The Aberration

[Darth Carnifex]

​

Seat of the Neverborn
Somewhere in the Unknown Regions

No one wants to die, but it is near to impossible to escape such inevitability.

Medicine has prolonged life far beyond what was considered the average lifespan centuries ago while cybernetics could halt the aging process in specific areas of the body, but ultimately there was no way to escape that grim eventuality.

The Sith had long been fascinated, borderline obsessed, with the prospect of prolonging one's life indefinitely so that their reign could continue without end over many eons. Some resorted to using their powers to siphon the vitality of others to repair their body and reverse the aging process, but they soon became addicted to their hunger and ended up consuming themselves. Others stored their consciousness in their holograms or other items of power, waiting for the day some unsuspecting tomb raider would stumble across their burial mound and be possessed by an echo of their long eroded power.

Others resolved to using both science and magic to achieve immortality, fashioning clone bodies to transfer their essence into once their current body had been spent. It was this method that the Dark Lord Carnifex had resorted to once he had discovered a means for his consciousness to return from the blasted realms of Chaos. Dozens of genetically identical clones were housed in a facility onboard a micro-planet hurtling through the vastness of the Unknown Regions, its location known only to Carnifex at any given time.

He often didn't visit the Seat of the Neverborn for reasons other than his own rebirth, but he had acquired some interesting genetic material that, after many hours of experimentation and analysis, would improve upon the design of his body in every clone that was created here on out.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

He walked along the rows of incubators, eerily blue light bathing him as he passed each one.

Behind the glass his own face, tranquil and still, watched his behind closed eyelids as he thundered on by. Maybe long ago he would have felt some discomfort seeing so many empty shells wearing his face behind cold callous glass, but he had since moved beyond such trivial feelings. Behind him were several genetic technicians maneuvering a hover-cart filled with various vials and glass containers housing grotesque lumps of silver-scarred flesh. The technicians were as grim-faced as the Sith Lord who led them through the facility, their eyes occasionally trailing off to gander at the wondrous equipment that lines the walls of the chamber and the various other contraptions that hung from the ceiling or protruded from panels in the floor.

At the end of a chamber was an empty metal gurney above which suspended a multi-limbed apparatus, each of its retracted metal limbs armed with various medical equipment like syringes, laser cauterizers, bone-saws, scissors, and even a hemodialysis pump.

The technicians wheeled the cart up next to the gurney and began to unpack all of its contents onto an empty metal table nearby, taking great care to not drop or disturb any of the items. Carnifex watched them work, and when they were finished he commanded them with his booming voice: "Wake up C-03 and bring him here, we'll start the first round of tests immediately."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

The clones floating idyllically in the gestation pods had no consciousness of their own, they were not made to be separate entities from their creator. They possessed no higher brain function but were capable of rudimentary motor skills.

When the technicians opened the pod the first thing the clone did was nearly collapse flat on its face, its verdant eyes blank and its face expressionless. It made no noise as the technicians roughly took hold of its arms and legs and drug it across the hard metal floor to the gurney. Carnifex himself helped lift the body up and onto the gurney while the technicians secured the binding around its limbs. Again, many would feel strange, even disgusted, to see themselves strung up in such a state as this, but Carnifex felt nothing as his eyes fell upon his doppleganger.

A locked contained was presented to the Dark Lord, who took it from the technician's hand and unlocked its contents by twisting the magnetically sealed cap. Inside was a small amorphous mass of seething darkness that undulated in the presence of life, yet as the Dark Lord took it from its confinement it seemed to shrink in what could be considered fear. Carnifex took it and placed it against the chest of his clone, and once the darkness touched the clone's skin it quickly spread out across to cover him completely. It seeped into his pores, the blackness shrinking away until every scrap of it had melded with the clone's body whose body began to involuntarily spasm as the corruption infected every fiber of his being down to his very atoms.

Then, unexpectedly, the flesh sloshed from the clone's bones as his body began to decay at an exorbitant rate. The technicians backed up in surprise and horror, but the Dark Lord merely squinted in annoyance at this abject failure. "The compound will need to be adjusted, apparently. Remove C-03's remains from the gurney and prep C-04 for testing."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

At the end of the day the Dark Lord blew through many of his spare clone bodies in the pursuit of success, all of them succumbing to horrific demises only dreamt of in the nightmares of madmen.

But at last he achieved the outcome he desired, with the clone designated as C-23 finally successfully bonding with the genetic compound. His molecular structure normalized shortly after the initial process and did not further mutate or break apart after a sizable waiting period. More tests were run on the clone body to determine if it would last the rigors of the Dark Lord's routine, and while there would always be some unknown variables the simulations that they did run proved that not only would this body perform as good as the current one he inhabited, it would perform exponentially better and last far longer than any previous host.

It was then decided that any remaining clone bodies were to be scrapped and a new template created combining the original sample and the successfully blended genetics. Soon enough a whole new batch rolled out from the cloning chambers several more levels down, each one an exact replica of the Dark Lord albeit clean shaven in both face and scalp. His musculature was perfectly replicated alongside every other bodily dimension he possessed for he desired no deviation in what he considered to be his own version of perfection.

They all even possessed the Sith tattoos that adorned his torso and the Sith symbol that had many years ago been inked into his forehead.