The Aksifas

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

• Image Source: Me
• Canon Link: N/A
• Primary Source: N/A

CORPORATION INFORMATION

• Corporation Name: The Aksifas ('golden' in an old Zuguruk dialect), colloquially the Golden Sith
• Headquarters: The Pomojema
• Locations: Jurgoran Forge (Cathay), the Dark Forge of Aza'zoth (location concealed), scattered monoliths (see below)
• Operations: Sith alchemy
• Parent Corporation: N/A
• Subsidiaries: N/A

DESCRIPTION
864 ABY
The Aksifas, the 'Golden Sith,' were the Darksiders who follow Ashin Varanin. A significant part of their work was a comprehensive alchemical operation capable of crafting top-tier products in quantity.

Like their master, the Aksifas tended to prioritize materials alchemy over the biological kind. The Sith/Ren blacksmith Azel Moran and his associates contributed significantly to the Aksifas' materials alchemy skills. Moran, a hulking human male, led the Aksifas' alchemical operations. The Aksifas made blades, amulets, and other creations for private buyers. Some of their work also wound up in the Warlords of the Sith and the Lords of the Sith.

902 ABY
By this point, the Aksifas numbered several dozen skilled materials alchemists. They had been taking commissions for almost four decades.

• Azel Moran, elderly but unchallenged as a weaponsmith, had taken only the most interesting personal commissions for himself and his core team. Examples included the Krath Council stilettos, the Dartflower sniper lanvaroks, Mercy's cleaver, the Krath Omensight masks, the Lineage Razors, the Little Sisters, and the Hungry Acolytes.
• Around the turn of the century, Ashin Varanin commissioned Moran and his team to iterate a wide range of potential approaches to immortality. This extensive and fast-moving project drew on the Pomojema's substantial reserves of tithed power and also utilized the Dark Forge of Aza'zoth. One result was the Transpositive Rings.
• Impressed by (and deeply envious of) the prolific ship-scale magitechnical work of Darth Prazutis , many Aksifas began considering starship-scale innovations.

The Aksifas had established unstaffed, small, black-and-gold, pyramidal monoliths on various worlds, typically in slums. The first were on Trevel'ka.

• Individuals would enter, often with items they had created. They would experience weakness and severe cold, and roughly one in a thousand entrants would emerge Force-sensitive.
• The Aksifas monolith sites' worthiness criteria focused on distance traveled — obstacles overcome and resilience — as well as attention to detail and crafting aptitude regardless of medium.
• The portion of life energy drained from entrants allowed these sites to endure indefinitely.
• The sites supported the Aksifas' long-term sustainability in three ways: reputation leading to interesting and prestigious commissions; a pool from which high-potential recruits could be cultivated; and a permanent flow of useful Force energy from around the galaxy. Each individual made Force-sensitive was around nine-tenths as strong as they could have been, with the last tenth being an unobtrusive tax of sorts, a quiet and passive Force drain effect. Anyone with the skill of a Sith Lord could remove the tax, preventing long-term resentment. Ashin, on witnessing the monolith sites in action, is known to have remarked incredulously that the Aksifas had invented student loans.

RATIONALE
864 ABY
Between the Sith Empire, the Vagrant Fleet, the Lords of the Fringe, and the Ke'dem, any number of Sith and fringe Force users had followed Ashin Varanin over the decades. Many of them had been alchemists. These days, in service to Ashin's goal of resurrecting Spencer Varanin, they'd come together to combine resources and build useful connections. Those purposes were core to the Aksifas.

902 ABY
Almost four decades since the rescue and resurrection of Spencer Varanin, the Aksifas were a well-established and coherent order of professional Sith-aligned materials alchemists. They had a major stake in the Pomojema, the faction-agnostic Dark Side academy of higher learning, but as a matter of pragmatism most Aksifas members - and, indeed, most aboard the Pomojema - were affiliated with the Sith Order in some way. They still had Ashin Varanin as their patron, but had almost always been led by Lord Moran as a matter of course.