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During a daring raid on Balmorra, the Lightsworn uncovered a terrible secret - an Imperial project known only as Project: Stardust! A superweapon of unimaginable power, designed to bring the galaxy to its knees. Jedi Master Romi Jade took the lead in a divination attempt, and though the seers were able to confirm its existence and presence in the deep core, further intel was needed. Whilst infiltrating a Galactic Empire base on Archais, a Lightsworn Jedi Shadow secures vital data: schematics, manifests, and the weapon’s location. The mass floats in orbit of Had Abbadon, its construction now complete.
The spreading darkness of the Galactic Empire has forged an uneasy alliance between the Lightsworn and their counterparts within theJedi Orderand the New Jedi Order. Unbeknownst to the Jedi, underworld agents of the Black Sun Syndicate arrive with raw materials for the Empire. Their presence threatens to tip the balance of the battle… Racing against time, the Jedi coalition strikes before the Empire can unleash its creation upon the galaxy. The element of surprise lends to their cause, allowing them to take the patrols of Star Destroyers and TIE pilots unawares. Before the battle has even begun in its entirety, Lightsworn shuttles land aboard Project: Stardust.
Objective I: Sundering Light
Streaks of laser fire paint the space above Hab Abbadon. The Lightsworn fleet broke hyperspace to land near Project: Stardust, bypassing the patrols of Star Destroyers in the system. Among the stars lay materials and tools that had supported the recently completed construction effort. The bulk of the Empire fleet has moved to engage stragglers who have yet to board, and the ships Lightsworn brought to obtain space superiority long enough to evacuate their troops after their mission aboard the superweapon is complete. Starfighters pour forth to support the battle that rages on. Imperial orders demand no quarter for the Jedi bold enough to strike a target of such importance.
Objective II: Final Dawn
Jedi strike teams push forth from the hangar bay, with Empire troops rallying to give staunch resistance. Several key targets have been identified for sabotage, the most important of which includes the reactor core. Other teams break off to cause havoc on the bridge, seize the communications room, and disrupt further launches from other bays. Danger emerges from the shadows as squadrons of Death Troopers and the Dark Side Elite march forth at the Emperor’s behest to stop these interlopers. Operatives of the Black Sun, present for a delivery of raw materials, move to protect their wares and prove their value to the Empire. The corridors aboard Project: Stardust are quickly becoming a battleground as either side clashes in a merciless endeavor.
Go, jedi, go Jedi go
Sith you better run and hide
Because one day you might not slide
Ceton had the song Jedi Rap by Regular Rock playing on the lander he found himself in. The Lightsworn was loaded up with his blades. Three lightsabers. Each with a different crystal and effect, as well as one of the protection pendants from Kattada around his neck. Aside from the teal sash around his belt, it was the only piece of that enclave he had.
He was tempered in combat. Not in an enclave.
The lander came in aggressively. Blasting their way into the hangar. The ship shook as the song went back to chorus. Ceton grabbed his cousin's shell, the one he turned into a shield and made his way to the front of the line. Focusing his will, the shield started to glow as he reinforced it with the Force. His yellow crossguard ignited as the first salvo caught his shield.
It was time. Using the Force to hurl the shield at neck level of the troopers.
"Project: Stardust is a statement. A doctrine. A final solution to the question of galactic dominance. Your contributions, if accepted, will reshape the very foundation of power in this galaxy..."
-- Alars Keto
as he debriefed selected, handpicked participants for Project: Stardust.
The office, found in a corridor located off the eighty-fourth junction of the colossus named "THE DEATHSTAR", had become a home away from home for Vireth following her induction into the secret, clandestine project colloquially dubbed "PROJECT: STARDUST" so that she could participate in the creation a weapon that no other man or the likes of their ilk would oppose less they invite certain catastrophe, and ruination through a splendour of triangulated galactic shattering green lights set to destroy entire star systems.
When Alars Keto
had debriefed the likes of her (and the other heroes of the Empire) regarding the existence of the project, Vireth had been shocked by the very idea of it given how quickly the Dark-Imperial bloc were mobilising for their second campaign in the Core Worldsterritories. Mere months ago she and the others of the Raithal Military Academy had been staring into the perpetual abyss wondering whether or not all that they had worked for-- in the shadow of the New Jedi Order, and their decadent Galactic Alliance-- had been for naught given the fall of the Dark Empire and it's catastrophic loss at the conclusion of the Core Wars all the while they had been preparing to join their Master as he worked to realise the promises of the New Order ushered by Palpatine a millennia ago.
The idea then of such a weapon, being formed and put together piece-by-piece in the shadows, was then akin to something of a myth. But the scope of the Emperor and his designs were beyond that of even one of his most devout chosen for Vireth was distinctly qualified to certify the ambitions of He (who were akin to that of a God) that were epitomized through the distinctive reality of the existence of his superweapon of which she had been serving aboard since the annexation of Arkania some weeks ago.
Vireth had always known better, even back then, that what their enemies had screamed from the ramparts of their decadence (regarding the defeat of both Korvan and Fossk's forces at Carlac and Empress Teta at the end of the Core Wars) had been lies and her belief had been rewarded through the revelation of the Deathstar-- a mighty machine that must have taken decades to create, and of which the very existence of such divinity tore to pieces the lies of all those who had claimed victory over the one, true Galactic Emperor ever since the SECOND GREAT HYPERSPACE WAR.
Raised in doctrine, reverence and architectural design, specifically, in the classical galactic and distinctive Imperial aesthetic-- in anticipation of a distinguished career to serve the paradigms lain out across the millennia by the Sith-- all of Vireth's work and ambition had been realised since the coup d'état on her homeworld of Kuat and Balmorra which had served as a prelude for the annexation of Imperial Centre. Reality had supplanted the lies and falsehoods of their enemies as the hands of their adversaries snatched their throats and begun the squeeze to choke them for their barbarity, and for the cruel worlds which they had ushered aloud, that were meant to inspire weakness or doubt even in the Emperor's most devout.
Indeed, the limitations of her Master were unbound, and the truth had settled in fast, and quickly, with a certain reality now renown across the Stars themselves.
The Galaxy was His, and We have made him a vessel worthy of bringing you all to heel.
As these last days of work-- neigh, a pilgrimage was more accurate-- aboard the Deathstar came towards the precipice of unopposed superiority and galactic dominance across all the Stars, as the flag of the resurgent, renewed, consecrated GALACTIC EMPIRE were set to be raised across the masses set to dismantle and therefore topple all those who would stand in the way of progress, Vireth had been meditating on those dark days assured that such doubt and uncertainty among her kin, whether they be back home on Kuat, or elsewhere, were now eroded, perhaps, disintegrated through the sheer certainty that once the galaxy laid their eyes upon this colossus, found today in the orbit of Had Abaddon, that there would be no-more doubt, or say about whose galaxy they belonged to.
Suddenly a klaxon rung above her, and as it's scream wailed for all those aboard the project to mobilise to deal with incursion, Vireth knew that their adversaries would try one last time to stop them...
Deonis uses the Force to throw a stack of heavy crates at Ceton's back while he throws his shield.
Stormtroopers fan out around Ceton, firing from multiple angles to try to get past his parrying saber.
He knelt on the floor of the hangar bay, a smoking censer dangling from one hand, a dark metal dagger held in the other. Stormtroopers knelt behind him, a congregation being led in prayer. Even as klaxons sounded around them, proximity alarms that heralded the approach of unauthorized ships, they dared not rise; not until the priest before them gave them leave. It was common knowledge among the Stormtrooper Corps that units who showed great piety and faith in the Emperor had much lower casualty rates than units that had poor participation in devotionals, a fact that brought faith to the heart of many a skeptic.
Of course, that was an engineered fact. Attaches from the Office of Imperial Truth monitored the communications of stormtrooper units, listening for signs of impiety. Those who privately joked about the Church's prayers, or made excuses to miss chapel, were reported to their commanders... and promptly assigned to frontal assault missions and dangerous diversionary attacks. Yet even in this artifice, Deonis Laythar saw the divine hand of the Emperor. After all, was it not still His system, His perfect Imperial machine, that rewarded the faithful and punished the faithless? Even a god needs intermediaries. It was his vision that counted.
"Oh Great One," Deonis intoned, his voice carrying easily despite the vast size of the hangar bay and the wailing alarms that filled it, "we stand upon your scouring eye - this instrument of your divine will, poised to sweep away the filth and corruption that infests the galaxy." For was that not what this Death Star was? The Emperor was the unconquered sun, the star around which His Empire orbited, burning with the eternal fire of cleansing and renewal. The Death Star held a portion of that flame in its technological heart - just a portion, but enough to scour an entire planet from the face of the galaxy, reordering the cosmos.
"We, your servants, beseech you - lend us your strength and clarity. The dregs of the old, corrupt galaxy - which you shall sweep away - approach in a vain attempt to sow chaos amid your holy order. By your will, we shall not allow them entry to your holy sanctum. By your might, we are empowered to resist them. By your wisdom, we shall pierce their lies." The magistrate took his knife and sliced a long, shallow line into the arm that held the censer, an arm already crisscrossed with old scar tissue. His blood dripped down onto the metal, mingling with the incense. He embraced the pain, the price of service to Solipsis.
He stood, and the troopers stood behind him, rising in practiced unison. "So mote it be," they whispered together. Deonis could hear the fear in their voices - but it was not fear of the enemy. They did not fear the lightsabers of the Jedi or the blasters of the so-called "High Republic". They feared only Solipsis, the master of their destinies, who held their lives - and the lives of everyone they had ever known, in His almighty hands. To fail him was unthinkable. Even if a thousand Lightsworn stormed the hangar with their laser-swords and mystic powers and self-righteousness, these men and women would die before taking one step back.
Deonis turned to face them. With a flick of his arm, he swung the censer in a wide arc, casting incense smoke over the front rank of troopers - along with a spray of his own blood, spattering the pristine white armor with a pattering of crimson droplets. "For order! For progress! For the Emperor!" he bellowed. "For the Emperor!" came the reply, drowning out the klaxons, seeming to shake the vast hangar bay. Dismissed from prayer with those words, the stormtroopers fanned out, taking up defensive positions behind barricades and stacks of cargo crates. The moment the first enemy shuttle blasted its way in, they opened fire.
The shuttle landed in the hangar bay, and a curious alien Jedi emerged from it. He held a gleaming yellow laser-sword in one hand and a glowing shield in the other - one that seemed to resemble the shell on his own back. Had he cannibalized one of his own kind for armor parts? Deonis could almost respect him for that - Jedi were seldom so ruthless. The shield came hurdling through the hangar, guided by the Force, and blasted through a rank of stormtroopers. They would give no ground, held firm by faith and fear, but they would be no match for a Jedi. These minor demigods of the Force could destroy a hundred ordinary men.
So much for their compassion. They might as well embrace that they were killing machines.
But if the stormtroopers could not hold back this Lightsworn filth, it fell to Deonis to do so in their stead. The Magistrate stowed away knife and censer and stretched out his hand, calling his staff to his grasp through the Force. The long metal pole was topped with the image of a brazen sun - the dark, cleansing fire of Solipsis, the anchor and purifier of the Emperor. "You were a fool to come here, Jedi," Deonis proclaimed, stepping forward and raising his hand. "Now you shall witness the power of this fully armed and operational battle station - the will of the Emperor made manifest... if you can survive long enough to see it unleashed."
As the Jedi's shell-shield flew away, used for attack rather than defense, Deonis seized a nearby stack of cargo crates and hurled them at the alien's back. The stack weighed over a metric tonne - enough to squash anyone caught beneath them to jelly. At the same time, the stormtroopers in the hangar bay used their training. They fanned out around the lone Jedi, firing from multiple angles - every point of the compass. Laser-swords might be able to deflect a dozen blaster bolts in the blink of an eye, but what of three dozen, coming from all angles? It was the best tactic ordinary troopers could muster against a Jedi.
Now this Lightsworn would see the folly of charging heedlessly into a moon-sized battle station...
Not all of the Empire's weapons were as grand and horrific as the immense catalyst of destruction that was the Death Star.
The result of Project Stardust was something immense, something important, something perfect - the Death Star was a monument to the Empire in its entirety, and a monument to what lay at its heart - the Dark Side. The Death Star, and the Empire that had built it, were war made manifest - they were conflict, and the force itself was conflict. That was why it was perfect.
But it was not the only one of the Empire's weapons, far from it, nor was it the Empire's most insidious.
While some of the Empire's greatest armaments were as much symbol as they were implement of destruction, there were other weapons that lay dormant, hidden in the shadows for when the time came to unleash them. Knives in the dark.
That was what he was. Forged across two Empires and the designs of the Sith, conjured by the twisted sciences of Imperial ingenuity, and tamed by the relentless tutelage of indoctrination and propaganda. He had laid in wait since his birth in the shadows of Byss, brought first before the Emperor himself and then to the Death Star, to wait. To wait for when he would be unleashed.
Days in isolation, in a stasis interrupted only by the teachings of the Dark Side and the twisted truths of Jedi hypocrisy. He had waited. And now, it was time.
"Awaken, Ashwalker."
In a rush, consciousness came to him, and disorientation followed with it. He had no comprehension of how long the stasis chamber had held him, how long he had been locked in the prison of his mind with naught but his lessons to keep him. Outside, through the heavy plated walls of the pod, he could hear a klaxon, and the call to repel boarders. There was no more he could grasp physically while he remained locked within the chamber that held him, deep in the bowels of the immense space station, and so he reached out - beyond the physical.
The Force sang to him, euphoric, because all across the station and beyond, he could feel it. Conflict. It called to him like a siren's song, a promise that he had woken into the galaxy to meet with his purpose, to fight, to kill, to grow. That was why he had been made, that was the destiny that the Emperor, the Empire, and the Force itself had for him.
He drew himself back to his own mind, conscious that he would need to step beyond the chamber he was locked within before he could bathe in battle. He might have forced himself free, might have ripped the very chamber and the room beyond it asunder, but there was more beyond the chamber he was locked in, there was another. Distantly, he heard the hiss and click of his chamber depressurising, and he felt the presence of the one beyond his would-be-prison.
The voice of his master might have been what awoke him, but it was another that had been sent to guide him.
Servants of the Empire were meant to do as instructed. No more, and most certainly not less.
He pressed down on panels and levers, then another button when a red alarm blinked on the screen with caution. Fixed it, he sighed with relief. He would have whistled a tune if not for the helmet masking his face, though his knee bounced rapidly amid sparing glances. The tube's liquid drained and Veno drank in the sight, leaning closer, "One ugly sonofa-"
The glass exploded outwards, the electronics crumbled and sparked as they broke apart, and poor Veno was flung across the room, leaving a dent in the wall paneling. He grumbled something low and bitterly, pushing himself back up.
"You work for me now," said Veno, pointing. "So do as I say."
In the form of a robed, blue blur, the Jedi had begun to tore through the Death Star. Squadrons of armoured storm troopers repelled, cut down and forced to regroup. He was directionless, serving only chaos. Rather un-Jedi-like. If that was what it took to preserve the Alliance, then so be it.
Seeing the masked man, Rakaan only charged ahead with his gleaming blade. The Force might have told him there was something more, something worse, though an enemy all-the-same.
Kaan felt the Dark Side's flame stir, but somewhat distant. Foreign, even.
Snap-hiss.
His crimson, cross-guard saber shot out of the black vinyl cylinder, meeting the Jedi's downward blow half-way through its deadly arc. Sparks showered both and he felt the familiar sting over the unscorched bits of his flesh.
The repugnant clouds over his mind from mere minutes ago parted, an inferno of clarity bursting from his core as the dark side fed on the violent intent — he understood now the distant flame was not his own but that of his foe.
A flicker, at most.
But a spark is all it took to ignite the blaze that was the Dark Side, that he understood well.
Kann said, "Seeking vengeance, friend?" pulling away at arm's length, then bursting into a flurry of sideways blows, seeking to snatch the initiative from the Jedi.
A question half-considered, pressing down with his strength as the blades hissed and whined and sparked against one another. Vengeance, but for what? For friends, allies, the people he was charged to protect. Dead beneath the boot of the Empire, the Sith.
Pain burrowed deeper, still. Knowing many had deserted their cause. That pain, however, was a guiding light to follow despite the emerging shadow.
"Only an end to you," he said, their blades separating.
The lightsaber was impossibly fast in his one-handed grasp, shifting from one side to the other in defense. In the gap, he took it in both hands and swung at head height with white knuckles.
Kaan was onto him and then he wasn't — sent reeling backwards by the Jedi's blade raking across his mask, searing a blazing cut through the ur-Kittat etchings. The plasma's glow faded, leaving a charred scar that lingered only moments before the alchemized material swallowed it whole.
Fear rushed through his bones. He smirked, drinking it in, stoking the embers of the dark side even as these flames were paltry beside those of his peers blessed with an abundance of midi-chlorians.
Kaan said, "What is the end but just the beginning of something new?", bringing his saber up in a defensive stance. "Something better."
Steadily, the figure in the pod's patience - limited as it was - was tested enough. He focused inward, focused on his anger, his displeasure, and his desire to be freed, and he forced it outward. Steel creaked and screamed as it ripped and bent in ways it was not meant to, electronics sparked and shattered and an additional two pods - occupied or otherwise - burst from the sudden pressure that surged from the clone that Veno had freed. As he dropped from his pod to a knee, he sensed that his savior had been sent flying back by the pulse, but he was already lifting himself back up - more resilient than he had expected.
As he rose to his feet, stretching his body to its full height and feeling the weight of stasis steadily wear off his aching, worn limbs, he heard Veno's words, his command. It might have seemed to give him pause for a moment as he mentally probed the man, searched for any hint of the Force within him, any power. What he found was lacking.
There was no immediate verbal reply, instead, his reply came in the tightening of Veno's throat, the closing of his windpipe, and the all-encompassing pressure that surrounded the agent of the Empire, threatening to lift him from his feet entirely as the freed clone stepped toward him, crossing the damaged and freshly water-logged floor of the stasis room where he had been kept until he stood before the one who had released him.
"You will find me a weapon." It was barely even a command, more of a statement of fact as he released his grip on Veno through the force, and allowed his wits to return to him. There was no need to command the man that had freed him, despite his weak attempt at dominance.
Veno would find him a weapon, or he would kill him without one.
Such words he did not yet know the true meaning of. In time, maybe so. The cold, coiling voice whispered up from the depths of him in a rolling, slurring sound -- though it's meaning was lost to him, for now. Rakaan rolled his shoulders forwards, stepping closer and swinging with a practiced fury clinging to control.
An inferno was an impossible thing to hold at bay, blazing as it was.
"I don't care about your new beginnings," he said, "I'll kill you as many times as I have to."
Being hoisted up into the air and gasping for air, clawing at his own throat, Veno had come to realise the gravity of his boldly made gamble. A bust, even. Crumpling down to the ground for a second time within mere moments, he caressed where the invisible hand at squeezed the life from him, sputtering a cough.
"Got it, got it." He sounded hoarse. "I got a knife, I got a blaster. Anything else, you'll need to grab it from someone out there."
He shambled towards the doorway, opening it with the press of a wall-mounted console. The alarms bled into the room, the dim red glow flashing across the threshold. "But, might be tricky. There's, you know, Jedi on board."
As Veno eased the lingering tightness in his throat and declared his armaments, the knife in question lifted from the sheathe upon Veno's body, carrying itself through the air and into the grip of the freshly-awoken warrior. He had sensed the ongoing battle throughout the station - the conflict called to him still, and he was far from sated by his brief displays of violence against the one who had gambled on a servant, and had lost.
Steady footfalls carried the masked force-wielder across the room and toward the doorway as it opened, and it was only a few moments before Veno declared their presence that he felt it. The stain of light, the hypocrisy of a 'Jedi Strike Team'. They were spread across the station, splitting this way and that in what he could only assume was a desperate attempt to destroy the superweapon they had found themselves aboard. What fallacy.
He felt his anger grow, and despite Veno's warning, he carried himself through the fresh-opened door, and began to advance down the hallway, his fingers clutching tightly to the knife he had co-opted.
"Then we will find them." The statement was simple, and the command in it was clear - Veno may not have found a servant, but the one he had freed had."One of them carries my new weapon."
Veno hesitated to trail after the freshly awoken Sith, nearly clinging to the doorframe as if it were some barrier that could prevent his advance. "That's just a knife," he said, somewhat meekly, "They have lightsabers!"
Though with that failing to provide much of an impact, he carried on and after the clone. "There's an armoury around here somewhere," he half-muttered to himself, looking to his wrist and placing two fingers along the side of his helmet, pressing something.
Once more, the blades clashed. Swing against swing, plasma sizzling in the air, drawing scorched lines across metal walls and ceilings narrowing the corridor.
Channeling the Force through the mask, Kaan now saw clearly what lay beneath the man's words — an ethereal lattice stringing the letters of his speech hung in the air, glowing angelic-blue, par for a single line, extending towards the Jedi's heart, burning red. A fault line, bleeding tar.
A moment later, it was all gone — such abstract applications of shatterpoint were beyond his reach, inadvertently manifested at rare times; instead, his enhanced sight now yielded what he knew best: invisible lattices of the tangible, the material world.
Invisible lines surfaced before his eyes, mapping the Jedi's cerulean blade until a single crimson fault quivered across it.
Kaan shifted his stance, angling his weapon to cleave at that weakness, where a precise blow could tear it from his foe's grip.
But an armory was not what he had set his mind to. As he advanced down the corridor, he cast his thoughts outward, and willed the force to guide him. His relative disarmament compared to his would-be enemy mattered little to him, the force was his weapon, and if that was all he had with him to destroy the Jedi, then that was what he would use. Such was his test, not that Veno could understand - he would not fall to a Jedi, with or without a lightsaber of his own - because the Jedi did not understand the Force, and so they could not use it to destroy him.
He did not know his way around the Death Star - the entirety of his time aboard the immense superstructure had been within the confines of his statis pod. While he could feel the movements of others through the force, he did not know where they went, or how best to cut any of them off, but it seemed as if he did not need to.
"There is a detention center near here, correct?" He stopped, letting his masked gaze turn to focus on Veno as he questioned him. There were a collection of lifeforms he could feel stationary a short distance from them, and a pair of infuriatingly bright ripples in the Force steadily growing closer to them. Prisoners of the Empire, he assumed, important enough to have disappeared aboard this titanic engine of devastation. The Jedi simply could not help themselves but attempt to play the heroes."Take us there."
Rakaan pressed forwards with aggression. Fast-feet beneath him shuffled across the reflective Imperial floor, with the might of a honed body and the Force giving great strength to each strike, all amid the seeming zone his mind locked himself within. It came naturally, the fight. All fights. A lightsaber was a brush in his hand, with his foes a canvas.
He was amid something of a flourish, something instinctive and unaccounted for, when the crimson blade jut out and clashed against the blue. It felt strained, weak against his fingers, until it was not felt at all.
The blade hissed, retreating into its hilt as it clattered against the floor. His eyes widened, reaching with a raw form of the Force that came to him. Short-lived, as Rakaan needed to weave out of the way of the lunging masked Sith.
Standing opposite the Sith, he scowled with his lightsaber further beyond his foe.
"The detention center?" His helmeted head craned forwards, "The armoury is closer, you should really- grrk!"
The same ethereal vice gripped his throat, tightening. "Okay, okay!" Veno wheezed out in time, and he could breath once again. "I get it. What you say, goes. My lord, I mean."
"It's this way," he said, after a moment of glancing down to his wrist. A sidelong glance met the unleashed clone and Veno spoke again, as if desperate to add an addendum, "My lord."
