WALLS OF KORRIBAN CITY
NEARBY ALLIES: [member="Sirella Valkner"], [member="Matsu Xiangu"], [member="Enyo Typhos"], [member="Darth Gallus"], [member="Darth Vashti"], [member="Darth Eversor"], [member="Vulkan"], [member="Silas of Ossus"], [member="Darth Praetorias"]
NEARBY ENEMIES: None
INCOMING ENEMIES: [member="Jericho"], [member="Syn"], [member="Suravi Teigra"]
Ahead, far in the distance, armies of the undead bogged down, taxed, exhausted Jedi defenders. That was their purpose, the hordes: to bring weakness by attrition, to birth overconfidence and then nibble it away. Line after defensive line protected Korriban City and the Sith Lords.
Behind him lay the city in question. A few pockets of pro-Jedi sentiment remained, some of them actively fighting but entirely outmatched. Korriban City's militia was largely on the side of the city itself, and many were retired Sith Empire troopers with long personal histories in this territory. Korriban had been Empress Desmius' capital during and after the Omni crisis damaged Dromund Kaas. From this planet, often from this city, Desmius and her closest associates -- Sirella Valkner, Kaine Zambrano, Voracitos, Tirdarius -- had conquered and dominated a significant fraction of the known galaxy. Their domain had reached from Tund to Aeten to Ossus. The wealth of ten thousand worlds had flowed here, and for all that Korriban was a backwater, you didn't just forget something like that. Not when that glory, that sheer success and unchallenged security and unflinching purpose, remained within living memory for every adult in residence.
Some of the dead who spoke to him -- he'd been a shade of Korriban just like them -- had known that glory firsthand. They whispered to him, and their whispers had value. He sent them out through the city, unseen, unheard, but felt: a bracing chill that reminded the people of the time when they'd been strong. When their little dustball had ruled more territory than the Silver Jedi had ever controlled, and control was a loose word. For all the monitoring stations and gun platforms and military scouting teams the Silvers deployed, restrictions that didn't lend themselves well to a Korribani mind, the Silvers had no stomach for grand strategy. No institutional will for anything but easy victories. That much, to Seren, was clear.
He looked up through the eyeslits of his black helmet and watched the sky. The spirits kept whispering. Right now, if his sources were accurate, a Silver landing force was making a troop deployment run through contested space, past [member="Darth Raxis"] and her flotilla. Ideally, [member="Darth Prazutis"] would be arriving iinsystem soon, but perhaps not soon enough to stop the landing. Perhaps enough troops would land that the Silvers could turn the tide against the armies that Valkner and Xiangu had unleashed. It was possible, though from Seren's perspective, enemy reinforcements would likely prove too little, too late.
Just like most of the other Silver movements in the Stygian Caldera.
Right now, by all accounts, a diplomatic mission at Ziost was monopolizing the attention of the Silvers and the people they'd summoned to help them in their moment of weakness. If his guess was right, more than half of the combined forces were busy watching a single small star destroyer in Ziost orbit. Elsewhere, Carnifex was crushing Commonwealth starships at Thule. Mon Calamari vessels had passed through this system and were pursuing Velok's flotilla, always two steps behind. Meanwhile, the Whiphid ripped the heart out of the Silvers' monitoring network and defensive station deployments: by this point, he should have put paid to about half of the total Silver positions in the Caldera. And while Ignus and Velok drew all the attention of allied forces within the Caldera, those forces weren't supporting the ground battle here on Korriban. A battle which had proceeded for some time with real success.
Meanwhile, probes in the Malachor system indicated no real traffic. The recent, massive Jedi presence there appeared to be holed up, accomplishing nothing, waiting for an attack that might never come -- while the Sith made it impossible to hold the Caldera. And demagogues were leading unchallenged movements on Elom, and recon ships were loose in the Caldera, and all sorts of lesser successes were at play.
They had to know, the Silver leaders. They had to know that, win or lose, the Sith would contest any further incursion into their historic worlds. They could keep their distance for a while, until the Sith turned their attention elsewhere, or they could suffer humiliating defeats and win bloody, pyrrhic, dispiriting victories. Victory could taste as bitter as defeat, after all.
Ideally, the Jedi were tasting something bitter right now and mistaking it for victory. On a strategic level, they'd already lost.
