Private The Anguished Fallen

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

A long range recovery bulk freighter disgorged a series of shuttles down to the surface of Tython. Aboard one such shuttle, clad in simple fur of some slaughtered beast, stood Gerra.

The shuttles landed in a consecrated valley, saturated with the Dark Side, though it had long since fallen into ruin. Seventy years ago, this Valley of Fire had seen a group of his people raised into the heights of the mighty One Sith empire.

As he strode off the shuttle his boots crunched into the black, volcanic soil and he beheld the wonders his people had wrought. A citadel and a tower, high reaching. Fallen into ruin now and abandoned. Purged by the Jedi of the Alliance many years ago.

He breathed deeply of the air, tasted the stench of sulfur, and shook his head. They had climbed so high, yet failed in their principle purpose: to find their lost homeworld. Perhaps, however, they had gained some insights he might still uncover.

Leaving behind his guards to protect the shuttles, the warlord ventured into the abandoned citadel alone. He feared not the shades of the past, nor the hallowed ground on which his boots now tread. All empire fell in time.

Eloise Dinn

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Eloise had never been to Tython, but the world had played a unique role in her history. It was on this planet where her mother had died - the first time - having been hit by a Mawite bomb. For many years, Eloise had clung to what she had thought was an act of heroic self-sacrifice, mythologizing her mother's actions. It was the last time Ishani Dinn ever fought for the good guys, the last time she tried to do the right thing.

That is, until she realized that her mother was never a hero. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her service within the Galactic Alliance had been as a political puppet, the artificially "elected" representative of her homeworld - itself only a tainted memory now, the narrative lens through which Eloise had once seen it shattered. Beautiful, rustic Chaldea had been ruled by a totalitarian theocracy; her loving grandparents were part of the despotic regime. Mom was always tied up in some form of zealotry... she simply switched roles, from worshiper to the worshiped.

The ruins of a citadel loomed over the spot where the bomb had hit, the crater long since filled. New scars pitted the landscape, the result of the most recent conquest and debauchery by the Sith and Imperials. Eloise had snuck aboard a shuttle, disguised as one of them, just to stand in the place where it happened and let the last of the lies unravel.

Hasuras Na-Gerra​

 

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

Surely did the giant stride it into the ruins of the citadel. His mighty figure fully eight feet of fashioned sinew looked but passing small, dwarfed by the ruins which climbed so high into an occluded sky.

At last he came to the base of that great tower and training back his neck beheld it in all its fallen slender. He could feel the shadows of the builders, lingering ghosts of those who once dwell here. It seemed strange to him that his people nomadic wanderers should at last have come here.

This was not their home world. This was not the cradle of the goddess and yet here is where they had chosen to build such wonders. Passing strange, he thought as he lingered there at the base of the tower. His eyes tracked down from the tower to stare at his own two hands.

He wondered what they might fashion. What task he might set them to beyond fashioning, blade or shield or instrument war.

Suddenly, he felt a presence nearer him. He frowned. This one was unfamiliar to him.

Eloise Dinn

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Eloise sensed a stranger approaching. Rather than continue to sit out in the open, she took cover behind a fallen pillar, waiting to see who it was.

A hulking behemoth of a man stepped into view. She watched as he wandered around, taking in the view of the ruined spire, when he seemed to become aware of her presence, turning his head to look straight at her. She didn't know who he was or what his intentions might be, but she wasn't taking any chances.

"Don't come any closer," she called out in warning, hand going to the lightsaber hanging from her belt. "I don't want any trouble."

Hasuras Na-Gerra​

 

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

Eyes the pallor of molten ore moved from the pale features of this interloper to the hand staying toward her belt. A hilt hung there, the unmistakable weapon of most Jedi and many Sith. Gerra had never found much appeal in it, nor taken the time to study those forms of combat, preferring the more brutal applications of the Force and armament fashioned by his own two hands.

A frown knit his brow.

“And yet your hand so readily drifts to a weapon,” he remarked simply, his voice as deep as the tectonic rumbling of shifting earth.

His own hands remained where they were at his sides and made no move toward the only weapon he carried, which in truth resembled no more than a smith’s hammer - though it gleamed as of bronze.

“Who are you, to issue such threats in this valley.”

The valley of his people.

Eloise Dinn

 

[Eloise Dinn]

"My mother died here," she replied. Let him be sympathetic, if that meant he would leave her alone. "I came to pay my respects."

She began to inch away from the man, back in the direction she had come, her hand still on her weapon and her eyes tracking his every move.

Hasuras Na-Gerra​

 

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

“Is that so? Loss is a heavy burden. In life, we are warmed by the fires of their presence. In death, we carry their ashes with us.”

One booted foot stepped forward, grinding the obsidian soil beneath heel. Much blood had been spilled in this valley. His people’s, the Jedi, and like as not the many who had been sacrificed in burnt offerings in hopes that the goddess Vahl would bestow favor or insight upon them. Which, he wondered, had been this one’s mother? The girl was no crone and could not have been alive in the age of the One Sith - absent some alchemy, sorcery, or other working of the Force.

Still… many other battles had been fought on Tython. Not long ago, the warlord of that rump state in the Core, Solipsis, had fought and died here. Apparently, the death did not take.

He would know more of what became of the Vahla here once he could recover any records of the high priestess of this Ember, such as they might remain.

Curiosity etched the Vahla’s face, though the frown had not left.

“How did she perish?”

Eloise Dinn

 

[Eloise Dinn]

He offered a few sympathetic words. Her ploy seemed to have worked, but Eloise still didn't let her guard down. She was in Sith-occupied space, after all, and that meant anyone and everything could pose a danger to her. Least of all this guy.

"There was a battle here," she answered his question. "A bomb fell on this spot. She was killed in the blast."

Ishani Dinn had risen from the dead afterwards, but she wasn't about to regale this stranger with the convoluted story of her mother's many resurrections. Nor did she especially want to converse with him any longer than necessary, as she continued to move to a better position. One where she would have an easy escape.

"It happened when I was very young. I never really knew her." At least, not the version of her who had died on Tython. "I don't exactly have much to mourn. Apart from... what could have been, I guess."

Hasuras Na-Gerra​

 

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

The gene-warrior nodded, thoughts dwelling briefly on how he himself was knit from the womb vats aboard his father’s warship, and upon the relationship between parent and child.

“The paths of the Maybe are manifold and untrodden,” he said, “A distraction to the present.”

This was one reason among many for why the technique of Shatterpoint was so difficult to master. The number of futures and possibilities and relationships seemed endless once the practitioner could See, but they would quickly be overwhelmed. Those, however, who knew the destiny they sought could break through the maze and seize the lines of fate.

“I can sense your unease. Who are you?”

Eloise Dinn

 

[Eloise Dinn]

“I can sense your unease. Who are you?”

"Should I trust a stranger I've only just met?" Let alone one even bigger than she was. She hesitated a moment, debating how to respond before replying, "Damara."

It was the name of the moon goddess worshiped by the natives of Zaathru. Her father and mother - the post-resurrection version Eloise was much more familiar with - had conquered the planet, letting the locals worship them as living incarnations of their gods. They had raised their younger children to believe they were other deities from the pantheon. Only Eloise and her twin were old enough to remember a time when they weren't gods. No one outside of Zaathru knew her by that name. It was safe.

She jerked her chin at him. "Who are you?"

Hasuras Na-Gerra​

 

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

The Vahla looked back in the direction of his shuttle. Who am I? A smith and a reaver. A conqueror and a prophet. To his people, a lord of war who made rich their holds with the plunder of petty kingdoms. To his enemies, a ravenous, insatiable pirate who had emerged from the Firefist Galaxy and birthed fire and death on a dozen worlds now.

The Sith Lords of the Order that had found their ships called themselves by various Darth names, but what was the purpose of such masks? Did Exar Kun style himself a Darth? Did Freedon Nadd, or Naga Sadow, or Marka Ragnos? No. They were Lords of the Sith, rulers full in their might. They had no need for secret names. Only those who hid in shadows in fear needed the title of Darth.

Gerra needed no such title.

“Hasuras na-Gerra,” he rumbled at last, “But you, Damara, may call me Gerra. Some would say you should trust neither stranger nor friend. I ask not for your trust, but simply to know why it is you have come here and who you are.”

The huge man loomed, but made no movement save to look over at her again, this girl with hair of violet.

“You are a Jedi. Or one of their kind. Don’t deny it, I can feel it,” he pronounced simply. “Did your mother die fighting for the Jedi in this place?”

Eloise Dinn