Pantoran vs Anzat, Round the First: Enter the Snot-Vampire

[Micah tol Powl]

The Temple of the Crystal Caverns​

The Planet Ilum || The Worlds of the Iron Empire​

​

People probably assumed that Jedi Temples were home to puppies and rainbows and ridiculously cheerful, pink Del-Ya.

The truth was, there was a lot of darkness lurking around the shadows of the Jedi. Like the caves on Rhen Var, the young Pantoran had found Ilum was a place steeped in history and lore. Forgotten several times over the course of history, only to be re-discovered with all the beauty of the fabled crystal caverns... and horrors to inspire fear and wonder alike.

Perhaps it was merely the nature of the Force. Darkness and light. Never wholly one without the other. There was no fear without hope, and hope was meaningless without fear.

Or perhaps it was the fact that he who hunts monsters was often the same as the beast so vilified. In which case the darkness that seemed to lurk in the shadows of the sacred places of the Jedi was just a pale reflection of themselves.

Whatever the case, there was darkness here.

"Kaire."

The voice carried through the hallowed halls, echoed as though whispered now by a ghostly choir. The black cloak marked the boy as one of the Iron Legion, the sable fur adorning the mantle a sign of his youth. For the small figure was indeed a youngling, his blue-skin made more pronounced by the appearance of yellow markings on either side of his face. In his hands was a most odd object; a book. Pages, authored in paper, turned one by one as the child perused the contents while he walked.

"...kaire tave xuolis iv mekn." The language was not human. Neither was it Pantoran. It was Sith, the book in his hands having been authored more than a thousand thousand years before during the age of the Sith Empire. A strange ring adorned his hand, his finger trailing along the page as the boy read from the book of the damned. "Dabar tave siqsa etrigan."

He looked up as he reached the end of the incantation. From somewhere beyond the darkness, a voice could be heard.

It did not echo.

It was not of this world.

Into the darkness, the boy called. And the darkness answered.

The dragon-like head of the serpentine amphistaff raised. The biot's dead eyes peered vacantly into the darkness, it's tail flickering as though the creature were aware that the pair were not alone in this place. The black snake was coiled around the boy's body, huddled beneath the cloak. A little scarf was tied behind the head. The biot's bioelectric field was not only capable to sheering through durasteel, but more than sufficient to keep the amphistaff warm. Even still, the Sernpidal native was being a little diva about the fact that the pair were living in the cold of the Iron Empire at the moment.

For his part, the child seemed nonplussed by the cold, the dank, or the dark. The Dark Side poison that had entered his veins on Tash-Taral had seeped into his bones, transforming the Pantoran child into a Sithspawn monstrosity. Though deceptive in appearance, an aura of death followed in his wake. The smell of blood rising up from the frozen ground as the child walked along.

In the company of [member="Théodred Heavenshield"], the young witch-boy tried to minimize his presence in the Force -- as though he needed to apologize for what had happened to him when he'd placed himself between [member="Rasu Gan"] and the tarentatek. As though being poisoned were somehow his fault.

Here, he let down his guard. Brought down the walls that restrained the darkness within, and let the ghosts of his past run free. There was much fear in him. Anger. Hatred. Jealousy. Remorse. Even love, like the love of a child orphaned. Or the child of an orphan loved by another, only to have her taken from him. The bittersweet symphony that played in half-remembered moments in [member="Irajah Ven"]'s arms. Fleeting, fickle minutes that had passed too soon.

He was not a Jedi.

He was not a Sith.

He was that which was Primeval.

He was the Dark Side.

[member="Tiland Kortun"]​

 

[Tiland Kortun]

Tiland frowned as he peered about the surface of the world. While smugglers were helpful in travel, they had downsides. Primarily, their indifference to using civilized space ports and dropping off their passengers in the middle of frozen wastes. Not that it had happened before, but incentives was enough to shade his previously benevolent view of the career.

He rubbed his hands together, skin cracking in the cold. The old man grimaced beneath his beard and pulled his robes tighter around his body. He needed shelter. While his body had no true circulatory system, at least not as humanoids understood, cold was still a struggle. Also uncomfortable.

Something rippled in the Force beneath him. It was a surge of dark emotion and fear and hate and passion. Death, it spoke. Yet there was something peculiar about it, unlike any other that he had encountered before.

Wind whipped across the frozen wastes and heavy clouds rolled across the sky. Tiland tasted snow on the air. Perhaps a storm was brewing, but this darkness was not something that he could ignore.

The monk knelt and closed his eyes. The Force rippled around him and he ripples spread trough the galaxy, both forward and backwards in time. He saw the dead walking and the Onega station crashing into Castameer and droids turning upon their friends.

But he also saw a child- a young Pantoran. This was the source of the darkness hat he felt, for it leaked from a nearby cave. Tiland rose, brushed the snow from his legs, and hurried forward. Each step sent him sinking into the snow, but he pressed on, clearing a path with his staff until a small cave appeared before him. Clutching the satchel of herbs close, Tiland scurried inwards, bending low.

The tunnel twisted and turned as it wound ever downwards. Above, the storm began in earnest and sent coldndrsfts through the passageway. Eventually, it deposited him into a wider cavern. The Force was strong here and he sensed light saber crystals all through this network.

But how to find the boy? That was the great question. A nudge from the Force sent him
In one direction and doing something he did not expect

"Hello!" He called, deep voice rumbling through the caverns. "I have come to meet you. I brought tea! Would you mind saying where you are?"

 

[Micah tol Powl]

"Zo kash ibiza..."

Head down, the boy continued wandering through the winding trail that formed a crystalline labyrinth beneath the surface of planet. His finger traced a path along the pages of the book as he read aloud. "...nu..."

The reciptation stopped abruptly, as the boy arrived at a word that defied logic. "...nu vy... vyk..." Tranlation taliman be damned. This chit was hard. "...vy-k-ti-al..." the Pantoran read aloud, sounding out the word like it Hooked on Phonics: High Sith edition.

Somewhere, the darkness was laughing. Promping the boy to look up with a scowl.

Let's see how well one of these Sith-y Force Ghosts spoke Basic, huh?

"Hello!"

...that wasn't a Force Ghost.

Or, if it was, Boo totally hadn't been serious about the whole speaking Basic thing. Plus, it would be totally lame if they did, in fact, speak Basic better than he did.

Of course, these were the crystal caves of Ilum. It could be an illusion. A trick. The plethora of crystal channeled the Force through the planet in a way that made everything unpredictable. The fact that Azi alerted on the presence that announced itself was cause for mild alarm, and also dismissed the initial impression that it was a ghostly illusion. Yuuzhan Vong were Force Dead. Subtle manipulations in the Force were invisible to the amphistaff.

Reaching back a hand, the blue skin youth swept the biot's dragon-like head toward him so that he could look into Azi's dead eyes. "Boonowa jen," the child whispered, slipping back into the Old Huttese used by the Primeval.

The amphistaff shot forward, springing from the child's body and darting along the floor. It's snout was down, it's tail high, as it ghosted along the ground like a sidewinder. Then, it stopped. It's head was pointed down a passage.

"Dan chik," the boy intoned softly, stooping low as he passed to scoop the snake-like creature up into his arms. Reaching back to his belt, he dug out a bit of dried nerf jerky, which he fed to the biot as a treat as he came around the corner.

There was a man there. An older man. "I'd have thought you a ghost, but I doubt the dead would be so lame as to talk about tea," the Pantoran remarked, as he pet the serpentine creature coiled about his arms.

It was probably tweenager for hello.

Then the boy stopped and actually looked at the man. The old bloke was freezing! "Cor blimey," the child uttered, the amphistaff springing into motion to coil around his body as the boy's hands let go the pet and flew instead to the straps holding the cloak over his armor. Sliding the fur-lined cloak from around his shoulders, the youngling held it out as he approached the stranger. "You look half frozen."

What the devil was a man doing out in the snow and ice?

[member="Tiland Kortun"]​

 

[Tiland Kortun]

[member="Boo Chiyo"]

Tiland blinked a tad in surprise. He had seen a child in his vision, but this child was even younger than he had expected. Kids kept getting younger ever year. He wasn't at all sure that he would ever get used to it. The perks of growing old, he supposed. Most peculiarly, the boy had an amphistaff. Those were rare sightings these days and quite unusual, especially for a child his age. But he sniffed in mock indignation.

"Too lame for tea?" He reached up and brushed some of the icicles from his beard. "Why, having known many deceased beings in my time, many were quite fond of tea." The ice dropped from his face and shattered against the ground beneath his feet.

"And as for why," he smiled wryly, "Well, I was travelling with some acquaintances who decided to land their ship in the middle of a blizzard, dump their cargo, and then leave again. Never fly with someone who won't tell you their landing point."

He brushed some of the snow from his robes again.

"But regardless, why are you trying to talk to the dead?" His hair was beginning to thaw, and he squeezed out some of the water. "You're far too young to be talking to such fuddy duddies."

He took the cloak gratefully and wrapped it around his shoulders.

"You aren't trying to do some sort of volunteer work with the elderly are you?" His voice, while sounding suspicious at first, had a warmth and gentleness to it that was at odds with the cold weather surrounding them. "Because I do not think that speaking to ghosts is what such things are about, eh?"

 

[Micah tol Powl]

The boy fumbled around his pockets for a moment.

"Well that figures," the boy remarked candidly, as the bearded old dude rambled something about deceased beings liking tea. "Master Coci likes tea an' she's, like, ancient old," he blurted aloud, without really thinking about it. It was true though, [member="Coci Heavenshield"] was a dirty tea drinker. Which did nothing to improve tea's public image.

The child's face lit up a moment, as he seemed to have found what he was looking for. It was a small thing. No larger than the size of his palm. Once, it had adorned part of some armor he'd worn in what seemed like a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It was shaped into six-sided hexagon. Black, red, and silver. The distinctive marking of the First Order emblazoned on one side.

Slapping the patch against his left arm, his touch came away with a cascade of Dark Side energy washing over his small form as a Tapas field was projected to ward off the cold.

"I'm Primeval," the boy noted, when asked why he would be talking to ghosts. "We don't believe in death." Death of the body, but the body was corporeal. The body was the creation of Halrormaleth, the flawed Creator. The soul was a different matter. The soul was eternal. So why shouldn't one speak with the dead?

Azi was getting curious, the amphistaff extending itself out from the boy's shoulder to sniff at this new person. Another moment and it might try going beard diving.

"I can take you to an Iron Legion base not far from here," the Pantoran offered, reaching up to pull back the curious and overly friendly biot. "You should be able to get a ship from there to the nursing home or where ever you're going."

[member="Tiland Kortun"]​