Tenebrum
Character
(Unfortunately, my literary ambition far exceeds my technological skill, so this will have to remain un-pretty until somebody can help me create some pretty codes for this. I actually want to start things off with something other than my character sheet (which you can find at the bottom of the post). This character formerly existed in another Sith RP group, but when I left that group almost two years ago, I wrote a post killing him off in which he hyperspaces himself into a black hole. Now that I've read Supernatural Encounters, I know that some black holes are a great way to find yourself transported to alternate dimensions, so I have decided that the final destination of this reckless hyperspace jump is the Chaos universe. I have left this piece untouched even though there are a couple small backstory things I have changed because 1) I'm proud of the writing overall, 2) I think it actually functions as a fantastic introduction to the character despite being written as a sendoff and 3) there are actually some elements that by pure chance align beautifully with this new universe, particularly the part where he speculates that this jump will "send [him] into Chaos."
Like I said, my actual character sheet is at the bottom of this post, but I hope you will enjoy this rather more literary introduction to my new and old Sith character: Tenebrum.)
The Disappearance of Senec Tinople
Senec Tinople opened his eyes.
For a long moment, he simply lay still in the darkness, watched the universe turn before him, all blue and white in its chaotic swirl, like a whirlpool of cosmic energy. Its allure fixed his gaze and drew him in, an impossibly sweet siren song that rang in his ears with deafening command, impossible to ignore.
Come play in the starlight, it whispered to him with saccharine sibilance. Come venture into the eternal abyss. Pull back the curtain of this world and look upon what awaits beyond.
Like a corpse driven by unnatural forces to raise a rotting head and emerge from the grave, so Senec's feathered hand stretched from where it rested, reaching out with mechanical resolve to find the hyperdrive controls, to send him careening yet further, yet faster into the infinite's embrace.
Instead, his hand bumped into a quite familiar object leaning up against the controls, the glimmering metal handle sending chills down his arm, fingers settling into their old familiar places with the unthinking practice of untold decades. In an instant, the song faded in his ears, and only the muted chimes of the cockpit around him broke the deafening silence.
Though his hand had settled onto this object with abject familiarity, yet the eyes that fastened upon it as he lifted the object to inspect it were full of wary confusion. Body had recognized what mind could not, or would not – a weathered old cane all black and gold, with a lothwolf's head leering at the top.
A flash of memory – a panicked fall from quite a height, a jumble of jungly vines and trees swirling about him as he descended, white stone sending an agonizing pain through his back at the terminus of his descent. He winced in sympathy, age-old pain jouncing through his frail frame.
Ah yes. So that was its purpose – to prop up an old man bent over with the pain of youthful folly. He took up the familiar old instrument with renewed familiarity, bringing the head close to examine the snarling wolf in greater detail. So angry it was, a moment of pure animal rage seemingly crystallized into an eternity of paralyzed passion. Senec felt an odd pang of sympathy with the aurodium creature. It reminded him terribly of something dreadful. . . if only he could remember what.
Yet there was something not quite right about its heft, was there? He shifted his grip on its strangely heavy shaft. No indeed; unless it was intended to be a particularly unwieldy blunderbuss, then something more lurked beneath this innocent implement of old age.
A rattle within its stygian length arrested his attention. Yes, no doubt about it – something lurked not beneath, but within. Yet its surface was smooth, no secret buttons providing access to its dark secrets. His hand moved once more to its old familiar grooves, and unbidden memory once again surged as he gave it a quick twist, the head of the cane slowly revolving, the scrapes of metal moving across long-unused grooves. Reflecting the hyperspatial blue and white, a dagger flashed in the unlit cockpit, and Senec drew in a hiss of surprise.
The loth-wolf no longer impotently bent under the weight of an old man's tired fingers. Instead it now leered from the base of a dagger's hilt, all full of the potential for untold violence, its gaping maw no longer a rictus of paralyzed rage but an animal full of the greedy anticipation of fresh blood. Senec turned the dagger slowly in his hands, the flat of the blade shifting so that his own wild-eyed features reflected back at him.
Or rather, they would have if not for the ooze of blood smeared all across the metal face. Dripping, spilling, fat drops descending down on his tunic and splatting across the cockpit floor. Not simply a single hue – a single life's worth of lifeblood. Rather, a veritable cocktail of blood coated the blade: green and red and every color in between. As his eyes searched between the splatters of blood for some little patch of silver metal to catch a glimpse of himself, instead other faces appeared between the bloodstains to stare at him: Nightsisters, humans, aliens of all types, their eyes coldly fixed on him as the blood spilled ever faster, a fountain of death.
His own features watched him, eyes strangely dead and cold, his face filling the flat of the blade, no blood or foreign faces to be seen. Those terrible eyes were yellow and rimmed with red, the unblinking stare of a killing creature. They were full of something else too, however, something far worse: a wild look of dread that tensed every muscle in his body, an incredible fear that radiated from his eyes although he could not imagine what those eyes feared.
Through the murkiness of this strange horror, the weight of the rest of the cane still tugged at his other hand with renewed vigor, still much too heavy for a normal cane.
The dagger slipped from his fingers, sliding down his tunic and clattering against the metal floor as he raised his other arm. Senec's eyes widened, a smug smirk of realization tugging at his beak-like snout. Not simply the discarded remnants of an old man's crutch – no, instead, a strange emitter rose from the sable stick, a single red button too revealed by the dagger's removal.
He thumbed the button with eager anticipation, not a second thought to be spared.
Crimson light jutted from the emitter, geysering from the shadows and painting the dark cockpit in eerie shadows of red and grey. Had memories not surged from his feeble mind like the sizzling crackles rippling across the energy blade, he might have cringed at how close the long blade had come to ripping through the cockpit's ceiling and giving Senec an all-too-close look at the superspatial chaos outside.
Red fiery energy split the suffocating darkness as, Senec now remembered, it had so many times before. The echoing shadows of Vassek III, the dusky sands of Korriban, the evening wilds of Dathomir – it all came surging back, past and present united by the pure energy of the blade dancing before his eyes.
"The Jedi used to intone that 'this weapon is your life.' Ridiculous! They have gotten it the wrong way 'round. A Sith's life is his weapon…"
Sith.
Yes. Yes, that is what he had been, hadn't he? His eyes searched the rippling surface of the blade, and once more faces swam into view, yet these ones were not filled with the coldness of the dead, but full of passion. Strength. Life.
A sightless crone, strangely beautiful yet emanating an ancient power. His old Master. Her face hidden by a fantastic helmet full of filigree, yet her expression came through all the clearer, an expression of patient reproval and coiled danger all at once. Traya.
A baleful visage, all cold metal, empty eyes filled with pools of yellow malice. Terrifying, yet filled with an understanding beyond that of droids. Vexx.
Pravum. Joker. Draconis. Each face rose to view and receded as memories spilled over Senec in a rising wave. Great figures of power, legendary in scale, yet he had encountered all and emerged unscathed, emerged more . . . powerful?
He re-examined himself, keen eyes falling from the blade and returning to his other, now-empty hand. Yes, power had once resided there, had it not? Not merely vested in the weapons it wielded, but forming a weapon of its own from which lightning spat and darkness seeped. Like a cyborg testing out a new mechanical appendage, Senec slowly raised his hand, turned it over, then stretched out.
In an instant, darkness boiled out of his hand, filling the cockpit with an unnatural blackness through which no light could permeate. It surrounded him, binding him to his seat as his eyes vainly sought to pierce his self-imposed blindness, to no avail. Try as he might, he could not control the rising tide of midnight, which continued to spool from his fingers in a growing tapestry of murkiness, pooling from that strange feeling of dread he could not place.
But even this unholy darkness was strangely familiar to the wizened Caamasi. As the entrancing light of the red blade had brought to mind his days of training, now this horrible darkness sent him back in time, and it all returned in gruesome detail – his closest brush with death.
He could feel the heat of Vexx's buzzing lightsaber withering the feathers on his neck, hear the sharp crackles of decayed bones snapping around him, almost taste the overpowering stench of death that dug into his olfactory senses like burrowing insects, coating his tongue in rot. While the taste of death slicked his mouth, the sight of the dead inflicted his eyes. Utter blackness encircled him. He could have been standing in the most open plain of Dantooine, and still it would feel as if walls pressed in upon him from all sides, inescapable, impermeable, inexhaustible. He had been caught in a half-death, as if the executions he had so narrowly escaped dogged his footsteps and clung to him, deteriorating his senses gradually.
But though his sight had been taken, not so his tongue. He moved his tongue about his mouth, suddenly becoming conscious of how acutely dry it had become, how . . . disused it felt. How long had it been since he had last talked?
Again, the faintest hint of good humor briefly lit up his features as the darkness gradually receded, the muted lights of the cockpit and the swirling hyperspace without once again drifting into view. He had once been quite the talker, he remembered. It had always been his saving grace and his greatest folly, a boon in his studies and a burden in his social brushes with the Sith. Yet now a frown furrowed his feathery eyebrows downward – even when quite alone, he had been accustomed to carrying on a conversation with himself to brainstorm, to reflect, or simply to amuse himself. The unnatural silence of the cockpit pressed in on him all the harder, and he opened his mouth to say something, anything.
Yet only a croak emerged from his throat, which felt as if it must have been transformed into sandpaper and then stitched shut.
A clatter behind him caused him to flinch, the involuntary motion thumbing the blade back into non-existence and sending the cane clattering down to the floor.
"Was that a word, young Master?" a modulated voice exclaimed with something between excitement and anxiety, "I have prayed to Typhojem daily for you to regain your speech, but now that I remember how much you used to talk my audio sensors off, I'm beginning to regret my devoutness."
Like a statue turning on a hidden hinge to reveal a passage beyond, Senec turned in his seat, the chair swiveling around to grant him a view of the unseen speaker: a spindly mechanical automaton whose glowing yellow photoreceptors watched him intently.
The old instincts turned like a creaking wheel as he recalled the banter between himself and this machine . . . 'Evade' was the name he had given it. Despite the churning of instinct telling him to generate some snide comment in return, however, his beak remained clamped shut, and try as he might, he could no more unlatch it than he could control the darkness in his fingertips.
A long moment of silence passed between them, then the droid's eyes dimmed, and he slumped slightly, turning back through the threshold, "Must have been my imagination. What have times come to when a droid has enough time to himself to develop an imagination? We'll try again tomorrow, Master. Oh dear."
Silence once again pressed in around Senec as the door slid shut, leaving him once again alone. Emotions had begun to bubble in him, far more passionate and substantive than the idle curiosity that had compelled him to study the cane and each subsequent revelation about himself, and far more concrete than the nameless horror that still filled his gut.
What was going on? What had turned Senec Tinople, intrepid explorer, flowery speechifier, rising star of the Sith, into a mute basket-case who jumped at his own shadow?
Shadow . . .
"A shadow appears to have substance, yet its nature is not clear. It displays itself as a reflection of a particular thing, yet it exists unseen even without that thing, existing merely as the nature of light warped around an object. I would be similarly nebulous…"
He had been so very loquacious. And all too prescient, it seemed. His journey within the Sith had not been the ascension of a great and terrible power, but instead a slow and painful descent into shadow, until even his sight had been taken. Once taken by Vexx as an apprentice, Senec had slipped away and, aimless, wandered the stars, blind, until . . . What had happened to regain his sight? Certainly not a turn towards the light; each step he had taken had only plunged him further into the depths of the dark side, and now it was far too late to turn back, step into the light. Something was pulling him in deeper, and though he might try to struggle against it, it was far too late for him. But what was it that tugged at him so relentlessly, a nameless fear burned into his retinas so that not even sleep could provide respite from its gnawing?
"Fear is less than useless. It will only fog up your brain and impede your decision-making. Far better to fail with bold impudence than to die, mewling and cowering at another's blade."
He remembered how much he had despised fear, the cruel arrogance of watching weaker beings recoil and flee. It was always the way of the weak, and those who gave in to it had no strength to persist, to fight and conquer not just the unknown, but themselves. Yet now fear rang at the very core of his being, inescapable from its tremulous and tenebrous clutches.
Fear that somehow related to the reason for his returning sight.
Fear that explained his muteness.
A terror that explained why he was here in his ship, endlessly traveling faster than light towards the edge of the galaxy, as if fleeing – running as fast as he could as far away from the center of the galaxy as-
A thunderclap echoed through his mind.
Center of the galaxy . . .
Coruscant.
A thousand flashing images passed through his mind, each more searing and terrifying than the last. Cloudcutters melting like ice, the rictus-screams of a hundred billion voices at once, and the darkness, the same darkness that threatened to trap Senec eternally as it once had before fleeing in the face of Senec's renewed resolve – the call he had received to report to Coruscant immediately for its final conquest, until-
The end of the universe. Senec's gaze returned to the stars, seeming to almost clutch at them desperately, as if afraid that they would once again slip away and disappear into the void that had appeared above Coruscant, the end of all things given material form, the death rattle of the universe – not in a heat-death of fire, but in cold eternal darkness, abrupt and forevermore.
There was no more bright center to the galaxy. Senec had seen the end of the universe, and it was as inevitable as the rising and setting of Horuset. A true prophet of the dark side, Senec's blindness had merely been an early harbinger, a prophetic glimpse of what awaited them all, of Typhojem's final victory, a blessing that had given him the foresight to flee.
As the memories of that final assault on reality spilled through Senec's brain, so bright and intense as to nearly liquify it, Senec fought the darkness that crept at his vision. As long as his engines remained pointed away from Coruscant, the darkness would never catch him. No more ambitions of power, no dreams of ruling, only one all-important goal consuming his mind.
Survive, where surely no other Sith had.
A persistent buzzing jolted Senec awake from the wakeful slumber into which he had slipped. Vacantly, his eyes surveyed the control board, halting on a diode that persistently blinked red with a strident chime. The sleep slipping away from his eyelids, he sat upright.
No!
The fuel indicator flashed at him with petulant impatience. How long the ship had been racing through hyperspace Senec hadn't an inkling, all concept of time nullified in an ever-dark ship cockpit, but clearly the ship was on its last legs.
Reaching out a quivering hand, he pulled at the hyperdrive lever, and with a groan, the ship jolted as it emerged back into realspace. He cast his eyes around, tugging at the joystick to survey his surroundings. A thousand stars glimmered at him, filling him with a strange sense of relief. The universe had not yet died, perhaps not even the galaxy.
He glanced at the nav display, which flickered intermittently, so low was it too on power. Somewhere in the Unknown Regions, that was for certain, though how far outside the galaxy's span was anyone's guess. From here, he might be able to turn around and limp to some remote star system on the edge of the galaxy: Terminus perhaps, or Farana, depending on what side of the galaxy he was.
But no. What point was there in returning to a galaxy that was surely doomed? As far as Senec had gotten from Coruscant, he knew that a lightyear, a thousand, or ten billion made no difference to the god of the Sith. He would consume all, and he would not be satisfied merely with one galaxy.
No, the time had come for one final jump away. But with so little fuel left, and with the great unknowns of extra-galactic space waiting for him, how could Senec make a jump with any guarantee that he would arrive somewhere that might have sufficient atmosphere to survive until he could find a way to refuel?
He had nearly completed his lazy rotation to survey his surroundings, when an unexpected sight halted his ship's motion in its tracks, chilling his hollow bones as he stared.
A midnight-black maw loomed in front of him, not a star to be seen in its void, its edges frayed like the jagged teeth of some enormous monster. Senec's heart seemed to freeze in his chest, and he felt as if he were already being drawn into its depths, that it was reaching out to him with gnarled arms to pull him into the abyss.
Was this already Typhojem's consuming darkness? Had the galaxy been so easily subsumed under the weight of his presence that even beyond the galaxy, it had already caught up with Senec's faster-than-light flight? It was everything he had feared. Dread tugged at him, pushing him down into his seat. seeking to pull him down into a morass of despair, a hopelessness that demanded he merely watch the approaching darkness, stubbornly outlast it as long as possible before submitting to the void.
But a sliver of fire tugged at him too, a waning spark of rebelliousness that had so often propelled Senec when faced with the worst. He was no weakling to merely bow his head and accept defeat. In every instance save one, he had held his head high and faced the consequences, fought them with beak and talon to come out triumphant. And each and every time, he had succeeded. How was this to be any different?
This renewed clarity sparked something half-forgotten in Senec's mind: scholarly analysis. Leaning forward, he studied the darkness anew, and his eyes widened as realization dawned. This was no supernatural darkness spawned from a Sith god. No, it was a natural force of equal power . . . and superior utility.
A black hole yawned in front of Senec with inexorable force – a force, Senec now realized, that had indeed been drawing him in closer and closer. It had not been his own dread pushing him down into the pilot's chair, but the increasing force of gravity as he approached the black hole at frightening speeds.
Senec now knew that only a few minutes remained for him to take any sort of action. With this realization came an odd sort of peace; no longer was he eternally on the run from a nameless terror, but now his impending doom had a name, and he could either act or acquiesce.
Being who he was, Senec's only real choice was action, and with this action came the old fiery zeal and cleverness that had so long escaped him since Typhojem had mashed his brains to pulp and filled his soul with terror.
Thinking quickly, the old Caamasi swiftly realized that even as far as he was from the black hole, it was already impossible for his ship to break its pull with its engines. He would be pulled towards the black hole inevitably, even if he was kicking and screaming the whole way. But temper tantrums had never been in Senec's playbook. No, instead a far better idea occurred to him.
"My chosen word is not 'shadow,' but 'tenebrous.' For a shadow, hard to understand though it is, evokes no fear or confusion. It is part of the very nature of reality, and we therefore do not question it. But to be tenebrous is to be dark and shadowy, unnatural in its murkiness."
There was now no escape from the darkness pulling at Senec. But just as in his pursuit of the dark side, he had never wavered, why should he now turn back to the light when faced with such great physical darkness?
"To be tenebrous is to be obscure and hard to understand, confusing the mind by its very presence."
Senec had always delighted in the wheels-within-wheels game, of using his superior intellect to confound his opponents. Nothing was better when delivering a kill than seeing an expression of utter shock and confusion on an enemy's face when delivering the death blow, than being totally secure in the knowledge that his enemy had been outclassed in every way. What then would be more appropriate than a gambit that, to any normal mind, would appear folly, but could indeed achieve ultimate victory?
"And most importantly, that which is tenebrous causes gloom and, by extension, fear, for that which is unnaturally dark is therefore unknowable in nature, and that which is unknowable will always cause terror in the weak and doubt even in the strongest.
Indeed, Lord Vexx, you are correct that this word has always been a part of me. Perhaps it too existed only in unnatural shadow, impossible for me to see until now.
But now that I see it, I seek to understand it, for only through understanding it shall I conquer fear and make it my own servant."
Darth Tenebrous II. That was the name Senec would have chosen for himself had he ascended to mastery. Following in the footsteps of his old master, Traya III, he would have made the title his own, and as an heir to Tenebrous, his intellect would have made the very darkness fall to its knees in subservience.
The time was over for flinching at shadows and fleeing from the darkness. Senec's true destiny lay – indeed, had always lain – in becoming a shade himself and in embracing the eternal void.
Fingers moving nimbly over the ship's controls with the youth of a young Caamasi, Senec laid in one final destination for the hyperdrive. Accelerating towards the very edge of the black hole, his ship would speed towards it at such an angle that, being drawn into a steep gravitational orbit while still at lightspeed, the black hole would (ideally) slingshot Senec into deep space at impossible speeds, much farther than he could have hoped to travel at normal hyperspeed.
Or perhaps he would be drawn into the black hole at such a speed that it would become a portal to eject him somewhere else impossibly far away in the universe: a new galaxy full of possibility.
Or perhaps it would simply crush him, reducing him and his ship to so much stardust in nanoseconds, sending Senec into Chaos before his senses even registered that he had died.
But really it didn't matter. At long last, Senec had conquered the darkness. And one way or another, he would soon be free.
The siren song of the stars once again rang in his ears as his fingers rested on the hyperdrive levers. But now, rather than resisting their urge, he smiled and sang along to their otherworldy harmony.
He rose and sketched a small bow sardonically.
"Goodbye, galaxy," he spoke, voice raspy but full, once more, of the good humor and zeal for which he had once been known, "The time has come for Senec to exit stage right."
A smile of equal humor and malice flitted across his features, "To the galaxy beyond, tremble at the opening lines of Tenebrous."
And with a final wink of light, Senec Tinople disappeared forever from the galaxy.
(I find it fitting that the final post I ever made in one group actually turns out to be the perfect intro to a new one. Now, onwards to the much-anticipated character sheet!)
Age: 70
Sex: Male
Species: Caamasi (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Caamasi/Legends)
Homeworld: Caamas
Occupation: Archaeologist (turned Sith)
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 160 lbs
Physical Description: Tenebrum is an elderly Caamasi with a bent in his back and a twinkle in his eye. Dressed in old-fashioned but well-maintained dark robes and tunics, he leans heavily on a loth-wolf-headed cane. Occasionally, old fashioned reading spectacles rest upon his beak. A datapad is secured firmly to his belt, fitted with all the scanning and archival technology an archaeologist might need.
But your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them. Behind the kindly-old-man act lurks a coldness in the eyes that might first be mistaken for scholarly arrogance. After all, he is well-published in Galactica Reviews and all the biggest scientific journals. But the hint of stodgy arrogance belies a far darker truth – a profound selfishness and base hunger for something far more sinister than scholarly accolades.
Weapons: As with his seemingly innocent persona, Tenebrum's appearance is more dangerous than it appears. His cane, sturdy enough to be used as a light melee weapon, is made of a fine light metal but subtly woven with cortosis. An even more disconcerting truth is revealed when twisting the finely detailed gold head of the cane counterclockwise; the head comes off and reveals itself as the hilt of a hidden dagger. But the rest of the cane is no less dangerous; a close examination reveals that it is a lightsaber pike whose emitter coyly taps against the ground when concealed. Its blade burns a fierce but traditional red when activated.
Personality/Beliefs: Once upon a time, Tenebrum was not shy to speak his mind at length when the mood struck him, accustomed as he was to a room of scientists quieting in anticipation when he so much as cleared his throat. His silver tongue, however, proved to be his greatest weakness in a time gone by, and he is now once again the diligent scholar that first granted him respect in his field – quiet, inquisitive, and detail-oriented, studying his surroundings and quietly analyzing what others say. He has by no means reverted to his pre-Sith days however. Where once his study and quiet analysis was for the benefit of his own learning, it is now subsumed with the desire to find and exploit weaknesses in everyone and everything surrounding him. Beneath the cold calculus, he remains obstinately arrogant and supremely self-assured of his own superior intelligence. When he enters combat, this calculated personality takes quite a different form; he becomes vicious and cruel in tone, never losing himself in violence, but always full of spite and contempt as he needles at his opponent to find a weakness.
Tenebrum has virtually no beliefs that approach religion or even spirituality. The Force is not a mystical will to be obeyed, but a tool to be used. Even as fate has seemed to miraculously intervene in his life time and again, Tenebrum scoffs at any notions of the will of the Force, instead believing solely in his own strength of will and his right to absolute power. Neither is he dedicated to any fascistic or democratic political views – he views all governments and orders as means to an end and only holds himself to a Sith Code or an Imperial statement of faith only so much as will ingratiate himself with others and preserve his own existence. Ultimately, Tenebrum believes in himself, and his brush with reality-defying godhood has left him permanently skeptical of the reality that now surrounds him, such that he approaches solipsism, albeit a practical one.
Strengths: Tenebrum's obsession with his own intelligence is not merely airs or self-deception. Possessed of a keen mind, well-studied and maintained, Tenebrum's cunning plots and deceptions keep his enemies guessing until the end. His natural mastery of illusions particularly perplex his prey, casting so much doubt on their reality that they do not even offer a defense when a real blade is hidden among many illusory ones. His knowledge of ancient civilizations and teachings proves a great asset as a Sith, though there are some civilizations in this new universe that elude him, like the Zeffo. But, whether it is out of genuine enjoyment to learn about a new civilization or fear of being stumped by a rival, Tenebrum is doing his best to learn all about these strange new worlds.
Weaknesses: As finely tuned as Tenebrum's mind is, his body remains his greatest weakness. Bent not only by crippling injury but by age, he is only able to move without pain by draining his own power to mute the ever-present agony. Because of this, Tenebrum prefers to move as little as possible in combat, relying on his skill with illusions and a rudimentary knowledge of telekinetic lightsaber combat to keep enemies at bay. While his lightsaber pike works in tandem with his powers to harm enemies at arms length, Tenebrum is almost useless in close-range melee combat and easily overpowered by youthful strength. Additionally, while his mind is more cunning and sharp than most, his arrogance blinds him, leading to potentially deadly moments of underestimating his enemy.
History: Senec Tinople was born around 90 ABY on Caamas to upper middle class parents and had an uneventful childhood. Indeed, it took decades for something truly interesting to transpire in Senec's life; he completed college and began his field studies without anything truly remarkable happening. Decades passed by as he established himself as eminent in his field, specializing in ruins dating from the time of the Rakata Infinite Empire.
This all changed one fateful day when, while scaling some ancient Massassi ruins, he slipped on the slick stone and plummeted almost thirty meters to certain death. But the galaxy had other plans for him; some power within him seemed to stir, and instead of becoming a feathery stain on the jungle floor, his fall was softened just enough for him to cheat death. His back, however, was permanently crippled. This disability, in turn, left a profound mark on his personality and interest, as he withdrew from friends and family and became obsessively fascinated with the ancient texts of all manner of Force-wielding sects. Turned away by the Jedi, who were alarmed by the naked self-interest spurring his research but wrote him off as an eccentric old cook and not a serious threat, Senec became only further embittered. Abandoning his home and permanently severing all connections with loved ones, Senec became a nomad, the libraries and ruins he traveled the galaxy over becoming almost as much of a home as the transports that ferried him from one destination to the next.
During his itinerant odyssey, a faction of Sith styling themselves as the Final Sith Order rose to preeminence in the galaxy. Intrigued by their unashamed grasp of power, he abandoned his studies of other sects and exclusively hunted Sith holocrons and artifacts. In great libraries and dusty catacombs, he found chronicles from Bane and Revan, Kun and Sadow. He devoured their teachings, learning of the great power the mind could harness if freed from the petty compassion of the Jedi, and in himself he found those burgeoning powers.
Supplicating entry at the doors of Korriban, Senec soon found himself an acolyte in a bustling Sith Academy, replete with all the expertise and knowledge he could ever have dreamed of. But success eluded him – outpaced in Force mastery by the raw natural talent and sheer physical strength of the young acolytes surrounding him, Senec struggled to distinguish himself through cunning and wit. However, for every word of praise his cunning earned him, his wit earned double the censure at every turn. Initially apprenticed to an awe-inspiring Master, he was stripped of his apprenticeship and nearly killed in a duel with a Dark Lord. After a final encounter when his remedial Master came within a breath of killing him and instead took his sight as a lasting reminder of his failure, Senec fled Korriban as a freshly minted Imperial archaeologist, going on adventures and acquiring a droid companion along the way.
But he could not hide from his destiny for long, as he received an ominous message from Imperial High Command, ordering him to resume his duties as Sith and join a fleet bound for Coruscant. There, while initially charged with mopping up the last remains of an Alliance army, a far more horrifying sight awaited him – the first assault of the Immortal Gods of the Sith upon a helpless galaxy. Unspooling inky unnatural blackness into the skies of Coruscant, Typhojem arrived, flattening the city-world in a miasma of screams and death. Terrified beyond words, Senec abandoned the Sith once again and fled blindly towards the edge of the galaxy, nearly losing his very self in his crazed flight.
However, he came to at the very edge of the galaxy and, rediscovering himself and his own will, he flung himself into the depths of a black hole, content to either be transported untold distances away or be consumed and destroyed by the darkness. Against all odds, his act of desperation paid off – instead of being crushed to atoms, he found himself transported into a strange and sinister realm full of red nebulae and forgotten worlds. Unknowingly, Senec had transported himself far closer to the homeworld of the God that had left him in abject fear, for he had arrived in Otherspace, where forgotten beings of eons past made all manners of eldritch creatures their playthings.
But fate once again intervened in Senec's destiny as a portal was opened to him, and through it, he found himself in a galaxy that was at once very familiar and very alien. The same worlds Senec knew so well once again greeted him, but strange new Empires and Sith Orders and other factions now populated them, and strangers now walked the halls of the Academy he had once fled. Even worse, new worlds sprung up where once there was none, and now vast spans of history were a mystery to him where once he could have recounted the better part of all major wars and events in the last millennium. Lastly, and strangest of all, Senec found that this strange new universe was hundreds of years more advanced than the one from which he had come.
Far from deterred by this strange development was Senec, however. By contrast, he was elated; his mad dream of a plan had worked, and surely this implied some greater destiny and triumph ahead. Without a second thought, Senec presented himself to these strange new Sith, and with this decision, he took on a new name, one laden with meaning for him: Tenebrum. Whether as an acolyte or apprentice, on Korriban or on Dromund Kaas, in the libraries or at the feet of a master, Tenebrum swore that one day he would triumph.
Like I said, my actual character sheet is at the bottom of this post, but I hope you will enjoy this rather more literary introduction to my new and old Sith character: Tenebrum.)
The Disappearance of Senec Tinople
Senec Tinople opened his eyes.
For a long moment, he simply lay still in the darkness, watched the universe turn before him, all blue and white in its chaotic swirl, like a whirlpool of cosmic energy. Its allure fixed his gaze and drew him in, an impossibly sweet siren song that rang in his ears with deafening command, impossible to ignore.
Come play in the starlight, it whispered to him with saccharine sibilance. Come venture into the eternal abyss. Pull back the curtain of this world and look upon what awaits beyond.
Like a corpse driven by unnatural forces to raise a rotting head and emerge from the grave, so Senec's feathered hand stretched from where it rested, reaching out with mechanical resolve to find the hyperdrive controls, to send him careening yet further, yet faster into the infinite's embrace.
Instead, his hand bumped into a quite familiar object leaning up against the controls, the glimmering metal handle sending chills down his arm, fingers settling into their old familiar places with the unthinking practice of untold decades. In an instant, the song faded in his ears, and only the muted chimes of the cockpit around him broke the deafening silence.
Though his hand had settled onto this object with abject familiarity, yet the eyes that fastened upon it as he lifted the object to inspect it were full of wary confusion. Body had recognized what mind could not, or would not – a weathered old cane all black and gold, with a lothwolf's head leering at the top.
A flash of memory – a panicked fall from quite a height, a jumble of jungly vines and trees swirling about him as he descended, white stone sending an agonizing pain through his back at the terminus of his descent. He winced in sympathy, age-old pain jouncing through his frail frame.
Ah yes. So that was its purpose – to prop up an old man bent over with the pain of youthful folly. He took up the familiar old instrument with renewed familiarity, bringing the head close to examine the snarling wolf in greater detail. So angry it was, a moment of pure animal rage seemingly crystallized into an eternity of paralyzed passion. Senec felt an odd pang of sympathy with the aurodium creature. It reminded him terribly of something dreadful. . . if only he could remember what.
Yet there was something not quite right about its heft, was there? He shifted his grip on its strangely heavy shaft. No indeed; unless it was intended to be a particularly unwieldy blunderbuss, then something more lurked beneath this innocent implement of old age.
A rattle within its stygian length arrested his attention. Yes, no doubt about it – something lurked not beneath, but within. Yet its surface was smooth, no secret buttons providing access to its dark secrets. His hand moved once more to its old familiar grooves, and unbidden memory once again surged as he gave it a quick twist, the head of the cane slowly revolving, the scrapes of metal moving across long-unused grooves. Reflecting the hyperspatial blue and white, a dagger flashed in the unlit cockpit, and Senec drew in a hiss of surprise.
The loth-wolf no longer impotently bent under the weight of an old man's tired fingers. Instead it now leered from the base of a dagger's hilt, all full of the potential for untold violence, its gaping maw no longer a rictus of paralyzed rage but an animal full of the greedy anticipation of fresh blood. Senec turned the dagger slowly in his hands, the flat of the blade shifting so that his own wild-eyed features reflected back at him.
Or rather, they would have if not for the ooze of blood smeared all across the metal face. Dripping, spilling, fat drops descending down on his tunic and splatting across the cockpit floor. Not simply a single hue – a single life's worth of lifeblood. Rather, a veritable cocktail of blood coated the blade: green and red and every color in between. As his eyes searched between the splatters of blood for some little patch of silver metal to catch a glimpse of himself, instead other faces appeared between the bloodstains to stare at him: Nightsisters, humans, aliens of all types, their eyes coldly fixed on him as the blood spilled ever faster, a fountain of death.
His own features watched him, eyes strangely dead and cold, his face filling the flat of the blade, no blood or foreign faces to be seen. Those terrible eyes were yellow and rimmed with red, the unblinking stare of a killing creature. They were full of something else too, however, something far worse: a wild look of dread that tensed every muscle in his body, an incredible fear that radiated from his eyes although he could not imagine what those eyes feared.
Through the murkiness of this strange horror, the weight of the rest of the cane still tugged at his other hand with renewed vigor, still much too heavy for a normal cane.
The dagger slipped from his fingers, sliding down his tunic and clattering against the metal floor as he raised his other arm. Senec's eyes widened, a smug smirk of realization tugging at his beak-like snout. Not simply the discarded remnants of an old man's crutch – no, instead, a strange emitter rose from the sable stick, a single red button too revealed by the dagger's removal.
He thumbed the button with eager anticipation, not a second thought to be spared.
Crimson light jutted from the emitter, geysering from the shadows and painting the dark cockpit in eerie shadows of red and grey. Had memories not surged from his feeble mind like the sizzling crackles rippling across the energy blade, he might have cringed at how close the long blade had come to ripping through the cockpit's ceiling and giving Senec an all-too-close look at the superspatial chaos outside.
Red fiery energy split the suffocating darkness as, Senec now remembered, it had so many times before. The echoing shadows of Vassek III, the dusky sands of Korriban, the evening wilds of Dathomir – it all came surging back, past and present united by the pure energy of the blade dancing before his eyes.
"The Jedi used to intone that 'this weapon is your life.' Ridiculous! They have gotten it the wrong way 'round. A Sith's life is his weapon…"
Sith.
Yes. Yes, that is what he had been, hadn't he? His eyes searched the rippling surface of the blade, and once more faces swam into view, yet these ones were not filled with the coldness of the dead, but full of passion. Strength. Life.
A sightless crone, strangely beautiful yet emanating an ancient power. His old Master. Her face hidden by a fantastic helmet full of filigree, yet her expression came through all the clearer, an expression of patient reproval and coiled danger all at once. Traya.
A baleful visage, all cold metal, empty eyes filled with pools of yellow malice. Terrifying, yet filled with an understanding beyond that of droids. Vexx.
Pravum. Joker. Draconis. Each face rose to view and receded as memories spilled over Senec in a rising wave. Great figures of power, legendary in scale, yet he had encountered all and emerged unscathed, emerged more . . . powerful?
He re-examined himself, keen eyes falling from the blade and returning to his other, now-empty hand. Yes, power had once resided there, had it not? Not merely vested in the weapons it wielded, but forming a weapon of its own from which lightning spat and darkness seeped. Like a cyborg testing out a new mechanical appendage, Senec slowly raised his hand, turned it over, then stretched out.
In an instant, darkness boiled out of his hand, filling the cockpit with an unnatural blackness through which no light could permeate. It surrounded him, binding him to his seat as his eyes vainly sought to pierce his self-imposed blindness, to no avail. Try as he might, he could not control the rising tide of midnight, which continued to spool from his fingers in a growing tapestry of murkiness, pooling from that strange feeling of dread he could not place.
But even this unholy darkness was strangely familiar to the wizened Caamasi. As the entrancing light of the red blade had brought to mind his days of training, now this horrible darkness sent him back in time, and it all returned in gruesome detail – his closest brush with death.
He could feel the heat of Vexx's buzzing lightsaber withering the feathers on his neck, hear the sharp crackles of decayed bones snapping around him, almost taste the overpowering stench of death that dug into his olfactory senses like burrowing insects, coating his tongue in rot. While the taste of death slicked his mouth, the sight of the dead inflicted his eyes. Utter blackness encircled him. He could have been standing in the most open plain of Dantooine, and still it would feel as if walls pressed in upon him from all sides, inescapable, impermeable, inexhaustible. He had been caught in a half-death, as if the executions he had so narrowly escaped dogged his footsteps and clung to him, deteriorating his senses gradually.
But though his sight had been taken, not so his tongue. He moved his tongue about his mouth, suddenly becoming conscious of how acutely dry it had become, how . . . disused it felt. How long had it been since he had last talked?
Again, the faintest hint of good humor briefly lit up his features as the darkness gradually receded, the muted lights of the cockpit and the swirling hyperspace without once again drifting into view. He had once been quite the talker, he remembered. It had always been his saving grace and his greatest folly, a boon in his studies and a burden in his social brushes with the Sith. Yet now a frown furrowed his feathery eyebrows downward – even when quite alone, he had been accustomed to carrying on a conversation with himself to brainstorm, to reflect, or simply to amuse himself. The unnatural silence of the cockpit pressed in on him all the harder, and he opened his mouth to say something, anything.
Yet only a croak emerged from his throat, which felt as if it must have been transformed into sandpaper and then stitched shut.
A clatter behind him caused him to flinch, the involuntary motion thumbing the blade back into non-existence and sending the cane clattering down to the floor.
"Was that a word, young Master?" a modulated voice exclaimed with something between excitement and anxiety, "I have prayed to Typhojem daily for you to regain your speech, but now that I remember how much you used to talk my audio sensors off, I'm beginning to regret my devoutness."
Like a statue turning on a hidden hinge to reveal a passage beyond, Senec turned in his seat, the chair swiveling around to grant him a view of the unseen speaker: a spindly mechanical automaton whose glowing yellow photoreceptors watched him intently.
The old instincts turned like a creaking wheel as he recalled the banter between himself and this machine . . . 'Evade' was the name he had given it. Despite the churning of instinct telling him to generate some snide comment in return, however, his beak remained clamped shut, and try as he might, he could no more unlatch it than he could control the darkness in his fingertips.
A long moment of silence passed between them, then the droid's eyes dimmed, and he slumped slightly, turning back through the threshold, "Must have been my imagination. What have times come to when a droid has enough time to himself to develop an imagination? We'll try again tomorrow, Master. Oh dear."
Silence once again pressed in around Senec as the door slid shut, leaving him once again alone. Emotions had begun to bubble in him, far more passionate and substantive than the idle curiosity that had compelled him to study the cane and each subsequent revelation about himself, and far more concrete than the nameless horror that still filled his gut.
What was going on? What had turned Senec Tinople, intrepid explorer, flowery speechifier, rising star of the Sith, into a mute basket-case who jumped at his own shadow?
Shadow . . .
"A shadow appears to have substance, yet its nature is not clear. It displays itself as a reflection of a particular thing, yet it exists unseen even without that thing, existing merely as the nature of light warped around an object. I would be similarly nebulous…"
He had been so very loquacious. And all too prescient, it seemed. His journey within the Sith had not been the ascension of a great and terrible power, but instead a slow and painful descent into shadow, until even his sight had been taken. Once taken by Vexx as an apprentice, Senec had slipped away and, aimless, wandered the stars, blind, until . . . What had happened to regain his sight? Certainly not a turn towards the light; each step he had taken had only plunged him further into the depths of the dark side, and now it was far too late to turn back, step into the light. Something was pulling him in deeper, and though he might try to struggle against it, it was far too late for him. But what was it that tugged at him so relentlessly, a nameless fear burned into his retinas so that not even sleep could provide respite from its gnawing?
"Fear is less than useless. It will only fog up your brain and impede your decision-making. Far better to fail with bold impudence than to die, mewling and cowering at another's blade."
He remembered how much he had despised fear, the cruel arrogance of watching weaker beings recoil and flee. It was always the way of the weak, and those who gave in to it had no strength to persist, to fight and conquer not just the unknown, but themselves. Yet now fear rang at the very core of his being, inescapable from its tremulous and tenebrous clutches.
Fear that somehow related to the reason for his returning sight.
Fear that explained his muteness.
A terror that explained why he was here in his ship, endlessly traveling faster than light towards the edge of the galaxy, as if fleeing – running as fast as he could as far away from the center of the galaxy as-
A thunderclap echoed through his mind.
Center of the galaxy . . .
Coruscant.
A thousand flashing images passed through his mind, each more searing and terrifying than the last. Cloudcutters melting like ice, the rictus-screams of a hundred billion voices at once, and the darkness, the same darkness that threatened to trap Senec eternally as it once had before fleeing in the face of Senec's renewed resolve – the call he had received to report to Coruscant immediately for its final conquest, until-
The end of the universe. Senec's gaze returned to the stars, seeming to almost clutch at them desperately, as if afraid that they would once again slip away and disappear into the void that had appeared above Coruscant, the end of all things given material form, the death rattle of the universe – not in a heat-death of fire, but in cold eternal darkness, abrupt and forevermore.
There was no more bright center to the galaxy. Senec had seen the end of the universe, and it was as inevitable as the rising and setting of Horuset. A true prophet of the dark side, Senec's blindness had merely been an early harbinger, a prophetic glimpse of what awaited them all, of Typhojem's final victory, a blessing that had given him the foresight to flee.
As the memories of that final assault on reality spilled through Senec's brain, so bright and intense as to nearly liquify it, Senec fought the darkness that crept at his vision. As long as his engines remained pointed away from Coruscant, the darkness would never catch him. No more ambitions of power, no dreams of ruling, only one all-important goal consuming his mind.
Survive, where surely no other Sith had.
A persistent buzzing jolted Senec awake from the wakeful slumber into which he had slipped. Vacantly, his eyes surveyed the control board, halting on a diode that persistently blinked red with a strident chime. The sleep slipping away from his eyelids, he sat upright.
No!
The fuel indicator flashed at him with petulant impatience. How long the ship had been racing through hyperspace Senec hadn't an inkling, all concept of time nullified in an ever-dark ship cockpit, but clearly the ship was on its last legs.
Reaching out a quivering hand, he pulled at the hyperdrive lever, and with a groan, the ship jolted as it emerged back into realspace. He cast his eyes around, tugging at the joystick to survey his surroundings. A thousand stars glimmered at him, filling him with a strange sense of relief. The universe had not yet died, perhaps not even the galaxy.
He glanced at the nav display, which flickered intermittently, so low was it too on power. Somewhere in the Unknown Regions, that was for certain, though how far outside the galaxy's span was anyone's guess. From here, he might be able to turn around and limp to some remote star system on the edge of the galaxy: Terminus perhaps, or Farana, depending on what side of the galaxy he was.
But no. What point was there in returning to a galaxy that was surely doomed? As far as Senec had gotten from Coruscant, he knew that a lightyear, a thousand, or ten billion made no difference to the god of the Sith. He would consume all, and he would not be satisfied merely with one galaxy.
No, the time had come for one final jump away. But with so little fuel left, and with the great unknowns of extra-galactic space waiting for him, how could Senec make a jump with any guarantee that he would arrive somewhere that might have sufficient atmosphere to survive until he could find a way to refuel?
He had nearly completed his lazy rotation to survey his surroundings, when an unexpected sight halted his ship's motion in its tracks, chilling his hollow bones as he stared.
A midnight-black maw loomed in front of him, not a star to be seen in its void, its edges frayed like the jagged teeth of some enormous monster. Senec's heart seemed to freeze in his chest, and he felt as if he were already being drawn into its depths, that it was reaching out to him with gnarled arms to pull him into the abyss.
Was this already Typhojem's consuming darkness? Had the galaxy been so easily subsumed under the weight of his presence that even beyond the galaxy, it had already caught up with Senec's faster-than-light flight? It was everything he had feared. Dread tugged at him, pushing him down into his seat. seeking to pull him down into a morass of despair, a hopelessness that demanded he merely watch the approaching darkness, stubbornly outlast it as long as possible before submitting to the void.
But a sliver of fire tugged at him too, a waning spark of rebelliousness that had so often propelled Senec when faced with the worst. He was no weakling to merely bow his head and accept defeat. In every instance save one, he had held his head high and faced the consequences, fought them with beak and talon to come out triumphant. And each and every time, he had succeeded. How was this to be any different?
This renewed clarity sparked something half-forgotten in Senec's mind: scholarly analysis. Leaning forward, he studied the darkness anew, and his eyes widened as realization dawned. This was no supernatural darkness spawned from a Sith god. No, it was a natural force of equal power . . . and superior utility.
A black hole yawned in front of Senec with inexorable force – a force, Senec now realized, that had indeed been drawing him in closer and closer. It had not been his own dread pushing him down into the pilot's chair, but the increasing force of gravity as he approached the black hole at frightening speeds.
Senec now knew that only a few minutes remained for him to take any sort of action. With this realization came an odd sort of peace; no longer was he eternally on the run from a nameless terror, but now his impending doom had a name, and he could either act or acquiesce.
Being who he was, Senec's only real choice was action, and with this action came the old fiery zeal and cleverness that had so long escaped him since Typhojem had mashed his brains to pulp and filled his soul with terror.
Thinking quickly, the old Caamasi swiftly realized that even as far as he was from the black hole, it was already impossible for his ship to break its pull with its engines. He would be pulled towards the black hole inevitably, even if he was kicking and screaming the whole way. But temper tantrums had never been in Senec's playbook. No, instead a far better idea occurred to him.
"My chosen word is not 'shadow,' but 'tenebrous.' For a shadow, hard to understand though it is, evokes no fear or confusion. It is part of the very nature of reality, and we therefore do not question it. But to be tenebrous is to be dark and shadowy, unnatural in its murkiness."
There was now no escape from the darkness pulling at Senec. But just as in his pursuit of the dark side, he had never wavered, why should he now turn back to the light when faced with such great physical darkness?
"To be tenebrous is to be obscure and hard to understand, confusing the mind by its very presence."
Senec had always delighted in the wheels-within-wheels game, of using his superior intellect to confound his opponents. Nothing was better when delivering a kill than seeing an expression of utter shock and confusion on an enemy's face when delivering the death blow, than being totally secure in the knowledge that his enemy had been outclassed in every way. What then would be more appropriate than a gambit that, to any normal mind, would appear folly, but could indeed achieve ultimate victory?
"And most importantly, that which is tenebrous causes gloom and, by extension, fear, for that which is unnaturally dark is therefore unknowable in nature, and that which is unknowable will always cause terror in the weak and doubt even in the strongest.
Indeed, Lord Vexx, you are correct that this word has always been a part of me. Perhaps it too existed only in unnatural shadow, impossible for me to see until now.
But now that I see it, I seek to understand it, for only through understanding it shall I conquer fear and make it my own servant."
Darth Tenebrous II. That was the name Senec would have chosen for himself had he ascended to mastery. Following in the footsteps of his old master, Traya III, he would have made the title his own, and as an heir to Tenebrous, his intellect would have made the very darkness fall to its knees in subservience.
The time was over for flinching at shadows and fleeing from the darkness. Senec's true destiny lay – indeed, had always lain – in becoming a shade himself and in embracing the eternal void.
Fingers moving nimbly over the ship's controls with the youth of a young Caamasi, Senec laid in one final destination for the hyperdrive. Accelerating towards the very edge of the black hole, his ship would speed towards it at such an angle that, being drawn into a steep gravitational orbit while still at lightspeed, the black hole would (ideally) slingshot Senec into deep space at impossible speeds, much farther than he could have hoped to travel at normal hyperspeed.
Or perhaps he would be drawn into the black hole at such a speed that it would become a portal to eject him somewhere else impossibly far away in the universe: a new galaxy full of possibility.
Or perhaps it would simply crush him, reducing him and his ship to so much stardust in nanoseconds, sending Senec into Chaos before his senses even registered that he had died.
But really it didn't matter. At long last, Senec had conquered the darkness. And one way or another, he would soon be free.
The siren song of the stars once again rang in his ears as his fingers rested on the hyperdrive levers. But now, rather than resisting their urge, he smiled and sang along to their otherworldy harmony.
He rose and sketched a small bow sardonically.
"Goodbye, galaxy," he spoke, voice raspy but full, once more, of the good humor and zeal for which he had once been known, "The time has come for Senec to exit stage right."
A smile of equal humor and malice flitted across his features, "To the galaxy beyond, tremble at the opening lines of Tenebrous."
And with a final wink of light, Senec Tinople disappeared forever from the galaxy.
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(I find it fitting that the final post I ever made in one group actually turns out to be the perfect intro to a new one. Now, onwards to the much-anticipated character sheet!)
Tenebrum (formerly Senec Tinople)
Age: 70
Sex: Male
Species: Caamasi (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Caamasi/Legends)
Homeworld: Caamas
Occupation: Archaeologist (turned Sith)
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 160 lbs
Physical Description: Tenebrum is an elderly Caamasi with a bent in his back and a twinkle in his eye. Dressed in old-fashioned but well-maintained dark robes and tunics, he leans heavily on a loth-wolf-headed cane. Occasionally, old fashioned reading spectacles rest upon his beak. A datapad is secured firmly to his belt, fitted with all the scanning and archival technology an archaeologist might need.
But your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them. Behind the kindly-old-man act lurks a coldness in the eyes that might first be mistaken for scholarly arrogance. After all, he is well-published in Galactica Reviews and all the biggest scientific journals. But the hint of stodgy arrogance belies a far darker truth – a profound selfishness and base hunger for something far more sinister than scholarly accolades.
Weapons: As with his seemingly innocent persona, Tenebrum's appearance is more dangerous than it appears. His cane, sturdy enough to be used as a light melee weapon, is made of a fine light metal but subtly woven with cortosis. An even more disconcerting truth is revealed when twisting the finely detailed gold head of the cane counterclockwise; the head comes off and reveals itself as the hilt of a hidden dagger. But the rest of the cane is no less dangerous; a close examination reveals that it is a lightsaber pike whose emitter coyly taps against the ground when concealed. Its blade burns a fierce but traditional red when activated.
Personality/Beliefs: Once upon a time, Tenebrum was not shy to speak his mind at length when the mood struck him, accustomed as he was to a room of scientists quieting in anticipation when he so much as cleared his throat. His silver tongue, however, proved to be his greatest weakness in a time gone by, and he is now once again the diligent scholar that first granted him respect in his field – quiet, inquisitive, and detail-oriented, studying his surroundings and quietly analyzing what others say. He has by no means reverted to his pre-Sith days however. Where once his study and quiet analysis was for the benefit of his own learning, it is now subsumed with the desire to find and exploit weaknesses in everyone and everything surrounding him. Beneath the cold calculus, he remains obstinately arrogant and supremely self-assured of his own superior intelligence. When he enters combat, this calculated personality takes quite a different form; he becomes vicious and cruel in tone, never losing himself in violence, but always full of spite and contempt as he needles at his opponent to find a weakness.
Tenebrum has virtually no beliefs that approach religion or even spirituality. The Force is not a mystical will to be obeyed, but a tool to be used. Even as fate has seemed to miraculously intervene in his life time and again, Tenebrum scoffs at any notions of the will of the Force, instead believing solely in his own strength of will and his right to absolute power. Neither is he dedicated to any fascistic or democratic political views – he views all governments and orders as means to an end and only holds himself to a Sith Code or an Imperial statement of faith only so much as will ingratiate himself with others and preserve his own existence. Ultimately, Tenebrum believes in himself, and his brush with reality-defying godhood has left him permanently skeptical of the reality that now surrounds him, such that he approaches solipsism, albeit a practical one.
Strengths: Tenebrum's obsession with his own intelligence is not merely airs or self-deception. Possessed of a keen mind, well-studied and maintained, Tenebrum's cunning plots and deceptions keep his enemies guessing until the end. His natural mastery of illusions particularly perplex his prey, casting so much doubt on their reality that they do not even offer a defense when a real blade is hidden among many illusory ones. His knowledge of ancient civilizations and teachings proves a great asset as a Sith, though there are some civilizations in this new universe that elude him, like the Zeffo. But, whether it is out of genuine enjoyment to learn about a new civilization or fear of being stumped by a rival, Tenebrum is doing his best to learn all about these strange new worlds.
Weaknesses: As finely tuned as Tenebrum's mind is, his body remains his greatest weakness. Bent not only by crippling injury but by age, he is only able to move without pain by draining his own power to mute the ever-present agony. Because of this, Tenebrum prefers to move as little as possible in combat, relying on his skill with illusions and a rudimentary knowledge of telekinetic lightsaber combat to keep enemies at bay. While his lightsaber pike works in tandem with his powers to harm enemies at arms length, Tenebrum is almost useless in close-range melee combat and easily overpowered by youthful strength. Additionally, while his mind is more cunning and sharp than most, his arrogance blinds him, leading to potentially deadly moments of underestimating his enemy.
History: Senec Tinople was born around 90 ABY on Caamas to upper middle class parents and had an uneventful childhood. Indeed, it took decades for something truly interesting to transpire in Senec's life; he completed college and began his field studies without anything truly remarkable happening. Decades passed by as he established himself as eminent in his field, specializing in ruins dating from the time of the Rakata Infinite Empire.
This all changed one fateful day when, while scaling some ancient Massassi ruins, he slipped on the slick stone and plummeted almost thirty meters to certain death. But the galaxy had other plans for him; some power within him seemed to stir, and instead of becoming a feathery stain on the jungle floor, his fall was softened just enough for him to cheat death. His back, however, was permanently crippled. This disability, in turn, left a profound mark on his personality and interest, as he withdrew from friends and family and became obsessively fascinated with the ancient texts of all manner of Force-wielding sects. Turned away by the Jedi, who were alarmed by the naked self-interest spurring his research but wrote him off as an eccentric old cook and not a serious threat, Senec became only further embittered. Abandoning his home and permanently severing all connections with loved ones, Senec became a nomad, the libraries and ruins he traveled the galaxy over becoming almost as much of a home as the transports that ferried him from one destination to the next.
During his itinerant odyssey, a faction of Sith styling themselves as the Final Sith Order rose to preeminence in the galaxy. Intrigued by their unashamed grasp of power, he abandoned his studies of other sects and exclusively hunted Sith holocrons and artifacts. In great libraries and dusty catacombs, he found chronicles from Bane and Revan, Kun and Sadow. He devoured their teachings, learning of the great power the mind could harness if freed from the petty compassion of the Jedi, and in himself he found those burgeoning powers.
Supplicating entry at the doors of Korriban, Senec soon found himself an acolyte in a bustling Sith Academy, replete with all the expertise and knowledge he could ever have dreamed of. But success eluded him – outpaced in Force mastery by the raw natural talent and sheer physical strength of the young acolytes surrounding him, Senec struggled to distinguish himself through cunning and wit. However, for every word of praise his cunning earned him, his wit earned double the censure at every turn. Initially apprenticed to an awe-inspiring Master, he was stripped of his apprenticeship and nearly killed in a duel with a Dark Lord. After a final encounter when his remedial Master came within a breath of killing him and instead took his sight as a lasting reminder of his failure, Senec fled Korriban as a freshly minted Imperial archaeologist, going on adventures and acquiring a droid companion along the way.
But he could not hide from his destiny for long, as he received an ominous message from Imperial High Command, ordering him to resume his duties as Sith and join a fleet bound for Coruscant. There, while initially charged with mopping up the last remains of an Alliance army, a far more horrifying sight awaited him – the first assault of the Immortal Gods of the Sith upon a helpless galaxy. Unspooling inky unnatural blackness into the skies of Coruscant, Typhojem arrived, flattening the city-world in a miasma of screams and death. Terrified beyond words, Senec abandoned the Sith once again and fled blindly towards the edge of the galaxy, nearly losing his very self in his crazed flight.
However, he came to at the very edge of the galaxy and, rediscovering himself and his own will, he flung himself into the depths of a black hole, content to either be transported untold distances away or be consumed and destroyed by the darkness. Against all odds, his act of desperation paid off – instead of being crushed to atoms, he found himself transported into a strange and sinister realm full of red nebulae and forgotten worlds. Unknowingly, Senec had transported himself far closer to the homeworld of the God that had left him in abject fear, for he had arrived in Otherspace, where forgotten beings of eons past made all manners of eldritch creatures their playthings.
But fate once again intervened in Senec's destiny as a portal was opened to him, and through it, he found himself in a galaxy that was at once very familiar and very alien. The same worlds Senec knew so well once again greeted him, but strange new Empires and Sith Orders and other factions now populated them, and strangers now walked the halls of the Academy he had once fled. Even worse, new worlds sprung up where once there was none, and now vast spans of history were a mystery to him where once he could have recounted the better part of all major wars and events in the last millennium. Lastly, and strangest of all, Senec found that this strange new universe was hundreds of years more advanced than the one from which he had come.
Far from deterred by this strange development was Senec, however. By contrast, he was elated; his mad dream of a plan had worked, and surely this implied some greater destiny and triumph ahead. Without a second thought, Senec presented himself to these strange new Sith, and with this decision, he took on a new name, one laden with meaning for him: Tenebrum. Whether as an acolyte or apprentice, on Korriban or on Dromund Kaas, in the libraries or at the feet of a master, Tenebrum swore that one day he would triumph.