Faction Race Against The Roots - [Dark Court]

[Darth Virelia]

Race Against The Roots

The jungle had not been tamed.

It breathed, it hunted, and it remembered. The clearing once marked for the Court's forward base now shuddered beneath a living canopy that refused to die. Every fire lit to clear the growth was snuffed out by thick, wet fog. Every chemical burn only fed stranger mutations. The air reeked of iron and rot; roots whispered beneath the soil like veins beneath the skin.

The Dark Court's banners still hung—torn, half-swallowed by vines—but they remained. The world itself wanted them gone, and yet here they stood. Barely.

Reports came in from every quarter of the perimeter: missing scouts, twisted carcasses dragged half into the underbrush, weapons jammed by spores that grew inside their barrels overnight. The engineers whispered that the soil itself was moving. The alchemists said the planet was healing its wounds faster than they could inflict them. And the commanders knew what that meant—failure.

The Court's delay had given Nathema time to fight back.

Now, the foothold teetered on the brink of annihilation. To stay above ground was suicide. Below, however, the sensors picked up faint hollows—ancient structures or tunnels, shifting faintly like a heartbeat under the crust. The readings were unstable, but they pulsed with energy unlike anything the Court's archives had recorded. Something alive, or something remembering what life once was.

And so the decision was made.

The surface would be abandoned to the jungle for now. The expedition would move beneath, into the wounds of the planet itself, to seek what could still be salvaged—and to find the power that Nathema hid so jealously beneath its skin. There would be no second retreat. No reinforcements. What remained of the Court would descend together, or perish separately.

At the edge of the sinkhole, the air hummed with unseen pressure. Roots swayed as if tasting the fear that hung on every breath.

A voice cut through the static of comms—measured, low, and cold.

"The jungle reclaims the hesitant. We do not hesitate. Move."

And with that, the descent began.

Objective One: The Shattered Sanctum

The first descent opens into the hollow bones of a forgotten temple, its ceiling fractured by roots and fungus that pulse like veins under thin skin. The walls hum faintly, vibrating with an energy too precise, too rhythmic, to be natural. At the center of the sanctum lies the prize—a crystalline engine, still intact, though cracked and thrumming with unstable resonance. It is a machine of impossible design: part conduit, part prison, and unmistakably alive. The air around it distorts as though the Force itself recoils.

The task is clear: recover the engine before the collapsing structure claims it, and before the planet finishes waking. But the engine resists removal. It sings in subsonic frequencies that burrow into bone and thought, summoning phantom voices to mislead, to delay, to tempt. Those who draw too near may glimpse the memories of the world it devoured—the moment Nathema died.

Extraction will require precision, coordination, and perhaps sacrifice. Disturb it clumsily, and the sanctum will shatter in full, taking the expedition with it. Handle it too gently, and the engine may slip deeper into the earth, lost again to time.

The Court must move fast. The jungle is already listening.

Objective Two: The Root of the Maw

The second descent is no ruin—it is alive. Vast caverns open into a tangled pit where the jungle's roots have grown downward to feed on something black and restless. Thick cords of flesh-like wood plunge into a fissure that bleeds ichor instead of sap, and the air is sweet with rot and pheromones that mock the scent of blood. The deeper one goes, the more the roots move—not in the wind, but in response to sound, heat, and fear.

Your task is destruction. Burn, sever, or corrupt the Maw's heart before it consumes the surface camp entirely. But what the alchemists call the "Maw" may not be mere vegetation. Shapes emerge from the walls, formed of bark, flesh, and armor scavenged from fallen Sith. They speak in your voices, finish your sentences, and bleed when cut.

The deeper you strike, the louder the planet screams. And somewhere beneath it all, something answers back.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Jungle Fever."

Objective 1: Tags -

The sanctum's breath was shallow.

Every sound seemed half-devoured by the walls—the soft rasp of boots through dust, the hiss of filtered air, the quiet pulse of the crystalline heart deeper within. Darth Virelia stood at the threshold where the descent ended and the forgotten temple began, the light from her gauntlet cutting a narrow path through the gloom. Behind her, the strike-team fanned out in disciplined silence, each step measured, each glance wary of the slow, rhythmic twitch of the roots that crawled along the stone.

The air was thick, charged, tasting faintly of ozone and decay. The ancient circuitry etched into the walls still glowed with a faint inner pulse, veins of cold light that traced the sigils of a civilization long erased. Virelia watched the patterns dance, eyes narrowing—not in wonder, but in calculation. Nathema remembered. The planet's memory was pain, and pain, properly harnessed, could be refined into power.

"Hold perimeter," she ordered, voice soft but absolute. "No weapons discharge unless provoked. This place listens."

A pair of operatives moved ahead, their lamps sweeping over the broken statues of figures whose faces had melted into blankness. The shadows shifted in strange synchrony, almost breathing. Beneath their feet, the ground vibrated with a slow, arrhythmic heartbeat that did not belong to any living thing.

Virelia stepped forward only once, boots brushing aside a carpet of pale moss. "Do you feel it?" she murmured to no one in particular. "It resists us—not out of malice, but out of memory. It fears being emptied again." Her gloved fingers brushed the air, tracing the invisible outline of the engine's distant pulse. "Fear makes things violent."

The first tremor rolled through the floor—distant, deliberate. Dust fell like ash. Somewhere below, the crystalline engine sang a single, trembling note, and the Force itself seemed to wince.

Virelia's violet eyes glimmered through her visor as she turned to the others. "We advance to the inner chamber. No one touches the core until I say. Map the entryways, watch the ceiling, and keep your breathing steady. If it begins to hum in your head—speak it aloud. Let the rest hear it."

Her voice lowered, a thread of command and promise.
"Nathema is awake. Let's remind it who walks its veins now."

 

[Veyra Kryze]

"Pain and Corruption."

Objective 2: Tags -

Veyra crouched at the lip of the sinkhole like a predator taking measure of new territory—cold, patient, interested. The jungle above had proven itself a jealous thing: it swallowed banners, choked fires, and drank scouts whole. Below, the earth opened its throat and hummed. She tasted that hum in the back of her teeth, metallic and sweet, and felt it answer the hunger behind her ribs.

Around her the Queensguard moved with the quiet confidence of ritual — armor whispering, blades close to the palm. The strike team would arrive in moments; their boots heavy with the last of the surface, their voices rough from smoke and rot. Veyra welcomed the weight. She wanted the grind of it. She wanted the fight to bruise her.

Her gaze slid over the sinkhole: fang-like roots aglow with a sickly sheen, steam rising from fissures where sap had become something else. The Maw pulsed beneath, a heart beating through veins of wood and iron. It was obscene and gorgeous: half-plant, half-memory, feeding on the dead honor of Sith who had died here long before the Court arrived. The thought uncoiled something delighted inside her. To corrupt it for the Dark Lady would be a deed worth singers' lies.

She flexed her fingers, feeling calluses like maps. The haft of a vibroblade hummed in her hand. She imagined thrusting it into root and bone, into bark that healed like a wound with will. Imagine corrupting that healing—teaching it to clutch, to worship, to bleed for the Court. Imagine a forest that yielded obedience, not rot.

A smell crawled under her hood—pheromones and rot braided with the sharp tang of old blood. The roots shivered as if in answer. Somewhere below, shapes shifted in ways not fully human. They spoke, reports said, in voices like echoes of your own. Veyra grinned and felt a hot savoring rise; mirrors were useful when you wanted to teach a thing to love you.

She rose, hoisted the cloak over her shoulders, and stepped until the sinkhole's edge pressed at her boots. Many straightened, eyes catching the fever that made her pulse quicken. She did not fear the Maw. She wanted it to notice her.

"Let it remember why it kneels," she said, low and sharp, handing the Dark Lady's intent like a blade to the waiting earth. "We will make it sing our names."

For the Dark Court.