First Reply Northern Blood

[Darth Virelia]

"Crush Them Underfoot."

- TAG: OPEN

It was a quiet night.

The communities of Nordra were fiercely devoted to traditions older than most recorded history. On the midnight of every fourth day, those who had passed from this life were carried in solemn procession to the nearest lava pit beyond their settlements, there to be returned to the earth from which all life had once emerged. No speeches were given. Silence itself was considered sacred amongst the Nord, for it allowed every soul present the opportunity to reflect upon the departed in their own way.

Such customs ensured that grief belonged equally to all, for before the molten earth, every Nord stood as one people beneath the weight of death.

Hashelm had become a place of terrible sorrow.

The misallocation of critical supplies by compromised off-world officials had left the settlement catastrophically unprepared for the blizzards that followed. Heating systems failed district by district. Emergency shelters lacked fuel. Medical stations exhausted their supplies within days. Entire families froze together within their homes as the storm consumed the settlement from the outside in.

Of the nearly twelve thousand Nord who called Hashelm home, one thousand two hundred and forty-one perished beneath the icy grip of Nordra's wrath.

To call the rites that followed sombre would have been a grotesque understatement.

Pilgrims arrived from villages and settlements across the surrounding mountain regions, many traveling for days through blizzards and volcanic ash simply to stand witness to what had become of their people. Communities that would ordinarily have regarded such ceremonies with quiet distance now gathered shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the lava pits, forced to confront the scale of the disaster with their own eyes. They came seeking understanding.

How could a settlement so large have been allowed to suffer such deprivation? How could so many lives be extinguished not by war, nor invasion, nor plague, but by numbers written incorrectly upon datapads and manifests? How could something so seemingly small condemn over a thousand souls to die in the cold?

The answers whispered amongst the crowds were ugly ones.

One by one, the dead were brought forward.

The elderly who had guided the settlement for decades. Workers whose hands still bore burns and scars from the mines. Mothers clutching children who would never again wake to see the glow of Nordra's lava rivers. Each was lowered into the molten earth below. Steam and ash rose into the midnight air as frozen flesh vanished into fire, returning at last to the warmth that had eluded them in their final moments of life.

And with every body surrendered to the ancestors, the mood amongst the living darkened further.

The Nord were a stoic people by nature. Hardship was woven into their existence from birth. Hunger, cold, and death were accepted realities upon Nordra. But this had not been the work of nature alone.

Rumours had spread relentlessly through the mountain settlements in the days following the disaster. Off-worlders, elusive and secretive, were said to be constructing something deep within the mountains. Resources intended for Nord communities had instead been diverted toward hidden facilities and black projects. Officials had been bribed. Supply chains manipulated. Entire shipments quietly vanished before ever reaching Hashelm.

The exact same supplies that had been promised to the Nord people. The exact same supplies that could have saved them.

As corpse after corpse disappeared into the lava below, grief slowly curdled into fury upon the faces of those who remained. The silence of the ceremony became strained, heavy with restrained hatred and suspicion.

Only tradition kept the gathering from erupting outright.

Knowing the situation was rapidly approaching a breaking point, the elder of Hashelm finally turned toward a relic long preserved by his people.

The device was ancient, the metal casing had dulled with age, worn smooth by decades of careful handling and ritual preservation. Strange symbols, foreign to the Nord tongue, lined its surface in faded aurebesh script. Most within the settlement no longer understood how the object truly functioned, only that generations earlier it had been entrusted to their ancestors by a wandering off-worlder who had once crossed the frozen wastes of Nordra.

A Jedi.

The elder still remembered the stories told to him as a child beside geothermal fires deep beneath the mountains. The stranger had arrived alone during another terrible winter many decades ago, aiding isolated settlements as storms consumed entire valleys. Before departing Nordra, he had entrusted the device to the Nord people with a single promise.

"Should your people ever truly need help, activate this device."

"Someone will come."

For generations, the device had remained untouched.

The Nord endured their hardships alone whenever possible. Such was their way. To invoke the aid of outsiders was not done lightly, especially not for a people forged by cold, loss, and survival. Yet as the elder stood overlooking the lava pits of Hashelm, watching the final ashes of the dead rise into the midnight sky, he understood something terrible.

The anger spreading through the settlements would soon consume more lives than the storm itself.

Justice was demanded. Blood cried out for blood. Already armed clans spoke openly of marching into the mountains to drag the hidden off-worlders from whatever fortress they had built amongst the peaks. Others demanded the execution of the compromised officials who had diverted the supplies. Fear, grief, and fury had become inseparable.

And beneath it all lingered something worse.

Someone had engineered this disaster. Someone had profited from the suffering of Hashelm. The elder could feel it in the unease spreading through his people like poison beneath the skin. If peace were to survive upon Nordra, then someone beyond the mountains would need to intervene. Someone capable of seeing beyond vengeance before the entire region descended into bloodshed.

Slowly, the elder activated the ancient device.

A low hum echoed from within the relic as dormant systems awakened for the first time in decades. Pale light flickered weakly against the elder's weathered hands while the signal vanished silently into the stars above Nordra. Who now carried the receiver was impossible to know. Perhaps no one, or perhaps the Jedi Order itself no longer existed in the form the old stories described.

It mattered little.

The message had been sent.

And somewhere in the galaxy, whether Jedi, wanderer, mercenary, or something far darker, someone would hear the call of Hashelm.

 

[Neryn Ka]

Tags: Darth Virelia ​

As it happened, Nordra's "salvation" would almost assuredly only make matters worse.

Neryn's leather-booted feet produced a hiss of rapidly-melting snow where they touched the freezing ground. Soil that hadn't seen the sky in centuries was exposed as the creature stalked up the mountainside, full of purpose and malignant curiosity.

Neryn hadn't thought much of the device after he'd pried it from the still-twitching hands of its previous owner. Just another shiny thing of many, added to an ever-growing pile of moldering plunder that was interesting enough to take, but not interesting enough to investigate further.

Neryn possessed a number of distressingly-birdlike qualities, chief among them a fascination with stealing things that caught his attention. Ornate ceremonial weapons, personal effects, the odd still-bright eyeball plucked expertly from a skull. Only a few of these retained his admiration for long, until it was off to the next shiny thing that had the supreme misfortune to attract his attention.

The transponder was no different.

That was, until the ancient machine had started to chime. Neryn had excavated it from a pile of stolen rubbish, dusted it off, and given it an overdue second look.

And so it was, that the elders of Hashelm sought refuge from their demons by calling upon a worse one. No Jedi answered the call today, though Neryn was beginning to wish one had done so instead of himself.

Occasionally, the winged creature would lift his ghoulish theater mask, spewing a torrent of fire from his jaws to melt a particularly-large snowdrift. The resultant clouds of steam were enormous, but didn't stay that way long; the spawn's progress up the harsh slopes could easily be tracked by the unusually-resilient, freezing mists that he left in his wake.

The shrieking winds whipped furiously at his ragged garments, and were he a creature of a more sanely-arranged physiological makeup, Neryn was certain he'd have frozen to death hours ago. As it was, the sheer ferocity of the winds inconvenienced him where the cold could not; they made flight effectively impossible. He had tried twice already, only to come crashing painfully down into the snow.

Only the sheer heat of his fury made the way viable, clearing a path as effectively as a fleet of bulldozers. There was anger aplenty to go around, too, and before long, Neryn was effectively surrounded in a bubble of tropical warmth.

The Amphibow coiled around one shoulder shivered convulsively despite this, and the masked man did his best to keep the creature alive. It had served him faithfully, and losing it to the life-sapping chill of this place would be a devastating loss. He carefully retrieved the last chunk of a ration bar from a pouch at his waist, popping it into the bioform's waiting mouth and giving the creature an affectionate scratch.

The transponder clutched in one rust-armored claw wasn't faring quite so well; it took much focus to avoid moltenizing the ancient device, and thus wasting a trip all the way out here. As it was, the outer coating had deformed somewhat, but the thing still appeared functional.

Neryn couldn't recall ever seeing a place so hostile and lifeless in his existence thus far. For kilometers around, the world was a flat, hazy gray palette, devoid of the flickering soul-candles that spoke of living things. The device had led him deep into the mountainous wilderness, yet its steady pulse only now indicated that he was getting close.

He was also getting tired. Much as Neryn liked to imagine himself as invulnerable, his energy was not an infinite quantity. He just hoped that whatever was at the end was worth it.

It occurred to him, albeit belatedly, that maybe this was precisely the plan. To tire him out trekking through an active blizzard, before setting upon him with ill intent. The longer the trip went, the more this seemed like the most plausible explanation. He was young and inexperienced, but had already made his share of enemies.

Neryn's particular brand of cruelty was as flamboyant as it was graphic; the sort of terrors that plastered lurid news stories and wartime clickbait the galaxy over. Lianna had been the worst; thankfully for him, his atrocities toward the civilian population there had largely been a mere footnote in the wider chaos of the war. That didn't mean, however, that nobody was seeking well-deserved vengeance for the things he had done there.

No matter. Slow-roasting the skin from a wailing would-be assailant seemed exactly the sort of diversion to improve his rapidly-souring mood. If this was a hunt, or a trap, then Neryn planned to very creatively express his displeasure after the fact.

Plausible, yes, but he sensed otherwise. There were other ways to knock off an enemy, most of them quicker, cheaper, and more direct than a scavenger hunt through the mountains. He'd just have to see who (or what) lay at the end of this road before he decided what to do with it.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crush Them Underfoot."

- TAG: Neryn Ka

Long, dangerous roads of ice and fire carved their way toward the settlement of Hashelm.

Jagged volcanic fissures split the frozen terrain apart for kilometers at a time, casting an ominous orange glow across the snowfields whenever the storms briefly relented. Smoke plumes rose intermittently along the horizon, vanishing and reappearing behind blizzards and treacherous mountain peaks like the breaths of slumbering beasts beneath the crust of Nordra itself.

Reaching Hashelm demanded both physical endurance and mental resilience. The roads were narrow, unstable, and forever threatened by avalanches, volcanic tremors, or sudden whiteout storms capable of swallowing entire convoys whole. The Nord, short and broad-shouldered as they were, had adapted to such hardships across countless generations.

Most off-worlders had not.

Many underestimated the silence of Nordra. The isolation. The crushing weight of endless snow and endless mountains. Some simply disappeared into the storms and were never found again. But now was not a time when even the Nord could confidently endure the wrath of their world.

The entrance to Hashelm stood as a wounded shadow of what it had once been.

The transparisteel windows of the checkpoint had been shattered during the recent storms, leaving jagged edges rimed with frost. Snow had drifted deep into the structure, piling against abandoned terminals and half-functional heaters that struggled desperately against the cold. The settlement gate itself, little more than reinforced metal plating mounted between heavy supports, hung partially bent from the force of the winds that had battered the region days earlier.

Repairs had clearly begun. They had clearly failed.

Three figures guarded the entrance.

One was unmistakably Nord, barely three feet tall yet carrying himself with the stubborn solidity of the mountains surrounding the settlement. Rugged thermal armour concealed most of his form beneath thick layers of fur-lined plating and insulated fabrics. A heavily modified blaster rifle hung across his chest, its age obvious from the countless replacement parts welded into its frame over decades of use.

The other two were human guards.

Off-worlders.

Their equipment was cleaner. Newer. Corporate issue, perhaps local security contractors reassigned after the disaster. Though both attempted to maintain disciplined expressions, tension was evident in the way their gloved hands lingered too close to their weapons.

All three took immediate notice of the lone traveller approaching through the storm.

Visitors to Hashelm had always been rare. Off-world visitors rarer still, as anyone willing to cross the frozen mountain passes alone, amidst political unrest and deadly weather, immediately invited suspicion.

The humans exchanged brief glances. The Nord narrowed his eyes beneath the rim of his hood, studying the figure carefully as snow and volcanic ash whipped between them. Still, none moved to raise their weapons.

Word had already spread through the settlement that someone might come seeking an audience with the elder. Whether they believed such rumours was another matter entirely, but the warning had stayed their hands for now.

The Nord stepped forward first, boots crunching against frozen stone as the wind howled around the damaged checkpoint. His voice emerged rough and gravelled behind the filter mask covering part of his face.

"You're a long way from anywhere that still matters, off-worlder. What brings you to Hashelm?"

 

[Neryn Ka]

Tag: Darth Virelia ​

By way of reply, Neryn raised the ancient device in one hand, where it could be clearly seen despite the obscuring weather. "Following this." He said simply, letting that answer settle where it may.

He studied the place, and its defenders, a bit more closely.

On one hand, it was astounding that intelligent life clung to such a bleak locale in the first place. The natives were hard, grim-faced, and from what little first impressions were worth, supremely intolerant of nonsense. Born survivors. Still, their posture was just a little too tense, their hands just a little too tight around the grips of their weapons.

Armored and protected mightily against the cold, all three. Neryn was not. Clad in ragged robes and museum-piece armor, most would have frozen to death in such a getup. He was not most.

He decided he could work with this. The blaster bolts weren't flying yet, so for now, Neryn would attempt subtlety, play along, and see where he got.

Traditionally, subtlety was not his strong point, so this promised to be an interesting expedition, as well as perhaps a learning experience. Curiosity drove him forward now, a desire to see this through to whatever end. Neryn Ka hated few things worse than an unfinished story, after all. The universe owed him resolution, willingly or otherwise.

"If it leads here, then your call has been answered. If it does not, then kindly get out of my way. My time is not an infinite resource, and by the looks of things, yours is not either."

The creature's voice had a curious, unpleasantly-echoing tone to it, like audio feedback through a malfunctioning communication device.

"I'm here for answers, as much as to answer. Which of you can give them to me?" His unpleasant, unwinking pyre-stare moved between each of the three of them in turn, seeing who might have the courage to meet his gaze. In the past, he'd found that very few could. He was something manifestedly unnatural, even when doing his best to hide it as he was now. Animals could not stand his presence, and people often fared little better.

Still, he was here, had come when all the galaxy's vaunted heroes and peacekeepers couldn't be bothered. Such were the hazards of casting your prayers out to the void.

It might not be your gods that answered them.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crush Them Underfoot."

- TAG: Neryn Ka

The wind intensified without warning, shrieking violently through the damaged checkpoint as snow and volcanic ash lashed against metal and armour alike. The already half-ruined gate groaned beneath the pressure of the storm, loose panels rattling loudly enough to almost drown out conversation entirely.

Despite the brutal cold, the two security officers maintained their posture. There was stiffness in their movements now, the kind born not from fear alone but from drilled discipline. They were experienced men. Professional enough to keep their weapons lowered and their nerves contained even while standing before something they clearly did not understand.

The Nord, however, did not so much as flinch.

The storm may as well have not existed for him. Through the darkened visor of his thermal mask, the sheer hardness of his stare could still be felt. Suspicion radiated from him like heat from a forge.

One of the security officers immediately recognized the object raised in the stranger's hand for what it likely was: some form of transponder or emergency beacon. He stepped forward cautiously, subtly gesturing for the Nord beside him to ease his stance.

Though with the Nord, "eased" and "ready to kill something" appeared dangerously similar.

The officer took another long look at the ancient device before returning his attention to the off-worlder standing before them amidst the blizzard. Unlike the rough accents common to the Outer Rim, his voice was clean and clipped, unmistakably Imperial in dialect. Core Worlds educated. Probably former military before ending up in private security contracts at the edge of nowhere.

"I have no knowledge of anyone in Hashelm possessing a matching device," he admitted carefully. "We were informed someone might be coming to assist with... local issues." His eyes narrowed slightly behind frost-covered goggles. "But you don't exactly strike me as a Jedi."

He paused before continuing, weighing every word. There was unease in him now. The man was thinking, calculating possibilities. If this stranger carried Jedi relics yet was not a Jedi himself, then that opened far worse possibilities.

Some other predator from the endless wars consuming the galaxy.

The officer still remembered watching battle footage from the Core: Red lightsabers carving through smoke-choked streets while entire districts burned around them. Compared to that, hardened mercenaries and bounty hunters almost seemed preferable. Men like those could at least be bargained with using credits.

Things touched by the Force often wanted stranger currencies.

"These Nord are peaceful people pushed to the edge," the officer continued. "So I wouldn't recommend doing anything that gets us all killed." A brief glance flicked toward the stranger's side, as if expecting to see a blaster, before returning to his face. "Ordinarily I'd insist you disarm any hidden weapons from yourself and submit to temporary custody before entering the settlement."

A strained exhale left him.

"But I don't think that's a realistic option."

The Nord looked sharply toward the officer, clearly unsettled by the direction the conversation had taken.

His gravelled voice emerged from behind the mask.

"With the amount of trouble off-worlders have already brought us, you are certain we should trust another stranger wandering out of the storm?"

The officer answered immediately, though his eyes never fully left the newcomer.

"I don't think trust has anything to do with it." His jaw tightened slightly. "Besides—"

"KARK! MOVEMENT ON THE RIDGE! WHERE IS JANIE?"

The warning erupted through the storm from behind them. The second security officer, an older man with a distinctly Corellian accent, dropped instantly behind the shattered checkpoint barricade. His thermal electrobinoculars swung wildly from the tether attached to his vest as he reached for his rifle in one fluid motion.

The atmosphere changed immediately.

The Nord moved without hesitation, darting toward the opposite side of the checkpoint with surprising speed for someone so heavily layered in thermal gear. His stout frame disappeared behind a protruding slab of reinforced concrete designed to halt incoming vehicles.

The remaining security officer was left exposed beside the intruder for only half a heartbeat. Then survival instinct won out.

His eyes flicked once toward the stranger beside him before he began retreating backward toward cover, weapon finally raised toward the distant ridgeline vanishing in the storm.

His voice came quickly, slowly trailing as he pulled back.

"Drinks are on me if we survive this, stranger."

 

[Neryn Ka]

Tag: Darth Virelia ​

"You are surprisingly well-informed." Replied Neryn flatly, noting the clear suspicion in the guard's tone. Whether sarcasm, or actual mild surprise at someone being able to distinguish a Jedi on sight alone, there was no way to tell.

"This device is old. One can trace the ravages of the years on its surface." He observed, almost wistfully. "If it left this place in the possession of a Jedi, it has almost certainly swapped hands many times in the intervening period. The last pair of hands it landed in were mine."

He didn't elaborate on how exactly this had come to be; the standoff was plenty tense enough as it was. Its last owner certainly hadn't put up much of a fight, so they were most likely not the original Jedi bearer. How it had gone from one to the other was anyone's guess.

"I'm afraid there's no other help coming. The Jedi are far too occupied battling extinction to be bothered with this freezing mudball. You don't seem like a local, which means you probably stay up-to-date on current events, which in turn means I don't need to tell you this."

"If I were here with ill-intent, and you did not trust me..." Neryn let out a quiet, ugly sound of mirth at this "Then you were very foolish to let me get this close. I wouldn't be discussing the issue with you in that instance, and certainly not handing over my weapons."

The standoff intensified. Despite the flesh-ripping wind, he could almost smell the distrust and apprehension on all three of them. He kept his hands clearly visible, didn't reach for a weapon, and didn't maintain visible readiness as they did. If it came down to it, he was certain he could dispatch all three, but the rest of the town was an unknown quantity. Unknown quantities lead to unknown outcomes, and unknown outcomes were often all-too-lethal in places like this.

"Fortunately for all of us, I simply wished to see where this led, and am not interested in causing trouble. Now I know. So why don't we just-"

Neryn's concealed visage snapped upwards as the three men dove for cover, suddenly laser-focused in the direction they'd indicated. One hand dropped to the long-handled lightsaber at his waist, but overall, he was more curious than worried.

"Your 'local issues' seem to be a little more complicated than you'd let on." Came the mocking observation, as he too scuttled behind the barricade. "They are also not my concern, unless this is what the call came for."

Typical, Neryn thought. If he had eyes, they'd have been engaged in an exasperated roll right now. Provincial locals and their provincial issues. It was the same everywhere he went, and it seemed that even this lifeless wasteland wasn't immune to the ailments that plagued the rest of the galaxy.

"Let me guess; some unpopular local policy has sparked an insurgency, one that occasionally makes its displeasure clear by firing on this charming little hamlet. How near the mark am I?"

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crush Them Underfoot."

- TAG: Neryn Ka

Taking cover behind the shattered checkpoint barricade, the two security officers quickly prepared themselves for a firefight.

The older Corellian re-engaged his thermal electrobinoculars, bracing them tightly against the edge of the ruined barrier as he attempted to assess the enemy position through the storm. Beside him, the younger Core Worlder brought up his rifle and swiftly inserted a small data-chip into the scope assembly. The optic flickered faintly as targeting calculations began compensating for wind velocity, thermal distortion, and snowfall density.

The blizzard continued to hammer the checkpoint relentlessly.

Visibility across the ridgeline shifted by the second. Entire sections of the mountainside vanished beneath walls of white before briefly reappearing as the winds broke formation. Shapes moved within the storm only in fragments now, silhouettes appearing and disappearing like spectres between bursts of snow.

Across the checkpoint, the Nord calmly readied his own weapon.

Unlike the off-worlders, there was no panic in his movements. The cold seemed to sharpen him rather than hinder him, as though Nordra's fury itself was a familiar companion whispering clarity into his mind. His short stature allowed him to use the protruding slab of concrete with perfect efficiency, remaining fully upright while still protected.

The Corellian let out a low grunt at the remarks of their strange new ally, almost sounding relieved to finally speak freely.

"I'm willing to bet they're tied to whatever's happening around this settlement," he muttered. "Or they're about to become part of it."

The Core Worlder kept his rifle trained toward the ridge.

"Local insurgents are exactly what we're worried about. ID those targets, Haze."

The Corellian adjusted the electrobinoculars again, squinting hard through the interference.

"Agh, kark..." Static crackled faintly from the device. "Mercenaries. Two of them." His expression darkened. "Heavy black armour. Bulky silhouettes. Looks like a sniper team." A pause followed. "Again... where the hell is Janie?"

Through the electrobinoculars, the opposing force became far clearer whenever the storm briefly loosened its grip upon the ridgeline.

The figures were heavily armed and heavily protected.

At first glance, their armour almost resembled industrial environmental suits, the kind used by deep-core miners or hazardous material crews operating near volcanic fissures. Thick black plating layered over insulated bodysuits gave them broad, unnatural silhouettes against the snow, while reinforced joints and heavy boots suggested equipment designed to endure extreme climates for prolonged periods of time.

Long antennae protruded from the rear of each suit, swaying slightly in the wind, likely tied to encrypted communications or advanced targeting systems. Their helmets were completely enclosed, featureless black visors concealing any trace of the beings beneath. The tinted glass reflected nothing but stormlight and distant volcanic glow, rendering them strangely inhuman against the frozen ridge.

The rifles they carried were similarly oversized, long-barrelled weapons braced carefully against the rocks overlooking Hashelm. One of the figures remained prone while the other shifted slowly beside them, methodically scanning the settlement through a mounted optic.

The younger officer glanced briefly over his shoulder toward the settlement behind them before immediately turning back toward the ridgeline, he pulled out a pair of his own bincoulars and offered them to the stranger.

"Friends of yours?" he said quickly. "Or do you have an idea on how to send them towards their ancestors?"

 

[Neryn Ka]

Tag: Darth Virelia ​

Truth be told, Neryn didn't have any friends. If he had, he'd hope this wasn't how they'd conduct themselves.

"If they were friends of mine, I wouldn't be hiding." He pointed out, somewhat irritably. "Get down and cover your eyes and ears."

Neryn peered over the barricade cautiously. This entire mess was rapidly becoming an irritation, and one with no clean solution.

The weapons he carried were mostly short-ranged in nature; perfect for getting to enjoy the fracas of battle up close, less so for picking off snipers from a distant mountainside.

He had two options. Fly there and deal with it directly, or burn the mountain with them on it. Neither would do much to endear the locals to him, but the alternative wasn't much more pleasant.

Neryn had learned early on that public displays of his more unnatural aspects never won favors. Though largely unshaped and undisciplined, his raw potential now was great, still glutted on stolen life-essence from the recent Lianna massacre. He wasn't a Jedi, and what he was about to do would require a lot of explaining afterwards, but it was perhaps the least horrifying thing he could think of to do.

Resigned, Neryn stood, pointing his left index and middle finger at the mountainside. Fire, or something very like fire, leapt from his fingertips with a roar like a starship engine. Though constrained in its fury to more resemble a cutting beam than open flame, it was very clearly lethal, lancing across the distance between the two sides with terrible intent.

Neryn moved his forearm lazily in a backhanded cutting motion, causing the beam to sweep from right to left. Snow instantly flash-vaporized, rock bubbled and ran as it became lava, and a grisly death raced towards their assailants as the fiery ray swept the ridgeline from end to end. Its path could be traced by the glowing molten trail it left behind, visible even from this distance.

Already, the effort made his vision blacken a little around the edges. That was the curse of his nature; everything from sight to keeping his body moving at all required constant effort. Tapping too deeply into that battery made every part of him suffer, but the alternative was sitting there and waiting to be shot.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crush Them Underfoot."

- TAG: Neryn Ka

It confirmed every terrible suspicion they had held.

From behind the barricade, the officers watched in stunned disbelief as the stranger rose from cover and unleashed something they could scarcely comprehend. Fire—or something close enough to it that the distinction no longer mattered—erupted forth in a screaming torrent from his outstretched hand, crossing the frozen mountainside with catastrophic force.

The beam carved through the blizzard like divine wrath.

Snow flash-vaporized instantly in its path. Entire sections of stone glowed molten orange as the heat liquefied the ridgeline itself, lava running down the mountainside in burning streams. The sweeping arc of destruction moved with horrifying precision, guided casually by the motion of Neryn's arm as though annihilating a distant sniper nest required no greater effort than brushing dust from a table.

The two mercenaries barely had time to react.

One vanished immediately beneath the incandescent wave, armour and body alike consumed in a burst of superheated debris. The second attempted to move, perhaps even tried to run, but the molten beam swept over the ridgeline faster than any living thing could escape.

Then came the sound. The mountains themselves cracking under impossible heat.

For several long seconds, nobody spoke.

The storm continued to howl around them, yet even the blizzard suddenly felt quieter against the backdrop of glowing rock and rising steam upon the distant ridge, all until a young feminine voice finally broke the silence from behind the checkpoint.

"Didn't know we were starting the fire show already."

The newcomers turned.

Another off-worlder approached at a hurried pace through the snow, wrapped in thermal gear layered beneath a weather-beaten coat. Judging from her accent, another Core Worlder. A long rifle rested against her shoulder, and unlike the others, her expression held more irritation than fear.

Haze looked back toward her briefly before quickly averting his eyes from the still-glowing ridgeline.

"Janie," he muttered. "You took your sweet time."

She snorted.

"And apparently you didn't need my help."

Stillness settled over the checkpoint again. The molten scar upon the mountainside remained visible even through the storm, glowing faintly against the darkness like a wound cut directly into Nordra itself. Steam rose endlessly from the ruined ridge where snow met flowing stone.

Slowly, the Nord emerged from cover and approached the others.

It was not every day one witnessed a single being bend fire to such monstrous purpose. The Nord had seen volcanic eruptions, magma surges, and entire mountain faces collapse into molten ruin. Yet this had come not from nature, nor machinery, but from the will of one individual standing only meters away.

Janie broke the silence again, glancing between the stranger and the others.

"So..." she said slowly. "Who's the friend?"

The Nord answered calmly.

"I believe he is the one the elder hoped would answer the call."

Janie gave a dry laugh.

"You Nord and your obsession with secrecy nearly got us all killed before introducing us to the walking apocalypse."

Even through the thermal mask, irritation visibly crossed the Nord's expression. His posture stiffened slightly, though he maintained enough composure not to rise to the jab. The younger Core Worlder stepped in quickly before the conversation could sour further.

"We're not here to antagonize the locals, Janie."

Then, cautiously, he turned back toward the stranger.

For the first time since the stranger's arrival, there was something different in the man's eyes now. Something akin to respect, or fear. Perhaps both. The Core Worlder glanced once more toward the burning ridgeline before speaking.

"What exactly are you?" He paused. "And what's your name, stranger?"

 

[Neryn Ka]

Tags: Darth Virelia ​

Neryn's head swam, and he staggered, extending a hand against the crumbled wall to steady himself. The darkness that had encroached on the horizons of his vision rushed forward to greet him as he failed to maintain his Sight. There certainly wasn't another of those in him. Maybe there wasn't even enough to let him stay upright.

He felt the Force-battery in his heart flutter. Too much expenditure too quickly. It had been an astounding display of power for a novice, but that was the strength that a city's worth of stolen lives bought you, at least for a few moments. Burn briefly, but burn brightly.

Failing to steady himself despite his best efforts, his knees gave out, and the creature slumped against the wall. Dimly, he was aware of the others standing over him, along with another whom he didn't recognize. If they planned to do him in, now was the time. He'd overreached his limits too much to put up meaningful resistance.

Neryn ignored them for the moment, taking repeated deep breaths until his vision cleared somewhat. His false-eyes reignited, and he jerked upright, returning their blank stares with his own.

"No..." he murmured. "Not the apocalypse, not by a long shot." That came later, of course, but they were nearer to the mark than they knew. After all, was his destiny not to usher in the fiery collapse of all that was? He certainly wasn't feeling very almighty at the moment, though.

Neryn noted the guard's usage of "what" rather than "who" in his question. Normally, he'd be annoyed to the point of potential violence by this, but he was currently too exhausted to care.

"I'm not sure." He answered finally, and with a touch of despondent realization. Figuring out who and what he was had been rather the point of little wanderings like this one. "Neryn Ka." That name almost certainly didn't mean anything to anyone, at least not to the likes of these. He was a mere servant back home, and less than noteworthy here.

"I think you owe me the courtesy of a return introduction, if nothing else. Along with telling me what's really going on here."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crush Them Underfoot."

- TAG: Neryn Ka

It was perhaps fortunate for Neryn that none of those surrounding him appeared interested in exploiting his moment of weakness. At least, not openly.

The security officers and the Nord exchanged quick glances between one another as the stranger staggered and collapsed against the ruined checkpoint wall. Hands hovered near weapons out of instinct, but none moved to draw. Suspicion still lingered heavily in the frozen air, yet overriding it was something simpler.

Whatever Neryn truly was, he had just saved their lives.

The younger Core Worlder studied him carefully as he struggled to recover, while Haze kept periodically glancing toward the molten scar still glowing faintly upon the ridgeline. Even Janie, who had masked most of her reactions behind dry humor, now watched with narrowed eyes and open calculation.

At the mention of his name, however, something subtly shifted across her expression. As though the name itself had triggered old rumors, fragmented stories, or half-remembered reports buried somewhere in the back of her mind. She said nothing immediately, though her posture grew noticeably more attentive.

James eventually broke the silence.

"James," he introduced himself with a small nod. "Former Imperial stormtrooper. These days I take whatever corporate security contracts pay enough to keep me fed in the dustbins of the galaxy."

He gestured toward the others in turn.

"You've already met Haze. Corellian. Professional complainer."

Haze grunted.

"Damn right."

James continued.

"And that's Janie. Sniper, checkpoint commander, and unfortunately the closest thing this place has to leadership most days."

Janie rolled her eyes slightly but did not contest it.

"We're part of the security presence dispatched to Hashelm after the incident."

At that, James stepped slightly aside, allowing Janie to speak properly.

"As you've probably noticed," she began, motioning vaguely toward the damaged checkpoint and distant settlement lights beyond the storm, "the town is in terrible shape. A storm ripped through the region recently and wiped out a significant amount of critical infrastructure. Heating units failed. Supply caches vanished. Emergency equipment that should've been here..." Her expression hardened. "...wasn't."

Snow whipped violently between them as she continued.

"The Nord lost over a thousand people because of it."

Even Haze looked away briefly at that number.

Janie straightened slightly, slipping back into the practiced tone of someone trying to remain professional amidst a political disaster rapidly spiraling out of control.

"Naturally, people started asking questions. Rumors spread that off-worlders were siphoning supplies away from settlements like Hashelm for unauthorized operations somewhere deeper in the mountains." She paused. "Right now we have an investigation underway to determine how true those claims actually are."

The Nord let out a quiet sound behind his mask. It was more the exhausted frustration of someone who already knew the answer but lacked the proof to force anyone else to acknowledge it.

Janie then looked directly back toward Neryn.

"Janie O'Conner," she said more formally this time. "Local Security Officer."

Her gaze briefly flicked toward the ancient device he still carried.

"If you're trying to reach the elder regarding that transponder, then I'd suggest you and I take a little walk."

Haze immediately looked toward her.

"How the hell did you know that's why he's here?"

Janie cleared her throat.

"Because anyone with half a brain knows lone strangers don't crawl through death storms to isolated settlements for sightseeing." She folded her arms against the cold. "And because the elder hasn't exactly been subtle lately."

James frowned slightly.

"You knew about the signal?"

"I knew rumors," Janie corrected. "The elder's been talking quietly with the village heads for days now. Something about old promises and outside help finally arriving."

Her eyes drifted back toward the cooling ridgeline where Neryn had unleashed fire upon the mountain.

"I figured if someone showed up carrying ancient Jedi hardware..." She paused briefly. "...and then started melting cliffs with their bare hands..."

A faint shrug followed.

"...there's a decent chance they're connected to the Force."

Haze muttered under his breath.

"That's one way to put it."

Then the Nord finally stepped closer.

His heavy boots crunched against snow and volcanic ash as he studied Neryn carefully through the darkened lenses of his mask. When he spoke again, his voice lacked much of the earlier suspicion.

"The elder will want to see you immediately." He glanced toward the distant lights of Hashelm beyond the ruined checkpoint. "Especially now."

 

[Neryn Ka]

Tag: Darth Virelia ​

Surprisingly, Neryn let out a quiet little laugh at the Correlian's introduction in particular.

"Professional complainer. I imagine that's a lucrative line of work. Plenty in the galaxy worth complaining about in these sad days."

Neryn wasn't one to care overmuch about the troubles of others, on the rare occasions he wasn't the cause of those troubles himself. For better or worse, he was what his maker had shaped him to be: a monster.

Still, even monsters could occasionally have their moments. He'd had one before, not so long ago. Had defied his innately-cruel and callous nature simply for the sake of defying it. He'd taken a certain wicked pleasure in the internal rebellion, if only because it was novel. An assertion of individuality in a universe that sorted people into neat molds.

Self-awareness was a raw and painful thing sometimes. Neryn remembered well the touch of cold air on his open and bleeding nerves, remembered well that feeling of weakness and exposure. It had been his first sensation on the day of his creation. Awareness of his own artificiality felt similar. A simulacrum of meat and bone striving ever for something real.

Even his usage of the Force wasn't real, not in the natural sense. Like everything else about himself, he'd carved that into his own meat and marrow with effort and study. It showed, too. Raw, untamed, inelegant, and inexpert, but unquestionably effective.

In every sense, he was the furthest thing imaginable from the savior that these downcast wretches had been pining for. As he'd said, though, the Jedi couldn't be bothered to come. He had instead, though more out of his normal inquisitiveness and explorative spirit than any sort of compassion.

Neryn sighed. "Well. I do hate an unfinished story. I came to see where this thing led, and I mean to."

Part of him was surprised that they were surprised. All four were staring at him as though he were a thermal detonator with a rapidly-declining timer. He'd been amongst the masses outside the Blackwall before, of course, but...

This was maybe his first real experience of seeing them as people. Thinking beings with their own ugly struggles, rather than something he could pull apart to laugh at the noises they made. That unpleasant, raw self-aware feeling came surging back again. Neryn deftly strangled it before it could bloom fully, returning his attention to the situation at hand.

He was unremarkable or frankly below-average back home, at least when not strengthened by the stolen life of thousands. Yet to these people, he still represented the potential end of their way of life. "Walking apocalypse", the woman had said. Pride, confusion, and something less easily-defined chased themselves through his mind, and he felt his head begin to spin again.

"Fine, show me to your leaders. If nothing else, I'd like answers." Still a little unsteady, Neryn rose to his full height. He was tall but of a thin, willowy build, and moved with the sort of alien grace typical to the species he owed loose ancestry to.

"Besides, they tried to kill me too. I don't blame you for not trusting me, but we have a common foe now, and I believe it best we deal with them however we may."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crush Them Underfoot."

- TAG: Neryn Ka

At the remark regarding professional complainers, a small chuckle passed between the checkpoint team, brief enough to almost vanish beneath the wind. Even Haze let out an amused grunt from behind his scarf.

For the first time since Neryn's arrival, the atmosphere eased slightly.

There was still caution in their eyes, certainly. No sane being watched someone carve molten trenches through a mountain and simply relaxed afterward. Yet there was no immediate hostility lingering amongst them now, there would not be whispered plans to put a blaster bolt through the stranger's skull while his back was turned.

Only Janie remained difficult to read.

While the others reacted like ordinary people attempting to process something extraordinary, she continued studying everything around her with quiet calculation. Her eyes lingered on Neryn for far too long. When the conversation finally drew to a close, James gave a short nod toward the settlement further ahead.

"Well then," he said dryly, "good luck with the locals, friend."

The Nord visibly disliked that particular phrasing.

Friend was perhaps far too optimistic a term for the mood currently hanging over Hashelm.

Janie wasted no time lingering at the checkpoint after that. Turning sharply into the storm, she began leading the way down the frozen pathway toward the settlement proper. Snow crunched beneath her boots while the storm howled endlessly through the mountain pass.

Behind them, the others remained at their positions. The checkpoint still needed guarding. Whatever those mercenaries had been doing on the ridgeline, nobody there believed they had acted alone. The gates of Hashelm would remain watched tonight.

Without looking back, Janie motioned for Neryn to follow.

The journey quickly became strange. At first it was easy enough to dismiss the distorted sense of distance as merely the result of the storm. Snow and darkness had a way of swallowing perspective on worlds like Nordra. But as the minutes dragged onward, even someone entirely unfamiliar with the settlement could tell something felt... off.

The path was far too long. The lights of Hashelm ahead never seemed to grow closer at the pace they should have. Landmarks vanished behind the blizzard only to reappear at odd angles later. At several points, Neryn could have sworn they had passed the same jagged volcanic outcropping more than once.

Yet Janie continued onward without hesitation.

She had remained silent the entire time, always walking just a step ahead of him through the snow. Her posture was composed, but not relaxed. Thoughtful. Deeply thoughtful. Like someone carefully arranging pieces across a board while deciding how much truth to reveal.

The cruelty of the weather had still not relented, yet unlike the checkpoint officers, Janie moved through it almost effortlessly. Either she had spent years adapting to Nordra, or stubbornness alone sustained her.

Eventually, her silence finally broke.

"How are things behind the Blackwall?"

Her voice was calm, almost conversational, then came the second question.

"Your mother still surviving their little games, spawn of Ka?"

 

[Neryn Ka]

Tag: Darth Virelia ​

Neryn, too, found the former trooper's choice of words a little too optimistic. He was increasingly confident that, had he not elected to kill the attacking mercs at his own expense, he'd probably still be stonewalled at the gate after they'd done it themselves.

So it ever was. He'd long learned that he was not the only unnatural thing roaming outside the Blackwall. One would be very foolish to trust someone they'd just met, especially on a planet like this one. That was something he could understand. One would perhaps be even more foolish to trust the likes of Neryn Ka.

He turned to follow the checkpoint commander, though he didn't entirely like the way she was looking at him. He'd seen that look before, on many other faces at many other times. Maybe he'd even had it on his own.

Neryn may have been no intellectual powerhouse, but even he noticed the repeating panorama before too long. One hand slipped to the smooth grip of his sidearm. He felt the weapon shift slightly in his hand, as if it too were uneasy. No matter; at this distance it could topple a bull Gorog, and he wouldn't need exhausting displays of sorcerous power to defend himself.

After the question came, Neryn reacted as he always did, perhaps predictably. Never one to beat around the bush, he went right for the heart of the matter.

"I'd be far more concerned about your own welfare than hers." Something boiled dangerously beneath the creature's voice. Up to now he'd been more curious than irate, but he reacted to perceived trickery in the same way that all predatory things did: with instinctive aggression.

Of course, there had always been the risk that someone would recognize the dark lineage to which he belonged. It would have been wiser to give the guards a false name, but at the moment he'd barely been conscious, much less in a state to come up with a decent lie.

"Who are you? The truth, please, or at least a more convincing lie. There's been a little too much dissembling already, and I'm getting tired of seeing that same mountain."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crush Them Underfoot."

- TAG: Neryn Ka

A small laugh escaped the officer's lips, utterly unbothered by the dangerous implications hanging between them.

The sound was strangely genuine.

She looked toward Neryn with an expression that balanced confidence and warmth in equal measure, as though entirely assured of her position while simultaneously amused to finally be speaking with someone she considered genuinely interesting. There was no fear in her eyes now, only a quiet excitement, like reconnecting with an old acquaintance thought long lost to time.

It became immediately obvious she had no intention of maintaining the façade much longer.

"Answers would certainly be appreciated," she admitted lightly. "But I suppose I can start first."

Her gaze drifted briefly toward the small chrono-watch wrapped around her right wrist. The gesture looked casual, though something about it felt deliberate.

"I should probably tell you this before we continue." A faint smile crossed her face. "If I genuinely believed you posed a serious threat to me, I would've had those snipers actually take the shot."

The wind howled violently around them.

"Interesting, isn't it?" she continued. "That they never fired once."

Then she stopped walking entirely, for the first time since leaving the checkpoint, Janie fully turned to face him beneath the storm.

The distant lights of Hashelm finally flickered properly into view behind her now. They had indeed been walking in circles, deliberately.

"You're about to reach the village for real this time," she said calmly. "When you arrive, the elder will ask you to inspect evidence. Shipment manifests. Supply logs. Financial records. Papers." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Eventually you'll discover documentation indicating that a local Nord administrator diverted funding away from settlement security and logistics. According to the records, that's why personnel haven't been properly paid."

She sighed softly through the cold.

"The implication being that Nord incompetence caused the disaster."

The disgust in her voice at that conclusion was subtle, but unmistakable.

"I'm trying to secure certain... personal interests in this sector." She tilted her head slightly. "And I know Lirka."

That finally settled between them with real weight.

"Old acquaintance. Very old acquaintance."

Snow swirled between them as she continued.

"The moment I heard your surname, combined with what you could do..." A faint shrug followed. "The conclusion wasn't exactly difficult to reach."

For a few seconds, only the storm writhed around them. Then Janie folded her arms against the cold and continued with brutal honesty.

"Our corporate security teams got short-changed by a drunken Nord bureaucrat who barely cared enough to hide it. Nobody stationed here wants to remain on this planet. The locals despise us. Most of my people are exhausted, underpaid, and one bad week away from putting blaster bolts into each other over ration shortages."

Her eyes drifted toward the mountains surrounding Hashelm.

"And frankly, I doubt you particularly enjoy this frozen bottleneck of a world either."

She looked back at him directly.

"You wanted answers? Here's one."

Her expression sharpened slightly.

"You are currently the only realistic chance they have of getting out of this situation alive."

They was the distinct word, as now she had purposely separated herself from the rest of the corporate security forces here on the planet. Finally, she answered the question Neryn had not yet asked aloud.

"Why did I lead you in circles?" A small breath escaped her. "Honestly?" She laughed softly to herself. "I was waiting to see if you were going to kill me."

The statement landed with startling casualness.

"Your mother has quite the reputation for violence." Her gaze remained steady on him. "And I figured if you intended to start burning people alive the moment you realized you were being manipulated, it was better that it happened away from the settlement."

Another pause.

"A Jedi would of been so much easier..."

Of course, she hadn't yet seemed to mention who she actually was, but it was painfully obvious that she wasn't some local security officer.

 

[Neryn Ka]

Tag: Darth Virelia ​

Neryn made a sort of sniffing noise at her threat, causing a swirl of sparks and cinders to fly from the empty eyeholes of his mask.

"They didn't carry a big enough gun. I've learned the hard way what sort of gun it takes." This said as less a boast, and more in the tone of dispassionate observation. "Nothing man-portable, at least when I've eaten recently. I welcome another attempt, but one should know their prey before they intend to drop it."

"It doesn't feel great, but I'd be more upset about the holes in my clothes than whatever damage your third-rate mercenary armaments can do. This cloth has history, after all."

He tilted his head sideways as he stared at her, the sort of posture a cat might adopt toward something it didn't understand. Her explanation was a long one, but he believed he got the gist well enough, and nodded slowly. "I think I see, then. So you've been playing them against one another. Stoking this mess for your own purposes. To what end?" Yet again, there was no readable tone to this question. Whether an accusation or simple curiosity, it was difficult to tell.

"Knowing Lirka means nothing. That name is known, and cursed, in many places. Someday mine will be too."

Her next comment, though, ensured that it was Neryn's turn to laugh. An ugly sound, like volcanic rock sliding into an open caldera. "If their salvation depends on my good graces, then I have bad news. That's a shallow well at the best of times, and growing shallower all the time. Particularly when I learn that our common cause was illusory from the beginning."

"I've no interest in killing you, at least for the moment. Who else am I going to get answers from, that talkative short fellow at the front gate?" That sniffing noise again, perhaps a sound of mild exasperation, as if having to explain the obvious to a child.

"No. Corpses don't tell tales, at least not in the condition I tend to leave them in. I won't deny I'm tempted, however. If you do know Lirka, then you know she has famously little patience for nonsense. That's a trait I inherited."

"The Jedi aren't coming, unfortunately. Their jurisdiction is a narrow one, and I mean that in terms of both space on the map and moral duty. A local spat on a remote iceball does not fall within it."

"I'm afraid I'm all you get, and perhaps that's for the best. A Jedi would have dithered about back there instead of dealing with the issue."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crush Them Underfoot."

- TAG: Neryn Ka

Neryn's questions were fair ones. After all, most beings tended to demand answers after discovering they had been deliberately deceived, redirected through snowstorms, and quietly profiled by a woman who seemed far more informed than she initially pretended to be.

Janie appeared to accept that reality without resistance as the wind eased slightly around them for the first time in several minutes, allowing her words to carry more clearly through the frozen pass.

"What end?" she repeated softly. "Ending this entire mess with the locals before it grows into something unmanageable."

She turned slightly, glancing toward the distant lights of Hashelm below.

"The Nord are obstructing certain local interests I have in this sector. Meanwhile, the more off-world attention this disaster attracts, the greater the chance someone begins uncovering things buried beneath this planet that are far better left hidden."

There was only ruthless practicality in her words.

"Resolve the conflict quickly," she continued, "and both problems disappear together."

A long sigh escaped her.

"Unfortunately, you happen to be in a remarkably useful position to make that happen."

The storm picked up again, snow whipping violently between them as though Nordra itself disapproved of the conversation.

"The alternative solutions available to me..." Her lips pressed together briefly. "Are considerably messier."

The way she said it made it immediately obvious that "messy" likely translated to bloodshed on a scale she would simply rather avoid if given the option.

For a few moments, she simply allowed the wind to fill the air, then Janie laughed quietly to herself.

"At the very least, you're already proving more reasonable than some self-righteous Jedi would've been."

There was unmistakable irritation in the way she said Jedi, though not outright hatred. More the exhaustion of someone who had previously dealt with people convinced morality alone could untangle political disasters.

Slowly, she reached for her rifle in a calm fashion. Her thumb and forefinger adjusted the scope assembly while she spoke, recalibrating it against the shifting storm conditions almost absentmindedly.

"You know," she said casually, "most Sith I've worked with would already have snapped in anger."

Her eyes briefly flicked toward him.

"So either you're unusually patient..." A faint smile touched her lips. "...or catastrophically tired."

The weapon clicked softly as she finished calibrating the optic, then came the real question.

"If you do help resolve this," she asked, voice quieter now beneath the storm, "what exactly do you want in return for getting me out of this miserable situation, Neryn?"

 

[Neryn Ka]

Tag: Darth Virelia ​

Neryn noted that "Janie" was still being highly evasive about what exactly she was doing here and why, but elected not to press the issue further. He was growing increasingly frustrated by the seemingly-impossible task of prying some information from the mercenary, if mercenary she was.

"It's not difficult to be more reasonable than a Jedi." He stated matter-of-factly. "Many people can achieve that, potentially even you."

Neryn's eyes, or what passed for eyes, were visibly narrowed in suspicion. Two smoldering slits of yellow amidst a field of emptiness, focused in all their infinite malice upon one person.

The winged spawn had been long used to simply cowing difficult people into submission, but that clearly wouldn't do here. He'd have to apply what little cunning he had in store.

"I didn't introduce myself with a 'Darth' title, did I?" Came the response. "You'll find I'm full of surprises. So either I'm telling the truth..." he trailed off, echoing her veiled threat in mocking fashion.

"Or maybe you haven't figured me out as much as you'd like to imagine."

"What I want?" For the third time, that sniffing-hissing noise emitted from the creature's golden visage, like the sound of a wood crackling on a bonfire. Judging by context, it was probably an expression of exasperation. "There's nothing I want that you can give me. Except maybe the truth. I'm noticing that's still a little light on the ground. You have a way of speaking much and saying little, and I suspect it will get you into trouble one day."

"I don't expect the truth will be forthcoming, so..." he tapped one gloved finger on his chin in a pantomime of consideration. "I'll settle for half of it. Your name. I suspect Janie is no more a real person than Jutrand is a resort world."

"That little fragment of the truth is worth playing your game a while longer, I think. I'd rather be a co-conspirator than a pawn. Were that not the case, I'd be back home tending to my actual duties, instead of following an anonymous signal to the end of the cosmos."