Dev Suspended in Gaffa (Kuat Shipyards)

[Darth Adekos]

By INVITATION only...

KUAT
ORBITAL SHIPYARDS​

Kuat's orbital ring was a monumental feat of engineering, one that was very rarely replicated in this dark and tiresome age. It had withstood many attempts at destruction and at least a dozen seizures in the last century alone. But it still hung there in orbit of the planet: unscathed, unbroken. Permanently unbothered.

Adekos wished he could say the same for himself.

He took a deep and indulgent breath as he strode its corridors. The air was sterile and recycled, passed through gauntlets of filters, stripped of even trace odors and particulates. Dead. Practically inert. Just the way he liked it.

"You were wise to seek me out," he droned to the cyborg following after him, Arris Windrun, "We'll start with something simple. Focus. Tell me what you sense at this very moment."

Stormtroopers and technicians occasionally passed by, moving in small, tightly packed groups like herd animals. They paid them no mind, except to step aside when necessary to avoid a collision.

That was by design, but they were not here to carry out any mischief. Not the kind that would cause property values to be reassessed, anyway.

Arris Windrun
​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Arris grew up on Talus, a practical stone's throw away from Corellia, where they had something of a cultural rivalry with Kuat. The Talusian picked up many jokes about the Kuati.

Jokes like: "Why do Kuatis love their ring so much? It reminds them of the family wreath." And other such jabs at the expense of their strange, aristocratic culture.

This was actually her first time in the system, and being reminded of such jokes reminded her of home, and being reminded of home reminded her of all those chips on her shoulder. She could go on and on until she unraveled a therapist's blame for all that bad behavior. Instead, she shook off those feelings and focused on the unique circumstance that brought her here.

"You were wise to seek me out," he droned to the cyborg following after him, Arris Windrun, "We'll start with something simple. Focus. Tell me what you sense at this very moment."

The request confused her. She began to look around the hallway. Eyed a stormtrooper and a technician chatting. Glanced out the transparisteel at the sight of the world. Then, she looked at him.

"Like - what I see and hear?"

 

[Darth Adekos]

"When you commandeered those assassin droids, did you do it by virtue of your sight and hearing?" Adekos asked without looking behind him. "No, I rather meant what you felt through the Force."

The old umbaran came to a stop before the window, pausing to consider the little green world below, or otherwise his frowning reflection. Old. He had been old for longer than he'd been young at this point. What a travesty.

He continued anyway, "You became attuned to it - however briefly - on Ruusan. It is far stronger there, but it is here. If you wish to wield that power again with any skill or regularity, then you must first learn to sense it even in these mundane places."

He turned from the window again to consider the inconsequential people still milling about: lowly souls carrying out the dull industry of shipbuilding. A GNK droid shuffled slowly on. It would take an agonizing seven minutes before it rounded the corner and was gone from sight.

"Recall that moment on Ruusan. You reached beyond yourself then. Try it again now."

Arris Windrun
​

 

[Arris Windrun]

She considered the old man's words with no small amount of frustration.

These feelings - she has felt them. They have certainly aided her, this much she understood, and yet... To summon such a thing on a whim.

Arris turned her sight back to the window that separated them from a cold and cruel death. She eyed storms this side of Kuat, barely visible in the sliver of stellar light as it peaked from the world's edge. With a sigh, the cyborg closed her eyes and thought back to those times.

She first sensed the Force in her fight with Vagabond, a Sith outlaw.

That bloody scream. It struck her, not just physically, but to the core of her very being. It invoked dark thoughts, bad memories. Flashes of life-threatening moments. Betrayal of a lover. Death of a friend. The fear she felt on the run. The fear she felt now.

Fear that returned like an echo. She heard his scream and felt the pain and fiery heat that followed. In the echo was a thread of the Force, and she couldn't help but follow it down an all too familiar path. From the flaming great tree to the lava flows of her next battle.

Drystan Creed fought as she did. With that skill and regularity that Darth Adekos mentioned, yes, but he was a fighter like her. The Shadow cornered Arris on a platform, got close, and struck her hard. A blow that had her back foot on the precipice of defeat.

Arris pulled the trigger. Then again. And again. Each time she felt her heart fire back at her louder, until the anger consumed her, until her jaw parted on the final round, and she let out that scream.

The anger. The fear. It all rushed through her again. Arris opened her eyes, and the Dark Side ate at her heart. It scratched at her instincts. It reminded her that it - her power - remained deep inside like the flecks of toxic metal that closed in around her gut. She clenched her stomach as if experiencing a deadly wound and gasped.

She turned to Adekos with eyes like a cornered animal. She feared him, for no particular reason other than he saw her in this vulnerable state.

It was only then that she caught but a glimpse of the terrible power inside him.

"Who are you?!" She meant to say so aloud, but incidentally had only done so through the Force.

 

[Darth Adekos]

"I am Darth Adekos, a Lord of the Sith," he replied, out loud, with about the same level of enthusiasm one would report the presence of a terminal illness. "But you knew this already."

Once, he had met a Sith Lord once who only communicated by din of telepathy. That man was so insufferable Adekos had developed an aversion to doing the same.

"What you have just touched is the Dark Side of the Force. You are right to fear it. If you do not master it, it will assuredly master you, and you will become little better than a ravening beast."

Adekos issued a contemptuous huff. "You may turn away from it now, if you wish. That is the way of the Jedi, and they all live remarkable, fulfilling lives, even if as ignorant slaves."

Arris Windrun
​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Arris exhaled.

It was only recently that she had learned of the Sith, but she still knew very little. Though she had a distinct impression that this wasn't the man to ask, fancy title or otherwise. She focused on the real reason she sought him out.

"How does one master it?"

There was no point in considering an alternative path. If this was the power that helped her win the Kaggath, then it was the power she felt she needed to move forward with her life. Third place stung, and... admittedly... she was quite envious of the praise that these Jedi and Sith in the tournament received.

Darth Adekos

 

[Darth Adekos]

The old umbaran smiled faintly. "How does anyone master anything? Practice and reflection. The unending parade of self-humiliation in trying, failing, trying again... Until it is impossible to do incorrectly."

He resumed walking - off from the window, continuing to lead her deeper into the labyrinthine shipyards.

"It is customary for masters of the Dark Side to torture their protégés. This stokes a spectrum of emotional responses that are conducive to tapping into the Dark Side." He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "I have found that this is not so conducive to the long-term survival of the master, which happens to be one of my personal success metrics."

It also turned the protégé into one of those aforementioned slavering beasts - one which would only go on to cause a few mass casualty events before being summarily euthanized by a Jedi or warden or suitably scrappy bounty hunter. But Adekos felt that was self-evident and hardly needed remarking upon.

"You already know something of ambition, hatred, fear, envy. Perhaps contempt. From there it is merely a question of mindfulness. Recognize these when they arise and wield them as tools. When a tool is no longer necessary for present purpose, it must be set down and put away."

Wielding the Dark Side was sometimes likened to holding a hot coal with the intention of beating an enemy to death with it. True enough, Darth Adekos agreed, and so he developed a set of specialized gauntlets which would let him hold hot coals without issue. Now he enjoyed all the satisfaction of beating his enemies to death with hot coals and none of the associated burn wounds.

Or so he believed.

Adekos led her to a pair of locked doors which parted as easily as if he'd been brandishing the master key. Two technicians turned from their control consoles to see what the intrusion was, but a vague and dismissive gesture from the Sith Lord was enough to convince them they had missed their lunch break. They stood, eyes glazed and unfocused, and wandered out into the shipyard. The doors shut again after them.

It was an observation deck overlooking one of the smaller drydocks. A modest, dagger-shaped pursuit frigate was suspended by some clamps. Construction droids crawled along its incomplete hull, ferrying materials and kicking up sparks as they were welded into place.

Arris Windrun
​

 

[Arris Windrun]

The Lord of the Sith's explanation of Master-Apprentice relationships was met with an emotional grimace, though his last point - on long-term survival - actually made a lot of sense to the Talusian. It was good to know his intentions were not to gratuitously torture her in some brute forced bid to provoke darker emotions.

His assumptions were right on the mark, too. As Arris followed him into the observation deck, she considered those words with more than curiosity. They ran like a debate deep inside her skull. Stirred old emotions, thoughts... beliefs. Per usual, the Galactic Kaggath stuck to Arris Windrun like a second shadow, following her steps until the moments when it could remind her of all those feelings Adekos listed off.

One part she hadn't followed, however, was his final bit of advice. She had never wielded such things - they took control in the moment - and it was never up to her, or so she felt, to put them away.

If that was the lesson he could teach... a lesson she could master...

She looked around the space, up at the frigate, at the droids, then at him.

Metal fingers curled into a fist, and hydraulic jaw parts slacked so synthflesh may curve into a smile.

"Then it's like every other damn day in my life. Ask and I will deliver - I will learn."

Darth Adekos

 

[Darth Adekos]

Every damn day indeed. What a little firecracker. He wandered idly to the edge of the observation deck, very close to the window. "I have no doubt you will learn. We shall see how quickly you manage."

The perfectly chilled, circulated air of the observation deck was suddenly felt to tense. Not really, of course - it only felt that way if one were attuned to the Force. In reality, the web of life was suddenly pulled taught. All that stretched from the room and beyond, the imperceptible signals and transmissions that synchronized the droids was arrested.

They all came to a sudden halt. Puppets whose strings had been cut at the source. Console screens winked off one by one.

"Oh. Look at that. They all stopped. And the controls are unresponsive."

He went from the window and found a delightfully ergonomic office chair to settle in.

"You should get them moving again before someone comes to check."

Arris Windrun
​