Private O, Mother Madrone

[Efret Farr]

Brosi.

Efret had heard about the relatively recent invasion and of Aerik's part in repelling it. It had compelled her to seek him out on Dromund Kaas, not in awe of his bravery but hoping for some information about the Netherworld. Since then, she had met Casimir and had all but forayed into a Nethergate with him.

It was strange. After the Second Cataclysm had swallowed Elias out of Theed, she had helped the then-Shirayan Knights find him, but hadn't joined them on their rescue attempt—as scared to navigate the awful realm with Nirrah to guide her as she was. But now, even after spending just a couple of months back in the Core, she had traversed the void not once but twice, and was prepared to continue to do so.

But coming back to the Thandon Cluster wasn't related to that business. Her attention had shifted to the matter of disguise. She was officially part of the Sith Covenant now. As much as she might try to keep to herself, she was bound to encounter Jedi sooner rather than latter. That was the nature of things. Jedi tended to sniff out Sith wherever they were, no matter how asocial or uninterested in combat as they might be. There was no hiding; there was no tolerable Sith to the Jedi. They all deserved to die. Protecting oneself, then, was a necessity.

For Efret, the first step of that was creating an alias. She was a well-known figure to most Jedi, even if not personally. Though the New Jedi Order had fallen years ago, and she had left it even before, her former reputation as one of its Councilwomen preceded her almost anywhere she went.

Was this to be one of those places?

She hoped against hope that it wasn't. Recognition was the bane of her newly developed exsistance.

During their conversation in Fondor's steam tunnels, Lysander had suggested that Efret visit one Madrona A’Mia , a Sith Sorceress who could aid her in her necessary transition. Brush cracked, shifting underfoot as Efret moved through the great forest reminiscent of the Kashyyykian Shadowlands in search of the legendary Neti. She had an idea already of the path before her, of the steps she'd take to reach anonymity: take a Sith moniker, get a new set of gear, and change her communication style.

Her interpretation system—consisting of her henna-styled electro-tattoos and vocoder—were as unique to her as her face. She wasn't the only Deaf Force user in the galaxy, no, but she was the only one with the particular voice programmed into her unit. It had been custom-made for her; this specific kind of assistive technology was rare in and of itself.

Therefore, it simply had to be changed. Though her borrowed voice might not be recognizable to every Light sider she would meet, her close friends and former colleagues were sure to remember the monotonous speech, and her otherwise carefully curated veneer would dissolve.

Efret Farr's reinvention would have to be all-consuming.

 

[Madrona A’Mia]

​

After not one but two failed attempts by interlopers to seize Brosi, industry on the planet had locked down its import significantly and few now entered orbit without stringent immigration procedures. The handful of cities which dotted the otherwise wild landscape still bustled with technological innovation and industry, but the world had grown more insular. The exception to that rule of course was anyone who could validate their identity as a Sith or was vouched for by one.

It was not uncommon now for A'Mia Madrona to be sought out. Where most of her life she'd been an unusual and ill-understood figure, the neti had recently developed some semblance of a positive reputation amongst her Sith peers. Brosi itself seemed to know this, its vast planet-wide jungles and deep oceans bore a certainty that Hoardmother held wisdom sought after by locals and off-worlders alike. The tricky part was getting an audience with her.

As Efret Farr set out, she was neither hindered nor threatened on the trail she blazed deep within one brilliantly hued jungle which teemed with life. She'd been warned about the deadly flora and fauna, even told blithely by one ship-hand at the port hangar that her odds of returning from the wilds unmaimed were astronomically low. Still, it was as if the soil itself knew her intentions and warded her from the roaming packs of Sithspawn.

Deep underground, working on a genetic coding project in a wing of her expansive laboratory, A'Mia was pulled from her scientific hyper-fixation by a gentle nudge at the back of her mind from Psilofyr.

"Hmm?" she thought to him absently.

The massive, powerful organism impressed upon the neti a handful of vague imprints — something or more specifically someone that might be worthy of her attention. A'Mia humored him, though her clever hands still wielded her pipet with unnerving speed as she measured out samples for her next experiment.

Mind melding with Psilofyr's staggering, alien intellect, A'Mia felt her attention split between the route memory of her task in the lab and viewing the dark haired stranger through a myriad of forest sense.

All at once, Efret had the very distinct impression that she was being watched.

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret had stepped into the Brosin wilderness with the warnings that had surfaced in her surficial archive search, which had been repeated generally by the shiphand, heavy on her heart. Her feet, though, she forced to be light, not for fear just of being heard by roaming predators, but of stepping anywhere she ought not.

She was under no delusions of grandeur. In fact, she dragged behind her the opposite—a self-imposed illusion of inferiority—like a second invisible ball and chain. It she wasn't to survive this world at any stage of her journey, she wouldn't struggle against it and try to change its mind.

Maybe that was part of why the forest seemed to respect her.

Her progress began at a slow pace as she scanned the world at her feet. It was difficult to ascertain what patch of floor would probably be safe versus which would probably not be through the monochromatic tans of Force Sight. The bright color of Brosi filtered into her physical eyes thorough the blotchy holes of real vision she still had. Together, her eyes and the Force stitched together one cohesive view of reality. She felt save enough to quicken her walk once she realized that the forest meant her no harm—at least not yet.

Soon enough on her venture, the Force pulled into familiar pleats. She slowed to a stop. The sensation was weak, but still pulled. Her augmented gaze rose into the twisted branches of a tree she couldn't name.

Something was mind mending up there, or so she felt—either someone hidden in the Force or...the tree itself?

She was familiar with the power, as she and Nirrah had engaged in it quite frequently. Granted, they only even used the visually telepathic aspect of it, the latter projecting whatever she was seeing directly into Efret's brain. And, of course, there was each time Malva'ikh's dagger had embedded its memories into her mind as well. In the case here, on Brosi, though, she wasn't the target.

"I'm Deaf," she announced, half of her hoping in vain that she was talking to the damp forest air. A'Mia might have noticed that Efret herself was like a root in these moments: fear slowly exuding out of her feet with each step. Though she was trying her best to control her reaction, she couldn't stop up the instinct to be afraid entirely. She could wick it away from her body though.

And the thirsty forest surely drank up every drop she gave up.

She added, "If whoever is watching me wants to communicate, know that I can't understand verbal telepathy."

If A'Mia did in fact wish to talk to her strange visitor, she would have to get creative.

Madrona A’Mia​

 

[Madrona A’Mia]

​

Efret's fear was apparent to the jungle, could be sensed and read by a myriad of different mycelial and root to bough connections. After all, what was more natural than fear? All organisms knew it at some level unless born inherently broken or carved and crafted to be devoid of such. Though to her credit, the girl did her best to cast the survival instinct aside in favor of whatever ambition brought her there.

And because the forest knew, A'Mia did Too.

A faint breeze rustled through the foliage and all animal-sound ceased. To Efret's senses, all fauna within a certain radius to her seemed to have fled. Her surroundings suddenly strangely barren save for the ever present foliage.

For her part, deep within her lab A'Mia handed tasks off to droid assistants and swiftly made her way to one of the many sanctums littered throughout her underground lab. There she found a tree of ample size and stepped through.

Without a sound, with barely even a stir to Efret's nearby environment, she was suddenly no longer alone. The neti merely watched from behind the woman where she'd stepped out seamlessly from a nearby tree. The botanical woman was still in a way impossible for mammalian species and she watched unblinking.

After gauging the newcomer's reaction, A'Mia sent a vision. It was really more a psycho-sensory message direct from her mind and through the environment into her guest via the Force. Imagery and sensations which elicited feeling and conveyed meaning: the earthy reverberating crack of a seed splitting to put down roots after it flew far from its mother tree on the wind, faint disturbances on the wind caused by a meadowlark calling for companionship at dusk, the slightly more solid foothold granted by loam when one has been trudging through sand prior. It came together like a tapestry woven from errant memory to form a query.

From where do you come and what is it you seek?
Efret Farr
​

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret's scrunched her brow against not the intrusion but its meaning. Trying to make sense of the projected images' symbolism wasn't particularly challenging, but setting on the intended meaning of whoever was communicating with her was. As the vivid colors of the memories planted directly into her mind faded back out to the mental landscape of Force Sight, A'Mia's message occurred to the former Jedi master.

There was a new object, tree-like in its general form, standing behind her now. Yes, she remembered; it certainly hadn't been there before telepathy had taken over her visual perception.

Efret whipped around on her boot heel, coming to focus on the mysterious, tall shape some meters before her through partially the Force and partially a window of her true, blurred sight. She squinted, although that didn't make anything more defined in either system of sight.

Though the forest hadn't meant her harm yet, sudden defensiveness gripped her. Her lithe fingers reached on instinct for her lightsaber until she redirected them to in front of her chest. "From the Core," her fingers signed, the vocoder at her neck verbally echoing their meaning in Basic grammar. She didn't know just she was speaking to, but she felt that her best chance of survival regardless would be to tell the truth. "I seek the sorceress A'Mia. Lysander von Ascania suggested I meet her."

Madrona A’Mia​