There came the essence of malevolence, the cold chill of insanity that prickled your spine in light-lipped goosebumps, tickling against the edges of the unknown. From this he came, the speaker of Keln’shar, Phoenix defined by burnt ash and reborn through failure.
Oh yes, there had come so much failure, so much that he had boiled within it, cast into the frothing fathoms of hot seas of failure, of shame, of
embarrassment. The cascading curtains of doubt once held him, fettered to a bastion of despair, hung high in crucifixion, arms splayed wide to showcase his desolation, and nude he had festered in such isolated madness, until the guiding hand of fate had led him to new sights. For freed from his chains, clasping him in perceived iron he realized it was not the bindings of melancholy shackles that held him in blindness, but the shells of his incubation that nurtured him, and from this
intense explosion from his embryonic embrace, Astoach was made whole once again in new purpose. A purpose rebuilt of a glowing destiny, composed a wall layered by bricks of tenacity.
It was a wall of triumph and a destiny of
war.
Astoach had vanished long ago, into the defiled winds of time to sink away, seemingly lost forever within the sandstorms of obscurity. Yet through this tempest of darkness, it was Romeo who had reached to him in the shadows where he lurked, amidst his alters of bone, drenched in candlelight and bathing in blankness, in the absence of thought, mind gone numb and eyes drifting to the scenery of fantasy, lost within his own musings. It was [member="Romeo Sin"] who saved him, culling the insanity that claimed him and granting him resounding perseverance in a new role in life, gifted upon the gilded pillow of deliverance; it was a title, a position, and grand expectancy of control. He was to become High Protector of this Romeo’s Tenebris Triumvirate, lord of its military and a general of war, an exciting prospect that roused the bloodthirsty instinct, that voluptuous
desire, from the deepest recesses of maddened slumber. Astoach swore himself to the cause and come the time of need he would arrive, prepared to assume the mantle.
And now, after such a long period of silence, those with the capability to sense such intricate workings along the vast web of Force may note the silent creeping cold that slowly swept about from the dark abyss of space. There was merely darkness initially, save for the bright array of starts that cascade across the eternal midnight sky of space. Just the chill, the caressing wraith of unseen hoarfrost that enshrouded and crept into the expansive, perhaps dismissed for the cold of Hoth – for those who might find themselves upon its surface – save for that sheer
malevolence. It beat like a heart, throbbing with wanton flame and passion from the darkest fathoms of untold space, the drumming beating ever faster as the source, the monster that haunted the deepest bowels of space, drew ever closer. That lascivious
rage that consumed like black-burning fire, fueled by further evil, raging upon the black gore of unseen worlds as it grew ever larger, encroaching upon the planet of Hoth. There was a poltergeist lose among the confines of orbit and upon the stench of blood it flowed like an invisible current to them.
Then from the blackness it came, the ghost ship. It ignited out of hyperspace with a brief flash, then a cloud of the detonation, launching shockwaves through the vacuum as flames ignited along its exterior and panels of metal shrapnel were sent sprawling through the empty void. A
YV-330 it once was, now a broiling casket of flame, ignited from a skeletal frame that consumed the shell of the vessel, spraying the internal matter as the shields failed and the pressurized compression launched its iron guts into the cold reaches of space. It sunk into itself, imploding, before the reactor finally ignited and splashed the midnight backdrop with the splatter of a purple eruption, casting arcs of pale plasma into electric strikes at the adjacent debris not yet consumed by the rampant blasts. Yet the presence of evil did not disperse with the freighter’s destruction, for a lone escape pod jettisoned from the craft and lazily impinged upon the space occupied by the Hikage Armada.
A sole occupant found himself within the rather derelict escape pod, whose seats were moth eaten and ventilation almost clogged by dust (a rather dangerously fatal occurrence, but the inhabitant showed little interest in the prospect of nearly being lit aflame). There were no visible lights in the escape pod, yet from the dark glass Astoach would watch into the tremendous graveyard of space, and in turn, the tremendous fleet presented before him. It filled his heart with such ecstasy, such impatient excitement to command one of such behemoth forces on his own, yet he maintained a proper poise and his face revealed little but solemnness. Yet, his face would betray little should emotion ever win an upper hand, for it was concealed beneath a black mask, carved of Synthe-Leather in the form of a shade, with twisted, puckered eyes situated above the gnarled stitching that webbed across the hood. It was old now and the leather curled and cracked under layers of grime and calloused patches of hardened, false-flesh, with chalk splayed across in symbolic presence, rubbed over the eyes by Astoach’s own hands freshly, to garner to proper appearance of a wraith.
He watched as a ghost indeed, silently awaiting some form of response to be emitted by the fleet, but impatience gradually won against him. A ghastly pale hand, tipped by blackened claws, jutting from the ripped thread of his cloak, scratched a trailing finger against the holographic panel, just barely luminescent, to his write. A comms system, accessing open frequency to which it broadcasted his announcement, in part muffled by the hallowed embrace of his mask,
“I’ve come at long last, Romeo Sin, to take my place among the helm of the Tenebris Triumvirate forces..." The grim drawl sung weeping cords of bony frost once again, that malevolent presence dancing to the tune of his speech.
"It's Astoach."
[member="Adan Jax"] [member="stardust"] [member="Mira Starwind"] [member="Celty Ikon"] [member="Captain Barbossa"] [member="Salvor Arnex"] [member="Aleksander Miles"] [member="Aedan Miles"]
(Sorry if I tagged the wrong people to this post or just missed a few, there are just SO many of you I damn near went cross-eyed trying to catch up on the thread!)
