Public The Graveyard Planet

[Darth Rath]

The planet of Boz Pity was one great Graveyard. There sentients of all sorts brought their deceased to bury.

Most striking of all was the giant skulls of the Gargantelles that coukd be found about the planet. Many locals turned the akulls into homes, using the great eye sockets as windows, and open mouth as a door.

It was upon this grave scene Darth Rath had made his residence. In the North he had forged a fortress from the great spinal columns of the Giants who had stood twenty meters tall, giving him ample materials to manipulate along with deposits of metal and wood. The Fortress of Phantoms was where he rested, inside a sarcophagus of white bone.

On occasion pallbearers drunk from their grief would venture into the forsaken domain and awaken the Wraith who would remind them why this planet was a graveyard.

Five funerary lads in their adolescence approached the Lair of the Phantom Master. They made jests as they came towards the gnarled gates of bone that opened at their approach. Inside was darkness, save for some torches of emerald flame, a sky light that fell on the coffin of ivory. The two intoxicated young men placed their hands on the lid and tries to open it to no avail and decided as they laughed to look around some more. As they stepped away a ghastly green fog poured out of the sarcophagus and began to move about the floor as the lads went down sowm stone steps to a lower level, one pallbearer’s legs was covered in the fog and suddenly it rose up around him and he disappeared letting out a cry that none of his friends would hear.

In dungeons below they waded in flooded waters to the ankle, each of them snickering as they carried on.

On of them spoke,

“This place is trippy..”

Another replied,

“You be tripp’in! Hey Carth! Yous got some Spice?”

Carth did not respond. Which did not alarm the remaining three who opening a cell found a skeleton freshly painted in blood that dripped. On the table was skin laid out like dough, which one of the Mourners took up and looked at.

“What dis?”

The Lead Ruffian took hold of it and examined it.

“Woah! You shed a lot Darren!”

Darren laughed,
“I told you I have a skin condition! Hahaha!”

There was a sound of something stirring in a nearby cell, where the three drunk dirgemen went snd saw a sight that made them trip. A figure without skin writhing on the floor, moaning, it looked up at them and shrieked making the young lads flee when theu met the pale green fog at the stairs.

“What the hell is that?!”

They backed away from the smoke of emerald hue as a figure emerged in it. It was draped in black robes and a steel helm with spike at the top. Its eyes hollow sockets like in a warrior mask. Ot had matching hauntlets with spiked finger tips which reached out at the nearest tressspasser’s face, the points grabbing hus chin like a crown of arrow tips. The Young Man shivered as the fog began to surrounded him and his two friends, and they all began to scream.

 

[Maestus]

Boz Pity.

Why not? Chances are, she would find enough samples here to last here a while. Gargantelles were her primary target. Given the planet's nickname as The Graveyard Planet, idle thoughts flit across her mind.

What, or actually, who else was buried here? Her mind considered nearby systems, their sentient species. She approached a crossroads with her research. Frustrated by slow progress, she'd left Crakull in search of...

What?

Truth be told, she wasn't sure exactly what she thought she'd find. Hell, she wasn't even sure what she was searching for at the moment. She hadn't told Darth Sorn she was leaving, either.

She was highly irritable lately. Frustrated by painfully slow progress in her labs...Coupled with the dreams...

She stood on Exegol. Or rather, what remained. The chunk she stood on was from underground. Yet it moved. She had the distinct sensation of being lowered, as one gets when descending on turbo lift.

All around her, smoke and dust clouded her physical senses. With a growl of irritation, she narrowed her black eyes at the smog playing havoc with her senses.

She stretched out in the Dark Side of the Force. She felt it lick her skin and caress her face. Like a pup, eager to please its mistress.

That's when the sensation would begin. Time paused. For how long, anyone's guess. Then the whisper started. A single word, repeated in various tones, languages. Some she'd never heard before, many long dead and ceased to be spoken millenia ago. But no matter how she heard it, she knew exactly what the word was...

Rebirth

Without fail, every time she slept, she had the same dream. It had begun recently, without prelude. And every time, as soon as she figured out the word in her dream, she was flung violently awake.

Without fail, her focus was off. Well skilled in her talents for sensing and seeing, each time she meditated, she noted how her body responded. Since she'd begun having the dream, her pulse was faster than usual. Her heart began beating hard and fast. Was she anxious? Excited? No, this was something else.

Conflict was settling in on the Lethan Twi'lek. The dream....The Word...Something dormant was being awoken in the Sith Lord.

She shook her head violently, Lekku swinging and writhe in protest to such indignity. The dream, and the unsettling feelings is elicited, temporarily banished from thought.

Maestus stood on the bridge of her flagship, the Praedo Mundis as it sat in orbit of Boz Pity. She gave a brief nod to her CO, which was returned in silence. The CO then moved to the center of the bridge, facing the planet below.

Maestus turned on her heel and stalked from the bridge. Though she said not a word, such was the unease roiling off the Twi'lek, not a single member of her crew dared even to breath until the blast doors hissed shut behind her.

Falling in step behind her came two of her Chosen. The Commander(who I really should name lol) stepped in perfect unison with his Mistress, 3 paces behind and directly on her 6. Behind the Commander, his own protegè.

Both were seemingly human. Commander was tall, lithe with braided black hair. His distinguishing garb was a Beskar pauldron on his left shoulder. It had been carved with runes, and glowed a faint orange.

Otherwise, both teacher and student wear similarly dressed. Except, the student was a female and so had a leather chestpiece that she had woven strips of beskar throughout. Both carried Beskar pikes in their right hands.

Maestus stormed through her ship towards the hangar where she kept her personal shuttle and other toys. As she seethed through the corridors and halls, all crew aboard scattered before her. It was like Moses parted the Red Sea and all the fishies were getting the hell outta dodge.

Stepping into the hangar bay was a welcome relief. The scents and sounds of her ship. Her people. All served as potent distractions for the churning rage within.

Her shuttle was prepped and ready for her. As one metallic bootheel hit the durasteel ramp, a naked hand waved off her Chosen. She would be going alone. She had decisions to make. Last thing she cared for were more distractions.

Once within, she headed for the cockpit. She allowed herself a deep inhale to center. With a feral grin playing at her lips, she crossed her arms as she stood in the shuttle cockpit staring out at the hangar. With confidence honed by decades of practice, the shuttle lifted up, manuevered towards the bay and was gone in an instant.

Each time was like the first time. The rush of adrenaline when she brought the shuttle out without lifting so much as a finger. She had gone through many, many shuttles during her years of practice. And more than 1 near death experience. Thankfully, Darth Sorn
Was an excellent scientist and put her back together more than once.

Thankfully, she was at least a decade since the last incident. Now, she and the shuttle were one. Her control of her ship was absolute.

She plotted her descent course and headed for the surface. Who knew what she would find on The Graveyard Planet?

And somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she wonders about pie...

 

[Darth Rath]

The Five Lads awoke, each of them chained to Tu’kata hound gargoyles (pic 2) hanging over a pit (pic 1). The Pentapallbearers dangled and called out to each other:

“Oh my god! What is happening!”

“I remember a fog!”

“Darren are you alright?”

“Yes, but don’t look down!”

“I recall something.. it touched my face!”

Standing at the Pit opening was the Figure in black robes with his helm with a point. The Five Mournful Young Men kept debating what was happening, fear began to sieze them. They were unware of The Phantom above, who now intrudees into their minds as they had his fortress:

“This is an oubliette. A place of forgetting. There are no walls, no cells, only air and the threat of impending gravity. Your chains are the delay, though if not cut asunder you will die of dangling deprived of necessities. The choice is simple, hang or bid me cut your shackles. I leave you to decide.”

This was a chance to study, to observe human behavior. The Phantom Lord watched as they displayed quizzical expressions as they talked amongst one another,

“We should stay put. We live if we stay put.”

“We’ll die of thirst!”

“I say cut us loose and we take the chance, maybe we can land on something or scale the wall..”

“There is no wall to scale you idiot!”

“What if we try to climb up.”

“First he’d have to cut our chains and we fall.”

“Yes, but he did not say we couldn’t hold on to these statues.”

Darth Rath paid attention to the one who was showing improvisational skills. Who now was trying to sway the rest.

“Listen to me, if he cuts our chains we can attempt to climb up. It is the only option he did not suggest and could save our lives!”

“I’d rather hang here.”

“I’m gonna jump.”

“Carth has a point. We should climb!”

“Yeah!”

“I am telling you this will work!”

The voice of Phantom filled their minds.

“Your decision..”

The Leader said,
“Cut our chains!”

Lord Rath replied,

“So be it.”

Taking his crossguard lightsaber hilt, The Phantom Knight stepped out on the elongated gargoyle and cut the chain saying, “My chains are broken, The Force will free me.”

He did this to each, they now all hung from their arms, some slipping. Carth climbed up, using his legs to wrap around the Hound of Stone, and hoisted himself up when he faced Lord Rath who held his crackling emerald saber.

“May I help my friends?”

Rath deactivated his blade and gestured with his clawed hand. Carth helped Darten up, and then moved to another, until now only one struggled to hang on.

“Help! I am gonna fall!”

Carth shouted,
“Marv hold on! Guys form a chain.”

The Four became a rope of bodies and grabbee the last of their company who had just slipped.

“I’ve gotcha you! Grab on to me.”

They were now all above and safe. The Phantom smacked his metal gauntlet hands together.

“I am impressed. Most give into despair, and languish there for weeks, others choose to fall.”

Carth stood in front of his friends.

“I will fight you if you come near them again!”

Darth Rath nodded his helm,
“Such spirit. Your reward is your freedom.”

The Five Lads began to sigh in relief ans laugh. When Darth Rath grabbed Carth by the neck with his claws and held him over the pit,
“However, I never leave here without dropping something!”

He let go of Carth who fell, throwing his hands in air as if seimming in water, and his friends screamed as he began to descend into abyss and disappeared. The Four let out a battle cry as they charged The Phantom Lord who dodged their punches with ease, he swept away like wind through their fingers, and tapped them with his index claw on the back, noggin, or back of the head. They all stumbled over each other as the collided and now panted and looked at Darth Rath with wet eyes. A curosity, these fleshlings oozed liquid when they felt for one another, something foreign to the Spectra in metal harness. It was then as they embraced one another as mourners that rising from the oit was Carth unharmed and laid beside them.

“Carth!” they all shouted and placed their arms around him.

Darth Rath approached them, they looked at him with pause.
“I never leave without dropping something..”

Carth smirked, “which you did.”

Darth Rath nodded,
“Which I did.”

The Leader of Pallbearers understood, this Phantom was teaching them a lesson. And now he kept his word and let them be heading back to his castle, though Carth watched him intently, as if curiosity had gripped him as well.

TAG: Maestus

 

[Darth Rath]

Mercy, that was how his actions would be framed by the naive. Lord Rath had spared the youths because he saw potential. Many Sith preferred to show strength through massacre and mean spirited acts to prove they had dominion over others. In reality it was a insecurity, the painted everything in blood to blindfold themselves to the fact they were stil captives to their fear, which whispered in their ear.

The Spectral Knight made his way back to his Fortress, his gate was erratic and yet to the keen eye a sign of his elemental nature. His dark steps pusled in the earth below, rocks levitating around his spiked plate boots. When he heard footsteps of another kind. Even the slightest soft movement, a leaf moving on a branch, or some pebbles shifting he could hear when he turned in his wraith mask to see who had begun to approach him.

 

[Maestus]

As she stepped from her shuttle, her boots crunched the ground beneath. Fire-rimmed eyes scanned the landscape slowly. Her first time to a new planet, and there was no purer memory than the very first.

Understandably, her attention was instantly snares by the gigantic skulls everywhere. Gargantelles were massive yes. But to see a skull with one's own eyes...

She stepped carefully as she weaved her way through possible funerary piles towards the nearest hulking skull. Gargantelles were a species she'd never had the privilege of seeing for herself. Sadly, she had to content herself with the bones left behind. She was confident even they would yield new information to her

What was that?

She tilted her head slightly, thinking the faint breeze carried a voice. More than 1 perhaps? She was under no illusions she was alone. She had felt a presence in the Force on her descent. She paid it little mind on the trip to the surface. Now that she was here, she stretched her mastery of the Dark Side in all directions. Allowing her senses to unroll over the surface, spreading from her epi-center and radiating outwards.

The spark within Darth Rath was vivid. Interesting. It beckoned like a flame.

She was no moth, however. She did turn and regard the direction she felt Rath. The pallbearers were given nothing more than passing notice.

A smirk tickled the corners of her lips. From the corner of her eye, she caught the briefest flash of a tail as its owner dove over the bottom jaw of a Gargantelle skull and disappeared.

Ah yes. Her reason for coming. Better get to it.

Raising one hand, a finger twitched. Soon, carts, crates and a box of accessories began to glide from the shuttle. She arranged them all nearby, and took a datapad from a box. A few taps of the screen. Flicks of her fingers to find what she wanted.

She then proceeded to harvest small bone fragments. She made no effort to disturb anything that look overtly like a grave. She did have some ethics, it seemed. Fluid as they were.

She made her way to various bones and skulls. She took scrapings and samples from each, as well as complete holorecordings to catalog it all.

She lost track of time. It could have been an hour or a week since she started. Studying the heaps of of samples she'd collected, a stray thought about maximum load capacity for her shuttle crossed her mind. Followed quickly by the realization she didn't have anymore containers left.

Well! That settled that. She would study and analyze what she had. When she returned, she would be better equipped.

This was like a kid in a candy store. So many delicious options to choose from. And her, limited by space. A soft chuckle slipped out.

Thank the Force, loading the shuttle was quite quick and easy. Shutting the ramp, she turned to the direction of Darth Rath .

She stepped off towards his direction. In the distance, the edges of his fortress began to coalesce from mere shadow into solid form. The darkness radiated from it. Perhaps this trip would bear fruit in more than one way.

And onwards she went...

Tag: Darth Rath