeping an eye on Imperial patrols and convoys. However, she yearned to join the fight.
During one incident, when she was passing on a message, she witnessed human soldiers and their Togruta minions carry out violent 'reprisals' against Gungan civilians accused of being partisans. The Vaderite minions took one of the civilians and hooked him up to the engine of a groundcar, while it was running. His body just shook all over. Then they took him to a generator, hooked him up to it and electrocuted him. Then they tied his wife to the back of the groundcar, and made her run behind it while they drove off. They drove her until she had died in agony. Morgak's burnt with anger. When she had to hide in a lake to avoid a patrol, she was almost caught by a Togruta militiaman, but pulled him down into the water. She stabbed him in the legs several times, and drowned him.
Soon she was drawn into combat missions. A grizzled Gungan warrior called Kas-Kal Marn became a mentor for her. Ironically, he had been exiled from the community for being a Republican Guard agent. Now his expertise in irregular warfare and terrorism became highly valuable. Her parents disliked him though. Kas-Kal was a bitter, jaded man with a penchant for brutality, but took Morgak under her wing. He taught her how to make bombs, fight and interrogate prisoners. War is not kind, and this one was a particularly brutal one.
The Vaderites showed Gungans no mercy, not making any distinction between partisan and civilian, adult or children. 'Collective punishment' was the norm. Vaderite propaganda cast the Gungans as mindless 'savages' and exhorted the soldiers to 'hunt them down like rabid beasts'. The Gungan rebels responded to the terror by laying roadside bombs, blowing up police stations and lynching humans and native collaborators.
Resources were scarce, and they had to take what they needed, regardless of the cost. Morgak participated in a requisition action, in which the rebels stole food from Nautolan civilians at gunpoint. The poor 'squids' were soon persecuted by the Vaderites for 'giving aid to terrorists'. They scored a significant victory when they managed to ambush a Vaderite troop convoy. They downed a tree onto the road, and rolled giant logs down on the convoy. No Vaderite soldier or alien auxiliary was spared. The rebels' greatest success was blowing up and heisting a Vaderite train. It marked the high point of the insurrection. However, the Vaderites brought down the hammer on her cell.
The rebels were forced to scatter. Wounded in a skirmish, Morgak had to hide. When she was found by Nautolans in the forest, she expected to be denounced. Instead a sympathetic Nautolan family took her in and helped nurse her back to health. However, the family forced her to leave when Vaderite soldiers came looking for her. The tide was starting to turn against the rebellion. Many of the Vaderite troops they had faced were paramilitary police forces, militia and army reservists, along with the Togruta auxiliaries. Several Gungan villages ceased paying tribute, and even the Nautolans had grown restless. Togruta auxiliaries deserted, disgruntled by their poor treatment.
However, the situation was changing. The notorious Darth Lachesis had returned to Chios. With the backing of the Supreme Leader, she took command. For decades, the human landowners and 'settlers' had dreaded the spectre of an alien uprising. Now that it had come, they spent no moment on the thought that the rebellious Gungans could have well-justified grievances against their tyrannical rule. To them, the Gungans were not people with rights or even sentient. And Lachesis was resolved to turn Chios into a 'human homeland'. She brought battle-hardened KEC and regular army troops with her. Her troops swept through and formed an occupation authority. Gungans and even members of other alien species were herded into camps, or their settlements were placed under direct human authority.
A town that had granted sanctuary to the rebels and was serving as a meeting place was bombed with napalm, poisonous gas and chemical weapons. They took advantage of the fact that it was a local festival. Men, women and children perished in the firestorm. Morgak's mother Maja was among the casualties. Morgak had manned a flak cannon to shoot down attacking gunships, and been badly fatally injured. Maja had been severely injured herself by the time she found her daughter. She gave the last of her life force to bring her daughter back from the brink of death, dying in her arms. She urged Morgak to keep fighting for their people. Inconsolable, angry and grieving, Morgak made her way through a a wasteland. As she walked through the ruins, she found a Gungan child, crouching and crying in the rubble.
Morgak smuggled the little girl out of the ruins, evading Vaderite soldiers that were staring to move in. She managed to save a few Gungans who were being 'processed' by the invaders, who had set up checkpoints, were kicking opening doors and grabbing civilians to be murdered. People who attempted to swim through a nearby river were shot by Vaderite soldiers, who made a sport out of it and competed with each other for 'scores'. She could not hope to fight them all. She and her charges had to hide in the ruins, then sneak into the swamps.
At one stage they were dected by a Togruta auxiliary. Morgak was ready to kill him, but to her surprise he lied to his human sergeant, letting them go. After a week in the wilderness, she managed to establish contact with Kas-Kal Marn, who helped her find a refuge for the children in the swamps. Sanctuaries were scarce, for the Vaderite troops were combing the island from west to east, north to south. Where they went, they created a wasteland, and called it peace. Under the guise of 'peacekeeping', the Vaderites introduced a policy of mass detention. At first, entire communities were 'resettled' into 'fortified hamlets' to 'protect them from terrorism. There, hunger and abuse were rampant. Freedom of movement was curtailed by a network of blockhouses, checkpoints and 'screening centres'. Chieftains and rebel cells were surrendering, hoping against hope that the Vaderites would show them mercy. However, Morgak was not done.
She persuaded her mentor to help her track down her brother, no matter the cost. He had heard rumours of experiments, and used his Republican Guard contacts to help her. In the process, Morgak came across references of a laboratory where people were being sent. With a motley band of partisans, the two of them broke into the facility. Gungans were indeed being detained and experimented on here. Her brother had been one of the victims, but she was too late.
The records showed that Nava had been subjected to 'immersion tests': he had been immersed in different types and temperatures of water, such as in icy or near boiling water. As part of the tests, he was kept in a tank of icewater for several hours, with his pulse and internal temperature measured through a series of electrcodes. Subsequently, he was thrown into boiling water for rewarming. All to determine how long and under what conditions Gungans could survive. The trials killed him. The records noted his stubbornness and resilience. They also showed that one of the researchers had used the 'test results' to write his doctoral thesis.
Morgak's fury knew no bounds. She had lost her mother, her brother and her home. Her people had lost their freedom, and were being herded like beasts. So be it. She would become the voice of the fallen, the avenger of the forgotten and the reaper of the guilty. She and Kas-Kal Marn were detected, but she slaughtered the guards, and the researchers, and burnt down the laboratory. A KEC physician called Doctor Emmanuel Zarov, mentor and friend of Jonas Menkales, had directed the experiments. Morgak drowned him in boiling water. She took the junior researcher who had used the suffering of her people to promote his academic career captive, so that she could torture him with railroad spikes and then nail him to a sacred tree.
After going off the grid, she resurfaced when she infiltrated the estate of a Vaderite landowner and killed him, along with his entire family. She helped the Togruta and Nautolan forced labourers who had been forced to toil on his stolen land escape. Some of them joined her. Morgak eventually reunited with her father in the wastelands. Tuorn had led what people he could save into the swamplands. But he knew that this sanctuary was not safe anymore - soon there would be nowhere to hide. Many of those under his protection were sick, starving or both.
The population of his camp consisted not just of Gungans, but also Nautolans, Togruta, and even Gamorreans who had originally been brought to the island as labourers and muscle, but turned on their human masters. Tuorn no longer believed that they could regain their freedom...but they also could not compromise anymore with the human invaders. The only thing that was left was to go down fighting...and help at least some of their people escape Chios. His focus was on the latter; she was determined to fight to the bitter end.
Together, they came to an accord. Kas-Kal Marn was able to use his contacts to get some support from the Republican Guard. They could provide arms, munitions, advisors and even some ships to evacuate people. It would not be enough. The Togruta would join them as well, led by a former commander of the dead queen's royal guard who had survived the destruction of their capital. The alliance was an uneasy one. Many a Gungan remembered a time when the Togruta had been the humans' boot on their neck. Morgak travelled from camp to camp, agitating for war.
She brought supplies, and munitions, and the heads of humans she had slain. An insurgent army was born, the Legion of the Crimson Tide. Kas-Kal Marn was named its commander, for the last stand of the Tephriki Gungans. Morgak became one of his lieutenants. When the Togruta rose up in revolt in their reservation, the Legion joined the insurrection. It was a war without pity, without restraint. Vaderite convoys and blockhouses were ambushed, farms burnt down and Vaderite settler families killed. Morgak distinguished herself as a small unit leader, and ambusher.
Using primitive, but still functional drones provided by the Republican Guard, Morgak and her cadre of rebels staged a terrorist attack on a Vaderite oil refinery. The attack was carried out in waves. The first drone hit a crude distillation unit, which triggered a blast and a ball of fire. The second attack took place about forty minutes later, and targeted crude oil reservoirs at the refinery. As a ball of flame and black smoke billowed into the sky, the rebels made their getaway.
In response, the Vaderites launched a crackdown. However, the rebels were able to lure them into an ambush. Ostensibly loyalist Togruta claimed that the unrest in their reservation had been fomented by renegades and Gungan agitators, and leaked intelligence about a 'terrorist camp'. Morgak acted as bait to draw in the enemy. And so Vaderite troops converged on the camp from several directions to prevent escape. However, aquatic troops were concealed in the water of a nearby lake, and other warriors in the trees, and materialised to ambush one section of the ring. Morgak slew a Sith acolyte in this engagement. She nailed his corpse to a tree. The battle was a grave humiliation for the Vaderites.
However, the invaders did not relent. Lachesis had taken full control, and was determined to fully subjugate Chios. And so the rebels were lured into a meat grinder of their own in the form of a juicy convoy carrying weapons and supplies. Except it was actually carrying soldiers. And when the rebels moved in they found themselves have been ambushed by light infantry, air attacks and even wild kath hounds bred for the occasion. The battle was a slaughter. Kas-Kal Marn had advised against the convoy strike. However, it had been too tempting, too necessary. For all their tactical successes, the rebels were running low on supplies, and ammunition. Even the Republican Guard could only provide so much via smuggling, especially after one of their hidden bases was destroyed by Vaderite air strikes. Morgak's mentor was killed making a stand against the oncoming human troopers. The rebels had to retreat with heavy losses. Morgak barely escaped with her life.
Licking their wounds in the swamps, the rebels found themselves overwhelmed by the Vaderite counteroffensive. The Vaderites managed to persuade some rebel commanders to lay down their arms by promising the mercy. Morgak had to kill a Gungan comrade who tried to assassinate the notorious terrorist in return for safe passage for his family. They were trapped, and hunger and disease were taking their toll. Her father Tuorn died in the crackdown while protecting refugees. When KEC troops tried to take him hostage, the shaman used all his remaining power to summon a tide to drown them, dying in the process. However, worse was yet to come. Through escaped Togruta forced labourers, the rebels learned that the Vaderites had built a death camp near the ruins of the destroyed Togruta capital of Gorkana. Thousands were being murdered by the hour. The noose was tightening around them, but the rebels had no choice but to make a move. The Togruta commanders were particularly adamant, and so was Morgak after what she'd seen in the Vaderite laboratory.
Her aunt Ganda was able to provide them with intelligence. Ganda had not been enthusiastic about the initial uprising and tried to stay out. But it was no longer possible. She had lost her family, and her people were dying at the Vaderites' hands. Having managed to preserve her reputation as a 'loyalist' Gungan and denounced her family, she got a job providing the camp guards with bread. Officially Camp Freedom was just a detention centre. As she learned, it was anything but. Inmates died of starvation, dehydration, disease, abuse...and systematic murder on a colossal scale. Ganda agreed to help pass along messages.
The assault on Camp Freedom would be Morgak's last battle. The battered rebels had managed to make contact with camp inmates planning an escape. The Legion of the Crimson Tide rallied for a last battle. On the day of the assault, a group of Nautolan prisoners responsible for disposing of the bodies of those who had already been murdered rose in revolt, using crude grenades that had been smuggled in by prisoners working in a munitions plant within the complex. They were joined by Gungans and Togruta from another part of the factory complex. A crematorium was set on fire. Meanwhile, Morgak and her remaining cadre of rebels assaulted the perimeter of the camp, and managed to break through. Morgak drew upon all the teachings of her father and other shamans to fight her foes, confusing and tormenting them with illusions. They killed Vaderites wherever they went and set fire to camp buildings. Some Vaderite guards had been taken out of commission because they had eaten poisoned bread supplied by Ganda. However, their escape route was cut off and Vaderite troops were rallying. When the partisans and several hundred prisoners tried to rush the main gate, many were cut down by heavy weapons' fire. A few rebels, cut off, fought their way to a crematorium, took their demolition charges into the oven room and detonated them in a defiant act of suicide against the tyrannical murderers.
Nonetheless, a few prisoners got out. Morgak was not among them. Injured by a grenade blast, and with her body scorched by shrapnel, she fought on, holding her ground so at least a few could flee. Ironically, her last companion was a Togruta prisoner, who used improvised grenades and an axe to kill Vaderites before being cut down. What was left of her motley force was captured by the Vaderites. The captured Gungan rebels were separated from their allies and brought to a field. There, the Vaderites demanded to know which of them was Morgak, since to them all Gungans looked the same. Morgak was about to identify herself, but suddenly one prisoner after another declared that they were Morgak. Thus they were all mowed down by machine gun fire. With her last dying breath, Morgak cursed all mankind. Her body was incinerated and the ashes scatterd. Her aunt managed to go into hiding and escape the island.
Camp Freedom continued its now openly genocidal operations until it was eventually dismantled. The Vaderites built a town called Sentinel's Rest, where the murderers could settle down as farmers, teachers, dentists and small businessowners. Chios had been 'cleansed of the xenos taint'. They planted trees on the murder sites, but soon they dared not enter the forest that suddenly sprung up, for there were...rumours of ghost of the angry dead. Death was not the end for Morgak. Her anger, her spite, and her hatred kept her tethered to this place. She refused to pass on into the Netherworld without her mission complete, and the nexus allowed her to resist its pull.
Her ghost, like so many of the victims of the genocide, continued to haunt the bone forest, as soon became to be called, terrorising any humans who dared enter. But as time passed, fewer and fewer humans were foolish enough to try. Then one day a young clone who called herself Kyriaki came to the bone forest to offer her a deal. She took it - for revenge, for all she and her people had lost. The two have been bound since then. Time will tell whether Morgak will get her revenge against the Vaderite butchers.
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