THE PROPHET'S GATE
The Angel Reforged
Tython, Now
This disturbance in the Force was hard to sense if you weren't looking for it.
There was so much
noise to drown it out. The Force storms howling across the plains and mountains, the molten blood pumping from deep within the planet, the chunks of ravaged moon streaking down to the surface, the sheer volume of
death clouding everything as armies met and clashed. But there was another sound, hidden in the background all this time: chanting. The chanting of
Darth Ptolemis
,
unopposed all this time in his sinister sorcery, drawing strength from the void and the shadow. His sorceries were more than just battlefield incantations. They were also a beacon, one long anticipated. Far away, across countless light years,
something was listening.
And for those who detected the chanting, those few who recognized that another ritual beyond the one atop Tho Yor was even now unfolding, there finally came an
answer. It was a chime, a strange, digital sound that no organic creature could possibly have created... and yet it echoed in the Force. It crossed the distance by traversing the Netherworld, which had once been the domain of the speaker's now-vanished master. For though Omni had failed to recreate all of reality as It had promised, Its creations still remained, and they remembered the pathways the Droid God had built across the vast distances of the cosmos.
Pathways that they had opened for the Maw before.
This moment was the beginning of the culmination of a plan that had begun much, much earlier...
... and far indeed from the peaceful lands of Tython.
In the sweltering forges of Zambul Rix, fed by the plunder of a dozen despoiled worlds, the Scar Hounds prepared for war.
Once this place had been the domain of the Argandulaniux Empire and its dark lord, Aldrouk Grandaun. But the Empire had made a fatal mistake: their warriors had
slain the sacred Heathen Priest who had been dispatched to offer them a place in the growing Brotherhood of the Maw. The Brotherhood had responded to this sacrilege swiftly and decisively. If the savage
Gundanbard would not embrace a future as soldiers of the Dark Voice, they would have no future at all.
A bloody conquest followed, a great cleansing of the shadowed planet. The Mawites tore down the temples of the false Gundanbard god Jendu, raising monuments to the Avatars in their place.
The dark lord Grandaun and his surviving followers were driven out into the furthest reaches of the Unknown Regions.
The Mawites were not a wasteful people. Alone against the galaxy, they could not afford to be. And so it was not long before the great forge-cities of Mar'Zambul once again echoed with the thunderous clattering of industrial machinery, countless factories once more churning out weapons of war... only this time, their dark fruit fed the Brotherhood. Weapons and vehicles forged in Zambul Rix were instrumental in the conquest of Tiantang, the destruction of Csilla, and the ravaging of the Sith regimes of the Galactic East. And each time a new world fell, or a fresh frontier was looted, the plunder was hauled back
here to build yet more of these tools of war.
As the holy domain of the Maw spread across the northern fringe of Known Space, the worlds they had conquered were divided up amongst the various warlords and their tribes. It was the Scar Hounds, masters of scavenging and cybernetics, who claimed the high-gravity deserts and jagged peaks of Mar'Zambul. With their savage ingenuity, they created all manner of new designs to supplement the Mawite armies, war skiffs and speeder technicals and cyborg warhounds. And though the grinding rigors of the Second Great Hyperspace War nearly bled the tribe dry of warriors in battle after battle, their clever forgemasters remained, ever improving their craft.
While fresh marauders trained in the brutal high-gravity environment, the Doom Smiths plied their trade in Zambul Rix.
They had been busy of late. The great Mawite push into the Core Worlds had expended
tremendous amounts of materiel, so many losses for each world that fell, and only the Doom Smiths could replenish each destroyed vehicle and lost weapon. But that had not been their only project of late, for the Dark Voice always had plans within plans. From the very beginning, the Prophet had foreseen that the small amount of troops he would be able to land on Tython - only what he could cram into a single
Crucifix II Star Destroyer - would never be enough to defeat all the forces who would come to interrupt his holy ritual. And so he had given secret orders to the Smiths.
The Maw had tested their plan on Teta, and although it had performed well, an asset vital to its success had been lost.
Now, in the great Gundanbard forges, that asset would be made anew... for the Prophet's plan must succeed.
Forgemaster Bashnag was one of the last of his people who still dwelled on Mar'Zambul. Most of the Gundanbard had been either driven away or exterminated, their sacrilege against the Holy Maw too great to even allow for them to be tortured into slave-soldiers. But despite the fanaticism of the Brotherhood, a few careful
exceptions had been made. Bashnag had been a master artisan of the Argandulaniux Empire, and he knew how to operate the great forges. For that, his life had been spared... though he had been made to suffer
greatly. He still bore the terrible scars inflicted on him by the Taskmaster, reminders of how the True Faith had been instilled in him by force.
Now he followed the commandments of the Heathen Priests without question... and they had a special task for him.
Bashnag gazed down at the colossus before him, a hulking shell of welded impervium in the rough shape of a man. He had forged many strange things before, exotic weapons and experimental vehicles, but this was the strangest of them all. For this thing he had created was not destined for any marauder squad, artillery unit, or warfleet, but for something else entirely. It was closer to the various cybernetics he had made, the countless replacement arms and legs and eyes he had churned out for maimed Scar Hounds over the years... but it wasn't quite
that, either. Nor was it a war droid, not exactly. For though it somewhat resembled one, there was no droid brain inside.
A much different force would bring it to life, if all went according to the Prophet's plan.
As Bashnag laid the finishing touches on the towering metal body, he heard the forge fall eerily silent. Looking up from his work, the Doom Smith saw the cause of the sudden hush. A column of Heathen Priests was processing through the center of the great manufactory, their flowing robes sweeping a tide of embers and metal shavings along with them, and all the workers paused to bow low as they passed. Bashnag knew that they were here for
him, to claim this strange and wondrous thing they had bidden him to build. He did not understand why it was so important, but he was only a forgemaster. Knowledge was not required of him, only skill and obedience.
"It is finished," he said, as the little conclave of hooded priests assembled around his work station. They looked down upon the gleaming metal body laid upon the colossal slab, inscribed with the runes of binding and control that they had requested, and they nodded at each other. The impervium shell could not match the strange Netherworld designs of Omni, the so-called Droid God, but it would serve well enough for their purposes. It would be enough to hold the countless spirits that comprised The Manifold, one of Omni's abandoned drone-angels, now held in bondage by the Maw. It would replace the Omni-given body that had been destroyed on Teta.
"You have served the Prophet well," the priests said, all nine of them speaking with a single eerie voice. "Resume your duties. Tell no one of this." Activating the repulsorlifts beneath the slab where the body was laid, they programmed it to drift on a preprogrammed course back out of the factory, fanning out to surround it like bodyguards. Where they were taking it, what they would do with it, the Doom Smith did not ask. Instead he simply turned away, watching the monitors for the next task that demanded his attention. There were only scant weeks until the Brotherhood would launch its attack on Tython, its most ambitious strike of the entire war. Everything must be ready.
And only his usefulness kept him alive. Bashnag, last of a condemned race, was all too keenly aware of that.
The slab was loaded onto a shuttle, which raced across the ashen plains and sun-baked deserts, skirting the jagged peaks of the uplands. It made its way far from Zambul Rix, crossing the great megacity of Zambul Acus, which covered a full sixth of Mar'Zambul's surface and housed
countless warriors and workers. Its course was laid for the third and smallest of the great Gundanbard cities: Zambul'Tacris, capital and spiritual center of the planet. Flashing storms raged above the city - clouds of ash riven by near-constant lightning. But it was only ionic discharge, drawn by the energies of the dark side. There was no rain in those clouds. There was never any rain.
The shuttle descended through the storm, shields visibly flashing as they held back electrical strikes, and streaked over the city. It passed the great Pyramid of Jendu, built to honor the war god of the vanquished Argandulaniux Empire, and set down in the grand Undarajut Plaza. In ages past, the plaza had seen the tread of hundreds of thousands of Gundanbard worshippers, warriors eager to bask in the power of their dark deity. Now the place was empty, silent except for the howling wind and the whine of repulsorlift engines. The shuttle's boarding ramp descended, and the conclave of priests walked down it, escorting the great slab and the strange metal shell upon it.
They turned their backs to the mighty pyramid and walked toward the other, equally massive monument across from it:
Aga'Dul, the nexus temple. Their forms grew hunched as they walked, as though they faced a strong headwind, or waded through chest-high water... but the resistance they felt was only spiritual, not physical. This place had been attuned to the Gundanbard for millennia, and even now, with the alien empire in ruins and the priests of their god silenced, it sought to keep intruders out. It took great willpower to advance.
It was said that a lightsider would crumble to dust if he attempted to enter the temple.
The dark priests only felt
as if they were crumbling to dust.
Still, they made it past the mighty walls and up the six hundred steps, reaching the colossal stone doors of the temple. They felt a terrible gravity tugging at their very souls, like a black hole attempting to rip the Force itself from their bodies... but they had trained to endure the rigors of this dark place, and did not falter. They stepped through the doors, entering the vaulted sanctuary, the roof so high that it vanished into darkness beyond the limits of their sight. They were not alone in the sanctuary. They were surrounded by a legion of the dead. Massacred Mawites, their limbs and heads and guts ripped from their bodies, stood at attention all across the temple.
These were the remnants of the battle that had destroyed The Manifold on Teta.
These were the corpses that Omni's abandoned angel had seized to avoid being scattered to the Nether winds.
"It is time," the nine said as one. Nine was the most powerful Mawite number - three groups of three, giving great honor to the Three Avatars. "Angel-Drone, we gather you now in this place of power. What was split into many, we now recombine as one." The priests reached out, drawing on the terrible dark gravity of the unholy nexus, wielding the very power that sought to rend their souls asunder. They let that power strip the spirit from each of the Mawite husks, the damaged corpses dropping to the ground with fleshy
thuds as their animating force was ripped away. Then they directed that wind of unleashed souls, guiding it to the shell they'd brought all this way.
On the dark stone slab, hovering gently on its repulsorlift jets, the eyes of the metal body flashed purple-teal.
The Manifold
, keeper of the secret of Omni's hypergates, had a body of their own once more.
And once more they were bound to obey the will of the Brotherhood.
