Private Rise - Post Balmora Operation

[Caelis Venn]

Tag: Lysander von Ascania

It was still raining, and dark, but the mission was over. Bodies lined the streets, blood was spilled, screams were met with echoes of blaster and saber hisses and slashes. Caelis killed without any remorse, he did it with a smile. He had one mission, and that was to do absolutely whatever the covenant told him to do. One particular Sith Knight noticed that. He was hand picked out of his entire ship of other Acolytes by the Knight. He didn't hesitate, a Sith Knight summoned his presence, so he obliged without question. The other Acolytes watched, scoffed, and rolled their eyes as the Knight and Caelis both embarked on his ship, instead of Caelis returning to his Acolyte boarded ship. The ship was bound to Coruscant which was a Sith conquered planet.

They were jealous. No one else has been acknowledged like that in that group of young dangerous Sith Acolytes.

They made their way into the ship, there was a large room near the bridge that the Knight lead Caelis into. What was this? Was it a conversation? Was it for him to murder him without anyone hearing? Did Caelis do something wrong? He wasn't being punished was he? Still, he stood there behind the Knight, eyes never faltered, and stared directly at him.

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[Lysander von Ascania]

Caelis Venn​

Night had fallen hours ago, but the smoke still hung in the air. The Covenant's message was written in blood across the city: defiance ends in ash. The screams heard now were from those left alive to remember.

In that crucible of destruction, there had been something else for him. An opportunity to stretch his own authority and test the edges of leadership. The results left him unsatisfied, hollow. Lysander wanted more..

Most of the remaining Acolytes had failed him. Broken.. but not their bodies. Those could be repaired. A few had survived only because the enemy had been too slow or too weak to finish them. And when he'd walked past them afterward, he'd tasted their fear like a toxin. Part of him wondered if it would have been better for them to die there. The Covenant had no place for those who'd glimpsed their own weakness and couldn't evolve. Some revelations couldn't be unlearned..

The Sith Knight guided the chosen Acolyte through the freighter's corridor, the one dense with Sith Lords and Knights. Congregated like carrion birds. Their presences pressed against the air as unique wounds in the Force, radiating malice, and other flavors of darkness. Here, power wasn't always always in titles, but in who would be left standing when blood pooled on durasteel floors..

The obsidian armor he wore was streaked with dried blood.. his, theirs, it didn't matter. Reaching up, he released the helm's seals. A mechanical hiss broke the silence. The world sharpened without the HUD.

Lysander studied him now, trying to peel away layers. The boy.. no, not a boy, but close.. was perhaps only a handful of years younger than him. Strange to think about. Back then, he'd been wearing Jedi robes on Naboo, still believing in mercy. The Kor'ethyr Academy on Korriban left scar tissue where hope once lived.

"You followed well," Lysander said at last, in a lethal murmur. "Unlike the others."

A slow breath escaped between parted lips.

"But tell me.. did you follow because you were trained to heel, or because you understood what was necessary?"

He circled him once before coming to another halt.

"One can be beaten into a corpse. The other.. that darkness must already hunger within you."

 

[Caelis Venn]

Tag: Lysander von Ascania

Caelis' hood and robe was still drenched in a mixture of water from the rain and the blood from his victims. He stood there with his hood down and his hair dripping with rain water as the Knight circled around him asking him questions. His mask that he wore when he was in combat PlanetSide was covered in red streaks of blood stretching across the face plate.

You followed well.. unlike the others. The Knight said.

Caelis took his face mask off and dropped it onto the floor and smiled. It clanked with a heavy thud as it rested onto the durasteel floor of the ship.

"But tell me.. did you follow because you were trained to heel, or because you understood what was necessary?"

Caelis looked at him with a smirk, and began to answer him.

"Both. I was trained to obey but at the same time I want to vanquish all of our enemies. It just so happened to conveniently be an order bestowed to us as well. I didn't kill because I was ordered. I killed because I wanted to." His smirk got slightly bigger, his eyes trained on the Knight before him as he circled him

The Knight stopped circling him for one more question to be muttered out of his lips.

"One can be beaten into a corpse. The other.. that darkness must already hunger within you."

"I relish in destroying all of those who oppose me and the Sith Covenant. I did what all of the others were afraid to do. Hard to believe those sorry excuses for Sith were trained let alone chosen for this mission. Weaklings. Pitiful pitiful weaklings. Makes me sick."
Caelis' expression changed into more of an anger as opposed to a smile.

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[Lysander von Ascania]

Caelis Venn​

"You speak of wanting and being ordered as if they're separate things," Lysander began, measuring each word like ingredients for poison. "But desire can be cultivated. Forged.. what I wonder is whether you understand the difference between bloodlust and purpose."

He understood the Acolyte's words. His actions today, the public execution, the blood still crusting beneath his fingernails, suggested a man of impulse. But appearances served their purpose. Behind closed doors for the Covenant, Lysander was a counterweight to zealotry.. a voice that warned of consequences when others shouted for needless war. He'd years now learning which strings to pull and which secrets to preserve.. all to maintain the equilibrium between warlords who would gladly burn some random world meaningless advantage. Sometimes, he wondered if this made him the biggest monster of all.

"Anyone can kill what they hate. The question is whether you can kill what you love, should it threaten what.. truly matters."

He circled him like a predator assessing not prey but potential offspring. He noticed the shift in expression. There was potential here, buried beneath bravado and blood.

"You call them weak," he continued, voice dropping to a murmur. "So, consider this paradox. If your strength is measured only by what you destroy, then you are forever dependent on external things to validate your power. The truly formidable need prove nothing.. they simply.. are. Tell me, which are you becoming?"

 

[Caelis Venn]

Tag: Lysander von Ascania

The low hum of the ship filled the silence, a constant vibration beneath Caelis Venn’s boots as starlines stretched beyond the viewport—Coruscant drawing ever closer.
He stood still, blade unlit at his side now, its presence no less felt.

“You speak of it like it’s clean,” Caelis said at last, voice quieter in the enclosed space. “Like purpose can exist without conflict.”
His eyes shifted to Lysander, unflinching.
“I don’t believe that.”
He paused faintly
“Desire isn’t something you strip down until it’s… acceptable. It’s something you master without dulling it.”
His fingers flexed slightly, as if remembering the weight of his saber mid-strike.

“Bloodlust without control is useless. But control without desire?” He gave a slight shake of his head. “That’s just hesitation wearing discipline as a mask.”
Caelis

The presence came again—quieter here, but sharper in the stillness between stars. It didn’t fight him. It waited.
Caelis’ expression tightened for the briefest moment before smoothing out again.
“And if what I love becomes a threat…” he repeated, more measured now. “Then it becomes a choice.”
Not as absolute as before.
Not as clean.
His gaze drifted briefly to the viewport—endless lights waiting ahead.
“I won’t pretend that’s easy,” he admitted, low. “But I won’t let it make me weak either.”
He turned back fully now, squaring himself within the narrow space.
“You ask what I’m becoming.”
Another pause.
“I’m becoming someone who decides what matters—before the moment forces it out of me.”
The ship hummed steadily as Coruscant grew larger in the distance, a world of endless consequence waiting beneath them.
Caelis’ voice dropped, quieter—but more certain.
“Not someone who waits to find out too late.”

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[Lysander von Ascania]

Caelis Venn​

He studied the acolyte, recognizing the conflict in those eyes. A familiar adversary he'd conquered within himself. Gloved fingers drummed against the lightsaber hilt clipped to his belt. A soft rap echoed.

"You've learned to control your impulses," Lysander said slowly , "but that's not the same as understanding them. Control alone would only leave you hollow." Or a slave to restraint. He searched for words that wouldn't sound like the mystical platitudes he'd once resented from Sith Lords, for it would be too easy to slip into a similar tone.

He wanted to offer what he'd never received.. clarity rather than dogma.

"When faced with opposition" he continued, tilting his head to observe, "do you actually process the emotion, or just suppress it?" He allowed silence to settle between them, giving space for the question to resonate. Many Sith spent years, burying their rage rather than understanding it. "True mastery isn't about becoming emotionless. It's the courage to acknowledge every shadow within yourself without becoming lost in them. Then, bending them to your will." A few of those words might've earned him punishment in his apprentice days, but he still believed them true nonetheless.

"Before you decide anything, you should know who stands in front of you. There is no Darth tied to my name. Only Lysander."

He closed the gap. A hand drifted to the collar of the acolyte's robe, brushing aside a streak of rainwater mixed with dried blood. "I will forge your discipline through challenge and revelation. Become my apprentice, and you'll find strength in your complexity. Your limitations will become weapons. True Sith power does not lie in mindless destruction. And I can guide you toward that awareness, if you're willing to walk that difficult path. First, mastery over yourself, then.. dominion over all others."

 

[Caelis Venn]

Tag: Lysander von Ascania

Caelis did not step back as Lysander closed the distance. If anything, he leaned slightly into it—not in defiance, but in quiet acceptance of the tension that hung between them. Rainwater and blood clung to his skin, but he made no move to wipe it away. It felt… appropriate.

His yellowed gaze held steady, though something beneath it shifted—something alive, restless.

“You assume I suppress it,” Caelis said, his voice low, measured—but not cold.
His fingers flexed slightly at his side, as if remembering something recent. Something violent.
“I don’t.”
There was no pride in the admission. No shame either.
“I feel it,” he continued, eyes narrowing just slightly. “Every moment of it. The anger… the doubt… the pull.” His jaw tightened faintly. “Especially the pull.”

For a brief second—barely noticeable—his focus drifted. Not to Lysander… but somewhere else. Someone else.
A voice that wasn’t here.
A presence that refused to fade.
His twin.

Caelis inhaled slowly, grounding himself again, forcing that fracture in his focus back under control, not by burying it, but by owning it.

“You speak of understanding,” he said, returning his full attention to Lysander. “But understanding doesn’t quiet it. It makes it sharper.”

There was curiosity in him now—but not the kind that sought comfort. The kind that sought truth, no matter the cost.

“You’re right about one thing,” Caelis added, tilting his head slightly. “Control alone isn’t enough. I’ve felt what happens when I rely on it. It cracks.”
His gaze hardened—not outwardly aggressive, but resolute.

“I don’t want to be hollow.”
The words came quieter now—but carried more weight than anything before them.

“I want to know why it’s there. Why it won’t let go.”
A faint pause.
“And how to use it… without it using me.”

Lysander’s offer lingered in the air between them, heavy with promise, and consequence. Caelis didn’t answer immediately. He studied him, not as a subordinate… but as someone standing at a crossroads.

“No ‘Darth,’” Caelis repeated softly, almost testing the sound of it. “Good.”

A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched his lips.
“I’m not looking for another voice to replace the one in my head.”
His expression settled again, more serious this time.
“But I am looking for someone who won’t lie to me about what I am.”
A brief pause before he spoke again,
“I’ll walk that path,” Caelis said, steady and certain. “Not for power alone… but for clarity.”

His gaze sharpened, locking fully onto Lysander now.
“But understand this—” he added, quieter, but edged with something unyielding, “whatever I become from it… it will be mine.”

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