[Sith] Relics of the Old Empire

[Ras'kala'han]

MALACHOR V​

The Stygian Caldera, Sith Space ​

​

The Stygian Caldera: A ripple in hyperspace that acted as a refuge to hide the ancient Sith from a Republic that would have wiped them out and even now served as a modern bulwark for the Sith. In his inquiries since he had been freed from carbonite, Antherion had learned that the Sith had lost nearly anything - another galaxies-spanning empire, now rotting on the garbage heap of history. More ruins ripening for the next messiah of darkness to rediscover. This was how it had been when Antherion was young, and free, and displaced by several millennia from this time. This was how it had been in his long, dreamless stasis. This was, maybe, how it would always be.

A certain Darth had taken it upon himself to set Malachor as a ripe center for illicit activity, and the ants of society had swarmed over it as predictably as if he had left out a bit of overripe fruit. Why, one might ask, would he make one of our ancestral homes into a crime-ridden slum?

The same reason any Sith has done anything, Antherion thought. Power.

He had a reason for being here - a meeting. Waiting in a relatively cozy spice parlor he had commandeered for this exact purpose, he sat next to an idle, compliant, and thank the Force silent protocol droid that was his crutch of the day for his withered limbs. A faintly sweet smell wafted in the air, and the room was slightly obscured with vapors. He had a soft, pale look to him, and his eyes were a grey-tinted, cloudy blue.

He was thinking of a specific person to cross paths with... but anyone could turn up. And to be honest, they would be welcome. You don't spend as long as he had in a lonely slumber without craving for some conversation - and the Dark Side might set someone interesting on a collision course with him.

| [member="Vrak Nashar"] |

 

[Vrak Nashar]

[member="Antherion"]

Malachor five was a broken, wreck of a planet that most people wouldn't even offer a second glance. This planet was worth about as much as...well any other useless asteroid floating through space.

Once, it had been hailed as something more.

Though many did not know it, Vrak knew that this place had once nearly been the rebirth of the Sith. The Gatekeeper of a holocron had told the tale of this world to him, how the Republic had destroyed it to end the Mandalorian wars, how the Sith Triumvirate had used it as an outpost, how everything had eventually come crashing down in the end. The story was an old one, though hardly unique. It seemed that the foolish end of Malachor was not one unique to the world.

In fact it was all too common with those that followed the way of his people.

Vrak frowned slightly as he hopped out of his Devourer-Class Interceptor, landing on the wasteland of Malachor with a soft thud.

He could still feel the lingering strength of this place, the echo of the darkside that seemed to resonate with an odd sort of pulse. He frowned for a moment, his gaze falling over the craggy rocks of the landscape all around him. From orbital scans he knew there was a crashed Republic cruiser nearby, an ancient vessel that supposedly had what he had come here to find. The Pureblood lingered by his ship for a moment, then slowly set off into the wasteland.

 

[Ras'kala'han]

A lot of people think that the true power of the Force lives in, well, forces. They think of the Force, and they think of the power of beings to break bones, shatter organs, to boil blood and smite enemies into ashen nothingness with lightning. It might be safe to say that Antherion had thought that way during his early training. He knew better now.

"Knowledge and defense" was a Jedi turn of phrase, but the true power of the Force was the knowledge it could give. And today, someone wanted him to know something. In this case, a place - a brief image swam in front of him, a Republic insignia, a scar made across several kilometers after a violent end - and a flash of red, the arch of a ridged cheekbone - and he was suddenly clutching his head, slumped forwards. He would need to find some way to get this under control.

"Master, are you feeling well?" His aide was doting on him, its metallic, masculine voice twinged with maternal concern that only a protocol unit could muster.

"Help me up, droid - " He said silkily as he centered himself, straightening his back where he was sitting. "We have business to attend to."

In not too long, he was being driven in a rented speeder through the wasteland by his machine, head idly hanging out the window. He was... Frankly, excited. This place, these visions... on Malachor, there was something waiting for him, something that was touched by the past. His time. In a way, Antherion felt like he was going home.

| [member="Vrak Nashar"] |

 

[Vrak Nashar]

[member="Antherion"]

His fingers slowly balled into fists.

A part of him despised this sort of thing. The part that deemed all Purebloods to be above this sort of nonsense. His kind were meant to be Kings and Queens, Emperors lording above all else. This work was meant for the lesser beings, the people of the galaxy that should be made to kneel.

Yet he couldn't deny that a small part of him enjoyed all of this. There was a small amount of fun in it, exploring the unknown, seeing what the galaxy had to offer. Perhaps it was an appeal to his more...base nature, the piece of him that thought he might encounter a Jedi or another Sith. Someone that he could kill. A small smile perked on his lips as he stepped to the edge of the cliff, his eyes falling on a distance silhouette on the horizon. He frowned for a minute more, then jumped onto the lower ledge.

His gaze fell towards the ship in the distance.

It would take him another hour or so to reach the vessel, but he hoped to find what he was looking for.

In the distance he felt an odd...prickle of the force. Nothing to be concerned about, just a tiny wave in the pond. Vrak frowned for just a few moments, then slowly began to move again. The quicker he got this done the better it would be.

 

[Ras'kala'han]

Antherion would almost go so far to say that cruising under the grey, stormy skies of Malachor was therapeutic if he was willing to admit that something was wrong with him — there was, ge was not. The cityscape gradually faded away on the horizon, and over time devris eventually began to surface on the ground as it raced past him. Eventually, wreckages loomed.

In a rare moment of levity, Antherion sung as the landscape raced past.It was an old Sith tune - something arch and artsy, a lilting ballad about a love affair between two acolytes, their final trial to kill each other. His voce was untrained, but he was doing it for his own pleasure, not an audience's.

He kept steady as he wandered on the arm of his mechanized crutch, eventually coming within earshot of [member="Vrak Nashar"].

"And I'll keep my promise, and sharpen my sword, my darling..."

 

[Vrak Nashar]

[member="Antherion"]

The cruiser lay just ahead now, a dozen or so paces.

He wandered over the broken craggy land, his lips thinning as he spotted the odd arch of the ships front. Briefly he studied the design, wondering just how long ago the ship had actually crashed here. These were the vessels that his people had fought against all those centuries ago. He frowned for a moment, then suddenly snapped his head to the side as he heard a small echo to his left.

Fingers almost immediately wrapped around his lightsaber hilt.

Running into anyone all the way out here should have been downright impossible. He was miles away from any settlement on Malachor, not to mention the fact that this wreck was supposedly undiscovered. His lips thinned, lightsaber slowly drawing away from his belt as he rounded one of the broken scraps of hull.

He spotted a figure moving slowly, speaking to himself.

His eyes narrowed, fingers tightened, and his hunt began.

 

[Ras'kala'han]

Antherion had a fairly good 'feel' for when another powerful Force-user was nearby. That being said, on Malachor V, it was much harder to get a 'feel', so to speak, since the whole world in of itself already had a background radiation of potent darkness. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get a pinpoint on the location of the person he had foreseen, his singing falling to a light hum.

Hm. It seemed whoever it was, they were cloaking their presence such that he couldn't get a clear vision of where he was, or what he was doing. In that case, it's best to opt for safety. Falling silent, mouthing the words to the tune under his breath, he had his droid guide him over to a large, jagged slab of sheet metal that once shielded a hull, a triangular shape jutting out of the ground most suitable for... sitting down.

Nodding to his droid, Antherion seated himself crosslegged on the ground, his plain, silky dress clothes stained by the dirt and grit surrounding him. The ship plating was such that a lightsaber couldn't subtly or easily penetrate it from behind, meaning if someone wanted to come to him with any harmful intent, it would need to be from ahead or above - and unsubtly, at that. Here, he would wait for the appointed visitor.

His insight had promised himself a glimpse of the past, snatched to the present. Prophecy didn't lie, even the small ones. Someone was here, and it was time to receive his meeting. He smiled, pursed his lips, and continued to sing softly.

"Blood dries on the soil of Korriban, blood runs in the temples and halls - When I saw you beneath the red soil there, my blood burned the hottest of all - "

| [member="Vrak Nashar"] |

 

[Vrak Nashar]

[member="Antherion"]

For a few moments Vrak considered simply killing the stranger.

The idea might have been a bit much, but it would at least put an end to things quickly. He'd grown rather tired of always having to fight as of late. It seemed that every single person he met wanted to kill him eventually. Even his allies fought with him. That was the way of life for SIth of course, but eventually it grew tiresome. Most no longer presented him with a challenge, those that tried to kill him were too obvious, and now that he had righted Athiss...things were moving in other directions.

His fingers tightened on his lightsaber, and then he thought better of it.

He could kill the other man, but there was no benefit to it. Slaughter was all well and good, holding it's own sort of benefit at times, but Vrak knew that killing for the sake of killing gained him nothing. So he simply wandered after the boy, his lips thinning as he watched him sit. "There are better places to sing."

His tone was notably filled with disapproval.

At least he hadn't tried to kill the man though.

 

[Ras'kala'han]

Antherion looked up at the pureblood, his face expressionless. "There are worse." he said serenely. So this was the being he had envisioned - red skin, bone ridges. It was as he remembered, here before him, as lifelike as he might expect. While he made conversation, he also began running through courses of action. He expected the disdain typical of an heir to the depraved nobility of Dromund Kaas, but only time would tell if the unmasked malice he sensed would flower into violence.

"Ari, I had foreseen, but part of me still didn't believe that the Old Lords' descendants had survived. I am Antherion — pleasure to meet you." He used a respectful tone and addressed him with a High Sith honorific, but his head held high. He kept a relaxed posture, but readied his mind to defend himsef from any hostility.

It's astonishing that they had survived as long as they had in his time, and they were dying out then. It wouldn't surprise me if he's the last of his kind.

| [member="Vrak Nashar"] |

 

[Vrak Nashar]

[member="Antherion"]

Some of his disdain immediately vanished.

Vrak was Pureblood, and there was no better way to a Purebloods heart than flatter. The title of "Old Lord's" was practically enough to placate his rage. It seemed a long time since someone had actually shown him respect upon a first encounter. The last few times he had simply run into someone they had insulted him in some way, and thus their fate had been sealed. This man at the very least, whomever he was, knew where Vrak came form, knew what honorifics he held.

"Who are you?" His voice was notably softer than before, less accusatory and harsh.

Malachor was not a world Purebloods ever really had power on. The planet had been destroyed millenia ago, but his people had no hand in the conflict. It had been the Jedi that had done it, an attempt to curb the rise of the Mandalorians. Amusing really, but the world was still Sith in a way.

This man likely knew that, and it could very well be this meeting had been an orchestration of the darkside.

 

[Ras'kala'han]

"First," he said, "And foremost a seeker of knowledge. Second, a servant of many powerful masters." The second one was spoken with a healthy dose of bitter irony. Through victory, my chains are broken. It seemed that every other planet he visited held a powerful Sith Lord who needed to commandeer someone for their pet project. "Third? A relic of the lost Empire."

He sighed ever so slightly. He held little sentimentality for an inefficient government, organized as a cult of personality around a murderous ghost, that had only ever succeeded in spurning a tremendous number of opportunities to destroy the Jedi and conquer everything. But that was the height of pureblood status - when they were regarded with special reverence with respect to their connection to the Force and the Golden Age of the Sith. So let's put on a show the audience will like.

"My body may have atrophied from millennia in carbonite - but my mind is still intact. I still remember when lightning arced over the Citadel. I remember when things were as they should be. Now, stranded on the shores of time, memory is all I have left of when near everything was ours."

A fantastic claim, but the truth. The best lies were embellished with a touch of the truth. Now... what's the perfect thing to say to get to the center of a Pureblooded Sith's heart?

"And to think on when it will all be ours again."

| [member="Vrak Nashar"] |