Private O' Child of Mine

[Lirka Ka]

UNKNOWN STOREHOUSE

Monsters festered in shadowy places. Dens littered across the Galaxy from all manners of evil, some forgotten, some hidden, others little more than abandoned and destitute places where the horrors created within were little more than wispy and forgotten things. Lirka possessed all manners of the three. For the dark dealings of the Once-Sephi were preferably done in secret. Each step upon her Dark Path plunged her deeper into damnation - within these hovels of misery, now monsters were born to be brought into the fold.

More hands, more eyes. More creatures to unleash upon the Galaxy and to bring within the orbit of the damnable zealot who would see civilization burn to satisfy her own mania.

Neryn Ka was the freshest of these beasts, the newest Ka built into Lirka's monstrous family. The fledgling so recently flung from the nest to find his place within a strange Galaxy - but yet for as quickly as he had been pushed from this place, the clarion call of the Ka matriarch summoned him home. If one could count a place as unfriendly and sterile as this a home. Sequestered away in the nowhere places where none deigned themselves to look.

Halls that hid away the gestation pods of Ka creation. Stockpiles of meat and replacement parts for the ever collapsing form of his progenitor. And murky tubes of liquid hiding away Darkness only knew what. But all of these little sins were but droplets in a river just waiting to become a torrent. Chipping away at the dam that held it back - but it was not a task that could be done alone. Lirka needed help,

She stood within the central lab, awaiting her spawn's arrival. Before her, a pulsating mass of meat drawn from many a poor sentient fool. A great many contraptions picking and prodding away, as if sorting this pile of living matter to an unknown end. Breaking it down into its core structures - the mechanical disassembly overseen by Lirka's patient form, the room seeming to move at the subtle gestures of the beast and the undulating swirling of viscous blackness that seemed to dance around a careful tubing network within the facility. It was a rarely unarmored appearance, letting her uncanny foulness free from its metal shell now that she was in good company.

She knew that he didn't hate her enough yet to kill her in this "weakened" state - no, that would come later. For now, she needed the careful touch that only a Ka could bring....

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[Neryn Ka]

Neryn had been a busy little fellow of late. Only recently loosed on the galaxy, but already so ambitious.

There was much to be done, and a finite amount of time in which to do it. Nonetheless, when the summons came, he'd dropped his schemes where they lay and lost no time in arriving.

Neryn inhaled deeply, tasting the formaldehyde reek that hung in the air. It smelled like home. After all, he'd first crawled from this place, and rendered the galaxy just a bit worse for having done so. It was at once womb and school, creator and teacher.

Neryn figured that most would find the "air" in here unbreathable, if not deadly. He was not most.

He suppressed a shudder with some difficulty. His birth had not been so long ago that he'd forgotten the sheer agony of his emergence into the galaxy. In a way, he'd died the instant he was born, broken repeatedly by his own ruined and terrible form.

Only sheer will and ingenuity had allowed him to survive. The spawn had learned early that the universe was a cruel and merciless teacher. Yet, the universe probably checked under its bed for Lirka Ka at night. There were worse things than the existential horror of existence, and Lirka was firmly among them.

He'd come motivated by that peculiar mix of fear, fealty, and envy that the Creator-Mother carefully engendered in all her terrible offspring. Neryn wasn't entirely a thing of mere flesh and blood, and his thought processes, emotions, and motivations were well beyond the realm of comprehension, at least for saner minds. He sneered at the greatest terrors the universe had to offer, spat on their offers or demands of service, and cared nothing for their pitiful temporal treasures.

Or so he liked to imagine.

Nonetheless, those three things drew him here. Fear, fealty, envy. He feared the Creator greatly. Indeed, Lirka was perhaps the only thing that made his crystalline false-heart quicken in panic. From the fear, came the fealty. If one liked being alive, one served, or one was unmade as easily as one had been made. He wondered how many of the shapeless things in these tanks had been disobedient children, however long ago. Neryn didn't intend to join them.

The envy was new, but no less potent. Neryn envied the respect and trepidation with which the Creator was viewed. He saw the revulsion and horror on the faces of even their "allies", when Lirka Ka's shadow fell across them.

Oh, how he wished he could spark fear in so effortless a way. He was young, new, an unknown quantity. Why should anyone take him seriously?

He had a lot of catching up to do.

Neryn didn't need directions to find where the Creator-Mother was. She'd made sure of that. When the call came, he returned home as instinctually as a bird might fly to warmer climes in winter.

He found Lirka hunched over a... thing in the center of one of the endless laboratories the building seemed to contain. The spawn scuttled trepidatiously over to study this new and revolting experiment.

As the Creator did not hide her face, he deemed it only proper that he do the same. Off came the leering demonic mask that he'd taken to wearing, aping the face and manner of an ancient antagonist.

Neryn's empty eye sockets kept their flickering yellow-embered gaze on the experiment, rather than the experimenter. Try as he might, he lacked the will to meet his maker's gaze, unfettered for the first time by the monstrous iron helm she habitually wore.

"I am here, as you commanded, O Creator." He murmured, stating the obvious. He was curious about the reason he was here, but he doubted it would remain a mystery long. If he played his cards right, he might even walk out having elevated his standing in the eyes of the illustrious House of Ka.

Just like that, the obvious fear made way for fawning unctuousness and ill-concealed ambition. "How can I serve?"

Lightsaber / Sidearm /Dagger / Amphibow​

 

[Lirka Ka]

The work of the killers never ended. It merely evolved in forms more grotesque than the last.

This birthplace of monsters felt like a remnant of older times to Lirka’s hearts now. Her’s was a mind that endlessly looked forward, to the End of All Things. Creation to serve destruction. Abominable things for her to ferry alongside the Path. Abominable things like Neryn Ka - each of her spawn were reminders of her past, in some form or fashion. Neryn another deviation of the utterly monstrous evolution she had subjected herself to time and time again: a proof of concept as much as testament to her ability to warp the natural order of things.

It is why she had returned this most foul of places, and summoned her newest of spawn to it again. The natural order was a repulsive thing, and it demanded to be broken once more.

That link between creator and creation brought them together. Monsters melded together in mind. Each built from the same base stock, even if the end result had ended up grossly different. For a time, she did not address him - the gory work of her strange spider-like surgical contraption continuing as meat was neatly broken down into its different components.

He was still a fledgling. And the eagerness of youth brought some modicum of amusement to her - though she did not show it. Finally she turned to address the newcomer, each of their eyes so utterly unnatural. Neryn’s flickering emptiness, meeting the dyed piercing orbs within Lirka’s skull. While the inklings of decay clawed at her features, the horrid uncanniness of her being took paramount position. It was like a statue animated to speak - perfectly sculpted in all the wrong ways that a person could never reach.

She did not answer his question immediately, her eyes were a distant and twitching thing for now. Her voice softer than it normally was, undistorted by her helm and the inklings of her alien accent sneaking through: the remnants of Thustra, their-home-that-had never-been-their-home

“I have scried the portents…swirled the blood to gaze out into the abyssal darkness of the beyond once more.”

New revelation in the transient devotion to her Primordial Darkness.

“Tell me, O’ Child of Mine. Do you know the relation between the Darkness from which all began, and the Darkness that which our Sithly compatriots wield as their weapon?”

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[Neryn Ka]

Neryn scratched his head with one of the long, razor-bladed talons that tipped his leathery wings, apparently briefly stymied by the question. True to form, he didn't know much of anything. Sometimes, that was useful. It allowed one to press ahead without getting overly mired in dogmas and expectations.

Mostly, however, ignorance was a nuisance. So it was here. He was aware, of course, of his mother's strange creed. It had shaped his outlook on things in a very real way, for how could it not? The Truth of it was plain enough to see; one only had to look out of any given window on any given world.

Certainly, it had endowed his maker with a terrible and far-reaching sort of vision. As he was born within its tenets, it didn't seem especially unusual or noteworthy to him. Indeed, he'd rather woven it into a series of projects planned for the near future...

Nonetheless, he couldn't see much connection between the Primordial Dark and the far-lesser parlor tricks of the Sith, but did his best to hazard a guess. Lirka Ka wasn't asking this because she didn't know; he was being catechized.

"I would assume that the Sith are, knowingly or otherwise, tools of the Primordial themselves?" He posited after a moment's consideration. "All things are, after all. Everything slides eventually toward dissolution. Some of us just help nudge others toward it a bit faster."

Neryn was, for all his numerous and varied faults, an enthusiastic nudger of fate's scales. He'd theorized early on that the universe was held up by certain persons, places, and things, support pillars upon which the integrity of this reality rested.

Knocking these pillars over was fun, but also necessary. Hastening the death of a senescent, decaying universe couldn't be anything other than noble, and Neryn thought of himself as a very beautiful and noble being. Whatever was born in place of this cesspool could only be an improvement. He fancied, however, that Lirka would not find these ideas as amusing as he did. They were bordering on the heretical, descending into what The Book called 'The Temptation of Annihilation".

Neryn may not have been the sharpest knife in the arsenal on the best of days, but he knew better than to give Lirka even the tiniest reason to call his competence into question.

"Perhaps, as the Sith are bringers of great suffering, they are also bringers of great enlightenment and evolution? The Text does say that the one must precede the other. That is the best guess I can offer, as I am sadly lacking in your hard-earned wisdom and perspective."

Lightsaber / Sidearm /Dagger /Amphibow​

 

[Lirka Ka]

TAGS: Neryn Ka

Darkness was everywhere. It was a constant war, the trudging and the tugging of the mighty brawling their way forward from the pull to oblivion that all lesser beings fell towards.

Peace is a lie, there is but chaos.

Chaos was suffocating, chaos consumed the mind and brought forth only madness. It required a luminary to cut through the screaming flurry of it all and see the truth that laid within. Or perhaps…to believe you understand chaos, is to truly fall victim to it.

For now, Lirka had seen through the chaos. She had felt the pull of darkness again, clawed ethereal hands tugging at her legs pulling her back to the netherworld of nothingness. Strength demanded evolution. And what was Lirka Ka but an ever-shifting mass of unnatural evolution?

She looked to Neryn Ka with those unnaturally dyed eyes. There as a furious intensity behind them, a raging blizzard tinted by the manic revelations of a prophet. The twitch at the corner of her lips, the writhing shifting of flesh. He was such a nascent thing, forced into existence with little of the flashed-memory the Ka’s shared from their progenitor.

The perfect scalpel for Lirka to loose upon the Galaxy. For whom else could she trust more than one built of her own stock?

“All things exist beneath Darkness, all things fight again for pull of Darkness - knowingly or otherwise.”

To truly grasp reality, one needed to embrace the mythology of it all.

“In the beginning, there was only nothingness. The Darkness that is beyond Darkness. It is the void that which all life came, and which all life will return. Yet from that nothingness came life…the Living Force.”

She spoke wistfully of the thing, equal parts enamored and disgusted with each word.

“It is a strange thing to imagine if you have not felt it, Spawn. The energy that binds all living things together. It is pandemonium. Darkness stretched its rancid claw into the chaos of the living, and infected it with the power of Darkness. The Strong were allowed to draw upon the power needed to survive the pull of the Primordial. The Primordial Darkness, the progenitor, the Dark Side its spawn…”

And then, in that intensity. The glint of maddening ambition.

“You were built to be the same as I, Neryn. We are cut off from this force-that-binds-all-things. Our vision is our own, our fate built by only our two claws. Yet, I have denied myself this piece of the Darkness for too long…when I feasted upon the meat of the Butcher-King in our marriage of blood and ichor within my gestalt. I was able to feel the energies of the Dark Side return to me, ever so briefly before the Jedi wretches purged that nascent power from this form.”

She took a step forward now, the scratching and clawing of those spider-like surgical limbs pausing in their categorical obliteration of whatever poor creature had once been alive.

“I will have that power returned to me. The Sith will never accept one such as I if I am to lead them through the Path. That is where I will need you, my Spawn. I need a hunter.”

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[Neryn Ka]

Neryn listened as his Creator spoke of her plans and ambitions, and their respective places within the universe. A good bit of it sailed over his head, but he grasped the gist of what was being said. He could scarcely contain his glee (and apprehension) when finally told the reason for Lirka's summons.

Indeed, this was something he could help with. Neryn wasn't lying when he denied having much of his forbear's wisdom, but he did inherit something of her talent for terrible and forbidden studies. Such studies had restored his sight and granted him great power, though none of the restraint and finesse required to use it to the fullest. He could feel the false-heart pulse in his chest, as if knowing his thoughts.

Neryn was a little more familiar with the Sith's sorceries than his maker might have realized. They were what kept him alive, or at least, alive in a recognizeable form. It was fitting that they should steal those powers for themselves, stripped of their false religion and foolish mysticism.

In any case, a golden opportunity had at last fallen into his hands, a way to prove his status beyond any vestige of doubt. The winged spawn visibly tensed like a cat as she spoke, almost itching to get to work. He was flattered that Lirka Ka would choose him for so critical a task, but even he understood the gravity of what was being laid before him. Important tasks came with equally unspeakable penalties for failure.

"I do love a good hunt." He replied smoothly, putting forth his very best air of confidence. "Name your quarry, and I will drag them screaming into your presence. Or only part of them, if you prefer."

Ever since terrorizing the civilian populations on Lianna, Neryn rather liked the former better. He'd rampaged unchecked through Lianna City's streets, just one of a thousand-thousand monsters to do so. Still, he fancied he was the most creative in his displays of cruelty.

Lirka had been right, when she'd told him stories of war after Brosi. The bloodshed was addictive. Of course, it was addictive because she had made it so, had wired his nervous system to love all the little sights and sounds the Sith brought with them everywhere they went. Still, he couldn't blame her in her entirety. She'd wrought him to be a monster in every possible sense of the term, but he'd made himself something even worse.

Nothing could have prepared him for all the screaming, all the fire, all the blood. Lianna had been a massacre on an almost incalculable scale, and his own hands were as red as anyone's. Most had been there for some objective. Neryn had just gone to set the world ablaze.

The spawn pulled himself out of his memories and back to the moment, exchanging a past horror for a present one. He met his creator's heart-stoppingly frightening gaze for a brief instant, then spared a glance at the mangled mass between them, suppressing a shudder with great effort. He remembered when he, too, had been such a misbegotten ruin, and had no desire to go back. This was Neryn's eternal dichotomy; torn between fawning servitude and fear of failure like the wretch he was. What was being asked of him today was very critical indeed, and he'd haul anyone or anything in the galaxy back in chains rather than occupy one of these tables again.

Lightsaber / Sidearm /Dagger /Amphibow​

 

[Lirka Ka]

TAGS: Neryn Ka

It was a clarion call to violence, the prospect of power dangled before and the boundless possibility that came with the truly wicked of this Galaxy grasping their hands around power to uplift the equally cruel in their orbit. Lirka strove to be an enabler, and the might of the Force would allow her to enable as she wished. Indeed, she would be a Sith to fear for the ages. Then the rabble would be forced to acknowledge her, forced to be suffocated beneath Darkness unfurled.

That is why Neryn Ka was the first killer to be given a task. She knew a Ka would share the same glimmers of ambitious madness that would allow the living force to be broken and warped into a great weapon.

“Oh it is a large list, my Spawn.”

And in that intensity, came a wave of malicious sadism. Was it to be a hunt, or a massacre? She knew her newest creation had tasted the sweet nectar of massacre once she had read the reports from Lianna. The boy had proved himself a bloody weapon indeed. Now she needed to turn a chainsaw into a scalpel.

“Jedi, Sith, Witches, cultists, and the many sorcerous sorts that scuttle and hide within the shadows of this Galaxy. I need their meat, their blood, their essence. That which gives them power, I shall take for myself…I shall replace what was taken from me.”

She turned to the bloody mess beside her. Once, perhaps, it may have been an acolyte. A potentiality snuffed out by Lirka’s mania.

“This form grows weary. It is a tired and well-used thing, a creation branded by the distant Malsheem rather than my own labs. Mine transient existence beckons to me once more, for such is the whispering call of power.”

And then rather suddenly, Lirka took a mighty clawful of viscera and jammed it down her mouth. Gorging herself on the Midhiclorians nestled within it like a gluttonous gammorean to be absorbed by the inky mass trapped within this wretched form. With gore sopping from her needle like teeth, she continued to speak.

“I have scried the texts from Korman Lao’s ruin. The next step on the Dark Path has presented itself to the worthy - shall you follow me into this damnable power, child?”

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[Neryn Ka]

Neryn considered this "request" only briefly. Lirka Ka was being surprisingly light-handed on this issue, but he was under no illusions. This was a command, and he was largely happy to comply.

Neryn's (very small) calculating side assessed the possible consequences. An empowered Lirka would be almost unstoppable. Millions (at least) would suffer and die, and the balance of power in Sith space would tip significantly. Thankfully, Neryn wasn't overly burdened by conscience. He only understood the very idea of such a thing in a vague and academic way.

Refusal, of course, would mean a few things, first among them his certain death. Neryn knew well that he could not defeat his forbear in a fair fight, and to try would result in him winding up on her grisly menu.

Lirka would then most likely find another catspaw to get the job done, and get what she wanted anyway. Only one option resulted in him gaining any standing or power (not to mention remaining alive). Neryn pounced upon that option hastily.

"Fortunately, these sorts are in no short supply." The spawn couldn't quite keep a wry tone from his voice. "Crawling out of every crevice like... well. To compare them to spiders does spiders a disservice. Securing them will not prove difficult, I suspect." Neryn sniffed, producing a seething furnace-crackle of a sound. He was already moving the pieces around in his diseased mind.

Despite his confident words, Neryn knew well that the sort of prey Lirka wanted was dangerous. None of them would come easily or cheaply.

"As fun as it is to pull pieces from them, I will do my best to ensure they are intact for your..." he trailed off as he watched Lirka take a bite from her gory meal.

"Perusal." He finished, quite failing to find the appropriate word.

"I will follow you wherever you deem it best, Mother. That is surely why you created me, after all." These occasional reminders of Lirka's true nature were equal parts terrifying and inspiring.

Not for the first time, Neryn found himself wondering what had set her on this path. He himself had been a horrific freak from day one, and had no choice in the matter. He wondered if it had also been so for Lirka, or if the formless thing that now wore the skin of a Sephi had once been a product of nature.

Her comments about the Malsheem would seem to indicate the former, but Neryn had no idea what a Malsheem was, and cared even less. It wasn't his place to ask. His place was to do as he was told and try to catch more favor than displeasure.

The alternative was almost too terrible to contemplate.

The spawn twitched nervously, causing his folded wings to flutter. He looked from the corpse to his maker, and back again. "We'd need a great many, I suspect. A place where the rats all huddle together, and can be scooped up en masse. Fuel for your apotheosis."

 

[Lirka Ka]

TAGS: Neryn Ka

The open hand, and the clenched fist. It was a dichotomy that Lirka embraced often - one did not need to shout and flex to exert their will, sometimes it took only drab intensity and the flowing threads of a scheme in motion.

Though it was perhaps the gristle in her teeth that added a certain extra…emphasis to the weight of her command. She had little doubt that Neryn Ka ever the fledgling would disobey her yet - he had not drank from that font of power and ambition that Lirka had that would see her clamber and crawl to power no matter who she wronged.

Despite her savage display, Lirka quickly returned to an analytical coldness as she examined her gory fascination.

“An accurate assessment of the situation. The force flows in abundance, it is merely a matter of picking through the trash for what is truly valuable. The prime specimens, as it were.”

Lirka had plenty of time, but not exactly the patience.

“Do not think I would suffocate you so. I do not need live specimens. I need organic matter of moderate freshness. Its status living or dead as of yet serves no purpose to my design - fly free, child. Murder to your heart’s content and pick through the carrion when you must.”

She knew how much a Ka could chafe under too much control. They were a free spirited sort after all.

The tale of Lirka Ka was a miserable one, born of the figments of a dead woman and the monster that now stole her name and wore her skin. The monster had replaced what laid before, and the monster would stake its claim to the Galaxy. The boy was right to fear, for the winding path of Lirka Ka was the sort of horribleness that only existed in the forgotten places of the Galaxy.

“Again, an accurate assessment. You have taken well to acumen. The pieces are already in motion - we shall have a great merger in the wake of war, Jedi and Sith shall brawl again as they have in all ancient history. And we, shall pick through the Carrion of it all to reap the dark rewards of the dead.”

Plans within plans. Schemes within schemes.

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[Neryn Ka]

Neryn's boyish features slowly split into a reptilian smile. If his flickering eye sockets did not already tarnish the illusion of normality, his teeth certainly finished the job. Pointed and needle-like, almost translucent, like the fangs of a deep-sea predator. Such features were disturbing, juxtaposed against such a youthful and otherwise-untarnished countenance, but that was Neryn as a whole: disturbing.

"You're far too kind, Mother." He oozed. "Dead but fresh it is." Neryn resisted the urge to ask if she'd like a drink or appetizer first; he'd learned early on that such comments were unlikely to be seen as amusing.

"I believe the Dzara has certain... tools at its disposal that may help with this task. I will assemble some resources and begin collecting suitable specimens."

Neryn had his gifts, but refrigeration wasn't traditionally among them. Quite the contrary; anything he killed was likely to be maimed and blackened to the point of inedibility. Ash was hardly the most nutritious of victuals, even for a horror like Lirka.

Still, that wouldn't stop him from trying. He would not be a disappointing heir as so many had been before him. Not even with all his secret alterations and heresies.

"If I may..." Continued the winged spawn, showing every sign of hesitation. "Am I to consider prey within the Blackwall to be off-limits? It occurs to me that we have a large supply of ready meals within easy reach. As you told me on Brosi, many would certainly dispose of you or I without hesitation."

"We already have the means to discretely remove and transport such morsels, and to be frank, who will miss them?"

Neryn didn't quite share his mother's cannibal leanings (at least in his more lucid moments), but he did like to collect trophies. Jewelry, weapons, personal effects, the odd fresh eyeball. Anything that shone or stood out, however worthless. Already a modest but growing horde of such stolen detritus collected in his quarters.

He figured she wouldn't mind if such items happened to go missing while their owners were being processed. Lirka Ka was not quite so consumed with the physical as he.

 

[Lirka Ka]

TAGS: Neryn Ka

Uncanniness. It was a mark of Lirka’s artistic touch, she thrived in that area where nature was warped into something that should not be. A mockery of natural design replaced with the careful craft of a madwoman - she was rather chuffed with how Neryn had ended up, the little freak he was.

Like mother like son.

“They certainly would - but, silence is a virtue. Express such virtue, child. I do not wish to have unwanted eyes upon my motions. Not all allies are friends, and not all friends are allies.”

Some certainly could help. But there were many more that Lirka would rather have not known of her wretched delving into tapping into the Sith’s dark magics.

Then, as she toyed with her gory mass still some. Lirka chuckled. There was no humor behind it, there rarely ever was. Instead it held only a murderous edge - what did Lirka care for Sith kind lest they served her ends? And many of them had yet to prove themselves more than hassles. Prey was prey.

“Meat is meat. Fly free. There is plenty of carrion to pick through within the Empire. Has-Beens and Would-Bes. We have no shortage of acolytes nameless and forgettable: they will not be missed, you are correct.”

Treasonous? Perhaps. But acolytes dropped like flies as it was anyway, what was a few dead bodies put to better usage by her?

Power did not want, nor did true cosmic power muddle itself in the petty squabbling of politics and allegiances. Time was of the essence, Lirka had centuries at her fingertips to wait…she just had a nasty habit of not being patient.

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[Neryn Ka]

Silence may well have been a virtue, but like many virtues, Neryn Ka was sorely deficient in it. Still, he would try, and potentially even succeed. What Neryn lacked in subtlety, he somewhat made up for in sheer self-confident delusion.

Aside from his Creator, Neryn Ka feared no other being. Even the ones he likely should be afraid of. That would carry him a certain distance, and his fear of failing said forbear would carry him a certain distance more.

What remained to be seen was how he would stand up to an actual, competent opponent. Civilians and rear-echelon Imperial troopers hardly counted. Powerful though the winged spawn may be, he was untested, and blind to his own shortcomings.

He would do some digging, find a spot where a likely harvest could take place. Neryn fancied he knew just the place, and knew just the crowd of expendable morons for the job...

But that was for the future. For the now, he commanded nothing and no one. Fulfilling Lirka Ka 's demands would require resources, weapons, and plenty of rubes to die in his own place. He possessed only one of these three things, for the time being.

An idea was beginning to form in Neryn's mind, one he dared not speak aloud just yet. For the moment, he simply nodded.

"I will make the appropriate arrangements." He confirmed dutifully. "I have not many favors to call upon in my short life, but I will pluck whatever strings are available to me. It is the Ka way to bend the wills of our lessers into directions we find more useful. I am certain that this task will prove to be a simple one."