Private The Meaning of a Name

[Joycelyn Zambrano]

Joycelyn's finger tapped the glass idly as her mind travelled back to that day on Thule, and the memory was sharp as glass.

She had assaulted the Silver Jedi Order on Kashyyyk, and stormed the stairs of Silver Rest. She was so closed to the home of the Jedi that she could almost taste it, but she was thwarted only meters from their doors. The young soldier had realised that she needed more than raw strength and skill at arms to accomplish her goals. If she wanted to be the instrument of Vahl, and to leave a permanent mark on galactic history, then she would need to levy every advantage she had in that direction.

If she truly wanted to end the Jedi-

Then she needed to seize any opportunity to increase her power, be it in numbers or in wisdom in the Force. She had taken on the mantle her father had discarded: Darth Vornskr. Joycelyn could remember well how he was when he was Vornskr, when he was whole. She had been a young girl, tested in the Force by the masters of the One Sith and the Ember of Vahl. They had all looked at her with such expectations, and at the time she squandered it. It took defeat and desperation to show her the power of her blood and name. It took strife to make her worthy of any title at all.

Now she had carried his name into a new age and made it her own.

However, in the recent weeks, a complication had risen: Her father's second half - The original Darth Vornskr. He had original claim to the name, of course, but there could not be two. The first and second Vornskr could not live at the same time. She would not let that be a weakness in her claim to power.

So, she had sent him a request for a meeting, father to daughter.

Joycelyn put the glass of ruby liquid aside and leaned her elbows on her knees. Her yellow eyes went across the room, and settled deeply in Zaudraka, where it lay balanced on its stand of bones. The blade rested, sated by the blood of the Jedi and knowing that its wielder shared its convictions, yet responded watchfully to her attention.

She waited.

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

The past few weeks had been a deluge of enlightenment. He had been absent for a long fifteen years, his mind shut off from the affairs of the galaxy he had been born into as he consulted the ancient wisdom of the Sepulchral. His last memories of the galaxy of his birth were what he had learned from his other half, the one who called Himself Carnifex; an epitaph that He had earned thousand times over. He knew that Carnifex had launched a war against the Galactic Alliance, knew the seeds of Operation: Eclipse had been planted, cultivated, and ready to flourish.

But he had never seen those long-laid plans bear fruit.

But the mysteries he had unraveled were worth all that he had grown blind to. Mysteries that he would eagerly share with his other half, that butcher Carnifex. Already their bond grew stronger with each passing day, their mirrored brainwaves falling into perfect synchronicity. It was but a pale imitation of what true unification would bring, but the first steps had already been taken. Carnifex rejected the idea of reunification, He had always been the more independent of the two halves and valued his singular identity greatly. Vornskr could not blame Him, he was Him after all, and he was content to wait until Carnifex had finally decided to embrace their true reunion.

The Two Who Were One.

Of the things that Carnifex had filled Vornskr on was their daughter Joycelyn. Vornskr's last memories of Joycelyn were that of a petulant child that rejected her birthright to chase her own short-sighted ambitions, a disappointment that had filled him with great shame. Carnifex informed Vornskr that their daughter had grown beyond that manic rebelliousness and fully embraced the legacy of her bloodline, assuming the mantle of Darth Vornskr the Second with Carnifex's blessing (for Vornskr had been presumed dead, and Vornskr did not hold that against his other half) and even rose to the Imperial throne. Such a drastic change from the girl he had known to the woman that had emerged on the other end of his long absence.

So when Vornskr received a letter from Joycelyn to meet with him privately, there was no power in the galaxy that could prevent him from going to her. He dressed lightly, adopting the modern trappings of the Sith favored by his counterpart without the same dramatic flair. He carried with him no weapon, he was not the warrior Carnifex was nor did he desire to emulate his other half. His strengths were his and his alone for the time being until blessed unification elevated their power to unfathomable heights.

The door opened and Vornskr entered, striding confidently towards the sitting Joycelyn and respectfully inclining his torso towards her.

"Daughter," spoke the man who was her father and yet was also not. He smiled warmly at her, a stark departure from the unfeeling stoicism embodied by Carnifex in his mad bid for immortality. What was so striking about his demeanor was that it was entirely genuine, not some forced mask worn to hide the true extent of his sociopathic nature as Carnifex would do.

"We have quite a lot to discuss, don't we?"

Joycelyn Zambrano ​

 

[Joycelyn Zambrano]

"Father."

She gave a polite nod in response to his statement, concealing the wave of discomfort that welled up in her when she saw him smile. She had not seen him smile like that in so many years that she reflexively felt something was terribly wrong. Seizing control of her lizard brain, Joycelyn brushed the thoughts aside and focused.

She had been told he would be different.

"I understand you have been briefed, but I want you to truly understand what has changed since last you saw me." "-How I changed."

She set the glass aside and shifted in her chair, leaning slightly forward. She always felt more comfortable when on the offensive, so when she invaded the neutral space between them, it was easier for her to press on with the conversation. It was an tenacity she did not display as readily when Kaine was one.

Had she had this discussion with the other Kaine?

Joycelyn could remember making her declaration and filing the report of the assault, her crash, and what happened on Zavrosh, but she could not remember them actually talking about it. Not like this, anyhow.

"I..." She paused, looking for a word that fit. "I lost." It did not make her feel stronger. "On Kashyyyk, I was steps away from entering their temple. My enemies were beaten as I climbed their stairs, but I lost." Joycelyn bit the inside of her cheek as the old resentment stirred. Shame, yes, but also drive. She still had silver lines barely visible on her skin where her helmet had cracked open under the sniper-fire, and another on her hip where a padawan had stabbed through the gap of her legionnaire plate. They were but some of many wounds collected in her battles against the Jedi.

"At my lowest point, I was wounded, stranded, and surrounded by wild vornskrs who had eaten my crew." She looked from him to the sword on its stand. "Then, Vahl showed me the way."

"I walked away with two lessons." She held up two fingers spread, then pressed them together and turned her hand to hide one finger behind the other. "-Made one."

"I cannot accomplish my goals while denying who and what I am: I am Vahla, I am Zambrano, and I am Sith." She had practised the Sith doctrine prior to her defeat on Kashyyyk, but the lesson was never as clear before. "I could not shirk my potential in the Force, nor the duties of my bloodlines" -Plural, her Vahla side was never forgotten.

"And there was only one name that could encapsule it all."

She did not say the name, but her eyes locked with Kaine's.

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Vornskr stood silently, watching his daughter with his bright scarlet eyes. Those eyes lacked the same darkness found in his other half, in Carnifex's, but were nonetheless filled with the same intensity. He listened to his daughter's words, allowed them to enter him as his mind comprehended each syllable one after the other. Vornskr had not been there to witness his daughter's ascension firsthand, nor had he even known about it until very recently.

Yet even then, he felt pride.

"You have risen so far, my daughter, far beyond what I had thought. My other half was right to place such great faith in you." He spoke differently from his other half, who always spoke in terms of superior to subordinate. Vornskr instead framed this conversation for what it truly was, father to daughter. There was a greater degree of warmth in his tone of voice, something sorely lacking in the emotionless Carnifex. Yet, despite that, Joycelyn would have been able to sense the same capacity for brutality lurking within him just below the surface.

"And I know why you have called me here, I can see it in your eyes. In my absence, the name Vornskr had been equally absent. Though Carnifex and I are the same halves of one being, only He bestowed upon Himself a new name. I clung to the name we once held, the last vestiges of the man we were." He slowly approached Joycelyn, who had remained sitting but imposed herself on the neutral space between them; an obvious gesture of dominance that had been passed down from father to daughter.

"Vornskr, what a name it is. A hunter of the Force, a hunter of the Jedi. Once we were hunter, but my other half viewed us as a dog collared by a mad Dark Lord. I saw it differently, but I could not reconcile my beliefs with myself at that time."

Scarlet eyes searched Joycelyn's.

"Tell me what Vornskr the Second has become."

Joycelyn Zambrano ​

 

[Joycelyn Zambrano]

Joycelyn had tamed vornskrs, she knew how difficult such a task could be even when they were captured as pups. They were fierce, stubborn, and always hungry. Their Instinct of hunting through the Force made them incredibly willful, and only through the Force could they be properly tamed. She had heard, though only as a rumour, that the dogs that were collared by the dark lord had also torn him apart.

A collar did not a master make.

"When I had your armour remade for me, I made it a symbol of the end of the Jedi." "And with it, I lead our forces into battle. In my objectives, I were victorious, but the betrayal of the-" She stopped herself for a moment, as the rage made her hands ball into fists. "The traitors of the New Imperial Order disrupted our advance."

She stood up from her seat, standing barely taller than her father. She locked her eyes with his, they shone with intelligence, but also anger and ambition. She had Carnifex' will to dominate, but she was not as cold as he was.

"I saw the need to make the populace loyal, so I began to fund orphanages in our name, where the children of war are made to be our loyal armed forces later. I also funded militias, so those who hold our Empire will always face resistance. They are still active, according to the Frumentarii"

She knew these were not so much the things that mattered. There was a bantha in the room that had to be addressed.

"I failed as Empress because I was too concerned with maps, armies, supply lines and maintaining a stable empire even when it was crumbling beneath me." "I strayed from the path, until I drank from the spring."

She recalled the journey with Vanessa Vantai, a helpful guide, but little less.

"I drank from the font of power and the well of wisdom."

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Our mistake was trusting power to those who lack it," Vornskr reassured, "Imperials serve a temporary purpose, but they should have been expunged when we came to power. The Sith need none other to rule, they only need others to serve. I have guided my other half to see this truth, as I hope to guide you to enlightenment as well." This hardline stance was a sharp departure from the doctrine once championed by Darth Carnifex, that of Sith-Imperialism. His other half seemed to repudiate Imperials entirely, advocating their extermination after they had been used to achieve power.

"The weak are given their lives by the graces of the powerful, as it has always been. In times long past, the weak attributed their existence to gods and spirits. In the age of the Republic, the lives of the privileged were maintained by the law that sustained them. Palpatine's Empire guaranteed safety at the cost of freedom. They were the Old Gods, the powerful who guided galactic history and shaped civilization as they saw fit." Vornskr smiled warmly when Joycelyn told him that she had drunk from those mystical fonts of power deep within the Maw as if he wasn't surprised in the least.

"We are the New Gods, Joycelyn. The galaxy trembles at our touch. The path you and my other half walked down is gone, that door closed. But when one door closes, another opens, and a new path has been laid. It is one we have envisioned but never truly grasped until now, the path of the Mortis Gods. You know as well as I do that Carnifex had sought the power of the Mortis Gods since he had been Emperor, pulling on a string that he hadn't realized could only be grasped with the death of an Empire."

"Only through the Empire's death could we realize our destiny, Joycelyn. The Empire was a heavy chain, and it is broken. What will you do now, unfettered by that chain?"

Joycelyn Zambrano ​

 

[Joycelyn Zambrano]

She had honestly thought that he would have more of a reaction to her having consumed some of those fonts of power. Then again, perhaps she was so strange compared to his vision of her past self that anything she said would be taken at face value. And now he wanted to know what she had planned for the future.

She had to admit, on the surface, the plan was a little ridiculous.

"First." She paused. "The trans-hydian section."

a disk floated over from one of the nearby counters before sparking to life with a map of the galaxy. It was not a planned exposition of her idea, but she made the best of it. Putting the disk on the floor, she expanded the holographic map and moved them to the section of space between the Hydian Way and the Parlemian Trade Route.

"Currently not under any jurisdiction, but the Silver Jedi and the New Imperial Order are encroaching upon it." With her hands, she showed how the different factions were moving. "Meanwhile, the Bryn'adul are crumbling."

"I can't hold it, but I can drain it of resources and distract our enemies with asymmetrical warfare." She looked at Kaine again. "No empire, but a reign of terror in their back yard."

She was certain that, if she had so desired, she could have risen to the highest ranks of the Sepulchral's military command. She had the experience. She had the training, and the reserves. Yet, she had not made such a move. Instead, she had a different plan all together.

"Our enemies do not expect us to have disappeared overnight. They are looking for us."

A wry smile spread over her lips as she studied the map once more.

"So I will let them chase me, and when they think they have me."

Her hands quickly clapped together around Coruscant, which she had subtly moved close to herself when she zoomed in and moved the map.

"They are too far from home to defend it."

It was a beginning, a draft of a plan, but she believed it would work.

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Bold and advantageous, you are certainly your father's daughter." Vornskr studied the map then, bright scarlet eyes moving between the different names and lines with exquisite ease. He had been absent from the galaxy for so long that it took him a few moments to familiarize himself with the layout of the hyperlanes and the surrounding borderlands.

From what he had learned from his counterpart, the Empire had elevated the Trans-Hydian and Trans-Perlemian territory into a river of commerce and trade. At the Empire's height, millions of credits sped up and down the Hydian to both fill the coffers of the Empire's treasury and facilitate the movement of goods between the highly populated lifestreams and the rural sectors of the Empire. With that infrastructure destroyed in several places, the overall life quality of those living beyond the immediate purview of the Hydian had plummeted drastically.

A push was all that was needed to strand those sectors in abject poverty.

"Destroying the remaining infrastructure of the Hydian and the Parlemian will prove costly to any of our enemies seeking to use what we have built for their own benefit. It is crucial that you leave little value behind in your ventures, Joycelyn. To deny our enemies this boon will be of great importance to the Sith. The people living across these super-hyperroutes no longer matter as well, if you can depopulate them then do it."

Despite being different in many aspects from Carnifex, it was clear that Vornskr mirrored his counterpart's penchant for cruelty. To undertake this course of action would deprive hundreds of thousands, even millions, of their means of sustenance and survival. Condemning entire populations to death and starvation was viewed as necessary by the Dark Lords of the Sith, to place a greater burden on those that would scavenge the Empire's moldering corpse.

"Our enemy's haste to destroy us will serve us instead. How many resources will they expend hunting down every whisper? And with those recusant Mawites making a big show for the whole galaxy to see, our work is made all the easier."

Joycelyn Zambrano ​

 

[Joycelyn Zambrano]

"There is more." A wry smile spread over her lips, encouraged by her father's praise. These were not new thoughts, that much one could easily tell, but a layer underneath the plan of running as bait and hitting them at home. These were the more true ambitions that she did share as easily.

"Coruscant, Bastion, Kashyyyk, Bosph"

She reached out to the different planets, marking them with her fingers. A red ring marked each of the systems and oscillated slightly to keep the eyes drawn to them.

"Naboo, Exegol, Kalidan-Lysenia."

Some of these were allies of the Sith Empire prior to their exile. Yet, these worlds were marked with the same light. Though they were not the bitterest of enemies that the Sith had, Joycelyn showed that there were no true allies. In the end, all had to bow before the rightful heirs to the throne of the Force. A throne, it was becoming steadily more apparent, that she intended to have some say in.

"It's not just the centre of the galaxy, and not just the Jedi." She closed her hand, and the capitals flared red. "In time, all capitals shall burn."

"Infrastructure, gone." She focused intensely on the planets before her. "Leadership, disposed." Her eyes flared with ambition. "Chaos, anarchy, countless lives lost." "And in that chaos comes the rise of the Sith." "

It looked as though the fire already danced in Joycelyn's eyes as she looked at her father again. While she didn't have the coldness of Carnifex, it was possible that she had some of his madness. What she proposed was to let the galaxy burn. The touch of Vahl, a goddess of fire and destruction, was clear on Joycelyn. More clear, perhaps, than even Carnifex had truly seen.

Then again, was that not also Kaine's plan? To unseat the rulers of the Force and to remake the galaxy in the image of the sith?

"In the beginning, I have joined with a coalition of pirates. Their support will help lay the foundations of my plan." "As long as they get rich, they care little of what happens to the rest."

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

A predatory smile grew across Vornskr's features, a frightening visage.

He clasped his hands together and gave a short jovial laugh. "Truly magnificent, my daughter. You may not realize it, but you stand on the same path as your father. This galaxy is a mistake, it is weak, cancerous. The whole galaxy must be remade, it is what Carnifex and the Worm simultaneously desire. To correct the great error of the Celestials is the only true path forward, it will require beings of great will and resolve to see it done. You must not relent in your bloodthirst, make all the enemies of the Sith pay for standing in our way. These pirates you speak of will serve you well."

Vornskr's eyes gradually glowed brighter and brighter as he spoke, as if the very words were lending tremendous strength in the Dark Side. It was clear that this disparate half of the father Joycelyn knew was just as ambitious as He was, though his words were edged with a genuine fanaticism that was sorely lacking in the emotionless drone of her father.

"You are more than worthy of the name Vornskr, for I have grown beyond it in my long absence from the galaxy." He grew silent for a few moments, his smile slowly fading as he ruminated quietly before finally speaking again. "I have dwelled long on my identity, daughter. I have come to learn that they call your father the Despoiler, the Mandalorians whisper the name Dha'naast in fear and anger. Dark Destroyer. A fitting epitaph from the Butcher King's enemies, no doubt He finds some secret pleasure in it."

"I am no Destroyer, not like Carnifex anyways. But what is destruction... without creation." His smile returned, hungry as before. "I am Demiurge, my dearest daughter, come to create a new universe out of the ashes of the old."

Joycelyn Zambrano ​