Mission Underground and Undercover

[Jonyna Si]

TAGS: Jax Thio Aeva Nightgate
OPEN TO A FEW SC CHARACTERS​

The Reaper entered Coruscant's orbit with all of it's stealth systems active.

Jonyna knew this was a risk, but it was one worth taking.

As she dawned her sith disguise, she looked to Jax, the man she had trusted to come with her on this mission. Somewhere in the lower strata beneath the former jedi temple, Jonyna had recieved a vision of someone down there. Waiting to be awoken...

Such a mission was personal to her as a former popsicle, but also as a rebel. Such a mission would mean getting a lay of the land once more, to see what the Imperials and the Sith had done to her former home.

As they landed on a far starport, Jonyna looked to the former shining beacon of democracy and freedom.

Now the home of darkness.

"We're in enemy territory Jax. We need to be careful."

And with that, she dawned the helmet, and sealed herself inside. To anyone else, she'd feel like a sith, the Dark Cloak of her suit allowing her to hide in plain sight.

 

[Iandre Athlea]

Coruscant never truly slept; it only learned how to hide its persistent exhaustion beneath a veil of artificial light. Iandre stood on the edge of a mid-level observation terrace, distanced equally from the chaotic roar of Level 1313 and the polished, sterile corridors of the upper districts. Above her, the heavy traffic lanes stitched glowing, frantic rivers through the sky, while below, entire districts disappeared into a thick layer of shadow and mist, stacked endlessly upon one another in a vertical sprawl of history.

For a long moment, she simply watched the mechanical pulse of the world, marking this as her first time returning to the capital since the Clone Wars had torn the galaxy apart, and certainly since the Jedi Temple still stood whole. Back then, Coruscant had felt eternal and unshakable, a world built on a foundation of certainty and order that seemed immune to any real consequence, even as war began to burn across the distant stars.

She knew better now, and as her gaze drifted upward, she saw the remains of the Jedi Temple complex piercing the skyline like a wounded monument. Its silhouette remained recognizable and imposing, yet it was deeply fractured and rebuilt with scarred layers of history—Republic, Empire, Occupation, and Reclamation—piled atop one another like hastily stitched bandages. What was once a sacred place had been systematically turned into a battleground, then a symbol, and finally a ruin.

Folding her arms loosely as her coat shifted in the artificial breeze generated by passing speeders, she murmured quietly to herself, "I remember when it was quiet," recalling a time when the silence wasn't empty, but rather the heavy, purposeful quiet of a place devoted entirely to reflection. She had been much younger then, still learning the weight of responsibility and still harboring the naive belief that institutions could protect themselves through virtue alone, but the war had long since cured her of that particular illusion.

She moved on slowly, her boots clicking softly along the terrace walkway as the mundane sounds of the city swirled around her: vendors calling out from nearby stalls, commuters arguing over transit delays, and distant music drifting from an open apartment window. Life continued as it always did, and that persistence unsettled her more than anything else.

She stopped again when the Temple came fully into view between two towering spires, realizing that up close, the reality looked far worse. Structural reinforcements wrapped portions of the complex like raised scars, and entire wings had been replaced with modernized, sterile architecture that clashed violently with the original design. Where there had once been sprawling gardens and open courtyards, there were now only security barriers and sensor arrays—a form of protection born entirely of fear rather than peace.

Resting one hand against the railing, she let memory layer over the harsh reality, seeing ghosts of younglings crossing courtyards and Masters engaged in quiet debate within meditation halls filled with soft light. The hum of thousands of lives devoted to balance was gone, replaced by the hollow echoes of politics and bureaucratic damage control.

Iandre exhaled slowly, whispering, "I'm sorry," though she was not entirely sure if she was speaking to the Temple, the Order, or perhaps just to her younger self. After a few more moments, she straightened her posture, reminding herself that she hadn't come for the sake of nostalgia; she had come to understand what remained and to determine whether anything left here was still worth fighting for.

With one final look toward the fractured spires, she turned and continued down the walkway, blending back into the endless, grinding motion of Coruscant's living machine, unaware that elsewhere in the city, forces tied to old wounds and a burgeoning darkness were already beginning to stir.

Jonyna Si Jax Thio Aeva Nightgate

 

[Aeva Nightgate]

Something was coming.

“Alright, lads, quit slackin’ and get your blasted hides moving!” A rough voice yelled over the cacophony of noise. Plasma torches burned brightly as speeders hurriedly flew too and fro overhead, the metal sky casting an ominous shadow on the lower levels of the ecuminopolis. Yet some natural light remained, flickering through the cracked and damaged infrastructure of the planet from the most recent battle. It had been barely two weeks since the Empire was driven off-world by the invading Sith, though within the planet’s lower levels, it didn’t really matter one way or another who governed the surface. The only time surface wars affected them was when something fell through the gutter and landed in the darkness below. In this particular case, a massive imperial warship had descended from the battle above during the invasion. Its flaming hull crashed violently into the duracreet surface of the planet, destroying more than a few buildings as it stabbed a flaming wound deep into the metal crust of the world. Now the warship lay still, its mass finally halted by the sheer volume of metal resistance it met as it dug its way through the underworld. Unsurprisingly, the first on the scene were the many gangs of salvagers, fighting and killing each other for different sections of the ship. Space battles over Coruscant weren’t common, so salvaging a ship like this was a very rare opportunity. This ship, in particular, had crashed near the ruins of the old Jedi Temple, which presented its own challenges. Relic hunters were common and could be highly dangerous as well. A few were already prowling the wreck, looking for hidden passageways or broken bulkheads it may have opened in the planet’s lower levels during its violent descent. Nobody knew for sure how deep the old Jedi Temple ran into the planet, or if all the old Jedi’s secrets had been picked clean by generations of scavengers and treasure hunters, but that didn’t discourage the few from watching.

And then came the sounds of blaster fire.

“Droids! We got old dro-ACK!” A young man’s voice sounded from one of the wreck’s lower passages as a blaster bolt interrupted his speech! Soon enough, a rather imposing and ancient-looking battle droid crawled from the darkness of a half-collapsed passage, bearing the emblem of the Jedi Order’s elder years. It was not alone. From the same passage, more of these ancient droids began to crawl quickly, attacking and killing any sentients they encountered! They were still heavily armed, but millennia had scrambled their circuits. There was no reasoning with them, no reprogramming; they simply had one protocol. Protect. Protect at any cost. The machines quickly spread through the ship, causing a full-blown battle to erupt inside the imperial vessel’s corridors as the salvagers regrouped and tried to push the droids back, but they struggled immensely. The droids may have been ancient, but their weaponry and armour seemed advanced for even modern times. Explosions and panic only continued to spread throughout the wreck’s body, as the droids seemed determined to not only protect the passageway they came from, but the entire ship itself. Whatever programming they had, it told them to stand guard. Now that the doorway they were protecting had been shattered, they moved into the ship, as it was now the only possible way anyone could reach the collapsed passage. Whether the salvagers knew it or not, the droids now considered the entire wreck under their protection, and anyone else was an intruder that must be dealt with.

Yet deeper still, something waited. Within the darkness of the old tunnels lay even more droids, diligently watching another large door. Behind the door, something began to stir, but it was not noticeable unless you could feel the force. It moved differently around here. Strangely. Like the chamber itself was extremely heavy with an invisible burden. The force moved as if it were carrying an immense feeling of regret, sadness, anger, and fear… Though it was unlike the sensations of the dark side. It was almost muted. It didn’t radiate malice or evil energy, simply loss in its purest form. The droids did not notice this change, but recent battles had taken their invisible toll.

Eternity had almost ended.

Jonyna Si Iandre Athlea Jax Thio