Public That Is Not Dead Which In Dreaming Lie [Open Sith]

[Reliquiis]

[Looking to RP with some new Sith RPers; all Sith are welcome]​

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In her restless mind, churned by the shattered memories of some lost soul within hers, Reliquiis dreamt of a cold, dead world, and heard a voice whispering to her between the echoes of its frigid gales. The words slipped out from her pursed dark blue lips as Reliquiis exhaled and slowly opened her Sith’s gilded eyes. The world was gone. Blurring visions of its blasting cold winds, powdered in whipped snowy mists, were replaced by the sallow gray swirling drifts of Korribanian incense, wafting from two flanking large Sith Chalices.

Reliquiis lips flatlined and curled at the edges into a gradual frown. She separated her clasped hands, which had been set in her lap, holding some strange fingered hand sign to focus her mediations. The Force slithered out from her control and lowered her from a suspended seat above the durasteel deck. As she descended, her legs unfurled from their crossed posture and stepped out to catch her soft landing. Another exhale of displeasure thrummed out of her flaring nostrils and the words hissed from her once more.

The words meant nothing to her. But of course, she was nothing herself. Reliquiis was a living reliquary for a shattered soul, with shattered memories, that haunted her shattered dreams. This relic of a Sith Lady, left somewhere between death and life, still could not be reached. The Sith Lady was chained behind the Sith Amulet her master had forged into her chest and lashed to her Sith Alchemied body by bands of Sith Sorcery. Yet from the dregs of her that leaked through the lattice of sorcery, came a foreign disturbed feeling of familiarity; of a self that was denied from her own.

Her Dark Master’s Lord Artificer ( Darth Vinaze ) who maintained her life-support suit of Sith Armor, and the Sith Amulet, had let slip of some of the history of this imprisoned Sith Lady…this Crestfallen Dark Saint. Had he set in motion this clandestine hunt? Perhaps. Or perhaps through him, the Dark Saint had stirred herself to speak to Reliquiis. The words spoke out of Reliquiis once more, but this time tinged in a tone that was, and was not, of her own.

“That is not dead, which in dreaming lie.” spoke the Dark Saint from Reliquiis’ lips. “In the House of Pall, the Dead Oracle awaits dreaming.” Reliquiis snarled after the voice faded from her throat, smack her lips as if it had left a rotten taste in her mouth. 'Enough of this Shadowed One,' Reliquiis' thoughts snapped at the voice that came from within herself. 'I will find the answer to your phantom musings. Cease.'

Reliquiis strode from her standing pondering, towards a conical holoprojection and navcomp module mounted in the center of her Sith Infiltrator Class Long-Range Personal Cruiser. She keyed a few commands into a control panel screen embedded in the module’s broad brimmed rim. From within the holoprojector orb beamed out a blooming star map, sparkling with blue holographic nodes of star systems that swirled about the galactic arms. One world was highlighted in a deep crimson halo and the star map zoomed into its location. The world’s name was labelled out in old High Sith ur-Kittât and Galactic Basic - Ziost.

Reliquiis narrowed her eyes on the hologram of the planet, a gray blue ball scarred with a silvery stricken atmosphere. The Lord Artificer had gifted her with records of Ancient Sith Lore, holobook copies of ancient tomes, chronicled histories, and the records of his own keeping of the Sith who emerged after the Great Gulag Plague. In those tomes, she had deciphered that there was only one location that could be named House of Pall. The great Sith Citadel built by the first Dark Lord of the Sith Ajunta Pall on top of the ruin of a slain Sith King Hakagram Graush. But, more importantly, it matched the haunted visions Reliquiis dreamt in her meditations.

The auto-pilot beeped the warning that the Sith Infiltrator would soon drop out of hyperspace over Ziost. Reliquiis reached a hovering hand away from the control panel and peaked up the t-shaped macrobinocular view face plate that completed her helmet. She placed the face plate and locked it into the edges of her helmet. A rebreather hissed from behind the face plate and a slow echoing wheeze of its breathing cycle exhaled in a low repeating beat.

Walking across the upper deck of the Sith Infiltrator’s spherical main bridge, she swivelled the pilot’s seat to sit down at the controls. From the viewport the starlines bleed back into disparate dots of distant stars and the world of Ziost rapidly ballooned closer. Reliquiis tapped a few commands into the starship’s sensory computers and engaged the stygium cloaking device, draping the Sith Infiltrator in a dark shroud that camouflaged it against the light around it.

Passing through the atmosphere and its whirling snow storms, Reliquiis settled down her starship in a frozen cave at the base of the great cliffs the Sith Citadel was perched upon. Exiting from the rear gangplank, Reliquiis drew up her hood over her helmeted head, the crimson T of her glowing visor peering from its shadowing dark. From the HUD in the interior of the helmet, she scanned the area.

No doubt the powers at be on this world had made the Sith Citadel their own relic to be hoarded and ransacked, as was the ravenous nature of the Sith in general when it came to relics. She herself was no different, ransacked by her Dark Master to wield the Dark Saint bound within her. She would have to tread carefully. But tread nevertheless. She needed answers. She needed to awaken this sleeping Dead Oracle.

Reliquiis stepped out of the shadow of the cave and from a series of hanging durasteel staircases, bolted into the side of the cliffs, solemnly made her procession up towards the Sith Citadel.​

 

[Kasir Dorran]

Reliquiis | Open​

A transport shuttle pierced through Ziost’s storm like a blade through flesh, the hull rattling as if the world itself were trying to resist the Sangnir’s arrival. When the landing struts finally struck the plateau, steam hissed upward, curling into the air like incense.

Soon he stood at the threshold, listening to the storm’s howl, before finally descending the ramp.

Each bite of the wind was a welcome sensation, for ice already flowed through his veins, this numbing all traces of discomfort. Each step felt like an unholy rite, the raging storm serving as a congregation for his purpose here..

Communion was never offered, only taken, a truth that followed like a shadow, no matter where he roamed.

He spotted the Citadel in the distance, and there, a figure moved. Small against the stone. He did not have a name, nor know of their purpose, but there was still a resonance that was undeniable. And he was here to understand, to unravel these threads of fate that had brought him to this place, where he could feel the pulse of the galaxy and sink his teeth into the heart of its suffering.

Standing at the cliff's edge, his cloak snapped in the wind, and he let hunger speak to him. Hunger was not chaos; it was doctrine.

That galaxy bled, and he was its memory.

A single pale hand trembled at his side, not from fear, but from recognition. It was faint..and unwelcome, whispered through the storm. The Sith clenched his fist until that very tremor would still.

Kasir's signature, that shroud of darkness that radiated from his very being, was not hidden.. nor did he wish it to be, for it was a warning. So, he allowed those inky tendrils to ripple through the air, wrapping around all nearby, so that they knew what lay beneath the hooded figure's veil: death.. and the promise of something darker still.

Boots finally struck the ice, shattering the surface with each pace he took. The sound was sharp, enough to signal his presence had his signature not already been felt. As if the Citadel were calling him home, he moved with feverish determination, beckoned forth by what could be a promise of power.

Or perhaps something older, something long delayed.

 

[Reliquiis]

She was being followed. Between the lashing tendrils of frigid air, whipped against the cliff face like a breaking tide, there was the carried sense of a roiling stir in the Dark Side. Pointed, alert, and projecting, the aura in the Dark Side was calling to her, marking her. Yet, no consequence came from it. Whoever was baring their spirit across the Force and reaching to her, did not make themselves known beyond the blatant signature they broadcast into the Darkness.

Reliquiis regarded this signature for a moment, this wanton font of power thrashing about in the void. She stopped her climb of the staircase and turned her head so that her helmet scanned the area. From her helmet’s HUD, the barren frozen landscape of Ziost returned readings of scant life. The Sith Citadel was a ruin, perched atop a broken peak that reigned over a ruined valley. Ruins upon ruin. Death upon death. A legacy of the Ancient Sith Lords. Reliquiis turned her head back to look forward and continue her climb. Whoever it was, they would reveal themselves shortly. No adherent to the Dark Side displayed power and sought not to use it there after.

Reaching the lower entrance of the Sith Citadel, Reliquiis stepped off the last step of the durasteel plates of the cliff staircase and stood for the first time on ancient and worn, monumental gray stone. The entrance was an enormous gaping maw held aloft by two bent colossus, burdened with the entrance’s mantle on their napes and shoulders. Part of the facade had caved in and was strewn about the stone steps in heaps and scattered fields of debris. Reliquiis moved across them, surveying the ruins and the surviving constructs, as the holorecorder mounted in her helmet recorded all she saw. Passing under the toppled arch of the entrance, Reliquiis passed into the lower levels of the Sith Citadel.

The cold and snow followed her, sucked through the entrance’s gaping mouth like a frigid drawn breath. The small tufts of snow swirled about her boots and danced along the rhythms of the winds through the lower levels. They traced paths between toppled statues, fallen columns, and islands of rubble stone. Black and bulbous orbed probe droids loitered in the air, rounding columns and passing overhead. Reliquiis strode deeper until she was approached by a figure in long crimson robes, flanked by a pair of black and red decorated bodyguard battle droids. The crimson robed one came up to Reliquiis pointing a boney fore finger at her helmet.

“Halt, stranger,” said the crimson robed one. “I would have you identify yourself.”

“I shall ask you the same, red one,” replied Reliquiis, her voice a growling, synthesized dark snarl emitted from her vocoder.

The crimson robed figure curled his wrinkled lips and contorted his wizened visage into a disgusted glare. He withdrew his pointing finger and rolled the rest into a tight fist which he lowered to his side. Reliquiis could feel he was trying to probe her presence in the Dark Side, find something, search her own ruined aura like he no doubt searched the ruins of this place. But the Sith Amulet would prevent such an invasive investigation. A rebuke in the Dark Side howled back at him and he jerked his head back with a startled recoil. The crimson robed figure looked Reliquiis up and down for a moment and then nodded slowly at her. Repulsion had subsided in him towards suspicious intrigue.

“I am Varr Ad Din, the Kissai Steward of this hallowed place, by order of the Lord of Ziost, Darth Arcanix herself,” replied Varr Ad Din. “Now, you will identify yourself…curious…stranger.”

“If this place is hallowed, then I am a pilgrim,” Reliquiis continued. “In search of enlightenment as a Sith.”

“A pilgrim?” parroted Varr Ad Din with a smack of his lips. The Kissai tilted his head and his completely black and pupilless eyes narrowed at Reliquiis. “And what enlightenment do you seek here?” he pressed. “This place is but silent stone and howling cold, Pilgrim Stranger.”

“Silent to you perhaps,” Reliquiis said, stepping aside from Varr Ad Din and striding beyond his battle droids.

“Another step more and I shall condemn you as a trespasser!” shouted Varr Ad Din.

Reliquiis kept walking, aiming for a side chamber, and did not turn her head when she addressed the Kissai Steward’s threat.

“We are Sith, those who crave power above all else,” said Reliquiis. “We are all trespassers here.”

Reliquiis passed into a side-chamber and kept going, she could feel the other in her trapped within the Sith Amulet was pulling her towards the upper levels.

Varr Ad Din spat a curse under his breath and turned to one of the Battle Droids. “Inform Darth Arcanix that an unidentified Sith has entered the Citadel and deliver the holorecords from the Ibis Probes for her ladyship’s review,” barked the Kissai Steward.

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TAGS: Kasir Dorran | Darth Arcanix ( Taeli Raaf )​

 

[Kasir Dorran]

Reliquiis | Taeli Raaf
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The storm was powerless to resist Kasir, so it parted before him, singing in submission, as though the winds were but sacred hymns. Each step taken across the ice, a verse recited. Snow lashed at the Sith's cloak, icy tendrils clutching onto the fabric.

And here, in the shadow of a citadel, the expanse stretched wide. But the Sangnir’s cruel gaze was a merciless scythe, and it was not white.. it was ash, drifting from a pyre that would burn until the end of time itself.

Ahead he saw the lone figure moving. Some Sith, powerful as they were, could make silence listened to. In that silence, he felt something older. That same intrigue simmered, a dangerous curiosity that he would not allow himself to indulge in too quickly. For predators did not rush; they strategized, they planned, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

This Sith was no exception.

Jagged and monolithic, spires were like teeth. To some, this was ruin, but for him, this was a carcass. An ancient beast whose bones still radiated hunger. He could feel the Dark here, thick, clinging, seeping into his lungs with every breath drawn. Intoxicating as it was oppressive.. and not entirely unfamiliar. After all, Ziost was one of the Holy Worlds.

That meant it was claimed by Kainite hands.

In this region, all worlds bore the mark of their dominion, and he hated them all the same.

As he drew ever closer, the man in the crimson robe materialized.. challenging the one he had been tracking. Words were a superfluous thing, for posture spoke volumes. A leash, a mouthpiece.. Kasir saw through that facade, understanding the man as nothing more than a shallow symbol.

And symbols, as he well knew, were meant to be shattered.

Thoughts were veiled behind the glint of fangs as he began to consider whether it was time to satisfy his thirst.

That drumbeat made them ache.

A name carried on the wind. Stretched.. distorted, but indeed clear enough. Arcanix.

Then he remembered Formos, as he remembered all of Wonosa, brothers and sisters dead as their home lay glassed beneath Arcanix’s will. Such recognition only stirred more hatred, and hatred was a steady flame. Kasir let it burn slow.

The journey continued; he did not trudge through the snow. He glided. Perhaps the steward thought himself harried by one intruder, blind to the truth that a second was already upon him. The suspicion, the droids.. all fixed upon a cloaked figure who dared to move past and into the Citadel's gut.

The phantom's shadow drew near, his gaze sliding over the crimson‑robed form. He did not slow, yet the words that slipped from pale lips carried the weight of a blade, each one slicing through the air.

“You keep the place well.. for a mausoleum. Your title means little to me. But I’ll remember your face.”

The approach was not loud, nor was it hidden. Sensors belonging to droids twitched, registering a second anomaly. The man’s head turned. He did not wait for a reply, already gone like smoke, and so the distance between him and the other Sith shrank. In the distance was their silhouette, every step only sharpening it.