Recon Run: Fresia (One Sith territory)

[Ashin Varanin]

Ke'dem had been paid over twenty-two million credits and a holocron to take a serious swing at a particular set of coordinates. Those coordinates turned out to be on the planet Fresia. A pretty basic HoloNet search turned up some anecdotal evidence that something nasty had been built there, in the course of a mass purge. Since the boss was a juggernaut who couldn't sense worth crap, Seren had been dispatched to get a feel for the stuff. Didn't hurt that his Force signature wasn't known to all and sundry. Unlike the boss, his presence would blend right in.

His old Sekairo-class stealth transport dropped him about ten klicks away from the target. He'd gone with Ke'dem's standard uniform, a micronized-turadium bodysuit. Old Sith lanvarok on the left wrist, length of chain wrapped around his right arm: all the gear he needed. Ratty dark robe over the whole ensemble. Oh, and zero immediate malicious intent, just to keep someone from getting a bad feeling about this.

At a loping run, Seren headed through the crags toward the Temple of Pain.

What would he find?

[member="Sage Bane"]

 

[Sage Bane]

A multitude of sleepless nights were clearly visible in the sunken trenches underneath the eyes of Sage Bane, Sith Lord and architect of the Temple of Pain. After Sage’s mind-controlled apprentice, [member="Kinsey Starchaser"], finally shook off his enthrallment and ran away for good, the despondent illusionist threw himself into his arcanity with obsessive doggedness. Although his palace was only a few miles away, he began to live in his temple, wearing stim patches to help him weather the long nights of experimenting in the labs. When he did sleep, he did so crunched up on the chaise lounge in his study, drifting off to sounds of victims being tortured in the garden outside, where burgeoning apprentices practiced their skills. He woke with massive cricks in his joints. The pain made Sage irritable, and his irritability was hell on his beleaguered apprentices, who became said victims of a new crop of apprentices if missteps were made.

Right now? The Sith Lord was currently in the reliquary on the second floor of the temple, meditating on the Holocron of Yana Hannica, given to him by another apprentice, one named Sifa Tirel. He was using the artifact to help him perfect the ancient Sith Lord’s Odojinya technique, and was getting close to being able to use the power without the momentous drain of energy that it usually caused him. It wasn’t the web itself that sapped his power, but more the part of the spell that severed the Force from its victim. How did the Sith Emperor Vitiate ever learn to strip the Force from entire planets? And how could Sage himself someday possess that kind of power?

Certainly not by moping around the temple, mourning the loss of his favorite apprentice.

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Sage Bane"]

Seren pulled himself up onto a ridge. This region was craggy, tons of verticality. It obstructed movement and obscured lines of sight, which could work and work well. He stayed low to keep from silhouetting himself against the skyline, and looked out over the Temple of Pain.

His first realization was that there were two facilities. One was pretty clearly a Sith temple, half-buried, with a monstrous pair of doors. The other, a couple of klicks away, was just as clearly a palace. He'd need to talk to the Admiral about this. The contract had been for one location, and the coordinates weren't precise enough to nail it down to one or the other. Common sense dictated the destruction of the temple, but it could be the palace, or the client could really expect both destroyed.

Keeping his presence muted, he found a rock fissure out of sight of both, and started gathering intel the best way he knew how. People died in Sith temples, as a rule, and generally you could dig up a shade or two. In fairly short order, the whispers started to close in on him.

"So tell me how you died," he rasped.

 

[Sage Bane]

Sage rubbed his eyes. Yannica, while a skilled sorceress, had the most monotone voice for a Holocron gatekeeper. Ever. Really, the woman could use some voice acting lessons. He let out a long, weary exhalation and with a mental command, shut off her droning for a while. What Sage needed was practice. He stalked out into the halls of the temple, eyes alighting on an Elomin apprentice who was currently fixing a manipulator arm on a spider droid.

"You! Come with me."

There wasn't a moment of hesitation. The apprentice immediately dropped his tools and trailed after the Sith Lord who made his way to the ground floor. Now in the Hall of Sorrow, he whirled on his heels, eyes locked on the Elomin. A dark murmur tumbled from his lips as Sage flawlessly recited Yannica's ancient incantations. Thin strands of the Force burst from his thin, pale fingers, enveloping the apprentice in an unbreakable net of the dark side. In a few moments, the dark side web meshed around the student and began to sever his connection to the Force.

"No...no..." the Elomin pleaded.

The student would soon be firmly trapped and unable to fight back with neither physical powers, nor the Force. Once the severance was complete, the energy mesh would be constricted, and would presumably slice through the man's skin like razor wire.

Whatever was left of him would be the problem of the maintenance droids.

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Sage Bane"]

At a guess, the Elomin was not the first student used as a test dummy for an advanced technique. Seren got an earful. The problem with thinning the veil, breaking the boundary between here and the shades of Chaos, was that you took what you could get. A fisherman never knew quite what would bite.

That said, to stretch the metaphor, a talented, prepared fisherman could choose the right lure and bait, the right waters. So Seren heard first from the roaring mewling pathetic frustration of the dead acolytes. Then he turned his attention to the despondent, the vestigial and washed-out, the most faded shades around. The innocent victims. Alchemy test subjects, prisoners in the catacombs, sacrificial lambs. Their whispery old terror stained the Force in an unappetizing way. Seren listened and listened hard, gleaning bits and pieces of information. Impressions of catacombs, bits and pieces of babbling-

It all washed over him, and matters of substance sank to the bottom, to the lowest common denominator -- to Seren. Getting a composite picture of the place would require reflection and a good bit of guesswork, but the lessons of the dead offered plenty of intelligence to the careful questioner.