Private Under The Hood

[Darth Virelia]

"Dungeon Delving."

Tag - Zee Caromed


The sky above was a constant bruise—metallic blue with veins of corroded red, like the atmosphere itself still remembered what it had been made to forget. Centuries of death. Rebirth. Death again. No matter how many towers they raised or sectors they cleared, Taris remained a wounded world.

Darth Virelia walked through the market square without a hood, face exposed to the sunless light that filtered through the smog, her presence announced not by armor or banners, but by the silence that followed her like a veil. Even here, in Mandalorian space, where warriors prided themselves on not flinching from power, people gave her room. A ripple of instinctual unease passed through the crowd—a shuffling aside, a sudden interest in vendor stock, averted eyes.

She didn't need fear. But she permitted it.

Her boots clicked softly on duracrete still stained with chemical rot. Her cloak, a deep, austere black trimmed in violet piping, whispered behind her with every motion. No fanfare. No entourage. Just her. Moving like a scalpel between organs.

Taris had changed. A little. Enough to be annoying.

The Mandalorians had done what they always did—paved over memory, poured credits into infrastructure, declared the world theirs by virtue of conquest. But the bones were still here. And she could feel them.

They whispered to her beneath the streets. Ancient catacombs. Rakghoul nests long turned to dust. Sith shrines buried beneath refineries and sports arenas. And deeper still, the old places. Places the Jedi had collapsed and buried, not with reverence, but fear. Those were what she had come for. That was where her work would continue.

But first, she needed a few things.

The street vendor was watching her. Not staring—Mandalorians rarely made that mistake—but watching, like a sentry might observe an unmarked crate ticking in the corner of a room. He was older, scar running from the brow through a cybernetic eye, pauldron etched with clan symbols she didn't bother reading.

She stopped at his stall anyway.

"Repulsor clamps," she said, voice like smooth obsidian scraping against intuition. "Variable tension. Magnetic isolation core, low-friction pads."

He blinked, didn't ask for a name. Just turned and started pulling items from the rack.

"And thermal ropes," she added, eyes flicking over the display with surgical calm. "Three coils. The compact variant."

The vendor nodded. "Delving, are we?"

She looked at him then. Truly looked. Not with eyes, but with the quiet pressure of intent. He tensed. Good. That meant he could still feel.

"There are places in this galaxy," she murmured, "where even fire doesn't wish to go. I plan to ask why."

He handed her the gear in silence.

She didn't haggle.

From there, she passed through the alleyways behind the open plaza—low-lit, wreathed in steam from exhaust vents and sizzling moisture in the air. Here, the underlayers of Taris bled through—grates exposing the chasms below, where rusted support beams groaned in quiet protest. This part of the city didn't pretend to be alive. It simply endured.

Which made it more honest than most.

Virelia moved without haste, but with direction. Her next stop was a supply node listed under a shell company—one of her own. Taris was Mandalorian space, but it was also old space. And old space had gaps. Forgotten access shafts. Back doors. Once, long ago, someone had stashed sensor-blocked crates beneath what was now a meat processing plant. She had inherited the key.

A faint whir of repulsors overhead drew her gaze briefly. A Mandalorian patrol swooped low on jetpacks—four soldiers in burnished red and bronze, armed and watching. Not confrontational. Not yet. Just observant.

She offered no salute. No motion at all.

Let them wonder.

Her thoughts drifted, just for a moment, to what lay ahead. The ruin wasn't on any modern map. She had triangulated it from Sith records, Jedi deletions, and seismic inconsistencies. It was older than even the Rakatan presence here, if her instincts were correct. Not just a tomb—an axiom. A wound in the Force stitched over with time and fear.

She would tear it open.

A hiss of pneumatics as the storage door unsealed before her. The interior lights flickered to life—old, yellow sodium lamps illuminating rows of gear, tools, and databanks. Quiet. Untouched. Just how she had left it.

Virelia exhaled, just once.

Her hand ran across the edge of a crate, fingers trailing over the embossed sigil of an empire long dead.

"No more delays," she whispered.

 

[Zee Caromed]

Caromed had held terrain in Taris for centuries. Not in the overt way that made sense to most. They did not control the police forces, they did not collect taxes. They had outlasted a dozen regimes, including some actively hostile to their existence. Though in the ancient years Caromed had borne the symbol of a nexu as their symbol, in modern years they'd labelled themselves with drengir - a subversive, malicious, hardy plant with a well-refined taste for meat. None could argue that this was not appropriate. If nothing else, a weed was the perfect face for a clan that had lingered on the verge of extinction for generations without dying.

The patrols in the sky were Mandalorian - Verd, if Zee had to guess, or Vizla. The man at the shop had been Caromed. The flow of information was unequal by design. Trust was not earned.

The mysterious woman from nowhere planning an excursion somewhere dark and private? She'd barely registered as important, even to a clan of largely force sensitive warriors. You didn't live long on Taris by sticking your nose into other people's business. That hole in the ground, though. That specific hole? Well.

The daughter of Petra Cavataio lived mere kilometers away. The hole was known to the clan. They kept eyes on it. Darth Virelia hadn't been worth much more than a note of consideration before she'd gone that way. Not that she wasn't a threat, but simply because Caromed wasn't in the business of getting involved most of the time. They maintaned hospitals and safehouses.

Zee also didn't like to get involved directly. He was, however, the closest representative of Caromed's authority in this district. The line of inheritance did not stop at his mother - her legacy was his to bear.

He'd detoured through the streets of Taris, moving swiftly through the claustrophobic hairpin alleyways through a combination of familiarity and hoverboarding skill. Met up with a team that he instructed to establish a respectable perimeter. Entered the ruins and tracked the passage of a single woman though the steps left in radioactive dust and the achingly familiar presence of the dark side. Zee was not powerful in that way, but the opression and passion of it had always felt a bit like home.

"Looking for something to take home?" The soft-voiced human called out from some distance away, stepping off of his board. He kept his beskar-ika openly displayed at the small of his back. For once, he wore a lightsaber on his hip. It didn't feel like his, even if it was. "Or are you out looking for a little trouble tonight?"

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Dungeon Delving."

Tag - Zee Caromed


The voice echoed down the corridor like a ripple through old blood.

Virelia did not startle. She was kneeling beside a shattered monolith—something once carved, once sacred, now smoothed down by time and water and heat. Her fingers were coated in dust, tracing symbols that had long since forgotten what they meant. But she'd remembered for them.

When the words reached her—low, casual, far too measured to be a warning—she did not rise immediately. Instead, she finished her gesture, slow and deliberate, pressing her palm flat against the stone. There was a sound beneath it, just barely audible. Not mechanical. Not quite alive.

She stood.

Black cloak falling around her like a curtain. Pale skin faintly luminescent in the half-light of the ruin. Eyes glowing faintly violet now, as if stirred by whatever lay buried below.

Then she turned toward him.

Her gaze drifted over the man—not hostile, not yet—but deeply, visibly amused. Not the sharp amusement of cruelty, but something darker. The kind of satisfaction that came when someone finally showed up to play the game correctly.

She looked him over, openly now. The lightsaber. The beskar. The tone.

"You came wearing a blade that doesn't belong to you and a question that assumes I need trouble to find me." A pause. "It's cute."

She took a single step forward, the dust curling around her boots like ash responding to a breeze that hadn't touched anything else in years.

"But if I were you, I'd save the smooth introductions for someone who still knows how to blush. I came here for something that can't be bought. Or buried. Or ignored."

Her eyes narrowed slightly. She tilted her head, half-curious, half predatory.

"So. Are you here to test against what's waking? Or are you just the polite messenger boy, come to ask the dangerous woman in the dark to behave?"

 

[Zee Caromed]

"Ma'am, if that qualifies as 'smooth' to you?" Zee chided gently. "You need a higher quality of suitor. Not me, of course. Somebody who can match and appreciate your very clear... energy." He explained, encircling the intense woman in his perspective by drawing a little circle around her with one painted fingernail.

As much as Zee felt that the lightsaber wasn't his, it did belong to him. His mother had made her position on this very clear - and he feared her reprisal more than just about anything else. The narrow band between the two spheres of 'things he could do make her actually upset' and 'things he might conceivable ever willingly do' almost entirely revolved around the Force and the implements related to it. He didn't feel the lightsaber was his, but he sure wasn't about to let it belong to anyone else.

It was an annoying position to feel himself forced to take.

"I am, in fact, the polite messenger boy." Zalke replied without an ounce of shame or reservation. The fact that he was of an age with the blonde was irrelevant - Zee had essentially no attachment to the trappings of power or masculinity. A challenge to either meant nothing here, out of view of all but the most miserable souls - with both parties quite aware of the power disparity between them. Zee wasn't helpless, nor was he without his tricks - but he wasn't a Darth. "There are people important to me on this planet. There are resources critical to the efforts of my power base. It would hinder my plans to have a calamity here, and it would damage the resources of my allies." Zee summarized, taking pains to provide a Sith context to his desires. No threats, no fear, no games; simple facts.

"I would like you to behave, though I cannot force you to." Zee summarized quietly, kicking his hoverboard into his hands. He flipped it around and sheathed it at his back, offering a crooked smile with a hand on his hip. "I won't waste your time by threatening you with things somebody else might to do you. And I think that trying to appeal to your better nature might just inscentivize you further - it's showing my throat, in a way." The slender human added. "But we're still talking, which I think means I present something interestesting on principle. I'll double down on that."

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Dungeon Delving."

Tag - Zee Caromed


The boy was honest.

That was the first thing she noticed—not his posturing, or his playfulness, but the absence of obfuscation. No cloak of bravado. No theatrical anger. Just a calm, articulate delivery of stakes. It was so rare, it almost felt like provocation.

She studied him.

Not his weapons. Not the saber that wasn't his, but had been given—a legacy chained to obligation. No, she watched the angles of his posture, the fluid way he stood without posturing. The casual rebellion in his cadence. The unguarded pride in not being the monster people feared he might become.

When she finally spoke, her voice had softened by a single, deliberate degree.

"You speak plainly. That's a gift. And a weapon. Few know how to wield either."

Her head tilted ever so slightly.

"If you wanted to impress me, you should've lied better. The truth is far more dangerous."

A faint curl of her lips—not a smile, not quite—but something close. Like the beginning of a door opening somewhere far below sea level.

She stepped closer, slow and sure, until they stood in the same circle of stale, sacred air.

"I believe you," she said, gently. Almost kindly. "About not wanting a calamity. About protecting what's yours. That's respectable."

Her gaze lingered on his lightsaber—not with threat, but curiosity.

"But the thing is... calamity is often the only thing old places respond to. Sometimes they need blood. Sometimes they need want."

Her hand rose, not toward him, but to the air between them—delicate, like brushing dust from a tapestry.

"And sometimes," she murmured, "they need someone who doesn't flinch when shown a throat."

A long silence stretched. Not tense. Just heavy. Full of the weight of what they both understood.

Then she stepped back.

"You may observe, if you like. But stay above the threshold when I descend. If what sleeps down there wakes... I won't shield anyone who isn't already mine."

 

[Zee Caromed]

"Trying to impress you is a losing game for me." Zee replied cooly. "If I fail to live up or pique the wrong curiosity, I'm dead. If I disappoint or bore, I'm dead. Best for me to keep things as honest and matter-of-fact as possible." Zee explained. Objectively speaking, this woman could murder him easily. Might even get away with it for awhile. "Name's Zalke, by the by. You can call me Zee if you like. You aren't required to give me a name if you don't care to."

But like, it was increasingly clear that senseless murder wasn't her deal, and Zee had grown up next to continent-cracking disasters in heels. He didn't flinch, he didn't look away. He didn't back away as she got closer. Backing away wouldn't have saved him anyway, should things go that way.

"Not even a little protection?" Zee asked mildly and half-joking, slipping a hand into his bag to slide on his medical vambraces. The pair had a couple of features useful for spelunking, and while he didn't have his full beskar'gam on him it was nice to at least be flying a piece of the regalia in a place of high danger. "Suppose I can't blame you. I'll patch you up if something pops off, though - you're a guest." Zee's tone suggested he was somewhere between matching her vague-yet-menacing energy and ensuring she knew his skillset and alignment towards a mutual goal.

Zee was mindful to keep himself out of the Sith's blind spots as they began walking. It was one of many habits that seemed deeply ingrained enough to be second nature. Keeping emotions out of his voice when speaking to somebody dangerous, minimizing the threat he presented to them while also minimizing the weaknesses he displayed, taking a dozen tiny little steps to avoid provocations and pitfalls that might invite reprisal - Zee was a natural diplomat or courtesan, even if it made him something of an odd case among the Mandalorians.

Granted, these survival skills only really kicked in around powerful Darksiders and the violently psychotic. Zee would go to his grave compuslively mouthing off at cops.

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Dungeon Delving."

Tag - Zee Caromed


He didn't flinch.

That alone earned him more grace than most. And he understood. Not just the stakes, but the theater of them—how proximity to power wasn't about posturing, but poise. Zalke—Zee—was not naive. That made him rare. But what made him valuable was that he didn't try to mask fear with arrogance. He wore his odds openly, like a sidearm, and handled them with care.

Virelia walked beside him, silent for a time, her cloak brushing the walls as the corridor narrowed into a descent. The deeper they went, the more the Force thickened—coiled, dormant, watching. It licked at the back of her tongue. Old pain. Old promise.

His words lingered. Guest. Protection. Patch you up.

A slow smile curled at her lips. Not cruel—intimate. Amused in that low, velvet way reserved for creatures who liked the way others walked toward danger, rather than away.

"You assume I'd let myself be patched," she murmured eventually. "That I break in ways you can reach."

Her voice was honeyed but quiet, slipping between syllables like smoke under a locked door. Not a threat—just a reminder. Some things didn't mend. Some didn't need to.

Still, her gaze flicked to his vambraces. She recognized the model. Not standard-issue. Purposeful.

He was clever. Quietly so.

"Zee," she repeated, tasting the name with deliberate slowness. "You're not what I expected."

She stopped beside a breach in the wall—collapsed duracrete sloping into the dark like a wound torn into the planet's memory. Something pulsed faintly below, a rhythm not unlike a heartbeat. She listened.

"You don't try to dominate. You don't shrink. You don't lie."

She turned to face him.

Then, quieter still:

"You'll live long. Unless you start wanting more."

That was the real warning.

Desire was what killed people. Not blades. Not Sith. Want. She let the silence breathe between them for a few more steps.

"Come." she said at last. "Tell me your story as we walk these halls."

A faint shimmer of violet played at the edge of her pupils again.

"Careful, I can't guarantee they don't listen."

 

[Zee Caromed]

He appreciated that she had opted to use his preferred nickname. He noted that she didn't give one of her own.

Zee walked quietly, eyes forward. Listening. He did not correct her in that he did not assume himself to be a panacea - but that anyone could break an arm or fall onto rebar in a fight. Such injuries had been the death of many who'd thought themselves beyond the reach of mundane death. A threat didn't need to be spiritual or malicious to take a life. Rabies and Rakghouls didn't care about the alignment of your soul.

Now, in her defense, whatever was at the bottom of this hole probably DID care a little about the alignment of your soul.

Flipping on one of the lights connected to his vambraces, Zee surveyed the surrounding tunnel with a degree of trepidation. While he had no issue with enclosed spaces on principle, he was much better off utilizing open space in a crisis. His hoverboard would be almost useless in an environment like this, as would his tendency to use his blades and baton with wide, sweeping strikes that threw his weight behind them.

Thankfully, Matukai was just as effective here as it was just about anywhere.

"I am a member of my clan and my guild." Zee replied candidly, hitching a thumb to the stylized drengir skull on his shirt and bag, and then to the green coarseweave sash and jacket he wore around his waist. "Caromed and Life-Bearers, respectively." He was mindful to use the hand that didn't have a flashlight attached to the wrist, to avoid strobing out the hallway.

"There isn't much to tell. I was trained to serve as a warrior, but showed potential as a healer. So I've been working in clinics and hospitals since I was around twelve." Zee elaborated, climbing through a gap between two collapsed stones. "My clan operates most of the ones in this district. I eventually graduated into the Life-Bearers, and have served as a battle medic since."

Zee ran his hands along the side of the tunnel. His fingers came away dusty. "Anything down here already knows who I am." He remarked quietly. "There are millions on the surface with my story. No shortage of hungry kids with something to prove on Taris - I just got luckier than most." Zee explained. "I had family to catch me when my parents died, and they gave me a shot to follow my passions. That's the only difference between me and anyone else. Luck with love."

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Dungeon Delving."

Tag - Zee Caromed


Virelia listened.

Not out of politeness—she had long ago shed the need for social courtesies—but out of curiosity. Curiosity was rarer. Cleaner. Less hungry than desire. And Zee's story was simple in shape, yet deeply textured in the way only those with real grief and real grace managed. Not rehearsed. Not rehearsed at all.

She noted how he spoke of himself: not modest, not self-deprecating—measured. He had already categorized himself as a supporting character in the galaxy's brutal drama. And yet he moved through it with purpose, as if tending the wounded could somehow stymie the tides of rot. There was something noble in that. Dangerous, too.

Because people like him always died hardest when they died.

She said nothing for a while. Just walked beside him in the hush of the corridor, her breath slow, her eyes half-lidded as though she were listening to the stone instead of him. In truth, she was doing both.

He'd been right earlier. About alignment.

The thing below did not feed indiscriminately.

The tunnel grew colder as they walked—physically, yes, but also spiritually, as if the light Zee cast from his vambrace had to fight harder for each inch of clarity. Shadows stretched too long, pooled too black. And the air tasted of iron and mold and age. Not rot—waiting.

"You think it was luck," she said at last, her voice low, the syllables slow and coaxing, like someone trying not to wake something sleeping too near.

She glanced at him.

"It wasn't. Not entirely."

Her hands stayed at her sides, but her posture shifted just enough to imply the suggestion of intimacy—not flirtation, not manipulation, just attention. A kind of naked focus that felt more like exposure than affection.

"Your grief didn't sour you. That's not common. Especially here."

A pause.

"You found your way to compassion without letting it cage you. And your people gave you room to become something, not just inherit it."

Her tone was warm, but surgical. No flattery. Only fact.

"Most are not so… cultivated."

Another pause. She reached forward—light as breath—and ran her gloved fingertips along the edge of a broken support strut, letting some instinct older than speech confirm what her mind already knew. Then she stepped aside, sweeping dust away with a Force-touched gesture, slow and deliberate.

The wall before them breathed. Just once. In. Then nothing.

An outline shimmered where the stone met the foundation—a thin seam like the part in a corpse's lips.

Beneath it, a faint sound. Not words. Not quite. Just the sound of expectation. Virelia knelt again, hand hovering just above the threshold. Not touching. Not yet.

"It's older than the Jedi thought," she murmured. "Older than the Sith admit."

Her eyes flicked up to Zee.

"You were born with a soft heart and forced to grow teeth, like me. This place was born with teeth, and was buried because it remembered how to bite."

A beat.

"I don't know which of you the tomb will like more."

The seam widened with a sigh, dust pouring inward as the hidden entrance slowly, almost reluctantly, opened. Black beyond. Dry as bone. Not cold.

Hungry.

She rose to her feet without ceremony, eyes shining faintly in the dark.

Then, softly, almost indulgently:

"Stay behind me. And stay interesting."

 

[Zee Caromed]

The most dangerous thing you could say to a Sith. "I respectfully disagree." Zee replied softly. "I've been soured. My mothers live in comfort that most of Taris can only dream of. Both of them have been drenched in blood their entire lives, and with that they've made our home into their fortress."

Zee crouched to fiddle with the lens of his flashlight, noting the function was in-tact. "My position in the clan affords me luxury and privilege, if I choose to accept it. And I dearly love the people who offer that life with outstretched arms." He explained. "Their hands may be bloodstained, but they used them to raise me up out of the murk and offered me everything they could reach. I choose to use that knowledge for the good of anyone that I can reach."

Being around somebody so histrionic as the mysterious woman was apparently a little contagious. "My hands aren't clean. Both by association with the people I love and by my own actions. I am a Mandalorian - as much a warrior as I am a healer."

The vambrace's flashlight wasn't cutting it. The darkness here was deeper, thicker, and more fearless than that tool could manage.

"This is my home." Zee responded softly, slipping the lightsaber off of his belt. The sickly orange blade lit up with a soft thrumm, the ancient crystal brimming with the desire to harm, to destroy, to rip and tear for no other reason than for the pure joy of inflicting violence - an energy it'd drank up over lifetimes of the previous owner using it for that alone. It did more to chase back the shadows than any mundane flashlight could. "These are my teeth." Zee added just as quietly, thumbing the activation switch as though holding the hand of an old friend. "I do not care what it likes. I have never lived for the pleasure of anyone but myself, and I will not be afraid while I have a weapon in my hand - especially not in my own back yard. If it's all the same, I would remain beside you."

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Dungeon Delving."

Tag - Zee Caromed


He stood beside her.

Lit by the ruinous flame of an old blade, its orange edge pulsing like a wound never quite healed, Zalke Caromed did not waver. His words were quiet, but grounded. Not performance. Not defiance. Certainty. And that was rare.

Virelia turned to face him fully now, the threshold yawning open behind her like a mouth ready to swallow gods. The dark pulled at her bones. But she studied him.

This boy—no, this man—was not innocent. Nor arrogant. He had neither illusion of purity nor craving for approval. He loved monsters, and from their hands he had learned how to build something better. Not perfect. Just better. Enough to matter.

And he did not ask permission to stand beside her. He declared it.

Virelia liked that.

She watched the lightsaber with academic interest. Old hatred lived in that crystal—she could taste it in the air, feel it crawling through the Force like scar tissue. The weapon did not suit him. But he wielded it with familiarity, not reverence. A tool. Not an identity.

"That," she said, voice like silk caught on sharp stone, "was beautifully said."

Her gaze lingered on him. Softened.

"You are wrong, of course," she added, the faintest smile playing at her lips. "But I like the shape of your wrongness."

There was no contempt in her tone. No menace. Only something warmer, older. A kind of respect born not from agreement, but from clarity. He understood himself. He moved through the world with eyes open, and still chose not to close them.

She stepped closer—nearer than etiquette allowed, nearer than decency preferred—and placed one hand lightly against his chestplate, just above the heart. Not aggressive. Not seductive. Intimate. A gesture of recognition, not possession.

"This place," she said softly, "will try to define you. It will tempt you to become simpler. Angrier. More… elegant in your hatred."

A beat.

"Don't let it."

Her hand fell away.

"You are neither clean, nor cruel. You are something else. That makes you harder to break."

The tomb beyond them rumbled faintly, as if annoyed by delay. She turned, cloak swaying behind her like liquid shadow, and looked down into the black.

"We go together then," she said.

And when she looked over her shoulder again—eyes gleaming violet, lips just shy of a smile—her voice dipped to something half-whisper, half-invitation.

"Just remember: I said 'stay interesting.' You've already succeeded."

Then she stepped into the dark.

The dark swallowed her whole.

There was no dramatic fall, no sudden shift in gravity—just the quiet suffocation of ancient air closing in around them. The first chamber unfolded not like a room, but a memory—long-forgotten, half-buried, and resentful of being disturbed.

Virelia stepped forward slowly, each footfall deliberate, silent as breath. Her senses stretched out ahead of her, brushing across the cold stone like fingertips tracing old scars. The air was still, but wrongly so—like the room was holding its breath.

The walls loomed high, arched with impossible precision, built in a style not Rakatan, not Sith, and certainly not Mandalorian. There were no overt glyphs, no murals, no holoprojectors—just seamless stone, fused by time or intent. Yet beneath that stillness, something pulsed. A resonance. Subsonic. Faint, like a voice whispering from behind layers of glass and soil.

The room was circular. A dais sat at the center, ringed by twelve standing columns—monolithic, tapered, each one carved from a different kind of stone. Obsidian. Basalt. Bone. Metal. One pulsed faintly with residual energy. Another bled a slow, silvery mist from hairline fractures.

Virelia paused before the nearest pillar and laid two fingers across its surface. It was warm.

Not with life.

With memory.

Virelia didn't speak for several heartbeats. She was listening. Not just to the Force, but to the way the room responded to presence. There was no trap yet. No test. Just awareness.

Then she finally spoke, her voice a breath against the pressure in the air.

"This room was a covenant."

She walked the circle slowly, brushing past one column after another, naming them not by their material but by their feeling.

"Sacrifice. Hunger. Binding. Vow. Debt. Devotion. Shame."

She paused.

"…Creation."

Her hand lingered there.

"This is not a tomb, Zee. It's a vault. Something was sealed in the center of this circle, not buried. Hidden. Preserved."

She turned to face him, backlit by the faint glow from his saber and the phosphorescent shimmer that now quietly bled from between the cracks in the stone.

Then, calmly:

"Do not step onto the dais until I ask. It may remember the wrong name."

She knelt again, drawing out a small vial from her cloak—deep violet, humming faintly with alchemical resonance. With a practiced flick, she poured a single drop onto the floor at the base of the dais.

It hissed.

The hiss became a tone. A low harmonic, dissonant and unnatural—like something deep beneath them was stirring.

Virelia's lips curved, ever so slightly.

"See if you can find anything interesting."

 

[Zee Caromed]

The deep, the dark and the cold. Zee was less used to being in ancient ruins than he was having people violate his personal space, and he was much less happy about them in general. Following quietly beside Virelia, the svelte Mando had plenty of time to reflect on his errors. He should have held out for backup, he should've worn his armor, he couldn't have looked this place up a little more on a boring night with plenty of time for research?

Truth of the matter was, though, he would not have. Zee was mostly occupied with the new and the new - making things that lived in the present and chasing what the future might hold. Ancient ruins didn't hold much charm, barely the appeal of being mindful of them as a duty to the clan. His force training had been basic, more a protective measure than the pursuit of any kind of excellence for the same reason - why spend years carving the Force into the shape that best suited him when he could wear armor?

Well. He'd left most of his armor at home. Unlike the tour on Ordo, though, this ancient ruins was draped in power that was neither hypothetical or long-gone. It thrummed in a way that made his skin crawl, made his grip tighten around the lightsaber. The lightsaber was all too happy to give a throaty purr of delight at the slightest motion.

Lifting the saber to try and spread the light a little further, Zee walked cautiously around the dais. "Odd number of columns on the north side. Even on every other." He observed quietly, mildly annoyed by the incongruence. "Walls look parallel - at least to my eye. Something to do with the space of the place." Zee noted softly.

He brought his saber down to illuminate the floor. "Concentric rings." Zee added, noting the curve of an old and weathered divot. "Concentrating something towards the middle?" Felt like an obvious thing to note, what with the dais, but - he only knew the very faintest things about Sith Alchemy and the practices related to it or from which it was derived.

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Dungeon Delving."

Tag - Zee Caromed


"Good," Virelia said, not looking up.

Not praise. Recognition. The kind you gave to someone who'd said something useful in a language older than either of you cared to admit you understood.

Her fingers continued to move along the edge of the central ring, hovering just above the surface, never quite touching. The air around her hands shimmered faintly. It wasn't the Force—it was something more particular. A focused resonance. As if the material itself was beginning to acknowledge her presence.

"You're right," she murmured, turning her head slightly. "The architecture's deliberately asymmetrical. Distorts memory. Disorients instinct. You walk the circle thinking it's whole, but the pattern keeps moving beneath your thoughts."

She gestured lazily toward the uneven columns without breaking her concentration.

"Ritual rooms like this are rarely about truth. They're about shaping what you believe to be true. Convince a soul it's at the center of the universe, and it begins to act accordingly."

A pause. Then her voice dipped, just enough to let that wry note return.

"Also works on Sith. You'll find we're very susceptible to suggestion when properly flattered."

She finally stood, turning to regard Zee again. The saber's glow painted harsh shadows across his face, but he didn't flinch from it, nor from her.

That mattered.

"You're not trained in alchemy," she observed. Not a question. Not a judgment. "But you're observant. That's more useful than memorizing runes you don't understand. You noticed the channels. The geometry. The pulse under your feet."

She took a slow, almost languid step toward him.

"Concentric rings concentrate force, yes—but more importantly, they bind it. They create a tether. One that can be looped, stored, reawakened."

She reached past him, letting her hand trail just a centimeter above the nearest groove in the floor. A faint ripple followed her movement—like air caught in a gravitational eddy.

"Whoever built this didn't want to protect themselves from what was buried. They wanted to contain it long enough to use it."

Another ripple. Stronger this time.

"And it's listening now."

She turned her gaze to him again, eyes gleaming with something unreadable. Not hunger. Not pleasure. Something closer to awe—reserved, precise, intellectual wonder. The kind of fascination that never dulled, no matter how deep the ruin or ancient the sin.

"You realize," she said softly, "that you're helping me undo something older than the concept of a Republic?"

The smile she gave him then was faint, but not cruel. Not mocking. It was… impressed. Truly.

"And yet you don't hesitate."

A beat.

She turned away before the moment could linger too long and raised one hand over the center of the dais. The light around her fingers twisted, bent, distorted. The air began to tighten—slowly, deliberately, like lungs preparing for a scream held far too long.

The rings in the floor answered.

Not with a flash. Not with a quake.

But with a heartbeat.

Once. Then again. Then again. Growing louder.

Virelia lowered her hand, eyes never leaving the center.

"I'll need you close when it opens," she said without turning. "Not to protect me. Not even to fight."

She exhaled.

"But because this thing was never meant to be touched alone."

 

[Zee Caromed]

Zee brought the lightsaber about slowly, gesturing towards the grooves in the floor - tracing the lines where it followed around the dais. Leading in the eye, drinking in the energy. A whirlpool carved in stone, the eye of an invisible storm, the topography of a funnel designed to pull metaphysical energy to a center point. Not quite the center - not the person standing at the dais who thought themselves the fortunate recipient and not the eager dove landing in the jaws of a beast. "Anything designed by people has a touch of humanity in it." He commented softly, his footsteps small and mincing as he moved carefully around one of the circles. "Even, round numbers and symmetry - nature cares very little for it. But when people make something, they care. It's a deliberate choice. And that tells me more than knowing what the design principles intend."

His eyes flit back to the Sith, careful and considering. Thoughtful. "As you said. Containment. Not a tomb." Zee commented quietly. He didn't know much about Sith Alchemy - he hadn't had much desire to learn it, and given her background he didn't think his mother would have wanted to teach it even if she understood more than the very basic principles. As always, the ever-studious punk wished he'd prepared a little better.

He wasn't entirely sure that the Sith wasn't planning to sacrifice him, after all. Maybe he'd be able to better recognize that, given experience. Time.

"Whatever happened to the beings who put this here, they didn't live long enough to make use of it. Or whatever got rid of them wasn't the sort of issue this would have helped with." Zee mused quietly, crouching down to pick up a pebble and turn it over between his fingers. "...conversely, they tried to use it and it ate them."

Heartbeats. Pounding in the deep. Something was rousing, or it'd been awake this whole time and was just now starting to get excited. Zee didn't like either option very much.

Standing, the svelte Mando stepped carefully over lines and grooves to stand next to Virelia - keeping his eyes on the dais as well. "If it wasn't meant to be touched alone- what was your plan coming down here?" He asked softly.

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Dungeon Delving."

Tag - Zee Caromed


She didn't answer him at first.

Not because she hadn't heard—his question hung in the air, light but pointed, like a needle resting just above skin—but because the room had begun to respond.

The heartbeats in the stone were growing more rhythmic now, synchronizing with her breath. She could feel the pressure behind the veil beginning to rise. Not explosive. Eager. Like a starving animal just catching the scent of meat again after centuries of silence.

She liked that feeling.

She always had.

Virelia's head turned slightly, violet eyes tracking Zee's careful footwork with idle amusement. He moved well—mindfully, but not hesitantly. He treated the space with caution, not fear. Not reverence. That distinction mattered. Fear made people clumsy. Reverence made them stupid.

He had neither.

Just that measured curiosity. Just enough defiance to make the dark take notice.

When she finally spoke, her voice had dropped a register—lower, smoother, more deliberate, like velvet dragged across stone.

"There are always plans," she murmured, "some more elegant than others."

She lifted one hand, palm upward. A faint glimmer of light twisted into being above it—six concentric rings of energy rotating around a central hollow point. A model. A memory. A map of the vault's internal geometries, etched in spectral gold.

"Ritual, of course, is one method. I could have created a proxy. Fed the vault a ghost. Given it a sacrifice grown in a vat, with the right emotional resonance etched into its bones. I've done it before."

The rings dissolved with a casual flick of her fingers.

She turned to look at him fully now, expression unreadable. Respectful. Curious. Almost amused.

She stepped down from the edge of the dais and began to circle him slowly—not predatory, not invasive. She walked as if tracing another ring. A smaller orbit. Him at its center.

"The architecture, the geometry, the resonance—all of it implies a contract, not a prison. This isn't a vault built to hide something. It's a vault designed to negotiate."

She paused just behind him.

"But you…" her voice dropped to a whisper, warm and deliberate, like a touch against the back of the neck. "You complicate things."

Another beat. A long one.

Then she stepped past him, returning to the edge of the dais.

"You're just… real. Grounded. And the vault doesn't know what to make of that yet."

She knelt again, pressing her palm to the center ring. Her breath hitched, just barely, as the stone sighed beneath her touch.

"I had a method," she admitted, fingers tensing slightly as the Force around her began to compress. "But I'd rather not use it, if I don't have to."

Then, after a moment, she smiled—soft, crooked, almost fond.

"Besides," she added, "I find I prefer your company."

 

[Zee Caromed]

"Pretty wise." Zee commented idly. "I'd make a cute corpse, but the vibe would really be off in here."

It wasn't like he hadn't considered the idea that she'd try to sacrifice him, of course. Zee was many things - and maybe foolhardy was one of them - but stupid? Never. Zee was pretty sure he couldn't beat this Sith in a fight even if he jumped her, but he didn't need to. He had a spring-loaded hoverboard and a willingness to scram. She, of course, had to know that as well. She'd seen him show up on the thing.

Zee lowered his mother's lit saber, watching Darth Virelia do her dark work with a curious eye. He might not have the background to understand what she was doing or full knowledge of the situation as it stood - but he didn't let details go unnoticed. He could fill in what he'd observed with understanding later. The red eyes of the pale Tarisian flit thoughtfully around the room, keeping track of Virelia herself and of the corners. Insofar as he could see them.

"So. Minus a local beauty to carve the heart out of..." Zee mused softly, using humor to cover his mild nerves. "What are we hoping to get from this? This thing's been down here longer than democracy - what knowledge could it possibly possess?" He inquired. "An unfathomably powerful weapon thirty thousand years ago would be primitive nonsense today, right? It stands to reason the same logic might be extended to Force-specific anomalies."

Granted, this wasn't always the case. His sister was a much, much worse clone than his mother despite coming from the same genetic material. That, Zee assumed, had more to do with the craftsmen involved than anything else. Fabula Caromed had been created by a specialized master of her art, Fable Merrill had been put together as a mass produced side-project.

Further. "Personality tests aside- I'm nobody, though." He added quietly. "I don't think my presence makes much difference. I'm a thimble of power, you've got buckets. And that isn't false modesty." Zee explained. "I know what I'm good at and what I'm not. My mastery of the Force is laughable by comparison. There are dozens of folk in the clan who skunk me at that, AND at having an even temper."

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Dungeon Delving."

Tag - Zee Caromed


"You're wrong," Virelia said, lightly.

Her hand still pressed to the center of the dais, but her voice carried—silken, unhurried, and gentle as a breeze down a long-abandoned hall. She didn't glance at him, not yet. Her focus remained on the vault's pulse, on the tension coiling like a serpent beneath her fingers. But there was a softness in her tone. A warmth that didn't come easily.

"You think power is the only thing that shapes events. That the Force weighs presence in decibels. It doesn't."

A breath.

"It listens for contradiction."

Then she looked up at him, finally. The room cast long shadows over her features, but her eyes glowed faintly—soft violet beneath the darkness, not blazing, not hungry. Understanding.

"You think you're a thimble of power beside a flood. That I'm here to tear the veil open, and you're just watching it happen."

She stood slowly, lifting her hand from the stone with deliberate care. A thread of energy still clung to her palm before breaking, like a hairline fracture in the dark. The dais did not close. It breathed.

"But what you are," she said, taking a slow step toward him, "is a variable."

Another step. Her voice lowered.

"The Force is not arithmetic. It's not a question of who has more. It's a question of pattern. Intention. Conflict. Presence. You are an unassumed outcome, Zee. You're real in a place built entirely of curated lies. And that changes the echo."

She stood before him again now, close—but not encroaching. Just enough for her voice to stay soft, her words meant only for him.

"Your presence makes all the difference."

A faint smile. Not teasing. Not dominant. Just… pleased.

"You disrupt the ritual just by surviving it."

Then, with a sweep of her arm, she turned back toward the center. The energy had begun to coalesce. The heartbeat had quickened. One of the columns—the one carved from dull bronze—shivered as if struck from within.

Without warning, the air dropped.

Cold, dry, absolute. The breath before a scream. The silence before a birth.

And then the dais moved.

It didn't rise or descend. It parted. As though the room had finally exhaled and surrendered its burden.

A thin line opened across its center, lightless and sharp, revealing stairs carved not from stone, but bone-white metal—untouched by time or oxidation. Not ornamental. Grown. Like the vault had been waiting to show this part of itself to someone worthy.

Virelia did not hesitate. She took the first step downward.

Her voice drifted up toward him again as she descended, calm and low.

"As for what I hope to gain..."

A faint hum. Not from her. From below.

"Knowledge, yes. But not of war. Not of weapons. There are things buried in the Force older than the Jedi, older than the Rakata, older than what most species ever bothered to remember."

She paused halfway down the stairs.

"Not all knowledge is measured by what it destroys."

Her eyes met his one last time before she vanished into the dark beneath the vault.

"Come with me, Zee, tell me what you know about the Rakghoul plague."

 

[Zee Caromed]

This entire thing had been caution and curiosity on Zee's end, to a point. The woman was powerful, connected, going directly to places that most visitors to Taris wouldn't have even if they knew they existed. As a Caromed, it was Zee's duty to pay attention to where such people were going in what was ostensibly his clan's territory on the off-chance it might be dangerous. As an inhabitant of Taris, Zee wanted to know what somebody wanted with that old junk. And, if he was being perfectly frank? Following a gorgeous, dangerous, and potentially crazy woman on an adventure somewhere new was a reason enough to be there. That sounded like a fun thing to be doing, even if it being in his own backyard ruined some of the joy of it.

The Rakghoul plague, though? That wasn't fun at all.

Zee frowned, and that frown could be heard in his voice as he followed her into the dark. "Old, old problem. Runs roughshod on ecumenopoli like Taris." The medic replied unhappily. While he was not a doctor, Zee WAS a nurse and a battlefield medic with an interest in the esoteric. "I've never treated it myself. I've read about it. Horrible stuff. A pox on dense populations since ancient times."

If she intended to unleash such a thing, even if it wasn't on Taris, it would almost be his sacred duty to try and cut her down right now. Zee swallowed the thought. He didn't need to give away the dark turn his mind took by betraying hostility around a Sith. "Current thought is that there is no 'The' Rakghoul plague. Presentation has been shown at various points to be a biological virus with a pharmecutical cure, the result of Sith magic permeating spiritual defenses - even worms, at one point." Zee added.

"The template has been used through history for various ends." Zee continued. "Some speculate that the Gulag virus was based on it, that the Dark Harvest crisis of 836 was a variant of it. I heard it was used to make a catgirl virus once." He added dryly.

Zee trailed after Virelia, tension in his shoulders and jaw.

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Dungeon Delving."

Tag - Zee Caromed


Virelia moved through the descending corridor with the grace of someone who already knew the shape of what lay ahead. The air was tightening, growing more humid, more mineral, tinged faintly with something deeper than rot. Something feral.

She didn't stop walking as Zee spoke. She listened.

Really listened.

Her expression remained composed, almost serene. But when he mentioned it being his duty—when he laid bare the tension between curiosity and responsibility, between awe and suspicion—her lips curled at the edges in subtle appreciation.

A man divided between wonder and wariness was a man still capable of making choices.

Good.

They reached the base of the stairwell. The hallway beyond opened into another space—not as large as the chamber above, but closer. Quieter. A vault-within-a-vault. Unlike the sanctified symmetry of the upper room, this one was irregular, ribbed with struts and supports that looked half-organic, like some vast, skeletal thorax. Along the far wall were pods. Five of them. Long dormant. Frosted glass.

None broken.

She stopped, placing a hand on the edge of one, the glass cold enough to sting through her glove.

Then she finally turned.

"You're sharp," she said. A quick compliment.

She gestured lightly to the pods.

"I don't want to unleash anything. Not a plague. Not a curse. Not even a legacy."

Her eyes lingered on the frost inside, searching for signs of movement—there were none. Still good.

"What I do want," she continued, tone softening, "is a solution to a different problem."

She crossed her arms loosely, weight resting into one hip. Her posture was casual, her voice quieter now. As if she wasn't trying to justify—only share.

"The Rakghoul plague is ancient, yes. Inconsistent. Weaponized by Sith, warped by time, mutated into legend. But beneath all of that—there's a single, terrifying constant."

She raised one gloved finger.

"Transformation."

Her gaze flicked to his, calm and level.

"The virus, in all its forms, rewrites the body. Sometimes instantly. Sometimes slowly. And always against its will. Flesh reshaped. Bone extended. Muscle fused. Limbs regrown—often hideously, but functionally."

A beat.

"I don't want the plague itself. I want the principle."

She turned back toward the pods.

"Here, in this vault, are preserved samples from a failed attempt to create an attenuated strain—one that would convert, but not consume. The Sith who worked here wanted to weaponize obedience, not just fear. They were obsessed with finding a threshold between monster and servant."

She smiled faintly.

"I'm also interested in whether their work can be reversed."

She turned back to him fully now, that softness still there, that deliberate care in how she spoke.

"If I can isolate the vector—find the strand that triggers transformation without necrosis—then yes. Maybe limbs can be regrown. Maybe lost tissue can be replaced without genetic rejection. Maybe we can stop carving children into armor just to let us survive a battlefield."

A pause. Her expression did not change.

"I didn't come here to make monsters."

Another pause.

"I've already made those."

A long silence settled.

And then, with a faint, teasing tilt of her head:

"Unless of course, you're more interested in the catgirl virus. In which case I'm afraid we're in the wrong tomb."

 

[Zee Caromed]

Zee chose to answer what he saw as light teasing with a mild huff and a roll of his eyes, though he did smile. "Not my flavor, by and large. The shape doesn't bother me - the everything else that came with it did." He explained, a hand on his hip. Zee had never been overly connected to or defensive of his masculinity, nor the most common alternative. He picked and collected bits of either most commonly accepted path as they pleased him, but that was about as far as he engaged with the entire spectrum - that he was born male was as important to his being as that he'd been born with black hair. It was something to be discarded or changed or dressed up to suit his desires. One of his parents was so completely demure and feminine that it caught people off guard when she tore battle tanks apart for light exercise. The other viewed gender as something to be used for whatever advantage was most applicable to the moment, just the same as armor or weapon. This just made sense to him.

That people spoke of that virus in such horrified tones made sense to him. That they always seemed more focused on the secondary sexual characteristics that it brought rather than the mental enslavement and behavioral modification that came with it? That struck Zee as odd.

"Even if I take your desire for this at face value." Zee pointed out as he broke eye contact to examine one of the tubes more closely. "You have to be aware at the abuse potential that such a technology has. Your well-intentioned bioware prosthesis today is the next generation's horrific bred-for-combat virus that turns people into puddles of boneless flesh or fascist zealots." He explained quietly. "And history is full of people who fully planned to live forever and maintain sole custody of their horrifying power, up until they died and everyone else had to live with the fallout."

Zee turned to face her again, furrowing his brow with concern. "Though if you were the sort of person to be swayed by simple ethics and the threat of future fallout, I doubt we'd be down here." He noted, his voice soft. Measured.

"So. As a clinician, then - transformative technology in much more controllable vectors is already widely available." Zee suggested. "Ambertear Exowombs have been rebuilding organs and limbs for ages. The Alchemical processes that created curated life a thousand years ago have been refined into scientific processes like EVC cloning." Zee elaborated. The second was of particular interest to him and had been one of the first subjects he'd studied in medschool - the superstition-draped precursors to EVC cloning had created his mother, and the refinement of that process by Rave Merrill had created his sister. EVC cloning was the modern process that had brought it to the rest of the Galaxy.

"The Sith have already pioneered minor transformations in pill form." Zee added. "Having taken them myself once or twice, I can attest to their efficacy. Twenty years ago, a day of pain could get you an entirely different skin or eye color for a day of pain. These days, you can get full genetic gender reassignment over the counter on the same time scale at any well-stocked pharmacy. Genetic, biological change - not simple nano-surgery reshaping." He elaborated. "And I'm not going to clutch my pearls over these coming from the Sith. I think they're a net gain for the Galaxy regardless of the source, and I don't think they're some sort of spiritual psyop against the Galaxy. Breaking chains, freeing the ego, bounding past the limits of assigned biology to shape the form to suit the soul - of course technology like this comes from the Sith. It has their spiritual fingerprints all over it, and I mean that as a compliment."

Zee swept the lightsaber around the room, the sickly orange blade throwing shadows across the walls. "With such groundwork already laid, and progress already shown - what is down here that you feel you need to master?" Zee asked. "Communicability? Ability to transgress species boundaries? Or has research into those avenues hit a stumbling block that we have to turn to the past to get around?" He inquired. "...I can assume that Darths aren't typically open to sharing their research and notes with their peers. That would probably hinder development."

​