Populate Shadows of Power | THR Populate of Bothawui & Masterra

[Pillar of Reflection]

​

Populate - Shadows of Power (Bothawui & Masterra)​

In an era of expansion and idealism, the High Republic surges into the Mid Rim, its banners raised high with promises of peace, prosperity, and progress. Trade routes open, diplomatic ties strengthen, and innovation flourishes under the watchful eyes of the Jedi and the Senate.

But not all are content to watch from the sidelines.

In the wake of the Mara conflict, whispers of Black Sun Syndicate undercurrents ripple through Republic space. Now, a bold delegation from Bothuwai arrives in Theed with a dangerous offer: classified intelligence gathered by the famed Bothan Spynet, evidence of an imminent strike tied to criminal networks in exchange for expedited High Republic membership and a defense pact.
As tensions spiral and allegiances fray, the Senate must decide: trust Bothuwai and gain a cunning ally, or drown in protocol and indecision as shadows rise to smother the light.

The fate of countless systems may rest on a single, fragile vote.

Objective One - The Bothuwai Gambit
Location: High Assembly Hall - Theed, Naboo
​

With unrest simmering across the Mid Rim and the scars of Mara still visible in the minds of many, the Republic teeters at the edge of something far greater than politics. Whispers of a hidden offensive, tied to the criminal empire of the Black Sun, ripple through senatorial corridors.

The Bothuwai delegation now stands before the High Assembly with a daring proposal. The famed Bothan Spynet has uncovered troubling evidence: a planned syndicate strike that could destabilize vital Republic systems. In return for their intelligence, Bothuwai demands swift accession into the Republic and the protection that comes with it.

Now, the senators of the High Republic must weigh paranoia against prudence. Can Bothuwai be trusted, or are they playing a deeper game of political leverage? Will the Republic act decisively, or let opportunity dissolve into endless debate, right as the enemy makes its move?

Objective Two - Codex Competition: Anchors of the Republic​

The High Republic spreads ever outward, eager to secure peace, but peace is rarely unchallenged.

As expansion accelerates, so too does resistance. While the Sith stir in the shadows and the Black Sun Syndicate sharpens its knives, new worlds flood into the Republic's fold. The Mid Rim has become the newest frontier, not just for diplomacy and trade, but for survival.

Your mission: In pairs, develop a codex submission for a key location that strengthens the Republic’s presence. This can be a Jedi Enclave hidden among the cliffs of a remote moon, a high-tech military bastion orbiting a strategic trade corridor, or a bustling new capital on a planet long overlooked.

Build a location that offers a foundation for roleplay and future conflict. Then, bring it to life, write with your partner for a minimum of five posts at this new site. Staff will evaluate submissions based on effort of the submission and story.

Rewards:

• 1st Place - 100,000 UCs
• 2nd Place - 50,000 UCs
• 3rd Place - 25,000 UCs

 

[Kel Se'Taav]

Kel knew his retirement was temporary from the moment he declared it. If he was being truthful about its nature, he was only trying to distance himself from the Core. The writing had been on the wall for years, but the Senator of Abregado-rae was blinded by his work and duty to the people. He couldn’t see the proverbial forest for the trees, but when Crimson Dawn razed the Fondor Canton and killed his colleagues before his eyes, Kel couldn’t hide anymore.

The Alliance he swore to serve was no longer the same government he was working for.

It was corrupt, self-serving, and weak. It was losing ground to the Sith in an unnecessary holy war while leaving the liberation of the Core to rebels like the Foundation. It was ignoring the Calladene Crisis and instead using emergency powers to enact wanton expansionist policies. It failed to send more than a single squad of Senate Commandos when Kel’s friends and colleagues were being slain, brutalized, and abducted by the Underworld.

The injury he suffered at the hands of a bounty hunter made Kel’s choice for him; it was time to leave the Alliance behind in search of a better way. For a time, that way led him to Lothal, where the Wild Space Republic eked out a life post-Planeshift in the galactic southeast. Kel supported the nascent Senate there, offering wisdom and guidance to the Chancellor. But his time there was limited, much to his chagrin. A strange message from his daughter arrived, spelling out a dire situation transpiring on the home front.

Kel’s daughter, Rae Se’Taav of the notorious Bothan Spynet, had uncovered something big. Crimson Dawn was a veritable minnow compared to the opee sea killer that threatened the galaxy now: Black Sun. Rae begged her father to return, pleaded for him to help Bothawui’s infamously callous delegation earn the trust of the westerly High Republic.

Kel agreed.

One lengthy hyperspace jump from Lothal to Naboo later, and a jet-lagged Kel Se’Taav was walking through the corridors of the High Assembly Hall with a stack of datapads under his arm and a pair of Bothan agents at his flank. He paused for a beat outside the chamber, brushing a speck of lint from his suit jacket, then stepped inside. The Bothan delegation was shown to their senatorial pod, and after a brief moment to arrange their data, they were ready.

Kel’s voice sounded through the chamber as his pod slid forward. He was well versed after years of asserting his presence into the raucous Alliance Senate. “Thank you all, senators, for your willingness to entertain this session today. I am Kel Se’Taav, former Alliance Senator of Abregado-rae. I come before you this afternoon as a representative of my homeworld, Bothawui, and as an advocate for our people.”

“It is my assumption that you have reviewed the intelligence shared between the Bothan Spynet and Republic Intelligence Service, but for those who have not yet had the opportunity, I shall share with you now what your colleagues have been shared thus far: the Republic is in danger of an imminent attack from the Underworld.”

Kel’s face was grim, despite his typically warm demeanor. For those who knew the man, they would feel a pang of fear and dread; Kel was not bluffing, and he would never spearhead such a political motion as he was about to make without an unfettered trust in the action.

“The Spynet is willing to divulge information regarding this threat to the High Republic, but that willingness is conditional. Bothawui has stood on its own as a neutral world amidst a very hostile environment. We find ourselves now, post-Planeshift, floating precariously between your nation and the growing shadow of the criminal underworld.”

So what, then, was the condition? Kel cleared his throat away from his mic, then turned back to the Senate before him. “Bothawui requests hastened admittance to the Republic, in exchange for unmitigated cooperation from our intelligence apparatus.”

Tags: Open​

 

[Mishel]

"The dead are never silent here. They wait for someone to listen."​

☾ Mishel Kryze ☽

2a7VEFsIMSM[/MEDIA]

"The last time I walked through fire, I didn't come back whole. Maybe that's the point. Maybe we're not meant to. But if there's a soul left in that place, even a single one left saving, I'll find it. Even if it means burning again."

- Jedi Master Mishel Kryze, approaching Ord Masterra
​

A HIGH REPUBLIC STORY
- ANCHORS OF THE REPUBLIC -

The veil thins. The flame falters. The forgotten Order calls.

Jedi Masters Coren Starchaser and Mishel Kryze descend into the Veilcarved Expanse of Ord Masterra, drawn by ghostfire, memory, and the last cry of a long-dead cryptkeeper.

---

​

---

When a cryptic map marked with Force signatures and ancient Jedi funeral script appears in the hands of Jedi Master Coren Starchaser, it's traced back to someone long thought dead, Charlyra Araano, a former Sith-turned-ghost of the Order of the Veilbound Pyre.

The map leads to Ord Masterra, a forgotten and haunted world where Jedi once tended to the dead, protected the living from corrupted Force echoes, and performed sacred rites of passage. The Veilcarved Expanse, an arid stretch of land scarred by ancient battles and rituals, has begun to stir with dark presence. The flame the Veilbound once guarded is now flickering, and Charlyra, its last guardian, cannot leave.

Coren, unable to ignore the weight of the message, reaches out to his padawan and fellow Jedi Master, Mishel Kryze, a woman shaped by fire and loss. Together, they return to the past, to a forgotten Order, a haunted world, and perhaps a chance to mend what time and war unraveled between them.

---

​

---

Post 1/5​

​

Ord Masterra, just "Masterra" on most astrogation charts, wasn't exempt from the Planeshift, but it had come through differently than most. Unlike other worlds torn apart, restructured, or swallowed by cosmic rebalancing, Masterra's bones had held. The land hadn't needed remapping; it remembered what it was.

Mishel's ship had landed in one of the deep desert pockets—stable enough, if not comfortable. The air was thick with electromagnetic interference, strongest over the Veilcarved Expanse, and worse near the Canyon of the Nameless, where Charlyra Araano was still holding vigil.

Charlyra. The contact. The last known guardian of an obscure, mostly-forgotten sect:

The Order of the Veilbound Pyre.

Not many even remembered they existed, let alone why they'd mattered.

Mishel descended the ship's ramp, leading down a pair of Orbraks—stocky, muscular beasts bred for the arid highlands of Monastery. She didn't speak to them; didn't need to. They were used to silence. So was she.

She waited briefly, letting her eyes sweep the horizon for Coren Starchaser, her master, her mentor. Whether he'd already landed, was about to land, or was just feeling his way through the Force, Mishel didn't worry. He'd show.

They were in a place where the Force felt fractured, where the air carried the weight of the dead. The veil between the living and the gone hung thin—fragile as skin stretched over bone.


The Veilbound Pyre weren't Jedi in the traditional sense. Maybe they never were.

They were something else, Jedi who had faced death and refused to die.
Dark Jedi who had tried to claw their way back.
Those who stood at the threshold and said "Not yet."
Those who had vengeance in their hearts but still listened when the Light whispered.
Those whose last breath came with regret, or clarity.

They were the dying.
The nearly dead.
The not-quite-finished.

Mishel saddled up on one of the Orbraks, the wind already pushing coarse dust across the dunes. She raised a Force barrier with an easy flick of her wrist, shielding herself and the animals. It wasn't about protection. It was about respect, for this place, for what it held, for what might wake up beneath their boots.

The Veilbound didn't take in initiates. They took in flickering candles, burnt-out coals, and people who didn't think they had anything left to offer. But when the Force whispered to them—

"You are not done."

...they listened.

And now, so would she...

The Veilbound were the ones who spoke with the dying. Not just out of duty, but because someone had to listen. They heard final truths, pulled names from failing lips, caught memories before they slipped into the ether. Some extracted regret. Others? Forgiveness.

That pain, raw, and unflinching wasn't cast aside. It was poured into their sabers, bound into their kyber crystals like soul-etched scars. At least, that's what Charlyra had written in her report.

Mishel had read it twice.
Then a third time.
Each word had felt heavier than the last.

When a Veilbound faced Sith or Jedi who had rotted from within, their blade flared brighter. Not from anger. From remorse. From everything they carried that the other refused to carry.

A kind of karmic balance, some might say. Mishel agreed. Quietly.

The Orbrak trudged forward, hooves crunching through the dust like it had walked this trail a hundred times before. The second one, still riderless, huffed softly and took the lead. Mishel didn't fight it. Maybe it knew something she didn't.

Maybe it had heard the call too.

Charlyra had called them Emberborn, those who walked the threshold between life and death and chose to turn back, not for themselves, but for someone else. Most were physically dying. Others were already hollowed out spiritually. All of them stood on that edge... and stepped into the fire not to survive, but to redeem.

It wasn't an order that took in idealists or martyrs. It took in those already burning.

Their purpose was clear, if not easy.

Burning rites to cleanse temples long swallowed by shadow.

Psychopomp duties, guiding the dying to peace. Sometimes through comfort. Sometimes through the saber.

Relic containment, those cursed pieces of the past, stained by Sith hands or bled dry by darkness.

Execution, when needed, of those who refused to die as nature intended. Especially, Force users who had found a way to cheat death.

But they mourned too.

They kept vigil over the fallen. Guarded their bodies. Prepared them.
Lit the pyres.
Let the Force take them home.

So why Ord Masterra?

What made this dust-choked world so important?

It had been left behind like so many others after the Old Republic collapsed. But centuries later, the mourners came. Jedi who didn't want to build temples or train Padawans. They came because they felt the Veil was thinner here. The Force pulsed through this world like a scar that hadn't healed.

Here, the dead did not rest easily.

Mishel looked up as the light dimmed. The sky above her was sealed in thick clouds, the kind that never broke, heavy, incense-dark. They didn't roll or flash with storm. They just hung there, like the breath of something ancient.

The land was dust.
Sand layered with ashes, old, wind-worn, bone-colored.

And now, as the sun slipped behind the jagged horizon, the cold crept in. It wasn't the kind that bit skin. It reached further. Deeper. Into bone.

Far in the distance, a cinderstorm twisted skyward, a cyclone of grey and ember. It shimmered against the fading light, pulsing like a dying star. Mishel could almost hear the wails caught in its winds, whispers in the Force too faint for words.

Around her, time had collapsed.

The ruins of the Old Republic were half-swallowed by sand.
Collapsed spaceports.
Shattered comm spires.
Cracked pylons leaning at angles, their metals twisted like grief.
And still standing, barely, were the charred Jedi reliquaries, long abandoned, blackened with soot and regret.

This world hadn't forgotten.
And neither had the dead.