Private Right In Two

[Irveric Tavlar]

//IN ORBIT// Troska
//ON BOARD// Epitaph
//TIMELINE// Shortly After The Darkness Is Revealing...
//THEMATIC// Snowing Like Its The End Of The World
//FOCUS// Hailyn

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Following the Sith Assembly, the Lord General had imposed on himself, exile. Though he might've walked a free man among the greater Imperial populace - he had painted a target over himself. He knew well whatever 'value' he had within the Sith Empire, he was likely better dead to them. Beneath the banner of the crimson saber, almost anyone was replaceable outright. With the void of Irveric Tavlar from his post a fawning glad hand or four were well underway in sowing favor.

Of any of the Empire's upper echelon to attempt and audience with the Lord General ; Achlys might've been one of two Tavlar might've accepted to hear. Her rhetoric was one purely of pragmatic patriotism. She didn't care to hear of the touted dogma of any of the Sith -- merely to better the Empire's position within the Galaxy. Though he could barely stomach the nation to which he owed his loyalty to for the entire length of his military tenure, he could respect the approach to which he adhered similarly for years prior. However Kintan and Mandalore both had scraped his consciousness dangerously close to the edge of mortality for him to act in service to the Sith any longer.

Suspended in starlit blackness above the barren world of Troska, Irveric had long expended his venues to receive a meeting like this. He would not venture back into Sith space so openly. The rest of his fleet and armies were indisposed in neutral space. He didn't seek to posture here nor outright expose his numbers in the event Braith cared to count them.

Receiving her aboard the star destroyer she was regarded at her station if only by a salute and escort from two of Tavlar's subordinates. Irveric's aim was not to posture like many of the Sith he'd receieved aboard the Epitaph had continuously attempted in turn to him. His reputation as a commander was one of rigid stoicness even within the throes of outright chaos -- this gesture by proxy seemed to display that well enough.

The door to the Lord General's command deck beneath the main bridge hissed open to reveal the Lord General and his closest retinue of subordinates and advisors- all of them present via holoprojection - Braith's entrance however triggered a shuttering of the holograms before they disappeared into nothingness. One of them in a faint gesture seemed to glance in her direction, equipped in black duraplast before phasing out with the others. Peering to her beneath a grievous visage marred by his close stings by death the Lord General nodded once to her.

"Reassuring that there isn't a call for my head yet. Unless that's ultimately why you're here." Irveric states outright. Offering a placid tone to match his lone even gaze adjacent from his covered eye and protruding beskar 'horn'. Though he had no desire to create conflict out of nothingness.

 

[Hailyn]

THE EVIL IN ME

Her chosen children had abandoned her - the Primeval calling for the death of their gods, declaring the gift of free will from an ancient will to be mere cowardice - and her adopted family had chosen to divide itself within its own house. From the beginning of time the people she chose to walk among made the conscious effort to spurn the advances she'd made, to force regret on her for her decision to leave the timeless void she had crossed over from when they'd shown her how twisted their minds were in dreams that they knew they were the masters of. In the grand scheme of things this matter was something she never should have become embroiled with in the first place, and yet the Empire had provided itself as the perfect stepping stone on the path to setting things right in the galaxy.

Braith's arrival aboard the cell that the Lord General had made for himself was one which was already a futile one in the mind of the witch, she had lost any hope for the children that were born beneath the stars in the last several months. The man she was meeting with, Irveric Tavlar , was a soldier - as she had been in the days of sleeping beneath the moonlight and living on the land one walked upon - and a soldier did not, generally, care for idle politics or for idealistic fantasies of the religious folk, so while she was bringing with her the pragmatism of someone that lived the life of battle with little care for the fanciful dalliances of the Sith proper there was little she could bring to the table to sway him back to loyalty if he had already set his mind on supporting a dogma that would give him empty promises of equality and exaggerated praise.

"Your accomplishments and work with the Empire's armed forces has earned you the right to speak out of turn on occasion, given your grievances remain as constructive as they were when last we met." She said with a frown, already forming an understanding of his perception from what short words he'd given. She kept herself at a healthy distance from the general, out of desire to keep the appearance of her glamour - a party trick, to some, that gave her a more human appearance than the truth that sat just under the surface - and to give him the impression that his position was above her own in his ship during this meeting, to minimize any displays of superiority she might inadvertently create by acting with deference to a decorated soldier that felt slighted. "I am not here to silence you, I am here out of respect for a man I considered an equal until he renounced his place as a part of the Sith." Braith explained, purposefully make eye contact.

"You."

 

[Irveric Tavlar]

She might've sought to offer an olive branch to him, excusing his outburst before the nigh entirety of the Sith Order but he knew well none of her peers would swallow their pride to take him back into the fold. Nor did he care to be. Speaking out as he did only to sit his position once more as one of the integral cogs of the wretched machine he'd cursed not days prior would only be a willing character suicide. It would melt all integrity away in favor of complacency. Were he younger, weaker and not lost so much already he likely would've brooded to himself and never opened his mouth in the face of the entirety of the Dark Order. That man was murdered on Mandalore if he wasn't a shambling carcass for years prior.

To hear he regarded her as equal wasn't so much suprising in speech as it might be in actuality it. She certainly wasn't going to approach him saying she regarded him as less. Though he'd held this monstrous apparatus of command he'd made few political connections aside from those he'd gone in league with in this treason.

"I was not expecting the gesture if I might be honest, Lady Achlys. From what I heard of your rhetoric you don't seem to be one who cares for any of the Sith doctrine, merely for the Empire as it is. In that I can't fault you being that I spent two decades in service to it...but I am no Sith, I've never been Sith." He said, he knew well what she might be implying by using the title to describe him but still he had to deny it. Mulling over his thoughts for a moment, he let silence settle.

"I wish it was so simple as adhering to my service, but I never destined myself to be the man I've been molded into. I was born to farmers and scrappers on Dantooine, welded hull plating on Ord Thoden before I was conscripted, I never sought to be a soldier. I don't do it for me, for any lust of power or thrill of command I do it to protect them, the men and women who look to me as their leader. Countless times I'd seen troopers, my peers, my comrades...my friends led to the slaughter because it was incompetent Sith at their behest. At Kintan...you, me, the near entirety of the Dark Council was there in force -- I lost my arm... I accomplished every objective I'd been assigned and even still...we lost...all of it, nothing." In defeat came hard truths, if Tavlar was anything he was remarkably honest...certainly to a fault as now speaking his mind had made him maligned by the very Empire he'd spilled his lifeblood for several times over.

"I can not be aimlessly paraded around the Galaxy to do their bidding any longer. To butcher and burn Kintan only to be driven back...to defend Mandalore, only to annihilate its people...for what?" Tavlar said candidly, though he had no love for the Network or its aims - it respected the Mandalorian way. They were perhaps the purest warriors in the Galaxy, having beaten the Sith and Jedi both bloody moved by will alone. To see its people, its culture and way of life be utterly replaced by something manufactured, unnatural. It seemed far more in line of pleasing the obsurd vision of a view than it did serve any pragmatic purpose by Irveric's line of thinking.

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Hailyn

 

[Hailyn]

Things were moving in roughly the direction Braith had anticipated, this entire meeting almost proving to be an exercise in futility, but the general still phrased things in a way that gave her a sense of direction she could take to salvage the situation into something that worked - perhaps not something that Carnifex would approve, but she'd make him listen to reason if push came to shove. "You make a fair point - I can understand how you've arrived at the conclusion you've reached given what you've gone through." She began, pausing momentarily to try to think of how best to word what she was going to say next. "I believe that the assembly was originally intended to correct the course for the empire, and we might have been able to address your concerns in a manner that was less.. hostile.. than it was allowed to become." She said, continuing with the lead into something she felt slightly more emboldened to say in private given the context of their meeting.

"To be blunt, Lord General, I believe that Empire would have been open to a moderate change in its structure if the meeting between Sith had been allowed to continue without the pointless political nonsense that widened a growing divide in ideologies and silenced the voices of pragmatism." Braith explained, pausing again with an expression resembling dissatisfaction. "A radical shift in greater autonomy for the military from men and women who fight amongst themselves over something as petty as which cult of personality they follow would have been on the table - and I believe will be on the table in the future depending on how this all plays out." She amended, sounding somewhat more pleased with her phrasing.

"It would be too much for me to ask you to return to the Empire as it is now, sir, and perhaps unfair for me to ask that you remain uninvolved - but this will not play out as Kintan and Mandalore did. I implore you to consider a less aggressive stance against the Empire in this conflict, not out of nostalgia or pity, but so that when the game is done you may have the option to leverage a change in the fundamental structure of our Empire." She said, implying but not outright stating an option she was giving him to choose from.

"I do not want this to come across as a threat, Lord General, but I am not our Dark Council. I will be more forgiving when this is over, but this is not a game that can be won. Do take that into consideration when thinking on my request - you will have my support when this is through, so long as you are willing to take it."

Irveric Tavlar

 

[Irveric Tavlar]

Braith's view point of acting purely in the Empire's interest, even if it implied that the Emperor, the Dark Council and the rest of the Sith Order as it is accept a man back who regarded them as parasites to their faces, calcifying one of the most prominent Sith sins of pride all the in the process. A task Irveric thought all but undo-able, there would be no means to which the wounds he created with his outburst would ever be sealed properly, at least through diplomatic means.

"Moderate changes...greater autonomy...none of that matters if I still kneel to Sith." Irveric stated bluntly. He was about past the point of compromise, at least in retaining any allegiance to the Emperor.

"The Sith Empire...it's a parasite on this galaxy. I only ever thought to retain my loyalty to it because I was very well sure I was fighting to maintain order, security for its people all the while the worlds behind us that we've conquered...people like minded to me - eradicated alongside entire cultures and civilizations that don't fit the warped, inhuman doctrine of its rulers. Lord Carnifex...Lord Prazutis, they do not fight for the same things I do. The Sith pray at the altar of power and annihilation, they don't understand the plight of their subjects." He did not say the name of her husband lightly but even still, he was resolute.

"On Mandalore...I was told I was defending its people from terrorists and rebels. I did my duty...I felt death there, I don't fear it any longer. My soldiers fought and won only to have the grounds they bled swept of all life. It means nothing to me to fight and defend this Empire only to annihilate the people at our backs. It's pointless...whatever autonomy the military is given I will still have to command these putrid wars. I garner no satisfaction from seeing innocents die." Irveric Tavlar states candidly, eventually shifting his disfigured gaze from hers, crossing his organic arm over the crimson cybernetic across his chest, the faint hiss of the servos sounding out as he manipulates the limb, staring with an empty eye into nothingness for a moment before he looks back to her.

"Win or lose, I will not go quietly silencing my own convictions because it is the easier path. All the same, should this delve into war and this Empire upended I will see to it that retribution is not inflicted unto you all the same. My perspective is unique between the Empire and the so called 'Apostates', I understand that but even so I will not yield in my beliefs or convictions, for anything." Irveric retorted as respectfully as he might've been able to state it, leaving the air open for her to speak once more.

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Hailyn

 

[Hailyn]

Idealistic words were like thorns to her ears, and at last she understood her misunderstanding and where it had begun. "I understand." She replied, her words seemingly denoting her acceptance of his views but, perhaps even more so than that, also serving as a statement for her new understanding of the wayward children born under the stars. She pondered, for a moment, if she should chastise him for playing into the same politics of the people she'd spoke ill of only minutes before, to scorn his convictions and elaborate on the futility of morality and ethics, but she decided against it - it was his lesson to learn, and as, she had said only moments ago, she had come to understand why it was that he - and they - rejected her guidance whenever it was given.

It was their lesson to learn.

She turned away from him, suddenly unable to take sight of him without feeling the sickness in the pit of her being upon his idealism being given clarity, and allowed herself an audible sigh - perhaps he would take it as frustration, or perhaps condescension, but in truth it didn't matter to her anymore how he perceived it as he had revealed the nature of his being to her in full and it was not one which she found worth further care. "Your words of conviction are wasted on me, General. I had believed you were a soldier, a warrior, but I see now you are just a man. It was my mistake coming here, expecting to provide you the better path, the right path. I do not wish for any of my children to suffer, but you have chosen the difficult road and have made a decision that will only bring you and those that follow you greater pain." She said, her words doubtlessly coming across as a strange choice of phrasing - there was no denying that she had referred to him in the manner a parent might, though they bore no formal relation.

"The true way is one which is difficult, Tavlar. It is ugly, it is brutal, and it has no satisfaction in the steps one takes to reach the end of its course - for it is a road that is defined by its conclusion, not the journey that was taken to reach it." Braith explained, disappointment audible in the tone of her voice. "Remember when you sleep easier, when you feel better for choosing the easier path of protecting those you deem innocent, that you have taken the road defined by its journey, with a conclusion that will never come - futility does not suit you, General, I had hoped you would have seen that." She continued as she strode away - to exit - and then paused for a moment to look back, something inhuman almost visible just below the surface of her visage.

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"It will not be too late."

And then she was gone.

Irveric Tavlar