First Reply To Steal from the Past

[Darth Dreer]

Darth Dreer hummed cheerily as he stepped, carefully picking his way over the occasional gnarled tree root or jagged stone.

Kohlma was oppressively ancient, the sort of place he'd normally quite like. Unfortunately, it was in Galactic Alliance territory, deeper than he'd normally dare go. Right on the border with the Mandalorians. He was here for something specific, else this lengthy trip would have never happened. There were no friends to be found here, he suspected. Not in Alliance space, and certainly not on Kohlma.

The fog was thick tonight, enough so to make a simple walk a hazard. The tattered, vaporous sheets obstructed the way forward, as if attempting to discourage him from going further. There was a certain darkness on Kohlma, even after all these centuries. He doubted anyone remembered. It was ancient history, lost history even, for one who didn't know where to look.

Long ago, something had been stamped out here by the Sith, something they feared as a rival. A sneer formed on Dreer's cracked lips. As with the old, so with the new. Sith were insecure creatures. Always plotting and planning and terrified that their power might be derailed. Power that teetered on so moveable a base was not power.

He supposed he wasn't much better than the rest. They just feared different things. To Dreer's mind, the only thing he was afraid of had already happened, and couldn't happen twice. Kohlma held no terror dark enough to even raise his heart rate. Not anymore.

A more superstitious mind might have been dissuaded. Might have conjured delusions about the ghosts of the unquiet dead defending their resting places. Might have started hearing the shuffling of rotting feet in the normal wind-whisper ambience of the overgrown, unnaturally-twisted trees. Kohlma was the perfect environment to create such fantasies, with its tomb-lined canyons. One couldn't design a more fertile ground for the dead to walk if one tried.

Pattern recognition was one of the key delineators between sapient and non-sapient life, but he knew well that such a gift could be turned painfully against the one who bore it. The mind might start detecting patterns where none existed, and invent fictional devils and ghouls to torment itself with. Dreer knew better. He'd become something of an artisan self-tormentor. The dead didn't hold a candle to the living when it came to that.

This section of the planet's endless cemetery procession was old. Old enough and remote enough to seemingly be forgotten. Dreer stopped to brush a tangle of dead vines from a partially-collapsed headstone. The ravaging claws of time and weather had long since rendered its owner anonymous. This marker was many, many times older than he was.

Good. This was the place. Obscure, old, and out of the way. Just as the texts had said.

It shouldn't take long to find what he was after. Dreer had seen a lot of cemeteries on a lot of different worlds. Some species had more bizarre or unconventional rites, but as a rule, burial seemed the most common.

The wealthy, of course, eventually died too, and those without private family burial grounds wound up right here next to the gormless masses. Naturally, their monuments were correspondingly larger and more ostentatious, striving for importance and exclusivity even as the clammy hands of the reaper hauled them away to irrelevance.

Dreer allowed himself a shake of his head. Such ridiculous priorities. To expend so much wealth on having a prettier, shinier marker than the next plot of worm food.

Dreer's knowledge of the local fauna was admittedly shaky, but he was led to believe that Kohlma's worms wouldn't care anymore about a corpse's bank account statements than those found elsewhere.

It didn't take him long to find a likely target. A mausoleum proper. No pauper's grave, this. It was a gaudy thing of elaborate carvings and faded gold filigree, likely larger inside than most living people's houses. A pair of massive metal double-doors barred entry, built right into the cliffside.

He strode to the door and placed a hand on it, concentrating. He searched for a lock with touch as much as anything else, feeling around for any subtle button or switch.

He'd spent almost his entire adult life doing just this, enough to know that every door had a weakness somewhere. Simply blasting it down with the Force was viable, but much less fun.

No, half of the allure was in the process. Darth Dreer found the musty tomb and the forgotten ruin more exhilarating than anything else that life had to offer.

It was a brief escape, if he tried hard enough. A momentary window back into the past, where everything made sense. In time, he'd defeat this lock the same as the rest, but he enjoyed the panacea while it lasted.

His musical humming increased in volume as his excitement grew, drifting through the cemetery. If the dead (or anything else) were walking tonight, they surely heard him...

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To be, or not to be."

Tags - Darth Dreer

The fog parted before her like a veil tugged by unseen fingers. Kohlma's air clung wet to the obsidian plates of her armor, sliding down the ridged lines as though even the planet's breath bent deferentially around her frame. Violet glimmers swam across her mirrored faceplate, six luminous eyes shifting with an insectile precision. Each subtle tilt of her helm refracted the dim starlight into fractured constellations, as though she herself were a galaxy staring back.

She had been walking for some time, though not without purpose. Kohlma had drawn her here—old world, old whispers, old ruins half-remembered by the kind of historians who preferred to write in riddles. It was not a place one stumbled into by accident. And yet, here, before a garish mausoleum whose filigree still clung to its stone like a parasite pretending to grandeur, she found another.

Her approach was not silent. She wished him to hear the deliberate rhythm of her boots striking broken stone. Predatory, yes, but never skulking. Kohlma was already alive with phantoms; she had no need to mimic them.

"Curious," she said at last, her voice a sonorous velvet that seemed to purr out from behind the blank helm. "A tomb in the fog, and someone humming as if he owned the dead."

She stopped a few paces from the mausoleum doors, head canting just slightly, as though she were dissecting the sight of him—his hand on the stone, the way the fog clung to his shoulders.

"You make yourself very at home here," Virelia continued, the words not accusation so much as observation. "Few walk Kohlma with such… cheer. Most who come are swallowed whole by the weight of its history. Yet you hum, as if the dead should dance to your tune."

A low ripple of laughter, licentious and amused, issued from her helm, quickly muffled by the rasp of the modulator. She let it linger, the kind of laugh that warmed and unsettled in equal measure.

 

[Darth Dreer]

Dreer didn't jump, look back, or seem entirely surprised to see her. His attention remained focused on the door, kneeling or standing to examine every inch of it.

Interlopers to his expeditions weren't unknown. In truth, he was surprised someone came to a place like Kohlma. A do-gooder, come to disrupt his work? Maybe. Dreer's brand of archaeology had little respect for the resting places of the deceased. Or maybe a rival? One who intended to steal what he was rightfully stealing?

He decided the best way forward was caution. Find out what manner of person had hunted him down amidst the tombstones.

"I'm not sure I'd call it cheer." He said finally. The voice that slithered out from behind his white mask was soft, cultured, almost unctuous, but tinged with an undeniable malice. "Unless cheer be relative. Nostalgia, maybe. For a time and place I never existed in."

"I've always been more at home among the dead than the living." He continued, finally unsheathing a short, chopping blade and sliding it into a small gap in the door's surface. "The dead are lucky. They exist in a perpetual past, where nothing changes and their names are enshrined in glory. As such, they won't miss a few mementos here and there, for those of us still living in the moment."

Despite his efforts, the door remained smugly closed. He sighed wearily, then turned around to study Darth Virelia . Armored, faceless, yet carrying herself with an utterly perfect confidence. His bilious yellow eyes narrowed within his own face-tomb. Careful. Best get her measure first.

"Or perhaps they will. Maybe your presence frightens them." Dreer opened his etheric senses, studying the stranger with more than his eyes and ears. They were a thing of darkness, without question. Darkness of a potent and terrifying magnitude. Such a lovely voice for one whose soul stained the very air around them, and from whom the very fog of Kohlma seemed to shrink away in terror.

"To what do I owe the pleasure? Coincidence, or do you intend to get in my way?"

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To be, or not to be."

Tags - Darth Dreer

The tomb's silence seemed to bend beneath her presence, the violet glimmer of her many-eyed helm reflecting the flicker of Dreer's blade against the unyielding seam of the door. She did not move at once—she lingered, letting the fog coil around her like incense, letting him hear her breath through the faint modulation of her mask, a reminder that she was alive in ways more deliberate than most mortals ever achieved.

When she did step closer, it was soundless, a predator's glide. Her taloned gauntlet brushed the filigreed surface of the mausoleum as though caressing a lover's spine, reverent yet possessive. The runes engraved across her armor pulsed with faint violet light, answering the tomb's old stillness with a heartbeat of their own.

"You mistake me for a warden," she said softly, the words carrying no edge of threat—only a cadence of inevitability. "But no—these bones hold no fear of me. If they stir at all, it is in recognition."

Her helm tilted slightly, insectile eyes gleaming, studying him in turn. His presence was unusual—too calm, too self-contained for the usual carrion feeders that haunted forgotten places. He had come prepared to trespass, not blunder. And though she could not see through him, the rhythm of his movements and his voice betrayed discipline, purpose. That intrigued her.

"You ask what pleasure you owe," she continued, her tone dipping into something almost indulgent. "Not coincidence. Never that. Kohlma yields nothing by accident. I came because this world remembers me, though it will not say how. Memory pulls us both here."

At last, she straightened to her full height, the cape at her back rippling with phantom movement as though alive. A faint hum from the crystalline node in her chest pulsed in tandem with her words.

"I am called Darth Virelia," she said, with no boast, no pomp—only the weight of certainty, like naming a law of nature. "I am a student of what the Sith buried and what they feared. Not to guard their secrets, but to remind them that nothing they entombed ever remains silent forever."

A pause—deliberate, respectful, the smallest bow of her head acknowledging his presence as one might a peer across an unspoken boundary.

"And you, wanderer among the dead? You move like one who belongs to them already. Tell me whose company I share at this door."

 

[Darth Dreer]

"An easy mistake to make." He responded, finally removing the blade from the door. With a flourish, it was returned to its place at his side.

"Places like this have many kinds of wardens. Not all are flesh and blood. Most also don't bother to use words, which is a point in your favor. I suppose that means I believe you."

He analyzed her in return. Calm, assured, most certainly dangerous. Contrary to the sleek, high-tech appearance of his visitor, Dreer's own trappings were decidedly weather-beaten. Simple brown leather clothing concealed most of his form, while a ragged, fog-moistened cloak topped off the whole bizarre figure. His appearance didn't speak of much in the way of wealth or an appreciation for comfort.

He decided it was best to be nice, for the moment. Dreer didn't typically appreciate interruptions to his work, no matter how mannerly or unusual they were. This Darth Virelia was both. Somehow he doubted that two Sith were here, in this same place on the same night, and something greater wasn't afoot. Better to play it cautious until it became apparent what his guest really wanted.

"Well then, Darth Virelia." He said, his tongue curling around the words like a constrictor snake. "I suppose that puts us here on similar purpose." He returned his attention to the barricade, sighed, and waved a hand. There was a clanking sound inside, and the doors swiveled open towards the two of them.

"It's no fun, but occasionally I find a door too stubborn for my mundane skills." He stepped inside, withdrew a frayed leatherbound notebook from a pouch at his side, and began studying the door's mechanisms. Here and there a note was taken, and he was silent for quite a few minutes.

Finally, he looked back up towards her, snapped the book shut, and tucked it back into his belt. "The Sith..." he began. "Have a history of burying what they fear, as you say. The powerful are too often insecure, and insecurity suffers no rivals. It is a... constant frustration for those of us with a historian's mind and heart. What alternate viewpoints might have thrived into the modern day, had they not been stamped out in their infancy. What might the galaxy look like now?"

"The Sith side of me sees it as nature taking its course. Weakness gets what weakness invites. My inner scholar, though, can barely contain his irritation."

Dreer stepped away from the threshold and back into the foggy air outside, letting out a mildly amused "hmph" at her last comment. Observant, if nothing else. "Not far off. I'd rather be here than wasting my time on a battlefield or in a boardroom. Darth Dreer, at your humble service." He spoke more like a scholar than a warrior, with something of the cadence of a lecturer without seeming to be aware of it. A near-constant tinge of nostalgia and longing hung on every word.

"Like I said, the dead are lucky, in their way. I'm in no hurry to join them just yet, but I can't deny that being a living piece of history as fascinating as all this..." a jerk of the head towards the door "Well. I can think of worse ends, is all I mean. A shame they do not always recognize their own as easily as you seem to."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To be, or not to be."

Tags - Darth Dreer

The doors sighed open, iron groaning against iron, and the stale breath of centuries spilled out to greet them. Dust rolled over her armor in faint waves, clinging before sliding off the obsidian plates as though reluctant to let go. Darth Virelia did not step forward immediately; she lingered at the threshold, savoring the first exhale of the tomb. For her, every forgotten vault was a confession waiting to be coaxed, and she preferred to let it speak before pressing her will upon it.

Her helm inclined toward him as he named himself, as though committing the syllables to memory. Darth Dreer. The cadence with which he spoke, the nostalgia soaked into his tone, marked him not as a grave robber, but as something rarer: one who sought to resurrect meaning from bones. That he couched his irritation at Sith insecurity in scholarly terms was… refreshing. Many who bore the title "Darth" could not string such thoughts together without drowning them in ego.

She drifted a single taloned hand along the seam of the open door, tracing where his will had unlocked what his blade could not. Sparks of violet energy arced faintly in the wake of her touch, runes across her chest pulsing in acknowledgment of the opening. When she spoke again, her voice carried an almost indulgent warmth.

"You call yourself scholar, and I see truth in it. The Sith call destruction inevitability, but I wonder if they ever realized how much knowledge their insecurities cost them. Every rival silenced is a shadow across the galaxy's memory. You are right to be irritated."

With that, she stepped inside at last, her cape trailing crimson shadow across the dust. The air was thicker here, heavy with the residue of ancient rites. Her pace was unhurried, a slow promenade deeper into the mausoleum's gloom.

"Let us test a theory, Darth Dreer," she said at length, voice echoing softly against the stone. "If what is buried here was feared, then it is not weakness we are about to exhume, but strength in a form the old Sith could not endure. That is worth a measure of risk, is it not?"

Her violet eyes glimmered faintly through the dark as she glanced back at him. "Walk with me, scholar. History does not reveal itself to those who linger outside."

 

[Darth Dreer]

Dreer was pleasantly surprised to have someone voice agreement with him. Pleasantly surprised, and perhaps a tad suspicious. There was, without question, something more going on here. Life seldom extended him any favors, and certainly not any allies.

"The Sith disregard for the philosophies of our enemies is not a surprising one, but it is a disappointing one. I find they often have much to teach us." What Dreer lacked in raw power, he had long attempted to make up for in breadth of knowledge. There were many strange, obscure arts known only to history's more fringe traditions, and he fancied he knew most of them.

"But, to admit that would be to admit that say, the Nightsisters or the Rhandites or whoever you please hold knowledge that Sith doctrine does not, and thus to admit that they hold power that Sith doctrine does not." He snickered, emitting a sound like a schoolboy who's left a tack on his instructor's chair. "Which of course will not do. Sith doctrine can either be supreme in all respects, or it can be wrong. At least that's how many see it. So, I bear the uneasy crown of the heretic, the dissenter, the apostate."

He considered Darth Virelia 's implicit self-invitation along on his little delve. Her use of "we" was subtle, but the intent was all too clear. Again, he found his eyes narrowing. Fine. He didn't survive up to now by displaying a lack of due caution. He'd see what Virelia's game was, one way or another.

"Quite so." He finally agreed, turning to follow and drawing his hood a little tighter around the edges of his mask. A few strands of gray-laced brown hair escaped out into the biting chill, before being tucked back out of the way. "And what strength it was, if the stories be true. Arts long-forgotten by most in our day. Arts I intend to pry forth, like I have so many others."

As usual, he immediately felt better once inside the tunnel. Quite the opposite of a claustrophobe, he always experienced a sense of increased control and safety in the galaxy's dark and forgotten places. Less avenues for possible attack. Less looking over one's shoulder.

"Of course, others will have been here over the centuries. I doubt that what I seek has been left untouched, but there's always something to be found, for the discerning delver."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To be, or not to be."

Tags - Darth Dreer

The air within the tomb pressed close, heavy with the musk of stone and centuries. Every sound was amplified—the scrape of Dreer's boots on the dust-laden floor, the soft exhalation of her armor's breath-like systems, the faint hum of the runes that pulsed in time with her steps. For Virelia, this was not confinement but intimacy; the narrowing of space sharpened focus, honed intent. She walked a half-pace ahead, the crimson-lined cape trailing shadow across the walls like a brush of flame.

His words amused her—not because they were foolish, but because they carried weight. Too many Sith cloaked their fear in bombast, hiding from the truth that others had touched mysteries they dared not. That Dreer admitted it freely marked him as rare. Her helm turned fractionally toward him, violet eyes gleaming in the dark.

"Heretic," she repeated, voice a purr shaped into respect. "The word is an honorific, though few understand why. Apostasy is not betrayal, but hunger. The Sith call it blasphemy when one admits another holds a shard of truth. Yet it is only through such shards that the whole can be glimpsed."

Her taloned gauntlet drifted along the carved walls as they descended. Reliefs had long ago faded into anonymity, but under her touch the glyphs shimmered faintly, as if recognizing that another darkness now sought to read them. She lingered at one, tracing the suggestion of a figure bent low beneath a descending crown. The image fractured, unfinished, a tale silenced before its end.

"Look closely, Dreer," she murmured, her tone softer now, intimate in the echoing corridor. "This is the nature of their fear. Not that rivals would defeat them, but that rivals might endure. Sith power consumes, but endurance resists consumption."

The path opened suddenly into a chamber vast and hollow, its ceiling vanishing into darkness. Stalactites drooled ancient water into a still pool at the center, and the reflections of their violet eyes shimmered across its surface.

Virelia advanced only far enough to let her presence claim the chamber. She turned her helm toward Dreer and inclined her head—an unspoken gesture: This place offers. Take the first step, scholar. Show me what you seek.

 

[Darth Dreer]

"I quite agree." He said smoothly. "My scholarly inclinations cannot be satisfied by but one path, one philosophy. To demand as much is to shackle me with dogma, and such shackles grow very tiresome, very quickly."

"Indeed, I have a theory that all of them share a common origin, somewhere in the primordial past." He stopped, dug that ratty notebook from his bag again, and made a few rough sketches of the symbols when she called attention to them. "Maybe I'll find that too, someday. The font from which all darkness flows."

Dreer stared out into the moldering cave. Here was where it had begun. All those centuries ago. "You seem to know a thing or two, so I'm sure you've divined why I came here. Nearly a full millenium ago now, there existed a... let's call them a society, on Kohlma. One part Dark Side-venerating cult, one part criminal organization. One that enslaved its members' minds with a combination of drugs and sorcery."

"The Sith had them eradicated, via the assassination of their leader, a Dark Jedi." He sidestepped a stalagmite that had grown across the passage as it opened up. The centuries had not been kind to these tunnels, and he wouldn't be surprised if some proved to be blocked or flooded. "Of course, history doesn't tell us what happened to their members, or their assets. All those drug-addled agents, assassins, moles. Thousands, by some counts. Maybe more. All unaccounted for."

"This, if my information is good, is what remains of their citadel. The door still being locked is a good sign. Perhaps this portion went undisturbed, and there might be something to learn from it, even after all this time."

"Which begs the question. Did you know all this already when you came here, or do you just make a habit of stalking boneyards at night, waiting for random homeless men to open doors for you?" His tone was darkly jesting, but in truth, he was still trying to figure his compatriot out. Darth Virelia was an unknown variable, and those historically didn't end well for him.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To be, or not to be."

Tags - Darth Dreer

Virelia listened as Dreer's words unfurled, their cadence steeped in memory and theory, and she found herself amused by the contrast. His cloak was frayed, his notebook battered, yet his mind was sharper than most Sith lords clad in gold and proclamations. A man willing to imagine that all shadows might spring from a single font—such thoughts were dangerous, intoxicating. She admired the taste of them.

The chamber accepted them with silence, its still pool a mirror for two figures out of time: one ragged, one sovereign. Virelia's gaze lingered on the faint glyphs reflected there, violet eyes multiplying across the water's surface. She stepped closer, her talons clicking faintly on stone, then stilled—head tilting as Dreer spoke of Kohlma's ancient society. Drugs, sorcery, obedience born of chemical chain. Her breath, distorted faintly through the mask, was a slow, deliberate sigh.

"How fitting," she said at last, her voice velvet laid over steel. "That the Sith destroyed them. Not because they were weak, but because they were effective. A rival discipline that dissolved the self, that turned will into instrument—ah, that would wound the ego of any Dark Lord. To see loyalty engineered rather than commanded."

Her gauntlet traced the air just above the water, sending ripples dancing across the mirrored glyphs. She did not touch—yet the pool responded, disturbed by her mere nearness.

"You ask if I knew. No. Kohlma's call is what drew me, not this particular cult. The past speaks to me as it does to you, though perhaps in another tongue." She turned, helm catching what little light the chamber gave. The six violet eyes burned faintly as her head inclined. "It seems fate has led two seekers into the same grave. That is all the explanation I will give."

She took another step, the cape whispering across the dust, and gestured toward the yawning black beyond the pool. Narrow passages beckoned deeper, the stone visibly warped by unnatural growths—roots twisting as if bone, stalactites shaped almost like teeth. The citadel waited.

"Come then, Dreer," she murmured, respectful yet edged with promise. "Show me what you seek."

 

[Darth Dreer]

"Surprising how much a little poison in a vial can change the mind, warp the body, and steal the soul, isn't it?." Said Dreer, allowing a trace of bitterness to slip into his voice. "By all accounts, they'd mastered the art. It almost makes one wonder if the soul exists at all, if it only takes some third-rate chemicals and a needle to kill it."

"Fair enough." He grunted in reply to her typically-cryptic response. He didn't quite believe in coincidences, but decided not to press the issue. He raised his left hand, then snapped his fingers with a melodramatic flourish. Slowly, a hazy bridge formed, then solidified across the water. It was a thing of ghostly mist and phantom translucency, but he took his first few steps across it all the same. "Water in places like this never holds anything good. I'd far rather not chance it."

He stepped lazily across the structure, occasionally stopping to peer over the edge into the black, stagnant water, before turning that strange, blank mask back to look at Darth Virelia .

"On the subject of poison, that selfsame poison is what I am here for. As much as they created, there's doubtless an intact sample somewhere. With luck, it was sealed well enough to survive the years. Chemistry isn't my strong suit, but I would like to change that. Gaps in one's knowledge are like gaps in one's armor. You never know when they'll get you killed."

"Come along. The Citadel proper can't be far ahead. Let us hope that our presence may go unnoticed, and that plunderers haven't reached this section by some other road."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To be, or not to be."

Tags - Darth Dreer



The bridge of mist shimmered beneath his tread, its insubstantial weave bending to Dreer's will alone. Virelia watched the conjuration with quiet appreciation. Not the raw display of force one often saw among the Sith, but something subtler, disciplined—a scholar's pragmatism rather than a warrior's roar. She followed, unhurried, her stride steady as her taloned boots pressed upon the phantom walkway as though it were stone.

"Poison," she mused, her voice low, rich, carrying across the stagnant chamber. "The simplest tools are the most enduring. A blade rusts, an empire crumbles, but a drop of venom can linger, transmute, undo what was thought immutable. No wonder they feared it." Her helm tilted toward him, violet eyes glimmering. "And no wonder you seek it."

The water below stirred faintly at their passage. Something shifted beneath its dark surface, though whether current, creature, or memory was impossible to tell. She did not glance down; instead, she let the citadel ahead claim her attention.

Beyond the bridge, the cavern walls narrowed into a jagged archway. Twisted roots had burrowed into the stone, knotting together in a lattice that half-blocked the way forward. Strange growths clung to them—fungal blooms pale as bone, exhaling spores that glittered faintly in the dim light. A faint scent of alkaloid bitterness hung in the air, acrid but alluring, as though the very stone exhaled remnants of the cult's art.

Virelia raised a gauntlet and let one talon scrape along the root-lattice. The spores responded in a soft shimmer, pulsing outward in waves. Her runes pulsed back, sympathetic resonance sparking through her armor. She lingered, then drew her hand away. "It lives still," she said softly. "The citadel breathes through what remains. Spores, toxins, vapors… this is no ordinary rot. Their alchemy persists, even without their hand to guide it."

She stepped aside, ceding the path, her cape trailing crimson against the mist. "You sought their poison. It seems eager to greet you, Dreer. Let us see how hospitable your long-dead hosts truly are."

Her tone carried no warning, no rebuke. Only respect tempered with intrigue—like a host ushering a guest into a hall where every shadow might yet prove alive.

 

[Darth Dreer]

Dreer's ragged boots clunked across the ghostly bridge with a purpose. They were close now, so very close. The substance was but one part of his future plans. A small part, but an important one nonetheless.

Out came that curved hatchet-sword again, flashing in the dim light cast by the bridge. He unceremoniously sliced aside a protruding fungal growth here and there, his movements practiced and deliberate. "Remarkable that no matter where you go, you always seem to find plants." He grumbled. The blade spit and hissed angrily in his hand, like a serpent. Where it touched living tissue, that section of the growth instantly withered and became lifeless.

"Fungi may not be flora as such, but I find it no less aggravating. Reminds me of Felucia." Despite the poor quality of his garb and the lack of any visible protection against the toxic spores, Dreer appeared unaffected by them. Occasionally, he'd stop to scrape a small sample off into a glass vial, but otherwise powered through. As if remembering that Darth Virelia was there, he paused. "I would hold your breath if that armor of yours doesn't filter the atmosphere. No telling what this filth in the air will do to a fresh set of lungs."

He let out a chuckle as she mentioned the cult's wayward weapons outliving them. "Yes, funny how that works. In a way, we're all paying for the sins of our fathers, aren't we? Their blundering actions cause ripples that affect us today. Here we are, being inconvenienced by the petty jealousy of Darth Sidious, some ten centuries later. I wish I could say it is unique, but I have been to many ancient battlefields. The weapons stay armed and deadly long after their makers' names have been lost to the ages. Some few even get worse over time, take lives after their original purpose has been forgotten."

"Few bother to look backwards to learn the lessons of yesterday, and even fewer bother to look forwards to consider how their actions will change tomorrow." He shrugged. "I suppose the lesson is that history shapes life as much as life shapes history. I find that looking backwards gives me more than enough to focus on."

As they moved, occasional carvings became visible on the walls, though many were effaced by time or the spreading blight. "Fate, if any such thing exists, has a pro-violence bias." He said, brushing one of the symbols with a leather-clad finger. "Time wears away art and culture while leaving the weapons intact. Another frustration to the scholar and the tomb-delver. To do what I do is to defy fate, wrench the treasures and lessons of history back from obscurity, and make use of them. While I bemoan the loss of so much data, sometimes a weapon will do just fine."

Finally, they emerged into a small ritual chamber, or what resembled one. Ancient, mostly-intact stained glass windows provided dim light, their surfaces depicting ancient battles and grisly sacrificial rites.

"And here we are." He said, a scholar's excitement slipping through his voice despite apparent effort. "One of the cult's centers of worship. If an intact sample exists, it will be here. If not, I'll just have to make do with the fungal clippings."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To be, or not to be."

Tags - Darth Dreer



The chamber received them like a lung drawing breath—damp air thick with spores and memory, light filtered through fractured glass into blood-hued shards that cast the floor in a mosaic of old violence. Virelia stood still for a moment, letting her helm tilt back to take in the faint images that lingered on the panes. Scenes of binding, of sacrifice, of devotion turned weapon. They were not delicate works; even in ruin they reeked of purpose.

"Remarkable," she murmured, though not with surprise—rather with something closer to satisfaction. Her talons swept faintly through the glow of red and gold light, the gesture like a conductor's hand teasing music from silence. "The Sith feared them because they made faith tangible. They made loyalty chemical. That is rarer than a blade, Dreer—it is control, perfected."

She prowled forward, boots whispering against stone, until she stood before the altar that dominated the chamber. Once it had been white, she suspected. Now it was the color of old bone, its surface etched with channels that had long ago run dark. She trailed a single claw down its edge, tracing the groove of some long-dried ritual. Her armor's runes pulsed faintly, sympathetic, as if recognizing what the altar had once demanded.

"History does favor violence," she agreed, voice slow and deliberate, "but even violence is only a servant. These rites were never about death alone. They were about transmutation. A soul broken, a will remade. If the poison you seek still exists, it will not be in a vial tucked away on a shelf. It will be here, in the residue of practice. In the stone, in the air, in the glass that watched it unfold."

She turned toward him then, six violet eyes gleaming in fractured light. Respect laced her tone, though beneath it curled something more—an indulgent recognition, as though she found his pursuit worthy of more than mere commentary. "You came for a sample. Take it. But know this: if their craft survived, it is not passive. It will test you as much as you test it."

Her gaze lingered on the altar once more, her voice lowering almost to a whisper. "Power that endures this long rarely wishes to remain bottled."

 

[Darth Dreer]

Dreer stopped for a second to drink it all in. For him, the Force had long been difficult to grasp. Like trying to cup water in one's hands, it could only be held onto with some effort, and never for long. His late master had seen to that. Still, even he could sense the oppressive weight of the Dark Side lingering here.

"As before, you prove surprisingly... insightful." He murmured, extending one hand to brush across the blight that even here trickled across the walls. He concentrated, and pushed deeper. "Let's see if you're correct."

She was, of course. The poison lived on, in the very stalks and spores that would inevitably swallow this place up entirely. Now that they'd exposed the ruin to open air, they'd also sealed its fate. His mind flexed, seeking to draw the pure essence from the life which surrounded it. It was difficult, maddeningly difficult.

Most any other Sith could have done it in seconds, but Dreer had to fight to do what came naturally to most. Finally, he extracted it, black and seething, from the noxious life surrounding them. Into the bottle it went, writhing and snapping against its confinement. He held it up to the dim moonlight that trickled in through the stained-glass murals, studying it.

"Once again, I find myself asking what the point is. If wills and souls are so ephemeral and mutable that one can stifle or snuff them with something made in a laboratory." He shook his head, surprised at his own weariness. "Fascinating."

"I suppose the answer is that, at least in some cases, poison has a will and soul of its own." He tucked the wretched thing into his bag, where the faint sounds of its rage continued. Then he paid his full attention to Darth Virelia . Unexpected blessing, or ugly loose end? He still didn't know her game, but part of him was hoping for the former. He wasn't in a fighting mood today.

"Well. I got what I came for. I hope you found it as instructive as I did." His hand slid closer to his lower back, where the curved blade was sheathed. If betrayal was going to come, now would be the time. Better safe than sorry.

"Now two keep the memory of this place, rather than zero. I suppose that's an accomplishment to be proud of."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To be, or not to be."

Tags - Darth Dreer



The ritual chamber seemed to darken with each pull of his will, each strand of corruption teased free from the blighted roots and forced into confinement. When at last the vial sealed with its seething prize, the air eased—only slightly, like a predator drawing back but not departing. Her helm tilted as she regarded the scholar and his trembling catch, and for a moment silence was her answer.

Then her voice spilled softly into the space, smooth and resonant, as though the walls themselves leaned in to hear. "You are right. Poison does not serve—it endures. It shapes, it insists. What you hold is no mere compound but a memory given flesh. To bottle it is to claim kinship with what the Sith themselves could not bear."

She stepped nearer, her cape brushing the dusty floor, the violet glow of her eyes catching the last shards of moonlight through the broken glass. "You ask the point. Perhaps there is none beyond this: that a will, once forged, does not dissolve even when its makers are dust. It lingers, waiting for a hand bold enough to claim it." Her taloned gauntlet gestured faintly toward his satchel, then lowered. "And you have claimed it, Darth Dreer."

For the first time she inclined her head fully, not mockery but recognition, sovereign acknowledging sovereign. "I am Darth Virelia. Virelia, ironically means elegant poison. I gather what remains, not to preserve it as curio, but to weave it into the tapestry yet to come. Every lost fragment is a thread. Every seeker a possible ally—or rival."

Her helm turned slightly, insectile gaze unreadable. "You say you are no hurry to join the dead. Then tell me, Dreer—have you somewhere to return to? A citadel, a conclave, a refuge? Or do you walk from grave to grave, carrying memory as your only companion?"

Her tone was not interrogation but curiosity sharpened to intimacy, respectful and edged with the faintest indulgence. In her words lay the promise of interest, of recognition: that his answer might matter, might ripple outward like the poison still writhing in his vial.