Dev Project: SOVEREIGN VESSEL

[Darth Strosius]

Darth Strosius maintained a silence as He extracted the implements from Neltriss's body, pausing briefly to cast a glance out of the corner of His visor at the mention of the 'lady of nightmare.' That sounded oddly familiar but He couldn't quite place it. His grip on a prong tightened slightly when the title was clarified with the name Keres. Now that one was very familiar and known to Him. He could only imagine what twisted machinations and inventions Adeline of all people would ask of Lady Korden. That did explain the blood manipulation technique though.

The pale tendrils that comprised His wings twitched at the mention of their existence, His own work pausing as He tilted His head towards Lady Korden with what must have been a rather incredulous expression beneath His mask. "They're an unintentional side-effect of a project. Nothing more. Nothing to be curious about." He took a slight step away from her as He spoke, a movement disguised as simply reaching to pluck out another implement. A scoff escaped Him at Lady Calis's comment on them and with a slight shrug of His shoulders they began to recede.

From their full extent they seeped back into His robes where they had emerged from, soon little more than the wisps that they had been previously. Albeit slightly more visible than before. Darth Strosius simply hummed at her remark on their work as He freed the last of the implements. The arts of Sith Alchemy and Sorcery had outlived the Sith as a species and had endured throughout most of galactic history until the present day, they would certainly be around long after even He had died. As for the actual work that they were doing in the sense of this particular ritual and project, that remained to be seen.

He bristled at the question, a hiss escaping His mask that only Lady Korden was in any position to hear. When His fingers pulled away from the implement that He had been moving away from the body, there was a visible dent in the metal where He had been grabbing it. "She's nowhere near comparable to Saint Syn, for a start." The words came through with far more venom than any that He had spoken with regarding the corpse emperor. This topic was something of a sore spot it seemed, a bruise on His pride and plans where the previous subject of conversation was merely another obstacle.

Darth Strosius snickered at the mention of some conflict between Lady Calis and Raaf, of course she would be the one they sent to reign in upstarts. It seemed to be her specialty of some kind. "Yes, she has a habit of doing that. If there is but one vanguard of the powers-that-be, it is Raaf. Anything to keep herself in the good graces of whoever sits in a throne so that her own sins and shortcomings are overlooked." Although His tone was even it was far colder and more tense than before, something more than simple hatred riddled His words and jerking movements as He cleaned the blood from His dagger.

Surprisingly enough this didn't seem to dissuade Lady Calis as she came down and stood between the pair of them, although she did have sense enough to not draw too close to the masked man in His current state. He was holding onto the dagger rather menacingly after all. "Raaf is the wretch, the stain made self-sustaining." He answered finally after more than a few long moments of silence, His gaze having remained locked onto Lady Calis's even as His gloved fingers toyed with the blade in their grasp.

"She is the sickness of the Sith made manifest. The Worm and Empyrean would lead the Sith astray for their own ends, Carnifex and his ilk have tainted the Sith of the present with their heresy and now rest on their laurels with all the influence and none of the responsibilities that come with it, but Raaf?" He hissed through clenched fangs and shook His head in disgust. "Raaf props up allies in space and on worlds that rightfully belong to the Sith, she would rather see a bunch of misguided Imperials hold dominion over the galaxy so long as they are under her sway. The Centrality and the Commonwealth are two prime examples."

Darth Strosius trembled with a barely restrained fury as He spoke, His gaze having drifted to the body in idle wandering as His mind spun with memories and insults alike. "Raaf would aid the enemies of the Sith before she ever even considered allowing us to prosper. She lashes out at those such as us so that her own influence and position can never be threatened, as she's long since aligned herself with the everpresent Zambrano menace. She has no need for a throne, but you can be certain that she will never give up a say on who should sit upon one."

He looked down at His dagger, His tendrils having lengthened and somewhat curled around His arms as His fingers ran down the edge of the blade in contemplation. "She's stolen two worlds from me, and the future from the Sith. Next time we meet I shall steal her eyes in recompense. Piece. By. Piece." He paused before glancing between Lady Calis and Lady Korden. "Where is our next subject? I have the urge to carve into something squirming and this body can't perform such an act anymore."

Darth Virelia / Vakhari Lutris

 

[Vakhari Lutris]

Tags: Darth Virelia Darth Strosius

It would seem her skills had been noted, and the offers of further payment already being offered to her. It would cause the strange woman to become a tad more chipper, a pep in her step so to speak.

"I had been told that I am a prodigy when it comes to alchemy and fleshcraft, I read things differently you could say... Much alike how I read my tome differently."
​

"You're both wasted on your titles,"

She had titles? Something given to her perhaps? It was easy to see that the statement confused the girl for a moment, she had no recollection of such things. With her confusion only becoming even more apparent as her shoulder was touched, a faint feeling of being watched would humor Serina as she touched Vakhari. Though, if this went noticed or not was hardly important.

"Quite the cast you both speak of, it is strange to me how different things are... In dead Yalara the very walls live and breathe in service to the head mistress, our minds numb to this existence as we focus on the pursuit of the sciences of the occult.. Caring not of the morals of lesser beings. Focused, disconnected. 'Illogical logic' as we called it, knowledge that is beyond the very stars."

When she spoke, her tone held no signs of hatred of the place, no joy or nostalgia. Spoken more as if she was some emotionally dulled teacher giving a lecture to the uninterested youth, a hint as to how more of these Yalaran scholars might be.

"But here?"

That chipper tune returned, as if switched back on.

"Out here is so... Raw, so primal and uneducated. As if it was some massive wriggling hellscape, desperate and spewing its incontinence everywhere. It really is filled with possibilities, such as getting to work on this project."

Despite how she had just described the galaxy as if it was all a mass of bile, her tone gave hint that she quite enjoyed it.
​

"They're an unintentional side-effect of a project. Nothing more. Nothing to be curious about." He took a slight step away from her as He spoke, a movement disguised as simply reaching to pluck out another implement.

Being ever the expert as socialization, the still dangerously intrigued girl would follow his steps.

"A side-effect? A fluke? A flaw?"

She would lean in, trying her best to inspect what she could while her hands had somehow fetched a pad out from her coat, the fingers swiftly tapping away as she made notes of this.

"Would you ever require a surgical removal? I would love the chance to explore your skin! Oo perhaps the insides as well yes?"

Vakhari clutched her pad tightly, the Sangnir could practically hear her heart race as her eyes beamed with excitement at the mere prospect.

"Wait, what were we talking about?"

Letting out an awkward chuckle she remembers, they were having a rather emotional discussion about something- someone? Hmm . . . .





​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To build a throne."

Tag - Vakhari Lutris , Darth Strosius



Serina Calis had not moved during Strosius' tirade—at least, not in the ways most would expect. She didn't interrupt, didn't recoil, didn't soothe. She watched. Observed. Consumed every syllable he spoke as though it were another layer of skin peeled away from the truth. There was something hypnotic about the way he unraveled himself in the forge's half-light: a scholar cloaked in fury, a priest of violence whose sermon had finally touched a divine rage.

And rage—it was so much more interesting than peace.

When he finished, the silence that followed was not relief. It was attention. Weight. The room had narrowed to a single axis between predator and prey, and Serina—graceful, monolithic, cold—stood at the exact fulcrum where power met desire.

Her voice, when it came, was almost gentle. The echo of a blade drawn slow and deliberate across velvet.

"You love her."

It was not mockery. It was not pity. It was truth, clinical and profound, the kind of truth Serina was expert at extracting without ever needing a knife.

She stepped toward him—not fast, not slow, just enough to make her presence felt like heat pressing close to a wound. "Not in the way of flowers and wine," she added, smiling now with something between hunger and admiration. "But oh, don't mistake it. There is no hatred that deep which does not emerge from obsession. From disappointment. From some terrible understanding that what stands in your way could have been more."

She lifted one hand—graceful, poised, predatory. With the tip of her finger, she pointed not at his mask, not at his dagger—but at his ribs. "You despise her because she could have built the world you dreamed of. And instead, she enforced someone else's."

The forge light danced across her features now, catching on the subtle ridges of her high collar, her ceremonial cuffs, the layered folds of her coat. She looked like a statue of a tyrant queen carved in the last seconds before the empire fell.

"She didn't destroy the Sith to rebuild them in the ashes. That would be an act of glory. She preserved them. In amber. In a jar."

She turned then—not as rejection, but as orbit—and let her attention fall instead to Vakhari, who was now all but vibrating with enthusiasm.

"And you…" Serina purred, drifting close enough to reach out and gently pluck the datapad from the woman's white-knuckled grip, if only to still the clatter of her fingers. "You would dissect a god if you were told there was one secret left in his blood."

Her voice was warm now. Indulgent. Even… affectionate, though not with any softness. It was the admiration of a lioness for the venomous viper slithering just beneath her paw.

"Your Yalaran conditioning is exquisite. That numb detachment, that cultured madness—it's something I've longed to see unshackled. And you're so close to that threshold, aren't you? You're not content to just observe anymore. You want to taste."

She handed the pad back with a single gloved hand, her fingers brushing across Vakhari's palm in a way that was more calculated than flirtation, but no less intimate for it.

"You belong in this galaxy of bile and fire, darling," Serina whispered, leaning close enough that only she could hear the next words. "It needs you. It deserves you."

Then she turned again, back to Strosius, her expression shifting from licentious affection to something more calculating. More strategic.

"I knew what you would say about Raaf," she admitted at last. "But I had to hear it. Not because I question your convictions—those are clear. But because I needed to understand your wound. And now I do."

She moved past the slab now, her footsteps echoing softly on the steel. "You are the product of every betrayal she endorsed. Every knife she refused to draw when it mattered. And so am I."

Serina paused beside a terminal and flicked her hand across its surface. A second subject was summoned—a woman this time, high midichlorian count, formerly a Knight in the New Jedi Order, a shadow sent to infiltrate the Sith. Her file was stained with red annotations.

"Raaf is not the enemy of the Sith," she said quietly, "because she wants to destroy us. No. The truth is worse. She wants to manage us."

Her gaze flicked to the glowing orb Vakhari had conjured. It pulsed now with a dull hunger.

"She sees the Sith as a plague. But she doesn't believe in eradicating plagues. She believes in vaccines. Dilution. Study. Quarantine."

Serina's eyes narrowed.

"That is why I fear her more than Empyrean. Because the Worm wanted dominion. Maliphant wanted worship. But Arcanix?" She turned her gaze back to Strosius. "She wants containment."

Her voice was low now. Intimate. "You're wrong to say she doesn't want a throne. She wants every throne. She just doesn't want to sit on them. She wants to design the cage they're built inside."

A beat.

"Empyrean failed because he thought sovereignty meant authority. But Darth Arcanix understands the truth. That in a fractured galaxy… sovereignty means narrative control."

The forge flickered.

"That's what we're building here. Not just armor. Not just weapons. A story too powerful to be managed. A reality so violently uncontainable, even Raaf won't be able to pathologize it."

She took one step forward and held out her hand—not as command, not as invitation. As covenant.

"So let's write that story together, The Scourge, the Progidy and the Architect. Let them name us monsters. Let them study us like illnesses. And then let them beg us for the cure."

Her smile widened then. Cold, victorious.

"And we'll charge them in blood."

 

[Darth Strosius]

He wasn't quite certain where or even what this "dead" Yalara was but the brief mention of it by Lady Korden made it sound drastically unappealing. Given her rather rigid and uninspired tone she must not have been too fond of it either, but it was difficult to tell. Her description of the wider galaxy was similarly grim but her more upbeat tone seemed to imply otherwise. Darth Strosius decided to simply banish the notion of trying to discern any deeper meanings in her remarks, one only reinforced as she leaned closer and forced Him to lean back in kind.

He did not want her touching any part of Him, external or internal. "Yes a flaw, one that I shall remedy as soon as I am able." Given the lack of personal space it was little wonder how she and Lady Calis had come to work together. "If they could be removed physically then I would have already done so, unfortunately they are metaphysical in nature albeit with some overlap." He glanced down at the pad and idly gestured towards it with His dagger. "It is beyond the purview of our project here, let us remain on task yes?"

Unfortunately as He was batting away one encroachment, the other reared her head with a remark that made His blood run cold and His body freeze in indignation. His masked visage snapped to Lady Calis, fast enough that the prongs of His mask scraped against His chestplate in an uncomfortably grating yet thankfully brief noise due to the motion. "I beg your pardon?" His tone made it seem more He'd prefer to hear begging for forgiveness rather than pardon.

The steps closer did little to alleviate the agitation either, instead making the tendrils flowing from His robes twitch and seemingly sharpen.

"I despise her because she stole two worlds from me, made my people refugees once more." The words were hissed more so than spoken, venomous but in warning rather than outright rebuttal. Lady Calis was always one to tread a dangerous line but this topic was more sore than most others, a bruise on His pride that had yet to heal and a scar on His body that He couldn't easily mend. When her attention shifted to Lady Korden He took the opportunity to soothe His enflamed emotions, rolling a shoulder and letting a sigh loose through clenched fangs.

By the time that she had set her sights back on Darth Strosius He wasn't on the edge of lashing out anymore but the tension in His form was evident even through His heavy robes. His tendrils revealed what His hidden body didn't, coiled and sharpened with subtle tremors every now and then as He listened with a slumbering fury. One that was quickly awakened when the outlet of a new subject had been brought forth as Lady Calis continued.

He set about His work in silence but each movement showed His reaction, each stab of an implement or His dagger, every pulse of the orb that fed off the pain and anger in equal measure. "She would think us all in need of containment," He finally spoke in agreement, maneuvering pliers with a grip that was going to leave dents in the metal. "Yet she would align herself with the true plagues that dare to label themselves Sith. A hypocritical tyrant, at least Empyrean and the Zambranos are overt in their corruption." It was the only charitable remark He would ever make in that regard.

As Lady Calis finalized her speech, her grandiose proposal, a slight squelch would punctuate it. He pulled His hand back from the subject, the glove now dripping slightly as He flexed His fingers. Darth Strosius let out a small hum at the sight but made no move to clean His glove. "Given your burning of Saijo, I find myself wondering which of us would be the Scourge and which the Architect." His tone was far more measured and relieved, evidently having sufficiently vented His frustrations for now throughout her remarks.

Darth Virelia / Vakhari Lutris

 

[Vakhari Lutris]

Tags: Darth Virelia Darth Strosius

Purview? She could argue that the interests she brought up along with the.. Peculiar words that Serina spoke was doing wonders when it came to extraction of alchemical composites.

"Metaphysical? Wha- You can't just.. Well how can you expect me to ignore that now?"

She speaks with a pleading whine, who wouldn't want her to inspect them? So far everyone, very disappointing!​

"And you…"

Vakhari's attention would be given to Serina, her fingers still going at her pad before it was taken from her. During said moment her fingers tapped at the air as if still running on instinct up until she squinted at Serina. ​

"You would dissect a god if you were told there was one secret left in his blood."

"Is there any other choice? My hands have helped build the beings that are thought of as gods, picky about perfections that I deliver."​

"Your Yalaran conditioning is exquisite. That numb detachment, that cultured madness—it's something I've longed to see unshackled. And you're so close to that threshold, aren't you? You're not content to just observe anymore. You want to taste."

"I like to think the conditioning is of my own making, but I suppose I can't deny that the work environment of the necro-techs was rather nice.."

Unshackled, the very word meant many things on Yalara. While their pursuits of knowledge tended to be unshackled so that they might synch with the very stars, each and every one of them was taught how to shackle and fortify the mind. There was no shortcut to enlightenment, only a steep dive into the depths of madness.

As the pad was given back to the woman, she quickly clutched it tightly like a hungry chick grabbing at food. It was not meant to be a rude gesture, for her mind was now occupied with looking at what all she wrote, and what all she had missed. Every sentence needed to be perfect, every detail about the wings needed to be perfect; For she would never accept otherwise.​

"You belong in this galaxy of bile and fire, darling," Serina whispered, leaning close enough that only she could hear the next words. "It needs you. It deserves you."

Her eyes simply stop reading, blinking a few times as words were whispered into her. A faint memory of the academy undercroft enters her mind, the twisted amalgamations of things that never got to be whispering to her, they begged, they tried the sweetest sounds. She could hear it again, the faint beating of a heart.

And while Vakhari demonstrated that 'Yalarn conditioning' by knowing to ignore words laced with honey, Serina would hear something whisper back.

"We know."

For now the girl shakes away the memories, focusing on the newest specimen that arrived.

"An illness?"

She taps at her covered chin, thinking herself more as a cure more than anything.

"What is next then? Is this next subject to be treated as the last thing?"

A 'thing' she says.

"Or is there some other way you want the material to be gathered?"





​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To build a throne."

Tag - Vakhari Lutris , Darth Strosius



Serina smiled.

But it was not the curve of a mouth amused—it was something deeper. A smile written across the eyes, half-lidded and gold like the final glint of sunlight before a fall into darkness. The kind of smile that said: I see you. Not the surface. Not the mask. But the mind beneath it, writhing and magnificent.

"That," she murmured, her gaze flicking to the new specimen being wheeled forward, "is the correct question."

She drifted again toward Vakhari, trailing like silk across blood-slick metal, until she stood just close enough to catch the edge of her scent. Mechanic's oil. Dried alchemical resin. A hint of plasma-burnt ozone. The smell of someone who worked with their hands—who did not flinch from heat or consequence. Serina's gloved fingers ghosted once more along the girl's pad as she leaned in.

"You see," she said, voice low, intimate, velvet sharpened with razors, "the first one was ritual. Foundation. Necessary. The extraction of suffering, yes—but crude. Purposeful, but unfocused. What we drew from him is a mirror of rage. It will add spine to the armor. Heat to the blood. But not… clarity."

She turned back to Strosius now, her movements slow, almost indulgent in how deliberately she offered him her full attention. "This one," she gestured to the restrained woman now moaning awake, "must be the opposite. Not a mirror, but a lens."

Her chin tilted upward, elegant and challenging all at once. "Can you do it, Strosius? Can you extract devotion without desecration? Can you carve faith into the alloy of my armor, not just hate? Can you thread in the echo of obedience, submission—not forced, but given?"

The lights of the forge danced wildly now, lapping at the dark like fire trying to remember how to consume.

"I want her hope," Serina continued, turning to pace slowly along the perimeter of the subject's slab. "Not just her pain. Her hope—the future she dreamed of. The idea she was willing to die for. I want that melted down and poured into my veins."

She glanced at Vakhari. "Tell me, darling. Can your tools map a soul? Can you pin an ideology and shape it like flesh?"

It wasn't mockery. It was challenge. Serina asked the impossible the way others asked for favors. She was a woman who could never be satisfied with the first answer—only the right one, the impossible one, solved.

And yet, beneath the grandness of her words, there was precision.

Every movement. Every glance. Every whisper of touch.

Because Serina wasn't just performing for drama—she was calibrating the entire room like a symphony, orchestrating not just the act of alchemy, but its narrative.

She stopped again at the edge of the slab and looked down at the woman—still alive, barely aware. A red smear of bruises began to spread along her collarbone where the shackles had dug into soft skin.

"She was someone's hero," Serina said softly, and for the briefest moment—there was a flicker of something like melancholy in her voice. "Not a saint, not a leader. Just theirs. Maybe to a village. Maybe to a daughter. Maybe to a lover waiting behind a closed door on a world we'll never care about."

A pause.

"And I will take that from her."

Another pause.

"And I will imprint that devotion into my armor."

She looked back at Strosius now, no pity in her face. Just resolution. Cold. Unrepentant.

"And I want you to make it beautiful."

Then, to Vakhari again, as she resumed her prowl around the forge.

"You asked what was next," Serina said, tapping her temple once. "Next is refinement. Not everything must be broken to be useful. Some things are more precious for being intact, unspoiled, humming with intention."

She turned back again and held out a hand—casual, imperious, inviting. "So. Let's try this: I want her conscious. I want her to speak what she believes. And I want you both to capture it—not just in blood or tissue, but in the Force. If her convictions are strong enough, they will resonate."

A devilish smile played along her lips again. "The Dark Side is not cruelty. It is clarity. Pain is just the easiest teacher. Not the only one."

She moved closer to the slab, kneeling for a moment beside the prisoner—just low enough to press her cheek next to hers.

Her voice dropped to a whisper only the woman could hear.

"Tell me… what do you love?"

There was no answer. The woman's breath caught in her throat, eyes still heavy with narcotics, lips trembling with the beginning of memory.

Serina didn't need the words.

She saw it in her heartbeat.

She stood, calm, stately.

"There," she said to the others, gesturing to the prisoner's chest with a slight nod. "That was the beginning. A memory. A person. A planet. Capture it. Hold it. Enshrine it."

She stepped back, her posture again languid, arms folded across her chest like a matriarch overseeing a ritual dinner.

"I want that devotion sanctified. Because when I wear this armor, it must not just deflect blades. It must cut through doubt. And doubt is not banished by rage. It is conquered by devotion."

A slow breath.

"I am the object of their devotion."

She looked again between the two. Her monsters. Her artists.

"I will become the icon others burn worlds for," she said softly. "So sculpt me one soul at a time."

She smiled again, teeth faintly bared now.

"And let this one willingly walk into the fire."

 

[Darth Strosius]

"You simply ignore it, there is nothing that can be done at the moment regardless." Nothing that He was willing to have done at least. A simple examination by a second pair of eyes might be beneficial of course but He wouldn't dare submit Himself to such a thing in mixed company. While He and Lady Calis were aligned there was always room for treachery and future betrayals, allowing her to witness an inspection of His deepest wound was simply out of the question for His own sake. Besides, Darth Strosius did not at all want Lady Korden anywhere near Him with the looks she kept giving Him.

Thankfully the task at hand very quickly returned to the forefront of discussion and focus, the matter of what to do with their next subject did need to be determined. The foundations had already been laid with the prior surgical butchery but now came the more important work of layering purpose into the prepared material. His own armor had been fashioned by hatred and regret but Lady Calis didn't seem to possess either in enough spades to warrant inclusion, her craft was one of guile instead.

For once she was fairly clear on what she wanted from Him in this regard, she desired the admiration that subject once garnered and the ideals that she had inspired. A rather odd inclusion but He could see what she needed from it. To twist admiration into devotion and hope into obedience, an interesting approach that He could do His best to follow. It wasn't His typical style but the challenge had been issued and He would indeed provide what she sought.

This extraction wouldn't be quite as physical as the first had been, the more complex emotions and concepts would necessitate a more delicate operation in order to properly manifest them onto the armor. The most difficult part of this venture would be determining the source of the hope that the subject had inspired before her capture. "Ah, I see." Yet again Lady Calis surprised Him with her wisdom as she moved closer to the subject, seeking to draw what they needed from the prisoner of her own volition.

Rather than having to pry out what they needed from the depths of her mind, Lady Calis sought to trick the subject into handing it right to them with her thoughts and remarks. Clever, if it bore fruit. Lady Korden's orb would be more useful for this task than His usual methods but He did have some ideas. He was adept enough at probing unprotected minds but He had yet to attempt such a maneuver on any that had the training to withstand such mental assaults.

There was little reason to try and invade an opponent's mind when it was so tightly secured and protected after all, it would just be a waste of effort which was better spent elsewhere. But with one simple question the subject had given a brief thought in response. An inkling of what could be wielded in their favor. A weak point in her armor that Darth Strosius leapt to seize even as He stood still.

All He had to do was widen that one stray thought into a bleeding wound with which they could draw the desired notions from. Lady Korden already had the proper tool in place, and so digging He went. "How many people did you fail to get here hm? How many lives were undone by your incapable hands? Your promises rendered false, your oaths broken, your beliefs stagnant and stale."

Darth Virelia / Vakhari Lutris

 

[Vakhari Lutris]

Tags: Darth Strosius Darth Virelia ​

She drifted again toward Vakhari, trailing like silk across blood-slick metal, until she stood just close enough to catch the edge of her scent. Mechanic's oil. Dried alchemical resin. A hint of plasma-burnt ozone. The smell of someone who worked with their hands—who did not flinch from heat or consequence. Serina's gloved fingers ghosted once more along the girl's pad as she leaned in.

Once again with the pad, it was not for someone else to swath their wriggly little unsterile fingers all over.. Yet, she kept a calm composure and expression, only gently moving the pad back.

​

She glanced at Vakhari. "Tell me, darling. Can your tools map a soul? Can you pin an ideology and shape it like flesh?"

"Map a soul.. If we are to drain out a breaking of will then I think I could work with it yes, I have experienced what can happen to dreams that never got a chance to be realized, when all hope is gone these ambitions and desires were torn from the being they once belonged to. Manifesting into our reality as physical nightmares and dread, supposedly created and devoured by the head mistress."

Her memory vaguely remembered something down in the abyss that dwelled under the academy, but it was hard to make a full picture.

"While I may not work with reality breaking nightmares, I do think that if we manage to find the right topic to break the subject that I could extract those defiled ambitions and ideals into the composite. I wouldn't say it will be a perfect one to one to their current more 'valourant' beliefs of course, that would be impossible to extract. What is though is a broken obedience, which should be what you are looking for?"

She glances at Alisteri, getting past her disappointment for now as he began working on what Serina was after. Her gloved hand reaches out, taking a feel of the air as the strange girl was looking for something.. Rummaging her hand through a collection, the runes began to glow once again.

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To build a throne."

Tag - Vakhari Lutris , Darth Strosius



Time passed—but not idly. Not wastefully.

The forge at the edge of the Polis Massan system had become a sanctum of fury and ambition. What began as an alchemical laboratory was now more temple than workshop: the air thrummed with residue from unspoken rituals, and the very walls had begun to weep from the psychic strain of the power channeled within them. The faint scent of iron and incense lingered even when no rites were in session. Machines clicked and hissed like beasts trying to breathe in the heavy atmosphere. The place had become alive. Or perhaps, possessed.

And in the heart of it all—her.

The prototype had been completed.

Tyrant's Embrace.

It did not rest on a rack. No idle shell of armor this. It stood upright, suspended in a vertical stasis field like a martyr offered to the gods of dominion. Its limbs hung slightly apart from the core with magnetic precision, each plate gleaming with a finish not of polish but of purpose. The armor pulsed faintly with violet light, like a creature in sleep. The crystalline heart at its center gave off low waves of resonant hum, syncing faintly with the rhythm of Serina's breath as she approached.

She walked slowly. The ritual demanded it. No snap of heels. No abrupt fanfare. She moved like a shadow remembering the shape of a woman—measured, poised, utterly deliberate.

Serina paused before the armor.

"I wonder," she said aloud, not to them but to the silence itself, "if they will look at me and still think me woman."

The armor did not answer. It didn't need to.

She stepped forward and raised her arms.

No servants approached. No machines clanked to assist. Instead, with an almost reverent slowness, the armor responded. The air shimmered around her as the field disengaged. Plates lifted, hovering briefly in orbit around her body, the central crystal flaring once with a pulse of welcome. The room dimmed. And then—fusion.

Piece by piece, the armor flowed inward, as if choosing to bind itself to her. The breastplate curved in first, kissing against her sternum with a low magnetic thrum. The lattice of phrik wrapped around her spine like a lover's embrace, locking into place with a click that sounded final. The arms folded into position next—clawed fingers flexing, each digit alive with tactile sensation. A single breath escaped her lips as the greaves sealed, the talon-toed boots rooting her to the chamber floor like a black tree of fate.

And then the helm.

It descended like judgment.

The mask sealed with a faint hiss. The six violet eyes lit simultaneously, casting eerie glints in every direction.

The transformation was total.

From head to toe, Serina Calis had vanished—subsumed by a figure that was no longer merely Sith, no longer even human. In her place stood a sovereign of ruin. A tyrant sculpted in symmetry and silence, encased in the adoration, fear, and broken dreams of those who had dared believe in anything but her.

A moment passed.

And then, she moved.

Not like someone burdened by armor, but like someone freed by it. Each motion was effortless, a panther in ceremonial silk and carbonized phrik. The segmented skirt swayed with regal menace, the coiled cape trailing behind her like the wake of a dying star. She turned once, slowly, and stopped before Vakhari.

"You have gifted me obedience tempered in madness," she said softly, her voice distorted by the helm into something smooth and venomous, like oil sliding over glass. "And in doing so, you have made something eternal."

She extended one armored hand—clawed and precise—and brushed two fingers beneath Vakhari's chin. "You are, incredible."

Then, to Strosius.

"You delivered clarity," she said, stepping toward him, letting the six eyes of her helm gaze down upon him like a judgment rendered from on high. "And rage, and purpose. You extracted devotion from broken memory, and I can feel it now—threaded in every plate."

She circled him once, slow and methodical. Not predatory. Evaluating. Then she stopped, just behind him, the soft susurrus of her cape brushing his boots.

"You do not trust me," she said gently. "And that's good. You shouldn't. But I will say this: your hands have shaped a myth. And the galaxy will bleed for it."

Silence fell again.

The room was no longer a forge.

It was a throne room now.

And she stood in it not as a guest—but as a sovereign whose time had finally come.

"I shall take this armor to the Celestial Archive first," she said, to no one and everyone. "To let the galaxy see what I've become. To let the weak believe I have finally chosen my shape."

A pause.

"They will call it vanity," she whispered. "Let them. Tyrants are always born in beauty."

And then she turned, her cape billowing behind her like a banner of war, and walked toward the exit—each step heavy with inevitability.

The Tyrant had embraced her armor.

Now the galaxy would embrace its fate.